The dictatorship of the proletariat

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The Dictatorship
of the Proletariat

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By L. KAMENEFF

Price 10 Cents

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The Dictatorship of the Proletariat

By L. KAMENEFF

Conservatism in ideology, theories based on principles,
slowness in their adaptation to rapidly-changing life, their
constant lagging behind the constantly changing forms of
the struggle — have frequently^been noted by Marxists. In
our struggle for Communism, \ve constantly meet with
these facts, we constantly haveto remark how great is
the power of the old ideology even over the best men of
the present Labor movement — in so far as these men
have grown up in the atmosphere of pre-war Europe.

This mental conservatism is most strikingly observed
in their approach to the question of dictatorship. Six
years of war and revolution (1914-1920) it would seem
should have elucidated this finally, from all points of view,
by practice, by facts out of the everyday life of the masses ;
and yet, even among the comrades adhering to the Third
International, we are often confronted with the question:

"What is the dictatorship of the proletariat? Cannot

the Labor movement attain its object without a dictatorship?

Why is dictatorship inevitable?" I heard these

questions not only from the members of the British Trade
IJnion delegation, but even from some of the members of
the delegation of Italian Socialists.

When one hears such questions one thinks involuntarily
that the persons uttering them must have slept through a
whole historical period, and, first of all, through the world-
war of 1914-18. For these years constituted a model epoch
of dictatorship, and the method of carrying on the war
were models of the application of dictatorial methods of
ruling a country.

From the point of view of the government of a coun-
try, the imperialist war consisted in the assembling and
placing under a single command of millions of men, in
providing their equipment and transport, and compelling
these many millions of men to carry out certain tasks.
These tasks were foreign to these millions, and were

228

accompanied for each of them, separately, and for all
together, with incredible sufferings, privations, and the
risk of death. How did the governments of Europe, Amer-
ica and Asia accomplish the task? By what methods did
they guarantee the assembling, equipment, transport and
command of these millions? By what methods did they
secure the adaptation of the whole administrative, economic
and social life of the state to carry out the tasks set by the
government? Was this achieved by means of democracy?
By the means of parliamentariasm ? By means of the real-
ization of the sovereignty of the "people"?

The sovereignty of the people, democracy, the State, par-
liamentarism, even from the point of view of their hypo-
critical bourgeois defenders, cannot but mean the discussion
and decision, if only of the most important questions, of the
state and social life by the citizens themselves, "free" and
"equal" in the eyes of the law.

However, at present, even the most unenlightened peasant,
in the most backward of all covmtries drawn into the war,
knows that the government of his country in 1914-1918 was,
as a whole and in every detail, a clear, simple, elementary
refutation of these regulations of bourgeois democracy.
Democracy, parliaments, elections, freedom of the press,
remained — in so far as they did remain — a mere screen ; in
reality all the countries drawn into the war — the whole
world— were governed by the methods of a dictatorship,
which utilized, when it happened to be convenient and prof-
itable, elections, parliaments and the press.

One must be a blind fool or a conscious deceiver of
the masses, not to see, or to conceal, this fundamental fact ;
at the most critical period of their history, at the moment
of their struggle for existence, the bourgeois States of
Europe, Asia and America defended themselves not by
means of democracy and parliamentarism, but by openly
passing over to the methods of dictatorship.

It was the dictatorship of the general staffs, of the offi-
cers' corps, and of large industry, to whom belonged, not
only actually, but also formally, all power both in the army
and in the country ; who commanded, not only lives, but also
the property of the whole country and of every citizen, not
only living at the time but yet to be born (the military debts
of Messrs. Romanoflf, HohenzoUern, Clemenceau and Lloyd

George will cover the lives and work of future generations).

During several years, before the eyes of the whole human
race, a picture of the practice of dictatorship is unrolled —
a dictatorship ruling over the whole world, determining
everything, regulating everything, penetrating everything,
and confirming its existence by 20,000,000 corpses on the
fields of Europe and Asia. It is natural, therefore, that to
the question, "What is dictatorship ?" the Communists
should answer: "Open your eyes, and you will see before
you a splendidly elaborated system of bourgeois dictatorship,
which has achieved its object; for it has given that con-
centration of power into the hands of a small group of
world imperialists which allowed them to conduct their zvar
and attain their peace (of \'ersailles). Do not pretend
that dictatorship — as a system of government, as a form
of power — can frighten anyone except the old women of
bourgeois pacifism. The dictatorship of the proletariat sup-
presses, not 'equality,' 'liberty,' and 'democracy,' but only
the bourgeois dictatorship, which in 1914-18 showed itself
to be the most bloody, most tyrannical, most pitiless, cynical
and hypocritical of all forms of power that ever existed."

