The attitude of the Bolsheviki toward the Constituent Assembly changed as their electoral prospects changed. At first, believing that, as a result of their successful coup, they would have the support of the great mass of the peasants and city workers, they were vigorous in their support of the Assembly. In the first of their "decrees" after the overthrow of the Kerensky Cabinet, the Bolshevik "Commissaries of the People" announced that they were to exercise complete power "until the meeting of the Constituent Assembly," which was nothing less than a pledge that they would regard the latter body as the supreme, ultimate authority. Three days after the revolt Lenine, as president of the People's Commissaries, published this decree:

In the name of the Government of the Republic, elected by the All-Russian Congress of Councils of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates, with the participation of the Peasants' Delegates, the Council of the People's Commissaries decrees:

1. That the elections to the Constituent Assembly shall be held on November 25th, the day set aside for this purpose.

2. All electoral committees, all local organizations, the Councils of Workmen's, Soldiers' and Peasants' Delegates and the soldiers' organizations at the front are to bend every effort toward safeguarding the freedom of the voters and fair play at the elections to the Constituent Assembly, which will be held on the appointed date.

If this attitude had been maintained throughout, and had the Bolsheviki loyally accepted the verdict of the electorate when it was given, there could have been no complaint. But the evidence shows that their early attitude was not maintained. Later on, as reports received from the interior of the country showed that the masses were not flocking to their banners, they began to assume a critical attitude toward the Constituent Assembly. The leaders of the Socialist-Revolutionary party were warning their followers that the Bolsheviki would try to wreck the Constituent Assembly, for which they were bitterly denounced in organs like Pravda and Izvestya. Very soon, however, these Bolshevist organs began to discuss the Constituent Assembly in a very critical spirit. It was possible, they pointed out, that it would have a bourgeois majority, treating the Socialist-Revolutionists and the Cadets as being on the same level, equally servants of the bourgeoisie. Then appeared editorials to show that it would not be possible to place the destinies of Russia in the hands of such people, even though they were elected by the "unthinking masses." Finally, when it was clear that the Socialist-Revolutionary party had elected a majority of the members, Pravda and Izvestya took the position that the victorious people did not need a Constituent Assembly; that a new instrument had been created which made the old democratic method obsolete.[35] The "new instrument" was, of course, the Bolshevist Soviet.

IV

For the moment we are not concerned with the merits or the failings of the Soviet considered as an instrument of government. We are concerned only with democracy and the relation of the Bolshevist method to democracy. From this point of view, then, let us consider the facts. The Soviet was not something new, as so many of our American drawing-room champions of Bolshevism seem to think. The Soviet was the type of organization common to Russia. There were Soviets of peasants, of soldiers, of teachers, of industrial workers, of officers, of professional men, and so on. Every class and every group in the classes had its own Soviet. The Soviet in its simplest form is a delegate body consisting of representatives of a particular group—a peasants' Soviet, for example. Another type, more important, roughly corresponds to the Central Labor Union in an American city, in that it is composed of representatives of workers of all kinds. These delegates are, in the main, chosen by the workers in the shops and factories and in the meetings of the unions. The anti-Bolshevist Socialists, such as the Mensheviki and the Socialist-Revolutionists, were not opposed to Soviets as working-class organizations. On the contrary, they approved of them, supported them, and, generally, belonged to them.

They were opposed only to the theory that these Soviets, recruited in a more or less haphazard manner, as such organizations must necessarily be, were better adapted to the governing of a great country like Russia than a legal body which received its mandate in elections based upon universal, equal, direct, and secret suffrage. No one ever pretended that the Soviets represented all the workers of Russia—including peasants in that term—or even a majority of them. No one ever pretended that the Soviet, as such, was a stable and constant factor. New Soviets were always springing up and others dying out. Many existed only in name, on paper. There never has been an accurate list of the Soviets existing in Russia. Many lists have been made, but always by the time they could be tabulated and published there have been many changes. For these and other reasons which will suggest themselves to the mind of any thoughtful reader, many of the leaders of the revolutionary movement in Russia have doubted the value of the Soviet as a unit of government, while highly valuing it as a unit of working-class organization and struggle.

Back of all the strife between the Bolsheviki centered around the Soviets and the Socialist-Revolutionists and Mensheviki, centered around the Constituent Assembly, was a greater fact than any we have been discussing, however. The Bolsheviki with their doctrinaire Marxism had carried the doctrine of the class struggle to such extreme lengths that they virtually placed the great mass of the peasants with the bourgeoisie. The Revolution must be controlled by the proletariat, they argued. The control of the government and of industry by the people, which was the slogan of the old democracy, will not do, for the term "the people" includes bourgeois elements. Even if it is narrowed by excluding the great capitalists and landowners, still it embraces the lesser capitalists, small landowners, shopkeepers, and the petty bourgeoisie in general. These elements weaken the militancy of the proletariat. What is needed is the dictatorship of the proletariat. Now, only a very small part of the peasantry, the very poor peasants, can be safely linked to the proletariat—and even these must be carefully watched. It was a phase of the old and familiar conflict between agrarian and industrial groups in the Socialist movement. It is not very many years since the Socialist party of America was convulsed by a similar discussion. Could the farmer ever be a genuine and sincere and trustworthy Socialist? The question was asked in the party papers in all seriousness, and in one or two state organizations measures were taken to limit the number of farmers entering the party, so that at all times there might be the certainty of a preponderance of proletarian over farmer votes.

Similar distrust, only upon a much bigger scale, explains the fight for and against the Constituent Assembly. Lenine and his followers distrusted the peasants as a class whose interests were akin to the class of small property-owners. He would only unite with the poor, propertyless peasants. The leaders of the peasantry, on the other hand, supported by the more liberal Marxians, would expand the meaning of the term "working class" and embrace within its meaning all the peasants as well as all city workers, most of the professional classes, and so on. We can get some idea of this strife from a criticism which Lenine directs against the Mensheviki:

In its class composition this party is not Socialist at all. It does not represent the toiling masses. It represents fairly prosperous peasants and working-men, petty traders, many small and some even fairly large capitalists, and a certain number of real but gullible proletarians who have been caught in the bourgeois net.[36]

It is clear from this criticism that Lenine does not believe that a genuine Socialist party—and, presumably, therefore, the same must apply to a Socialist government—can represent "fairly prosperous peasants and working-men." We now know how to appraise the Soviet government. The constitution of Russia under the rule of the Bolsheviki is required by law to be posted in all public places in Russia. In Article II, Chapter V, paragraph 9, of this document it is set forth that "the Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic involves, in view of the present transition period, the establishment of a dictatorship of the urban and rural proletariat and the poorest peasantry in the form of a powerful All-Russian Soviet authority." Attention is called to this passage here, not for the sake of pointing out the obvious need for some exact definition of the loose expression, "the poorest peasantry," nor for the sake of any captious criticism, but solely to point out the important fact that Lenine only admits a part of the peasantry—the poorest—to share in the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Turning to another part of the same important document—Article III, Chapter VI, Section A, paragraph 25—we find the basis of representation in the All-Russian Congress of Soviets stated. There are representatives of town Soviets and representatives of provincial congresses of Soviets. The former represent the industrial workers; the latter represent the peasants almost exclusively. It is important, therefore, to note that there is one delegate for every twenty-five thousand city voters and one for every one hundred and twenty-five thousand peasant voters! In Section B of the same Article, Chapter X, paragraph 53, we find the same discrimination: it takes five peasants' votes to equal the vote of one city voter; it was this general attitude of the Bolsheviki toward the peasants, dividing them into classes and treating the great majority of them as petty, rural bourgeoisie, which roused the resentment of the peasants' leaders. They naturally insisted that the peasants constituted a distinct class, co-operating with the proletariat, not to be ruled by it. Even Marie Spiridonova, who at first joined with the Bolsheviki, was compelled, later on, to assert this point of view.

