The Eighth Party Congress of the Communist party of the Soviet Union founded Soviet democracy in 1919. In January of 1935, the Seventh Soviet Congress announces the ‘introduction of Soviet democracy’. What is the meaning of this nonsense?
We want to tell a little story to illustrate the process that led to the ‘introduction of Soviet democracy’ in 1935, sixteen years after the introduction of Soviet democracy.
In the course of his studies, a student of criminal jurisprudence realizes that man’s anti-social acts are not to be looked upon as crimes, but as sicknesses; therefore, they should not be punished. They should be healed, and efforts should be made to prevent their recurrence. He gives up his study of law and turns to the study of medicine. He replaces formal ethical activities with practical and pertinent activities. After a while, he further realizes that his medical work will require the use of some non-medical methods. For example, he would like to dispense with the use of straitjackets as a method of treatment for mental patients and replace their use by preventive educational measures. Despite his better judgement, however, he is forced to make use of the straitjacket -there are just too many mental patients. He cannot cope with all of them, so he has to continue to use antiquated and poor methods, but always bearing in mind that they must be replaced someday by better methods.
As time goes by the task becomes more than he can handle. He is not equal to it. Too little is known about mental sicknesses. There are too many of them; education produces them by the thousands every day. As a physician he has to protect society from mental illnesses.
He cannot carry out his good intentions. On the contrary, he has to revert to the old methods, the very methods he had formerly condemned so severely and had wanted to replace with better ones. He makes use of straitjackets more and more. His educational plans come to naught. His efforts to become a physician who prevents sicknesses, instead of one who has to cure them, also fail. He has no choice but to revert to the old laws. His effort to treat criminals as patients does not bear fruit. He is forced to have them locked up again.
But he doesn’t admit his fiasco, neither to himself nor to others. He doesn’t have the courage. Perhaps he isn’t even aware of it. Now he asserts the following nonsense: The
introduction of straitjackets and prisons for criminals and people who are mentally ill represents an enormous step forward in the application of my medical art. It is the true medical art; it constitutes the attainment of my original goal!’
This story applies in the minutest detail to the ‘introduction of Soviet democracy’, sixteen years after the ‘introduction of Soviet democracy’. It becomes comprehensible only when it is assessed against the basic conception of ’social democracy’ and the ‘abolition of the state’ as set forth by Lenin in State and Revolution. The explanation for this measure given by the Soviet government is not so important here. Only one sentence from the explanation, printed in the Rundschau, 1935, no. 7, p. 3 31, shows that with this act, whether justified or not, Lenin’s conception of social democracy was annulled. It is stated:
The proletarian dictatorship has always been the only true power of the people. It has successfully fulfilled both of its main tasks: the destruction of the exploiters as a class, their expropriation and suppression, and the socialist education of the masses. The proletarian dictatorship continues to exist undeterred. . .
If the exploiters have been destroyed as a class and the socialist education of the. masses has been a success, and yet the dictatorship continues to exist ‘undeterred’, we see just how nonsensical the whole idea is. If the preconditions have been fulfilled, then why does the dictatorship continue to exist undeterred? Against whom or what is it directed if the exploiters have been crushed and the masses have already been educated to assume responsibility for social functions? Such a ridiculous formulation always conceals an all-too-true meaning: The dictatorship continues, but now it is no longer directed against the exploiters of the old school, but against the masses themselves.
The Rundschau continues: ‘This higher socialist phase, the alliance between workers and peasants, gives the proletarian dictatorship, as the democracy of the workers, a new and higher content. This new content also requires new forms, i.e... the transition to equal, direct, and secret ballots for the workers/
We don’t want to engage in any hair splitting: The proletarian dictatorship (which in time was supposed to give way to the self-administration of masses of people) exists simultaneously with the ‘most democratic* democracy. This is sociologic nonsense, a confusion of all sociologic concepts. We are concerned here with one central question: Was the main goal of the social revolutionary movement of 1917, the abolition of the state and the introduction of social self-administration, actually achieved? If so, then an essential difference must exist between the ‘Soviet democracy’ of 1935 and the ‘proletarian dictatorship’ of 1919 on the one hand, and the bourgeois parliamentary democracies of England and America on the other hand.
