The Soviets, as a form of the organization of the working class,
represents for Kautsky, "in relation to the party and professional
organizations of more developed countries, not a higher form of
organization, but first and foremost a substitute (Notbehelf), arising
out of the absence of political organizations." (Page 68.)
Let us grant that this is true in connection with Russia. But then,
why have Soviets sprung up in Germany? Ought one not absolutely to
repudiate them in the Ebert Republic? We note, however, that
Hilferding, the nearest sympathizer of Kautsky, proposes to include
the Soviets in the Constitution. Kautsky is silent.
The estimate of Soviets as a "primitive" organization is true to the
extent that the open revolutionary struggle is "more primitive" than
parliamentarism. But the artificial complexity of the latter embraces
only the upper strata, insignificant in their size. On the other hand,
revolution is only possible where the masses have their vital
interests at stake. The November Revolution raised on to their feet
such deep layers as the pre-revolutionary Social-Democracy could not
even dream of. However wide were the organizations of the party and
the trade unions in Germany, the revolution immediately proved
incomparably wider than they. The revolutionary masses found their
direct representation in the most simple and generally comprehensive
delegate organization--in the Soviet. One may admit that the Council
of Deputies falls behind both the party and the trade union in the
sense of the clearness of its programme, or the exactness of its
organization. But it is far and away in front of the party and the
trade unions in the size of the masses drawn by it into the organized
struggle; and this superiority in quality gives the Soviet undeniable
revolutionary preponderance.
The Soviet embraces workers of all undertakings, of all professions,
of all stages of cultural development, all stages of political
consciousness--and thereby objectively is forced to formulate the
general interests of the proletariat.
The _Communist Manifesto_ viewed the problem of the Communist just
in this sense--namely, the formulating of the general historical
interests of the working class as a whole.
"The Communists are only distinguished from other proletarian
parties," in the words of the _Manifesto_, "by this: that in the
different national struggles of the proletariat they point out, and
bring to the fore, the common interests of the proletariat,
independently of nationality; and again that, in the different stages
of evolution through which the struggle between the proletariat and
bourgeoisie passes, they constantly represent the interests of the
movement taken as a whole."
In the form of the all-embracing class organization of the Soviets,
the movement takes itself "as a whole." Hence it is clear why the
Communists could and had to become the guiding party in the Soviets.
But hence also is seen all the narrowness of the estimate of Soviets
as "substitutes for the party" (Kautsky), and all the stupidity of the
attempt to include the Soviets, in the form of an auxiliary lever, in
the mechanism of bourgeois democracy. (Hilferding.)
The Soviets are the organization of the proletarian revolution, and
have purpose either as an organ of the struggle for power or as the
apparatus of power of the working class.
Unable to grasp the revolutionary role of the Soviets, Kautsky sees
their root defects in that which constitutes their greatest merit.
"The demarcation of the bourgeois from the worker," he writes, "can
never be actually drawn. There will always be something arbitrary in
such demarcation, which fact transforms the Soviet idea into a
particularly suitable foundation for dictatorial and arbitrary rule,
but renders it unfitted for the creation of a clear, systematically
built-up constitution." (Page 170.)
Class dictatorship, according to Kautsky, cannot create for itself
institutions answering to its nature, because there do not exist lines
of demarcation between the classes. But in that case, what happens to
the class struggle altogether? Surely it was just, in the existence of
numerous transitional stages between the bourgeoisie and the
proletariat, that the lower middle-class theoreticians always found
their principal argument against the "principle" of the class
struggle? For Kautsky, however, doubts as to principle begin just at
the point where the proletariat, having overcome the shapelessness and
unsteadiness of the intermediate class, having brought one part of
them over to its side and thrown the remainder into the camp of the
bourgeoisie, has actually organized its dictatorship in the Soviet
Constitution.
The very reason why the Soviets an absolutely irreplaceable apparatus
in the proletarian State is that their framework is elastic and
yielding, with the result that not only social but political changes
in the relationship of classes and sections can immediately find their
expression in the Soviet apparatus. Beginning with the largest
factories and works, the Soviets then draw into their organization the
workers of private workshops and shop-assistants, proceed to enter the
village, organize the peasants against the landowners, and finally the
lower and middle-class sections of the peasantry against the richest.
