Published 2 (15) May 1917
The whole of Russia remembers the days of 19-21 April (2-4 May), when civil war was about to break out in the streets of Petrograd.
On 21 April the Provisional Government penned a new ‘reassuring missive’ purporting to ‘explain’ its predatory Note of the 18th.[1]
After this the majority of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies decided to consider the ‘incident settled’.
Another couple of days passed, and the question of a coalition cabinet cropped up. The Executive Committee was almost equally divided: twenty-three against a coalition cabinet, twenty-two for it. The incident had been ‘settled’ only on paper.
Two more days passed, and we now have another ‘incident’. War Minister Guchkov, one of the leaders of the Provisional Government, has resigned. There is talk of the whole Provisional Government having decided to resign. (At the time of writing, we still do not know for certain whether the government has resigned.) A new ‘incident’ has occurred, one that throws all previous ‘incidents’ into the shade.
Whence this spate of ‘incidents’? Is there no root cause which inevitably engenders ‘incident’ upon ‘incident’?
There is such a cause. It is what we know as the dual power, that state of unstable equilibrium resulting from the agreement between the Soviet and the Provisional Government.
The Provisional Government is a government of the capitalists. It cannot give up its dreams of conquests (annexations), it cannot end the predatory war by a democratic peace, it cannot but protect the profits of its own class (the capitalist class), it cannot but protect the estates of the landowners.
The Soviet represents other classes. Most of the workers and soldiers in the Soviet do not want this predatory war, they are not interested in the profits of the capitalists or in preserving the privileges of the landowners. At the same time, however, they still have faith in the Provisional Government of the capitalists, they are for having agreements with it, for keeping in contact with it.
The Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies are themselves a government in embryo. On some questions they attempt to exercise power parallel with the Provisional Government. We thus have an overlapping of power, or, as it is now called, a ‘crisis of power’.
This cannot go on for long. Such a state of affairs is bound every day to cause new ‘incidents’ and fresh complications. It is easy enough to inscribe on a bit of paper ‘the incident is settled’. In real life, however, these incidents do not disappear. And this for the simple reason that they are not ‘incidents’ at all, they are not chance happenings, not trifles. They are the outward signs of a deep-rooted inner crisis. They are a result of the impasse in which humanity now finds itself. There can be no way out of this predatory war unless we accept the measures proposed by the internationalist socialists.
The Russian people are offered three ways of ending this ‘crisis of power’. Some say: “Leave things as they are, put still greater trust in the Provisional Government. The threat to resign may be a trick calculated to make the Soviet say: We trust you still more. The Provisional Government wants the Soviet to beg it: Come and rule over us; what shall we do without you…”
Others propose a coalition cabinet. “Let us share the ministerial portfolios with Milyukov and co.”, they say, “let us get some of our own people into the cabinet; it will be quite another pair of shoes then.”
We propose a third way: A complete change of the Soviets’ policy, no confidence in the capitalists, and the transfer of all power to the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. A change of personalities will give nothing; the whole policy must be changed. Another class must assume power. A government of workers and soldiers would be trusted by the whole world, for everyone knows that a worker and a poor peasant would want to rob no one. Only this can put a speedy end to the war, only this can help us through the economic debacle.
All power to the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies! No confidence in the government the capitalists!
Every ‘incident’, every day, every hour will confirm the soundness of this watchword.
The Municipal Platform of the Proletarian Party
Published 5 (18) May 1917
Elections to the district councils being close at hand, the two petty-bourgeois democratic parties, the Narodniks and the Mensheviks, have come out with high-sounding platforms. These platforms are exactly the same as those of the European bourgeois parties who are engaged in angling for the gullible uneducated mass of voters from among the petty proprietors, etc., such as, for instance, the platform of the Radical and Radical-Socialist Party of France. The same specious phrases, the same lavish promises, the same vague formulations, the same silence on or forgetfulness of the main thing, namely, the actual conditions on which the practicability of these promises depends.
At present these conditions are:
- The imperialist war;
- The existence of a capitalist government;
- The impossibility of seriously improving the condition of the workers and the whole mass of working people without revolutionary encroachment on the ‘sacred right, of capitalist private property’;
- The impossibility of carrying out the reforms promised by those parties while the old organs and machinery of government remain intact, while there exists a police force which is bound to back the capitalists and put a thousand and one obstacles in the way of such reforms.
For example: “House rents is in war time to be controlled”, “such stocks to be requisitioned for the public needs” (that is stocks of foodstuffs kept in stores or by private individuals) “communal stores, bakeries, canteens and kitchens to be organised”, write the Mensheviks. “Proper attention to be paid to sanitation and hygiene”, echo the Narodniks (the Socialist-Revolutionaries).