The theorist of Communism, beginning with Karl Marx,
proved, however, a long while ago, that the dictatorship of
the proletariat does not consist in replacing the bourgeoisie
by the proletariat at the same governmental machine. The
task of the dictatorship of the proletariat is to break up the
machinery of government created by the bourgeoisie, and
re replace it by a new one, created on a diflFerent basis and
reposing on a new co-relation of the classes.

The dictatorship of the proletariat appears in the pro-
grams of the Socialist parties, not later than the seventies of
the nineteenth century. However, during the whole period
of the Second International, it did not once, on any occa-
sion, become the practical duty of the day, and attracted
the attention neither of the practical workers nor of the
theoreticians of the Labor movement; and only when, in
1914-18, through the veil of democracy, parliamentarism,
and political liberty, the unmistakable features of the bour-
geois dictatorship became clearly discernible, did the idea of
the dictatorship of the proletariat become a real force. It
became a force because, as Marx says, it took possession
of the proletarian masses.

In the 1903 program of the Russian Social Democratic
Party — a program which aspired to be only a precise and
improved statement of the programs of the Social Demo-
cratic parties already in existence, and which at the time,
in 1903, united both the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks —
the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat was expressed
as follows :

"The necessary condition for the social revolution is the
dictatorship of the proletariat, that is the conquest by the
proletariat of a political power that will allow it to crush
all resistance on the part of the exploiters." This definition
is embodied without alteration in the program of the Rus-
sian Communist Party.

The authors of the 1903 program could not foresee the
actual circumstances in which the proletariat of any country
would have to take the power into its hands. They cer-
tainly did not attempt at the time to define in what measure
the dictatorship of the proletariat would be connected with
the formation of a proletarian (Red) army, with the prac-
tice of Terror, with the limitation of political liberties.
They had to underline, and they did underline, not these
changeable elements — varying in the various countries — of
the proletarian dictatorship, but its fundamental and un-
changing feature, inevitable for any country and any his-
torical conditions under which the proletariat seizes power.

The proletariat not only seizes power ; in grasping it, the
proletariat gives to it such a character, such a degree of con-
centration, energy, determination, absoluteness, infinitude,
as according to the words of the program, "will allow it
to crush all resistance on the part of the exploiters." That
is the fundamental feature of the dictatorship of the pro-
letariat.

The dictatorship of the proletariat is therefore an organ-
ization of the State and a form of administration of State
affairs which, in the transitional stage from capitalism to
Communism, will allow the proletariat, as the ruling class,
to crush all resistance on the part of the exploiters to the
work of Socialist reconstruction.

It is thus clear that the question itself of the necessity,
the inevitability of a proletarian dictatorship for every cap-
italist country is connected with the question as to whether
the resistance of the exploiters to their expropriation by

Socialist society^HDr, more precisely, by society marching
towards Socialism — is inevitable.

In the same way, the question regarding the degree of
severity of the dictatorship, the extent and conditions of the
limitation of the political rights of the bourgeoisie and lim-
itation of political liberty in general, the application of
terrorist methods, etc., is indissolubly linked with the ques-
tion of the degree, forms, stubbornness and organization
of resistance by the exploiters.

Anyone who expresses a doubt as to the inevitability of
the dictatorship of the proletariat, as a necessary stage
towards Socialist society, thereby expresses a doubt of the
bourgeoisie showing any resistance to the proletariat at the
decisive hour of the expropriation of the exploiters.

Propaganda based on this may be dictated either by in-
dividual stupidity, or the interest of a group of persons in
concealing from the proletariat the circumstances of the
forthcoming struggle, and in preventing it from preparing
for the same.