Mention is made of the ‘further democratization’ of the Soviet system. How is this possible? We were under the impression that, in terms of its nature, the conception of its founders and also as it actually was in the beginning, the ‘proletarian dictatorship’ is completely identical with social democracy (— proletarian democracy). If, however, the dictatorship of the proletariat is the same as social democracy, then a Soviet democracy cannot be introduced sixteen years after the establishment of social democracy, nor can there be a ‘further democratization’. The ‘introduction of democracy’ certainly implies -and there can be no doubt about this - that social democracy had not existed previously and that the dictatorship of the proletariat was not identical with social democracy. Quite
apart from this, it is absurd to say that social democracy is the ‘most democratic’ system. Is bourgeois democracy only ‘a little’ democratic, while social democracy is ‘more’ democratic? What does ‘a little’ and what does ‘more’ mean? In reality, bourgeois parliamentary democracy is a formal democracy; masses of people elect their representatives, but they do not govern themselves through their own workers’ organi2ations. And Lenin’s social democracy was supposed to be a qualitatively completely different form of social regulation and not merely a kind of quantitative improvement of formal parliamentarianism. It was supposed to replace the proletarian dictatorship of the state by the actual and practical self-administration of the workers. The parallel existence of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ and the self-administration of the working masses is an impossibility. As a political demand it is confusing and nonsensical. In actual fact it is a dictatorship of party bureaucracy that rules over the masses under the guise of a formal democratic parliamentarianism.
We must never lose sight of the fact that Hitler always built upon the justified hate of masses of people against sham democracy and the parliamentary system - and with great success! In view of such political manoeuvres on the part of Russian Communists, fascism’s potent slogan, ‘unity of Marxism and parliamentary bourgeois liberalism’, must have been very impressive I Around 1935 the hope that broad masses of people throughout the world had placed on the Soviet Union began to dwindle more and more. Actual problems cannot be solved with political illusions. One has to have the guts to face difficulties squarely. Clearly established social concepts cannot be confused with impunity.
In the establishment of ‘Soviet democracy’, the participation of the masses in the administration of the state was stressed, the protectorate of the industries over the respective branches of the government was made explicit and the fact that workers’ and peasants’ councils have a voice ‘in’ the people’s commissariats was extolled. However, this is not the issue. It is the following that is important:
How do the masses actually participate in the administration of the state? Is this participation an increasing take-over of administrative functions, as is called for by social democracy? What is the form of this ‘participation’?
A formal protectorate of an industry over a branch of the government is not self-administration. Does the government branch control the industry or vice versa?
Councils having a voice ‘in’ the people’s commissariat means that they are appendages or, at best, executive organs of the commissariat, whereas Lenin’s demand reads: Replacement of all official bureaucratic functions by Soviets, which spread more and more among the masses.
If Soviet democracy is ‘introduced’ at the same time that the dictatorship of the proletariat continues to be ‘consolidated’, this can only mean that the goal, the continuous withering away of the proletarian state and the proletarian dictatorship, has been given up.
On the basis of the available facts and the assessment of these facts, the introduction of ‘Soviet democracy’ sixteen years after the introduction of Soviet democracy means that: The transition from authoritarian state government to self-administration of society was not possible. This transition failed to materialize because the biopathic structure of
the masses and the means of effecting a basic change in this structure were not recognised. There can be no question that the misappropriation and curbing of individual capitalists was a complete success; but the education of the masses, the attempt to make them capable of abolishing the state, which was only an oppressor to them, to effect its ‘withering away’ and to take over its functions, was not a success. It was for this reason that the social democracy that had begun to develop during the first years of the Revolution had to die out little by little. It was also for this reason that the state apparatus, which had not been replaced by anything, had to be consolidated to secure the existence of society. Besides a shifting of the political emphasis to the masses of the kolkhoz peasants, the ‘introduction of universal suffrage’ in 1935 meant the reintroduction of formal democracy. In essence, it meant that the bureaucratic state apparatus, which was becoming more and more powerful, granted a meaningless parliamentary right to a mass of people who had not been able to destroy this apparatus and had not learned to administrate its own affairs. There is no indication whatever in the Soviet Union that the slightest effort is being made to prepare the working masses to take over the administration of society. It is certainly necessary to teach people to read and write, to be sanitary and to understand the technique of motors, but this has nothing to do with social self-administration. Hitler does as much.