Excellent wishes, to be sure. The trouble is that they cannot be carried out unless one stops supporting the imperialist war, stops supporting the loan (which is profitable to the capitalists), stops supporting the capitalist government, which safeguards capitalist profits, stops preserving the police, who are bound to obstruct, thwart and kill any such reform, even if the government and the capitalists themselves did not present an ultimatum to the reformers (and they certainly will, once capitalist profits are involved).
The trouble is that once we forget the harsh and rigid conditions of capitalist domination, then all such platforms, all such lists of sweeping reforms are empty words, which in practice turn out to be either harmless ‘pious wishes’, or simple hoodwinking of the masses by ordinary bourgeois politicians.
We must face the truth squarely. We must not gloss it over, we must tell it to people in a straightforward manner. We must not brush the class struggle under the carpet, but clarify what relation it bears to the high-sounding, specious, delightful ‘radical’ reforms.
Comrade workers, and all other citizens of Petrograd! In order to give the people all those pressing and essential reforms of which the Narodniks and the Mensheviks speak, one must throw over the policy of support for the imperialist war and war loans, support for the capitalist government and for the principle of the inviolability of capitalist profits. To carry out those reforms, one must not allow the police to be reinstated, as the Cadets are now doing, but have it replaced by a people’s militia. This is what the party of the proletariat should tell the people at elections, this is what it must say against the petty-bourgeois parties of the Narodniks and the Mensheviks. This is the essence of the proletarian municipal platform that is being glossed over by the petty-bourgeois parties.
Foremost in this platform, topping the list of reforms, there must be, as a basic condition for their actual realisation, the following three fundamental points:
- No support for the imperialist war (either in the form of support for the war loan, or in any other form).
- No support to the capitalist government.
- No reinstatement of the police, which must be replaced by a people’s militia.
Unless attention is focused on these cardinal questions, unless it is shown that all municipal reforms are contingent upon them, the municipal programme inevitably becomes (at best) a pious wish.
Let us examine point 3.
In all bourgeois republics, even the most democratic, the police (like the standing army) is the chief instrument of oppression of the masses, an instrument making for a possible restoration of the monarchy. The police beats up the ‘common people’ in the police stations of New York, Geneva and Paris; it favours the capitalists either because it is bribed to do so (America and other countries), or because it enjoys wealthy ‘patronage’ and ‘protection’ (Switzerland), or because of a combination of both (France). Separated as it is from the people, forming a professional caste of men trained in the practice of violence upon the poor, men who receive somewhat higher pay and the privileges that go with authority (to say nothing of ‘gratuities’), the police everywhere, in every republic, however democratic, where the bourgeoisie is in power, always remains the unfailing weapon, the chief support and protection of the bourgeoisie. No important radical reforms in favour of the working masses can be implemented through the police. That is objectively impossible.
A people’s militia instead of the police force and the standing army is a prerequisite of effective municipal reforms in the interests of the working people. At a time of revolution this prerequisite is practicable. And it is on this that we must concentrate the whole municipal platform, for the other two cardinal conditions apply to the state as a whole, and not only to municipal governments.
Just how this people’s militia can be brought into existence is something which experience will show. To enable the proletarians and semi-proletarians to serve in this militia, the employers must be made to pay them their full wages for the days and hours they spend in service. This is practicable. Whether we should first organise a workers’ militia by drawing upon the workers employed at the large factories, i.e. the workers who are best organised and most capable of fulfilling the task of militiamen, or whether we should immediately organise general compulsory service for all adult men and women, who would devote to this service one or two weeks a year and so on, is not a question of fundamental importance. There is no harm in the different districts adopting different procedures – in fact, it would make for richer experience, and the process of organisation would develop more smoothly and come closer to life’s practical requirements.
A people’s militia would mean education of the masses in the practices of democracy.
A people’s militia would mean government of the poor by the people themselves, chiefly by the poor, and not by the rich, not through their police.
A people’s militia would mean that control (over factories, dwellings, the distribution of products, etc.) would be real and not merely on paper.
A people’s militia would mean distribution without any bread queues, without any privileges for the rich.
A people’s militia would mean that quite a number of the serious and radical reforms listed also by the Narodniks and the Mensheviks would not remain mere pious wishes.
Comrades, working men and women of Petrograd! Go to the district council elections. Protect the interests of the poor population. Come out against the imperialist war, against support of the capitalist government, against the restoration of the police and for the immediate unqualified replacement of the police by a people’s militia.
