CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY WiLLARD FiSKE Endowment Cornell University Library HX36.K21 T85 1922 Dictatorship vs. democracv a" oiin 3 1924 030 320 810 PUN LIBRARY -ClRCULAllUN DATE DUE ! . ^--j^^ h|^n||utfii^£Mi^^ \ n the balance of power. The Soviet regime in Russia is Utopian — "because it does not correspond to the balance of power." Backward Russia cannot put objects before itself which would be appropriate to advanced Germany. And for the proletariat of Germany it would be madness to take political power into its own hands, as this "at the present moment" would disturb the balance of power. The League of Nations is imperfect, but still corresponds to the balance of power. The struggle for the overthrow of imperialist supremacy is Utopian — the balance of power only requires a revision of the Versailles Treaty. When Longuet hobbled after Wilson this took place, not because of the political decomposition of Longuet, but in honor of the law of the balance of power. The Austrian president, Seitz, and the chancellor, Renner, must, in the opinion of Friedrich Adler, exercise their bour- geois impotence at the central posts of the bourgeois republic, for otherwise the balance of power would be infringed. Two 12 \ Dictatorship vs. Democracy 13 years before the world war, Karl Renner, then not a chancellor, but a "Marxist" advocate of opportunism, explained to me that the regime of June 3 — that is, the union of landlords and capitalists crowned by the monarchy — must inevitably maintain itself in Russia during a whole historical period, as it answ^ered to the balance of power. What is this balance of power after all — that sacramental^ formula which is to define, direct, and explain the whole course of history, wholesale and retail? Why exactly is it that the formula of the balance of power, in the mouth of Kautsky and his present school, inevitably appears as a justifi- cation of indecision, stagnation, cowardice and treachery? By the balance of power they understand everything yotr please: the level of production attained, the degree of dif- ferentiation of classes, the number of organized workers, the total funds at the disposal of the trade unions, sometimes the results of the last parliamentary elections, frequently the degree of readiness for compromise on the part of the ministry, or the degree of effrontery of the financial oligarchy. MostN frequently, it means that summary political impression which! exists in the mind of a half-blind pedant, or a so-called realist i politician, who, though he has absorbed the phraseology of ] Marxism, in reality is guided by the most shallow manoeuvres, I bourgeois prejudices, and parliamentary "tactics." After a' whispered conversation with the director of the police depart- ment, an Austrian Social-Democratic politician in the good, and not so far off, old times always knew exactly whether the balance of power permitted a peaceful street demonstra- tion in Vienna on May Day. In the case of the Eberts, Scheidemanns and Davids, the balance of power was, not so very long ago, calculated exactly by the number of fingers which were extended to them at their meeting in the Reichstag with Bethmann-Hollweg, or with Ludendorff himself. According to Friedrich Adler, the establishment of a Soviet dictatorship in Austria would be a fatal infraction of the balance of power ; the Entente would condemn Austria to starvation. In proof of this, Friedrich Adler, at the July congress of Soviets, pointed to Hungary, where at that time the Hungarian Renners had not yet, with the help of the Hungarian Adlers, overthrown the dictatorship of the Soviets. 14 Dictatorship vs. Democracy At the first glance, it might really seem that Friedrich Adler was right in the case of Hungary. The proletarian dictator- ship was overthrown there soon afterwards, and its place was filled by the ministry of the reactionary Friedrich. But it is quite justifiable to ask: Did the latter correspond to the balance of power? At all events, Friedrich and his Huszar might not even temporarily have seized power had it not ^been for the Roumanian army. 'Hence, it is clear that, when discussing the fate of the Soviet Government in Hungary, it is necessary to take account of the "balance of power," at all events in two countries — in Hungary itself, and in its neighbor, Roumania. But it is not difficult to grasp that we cannot stop at this. If the dictatorship of the Soviets had been set up in Austria before the maturing of the Hungarian crisis, the overthrow of the Soviet regime in Budapest would have been an infinitely more difficult task. Consequently, we have to include Austria also, together with the treacherous policy of Friedrich Adler, in that balance of power which determined the temporary fall of the Soviet Government in Hungary. Friedrich Adler himself, however, seeks the key to the balance of power, not in Russia and Hungary, but in the _West, in the countries of Clemenceau and Lloyd George. They have in their hands bread and coal — and really bread and coal, especially in our time, are just as foremost factors in the mechanism of the balance of power as cannon in the i constitution of Lassalle. Brought down from the heights, Adler's idea consists, consequently, in this ; that the Austrian proletariat must not seize power until such time as it is I permitted to do so by Clemenceau (or Millerand— t'.i?., a ^ Clemenceau of the second order). However, even here it is permissible to ask: Does the policy of Clemenceau himself really correspond to the balance I of power ? At the first glance it may appear that it corresponds ", well enough, and, if it cannot be proved, it is, at least, guaran- teed by Clemenceau's gendarmes, who break up working-class : meetings, and arrest and shoot Communists. But here we ; cannot but remember that the terrorist measures of the Soviet 1 Government — that is, the same searches, arrests, and execu- Jtions, only directed against the counter-revolutionaries are Dictatorship vs. Democracy 15 considered by some people as a proof that the Soviet Govern- \ ment does not correspond to the balance of power. In vain/ would we, however, begin to seek in our time, anywhere inj the world, a regime which, to preserve itself, did not have recourse to measures of stern mass repression. This means/ that hostile class forces, having broken through the frame- work of every kind of law — including that of "democracy" — are striving to find their new balance by means of a merciless struggle. When the Soviet system was being instituted in Russia, not only the capitalist politicians, but also the Socialist op- portunists of all countries proclaimed it an insolent challenge to the balance of forces. On this score, there was no quarrel between Kautsky, the Austrian Count Czemin, and the Bulgari- an Premier, Radoslavov. Since that time, the Austro-Hungari- an and German monarchies have collapsed, and the most powerful militarism in the world has fallen into dust. The Soviet regime has held out. The victorious countries of the Entente have mobilized and hurled against it all they could. The Soviet Government has stood firm. Had Kautsky, Fried- rich Adler, and Otto Bauer been told that the system of the dictatorship of the proletariat would hold out in Russia — first against the attack of German militarism, and then in a cease- less war with the militarism of the Entente countries — the sages of the Second International would have considered such a prophecy a laughable misunderstanding of the "balance of power." ^__ The balan ce of political power at any given moment is determined under the influence of fundamental and secondary facfofslDT'differirig degrees of eflfecfiveness, and only in its ifioist fundamental quality is it determined by the stage of the development! of ^production. The social structure of a people is extraordinarily behind the development of its productive/ forces. The lower middle classes, and particularly the peasant-/ ry, retain their existence long after their economic methods have been made obsolete, and have been condemned, by the technical development of the productive powers of society?; The consciousness of the masses, in its turn, is extraordinarily behind the development of their social relations, the conscious- ness of the old Socialist parties is a whole epoch behind the I i6 Dictatorship vs. Democracy state of mmd of the masses, and the consciousness of the old ( parliamentary and trade union leaders, more reactionary than \the consciousness of their party, represents a petrified mass 1 which history has been unable hitherto either to digest or /reject. In the parliamentary epoch, during the period of ' stability of social relations, the psychological factor — without great error— was the foundation upon which all current calcu- lations were based. It was considered that parliamentary elections reflected the balance of power with sufficient exact- r^ess. The imperialist war, which upset all bourgeois society, displayed the complete uselessness of the old criteria. The latter completely ignored those profound historical factors which had gradually been accumulating in the preceeding period, and have now, all at once, appeared on the surface, and have begun to determine the course of history. -'"'Trhe political worshippers of routine, incapable of sur- veying the historical process in its complexity, in its internal clashes and contradictions, imagined to themselves that history was preparing the way for the Socialist order simultaneously and systematically on all sides, so that concentration of pro- duction and the development of a Communist morality in the producer and the consumer mature simultaneously with the electric plough and a parliamentary majority. Hence the purely mechanical attitude towards parliamentarism, which, in the eyes of the majority of the statesmen of the Second International, indicated the degree to which society was pre- / pared for Socialism as accurately as the manometer indicates / j the pressure of steam. Yet there is nothing more senseless ,/ I than this mechanized representation of the development of \gocial relations. j If, beginning with the productive bases of society, we ascend the stages of the superstructure — classes, the State, laws, parties, and so on — it may be established that the weight of each additional part of the superstructure is not simply to be added to, but in many cases to be multiplied by, the jk^eight of all the preceding stages. As a result, the political consciousness of groups which long imagined themselves to be among the most advanced, displays itself, at a moment of j change, as a colossal obstacle in the path of historical develop- iment. To-day it is quite beyond doubt that the parties of the Dictatorship vs. Democracy 17 Second International, standing at the head of the proletariat, which dared not, could not, and would not take power into their hands at the most critical moment of human history, and which led the proletariat along the road of mutual destruction in the interests of imperialism, proved a decisive factor of the coimter-revolution. ^^ The great forces of production — that shock factor in historical development — were choked in those obsolete institu- tions of the superstructure (private property and the national State) in which they found themselves locked by all preced- ing development. Engendered by capitalism, the forces of, production were knocking at all the walls of the bourgeois national State, demanding their emancipation by means of .^^M^ocialist organization of economic life on a world scale. The stagnation of social groupings, the stagnation of political forces, which proved themselves incapable of destroying the old class groupings, the stagnation, stupidity and treachery of the directing Socialist parties, which had assumed to them- selves in reality the defense of bourgeois society — all these! factors led to an elemental revolt of the forces of production, in the shape of the imperialist wa&/ Human technical skill, the most revolutionary factor ia-Wstory, arose with the might -accumulated during scores of years against the disgusting conservatism and criminal stupidity of the Scheidemanns, Kautskies, Renaudels, Vanderveldes and Longuets, and, by means of its howitzers, machine-guns, dreadnoughts and aero- planes, it began a furious pogrom of human culture. In tills way the cause of the misfortunes at present ex-^ perienced by humanity is precisely that the development of the technical command of men over nature has long ago grown ripe for the socialization of economic life. The proletariat^ has occupied a place in production which completely guarantees its dictatorship, while the most intelligent forces in history--^ the parties and their leaders — ^have been discovered to be still wholly under the yoke of the old prejudices, and only fostered a lack of faith among the masses in their own power. In quite recent years Kautsky used to understand this. "The proletariat at the present time has grown so strong," wrote Kautsky in his pamphlet. The Path to Power, "that it can calmly await the coming war. There can be no more talk of a premature i8 Dictatorship vs. Democracy revolution, now that the proletariat has drawn from the present structure of the State such strength as could be drawn therefrom, and now that its reconstruction has become a /''Condition of the proletariat's further progress." From the I moment that the development of productive forces, outgrowing \ the framework of the bourgeois national State, drew mankind I into an epoch of crises and convulsions, the consciousness I of the masses was shaken by dread shocks out of the com- I parative equilibrium of the preceding epoch. The routine and stagnation of its mode of living, the hypnotic suggestion of peaceful legality, had already ceased to dominate the prole- tariat. But it had not yet stepped, consciously and courage- ously, on to the path of open revolutionary struggle. It wavered, passing through the last moment of unstable equi- librium. At such a moment of psychological change, the part played by the summit — the State, on the one hand, and the revolutionary Party on the other — acquires a colossal im- portance. A determined push from left or right is sufficient to move the proletariat, for a certain period, to one or the other side. We saw this in 1914, when, under the united pressure of imperialist governments and Socialist patriotic parties, the working class was all at once thrown out of its equilibrium and hurled on to the path of imperialism. We have since seen how the experience of the war, the contrasts, between its results and its first objects, is shaking the masses in a revolutionary sense, making them more and more capable /of an open revolt against capitalism. In such conditions, iT the presence of a revolutionary party, which renders to itself \ a clear account of the motive forces of the present epoch, [ and understands the exceptional role amongst them of a revolu- ■ 1 tionary class ; which knows its inexhaustible, but unrevealed, ! powers ; which believes in that class and believes in itself ; \ which knows the power of revolutionary method in an epoch /of instability of all social relations; which is ready to employ j that method and carry it through to the end — ^the presence / of such a party represents a factor of incalculable historical Jvwjportance. f/'~' And, on the other hand, the Socialist party, eiyoying traditional influence, which does not render itself an account of what is going on around it, which does not understand the Dictatorship vs. Democracy 19 revolutionary situation, and, therefore, finds no key to it, which does not believe in either the proletariat or itself — such a party in our time is the most mischievous stumbling block in history, and a source of confusion and inevitable chaos. Such is now the role of Kautsky and his sympathizers. They teach the proletariat not to believe in itself, but to believe its reflection in the crooked mirror of democracy which has been shattered by the jack-boot of militarism into a thousand fragments. ' The decisive factor in the revolutionary policy of the working class must be, in their view, not the international situation, not the actual collapse of capitalism, not that social collapse which is generated thereby, not that concrete necessity of the supremacy of the working class for which the cry arises from the smoking ruins of capitalist civilization — not all this must determine the policy of the revolutionary party of the proletariat— but that counting of votes which is carried out by the capitalist tellers of parlia- mentarism. Only a few years ago, we repeat, Kautsky seemed to understand the real inner meaning of the problem of revo- lution. "Yes, the proletariat represents the sole revolutionary class of the nation," wrote Kautsky in his pamphlet. The Path ^ to Power. It follows that every collapse of the capitalist order, whether it be of a moral, financial, or military char- acter, implies the bankruptcy of all the bourgeois parties responsible for it, and signifies that the sole way out of the blind alley is the establishment of the power of the proletariat. And to-day the party of prostration and cowardice, the party of Kautsky, says to the working class: "The question is not whether you to-day are the sole creative force in history ; whether you are capable of throwing aside that ruling band of robbers into which the propertied classes have developed; the question is not whether anyone else can accomplish this task on your behalf ; tha question is not whether history allows you any postponement (for the present condition of bloody chaos threatens to bury you yourself, in the near future, under the last ruins of capitalism). The problem is for the ruling imperialist bandits to succeed — yesterday or to-day— to deceive, violate, and swindle public opinion, by collecting 51 per cent, of the votes against your 49. Perish the world, but long live the parliamentary majority !" The Dictatorship of the Proletariat < tT% yrARX and Engels hammered out the idea of the dictator- IVl ship of the proletariat, which Engels stubbornly de- fended in 1891, shortly before his death — the idea that the political autocracy of the proletariat is the sole form in which it can realize its control of the state." That is what Kautsky wrote about ten years ago. The sole form of power for the proletariat he considered to be not a Socialist majority in a democratic parliament, but the political autocracy of the proletariat, its dictatorship. And Jt is quite clear that, if our problem is the abolition of private property in the means of production, the only road to its solution lies through the concentration of State power in its entirety in the hands of the proletariat, and the setting up for the transitional period of an exceptional regime — a regime in which the ruling class is guided, not by general principles calculated for a prolonged period, but by considerations of ^revolutionary policy. The dictatorship is necessary because it is a case, not of partial changes, but of the very existence of the bourgeoisie. No agreement is possible on this ground. Only force can be the deciding factor. The dictatorship of the proletariat does ' not exclude, of course, either separate agreements, or con- siderable concessions, especially in connection with the lower middle class and the peasantry. But the proletariat can only conclude these agreements after having gained possession of the apparatus of power, and having guaranteed to itself the possibility of independently deciding on which points to yield and on which to stand firm, in the interests of the general Socialist task. Kautsky now repudiates the dictatorship of the proletariat 20 Dictatorship vs. Democracy 21 at the very outset, as the "tyranny of the minority over the majority." That is, he discerns in the revolutionary regime of the proletariat those very features by which the honest Socialists of all countries invariably describe the dictatorship of the exploiters, albeit masked by the forms of democracy. Abandoning the idea ofl a revolutionary dictatorship, Kautsky transforms the question of the conquest of power by the proletariat into a question of the conquest of a majori- ty of votes by the Social-Democratic Party in one of the electoral campaigns of the future^ Universal suffrage, accord-* ing to the legal fiction of parliamentarism, expresses the will of the citizens of all classes in the nation, and, consequent- ly, gives a possibility of attracting a majority to the side of Socialism. While the theoretical possibility has not been realized, the Socialist minority must submit to the bourgeois majority. This fetishism of the parliamentary majority re- '' presents a brutal repudiation, not only of the dictatorship of the proletariat, but of Marxism and of the revolution altogether. If, in principle, we are to subordinate Socialist\ policy to the parliamentary mystery of majority and minority, it follows that, in countries where formal democracy prevails, ) there is no place at all for the revolutionary struggle. Ifj the majority elected on the basis of universal suffrage in Switzerland pass draconian legislation against strikers, or if the executive elected by the will of a formal majority in Northern America shoots workers, have the Swiss and Ameri- can workers the "right" of protest by organizing a general strike? Obviously, no. The political strike is a form of extra-parliamentary pressure on the "national will," as it has expressed itself through universal suffrage. True, Kautsky himself, apparently, is ashamed to go as far as the logic of his new position demands. Bound by some sort of remnant of the past, he is obliged to acknowledge the possibility of correcting universal suffrage by action. Parliamentary elec- tions, at all events in principle, never took the place, in the eyes of the Social-Democrats, of the real class struggle, of its conflicts repulses, attacks, revolts ; they were considered mere- ly as a 'contributory fact in this struggle, playing a greater part at one period, a smaller at another, and no part at all in the period of dictatorship. 22 _ Dictatorship vs. Democracy In 189 1, that is, not long before his death, Engels, as we just heard, obstinately defended the dictatorship of the proletariat as the only possible form of its control of the State. Kautsky himself more than once repeated this defini- tion. Hence, by the way, we can see what an unworthy forgery is Kautsky's present attempt to throw back the dictatorship of the proletariat at us as a purely Russian invention. <5^^ho aims at the end cannot reject the means. ,The ^ struggle must be carried on with such intensity as actually to guarantee the supremacy of the proletariat. If the Socialist revolution requires a dictatorship — "the sole form in which the proletariat can achieve control of the State"— it follows that the dictatorship must be guaranteed at all cost. ^' To write a pamphlet about dictatorship one needs an ink- / pot and a pile of paper, and possibly, in addition, a certain ' number of ideas in one's head. But in order to establish and consolidate the dictatorship, one has to prevent the bourgeoisie from undermining the State power of the proletariat. Kautslcy apparently thinks that this can be achieved by tearful pam- phlets. But his own experience ought to have shown him that it is not sufficient to have lost all influence with the proletariat, to acquire influence with the bourgeoisie, sj It is only possible to safeguard the supremacy of the j working class by forcing the bourgeoisie accustomed to rule, to realize that it is too dangerous an undertaking for it to revolt against the dictatorship of the proletariat, to under- mine it by conspiracies, sabotage, insurrections, or the calling Jn of foreign troops. The bourgeoisie, hurled from power, >;' must be forced to obey. In what way? The priests used to j terrify the people with future penalties. We have no such \ resources at our disposal. But even the priests' hell never ! stood alone, but was always bracketed with the material fire \ of the Holy In^jjisition, and with the scorpions of the demo- Vcratic State, fls it possible that Kautsky is leaning to the idea that the iJOurgeoisie can be held down with the help of the categorical imperativfel which in his last writings plays I A the part of the Holy GhosfTpWe, on our part, can only promise I Thim our material assistance if he decides to equip a Kantian- I J humanitarian mission to the realms of Denikin and Kolchak. ' At all events, there he would have the possibility of convincing Dictatorship vs. Democracy 23 himself that the counter-revolutionaries are not naturally devoid of character, and that, thanks to their six years' exist- ence in the fire and smoke of war, their character has managed to become thoroughly hardened. Every White Guard has long ago acquired the simple truth that it is easier to hang a Communist to the branch of a tree than to convert him with a book of Kautsky's. These gentlemen have no superstitious fear, either of the principles of democracy or of the flames of hell — the more so because the priests of the church and of official learning act in collusion with them, and pour their combined thunders exclusively on the heads of the Bolsheviks. The Russian White Guards resemble the German and all other White Guards in this respect— that they cannot be convinced or shamed, but only terrorized or crushed. The man who repudiates terrorism in principle — i.e., re- pudiates measures of suppression and intimidation towards ' determined and armed counter-revolution, must reject all ideal of the political supremacy of the working class and its revo- 1 lutionary dictatorship. The man who repudiates the dictator- ship of the proletariat repudiates the Socialist revolution, and digs the grave of Socialism. '"- At the present time, Kautsky has no theory of the social revolution. Every time he tries to generalize his slanders against the revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, he produces merely a rechauffe of the prejudices of Jauresism and Bemsteinism. "The revolution of 1789," writes Kaustky, "itself put an end to the most important causes which gave it its harsh and violent character, and prepared the way for milder forms of the future revolution." (Page 140.)* Let us admit this, though to do so we have to forget the June days of 1848 and tfie horrors of the suppression of the Commune. Let us admit that the great revolution of the eighteenth century, * Translator's Note— For convenience sake, the references throngh- nnt have been altered to fall in the English translation of Kautsky's book Mr Kerridge's translation, however, has not been adhered to. 24 Dictatorship vs. Democracy which by measures of merciless terror destroyed the rule of absolutism, of feudalism, and of clericalism, really prepared the way for more peaceful and milder solutions of social problems. But, even if we admit this purely liberal stand- point, even here our accuser will prove to be completely in the wrong; for the Russian Revolution, which culminated in the dictatorship of the proletariat, began with just that work which was done in France at the end of the eighteenth century. Our forefathers, in centuries gone by, did not take the trouble to prepare the democractic way — by means of revolutionary terrorism — for milder manners in our revolu- tion. The ethical mandarin, Kautsky, ought to take these circumstances into account, and accuse our forefathers, not us. Kautsky, however, seems to make a little concession in this direction. "True," he says, "no man of insight could doubt that a military monarchy like the German, the Austrian, or the Russian could be overthrown only by violent methods. But in this connection there was always less thought" (amongst whom?), "of the bloody use of arms, and more of the working class weapon peculiar to the proletariat — the mass strike. And that a considerable portion of the prole- tariat, after seizing power, would again — as at the end of the eighteenth century — give vent to its rage and revenge in bloodshed could not be expected. This would have meant a complete negation of all progress." (Page 147.) As we see, the war and a series of revolutions were required to enable us to get a proper view of what was going on in reality in the heads of some of our most learned theore- ticians. It turns out that Kautsky did not think that a Romanoff or a Hohenzollern could be put away by means of conversations; but at the same time he seriously imagined that a military monarchy could be overthrown by a general strike — i.e., by a peaceful demonstration of folded arms. In spite of the Russian revolution, and the world discussion of this question, Kautsky, it turns out, retains the anarcho-reform- ist view of the general strike. We might point out to him that, in the pages of its own journal, the Neue Ze'it, it was explained twelve years ago that the general strike is only ^a mobilization of the proletariat and its setting up against Dictatorship vs. Democracy 25 its enemy, the State ; but that the strike in itself cannot produce | the solution of the problem, because it exhausts the forces I of the proletariat sooner than those of its enemies, and this, ' sooner or later, forces the workers to return to the factories. The general strike acquires a decisive importance only as a preliminary to a conflict between the proletariat and the armed forces of the opposition — i.e., to the open revolutionary rising of the workers. Only by breaking the will of the armies thrown against it can the revolutionary class solve the problem of power — the root problem of every revolution. The generak strike produces the mobilization of both sides, and gives the \ first serious estimate of the powers of resistance of the counter- 1 revolution. But only in the further stages of the struggle, after the transition to the path of armed insurrection, can that bloody price be fixed which the revolutionary class has to pay 1 for power. But that it will have to pay with blood, that, in/ the struggle for the conquest of power and for its consolida- 1 tion, the proletariat will have not only to be killed, but also to kill — of thii^ no serious revolutionary ever had any doubt. To announce that the existence of a determined life-and-death struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie "is a complete negation of all progress," means simply that the heads of some of our most reverend theoreticians take the form of a camera-obscura, in which objects are represented upside down. But, even when applied to more advanced and cultured! countries with established democractic traditions, there is absolutely no proof of the justice of Kautsky's historical argument. As a matter of fact, the argument itself is not new Once upon a time the Revisionists gave it a character more based on principle. They strove to prove that the growth of proletarian organizations under democractic con- ditions guaranteed the gradual and imperceptibl^reformist and evolutionary— transition to Socialist society— without general strikes and risings, without the dictatorship of the proletariat. \ Kautsky at that culminating period of his activity, showed^ that in spite' of the forms of democracy, the class contradic- tions of capitalist society grew deeper, and that this process 26 Dictatorship vs. Democracy must inevitably lead to a revolution and the conquest of power by the proletariat. No one, of course, attempted to reckon up beforehand the number of victims that will be called for by the revolution- ary insurrection of the proletariat, and by the regime of its pdictatorship. But it was clear to all that the number of \ victims will vary with the strength of resistance of the proper- Itied classes. If Kautsky desires to say in his book that a aemocractic upbringing has not weakened the class egoism of the bourgeoisie, this can be admitted without further parley. »/^ If he wishes to add that the imperialist war, which [ broke out and continued for four years, in spite of democracy, I brought about a degradation of morals and accustomed men 1 to violent methods and action, and completely stripped the \ bourgeoisie of the last vestige of awkwardness in ordering /the destruction of masses of humanity — here also he will be iscight. All this is true on the face of it. But one has to struggle in real conditions. The contending forces are not proletarian and bourgeois manikins produced in the retort of Wagner- Kautsky, but a real proletariat against a real bourgeoisie, as they have emerged from the last imperialist slaughter. In this fact of merciless civil war that is spreading over the whole world, Kautsky sees only the result of a fatal lapse from the "experienced tactics" of the Second International. , "In reality, since the time," he writes, "that Marxism has dominated the Socialist movement, the latter, up to the world war, was, in spite of its great activities, preserved from great defeats. And the idea of insuring victory by means of terrorist domination had completely disappeared from its ranks. "Much was contributed in this connection by the faci that, at the time when Marxism was the dominating Socialist teach- ing, democracy threw out firm roots in Western Europe, and began there to change from an end of the struggle to a trustworthy basis of political life." (Page 145.) In this "formula of progress" there is not one atom of Marxism. The real process of the struggle of classes and their material conflicts has been lost in Marxist propaganda, which, thanks to the conditions of democracy, guarantees, Dictatorship vs. Democracy 27 forsooth, a painless transition to a new and "wiser" order. This is the most vulgar liberalism, a belated piece of rational- ism in the spirit of the eighteenth century — with the difference that the ideas of Condorcet are replaced by a vulgarisation of the Communist Manifesto. All history resolves itself into an endless sheet of printed paper, and the centre of this "humane" process proves to be the well-worn writing table of Kautsky. ' We are given as an example the working-class movement in the period of the Second International, which, going forward under the banner of Marxism, never sustained great defeats whenever it deliberately challenged them. But did not the v.-hole working-class movement, the proletariat of the whole v^orld, and with it the whole of htmian culture, sustain an incalculable defeat in August, 1914, when history cast up the accounts of all the forces and possibilities of the Socialist parties, amongst whom, we are told, the guiding role belonged to Marxism, "on the firm footing of democracy"? Those parties proved bankrupt. Those features of their previous work which Kautsky now wishes to render permanent — self- adaptation, repudiation of "illegal" activity, repudiation of the open fight, hopes placed in democracy as the road to a painless revolution — all these fell into dust. In their fear of defeat, holding back the masses from open conflict, dissolv- ing the general strike discussions, the parties of the Second International were preparing their own terrifying defeat; for they were not" able to move one finger to avert the greatest catastrophe in world history, the four years' imperialist slaughter which foreshadowed the violent character of the civil war.' Truly, one has to put a wadded nightcap not only over one's eyes, but over one's nose and ears, to be able to-day, a<^ter the inglorious collapse of the Second International, after the disgraceful bankruptcy of its leading party— the German Social Democracy— after the bloody lunacy of the world slaughter and the gigantic sweep of the civil war, to set w in contrast to us, the profundity, the loyalty, the peace- f ,lness and the sobriety of the Second International, the heritage of which we are still liquidating. 