Dictatorship vs. Democracy

lass and Its

SIAN PR

rism and trade unionism, but upon the young working-class of a backward country. History, as always, moved along the line of least resistance. The revolutionary epoch burst upon us through the least barricaded door. Those extraordin

epoch that has arrived throughout the world, Kautsky discusses the theme of

instincts, sentiments of solidarity, etc. Such a form of morale," Kautsky further informs us, "was very highly developed amongst the proletari

hat Bolshevism has become amalgamated with the Russian proletariat, Kautsky makes an attempt to fling mud at the Russian proletariat as a

ired arms by night. "As under present circumstances it is absolutely necessary to be extremely economical with the resources of the Commune," the regulation read, "the night duty will be rendered without payment…." "Truly," Kautsky concludes, "these working men did not regard the period of their dictatorship as an opportune moment for the satisfaction of their personal interests." (Page 90.) Quite otherwise is the case with the Russian working class. That class has no intel

class are shown up, and attempts to represent matters in such a way as if the life of the Russian proletariat bet

-not of one worker for the space of one night, but of tens of thousands of workers for the space of a long series of disturbed nights. In the days and weeks of Yudenich's advance on Petrograd, one telephonogram of the Soviet was suffi

days, 15,000 persons. And at what moment? At the moment when the danger of the destruction of the Soviet Government had reached its most acute point. At the moment when Orel had been taken, and Denikin was approaching Tula and Moscow, when Yudenich was threatening Petrograd. At that most painful moment, the Moscow proletariat, in the course of a week, gave to the ran

without reward, for the sake of the economic reconstruction of the country. And this is done by half-starved people, in torn boots, in dirty linen-because the country has neither boots nor soap. Such, in reality, is that Bolshevik proletariat to whom Kautsky recommends a course of self-sacrifice. The facts of the situation, and their relative importance, will ap

d with the ever-increasing support of the proletariat of other countries, we should deal adequately with our difficulties, and be able to guarantee the transition of Russia to the Socialist order. In this connection, Kautsky asks: "Would Trotsky undertake to get on a locomotive and set it going, in the conviction that he would during the jou

addle, and to guide the animal in all its steps?" We have foundations for believing that Kautsky would not make up his mind to such a dangerous purely Bolshevik experiment. On the other hand, we fear that, through not risking to mou

and to turn it. True, the engine allows training man?uvres only under the guidance of an old driver. The horse allows of instructions in the riding school only under the guidance of experienced trainers. But in the sphere of State administration such artificial conditions cannot be created. The bo

whether it will or will not mount the horse, whether it will take power immediately or postpone the moment. Under certain cond

consciously and malignantly transforms the disorganization of production into a method of political struggle, with the object of restoring powe

ssity, to learn by its own experience a most difficult art-that of organizing Socialist economy. Ha

e Murzilovka Soviet: "The Soviet hereby empowers Comrade Gregory Sareiev, in accordance with his choice and instructions, to requisition and lead to the barracks, for the use of the Artillery Division stationed i

munication, I gave instructions, however, that careful inquiry should be made, in order to discover what fact

ing counties either. The most similar in name is the village of Muraviovka, Briansk County; but no artillery division has ev

nits. Absolutely nowhere were we able to discover even an indirect allusion

absolutely nothing was discovered; and no wonder. The very contents of the forgery are in too brutal a contrast with the moral

forgery, which might be circulated only by the most mal

howed me a number of a Swedish paper (Svenska Dagbladet) of November 9, 1

ht of socializing in the town of Ekaterinodar (obliterated)

odar women during the reign of Denikin's militarism there. That the document might lead into error the thick-witted Swedish bourgeois is not at all amazing. But for the Russian reader it is only too clear that the document is not merely a forgery, but drawn up by a foreigner, dictionary in hand. It is extremely curious that the names of both the socializers of women, "Gregory Sareiev" and "Karaseiev" sound absolutely non-R

, has original inspi

DE UNIONS, A

party and professional organizations of more developed countries, not a higher form of organization, but fi

