Dictatorship vs. Democracy Part 3

If we look back to the historical sequence of world concepts, the theory of natural law will prove to be a paraphrase of Christian spiritualism freed from its crude mysticism. The Gospels proclaimed to the slave that he had just the same soul as the slave-owner, and in this way established the equality of all men before the heavenly tribunal. In reality, the slave remained a slave, and obedience became for him a religious duty. In the teaching of Christianity, the slave found an expression for his own ignorant protest against his degraded condition. Side by side with the protest was also the consolation.

Christianity told him:--"You have an immortal soul, although you resemble a pack-horse." Here sounded the note of indignation. But the same Christianity said:--"Although you are like a pack-horse, yet your immortal soul has in store for it an eternal reward." Here is the voice of consolation. These two notes were found in historical Christianity in different proportions at different periods and amongst different cla.s.ses. But as a whole, Christianity, like all other religions, became a method of deadening the consciousness of the oppressed ma.s.ses.

Natural law, which developed into the theory of democracy, said to the worker: "all men are equal before the law, independently of their origin, their property, and their position; every man has an equal right in determining the fate of the people." This ideal criterion revolutionized the consciousness of the ma.s.ses in so far as it was a condemnation of absolutism, aristocratic privileges, and the property qualification. But the longer it went on, the more it sent the consciousness to sleep, legalizing poverty, slavery and degradation: for how could one revolt against slavery when every man has an equal right in determining the fate of the nation?

Rothschild, who has coined the blood and tears of the world into the gold napoleons of his income, has one vote at the parliamentary elections. The ignorant tiller of the soil who cannot sign his name, sleeps all his life without taking his clothes off, and wanders through society like an underground mole, plays his part, however, as a trustee of the nation's sovereignty, and is equal to Rothschild in the courts and at the elections. In the real conditions of life, in the economic process, in social relations, in their way of life, people became more and more unequal; dazzling luxury was acc.u.mulated at one pole, poverty and hopelessness at the other. But in the sphere of the legal edifice of the State, these glaring contradictions disappeared, and there penetrated thither only unsubstantial legal shadows. The landlord, the laborer, the capitalist, the proletarian, the minister, the bootblack--all are equal as "citizens" and as "legislators." The mystic equality of Christianity has taken one step down from the heavens in the shape of the "natural," "legal" equality of democracy. But it has not yet reached earth, where lie the economic foundations of society. For the ignorant day-laborer, who all his life remains a beast of burden in the service of the bourgeoisie, the ideal right to influence the fate of the nations by means of the parliamentary elections remained little more real than the palace which he was promised in the kingdom of heaven.

In the practical interests of the development of the working cla.s.s, the Socialist Party took its stand at a certain period on the path of parliamentarism. But this did not mean in the slightest that it accepted in principle the metaphysical theory of democracy, based on extra-historical, super-cla.s.s rights. The proletarian doctrines examined democracy as the instrument of bourgeois society entirely adapted to the problems and requirements of the ruling cla.s.ses; but as bourgeois society lived by the labor of the proletariat and could not deny it the legalization of a certain part of its cla.s.s struggle without destroying itself, this gave the Socialist Party the possibility of utilizing, at a certain period, and within certain limits, the mechanism of democracy, without taking an oath to do so as an unshakable principle.

The root problem of the party, at all periods of its struggle, was to create the conditions for real, economic, living equality for mankind as members of a united human commonwealth. It was just for this reason that the theoreticians of the proletariat had to expose the metaphysics of democracy as a philosophic mask for political mystification.

The democratic party at the period of its revolutionary enthusiasm, when exposing the enslaving and stupefying lie of church dogma, preached to the ma.s.ses:--"You are lulled to sleep by promises of eternal bliss at the end of your life, while here you have no rights and you are bound with the chains of tyranny." The Socialist Party, a few decades later, said to the same ma.s.ses with no less right:--"You are lulled to sleep with the fiction of civic equality and political rights, but you are deprived of the possibility of realizing those rights. Conditional and shadowy legal equality has been transformed into the convicts' chain with which each of you is fastened to the chariot of capitalism."

In the name of its fundamental task, the Socialist Party mobilized the ma.s.ses on the parliamentary ground as well as on others; but nowhere and at no time did any party bind itself to bring the ma.s.ses to Socialism only through the gates of democracy. In adapting ourselves to the parliamentary regime, we stopped at a theoretical exposure of democracy, because we were still too weak to overcome it in practice.