Published 11 (24) May 1917
Now that ‘socialists’ have become members of the cabinet,[2] things will be different, the defencists have been assuring us. It did not take more than a few days to reveal the falsity of these assurances.
We all know what indignation was aroused among the soldiers and workers by ex-Minister Milyukov’s statement that he had no intention of publishing the secret treaties which ex-Tsar Nicholas II had concluded with the British and French capitalists. And now, what does Mr. Tereshchenko, the new Minister of Foreign Affairs, the associate of Skobelev and Tsereteli, have to say on this question?
Tereshchenko admits that “this question [i.e. the secret treaties] arouses passions”. But what does he do to cool these passions? He simply repeats what Milyukov, who has just been deposed, said before him.
“Immediate publication of the treaties would amount to a break with the Allies”, Tereshchenko declared in a statement to the press.
And the ‘socialist’ ministers are silent and condone the system of secret diplomacy.
The coalition cabinet has brought no changes. The tsar’s secret treaties remain sacred to it.
And you, gentlemen, want this not to ‘arouse passions’? What do you take the class-conscious workers and soldiers for? Or do you really regard them as ‘rebellious slaves’?
Published 14 (27) May 1917
News, speculation, apprehensions and rumours of an impending disaster are becoming more and more frequent. The capitalist newspapers are trying to frighten people; they are fulminating against the Bolsheviks and making play of Kutler’s[3] cryptic allusions to “a certain” factory, to “certain” factories, to “a certain” enterprise and so forth. Peculiar methods, strange ‘proofs’. Why not name a definite factory? Why not give the public and the workers a chance to verify these rumours, which are deliberately calculated to excite alarm?
It should not be difficult for the capitalists to understand that by withholding the exact facts about definite specified factories they are only making themselves ridiculous. Why, gentlemen – you capitalists are the government, you have ten out of the sixteen ministers, you bear the responsibility, you give the orders. Is it not ridiculous that people who run the government, people who have a majority in it, should confine themselves to Kutler’s anonymous references, should be afraid to come out in the open and should try to shift responsibility to other parties that are not at the helm of the state?
The newspapers of the petty-bourgeois parties, the Narodniks and Mensheviks, are also complaining, though in a somewhat different tone. They do not so much level accusations against the terrible Bolsheviks (that, of course, is all in the day’s work) as heap one good wish upon another. Most typical in this respect is Izvestia, which is run by a bloc of the two above-named parties. In its issue No. 63 for 11 (24) May are two articles on the subject of combating economic chaos. The articles are identical in character. One of them, to put it mildly, is injudiciously headed (altogether as ‘injudicious’ as the very fact of the Narodniks and Mensheviks joining the imperialist cabinet): ‘What Does the Provisional Government Want?’ It would have been more correct to say: ‘What the Provisional Government Does Not Want and What it Promises’.
The other article is a ‘resolution of the Economic Department of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies’. Here are some quotations from it, best illustrative of its contents:
Many branches of industry are ripe for a state trade monopoly (grain, meat, salt, leather), others are ripe for the organisation of state – controlled trusts (coal, oil, metallurgy, sugar, paper); and, finally, present conditions demand in the case of nearly all branches of industry state control of the distribution of raw materials and manufactures, as well as price filing… Simultaneously, it is necessary to place all banking institutions under state and public control in order to combat speculation in goods subject to state control… At the same time, the most energetic measures should be taken against the workshy, even if labour conscription has to be introduced for that purpose… The country is already in a state of catastrophe, and the only thing that can save it is the creative effort of the whole nation headed by a government which has consciously shouldered [ahem! ahem!] the stupendous task of rescuing a country ruined by war and the tsarist regime.
With the exception of the last phrase beginning with the words we have italicised, a phrase which with purely philistine credulity places on the ‘shoulders’ of the capitalists tasks they are incapable of fulfilling, the programme is an excellent one. We have here control, state-controlled trusts, the combating of speculation, labour conscription – in what way does this differ from ‘terrible’ Bolshevism, what more could these ‘terrible’ Bolsheviks want?
That is just the point, that is the crux of the matter, that is just what petty bourgeoisie and philistines of all shades and colours stubbornly refuse to see. They are forced to accept the programme of ‘terrible’ Bolshevism, because no other programme offers a way out of the really calamitous debacle that is impending. But – there is this but – the capitalists ‘accept’ this programme (see the famous section 3 of the declaration of the ‘new’ Provisional Government)[4] in order not to carry it out. And the Narodniks and Mensheviks trust the capitalists, and encourage the people to share this fatal trust. That is the sum and substance of the political situation.
