CHAPTER VII

BOLSHEVIST THEORY AND PRACTICE

I

Utopia-making is among the easiest and most fascinating of all intellectual

occupations. Few employments which can be called intellectual are easier

than that of devising panaceas for the ills of society, of demonstrating on

paper how the rough places of life may be made plain and its crooked ones

made straight. And it is not a vain and fruitless waste of effort and of

time, as things so easy of achievement often are. Many of the noblest minds

of all lands and all ages have found pleasure and satisfaction in the

imagining of ideal commonwealths and by so doing have rendered great

service to mankind, enriching literature and, what is more important,

stimulating the urge and passion for improvement and the faith of men in

their power to climb to the farthest heights of their dreams. But the

material of life is hard and lacks the plastic quality of inspired

imagination. Though there is probably no single evil which exists for which

a solution has not been devised in the wonderful laboratory of visioning,

the perversity of the subtle and mysterious thing called life is such that

many great and grave evils continue to challenge, perplex, and harass our

humankind.

Yet, notwithstanding the plain lesson of history and experience, the

reminder impressed on every page of humanity's record, that between the

glow and the glamour of the vision and its actual realization stretches a

long, long road, there are many simple-minded souls to whom the vision

gleamed is as the goal attained. They do not distinguish between schemes on

paper and ideals crystallized into living realities. This type of mind is

far more common than is generally recognized; that is why so many people

quite seriously believe that the Bolsheviki have really established in

Russia a society which conforms to the generous ideals of social democracy.

They have read the rhetorical "decrees" and "proclamations" in which the

shibboleths of freedom and democracy abound, and are satisfied. Yet it

ought to be plainly evident to any intelligent person that, even if the

decrees and proclamations were as sound as they are in fact unsound, and as

definite as they are in fact vague, they would afford no real basis for

judging Bolshevism as an actual experiment in social polity. There is, in

ultimate analysis, only one test to apply to Bolshevism--namely, the test

of reality. We must ask what the Bolsheviki did, not what they professed;

what was the performance, not what was the promise.

Of course, this does not mean that we are to judge result wholly without

regard to aim. Admirable intention is still admirable as intention, even

when untoward circumstance defeats it and brings deplorable results.

Bolshevism is not merely a body of belief and speculation. When the

Bolsheviki seized the government of Russia and began to attempt to carry

out their ideas, Bolshevism became a living movement in a world of reality

and subject to the acid test of pragmatic criteria. It must be judged by

such a matter-of-fact standard as the extent to which it has enlarged or

diminished the happiness, health, comfort, freedom, well-being,

satisfaction, and efficiency of the greatest number of individuals. Unless

the test shows that it has increased the sum of good available for the

mass, Bolshevism cannot be regarded as a gain. If, on the contrary, the

test shows that it has resulted in sensibly diminishing the sum of good

available to the greatest number of people, Bolshevism must be counted as a

move in the wrong direction, as so much effort lost. Nothing that can be

urged on philosophical or moral grounds for or against the moral or

intellectual impulses that prompted it can fundamentally change the

verdict. Yet, for all that, it is well to examine the theory which inspires

the practice; well to know the manner and method of thinking, and the view

of life, from which Bolshevism as a movement of masses of men and women

proceeds.

Theoretically, Bolshevism, as such, has no necessary connection with the

philosophy or the program of Socialism. Certain persons have established a

working relation between Socialism, a program, and Bolshevism, a method.

The connection is not inherently logical, but, on the contrary, wholly

adventitious. As a matter of fact, Bolshevism can only be linked to the

program of Socialism by violently and disastrously weakening the latter and

destroying its fundamental character. We shall do well to remember this; to

remember that the method of action, and, back of the method, the philosophy

on which it rests and from which it springs, are separate and distinct from

Socialism. They are incalculably older and they have been associated with

vastly different programs. All that is new in Bolshevism is that a very old

method of action, and a very old philosophy of action, have been seized

upon by a new class which attempts to unite them to a new program.

That is all that is implied in the "dictatorship of the proletariat."

Dictatorship by small minorities is not a new political phenomenon. All

that is new when the minority attempting to establish its dictatorship is

composed of poor, propertyless people, is the fact of their economic

condition and status. That is the only difference between the dictatorship

of Russia by the Romanov dynasty and the dictatorship of Russia by a small

minority of determined, class-conscious working-people. It is not only the

precise forms of oppressive power used by them that are identically

characteristic of Czarism and Bolshevism, but their underlying philosophy.

Both forms of dictatorship rest upon the philosophy of might as the only

valid right. Militarism, especially as it was developed under Prussian

leadership, has exactly the same philosophy and aims at the same general

result, namely, to establish the domination and control of society by a

minority class. The Bolsheviki have simply inverted Czarism and Militarism.

What really shocks the majority of people is not, after all, the methods or

the philosophy of Bolshevism, but the fact that the Bolsheviki, belonging

to a subject class, have seized upon the methods and philosophy of the most

powerful ruling classes and turned them to their own account. There is a

class morality and a class psychology the subtle influences of which few

perceive as a matter of habit, which, however, to a great extent shape our

judgments, our sympathies, and our antipathies. Men who never were shocked

when a Czar, speaking the language of piety and religion, indulged in the

most infamous methods and deeds of terror and oppression, are shocked

beyond all power of adequate expression when former subjects of that same

Czar, speaking the language of the religion of democracy and freedom,

resort to the same infamous methods of terror and oppression.

II

The idea that a revolting proletarian minority might by force impose its

rule upon society runs through the history of the modern working class, a

note of impatient, desperate, menacing despair. The Bolsheviki say that

they are Marxian Socialists; that Marx believed in and advocated the

setting up, during the transitory period of social revolution, of the

"dictatorship of the proletariat." They are not quite honest in this claim,

however; they are indulging in verbal tricks. It is true that Marx taught

that the proletarian dominion of society, as a preliminary to the abolition

of all class rule of every kind, must be regarded as certain and

inevitable. But it is not honest to claim the sanction of his teaching for

the seizure of political power by a small class, consisting of about 6 per

cent. of the population, and the imposition by force of its rule upon the

majority of the population that is either unwilling or passive. That is the

negation of Marxian Socialism. _It is the essence of Marx's teaching that

the social revolution must come as a historical necessity when the

proletariat itself comprises an overwhelming majority of the people_.

Let us summarize the theory as it appears in the _Communist Manifesto_:

Marx begins by setting forth the fact that class conflict is as old as

civilization itself, that history is very largely the record of conflicts

between contending social classes. In our epoch, he argues, class conflict

is greatly simplified; there is really only one division, that which

divides the bourgeoisie and the proletariat: "Society as a whole is more

and more splitting up into great hostile camps, into two great classes

directly facing each other, bourgeoisie and proletariat." ... "With the

development of industry the proletariat not only increases in numbers; it

becomes concentrated in great masses, its strength grows, and it feels that

strength more." ... "The proletarian movement is the _self-conscious,

independent movement of the immense majority in the interests of the

immense majority_." It is this "immense majority" that is to establish its

dominion. Marx expressly points out that "all previous historical movements

were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities." It is the

great merit of the movement of the proletariat, as he conceives it, that it

is the "movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense

majority."

Clearly, when Lenine and his followers say that they take their doctrine of

the "dictatorship of the proletariat" from Marx, they pervert the truth;

they take from Marx only the phrase, not their fundamental policy. It is

not to be denied that there were times when Marx himself momentarily lapsed

into the error of Blanqui and the older school of Utopian, conspiratory

Socialists who believed that they could find a short cut to social

democracy; that by a surprise stroke, carefully prepared and daringly

executed, a small and desperate minority could overthrow the existing

social order and bring about Socialism. As Jaurès has pointed out,[50] the

mind of Marx sometimes harked back to the dramatic side of the French

Revolution, and was captivated by such episodes as the conspiracy of Babeuf

and his friends, who in their day, while the proletariat was a small

minority, even as it is in Russia now, sought to establish its dominion.

But it is well known that after the failure of the Paris Commune, in 1871,

Marx once and for all abandoned all belief in this form of the

"dictatorship of the proletariat," and in the possibility of securing

Socialism through the conspiratory action of minorities. He was even rather

unwilling that the _Manifesto_ should be republished after that, except as

a purely historical document. It was in that spirit of reaction that he and

Engels wrote in 1872 that passage--to which Lenine has given such an

unwarranted interpretation--in which they say that the Commune had shown

that "the working classes cannot simply take possession of the ready-made

state machine and set it in motion for their own aims."

