II

The proclamation by the Bolshevists of the right to self-determination of all nations caused the detaching from Soviet Russia of Finland, the Baltic Provinces, Poland, the Ukraine, and the Caucasus. This resulted in the downfall of the proletarian revolution in most of these countries.

The self-determination slogan was a bourgeois-capitalist one. Either the Bolshevists proclaimed it from weakness in the fear that if they did not give these States their freedom they could not smash up Czarism, or, as it appears now, they wanted, even then, a national Russian State. The doubts both as to the power of Communism to triumph and the necessity of nationalism were inspired by the peasants.

The enrolment of the proletariat into the Red Army was a proletarian-Communist measure. The admission of the peasants into the army was a bourgeois-capitalist measure, for the peasants would, and will, prove themselves enemies of Communism, both economically and militarily.

Undoubtedly the peasant was willing to fight against the counter-revolution, in so far as it threatened the private property of the peasants in the soil. They fought against Yudenitch, Koltchak and Wrangel. The Bolshevists might be able to keep both the peasants and the proletarians in the army by giving them better food and clothing than they could get outside, but could the peasants still fight for the Bolshevists after their own private property was secured and the counter-revolution of the big landowners no more? No, the peasants would certainly not do that.

A very interesting question in this regard was the fate of the Bolshevist campaign in Poland in 1920. Why did the Russian Army then suddenly retire? When the writer, on behalf of the Communist Workers’ Party, asked this question in Moscow at the sitting of the Executive of the Third International in November, 1920, Trotsky and Karsky gave no clear answer. The explanations were confused. One said the fault lay with the civil service, another with the military. We now believe that the true answer which was kept from us is that the peasants did not want to continue the attack of European capitalism. As soon as their property was secured against the foreigner they would not war any more against European capitalism. The peasants are the majority of the Russian Army. One must no longer reckon on their assistance in a European revolution.

A genuine proletarian revolution will not have peasants in its army, for its army must be wholly Communist.

The peace of Brest-Litovsk was a bourgeois, or capitalist-Democratic one. A real proletarian revolution would have remained the enemy of all capitalist Powers, whilst waiting for and assisting the rising of the proletariat in other countries.

It was proletarian-Communist to give political power to the workers. It was bourgeois to give it to the peasants. A proletarian revolution in Germany and England will not give political power to such elements until their deeds have proved them Communists.

The suppression of the independence and self-expression of the workers was also bourgeois-capitalist. The workers and their organisations did not get the leadership and control of industry, transport and distribution.

The Bureaucratic despotism of the leaders was also bourgeois-capitalist. The corruption was also bourgeois-capitalist.

The party dictatorship of the Bolshevists was in the highest degree bourgeois. Party dictatorship will always become so. In leader-dictatorship lies the kernel of the bourgeois capitalist revolution, and in it is the greatest proof that the Russian revolution was chiefly, and in its origin, a bourgeois capitalist one.

The party dictatorship was in its origin bourgeois capitalist. It began through the power of the peasants, the non-proletarian class. A party dictatorship could overpower and lead the peasant class in Russia. A proletarian class dictatorship could not do this, for a dictatorship of the proletarian class will always aspire to pure Communism. Once it has the power to govern the proletariat will not content itself with less. The enormous power, the great numbers of the peasants prevented pure Communism from being achieved.

The proletariat as a class could not lead the dictatorship. This could only be done by a party — the Bolshevist Party, and this only by NOT introducing pure Communism, by making concessions to the peasantry, the private owners of the land, and to the capitalists. A proletarian class would never do this. The awakened proletariat will not make concessions; it will demand everything for itself. Its watchword will remain unto the end:

“We have nothing: we shall be everything”.

The Bolshevist party held the dictatorship through the might and power of the peasants. This party dictatorship, because of the might of the peasants, was of necessity mainly capitalistic. It dominated, instead of representing the proletariat, over which it was the despot. It may be that this dictatorship was inevitable; it may be that, under the circumstances, it was the best that could be had; nevertheless, it was a despotism. It dictated to the workers what concessions they must make and what advantages were to be given to the peasants.

It could not have been otherwise in a land so largely agrarian. Having originated from the power of the peasants; the dictatorship of the Bolshevists was necessarily bourgeois-democratic.

We are proud that Rosa Luxemburg in her voice from the grave has pointed out the nature of the party dictatorship and its effect on the revolution just as we have done. She says a few dozen party leaders of inexhaustible energy and endless idealism direct and rule. Amongst them are in reality one dozen eminent heads who lead and an elite of the workmen which is called from time to time to applaud the speeches of the leaders and to vote unanimously for the resolutions laid before them. At bottom, therefore, it is a clique arrangement — a dictatorship it is true; but not a dictatorship of the proletariat, simply a dictatorship of a handful of politicians; in short a dictatorship in the bourgeois sense.

“Yes: dictatorship . . . But this dictatorship must be the work of the class and not that of a leading minority in the name of the class; that is to say, it must, step by step, arise from the active participation of the class, remain under its direct influence, and be subordinated to the control of publicity and be the outcome of the political experience of the whole people”.

The Communist Workers’ Party and the Communist Workers’ International can echo the words of Rosa Luxemburg, but instead of the “whole people” we always read the proletariat.

Rosa Luxemburg did not understand that all this could not happen in Russia; that no class dictatorship was possible there, because the proletariat was too small and the peasantry too mighty.

She did not see, because her life was too short, that the Bolshevists had built their party dictatorship not only out of the might of the peasants, but that they were compelled to use their dictatorship through the might of the peasants for the bourgeois revolution in Russia. They used their party dictatorship always more in the interests of the peasants — that is to say, in the interests of capitalist private property, and against the proletariat and Communism.

The productive and class conditions in Russia forced the revolution to be to a great extent a bourgeois one. The proletarian class conditions gave the Bolshevists the leadership. This leadership could not, on account of the productive and class conditions, be a class dictatorship; it had to be a party dictatorship, and these very conditions compelled the party dictatorship to be a bourgeois capitalist one.

Party dictatorship is typical of a bourgeois revolution, in a society based on private property. By such a revolution one class dispossesses another class, but itself remains on the basis of private property. The newly risen class uses and cheats the class beneath it.

A bourgeois revolution is always a revolution of a minority against the majority.

The proletarian revolution which aims at being truly Communist, must be a revolution of the majority against the minority. Therefore it must take place, or at least have its beginning, in a truly proletarian country.

If the revolution comes from the majority, or, at least represents the interests of the majority, then it does not require a party dictatorship, it has no need to cheat the masses by such means. Then the dictatorship of the class is inevitable.

The Party dictatorship in Russia was the surest sign that the revolution was bourgeois-capitalist.

We shall postpone, till we have treated the second period, a detailed exposure of the fact that even in the first period of their power the Bolshevists showed their bourgeois-democratic or capitalist policy by their influence on the proletariat in other countries through the Third International.