ism, bribery, speculation and other indecencies. It takes time and an iron hand to get rid of this.
There never was a great revolution in history in which the people have not instinctively felt this and have not displayed a salutary firmness, shooting thieves on the spot. The trouble with the previous revolutions was this—that the revolutionary zeal of the masses, which kept them vigilant and gave them strength to suppress mercilessly the elements of decay, did not last long. The social, the class cause of such weakness of revolutionary zeal lay in, the weakness of the proletariat, which is the only class capable (if sufficiently numerous, conscious and disciplined) of attracting the majority of the exploited toilers (the majority of the poor, if we should use a simpler and more popular expression) and of retaining the power for a sufficiently long time to suppress completely both all exploiters and all elements of decay.
This historical experience of all revolutions, the universal historical, economic and political lesson was summed up by Marx in his brief, sharp, exact and vivid formula: the dictatorship of the proletariat. And that the Russian revolution has correctly approached this universal historical problem has been proved by the victorious march of the Soviet organization among all the peoples and tongues of Russia. For the Soviet rule is nothing else than the organized form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the dictatorship of the advanced class awakening to a new Democracy, to independent participation in the administration of the state, tens and tens of millions of exploited toilers, who through their experience are discovering that the disciplined and class-conscious vanguard of the proletariat is their most reliable leader.
But "dictatorship" is a great word. And great words must not be used in vain. A dictatorship is an iron rule, with revolutionary daring and swift and merciless in the suppression of the exploiters as well as of the thugs (hooligans.) And our rule is too mild, quite frequently resembling putty rather than iron. We must not for a moment
