Page:Samuel Gompers - Out of Their Own Mouths (1921).djvu/42

 16 time of the Communist Party Congress held in March, 1921.

Lenin says in this article that it is nonsense to speak of these changes as "a renunciation of the proletarian dictatorship" and proves his point. But correspondents continue to insist upon the contrary interpretation, caught by Lenin's use of the expression "state capitalism" as applied to the present Soviet policy. Now moderate Socialists have always referred to this intermediate phase between capitalism and socialism by the apologetic term "state socialism," while ultra-revolutionists have known this identical thing under the derisive term "state-capitalism." To the latter this expression is derogatory, though non-socialists take it to represent a policy more friendly to capitalism, more reasonable than "state socialism," and a totally different thing. To every Bolshevist the expression, "state capitalism," means that the present policy, revolutionary and extreme as it may still seem to the rest of the world, is but the merest beginning of the thoroughgoing communism they have in view and is introduced solely as a means to further steps in the communist direction. Yet Lenin's clear statement on this point is interpreted by certain correspondents as a concession to capitalism.

Lenin's article above referred to is quoted by Michael Farbman in the New York World as follows:

"The way to State-socialism," he says, "lies through state capitalism. (German state capitalism.) We are unable and long will be unable to supply the peasants with all they need. This will be possible only after electrification of the whole country (!) has been accomplished.