# Out of Their Own Mouths/Chapter 3

III
THE POLITICAL FOUNDATION: WAR AGAINST DEMOCRACY
Bolshevism arose as a repudiation of democracy, when Lenin employed a company of armed sailors to disperse the Constitutional Assembly—which had been deliberately and fairly elected by the entire Russian people. The Bolshevists have never held one election under universal suffrage in Russia since that day. Far from apologizing, they have boasted of their action in overthrowing the constituent assembly. Their printing presses have been occupied not with apologies, but with seeking plausible phrases with which to cover their reactionary despotism, such as "dictatorship of the proletariat," "Soviets," "the rule of the workmen and peasants."
At first Lenin endeavored also to distort and twist the word "democracy" to his purposes, but the Soviet régime was steadily becoming more and more anti-democratic and the effort was soon abandoned. It has been widely claimed that at the Soviet Congress in December, 1920, and in the Communist Party Congress in March, 1921, the Bolshevists abandoned a large part of their practices and doctrines, threw communism overboard and adopted capitalism. The fact is that one steady and ceaseless change in the Bolshevist position has been to get farther and farther away from democracy ​and nearer and nearer to the absolute dictatorship of Lenin and those about him.
At the outset Lenin made a strained effort to claim that the Bolshevist régime was democratic. In order to do this he made use of the favorite Bolshevist propaganda trick of employing a word to mean the very opposite of what it does mean. Nevertheless at that time he did wish the world to believe that the Bolshevists, in some sense, represented the Russian people.
The Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Delegates constitutes the form of government by the workers, and represents the interest of all the poorest of our people, of nine-tenths of the population, aiming to secure peace, bread and liberty. … (Nicolai Lenin in a book entitled "The Proletarian Revolution in Russia," edited by Louis C. Fraina, pp. 24–25).
In the Die Kommunistische Internationale in 1919 Lenin similarly wrote:
So Soviet or proletarian democracy has its birthplace in Russia. It represents another stage in evolution following upon the Paris Commune. … For the first time in the history of the world a Soviet or proletarian democracy has created a democracy of the masses of the working people, of the laborers and the small peasantry.
Never before in history has there been a government truly representing the majority of the people and rendering effective the actual power of this majority except the Soviet.
So anxious was the Bolshevist dictator to claim that he had the support of the Russian people and so con​fident was he of his capacity to win that support that he even had the courage to make democracy fundamental in the Communist doctrine as he formulated it at that time. This may be seen in his report to the Communist Congress in March, 1919—a report accepted, like all of Lenin's, by the Congress. In this report, reproduced in the Petrograd Pravda of March 8, 1919, we read:
That which definitely distinguishes a dictatorship of the proletariat from a dictatorship of other classes, from a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in all the civilized capitalist countries, is that the dictatorship of the landlords and of the bourgeoisie was the forcible suppression of the resistance of the overwhelming majority of the population, namely, the toilers. On the other hand, the dictatorship of the proletariat is the forcible suppression of the resistance of the exploiters, that is, of an insignificant minority of the population—of landlords and capitalists.
It therefore follows that a dictatorship of the proletariat must necessarily carry with it not only changes in the form and institutions of democracy, speaking in general terms, but specifically such a change as would secure an extension such as has never been seen in the history of the world of the actual use of democratism by the toiling classes.
And in actual fact the form of dictatorship of the proletariat which has already been worked out in practice, that is, the Soviet authority in Russia, the Räte system in Germany, the shop stewards' committees, and other similar Soviet institutions in other countries, all represent and realize for the toiling classes, that is, for the overwhelming majority of the population, this actual possibility to use democratic rights and freedoms, which possibility never existed, even approximately, in the very best and most democratic bourgeois republics.
On the 8th of April, 1920, he said at the Russian Labor Union Congress that no state had shown such a democratic spirit as Soviet Russia and proceeded to show what he meant by democracy by demanding that the policy be continued of "making the laboring masses participate in politics under the direction of the Communist Party."