It was no less an interpreter of Marx than his great collaborator and

friend, Frederick Engels, who, in 1895, stated the reasons for abandoning

all belief in the possibility of accomplishing anything through political

surprises and through the action of small conscious and determined

minorities at the head of unconscious masses:

History proved that we were wrong--we and those who like us, in

1848, awaited the speedy success of the proletariat. It became

perfectly clear _that economic conditions all over the Continent

were by no means as yet sufficiently matured for superseding the

capitalist organization of production_. This was proved by the

economic revolution which commenced on the continent of Europe

after 1848 and developed in France, Austria-Hungary, Poland, and,

recently, also in Russia, and made Germany into an industrial

state of the first rank--all on a capitalist basis, _which shows

that in 1848 the prevailing conditions were still capable of

expansion_. And to-day we have a huge international army of

Socialists.... If this mighty proletarian army has not yet reached

its goal, if it is destined to gain its ends only in a long drawn

out struggle, making headway but slowly, step by step, this only

proves how impossible it was in 1848 to change social conditions

by forcible means ... the time for small minorities to place

themselves at the head of the ignorant masses and resort to force

in order to bring about revolutions, is gone. _A complete change

in the organization of society can be brought about only by the

conscious co-operation of the masses_; they must be alive to the

aim in view; they must know what they want. The history of the

last fifty years has taught us that.[51]

What Engels had in mind when he stressed the fact that history showed that

in 1848 "the prevailing conditions were still capable of expansion" is the

central Marxian doctrine of historical inevitability. It is surely less

than honest to claim the prestige and authority of Marx's teachings upon

the slender basis of a distorted version of his early thought, while

completely ignoring the matured body of his doctrines. It may not matter

much to the world to-day what Marx thought, or how far Lenine follows his

teachings, but it is of importance that the claim set up by Lenine and

Trotzky and many of their followers that they are guided by the principles

of Marxian Socialism is itself demonstrably an evidence of moral or

intellectual obliquity, which makes them very dangerous guides to follow.

It is of importance, too, that the claim they make allures many Socialists

of trusting and uncritical minds to follow them.

Many times in his long life Marx, together with Engels, found himself

engaged in a fierce war against the very things Lenine and Trotzky and

their associates have been trying to do. He thundered against Weitling, who

wanted to have a "daring minority" seize the power of the state and

establish its dictatorship by a _coup d'état_. He was denounced as a

"reactionary" by Willich and Kinkel because, in 1850, he rejected with

scorn the idea of a sudden seizure of political power through conspiratory

action, and had the courage to say that it would take fifty years for the

workers "to fit themselves for political power." He opposed Lassalle's idea

of an armed insurrection in 1862, because he was certain that the economic

development had not yet reached the stage which alone could make a social

change possible. He fought with all the fierce impetuousness of his nature

every attempt of Bakunin to lead the workers to attempt the seizure of

political power and forcibly establish their rule while still a

minority.[52] He fought all these men because he had become profoundly

convinced that "_no social order ever disappears before all the productive

forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and new and

higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions

of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society_."[53] No

"dictatorship of the proletariat," no action by any minority, however well

armed or however desperate, can overcome that great law.

The "dictatorship of the proletariat" in the sense in which that term is

used by the Russian Bolshevik leaders, and by those who in other countries

are urging that their example be followed, is not a policy of Marxian

Socialism. It is not a product of modern conditions. Rather it harks back

to the earlier conspiratory Socialism of Blanqui, with its traditions

inherited from Robespierre and Babeuf. So far as its advocates are

concerned, Marx and the whole modern Socialist movement might as well never

have existed at all. They take us back three-quarters of a century, to the

era before Marx, to that past so remote in intellectual and moral

character, though recent in point of time, when the working class of no

country in Europe possessed the right to vote--when the workers were

indeed proletarians and not citizens; not only propertyless, but also

"without a fatherland."

In truth, it is not difficult to understand how this theory has found

acceptance in Russia. It was not difficult to understand why Marx's

doctrine of economic evolution was for many years rejected by most Russian

Socialists; why the latter took the view that Socialism must be more

quickly attained, that capitalism was not a necessary precursor of

Socialism in Russia, but that an intelligent leadership of passive masses

would successfully establish Socialism on the basis of the old Russian

communal institutions. It was quite easy to understand the change that came

with Russia's industrial awakening, how the development of factory

production gave an impetus to the Marxian theories. And, though it presents

a strange paradox, in that it comes at a time when, despite everything,

Russian capitalism continues to develop, it is really not difficult to

understand how and why pre-Marxian conceptions reappear in that great land

of paradoxes. Politically and intellectually the position of the

proletariat of Russia before the recent Revolution was that of the

proletariat of France in 1848.

But that which baffles the mind of the serious investigator is the

readiness of so many presumably intelligent people living in countries

where--as in America--wholly different conditions prevail to ignore the

differences and be ready to abandon all the democratic advance made by the

workers. There is nothing more certain in the whole range of social and

political life than the fact that the doctrine that the power of the state

must be seized and used by the proletariat against the non-proletarian

classes, even for a relatively brief period, _can only be carried out by

destroying all the democracy thus far achieved_.

III

The validity of the foregoing contention can scarcely be questioned, except

by those to whom phrases are of more consequence than facts, who place

theories above realities. The moment the Bolsheviki tried to translate

their rhetorical propaganda for the dictatorship of the proletariat into

the concrete terms of political reality they found that they were compelled

to direct their main opposition, not against the bourgeoisie, or even

against capitalism, but against the newly created democracy. In the

movement to create a democratic government resting upon the basis of

universal, direct, equal, and secret suffrage they saw a peril to their

scheme far more formidable than militarism or capitalism. It was for this

reason that they set themselves to the task of suppressing the Constituent

Assembly. Only political simpletons will seriously regard the Bolshevik

attempt to camouflage their motive by pretending that they determined to

crush the Constituent Assembly because its members were elected on a

register that was "obsolete" and therefore no longer truly represented the

people.

The German Spartacides, who were acting in full accord with the Russian

Bolsheviki, had not that miserable excuse. Yet they set out by force of

arms to _prevent any election being held_. In this they were quite

consistent; they wanted to set up a dictatorship, and they knew that the

overwhelming mass of the people wanted something very different. At a

dinner of the Inter-Collegiate Socialist Society in New York, in December,

1918, a spokesman for the German variety of Bolshevism blandly explained

that "Karl Liebknecht and his comrades know that they cannot hope to get a

majority, therefore they are determined that no elections shall be held.

They will prevent this by force. After some time, perhaps, when a

proletarian régime has existed long enough, and people have become

convinced of the superiority of the Socialist way, or at least grown used

to it, _and it is safe to do so_, popular elections may be permitted."

Incredible as it seems, this declaration was received with cheers by an

audience which only a few minutes before had cheered with equal fervor

denunciations of "encroachments upon American democracy."

Curiously enough, the precise manner in which the Bolsheviki have acted

against democracy was set forth, as far back as 1850, by a German, Johann

von Miquel, in a letter to Karl Marx. Miquel was born in Hanover, but his

ancestors were of French origin. He studied at Heidelberg and Göttingen,

and became associated with the Socialist movement of the period. He settled

down to the practice of law, however, and when Hanover was annexed by

Prussia he entered the Prussian parliament. After the "dismissal of the

pilot," Bismarck, he became Prussian Minister of Finance, holding that

position for ten years. Liebknecht referred to him as "my former _comrade

in communismo_ and present Chancellor _in re_." This Miquel, while he was

still a Socialist, in 1850 wrote to Marx as follows:

The workers' party may succeed against the upper middle class and

what remains of the feudal element, _but it will be attacked on

its flank by the democracy_. We can perhaps give an anti-bourgeois

tone to the Revolution for a little while, _we can destroy the

essential conditions of bourgeois production_; but we cannot

possibly put down the small tradesmen and shopkeeping class, the

petty bourgeoisie. My motto is to secure all we can get. We should

prevent the lower and middle class from _forming any organizations

for as long a time as possible_ after the first victory, and

especially oppose ourselves in serried ranks to the plan of

calling a Constitutional Assembly. Partial terrorism, local

anarchy, must replace for us what we lack in bulk.