Control over the trusts, with publication of their full reports, with immediate conferences of their employees, with the unqualified participation in this control of the workers themselves, with independent control on the part of representatives of every important political party – all this can be introduced by decree which can be drafted in a single day.
What is the difficulty then, Citizens Shingarevs, Tereshchenkos, Konovalovs? What is stopping you, Citizens, near-socialist ministers Chernov and Tsereteli? What is stopping you, Citizens Narodnik and Menshevik leaders of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies?
Neither we nor anybody else could have proposed anything but the immediate establishment of such control over the trusts, banks, trade, food supply and the workshy (a surprisingly good word to come from the pen of the Izvestia editors!). Nothing better could be devised than “the creative effort of the whole nation”.
Only we must not trust the word of the capitalists; we must not believe the naive (at best, naive) hope of the Mensheviks and Narodniks that the capitalists can establish such control.
A debacle is impending. Disaster is imminent. The capitalists are heading all countries to destruction. There is only one way out: revolutionary discipline, revolutionary measures by the revolutionary class, the proletarians and semi proletarians, the transfer of all power in the state to that class, a class that is really capable of instituting such control, that is able to cope effectively with the ‘workshy’.
Published 20 May (2 June) 1917
It has not. Dual power still remains. The basic question of every revolution, that of state power, is still in an uncertain, unstable and obviously transitory state.
Compare the papers of the cabinet, Rech, for instance, with Izvestia, Dyelo Naroda and Rabochaya Gazeta. Scan the meagre – unfortunately all too meagre – official reports of what is going on at the meetings of the Provisional Government, of how the government ‘postpones’ discussion of the most vital issues, because of its inability to take any definite course. Study the resolution of the Soviet’s Executive Committee passed on 16 (29) May, which deals with such a crucial and momentous question as that of how to cope with economic chaos and avert imminent debacle – and you will see that dual power is absolutely intact.
Everyone admits that the country is swiftly heading for disaster – yet all that is done about it is to brush the question under the carpet.
Is it not sidestepping the issue when a resolution on such a grave question as impending economic catastrophe, at such a grave moment, merely creates a spate of commissions, departments and sub-departments; when the same Executive Committee passes a resolution expressing nothing but pious wishes on such a scandalous affair as that of the Donets coal mine owners who were found guilty of deliberately disorganising production? Price fixing, profit regulation, the establishment of a minimum wage and the formation of state-controlled trusts – yes, but how, through whom?
Through the central and local institutions in the Donets Krivoi Rog Basin. These institutions must be democratic in character and made up of representatives of the workers, employers, the government and democratic revolutionary organisations[!].
This would be comical if the matter involved were not a tragedy.
It is common knowledge that such ‘democratic’ institutions have existed and still exist locally and in Petrograd (the very same Executive Committee of the Soviet) but they are powerless to do anything. Meetings between the Donets workers and the employers have been going on since the end of March – March! Over six weeks have passed and the result is that the Donets workers have been forced to the conclusion that the coal mine owners are deliberately disorganising production!
And again the people are fed with promises, commissions, meetings between representatives of the workers and employers (in equal numbers?), and the old red tape starts all over again.
The root of the evil is in the dual power. The root of the Narodniks’ and Mensheviks’ error is that they do not understand the class struggle, and want to replace or cloak it, reconcile it by means of phrases, promises, resolutions, commissions ‘with the participation’ of representatives… of the same dual government!
The capitalists have made fantastic, outrageous fortunes out of the war. They have the majority of the government on their side. They want to rule supreme; in view of their class position they are bound to make a bid for supreme power and fight for it.
The working masses constitute the vast majority of the population, they control the Soviets, they are aware of their power as a majority, they see everywhere the promise of a ‘democratised’ life, they know that democracy is the rule of the majority over the minority (and not the reverse – which is what the capitalists want), they have been striving to better their lives only since the revolution (and then not everywhere), and not since the beginning of the war – therefore they cannot but aspire towards supreme rule by the people, i.e. the majority of the population, towards affairs being managed according to the will of the worker majority as opposed to the capitalist minority, and not according to an ‘agreement’ between the majority and the minority.
Dual power still remains. The government of the capitalists remains a government of the capitalists, despite the appended tag of Narodniks and Mensheviks in a minority capacity. The Soviets remain the organisation of the majority. The Narodnik and Menshevik leaders are floundering helplessly in an attempt to straddle two stools.
Meanwhile the crisis is growing. Things have reached a point where the capitalists – the coal mine owners – are brazenly committing outrageous crimes – they are disorganising and stopping production. Unemployment is spreading. There is talk of lockouts. Actually they have started in the form of disorganisation of production by the capitalists (for coal is the bread of industry!), in the form of growing unemployment.
