Page 187
PART XII
THE INEVITABLE REVOLUTION, CAPTURING STATE POWER & COUNTER-REVOLUTION
At some indefinite time in the future the proletarian revolution led by
the class conscious vanguard will occur.390
The specific acts by which it will be accomplished should be
left for future decision.391
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390 (a) "...revolution is undoubtedly brewing and is inevitable. But only a fool can ask when revolution will break out in the West. Revolution can never be forecast; it cannot be foretold; it comes of itself."
(b) "We are banking on the inevitability of the international revolution,
but this does not mean that we are such fools as to bank on the revolution
inevitably coming on a definite and early date."
(c) "...revolution cannot be called forth. We can only work for the
revolution. If you work consistently, if you work devotedly, if this
work is linked up with the interests of the oppressed masses who make up
the majority, revolution will come; but where, how, at what moment, from
what immediate cause, cannot be foretold."
(d) "No serious politician will every say when this or that collapse of
a 'system' 'must begin'."
(e) "A people's revolution, true, cannot be timed.... Can the working
class movement be timed? No, it cannot; for that movement is made
up of thousands of separate acts.... A people's revolution cannot be
timed in advance."
(f) "Revolutions are not made to order, they cannot be timed for any particular
moment; they mature in a process of historical development and break out
at a moment determined by a whole complex of internal and external causes.
That moment is close at hand and is bound to come, inevitably and unavoidably."
(g) "Revolution never falls ready-made from the skies, and when revolutionary
ferment starts no one can say whether and when it will lead to a 'real,'
'genuine' revolution."
(h) (Add) "...Anti-Duhring (written by Engels--Ed.) does not blame the
Anarchists for being in favor of the abolition of the state, but for preaching
that the state can be abolished 'within twenty-four hours'."
391 (a) "We are not doctrinaires. Our theory is no dogma,
but a guide to action. We do not claim that Marx or the Marxists know
the road to socialism to the last concrete detail. To claim anything
of the kind would be absurd. What we know is the direction of this road,
we know what class forces follow it; the concrete, practical details will
be revealed only by the experience of the millions when they take things into
their own hands."
(b) "...Marxism differs from all primitive forms of socialism by not binding
the movement to any one particular form of struggle. It recognizes
the most varied forms of struggle.... Absolutely hostile to all abstract
formulas and to all doctrinaire recipes.... Marxism, therefore, positively
does not reject any form of struggle. Under no circumstances does
Marxism confine itself to the forms of struggle possible and in existence
at the given moment only, recognising as it does that new forms of struggle,
unknown to the participants of the given period, inevitably arise as the
given social situation changes. In this respect Marxism learns, if
we may so express it, from mass practice, and makes no claim whatever to
teach the masses forms of struggle invented by 'systemmatisers' in the seclusion
of their studies.... Marxism demands an absolutely historical examination
of the question of the forms of struggle. To treat this question, apart
from the concrete historical situation betrays a failure to understand the
rudiments of dialectical materialism.... To attempt to answer yes or
no to the question whether any particular means of struggle should be used,
without making a detailed examination of the concrete situation of the given
movement at the given stage of its development, means completely to abandon
the Marxist position."
(c) "The revolutionary experience of the CPSU teaches the lesson that actions
must not be stereotyped but must possess maximum flexibility."
(d) "We would be committing a great mistake if we attempted to force the
complex, urgent, rapidly developing practical tasks of the revolution into
the Procrustean bed of narrowly conceived 'theory' instead of regarding
theory primarily and predominantly as a guide to action."
(e) "Marx did not commit himself, or the future leaders of the socialist
revolution, to matters of form, to ways and means of bringing about the
revolution."
(f) "A Marxist must base his arguments on tactics on an analysis of the
objective course of the revolution."
(g) "When the army of the proletariat fights unswervingly and under the
leadership of a strong Social-Democratic organization for its economic and
political emancipation, that army will itself indicate the methods and means
of action to the generals...for the solution of the problem depends on the
state of the working-class movement, on its breadth, on the methods of struggle
developed by the movement, on the quality of the revolutionary organization
leading the movement...on the conditions governing home and foreign politics--in
a word, it depends on a thousand and one things which cannot be guessed, and
which it would be useless to try to guess in advance."
(h) "As if one can set out to make a great revolution and know beforehand
how it is to be completed! Such knowledge cannot be derived from books
and our decision could spring only from the experience of the masses."
(i) "A revolution cannot be made to order--it develops."
(j) (Add) "...those 'old Bolsheviks' who more than once already have played
so regrettable a role in the history of our Party by reiterating formulas
senselessly learned by rote instead of studying the specific features of
the new and living reality."
Page 188
The immediate attempt of those in revolt must be to capture state power
392
and eliminate the entire politico-administrative apparatus created
by the ruling class.
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392 (a) "The immediate aim of the Communists is the...formation
of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest
of political power by the proletariat."
(b) "Objective conditions make it the urgent task of the day to prepare
the proletariat in every way for the conquest of political power in order
to carry out the economic and political measures which are the sum and substance
of the socialist revolution."
(c) "To effect this social revolution the proletariat must win political
power, which will make it master of the situation and enable it to remove
all obstacles along the road to its great goal."
(d) "...the proletariat must capture political power as a means with which
to expropriate the bourgeoisie."
(e) "As the lords of the land and of capital always make use of their political
privileges to defend and perpetuate their economic monopolies and to enslave
labour, the conquest of political power becomes the great duty of the proletariat."
(f) "The basic question of every revolution is that of state power."
(g) "The fundamental question of a revolution is the question of power.
The character of a revolution, its course and outcome wholly depend upon
who wields power, upon which class is in power."
(h) "Marxism recognizes a class struggle as fully developed, 'nation-wide,'
only if it does not merely embrace politics but takes in the most significant
thing in politics--the organization of state power."
(i) "...the first stage of the socialist revolution will be the political
domination of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie."
Page 189
All existing political institutions (legislatures, armies, courts, etc.)
must be abolished,393
since they have been structured so as to serve a propertied system,
not its counterpart, and all major means of production and distribution must
be confiscated and turned into commonly-owned property.
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393 (a) "The proletariat cannot...simply take possession of
the existing machinery of state and employ this ready-made machinery for its
own purposes. The prime condition for retaining its political power
is to reconstruct this inherited executive machine and to destroy it as an
instrument of class domination."
(b) "Today, both in England and in America, the 'precondition of any real
people's revolution' is the break-up, the shattering of the 'ready-made
state machinery'...."
(c) "...the capitalist state has to be smashed and the power of the capitalists
destroyed. It is our task to build a new socialist state."
(d) "...the proletariat achieved this (state power--Ed.) not by putting
into operation the old apparatus of state power, but by smashing it to pieces,
levelling it with the ground (in spite of the howls of frightened philistines
and the threats of saboteurs), and building a new state apparatus....
That new apparatus is not anybody's invention, it grows out of the proletarian
class struggle as that struggle becomes more widespread and intense.
That new apparatus of state power, the new type of state power, is Soviet
power."
(e) "Only the forcible overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the confiscation of
its property, the destruction of the entire bourgeois state apparatus from
top to bottom--parliamentary, judicial, military, bureaucratic, administrative,
municipal, etc.--right down to the wholesale deportation and internment
of the most dangerous and stubborn exploiters and the institution of strict
surveillance over them so as to foil their inevitable attempts to resist
and to restore capitalist slavery--only such measures can ensure real submission
of the whole class of exploiters."
(f) "It is impossible to go over from capitalism to socialism without breaking
up the national frameworks...."
(g) "Before a brand-new social system can be built on the site of the old,
the site must be swept clean."
(h) "The dictatorship of the proletariat cannot arise as the result of
the peaceful development of bourgeois society and of bourgeois democracy;
it can arise only as the result of the smashing of the bourgeois state machine,
the bourgeois army, the bourgeois bureaucratic machine, the bourgeois police."
(i) "...one principal and fundamental lesson of the Paris Commune was considered
by Marx and Engels to be of such enormous importance that they introduced
it as a vital correction into the Communist Manifesto.... Marx's idea
is that the working class must break up, shatter the 'ready-made state machinery,'
and not confine itself merely to taking possession of it."
(j) "...the Paris Commune, which showed that the working class cannot arrive
at socialism except by way of dictatorship, by the forcible suppression
of the exploiters. That is the first thing the Paris Commune showed,
namely, that the working class cannot get to socialism via the old, bourgeois-democratic
parliamentary state, but only via a new type of state, which will smash
both parliamentarism and the bureaucracy from top to bottom."
(k) "One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that 'the working
class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery, and wield
it for its own purposes."
(l) In referring to the anarchist approach, Lenin once said, "To destroy
officialdom immediately, everywhere, completely--this cannot be thought
of. That is a Utopia. But to break up at once the old bureaucratic
machine and to start immediately the construction of a new one which will
enable us to reduce all officialdom to naught--this is no Utopia...."
(m) (Add) "In capitalist society, the court was mainly an instrument of
oppression, an instrument of bourgeois exploitation. Hence the bounden
duty of the proletarian revolution lay not in reforming the judicial institutions...but
in completely destroying and razing to its foundations the whole of the
old judicial apparatus."
Page 190
Once the resistance of the property owners has been destroyed
394
and their institutions are no longer operational, the party must continue
to closely involve itself with the masses as both seek to restructure society.
Proletarian rule must replace bourgeois rule; rule by the masses must replace
rule by the elite;395
common ownership of the means of production and distribution must
replace private ownership; socialism must replace capitalism.
396
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394 (Add) "...the lords of land and the lords of capital will
always use their political privileges for the defence and perpetuation of
their economical monopolies. So far from promoting, they will continue
to lay every possible impediment in the way of the emancipation of labour.... To conquer political power has therefore become the great duty of the working
classes.... The social emancipation of the workers is inseparable from
their political emancipation."
395 (Add) "The task that confronts us is to sweep away the
old capitalists and to make it impossible for new ones to emerge; to see
to it that power remains fully, entirely, and exclusively in the hands of
those who work, who live by their own labour."
396 (a) "The essence of Social-Democracy is the organization
of the class struggle of the proletariat for the purpose of winning political
power, of transferring all means of production to society as a whole, and
of replacing capitalist by socialist economy...."
(b) "...the main demand of Marx (is--Ed.) the seizure of all the means
of production in the name of society by a proletariat risen to sole political
power...."
(c) "The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production
into state property."
(d) "The real emancipation of the working class requires a social revolution--which
is being prepared by the entire development of capitalism--i.e., the abolition
of private ownership of the means of production, their conversion into public
property, and the replacement of capitalist production of commodities by the
socialist organization of the production of articles by society as a whole,
with the object of ensuring full well-being and free, all round development
for all its members."
Page 191
Once ruling class dominance has been smashed and state power has passed
to the masses, a transitional period--the socialist phase--of greatly increased
brotherhood, progress, purpose and decency will quickly begin to materialize.
The abolishment of private ownership will eliminate the major source of man's
divisions and problems. Men will begin to drift toward one another since
that which drove them apart no longer exists to any significant degree and
magnetic material forces will be present.397
However, this does not mean that all problems will have been
solved. Certainly not!398
As old dilemmas are remedied new ones will arise, which is
in the nature of the dialectic. Life is a journey not an arrival. Man will never attain a utopian society in which all problems have vanished. That's impossible. Contradictions are so enmeshed within the fabric
of existence that if they were to vanish, matter would cease to exist. But incredible improvements are well within the realm of possibility. Man is rightfully seeking to attain that which cannot be realized. If
it were achieved he would not only have destroyed all matter but himself as
well.
