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{{Library work|title=Materialism and the Dialectical Method|author=Maurice Cornforth|published_date=1953|source=https://comlib.encryptionin.space/epubs/cornforth1953/|pdf=https://redstarpublishers.org/cornforth1953.pdf}}

== Dedication ==

In Memory of David Guest

Who Died in Spain

in the Struggle

Against Fascism

First printed in the U.S.A. in 1953

Reprinted in 2015

== Foreword ==

The present volume deals with the basic ideas of Marxist materialism and the dialectical method. A second volume will deal with the further development of these ideas in their application to society and the growth of human consciousness—historical materialism and the theory of knowledge.

I have tried to confine myself to a straightforward exposition of the leading ideas of dialectical materialism, so far as I myself have succeeded in understanding them, without burdening the exposition with digressions into more technical questions of philosophy, or with discussions about and polemics against any of the more abstruse philosophical theories, past and present, or with much of the argumentation about particular points which might be necessary to defend them against philosophical opponents.

I have done my best to limit the use of technical terms to the minimum, and to give an explanation of the meaning of all such terms as and when they occur

Maurice Cornforth

London

== PART ONE: MATERIALISM ==

=== 1. Party Philosophy ===

<blockquote>''Every philosophy expresses a class outlook. But in contrast to the exploiting classes, which have always sought to uphold and justify their class position by various disguises and falsifications, the working class, from its very class position and aims, is concerned to know and understand things just as they are, without disguise or falsification.''

''The party of the working class needs a philosophy which expresses a revolutionary class outlook. The alternative is to embrace ideas hostile to the working class and to socialism.''

''This determines the materialist character of our philosophy.''
</blockquote>

==== Party Philosophy and Class Philosophy ====

Dialectical materialism has been defined as: “The world outlook of the Marxist-Leninist Party.”<ref>Joseph Stalin, ''Dialectical and Historical Materialism'', N. Y., 1940.</ref>

This definition must appear a strange one, both to many politicians and to many philosophers. But we will not begin to understand dialectical materialism unless we can grasp the thought which lies behind this definition.

Let us ask, first of all, what conception of philosophy lies behind the idea expressed in this definition of party or—since a party is always the political representative of a class—class philosophy.

By philosophy is usually meant our most general account of the nature of the world and of mankind’s place and destiny in it—our world outlook.

That being understood, it is evident that everybody has some kind of philosophy, even though he has never learned to discuss it. Everybody is influenced by philosophical views, even though he has not thought them out for himself and cannot formulate them.

Some people, for example, think that this world is nothing but “a vale of tears” and that our life in it is the preparation for a better life in another and better world. They accordingly believe that we should suffer whatever befalls us with fortitude, not struggling against it, but trying to do whatever good we can to our fellow creatures. This is one kind of philosophy, one kind of world outlook.

Other people think that the world is a place to grow rich in, and that each should look out for himself. This is another kind of philosophy.

But granted that our philosophy is our world outlook, the task arises of working out this world outlook systematically and in detail, turning it into a well-formulated and coherent theory, turning vaguely held popular beliefs and attitudes into more or less systematic doctrines. This is what the philosophers do.

By the time the philosophers have worked out their theories, they have often produced something very complicated, very abstract and very hard to understand. But even though only a comparatively few people may read and digest the actual productions of philosophers, these productions may and do have a very wide influence.

For the fact that philosophers have systematized certain beliefs reinforces those beliefs, and helps to impose them upon wide masses of ordinary people. Hence, everyone is influenced in one way or another by philosophers, even though they have never read the works of those philosophers.

And if this is the case, then we cannot regard the systems of the philosophers as being wholly original, as being wholly the products of the brain-work of the individual philosophers. Of course, the formulation of views, the peculiar ways in which they are worked out and written down, is the work of the particular philosopher. But the views themselves, in their most general aspect, have a social basis in ideas which reflect the social activities and social relations of the time, and which, therefore, do not spring ready-made out of the heads of philosophers.

From this we may proceed a step further.

When society is divided into classes—and society always has been divided into classes ever since the dissolution of the primitive communes, that is to say, throughout the entire historical period to which the history of philosophy belongs—then the various views which are current in society always express the outlooks of various classes. We may conclude, therefore, that the various systems of the philosophers also always express a class outlook. They are, in fact, nothing but the systematic working out and theoretical formulation of a class outlook, or, if you prefer, of the ideology of definite classes.

Philosophy is and always has been class philosophy. Philosophers may pretend it is not, but that does not alter the fact.

For people do not and cannot think in isolation from society, and therefore from the class interests and class struggles which pervade society, any more than they can live and act in such isolation. A philosophy is a world outlook, an attempt to understand the world, mankind and man’s place in the world. Such an outlook cannot be anything but the outlook of a class, and the philosopher functions as the thinking representative of a class. How can it be otherwise? Philosophies are not imported from some other planet, but are produced here on earth, by people involved, whether they like it or not, in existing class relations and class struggles. Therefore, whatever philosophers say about themselves, there is no philosophy which does not embody a class outlook, or which is impartial, as opposed to partisan, in relation to class struggles. Search as we may, we shall not find any impartial, non-partisan, non-class philosophy.

Bearing this in mind, then, we shall find that the philosophies of the past have all, in one way or another, expressed the outlook of the so-called “educated” classes, that is to say, of the exploiting classes. In general, it is the leaders of society who express and propagate their ideas in the form of systematic philosophies. And up to the appearance of the modern working class, which is the peculiar product of capitalism, these leaders have always been the exploiting classes. It is their outlook which has dominated philosophy, just as they have dominated society.

We can only conclude from this that the working class, if today it intends to take over leadership of society, needs to express its own class outlook in philosophical form, and to oppose this philosophy to the philosophies which express the outlook and defend the interests of the exploiters.

“The services rendered by Marx and Engels to the working class may be expressed in a few words thus: they taught the working class to know itself and be conscious of itself, and they substituted science for dreams,” wrote Lenin.<ref>''Lenin on Engels'', N. Y., 1935.</ref>

“It is the great and historic merit of Marx and Engels that they proved by scientific analysis the inevitability of the collapse of capitalism and its transition to communism, under which there will be no more exploitation of man by man… that they indicated to the proletarians of all countries their role, their task, their mission, namely, to be the first to rally around themselves in this struggle all the toilers and exploited.”<ref>''Ibid''.</ref>

Teaching the working class “to know itself and be conscious of itself,” and to rally around itself “all the toilers and exploited,” Marx and Engels founded and established the revolutionary theory of working-class struggle, which illumines the road by which the working class can throw off capitalist exploitation, can take the leadership of all the masses of the people, and so free the whole of society once and for all of all oppression and exploitation of man by man.

Marx and Engels wrote in the period when capitalism was still in the ascendant and when the forces of the working class were first being rallied and organized. Their theory was further continued by Lenin, in the period when capitalism had reached its final stage of monopoly capitalism or imperialism, and when the proletarian socialist revolution had begun. It was further continued by Stalin.

Marx and Engels taught that, without its own party, the working class certainly could not win victory over capitalism, could not lead the whole of society forward to the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. The working class must have its own party, independent of all bourgeois parties. Further developing the Marxist teachings about the party, Lenin showed that the party must act as the vanguard of its class, the most conscious section of its class, and that it is the instrument for winning and wielding political power.

To fulfill such a role, the party must evidently have knowledge, understanding and vision; in other words, it must be equipped with revolutionary theory, on which its policies are based and by which its activities are guided.

This theory is the theory of Marxism-Leninism. And it is not just an economic theory, nor yet exclusively a political theory, but a world outlook—a philosophy. Economic and political views are not and never can be independent of a general world outlook. Specific economic and political views express the world outlook of those who hold such views, and conversely, philosophical views find expression in views on economics and politics.

Recognizing all this, the revolutionary party of the working class cannot but formulate, and having formulated, hold fast to, develop and treasure its party philosophy. In this philosophy—dialectical materialism—are embodied the general ideas by means of which the party understands the world which it is seeking to change and in terms of which it defines its aims and works out how to fight for them. In this philosophy are embodied the general ideas by means of which the party seeks to enlighten and organize the whole class, and to influence, guide and win over all the masses of working people, showing the conclusions which must be drawn from each stage of the struggle, helping people to learn from their own experience how to go forward towards socialism.

And so we see why it is that in our times a philosophy has arisen which expresses the revolutionary world outlook of the working class, and that this philosophy—dialectical materialism—is defined as “the world outlook of the Marxist-Leninist Party.”

Experience itself has taught the party the need for philosophy. For experience shows that if we do not have our own revolutionary socialist philosophy, then inevitably we borrow our ideas from hostile, anti-socialist sources. If we do not adopt today the outlook of the working class and of the struggle for socialism, then we adopt—or slip into, without meaning to do so—that of the capitalists and of the struggle against socialism. This is why the working class party—if it is to be the genuine revolutionary leadership of its class, and is not to mislead its class by the importation of hostile capitalist ideas, and of policies corresponding to such ideas—must be concerned to formulate, defend and propagate its own revolutionary philosophy.

==== Class Philosophy and Truth ====

Against what has just been said about a class and party philosophy, the objection is bound to be raised that such a conception is a complete travesty of the whole idea of philosophy.

Class interests may incline us to believe one thing rather than another, some will say, but should not philosophy be above this? Should not philosophy be objective and impartial, and teach us to set class and party interests aside, and to seek only for the truth? For surely what is true is true, whether this suits some or other class interests or not? If philosophy is partisan—party philosophy—how can it be objective, how can it be true philosophy?

In reply to such objections, we may say that the working class standpoint in philosophy is very far indeed from having no concern for truth.

Is there no such thing as truth? Of course there is—and men are getting nearer to it. For different outlooks, partisan as they may be, are not on a level so far as nearness to truth is concerned. Every philosophy embodies a class outlook. Yes, but just as one class differs from another class in its social role and in its contribution to the development of society, so one philosophy embodies positive achievements in comparison with another in the working out of the truth about the world and society.

People are prone to believe that if we adopt a partisan, class standpoint, then we turn our backs on truth; and that, on the other hand, if we genuinely seek for truth, then we must be strictly impartial and non-partisan. But the contrary is the case. It is only when we adopt the partisan standpoint of historically the most progressive class that we are able to get nearer to truth.

The definition of dialectical materialism, therefore, as the philosophy of the revolutionary working-class party, is in no way incompatible with the claim of dialectical materialism to express truth, and to be a means of arriving at truth. On the contrary. We have every right to make this claim, in view of the actual historical position and role of the working class.

Except for the working class, all other classes which have aspired to take the leadership of society have been exploiting classes. But every exploiting class, whatever its achievements, has always to find some way of disguising its real position and aims, both from itself and from the exploited, and of making out that its rule is just and permanent. For such a class can never recognize its real position and aims as an exploiting class, or the temporary character of its own system.

For example, in ancient slave society, Aristotle, the greatest philosopher of antiquity, made out that the institution of slavery was decreed by nature, since some men were by nature slaves.

In the heyday of feudal society the greatest philosopher of the middle ages, Thomas Aquinas, represented the entire universe as being a kind of feudal system. Everything was arranged in a feudal hierarchy,<ref>A hierarchy is an order in which the things at the top rule over the things below them. Thus the serfs were at the bottom of the feudal hierarchy and the king was at the top. Similarly, the Pope is the head of the “Catholic hierarchy.”</ref> with God surrounded by the chief archangels at the top. Everything depended on what was next above it in the system, and nothing could exist without God.

As for capitalism, it dissolves all feudal ties and, as Marx and Engels observed, “has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous cash payment.”<ref>Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, ''The Communist Manifesto'', Chapter I, N. Y., 1948.</ref> This was reflected in the beginnings of capitalist philosophy, especially in Britain.

This philosophy saw the world as consisting of independent atoms, each complete in itself, concerned only with itself, and all interacting. This was a mirror of capitalist society, as seen by the rising bourgeoisie. And by means of such ideas they succeeded, too, in disguising their own aims of domination and profit. Worker and capitalist were “on a level,” each was a free human atom, and they entered into a free contract, the one to work, the other to provide capital and pay wages.

But the working class does not need any such “false consciousness” as is contained in such philosophies. It does not want to set up a new system of exploitation, but to abolish all exploitation of man by man. For this reason, it has no interest whatever in disguising anything, but rather in understanding things just as they really are. For the better it understands the truth, the more is it strengthened in its struggle.

Moreover, other classes have always wanted to perpetuate themselves and to last out for as long as they could. And so they have favored philosophical “systems” which give themselves a permanent place in the universe. Such systems attempt to define the nature of the universe so as to represent certain things and certain relations as being necessary, eternal and unchangeable. And then they make it appear that a particular social system is a necessary part of the whole.

But the working class does not want to perpetuate itself. On the contrary, it wants to do away with its own existence as a class as quickly as possible, and to establish a classless society. Therefore, the working class has no use at all for any philosophical “system” which establishes any false permanence. Its class position and aims are such that it can afford to and needs to recognize and trace out the change, coming into being and ceasing to be of everything in existence.

Party philosophy, then, has a right to lay claim to truth. For it is the only philosophy which is based on a standpoint which demands that we should always seek to understand things just as they are, in all their manifold changes and interconnections, without disguises and without fantasy.

==== A Revolution in Philosophy ====

“The Marxian doctrine is omnipotent because it is true,” wrote Lenin. “It is complete and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world conception which is irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction or defense of bourgeois oppression.”<ref>Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, V. I. Lenin, Joseph Stalin, ''On the Theory of Marxism'', Lenin, “The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism,” N. Y., 1948.</ref>

And he further wrote:

“There is nothing resembling ‘sectarianism’ in Marxism, in the sense of its being a hidebound, petrified doctrine, a doctrine which arose away from the highroad of development of world civilization. On the contrary, the genius of Marx consists precisely in the fact that he furnished answers to questions the foremost minds of mankind had already raised. His teachings arose as the direct and immediate continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of philosophy, political economy and socialism.”<ref>''Ibid''.</ref>

Marxism is a revolution in philosophy. This revolution appears as the culmination of a whole great development of philosophical thought, in which the problems of philosophy were posed and took shape in the course of a series of revolutions, the highest point being reached in the classical German philosophy of the early nineteenth century. Marxism is thus the continuation and culmination of the past achievements of philosophy. And it is a continuation which puts an end to an epoch and constitutes a new point of departure. In comparison with past philosophies, it launches out on new lines. It puts an end to the “systems” of the past, and is a philosophy of an entirely new kind.

Marxism-Leninism is no longer a philosophy which expresses the world outlook of an exploiting class, of a minority, striving to impose its rule and its ideas upon the masses of the people, in order to keep them in subjection; but it is a philosophy which serves the common people in their struggle to throw off all exploitation and to build a classless society.

Marxism-Leninism is a philosophy which seeks to understand the world in order to change it. “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways,” wrote Marx. “The point, however, is to change it.”<ref>Frederick Engels, ''Ludwig Feuerbach'', Appendices, Karl Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach,” XI, N. Y., 1941.</ref> Therefore, if we could say of past philosophy that it has been an attempt to understand the world and man’s place and destiny in it—an attempt necessarily conditioned by the class outlook, prejudices and illusions of the various exploiting class philosophers—we have to say of Marxist-Leninist philosophy that it is an attempt to understand the world in order to change the world and to shape and realize man’s destiny in it. Dialectical materialism is a theoretical instrument in the hands of the people for use in changing the world.

Marxism-Leninism, therefore, seeks to base our ideas of things on nothing but the actual investigation of them, arising from and tested by experience and practice. It does not invent a “system,” as previous philosophies have done, and then try to make everything fit into it.

Thus dialectical materialism is in the truest sense a popular philosophy, a scientific philosophy and a philosophy of practice. “The discovery of Marx and Engels represents the end of the old philosophy, ''i.e.'' the end of that philosophy which claimed to give a universal explanation of the world,” said A. A. Zhdanov. “With the appearance of Marxism as the scientific world outlook of the proletariat there ends the old period in the history of philosophy, when philosophy was the occupation of isolated individuals, the possession of philosophical schools consisting of a small number of philosophers and their disciples, detached from life and the people, and alien to the people.

“Marxism is not such a philosophical school. On the contrary, it supersedes the old philosophy—the philosophy that was the property of a small elite, the aristocracy of the intellect. It marked the beginning of a completely new period in the history of philosophy, when it became a scientific weapon in the hands of the proletarian masses in their struggle for emancipation from capitalism.

“Marxist philosophy, as distinguished from preceding philosophical systems, is not a science above other sciences; rather, it is an instrument of scientific investigation, a method, penetrating all natural and social sciences, enriching itself with their attainments in the course of their development. In this sense, Marxist philosophy is the most complete and decisive negation of all preceding philosophy. But to negate, as Engels emphasized, does not mean merely to say ‘no’. Negation includes continuity, signifies absorption, the critical reforming and unification in a new and higher synthesis of everything advanced and progressive that has been achieved in the history of human thought.”<ref>Andrei A. Zhdanov, ''Essays on Literature, Philosophy, and Music'', Chapter II, N. Y., 1950.</ref>

The revolutionary characteristics of dialectical materialism are embodied in the two features of Marxist-Leninist philosophy which give it its name—dialectics and materialism. In order to understand things so as to change them we must study them, not according to the dictates of any abstract system, but in their real changes and interconnections—and that is what is meant by dialectics.

We must set aside preconceived ideas and fancies about things, and strive to make our theories correspond to the real conditions of material existence—and that means that our outlook and theory are materialist.

In dialectical materialism, wrote Engels, “the materialist world outlook was taken really seriously for the first time and was carried through consistently….” For “it was resolved to comprehend the real world—nature and history—just as it presents itself to everyone who approaches it free from preconceived idealist fancies. It was decided relentlessly to sacrifice every idealist fancy which could not be brought into harmony with the facts conceived in their own and not in a fantastic connection. And materialism means nothing more than this.”<ref>Engels, ''Ludwig Feuerbach'', Chapter IV.</ref>

=== 2. Materialism and Idealism ===

<blockquote>''Materialism is opposed to idealism since, while idealism holds that the spiritual or ideal is prior to the material, materialism holds that matter is prior. This difference manifests itself in opposed ways of interpreting and understanding every question, and so in opposed attitudes in practice.''

''While idealism takes many subtle forms in the writings of philosophers, it is at bottom a continuation of belief in the supernatural. It involves belief in two worlds, in the ideal or supernatural world over against the real material world.''

''In essence idealism is a conservative, reactionary force; and its reactionary influence is demonstrated in practice. Marxism adopts a consistent standpoint of militant materialism.''
</blockquote>

==== Materialism, and Idealism—Opposed Ways of Interpreting Every Question ====

Our philosophy is called Dialectical Materialism, said Stalin, “because its approach to the phenomena<ref>A ''phenomenon'', plural ''phenomena'', is anything which we observe.</ref> of nature, its method of studying and apprehending them, is dialectical, while its interpretation of the phenomena of nature, its conception of these phenomena, its theory, is materialistic.”<ref>Stalin, ''Dialectical and Historical Materialism''.</ref>

Materialism is not a dogmatic system. It is rather a way of interpreting, conceiving of, explaining every question.

The materialist way of interpreting events, of conceiving of things and their interconnections, is opposed to the idealist way of interpreting and conceiving of them. Materialism is opposed to idealism. With every question, there are materialist and idealist ways of interpreting it, materialist and idealist ways of trying to understand it.

Thus materialism and idealism are not two opposed abstract theories about the nature of the world, of small concern to ordinary practical folk. They are opposed ways of interpreting and understanding every question, and, consequently, they express opposite approaches in practice and lead to very different conclusions in terms of practical activity.

Nor are they, as some use the terms, opposite moral attitudes— the one high-minded, the other base and self-seeking. If we use the terms like this, we will never understand the opposition between capitalist and materialist conceptions.

For this way of speaking is, as Engels said, nothing but “an unpardonable concession to the traditional philistine prejudice against the word materialism resulting from the long-continued defamation by the priests. By the word materialism the philistine understands gluttony, drunkenness, lust of the eye, lust of the flesh, arrogance, cupidity, miserliness, profit-hunting and stock-exchange swindling—in short, all the filthy vices in which he himself indulges in private. By the word idealism he understands the belief in virtue, universal philanthropy and in a general way a ‘better world’, of which he boasts before others.”<ref>Engels, ''Ludwig Feuerbach'', Chapter II.</ref>

Before trying to define materialism and idealism in general terms, let us consider how these two ways of understanding things are expressed in relation to certain simple and familiar questions. This will help us to grasp the significance of the distinction between a materialist and an idealist interpretation.

First let us consider a very familiar natural phenomenon—a thunderstorm. What causes thunderstorms?

An idealist way of answering this question is to say that thunderstorms are due to the anger of God. Being angry, he arranges for lightning and thunderbolts to descend upon mankind.

The materialist way of understanding thunderstorms is opposed to this. The materialist will try to explain and understand thunderstorms as being solely due to what we call natural forces. For example, ancient materialists suggested that far from thunderstorms being due to the anger of the gods, they were caused by material particles in the clouds banging against one another. That this particular explanation was wrong, is not the point: the point is that it was an attempt at materialist as opposed to idealist explanation. Nowadays a great deal more is known about thunderstorms arising from the scientific investigation of the natural forces involved. Knowledge remains very incomplete, but at all events enough is known to make it quite clear that the explanation must be on materialist lines, so that the idealist explanation has become thoroughly discredited.

It will be seen that while the idealist explanation tries to relate the phenomenon to be explained to some ''spiritual'' cause—in this case the anger of God—the materialist explanation relates it to ''material'' causes.

In this example, most educated people today would agree in accepting the materialist interpretation. This is because they generally accept the ''scientific'' explanation of natural phenomena, and every advance of natural science is an advance in the ''materialist'' understanding of nature.

Let us take a second example, this time one arising out of social life. For instance: Why are there rich and poor? This is a question which many people ask, especially poor people.

The most straightforward idealist answer to this question is to say simply—It is because God made them so. It is the will of God that some should be rich and others poor.

But other less straightforward idealist explanations are more in vogue. For example: it is because some men are careful and farsighted, and these husband their resources and grow rich, while others are thriftless and stupid, and these remain poor. Those who favor this type of explanation say that it is all due to eternal “human nature.” The nature of man and of society is such that the distinction of rich and poor necessarily arises.

Just as in the case of the thunderstorm, so in the case of the rich and poor, the idealist seeks for some spiritual cause—if not in the will of God, the divine mind, then in certain innate characteristics of the human mind.

The materialist, on the other hand, seeks the reason in the material, economic conditions of social life. If society is divided into rich and poor, it is because the production of the material means of life is so ordered that some have possession of the land and other means of production while the rest have to work for them. However hard they may work and however much they may scrape and save, the non-possessors will remain poor, while the possessors grow rich on the fruits of their labor.

On such questions, therefore, the difference between a materialist and an idealist conception can be very important. And the difference is important not merely in a theoretical but in a practical sense.

A materialist conception of thunderstorms, for example, helps us to take precautions against them, such as fitting buildings with lightning conductors. But if our explanation of thunderstorms is idealist, all we can do is to watch and pray. If we accept an idealist account of the existence of rich and poor, all we can do is to accept the existing state of affairs—rejoicing in our superior status and bestowing a little charity if we are rich, and cursing our fate if we are poor. But armed with a materialist understanding of society we can begin to see the way to change society.

It is clear, therefore, that while some may have a vested interest in idealism, it is in the interests of the great majority to learn to think and to understand things in the materialist way.

How, then, can we define materialism and idealism, and the difference between them, in general terms, so as to define the essence of the question? This was done by Engels.

“The great basic question of all philosophy, especially of modern philosophy, is that concerning the relation of thinking and being…. The answers which the philosophers have given to this question split them into two great camps. Those who asserted the primacy of spirit to nature and therefore in the last instance assumed world creation in some form or another… comprised the camp of idealism. The others, who regarded nature as primary, belong to the various schools of materialism.”<ref>Engels, ''Ludwig Feuerbach'', Chapter II.</ref>

Idealism is the way of interpreting things which regards the spiritual as prior to the material, whereas materialism regards the material as prior. Idealism supposes that everything material is dependent on and determined by something spiritual, whereas materialism recognizes that everything spiritual is dependent on and determined by something material. And this difference manifests itself both in general philosophical conceptions of the world as a whole, and in conceptions of particular things and events.

==== Idealism and the Supernatural ====

At bottom, idealism is religion, theology. “Idealism is clericalism,” wrote Lenin.<ref>V. I. Lenin, ''Selected Works'', Vol. 11, “On Dialectics,” N. Y., 1943.</ref> All idealism is a continuation of the religious approach to questions, even though particular idealist theories have shed their religious skin. Idealism is inseparable from superstition, belief in the supernatural, the mysterious and unknowable.

Materialism, on the other hand, seeks for explanations in terms belonging to the material world, in terms of factors which we can verify, understand and control.

The roots of the idealist conception of things are, then, the same as those of religion.

To believers, the conceptions of religion, that is to say, conceptions of supernatural spiritual beings, generally seem to have their justification, not, of course, in any evidence of the senses, but in something which lies deep within the spiritual nature of man. And, indeed, it is true that these conceptions do have very deep roots in the historical development of human consciousness. But what is their origin, how did such conceptions arise in the first place? We can certainly not regard such conceptions as being the products, as religion itself tells us, of divine revelation, or as arising from any other supernatural cause, if we find that they themselves have a natural origin. And such an origin can in fact be traced.

Conceptions of the supernatural, and religious ideas in general, owe their origin first of all to the helplessness and ignorance of men in face of the forces of nature. Forces which men cannot understand are personified—they are represented as manifestations of the activity of spirits.

For example, such alarming events as thunderstorms were, as we have seen, explained fantastically as due to the anger of gods. Again, such important phenomena as the growth of crops were put down to the activity of a spirit: it was believed that it was the corn spirit that made the corn grow.

From the most primitive times men personified natural forces in this way. With the birth of class society, when men were impelled to act by social relations which dominated them and which they did not understand, they further invented supernatural agencies doubling, as it were, the state of society. The gods were invented superior to mankind, just as the kings and lords were superior to the common people.

All religion, and all idealism, has at its heart this kind of ''doubling of the world''. It is dualistic, and invents a dominating ideal or supernatural world over against the real material world.

Very characteristic of idealism are such antitheses as: soul and body; god and man; the heavenly kingdom and the earthly kingdom; the forms and ideas of things, grasped by the intellect, and the world of material reality, perceptible by the senses.

This “doubling” of the world is carried to its furthest limits in subjective idealism, which ends by regarding the material world as a mere illusion and asserts that only the non-material world is real. The dualistic character of all idealism is most marked in subjective idealism, which posits a complete antithesis between the mechanistic system of the illusory material world and the “freedom” of the higher, non-material reality. This antithesis, disguised as it often is behind allegedly “scientific” and “empiricist” theorizing, characterizes all subjective idealist philosophies, from Berkeley to John Dewey.

For idealism, there is always a higher, more real, non-material world—which is prior to the material world, is its ultimate source and cause, and to which the material world is subject. For materialism, on the other hand, there is ''one'' world, the material world.

By idealism in philosophy we mean any doctrine which says that beyond material reality there is a higher, spiritual reality, in terms of which the material reality is in the last analysis to be explained.

==== Some Varieties of Modern Philosophy ====

At this point a few observations may be useful concerning some characteristic doctrines of modern bourgeois philosophy.

For nearly three hundred years there has been put forward a variety of philosophy known as “subjective idealism.” This teaches that the material world does not exist at all. Nothing exists but the sensations and ideas in our minds, and there is no external material reality corresponding to them.

And then again, this subjective idealism is put forward in the form of a doctrine concerning knowledge: it denies that we can know anything about objective reality outside ourselves, and says that we can have knowledge of appearances only and not of “things in themselves.”

This sort of idealism has become very fashionable today. It even parades as extremely “scientific.” When capitalism was still a progressive force, bourgeois thinkers used to believe that we could know more and more about the real world, and so control natural forces and improve the lot of mankind indefinitely. Now they are saying that the real world is unknowable, the arena of mysterious forces which pass our comprehension. It is not difficult to see that the fashion for such doctrines is just a symptom of the decay of capitalism.

We have seen that, at bottom, idealism always believes in ''two worlds'', the ideal and the material, and it places the ideal prior to and above the material. Materialism, on the other hand, knows one world only, the material world, and refuses to invent a second, imaginary, superior ideal world.

Materialism and idealism are irreconcilably opposed. But this does not stop many philosophers from trying to reconcile and combine them. In philosophy there are also various attempted compromises between idealism and materialism.

One such attempted compromise is often known as “dualism.” Such a compromise philosophy asserts the existence of the spiritual as separate and distinct from the material—but it tries to place the two on a level. Thus it treats the world of non-living matter in a thoroughly materialist way: this, it says, is the sphere of activity of natural forces, and spiritual factors do not enter into it and have nothing to do with it in any way. But when it comes to mind and society, here, says this philosophy, is the sphere of activity of spirit. Here, it maintains, we must seek explanations in idealist and not in materialist terms.

Such a compromise between materialism and idealism, therefore, amounts to this—that with regard to all the most important questions concerning men, society and history we are to continue to adopt idealist conceptions and to oppose materialism.

Another compromise philosophy is known as “realism.” In its modern form, this philosophy has arisen in opposition to subjective idealism.

The “realist” philosophers say that the external material world really exists independent of our perceptions and is in some way reflected by our perceptions. In this the “realists” agree with the materialists in opposition to ''subjective'' idealism; indeed, you cannot be a materialist unless you are a thorough-going realist on the question of the real existence of the material world.

But merely to assert that the external world exists independent of our perceiving it, is not to be a materialist. For example, the great Catholic philosopher of the middle ages, Thomas Aquinas, was in this sense a “realist.” And to this day most Catholic theologians regard it as a heresy to be anything but a “realist” in philosophy. But at the same time they assert that the material world, which really exists, was created by God, and is sustained and ruled all the time by the power of God, by a spiritual power. So, far from being materialists, they are idealists.

As for modern “realism,” it concedes to materialism the bare existence of matter and, for the rest, is ready to concede everything to idealism.

Moreover, the word “realism” is much abused by philosophers. So long as you believe that something or other is “real,” you may call yourself a “realist.” Some philosophers think that not only is the world of material things real, but that there is also, outside space and time, a real world of “universals,” of the abstract essences of things: so these call themselves “realists.” Others say that, although nothing exists but the perceptions in our minds, nevertheless these perceptions are real: so these call themselves “realists” too. All of which goes to show that some philosophers are very tricky in their use of words.

==== The Basic Teachings of Materialism in Opposition to Idealism ====

In opposition to all the forms of idealism, and of tricky compromises between materialism and idealism, the basic teachings of materialism can be formulated very simply and clearly.

To grasp the essence of these teachings we should also understand what are the main assertions made in every form of idealism. There are three such main assertions of idealism.

# Idealism asserts that the material world is dependent on the spiritual.
# Idealism asserts that spirit, or mind, or idea, can and does exist in separation from matter. (The most extreme form of this assertion is subjective idealism, which asserts that matter does not exist at all but is pure illusion.)
# Idealism asserts that there exists a realm of the mysterious and unknowable, “above,” or “beyond,” or “behind” what can be ascertained and known by perception, experience and science.

The basic teachings of materialism stand in opposition to these three assertions of idealism.

# Materialism teaches that the world is by its very nature material, that everything which exists comes into being on the basis of material causes, arises and develops in accordance with the laws of motion of matter.
# Materialism teaches that matter is objective reality existing outside and independent of the mind; and that far from the mental existing in separation from the material, everything mental or spiritual is a product of material processes.
# Materialism teaches that the world and its laws are fully knowable, and that while much may not be known there is nothing which is by nature unknowable.

The Marxist-Leninist philosophy is characterized by its absolutely consistent materialism all along the line, by its making no concessions whatever at any point to idealism. Thus Stalin points out:

“(a) Contrary to idealism, which regards the world as the embodiment of an ‘absolute idea,’ a ‘universal spirit,’ ‘consciousness,’ Marx’s philosophical materialism holds that the world is by its very nature material, that the multifold phenomena of the world constitute different forms of matter in motion… and that the world develops in accordance with the laws of movement of matter and stands in no need of a ‘universal spirit.’

“(b) Contrary to idealism, which asserts that only our mind really exists… the Marxist materialist philosophy holds that matter, nature, being is an objective reality existing outside and independent of our mind; that matter is primary, since it is the source of sensations, ideas, mind, and that mind is secondary, derivative, since it is a reflection of matter, a reflection of being; that thought is a product of matter which in its development has reached a high degree of perfection, namely, of the brain, and the brain is the organ of thought; and that, therefore, one cannot separate thought from matter without committing a grave error.

“(c) Contrary to idealism, which denies the possibility of knowing the world and its laws… Marxist philosophical materialism holds that the world and its laws are fully knowable, that our knowledge of the laws of nature, tested by experiment and practice, is authentic knowledge having the validity of objective truth, and that there are no things in the world which are unknowable, but only things which are still not known, but which will be disclosed and made known by the efforts of science and practice.”<ref>Stalin, ''Dialectical and Historical Materialism''.</ref>

==== Materialism and Idealism in Practice ====

As was pointed out above, the opposition of materialism and idealism—which has now been stated in its most general terms—is not an opposition between abstract theories of the nature of the world, but is an opposition between different ways of understanding and interpreting every question. That is why it is of such profound importance.

Let us consider some of the very practical ways in which the opposition of materialism and idealism is manifested.

Idealists tell us, for example, not to place “too much” reliance on science. They tell us that the most important truths are beyond the reach of science. Hence they encourage us not to believe things on the basis of evidence, experience, practice, but to take them on trust from those who pretend to know best and to have some “higher” source of information.

In this way idealism is a very good friend and standby of every form of reactionary propaganda. It is the philosophy of the capitalist press and the radio. It favors superstitions of all sorts, prevents us from thinking for ourselves and taking a scientific approach to moral and social problems.

Again, idealists tell us that what is most important for us all is the inner life of the soul. They tell us that we shall never solve our human problems except by some inner regeneration. This is a favorite theme in the speeches of well-fed persons. But many workers fall for it too—in factories, for example, where a “Moral Rearmament” group is active. They tell you not to fight for better conditions, but to improve your soul. They do not tell you that the best way to improve yourself both materially and morally is to join in the fight for peace and socialism.

Again, an idealist approach is common amongst many socialists. Many sincere socialists, for example, think that what is essentially wrong with capitalism is that goods are unfairly distributed, and that if only we could get everyone, including the capitalists, to accept a new conception of fairness and justice, then we could do away with the evils of capitalism. Socialism to them is nothing but the realization of an abstract idea of justice.

The idealism of this belief lies in its assumption that it is simply the ''ideas'' which we hold that determine the way we live and the way society is organized. Those who think in this way forget to look for the ''material'' causes. For what in fact determines the way goods are distributed in capitalist society—the wealth enjoyed by one part of society, while the other and greater part lives in poverty—is not the ideas which men hold about the distribution of wealth, but the material fact that the mode of production rests on the exploitation of the worker by the capitalist. So long as this mode of production remains in existence, so long will extremes of wealth and poverty remain, and so long will socialist ideas of justice be opposed by capitalist ideas of justice. The task of socialists, therefore, is to organize and lead the struggle of the working class against the capitalist class to the point where the working class takes power from the capitalist class.

If we do not understand this, then we cannot find the way to fight effectively for socialism. We shall find that our socialist ideals are constantly disappointed and betrayed. Such, indeed, has been the experience of British socialism.

It can be seen from these examples how idealism serves as a weapon of reaction; and how when socialists embrace idealism they are being influenced by the ideology of the capitalists. We can no more take over and use capitalist ideas for the purposes of socialist theory than we can take over and use the capitalist state machine, with all its institutions and officials, for the purposes of building socialism.

Right through history, indeed, idealism has been a weapon of reaction. Whatever fine systems of philosophy have been invented, idealism has been used as a means of justifying the rule of an exploiting class and deceiving the exploited.

This is not to say that truths have not been expressed in an idealist guise. Of course they have. For idealism has very deep roots in our ways of thinking, and so men often clothe their thoughts and aspirations in idealist dress. But the idealist form is always an impediment, a hindrance in the expression of truth—a source of confusion and error.

Again, progressive movements in the past have adopted and fought under an idealist theory. But this has shown only that they contained in themselves the seeds of future reaction (inasmuch as they represented the striving of a new exploiting class to come to power) or that they were themselves influenced by ideas of reaction; or it has been a mark of their weakness and immaturity.

For example, the great revolutionary movement of the English bourgeoisie in the seventeenth century fought under idealist, religious slogans. But the same appeal to God which justified Cromwell in the execution of the King justified him also in stamping out the Levelers.

Early democrats and socialists had many idealist notions. But in their case this demonstrated the ''immaturity'' and ''weakness'' of the movement. The idealist illusions had to be overcome if the revolutionary working-class movement was to arise and triumph. As the movement grew strong, the continuance within it of idealist notions represented an alien, reactionary influence.

We can truly say that idealism is essentially a conservative force—an ideology helping the defense of things as they are, and the preservation of illusions in men’s minds about their true condition.

On the other hand, every real social advance—every increase in the productive forces, every advance of science—generates materialism and is helped along by materialist ideas. And the whole history of human thought has been the history of the fight of materialism against idealism, of the overcoming of idealist illusions and fantasies.

==== The Fight for Materialism ====

Marxists, as the organized vanguard of the working class fighting to end all exploitation of man by man and to establish communism, have no use for idealism in any form.

Here, for example, are some of the ways in which Lenin expressed himself on this question.

“The genius of Marx and Engels consisted in the very fact that in the course of a long period, nearly half a century, they developed materialism, that they further advanced one fundamental trend in philosophy….

“Take the various philosophical utterances by Marx… and you will find an invariable basic motif, ''viz''. insistence upon materialism and contemptuous derision of all obscurantism, of all confusion and all deviations towards idealism….

“Marx and Engels were partisans in philosophy from start to finish; they were able to detect the deviations from materialism and concessions to idealism… in each and every ‘new’ tendency….

“The realists etc., including the positivists, are all a wretched mush; they are a contemptible middle party in philosophy, who confuse the materialist and idealist trends on every question. The attempt to escape these two basic trends in philosophy is nothing but conciliatory quackery.”<ref>Lenin, ''Selected Works'', Vol. 11, “Materialism and Empirio-Criticism,” Chapter VI, Section 4.</ref>

On every issue we are partisans of materialism against idealism. This is because we know that it is in the light of materialist theory, which studies things as they are, without idealist fantasies about them, that we can understand the forces in nature and society so as to be able to transform society and to master the forces of nature.

And because of this, too, materialism teaches us to have confidence in ourselves, in the working class—in people. It teaches us that there are no mysteries beyond our understanding, that we need not accept that which is as being the will of God, that we should contemptuously reject the “authoritative” teachings of those who set up to be our masters, and that we can ourselves understand nature and society so as to be able to change them.

We hate idealism, because under cover of high-sounding talk it preaches the subjection of man to man and belittles the power of humanity.

It was the materialist confidence in humanity which was expressed by Maxim Gorky when he wrote:

“For me, there are no ideas beyond man; for me, man and only man is the miracle worker and the future master of all forces of nature. The most beautiful things in this our world are the things made by labor, made by skilled human hands, and all our ideas are born out of the process of labor.

“And if it is thought necessary to speak of sacred things, then the one sacred thing is the dissatisfaction of man with himself and his striving to be better than he is; sacred is his hatred of all the trivial rubbish which he himself has created; sacred is his desire to do away with greed, envy, crime, disease, war and all enmity between men on earth; and sacred is his labor.”<ref>Maxim Gorky, ''Literature and Life'', “How I Learned to Write,” London, 1946.</ref>

=== 3. Mechanistic Materialism ===

<blockquote>''The type of materialism produced in the past by the revolutionary bourgeoisie was mechanistic materialism. This took over the ancient materialist conception that the world consisted of unchanging material particles (atoms), whose interactions produced all the phenomena of nature, and further strove to understand the workings of nature on the model of the workings of a machine.''

''It was in its time a progressive and revolutionary doctrine. But it has three grave weaknesses. (1) It requires the conception of a Supreme Being who started the world up; (2) it seeks to reduce all processes to the same cycle of mechanistic interactions and so cannot account for development, for the emergence of new qualities, new types of processes in nature; (3) it cannot account for social development, can give no account of human social activity and leads to an abstract conception of human nature.''
</blockquote>
==== The Changing World and How to Understand It ====

Before Marx, materialism was predominantly ''mechanistic.''

We often hear people complain that the materialists seek to reduce everything in the world, including life and mind, to a system of soulless mechanism, to a mere mechanical interaction of bodies. This refers to mechanistic materialism. Marxist materialism is, however, not mechanistic but dialectical. To understand what this means we need first to understand something about mechanistic materialism itself.

We can approach this problem by asking how materialists have sought to understand the various processes of change which are observed everywhere in the world.

