The Proletarian Revolution in Russia/Part 5/Chapter 3
III
DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT AND CIVIL
WAR
The proletarian state, brought into being by the revolution of November 7 and by the fiat of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, was a state representing exclusively the producing masses, a state of the federated Soviets. It was, in its fundamentals, the expression of proletarian state requirements as determined by the prevailing revolutionary tasks, and as projected by the Paris Commune.[1] The new government was the Soviets, federated and assuming all the functions of the state,—the self-government of the producing class. The local Soviet was the local authority of government, elected directly by the suffrage of the workers in the factories and the peasants in the fields; these elections were frequent, and the representatives were at all times freely recallable by their constituents. The local Soviets elected delegates to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, on the basis of proportional representation, and this Congress was the supreme governing body of Russia. The Congress elected the members of the Council of People's Commissaires, and a Central Executive Committee, also on the basis of proportional representation; this Committee sat permanently during the intervals between sessions of the Congress, and directed the activity of the Council of People's Commissaires. At the session of the Congress, each Commissaire and the Central Executive Committee rendered reports; the decision of the Congress on all matters was supreme. The new regime abolished the parliamentary system and the complicated bureaucratic machinery of the bourgeois state; it united legislative and executive functions. This flexible system of government was instantly responsive to the will of the people; it was the utmost in democracy,—not that bourgeois democracy which is simply a form of authority of the appropriating over the producing class, but the free, conscious expression of the initiative, activity and interests of the organized producers.
The Soviet state presents, however, a dual character: it is a democracy in its attitude and relation to the producing class, but a stern and unrelenting dictatorship toward the bourgeoisie. This dual character is the expression of the transition period from Capitalism to Socialism, of the requirements of crushing the resistance of the counter-revolutionary elements, destroying the political power of the Capitalist Class, completing the destruction of the bourgeois regime, and gradually introducing the relations and institutions of Communist Socialism. In this transition period the state assumes the form of a dictatorship of the revolutionary proletariat, an instrument for the crushing of the bourgeoisie in the inevitable civil war.
Civil war ensued immediately upon the assumption of power by the revolutionary proletariat and peasantry through the Soviets. The ultimate test of the proletarian revolution is the test of armed force, since the ruling class and its allies will resort to the desperation of revolt to crush the proletarian regime. The supremacy of the proletariat, accordingly, inevitably means civil war, more or less intense according to circumstances; the transition period being characterized by civil war, the proletarian state retains the repressive character of the old state until the bourgeoisie is completely crushed. The state is an instrument of coercion: the bourgeois state is an instrument for the coercion of the proletariat; the revolutionary proletarian state—the dictatorship of the proletariat—is an instrument for the coercion of the bourgeoisie, until the complete ascendancy of Socialism renders repression unnecessary, when the state as state, utterly disappears.
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels projected a determining phase of the proletarian revolution: "The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees all capital from the bourgeoisie; to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state—that is, of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible Of course, in the beginning this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production." And in his Criticism of the Gotha Program Marx says: "Between the capitalist and the communist system of society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. This corresponds to a political transition period, whose state can be nothing else than the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat." The theory of Marx is the practice of the proletarian revolution in Russia. The dictatorship of the proletariat ruthlessly annihilates the rights and ideology of the old regime, and relentlessly crushes all counter-revolutionary movements.
Civil war being a phase of the transition from Capitalism to Socialism, the dictatorship of the proletariat is constrained to use force in its struggle against the counter-revolution. But the use of force is not a finality: it is a process of revolutionary development. The use of force is as temporary as the dictatorship of the proletariat itself: a necessary means of pushing on the Revolution to the pont where force and dictatorship are each equally unnecessary because their functions have become unnecessary.
The first problem of the Soviet state, accordingly, was to emerge victorious out of the civil war which immediately broke loose. The defeat of Kerensky at Gatchina, on November 14, disposed of Kerensky, but it did not dispose of the efforts of the counter-revolution to crush the new proletarian regime.