Problems and contradictions permeate everything and by attempting to resolve
them, man finds purpose and meaning in life. Through labor he fulfills
himself and attains happiness and contentment in an otherwise boring, monotonous
existence.399
There is no progress, purpose or meaning in a life without
struggle. 400
------------------------------------------------------------------------
397 (Add) "There is no need of any great penetration (intelligence--Ed.)
to see...how necessarily materialism is connected with communism and socialism. If man draws all his knowledge, sensation, etc., from the world of the senses
and the experience gained in it, the...world must be arranged so that in it
man experiences and gets used to what is really human. ...man's private
interest must be made to coincide with the interest of humanity."
398 "Soviet power is not a miracle-working talisman. It does
not, overnight, heal all the evils of the past--illiteracy, lack of culture...the
aftermath of predatory capitalism. But it does pave the way to socialism
(read: Communism--Ed.). It gives those who were formerly oppressed the
chance to straighten their back...."
399 "...communists, for whom the basis of this whole opposition
between work and pleasure disappears."
400 (Add) "What is work? Work is struggle."
Page 192
The masses are repeatedly challenged by their material conditions not
only to defeat the minority of men who enslave them but also to reconstruct
the arrangement of matter. Labor, experimentation, struggle, and study
are what organisms really desire. People achieve far more enjoyment
and satisfaction after having created something worthwhile through labor
than wasting time on a vacation in the mountains or on the beach. The
ruling class has even managed to pervert the mass conception of what is enjoyable
and valuable.401
People are not naturally lazy but enjoy working and creating
to their own specifications. Their tendency to avoid labor sought by
the ruling minority, however, projects an appearance of laziness.
Although the contradictory interests of man versus man (the class struggle)
will have taken a giant step toward resolution with the advent of socialism,
the problems and contradictions produced by inadequate knowledge and control
of material conditions will remain. A major problem from which others
will arise after the revolution will be the continued necessity of many
workers to labor at tasks which are relatively boring, stultifying, and lacking
in creativity. Until technology has developed to such a degree that
machines can free people from undesirable labor, work will remain an activity
from which many seek escape rather than involvement. But escape is
no answer. Society must eventually be structured in such a manner that
everyday living and working are so interesting, exciting, stimulating, and
challenging that no one will seek refuge and enjoyment in such traditional
vices as alcoholism, drug addiction, escapist literature, gambling, pornography,
sex, smoking, and prostitution.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
401 (Add) "'Pleasurable idleness,' too, belongs wholly to the
most trivial bourgeois outlook."
Page 193
The most persistent problem after the revolution will be the insidious
reemergence of private property and the accompanying mentality. Motivated
primarily by inadequate material benefits and to a lesser extent by bourgeois
ideological and physical inroads, many uninformed, unintelligent, or non
class-conscious workers will remain vulnerable to the ideology of self-interest
which dominates the world of private ownership. They will accept ideas
and commit acts without realizing that not only their own interests but those
of others will be harmed in the long run. By capitalizing on the fact
that earlier pernicious indoctrination of them will be deeply ingrained and
repeatedly reappear after the revolution,402
individuals of the ruling class persuasion will seek to reinstitute
their control by any means possible.403
From deceptive cultural penetration to overt armed clashes
and coup d'etats, the latter's methods will be quite varied and often innocently
disguised. Whether inroads are made because of material inadequacy or
bourgeois encroachment, only the most informed, class-conscious, and intelligent
workers will be able to understand how certain acts or ideas will contribute
to the reinstitution of private property.
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402 (a) "Invariably, remnants of old ideas reflecting the old
system remain in people's minds for a long time, and they do not easily give
way."
(b) "When an old social order is destroyed it cannot be destroyed immediately
in the minds of all people, there will always be some who are drawn to the
old."
(c) "When the worker became the vanguard leader of the poor (peasants,
etc.--Ed.), he did not thereby become a saint.... Having begun the
communist revolution, the working class cannot instantly discard the weaknesses
and vices inherited from the society of landlords and capitalists, the society
of exploiters and parasites, the society based on the filthy selfishness
and personal gain of a few and the poverty of the many."
(d) "The workers were never separated by a Great Wall of China from the
old society. And they have preserved a good deal of the traditional
mentality of capitalist society. The workers are building a new society
(post-revolutionary Russia--Ed.) without themselves having become new people,
or cleansed of the filth of the old world; they are still standing up to
their knees in that filth. We can only dream of clearing the filth
away. It would be utterly utopian to think this could be done all at
once. It would be so utopian that in practice it would only postpone
socialism to kingdom come. No, that is not the way we intend to build
socialism. We are building while still standing on the sod of capitalist
society, combating all those weaknesses and shortcomings which also affect
the working people and which tend to drag the proletariat down. There
are many old separatist habits and customs of the small holder in this struggle,
and we still feel the effects of the old maxim 'every man for himself, and
the devil take the hindmost'."
(e) "We do not conceal such facts, we do not whitewash them, we do not
try to avoid them with pseudo-Left phrases and intentions. No, the
working class is not separated by a Chinese wall from the old bourgeois society. And when a revolution takes place, it does not happen as in the case of the
death of an individual, when the deceased is simply removed. When the
old society perishes, its corpse cannot be nailed up in a coffin and lowered
into a grave. It disintegrates in our midst; the corpse rots and infects
us. No great revolution has ever proceeded otherwise; no great revolution
can proceed otherwise. The very things we have to combat in order to
preserve and develop the sprouts of the new order in an atmosphere infected
with the miasmas of a decaying corpse, the literary and political atmosphere,
the play of political parties...are all going to be used against us to put
a spoke in our wheel. A socialist revolution can never be engendered
in other way; and not a single country can pass from capitalism to socialism
(read: Communism--Ed.) except in an atmosphere of disintegrating capitalism
and of painful struggle against it."
(f) "...the survivals of capitalism in peoples' minds, including the minds
of certain members of our Party, are quite tenacious."
(g) "In our country bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideology, anti-Marxist
ideology, will continue to exist for a long time."
(h) "The habits of the capitalist system are too strong; to reeducate people
who have been brought up in these habits for centuries is no easy matter
and will take a long time. But we say that our fighting weapon is organization. We must organize everything, take everything into our own hands...."
(i) (Add) "Things would not be so bad if we did not have to build socialism
with people inherited from capitalism. But that is the whole trouble
with socialist construction--we have to build socialism with people who
have been thoroughly spoiled by capitalism. That is the whole trouble
with the transition (from capitalism, through socialism, to communism--Ed.)...."
(j) (Add) "You are naive if you think that the intelligentsia, the middle
class, and the petty bourgeoisie will turn Communist the day the proletariat
is victorious."
(k) (Add) In 1919 Lenin said the following about post-revolutionary conditions.
"Let as many people as possible go into action and deal one more blow to
that accursed maxim of the old capitalist society, a maxim which we have
inherited from that society and which infects and spoils every one of use
in one degree or another, the maxim 'every man for himself, and the devil
take the hindmost.' It is this heritage from predatory, sordid and
bloody capitalism that is stifling us, crushing us, oppressing , ruining
and frustrating us more than anything else. We cannot rid ourselves
of this heritage at once. It must be fought incessantly; more than
one crusade will have to be declared and conducted against it."
(l) (Add) "...a persistent struggle--bloody and bloodless, violent and peaceful,
military and economic, educational and administrative--against the forces
and traditions of the old society. The force of habit of millions and
tens of millions is a most terrible force."
403 (a) "The transition from capitalism to communism represents
an entire historical epoch (socialism--Ed.). Until this epoch has terminated
the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration and this hope is
converted into attempts at restoration....exploiters...throw themselves with
energy grown tenfold...into the battle for the recovery of the 'paradise,'
of which they have been deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been
leading such a sweet and easy life...."
(b) "After the revolution's victory over counter-revolution the latter
will not disappear; on the contrary, it will inevitably start a new and even
more desperate struggle."
(c) "It is precisely after the bourgeoisie is overthrown that the class
struggle assumes its acutest forms. And we have no use for those (bourgeois--Ed.)
democrats and socialists who deceive themselves and deceive others by saying:
'The bourgeoisie have been overthrown, the struggle is all over.' The
struggle is not over, it has only just started, because, to this day, the
bourgeoisie have not reconciled themselves to the idea that they have been
overthrown."
(d) "There has never been a revolution without counter-revolution, nor
can there be.... The question is not whether there will be counter-revolution
but who, in the last analysis, after the inevitably long battles, with their
many vicissitudes, will be the victor."
(e) "After the enemies with guns have been wiped out, there will still
be enemies without guns; they are bound to struggle...against us, and we
must never regard these enemies lightly."
(f) (Add) As Lenin said after the Russian revolution, "The class of exploiters,
the landlords and capitalists has not disappeared and cannot disappear all
at once.... The exploiters have been smashed, but not destroyed....
They still retain a part of certain means of production, they still have
money, they still have vast social connections. Just because they have
been defeated, their energy of resistance has increased a hundred and thousandfold. ...their importance is incomparably greater than their numerical strength
among the population would warrant. The class struggle waged by the
overthrown exploiters against the victorious vanguard of the exploited, i.e.,
against the proletariat, has become incomparably more bitter."
Page 194
Section II
THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT IS MANDATORY
In order to protect the workers until such time as they know what to seek
and what to shun, in order to prevent a reascendancy of property owners,
either forcefully or ideologically, the transitional period of socialist
society must create and employ a state apparatus--the dictatorship of the
proletariat 404
--after smashing the bourgeois state machinery.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
404 (a) "But we say on the basis of the teachings of Marx and
the experience of the Russian revolution: the proletariat must first overthrow
the bourgeoisie and win for itself state power, and then use that state power,
that is, the dictatorship of the proletariat...."
(b) "Lenin said that the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat
is basic to Marxism."
(c) "...the fundamental question of Leninism, its point of departure, its
foundation, is the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat."
(d) "The teaching on the dictatorship of the proletariat is the chief thing
in Marxism."
(e) "I have shown you that the dictatorship of the proletariat is an inevitable,
essential, and absolutely indispensable means of emerging from the capitalist
system."
(f) "The question of the dictatorship of the proletariat is the fundamental
question of the modern working-class movement in all capitalist countries
without exception.... Whoever has failed to understand that dictatorship
is essential to the victory of any revolutionary class has no understanding
of the history of revolutions or else does not want to know anything in
this field."
(g) "At the same time socialism is inconceivable unless the proletariat
is the ruler of the state. This also is ABC."
(h) "The dictatorship of the proletariat is...for the purpose of...crushing
the resistance of the overthrown exploiters.... The revolution can
vanquish the bourgeoisie, can overthrow its power, without the dictatorship
of the proletariat. But the revolution will be unable to crush the
resistance of the bourgeoisie...unless...it creates a special organ in the
form of the dictatorship of the proletariat as its principal mainstay."
(i) "Because from a society in which one class oppresses another there
is no way out other than through the dictatorship of the oppressed class."
(j) "In this sense the dictatorship of the proletariat is an essential
political condition of the social revolution."
(k) "A necessary condition for this social revolution is the dictatorship
of the proletariat, i.e., the conquest by the proletariat of such political
power as will enable it to suppress all resistance on the part of the exploiters."
(l) "Proletarian dictatorship is the sole means of defending the working
people against the oppression of capital...the violence of bourgeois military
dictatorship and imperialist war. Proletarian dictatorship is the
sole step to equality and democracy in practice, not on paper, but in life,
not in political phrase-mongering, but in economic reality."