3 Democracy " either democracy, or civil war " sj^JV'AUTSKY has a clear and solitary path to salvation: ISl. democracy. All that is necessary is that every one should \^ acknowledge it and bind himself to support it. The Right Socialists must renounce the sanguinary slaughter with which the have been carrying out the will of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie itself must abandon the idea of using its Noskes and Lieutenant Vogels to defend its privileges to the last breath. Finally, the proletariat must once and for all reject the idea of overthrowing the bourgeoisie by means other than those laid down in the Constitution. If the conditions enumerat- ed are observed, the social revolution will painlessly melt into democracy. In order to succeed it is sufficient, as we see, for our stormy history to draw a nightcap over its head, and take %a pinch of wisdom out of Kautsky's §nufifbox. "There exist only two possibilties," says our sage, "either democracy, or civil war." (Page 220.) Yet, in Germany, where the formal elements of "democracy" are present before our eyes, the civil war does not cease for a moment. "Un- questionably," agrees Kautsky, "under the present National Assembly Germany cannot arrive at a healthy condition. But that process of recovery will not be assisted, but hindered, if we transform the struggle against the present Assembly into a struggle against the democratic franchise." (Page 230.) As if the question in Germany really did reduce itself to one of electoral forms and not to one of the real possession of power ! The present National Assembly, as Kautsky admits, cannot "bring the country to a healthy condition." Therefore let us begin the game again at the beginning. But will the 28 Dictatorship vs. Democracy 29 partners agree? It is doubtful. If the rubber is not favor- able to us, obviously it is so to them. The National Assembly which "is incapable of bringing the country to a healthy condition," is quite capable, through the mediocre dictator- ship of NoskeT of prepariri|T tVip_A»faY for the dictatorship of J-^udMidbaiff. So it was with the Constituent Assembly which prepared the way for Kolchak. The historical mission of Kautsky consists precisely in having waited for the revolution to write his (n + ith) book, which should explain the collapse of the revolution by all the previous course of history, from the ape to Noske, and from Noske to Ludendorff. The pro-N blem before the revolutionary party is a difficult one : its | problem is to foresee the peril in good time, and to forestall | it by action. And for this there is no other way at present than to tear the power out of the hands of its real possessors, the agrarian and capitalist magnates, who are only temporarily hiding behind Messrs. Ebert and Noske. Thus, from the present National Assembly, the path divides into two: either the dictatorship of the imperialist clique, or the dictatorship of the proletariat. On neither side does the path lead to "democracy." (Kautslqr does not see this. He explains at great length that democracy is of great importance for its political development and its education in organization of the masses, and that through it the proletariat can come to complete emancipation. One might imagine that, since the day on which the Erfurt Programme was written, nothing worthy of notice had ever happened in the worldly Yet meanwhile, for decades, the proletariat of France, Germany, and the other most important countries has been struggling and developing, making the widest possible use of the institutions of democracy, and building up on that basis powerful political organizations. This path of the educa- tion of the proletariat through democracy to Socialism proved, however, to be interrupted by an event of no inconsiderable importance — the world imperialist war. The class state at the moment when, thanks to its machinations, the war broke out succeeded in enlisting the assistance of the guiding Organ- izations of Social-Democracy to deceive the proletariat and draw it into the whirl-pool. So that, taken as they standi) the methods of democracy, in spite of the incontestable bene-' y. 30 Dictatorship vs. Demockacy fits which they afford at a certain period, displayed an extreme- ly limited power of action; with the result that two genera- tions of the proletariat, educated under conditions of democ- racy, by no means guaranteed the necessary political prepara- tion for judging accurately an event like the world imperialist war. That experience gives us no reasons for affirming that, tf the war had broken out ten or fifteen years later, the ''''^proletariat would have been more prepared for it. The bour- . geois democratic state not only creates more favorable con- ditions for the political education of the workers, as compared with absolutism, but also sets a limit to that development i in the shape of bourgeois legality, which skilfully accumulates I and builds on the upper strata of the proletariat opportunist Vhabits and law-abiding prejudices^ The school of democracy proved quite insufficient to rouse the German proletariat to revolution when the catastrophe of the war was at hand. The barbarous school of the war, social-imperialist ambitions, colossal military victories, and unparalleled defeats were re- quired. After these events, which made a certain amount of difference in the universe, and even in the Erfurt Programme, to. come out with common-places as to meaning of democratic parliamentarism for the education of the proletariat signifies a fall into political childhood. This is just the misfortune which has overtaken Kautsky. "Profound disbelief in the political struggle of the prole- tariat," he writes, "and in its participation in politics, was the characteristic of Proudhonism. To-day there arises a simi- lar ( ! !) view, and it is recommended to us as the new gospel of Socialist thought, as the result of an experience which Marx did not, and could not, know. In reality, it is only a variation of an idea which half a century ago Marx was fighting, and which he in the end defeated." (Page 79.) Bolshevism proves to be warmed-up Proudhonism ! From a purely theoretical point of view, this is one of the most btazen remarks in the pamphlet. The Proudhonists repudiated democracy for the same reason that they repudiated the political struggle generally. They stood for the economic organization of the workers without the interference of the State, without revolutionary outbreaks — for self-help of the workers on the basis of produc- Dictatorship vs. Democracy 31 tion for profit. As far as they were driven by the course of events on to the path of the political struggle, they, as lower middle class theoreticians, preferred democracy, not only to plutocracy, but to revolutionary dictatorship. What thoughts have they in common with us ? ^While we repudiate democ- "^ racy in the name of the concentrated power of the proletariat, the Proudhonists, on the other hand, were prepared to make their peace with democracy, diluted by a federal basis, in order to avoid the revolutionary monopoly of power by the proletariat. With more foundation Kautsky might have com- pared us with the opponents of the Proudhonists, the Blan-\ quists, who understood the meaning of a revolutionary govern- <. ment, but did not superstitiously make the question of seizingl it depend on the formal signs of democracy. , But in ordef . to put the comparison of the Communists with the Blanquists [ on a reasonable footing, it would have to be added that, in the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils, we had at our disposal such an organization for revolution as the Blanquists could not even dream of ; in our party we had, and have, an in- valuable organization of political leadership with a perfected programme of the social revolution. Finally, we had, and have, a powerful apparatus of economic transformation in our trade unions, which stand as a whole under the banner cf Communism, and support the Soviet Government. Under such conditions, to talk of the renaissance of Proudhonist prejudices in the shape of Bolshevism can only take place v/hen one has lost all traces of theoretical honesty and historical understanding. THE IMPERIALIST TRANSFORMATION OF DEMOCRACY It is not for nothing that the v/ord "democracy" has a double meaning in the political vocabulary. On the one hand, i it means a state system founded on universal suffrage and the! other attributes of formal "popular government." On the other hand, by the word "democracy" is understood the mass! of the people itself, in so far as it leads a political existence.! In the second sense, as in the first, the meaning of democracy' rises above class distinctions. This peculiarity of terminology has its profound political significance. J)emocracy as a polit- 32 Dictatorship vs. Democracy ' ical system is the more perfect and unshakable the greater is the part played in the life of the country by the inter- mediate and less differentiated mass of the population — the lower middle class of the town and the country^ Democracy achieved its highest expression in the nineteenth century in Switzerland and the United States of North America. On the other side of the ocean the democratic organization of power in a federal republic was based on the agrarian democ- lacy of the farmers. In the small Helvetian Republic, the lower middle classes of the towns and the rich peasantry con- stituted the basis of the conservative democracy of the united cantpns. /'■""^Bom of the struggle of the Third Estate against the powers of feudalism, the democratic State very soon becomes ilhe weapon of defence against the class antagonisms generated Within bourgeois society. Bourgeois society succeeds in this the more, the wider beneath it is the layer of the lower middle ,j class, the greater is the importance of the latter in the eco- \ nomic life of the country, and the less advanced, consequent- jly, is the development of class antagonism. However, the intermediate classes become ever more and more helplessly behind historical development, and, thereby, become ever more and more incapable of speaking in the name of the nation. True, the lower middle class doctrinaires (Bernstein and Company) used to demonstrate with satisfaction that the dis- appearance of the middle classes was not taking place with /that swiftness that was expected by the Marxian school. And, in reality, one might agree that, numerically, the middle-class 1 elements in the town, and especially in the country, still main- / tain an extremely prominent position. But the chief meaning / of evolution has shown itself in the decline in importance on the part of the middle classes from the point of view of pro- duction: the amount of values which this class brings to the general income of the nation has fallen incomparably more rapidly than the numerical strength of the middle classes. Y Correspondingly, falls their social, political, and cultural im- |^4)ortance. Historical development has been relying more and i more, not on these conservative elements inherited from the ; past, but on the polar classes of society — i. e., the capitalist I bourgeoisie and the proletariat. i Dictatorship vs. Democracy 33 The more the middle classes lost their social importanceTs the less they proved capable of playing the part of an autho- ritative arbitral judge in the historical conflict between capital and labor. Yet the very considerable numerical proportion of the town middle classes, and still more of the peasantry, con- tinues to find direct expression in the electoral statistics of parliamentarism. The formal equality of all citizens as elec- tors thereby only gives more open indication of the incapacity of democratic parlialmentarism to settle the root questions of historical evolution. An "equal" vote for the proletariat, the peasant, and the manager of a trust formally placed the peas- ant in the position of a mediator between the two antagonists ; but, in reality, the peasantry, socially and culturally backward" and politically helpless, has in all countries always provided I support for the most reactionary, filibustering, and mercenary /■ parties which, in the long run, always supported capital against) labor. ___^ Absolutely contrary to all the prophecjgs of BernsteinT] Sombart, Tugan-Baranovsky, and other^^e continued ex- j .istence of the middle classes has not smtened, but has ren- dered to the last degree acute, the revolutionary crisis of bourgeois society. If the proletarization of the lower niiddld classes and the peasantry had been proceeding in a chemically purified form, the peaceful conquest of power by the pro- letariat through the democratic parliamentary apparatus would have been much more probable than we can imagine at pres- ent Just the fact that was seized upon by the partisans of the lower middle class— its longevity— has proved fatal even for the external forms of political democracy, now that capi- talism has undermined its essential foundations. Occupymg in parliamentary politics a place which it has lost in produc- tion the middle class has finally compromised parliamentar- ism ' and has transformed it into an institution of confused chatter and legislative obstruction. From this fact alone, there Prew up before the proletariat the problem of seizing the fpparatus of state power as such, mdependently of the middle dass and even against it-not aga nst its interests, but against I its stupidity and its policy, impossible to follow in its helplessy '""'"Imperialism," wrote Marx of the Empire of Napoleon 34 Dictatorship vs. Democracy III, "is the most prostituted, and, at the same time, perfected form of the state which the bourgeoisie, having attained its fullest development, transforms into a weapon for the enslave- ment of labor by capital." This definition has a wider sig- nificance than for the French Empiie alone, and includes the latest form of imperialism, born of the world conflict between the national capitalisms of the great powers. In the economic sphere, imperialism pre-supposed the final collapse of the rule of the middle class ; in the political sphere, it signified the complete destruction of democracy by means of an internal molecular transformation, and a universal subordination of all democracy's resources to its own ends. Seizing upon all countries, independently of their previous political history, imperialism showed that all political prejudices were foreign to it, and that it was equally ready and capable of making use, after their transformation and subjection, of the mon- archy of Nicholas Romanoff or Wilhelm Hohenzollern, of the presidential autocracy of the United States of North America, and of the helplessness of a few hundred chocolate legislators in the French parliament. The last great slaughter — the bloody font in which the bourgeois world attempted to be re-baptised — presented to us a picture, unparalleled in his- tory, of the mobilization of all state forms, systems of govern- ment, political tendencies, religious, and schools of philosophy, in the service of imperialism. Even many of those pedants who slept through the preparatory period of imperialist de- velopment during the last decades, and continued to maintain a traditional attitude towards ideas of democracy and univer- sal suffrage, began to feel during the war that their accus- tomed ideas had become fraught with some new meaning. Absolutism, parliamentary monarchy, democracy — in the pres- ence of imperialism (and, consequently, in the presence of the revolution rising to take its place), all the state forms of bour- geois supremacy, from Russian Tsarism to North American quasi-democratic federalism, have been given equal rights, bound up in such combinations as to supplement one another in '"an indivisible whole. Imperialism succeeded by means of all the ( resources it had at its disposal, includin political terms of the epoch. The iron dictatorship of the Jacobins was evoked by the monstrously difficult position of revolutionary France. Here is what the bourgeois historian says of this period : "Foreign troops had entered French territory from four sides. In the north, the British and the Austrians, in Alsace, the Prussians, in Dauphine and up to Lyons, the Piedmontese, in Roussillon the Spaniards. And this at a time when civil war was raging at four different points: in Normandy, in the Vendee, at Lyons, and at Toulon." (Page 176). To this we must add internal enemies in the form of numerous secret supporters of the old regime, ready by all methods to assist the enemy. The severity of the proletarian dictatorship in Russia, let us point out here, was conditioned by no less difficult circum- stances. There was one continuous front, on the north and south, in the east and west. Besides the Russian White Guard armies of Kolchak, Denikin and others, there are attacking Soviet Russia, simultaneously or in turn : Germans, Austrians, Czecho-Slovaks, Serbs, Poles, Ukrainians, Roumanians, French, British, Americans, Japanese, Finns, Esthonians, Lithuanians. ... In a country throttled by a blockade and strangled by hunger, there are conspiracies, risings, terrorist acts, and destruction of roads and bridges. "The government which had taken on itself the struggle with countless external and internal enemies had neither money, nor sufficient troops, nor anything except boundless energy, enthusiastic support on the part of the revolutionary elements of the country, and the gigantic courage to take all measures necessary for the safety of the country, however arbitrary and severe they were." In such words did once upon a time Plekhanov describe the government of the — Jacobins. {Sozial-demokrat, a quarterly review of literature and politics. Book I, February, 1890, London. The article on "The Cen- tenary of the Great Revolution," pages 6-7). Dictatorship vs. Democracy 51 Let us now turn to the revolution which took place in the second half of the nineteenth century, in the country of "democracy"— in the United States of North America. Al- though the question was not the abolition of property al together, but only of the abolition of property in negroes nevertheless, the institutions of democracy proved absoluteh powerless to decide the argument in a peaceful way. Tb southern states, defeated at the presidential elections in i860 decided by all possible means to regain the influence they haa hitherto exerted in the question of slave-owning ; and uttering, as was right, the proper sounding words about freedom and independence, rose in a slave-owners' insurrection. Hence inevitably followed all the later consequences of civil war. At the very beginning of the struggle, the military government in Baltimore imprisoned in Fort MacHenry a few citizens, sympathizers wilJi the slave-holding South, in spite of Habeas Corpus. The question of the lawfulness or the imlawfulness of such action became the object of fierce disputes between so-called "high authorities." The judge of the Supreme Court, decided that the President had neither the right to arrest the operation of Habeas Corpus nor to give plenipotentiary powers to that end to the military authorities. "Such, in all probability, is the correct Constitutional solution of the ques- tion," says one of the first historians of the American Civil War. "But the state of affairs was to such a degree critical, and the necessity of taking decisive measures against the pop- ulation of Baltimore so great, that not only the Government but the people of the United States also supported the most energetic measures." * Some goods that the rebellious South required were se- cretly supplied by the merchants of the North. Naturally, the Northerners had no other course but to introduce methods of repression. On August 6, 1861, the President confirmed a re- solution of Congress as to "the confiscation of property used for insurrectionary purposes." The people, in the shape of the most democratic elements, were in favor of extreme meas- ures The Republican Party had a decided majority in the * (The History of the American War, by Fletcher, Lieut.-Colonel in the Scots Guards, St. Petersburg, 1867, page 95.) 52 Dictatorship vs. Demociiacy North, and persons suspected of secessionism, i.e., of sympa- thizing with the rebellious Southern states, were subjected to violence. In some northern towns, and even in the states of New England, famous for their order, the people frequently burst into the offices of newspapers which supported the re- volting slave-owners and smashed their printing presses. It occasionally happened that reactionary publishers were smear- ed with tar, decorated with feathers, and carried in such array through the public squares until they swore an oath of loyalty to the Union. The personality of a planter smeared in tar bore little resemblance to the "end-in-itself ;" so that the cate- gorical imperative of Kautsky suffered in the civil war of the states a considerable blow. But this is not all. "The govern- ment, on its part," the historian tells us, "adopted repressive measures of various kinds against publications holding views opposed to its own: and in a short time the hitherto free American press was reduced to a condition scarcely superior to that prevailing in the autocratic European States." The same fate overtook the freedom of speech. "In this way," Lieut.-Colonel Fletcher continues, "the American people at this time denied itself the greater part of its freedom. It should be observed," he moralizes, "that the majority of the people was to such an extent occupied with the war, and to such a degree imbued with the readiness for any kind of sac- rifice to attain its end, that it not only did not regret its van- inshed liberties, but scarcely even noticed their disappear- ance." * Infinitely more ruthlessly did the bloodthirsty slave- owners of the South employ their uncontrollable hordes. "Wherever there was a majority in favor of slavery," writes the Count of Paris, "public opinion behaved despotically to the minority. All who expressed pity for the national banner... were forced to be silent. But soon this itself became insuffi- cient; as in all revolutions, the indifferent were forced to ex- press their loyalty to the new order of things.... Those who did not agree to this were given up as a sacrifice to the hatred and violence of the mass of the people.... In each centre of growing civilization (South-Western states) vigil- * Fletcher's History of the American War, pages 162-164. Dictatorship vs. Democracy 53 ance committees were formed, composed of all those who had been distinguished by their extreme views in the electoral strug- gle.... A tavern was the usual place of their sessions, and a noisy orgy was mingled with a contemptible parody of public forms of justice. A few madmen sitting around a desk or which gin and whisky flowed judged their present and absent fellow-citizens. The accused, even before having beer questioned, could see the rope being prepared. He who did not ■ appear at the court learned his sentence when falling under the bullets of the executioner concealed in the forest..." This picture is extremely reminiscent of the scenes which day by day took place in the camps of Denikin, Kolchak, Yudenich, and the other heroes of Anglo-Franco-American "democracy." We shall see later how the question of terrorism stood in regard to the Paris Commune of 1871. In any case, the at- tempts of Kautsky to contrast the Commune with us are false at their very root, and only bring the author to a juggling with words of the most petty character. The institution of hostages apparently must be recognized as "immanent"' in the terrorism of the civil war. Kautsky is against terrorism and against the institution of hostages, but in favor of the Paris Commune. (N. B.— The Commune ex- isted fifty years ago.) Yet the Commune took hostages. A difficulty arises. But what does the art of exegesis exist for ? The decree of the Commune concerning hostages and their execution in reply to the atrocities of the Versaillese arose, according to the profound explanation of Kautsky, "from a striving to preserve human life, not to destroy it." A marvellous discovery! It only requires to be developed. It could, and must, be explained that in the civil war we de- stroyed White Guards in order that they should not destroy the workers. Consequently, our problem is not the destruc- tion of human life, but its preservation. But as we have to struggle for the preservation of human life with arms in our hands, it leads to the destruction of human life— a puzzle tiie dialectical secret of which was explained by old Hegel, with- out reckoning other still more ancient sages. The Commune could maintain itself and consolidate its position only by a determined struggle with the Versaillese. 54 Dictatorship vs. Democracy The latter, on the other hand, had a large number of agents in Paris. Fighting with the agents of Thiers, the Commune could not abstain from destroyinjf the Versaillese at the front and in the rear. If its rule had crossed the bounds of Paris, in the provinces it w^ould have found — during the process of the civil war with the Army of the National Assembly — still more determined foes in the midst of the '.peaceful population. The Commune when fighting the royal- i ists could not allow freedom of speech to royalist agents in Uhe rear. Kautslcy, in spite of all the happenings in the world to-day, completely fails to realize what war is in general, and tiie civil war in particular. He does not understand that every, or nearly every, sympathizer with Thiers in Paris was not merely an "opponent" of the Communards in ideas, but an agent and spy of Thiers, a ferocious enemy ready to shoot one in the back. The enemy must be made harmless, and in wartime this means that he must be destroyed. The problem of revolution, as of war, consists in break- ing the will of the foe, forcing him to capitulate and to accept the conditions of the conqueror. The will, of course, is a fact of the physical world, but in contradistiction to a meeting, a dispute, or a congress, the revolution carries out its object by means of the employment of material resources — though to a less degree than war. The bourgeoisie itself conquered power by means of revolts, and consolidated it by the civil war. In the peaceful period, it retains power by means of a system of repression. As long as class society, founded on the most deep-rooted antagonisms, continues to exist, repres- sion remains a necessary means of breaking the will of the op- posing side. f Even if, in one country or another, the dictatorship of the 1 proletariat grew up within the external framework of democ- j racy, this would by no means avert the civil war. The ques- / tion as to who is to rule the country, i.e., of the life or death '^ of the bourgeoisie, will be decided on either side, not by re- ferences to the paragraphs of the constitution, but by the em- ployment of all forms of violence. However deeply Kautsky goes into the question of the food of the anthropopithecus (see page 122 et seq. of his book) and other immediate and Dictatorship vs. Democracy 55 remote conditions which determine the cause of human cruelty, he will find in history no other way of breaking the class will of the enemy except the systematic and energetic use of violence. The degree of ferocity of the struggle depends on a series of internal and international circumstances. The more fero- cious and dangerous is the resistance of the class enemy who have been overthrown, the more inevitably does the system of repression take the form of a system of terror. But here Kautsky unexpectedly takes up a new position in his struggle with Soviet terrorism. He simply waves aside all reference to the ferocity of the counter-revolutior^ary op- position of the Russian bourgeoisie. "Such ferocity," he says, "could not be noticed in Novem- ber, 1917, in Petrograd and Moscow, and still less more re- cently in Budapest." (Page 149.) With such a happy formu- lation of the question, revolutionary terrorism merely proves to be a product of the bloodthirstiness of the Bolsheviks, who simultaneously abandoned the traditions of the vegetarian an- thropopithecus and the moral lessons of Kautsky. The first conquest of power by the Soviets at the begin- ning of November, 1917 (new style), was actually accom- plished with insignificant sacrifices. The Russian bourgeoisie found itself to such a degree estranged from the masses of the people, so internally helpless, so compromised by the course and the result of the war, so demoralized by the regime of Kerensky, that it scarcely dared show any resistance. In Petrograd the power of Kerensky was overthrown almost without a fight. In Moscow its resistance was dragged out, mainly owing to the indecisive character of our own actions. In the majority of the provincial towns, power was trans- ferred to the Soviet on the mere receipt of a telegram from Petrograd or Moscow. If the matter had ended there, there would have been no word of the Red Terror. But in November, 1917, there was already evidence of the beginning of the resistance of the propertied classes. True, there was required the intervention of the imperialist governments of the West in order to give the Russian counter-revolution faith in itself, and to add ever-increasing power to its resistance. 56 Dictatorship vs. Democracy This can be shown from facts, both important and insignifi- cant, day by day during the whole epoch of the Soviet revolu- tion. Kerensky's "Staff" felt no support forthcoming from the mass of the soldiery, and was inclined to recognize the Soviet Government, which had begun negotiations for an armistice with the Germans. But there followed the protest of the military missions of the Entente, followed by open threats. The Staff was frightened; incited by "Allied" officers, it en- tered the path of opposition. This led to armed conflict and to the murder of the chief of the field staff, General Dukhonin, by a group of revolutionary sailors. In Petrograd, the official agents of the Entente, especially the French Military Mission, hand in hand with the S.R.s and the Mensheviks, openly organized the opposition, mobilizing, arming, inciting against us the cadets, and the bourgeois youth generally, from the second day of the Soviet revolution. The rising of the junkers on November 10 brought about a hun- dred times more victims than the revolution of November 7. The campaign of the adventurers Kerensky and Krasnov against Petrograd, organized at the same time by the Entente, naturally introduced into the struggle the first elements of savagery. Nevertheless, General Krasnov was set free on his word of honor. The Yaroslav rising (in the summer of 1918) which involved so many victims, was organized by Savinkov on the instructions of the French Embassy, and with its re- sources. Archangel was captured according to the plans of British naval agents, with the help of British warships and aeroplanes. The beginning of the empire of Kolchak, the nominee of the American Stock Exchange, was brought about by the foreign Czecho-Slovak Corps maintained by the re- sources of the French Government. Kaledin and Krasnov (liberated by us), the first leaders of the counter-revolution on the Don, could enjoy partial success only thanks to the open military and financial aid of Germany. In the Ukraine the Soviet power was overthrown in the beginning of 1918 by German militarism. The Volunteer Army of Denikin was created with the financial and technical help of Great Britain and France. Only in the hope of British intervention and of British military support was Yudenich's army created. The Dictatorship vs. Democracy 57 politicians, the diplomats, and the journalists of the Entente have for two years on end been debating with complete frank- ness the question of whether the financing of the civil war in Russia is a sufficiently profitable enterprise. In such circum- stances, one needs truly a brazen forehead to seek the reason for the sanguinary character of the civil war in Russia in the malevolence of the Bolsheviks, and not in the international situation. The Russian proletariat was the first to enter the path of the social revolution, and the Russian bourgeoisie, politically helpless, was emboldened to struggle against its political and economic expropriation only because it saw its elder sister in all countries still in power, and still maintaining economic, political, and, to a certain extent, military supremacy. If our November revolution had taken place a few months, or even a few weeks, after the establishment of the rule of the proletariat in Germany, France, and England, there can be no doubt that our revolution would have been the most "peaceful," the most "bloodless" of all possible revo- lutions on this sinful earth. But this historical sequence — the most "natural" at the first glance, and, in any case, the most beneficial for thfe Russian working class — found itself in- fringed — not through our fault, but through the will of events. Instead of being the last, the Russian proletariat proved to be the first. It was just this circimistance, after the first period of confusion, that imparted desperation to the character of the resistance of the classes which had ruled in Russia previ- ously, and forced the Russian proletariat, in a moment of the greatest peril, foreign attacks, and internal plots and insur- rections, to have recourse to severe measures of State terror. No one 'will now say that those measures proved futile. But, perhaps, we are expected to consider them "intolerable"? The working class, which seized power in battle, had as its object and its duty to establish that power unshakeably, to guarantee its own supremacy beyond question, to destroy its enemies' hankering for a new revolution, and thereby to make sure of carrying out Socialist reforms. Otherwise there would be no point in seizing power. The revolution "logically" does not demand terrorism, 58 Dictatorship vs. Democracy iust as "logically" it does not demand an armed insurrection. / What a profound commonplace ! But ^he revolution does re- ^l quire of the revolutionary class that if should attain its end \ by all methods at its disposal — if necessary, by an armed ris- \ing: if required, by terrorism. A revolutionary class which has conquered power with arms in its hands is bound to, and will, suppress, rifle in hand, all attempts to tear the power out of its hands. Where it has against it a hostile army, it will oppose to it its own army. Where it is confronted with armed conspiracy, attempt at murder, or rising, it will hurl at the heads of its enemies an unsparing penalty^ Perhaps Kautsky has invented other methods ? Or does he' reduce the whole question to the degree of repression, and recommend in all circumstances imprisonment instead of execution? ( The question of the form of repression, or of its degree, ■of course, is not one of "principle." It is a question of ex- pediency. In a revolutionary period, the party which has been thrown from power, which does not reconcile itself with the stability of the ruling class, and which proves this by its desperate struggle against the latter, cannot be terrorized by the threat of imprisonment, as it does not believe in its dura- tion. It is just this simple but decisive fact that explains the widespread recourse to shooting in a civil war,/ , Or, perhaps, Kautsky wishes to say that execution is not expedient, that "classes cannot be cowed." This is untrue. Terror is helpless — and then only "in the long run" — if it is employed by reaction against a historically rising class. But Lterror can be very efficient against a reactionary class which does not want to leave the scene of operations. Intimidation is a powerful weapon of policy, both internationally and internally. JVar, like revolution, is founded upon intimidation. A victorious war, generally speaking, destroys only an in- significant part of the conquered army, intimidating the re- mainder and breaking their will. The revolution works