The development of Soviet society was characterized by the formation of a new autonomous state apparatus, which had become strong enough to give the mass of the population the illusion of freedom without endangering its own position in any way, in precisely the same way as Hitler’s National Socialism had done. The introduction of Soviet democracy was not a step forward, but a step backward, one of many regressions to old forms of social life. What guarantees are there that the state apparatus of the Soviet Union will abolish itself by educating the masses to administrate their own affairs? Sentimentality serves no purpose here: The Russian Revolution encountered an obstacle, of which it had no knowledge and which was therefore shrouded in illusions. The obstacle was man’s human structure, a structure that had become biopathic in the course of thousands of years. It would be absurd to set the ‘blame’ down to Stalin or anyone else. Stalin was only an instrument of circumstances. Only on paper does the process of social development appear as easy and as pleasant as taking a stroll through the woods. In hard reality it encounters new and unrecognized difficulties one after the other. Regressions and catastrophes result. One has to learn to recognize, investigate and master them. However, one reproach remains: The veracity of a promising social plan has to be examined again and again. It must be honestly decided whether the plan is true or false, and whether anything has been overlooked in its development. Only is such a way can the plan be consciously changed and improved, and its development more effectively mastered. It may often be necessary to mobilize the thinking of many people to overcome those forces that obstruct the development towards freedom. But to befog the masses with illusions is a social crime. When an honest leader of the masses reaches an impasse and knows that he cannot make any headway, he resigns and makes room for others. If a better leader does not appear, the present leader honestly tells the community exactly where it stands, and he waits with them to see whether a solution cannot be found after all, either from the course of events themselves or from an individual insight. But the politician is afraid of such honesty.
In defence of the international workers’ movement, it must be pointed out that its fight for a real and genuine democracy -not a mere rhetorical one - was made incredibly difficult. One always sided with those who declared: ‘The dictatorship of the proletariat is a dictatorship like any other dictatorship. This has become clear, for why is it only now that democracy is “introduced”?’ There was no reason to be happy about the praise given to the Soviet Union (‘introspective’,’ democracy’, ‘finally’) by the Social Democrats. It was a bitter pill, a formality. An objective regression in the course of a development is often necessary and has to be accepted, but to shroud such a regression in illusions by the fascist method of lying cannot be justified. When Lenin introduced the ‘New Economic Policy’ (NEP) in 1923, he did not say: ‘We have advanced from a lower phase of proletarian dictatorship to a higher phase. The introduction of the NEP constitutes an enormous step forward towards communism.’ Such a statement would have immediately undermined confidence in Soviet leadership. When Lenin introduced the NEP, he said:
It is sad and cruel, but there is no way of getting around it right now. The economy imposed upon communism by the war has confronted us with unforeseen difficulties. We have to go back a step in order to precede that much more securely. True, we are giving private enterprise a bit of freedom - we have no other choice - but we know exactly what we are doing.
In the case of the ‘introduction of Soviet democracy’, such self-evident perception and frankness were missing. In 1935 they were more necessary than ever before. Such a direct and honest approach would have won millions of friends throughout the world. It would have made people think. It might even have averted the pact with Hitler, the responsibility for which was shoved off on the Trotskians. As it was, however, a new Russian nationalism was superimposed on Lenin’s social democracy.
The Leningrad Red Times, the central organ of the Russian Bolsheviks, stated on 4 February 1935:
All our love, our faithfulness, our strength, our hearts, our heroism, our life -everything for you, take it, O great Stalin, everything is yours, O leader of our great homeland. Command your sons. They can move in the air and under the earth, in water and in the stratosphere.80 Men and women of all times and all nations will remember your name as the most magnificent, the strongest, the wisest, the most beautiful. Your name is written on every factory, on every machine, in every corner of the world, in every human heart. When my beloved wife bears me a child, the first word I will teach him will be ‘Stalin.’
In Pravda of 19 March 1935 (quoted in the Rundschau, no. 15,p. 787,1935), we find an article entitled ‘Soviet Patriotism’in which’ Soviet patriotism’ begins to vie with ‘fascist patriotism’:
Soviet patriotism - that flaming feeling of boundless love, unconditional devotion to one’s native country, deepest responsibility for its fate and for its defence - surges forth from the deepest depths of our people. Never before has heroism in the right for one’s own country reached such stupendous heights. The unparalleled and glorious history of the Soviet Union shows what the working people are capable of when it is a question of their homeland. The immortal song of our dear, liberated and new-formed country resounds from the illegal work, the barricades, the storming and sweeping of Budenny’s crack mounted army, the grape-shot fire of the imperishable army of the revolution, the
harmony of the plants and factories of socialist industries, the rhythm of work between city and town, and the activity of the Communist Party.
