XII “The Dictatorship of the Proletariat”
In a pamphlet entitled Two Tactics, published in Geneva, in 1905, at the time of the first Russian Revolution, Lenin wrote:
Whoever wants to try any path to Socialism other than political democracy will inevitably come to absurd and reactionary conclusions, both in an economic and a political sense. If some workmen ask us, “Why not achieve the maximum program?” we shall answer them by pointing out how alien to Socialism the democratic masses are, how undeveloped are the class contradictions, how unorganized are the proletarians.... The largest possible realization of democratic reform is necessary and requisite for the spreading of socialistic enlightenment and for introducing appropriate organization.
These words are worth remembering. In the light of the tragic results of Bolshevism they seem singularly prophetic, for certainly by attempting to achieve Socialism through other methods than those of political democracy Lenin and his followers have “come to absurd and reactionary conclusions, both in an economic and a political sense.” They profess, for example, to have established in Russia a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” In reality they have set up a tyrannical rule over the proletariat, together with the rest of the population, by an almost infinitesimal part of the population of Russia. Lenin and his followers claim to be the logical exemplars of the teachings of Karl Marx, whereas their whole theory is no more than a grotesque travesty of Marx’s teachings.
More than seventy years have elapsed since the publication of Marx’s Communist Manifesto, in which he set forth his theory of the historic rôle of the proletariat. Thirty-seven years—more than a full generation—have elapsed since his death in 1883. Even if it were true that during the period spanned by these two dates Karl Marx believed in and advocated the dictatorship of the proletariat in the sense in which that term is used by the Bolsheviki, that fact would possess little more than historical interest. Much has happened since the death of Marx, and still more since the early ’seventies, when his life-work virtually ended, which the political realist needs must take into account. Marx did not utter the last word of human wisdom upon the laws and methods of social progress and so render new and fresh judgments unnecessary and wrong. No one can study the evolution of Marx himself and doubt that if he were alive to-day he would hold very different views from those which he held in 1847 and subsequently. Our only justification for considering the relation of Leninism to Marxism lies in the fact that in this and other countries outside of Russia a considerable element in the Socialist movement, deceived by Lenin’s use of certain Marxian phrases, gives its support to Leninism in the belief that it is identical with Marxism. Nothing could be farther from the teachings of Marx than the oppressive bureaucratic dictatorship by an infinitesimal minority set up by Lenin and his disciples.
In the Communist Manifesto Marx used the term “proletariat” in the sense in which it was used by Barnave and other Intellectuals of the French Revolution, not as it is commonly used to-day, as a synonym for the wage-earning class. The term as used by Marx connoted not merely an absence of property, not merely poverty, but a peculiar state of degradation. Just as in Roman society the term was applied to a large class, including peasants, wage laborers, and others without capital, property, or assured means of support, unfit and unworthy to exercise political rights, so the term was used by Marx, as it had been by his predecessors, to designate a class in modern society similarly denied the rights of citizenship. When Marx wrote in 1847 this was the condition of the wage-earning class in every European country. In no one of these countries did the working-class enjoy the right of suffrage. Marx saw no hope of any amelioration of the lot of this class. On the contrary, he believed that the evolution of society would take the form of a relentless, brutal process, unrestrained by any humane consciousness or legislation, which would culminate in a division of society into two classes, on the one hand a very small ruling and owning class, on the other hand the overwhelming majority of the population. He specifically rejected the idea of minority rule: “All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.”
Not only does Marx here present the proletarian uprising as the culmination of a historical process which has made proletarians of “the immense majority,” but, what is more significant, perhaps, he presents this movement, not as a conscious ideal, but as an inevitable and inescapable condition. In 1875, in a famous letter criticizing the Gotha program of the German Social Democrats, he wrote: “Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. This requires a political transition stage, which can be nothing less than the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.” It is mainly upon this single quotation that Lenin and his followers rely in claiming Marxian authority for the régime set up in Russia under the title the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. The passage cited cannot honestly and fairly be so interpreted. We are bound to bear in mind that Marx still held to the belief that the revolution from capitalist to communist society could only take place when the proletariat had become “the immense majority.”