During the course of 1920 the anti-democratic course of the Soviet régime became more and more marked and its support among the population became narrower and narrower. In the opening speech of the Congress of the Communist Internationale, Zinoviev declared:
The idea of democracy has faded away before our very eyes. When the American bourgeoisie before the eyes of the whole world suspended constitutional guarantees, when this much-praised democracy violated all the principles established by it—by this it itself determined its place. On this question there should not be two opinions. In noting the victory over the II Internationale it is necessary to emphasize the much-debated point, and finish once for all with democratic tendencies.
"All movements heretofore have been movements of minorities or in the interests of minorities. The proletarian movement is an independent movement of the enormous majority." From the Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. …
The Bolshevik revolution dealt a heavy blow to that theory. In Russia the proletariat is only a minority—this fact is not disputed by either the Bolsheviki or the anti-Bolsheviki, and it is this minority that seized the political power and established a dictatorship of the proletariat. … This is the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The Communist Parties of all countries and even the Socialist Center [i.e., the Menshevists and other orthodox Marxists] have accepted the new formula—the dictatorship of the proletariat through the Soviets, and have renounced "democracy" in the sense in which that term had been understood in all socialist platforms prior to the Bolshevik revolution. At times the old word "democracy" is still used, but a new meaning is read into it. In the discussion of the 21 points many communist leaders have outspokenly declared against democracy and in favor of dictatorship.
The truth is that experience has demonstrated to the communists that even in the most highly developed capitalistic countries (except, perhaps England) the proletariat is as yet not the majority of the adult population. Therefore, the proletariat is as yet powerless to establish socialism through the machinery of democracy. The proletariat is accordingly faced with the alternative of postponing the establishment of ​socialism until the course of capitalistic development will raise it to a majority of the population or of seizing the powers of government by an uprising of an armed minority, and establishing a dictatorship which does not need the support of the majority of the voters.
This quotation is from the Socialist Review, April, 1921.
Indeed a thoroughly anti-democratic conception ruled Soviet Russia from the beginning. Without quoting at length from the Soviet constitution on this point, we can with equal effect and more brevity cite the following from a resolution of the Eighth Communist Congress, held March 18–23, 1919:
The Russian Communist Party, developing the concrete aims of the dictatorship of the proletariat with reference to Russia, the chief characteristic of which is that the majority of the population consists of petty bourgeoisie, defines these aims as follows:
The urban proletariat … played the part of leader in the revolution. … Our Soviet constitution reflects that in certain privileges it confers upon the industrial proletariat in comparison with the more scattered petty-bourgeois mass in the village [i.e. the bulk of the agriculturists].
By the spring of 1920 Lenin had already thrown over the democratic idea, together with all hope of gaining the support of the peasants within the next twenty-five or fifty years, for he said at the Trade Union Congress in April:
The peasantry remained, in their production, as property owners and are creating new capitalistic relations. These are the fundamental traits of our economic ​situation, and hence originates the unwisdom of the talk of equality, freedom and democracy, by those who do not understand the actual situation. (From Soviet Russia, December 25, 1920.)
So all the fraudulent pretenses of "democracy," even in the most strained interpretation of the word, have been abandoned. Let us now examine the pretense that there has been instituted a government of "Soviets." In Russian the word "Soviets" means simply "councils." And so it is used, even in Bolshevist Russia, in senses that vary almost from day to day. It is true they have a Soviet constitution but it is subject to unlimited interpretation and administration by the Communist Party—who constructed it, in the first place, for their own purposes. If, however, we turn to the Soviet constitution, on the momentary supposition that it means in practice what it says on paper, we find it full of anti-democratic clauses. Even in the very friendly report of the British Labor Party it is pointed out that clause 23 of the constitution reads:
In the general interest of the working-class, the Russian Soviet Republic deprives individuals and sections of the community of any privileges which may be used to the detriment of the Socialist Revolution.
The British Labor Party report also points out that the peasants have only one-third of the vote per capita of the town electors, that the system of voting is always open, there being no secret ballot, and that the elections are so indirect that the handful of Moscow Commissars ​are in complete control, being only "theoretically" responsible to the Soviets.
Just as they have abandoned the pretense of democracy, so the Bolshevists have now given up the pretense of a "Soviet" government, whatever that may mean. Let us note the following from the proceedings of the Communist Internationale, July, 1920.
