DOCUMENTS 243 242 THE CLASS STRUGGLE Let us have complete independence of the Young People League; but let us also have complete independence to criticise them! They do not want to be flattered.
Among the errors of this fine periodical we have just named, are, principally, the following three: On the disarmament question, the incorrect position we have criticised in a special article. There is reason to believe that this error was called forth by the desire (very good in itself) to emphasize the necessity of fighting for a complete abolition of militarism (a good point. forgetting, however, the part to be played by civil wars in the socialistic revolution. As to the question of the difference between socialists and anarchists in their relation to the government, Comrade Nota Bene article (No. 6) makes a serious mistake (also in a number of other questions, as for instance, in the motivation of our right against the cry to defend the home country. The author wants to give a clear conception of government in general (by the side of the predatory imperialist government. He quotes a number of declarations by Marx and Engels. He finally arrives, among other things, at the following two conclusions: a) It is absolutely erroneous to find the difference between socialists and anarchists in the fact that the former are in favor of, and the latter against, government.
The actual difference lies in the fact that the revolutionary social democracy wishes to create a new, social (because centralized) system of production, e. technically more advanced, while the decentralized anarchistic production would amount to a step back, to the old technology, to the old form of enterprise. This is not correct. The author puts the question as to the difference between the relation of the socialists and anarchists to the government, but he answers not this question, but another, giving the difference in their attitude toward the economic foundation of the future society. And do not forget that this is a very important and necessary question. For all this, the chief difference between the relations of the anarchists and socialists toward the government should not have been overlooked. Socialists are willing to utilize the present government and its institutions in the struggle for the liberation of the working class, and also insist on the necessity of so using the government in the creation of a suitable transition form from capitalism to socialism. This transition form, also governmental, is the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The anarchists wish to abolish the government, disrupt it (German Sprengen. as Comrade Nota Bene observes at one point, erroneously ascribing this view to socialists. The socialists (the author has unfortunately cited chiefly quotations from Engels that are not always appropriate)
are for a dying out, a gradual disuse of government after the expropriation of the bourgeoisie.
b) For the social democracy, which is, or at least ought to be, the awakener of the masses, it is now more than ever necessary to emphasize its hostility to the principle of government. The present war has shown how deeply rooted governmentalism is in the minds of the workers. Thus writes Comrade Nota Bene. To emphasize hostility to the principle of government, one must really have a clear idea of it, and that is just what the author lacks. The phrase about the rooted governmentalism is quite confusing, un Marxian, and unsocialistic. It is not governmentalism that must be met with a denial of governmentalism, but it is the policy of opportunism (an opportunist, reformist, bourgeois relation to the government) that must be met with a revolutionary social democratic policy (a revolutionary social democratic attitude toward the bourgeois government, and the utilization of the government against the bourgeoisie for the overthrow of the latter. That is a very different story. We shall return to this very important question at some future date, In the declaration of principles of the International Young People Socialist League, printed in No. as a proposal by the secretary, there are a number of inaccuracies, and, worst of all, the main thing is missing: a clear statement of our three principal tendencies (socialchauvinism, the center, the right. now fighting for the domination of the Socialism of the whole world. repeat: such errors must be refuted and cleared up. And we must make every effort to approach and keep in contact with the Young People organizations, helping them in every way, but we must exercise understanding in doing so.
Manifesto issued on December 19, 1917, By the Soviet of Railway, Petrograd District, to the Railroad Employees of all the Russian Railway Systems Comrades!
The general confusion into which the country was plunged by the government of the landholders and capitalists, which for eight inonths has been operating without the slightest accounting or controi, has been particularly manifest in the railways, which constitute one of the most important functions of the national economic life.
Even without this, the transportation system, after being dislocated by the war, had fallen into complete disorganization because of the criminal carelessness, ignorance, and lack of preparation on the part of the higher officials of the railroads, of the guardians, who, although they were entrusted with the guidance of the hundreds of thousands of white slaves constituting the lower ranks of the serv