? Ought one not absolutely to repudiate them in the Ebert Republic? We note, however, that Hilferding, th

n to their feet such deep layers as the pre-revolutionary Social-Democracy could not even dream of. However wide were the organizations of the party and the trade unions in Germany, the revolution immediately proved incomparably wider than they. The revolutionary masses found their direct representation in the most simple and generally comprehensive delegate organization-in the Soviet. One

ages of cultural development, all stages of political consciousness-and thereb

st just in this sense-namely, the formulating of the gene

proletariat they point out, and bring to the fore, the common interests of the proletariat, independently of nationality; and again that, in the different stages

had to become the guiding party in the Soviets. But hence also is seen all the narrowness of the estimate of Soviets as "substitutes for the party" (Kaut

tion, and have purpose either as an organ of the struggle

from the worker," he writes, "can never be actually drawn. There will always be something arbitrary in such demarcation, which fact transforms the Soviet idea into a par

of numerous transitional stages between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, that the lower middle-class theoreticians always found their principal argument against the "principle" of the class struggle? For Kautsky, however, doubts as to principle begin just at the point w

the relationship of classes and sections can immediately find their expression in the Soviet apparatus. Beginning with the largest factories and works, the Soviets then draw into their organization the work

nding-and at certain moments contracting-in harmony with the expansion and contraction of the social positions conquered by the proletariat, the Soviet system remains the State apparatus of the social revolution, in its internal dynamics, its ebbs and flows, its mistak

ts are the weapon of the revolution itself. After its victory, the Soviets become the organs of p

tee of the party. This affords extreme economy of time and energy, and in the most difficult and complicated circumstances gives a guarantee for the necessary unity of action. Such a regime is possible only in the presence of the unquestioned authority of the party, and the faultlessness of its discipline. Happily for the revolution, our party does possess in an equal measure both of these qualities. Wh

ss there enter various elements, heterogeneous moods, different levels of development. Yet the dictatorship pre-supposes unity of will, unity of direction, unity of action. By what other path then can it b

coalitions with bourgeois parties, of which of course there can be no talk, but a coalition of Communists with ot

h disguised Opportunists. The coalition soon broke up. The Communist Party paid heavily for the revolutionary instability and the political treachery of its companions. It is quite obvious that for the Hungarian Communists it would have been more profitable to have come to power later, after having afforded to the Left Opportunists the possibility

al companions. Apparently, such a coalition, in which we were the stronger side and, therefore, were not taking too many risks in the attempt, at one definite stage in history, to make use of the extreme Left-wing of the bourgeois democracy, tactically must be completely justified. But, none the less, the Left S.R. e

strong revolutionary organization that the party has afforded to the Soviets the possibility of becoming transformed from shapeless parliaments of labor into the apparatus of the supremacy of labor. In this "substitution" of the power of the party for the power of the working class there is nothing accidental, and in reality

orical development? Destroying or driving underground the other parties, you have thereby prevented their political c

ne of action, without the possible circulation of Menshevik papers. Noske crushes the Communists, but they grow. We have suppressed the Mensheviks and the S.R.s-and they have disappeared. This criterion is sufficient for us. At all events, our problem is not at every given moment s

ition. The trade unions become the most important economic organs of the proletariat in power. Thereby they fall under the leadership of the Communist Party.

he revolutionary vanguard, which relies upon the heavy masses, and, where necessary, obliges the backward tail to dress by the head. This refers also to the trade unions. After the conquest of power by the proletariat, they acquire a compulsory character. They must include all industrial workers. The party, on the other hand, as before, includes i

he unions to haggle with the Soviet State, lay down conditions for it, and demand from it guarantees. The further we go, however, the more do the unions recognize that they are organs of production of the Soviet State, and assume responsibility for its fortunes-not oppos

class. From the old policy of trade unionism, which at a certain stage is inseparable from the industrial movement within the f

ASANT

n the villages by granting political rights exclusively to the poorest peasants.