But the path of Socialist ideas which is visible through all deviations, and even betrayals, foreshadows no other outcome but this: to throw democracy aside and replace it by the mechanism of the proletariat, at the moment when the latter is strong enough to carry out such a task.

We shall bring one piece of evidence, albeit a sufficiently striking one. "Parliamentarism," wrote Paul Lafargue in the Russian review, _Sozialdemokrat_, in 1888, "is a system of government in which the people acquires the illusion that it is controlling the forces of the country itself, when, in reality, the actual power is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie--and not even of the whole bourgeoisie, but only of certain sections of that cla.s.s. In the first period of its supremacy the bourgeoisie does not understand, or, more correctly, does not feel, the necessity for making the people believe in the illusion of self-government. Hence it was that all the parliamentary countries of Europe began with a limited franchise. Everywhere the right of influencing the policy of the country by means of the election of deputies belonged at first only to more or less large property holders, and was only gradually extended to less substantial citizens, until finally in some countries it became from a privilege the universal right of all and sundry.

"In bourgeois society, the more considerable becomes the amount of social wealth, the smaller becomes the number of individuals by whom it is appropriated. The same takes place with power: in proportion as the ma.s.s of citizens who possess political rights increases, and the number of elected rulers increases, the actual power is concentrated and becomes the monopoly of a smaller and smaller group of individuals." Such is the secret of the majority.

For the Marxist, Lafargue, parliamentarism remains as long as the supremacy of the bourgeoisie remains. "On the day," writes Lafargue, "when the proletariat of Europe and America seizes the State, it will have to organize a revolutionary government, and govern society as a dictators.h.i.+p, until the bourgeoisie has disappeared as a cla.s.s."

Kautsky in his time knew this Marxist estimate of parliamentarism, and more than once repeated it himself, although with no such Gallic sharpness and lucidity. The theoretical apostasy of Kautsky lies just in this point: having recognized the principle of democracy as absolute and eternal, he has stepped back from materialist dialectics to natural law. That which was exposed by Marxism as the pa.s.sing mechanism of the bourgeoisie, and was subjected only to temporary utilization with the object of preparing the proletarian revolution, has been newly sanctified by Kautsky as the supreme principle standing above cla.s.ses, and unconditionally subordinating to itself the methods of the proletarian struggle. The counter-revolutionary degeneration of parliamentarism finds its most perfect expression in the deification of democracy by the decaying theoreticians of the Second International.

THE CONSt.i.tUENT a.s.sEMBLY

Speaking generally, the attainment of a majority in a democratic parliament by the party of the proletariat is not an absolute impossibility. But such a fact, even if it were realized, would not introduce any new principle into the course of events. The intermediate elements of the intelligentsia, under the influence of the parliamentary victory of the proletariat, might possibly display less resistance to the new regime. But the fundamental resistance of the bourgeoisie would be decided by such facts as the att.i.tude of the army, the degree to which the workers were armed, the situation in the neighboring states: and the civil war would develop under the pressure of these most real circ.u.mstances, and not by the mobile arithmetic of parliamentarism.

Our party has never refused to lead the way for proletarian dictators.h.i.+p through the gates of democracy, having clearly summed up in its mind certain agitational and political advantages of such a "legalized" transition to the new regime. Hence, our attempt to call the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly. The Russian peasant, only just awakened by the revolution to political life, found himself face to face with half a dozen parties, each of which apparently had made up its mind to confuse his mind. The Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly placed itself across the path of the revolutionary movement, and was swept aside.

The opportunist majority in the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly represented only the political reflection of the mental confusion and indecision which reigned amidst the middle-cla.s.ses in the town and country and amidst the more backward elements of the proletariat. If we take the viewpoint of isolated historical possibilities, one might say that it would have been more painless if the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly had worked for a year or two, had finally discredited the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks by their connection with the Cadets, and had thereby led to the formal majority of the Bolsheviks, showing the ma.s.ses that in reality only two forces existed: the revolutionary proletariat, led by the Communists, and the counter-revolutionary democracy, headed by the generals and the admirals. But the point is that the pulse of the internal relations of the revolution was beating not at all in time with the pulse of the development of its external relations. If our party had thrown all responsibility on to the objective formula of "the course of events"

the development of military operations might have forestalled us.

