Speaking generally, the attainment of a majority in a democratic
parliament by the party of the proletariat is not an absolute
impossibility. But such a fact, even if it were realized, would not
introduce any new principle into the course of events. The
intermediate elements of the intelligentsia, under the influence of
the parliamentary victory of the proletariat, might possibly display
less resistance to the new regime. But the fundamental resistance of
the bourgeoisie would be decided by such facts as the attitude of the
army, the degree to which the workers were armed, the situation in the
neighboring states: and the civil war would develop under the pressure
of these most real circumstances, and not by the mobile arithmetic of
parliamentarism.
Our party has never refused to lead the way for proletarian
dictatorship through the gates of democracy, having clearly summed up
in its mind certain agitational and political advantages of such a
"legalized" transition to the new regime. Hence, our attempt to call
the Constituent Assembly. The Russian peasant, only just awakened by
the revolution to political life, found himself face to face with half
a dozen parties, each of which apparently had made up its mind to
confuse his mind. The Constituent Assembly placed itself across the
path of the revolutionary movement, and was swept aside.
The opportunist majority in the Constituent Assembly represented only
the political reflection of the mental confusion and indecision
which reigned amidst the middle-classes in the town and country
and amidst the more backward elements of the proletariat. If we
take the viewpoint of isolated historical possibilities, one
might say that it would have been more painless if the Constituent
Assembly had worked for a year or two, had finally discredited the
Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks by their connection
with the Cadets, and had thereby led to the formal majority of the
Bolsheviks, showing the masses that in reality only two forces
existed: the revolutionary proletariat, led by the Communists, and
the counter-revolutionary democracy, headed by the generals and the
admirals. But the point is that the pulse of the internal relations of
the revolution was beating not at all in time with the pulse of the
development of its external relations. If our party had thrown all
responsibility on to the objective formula of "the course of events"
the development of military operations might have forestalled us.
German imperialism might have seized Petrograd, the evacuation of
which the Kerensky Government had already begun. The fall of Petrograd
would at that time have meant a death-blow to the proletariat, for all
the best forces of the revolution were concentrated there, in the
Baltic Fleet and in the Red capital.
* * * * *
Our party may be accused, therefore, not of going against the course
of historical development, but of having taken at a stride several
political steps. It stepped over the heads of the Mensheviks and the
Socialist-Revolutionaries, in order not to allow German imperialism to
step across the head of the Russian proletariat and conclude peace
with the Entente on the back of the revolution before it was able to
spread its wings over the whole world.
From the above it will not be difficult to deduce the answers to the
two questions with which Kautsky pestered us. Firstly: Why did we
summon the Constituent Assembly when we had in view the dictatorship
of the proletariat? Secondly: If the first Constituent Assembly which
we summoned proved backward and not in harmony with the interests of
the revolution, why did we reject the idea of a new Assembly? The
thought at the back of Kautsky's mind is that we repudiated democracy,
not on the ground of principle, but only because it proved against us.
In order to seize this insinuation by its long ears, let us establish
the facts.
The watchword, "All power to the Soviets," was put forward by our
Party at the very beginning of the revolution--_i.e._, long before,
not merely the decree as to the dissolution of the Constituent
Assembly, but the decree as to its convocation. True, we did not set
up the Soviets in opposition to the future Constituent Assembly, the
summoning of which was constantly postponed by the Government of
Kerensky, and consequently became more and more problematical. But in
any case, we did not consider the Constituent Assembly, after the
manner of the democrats, as the future master of the Russian land, who
would come and settle everything. We explained to the masses that the
Soviets, the revolutionary organizations of the laboring masses
themselves, can and must become the true masters. If we did not
formally repudiate the Constituent Assembly beforehand, it was only
because it stood in contrast, not to the power of the Soviets, but to
the power of Kerensky himself, who, in his turn, was only a screen for
the bourgeoisie. At the same time we did decide beforehand that, if,
in the Constituent Assembly, the majority proved in our favor, that
body must dissolve itself and hand over the power to the Soviets--as
later on the Petrograd Town Council did, elected as it was on the
basis of the most democratic electoral franchise. In my book on the
October Revolution, I tried to explain the reasons which made the
Constituent Assembly the out-of-date reflection of an epoch through
which the revolution had already passed. As we saw the organization of
revolutionary power only in the Soviets, and at the moment of the
summoning of the Constituent Assembly the Soviets were already the de
facto power, the question was inevitably decided for us in the sense
of the violent dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, since it would
not dissolve itself in favor of the Government of the Soviets.
"But why," asks Kautsky, "did you not summon a new Constituent
Assembly?"
Because we saw no need for it. If the first Constituent Assembly could
still play a fleeting progressive part, conferring a sanction upon the
Soviet regime in its first days, convincing for the middle-class
elements, now, after two years of victorious proletarian dictatorship
and the complete collapse of all democratic attempts in Siberia, on
the shores of the White Sea, in the Ukraine, and in the Caucasus, the
power of the Soviets truly does not need the blessing of the faded
authority of the Constituent Assembly. "Are we not right in that case
to conclude," asks Kautsky in the tone of Lloyd George, "that the
Soviet Government rules by the will of the minority, since it avoids
testing its supremacy by universal suffrage?" Here is a blow that
misses its mark.