(m) "The dictatorship of the proletariat stands for the use of force against
the exploiters. Our road is through endurance, proletarian solidarity,
and the iron dictatorship of the working people." In regard to the
1918 revolutionary government of Russia, Lenin made the following observation.
"There is no doubt that in many cases the Soviet government has not displayed
sufficient determination in the struggle against counter-revolution, and
in this respect it has had the appearance not of iron, but of jelly, from
which socialism cannot be built.... We shall be merciless both to our
enemies and to all waverers and harmful elements in our midst who dare to
bring disorganization into our difficult creative work of building a new
life for the working people."
(n) "Nobody, with the exception of the utopian socialists, has ever asserted
that victory is possible without resistance, without the dictatorship of
the proletariat and without seizing the old world in an iron grip....
You stubbornly refuse to see that the iron hand that destroys also creates."
(o) "Dictatorship is domination of one part of society over the rest of
society, and domination, moreover, that rests directly on coercion.
Dictatorship of the proletariat, the only consistently revolutionary class,
is necessary to overthrow the bourgeoisie and repel its attempts at counter-revolution.
The question of proletarian dictatorship is of such overriding importance
that he who denies the need for such dictatorship, or recognizes it only
in words, cannot be a member of the Social-Democratic Party."
(p) "We are reproached for having established the dictatorship of the proletariat,
for the iron, relentless and firm rule of the workers, which stops at nothing
and which says that whoever is not with us is against us, and that the slightest
resistance to this rule will be crushed.... We are proud of this dictatorship,
of this iron rule of the workers, which said: 'We have overthrown the capitalists
and we will lay down our lives to prevent any attempt of theirs to restore
their rule."
(q) "...joint work in the ranks of a single Party is impossible with a
person who does not understand the necessity for the dictatorship of the
proletariat, which is recognized by our Party Programme, who does not understand
that without such a dictatorship, that is, without a systematic ruthless
suppression of the resistance of the exploiters...one cannot conceive of
any...socialist revolution...."
(r) "The dictatorship of the proletariat and Soviet power imply a clear
notion of the need to break, to smash to smithereens the bourgeois (even
if it is republican-democratic) state machinery, the courts, the bureaucracy,
both civil and military, etc."
(s) "...when history places the dictatorship of the proletariat on the
order of the day it is not voting, but civil war that decides all serious
political problems. They fail to understand that the dictatorship of
the proletariat is the rule of one class, which takes into its hands the
entire machinery of the new state, and which defeats the bourgeoisie....
...the proletariat needs a state not for the 'freedom,' but for the suppression
of its enemy, the exploiter, the capitalist."
(t) "...what, in effect, does it mean to recognize the dictatorship of
the proletariat. It takes every day, in propaganda, agitation, speeches,
and articles, to prepare the proletariat for the conquest of power, for
the suppression of the exploiters, the suppression of all the proletariat's
opponents."
(u) "The main point in the teaching of Marx is the class struggle.
This has very often been said and written. But this is not true....
The theory of the class struggle was not created by Marx, but by the bourgeoisie
before Marx and is, generally speaking, acceptable to the bourgeoisie.
He who recognizes only the class struggle is not yet a Marxist....
To limit Marxism to the teaching of the class struggle means to curtail Marxism--to
distort it, to reduce it to something which is acceptable to the bourgeoisie. A Marxist is one who extends the acceptance of the class struggle to the acceptance
of the dictatorship of the proletariat."
(v) "The socialist dictatorship of the proletariat, capture of power by
the proletariat--this is what the socialist revolution must start with.
This means that until the bourgeoisie is completely vanquished, until its
wealth has been confiscated, the proletariat must without fail possess a
military force.... The socialist dictatorship of the proletariat is
needed to enable the proletariat to expropriate the bourgeoisie...."
(w) "On the other hand, what is the difference between the idea of the
'dictatorship of the proletariat' and breaking the resistance of the capitalists?
None whatsoever. The dictatorship of the proletariat is a scientific
term indicating the class which plays the leading role in it and the special
form of state power called dictatorship, i.e., power based not on law or
elections, but directly on the armed force of a particular section of the
population. What is the purpose and significance of the dictatorship
of the proletariat? To break the resistance of the capitalists!"
(x) "Only by its reliance on the dictatorship, the state power of the proletariat,
can the working class suppress the resistance of the exploiting classes
after the overthrow of their power, draw into the transformation of society
all wavering, doubting elements and re-educate itself and all other working
people. The dictatorship of the proletariat, therefore, is not the
culmination of the class struggle but its continuance in new forms."
(y) "We said openly: dictatorship is a harsh word, severe and even bloody,
but we said that the dictatorship of the workers will ensure the end of
the yoke of the exploiters....
(z) "Marxism, which recognizes the necessity for the class struggle, asserts
that mankind can reach the goal of socialism only through the dictatorship
of the proletariat. The word dictatorship is a cruel, stern, bloody
and painful one; it is not a word to play with."
(aa) "When I (Lenin--Ed.) consider its (the Cheka--Ed.) activities and
see how they are attacked, I say this is all narrow-minded and futile talk....
We surely know from experience that the expropriation of the bourgeoisie
entails a drastic struggle--a dictatorship. Marx said that the revolutionary
dictatorship of the proletariat lies between capitalism and communism.
The more the proletariat presses the bourgeoisie, the more furiously they
will resist. ...its (Cheka--Ed.) services are invaluable. There
is no way of emancipating the people except by forcibly suppressing the
exploiters. That is what the Cheka is doing, and therein lies its service
to the proletariat."
(bb) "We need physical force because we are building a dictatorship, we
are applying force to the exploiters, and we shall cast aside with contempt
all who fail to understand this, so as not to waste words...."
(cc) "What is this dictatorship for? Its first function is to suppress
the reactionary classes and elements and those exploiters in our country
who resist the socialist revolution, to suppress those who try to wreck our
socialist construction...."
(dd) "If you give our Constitution a careful reading, you will see that
we have not made any fantastic promises, but insist on the need for dictatorship,
because the whole bourgeois world is against us."
(ee) "...dictatorship, i.e., the forcible suppression of resistance by
force and the arming of the revolutionary classes of the people...."
(ff) "One cannot be a revolutionary in fact unless one prepares for dictatorship."
(gg) "We must say: either those who wanted to crush us--and who we think
ought to be destroyed--must perish, in which case our Soviet Republic will
live, or the capitalists will live, and in that case the Republic will perish.... There is not and cannot be any choice or any room for sentiment. Sentiment
is no less a crime than cowardice in wartime. Whoever now departs from
order and discipline is permitting the enemy to penetrate our midst."
(hh) "...during the transition from capitalism to Communism, suppression
is still necessary."
(ii) "The dictatorship of the proletariat is a revolutionary power based
on the use of force against the bourgeoisie."
(jj) "The state is only a weapon of the proletariat in its class struggle.
A special kind of cudgel...."
(kk) "We need the state, we need coercion. The Soviet courts must
be the organ of the proletarian state carrying out such coercion."
(ll) "We are for a strong revolutionary government because it is the only
possible and the only reliable government.
(mm) "We are for a strong revolutionary government. Whatever the
capitalists and their flunkeys may shout about us to the contrary, their
lies will remain lies."
(nn) "Unless we defended the socialist republic by force of arms, we could
not exist. A ruling class would never surrender its power to an oppressed
class. And the latter would have to prove in practice that it is capable
not only of overthrowing the exploiters, but also of organizing its self-defence
and of staking every thing on it."
(oo) "Never in history has there been a revolution in which it was possible
to lay down one's arms and rest on one's laurels after the victory.
Whoever thinks that such revolutions are possible is not only no revolutionary,
but the worst enemy of the working class."
(pp) "When violence is exercised by the working people, by the masses of
exploited against the exploiters--then we are for it! And we are not
in the least disturbed by the howls of those people who...demand that we perform
the impossible, that we socialists achieve complete victory without fighting
against the exploiters and without suppressing their resistance."
(qq) "The dictatorship of the proletariat is the most determined and revolutionary
form of the proletariat's class struggle against the bourgeoisie.
This struggle can be successful only when the most revolutionary vanguard
of the proletariat has the backing of the overwhelming majority of the proletariat. Hence, preparation for the dictatorship of the proletariat entails not only
explanation of the bourgeois character of all reformism, of all defence of
democracy, while private ownership of the means of production is preserved;
it entails not only exposure of such trends, which are in fact a defence of
the bourgeoisie within the labour movement; it also calls for old leaders
being replaced by Communists in proletarian organizations of absolutely every
type--not only political, but also trade union, co-operative, educational
etc. The more complete, lengthy and firmly established the rule of bourgeois
democracy has been in a given country, the more the bourgeoisie will have
succeeded in securing the appointment to such leading posts of people whose
minds have been molded by it and imbued with its views and prejudices, and
who have very often been directly or indirectly bought by it. These
representatives of the labour aristocracy, bourgeoisified workers, should
be ousted from all their posts a hundred times more sweepingly than hitherto,
and replaced by workers--even by wholly inexperienced men, provided they are
connected with the exploited masses and enjoy their confidence in the struggle
against the exploiters. The dictatorship of the proletariat will require
the appointment of such inexperienced workers to the most responsible posts
in the state; otherwise the workers' government will be impotent and will
not have the support of the masses."
(rr) "The chief reason why the 'socialists' do not understand the dictatorship
of the proletariat is that they do not carry the idea of the class struggle
to its logical conclusion."
(ss) "...the state is only a transitional institution which is used in
the struggle, in the revolution, in order to hold down one's adversaries
by force...so long as the proletariat still uses the state, it does not use
it in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries...."
(tt) "...the state should be used for a specific form of transition from
capitalism to socialism (read: Communism--Ed.). This transitional
form is the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is also a state."
(uu) "The utopians did not realize that the transition to socialism (read:
Communism--Ed.) involves the class struggle and the dictatorship of the
proletariat."
(vv) "...the proletariat must have a state for the period of transition
to socialism (read: Communism--Ed.), but this state must not be a conventional
type of state, but the immediate, massive and wholesale organization of
the armed workers to substitute for the old instruments of administration:
the standing army, the police and the civil service."
(ww) "...all of us unreservedly recognize the need for the state and for
an organization of power not only for the present, but also for the later
historical period when the transition from capitalism to socialism (read:
Communism--Ed.) will be taking place."
(xx) "...the dictatorship of a single class is necessary not only for any
class society generally, not only for the proletariat which has overthrown
the bourgeoisie, but for the entire historical period which separates capitalism
from 'classless society,' from communism.... The transition from capitalism
to Communism (through the socialist stage--Ed.) will certainly bring a great
variety and abundance of political forms, but the essence will inevitably
be only one: the dictatorship of the proletariat. (The socialist stage
is the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat--Ed.)."
(yy) "The first fact that has been established with complete exactness
by the whole theory of evolution, by science as a whole...is that, historically,
there must undoubtedly be a special stage or epoch of transition from capitalism
to Communism. ...the transition from capitalist society, developing
toward Communism, toward a Communist society, is impossible without a 'political
transition period,' and the state in this period can only be the revolutionary
dictatorship of the proletariat (the socialist phase--Ed.)."
(zz) "The great founders of socialism, Marx and Engels, ...saw clearly
that the transition from capitalism to socialism (read: Communism--Ed.) would
require prolonged birth pangs, a long period of the dictatorship of the proletariat,
the break-up of all that belonged to the past, the ruthless destruction of
all forms of capitalism...."