Moreover, it is quite clear that he was still thinking, in 1875, of dictatorship by this immense majority as a temporary measure. Of course, the word “dictatorship” is a misnomer when it is so used, but not more so than when used to describe rule by any class. Strictly speaking, dictatorship refers to a rule by a single individual who is bound by no laws, the absolute supremacy of an individual dictator. Friedrich Engels, who collaborated with Marx in writing the Communist Manifesto and in much of his subsequent work, and who became his literary executor and finished Das Kapital, certainly knew the mind of Marx as no other human being did or could. Engels has, fortunately, made quite clear the sense in which Marx used the term “dictatorship of the proletariat.” In his Civil War in France, Marx described the Paris Commune as “essentially a government of the working-class, the result of the struggle of the producing class against the appropriating class, the political form under which the freedom of labor could be attained being at length revealed.” He described with glowing enthusiasm the Commune with its town councilors chosen by universal suffrage, and not by the votes of a single class. As Kautsky remarks, “the dictatorship of the proletariat was for him a condition which necessarily arose in a real democracy, because of the overwhelming numbers of the proletariat.”66 That this is a correct interpretation of Marx’s thought is attested by the fact that in his introduction to the Civil War in France Engels describes the Commune, based on the general suffrage of the whole people, as “the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.”
Of course, the evolution of modern industrial nations has proceeded upon very different lines from those forecasted by Marx. The middle class has not been exterminated and shows no signs of being submerged in the wage-earning class; the workers are no longer disfranchised and outside the pale of citizenship; on the contrary, they have acquired full political rights and are becoming increasingly powerful in the parliaments. In other words, the wage-earning class is, for the most part, no longer “proletarian” in the narrow sense in which Marx used the term. Quite apart from these considerations, however, it is very obvious that the theory of Lenin and his followers that the whole political power of Russia should be centered in the so-called industrial proletariat, which even the Bolsheviki themselves have not estimated at more than 3 per cent. of the entire population, bears no sort of relation to the process Marx always had in mind when he referred to “proletarian dictatorship.” Not only is there no sanction for the Leninist view in Marxian theory, but the two are irreconcilably opposed.
The Bolshevist régime does not even represent the proletariat, however. The fact is thoroughly well established that the political power rests in the Communist Party, which represents only a minority of the proletariat. What we have before us in Russia is not even a dictatorship of the proletariat, but a dictatorship over an entire people, including the proletariat, by the Communist Party. The testimony of the Bolsheviki themselves upon this point is abundant and conclusive. If any good purpose were served thereby, pages of statements to this effect by responsible Bolshevist leaders could be cited; for our present purpose, however, the following quotations will suffice:
In a letter to workmen and peasants issued in July, 1918, Lenin said, “The dictatorship of the proletariat is carried out by the party of the Bolsheviki, which, as early as 1905, and earlier, became one with the entire revolutionary proletariat.” In an article entitled, “The Party and the Soviets,” published in Pravda, February 13, 1919, Bucharin, editor-in-chief of that important official organ of the Communist Party, said: “It is no secret for any one that in a country where the working-class and the poorest peasantry are in power, that party is the directing party which expresses the interests of these groups of the population—the Communist Party. All the work in the Soviet goes on under the influence and the political leadership of our party. It is the forms which this leadership should assume that are the subject of disagreement.” In Pravda, November 5, 1919, the leading editorial says of the “adventure of Yudenich” that in the last analysis “this ordeal has strengthened the cause of revolution and has strengthened the hegemony of the Communist Party.” In the Samara Kommuna, April 11, 1919, we read that “The Communist Party as a whole is responsible for the future of the young Soviet Socialist Republic, for the whole course of the world Communist revolution. In the country the highest organ of authority, to which all Soviet institutions and officials are subordinate, is again the Communist Party.”