"All the Russian delegates," says Comrade Trotsky, "when they return from the Congress will have to face a whole series of questions; for example, the proposal of the Polish Government to conclude peace. Where shall we decide this question? In the trade unions? Of course, not there. It is true, we have a Soviet of People's Commissaries, but the Soviet of People's Commissaries also requires political control and definite political direction. We shall give it this political direction on the basis of the work of the party and the political control can be carried out only by the Communist Party."
In spite of the wholly despotic nature of their rule, the Bolshevists hold so-called Soviet elections and send broadcast over the world accounts of electoral victories as proof of the fact that they are a civilized and orderly government with popular support. It may be doubted if such "elections" have occurred in any country for a century or more. An excellent account of the latest Bolshevist electoral victory was given in the German Socialist Press in April, 1920, by the foreign delegation of the Socialist Democratic Labor Party of Russia.
The brilliant victory at elections to the Moscow Soviet as announced by the Communists will probably be able to deceive nobody either in Russia or abroad. After ​recent events in Russia the whole world knows what is the true state of mind of the Russian masses and what kind of electoral freedom exists in the free Socialistic Soviet Republic of Russia. This freedom is as follows:
A complete suppression of all freedom of press and assemblage for all inhabitants except Communists.
The absolute prohibition of all other parties to conduct any kind of an electoral campaign.
The illegal Social Revolutionists are not permitted to go to the polls at all, so that this strong party cannot possess a single Soviet delegate (among tens of thousands) in all Russia.
The Socialist Democratic party is formally legal but in fact illegal since regularly before each election there are mass arrests, the victims of which are only allowed their liberty again after the elections.
Public voting by the reason of hands in the election of all officials.
Election geometry as follows: of 1100 delegates in Moscow, 600 were assigned to the army, moreover 200 were appointed by the executive staffs of the red labor unions. [We shall show below that these executives were in turn generally appointed by the choice of the Communist party.]
The above facts are taken from the official declaration of the electoral regulations.
In Bolshevist Russia, then, we do not have a democracy or a Soviet régime but a so-called "proletarian dictatorship." Is it a Labor State? Arguing against Trotzky at a meeting called to discuss the trade unions at the end of 1920, Lenin said:
If we in 1917 [before the Bolshevists seized power] wrote about a Labor State that was quite clear. But at present, if we say: "Why and against whom is the labor class to be protected, as there is no bourgeoisie, ​as the state is a labor state?" we must say "not quite a labor state." This is peculiar inasmuch as many of Trotsky's mistakes are based upon this point. In fact we have not a labor state, but a labor-peasant's state, first of all. Many things may be explained on this account. Already our party program shows that we have a labor state with burocratic perversions. That is the reality of the transitory period. Can you tell me whether in such a burocratic state, etc.
Also at the meeting of the Congress of Soviets, as reported in the Petrograd Pravda of December 23, 1920, Lenin made it clear that he was aware that the non-Communists—the Communist Party including only 600,000 members—did not support the leading policies of his government:
Are the members of the trades unions and most of the non-partisan elements convinced of the necessity of our new methods, of our great tasks of economic construction? Are they convinced of the necessity of giving everything for war, of sacrificing everything for a victory on the military front?
The answer is undoubtedly, No! They are not sufficiently convinced of that.
In Russia to-day we have neither a democracy, a Soviet régime nor a Labor State, but the dictatorship of the Communist Party. The only phrases by which the Communists now insist in disguising their rule are "the dictatorship of the proletariat" and the "Republic of the Workmen and Peasants." The fact that they continue to use these expressions while at the same time they confess it is the Communist Party that governs indicates the brazen deception that permeates their entire propaganda.
​The official confession that the Communist Party rules may be seen in the resolution proposed by that Party at the 1920 Congress of the Communist Internationale and accepted unanimously by that body. We quote only a few of the most important expressions from this very interesting document. The meaning is so clear that comments are not called for.
The Communist Party is a part of the working class, precisely its most advanced, most conscious, and therefore most revolutionary part. The Communist Party springs into being through a natural selection of the best, the most conscious, the most self-sacrificing, and far-seeing workmen. The Communist Party has no interests different from the interests of the working class. …
The Communist Party is that lever of political organization by means of which the most advanced part of the working class directs the mass of the proletariat and semi-proletariat along the right road.
