AnarchismBourgeoisieCominternCommunismCommunist PartyDemocracyPrivate PropertySocialismSocialist PartySovietStrikeSyndicalismWorkers MovementWorkers PartyWorking ClassWorld War

The Soviets and The W.
NEW political form has seized upon By Ferguson The is capitalizing the sympathy which it has won by the capitalistic brutalithe imagination of people everywhere as the highest expression of democracy, Not tary expenditure in favor of educational and ties against it as an offensive against the Communist movement in this country, it the democracy of phrases and abstract per economic expenditure. With the intervensonal liberties, which vanish upon touch. tion out of the way, the Soviet government goes to unbelievable extremes in its official denunciation of mass action and Dictatorbut mass democracy democracy which would already exhibit itself as almost enTeaches out in a conscious effort to bring tirely a communist administration of na ship of the Proletariat, conceptions which are the essence of the world proletarian reever widening circles of industrial and rural tional economy. It goes without saying that volution now in full swing. It still makes workers into the active administration and such an administration for a great country control of the national economy.
like Russia especially immediately follow attacks upon the Communist Party for advoIt seems a strange perversity that at this ing the world war destruction and the czar. cating political action, even though the late day in the history of the proletarian istic chaos, requires a span of years for ad Communist Party puts overwhelming emrevolution in Russia there are yet among us. justment in detail. But the actual achieve phasis on industrial organization and acin such radical organizations as the ments up to date, and the cementing of the tion as the most effective means of political and the Socialist Labor Party, many confidence of a vast unenlightened people in assertion by the workers of the United who cannot transpose in their own minds the proletarian democracy, and the winning States today. Again it is the anarchist inthe Dictatorship of the Proletariat as the of the acquiescent tolerance of political mi fusion which explains why these outward expression of a real democracy of norities ranging from Anarchists to Liberals. propagandists shun anything done in the the working class. There is dictatorship in and the drawing together with the industrial name of political power, even though it is the that there is exclusion from suffrage, ex proletarians of the peasantry and large ele politics of the revolution itself, not the Soclusion of the exploiting groups which have ments of the petty bourgeosie these testi cialist politics of parliamentarism against up to this moment used the state power for fy to the high adaptability and democratic which the Syndicalist movement was a protest. The Syndicalists set up the general the bourgeois class purposes, have used this appeal of the Soviets in operation.
power ruthlessly and brutally, even in the The official literature of the strike in opposition to the indirect, futile.
countries which make the greatest pre describe the Soviets as a makeshift substi wheedling method of legislative reformism.
tense out of the hollow forms of bourgeois tute for industrial unions. An analysis of The Left Wing Socialists accepted the chaldemocracy, as in the United States. these writings shows that the root lenge, and in the European countries, in AuThe proletarian revolution contrasts with of the argument is nothing other than the stralia and in Canada there is the closest cooperation between the radical unionists the 18th century bourgeois revolutions in anarchist conception of the proletarian revohonesty The bourgeois revolutionists. lution that the revolution is the elimination and the revolutionary Socialists, who in alof the state, as against the Communist conmost all the countries now differentiate some with sinister cunning, others with themselves as Communists.
generous zeal and glow of love of liberty. ception that the revolution is the elimination used the slogans of liberty, fraternit. of the private property system of exploitThis opposition of radical unionism to equality as if these meant what they said. ation, with the disappearance of the state as Communism and Sovietism is a distinctive The masses responded, under the impulse of a necessary sequence of the passing of class American phenomenon. In other countries their oppressions, and in the faith of Reason exploitation.
one cannot discover the line between the reand Liberty. Then came the black night of Careful rending will show that the idea volutionist within the union and the revobourgeois rendering of blood and bone and of the industrial union prepared in ad lutionist as an advocate of Dictatorship of soul into avid profit.
vance of the revolution for taking into it the Proletariat. The mass action concepThe proletarian revolution does not con self all the functions of social reconstruc tion, even more, has its practical exemplificeal its problems and difficulties from tion is not only a phantastical myth, not only cation in the activities of the Syndicalists.
whom shall it conceal, if it is in truth of the an evasion of the obvious reality that the in The WW. for the moment, lines up masses? Nor does it deal in hypocrisies with dustrial union comes into life under capital withr the Scheidemann Ebert Kautsky reits enemies. It is the Socialist dealing in ism as an immediate fighting weapon for gine against the Communist movement, the hypocrisies which finally brought the So better conditions of labor (and that this is cardinal principle of which is: All power to cialist parties to the level of their own its whole equipment as an industrial union. the Soviets. All power to the special new hypocrisies. The hypocrisies offered for but also a mischievous boomerang against organs of power, political and industrial, by bourgeois consumption converted them the revolutionary movement itself, since it which the working class makes itself the selves into the justification for working class leads to the negation of everything except ruling class of society, using this power for betrayal the unions built according to this theory. dictatorial inroads upon the private property Even the Liberals, with generous inThe insists that it came into being system of labor exploitation.
stincts and love of liberty in confusion with in direct responsiveness to the life needs of compelling upper class loyalty, neverthe the workers in the mines, in the forests, on The 11. for the moment, refuses to less are sweept off their feet by the honesty the docks and in the shops. And so do all realize that the struggle for proletarian class of the proletarian revolution. They are other unions come into being under like power and the process of revolutionary resickened of their own sham democracy, but impulse. The difference is that the 11. construction will determine new forms of the bonds of social caste hold them firm.
was built out of such elements and under organization and management, just as the At most they talk for the masses; they do such conditions of capitalistic exploitation struggles in the capitalist industries have not act with the masses. The Liberals that it took on a special character of des produced unions of one kind and another.
accept the marking off of the limits of perate struggle, and that it required a kind The for the moment, refuses to proletarian democracy during the transi of organization and methods of action which concede that Sovietism does not in the least tional revolutionary period, under the name were in fundamental antagonism to the negate the immediate importance of the indictatorship, as a welcome relief from the dominant trade unionism. Under like con dustrial union movement in the class phrase democracy which is nothing other ditions of exploitation, and with the craft struggle; that Sovietism does not at all nethan finance dictatorship as against the groups losing control as the unskilled and gate the potential usefulness of pre revoluwhole people.
semi skilled come to the front in unions such tionary industrial unions as units within Not so the in its official liter as those of the steel workers and the miners the general Soviet system.
ature. Not so the There are those and the machinists and the longshoremen, who value phrases like their fellows cling the trend toward aggressive industrial uniIn other words, there is nothing for the to opiates.
onism takes its way throughout the labor to surrender to the general removement.
volutionary movement This proces is helped by the in the United The Soviets are a form in process of agitation and example of the pioneer States except an arrogant conceit, and failevolution. At the moment they are a blend, But the becomes a perverse will result in a miserable betrayal ing this, the present official policy of the not without confusion, of the initial unit element in the labor movement when it both in the Communist political control and loses sight of the realities which brought it of all the splendid courage and sacrifice that of the Communist economic administration into life and insists that it is its theory, not have gone into the making of hisAs the reconstruction advances, the politi its example, which is of importance; when tory.
cal functions diminish and the economic it insists that the whole revolutionary agifunctions come to the forefront. Even now, tation in the United States can be nothing of revolutionary proletarian propaganda in The Communist Party stands for a unity with the Red Army fighting on some fifteen except one continuous hallelujah to the the United States, a unity based on the Mafronts, there is already a tremendous alter.
ation of the national budget away from milimifesto and Program of the Communist International.