A Shortcut to Communism?
The Bolsheviks attempted to stamp out private trade and bartering which they saw as the final remnants of capitalism. By controlling the food supply and rationing they could control society. Left-wing Bolsheviks saw the ration coupon as the founding deed of the Communist order - an alternative to money, whose disappearance they mistakenly believed would mean the end of the capitalist system. The class of one's ration defined one's place in the new social hierarchy.
EXTRACT FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY. Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924 (Pimlico, 1997), pp. 726-7.
...There were some Bolsheviks on the extreme Left who thought that inflation should be encouraged in order to phase out money altogether...
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