(aaa) "One of the chief conditions for the socialist revolution's victory
is that the working class must realize it has to rule and that its rule
should be carried through during the transition period from capitalism to
socialism (read: communism--Ed.). The rule of the proletariat, the
vanguard of all the working and exploited people, is essential in this transition
period if classes are to be completely abolished, if the resistance of the
exploiters is to be suppressed, and if the entire mass of the working and
exploited people--crushed, downtrodden and disunited by capitalism--are to
be united...."
(bbb) "...we have always said that a long period of 'birth-pangs' lies
between capitalism and socialism (read: communism--Ed.); that violence is
always the midwife of the old society; that a special state (that is, a special
system of organized coercion of a definite class) corresponds to the transitional
period between the bourgeois and the socialist (read: communist--Ed.) society,
namely the dictatorship of the proletariat. What dictatorship implies and
means is a state of simmering war, a state of military measures of struggle
against the enemies of the proletarian power. The Paris Commune was
a dictatorship of the proletariat, and Marx and Engels reproached it for what
they considered to be one of the causes of its downfall, namely, that the
Commune had not used its armed force with sufficient vigor to suppress the
resistance of the exploiters. ...their resistance must really be broken,
and it will be broken, and...the scientific name for this breaking-up operation
is the dictatorship of the proletariat; ...an entire historical period is
marked by the suppression of capitalist resistance, and, consequently, by
systematic application of coercion to an entire class (the bourgeoisie--Ed.)
and its accomplices."
(ccc) "Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the
revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding
to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing
but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat."
(ddd) "History teaches us that no oppressed class ever did, or could, achieve
power without going through a period of dictatorship, i.e., the conquest
of political power and forcible suppression of the resistance always offered
by the exploiters--a resistance that is most desperate, most furious, and
that stops at nothing."
(eee) "Suppression of the resistance of the exploiters. This, as
the task...of the epoch, is entirely forgotten by the opportunists and the
'socialists'."
(fff) "Marx deducted from the whole history of socialism and political
struggle that the state was bound to disappear, and that the transitional
form of its disappearance...would be the 'proletariat organized as the ruling
class'."
(ggg) "...the state will exist until victorious socialism develops into
full communism."
(hhh) "We shall use this machine, or bludgeon, to destroy all exploitation.
And when the possibility of exploitation no longer exists anywhere in the
world...only when the possibility of this no longer exists shall we consign
this machine to the scrap heap. Then there will be no state and no
exploitation."
(iii) "...we advocate and, when in power, will implement the dictatorship
of the proletariat, though the entire trend of development is toward abolition
of coercive domination of one part of society over another."
(jjj) (Add) "The victory of socialism (as the first stage of communism)
over capitalism requires that the proletariat, as the only really revolutionary
class, shall accomplish the following three tasks. First--overthrow
the exploiters, and first and foremost the bourgeoisie, as their principal
economic and political representative; utterly rout them; crush their resistance;
absolutely preclude any attempt on their part to restore the yoke of capital
and wage-slavery. Second--win over and bring under the leadership
of the Communist Party, the revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat, not
only the entire proletariat, or its vast majority, but all who labour and
are exploited by capital; educate, organize, train and discipline them in
the actual course of a supremely bold and ruthlessly firm struggle against
the exploiters.... Third--neutralize, or render harmless, the inevitable
vacillation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat...to be seen in
the class of petty proprietors...as well as in the stratum of intellectuals,
salary earners, etc., which corresponds to this class."
(kkk) (Add) "The grasping, malicious, frenzied, filthy avidity of the money-bags,
the cowed servility of their hangers-on is the true social source of the
present wail raised by the spineless, intellectuals...against violence on
the part of the proletariat and the revolutionary peasants. Such is
the objective meaning of their howls, their pathetic speeches, their clownish
cries of 'freedom' (freedom for the capitalists to oppress the people), etc. They would be 'prepared' to recognize socialism, if mankind could jump straight
into it in one spectacular leap, without any of the friction, the struggles,
the exploiters' gnashing of teeth, or their diverse attempts to preserve the
old order, or smuggle it back through the window, without the revolutionary
proletariat responding to each attempt in a violent manner. These spineless
hangers-on of the bourgeoisie with intellectualist pretensions are quite 'prepared'
to wade into the water provided they do not get their feet wet."
Page 195
The creation of any state mechanism entails by definition the establishment
of a dictatorship405
and the post-revolutionary system of socialism is no different in
this regard. The unique feature of proletarian dictatorship, however,
lies in the fact that never before has the majority dictated to the minority
throughout all aspects of society.406
------------------------------------------------------------------------
405 (a) (Add) "Authority--unlimited, outside the law, and based
on force in the most direct sense of the word--is dictatorship."
(b) (Add) "The scientific term 'dictatorship' means nothing more nor less
than authority untrammeled by any laws, absolutely unrestricted by any rules
whatever, and based directly on force. The term 'dictatorship' has no
other meaning but this...."
406 (a) "...the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is the rule
of a minority over the majority.... The dictatorship of the proletariat...is
the rule of the majority over the minority...."
(b) "The state is a machine in the hands of the ruling class for suppressing
the resistance of its class enemies. In this respect the dictatorship
of the proletariat does not differ essentially from the dictatorship of
any other class, for the proletarian state is a machine for the suppression
of the bourgeoisie. But there is one substantial difference.
The difference consists in the fact that all hitherto existing class states
have been dictatorships of the exploiting minority over the exploited majority,
whereas the dictatorship of the proletariat is the dictatorship of the exploited
majority over the exploiting minority."
(c) "The fundamental distinction between the dictatorship of the proletariat
and the dictatorship of other classes...is that the dictatorship of the
landlords and bourgeoisie has been forcible suppression of the resistance
of the overwhelming majority of the population, namely the working people.
The dictatorship of the proletariat, on the contrary is forcible suppression
of the resistance of the exploiters...."
(d) "What was this power based on, then? It was based on the mass
of the people. This is the main feature that distinguished this new
authority from all the preceding organs of the old regime. The latter
were the instruments of the rule of the minority over the people, over the
masses of workers and peasants. The former was an instrument of the
rule of the people, of the workers and peasants, over the minority, over
a handful of police bullies, over a handful of privileged nobles and government
officials. Such is the difference between dictatorship over the people
and dictatorship of the revolutionary people...."
(e) "But the organ of suppression is now the majority of the population,
and not a minority, as was always the case under slavery, serfdom, and wage
labour."
(f) "What is Soviet power? What is the essence of this new power,
which people in most countries still will not, or cannot, understand?
The nature of this power, which is attracting larger and larger numbers of
workers in every country (especially those which are undeveloped--Ed.), is
the following: in the past the country was, in one way or another, governed
by the rich, or by the capitalists, but now, for the first time, the country
is being governed by the classes, and moreover, by the masses of those classes,
which capitalism formerly oppressed."
(g) "There is, therefore, absolutely no contradiction in principle between
Soviet (that is, socialist) democracy and the exercise of dictatorial power
by individuals. The difference between proletarian dictatorship and
bourgeois dictatorship is that the former strikes at the exploiting minority
in the interests of the exploited majority...."
(h) "The only difference is that the Kerenskys...(and other capitalist
spokesmen--Ed.) have practised terror against the workers, soldiers and peasants
in the interests of a handful of landowners and bankers, while the Soviet
government is taking strong measures against the landowners, marauders and
their underlings--in the interests of the workers, soldiers, and peasants."
(i) (Add) "...dictatorship means unlimited power based on force, and not
on law. In civil war, any victorious power can only be a dictatorship.
The point is, however, that there is the dictatorship of a minority over
the majority, the dictatorship of a handful of police officials over the
people; and there is the dictatorship of the overwhelming majority of the
people over a handful of tyrants, robbers, and usurpers of the people's power."
(j) (Add) "Again we have to explain that when we speak of dictatorship
we mean the employment of coercion. Every state implies employment
of coercion; but the whole difference lies in whether it is employed against
the exploited or against the exploiters."
(k) (Add) "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."
(l) (Add) "Revolutions in the past usually ended by one group of exploiters
at the helm of government being replaced by another group of exploiters.
The exploiters changed, exploitation remained. Such was the case during
the revolutions of the slaves, the revolutions of the serfs, the revolutions
of the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie."
(m) (Add) "All revolutions up to the present day have resulted in the displacement
of one definite class rule by another; but all ruling classes up to now
have been only small minorities in relation to the ruled mass of the people.
One ruling minority was thus overthrown; another minority seized the helm
of state in its stead and refashioned the state institutions to suit its
own interests. ...the common form of all these revolutions was that
they were minority revolutions. Even when the majority took part, it
did so--whether wittingly or not--only in the service of a minority; but
because of this, or even simply because of the passive, unresisting attitude
of the majority, this minority acquired the appearance of being the representative
of the whole people."
(n) (Add) "Marx said that every genuine and complete victory of a revolution
can only be a dictatorship, having in mind, of course, the dictatorship
(i.e., unrestricted power) of the masses over the few, and not vice versa."
(o) (Add) "In dealing with the idea of control and the question of when
and by whom this control is to be affected, one must not for a single moment
forget the class character of the modern state, which is merely an organisation
of class rule.... In revolutionary times, of all times, it is necessary
accurately to analyze the question as to the very essence of the state,
as to whose interests it shall protect, and as to how it should be constructed
in order to protect effectively the interests of the working people."
Page 196
Section III
PARTY LEADERSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT IS REQUIRED
The inadequate development of material conditions, the insidious activities
of bourgeois supporters, and incomplete awareness on the part of the proletariat
necessitate that this new state be administered by a party leadership until
such time as the party is no longer needed. Until proletarians are
capable of realizing what acts are in their own interests and can judge on
a par with former property owners the tendency of any act or idea to enhance
or retard their class interests, the party leaders must be the guiding hand
of the socialist state.407
------------------------------------------------------------------------
407 (a) "...the dictatorship of the proletariat can be implemented
only through the party, as the guiding force of the dictatorship...."
(b) "Without the Party as the main guiding force, it is impossible for
the dictatorship of the proletariat to be at all durable and firm."
(c) "To govern you need an army of steeled revolutionary Communists.
We have it, and it is called the Party."
(d) "...the dictatorship of the proletariat would not work except through
the Communist Party."
(e) "Indeed, you cannot lead the proletariat without a Party."
(f) "Communism says: The Communist Party, the vanguard of the proletariat,
leads the non-Party workers' masses, educating, preparing, teaching and
training the masses ('school' of communism)--first the workers and then the
peasants--to enable them eventually to concentrate in their hands the administration
of the whole national economy."
(g) "But the proletariat needs the Party not only to achieve the dictatorship;
it needs it still more to maintain the dictatorship."
(h) "But the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through
an organization embracing the whole of that class, because in all capitalist
countries...the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, and so corrupted
in part (by imperialism in some countries) that an organization taking in
the whole proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship.
It can be exercised only by a vanguard that has absorbed the revolutionary
energy of the class. ...for the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot
be exercised by a mass proletarian organization."
(i) "Lastly, it is the dictatorship of the revolutionary people.
