Part 5 (1/2)
CHAPTER VI
PROLETARIAN RULE
The proletariat can get into power only at a moment of national upheaval, of sweeping national enthusiasm. The proletariat a.s.sumes power as a revolutionary representative of the people, as a recognized leader in the fight against absolutism and barbaric feudalism. Having a.s.sumed power, however, the proletariat will open a new era, an era of positive legislation, of revolutionary politics, and this is the point where its political supremacy as an avowed spokesman of the nation may become endangered.
The first measures of the proletariat--the cleansing of the Augean stables of the old regime and the driving away of their inhabitants--will find active support of the entire nation whatever the liberal castraters may tell us of the power of some prejudices among the ma.s.ses. The work of political cleansing will be accompanied by democratic reorganization of all social and political relations. The labor government, impelled by immediate needs and requirements, will have to look into all kinds of relations and activities among the people. It will have to throw out of the army and the administration all those who had stained their hands with the blood of the people; it will have to disband all the regiments that had polluted themselves with crimes against the people. This work will have to be done immediately, long before the establishment of an elective responsible administration and before the organization of a popular militia. This, however, will be only a beginning. Labor democracy will soon be confronted by the problems of a normal workday, the agrarian relations and unemployment.
The legislative solution of those problems will show the _cla.s.s character_ of the labor government. It will tend to weaken the revolutionary bond between the proletariat and the nation; it will give the economic differentiation among the peasants a political expression.
Antagonism between the component parts of the nation will grow step by step as the policies of the labor government become more outspoken, lose their general democratic character and become _cla.s.s policies_.
The lack of individualistic bourgeois traditions and anti-proletarian prejudices among the peasants and the intelligentzia will help the proletariat a.s.sume power. It must not be forgotten, however, that this lack of prejudices is based not on political understanding, but on political barbarism, on social shapelessness, primitiveness, and lack of character. These are all qualities which can hardly guarantee support for an active, consistent proletarian rule.
The abolition of the remnants of feudalism in agrarian relations will be supported by all the peasants who are now oppressed by the landlords. A progressive income tax will be supported by an overwhelming majority of the peasants. Yet, legislative measures in defense of the rural proletariat (farm hands) will find no active support among the majority, and will meet with active opposition on the part of a minority of the peasants.
The proletariat will be compelled to introduce cla.s.s struggle into the village and thus to destroy that slight community of interests which undoubtedly unites the peasants as a whole. In its next steps, the proletariat will have to seek for support by helping the poor villagers against the rich, the rural proletariat against the agrarian bourgeoisie. This will alienate the majority of the peasants from labor democracy. Relations between village and city will become strained. The peasantry as a whole will become politically indifferent. The peasant minority will actively oppose proletarian rule. This will influence part of the intellectuals and the lower middle cla.s.s of the cities.
Two features of proletarian politics are bound particularly to meet with the opposition of labor's allies: _Collectivism_ and _Internationalism_.
The strong adherence of the peasants to private owners.h.i.+p, the primitiveness of their political conceptions, the limitations of the village horizon, its distance from world-wide political connections and interdependences, are terrific obstacles in the way of revolutionary proletarian rule.
To imagine that Social-Democracy partic.i.p.ates in the provisional government, playing a leading role in the period of revolutionary democratic reconstruction, insisting on the most radical reforms and all the time enjoying the aid and support of the organized proletariat,--only to step aside when the democratic program is put into operation, to leave the completed building at the disposal of the bourgeois parties and thus to open an era of parliamentary politics where Social-Democracy forms only a party of opposition,--to imagine this would mean to compromise the very idea of a labor government. It is impossible to imagine anything of the kind, not because it is ”against principles”--such abstract reasoning is devoid of any substance--but because it is _not real_, it is the worst kind of Utopianism, it is the revolutionary Utopianism of Philistines.
Our distinction between a minimum and maximum program has a great and profound meaning only under bourgeois rule. The very fact of bourgeois rule eliminates from our minimum program all demands incompatible with private owners.h.i.+p of the means of production. Those demands form the substance of a Socialist revolution, and they presuppose a dictators.h.i.+p of the proletariat. The moment, however, a revolutionary government is dominated by a Socialist majority, the distinction between minimum and maximum programs loses its meaning both as a question of principle and as a practical policy. _Under no condition will a proletarian government be able to keep within the limits of this distinction._
Let us take the case of an eight hour workday. It is a well established fact that an eight hour workday does not contradict the capitalist order; it is, therefore, well within the limits of the Social-Democratic minimum program. Imagine, however, its realization in a revolutionary period, when all social pa.s.sions are at the boiling point. An eight hour workday law would necessarily meet with stubborn and organized opposition on the part of the capitalists--let us say in the form of a lock-out and closing down of factories and plants. Hundreds of thousands of workingmen would be thrown into the streets. What ought the revolutionary government to do? A bourgeois government, however radical, would never allow matters to go as far as that. It would be powerless against the closing of factories and plants. It would be compelled to make concessions. The eight hour workday would not be put into operation; the revolts of the workingmen would be put down by force of arms....
