PROLETARIAN RULE
The proletariat can get into power only at a moment of national
upheaval, of sweeping national enthusiasm. The proletariat assumes power
as a revolutionary representative of the people, as a recognized leader
in the fight against absolutism and barbaric feudalism. Having assumed
power, however, the proletariat will open a new era, an era of positive
legislation, of revolutionary politics, and this is the point where its
political supremacy as an avowed spokesman of the nation may become
endangered.
The first measures of the proletariat--the cleansing of the Augean
stables of the old regime and the driving away of their
inhabitants--will find active support of the entire nation whatever the
liberal castraters may tell us of the power of some prejudices among the
masses. The work of political cleansing will be accompanied by
democratic reorganization of all social and political relations. The
labor government, impelled by immediate needs and requirements, will
have to look into all kinds of relations and activities among the
people. It will have to throw out of the army and the administration all
those who had stained their hands with the blood of the people; it will
have to disband all the regiments that had polluted themselves with
crimes against the people. This work will have to be done immediately,
long before the establishment of an elective responsible administration
and before the organization of a popular militia. This, however, will be
only a beginning. Labor democracy will soon be confronted by the
problems of a normal workday, the agrarian relations and unemployment.
The legislative solution of those problems will show the _class
character_ of the labor government. It will tend to weaken the
revolutionary bond between the proletariat and the nation; it will give
the economic differentiation among the peasants a political expression.
Antagonism between the component parts of the nation will grow step by
step as the policies of the labor government become more outspoken, lose
their general democratic character and become _class policies_.
The lack of individualistic bourgeois traditions and anti-proletarian
prejudices among the peasants and the intelligentzia will help the
proletariat assume power. It must not be forgotten, however, that this
lack of prejudices is based not on political understanding, but on
political barbarism, on social shapelessness, primitiveness, and lack of
character. These are all qualities which can hardly guarantee support
for an active, consistent proletarian rule.
The abolition of the remnants of feudalism in agrarian relations will be
supported by all the peasants who are now oppressed by the landlords. A
progressive income tax will be supported by an overwhelming majority of
the peasants. Yet, legislative measures in defense of the rural
proletariat (farm hands) will find no active support among the majority,
and will meet with active opposition on the part of a minority of the
peasants.
The proletariat will be compelled to introduce class struggle into the
village and thus to destroy that slight community of interests which
undoubtedly unites the peasants as a whole. In its next steps, the
proletariat will have to seek for support by helping the poor villagers
against the rich, the rural proletariat against the agrarian
bourgeoisie. This will alienate the majority of the peasants from labor
democracy. Relations between village and city will become strained. The
peasantry as a whole will become politically indifferent. The peasant
minority will actively oppose proletarian rule. This will influence part
of the intellectuals and the lower middle class of the cities.
Two features of proletarian politics are bound particularly to meet with
the opposition of labor's allies: _Collectivism_ and _Internationalism_.
The strong adherence of the peasants to private ownership, the
primitiveness of their political conceptions, the limitations of the
village horizon, its distance from world-wide political connections and
interdependences, are terrific obstacles in the way of revolutionary
proletarian rule.
To imagine that Social-Democracy participates in the provisional
government, playing a leading role in the period of revolutionary
democratic reconstruction, insisting on the most radical reforms
and all the time enjoying the aid and support of the organized
proletariat,--only to step aside when the democratic program is put into
operation, to leave the completed building at the disposal of the
bourgeois parties and thus to open an era of parliamentary politics
where Social-Democracy forms only a party of opposition,--to imagine
this would mean to compromise the very idea of a labor government. It is
impossible to imagine anything of the kind, not because it is "against
principles"--such abstract reasoning is devoid of any substance--but
because it is _not real_, it is the worst kind of Utopianism, it is the
revolutionary Utopianism of Philistines.
Our distinction between a minimum and maximum program has a great and
profound meaning only under bourgeois rule. The very fact of bourgeois
rule eliminates from our minimum program all demands incompatible with
private ownership of the means of production. Those demands form the
substance of a Socialist revolution, and they presuppose a dictatorship
of the proletariat. The moment, however, a revolutionary government is
dominated by a Socialist majority, the distinction between minimum and
maximum programs loses its meaning both as a question of principle and
as a practical policy. _Under no condition will a proletarian government
be able to keep within the limits of this distinction._
Let us take the case of an eight hour workday. It is a well established
fact that an eight hour workday does not contradict the capitalist
order; it is, therefore, well within the limits of the Social-Democratic
minimum program. Imagine, however, its realization in a revolutionary
period, when all social passions are at the boiling point. An eight hour
workday law would necessarily meet with stubborn and organized
opposition on the part of the capitalists--let us say in the form of a
lock-out and closing down of factories and plants. Hundreds of thousands
of workingmen would be thrown into the streets. What ought the
revolutionary government to do? A bourgeois government, however radical,
would never allow matters to go as far as that. It would be powerless
against the closing of factories and plants. It would be compelled to
make concessions. The eight hour workday would not be put into
operation; the revolts of the workingmen would be put down by force of
arms....
