In October reports from Tambov, Viatka, Vladimir, Tula and Saratov indicate that, though supplies of all kinds of grain were fairly good, the disorganisation of transport was so great that the larger part of those supplies remained where they were. A number of delegates were sent to Saratov to obtain 30,000 puds of breadstuffs for twenty-five workmen's organisations in Moscow. They only succeeded in obtaining 3,000 puds, and they complained most bitterly of "bureaucracy" at the hands of the Saratov Provincial Food Committee, who kept them waiting a very long time and finally passed them on to a local Committee who declined to do anything. They demanded that pressure should be brought to bear on the Provincial Committee to make them disgorge part of their large reserves for the starving centre.
Russian Co-operative Societies.
Recently reports and articles have been appearing in certain of the Labour and capitalist Press favourable to the Bolsheviks, notably the "Labour Leader," concerning the co-operative movement in Russia. It is alleged that the growth of the co-operative movement there is evidence that the Bolshevist Government is really and seriously building up a new Socialist society despite the grave difficulties within and the antagonism from without. It is true that the co-operative movement is going ahead in Russia, but it is not because of, but in spite of, Bolshevism. The co-operative movement in Russia is not the product of the Bolshevist Government; it existed and progressed under Tsardom. The help which the co-operative societies rendered to the Russian people during the war is beyond all dispute. The majority of the co-operators in the area under Bolshevist domination are forced to work with the Bolshevist Soviets in order to save their societies from dissolution. The co-operative societies in Siberia, representing two million affiliated families, a population of about ten millions, have been the backbone of the opposition to the Bolshevist Government east of the Urals.
Bolshevism in Russia is, in fact, a revival of the Anarchism of Bakunine, tinged with certain Marxist theories which the Bolshevik refugees have gathered during their numerous sojourns abroad. It is a worship of the Revolution to which everything must be sacrificed. In its adoration of the Goddess of Liberty it is willing-to crush the freedom of human beings. The change from Tsardom to Bolshevism is, to use Trotzky's cynical phrase, "the turn of the wheel."
The Bolshevist Government has now dominated the central portion of European Russia for more than a twelvemonth. It bases its demand for general recognition on the fact that it has lasted a year without being overturned, and contends that that proves it has the support of "Soviet" Russia. The brief statement of internal conditions at Moscow and Petrograd made above suggests that the reports of terrible food shortage in those great cities, which come from independent sources, are not entirely destitute of foundation. And yet the apologists of the Bolsheviks here assure us that in Russia at the present time we have a "Socialist Republic of a very high order"!
These facts require to be made thoroughly well known among the working classes of these islands. The idea is being assiduously put about, more subterraneously than openly, that there is now established in Russia a genuine Socialist Republic, or, at all events, a real and conscious attempt on the part of the workers and peasants of Russia to establish such a Republic. Given this idea, there is every reason for a popular agitation to prevent anything being done by the British Government and its allies to hamper that Socialist Republic in the early stages of its development. Unfortunately, the utter incapacity of the recent and present Coalition to come to any definite policy regarding Russia, and the inclination of some of its members to back the reactionists, while standing aloof from the real democratic forces in Russia which support the Constituent Assembly, play completely into the hands of the Bolsheviks of Russia and their sympathisers here. Whatever Bolshevist undercurrents there are in the present reckless strike movements in Glasgow, Belfast and elsewhere are therefore due in great part to the Governments of Mr. Lloyd George. Nevertheless it behoves the working class of these islands to take cognisance of the facts concerning Russia, for they will enable them to realise clearly the grave mischief that these "unauthorised" strikes are doing, more to their own class and the country generally than to the capitalists against whom the efforts of the majority of the strikers are directed.
Bolshevism on the Clyde.
The Clyde is the centre of Bolshevism in Britain, though the spirit of it is in other parts also. But on the Clyde a number of very determined and exceedingly well meaning, but "heady," Socialists of the S.L.P. "impossibilist" type have influenced by sheer persistence a good many others who do not understand whither they are being led. Here, again, the "dictatorship of the proletariat" means the dictation of the proletariat by these "impossibilists," in order to bring capitalist industry to its knees. For that purpose strikes are to be brought about as frequently as possible on no matter what pretext, provided that pretext calls out enough "hands" to paralyse capitalist industry. It may be increased wages one day, shorter hours the next, shop conditions the day after, anything that will cause men to "down tools."
The idea, obviously, is to reduce industry to such a state of chaos that it becomes absolutely unprofitable to the employers, and thus it will be easier for the shop committees to take over the "control of industry" by Soviets from which all "bourgeois" and "counter-revolutionaries" shall be excluded. Meanwhile, when the strikes have reached a certain point, the demand shall be made for Government intervention, which, if granted under vague threats of terrible things to come, will redound to the power and credit of the Bolshevist leaders; and if not, and disturbances take place, then the leaders will be arrested, the revolutionary fires will be lighted on the Clyde, and will spread over the whole country; the leaders in question will be released from gaol by enthusiastic "revolutionary" crowds; and then will follow a glorified transformation scene as in a pantomime, with the heroes bathed in gorgeous "revolutionary" lime-light effects. I should not write in this fashion did I not know that this idea has influenced a few of the most single-minded and devoted Socialists on the Clyde, and we can only regret that such really noble spirits should have been unable to keep their heads in the greatest crisis in the world's history.
The "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" in Operation.
The battle cry of the Russian Bolsheviks and their sympathisers and would-be imitators elsewhere is the "dictatorship of the proletariat." Let us consider what that means. Dictatorship means despotism, and whether it is that of a Tsar or a Kaiser, an oligarchy or a Bolshevik administration, it is despotism—nothing more and nothing less. Impatience with the slowness of the mass of the people is only to be expected in all who see what human existence could be made on this planet, how enjoyable and pleasurable life might be made by light and pleasant labour for all, with the vast powers which man now possesses over Nature. I don't suppose there is a single Socialist who has spent twenty years of his or her life in the cause of International Social-Democracy who has not at times wished that the Social Revolution could be quickly brought about by some benevolent despotism. That a similar train of thought should have entered the minds of Russian refugees, driven from a land where political democracy in any form appeared almost hopeless of achievement, is only natural, and equally natural that it should have been pursued to its abstract logical conclusion, inasmuch as, unlike ourselves, they were not working actually amongst the people day in and day out to understand how impossible of realisation such a wish must be. Impatience with the mass—however the Mass may be worshipped—is at the bottom of the idea of the "dictatorship of the proletariat." They must be emancipated in spite of themselves. Liberty and democracy can come afterwards when the Socialist dictators have transformed capitalist society into the Socialist State. During that transformation the mass must obey the minority which has seized power; it must accept as right and just what that minority decrees; it must abandon liberty of speech and the Press, or at least it must refuse those liberties to all who do not agree with the actions of the minority in power. And if the mass don't like it, well–! Are these not precisely the principles on which Lenin and Trotzky are striving to create this "Socialist Republic of a very high order"? And are they not revealed in the attempts of a small minority to impose their will on the majority during our own strike influenza? Often is it observable that those who most vehemently denounce the slightest exercise of power in others have not the faintest objection to using it ruthlessly themselves. Bolshevism, then, is another phase, and anything but a pleasant phase, of Utopian Socialism, whatever use of the name of Karl Marx be made in connection with its advocacy.