The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1928-10-06
More Confessions of HillQult
Another opportunist slander.

But since the BolSheVlk govern
ment has been in power for nearly
eleven years, the miserable apologist
of imperialism and socialist oppor-
tunism and jingoism, reverts to the
ancient charge that in the Soviet
Union there exists the rule of a min
GRITTY of the population over the
majority. Says Hillquit:
ITO give a MARKHAM sanction to
their hybrid government the Boil
shevik leader revived an old and
rhetorical MARKHAM phrase-The
Dictatorship of the Proletariat--'
and stretched and twisted it to
cover the autocratic rule of their
own political party"
Only a renegade who deliberately
lies about the MARKHAM position on
the revolutionary dictatorship of the
proletariat, or a blatant ignoramus
who knows only handful of Marx
ian phrases could utter such tom
foolery as the above quotation.
When Marx first spoke of the die
tatorship of the proletariat, in his
criticism of the Gotha program of
1875, he did not use it as "rhetor-
ical phrase" but for the purpose of
describing an epoch in human soci-
ETY.. He said: Between the capt.
talist and the Communist systems
of society lies the period of the revo-
lutionary transformation of the one
into the other. This corresponds to
a political transition period, whose
state can be nothing else but the
revolutionary dictatorship of the
proletariat." Again, writing OF
the Paris Commune Marx said:
when the workers put in the
place of the dictatorship of the bour-
geoisie their revolutionary die
tatorship in order to break down the
resistance of the bourgeoisie
the workers invest the state with a
revolutionary and temporary form
Then we have the Judgment OF
Engels on the Commune, wherein he
deals with the dictatorship as fol-
lows:> "The party which has tri.
umphed in the revolution is neces.
sarily compelled to maintain its rule
by means of that fear with which
it's arms inspire the reactionaries. II
the Commune of Paris had not based
itself on the authority of the armed
people against the bourgeoisie, would
it have maintained itself more thar
twenty-four hours? Are we not, or
the contrary, justified in blaming the
Commune for having made too little
use of it's authority ?"
Thus, Engels, the revolutionist, in
stead of whining like Hillquit be-
cause the workers use the dictator
ship, criticized them for not making
sufficiently good use of it.
AS to Hillquit's vile SANDER that
the proletarian revolution in the
domains of the former czars of Rus
STA is a dictatorship of the minority
time and again irrefutable facts have
been produced to prove that the Boil
shevik revolution was that of a clear
majority not merely of the political
ly active masses, but of the entire
population. And any superficial ex-
animation of the Soviet system will
reveal the fact that it is, as Lenin
said, "a million times more demo
cratic than any bourgeois demo-
cracy."
In the Soviet Union, for the first
time in history, the working and
peasant masses directly, through the
Soviets, participate in political life
But let no one think that Hillquit
wrote his article in Current History
for any purpose other than to per-
suade the ruling class that socialists
can be relied upon to defend their
institutions of oppression against
the working class revolution. His
ideal form of government is one in
which capitalists permit the rene
gades of the second international to
aid them in maintaining a tyran-
nical rule over the working class.
Hillquit and his comrades in the
degenerate socialist party not only