When persons, calling themselves Socialists, declare that
the course of dictatorship, admissible and explicable for
Russia, is in no wise obligatory or inevitable for any other
capitalist country, they proclaim a thing directly contrary to
truth. The actual Russian bourgeoisie always was, and
up to the October Revolution remained, the least organized,
the least conscious in the sense of class, the least united
of all bourgeois classes in the countries of the old capitalist
order. The Russian peasantry had not time enough to de-
velop that class of strong and politically-united peasants,
which is the basis of a series of bourgeois parties in the
West. The Russian middle class of the towns, crushed and
politically unenlightened, never represented anything like
such groups of the population as, in the West, create and
support the parties of "Christian Socialism" and anti-Semi-
tism.

The first thunder claps of the proletarian revolution broke
over this politically backward, inactive and unorganized
class. "The resistance of the exploiters" to the blows of the
Russian proletariat must therefore be considered as com-
paratively weak — weak, naturally only in comparison with
the activity which the bourgeoisie of any other European
country will be able to develop. The actively resisting ele-

8

ment, which dragged on the struggle for three years, were
not the unorganized forces of the Russian bourgeoisie, but,
first of all, foreign interventionists, and then the bourgeoisie
of the border countries (Finland, Lithuania, Poland, Uk-
raine), which, playing upon the century-old hatred against
Tsarist Russia, managed to unite under the flag of nation-
alism certain organized groups for resistance against the
Russian proletariat. If it were not for these external cir-
cumstances, the resistance of the Russian bourgeoisie would
have been broken, not in three years, but in three months,
and the proletarian apparatus of State power would nat-
urally have directed all its energy towards other ends.

In conformity with the nature of the resistance which wa?
to be expected from the Russian propertied classes and
their organizations, the dictatorship of the proletariat in
Russia had its period of "rosy illusions" and "sentimental
youth."

There can be nothing more mistaken than to assume that
the Russian proletariat, or even its leader, the Communist
Party, came into power with recipes, prepared in advance,
of practical measures for the realization of the dictatorship.
Only "Socialist" ignoramuses, or charlatans, could suggest
that the Russian Communists came into power with a pre-
pared plan for a standing army. Extraordinary Commissions,
and limitations of political liberty, to which the Russian
proletariat was obliged to recur for self-defense after bitter
experience. The cause of the proletariat was saved, because
it soon profited by its acquired experience and, with unfail-
ing energy, applied these methods of struggle when it be-
came convinced of their inevitability.

The transference of power to the Soviets, and the for-
mation of the new Workers' and Peasants' Government
took place on November 7th, 1917. The discomfiture and
disorganization of the bourgeoisie was so great that it was
unable to muster any serious forces against the workmen.
The resistance of the government of Kerensky was broken
after a few days. The elections to the Constituent Assem-
bly still continued. All the political parties — up to Miliu-
kofT's party— continued to exist openly. All the bourgeois
newspaper continued to circulate. Capital punishment was
abolished. The army was being demobilized. In the hands
of the government there were no other forces than the

volunteer detachment of armed workmen. The Ministers
of Kerensky's government arrested, during the first days,
(the leaders of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, Avk-
sentieff, Gotz, Zenzinoff, the Generals Boldareff, Krasnoff
and others — later on, all of them, leaders of the armed
struggle against the Soviet power and members of the rebel
governments of Siberia, the Don and the South) were set
free. Generals Denikin, Markoff, Erdeli and others re-
mained in the hands of the Soviet power up to November
20th and left its limits alive.

Yes, that was the period of "rosy illusions." It continued
for a few months.

The conditions began to change by April-May, 1918. In
April, 1918, the decree regarding the formation of a stand-
ing Red Army was published. Only in April the Extra-
ordinary Commissions acquired the right to execute rob-
bers caught in the net and officers going off to Korniloff, ac-
cording to his secret mobilization. Only on June 18th did
the Revolutionary Court pass its first sentence of death on
the Admiral commanding the Baltic Fleet. Only in May
were measures taken to stop the publication of the bour-
geois papers (at the moment of this suppression there were
thirty papers against three of the Soviets in Moscow alone).
Only in June, 1918, were the Mensheviks driven out of the
Soviets.

