Dictatorship vs. Democracy Part 10

"The Bolsheviks," Kautsky mediates, "acquired the force necessary for the seizure of political power through the fact that, amongst the political parties in Russia, they were the most energetic in their demands for peace--peace at any price, a separate peace--without interesting themselves as to the influence this would have on the general international situation, as to whether this would a.s.sist the victory and world domination of the German military monarchy, under the protection of which they remained for a long time, just like Indian or Irish rebels or Italian anarchists." (Page 53.)

Of the reasons for our victory, Kautsky knows only the one that we stood for peace. He does not explain the Soviet Government has continued to exist now that it has again mobilized a most important proportion of the soldiers of the imperial army, in order for two years successfully to combat its political enemies.

The watchword of peace undoubtedly played an enormous part in our struggle; but precisely because it was directed against the _imperialist_ war. The idea of peace was supported most strongly of all, not by the tired soldiers, but by the foremost workers, for whom it had the import, not for a rest, but of a pitiless struggle against the exploiters. It was those same workers who, under the watchword of peace, later laid down their lives on the Soviet fronts.

The affirmation that we demanded peace without reckoning on the effect it would have on the international situation is a belated echo of Cadet and Menshevik slanders. The comparison of us with the Germanophile nationalists of India and Ireland seeks its justification in the fact that German imperialism did actually _attempt_ to make use of us as it did the Indians and the Irish. But the chauvinists of France spared no efforts to make use of Liebknecht and Luxemburg--even of Kautsky and Bernstein--in their own interests. The whole question is, did we allow ourselves to be utilized? Did we, by our conduct, give the European workers even the shadow of a ground to place us in the same category as German imperialism? It is sufficient to remember the course of the Brest negotiations, their breakdown, and the German advance of February, 1918, to reveal all the cynicism of Kautsky's accusation. In reality, there was no peace for a single day between ourselves and German imperialism. On the Ukrainian and Caucasian fronts, we, in the measure of our then extremely feeble energies, continued to wage war without openly calling it such. We were too weak to organize war along the whole Russo-German front. We maintained persistently the fiction of peace, utilizing the fact that the chief German forces were drawn away to the west. If German imperialism did prove sufficiently powerful, in 1917-18, to impose upon us the Brest Peace, after all our efforts to tear that noose from our necks, one of the princ.i.p.al reasons was the disgraceful behavior of the German Social-Democratic Party, of which Kautsky remained an integral and essential part. The Brest Peace was pre-determined on August 4, 1914. At that moment, Kautsky not only did not declare war against German militarism, as he later demanded from the Soviet Government, which was in 1918 still powerless from a military point of view; Kautsky actually proposed voting for the War Credits, "under certain conditions"; and generally behaved in such a way that for months it was impossible to discover whether he stood for the War or against it. And this political coward, who at the decisive moment gave up the princ.i.p.al positions of Socialism, dares to accuse us of having found ourselves obliged, at a certain moment, to retreat--not in principle, but materially. And why? Because we were betrayed by the German Social-Democracy, corrupted by Kautskianism--_i.e._, by political prost.i.tution disguised by theories.

We did concern ourselves with the international situation! In reality, we had a much more profound criterion by which to judge the international situation; and it did not deceive us. Already before the February Revolution the Russian Army no longer existed as a fighting force. Its final collapse was pre-determined. If the February Revolution had not taken place, Tsarism would have come to an agreement with the German monarchy. But the February Revolution which prevented that finally destroyed the army built on a monarchist basis, precisely because it was a revolution. A month sooner or later the army was bound to fall to pieces. The military policy of Kerensky was the policy of an ostrich. He closed his eyes to the decomposition of the army, talked sounding phrases, and uttered verbal threats against German imperialism.

In such conditions, we had only one way out: to take our stand on the platform of peace, as the inevitable conclusion from the military powerlessness of the revolution, and to transform that watchword into the weapon of revolutionary influence on all the peoples of Europe.