in the same way : it kills individuals, and intimidates thousands. In this sense, the Red Terror is not distinguishable from the armed insurrection, the direct continuation of which it repre- sents. The State terror of a revolutionary class can be condemned "morally" only by a man who, as a principle, rejects (in words) every form of violence whatsoever Dictatorship vs. Democracy 59 consequently, every war and every rising. For this one has TO be merely and simply a hypocritical Quaker. "But, in that case, in what do your tactics differ from the '' tactics of Tsarism?" we are asked, by the high priests of Liberalism and Kautskianism. You do not understand this, holy men? We shall explain '' to you. The terror of Tsarism was directed against the prole- tariat. The gendarmerie of Tsarism throttled the workers who were fighting for the Socialist order. Our Extraordinary Commissions shoot landlords, capitalists, and generals who are striving to restore the capitalist order. Do you grasp this . . . distinction ? Yes ? For us Communists it is quite sufficient. "freedom of the press" One point particularly worries Kautsky, the author of a great many books and articles — ^the freedom of the Press. Is it permissible to suppress newspapers ? During war all institutions and organs of the State and \ of public opinion become, directly or indirectly, weapons of I warfare. This is particularly true of the Press. No govern- ) ment carrying on a serious war will allow publications to exist / on its territory which, openly or indirectly, support the enemy. Still more so in a civil war. The nature of the latter is such that each of the struggling sides has in the rear of its armies considerable circles of the population on the side of the enemy. In war, where both success and failure are repaid by death, hostile agents who penetrate into the rear are subject to execution. This is inhumane, but no one ever considered war a school of humanity — still less civil war. Can it be seriously demanded that, during a civil war with the White Guards of Denikin, the publications of parties sup- porting Denikin should come out unhindered in Moscow and Petrograd? To propose this in the name of the "freedom" of the Press is just the same as, in the name of open dealing, to demand the publication of military secrets. "A besieged city," wrote a Communard, Arthur Arnould of Paris, "cannot permit within its midst that hopes for its fall should openly be expressed, that the fighters defending it should be incited to treason, that the movements of its troops should be com- municated' to the enemy. Such was the position of Paris 6o Dictatorship vs. Democracy under the Commune." Such is the position of the Soviet Republic during the two years of its existence. Let us, however, Hsten to what Kautsky has to say in this connection. "The justification of this system (i.e., repressions in connection with the Press) is reduced to the naive idea that an absolute truth ( !) exists, and that only the Communists posses it (!). Similarly," continues Kautsky, "it reduces itself to another point of view, that all writers are by nature liars ( !) and that only Communists are fanatics for truth ( !). In reality, liars and fanatics for what they consider truth are to be found in all camps." And so on, and so on, and so on. (Page 176.) In this way, in Kautsky's eyes, the revolution, in its most acute phase, when it is a question of the life and death of classes, continues as hitherto to be a literary discussion with the object of establishing. . .the truth. What profundity!. . . / Our "truth," of course, is not absolute. But as in its name \ we are, at the present moment, shedding our blood, we have \ neither cause nor possibility to carry on a literary discussion I as to the relativity of truth with those who "criticize" us With the help of all forms of arms. Similarly, our problem IS not to punish liars and to encourage just men amongst .journalists of all shades of opinion, but to throttle the class I lie of the bourgeoisie and to achieve the class truth of the I proletariat, irrespective of the fact that in both camps there {are fanatics and liars. "The Soviet Government," Kautsky thunders, "has de- stroyed the sole remedy that might militate against corrup- tion : the freedom of the Press. Control by means of unlimited freedom of the Press alone could have restrained those bandits and adventurers who will inevitably cling like leeches to every unlimited, uncontrolled power." (Page 188.) And so on. The Press as a trusty weapon of the struggle with corrup- tion! This liberal recipe sounds particularly pitiful when one remembers the two countries with the greatest "freedom" of the Press — North America and France — which, at the same time, are countries of the most highly developed stage of capitalist corruption. Dictatorship vs. Democracy 6i Feeding on the old scandal of the political ante-rooms of the Russian revolution, Kautsky imagines that without Cadet and Menshevik freedom the Soviet apparatus is honey- combed with "bandits" and "adventurers." Such was the voice of the Mensheviks a year or eighteen months ago. Now even they will not dare to repeat this. With the help of Soviet control and party selection, the Soviet Government, in the intense atmosphere of the struggle, has dealt with the bandits and adventurers who appeared on the surface at the moment of the revolution incomparably better than any govern- ment whatsoever, at any time whatsoever. We are fighting. We are fighting a life-and-death strug- gle. The Press is a weapon not of an abstract society, but\ of two irreconcilable, armed and contending sides. We are ] destroying the Press of the counter-revolution, just as we destroyed its fortified positions, its stores, its communica- tions, and its intelligence system. Are we depriving ourselves of Cadet and Menshevik criticisms of the corruption of the working class? In return we are victoriously destroying the very foundations of capitalist corruption. But Kautsky goes further to develop his theme. He complains that we suppress the newspapers of the S.R.s and the Mensheviks, and even — such things have been known — arrest their leaders. Are we not dealing here with "shades of opinion" in the proletarian or the Socialist movement ? The scholastic pedant does not see facts beyond his accustomed words. The Mensheviks and S.R.s for him are simply tend- encies in Socialism, whereas, in the course of the revolution, they have been transformed into an organization which works in active co-operation with the counter-revolution and carries on against us an open war. The army of Kolchak was organ- ized by Socialist Revolutionaries (how that name savours to-day of the charlatan!), and was supported by Mensheviks. Both carried on — and carry on— against us, for a year and a half, a war on the Northern front. The Mensheviks who rule the Caucasus, formerly the allies of Hohenzollem, and to-day the allies of Lloyd George, arrested and shot Bolsheviks hand in hand with German and British officers. The Mensheviks and S.R.S of the Kuban Rada organized the army of Denikin. The Esthonian Mensheviks who participate in their govern- 62 Dictatorship vs. Democracy ment were directly concerned in the last advance of Yudenich against Petrograd. Such are these "tendencies" in the Soc- ialist movement. Kautsky considers that one can be in a state of open and civil w^ar with the Mensheviks and S.R.s, who, with the help of the troops they themselves have organized for Yudenich, Kolchak and Denikin, are fighting for their "shade of opinions" in Socialism, and at the same time to allow those innocent "shades of opinion" freedom of the Press in our rear. If the dispute with the S.R.s and the Mensheviks could be settled by m^ans of persuasion and voting — that is, if there were not behind their backs the Russian and foreign imperial- igfs^there would be no civil war. ' Kautsky, of course, is ready to "condemn" — an extra drop of ink — the blockade, and the Entente support of Denikin, and the White Terror. But in his high impartiality he cannot refuse the latter certain extenuating circtmistances. ^The White Terror, you see, does not infringe their own principles, while the Bolsheviks, making use of the Red Terror, betray the principle of "the sacredness of human life which they themselves proclaimed." (Page 210.) TWhat is the meaning of the principle of the sacre4ness of ntlman life in practice, and in what does it differ from the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," Kautsky does not explain. When a murderer raises his knife over a child, may one kill the murderer to save the child? Will not thereby the principle of the "sacredness of human life" be infringed? May one kill the murderer to save oneself? Is an insurrec- tion of oppressed slaves against their masters permissible? Is it permissible to purchase one's freedom at the cost of the life of one's jailers? If human life in general is sacred and in- violable, we must deny ourselves n_flt only the use of terror, not .ralywar, but also revolution itselfA Kautsky simply does not realize the counter-revolutionary-rneaning of the "principle" ^ which he attempts to force upon us. Elsewhere we shall isee that Kautsky accuses us of concluding the Brest-Litovsk jpeace: in his opinion we ought to have continued war. But jwhat then becomes of the sacredness of human life? Does ilife cease to be sacred when it is a question of people talking another language, or does Kautsky consider that mass murders \ organized on principles of strategy and tactics are not murders Dictatorship vs. Democracy 63 at all ? Truly it is difficult to put forward ip. /^iir age a principle more hypocritical and more stupid. [As long as^^ human labor power, and, consequently,, life kseff, remain articles of sale 2ind purchase, of exploitation and robbery, the principle of the "sacredness of human life" remains a shameful lie, uttered with the object of keeping the oppressedy slaves in their chains7\ We used to fight-against the death penalty introduced by Kerensky, because that penalty was inflicted by the courts- martial of the old army on soldiers who refused to continue the imperialist war. We tore this weapon out of the hands of the old courts-martial, destroyed the courts-martial them- selves, and demobilized the old army which had brought them forth. Destroying in the Red Army, and generally throughout the country, counter-revolutionary conspirators who strive by means of insurrections, murders, and disorganization, to re- store the old regime, we are acting in accordance with the iron laws of a war in which we desire to guarantee our victory. If it is a question of seeking formal contradictions, then obviously we must do so on the side of the White Terror, which is the weapon of classes which consider themselves "Chrisitian," patronize idealist philosophy, and are firmly con- vinced that the individuality (their own) is an end-in-itself. ^ST^or us, we were never concerned with the Kantian-priestly TiSS vegetarian-Quaker prattle about the "sacredness of human life." We were revolutionaries in opposition, and have re- mained revolutionaries in power. To make' the individuaTj sacred we must destroy the social order which crucifieshim./ And this problem can only be solved by blood and iro^ J ^ — — There is another difference between the White Terror an3V^ the Red, which Kautsky to-day ignores, but which in the eyes U of a Marxist is of decisive significance. The White Terror | is the weapon of the historically reactionary class.,- When/ we exposed the futility of the repressions of the bourgeois State against the proletariat, we never denied that by arrests and executions the ruling class, under certain conditions, might temporarily retard the development of the social revolution. But we were convinced that lliey would not be able to bring it to a halt. We relied on the fact that the proletariat is 64 Dictatorship vs. Democracy the historically rising class, and that bourgeois society could ^ not develop without increasing the forces of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie to-day is a falling class. It not only no longer plays an essential part in production, but by its imperial- ist methods of appropriation is destroying the economic struct- I ure of the world and human culture generally. Nevertheless, Hhe historical persistence of the bourgeoisie is colossal. It holds to power, and does not wish to abandon it. Thereby it threatens to drag after it into the abyss the whole of society. We are forced to tear it off, to chop it away, ^'^e -Red Terror is a weapon utilized against a class, doomed to destruction, which does not wish to perish. If the White Terror can only retard the historical rise of the proletariat, the Red Terror hastens the destruction of the bourgeoisie. This hastening — a pure question of acceleration — is at certain periods of decisive importance. Without the Red Terror, the Russian bourgeoisie, together" with the world bourgeoisie, would throttle us long before the coming of the revolution in Europe. One must be blind not to see this, or a swindler to deny it. The man who recognizes the revolutionary historic import- ance of the very fact of the existence of the Soviet system ^lust also sanction the Red Terror, j Kautsky, who, during the last two years, has covered mountains of paper with polemics against Communism and Terrorism, is obliged, at the end of his pamphlet, to recognize the facts, and unexpectedly to admit that the Russian Soviet Government is to-day the most important factor in the world revolution. "However one regards the Bolshevik methods," he writes, "the fact that a proletarian government in a large country has not only reached power, but has retained it for two years up to the present time, amidst great difficulties, extraordinarily increases the sense of power amongst the proletariat of all countries. For the actual revolution the Bolsheviks have thereby accomplished a great work — grosses geleistet. (Page 233.) This announcement stuns us as a completely unexpected recognition of historical truth from a quarter whence we had long since ceased to await it. The Bolsheviks have ac- complished a great historical task by existing for two years against the united capitalist world. But the Bolsheviks held Dictatorship vs. Democracy 65 out not only by ideas, but by the sword. Kautsky's admission is an involuntary sanctioning of the methods of the Red Ter- ror, and at the same time the most effective condemnation of his own critical concoction. THE INFLUENCE OF THE WAR Kautsky sees one of the reasons for the extremely bloody character of the revolution in the war and in its hardening in- fluence on manners. Quite undeniable. That influence, with all the consequences that follow from it, might have been foreseen earlier — approximately in the period when Kautsky was not certain whether one ought to vote for the war credits or against them. "Imperialism has violently torn society out of its condi- tion of unstable equilibrium," he wrote five years ago in our German hook— The War and the International. "It has blown up the sluices with which Social Democracy held back the current of the revolutionary energy of the proletariat, and has directed that current into its own channels. This mon- strous historical experiment, which at one blow has broken the back of the Socialist International, represents a deadly danger for bourgeoisie society itself. The hammer has been taken from the hand of the worker, and has been replaced by the sword. The worker, bound hand and foot by the mechanism of capitalist society, has suddenly burst out of its midst, and is learning to put the aims of the community higher than his own domestic happiness and than life itself. "With this weapon, which he himself has forged, in his hand, the worker is placed in a position in which the political destiny of the State depends directly on him. Those who in former times oppressed and despised him now flatter and caress him. At the same time he is entering into intimate relations with those same guns which, according to Lassalle, constitute the most important integral part of the constitution. He crosses the boundaries of states, participates in violent requisitions and under his blows towns pass from hand to hand. Changes take place such as the last generation did not dream of. ... ^ r "If the most advanced workers were aware that lorce 66 . Dictatorship vs. Democracy was the mother of law, their political thought still remained saturated with the spirit of opportunism and self-adaptation to bourgeois legality. To-day the worker has learned in prac- tice to despise that legality, and violently to destroy it. The static moments in his psychology are giving place to the dynamic. Heavy guns are knocking into his head the idea, that, in cases where it is impossible to avoid an obstacle, there remains the possibility of destroying it. Nearly the whole adult male population is passing through this school of war, terrible in its social realism, which is bringing forth a new type of humanity. "Over all the criteria of bourgeois society — its law, its morality, its religion-^is now raised the fist of iron necessity. 'Necessity knows no law' was the declaration of the German Chancellor (August 4, 1914). Monarchs come out into the market place to accuse one another of lying in the language of fishwives ; governments break promises they have solemnly made, while the national church binds its Lord God like a con- vict to the national cannon. Is it not obvious that these cir- cumstances must create important alterations in the psychol- ogy of the working class, radically curing it of that hypnosis of legality which was created by the period of political stag- nation? The propertied classes will soon, to their sorrow, have to be convinced of this. The proletariat, after passing through the school of war, at the first serious obstacle within its own country will feel the necessity of speaking with the language of force. 'Necessity knows no law,' he will throw in the face of those who attempt to stop him by laws of bour- geois legality. And the terrible economic necessity which will arise during the course of this war, and particularly at its end, win drive the masses to spurn very many laws." (Page 56-57.) (-''' All this is undeniable. But to what is said above one must add that the war has exercised no less influence on the psychology of the ruling classes. As the masses become more insistent in their demands, so the bourgeoisie has become more unyielding. In times of peace, the capitalists used to guarantee their interests by means of the "peaceful" robbery of hired labor. During the war they served those same interests by means of the destruction of countless human lives. This has imparted Dictatorship vs. Democracy 67 to their consciousness as a master class a new "Napoleonic" trait. The capitalists during the war became accustomed to send to their death millions of slaves — fellow-countrymen and colonials — for the sake of coal, railway, and other profits. During the war there emerged from the ranks of the bourgeoisie — large, middle, and small — hundreds of thousands of officers, professional fighters, men whose character has re- ceived the hardening of battle, and has become freed from all external restraints: qualified soldiers, ready and able to de- fend the privileged position of the bourgeoisie which produced them with a ferocity which, in its way, borders on heroism. ^ The revolution would probably be more humane if the ] proletariat had the possibility of" "buying off all this band," as / Marx once put it. But capitalism during the war has imposed/ upon the toilers too great a load of debt, and has too deeply undermined the foundations of production, for us to be able seriously to contemplate a ransom in return for which the bourgeoisie would silently make its peace with the revolution. The masses have lost too much blood, have suffered too much, have become too savage, to accept a decision which econo- mically would be beyond their capacity. To this there must be added other circumstances working in the same direction. The bourgeoisie of the conquered coun- tries has been embittered by defeat, the responsibility for which it is inclined to throw on the rank and file — on the workers and peasants who proved incapable of carrying on "the great national war" to a victorious conclusion. From this point of view, one finds very instructive those explana- tions, unparalleled for their effrontery, which Ludendorff gave to the Commission of the National Assembly. The bands of Ludendorff are burning with the desire to take revenge for their humiliation abroad on the blood of their own proletariat. As for the bourgeoisie of the victorious countries, it has be- come inflated with arrogance, and is more than ever ready to defend its social position with the help of the bestial method? which guaranteed its victory. We have seen that the bourgeA oisie is incapable of organizing the division of the booty amonsst its own ranks without war and destruction. Can it, without a fight, abandon its booty altogether? The experiencej of the last five years leaves no doubt whatsoever on this 68 Dictatorship vs. Democracy score: if even previously it was absolutely Utopian to expect that the expropriation of the propertied classes — thanks to "democracy" — would take place imperceptibly and painlessly, without insurrections, armed conflicts, attempts at counter- revolution, and severe repression, the state of affairs we have inherited from the imperialist war predetermines, doubly and trebly, the tense character of the civil war and the dictator- ship of the proletariat. s The Paris Commune and Soviet Russia. "The short episode of the first revolution carried out by the proletariat for the proletariat ended in the triumph of its enemy. This episode— from March i8 to May 28— lasted seventy-two days."— "The Paris Commune" of March 18, 1871, P. L. Lavrov, Petrograd. 'Kolos' Publishing House, 1919, pp. 160. THE IMMATURITY OF THE SOCIALIST PARTIES IN THE COMMUNE. THE Paris Commune of 1871 was the first, as yet weak, historic attempt of the working class to impose its supre- macy. We cherished the memory of the Commune in spite of tiie extremely limited character of its experience, the immaturity of its participants, the confusion of its programme, the lack of imity amongst its leaders, the indecision of their plans, the hopeless panic of its executive organs, and the ter- rifying defeat fatally precipitated by all these. We cherish in the Commune, in the words of Lavrov, "the first, though still pale, dawn of the proletarian republic." Quite otherwise with Kautsky. Devoting a considerable part of his book to a crudely tendencious contrast between the Commune and the Soviet power, he sees the main advantages of the Commune in features that we find are its misfortune and its fault. Kautsky laboriously proves that the Paris Commune of] 1871 was not "artifically" prepared, but emerged unexpectedly, I taking the revolutionaries by surprise — in contrast to the November revolution, which was carefully prepared by our i party. This is incontestable. Not daring clearly to formulate | his profundly reactionary ideas, Kautsky does not say outright / 69 yo Dictatorship vs. Democracy whether the Paris revolutionaries of 1871 deserve praise for not having foreseen the proletarian insurrection, and for not having foreseen the inevitable and consciously gone to meet it. ' However, all Kautsky's picture was built up in such a way as ,to produce in the reader just this idea : the Communards were teimply overtaken by misfortune (the Bavarian philistine, Voll- mar, once expressed his regret that the Communards had not jgone to bed instead of taking power into their hands), and, therefore, deserve pity. The Bolsheviks consciously went to meet misfortune (the conquest of power), and, therefore, there is no forgiveness for them either in this or the future world. Such a formulation of 4he question may seem incred- ible in its internal inconsistency. None the less, it follows quite inevitably from the position of the Kautskian "Inde- pendents," who draw their heads into their shoulders in order to see and foresee nothing; and, if they do move forward, it is only after having received a preliminary stout blow in the rear. "To humiliate Paris,' writes Kautsky, "not to give it self- government, to deprive it of its position as capital, to disarm it in order afterwards to attempt with greater confidence a monarchist coup d'etat — such was the most important task of the National Assembly and the chief of the executive power it elected, Thiers. Out of this situation arose the conflict which led to the Paris insurrection. "It is clear how different from this was the character of the coup d'etat carried out by the Bolsheviks, which drew its strength from the yearning for peace ; which had the peasantry behind it ; which had in the National Assembly against it, not monarchists, but S.R.s and Menshevik Social Democrats. "The Bolsheviks came to power by means of a well-pre- pared coup d'etat, which at one blow handed over to them the whole machinery of the State — immediately utilized in the most energetic and merciless manner for the purpose of sup- pressing their opponents, amongst them their proletarian op- ponents. "No one, on the other hand, was more surprised by the insurrection of the Commune than the revolutionaries them- selves, and for a considerable number amongst them the con- flict was in the highest degree undesirable." (Page 56.) Dictatorship vs. Democracy 71 In order more clearly to realize the actual sense of what Kautsky has written here of the Communards, let us bring forward the following evidence. "On March i, 1871," writes Lavrov, in his very instruc- tive book on the Commune, "six months after the fall of the Empire, and a few days before the explosion of the Commune, the guiding personalities in the Paris International still had no definite political programme." (Pages 64-65.) "After March 18," writes the same author, "Paris was in the hands of the proletariat, but its leaders, overwhelmed by their unexpected power, did not take the most elementary measures." (Page 71.) " 'Your part is too big for you to play, and your sole aim is to get rid of responsibility,' said one member of the Central Committee of the National Guard. In this was a great deal of truth," writes the Communard and historian of the Com- mune, Lissagaray. "But at the moment of action itself the absence of preliminary organization and preparation is very often a reason why parts are assigned to men which are too big for them to play." (Brussels, 1876; page 106.) From this one can already see (later on it will become still mose obvious) that the absence of a direct struggle for power on the part of the Paris Socialists was explained by their theoretical shapelessness and political helplessness, and not at all by higher considerations of tactics. We have no doubt that Kautsky's own loyalty to the tra- ditions of the Commune will be expressed mainly in that ex- traordinary surprise with which he will greet the proletarian revolution in Germany as "a conflict in the highest degree un- desirable." We doubt, however, whether this will be ascribed by posterity to his credit. In reality, one must describe his historical analogy as a combination of confusion, omission, and fraudulent suggestion. . , , ^, . The intentions which were entertamed by Thiers towards Paris were entertained by Miliukov, who was openly supported by Tseretelli and Chernov, towards Petrograd. All of them, from Komilov to Potressov, affirmed day after day that Petrograd had alienated itself from the country, had nothing in common with it, was completely corrupted, and was at- tempting to impose its will upon the community. To over- 72 Dictatorship vs. Democracy throw and humiliate Petrograd was the first task of Miliukov and his assistants. And this took place at a period when Petrograd was the true centre of the revolution, which had not yet been able to consolidate its position in the rest of the country. The former president of the Duma, Rodzianko, openly talked about handing over Petrograd to the Germans for educative purposes, as Riga had been handed over. Rod- zianko only called by its name what Miliukov was trying to carry out, and what Kerensky assisted by his whole policy. Miliukov, like Thiers, wished to disarm the proletariat. More than that, thanks to Kerensky, Chernov, and Tseretelli, the Petrograd proletariat was to a considerable extent dis- armed in July, 1917. It was partially re-armed during Kor- nilov's march on Petrograd in August. And this new arming was a serious element in the preparation of the November insurrection. In this way, it is just the points in which Kautsky contrasts our November revolution to the March revolt of the Paris workers that, to a very large extent, coincide. In what, however, lies the difference between them? First of all, in the fact that Thiers' criminal plans succeeded : Paris was throttled by him, and tens of thousands of workers were destroyed. Miliukov, on the other hand, had a complete fiasco : Petrograd remained an impregnable fortress of the proletariat, and the leader of the bourgeoisie went to the Ukraine to peti- tion that the Kaiser's troops should occupy Russia. For this difference we were to a considerable extent responsible — and we are ready to bear the responsibility. There is a capital difference also in the fact — that this told more than once in the further course of events — that, while the Communards began mainly with considerations of patriotism, we were in- variably guided by the point of view of the international revo- lution. The defeat of the Commune led to the practical col- lapse of the First International. The victory of the Soviet power has led to the creation of the Third International. But Marx — on the eve of the insurrection — advised the Communards not to revolt, but to create an organization ! One might understand Kautsky if he adduced this evidence in order to show that Marx had insufficiently gauged the acute- ness of the situation in Paris. But Kautsky attempts to ex- ploit Marx's advice as a proof of his condemnation of insur- Dictatorship vs. Democracy 73 rection in general. Like all the mandarins of German Social] Democracy, Kautsky sees in organization first and foremosti a method of hindering revolutionary action. But limiting ourselves to the question of organization as such, we must not forget that the November revolution was preceded by nine months of Kerensky's Government, during which our party, not without success, devoted itself not only to agitation, but also to organization. The November revo- lution took place after we had achieved a crushing majority hi the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils of Petrograd, Moscow, and all the industrial centres in the country, and had trans- formed the Soviets into powerful organizations directed by our party. The Communards did nothing of the kind. Finally, we had behind us the heroic Commune of Paris, from the de- feat of which we had drawn the deduction that revolutionaries must foresee events and prepare for them. For this also we are to blame. Kautsky requires his extensive comparison of the Com- mune and Soviet Russia only in order to slander and humiliate a living and victorious dictatorship of the proletariat in the interests of an attempted dictatorship, in the already fairly distant past. Kautsky quotes with extreme satisfaction the statement of the Central Committee of the National Guard on March 19 in connection with the murder of the two generals by the soldiery. "We say indignantly : the bloody filth with the help of which it is hoped to stain our honor is a pitiful slander. We never organized murder, and never did the National Guard take part in the execution of crime." Naturally, the Central Committee had no cause to assume responsibility for murders with which it had no concern. But the sentimental, pathetic tone of the statement very clearly characterises the political timorousness, of these men m the face of bourgeois public opinion. Nor is this surprising. The representatives of the National Guard were men m most cases with a very modest revolutionary past. "Not one well-known name " writes Lissagaray. "They were pettybourgeois shop- keepers strangers to all but limited circles, and, m most cases, strsmgers hitherto to politics." (Page 70.) , , ., , "The modest and, to some extent, fearful sense of terrible 74 Dictatorship vs. Democracy historical responsibility, and the desire to get rid of it as soon as possible," writes Lavrov of them, "is evident in all the proclamations of this Central Committee, into the hands of which the destiny of Paris had fallen." (Page ']'].') After bringing forward, to our confusion, the declamation concerning bloodshed, Kautsky later on follows Marx and Engels in criticizing the indecision of the Commune. "If the Parisians (i.e., the Communards) had persistently followed up the tracts of Thiers, they would, perhaps, have managed to seize the government. The troops falling back from Paris would not have shown the least resistance... but they let Thiers go without hindrance. They allowed him to lead away his troops and reorganize them at Versailles, to inspire a new spirit in, and strengthen, them." (Page 49.) Kautsky cannot understand that it was the same men, and for the very same reasons, who published the statement of March 19 quoted above, who allowed Thiers to leave Paris with impunity and gather his forces. If the Communards had conquered with the help of resources of a purely moral char- acter, their statement would have acquired great weight. But \ this did not take place. In reality, their sentimental humane- j ness was sirnply the obverse of their revolutionary passivity. The men who, by the will of fate, had received power in Paris, could not understand the necessity of immediately utilizing that power to the end, of hurling themselves after Thiers, and, \ before he recovered his grasp of the situation, of crushing 'him, of concentrating the troops in their hands, of carrying out the necessary weeding-out of the officer class, of seizing the provinces. Such men, of course, were not inclined to ' severe measures with counter-revolutionary elements. The one was closely bound up with the other. Thiers could not be .followed up without arresting Thiers' agents in Paris and f shooting conspirators and spies. When one considered the I execution of counter-revolutionary generals as an indelible \ "crime," one could not develop energy in following up troops who were under the direction of counter-revolutionary gen- erals. In the revolution in the highest degree of energy is the highest degree of humanity. "Just the men," Lavrov justly remarks, "who hold human life and human blood dear must Dictatorship vs. Democracy 75 strive to organize the possibility for a swift and decisive vic- tory, and then to act v^^ith the greatest swiftness and energy, in order to crush the enemy. For only in this way can we achieve the minimum of inevitable sacrifice and the minimum of bloodshed." (Page 225.) The statement of March 19 will, however, be considered with more justice if we examine it, not as an unconditional confession of faith, but as the expression of transient moods the day after an unexpected and bloodless victory. Being an absolute stranger to the understanding of tlie dynamics of revolution, and the internal limitations of its swiftly-develop- ing moods, Kautsky thinks in lifeless schemes, and distorts^ the perspective of events by arbitrarily selected analogies. He does not understand that soft-hearted indecision is generally characteristic of the masses in the first period of the revo- lution. The workers pursue the offensive only under the pres- sure of iron necessity, just as they have recourse to the Red Terror only under the threat of destruction by the White ^ Guards. That which Kautsky represents as the result of the peculiarly elevated moral feeling of the Parisian proletariat in 1 87 1 is, in reality, merely a characteristic of the first stage of the civil war. A similar phenomenon could have been witnessed in our case. In Petrograd we conquered power in November, 1917, almost without bloodshed, and even without arrests. The ministers of Kerensky's Government were set free very soon after the revolution. More, the Cossack General, Krasnov, who had advanced on Petrograd together with Kerensky after the power had passed to the Soviet, and who had been made prisoner by us at Gatchina, was set free on his word of honor the next day. This was "generosity" quite in the spirit of the first measures of the Commune. But it was a mistake. Afterwards, General Krasnov, after fighting against us for about a year in the South, and destroying many thousands of Communists, again advanced on Petrograd, this time m the ranks of Yudenich's army. The proletarian revolution assumed a more severe character only after the rising of the junkers in Petrograd, and particularly after the rising of the Czecho- slovaks on the Volga organized by the Cadets, the S.R.s, and the Mensheviks, after their mass executions of Communists, 76 Dictatorship vs. Democracy the attempt on Lenin's life, the murder of Uritsky, etc., etc. The same tendencies, only in an embryonic form, we see in the history of the Commune. Driven by the logic of the struggle, it took its stand in principle on the path of intimidation. The creation of the Committee of Public Safety was dictated, in the case of many of its supporters, by .the idea of the Red Terror. The Com- mittee was apopinted "to cut off the heads of traitors" (Jour- nal Officiel" No. 123), "to avenge treachery" (No. 124). Under the head of "intimidatory" decrees we must class the order to seize the property of Thiers and of his ministers, to destroy Thiers' house, to destroy the Vendome column, and especially the decree on hostages. For every captured Com- munard or sympathizer with the Commune shot by the Ver- saillese, three hostages were to be shot. The activity of the Prefecture of Paris controlled by Raoul Rigault had a purely terroristic, though not always a useful, purpose. The effect of all these measures of intimidation was paralyzed by the helpless opportunism of the guiding elements in the Commune, by their striving to reconcile the bourgeoisie with the fait accompli by the help of pitiful phrases, by their vacillations between the fiction of democracy and the reality of dictatorship. The late Lavrov expresses the latter idea splendidly in his book on the Commune. "The Paris of the rich bourgeois and the poor proletarians, as a political community of different classes, demanded, in the name of liberal principles, complete freedom of speech, of assembly, of criticism of the government, etc. The Paris which had accomplished the revolution in the interests of the proletariat, and had before it the task of realizing this re- volution in the shape of institutions, Paris, as the community of the emancipated working-class proletariat, demanded revolu- tionary — i.e., dictatorial, measures against the enemies of the new order." (Pages 143-144.) If the Paris Commune had not fallen, but had continued to exist in the midst of a ceaseless struggle, there can be no doubt that it would have been obliged to have recourse to more and more severe measures for the suppression of the counter-revolution. True, Kautsky would not then have had the possibility of contrasting the humane Communards Dictatorship vs. Democracy "jy with the inhumane Bolsheviks. But in return, probably, Thiers, would not have had the possibility of inflicting his monstrous bloodletting upon the proletariat of Paris. History, possibly, would not have been the loser. THE IRRESPONSIBLE CENTRAL COMMITTEE AND THE "democratic" COMMUNE "On March 19," Kautsky informs us, "in the Central Committee of the National Guard, some demanded a march on Versailles, others an appeal to the electors, and a third party the adoption first of all of revolutionary measures; as if every one of these steps," he proceeds very learnedly to inform us, "were not equally necessary, and as if one excluded the other." (Page 72.) Further on, Kautsky, in connection with these disputes in the Commune, presents us with various warmed-up platitudes as to the mutual relations of reform and revolution. In reality, the following was the situation. If it were decided to march on Versailles, and to do this without losing an hour it was necessary immediately to reorganize the National Guard, to place at its head the best fighting elements of the Paris proletariat, and thereby temporarily to weaken Paris from the revolutionary point of view. But to organize elections in Paris, while at the same time sending out of its walls the flower of the working class, would have been sense- less from the point of view of the revolutionary party. Theore- tically, a march on Versailles and elections to the Commune, of course, did not exclude each other in the slightest degree, but in practice they did exclude each other: for the success of the elections, it was necessary to postpone the attack; for the attack to succeed, the elections must be put off. Fmal- ly, leading the proletariat out to the field and thereby tempora- rily weakening Paris, it was essential to obtain some guarantee against the possibility of counter-revolutionary attempts m the capital; for Thiers would not have hesitated at any measures to raise a white revolt in the rear of the Commun- ards It was essential to establish a more military— i.e., a more stringent regime in the capital. "They had to fight,' writes Lavrov, "against many internal foes with whom Pans was full, 'who only yesterday had been noting around the 78 Dictatorship vs. Democracy Exchange and the Vendome Square, who had their represent- atives in the administration and in the National Guard, who possessed their press, and their meetings, who almost openly maintained contact with the Versaillese, and who became more determined and more audacious at every piece of care- lesgness, at every check of the Commune." (Page 87.) It was necessary, side by side with this, to carry out revolutionary measures of a financial and generally of an economic character: first and foremost, for the equipment of the revolutionary army. All these most necessary measures of revolutionary dictatorship could with difficulty be recon- sciled with an extensive electoral campaign. But Kautsky has, not the least idea of what a revolution is in practice. He thinks that theoretically to reconcile is the same as practically to accomplish. The Central Committee appointed March 22 as the day of elections for the Commune ; but, not sure of itself, frightened at its own illegality, striving to act in unison with more "legal" institutions, entered into ridiculous and endless negotiations with a quite helpless assembly of mayors and deputies of Paris, showing its readiness to divide power with them if only an agreement could be arrived at. Meanwhile precious time was slipping by. J Marx, on whom Kautsky, through old habit, tries to rely, did not under any circumstances propose that, at one and the same time, the Commune should be elected and the workers should be led out into the field for the war. In his letter to Kugelmann, Marx wrote, on April 12, 1871, that the Central Committee of the National Guard had too soon given up its power in favor of the Commime. Kautsky, in his own words, "does not understand" this opinion of Marx. It is quite I simple. Marx at any rate understod that the problem was i not one of chasing legality, but of inflicting a fatal blow upon \the enemy. "If the Central Committee had consisted of real revolutionaries," says Lavrov, and rightly, "it ought to have acted differently. It would have been quite unforgivable for it to have given the enemy ten days' respite before the election and assembly of the Commune, while the leaders of the proletariat refused to carry out their duty ^nd did not recognize that they had the right immediately to lead the Dictatorship vs. Democracy 79 proletariat. As it was, the feeble immaturity of the popular parties created a Committee which considered those ten days of inaction incumbent upon it." (Page 78.) The yearning of the Central Committee to hand overV power as soon as possible to a "legal" Government was dictat- ed, not so much by the superstitions of former democracy, of which, by the way, there was no lack, as by fear of re- I sponsibiHty. Under the plea that it was a temporary institu- tion, the Central Committee avoided the taking of the most ' necessary and absolutely pressing measures, in spite of the fact that all the material apparatus of power was centred in its hands. But the Commune itself did not take over political power in full from the Central Committee, and the latter continued to interfere in all business quite unceremoniously. This created a dual Government, which was extremely danger- ous, particularly under military conditions^ On May 3 the Central Committee sent deputies to the Commune demanding that the Ministry for War should be placed imder its control. Again there arose, as Lissagaray writes, the question as to whether "the Central Committee should be dissolved, or arrested, or entrusted with the ad- ministration of the Ministry for War." Here was a question, not of the principles of democracy,'^ but of the absence, in the case of both parties, of a clear programme of action, and of the readiness, both of the irre- sponsible revolutionary organizations in the shape of the Central Committee and of the "democratic" organization of the Commune, to shift the responsibility on to the other's shoulders, while at the same time not entirely renouncing ^^ power. These were political relations which it might seem no one could call worthy of imitation. "But the Central Committee," Kautsky consoles himself, "never attempted to infringe the principle in virtue of which the supreme power must belong to the delegates elected by universal suffrage. In this respect the "Paris Commune was the direct antithesis of the Soviet Republic." (Page 74.) There was no unity of government, there was no revolutionarj^ decision, there existed a division of power, and, as a result, \ there came swift and terrible destruction. But to counter-' 8o Dictatorship vs. Democracy balance this — is it not comforting? — there was no infringement of the "principle" of democracy. THE DEMOCRATIC COMMUNE AND THE REVOLUTIONARY DICTATORSHIP V Comrade Lenin has already pointed out to Kautsky that attempts to depict the Commune as the expression of formal democracy constitute a piece of absolute theoretical swindling. / The Commune, in its tradition and in the conception of its i leading political party — the Blanquists — was the expression j of the dictatorship of the revolutionary city over the country. j \ So it was in the great French Revolution ; so it would have been i in the revolution of 1871 if the Commune had not fallen in \ the first days. The fact that in Paris itself a Government was '( elected on the basis of universal suffrage does not exclude ,' a much more significant fact — namely, that of the military I operations carried on by the Commune, one city, against peasant France, that is the whole country. To satisfy the great democrat, Kautsky, the revolutionaries of the Com- mune ought, as a preliminary, to have consulted, by means of universal suffrage, the whole population of France as to whether it permitted them to carry on a war with Thiers' bands. Finally, in Paris itself the elections took place after the bourgeoisie, or at least its most active elements, had fled, and after Thiers' troops had been evacuated. The bourgeoisie that remained in Paris, in spite of all its impudence, was still afraid of the revolutionary battalions, and the elections took place under the auspices of that fear, which was the forerunner of what in the future would have been inevitable — namely, of the Red Terror. But to console oneself with the thought that the Central Committee of the National Guard, under the dictatorship of which — unfortunately a very feeble and formalist dictatorship — the elections to the Commune were held, did not infringe the principle of universal suffrage, is truly to brush with the shadow of a broom. Amusing himself by barren analogies, Kautsky benefits by the circumstance that his reader is not acquainted with the facts. In Petrograd, in November, 1917, we also elected Dictatorship vs. Democracy 8i a Commune (Town Council) on the basis of the most "demo- cratic" voting, without limitations for the bourgeoisie. These elections, being boycotted by the bourgeoisie parties, gave us a crushing majority. The "democratically" elected Council voluntarily submitted to the Petrograd Soviet — i.e., placed the fact of the dictatorship of the proletariat higher than the "principle" of imiversal suffrage, and, after a short time, dissolved itself altogether by its own act, in favor of one of the sections of the Petrograd Soviet. Thus the Petrograd Soviet — ^that true father of tiie Soviet regime — has upon itself the seal of a formal "democratic" benediction in no way less than the Paris Commune. * "At the elections of March 26, eighty members were elected to the Commune. Of these, fifteen were members of the government party (Thiers), and six were bourgeois radicals who were in opposition to the Government, but con- demned the rising (of the Paris workers). "The Soviet Republic," Kautsky teaches us, "would never have allowed such counter-revolutionary elements to stand as candidates, let alone be elected. The Commune, on the other hand, out of respect for democracy, did not place the least obstacle in the way of the election of its bourgeois opponents." (Page 74.) We have already seen above that here Kautsky completely misses the mark. First of all, at a similar stage of develop- ment of the Russian Revolution, there did not take place democratic elections to the Petrograd Commune, in which the Soviet Government placed no obstacle in the way of the bourgeois parties; and if the Cadets, the S.R.s and the Mensheviks, who had their press which was openly calling for *It is not without interest to observe that in the Communal elections of 1871 in Paris there participated 230,000 electors. At the Town elections of November, 1917, in Petrograd, in spite of tho boycott of the election on the part of all parties except ourselves and the Left Social Eevolutionaries, who had no influence in the capital, there participated 390,000 electors. In Paris, in 1871, the population numbered two millions. In Petrograd, in November, 1917, there were not more than two millions. It must be noticed that our electoral system was infinitely more democratic. The Central Committee of the National Guard carried out the elections on the basis of the electoral law of the empire. 82 Dictatorship vs. Democracy the overthrow of the Soviet Government, boycotted the elec- tions, it was only because at that time they still hoped soon to make an end of us with the help of armed force. Secondly, no democracy expressing all classes was actually to be found in the Paris Commune. The bourgeois deputies — Conserva- tives, Liberals, Gambettists^ — found no place in it. "Nearly all these individuals," says Lavrov, "either imme- diately or very soon, left the Council of the Commune. They might have been representatives of Paris as a free city under the rule of the bourgeoisie, but were quite out of place in the Council of the Commime, which, willy-nilly, consistently or inconsistently, completely or incompletely, did represent the revolution of the proletariat, and an attempt, feeble though it might be, of building up forms of society corresponding to that revolution." (Pages 111-112.) If the Petrograd bourgeoisie had not boycotted the municipal elections, its representatives would have entered the Petrograd Council. They would have remained there up to the first Social Revo- lutionary and Cadet rising, after which — with the permission or without the permission of Kautsky — they would probably have been arrested if they did not leave the Council in good time, as at a certain moment did the bourgeois members of the Paris Commune. The course of events would have re- mained the same : only on their surface would certain episodes have worked out differently. In supporting the democracy of the Commune, and at the same time accusing it of an insufficiently decisive note in its attitude to Versailles, Kautsky does not understand that the Communal elections, carried out with the ambiguous help of the "lawful" mayors and deputies, reflected the hope of a peaceful agreement with Versailles. This is the whole point. The leaders were anxious for a compromise, not for a struggle. The masses had not yet outlived their illusions. Undeserved revolutionary reputations had not yet had time to be exposed. Everything taken together was called dejnoc- racy. "We must rise above our enemies by. moral force ..." preached Vermorel. "We must not infringe liberty and in- dividual life ..." Striving to avoid fratricidal war, Vermorel called upon the liberal bourgeoisie, whom hitherto he had so Dictatorship vs. Democracy 83 mercilessly exposed, to set up "a lawful Government, re- cognized and respected by the whole population of Paris." The Journal Officiel, published under the editorship of the Internationalist Longuet, wrote : "The sad misunderstanding, which in the June days (1848) armed two classes of society against each other, cannot be renewed Class antagonism has ceased to exist " (March 30.) And, further: "Now all conflicts will be appeased, because all are inspired with a feeling of solidarity, because never yet was there so little social hatred and social antagonism." (April 3.) At the session of the Commune of April 25, Jourde, and not without foundation, congratulated himself on the fact that the Commune had "never yet infringed the principle of private property." By this means they hoped to win over bourgeois public opinion and find the path to compromise. "Such a doctrine," says Lavrov, and rightly, "did not in the least disarm the enemies of the proletariat, who under- stood excellently with what its sucess threatened them, and only sapped the proletarian energy and, as it were, deliberately blinded it in the face of its irreconcilable enemies." (Page 137.) But this enfeebling doctrine was inextricably bound up with the fiction of democracy. The form of mock legality it was that allowed them to think that the problem would be solved without a struggle. "As far as the mass of the popula- tion is concerned," writes Arthur Arnould, a member of the Commvme, "it was to a certain extent justified in the belief in the existence of, at the very least, a hidden agree- ment with the Government." Unable to attract the bourgeoisie, the compromisers, as always, deceived the proletariat. The clearest evidence of all that, in the conditions of the inevitable and already beginning civil war, democratic parlia- mentarism expressed only the compromizing helplessness of the leading groups, was the senseless procedure of the supple- mentary elections to the Commune of April 6. At this moment, "it was no longer a question of voting," writes Arthur Ar- nould. "The situation had become so tragic that there was not either the time or the calmness necessary for the correct functioning of the elections All persons devoted to the Commune were on the fortifications, in the forts, in the fore- most detachments The people attributed no importance 84 Dictatorship vs. Democracy whatever to these supplementary elections. The elections were in reality merely parliamentarism. What was required was not to count voters, but to have soldiers: not to discover whether we had lost or gained in the Commune of Paris, but to defend Paris from the Versaillese." From these words Kautsky might have observed why in practice it is not so simple to combine class war with interclass democracy. "The Commune is not a Constituent Assembly," wrote in his book, Milliere, one of the best brains of the Commune. "It is a military Council. It must have one airn, victory ; one weapon, force ; one law, the law of social salvation." "They could never understand," Lissagaray accuses the leaders, "that the Commune was a barricade, and not an ad- ministration." They began to understand it in the end, when it was too late. Kautsky has not understood it to this day. There is no reason to believe that he will ever understand it. ■4/ / The Commune was the living negation of formal democ- "^racy, for in its development it signified the dictatorship of (working class Paris over the peasant country. It is this fact Tthat dominates all the rest. However much the political doctrinaires, in the midst of the Commune itself, clung to the appearances of democractic legality, every action of the Com- mune, though insufficient for victory, was sufficient to reveal its illegal nature. The Commune — that is to say, the Paris City Council — repealed the national law concerning conscription. It called its official organ The Official Journal of the French Republic. Though cautiously, it still laid hands on the State Bank. It proclaimed the separation of Church and State, and abolished the Church Budgets. It entered into relations with various embassies. And so on, and so on. It did all this in virtue of the revolutionary dictatorship. But Clemenceau, young democrat as he was then, would not recognize that virtue. At a conference with the Central Committee, Clemenceau said : "The rising had an unlawful beginning. . . . Soon the Committee will become ridiculous, and its decrees will be Dictatorship vs. Democracy 85 despised. Besides, Paris has not the right to rise against France, and must unconditionally accept the authority of the Assembly." The problem of the Commune was to dissolve the Na- tional Assembly. Unfortunately it did not succeed in doing so. To-day Kautsky seeks to discover for its criminal inten- tions some mitigating circumstances. He points out that the Communards had as their op- ponents in the National Assembly the monarchists, while we in the Constituent Assembly had against us . . . Socialists, in the persons of the S.R.s, and the Mensheviks. A complete mental eclipse ! Kautsky talks about the Mensheviks and the S.R.s, but forgets our sole serious foe — the Cadets. It was they who represented our Russian Thiers party — i.e., a bloc of property owners in the name of property: and Professor Miliukov did his utmost to imitate the "little great man." Very soon indeed — long before the October Revolution — Miliukov began to seek his Galifet in the generals Kornilov, Alexeiev, then Kaledin, Krasnov, in turn. And after Kolchak had thrown aside all political parties, and had dissolved the Constituent Assembly, the Cadet Party, the sole serious bourgeois party, in its essence monarchist through and through, not only did not refuse to support him, but on the contrary devoted more sympathy to him than before. The Mensheviks and the S.R.s played no independent role amongst us — just like Kautsky's party during the revo- lutionary events in Germany. They based their whole policy upon a coalition with the Cadets, and thereby put the Cadets in a position to dictate quite irrespective of the balance of political forces. The Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik"' Parties were only an intermediary apparatus for the purpose of collecting, at meetings and elections, the political confidence of the masses awakened by the revolution, and for handing it over for disposal by the counter-revolutionary imperialist party of the Cadets — independently of the issue of the elec- tions. The purely vassal-like dependence of the S.R.s and Men- shevik majority on the Cadet minority itself represented a very thinly-veiled insult to the idea of "democracy." But this is not all. 86 Dictatorship vs. Democracy In all districts of the country where the regime of "democ- racy" lived too long, it inevitably ended in an open coup d'etat of the counter-revolution. So it was in the Ukraine, where the democratic Rada, having sold the Soviet Government to German imperialism, found itself overthrown by the monar- chist Skoropadsky. So it was in the Kuban, where the demo- cratic Rada found itself under the heel of Denikin. So it was — and this was the most important experiment of our "democracy" — in Siberia, where the Constituent Assembly, with the formal supremacy of the S.R.s and the Mensheviks, in the absence of the Bolsheviks, and the de facto guidance of the Cadets, led in the end to the dictatorship of the Tsarist Admiral Kolchak. So it was, finally, in the north, where the Constituent Assembly government of the Socialist-Revolution- ary Chaikovsky became merely a tinsel decoration for the rule of counter-revolutionary generals, Russian and British. So it was, or is, in all the small Border States — in Finland, Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Georgia, Armenia — where, under the formal banner of "democracy," there is be- ing consolidated the supremacy of the landlords, the capital- ists, and the foreign militarists. THE PARIS WORKER OF 187I AND THE PETROGRAD PROLETARIAN OF I917 One of the most coarse, unfounded, and politically dis- graceful comparisons which Kautsky makes between the Com- mune and Soviet Russia is touching the character of the Paris worker in 1871 and the Russian proletarian of 1917-19. The first Kautsky depicts as a revolutionary enthusiast capable of a high measure of self-sacrifice; the second, as an egoist and a coward, an irresponsible anarchist. The Parisian worker has behind him too definite a past to need revolutionary recommendations — or protection frpm the praises of the present Kautsky. None the less, the Petro- grad proletarian has not, and cannot have, any reason for avoiding a comparison with his heroic elder brother. The continuous three years' struggle of the Petrograd workers- first for the conquest of power, and then for its maintenance and consolidation — represents an exceptional story of col- Dictatorship vs. Democracy 87 lective heroism and self-sacrifice, amidst unprecedented tor- tures in the shape of hunger, cold, and constant perils. Kautsky, as we can discover in another connection, takes for contrast with the flower of the Communards the most sinister elements of the Russian proletariat. In this respect also he is in no way different from the bourgeois sycophants, to whom dead Communards always appear infinitely more at- tractive than the living. ^ The Petrograd proletariat seized power four and a half ] decades after the Parisian. This period has told enormously / m our favor. The petty-bourgeois craft character of old and partly of new Paris is quite foreign to Petrograd, the centre of the most concentrated industry in the world. The latter circumstances has extremely facilitated our tasks of agitation and organization, as well as the setting up of the Soviet sys- tem. Our proletariat did not have even a faint measure of the>^ rich revolutionary traditions of the French proletariat. But, ] instead, there was still very fresh in the memory of the older J generation of our workers, at the beginning of the present / revolution, the great experiment of 1905, its failure, and the' duty of vengeance it had handed down. The Russian workers had not, like the French, passed^ through a long school of democracy and parliamentarism, which at a certain epoch represented an important factor in the political education of the proletariat. But, on the other | hand, the Russian working class had not had seared into its ; soul the bitterness of dissolution and the poison of scepticism, i which up to a certain, and — let us hope— not very distant! moment, still restrain the revolutionary will of the French^ proletariat. The Paris Commune suffered a military defeat before economic problems had arisen before it in their full magni- tude. In spite of the splendid fighting qualities of the Paris workers, the military fate of the Commune was at once de- termined as hopeless. Indecision and compromise-mongering above brought about collapse below. The pay of the National Guard was issued on the basis of the existence of 162,000 rank and file and 6,500 officers ; tKe number of those who actually went into battle, especially 88 Dictatorship vs. Democracy after the unsuccessful sortie of April 3, varied between twenty and thirty thousand. These facts do not in the least compromise the Paris workers, and do not give us the right to consider them towards and deserters — although, of course, there was no lack Iof desertion. For a fighting army there must be, first of all, a centralized and accurate apparatus of administration. Of this the Commune had not even a trace. The War Department of the Commune, was, in the ex- pression of one writer, as it were a dark room, in which all collided. The office of the Ministry was filled with officers and ordinary Guards, who demanded military supplies and food, and complained that they were not relieved. They were sent to the garrison .... "One battalion remained in the trenches for 20 and 30 days, while others were constantly in reserve. . . . This care- lessness soon killed any discipline. Courageous men soon de- termined to rely only on themselves; others avoided service. In the same way did officers behave. One would leave his post to go to the help of a neighbor who was under fire; others went away to the city. . ." (Lavrov, page 100.) Such a regime could not remain unpunished; the Com- mune was drowned in blood. But in this connection Kautsky has a marvelous solution. "The waging of war," he says, sagely shaking his head, "is, after all, not a strong side of the proletariat." (Page 76.) This aphorism, worthy of Pangloss, is fully on a level with the other great remark of Kautsky, namely, that the International is not a suitable weapon to use in wartime, be- ing in its essence an "instrument of peace." In these two aphorisms, in reality, may be found the present Kautsky, complete, in his entirety — i. e., just a little over a round zero. The waging of war, do you see, is on the whole, not a strong side of the proletariat, the more that the International itself was not created for wartime. Kautsky's ship was built for lakes and quiet harbors, not at all for the open sea, and not for a period of storms. If that ship has sprung a leak, and has begun to fill, and is now comfortably going to the bottom, we must throw all the blame upon the storm, the un- Dictatorship vs. Democracy 89 necessary mass of water, the extraordinary size of the waves, and a series of other unforeseen circumstances for which Kautsky did not build his marvelous instrument. The international proletariat put before itself as its prob- lem the conquest of power. Independently of whether civil war, "generally," belongs to the inevitable attributes of revo- lution, "generally," this fact remains unquestioned — that the advance of the proletariat, at any rate in Russia, Germany, and parts of former Austro-Hungary, took the form of an intense civil war not only on internal but also on external fronts. If the waging of war is not the strong side of the\ proletariat, while the workers' International is suited only for peaceful epochs, then we may as well erect a cross over the revolution and over Socialism; for the waging of war is a fairly strong side of the capitalist State, which without a war I will not admit the workers to supremacy. In that case there j remains only to proclaim the so-called "Socialist" democracy to be merely the accompanying feature of capitalist society and bourgeois parliamentarism — i. e., openly to sanction what the Eberts, Schneidermanns, Renaudels, carry out in practice and what Kautsky still, it seems, protests against in words. The waging of war was not a strong side of the Com- mune. Quite so; that was why it was crushed. And how mercilessly crushed! "We have to recall the proscriptions of Sulla, Antony, and Octavius," wrote in his time the very moderate liberal, Fiaux, "to meet such massacres in the history of civilized nations. The religious wars under the last Valois, the night of St. Bartholomew, the Reign of Terror were, in comparison with it, child's play. In the last week of May alone, in Paris, 17,000 corpses of the insurgent Federals were picked up... the killing was still going on about June 15." "The waging of war, after all, is not the strong side of the proletariat." It is not true! The Russian workers have shown that they are capable of wielding the "instrument of war" as well. We see here a gigantic step forward in comparison with the Commune. It is not a renunciation of the Commune — for the traditions of the Commune consist not at all in its help- lessness — ^but the continuation of its work. The Commune go Dictatorship vs. Democracy was weak. To complete its work we have become strong. The Commune was crushed. We are inflicting blow after blow upon the executioners of the Commune. We are taking ven- geance for the Commune, and we shall avenge it. ^ Out of 167,000 National Guards who received pay, only twenty or thirty thousand went into battle. These figures serve" as interesting material for conclusions as to the role of formal democracy in a revolutionary epoch. The vote of the Paris Commune was decided, not at the elections, but in the battles with the troops of Thiers. One hundred and sixty-seven thousand National Guards represented the great mass of the electorate. But in reality, in the battles, the fate of the Commune was decided by twenty or thirty thousand persons; the most devoted fighting minority. This minority did not stand alone: it simply expressed, in a more courageous and self-sacrificing manner, the will of the majority. But none the less it was a minority. The others who hid at the critical moment were not hostile to the Commune; on the contrary, they actively or passively supported it, but they were less politically conscious, less decisive. On the arena of political democracy, their lower level of political consciousness afforded the possibility of their being deceived by adventurers, swindlers, middle-class cheats, and honest dullards who really deceived themselves. But, at the moment of open class war, they, to a greater or lesser degree, followed the self-sacrificing minority. It was this that found its expression in the organization of the National Guard. If the existence of the Commune had been prolonged, this relationship between the advance guard and the mass of the proletariat would have grown more and more firm. The organization which would have been formed and con- solidated in the process of the open struggle, as the organiza- tion of the laboring masses, would have become the organiza- tion of their dictatorship — the Council of Deputies of the armed proletariat. 