Thus over six months (November, 1917 — April-May,
1918) passed from the moment of the formation of the
Soviet power to the practical application by the proletariat
of any harsh dictatorial measures. The increased severity
in the dictatorship was called forth by a series of very ele-
mentary facts. In April, the government of Skoropadsky
was organized in Kieff ; in May took place the rising of the
Czecho-Slovaks, their seizure of the railway system and the
formation of the Socialist-Revoluntionary government in the
East; in May, too, the Cossack counter-revolution on the
Don — the Russian Vendee — acquired increased importance
under the command of General Krasnoff.

Parallel with this, all the attention and energy of the
working class was concentrated on the tasks of the war, and
the Soviet state was transformed into a camp of armed pro-
letarians.

10

Such was the experience of the Russian proletariat. We
have now before us the experience of the class struggle for
proletarian power in Finland, Hungary and Germany. The
fundamental difference between the experience of Hungary,
Finland and Germany and that of Russia consists in the
fact that the bourgeoisie of those countries proved, as was
to be expected, to be much more organized, united and
capable of fighting than the Russian bourgeoisie. Its period
of confusion was much shorter; it organized a counter-at-
tack against the proletariat much more rapidly and ener-
getically ; and by that very fact shortened the period of illu-
sions of the proletariat itself as to the nature of its dictator-
ship.

The experience of the workers of Russia, Finland, Hun-
gary and Germany allows us to establish an empiric law of
the development of proletarian dictatorship, which may be
expressed approximately in the following words. The fact
of the conquest of the central political power by the prole-
tariat in no wise completes the struggle for power, but only
marks the beginning of a new and more' determined period
of warfare between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

After the first blow of the proletarian revolution and the
seizure of the central apparatus of power by the proletariat,
the bourgeoisie inevitably needs a certain time for mobiliza-
tion of its forces, the bringing up of reserves and their or-
ganization. Its passing to a counter attack opens up an
epoch of undisguised warfare, and armed clash of the forces
of both sides.

It is just during this period that the rule of the proletariat
acquires the harsh features of a dictatorship: a Red Army,
a terrorist suppression of the exploiters and their allies, the
limitation of political liberty, becomes inevitable if the pro-
letariat does not wish to give up without a fight the power
it has won.

The dictatorship of the proletariat is consequently a form
of government of the state which is most adapted to the
carrying on of a war with the bourgeoisie, and to guarantee
most rapidly the victory of the proletariat in such war.

Are there any grounds for presuming that such a war in
Europe will be carried on in less acute forms? That the
European bourgeoisie will submit with a lighter heart to
the expropriation of its riches by the proletariat? Can any

11

reasonable person build his tactics on the supposition that
the European bourgeoisie will not show all the resistance
of which it is capable against the proletariat which has
seized power ? Can one presume that, entering into the fight
against the proletariat in power, the European bourgeoisie
will prove to be less armed, less capable of fighting, less
united and less prudent than the bourgeoisie of Russia,
Finland or Hungary? Can one imagine that it will stop at
any means, beginning with a far-reaching union with the
betrayers of Socialism from the camp of the Second Inter-
national and ending with the bombardment of the work-
men's quarters and the application of the latest technical
methods for the suffocation of the enemy in war?

What under these conditions can be the meaning of a
doubt in the inevitability of the methods of proletarian dic-
tatorship, or a refusal to work, day in and day out, for the
preparation of the proletariat to utilize all the methods of
dictatorship in the coming struggle?

To move towards a seizure of power, not hoping to hold
it, and not preparing the conditions for holding it, is simply
f oolhardiness ; to recognize the necessity for the proletariat
conquering power, and to doubt the necessity of a dictator-
ship of the proletariat, to refuse to instruct the workers in
this direction — means consciously to prepare the betrayal of
the cause of Socialism. Whoever does not recognize the
necessity for fhe severest proletarian dictatorship during the
transitional period from capitalism to Socialism; does not
prepare the necessary conditions for the proletariat, on
acquiring the central apparatus of power, at once directing
it to the suppression of the resistance of the exploiters;
whoever does not explain to the proletariat, as a necessary
condition here and now, of its victory, the inevitability of an
armed struggle and harsh measures against treason and hesi-
tation, and does not arm the proletariat with the suitable
weapons — that person is preparing the ruin of the prole-
tariat and the victory of the bourgeoisie.