Under the political domination of the proletariat, the introduction of an eight hour workday must have totally different consequences. The closing down of factories and plants cannot be the reason for increasing labor hours by a government which represents not capital, but labor, and which refuses to act as an ”impartial” mediator, the way bourgeois democracy does. A labor government would have only one way out--to expropriate the closed factories and plants and to organize their work on a public basis.
Or let us take another example. A proletarian government must necessarily take decisive steps to solve the problem of unemployment.
Representatives of labor in a revolutionary government can by no means meet the demands of the unemployed by saying that this is a bourgeois revolution. Once, however, the state ventures to eliminate unemployment--no matter how--a tremendous gain in the economic power of the proletariat is accomplished. The capitalists whose pressure on the working cla.s.s was based on the existence of a reserve army of labor, will soon realize that they are powerless _economically_. It will be the task of the government to doom them also to _political_ oblivion.
Measures against unemployment mean also measures to secure means of subsistence for strikers. The government will have to undertake them, if it is anxious not to undermine the very foundation of its existence.
Nothing will remain for the capitalists but to declare a lock-out, to close down factories and plants. Since capitalists can wait longer than labor in case of interrupted production, nothing will remain for a labor government but to meet a general lock-out by expropriating the factories and plants and by introducing in the biggest of them state or communal production.
In agriculture, similar problems will present themselves through the very fact of land-expropriation. We cannot imagine a proletarian government expropriating large private estates with agricultural production on a large scale, cutting them into pieces and selling them to small owners. For it the only open way is to organize in such estates cooperative production under communal or state management. This, however, _is the way of Socialism_.
Social-Democracy can never a.s.sume power under a double obligation: to put the _entire_ minimum program into operation for the sake of the proletariat, and to keep strictly _within the limits_ of this program, for the sake of the bourgeoisie. Such a double obligation could never be fulfilled. Partic.i.p.ating in the government, not as powerless hostages, but as a leading force, the representatives of labor _eo ipso_ break the line between the minimum and maximum program. _Collectivism becomes the order of the day._ At which point the proletariat will be stopped on its march in this direction, depends upon the constellation of forces, not upon the original purpose of the proletarian Party.
It is, therefore, absurd to speak of a _specific_ character of proletarian dictators.h.i.+p (or a dictators.h.i.+p of the proletariat _and_ the peasantry) within a bourgeois revolution, viz., a _purely democratic_ dictators.h.i.+p. The working cla.s.s can never secure the democratic character of its dictators.h.i.+p without overstepping the limits of its democratic program. Illusions to the contrary may become a handicap.
They would compromise Social-Democracy from the start.
Once the proletariat a.s.sumes power, it will fight for it to the end. One of the means to secure and solidify its power will be propaganda and organization, particularly in the village; another means will be a _policy of Collectivism_. Collectivism is not only dictated by the very position of the Social-Democratic Party as the party in power, but it becomes imperative as a means to secure this position through the active support of the working cla.s.s.
When our Socialist press first formulated the idea of a _Permanent Revolution_ which should lead from the liquidation of absolutism and civic bondage to a Socialist order through a series of ever growing social conflicts, uprisings of ever new ma.s.ses, unremitting attacks of the proletariat on the political and economic privileges of the governing cla.s.ses, our ”progressive” press started a unanimous indignant uproar. Oh, they had suffered enough, those gentlemen of the ”progressive” press; this nuisance, however, was too much. Revolution, they said, is not a thing that can be made ”legal!” Extraordinary measures are allowable only on extraordinary occasions. The aim of the revolutionary movement, they a.s.serted, was not to make the revolution go on forever, but to bring it as soon as possible into the channels of _law_, etc., etc. The more radical representatives of the same democratic bourgeoisie do not attempt to oppose the revolution from the standpoint of completed const.i.tutional ”achievements”: tame as they are, they understand how hopeless it is to fight the proletariat revolution with the weapon of parliamentary cretinism _in advance_ of the establishment of parliamentarism itself. They, therefore, choose another way. They forsake the standpoint of law, but take the standpoint of what they deem to be facts,--the standpoint of historic ”possibilities,” the standpoint of political ”realism,”--even ... even the standpoint of ”Marxism.” It was Antonio, the pious Venetian bourgeois, who made the striking observation:
Mark you this, Ba.s.sanio, The devil can cite scriptures for his purpose.
Those gentlemen not only consider the idea of labor government in Russia fantastic, but they repudiate the very probability of a Social revolution in Europe in the near historic epoch. The necessary ”prerequisites” are not yet in existence, is their a.s.sertion.
Is it so? It is, of course, not our purpose to set a time for a Social revolution. What we attempt here is to put the Social revolution into a proper historic perspective.
CHAPTER VII