Why only of the revolutionary, and not of the whole people? Because
among the whole people, constantly suffering, and most cruelly...there are
some who are physically cowed and terrified; there are some who are morally
degraded by the 'resist not evil' theory, for example, or simply degraded
not by theory, but by prejudice, habit, routine; and there are indifferent
people, whom we call philistines, petty-bourgeois people who are more inclined
to hold aloof from intense struggle, to pass by or even to hide themselves
(for fear of getting mixed up in the fight and getting hurt). That
is why the dictatorship is exercised, not by the whole people, but by the
revolutionary people, who, however, do not shun the whole people, who explain
to all the people the motives of their actions in all their details, and
who willingly enlist the whole people not only in 'administering' the state,
but in governing it too, and indeed in organizing the state."
(j) (Add) "Less chatter about 'labour democracy,' about 'liberty, equality,
and fraternity,' about 'government by the people,' and all such stuff; the
class-conscious workers and peasants of our day see the trickery of the bourgeois
intellectual through these pompous phrases...."
(k) (Add) "Lenin showed that the revolutionary party is the advanced, most
conscious contingent of the working class."
(l) (Add) "Does not the class struggle in the epoch of the transition from
capitalism to socialism (read: communism--Ed.) consist in safeguarding the
interests of the working class against the few, the groups and strata of workers
(and former members of the propertied class--Ed.) who stubbornly cling to
the traditions (habits) of capitalism and who continue to regard the...(new--Ed.)State
in the old way: do less work and worse work and grab as much money as possible
from the state."
Page 197
The relationship of the party to the proletariat will be comparable to
that of father to son. Those within the latter group must be taught
and guided408
until such time as they are able to accurately judge the degree to
which acts and ideas are in the interest of others as well as themselves,
i.e., until their class consciousnesses have adequately matured. Control
and guidance will be greatest after the revolution, slacken later and eventually
dissolve. Both the proletarians, who do not yet know what is in their
class interests, and former members of the ruling class, who know all too
well what works to their advantage, must be guided in varying degrees until
the former are correctly re-educated and can assume all the functions and
ideological influences formerly retained by the Party. The proletariat
after the revolution resembles an infant following birth.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
408 (a) (Add) "One of the essential tasks confronting the Party
in the epoch of the dictatorship of the proletariat is to re-educate the older
generations and educate the new generations in the spirit of the proletarian
dictatorship and socialism. The old habits and customs, traditions,
and prejudices inherited from the old society are most dangerous enemies of
socialism. They--these traditions and habits--have a firm grip over
millions of working people...."
(b) (Add) "This is a matter of transferring the very habits of people,
habits that have for a long time been defiled and debased by the accursed
private ownership of the means of production, and also by the atmosphere
of bickering, distrust, enmity, disunity, and mutual intrigue that is inevitably
generated...by small individual economy, the economy of private owners and
of 'free' exchange among them."
Page 198
Neither possesses a sufficient degree of awareness to know what acts or
ideas aid or retard development;409
both require a guiding hand to teach, restrain and motivate. If the masses had possessed an adequate degree of comprehension, they would
never have been led astray from the beginning. There is no denying the
fact that not only have the property owners exploited the masses throughout
history but they have outwitted them to a large degree. One of the
most important duties of the party leadership is to correct this imbalance,
to provide understanding. Because the strength of the masses combined
with the intellectual awareness of the Party create a formidable union,
410
property owners have spent vast sums of money in an attempt to portray
the Party in as bad a light as possible and sever its connections with the
masses.411
The wealthy realize that the workers are quite vulnerable without
the Party. They are as malleable as dough, as helpless as a child.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
409 (a) (Add) "The political ignorance of the people of Russia
(or the United States--Ed.) is to be seen, in part, in their inability to
look for exact proofs concerning controversial and important historical questions,
and in the naive credence they give to shouting and expostulation, and to
the assurances and vows made by people with interests at stake."
(b) (Add) "...the idea, common among the old parties and the old leaders
of the Second International, that the majority of the exploited toilers
can achieve complete clarity of socialist consciousness and firm socialist
convictions and character under capitalist slavery, under the yoke of the
bourgeoisie (which assumes an infinite variety of forms that become more
subtle and at the same time more brutal and ruthless the higher the cultural
level in a given capitalist country) is also idealisation of capitalism and
of bourgeois democracy, as well as deception of the workers. In fact,
it is only after the vanguard of the proletariat, supported by the whole
or the majority of this, the only revolutionary class, overthrows the exploiters,
suppresses them, emancipates the exploited from their state of slavery and
immediately improves their conditions of life at the expense of the expropriated
capitalists--it is only after this, and only in the process of an acute class
struggle (which continues after the revolution--Ed.), that the masses of
the toilers and exploited can be educated, trained and...get rid of the selfishness,
disunity, vices, and weaknesses engendered by private property; only then
will they be converted into a free union of free workers."
410 (Add) "...theory also becomes a material force as soon
as it has gripped the masses."
411 "It is in the interest of the capitalist class, of the
entire bourgeoisie, to keep the workers ignorant and isolated, to remove
as quickly as possible those among them who are more intelligent and who
make use of their intellect and knowledge, not to become traitors to their
class...(by working with the ruling class--Ed.), but to help other workers
acquire greater knowledge and to learn to stand up jointly for the working-class
cause."
Page 199
The obligations of leadership require that the Party not only convey information
to the people but also willingly, indeed, eagerly receive information from
them. There must be a constant dialectical interaction
412
in order to prevent party members from becoming bureaucratic functionaries
passing down decrees with little relevance to material conditions.
Marxist leaders should periodically work in the fields, cut cane with the
peasants, labor in factories, converse with students, or engage in other
activities which keep them in close touch with the peoples' needs, desires
and conditions. 413
------------------------------------------------------------------------
412 (a) "In all practical work of our Party, all correct leadership
is necessarily 'from the masses, to the masses'."
(b) "In its work the Party must be able to combine the strictest adherence
to principle...with the maximum of ties and contacts with the masses...without
this, the Party will be unable not only to teach the masses but also to
learn from them, it will be unable not only to lead the masses and raise
them to its own level but also to heed their voice and anticipate their urgent
needs."
413 (a) "It (the Party--Ed.) must at the same time be a detachment
of the class, part of the class, closely bound up with it by all the fibers
of its being."
(b) (Add) "Any leading person who does not go and learn from the masses
will have no knowledge whatsoever."
(c) (Add) "We should never pretend to know what we don't know, and we should
not feel ashamed to ask and learn from people below."
(d) (Add) "Only through the practice of the people, that is, through experiences,
can we verify whether a policy is correct or wrong and determine to what
extent it is correct or wrong."
(e) (Add) "...the Party must be purged of those who have lost touch with
the masses...."
(f) (Add) "...official optimism is sometimes sickening, for it is obvious
that all is not well, nor can it be. Obviously, there are defects,
which must be exposed without fear of criticism, and then eliminated...
Either we abandon this official optimism and official approach to the matter,
do not fear criticism and allow ourselves to be criticised by the non-Party
workers and peasants, who, after all, are the ones to feel the effects of
our mistakes, or we do not do this, and discontent will accumulate and grow,
and we shall have criticism in the form of revolts."
(g) (Add) "No movement, including the working-class movement, is possible
without debates, controversy, and conflict of opinion.... Worker comrades!
Debate this question. Arrange debates, talks and discussions to obtain
absolute clarity on this question, but have no dealings with those who resort
to recrimination instead of argument."
(h) (Add) Interparty discussions are also needed. "Discussions (talks,
debates, disputes) about parties and about common tactics are essential;
without them the masses are disunited; without them common decisions are
impossible and, therefore, unity of action is also impossible. Without
them the Marxist organization of those workers 'who can get at the root of
things' would disintegrate and the influence of the bourgeoisie on the unenlightened
would thereby be facilitated."
Page 200
There must be a constant struggle against bureaucratic aloofness.
414
As time progresses and in so far as practical, efforts should
be made to involve ever greater numbers of people in administrative activities.
415
Will this be a dictatorship of the Party as opposed to the
proletariat, 416
some will ask. Effective, disciplined education by parents
who have greatly contributed to a social concern on the part of their children
by exposing the latter to certain actions and ideas only under appropriate
material conditions could hardly be called dictatorship.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
414 (a) "...we need to understand that the struggle against
the evils of bureaucracy is absolutely indispensable, and that it is just
as intricate as the fight against (the vacillation of--Ed.) the petty bourgeois
element."
(b) "We shall do everything that can be done to eliminate bureaucratic
practices by promoting workers from below, and we shall accept every piece
of practical advice on this matter."
(c) "Our worst internal enemy is the bureaucrat.... He is very conscientious,
but he has not learnt to combat red tape, he is unable to combat it, he
condones it."
(d) "...the fact that as these leaders rise they get further away from the
masses...cannot but give rise to a certain danger of the leaders losing contact
with the masses and the masses getting out of touch with the leaders.
This danger may result in the leaders becoming conceited and regarding themselves
as infallible.... Clearly, nothing can come of this but the ruin of
the Party."
(e) "But one of the most serious obstacles, if not the most serious of
all, is the bureaucracy of our apparatus."
415 (a) To prevent bureaucratic aloofness from emerging, Lenin
proposed "...immediate transition (to whatever extent possible--Ed.) to a
state of things when all fulfill the functions of control and superintendence,
so that all become 'bureaucrats' for a time, and no one, therefore, can become
a 'bureaucrat'."
(b) "Our aim is to draw the whole of the poor into the practical work of
administration...."
(c) "Transition through the Soviet state to the gradual abolition of the
state by systematically drawing an ever greater number of citizens, and
subsequently each and every citizen, into direct and daily performance of
their share of the burdens of administering the state."
(d) "It is important for us to draw literally all working people into the
government of the state. It is a task of tremendous difficulty."
(e) "The revolutionary measures, however, cannot be implemented without
organizing the entire people for democratic administration of the means of
production captured from the bourgeoisie, without enlisting the entire mass
of the working people...for the democratic organization of their ranks, their
forces, their participation in state affairs."
(f) "The surest remedy for bureaucracy is raising the cultural level of
the workers and peasants. One can curse and denounce bureaucracy in
the state apparatus, one can stigmatize and pillory bureaucracy in our practical
work, but unless the masses of the workers reach a certain level of culture,
which will create the possibility, the desire, the ability to control the
state apparatus from below, by the masses of the workers themselves, bureaucracy
will continue to exist in spite of everything."
(g) "We must re-educate the masses; they can be re-educated only
by agitation and propaganda. The masses must be brought, in the first
place, into the work of building the entire economic life. That must
be the principal and basic object in the work of each agitator and propagandist,
and when he realises this, the success of his work will be assured."
(h) (Add) "It is absolutely untrue to say that we have no confidence in
the working class and that we are keeping the workers out of the governing
bodies. We are on the look-out for every worker who is at all fit for
managerial work; we are glad to have him and give him a trial. If the
Party has no confidence in the working class and does not allow workers to
occupy responsible posts, it ought to be ousted."
(i) (Add) "Creative activity at the grass roots is the basic factor of
the new public life.... Socialism cannot be decreed from above.
Its spirit rejects the mechanical bureaucratic approach; living, creative
socialism is the product of the masses themselves."
(j) (Add) "...it is only after they have been really emancipated from the
yoke of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois machinery of state, only after
they have found an opportunity of organizing in their Soviets in a really
free way (free from the exploiters), that the masses, i.e., the toilers and
exploited as a body, can display, for the first time in history, all the
initiative and energy of tens of millions of people who have been crushed
by capitalism. Only when the Soviets have become the sole state apparatus
is it really possible to ensure the participation, in the work of administration,
of the entire mass of the exploited, who, even under the most enlightened
and freest bourgeois democracy, have always actually been excluded 99 per
cent from participation in the work of administration. It is only in
the Soviets that the exploited masses really begin to learn--not in books,
but from their own practical experience--the work of socialist construction,
of creating a new social discipline and a free union of free workers."