That is, instead of, together with Kerensky, peacefully awaiting the final military catastrophe--which might bury the revolution in its ruins--we proposed to take possession of the watchword of peace and to lead after it the proletariat of Europe--and first and foremost the workers of Austro-Germany. It was in the light of this view that we carried on our peace negotiations with the Central Empires, and it was in the light of this that we drew up our Notes to the governments of the Entente. We drew out the negotiations as long as we could, in order to give the European working ma.s.ses the possibility of realizing the meaning of the Soviet Government and its policy. The January strike of 1918 in Germany and Austria showed that our efforts had not been in vain. That strike was the first serious premonition of the German Revolution. The German Imperialists understood then that it was just we who represented for them a deadly danger. This is very strikingly shown in Ludendorff's book. True, they could not risk any longer coming out against us in an open crusade. But wherever they could fight against us secretly deceiving the German workers with the help of the German Social-Democracy, they did so; in the Ukraine, on the Don, in the Caucasus. In Central Russia, in Moscow, Count Mirbach from the very first day of his arrival stood as the centre of counter-revolutionary plots against the Soviet Government--just as Comrade Yoffe in Berlin was in the closest possible touch with the revolution. The Extreme Left group of the German revolutionary movement, the party of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, all the time went hand in hand with us. The German revolution at once took on the form of Soviets, and the German proletariat, in spite of the Brest Peace, did not for a moment entertain any doubts as to whether we were with Liebknecht or Ludendorff. In his evidence before the Reichstag Commission in November, 1919, Ludendorff explained how "the High Command demanded the creation of an inst.i.tution with the object of disclosing the connection of revolutionary tendencies in Germany with Russia. Yoffe arrived in Berlin, and in various towns there were set up Russian consulates. This had the most painful consequences in the army and navy." Kautsky, however, has the audacity to write that "if matters did come to a German revolution, truly it is not the Bolsheviks who are responsible for it." (Page 162.)

Even if we had had the possibility in 1917-18, by means of revolutionary abstention, of supporting the old Imperial Army instead of hastening its destruction, we should have merely been a.s.sisting the Entente, and would have covered up by our aid its brigands' peace with Germany, Austria, and all the countries of the world generally. With such a policy we should at the decisive moment have proved absolutely disarmed in the face of the Entente--still more disarmed than Germany is to-day. Whereas, thanks to the November Revolution and the Brest Peace we are to-day the only country which opposes the Entente rifle in hand. By our international policy, we not only did not a.s.sist the Hohenzollern to a.s.sume a position of world domination; on the contrary, by our November Revolution we did more than anyone else to prepare his overthrow. At the same time, we gained a military breathing-s.p.a.ce, in the course of which we created a large and strong army, the first army of the proletariat in history, with which to-day not all the unleashed hounds of the Entente can cope.

The most critical moment in our international situation arose in the autumn of 1918, after the destruction of the German armies. In the place of two mighty camps, more or less neutralizing each other, there stood before us the victorious Entente, at the summit of its world power, and there lay broken Germany, whose Junker blackguards would have considered it a happiness and an honor to spring at the throat of the Russian proletariat for a bone from the kitchen of Clemenceau. We proposed peace to the Entente, and were again ready--for we were obliged--to sign the most painful conditions. But Clemenceau, in whose imperialist rapacity there have remained in their full force all the characteristics of lower-middle-cla.s.s thick-headedness, refused the Junkers their bone, and at the same time decided at all costs to decorate the Invalides with the scalps of the leaders of the Soviet Republic. By this policy Clemenceau did us not a small service. We defended ourselves successfully, and held out.

What, then, was the guiding principle of our external policy, once the first months of existence of the Soviet Government had made clear the considerable vitality as yet of the capitalist governments of Europe?

Just that which Kautsky accepts to-day uncomprehendingly as an accidental result--_to hold out_!