The world is full of change. Night follows day and day night; the seasons succeed each other; people are born, grow old and die. Every philosophy recognizes that change is an omnipresent fact. The question is: how are we to understand the change which we observe everywhere?

Change may be understood, in the first place, in an idealist way or in a materialist way.

Idealism traces back all change to some idea or intention—if not human, then divine. Thus for idealism, changes in the material world are, in the last analysis, initiated and brought about by something outside matter, not material, not subject to the laws of the material world.

But materialism traces back all change to material causes. In other words, it seeks to explain what happens in the material world from the material world itself.

But while the occurrence of change has been recognized by everyone, since none can ignore it, philosophers have nevertheless sought to find something which does not change—something permanent, something changeless, behind or within the change.

This is generally an essential part of the ideology of an exploiting class. They are afraid of change, because they are afraid that they, too, may be swept away. So they always seek for something fixed and stable, not subject to change. They try to hitch themselves on to this, as it were.

The earlier materialists, too, sought for this. Behind all the changing appearances they looked for something which never changes. But while idealists looked for the eternal and changeless in the realm of spirit, these materialists looked for it in the material world itself. And they found it in the ultimate material particle—the eternal and indestructible atom. (“Atom” is a Greek word meaning “unbreakable.”)

For such materialists, then, all ''changes'' were produced by the movement and interaction of ''unchanging'' atoms.

This is a very ancient theory, put forward over two thousand years ago in Greece, and earlier still in India.

In its day it was a very progressive theory, a great weapon against idealism and superstition. The Roman poet Lucretius, for example, explained in his philosophical poem ''On the Nature of Things'' that the purpose of the atomistic theory of the Greek philosopher Epicurus was to demonstrate “what are the elements out of which everything is formed, and how everything comes to pass without the intervention of the gods.”

Thus there was born a materialism which saw the world as consisting of hard, impenetrable material particles, and which understood all change as arising from nothing but the motion and interaction of such particles.

This theory was revived in modern times. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries philosophers and scientists turned to it in their fight against feudal, Catholic philosophy. But this modern materialism proved to be much richer in content than the ancient. For it tried to work out what were the laws of interaction of material particles, and so to present a picture of how all phenomena, from merely physical changes to the life of man, resulted from the motion and interaction of the separate parts of matter. In this way, by the eighteenth century, there had appeared the characteristic modern theories of mechanistic materialism.

==== A Bourgeois Philosophy ====

Mechanistic materialism was in essence an ideology, a mode of theorizing, of the rising bourgeoisie. In order to understand it we must understand, first of all, that it arose and developed in opposition to feudal ideology—that its critical edge was directed against feudal ideas, that it was in fact the most radical of all bourgeois forms of opposition against the feudal outlook.

In the period of the rise of the bourgeoisie, the feudal social relations were shattered, and so were the feudal ideas, embodied in the Catholic philosophy, in which those social relations were enshrined.

The feudal system, whose economic basis lay in the exploitation of the serfs by the feudal proprietors, involved complex social relationships of dependence, subordination and allegiance. All this was reflected, not only in social and political philosophy, but also in the philosophy of nature.

It was typical of the natural philosophy of the feudal period that everything in nature was explained in terms of its proper place in the system of the universe, in terms of its supposed position of dependence and subordination in that system, and of the end or purpose which it existed to serve.

The bourgeois philosophers and scientists destroyed these feudal ideas about nature. They regarded nature as a system of bodies in interaction, and, rejecting all the feudal dogmas, they called for the investigation of nature in order to discover how nature really worked.

The investigation of nature advanced hand in hand with the geographical discoveries, the development of trade and transport, the improvement of machinery and manufactures. The greatest strides were made in the mechanical sciences, closely connected as they were with the needs of technology. So it came about that materialist theory was enriched as the result of the scientific investigation of nature, and in particular by the mechanical sciences.

This determined at once the strength and the weakness, the achievement and the limitation, of the materialist theory.

What pushed that theory forward was, so Engels writes, “the powerful and ever more rapidly onrushing progress of science and industry.” But it remained “predominantly mechanical,” because only the mechanical sciences had attained any high degree of development. Its “specific, but at that time inevitable limitation” was its “exclusive application of the standards of mechanics.”<ref>Engels, ''Ludwig Feuerbach'', Chapter II.</ref>

The mechanistic way of understanding nature did not arise, however, simply from the fact that at that time it was only the mechanical sciences which had made any great progress. It was deeply rooted in the class outlook of the most progressive bourgeois philosophers, and this led to their turning exclusively to the mechanical sciences for their inspiration.

Just as the bourgeoisie, overthrowing feudal society, stood for individual liberty, equality and the development of a free market, so the most progressive philosophers of the bourgeoisie—the materialists—overthrowing the feudal ideas, proclaimed that the world consisted of separate material particles interacting with one another in accordance with the laws of mechanics.

This theory of nature reflected bourgeois social relations no less than the theories it replaced had reflected feudal social relations. But just as the new bourgeois social relations broke the feudal fetters and enabled a great new development of the forces of production to begin, so the corresponding bourgeois theory of nature broke down the barriers which feudal ideas had placed in the way of scientific research and enabled a great new development of scientific research to begin.

The philosophical outlook seemed to find its confirmation in science, and science provided materials for the development and working out in detail of the philosophical outlook.

==== The World and the Machine ====

The world—so thought the mechanistic materialists—consists of nothing but particles of matter in interaction. Each particle has an existence separate and distinct from every other; in their totality they form the world; the totality of their interactions forms the totality of everything that happens in the world; and these interactions are of the mechanical type, that is to say, they consist simply of the external influence of one particle upon another.

Such a theory is equivalent to regarding the whole world as nothing but a complex piece of machinery, a mechanism.

From this standpoint, the question always posed about any part of nature is the question we ask about a machine: what is its mechanism, how does it work?

This was exemplified in Newton’s account of the solar system. Newton adopted the same general view as the Greek materialist, Epicurus, inasmuch as he thought that the material world consisted of particles moving about in empty space. But faced with any particular natural phenomenon, such as the movements of the sun and planets, Epicurus was not in the least concerned to give any exact account of it. With regard to the apparent movement of the sun across the heavens from east to west, for example, Epicurus said that the important thing was to understand that the sun was not a god but was simply a collection of atoms: no account of the actual machinery of its motions was necessary. Perhaps, he said, the sun goes round and round the earth; but perhaps it disintegrates and its atoms separate every night, so that it is “a new sun” which we see the next morning: to him such questions were simply unimportant. Newton, on the other hand, was concerned to show exactly how the solar system worked, to demonstrate the mechanics of it, in terms of gravity and mechanical forces.

But just as Epicurus was not interested in how the solar system worked, so Newton was not interested in how it originated and developed. He took it for granted as a stable piece of machinery— created, presumably, by God. Not how it originated, not how it developed, but how it worked, was the question which he dealt with.

The same mechanistic approach was manifested in Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of the blood. The essence of his discovery was that he demonstrated the mechanism of circulation, regarding the heart as a pump, which pumps the blood out along the arteries so that it flows back through the veins, the whole system being regulated by a series of valves.

To understand the mechanistic outlook better, let us ask: what is a mechanism? what is characteristic of a mechanism?

<ol style="list-style-type:lower-alpha">
<li>A mechanism consists of permanent parts, which fit together.</li>
<li>It requires a motive force to set it going.</li>
<li>Once set going, the parts interact and results are produced according to laws which can be exactly stated.</li></ol>

Consider, for example, such a mechanism as a watch. (''a'') It consists of a number of different parts—cogs, levers and so on— fitted neatly together. (''b'') It has to be wound up. (c) Then, as the spring uncoils, the parts interact according to laws exactly known to watchmakers, resulting in the regular movements of the hands on the dial.

Further, to know how a mechanism, such as a watch, works, you must take it to bits, find out what its parts are, how they fit together and how, by their interactions, once the mechanism is set in motion by the application of the required motive force, they produce the total motion characteristic of the mechanism in working order.

This is just how the mechanistic materialists regarded nature. They sought to take nature to bits, to find its ultimate component parts, how they fitted together and how their interactions produced all the changes we perceive, all the phenomena of the world. And moreover, finding out how the mechanism worked, they sought to find out how to repair it, how to improve it, how to change it and to make it produce new results corresponding lo the requirements of man.

==== The Strength and Achievement of Mechanistic Materialism ====

Mechanistic materialism was an important milestone in our understanding of nature. And it was a great progressive step of bourgeois thinkers, a blow against idealism.

The mechanists were thorough-going in their materialism. For they waged a progressive fight against idealism and clericalism by trying to extend to the realm of mind and society the same mechanistic conceptions which were used in the scientific investigation of nature. They sought to include man and all his spiritual activities in the mechanistic system of the natural world.

The most radical mechanists regarded not merely physical processes, and not merely plant and animal life, but man himself as a machine. Already in the seventeenth century the great French philosopher Descartes had said that all animals were complicated machines—automata: but man was different, since he had a soul. But in the eighteenth century a follower of Descartes, the physician LaMettrie, wrote a book with the provocative title ''Man a Machine.'' Men, too, were machines, he said, though very complicated ones.

This doctrine was looked upon as exceptionally shocking, and as a terrible insult to human nature, not to mention God. Yet it was in its time a progressive view of man. The view that men are machines was an advance in the understanding of human nature as compared with the view that they are wretched pieces of clay inhabited by immortal souls. And it was, comparatively speaking, a more humane view.

For example, the great English materialist and utopian socialist Robert Owen told the pious industrialists of his time:

“Experience has shown you the difference of the results between mechanism which is neat, clean, well-arranged and always in a high state of repair, and that which is allowed to be dirty, in disorder, and which therefore becomes much out of repair…. If, then, due care as to the state of your inanimate machines can produce such beneficial results, what may not be expected if you devote equal attention to your ''vital'' machines, which are far more wonderfully constructed?”<ref>Robert Owen, ''New View of Society''.</ref>

This humanitarianism was, however, at the best bourgeois humanitarianism. Like all mechanistic materialism, it was rooted in the class outlook of the bourgeoisie. The view that man is a machine is rooted in the view that in production man is a mere appendage of the machine. And if on the one hand this implies that the human machine ought to be well tended and kept in good condition, on the other hand it equally implies that no more should be expended for this purpose than is strictly necessary to keep the human machine in bare working order.

==== The Weakness and Limitations of Mechanistic Materialism ====

Mechanistic materialism had grave weaknesses.

(1) It could not sustain the materialist standpoint consistently and all the way.

For if the world is like a machine, who made it, who started it up? There was necessary, in any system of mechanistic materialism, a “Supreme Being,” outside the material world—even if he no longer continuously interfered in the world and kept things moving, but did no more than start things up and then watch what happened.

Such a “Supreme Being” was postulated by nearly all the mechanistic materialists; for example, by Voltaire and Tom Paine. But this opens the door to idealism.

(2) Mechanistic materialism sees change everywhere. Yet because it always tries to ''reduce'' all phenomena to the same system of mechanical interactions, it sees this change as nothing but the eternal ''repetition'' of the same kinds of mechanical processes, an eternal cycle of the same changes.

This limitation is inseparable from the view of the world as a machine. For just as a machine has to be started up, so it can never do anything except what it was made to do. It cannot change itself or produce anything radically new. Mechanistic theory, therefore, always breaks down when it is a question of accounting for the emergence of ''new quality.'' It sees change everywhere—but nothing ''new,'' no ''development.''

The various processes of nature—chemical processes and the processes of living matter, for example—cannot in fact be all reduced to one and the same kind of mechanical interaction of material particles.

Chemical interactions differ from mechanical interactions inasmuch as the changes which take place as a result of chemical Interaction involve a change of quality. For example, if we consider the mechanical interaction of two particles which collide, then their qualitative characteristics are irrelevant and the result is expressed as a change in the quantity and direction of motion of each. But if two chemical substances come together and combine chemically, then there results a new substance qualitatively different from either. Similarly, from the point of view of mechanics heat is nothing but an increase in the quantity of motion of the particles of matter. But in chemistry, the application of heat leads to qualitative changes.

Nor do the processes of nature consist in the repetition of the same cycle of mechanical interactions, but in nature there is continual development and evolution, producing ever new forms of the existence or, what is the same thing, motion of matter. Hence the more widely and consistently the mechanistic categories are applied in the interpretation of nature, the more is their essential limitation exposed.

(3) Still less can mechanistic materialism explain ''social'' development.

Mechanistic materialism expresses the radical bourgeois conception of society as consisting of social atoms, interacting together. The real economic and social causes of the development of society cannot be discovered from this point of view. And so great social changes seem to spring from quite accidental causes. Human activity itself appears to be either the mechanical result of external causes, or else it is treated—and here mechanistic materialism collapses into idealism—as purely spontaneous and uncaused.

In a word, mechanistic materialism cannot give an account of men’s social activity.

==== Mechanistic Materialism and Utopian Socialism ====

The mechanistic view treated men quite abstractly, each man being regarded as a social atom endowed by nature with certain inherent properties, attributes and rights.

This was expressed in the bourgeois conception of “the rights of man,” and in the bourgeois revolutionary slogan: “All men are equal.”

But the conception of human rights cannot be deduced from the abstract nature of man, but is determined by the stage of society in which men are living. Nor are men what they are “by nature,” but they become what they are, and change, as a result of their social activity. Nor are all men “by nature” equal. In opposition to the bourgeois conception of abstract equality, which amounted to mere formal equality of rights as citizens, equality before the law, Marx and Engels declared:

“The real content of the proletarian demand for equality is the demand for the abolition of classes. Any demand for equality which goes beyond that of necessity passes into absurdity.”<ref>Frederick Engels, ''Anti-Dühring'', Part I, Chapter X, N. Y., 1939.</ref>

Adopting their abstract, mechanistic view of men as social atoms, the progressive mechanists tried to work out, in an abstract way, what form of society would be best for mankind—what would best suit abstract human nature, as they conceived of it.

This way of thinking was taken over by the socialist thinkers who immediately preceded Marx, the utopian socialists. The utopian socialists were mechanistic materialists. They put forward socialism as an ideal society. They did not see it as necessitated by the development of the contradictions of capitalism—it could have been put forward and realized at any time, if only men had had the wit to do so. They did not see it as having to be won by working-class struggle against capitalism—it would be realized when everyone was convinced that it was just and best adapted to the requirements of human nature. (For this reason Robert Owen appealed to both the Archbishop of Canterbury and Queen Victoria to support his socialist program.)

Again, the mechanistic materialists—and this applied above all to the utopian socialists—thought that what a man was, his character and his activities, was determined by his environment and education. Therefore they proclaimed that to make men better, happier and more rational it was simply necessary to place them in better conditions and to give them a better education.

But to this Marx replied:

“The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing and that, therefore, changed men are produced by changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that circumstances are changed precisely by men and that the educator must himself be educated.”<ref>Engels, ''Ludwig Feuerbach'', Appendices, Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach, III.</ref>

If men are simply the products of circumstances, then they are at the mercy of circumstances. But on the contrary, men can themselves change their circumstances. And men themselves are changed, not as a mechanical result of changed circumstances, but in the course of and as a result of their own activity in changing their circumstances.

So what are the real material social causes at work in human society, which give rise to new activities, new ideas and therefore to changed circumstances and changed men?

Mechanistic materialism could not answer this question. It could not explain the laws of social development nor show how to change society.

Therefore while it was a progressive and revolutionary doctrine in its time, it could not serve to guide the struggle of the working class in striving to change society.

=== 4. From Mechanistic to Dialectical Materialism ===

<blockquote>''Mechanistic materialism makes certain dogmatic assumptions: (1) That the world consists of permanent and stable things or particles, with definite, fixed properties; (2) that the particles of matter are by nature inert and no change ever happens except by the action of some external cause; (3) that all motion, all change can be reduced to the mechanical interaction of the separate particles of matter; (4) that each particle has its own fixed nature independent of everything else, and that the relationships between separate things are merely external relationships.''

''Overcoming and passing beyond the dogmatic standpoint of mechanism, dialectical materialism holds that the world is not a complex of things but of processes, that matter is inseparable from motion, that the motion of matter comprehends an infinite diversity of forms which arise one from another and pass into one another, and that things exist not as separate individual units but in essential relation and interconnection.''
</blockquote>
==== Things and Processes ====

In order to find how the limitations of the mechanist approach can be overcome we may consider first of all certain extremely dogmatic assumptions which are made by mechanistic materialism. These mechanistic assumptions are none of them justified. And by bringing them to the light of day and pointing out what is wrong with them, we can see how to advance beyond mechanistic materialism.

(1) Mechanism sees all change as having at its basis permanent and stable things with definite, fixed properties.

Thus for the mechanists the world consists of indivisible, indestructible material particles, which in their interaction manifest such properties as position, mass, velocity.

According to mechanism, if you could state the position, mass and velocity of every particle at a given instant of time, then you would have said everything that could be said about the world at that time, and could, by applying the laws of mechanics, predict everything that was going to happen afterwards.

This is the first dogmatic assumption of mechanism. But we need to reject it. For the world does not consist of ''things'' but of ''processes,'' in which things come into being and pass away.

“The world is not to be comprehended as a complex of ready-made things,” wrote Engels, “but as a complex of processes, in which things apparently stable, no less than their mind-images in our heads, the concepts, go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away.”<ref>Engels, ''Ludwig Feuerbach'', Chapter IV.</ref>

This, indeed, is what science in its latest developments teaches us. Thus the atom, once thought to be eternal and indivisible, has been dissolved into electrons, protons and neutrons; and these themselves are not “fundamental particles” in any absolute sense, ''i.e.'' they are not eternal and indestructible, any more than the atom; but science more and more shows that they, too, come into being, pass away and go through many transformations.

What is fundamental is not the “thing,” the “particle,” but the unending ''processes'' of nature, in which ''things'' go through “an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away.” And nature’s process is, moreover, infinite: there will always be fresh aspects to be revealed, and it cannot be reduced to any ''ultimate'' constituents. “The electron is as inexhaustible as the atom, nature is infinite,” wrote Lenin.<ref>Lenin, ''Selected Works'', Vol. 11, “Materialism and Empirio-Criticism,” Chapter V, Section 2.</ref>

Just so in considering society, we cannot understand a given society simply in terms of some set of institutions in and through which individual men and women are organized, but we must study the social processes which are going on, in the course of which both institutions and people are transformed.

==== Matter and Motion ====

(2) The second dogmatic assumption of mechanism is the assumption that no change can ever happen except by the action of some external cause.

Just as no part of a machine moves unless another part acts on it and makes it move, so mechanism sees matter as being inert— without motion, or rather without self-motion. For mechanism, nothing ever moves unless something else pushes or pulls it, it never changes unless something else interferes with it.

No wonder that, regarding matter in this way, the mechanists had to believe in a Supreme Being to give the “initial impulse.” But we need to reject this lifeless, dead theory about matter. This theory separates matter and motion: it thinks of matter as just a dead mass, so that motion always has to be impressed on matter from outside. But, on the contrary, you cannot separate matter and motion. Motion, said Engels, is the mode of existence of matter.

“Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, nor can there be. Motion in cosmic space, mechanical motion of smaller masses on the various celestial bodies, the motion of molecules as heat or as electrical or magnetic currents, chemical combination or disintegration, organic life—at each given moment each individual atom of matter in the world is in one or other of these forms of motion, or in several forms of them at once. All rest, all equilibrium is only relative, and only has meaning in relation to one or other definite form of motion. A body, for example, may be on the ground in mechanical equilibrium, may be mechanically at rest; but this in no way prevents it from participating in the motion of the earth and in that of the whole solar system, just as little as it prevents its most minute parts from carrying out the oscillations determined by its temperature, or its atoms from passing through a chemical process. Matter without motion is Just as unthinkable as motion without matter.”<ref>Engels, ''Anti-Dühring'', Part I, Chapter VI.</ref>

Far from being dead, lifeless, inert, it is the very nature of matter to be in process of continual change, of motion. Once we realize this, then there is an end of appeal to the “initial impulse.” Motion, like matter, never had a beginning.

The conception of the inseparability of matter and motion, the understanding that “motion is the mode of existence of matter,” provides the way to answering a number of perplexing questions which usually haunt people’s minds when they think about materialism and which lead them to desert materialism and to run to the priests for an explanation of the “ultimate” truth about the universe.

Was the world created by a Supreme Being? What was the origin of matter? What was the origin of motion? What was the very beginning of everything? What was the first cause? These are the sort of questions which puzzle people.

It is possible to answer these questions.

No, the world was not created by a Supreme Being. Any particular organization of matter, any particular process of matter in motion, has an origin and a beginning—it originated out of some previous organization of matter, out of some previous process of matter in motion. But matter in motion had no origin, no beginning.

Science teaches us the inseparability of matter and motion. However static some things may seem to be, there is in them continual motion. The atom, for instance, maintains itself as the same only by means of a continual movement of its parts.

So in studying the causes of change, we should not merely seek for external causes of change, but should above all seek for the source of the change within the process itself, in its own self-movement, in the inner impulses to development contained within things themselves.

Thus in seeking the causes of social development and its laws, we should not see social changes as being brought about by the actions of great men, who impressed their superior ideas and will on the inert mass of society—nor as being brought about by accidents and external factors—but as being brought about by the development of the internal forces of society itself; and that means, by the development of the social forces of production.

Thus unlike the utopians, we see socialism as the result, not of the dreams of reformers, but of the development of capitalist society itself—which contains within itself causes which must inevitably bring it to an end and lead to the socialist revolution.

==== The Forms of Motion of Matter ====

(3) The third dogmatic assumption of mechanism is the assumption that the mechanical motion of particles, ''i.e.'' the simple change of place of particles as the result of the action on them of external forces, is the ultimate, basic form of motion of matter; and that all changes, all happenings whatsoever can be reduced to and explained by such mechanical motion of particles.

Thus all the motion of matter is reduced to simple mechanical motion. All the changing qualities which we recognize in matter are nothing but the appearances of the basic mechanical motion of matter. However varied the appearances may be, whatever new and higher forms of development may appear to arise, they are all to be reduced to one and the same thing—the eternal repetition of the mechanical interaction of the separate parts of matter.

It is difficult to find any justification for such an assumption. In the material world there are many different types of process, which all constitute different forms of the motion of matter. But they can by no means be all reduced to one and the same form of (mechanical) motion.

“Motion in the most general sense,” wrote Engels, “conceived as the mode of existence, the inherent attribute, of matter, comprehends all changes and processes occurring in the universe, from mere change of place right to thinking. The investigation of the nature of motion had as a matter of course to start from the lowest, simplest forms of this motion and to learn to grasp these before it could achieve anything in the way of explanation of the higher and more complicated forms.”<ref>Frederick Engels, ''Dialectics of Nature'', Chapter III, N. Y., 1940.</ref>

The simplest form of motion is the simple change of place of bodies, the laws of which are studied by mechanics. But that does not mean that all motion can be reduced to this simplest form of motion. It rather means that we need to study how, from the simplest form of motion, all the higher forms of motion arise and develop—“from mere change of place right to thinking.”

One form of motion is transformed into another and arises from another. The higher, more complex form of motion cannot exist without the lower and simpler form: but that is not to say that it can be reduced to that simpler form. It is inseparable from the simpler form, but its nature is not exhausted thereby. For example, the thinking which goes on in our heads is inseparable from the chemical, electrical etc. motion which goes on in the gray matter of the brain; but it cannot be reduced to that motion, its nature is not exhausted thereby.

The ''materialist'' standpoint, however, which rejects the mechanistic idea that all forms of motion of matter can be reduced to mechanical motion, must not be confused with the ''idealist'' notion that the higher forms of motion cannot be explained as arising from the lower forms. For example, idealists assert that life, as a form of motion of matter, cannot possibly be derived from any processes characteristic of non-living matter. For them, life can only arise through the introduction into a material system of a mysterious something from outside—a “vital force.” But to say that a higher form of motion cannot be reduced to a lower form is not to say that it cannot be derived from the lower form in the course of the latter’s development. Thus materialists will always affirm that life, for example, appears at a certain stage in the development of more complex forms of non-living matter, and arises as a result of that development, not as a result of the introduction into non-living matter of a mysterious “vital force.” The task of science in this sphere remains to demonstrate experimentally how the transition from non-living to living matter takes place.

Thus the mechanistic program of reducing all the motion of matter to simple, mechanical motion must be rejected. We need rather to study all the infinitely various forms of motion of matter, in their transformations one into another, and as they arise one from another, the complex from the simple, the higher from the lower.

In the case of society, no one has yet tried to show how social changes can be explained by the mechanical interactions of the atoms composing the bodies of the various members of society— though to do so would be the logical culmination of the mechanistic program. But the next best thing is attempted by the mechanistic theory known as “economic determinism.” According to this theory, the whole motion of society is to be explained by the economic changes taking place in society, all the determinants of social change have been exhausted when the economic process has been described. This is an example of the mechanistic program of reducing a complex motion to a simple form—the process of social change, including all the political, cultural and ideological developments, to a simple economic process. But the task of explaining social development cannot be fulfilled by trying to reduce the whole development to an economic process. The task is rather to show how, on the basis of the economic process, all the various forms of social activity arise and play their part in the complex movement of society.

==== Things and Their Interconnection ====

(4) The last dogmatic assumption of mechanism to be mentioned is that each of the things or particles, whose interactions are said to make up the totality of events in the universe, has its own fixed nature quite independent of everything else. In other words, each thing can be considered as existing in separation from other things, as an independent unit.

Proceeding on this assumption it follows that all relations between things are merely external relations. That is to say, things enter into various relationships one with another, but these relationships are accidental and make no difference to the nature of the things related.

And regarding each thing as a separate unit entering into external relations with other things, it further follows that mechanism regards the whole as no more than the sum of its separate parts. According to this view, the properties and laws of development of the whole are uniquely determined by the properties of all its parts.

Not one of these assumptions is correct. Nothing exists or can exist in splendid isolation, separate from its conditions of existence, independent of its relationships with other things. Things come into being, exist and cease to exist, not each independent of all other things, but each in its relationship with other things. The very nature of a thing is modified and transformed by its relationships with other things. When things enter into such relationships that they become parts of a whole, the whole cannot be regarded as nothing more than the sum total of the parts. True, the whole is nothing apart from and independent of its parts. But the mutual relations which the parts enter into in constituting the whole modify their own properties, so that while it may be said that the whole is determined by the parts it may equally be said that the parts are determined by the whole.

Once again, the development of science itself shows the inadmissibility of the old mechanistic assumptions. These assumptions have force only in the very limited sphere of the study of the mechanical interactions of discrete particles. In physics they were already shattered with the development of the study of the electromagnetic field. Still less are they admissible in biology, in the study of living matter, and still less in the study of men and society.

==== The Correction of Mechanistic Materialism ====

When we bring into the open and reject these assumptions of mechanistic materialism, then we begin to see the need for a materialist doctrine of a different, of a new type—a materialism which overcomes the weaknesses and narrow, dogmatic assumptions of mechanism.

This is dialectical materialism.

Dialectical materialism understands the world, not as a complex of ready-made things, but as a complex of processes, in which all things go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away.

Dialectical materialism considers that matter is always in motion, that motion is the mode of existence of matter, so that there can no more be matter without motion than motion without matter. Motion does not have to be impressed upon matter by some outside force, but above all it is necessary to look for the inner impulses of development, the self-motion, inherent in all processes.

Dialectical materialism understands the motion of matter as comprehending all changes and processes in the universe, from mere change of place right to thinking. It recognizes, therefore, the infinite diversity of the forms of motion of matter, the transformation of one form into another, the development of the forms of motion of matter from the simple to the complex, from the lower to the higher.

Dialectical materialism considers that, in the manifold processes taking place in the universe, things come into being, change and pass out of being, not as separate individual units, but in essential relation and interconnection, so that they cannot be understood each separately and by itself but only in their relation and interconnection.

In dialectical materialism, therefore, there is established a materialist conception far richer in content and more comprehensive than the former mechanistic materialism.

<div>

</div>
=== 5. The Dialectical Conception of Development ===

<blockquote>''Whereas the older philosophies considered that the universe always remained much the same, a perpetual cycle of the same processes, science has demonstrated the fact of evolution. But while recognizing the fact of evolutionary development, bourgeois thinkers have tried to understand and explain it in fantastic, idealist terms. And they have conceived of development as being always a smooth, continuous process, not recognizing the occurrence of abrupt breaks in continuity, the leap from one stage to another.''

''Following up the ideas of Hegel by taking up the revolutionary side of his philosophy while freeing it of its idealist trammels, Marx and Engels established the dialectical materialist conception of development. The key to understanding development in nature and society and the leaps and breaks in continuity which characterize all real development—lies in the recognition of the inner contradictions and opposite conflicting tendencies which are in operation in all processes.''

''This discovery by Marx and Engels was a revolution in philosophy and made of it a revolutionary weapon of the working people, a method for understanding the world so as to change it.''
</blockquote>
==== The Idea of Evolution ====

We have seen that the corrections of the mechanistic standpoint made by dialectical materialism are fully justified by and have a basis in the advance of science. Indeed, the advance of science itself has shattered the whole conception of the universe held by the older, mechanistic materialists.

According to that conception, the universe always remained much the same. It was a huge machine which always did the same things, kept grinding out the same products, went on and on in a perpetual cycle of the same processes.

Thus it used to be thought that the stars and the solar system always remained the same—and that the earth, with its continents and oceans and the plants and animals inhabiting them, likewise always remained the same.

But this conception has given way to the conception of evolution, which has invaded all spheres of investigation without exception. Nor was it scientific investigation alone which produced the idea of evolution. Science does not advance in isolation from society as a whole. The idea of evolution was generated out of the rise of industrial capitalism itself.

“The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence of all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation, distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.”<ref>Marx and Engels, ''The Communist Manifesto'', Chapter I.</ref>

The industrial capitalists saw themselves as the bearers of progress. And as they thought progress was the law of capitalism, so they saw it as the law of the whole universe.

So there was made possible a great advance in the scientific picture of the universe. We find developing a picture of the universe, not as static, as always the same, but as in continual progressive development.

The stars did not always exist—they were formed out of masses of dispersed gas.

Once formed, the whole stellar system, with all the stars in it, goes through an evolutionary process, stage by stage.

Some stars, like our sun, acquire planets—a solar system. Thus the earth was born. As its surface cooled, so chemical compounds were formed, impossible in the high temperatures of the stars.

Thus matter began to manifest new properties, nonexistent before—the properties of chemical combination.

Then organic compounds were formed out of the complex linking of carbon atoms. And from organic matter the first bodies arose which began to manifest the properties of life, of living matter. Still new properties of matter emerged—the properties of living matter.

Living organisms went through a long evolution, leading eventually to man. With man, human society was born. And still new processes, with new laws, arose—the laws of society, and the laws of thought.

What comes next?

Capitalist science can go no further. Here it ends, since capitalist science cannot contemplate the ending of capitalism. But socialist science shows that man himself is about to embark on a new phase of evolution—communist society, in which the whole social process will be brought under his own conscious, planned direction.

All this is the evolutionary history of the material universe.

Apart from the last point, it may be said this is all common knowledge. Bourgeois thinkers know this as well as Marxists, though they often forget it. But Marxism does not only stress the fact that everything in the world goes through a process of development. What Marxism found out was how to understand and explain this development in a materialist way.

The discovery of Marxism was the discovery of the laws of materialist dialectics. And that is why Marxism alone is able to give a fully scientific account of development and to point out the future path.

This is the meaning of Marx’s great discovery—how to understand change and development in a materialist way, and therefore how to become masters of the future.

==== Idealist Conceptions of Change and Development ====

How did bourgeois thinkers try to account for the universal change and development which they discovered?

Let us consider what some of them have had to say over a period of more than a century.

Hegel said that the whole process of development taking place in history was due to the Absolute Idea realizing itself in history. Herbert Spencer said that all development was a process of increasing “integration of matter,” and he put this down to what he called an “Incomprehensible and Omnipresent Power.” Henri Bergson said that everything was in process of evolution, due to the activity of “the Life Force.” Fairly recently, a school of British philosophers has coined the phrase “emergent evolution.” They pointed out that in the course of development new qualities of matter are continually emerging, one after the other. But as to why this should happen, one of the leaders of this school, Professor Samuel Alexander, said that it was inexplicable and must be accepted “with natural piety,” while another of its leaders, Professor C. Lloyd Morgan, said that it must be due to some immanent force at work in the world, which he identified with God.

Thus in every case some fantasy, something inexplicable and unpredictable, was conjured up to explain development. And so,

when they thought about the future, all these bourgeois philosophers of evolution either thought, like Hegel, that development had now finished (Hegel taught that the Absolute Idea was fully realized in the Prussian State of which he was a distinguished employee), or else regarded the future as unfathomable.

Nowadays they begin to give up hope altogether and regard everything—past, present and future—as incomprehensible, the result of forces no one can ever understand or control.

It is the same story in the sciences. The cosmogonists, who study the evolution of the stars, appeal to a mysterious creation to start the process off. The biologists who study the evolution of organic life appeal to a series of unpredictable accidents (the random mutations of genes) as the basis for the whole process.

Such ideas are, however, unscientific. Why? Because they assert that the processes they are supposed to be investigating take place without any cause. True, the assertion is often made under a cloak of “scientific” objectivity and humility: it is not positively stated that no cause exists, but only that we have at present no clue as to what the cause, if any, may be. But such reservations do not materially alter the nature of the theories in question. For the fact remains that to say that matter was created, to say that “mutations” occur spontaneously, is to say that something happens for no reason, without any discoverable cause. Such statements do not deserve to be called even provisional scientific hypotheses but are simply idealist inventions, fantasies. Science may not yet know why something happens, but to say that it happens for no reason is to abandon science.

A second defect in the evolutionary ideas of most bourgeois thinkers is that they regard the process of evolution as a smooth, continuous and unbroken process. They see the process of transition from one evolutionary stage to another as taking place through a series of gradations, without conflict and without any break in continuity.

But continuity is not the law of development. On the contrary, periods of smooth, continuous evolutionary development are interrupted by sudden and abrupt changes. The emergence of the new stage in development takes place, when the conditions for it have matured, by a break in continuity, by the leap from one state to another.

Hegel was the first to point this out.

With every period of transition, he observed:

“It is as in the case of the birth of a child; after a long period of nutrition in silence, the continuity of the gradual growth in size, of quantitative change, is suddenly cut short by the first breath drawn—there is a break in the process, a qualitative change—and the child is born.”<ref>G. W. F. Hegel, ''Phenomenology of Mind'', Preface.</ref>

But Marx alone followed up this profound observation of Hegel. As for the ensuing bourgeois thinkers, although the investigations of science, and common experience itself, clearly demonstrate that development cannot take place without discontinuity, without abrupt transitions and the leap from one state to another, they have nevertheless in their general theories tried to make unbroken continuity the law of evolution.

This prejudice in favor of a smooth line of evolution has gone hand in hand with the liberal belief that capitalist society will evolve smoothly—through orderly bourgeois progress broadening down “from precedent to precedent,” as Tennyson once expressed it. To have thought differently about evolution in general would have implied that we would have to think differently about social evolution in particular.

==== The Dialectical Materialist Conception of Development ====

The problem of understanding and explaining development in a materialist way—that is, “in harmony with the facts conceived in their own and not in a fantastic connection”—is answered by dialectical materialism.

Dialectical materialism considers the universe, not as static, not as unchanging, but as in continual process of development. It considers this development, not as a smooth, continuous and unbroken process, but as a process in which phases of gradual evolutionary change are interrupted by breaks in continuity, by the sudden leap from one state to another. And it seeks for the explanation, the driving force, of this universal movement, not in inventions of idealist fantasy, but within material processes themselves—in the inner contradictions, the opposite conflicting tendencies, which are in operation in every process of nature and society.

The main ideas of materialist dialectics, which are applied in dealing with the laws of development of the real material world, including society, will be the subject of the following chapters. But this is how Lenin summed them up:

The essential idea of materialist dialectics is:

“The recognition of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature…. This alone furnishes the key to the self-movement of everything in existence. It alone furnishes the key to the leaps, to the break in continuity, to the transformation into the opposite, to the destruction of the old and emergence of the new….

“In its proper meaning, dialectics is the study of the contradiction within the very essence of things.

“Development is the struggle of opposites.”<ref>V. I. Lenin, ''Philosophical Notebooks'', Russian Edition.</ref>

==== From Hegel to Marx ====

Where contradiction is at work, there is the force of development.

This profound conception was first put forward by Hegel. But he worked it out in an idealist way. According to Hegel, the whole process in the material world, in space and time, is nothing but the realization of the Absolute Idea, outside space and time. The Idea develops through a series of contradictions, and it is this ideal development which manifests itself in the material world. If things in space and time are forced to go through a series of transformations and to arise and pass away one after the other, that is because they are nothing but the embodiment of a self-contradictory phase of the Absolute Idea. For Hegel, the development of real things was due to the self-contradictoriness of their concepts: where the concept was self-contradictory, the thing which realized that concept could not be stable but must eventually negate itself and turn into something else. Thus instead of the concepts of things being regarded as the reflections of those things in our minds, the things were themselves regarded as nothing but the realizations of their concepts.

This is how Engels summed up the materialist criticism of Hegel.

“Hegel was not simply put aside. On the contrary, one started out from his revolutionary side… from the dialectical method. But in its Hegelian form this method was unusable.

“According to Hegel, dialectics is the self-development of the concept. The absolute concept does not only exist—where unknown—from eternity, it is also the actual living soul of the whole existing world….

“According to Hegel, therefore, the dialectical development apparent in nature and history, ''i.e.'' the causal interconnection of the progressive movement from the lower to the higher, which asserts itself through all zig-zag movements and temporary setbacks, is only a miserable copy of the self-movement of the concept going on from eternity, no one knows where, but at all events independently of any thinking human brain.

“This ideological reversal had to be done away with. We comprehended the concepts in our heads once more materialistically— as images of real things instead of regarding the real things as images of this or that stage of development of the absolute concept.

“Thus dialectics reduced itself to the science of the general laws of motion—both of the external world and of human thought—two sets of laws which are identical in substance, but differ in their expression in so far as the human mind can apply them consciously, while in nature and also up to now for the most part in human history, these laws assert themselves unconsciously in the form of external necessity in the midst of an endless series of seeming accidents.

“Thereby the dialectic of the concept itself became merely the conscious reflection of the dialectical motion of the real world and the dialectic of Hegel was placed upon its head; or rather, turned off its head, on which it was standing before, and placed on its feet again….

“In this way, however, the revolutionary side of Hegelian philosophy was again taken up and at the same time freed from the idealist trammels which in Hegel’s hands had prevented its consistent execution.”<ref>Engels, ''Ludwig Feuerbach'', Chapter IV.</ref>

This materialist understanding of dialectics is the key to understanding the forces of development within the material world itself, without recourse to outside causes.

This discovery arises from the whole advance of science and philosophy.

But above all it arises from the investigation of the laws of society, an investigation made imperative thanks to the very development of society—from the discovery of the contradictions of capitalism, explaining the forces of social development, and thereby showing the way forward from capitalism to socialism.

That is why bourgeois thinkers could not answer the problem of explaining the real material forces of development in nature and society. To answer this problem was to condemn the capitalist system. And here they had a blind spot. Only the revolutionary philosophy of the vanguard of the revolutionary class, the working class, could do it.

Marx’s discovery of the laws of materialist dialectics showed us how to understand the dialectical development of nature. But above all it showed us how to understand social change and how to wage the working-class struggle for socialism.

This discovery revolutionized philosophy.

It signalized the triumph of materialism over idealism, by doing away with the limitations of the merely mechanistic materialism of the past.

It likewise spelled the end of all “systems” of philosophy.

It made philosophy into a revolutionary weapon of the working people, an instrument, a method for understanding the world so as to change it.

Summing up the essential ideas of materialist dialectics Stalin wrote:

“Life always contains the new and the old, the growing and the dying, the revolutionary and the counter-revolutionary.

“That in life which is born and grows day after day is invincible, its progress cannot be checked. That is to say, if, for example, the proletariat as a class is born and grows day after day, no matter how weak it may be today, in the long run it must conquer. Why? Because it is growing, gaining strength and marching forward. On the other hand, that in life which grows old and is advancing to its grave, must inevitably sustain defeat, even if today it represents a titanic force. That is to say, if, for example, the ground is gradually slipping further and further back from under the feet of the bourgeoisie, and the latter is slipping further and further back every day, no matter how strong it may be today, it must, in the long run, sustain defeat.”<ref>Joseph Stalin, ''Anarchism or Socialism?'' Chapter I, Moscow, 1950.</ref>

Thus the materialist dialectics of Marx shows us the way forward and gives us unshakable confidence in our cause.

