THE DICTATORSHIP of the PROLETARIAT
By L. KAMENEFF.
Conservatism in ideology, theories based on principles, slowness in their adaptation to rapidly-changing life, their constant lagging behind the constantly changing forms of the struggle—have frequently been noted by Marxists. In our struggle for Communism, we constantly meet with these facts, we constantly have to remark how great is the power of the old ideology even over the best men of the present Labour movement—in so far as these men have grown up in the atmosphere of pre-war Europe.
This mental conservatism is most strikingly observed in. their approach to the question of dictatorship. Six years of war and revolution (1914–1920) it would seem, should have elucidated this finally, from all points of view, by practice, by facts out of the everyday life of the masses; and yet, even among the comrades adhering to the Third International, we are often confronted with the question: "What is the dictatorship of the proletariat? … Cannot the Labour movement attain its object without a dictatorship? Why is dictatorship inevitable?" I have heard these questions not only from the members of the British Trade Union delegation, but even from some of the members of the delegation of Italian Socialists.
When one hears such questions one thinks involuntarily that the persons uttering them must have slept through a whole historical period, and, first of all, through the world-war of 1914–18. For these years constituted a model epoch of dictatorship, and the methods of carrying
3