Not only do we find that the Bolshevist régime rests upon the theory of the hegemony of the Communist Party, but in practice the party functions as a part of the state machinery, as the directing machinery, in point of fact, placing the Soviets in a subordinate position. At times the Communist Party has exercised the entire power of government, as, for example, from July, 1918, to January, 1919. Thus we read in Izvestia, November 6, 1919, “From October, 1917, up to July, 1918, is the first period of Soviet construction; from July, 1918, up to January, 1919, the second period, when the Soviet work was conducted exclusively by the power of the Russian Communist Party; and the third period from January this year, when in the work of Soviet construction broad non-partizan masses participated.”
This condition was, of course, made possible by the predominance of Communist Party members in the Soviet Government, a predominance due to the measures taken to exclude the anti-Bolshevist parties. Thus 88 per cent. of the members of the Executive Committees of the Provincial Soviets were members of the Communist Party, according to Izvestia, November 6, 1919. In the army, while their number was relatively small, not more than 10,000 in the entire army, members of the Communist Party held almost all the responsible posts. Trotsky, as Commander-in-Chief, reported to the seventh Congress, according to the Red Baltic Fleet, December 11, 1919, “our Army consists of peasants and workmen. Workmen represent scarcely more than 15 to 18 per cent., but they maintain the same directing position as throughout Soviet Russia. This is a privilege secured to them because of their greater consciousness, compactness, and revolutionary zeal. The army is the reflection of our whole social order. It is based on the rule of the working-class, in which latter the party of Communists plays the leading rôle.” Trotsky further said: “The number of members of this party in the army is about ten thousand. The responsible posts of commissaries are occupied by them in the overwhelming majority of instances. In each regiment there is a Communist group. The significance of the Communists in the army is shown by the fact that when conditions become unfavorable in a given division the commanding staff appeals to the Revolutionary Military Soviet with a request that a group of Communists be sent down.” Accordingly, it is not surprising to find the party itself exercising the functions of government and issuing orders. In Izvestia and Pravda, during April, 1919, numerous paragraphs were published relating to the mobilization of regiments by the Communist Party.
From figures published by the Bolsheviki themselves it is possible to obtain a tolerably accurate idea of the actual numerical strength of the Communist Party. During the second half of 1918, when, as stated in the paragraph already quoted from Izvestia, “the Soviet work was conducted exclusively by the power of the Russian Communist Party,” there was naturally a considerable increase in the party membership, for very obvious reasons. In Severnaya Communa, February 22, 1919, appeared the following:
At the session of the Moscow Committee of the Russian Communist Party, on February 15, 1919, the following resolutions were carried: Taking into account—(1) That the uninterrupted growth of our party during the year of dictatorship has inevitably meant that there have entered its ranks elements having absolutely nothing in common with Communism, joining in order to use the authority of the Russian Communist Party for their own personal, selfish aims; (2) That these elements, taking cover under the flag of Communism, are by their acts discrediting in the eyes of the people the prestige and glorious name of our Proletarian Party; (3) That the so-called “Communists of our days” by their outrageous behavior are arousing discontent and bitter feeling in the people, thus creating a favorable soil for counter-revolutionary agitation—taking all this into account, the Moscow Committee of the Russian Communist Party declares:
(a) That the party congress about to be held should call on all party organizations to check up in the strictest manner all members of the party and cleanse its ranks of elements foreign to the party; (b) that one must carry on a decisive struggle against those elements whose acts create a counter-revolutionary state of mind; (c) that one must make every effort to raise the moral level of members of the Russian Communist Party and educate them in the spirit of true Proletarian Communism; (d) that one must direct all efforts toward strengthening party discipline and establishing strict control by the party over all its members in all fields of Party-Soviet activity.