t dreaming to inquire into its general direction, and into the internal co

dle peasants, whose requirements were covered by the products of their farms, and who were able to a limited extent to sell their surplus; and the upper layer-i.e., the rich peasants, the vulture (kulak) class, which systema

f the town proletariat, whilst the vulture class represented its just as undeniable and irreconcilable enemie

policy, robbed the town for a prolonged period of any possibility of giving the village the products of the textile and metal-working industries, imported goods, and so on. At the same time, industry could not entirely cease drawing from the village all, albeit the smallest quantity, of its food resources. The proletariat demanded of the peasantry the granting of food credits, economic subsidies in respect of values which it is only now about to create. The symb

sference of power to the village poor had an immeasurable revolutionary significance. For the guidance of the village semi-proletarians, there were despatched from the towns parties from amongst the foremost workers, who accomplished invaluable work in the villages. The Committees of Poverty became shock battalions against the vulture class. Enjoying the support of the State, they thereby obliged the middle section of the peasantry to choose, not only between the Soviet power and the power of the landlords, but between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the semi-proletarian elements of the village on the one hand, and the yoke of the rich speculators on the other. By a series of lessons, some of which were very severe, the middle peasantry was obliged to become convinced that the Soviet regime, which had driven away the landlords and bailiffs, in its turn imposes new duties upon the peasantry, and demands sacrifices from them. The political education of tens of millions of the middle peasantry did not take place as easily an

ons to be drawn. And after all, how should he think of them? Experience such as we are acquiring in this respect knows no precedent; and questions and problems such as the Soviet Government is now solving in practice have no solution in books. What Kautsky calls

quantity shall it hand over to the peasants; what policy shall it lay down for the agricultural communes; in what form shall it give them support, so as not to make them the nursery for parasitism; in what form is control to be organized over them-all these are absolutely new problems of Socialist ec

turns against us. "This has introduced into the Soviet regime an economically reactionary eleme

lly reactionary element"! Nor is this all. Having poisoned the Soviet regime by its "reactionary element," the peasantry has deprived us of its

e peasant's horses. To carry out their policy, the bourgeois governments-including the Kautskian-Menshevik variety-made use of a purely bureaucratic apparatus, which reckons with the requirements of the peasant's farm to an infinitely less degree than the Soviet apparatus, which consists of workers and peasants. As a result, the middle peasant, in spite of his waverings, his dissatisfaction, and even his risings, ultimately always comes to the conclusion that, however difficult it is for him at present un

OVERNMENT AN

ted to attract them to work by all sorts of measures, incidentally by giving them extremely high salaries. "In this way," Kautsky says ironically, "the true path, the true method of attracting experts consists in first of all giving them a thorough good hid

an insurmountable fact. Consequently, the bourgeois intelligentsia treated its duties to the Labor State extremely lightly, even when it entered its service; and it considered that to receive money from Wilson, Clémenceau or Mirbach for anti-Soviet agitation, or to hand over military secrets and techni

and behind." (Page 193.) In this way, Kautsky seriously imagines that it is possible to attract the bourgeois intelligentsia to the work of Socialist construction by means of mere persuasion-and this in conditions when, in all oth

ts, precisely because it knew their enormous importance from the point of view of organization so long as they do not attempt to carry on an independent "democratic" policy and execute the orders of one of the fundamental classes of society. Only after the opposition of the intelligentsia had been broken by a severe struggle did the possibility open before us of enlisting the assistance of the experts. We immediately entered that path. It proved not as simple as it might have seemed at first. The relations which existed under capitalist conditions between the working man and the director, the clerk and the manager, the soldier

s own satisfaction that it was capable of overcoming the greatest obstacles in its path, which had torn to pieces the veil of mystery which had hitherto surrounded the power of the propertied classes, which had realized that all good things on the earth were not the di

ce on March 28, 1918, "the struggle with sabotage must express itself in the form of transforming the saboteurs of yesterday into the servants, executive officials, technical guides, of the new regime, wherever it requires them. If

, former officers, there is sunk a certain portion of our national capital, which we are

abolishing the meaning of skilled forces, the meaning of persons possessing spe

at flood-tide of the collegiate principle which is at present to be observed in all spheres is the quite natural reaction of a young, revolutionary, only yesterday oppressed class, which is throwing out the one-man principle of its rulers of yesterday-the landlords

l specialist, who is equipped with certain knowledge, on whom a great measure of responsibility must be laid, and who must be kept under careful political control. But it is necessary to allow the expert freedom to act, freedom to create; because no expert, be he ever so little gifted or capable, can work in h

ineer or of some general of yesterday that the Soviet regime may stumble-in the political, in the revolutionary, in the military sense, the Soviet regime is unconquerable. But it may stumble through its own incapacity to grapple with the problems of creative organization. The Soviet regime is bound to draw from the old institutions all that was vi

s is for us just as essential as the administration of the resources of production and transport, and all the wealth of the country generally. We must, and in addition we must immediately, bring under our control all

the very beginning, in the War Department. Here, unde

re obliged to sacrifice the interests of industry and transport to the requirements of military defence. The extremely changeable course of the civil war, in its turn, threw obstacles in the way of the establishment of r

ired first-class importance. One of the most important amongst them is the problem of the scientific organization of production. Before the experts there opens a boundless field of activi