We realized too clearly that the very fact of the existence of the Soviet Government is an event of the greatest revolutionary importance; and this realization dictated to us our concessions and our temporary retirements--not in principle but in practical conclusions from a sober estimate of our own forces. We retreated like an army which gives up to the enemy a town, and even a fortress, in order, having retreated, to concentrate its forces not only for defence but for an advance. We retreated like strikers amongst whom to-day energies and resources have been exhausted, but who, clenching their teeth, are preparing for a new struggle. If we were not filled with an unconquerable belief in the world significance of the Soviet dictatorship, we should not have accepted the most painful sacrifices at Brest-Litovsk. If our faith had proved to be contradicted by the actual course of events, the Brest Peace would have gone down to history as the futile capitulation of a doomed regime. That is how the situation was judged _then_, not only by the Kuhlmanns, but also by the Kautskies of all countries. But we proved right in our estimate, as of our weakness then, so of our strength in the future.

The existence of the Ebert Republic, with its universal suffrage, its parliamentary swindling, its "freedom" of the Press, and its murder of labor leaders, is merely a necessary link in the historical chain of slavery and scoundrelism. The existence of the Soviet Government is a fact of immeasurable revolutionary significance. It was necessary to retain it, utilizing the conflict of the capitalist nations, the as yet unfinished imperialist war, the self-confident effrontery of the Hohenzollern bands, the thick-wittedness of the world-bourgeoisie as far as the fundamental questions of the revolution were concerned, the antagonism of America and Europe, the complication of relations within the Entente. We had to lead our yet unfinished Soviet ship over the stormy waves, amid rocks and reefs, completing its building and armament en route.

Kautsky has the audacity to repeat the accusation that we did not, at the beginning of 1918, hurl ourselves unarmed against our mighty foe.

Had we done this we would have been crushed.[8] The first great attempt of the proletariat to seize power would have suffered defeat.

The revolutionary wing of the European proletariat would have been dealt the severest possible blow. The Entente would have made peace with the Hohenzollern over the corpse of the Russian Revolution, and the world capitalist reaction would have received a respite for a number of years. When Kautsky says that, concluding the Brest Peace, we did not think of its influence on the fate of the German Revolution, he is uttering a disgraceful slander. We considered the question from all sides, and our _sole criterion_ was the interests of the international revolution.

[8] The Vienna Arbeiterzeitung opposes, as is fitting, the wise Russian Communists to the foolish Austrians. "Did not Trotsky," the paper writes, "with a clear view and understanding of possibilities, sign the Brest-Litovsk peace of violence, notwithstanding that it served for the consolidation of German imperialism? The Brest Peace was just as harsh and shameful as is the Versailles Peace. But does this mean that Trotsky had to be rash enough to continue the war against Germany? Would not the fate of the Russian Revolution long ago have been sealed? Trotsky bowed before the unalterable necessity of signing the shameful treaty in antic.i.p.ation of the German revolution." The honor of having foreseen all the consequences of the Brest Peace belongs to Lenin. But this, of course, alters nothing in the argument of the organ of the Viennese Kautskians.

We came to the conclusion that those interests demanded that the only Soviet Government in the world should be preserved. And we proved right. Whereas Kautsky awaited our fall, if not with impatience, at least with certainty; and on this expected fall built up his whole international policy.

The minutes of the session of the Coalition Government of November 19, 1918, published by the Bauer Ministry, run:--"First, a continuation of the discussion as to the relations of Germany and the Soviet Republic.

Haase advises a policy of procrastination. Kautsky agrees with Haase: _decision must be postponed_. _The Soviet Government will not last long. It will inevitably fall in the course of a few weeks_...."

In this way, at the time when the situation of the Soviet Government was really extremely difficult--for the destruction of German militarism had given the Entente, it seemed, the full possibility of finishing with us "in the course of a few weeks"--at that moment Kautsky not only does not hasten to our aid, and even does not merely wash his hands of the whole affair; he partic.i.p.ates in active treachery against revolutionary Russia. To aid Scheidemann in his role of _watch-dog_ of the bourgeoisie, instead of the "programme" role a.s.signed to him of its "_grave-digger_," Kautsky himself hastens to become the grave-digger of the Soviet Government. But the Soviet Government is alive. It will outlive all its grave-diggers.