As long as the governmental authority has not been conquered by the proletariat, as long as the proletariat has not established its rule once for all and has not guaranteed the working class from the possibility of a bourgeois restoration, so long will the Communist Party by right have in its organized ranks only the minority of the workmen. Up to the time of the seizure of governmental authority and during the period of transition the Communist Party may, in favorable circumstances, exercise undivided ideological and political influence upon all the proletarian and semi-proletarian strata of a population, but it can not bring them together in its ranks in an organized manner. Only after the proletarian dictatorship will have deprived the bourgeois of such powerful weapons of effective influence as the press, the school, the parliament, the ​church, the administrative apparatus, etc., only after the final defeat of the bourgeois social order will have become evident for everybody, only then will all or practically all the workmen begin to enter the ranks of the Communist Party. …
In Germany the Eight Independents, whenever they make their halfway steps, allege that they represent the desires of the masses, not realizing that a party exists precisely for the purpose of marching in front of the mass and of showing the mass the road it is to follow.
The Proletarian Revolution, in Russia, has brought to the foreground the basic form of labor dictatorship, viz., the Soviet. In the very near future the following division will establish itself: First, the party; second, the Soviets; and third, the productive unions. But the work both in the Soviets and in the revolutionized productive unions must be invariably and systematically directed by the party of the proletariat, i.e., the Communist Party. The organized vanguard of the labor class, the Communist Party, serves equally the interests of the economical, the political, and the cultural struggle of the working class as a whole. The Communist Party must be the soul of the productive unions, of the Soviets of Workmen's Deputies, and of all the other forms of proletarian organization.
The appearance of the Soviets as the chief form of the dictatorship of the proletariat furnished by the history does not in any way diminish the directing role of the Communist Party in the Proletarian Revolution.
Again the monopoly of all governmental functions, and of nearly all the most vital economic functions, by the Communist Party was briefly stated by Lenin on November 5th, 1920 (before the Political Education Conference—quoted by Soviet Russia, April 30th, 1921). In this speech Lenin referred to that party as necessarily controlling "the mighty state apparatus" ​and as "determining everything." His most significant sentences were the following:
We must openly recognize the predominance of the Communist Party in our policy.
The party may express the interests of its class more or less, may pass through alterations of one kind or another, but we do not yet know of a better form: no other form has as yet been found in any country. The entire juristic and practical constitution of the Soviet Republic is built upon the fact that it is the party that is improving and determining everything, reconstructing everything according to a single principle, in order that the Communist elements in close contact with the proletariat may permeate it with their spirit and liberate it from the heritage of capitalism, which we are so ardently striving to overcome.
Every propagandist belongs to the party, which is guiding and directing the entire state, the world struggle of Soviet Russia against capitalism. This propagandist is a representative of the fighting class and party that controls and necessarily must control this mighty state apparatus.
What now is this Communist Party which claims to represent the proletariat by divine right, not only in Russia but throughout the whole world—and by representing the world proletariat, proposes to take possession of the earth and all it contains?
Here are the official Soviet statistics of the Party membership of some 604,000 (we omit a few unimportant figures):
| Government or town officials | 318,000— | 53 Per Cent. |
| Officers and Soldiers | 162,000— | 27 Per„ Cent.„ |
| Party Employees | 36,000— | 6 Per„ Cent.„ |
| Workingmen | 70,000— | 11 Per„ Cent.„ |
​But while the Communist Party represents a little more than one per cent, of the adult population of Russia, Zinoviev, in opening the congress of the Soviets last December (see Pravda, December 29, 1920) boastfully asserted that the percentage of Communists in the provincial executive commissions was ninety-nine! From these figures, we may see that in Soviet Russia each Communist counts for as much as ten thousand non-party members.