6. Marx and Kautsky. KAUTSKY loftily sweeps aside Marx's views on terror, expressed by him in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung — as at that time, do you see, Marx was still very "young," and consequently his views had not yet had time to arrive at that condition of complete enfeeblement which is so clearly to be observed in the case of certain theoreticians in the seventh decade of their life. As a contrast to the green Marx of 1848-49 (the author of the Communist Manifesto!) Kautsky quotes the mature Marx of the epoch of the Paris Commune — and the latter, under the pen of Kautsky, loses his great lion's mane, and appears before us as an extremely respectable reasoner, bowing before the holy places of democracy, de- claiming on the sacredness of human life, and filled with all due reverence for the political charms of Schneidermann, Vandervelde, and particularly of his own physical grandson, Jean Longuet. In a word, Marx, instructed by the experience of life, proves to be a well-behaved Kautskian. From the deathless Civil War in France, the pages of which have been filled with a new and intense life in our own epoch, Kautsky has quoted only those lines in which the mighty theoretician of the social revolution contrasted the generosity of the Communards with the bourgeois ferocity of the Versaillese. Kautsky has devastated these lines and made them commonplace. Marx, as the preacher of detached humanity, as the apostle of general love of mankind! Just as if we were talking about Buddha or Leo Tolstoyj . . It is more than natural that, against the international campaign which represented the Communards as souteneurs and the women of the Commune as prostitutes, against the vile slanders which attributed to the conquered fighters ferocious 91 92 Dictatorship vs. Democracy features drawn from the degenerate imagination of the vic- torious bourgeoisie, Marx should emphasize and underline those features of tenderness and nobility which not infre- quently were merely the reverse side of indecision. JVlarx •J was Marx. He was neither an empty pedant, nor, all the more, the legal defender of the revolution: he combined a scientific analysis of the Commune with its revolutionary apology. He not only explained and criticised — he defended and struggled. But, emphasizing the mildness of the Com- mune which failed, Marx left no doubt possible concerning the measures which the Commune ought to have taken in order not to fail. * The author of the Civil War accuses the Central Com- mittee — i.e., the then Council of National Guards' Deputies, of having too soon given up its place to the elective Commune. Kautsky "does not understand" the reason for such a re- proach, j This conscientious non-understanding is one of the symptoms of Kautsky's mental decline in connection with : questions of the revolution generally. The first place, accord- ; ing to Marx, ought to have been filled by a purely fighting : organ, a centre of the insurrection and of military operations \ against Versailles, and not the organized self-government of \ the labor democracy. For the latter the turn would come i later. Marx accuses the Commune of not having at once begun an attack against the Versailles, and of having entered upon the defensive, which always appears "more humane," and gives more possibilities of appealing to moral law and the sacredness of human life, but in conditions of civil war never leads to victory. Marx, on the other hand, first and fore- most wanted a revolutionary victory. Nowhere, by one word, does he put forward the principle of democracy as something standing above the class struggle^ On the contrary, with the concentrated contempt of the revolutionary and the Com- munist, Marx — not the young editor of the Rhine Paper, but the mature author of Capital: our genuine Marx with the mighty leonine mane, not as yet fallen under the hands of the hairdressers of the Kautsky school — with what concen- trated contempt he speaks about the "artificial atmosphere of parliamentarism" in which physical and spiritual dwarfs like Dictatorship vs. Democracy 93 Thiers se^m giants! The Civil War, after the barren and pedantic pamhlet of Kautsky, acts Uke a storm that clears the air. In spite of Kautsky's slanders, Marx had nothing in com- mon with the view of democracy as the last, absolute, supreme product of history. The development of bourgeois society itself, out of which contemporary democracy grew up, in no way represents that process of gradual democratization which figured before the war in the dreams of the greatest Socialist illusionist of democracy — Jean Jaures — and now in those of the most learned of pedants, Karl Kautsky. In the empire] of Napoleon III, Marx sees "the only possible form of gov- ernment in the epoch in which the bourgeoisie has already \ lost the possibility of governing the people, while the work- 1 ing class has not yet acquired it." In this way, not democracy,! but Bonapartism, appears in Marx's eyes as the final form oft bourgeois power. Learned men may say that Marx was mis-j taken, as the Bonapartist empire gave way for half a century to the "Democratic Republic." But Marx was not mistaken. In essence he was right. The Third Republic has been the period of the complete decay of democracy. Bonapartism has found in the Stock Exchange Republic of Poincare- Clemenceau, a more finished expression than in the Second Empire. True, the Third Republic was not crowned by the imperial diadem; but in return there loomed over it the shadow of the Russian Tsar. In his estimate of the Commune, Marx carefully avoids using the worn currency of democratic terminology. "The Commune was," he writes, "not a parliament, but a working institution, and united in itself both executive and legislative power." In the first place, Marx puts forward, not the particular democratic form of the Commune, but its class es- sence. The Commune, as is known, abolished the regular army and the police, and decreed the confiscation of Church property. It did this in the right of the revolutionary dicta- torship of Paris, without the permission of the general democ- racy of the State, which at that moment formally had found a much more "lawful" expression in the National Assembly of Thiers^ But a revolution is not decided by votes. "The National Assembly," says Marx, "was nothing more nor less 94 Dictatorship vs. Democracy than one of the episodes of that revolution, the true embodi- ment of which was, nevertheless, armed Paris." How far this is from formal democracy! "It only required that the Communal order of things," says Marx, "should be set up in Paris and in the secondary centres, and the old central government would in the provinces ^also have yielded to the self-government of -the producers." j'Marx, consequently, sees the problem of revolutionary Paris, I not in appealing from its victory to the frail will of the Con- \stituent Assembly, but in covering the whole of France with a centralized organization of Communes, built up not on the j external principles of democracy but on the genuine self-gov- i^emment of the producers. Kautsky has cited as an argument against the Soviet Constitution the indirectness of elections, which contradicts the fixed laws of bourgeois democracy. Marx characterizes the proposed structure of labor France in the following words : — "The management of the general affairs of the village communes of every district was to devolve on the Assembly of plenipotentiary delegates meeting in the chief town of the district; while the district assemblies were in turn to send delegates to the National Assembly sitting in Paris." Marx, as we can see, was not in the least degree disturbed by the many degrees of indirect election, in so far as it was a question of the State organization of the proletariat itself. / In the framework of bourgeois democracy, . indirectness of i election confuses the demarcation line of parties and classes; ] but in the "self-government of the producers" — i.e., in the \ class proletarian State, indirectness of election is a question not of politics, but of the technical requirements of self-gov- Jemment, and within certain limits may present the same ad- jvantages as in the realm of trade union organization. The Philistines of democracy are indignant at the in- equality in representation of the workers and peasants which, in the Soviet Constitution, reflects the difference in the revo- lutionary roles of the town and the country. Marx writes: "The Commune desired to bring the rural producers under the intellectual leadership of the central towns of their dis- 1 tricts, and there to secure to them, in the workmen of the towns, the natural guardians of their interests." The ques- Dictatorship vs. Democracy 95 tion was not one of making the peasant equal to the worker A on paper, but of spiritually raising the peasant to the level of \ the worker. All questions of the proletarian State Marx de- / cides according to the revolutionary dynamics of living forces, and not according to the play of shadows upon the market- place screen of parliamentarism. In order to reach the last confines of mental collapse, ^ Kautsky denies the universal authority of the Workers' Councils on the ground that there is no legal boundary be- tween the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. In the indeter- minate nature of the social divisions Kautsky sees the source of the arbitrary authority of the Soviet dictatorship. Marx sees directly the contrary. "The Commune was an extremely elastic form of the State, while all former forms of govern- ment had suffered from narrowness. Its secret consists in this, that in its very essence it was the government of the working class, the result of the struggle between the class of producers and the class of appropriators, the political form, long sought, xmder which there could be accomplished the economic emancipation of labor." The secret of the Com- mune consisted in the fact that by its very essence it was a government of the working class. This secret, explained by Marx, has remained, for Kautsky, even to this day, a mystery sealed with seven seals. The Pharisees of democracy speak with indignation of the repressive measures of the Soviet Government, of the closing of newspapers, of arrests and shooting. Marx replies to "the vile abuse of the lackeys of the Press" and to the reproaches of the "well-intentioned bourgeois doctrinaries," in coimection with the repressive measures of the Commune in the following words : — "Not satisfied with their open wag- ing of a most bloodthirsty war against Paris, the Versaillese strove secretly to gain an entry by corruption and conspiracy. Could the Commune at such a time without shamefully be- traying its trust, have observed the customary forms of liber- alism, just as if profound peace reigned around it? Had the government of the Copimune been akin in spirit to that of Thiers, there would have been no more occasion to suppress newspapers of the party of order in Paris than there was to suppress newspapers of the Commtme at Versailles." In this 96 Dictatorship vs. Democracy way, what Kautsky demands in the name of the sacred foundations of democracy Marx brands as a shameful be- trayal of trust. Concerning the destruction of which the Commune is ac- cused, and of which now the Soviet Government is accused, Marx speaks as of "an inevitable and comparatively insig- nificant episode in the titanic struggle of the new-born order with the old in its collapse." Destruction and cruelty are inevitable in any war. Only sycophants can consider them a crime "in the war of the slaves against their oppressors, the only just war in history." (Marx.) Yet our dread accuser Kautsky, in his whole book, does not breathe a word of the fact that we are in a condition of perpetual revolutionary self- defence, that we are waging an intensive war against the op- pressors of the world, the "only just war in history." Kautsky yet again tears his hair because the Soviet Gov- ernment, during the Civil War, has made use of the severe method of taking hostages. He once again brings forward pointless and dishonest comparisons between the fierce Soviet Government and the humane Commune. Clear and definite in this connection sounds the opinion of Marx. "When Thiers, from the very beginning of the conflict, had enforced the humane practice of shooting down captured Communards, the Commune, to protect the lives of those prisoners, had nothing left for it but to resort to the Prussian custom of taking hostages. The lives of the hostages had been forfeited over and over again by the continued shooting of the prisoners on the part of the Versaillese. How could their lives he spared any longer after the blood-bath with which MacMahon's Pretorians celebrated their entry into Paris ?" How otherwise, we shall ask together with Marx, can one act in conditions of civil war, when the counter-revolution, occupying a con- siderable portion of the national territory, seizes wherever it can the unarmed workers, their wives, their mothers, and shoots or hangs them: how otherwise can one act than to seize as hostages the beloved or the trusted of the bourgeoisie, thus placing the whole bourgeois class under the Damocles' sword of mutual responsibility? It would not be difficult to show, day by day through the history of the civil war, that all the severe measures of the Dictatorship vs. Democracy 97 Soviet Government were forced upon it as measures of revolutionary self-defense. We shall not here enter into details. But, to give though it be but a partial criterion for valuing the conditions of the struggle, let us remind the reader that, at the moment when the White Guards, in com- pany with their Anglo-French allies, shoot every Communist without exception who falls into their hands, the Red Army spares all prisoners without exception, including even officers of high rank. "Fully grasping its historical task, filled with the heroic decision to remain equal to that task," Marx wrote, "the working class may reply with a smile of calm contempt to the vile abuse of the lackeys of the Press and to the learned patronage of well-intentioned bourgeois doctrinaires, who utter their ignorant stereotyped commonplaces, their characteristic nonsense, with the profound tone of oracles of scientific im- maculateness." If the well-intentioned bourgeois doctrinaires sometimes appear in the guise of retired theoreticians of the Second International, this in no way deprives their characteristic nonsense of the right of remaining nonsense. 7 The Working Class and Its Soviet Policy the russian proletariat THE initiative in the social revolution proved, by the force of events, to be imposed, not upon the old proletariat of Western Europe, with its mighty economic and political organization, with its ponderous traditions of parliamentarism 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 extraordinary, truly superhuman, difficulties which wei'e thus flung' upon the Russian proletariat have prepared, hastened, and to a con- siderable extent assisted the revolutionary work of the West European proletariat which still lies before us. Instead of examining the Russian Revolution in the light of the revolutionary epoch that has arrived throughout the world, Kautsky discusses the theme of whether or no the Russian proletariat has taken power into its hands too soon. "For Socialism," he explains, "there is necessary a high development of the people, a high morale amongst the masses, strongly-developed social instincts, sentiments of solidarity, etc. Such a form of morale," Kautsky further informs us, "was very highly developed amongst the proletariat of the Paris Commune. It is absent amongst the masses which at the present time set the tone amongst the Bolshevik prole- tariat." (Page 177.) For Kautsky's purpose, it is not sufEcient to fling mud at the Bolsheviks as a political party before the eyes of his read- ers. Knowing that Bolshevism has become amalgamated with Dictatorship vs. Democracy 99 the Russian proletariat, Kautsky makes an attempt to fling mud at the Russian proletariat as a whole, representing it as an ignorant, greedy mass, without any ideals, which is guided only by the instincts and impulses of the moment. Throughout his booklet Kautsky returns many times to the question of the intellectual and moral level of the Russian workers, and every time only to deepen his characterization of them as ignorant, stupid and barbarous. To bring about the most striking contrasts, Kautsky adduces the example of how a workshop committee in one of the war industries during the Commune decided upon compulsory night duty in the works for one worker so that it might be possible to distribute repaired arms by night. "As under present circum- stances 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 legard 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 cl^ss. That class has no intelligence, no stability, no ideals, no stead- fastness, no readiness for self-sacrifice, and so on. "It is just as little capable of choosing suitable plenipotentiary leaders for itself," Kautsky jeers, "as Munchausen was able to drag himself from the swamp by means of his own hair." This comparison of the Russian proletariat with the impostor Munchausen dragging himself from the swamp is a striking example of the brazen tone in which Kautsky speaks of the Russian working class. He brings extracts from various speeches and articles of ours in which undesirable phenomena amongst the \vorking class are shown up, and attempts to represent matters in such a way as if the life of the Russian proletariat between 1917-20 — i.e., in the greatest of revolutionary epochs — is fully de- scribed by passivity, ignorance, and egotism. Kautsky, forsooth, does not know, has never heard, cannot guess, may not imagine, that during the civil war the Russian proletariat had more than one occasion of freely giving its labor, and even of establishing "unpaid" guard duties — not of one worker for the space of one night, but of ICX5 Dictatorship vs. Democracy 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 sufficient to ensure that many thousands of workers should spring to their posts in all the factories, in all the wards of the city. And this not in the first days of the Petrograd Commune, but after a two years' struggle in cold and hunger. Two or three times a year our party mobilizes a high proportion of its numbers for the front. Scattered over a distance of 8,000 versts, they die and teach others to die. And when, in hungry and cold Moscow, which has given the flower of its workers to the front, a Party Week is proclaimed, there pour into our ranks from the proletarian masses, in the space of seven 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 approach- ing Tula and Moscow, when Yudenich was threatening Petro- grad. At that most painful moment, the Moscow proletariat, in the course of a week, gave to the ranks of our party 15,000 men, who only waited a new mobilization for the front. And it can be said with certainty that never yet, with the exception of the week of the November rising in 191 7, was the Moscow proletariat so single-minded in its revolutionary enthusiasm, and in its readiness for devoted struggle, as in those most difficult days of peril and self-sacrifice. When our party proclaimed the watchword of Subbotniks and Voskresniks (Communist Saturdays and Sundays), the revolutionary idealism of the proletariat found for itself a striking expression in the shape of voluntary labor. At first tens and hundreds, later thousands, and now tens and hundreds of thousands of workers every week give up several hours of their labor 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 appear still more vividly before us if we recall that all the egoist, bourgeois, coarsely selfish elements Dictatorship vs. Democracy ioi of the proletariat — all those who avoid service at the front and in the Subbotniks, who engage in speculation and in weeks of starvation incite the workers to strikes — all of them vote at the Soviet elections for the Mensheviks; that is, for the Russian Kautskies. Kautsky quotes our words to the efifect that, even before the November Revolution, we clearly realized the defects in education of the Russian proletariat, but, recognizing the inevitability of the transference of power to the working class, we considered ourselves justified in hoping that during the struggle itself, during its experience, and 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 journey have time to learn and to arrange everything? One must preliminarily have acquired the quali- ties necessary to drive a locomotive before deciding to set it going. Similarly the proletariat ought beforehand to have required those necessary qualities which make it capable of administering industry, once it had to take it over." (Page I73-) This instructive comparison would have done honor to any village clergyman. None the less, it is stupid. With infinitely more foundation one could say : "Will Kautsky dare to mount a horse before he has learned to sit firmly in the saddle, and to guide the animal in all its steps?" We have fotuidations 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 mount the horse, Kautsky would have considerable difficulty in learn- ing the secrets of riding on horse-back. For the fundamental Bolshevik prejudice is precisely this: that one learns to ride on horse-back only when sitting on the horse. Concerning the driving of the locomotive, this principle is at first sight not so evident ; but none the less it is there. No one yet has learned to drive a locomotive sitting in his study. One has to get up on to the engine, to take one's stand in the tender, to take into one's hands the regulator. 102 Dictatorship vs. Democracy and to turn it. True, the engine allows training manoeuvres 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 adminis- .- tration such artificial conditions cannot be created. The bour- / geoisie does not build for the proletariat academies of State administration, and does not place at its disposal, for prelimi- Vnary practice, the helm of the State. And besides, the workers and peasants learn even to ride on horse-back not in the riding school, and without the assistance of trainers. To this we must add another consideration, perhaps the most important. No one gives the proletariat the opportunity of choosing whether it will or will not mount the horse, , whether it will take power immediately or postpone the moment. Under certain conditions the working class is bound to take power, under the threat of political self-annihilation ; for a whole historical period. Once having taken power, it is impossible to accept one \ set of consequences at will and refuse to accept others. If \ the capitalist bourgeoisie consciously and malignantly trans- forms the disorganization of production into a method of 1 political struggle, with the object of restoring power to itself, { the proletariat is obliged to resort to Socialization, independent- \ly of whether this is beneficial or otherwise at the given moment. And, once having taken over production, the proletariat Is obliged, under the pressure of iron necessity, to learn by its own experience a most difficult art — ^that of organizing Socialist economy. Having mounted the saddle, the rider is obliged to guide the horse — on the peril of breaking his neck. To give his high-souled supporters, male and female, a complete picture of the moral level of the Russian proletariat, Kautsky adduces, on page 172 of his book, the following mandate, issued, it is alleged, by the Murzilovka Soviet: "The Soviet hereby empowers Comrade Gregory Sareiey, in accordance with his choice and instructions, to requisition Dictatorship- vs. Democracy 103 and lead to the barracks, for the use of the Artillery Division stationed in Murzilovka, Briansk County, sixty women and girls from the bourgeois and speculating class, September 16, 1918." (What are the Bolshevists doing t Published by Dr. Nath. Wintch-Malejefl. Lausanne, 1919. Page 10.) Without having the least doubt of the forged character of this document and the lying nature of the whole communica- tion, I gave instructions, however, that careful inquiry should be made, in order to discover what facts and episodes lay at the root of this invention. A carefully carried out investigation showed the following: — (i) In the Briansk County there is absolutely no village b)' the name of Murzilovka. There is no such village in the neighboring counties either. The most similar in name is the village of Muraviovka, Briansk County; but no artillery divi- sion has ever been stationed there, and altogether nothing ever took place which might be in any way connected with the above "document." (2) The investigation was also carried on along the line of the artillery units. Absolutely nowhere were we able to discover even an indirect allusion to a fact similar to that adduced by Kautsky from the words of his inspirer. (3) Finally the investigation dealt with the question of whether there had been any rumors of this kind on the spot. Here, too, absolutely nothing was discovered ; and no wonder. The very contents of the forgery are in too brutal a contrast with the morals and- public opinion of the forernost workers and peasants who direct the work of the Soviets, even in the most backward regions. In this way, the document must be described as a pitiful forgery, which might be circulated only by the most malignant sycophants in the most yellow of the gutter press. While the investigation described above was going on. Comrade Zinovieflf showed me a number of a Swedish paper (Svenska Dagbladet) of J^ovember 9, 1919, in which was printed the facsimile of a mandate running as follows : — "Mandate. The bearer of this, Comrade Karaseiev, has the right of socializing in the town of Ekaterinodar (obliterat- ed) girls aged from 16 to 36 at his pleasure. — Glavkom Ivash- CHEFF." 104 Dictatorship vs. Democracy This document is even more stupid and impudent that that quoted by Kautsky. The town of Ekaterinodar — the Centre of the Kuban — was, as is well known, for only a very fhort time in the hands of the Soviet Government. Apparently Ihe author of the forgery, not very well up in his revolutionary chronology, rubbed out the date on this document, lest by some chance it should appear that "Glavkom Ivashche'ff" socialized the Ekaterinodar women during the reign of Deni- kin'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 docu- ment 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 "Kara- seiev" sound absolutely non-Russia. The ending "eiev" in Russian names is found rarely, and only in definite combina- tions. But the accuser of the Bolsheviks himself, the author of the English pamphlet on whom Kautsky bases his evidence, has a name that does actually end in "eiev." It seems obvious that this Anglo-Bulgarian police agent, sitting in Lausanne, creates socializers of women, in the fullest sense of the word, after his own likeness and image. Kautsky, at any rate, has original inspirers and assistants ! SOVIETS, TRADE UNIONS, AND THE PARTY The Soviets, as a form of the organization of the working class, represents for Kautsky, "in relation to the party and professional organizations of more developed countries, not a higher form of organization, but first and foremost a substitute (Notbehelf), arising out of the absence of political organiza- tions." (Page 68.) Let us grant that this is true in connection with Russia. But then, why have Soviets sprung up in Germany? Ought one not absolutely to repudiate them in the Ebert Republic? We note, however, that Hilferding, the nearest sympathizer of Kautsky, proposes to include the Soviets in the Constitution. Kautsky is silent. ( The estimate of Soviets as a "primitive" organization is \true to the extent that the open revolutionary struggle is Dictatorship vs. Democracy 105 "more primitive" than parliamentarism. But the artificial comA plexity of the latter embraces only the upper strata, insignifi- | cant in their size. On the other hand, revolution is only possi- I ble where the masses have their vital interests at stake. The November Revolution raised on to their feet such deep layers as the pre- revolutionary social democracy could not even dream of. However wide were the organizations of the party and the trade unions in Germany, the revolution immediately proved incomparably wider than they. The revolutionary masses found tlieir direct representation in the most simple and generally comprehensive delegate organization — in the Soviet. One may ' admit that the Council of Deputies falls behind both the party and the trade union in the sense of the clearness of its pro- gramme, or the exactness of its organization. But it is far and away in front of the party and the trade unions in the size of tiie masses drawn by it into the organized struggle; and this superiority in quality gives the Soviet undeniable revolutionary preponderance. The Soviet embraces workers of all undertakings, of alPj professions, of all stages of cultural development, all stages I of political consciousness — and thereby objectively is forcedj to formulate the general interests of the proletariat. The Communist Manifesto viewed the problem of the' Communist just in this sense— namely, the formulating of the general historical interests of the working class as a whole. "The Communists are only distinguished from other pro- letarian parties," in the words of the Manifesto, "by this : that in the different national struggles of the proletariat they point out, and bring to the fore, the common interests of the proletariat, independently of nationality; and again that, in the different stages of evolution through which the struggle between the proletariat and bourgeoisie passes, they constantly represent the interests of the movement taken as a whole. In the form of the all-embracing class organization of the Soviets, the movement takes itself "as a whole." Hence it is clear why the Communists could and had to become the guiding party in the Soviets. But hence also is seen all the narrowness of the estimate of Soviets as "substitutes for the party" (Kautslgr), and all the stupidity of the attempt to V io6 Dictatorship vs. Democracy include the Soviets, in the form of an auxiliary lever, in the mechanism of bourgeois^ democracy. (Hilferding.) The Soviets are the organization of the proletarian revo- lution, and have purpose either as an organ of the struggle for power or as the apparatus of power of the working class. Unable to grasp the revolutionary role of the Soviets, Kautsky sees their root defects in that virhich constitutes their greatest merit. "The demarcation of the bourgeois from the Vvorker," he writes, "can never be actually drawn. There will always be something arbitrary in such demarcation, which fact transforms the Soviet idea into a particularly suitable foundation for dictatorial and arbitrary rule, but renders it unfitted for the creation of a clear, systematically built-up constitution." (Page 170.) Class dictatorship, according to Kautsky, cannot create for itself institutions answering to its nature, because there do not exist lines of demarcation between the classes. But in that case, what happens to the class struggle altogether? Surely it was just, in the existence of numerous transitional stages between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, that the lower middle-class theoreticians always found their principal argument against the "principle" of the class struggle? For Kautsky, however, doubts as to principle begin just at the point where the proletariat, having overcome the shapelessness and unsteadiness of the intermediate class, having brought one part of them over to its side and thrown the remainder into the camp of the bourgeoisie, has actually organized Its dictatorship in the Soviet Constitution. The very reason why the Soviets are absolutely irreplace- able apparatus in the proletarian State is that their framework is elastic and yielding, with the result that not only social but political changes in the relationship of classes and sections can immediately find their expression in the Soviet apparatus. Beginning with the largest factories and works, the Soviets then draw into their organization the workers of private work- shops and shop-assistants, proceed to enter the village, organize the peasants against the landowners, and finally the lower and middle-class sections of the peasantry against the richest. The Labor State collects numerous staflfs of employees, to a considerable extent from the ranks of the bourgeoisie Dictatorship, vs. Democracy 107 and the bourgeois educated classes. To the extent that they become disciplined under the Soviet regime, they find re- presentation in the Soviet system. Expanding — and at certain moments contracting— in harmony with the expansion and contraction of the social positions conquered by the proletariat, the Soviet system remains the State apparatus of the social revolution, in its internal dynamics, its ebbs and flows, its mistakes and successes. With the final triumph of the sociaI\ revolution, the Soviet system will expand and include the whole population, in order thereby to lose the characteristics of a form of State, and melt away into a mighty system of producing and consuming co-operation. ^ If the party and the trade unions were organizations oi preparation for the revolution, the Soviets are the weapon oi the revolution itself. After its victory, the Soviets become the organs of power. The role of the party and the unions without decreasing is nevertheless essentially altered. In the hands of the party is concentrated the general / control. It does not immediately administer, since its apparatus is not adapted for this purpose. But it has the final word in all fimdamental questions. Further, our practice has led to the result that, in all moot questions, generally — conflicts between departments and personal conflicts within depart- ments — the last word belongs to the Central Committee of the party. This affords extreme economy of time and energy, and in the most difficult and complicated circumstances gives a guarantee for the necessary unity of action. Such a regime is possible only in the presence of the unquestioned authority of the party, and the faultlessness of its discipline. Happily for the revolution, our party does possess in an equal measure both of these qualities. 'U^ether in other countries which have not received from their past a strong revolutionary organization, with a great hardening in conflict, there will be created just as authoritative a Communist Party by the time of the proletarian revolution, it is difficult to foretell; but it is quite obvious that on this question, to a very large extent, depends the progress of the Socialist revolution in each country. The exclusive role of the Communist Party tmder the '' conditions of a victorious proletarian revolution is quite com- io8 Dictatorship vs. Democracy prehensible. The question is of the dictatorship of a class. In the composition of that class there enter various elements, heterogeneous moods, different levels of development. Yet the dictatorship pre-supposes unity of will, unity of direction, unity of action. By what other path then can it be attained? The revolutionary supremacy of the proletariat pre-supposes within the proletariat itself the political supremacy of a party, with a clear programme of action and a faultless internal ^discipline. ^ The policy of coalitions contradicts internally the regime of the revolutionary dictatorship. We have in view, not coali- tions with bourgeois parties, of which of course there can be no talk, but a coalition of Communists with other "Socialist" organizations, representing different stages of backwardness and prejudice of the laboring masses. The revolution swiftly reveals all that is imstable, wears out all that is artificial; the contradictions glozed over in a coalition are swiftly revealed under the pressure of revolu- tionary events. We have had an example of this in Hungary, where the dictatorship of the proletariat assumed the political form of the coalition of the Communists with disguised Op- portunists. 