Even under present conditions in Russia, it is possible still to feel the inspiration of the essential spirit of Communism, the spirit of creative hope, seeking to sweep away the incumbrances of injustice and tyranny and rapacity which obstruct the growth of the human spirit, to replace individual competition by collective action, the relation of master and slave by free cooperation. This hope has helped the best of the Communists to bear the harsh years through which Russia has been passing, and has become an inspiration to the world. The hope is not chimerical, but it can only be realized through a more patient labour, a more objective study of facts, and above all a longer propaganda, to make the necessity of the transition obvious to the great majority of wage-earners. Russian Communism may fail and go under, but Communism itself will not die. And if hope rather than hatred inspires its advocates, it can be brought about without the universal cataclysm preached by Moscow. The war and its sequel have proved the destructiveness of capitalism; let us see to it that the next epoch does not prove the still greater destructiveness of Communism, but rather its power to heal the wounds which the old evil system has inflicted upon the human spirit.
Endnotes
-
See the article “On the role of the Communist Party in the Proletarian Revolution,” in Theses Presented to the Second Congress of the Communist International, Petrograd-Moscow, —a valuable work which I possess only in French. ↩
-
Electrification is desired not merely for reorganizing industry, but in order to industrialize agriculture. In Theses Presented to the Second Congress of the Communist International (an instructive little book, which I shall quote as Theses), it is said in an article on the Agrarian question that Socialism will not be secure till industry is reorganized on a new basis with “general application of electric energy in all branches of agriculture and rural economy,” which “alone can give to the towns the possibility of offering to backward rural districts a technical and social aid capable of determining an extraordinary increase of productivity of agricultural and rural labour, and of engaging the small cultivators, in their own interest, to pass progressively to a collectivist mechanical cultivation” (p. 36 of French edition). ↩
-
In Theses (p. 34) it is said: “It would be an irreparable error … not to admit the gratuitous grant of part of the expropriated lands to poor and even well-to-do peasants.” ↩
-
In Theses (p. 6 of French edition) it is said:
The ancient classic subdivision of the Labour movement into three forms (parties, trade unions, and cooperatives) has served its time. The proletarian revolution has raised up in Russia the essential form of proletarian dictatorship, the soviets. But the work in the Soviets, as in the industrial trade unions which have become revolutionary, must be invariably and systematically directed by the party of the proletariat, i.e. the Communist Party. As the organized advanced guard of the working class, the Communist Party answers equally to the economic, political and spiritual needs of the entire working class. It must be the soul of the trade unions, the soviets, and all other proletarian organizations.
The appearance of the Soviets, the principal historical form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, in no way diminishes the directing role of the party in the proletarian revolution. When the German Communists of the “Left” … declare that “the party itself must also adapt itself more and more to the Soviet idea and proletarianize itself,” we see there only an insinuating expression of the idea that the Communist Party must dissolve itself into the Soviets, so that the Soviets can replace it.
This idea is profoundly erroneous and reactionary.
The history of the Russian Revolution shows us, at a certain moment, the Soviets going against the proletarian party and helping the agents of the bourgeoisie. …
In order that the Soviets may fulfil their historic mission, the existence of a Communist Party, strong enough not to “adapt” itself to the Soviets but to exercise on them a decisive influence, to force them not to adapt themselves to the bourgeoisie and official social democracy, … is on the contrary necessary.
-
The ninth Communist Congress (March–April, 1920) says on this subject: “In view of the fact that the first condition of the success of the Soviet Republic in all departments, including the economic, is chiefly systematic printed agitation, the Congress draws the attention of the Soviet Government to the deplorable state in which our paper and printing industries find themselves. The ever decreasing number of newspapers fail to reach not only the peasants but even the workers, in addition to which our poor technical means render the papers hardly readable. The Congress strongly appeals to the Supreme Council of Public Economy, to the corresponding Trade Unions and other interested institutions, to apply all efforts to raise the quantity, to introduce general system and order in the printing business, and so secure for the worker and peasant in Russia a supply of Socialist printed matter.” ↩
Colophon
The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism
was published in 1920 by
Bertrand Russell.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Jacob Garber,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2005 by
Thierry Alberto, Jeannie Howse, and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans from the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
The Bolshevik,
a painting completed in 1918 by
David Jagger.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
November 11, 2024, 10:39 p.m.
You can check for
