Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested.—V.I.Lenin
I.L.W.P. BULLETIN
Weekly newspaper of the International Leninist Workers Party (P&P Bulletin Publications, PO Box 50, London SW17 9NL)((GPO Regd.)   
No 0676 November 24th 1992                                                                                                                        10p 
Sales meetings Saturday,2pm Receipts, sleeping bags.

Fire round the monarchy. War, ruin, and pestilence on their way.

The British imperialist establishment is so up to its neck in trouble that the Windsor debacle might seem like a minor local difficulty before much longer.

The near-universal derision of Royalty for incurring another huge public bill at a time of economic despair when the costs of the libertine antics of aristocratic circles are already a scandal, marks a new level of unprecedented middle-class political disaffection.

One Guardian letter joked that the first sight of the castle in flames, the glum monarch, and soldiers everywhere raised brief hopes that the revolution had already begun.

It is in fact a little way off yet, but the paralysed performance of the British ruling class on all fronts is helping to speed things up nicely.

If the price of repairing a bit of the royal fabric is thought too high, then what will be the public reaction when the total economic catastrophe of Thatcherism is finally grasped.

And if royal-purse penny-pinching is thought to have caused monstrous damage to a lovely old castle, then how savage will be the accusations when it is realised that free market forces have caused the complete bankruptcy of Britain itself.

The Tory government and the imperialist parliamentary system worldwide are perched on a knife-edge of popular hatred as the abyss of endless slump and warmongering chauvinist nightmares yawns beneath them.

The financial ineptness, the industrial backwardness, and the general air of error-strewn corruption now being seen to infect the Major regime is in fact just normal Tory government.

But the appearance of it in tatters now to everyone is a striking reflection of how severe and serious the political crisis of imperialism is now becoming, fast catching up with the very real and insoluble economic disasters.

The GATT talks to avoid a world trade war have pretended to come up with an agreement of sorts, - out of a true terror of further failure.

But it is a real 'peace in our time' bit of useless paper-waving like Chamberlain's 'agreement' for 'no war with Germany' in 1938. And the French, indeed, are already calling the deal a 'farming Munich'.

The profiteering exploitative tyranny of 'free market forces' must go on insisting on the destruction of ever-greater quantities of allegedly 'surplus ' capital (surplus production, in effect) or else the rates of profit of all investments everywhere will continue to plunge towards zero and bankruptcy.

In farming, this means wiping out more food production, despite the fact that half the world is literally starving, and half the farmers in the exploiting imperialist countries are facing serious financial difficulties.

Thousands more of them will be wiped out in France and elsewhere if the proposed GATT output-reduction deal goes through. But an all-out international trade war starts immediately if Lt does not go through.

But the really painful dilemma for the capitalist bourgeoisie to ponder is that there is going to be a ferocious trade-war anyway, - the worst in imperialist history, leading inevitably towards inter-imperialist World War III.

The bogus 'free market forces' system is in fact a plaything of the most powerful monopoly-capitalist forces ever ranged against
each other, - dwarfing the confrontations and insoluble contradictions over world economic supremacy which drove the mightiest industrialised nations to inter-imperialist World War I and II earlier this century.

Suggestions that 'perhaps the great powers will not be so foolish as to go to war again' are certifiable insanity.

They will go to war again because nothing in the entire deep-rooted capitalist mechanism which totally dominates all economic, political and social life in the 'free' world enables the great nations to avoid going to war (that is, other than proletarian revolution of course, which puts an end to capitalism).

The total motive force of the whole capitalist system is the driving ambition to become the greatest monopoly-imperialist bourgeois in all world history.

And every corner shop that works shares a tiny bit of that greater ambition which is the necessary cement for making the entire 'free world' international system work.

It works because it offers great national glory, tremendous personal wealth and power, and holds out the hope of glitzy trickle-down easy money everywhere.

The system's tragedy is that when it does not work, it doesn't work on a spectacular scale.

The driving ambition to remain the world's top dog among nations, on one continent, in one community, in one industry, in one town, on one street corner — remains the uncontrollable life-force of the very system itself.

But in a slump, ambition can only prevail by wiping out rivals.

Marxist science long ago explained the iron law of periodic destruction of relatively 'surplus' capital (produced by the very greed motivation of the capitalist mechanism which no participant can afford to ignore). The peculiarities of 20th century 'anti-communist' Western 'harmony' to get over previous revolutionary waves created by earlier slumps, have now in the 1990s produced the most monstrous overhang of 'surplus' capital in all history.

The free-market system is now literally choking on the carefree credit expansions of its own demented anti-communist crusades. Unless vast quantities of 'surplus' capital are wiped out everywhere, all capital will go bankrupt.

The threat to French and American farmers (who are also hit by the GATT compromise) is just the beginning, adding to the already near-record levels of unemployment everywhere.

The threat by all the French to fight back is just the stuff of World War III. Soon there will be scores more trade-war issues flaring, and the mood of national-chauvinist warmongering intransigence in the background of these 'free world' ambitions (in the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Baltics, the near East, the middle East, right across Africa, etc) is right on cue for the destructive mayhem which capitalist-imperialism alone inspires and cannot help but inspire.

The new tidal wave of monetary instability around Europe this week, further destroying the barmy 'harmony' illusions of the ERM and Maastricht, - is exactly a reflection of the insoluble underlying unevenness and instability of development of the vast credit-capital overhang polluting the entire 'free world' market.

The Common Market conflicts continue to humiliate Britain in particular (new suppressed rows with Germany today over high Bundesbank interest rates, and a reluctance in Bonn to unleash even more credit pollution in a vain bid to 'kick-start' the world economy again) because of British imperialism's especially weak trade-war position (geriatrically decayed after 350 years of world leadership), underlined by yesterday's catastrophic latest trade deficit.

And the Iraqgate scandal shows not just the Tory government in trouble but public intolerance growing to the whole wretched capitalist parliamentary circus which is always condoning such sordid arms-dealing under either party. The US Iraqgate corruption is even more scandalous.

The nazi torching of 'aliens' in Germany spells the dangers of capitalist-system frustration. Only Marxist-Leninist science can end it.

The disgusting 'free' press continues trying to tie fascism to the merger with revisionist-liquidated East Germany, trial-scapegoating Honecker for all past evil. And fake-'lefts' in the West (see next story) back such witch-hunts. But however weak, it was only the GDR which banned fascism. The only real 'freedom' is recognition of necessity, as Marx said. JH

Petty bourgeois critics hated Soviet Bolshevism and now want to bury all idea of communist leadership.