The Labor State collects numerous staffs of employees, to a
considerable extent from the ranks of the bourgeoisie and the
bourgeois educated classes. To the extent that they become disciplined
under the Soviet regime, they find representation in the Soviet
system. Expanding--and at certain moments contracting--in harmony with
the expansion and contraction of the social positions conquered by the
proletariat, the Soviet system remains the State apparatus of the
social revolution, in its internal dynamics, its ebbs and flows, its
mistakes and successes. With the final triumph of the social
revolution, the Soviet system will expand and include the whole
population, in order thereby to lose the characteristics of a form of
State, and melt away into a mighty system of producing and consuming
co-operation.
If the party and the trade unions were organizations of preparation
for the revolution, the Soviets are the weapon of the revolution
itself. After its victory, the Soviets become the organs of power. The
role of the party and the unions, without decreasing is nevertheless
essentially altered.
In the hands of the party is concentrated the general control. It does
not immediately administer, since its apparatus is not adapted for
this purpose. But it has the final word in all fundamental questions.
Further, our practice has led to the result that, in all moot
questions, generally--conflicts between departments and personal
conflicts within departments--the last word belongs to the Central
Committee of the party. This affords extreme economy of time and
energy, and in the most difficult and complicated circumstances gives
a guarantee for the necessary unity of action. Such a regime is
possible only in the presence of the unquestioned authority of the
party, and the faultlessness of its discipline. Happily for the
revolution, our party does possess in an equal measure both of these
qualities. Whether in other countries which have not received from
their past a strong revolutionary organization, with a great hardening
in conflict, there will be created just as authoritative a Communist
Party by the time of the proletarian revolution, it is difficult to
foretell; but it is quite obvious that on this question, to a very
large extent, depends the progress of the Socialist revolution in each
country.
The exclusive role of the Communist Party under the conditions of a
victorious proletarian revolution is quite comprehensible. The
question is of the dictatorship of a class. In the composition of that
class there enter various elements, heterogeneous moods, different
levels of development. Yet the dictatorship pre-supposes unity of
will, unity of direction, unity of action. By what other path then can
it be attained? The revolutionary supremacy of the proletariat
pre-supposes within the proletariat itself the political supremacy of
a party, with a clear programme of action and a faultless internal
discipline.
The policy of coalitions contradicts internally the regime of the
revolutionary dictatorship. We have in view, not coalitions with
bourgeois parties, of which of course there can be no talk, but a
coalition of Communists with other "Socialist" organizations,
representing different stages of backwardness and prejudice of the
laboring masses.
The revolution swiftly reveals all that is unstable, wears out all
that is artificial; the contradictions glossed over in a coalition are
swiftly revealed under the pressure of revolutionary events. We have
had an example of this in Hungary, where the dictatorship of the
proletariat assumed the political form of the coalition of the
Communists with disguised Opportunists. The coalition soon broke up.
The Communist Party paid heavily for the revolutionary instability and
the political treachery of its companions. It is quite obvious that
for the Hungarian Communists it would have been more profitable to
have come to power later, after having afforded to the Left
Opportunists the possibility of compromising themselves once and for
all. It is quite another question as to how far this was possible. In
any case, a coalition with the Opportunists, only temporarily hiding
the relative weakness of the Hungarian Communists, at the same time
prevented them from growing stronger at the expense of the
Opportunists; and brought them to disaster.
The same idea is sufficiently illustrated by the example of the
Russian revolution. The coalition of the Bolsheviks with the Left
Socialist Revolutionists, which lasted for several months, ended with
a bloody conflict. True, the reckoning for the coalition had to be
paid, not so much by us Communists as by our disloyal companions.