== PART TWO: DIALECTICS ==

=== 6. Dialectics and Metaphysics ===

<blockquote>''Dialectics, as a method of investigation, a method of thinking, is opposed to metaphysics. The metaphysical way of thinking deals with abstractions. It considers things each by itself, in abstraction from their real conditions of existence and interconnections; and it considers things as fixed and frozen, in abstraction from their real change and development. Consequently it invents rigid formulas and is always posing hard and fast antitheses—“either-or.” It fails to comprehend the unity and struggle of opposite processes and tendencies manifested in all phenomena of nature and society.''

''In contrast to metaphysics, the aim of dialectics is to trace the real changes and interconnection in the world and to think of things always in their real motion and interconnection.''
</blockquote>
Dialectical materialism, the world outlook of the Marxist-Leninist Party, is materialist in its theory, its interpretation and explanation of everything, dialectical in its method.

We have seen how materialist explanation is opposed to idealist explanation. And then we saw how materialists formerly interpreted things in a mechanist way, but how mechanistic materialism proved inadequate to explain real processes of change and development. For this we need materialist dialectics. We need to study and understand things dialectically.

The dialectical method is, indeed, nothing but the method of studying and understanding things in their real change and development.

As such, it stands opposed to ''metaphysics.''

What is metaphysics? Or more exactly, what is the metaphysical way of thinking, which is opposed by the dialectical way of thinking?

Metaphysics is essentially an abstract way of thinking. In a sense all thinking is “abstract,” since it works with general concepts and cannot but disregard a great deal of particular and unessential detail. For example, if we say that “men have two legs,” we are thinking of the two-leggedness of men in abstraction from their other properties, such as having a head, two arms and so on; and similarly we are thinking of all men in general, disregarding the individuality of particular men, of Peter, Paul and so on. But there is abstraction and abstraction. Metaphysics is distinguished by the fact that it makes false, misleading abstractions. As Engels once pointed out, “the art of working with concepts is not inborn… but requires real thought”;<ref>Engels, ''Anti-Dühring'', Preface.</ref> the art of right thinking involves learning how to avoid metaphysical abstraction.

Suppose, for example, we are thinking about men, about “human nature.” Then we should think about human nature in such a way that we recognize that men live in society and that their human nature cannot be independent of their living in society but develops and changes with the development of society. We shall then form ideas about human nature which correspond to the actual conditions of men’s existence and to their change and development. But yet people often think about “human nature” in a very different way, as though there were such a thing as “human nature” which manifested itself quite independent of the actual conditions of human existence and which was always and everywhere exactly the same. To think in such a way is obviously to make a false, misleading abstraction. And it is just such an abstract way of thinking that we call “metaphysics.”

The concept of fixed, unchanging “human nature” is an example of metaphysical abstraction, of the metaphysical way of thinking.

The metaphysician does not think in terms of real ''men,'' but of “Man” in the abstract.

Metaphysics, or the metaphysical way of thinking, is, then, that way of thinking which thinks of things (1) in abstraction from their conditions of existence, and (2) in abstraction from their change and development. It thinks of things (1) in separation one from another, ignoring their interconnections, and (2) as fixed and frozen, ignoring their change and development.

One example of metaphysics has already been given. It is not difficult to find plenty more. Indeed, the metaphysical way of thinking is so widespread, and has become so much part and parcel of current bourgeois ideology, that there is hardly an article in a journal, a talk on the radio, or a book by a learned professor, in which examples of metaphysical fallacy are not to be found.

A good deal is said and written, for example, about democracy. But the speakers and writers usually refer to some pure or absolute democracy, which they seek to define in abstraction from the actual development of society, of classes and of class struggle. But there can be no such pure democracy; it is a metaphysical abstraction. If we want to understand democracy we have always to ask: democracy for whom, for the exploiters or the exploited? We have to understand that since democracy is a form of government, there is no democracy which is not associated with the rule of some particular class, and that the democracy which is established when the working class is the ruling class is a higher form of democracy than capitalist democracy, just as capitalist democracy is a higher form of democracy than, say, the slave-owners’ democracy of ancient Greece. In other words, we should not try to think of democracy in abstraction from real social relations and from the real change and development of society.

Again, pacifists try to base their opposition to war on the idea that “all wars are wrong.” They think of war in the abstract, without reflecting that the character of each particular war is determined according to the historical epoch, the aims of the war and the classes in whose interests it is fought. Consequently they fail to distinguish between imperialist wars and wars of liberation, between unjust war and just war.

In most British schools today the children are regularly subjected to “intelligence tests.” It is alleged that each child possesses a certain fixed quantity of “intelligence,” which can be estimated without regard to the actual conditions of the child’s existence and which determines his capabilities throughout the whole of his life regardless of whatever conditions for change and development may subsequently come in his way. This is another example of metaphysics. In this case the metaphysical conception of “intelligence” is used as an excuse for denying educational opportunities to the majority of children on the grounds that their intelligence is too low for them to benefit from such opportunities.

In general, metaphysics is a way of thinking which tries to fix the nature, properties and potentialities of everything it considers once and for all. Consequently it presupposes that each thing has a fixed nature and fixed properties.

And it thinks in terms of “things” rather than “processes.” It tries to sum up everything in a formula, which says that the whole world, or any part of the world which is under consideration, consists of just such and such things with such and such properties. Such a formula we may call a “metaphysical” formula.

Thus Engels refers to “the old method of investigation and thought which Hegel calls ‘metaphysical,’ which preferred to investigate ''things'' as given, as fixed and stable.”<ref>Engels, ''Ludwig Feuerbach'', Chapter IV.</ref>

In philosophy, metaphysics often means the search for the “ultimate constituents of the universe.” Thus the materialists who said that the ultimate constituents were small, solid, material particles were just as much metaphysicians as the idealists who said that the ultimate constituents were spirits. All such philosophers thought they could sum up “the ultimate nature of the universe” in some formula. Some have held this formula, some that, but all have been metaphysicians. Yet it has been a hopeless quest. We cannot sum up the whole infinite changing universe in any such formula. And the more we find out about it, the more is this evident.

It should now be clear that the mechanistic materialism which we discussed in the preceding chapters can equally well be called ''metaphysical'' materialism.

We may also note, in passing, that certain philosophers today, the so-called positivists,<ref>The ''positivists'' say we have no right to assert that anything exists except our own sense-perceptions. They say that to assert anything else is “metaphysics.”</ref> claim to be against “metaphysics” because they claim to reject any philosophy which seeks for “the ultimate constituents of the universe.” For them, “metaphysics” means any theory which deals with “ultimates” not verifiable in sense-experience. By using the term in this way, they conceal the fact that they themselves are, if anything, more metaphysical than any other philosophers. For their own mode of thinking reaches extremes of metaphysical abstraction. What could be more metaphysical than to imagine, as the positivist philosophers do, that our sense-experience exists in abstraction from the real material world outside us? Indeed, they themselves make “sense-experience” into a metaphysical “ultimate.”

In opposition to the abstract, metaphysical way of thinking, dialectics teaches us to think of things in their real changes and interconnections. To think dialectically is to think concretely, and to think concretely is to think dialectically. When we oppose the dialectical method to metaphysics, then we show up the inadequacy, one-sidedness or falsity of the abstractions of metaphysics.

This consideration enables us to understand the original meaning of the term “dialectics.” The word is derived from the Greek ''dialego,'' meaning to discuss or debate. It was considered that to discuss a question from all sides, and from all angles, allowing different one-sided points of view to oppose and contradict each other during the debate, was the best method of arriving at the truth. Such was the dialectics employed, for example, by Socrates. When anyone claimed to have a formula which answered some questions once and for all, Socrates would enter into discussion with him and, by forcing him to consider the question from different angles, would compel him to contradict himself and so to admit that his formula was false. By this method Socrates considered that it was possible to arrive at more adequate ideas about things.

The Marxist dialectical method develops from and includes dialectics in the sense in which it was understood by the Greeks. But it is far richer in content, far wider in its scope. As a result, it becomes something qualitatively ''new'' as compared with pre-Marxist dialectics—a new revolutionary method. For it is combined with a consistent materialism and ceases to be a mere method of argument, becoming a method of investigation applicable to both nature and society, a method of materialist understanding of the world which grows out of and guides the activity of changing the world.

==== The Metaphysical “Either-Or” ====

Metaphysics presupposes that each thing has its own fixed nature, its own fixed properties, and considers each thing by itself, in isolation. It tries to settle the nature and properties of each thing as a given, separate object of investigation, not considering things in their interconnection and in their change and development.

Because of this, metaphysics thinks of things in terms of hard and fast antitheses. It opposes things of one sort to things of another sort: if a thing is of one sort, it has one set of properties; if of another sort, it has another set of properties; the one excludes the other, and each is thought of in separation from the other.

Thus Engels writes:

“To the metaphysician, things and their mental images, ideas, are isolated, to be considered one after the other, apart from each other, rigid fixed objects of investigation given once and for all. He thinks in absolutely irreconcilable antitheses. ‘His communication is Yea, yea, Nay, nay, for whatever is more than these cometh of evil.’ For him a thing either exists or it does not exist; it is equally impossible for a thing to be itself and at the same time something else.”<ref>Engels, ''Anti-Dühring'', Introduction.</ref>

Philosophers have expressed the essence of this metaphysical way of thinking in the formula: “Each thing is what it is, and not another thing.” This may sound no more than plain common sense. But that only shows that so-called common sense itself conceals misleading ideas which need to be brought into the open. This way of thinking prevents us from studying things in their real changes and interconnections—in all their contradictory aspects and relationships, in their process of changing from “one thing” into “another thing.”

It is not only philosophers who are metaphysicians.

There are left-wing trade unionists, for example, who are as metaphysical as any school of philosophers. For them everyone at their trade union local meeting is either a class-conscious militant or else he is a right-wing opportunist. Everyone must fit into one or other category, and once he is down as “right wing” he is finished so far as they are concerned. That some worker who has been their opponent in the past and on some issues may yet prove an ally in the future and on other issues is not allowed for in their metaphysical outlook on life.

In one of Moliere’s plays there is a man who learns for the first time about prose. When they explain to him what prose is, he exclaims: “Why, I’ve been speaking prose all my life!”

Similarly, there are many workers who may well say: “Why, I’ve been a metaphysician all my life!”

The metaphysician has his formula ready for everything. He says—Either this formula fits or it does not. If it does, that settles it. If it does not, then he has some alternative formula ready. “Either-or, but not both” is his motto. A thing is either this or that; it has either this set of properties or that set of properties; two things stand to one another either in this relationship or in that.

The use of the metaphysical “either-or” leads people into countless difficulties.

For example, difficulties are felt in understanding the relations between American and British imperialism today. For it is argued: Either they are working together, or else they are not. If they are working together, then there is no rift between them; if there is a rift between them, then they are not working together. But on the contrary, they are working together and yet there are rifts between them; and we cannot understand the way they work together nor fight them effectively unless we understand the rifts which divide them.

Again, difficulties are felt in understanding the possibility of the peaceful co-existence of capitalist and socialist states. For it is argued: Either they can co-exist peacefully, in which case antagonism between capitalism and socialism must cease; or else the antagonism remains, in which case they cannot co-exist peacefully. But on the contrary, the antagonism remains, and yet the striving of the socialist states and of millions of people in all countries for peace can prevent a war between capitalist and socialist states.

It is often difficult to avoid a metaphysical way of thinking. And this is because, misleading as it is, it yet has its roots in something very necessary and useful.

It is necessary for us to classify things—to have some system of classifying them and assigning their properties and relations. That is a prerequisite of clear thinking. We have to work out what different kinds of things there are in the world, to say that these have these properties as distinct from those which have those other properties, and to say what are their relations.

But when we go on to consider these things and properties and relations each in isolation, as fixed constants, as mutually exclusive terms, then we begin to go wrong. For everything in the world has many different and indeed contradictory aspects, exists in intimate relationship with other things and not in isolation, and is subject to change. And so it frequently happens that when we classify something as “A” and not “B,” then this formula is upset by its changing from “A” into “B,” or by its being “A” in some relationships and “B” in others, or by its having a contradictory nature, part “A” and part “B.”

For example, we all know the difference between birds and mammals, and that while birds lay eggs mammals, in general, produce their young alive and suckle them. Naturalists used to believe that mammals were rigidly distinguished from birds because, among other things, mammals do not lay eggs. But this formula was completely upset when an animal called the platypus was discovered, for while the platypus is undoubtedly a mammal, it is a mammal which lays eggs. What is the explanation of this irregular behavior of the platypus? It is to be found in the evolutionary relationship of birds and mammals, which are both descended from original egg-laying animals. The birds have continued to lay eggs while the mammals stopped doing so—except for a few conservative animals like the platypus. If we think of animals in their evolution, their development, this appears very natural. But if we try, as the older naturalists tried, to make them fit into some rigid, fixed scheme of classification, then the products of evolution upset that classification.

Again, an idea or a theory which was progressive in one set of circumstances, when it first arose, cannot for that reason be labeled “progressive” in an absolute sense, since it may later become reactionary in new circumstances. For instance, mechanistic materialism when it first arose was a progressive theory. But we cannot say that it is still progressive today. On the contrary, under the new circumstances which have arisen mechanistic theory has become retrograde, reactionary. Mechanism, which was progressive in the rising phase of capitalism, goes hand in hand with idealism as part of the ideology of capitalism in decay.

Common sense, too recognizes the limitation of the metaphysical way of thinking.

For example: When is a man bald? Common sense recognizes that though we can distinguish bald men from non-bald men, nevertheless baldness develops through a process of losing one’s hair, and therefore men in the midst of this process enter into a phase in which we cannot say absolutely either that they are bald or that they are not: they are in process of becoming bald. The metaphysical “either-or” breaks down.

In all these examples we are confronted with the distinction between an ''objective process,'' in which something undergoes change, and the ''concepts'' in terms of which we try to sum up the characteristics of the things involved in the process. Such concepts never do and never can always and in all respects correspond to their objects, precisely because the objects are undergoing change. Thus Engels writes:

“Are the concepts that prevail in natural science fictions because they by no means always coincide with reality? From the moment we accept the theory of evolution all our concepts of organic life correspond only approximately to reality. Otherwise there would be no change; on the day that concept and reality absolutely coincide in the organic world, development is at an end.”<ref>Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, ''Selected Correspondence'', Engels to Schmidt, March 12, 1895, N. Y., 1942.</ref>

And he pointed out that similar considerations apply to all concepts without exception.

==== The Unity and Struggle of Opposites ====

When we think of the properties of things, their relationships, their modes of action and interaction, the processes into which they enter, then we find that, generally speaking, all these properties, relationships, interactions and processes divide into ''fundamental opposites.''

For example, if we think of the simplest ways in which two bodies can act on one another, then we find that this action is either repulsion or attraction.

If we consider the electrical properties of bodies, then there is positive and negative electricity.

In organic life, there is the building up of organic compounds and the breaking down of them.

Again, in mathematics, there is addition and subtraction, plus and minus.

And in general, whatever sphere of inquiry we may be considering, we find that it involves such fundamental opposites. We find ourselves considering, not just a number of ''different'' things, ''different'' properties, ''different'' relations, ''different'' processes, but pairs of ''opposites,'' fundamental ''oppositions.'' As Hegel put it: “In opposition, the different is not confronted by any other, but by ''its'' other.”<ref>Hegel, ''Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences'': Logic, Section 119.</ref>

Thus if we think of the forces acting between two bodies, there are not just a number of different forces, but they divide into attractive and repulsive forces; if we think of electric charges, there are not just a number of different charges, but they divide into positive and negative; and so on. Attraction stands opposed to repulsion, positive electricity to negative electricity.

Such fundamental oppositions are not understood by the metaphysical way of thinking.

In the first place, the metaphysical way of thinking tries to ignore and discount opposition. It seeks to understand a given subject-matter simply in terms of a whole number of different properties and different relations of things, ignoring the fundamental oppositions which are manifested in these properties and relations. Thus those who think in metaphysical terms about class-divided societies, for example, try to understand society as consisting merely of a large number of different individuals connected together by all kinds of different social relations—but they ignore the fundamental opposition of exploiters and exploited, manifested in all those social relations.

In the second place, when the metaphysical way of thinking does nevertheless come upon the fundamental oppositions and cannot ignore them, then—true to its habit of thinking of each thing in isolation, as a fixed constant—it considers these opposites each in isolation from the other, understands them separately and as each excluding the other. Thus, for example, the older physicists used to think of positive and negative electricity just simply as two different “electrical fluids.”

But contrary to metaphysics, not only are fundamental opposites involved in every subject-matter, but these opposites mutually imply each other, are inseparably connected together, and, far from being exclusive, neither can exist or be understood except in relation to the other.

This characteristic of opposition is known as polarity: Fundamental opposites are polar opposites. A magnet, for example, has two poles, a north pole and a south pole. But these poles, opposite and distinct, cannot exist in separation. If the magnet is cut in two, there is not a north pole in one half and a south pole in the other, but north and south poles recur in each half. The north pole exists only as the opposite of the south, and vice versa; the one can be defined only as the opposite of the other.

In general, fundamental opposition has to be understood as polar opposition, and every subject-matter has to be understood in terms of the polar opposition involved in it.

Thus in physics we find that attraction and repulsion are involved in every physical process in such a way that they cannot be separated or isolated the one from the other. In considering living bodies, we do not find in some cases the building up of organic compounds and in other cases their breaking down, but every life process involves both the building up and the breaking down of organic compounds. In capitalist society the increasing socialization of labor is inseparable from its opposite, the increasing centralization of capital.

This unity of opposites—the fact that opposites cannot be understood in separation one from another, but only in their inseparable connection in every field of investigation—is strikingly exemplified in mathematics. Here the fundamental operations are the two opposites, addition and subtraction. And so far is it from being the case that addition and subtraction can be understood each apart from the other, that addition can be represented as subtraction and vice versa; thus the operation of subtraction (a — b) can be represented as an addition (— b + a). Similarly a division a/b can be represented as a multiplication a x (1/b).<ref>Engels, ''Dialectics of Nature'', Chapter 7, “Note on Mathematics.”</ref>

The unity of opposites, their inseparable connection, is by no means to be understood as a harmonious and stable relationship, as a state of equilibrium. On the contrary, “The unity of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute.”<ref>Lenin, ''Selected Works'', Vol. 11, “On Dialectics.”</ref>

The existence of fundamental polar oppositions, manifesting themselves in every department of nature and society, expresses itself in the ''conflict'' and ''struggle'' of opposed tendencies, which, despite phases of temporary equilibrium, lead to continual motion and development, to a perpetual coming into being and passing away of everything in existence, to sharp changes of state and transformations.

Thus, for example, the equilibrium of attractive and repulsive forces in the physical world is never more than conditional and temporary; the conflict and struggle of attraction and repulsion always asserts itself, issuing in physical changes and transformations, whether transformations on an atomic scale, chemical changes or, on a grand scale, in the explosion of stars.

==== Dialectics and Metaphysics ====

To sum up.

Metaphysics thinks in terms of “ready-made” things, whose properties and potentialities it seeks to fix and determine once and for all. It considers each thing by itself, in isolation from every other, in terms of irreconcilable antitheses—“either-or.” It contrasts one thing to another, one property to another, one relationship to another, not considering things in their real movement and interconnection, and not considering that every subject-matter represents a unity of opposites—opposed but inseparably connected together.

Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics refuses to think of things each by itself, as having a fixed nature and fixed properties— “either-or”—but it recognizes that things come into being, exist and cease to be, in a process of unending change and development, in a process of complicated and ever-changing interrelationship, in which each thing exists only in its connection with other things and goes through a series of transformations, and in which is always manifested the unity, inseparable interconnection and struggle of the opposite properties, aspects, tendencies characteristic of every phenomenon of nature and society.

Contrary to metaphysics, the aim of dialectics is to trace the real changes and interconnections in the world and to think of things always in their motion and interconnection.

Thus Engels writes:

“The world is not to be comprehended as a complex of ready-made things but as a complex of processes…. One no longer permits oneself to be imposed upon by the antitheses insuperable for the old metaphysics.”<ref>Engels, ''Ludwig Feuerbach'', Chapter IV.</ref>

“The old rigid antitheses, the sharp impassable dividing lines are more and more disappearing…. The recognition that these antagonisms and distinctions are in fact to be found in nature but only with relative validity, and that on the other hand their imagined rigidity and absoluteness have been introduced into nature only by our minds—this recognition is the kernel of the dialectical conception of nature.”<ref>''Anti-Dühring'', Preface.</ref>

“Dialectics… grasps things and their images, ideas, essentially in their inter-connection, in their sequence, their movement, their birth and death.”<ref>''Ibid.'', Introduction.</ref>

Lenin wrote that the understanding of the “contradictory parts” of every phenomenon was “the essence of dialectics.” It consists in “the recognition (discovery) of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature, including mind and society.”<ref>Lenin, ''Selected Works'', Vol. 11, “On Dialectics.”</ref>

Lastly, Marx wrote that: “dialectic… in its rational form is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary.”<ref>Karl Marx, ''Capital'', Vol. I, Preface to second edition, N. Y., 1947.</ref>

=== 7. Change and Interconnection ===

<blockquote>''The Marxist dialectical method demands that we must always consider things, not in isolation, but in their interconnection with other things, in relation to the actual conditions and circumstances of each case; and that we must consider things in their change and movement, their coming into being and going out of being, always taking particularly into account what is new, what is rising and developing.''

''It follows that the Marxist dialectical method forbids the employment of “ready-made schemes” and abstract formulas, but demands the thorough, detailed analysis of a process in all its concreteness, basing its conclusions only on such an analysis.''
</blockquote>
==== Four Principal Features of the Marxist Dialectical Method ====

In his ''Dialectical and Historical Materialism'' Stalin said that there are four principal features of the Marxist dialectical method.

(1) Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics does not regard nature as just an agglomeration of things, each existing independently of the others, but it considers things as “connected with, dependent on and determined by each other.” Hence it considers that nothing can be understood taken by itself, in isolation, but must always be understood “in its inseparable connection with other things, and as conditioned by them.”

(2) Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics considers everything as in “a state of continuous movement and change, of renewal and development, where something is always arising and developing and something always disintegrating and dying away.” Hence it considers things “not only from the standpoint of their interconnection and interdependence, but also from the standpoint of their movement, their change, their development, their coming into being and going out of being.”

(3) Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics does not regard the: process of development as “a simple process of growth,” but as “a development which passes from… quantitative changes to open, fundamental changes, to qualitative changes,” which occur “abruptly, taking the form of a leap from one state to another.” Hence it considers development as “an onward and upward movement, as a transition from an old qualitative state to a new qualitative state, as a development from the simple to the complex, from the lower to the higher.”

(4) Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics “holds that the process of development from the lower to the higher takes place… as a disclosure of the contradictions inherent in things… as a struggle of opposite tendencies which operate on the basis of these contradictions.”

We shall postpone until the next chapter consideration of the latter two features, which concern the process of development from one qualitative state to another, from the lower to the higher. In this chapter we shall consider the first two features of the dialectical method, namely, that it considers things always in their interconnection and in their movement and change.

==== Considering Things in Their Interconnection and Circumstances ====

The dialectical method demands, first, that we should consider things, not each by itself, but always in their interconnection with other things.

This sounds “obvious.” Nevertheless it is an “obvious” principle which is very often ignored and is extremely important to remember. We have already considered it and some examples of its application in discussing metaphysics, since the very essence of metaphysics is to think of things in an abstract way, isolated from their relations with other things and from the concrete circumstances in which they exist.

The principle of considering things in relation to actual conditions and circumstances, and not apart from those actual conditions and circumstances, is always of fundamental importance for the working-class movement in deciding the most elementary questions of policy.

For example, there was a time when the British workers were fighting for a ten-hour day. They were right at that time not to make their immediate demand an eight-hour day, since this was not yet a realizable demand. They were equally right, when they got a ten-hour day, not to be satisfied with it.

There are times when it is correct for a section of workers to come out on strike, and there are times when it is not correct. Such matters have to be judged according to the actual circumstances of the case. Similarly there are times when it is correct to go on prolonging and extending a strike, and there are times when it is correct to call it off.

No working-class leader can be of very much value if he tries to decide questions of policy in terms of “general principle” alone, without taking into account the actual circumstances in relation to which policy has to be operated, without understanding that the same policy can be right in one case and wrong in another, depending on the concrete circumstances of each case.

Thus Lenin wrote:

“Of course, in politics, in which sometimes extremely complicated—national and international—relationships between classes and parties have to be dealt with… it would be absurd to concoct a recipe, or general rule… that would serve in all cases. One must have the brains to analyze the situation in each separate case.”<ref>Lenin, ''Left-wing Communism'', Chapter VIII, N. Y., 1934.</ref>

This readiness on the part of Marxists to adapt policy to circumstances and to change policy with circumstances is sometimes called Communist “opportunism.” But it is nothing of the kind—or rather, it is the very opposite. It is the application in practice of the science of the strategy and tactics of working-class struggle. Indeed, what is meant by opportunism in relation to working-class policy? It means subordinating the long-term interests of the working class as a whole to the temporary interests of a section, sacrificing the interests of the class to defense of the temporary privileges of some particular group. Communists are guided by Marx’s principle that “they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.”<ref>Marx and Engels, ''The Communist Manifesto'', Chapter II.</ref> And this requires that, in the interests of the movement as a whole, one must analyze the situation in each separate case, deciding what policy to pursue in each case in the light of the concrete circumstances.

On general questions, too, the greatest confusion can arise from forgetting the dialectical principle that things must not be considered in isolation but in their inseparable inter-connection.

For example, the British Labor leaders once said, and many members of the Labor Party continue to say, that nationalization is an installment of socialism. They consider nationalization by itself, in isolation, out of connection with the state and with the social structure in relation to which nationalization measures are introduced. They overlook the fact that if the public power, the state, remains in the hands of the exploiters, and if their representatives sit on and control the boards of the nationalized industries, which continue to be run on the basis of exploiting the labor of one class for the profit of another class, then nationalization is not socialism. Socialist nationalization can come into being only when the public power, the state, is in the hands of the workers.

Again, in political arguments people very often appeal to a concept of “fairness” which leads them to judge events without the slightest consideration of the real meaning of those events, of the circumstances in which they occur. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander: that is the principle employed in such arguments.

Thus it is argued that if we defend the democratic right of the workers in a capitalist country to agitate for the ending of capitalism and the introduction of socialism, then we cannot deny to others in a socialist country the right to agitate for the ending of socialism and the reintroduction of capitalism. Those who argue like this throw up their hands in horror when they find that counter-revolutionary groupings in the U.S.S.R., who sought to restore capitalism in that country, were deprived of the possibility of carrying out their aims. Why, they exclaim, this is undemocratic, this is tyranny! Such an argument overlooks the difference between fighting in the interests of the vast majority of the people to end exploitation, and fighting in the interests of a small section to preserve or reintroduce exploitation; it overlooks the difference between defending the right of the vast majority to run their affairs in their own interests, and defending the right of a small minority to keep the majority in bondage; in other words, it overlooks the difference between moving forward and backward, between putting the clock ahead and putting it back, between revolution and counter-revolution. Of course, if we fight to achieve socialism, and if we achieve it, then we shall defend what we have achieved and shall not allow the slightest possibility of any group destroying that achievement. Let the capitalists and their hangers-on shout about democracy “in general.” If, as Lenin said, we “have the brains to analyze the situation,” we shall not be deceived by them.

The “liberal” concept of “fairness” has, indeed, become a favorite weapon of reaction lately. In 1949 and again in 1950, when the fascists decided to hold a demonstration in London on May Day, the Home Secretary promptly banned the workers’ May Day demonstration. If I ban one, I must ban the other, he blandly explained. How scrupulously “fair” he was!

The principle of understanding things in their circumstances and interconnections is likewise a very important principle in science. Yet scientists, who take things to bits and consider their various properties, very often forget that things which they may consider in isolation do not exist in isolation. And this leads to serious misunderstandings.

Soviet biologists, for example, guided by this first principle of dialectics, have stressed the unity of the organism and its environment. They have pointed out that you cannot consider the organism as having a nature of its own, isolated from its environment: that is metaphysics. Thus there is no such thing as a plant, for instance, isolated from its environment: such a plant is a mere museum piece, a dead plant artificially preserved. Living plants grow in a soil, in a climate, in an environment, and they grow and develop by assimilating that environment. Thus Lysenko defined the heredity, or nature, of an organism as its requirement of certain conditions for its life and development, and its responding to various conditions in a certain way. This understanding of the unity of organism and environment had important consequences. For it led to the expectation that by compelling an organism to adapt itself to and assimilate changed conditions, its nature could be changed. And this expectation has been verified in practice.

The biologists of the Mendel-Morgan school, on the other hand, treat the organism abstractly, metaphysically, as isolated from its real conditions of life. They conceive of the “nature” of the organism as quite independent of its conditions of life. Hence they conclude, in true metaphysical style, that the heredity of an organism “is what is,” and that it is no use trying to change it in the ways in which Soviet biologists ''have'' changed the heredity of organisms.

==== Considering Things in Their Movement, Their Coming into Being and Going Out of Being ====

Let us now consider some examples of the second principle of dialectics, which demands that we should consider things in their movement, their change, their coming into being and going out of being.

This principle, too, is of great importance in science.

Soviet biologists, for example, guided by this principle of dialectics, have considered the organism in its growth and development. Thus at a certain stage of growth, the nature of the organism is still plastic; if you can modify it at that stage, you can often change its nature, give it a changed heredity. Something is newly coming into being in the organism, and that is the time to foster it and to give it a desired direction. But if that stage is passed, then its nature becomes fixed and you cannot change it. You must find just the right stage of growth if you wish to modify the heredity of the organism.

The biologists of the Mendel-Morgan school, on the other hand, consider the nature of the organism as given and fixed from the very start.

This second principle of dialectics teaches us always to pay attention to what is new, to what is rising and growing—not just to what exists at the moment, but to what is coming into being.

This principle is of paramount importance for revolutionary understanding, for revolutionary practice.

The Russian Bolsheviks, for example, saw from the very beginning how Russian society was moving—what was new in it, what was coming into being. They looked for what was rising and growing, though it was still weak—the working class. While others discounted the importance of the working class and finished by entering into compromises with the forces of the old society, the Bolsheviks concluded that the working class was the new, rising force, and led it to victory.

Just this same understanding of what was rising and growing and of what was disintegrating and dying away, was exemplified in Stalin’s leadership during the war, 1941-45. When the Germans were before Moscow in November 1941, and all the “allied military strategists” outside the Soviet Union considered that Russia’s defeat was certain, Stalin said that while the Germans were at the peak of their military power the Soviet forces, on the other hand, were still mobilizing and increasing. Therefore the defeat of the German fascists was certain.

“Germany, whose reserves of manpower are already being exhausted, has been considerably more weakened than the Soviet Union, whose reserves are only now being mobilized to the full…. Can there be any doubt that we can, and are bound to, defeat the German invaders? The German invaders are straining their last efforts. There is no doubt that Germany cannot sustain such a strain for long.”<ref>Stalin, ''The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union'', Speeches of November 6 and 7, 1941, N. Y., 1945.</ref>

Similarly today, when press and radio are full of the boasts and threats of the American imperialists and their henchmen, we stress that which is rising and growing all over the world, the people’s camp of peace, which is bound to continue to grow and to overwhelm the imperialists in shameful disaster.

Again, in the fight for unity of the working-class movement, in relation to the British Labor Party and the affiliated trade unions, we pay attention above all to that which is arising and growing in the movement. Therefore we see a great deal more than the policy of the right-wing leaders and their influence. The right wing has its basis in the past, though it is still strong and dominant. But there are arising the forces of the future, determined to fight against capitalism and war.

Similarly in relation to individual people—we should foster and build on what is coming to birth in them, what is rising and moving ahead. This is what a good secretary or organizer does.

Such examples as these show that the basis of the dialectical method, its most essential principle, is to study and understand things in their concrete interconnection and movement.

==== Against “Ready-made Schemes”—“Truth Is Always Concrete” ====

Sometimes people imagine that dialectics is a preconceived scheme, into the pattern of which everything is supposed to fit. This is the very opposite of the truth about dialectics. The employment of the Marxist dialectical method does not mean that we apply a preconceived scheme and try to make everything fit into it. No, it means that we study things as they really are, in their real interconnection and movement.

This is something which Lenin insisted on again and again. Indeed, he proclaimed it as “the fundamental thesis of dialectics.” “Genuine dialectics,” Lenin wrote, proceeds “by means of a thorough, detailed analysis of a process in all its concreteness. The fundamental thesis of dialectics is: there is no such thing as abstract truth, truth is always concrete.”<ref>V. I. Lenin, ''Selected Works'', Vol. 2, ''One Step Forward, Two Steps Back'', Section R, “Something about Dialectics.”</ref>

What did he mean by “truth is always concrete”? Just that we will not get at the truth about things, about either nature or society, by thinking up some general scheme, some abstract formula; but only by trying to work out as regards each process just what are the forces at work, how they are related, which are rising and growing and which are decaying and dying away, and on this basis reaching an estimate of the process as a whole.

So Engels said: “There could be no question of building the laws of dialectics into nature, but of discovering them in it and evolving them from it…. Nature is the test of dialectics.”<ref>Engels, ''Anti-Dühring'', Preface and Introduction.</ref>

As regards the study of society, and the estimate we make of real social changes on which we base our political strategy, Lenin ridiculed those who took some abstract, preconceived scheme as their guide.

According to some “authorities,” the Marxist dialectics laid it down that all development must proceed through “triads”—thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Lenin ridiculed this.

“It is clear to everybody that the main burden of Engels’ argument is that materialists must depict the historical process correctly and accurately, and that insistence on… selection of examples which demonstrate the correctness of the triad is nothing but a relic of Hegelianism…. And, indeed, once it has been categorically declared that to attempt to ‘prove’ anything by triads is absurd, what significance can examples of ‘dialectical’ process have?… Anyone who reads the definition and description of the dialectical method given by Engels will see that the Hegelian triads are not even mentioned, and that it all amounts to regarding social evolution as a natural-historical process of development….

“What Marx and Engels called the dialectical method… is nothing more nor less than the scientific method in sociology, which consists in regarding society as a living organism in a constant state of development… the study of which requires an objective analysis of the relations of production that constitute the given social formation and an investigation of its laws of functioning and development.”<ref>Lenin, ''Selected Works'', Vol. 1, “What the Friends of the People Are and How They Fight Against the Social Democrats,” Part I.</ref>

Let us consider some examples of what the “analysis of a process in all its concreteness” and the principle that “truth is always concrete” mean, in contrast to the method of trying to lay down some preconceived scheme of social development and of appealing to such a scheme as a basis for policy.

In tsarist Russia the Mensheviks used to say: “We must have capitalism before socialism.” First capitalism must go through its full development, then socialism will follow: that was their scheme. Consequently they supported the liberals in politics and enjoined the workers to do no more than fight for better conditions in the capitalist factories.

Lenin repudiated this silly scheme. He showed that the liberals, frightened by the workers, would compromise with the tsar; but that the alliance of workers with peasants could take the lead from them, overthrow the tsar, and then go on to overthrow the capitalists and build socialism before ever capitalism was able to develop fully.

After the proletarian revolution was successful, another scheme was propounded—this time by Trotsky. “You can’t build socialism in one country. Unless the revolution takes place in the advanced capitalist countries, socialism cannot come in Russia.” Lenin and Stalin showed that this scheme, too, was false. For even if the revolution did not take place in the advanced capitalist countries, the alliance of workers and peasants in the Soviet Union had still the forces to build socialism.

In Western European countries it used often to be said: “We must have fascism before communism.” First the capitalists will abandon democracy and introduce the fascist dictatorship, and then the workers will overthrow the fascist dictatorship. But the Communists replied, no, we will fight together with all the democratic forces to preserve bourgeois democracy and to defeat the fascists, and that will create the best conditions for going forward to win working-class power and to commence to build socialism.

Lastly, today we sometimes hear the argument: “Capitalism means war, therefore war is inevitable.” True enough, so long as capitalism, which has long ago entered its last (imperialist) phase, persists, there must inevitably be conflicts between the rival powers, and these conflicts are such as to entail the inevitability of imperialist wars. But the imperialists cannot make war without the people. The more they prepare war, the more open their aggressiveness becomes, the more one power attempts to impose its domination on another, and the more hardships they impose on the people, the more can the people be rallied to oppose their war. Therefore in any instance when war threatens, that war can be prevented and postponed. And by fighting to preserve peace, we can lay the basis for ending the conditions which pose the inevitability of war. Imperialist war plans can be defeated; they can be defeated if the working class rallies all the peace-loving forces around itself. And imperialism itself, with the consequent inevitability of war, can be ended. If we defeat the imperialist war plans, that will be the best road towards the ending of capitalism itself and the building of socialism. Imperialism will not be ended by waiting for it to wreck itself in inevitable wars, but by uniting to prevent the realization of its war plans.

In all these examples it will be seen that the acceptance of some ready-made scheme, some abstract formula, means passivity, support for capitalism, betrayal of the working class and of socialism. But the dialectical approach which understands things in their concrete interconnection and movement, shows us how to forge ahead—how to fight, what allies to draw in. That is the inestimable value of the Marxist dialectical method to the working-class movement.

=== 8. The Laws of Development ===

<blockquote>''To understand development we must understand the distinction between quantitative change—increase and decrease—and qualitative change—the passing into a new state, the emergence of something new.''

''Quantitative change always leads at a certain critical point to qualitative change. And similarly qualitative differences and qualitative changes always rest on quantitative differences and quantitative changes.''

''Development must be understood, therefore, not as a simple process of growth but as a process which passes from quantitative changes to open, fundamental qualitative changes.''

''Further, this transformation of quantitative into qualitative changes takes place as a result of the conflict or struggle of opposite tendencies which operate on the basis of the contradictions inherent in all things and processes.''

''The Marxist dialectical method, therefore, teaches us to understand processes of development in terms of the transformation of quantitative into qualitative changes, and to seek the grounds and the explanation of such development in the unity and struggle of opposites.''
</blockquote>
==== What Do We Mean by “Development”? ====

In stressing the need to study real processes in their movement and in all their interconnections, Stalin pointed out that in the processes of nature and history there is always “renewal and development, where something is always arising and developing and something always disintegrating and dying away.”<ref>Stalin, ''Dialectical and Historical Materialism''.</ref> When that which is arising and developing comes to fruition, and that which is disintegrating and dying away finally disappears, there emerges something ''new.''

For as we saw in criticizing mechanistic materialism, processes do not always keep repeating the same cycle of changes, but advance from stage to stage as something new continually emerges.

This is the real meaning of the word “development.” We speak of “development” where stage by stage something new keeps emerging.

Thus there is a difference between mere ''change'' and development. Development is change proceeding according to its own internal laws from stage to stage.

And there is equally a difference between ''growth'' and development. This difference is familiar to biologists, for example. Thus growth means getting bigger—merely quantitative change. But development means, not getting bigger, but passing into a qualitatively new stage, becoming qualitatively different. For example, a caterpillar grows longer and fatter; then it spins itself a cocoon, and finally emerges as a butterfly. This is development. A caterpillar ''grows'' into a bigger caterpillar; it ''develops'' into a butterfly.

Processes of nature and history exemplify, not merely change, not merely growth, but development. Can we, then, reach any conclusions about the general laws of development? This is the further task of materialist dialectics—to find what general laws are manifested in all development, and to give us, therefore, the ''method of approach'' for understanding, explaining and controlling development.

==== Quantity and Quality: The Law of the Transformation of Quantitative into Qualitative Changes ====

This brings us to the two latter features of the Marxist dialectical method, as explained by Stalin. The first of these may be called “the law of the transformation of quantitative into qualitative change.” What does this mean?

All change has a quantitative aspect, that is, an aspect of mere increase or decrease which does not alter the nature of that which changes. But quantitative change, increase or decrease, cannot go on indefinitely. At a certain point it always leads to a qualitative change; and at that critical point (or “nodal point,” as Hegel called it) the qualitative change takes place relatively suddenly, by a leap, as it were.

For example, if water is being heated, it does not go on getting hotter and hotter indefinitely; at a certain critical temperature, it begins to turn into steam, undergoing a qualitative change from liquid to gas. A cord used to lift a weight may have a greater and greater load attached to it, but no cord can lift a load indefinitely great: at a certain point, the cord is bound to break. A boiler may withstand a greater and greater pressure of steam—up to the point where it bursts. A variety of plant may be subjected to a series of changes in its conditions of growth for a number of generations—for instance, to colder temperatures; the variety continues unchanged, until a point is reached when suddenly a qualitative change is induced, a change in the heredity of the plant. In this way spring wheats have been transformed into winter wheats, and vice versa, as a result of the accumulation of a series of quantitative changes.

