The rapacious toll of the East: How the Monopolies plunder the Toilers through Freight

Comrades! Pray, cast your eyes upon the latest reports from the marches of commerce. It is a spectacle of pure, unadulterated exploitation! In a mere month, the cost of transporting goods by carriage from China to our lands has soared by some fifteen to twenty-five per cent. Is this not the very essence of the bourgeois appetite for profit?

Consider the cold, hard figures provided by the agents of the market. On the fifth of July, a load of twenty tons from Manchuria to Novolipetsk commanded a sum of nine hundred thousand rubles. Yet, by the seventh, the profiteers demanded no less than one million and one hundred and fifty thousand! The audacity of these money-lenders is boundless; they claim there is a dearth of carriages, while they simultaneously tighten the noose around the neck of the producer.

Mr. Mikhail Shilinchuk of 'Trasko' dares to speak of an 'increase in demand'—a fifty per cent rise since April! I ask you: is this 'demand,' or is it the desperate scramble of the proletariat caught in the gears of a capitalist machine?

And what of the excuse regarding fuel? Mr. Georgy Vlastopulo of 'Optimalog' suggests that the cost of petrol and diesel is to blame, adding ten to twenty thousand rubles to the bill daily. Mark my words: the bourgeoisie always finds a convenient crisis to justify their theft. They point to the fires and ruins of our refineries, caused by the conflicts of the day, to mask the fact that the Capital is simply gorging itself upon the misery of the masses.

Even the high ministers, such as Mr. Novak, speak of 'restructuring logistics' and importing fuel from Belarus and Kazakhstan. They offer us the crumbs of a revised plan while the great Monopolies continue to bleed the working man dry. They propose the production of lesser-grade fuels—a fitting metaphor for the quality of life they provide for the labouring class!

How long shall the toilers endure this yoke? The freight rates are not merely numbers on a ledger; they are the chains of financial capital, binding the worker to the whim of the merchant-princes!