It is easy to understand the distrust of the Bolsheviki by the Socialist parties and groups which represented the peasants. The latter class constituted more than 85 per cent. of the population. Moreover, it had furnished the great majority of the fighters in the revolutionary movement. Its leaders and spokesmen resented the idea that they were to be dictated to and controlled by a minority, which was, as Lenine himself admitted, not materially more numerous than the old ruling class of landowners had been. They wanted a democratic governmental system, free from class rule, while the Bolsheviki wanted class rule. Generalizations are proverbially perilous, and should be very cautiously made and applied to great currents of thought and of life. But in a broad sense we may fairly say that the Socialism of the Socialist-Revolutionists and the Mensheviki, the Socialism of Kerensky and the men who were the majority of the Constituent Assembly, was the product of Russian life and Russian economic development, while the Socialism that the Bolsheviki tried by force of arms to impose upon Russia was as un-Russian as it could be. The Bolshevist conception of Socialism had its origin in Marxian theory. Both Marx and Engels freely predicted the setting up of "a dictatorship of the proletariat"—the phrase which the Bolsheviki have made their own.

Yet, the Bolsheviki are not Marxians. Their Socialism is as little Marxian as Russian. When Marx and Engels forecasted the establishment of proletarian dictatorship it was part of their theorem that economic evolution would have reduced practically all the masses to a proletarian state; that industrial and commercial concentration would have reached such a stage of development that there would be on the one side a small class of owners, and, on the other side, the proletariat. There would be, they believed, no middle class. The disappearance of the middle class was, for them and for their followers, a development absolutely certain to take place. They saw the same process going on with the same result in agriculture. It might be less rapid in its progress, but not one whit less certain. It was only as the inevitable climax to this evolution that they believed the "dictatorship of the proletariat" would be achieved. In other words, the proletariat would be composed of the overwhelming majority of the body politic and social. That is very different from the Bolshevist attempt to set up the dictatorship of the proletariat in a land where more than 85 per cent, of the people are peasants; where industrial development is behind the rest of the world, and where dictatorship of the proletariat means the domination of more than one hundred and eighty millions of people by two hundred thousand "proletarians and the poorest peasants," according to Lenine's statement, or by six per cent. of the population if we assume the entire proletariat to be united in the dictatorship!

V

At the time of the disturbances which took place in Petrograd in December, over the delay in holding the Constituent Assembly, the Bolshevik government announced that the Constituante would be permitted to convene on January 18th, provided that not less than four hundred delegates were in attendance. Accordingly, the defenders of the Constituent Assembly arranged for a great demonstration to take place on that day in honor of the event. It was also intended to be a warning to the Bolsheviki not to try to further interfere with the Constituante. An earnest but entirely peaceful mass of people paraded with flags and banners and signs containing such inscriptions as "Proletarians of All Countries, Unite!" "Land and Liberty," "Long Live the Constituent Assembly," and many others. They set out from different parts of the city to unite at the Field of Mars and march to the Taurida Palace to protest against any interference with the Constituent Assembly. As they neared the Taurida Palace they were confronted by Red Guards, who, without any preliminary warning or any effort at persuasion, fired into the crowd. Among the first victims was a member of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Peasants' Delegates, the Siberian peasant Logvinov, part of whose head was shot away by an explosive bullet. Another victim was the militant Socialist-Revolutionist Gorbatchevskaia. Several students and a number of workmen were also killed. Similar massacres occurred at the same time in other parts of the city. Other processions wending their way toward the meeting-place were fired into. Altogether one hundred persons were either killed or very seriously wounded by the Red Guards, who said that they had received orders "not to spare the cartridges." Similar demonstrations were held in Moscow and other cities and were similarly treated by the Red Guards. In Moscow especially the loss of life was great. Yet the Bolshevist organs passed these tragic events over in complete silence. They did not mention the massacres, nor did they mention the great demonstration at the funeral of the victims, four days later.

When the Constituent Assembly was formally opened, on January 18th, it was well known on every hand that the Bolshevik government would use force to destroy it if the deputies refused to do exactly as they were told. The corridors were filled with armed soldiers and sailors, ready for action.

The Lenine-Trotzky Ministry had summoned an extraordinary Congress of Soviets to meet in Petrograd at the same time, and it was well understood that they were determined to erect this Soviet Congress into the supreme legislative power. If the Constituent Assembly would consent to this, so much the better, of course. In that case there would be a valuable legal sanction, the sanction of a democratically elected body expressly charged with the task of determining the form and manner of government for Free Russia. Should the Constituent Assembly not be willing, there was an opportunity for another coup d'etat.

In precisely the same way as the Ministry during the last years of Czarism would lay before the Duma certain documents and demand that they be approved, so the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets—the Bolshevik power—demanded that the Constituent Assembly meekly assent to a document prepared for it in advance. It was at once a test and a challenge; if the Assembly was willing to accept orders from the Soviet authority and content itself with rubber-stamping the decrees of the latter, as ordered, it could be permitted to go on—at least for a time. At the head of the Constituent Assembly, as president, the deputies elected Victor Chernov, who had been Minister of Agriculture under Kerensky. At the head of the Bolshevik faction was Sverdlov, chairman of the Executive Committee of the Soviets. He it was who opened the fight, demanding that the following declaration be adopted by the Constituante as the basis of a Constitution for Russia:

DECLARATION OF THE RIGHT'S OF THE TOILING AND EXPLOITED PEOPLE

I

1. Russia is to be declared a republic of the workers', soldiers' and peasants' Soviets. All power in the cities and in the country belongs to the Soviets.

2. The Russian Soviet Republic is based on the free federation of free peoples, on the federation of national Soviet republics.

II

Assuming as its duty the destruction of all exploitation of the workers, the complete abolition of the class system of society, and the placing of society upon a socialistic basis, and the ultimate bringing about of victory for Socialism in every country, the Constituent Assembly further decides:

1. That the socialization of land be realized, private ownership of land be abolished, all the land be proclaimed common property of the people and turned over to the toiling masses without compensation on the basis of equal right to the use of land.

All forests, mines, and waters which are of social importance, as well as all living and other forms of property, and all agricultural enterprises, are declared national property.

2. To confirm the decree of the Soviets concerning the inspection of working conditions, the highest department of national economy, which is the first step in achieving the ownership by the Soviets of the factories, mines, railroads, and means of production and transportation.

3. To confirm the decree of the Soviets transferring all banks to the ownership of the Soviet Republic, as one of the steps in the freeing of the toiling masses from the yoke of capitalism.

4. To enforce general compulsory labor, in order to destroy the class of parasites, and to reorganize the economic life. In order to make the power of the toiling masses secure and to prevent the restoration of the rule of the exploiters, the toiling masses will be armed and a Red Guard composed of workers and peasants formed, and the exploiting classes shall be disarmed.

III

1. Declaring its firm determination to make society free from the chaos of capitalism and imperialism, which has drenched the country in blood in this most criminal war of all wars, the Constituent Assembly accepts completely the policy of the Soviets, whose duty it is to publish all secret treaties, to organize the most extensive fraternization between the workers and peasants of warring armies, and by revolutionary methods to bring about a democratic peace among the belligerent nations without annexations and indemnities, on the basis of the free self-determination of nations—at any price.

2. For this purpose the Constituent Assembly declares its complete separation from the brutal policy of the bourgeoisie, which furthers the well-being of the exploiters in a few selected nations by enslaving hundreds of millions of the toiling peoples of the colonies and the small nations generally.

The Constituent Assembly accepts the policy of the Council of People's Commissars in giving complete independence to Finland, in beginning the withdrawal of troops from Persia, and in declaring for Armenia the right of self-determination.

A blow at international financial capital is the Soviet decree which annuls foreign loans made by the governments of the Czar, the landowners and the bourgeoisie. The Soviet government is to continue firmly on this road until the final victory from the yoke of capitalism is won through international workers' revolt.

As the Constituent Assembly was elected on the basis of lists of candidates nominated before the November Revolution, when the people as a whole could not yet rise against their exploiters, and did not know how powerful would be the strength of the exploiters in defending their privileges, and had not yet begun to create a Socialist society, the Constituent Assembly considers it, even from a formal point of view, unjust to oppose the Soviet power. The Constituent Assembly is of the opinion that at this moment, in the decisive hour of the struggle of the people against their exploiters, the exploiters must not have a seat in any government organization or institution. The power completely and without exception belongs to the people and its authorized representatives—the workers', soldiers' and peasants' Soviets.

