The most important feature of the revolution on the financial field is the depreciation of money. The government printed paper money without regard to the gold reserve. These paper bills are no national debt certificates, no credit certificates; they are nothing but paper. The state does not borrow and has no creditors like the capitalist states. Capitalism, that is, interest bearing capital, is abolished. The money issued by the bolsheviks represents no national debt and it is not intended to have it redeemed by the state. The security back of it is the wealth of the country, the land, which has become state property, the forests, the mines, the oil springs, the factories and the machinery; all these are the assets of the state. We have also seen that the bolsheviks in their commercial treaties with other countries pay with natural resources, which they turn over in form of concessions to the capitalist states for exploitation, seeing that they have no possiblity of exploiting them themselves. In consonance therewith the bolshevik paper money does not carry the legend "Loan Certificate" or "National Bank Note" or a statement to the effect that the state pays the amount upon demand, but in 6 languages it has the words: "Proletarians of all countries, unite!"
This is nearly a precise verbal account of an interview with Minister of Finance Krestinsky. From this we can see that it has not been possible to abolish money, as many socialist theories teach, but that interest was abolished and therewith also the income without work, which fell to the rich through their ownership of shares and other valuable papers. By this means, however, only one form of income without work is abolished, though it is the most parasitic form. Through the retention of paper notes it was possible to make the notes themselves into merchandise just as well as other goods. In fact, there are in Russia a great number of currency speculators. They buy German, Swedish, Finnish, Esthonian and Russian money and afterwards sell it with a good profit. Naturally, speculation is heavily punished, but it is an old truism that punishments do not protect us from misdeeds or foolishness. The second form of parasitical income, i. e., trade, is, consequently, not done away with, and money keeps right on existing.
Third, through the retention of money, the standard by which the value of labor is measured continues to be money, and it is exactly for this reason that money has an independent magnitude and significance.
The circumstance that no private person can draw money or other values from the bank for a note, and that the state has stepped into the place of the private capitalist, is of far-reaching importance. The private person no longer has the right to demand any material values whatsoever in the form of inheritance, etc. ; these values belong to the whole people, to the collectivity; to the state. Thus the financial system is collectivistic or part of the state business, in contradistinction to the capitalist states, where there is private economy.