Lenin on State Capitalism - İnterview with Lincoln Eyre

From INTERVIEW WITH LINCOLN EYRE, CORRESPONDENT OF THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER "THE WORLD"

"And your oeace terrns?"

" It is idle to talk further about themt Lenin returned em­ phatically. "All the world knows that we are prepared to make pea­ ce on terrns the fairness of which even the most imperialistic capi­talists could not dispute. We have reiterated and reiterated our desire for peace, our need far peace and our readiness to give foreign capital the most generous concessions and guarantees. But we do not propose to be strangled to death for the sake of peace.,,

"I know of no reason why a socialistic commo!1wealth like ours cannot do business indefınitely with capitalistic. coun tries. We don't mind taking their capitalistic locomotives and farming machinery, so why sho-q.ld they mind ta.king our socialistic wheat , fl.ax and platinum. 

Socialistic corn tastes the same as any other corn, does it not? Of course, they will have to have business relations with the dreadful Bolsheviks-that is, the Soviet Govern­ ment. But it should not be harder for American steel manufac­ turers, for instance, to deal wiıth the Soviets than it was for them to deal with Entente governments31 in their war-time munition deals."

Published  on  Febru ary 21, 1920 in    the    newspaper   The   World, No.  21368      ,

V ol.  42,  p. 177