revolution, are drawn from their hiding places and thrown on the hungry market.
The last measure deals with the agricultural phase. (4), By the substitution of the grain tax for the grain levy the peasants are encouraged to produce more food-stuffs. Under the grain levy everything was taken from them except barely enough for them to live on; whereas under the grain tax they have to give up only a certain percentage of their crops. The rest is left for them to dispose of as they see fit. The more they raise the more they have. This is an incentive to production, so direct that even the dull-witted peasants can comprehend it.
The additional mass of machinery and other commodities secured through foreign trade, concessions, and small free-trade industry will be used to rehabilitate the industries generally and to satisfy burning needs of the workers and peasants. And the large surpluses of grain originating as a result of the new tax system will serve to relieve the food shortage in the cities and also as an important basis for foreign trade. Just as decreasing production in the two spheres of industry and agriculture reacted unfavorably upon each other constantly,and finally developed the vicious circle above-described, so it is calculated that the gradually increasing production in these two spheres will influence one another favorably until finally the vicious circle is broken altogether, and Russia, with great reserves in her control, is able to march rapidly forward to abunding prosperity. That is the purpose of the new economic policies of Soviet Russia.
The new economic program is esentially capitalistic: it is an attempt to use some of capitalism's own weapons temporarily against itself. That there is danger in this for the revolution cannot be denied, but it is a peril that must be run because the workers in other countries have failed to support Russia by dethroning their masters. The world's capitalists hope and believe that the danger will be fatal, and many revolutionaries dread that they may be right. But the Russian Communists, keen realists and with all the facts in their hands, are sure that they can offset it and achieve the end they have in mind. Let us examine for a minute
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