The Proletarian Revolution in Russia/Part 2/Chapter 4
IV
THE NEW TYPE OF GOVERNMENT.
The significance of the Councils of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Delegates is generally misunderstood because the majority of the people do not realize their class character and meaning, the part they play in the Russian Revolution. The significance of the Councils is misunderstood for another reason, because they constitute an entirely new form of power, a new type of government.
To this day, the most perfect type of bourgeois government has been the parliamentary democratic republic: power vested in a parliament, with the usual machinery of government, the usual system and organs of administration,—a standing army, a police and a bureaucracy, practically unchangeable, privileged, and standing above the nation.
But the new revolutionary epoch, beginning with the end of the nineteenth century and determined objectively by Imperialism, has been pushing: to the fore a new type of democratic government which in certain respects ceases to be a government, or, to quote Engels' words, "does not seem to be, properly speaking, a government." This is a government on the model of the Paris Commune, replacing the army and the police by an armed citizenry. That was the essential feature of the Commune, which has been so much misrepresented and slandered by bourgeois writers, who pretend among other things that the Commune was trying to put Socialism into immediate practice.
This is the new type of government which the Russian Revolution began to organize between 1905 and 1917. The Republic of the Councils of Workers, Soldiers and Peasants, united in an All-Russian Council of Councils,—this is what is already coming into being in our midst, upon the initiative of millions of people. This is the government of a democracy which is taking the law into its own hands, which relies on itself alone and will not wait while certain gentlemen, Cadets and professors, elaborate nice little laws for a bourgeois republic of the parliamentary type, or while the pedants and routine worshippers of petty bourgeois Socialism, like Plekhanov and Kautsky, refuse to deviate from Marx' teachings in governmental matters.
The difference between Marxism and Anarchism is that Marxism admits the necessity of government and governmental power in revolutionary periods generally, and during the period of transition from Capitalism to Socialism in particular. The difference between Marxism and the petty bourgeois, opportunistic Socialism of the Plekhanov and Kautsky type is that Marxism admits the necessity during the revolutionary period of a government not of the usual bourgeois parliamentary, republican type, but one similar to the Paris Commune.
The main difference 'between the two types of government is this:
It is extremely easy to revert from a bourgeois republic to a monarchy (as history proves), as all the machinery of repression is left undisturbed: army, police, bureaucracy.
As in the Commune, the Councils of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Delegates destroy that machinery, abolish it entirely.
A republic of the parliamentary bourgeois type strangles and crushes the independent political life of the masses, prevents the Classes from taking a direct part in the democratic up-building of the governmental activity from below. The Councils of Workesr, Soldiers and Peasants do just the opposite. They reproduce the type of government established by the Paris Commune and which Marx called the "finally open form of government in which the liberation of the workers can really take place."
People often say that "the Russian nation is not prepared for the introduction of a Commune." This was a favorite argument with the feudal lords when they explained that the peasants were not ready for freedom. The Commune, that is the Councils of Workers' and Soldiers' delegates, would not introduce, does not intend to introduce and should not introduce any reorganization which is not absolutely ripe not only in the economic activity but in the consciousness of the majority of the people. The more terrible the economic bankruptcy and the crisis produced by the war, the more we will need a perfect political form which will facilitate the healing of the wounds inflicted by the war upon mankind. The less experienced the Russian people is with organization the more aggressively we must proceed with the constructive organization of the people itself, not merely through bourgeois politicians and bureaucrats.
The sooner we cast off the prejudices instilled by the pseudo-Marxism of Plekhanov, Kautsky & Co., the more actively we will help the people everywhere organize Councils of Workers and Peasants.
We must expect blunders in the first attempt at structural organization of the people, but it is better to blunder ahead than to lag behind; for while we lag the bourgeois professors and jurists prepare bills for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, for the perpetuation of the parliamentary bourgeois republic and the suppression of the Councils of Workers' and Peasants' Delegates.
If we organize and conduct an energetic propaganda, not only the proletariat but nine-tenths of the peasantry will rise against the re-establishment of the police, against an immovable and privileged bureaucracy, against an army which is separate from the nation. And such will be the new type of government. The substitution of a national militia for the police is a change which results logically from the whole course of the revolution and which has been adopted in most Russian communities. We must make it clear to the masses that in the majority of revolutions of the usual bourgeois type, a change of that sort was very ephemeral and that the bourgeoisie, however democratic and republican it may have been, soon returned to the former police system, the kind of police which is alien to the people, which is commanded by bourgeois and is ready to assist in any attempt at oppression of the people.
The only way to prevent a return to the old police system is to organize a national militia and make it part of the army, the army being replaced by an armed citizenry. The militia would comprise all citizens of both sexes between the ages of 15 and 65, these age limits being selected approximately to exclude minors and old people. Capitalists should pay their employes, servants and other subordinates for days which they have to serve in the militia. Unless women feel called upon to take an active part not only in political life generally, but and particularly in continuous general social work, it is idle to speak not only of Socialism but of complete democracy. Certain special functions of the police, such as the care of the side, of abandoned children, the supervision of foodstuffs, etc., will never be satisfactorily discharged until women are on a footing of perfect equality with men, not only on paper but in reality.
We must not go back to the police system. To secure the influence of all organized bodies to support the project of organizing a national militia is one of the tasks that the proletariat must assume, in order to protect and strengthen the Revolution and assure its normal development.