Sole responsibility for this crisis, for the impending catastrophe, rests with the Narodnik and Menshevik leaders. For it is they who are at present the leaders of the Soviets, i.e. of the majority. That the minority (the capitalists) should be unwilling to submit to the majority is inevitable. No person who has not forgotten the lessons which science and the experience of all countries teach us, no person who has not forgotten the class struggle, will look trustfully towards ‘an agreement’ with the capitalists on such an essential, burning question.
The majority of the population, i.e. the Soviets, the workers and peasants, would be fully able to save the situation, prevent the capitalists from disorganising and stopping production, establish their own immediate and effective control over production if it were not for the ‘conciliatory’ policy of the Narodnik and Menshevik leaders. They bear full responsibility for the crisis and the catastrophe.
There is no way out, however, other than by the worker and peasant majority deciding to act against the capitalist minority. Playing for time will not help, it will only make matters worse.
Viewed from a Marxist angle, the ‘conciliatory’ attitude of the Narodnik and Menshevik leaders is a manifestation of petty-bourgeois indecision. The petty bourgeoisie is afraid to trust the workers, and is afraid to break with the capitalists. Such wavering is inevitable, as inevitable as our struggle, the struggle of the proletarian party, to overcome indecision, and to make the people see the necessity for rehabilitating, organising and increasing production in the teeth of capitalist opposition.
There is no other way out. Either we go back to supreme rule by the capitalists, or forward towards real democracy, towards majority decisions. This dual power cannot last long.
‘Forgotten Words’ of Democracy
Written before 25 May (7 June) 1917
Editor’s note:
The sailors, soldiers and workers of the military workshops in Kronstadt played a very important part in preparing the victory of the October armed uprising in Petrograd. The Kronstadt Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies followed the lead of the Bolsheviks from the very first day of its existence. This was due to the revolutionary traditions of Kronstadt (the mutinies of 1905 and 1906, the uprising on the battleship Gangut in 1915) and to the existence of a strong Bolshevik organisation there which carried on revolutionary work all through the war.
Owing to the conflict between the Kronstadt Soviet and the Commissar of the Provisional Government, Pepelyaev, a resolution moved by the non-party section of the Soviet and supported by the Bolsheviks was passed on 17 (30) May 1917 abolishing the office of Government Commissar and vesting all power in the Kronstadt Soviet. This resolution stated that the sole authority in the town of Kronstadt was the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, which, on affairs of state concern, entered into direct contact with the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.
The bourgeois, SR and Menshevik press raised a hue and cry against the men of Kronstadt and the Bolsheviks, declaring that Russia was on the verge of collapse and anarchy, that Kronstadt was seceding and so on.
A delegation from the Petrograd Soviet (Chkheidze, Gotz and others) followed by one from the Provisional Government (Ministers Skobelev and Tsereteli) went out to settle the Kronstadt incident. The latter succeeded in getting a decision passed through the Kronstadt Soviet arranging a compromise settlement, under which the Commissar was to be elected by the Soviet and endorsed by the Provisional Government. In addition, a general political resolution was adopted in which the Kronstadt Soviet declared that it recognised the authority of the Provisional Government, but that this “recognition does not, of course, exclude criticism and the desire that revolutionary democracy should create a new organisation of central authority by vesting all power in the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies”. The resolution also expressed the hope that the Bolsheviks would succeed in achieving this. It ended with a strong protest against attempts to ascribe to the Kronstadt Bolsheviks the intention of separating Kronstadt from the rest of Russia.
Lenin considered the revolutionary action in Kronstadt to have been premature. The negotiations by the Bolshevik group of the Kronstadt Soviet to settle the conflict and the further work of the Kronstadt Party organisation were directed by Lenin.
* * *
The filthy torrent of lies and slander which the capitalist papers have spewed out against the Kronstadt comrades has revealed once more how dishonest these papers are. They have seized on a quite ordinary and unimportant incident and magnified it to the dimensions of a ‘state’ affair, of ‘secession’ from Russia and so on and so forth.
Izvestia of the Petrograd Soviet, No. 74, reports that the Kronstadt incident has been settled. As was to have been expected, Ministers Tsereteli and Skobelev easily came to an understanding with the Kronstadt people on the basis of a compromise resolution. Needless to say, we express our hope and confidence that this compromise resolution, provided both sides faithfully live up to it, will, for a sufficiently lengthy period of time, eliminate conflicts in the work of the revolution both in Kronstadt and the rest of Russia.
The Kronstadt incident is a matter of principle to us in two respects.