The Redgrave middle-class theatrical revisionists have continued their attack on Lenin by resurrecting Rosa Luxemburg's noddyland notions of a parliamentary proletarian dictatorship.

This idealist historical gibberish which in the real world of vicious international class struggle could never conceivably become reality and never has, is now slicked out with foul confusion about current Russian chaos and what caused it.

The aim is to continue promoting the Redgraves' social and political standing in bourgeois-imperialist Britain and the West, to preserve a vestige of phony 'left' credentials, and to bury Bolshevism for all time.

This return to the 1918 cold vomit of Luxemburg's illusions in bourgeois democracy (which butchered her like a dog just a few months later) begins:

"Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element."

'Dictatorship of the class or dictatorship of the party? This is the great question at the centre of Rosa Luxemburg's criticism of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the practice of the October Revolution.'

The 'freedom' quote is described as having been written by someone who allegedly sympathised with the Bolshevik Revolution but who had 

"the deepest sense of responsibility of a Communist who sees negative things taking place and must bring them to light. She could not avoid this task of exposing the disastrous consequences these would have on the course of building socialism."

Written in 1918, the Luxemburg pamphlet was in fact nothing but the defeatist pessimism of petty-bourgeois 'revolutionaries' who had all opposed Lenin and were all now banking on the early collapse of the Soviet revolution, - as Lenin himself explained in endless blistering counter-polemics, some of which are reproduced below.

The entire stance of the anti-Leninist 'left' was, of course, totally buried by history itself. Not only did the puny Soviet revolution survive the most brutal military-invasion onslaught that the entire might of Western imperialism could throw into the destruction of Soviet Russia followed by vicious economic embargo and non-recognition, lasting in the USA's case until the 1930s, - but the USSR workers state went on to become the greatest state power on earth, - the beacon of the national-liberation struggle to overthrow the colonial empires of Western imperialism in the post-1945 period, - having smashed German imperialist Western fascist might virtually single-handed. The 'democracy'-worshipping and 'freedom'-loving Luxemburg did not survive this Western fascist reaction, butchered by German social-democracy in 1919.

These Redgraveite anti-communist philistines are only now resurrecting this Luxemburg garbage to try to cash in on the utter worldwide political confusion created by the astonishing self-liquidation by the Soviet workers-state bureaucracy under Gorbachev revisionism 70 years later.

The shallowness of the Redgrave revisionist stance is so cheap and sordid that the 'disastrous consequences', which could cover anything from 1917 to 1992, are deliberately left unspecified for good reason.

These appalling opportunist parasites on the workers movement originally hailed Gorbachev as the new Bolshevik-Revolution messiah, - the 'political revolution' long-promised by their other failed 'hero' Trotsky.

In this barminess, any 'disastrous consequences' spoken of with reference to the Soviet workers state were strictly limited to the misdeeds of Stalin and his methods. The workers state itself, - the Bolshevik Revolution as bequeathed by Lenin (and allegedly by Trotsky too in this weird anti-communist view of 'support' for the Bolshevik Revolution) - was again going to become the beacon of world hope under Gorbachev.

Without a word of explanation to the working class (which shows the real attitude to 'democracy' of these 'revolutionary' elitist cretins), the Redgraveites have now ditched all support for the Lenin-Trotsky revolutionary bequest and gone over to Luxemburg's poisonous vilification of the dictatorship of the proletariat itself.

But still the 'disastrous consequences' remain unexplained, festering there like some criminal slander just waiting to be tipped out when the muddleheaded Redgraveite opportunists next decide to rearrange their stinking chamber-pots full of historical garbage.

The deliberate confusion turns into total chaos as the Redgraveites quickly add: 

"Now, looking at the consequences of the reign of terror consolidated by Stalin, one must recognise the force of Rosa Luxemburg's foresight and her profound scientific Marxist analysis, her faith in freedom....Luxemburg did not fail in her predictions. With the collapse of the regimes of 'existent socialism', the degradation to which public life had been condemned by the dictatorship of a 'handful of politicians' and an 'elite' of hand-clappers, became evident.

The masses which 'had been placed in the corner' showed an unparalleled ignorance of the functioning of public life, and the content of the freedom which they so passionately demanded is a complete void."

Utterly contradicting themselves, the Redgraveite circus-freaks then quote the philosophical illiteracy of 'the great and tragic revolutionary' Luxemburg: 

"Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently."

They can 'think differently' now in the abysmal decay of the Soviet workers state brought on by the Gorbachev-Yeltsin revisionist 'democratic' revolution. But the closer the degeneracy sinks towards total capitalist counter-revolution, the more obviously is this 'democratic' freedom a 'complete void' to use the Redgraveites own admission, - graphically reflected in the boom in prostitution, drugs, crime of every description, official corruption, and the government's ideological stooging for Western imperialism.

And none of this has anything whatever to do with the social standards imposed under the Soviet workers state which led the world in responsible internationalism, rational economic planning, civil order, and serious culture.

The implications of the Redgraveite innuendoes, quoting Luxemburg, amount to a disgusting disgraceful anti-Soviet slander:-

"In the chapter entitled 'The Problem of Dictatorship', Rosa Luxemburg sums up her conclusions in two paragraphs which alone are a precious contribution to Marxist theory (!);

'Lenin says: the bourgeois state is an instrument of oppression of the working class; the socialist state, of the bourgeoisie. To a certain extent, he says, it is only the capitalist state stood on its head. This simplified view misses the most essential thing; bourgeois class rule has no need of the political training and education of the entire mass of the people, at least not beyond certain narrow limits. But for the proletarian dictatorship that is the life element, the very air without which it is not able to exist....

'The socialist system of society should only be, and can only be, a historical product, born out of the school of its own experiences, born in the course of its realisation, as a result of the developments of living history. Socialism by its very nature cannot be decreed or introduced by ukase. The negative, the tearing down, can be decreed; the building up, the positive, cannot. New territory. Only unobstructed, effervescing life falls into a thousand new forms and improvisations, brings to light creative force, itself corrects all mistaken attempts.'" 

The implication is that the Soviet proletarian dictatorship under the leadership of its Leninist party created nothing.

But it was precisely the astonishing creative achievements of the savagely hard-pressed revolutionary forces on the receiving end of brutal imperialist armed intervention, economic sabotage, and White Guard fascist terror which were under the Bolshevik leadership, the miracle of the Russian Revolution, - the miracle of all human history so far.

And just to prove how sound was the basic partnership of the revolutionary enthusiasm, sacrifices, and initiatives of the masses with the correct political and philosophical leadership of the Leninist party at the head of the dictatorship of the proletariat, - the Soviet workers state repeated this miraculous historical achievement again from 1941 to 1945 in once more overcoming near-total devastation and yet still beating the mightiest imperialist military force in the annals of fascist-capitalist colonialism, - the huge German-Nazi Western war machine.

