If the proletariat, acting through the Soviets, should successfully establish accounting and control on a national scale, there would be no need for such compromise. Through the Food Departments of the Soviets, through their organs of supply, we would unite the population in one co-operative directed by the proletariat, without the assistance from bourgeois co-operatives, without concessions to the purely bourgeois principle which compels the labor co-operatives to remain side by side with the bourgeois co-operatives instead of wholly subjecting these bourgeois co-operatives, fusing both?[69]
V
It is no mood of captious, unfriendly criticism that attention is specially directed to these compromises. Only political charlatans, ineffective quacks, and irresponsible soap-box orators see crime against the revolutionary program of the masses in a wise and honest opportunism. History will not condemn the Bolsheviki for the give-and-take, compromise-where-necessary policy outlined in the foregoing paragraphs. Its condemnation will be directed rather against their failure to act in that spirit from the moment the first Provisional Government arose. Had they joined with the other Socialists and established a strong Coalition Government, predominantly Socialist, but including representatives of the most liberal and democratic elements of the bourgeoisie, it would have been possible to bring the problems of labor organization and labor discipline under democratic direction. It would not have been possible to establish complete industrial democracy, fully developed Socialism, nor will it be possible to do this for many years to come.
But it would have been easy and natural for the state to secure to the workers a degree of economic assurance and protection not otherwise possible. It would have been possible, too, for the workers' organizations, recognized by and co-operating with the state, to have undertaken, in a large degree, the control of the conditions of their own employment which labor organizations everywhere are demanding and gradually gaining. The best features of "Guild Socialism" could nowhere have been so easily adopted.[70] But instead of effort in these directions, we find the Bolsheviki resorting to the Taylor System of Scientific Management enforced by an individual dictator whose word is final and absolute, to disobey whom is treason! There is not a nation in the world with a working-class movement of any strength where it would be possible to introduce the industrial servitude here described:
The most conscious vanguard of the Russian proletariat has already turned to the problem of increasing labor discipline. For instance, the central committee of the Metallurgical Union and the Central Council of the Trades Unions have begun work on respective measures and drafts of decrees. This work should be supported and advanced by all means. We should immediately introduce piece work and try it out in practice. We should try out every scientific and progressive suggestion of the Taylor System; we should compare the earnings with the general total of production, or the exploitation results of railroad and water transportation, and so on.
The Russian is a poor worker in comparison with the workers of the advanced nations, and this could not be otherwise under the régime of the Czar and other remnants of feudalism. The last word of capitalism in this respect, the Taylor System—as well as all progressive measures of capitalism—combine the refined cruelty of bourgeois exploitation and a number of most valuable scientific attainments in the analysis of mechanical motions during work, in dismissing superfluous and useless motions, in determining the most correct methods of the work, the best systems of accounting and control, etc. The Soviet Republic must adopt valuable and scientific and technical advance in this field. The possibility of Socialism will be determined by our success in combining the Soviet rule and the Soviet organization of management with the latest progressive measures of capitalism. We must introduce in Russia the study and the teaching of the Taylor System and its systematic trial and adaptation. While working to increase the productivity of labor, we must at the same time take into account the peculiarities of the transition period from capitalism to Socialism, which require, on one hand, that we lay the foundation for the Socialist organization of emulation, and, on the other hand, require the use of compulsion so that the slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat should not be weakened by the practice of a too mild proletarian government.
The resolution of the last (Moscow) Congress of the Soviets advocates, as the most important problem at present, the creation of "efficient organization" and higher discipline. Such resolutions are now readily supported by everybody. But that their realization requires compulsion, and compulsion in the form of a dictatorship, is ordinarily not comprehended. And yet, it would be the greatest stupidity and the most absurd opportunism to suppose that the transition from capitalism to Socialism is possible without compulsion and dictatorship. The Marxian theory has long ago criticized beyond misunderstanding this petty bourgeois-democratic and anarchistic nonsense. And Russia of 1917-18 confirms in this respect the Marxian theory so clearly, palpably, and convincingly that only those who are hopelessly stupid or who have firmly determined to ignore the truth can still err in this respect. Either a Kornilov dictatorship (if Kornilov be taken as Russian type of a bourgeois Cavaignac) or a dictatorship of the proletariat—no other alternative is possible for a country which is passing through an unusually swift development with unusually difficult transitions and which suffers from desperate disorganization created by the most horrible war.[71]
This dictatorship is to be no light affair, no purely nominal force, but a relentless iron-hand rule. Lenine is afraid that the proletariat is too soft-hearted and lenient. He says:
But "dictatorship" is a great word. And great words must not be used in vain. A dictatorship is an iron rule, with revolutionary daring and swift and merciless in the suppression of the exploiters as well as of the thugs (hooligans). And our rule is too mild, quite frequently resembling jam rather than iron.[72]
And so the dictatorship of the proletariat becomes the dictatorship of a single person, a super-boss and industrial autocrat: We must learn to combine the stormy, energetic breaking of all restraint on the part of the toiling masses with iron discipline during work, with absolute submission to the will of one person, the Soviet director, during work.[73]