Supporting the Soviet rule and accepting the orders of the Council of People's Commissars, the Constituent Assembly acknowledges its duty to outline a form for the reorganization of society.

Striving at the same time to organize a free and voluntary, and thereby also a complete and strong, union among the toiling classes of all the Russian nations, the Constituent Assembly limits itself to outlining the basis of the federation of Russian Soviet Republics, leaving to the people, to the workers and soldiers, to decide for themselves, in their own Soviet meetings, if they are willing, and on what conditions they prefer, to join the federated government and other federations of Soviet enterprise. These general principles are to be published without delay, and the official representatives of the Soviets are required to read them at the opening of the Constituent Assembly.

The demand for the adoption of this declaration gave rise to a long and stormy debate. The leaders of the Socialist-Revolutionists and the Mensheviki stoutly contended that the adoption of the declaration would be virtually an abdication of the task for which the Constituent Assembly had been elected by the people, and, therefore, a betrayal of trust. They could not admit the impudent claim that an election held in November, based upon universal suffrage, on lists made up as recently as September, could in January be set aside as being "obsolete" and "unrepresentative." That a majority of the Bolshevik candidates put forward had been defeated, nullified, they argued, the claim of the Bolsheviki that the fact that the candidates had all been nominated before the November insurrection should be regarded as reason for acknowledging the Bolshevik Soviet as superior to the Constituent Assembly. They insisted upon the point, which the Bolshevik spokesmen did not attempt to controvert, that the Constituent Assembly represented the votes of many millions of men and women,[37] while the total actual membership represented by the Soviet power did not at the time number one hundred thousand!

As might have been expected, the proposal to adopt the declaration submitted to the Constituent Assembly in this arrogant fashion was rejected by an enormous majority. The Bolshevik members, who had tried to make the session a farce, thereupon withdrew after submitting a statement in which they charged the Constituent Assembly with being a counter-revolutionary body, and the Revolutionary-Socialist party with being a traitorous party "directing the fight of the bourgeoisie against the workers' revolution." The statement said that the Bolshevik members withdrew "in order to permit the Soviet power to determine what relations it would hold with the counter-revolutionary section of the Constituent Assembly"—a threat which needed no interpretation.

After the withdrawal of the Bolshevik members, the majority very quickly adopted a declaration which had been carefully prepared by the Socialist-Revolutionists during the weeks which had elapsed since the elections in the preliminary conferences which had been held for that purpose. The declaration read as follows:

RUSSIA'S FORM OF GOVERNMENT

In the name of the peoples who compose the Russian state, the All-Russian Constituent Assembly proclaims the Russian State to be the Russian Democratic Federated Republic, uniting indissolubly into one whole the peoples and territories which are sovereign within the limits prescribed by the Federal Constitution.

LAWS REGARDING LAND OWNERSHIP

1. The right to privately own land within the boundaries of the Russian Republic is hereby abolished forever.

2. All land within the boundaries of the Russian Republic, with all mines, forests, and waters, is hereby declared the property of the nation.

3. The republic has the right to control all land, with all the mines, forests, and waters thereof, through the central and local administration, in accordance with the regulation provided by the present law.

4. The autonomous provinces of the Russian Republic have title to land on the basis of the present law and in accordance with the Federal Constitution.

5. The tasks of the central and local governments as regards the use of lands, mines, forests, and waters are:

a. The creation of conditions conducive to the best possible utilization of the country's natural resources and the highest possible development of its productive forces.

b. The fair distribution of all natural wealth among the people.

6. The rights of individuals and institutions to land, mines, forests, and waters are restricted merely to utilization by said individuals and institutions.

7. The use of all mines, forests, land, and waters is free to all citizens of the Russian Republic, regardless of nationality or creed. This includes all unions of citizens, also governmental and public institutions.

8. The right to use the land is to be acquired and discontinued on the basis prescribed by this fundamental law.

9. All titles to land at present held by the individuals, associations, and institutions are abolished in so far as they contradict this law.

10. All land, mines, forests, waters, at present owned by and otherwise in the possession of individuals, associations, and institutions, are confiscated without compensation for the loss incurred.

DEMOCRATIC PEACE

In the name of the peoples of the Russian Republic, the All-Russian Constituent Assembly expresses the firm will of the people to immediately discontinue the war and conclude a just and general peace, appeals to the Allied countries proposing to define jointly the exact terms of the democratic peace acceptable to all the belligerent nations, in order to present these terms, in behalf of the Allies, to the governments fighting against the Russian Republic and her allies.

The Constituent Assembly firmly believes that the attempts of the peoples of Russia to end the disastrous war will meet with a unanimous response on the part of the peoples and the governments of the Allied countries, and that by common efforts a speedy peace will be attained, which will safeguard the well-being and dignity of all the belligerent countries.

The Constituent Assembly resolves to elect from its midst an authorized delegation which will carry on negotiations with the representatives of the Allied countries and which will present the appeal to jointly formulate terms upon which a speedy termination of the war will be possible, as well as for the purpose of carrying out the decisions of the Constituent Assembly regarding the question of peace negotiations with the countries fighting against us.

This delegation, which is to be under the guidance of the Constituent Assembly, is to immediately start fulfilling the duties imposed upon it.

Expressing, in the name of the peoples of Russia, its regret that the negotiations with Germany, which were started without preliminary agreement with the Allied countries, have assumed the character of negotiations for a separate peace, the Constituent Assembly, in the name of the peoples of the Federated Republic, while continuing the armistice, accepts the further carrying on of the negotiations with the countries warring against us in order to work toward a general democratic peace which shall be in accordance "with the people's will and protect Russia's interests."

VI

Immediately following the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly a body of Red Guards shot the two Constitutional Democrats, Kokoshkin and Shingariev, who were at the time confined as prisoners who were ill in the Naval Hospital. The reason for the brutal murder of these men was that they were bourgeoisie and, therefore, enemies of the working class! It is only just to add that the foul deed was immediately condemned by the Bolshevik government and by the Soviet of Petrograd. "The working class will never approve of any outrages upon our prisoners, whatever may have been their political offense against the people and their Revolution," the latter body declared, in a resolution on the subject of the assassinations. Two days after the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly twenty-three Socialist-Revolutionist members of that body, assembled at the office of their party, were arrested, and the premises occupied by Red Guards, the procedure being exactly as it used to be in the old days under the Czar.

There is a relentless logic of life and action from which there can be no escape. Czarism was a product of that inexorable process. All its oppression and brutality proceeded by an inevitable and irresistible sequence from the first determination and effort to realize the principle of autocracy. Any dictatorship, whether of a single man, a group or class, must rest ultimately upon oppressive and coercive force. Believing that the means would be justified by the end, Lenine and Trotzky and their associates had suppressed the Constituent Assembly, claiming that parliamentary government, based upon the equal and free suffrage of all classes, was, during the transition period, dangerous to the proletariat; that in its stead a new type of government must be established—government by associations of wage-earners, soldiers, and peasants, called Soviets.

But what if among these there should develop a purpose contrary to the purpose of the Bolsheviki? Would men who, starting out with a belief in the Constituante, and as its champions, used force to destroy and suppress it the moment it became evident that its purpose was not their purpose, hesitate to suppress and destroy any Soviet movement which adopted policies contrary to their own? What assurance could there be, once their point of view, their initial principle, was granted, that the freedom denied to the Constituante would be assured to the Soviets? In the very nature of the case there could be no such assurance. However honest and sincere the Bolsheviki themselves might be in their belief that there would be such assurance, there could in fact be none, for the logic of life is stronger than any human will.

