Once in power, the proletariat will appear before the peasantry as its liberator.
Proletarian rule will mean not only democratic equality, free self-government, shifting the burden of taxation on the propertied classes, dissolution of the army among the revolutionary people, abolition of compulsory payments for the Church, but also recognition of all revolutionary changes made by the peasants in agrarian relations (seizures of land). These changes will be taken by the proletariat as a starting point for further legislative measures in agriculture. Under such conditions, the Russian peasantry will be interested in upholding the proletarian rule ("labor democracy"), at least in the first, most difficult period, not less so than were the French peasants interested in upholding the military rule of Napoleon Bonaparte who by force guaranteed to the new owners the integrity of their land shares.
But is it not possible that the peasants will remove the workingmen from their positions and take their place? No, this can never happen. This would be in contradiction to all historical experiences. History has convincingly shown that the peasantry is incapable of an independent political rôle.
The history of capitalism is the history of subordination of the village by the city. Industrial development had made the continuation of feudal relations in agriculture impossible. Yet the peasantry had not produced a class which could live up to the revolutionary task of destroying feudalism. It was the city which made rural population dependent on capital, and which produced revolutionary forces to assume political hegemony over the village, there to complete revolutionary changes in civic and political relations. In the course of further development, the village becomes completely enslaved by capital, and the villagers by capitalistic political parties, which revive feudalism in parliamentary politics, making the peasantry their political domain, the ground for their preëlection huntings. Modern peasantry is driven by the fiscal and militaristic system of the state into the clutches of usurers' capital, while state-clergy, state-schools and barrack depravity drive it into the clutches of usurers' politics.
The Russian bourgeoisie yielded all revolutionary positions to the Russian proletariat. It will have to yield also the revolutionary hegemony over the peasants. Once the proletariat becomes master of the situation, conditions will impel the peasants to uphold the policies of a labor democracy. They may do it with no more political understanding than they uphold a bourgeois régime. The difference is that while each bourgeois party in possession of the peasants' vote uses its power to rob the peasants, to betray their confidence and to leave their expectations unfulfilled, in the worst case to give way to another capitalist party, the working class, backed by the peasantry, will put all forces into operation to raise the cultural level of the village and to broaden the political understanding of the peasants.
Our attitude towards the idea of a "dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry" is now quite clear. It is not a question whether we think it "admissible" or not, whether we "wish" or we "do not wish" this form of political coöperation. In our opinion, it simply cannot be realized, at least in its direct meaning. Such a coöperation presupposes that either the peasantry has identified itself with one of the existing bourgeois parties, or it has formed a powerful party of its own. Neither is possible, as we have tried to point out.
CHAPTER VI
PROLETARIAN RULE
The proletariat can get into power only at a moment of national upheaval, of sweeping national enthusiasm. The proletariat assumes power as a revolutionary representative of the people, as a recognized leader in the fight against absolutism and barbaric feudalism. Having assumed power, however, the proletariat will open a new era, an era of positive legislation, of revolutionary politics, and this is the point where its political supremacy as an avowed spokesman of the nation may become endangered.
The first measures of the proletariat—the cleansing of the Augean stables of the old régime and the driving away of their inhabitants—will find active support of the entire nation whatever the liberal castraters may tell us of the power of some prejudices among the masses. The work of political cleansing will be accompanied by democratic reorganization of all social and political relations. The labor government, impelled by immediate needs and requirements, will have to look into all kinds of relations and activities among the people. It will have to throw out of the army and the administration all those who had stained their hands with the blood of the people; it will have to disband all the regiments that had polluted themselves with crimes against the people. This work will have to be done immediately, long before the establishment of an elective responsible administration and before the organization of a popular militia. This, however, will be only a beginning. Labor democracy will soon be confronted by the problems of a normal workday, the agrarian relations and unemployment. The legislative solution of those problems will show the class character of the labor government. It will tend to weaken the revolutionary bond between the proletariat and the nation; it will give the economic differentiation among the peasants a political expression. Antagonism between the component parts of the nation will grow step by step as the policies of the labor government become more outspoken, lose their general democratic character and become class policies.