8

PROBLEMS OF THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR

THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT AND INDUSTRY

If, in the first period of the Soviet revolution, the princ.i.p.al accusation of the bourgeois world was directed against our savagery and blood-thirstiness, later, when that argument, from frequent use, had become blunted, and had lost its force, we were made responsible chiefly for the economic disorganization of the country. In harmony with his present mission, Kautsky methodically translates into the language of pseudo-Marxism all the bourgeois charges against the Soviet Government of destroying the industrial life of Russia. The Bolsheviks began socialization without a plan. They socialized what was not ready for socialization. The Russian working cla.s.s, altogether, is not yet prepared for the administration of industry; and so on, and so on.

Repeating and combining these accusations, Kautsky, with dull obstinacy, hides the real cause for our economic disorganization: the imperialist slaughter, the civil war, and the blockade.

Soviet Russia, from the first months of its existence, found itself deprived of coal, oil, metal, and cotton. First the Austro-German and then the Entente imperialisms, with the a.s.sistance of the Russian White Guards, tore away from Soviet Russia the Donetz coal and metal-working region, the oil districts of the Caucasus, Turkestan with its cotton, Ural with its richest deposits of metals, Siberia with its bread and meat. The Donetz area had usually supplied our industry with 94 per cent. of its coal and 74 per cent. of its crude ore. The Ural supplied the remaining 20 per cent. of the ore and 4 per cent. of the coal. Both these regions, during the civil war, were cut off from us. We were deprived of half a milliard poods of coal imported from abroad. Simultaneously, we were left without oil: the oilfields, one and all, pa.s.sed into the hands of our enemies. One needs to have a truly brazen forehead to speak, in face of these facts, of the destructive influence of "premature," "barbarous," etc., socialization. An industry which is completely deprived of fuel and raw materials--whether that industry belongs to a capitalist trust or to the Labor State, whether its factories be socialized or not--its chimneys will not smoke in either case without coal or oil. Something might be learned about this, say, in Austria; and for that matter in Germany itself. A weaving factory administered according to the best Kautskian methods--if we admit that anything at all can be administered by Kautskian methods, except one's own inkstand--will not produce prints if it is not supplied with cotton. And we were simultaneously deprived both of Turkestan and American cotton. In addition, as has been pointed out, we had no fuel.

Of course, the blockade and the civil war came as the result of the proletarian revolution in Russia. But it does not at all follow from this that the terrible devastation caused by the Anglo-American-French blockade and the robber campaigns of Kolchak and Denikin have to be put down to the discredit of the Soviet methods of economic organization.

The imperialist war that preceded the revolution, with its all-devouring material and technical demands, imposed a much greater strain on our young industry than on the industry of more powerful capitalist countries. Our transport suffered particularly severely.

The exploitation of the railways increased considerably; the wear and tear correspondingly; while repairs were reduced to a strict minimum.

The inevitable hour of Nemesis was brought nearer by the fuel crisis.

Our almost simultaneous loss of the Donetz coal, foreign coal, and the oil of the Caucasus, obliged us in the sphere of transport to have recourse to wood. And, as the supplies of wood fuel were not in the least calculated with a view to this, we had to stoke our boilers with recently stored raw wood, which has an extremely destructive effect on the mechanism of locomotives that are already worn out. We see, in consequence, that the chief reasons for the collapse of transport preceded November, 1917. But even those reasons which are directly or indirectly bound up with the November Revolution fall under the heading of political consequences of the revolution; and in no circ.u.mstances do they affect Socialist economic methods.

The influence of political disturbances in the economic sphere was not limited only to questions of transport and fuel. If world industry, during the last decade, was more and more becoming a single organism, the more directly does this apply to national industry. On the other hand, the war and the revolution were mechanically breaking up and tearing asunder Russian industry in every direction. The industrial ruin of Poland, the Baltic fringe, and later of Petrograd, began under Tsarism and continued under Kerensky, embracing ever new and newer regions. Endless evacuations simultaneous with the destruction of industry, of necessity meant the destruction of transport also. During the civil war, with its changing fronts, evacuations a.s.sumed a more feverish and consequently a still more destructive character. Each side temporarily or permanently evacuated this or that industrial centre, and took all possible steps to ensure that the most important industrial enterprises could not be utilized by the enemy: all valuable machines were carried off, or at any rate their most delicate parts, together with the technical and best workers. The evacuation was followed by a re-evacuation, which not infrequently completed the destruction both of the property transferred and of the railways. Some most important industrial areas--especially in the Ukraine and in the Urals--changed hands several times.