What a remarkable anticipation of the Bolshevist methods of 1917-18 is thus

outlined in this letter, written sixty-seven years before the Bolshevik

_coup d'état!_ How literally Lenine, Trotzky and Co. have followed Herr von

Miquel! They have desperately tried to "give an anti-bourgeois tone to the

Revolution," denouncing as bourgeois reactionaries the men and women whose

labors and sacrifices have made the Russian Socialist movement. They have

destroyed "the essential conditions" of bourgeois and of any other than the

most primitive production. They have set themselves in serried ranks in

opposition to "the plan of calling a Constitutional Assembly." They have

suppressed not only the organizations of the "lower and middle class," but

also those of a great part of the working class, thus going beyond Miquel.

Finally, to replace what they lack in bulk, they have resorted to "partial

terrorism and local anarchy."

And it is in the name of revolutionary progress, of ultra-radicalism, that

we are called upon to revert to the tactics of desperation born of the

discouraging conditions of nearly seventy years ago. A new philosophy has

taken possession of the easily possessed minds of Greenwich Village

philosophers and parlor revolutionists--a new philosophy of progress,

according to which revolutionary progress consists in the unraveling by

feverish fingers of the fabric woven through years of sacrifice; in

abandoning high levels attained for the lower levels from which the

struggles of the past raised us; in harking back to the thoughts and the

tactics of men who shouted their despairing, defiant cries into the gloom

of the blackest period of the nineteenth century!

Universal, secret, equal, and direct suffrage was a fact in Russia, the

first great achievement of the Revolution. Upon that foundation, and upon

no other, it was possible to build an enduring, comprehensive social

democracy. Against that foundation the Bolsheviki hurled their destructive

power, creating a discriminating class suffrage, disfranchising a great

part of the Russian people--not merely the bourgeoisie, but a considerable

part of the working class itself. Chapter XIII of Article 4 of the

Constitution of the "Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic" sets

forth the qualifications for voting, as follows:

THE RIGHT TO VOTE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

64. The right to vote and to be elected to the Soviets is enjoyed

by the following citizens, irrespective of religion, nationality,

domicile, etc., of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet

Republic, of both sexes, who shall have completed their eighteenth

year by the day of election:

a. All who have acquired the means of living through labor that is

productive and useful to society, and also persons engaged in

housekeeping which enables the former to do productive work--i.e.,

laborers and employees of all classes who are employed in

industry, trade, agriculture, etc.; and peasants and Cossack

agricultural laborers who employ no help for the purpose of making

profits.

b. Soldiers of the army and navy of the Soviets.

c. Citizens of the two preceding categories who have to any degree

lost their capacity to work.

Note 1: Local Soviets may, upon approval of the central power,

lower the age standard mentioned herein.

Note 2: Non-citizens mentioned in Paragraph 20 (Article 2, Chapter

Five) have the right to vote.

65. The following persons enjoy neither the right to vote nor the

right to be voted for, even though they belong to one of the

categories enumerated above, namely:

a. Persons who employ hired labor in order to obtain from it an

increase in profits.

b. Persons who have an income without doing any work, such as

interest from capital, receipts from property, etc.

c. Private merchants, trade, and commercial brokers.

d. Monks and clergy of all denominations.

e. Employees and agents of the former police, the gendarme corps,

and the Okhrana (Czar's secret service), also members of the

former reigning dynasty.

f. Persons who have in legal form been declared demented or

mentally deficient, and also persons under guardianship.

g. Persons who have been deprived by a Soviet of their rights of

citizenship because of selfish or dishonorable offenses, for the

period fixed by the sentence.

Apparently the Constitution does not provide any standard for determining

what labor is "useful and productive to society," and leaves the way open

for a degree of arbitrariness on the part of some authority or other that

is wholly incompatible with any generally accepted ideal of freedom and

democracy. It is apparent from the text of paragraph 64, subdivision "a" of

the foregoing chapter that housekeeping as such is not included in the

category of "labor that is productive and useful to society," for a

separate category is made of it. The language used is that "The right to

vote and to be elected to the Soviets is enjoyed by.... All who have

acquired the means of living through labor that is productive and useful to

society, _and also_ persons engaged in housekeeping, which enables the

former to do productive work--_i.e._, laborers and employees of all classes

who are employed in industry, trade, agriculture, etc."

This _seems_ to mean that persons engaged in housekeeping can only vote if

and when they are so engaged in order to enable other persons than

themselves to do "productive work." It appears that housekeeping for

persons not engaged in such productive work--for children, for

example--would not confer the right to vote. It is not possible to tell

with certainty what it _does_ mean, however, for there is probably not a

single person in Russia or in the world who can tell exactly what this

precious instrument actually means. What standard is to be established to

determine what labor is "productive" and "useful"? Is the journalist, for

instance, engaged in useful and productive labor? Is the novelist? is the

agitator? Presumably the journalist employed in defending the Soviet

Republic against attacks by unfriendly critics would be doing useful work

and be entitled to vote, but what about the journalist employed in making

the criticisms? Would the wife of the latter, no matter how much she might

disagree with her husband's views, be barred from voting, simply because

she was "engaged in housekeeping" for one whose labors were not regarded

"productive and useful to society"? If the language used means anything at

all, apparently she would be so disfranchised.

Upon what ground is it decided that the "private merchant" may not vote?

Certainly it is not because his labor is of necessity neither productive

nor useful, for paragraph 65 says that even though belonging to one of the

categories of persons otherwise qualified to vote, the private merchant may

"enjoy neither the right to vote nor to be voted for." The keeper of a

little grocery store, even though his income is not greater than that of a

mechanic, and despite the fact that his store meets a local need and makes

his services, therefore, "useful" in the highest degree, cannot enjoy civic

rights, simply because he is a "merchant"! The clergy of all denominations

are excluded from the franchise. It does not matter, according to this

constitution, that a minister belongs to a church independent of any

connection with the state, that he is elected by people who desire his

services and is paid by them, that he satisfies them and is therefore

doing a "useful service"--if utility means the satisfying of needs--because

he is so employed he cannot vote.

It is clearly provided that "peasants and Cossack agricultural laborers who

employ no help for the purpose of making profits" can vote and be voted

for. But no persons "who employ hired labor in order to obtain from it an

increase in profits" may vote or be elected to office, _even though the

work they do is productive and useful to society._ A peasant who hires no

assistance may vote, but if he decides that by employing a boy to help him

he will be able to give better attention to certain crops and make more

money, even though he pays the boy every penny that the service is worth,

judged by any standard whatever, he loses his vote and his civic status

because, forsooth, he has gained in his net income as a result of his

enterprise. And this is seriously put forward as the basis of government in

a nation needing an intense and universal stimulation of its economic

production.

A militant suffragist friend of mine, whose passion for universal suffrage

in America is so great that it leads her to join in all sorts of

demonstrations protesting against the failure of the United States Senate

to pass the Susan B. Anthony amendment--even leading her to join in the

public burning of President Wilson's speeches, a queer emulation of the

ancient ecclesiastical bigotry of burning heretical books!--manages to

unite to her passion for equal and unrestricted suffrage an equally

passionate admiration for the Bolsheviki, arch-enemies of equal and

unrestricted suffrage. Her case is not exceptional: it is rather typical of

the Bolshevik following in England and in America. Such minds are not

governed and directed by rational processes, but by emotional impulses,

generally of pathological origin.

What the Bolshevik constitution would mean if practically applied to

American life to-day can be briefly indicated. The following classes would

certainly be entitled to vote and to be elected to office:

1. All wage-earners engaged in the production of goods and utilities

regarded by some designated authority as "productive and useful to

society."

2. Teachers and educators engaged in the public service.

3. All farmers owning and working their own farms without hired help of any

kind.

4. All wage-earners engaged in the public service as employees of the

state, subdivisions of the state, or public service corporations-such as

postal clerks, street-railway workers, electricians, and so on.

5. Wives and others engaged in keeping the homes of the foregoing, so as to

enable them to work.

6. The "soldiers of the army and navy"--whether all officers are included

is not clear from the text.

Now let us see what classes would be as certainly excluded from the right

to vote and to be voted for.

1. Every merchant from the keeper of a corner grocery store to the owner of

a great mercantile establishment.

2. Every banker, every commission agent, every broker, every insurance

agent, every real-estate dealer.

3. Every farmer who hires help of any kind--even a single "hand."

4. Every petty contractor, garage-keeper, or other person employing any

hired help whatever, including the professional writer who hires a

stenographer, the doctor who hires a chauffeur, and the dentist who hires a

mechanic assistant.

5. Every clergyman and minister of the Gospel.

6. Every person whose income is derived from inherited wealth or from

invested earnings, including all who live upon annuities provided by gift

or bequest.