416 (Add) "...the dictatorship of the proletariat will be a
dictatorship of the entire proletariat as a class over the bourgeoisie and
not the domination of a few individuals over the proletariat."
Page 201
If dictatorship is defined as the control of one's actions or beliefs
by forces or beings over which he has little or no influence, then the abolishment
of all dictatorship would mean the removal of all restraints applied to the
beliefs or behavior of any infants, children, or adults. This is impractical
to the extreme. When children begin their education, someone must select
what they are to learn, the books available, and the ideas taught. Since
the children can play no part in their selection, dictatorship becomes unavoidable.
Capitalist propaganda agencies (TV, radio, the print media, etc.) constantly
censor the content and language of thousands of programs and articles.
They're by no means immune. It's standard fare. For all dictatorship
to vanish, a person would have to possess decisive control over all factors
affecting his life from birth, which is impossible. Dictatorial control
can be progressively reduced but never eradicated. Some dictatorial
activities will always be present.
Like money, knowledge, strength, peace, war, fire, water, and a multitude
of other aspects of life, dictatorship can be negative or positive depending
on the conditions. There is nothing inherently wrong with dictatorial
control. Concern, instead, should lie with how, for whom, and to what
end it's employed. To simply reject the word "dictatorship" outright
without more extensive analysis as to its bourgeois or proletarian nature
is naive, impractical, and unrealistic.417
------------------------------------------------------------------------
417 (a) "What is so terrible about the word 'dictatorship'."
(b) "And now 'dictatorship' is a word that can frighten only utterly ignorant
people...."
(c) "Hence it is absurd to speak of the principle of authority as being
absolutely evil, and of the principle of autonomy as being absolutely good.
Authority and autonomy are relative things whose spheres vary with the various
phases of the development of society."
(d) (Add) "Dictatorial powers and one-man management are not contradictory
to socialist democracy."
(e) (Add) Under certain conditions Lenin considered one-man rule to be
not only acceptable but desirable. "We need more discipline, more individual
authority and more dictatorship. Without that, we cannot even dream
of a bigger victory.... ...Our chief slogan is--let us have more one-man
management, let us get closer to one-man management, let us have more labour
discipline, let us pull ourselves together and work with military determination,
staunchness and loyalty, brushing aside all group and craft interests, sacrificing
all private interests. We cannot succeed otherwise."
(f) (Add) "We must learn to combine the 'public meeting' democracy of the
working people...with iron discipline while at work, with unquestioning
obedience to the will of a single person, the Soviet leader, while at work."
Page 202
Those who throw up their hands in disgust and contend they reject all
forms of dictatorial influence, whether capitalist or socialist as do anarchists,
are propounding an ideology divorced from the dictates of material conditions.
The question of control can not be resolved by denouncing all dictatorships.
It's not that easy. Any American who rejects all dictatorships or proletarian
dictatorship in particular is simultaneously adopting bourgeois dictatorship. There is no inbetween.418
One either supports private ownership of the means of production
and distribution or he does not. Even those who refuse to pay taxes,
serve in the army, work for a property owner or engage in any other physical
or verbal act which may aid the system find total non-support nearly impossible.
To obtain wages, food, clothing, shelter, or other necessities through trade
or barter is to be involved. Individuals not actively and effectively
seeking the destruction of capitalism, which entails far more than merely
resisting its commands, are contributing to its preservation and enhancement.
Neutrality in the class struggle is for all practical purposes illusory.
419
------------------------------------------------------------------------
418 (a) "...by repudiating the 'dictatorship of the proletariat'
they are for the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. There is no middle
course; a middle course is the futile dream of the petty bourgeois democrat
(or intellectual--Ed.)."
(b) "...in a capitalist country it is possible to stand for capital and
it is possible to stand for labour, but it is impossible to stand for along
inbetween."
(c) "For there can be no 'middle' course in a society rent by bitter class
struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, particularly when
this struggle is inevitably aggravated by a revolution. And the whole
essence of the class position and aspirations of the petty bourgeoisie is
that they want the impossible, that they aspire to the impossible, i.e.,
to a 'middle course'."
(d) "Either the dictatorship (i.e., the iron rule) of the landowners and
capitalists, or the dictatorship of the working class. There is no
middle course. The scions of the aristocracy, intellectualists and
petty gentry, badly educated on bad books, dream of a middle course.
There is no middle course anywhere in the world, nor can there be.
Either the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (masked by ornate...phraseology
about a people's government, a constituent assembly, liberties and the like),
or the dictatorship of the proletariat. He who has not learned this
from the whole history of the nineteenth century is a hopeless idiot."
(e) "The attempt to take up a middle position and to 'reconcile' the proletariat
with the bourgeoisie is sheer stupidity and is doomed to miserable failure."
(f) "It is with absolute frankness that we speak of this struggle of the
proletariat; each man must choose between joining our side or the other
side. Any attempt to avoid taking sides in this issue must end in fiasco."
(g) "...there can be no stopping half-way between the dictatorship of the
bourgeoisie and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Any dream of
some kind of third way is the reactionary lamentation of the petty bourgeois."
(h) "The main thing that socialists fail to understand and that constitutes
their short-sightedness in matters of theory, their subservience to bourgeois
prejudices and their political betrayal of the proletariat is that in capitalist
society, whenever there is any serious aggravation of the class struggle
intrinsic to that society, there can be no alternative but the dictatorship
of the bourgeoisie or the dictatorship of the proletariat. Dreams of
some third way are reactionary petty-bourgeois lamentations."
(i) "Only two forces, in fact, have arisen: the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie
and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Whoever has not learnt this
from Marx, whoever has not learnt this from the works of all the great Socialists,
has never been a Socialist, understood nothing about socialism, and has only
called himself a Socialist."
(j) "Anyone who has read Marx and failed to understand that in capitalist
society, at every acute moment, in every serious class conflict, the alternative
is either the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or the dictatorship of the
proletariat, has understood nothing of either the economic or the political
doctrines of Marx."
(k) "...there can be only one of two possible powers in capitalist society,
either the power of the capitalists or the power of the proletariat, no
matter whether that society is developing, is firmly on its feet, or is declining. Every middle-of-the-road power is a dream, and every attempt to set up something
in between leads only to people, even if they are absolutely sincere, shifting
to one side or the other."
(l) "...it is more to their advantage to side with the dictatorship of
the proletariat than with the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and...there
can be no third course."
(m) "All of us very well realize that there can only be one alternative
in class struggle: recognition either of the rule of capital or of the working
class."
(n) "There is and can be only one alternative: either the dictatorship
of the bourgeoisie, disguised by...all kinds of voting systems, democracy
and similar bourgeois frauds that are used to blind fools, and that only
people who have become utter renegades from Marxism and socialism all along
the line can make play of today--or the dictatorship of the proletariat for
suppressing with an iron hand the bourgeoisie, who are inciting the most
backward elements against the finest leaders of the world proletariat."
(o) "We, of course, are not opposed to violence. We laugh at those
who are opposed to the dictatorship, we laugh and say that they are fools
who do not understand that there must be either the dictatorship of the
proletariat or the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Those who think
otherwise are either idiots, or so politically ignorant that it would be
a disgrace to allow them to come anywhere near a meeting, let alone on the
platform. The only alternative is either violence against Liebknecht
and Luxemburg (German Marxists--Ed.), the murder of the best leaders of the
workers, or the violent suppression of the exploiters; and whoever dreams
of a middle course is our most harmful and dangerous enemy."
(p) (Add) "...liberalism or Social-Democracy (Marxism--Ed.); half-way theories
and trends will very quickly be ground down between the millstones of these
two growing and mounting 'opposites'."
(q) (Add) "Always and everywhere, the people are slowly and painfully dividing
into two camps--that of the dispossessed and downtrodden, of those who are
fighting for a brighter future for all working people, and that of those who
in one way or another support the landowners and capitalists."
419 (a) "Civil war knows no neutrals."
(b) It is especially difficult to be neutral during times of violence.
" ...whoever thinks, whoever takes an interest, is obliged to join one armed
camp or the other. You may be beaten up, maimed, or murdered no matter
in what supremely peaceful and scrupulously lawful way you behave.
Revolution does not recognize neutrals.
(c) "There are not, and cannot be, any neutrals in a civil war....
Who is not for the revolution is against the revolution. Who is not
a revolutionary is one of the Black hundreds."
(d) "...in the class struggle there can be no neutrals; in capitalist society,
it is impossible to 'abstain' from taking part in the exchange of commodities
or labour-power. An exchange inevitably gives rise to economic and
then to political struggle. Hence, in practice, indifference to the
struggle does not at all mean standing aloof from the struggle, abstaining
from it, or being neutral. Indifference is tacit support of the strong,
of those who rule."
(e) "There can be no talk of any sort of trade union 'neutrality.'
Any campaign for neutrality is either a hypocritical screen for counter-revolution
or a complete lack of class-consciousness."
Page 203
Those who say socialism should be rejected because of alleged party dictatorship
are simultaneously supporting bourgeois dictatorship, even though they may
not realize as much. To slap the Party is to embrace the capitalist.
420
Note: WHAT IS DEMOCRACY
Parenthetically speaking, it should be noted that dictatorship is not
reduced through the creation of a democracy. Democracies, both proletarian
and bourgeois, are dictatorships.421
There are no pure democracies, democracies in general
422
or democracies above dictatorship and class interest, since every
democracy is a state.423
Democracy for everyone is a myth.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
420 (a) (Add) "Whoever weakens ever so little the iron discipline
of the party of the proletariat (especially during the time of its dictatorship),
actually aids the bourgeoisie against the proletariat."
(b) (Add) "These intellectualist howls about the suppression of capitalist
resistance are actually nothing but an echo of the old 'conciliation,' to
put it in a 'genteel' manner. Putting it with proletarian bluntness,
this means: continued kowtowing to the money-bags is what lies behind the
howls against the present working-class coercion now being applied (unfortunately,
with insufficient pressure or vigor) against the bourgeoisie, the saboteurs
and counter-revolutionaries."
421 (a) "...as long as the land and other means of production
remain private property the most democratic republic must inevitably remain
a bourgeois dictatorship, a machine for the suppression of the overwhelming
majority of working people by a handful of capitalists."
(b) "No bourgeois republic, however democratic, ever was or could have
been anything but a machine for the suppression of the working people by
capital, an instrument of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the political
rule of capital. The democratic bourgeois republic promised and proclaimed
majority rule, but it could never put this into effect as long as private
ownership of the land and other means of production existed. 'Freedom'
in the bourgeois-democratic republic was actually freedom for the rich...."
(c) "The old state, even the best and most democratic bourgeois republic,
was never, I repeat, and never could be, anything but the dictatorship of
the bourgeoisie, that is, of those who own the factories, the implements
of production, the land, the railways--in a word, all the material means,
all the instruments of labour, without the possession of which labour remains
in slavery."
(d) "The bourgeoisie has used state power as an instrument of the capitalist
class against the proletariat, against all the working people. That
has been the case in the most democratic bourgeois republics. Only
the betrayers of Marxism have 'forgotten' this."
(e) "...the most democratic bourgeois republic is a machine for the oppression
of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie."
(f) "(Bourgeois--Ed.) Democracy is formal parliamentarism, but in reality
it is a continuous, cruel mockery, heartless, unbearable oppression of the
working people by the bourgeoisie."
