The Appeal to Marx

The, ungracious critics of our Russian friends do not, indeed, absolutely reject dictatorship on principle. What they take amiss is the character of the dictatorship in Russia. Karl Kautsky endeavours to prove that dictatorship and democracy must go hand in hand. The dictatorship must not sacrifice democratic principles but must realise them. The dictatorship must be an effluence of democracy. It most subserve the will of the majority and the interests of the majority. According to the critics, neither of these requirements is fulfilled in Russia. The small bolshevist minority, we are told, employing brutal and forcible measures. constrains the overwhelming majority of Russians to accept bolshevist policy. This policy, far from safe-guarding the revolution, endangers the revolution; far from advancing socialism, compromises socialism. This is the kernel of the critical onslaughts, which are directed at a mark beyond “bolshevism,” which aim at clarifying, at revising, the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat. We are given chains of logical inferences, attempts at a new outline of the concept of dictatorship, as contrasted with the old theory, which is rejected as “blanquist” or “Jacobin” The arguments are, of course, peppered with appeals to Marx and Engels, and with quotations from these authors. I have carefully read the expositions, but my general outlook upon the question, upon the application of the doctrine to the special case of the Russian revolution, and upon the part played by the bolsheviks in that revolution, remains unchanged. As concerns the contentious questions of our own day, what does it matter whether the historic phenomena which Marx witnessed during his lifetime led him to codify his conception of the dictatorship of the proletariat; what does it matter if, having at first been inclined to a “Jacobin” outlook, he subsequently came rather to adopt an “evolutionist and parliamentarist” view. With all due deference to Comrade Martoff’s wide knowledge of Marxist theory, and to the indisputable acumen with which he applies that theory, we may none the less feel inclined to challenge his deductions, and the way in which he contrasts his interpretation of Marx with the dictatorship exercised by the bolsheviks. But even if we believe Martoff to be right concerning Marx’s opinions and concerning the applicability of those opinions to the Russian situation, there is one simple fact still to be remembered, and it is that historical evolution was not arrested when the pen fell from Marx’s hand.