The Outlook for the Soviet Republic

Lenin’s government is threatened by another 9th Thermidor, but it may come about in some other way. History does not repeat itself. A government that gets an object in view, which under the circumstances is unattainable, may go to pieces in two different ways. It will in the end be overthrown if it stands by its programme and falls with it. But it can only maintain itself if it makes some corresponding change in its programme, and finally abandons it altogether. Whatever happens, one way just as much as the other, will lead to failure, so far as the thing itself is concerned. For those persons implicated, however, it makes an enormous difference whether they retain the State power in their own hands, or whether they are to be delivered up as fallen idols to the rage and fury of their enemy.

Robespierre fell on the 9th Thermidor, but not all the Jacobins shared his fate. By means of clever adaptation to circumstances many of them rose to a high position. Napoleon himself originally belonged to the Terrorists, and indeed was a friend of Robespierre’s brother. Their sister said later on; “Bonaparte was a Republican. I will even go so far as to say that he was on the side of the Mountain. His admiration for my elder brother, his friendship for my younger brother, and perhaps also the sympathy he showed in my misfortune, were responsible for my receiving from the Consulate a donation of 3,600 frs.” (Quoted by J.H. Rose, Napoleon I, 1916, volume 1, p.50.)

But not only individuals. Whole parties can so transform themselves as to extricate themselves from an untenable position, not only with a whole skin, but even with enhanced power and respect. It is not impossible that the collapse of the communist experiment in Russia may not equally transform the Bolsheviks, and save them as a governing party. They are already on the way. As thorough-going, practical politicians, the Bolsheviks have developed the art of adaptation to circumstances in the course of their rule to a remarkable degree. Originally they were wholehearted protagonists of a National Assembly, elected on the strength of a universal and equal vote. But they set this aside, as soon as it stood in their way. They were thorough-going opponents of the death penalty, yet they established a bloody rule. When democracy was being abandoned in the State they became fiery upholders of democracy within the proletariat, but they are repressing this democracy more and more by means of their personal dictatorship. They abolished the piece-work system, and are now reintroducing it. At the beginning of their regime they declared it to be their object to smash the bureaucratic apparatus, which represented the means of power of the old State; but they have introduced in its place a new form of bureaucratic rule. They came into power by dissolving the discipline of the army, and finally the army itself. They have created a new army, severely disciplined. They strove to reduce all classes to the same level, instead of which they have called into being a new class distinction. They have created a class which stands on a lower level than the proletariat, which latter they have raised to a privileged class; and over and above this they have caused still another class to appear, which is in receipt of large incomes and enjoys high privileges. They hoped in the villages to cripple the peasants who had property, by meting out political rights exclusively to the poorest among the peasantry. Now they have granted these propertied peasants some measure of representation. They began with a merciless expropriation of capital, and at the present moment are preparing to hand over to American capitalists the mineral treasures of half Russia., in order to gain their assistance, and in every way to come to some terms with foreign capital. The French war correspondent, Ludovic Naudeau, gave a report recently in the Temps of a conversation he had had with Lenin, in which the latter, among other remarks, gave the following account of his friendly attitude towards capital:–

We are very willing to propose that we should acknowledge and pay the interest on our foreign leans; and since we lack other means of payment, that this should take the form of the delivery of wheat, petroleum, and all kinds of raw material, of which we without doubt have superfluous stacks, as soon as work in Russia can be undertaken to its fullest extent. We have also decided, on the strength of our contracts, which, of course, must first receive diplomatic sanction, to grant concessions to subjects of the Entente Powers for the exploiting of forests and mines, naturally subject to the condition that the essential basis of government of the Russian Soviet Republic be acknowledged. We know that English, Japanese, and American capitalists are keenly striving for such concessions.

Interviews are not documents upon which one can swear, but the views of the Soviet Republic, about which we are here speaking, are proved by other responsible reporters on Russia. They give evidence of a strong sense of the actual realities of life; but show that they have already renounced their Communist programme, since its realisation will be delayed for some long time to come, if they are prepared to form out to foreign capitalists a part of Russia for eighty years. Communism, as a. means towards the immediate emancipation of the Russian proletariat, has now collapsed. It is now only a question whether Lenin’s government will announce in a veiled manner the bankruptcy of Bolshevik methods, and seek thereby to maintain its position; or whether a counter-revolutionary power will overthrow this government and proclaim its bankruptcy in a very brutal way. We should ourselves prefer the first way, namely, that Bolshevism should once more consciously establish itself on the basis of Marxist evolution, which holds that natural phases of development cannot be precipitated. It would be the least painful, and it would also be the most beneficial way for the International proletariat. But, unfortunately, the course of world-history does not always run according to our wishes. The hereditary sin of Bolshevism has been its suppression of democracy through a form of government, namely, the dictatorship, which has no meaning unless it represents the unlimited and despotic power, either of one single person, or of a small organisation intimately bound together. With a dictatorship it is as with war. This should be borne in mind by those in Germany who are under the influence of the Russian method, and who are now coquetting with the idea of a dictatorship, without thinking it out to its logical conclusion. It is easy to begin a dictatorship as it is to begin war, if one has the State power under control. But when once such steps have been taken, it is as difficult at will to stop the one as the other. One has to choose between two alternatives, either to triumph or to end in catastrophe. Russia has an imperative need of foreign capital. But this help will not be forthcoming to the Soviet Republic, unless it upholds the National Assembly and the freedom of the Press. This is not to imply that the capitalists were ever democratic idealists. Without hesitation they gave millions in support of Tsarism; but they have no strong confidence in regard to the business capacity of the present revolutionary government. They are in doubt as to its constitution, when it suffers no criticism to appear in the Press, and obviously has not the majority of the population behind it. Will the Soviet Government find a way to preserve the freedom of the Press and to convoke a Constituent Assembly? A certain number of Bolsheviks have declared that they fear the one just as little as the other. But why, then, do they not uphold them? Why do they despise a means which, if they use it well, must help towards an enormous increase of their moral strength, and of other people’s confidence in them? In the aforementioned preface to Bucharin’s Programme of the Communists there is written:–