This law of the transformation of quantitative into qualitative change is also met with in society. Thus before the system of industrial capitalism comes into being there takes place a process of the accumulation of wealth in money form in a few private hands (largely by colonial plunder), and of the formation of a propertyless proletariat (by enclosures and the driving of peasants off the land). At a certain point in this process, when ''enough'' money is accumulated to provide capital for industrial undertakings, when ''enough'' people have been proletarianized to provide the labor required, the conditions have matured for the development of industrial capitalism. At this point an accumulation of quantitative changes gives rise to a new qualitative stage in the development of society.

In general, qualitative changes happen with relative suddenness—by a leap. Something new is suddenly born, though its potentiality was already contained in the gradual evolutionary process of continuous quantitative change which went before.

Thus we find that continuous, gradual quantitative change leads at a certain point to discontinuous, sudden qualitative change. We have already remarked in an earlier chapter that most of those who have considered the laws of development in nature and society have conceived of this development only in its continuous aspect. This means that they have considered it only from the aspect of a process of growth, of quantitative change, and have not considered its qualitative aspect, the fact that at a certain point in the gradual process of growth a new quality suddenly arises, a transformation takes place.

Yet this is what always happens. If you are boiling a kettle, the water suddenly begins to boil when boiling point is reached. If you are scrambling eggs, the mixture in the pan suddenly “scrambles.” And it is the same if you are engaged in changing society. We will only change capitalist society into socialist society when the rule of one class is replaced by the rule of another class—and this is a radical transformation, a leap to a new state of society, a revolution.

If, on the other hand, we consider quality itself, then qualitative change always arises as a result of an accumulation of quantitative changes, and differences in quality have their basis in differences of quantity.

Thus just as quantitative change must at a certain point give rise to qualitative change, so if we wish to bring about qualitative change we must study its quantitative basis, and know what must be increased and what diminished if the required change is to be brought about.

Natural science teaches us how purely quantitative difference—addition or subtraction—makes a qualitative difference in nature. For example, the addition of one proton in the nucleus of an atom makes the transition from one element to another.<ref>For a simple account of the physical phenomena referred to in this and in our next example see ''The Challenge of Atomic Energy'', by E. H. S. Burhop, London, 1951.</ref> The atoms of all the elements are formed out of combinations of the same protons and electrons, but a purely quantitative difference between the numbers combined in the atom gives different kinds of atoms, atoms of different elements with different chemical properties. Thus an atom consisting of one proton and one electron is a hydrogen atom, but if another proton and another electron are added it is an atom of helium, and so on. Similarly in chemical compounds, the addition of one atom to a molecule makes the difference between substances with different chemical properties. In general, different qualities have their basis in quantitative difference.

As Engels put it:

“In nature, in a manner exactly fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or subtraction of matter or motion….

“All qualitative differences in nature rest on differences of chemical composition or on different quantities or forms of motion or, as is almost always the case, on both. Hence it is impossible to alter the quality of a body without addition or subtraction of matter or motion, ''i.e.'' without quantitative alteration of the body concerned.”<ref>Engels, ''Dialectics of Nature'', Chapter II.</ref>

This feature of the dialectical law connecting quality and quantity is familiar to readers of the popular literature about atomic bombs. To make a uranium bomb it is necessary to have the isotope, uranium-235; the more common isotope, uranium-238, will not do. The difference between these two is merely quantitative, a difference in atomic weight, depending on the number of neutrons present in each case. But this quantitative difference of atomic weight, 235 and 238, makes the qualitative difference between a substance with the properties required for the bomb and a substance without those properties. Further, having got a quantity of uranium-235, a certain “critical mass” of it is required before it will explode. If there is not enough, the chain reaction which constitutes the explosion will not occur; when the “critical mass” is reached, the reaction does occur.

Thus we see that quantitative changes are transformed at a certain point into qualitative changes, and qualitative differences rest on quantitative differences. This is a universal feature of development. What makes such development happen?

==== Development Takes Place Through the Unity and Struggle of Opposites ====

In general, the reason why in any particular case a quantitative change leads to a qualitative change lies in the very nature, in the content, of the particular processes involved. Therefore in each case we can, if we only know enough, explain just why a qualitative change is inevitable, and why it takes place at the point it does.

To explain this we have to study the facts of the case. We cannot invent an explanation with the aid of dialectics alone; where an understanding of dialectics helps is that it gives us the clue as to where to look. In a particular case we may not yet know how and why the change takes place. In that case we have the task of finding out, by investigating the facts of the case. For there is nothing unknowable, no essential mystery or secret of development, of the emergence of the qualitatively new.

Let us consider, for example, the case of the qualitative change which takes place when water boils.

When heat is applied to a mass of water contained in a kettle, then the effect is to increase the motion of the molecules composing the water. So long as the water remains in its liquid state, the forces of attraction between the molecules are sufficient to insure that, though some of the surface molecules are continually escaping, the whole mass coheres together as a mass of water inside the kettle. At boiling point, however, the motion of the molecules has become sufficiently violent for large numbers of them to begin jumping clear of the mass. A qualitative change is therefore observed. The water begins to bubble and the whole mass is rapidly transformed into steam. This change evidently occurs as a result of the oppositions operating within the mass of water—the tendency of the molecules to move apart and jump free versus the forces of attraction between them. The former tendency is reinforced to the point where it overcomes the latter as a result, in this case, of the external application of heat.

Another example we have considered is that of a cord which breaks when its load becomes too great. Here again, the qualitative change takes place as a result of the opposition set up between the tensile strength of the cord and the pull of the load. Again, when a spring wheat is transformed into a winter wheat, this is a result of the opposition between the plant’s “conservatism” and the changing conditions of growth and development to which it is subjected; at a certain point, the influence of the latter overcomes the former.

These examples prepare us for the general conclusion that, as Stalin puts it, “the internal content of the process of development, the internal content of the transformation of quantitative changes into qualitative changes” consists in the struggle of opposites— opposite tendencies, opposite forces—within the things and process concerned.

Thus the law that quantitative changes are transformed into qualitative changes, and that differences in quality are based on differences in quantity, leads us to the law of the unity and struggle of opposites.

Here is the way Stalin formulates this law of dialectics.

“Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics holds that internal contradictions are inherent in all things and phenomena of nature, for all have their negative and positive sides, a past and a future, something dying away and something developing; and that the struggle between these opposites, the struggle between the old and the new, between that which is dying away and that which is being born, between that which is disappearing and that which is developing, constitutes the internal content of the process of development, the internal content of the transformation of quantitative changes into qualitative changes.

“The dialectical method therefore holds that the process of development from the lower to the higher takes place not as a harmonious unfolding of phenomena, but as a disclosure of the contradictions inherent in things and phenomena, as a ‘struggle’ of opposite tendencies which operate on the basis of these contradictions.”<ref>Stalin, ''Dialectical and Historical Materialism''.</ref>

To understand development, to understand how and why quantitative changes lead to qualitative changes, to understand how and why the transition takes place from an old qualitative state to a new qualitative state, we have to understand the contradictions inherent in each thing and process we are considering, and how a “struggle” of opposite tendencies arises on the basis of these contradictions.

We have to understand this concretely, in each case, bearing in mind Lenin’s warning that “the fundamental thesis of dialectics is: truth is always concrete.” We cannot deduce the laws of development in the concrete case from the general principles of dialectics: we have to discover them by actual investigation in each case. But dialectics tells us what to look for.

==== Dialectics of Social Development—The Contradictions of Capitalism ====

The dialectics of development—the unity and struggle of opposites—has been most thoroughly worked out in the Marxist science of society. Here, from the standpoint of the working-class struggle, on the basis of working-class experience, we can work out the dialectic of the contradictions of capitalism and of their development very exactly.

But the principles involved in the development of society are not opposed to but are in essence the same as those involved in the development of nature, though different in their form of manifestation in each case. Thus Engels said:

“I was not in doubt—that amid the welter of innumerable changes taking place in nature the same dialectical laws of motion are in operation as those which in history govern the apparent fortuitousness of events.”<ref>Engels, ''Anti-Dühring'', Preface.</ref>

How Marxism understands the contradictions of capitalism and their development, this crowning triumph of the dialectical method, was explained in general terms by Engels.

The basic contradiction of capitalism is not simply the conflict of two classes, which confront one another as two external forces which come into conflict. No, it is the contradiction within the social system itself, on the basis of which the class conflict arises and operates.

Capitalism brought about:

“The concentration of the means of production in large workshops and manufactories, their transformation into means of production which were in fact social. But the social means of production and the social products were treated as if they were still, as they had been before, the means of production and the products of individuals. Hitherto, the owner of the instruments of labor had appropriated the product because it was as a rule his own product, the auxiliary labor of other persons being the exception; now, the owner of the instruments of production continued to appropriate the product, although it was no longer ''his'' product, but exclusively the product of ''others’ labor.'' Thus, therefore, the products, now socially produced, were not appropriated by those who had really set the means of production in motion and really produced the products, but by the ''capitalists''.”<ref>Engels, ''Anti-Dühring'', Part III, Chapter II; or ''Socialism, Utopian and Scientific'', Chapter III, N. Y., 1935.</ref>

The basic contradiction of capitalism is, therefore, the contradiction between socialized production and capitalist appropriation. It is on the basis of this contradiction that the struggle between the classes develops.

“In this contradiction… the whole conflict of today is already present in germ…. The contradiction between social production and capitalist appropriation became manifest as the antagonism between proletariat and bourgeoisie.”<ref>''Ibid.''</ref>

And the contradiction can only be resolved by the victory of the working class, when the working class sets up its own dictatorship and initiates social ownership and appropriation to correspond to social production.

This example very exactly illustrates the point of what Stalin said about “struggle of opposite tendencies which operate on the basis of these contradictions.” The class struggle exists and operates on the basis of the contradictions inherent in the social system itself.

It is from the struggle of opposite tendencies, opposing forces, arising on the basis of the contradictions inherent in the social system, that social transformation, the leap to a qualitatively new stage of social development, takes place.

This process has its quantitative aspect. The working class increases in numbers and organization. Capital becomes more concentrated, more centralized.

“Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital… grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself.”<ref>Marx, ''Capital'', Vol. I, Chapter XXXII.</ref>

With this quantitative process of increase and decrease, the basic contradiction of socialized labor and private appropriation becomes intensified—for the social character of labor is magnified while capital accumulates and is concentrated in the hands of a diminishing number of great “magnates of capital”—and the tension between the opposing forces becomes intensified, too. At length quantitative change gives rise to qualitative change.

“Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds.

“The expropriators are expropriated.”<ref>''Ibid.''</ref>

In this way the laws of dialectical development, summarized in the principles of the transformation of quantitative into qualitative change and of the unity and struggle of opposites, are found at work in the development of society; this development is to be understood in terms of the operation of those laws; and this dialectical understanding, once it has become the theoretical possession of the working class, serves as an indispensable instrument of the working class in carrying into effect the socialist transformation of society.

=== 9. The New and the Old ===

<blockquote>''The struggle of opposed forces which constitutes the driving force of development does not take place accidentally but on the basis of internal contradictions inherent in the very nature of the processes concerned. There arises a contradiction between the new and the old; that which is arising and growing contradicts that which is dying away and disappearing. And this fact is strikingly exemplified in the development of society.''

''In the process of development the new grows strong and overpowers the old, and this leads to the forward movement of development, in which each stage is an advance to something new, not a falling back to some stage already passed.''

''Since development proceeds by the overcoming and supplanting of the old by the new it follows that development can only proceed by the negation of the old and not by its preservation.''
</blockquote>
==== Contradictions Inherent in Things and Processes—Internal Contradictions ====

In the last chapter we considered how qualitative change is brought about by the struggle of opposed forces. This was exemplified equally in the change of state of a body, from liquid to solid or gas, and in the change of society from capitalism to socialism. In each case there are “opposite tendencies” at work, whose “struggle” eventuates in some fundamental transformation, a qualitative change.

This “struggle” is not external and accidental. It is not adequately understood if we suppose that it is a question of forces or tendencies arising quite independently the one of the other, which happen to meet, to bump up against each other, so to speak, and to come into conflict.

No. The struggle is internal and necessary; for it arises and follows from the contradictory nature of the process as a whole.

The opposite tendencies are not independent the one of the other

but are inseparably connected as parts or aspects of a single contradictory whole, and they operate and come into conflict on the basis of the contradiction inherent in the process as a whole.

Thus the opposed tendencies which operate in the course of the change of state of a body operate on the basis of the contradictory unity of attractive and repulsive forces inherent in all physical phenomena. And the class struggle which operates in capitalist society operates on the basis of the contradictory unity of socialized labor and private appropriation inherent in that society.

This dialectical understanding of the internal necessity of the struggle of opposed forces, and of its outcome, based on the contradictions inherent in the process as a whole, is no mere refinement of philosophical analysis. It is of very great practical importance.

Bourgeois theorists, for example, are well able to recognize the fact of class conflicts in capitalist society. What they do not recognize is the necessity of this conflict; that it is based on contradictions inherent in the very nature of the capitalist system and that, therefore, the struggle can only culminate in and end with the destruction of the system itself and its replacement by a new, higher system of society. So they seek to mitigate the class conflict, to tone it down and reconcile the opposing classes, or to stamp it out, and so to preserve the system intact. And precisely this bourgeois understanding of the class conflict is brought into the labor movement by Social Democracy.

It is in opposition to such a shallow, metaphysical way of understanding class conflict that Lenin points out:

“The main point in the teaching of Marx is the class struggle. This has very often been said and written. But this is not true. Out of this error, here and there, springs an opportunist distortion of Marxism, such a falsification of it as to make it acceptable to the bourgeoisie. The theory of the class struggle was ''not''created by Marx, but by the bourgeoisie ''before'' Marx and is, generally speaking, ''acceptable'' to the bourgeoisie. He who recognizes ''only'' the class struggle is not yet a Marxist; he may be found not to have gone beyond the boundaries of bourgeois reasoning and politics. To limit Marxism to the teaching of the class struggle means to curtail Marxism—to distort it, to reduce it to something which is acceptable to the bourgeoisie. A Marxist is one who ''extends'' the acceptance of the class struggle to the acceptance of the ''dictatorship of the proletariat.'' Herein lies the deepest difference between a Marxist and an ordinary petty or big bourgeois. On this touchstone it is necessary to test a ''real''understanding and acceptance of Marxism.”<ref>V. I. Lenin, ''The State and Revolution'', Chapter II, Section 3, N. Y., 1932.</ref>

In general, we understand contradiction as inherent in, belonging to the very essence of, a given system or process; the struggle through which development takes place is not an external clash of accidentally opposed factors, but is based on contradictions in the very essence of things; and thus is determined the necessary outcome, the necessary solution of the contradiction.

Of course, conflicts of an external, accidental character also occur in nature and society. But these are not of decisive importance in determining the course of development.

==== The Contradiction Between Old and New, Past and Future ====

If we consider a process of development as a whole, as, in Stalin’s words, “an onward and upward movement” involving at each stage “a transition from an old qualitative state to a new qualitative state,” then it reveals itself as the continuous posing and solution of a series of contradictions.

The new stage of development comes into being from the working out of the contradiction and struggle inherent in the old. And the new stage itself contains the germ of a new contradiction. For it comes into being containing something of the past from which it springs and something of the future to which it leads. It has, therefore, its “negative and positive sides, a past and a future, something dying away and something developing.” On this basis there once again arises within it “the struggle between the old and the new, between that which is dying away and that which is being born, between that which is disappearing and that which is developing.”

Hence development continually drives forward to fresh development; the whole process at each stage is in essence the struggle between the old and the new, that which is dying and that which is being born.

This dialectical character of development is strikingly exemplified in social development—in, for example, the stage of development with which we ourselves are specially concerned, the development from capitalism to socialism.

The basic contradiction of capitalism is that between socialized production and capitalist appropriation. This itself is the contradiction between the new and the old in society.

Capitalist appropriation carries on the old institution of private property in the implements of production, under which the owner of the implements of production appropriated the product. The artisan owned his tools and his product. This private ownership of the implements of production and of the product by the individual producer is carried over and transformed into the ownership and appropriation by the capitalist. But while private ownership and appropriation is carried on from the former state of society, what is quite new, what is newly born, arising and advancing in capitalist society, is the socialization of production. The old, petty individual production is destroyed; production is carried on in a new socialized way in great workshops by hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands of workers. The old individual producer is expropriated from his means of production (the peasant is turned off his bit of land, the artisan loses his little workshop), yet the means of production are still privately owned and the product still appropriated—by the individual capitalist or capitalist concern. What the capitalist appropriates, however, is no longer the product of his own labor, but the social product of the social labor of others. Hence this private capitalist appropriation now contradicts the new socialized character of production. In this way, as capitalist society comes into being and develops, the old contradicts the new.

At first capitalism continues to expand, bringing all aspects of economy under its sway and extending its sway over the whole world. But then begins its process of decline. The contradictions reach a breaking point. Capitalism enters into its period of death throes, the general crisis of capitalism. A handful of great monopolists stands opposed to the working class in the capitalist countries; and not only to the working class in the capitalist countries but to the millions of oppressed peoples in the colonial territories. The old masters of the world stand opposed to its future masters—the past to the future. Moreover, rival groups of monopolists stand opposed to one another, as new imperialist claimants to world domination rise and confront the older-established powers. The system begins to break at its weakest points; first in one country, then in a series of countries, the capitalists are overpowered and the new system of socialism begins to arise, so that a new socialist power building up in part of the world confronts the old capitalist power dying but fighting for life in the rest of the world.

Thus the old goes down, fighting against the new. The new grows strong, overpowers and supplants the old. Such is the pattern of development.

==== The Forward Movement of Development ====

This pattern of development is the dialectic of forward movement—“in which,” as Engels said, “in spite of all seeming accidents and all temporary retrogression, a progressive development asserts itself in the end.”<ref>Engels, ''Ludwig Feuerbach'', Chapter IV.</ref> The process moves forward from stage to stage, each stage being a genuine advance to something new, not a falling back to some stage already past.

In this process of development there are processes of advance, the birth and surging forward of the new, and processes of decay, the decline and fall of the old. Of course, there are times and occasions when the process of decay may become paramount, and when the forces of advance are not sufficiently strong to overcome the old and to supplant it. This has occurred in the past, for instance, in the history of society, when civilizations have disintegrated and disappeared, because they decayed and the forces of advance were not strongly enough developed in them to carry them forward. No matter. Despite such “temporary retrogression,” the “progressive development asserts itself in the end.”

At the present day there are people who talk about the likelihood of “the end of civilization.” If we considered only the capitalist forces, such an end might well be expected. If there were no Soviet Union, if there were no People’s China, if there were no organized working-class movement, no national liberation movement, no peace movement, then the capitalists would quite certainly destroy their own civilization. But in fact there have already risen and grown tens of millions strong the new forces which will carry civilization forward from capitalism to socialism.

The overall, long-term, forward-moving process of development takes place, not in a straight line, but in a series of zig-zags, of particular and seemingly accidental occurrences, of temporary setbacks; for the development as a whole is but the summation of an entire complex of infinitely various changes and interrelations. If, then, we want to understand how the development proceeds in the concrete case, we have to see it as taking its course through a series of particular, concrete events. On the other hand, if we want to understand these particular events themselves, we should understand them, not in isolation, but in their context within the process of development as a whole.

As concerns particular changes of particular things which take part in the process of development, they do not, of course, all fall into a single pattern of “forward movement.” There are manifold comings and goings and interactions of particular things, changes of form and changes of state, changes of one thing into another and destruction of one thing by another, cycles of change which revert again to the original starting point, and so on. Dialectics, as the study of processes in all their concreteness, in all their manifold changes and interconnections, is concerned with all these processes. Here, however, we are concerned with the general laws of the overall process of development, as an “onward and upward movement” manifested in a series of “transitions from an old qualitative state to a new qualitative state.”

==== The Role of Negation in Development ====

This general forward movement, as we have seen, infinitely complex as it is in detail, takes place through the struggle of the new and the old and the overcoming of the old and dying by the new and rising.

This dialectical conception of development is opposed to the older liberal conception favored by bourgeois theoreticians. The bourgeois liberals recognize development and assert that progress is a universal law of nature and society. But they see development as a gradual and smooth process, proceeding through a series of easy and imperceptible changes. They may recognize struggle where they cannot help but notice it; but to them it seems an unfortunate interruption of orderly progress, more likely to impede development than to help it forward. For them, what exists has not to be supplanted by what is coming into existence, the old has not to be overcome by the new, but it has to be ''preserved,'' so that it can gradually improve itself and become a higher existence.

True to this philosophy, which they took over from the capitalists, the Social Democrats strove to preserve capitalism, with the idea that it could imperceptibly grow into socialism; and thus striving to preserve capitalism, they end by fighting, not for socialism, but against it. When the struggle is on, these exponents of social peace and class collaboration cannot avoid struggle: they simply enter into it on the other side.

Comparing the dialectical materialist, or revolutionary, conception of development with this liberal, reformist conception of development, we may say that the one recognizes and embraces, while the other fails to recognize and shrinks from, the role of ''negation'' in development.

Of course, we cannot assert that the transition from the old state to the new, from one quality to another, must always take place in exactly the same way. For, as we have already seen, dialectics does not mean applying some preconceived scheme to every process, but, on the contrary, every process has its own dialectic, which must be deduced from the study of the process itself. Thus while dialectics teaches us to recognize how the old supplants the new in a sudden, revolutionary way, by a blow in which the old is abolished and the new established in its place, we must also take into account how the transition to a new quality takes place in a different way—not by a sudden blow, but “by the gradual and prolonged accumulation of the elements of the new quality… and the gradual dying away of the elements of the old quality.”<ref>Joseph Stalin, ''Marxism and Linguistics'', Chapter I, N. Y., 1951.</ref> Both types of transition are exemplified in nature, and also in society. The gradual process is manifested, for example, as Stalin has recently pointed out, in the development of languages. And again, while fundamental changes in society take place through revolutionary upheavals so long as antagonistic classes exist, such revolutions are no longer necessary after antagonistic classes have been finally abolished in socialist society.

The liberal’s mistake lies, not in recognizing the occurrence of gradual changes, but in recognizing nothing else and failing to comprehend the role of negation in development. Dialectics teaches us to understand that the new must struggle with and overcome the old, that the old must give way to and be supplanted by the new—in other words, that the old must be ''negated.''

The liberal, who thinks metaphysically, understands negation simply as saying: “No.” To him negation is merely the end to something. Far from meaning advance, it means retreat; far from meaning gain, it means loss. Dialectics, on the other hand, teaches us not to be afraid of negation, but to understand how it becomes a condition of progress, a means to positive advance.

=== 10. The Negation of Negation ===

<blockquote>''The dialectical conception of development through negation is opposed to the liberal conception of development. For the liberal, negation is simply a blow which destroys something. But on the contrary, negation is the condition for positive advance, in which the old is abolished only after it has already produced the conditions for the transition to the new, and in which all the positive achievement belonging to the old stage is carried forward into the new.''

''Moreover, a stage already passed can be re-created on a higher level as a result of double negation, the negation of the negation. According to the liberal conception of development, if a given stage of development is to be raised to a higher level this must take place gradually and peacefully, without the process of negation. But on the contrary, it is only through a double negation that the higher stage can be reached.''

''The repetition of the old stage on a higher level taking place through the negation of negation is a comprehensive and important law of development, the operation of which is exemplified in many processes of nature, history and thought.''
</blockquote>
==== The Positive Character of Negation ====

“Negation in dialectics does not mean simply saying no,” wrote Engels.<ref>Engels, ''Anti-Dühring'', Part I, Chapter XIII.</ref>

When in the process of development the old stage is negated by the new, then, in the first place, that new stage could not have come about except as arising from and in opposition to the old. The conditions for the existence of the new arose and matured within the old. The negation is a positive advance, brought about only by the development of that which is negated. The old is not simply abolished, leaving things as though it had never existed: it is abolished only after it has itself given rise to the conditions for the new stage of advance.

In the second place, the old stage, which is negated, itself constitutes a stage of advance in the forward-moving process of development as a whole. It is negated, but the advance which took place in it is not negated. On the contrary, this advance is carried forward to the new stage, which takes into itself and carries forward all the past achievement.

For example: socialism replaces capitalism—it negates it. But the conditions for the rise and victory of socialism were born of capitalism, and socialism comes into existence as the next stage of social development after capitalism. Every achievement, every advance in the forces of production, and likewise every cultural achievement, which took place under capitalism, is not destroyed when capitalism is destroyed, but, on the contrary, is preserved and carried further.

This positive content of negation is not understood by liberals, for whom negation is “simply saying no.” Moreover, they think of negation as coming only from outside, externally. Something is developing very well, and then something else comes from outside and negates it—destroys it. That is their conception. That something by its own development leads to its own negation, and thereby to a higher stage of development—lies outside their comprehension.

Thus the liberals conceive of social revolution not only as a catastrophe, as an end to ordered progress, but they believe that such a catastrophe can be brought about only by outside forces. If a revolution threatens to upset the capitalist system, that is not because of the development of the contradictions of that system itself, but is due to “agitators.”

Of course, there ''is'' negation which takes the form simply of a blow from outside which destroys something. For instance, if I am walking along the road and am knocked down by a car, I suffer negation of a purely negative sort. Such occurrences are frequent both in nature and in society. But this is not how we must understand negation if we are to understand the positive role of negation in the process of development.

At each stage in the process of development there arises the struggle of the new with the old. The new arises and grows strong within the old conditions, and when it is strong enough it overcomes and destroys the old. This is the negation of the past stage of development, of the old qualitative state; and it means the coming into being of the new and higher stage of development, the new qualitative state.

==== Negation of Negation ====

This brings us to a further dialectical feature of development— the negation of negation.

According to the liberal idea that negation “means simply saying no,” if the negation is negated, then the original position is restored once more without change. According to this idea, negation is simply a negative, a taking away. Hence if the negation, the taking away, is itself negated, that merely means putting back again what was taken away. If a thief takes my watch, and then I take it away from him, we are back where we started—I have the watch again. Similarly, if I say, “It’s going to be a fine day,” and you say, “No, it’s going to be a wet day,” to which I reply, “No, it’s not going to be a wet day,” I have simply, by negating your negation, restated my original proposition.

This is enshrined in the principle of formal logic, “not not-A equals A.” According to this principle, negation of negation is a fruitless proceeding. It just takes you back where you started.

Let us, however, consider a real process of development and the dialectical negation which takes place in it.

Society develops from primitive communism to the slave system. The next stage is feudalism. The next stage is capitalism. Each stage arises from the previous one, and negates it. So far we have simply a succession of stages, each following as the negation of the other and constituting a higher stage of development. But what comes next? Communism. Here there is a return to the beginning, but at a higher level of development. In place of primitive communism, based on extremely primitive forces of production, comes communism based on extremely advanced forces of production and containing within itself tremendous new potentialities of development. The old, primitive classless society has become the new and higher classless society. It has been raised, as it were, to a higher power, has reappeared on a higher level. But this has happened only because the old classless society was negated by the appearance of classes and the development of class society, and because finally class society, when it had gone through its whole development, was itself negated by the working class taking power, ending exploitation of man by man, and establishing a new classless society on the foundation of all the achievements of the whole previous development.

This is the negation of negation. But it does not take us back to the original starting point. It takes us forward to a new starting point, which is the original one raised, through its negation and the negation of the negation, to a higher level.

Thus we see that in the course of development, as a result of a double negation, a later stage can repeat an earlier stage, but repeat it on a higher level of development.

There is “a development that seemingly repeats the stages already passed, but repeats them otherwise (in a new way), on a higher basis… a development, so to speak, in spirals, not in a straight line.”<ref>V. I. Lenin, ''The Teachings of Karl Marx'', N. Y., 1930.</ref>

This is a conception of development, like that of dialectical negation in general, which the liberal outlook cannot stomach. To the liberal outlook development seems to be a smooth, upward course proceeding through a series of small changes. If a given stage of development is to be raised to a higher level, then this must take place gradually and peacefully, through the “harmonious unfolding” of all the higher potentialities latent in the original stage. But on the contrary, the facts show that it is only through struggle and through negation that the higher stage is won. The development takes place not as “a harmonious unfolding” but as “a disclosure of contradictions,” in which the lower stage is negated—destroyed; in which the development which follows its negation is itself negated; and in which the higher stage is reached only as a result of that double negation.

As Hegel put it, the higher end of development is reached only through “the suffering, the patience and the labor of the negative.”<ref>Hegel, ''The Phenomenology of Mind'', Preface.</ref>

==== A Comprehensive and Important Law of Development ====

In discussing the negation of negation we must again stress what was said earlier, namely, that the essence of dialectics is to study a process “in all its concreteness,” to work out how it actually takes place, and not to impose on it some preconceived scheme and then try to “prove” the necessity of the real process reproducing the ideal scheme. We do not say in advance that every process will exemplify the negation of negation. Still less do we use this conception to try to “prove” anything.

Referring to Marx’s demonstration of the occurrence of the negation of negation in history, Engels said:

“In characterizing the process as the negation of the negation, therefore, Marx does not dream of attempting to prove by this that the process was historically necessary. On the contrary: after he has proved from history that in fact the process has partially already occurred, and partially must occur in the future, he then also characterizes it as a process which develops in accordance with a definite historical law. That is all.”<ref>Engels, ''Anti-Dühring'', Part I, Chapter XIII.</ref> Dialectics teaches us that we shall understand the laws of development of each particular process by studying that process itself, in its development. But when we do that, we shall discover the repetition of the old stage on a higher level taking place through the negation of negation.

“What, therefore, is the negation of the negation?” wrote Engels. “An extremely general—and for this reason extremely comprehensive and important—law of development of nature, history and thought…. It is obvious that in describing any evolutionary process as the negation of the negation I do not say anything concerning the ''particular'' process of development…. When I say that all these processes are the negation of negation, I bring them all together under this one law of motion, and for this very reason I leave out of account the peculiarities of each separate process. Dialectics is nothing more than the science of the general laws of motion and development of nature, human society and thought.”<ref>''Ibid.''</ref>

How “extremely comprehensive and important” is this law of development can be shown in numerous examples.

We have already seen how the negation of the negation occurs in history in the development from primitive communism to communism. It occurs again in the development of individual property. Marx pointed out that the pre-capitalist “individual private property founded on the labors of the proprietor” is negated—destroyed—by capitalist private property. For capitalist private property arises only on the ruin and expropriation of the pre-capitalist individual producers. The individual producer used to own his instruments of production and his product—both were taken away from him by the capitalists. But when capitalist private property is itself negated—when “the expropriators are expropriated”—then the individual property of the producers is restored once more, but in a new form, on a higher level.

“This does not re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him individual property based on the acquisitions of the capitalist era, ''i.e.'' on co-operation and the possession in common of the land and of the means of production.”<ref>Marx, ''Capital'', Vol. I, Chapter XXXII.</ref>

The producer, as a participant in socialized production, then enjoys, as his individual property, a share of the social product— “according to his labor,” in the first stage of communist society, and “according to his needs” in the fully developed communist society.

When capitalism arose, the only way forward was through this negation of negation. Some of the British Chartists put forward in their land policy demands aimed at arresting the new capitalist process and at restoring the ''old'' private property of the producer. This was vain. The only road forward for the producers was by the struggle against capitalism and for socialism—not to restore the ''old'' individual property which capitalism had destroyed, but to destroy capitalism and so create individual property again on a ''new,'' socialist basis.

Again, in the history of thought, the “primitive, natural materialism” of the earliest philosophers is negated by philosophical idealism, and modern materialism arises as the negation of that idealism.

“This modern materialism, the negation of negation, is not the mere re-establishment of the old, but adds to the permanent foundations of this old materialism the whole thought content of two thousand years of development of philosophy and natural science.”<ref>Engels, ''Anti-Dühring'', Part I, Chapter XIII.</ref>

The negation of negation, as Engels also pointed out, is a very familiar phenomenon to the plant breeder. If he has some seed and wants to get from it some better seed, then he has to grow the seed under definite conditions for its development—which means bringing about the negation of the seed by its growing into a plant and then controlling the conditions of development of the plant until it brings about its own negation in the production of more seed.

Some experts, it is true, have lately advocated going another and more direct way about it, namely, changing the seed directly by treating it with chemicals or X-rays. The result of this, however, is simply a number of haphazard changes in the properties of the seed, and not a controlled process of development.

“Furthermore, the whole of geology is a series of negated negations,” wrote Engels, “a series arising from the successive shattering of old and the depositing of new rock formations…. But the result of this process has been a very positive one: the creation, out of the most varied chemical elements, of a mixed and mechanically pulverized soil which makes possible the most abundant and diverse vegetation.”

“It is the same in mathematics,” he continued. If you want to raise a number ''a'' to a higher power, then this can be done by first operating on ''a'' so as to get —''-a,'' and then making the additional operation of multiplying ''2'' ''2'' ''—a'' by itself, which results in ''a'' ''.'' Thus ''a,''

the second power of ''a,'' is reached by a negation of negation. In this case it is also possible to get 2 ''a'' from ''a'' by a single process, namely, multiplying ''a'' by ''a.'' Nevertheless, as Engels pointed out, “the negated negation is so securely entrenched in ''2'' ''a'' that the latter always has two square roots, namely ''a'' and — ''a.''”<ref>''Ibid.''</ref>

The negation of negation is found in the series of chemical elements, in which properties of elements of lower atomic weight disappear and then reappear again in elements of higher atomic weight.

And the development of life itself obeys the law of negation of negation. The most primitive living organisms are comparatively speaking immortal, continuing themselves in being by continually dividing. The development of higher organisms, with sexual reproduction, was possible only at the cost of death. The organism becomes mortal. The higher development of life takes place through its negation, death.

And after that, these mortal organisms advance further. The process of the evolution of species of plants and animals begins. With the birth of man, social evolution begins, the whole process of social development from primitive communism, through its negation, class society, to the classless society of communism. Moreover, man begins to master nature. And when, with communism, he brings his own social organization under his own conscious control, then an entirely new epoch in the evolution of life opens up.

=== 11. Criticism and Self-Criticism ===

<blockquote>''Development through contradiction, the struggle between the new and the old, will continue to be the rule in the future development of communist society. But with the ending of all exploitation of man by man, this development will no longer take place through violent social conflicts and upheavals but through the rational method of criticism and self-criticism, which will become the new level of development.''

''From the whole discussion of the Marxist dialectical method the conclusion follows that Marxism is a creative science which must continually advance in application to new conditions of development. Criticism and self-criticism lies at the very heart of the Marxist dialectical method.''
</blockquote>
==== A New Type of Development ====

What, now, of the future development of society, after the stage of communism has been reached? Are we to suppose that the same dialectical laws of development will continue to operate? Or that development will cease?

Development will not cease. On the contrary, it is only with the achievement of communism that human development in the proper sense, that is to say, a development consciously planned and controlled by men themselves, really begins; all the rest was only the painful preparation for it, the birth-pangs of the human race.

When all the means of production are brought fully under planned social direction, then it may be expected that men’s mastery over nature will enormously increase, and the conquest and transformation of nature by man will in turn mean profound changes in men’s mode of life. For instance, ability to produce an absolute abundance of products with a minimum expenditure of human labor, abolition of the antithesis between town and countryside, abolition of the antithesis between manual and intellectual labor, clearly imply profound changes in social organization, in outlook, in habits, in mode of life generally. But the effecting of such changes cannot but involve, at each stage, the overcoming of forms of social organization, of outlooks and habits, belonging to the past. Development, therefore, will continue to take place through the disclosure of contradictions, the struggle between the new and the old, the future and the past. How else can we expect things to move forward? New tendencies will arise out of the existing conditions at each stage, which will come into contradiction with the existing conditions and hence lead to their passing and giving way to new conditions.

But there is no reason to expect that this development will take place, as hitherto, through violent conflicts and social upheavals.

On the contrary, with communism there will have taken place, as Engels expressed it, “humanity’s leap from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom.” And that means that the elemental conflicts characteristic of the “realm of necessity” will give place to changes controlled and planned.

“The laws of his own social activity, which have hitherto confronted him as external, dominating laws of nature, will then be applied by man with complete understanding, and hence will be dominated by man. Men’s own social organization which has hitherto stood in opposition to them as if arbitrarily decreed by nature and history, will then become the voluntary act of men themselves… men with full consciousness will fashion their own history.”<ref>Engels, ''Anti-Dühring'', Part III, Chapter II; ''Socialism, Utopian and Scientific'', Chapter III.</ref>

When men understand the laws of their own social organization and have it under their own co-operative control, when there is no exploitation of man by man, when what is new and rising and its contradiction with the old is fully understood, then it is possible to do away with old conditions and create new conditions in a deliberate and planned way, without conflict or upheaval. Contradiction and the overcoming of the old by the new remain; but the element of antagonism and conflict as between men in society disappears and gives way to the properly human method of deciding affairs by rational discussion—criticism and self-criticism.

This mode of social development is already beginning in the Soviet Union today.

“In our Soviet society,” said A. A. Zhdanov, “where antagonistic classes have been liquidated, the struggle between the old and the new, and consequently the development from the lower to the higher, proceeds not in the form of struggle between antagonistic classes and of cataclysms, as is the case under capitalism, but in the form of criticism and self-criticism, which is the real motive force of our development, a powerful instrument in the hands of the Communist Party. This is incontestably a new aspect of movement, a new type of development, a new dialectical law.”<ref>Zhdanov, ''Essays on Literature, Philosophy, and Music'', Chapter II.</ref>

==== Human Perspectives ====

In the first phase of the transition from socialism to communism, development takes place through continued struggle against the old heritage of capitalism.

What will happen when the last traces of old class society have been obliterated throughout the world? We can at all events predict certain initial features of the development of world communist society—associated humanity. Thus the organization of the state and of a government party will become outmoded, and state and party will disappear. This was already foreseen by Marx and Engels.

Again, Stalin has pointed out that the fullest development of national cultures and national languages, which is the task first arising from the abolition of the national oppression of capitalism, will provide the basis for an eventual universal human culture and human language. When “socialism has become part and parcel of the life of the peoples, and when practice has convinced the nations of the superiority of a common language over national languages,” then “national differences and languages will begin to die away and make room for a world language, common to all nations.”<ref>Joseph Stalin, ''The National Question and Leninism'', N. Y., 1951.</ref>

As for the more remote future, we have no data on which to base predictions—though we can be quite sure that vast changes will take place, and that the people of the future, masters of nature and knowing no oppression of man by man, will be well able to look after the destinies of the human race.

Bernard Shaw, in his ''Back to Methuselah,'' speculated on the possibility of the span of human life being greatly extended, and eventually extended indefinitely. True, he thought this would happen through the mysterious operation of “the life force.” Yet it was a profound speculation, for such a result may well be brought about through the development of physiological knowledge and medical science. And Shaw was quite right in supposing that such a development would make a tremendous difference in the whole mode of human life and in all social institutions. This is, indeed, one of the ways in which the advance of science and of men’s mastery over nature (our own nature, in this case) could lead to developments of vast, transforming significance for human life and society.

At all events, we cannot set limits to the powers of human achievement. And bearing this in mind, we may well believe that our descendants a few hundred generations hence will in their manner of life resemble us far less than we resemble our own ancestors among the primitive savages.

==== Creative Marxism ====

With this, we may try to sum up the main conclusions about dialectics.

Dialectics is concerned with interconnection, change and development. Understood in the materialist way, dialectics is “the science of the general laws of motion and development of nature, human society and thought.”

The dialectical method is the method of approach by the application of which we advance our materialist understanding of nature and history, and all particular processes of nature and history. It is a ''method''—not a general formula, and not an abstract philosophical system. It guides us in understanding things so as to change them.

Such being the nature of dialectics and of the dialectical method, it should be clear that the science of dialectics itself grows and develops, and that the method is enhanced and enriched with each further application. Every new social development and every new advance of the sciences and the arts provides the basis for enriching and extending the understanding of dialectics and of the dialectical method. We cannot understand and master new material simply by repeating what has already been learned, but on the contrary, we learn more, and extend, correct and enrich our ideas in the light of new problems and new experiences.

Thus Marxism is a developing, progressive science.

“There is dogmatic Marxism and creative Marxism. I stand by the latter,” said Stalin.<ref>See ''History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union'', Chapter VII, Section 4, N. Y., 1939.</ref>

Creative Marxism:

“Concentrates its attention upon… the path and means of realizing Marxism for various situations, changing the path and means when the situation changes…. It takes its directives and guiding lines not from historical analogies and parallels, but from the study of surrounding conditions. In its activities it relies, not on quotations and aphorisms but on practical experience, testing every step it takes by experience, learning from its mistakes and teaching others to build a new life.”<ref>Joseph Stalin, ''Lenin'', “Lenin as Organizer and Leader of the Communist Party,” N. Y., 1934.</ref>

“Mastering the Marxist-Leninist theory means assimilating ''the substance'' of this theory and learning to use it in the solution of the practical problems of the revolutionary movement under the varying conditions of the class struggle of the proletariat.

