Page:Lev Borisovich Kamenev - The Dictatorship of the Proletariat (1920).pdf/15

 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 resistance 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 enterprises by concealing their books—are not less important factors in the resistance of the bourgeoisie. The suppression of all these various forms of resistance can be as little the work of an organisation created in the narrow sphere of the trade union movement, as, say, of a workers' co-operative organisation. It can be successfully achieved only by a general organisation of all the workers, in the shape of their Soviets, in which are represented all the forms of the labour movement, and which are under the guidance of a political 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 strengthening 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 working 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; anyone who doubts or renounces the political party of the proletariat, is helping to weaken and disorganise the working class.

June, 1920