To this it must be added that, at the time when the destruction of technical equipment was being accomplished on an unprecedented scale, the supply of machines from abroad, which hitherto played a decisive part in our industry, had completely ceased.

But not only did the dead elements of production--buildings, machines, rails, fuel, and raw material--suffer terrible losses under the combined blows of the war and the revolution. Not less, if not more, did the chief factor of industry, its living creative force--the proletariat--suffer. The proletariat was consolidating the November revolution, building and defending the apparatus of Soviet power, and carrying on a ceaseless struggle with the White Guards. The skilled workers are, as a rule, at the same time the most advanced. The civil war tore away many tens of thousands of the best workers for a long time from productive labor, swallowing up many thousands of them for ever. The Socialist revolution placed the chief burden of its sacrifices upon the proletarian vanguard, and consequently on industry.

All the attention of the Soviet State has been directed, for the two and a half years of its existence, to the problem of military defence.

The best forces and its princ.i.p.al resources were given to the front.

In any case, the cla.s.s struggle inflicts blows upon industry. That accusation, long before Kautsky, was levelled at it by all the philosophers of the social harmony. During simple economic strikes the workers consume, and do not produce. Still more powerful, therefore, are the blows inflicted upon economic life by the cla.s.s struggle in its severest form--in the form of armed conflicts. But it is quite clear that the civil war cannot be cla.s.sified under the heading of Socialist economic methods.

The reasons enumerated above are more than sufficient to explain the difficult economic situation of Soviet Russia. There is no fuel, there is no metal, there is no cotton, transport is destroyed, technical equipment is in disorder, living labor-power is scattered over the face of the country, and a high percentage of it has been lost to the front--is there any need to seek supplementary reasons in the economic Utopianism of the Bolsheviks in order to explain the fall of our industry? On the contrary, each of the reasons quoted alone is sufficient to evoke the question: how is it possible at all that, under such conditions, factories and workshops should continue to function?

And yet they do continue princ.i.p.ally in the shape of war industry, which is at present living at the expense of the rest. The Soviet Government was obliged to re-create it, just like the army, out of fragments. War industry, set up again under these conditions of unprecedented difficulty, has fulfilled and is fulfilling its duty: the Red Army is clothed, shod, equipped with its rifle, its machine gun, its cannon, its bullet, its sh.e.l.l, its aeroplane, and all else that it requires.

As soon as the dawn of peace made its appearance--after the destruction of Kolchak, Yudenich, and Denikin--we placed before ourselves the problem of economic organization in the fullest possible way. And already, in the course of three or four months of intensive work in this sphere, it has become clear beyond all possibility of doubt that, thanks to its most intimate connection with the popular ma.s.ses, the elasticity of its apparatus, and its own revolutionary initiative, the Soviet Government disposes of such resources and methods for economic reconstruction as no other government ever had or has to-day.

True, before us there arose quite new questions and new difficulties in the sphere of the organization of labor. Socialist theory had no answers to these questions, and could not have them. We had to find the solution in practice, and test it in practice. Kautskianism is a whole epoch behind the gigantic economic problems being solved at present by the Soviet Government. In the form of Menshevism, it constantly throws obstacles in our way, opposing the practical measures of our economic reconstruction by bourgeois prejudices and bureaucratic-intellectual scepticism.

To introduce the reader to the very essence of the questions of the organization of labor, as they stand at present before us, we quote below the report of the author of this book at the Third All-Russian Congress of Trade Unions. With the object of the fullest possible elucidation of the question, the text of the speech is supplemented by considerable extracts from the author's reports at the All-Russian Congress of Economic Councils and at the Ninth Congress of the Communist Party.