(g) "From the point of view of bourgeois society, once there is 'democracy,'
and once capitalist and proletarian alike take part in the voting, this
is the 'popular will,' this is 'equality' and an expression of the people's
will. We know what an abominable fraud this talk is, which only serves
as a cover for butchers and murderers like Ebert and Scheidemann (German
leaders during the Weimar Republic--Ed.). In bourgeois society the mass of
the working people are governed by the bourgeoisie with the help of more
or less democratic forms. They are governed by a minority, the property-owners,
those who have a share in capitalist property and who have turned education
and science, that supreme bulwark and flower of capitalist civilization,
into an instrument of exploitation, into a monopoly, in order to keep the
overwhelming majority of the people in slavery."
(h) (Add) "In capitalist society, we have a democracy that is curtailed,
poor, false; a democracy only for the rich, for the minority."
(i) (Add) "Bourgeois democracy, which is invaluable in educating the proletariat
and training it for the struggle, is always narrow, hypocritical, spurious
and false; it always remained democracy for the rich and a swindle for the
poor."
(j) (Add) "In capitalist society...democracy is always bound by the narrow
framework of capitalist exploitation, and consequently always remains, in
reality, a democracy for the minority, only for the possessing classes, only
for the rich. Freedom in capitalist society always remains just about
the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners. ...in the ordinary peaceful course of events, the majority of the population
is debarred from participating in social and political life. Democracy
for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich--that is the democracy
of capitalist society. (For the majority it is dictatorship--Ed.)."
(k) (Add) "Bourgeois democracy...always remains, and under capitalism cannot
but remain, restricted, truncated, false and hypocritical, a paradise for
the rich and a snare and a deception for the exploited, for the poor.
...every bourgeois democracy (is--Ed.) only a democracy for the rich."
(l) (Add) "Democracy under capitalism is capitalist democracy, the democracy
of the exploiting minority, based on the restriction of the rights of the
exploited majority...."
(m) (Add) "...so long as there are exploiters who rule the majority, the
exploited, the democratic state must inevitably be a democracy for the exploiters."
(n) (Add) "Bourgeois democracy that solemnly announced the equality of
all citizens, in actual fact hypocritically concealed the domination of the
capitalist exploiters and deceived the masses with the idea that the equality
of exploiters and exploited is possible."
(o) (Add) "...equality is a deception if it runs counter to the emancipation
of labour from the yoke of capital. That is what we say, and it is
absolutely true. We say that a democratic republic with present-day
equality is a fraud, a deception; here there is no equality, nor can there
be. It is prevented by the private ownership of the means of production
and money, capital."
(p) (Add) "Old or bourgeois democracy proclaims freedom and equality, equality
irrespective of whether a person owns anything or not, irrespective of whether
he is the owner of capital or not; it proclaims freedom for private owners
to dispose of land and capital and freedom for those who have neither to sell
their workers' hands to a capitalist. ...We, and all the socialists
who have not yet betrayed socialism, have always exposed the lies, fraud,
and hypocrisy of bourgeois society that talk about freedom and equality, or,
at any rate, about the freedom and equality of elections, although actually
the power of the capitalists, the private ownership of land and factories,
predetermines not freedom but the oppression and deception of the working
people under every possible kind of 'democratic and republican' system."
(q) (Add) "Bourgeois democracy confined itself to proclaiming formal rights
equally applicable to all citizens, e.g., the right of assembly, of association,
of the press. At best all legislative restrictions on these points
were abolished in the most democratic bourgeois republics. But, in
reality, both administrative practices and particularly the economic bondage
of the working people always make it impossible for them, under bourgeois
democracy, to make any wide use of these rights and liberties."
(r) (Add) "Under capitalism the exploited masses do not, nor can they,
really participate in the administration of the country, if for no other
reason than that, even under the most democratic regimes, governments under
the conditions of capitalism, are not set up by the people but by the Rothschilds
and Stinneses, the Rockefellers and Morgans."
(s) (Add) "The old, i.e., bourgeois, democracy or the parliamentary system
were so organized that it was the mass of the working people who were kept
farthest away from the machinery of government."
(t) (Add) "Under bourgeois democracy the capitalists, by the thousands
of tricks--which are the more artful and effective the more 'pure' democracy
is developed--push the masses away from the work of administration, from
freedom of the press, the right of assembly etc."
(u) (Add) "We said to the bourgeoisie: You, exploiters and hypocrites,
talk about democracy, while at every step you erect thousands of barriers
to prevent the oppressed masses from taking part in politics."
(v) (Add) "In all (bourgeois--Ed.) countries the working class masses are
oppressed. They do not enjoy the benefits of capitalist civilization,
although the working people should by rights constitute the basis of all
state life."
(w) (Add) "Even in the most democratic and freest republics, as long as
capital rules and the land remains private property, the government will
always be in the hands of a small minority, nine-tenths of which consist
of capitalists, or rich men."
(x) (Add) "...the modern representative state is an instrument of exploitation
of wage labour by capital."
(y) (Add) "'Democratic' deception reinforced by coercion; coercion concealed
by 'democratic' deception--such is the alpha and omega of dictatorship of
the imperialist bourgeoisie."
(z) (Add) "...the entire history of bourgeois democracy, particularly in
the advanced countries, has converted the parliamentary rostrum into one
of the principal, if not the principal, venues of unparalleled fraudulency,
financial and political deception of the people, careerism, hypocrisy and
oppression of the working people. The intense hatred of parliaments
felt by the best representatives of the revolutionary proletariat is therefore
quite justified."
(aa) (Add) "The Scheidemanns and the Kautskys...prettify bourgeois democracy,
bourgeois parliamentarism and the bourgeois republic, so as to make it appear
that the capitalists decide affairs of state by the will of the majority,
and not by the will of capital, not by means of deception and oppression and
the violence of the rich against the poor."
(bb) (Add) "We (the Russian Bolsheviks--Ed.) do not promise a land flowing
with milk and honey. But over there (in capitalist territory--Ed.)
you are promised equality, and get saddled with a landowner. That is
why we won (the counter-revolutionary war--Ed.)."
422 (a) "Let the liars and the hypocrites, the obtuse and the
blind, the bourgeois and their supporters, try to deceive the people with
talk about freedom in general, about equality in general and about democracy
in general."
(b) "We do not believe in 'absolutes.' We laugh at 'pure democracy'."
(c) "Either the power of the proletariat or dictatorship of the bourgeoisie,
there is no middle course on issues of any seriousness for any length of
time. And anyone who talks about independence, about democracy in general,
consciously or unconsciously presupposes something intermediate, something
standing between classes or above classes. In every case that is self-deception
or deception of others. It serves to conceal the fact that as long as capitalist
power remains, as long as capitalists retain the ownership of the means of
production, democracy may be broad or narrow, more or less civilized, and
so on and so forth, but it actually remains dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.... ...All talk of independence or democracy in general, no matter what sauce
it may be served up with, is a sheer fraud and a downright betrayal of socialism."
423 (a) "...democracy is also a state...."
(b) "Democracy is also a state."
(c) "...democracy too is domination 'of one part of the population over
the other'; it too is a form of state."
(d) "Democracy is a form of the state--one of its varieties. Consequently,
like every state, it consists in organized, systematic application of force
against human beings."
(e) "Every state, including the most democratic republic, is nothing but
a machine for the suppression of one class by another. The proletarian
state is a machine for the suppression of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat.
Such suppression is necessary because of the furious, desperate resistance
put up by the landowners and capitalists, by the entire bourgeoisie and
all their hangers-on, by all the exploiters, who stop at nothing when their
overthrow, when the expropriation of the expropriators, begins. The
bourgeois parliament, even the most democratic in the most democratic republic,
in which the property and rule of the capitalists are preserved, is a machine
for the suppression of the working millions by small groups of exploiters."
(f) "Democracy is one of the forms of the state, whereas we Marxists are
opposed to all and every kind of state."
Page 204
One must always ask, "Democracy for whom, for which class?"
424
Dictatorship will only rapidly fade with the realization of a communist
society, since only the latter has no state apparatus. Communism is
above democracy, is better than democracy, goes beyond democracy because it
lacks coercive agencies. The reduction of dictatorial control will arise
from a process. Bourgeois democracy (the dictatorship of the minority
over the majority), as represented by modern capitalist countries,
425
will be followed by proletarian democracy (the dictatorship of the
majority over the minority or socialism426
), which will be followed by stateless communism
427
(the dictatorship of no one). As communism emerges the state
(dictatorship) and democracy will fade.428
In essence and contrary to popular belief, democracy and dictatorship
are not mutually exclusive429
but complementary terms. When one is present so is the other;
when one fades so does the other. The existence of democracy for one
class means dictatorship for another and vice versa.
In summary, total abolishment of all dictatorship is neither feasible
nor desirable until the arrival of communism. The real question for
the immediate future is whether proletarian or bourgeois democracy should
be supported. There is no intermediate position. And if one selects
proletarian domination, then he must necessarily support party leadership
for many years after the revolution. To favor mass proletarian determination
of significant issues would be to open a pandora's box of possible bourgeois
inroads. The masses are often incapable of formulating correct policy
in the beginning, although they must certainly participate in its creation. If everyone were equally aware of the world situation, bourgeois dictatorship
would have been precluded ab initio. How could a minority have ruled
and exploited the majority if both groups had been equally cognizant of society's
arrangement. If the latter situation prevailed the Party might as well
be replaced after the revolution by an innocuous administrative agency executing
policy according to nation-wide referendums. Yet, if the votes were
not unanimous, dictatorship would still exist, since the minority would have
to submit to the majority. To escape all dictatorship is virtually impossible;
to create a dictatorship of, by, and for the masses is quite practical.
Page 205
424 (a) "It is natural for a liberal to speak of 'democracy'
in general; but a Marxist will never forget to ask: for what class? ..dictatorship does not necessarily mean the abolition of democracy for the
class that exercises the dictatorship over the other classes; but it necessarily
does mean the abolition (or very material restriction, which is also a form
of abolition) of democracy for the class over which, or against which, the
dictatorship is exercised."
(b) "Until classes are abolished, all talk about freedom and equality in
general is self-deception, or else deception of the workers and of all who
toil and are exploited by capital; in any case, it is a defence of the interests
of the bourgeoisie. Until classes are abolished, all arguments about freedom
and equality should be accompanied by the questions: freedom for which class,
and for what purpose; equality between which classes, and in what respect? Any direct or indirect, witting or unwitting evasion of these questions inevitably
turns into a defence of the interests of the bourgeoisie, the interests of
capital, the interests of the exploiters. If these questions are glossed
over, and nothing is said about the private ownership of the means of production,
then the slogan of freedom and equality is merely the lies and humbug of bourgeois
society, whose formal recognition of freedom and equality conceals actual
economic servitude and inequality for the workers, for all who toil and are
exploited by capital, i.e., for the overwhelming majority of the population
in all capitalist countries."
(c) (Add) "...we cannot speak of 'pure democracy' as long as different
classes exist; we can only speak of class democracy. ...pure democracy
is not only an ignorant phrase, revealing a lack of understanding both of
the class struggle and of the nature of the state.... 'Pure democracy'
is the mendacious phrase of a liberal who wants to fool the workers."
(d) (Add) "How Engels would have ridiculed the vulgar petty bourgeois...who
took it into his head to talk about 'pure democracy' in a society divided
into classes!"
(e) (Add) "...how unutterably nonsensical and theoretically stupid is the
common petty-bourgeois idea...that the transition to socialism is possible
'by means of democracy' in general. The fundamental source of this
error lies in the prejudice inherited from the bourgeois that 'democracy'
is something absolute and not concerned with classes."