Yet, notwithstanding the inflation of party membership here referred to, we find Izvestia reporting in that same month, February, 1919, as follows: “The secretary of the Communist Party of the Moscow Province states that the total number of party members throughout the whole province is 2,881.” At the eighth Congress of the Communist Party, March, 1919, serious attention was given to the inflation of the party membership by the admission of Soviet employees and others who were not Communists at heart, and it was decided to cleanse the party of such elements and, after that was done, to undertake a recruiting campaign for new members. Yet, according to the official minutes of this Congress, “the sum total of the Communist Party throughout Soviet Russia represents about one-half of one per cent. of the entire population.” We find in Izvestia, May 8, 1919, that out of a total of more than two million inhabitants in the Province of Kaluga the membership of the Communist Party amounted to less than one-fifth of one per cent. of the population: “According to the data of the Communist Congress of the Province of Kaluga there are 3,861 registered members of the party throughout the whole province.” On the following day, May 9, 1919, Izvestia reported: “At the Communist Congress of the Riazan Province 181 organizations were represented, numbering 5,994 members.” As the population of the Riazan Province was well over 3,000,000 it will be seen that here again the Communist Party membership was less than one-fifth of one per cent. of the population.
At this time various Bolshevist journals gave the Communist Party membership at 20,000 for the city of Moscow and 12,000 for Petrograd. Then took place the so-called “re-registration,” to “relieve the party of this ballast,” as Pravda said later on, “those careerists of the petty bourgeois groups of the population.” In Petrograd the membership was reduced by nearly one-third and in some provincial towns by from 50 to 75 per cent. The result was that in September, 1919, Pravda reported the number of Communist Party members in Petrograd as 9,000, “with at least 50,000 ardent supporters of the anti-Bolshevist movement.” This official journal did not regard the 9,000 as a united body of genuine and sincere Communists: “Are the 9,000 upholding the cause of Bolshevism acting according to their convictions? No. Most of them are in ignorance of the principles of the Communists, which at heart they do not believe in, but all the employees of the Soviets study these principles much the same as under the rule of the Czar they turned their attention to police rules in order to get ahead.”
On October 1, 1919, Pravda published two significant circular letters from the Central Committee of the Communist Party to the district and local organizations of the party. The first of these called for “a campaign to recruit new members into the party” and to induce old members to rejoin. To make joining the party easier “entry into the party is not to be conditioned by the presentation of two written recommendations as before.” The appeal to the party workers says, “During ‘party-week’ we ought to increase the membership of our party to half a million.” The second circular is of interest because of the following sentences: “The principle of administration by ‘colleges’ must be reduced to a minimum. Discussions and considerations must be given up. The party must be as soon as possible rebuilt on military lines, and there must be created a military revolutionary apparatus which would work solidly and accurately. In this apparatus there must be clearly distributed privileges and duties.”
The frenzied efforts to increase the party membership by “drives” in which every device and every method of persuasion and pressure was used brought into the party many who were not Communists at all. Thus we find Pravda saying, December 12, 1919: “The influx of many members to the collectives (Soviet Management groups) comes not only from the working-class, but also from the middle bourgeoisie which formerly considered Communists as its enemies. One of the new collectives is a collective at the estate of Kurakin (a children’s colony). Here entered the collective not only loyal employees, but also representatives of the teaching staff.” Pravda adds that “this inrush of the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie that formerly considered the Communists as its enemies, is not at all to our interest. Of course, there may be honest Soviet officials who have in fact shown their loyalty to the great ideas of Communism, and such can find their place in our ranks.” Other Bolshevist journals wrote in the same spirit deploring the admission of so many “bourgeois” Soviet officials into the party.
In spite of this abnormal and much-feared inflation of the party membership, Pravda reported on March 18, 1920, that with more than 300,000 workmen in Petrograd the total membership of the Communist Party in that city was only 30,000. That is to say, including all the Soviet officials and “bourgeois elements,” the party membership amounted to rather less than 10 per cent. of the industrial proletariat, and that in the principal center of the party, the first of the two great cities. Surely this is proof that the Communist Party really represents only a minority of the industrial proletariat. If even with all its bourgeois elements it amounts in the principal industrial city, its stronghold, to less than 10 per cent. of the number of working-men, we may be quite certain that in the country as a whole the percentage is very much smaller.