As was inevitable, the Bolsheviki soon found themselves in the position of suppressing Soviets which they could not control as freely and in the same manner as they had suppressed the Constituent Assembly. When, for example, the soldiers of the Preobrajenski Regiment—the very men who helped the Bolsheviki into power—became dissatisfied and organized, publishing their own organ, The Soldier's Cloak, the paper was confiscated and the organization suppressed.[38] The forcible suppression of Soviets was common. The Central Executive Committee of the National Soviet of Peasants' Delegates, together with the old Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates (who had never acknowledged the October elections), convoked an extraordinary assembly of Soviets on January 8th, the same date as that on which the Bolshevik Congress of Soviets was convoked. Circumstances compelled the opening to be deferred until two days later, the 10th. This conference, called the Third All-Russian Congress of Peasants' Soviets, was suppressed by force, many of the 359 delegates and all the members of the Executive Committee being arrested. The following extract from a declaration of protest addressed by the outraged peasants to the Congress of Soviets of Workmen, Soldiers, and Peasants convoked by the Bolshevik government tells the story:

As soon as the Congress was opened, sailors and Red Guards, armed with guns and hand-grenades, broke into the premises (11 Kirillovskaia Street), surrounded the house, poured into the corridors and the session hall, and ordered all persons to leave.

"In whose name do you order us, who are Delegates to the Peasants' Congress of All-Russia, to disperse?" asked the peasants.

"In the name of the Baltic fleet," the sailor's replied.

The peasants refused; cries of protest were raised. One by one the peasants ascended the tribune to stigmatize the Bolsheviki in speeches full of indignation, and to express the hopes that they placed in the Constituent Assembly....

This session of the Congress presented a strange spectacle: disturbed by men who confessed that they did not know why they were there, the peasants sang revolutionary songs; the sailors, armed with guns and grenades, joined them. Then the peasants knelt down to sing a funeral hymn to the memory of Logvinov, whose coffin was even yesterday within the room. The soldiers, lowering their guns, knelt down also.

The Bolshevik authorities became excited; they did not expect such a turn of events. "Enough said," declared the chiefs; "we have come not to speak, but to act. If they do not want to go to Smolny, let them get out of here." And they set themselves to the task.

In groups of five the peasants were conducted down-stairs, trampled upon, and, on their refusal to go to Smolny, pushed out of doors during the night in the midst of the enormous city of which they knew nothing.

Members of the Executive Committee were arrested,[39] the premises occupied by sailors and Red Guards, the objects found therein stolen.

The peasants found shelter in the homes of the inhabitants of Petrograd, who, indignant, offered them hospitality. A certain number were lodged in the barracks of the Preobrajenski Regiment. The sailors, who but a few minutes before had sung a funeral hymn to Logvinov, and wept when they saw that they had understood nothing, now became the docile executioners of the orders of the Bolsheviki. And when they were asked, "Why do you do this?" they answered, as in the time, still recent, of Czarism: "It is the order. No need to talk."[40]

We do not need to rely upon the testimony of witnesses belonging to the Revolutionary Socialist party, the Mensheviki, or other factions unfriendly to the Bolsheviki. However trustworthy such testimony may be, and however well corroborated, we cannot expect it to be convincing to those who pin their faith to the Bolsheviki. Such people will believe only what the Bolsheviki themselves say about Bolshevism. It is well, therefore, that we can supplement the testimony already given by equally definite and direct testimony from official Bolshevist sources to the same effect. From the official organs of the Bolsheviki it can be shown that the Bolshevik authorities suppressed Soviet after Soviet; that when they found that Soviets were controlled by Socialists who belonged to other factions they dissolved them and ordered new elections, refusing to permit the free choice of the members to be expressed in selecting their officers.

The Bolsheviki did this, it should be remembered, not merely in cases where Mensheviki or Socialist-Revolutionists were in the majority, but also in cases where the majority consisted of members of the Socialist-Revolutionary party of the Left—the faction which had united with the Bolsheviki in suppressing the Constituante. Their union with the Bolsheviki was from the first a compromise, based upon the political opportunism of both sides. The Socialist-Revolutionists of the Left did not believe in the Bolshevik theories or program, but they wanted the political assistance of the Bolsheviki. The latter did not believe in the theories or program of the Socialist-Revolutionists of the Left, but they wanted their political support. The union could not long endure; the differences were too deeply rooted. Before very long the Bolsheviki were fighting their former allies and the Socialist-Revolutionists of the Left, like Marie Spiridonova, for example, were fighting the Bolsheviki. At Kazan, where Lenine went to school, the Soviet was dissolved because it was controlled by Socialist-Revolutionists of the Left, former allies, now hostile to the Bolsheviki. Here are two paragraphs from Izvestya, one of the Bolshevist official organs:

KAZAN, July 26th. As the important offices in the Soviet were occupied by Socialist-Revolutionists of the Left, the Extraordinary Commission has dissolved the Provisional Soviet. The governmental power is now represented by a Revolutionary Committee. (Izvestya, July 28, 1918.)

KAZAN, August 1. The state of mind of the workmen is revolutionary. If the Mensheviki dare to carry on their propaganda, death menaces them. (Idem, August 3.)

And here is confirmation from another official organ of the Bolsheviki, Pravda:

KAZAN, August 4th. The Provisional Congress of the Soviets of the Peasants has been dissolved because of the absence from it of poor peasants and because its state of mind is obviously counter-revolutionary. (Pravda, August 6, 1918.)

As early as April, 1918, the Soviet at Jaroslav was dissolved by the Bolshevik authorities and new elections ordered.[41] In these elections the Mensheviki and the Socialist-Revolutionists everywhere gained an absolute majority.[42] The population here wanted the Constituent Assembly and they wanted Russia to fight on with the Allies. Attempts to suppress this majority led to insurrection, which the Bolsheviki crushed in the most brutal manner, and when the people, overpowered and helpless, sought to make peace, the Bolsheviki only increased the artillery fire! Here is an "Official Bulletin," published in Izvestya, July 21, 1918:

At Jaroslav the adversary, gripped in the iron ring of our troops, has tried to enter into negotiations. The reply has been given under the form of redoubled artillery fire.

Izvestya published, on July 25th, a Bolshevist military proclamation addressed to the inhabitants of Jaroslav concerning the insurrection which originally arose from the suppression of the Soviet and other popular assemblages:

The General Staff notifies to the population of Jaroslav that all those who desire to live are invited to abandon the town in the course of twenty-four hours and to meet near the America Bridge. Those who remain will be treated as insurgents, and no quarter will be given to any one. Heavy artillery fire and gas-bombs will be used against them. All those who remain will perish In the ruins of the town with the insurrectionists, the traitors, and the enemies of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolution.

Next day, July 26th, Izvestya published the information that "after minute questionings and full inquiry" a special commission appointed to inquire into the events relating to the insurrection at Jaroslav had listed 350 persons as having "taken an active part in the insurrection and had relations with the Czecho-Slovaks," and that by order of the commissioners the whole band of 350 had been shot!

It is needless to multiply the illustrations of brutal oppression—of men and women arrested and imprisoned for no other crime than that of engaging in propaganda in favor of government by universal suffrage; of newspapers confiscated and suppressed; of meetings banned and Soviets dissolved because the members' "state of mind" did not please the Bolsheviki. Maxim Gorky declared in his Novya Zhizn that there had been "ten thousand lynchings." Upon what authority Gorky—who was inclined to sympathize with the Bolsheviki, and who even accepted office under them—based that statement is not known. Probably it is an exaggeration. One thing, however, is quite certain, namely, that a reign of terror surpassing the worst days of the old regime was inflicted upon unhappy Russia by the Bolsheviki. At the very beginning of the Bolshevik regime Trotzky laughed to scorn all the protests against violence, threatening that resort would be had to the guillotine. Speaking to the opponents of the Bolshevik policy in the Petrograd Soviet, he said:

"You are perturbed by the mild terror we are applying against our class enemies, but know that not later than a month hence this terror will take a more terrible form on the model of the terror of the great revolutionaries of France. Not a fortress, but the guillotine will be for our enemies."

