Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/419



The resolution of the March Congress of the Soviets advocates, as the most important problem at present, the creation of "efficient organization" and higher discipline. Such resolutions are now readily supported by everybody. But that their realization requires compulsion, and compulsion in the form of a dictatorship, is ordinarily not comprehended. And yet, it would be the greatest stupidity and the most absurd opportunism to suppose that the transition from Capitalism to Socialism is possible without compulsion and dictatorship. The Marxian theory long ago condemned in no uncertain terms this petty bourgeois-democratic and anarchistic nonsense. And the Russia of 1917–1918 confirms in this respect the Marxian theory so clearly, palpably and convincingly that only those who are hopelessly stupid or who have firmly determined to ignore the truth can still err in this respect. Either a Kornilov dictatorship (if Kornilov be taken as the Russian type of a bourgeois Cavaignac), or a dictatorship of the proletariat,—no other alternative is possible for a country which is passing through an unusually swift development with unusually difficult transitions and which suffers from desperate disorganization created by the most horrible war. All middle courses are advanced—in order to deceive the people—by the bourgeoisie, who are not in a position to tell the truth and admit openly that they need a Kornilov, or—through stupidity—by the petty bourgeois democrats, the Chernovs, Tseretellis and Martovs, prattling of a united democracy, of the dictatorship of democracy, of a single democratic front, and similar nonsense. Those who have not learned even from the course of the Russian revolution of 1917–1918 that middle courses are impossble, must be given up as hopeless.

On the other hand, it is not hard to see that during any transition from Capitalism to Socialism a dictatorship is necessary for two main reasons or in two main directions. In the first place, it is impossible to conquer and destroy Capitalism without the merci-