Yet the Soviet chiefs continue to make the most preposterous claims on behalf of the party. For example Lenin declared in his closing speech at the Tenth Congress of the Communist Party (see Moscow Wireless of March 20, 1921) that "there is no other power except the Communist Party that is capable of uniting millions of widely distributed small farmers." In view of the fact shown in the above statistics that the agriculturists do not include more than two or three per cent, of the membership of the Communist Party although they outnumber that party by more than fifty to one, we can get some notion of the extreme degree of untruthfulness which the Bolshevists, by long and strenuous practice, have finally attained. But all this flood of falsehood is proving useless for Bolshevist purposes, since the discussion within the Communist ranks itself is now disclosing the full truth. Late in 1920 Trotzky complained in the Pravda:
The people are now maintaining the same attitude toward the Soviet Régeme which they maintained against capitalism, as a force exploiting it and robbing it of its toil. Our problem is to regain the support of the workers.
For three years the Soviet Government has seriously turned aside from the principles of proletarian democracy, and from the spirit of the Soviet Constitution. On the one hand, there have been created two legislative bodies, not provided by our constitution—the Council of Defense and the Military Revolutionary Council; on the other, all constitution organs (legislative as well as executive) have virtually disappeared.
The eclipse of the Central Executive Committee is generally known. But even the Council of People's Commissars and the Council of Defense, which have ostensibly replaced the Central Executive Committee, have been, in their turn, eclipsed by still another body.
In reality the centre of political leadership has been shifted to the Central Committee of the Communist party, and even here to a smaller body, the "Political Bureau" of this committee.
Legislative measures, diplomatic acts, and military plans decided by this "Politik-Bureau" are formally sanctioned and issued in the name either of the People's Commissars or the Council of Defense. Diplomatic notes and military plans do not need even such formal sanction of any of the existing legislative or executive organs of the State.
In describing the steady reactionary trend toward the dictatorship of a smaller and smaller number of men, we cannot stop with the assertion that it is the Communist Party that controls, for the question arises, who controls the Communist Party? This is easily answered. At a special meeting of the Soviet Economic Conference in January, 1920, Lenin said:
No matter what domain of Soviet activity we turn to, we see a small portion of the conscious proletariat, a still greater number of the less conscious, and then at the very foundation, an enormous mass of peasants who have all retained their individual economic habits of free commerce and speculation. Such are the conditions under which we must act and which determine appropriate methods of action. …
In the autocracy of the chiefs of communism and the communist domination of the people lies the pledge of our success.
What we really have in Soviet Russia is the rule of the chiefs of the Bolshevist Party, the congresses of that organization being cut and dried affairs. We must not forget that the Commissars in control of the Bolshevist Government are able to apply their dictatorial power over Communist party members, using not only rewards and punishments for their purposes but also the frightful "Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution." Furthermore the Executive of the Party reserves the right of purging it from time to time of unsatisfactory members and thousands upon thousands have been put out in this way. At the same time entrance is made extremely difficult and is controlled by the central committee. The excuse for all this centralization within the Party is, of course, the necessities of the revolutionary civil war that is still raging and, as we show below, is expected to continue to rage for the next twenty-five or fifty years.
The following paragraphs from the long resolution of the Second Congress of the Communist Internationale already quoted sufficiently indicate the power ​placed in the hands of the Communist bosses by the constitution of their organization:
The 2nd Congress of the Communist Internationale should not only affirm the historic mission of the Communist Party in general, but should indicate to the International Proletariat, at least in its fundamental features, precisely what kind of a Communist Party we need.
The Communist Internationale considers that the Communist Party should be built up on the basis of iron proletarian centralism particularly in the epoch of the dictatorship of the proletariat. In order to be able to direct successfully the activities of the working class in the long and persistent civil war which impends, the Communist Party itself must operate within its own ranks iron military order.
Under the "military order" of an "iron proletarian centralism" any practical person may easily grasp the futility of such reforms as are now proposed for "the ending of the dictatorship of the people's commissars" and "the taking over of actual control of the affairs of state by the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets." (Resolution of the 1920 Soviet Congress.) Where is there any authority honestly to carry out this proposed change outside of the Communist Party? The resolution on February 9, 1921, by which the Central Executive Committee ordered the local Soviets convoked and given "full power," was also mere verbiage. As these local governing bodies consist to the extent of ninety-nine per cent (see Zinoviev's figures above quoted) of Communists under the dictatorial power of the Soviet Commissars as chiefs of the Party, what change has taken place?