German imperialism might have seized Petrograd, the evacuation of which the Kerensky Government had already begun. The fall of Petrograd would at that time have meant a death-blow to the proletariat, for all the best forces of the revolution were concentrated there, in the Baltic Fleet and in the Red capital.

Our party may be accused, therefore, not of going against the course of historical development, but of having taken at a stride several political steps. It stepped over the heads of the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, in order not to allow German imperialism to step across the head of the Russian proletariat and conclude peace with the Entente on the back of the revolution before it was able to spread its wings over the whole world.

From the above it will not be difficult to deduce the answers to the two questions with which Kautsky pestered us. Firstly: Why did we summon the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly when we had in view the dictators.h.i.+p of the proletariat? Secondly: If the first Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly which we summoned proved backward and not in harmony with the interests of the revolution, why did we reject the idea of a new a.s.sembly? The thought at the back of Kautsky's mind is that we repudiated democracy, not on the ground of principle, but only because it proved against us.

In order to seize this insinuation by its long ears, let us establish the facts.

The watchword, "All power to the Soviets," was put forward by our Party at the very beginning of the revolution--_i.e._, long before, not merely the decree as to the dissolution of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, but the decree as to its convocation. True, we did not set up the Soviets in opposition to the future Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, the summoning of which was constantly postponed by the Government of Kerensky, and consequently became more and more problematical. But in any case, we did not consider the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, after the manner of the democrats, as the future master of the Russian land, who would come and settle everything. We explained to the ma.s.ses that the Soviets, the revolutionary organizations of the laboring ma.s.ses themselves, can and must become the true masters. If we did not formally repudiate the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly beforehand, it was only because it stood in contrast, not to the power of the Soviets, but to the power of Kerensky himself, who, in his turn, was only a screen for the bourgeoisie. At the same time we did decide beforehand that, if, in the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, the majority proved in our favor, that body must dissolve itself and hand over the power to the Soviets--as later on the Petrograd Town Council did, elected as it was on the basis of the most democratic electoral franchise. In my book on the October Revolution, I tried to explain the reasons which made the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly the out-of-date reflection of an epoch through which the revolution had already pa.s.sed. As we saw the organization of revolutionary power only in the Soviets, and at the moment of the summoning of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly the Soviets were already the de facto power, the question was inevitably decided for us in the sense of the violent dissolution of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, since it would not dissolve itself in favor of the Government of the Soviets.

"But why," asks Kautsky, "did you not summon a new Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly?"

Because we saw no need for it. If the first Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly could still play a fleeting progressive part, conferring a sanction upon the Soviet regime in its first days, convincing for the middle-cla.s.s elements, now, after two years of victorious proletarian dictators.h.i.+p and the complete collapse of all democratic attempts in Siberia, on the sh.o.r.es of the White Sea, in the Ukraine, and in the Caucasus, the power of the Soviets truly does not need the blessing of the faded authority of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly. "Are we not right in that case to conclude," asks Kautsky in the tone of Lloyd George, "that the Soviet Government rules by the will of the minority, since it avoids testing its supremacy by universal suffrage?" Here is a blow that misses its mark.

If the parliamentary regime, even in the period of "peaceful," stable development, was a rather crude method of discovering the opinion of the country, and in the epoch of revolutionary storm completely lost its capacity to follow the course of the struggle and the development of revolutionary consciousness, the Soviet regime, which is more closely, straightly, honestly bound up with the toiling majority of the people, does achieve meaning, not in statically reflecting a majority, but in dynamically creating it. Having taken its stand on the path of revolutionary dictators.h.i.+p, the working cla.s.s of Russia has thereby declared that it builds its policy in the period of transition, not on the shadowy art of rivalry with chameleon-hued parties in the chase for peasant votes, but on the actual attraction of the peasant ma.s.ses, side by side with the proletariat, into the work of ruling the country in the real interests of the laboring ma.s.ses. Such democracy goes a little deeper down than parliamentarism.

To-day, when the main problem--the question of life and death--of the revolution consists in the military repulse of the various attacks of the White Guard bands, does Kautsky imagine that any form of parliamentary "majority" is capable of guaranteeing a more energetic, devoted, and successful organization of revolutionary defence? The conditions of the struggle are so defined, in a revolutionary country throttled by the criminal ring of the blockade, that all the middle-cla.s.s groups are confronted only with the alternative of Denikin or the Soviet Government. What further proof is needed when even parties, which stand for compromise in principle, like the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, have split along that very line?

