The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1919-05-20
BoLsHEvIsM NOT DEMOCRATIC

statement by William b wilson, secretary VI
labor Most of the support of this movement,
the secretary explains in letter to James VIII
SON president of the international Association of
Pattern Makers, comes from the mistaken belief
that it is democratic. In an extended argument
Secretary Wilson quotes from Lenine's own
speeches to prove that the Bolshevik government
is not even dictatorship of the proletariat but
absolute in type like czarism.
A part of the secretarys letter follows:
"At the dinner of the employees of the Brook
lyn navy yard given under the auspices of the
metal trades department of the American Fed
Grafton of Labor, April 80, made the statement
that had no fear of bolshevism, so-called, secur
ing foothold amongst the workers of the United
States that bolshevism, as understood in Russia,
meant the dictatorship of the individual, or, at
most, the few, with the purpose of introducing
compulsory labor, goaded to higher speed by the
introduction of the Taylor system under the di-
rection of an individual dictatorship; that did
not believe that any of people. inside or out
side of the trade union movement, whether con-
servatives radicals, would support or advocate
this kind of government when they came to know
what it was.
'fYou have asked me for the source of the in
formation that based my statement upon. am
sending you herewith some excerpts from a
speech made by Niholai Lenine premier of the
Russian soviet republic in outlining the objects
of the bolshevists to the national soviet Moscow,
April, 1913, as published by the Rand School OF
Social Science for purposes of propaganda IN this
country, which fully sustain the statements
made.
saThe average American mind in interpreting
the term dictatorship of the proletarlat' has
understood it to mean the will of a majority of
tho
of society We have been almost unanimous in
resisting this theory From the beginning of
time until the creation of the United States the
workers had been excluded from voice in gov
ornamental affairs. There was perpetual strug
gle to remedy the wrong. The philosophy upon
which they acted was that every person who had
to obey the laws of a country ought to have a.
voice in determining what those laws should be.
They are still imbued with that principle and con-
sequently have had no kindly feeling for die
Itatorship of the proletariat.
But clearly this is not the principle being pur
sued by the Russian bolshevists. They fear the
will of the majority just as much as Kaiser Will
helm, Emperor Karl, or Gar Nicholas did, and
boldly declare the dictatorship of the advanced
class awakening to democracy, and this
group is to be the sole judge of how the people
shall i've what they shall do and how they shall
do it.
"But the dictatorship goes farther than SIM
DIV to the most conscious vanguard the Sad-
vanced class the 'class-conscious vanguard or
the advanced workers, as the group is variously
termed It sets up an individual dictatorship with
unlimited power and insists that the revolution
demands the absolute submission of the masses to
the single will of those who direct the labor
processes. This single will must be obeyed by
obligatory labor service. The worker no longer
is to be permitted to quit work for reasons that
are sufficient to himself. He may not like the
place, or have friends somewhere else and desire
to move, but he cannot without permission of the
dictator. He may dislike his work, his manager
his foreman, his shop, his wages, his hours of
labor, or the conditions of employment, but he
must not quit because of the merciless dictator
ship of individuals for definite processes of
work
Even the court is to be used as means OF
training in discipline that will consider the re-
sponsibility for the pangs of famine and unem-
ployment and those who are responsible, that is,
those who fail to produce bread for men and fuel
for industry are ODE punished without mercy
no matter what the conditions are under which
they stop. While this autocratic rule is going on
the public press is to be Systematically repressed
There must be no criticism of the dictator die
tators. Nothing must reach the attention of the
masses except thtat which has been prepared for