First, it has revealed a fact long ago observed by us and officially recognised in our Party’s resolution (on the Soviets), namely, that in the local areas the revolution has gone farther than it has in Petrograd. Succumbing to the current craze for the revolutionary phrase, the Narodniks and Mensheviks as well as the Cadets did not wish to or could not grasp the significance of this fact.
Secondly, the Kronstadt incident raised an important, fundamental issue of programmatic significance, which no honest democrat, to say nothing of a socialist, can afford to treat with indifference. It is the question of whether the central authority has the right to endorse officials elected by the local population or not.
The Mensheviks, to whose party ministers Tsereteli and Skobelev belong, still claim to be Marxists. Tsereteli and Skobelev got a resolution passed in favour of such endorsement. In doing so, did they stop to think of their duty as Marxists?
Should the reader find this question naive and pass a remark to the effect that the Mensheviks now have really become a petty-bourgeois, even defencist (i.e. chauvinist) party, and therefore it would be ludicrous even to talk about Marxism, we shall not argue the point. All we shall say is that Marxism always gives close attention to questions of democratism, and the name of democrats can hardly be denied to citizens Tsereteli and Skobelev.
Did they stop to think of their duty as democrats, of their ‘title’ as democrats, when they passed the resolution authorising the Provisional Government to ‘endorse’ officials elected by the Kronstadt population?
Obviously, they did not.
In support of this conclusion, we shall quote the opinion of a writer who, we hope, even in the eyes of Tsereteli and Skobelev, is considered something of a scientific and Marxian authority. That writer is Friedrich Engels.
In criticising the draft programme of the German Social-Democrats (now known as the Erfurt Programme) Engels wrote in 1891 that the German proletariat was in need of a single and united republic.
But not such a republic as the present French Republic, which is really an empire founded in 1798 but without an emperor. From 1792 to 1798 every French department, every commune enjoyed complete self-government after the American pattern. That is what we [the German Social-Democrats] should have too. How self-government can be organised and how a bureaucracy can be dispensed with has been demonstrated to us by America and the First French Republic, as well as by Australia, Canada and other British colonies even today. Such provincial and communal self-government is much freer than, for instance, Swiss federalism, where each canton is really independent of the confederation [i.e. the central government] but at the same time is the supreme authority as far as the minor subdivisions of the canton are concerned – the Bezirk and the Commune. The cantonal governments appoint the Bezirksstatthalter[5] and Prefects. This right of appointing local officers is entirely unknown in English-speaking countries, and in future we must politely abolish this right [i.e. appointment from above], just as we should the Prussian Landräthe and Regierungsräthe.[6]
Such was Engels’ opinion on questions of democracy as applied to the right of appointing officers from above. To express these views with greater precision and accuracy, he proposed that the German Social-Democrats should insert in their programme the following demand:
Complete self-government in the communes, districts and regions through officers elected by universal suffrage; abolition of all state-appointed local and regional authorities.[7]
The italicised words leave nothing to be desired in the way of clarity and definiteness.
Worthy citizens, Ministers Tsereteli and Skobelev! You are probably flattered to have your names mentioned in history books. But will it be flattering to have every Marxist – and every honest democrat – say that Ministers Tsereteli and Skobelev helped the Russian capitalists to build such a republic in Russia as would turn out to be not a republic at all, but a monarchy without a monarch?
* * *
PS: This article was written before the Kronstadt incident entered its last stage, as reported in today’s papers. The Kronstadt people have not broken the compromise agreement. Not a single fact remotely suggesting a breach of this agreement has been cited. Rech’s reference to newspaper articles is mere subterfuge, since you can only break an agreement by deeds and not by newspaper articles. The fact then remains, that Ministers Tsereteli, Skobelev and co. have allowed themselves to be scared for the hundredth and thousandth time by the screams of the frightened bourgeoisie and have resorted to gross threats against the people of Kronstadt. Crude, absurd threats, that merely serve the counter-revolution.
Published 31 May (13 June) 1917
The answers of the French and the British governments clearly demonstrate the soundness of our repeated assertions that neither the Russian, nor the French, nor the British, nor the German capitalist governments can throw over the policy of annexations, and that all such promises are designed to deceive the peoples.[8]
We are fighting to seize Alsace-Lorraine, we are fighting for victory, the French replied. Be good enough to comply with the treaty and fight for Russian and German Poland, the British replied.
The bitter truth that capitalism cannot be reconciled to a non-annexationist policy has been exposed once more. The policy of the ‘conciliators’, of those who wish to reconcile the capitalists and the proletariat, the policy of the Narodnik and Menshevik ministerialists, is an obvious failure. All their hopes on a coalition government have been shattered, all their promises have been exposed as mere verbiage.