425 (Add) "For in no civilized capitalist country does 'democracy
in general' exist; all that exists is bourgeois democracy...."
426 (a) (Add) "...in a class society the dictatorship of the
proletariat is the highest form of democracy."
(b) (Add) "Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than
any bourgeois democracy...."
(c) (Add) "Proletarian democracy suppresses the exploiters, the bourgeoisie--and
is therefore not hypocritical, does not promise them freedom and democracy--and
gives the working people genuine democracy."
(d) (Add) "The dictatorship of the proletariat alone can emancipate humanity
from the oppression of capital, from the lies, falsehood and hypocrisy of
bourgeois democracy--democracy for the rich--and establish democracy for the
poor...."
(e) (Add) "...proletarian or Soviet democracy, instead of the formal proclamation
of rights and liberties, guarantees them in practice first and foremost
to those classes of the population who were oppressed by capitalism, i.e.,
the proletariat and the peasantry."
(f) (Add) "...the dictatorship of the proletariat produces a series of
restrictions of liberty in the case of the oppressors, the exploiters, the
capitalists. We must crush them in order to free humanity from wage-slavery;
their resistance must be broken by force; it is clear that where there is
suppression there is also violence, there is no liberty, no democracy....
Democracy for the vast majority of the people, and suppression by force i.e.,
exclusion from democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of the people--this
is the modification of democracy during the transition from capitalism to
Communism."
(g) (Add) "Socialism leads to the withering away of every state, consequently
also of every democracy, but socialism can be implemented only through the
dictatorship of the proletariat, which combines violence against the bourgeoisie,
i.e., the minority of the population, with full development of democracy,
i.e., the genuinely equal and genuinely universal participation of the entire
mass of the population in all state affairs and in all the complex problems
of abolishing capitalism."
(h) (Add) "So long as classes exist the freedom and equality of classes
is a bourgeois deception. The proletariat takes power, becomes the
ruling class, smashes bourgeois parliamentarism and bourgeois democracy,
suppresses the bourgeoisie, suppresses all attempts of all other classes
to return to capitalism, gives real freedom and equality to the working people
(which is practicable only when the private ownership of the means of production
has been abolished), and gives them not only the 'right to,' but the real
use of, what has been taken from the bourgeoisie. He who fails to understand
this content of the dictatorship of the proletariat (or what is the same thing,
Soviet power, or proletarian democracy) is misusing the term dictatorship
of the proletariat."
(i) (Add) "Throughout the world socialism has set itself the task of combating
every kind of exploitation of man by man. That democracy has real
value for us which serves the exploited, the underprivileged. If those
who do not work are disfranchised that would be real equality between people. Those who do not work should not eat."
(j) (Add) "The essence of Bolshevism and the Soviet power is to expose
the falsehood and mummery of bourgeois democracy, to abolish the private
ownership of land and factories and concentrate all state power in the hands
of the working and exploited masses."
(k) (Add) "The whole point is that a bourgeois state which is exercising
the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie through a democratic republic cannot
confess to the people that it is serving the bourgeoisie; it cannot tell
the truth, and is compelled to play the hypocrite. But a state of the
Paris Commune type, a Soviet state, openly and frankly tells the people the
truth and declares that it is the dictatorship of the proletariat...and by
this truth is wins over scores and scores of millions of new citizens...."
(l) (Add) "I am sure the new democracy, that is, the proletarian democracy,
is coming in all countries and will crush all obstacles and the imperialist-capitalist
system in the new and the old world."
427 (a) "But from this capitalist democracy--inevitably narrow,
subtly rejecting the poor, and therefore hypocritical and false to the core--progress
does not march onward, simply, smoothly and directly, to 'greater and greater
democracy,' as the liberal professors and petty-bourgeois opportunists would
have us believe. No, progress marches onward, i.e., toward Communism,
through the dictatorship of the proletariat; it cannot do otherwise, for there
is no one else and no other way to break the resistance of the capitalist
exploiters."
(b) (Add) "Communism cannot be imposed by force."
428 (a) "Democracy, of course, is also a type of state which
must disappear when the state disappears, but that will only take place in
the transition from conclusively victorious and consolidated socialism to
full communism."
(b) "...democracy, too, is a form of state which must disappear when the
state disappears."
(c) "...it is constantly forgotten that the destruction of the state means
also the destruction of democracy; that the withering away of the state
also means the withering away of democracy. At first sight such a statement
seems exceedingly strange and incomprehensible.... Democracy is a state
recognizing the subordination of the minority to the majority, i.e., an organization
for the systematic use of violence by one class against the other, by one
part of the population against another. We set ourselves the ultimate
aim of destroying the state, i.e., every organized and systematic violence,
every use of violence against man in general." (Thus we set ourselves
the aim of destroying democracy and replacing it with communism--Ed.).
(d) (Add) "Only in Communist society...when there are no classes...only
then 'the state ceases to exist,' and 'it becomes possible to speak of freedom.' Only then a really full democracy, a democracy without any exceptions, will
be possible and will be realized. Only then will democracy itself begin
to wither away...."
(e) (Add) "The anarchists want to 'abolish' the state, 'blow it up'....
The socialists...hold that the state will 'wither away,' will gradually 'fall
asleep' after the bourgeoisie has been expropriated."
429 (a) "...it must be made clear that democracy under the
Soviet system does not contradict dictatorship."
(b) (Add) "From the vulgar bourgeois standpoint the terms dictatorship
and democracy are mutually exclusive. Failing to understand the theory
of class struggle and accustomed to seeing in the political arena the petty
squabbling of the various bourgeois circles and coteries, the bourgeois (mind--Ed.)
understands by dictatorship the annulment of all liberties and the guarantees
of democracy, arbitrariness of every kind, and every sort of abuse of power
in a dictator's personal interests."
Page 206
Section IV
FORESTALLING SUCCESSFUL COUNTER-REVOLUTION
Once party control is accepted as initially unavoidable, the question
becomes one of preventing the creation of a new elite, a new ruling class.
Safeguards arising from material conditions must be present, since the latter
provide an enduring and compelling quality not realizable through man-made
laws, rules, regulations, and ideology. The most effective safeguard
is that arising from the material requirements of revolutionary leadership. Those leading a revolt against private property are engaged in one of the
most hazardous, uncertain activities imaginable. Much self-denial and
self-sacrifice are required often punctuated by periods of hopelessness, frustration
and anxiety. Rewards are often outweighed by the risks incurred and
intimidation often overcomes all but the most determined. In essence, revolution
is not for the fainthearted, the lovers of affluence, or those choosing to
put self above others. Success is too uncertain, rewards too sparse.
By the very nature of what they are attempting to accomplish and must endure
socialist revolutionaries must be more concerned about others than themselves.
If self-interest were the primary motivating factor of their behavior, they
would never have embarked upon a revolutionary career from the beginning.
The possibility of victory is outweighed by the possibility of defeat.
To the egotist there is too much labor and risk involved with too little
possibility of personal gain. Material conditions dictate that successful
socialist revolutionary leaders be socially concerned, informed, dedicated
and, above all, selfless. It would difficult to imagine any other type of
individual leading a socialist revolution. The caliber of those who
have led successful socialist revolutions substantiates this thesis.
430
Why should Lenin, Stalin, Fidel Castro, Mao, and Ho Chi Minh
have risked their lives when they could have lived better than most people
within the prevailing system. They could have forgotten about suffering
humanity, but they didn't.431
Since there is little possibility of undesirable leadership during the
revolution or in the immediate post-revolutionary period, the question becomes
one of maintaining good leadership for many years afterward. Undoubtedly,
this has become a major concern for the socialist world. How can the
alertness, the spirit, the determination, the energy, the self-sacrifice
so prominent in the original revolutionary cadre be perpetuated, strengthened
and transferred to subsequent leaders. How can the latter, who often
did not participate in the original revolution, be prevented from establishing
a new elite or selling-out entirely. Moreover, if the party leadership
should later divide into two groups, each claiming to have the correct approach,
how will the movement be kept on the correct path. The solution to these
problems lies not only with responsible post-revolutionary party leaders making
the correct decisions (a strong element of belief in party leadership is
unavoidable here) but also with correctly educating the masses.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
430 (Add) "...our Party is a fortress, the gates of which are
opened only to those who have been tested."
431 (a) "I (Marx--Ed.) laugh at the so-called 'practical' men
with their wisdom. If one chose to be an ox, one could of course turn
one's back on the sufferings of mankind and look after one's own skin. But I should have really regarded myself as impractical if I had pegged out...."
(b) (Add) "One of his (Marx--Ed.) favorite sayings was: 'work for humanity.'
...'I am a citizen of the world,' he used to say; 'I am active wherever I
am."
(c) (Add) "It is, of course, simpler and easier to follow the line of least
resistance, and for everyone to make himself comfortable in his own corner
following the rule, 'it's none of my business,'...."
Page 207
Immediately after the revolution the party leadership must undertake an
extensive program of awakening the people as to what they should seek in leaders
and demand in policies,432
so that if splits or revisionist attitudes later develop, they can
decide issues, if need be, through mass movement.
As the masses become increasingly capable of accurately weighing the various
positions, they will understandably demand greater control over society and
a greater voice in policy formulation. A struggle will progressively
develop as the party leadership seeks to hinder their involvement in major
decision-making. A healthy struggle will evolve, a dialectical interaction,
in which the Party will steadily retreat. As the capitalist system created
its gravedigger--the proletariat,433
the Party will create its replacement--an accurately informed mass
population. When the average citizen becomes as knowledgeable and aware
as the party leaders, when all citizens are equally capable of devising correct
strategy and recognizing those acts or ideas which are regressive and decadent
and lead to the reinstitution of capitalism, the Party's policies will be
indistinguishable from mass desire and the restrictive element of party leadership,
indeed, the Party itself will have taken a tremendous step toward eradication.
Mass strength and awareness will contribute to the eventual replacement of
the Party by a weak administrative apparatus lacking enforcement capability.
Admittedly, there is no air-tight approach to this problem. Although
unlikely given the demands of revolution and the material alterations it
produces, the original cadre could become a new elite or subsequent leaders
could become lackadaisical revisionists because of affluent material conditions.
As recent events in China have shown, nothing destroys revolutionary fervor
faster than greatly increased material comforts. The revolution will
aid the eventual creation of communism but not furnish guarantees.
Although the vast material changes after the revolution will immensely reduce
the possible formation of a misguided ruling group, they will not negate
it. There is no perfect solution. Although greatly diminished,
an element of risk will always be involved. But the overriding fact
remains that those rejecting socialism because elitism could develop are
simultaneously aiding capitalism. They are refusing that which is good
and could deteriorate and accepting that which is already known to be worthy
of destruction. Party leadership until the masses are ideologically
mature is not a perfect mechanism of government, indeed, what is, but it
is immensely better than any other avenue.
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432 "Explanation to the proletariat of the tasks of such a
state...must constitute one of the principal tasks of the proletarian party....
433 (a) "What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all,
is its own gravediggers. It's fall and the victory of the proletariat
are equally inevitable."
(b) "...capitalism itself at each step of its development teaches and unites
its grave-diggers, multiplying their ranks and intensifying their wrath."
(c) (Add) "At each step in its development, capitalism increases the number
of proletarians, wage-workers; it rallies, organizes and enlightens them,
and in this way molds a class force that must inevitably march toward its
goal."
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