This amazing mass creativity, unleashed by the scientific correctness of the basic Bolshevik revolutionary philosophy of proletarian dictatorship, gained further reflection in the colossal economic achievements of the industrialisation and collectivisation of production in the 1930s (which enabled the USSR to eventually outperform the mighty German economy between 1941 and 1945 despite having to overcome all the backwardness of Tsarist Russia and all the immense devastation of the Great Imperialist War (World War I) and the even worse destruction of the War of Imperialist Intervention and the long Civil War against White Guard terror which followed). 1950s rebuilding echoed it.

Every Trotsky/Luxemburg-type cynic said the Soviet proletarian dictatorship would not survive the very attempt to establish the Soviet workers state. Then they said it would not survive the 1920s. Then they were certain that it would be economically undermined by the renewed imperialist expansion of the late 1930s. Then they said the USSR could never survive a war with Germany. Then it was claimed that the Cold War nuclear encirclement of the USSR and the burdens of the national-liberation struggle and the socialist camp would eventually bankrupt the Soviet workers state.

Every single Western prediction was just the purest petty-bourgeois anti-communist poison.

The Redgraveites simply regurgitate this stale vomit now.

Soviet creativity was certainly impaired gravely by the appalling limitations and mistakes of Stalinism's class-collaborating international revisionist outlook which dreamed insanely of permanently sharing the planet with rabid warmongering imperialism, and overcoming market-exploitation ruthlessness by monopoly capitalist imperialism with the laid-back bureaucratic muddling-through of Soviet economic planning.

But there never was a Soviet economic 'crisis' of any description, nor any political 'crisis' either. Nor any 'crisis' of too-crippling an arms burden to keep up with US nuclear-encirclement threats and protection of the socialist camp and national-liberation struggles.

There was only the most astonishing and spectacular own-goal in all history, - the self-liquidation by the revisionist bureaucracy in the insane belief that it was furthering its own interests and those of the Soviet workers state by dismantling the dictatorship of the proletariat, the party leadership, and the state economic planning.

It is the results of this bizarre suicide which alone can be described as 'unparalleled ignorance' and a 'complete void', - not the phenomenally rich experience of 70 years of Soviet workers statehood which produced brilliant breakthroughs in science and technology, military feats, mass literacy and education, largescale economic planning, international altruism, and serious culture.

It is a monstrous fraud to now turn on the Soviet masses and accuse them of creating the present disgusting misery of renewed capitalist degeneracy now relentlessly reclaiming the former Soviet Union lands, unleashing racist civil war in all directions, economic brigandage, grotesque exploitation and profiteering, and all the dirtiest dregs of human 'culture' from the mafia-controlled drugs and prostitution market place.

It is the revisionist anti-Leninist gibberish of Gorbachevism and the even worse fascist reaction of Yeltsinism, - much of it supported by the depraved Redgraveites, - which has inflicted these degradations on the FSU.

But with belt-and-braces anti-communist determination, the Redgraveites not only simply ignore the whole role of Gorbachevite leadership (which they slavishly stooged for) but even try wiping out from the historical record books the very crucial notion of revolutionary leadership at all.

At a stroke, the entire purpose of building the science of Marxist-Leninist revolutionary leadership has been obliterated by these fatuous middle-class dilettantes of the Redgrave clique.

Such sectarian posturing stupidity is not in itself very important but it does help raise all the time the continuing difficulties of worldwide ignorance about what actually happened to the first workers state in history, - re-emphasising that without the continued leadership of correct revolutionary theory all the time that imperialist counter-revolution stalks the earth, then successful revolutionary practice can only be put in the gravest jeopardy.

More farsighted firmer revolutionary leadership than ever was required from Moscow in the appalling confusion of US imperialism's retreat from blatant Cold-War provocations into more purposeful trade-war confrontations against its own great 'allies' Germany and Japan, as Reagan sought arms-limitation deals so as to reduce the USA's foreign trade and domestic budget deficits which were crippling America, and create conditions for a serious trade-war offensive.

Gorbachevite revisionist idiocy, - backed by Redgraveite revisionist idiocy, - failed to say one correct thing about capitalism's unavoidable future warmongering perspectives, and instead completely capitulated into class-collaboration with imperialism and with bourgeois ideological chaos.

These Redgraveite stooges for middle-class opportunism are there to add further confusion to this liquidationist nightmare, contributing such blatant lies as: 

"Luxemburg's views on the conspiratorial party organised in a centralist-dictatorial manner, and the imposition of its dictatorship upon the whole society, coincide with Engels' views".

The Marxist material below proves the Redgraveites to be charlatans. Build Leninism. Spread the Bulletin. JH

The Split in the Communist Party of Germany (The Spartacus League), sets forth the substance of this opposition's views most saliently, and with the utmost clarity and concision. A few quotations will suffice to acquaint the reader with that substance:

"The Communist Party is the party of the most determined class struggle...." "...Politically, the transitional period [between capitalism and socialism] is one of the proletarian dictatorship...."

"...The question arises: who is to exercise this dictatorship: the Communist Party or the proletarian class?... Fundamentally, should we strive for a dictatorship of the Communist Party, or for a dictatorship of the proletarian class?..." 

"...Consequently, two Communist parties are now arrayed against each other:

"One is a party of leaders, which is out to organise the revolutionary struggle and to direct it from above, accepting compromises and parliamentarianism so as to create a situation enabling it to join a coalition government exercising a dictatorship.

"The other is a mass party, which expects an upsurge of the revolutionary struggle from below, which knows and applies a single method in this struggle—  a method which clearly leads to the goal—and rejects all parliamentary and opportunist methods. That single method is the unconditional overthrow of the bourgeoisie, so as then to set up the proletarian class dictatorship for the accomplishment of socialism.…

"...There—the dictatorship of leaders; here—the dictatorship of the masses!
That is our slogan."

Such are the main features characterising the views of the opposition in the German Communist Party.	

Any Bolshevik who has consciously participated in the development of Bolshevism since 1903 or has closely observed that development will at once say, after reading these arguments, "What old' and familiar rubbish! What 'Left-wing' childishness!"

But let us examine these arguments a little more closely.