And most harmful of all, as far as the cause of the revolution and the interests of the toiling masses are concerned, is the attempt to cover up the whole thing with phrases. Two shadings stand out in this torrent of phrases, one as bad as the other.
Rabochaya Gazeta, the organ of the Menshevik ministerialists, brings grist to the Cadet mill. On the one hand, it says:
On this basis [on the basis of the answers of the two Allied powers] there can be no agreement between them and us…
When they say “us”, do they mean the Russian capitalists? The theory of the class struggle is thrown overboard; it is much more profitable to spout phrases about ‘democracy’ in the abstract, while trampling underfoot the elementary truth of Marxism, namely, that it is precisely within a ‘democracy’ that the gulf between the capitalists and the proletarians is widest.
On the other hand, Rabochaya Gazeta wishes to make:
… an attempt at revision [of the agreements and treaties] through a conference of representatives of the Allied governments to be specially convened.
The same old story: agreement with the capitalists, which, in fact, signifies deception of the workers by playing at negotiations with their class foes.
“The pressure of the rank and file of the French and British democracies, even pressure by the French and British proletariat alone upon their respective governments”, writes Rabochaya Gazeta.
In Russia the Mensheviks are supporting their own imperialist government, but in other countries they want pressure to be brought to bear…
What is this, if not sheer phrase-mongering and humbug from beginning to end?
“We are working for it [for world peace] by convening an international socialist conference…” to be attended by ministers from among those ex-socialists who have sided with their governments! This is ‘working’ with a vengeance to deceive the people on a major scale by means of a series of minor deceptions.
We have Dyelo Naroda phrase-mongering ‘à la Jacobin’. That stern tone, those spectacular revolutionary exclamations:
… we know enough […] faith in the victory of our Revolution [with a capital letter, of course] upon this or that step […] of the Russian revolutionary democracy depend the destinies […] of the entire Uprising [with a capital letter, of course] which the working people have so happily and so victoriously begun.
Obviously, if you write the words Revolution and Uprising with capital letters it makes the thing look ‘awfully’ frightening, just like the Jacobins. Plenty of effect at small expense. For the people who write this are virtually helping to crush the revolution and impede the uprising of the working people by supporting the Russian government of the imperialists, by supporting their methods of concealing from the people the secret treaties, their tactics of putting off the immediate abolition of the landed estates, by supporting their war policy of ‘offensive’, their high-handed insulting behaviour towards the local representative bodies, their presumption to appoint or endorse the local officers elected by the local population, and so on ad infinitum.
Gentlemen, heroes of the phrase, knights of revolutionary bombast! Socialism demands that we distinguish between capitalist democracy and proletarian democracy, between bourgeois revolution and proletarian revolution, between a rising of the rich against the tsar and a rising of the working people against the rich. Socialism demands that we distinguish our bourgeois revolution, which has ended (the bourgeoisie now is counter-revolutionary), from the mounting revolution of the proletarians and poor peasants. The former revolution is for war, for preserving the landed estates, for ‘subordinating’ the local organs of self-government to the central government, for secret treaties. The latter revolution has begun to throttle the war by revolutionary fraternisation, by abolishing the power of the landowners in the local areas, by increasing the number and the power of the Soviets and by introducing everywhere the elective principle.
The Narodnik and Menshevik ministerialists are spouting phrases about ‘democracy’ in the abstract, about ‘Revolution’ in the abstract in order to cover up their agreement with the imperialist, now definitely counter-revolutionary, bourgeoisie of their own country – an agreement which, in effect, is turning into a struggle against the revolution of the proletarians and semi-proletarians.
Written 31 May (13 June) 1917
Novaya Zhizn today publishes a resolution introduced by Comrade Avilov at a meeting of shop committees.[9] Unfortunately, this resolution must be regarded as an example of a petty-bourgeois attitude that is neither Marxist nor socialist. Because this resolution accentuates in sharp focus all the weaknesses peculiar to the Menshevik and Narodnik Soviet resolutions, it is typical and worthy of attention.
The resolution begins with an excellent general statement, with a splendid indictment of the capitalists:
The present economic debacle […] is a result of the war and the predatory anarchic rule of the capitalists and the government.
Correct! That capital is oppressive, that it is a predator, that it is the original source of anarchy – in this the petty bourgeoisie is ready to agree with the proletariat. But there the similarity ends. The proletarian regards capitalist economy as a robber economy, and therefore wages a class struggle against it, shapes his whole policy on unconditional distrust of the capitalist class, and in dealing with the question of the state his first concern is to distinguish which class the ‘state’ serves, whose class interests it stands for. The petty bourgeois, at times, gets ‘furious’ with capital, but as soon as the fit of anger is over he goes back to his old faith in the capitalists, to the hopes placed in the ‘state’… of the capitalists!
