Proletarian Dictatorship Provisional

It is undeniable that the democracy created by the soviet constitution is incomplete; it is incontestable that thereby large groups of persons are excluded from the suffrage. But the critics seem to forget that these disqualifications are merely provisional, that they will be enforced solely for the period during which the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry persists and must persist. The constitution leaves no doubt upon this matter. The dissolution of Old Russia, the coming of New Russia, are not yet so far advanced as to enable the soviet government with one stroke of the pen or with a single mighty blow to abolish private ownership of the means of production. In Russia, the knell of private property has not yet sounded, the hour for the expropriation of all expropriators has not yet struck. Minorities still possess economic power and social power, can still use and misuse these powers against the overwhelming majority of the workers. Is political power to be superadded, to enable them to pursue their egoistic aims in defiance of the interests of the community at large? Let us clear our minds of phrases; let us cut loose from formalities; let us cease to reiterate the shibboleth that “the masses have the right and the power” to counteract the anti-social machinations of the possessing minorities. Is it not obvious that, in reality, things will be very different until economic freedom and economic equality shall have endowed the entire nation with spiritual freedom and maturity? Who would not laugh at a military commander so unwise as to send artillery and shells as a gift to the hostile army? Yet the Bolshevists are supposed to have committed a deadly sin in that they refused to arm and equip the reactionary minorities for the struggle against the revolution. This too at the very moment when revolution and counter-revolution were at life-and-death grips; when the counter-revolution was not merely supported by all the reactionary energies of Russia, but was being furnished by the Allied governments with troops, money, and moral support.