7. Every person engaged in housekeeping for persons included in any of the

foregoing six categories--including the wives of such disqualified persons.

There are many occupational groups whose civic status is not so easily

defined. The worker engaged in making articles of luxury, enjoyed only by

the privileged few, could hardly have a better claim to a vote than the

housekeeper of a man whose income was derived from foreign investments, or

than the chauffeur of a man whose income was derived from government bonds.

All three represent, presumably, types of that parasitic labor which

subjects those engaged in it to disfranchisement. Apparently, though not

certainly, then, the following would also be disfranchised:

1. All lawyers except those engaged by the public authorities for the

public service.

2. All teachers and educators other than those engaged in the public

service.

3. All bankers, managers of industries, commercial travelers, experts, and

accountants except those employed in the public service, or whose labor is

judged by a competent tribunal to be necessary and useful.

4. All editors, journalists, authors of books and plays, except as special

provision might be provided for individuals.

5. All persons engaged in occupations which a competent tribunal decided to

classify as non-essential or non-productive.

Any serious attempt to introduce such restrictions and limitations of the

right of suffrage in America would provoke irresistible revolt. It would be

justly and properly regarded as an attempt to arrest the forward march of

the nation and to turn its energies in a backward direction. It would be

just as reactionary in the political world as it would be in the industrial

world to revert back to hand-tool production; to substitute the ox-team for

the railway system, the hand-loom for the power-loom, the flail for the

threshing-machine, the sickle for the modern harvesting-machine, the human

courier for the electric telegraph.

Yet we find a radical like Mr. Max Eastman giving his benediction and

approval to precisely such a program in Russia as a substitute for

universal suffrage. We find him quoting with apparent approval an article

setting forth Lenine's plan, hardly disguised, to disfranchise every farmer

who employs even a single hired helper.[54]

Lenine's position is quite clear. "Only the proletariat leading on the

poorest peasants (the semi-proletariat as they are called in our program)

... may undertake the steps toward Socialism that have become absolutely

unavoidable and non-postponable.... The peasants want to retain their small

holdings and to arrive at some place of equal distribution.... So be it. No

sensible Socialist will quarrel with a pauper peasant on this ground. If

the lands are confiscated, _so long as the proletarians rule in the great

centers, and all political power is handed over to the proletariat_, the

rest will take care of itself."[55] Yet, in spite of Lenine's insistence

that all political power be "handed over to the proletariat," in spite of a

score of similar utterances which might be quoted, and, finally, in spite

of the Soviet Constitution which so obviously excludes from the right to

vote a large part of the adult population, an American Bolshevist

pamphleteer has the effrontery to insult the intelligence of his readers

by the stupidly and palpably false statement that "even at the present time

95 per cent. in Russia can vote, while in the United States only about 65

per cent. can vote."[56]

Of course it is only as a temporary measure that this dictatorship of a

class is to be maintained. It is designed only for the period of transition

and adjustment. In time the adjustment will be made, all forms of social

parasitism and economic exploitation will disappear, and then it will be

both possible and natural to revert to democratic government. Too simple

and naïve to be trusted alone in a world so full of trickery and tricksters

as ours are they who find any asurance in this promise. They are surely

among the most gullible of our humankind!

Of course, the answer to the claim is a very simple one: it is that no

class gaining privilege and power ever surrenders it until it is compelled

to do so. Every one who has read the pre-Marxian literature dealing with

the dictatorship of the proletariat knows how insistent is the demand that

the period of dictatorship must be _prolonged as much as possible_. Even

Marx himself insisted, on one occasion at least, that it must be maintained

as long as possible,[57] and in the letter of Johann von Miquel, already

quoted, we find the same thought expressed in the same terms, "as long as

possible." But even if we put aside these warnings of human experience and

of recorded history, and persuade ourselves that in Russia we have a wholly

new phenomenon, a class possessing powers of dictatorship animated by a

burning passion to relinquish those powers as quickly as possible, is it

not still evident that the social adjustments that must be made to reach

the stage where, according to the Bolshevik standards, political democracy

can be introduced, must, under the most favorable circumstances

conceivable, take many, many years? Even Lenine admits that "a sound

solution of the problem of increasing the productivity of labor" (which

lies at the very heart of the problem we are now discussing) "requires at

least (especially after a most distressing and destructive war) several

years."[58]

From the point of view of social democracy the basis of the Bolshevik state

is reactionary and unsound. The true Socialist policy is that set forth by

Wilhelm Liebknecht in the following words: "The political power which the

Social Democracy aims at and which it will win, no matter what its enemies

may do, _has not for its object the establishment of the dictatorship of

the proletariat, but the suppression of the dictatorship of the

bourgeoisie_."[59]

IV

Democracy in government and in industry must characterize any system of

society which can be justly called Socialist. Thirteen years ago I wrote,

"Socialism without democracy is as impossible as a shadow without

light."[60] That seemed to me then, as it seems to-day, axiomatic. And so

the greatest Socialist thinkers and leaders always regarded it. "We have

perceived that Socialism and democracy are inseparable," declared William

Liebknecht, the well-beloved, in 1899.[61] Thirty years earlier, in 1869,

he had given lucid expression to the same conviction in these words:

"Socialism and democracy are not the same, but they are only different

expressions of the same fundamental idea. They belong to each other, round

out each other, and can never stand in contradiction to each other.

Socialism without democracy is pseudo-Socialism, just as democracy without

Socialism is pseudo-democracy."[62] Democracy in industry is, as I have

insisted in my writing with unfailing consistency, as inseparable from

Socialism as democracy in government.[63] Unless industry is brought within

the control of democracy and made responsive to the common will, Socialism

is not attained.

Everywhere the organized working class aspires to attain that industrial

democracy which is the counterpart of political democracy. Syndicalism,

with all its vagaries, its crude reversal to outworn ideas and methods, is,

nevertheless, fundamentally an expression of that yearning. It is the same

passion that lies back of the Shop Stewards' movement in England, and that

inspires the much more patiently and carefully developed theories and plans

of the advocates of "Guild Socialism." Motived by the same desire, our

American labor-unions are demanding, and steadily gaining, an increasing

share in the actual direction of industry. Joint control by boards composed

of representatives of employers, employees, and the general public is, to

an ever-increasing extent, determining the conditions of employment, wage

standards, work standards, hours of labor, choice and conduct of foremen,

and many other matters of vital importance to the wage-earners. That we

are still a long way from anything like industrial democracy is all too

painfully true and obvious, but it is equally obvious that we are

struggling toward the goal, and that there is a serious purpose and

intention to realize the ideal.

Impelled by the inexorable logic of its own existence as a dictatorship,

the Bolshevik government has had to set itself against any and every

manifestation of democracy in industry with the same relentless force as it

opposed democracy in government. True, owing to the fact that, following

the line of industrial evolution, the trade-union movement was not strongly

enough developed to even attempt any organization for the expression of

industrial democracy comparable to the Constituent Assembly. It is equally

true, however, that had such an organization existed the necessity to

suppress it, as the political organization was suppressed, would have

proceeded inevitably and irresistibly from the creation of a dictatorship.

_There cannot be, in any country, as co-existent forces, political

dictatorship and industrial democracy._ It is also true that such

democratic agencies as there were existing the Bolsheviki neglected.

That the Bolsheviki did not establish industrial democracy in its fullest

sense is not to be charged to their discredit. Had Bolshevism never

appeared, and had the Constituent Assembly been permitted to function

unmolested and free, it would have taken many years to realize anything

like a well-rounded industrial democracy, for which a highly developed

industrial system is absolutely essential. The leaders of the Bolshevik

movement recognized from the first that the time had not yet arrived for

even attempting to set up a Socialist commonwealth based on the social

ownership and democratic control of industry. Lenine frankly declared that

"Socialism cannot now prevail in Russia,"[64] and Trotzky said, a month

after the _coup d'état_: "We are not ready yet to take over all

industry.... For the present, we expect of the earnings of a factory to pay

the owner 5 or 6 per cent. yearly on his actual investment. What we aim at

now is _control_ rather than _ownership_."[65] He did not tell Professor

Ross, who records this statement, on what grounds the owner of the property

thus controlled by the Soviet government, and who thus becomes a partner of

the government, is to be excluded from the exercise of the franchise. But

let that pass.