Soviet Russia, the country bred and reared by Lenin and Stalin I How it is caressed by the rays of Spring, which began with the October revolution! Streams swelled up, dammed-up currents broke forth, and all the forces of the working people began to move and to pave the way for new historical developments. The grandeur of the Soviet Union, the splendour of its fame and its power shone forth from every corner of the country. The seeds of a rich life and a socialist culture sprang up rapidly. We have raised the Red banner of Communism to new heights and far into blue distant skies. - Soviet patriotism is the love of our people for the land, the land which we have wrung from the capitalists and landowners with blood and sword. It is the attachment to the beautiful life which our great people have created. It is the militant and powerful guard in West and East. It is the dedication to the great cultural heritage of human genius which has blossomed so perfectly in our country and in our country only [my italics, WR]. Is it surprising, then, that foreigners come to the borders of the Soviet Union, people with different educational backgrounds, to bow reverently to the haven of culture, to the state of the Red flag?
Soviet Union - the fountainhead of mankind I The name of Moscow rings forth to the workers, peasants, to all honest and cultured people the world over, rings forth like a bell in the fog at sea, a hope for a brighter future and for the victory over fascist barbarism.
... In our socialist country, the interests of the people cannot be separated from the interests of the country and its government. Soviet patriotism derives its inspiration from the fact that the people themselves, under the leadership of the Soviet Party, have shaped their own life. It derives its inspiration from the fact that only now, under Soviet power, has our beautiful and rich country been opened to the working people. And the natural attachment to one’s native country, one’s native soil, to the skies under which one first saw the light of this world, grows and becomes a powerful pride in one’s socialist country, in one’s great Communist Party, in one’s Stalin. The ideas of Soviet patriotism breed and rear heroes, knights and millions of brave soldiers who, like an all-engulfing avalanche, are ready to hurl themselves upon the enemies of the country and obliterate them from the face of the earth. With the milk from their mothers, our youth are imbued with love for their country. It is our obligation to educate new generations of Soviet patriots, for whom the interests of their country will mean more than anything else, even more than life itself...
.. . The great invincible spirit of Soviet patriotism is nurtured with the greatest care, skill and creativity. Soviet patriotism is one of the outstanding manifestations of the October revolution. How much strength, boldness, youthful vigour, heroism, pathos, beauty and movement it contains!
In our country, Soviet patriotism glows like a powerful flame. It drives life forward. It heats the motors of our storm tanks, our heavy bombers, our destroyers, and loads our cannons. Soviet patriotism guards our borders, where vile enemies, doomed to perish, threaten our peaceful life, our power and our glory...
This is the emotional plague of politics. It has nothing to do with the natural love of one’s native country. It is the maudlin raving of a writer who knows of no objective means of stirring people’s enthusiasm. It is comparable to the erection of an impotent man, forcefully brought about by the use of yohimbine. And the social effects of such
patriotism are comparable to the reaction of a healthy woman to a sexual embrace made possible by yohimbine.
Perhaps this ‘Soviet patriotism’, in view of the extinction of revolutionary enthusiasm, was a necessary preparation for the later fight against the ‘Wotan patriotism. Work-democracy has nothing to do with such ‘patriotism’. Indeed, one can safely infer that rational social leadership has failed when such yohimbine patriotism begins to crop up. The love of a people for its country, attachment to the earth and devotion to the community speaking the same language, are human experiences, which are too deep and too serious to be made the objects of political irrationalism. Such yohimbine forms of patriotism do not solve a single objective problem of the human society of the working man; they have nothing to do with democracy. Outbreaks of sentimental pathos always point to fear on the part of those who are responsible. We want to have nothing to do with it.
When a genuine democratic, i.e., work-democratic, effort is made to effect a basic change in the structure of masses of people, it is easy to appraise the progress or lack of progress that is being made. For instance, when masses of people begin to clamour for super-dimensional pictures of their ‘fuhrer’, then they are on their way to becoming irresponsible. In Lenin’s time, a spoon-fed fuhrer-cult did not exist, and there were no sky-high pictures of the fuhrer of the proletariat. It is known that Lenin wanted no part of such things.
