none of its members may receive more than 13,500 rubles per month, which limits the Peoples' Commissars (the Cabinet of Russia) to that insignificant sum—now worth about 45 cents. Some non-party industrial experts, however, are paid as much as 750,000 rubles per month.
From the price list submitted above it is at once evident that wages of even 20,000 rubles per month have a negligible purchasing power, and as it has been out of the question to keep the schedules adjusted to the varying price rates, the Government has adopted a new policy of paying the workers their wages (in addition to their regular supplies) in the articles they produce, so far as the nature and condition of industry will permit. These products the workers then trade off through the co-operatives, either to the peasants for foodstuffs, or to other groups of workers for clothes, shoes, etc. Thus, so far as possible, they are protected from the wild price fluctuations in the "free" markets, and yet enabled to take advantage of whatever commodities these markets have to offer.
Although Russian revolutionists often smile at the antics of their money system and the way it yields them so much support, still they understand very well the disadvantages of inflating the currency. They know that a tremendous amount of Russian production (mostly agricultural) is still carried on upon a competitive, independent basis, and that for this to take place to the best advantage a stable monetary system is absolutely necessary. If they have weakened the medium of exchange it has been under the pressure of extreme revolutionary necessity.
Already the keen economists at the head of the Soviet Government have plans to re-habilitate the currency. But this can probably never be accomplished fully until the industrial crisis is solved; until the workers in the nationalized industries have great surpluses of goods on hand to trade off with the independent producers—the peasants principally. When that time comes, and come it will in the near future, the question of a medium of exchange, whether money, labor checks, or what not, will be a mere detail to be worked out at leisure.
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