When the Bolsheviki seized the power of the state, they found themselves

confronted by a terrific task. Russia was utterly demoralized. An

undeveloped nation industrially, war and internal strife had wrought havoc

with the industrial life she had. Her railways were neglected and the whole

transportation system, entirely inadequate even for peace needs, had, under

the strain of the war, fallen into chaos. After the March Revolution, as a

natural consequence of the intoxication of the new freedom, such

disciplines as had existed were broken down. Production fell off in a most

alarming manner. During the Kerensky régime Skobelev, as Minister of Labor,

repeatedly begged the workers to prove their loyalty to the Revolution by

increased exertion and faithfulness in the workshops and factories. The

Bolsheviki, on their part, as a means of fighting the Provisional

Government, preached the opposite doctrine, that of sabotage. In every

manner possible they encouraged the workers to limit production, to waste

time and materials, strike for trivial reasons, and, in short, do all that

was possible to defeat the effort to place industry upon a sound basis.

When they found themselves in possession of the powers of government the

Bolshevik leaders soon had to face the stern realities of the conditions

essential to the life of a great nation. They could not escape the

necessity of intensifying production. They had not only promised peace, but

bread, and bread comes only from labor. Every serious student of the

problem has realized that the first great task of any Socialist society

must be _to increase the productivity of labor_. It is all very well for a

popular propaganda among the masses to promise a great reduction in the

hours of labor and, at the same time, a great improvement in the standards

of living. The translation of such promises into actual achievements must

prove to be an enormous task. To build the better homes, make the better

and more abundant clothing, shoes, furniture, and other things required to

fulfil the promise, will require a great deal of labor, and such an

organization of industry upon a basis of efficiency as no nation has yet

developed. If the working class of this or any other country should take

possession of the existing organization of production, there would not be

enough in the fund now going to the capitalist class to satisfy the

requirements of the workers, _even if not a penny of compensation were paid

to the expropriated owners_. Kautsky, among others, has courageously faced

this fact and insisted that "it will be one of the imperative tasks of the

Social Revolution not simply to continue, but to increase production; the

victorious proletariat must extend production rapidly if it is to be able

to satisfy the enormous demands that will be made upon the new régime."[66]

From the first

this problem had to be faced by the Bolshevik government. We find Lenine

insisting that the workers must be inspired with "idealism, self-sacrifice,

and persistence" to turn out as large a product as possible; that the

productivity of labor must be raised and a high level of industrial

performance as the duty of every worker be rigorously insisted upon. It is

not enough to have destroyed feudalism and the monarchy:

In every Socialist revolution, however, the main task of the

proletariat, and of the poorest peasantry led by it--and, hence,

also in the Socialist revolution in Russia inaugurated by us on

November 7, 1917, consists in the positive and constructive work

of establishing an extremely complex and delicate net of newly

organized relationships covering the systematic production and

distribution of products which are necessary for the existence of

tens of millions of people. The successful realization of such a

revolution depends on the original historical creative work of the

majority of the population, and first of all of the majority of

the toilers. _The victory of the Socialist revolution will not be

assured unless the proletariat and the poorest peasantry manifest

sufficient consciousness, idealism, self-sacrifice, and

persistence._ With the creation of a new--the Soviet--type of

state, offering to the oppressed toiling masses the opportunity to

participate actively in the free construction of a new society, we

have solved only a small part of the difficult task. _The main

difficulty is in the economic domain; to raise the productivity of

labor, to establish strict and universal accounting and control of

production and distribution, and actually to socialize

production._[67]

Lenine recognizes, as every thoughtful person must, that this task of

organizing production and distribution cannot be undertaken by "the

proletariat and the poorest peasants." It requires a vast amount of highly

developed technical knowledge and skill, the result of long training and

superior education. This kind of service is so highly paid, in comparison

with the wages paid to the manual workers, that it lifts those who perform

the service and receive the high salaries into the ranks of the

bourgeoisie. Certainly, even though they are engaged in performing work of

the highest value and the most vital consequence, the specialists, experts,

and directing managers of industry are not of the "working class," as that

term is commonly employed. And no matter how we may speculate upon the

possible attainment of approximate equality of income in some future near

or remote, the fact is that the labor of such men can only be secured by

paying much more than is paid to the manual workers.

Quite wisely, the Bolshevik government decided that it must have such

services, no matter that they must be highly paid for; that they could only

be rendered by the hated bourgeoisie and that, in consequence, certain

compromises and relations with the bourgeoisie became necessary the moment

the services were engaged. The Bolshevik government recognized the

imperative necessity of the service which only highly paid specialists

could give and wisely decided that no prejudice or theory must be permitted

to block the necessary steps for Russia's reconstruction. In a spirit of

intelligent opportunism, therefore, they subordinated shibboleths,

prejudices, dogmas, and theories to Russia's necessity. The sanity of this

opportunistic attitude is altogether admirable, but it contrasts strangely

with the refusal to co-operate with the bourgeoisie in establishing a

stable democratic government--no less necessary for Russia's reconstruction

and for Socialism. As a matter of fact, the very promptitude and sanity of

their opportunism when faced by responsibility, serves to demonstrate the

truth of the contention made in these pages, that in refusing to co-operate

with others in building up a permanently secure democratic government,

they were actuated by no high moral principle, but simply by a desire to

gain power. The position of Russia to-day would have been vastly different

if the wisdom manifested in the following paragraphs had governed Lenine

and his associates in the days when Kerensky was trying to save Russian

democracy:

_Without the direction of specialists of different branches of

knowledge, technique, and experience, the transformation toward

Socialism is impossible_, for Socialism demands a conscious mass

movement toward a higher productivity of labor in comparison with

capitalism and on the basis which had been attained by capitalism.

Socialism must accomplish this movement forward in its own way, by

its own methods--to make it more definite, by Soviet methods. But

the specialists are inevitably bourgeois on account of the whole

environment of social life which made them specialists.... In view

of the considerable delay in accounting and control in general,

although we have succeeded in defeating sabotage, we have _not

yet_ created an environment which would put at our disposal the

bourgeois specialists. Many sabotagers are coming into our

service, but the best organizers and the biggest specialists can

be used by the state either in the old bourgeois way (that is, for

a higher salary) or in the new proletarian way (that is, by

creating such an environment of universal accounting and control

which would inevitably and naturally attract and gain the

submission of specialists). We were forced now to make use of the

old bourgeois method and agree to a very high remuneration for the

services of the biggest of the bourgeois specialists. All those

who are acquainted with the facts understand this, but not all

give sufficient thought to the significance of such a measure on

the part of the proletarian state. _It is clear that the measure

is a compromise, that it is a defection from the principles of the

Paris Commune and of any proletarian rule, which demand the

reduction of salaries to the standard of remuneration of the

average workers_--principles which demand that "career hunting" be

fought by deeds, not words.

Furthermore, it is clear that such a measure is not merely a halt

in a certain part and to a certain degree of the offensive against

capitalism (for capitalism is not a quantity of money, but a

definite social relationship), _but also a step backward by our

Socialist Soviet state_, which has from the very beginning

proclaimed and carried on a policy of reducing high salaries to

the standard of wages of the average worker.

... The corrupting influence of high salaries is beyond

question--both on the Soviets ... and on the mass of the workers.

But all thinking and honest workers and peasants will agree with

us and will admit that we are unable to get rid at once of the

evil heritage of capitalism.... The sooner we ourselves, workers

and peasants, learn better labor discipline and a higher technique

of toil, making use of the bourgeois specialists for this purpose,

the sooner we will get rid of the need of paying tribute to these

specialists.[68]

We find the same readiness to compromise and to follow the line of least

resistance in dealing with the co-operatives. From 1906 onward there had

been an enormous growth of co-operatives in Russia. They were of various

kinds and animated by varied degrees of social consciousness. They did not

differ materially from the co-operatives of England, Belgium, Denmark,

Italy, or Germany except in the one important particular that they relied

upon bourgeois Intellectuals for leadership and direction to a greater

extent than do the co-operatives in the countries named. They were

admirably fitted to be the nuclei of a socialized system of distribution.