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 pro- fitable to have come to power later, after having afforded to the Left Opportunists the possibility of compromising theta- selves once and for all. It is quite another question as to how far this was possible. In any case, a coalition with the Op- portunists, only temporarily hiding the relative weakness of the Hungarian Communists, at the same time prevented them from growing stronger at the expense of the Opportunists; and brought them to disaster. The same idea is sufficiently illustrated by the example of the Russian revolution. The coalition of the Bolsheviks with the Left Socialist Revolutionists, which lasted for several months, ended with a bloody conflict. True, the reckoning for the coalition had to be paid, not so much by us Com- munists as by our disloyal companions. Apparently, such a coalition, in which we were the stronger side and, therefore, Dictatorship vs. Democracy 109 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 justi- fied. But, none the less, the Left S.R. episode quite clearly shows that the regime of compromises, agreements, mutual concessions — for that is the meaning of the regime of coali- , tion — cannot last long in an epoch in which situations alter with extreme rapidity, and in which supreme unity in point ) cf view is necessary in order to render possible unity of /, action. We have more than once been accused of having sub-\ flituted for the dictatorship of the Soviets the dictatorship I of our party. Yet it can be said with complete justice that/ the dictatorship of the Soviets became possible only by means/ of the dictatorship of the party. It is thanks to the clarit^ of its theoretical vision and its strong revolutionary organiza- tion 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 "sub- stitution" of the power of the party for the power of the working class there is nothing accidental, and in reality there is no substitution at all. The Communists express the funda- mental interests of the working class. It is quite natural that, in the period in which history brings up those interests, in all their magnitude, on to the order of the day, the Com- munists have become the recognized representatives of the working class as a whole. But where is your guarantee, certain wise men ask us, that it is just your party that expresses the interests of historical development? Destroying or driving underground the other parties, you have thereby prevented their political competition with you, and consequently you have deprived yourselves of the possibility of testing your line of action. This idea is dictated by a purely liberal conception of the course of the revolution. In a period in which all antago- ' risms assume an open character, and the political struggle swiftfy passes into a civil war, the ruling party has sufficient material standard by which to test its line of action, without the possible circulation of Menshevik papers. Noske crushes the Communists, but they grow. We have suppressed the no Dictatorship vs. Democracy Mensheviks and the S.R.s — and they have disappeared. This jcriterion is sufficient for us. (At all events, our problem is Nijnot at every given moment statistically to measure the group' i'mg of tendencies; but to render victory for our tendency se- / cure. For that tendency is the tendency of the. revolutionary / dictatorship; and in the course of the latter, in its internal ' friction, we must find a sufficient criterion for self-examina- '^tion^ 1 he continuous "independence" of the trade union move- ment, in the period of the proletarian revolution, is just as much an impossibility as the policy of coalition. The trade unions become the most important economic organs of the proletariat in power. Thereby they fall under the leadership of the Communist Party. Not only questions of principle in the trade union movement, but serious conflicts of organization within it, are decided by the Central Committee of our party. ^. .' The Kautskians attack the Soviet Government as the dictatorship of a "section'' of the working class. "If only," they say, "the dictatorship was carried out by the whole class !" It is not easy to understand what actually they imagine when they say this. The dictatorship of the proletariat, in its very essence, signifies the immediate supremacy of the revolutionary vanguard, which relies upon the heavy masses, and, where (necessary, obliges the backward tail to dress by the head. This refers also to the trade unions. After the conquest of power by the proletariat, they acquire a compulsory character. They must include all industrial workers. The party, on the ether hand, as before, includes in its ranks only the most class-conscious and devoted ; and only in a process of careful selection does it widen its ranks. Hence follows the guiding role of the Communist minority in the trade xmions, which answers to the supremacy of the Communist Party in the Soviets, and represents the political expression of the dictator- ^ship of the proletariat. The trade unions become the direct organizers of social production. They express not only the interests of the in- dustrial workers, but the interests of industry itself. During the first period, the old currents in trade unionism more than once raised their head, urging the unions to haggle with the Soviet State, lay down conditions for it, and demand from Dictatorship vs. Democracy hi it guarantees. The further we go, however, the more do the~^ unions recognize that they are organs of production of the / Soviet State, and assume responsibility for its fortunes — not / opposing themselves to it, but identifying themselves with it. / The unions become the organizers of labor discipline. Theyi: demand from the workers intensive labor under the mostl difificult conditions, to the extent that the Labor State is not) jet able to alter those conditions. The unions become the apparatus of revolutionary re- pression against undisciplined, anarchical, parasitic elements in the working class. From the old policy of trade unionism, which at a certain stage is inseparable from the industrial movement within the framework of capitalist society, the unions pass along the whole line on to tiie new path of the policy of revolutionary Communism. THE PEASANT POLICY The Bolsheviks "hoped," Kautsky thunders, "to overcome the substantial peasants in the villages by granting political rights exclusively to the poorest peasants. They then again granted representation to the substantial peasantry." (Page 2X6.) Kautsky emmierates the external "contradictions" of our peasant policy, not dreaming to inquire into its general direc- tion, and into the internal contradictions visible in the econom- ic and political situation of the country. In the Russian peasantry as it entered the Soviet orderl there were three elements: the poor, living to a considerable f extent by the sale of their labor-power, and forced to buy ' additional food for their requirements; the middle peasants, , whose requirements were covered by the products of their farms, and who were able to a limited extent to sell their I surplus ; and the upper layer — i.e., the rich peasants, the vulture (kulak) class, which systematically bought labor-power and sold their agricultural produce on a large scale. It is quite unnecessary to point out that these groups are not distinguished by definite symptoms or by homogeneousness throughout the country. Still, on the whole, and generally speaking, the peasant 112 Dictatorship vs. Democracy \poor represented the natural and undeniable allies of the jtown proletariat, whilst the vulture class represented its just las undeniable and irreconcilable enemies. The most hesita- Ition was principally to be observed amongst the widest, the middle section of the peasantry. ' Had not the country been so exhausted, and if the prole- tariat had had the possibility of offering to the peasant masses the necessary quantity of commodities and cultural require- ments, the adaptation of the toiling majority of the peasantry to the new regime would have taken place much less pain- fully. But the economic disorder of the country, which was not the result of our land or food policy, but was generated by the causes which preceded the appearance of that 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 symbol of those future values w^as the credit symbol, now finally deprived of all value. But the peasant mass is not very capable of historical detachment. Bound up with the Soviet Government by the abolition of land- lordism, and seeing in it a guarantee against the restoration of Tsarism, the peasantry at the same time not infrequently opposes the collection of corn, considering it a bad bargain so long as it does not itself receive printed calico, nails, and kerosine. The Soviet Government naturally strove to impose the chief weight of the food tax upon the upper strata of the f village. But, in the unformed social conditions of the village, [ the influential peasantry, accustomed to lead the middle peas- , ants in its train, found scores of methods of passing on the ifood tax from itself to the wide masses of the peasantry, Ithereby placing them in a position of hostility and opposition fo the Soviet power. It was necessary to awaken in the lower ranks of the peasantry suspicion and hostility towards the speculating upper strata. This purpose was served by the Committees of Poverty. They were built up of the rank Dictatorship vs. Democracy ti3 and file, of elements who in the last epoch were oppressed, driven into a dark comer, deprived of their rights. Of course, in their midst there turned out to be a certain number of semi-parasitic elements. This served as the chief text for the demagogues amongst the populist "Socialists," whose speeches found a grateful echo in the hearts of the village vultures. But the mere fact of the transference of power to the village poor had an immeasurable revolutionary signifi- cance. 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 and smoothly as in the school-room, and it did not give immediate and unquestionable results. There were risings of the middle peasants, uniting with the speculators, and always in such cases falling under the leadership of White Guard landlords; there were abuses committed by local agents of the Soviet Government, particularly by those of the Com- mittees of Poverty. But the fundamental political end was attained. The powerful class of rich peasantry, if it was not finally annihilated, proved to be shaken to its foundations, with its self-reliance undermined. The middle peasantry, remaining politically shapeless, just as it is economically shape- less, began to learn to find its representative in the foremost worker, as before it found it in the noisy village speculator. Once this fundamental result was achieved, the Committees of Poverty, as temporary institutions, as a sharp wedge driven into the village masses, had to yield their place to the Soviets, 114 Dictatorship vs. Democracy > in which the village poor are represented side by side with the middle peasantry. The Committees of Poverty existed about six months, from June to December, 1918. In their institution, as in their abolition, Kautsky sees nothing but the "waverings" of Soviet policy. Yet at the same time he himself has not even a suspicion of any practical lessons to be drawn. And after all, bow 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 iin practice have no solution in books. What Kautsky calls I contradictions in policy are, in reality, the active manoeuvring of the proletariat in the spongy, undivided, peasant mass. The sailing ship has to manoeuvre before the wind; yet no one will see contradictions in the manoeuvres which finally bring the ship to harbor. In questions as to agricultural communes and Soviet farms, there could also be found not a few "contradictions," in which, side by side with individual mistakes, there are expressed various stages of the revolution. What quantity of land shall the Soviet State leave for itself in the Ukraine, and what quantity shall it hand over to the peasants ; what policy shall it lay down for the agricultural communes; in v/hat 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 cf Socialist economic construction, which have been settled beforehand neither theoretically nor practically, and in the settling of which the general principles of our programme have even yet to find their actual application and their testing in practice, by means of inevitable temporary deviations to right or left. But even the very fact that the Russian proletariat has found support in the peasantry Kautsky turns against us. "This has introduced into the Soviet regime an economically reactionary element which was spared ( !) the Paris Commune, as its dictatorship did not rely on peasant Soviets." As if in reality we could accept the heritage of the feudal and bourgeois order with the possibility of excluding from Dictatorship vs. Democracy 115 it at will "an economically reactionary eleiment"! Nor is this all. Having poisoned the Soviet regime by its "reaction- ary element," the peasantry has deprived us of its support. To-day it "hates" the Bolsheviks. All this Kautsky knows very certainly from the radios of Clemenceau and the squibs of the Mensheviks. In reality, what is true is that wide masses of the peas- antry are suffering from the absence of the essential products of industry. But it is just as true that every other regime — and there were not a few of them, in various parts of Russia, during the last three years — proved infinitely more oppressive for the shoulders of the peasantry. Neither monarchical nor democratic governments were able to increase their stores of manufactured goods. Both of them found themselves in need of the peasant's com and the peasant's horses. To carry out their policy, the bourgeois governments — including the Kautskian-Menshevik variety — made use of a purely bureau- cractic 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 dis- satisfaction, and even his risings, ultimately always comes to the conclusion that, however difficult it is for him at present under the Bolsheviks, under every other regime it would be infinitely more difficult for him. It is quite true that the Commune was "spared" peasant support. But in return the Commune was not spared annihilation by the peasant armies of Thiers! Whereas our army, four-fifths of whom are peasants, is fighting with enthusiasm and with success for the Soviet Republic. And this one fact, controverting Kautsky and those inspiring him, gives the best possible verdict on the peasant policy of the Soviet Government. THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT AND THE EXPERTS "The Bolsheviks at first thought they could manage without the intelligentsia, without the experts," Kautsky nar- rates to us. (Page 191.) But then, becoming convinced of the necessity of the intelligentsia, they abandoned their severe repressions, and attempted to attract them to work by all ii6 Dictatorship vs. Democracy 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 hiding." ( Page 192.) : Quite so. With all due respect to all philistines, the dictator- ship of the proletariat does just consist in "giving a hiding" \ to the classes that were previously supreme, before forcing i them to recognize the new order and to submit to it. /^ The professional intelligentsia, brought up with a preju- ^ dice about the omnipotence of the bourgeoisie, long would not, could not, and did not believe that the working class is really \ capable of governing the country; that it seized power not I by accident ; and that the dictatorship of the proletariat is an 1 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, Clemenceau or Mirbach for anti-Soviet agitation, or to hand over military secrets and technical re- sources to White Guards and foreign imperialists, is a quite natural and obvious course under the regime of the proletariat. It became necessary to show it in practice, and to show it severely, that the proletariat had not seized power in order to allow such jokes to be played off at its expense. In the severe penalties adopted in the case of the intelli- gentsia, our bourgeois idealist sees the "consequence of a policy which strove to attiact the educated classes, not by means of persuasion, but by means of kicks from before . and behind." (Page 193.) In this way, Kautsky seriously imagines that it is possible to attract the bourgeois intelligent- sia to the work of Socialist construction by means of mere persuasion — and this in conditions when, in all other countries, [ there is still supreme the bourgeoisie which hesitates at no \ methods of terrifying, flattering, or buying over the Russian (intelligentsia and making it a weapon for the transformation of Russia into a colony of slaves. Instead of analyzing the course of the struggle, Kautsky, when dealing with the intelligentsia, gives once again merely \ academical recipes. It is absolutely false that our party "had the idea of managing without the intelligentsia, not realiz- Dictatorship vs. Democracy 117 ing to the full its importance for the economic and cultural work that lay before us. On the contrary. When the struggle for the conquest and consolidation of power was in full blast, and the majority of the intelligentsia was playing the part cf a shock battalion of the bourgeoisie, fighting against us openly or sabotaging our institutions, the Soviet power fought mercilessly with the experts, 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 and the officer, left behind a very deep class distrust of the experts ; and that distrust had become still more acute during the first period of the civil war, when the intelligentsia did its utmost to break the labor revolution by hunger and cold. It v/as not easy to outlive this frame of mind, and to pass from the first violent antagonism to peaceful collaboration. The laboring masses had gradually to become accustomed to see in the engineer, the agricultural expert, the officer, not the oppressor of yesterdav but the useful worker of to-dav — a necessary expert, entirely under the orders of the Workers' and Peasants' Government. We have already said that Kautsky is wrong when he attributes to the Soviet Government the desire to replace ex- perts by proletarians. But that such a desire was bound to spring up in wide circles of the proletariat cannot be denied. A young class which had proved to its 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 direct gift of heaven — that a revolutionary class was naturally inclined, i in the person of the less mature of its elements, at first to ' over-estimate its capacity for solving each and every problem, 1 18 Dictatorship vs. Democracy ' without having recourse to the aid of experts educated by the ; bourgeoisie. It was not merely yesterday that we began the struggle with such tendencies, in so far as they assumed a definite character. "To-day, when the power of the Soviets has been set on a firm footing," we said at the Moscow City Conference 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 we do not grapple with this, if we do not attract all the forces necessary to us and enlist them in the Soviet service, our struggle of yesterday with sabotage would thereby be condemned as an absolutely vain and fruitless struggle. "Just as in dead machines, so into those technical experts, engineers, doctors, teachers, former officers, there is sunk a certain portion of our national capital, which we are obliged to exploit and utilize if we want to solve the root problems standing before us. f "Democratization does not at all consist — as every i Marxist learns in his A B C — in abolishing the meaning of \ skilled forces, the meaning of persons possessing special 1 knowledge, and in replacing them everywhere and anywhere "\by elective boards. "Elective boards, consisting of the best representatives of the working class, but not equipped with the necessary tech- nical knowledge, cannot replace one expert who has passed through the technical school, and who knows how to carry out the given technical work. That 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 yes- terday oppressed class, which is throwing out the one-man principle of its rulers of yesterday — ^the landlords and the generals — and everywhere is appointing its elected represen- tatives. This, I say, is quite a natural and, in its origin, quite a healthy revolutionary reaction; but it is not the last word in the economic constructive work of the proletatarian class. "The next step must consist in the self -limitation of the collegiate principle, in a healthy and necessary act of self- Dictatorship vs. Democracy 119 limitation by the working class, which knows where the de- cisive word can be spoken by the elected representatives of the workers themselves, and where it is necessary to give way to a technical specialist, who is equipped wtih certain knowl- edge, 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 cap- able, can work in his department when subordinate in his own technical work to a board of men who do not know that de- partment. Political, collegiate and Soviet control everywhere and anywhere; but for the executive functions, we must ap- point technical experts, put them in responsible positions, and impose responsibility upon them. "Those who fear this are quite unconsciously adopting an attitude of profound internal distrust towards the Soviet regime. Those who think that the enlisting of the saboteurs of yesterday in the administration of technically expert posts threatens the very foundations of the Soviet regime, do not realize that it is not through the work of some engineer 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 vital and valuable inj them, and harness it on to the new work. If, comrades, wej do not accomplish this, we shall not deal successfully with our principal problems ; for it would be absolutely impossible for us to bring forth from our masses, in the shortest possible time, all the necessary experts, and throw aside all that was accumulated in the past. "As a matter of fact, it would be just the same as if wej said that all the machines which hitherto had served to ex-| ploit the workers were now to be thrown aside. It would be| madness. The enlisting of scientific experts 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 technical experts we possess, and introduce 120 Dictatorship vs. Democracy in practice for them the principle of compulsory labor; at the same time leaving them a wide margin of activity, and main- taining over them careful political control." * The question of experts was particularly acute, from the very beginning, in the War Department. Here, under the pressure of iron necessity, it was solved first. In the sphere of administration of industry and transport, the necessary forms of organization are very far from Deing attained, even to this day. We must seek the reason in the fact that during the first two years we were obliged to sac- rifice the interests of industry and transport to the require- ments of military defence. The extremely changeable course of the civil war, in its turn, threw obstacles in the way of the establishment of regular relations with the experts. Quali- fied technicians of industry and transport, doctors, teachers, professors, either went away with the retreating armies of Kolchak and Denikin, or were compulsorily evacuated by them. Only now, when the civil war is approaching its conclu- sion, is tiie intelligentsia in its mass making its peace with the Soviet Government, or bowing before it. Economic problems have acquired first-class importance. One of the most import- ant amongst them is the problem of the scientific organi.zation of production. Before the experts there opens a boundless field of activity. They are being accorded the independence necessary for creative work. The general control of industry Ion a national scale is concentrated in the hands of the Party \of the proletariat. THE INTERNAL POLICY OF THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT "The Bolsheviks," Kautsky mediates, "acquired the force necessary for the seizure of political power through the fact that, amongst the political parties in Russia, they were the most energetic in their demaids for peace — peace at any price. * Labor, Discipline, and Order will save the Socialist Soviet Repnblic (Moscow, 1918). Kautsky knows this pamphlet, as he quotes from it several times. This, however, does not prevent him passing over the passage quoted above, which makes clear the attitude of the Soviet Government to the intelligentsia. Dictatorship vs. Democracy 121 a separate peace — without interesting themselves as to the in- fluence this would have on the general international situation, as to whether this would assist the victory and world domin- ation of the German military monarchy, under the protection of which they remained for a long time, just like Indian or Irish rebels or Italian anarchists." (Page 53.) Of the reasons for our victory, Kautsky knows only the one that we stood for peace. He does not explain the Soviet Government has continued to exist now that it has again mobilized a most important proportion of the soldiers of the ixnperial army, in order for two years successfully to combat its political enemies. The watchword of peace undoubtedly played an enormous \ part in our struggle; but precisely because it was directed against the imperialist war. The idea of peace was supported i most strongly of all, not by the tired soldiers, but by the fore-/ most workers, for whom it had the import, not for a rest, but of a pitiless struggle against the exploiters. It was those same workers who, under the watchword of peace, later laid down their lives on the Soviet fronts. The affirmation that we demanded peace without reckon- ing on the effect it would have on the international situation is a belated echo of Cadet and Menshevik slanders. The com- parison of us with the Germanophil nationalists of India and Ireland seeks its justification in the fact that German imperi- alism did actually attempt to make use of us as it did the Indians and the Irish. But the chauvinists of France spared no efforts to make use of Liebknecht and Luxemburg— even of Kautsky and Bernstein — in their own interests. The whole question is, did we allow ourselves to be utilized? Did we, by our conduct, give the European workers even the shadow of a ground to place us in the same category as German im- perialism? It is sufficient to remember the course of the Brest negotiations, their breakdown, and the German advance 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 ex- tremely feeble energies, continued to wage war without openly calling it such. We were too weak to organize war along the 122 Dictatorship vs. Democracy whole RussO'German front. We maintained persistently the fiction of peace, utilizing the fact that the chief German forces i were drawn away to Ae 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 be- havior of the German Social-Democratic Party, of which Kautsky remained an integral and essential part. The Brest Peace was pre-determined on August 4, 1914. At that mo- ment, Kautsky not only did not declare war against German militarism, as he later demanded from the Soviet Government, which was in 1918 still powerless from a military point of view; Kautsky actually proposed voting for the War Credits, "under certain conditions"; and generally behaved in such a way that for months it was impossible to discover whether he ^ stood for the War or against it. And this political coward, j who at the decisive moment gave up the principal positions of I Socialism, dares to accuse us of having found ourselves \ obliged, at a certain moment, to retreat — not in principle, but \materially. And why? Because we were betrayed by the German Social Democracy, corrupted by Kautskianism — i.e., by political prostitution disguised by theories. / We did concern ourselves with the intei-national situ- ation ! In reality, we had a much more profound criterion by which to judge the international situation ; and it did not de- ceive us. Already before the February Revolution the Rus- sian Army no longer existed as a fighting force. 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 it was a revolution. A month sooner or later the army was bound to fall to pieces. The military policy of Kerensky was the policy of an ostrich. He closed his eyes to the decomposition of the army, talked sounding phrases, and uttered verbal threats against German imperialism. In such conditions, we had only one way out : to take our stand on the platform of peace, as the inevitable conclusion from the military powerlessness of the revolution, and to Dictatorship vs. Democracy 123 traisform that watchword into the weapon of revolutionary influence on all the peoples of Europe. That is, instead of,\ together with Kerensky, peacefully awaiting the final military ] catastrophe — ^which might bury the revolution in its ruins — | we proposed to take possession of the watchword of peace! and to lead after it the proletariat of Europe — and first and forenaost the workers of Austro-Germany. It was in the light! of this view that we carried on our peace negotiations with the Central Empires, and it was in the light of this that we drew up our Notes to the governments of the Entente. We drew out the negotiations as long as we could, in order to give the European working masses the possibility of realizing the meaning of the Soviet Government and its policy. The January strike of 1918 in Germany and Austria showed that out 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 repre- sented for them a deadly danger. This is very strikingly shown in LundendorfF's book. True, they could not risk any longer coming out against us in an open crusade. But wher- ever 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 Cen- tral Russia, in Moscow, Count Mirbach from the very first day of his arrival stood as the centre of counter-revolution- ary plots against the Soviet Government — just as Comrade Yoffe in Berlin was in the closest possible touch with the re- volution. The Extreme Left group of the German revolu- tionary movement, the party of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, all the time went hand in hand with us. The German revolution at once took on the form of Soviets, and the German proletariat, in spite of the Brest Peace, did not for a moment entertain any doubts as to whether we were with Liebknecht or LudendorfF. In his evidence before the Reichstag Commission in November, 1919, Ludendorff ex- plained how "the High Command demanded the creation of an institution with the object of disclosing the connection of revolutionary tendencies in Germany with Russia. Yoffe ar- rived in Berlin, and in various towns there were set up Rus- sian consulates. This had the most painful consequences in 1^4 Dictatorship vs. Democracy the army and navy." Kautsky, however, has the audacity to write that "if matters did come to a German revolution, truly it is not the Bolsheviks who are responsible for it. (Page 162.) Even if we had had the possibility in 1917-18, by means of revolutionary abstention, of supporting the old Imperial Army instead of hastening its destruction, we should have merely been assisting the Entente, and would have covered up by our aid its brigands' peace with Germany, Austria, and all the countries of the world generally. With such a policy we should at the decisive moment have proved absolutely dis- armed in the face of the Entente — still more disarmed than Germany is to-day. Whereas, thanks to the November Revo- lution 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 Hohenzollem to assume a position of world domination; on the contrary, by our No- vember Revolution we did more than anyone else to prepare his overthrow. At the same time, we gained a military breath- ing-space, in the course of which we created a large and strong army, the first army of the proletariat in historj', with which to-day not all the unleashed hounds of the Entente can cope. The most critical moment in our international situation arose in the autumn of 1918, after the destruction of the Ger- man armies. In the place of two mighty camps, more or less neutralizing each other, there stood before us the victorious Entene, at the summit of its world power, and there lay broken Germany, whose Junker blackguards would have con- sidered 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 full force all the characteristics of lower-middle-class thick-headedness, refused the Junkers their bone, and at the same time decided at all costs to de- corate the Invalides with the scalps of the leaders of the Soviet Republic. By this policy Clemenceau did us not a small service. We defended ourselves successfully, and held out. What, then, was the guiding principle of our external Dictatorship vs. Democracy 125 policy, once tlie first months of existence of the Soviet Gov- ernment had made clear the considerable vitality as yet of the capitalist governments of Europe? Just that which Kautsky accepts to-day uncomprehendingly as an accidental result — to hold out! We realized too clea.rly that the very fact of the existence of the Soviet Government is an event of the greatest revolu- tionary importance; and this realization dictated to us our concessions and our temporary retirements — not in principle but in practical conclusions from a sober estimate of our own forces. We retreated like an army which gives up to the enemy a town, and even a fortress, in order, having retreated, to concentrate its forces not only for defence but for an ad- vance. We retreated like strikers amongst whom to-day energies and resources have been exhausted, but who, clench- ing their teeth, are preparing for a new struggle. If we were not filled with an unconquerable belief in the world signifi- cance 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 Kiihlmanns, but also by the Kautskies of all countries. But we proved right in our esti- mate, as of our weakness then, so of our strength in the future. The existence of the Ebert Republic, with its uni- versal suffrage, its parliamentary swindling, its "freedom" of the Press, and its murder of labor leaders, is merely a nec- cessary link in the historical chain of slavery and scoundrel- ism. The existence of the Soviet Government is a fact of im- measurable revolutionary significance. It was necessary to retain it, utilizing the conflict of the capitalist nations, the as yet unfinished imperialist war, the self-confident enffrontery of the Hohenzollem bands, the thick-wittedness of the world- bourgeoisie as far as the fundamental questions of the re- volution were concerned, the antagonism of America and Europe, the complication of relations within the Entente. We had to 'lead our yet unfinished Soviet ship over the stormy waves, amid rocks and reefs, completing its building and armament en route. 126 Dictatorship vs. Democracy Kautsky has the audacity to repeat the accusation that we did not, at the beginning of 1918, hurl ourselves unarmed against our mighty foe. Had we done this we would have been crushed* The first great attempt of the proletariat to seize power would have suffered defeat. The revolutionary 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 Revolu- tion, and the world capitalist reaction would have received a respite for a number of years. When Kautsky says that, con- cluding the Brest Peace, we did not think of its influence on the fate of the German Revolution, he is uttering a dis- graceful slander. We considered the question from all sides, and our sole criterion was the interests of the international revolution. '' We came to the conclusion that those interests demanded that the only Soviet Government in the world should be pre- \ served. And we proved right. Whereas Kautsky awaited our ^fall, if not with impatience, at least with certainty; and on this expected fall built up his whole international policy. The minutes of the session of the Coalition Government of November 19, 1918, published by the Bauer Ministry, run: — "First, a continuation of the discussion as to the relations of Germany and the Soviet Republic. Haase advises a policy of procrastination. Kautsky agrees with Haase : decision must be postponed. The Soviet Government will not last long. It will inevitably fall in the course of a few weeks ..." In this way, at the time when the situation of the Soviet * The Vienna Arbeiterzeitnn? opposes, as is fitting, the wise Bussian Communists to the foolish Austrians. "Did not Trotsky," the paper writes, "with a clear view and understanding of possibilities, sign the Brest-Litovsk peace of violence, notwithstanding that it served for the consolidation of German imperialism? The Brest Peace was just as harsh and shameful as is the Versailles Peace. But does this mean that Trotsky had to be rash enough to continue the war against Germany? Would not the fate of the Russian Eevolution long ago have been sealed? Trotsky bowed before the unalterable necessity of signing the shameful treaty in anticipation of the German revolu- tion." The honor of having foreseen all the consequences of the Brest Peace belongs to Lenin. But this, of course, alters nothing in the argument of the organ of the Vienniese Kautskians. Dictatorship vs. Democracy 127 Government was really extremely difficult — for the destrm- tion of German militarism had given the Entente, it seemed, the full possibihty of finishing with us "in the course of a few 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 re- volutionary Russia. To aid Scheidemann in his role of watch- dog of the bourgeoisie, instead of the "programme" role as- signed to him of its "grave-digger," Kautsky himself hastens to become the grave-digger of the Soviet Government. But the Soviet Government is alive. It will outlive all its grave- diggers. 