The mere presentation of the question—-"dictatorship of the party or dictatorship of the class; dictatorship (party) of the leaders, or dictatorship (party) of the masses?"—testifies to most incredibly and hopelessly muddled thinking. These people want to invent something quite out of the ordinary, and, in their effort to be clever, make themselves ridiculous. It is common knowledge that the masses are divided into classes; that the masses can be contrasted with classes only by contrasting the vast majority in general, regardless of division according to status in the social system of production, with categories holding a definite status in the social system of production; that as a rule and in most cases—at least in present-day civilised countries—classes are led by political parties; that political parties, as a general rule, are run by more or less stable groups composed of the most authoritative, influential and experienced members, who are elected to the most responsible positions, and are called leaders. All this is elementary. All this is clear and simple. Why replace this with some kind of rigmarole, some new Volapük? On the one hand, these people seem to have got muddled when they found themselves in a predicament, when the party's abrupt transition from legality to illegality upset the customary, normal and simple relations between leaders, parties and classes. In Germany, as in other European countries, people had become too accustomed to legality, to the free and proper election of "leaders" at regular party congresses, to the convenient method of testing the class composition of parties through parliamentary elections, mass meetings, the press, the sentiments of the trade unions and other associations, etc. When, instead of this customary procedure, it became necessary, because of the stormy development of the revolution and the development of the civil war, to go over rapidly from legality to illegality, to combine the two, and to adopt the "inconvenient" and "undemocratic" methods of selecting, or forming, or preserving "groups of leaders"—people lost their bearings and began to think up some unmitigated nonsense. Certain members of the Communist Party of Holland, who were unlucky enough to be born in a small country with traditions and conditions of highly privileged and highly stable legality, and who had never seen a transition from legality to illegality, probably fell into confusion, lost their heads, and helped create these absurd inventions.

On the other hand, one can see simply a thoughtless and incoherent use of the now "fashionable" terms: "masses" and "leaders'". These people have heard and memorised a great many attacks on "leaders", in which the latter have been contrasted with the "masses"; however, they have proved unable to think matters out and gain a clear understanding of what it was all about.

The divergence between "leaders" and "masses" was brought out with particular clarity and sharpness in all countries at the end of the imperialist war and following it. The principal reason for this was explained many times by Marx and Engels between the years 1852 and 1892, from the example of Britain. That country's exclusive position led to the emergence, from the "masses", of a semi-petty-bourgeois, opportunist "labour aristocracy". The leaders of this labour aristocracy were constantly going over to the bourgeoisie, and were directly or indirectly on its pay roll. Marx earned the honour of incurring the hatred of these disreputable persons by openly branding them as traitors. Present-day (twentieth-century) imperialism has given a few advanced countries an exceptionally privileged position, which, everywhere in the Second International, has produced a certain type of traitor, opportunist, and social-chauvinist leaders, who champion the interests of their own craft, their own section of the labour aristocracy. The opportunist parties have become separated from the "masses", i.e., from the broadest strata of the working people, their majority, the lowest-paid workers. The revolutionary proletariat cannot be victorious unless this evil is combated, unless the opportunist, social-traitor leaders are exposed, discredited and expelled. That is the policy the Third International has embarked on.

To go so far, in this connection, as to contrast, in general, the dictatorship of the masses with a dictatorship of the leaders is ridiculously absurd, and stupid. What is particularly amusing is that, in fact, instead of the old leaders, who hold generally accepted views on simple matters, new leaders are brought forth (under cover of the slogan "Down with the leaders!"), who talk rank stuff and nonsense. Such are Laufenberg, Wolffheim, Horner, Karl Schroder, Friedrich Wendel and Karl Erler,* in Germany. Erler's attempts to give the question more "profundity" and to proclaim that in general political parties are unnecessary and "bourgeois" are so supremely absurd that one can only shrug one's shoulders. It all goes to drive home the truth that a minor error can always assume monstrous proportions if it is persisted in, if profound justifications are sought for it, and if it is carried to its logical conclusion.

Repudiation of the Party principle and of Party discipline—that is what the opposition has arrived at. And this is tantamount to completely disarming the proletariat in the interests of the bourgeoisie. It all adds up to that petty-bourgeois diffuseness and instability, that incapacity for sustained effort, unity and organised action, which, if encouraged, must inevitably destroy any proletarian revolutionary movement. From the standpoint of communism, repudiation of the Party principle means attempting to leap from the eve of capitalism's collapse (in Germany), not to the lower or the intermediate phase of communism, but to the higher. We in Russia (in the third year since the overthrow of the bourgeoisie) are making the first steps in the transition from capitalism to socialism or the lower stage of communism. Classes still remain, and will remain everywhere for years after the proletariat's conquest of power. Perhaps in Britain, where there is no peasantry (but where petty proprietors exist), this period may be shorter. The abolition of classes means, not merely ousting the landowners and the capitalists—that is something we accomplished with comparative ease; it also means abolishing the small commodity producers, and they cannot be ousted, or crushed; we must learn to live with them. They can (and must) be transformed and re-educated only by means of very prolonged, slow, and cautious organisational work. They surround the proletariat on every side with a petty-bourgeois atmosphere, which permeates and corrupts the proletariat, and constantly causes among the proletariat relapses into petty-bourgeois spinelessness, disunity, individualism, and alternating moods of exaltation and dejection. The strictest centralisation and discipline are required within the political party of the proletariat in order to counteract this, in order that the organisational role of the proletariat (and that is its principal role) may be exercised correctly, successfully and victoriously. The dictatorship of the proletariat means 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 in millions and tens of millions is a most formidable force. Without a party of iron that has been tempered in the struggle, a party enjoying the confidence of all honest people in the class in question, a party capable of watching and influencing the mood of the masses, such a struggle cannot be waged successfully. It is a thousand times easier to vanquish the centralised big bourgeoisie than to "vanquish" the millions upon millions of petty proprietors; however, through their ordinary, everyday, imperceptible, elusive and demoralising activities, they produce the very results which the bourgeoisie need and which tend to restore the bourgeoisie. Whoever brings about even the slightest weakening of the iron discipline of the party of the proletariat (especially during its dictatorship), is actually aiding the bourgeoisie against the proletariat.

There have always been attacks on the "dictatorship of leaders" in our Party. The first time I heard such attacks, I recall, was in 1895, when, officially, no party yet existed, but a central group was taking shape in St. Petersburg, which was to assume the leadership of the district groups.81 At the Ninth Congress of our Party (April 1920) there was a small opposition, which also spoke against the ''dictatorship of leaders", against the "oligarchy", and so on. There is therefore nothing surprising, new, or terrible in the "infantile disorder" of "Left-wing communism"
"Left-wing" communism - an infantile disorder May 1920

The proletariat can win state power, establish the Soviet system, and satisfy the economic needs of the majority of the working people at the expense of the exploiters.