The attitude taken towards technical achievements is also indicative of a people’s progress or lack of progress towards genuine freedom. In the Soviet Union the construction of the airliner’ Gorki’ was extolled as a ‘revolutionary achievement’. But wherein lies the essential difference between the construction of this airliner and those of Germany or America? The construction of aeroplanes is indispensable in order to provide the broad industrial basis necessary for modern work-democracy. This much is clear, and there should be no arguing about it. What is important is whether the broad masses of workers identify with the construction of aeroplanes in an illusionary nationalistic-chauvinistic way, i.e., derive a feeling of superiority towards other nations on the basis of the construction of these aeroplanes, or whether the construction of aeroplanes serves to bring about a closer human relationship among the various nations and nationalities, i.e., serves to promote internationalism. In other words, as far as man’s character structure is concerned, the construction of aeroplanes can serve a reactionary or work-democratic purpose. Under the management of power-thirsty politicians, the construction of aeroplanes can easily be exploited to create nationalistic chauvinism. But airliners can also be used to transport Germans to Russia, Russians to China and Germany, Americans to Germany and Italy and Chinese to America and Germany. In this way the German worker would have a chance to see for himself that he is not essentially different from the Russian worker, and the English worker would be able to learn that the Indian worker is not to be looked upon as a born object of exploitation.
Here again we see clearly that the technical development of a society is not identical with its cultural development. The structure of the human character represents a social power in itself, a power that can be directed towards reactionary or international goals, even when the technical basis is one and the same. The tendency to see everything in terms of economy is catastrophic. Every effort must be made to correct this tendency.
It boils down to this: The working masses of people must refuse to be content with illusionary gratifications, which always end in a kind of fascism, and to insist upon the real gratification of the necessities of life and to bear the responsibility for it.
The Social Democratic organization of Viennese workers regarded the introduction of the trolley system by the Social Democratic community of Vienna as a specifically social democratic achievement. The communist workers of Moscow, that is to say, workers who were fundamentally hostile towards the Social Democratic party, regarded the subway constructed by the communist city administration of Moscow as a specifically communist achievement. And the German workers regarded the planned Baghdad railroad as a specifically German achievement. These examples are evidence of the plague like nature of the illusionary gratification fostered by political irrationalism. Such irrationalism conceals the simple fact that a German railroad and a Viennese railroad and a Moscow railroad are based on precisely the same internationally valid principles of work, which the Viennese, Berlin and Moscow workers follow in precisely the same way. These workers of various nationalities don’t say to themselves: We are all related to one another by the principle of our work and accomplishment. Let us get to know one another and also consider how we can teach the Chinese worker to make use of our principles.’ No! The German worker is firmly convinced that his railroad is different and better, let us say more Wotanistic, than the Russian railroad. Thus, it never enters his mind to help the Chinaman to build a railroad. On the contrary, hypnotized by his illusionary nationalistic gratification, he follows some plague-ridden general or another, who wants to deprive the Chinese of whatever railroad they have. In this way the emotional plague of politics engenders division and deadly hostility within the same class; in this way it engenders envy, boastfulness, unprincipled conduct and irresponsibility. The elimination of illusionary gratification and its replacement by the genuine gratification derived from a genuine interest in and relationship to work and the establishment of international cooperation among workers are indispensable preconditions for the uprooting of the craving for authority in the character structure of the workers. Only then will the working masses of people be able to develop the forces necessary to adapt technology to the needs of the masses.
In an essay printed in the Europdische Heften of 22 November 1934, Hinoy reached the conclusion:’ .. The workers [in the Soviet Union] do not feel themselves to be the direct rulers of their country, nor do the youth. The state is the ruler, but the youth look upon this state as their own creation, and it is from this conception that it derives its patriotism.’
Such statements were common at that time, and they left no room for doubt that, no matter how one appraised it, the society of the Soviet Union of the 19305 had nothing whatever to do with the original programme of the Communist party, a programme that called for the gradual abolition of the state.
This is an objective and factual statement and not a political programme against the Soviet Union. I call upon the KGB agents in Europe and America to take cognizance of this. The murdering of those who make such statements will not change the facts of the case in the least.
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