OLICY OF THE S

their demands for peace-peace at any price, a separate peace-without interesting themselves as to the influence this would have on the general international situation, as to whether this would assi

he Soviet Government has continued to exist now that it has again mobilized a most important proportion o

of peace was supported most strongly of all, not by the tired soldiers, but by the foremost workers, for whom it had the import, not for a rest, but of

ce of February, 1918, to reveal all the cynicism of Kautsky's accusation. In reality, there was no peace for a single day between ourselves and German imperialism. On the Ukrainian and Caucasian fronts, we, in the measure of our then extremely feeble energies, continued to wage war without openly calling it such. We were too weak to organize war along the whole Russo-German front. We maintained persistently the fiction of peace, utilizing the fact that the chief German forces were drawn away to the west. If German imperialism did prove sufficiently powerful, in 1917-18, to impose upon us the Brest Peace, after all our efforts to tear that noose from our necks, one of the principal reasons was the disgraceful behavior of the German Social-Democratic Party, of which Kautsky remained an integral and essential part

Its final collapse was pre-determined. If the February Revolution had not taken place, Tsarism would have come to an agreement with the German monarchy. But the February Revolution which prevented that finally destroyed the army built on a monarchist basis, precisely because

ing of the Soviet Government and its policy. The January strike of 1918 in Germany and Austria showed that our efforts had not been in vain. That strike was the first serious premonition of the German Revolution. The German Imperialists understood then that it was just we who represented for them a deadly danger. This is very strikingly shown in Ludendorff's book. True, they could not risk any longer coming out against us in an open crusade. But wherever they could fight against us secretly deceiving the German workers with the help of the German Social-Democracy, they did so; in the Ukraine, on the Don, in the Caucasus. In Central Russia, in Moscow, Count Mirbach from the very first day of his arrival stood as the centre of counter-revolutionary plots against the Soviet Government-just as Comrade Yoffe in Berlin was in the closest possible touch with the revolution. The Extreme Left gr

should at the decisive moment have proved absolutely disarmed in the face of the Entente-still more disarmed than Germany is to-day. Whereas, thanks to the November Revolution and the Brest Peace we are to-day the only country which opposes the Entente rifle in hand. By our international policy, we not only did not assist the Hohenzollern to assume a posi

ds would have considered it a happiness and an honor to spring at the throat of the Russian proletariat for a bone from the kitchen of Clemenceau. We proposed peace to the Entente, and were again ready-for we were obliged-to sign the most painful conditions. But Clemenceau, in whose imperialist rapacity there have remained in their

he Soviet Government had made clear the considerable vitality as yet of the capitalist governments of

ble belief in the world significance of the Soviet dictatorship, we should not have accepted the most painful sacrifices at Brest-Litovsk. If our faith had proved to be contradicted by the actual course of events, the Brest Peace would have gone down to history as the futile capitulation of a doomed regime. That is how the situation was judged then, not only by the Kühlmanns, but also by the Kautskies of all countries. But we proved right in our estimate, as of our weakness then, so of our strength in the future. The existence of the Ebert Republic, with its universal suffrage, its parliamentary swindling, its "freedom" of the Press, and its murder of labor leaders, is merel

evolutionary wing of the European proletariat would have been dealt the severest possible blow. The Entente would have made peace with the Hohenzollern over the corpse of the Russian Revolution, and the world capitalist reaction would have received a respite for a number of year

rld should be preserved. And we proved right. Whereas Kautsky awaited our fall, if not with impat

on of the discussion as to the relations of Germany and the Soviet Republic. Haase advises a policy of procrastination. Kautsky agrees

weeks"-at that moment Kautsky not only does not hasten to our aid, and even does not merely wash his hands of the whole affair; he participates in active treachery against revolutionary Russia. To aid Scheidemann in his role of watch-dog o