Is that sufficient for achieving complete and final victory? No, it is not.

The petty-bourgeois democrats, their chief present-day representatives, the "socialists" and "Social-Democrats", are suffering from illusions when they imagine that the working people are capable, under capitalism, of acquiring the high degree of class-consciousness, firmness of character, perception and wide political outlook that will enable them to decide, merely by voting, or at all events, to decide in advance, without long experience of struggle, that they will follow a particular class, or a particular party.

It is a mere illusion. It is a sentimental story invented by pedants and sentimental socialists of the Kautsky, Longuet and MacDonald type.

Capitalism would not be capitalism if it did not, on the one hand, condemn the masses to a downtrodden, crushed and terrified state of existence, to disunity (the countryside!) and ignorance, and if it (capitalism) did not, on the other hand, place in the hands of the bourgeoisie a gigantic apparatus of falsehood and deception to hoodwink the masses of workers and peasants, to stultify their minds, and so forth.

That is why only the proletariat can lead the working people out of capitalism to communism. It is no use thinking that the petty-bourgeois or semi-petty-bourgeois masses can decide in advance the extremely complicated political question: "to be with the working class or with the bourgeoisie". The vacillation of the non-proletarian sections of the working people is inevitable; and inevitable also is their own practical experience, which will enable them to compare leadership by the bourgeoisie with leadership by the proletariat.

This is the circumstance that is constantly lost sight of by those who worship ''consistent democracy" and who imagine that extremely important political problems can be solved by voting. Such problems are actually solved by civil war if they are acute and aggravated by struggle, and the experience of the non-proletarian masses (primarily of the peasants), their experience of comparing the rule of the proletariat with the rule of the bourgeoisie, is of tremendous importance in that war.

The Constituent Assembly elections in Russia in November 1917, compared with the two-year Civil War of 1917-19, are highly instructive in this respect.

See which districts proved to be the least Bolshevik. First, the East-Urals and the Siberian where the Bolsheviks polled 12 per cent and 10 per cent of the votes respectively. Secondly, the Ukraine where the Bolsheviks polled 10 per cent of the votes. Of the other districts, the Bolsheviks polled the smallest percentage of votes in the peasant district of Great Russia, the Volga-Black Earth district, but even there the Bolsheviks polled 16 per cent of the votes.

It was precisely in the districts where the Bolsheviks polled the lowest percentage of votes in November 1917 that the counter-revolutionary movements, the revolts and the organisation of counter-revolutionary forces had the greatest success. It was precisely in those districts that the rule of Kolchak and Denikin lasted for months and months.

The vacillation of the petty-bourgeois population was particularly marked in those districts where the influence of the proletariat is weakest. Vacillation was at first in favour of the Bolsheviks when they granted land and when the demobilised soldiers brought the news about peace; later—against the Bolsheviks when, to promote the international development of the revolution and to protect its centre in Russia, they agreed to sign the Treaty of Brest63 and thereby "offended" patriotic sentiments, the deepest of petty-bourgeois sentiments. The dictatorship of the proletariat was particularly displeasing to the peasants in those places where there were the largest stocks of surplus grain, when the Bolsheviks showed that they would strictly and firmly secure the transfer of those surplus stocks to the state at fixed prices. The peasants in the Urals, Siberia and the Ukraine turned to Kolchak and Denikin.

Further, the experience of Kolchak and Denikin "democracy", about which every hack writer in Kolchakia and Denikia shouted in every issue of the whiteguard newspapers, showed the peasants that phrases about democracy and about the "Constituent Assembly" serve only as a screen to conceal the dictatorship of the landowners and capitalists.

Another turn towards Bolshevism began and peasant revolts spread in the rear of Kolchak and Denikin. The peasants welcomed the Red troops as liberators.

In the long run, it was this vacillation of the peasantry, the main body of the petty-bourgeois working people, that decided the fate of Soviet rule and of the rule of Kolchak and Denikin. But this "long run" was preceded by a fairly lengthy period of severe struggle and painful trial, which have not ended in Russia after two years, have not ended precisely in Siberia and in the Ukraine. And there is no guarantee that they will end completely within, say, another year or so.

The supporters of "consistent" democracy have not given thought to the importance of this historical fact. They invented, and are still inventing, nursery tales about the proletariat under capitalism being able to "convince" the majority of the working people and win them firmly to its side by voting. But reality shows that only in the course of a long and fierce struggle does the stern experience of the vacillating petty bourgeoisie lead it to the conclusion, after comparing the dictatorship of the proletariat with the dictatorship of the capitalists, that the former is better than the latter.

In theory, all socialists who have studied Marxism and are willing to take into account the lessons of the nineteenth-century political history of the advanced countries recognise that the vacillation of the petty bourgeoisie between the proletariat and the capitalist class is inevitable. The economic roots of this vacillation are clearly revealed by economic science, the truths of which have been repeated millions of times in the newspapers, leaflets and pamphlets issued by the socialists of the Second International.

But these people cannot apply those truths to the peculiar epoch of the dictatorship of the proletariat. They substitute petty-bourgeois-democratic prejudices and illusions (about class "equality", about "consistent" or "pure" democracy, about solving great historic problems by voting, and so forth) for the class struggle. They will not understand that after capturing state power the proletariat does not thereby cease its class struggle, but continues it in a different form and by different means. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the class struggle of the proletariat conducted with the aid of an instrument like state power, a class struggle, one of whose aims is to demonstrate to the non-proletarian sections of the working people by means of their long experience and a long list of practical examples that it is more to their advantage to side with the dictatorship of the proletariat than with the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and that there can be no third course.

The returns of the Constituent Assembly elections held in November 1917 give us the main background to the picture of the development of the Civil War that has raged for two years since those elections. The main forces in that war were already clearly evident during the Constituent Assembly elections—the role of the "striking force" of the proletarian army, the role of the vacillating peasantry, and the role of the bourgeoisie were already apparent. In his article N. V. Svyatitsky writes: "The Cadets were most successful in the same regions where the Bolsheviks were most successful—in the Northern and Central-Industrial regions" (p. 116). Naturally, in the most highly developed capitalist centres, the intermediary elements standing between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie were the weakest. Naturally, in those centres, the class struggle was most acute. It was there that the main forces of the bourgeoisie were concentrated and there, only there, could the proletariat defeat the bourgeoisie. Only the proletariat could rout the bourgeoisie, and only after routing the bourgeoisie could the proletariat definitely win the sympathy and support of the petty-bourgeois strata of the population by using an instrument like state power.

If properly used, if correctly read, the returns of the Constituent Assembly elections reveal to us again and again the fundamental truths of the Marxist doctrine of the class struggle.