But if the dictatorship of the proletariat is an organiza-
tion of power, which is best adapted to the carrying on of
the war against the bourgeoisie and the suppression of its
resistance, then we have an answer also to the question
which is generally put to the Communists by the syndicalists
of various schools of thought. The latter while admitting

12

the dictatorship of the proletariat, cannot divest themselves
of their old prejudices against a political party of the pro-
letariat. The question, consequently, is : what organization
is capable of achieving a solution of the problems of dic-
tatorship ?

There can be no doubt that, at the moment of a decisive
class war, the power of command and compulsion must
lie in the hands of a definite organization, capable of bearing
the responsibility for each step it takes and of guaranteeing
the logical sequence of these steps.

The army of the proletariat, moving in battle order,
must have its general staff. When leading its regiments
to the attack, that general staff must be capable of "sur-
veying the sum total of the international, political and
economic conditions of the struggle. It must possess equal
authority over all kinds of arms at the disposition of the
working class. It must be in a position to carry out its
decisions through the trade unions, and the workmen's co-
operatives, through the factory committees, and through
the leagues of young workers, by means of written propa-
ganda, and through the fighting militia of armed workers.

At the moment when the old power is overthrown and
the apparatus of government is seized by the revolting pro-
letariat, that general staff has new tasks to perform. The
victory of the proletariat signifies the disorganization of
the old social system. The formation of a new army, the
feeding of the country, the building up of industry on new
principles, the organization of law courts, the establishment
of relations with the peasants, the diplomatic relations with
other countries — all these matters become at once the im-
mediate tasks of the general staff of the victorious prole-
tarian army. Any delay in the accomplishment of one of
these tasks, or any hesitation in the decision, is capable of
bringing greatest harm to the further victorious develop-
ment of the proletarian revolution.

Consequently, this general staff must be an organized
responsible, and centralized institution, prepared to deal
with, and decide all political, economic, social and diplo-
matic problems. An organization which would satisfy all
these conditions and solve all the problems incumbent upon
it may be called, of course, by any name whatsoever ; but in
reality — and if we do not play with words — such an organ-

13

ization can only be the political party of the proletariat;
i. e., an organization of the most advanced, revolutionary
elements of the proletariat, united by their common politi-
cal program and an iron discipline.

Such an organization cannot be formed in a day or even
a week ; it is the result of a prolonged process of assembling
and selecting experienced leaders, who have proved, by their
daily work, to be capable of estimating rightly each phase
of the labor struggle, and the interests of each separate
group of the working class, from the higher point of view
of the general interests of the entire working class as a
whole.

The greatest misfortune which could befall the pro-
letarian army after seizing the strongholds of capitalism,
would be if the apparatus of leadership proved to be in
the hands of men, groups, or organizations whose previous
work had been carried out only in the sphere of the labor
movement.

The suppression of the resistance of the exploiters —
which is the fundamental task of the dictatorship — is not
only a military, or only a political, or only an economic task;
it is all of them — military, political, economic. The re-
sistance of the exploiters acquires only its most acute form
during an armed conflict; but the rich peasantry, which
will not give the bread for the famishing population; the
engineers who sabotage industry ; and the bankers who bring
confusion into the mutual account of the industrial enter-
prises by concealing their books — are not less important
factors in the resistance of the bourgeoisie. The suppres-
sion of all these various forms of resistance can be as little
the work of an organization created in the narrow sphere
of the trade union movement, as, say, of a workers' co-op-
erative organization. It can be successfully achieved only by
a general organization of all the workers, in the shape of
their Soviets, in which are represented all the forms of the
labor movement, and which are under the guidance of a pol-
tical party, concentrating in itself the whole experience of
the previous struggle of the working class.

In the epoch of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the
Communist Party is still more necessary for the working
class than in any other. It constitutes an essential condition
for victory. A refusal to work for its creation and strength-

14

ening means a renunciation of the efficient carrying on of
the class war, i. e., a renunciation of dictatorship, of a
condition of the victory of Socialism, and may engender,
although unconsciously, the most cruel betrayal of the work-
ing class cause, by depriving the proletariat, at the most
critical moment, of its most important weapon. Anyone who
doubts the inevitability of the dictatorship of the proletariat,
as a necessary stage of its victory over the bourgeoisie,
facilitates the conditions for the victory of the latter; any-
one who doubts or renounces the political party of the
proletariat, is helping to weaken and disorganize the work-
ing class.

June, 1920.

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