“Mastering the Marxist-Leninist theory means being able to enrich this theory with the new experience of the revolutionary movement, with new propositions and conclusions, it means being able ''to develop it and advance it'' without hesitating to replace—in accordance with the substance of the theory—such of its propositions and conclusions as have become antiquated by the new ones corresponding to the new historical situation.”<ref>''History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union'', Conclusion.</ref>

Creative Marxism is the very opposite of revisionism. This must be stressed, because revisionism usually begins by announcing that Marxism “must not become a dogma.” Revisionism means going backward from Marxism: in the name of opposing dogmas, it abandons Marxism in favor of the dogmas of bourgeois theory. Creative Marxism preserves and cherishes the substance of the Marxist materialist theory. Thus Stalin said of Lenin:

“Lenin was, and remains, the most loyal and consistent pupil of Marx and Engels, and he wholly and entirely based himself on the principles of Marxism. But Lenin did not merely carry out the doctrines of Marx and Engels. He was also the continuator of these doctrines…. He developed the doctrines of Marx and Engels still further in application to the new conditions of development.”<ref>Stalin, ''Interview with the First American Labor Delegation'', 1927.</ref>

==== Criticism and Self-Criticism, a Lever of Progress ====

In order, then, to master the method of Marxism-Leninism, the method of dialectics, we must use it and develop it in use. And this demands criticism and self-criticism in all spheres of theoretical and practical activity.

Criticism and self-criticism, which belongs at the very heart of the Marxist dialectical method, means that theory and practice must always be matched up one with the other. Theory must not be allowed to lag behind practice; theory must keep not only level with practice but in advance of it, so as to serve as a true and reliable guide. Practice must not be allowed to grope in the dark without the light of theory, nor to be distorted by wrong and antiquated theory. And this matching up of theory and practice can only be achieved by constant alertness, by constant readiness to criticize and to learn, by continuous check-up of ideas and actions both from above and from below, by readiness to recognize what is new and to correct or cast aside what is old and no longer applicable, by frank recognition of mistakes. Mistakes are inevitable. But by the check up which recognizes mistakes in time, by examining critically the roots of those mistakes and correcting them, by learning from mistakes, we advance to new successes.

“A party is invincible,” wrote Stalin, “if it does not fear criticism and self-criticism, if it does not gloss over the mistakes and defects in its work, if it teaches and educates its cadres by drawing the lessons from the mistakes in party work, and if it knows how to correct its mistakes in time.”<ref>''History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union'', Conclusion.</ref>

Mistakes are seldom mere accidental errors of judgment. Most often mistakes arise because we cling to old habits and old formulations which have become antiquated and inapplicable to new conditions and new tasks. When this happens, and when, as a result, things do not turn out as anticipated, then, if we are ready critically to examine what has gone wrong, we learn something new and grow in strength, stature and experience.

“We are advancing in the process of struggle, in the process of the development of contradictions, in the process of overcoming these contradictions, in the process of bringing these contradictions to light and liquidating them,” said Stalin.

“Something in life is always dying. But that which is dying refuses to die quietly; it fights for its existence, defends its moribund cause.

“Something new in life is always being born. But that which is being born does not come into the world quietly; it comes in squealing and screaming, defending its right to existence.

“The struggle between the old and the new, between the dying and the nascent—such is the foundation of development. By failing openly and honestly, as befits Bolsheviks, to point to, to bring to light, the defects and mistakes in our work, we close our road to progress. But we want to go forward. And precisely because we want to go forward, we must make honest and revolutionary self-criticism of our most important tasks. Without this there is no progress. Without this there is no development.”<ref>Joseph Stalin, ''Report to Fifteenth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union''.</ref>

=== 12. Dialectical Materialism and Science ===

<blockquote>''Dialectical materialism is a scientific world outlook. Its scientific character is manifested especially in that it turns socialism into a science and, by developing the science of society, shows how the whole of science can be developed in the service of mankind. In general, dialectical materialism is a scientific world outlook in that it does not seek to establish any philosophy “above science” but bases its conception of the world on the discoveries of the sciences.''

''The entire advance of the sciences is an advance of materialism against idealism; and further, science shows that our materialist conception of the world must be dialectical. Such great past discoveries as the law of the transformation of energy, the Darwinian theory of evolution and the theory of the cell have demonstrated the dialectic of nature.''

''Nevertheless science in the capitalist world has entered into a state of crisis, due primarily to (1) the subjugation of scientific research to the capitalist monopolies and to military purposes, and (2) the conflict between new discoveries and old idealist and metaphysical ideas. Dialectical materialism is not only a generalization of the achievements of science, but a weapon for the self-criticism and for the advancement of science.''
</blockquote>
==== A Scientific World Outlook ====

Dialectical materialism, the world outlook of the Marxist-Leninist party, is a truly scientific world outlook. For it is based on considering things as they are, without arbitrary, preconceived assumptions (idealist fantasies); it insists that our conceptions of things must be based on actual investigation and experience, and must be constantly tested and re-tested in the light of practice and further experience.

Indeed, “dialectical materialism” means: understanding things just as they are (“materialism”), in their actual interconnection and movement (“dialectics”).

The same cannot be said about other philosophies. They all make arbitrary assumptions of one kind or another, and try to erect a “system” on the basis of those assumptions. But such assumptions are arbitrary only in appearance; in fact they express the various prejudices and illusions of definite classes.

The scientific character of Marxism is manifested especially in this, that it makes ''socialism'' into a ''science.''

We do not base our socialism, as the utopians did, on a conception of abstract human nature. The utopians worked out schemes for an ideal society, but could not show how to achieve socialism in practice. Marxism made socialism into a science by basing it on an analysis of the actual movement of history, of the economic law of motion of capitalist society in particular, thus showing how socialism arises as the necessary next stage in the evolution of society, and how it can come about only by the waging of the working-class struggle, through the defeat of the capitalist class and the institution of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Thus Marxism treats man himself, society and history, scientifically.

“Socialism, having become a science, demands the same treatment as every other science—it must be studied. The task of the leaders will be to bring understanding, thus acquired and clarified, to the working masses, to spread it with increased enthusiasm, to close the ranks of the party organizations and of the labor unions with even greater energy.”<ref>Frederick Engels, ''Peasant War in Germany'', Preface to second edition, N. Y., 1926.</ref>

Scientific study of society shows that human history develops from stage to stage according to definite laws. Men themselves are the active force in this development. By understanding the laws of development of society, therefore, we can guide our own struggles and create our own socialist future.

Thus scientific socialism is the greatest and most important of all the sciences.

The practitioners of the natural sciences are now getting worried because they feel that governments do not know how to put their discoveries to proper use. They have good cause to worry about this. Science is discovering the secrets of atomic energy, for example; but its discoveries are being used to create weapons of destruction. Many people are even coming to believe that it would be better if we had no science, since its discoveries open up such terrifying possibilities of disaster.

How can we insure that the discoveries of science are put to proper use for the benefit of mankind? It is scientific socialism, Marxism-Leninism, alone which answers this problem. It teaches us what are the forces which make history and thereby shows us how we can make our own history today, change society and determine our own future. It teaches us, therefore, how to develop the sciences in the service of mankind, how to carry them forward in today’s crisis. Physics can teach us how to release atomic energy, it cannot teach us how to control the social use of that energy. For this there is required, not the science of the atom, but the science of society.

==== Science and Materialism ====

Dialectical materialism is in no sense a philosophy “above science.”

Others have set philosophy “above science,” in the sense that they have thought they could discover what the world was like just by thinking about it, without relying on the data of the sciences, on practice and experience. And then, from this lofty standpoint, they have tried to dictate to the scientists, to tell them where they were wrong, what their discoveries “really meant,” and so on.

But Marxism makes an end of the old philosophy which claimed to stand above science and to explain “the world as a whole.”

“Modern materialism… no longer needs any philosophy standing above the sciences,” wrote Engels. “As soon as each separate science is required to get clarity as to its position in the great totality of things and of our knowledge of things a special science dealing with this totality is superfluous.”<ref>Engels, ''Anti-Dühring'', Introduction, I.</ref>

Dialectical materialism, he further wrote:

“Is in fact no longer a philosophy, but a simple world outlook which has to establish its validity and be applied not in a science of sciences standing apart, but within the positive sciences…. Philosophy is therefore… ‘both overcome and preserved’; overcome as regards its form, and preserved as regards its real content.”<ref>''Ibid.'', Part I, Chapter XIII.</ref>

Our picture of the world about us, of nature, of natural objects and processes, their interconnections and laws of motion, is not to be derived from philosophical speculation, but from the investigations of the natural sciences.

The scientific picture of the world and its development is not complete, and never will be. But it has advanced far enough for us to realize that philosophical speculation is superfluous. And we refuse to fill in gaps in scientific knowledge by speculation.

For instance, we do know that life is the mode of existence of certain types of organic bodies—proteins; but we do not yet know exactly how such bodies, how life, originated. It is no use speculating about this; we will have to find out, the hard way, by intensive scientific investigation. Only so will we come to understand “the mystery of life.” Thus:

“Science is already able to control life, can control living and dead protein. But science cannot yet say definitely what protein is, what life is, as to the derivation of it. Why? Engels in his day put it excellently when he said that ‘in order to gain an exhaustive knowledge of what life is, we should have to go through all the forms in which it appears, from the lowest to the highest.’ Consequently, in order to understand and learn what protein is, it is also necessary to go through all the forms of manifestation, from the lowest to the highest. And for this we need ''experiment, experiment and again experiment''.”<ref>T. D. Lysenko and others, ''The Situation in Biological Science'', Speech of S. G. Petrov, August 2, 1948, N. Y., 1949. The quotation from Engels is from ''Anti-Dühring'', Part I, Chapter VIII.</ref>

The growing picture of the world which natural science unfolds is a materialist picture—despite the many efforts of bourgeois philosophers to make out the contrary. For step by step as science advances it shows how the rich variety of things and processes and changes to be found in the real world can be explained and understood in terms of material causes, without bringing in God or spirit or any supernatural agency.

Every advance of science is an advance of materialism against idealism, a conquest for materialism—although when driven out of one position idealism has always taken up another position and manifested itself again in new forms, so that in the past the sciences have never been consistently materialist.

For every advance of science means showing the order and development of the material world “from the material world itself.”

==== Science and Dialectics ====

As science has advanced, not only has this materialist picture of the world become less shadowy, more definite and more convincing, but Engels pointed out: “With each epoch-making discovery even in the sphere of natural science materialism has to change its form.”<ref>Engels, ''Ludwig Feuerbach'', Chapter II.</ref>

The discoveries of the natural sciences over the past hundred years or more have this significance—that the materialist picture which they unfold is a dialectical one.

Thus Engels wrote:

“The revolution which is being forced on theoretical natural science by the mere need to set in order the purely empirical discoveries… is of such a kind that it must bring the dialectical character of natural events more and more to the consciousness even of those… who are most opposed to it.”<ref>Engels, ''Anti-Dühring'', Preface.</ref>

“Nature is the test of dialectics, and it must be said for modern natural science that it has furnished extremely rich and daily increasing materials for this test, and has thus proved that in the last analysis nature’s process is dialectical.”<ref>''Ibid.'', Introduction.</ref>

Three great discoveries of science in the nineteenth century above all contributed to this result, Engels pointed out.<ref>Engels, ''Ludwig Feuerbach'', Chapter IV.</ref> These were:

The discovery that the cell is the unit from whose multiplication and division the whole plant or animal body develops (announced by Schwann in 1839).

The law of the transformation of energy (announced by Mayer in 1845).

The Darwinian theory of evolution (announced in 1859).

Let us briefly consider the dialectical significance of these discoveries.

First, the transformation of energy.

It used to be thought that heat, for example, was a “substance,” which passed in and out of bodies; and that electricity, magnetism and so on were separate “forces,” acting on bodies. In this way different types of physical processes were considered each separate from the other, in isolation. Each was placed in a separate compartment as the manifestation of a separate “substance” or “force” and their essential interconnection wan not understood.

But science in the nineteenth century, with the principle of the conservation and transformation of energy, discovered that: “mechanical force… heat, radiation (light or radiant heat), electricity, magnetism and chemical energy are different forum of manifestation of universal motion, which pass into one another in definite proportions so that in place of a certain quantity of one which disappears a certain quantity of another makes its appearance, and thus the whole motion of nature is reduced to this incessant process of transformation from one form into another.”<ref>''Ibid.''</ref>

The clue to this discovery was not found in any abstract philosophy, by any process of pure thought. No, it was closely related to the development of steam engines and to the working out of their principles of operation.

In a steam engine the burning of coal releases heat energy, which heats up steam, which is then forced through a cylinder where it drives the piston forward and turns the wheels of the engine. Heat is transformed into mechanical motion.

Where did the energy released from the coal come from? We now know that it came from the sun’s radiations, was stored up in the plants which formed the coal seams, and was finally released when the coal was burned. A lot of it came from the solar atoms in the process of building heavier elements from hydrogen in the interior of the sun.

This discovery was first formulated as a conservation law— energy cannot be created or destroyed, the quantity which disappears in one form reappears in another form. But it is fundamentally, as Engels pointed out, a transformation law—one form of motion of matter is transformed into another.

Thus physics becomes a science of transformations—no longer studying the different types of physical processes, or forms of motion, each in isolation, but studying their interconnections and how one is transformed into another.

(Transformation laws are laws of motion and interconnection, concerning the interconnection of the forms of motion of matter and their passage one into the other; they are not laws of the transformation of quantity into quality. Knowledge of the transformation laws is essential for understanding the passage from quantity to quality in particular cases. For example, knowledge of the laws of the transformation of heat into mechanical motion will show how much heat energy must be released before enough steam-pressure is generated to drive the piston.)

The Darwinian theory of evolution is in the same way dialectical and materialist.

In place of separate species, each created by God, Darwin showed us a picture of the evolutionary development of species by means of natural selection. The sharp divisions were broken down, it was shown how species are inter-related and how living nature is transformed. For instance, the swimming-bladder of the fish becomes the lung of the land animal, the scales of the reptile become the feathers of the bird, and so on.

Closely related to this was the development of geology, which also became an evolutionary science, studying the evolution of the earth’s crust.

Lastly, the discovery that the cell was the unit from whose multiplication and division the whole plant or animal body developed replaced the older conception of the body as made up of separate tissues. The cell theory was also a theory of motion and interconnection, showing how all the tissues and organs arose by differentiation.

Thus we see how natural science, step by step, unfolds a picture of nature’s dialectic.

When we say “a picture,” we must add that it is a picture in the sense that, so far as it goes, it is a faithful image. But we did not make it by just observing nature and writing down what we observed, nor does it serve as something which we merely admire, an object of contemplation and intellectual enjoyment.

It is sometimes said that the essential feature of science is that it is based on observations. Of course, science is based on observations; but this is not its most essential feature. The basis of science is not mere observation, but experiment. Science is based on an activity of interfering with nature, changing it—and we learn about things, not just by observing them, but by changing them.

Thus science would never have found out the secrets of the transformation of heat into mechanical motion solely by observing nature. They were found out as a result of building steam engines; we learned the secrets of the process in proportion as we ourselves learned how to reproduce that process.

Nor could Darwin have written ''The Origin of Species'' on the sole basis of the observations he made on the voyage of the ''Beagle.'' He made use of the practical experience and results of English animal breeders and plant breeders.

The scientific picture is based, not just on observing things, but on changing them.

And we test it, develop it and use it also in changing nature. Science is not a dogma, but a guide to action. On the other hand, if it becomes divorced from practice, it degenerates into a dogma.

Natural science, then, proves that nature’s process is dialectical, and gives us an ever more concrete, detailed picture of the real dialectical motion and interconnection in nature.

==== The Crisis of Science in the Capitalist World ====

But, while pointing this out, Engels also pointed to the very great confusion which exists in the sciences.

“The scientists who have learned to think dialectically are still few and far between, and hence the conflict between the discoveries made and the old traditional mode of thought is the explanation of the boundless confusion which now reigns in theoretical natural science and reduces both teachers and students, writers and readers to despair.”<ref>Engels, ''Anti-Dühring'', Introduction.</ref>

This confusion has become very much worse today. In fact, as the general crisis of capitalism has developed and become more acute, so has the confusion in scientific theory and the distortion of scientific practice developed and increased with it.

Science which by its discoveries lays bare the true dialectics of nature is nevertheless in a state of crisis in the capitalist world.

What is the nature of this crisis? It has a double nature.

In the first place, science is an activity of research and discovery. In capitalist society it has grown enormously, along with the other forces of production. Scientific research can no longer be carried out by individuals on their own: it requires great institutes, vast equipment, elaborate organization, big financial expenditure.

But the more scientific research expands and the greater these requirements become, the more it falls under the control of the monopolies and of their governments, and particularly of the military.

Science has to contribute to profits and to war. Such science as does not so contribute is increasingly starved of the resources necessary to carry on.

“For example, the whole important field of plant physiology remains relatively undeveloped. This is, to put it crudely, because there is no money in it. The state of agriculture under capitalism is such that the conditions are not created for fundamental researches in this field…. It is interesting to note, too, that while some fields of science are neglected because there is no money in them, others suffer because there is too much. Thus geo-chemistry is hampered, for instance, because the very powerful oil interests impose conditions of secrecy on such researches. Science is called upon to answer just those particular problems in which the capitalist monopolies are interested, which is by no means the same as answering the problems which are bound up with the further development of science and with the interests of the people. This warps the whole development of science.”<ref>J. D. Bernal and Maurice Cornforth, ''Science for Peace and Socialism'', London, 1948.</ref>

Thus science becomes more and more commercialized—and militarized. And as a result science is more and more disorganized and distorted. This is what is happening to science in the capitalist world. Science can contribute mightily, not only to giving us knowledge, but through that knowledge to human welfare, to developing our powers of production, to conquering disease. Yet it is not being developed as it could be toward these ends.

How can the disorganization and distortion of science be overcome?

We can and must resist the misuse of science here and now. But only the advance to socialism can ensure the full development and use of science in the service of mankind. Just as socialism means that the development of all the forces of production can be planned and organized in the service of man, not for profit and war, so it means the same for science in particular.

The second aspect is that of theory—the crisis of scientific ideas.

How does this arise?

The primary role of science is to discover the interconnections and laws operating in the world, so as to equip men with the knowledge necessary to improve their production and live better and more fully.

But to develop research and formulate discovery, ideas are necessary. To work out and guide the strategy of advance of science, theory is necessary.

And in this sphere of ideas and theory, the great achievements of science in capitalist society come into collision with the traditional forms of bourgeois ideology.

As Engels stated, there develops “the conflict between the discoveries made and the old traditional modes of thought.”

In two words, the ''idealism'' and the ''metaphysics'' characteristic of and ingrained in bourgeois ideology have penetrated deeply into the ideas and theories of the sciences.

Thanks to the way in which, in field after field, scientific discovery reveals the real dialectic of nature, it follows that, as Engels put it, the further development of scientific discovery demands “the dialectical synthesis.”<ref>Engels, ''Anti-Dühring'', Preface.</ref> But this would carry theory far beyond the limits imposed on it by the bourgeois outlook.

==== The New Against the Old in Science ====

So it is that we find that in field after field bourgeois science turns back from its own achievements, gives up vantage grounds won, and instead of going forward suffers a theoretical collapse. Here, indeed, is a case of the struggle of the new against the old—of advancing scientific discovery against the old ideas in terms of which scientific theory is formulated. Understanding it thus, we can be quite sure that the retrogressive trend will be but temporary, and that the advance of science will break through the barriers of old ideas and outworn dogmas.

In biology, it was the fate of the Darwinian theory to have a dogma imposed on it—the theory of the gene. The same thing happened to the cell theory, with Virchow’s dogma that the cell comes only from the cell. In each case a dialectical theory of development had imposed on it a metaphysical dogma which denied development.

In physics, the great discoveries about the electron, the atomic nucleus, the quantum of action—about physical transformations— were interpreted, and not by idealist philosophers alone but by theoretical physicists, as meaning that matter had disappeared and that the limits of investigation had been reached. In the allied science of cosmology, scientists, having found out so much about the universe and its development, began to have recourse to ideas of creation.

In all these cases, a dogma is imposed upon science, strangling its further development. Hence the crisis.

The “crime” of Soviet science is that it is successfully challenging and removing such dogmas.

In the Soviet Union scientists have followed Stalin’s wise advice, when he called for the progress of:

“Science whose devotees, while understanding the power and significance of the established scientific traditions and ably utilizing them in the interests of science, are nevertheless not willing to be slaves of these traditions; the science which has the courage and determination to smash the old traditions, standards and views when they become antiquated and begin to act as a fetter on progress, and which is able to create new traditions, new standards and new views.”<ref>Joseph Stalin, Speech to Higher Educational Workers, delivered in 1938.</ref>

== Conclusions ==

We have now briefly surveyed the principal features of the Marxist materialist conception of the world and of the Marxist dialectical method. What conclusions can we draw at this stage?

(1) The world outlook of dialectical materialism is a consistent and reasoned outlook, which derives its strength from the fact that it arises directly from the attempt to solve the outstanding problems of our time.

The epoch of capitalism is an epoch of stormy development in society. It is marked by revolutionary advances of the forces of production and of scientific discovery, and by consequent uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions. This sets one theoretical task above all, and that is to arrive at an adequate conception of the laws of change and development in nature and society.

To this theoretical task dialectical materialism addresses itself.

(2) This is not the task of working out a philosophical system, in the old sense. What is required is not any system of ideas spun out of the heads of philosophers, which we can then admire and contemplate as a system of “absolute truth.”

Capitalist society is a society rent with contradictions, and the more it has developed, the more menacing and intolerable for the working people have the consequences of these contradictions become. The new powers of production are not utilized for the benefit of society as a whole but for the profit of an exploiting minority. Instead of leading to universal plenty, the growth of the powers of production leads to recurrent economic crises, to unemployment, to poverty and to hideously destructive wars.

Therefore the philosophical problem of arriving at a true conception of the laws of change and development in nature and society becomes, for the working people, a practical political problem of finding how to change society, so that the vast new forces of production can be used in the service of humanity. For the first time in history the possibility of a full and rich life for everyone exists. The task is to find how to make that possibility a reality.

It is to the solution of this practical task that the theory of dialectical materialism is devoted.

(3) Addressing itself to this task, dialectical materialism is and can only be a partisan philosophy, the philosophy of a party, namely, of the party of the working class, whose object is to lead the millions of working people to the socialist revolution and the building of communist society.

(4) Dialectical materialism cannot but stand out in sharp contrast to the various contemporary schools of bourgeois philosophy.

What have these various schools of philosophy to offer at the present time? Systems and arguments by the bucketful—none of them either original or cogent, if one takes the trouble to analyze them closely. But no solution to the problems pressing upon the people of the capitalist countries and the colonies. How to end poverty? How to end war? How to utilize production for the benefit of all? How to end the oppression of one nation by another? How to end the exploitation of man by man? How to establish the brotherhood of men? These are our problems. We must judge philosophies by whether or not they show how to solve them. By that criterion, the philosophical schools of capitalism must one and all be judged—“weighed in the balance and found wanting.”

The prevailing bourgeois philosophies, with all their differences, have in common a retreat from the great positive ideas which inspired progressive movements in the past. They emphasize men’s helplessness and limitations; they speak of a mysterious universe; and they counsel either trust in God or else hopeless resignation to fate or blind chance. Why is this? It is because all these philosophies are rooted in acceptance of capitalism and cannot see beyond capitalism. From start to finish they reflect the insoluble crisis of the capitalist world. And their function is to help entangle the people “in a web of lies.”

(5) Dialectical materialism asks to be judged and will be judged by whether it serves as an effective instrument to show the way out of capitalist crisis and war, to show the way for the working people to win and wield political power, to show the way to build a socialist society in which there is no more exploitation of man by man and in which men win increasing mastery over nature.

Dialectical materialism is a philosophy of practice, indissolubly united with the practice of the struggle for socialism.

It is the philosophy born out of the great movement of our times—the movement of the people who labor, who “create all the good things of life and feed and clothe the world,” to rise at last to their full stature. It is wholly, entirely dedicated to the service of that movement. This is the source of all its teachings, and in that service its conclusions are continually tried, tested and developed. Without such a philosophy, the movement cannot achieve consciousness of itself and of its tasks, cannot achieve unity, cannot win its battles.

Since the greatest task facing us is that of ending capitalist society and building socialism, it follows that the chief problem to which dialectical materialism addresses itself, and on the solution of which the whole philosophy of dialectical materialism turns, is the problem of understanding the forces of development of society. The chief problem is to reach such an understanding of society, of men’s social activity and of the development of human consciousness, as will show us how to achieve and build the new socialist society and the new socialist consciousness. The materialist conception and dialectical method with which we have been concerned in this volume are applied to this task in the materialist conception of history and in the Marxist-Leninist theory of knowledge. These will form the subject matter of the second volume.

== Bibliography ==

We mention here only works by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin in which the general underlying principles of dialectical materialism are expounded and developed.

The best general introduction is contained in Engels’ ''Socialism, Utopian and Scientific'' and in Stalin’s ''Anarchism or Socialism?'' After these it is necessary to study the ''Communist Manifesto'', by Marx and Engels.

It is advisable to become acquainted with these three works before studying the two short books in which the basic ideas of dialectical materialism are brought together and summarized—Lenin’s ''The Teachings of Karl Marx'' and Stalin’s ''Dialectical and Historical Materialism.'' The latter is of absolutely fundamental importance for the student, containing as it does a systematic exposition of the principal features of the Marxist dialectical method, Marxist philosophical materialism and the Marxist science of history, generalizing the conclusions of the whole experience of the application and development of Marxist theory in the course of the working-class struggle for socialism.

The place occupied by dialectical materialism in the whole theory and practice of Marxism is dealt with in Lenin’s “The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism,” in connection with which should also be read his “Marxism and Revisionism” (both in Lenin, ''Selected Works'', Vol. 11).

The creative, developing character of Marxism, and the role of history in the working-class movement are dealt with in the “Conclusion” of Stalin’s ''History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union''.

The essential difference between materialism and idealism, between dialectical and mechanistic materialism, and between the Marxist and Hegelian dialectics is to be found in Engels’ ''Ludwig Feuerbach'', with its appendix, Marx’s “Eleven Theses on Feuerbach.”

Along with this we may draw attention to Engels’ “Introduction” to ''Dialectics of Nature'', and to Lenin’s “The Attitude of the Workers’ Party toward Religion” (''Selected Works'', Vol. 11).

Of fundamental importance then are three longer and more difficult works: Engels’ ''Anti-Dühring'', especially Part I; Engels’ ''Dialectics of Nature''; Lenin’s ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism''.

A part of Lenin’s ''Philosophical Notebooks'' is translated into English under the title “On Dialectics”; and he deals with the fight for materialism in “On the Significance of Militant Materialism” (both in ''Selected Works'', Vol. 11). Important statements summarizing the essentials of the dialectical method are contained in Lenin’s “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back,” Section R, “Something About Dialectics” (''Selected Works'', Vol. 2), and “Once Again on the Trade Unions,” section on “Dialectics and Eclecticism” (''Selected Works'', Vol. 9). See also Lenin’s “What the ‘Friends of the People’ Are and How They Fight for the Social Democrats” (''Selected Works'', Vol. 11), which is concerned mainly with historical materialism, the subject of the next volume.

<references />

Library:Materialism and the Dialectical Method

2026-01-26T15:23:28Z

ComradeEd: Import from EPUB

{{Library work|title=Materialism and the Dialectical Method|author=Maurice Cornforth|published_date=1953|source=https://comlib.encryptionin.space/epubs/cornforth1953/|pdf=https://redstarpublishers.org/cornforth1953.pdf}}

== Dedication ==

In Memory of David Guest

Who Died in Spain

in the Struggle

Against Fascism

First printed in the U.S.A. in 1953

Reprinted in 2015

== Foreword ==

The present volume deals with the basic ideas of Marxist materialism and the dialectical method. A second volume will deal with the further development of these ideas in their application to society and the growth of human consciousness—historical materialism and the theory of knowledge.

I have tried to confine myself to a straightforward exposition of the leading ideas of dialectical materialism, so far as I myself have succeeded in understanding them, without burdening the exposition with digressions into more technical questions of philosophy, or with discussions about and polemics against any of the more abstruse philosophical theories, past and present, or with much of the argumentation about particular points which might be necessary to defend them against philosophical opponents.

I have done my best to limit the use of technical terms to the minimum, and to give an explanation of the meaning of all such terms as and when they occur

Maurice Cornforth

London

== PART ONE: MATERIALISM ==

=== 1. Party Philosophy ===

<blockquote>''Every philosophy expresses a class outlook. But in contrast to the exploiting classes, which have always sought to uphold and justify their class position by various disguises and falsifications, the working class, from its very class position and aims, is concerned to know and understand things just as they are, without disguise or falsification.''

''The party of the working class needs a philosophy which expresses a revolutionary class outlook. The alternative is to embrace ideas hostile to the working class and to socialism.''

''This determines the materialist character of our philosophy.''
</blockquote>

==== Party Philosophy and Class Philosophy ====

Dialectical materialism has been defined as: “The world outlook of the Marxist-Leninist Party.”<ref>Joseph Stalin, <cite>Dialectical and Historical Materialism</cite>, N. Y., 1940.</ref>

This definition must appear a strange one, both to many politicians and to many philosophers. But we will not begin to understand dialectical materialism unless we can grasp the thought which lies behind this definition.

Let us ask, first of all, what conception of philosophy lies behind the idea expressed in this definition of party or—since a party is always the political representative of a class—class philosophy.

By philosophy is usually meant our most general account of the nature of the world and of mankind’s place and destiny in it—our world outlook.

That being understood, it is evident that everybody has some kind of philosophy, even though he has never learned to discuss it. Everybody is influenced by philosophical views, even though he has not thought them out for himself and cannot formulate them.

Some people, for example, think that this world is nothing but “a vale of tears” and that our life in it is the preparation for a better life in another and better world. They accordingly believe that we should suffer whatever befalls us with fortitude, not struggling against it, but trying to do whatever good we can to our fellow creatures. This is one kind of philosophy, one kind of world outlook.

Other people think that the world is a place to grow rich in, and that each should look out for himself. This is another kind of philosophy.

But granted that our philosophy is our world outlook, the task arises of working out this world outlook systematically and in detail, turning it into a well-formulated and coherent theory, turning vaguely held popular beliefs and attitudes into more or less systematic doctrines. This is what the philosophers do.

By the time the philosophers have worked out their theories, they have often produced something very complicated, very abstract and very hard to understand. But even though only a comparatively few people may read and digest the actual productions of philosophers, these productions may and do have a very wide influence.

For the fact that philosophers have systematized certain beliefs reinforces those beliefs, and helps to impose them upon wide masses of ordinary people. Hence, everyone is influenced in one way or another by philosophers, even though they have never read the works of those philosophers.

And if this is the case, then we cannot regard the systems of the philosophers as being wholly original, as being wholly the products of the brain-work of the individual philosophers. Of course, the formulation of views, the peculiar ways in which they are worked out and written down, is the work of the particular philosopher. But the views themselves, in their most general aspect, have a social basis in ideas which reflect the social activities and social relations of the time, and which, therefore, do not spring ready-made out of the heads of philosophers.

From this we may proceed a step further.

When society is divided into classes—and society always has been divided into classes ever since the dissolution of the primitive communes, that is to say, throughout the entire historical period to which the history of philosophy belongs—then the various views which are current in society always express the outlooks of various classes. We may conclude, therefore, that the various systems of the philosophers also always express a class outlook. They are, in fact, nothing but the systematic working out and theoretical formulation of a class outlook, or, if you prefer, of the ideology of definite classes.

Philosophy is and always has been class philosophy. Philosophers may pretend it is not, but that does not alter the fact.

For people do not and cannot think in isolation from society, and therefore from the class interests and class struggles which pervade society, any more than they can live and act in such isolation. A philosophy is a world outlook, an attempt to understand the world, mankind and man’s place in the world. Such an outlook cannot be anything but the outlook of a class, and the philosopher functions as the thinking representative of a class. How can it be otherwise? Philosophies are not imported from some other planet, but are produced here on earth, by people involved, whether they like it or not, in existing class relations and class struggles. Therefore, whatever philosophers say about themselves, there is no philosophy which does not embody a class outlook, or which is impartial, as opposed to partisan, in relation to class struggles. Search as we may, we shall not find any impartial, non-partisan, non-class philosophy.

Bearing this in mind, then, we shall find that the philosophies of the past have all, in one way or another, expressed the outlook of the so-called “educated” classes, that is to say, of the exploiting classes. In general, it is the leaders of society who express and propagate their ideas in the form of systematic philosophies. And up to the appearance of the modern working class, which is the peculiar product of capitalism, these leaders have always been the exploiting classes. It is their outlook which has dominated philosophy, just as they have dominated society.

We can only conclude from this that the working class, if today it intends to take over leadership of society, needs to express its own class outlook in philosophical form, and to oppose this philosophy to the philosophies which express the outlook and defend the interests of the exploiters.

“The services rendered by Marx and Engels to the working class may be expressed in a few words thus: they taught the working class to know itself and be conscious of itself, and they substituted science for dreams,” wrote Lenin.<ref><cite>Lenin on Engels</cite>, N. Y., 1935.</ref>

“It is the great and historic merit of Marx and Engels that they proved by scientific analysis the inevitability of the collapse of capitalism and its transition to communism, under which there will be no more exploitation of man by man… that they indicated to the proletarians of all countries their role, their task, their mission, namely, to be the first to rally around themselves in this struggle all the toilers and exploited.”<ref><cite>Ibid</cite>.</ref>

Teaching the working class “to know itself and be conscious of itself,” and to rally around itself “all the toilers and exploited,” Marx and Engels founded and established the revolutionary theory of working-class struggle, which illumines the road by which the working class can throw off capitalist exploitation, can take the leadership of all the masses of the people, and so free the whole of society once and for all of all oppression and exploitation of man by man.

Marx and Engels wrote in the period when capitalism was still in the ascendant and when the forces of the working class were first being rallied and organized. Their theory was further continued by Lenin, in the period when capitalism had reached its final stage of monopoly capitalism or imperialism, and when the proletarian socialist revolution had begun. It was further continued by Stalin.

Marx and Engels taught that, without its own party, the working class certainly could not win victory over capitalism, could not lead the whole of society forward to the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. The working class must have its own party, independent of all bourgeois parties. Further developing the Marxist teachings about the party, Lenin showed that the party must act as the vanguard of its class, the most conscious section of its class, and that it is the instrument for winning and wielding political power.

To fulfill such a role, the party must evidently have knowledge, understanding and vision; in other words, it must be equipped with revolutionary theory, on which its policies are based and by which its activities are guided.

This theory is the theory of Marxism-Leninism. And it is not just an economic theory, nor yet exclusively a political theory, but a world outlook—a philosophy. Economic and political views are not and never can be independent of a general world outlook. Specific economic and political views express the world outlook of those who hold such views, and conversely, philosophical views find expression in views on economics and politics.

Recognizing all this, the revolutionary party of the working class cannot but formulate, and having formulated, hold fast to, develop and treasure its party philosophy. In this philosophy—dialectical materialism—are embodied the general ideas by means of which the party understands the world which it is seeking to change and in terms of which it defines its aims and works out how to fight for them. In this philosophy are embodied the general ideas by means of which the party seeks to enlighten and organize the whole class, and to influence, guide and win over all the masses of working people, showing the conclusions which must be drawn from each stage of the struggle, helping people to learn from their own experience how to go forward towards socialism.

And so we see why it is that in our times a philosophy has arisen which expresses the revolutionary world outlook of the working class, and that this philosophy—dialectical materialism—is defined as “the world outlook of the Marxist-Leninist Party.”

Experience itself has taught the party the need for philosophy. For experience shows that if we do not have our own revolutionary socialist philosophy, then inevitably we borrow our ideas from hostile, anti-socialist sources. If we do not adopt today the outlook of the working class and of the struggle for socialism, then we adopt—or slip into, without meaning to do so—that of the capitalists and of the struggle against socialism. This is why the working class party—if it is to be the genuine revolutionary leadership of its class, and is not to mislead its class by the importation of hostile capitalist ideas, and of policies corresponding to such ideas—must be concerned to formulate, defend and propagate its own revolutionary philosophy.

==== Class Philosophy and Truth ====

Against what has just been said about a class and party philosophy, the objection is bound to be raised that such a conception is a complete travesty of the whole idea of philosophy.

Class interests may incline us to believe one thing rather than another, some will say, but should not philosophy be above this? Should not philosophy be objective and impartial, and teach us to set class and party interests aside, and to seek only for the truth? For surely what is true is true, whether this suits some or other class interests or not? If philosophy is partisan—party philosophy—how can it be objective, how can it be true philosophy?

In reply to such objections, we may say that the working class standpoint in philosophy is very far indeed from having no concern for truth.

Is there no such thing as truth? Of course there is—and men are getting nearer to it. For different outlooks, partisan as they may be, are not on a level so far as nearness to truth is concerned. Every philosophy embodies a class outlook. Yes, but just as one class differs from another class in its social role and in its contribution to the development of society, so one philosophy embodies positive achievements in comparison with another in the working out of the truth about the world and society.

People are prone to believe that if we adopt a partisan, class standpoint, then we turn our backs on truth; and that, on the other hand, if we genuinely seek for truth, then we must be strictly impartial and non-partisan. But the contrary is the case. It is only when we adopt the partisan standpoint of historically the most progressive class that we are able to get nearer to truth.

The definition of dialectical materialism, therefore, as the philosophy of the revolutionary working-class party, is in no way incompatible with the claim of dialectical materialism to express truth, and to be a means of arriving at truth. On the contrary. We have every right to make this claim, in view of the actual historical position and role of the working class.

Except for the working class, all other classes which have aspired to take the leadership of society have been exploiting classes. But every exploiting class, whatever its achievements, has always to find some way of disguising its real position and aims, both from itself and from the exploited, and of making out that its rule is just and permanent. For such a class can never recognize its real position and aims as an exploiting class, or the temporary character of its own system.

For example, in ancient slave society, Aristotle, the greatest philosopher of antiquity, made out that the institution of slavery was decreed by nature, since some men were by nature slaves.

In the heyday of feudal society the greatest philosopher of the middle ages, Thomas Aquinas, represented the entire universe as being a kind of feudal system. Everything was arranged in a feudal hierarchy,<ref>A hierarchy is an order in which the things at the top rule over the things below them. Thus the serfs were at the bottom of the feudal hierarchy and the king was at the top. Similarly, the Pope is the head of the “Catholic hierarchy.”</ref> with God surrounded by the chief archangels at the top. Everything depended on what was next above it in the system, and nothing could exist without God.

As for capitalism, it dissolves all feudal ties and, as Marx and Engels observed, “has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous cash payment.”<ref>Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, <cite>The Communist Manifesto</cite>, Chapter I, N. Y., 1948.</ref> This was reflected in the beginnings of capitalist philosophy, especially in Britain.

This philosophy saw the world as consisting of independent atoms, each complete in itself, concerned only with itself, and all interacting. This was a mirror of capitalist society, as seen by the rising bourgeoisie. And by means of such ideas they succeeded, too, in disguising their own aims of domination and profit. Worker and capitalist were “on a level,” each was a free human atom, and they entered into a free contract, the one to work, the other to provide capital and pay wages.

But the working class does not need any such “false consciousness” as is contained in such philosophies. It does not want to set up a new system of exploitation, but to abolish all exploitation of man by man. For this reason, it has no interest whatever in disguising anything, but rather in understanding things just as they really are. For the better it understands the truth, the more is it strengthened in its struggle.

Moreover, other classes have always wanted to perpetuate themselves and to last out for as long as they could. And so they have favored philosophical “systems” which give themselves a permanent place in the universe. Such systems attempt to define the nature of the universe so as to represent certain things and certain relations as being necessary, eternal and unchangeable. And then they make it appear that a particular social system is a necessary part of the whole.

But the working class does not want to perpetuate itself. On the contrary, it wants to do away with its own existence as a class as quickly as possible, and to establish a classless society. Therefore, the working class has no use at all for any philosophical “system” which establishes any false permanence. Its class position and aims are such that it can afford to and needs to recognize and trace out the change, coming into being and ceasing to be of everything in existence.

Party philosophy, then, has a right to lay claim to truth. For it is the only philosophy which is based on a standpoint which demands that we should always seek to understand things just as they are, in all their manifold changes and interconnections, without disguises and without fantasy.