The comparison of the Constituent Assembly elections in November 1917 with the development of the proletarian revolution in Russia from October 1917 to December 1919 enables us to draw conclusions concerning bourgeois parliamentarism and the proletarian revolution in every capitalist country. Let me try briefly to formulate, or at least to outline, the principal conclusions. 

1. Universal suffrage is an index of the level reached by the various classes in their understanding of their problems. It shows how the various classes are inclined to solve their problems. The actual solution of those problems is not provided by voting, but by the class struggle in all its forms, including civil war.

2. The socialists and Social-Democrats of the Second International take the stand of vulgar petty-bourgeois democrats and share the prejudice that the fundamental problems of the class struggle can be solved by voting.

3. The party of the revolutionary proletariat must take part in bourgeois parliaments in order to enlighten the masses; this can be done during elections and in the struggle between parties in parliament. But limiting the class struggle to the parliamentary struggle, or regarding the latter as the highest and decisive form, to which all the other forms of struggle are subordinate, is actually desertion to the side of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat.

4. All the representatives and supporters of the Second International, and all the leaders of the German, so-called "independent", Social-Democratic Party, actually go over to the bourgeoisie in this way when they recognise the dictatorship of the proletariat in words, but in deeds, by their propaganda, imbue the proletariat with the idea that it must first obtain a formal expression of the will of the majority of the population under capitalism (i.e.. a majority of votes in the bourgeois parliament) to transfer political power to the proletariat, which transfer is to take place later.

All the cries, based on this premise, of the German "independent" Social-Democrats and similar leaders of decayed socialism against the ''dictatorship of a minority", and so forth, merely indicate that those leaders fail to understand the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, which actually reigns even in the most democratic republics; and that they fail to understand the conditions for its destruction by the class struggle of the proletariat.

5. This failure to understand consists, in particular, in the following: they forget that, to a very large degree, the bourgeois parties are able to rule because they deceive the masses of the people, because of the yoke of capital, and to this is added self-deception concerning the nature of capitalism, a self-deception which is characteristic mostly of the petty-bourgeois parties, which usually want to substitute more, or less disguised forms of class conciliation for the class struggle.

"First let the majority of the population, while private property still exists, i.e., while the rule and yoke of capital still exist, express themselves in favour of the party of the proletariat, and only then can and should the party take power"—so say the petty-bourgeois democrats who call themselves socialists but who are in reality the servitors of the bourgeoisie.

"Let the revolutionary proletariat first overthrow the bourgeoisie, break the yoke of capital, and smash the bourgeois state apparatus, then the victorious proletariat will be able rapidly to gain the sympathy and support of the majority of the non-proletarian working people by satisfying their needs at the expense of the exploiters"—say we. The opposite will be rare exception in history (and even in such an exception the bourgeoisie can resort to civil war, as the example of Finland showed 64).

6. Or in other words:
"First we shall pledge ourselves to recognise the principle of equality, or consistent democracy, while preserving private property and the yoke of capital (i.e., actual inequality under formal equality), and try to obtain the decision of the majority on this basis"—say the bourgeoisie and their yes-men, the petty-bourgeois democrats who call themselves socialists and Social-Democrats.

"First the proletarian class struggle, winning state power, will destroy the pillars and foundations of actual inequality, and then the proletariat, which has defeated the exploiters, will lead all working people to the abolition of classes, i.e.. to socialist equality, the only kind that is not a deception"—say we.

7. In all capitalist countries, besides the proletariat, or that part of the proletariat which is conscious of its revolutionary aims and is capable of fighting to achieve them, there are numerous politically immature proletarian, semi-proletarian, semi-petty-bourgeois strata which follow the bourgeoisie and bourgeois democracy (including the "socialists" of the Second International) because they have been deceived, have no confidence in their own strength, or in the strength of the proletariat, are unaware of the possibility of having their urgent needs satisfied by means of the expropriation of the exploiters.

These strata of the working and exploited people provide the vanguard of the proletariat with allies and give it a stable majority of the population; but the proletariat can win these allies only with the aid of an instrument like state power, that is to say, only after it has overthrown the bourgeoisie and has destroyed the bourgeois state apparatus.

8. The strength of the proletariat in any capitalist country is far greater than the proportion it represents of the total population. That is because the proletariat economically dominates the centre and nerve of the entire economic system of capitalism, and also because the proletariat expresses economically and politically the real interests of the overwhelming majority of the working people under capitalism.

Therefore, the proletariat, even when it constitutes a minority of the population (or when the class-conscious and really revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat constitutes a minority of the population), is capable of overthrowing the bourgeoisie and, after that, of winning to its side numerous allies from a mass of semi-proletarians and petty bourgeoisie who never declare in advance in favour of the rule of the proletariat, who do not understand the conditions and aims of that rule, and only by their subsequent experience become convinced that the proletarian dictatorship is inevitable, proper and legitimate.

9. Finally, in every capitalist country there are always very broad strata of the petty bourgeoisie which inevitably vacillate between capital and labour. To achieve victory, the proletariat must, first, choose the right moment for its decisive assault on the bourgeoisie, taking into account, among other things, the disunity between the bourgeoisie and its petty-bourgeois allies, or the instability of their alliance, and so forth. Secondly, the proletariat must, after its victory, utilise this vacillation of the petty bourgeoisie in such a way as to neutralise them, prevent their siding with the exploiters; it must be able to hold on for some time in spite of this vacillation, and so on, and so forth.

10. One of the necessary conditions for preparing the proletariat for its victory is a long, stubborn and ruthless struggle against opportunism, reformism, social-chauvinism, and similar bourgeois influences and trends, which are inevitable, since the proletariat is operating in a capitalist environment. If there is no such struggle, if opportunism in the working-class movement is not utterly defeated beforehand, there can be no dictatorship of the proletariat. Bolshevism would not have defeated the bourgeoisie in 1917-19 if before that, in 1903-17, it had not learned to defeat the Mensheviks, i.e., the opportunists, reformists, social-chauvinists, and ruthlessly expel them from the party of the proletarian vanguard.

At the present time, the verbal recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat by the leaders of the German "Independents", or by the French Longuetists,68 and the like, who are actually continuing the old, habitual policy of big and small concessions to and conciliation with opportunism, subservience to the prejudices of bourgeois democracy ("consistent democracy" or "pure democracy" as they call it) and bourgeois parliamentarism, and so forth, is the most dangerous self-deception—and sometimes sheer fooling of the workers.

Elections and the dictatorship of the proletariat Dec 1919	.

