Page:Raymond Augustine McGowan - Bolshevism in Russia and America (1920).pdf/24

 24 sary for those who want Socialism to gain complete political power before the first step towards Socialism can be taken. Moreover, it holds that the only way to gain political power is for those who believe in Socialism to seize it, and not try to obtain it by a political election. All the tactics preceding the seizure of political power, are to be directed to that end; elections, strikes, etc., are all to be used, not for any immediate benefit that might be obtained from them, but as propaganda for the "dictatorship of the proletariat." When political power is obtained, the Government is fashioned:

1. To exclude all but the workers, soldiers, and, the traders and farmers who hire no labor and live by their work;

2. To diminish the influence of all but the propertyless city workmen and the poorest farmers;

3. To give the greater electoral power to the city workmen;

4. To concentrate the electoral power in the hands of the more zealous believers in the Bolshevist program;

5. And to hand over the real political power to the leaders.

Terrorism and civil war are necessary to keep the political power and will be prosecuted as strenuously as is thought necessary. The political power is to be used to usher in common ownership of the means of production and distribution, but this can only be reached after a measurably slow process, filled with fundamental compromises on Socialism. When property is nationalized, it is confiscated. Nor is it too much to include as basic in Bolshevism the spirit of the S9viet Republic's laws on religion, marriage, and divorce.

The element of Bolshevism, however, which differentiates it from ordinary Socialism, is its tactics. Bolshevism considers that the first step towards common ownership is the revolutionary seizure of political power by those who want Socialism.