DICTATORSHIP

By James Kennedy

Marx made this declaration when he criticised the reactionary policy of the German Social Democratic Party, in 1875. To understand its significance it is necessary to take into consideration the economic and historical conditions prevailing in Germany at that time.

First of all, in Germany among 'the working people' there are more peasants than proletarians.

Bismarck, whose policy was to unify the separate German States (without proletarian revolution) made overtures to the SPD which could only lead to confusion and the consequent disruption of the movement. To escape this situation, it was necessary that the proletariat should overthrow its ruling class, and owing to the backwardness of the country concessions would require to be granted to the peasants inside and the capitalists outside; through the medium of proletarian dictatorship.

 In Russia, Lenin did nothing more than call for the dictatorship of the proletariat where the peasants comprised the vast majority of the workers and the real force of the revolution. In the front line of the Revolution was "the proletariat grown upon the soil I of great industry", and struggling for the control of the means of production, whereas the demands of the peasants did not exceed land distribution. To yield concessions could only be of momentary significance, as "the class struggle is national not in respect of substance but in respect of form." The tocsin for World Revolution, sounded by the Russian proletariat, failed to echo in Western Europe. The defeat of the proletariat in Germany in 1919 and 1923 was instrumental in abandoning the idea of World Revolution, and the Russian Dictatorship of the proletariat was supplanted by the Dictatorship of the Communist Party Bureaucracy.

 The CPSU being the strongest section of the Communist International it was natural that the headquarters of the CI should be Moscow. The policy of the CI was concentrated in developing the internal and external interests of Russia, and parties were set up throughout the capitalist world for that purpose. Reactionary policies e.g. reformist and religious expediencies were instituted to win the masses in opposition to the Second International, and the slogan "all power to the Soviet Union, the Socialist Fatherland" came to the fore. The triumph of the Bolshevik Party in October 1917, seemed a safe pretext for all counter-revolutionary activities.

The CPSU played for time so as to maintain its bureaucratic hierarchy. With the collapse of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, financial, commercial and military pacts with foreign powers, peace in order to perfect its military machine, State exploitation of the workers, the execution of the old Bolsheviks, have all been done in the name of the "Socialist Fatherland". The policy of the CI in making national and international concessions to the capitalist class in defence of the USSR has brought about a reversion calculated to make Russia "the last stronghold of capitalist reaction" chiefly directed against the international Proletariat.

 Lenin's utopian idea of a "Workers' State" is in essence State Capitalism. The NEP is capitalist economics, through and through. Wage labour is the basis of capitalism. Russian society is no exception - high or low wages have no bearing on the question. The productivity of labour increases out of all proportion to wages which means a relative decline in the value of labour-power and the abject pauperisation of the working class as a whole. To say that unemployment in Russia is non-existent is to reveal that industrial development has not reached that stage where the agrarian population has been completely absorbed in wage labour.

Wage labour gives rise to commodity production and capitalist relations, therefore, the control of the means of production and exchange in the hands of the state and not the proletariat. State Capitalism presupposes wage slavery, and a slavery that becomes more brutal in character as the productive forces of labour develops. The Russian proletariat is learning why failure followed the initial success of the Bolshevik Party. The CI in exploiting Bolshevik traditions to divert the proletariat from the International character of the revolution cannot always succeed. The impetus once set in motion will raise the Marxian slogan: Abolition of the wages system!

(March-April 1939)