Page:Samuel Gompers - Out of Their Own Mouths (1921).djvu/131

 Rh There is no harmony between the interests of the proletariat and the peasantry. Here the difficulty starts for us.

Already then there was apparent the necessity of individual administration, of recognition of the dictatorial plenary powers of one person for the carrying out of the Soviet idea; therefore all manner of talk about equal rights is nonsense. We conduct the class struggle not on the basis of equal rights. The proletariat wins because it consists of hundreds of thousands of disciplined men, who are animated by a uniform will.

The exact meaning of "the dictatorship of the proletariat" was never stated in a more uncompromising form than in Lenin's celebrated speech at the Communist Party Congress (March, 1921)—a speech heralded throughout the world by all advocates of friendly relations with the Soviets, as the supreme evidence of compromise with capitalism and surrender to the peasantry! We quote a few sentences as given by the official Russian Press Review of March 15th.

We regard all these events from the point of view of the class struggle. We are not mistaken with regard to the relations between the proletariat and the petty bourgeoisie—a most difficult question, which demands complicated measures in order to secure the victory of the proletariat, or to be more correct, a whole system of complicated transitional measures. …

What is the meaning of the slogan of "free trade" advanced by the petty-bourgeois elements ? It shows that there are some difficulties in the relations between the proletariat and the small farmer which we have not yet overcome. I refer to the attitude of the proletariat to the small property-holders in a country where the proletariat has been victorious and the proletarian revolu-