8 Problems of the Organization of Labor THE soviet government AND INDUSTRY IF, in the first period of the Soviet revolution, the principal accusation of the bourgeois v^rorld was directed against our savagery and blood-thirstiness, later, when that argu- ment, from frequent use, had become blunted, and had lost its force, we were made responsible chiefly for the economic disorganization of the country. In harmony with his present mission, Kautsky methodically translates into the language of pseudo-Marxism all the bourgeois charges against the Soviet Government of destroying the industrial life of Russia. The Bolsheviks began socialization without a plan. They socialized what was not ready for socialization. The Russian working class, altogether, is not yet prepared for the administration pf industry; and so on, and so on. / Repeating and combining these accusations, Kautsky, I with dull obstinacy, hides the real cause for our economic dis- j organization: the imperialist slaughter, the civil war, and the Vblockade. Soviet Russia, from the first months of its existence, found itself deprived of coal, oil, metal, and cotton. First the Austro-German and then the Entente imperialisms, with the assistance of the Russian White Guards, tore away from Soviet Russia the Donetz coal and metal working region, the oil districts of the Caucasus, Turkestan with its cotton, Ural with its richest deposits of metals, Siberia with its bread and meat. The Donetz area had usually supplied our indus- try with 94 per cent, of its coal and 74 per cent, of its crude ore. The Ural supplied the remaining 20 per cent, of the ore and 4 per cent, of the coal. Both these regions, during the 128 Dictatorship vs. Democracy 129 civil_ war, were cut off from us. We were deprived of half a milliard poods of coal imported from abroad. Simultane- ously, we were left without oil: the oilfields, one and all, passed into the hands of our enemies. One needs to have a truly brazen forehead to speak, in face of these; facts, of the destructive influence of "premature," "barbarous," etc., so- cialization. An industry which is completely deprived of fuel and raw materials — whether that industry belongs to a capi- talist trust or to the Labor State, whether its factories be socialized or not — its chimneys will not smoke in either case without coal or oil. Something might be learned about this, say, in Austria; and for that matter in Germany itself. A weaving factory administered according to the best Kautskian methods — if we admit that anything at all can be administered by Kautskian methods, except one's own inkstand — will not produce prints if it is not supplied with cotton. And we were simultaneously deprived both of Turkestan and American cot- ton. In addition, as has been pointed out, we had no fuel. Of course, the blockade and the civil war came as the result of the proletarian revolution in Russia. But it does not at all follow from this that the terrible devastation caused by the Anglo-Americaji-French blockade and the robber cam- paigns of Kolchak and Denikin have to be put down to the discredit of the Soviet methods of economic organization. ^ The imperialist war that preceded the revolution, with its'-; all-devouring material and technical demands, imposed a much j greater strain on our young industry than on the industry of J more powerful capitalist countries. Our transport suffered/ particularly severely. The exploitation of the railways in- creased considerably; the wear and tear correspondingly; while repairs were reduced to a strict minimum. The inevi- table hour of Nemesis was brought nearer by the fuel crisis. Our almost simultaneous loss of the Ddnetz coal, foreign coal, and the oil of the Caucasus, obliged us in the sphere of trans- port to have recourse to wood. And, as the supplies of wood fuel were not in the least calculated with a view to this, we had to stoke our boilers with recently stored raw wood, which has an extremely destructive effect on the mechanism of loco- motives that are already worn out. We see, in consequence, that the chief reasons for the collapse of transport preceded 130 Dictatorship vs. Democracy Novenber, 191 7. But even those reasons which are directly or indirectly bound up with the November Revolution fall under the heading of political consequences of the revolution; and in no circumstances do they affect Socialist economic niethods. The influence of political disturbances in the economic sphere was not limited only to questions of transport and fuel. If world industry, during the last decade, was more and more becoming a single organism, the more directly does this apply to national industry. On the other hand, the war and the \ revolution were mechanically breaking up and tearing asunder .Russian industry in every direction. The industrial ruin of Poland, the Baltic fringe, and later of Petrograd, began un- der Tsarism and continued under Kerensky, embracing ever new and newer regions. Endless evacuations simultaneous with the destruction of industry, of necessity meant the des- truction of transport also. During the civil war, with its changing fronts, evacuations assumed a more feverish and consequently a still more destructive character. Each side temporarily or permanently evacuated this or that industrial centre, and took all possible steps to ensure that the most im- portant industrial enterprises could not be utilized by the enemy: all valuable machines were carried off, or at any rate their most delicate parts, together with the technical and best workers. The evacuation was followed by a re-evacuation, which not infrequently completed the destruction both of the property transferred and of the railways. Some most import- ant industrial areas — especially in the Ukraine and in the Urals — changed hands several times. To this it must be added that, at the time when the des- truction of technieitl equipment was being accomplished on an unprecedented scale, the supply of machines from abroad, which hitherto played a decisive part in our industry, had completely ceased. But not only did the dead elements of production — build- ings, machines, rails, fuel, and raw material — suffer terrible losses under the combined blows of the war and the revolu- tion. Not less, if not more, did the chief factor of industry, its living creative force — ^the proletariat — suffer. The prole- tariat was consolidating the November revolution, building Dictatorship vs. Democracy 131 and defending the apparatus of Soviet power, and carrying on a ceaseless struggle with the White Guards. The skilled workers are, as a rule, at the same time the most advanced. The civil war tore away many tens of thousands of the best workers for a long time from productive labor, swallowing up many thousands of them for ever. The Socialist revolu- tion placed the chief burden of its sacrifices upon the prole- tarian vanguard, and consequently on industry. All the attention of the Soviet State has been directed, for the two and a half years of its existence, to the problem of military defence. The best forces and its principal re- sources were given to the front. In any case, the class struggle inflicts blows upon indus- try. That accusation, long before Kautsky, was levelled at it by all the philosophers of the social harmony. During simple economic strikes the workers consume, and do not produce. Still more powerful, therefore, are the blows inflicted upon economic life by the class struggle in its severest form — in the form of armed conflicts. But it is quite clear that the civil war cannot be classified under the heading of Socialist economic methods. The reasons enumerated above are more than sufficient to explain the difficult economic situation of Soviet Russia. There is no fuel, there is no metal, there is no cotton, trans- port is. destroyed, technical equipment is in disorder, living labor-power is scattered over the face of the country, and a high percentage of it has been lost to the front — is there any need to seek supplementary reasons in the economic Utopian- ism of the Bolsheviks in order to explain the fall of our in- dustry? On the contrary, each of the reasons quoted alone is sufficient to evoke the question: how is it possible at all that, under such conditions, factories and workshops should continue to function? And yet they do continue principally in the shape of war industry, which is at present living at the expense of the rest. The Soviet Government was obliged to re-create it, just like the army, out of fragments. War industry, set up again under these conditions of unprecedented difficulty, has fulfilled and is fulfiilling its duty: the Red Army is clothed, shod, equipped 132 Dictatorship vs. Democracy with its rifle, its machine gun, its cannon, its bullet, its shell, its aeroplane, and all else that it requires. As soon as the dawn of peace made its appearance — after the destruction of Kolchak, Yudenich, and Denikin — we placed before ourselves the problem of economic organization in the fullest possible way. And already, in the course of three or four months of intensive work in this sphere, it has become clear beyond all possibility of doubt that, thanks to its most intimate connection with the popular masses, the elasticity of its apparatus, and its own revolutionary initiative, the Soviet Government disposes of such resources and meth- ods for economic reconstruction as no other government ever had or has to-day. True, before us there arose quite new questions and new difficulties in the sphere of the organization of labor. Socialist theory had no answers to these questions, and could not have them. We had to find the solution in practice, and test it in practice. Kautskianism is a whole epoch behind the gigantic economic problems being solved at present by the Soviet Gov- emnient. In the form of Menshevism, it constantly throws obstacles in our way, opposing the practical measures of our economic reconstruction by bourgeois prejudices and bureau- cratic-intellectual scepticism. To introduce the reader to the very essence of the ques- tions of the organization of labor, as they stand at present before us, we quote below the report of the author of this book at the Third All-Russian Congress of Trade Unions. With the object of the fullest possible elucidation of the ques- • tion, the text of the speech is supplemented by considerable extracts from the author's reports at the All-Russian Congress of Economic Councils and at the Ninth Congress of the Com- munist Party. REPORT ON THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR Comrades, the internal civil war is coming to an end. On the western front, the situation remains undecided. It is pos- sible that the Polish bourgeoisie will hurl a challenge at its fate. ... . But even in this case — we do not seek it — the war Dictatorship vs. Democracy 133 will not demand of us that all-devouring concentration of forces which the simultaneous struggle on four fronts im- posed upon us. The frightful pressure of the war is becom- ing weaker. Economic requirements and problems are more and more coming to the fore. History is bringing us, along the whole line, to our fundamental problem — the organization of labor on new social foundations. The organization of labor is in its essence the organization of the new society: every historical form of society is in its foundation a form of organ- ization of labor. While every previous form of society was an organization of labor in the interests of a minority, which organized its State apparatus for the oppression of the over- whelming majority of the workers, we are making the first attempt in world-history to organize labor in the interests of the laboring majority itself. This, however, does not exclude the element of compulsion in all its forms, both the most gentle and the extremely severe. The element of State compulsion not only does not disappear from the historcial arena, but on the contrary will still play, for a considerable period, an ex- tremely prominent part. As a general rule, man strives to avoid labor. Love for work is not at all an inborn characteristic : it is created by eco- nomic pressure and social education. One may even say that man is a fairly lazy animal. It is on this quality, in reality, that is founded to a considerable extent all human progress; because if man did not strive to expend his energy econo- mically, did not seek to receive the largest possible quantity of products in return for a small quantity of energy, there would have been no technical development or social culture. It would appear, then, from this point of view that human laziness is a progressive force, Old Antonio Labriola, the Italian Marxist, even used to picture the man of the future as a "happy and lazy genius." We must not, however, draw ; the conclusion from this that the party and the trade unions must propagate this quality in their agitation as a moral duty. No, no! We have sufficient of it as it is. The problem before the social organization is just to bring "laziness" within a definite framework, to discipline it, and to pull mankind to- gether with the help of methods and measures invented by mankind itself. 134 Dictatorship vs. Democracy compulsory labor service / The key to economic organization is labor-power, skilled, 'elementarily trained, semi-trained, untrained, or unskilled. To work out methods for its accurate registration, mobilization, distribution, productive application, means practically to solve the problem of economic construction. This is a problem for a whole epoch — a gigantic problem. Its difficulty is intensified by the fact that we have to reconstruct labor on Socialist foundations in conditions of hitherto unknown poverty and terrifying misery. ■^ The more our machine equipment is worn out, the more V disordered our railways grow, the less hope there is for us of ', receiving machines to any significant extent from abroad in the near future, the greater is the importance acquired by the question of living labor-power. At first sight it would seem that there is plenty of it. But how are we to get at it ? How are we to apply it ? How are we productively to organize it ? Even with the cleaning of snow drifts from the railway tracks, we were brought face to face with very big difficulties. It was absolutely impossible to meet those difficulties by means of buying labor-power on the market, with the present insig- nificant purchasing power of money, and in the most complete absence of manufactured products. Our fuel requirements cannot be satisfied, even partially, without a mass application, on a scale hitherto unknown, of labor-power to work on wood, fuel, peat, and combustible slate. The civil war has played havoc with our railways, our bridges, our buildings, our sta- tions. We require at once tens and hundreds of thousands of hands to restore order to all this. For production on a large scale in our timber, peat, and other enterprises, we re- quire housing for our workers, if they be only temporary huts. Hence, again, the necessity of devoting a considerable amount of labor-power to building work. Many workers are required to organize river navigation; and so on, and so forth. . . . Capitalist industry utilizes auxiliary labor-power on a large scale, in the shape of peasants employed on industry for only part of the year. The village, throttled by the grip of landlessness, always threw a certain surplus of labor-power on to the market. The State obliged it to do this by its de- Dictatorship vs. Democracy 135 mand for taxes. The market offered the peasant manufac- tured goods. To-day, we have none of this. The village has acquired more land; there is not sufficient agricultural ma- chinery; workers are required for the land; industry can at present give practically nothing to the village ; and the market no longer has an attractive influence on labor-power. Yet labor-power is required — required more than at any time before. Not only the worker, but the peasant also, must give to the Soviet State his energy, in order to ensure that laboring Russia, and with it the laboring masses, should not be crushed. The only way to attract the labor-power neces- sary for our economic problems is to introduce coml>ulsory labo" service. The very principle of compulsory labor service is for the\' Communist quite unquestionable. "He who works not, neither 1 shall he eat." And as all must eat, all are obliged to work. ) Compulsory labor service is sketched in our Constitution and ! in our Labor Code. But hitherto it has always remained a mere principle. Its application has always had an accidental, impartial, episodic character. Only now, when along the whole line we have reached the question of the economic re-birth of the country, have problems of compulsory labor service arisen before us in the most concrete way possible. The only solution of economic difficulties that is correct from the point of view both of principle and of practice is to treat the population of the whole country as the reservoir of the necessary labor power — an almost inexhaustible reservoir — and to introduce strict order into the work ofits registration, mobilization, and utilization. How are we practically to begin the utilization of labor- / power on the basis of compulsory military service? Hitherto only the War Department has had any experience \y in the sphere of the registration, mobilization, formation, andi transference from one place to another of large, masses. These technical methods and principles were inherited by our War Department, to a considerable extent, from the past. In the economic sphere there is no such heritage; since f^ in that sphere there existed the principle of private property, \ and labor-power entered each factory separately from the 1 market. It is consequently natural that we should be obliged, y 136 Dictatorship vs. Democracy at any rate during the first period, to make use of the apparatus of the War Department on a large scale for labor mobiliza- tions. We have set up special organizations for the application of the principle of compulsory labor service in the centre and in the districts: in the provinces, the counties, and the rural districts, we have already compulsory labor committees at work. They rely for the most part on the central and local organs of the War Department. Our economic centres — the Supreme Economic Council, the People's Commissariat for Agriculture, the People's Commissariat for Ways and Com- munications, the People's Commissariat for Food — work out estimates of the labor-power they require. The Chief Com- mittee for Compulsory Labor Service receives these estimates, co-ordinates them, brings them into agreement with the local resources of labor-power, gives corresponding directions to its local organs, and through them carries out labor mobiliza- tions. Within the boundaries of regions, provinces, and coun- ties, the local bodies carry out this work independently, with the object of satisfying local economic requirements. All this organization is at present only in the embryo stage. It is still very imperfect. But the course we have adopted is unquestionably the right one. If the organization of the new society can be reduced fundamentally to the reorganization of labor, the organization of labor signifies in its turn the correct introduction of general labor service. This problem is In no way met by measures of a purely departamental and administrative character. It touches the very foundations of economic life and the social structure. It finds itself in conflict with the most powerful psychological habits and prejudices. The introduction ot compulsory labor service pre-supposes, on the one hand, a colossal work of education, and, on the other, the greatest possible care in the practical method adopted. The utilization of labor-power must be to the last degree economical. In our labor mobilizations we have to reckon with the economic and social conditions of every region, and with the requirements of the principal occupation of the local population — i.e., of agriculture. We have, if possible, to make use of the previous auxiliary occupations and part-time in- Dictatorship vs. Democracy 137 dustries of the local population. We have to see that the transference of mobilized labor-power should take place over the shortest possible distances — i.e., to the nearest sectors of the labor front. We must see that the number of workers mobilized correspond to the breadth of our economic problem. We must see that the workers mobilized be supplied in good time with the necessary implements of production, and with food. We must see that at their head be placed experienced and business-like instructors. We must see that the workers mobilized become convinced on the spot that their labor-power is being made use of cautiously and economically and is not being expended haphazard. Wherever it is possible, direct mobilization must be replaced by the labor task — i.e., by the imposition on the rural district of an obligation to jupply, for example, in such a time such a number of cubic sazhens of wood, or to bring up by carting to such a station so many poods of cast-iron, etc. In this sphere, it is essential to study experience as it accumulates with particular care, to allow a great measure of elasticity to the economic apparatus, to show more attention to local interests and social peculiarities of tradition. Jn a word, we have to complete, ameliorate,i/ perfect, the system, methods, and organs for the mobilization of labor-power. But at the same time it is necessary once for ^ all to make clear to ourselves that the principle itself of \ compulsory labor service has just so radically and permanently j replaced the principle of free hiring as the socialization of^ the means of production has replaced capitalist property. THE MILITARIZATION OF LABOR The introduction of compulsory labor service is unthink- able without the application, to a greater or less degree, of the methods of militarization of labor^ This term at once brings us into the region of the greatest possible superstitions and outcries from the opposition. To understand what militarization of labor m the Workers State means, and what its methods are, one has to make clear to oneself in what way the army itself was militarized— for, as we all know, in its first days the army did not at all possess the necessary "military" qualities. Durmg these two 138 Dictatorship vs. Democracy years we mobilized for the Red Army nearly as many soldiers as there are members in our trade unions. But the memDers of the trade unions are workers, while in the army the workers constitute about 15 per cent., the remainder being a peasant mass. And, none the less, we can have no doubt that the true builder and "militarizer" of the Red Army has been the foremost worker, pushed forward by the party and the trade union organization. Whenever the situation at the front was difificult, whenever the recently-mobilized peasant mass did not display sufHcient stability, we turned on the one hand to the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and on the other to the All-Russian Coimcil of Trade Unions. From both these sources the foremost workers were sent to the front, and there built the Red Army after their own likeness and image — educating, hardening, and militarizing the peasant mass. This fact must be kept in mind to-day with all possible clearness because it throws the best possible light on the mean- ing of militarization in the workers' and peasants' State. The '.militarization of labor has more than once been put forward jas a watchword and realized in separate branches of economic llife in the bourgeois countries, both in the West and in Russia sunder Tsarism. But our militarization is distinguished from Ithose experiments by its aims and methods, just as much as jthe class-conscious proletariat organized for emancipation is jdistinguished from the class-conscious bourgeoisie organized ifor exploitation. From the confusion, semi-unconscious and semi-deliberate, of two different historical forms of militarization — the pro- letarian or Socialist and the bourgeois — there spring the greater part of the prejudices, mistakes, protests, and outcries on this subject. It is on such a confusion of meanings that the whole position of the Mensheviks, our Russian Kautskies, is founded, as it was expressed in their theoretical resolution moved at the present Congress of Trade Unions. The Mensheviks attacked not only the militarization of labor, but general labor service also. They reject tiiese methods as "compulsory." They preach that general labor service means a low productivity of labor, while militarization means senseless scattering of labor-power. "Compulsory labor always is unproductive labor," — such Dictatorship vs. Democracy 139 is the exact phrase in the Menshevik resolution. This affirma- tion brings us right up to the very essence of the question. For, as we see, die question is not at all virhether it is wise or unwise to proclaim this or that factory militarized, or whether it is helpful or otherwise to give the military revolu- tionary tribimal powers to punish corrupt workers who steal materials and instruments, so precious to us, or who sabotage their work. No, the Mensheviks have gone much further into the question. Affirming that compulsory labor is always unproductive, they thereby attempt to cut the ground from under the feet of our economic reconstruction in the present tarnsitional epoch. For it is beyond question that to step from bourgeois anarchy to Socialist economy without a re- volutionary dictatorship, and without compulsory forms of economic organization, is impossible. In the first paragraph of the Menshevik resolution we are told that we are living in the period of transition from the capitalist method of production to the Socialist. What does this mean? And, first of all, whence does this come? Since what time has this been admitted by our Kautskians? They accused us — and this formed the foundation of our differences — of Socialist Utopianism; they declared — and this constituted the essence of their political teaching — that there can be no talk about the transition to Socialism in our epoch, and that our revolution is a bourgeois revolution, and that we Communists are only destroying capitalist economy, and that we are not leading the country forward but are 1 brow- ing it back. This was the root difference — the most profound, the most irreconcilable — from which all the others followed. Now the Mensheviks tell us incidentally, in the introductory paragraph of their resolution, as something that does not require proof, that we are in the period of transition from capitalism to Socialism. And this quite unexpected admission, which, one might think, is extremely like a complete capitula- tion, is made the more lightly and carelessly that, as the whole resolution shows, it imposes no revolutionary obligations on the Mensheviks. They remain entirely captive to the bourgeois ideology. After recognizing that we are on the road to Socialism, the Mensheviks with all the greater ferocity attack those methods without which, in the harsh and difficult con- I40 Dictatorship vs. Democracy ditions of the present day, the transition to Socialism cannot bg. acomplished. r'''^ Compulsory labor, we are told, is always unproductive. I We ask what does compulsory labor mean here, that is, to I what kind of labor is it opposed? Obviously, to free labor. \ What are we to understand, in that case, by free labor? That I phrase was formulated by the progressive philosophers of the ', bourgeoisie, in the struggle against unfree, i.e., against the \ serf labor of peasants, and against the standardized and re- l gulated labor of the craft guilds. Free labor meant labor which might be "freely" bought in the market; freedom was reduced to a legal fiction, on the basis of freely-hired slavery. We know of no other form of free labor in history. Let the very few representatives of the Mensheviks at this Congress explain to us what they mean by free, non-compulsory labor, if not the market of labor-power. History has known slave labor. History has known serf labor. History has known the regulated labor of the mediaeval craft guilds. Throughout the world there now prevails hired labor, which the yellow journalists of all countries oppose, as the highest possible form of liberty, to Soviet "slavery." We, on the other hand, oppose capitalist slavery by socially- regulated labor on the basis of an economic plan, obligatory for the whole people and consequently compulsory for each worker in the country. Without this we cannot even dream of a transition to Socialism. The element of material, physical, compulsion may be greater or less ; that depends on many conditions — on the degree of wealth or poverty of the country, on the heritage of the past, on the general level of culture, on the condition of transport, on the administrative aparatus, etc., etc. But obligation, and, consequently, compulsion, are essential conditions in order to bind down the bourgeois anarchy, to secure socialization of the means of production and labor, and to reconstruct economic life on the basis of a singje plan. . — For the Liberal, freedom in the long run means the market. /Can or canno*- the capitalist buy labor-power at a moderate Iprice — that iis for him the sole measure of the freedom oi jlabor. That measure is false, not only in relation to the 'future but also in connection with the past. Dictatorship vs. Democracy 141 It would be absurd to imagine that, during the time of bondage-right, work was carried entirely under the stick of physical compulsion, as if an overseer stood with a whip behind the back of every peasant. Mediaeval forms of eco- nomic life grew up out of definite conditions of production, and created definite forms of social life, with which the peas- ant grew accustomed, and which he at certain periods con- sidered just, or at any rate unalterable. Whenever he, under the influence of a change in material conditions, displayed hostility, the State descended upon him with ita material force, thereby displaying the compulsory character of the organiza- tion of labor. The foundations of the militarization of labor are those forms of State compulsion without which the replacement of capitalist economy by the Socialist will for ever remain an empty sound. Why do we speak of militarization? Of course, this is only an analogy — but an analogy very rich in content. No social organization except the army has ever considered itself Justified in subordinating citizens to itself in such a measure, and to control them by its will on all sides to such a degree, as the State of the proletarian dictatorship considers itself justified in doing, and does. Only the army — just because in its way it used to decide questions of the life or death of nations. States, and ruling classes — ^was endowed with powers of demanding from each and all complete sub- mission to its problems, aims, regulations, and orders. And it achieved this to the greater degree, the more the problems of military organization coincided with the requirements of social development. The question of the life or death of Soviet Russian is at present being settled on the labor front; our economic,. and together with them our professional and productive organiza- tions, haA'e the right to demand from their members all that devotion, discipline, and executive thoroughness, which hither- to only the army required. On the other hand, the relation of the capitalist to the worker is not at all founded merely on the "free" contract, but includes the very powerful elements of State regulation and material compulsion. The competition of capitalist with capitalist imparted a 142 Dictatorship vs. Democracy certain very limited reality to the fiction of freedom of labor ; but this competition, reduced to a minimum by trusts and ' syndicates, we have finally eliminated by destroying private property in the means of production. The transition to Social- \] ism, verbally acknowledged by the Mensheviks, means the transition from anarchical distribution of labor-power — by means of the game of buying and selling, the movement of market prices and wages — to systematic distribution of the workers by the economic organizations of the county, the province, and the whole country. Such a form of planned distribution pre-supposes the subordination of those distribut- ed to the economic plan of the State. And this is the essence of compulsory labor service, which inevitably enters into the programme of the Socialist organization of labor, as its funda- mental element. \i If organized economic life is unthinkable without compul- sory labor service, the latter is not to be realized, without the abolition of fiction of the freedom of labor, and without the substitution for it of the obligatory principle, which is sup- plemented by real compulsion. That free labor is more productive than compulsory labor is quite true when it refers to the period of transition from feudal society to bourgeois society. But one needs to be a Liberal or — at the present day — a Kautskian, to make that truth permanent, and to transfer its application to the period of transition from the bourgeois to the Socialist order. If it were true that compulsory labor is unproductive always and under every condition, as the Menshevik resolution says, all i our constructive work would be doomed to failure. \For we h can have no way to Socialism except by the authoritative re- / gulation of the economic forces and resources of the country, j and the centralized distribution of labor-power in harmony [ with the general State plan. The Labor State considers itself empowered to send every worker to the place where his work is necessary. And not one serious Socialist will begin to deny to the Labor State the right to lay its hand upon the worker who refuses to execute his labor duty. But the whole point is that the Menshevik path of transition to '"'Socialism" is a milky way, without the bread monopoly, without the aboli- tion of the market, without the revolutionary dictatorship, and Dictatorship vs. Democracy 143 without the militarization of labor. Without general labor service, without the right to orderV and demand fulfilment of orders, the trade unions will be \ transformed into a mere form without a reality; for the 1 young Socialist State requires trade unions, not for a struggle for better conditions of labor — that is the task of the social and State organizations as a whole — but to organize the [ working class for the ends of production, to educate, discipline, distribute, group, retain certain categories and certain workers at their posts for fixed periods — in a word, hand in hand ■' with the State to exercise their authority in order to lead the workers into the framework of a single economic plan. To defend, under such conditions, the "freedom" of labor means to defend fruitless, helpless, absolutely unregulated searches for better conditions, unsystematic, chaotic changes from factory to factory, in a himgry country, in conditions of terrible disorganization of the transport and food apparatus... What except the complete collapse of the working-class and com- plete economic anarchy could be the result of the stupid attempt to reconcile bourgeois freedom of labor with prole- tarian socialization of the means of production? v^^ Consequently, comrades, militarization of labor, in the V root sense indicated by me, is not the invention of invidual politicians or an invention of our War Department, but re- j presents the inevitable method of organization and disciplining | of labor-power during the period of transition from capitalism J to Socialism_j; And if the compulsory distribution of labor-- power, its brief or prolonged retention at particular industries and factories, its regulation within the framework of the general State economic plan — if these forms of compulsion lead always and everywhere, as the Menshevik resolution states, to the lowering of productivity, then you can erect a monument over the grave of Socialism. For we cannot build Socialism on decreased production. Every social organization is in its foundation an organization of labor, and if our new organization of labor leads to a lowering of its productivity, it thereby most fatally leads to the destruction of the Socialist society we are building, whichever way we twist and turn, whatever measures of salvation we invent. That is why I stated at the very beginning that the Men- 144 Dictatorship vs. Democracy shevik argument against militarization leads us to the root question of general labor service and its influence on the pro- .