That threat was not literally carried out, but there was a near approach to it when public hangings for civil offenses were established. For reintroducing the death penalty into the army as a means of putting an end to treason and the brutal murder of officers by rebellious soldiers, the Bolsheviki excoriated Kerensky. Yet they themselves introduced hanging and flogging in public for petty civil crimes! The death penalty was never inflicted for civil crimes under the late Czar. It was never inflicted for political offenses. Only rarely was it inflicted for murder. It remained for a so-called "Socialist" government to resort to such savagery as we find described in the following extract from the recognized official organ of the Bolshevik government:

Two village robbers were condemned to death. All the people of Semenovskaia and the surrounding communes were invited to the ceremony. On July 6th, at midday, a great crowd of interested spectators arrived at the village of Loupia. The organizers of the execution gave to each of the bystanders the opportunity of flogging the condemned to obtain from them supplementary confessions. The number of blows was unlimited. Then a vote of the spectators was taken as to the method of execution. The majority was for hanging. In order that the spectacle could be easily seen, the spectators were ranged in three ranks—the first row sat down, the second rested on the knee, and the third stood up.[43]

The Bolshevik government created an All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, which in turn created Provincial and District Extraordinary Commissions. These bodies—the local not less than the national—were empowered to make arrests and even decree and carry out capital sentences. There was no appeal from their decisions; they were simply required to report afterward! Only members of the Bolshevik party were immune from this terror. Alminsky, a Bolshevist writer of note, felt called upon to protest against this hideous travesty of democratic justice, and wrote in Pravda:

The absence of the necessary restraint makes one feel appalled at the "instruction" issued by the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission to "All Provincial Extraordinary Commissions," which says: "The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission is perfectly independent in its work, carrying out house searches, arrests, executions, of which it afterward reports to the Council of the People's Commissaries and to the Central Executive Council." Further, the Provincial and District Extraordinary Commissions "are independent in their activities, and when called upon by the local Executive Council present a report of their work." In so far as house searches and arrests are concerned, a report made afterward may result in putting right irregularities committed owing to lack of restraint. The same cannot be said of executions.... It can also be seen from the "instruction" that personal safety is to a certain extent guaranteed only to members of the government, of the Central Council, and of the local Executive Committees. With the exception of these few persons all members of the local committees of the [Bolshevik] Party, of the Control Committees, and of the Executive Committee of the party may be shot at any time by the decision of any Extraordinary Commission of a small district town if they happen to be on its territory, and a report of that made afterward.[44]

VII

While in some respects, such as this terrible savagery, Bolshevism has out-Heroded Herod and surpassed the regime of the Romanovs in cruel oppression, upon the whole its methods have been very like that of the latter. There is really not much to choose between the ways of Stolypin and Von Plehve and those of the Lenine-Trotzky rule. The methods employed have been very similar and in not a few instances the same men who acted as the agents of espionage and tyranny for the Czar have served the Bolsheviki in the same capacity. Just as under Czarism there was alliance with the Black Hundreds and with all sorts of corrupt and vicious criminal agents, so we find the same phenomenon recurring under the Bolsheviki. The time has not yet arrived for the compilation of the full record of Bolshevism in this particular, but enough is known to justify the charge here made. That agents-provocateurs, spies, informers, police agents, and pogrom-makers formerly in the service of the Czar have been given positions of trust and honor by Lenine and Trotzky unfortunately admits of no doubt whatever.

It was stated at a meeting of Russians held in Paris in the summer of 1917 that one of the first Russian regiments which refused to obey orders to advance "contained 120 former political or civil police agents out of 181 refractory soldiers." During the Kerensky regime, at the time when Lenine was carrying on his propaganda through Pravda,[45] Vladimir Bourtzev exposed three notorious agents of the old police terror, provocateurs, who were working on the paper. In August, 1917, the Jewish Conjoint Committee in London published a long telegram from the representative of the Jewish Committee in Petrograd, calling attention to the fact that Lenine's party was working in tacit agreement with the Black Hundreds. The telegram is here given in full:

Extreme Russian reactionaries have allied themselves closely with extreme revolutionaries, and Black Hundreds have entered into tacit coalition with the Lenine party. In the army the former agents and detectives of the political police carry on ardent campaign for defeat, and in the rear the former agents-provocateurs prepare and direct endless troubles.

The motives of this policy on the part of the reactionaries are clear. It is the direct road to a counter-revolution. The troubles, the insurrections, and shocking disorders which follow provoke disgust at the Revolution, while the military defeats prepare the ground for an intervention of the old friend of the Russian Black Hundreds, William II, the counter-revolutionaries work systematically for the defeat of the Russian armies, sometimes openly, cynically.

Thus in their press and proclamations they go so far as to throw the whole responsibility for the war and for the obstacles placed in the way of a peace with Germany on the Jews. It is these "diabolical Jews," they say, who prevent the conclusion of peace and insist on the continuation of the war, because they desire to ruin Russia. Proclamations in this sense have been found, together with a voluminous anti-Semitic literature, in the offices of the party of Lenine Bolsheviki (Maximalists), and particularly at the headquarters of the extreme revolutionaries, Chateau Knheshinskaja. Salutations. BLANK.

That the leaders of the Bolsheviki, particularly Lenine and Trotzky, ever entered into any "agreement" with the Black Hundreds, or took any part in the anti-Semitic campaign referred to, is highly improbable. Unless and until it is supported by ample evidence of a competent nature, we shall be justified in refusing to believe anything of the sort. It is, however, quite probable that provocateurs worming their way into Lenine's and Trotzky's good graces tried to use the Bolshevik agitation as a cover for their own nefarious work. As we have seen already, Lenine had previously been imposed upon by a notorious secret police agent, Malinovsky. But the open association of the Bolsheviki with men who played a despicable role under the old regime is not to be denied. The simple-minded reader of Bolshevist literature who believes that the Bolshevik government, whatever its failings, has the merit of being a government by real working-men and working-women, needs to be enlightened. Not only are Lenine and Trotzky not of the proletariat themselves, but they have associated with themselves men whose lives have been spent, not as workers, not even as simple bourgeoisie, but as servants of the terror-system of the Czar. They have associated with themselves, too, some of the most corrupt criminals in Russia. Here are a few of them:

Professor Kobozev, of Riga, joined the Bolsheviki and was active as a delegate to the Municipal Council of Petrograd. According to the information possessed by the Russian revolutionary leaders, this Professor Kobozev used to be a police spy, his special job being to make reports to the police concerning the political opinions and actions of students and faculty members. One of the very first men released from prison by the Bolsheviki was one Doctor Doubrovine, who had been a leader of the Black Hundreds, an organizer of many pogroms. He became an active Bolshevik. Kamenev, the Bolshevik leader, friend of Lenine, is a journalist. He was formerly a member of the old Social Democratic party. Soon after the war broke out he was arrested and behaved so badly that he was censured by his party. Early in the Revolution of 1917 he was accused of serving the secret police at Kiev. Bonno Brouevitch, Military Councilor to the Bolshevik government, was a well-known anti-Semite who had been dismissed from his military office on two occasions, once by the Czar's government and once by the Provisional Government. General Komisarov, another of Lenine's trusted military officials and advisers, was formerly a chief official of the Czar's secret police, known for his terrible persecution of the revolutionists. Accused of high treason by the Provisional Government, he fled, but returned and joined the Lenine-Trotzky forces. Prince Andronikov, associate of Rasputin; (Lenine's "My friend, the Prince"); Orlov, police agent and "denouncer" and secretary of the infamous Protopopov; Postnikov, convicted and imprisoned as a German spy in 1910; Lepinsky, formerly in the Czar's secret police; and Gualkine, friend of the unspeakable Rasputin, are some of the other men who have been closely identified with the "proletarian regime" of the Bolsheviki.[46] The man they released from prison and placed in the important position of Military Commander of Petrograd was Muraviev, who had been chief of the Czar's police and was regarded by even the moderate members of the Provisional Government, both under Lvov and Kerensky, as a dangerous reactionary.[47] Karl Radek, the Bohemian, a notorious leader of the Russian Bolsheviki, who undertook to stir up the German workers and direct the Spartacide revolt, was, according to Justice, expelled from the German Social Democratic party before the war as a thief and a police spy.[48] How shall we justify men calling themselves Socialists and proletarian revolutionists, who ally themselves with such men as these, but imprison, harry, and abuse such men and women as Bourtzev, Kropotkin, Plechanov, Breshkovskaya, Tchaykovsky, Spiridonova, Agounov, Larokine, Avksentiev, and many other Socialists like them?