Apparently, such a coalition, in which we were the stronger side and,
therefore, were not taking too many risks in the attempt, at one
definite stage in history, to make use of the extreme Left-wing of the
bourgeois democracy, tactically must be completely justified. But,
none the less, the Left S.R. episode quite clearly shows that the
regime of compromises, agreements, mutual concessions--for that is the
meaning of the regime of coalition--cannot last long in an epoch in
which situations alter with extreme rapidity, and in which supreme
unity in point of view is necessary in order to render possible unity
of action.
We have more than once been accused of having substituted for the
dictatorship of the Soviets the dictatorship of our party. Yet it can
be said with complete justice that the dictatorship of the Soviets
became possible only by means of the dictatorship of the party. It is
thanks to the clarity of its theoretical vision and its strong
revolutionary organization that the party has afforded to the Soviets
the possibility of becoming transformed from shapeless parliaments of
labor into the apparatus of the supremacy of labor. In this
"substitution" of the power of the party for the power of the working
class there is nothing accidental, and in reality there is no
substitution at all. The Communists express the fundamental interests
of the working class. It is quite natural that, in the period in which
history brings up those interests, in all their magnitude, on to the
order of the day, the Communists have become the recognized
representatives of the working class as a whole.
But where is your guarantee, certain wise men ask us, that it is just
your party that expresses the interests of historical development?
Destroying or driving underground the other parties, you have thereby
prevented their political competition with you, and consequently you
have deprived yourselves of the possibility of testing your line of
action.
This idea is dictated by a purely liberal conception of the course of
the revolution. In a period in which all antagonisms assume an open
character, and the political struggle swiftly passes into a civil war,
the ruling party has sufficient material standard by which to test its
line of action, without the possible circulation of Menshevik papers.
Noske crushes the Communists, but they grow. We have suppressed the
Mensheviks and the S.R.s--and they have disappeared. This criterion is
sufficient for us. At all events, our problem is not at every given
moment statistically to measure the grouping of tendencies; but to
render victory for our tendency secure. For that tendency is the
tendency of the revolutionary dictatorship; and in the course of the
latter, in its internal friction, we must find a sufficient criterion
for self-examination.
The continuous "independence" of the trade union movement, in the
period of the proletarian revolution, is just as much an impossibility
as the policy of coalition. The trade unions become the most important
economic organs of the proletariat in power. Thereby they fall under
the leadership of the Communist Party. Not only questions of principle
in the trade union movement, but serious conflicts of organization
within it, are decided by the Central Committee of our party.
The Kautskians attack the Soviet Government as the dictatorship of a
"section" of the working class. "If only," they say, "the dictatorship
was carried out by the _whole_ class!" It is not easy to understand
what actually they imagine when they say this. The dictatorship of the
proletariat, in its very essence, signifies the immediate supremacy of
the revolutionary vanguard, which relies upon the heavy masses, and,
where necessary, obliges the backward tail to dress by the head. This
refers also to the trade unions. After the conquest of power by the
proletariat, they acquire a compulsory character. They must include
all industrial workers. The party, on the other hand, as before,
includes in its ranks only the most class-conscious and devoted; and
only in a process of careful selection does it widen its ranks. Hence
follows the guiding role of the Communist minority in the trade
unions, which answers to the supremacy of the Communist Party in the
Soviets, and represents the political expression of the dictatorship
of the proletariat.
The trade unions become the direct organizers of social production.
They express not only the interests of the industrial workers, but the
interests of industry itself. During the first period, the old
currents in trade unionism more than once raised their head, urging
the unions to haggle with the Soviet State, lay down conditions for
it, and demand from it guarantees. The further we go, however, the
more do the unions recognize that they are organs of production of the
Soviet State, and assume responsibility for its fortunes--not opposing
themselves to it, but identifying themselves with it. The unions
become the organizers of labor discipline. They demand from the
workers intensive labor under the most difficult conditions, to the
extent that the Labor State is not yet able to alter those conditions.
The unions become the apparatus of revolutionary repression against
undisciplined, anarchical, parasitic elements in the working class.
From the old policy of trade unionism, which at a certain stage is
inseparable from the industrial movement within the framework of
capitalist society, the unions pass along the whole line on to the new
path of the policy of revolutionary Communism.