​But is this a merely transitional party dictatorship while the foreign wars continue and while the victory of the Communists is not yet assured? Not at all. In his speech before the Communist Internationale, as quoted in the Moscow Pravda, December 3, 1920, Zinoviev declared: "After the victory the role of the party does not decline but on the contrary increases." We have already quoted the resolution of that Congress referring to "the long and persistent civil war which impends." Again Lenin says in his "Theses," which were adopted by the Congress:
The conquest of political power by the proletariat does not bring about the cessation of class struggle against the bourgeoisie, but on the contrary, makes this struggle especially wide, sharp, and pitiless.
What before the victory of the proletariat appears theoretically as merely a difference of opinion on the question of "democracy," after the proletarian victory becomes inevitably a question to be decided by force of arms.
On January 30, 1921, Lenin said to the visiting delegation of Spanish Socialists:
We never speak about liberty. We practice the proletariat's dictatorship in the name of the minority because the peasant class has not yet become proletariat and are not with us. It will continue until they subject themselves. Presumably the dictatorship will last about forty years.
Similarly Lenin declared to Serrati, the Italian revolutionary leader, a few months earlier, that the ​dictatorship would last twenty-five years to fifty years. The Second Communist Internationale concludes its discussion of the dictatorial role of the Communist Party (above quoted) as follows:
The aim of a political party of the proletariat disappears only with the complete destruction of classes. In the process of achieving this final victory of Communism it is possible that the specific gravity of the three fundamental proletarian organizations of our time, the party, the Soviet, and the productive unions, will undergo changes, and that eventually a unified type of labor organization will become crystallized. But the Communist Party will become dissolved completely in the working class at the time when Communism will cease to be the aim of the struggle, and when the whole working class will become communistic.
The fact that the dictatorship of the proletariat is not regarded as a rapidly passing phase was again brought out by Lenin at the Congress of the Communist Party in March, 1920—when the Bolshevist leader said:
We must base our activities with regard to class relations in our country and in other countries, so as to retain the dictatorship of the proletariat for a prolonged period and to extricate ourselves if only gradually from the misfortunes and crises which have come upon us.
Not only do the Bolshevists promulgate for all countries a long period of dictatorship similar to what we now see in Russia, but they believe that this will be a period of civil war justifying all manner of terrorism, violence and extreme measures. As the resolution above cited frequently says, a long period of civil war ​is before us. During this civil war no other parties have a right to represent the proletariat, no matter what their numerical support, except the Communist Party. The attitude of the Communists toward other political organizations of labor is shown by the following remarks of Lenin:
We see in practice that the unity of the proletariat during a social revolution may be achieved only by the extreme revolutionary party of Marxism, and only by means of a ruthless struggle against other parties—(Lenin at Transport Workers' Congress—Economic Life, December 3, 1920).
The Social Revolutionaries, the Menshevists and the Kerenskys? … Everyone who is at present acting against the Soviet Government and calls himself a non-party member—lies (Lenin at meeting of Central Exexcutive Committee, Moscow Wireless, March 23, 1921).
Not only are all other labor parties and non-party members declared to be non-labor or bourgeois, but, whenever they assume any importance, they are definitely excluded from the Soviets, as we see from the following decree:
(All-Russian Central Executive Committee, June 14 (1), 1918.)
Whereas, The presence in the Soviet organization of representatives of parties that clearly strive to discredit and overthrow the authority of the Soviets is absolutely inadmissible:
Therefore, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets resolves to exclude from its membership representatives of the parties of Socialist-Revolutionaries (Right and Center), Russian Social-Demo​cratic Workmen's Party (Menshevists), and also to propose to all Soviets of Workmen's, Soldiers', Peasants' and Cossacks' Deputies to remove the representatives of these fractions from their midst.
| (Signed) | President of all-Russian Cen- tral Executive Committee, Y. Sverdlov. Secretary—V. Avanesov. |
Not only are leaders of all opposition parties excluded from the Soviet whenever they become powerful, but they are regarded as traitors and treated accordingly. The only opposition tolerated is obliged to call itself "non-partisan," and even the non-partisans are "suspect" and subject to sudden punishment.
[Lenin's speech above quoted is only one of many evidences of this attitude.]