“he conditions which Kautsky and company would impose upon a revolution appear to be that the revolution certainly has the right to dictate its will to the bourgeoisie, but that at the same time it is pledged to grant the bourgeoisie every facility, whether through freedom of the Press or through the Constituent Assembly, to air its complaints. This masterly suggestion of a learned expert, who does not seem to bother whether he has right on his side, but only whether he can lodge his accusation on the particular man for whom he is looking, might quite well be put into practice, abstractly regarded, without its doing any harm to the Revolution. But the Revolution consists in being a civil war, and those classes who have to fight with cannons and machine-guns readily forego such Homeric form of controversy. The Revolution never discussed with its enemies. It destroys them, and the counter-revolution does the same thing, and both are quite capable of shouldering the reproof that they have disregarded the orders of the German Reichstag.

This justification of slaughter, also in regard to the counter-revolution, is all the more sublime, when it is compared with what the author says a few pages before concerning the revolution:–

The Socialist Revolution is a long process, which begins with the dethronement of the capitalist class; but it can only end with the transformation of the capitalist system into one for the community of Labour. This process will take a generation, at least, in each country. This period is exactly the period of the proletarian dictatorship; the period, that is to say, in. which the proletariat, with one hand, must continue to crush the capitalist class, while the other hand alone is free to aid in other Socialistic reconstruction. (p.18)

That is to say, the revolution is synonymous with civil war, with a war in which no pardon is given, in which the one side attempts to crush the other without any lasting effect, since this pleasant process must continue “for a generation at least.” This devastating civil war, carried on by means of machine-guns and gas-bombs, which must work more dire destruction on land than ever happened before in the Thirty Years’ War; which decimates the population, increases their brutality until it becomes the wildest barbarism, and which completely stops all sources of production – this, indeed, is to be the way to the working out of the higher form of life for which Socialism stands! This masterly conception of the Socialist Revolution is certainly not that of a “learned expert,” but of a professional revolutionary for whom insurrection is synonymous with revolution, and who really loses his health and life if such revolution assumes the form of democracy, and not that of a civil war. But one thing is certainly correct. There are only two possibilities – either democracy or civil war. Whoever abolishes the one must be prepared for the other. He can only escape from a dictatorship where he has to deal with an absolutely hopeless and apathetic population, which by its very nature represents the lack of human material on which to build the structure of a Socialist society.

As we have only the two alternatives – democracy or civil war – I myself draw the conclusion that wherever Socialism does not appear to be possible on a democratic basis, and where the majority of the population rejects it, its time has not yet fully come. Bolshevism, on the other hand, argues that Socialism can only be introduced by being forced on a majority by a minority, and such can happen only through dictatorship and civil war. The fact alone that Bolshevism feels itself to be in a minority among the people makes it clear why it so obstinately rejects democracy, in spite of its assurance that democracy cannot “harm the revolution.” If it thought it had the majority behind it, it would not need to reject democracy, even if it did regard fighting with cannons and machine-guns as the one and only possible form of revolutionary struggle. Moreover, this struggle would be made easier for Bolshevism, as it was for the revolutionary Parisians in 1793, if a revolutionary Convention was behind it all. But such a Convention would not stand behind it. When the Bolsheviks came into power they found themselves at the height of their influence over the workmen, the soldiers, and a large section of the peasants; and yet they themselves at that time did not dare to appeal for a universal election. Instead of dissolving the Constituent Assembly and introducing a new election, they simply smashed it. Ever since, the opposition against the Bolsheviks has been increasing from day to day. The growing nervousness betrayed by its disciples over every kind of Press which is not official, as well as the exclusion of Socialist critics from the Soviets, shows the transition to the Regiment of Terror. In such a situation, to demolish the dictatorship in order gradually to return to democracy is scarcely possible. All such attempts hitherto have quickly come to an end. The Bolsheviks are prepared, in order to maintain their position, to make all sorts of possible concessions to bureaucracy, to militarism, and to capitalism, whereas any concession to democracy seems to them to be sheer suicide. And yet that alone offers any possibility of bringing the civil war to an end, and of leading Russia again along paths of economic progress and prosperous development, towards some higher form of existence. Without democracy Russia will go to pieces; but through democracy the proletariat must go to pieces. The final result is quite predictable. It need not be a 9th Thermidor, but I fear it will not be far removed from that.