Out of office the Bolsheviki had sneered at these working-class

organizations and denounced them as "bourgeois corruptions of the militant

proletariat." Necessity and responsibility soon forced the adoption of a

new attitude toward them. The Bolshevik government had to accept the

despised co-operatives, and even compromise Bolshevist principles as the

price of securing their services:

A Socialist state can come into existence only as a net of

production and consumption communes, which keep conscientious

accounts of their production and consumption, economize labor,

steadily increasing its productivity and thus making it possible

to lower the workday to seven, six, or even less hours. Anything

less than rigorous, universal, thorough accounting and control of

grain and of the production of grain, and later also of all other

necessary products, will not do. We have inherited from capitalism

mass organizations which can facilitate the transition to mass

accounting and control of distribution--the consumers'

co-operatives. They are developed in Russia less than in the more

advanced countries, but they comprise more than 10,000,000

members. The decree on consumers' associations which was recently

issued is extremely significant, showing clearly the peculiarity

of the position and of the problem of the Socialist Soviet

Republic at the present time.

The decree is an agreement with the bourgeois co-operatives and

with the workmen's co-operatives adhering to the bourgeois

standpoint. The agreement or compromise consists, firstly, in the

fact that the representatives of these institutions not only

participated in the deliberations on this decree, but had

practically received a determining voice, for parts of the decree

which met determined opposition from these institutions were

rejected. Secondly and essentially, the compromise consists in the

rejection by the Soviet authority of the principle of free

admission to the co-operatives (the only consistent principle from

the proletarian standpoint), and that the whole population of a

given locality should be _united in a single co-operative_. The

defection from this, the only Socialist principle, which is in

accord with the problem of doing away with classes, allows the

existence of working-class co-operatives (which in this case call

themselves working-class co-operatives only because they submit to

the class interests of the bourgeoisie). Lastly, the proposition

of the Soviet government completely to exclude the bourgeoisie

from the administration of the co-operatives was also considerably

weakened, and only owners of capitalistic commercial and

industrial enterprises are excluded from the administration.

* * * * *

If the proletariat, acting through the Soviets, should

successfully establish accounting and control on a national scale,

there would be no need for such compromise. Through the Food

Departments of the Soviets, through their organs of supply, we

would unite the population in one co-operative directed by the

proletariat, without the assistance from bourgeois co-operatives,

without concessions to the purely bourgeois principle which

compels the labor co-operatives to remain side by side with the

bourgeois co-operatives instead of wholly subjecting these

bourgeois co-operatives, fusing both?[69]

V

It is no mood of captious, unfriendly criticism that attention is specially

directed to these compromises. Only political charlatans, ineffective

quacks, and irresponsible soap-box orators see crime against the

revolutionary program of the masses in a wise and honest opportunism.

History will not condemn the Bolsheviki for the give-and-take,

compromise-where-necessary policy outlined in the foregoing paragraphs. Its

condemnation will be directed rather against their failure to act in that

spirit from the moment the first Provisional Government arose. Had they

joined with the other Socialists and established a strong Coalition

Government, predominantly Socialist, but including representatives of the

most liberal and democratic elements of the bourgeoisie, it would have been

possible to bring the problems of labor organization and labor discipline

under democratic direction. It would not have been possible to establish

complete industrial democracy, fully developed Socialism, nor will it be

possible to do this for many years to come.

But it would have been easy and natural for the state to secure to the

workers a degree of economic assurance and protection not otherwise

possible. It would have been possible, too, for the workers'

organizations, recognized by and co-operating with the state, to have

undertaken, in a large degree, the control of the conditions of their own

employment which labor organizations everywhere are demanding and gradually

gaining. The best features of "Guild Socialism" could nowhere have been so

easily adopted.[70] But instead of effort in these directions, we find the

Bolsheviki resorting to the _Taylor System of Scientific Management

enforced by an individual dictator whose word is final and absolute, to

disobey whom is treason_! There is not a nation in the world with a

working-class movement of any strength where it would be possible to

introduce the industrial servitude here described:

The most conscious vanguard of the Russian proletariat has already

turned to the problem of increasing labor discipline. For

instance, the central committee of the Metallurgical Union and the

Central Council of the Trades Unions have begun work on respective

measures and drafts of decrees. This work should be supported and

advanced by all means. _We should immediately introduce piece work

and try it out in practice. We should try out every scientific and

progressive suggestion of the Taylor System_; we should compare

the earnings with the general total of production, or the

exploitation results of railroad and water transportation, and so

on.

The Russian is a poor worker in comparison with the workers of the

advanced nations, and this could not be otherwise under the régime

of the Czar and other remnants of feudalism. The last word of

capitalism in this respect, the Taylor System--as well as all

progressive measures of capitalism--combine the refined cruelty of

bourgeois exploitation and a number of most valuable scientific

attainments in the analysis of mechanical motions during work, in

dismissing superfluous and useless motions, in determining the

most correct methods of the work, the best systems of accounting

and control, etc. The Soviet Republic must adopt valuable and

scientific and technical advance in this field. _The possibility

of Socialism will be determined by our success in combining the

Soviet rule and the Soviet organization of management with the

latest progressive measures of capitalism. We must introduce in

Russia the study and the teaching of the Taylor System and its

systematic trial and adaptation_. While working to increase the

productivity of labor, we must at the same time take into account

the peculiarities of the transition period from capitalism to

Socialism, which require, on one hand, that we lay the foundation

for the Socialist organization of emulation, and, on the other

hand, _require the use of compulsion so that the slogan of the

dictatorship of the proletariat should not be weakened by the

practice of a too mild proletarian government_.

The resolution of the last (Moscow) Congress of the Soviets

advocates, as the most important problem at present, the creation

of "efficient organization" and higher discipline. Such

resolutions are now readily supported by everybody. But that their

realization requires compulsion, and _compulsion in the form of a

dictatorship_, is ordinarily not comprehended. And yet, it would

be the greatest stupidity and the most absurd opportunism to

suppose that the transition from capitalism to Socialism is

possible without compulsion and dictatorship. The Marxian theory

has long ago criticized beyond misunderstanding this petty

bourgeois-democratic and anarchistic nonsense. And Russia of

1917-18 confirms in this respect the Marxian theory so clearly,

palpably, and convincingly that only those who are hopelessly

stupid or who have firmly determined to ignore the truth can still

err in this respect. Either a Kornilov dictatorship (if Kornilov

be taken as Russian type of a bourgeois Cavaignac) or a

dictatorship of the proletariat--no other alternative is possible

for a country which is passing through an unusually swift

development with unusually difficult transitions and which suffers

from desperate disorganization created by the most horrible

war.[71]

This dictatorship is to be no light affair, no purely nominal force, but a

relentless iron-hand rule. Lenine is afraid that the proletariat is too

soft-hearted and lenient. He says:

But "dictatorship" is a great word. And great words must not be

used in vain. A dictatorship is an iron rule, with revolutionary

daring and swift and merciless in the suppression of the

exploiters as well as of the thugs (hooligans). And our rule is

too mild, quite frequently resembling jam rather than iron.[72]

And so the dictatorship of the proletariat becomes the _dictatorship of a

single person_, a super-boss and industrial autocrat: We must learn to

combine the stormy, energetic breaking of all restraint on the part of the

toiling masses _with iron discipline during work, with absolute submission

to the will of one person, the Soviet director, during work_.[73]

As I copy these words from Lenine's book my memory recalls the days, more

than twenty years ago, when as a workman in England and as shop steward of

my union I joined with my comrades in breaking down the very things Lenine

here proposes to set up in the name of Socialism. "Absolute submission to

the will of one person" is not a state toward which free men will strive.

Not willingly will men who enjoy the degree of personal freedom existing in

democratic nations turn to this:

With respect to ... the significance of individual dictatorial

power from the standpoint of the specific problems of the present

period, we must say that every large machine industry--which is

the material productive source and basis of Socialism--requires an

absolute and strict unity of the will which directs the joint work

of hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands of people. This

necessity is obvious from the technical, economical, and

historical standpoint, and has always been recognized by all those

who had given any thought to Socialism, as its prerequisite. But

how can we secure a strict unity of will? _By subjecting the will

of thousands_ to the will of one.

This subjection, _if the participants in the common work are

ideally conscious and disciplined_, may resemble the mild leading

of an orchestra conductor; but may take the acute form of a

dictatorship--if there is no ideal discipline and consciousness.

But at any rate, _complete submission to a single will is

absolutely necessary for the success of the processes of work

which is organized on the type of large machine industry_. This is

doubly true of the railways. And just this transition from one

political problem to another, which in appearance has no

resemblance to the first, constitutes the peculiarity of the

present period. The Revolution has just broken the oldest, the

strongest, and the heaviest chains to which the masses were

compelled to submit. So it was yesterday. And to-day, the same

Revolution (and indeed in the interest of Socialism) demands the

_absolute submission_ of the masses to the _single will_ of those

who direct the labor process. It is self-evident that it can be

realized only after great upheavals, crises, returns to the old;

only through the greatest strain of the energy of the proletarian

vanguard which is leading the people to the new order....

