Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 4th, 1920 WHERE BOLSHEVISM LEADS.

Hokitika Guardian, 4 August 1920, Page 2

Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 4th, 1920 WHERE BOLSHEVISM LEADS.

From time to time thorp app Statements by Lenin and Trotsky whicft leave no doubt where Bolshevism leads. Jn Jfoijdav’s issue was a cable message g.iying a synopsis of a recent speech by the former in whjch l.enjn is credited with waving that he considered that any policy except one hound up with terror and violence was impossible. The dictatorship of the proletariat was unthinkable without terror and violence against the most deadly enemies of the working classes. Just what this all means, we need but think back into history and study the doings of the French Revolution to understand what “the terror and violence of a proletariat dictatorship” would ’’ ’ ’ A Melbourne paper some little time ago when conjouring over this subject remarked that Emerson found that history taught us “the good .of evil,-” and this probably will he civilisation’s consolation of the horrors attendant upon the rise of Bolshevism In Russia. Just now in the affray with Poland wp find to begin with, that Bolshevism cannot' keep its word. To it, its spoken and written word, are as a scrap of paper to be torn up and thrown to the winds, ns circumstances suit. But while Boli'heyism is thus not genericnlly honest, it has uu objective which in turn will rend the proletariat and make them hut the creatures of a machine which would negative the rules and customs of civilisation. It- js not so long ago that the London “Morning Post” published Trotsky’s scheme for the conscription of labor in fiussia. He laid down thirteen rules for observation, and issued his scheme with a circular letter which contained this paragraph: “If we hesitat-e for a single moment as to the necessity of .establishing labour conscription and of militarising labour (in the beginning at least, in the form of labour armies,) of enlisting the experts and of fighting against- the formless and loose organisation of our collegiate economic organs, the cause of communist reconstruction will be gravely men-

The object In view is plainly disclosed, and the letter concluded with n warning that the contra] committee cannot possiby endorse the objections expressed by the workers to the mih- , tarisation of labour nor can it tolerate j references to the “principle of the freedom of labour.” In Australia, eomj mented the Argus, the -advocacy of | Bolshevism is bnspd upon the belief that in Russia Bolshevism is the cause of the worker. This is not so. It is the cause of the political exploiter. It has created a. bureaucracy against which the workers a.re complaining bitterly. As Colonel Ward, the British Labour member, has shown, it is the. working cla&ses in Russia, who are opposing the Lenin regime. True there are opponents among the other classes; but a very interesting—though not unnatural devc-

lopment lias been manifested lately. The Lenin Government has been so i long in office that vested interests huve ; grown up round its institutions, and some of these interests would suffer j with a change of Government. Article 1 of the Russian Constitution ad- , opted in 1918 declares “the Russian Soviet Republic is organised on tho basis of a free union of free nations, as a federation of Soviet national republics.” Within two years of the passing of that article conscription of labour is decreed. It is perfectly constitutional in Russia, for in the second chapter of Article 1 we read—“ Universal obligation to work is introduced for the purpose of eliminating the parasitic

strata of society, ■ and organising the . economic life of the country.” To this provision the various Soviets readily consented:. Its object was to* fojrce ; duke’s son to work, and no Soviet delegate imagined, in these halyeon ‘ days, when the birth of freedom was so blithely hailed, that it would be ' used to compel cook’s son to work I against his will. Already the leaders . of strikes have been shot, and strik- 1 ers driven to work by the Reds at the ' point of the bayonet. It is difficult to obtain from the Bolsheviks trustworthy i nccounts of their administration, but the authenticity of the documents now quoted are said to be beyond question. Bolshevism seems to be on the high road for self-destruction.