In surveying the fight of the Bolsheviki to establish their rule it is impossible to fail to observe that their chief animus has been directed against other Socialists, rather than against members of the reactionary parties. That this has been the fact they do not themselves deny. For example, the "People's Commissary of Justice," G.I. Oppokov, better known as "Lomov," declared in an interview in January, 1918: "Our chief enemies are not the Cadets. Our most irreconcilable opponents are the Moderate Socialists. This explains the arrests of Socialists and the closing down of Socialist newspapers. Such measures of repression are, however, only temporary."[49] And in the Soviet at Petrograd, July 30, 1918, according to Pravda, Lachevitch, one of the delegates, said: "The Socialist-Revolutionists of the Right and the Mensheviki are more dangerous for the government of the Soviets than the bourgeoisie. But these enemies are not yet exterminated and can move about freely. The proletariat must act. We ought, once for all, to rid ourselves of the Socialist-Revolutionists of the Right and of the Mensheviki."

In this summary of the Bolsheviki war against democracy, it will be observed, no attempt has been made to gather all the lurid and fantastic stories which have been published by sensational journalists. The testimony comes from Socialist sources of the utmost reliability, much of it from official Bolshevist sources. The system of oppression it describes is twin brother to that which existed under the Romanovs, to end which hundreds of thousands of the noblest and best of our humankind gave up their lives. Under the banner of Social Democracy a tyranny has been established as infamous as anything in the annals of autocracy.

"O Liberty, what monstrous crimes are committed in thy great name!"



CHAPTER VII

BOLSHEVIST THEORY AND PRACTICE

I

Utopia-making is among the easiest and most fascinating of all intellectual occupations. Few employments which can be called intellectual are easier than that of devising panaceas for the ills of society, of demonstrating on paper how the rough places of life may be made plain and its crooked ones made straight. And it is not a vain and fruitless waste of effort and of time, as things so easy of achievement often are. Many of the noblest minds of all lands and all ages have found pleasure and satisfaction in the imagining of ideal commonwealths and by so doing have rendered great service to mankind, enriching literature and, what is more important, stimulating the urge and passion for improvement and the faith of men in their power to climb to the farthest heights of their dreams. But the material of life is hard and lacks the plastic quality of inspired imagination. Though there is probably no single evil which exists for which a solution has not been devised in the wonderful laboratory of visioning, the perversity of the subtle and mysterious thing called life is such that many great and grave evils continue to challenge, perplex, and harass our humankind.

Yet, notwithstanding the plain lesson of history and experience, the reminder impressed on every page of humanity's record, that between the glow and the glamour of the vision and its actual realization stretches a long, long road, there are many simple-minded souls to whom the vision gleamed is as the goal attained. They do not distinguish between schemes on paper and ideals crystallized into living realities. This type of mind is far more common than is generally recognized; that is why so many people quite seriously believe that the Bolsheviki have really established in Russia a society which conforms to the generous ideals of social democracy. They have read the rhetorical "decrees" and "proclamations" in which the shibboleths of freedom and democracy abound, and are satisfied. Yet it ought to be plainly evident to any intelligent person that, even if the decrees and proclamations were as sound as they are in fact unsound, and as definite as they are in fact vague, they would afford no real basis for judging Bolshevism as an actual experiment in social polity. There is, in ultimate analysis, only one test to apply to Bolshevism—namely, the test of reality. We must ask what the Bolsheviki did, not what they professed; what was the performance, not what was the promise.

Of course, this does not mean that we are to judge result wholly without regard to aim. Admirable intention is still admirable as intention, even when untoward circumstance defeats it and brings deplorable results. Bolshevism is not merely a body of belief and speculation. When the Bolsheviki seized the government of Russia and began to attempt to carry out their ideas, Bolshevism became a living movement in a world of reality and subject to the acid test of pragmatic criteria. It must be judged by such a matter-of-fact standard as the extent to which it has enlarged or diminished the happiness, health, comfort, freedom, well-being, satisfaction, and efficiency of the greatest number of individuals. Unless the test shows that it has increased the sum of good available for the mass, Bolshevism cannot be regarded as a gain. If, on the contrary, the test shows that it has resulted in sensibly diminishing the sum of good available to the greatest number of people, Bolshevism must be counted as a move in the wrong direction, as so much effort lost. Nothing that can be urged on philosophical or moral grounds for or against the moral or intellectual impulses that prompted it can fundamentally change the verdict. Yet, for all that, it is well to examine the theory which inspires the practice; well to know the manner and method of thinking, and the view of life, from which Bolshevism as a movement of masses of men and women proceeds.

Theoretically, Bolshevism, as such, has no necessary connection with the philosophy or the program of Socialism. Certain persons have established a working relation between Socialism, a program, and Bolshevism, a method. The connection is not inherently logical, but, on the contrary, wholly adventitious. As a matter of fact, Bolshevism can only be linked to the program of Socialism by violently and disastrously weakening the latter and destroying its fundamental character. We shall do well to remember this; to remember that the method of action, and, back of the method, the philosophy on which it rests and from which it springs, are separate and distinct from Socialism. They are incalculably older and they have been associated with vastly different programs. All that is new in Bolshevism is that a very old method of action, and a very old philosophy of action, have been seized upon by a new class which attempts to unite them to a new program.

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 Jaures 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'etat. 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.

The "dictatorship of the proletariat" in the sense in which that term is used by the Russian Bolshevik leaders, and by those who in other countries are urging that their example be followed, is not a policy of Marxian Socialism. It is not a product of modern conditions. Rather it harks back to the earlier conspiratory Socialism of Blanqui, with its traditions inherited from Robespierre and Babeuf. So far as its advocates are concerned, Marx and the whole modern Socialist movement might as well never have existed at all. They take us back three-quarters of a century, to the era before Marx, to that past so remote in intellectual and moral character, though recent in point of time, when the working class of no country in Europe possessed the right to vote—when the workers were indeed proletarians and not citizens; not only propertyless, but also "without a fatherland."

In truth, it is not difficult to understand how this theory has found acceptance in Russia. It was not difficult to understand why Marx's doctrine of economic evolution was for many years rejected by most Russian Socialists; why the latter took the view that Socialism must be more quickly attained, that capitalism was not a necessary precursor of Socialism in Russia, but that an intelligent leadership of passive masses would successfully establish Socialism on the basis of the old Russian communal institutions. It was quite easy to understand the change that came with Russia's industrial awakening, how the development of factory production gave an impetus to the Marxian theories. And, though it presents a strange paradox, in that it comes at a time when, despite everything, Russian capitalism continues to develop, it is really not difficult to understand how and why pre-Marxian conceptions reappear in that great land of paradoxes. Politically and intellectually the position of the proletariat of Russia before the recent Revolution was that of the proletariat of France in 1848.

But that which baffles the mind of the serious investigator is the readiness of so many presumably intelligent people living in countries where—as in America—wholly different conditions prevail to ignore the differences and be ready to abandon all the democratic advance made by the workers. There is nothing more certain in the whole range of social and political life than the fact that the doctrine that the power of the state must be seized and used by the proletariat against the non-proletarian classes, even for a relatively brief period, can only be carried out by destroying all the democracy thus far achieved.

III

The validity of the foregoing contention can scarcely be questioned, except by those to whom phrases are of more consequence than facts, who place theories above realities. The moment the Bolsheviki tried to translate their rhetorical propaganda for the dictatorship of the proletariat into the concrete terms of political reality they found that they were compelled to direct their main opposition, not against the bourgeoisie, or even against capitalism, but against the newly created democracy. In the movement to create a democratic government resting upon the basis of universal, direct, equal, and secret suffrage they saw a peril to their scheme far more formidable than militarism or capitalism. It was for this reason that they set themselves to the task of suppressing the Constituent Assembly. Only political simpletons will seriously regard the Bolshevik attempt to camouflage their motive by pretending that they determined to crush the Constituent Assembly because its members were elected on a register that was "obsolete" and therefore no longer truly represented the people.