Even if we take into account only the militant portion of the organized proletariat, the Communist Party is shown to represent only a minority of it. Economicheskaya Zhizn, October 15, 1919, published an elaborate statistical analysis of the First Trades-Union Conference of the Moscow Government. We learn that in the Union of Textile Workers, the largest union represented, of 131 delegates present only 27, or 20.6 per cent., declared themselves to be Communists; while 94, or 71.7 per cent., declared themselves to be non-party, and 3 declared that they were Mensheviki. Of the 21 delegates of the Union of Compositors 13, or 62.3 per cent., declared themselves to be Mensheviki; 7, or 33 per cent., to be non-party, and only 1 registered as a Communist. The Union of Soviet employees naturally sent a majority of delegates who registered as Communists, 45 out of 67 delegates, or 67 per cent., so registering themselves. The unions were divided into four classes or categories, as follows:
| Category | No. of Delegates | No. of Members Represented |
|---|---|---|
| First: Workers employed in large industries | 287 | 266,660 |
| Second: Workers employed in small industries | 113 | 806,200 |
| Third: “Mixed unions” of Soviet employees, etc | 197 | 204,100 |
| Fourth: Intellectual workers’ unions | 183 | 132,800 |
If we take the first two categories as representing the industrial proletariat as a whole we get 1,072,860 proletarians represented by 400 delegates; in the third and fourth categories, representing Soviet officials, Intellectuals, and “petty bourgeois elements,” we get 380 delegates representing 336,900 members. Thus the industrial proletariat secured only about one-third of the representation in proportion to membership secured by the other elements. Representation was upon this basis:
| Category | One Delegate for Every | |
|---|---|---|
| First: Workers in large industries | 610 | workers |
| Second: Workers in small industries | 1,427 | “ |
| Third: “Mixed unions”—Soviet employees, city employees, etc | 247 | “ |
| Fourth: Intellectuals | 237 | “ |
With all this juggling and gerrymandering the Bolsheviki did not manage to get a majority of out-and-out Communists, and only by having a separate classification for “sympathizers” did they manage to attain such a majority, namely, 52 per cent. of all delegates. If we take the delegates of workers engaged in the large industries, the element which Lenin has so often called “the kernel of the proletariat,” we find that only 28 per cent. declared themselves as belonging to the Communist Party. At the All-Russian Conference of Engineering Workers, reported in Economicheskaya Zhizn (No. 219), we find that of the delegates present those declaring themselves to be Communists were 40 per cent., those belonging to no party 46 per cent., and Mensheviki 8 per cent.
In considering these figures we must bear in mind these facts: First, delegates to such bodies are drawn from the most active men in the organizations; second, persecution of all active in opposition to the Bolsheviki inevitably lessened the number of active opponents among the delegates; third, for two years there had been no freedom of press, speech, or assemblage for any but the Communists; fourth, by enrolling as a Communist, or even by declaring himself to be a “sympathizer,” a man could obtain a certain amount of protection and a privileged position in the matter of food distribution. When all these things are duly taken into account the weakness of the hold of the Bolsheviki upon the minds of even the militant part of the proletariat is evident.
What an absurdity it is to call the Bolshevist régime a dictatorship of the proletariat, even if we accept the narrow use of this term upon which the Bolsheviki insist and omit all except about 5 per cent. of the peasantry, a class which comprises 85 per cent. of the entire population. It is a dictatorship by the Communist Party, a political faction which, according to its own figures, had in its membership in March, 1919, about one-half of one per cent. of the population—or, roughly, one and a half per cent. of the adult population entitled to vote under the universal franchise introduced by the Provisional Government; a party which, after a period of confessedly dangerous inflation by the inclusion of non-proletarian elements in exceedingly large numbers, had in March of this year, in the greatest industrial center, a membership amounting to less than 10 per cent. of the number of working-men. To say that Soviet Russia is governed by the proletariat is, in the face of these figures, a grotesque and stupid misstatement.
Notes
66 Kautsky, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, p. 45.