REPORT ON THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR

Comrades, the internal civil war is coming to an end. On the western front, the situation remains undecided. It is possible that the Polish bourgeoisie will hurl a challenge at its fate.... But even in this case--we do not seek it--the war will not demand of us that all-devouring concentration of forces which the simultaneous struggle on four fronts imposed upon us. The frightful pressure of the war is becoming weaker. Economic requirements and problems are more and more coming to the fore. History is bringing us, along the whole line, to our fundamental problem--the organization of labor on new social foundations. The organization of labor is in its essence the organization of the new society: every historical form of society is in its foundation a form of organization of labor. While every previous form of society was an organization of labor in the interests of a minority, which organized its State apparatus for the oppression of the overwhelming majority of the workers, we are making the first attempt in world history to organize labor in the interests of the laboring majority itself. This, however, does not exclude the element of compulsion in all its forms, both the most gentle and the extremely severe. The element of State compulsion not only does not disappear from the historical arena, but on the contrary will still play, for a considerable period, an extremely prominent part.

As a general rule, man strives to avoid labor. Love for work is not at all an inborn characteristic: it is created by economic pressure and social education. One may even say that man is a fairly lazy animal.

It is on this quality, in reality, that is founded to a considerable extent all human progress; because if man did not strive to expend his energy economically, did not seek to receive the largest possible quant.i.ty of products in return for a small quant.i.ty of energy, there would have been no technical development or social culture. It would appear, then, from this point of view that human laziness is a progressive force, Old Antonio Labriola, the Italian Marxist, even used to picture the man of the future as a "happy and lazy genius." We must not, however, draw the conclusion from this that the party and the trade unions must propagate this quality in their agitation as a moral duty. No, no! We have sufficient of it as it is. The problem before the social organization is just to bring "laziness" within a definite framework, to discipline it, and to pull mankind together with the help of methods and measures invented by mankind itself.

COMPULSORY LABOR SERVICE

The key to economic organization is labor-power, skilled, elementarily trained, semi-trained, untrained, or unskilled. To work out methods for its accurate registration, mobilization, distribution, productive application, means practically to solve the problem of economic construction. This is a problem for a whole epoch--a gigantic problem.

Its difficulty is intensified by the fact that we have to reconstruct labor on Socialist foundations in conditions of hitherto unknown poverty and terrifying misery.

The more our machine equipment is worn out, the more disordered our railways grow, the less hope there is for us of receiving machines to any significant extent from abroad in the near future, the greater is the importance acquired by the question of living labor-power. At first sight it would seem that there is plenty of it. But how are we to get at it? How are we to apply it? How are we productively to organize it? Even with the cleaning of snow drifts from the railway tracks, we were brought face to face with very big difficulties. It was absolutely impossible to meet those difficulties by means of buying labor-power on the market, with the present insignificant purchasing power of money, and in the most complete absence of manufactured products. Our fuel requirements cannot be satisfied, even partially, without a ma.s.s application, on a scale hitherto unknown, of labor-power to work on wood, fuel, peat, and combustible slate. The civil war has played havoc with our railways, our bridges, our buildings, our stations. We require at once tens and hundreds of thousands of hands to restore order to all this. For production on a large scale in our timber, peat, and other enterprises, we require housing for our workers, if they be only temporary huts. Hence, again, the necessity of devoting a considerable amount of labor-power to building work. Many workers are required to organize river navigation; and so on, and so forth....

Capitalist industry utilizes auxiliary labor-power on a large scale, in the shape of peasants employed on industry for only part of the year. The village, throttled by the grip of landlessness, always threw a certain surplus of labor-power on to the market. The State obliged it to do this by its demand for taxes. The market offered the peasant manufactured goods. To-day, we have none of this. The village has acquired more land; there is not sufficient agricultural machinery; workers are required for the land; industry can at present give practically nothing to the village; and the market no longer has an attractive influence on labor-power.

Yet labor-power is required--required more than at any time before.