The German Spartacides, who were acting in full accord with the Russian Bolsheviki, had not that miserable excuse. Yet they set out by force of arms to prevent any election being held. In this they were quite consistent; they wanted to set up a dictatorship, and they knew that the overwhelming mass of the people wanted something very different. At a dinner of the Inter-Collegiate Socialist Society in New York, in December, 1918, a spokesman for the German variety of Bolshevism blandly explained that "Karl Liebknecht and his comrades know that they cannot hope to get a majority, therefore they are determined that no elections shall be held. They will prevent this by force. After some time, perhaps, when a proletarian regime has existed long enough, and people have become convinced of the superiority of the Socialist way, or at least grown used to it, and it is safe to do so, popular elections may be permitted." Incredible as it seems, this declaration was received with cheers by an audience which only a few minutes before had cheered with equal fervor denunciations of "encroachments upon American democracy."

Curiously enough, the precise manner in which the Bolsheviki have acted against democracy was set forth, as far back as 1850, by a German, Johann von Miquel, in a letter to Karl Marx. Miquel was born in Hanover, but his ancestors were of French origin. He studied at Heidelberg and Goettingen, and became associated with the Socialist movement of the period. He settled down to the practice of law, however, and when Hanover was annexed by Prussia he entered the Prussian parliament. After the "dismissal of the pilot," Bismarck, he became Prussian Minister of Finance, holding that position for ten years. Liebknecht referred to him as "my former comrade in communismo and present Chancellor in re." This Miquel, while he was still a Socialist, in 1850 wrote to Marx as follows:

The workers' party may succeed against the upper middle class and what remains of the feudal element, but it will be attacked on its flank by the democracy. We can perhaps give an anti-bourgeois tone to the Revolution for a little while, we can destroy the essential conditions of bourgeois production; but we cannot possibly put down the small tradesmen and shopkeeping class, the petty bourgeoisie. My motto is to secure all we can get. We should prevent the lower and middle class from forming any organizations for as long a time as possible after the first victory, and especially oppose ourselves in serried ranks to the plan of calling a Constitutional Assembly. Partial terrorism, local anarchy, must replace for us what we lack in bulk.

What a remarkable anticipation of the Bolshevist methods of 1917-18 is thus outlined in this letter, written sixty-seven years before the Bolshevik coup d'etat! How literally Lenine, Trotzky and Co. have followed Herr von Miquel! They have desperately tried to "give an anti-bourgeois tone to the Revolution," denouncing as bourgeois reactionaries the men and women whose labors and sacrifices have made the Russian Socialist movement. They have destroyed "the essential conditions" of bourgeois and of any other than the most primitive production. They have set themselves in serried ranks in opposition to "the plan of calling a Constitutional Assembly." They have suppressed not only the organizations of the "lower and middle class," but also those of a great part of the working class, thus going beyond Miquel. Finally, to replace what they lack in bulk, they have resorted to "partial terrorism and local anarchy."

And it is in the name of revolutionary progress, of ultra-radicalism, that we are called upon to revert to the tactics of desperation born of the discouraging conditions of nearly seventy years ago. A new philosophy has taken possession of the easily possessed minds of Greenwich Village philosophers and parlor revolutionists—a new philosophy of progress, according to which revolutionary progress consists in the unraveling by feverish fingers of the fabric woven through years of sacrifice; in abandoning high levels attained for the lower levels from which the struggles of the past raised us; in harking back to the thoughts and the tactics of men who shouted their despairing, defiant cries into the gloom of the blackest period of the nineteenth century!

Universal, secret, equal, and direct suffrage was a fact in Russia, the first great achievement of the Revolution. Upon that foundation, and upon no other, it was possible to build an enduring, comprehensive social democracy. Against that foundation the Bolsheviki hurled their destructive power, creating a discriminating class suffrage, disfranchising a great part of the Russian people—not merely the bourgeoisie, but a considerable part of the working class itself. Chapter XIII of Article 4 of the Constitution of the "Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic" sets forth the qualifications for voting, as follows:

THE RIGHT TO VOTE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

64. The right to vote and to be elected to the Soviets is enjoyed by the following citizens, irrespective of religion, nationality, domicile, etc., of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, of both sexes, who shall have completed their eighteenth year by the day of election:

a. All who have acquired the means of living through labor that is productive and useful to society, and also persons engaged in housekeeping which enables the former to do productive work—i.e., laborers and employees of all classes who are employed in industry, trade, agriculture, etc.; and peasants and Cossack agricultural laborers who employ no help for the purpose of making profits.

b. Soldiers of the army and navy of the Soviets.

c. Citizens of the two preceding categories who have to any degree lost their capacity to work.

Note 1: Local Soviets may, upon approval of the central power, lower the age standard mentioned herein.

Note 2: Non-citizens mentioned in Paragraph 20 (Article 2, Chapter Five) have the right to vote.

65. The following persons enjoy neither the right to vote nor the right to be voted for, even though they belong to one of the categories enumerated above, namely:

a. Persons who employ hired labor in order to obtain from it an increase in profits.

b. Persons who have an income without doing any work, such as interest from capital, receipts from property, etc.

c. Private merchants, trade, and commercial brokers.

d. Monks and clergy of all denominations.

e. Employees and agents of the former police, the gendarme corps, and the Okhrana (Czar's secret service), also members of the former reigning dynasty.

f. Persons who have in legal form been declared demented or mentally deficient, and also persons under guardianship.

g. Persons who have been deprived by a Soviet of their rights of citizenship because of selfish or dishonorable offenses, for the period fixed by the sentence.

Apparently the Constitution does not provide any standard for determining what labor is "useful and productive to society," and leaves the way open for a degree of arbitrariness on the part of some authority or other that is wholly incompatible with any generally accepted ideal of freedom and democracy. It is apparent from the text of paragraph 64, subdivision "a" of the foregoing chapter that housekeeping as such is not included in the category of "labor that is productive and useful to society," for a separate category is made of it. The language used is that "The right to vote and to be elected to the Soviets is enjoyed by.... All who have acquired the means of living through labor that is productive and useful to society, and also persons engaged in housekeeping, which enables the former to do productive work—i.e., laborers and employees of all classes who are employed in industry, trade, agriculture, etc."

This seems to mean that persons engaged in housekeeping can only vote if and when they are so engaged in order to enable other persons than themselves to do "productive work." It appears that housekeeping for persons not engaged in such productive work—for children, for example—would not confer the right to vote. It is not possible to tell with certainty what it does mean, however, for there is probably not a single person in Russia or in the world who can tell exactly what this precious instrument actually means. What standard is to be established to determine what labor is "productive" and "useful"? Is the journalist, for instance, engaged in useful and productive labor? Is the novelist? is the agitator? Presumably the journalist employed in defending the Soviet Republic against attacks by unfriendly critics would be doing useful work and be entitled to vote, but what about the journalist employed in making the criticisms? Would the wife of the latter, no matter how much she might disagree with her husband's views, be barred from voting, simply because she was "engaged in housekeeping" for one whose labors were not regarded "productive and useful to society"? If the language used means anything at all, apparently she would be so disfranchised.

Upon what ground is it decided that the "private merchant" may not vote? Certainly it is not because his labor is of necessity neither productive nor useful, for paragraph 65 says that even though belonging to one of the categories of persons otherwise qualified to vote, the private merchant may "enjoy neither the right to vote nor to be voted for." The keeper of a little grocery store, even though his income is not greater than that of a mechanic, and despite the fact that his store meets a local need and makes his services, therefore, "useful" in the highest degree, cannot enjoy civic rights, simply because he is a "merchant"! The clergy of all denominations are excluded from the franchise. It does not matter, according to this constitution, that a minister belongs to a church independent of any connection with the state, that he is elected by people who desire his services and is paid by them, that he satisfies them and is therefore doing a "useful service"—if utility means the satisfying of needs—because he is so employed he cannot vote.

It is clearly provided that "peasants and Cossack agricultural laborers who employ no help for the purpose of making profits" can vote and be voted for. But no persons "who employ hired labor in order to obtain from it an increase in profits" may vote or be elected to office, even though the work they do is productive and useful to society. A peasant who hires no assistance may vote, but if he decides that by employing a boy to help him he will be able to give better attention to certain crops and make more money, even though he pays the boy every penny that the service is worth, judged by any standard whatever, he loses his vote and his civic status because, forsooth, he has gained in his net income as a result of his enterprise. And this is seriously put forward as the basis of government in a nation needing an intense and universal stimulation of its economic production.