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, from the brutalities of the Avramovs, 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 organising the state.

Contribution to history of dictatorship question Oct 1920

An essential condition of the Bolsheviks' success

It is, I think, almost universally realised at present that the Bolsheviks could not have retained power for two and a half months, let alone two and a half years, without the most rigorous and truly iron discipline in our Party, or without the fullest and unreserved support from the entire mass of the working class, that is, from all thinking, honest, devoted and influential elements in it, capable of leading the backward strata or carrying the latter along with them.

The dictatorship of the proletariat means a most determined and most ruthless war waged by the new class against a more powerful enemy, the bourgeoisie, whose resistance is increased tenfold by their overthrow (even if only in a single country), and whose power lies, not only in the strength of international capital, the strength and durability of their international connections, but also in the force of habit, in the strength of small-scale production. Unfortunately, small-scale production is still widespread in the world, and small-scale production engenders capitalism and the bourgeoisie continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously, and on a mass scale. All these reasons make the dictatorship of the proletariat necessary, and victory over the bourgeoisie is impossible without a long, stubborn and desperate life-and-death struggle which calls for tenacity, discipline, and a single and inflexible will.

I repeat: the experience of the victorious dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia has clearly shown even to those who are incapable of thinking or have had no occasion to give thought to the matter that absolute centralisation and rigorous discipline of the proletariat are an essential condition of victory over the bourgeoisie.

This is often dwelt on. However, not nearly enough thought is given to what it means, and under what conditions it is possible. Would it not be better if the salutations addressed to the Soviets and the Bolsheviks were more frequently accompanied by a profound analysis of the reasons why the Bolsheviks have been able to build up the discipline needed by the revolutionary proletariat?

As a current of political thought and as a political party, Bolshevism has existed since 1903. Only the history of Bolshevism during the entire period of its existence can satisfactorily explain why it has been able to build up and maintain, under most difficult conditions, the iron discipline needed for the victory of the proletariat.

The first questions to arise are: how is the discipline of the proletariat's revolutionary party maintained? How is it tested? How is it reinforced? First, by the class-consciousness of the proletarian vanguard and by its devotion to the revolution, by its tenacity, self-sacrifice and heroism. Second, by its ability to link up, maintain the closest contact, and—if you wish—merge, in certain measure, with the broadest masses of the working people—primarily with the proletariat, but also with, the non-proletarian masses of working people. Third, by the correctness of the political leadership exercised by this vanguard, by the correctness of its political strategy and tactics, provided the broad masses have seen, from their own experience, that they are correct. Without these conditions, discipline in a revolutionary party really capable of being the party of the advanced class, whose mission it is to overthrow the bourgeoisie and transform the whole of society, cannot be achieved. Without these conditions, all attempts to establish discipline inevitably fall flat and end up in phrasemongering and clowning. On the other hand, these conditions cannot emerge at once. They are created only by prolonged effort and hard-won experience. Their creation is facilitated by a correct revolutionary theory, which, in its turn, is not a dogma but assumes final, shape only in close connection with the practical activity of a truly mass and truly revolutionary movement.

The fact that, in 1917-20, Bolshevism was able, under unprecedentedly difficult conditions, to build up and successfully maintain the strictest centralisation and iron discipline was due simply to a number of historical peculiarities of Russia.

On the one hand, Bolshevism arose in 1903 on a very firm foundation of Marxist theory. The correctness of this revolutionary theory, and of it alone, has been proved, not only by world experience throughout the nineteenth century, but especially by the experience of the seekings and vacillations, the errors and disappointments of revolutionary thought in Russia. For about half a century—approximately from the forties to the nineties of the last century—progressive thought in Russia, oppressed by a most brutal and reactionary tsarism, sought eagerly for a correct revolutionary theory, and followed with the utmost diligence and thoroughness each and every "last word" in this sphere in Europe and America. Russia achieved Marxism—the only correct revolutionary theory—through the agony she experienced in the course of half a century of unparalleled torment and sacrifice, of unparalleled revolutionary heroism, incredible energy, devoted searching, study, practical trial, disappointment, verification, and comparison with European experience. Thanks to the political emigration caused by tsarism, revolutionary Russia, in the second half of the nineteenth century, acquired a wealth of international links and excellent information on the forms and theories of the world revolutionary movement, such as no other country possessed.

On the other hand, Bolshevism, which had arisen on this granite foundation of theory, went through fifteen years of practical history (1903-17) unequalled anywhere in the world in its wealth of experience. During those fifteen years, no other country knew anything even approximating to that revolutionary experience, that rapid and varied succession of different forms of the movement—legal and illegal, peaceful and stormy, underground and open, local circles and mass movements, and parliamentary and terrorist forms. In no other country has there been concentrated, in so brief a period, such a wealth of forms, shades, and methods of struggle of all classes of modern society, a struggle which, owing to the backwardness of the country and the severity of the tsarist yoke, matured with exceptional rapidity, and assimilated most eagerly and successfully the appropriate "last word" of American and European-political experience.

In reality you are frightened by the comparatively minor difficulties of the struggle against bourgeois influences within the working-class movement, whereas your victory - i. e., the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the conquest of political power by the proletariat — will create these very same difficulties on a still larger, an infinitely larger scale. Like children, you are frightened by a minor difficulty which confronts you today, but you do not understand that tomorrow, and the day after, you will still have to learn, and learn thoroughly, to overcome the selfsame difficulties, only on an immeasurably greater scale.

Under Soviet rule, your proletarian party and ours will be invaded by a still larger number of bourgeois intellectuals. They will worm their way into the Soviets, the courts, and the administration, since communism cannot be built otherwise than with the aid of the human material created by capitalism, and the bourgeois intellectuals cannot be expelled and destroyed, but must be won over, remoulded, assimilated and re-educated, just as we must — in a protracted struggle waged on the basis of the dictatorship of the proletariat — re-educate the proletarians themselves, who do not abandon their petty-bourgeois prejudices at one stroke, by a miracle, at the behest of the Virgin Mary, at the behest of a slogan, resolution or decree, but only in the course of a long and difficult mass struggle against mass petty-bourgeois influences. Under Soviet rule, these same problems, which the anti-parliamentarians now so proudly, so haughtily, so lightly and so childishly brush aside with a wave of the hand — these selfsame problems are arising anew within the Soviets, within the Soviet administration, among the Soviet "pleaders" (in Russia we have abolished, and have rightly abolished, the bourgeois legal bar, but- it is reviving again under the cover of the "Soviet pleaders"101). Among Soviet engineers, Soviet school-teachers and the privileged, i. e., the most highly skilled and best situated, workers at Soviet factories, we observe a constant revival of absolutely all the negative traits peculiar to bourgeois parliamentarianism, and we are conquering this evil — gradually— only by a tireless, prolonged and persistent struggle based on proletarian organisation and discipline.