When suggesting to us the election of a Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, does Kautsky propose the stopping of the civil war for the purpose of the elections? By whose decision? If he intends for this purpose to bring into motion the authority of the Second International, we hasten to inform him that that inst.i.tution enjoys in Denikin's camp only a little more authority than it does in ours. But to the extent that the civil war between the Workers' and Peasants' Army and the imperialist bands is still going on, the elections must of necessity be limited to Soviet territory. Does Kautsky desire to insist that we should allow the parties which support Denikin to come out into the open? Empty and contemptible chatter! There is not one government, at any time and under any conditions, which would allow its enemies to mobilize hostile forces in the rear of its armies.

A not unimportant place in the discussion of the question is occupied by the fact that the flower of the laboring population is at present on active service. The foremost workers and the most cla.s.s-conscious peasants, who take the first place at all elections, as in all important political activities, directing the public opinion of the workers, are at present fighting and dying as commanders, commissars, or rank and file in the Red Army. If the most "democratic" governments in the bourgeois states, whose regime is founded on parliamentarism, consider it impossible to carry on elections to parliament in wartime, it is all the more senseless to demand such elections during the war of the Soviet Republic, the regime of which is not for one moment founded on parliamentarism. It is quite sufficient that the revolutionary government of Russia, in the most difficult months and times, never stood in the way of periodic re-elections of its _own_ elective inst.i.tutions--the local and central Soviets.

Finally, as a last argument--the last and the least--we have to present to the notice of Kautsky that even the Russian Kautskians, the Mensheviks like Martov and Dan, do not consider it possible to put forward at the present moment a demand for a Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, postponing it to better times in the future. Will there be any need of it then? Of this one may be permitted to doubt. When the civil war is over, the dictators.h.i.+p of the working cla.s.s will disclose all its creative energy, and will, in practice, show the most backward ma.s.ses what it can give them. By means of a systematically applied universal labor service, and a centralized organization of distribution, the whole population of the country will be drawn into the general Soviet system of economic arrangement and self-government. The Soviets themselves, at present the organs of government, will gradually melt into purely economic organizations. Under such conditions it is doubtful whether any one will think of erecting, over the real fabric of Socialist society, an archaic crown in the shape of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, which would only have to register the fact that everything necessary has already been "const.i.tuted" before it and without it.[3]

[3] In order to charm us in favor of a Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly Kautsky brings forward an argument based on the rate of exchange to the a.s.sistance of his argument, based on the categorical imperative. "Russia requires," he writes, "the help of foreign capital, but this help will not come to the Soviet Republic if the latter does not summon a Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, and does not give freedom of the Press; not because the capitalists are democratic idealists--to Tsarism they gave without any hesitation many milliards--but because they have no business faith in a revolutionary government."

(Page 218.)

There are sc.r.a.ps of truth in this rubbish. The Stock Exchange did really support the government of Kolchak when it relied for support on the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly. From its experience of Kolchak the Stock Exchange became confirmed in its conviction that the mechanism of bourgeois democracy can be utilized in capitalist interests, and then thrown aside like a worn-out pair of puttees. It is quite possible that the Stock Exchange would again give a parliamentary loan on the guarantee of a Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, believing, on the basis of its former experience, that such a body would prove only an intermediate step to capitalist dictators.h.i.+p. We do not propose to buy the "business faith" of the Stock Exchange at such a price, and decidedly prefer the "faith"

which is aroused in the realist Stock Exchange by the weapon of the Red Army.

4

TERRORISM

The chief theme of Kautsky's book is terrorism. The view that terrorism is of the essence of revolution Kautsky proclaims to be a widespread delusion. It is untrue that he who desires revolution must put up with terrorism. As far as he, Kautsky, is concerned, he is, generally speaking, for revolution, but decidedly against terrorism.

From there, however, complications begin.