To the extent to which the principal problem of the Soviet rule

changes from military suppression to administration, suppression

and compulsion will, _as a rule, be manifested in trials, and not

in shooting on the spot_. And in this respect the revolutionary

masses have taken, after November 7, 1918, the right road and have

proved the vitality of the Revolution, when they started to

organize their own workmen's and peasants' tribunals, before any

decrees were issued dismissing the bourgeois-democratic judicial

apparatus. _But our revolutionary and popular tribunals are

excessively and incredibly weak. It is apparent that the popular

view of the courts--which was inherited from the régime of the

landowners and the bourgeoisie--as not their own, has not yet been

completely destroyed_. It is not sufficiently appreciated that the

courts serve to attract all the poor to administration (for

judicial activity is one of the functions of state

administration); that the court is _an organ of the rule of the

proletariat and of the poorest peasantry; that the court is a

means of training in discipline_. There is a lack of appreciation

of the simple and obvious fact that, if the chief misfortunes of

Russia are famine and unemployment, these misfortunes cannot be

overcome by any outbursts of enthusiasm, but only by thorough and

universal organization and discipline, in order to increase the

production of bread for men and fuel for industry, to transport it

in time, and to distribute it in the right way. That therefore

_responsibility_ for the pangs of famine and unemployment falls on

_every one who violates the labor discipline in any enterprise and

in any business_. That those who are responsible should be

discovered, tried, and _punished without mercy_. The petty

bourgeois environment, which we will have to combat persistently

now, shows particularly in the lack of comprehension of the

economic and political connection between famine and unemployment

and the _prevailing dissoluteness in organization and

discipline_--in the firm hold of the view of the small proprietor

that "nothing matters, if only I gain as much as possible."

A characteristic struggle occurred on this basis in connection

with the last decree on railway management, the decree which

granted dictatorial (or "unlimited") power to individual

directors. The conscious (and mostly, probably, unconscious)

representatives of petty bourgeois dissoluteness contended that

the granting of "unlimited" (_i.e._, dictatorial) power to

individuals was a defection from the principle of board

administration, from the democratic and other principles of the

Soviet rule. Some of the Socialist-Revolutionists of the left wing

carried on a plainly demagogic agitation against the decree on

dictatorship, appealing to the evil instincts and to the petty

bourgeois desire for personal gain. The question thus presented is

of really great significance; firstly, the question of principle

is, in general, the appointment of individuals endowed with

unlimited power, the appointment of dictators, in accord with the

fundamental principles of the Soviet rule; secondly, in what

relation is this case--this precedent, if you wish--to the special

problems of the Soviet rule during the present concrete period?

Both questions deserve serious consideration.[74]

With characteristic ingenuity Lenine attempts to provide this dictatorship

with a theoretical basis which will pass muster as Marxian Socialism. He

uses the term "Soviet democracy" as a synonym for democratic Socialism and

says there is "absolutely no contradiction in principle" between it and

"the use of dictatorial power of individuals." By what violence to reason

and to language is the word _democracy_ applied to the system described by

Lenine? To use words with such scant respect to their meanings, established

by etymology, history, and universal agreement in usage, is to invite and

indeed compel the contempt of minds disciplined by reason's practices. As

for the claim that there is no contradiction in principle between

democratic Socialism and the exercise of dictatorial power by individuals,

before it can be accepted every Socialist teacher and leader of any

standing anywhere, the programs of all the Socialist parties, and their

practice, must be denied and set aside. Whether democratic Socialism be

wise or unwise, a practical possibility or an unrealizable idea, at least

it has nothing in common with such reactionary views as are expressed in

the following:

That the dictatorship of individuals has very frequently in the

history of revolutionary movements served as an expression and

means of realization of the dictatorship of the revolutionary

classes is confirmed by the undisputed experience of history. With

bourgeois democratic principles, the dictatorship of individuals

has undoubtedly been compatible. But this point is always treated

adroitly by the bourgeois critics of the Soviet rule and by their

petty bourgeois aides. On one hand, they declared the Soviet rule

simply something absurd and anarchically wild, carefully avoiding

all our historical comparisons and theoretical proofs that the

Soviets are a higher form of democracy; nay, more, the beginning

of a _Socialist_ form of democracy. On the other hand, they demand

of us a higher democracy than the bourgeois and argue: with your

Bolshevist (_i.e._, Socialist, not bourgeois) democratic

principles, with the Soviet democratic principles, individual

dictatorship is absolutely incompatible.

Extremely poor arguments, these. If we are not Anarchists, we must

admit the necessity of a state--that is, of _compulsion_, for the

transition from capitalism to Socialism. The form of compulsion is

determined by the degree of development of the particular

revolutionary class, then by such special circumstances as, for

instance, the heritage of a long and reactionary war, and then by

the forms of resistance of the bourgeoisie and the petty

bourgeoisie. _There is therefore absolutely no contradiction in

principle between the Soviet (Socialist) democracy and the use of

dictatorial power of individuals_. The distinction between a

proletarian and a bourgeois dictatorship consists in this: that

the first directs its attacks against the exploiting minority in

the interests of the exploited majority; and, further, in this,

that the first is accomplished (also through individuals) not only

by the masses of the exploited toilers, but also by the

organizations which are so constructed that they arouse these

masses to historical creative work (the Soviets belong to this

kind of organization).[75]

This, then, is Bolshevism, not as it is seen and described by unfriendly

"bourgeois" writers, but as it is seen and described by the acknowledged

intellectual and political leader of the Bolsheviki, Nikolai Lenine. I have

not taken any non-Bolshevist authority; I have not even restated his views

in a summary of my own, lest into the summary might be injected some

reflexes of my own critical thought. Bolshevism is revealed in all its

reactionary repulsiveness as something between which and absolute,

individual dictatorial power there is "absolutely no contradiction in

principle." It will not avail for our American followers and admirers of

the Bolsheviki to plead that these things are temporary, compromises with

the ideal due to the extraordinary circumstances prevailing in Russia, and

to beg a mitigation of the severity of our judgment on that account.

The answer to the plea is twofold: in the first place, they who offer it

must, if they are sincere, abandon the savagely critical attitude they have

seen fit to adopt toward our own government and nation because with

"extraordinary conditions prevailing" we have had introduced conscription,

unusual restrictions of movement and of utterance, and so forth. How else,

indeed, can their sincerity be demonstrated? If the fact that extraordinary

conditions justified Lenine and his associates in instituting a régime so

tyrannical, what rule of reason or of morals must be invoked to refuse to

count the extraordinary conditions produced in our own nation by the war as

justification for the special measures of military service and discipline

here introduced?

But there is a second answer to the claim which is more direct and

conclusive. It is not open to argument at all. It is found in the words of

Lenine himself, in his claim that there is absolutely no contradiction

between the principle of individual dictatorship, ruling with iron hand,

and the principle upon which Soviet government rests. There has been no

compromise here, for if there is no contradiction in principle no

compromise could have been required. Lenine is not afraid to make or to

admit making compromises; he admits that compromises have been made. It was

a compromise to employ highly salaried specialists from the bourgeoisie, "a

defection from the principles of the Paris Commune and of any proletarian

rule," as he says. It was a compromise, another "defection from the only

Socialist principle," to admit the right of the co-operatives to determine

their own conditions of membership. Having made these declarations quite

candidly, he takes pains to assure us that there was no such defection from

principle in establishing the absolute rule of an individual dictator,

that there was absolutely no contradiction in principle in this.[76]

Moreover, there is no reason for regarding this dictatorship as a temporary

thing, if Lenine himself is to be accepted as an authoritative spokesman.

Obviously, if there is nothing in the principle of an absolute individual

dictatorship which is in contradiction to the Bolshevik ideal, there can be

no Bolshevik principle which necessarily requires for its realization the

ending of such dictatorship. Why, therefore, may it not be continued

indefinitely? Certainly, if the dictatorship is abolished it will not

be--if Lenine is to be seriously considered--on account of its

incompatibility with Bolshevik principles.