Of course, under the rule of the bourgeoisie it is very "difficult" to eradicate bourgeois habits from our own, i. e., the workers', party; it is "difficult'' to expel from the party the familiar parliamentary leaders who have been hopelessly corrupted by bourgeois prejudices; it is "difficult" to subject to proletarian discipline the absolutely essential (even if very limited) number of people coming from the ranks of the bourgeoisie; it is "difficult'' to form, in a bourgeois parliament, a communist group fully worthy of the working class; it is "difficult" to ensure that the communist parliamentarians do not engage in bourgeois parliamentary inanities, but concern themselves with the very urgent work of propaganda, agitation and organisation among the masses. All this is "difficult", to be sure; it was difficult in Russia, and it is vastly more difficult in Western Europe and in America, where the bourgeoisie is far stronger, where bourgeois-democratic traditions are stronger, and so on.

Yet all these "difficulties" are mere child's play compared with the same sort of problems which, in any event, the proletariat will have most certainly to solve in order to achieve victory, both during the proletarian revolution and after the seizure of power by the proletariat. Compared with these truly gigantic problems of re-educating, under the proletarian dictatorship, millions of peasants and small proprietors, hundreds of thousands of office employees, officials and bourgeois intellectuals, of subordinating them all to the proletarian state and to proletarian leadership, of eradicating their bourgeois habits and traditions—compared with these gigantic problems it is childishly easy to create, under the rule of the bourgeoisie, and in a bourgeois parliament, a really communist group of a real proletarian party.

"Left-wing'' communism - an infantile disorder May 1920

To prevent the true meaning of his struggle against anarchism from being distorted, Marx expressly emphasised the "revolutionary and transient form" of the state which the proletariat needs. The proletariat needs the state only temporarily. We do not at all differ with the anarchists on the question of the abolition of the state as the aim. We maintain that, to achieve this aim, we must temporarily make use of the instruments, resources and methods of state power against the exploiters, just as the temporary dictatorship of the oppressed class is necessary for the abolition of classes. Marx chooses the sharpest and clearest way of stating his case against the anarchists: After overthrowing the yoke of the capitalists, should the workers "lay down their arms", or use them against the capitalists in order to crush their resistance? But what is the systematic use of arms by one class against another if not a "transient form" of state?

Let every Social-Democrat ask himself: Is that how he has been posing the question of the state in controversy with the anarchists? Is that how it has been posed by the vast majority of the official socialist parties of the Second International?

Engels expounds the same ideas in much greater detail and still more popularly. First of all he ridicules the muddled ideas of the Proudhonists, who called themselves "anti-authoritarians", i.e., repudiated all authority, all subordination, all power. Take a factory, a railway, a ship on the high seas, said Engels: is it not clear that not one of these complex technical establishments, based on the use of machinery and the systematic co-operation of many people, could function without a certain amount of subordination and, consequently, without a certain amount of authority or power?

"...When I counter the most rabid anti-authoritarians with these arguments,, the only answer they can give me is the following: Oh, that's true, except that here it is not a question of authority with which we vest our delegates, but of a commission! These people imagine they can change a thing by changing its name...."'

Having thus shown that authority and autonomy are relative terms, that the sphere of their application varies with the various phases of social development, that it is absurd to take them as absolutes, and adding that the sphere of application of machinery and large-scale production is steadily expanding, Engels passes from the general discussion of authority to the question of the state.

"Had the autonomists," he wrote, "contented themselves with saying that the social organisation of the future would allow authority only within the bounds which the conditions of production make inevitable, one could have come to terms with them. But they are blind to all facts that make authority necessary and they passionately fight the word.

"Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All socialists are agreed that the state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and become mere administrative functions of watching over social interests. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social relations that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority.

"Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is it is an act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon, all of which are highly authoritarian means. And the victorious party must maintain its rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries. Would the Paris Commune have lasted more than a day if it had not used the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie?

Cannot we, on the contrary, blame it for having made too little use of that authority? Therefore, one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don't know what they are talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion. Or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the cause of the proletariat. In either case they serve only reaction." (P. 39.) *

One of the most, if not the most remarkable observation on the state in the works of Marx and Engels is contained in the following passage in Engels's letter to Bebel dated March 18-28, 1875:

As the state is only a transitional institution which is used in the struggle, in the revolution, to hold down one's adversaries by force, it is sheer nonsense to talk of a 'free people's state'; so long as the proletariat still needs the state, it does not need it in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom the state as such ceases to exist.'

The State and Revolution Aug-Nov. 1917

What do these words of Marx tell us? That a provisional revolutionary government must act dictatorially (a proposition which the Mensheviks were totally unable to grasp since they were fighting shy of the slogan of dictatorship), and that the task of such a dictatorship is to destroy the remnants of the old institutions (which is precisely what was clearly stated in the resolution of the Third Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party [Bolsheviks] on the struggle against counter-revolution, and was omitted in the Mensheviks' resolution as shown above). Third, and last, it follows from these words that Marx castigated the bourgeois democrats for entertaining 'constitutional illusions' in a period of revolution and open civil war. The meaning of these words becomes particularly obvious from the article in Die Neue Rheinische Zeitung of June 6, 1848.

" 'A Constituent National Assembly,' Marx wrote, 'must first of all be an active, revolutionary active assembly. The Frankfurt Assembly,108 however, is busying itself with school exercises in parliamentarianism while allowing the government to act. Let us assume that this learned assembly succeeds, after mature consideration, in evolving the best possible agenda and the best constitution, but what is the use of the best possible agenda and of the best possible constitution, if the German governments have in the meantime placed the bayonet on the agenda?'* "That is the meaning of the slogan: dictatorship.…

"Major questions in the life of nations are settled only by force. The reactionary classes themselves are usually the first to resort to violence, to civil war; they are the first to 'place the bayonet on the agenda', as the Russian autocracy has systematically and unswervingly been doing everywhere ever since January 9.109 And since such a situation has arisen, since the bayonet has really become the main point on the political agenda, since insurrection has proved imperative and urgent — the constitutional illusions and school exercises in parliamentarianism become merely a screen for the bourgeois betrayal of the revolution, a screen to conceal the fact that the bourgeoisie is 'recoiling' from the revolution. It is precisely the slogan of dictatorship that the genuinely revolutionary class must advance, in that case."**

Contribution to history of dictatorship question Oct 1920