"The revolution brings us," Kautsky complains, "a b.l.o.o.d.y terrorism carried out by Socialist governments. The Bolsheviks in Russia first stepped on to this path, and were, consequently, sternly condemned by all Socialists who had not adopted the Bolshevik point of view, including the Socialists of the German Majority. But as soon as the latter found themselves threatened in their supremacy, they had recourse to the methods of the same terrorist regime which they attacked in the East." (Page 9.) It would seem that from this follows the conclusion that terrorism is much more profoundly bound up with the nature of revolution than certain sages think. But Kautsky makes an absolutely opposite conclusion. The gigantic development of White and Red terrorism in all the last revolutions--the Russian, the German, the Austrian, and the Hungarian--is evidence to him that these revolutions turned aside from their true path and turned out to be not the revolution they ought to have been according to the theoretical visions of Kautsky. Without going into the question whether terrorism "as such" is "immanent" to the revolution "as such," let us consider a few of the revolutions as they pa.s.s before us in the living history of mankind.

Let us first regard the religious Reformation, which proved the watershed between the Middle Ages and modern history: the deeper were the interests of the ma.s.ses that it involved, the wider was its sweep, the more fiercely did the civil war develop under the religious banner, and the more merciless did the terror become on the other side.

In the seventeenth century England carried out two revolutions. The first, which brought forth great social upheavals and wars, brought amongst other things the execution of King Charles I, while the second ended happily with the accession of a new dynasty. The British bourgeoisie and its historians maintain quite different att.i.tudes to these two revolutions: the first is for them a rising of the mob--the "Great Rebellion"; the second has been handed down under the t.i.tle of the "Glorious Revolution." The reason for this difference in estimates was explained by the French historian, Augustin Thierry. In the first English revolution, in the "Great Rebellion," the active force was the people; while in the second it was almost "silent." Hence, it follows that, in surroundings of cla.s.s slavery, it is difficult to teach the oppressed ma.s.ses good manners. When provoked to fury they use clubs, stones, fire, and the rope. The court historians of the exploiters are offended at this. But the great event in modern "bourgeois" history is, none the less, not the "Glorious Revolution," but the "Great Rebellion."

The greatest event in modern history after the Reformation and the "Great Rebellion," and far surpa.s.sing its two predecessors in significance, was the great French Revolution of the eighteenth century. To this cla.s.sical revolution there was a corresponding cla.s.sical terrorism. Kautsky is ready to forgive the terrorism of the Jacobins, acknowledging that they had no other way of saving the republic. But by this justification after the event no one is either helped or hindered. The Kautskies of the end of the eighteenth century (the leaders of the French Girondists) saw in the Jacobins the personification of evil. Here is a comparison, sufficiently instructive in its ba.n.a.lity, between the Jacobins and the Girondists from the pen of one of the bourgeois French historians: "Both one side and the other desired the republic." But the Girondists "desired a free, legal, and merciful republic. The Montagnards desired a despotic and terrorist republic. Both stood for the supreme power of the people; but the Girondist justly understood all by the people, while the Montagnards considered only the working cla.s.s to be the people.

That was why only to such persons, in the opinion of the Montagnards, did the supremacy belong." The ant.i.thesis between the n.o.ble champions of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly and the bloodthirsty agents of the revolutionary dictators.h.i.+p is here outlined fairly clearly, although in the political terms of the epoch.

The iron dictators.h.i.+p 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 a.s.sist the enemy.

The severity of the proletarian dictators.h.i.+p in Russia, let us point out here, was conditioned by no less difficult circ.u.mstances. 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, j.a.panese, 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 Centenary of the Great Revolution," pages 6-7).

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. Although the question was not the abolition of property altogether, but only of the abolition of property in negroes, nevertheless, the inst.i.tutions of democracy proved absolutely powerless to decide the argument in a peaceful way.

The southern states, defeated at the presidential elections in 1860, decided by all possible means to regain the influence they had 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 with the slave-holding South, in spite of Habeas Corpus. The question of the lawfulness or the unlawfulness 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 Const.i.tutional solution of the question," 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 population of Baltimore so great, that not only the Government but the people of the United States also supported the most energetic measures."[4]

[4] (The History of the American War, by Fletcher, Lieut.-Colonel in the Scots Guards, St. Petersburg, 1867, page 95.)

Some goods that the rebellious South required were secretly 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 resolution 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 measures. The Republican Party had a decided majority in the North, and persons suspected of secessionism, _i.e._, of sympathizing 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 revolting slave-owners and smashed their printing presses. It occasionally happened that reactionary publishers were smeared 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 categorical imperative of Kautsky suffered in the civil war of the states a considerable blow. But this is not all. "The government, 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,"