==== A Revolution in Philosophy ====

“The Marxian doctrine is omnipotent because it is true,” wrote Lenin. “It is complete and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world conception which is irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction or defense of bourgeois oppression.”<ref>Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, V. I. Lenin, Joseph Stalin, <cite>On the Theory of Marxism</cite>, Lenin, “The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism,” N. Y., 1948.</ref>

And he further wrote:

“There is nothing resembling ‘sectarianism’ in Marxism, in the sense of its being a hidebound, petrified doctrine, a doctrine which arose away from the highroad of development of world civilization. On the contrary, the genius of Marx consists precisely in the fact that he furnished answers to questions the foremost minds of mankind had already raised. His teachings arose as the direct and immediate continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of philosophy, political economy and socialism.”<ref><cite>Ibid</cite>.</ref>

Marxism is a revolution in philosophy. This revolution appears as the culmination of a whole great development of philosophical thought, in which the problems of philosophy were posed and took shape in the course of a series of revolutions, the highest point being reached in the classical German philosophy of the early nineteenth century. Marxism is thus the continuation and culmination of the past achievements of philosophy. And it is a continuation which puts an end to an epoch and constitutes a new point of departure. In comparison with past philosophies, it launches out on new lines. It puts an end to the “systems” of the past, and is a philosophy of an entirely new kind.

Marxism-Leninism is no longer a philosophy which expresses the world outlook of an exploiting class, of a minority, striving to impose its rule and its ideas upon the masses of the people, in order to keep them in subjection; but it is a philosophy which serves the common people in their struggle to throw off all exploitation and to build a classless society.

Marxism-Leninism is a philosophy which seeks to understand the world in order to change it. “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways,” wrote Marx. “The point, however, is to change it.”<ref>Frederick Engels, <cite>Ludwig Feuerbach</cite>, Appendices, Karl Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach,” XI, N. Y., 1941.</ref> Therefore, if we could say of past philosophy that it has been an attempt to understand the world and man’s place and destiny in it—an attempt necessarily conditioned by the class outlook, prejudices and illusions of the various exploiting class philosophers—we have to say of Marxist-Leninist philosophy that it is an attempt to understand the world in order to change the world and to shape and realize man’s destiny in it. Dialectical materialism is a theoretical instrument in the hands of the people for use in changing the world.

Marxism-Leninism, therefore, seeks to base our ideas of things on nothing but the actual investigation of them, arising from and tested by experience and practice. It does not invent a “system,” as previous philosophies have done, and then try to make everything fit into it.

Thus dialectical materialism is in the truest sense a popular philosophy, a scientific philosophy and a philosophy of practice. “The discovery of Marx and Engels represents the end of the old philosophy, ''i.e.'' the end of that philosophy which claimed to give a universal explanation of the world,” said A. A. Zhdanov. “With the appearance of Marxism as the scientific world outlook of the proletariat there ends the old period in the history of philosophy, when philosophy was the occupation of isolated individuals, the possession of philosophical schools consisting of a small number of philosophers and their disciples, detached from life and the people, and alien to the people.

“Marxism is not such a philosophical school. On the contrary, it supersedes the old philosophy—the philosophy that was the property of a small elite, the aristocracy of the intellect. It marked the beginning of a completely new period in the history of philosophy, when it became a scientific weapon in the hands of the proletarian masses in their struggle for emancipation from capitalism.

“Marxist philosophy, as distinguished from preceding philosophical systems, is not a science above other sciences; rather, it is an instrument of scientific investigation, a method, penetrating all natural and social sciences, enriching itself with their attainments in the course of their development. In this sense, Marxist philosophy is the most complete and decisive negation of all preceding philosophy. But to negate, as Engels emphasized, does not mean merely to say ‘no’. Negation includes continuity, signifies absorption, the critical reforming and unification in a new and higher synthesis of everything advanced and progressive that has been achieved in the history of human thought.”<ref>Andrei A. Zhdanov, <cite>Essays on Literature, Philosophy, and Music</cite>, Chapter II, N. Y., 1950.</ref>

The revolutionary characteristics of dialectical materialism are embodied in the two features of Marxist-Leninist philosophy which give it its name—dialectics and materialism. In order to understand things so as to change them we must study them, not according to the dictates of any abstract system, but in their real changes and interconnections—and that is what is meant by dialectics.

We must set aside preconceived ideas and fancies about things, and strive to make our theories correspond to the real conditions of material existence—and that means that our outlook and theory are materialist.

In dialectical materialism, wrote Engels, “the materialist world outlook was taken really seriously for the first time and was carried through consistently….” For “it was resolved to comprehend the real world—nature and history—just as it presents itself to everyone who approaches it free from preconceived idealist fancies. It was decided relentlessly to sacrifice every idealist fancy which could not be brought into harmony with the facts conceived in their own and not in a fantastic connection. And materialism means nothing more than this.”<ref>Engels, <cite>Ludwig Feuerbach</cite>, Chapter IV.</ref>

=== 2. Materialism and Idealism ===

<blockquote>''Materialism is opposed to idealism since, while idealism holds that the spiritual or ideal is prior to the material, materialism holds that matter is prior. This difference manifests itself in opposed ways of interpreting and understanding every question, and so in opposed attitudes in practice.''

''While idealism takes many subtle forms in the writings of philosophers, it is at bottom a continuation of belief in the supernatural. It involves belief in two worlds, in the ideal or supernatural world over against the real material world.''

''In essence idealism is a conservative, reactionary force; and its reactionary influence is demonstrated in practice. Marxism adopts a consistent standpoint of militant materialism.''
</blockquote>

==== Materialism, and Idealism—Opposed Ways of Interpreting Every Question ====

Our philosophy is called Dialectical Materialism, said Stalin, “because its approach to the phenomena<ref>A ''phenomenon'', plural ''phenomena'', is anything which we observe.</ref> of nature, its method of studying and apprehending them, is dialectical, while its interpretation of the phenomena of nature, its conception of these phenomena, its theory, is materialistic.”<ref>Stalin, <cite>Dialectical and Historical Materialism</cite>.</ref>

Materialism is not a dogmatic system. It is rather a way of interpreting, conceiving of, explaining every question.

The materialist way of interpreting events, of conceiving of things and their interconnections, is opposed to the idealist way of interpreting and conceiving of them. Materialism is opposed to idealism. With every question, there are materialist and idealist ways of interpreting it, materialist and idealist ways of trying to understand it.

Thus materialism and idealism are not two opposed abstract theories about the nature of the world, of small concern to ordinary practical folk. They are opposed ways of interpreting and understanding every question, and, consequently, they express opposite approaches in practice and lead to very different conclusions in terms of practical activity.

Nor are they, as some use the terms, opposite moral attitudes— the one high-minded, the other base and self-seeking. If we use the terms like this, we will never understand the opposition between capitalist and materialist conceptions.

For this way of speaking is, as Engels said, nothing but “an unpardonable concession to the traditional philistine prejudice against the word materialism resulting from the long-continued defamation by the priests. By the word materialism the philistine understands gluttony, drunkenness, lust of the eye, lust of the flesh, arrogance, cupidity, miserliness, profit-hunting and stock-exchange swindling—in short, all the filthy vices in which he himself indulges in private. By the word idealism he understands the belief in virtue, universal philanthropy and in a general way a ‘better world’, of which he boasts before others.”<ref>Engels, <cite>Ludwig Feuerbach</cite>, Chapter II.</ref>

Before trying to define materialism and idealism in general terms, let us consider how these two ways of understanding things are expressed in relation to certain simple and familiar questions. This will help us to grasp the significance of the distinction between a materialist and an idealist interpretation.

First let us consider a very familiar natural phenomenon—a thunderstorm. What causes thunderstorms?

An idealist way of answering this question is to say that thunderstorms are due to the anger of God. Being angry, he arranges for lightning and thunderbolts to descend upon mankind.

The materialist way of understanding thunderstorms is opposed to this. The materialist will try to explain and understand thunderstorms as being solely due to what we call natural forces. For example, ancient materialists suggested that far from thunderstorms being due to the anger of the gods, they were caused by material particles in the clouds banging against one another. That this particular explanation was wrong, is not the point: the point is that it was an attempt at materialist as opposed to idealist explanation. Nowadays a great deal more is known about thunderstorms arising from the scientific investigation of the natural forces involved. Knowledge remains very incomplete, but at all events enough is known to make it quite clear that the explanation must be on materialist lines, so that the idealist explanation has become thoroughly discredited.

It will be seen that while the idealist explanation tries to relate the phenomenon to be explained to some ''spiritual'' cause—in this case the anger of God—the materialist explanation relates it to ''material'' causes.

In this example, most educated people today would agree in accepting the materialist interpretation. This is because they generally accept the ''scientific'' explanation of natural phenomena, and every advance of natural science is an advance in the ''materialist'' understanding of nature.

Let us take a second example, this time one arising out of social life. For instance: Why are there rich and poor? This is a question which many people ask, especially poor people.

The most straightforward idealist answer to this question is to say simply—It is because God made them so. It is the will of God that some should be rich and others poor.

But other less straightforward idealist explanations are more in vogue. For example: it is because some men are careful and farsighted, and these husband their resources and grow rich, while others are thriftless and stupid, and these remain poor. Those who favor this type of explanation say that it is all due to eternal “human nature.” The nature of man and of society is such that the distinction of rich and poor necessarily arises.

Just as in the case of the thunderstorm, so in the case of the rich and poor, the idealist seeks for some spiritual cause—if not in the will of God, the divine mind, then in certain innate characteristics of the human mind.

The materialist, on the other hand, seeks the reason in the material, economic conditions of social life. If society is divided into rich and poor, it is because the production of the material means of life is so ordered that some have possession of the land and other means of production while the rest have to work for them. However hard they may work and however much they may scrape and save, the non-possessors will remain poor, while the possessors grow rich on the fruits of their labor.

On such questions, therefore, the difference between a materialist and an idealist conception can be very important. And the difference is important not merely in a theoretical but in a practical sense.

A materialist conception of thunderstorms, for example, helps us to take precautions against them, such as fitting buildings with lightning conductors. But if our explanation of thunderstorms is idealist, all we can do is to watch and pray. If we accept an idealist account of the existence of rich and poor, all we can do is to accept the existing state of affairs—rejoicing in our superior status and bestowing a little charity if we are rich, and cursing our fate if we are poor. But armed with a materialist understanding of society we can begin to see the way to change society.

It is clear, therefore, that while some may have a vested interest in idealism, it is in the interests of the great majority to learn to think and to understand things in the materialist way.

How, then, can we define materialism and idealism, and the difference between them, in general terms, so as to define the essence of the question? This was done by Engels.

“The great basic question of all philosophy, especially of modern philosophy, is that concerning the relation of thinking and being…. The answers which the philosophers have given to this question split them into two great camps. Those who asserted the primacy of spirit to nature and therefore in the last instance assumed world creation in some form or another… comprised the camp of idealism. The others, who regarded nature as primary, belong to the various schools of materialism.”<ref>Engels, <cite>Ludwig Feuerbach</cite>, Chapter II.</ref>

Idealism is the way of interpreting things which regards the spiritual as prior to the material, whereas materialism regards the material as prior. Idealism supposes that everything material is dependent on and determined by something spiritual, whereas materialism recognizes that everything spiritual is dependent on and determined by something material. And this difference manifests itself both in general philosophical conceptions of the world as a whole, and in conceptions of particular things and events.

==== Idealism and the Supernatural ====

At bottom, idealism is religion, theology. “Idealism is clericalism,” wrote Lenin.<ref>V. I. Lenin, <cite>Selected Works</cite>, Vol. 11, “On Dialectics,” N. Y., 1943.</ref> All idealism is a continuation of the religious approach to questions, even though particular idealist theories have shed their religious skin. Idealism is inseparable from superstition, belief in the supernatural, the mysterious and unknowable.

Materialism, on the other hand, seeks for explanations in terms belonging to the material world, in terms of factors which we can verify, understand and control.

The roots of the idealist conception of things are, then, the same as those of religion.

To believers, the conceptions of religion, that is to say, conceptions of supernatural spiritual beings, generally seem to have their justification, not, of course, in any evidence of the senses, but in something which lies deep within the spiritual nature of man. And, indeed, it is true that these conceptions do have very deep roots in the historical development of human consciousness. But what is their origin, how did such conceptions arise in the first place? We can certainly not regard such conceptions as being the products, as religion itself tells us, of divine revelation, or as arising from any other supernatural cause, if we find that they themselves have a natural origin. And such an origin can in fact be traced.

Conceptions of the supernatural, and religious ideas in general, owe their origin first of all to the helplessness and ignorance of men in face of the forces of nature. Forces which men cannot understand are personified—they are represented as manifestations of the activity of spirits.

For example, such alarming events as thunderstorms were, as we have seen, explained fantastically as due to the anger of gods. Again, such important phenomena as the growth of crops were put down to the activity of a spirit: it was believed that it was the corn spirit that made the corn grow.

From the most primitive times men personified natural forces in this way. With the birth of class society, when men were impelled to act by social relations which dominated them and which they did not understand, they further invented supernatural agencies doubling, as it were, the state of society. The gods were invented superior to mankind, just as the kings and lords were superior to the common people.

All religion, and all idealism, has at its heart this kind of ''doubling of the world''. It is dualistic, and invents a dominating ideal or supernatural world over against the real material world.

Very characteristic of idealism are such antitheses as: soul and body; god and man; the heavenly kingdom and the earthly kingdom; the forms and ideas of things, grasped by the intellect, and the world of material reality, perceptible by the senses.

This “doubling” of the world is carried to its furthest limits in subjective idealism, which ends by regarding the material world as a mere illusion and asserts that only the non-material world is real. The dualistic character of all idealism is most marked in subjective idealism, which posits a complete antithesis between the mechanistic system of the illusory material world and the “freedom” of the higher, non-material reality. This antithesis, disguised as it often is behind allegedly “scientific” and “empiricist” theorizing, characterizes all subjective idealist philosophies, from Berkeley to John Dewey.

For idealism, there is always a higher, more real, non-material world—which is prior to the material world, is its ultimate source and cause, and to which the material world is subject. For materialism, on the other hand, there is ''one'' world, the material world.

By idealism in philosophy we mean any doctrine which says that beyond material reality there is a higher, spiritual reality, in terms of which the material reality is in the last analysis to be explained.

==== Some Varieties of Modern Philosophy ====

At this point a few observations may be useful concerning some characteristic doctrines of modern bourgeois philosophy.

For nearly three hundred years there has been put forward a variety of philosophy known as “subjective idealism.” This teaches that the material world does not exist at all. Nothing exists but the sensations and ideas in our minds, and there is no external material reality corresponding to them.

And then again, this subjective idealism is put forward in the form of a doctrine concerning knowledge: it denies that we can know anything about objective reality outside ourselves, and says that we can have knowledge of appearances only and not of “things in themselves.”

This sort of idealism has become very fashionable today. It even parades as extremely “scientific.” When capitalism was still a progressive force, bourgeois thinkers used to believe that we could know more and more about the real world, and so control natural forces and improve the lot of mankind indefinitely. Now they are saying that the real world is unknowable, the arena of mysterious forces which pass our comprehension. It is not difficult to see that the fashion for such doctrines is just a symptom of the decay of capitalism.

We have seen that, at bottom, idealism always believes in ''two worlds'', the ideal and the material, and it places the ideal prior to and above the material. Materialism, on the other hand, knows one world only, the material world, and refuses to invent a second, imaginary, superior ideal world.

Materialism and idealism are irreconcilably opposed. But this does not stop many philosophers from trying to reconcile and combine them. In philosophy there are also various attempted compromises between idealism and materialism.

One such attempted compromise is often known as “dualism.” Such a compromise philosophy asserts the existence of the spiritual as separate and distinct from the material—but it tries to place the two on a level. Thus it treats the world of non-living matter in a thoroughly materialist way: this, it says, is the sphere of activity of natural forces, and spiritual factors do not enter into it and have nothing to do with it in any way. But when it comes to mind and society, here, says this philosophy, is the sphere of activity of spirit. Here, it maintains, we must seek explanations in idealist and not in materialist terms.

Such a compromise between materialism and idealism, therefore, amounts to this—that with regard to all the most important questions concerning men, society and history we are to continue to adopt idealist conceptions and to oppose materialism.

Another compromise philosophy is known as “realism.” In its modern form, this philosophy has arisen in opposition to subjective idealism.

The “realist” philosophers say that the external material world really exists independent of our perceptions and is in some way reflected by our perceptions. In this the “realists” agree with the materialists in opposition to ''subjective'' idealism; indeed, you cannot be a materialist unless you are a thorough-going realist on the question of the real existence of the material world.

But merely to assert that the external world exists independent of our perceiving it, is not to be a materialist. For example, the great Catholic philosopher of the middle ages, Thomas Aquinas, was in this sense a “realist.” And to this day most Catholic theologians regard it as a heresy to be anything but a “realist” in philosophy. But at the same time they assert that the material world, which really exists, was created by God, and is sustained and ruled all the time by the power of God, by a spiritual power. So, far from being materialists, they are idealists.

As for modern “realism,” it concedes to materialism the bare existence of matter and, for the rest, is ready to concede everything to idealism.

Moreover, the word “realism” is much abused by philosophers. So long as you believe that something or other is “real,” you may call yourself a “realist.” Some philosophers think that not only is the world of material things real, but that there is also, outside space and time, a real world of “universals,” of the abstract essences of things: so these call themselves “realists.” Others say that, although nothing exists but the perceptions in our minds, nevertheless these perceptions are real: so these call themselves “realists” too. All of which goes to show that some philosophers are very tricky in their use of words.

==== The Basic Teachings of Materialism in Opposition to Idealism ====

In opposition to all the forms of idealism, and of tricky compromises between materialism and idealism, the basic teachings of materialism can be formulated very simply and clearly.

To grasp the essence of these teachings we should also understand what are the main assertions made in every form of idealism. There are three such main assertions of idealism.

# Idealism asserts that the material world is dependent on the spiritual.
# Idealism asserts that spirit, or mind, or idea, can and does exist in separation from matter. (The most extreme form of this assertion is subjective idealism, which asserts that matter does not exist at all but is pure illusion.)
# Idealism asserts that there exists a realm of the mysterious and unknowable, “above,” or “beyond,” or “behind” what can be ascertained and known by perception, experience and science.

The basic teachings of materialism stand in opposition to these three assertions of idealism.

# Materialism teaches that the world is by its very nature material, that everything which exists comes into being on the basis of material causes, arises and develops in accordance with the laws of motion of matter.
# Materialism teaches that matter is objective reality existing outside and independent of the mind; and that far from the mental existing in separation from the material, everything mental or spiritual is a product of material processes.
# Materialism teaches that the world and its laws are fully knowable, and that while much may not be known there is nothing which is by nature unknowable.

The Marxist-Leninist philosophy is characterized by its absolutely consistent materialism all along the line, by its making no concessions whatever at any point to idealism. Thus Stalin points out:

“(a) Contrary to idealism, which regards the world as the embodiment of an ‘absolute idea,’ a ‘universal spirit,’ ‘consciousness,’ Marx’s philosophical materialism holds that the world is by its very nature material, that the multifold phenomena of the world constitute different forms of matter in motion… and that the world develops in accordance with the laws of movement of matter and stands in no need of a ‘universal spirit.’

“(b) Contrary to idealism, which asserts that only our mind really exists… the Marxist materialist philosophy holds that matter, nature, being is an objective reality existing outside and independent of our mind; that matter is primary, since it is the source of sensations, ideas, mind, and that mind is secondary, derivative, since it is a reflection of matter, a reflection of being; that thought is a product of matter which in its development has reached a high degree of perfection, namely, of the brain, and the brain is the organ of thought; and that, therefore, one cannot separate thought from matter without committing a grave error.

“(c) Contrary to idealism, which denies the possibility of knowing the world and its laws… Marxist philosophical materialism holds that the world and its laws are fully knowable, that our knowledge of the laws of nature, tested by experiment and practice, is authentic knowledge having the validity of objective truth, and that there are no things in the world which are unknowable, but only things which are still not known, but which will be disclosed and made known by the efforts of science and practice.”<ref>Stalin, <cite>Dialectical and Historical Materialism</cite>.</ref>

==== Materialism and Idealism in Practice ====

As was pointed out above, the opposition of materialism and idealism—which has now been stated in its most general terms—is not an opposition between abstract theories of the nature of the world, but is an opposition between different ways of understanding and interpreting every question. That is why it is of such profound importance.

Let us consider some of the very practical ways in which the opposition of materialism and idealism is manifested.

Idealists tell us, for example, not to place “too much” reliance on science. They tell us that the most important truths are beyond the reach of science. Hence they encourage us not to believe things on the basis of evidence, experience, practice, but to take them on trust from those who pretend to know best and to have some “higher” source of information.

In this way idealism is a very good friend and standby of every form of reactionary propaganda. It is the philosophy of the capitalist press and the radio. It favors superstitions of all sorts, prevents us from thinking for ourselves and taking a scientific approach to moral and social problems.

Again, idealists tell us that what is most important for us all is the inner life of the soul. They tell us that we shall never solve our human problems except by some inner regeneration. This is a favorite theme in the speeches of well-fed persons. But many workers fall for it too—in factories, for example, where a “Moral Rearmament” group is active. They tell you not to fight for better conditions, but to improve your soul. They do not tell you that the best way to improve yourself both materially and morally is to join in the fight for peace and socialism.

Again, an idealist approach is common amongst many socialists. Many sincere socialists, for example, think that what is essentially wrong with capitalism is that goods are unfairly distributed, and that if only we could get everyone, including the capitalists, to accept a new conception of fairness and justice, then we could do away with the evils of capitalism. Socialism to them is nothing but the realization of an abstract idea of justice.

The idealism of this belief lies in its assumption that it is simply the ''ideas'' which we hold that determine the way we live and the way society is organized. Those who think in this way forget to look for the ''material'' causes. For what in fact determines the way goods are distributed in capitalist society—the wealth enjoyed by one part of society, while the other and greater part lives in poverty—is not the ideas which men hold about the distribution of wealth, but the material fact that the mode of production rests on the exploitation of the worker by the capitalist. So long as this mode of production remains in existence, so long will extremes of wealth and poverty remain, and so long will socialist ideas of justice be opposed by capitalist ideas of justice. The task of socialists, therefore, is to organize and lead the struggle of the working class against the capitalist class to the point where the working class takes power from the capitalist class.

If we do not understand this, then we cannot find the way to fight effectively for socialism. We shall find that our socialist ideals are constantly disappointed and betrayed. Such, indeed, has been the experience of British socialism.

It can be seen from these examples how idealism serves as a weapon of reaction; and how when socialists embrace idealism they are being influenced by the ideology of the capitalists. We can no more take over and use capitalist ideas for the purposes of socialist theory than we can take over and use the capitalist state machine, with all its institutions and officials, for the purposes of building socialism.

Right through history, indeed, idealism has been a weapon of reaction. Whatever fine systems of philosophy have been invented, idealism has been used as a means of justifying the rule of an exploiting class and deceiving the exploited.

This is not to say that truths have not been expressed in an idealist guise. Of course they have. For idealism has very deep roots in our ways of thinking, and so men often clothe their thoughts and aspirations in idealist dress. But the idealist form is always an impediment, a hindrance in the expression of truth—a source of confusion and error.

Again, progressive movements in the past have adopted and fought under an idealist theory. But this has shown only that they contained in themselves the seeds of future reaction (inasmuch as they represented the striving of a new exploiting class to come to power) or that they were themselves influenced by ideas of reaction; or it has been a mark of their weakness and immaturity.

For example, the great revolutionary movement of the English bourgeoisie in the seventeenth century fought under idealist, religious slogans. But the same appeal to God which justified Cromwell in the execution of the King justified him also in stamping out the Levelers.

Early democrats and socialists had many idealist notions. But in their case this demonstrated the ''immaturity'' and ''weakness'' of the movement. The idealist illusions had to be overcome if the revolutionary working-class movement was to arise and triumph. As the movement grew strong, the continuance within it of idealist notions represented an alien, reactionary influence.

We can truly say that idealism is essentially a conservative force—an ideology helping the defense of things as they are, and the preservation of illusions in men’s minds about their true condition.

On the other hand, every real social advance—every increase in the productive forces, every advance of science—generates materialism and is helped along by materialist ideas. And the whole history of human thought has been the history of the fight of materialism against idealism, of the overcoming of idealist illusions and fantasies.

==== The Fight for Materialism ====

Marxists, as the organized vanguard of the working class fighting to end all exploitation of man by man and to establish communism, have no use for idealism in any form.

Here, for example, are some of the ways in which Lenin expressed himself on this question.

“The genius of Marx and Engels consisted in the very fact that in the course of a long period, nearly half a century, they developed materialism, that they further advanced one fundamental trend in philosophy….

“Take the various philosophical utterances by Marx… and you will find an invariable basic motif, ''viz''. insistence upon materialism and contemptuous derision of all obscurantism, of all confusion and all deviations towards idealism….

“Marx and Engels were partisans in philosophy from start to finish; they were able to detect the deviations from materialism and concessions to idealism… in each and every ‘new’ tendency….

“The realists etc., including the positivists, are all a wretched mush; they are a contemptible middle party in philosophy, who confuse the materialist and idealist trends on every question. The attempt to escape these two basic trends in philosophy is nothing but conciliatory quackery.”<ref>Lenin, <cite>Selected Works</cite>, Vol. 11, “Materialism and Empirio-Criticism,” Chapter VI, Section 4.</ref>

On every issue we are partisans of materialism against idealism. This is because we know that it is in the light of materialist theory, which studies things as they are, without idealist fantasies about them, that we can understand the forces in nature and society so as to be able to transform society and to master the forces of nature.

And because of this, too, materialism teaches us to have confidence in ourselves, in the working class—in people. It teaches us that there are no mysteries beyond our understanding, that we need not accept that which is as being the will of God, that we should contemptuously reject the “authoritative” teachings of those who set up to be our masters, and that we can ourselves understand nature and society so as to be able to change them.

We hate idealism, because under cover of high-sounding talk it preaches the subjection of man to man and belittles the power of humanity.

It was the materialist confidence in humanity which was expressed by Maxim Gorky when he wrote:

“For me, there are no ideas beyond man; for me, man and only man is the miracle worker and the future master of all forces of nature. The most beautiful things in this our world are the things made by labor, made by skilled human hands, and all our ideas are born out of the process of labor.

“And if it is thought necessary to speak of sacred things, then the one sacred thing is the dissatisfaction of man with himself and his striving to be better than he is; sacred is his hatred of all the trivial rubbish which he himself has created; sacred is his desire to do away with greed, envy, crime, disease, war and all enmity between men on earth; and sacred is his labor.”<ref>Maxim Gorky, <cite>Literature and Life</cite>, “How I Learned to Write,” London, 1946.</ref>

=== 3. Mechanistic Materialism ===

<blockquote>''The type of materialism produced in the past by the revolutionary bourgeoisie was mechanistic materialism. This took over the ancient materialist conception that the world consisted of unchanging material particles (atoms), whose interactions produced all the phenomena of nature, and further strove to understand the workings of nature on the model of the workings of a machine.''

''It was in its time a progressive and revolutionary doctrine. But it has three grave weaknesses. (1) It requires the conception of a Supreme Being who started the world up; (2) it seeks to reduce all processes to the same cycle of mechanistic interactions and so cannot account for development, for the emergence of new qualities, new types of processes in nature; (3) it cannot account for social development, can give no account of human social activity and leads to an abstract conception of human nature.''
</blockquote>
==== The Changing World and How to Understand It ====

Before Marx, materialism was predominantly ''mechanistic.''

We often hear people complain that the materialists seek to reduce everything in the world, including life and mind, to a system of soulless mechanism, to a mere mechanical interaction of bodies. This refers to mechanistic materialism. Marxist materialism is, however, not mechanistic but dialectical. To understand what this means we need first to understand something about mechanistic materialism itself.

We can approach this problem by asking how materialists have sought to understand the various processes of change which are observed everywhere in the world.

The world is full of change. Night follows day and day night; the seasons succeed each other; people are born, grow old and die. Every philosophy recognizes that change is an omnipresent fact. The question is: how are we to understand the change which we observe everywhere?

Change may be understood, in the first place, in an idealist way or in a materialist way.

Idealism traces back all change to some idea or intention—if not human, then divine. Thus for idealism, changes in the material world are, in the last analysis, initiated and brought about by something outside matter, not material, not subject to the laws of the material world.

But materialism traces back all change to material causes. In other words, it seeks to explain what happens in the material world from the material world itself.

But while the occurrence of change has been recognized by everyone, since none can ignore it, philosophers have nevertheless sought to find something which does not change—something permanent, something changeless, behind or within the change.

This is generally an essential part of the ideology of an exploiting class. They are afraid of change, because they are afraid that they, too, may be swept away. So they always seek for something fixed and stable, not subject to change. They try to hitch themselves on to this, as it were.

The earlier materialists, too, sought for this. Behind all the changing appearances they looked for something which never changes. But while idealists looked for the eternal and changeless in the realm of spirit, these materialists looked for it in the material world itself. And they found it in the ultimate material particle—the eternal and indestructible atom. (“Atom” is a Greek word meaning “unbreakable.”)

For such materialists, then, all ''changes'' were produced by the movement and interaction of ''unchanging'' atoms.

This is a very ancient theory, put forward over two thousand years ago in Greece, and earlier still in India.

In its day it was a very progressive theory, a great weapon against idealism and superstition. The Roman poet Lucretius, for example, explained in his philosophical poem ''On the Nature of Things'' that the purpose of the atomistic theory of the Greek philosopher Epicurus was to demonstrate “what are the elements out of which everything is formed, and how everything comes to pass without the intervention of the gods.”

Thus there was born a materialism which saw the world as consisting of hard, impenetrable material particles, and which understood all change as arising from nothing but the motion and interaction of such particles.

This theory was revived in modern times. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries philosophers and scientists turned to it in their fight against feudal, Catholic philosophy. But this modern materialism proved to be much richer in content than the ancient. For it tried to work out what were the laws of interaction of material particles, and so to present a picture of how all phenomena, from merely physical changes to the life of man, resulted from the motion and interaction of the separate parts of matter. In this way, by the eighteenth century, there had appeared the characteristic modern theories of mechanistic materialism.

==== A Bourgeois Philosophy ====

Mechanistic materialism was in essence an ideology, a mode of theorizing, of the rising bourgeoisie. In order to understand it we must understand, first of all, that it arose and developed in opposition to feudal ideology—that its critical edge was directed against feudal ideas, that it was in fact the most radical of all bourgeois forms of opposition against the feudal outlook.

In the period of the rise of the bourgeoisie, the feudal social relations were shattered, and so were the feudal ideas, embodied in the Catholic philosophy, in which those social relations were enshrined.

The feudal system, whose economic basis lay in the exploitation of the serfs by the feudal proprietors, involved complex social relationships of dependence, subordination and allegiance. All this was reflected, not only in social and political philosophy, but also in the philosophy of nature.

It was typical of the natural philosophy of the feudal period that everything in nature was explained in terms of its proper place in the system of the universe, in terms of its supposed position of dependence and subordination in that system, and of the end or purpose which it existed to serve.

The bourgeois philosophers and scientists destroyed these feudal ideas about nature. They regarded nature as a system of bodies in interaction, and, rejecting all the feudal dogmas, they called for the investigation of nature in order to discover how nature really worked.

The investigation of nature advanced hand in hand with the geographical discoveries, the development of trade and transport, the improvement of machinery and manufactures. The greatest strides were made in the mechanical sciences, closely connected as they were with the needs of technology. So it came about that materialist theory was enriched as the result of the scientific investigation of nature, and in particular by the mechanical sciences.

This determined at once the strength and the weakness, the achievement and the limitation, of the materialist theory.

What pushed that theory forward was, so Engels writes, “the powerful and ever more rapidly onrushing progress of science and industry.” But it remained “predominantly mechanical,” because only the mechanical sciences had attained any high degree of development. Its “specific, but at that time inevitable limitation” was its “exclusive application of the standards of mechanics.”<ref>Engels, <cite>Ludwig Feuerbach</cite>, Chapter II.</ref>

The mechanistic way of understanding nature did not arise, however, simply from the fact that at that time it was only the mechanical sciences which had made any great progress. It was deeply rooted in the class outlook of the most progressive bourgeois philosophers, and this led to their turning exclusively to the mechanical sciences for their inspiration.

Just as the bourgeoisie, overthrowing feudal society, stood for individual liberty, equality and the development of a free market, so the most progressive philosophers of the bourgeoisie—the materialists—overthrowing the feudal ideas, proclaimed that the world consisted of separate material particles interacting with one another in accordance with the laws of mechanics.

This theory of nature reflected bourgeois social relations no less than the theories it replaced had reflected feudal social relations. But just as the new bourgeois social relations broke the feudal fetters and enabled a great new development of the forces of production to begin, so the corresponding bourgeois theory of nature broke down the barriers which feudal ideas had placed in the way of scientific research and enabled a great new development of scientific research to begin.

The philosophical outlook seemed to find its confirmation in science, and science provided materials for the development and working out in detail of the philosophical outlook.

==== The World and the Machine ====

The world—so thought the mechanistic materialists—consists of nothing but particles of matter in interaction. Each particle has an existence separate and distinct from every other; in their totality they form the world; the totality of their interactions forms the totality of everything that happens in the world; and these interactions are of the mechanical type, that is to say, they consist simply of the external influence of one particle upon another.

Such a theory is equivalent to regarding the whole world as nothing but a complex piece of machinery, a mechanism.

From this standpoint, the question always posed about any part of nature is the question we ask about a machine: what is its mechanism, how does it work?

This was exemplified in Newton’s account of the solar system. Newton adopted the same general view as the Greek materialist, Epicurus, inasmuch as he thought that the material world consisted of particles moving about in empty space. But faced with any particular natural phenomenon, such as the movements of the sun and planets, Epicurus was not in the least concerned to give any exact account of it. With regard to the apparent movement of the sun across the heavens from east to west, for example, Epicurus said that the important thing was to understand that the sun was not a god but was simply a collection of atoms: no account of the actual machinery of its motions was necessary. Perhaps, he said, the sun goes round and round the earth; but perhaps it disintegrates and its atoms separate every night, so that it is “a new sun” which we see the next morning: to him such questions were simply unimportant. Newton, on the other hand, was concerned to show exactly how the solar system worked, to demonstrate the mechanics of it, in terms of gravity and mechanical forces.

But just as Epicurus was not interested in how the solar system worked, so Newton was not interested in how it originated and developed. He took it for granted as a stable piece of machinery— created, presumably, by God. Not how it originated, not how it developed, but how it worked, was the question which he dealt with.

The same mechanistic approach was manifested in Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of the blood. The essence of his discovery was that he demonstrated the mechanism of circulation, regarding the heart as a pump, which pumps the blood out along the arteries so that it flows back through the veins, the whole system being regulated by a series of valves.

To understand the mechanistic outlook better, let us ask: what is a mechanism? what is characteristic of a mechanism?

<ol style="list-style-type:lower-alpha">
<li>A mechanism consists of permanent parts, which fit together.</li>
<li>It requires a motive force to set it going.</li>
<li>Once set going, the parts interact and results are produced according to laws which can be exactly stated.</li></ol>

Consider, for example, such a mechanism as a watch. (''a'') It consists of a number of different parts—cogs, levers and so on— fitted neatly together. (''b'') It has to be wound up. (c) Then, as the spring uncoils, the parts interact according to laws exactly known to watchmakers, resulting in the regular movements of the hands on the dial.

Further, to know how a mechanism, such as a watch, works, you must take it to bits, find out what its parts are, how they fit together and how, by their interactions, once the mechanism is set in motion by the application of the required motive force, they produce the total motion characteristic of the mechanism in working order.

This is just how the mechanistic materialists regarded nature. They sought to take nature to bits, to find its ultimate component parts, how they fitted together and how their interactions produced all the changes we perceive, all the phenomena of the world. And moreover, finding out how the mechanism worked, they sought to find out how to repair it, how to improve it, how to change it and to make it produce new results corresponding lo the requirements of man.

==== The Strength and Achievement of Mechanistic Materialism ====

Mechanistic materialism was an important milestone in our understanding of nature. And it was a great progressive step of bourgeois thinkers, a blow against idealism.

The mechanists were thorough-going in their materialism. For they waged a progressive fight against idealism and clericalism by trying to extend to the realm of mind and society the same mechanistic conceptions which were used in the scientific investigation of nature. They sought to include man and all his spiritual activities in the mechanistic system of the natural world.

The most radical mechanists regarded not merely physical processes, and not merely plant and animal life, but man himself as a machine. Already in the seventeenth century the great French philosopher Descartes had said that all animals were complicated machines—automata: but man was different, since he had a soul. But in the eighteenth century a follower of Descartes, the physician LaMettrie, wrote a book with the provocative title ''Man a Machine.'' Men, too, were machines, he said, though very complicated ones.

This doctrine was looked upon as exceptionally shocking, and as a terrible insult to human nature, not to mention God. Yet it was in its time a progressive view of man. The view that men are machines was an advance in the understanding of human nature as compared with the view that they are wretched pieces of clay inhabited by immortal souls. And it was, comparatively speaking, a more humane view.

For example, the great English materialist and utopian socialist Robert Owen told the pious industrialists of his time:

“Experience has shown you the difference of the results between mechanism which is neat, clean, well-arranged and always in a high state of repair, and that which is allowed to be dirty, in disorder, and which therefore becomes much out of repair…. If, then, due care as to the state of your inanimate machines can produce such beneficial results, what may not be expected if you devote equal attention to your ''vital'' machines, which are far more wonderfully constructed?”<ref>Robert Owen, <cite>New View of Society</cite>.</ref>

This humanitarianism was, however, at the best bourgeois humanitarianism. Like all mechanistic materialism, it was rooted in the class outlook of the bourgeoisie. The view that man is a machine is rooted in the view that in production man is a mere appendage of the machine. And if on the one hand this implies that the human machine ought to be well tended and kept in good condition, on the other hand it equally implies that no more should be expended for this purpose than is strictly necessary to keep the human machine in bare working order.

==== The Weakness and Limitations of Mechanistic Materialism ====

Mechanistic materialism had grave weaknesses.

(1) It could not sustain the materialist standpoint consistently and all the way.

For if the world is like a machine, who made it, who started it up? There was necessary, in any system of mechanistic materialism, a “Supreme Being,” outside the material world—even if he no longer continuously interfered in the world and kept things moving, but did no more than start things up and then watch what happened.

Such a “Supreme Being” was postulated by nearly all the mechanistic materialists; for example, by Voltaire and Tom Paine. But this opens the door to idealism.

(2) Mechanistic materialism sees change everywhere. Yet because it always tries to ''reduce'' all phenomena to the same system of mechanical interactions, it sees this change as nothing but the eternal ''repetition'' of the same kinds of mechanical processes, an eternal cycle of the same changes.

This limitation is inseparable from the view of the world as a machine. For just as a machine has to be started up, so it can never do anything except what it was made to do. It cannot change itself or produce anything radically new. Mechanistic theory, therefore, always breaks down when it is a question of accounting for the emergence of ''new quality.'' It sees change everywhere—but nothing ''new,'' no ''development.''

The various processes of nature—chemical processes and the processes of living matter, for example—cannot in fact be all reduced to one and the same kind of mechanical interaction of material particles.

Chemical interactions differ from mechanical interactions inasmuch as the changes which take place as a result of chemical Interaction involve a change of quality. For example, if we consider the mechanical interaction of two particles which collide, then their qualitative characteristics are irrelevant and the result is expressed as a change in the quantity and direction of motion of each. But if two chemical substances come together and combine chemically, then there results a new substance qualitatively different from either. Similarly, from the point of view of mechanics heat is nothing but an increase in the quantity of motion of the particles of matter. But in chemistry, the application of heat leads to qualitative changes.

Nor do the processes of nature consist in the repetition of the same cycle of mechanical interactions, but in nature there is continual development and evolution, producing ever new forms of the existence or, what is the same thing, motion of matter. Hence the more widely and consistently the mechanistic categories are applied in the interpretation of nature, the more is their essential limitation exposed.

(3) Still less can mechanistic materialism explain ''social'' development.

Mechanistic materialism expresses the radical bourgeois conception of society as consisting of social atoms, interacting together. The real economic and social causes of the development of society cannot be discovered from this point of view. And so great social changes seem to spring from quite accidental causes. Human activity itself appears to be either the mechanical result of external causes, or else it is treated—and here mechanistic materialism collapses into idealism—as purely spontaneous and uncaused.

In a word, mechanistic materialism cannot give an account of men’s social activity.

==== Mechanistic Materialism and Utopian Socialism ====

The mechanistic view treated men quite abstractly, each man being regarded as a social atom endowed by nature with certain inherent properties, attributes and rights.

This was expressed in the bourgeois conception of “the rights of man,” and in the bourgeois revolutionary slogan: “All men are equal.”