The same thing has happened with Comrade Avilov.
After a splendid, strongly worded, formidable introduction accusing the capitalists and even the government of the capitalists of running a ‘robber’ economy, Comrade Avilov, throughout his resolution, in all its concrete substance and all its practical proposals, forgets the class stand point, and, like the Mensheviks and Narodniks, lapses into bombast about the ‘state’ in general, about ‘revolutionary democracy’ in the abstract.
Workers! Predatory capital is creating anarchy and economic chaos, and the government of the capitalists, too, is ruling by anarchy. Salvation lies in control on the part of “the state with the cooperation of revolutionary democracy”. This is the substance of Avilov’s resolution.
What are you talking about, Comrade Avilov! How can a Marxist forget that the state is an organ of class rule? Is it not ridiculous to appeal to a capitalist state to take action against ‘predatory capitalists’?
How can a Marxist forget that in the history of all countries the capitalists, too, have often been ‘revolutionary democrats’, as in England in 1649, in France in 1789, in 1830, 1848 and 1870 and in Russia in February 1917?
Can you have forgotten that the revolutionary democracy of the capitalists, of the petty bourgeoisie and of the proletariat must be distinguished one from the other? Does not the whole history of all the revolutions I have just mentioned show a distinction of classes within ‘revolutionary democracy’?
To continue in Russia to speak of ‘revolutionary democracy’ in general after the experience of February, March, April and May 1917 is to deceive the people knowingly or unknowingly, consciously or unconsciously. The ‘moment’ of general fusion of classes against tsarism has come and gone. The very first agreement between the first ‘Provisional Committee’ of the Duma and the Soviet marked the end of the class fusion and the beginning of the class struggle.
The April crisis (20 April), followed by that of 6 May, then 27-29 May (the elections), etc., etc., have brought about a definite cleavage of classes in the Russian revolution within the Russian ‘revolutionary democracy’. To ignore this is to sink to the helpless level of the petty bourgeois.
To appeal now to the ‘state’ and to ‘revolutionary democracy’ on the matter of predatory capitalism of all questions, is to drag the working class backward. In effect it means preaching complete stoppage of the revolution. For our ‘state’ today, after April, after May, is a state of ‘predator’ capitalists, who, in the persons of Chernov, Tsereteli and co., have tamed a fairly considerable portion of ‘revolutionary (petty-bourgeois) democracy’.
This state is hindering the revolution everywhere, in all fields of home and foreign policy.
To hand over to this state the job of fighting the capitalist ‘predators’ is like throwing the pike into the river.[10]
Endnotes
[1] The Provisional Government’s statement published in the central newspapers on 22 April (5 May) 1917 ‘elucidating’ Foreign Minister Milyukov’s Note of 18 April (1 May) 1917. By this ‘elucidation’ the Provisional Government tried to cover up the imperialist character of the Note, which had announced the intention of continuing the war ‘to decisive victory’.
[2] The representatives of the ‘socialist’ parties who joined the coalition Provisional Government formed on 5 (18) May 1917 were Tsereteli and Skobelev (Mensheviks), Kerensky and Chernov (SRs), Pereverzev (closely connected with the SRs) and Peshekhonov (Popular Socialist Party).
[3] Cadet and prominent politician in Russia from 1904.
[4] Issued on 6 (19) May 1917 by the first coalition Provisional Government. Paragraph 3 of this document read:
The Provisional Government will redouble its determined efforts to combat economic disorganisation by developing planned state and public control of production, transport, commerce and distribution of products, and where necessary will resort also to the organisation of production.
[5] District governors.
[6] See Engels, Friedrich, ‘A Critique of the Draft Social-Democratic Programme of 1891’, MECW, Vol. 27, pp. 228-9.
[7] Ibid., p. 229.
[8] This refers to the replies of the French and British governments to the declaration of the Provisional Government of 27 March (9 April) 1917, both expressing the hope of Russia’s continued cooperation in fighting to win the war.
[9] Avilov left the Bolsheviks in 1917 and joined Bazarov, Lindov and others to form the United Social-Democrat Internationalists, who aimed to bring together the Menshevik-Internationalists with the more moderate Bolsheviks into a new group. The group’s organ was Novaya Zhizn.
[10] The offending fish, in Ivan Krylov’s fable, was sentenced to be drowned by being thrown into the river.