Bolshevism: The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy

by John Spargo

As I copy these words from Lenine's book my memory recalls the days, more than twenty years ago, when as a workman in England and as shop steward of my union I joined with my comrades in breaking down the very things Lenine here proposes to set up in the name of Socialism. "Absolute submission to the will of one person" is not a state toward which free men will strive. Not willingly will men who enjoy the degree of personal freedom existing in democratic nations turn to this:

With respect to ... the significance of individual dictatorial power from the standpoint of the specific problems of the present period, we must say that every large machine industry—which is the material productive source and basis of Socialism—requires an absolute and strict unity of the will which directs the joint work of hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands of people. This necessity is obvious from the technical, economical, and historical standpoint, and has always been recognized by all those who had given any thought to Socialism, as its prerequisite. But how can we secure a strict unity of will? By subjecting the will of thousands to the will of one.

This subjection, if the participants in the common work are ideally conscious and disciplined, may resemble the mild leading of an orchestra conductor; but may take the acute form of a dictatorship—if there is no ideal discipline and consciousness. But at any rate, complete submission to a single will is absolutely necessary for the success of the processes of work which is organized on the type of large machine industry. This is doubly true of the railways. And just this transition from one political problem to another, which in appearance has no resemblance to the first, constitutes the peculiarity of the present period. The Revolution has just broken the oldest, the strongest, and the heaviest chains to which the masses were compelled to submit. So it was yesterday. And to-day, the same Revolution (and indeed in the interest of Socialism) demands the absolute submission of the masses to the single will of those who direct the labor process. It is self-evident that it can be realized only after great upheavals, crises, returns to the old; only through the greatest strain of the energy of the proletarian vanguard which is leading the people to the new order....

To the extent to which the principal problem of the Soviet rule changes from military suppression to administration, suppression and compulsion will, as a rule, be manifested in trials, and not in shooting on the spot. And in this respect the revolutionary masses have taken, after November 7, 1918, the right road and have proved the vitality of the Revolution, when they started to organize their own workmen's and peasants' tribunals, before any decrees were issued dismissing the bourgeois-democratic judicial apparatus. But our revolutionary and popular tribunals are excessively and incredibly weak. It is apparent that the popular view of the courts—which was inherited from the régime of the landowners and the bourgeoisie—as not their own, has not yet been completely destroyed. It is not sufficiently appreciated that the courts serve to attract all the poor to administration (for judicial activity is one of the functions of state administration); that the court is an organ of the rule of the proletariat and of the poorest peasantry; that the court is a means of training in discipline. There is a lack of appreciation of the simple and obvious fact that, if the chief misfortunes of Russia are famine and unemployment, these misfortunes cannot be overcome by any outbursts of enthusiasm, but only by thorough and universal organization and discipline, in order to increase the production of bread for men and fuel for industry, to transport it in time, and to distribute it in the right way. That therefore responsibility for the pangs of famine and unemployment falls on every one who violates the labor discipline in any enterprise and in any business. That those who are responsible should be discovered, tried, and punished without mercy. The petty bourgeois environment, which we will have to combat persistently now, shows particularly in the lack of comprehension of the economic and political connection between famine and unemployment and the prevailing dissoluteness in organization and discipline—in the firm hold of the view of the small proprietor that "nothing matters, if only I gain as much as possible."

A characteristic struggle occurred on this basis in connection with the last decree on railway management, the decree which granted dictatorial (or "unlimited") power to individual directors. The conscious (and mostly, probably, unconscious) representatives of petty bourgeois dissoluteness contended that the granting of "unlimited" (i.e., dictatorial) power to individuals was a defection from the principle of board administration, from the democratic and other principles of the Soviet rule. Some of the Socialist-Revolutionists of the left wing carried on a plainly demagogic agitation against the decree on dictatorship, appealing to the evil instincts and to the petty bourgeois desire for personal gain. The question thus presented is of really great significance; firstly, the question of principle is, in general, the appointment of individuals endowed with unlimited power, the appointment of dictators, in accord with the fundamental principles of the Soviet rule; secondly, in what relation is this case—this precedent, if you wish—to the special problems of the Soviet rule during the present concrete period? Both questions deserve serious consideration.[74]

With characteristic ingenuity Lenine attempts to provide this dictatorship with a theoretical basis which will pass muster as Marxian Socialism. He uses the term "Soviet democracy" as a synonym for democratic Socialism and says there is "absolutely no contradiction in principle" between it and "the use of dictatorial power of individuals." By what violence to reason and to language is the word democracy applied to the system described by Lenine? To use words with such scant respect to their meanings, established by etymology, history, and universal agreement in usage, is to invite and indeed compel the contempt of minds disciplined by reason's practices. As for the claim that there is no contradiction in principle between democratic Socialism and the exercise of dictatorial power by individuals, before it can be accepted every Socialist teacher and leader of any standing anywhere, the programs of all the Socialist parties, and their practice, must be denied and set aside. Whether democratic Socialism be wise or unwise, a practical possibility or an unrealizable idea, at least it has nothing in common with such reactionary views as are expressed in the following:

That the dictatorship of individuals has very frequently in the history of revolutionary movements served as an expression and means of realization of the dictatorship of the revolutionary classes is confirmed by the undisputed experience of history. With bourgeois democratic principles, the dictatorship of individuals has undoubtedly been compatible. But this point is always treated adroitly by the bourgeois critics of the Soviet rule and by their petty bourgeois aides. On one hand, they declared the Soviet rule simply something absurd and anarchically wild, carefully avoiding all our historical comparisons and theoretical proofs that the Soviets are a higher form of democracy; nay, more, the beginning of a Socialist form of democracy. On the other hand, they demand of us a higher democracy than the bourgeois and argue: with your Bolshevist (i.e., Socialist, not bourgeois) democratic principles, with the Soviet democratic principles, individual dictatorship is absolutely incompatible.

Extremely poor arguments, these. If we are not Anarchists, we must admit the necessity of a state—that is, of compulsion, for the transition from capitalism to Socialism. The form of compulsion is determined by the degree of development of the particular revolutionary class, then by such special circumstances as, for instance, the heritage of a long and reactionary war, and then by the forms of resistance of the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie. There is therefore absolutely no contradiction in principle between the Soviet (Socialist) democracy and the use of dictatorial power of individuals. The distinction between a proletarian and a bourgeois dictatorship consists in this: that the first directs its attacks against the exploiting minority in the interests of the exploited majority; and, further, in this, that the first is accomplished (also through individuals) not only by the masses of the exploited toilers, but also by the organizations which are so constructed that they arouse these masses to historical creative work (the Soviets belong to this kind of organization).[75]

This, then, is Bolshevism, not as it is seen and described by unfriendly "bourgeois" writers, but as it is seen and described by the acknowledged intellectual and political leader of the Bolsheviki, Nikolai Lenine. I have not taken any non-Bolshevist authority; I have not even restated his views in a summary of my own, lest into the summary might be injected some reflexes of my own critical thought. Bolshevism is revealed in all its reactionary repulsiveness as something between which and absolute, individual dictatorial power there is "absolutely no contradiction in principle." It will not avail for our American followers and admirers of the Bolsheviki to plead that these things are temporary, compromises with the ideal due to the extraordinary circumstances prevailing in Russia, and to beg a mitigation of the severity of our judgment on that account.