•^ductivity of labor. It is true that compulsory labor is always ( unproductive? We have to reply that that is the most pitiful 1 and worthless Liberal prejudice. The whole question is : who I applies the principle of compulsion, over whom, and for what I purpose? What State, what class, in what conditions, by \ what methods ? Even the serf organization was in certain conditions a step forward, and led to the increase in the pro- ductivity of labor. Production has grown extremely under capitalism, that is, in the epoch of the free buying and selling of labor-power on the market. But free labor, together with the whole of capitalism, entered the stage of imperialism and blew itself up in the imperialist war. The whole economic life of the world entered a period of bloody anarchy, mon- strous perturbations, the impoverishment, dying out, and des- truction of masses of the people. Can we, under such con- ditions, talk about the productivity of free labor, when the fruits of that labor are destroyed ten times more quickly than they are created? The imperialistic war, and that which fol- lowed it, displayed the impossibility of society existing any longer on the foundation of free labor. Or perhaps someone possesses the secret of how to separate free labor from the delirium tremens of imperialism, that is, of turning back the clo ck of social development half a century or a century? , >'^ If it were to turn out that the planned, and consequently compulsory, organization of labor which is arising to replace imperialism led to the lowering of economic life, it would mean the destruction of all our culture, and a retrograde movement of humanity back to barbarism and savagery. Happily, not only for Soviet Russia but for the whole of humanity, the philosophy of the low productivity of compul- sory labor — "everywhere and under all conditions" — is only \ a belated echo of ancient Liberal melodies. The productivity. \of labor is the total productive meaning of the most complex jcombination of social conditions, and is not in the least meas- ,ured or pre-determined by the legal form of labor. '^ The whole of human history is the history of the organ- ization and education of collective man for labor, with the ob- ject of attaining a higher level of productivity. Man, as I Dictatorship vs. Democracy 145 have already permitted myself to point out, is lazy; that is, he instinctively strives to receive the largest possible quantity of products for the least possible expenditure of energy. With- out such a striving, there would have been no economic devel- opment. The growth of civilization is measured by the pro- ductivity of human labor, and each new form of social rela- tions must pass through a test on such lines. "Free," that is, freely-hired labor, did not appear all at once upon the world, with all the attributes of productivity. It acquired a high level of productivity only gradually, as a result of a prolonged application of methods of labor organ- ization and labor education. Into that education there entered the most varying methods and practices, which in addition changed from one epoch to another. First of all the bourge- oisie drove the peasant from the village to the high road with its club, having preliminarily robbed him of his land, and when he would not work in the factory it branded his fore- head with red-hot irons, hung him, sent him to the gallows; and in the long run it taught the tramp who had been shaken out of his village to stand at the lathe in the factory. At this stage, as we see, "free" labor is little different as yet from convict labor, both in its material conditions and in its legal aspect. At different times the bourgeoisie combined the red-hot! irons of repression in different proportions with methods of I moral influence, and, first of all, the teaching of the priest, j As early as the sixteenth century, it reformed the old religion of Catholicism, which defended the feudal order, and adapted for itself a new religion in the form of the Reformation, which combined the free soul with free trade and free labor. It found for itself new priests, who became the spiritual shop- assistants, pious counter-jumpers of the bourgeoisie. The school, the press, the market place, and parliament were adapted by the bourgeoisie for the moral fashioning of the working-class. Different forms of wages — day-wages, piece wages, contract and collective bargaining^all these are merely changing methods in the hands of the bourgeoisie for the labor mobilization of the proletariat. To this there are added all sorts of forms for encouraging labor and exciting anibi- tion. Finally, the bourgeoisie learned how to gain possession 146 Dictatorship vs. Democracy ev«n of the trade unions — i.e., the organizations of the work- ing class itself; and it made use of them on a large scale, particularly in Great Britain, to discipline the workers. It domesticated the leaders, and with their help inoculated the workers with the fiction of the necessity for peaceful organic labor, for a faultless attitude to their duties, and for a strict execution of the laws of the bourgeois State. The crown of all this work is Taylorism, in which the elements of the scien- tific organization of the process of production are combined with the most concentrated methods of the system of sweat- / From all that has been said above, it is clear that the 'productivity of freely-hired labor is not something that ap- \peared all at once, perfected, presented by history on a salver. No, it was the result of a long and stubborn policy of repres- sion, education, organization, and encouragement, applied by the bourgeoisie in its relations with the working class. Step by step it learned to squeeze out of the workers ever more and more of the products of labor; and one of the most power- ful weapons in its hand turned out to be the proclamation of free hiring as the sole free, normal, healthy, productive, and saving form of labor. A legal form of labor which would of its own virtue guarantee its productivity has not been known in history, and I cannot be known. The legal superstructure of labor corres- \ponds to the relations and current ideas of the epoch. The productivity of labor is developed, on the basis of the devel- opment of technical forces, by labor education, by the gradual adaptation of the workers to the changed methods of produc- tion and the new form of social relations. The creation of Socialist society means the organization of the workers on new foundations, their adaptation to those foundations, and their labor re-education, with the one un- changing end of the increase in the productivity of labor. The working class, under the leadership of its vanguard, must (itself re-educate itself on the foundations of Socialism. Who- ever has not understood this is ignorant of the A B C of 'Socialist construction. What methods have we, then, for the re-education of the workers? Infinitely wider thdn the bourgeoisie has — and, in Dictatorship vs. Democracy 147 addition, honest, direct, open methods, infected neither by hypocrisy nor by lies. The bourgeoisie had to have recourse to deception, representing its labor as free, when in reality it \ was not merely socially-imposed, but actually slave labor. For j it was the labor of the majority in the interests of the mi-/ nority. We, on the other hand, organize labor in the interests/ of the workers themselves, and therefore we can have no) motives for hiding or masking the socially compulsory char- acter of our labor organization. We need the fairy stories neither of the priests, nor of the Liberals, nor of the Kauts- kians. We say directly and openly to the masses that they can save, rebuild, and bring to a flourishing condition a So- cialist country only by means of hard work, imquestioning discipline and exactness in execution on the part of every worker. The chief of our resources is moral influence — propa- ganda not only in word but in deed. General labor service has an obligatory character ; but this does not mean at all that it represents violence done to the working class. If com- pulsory labor came up against the opposition of the majority of the workers it would turn out a broken reed, and with it the whole of the Soviet order. The militarization of labor, when the workers are opposed to it, is the State slavery of Arakeheyev. The militarization of labor by the will of the workers themselves is the Socialist dictatorship. That com- pulsory labor service and the militarization of labor do not force the will of the workers, as "free" labor used to do, is best shown by the flourishing, unprecendented in the history of humanity, of labor voluntarism in the form of "Subbot- niks" (Communist Saturdays). Such a phenomenon there never was before, anywhere or at any time. By their own voltmtary labor, freely given — once a week and oftener — the workers clearly demonstrate not only their readiness to bear the yoke of "compulsory" labor but their eagerness to give the State besides that a certain quantity of additional labor. The "Subbotniks" are not only a splendid demonstration of Communist solidarity, but also the best possible guarantee for the successful introduction of general labor service. Such truly Communist tendencies must be shown up in their true light, extended, and developed with the help of propaganda. J^S Dictatorship vs. Democracy /^ The chief spiritual weapon of the bourgeoisie is religion; [ ours is the open explanation to the masses of the exact posi- \ tion of things, the extension of scientific and technical knowl- \ edge, and the initiation of the masses into the general eco- I nomic plan of the State, on the basis of which there must be j brought to bear all the labor-power at the disposal of the Soviet regime. Political economy provided us with the principal sub- stance of our agitation in the period we have just left: the capitalist social order was a riddle, and we explained that rid- dle to the masses. To-day, social riddles are explained to the masses by the very mechanism of the Soviet order, which V j draws the masses into all branches of adrninistration. Poli- \ tical economy will more and more pass into the realms of \ history. There move forward into the foreground the sciences \ which study nature and the methods of subordinating it to man. r' The trade unions must organize scientific and technical /educational work on the widest possible scale, so that every > worker in his own branch of industry shoud find the impulses \for theoretical work of the brain, while the latter should jagain return him to labor, perfecting it and making him (more productive. The press as a whole must fall into line with the economic problems of the country — not in that sense alone in which this is being done at present — i.e., not in the sense of a mere general agitation in favor of a revival of labor — ^but in the sense of the discussion and the weighing of concrete economic problems and plans, ways and means of their solution, and, most important of all, the testing and criticism of results already achieved. The newspapers must from day to day follow the production of the most important factories and other enterprises, registering their successes and failures encouraging some and pillorying others. . . . Russian capitalism, in consequence of its lateness, its lack of independence, and its resulting parasitic features, has had much less time than European capitalism technically to educate the laboring masses, to train and discipline them for produc- tion. That problem is now in its entirety imposed upon the industrial organizations of the proletariat. A good engineer, a good mechanic, and a good carpenter, must have in the Dictatorship vs. Democracy 149 Soviet Republic the same publicity and fame as hitherto was'^ enjoyed by prominent agitators, revolutionary fighters, and, j in the most recent period, the most courageous and capable,/ commanders and commissaries. Greater and lesser leaders of technical development must occupy the central position in the public eye. Bad workers must be made ashamed of doing their work badly. We still retain, and for a long time will retain, the system of wages. The further we go, the more will its im- portance become simply to guarantee to all members of society all the necessaries of life; and thereby it will cease to be a system of wages. But at present we are not sufficiently rich for this. Out main problem is to raise the quantity of products turned out, and to this problem all the remainder must be subordinated. In the present difficult period the system of wages is for us, first and foremost, not a method for guarantee- ing the personal existence of any separate worker, but a method of estimating what that individual worker brings by his labor to the Labor Republic. Consequently, wages, in the form both of money and of goods, must be brought into the closest possible touch with the productivity of individual labor. Under capitalism, the system of piece-work and of grading, the application of the Taylor system, etc., have as their object to increase the ex- ploitation of the workers by the squeezing-out of surplus value. Under Socialist production, piece-work, bonuses, etc., have as their problem to increase the volume of social product, and consequently to raise the general well-being. Those workers who do more for the general interest than others receive the Tight to a greater quantity of the social product than the lazy, the careless, and the disorganizers. Finally, when it rewards some, the Labor State cannot but punish others— those who are clearly infringing labor solidarity, undermining the commoii work, and seriously im- pairing the Socialist renaissance of the country. Repression for the attainment of economic ends is a necessary weapon of the Socialist dictatorship. All the measures enumerated above— and together with them a number of others— must assist the development of ISO Dictatorship vs. Democracy rivalry in the sphere of production. Without this we shall never rise above the average, which is a very unsatisfactory level. At the bottom of rivalry lies the vital instinct — the struggle for existence — which in the bourgeois order assumes the character of competition. Rivalry will not disappear even in the developed Socialist society ; but with the growing guaran- tee of the necessary requirements of life rivalry will acquire t an ever less selfish and purely idealist character. It will express itself in a striving to perform the greatest possible service for one's village, county, town, or the whole of society, and to receive in return renown, gratitude, sympathy, or, finally, just internal satisfaction from the consciousness of work well done. But in the difficult period of transition, in conditions of the extreme shortage of material goods, and the as yet insufficiently developed state of social solidarity, rivalry must inevitably be to a greater or less degree bound up with a striving to guarantee for oneself one's own requirements. This, comrades, is the sum of resources at the disposal of the Labor State in order to raise the productivity of labor. As we see, there is no ready-made solution here. We shall find it written in no book. For there could not be such a book. We are now only beginning, together with you, to write that book in the sweat and the blood of the workers. We say: working men and women, you have crossed to the path of regulated labor. Only along that road will you build the Socialist society. Before you there lies a problem which no one wilbsettle for you: the problem of increasing produc- tion on new social foundations. Unless you solve that problem, you will perish. If you solve it, you will raise humanity by a whole head. LABOR ARMIES The question of the application of armies to labor pur- poses, which has acquired amongst us an enormous importance from the point of view of principle, was approached by us by the path of practice, not at all on the foundations of theo- letical consideration. On certain borders of Soviet Russia, circumstances had arisen which had left considerable military forces free for an indefinite period. To transfer them to other Dictatorship vs. Democracy 151 active fronts, especially in the winter, was difficult in conse- quence of the disorder of railway transport. Such, for example, proved the position of the Third Anny, distributed over the provinces of the Ural and the Ural area. The leading workers of that army, understanding that as yet it could not be demobilized, themselves raised the question of its transference to labor work. They sent to the centre a more or less worked-out draft decree for a labor army. The problem was novel and difficult. Would the Red soldiers work? Would their work be sufficiently productive? Would it pay for itself? In this connection there were doubts even in our own ranks. Needless to say, the Mensheviks struck up a chorus of opposition. The same Abramovich, at the Congress of Economic Coimcils called in January or the beginning of February — that is to say, when the whole affair was still in draft stage — foretold that we should suffer an in- evitable failure, for the whole undertaking was senseless, an Arakcheyev Utopia, etc., etc. We considered the matter otherwise. Of course the difficulties were great, but they were not distinguishable in principle from many other difficulties of Soviet constructive work. Let us consider in fact what was the organism of the Third Army. Taken all in all, one rifle division and one cavalry division — a total of fifteen regiments — and, in addition, special units. The remaining military formations had already been transformed to other armies and fronts. But the appa- ratus of military administration had remained untouched as yet, and we considered it probable that in the spring we should have to transfer it along the Volga to the Caucasus front, against Denikin, if by that time he were not finally broken. On the whole, in the Third Army there remained about 120,000 Red soldiers in administrative posts, institu- tions, military units, hospitals, etc. In this general mass, mainly peasant in its composition, there were reckoned about 16,000 Communists and members of the organization of sym- pathizers — to a considerable extent workers of the Ural. In this way, in its composition and structure, the Third Army represented a peasant mass bound together into a military organization under the leadership of the foremost workers. In the army there worked a considerable number of military 152 Dictatorship vs. Democracy specialists, who carried out important military fimctions while remaining under the general control of the Communists. If we consider the Third Army from this general point of view, we shall see that it represents in miniature the whole of Soviet Russia. Whether we take the Red Army as a whole, or the organization of the Soviet regime in the county, pro- vince, or the whole Republic, including the economic organs, we shall find everywhere the same scheme of organization; millions of peasants drawn into new forms of political, eco- nomic, and social life by the organized workers, who occupy a controlling position in all spheres of Soviet construction. To posts requiring special knowledge, we send experts of the bourgeois school. They are given the necessary independence, but control over their work remains in the hands of the work- ing class, in the person of its Communist Party. The introduc- tion of general labor service is again only conceivable for us as the mobilization of mainly peasant labor-power under the guidance of the most advanced workers. In this way there were not, and could not, be any obstacles in principle in the way of application of the army to labor. In other words, the opposition in principle to labor armies, on the part of those same Mensheviks, was in reality opposition to "compulsory" labor generally, and consequently against general labor service and against Soviet methods of economic reconstruction as a whole. This opposition did not trouble us a great deal. Naturally, the military apparatus as such is not adapted directly to the process of labor. But we had no illusions about that. Control had to remain in the hands of the ap- propriate economic organs; the army supplied the necessary labor power in the form of organized, compact units, suitable in the mass for the execution of the simplest homogeneous types of work: the freeing of roads from snow, the storage of fuel, building work, organization of cartage, etc., etc. To-day we have already had considerable experience in the work of the labor application of the army, and can give not merely a preliminary or hypothetical estimate. What are the conclusions to be drawn from that experience? The Mensheviks have hastened to draw them. The same Abramo- vich, again, announced at the Miners' Congress that we had Dictatorship vs. Democracy 153 become bankrupt, that the labor armies represent parasitic formations, in which there are 100 officials for every ten workers. Is this true? No. This is the irresponsible and malignant criticism of men who stand on one side, do not know the facts .collect only fragments and rubbish, and are concerned in any way and every way either to declare our bankruptcy or to prophecy it. In reality, the labor armies have not only not gone bankrupt, but, on the contrary, have had important successes, have displayed their fidelity, are developing and are becoming stronger and stronger. Just those prophets have gone bankrupt who foretold that nothing would come of the whole plan, that nobody would begin to work, and that the Red soldiers would not go to the labor front but would simply scatter to their homes. These criticisms were dictated by a philistine scepticism, lack of faith in the masses, lack of faith in bold initiative, and organization. But did we not hear exactly the same criticism, at bottom, when we had recourse to extensive mobilizations for military problems? Then too we were frightened, we were terrified by stories of mass desertion, which was abso- lutely inevitable, it was alleged, after the imperialist war. Naturally, desertion there was, but considered by the test of experience it proved not at all on such a mass scale as was foretold; it did not destroy the army; the bond of morale and organization — Communist voltmtarism and State compul- sion combined — allowed us to carry out mobilizations of mil- lions to carry through numerous formations and redistributions, and to solve the most difficult military problems. In the long run, the army was victorious. In relation to labor problems, on the foundation of our military experience, we awaited the same results; and we were not mistaken. The Red soldiers did not scatter when they were transformed from military to labor service, as the sceptics prophesied. Thanks to our splendidly-organized agitation, the transference itself took place amidst great enthusiasm. True, a certain portion of the soldiers tried to leave the army, but this always happens when a large military formation is transferred from one front to another, or is sent from the rear to the front — in general when it is shaken up — and when potential desertion becomes active. But immediately the political sections, the press, the 154 Dictatorship vs. Democracy organs of struggle with desertion, etc., entered into their rights ; and to-day the percentage of deserters from our labor armies is in no way higher than in our armies on active service. The statement that the armies, in view of their internal structure, can produce only a small percentage of workers, is true only to a certain extent. As far as the Third Army is concerned, I have already pointed out that it retained its com- plete apparatus of administration side by side with an extreme- ly insignificant number of military units. While we — owing to military and not economic considerations — retained un- touched the staff of the army and its administrative appa- ratus, the percentage of workers produced by the army was actually extremely low. From the general number of 120,000 Red soldiers, 21% proved to be employed in administrative and economic work; 16% were engaged in daily detail work (guards, etc.) in connection with the large number of army institutions and stores; the number of sick, mainly typhus cases, together with the medico-sanitary personnel, was about 13% ; about 25% were not available for various reasons (detachment, leave, absence without leave, etc.). In this way, the total personnel available for work constitutes no more than 23% ; this is the maximum of what can be drawn for labor from the given army. Actually, at first, there worked only about 14%, mainly drawn from the two divisions, rifle and cavalry, which still remained with the army. But as soon as it was clear that Denikin had been crushed, and that we should not have to send the Third Army down the Volga in the spring to assist the forces on the Caucasus front, we immediately entered upon the disbanding of the clumsy army apparatus and a more regular adaptation of the army institutions to problems of labor. Although this work is not yet complete, it has already had time to give some very significant results. At the present moment (March, 1920), the former Third Army gives about 38% of its total composi- tion as workers. As for the military units of the Ural military area working side by side with it, they already provide 49% of their number as workers. This result is not so bad, if we compare it with the amount of work done in factories and workshops, amongst which in the case of many quite recently, in the case of some even to-day, absence from work Dictatorship vs. Democracy 155 for legal and illegal reasons reached 50% and over* To this one must add that workers in factories and workshops are not infrequently assisted by the adult members of their family, while the Red soldiers have no auxiliary force but themselves. If we take the case of the 19-year-olds, who have been ] mobilized in the Ural with the help of the military apparatus— principally for wood fuel work — we shall find that, out of their ! general number of over 30,000, over 75% attend work. This is already a very great step forward. It shows that, using the military apparatus for mobilization and formation, we can introduce such alterations in the construction of purely labor units as guarantee an enormous increase in the percen- tage of those who participate directly in the material process of production. Finally, in connection with the producfivity of miKtary labor, we can also now judge on the basis of experience. During the first days, the productivity of labor in the principal departments of work; in spite of the great moral enthusiasm, was in reality very low, and might seem completely discourag- ing when one read the first labor communiques. Thus, for the preparation of a cubic sazhen of wood, at first, one had to reckon thirteen to fifteen labor days ; whereas the standard — true, rarely attained at the present day — is reckoned at three days. One must add, in addition, that artistes in this q)herc are capable, under favorable conditions, of producing one cubic sazhen per day per man. What happened in reality? The military units were quartered far from the forest to be felled. In many cases it was necessary to march to and from work 6 to 8 versts, which swallowed up a considerable portion of the working day. There were not sufficient axes and_ saws on the spot. Many Red soldiers, bom in the plains, did not know the forests, had never felled trees, had never chopped or sawed them up. The provincial and county Timber Com- mittees were very far from knowing at first how to use the military units, how to direct them where they were required, how to equip them as they should be equipped. It is not * Since that time this percentage has been considerably lowered (June, 1920). 156 Dictatorship vs. Democracy wonderful that all tliis had as its result an extremely low level of productivity. But after the most crying defects in organization were eliminated, results were achieved that were much more satisfactory. Thus, acocrding to the most recent data, in that same First Labor Army, four and a half working days are now devoted to one sazhen of wood, which is not \so far from the present standard. What is most comforting, however, is the fact that the productivity of labor systematic- jally increases, in the measure of the improvement of its condi- Itions. While as to what can be achieved in this respect, we have a brief but very rich experience in the Moscow Engineer Regiment. The Chief Board of Military Engineers, which controlled this experiment, began with fixing the standard of production as three working days for a cubic sazhen of wood. This standard soon proved to be surpassed. In January there were spent on a cubic sazhen of wood two and one-third working days; in February, 2.1; in March, 1.5; which repre- rsents an exclusively high level of productivity. This result jwas achieved by moral influence, by the exact registration of I the individual work of each man, by the awakening of labor [pride, by the distribution of bonuses to the workers who ''produced more than the average result — or, to speak in the language of the trade unions, by a sliding scale adaptable to all individual changes in the productivity of labor. This ex- periment, carried out almost under laboratory conditions, clearly indicates the path along which we have to go in future. At present we have functioning a series of labor armies — the First, the Petrograd, the Ukrainian, the Caucasian, the South Volga, the Reserve. The latter, as is known, assisted considerably to raise the traffic capacity of the Kazan-Ekaterin- burg Railway; and, wherever the experiment of the adaptation of military units for labor problems was carried out with any intelligence at all, the results showed that this method is unquestionably live and correct. The prejudice concerning the inevitably parasitic nature of military organization — under each and every condition — proves to be shattered. The Soviet Army reproduces within itself the tendencies of the Soviet social order. We must not think in the petrifying terms of the last epoch: "milita- Dictatorship vs. Democracy 157 rism," "military organization," "the unproductiveness of com- pulsory labor." We must approach the phenomena of the new epoch without any prejudices, and widi eyes wide open; and we must remember that Saturday exists for man, and not vice versa ; that all forms of organization, including the milita- ry, are only weapons in the hands of the working class in power, which has both the right and the possibility of adapting, altering, refashioning, those weapons, until it has achieved the requisite result. THE SINGLE ECONOMIC PLAN The widest possible application of the principle of general labor service, together with measures for the militarization of labor, can play a decisive part only in case they are applied on the basis of a single economic plan covering the whole country and all branches of productive activity. This plan must be drawn up for a number of years, for the whole epoch that lies before us. It is naturally broken up into separate periods or stages, corresponding to the inevitable stages in the economic rebirth of the country. We shall have to begin with the most simple and at the same time most fundamental problems. ^ We have first of all to afford the working class the very \ possibility of living — though it be in the most difficult con- ditions — and thereby to preserve our industrial centres and save the towns. This is the point of departure. If we doj not wish to melt the town into agriculture, and transform the whole country into a peasant State, we must support our transport, even at the minimum level, and secure bread for tiie towns, fuel and raw materials for industry, fodder for the cattle. Without this we shall not make one step forward. Consequently, the first part of the plan comprises the improve- \ ment of transport, or, in any case, the prevention of its further \ deterioration and the preparation of the most necessary sup- plies of food, raw materials, and fuel. The whole of the next period will be in its entirety filled with the concentration and straining of labor-power to solve these root problems; and only in this way shall we lay the foundations for all that is to come. It was such a problem, incidentally, that we put 158 Dictatorship vs. Democracy before our labor armies. Whether the first or the following periods will be measured by months or by years, it is fruitless at present to guess. This depends on many reasons, beginning with the international situation and ending with the degree of single-mindedness and steadfastness of the working class. /* The second period is the period of machine-building in Y the interests of transport and the storage of raw material Vand fuel. Here the core is in the locomotive. At the present time the repairing of locomotives is carried on in too haphazard a fashion, swallowing up energies and resources beyond all measure. We must reorganize the repair- ing of our rolling-stock, on the basis of the mass production of spare parts. To-day, when the whole network of the railways and the factories is in the hands of one master, the Labor State, we can and must fix single t)T)es of locomotives and trucks for the whole country, standardize their constituent parts, draw all the necessary factories into the work of the mass production of spare parts, reduce repairing to the simple replacing of worn-out parts by new, and thereby make it possible to build new locomotives on a mass scale out of spare parts. Now that the sources of fuel and raw material are again open to us, we must concentrate our exclusive attention on the building of locomotives. /^ The third period will be one of machine-building in the (^interests of the production of articles of primary necessity. ^ Finally, the fourth period, reposing on the conquests of , the first three, will allow us to begin the production of articles "