The Press Saturday, April 16, 1921. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17121, 16 April 1921, Page 8

The Press Saturday, Apr il 16, 1921. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

i' Qwing to the peasants''polity- of passive •resistance by producing only sufficient ? for their owq and'sp coercing the „ r , city population by ii" the 1 direfiai't'jtoeat. 6f ■ starvation, the v Aussiw «> wo. learn from very rf,ce^^tAos f htls reestablished freedom *1 of ti'ocloj ' deoided to substitute ft r tax lor its high-handed method 0 requisitioning, -'Both these '-"steps imply recognition of the "bourgeois" rights, of private property, and «-• are- so. for forth 4 Irani; abandonment; of tho mueh-bekuded dGctrinea of Com.j. Tflurusm. Commenting on the situation A : ; liiiuft ■ created, and' oti;Vecent public proby Lenin, "Th& Tims 9" points out that on £enin!/} own showing " "the of iho IJroletariat" 1 - has proved, at leftst-in Russia, a disas-, hj,: ttons failure, and that nothing liow rec mains for the Bolshevik firebrands bub . to eat'the. leek .with what , gustft they ■ can simulate, and revert to that very r principle of capitalism, the abolition of £■ which v&s their: sole justification for existence. . -Nov, from the standpoint •< of the Marxist, or of those intellectual offspring of.Mnrx- and Erigels, the pfor • pliets and disciples of the Thin! Inter* . hationa},. all this is very -Bjjd. * It is worsethan sad. It is demoralising, and may i?ell make these gentle-Siearted &i- ---. . thusiasts despair of human nature. .'All < the conditions aa commonly laid down. - 1 present. • There were the va3t masses of population vaguely discontent* i .: ' ed, not knowing—to borrow from. "Creative Revolution" a charming phrase of Stephen Reynolds', not. know* i ing " 'xaOtly what they wants," but .wanting, it ."hellish bad for a long r f time." . .Thore were the small group of ;• olaBS-oonscious Communists, the prole- - tariat elite, knowing exactly what they i wanted, and undeterred by any sontii ment of ''bourgeois" morality or reli- *' gion from taking even the most repul- ,*,■ aive steps 1 lead to them ' getting it. This small and fcglily effective olate hiia seised the roths of power *' according to programme, and, as ■■■; Mfcrr ptlts it in his attractive! .."Communist used its ' --political supremacy to wrest, by decrees, and very rapid degrees, ' all r capital from the bourgeoisie, and to centralise .all instruments of production :? ' n*.thehandaof the State—thats,their, r own This should have led, acCordingtotheGospol of Marx,, to an . '^increase,slowit might be,,Jbut dejinHo i and" progressive, of the total productive . - forces. Yet- somehow it didn't. It

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slymld have led to the growth of "a "revolutionary mass psychology"—the exponents of this kind of doctrine have a touching* faith in reverberating phrases—tho liftle leaven of the selfchosen few ledvening the whole lump of the many, and making them all comprehend in theory, and realise in practice, "the social character-of production," and tho extreme impropriety, to use no harsher tbrm, of living on incomes derived from investment. Out of this should naturally havip evolved, if not exactly a new heaven, at least a new earth, where the good of all should be the goal of every effort, and men' find sufficient stimulus for toil in .the thought of the benefits they were thereby producing for their neighbour. But yesterday this was confidently being Jooked for in Russia, where it is affirmed by Eden and Cedar Paul in their , lyrical musings on " Ergatocracy" 1 recently published as "Creative Revolution," that' "gradu"ally, as popular ideology is modified " by the new conditions, the stringency "of the dictatorship will relax, and "tho subordination of tho workers " will cdme more and more to resemble " the harmonious sclf-disciplino an "orchestra or a choir; while {lie dic- " tutorship in. its turn will become " more like the guiding will and in- " spiration of a' competent orchestral "conductor or, choirmaster." But now it appears that far from the "ideology" of ,the moujik conform-' .ing to the "ideology" of the "new "conditions," tho "new conditions" are themselves to be modified by the moujiks, and modified so effectively that the bloom of "their newness is roughly rubbed away. _ "Our views," write thb Pauls, "have been greatly "clarified, our conative trends (!) "have been enormously stimulated by " the new perspectives opened out by "the Bolshevik revolution. Left-wing " Socialists liave no use for Parliament- " tiry democracy. They are out' for " Communist ergatocracy. And we of "the Third International expect to " achieve -it by way of the Dictatorship of the-Proletariat." Quite so, and. very prettily put, but'will the formula work? It appears that in Russia it will not.