VI

The Bolshevik government of Russia is credited by many of its admirers in

this country with having solved the great land problem and with having

satisfied the land-hunger of the peasants. It is charged, moreover, that

the bitter opposition to the Bolsheviki is mainly due to agitation by the

bourgeoisie, led by the expropriated landowners, who want to defeat the

Revolution and to have their former titles to the land restored. Of course,

it is true that, so far as they dare to do so, the former landowners

actively oppose the Bolsheviki. No expropriated class ever acted otherwise,

and it would be foolish to expect anything else. But any person who

believes that the opposition of the great peasant Socialist organizations,

and especially of the Socialist-Revolutionists, is due to the confiscation

of the land, either consciously or unconsciously, is capable of believing

anything and quite immune from rationality.

The facts in the case are, briefly, as follows: First, as Professor Ross

has pointed out,[77] the land policy of the Bolshevik government was a

compromise of the principles long advocated by its leaders, a compromise

made for political reasons only. Second, as Marie Spiridonova abundantly

demonstrated at an All-Russian Soviet Conference in July, 1918, the

Bolshevik government did not honorably live up to its agreement with the

Socialist-Revolutionists of the Left. Third, so far as the land problem was

concerned there was not the slightest need or justification for the

Bolshevik _coup d'état_, for the reason that the problem had already been

solved on the precise lines afterward followed in the Soviet decree and the

leaders of the peasants were satisfied. We have the authority of no less

competent a witness than Litvinov, Bolshevist Minister to England, that

"the land measure had been 'lifted' bodily from the program of the

Socialist-Revolutionists."[78] Each of these statements is amply sustained

by evidence which cannot be disputed or overcome.

That the "land decree" which the Bolshevik government promulgated was a

compromise with their long-cherished principles admits of no doubt

whatever. Every one who has kept informed concerning Russian revolutionary

movements during the past twenty or twenty-five years knows that during all

that time one of the principal subjects of controversy among Socialists was

the land question and the proper method of solving it. The "Narodniki," or

peasant Socialists, later organized into the Socialist-Revolutionary party,

wanted distribution of the land belonging to the big estates among the

peasant communes, to be co-operatively owned and managed. They did not want

land nationalization, which was the program of the Marxists--the Social

Democrats. This latter program meant that, instead of the land being

divided among the peasants' communal organizations, it should be owned,

used, and managed by the state, the principles of large-scale production

and wage labor being applied to agriculture in the same manner as to

industry.

The attitude of the Social Democratic party toward the peasant Socialists

and their program was characterized by that same certainty that small

agricultural holdings were to pass away, and by the same contemptuous

attitude toward the peasant life and peasant aspirations that we find in

the writings of Marx, Engels, Liebknecht, and many other Marxists.[79]

Lenine himself had always adopted this attitude. He never trusted the

peasants and was opposed to any program which would give the land to them

as they desired. Mr. Walling, who spent nearly three years in Russia,

including the whole period of the Revolution of 1905-06, writes of Lenine's

position at that time:

Like Alexinsky, Lenine awaits the agrarian movement ... and hopes

that a railway strike with the destruction of the lines of

communication and _the support of the peasantry_ may some day put

the government of Russia into the people's hands. However, I was

shocked to find that this important leader also, though he expects

a full co-operation with the peasants on equal terms, _during the

Revolution_, feels toward them a very _deep distrust_, thinking

them to a large extent bigoted and blindly patriotic, and fearing

that they may some day shoot down the working-men as the French

peasants did during the Paris Commune.

The chief basis for this distrust is, of course, the prejudiced

feeling that the peasants are not likely to become good

Socialists. _It is on this account that Lenine and all the Social

Democratic leaders place their hopes on a future development of

large agricultural estates in Russia and the increase of the

landless agricultural working class, which alone they believe

would prove truly Socialist_.[80]

The Russian Social Democratic Labor party, to which Lenine belonged, and of

which he was an influential leader, adopted in 1906 the following program

with regard to land ownership:

1. Confiscation of Church, Monastery, Appanage, Cabinet,[81] and

private estate lands, _except small holdings_, and turning them

over, together with the state lands, to the great organs of local

administration, which have been democratically elected. Land,

however, which is necessary as a basis for future colonization,

together with the forests and bodies of water, which are of

national importance, are to pass into the control of the

democratic state.

2. Wherever conditions are unfavorable for this transformation,

the party declares itself in favor of a division among the

peasants of such of the private estates as already have the petty

farming conditions, or which may be necessary to round out a

reasonable holding.

This program was at the time regarded as a compromise. It did not wholly

suit anybody. The peasant leaders feared the amount of state ownership and

management involved. On the other hand, the extreme left wing of the Social

Democrats--Lenine and his friends--wanted the party to proclaim itself in

favor of _the complete nationalization of all privately owned land, even

that of the small peasant owners_, but were willing, provided the principle

were this stated, to accept, as a temporary expedient, division of the land

in certain exceptional instances. On the other hand, the

Socialist-Revolutionists wanted, not the distribution of lands among a

multitude of private owners, as is very generally supposed, but its

socialization. Their program provided for "the socialization of all

privately owned lands--that is, the taking of them out of the private

ownership of persons into the public ownership and _their management by

democratically organized leagues of communities with the purpose of an

equitable utilization_." They wanted to avoid the creation of a great army

of what they described as "wage-slaves of the state" and, on the other

hand, they wanted to build upon the basis of Russian communism and, as far

as possible, prevent the extension of capitalist methods--and therefore of

the class struggle--into the agrarian life of Russia.

When the Bolsheviki came into power they sought first of all to split the

peasant Socialist movement and gain the support of its extreme left wing.

For this reason they agreed to adopt the program of the Revolutionary

Socialist party. It was Marie Spiridonova who made that arrangement

possible. It was, in fact, a political deal. Lenine and Trotzky, on behalf

of the Bolshevik government, agreed to accept the land policy of the

Socialist-Revolutionists, and in return Spiridonova and her friends agreed

to support the Bolsheviki. There is abundant evidence of the truth of the

following account of Professor Ross:

Among the first acts of the Bolsheviki in power was to square

their debt to the left wing of the Social Revolutionists, their

ally in the _coup d'état_. The latter would accept only one kind

of currency--the expropriation of the private landowners without

compensation and the transfer of all land into the hands of the

peasant communes. The Bolsheviki themselves, as good Marxists,

took no stock in the peasants' commune. As such, pending the

introduction of Socialism, they should, perhaps, have nationalized

the land and rented it to the highest bidder, regardless of

whether it was to be tilled in small parcels without hired labor

or in large blocks on the capitalistic plan. The land edict of

November does, indeed, decree land nationalism; however, the vital

proviso is added that "the use of the land must be equalized--that

is, according to local conditions and according to the ability to

work and the needs of each individual," and further that "the

hiring of labor is not permitted." The administrative machinery is

thus described: "All the confiscated land becomes the land capital

of the nation. Its distribution among the working-people is to be

in charge of the local and central authorities, beginning with the

organized rural and urban communities and ending with the

provincial central organs." Such is the irony of fate. _Those who

had charged the rural land commune with being the most serious

brake upon Russia's progress, and who had stigmatized the

People-ists as reactionaries and Utopians, now came to enact into

law most of their tenets--the equalization of the use of land, the

prohibition of the hiring of labor, and everything else!_[82]

The much-praised land policy of the Bolsheviki is, in fact, not a Bolshevik

policy at all, but one which they have accepted as a compromise for

temporary political advantage. "Claim everything in sight," said a noted

American politician on one occasion to his followers. Our followers of the

Bolsheviki, taught by a very clever propaganda, seem to be acting upon that

maxim. They claim for the Bolsheviki everything which can in the slightest

manner win favor with the American public, notwithstanding that it involves

claiming for the Bolsheviki credit to which they are not entitled. As early

as May 18, 1917, it was announced by the Provisional Government that the

"question of the transfer of the land to the toilers" was to be left to the

Constituent Assembly, and there was never a doubt in the mind of any

Russian Socialist how that body would settle it; never a moment when it was

doubted that the Constituent Assembly would be controlled by the

Socialist-Revolutionary party. When Kerensky became Prime Minister one of

the first acts of his Cabinet was to create a special committee for the

purpose of preparing the law for the socialization of the land and the

necessary machinery for carrying the law into effect. The All-Russian

Peasants' Congress had, as early as May, five months before the Bolshevik

counter-revolution, adopted the land policy for which the Bolsheviki now

are being praised by their admirers in this country. That policy had been

crystallized into a carefully prepared law which had been approved by the

Council of Ministers. The Bolsheviki did no more than to issue a crudely

conceived "decree" which they have never at any time had the power to

enforce in more than about a fourth of Russia--in place of a law which

would have embraced all Russia and have been secure and permanent.