Many of the revolts against the new regime were organized by the military clique, led by Kaledine, Kornilov & Co. The revolts of of the Cossacks were particularly menacing, and were crushed only by the heroic activity of the Red Guards. The Red Guard played a very important role in the civil war during the Soviet regime. It consisted almost wholly of armed workingmen, militant class conscious, who thoroughly understood the Revolution, were willing to die for it, and acted as the dynamic centre of the revolutionary masses in action. But the military opposition to the Soviet government was almost negligible; the real opposition came from other sources, and in a more threatening manner.
The bourgeoisie and the propertied classes generally, including the petite bourgeoisie, were almost a solid mass in opposition to the Soviets. Of this opposition, that of the imperialistic bourgeoisie itself was the least important; it was the opposition of the middle class and the petty bourgeois intelligentsia which proved most formidable. And this opposition expressed itself in the form of sabotage; that is to say, the intelligentsia and the middle class generally refused to co-operate with the Soviets in the reconstruction of the country and did all in their power to hamper this reconstruction. Technicians refused their service in industry; school teachers went on strike; men and women of specialized ability refused to co-operate with the constituted bodies of reconstruction. Men and women of the bourgeoisie, in hospitals, in charity organizations, everywhere their service were needed, indulged in sabotage, either by open refusal of work or by cunningly interfering with the normal course of things. And the lies, the slanders—the output was enormous. The intelligentsia, the petty bourgeois intellectuals and professionals, constituted an active and venomous centre of resistance to the Workers' and Peasants' Government.
In this attitude, the petite bourgeoisie demonstrated in practice the revoultionary Socialist theory that it is the greatest enemy of the proletarian revolution, before and after the event. The proletarian revolution means the supremacy of the great mass of the people, of the propertiless workers and peasants; unless these great masses appear upon the stage of events and determine the activity of the state, there is no proletarian revolution. In this sense, the proletarian revolution goes to the heart of things; it means a fundamental change, the reversal of relations in bourgeois society, where the "intellectuals" order and the masses obey. The masses in Russia had become conscious, determining the activity of the government and of the society. Against this new dispensation of things—surely "the end of the world!"—the petite bourgeoisie revolted in dismay and anger, refusing to have anything to do with masses that did not pay it homage. All the pettiness, all the arrogance, all the hypocrisy of the bourgeois system of things, which to the bourgeoisie itself are simply instruments of oppression, become in the souls of the petite bourgeoisie principles, ideals, aspirations of eternal fitness and beauty. "Since the masses refuse our tutelage, let us leave the masses to their fate!"
But the masses are determined, aggressive, uncompromising; Revolution has set loose their latent energy and initiative; they reveal unsuspected reserves of heroism, capacity and daring: the intelligentsia will yet submit to the authority of the masses. …
The moderate Socialists were equally active against the regime of the revolutionary workers and peasants; in fact, they constituted a merciless, inexorable opposition. The Mensheviki, including George Plekhanov, I. G. Tseretelli, and even the "internationalist" Martov, issued declarations branding the Revolution of November 7 and the assumption of power by the Soviets as a "crime." The Social-Revolutionists of the Right, during the week after the Bolshevist coup issued proclamations against the Bolsheviki. These moderate Socialists adopted the policy and attitude of the petite bourgeoisie, proving a relentless enemy of the proletarian revolution. Lenin had said that the institution of the Soviet Republic would pave the way for the peaceful, creative struggle of parties within the Soviets; but the moderates rejected the peaceful struggle within the Soviets, of party against party, program against program: they resorted to conspiracy, force, terrorism against the revolutionary proletarian government of the Soviets. The "old guard" of the struggle against Czarism, animated by the ideology of the petite bourgeoisie, resorted to similar tactics: Vladimir Burtsev conspired as in the old days; Boris Savinkov organized terrorist plots against the Soviet authority as he had organized terrorism against Czarism; Tschaikovsky declared at the Railway Workers' Convention in January that terrorism would be used against the Bolsheviki as in the days of Czarism. Nor was this mere threatening: terrorism was actually organized, and only the solidity of the Soviets, the support of the revolutionary masses, rendered the terrorist campaign unsuccessful.