A militant suffragist friend of mine, whose passion for universal suffrage in America is so great that it leads her to join in all sorts of demonstrations protesting against the failure of the United States Senate to pass the Susan B. Anthony amendment—even leading her to join in the public burning of President Wilson's speeches, a queer emulation of the ancient ecclesiastical bigotry of burning heretical books!—manages to unite to her passion for equal and unrestricted suffrage an equally passionate admiration for the Bolsheviki, arch-enemies of equal and unrestricted suffrage. Her case is not exceptional: it is rather typical of the Bolshevik following in England and in America. Such minds are not governed and directed by rational processes, but by emotional impulses, generally of pathological origin.

What the Bolshevik constitution would mean if practically applied to American life to-day can be briefly indicated. The following classes would certainly be entitled to vote and to be elected to office:

1. All wage-earners engaged in the production of goods and utilities regarded by some designated authority as "productive and useful to society."

2. Teachers and educators engaged in the public service.

3. All farmers owning and working their own farms without hired help of any kind.

4. All wage-earners engaged in the public service as employees of the state, subdivisions of the state, or public service corporations-such as postal clerks, street-railway workers, electricians, and so on.

5. Wives and others engaged in keeping the homes of the foregoing, so as to enable them to work.

6. The "soldiers of the army and navy"—whether all officers are included is not clear from the text.

Now let us see what classes would be as certainly excluded from the right to vote and to be voted for.

1. Every merchant from the keeper of a corner grocery store to the owner of a great mercantile establishment.

2. Every banker, every commission agent, every broker, every insurance agent, every real-estate dealer.

3. Every farmer who hires help of any kind—even a single "hand."

4. Every petty contractor, garage-keeper, or other person employing any hired help whatever, including the professional writer who hires a stenographer, the doctor who hires a chauffeur, and the dentist who hires a mechanic assistant.

5. Every clergyman and minister of the Gospel.

6. Every person whose income is derived from inherited wealth or from invested earnings, including all who live upon annuities provided by gift or bequest.

7. Every person engaged in housekeeping for persons included in any of the foregoing six categories—including the wives of such disqualified persons.

There are many occupational groups whose civic status is not so easily defined. The worker engaged in making articles of luxury, enjoyed only by the privileged few, could hardly have a better claim to a vote than the housekeeper of a man whose income was derived from foreign investments, or than the chauffeur of a man whose income was derived from government bonds. All three represent, presumably, types of that parasitic labor which subjects those engaged in it to disfranchisement. Apparently, though not certainly, then, the following would also be disfranchised:

1. All lawyers except those engaged by the public authorities for the public service.

2. All teachers and educators other than those engaged in the public service.

3. All bankers, managers of industries, commercial travelers, experts, and accountants except those employed in the public service, or whose labor is judged by a competent tribunal to be necessary and useful.

4. All editors, journalists, authors of books and plays, except as special provision might be provided for individuals.

5. All persons engaged in occupations which a competent tribunal decided to classify as non-essential or non-productive.

Any serious attempt to introduce such restrictions and limitations of the right of suffrage in America would provoke irresistible revolt. It would be justly and properly regarded as an attempt to arrest the forward march of the nation and to turn its energies in a backward direction. It would be just as reactionary in the political world as it would be in the industrial world to revert back to hand-tool production; to substitute the ox-team for the railway system, the hand-loom for the power-loom, the flail for the threshing-machine, the sickle for the modern harvesting-machine, the human courier for the electric telegraph.

Yet we find a radical like Mr. Max Eastman giving his benediction and approval to precisely such a program in Russia as a substitute for universal suffrage. We find him quoting with apparent approval an article setting forth Lenine's plan, hardly disguised, to disfranchise every farmer who employs even a single hired helper.[54]

Lenine's position is quite clear. "Only the proletariat leading on the poorest peasants (the semi-proletariat as they are called in our program) ... may undertake the steps toward Socialism that have become absolutely unavoidable and non-postponable.... The peasants want to retain their small holdings and to arrive at some place of equal distribution.... So be it. No sensible Socialist will quarrel with a pauper peasant on this ground. If the lands are confiscated, so long as the proletarians rule in the great centers, and all political power is handed over to the proletariat, the rest will take care of itself."[55] Yet, in spite of Lenine's insistence that all political power be "handed over to the proletariat," in spite of a score of similar utterances which might be quoted, and, finally, in spite of the Soviet Constitution which so obviously excludes from the right to vote a large part of the adult population, an American Bolshevist pamphleteer has the effrontery to insult the intelligence of his readers by the stupidly and palpably false statement that "even at the present time 95 per cent. in Russia can vote, while in the United States only about 65 per cent. can vote."[56]

Of course it is only as a temporary measure that this dictatorship of a class is to be maintained. It is designed only for the period of transition and adjustment. In time the adjustment will be made, all forms of social parasitism and economic exploitation will disappear, and then it will be both possible and natural to revert to democratic government. Too simple and naive to be trusted alone in a world so full of trickery and tricksters as ours are they who find any asurance in this promise. They are surely among the most gullible of our humankind!

Of course, the answer to the claim is a very simple one: it is that no class gaining privilege and power ever surrenders it until it is compelled to do so. Every one who has read the pre-Marxian literature dealing with the dictatorship of the proletariat knows how insistent is the demand that the period of dictatorship must be prolonged as much as possible. Even Marx himself insisted, on one occasion at least, that it must be maintained as long as possible,[57] and in the letter of Johann von Miquel, already quoted, we find the same thought expressed in the same terms, "as long as possible." But even if we put aside these warnings of human experience and of recorded history, and persuade ourselves that in Russia we have a wholly new phenomenon, a class possessing powers of dictatorship animated by a burning passion to relinquish those powers as quickly as possible, is it not still evident that the social adjustments that must be made to reach the stage where, according to the Bolshevik standards, political democracy can be introduced, must, under the most favorable circumstances conceivable, take many, many years? Even Lenine admits that "a sound solution of the problem of increasing the productivity of labor" (which lies at the very heart of the problem we are now discussing) "requires at least (especially after a most distressing and destructive war) several years."[58]

From the point of view of social democracy the basis of the Bolshevik state is reactionary and unsound. The true Socialist policy is that set forth by Wilhelm Liebknecht in the following words: "The political power which the Social Democracy aims at and which it will win, no matter what its enemies may do, has not for its object the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, but the suppression of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie."[59]

IV

Democracy in government and in industry must characterize any system of society which can be justly called Socialist. Thirteen years ago I wrote, "Socialism without democracy is as impossible as a shadow without light."[60] That seemed to me then, as it seems to-day, axiomatic. And so the greatest Socialist thinkers and leaders always regarded it. "We have perceived that Socialism and democracy are inseparable," declared William Liebknecht, the well-beloved, in 1899.[61] Thirty years earlier, in 1869, he had given lucid expression to the same conviction in these words: "Socialism and democracy are not the same, but they are only different expressions of the same fundamental idea. They belong to each other, round out each other, and can never stand in contradiction to each other. Socialism without democracy is pseudo-Socialism, just as democracy without Socialism is pseudo-democracy."[62] Democracy in industry is, as I have insisted in my writing with unfailing consistency, as inseparable from Socialism as democracy in government.[63] Unless industry is brought within the control of democracy and made responsive to the common will, Socialism is not attained.

Everywhere the organized working class aspires to attain that industrial democracy which is the counterpart of political democracy. Syndicalism, with all its vagaries, its crude reversal to outworn ideas and methods, is, nevertheless, fundamentally an expression of that yearning. It is the same passion that lies back of the Shop Stewards' movement in England, and that inspires the much more patiently and carefully developed theories and plans of the advocates of "Guild Socialism." Motived by the same desire, our American labor-unions are demanding, and steadily gaining, an increasing share in the actual direction of industry. Joint control by boards composed of representatives of employers, employees, and the general public is, to an ever-increasing extent, determining the conditions of employment, wage standards, work standards, hours of labor, choice and conduct of foremen, and many other matters of vital importance to the wage-earners. That we are still a long way from anything like industrial democracy is all too painfully true and obvious, but it is equally obvious that we are struggling toward the goal, and that there is a serious purpose and intention to realize the ideal.