BOLSHEVISM.

A FEROCITY OF TONE YOU WOULD EXPECT

What is Bolshevism? The Bolshevists and their friends in happier countries are never tired of telling the world that they are sadly misunderstood and cruelly defamed. We may all agree with them that it is of the first importance they should be recognised for what they really are. The purpose of this article is to set out their own account of themselves. In the spring of this year there was published in Moscow, in rather odd French, a bulky pamphlet with the name of one Nicolas Boukharine on the title page, entitled “The Programme of the Communist (Bolsheviks).” It has the Bolshevik imprimatur, we need hardly say, for nothing can be printed in Russia without. Its purpose is, of course, to present the Bolshevik case in the most favourable light to the world, and in particular to France. There can, therefore, be no evading the fact that its doctrines are not an invention of the enemy, but the pure milk of the Bolshevik gospel. Let us glance first at its tone. Ferocity you will expect, and you have it, but a very curious phenomenon is the infusion into ferocity of a childishness, a bewildering inconsequence. Nothing quite like this furious fatuity is to be found in revolutionary literature. But no criticism or description can do justice to it, and we prefer to quote. “What is it,” M. Boukharine inquires, “which rouses the most violent hatred or capitalists and landlords, generals and bishops, courtesans of the great world, and chief constables? It is Bolshevism.” As quaint a collection of enemies, surely, as ever a controversialist put together. Here is M. Boukharine argumentative: “We know that cattle can be raised specially for slaughter. Such animals are fed artificially, because from day to day they are given a special fattening food. The bourgeoisie does the same with the working class. It is true that it gives a very small allowance of real food, on which it would be difficult to grow fat.” The notion of obesity as a privilege not granted to the working classes is certainly quite new. And here is the Bolshevik upon religion: “Faith in God is faith in a state of slavery existing, according to its own account, not only in the world, but in the whole universe. It is clear that in fact nothing of the sort exists, but we can understand what an obstacle such stories are to the development of humanity … Suppose that we believed in the prophet Elijah. We should never have built a tramway … Those who do not believe in God examine what happens, how and why; they see that the war has been launched by kings and president, by the richer bourgeoisie and the landlords.” Religion, to be sure, has had some strange antagonists before, but M. Boukharine stands by himself. It may be hard to believe that such weird rhetoric is not a parody. But no enemy has done this. We have given it word for word and letter for letter, and, crazy as it is, we can make oath that these small doses give but a pale and ineffectual impression of the whole pamphlet.

FOUNDATION OF THE FAITH.

Let us come, if we can find it, to something like argument. The foundation of Bolshevism, according to this -authorised gospel, is Karl Marx, who has certainly been translated indeed. “Bolshevism,” we are told, “is nothing but the revolutionary doctrine of Karl Marx on the inevitable necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the absolute domination of the working class over the bourgeoisie.” The contribution of the Bolsheviks is “the form which this dictatorship must take. Their revolution has revealed to the world that the power of Soviets (committees) of working men is alone capable of bringing humanity out of its existing impasse. The power of the Soviets is an invention which has become universal. Hungary, Bavaria, following Russia, have already put it into practice. Its triumph in the whole world is as certain as the ruin of the accursed system of capitalism.” That was written in April, and perhaps the triumph even from the longitude of Moscow does not look so certain as it did. Now, what exactly does Bolshevism mean by the Soviet system? In the first place (and the meaning of Bolshevism is in general negative rather than positive, hostility to something else rather than constructive) it means antagonism to Parliamentary government. “What,” our Bolshevik asks, “is the fundamental difference between a Parliamentary Republic and a Sovietist Republic? It consists in this, that in a Sovietist Republic the non-working classes are deprived of the vote, and have no part in the direction of affairs. The Soviets govern the country. These Soviets are elected by the workers in the particular spot where they work, in the mills, factories, workshops, mines, market towns, villages. The middleclass, the ex-landlords, bankers, speculators, business men, shopkeepers, moneylenders, the “intellectuals” who supported Kornilow, the priests, the bishops – in a word all the black army has no voice, does not enjoy fundamental political rights.” And yet there are people who tell us that the Bolsheviks are champions of democracy! They have themselves no illusions about that. They speak with frank contempt of “what used to be called democratic.” They insist upon the fact that what they want is no government of the people by the people, but government of the whole people by a section of the people, and a government more absolute than any of the old Empires. “The working class revolution,” we are told, “cannot grant freedom of organisation, freedom of speech, freedom of the Press.” This is its ruthless decision – no indulgence to the middle class, and complete liberty and the power of acting on that liberty for the working-classes and the poor peasants.” It was (in the first pages of the pamphlet) a horrible outrage that any one should dare interfere with the right to strike. But that the “intellectuals” should strike, that the men of science, the engineers, should decline to work for the Bolsheviks is also and equally an outrage. As for religion, the Bolshevik can no more keep that out of his rhetoric than Mr. Dick could do without King Charles’s head. Religion is “the old virus with which the people used to be, and still is being; poisoned.” Reverence for the souls of dead rich men, that is the basis of religion.” And so forth in the same strain.

THE MIDDLE CLASS.

But it may be said that, after all, the Bolshevik claim of supremacy for the working class is essentially democratic. In every country the “nonworkers,” to adopt the Bolshevik phrase, are numerically insignificant, a mere handful of the community. But this is not the least what the Bolshevik means. The accursed middle-class, in his eyes, is a vast proportion of the population. “The workers and the poor peasants” in the phrase he loves (note the limitation to the poor) are only a section, a section into which, for example, a very large number of British trades unionists would not be admitted. For the qualification required of a member of the working classes in the Bolshevik system is not that a man should work, not even that he should work with his hands. He may do all that, and yet be one of the accursed middle class who are entitled neither to life, nor liberty, nor any sort of happiness. The Bolshevik recognises quite frankly that the rich are but few, and it is not the rich that he hates, not the man of great possessions, but the man of small, because in the man with something to lose, with a house of his own, or a bit of land, or some trifle of capital laid by, he discovers the most determined enemy of his communism. He tells us that the foundation of the old society is not the great capitalist, but the “petit patron,” the man who has some little substance of his own. “To take away their strength from the rich in violently depriving them of their riches; that is the chief task of the workman’s party,” the Bolsheviks. But who are “the rich”? Everybody who owns anything. “Capitalism and the great capitalist are the offspring of the struggle between small businesses. If we were to divide property and produce small owners … we should come back after a little while to the order which we have just destroyed… Division into small private properties is not the workman’s ideal.” What about the workman who already owns something? In the first place he does not exist; in the second place, he is a rascal. In spite of all that Bolshevism can say or do, the workman and the peasant insist upon believing that they will be better off with some property of their own. And the conclusion of the whole matter is a very nervous piece of rhetoric. There are going to be “many thorns on the path,” the Bolshevik will have to suffer and go through fire, he has “many bad elements in his own ranks who only want to sell themselves to the first comer and fish in troubled water.” There must be “no senile groans, no hysterical cries,” the unhappy “workman and poor peasant” must believe that he cannot go back, and therefore go on, Such is Bolshevism as it looks to its own advocates.