Moderate Socialism has much to atone for. It is the arch-enemy of the proletariat and of Socialism. In all nations it is the curse of the revolutionary movement. Moderate Socialism in Russia might have been forgiven its attitude prior to November 7; its acts thereafter will be forever an indelible brand of shame. The international proletariat will learn from the history of the war, from the history of the Russian Revolution, that the proletarian revolution must necessarily wage a merciless, uncompromising struggle against moderate Socialism, which in its tendency is counter-revolutionary.
The Soviet government used drastic measures against the counter-revolution. Its policy was unwavering and stern; the hesitancy of the coalition regime was a thing of the past. The Provisional Government possessed no solidity because there was no solid class behind it, simply a fictitious unity of parties; it could not, under the conditions, determine upon and adhere to an uncompromising policy. But the Soviet Government was reared upon the solid basis of the revolutionary proletariat; it could, and did, adopt a consistent, courageous and uncompromising; policy. The counter-revolutionary revolts were crushed ruthlessly, not simply by armed force, but by intensifying class antagonism and thereby splitting the opposition; as among the Cossacks, for example, where the solid support of Kaledine was divided by means of Cossacks' Soviets, organizing the propertiless Cossacks against those of property. Against the intelligentsia coercive measures were adopted, the only way to convince them of the futility of their course. The bourgeoisie was attacked by means of the expropriation of large enterprises and by a rigid workers' control of industry, the drastic regulation of the economic activity of the country. Perhaps the most effective measure against the opposition in general was the exclusion of the bourgeoisie from participation in the government,—which is another necessary feature of the dictatorship of the proletariat. And underlying all these measures was the Soviets' merciless use of mass terror against the counter-revolution.
The armed struggle against the counter-revolution raged throughout Russia, and spread into Finland and the Ukraine, where the struggle between the revolutionary workers and peasants and the bourgeoisie assumed a particularly violent form. The revolutionists in Finland and the Ukraine were assisted by the Bolsheviki and the Red Guards, but were unsuccessful because of the intervention of Austro-German troops, who were invited to invade the country in order to strike at the Revolution. The attitude of the Bolsheviki toward Finland and the Ukraine was to grant them their independence, trusting to the natural affinity of proletarian governments to unite; and then did all in their power to produce the victory of the proletarian revolution in Finland and the Ukraine.
- ↑ The working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes… The Commune was formed of the various municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms. The majority of its members were naturally workingmen, or acknowledged representatives of the working class. The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary, body, executive and legislative at the same time. Instead of continuing to be the agent of the central Government, the police was at once stripped of its political attributes and turned into the responsible and at all times revocable agent of the Commune. So were the officials of all other branches of the administration. From the members of the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at workmen's wages. The vested interests and the representation allowances of the high dignitaries of State disappeared along with the high dignitaries themselves. Public functions ceased to be the private property of the tools of the central Government. Not only municipal administration, but the whole initiative hitherto exercised by the State was laid into die hands of the Commune. … The Paris Commune was, of course, to serve as a model to all the great industrial centers of France. The communal regime once established in Paris and the secondary centres, the old centralized Government would in the provinces, too, have to give way to the self-government of the producers. In a rough sketch of national organization which the Commune had no time to develop, it is clearly stated that the Commune was to be the political form of even the smallest country hamlet, and that in the rural districts the standing army was to be replaced by a national militia, with an extremely short term of service. The rural communes of delegates in the central town, and these district assemblies were again to send dmtties to the National Delegation in Paris, each delegate to be at any time revocable and bound by the mandat imperatif (formal instructions) of his constituents. The few important functions which still would remain, for a central government were not to be suppressed, as has intentionally been misstated, but were to be discharged by communal, and therefore strictly responsible, agents. The unity of the nation was not to be broken; but, on the contrary, to be organized by the Communal Constitution, and to become a reality by the destruction of the State power which claimed to be the embodiment of that unity independent of, and superior to, the nation itself, from which it was but a parasitic excrescence. … The Communal Constitution brought the rural producers under the intellectual lead of the central towns of their districts, and there secured to them, in the workingmen, the natural trustees of their interests. … It was essentially a working class government, the product of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economic emancipation of labor.—Karl Marx, The Civil War in France.