Under the political domination of the proletariat, the introduction of
an eight hour workday must have totally different consequences. The
closing down of factories and plants cannot be the reason for increasing
labor hours by a government which represents not capital, but labor, and
which refuses to act as an "impartial" mediator, the way bourgeois
democracy does. A labor government would have only one way out--to
expropriate the closed factories and plants and to organize their work
on a public basis.
Or let us take another example. A proletarian government must
necessarily take decisive steps to solve the problem of unemployment.
Representatives of labor in a revolutionary government can by no means
meet the demands of the unemployed by saying that this is a bourgeois
revolution. Once, however, the state ventures to eliminate
unemployment--no matter how--a tremendous gain in the economic power of
the proletariat is accomplished. The capitalists whose pressure on the
working class was based on the existence of a reserve army of labor,
will soon realize that they are powerless _economically_. It will be the
task of the government to doom them also to _political_ oblivion.
Measures against unemployment mean also measures to secure means of
subsistence for strikers. The government will have to undertake them, if
it is anxious not to undermine the very foundation of its existence.
Nothing will remain for the capitalists but to declare a lock-out, to
close down factories and plants. Since capitalists can wait longer than
labor in case of interrupted production, nothing will remain for a labor
government but to meet a general lock-out by expropriating the factories
and plants and by introducing in the biggest of them state or communal
production.
In agriculture, similar problems will present themselves through the
very fact of land-expropriation. We cannot imagine a proletarian
government expropriating large private estates with agricultural
production on a large scale, cutting them into pieces and selling them
to small owners. For it the only open way is to organize in such estates
cooeperative production under communal or state management. This,
however, _is the way of Socialism_.
Social-Democracy can never assume power under a double obligation: to
put the _entire_ minimum program into operation for the sake of the
proletariat, and to keep strictly _within the limits_ of this program,
for the sake of the bourgeoisie. Such a double obligation could never be
fulfilled. Participating in the government, not as powerless hostages,
but as a leading force, the representatives of labor _eo ipso_ break the
line between the minimum and maximum program. _Collectivism becomes the
order of the day._ At which point the proletariat will be stopped on
its march in this direction, depends upon the constellation of forces,
not upon the original purpose of the proletarian Party.
It is, therefore, absurd to speak of a _specific_ character of
proletarian dictatorship (or a dictatorship of the proletariat _and_ the
peasantry) within a bourgeois revolution, viz., a _purely democratic_
dictatorship. The working class can never secure the democratic
character of its dictatorship without overstepping the limits of its
democratic program. Illusions to the contrary may become a handicap.
They would compromise Social-Democracy from the start.
Once the proletariat assumes power, it will fight for it to the end. One
of the means to secure and solidify its power will be propaganda and
organization, particularly in the village; another means will be a
_policy of Collectivism_. Collectivism is not only dictated by the very
position of the Social-Democratic Party as the party in power, but it
becomes imperative as a means to secure this position through the active
support of the working class.
* * * * *
When our Socialist press first formulated the idea of a _Permanent
Revolution_ which should lead from the liquidation of absolutism and
civic bondage to a Socialist order through a series of ever growing
social conflicts, uprisings of ever new masses, unremitting attacks of
the proletariat on the political and economic privileges of the
governing classes, our "progressive" press started a unanimous indignant
uproar. Oh, they had suffered enough, those gentlemen of the
"progressive" press; this nuisance, however, was too much. Revolution,
they said, is not a thing that can be made "legal!" Extraordinary
measures are allowable only on extraordinary occasions. The aim of the
revolutionary movement, they asserted, was not to make the revolution go
on forever, but to bring it as soon as possible into the channels of
_law_, etc., etc. The more radical representatives of the same
democratic bourgeoisie do not attempt to oppose the revolution from the
standpoint of completed constitutional "achievements": tame as they are,
they understand how hopeless it is to fight the proletariat revolution
with the weapon of parliamentary cretinism _in advance_ of the
establishment of parliamentarism itself. They, therefore, choose another
way. They forsake the standpoint of law, but take the standpoint of what
they deem to be facts,--the standpoint of historic "possibilities," the
standpoint of political "realism,"--even ... even the standpoint of
"Marxism." It was Antonio, the pious Venetian bourgeois, who made the
striking observation:
Mark you this, Bassanio,
The devil can cite scriptures for his purpose.
Those gentlemen not only consider the idea of labor government in Russia
fantastic, but they repudiate the very probability of a Social
revolution in Europe in the near historic epoch. The necessary
"prerequisites" are not yet in existence, is their assertion.
Is it so? It is, of course, not our purpose to set a time for a Social
revolution. What we attempt here is to put the Social revolution into a
proper historic perspective.