If the parliamentary regime, even in the period of "peaceful," stable
development, was a rather crude method of discovering the opinion of
the country, and in the epoch of revolutionary storm completely lost
its capacity to follow the course of the struggle and the development
of revolutionary consciousness, the Soviet regime, which is more
closely, straightly, honestly bound up with the toiling majority of
the people, does achieve meaning, not in statically reflecting a
majority, but in dynamically creating it. Having taken its stand on
the path of revolutionary dictatorship, the working class of Russia
has thereby declared that it builds its policy in the period of
transition, not on the shadowy art of rivalry with chameleon-hued
parties in the chase for peasant votes, but on the actual attraction
of the peasant masses, side by side with the proletariat, into the
work of ruling the country in the real interests of the laboring
masses. Such democracy goes a little deeper down than parliamentarism.
To-day, when the main problem--the question of life and death--of the
revolution consists in the military repulse of the various attacks of
the White Guard bands, does Kautsky imagine that any form of
parliamentary "majority" is capable of guaranteeing a more energetic,
devoted, and successful organization of revolutionary defence? The
conditions of the struggle are so defined, in a revolutionary country
throttled by the criminal ring of the blockade, that all the
middle-class groups are confronted only with the alternative of
Denikin or the Soviet Government. What further proof is needed when
even parties, which stand for compromise in principle, like the
Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, have split along that
very line?
When suggesting to us the election of a Constituent Assembly, does
Kautsky propose the stopping of the civil war for the purpose of the
elections? By whose decision? If he intends for this purpose to bring
into motion the authority of the Second International, we hasten to
inform him that that institution enjoys in Denikin's camp only a
little more authority than it does in ours. But to the extent that the
civil war between the Workers' and Peasants' Army and the imperialist
bands is still going on, the elections must of necessity be limited to
Soviet territory. Does Kautsky desire to insist that we should allow
the parties which support Denikin to come out into the open? Empty and
contemptible chatter! There is not one government, at any time and
under any conditions, which would allow its enemies to mobilize
hostile forces in the rear of its armies.
A not unimportant place in the discussion of the question is occupied
by the fact that the flower of the laboring population is at present
on active service. The foremost workers and the most class-conscious
peasants, who take the first place at all elections, as in all
important political activities, directing the public opinion of the
workers, are at present fighting and dying as commanders, commissars,
or rank and file in the Red Army. If the most "democratic" governments
in the bourgeois states, whose regime is founded on parliamentarism,
consider it impossible to carry on elections to parliament in
wartime, it is all the more senseless to demand such elections during
the war of the Soviet Republic, the regime of which is not for one
moment founded on parliamentarism. It is quite sufficient that the
revolutionary government of Russia, in the most difficult months and
times, never stood in the way of periodic re-elections of its _own_
elective institutions--the local and central Soviets.
Finally, as a last argument--the last and the least--we have to
present to the notice of Kautsky that even the Russian Kautskians, the
Mensheviks like Martov and Dan, do not consider it possible to put
forward at the present moment a demand for a Constituent Assembly,
postponing it to better times in the future. Will there be any need of
it then? Of this one may be permitted to doubt. When the civil war is
over, the dictatorship of the working class will disclose all its
creative energy, and will, in practice, show the most backward masses
what it can give them. By means of a systematically applied universal
labor service, and a centralized organization of distribution, the
whole population of the country will be drawn into the general Soviet
system of economic arrangement and self-government. The Soviets
themselves, at present the organs of government, will gradually melt
into purely economic organizations. Under such conditions it is
doubtful whether any one will think of erecting, over the real fabric
of Socialist society, an archaic crown in the shape of the Constituent
Assembly, which would only have to register the fact that everything
necessary has already been "constituted" before it and without it.[3]
[3] In order to charm us in favor of a Constituent Assembly
Kautsky brings forward an argument based on the rate of
exchange to the assistance of his argument, based on the
categorical imperative. "Russia requires," he writes, "the
help of foreign capital, but this help will not come to the
Soviet Republic if the latter does not summon a Constituent
Assembly, and does not give freedom of the Press; not
because the capitalists are democratic idealists--to Tsarism
they gave without any hesitation many milliards--but because
they have no business faith in a revolutionary government."
(Page 218.)
There are scraps of truth in this rubbish. The Stock
Exchange did really support the government of Kolchak when
it relied for support on the Constituent Assembly. From its
experience of Kolchak the Stock Exchange became confirmed in
its conviction that the mechanism of bourgeois democracy can
be utilized in capitalist interests, and then thrown aside
like a worn-out pair of puttees. It is quite possible that
the Stock Exchange would again give a parliamentary loan on
the guarantee of a Constituent Assembly, believing, on the
basis of its former experience, that such a body would prove
only an intermediate step to capitalist dictatorship. We do
not propose to buy the "business faith" of the Stock
Exchange at such a price, and decidedly prefer the "faith"
which is aroused in the realist Stock Exchange by the weapon
of the Red Army.
4