But the conception of human rights cannot be deduced from the abstract nature of man, but is determined by the stage of society in which men are living. Nor are men what they are “by nature,” but they become what they are, and change, as a result of their social activity. Nor are all men “by nature” equal. In opposition to the bourgeois conception of abstract equality, which amounted to mere formal equality of rights as citizens, equality before the law, Marx and Engels declared:

“The real content of the proletarian demand for equality is the demand for the abolition of classes. Any demand for equality which goes beyond that of necessity passes into absurdity.”<ref>Frederick Engels, <cite>Anti-Dühring</cite>, Part I, Chapter X, N. Y., 1939.</ref>

Adopting their abstract, mechanistic view of men as social atoms, the progressive mechanists tried to work out, in an abstract way, what form of society would be best for mankind—what would best suit abstract human nature, as they conceived of it.

This way of thinking was taken over by the socialist thinkers who immediately preceded Marx, the utopian socialists. The utopian socialists were mechanistic materialists. They put forward socialism as an ideal society. They did not see it as necessitated by the development of the contradictions of capitalism—it could have been put forward and realized at any time, if only men had had the wit to do so. They did not see it as having to be won by working-class struggle against capitalism—it would be realized when everyone was convinced that it was just and best adapted to the requirements of human nature. (For this reason Robert Owen appealed to both the Archbishop of Canterbury and Queen Victoria to support his socialist program.)

Again, the mechanistic materialists—and this applied above all to the utopian socialists—thought that what a man was, his character and his activities, was determined by his environment and education. Therefore they proclaimed that to make men better, happier and more rational it was simply necessary to place them in better conditions and to give them a better education.

But to this Marx replied:

“The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing and that, therefore, changed men are produced by changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that circumstances are changed precisely by men and that the educator must himself be educated.”<ref>Engels, <cite>Ludwig Feuerbach</cite>, Appendices, Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach, III.</ref>

If men are simply the products of circumstances, then they are at the mercy of circumstances. But on the contrary, men can themselves change their circumstances. And men themselves are changed, not as a mechanical result of changed circumstances, but in the course of and as a result of their own activity in changing their circumstances.

So what are the real material social causes at work in human society, which give rise to new activities, new ideas and therefore to changed circumstances and changed men?

Mechanistic materialism could not answer this question. It could not explain the laws of social development nor show how to change society.

Therefore while it was a progressive and revolutionary doctrine in its time, it could not serve to guide the struggle of the working class in striving to change society.

=== 4. From Mechanistic to Dialectical Materialism ===

<blockquote>''Mechanistic materialism makes certain dogmatic assumptions: (1) That the world consists of permanent and stable things or particles, with definite, fixed properties; (2) that the particles of matter are by nature inert and no change ever happens except by the action of some external cause; (3) that all motion, all change can be reduced to the mechanical interaction of the separate particles of matter; (4) that each particle has its own fixed nature independent of everything else, and that the relationships between separate things are merely external relationships.''

''Overcoming and passing beyond the dogmatic standpoint of mechanism, dialectical materialism holds that the world is not a complex of things but of processes, that matter is inseparable from motion, that the motion of matter comprehends an infinite diversity of forms which arise one from another and pass into one another, and that things exist not as separate individual units but in essential relation and interconnection.''
</blockquote>
==== Things and Processes ====

In order to find how the limitations of the mechanist approach can be overcome we may consider first of all certain extremely dogmatic assumptions which are made by mechanistic materialism. These mechanistic assumptions are none of them justified. And by bringing them to the light of day and pointing out what is wrong with them, we can see how to advance beyond mechanistic materialism.

(1) Mechanism sees all change as having at its basis permanent and stable things with definite, fixed properties.

Thus for the mechanists the world consists of indivisible, indestructible material particles, which in their interaction manifest such properties as position, mass, velocity.

According to mechanism, if you could state the position, mass and velocity of every particle at a given instant of time, then you would have said everything that could be said about the world at that time, and could, by applying the laws of mechanics, predict everything that was going to happen afterwards.

This is the first dogmatic assumption of mechanism. But we need to reject it. For the world does not consist of ''things'' but of ''processes,'' in which things come into being and pass away.

“The world is not to be comprehended as a complex of ready-made things,” wrote Engels, “but as a complex of processes, in which things apparently stable, no less than their mind-images in our heads, the concepts, go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away.”<ref>Engels, <cite>Ludwig Feuerbach</cite>, Chapter IV.</ref>

This, indeed, is what science in its latest developments teaches us. Thus the atom, once thought to be eternal and indivisible, has been dissolved into electrons, protons and neutrons; and these themselves are not “fundamental particles” in any absolute sense, ''i.e.'' they are not eternal and indestructible, any more than the atom; but science more and more shows that they, too, come into being, pass away and go through many transformations.

What is fundamental is not the “thing,” the “particle,” but the unending ''processes'' of nature, in which ''things'' go through “an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away.” And nature’s process is, moreover, infinite: there will always be fresh aspects to be revealed, and it cannot be reduced to any ''ultimate'' constituents. “The electron is as inexhaustible as the atom, nature is infinite,” wrote Lenin.<ref>Lenin, <cite>Selected Works</cite>, Vol. 11, “Materialism and Empirio-Criticism,” Chapter V, Section 2.</ref>

Just so in considering society, we cannot understand a given society simply in terms of some set of institutions in and through which individual men and women are organized, but we must study the social processes which are going on, in the course of which both institutions and people are transformed.

==== Matter and Motion ====

(2) The second dogmatic assumption of mechanism is the assumption that no change can ever happen except by the action of some external cause.

Just as no part of a machine moves unless another part acts on it and makes it move, so mechanism sees matter as being inert— without motion, or rather without self-motion. For mechanism, nothing ever moves unless something else pushes or pulls it, it never changes unless something else interferes with it.

No wonder that, regarding matter in this way, the mechanists had to believe in a Supreme Being to give the “initial impulse.” But we need to reject this lifeless, dead theory about matter. This theory separates matter and motion: it thinks of matter as just a dead mass, so that motion always has to be impressed on matter from outside. But, on the contrary, you cannot separate matter and motion. Motion, said Engels, is the mode of existence of matter.

“Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, nor can there be. Motion in cosmic space, mechanical motion of smaller masses on the various celestial bodies, the motion of molecules as heat or as electrical or magnetic currents, chemical combination or disintegration, organic life—at each given moment each individual atom of matter in the world is in one or other of these forms of motion, or in several forms of them at once. All rest, all equilibrium is only relative, and only has meaning in relation to one or other definite form of motion. A body, for example, may be on the ground in mechanical equilibrium, may be mechanically at rest; but this in no way prevents it from participating in the motion of the earth and in that of the whole solar system, just as little as it prevents its most minute parts from carrying out the oscillations determined by its temperature, or its atoms from passing through a chemical process. Matter without motion is Just as unthinkable as motion without matter.”<ref>Engels, <cite>Anti-Dühring</cite>, Part I, Chapter VI.</ref>

Far from being dead, lifeless, inert, it is the very nature of matter to be in process of continual change, of motion. Once we realize this, then there is an end of appeal to the “initial impulse.” Motion, like matter, never had a beginning.

The conception of the inseparability of matter and motion, the understanding that “motion is the mode of existence of matter,” provides the way to answering a number of perplexing questions which usually haunt people’s minds when they think about materialism and which lead them to desert materialism and to run to the priests for an explanation of the “ultimate” truth about the universe.

Was the world created by a Supreme Being? What was the origin of matter? What was the origin of motion? What was the very beginning of everything? What was the first cause? These are the sort of questions which puzzle people.

It is possible to answer these questions.

No, the world was not created by a Supreme Being. Any particular organization of matter, any particular process of matter in motion, has an origin and a beginning—it originated out of some previous organization of matter, out of some previous process of matter in motion. But matter in motion had no origin, no beginning.

Science teaches us the inseparability of matter and motion. However static some things may seem to be, there is in them continual motion. The atom, for instance, maintains itself as the same only by means of a continual movement of its parts.

So in studying the causes of change, we should not merely seek for external causes of change, but should above all seek for the source of the change within the process itself, in its own self-movement, in the inner impulses to development contained within things themselves.

Thus in seeking the causes of social development and its laws, we should not see social changes as being brought about by the actions of great men, who impressed their superior ideas and will on the inert mass of society—nor as being brought about by accidents and external factors—but as being brought about by the development of the internal forces of society itself; and that means, by the development of the social forces of production.

Thus unlike the utopians, we see socialism as the result, not of the dreams of reformers, but of the development of capitalist society itself—which contains within itself causes which must inevitably bring it to an end and lead to the socialist revolution.

==== The Forms of Motion of Matter ====

(3) The third dogmatic assumption of mechanism is the assumption that the mechanical motion of particles, ''i.e.'' the simple change of place of particles as the result of the action on them of external forces, is the ultimate, basic form of motion of matter; and that all changes, all happenings whatsoever can be reduced to and explained by such mechanical motion of particles.

Thus all the motion of matter is reduced to simple mechanical motion. All the changing qualities which we recognize in matter are nothing but the appearances of the basic mechanical motion of matter. However varied the appearances may be, whatever new and higher forms of development may appear to arise, they are all to be reduced to one and the same thing—the eternal repetition of the mechanical interaction of the separate parts of matter.

It is difficult to find any justification for such an assumption. In the material world there are many different types of process, which all constitute different forms of the motion of matter. But they can by no means be all reduced to one and the same form of (mechanical) motion.

“Motion in the most general sense,” wrote Engels, “conceived as the mode of existence, the inherent attribute, of matter, comprehends all changes and processes occurring in the universe, from mere change of place right to thinking. The investigation of the nature of motion had as a matter of course to start from the lowest, simplest forms of this motion and to learn to grasp these before it could achieve anything in the way of explanation of the higher and more complicated forms.”<ref>Frederick Engels, <cite>Dialectics of Nature</cite>, Chapter III, N. Y., 1940.</ref>

The simplest form of motion is the simple change of place of bodies, the laws of which are studied by mechanics. But that does not mean that all motion can be reduced to this simplest form of motion. It rather means that we need to study how, from the simplest form of motion, all the higher forms of motion arise and develop—“from mere change of place right to thinking.”

One form of motion is transformed into another and arises from another. The higher, more complex form of motion cannot exist without the lower and simpler form: but that is not to say that it can be reduced to that simpler form. It is inseparable from the simpler form, but its nature is not exhausted thereby. For example, the thinking which goes on in our heads is inseparable from the chemical, electrical etc. motion which goes on in the gray matter of the brain; but it cannot be reduced to that motion, its nature is not exhausted thereby.

The ''materialist'' standpoint, however, which rejects the mechanistic idea that all forms of motion of matter can be reduced to mechanical motion, must not be confused with the ''idealist'' notion that the higher forms of motion cannot be explained as arising from the lower forms. For example, idealists assert that life, as a form of motion of matter, cannot possibly be derived from any processes characteristic of non-living matter. For them, life can only arise through the introduction into a material system of a mysterious something from outside—a “vital force.” But to say that a higher form of motion cannot be reduced to a lower form is not to say that it cannot be derived from the lower form in the course of the latter’s development. Thus materialists will always affirm that life, for example, appears at a certain stage in the development of more complex forms of non-living matter, and arises as a result of that development, not as a result of the introduction into non-living matter of a mysterious “vital force.” The task of science in this sphere remains to demonstrate experimentally how the transition from non-living to living matter takes place.

Thus the mechanistic program of reducing all the motion of matter to simple, mechanical motion must be rejected. We need rather to study all the infinitely various forms of motion of matter, in their transformations one into another, and as they arise one from another, the complex from the simple, the higher from the lower.

In the case of society, no one has yet tried to show how social changes can be explained by the mechanical interactions of the atoms composing the bodies of the various members of society— though to do so would be the logical culmination of the mechanistic program. But the next best thing is attempted by the mechanistic theory known as “economic determinism.” According to this theory, the whole motion of society is to be explained by the economic changes taking place in society, all the determinants of social change have been exhausted when the economic process has been described. This is an example of the mechanistic program of reducing a complex motion to a simple form—the process of social change, including all the political, cultural and ideological developments, to a simple economic process. But the task of explaining social development cannot be fulfilled by trying to reduce the whole development to an economic process. The task is rather to show how, on the basis of the economic process, all the various forms of social activity arise and play their part in the complex movement of society.

==== Things and Their Interconnection ====

(4) The last dogmatic assumption of mechanism to be mentioned is that each of the things or particles, whose interactions are said to make up the totality of events in the universe, has its own fixed nature quite independent of everything else. In other words, each thing can be considered as existing in separation from other things, as an independent unit.

Proceeding on this assumption it follows that all relations between things are merely external relations. That is to say, things enter into various relationships one with another, but these relationships are accidental and make no difference to the nature of the things related.

And regarding each thing as a separate unit entering into external relations with other things, it further follows that mechanism regards the whole as no more than the sum of its separate parts. According to this view, the properties and laws of development of the whole are uniquely determined by the properties of all its parts.

Not one of these assumptions is correct. Nothing exists or can exist in splendid isolation, separate from its conditions of existence, independent of its relationships with other things. Things come into being, exist and cease to exist, not each independent of all other things, but each in its relationship with other things. The very nature of a thing is modified and transformed by its relationships with other things. When things enter into such relationships that they become parts of a whole, the whole cannot be regarded as nothing more than the sum total of the parts. True, the whole is nothing apart from and independent of its parts. But the mutual relations which the parts enter into in constituting the whole modify their own properties, so that while it may be said that the whole is determined by the parts it may equally be said that the parts are determined by the whole.

Once again, the development of science itself shows the inadmissibility of the old mechanistic assumptions. These assumptions have force only in the very limited sphere of the study of the mechanical interactions of discrete particles. In physics they were already shattered with the development of the study of the electromagnetic field. Still less are they admissible in biology, in the study of living matter, and still less in the study of men and society.

==== The Correction of Mechanistic Materialism ====

When we bring into the open and reject these assumptions of mechanistic materialism, then we begin to see the need for a materialist doctrine of a different, of a new type—a materialism which overcomes the weaknesses and narrow, dogmatic assumptions of mechanism.

This is dialectical materialism.

Dialectical materialism understands the world, not as a complex of ready-made things, but as a complex of processes, in which all things go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away.

Dialectical materialism considers that matter is always in motion, that motion is the mode of existence of matter, so that there can no more be matter without motion than motion without matter. Motion does not have to be impressed upon matter by some outside force, but above all it is necessary to look for the inner impulses of development, the self-motion, inherent in all processes.

Dialectical materialism understands the motion of matter as comprehending all changes and processes in the universe, from mere change of place right to thinking. It recognizes, therefore, the infinite diversity of the forms of motion of matter, the transformation of one form into another, the development of the forms of motion of matter from the simple to the complex, from the lower to the higher.

Dialectical materialism considers that, in the manifold processes taking place in the universe, things come into being, change and pass out of being, not as separate individual units, but in essential relation and interconnection, so that they cannot be understood each separately and by itself but only in their relation and interconnection.

In dialectical materialism, therefore, there is established a materialist conception far richer in content and more comprehensive than the former mechanistic materialism.

<div>

</div>
=== 5. The Dialectical Conception of Development ===

<blockquote>''Whereas the older philosophies considered that the universe always remained much the same, a perpetual cycle of the same processes, science has demonstrated the fact of evolution. But while recognizing the fact of evolutionary development, bourgeois thinkers have tried to understand and explain it in fantastic, idealist terms. And they have conceived of development as being always a smooth, continuous process, not recognizing the occurrence of abrupt breaks in continuity, the leap from one stage to another.''

''Following up the ideas of Hegel by taking up the revolutionary side of his philosophy while freeing it of its idealist trammels, Marx and Engels established the dialectical materialist conception of development. The key to understanding development in nature and society and the leaps and breaks in continuity which characterize all real development—lies in the recognition of the inner contradictions and opposite conflicting tendencies which are in operation in all processes.''

''This discovery by Marx and Engels was a revolution in philosophy and made of it a revolutionary weapon of the working people, a method for understanding the world so as to change it.''
</blockquote>
==== The Idea of Evolution ====

We have seen that the corrections of the mechanistic standpoint made by dialectical materialism are fully justified by and have a basis in the advance of science. Indeed, the advance of science itself has shattered the whole conception of the universe held by the older, mechanistic materialists.

According to that conception, the universe always remained much the same. It was a huge machine which always did the same things, kept grinding out the same products, went on and on in a perpetual cycle of the same processes.

Thus it used to be thought that the stars and the solar system always remained the same—and that the earth, with its continents and oceans and the plants and animals inhabiting them, likewise always remained the same.

But this conception has given way to the conception of evolution, which has invaded all spheres of investigation without exception. Nor was it scientific investigation alone which produced the idea of evolution. Science does not advance in isolation from society as a whole. The idea of evolution was generated out of the rise of industrial capitalism itself.

“The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence of all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation, distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.”<ref>Marx and Engels, <cite>The Communist Manifesto</cite>, Chapter I.</ref>

The industrial capitalists saw themselves as the bearers of progress. And as they thought progress was the law of capitalism, so they saw it as the law of the whole universe.

So there was made possible a great advance in the scientific picture of the universe. We find developing a picture of the universe, not as static, as always the same, but as in continual progressive development.

The stars did not always exist—they were formed out of masses of dispersed gas.

Once formed, the whole stellar system, with all the stars in it, goes through an evolutionary process, stage by stage.

Some stars, like our sun, acquire planets—a solar system. Thus the earth was born. As its surface cooled, so chemical compounds were formed, impossible in the high temperatures of the stars.

Thus matter began to manifest new properties, nonexistent before—the properties of chemical combination.

Then organic compounds were formed out of the complex linking of carbon atoms. And from organic matter the first bodies arose which began to manifest the properties of life, of living matter. Still new properties of matter emerged—the properties of living matter.

Living organisms went through a long evolution, leading eventually to man. With man, human society was born. And still new processes, with new laws, arose—the laws of society, and the laws of thought.

What comes next?

Capitalist science can go no further. Here it ends, since capitalist science cannot contemplate the ending of capitalism. But socialist science shows that man himself is about to embark on a new phase of evolution—communist society, in which the whole social process will be brought under his own conscious, planned direction.

All this is the evolutionary history of the material universe.

Apart from the last point, it may be said this is all common knowledge. Bourgeois thinkers know this as well as Marxists, though they often forget it. But Marxism does not only stress the fact that everything in the world goes through a process of development. What Marxism found out was how to understand and explain this development in a materialist way.

The discovery of Marxism was the discovery of the laws of materialist dialectics. And that is why Marxism alone is able to give a fully scientific account of development and to point out the future path.

This is the meaning of Marx’s great discovery—how to understand change and development in a materialist way, and therefore how to become masters of the future.

==== Idealist Conceptions of Change and Development ====

How did bourgeois thinkers try to account for the universal change and development which they discovered?

Let us consider what some of them have had to say over a period of more than a century.

Hegel said that the whole process of development taking place in history was due to the Absolute Idea realizing itself in history. Herbert Spencer said that all development was a process of increasing “integration of matter,” and he put this down to what he called an “Incomprehensible and Omnipresent Power.” Henri Bergson said that everything was in process of evolution, due to the activity of “the Life Force.” Fairly recently, a school of British philosophers has coined the phrase “emergent evolution.” They pointed out that in the course of development new qualities of matter are continually emerging, one after the other. But as to why this should happen, one of the leaders of this school, Professor Samuel Alexander, said that it was inexplicable and must be accepted “with natural piety,” while another of its leaders, Professor C. Lloyd Morgan, said that it must be due to some immanent force at work in the world, which he identified with God.

Thus in every case some fantasy, something inexplicable and unpredictable, was conjured up to explain development. And so,

when they thought about the future, all these bourgeois philosophers of evolution either thought, like Hegel, that development had now finished (Hegel taught that the Absolute Idea was fully realized in the Prussian State of which he was a distinguished employee), or else regarded the future as unfathomable.

Nowadays they begin to give up hope altogether and regard everything—past, present and future—as incomprehensible, the result of forces no one can ever understand or control.

It is the same story in the sciences. The cosmogonists, who study the evolution of the stars, appeal to a mysterious creation to start the process off. The biologists who study the evolution of organic life appeal to a series of unpredictable accidents (the random mutations of genes) as the basis for the whole process.

Such ideas are, however, unscientific. Why? Because they assert that the processes they are supposed to be investigating take place without any cause. True, the assertion is often made under a cloak of “scientific” objectivity and humility: it is not positively stated that no cause exists, but only that we have at present no clue as to what the cause, if any, may be. But such reservations do not materially alter the nature of the theories in question. For the fact remains that to say that matter was created, to say that “mutations” occur spontaneously, is to say that something happens for no reason, without any discoverable cause. Such statements do not deserve to be called even provisional scientific hypotheses but are simply idealist inventions, fantasies. Science may not yet know why something happens, but to say that it happens for no reason is to abandon science.

A second defect in the evolutionary ideas of most bourgeois thinkers is that they regard the process of evolution as a smooth, continuous and unbroken process. They see the process of transition from one evolutionary stage to another as taking place through a series of gradations, without conflict and without any break in continuity.

But continuity is not the law of development. On the contrary, periods of smooth, continuous evolutionary development are interrupted by sudden and abrupt changes. The emergence of the new stage in development takes place, when the conditions for it have matured, by a break in continuity, by the leap from one state to another.

Hegel was the first to point this out.

With every period of transition, he observed:

“It is as in the case of the birth of a child; after a long period of nutrition in silence, the continuity of the gradual growth in size, of quantitative change, is suddenly cut short by the first breath drawn—there is a break in the process, a qualitative change—and the child is born.”<ref>G. W. F. Hegel, <cite>Phenomenology of Mind</cite>, Preface.</ref>

But Marx alone followed up this profound observation of Hegel. As for the ensuing bourgeois thinkers, although the investigations of science, and common experience itself, clearly demonstrate that development cannot take place without discontinuity, without abrupt transitions and the leap from one state to another, they have nevertheless in their general theories tried to make unbroken continuity the law of evolution.

This prejudice in favor of a smooth line of evolution has gone hand in hand with the liberal belief that capitalist society will evolve smoothly—through orderly bourgeois progress broadening down “from precedent to precedent,” as Tennyson once expressed it. To have thought differently about evolution in general would have implied that we would have to think differently about social evolution in particular.

==== The Dialectical Materialist Conception of Development ====

The problem of understanding and explaining development in a materialist way—that is, “in harmony with the facts conceived in their own and not in a fantastic connection”—is answered by dialectical materialism.

Dialectical materialism considers the universe, not as static, not as unchanging, but as in continual process of development. It considers this development, not as a smooth, continuous and unbroken process, but as a process in which phases of gradual evolutionary change are interrupted by breaks in continuity, by the sudden leap from one state to another. And it seeks for the explanation, the driving force, of this universal movement, not in inventions of idealist fantasy, but within material processes themselves—in the inner contradictions, the opposite conflicting tendencies, which are in operation in every process of nature and society.

The main ideas of materialist dialectics, which are applied in dealing with the laws of development of the real material world, including society, will be the subject of the following chapters. But this is how Lenin summed them up:

The essential idea of materialist dialectics is:

“The recognition of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature…. This alone furnishes the key to the self-movement of everything in existence. It alone furnishes the key to the leaps, to the break in continuity, to the transformation into the opposite, to the destruction of the old and emergence of the new….

“In its proper meaning, dialectics is the study of the contradiction within the very essence of things.

“Development is the struggle of opposites.”<ref>V. I. Lenin, <cite>Philosophical Notebooks</cite>, Russian Edition.</ref>

==== From Hegel to Marx ====

Where contradiction is at work, there is the force of development.

This profound conception was first put forward by Hegel. But he worked it out in an idealist way. According to Hegel, the whole process in the material world, in space and time, is nothing but the realization of the Absolute Idea, outside space and time. The Idea develops through a series of contradictions, and it is this ideal development which manifests itself in the material world. If things in space and time are forced to go through a series of transformations and to arise and pass away one after the other, that is because they are nothing but the embodiment of a self-contradictory phase of the Absolute Idea. For Hegel, the development of real things was due to the self-contradictoriness of their concepts: where the concept was self-contradictory, the thing which realized that concept could not be stable but must eventually negate itself and turn into something else. Thus instead of the concepts of things being regarded as the reflections of those things in our minds, the things were themselves regarded as nothing but the realizations of their concepts.

This is how Engels summed up the materialist criticism of Hegel.

“Hegel was not simply put aside. On the contrary, one started out from his revolutionary side… from the dialectical method. But in its Hegelian form this method was unusable.

“According to Hegel, dialectics is the self-development of the concept. The absolute concept does not only exist—where unknown—from eternity, it is also the actual living soul of the whole existing world….

“According to Hegel, therefore, the dialectical development apparent in nature and history, ''i.e.'' the causal interconnection of the progressive movement from the lower to the higher, which asserts itself through all zig-zag movements and temporary setbacks, is only a miserable copy of the self-movement of the concept going on from eternity, no one knows where, but at all events independently of any thinking human brain.

“This ideological reversal had to be done away with. We comprehended the concepts in our heads once more materialistically— as images of real things instead of regarding the real things as images of this or that stage of development of the absolute concept.

“Thus dialectics reduced itself to the science of the general laws of motion—both of the external world and of human thought—two sets of laws which are identical in substance, but differ in their expression in so far as the human mind can apply them consciously, while in nature and also up to now for the most part in human history, these laws assert themselves unconsciously in the form of external necessity in the midst of an endless series of seeming accidents.

“Thereby the dialectic of the concept itself became merely the conscious reflection of the dialectical motion of the real world and the dialectic of Hegel was placed upon its head; or rather, turned off its head, on which it was standing before, and placed on its feet again….

“In this way, however, the revolutionary side of Hegelian philosophy was again taken up and at the same time freed from the idealist trammels which in Hegel’s hands had prevented its consistent execution.”<ref>Engels, <cite>Ludwig Feuerbach</cite>, Chapter IV.</ref>

This materialist understanding of dialectics is the key to understanding the forces of development within the material world itself, without recourse to outside causes.

This discovery arises from the whole advance of science and philosophy.

But above all it arises from the investigation of the laws of society, an investigation made imperative thanks to the very development of society—from the discovery of the contradictions of capitalism, explaining the forces of social development, and thereby showing the way forward from capitalism to socialism.

That is why bourgeois thinkers could not answer the problem of explaining the real material forces of development in nature and society. To answer this problem was to condemn the capitalist system. And here they had a blind spot. Only the revolutionary philosophy of the vanguard of the revolutionary class, the working class, could do it.

Marx’s discovery of the laws of materialist dialectics showed us how to understand the dialectical development of nature. But above all it showed us how to understand social change and how to wage the working-class struggle for socialism.

This discovery revolutionized philosophy.

It signalized the triumph of materialism over idealism, by doing away with the limitations of the merely mechanistic materialism of the past.

It likewise spelled the end of all “systems” of philosophy.

It made philosophy into a revolutionary weapon of the working people, an instrument, a method for understanding the world so as to change it.

Summing up the essential ideas of materialist dialectics Stalin wrote:

“Life always contains the new and the old, the growing and the dying, the revolutionary and the counter-revolutionary.

“That in life which is born and grows day after day is invincible, its progress cannot be checked. That is to say, if, for example, the proletariat as a class is born and grows day after day, no matter how weak it may be today, in the long run it must conquer. Why? Because it is growing, gaining strength and marching forward. On the other hand, that in life which grows old and is advancing to its grave, must inevitably sustain defeat, even if today it represents a titanic force. That is to say, if, for example, the ground is gradually slipping further and further back from under the feet of the bourgeoisie, and the latter is slipping further and further back every day, no matter how strong it may be today, it must, in the long run, sustain defeat.”<ref>Joseph Stalin, <cite>Anarchism or Socialism?</cite> Chapter I, Moscow, 1950.</ref>

Thus the materialist dialectics of Marx shows us the way forward and gives us unshakable confidence in our cause.

== PART TWO: DIALECTICS ==

=== 6. Dialectics and Metaphysics ===

<blockquote>''Dialectics, as a method of investigation, a method of thinking, is opposed to metaphysics. The metaphysical way of thinking deals with abstractions. It considers things each by itself, in abstraction from their real conditions of existence and interconnections; and it considers things as fixed and frozen, in abstraction from their real change and development. Consequently it invents rigid formulas and is always posing hard and fast antitheses—“either-or.” It fails to comprehend the unity and struggle of opposite processes and tendencies manifested in all phenomena of nature and society.''

''In contrast to metaphysics, the aim of dialectics is to trace the real changes and interconnection in the world and to think of things always in their real motion and interconnection.''
</blockquote>
Dialectical materialism, the world outlook of the Marxist-Leninist Party, is materialist in its theory, its interpretation and explanation of everything, dialectical in its method.

We have seen how materialist explanation is opposed to idealist explanation. And then we saw how materialists formerly interpreted things in a mechanist way, but how mechanistic materialism proved inadequate to explain real processes of change and development. For this we need materialist dialectics. We need to study and understand things dialectically.

The dialectical method is, indeed, nothing but the method of studying and understanding things in their real change and development.

As such, it stands opposed to ''metaphysics.''

What is metaphysics? Or more exactly, what is the metaphysical way of thinking, which is opposed by the dialectical way of thinking?

Metaphysics is essentially an abstract way of thinking. In a sense all thinking is “abstract,” since it works with general concepts and cannot but disregard a great deal of particular and unessential detail. For example, if we say that “men have two legs,” we are thinking of the two-leggedness of men in abstraction from their other properties, such as having a head, two arms and so on; and similarly we are thinking of all men in general, disregarding the individuality of particular men, of Peter, Paul and so on. But there is abstraction and abstraction. Metaphysics is distinguished by the fact that it makes false, misleading abstractions. As Engels once pointed out, “the art of working with concepts is not inborn… but requires real thought”;<ref>Engels, <cite>Anti-Dühring</cite>, Preface.</ref> the art of right thinking involves learning how to avoid metaphysical abstraction.

Suppose, for example, we are thinking about men, about “human nature.” Then we should think about human nature in such a way that we recognize that men live in society and that their human nature cannot be independent of their living in society but develops and changes with the development of society. We shall then form ideas about human nature which correspond to the actual conditions of men’s existence and to their change and development. But yet people often think about “human nature” in a very different way, as though there were such a thing as “human nature” which manifested itself quite independent of the actual conditions of human existence and which was always and everywhere exactly the same. To think in such a way is obviously to make a false, misleading abstraction. And it is just such an abstract way of thinking that we call “metaphysics.”

The concept of fixed, unchanging “human nature” is an example of metaphysical abstraction, of the metaphysical way of thinking.

The metaphysician does not think in terms of real ''men,'' but of “Man” in the abstract.

Metaphysics, or the metaphysical way of thinking, is, then, that way of thinking which thinks of things (1) in abstraction from their conditions of existence, and (2) in abstraction from their change and development. It thinks of things (1) in separation one from another, ignoring their interconnections, and (2) as fixed and frozen, ignoring their change and development.

One example of metaphysics has already been given. It is not difficult to find plenty more. Indeed, the metaphysical way of thinking is so widespread, and has become so much part and parcel of current bourgeois ideology, that there is hardly an article in a journal, a talk on the radio, or a book by a learned professor, in which examples of metaphysical fallacy are not to be found.

A good deal is said and written, for example, about democracy. But the speakers and writers usually refer to some pure or absolute democracy, which they seek to define in abstraction from the actual development of society, of classes and of class struggle. But there can be no such pure democracy; it is a metaphysical abstraction. If we want to understand democracy we have always to ask: democracy for whom, for the exploiters or the exploited? We have to understand that since democracy is a form of government, there is no democracy which is not associated with the rule of some particular class, and that the democracy which is established when the working class is the ruling class is a higher form of democracy than capitalist democracy, just as capitalist democracy is a higher form of democracy than, say, the slave-owners’ democracy of ancient Greece. In other words, we should not try to think of democracy in abstraction from real social relations and from the real change and development of society.

Again, pacifists try to base their opposition to war on the idea that “all wars are wrong.” They think of war in the abstract, without reflecting that the character of each particular war is determined according to the historical epoch, the aims of the war and the classes in whose interests it is fought. Consequently they fail to distinguish between imperialist wars and wars of liberation, between unjust war and just war.

In most British schools today the children are regularly subjected to “intelligence tests.” It is alleged that each child possesses a certain fixed quantity of “intelligence,” which can be estimated without regard to the actual conditions of the child’s existence and which determines his capabilities throughout the whole of his life regardless of whatever conditions for change and development may subsequently come in his way. This is another example of metaphysics. In this case the metaphysical conception of “intelligence” is used as an excuse for denying educational opportunities to the majority of children on the grounds that their intelligence is too low for them to benefit from such opportunities.

In general, metaphysics is a way of thinking which tries to fix the nature, properties and potentialities of everything it considers once and for all. Consequently it presupposes that each thing has a fixed nature and fixed properties.

And it thinks in terms of “things” rather than “processes.” It tries to sum up everything in a formula, which says that the whole world, or any part of the world which is under consideration, consists of just such and such things with such and such properties. Such a formula we may call a “metaphysical” formula.

Thus Engels refers to “the old method of investigation and thought which Hegel calls ‘metaphysical,’ which preferred to investigate ''things'' as given, as fixed and stable.”<ref>Engels, <cite>Ludwig Feuerbach</cite>, Chapter IV.</ref>

In philosophy, metaphysics often means the search for the “ultimate constituents of the universe.” Thus the materialists who said that the ultimate constituents were small, solid, material particles were just as much metaphysicians as the idealists who said that the ultimate constituents were spirits. All such philosophers thought they could sum up “the ultimate nature of the universe” in some formula. Some have held this formula, some that, but all have been metaphysicians. Yet it has been a hopeless quest. We cannot sum up the whole infinite changing universe in any such formula. And the more we find out about it, the more is this evident.

It should now be clear that the mechanistic materialism which we discussed in the preceding chapters can equally well be called ''metaphysical'' materialism.

We may also note, in passing, that certain philosophers today, the so-called positivists,<ref>The ''positivists'' say we have no right to assert that anything exists except our own sense-perceptions. They say that to assert anything else is “metaphysics.”</ref> claim to be against “metaphysics” because they claim to reject any philosophy which seeks for “the ultimate constituents of the universe.” For them, “metaphysics” means any theory which deals with “ultimates” not verifiable in sense-experience. By using the term in this way, they conceal the fact that they themselves are, if anything, more metaphysical than any other philosophers. For their own mode of thinking reaches extremes of metaphysical abstraction. What could be more metaphysical than to imagine, as the positivist philosophers do, that our sense-experience exists in abstraction from the real material world outside us? Indeed, they themselves make “sense-experience” into a metaphysical “ultimate.”

In opposition to the abstract, metaphysical way of thinking, dialectics teaches us to think of things in their real changes and interconnections. To think dialectically is to think concretely, and to think concretely is to think dialectically. When we oppose the dialectical method to metaphysics, then we show up the inadequacy, one-sidedness or falsity of the abstractions of metaphysics.

This consideration enables us to understand the original meaning of the term “dialectics.” The word is derived from the Greek ''dialego,'' meaning to discuss or debate. It was considered that to discuss a question from all sides, and from all angles, allowing different one-sided points of view to oppose and contradict each other during the debate, was the best method of arriving at the truth. Such was the dialectics employed, for example, by Socrates. When anyone claimed to have a formula which answered some questions once and for all, Socrates would enter into discussion with him and, by forcing him to consider the question from different angles, would compel him to contradict himself and so to admit that his formula was false. By this method Socrates considered that it was possible to arrive at more adequate ideas about things.

The Marxist dialectical method develops from and includes dialectics in the sense in which it was understood by the Greeks. But it is far richer in content, far wider in its scope. As a result, it becomes something qualitatively ''new'' as compared with pre-Marxist dialectics—a new revolutionary method. For it is combined with a consistent materialism and ceases to be a mere method of argument, becoming a method of investigation applicable to both nature and society, a method of materialist understanding of the world which grows out of and guides the activity of changing the world.

==== The Metaphysical “Either-Or” ====

Metaphysics presupposes that each thing has its own fixed nature, its own fixed properties, and considers each thing by itself, in isolation. It tries to settle the nature and properties of each thing as a given, separate object of investigation, not considering things in their interconnection and in their change and development.

Because of this, metaphysics thinks of things in terms of hard and fast antitheses. It opposes things of one sort to things of another sort: if a thing is of one sort, it has one set of properties; if of another sort, it has another set of properties; the one excludes the other, and each is thought of in separation from the other.

Thus Engels writes:

“To the metaphysician, things and their mental images, ideas, are isolated, to be considered one after the other, apart from each other, rigid fixed objects of investigation given once and for all. He thinks in absolutely irreconcilable antitheses. ‘His communication is Yea, yea, Nay, nay, for whatever is more than these cometh of evil.’ For him a thing either exists or it does not exist; it is equally impossible for a thing to be itself and at the same time something else.”<ref>Engels, <cite>Anti-Dühring</cite>, Introduction.</ref>

Philosophers have expressed the essence of this metaphysical way of thinking in the formula: “Each thing is what it is, and not another thing.” This may sound no more than plain common sense. But that only shows that so-called common sense itself conceals misleading ideas which need to be brought into the open. This way of thinking prevents us from studying things in their real changes and interconnections—in all their contradictory aspects and relationships, in their process of changing from “one thing” into “another thing.”

It is not only philosophers who are metaphysicians.

There are left-wing trade unionists, for example, who are as metaphysical as any school of philosophers. For them everyone at their trade union local meeting is either a class-conscious militant or else he is a right-wing opportunist. Everyone must fit into one or other category, and once he is down as “right wing” he is finished so far as they are concerned. That some worker who has been their opponent in the past and on some issues may yet prove an ally in the future and on other issues is not allowed for in their metaphysical outlook on life.

In one of Moliere’s plays there is a man who learns for the first time about prose. When they explain to him what prose is, he exclaims: “Why, I’ve been speaking prose all my life!”

Similarly, there are many workers who may well say: “Why, I’ve been a metaphysician all my life!”

The metaphysician has his formula ready for everything. He says—Either this formula fits or it does not. If it does, that settles it. If it does not, then he has some alternative formula ready. “Either-or, but not both” is his motto. A thing is either this or that; it has either this set of properties or that set of properties; two things stand to one another either in this relationship or in that.

The use of the metaphysical “either-or” leads people into countless difficulties.

For example, difficulties are felt in understanding the relations between American and British imperialism today. For it is argued: Either they are working together, or else they are not. If they are working together, then there is no rift between them; if there is a rift between them, then they are not working together. But on the contrary, they are working together and yet there are rifts between them; and we cannot understand the way they work together nor fight them effectively unless we understand the rifts which divide them.

Again, difficulties are felt in understanding the possibility of the peaceful co-existence of capitalist and socialist states. For it is argued: Either they can co-exist peacefully, in which case antagonism between capitalism and socialism must cease; or else the antagonism remains, in which case they cannot co-exist peacefully. But on the contrary, the antagonism remains, and yet the striving of the socialist states and of millions of people in all countries for peace can prevent a war between capitalist and socialist states.

It is often difficult to avoid a metaphysical way of thinking. And this is because, misleading as it is, it yet has its roots in something very necessary and useful.

It is necessary for us to classify things—to have some system of classifying them and assigning their properties and relations. That is a prerequisite of clear thinking. We have to work out what different kinds of things there are in the world, to say that these have these properties as distinct from those which have those other properties, and to say what are their relations.

But when we go on to consider these things and properties and relations each in isolation, as fixed constants, as mutually exclusive terms, then we begin to go wrong. For everything in the world has many different and indeed contradictory aspects, exists in intimate relationship with other things and not in isolation, and is subject to change. And so it frequently happens that when we classify something as “A” and not “B,” then this formula is upset by its changing from “A” into “B,” or by its being “A” in some relationships and “B” in others, or by its having a contradictory nature, part “A” and part “B.”

For example, we all know the difference between birds and mammals, and that while birds lay eggs mammals, in general, produce their young alive and suckle them. Naturalists used to believe that mammals were rigidly distinguished from birds because, among other things, mammals do not lay eggs. But this formula was completely upset when an animal called the platypus was discovered, for while the platypus is undoubtedly a mammal, it is a mammal which lays eggs. What is the explanation of this irregular behavior of the platypus? It is to be found in the evolutionary relationship of birds and mammals, which are both descended from original egg-laying animals. The birds have continued to lay eggs while the mammals stopped doing so—except for a few conservative animals like the platypus. If we think of animals in their evolution, their development, this appears very natural. But if we try, as the older naturalists tried, to make them fit into some rigid, fixed scheme of classification, then the products of evolution upset that classification.

Again, an idea or a theory which was progressive in one set of circumstances, when it first arose, cannot for that reason be labeled “progressive” in an absolute sense, since it may later become reactionary in new circumstances. For instance, mechanistic materialism when it first arose was a progressive theory. But we cannot say that it is still progressive today. On the contrary, under the new circumstances which have arisen mechanistic theory has become retrograde, reactionary. Mechanism, which was progressive in the rising phase of capitalism, goes hand in hand with idealism as part of the ideology of capitalism in decay.

