Page:Karl Radek - Proletarian Dictatorship and Terrorism - tr. Patrick Lavin (1921).djvu/55

48 are permanently undernourished, and must continue to be so, as people must produce war necessities in the first place, and can only produce industrial goods on the very smallest scale to be exchanged for articles of food. Finally, the most energetic proletarians, who have learned how to manage production, are at the front, and are the soul of the Red Army. In this situation, conditions will not allow of waiting until the capacity of the proletariat for directing is gradually developed. In this process of the strengthening of collective independence and of the rugged feeling of collective responsibility, the most intelligent workers, manual as well as mental workers, must be invested with dictatorial powers. The Kautskys see in that the bankruptcy of Communism, a renunciation of the Soviet idea. In reality these transient dictatorial encroachments are a result of the war which does not allow the Soviet Constitution to overcome its infantile weaknesses, or to strengthen the independence of the masses. These encroachments lead to the overcoming of stagnation only because they are backed by the Soviets, which have the confidence of the masses, and which point out to them the meaning and the necessity of such measures.

This description of the internal development of the Russian Soviet Republic shows the difficulties with which it has to contend, thanks not only to the immaturity of the Russian proletariat and not only to the preponderatingly agrarian character of the country, but also and primarily to the fact that the Russian Revolution broke out before the proletariat of the capitalist countries rose in rebellion. It had to grapple not only with its own counter-revolution but also with world capital which attempted to suppress it in order that it might again have a supply of cannon fodder at its disposal, and which now seeks to trample upon it and to destroy the seat of the world revolution. The shock of the counter-revolutionary armies of world capital, the plot concocted on Russian soil and the assistance it has repeatedly given to Russian capital, which always held out the hope of victory over the Russian workers—all these circumstances were bound to make