Bolshevism: The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy

by John Spargo

That is all that is implied in the "dictatorship of the proletariat." Dictatorship by small minorities is not a new political phenomenon. All that is new when the minority attempting to establish its dictatorship is composed of poor, propertyless people, is the fact of their economic condition and status. That is the only difference between the dictatorship of Russia by the Romanov dynasty and the dictatorship of Russia by a small minority of determined, class-conscious working-people. It is not only the precise forms of oppressive power used by them that are identically characteristic of Czarism and Bolshevism, but their underlying philosophy. Both forms of dictatorship rest upon the philosophy of might as the only valid right. Militarism, especially as it was developed under Prussian leadership, has exactly the same philosophy and aims at the same general result, namely, to establish the domination and control of society by a minority class. The Bolsheviki have simply inverted Czarism and Militarism.

What really shocks the majority of people is not, after all, the methods or the philosophy of Bolshevism, but the fact that the Bolsheviki, belonging to a subject class, have seized upon the methods and philosophy of the most powerful ruling classes and turned them to their own account. There is a class morality and a class psychology the subtle influences of which few perceive as a matter of habit, which, however, to a great extent shape our judgments, our sympathies, and our antipathies. Men who never were shocked when a Czar, speaking the language of piety and religion, indulged in the most infamous methods and deeds of terror and oppression, are shocked beyond all power of adequate expression when former subjects of that same Czar, speaking the language of the religion of democracy and freedom, resort to the same infamous methods of terror and oppression.

II

The idea that a revolting proletarian minority might by force impose its rule upon society runs through the history of the modern working class, a note of impatient, desperate, menacing despair. The Bolsheviki say that they are Marxian Socialists; that Marx believed in and advocated the setting up, during the transitory period of social revolution, of the "dictatorship of the proletariat." They are not quite honest in this claim, however; they are indulging in verbal tricks. It is true that Marx taught that the proletarian dominion of society, as a preliminary to the abolition of all class rule of every kind, must be regarded as certain and inevitable. But it is not honest to claim the sanction of his teaching for the seizure of political power by a small class, consisting of about 6 per cent. of the population, and the imposition by force of its rule upon the majority of the population that is either unwilling or passive. That is the negation of Marxian Socialism. It is the essence of Marx's teaching that the social revolution must come as a historical necessity when the proletariat itself comprises an overwhelming majority of the people.

Let us summarize the theory as it appears in the Communist Manifesto: Marx begins by setting forth the fact that class conflict is as old as civilization itself, that history is very largely the record of conflicts between contending social classes. In our epoch, he argues, class conflict is greatly simplified; there is really only one division, that which divides the bourgeoisie and the proletariat: "Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other, bourgeoisie and proletariat." ... "With the development of industry the proletariat not only increases in numbers; it becomes concentrated in great masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more." ... "The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority in the interests of the immense majority." It is this "immense majority" that is to establish its dominion. Marx expressly points out that "all previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities." It is the great merit of the movement of the proletariat, as he conceives it, that it is the "movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority."

Clearly, when Lenine and his followers say that they take their doctrine of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" from Marx, they pervert the truth; they take from Marx only the phrase, not their fundamental policy. It is not to be denied that there were times when Marx himself momentarily lapsed into the error of Blanqui and the older school of Utopian, conspiratory Socialists who believed that they could find a short cut to social democracy; that by a surprise stroke, carefully prepared and daringly executed, a small and desperate minority could overthrow the existing social order and bring about Socialism. As Jaurès has pointed out,[50] the mind of Marx sometimes harked back to the dramatic side of the French Revolution, and was captivated by such episodes as the conspiracy of Babeuf and his friends, who in their day, while the proletariat was a small minority, even as it is in Russia now, sought to establish its dominion. But it is well known that after the failure of the Paris Commune, in 1871, Marx once and for all abandoned all belief in this form of the "dictatorship of the proletariat," and in the possibility of securing Socialism through the conspiratory action of minorities. He was even rather unwilling that the Manifesto should be republished after that, except as a purely historical document. It was in that spirit of reaction that he and Engels wrote in 1872 that passage—to which Lenine has given such an unwarranted interpretation—in which they say that the Commune had shown that "the working classes cannot simply take possession of the ready-made state machine and set it in motion for their own aims."

It was no less an interpreter of Marx than his great collaborator and friend, Frederick Engels, who, in 1895, stated the reasons for abandoning all belief in the possibility of accomplishing anything through political surprises and through the action of small conscious and determined minorities at the head of unconscious masses:

History proved that we were wrong—we and those who like us, in 1848, awaited the speedy success of the proletariat. It became perfectly clear that economic conditions all over the Continent were by no means as yet sufficiently matured for superseding the capitalist organization of production. This was proved by the economic revolution which commenced on the continent of Europe after 1848 and developed in France, Austria-Hungary, Poland, and, recently, also in Russia, and made Germany into an industrial state of the first rank—all on a capitalist basis, which shows that in 1848 the prevailing conditions were still capable of expansion. And to-day we have a huge international army of Socialists.... If this mighty proletarian army has not yet reached its goal, if it is destined to gain its ends only in a long drawn out struggle, making headway but slowly, step by step, this only proves how impossible it was in 1848 to change social conditions by forcible means ... the time for small minorities to place themselves at the head of the ignorant masses and resort to force in order to bring about revolutions, is gone. A complete change in the organization of society can be brought about only by the conscious co-operation of the masses; they must be alive to the aim in view; they must know what they want. The history of the last fifty years has taught us that.[51]

What Engels had in mind when he stressed the fact that history showed that in 1848 "the prevailing conditions were still capable of expansion" is the central Marxian doctrine of historical inevitability. It is surely less than honest to claim the prestige and authority of Marx's teachings upon the slender basis of a distorted version of his early thought, while completely ignoring the matured body of his doctrines. It may not matter much to the world to-day what Marx thought, or how far Lenine follows his teachings, but it is of importance that the claim set up by Lenine and Trotzky and many of their followers that they are guided by the principles of Marxian Socialism is itself demonstrably an evidence of moral or intellectual obliquity, which makes them very dangerous guides to follow. It is of importance, too, that the claim they make allures many Socialists of trusting and uncritical minds to follow them.

Many times in his long life Marx, together with Engels, found himself engaged in a fierce war against the very things Lenine and Trotzky and their associates have been trying to do. He thundered against Weitling, who wanted to have a "daring minority" seize the power of the state and establish its dictatorship by a coup d'état. He was denounced as a "reactionary" by Willich and Kinkel because, in 1850, he rejected with scorn the idea of a sudden seizure of political power through conspiratory action, and had the courage to say that it would take fifty years for the workers "to fit themselves for political power." He opposed Lassalle's idea of an armed insurrection in 1862, because he was certain that the economic development had not yet reached the stage which alone could make a social change possible. He fought with all the fierce impetuousness of his nature every attempt of Bakunin to lead the workers to attempt the seizure of political power and forcibly establish their rule while still a minority.[52] He fought all these men because he had become profoundly convinced that "no social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and new and higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society."[53] No "dictatorship of the proletariat," no action by any minority, however well armed or however desperate, can overcome that great law.