Common sense, too recognizes the limitation of the metaphysical way of thinking.

For example: When is a man bald? Common sense recognizes that though we can distinguish bald men from non-bald men, nevertheless baldness develops through a process of losing one’s hair, and therefore men in the midst of this process enter into a phase in which we cannot say absolutely either that they are bald or that they are not: they are in process of becoming bald. The metaphysical “either-or” breaks down.

In all these examples we are confronted with the distinction between an ''objective process,'' in which something undergoes change, and the ''concepts'' in terms of which we try to sum up the characteristics of the things involved in the process. Such concepts never do and never can always and in all respects correspond to their objects, precisely because the objects are undergoing change. Thus Engels writes:

“Are the concepts that prevail in natural science fictions because they by no means always coincide with reality? From the moment we accept the theory of evolution all our concepts of organic life correspond only approximately to reality. Otherwise there would be no change; on the day that concept and reality absolutely coincide in the organic world, development is at an end.”<ref>Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, <cite>Selected Correspondence</cite>, Engels to Schmidt, March 12, 1895, N. Y., 1942.</ref>

And he pointed out that similar considerations apply to all concepts without exception.

==== The Unity and Struggle of Opposites ====

When we think of the properties of things, their relationships, their modes of action and interaction, the processes into which they enter, then we find that, generally speaking, all these properties, relationships, interactions and processes divide into ''fundamental opposites.''

For example, if we think of the simplest ways in which two bodies can act on one another, then we find that this action is either repulsion or attraction.

If we consider the electrical properties of bodies, then there is positive and negative electricity.

In organic life, there is the building up of organic compounds and the breaking down of them.

Again, in mathematics, there is addition and subtraction, plus and minus.

And in general, whatever sphere of inquiry we may be considering, we find that it involves such fundamental opposites. We find ourselves considering, not just a number of ''different'' things, ''different'' properties, ''different'' relations, ''different'' processes, but pairs of ''opposites,'' fundamental ''oppositions.'' As Hegel put it: “In opposition, the different is not confronted by any other, but by ''its'' other.”<ref>Hegel, <cite>Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences</cite>: Logic, Section 119.</ref>

Thus if we think of the forces acting between two bodies, there are not just a number of different forces, but they divide into attractive and repulsive forces; if we think of electric charges, there are not just a number of different charges, but they divide into positive and negative; and so on. Attraction stands opposed to repulsion, positive electricity to negative electricity.

Such fundamental oppositions are not understood by the metaphysical way of thinking.

In the first place, the metaphysical way of thinking tries to ignore and discount opposition. It seeks to understand a given subject-matter simply in terms of a whole number of different properties and different relations of things, ignoring the fundamental oppositions which are manifested in these properties and relations. Thus those who think in metaphysical terms about class-divided societies, for example, try to understand society as consisting merely of a large number of different individuals connected together by all kinds of different social relations—but they ignore the fundamental opposition of exploiters and exploited, manifested in all those social relations.

In the second place, when the metaphysical way of thinking does nevertheless come upon the fundamental oppositions and cannot ignore them, then—true to its habit of thinking of each thing in isolation, as a fixed constant—it considers these opposites each in isolation from the other, understands them separately and as each excluding the other. Thus, for example, the older physicists used to think of positive and negative electricity just simply as two different “electrical fluids.”

But contrary to metaphysics, not only are fundamental opposites involved in every subject-matter, but these opposites mutually imply each other, are inseparably connected together, and, far from being exclusive, neither can exist or be understood except in relation to the other.

This characteristic of opposition is known as polarity: Fundamental opposites are polar opposites. A magnet, for example, has two poles, a north pole and a south pole. But these poles, opposite and distinct, cannot exist in separation. If the magnet is cut in two, there is not a north pole in one half and a south pole in the other, but north and south poles recur in each half. The north pole exists only as the opposite of the south, and vice versa; the one can be defined only as the opposite of the other.

In general, fundamental opposition has to be understood as polar opposition, and every subject-matter has to be understood in terms of the polar opposition involved in it.

Thus in physics we find that attraction and repulsion are involved in every physical process in such a way that they cannot be separated or isolated the one from the other. In considering living bodies, we do not find in some cases the building up of organic compounds and in other cases their breaking down, but every life process involves both the building up and the breaking down of organic compounds. In capitalist society the increasing socialization of labor is inseparable from its opposite, the increasing centralization of capital.

This unity of opposites—the fact that opposites cannot be understood in separation one from another, but only in their inseparable connection in every field of investigation—is strikingly exemplified in mathematics. Here the fundamental operations are the two opposites, addition and subtraction. And so far is it from being the case that addition and subtraction can be understood each apart from the other, that addition can be represented as subtraction and vice versa; thus the operation of subtraction (a — b) can be represented as an addition (— b + a). Similarly a division a/b can be represented as a multiplication a x (1/b).<ref>Engels, <cite>Dialectics of Nature</cite>, Chapter 7, “Note on Mathematics.”</ref>

The unity of opposites, their inseparable connection, is by no means to be understood as a harmonious and stable relationship, as a state of equilibrium. On the contrary, “The unity of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute.”<ref>Lenin, <cite>Selected Works</cite>, Vol. 11, “On Dialectics.”</ref>

The existence of fundamental polar oppositions, manifesting themselves in every department of nature and society, expresses itself in the ''conflict'' and ''struggle'' of opposed tendencies, which, despite phases of temporary equilibrium, lead to continual motion and development, to a perpetual coming into being and passing away of everything in existence, to sharp changes of state and transformations.

Thus, for example, the equilibrium of attractive and repulsive forces in the physical world is never more than conditional and temporary; the conflict and struggle of attraction and repulsion always asserts itself, issuing in physical changes and transformations, whether transformations on an atomic scale, chemical changes or, on a grand scale, in the explosion of stars.

==== Dialectics and Metaphysics ====

To sum up.

Metaphysics thinks in terms of “ready-made” things, whose properties and potentialities it seeks to fix and determine once and for all. It considers each thing by itself, in isolation from every other, in terms of irreconcilable antitheses—“either-or.” It contrasts one thing to another, one property to another, one relationship to another, not considering things in their real movement and interconnection, and not considering that every subject-matter represents a unity of opposites—opposed but inseparably connected together.

Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics refuses to think of things each by itself, as having a fixed nature and fixed properties— “either-or”—but it recognizes that things come into being, exist and cease to be, in a process of unending change and development, in a process of complicated and ever-changing interrelationship, in which each thing exists only in its connection with other things and goes through a series of transformations, and in which is always manifested the unity, inseparable interconnection and struggle of the opposite properties, aspects, tendencies characteristic of every phenomenon of nature and society.

Contrary to metaphysics, the aim of dialectics is to trace the real changes and interconnections in the world and to think of things always in their motion and interconnection.

Thus Engels writes:

“The world is not to be comprehended as a complex of ready-made things but as a complex of processes…. One no longer permits oneself to be imposed upon by the antitheses insuperable for the old metaphysics.”<ref>Engels, <cite>Ludwig Feuerbach</cite>, Chapter IV.</ref>

“The old rigid antitheses, the sharp impassable dividing lines are more and more disappearing…. The recognition that these antagonisms and distinctions are in fact to be found in nature but only with relative validity, and that on the other hand their imagined rigidity and absoluteness have been introduced into nature only by our minds—this recognition is the kernel of the dialectical conception of nature.”<ref><cite>Anti-Dühring</cite>, Preface.</ref>

“Dialectics… grasps things and their images, ideas, essentially in their inter-connection, in their sequence, their movement, their birth and death.”<ref><cite>Ibid.</cite>, Introduction.</ref>

Lenin wrote that the understanding of the “contradictory parts” of every phenomenon was “the essence of dialectics.” It consists in “the recognition (discovery) of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature, including mind and society.”<ref>Lenin, <cite>Selected Works</cite>, Vol. 11, “On Dialectics.”</ref>

Lastly, Marx wrote that: “dialectic… in its rational form is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary.”<ref>Karl Marx, <cite>Capital</cite>, Vol. I, Preface to second edition, N. Y., 1947.</ref>

=== 7. Change and Interconnection ===

<blockquote>''The Marxist dialectical method demands that we must always consider things, not in isolation, but in their interconnection with other things, in relation to the actual conditions and circumstances of each case; and that we must consider things in their change and movement, their coming into being and going out of being, always taking particularly into account what is new, what is rising and developing.''

''It follows that the Marxist dialectical method forbids the employment of “ready-made schemes” and abstract formulas, but demands the thorough, detailed analysis of a process in all its concreteness, basing its conclusions only on such an analysis.''
</blockquote>
==== Four Principal Features of the Marxist Dialectical Method ====

In his <cite>Dialectical and Historical Materialism</cite> Stalin said that there are four principal features of the Marxist dialectical method.

(1) Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics does not regard nature as just an agglomeration of things, each existing independently of the others, but it considers things as “connected with, dependent on and determined by each other.” Hence it considers that nothing can be understood taken by itself, in isolation, but must always be understood “in its inseparable connection with other things, and as conditioned by them.”

(2) Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics considers everything as in “a state of continuous movement and change, of renewal and development, where something is always arising and developing and something always disintegrating and dying away.” Hence it considers things “not only from the standpoint of their interconnection and interdependence, but also from the standpoint of their movement, their change, their development, their coming into being and going out of being.”

(3) Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics does not regard the: process of development as “a simple process of growth,” but as “a development which passes from… quantitative changes to open, fundamental changes, to qualitative changes,” which occur “abruptly, taking the form of a leap from one state to another.” Hence it considers development as “an onward and upward movement, as a transition from an old qualitative state to a new qualitative state, as a development from the simple to the complex, from the lower to the higher.”

(4) Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics “holds that the process of development from the lower to the higher takes place… as a disclosure of the contradictions inherent in things… as a struggle of opposite tendencies which operate on the basis of these contradictions.”

We shall postpone until the next chapter consideration of the latter two features, which concern the process of development from one qualitative state to another, from the lower to the higher. In this chapter we shall consider the first two features of the dialectical method, namely, that it considers things always in their interconnection and in their movement and change.

==== Considering Things in Their Interconnection and Circumstances ====

The dialectical method demands, first, that we should consider things, not each by itself, but always in their interconnection with other things.

This sounds “obvious.” Nevertheless it is an “obvious” principle which is very often ignored and is extremely important to remember. We have already considered it and some examples of its application in discussing metaphysics, since the very essence of metaphysics is to think of things in an abstract way, isolated from their relations with other things and from the concrete circumstances in which they exist.

The principle of considering things in relation to actual conditions and circumstances, and not apart from those actual conditions and circumstances, is always of fundamental importance for the working-class movement in deciding the most elementary questions of policy.

For example, there was a time when the British workers were fighting for a ten-hour day. They were right at that time not to make their immediate demand an eight-hour day, since this was not yet a realizable demand. They were equally right, when they got a ten-hour day, not to be satisfied with it.

There are times when it is correct for a section of workers to come out on strike, and there are times when it is not correct. Such matters have to be judged according to the actual circumstances of the case. Similarly there are times when it is correct to go on prolonging and extending a strike, and there are times when it is correct to call it off.

No working-class leader can be of very much value if he tries to decide questions of policy in terms of “general principle” alone, without taking into account the actual circumstances in relation to which policy has to be operated, without understanding that the same policy can be right in one case and wrong in another, depending on the concrete circumstances of each case.

Thus Lenin wrote:

“Of course, in politics, in which sometimes extremely complicated—national and international—relationships between classes and parties have to be dealt with… it would be absurd to concoct a recipe, or general rule… that would serve in all cases. One must have the brains to analyze the situation in each separate case.”<ref>Lenin, <cite>Left-wing Communism</cite>, Chapter VIII, N. Y., 1934.</ref>

This readiness on the part of Marxists to adapt policy to circumstances and to change policy with circumstances is sometimes called Communist “opportunism.” But it is nothing of the kind—or rather, it is the very opposite. It is the application in practice of the science of the strategy and tactics of working-class struggle. Indeed, what is meant by opportunism in relation to working-class policy? It means subordinating the long-term interests of the working class as a whole to the temporary interests of a section, sacrificing the interests of the class to defense of the temporary privileges of some particular group. Communists are guided by Marx’s principle that “they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.”<ref>Marx and Engels, <cite>The Communist Manifesto</cite>, Chapter II.</ref> And this requires that, in the interests of the movement as a whole, one must analyze the situation in each separate case, deciding what policy to pursue in each case in the light of the concrete circumstances.

On general questions, too, the greatest confusion can arise from forgetting the dialectical principle that things must not be considered in isolation but in their inseparable inter-connection.

For example, the British Labor leaders once said, and many members of the Labor Party continue to say, that nationalization is an installment of socialism. They consider nationalization by itself, in isolation, out of connection with the state and with the social structure in relation to which nationalization measures are introduced. They overlook the fact that if the public power, the state, remains in the hands of the exploiters, and if their representatives sit on and control the boards of the nationalized industries, which continue to be run on the basis of exploiting the labor of one class for the profit of another class, then nationalization is not socialism. Socialist nationalization can come into being only when the public power, the state, is in the hands of the workers.

Again, in political arguments people very often appeal to a concept of “fairness” which leads them to judge events without the slightest consideration of the real meaning of those events, of the circumstances in which they occur. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander: that is the principle employed in such arguments.

Thus it is argued that if we defend the democratic right of the workers in a capitalist country to agitate for the ending of capitalism and the introduction of socialism, then we cannot deny to others in a socialist country the right to agitate for the ending of socialism and the reintroduction of capitalism. Those who argue like this throw up their hands in horror when they find that counter-revolutionary groupings in the U.S.S.R., who sought to restore capitalism in that country, were deprived of the possibility of carrying out their aims. Why, they exclaim, this is undemocratic, this is tyranny! Such an argument overlooks the difference between fighting in the interests of the vast majority of the people to end exploitation, and fighting in the interests of a small section to preserve or reintroduce exploitation; it overlooks the difference between defending the right of the vast majority to run their affairs in their own interests, and defending the right of a small minority to keep the majority in bondage; in other words, it overlooks the difference between moving forward and backward, between putting the clock ahead and putting it back, between revolution and counter-revolution. Of course, if we fight to achieve socialism, and if we achieve it, then we shall defend what we have achieved and shall not allow the slightest possibility of any group destroying that achievement. Let the capitalists and their hangers-on shout about democracy “in general.” If, as Lenin said, we “have the brains to analyze the situation,” we shall not be deceived by them.

The “liberal” concept of “fairness” has, indeed, become a favorite weapon of reaction lately. In 1949 and again in 1950, when the fascists decided to hold a demonstration in London on May Day, the Home Secretary promptly banned the workers’ May Day demonstration. If I ban one, I must ban the other, he blandly explained. How scrupulously “fair” he was!

The principle of understanding things in their circumstances and interconnections is likewise a very important principle in science. Yet scientists, who take things to bits and consider their various properties, very often forget that things which they may consider in isolation do not exist in isolation. And this leads to serious misunderstandings.

Soviet biologists, for example, guided by this first principle of dialectics, have stressed the unity of the organism and its environment. They have pointed out that you cannot consider the organism as having a nature of its own, isolated from its environment: that is metaphysics. Thus there is no such thing as a plant, for instance, isolated from its environment: such a plant is a mere museum piece, a dead plant artificially preserved. Living plants grow in a soil, in a climate, in an environment, and they grow and develop by assimilating that environment. Thus Lysenko defined the heredity, or nature, of an organism as its requirement of certain conditions for its life and development, and its responding to various conditions in a certain way. This understanding of the unity of organism and environment had important consequences. For it led to the expectation that by compelling an organism to adapt itself to and assimilate changed conditions, its nature could be changed. And this expectation has been verified in practice.

The biologists of the Mendel-Morgan school, on the other hand, treat the organism abstractly, metaphysically, as isolated from its real conditions of life. They conceive of the “nature” of the organism as quite independent of its conditions of life. Hence they conclude, in true metaphysical style, that the heredity of an organism “is what is,” and that it is no use trying to change it in the ways in which Soviet biologists ''have'' changed the heredity of organisms.

==== Considering Things in Their Movement, Their Coming into Being and Going Out of Being ====

Let us now consider some examples of the second principle of dialectics, which demands that we should consider things in their movement, their change, their coming into being and going out of being.

This principle, too, is of great importance in science.

Soviet biologists, for example, guided by this principle of dialectics, have considered the organism in its growth and development. Thus at a certain stage of growth, the nature of the organism is still plastic; if you can modify it at that stage, you can often change its nature, give it a changed heredity. Something is newly coming into being in the organism, and that is the time to foster it and to give it a desired direction. But if that stage is passed, then its nature becomes fixed and you cannot change it. You must find just the right stage of growth if you wish to modify the heredity of the organism.

The biologists of the Mendel-Morgan school, on the other hand, consider the nature of the organism as given and fixed from the very start.

This second principle of dialectics teaches us always to pay attention to what is new, to what is rising and growing—not just to what exists at the moment, but to what is coming into being.

This principle is of paramount importance for revolutionary understanding, for revolutionary practice.

The Russian Bolsheviks, for example, saw from the very beginning how Russian society was moving—what was new in it, what was coming into being. They looked for what was rising and growing, though it was still weak—the working class. While others discounted the importance of the working class and finished by entering into compromises with the forces of the old society, the Bolsheviks concluded that the working class was the new, rising force, and led it to victory.

Just this same understanding of what was rising and growing and of what was disintegrating and dying away, was exemplified in Stalin’s leadership during the war, 1941-45. When the Germans were before Moscow in November 1941, and all the “allied military strategists” outside the Soviet Union considered that Russia’s defeat was certain, Stalin said that while the Germans were at the peak of their military power the Soviet forces, on the other hand, were still mobilizing and increasing. Therefore the defeat of the German fascists was certain.

“Germany, whose reserves of manpower are already being exhausted, has been considerably more weakened than the Soviet Union, whose reserves are only now being mobilized to the full…. Can there be any doubt that we can, and are bound to, defeat the German invaders? The German invaders are straining their last efforts. There is no doubt that Germany cannot sustain such a strain for long.”<ref>Stalin, <cite>The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union</cite>, Speeches of November 6 and 7, 1941, N. Y., 1945.</ref>

Similarly today, when press and radio are full of the boasts and threats of the American imperialists and their henchmen, we stress that which is rising and growing all over the world, the people’s camp of peace, which is bound to continue to grow and to overwhelm the imperialists in shameful disaster.

Again, in the fight for unity of the working-class movement, in relation to the British Labor Party and the affiliated trade unions, we pay attention above all to that which is arising and growing in the movement. Therefore we see a great deal more than the policy of the right-wing leaders and their influence. The right wing has its basis in the past, though it is still strong and dominant. But there are arising the forces of the future, determined to fight against capitalism and war.

Similarly in relation to individual people—we should foster and build on what is coming to birth in them, what is rising and moving ahead. This is what a good secretary or organizer does.

Such examples as these show that the basis of the dialectical method, its most essential principle, is to study and understand things in their concrete interconnection and movement.

==== Against “Ready-made Schemes”—“Truth Is Always Concrete” ====

Sometimes people imagine that dialectics is a preconceived scheme, into the pattern of which everything is supposed to fit. This is the very opposite of the truth about dialectics. The employment of the Marxist dialectical method does not mean that we apply a preconceived scheme and try to make everything fit into it. No, it means that we study things as they really are, in their real interconnection and movement.

This is something which Lenin insisted on again and again. Indeed, he proclaimed it as “the fundamental thesis of dialectics.” “Genuine dialectics,” Lenin wrote, proceeds “by means of a thorough, detailed analysis of a process in all its concreteness. The fundamental thesis of dialectics is: there is no such thing as abstract truth, truth is always concrete.”<ref>V. I. Lenin, <cite>Selected Works</cite>, Vol. 2, <cite>One Step Forward, Two Steps Back</cite>, Section R, “Something about Dialectics.”</ref>

What did he mean by “truth is always concrete”? Just that we will not get at the truth about things, about either nature or society, by thinking up some general scheme, some abstract formula; but only by trying to work out as regards each process just what are the forces at work, how they are related, which are rising and growing and which are decaying and dying away, and on this basis reaching an estimate of the process as a whole.

So Engels said: “There could be no question of building the laws of dialectics into nature, but of discovering them in it and evolving them from it…. Nature is the test of dialectics.”<ref>Engels, <cite>Anti-Dühring</cite>, Preface and Introduction.</ref>

As regards the study of society, and the estimate we make of real social changes on which we base our political strategy, Lenin ridiculed those who took some abstract, preconceived scheme as their guide.

According to some “authorities,” the Marxist dialectics laid it down that all development must proceed through “triads”—thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Lenin ridiculed this.

“It is clear to everybody that the main burden of Engels’ argument is that materialists must depict the historical process correctly and accurately, and that insistence on… selection of examples which demonstrate the correctness of the triad is nothing but a relic of Hegelianism…. And, indeed, once it has been categorically declared that to attempt to ‘prove’ anything by triads is absurd, what significance can examples of ‘dialectical’ process have?… Anyone who reads the definition and description of the dialectical method given by Engels will see that the Hegelian triads are not even mentioned, and that it all amounts to regarding social evolution as a natural-historical process of development….

“What Marx and Engels called the dialectical method… is nothing more nor less than the scientific method in sociology, which consists in regarding society as a living organism in a constant state of development… the study of which requires an objective analysis of the relations of production that constitute the given social formation and an investigation of its laws of functioning and development.”<ref>Lenin, <cite>Selected Works</cite>, Vol. 1, “What the Friends of the People Are and How They Fight Against the Social Democrats,” Part I.</ref>

Let us consider some examples of what the “analysis of a process in all its concreteness” and the principle that “truth is always concrete” mean, in contrast to the method of trying to lay down some preconceived scheme of social development and of appealing to such a scheme as a basis for policy.

In tsarist Russia the Mensheviks used to say: “We must have capitalism before socialism.” First capitalism must go through its full development, then socialism will follow: that was their scheme. Consequently they supported the liberals in politics and enjoined the workers to do no more than fight for better conditions in the capitalist factories.

Lenin repudiated this silly scheme. He showed that the liberals, frightened by the workers, would compromise with the tsar; but that the alliance of workers with peasants could take the lead from them, overthrow the tsar, and then go on to overthrow the capitalists and build socialism before ever capitalism was able to develop fully.

After the proletarian revolution was successful, another scheme was propounded—this time by Trotsky. “You can’t build socialism in one country. Unless the revolution takes place in the advanced capitalist countries, socialism cannot come in Russia.” Lenin and Stalin showed that this scheme, too, was false. For even if the revolution did not take place in the advanced capitalist countries, the alliance of workers and peasants in the Soviet Union had still the forces to build socialism.

In Western European countries it used often to be said: “We must have fascism before communism.” First the capitalists will abandon democracy and introduce the fascist dictatorship, and then the workers will overthrow the fascist dictatorship. But the Communists replied, no, we will fight together with all the democratic forces to preserve bourgeois democracy and to defeat the fascists, and that will create the best conditions for going forward to win working-class power and to commence to build socialism.

Lastly, today we sometimes hear the argument: “Capitalism means war, therefore war is inevitable.” True enough, so long as capitalism, which has long ago entered its last (imperialist) phase, persists, there must inevitably be conflicts between the rival powers, and these conflicts are such as to entail the inevitability of imperialist wars. But the imperialists cannot make war without the people. The more they prepare war, the more open their aggressiveness becomes, the more one power attempts to impose its domination on another, and the more hardships they impose on the people, the more can the people be rallied to oppose their war. Therefore in any instance when war threatens, that war can be prevented and postponed. And by fighting to preserve peace, we can lay the basis for ending the conditions which pose the inevitability of war. Imperialist war plans can be defeated; they can be defeated if the working class rallies all the peace-loving forces around itself. And imperialism itself, with the consequent inevitability of war, can be ended. If we defeat the imperialist war plans, that will be the best road towards the ending of capitalism itself and the building of socialism. Imperialism will not be ended by waiting for it to wreck itself in inevitable wars, but by uniting to prevent the realization of its war plans.

In all these examples it will be seen that the acceptance of some ready-made scheme, some abstract formula, means passivity, support for capitalism, betrayal of the working class and of socialism. But the dialectical approach which understands things in their concrete interconnection and movement, shows us how to forge ahead—how to fight, what allies to draw in. That is the inestimable value of the Marxist dialectical method to the working-class movement.

=== 8. The Laws of Development ===

<blockquote>''To understand development we must understand the distinction between quantitative change—increase and decrease—and qualitative change—the passing into a new state, the emergence of something new.''

''Quantitative change always leads at a certain critical point to qualitative change. And similarly qualitative differences and qualitative changes always rest on quantitative differences and quantitative changes.''

''Development must be understood, therefore, not as a simple process of growth but as a process which passes from quantitative changes to open, fundamental qualitative changes.''

''Further, this transformation of quantitative into qualitative changes takes place as a result of the conflict or struggle of opposite tendencies which operate on the basis of the contradictions inherent in all things and processes.''

''The Marxist dialectical method, therefore, teaches us to understand processes of development in terms of the transformation of quantitative into qualitative changes, and to seek the grounds and the explanation of such development in the unity and struggle of opposites.''
</blockquote>
==== What Do We Mean by “Development”? ====

In stressing the need to study real processes in their movement and in all their interconnections, Stalin pointed out that in the processes of nature and history there is always “renewal and development, where something is always arising and developing and something always disintegrating and dying away.”<ref>Stalin, <cite>Dialectical and Historical Materialism</cite>.</ref> When that which is arising and developing comes to fruition, and that which is disintegrating and dying away finally disappears, there emerges something ''new.''

For as we saw in criticizing mechanistic materialism, processes do not always keep repeating the same cycle of changes, but advance from stage to stage as something new continually emerges.

This is the real meaning of the word “development.” We speak of “development” where stage by stage something new keeps emerging.

Thus there is a difference between mere ''change'' and development. Development is change proceeding according to its own internal laws from stage to stage.

And there is equally a difference between ''growth'' and development. This difference is familiar to biologists, for example. Thus growth means getting bigger—merely quantitative change. But development means, not getting bigger, but passing into a qualitatively new stage, becoming qualitatively different. For example, a caterpillar grows longer and fatter; then it spins itself a cocoon, and finally emerges as a butterfly. This is development. A caterpillar ''grows'' into a bigger caterpillar; it ''develops'' into a butterfly.

Processes of nature and history exemplify, not merely change, not merely growth, but development. Can we, then, reach any conclusions about the general laws of development? This is the further task of materialist dialectics—to find what general laws are manifested in all development, and to give us, therefore, the ''method of approach'' for understanding, explaining and controlling development.

==== Quantity and Quality: The Law of the Transformation of Quantitative into Qualitative Changes ====

This brings us to the two latter features of the Marxist dialectical method, as explained by Stalin. The first of these may be called “the law of the transformation of quantitative into qualitative change.” What does this mean?

All change has a quantitative aspect, that is, an aspect of mere increase or decrease which does not alter the nature of that which changes. But quantitative change, increase or decrease, cannot go on indefinitely. At a certain point it always leads to a qualitative change; and at that critical point (or “nodal point,” as Hegel called it) the qualitative change takes place relatively suddenly, by a leap, as it were.

For example, if water is being heated, it does not go on getting hotter and hotter indefinitely; at a certain critical temperature, it begins to turn into steam, undergoing a qualitative change from liquid to gas. A cord used to lift a weight may have a greater and greater load attached to it, but no cord can lift a load indefinitely great: at a certain point, the cord is bound to break. A boiler may withstand a greater and greater pressure of steam—up to the point where it bursts. A variety of plant may be subjected to a series of changes in its conditions of growth for a number of generations—for instance, to colder temperatures; the variety continues unchanged, until a point is reached when suddenly a qualitative change is induced, a change in the heredity of the plant. In this way spring wheats have been transformed into winter wheats, and vice versa, as a result of the accumulation of a series of quantitative changes.

This law of the transformation of quantitative into qualitative change is also met with in society. Thus before the system of industrial capitalism comes into being there takes place a process of the accumulation of wealth in money form in a few private hands (largely by colonial plunder), and of the formation of a propertyless proletariat (by enclosures and the driving of peasants off the land). At a certain point in this process, when ''enough'' money is accumulated to provide capital for industrial undertakings, when ''enough'' people have been proletarianized to provide the labor required, the conditions have matured for the development of industrial capitalism. At this point an accumulation of quantitative changes gives rise to a new qualitative stage in the development of society.

In general, qualitative changes happen with relative suddenness—by a leap. Something new is suddenly born, though its potentiality was already contained in the gradual evolutionary process of continuous quantitative change which went before.

Thus we find that continuous, gradual quantitative change leads at a certain point to discontinuous, sudden qualitative change. We have already remarked in an earlier chapter that most of those who have considered the laws of development in nature and society have conceived of this development only in its continuous aspect. This means that they have considered it only from the aspect of a process of growth, of quantitative change, and have not considered its qualitative aspect, the fact that at a certain point in the gradual process of growth a new quality suddenly arises, a transformation takes place.

Yet this is what always happens. If you are boiling a kettle, the water suddenly begins to boil when boiling point is reached. If you are scrambling eggs, the mixture in the pan suddenly “scrambles.” And it is the same if you are engaged in changing society. We will only change capitalist society into socialist society when the rule of one class is replaced by the rule of another class—and this is a radical transformation, a leap to a new state of society, a revolution.

If, on the other hand, we consider quality itself, then qualitative change always arises as a result of an accumulation of quantitative changes, and differences in quality have their basis in differences of quantity.

Thus just as quantitative change must at a certain point give rise to qualitative change, so if we wish to bring about qualitative change we must study its quantitative basis, and know what must be increased and what diminished if the required change is to be brought about.

Natural science teaches us how purely quantitative difference—addition or subtraction—makes a qualitative difference in nature. For example, the addition of one proton in the nucleus of an atom makes the transition from one element to another.<ref>For a simple account of the physical phenomena referred to in this and in our next example see <cite>The Challenge of Atomic Energy</cite>, by E. H. S. Burhop, London, 1951.</ref> The atoms of all the elements are formed out of combinations of the same protons and electrons, but a purely quantitative difference between the numbers combined in the atom gives different kinds of atoms, atoms of different elements with different chemical properties. Thus an atom consisting of one proton and one electron is a hydrogen atom, but if another proton and another electron are added it is an atom of helium, and so on. Similarly in chemical compounds, the addition of one atom to a molecule makes the difference between substances with different chemical properties. In general, different qualities have their basis in quantitative difference.

As Engels put it:

“In nature, in a manner exactly fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or subtraction of matter or motion….

“All qualitative differences in nature rest on differences of chemical composition or on different quantities or forms of motion or, as is almost always the case, on both. Hence it is impossible to alter the quality of a body without addition or subtraction of matter or motion, ''i.e.'' without quantitative alteration of the body concerned.”<ref>Engels, <cite>Dialectics of Nature</cite>, Chapter II.</ref>

This feature of the dialectical law connecting quality and quantity is familiar to readers of the popular literature about atomic bombs. To make a uranium bomb it is necessary to have the isotope, uranium-235; the more common isotope, uranium-238, will not do. The difference between these two is merely quantitative, a difference in atomic weight, depending on the number of neutrons present in each case. But this quantitative difference of atomic weight, 235 and 238, makes the qualitative difference between a substance with the properties required for the bomb and a substance without those properties. Further, having got a quantity of uranium-235, a certain “critical mass” of it is required before it will explode. If there is not enough, the chain reaction which constitutes the explosion will not occur; when the “critical mass” is reached, the reaction does occur.

Thus we see that quantitative changes are transformed at a certain point into qualitative changes, and qualitative differences rest on quantitative differences. This is a universal feature of development. What makes such development happen?

==== Development Takes Place Through the Unity and Struggle of Opposites ====

In general, the reason why in any particular case a quantitative change leads to a qualitative change lies in the very nature, in the content, of the particular processes involved. Therefore in each case we can, if we only know enough, explain just why a qualitative change is inevitable, and why it takes place at the point it does.

To explain this we have to study the facts of the case. We cannot invent an explanation with the aid of dialectics alone; where an understanding of dialectics helps is that it gives us the clue as to where to look. In a particular case we may not yet know how and why the change takes place. In that case we have the task of finding out, by investigating the facts of the case. For there is nothing unknowable, no essential mystery or secret of development, of the emergence of the qualitatively new.

Let us consider, for example, the case of the qualitative change which takes place when water boils.

When heat is applied to a mass of water contained in a kettle, then the effect is to increase the motion of the molecules composing the water. So long as the water remains in its liquid state, the forces of attraction between the molecules are sufficient to insure that, though some of the surface molecules are continually escaping, the whole mass coheres together as a mass of water inside the kettle. At boiling point, however, the motion of the molecules has become sufficiently violent for large numbers of them to begin jumping clear of the mass. A qualitative change is therefore observed. The water begins to bubble and the whole mass is rapidly transformed into steam. This change evidently occurs as a result of the oppositions operating within the mass of water—the tendency of the molecules to move apart and jump free versus the forces of attraction between them. The former tendency is reinforced to the point where it overcomes the latter as a result, in this case, of the external application of heat.

Another example we have considered is that of a cord which breaks when its load becomes too great. Here again, the qualitative change takes place as a result of the opposition set up between the tensile strength of the cord and the pull of the load. Again, when a spring wheat is transformed into a winter wheat, this is a result of the opposition between the plant’s “conservatism” and the changing conditions of growth and development to which it is subjected; at a certain point, the influence of the latter overcomes the former.

These examples prepare us for the general conclusion that, as Stalin puts it, “the internal content of the process of development, the internal content of the transformation of quantitative changes into qualitative changes” consists in the struggle of opposites— opposite tendencies, opposite forces—within the things and process concerned.

Thus the law that quantitative changes are transformed into qualitative changes, and that differences in quality are based on differences in quantity, leads us to the law of the unity and struggle of opposites.

Here is the way Stalin formulates this law of dialectics.

“Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics holds that internal contradictions are inherent in all things and phenomena of nature, for all have their negative and positive sides, a past and a future, something dying away and something developing; and that the struggle between these opposites, the struggle between the old and the new, between that which is dying away and that which is being born, between that which is disappearing and that which is developing, constitutes the internal content of the process of development, the internal content of the transformation of quantitative changes into qualitative changes.

“The dialectical method therefore holds that the process of development from the lower to the higher takes place not as a harmonious unfolding of phenomena, but as a disclosure of the contradictions inherent in things and phenomena, as a ‘struggle’ of opposite tendencies which operate on the basis of these contradictions.”<ref>Stalin, <cite>Dialectical and Historical Materialism</cite>.</ref>

To understand development, to understand how and why quantitative changes lead to qualitative changes, to understand how and why the transition takes place from an old qualitative state to a new qualitative state, we have to understand the contradictions inherent in each thing and process we are considering, and how a “struggle” of opposite tendencies arises on the basis of these contradictions.

We have to understand this concretely, in each case, bearing in mind Lenin’s warning that “the fundamental thesis of dialectics is: truth is always concrete.” We cannot deduce the laws of development in the concrete case from the general principles of dialectics: we have to discover them by actual investigation in each case. But dialectics tells us what to look for.

==== Dialectics of Social Development—The Contradictions of Capitalism ====

The dialectics of development—the unity and struggle of opposites—has been most thoroughly worked out in the Marxist science of society. Here, from the standpoint of the working-class struggle, on the basis of working-class experience, we can work out the dialectic of the contradictions of capitalism and of their development very exactly.

But the principles involved in the development of society are not opposed to but are in essence the same as those involved in the development of nature, though different in their form of manifestation in each case. Thus Engels said:

“I was not in doubt—that amid the welter of innumerable changes taking place in nature the same dialectical laws of motion are in operation as those which in history govern the apparent fortuitousness of events.”<ref>Engels, <cite>Anti-Dühring</cite>, Preface.</ref>

How Marxism understands the contradictions of capitalism and their development, this crowning triumph of the dialectical method, was explained in general terms by Engels.

The basic contradiction of capitalism is not simply the conflict of two classes, which confront one another as two external forces which come into conflict. No, it is the contradiction within the social system itself, on the basis of which the class conflict arises and operates.

Capitalism brought about:

“The concentration of the means of production in large workshops and manufactories, their transformation into means of production which were in fact social. But the social means of production and the social products were treated as if they were still, as they had been before, the means of production and the products of individuals. Hitherto, the owner of the instruments of labor had appropriated the product because it was as a rule his own product, the auxiliary labor of other persons being the exception; now, the owner of the instruments of production continued to appropriate the product, although it was no longer ''his'' product, but exclusively the product of ''others’ labor.'' Thus, therefore, the products, now socially produced, were not appropriated by those who had really set the means of production in motion and really produced the products, but by the ''capitalists''.”<ref>Engels, <cite>Anti-Dühring</cite>, Part III, Chapter II; or <cite>Socialism, Utopian and Scientific</cite>, Chapter III, N. Y., 1935.</ref>

The basic contradiction of capitalism is, therefore, the contradiction between socialized production and capitalist appropriation. It is on the basis of this contradiction that the struggle between the classes develops.

“In this contradiction… the whole conflict of today is already present in germ…. The contradiction between social production and capitalist appropriation became manifest as the antagonism between proletariat and bourgeoisie.”<ref><cite>Ibid.</cite></ref>

And the contradiction can only be resolved by the victory of the working class, when the working class sets up its own dictatorship and initiates social ownership and appropriation to correspond to social production.

This example very exactly illustrates the point of what Stalin said about “struggle of opposite tendencies which operate on the basis of these contradictions.” The class struggle exists and operates on the basis of the contradictions inherent in the social system itself.

It is from the struggle of opposite tendencies, opposing forces, arising on the basis of the contradictions inherent in the social system, that social transformation, the leap to a qualitatively new stage of social development, takes place.

This process has its quantitative aspect. The working class increases in numbers and organization. Capital becomes more concentrated, more centralized.

“Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital… grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself.”<ref>Marx, <cite>Capital</cite>, Vol. I, Chapter XXXII.</ref>

With this quantitative process of increase and decrease, the basic contradiction of socialized labor and private appropriation becomes intensified—for the social character of labor is magnified while capital accumulates and is concentrated in the hands of a diminishing number of great “magnates of capital”—and the tension between the opposing forces becomes intensified, too. At length quantitative change gives rise to qualitative change.

“Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds.

“The expropriators are expropriated.”<ref><cite>Ibid.</cite></ref>

In this way the laws of dialectical development, summarized in the principles of the transformation of quantitative into qualitative change and of the unity and struggle of opposites, are found at work in the development of society; this development is to be understood in terms of the operation of those laws; and this dialectical understanding, once it has become the theoretical possession of the working class, serves as an indispensable instrument of the working class in carrying into effect the socialist transformation of society.

=== 9. The New and the Old ===

<blockquote>''The struggle of opposed forces which constitutes the driving force of development does not take place accidentally but on the basis of internal contradictions inherent in the very nature of the processes concerned. There arises a contradiction between the new and the old; that which is arising and growing contradicts that which is dying away and disappearing. And this fact is strikingly exemplified in the development of society.''

''In the process of development the new grows strong and overpowers the old, and this leads to the forward movement of development, in which each stage is an advance to something new, not a falling back to some stage already passed.''

''Since development proceeds by the overcoming and supplanting of the old by the new it follows that development can only proceed by the negation of the old and not by its preservation.''
</blockquote>
==== Contradictions Inherent in Things and Processes—Internal Contradictions ====

In the last chapter we considered how qualitative change is brought about by the struggle of opposed forces. This was exemplified equally in the change of state of a body, from liquid to solid or gas, and in the change of society from capitalism to socialism. In each case there are “opposite tendencies” at work, whose “struggle” eventuates in some fundamental transformation, a qualitative change.

This “struggle” is not external and accidental. It is not adequately understood if we suppose that it is a question of forces or tendencies arising quite independently the one of the other, which happen to meet, to bump up against each other, so to speak, and to come into conflict.

No. The struggle is internal and necessary; for it arises and follows from the contradictory nature of the process as a whole.

The opposite tendencies are not independent the one of the other

but are inseparably connected as parts or aspects of a single contradictory whole, and they operate and come into conflict on the basis of the contradiction inherent in the process as a whole.

Thus the opposed tendencies which operate in the course of the change of state of a body operate on the basis of the contradictory unity of attractive and repulsive forces inherent in all physical phenomena. And the class struggle which operates in capitalist society operates on the basis of the contradictory unity of socialized labor and private appropriation inherent in that society.

This dialectical understanding of the internal necessity of the struggle of opposed forces, and of its outcome, based on the contradictions inherent in the process as a whole, is no mere refinement of philosophical analysis. It is of very great practical importance.

Bourgeois theorists, for example, are well able to recognize the fact of class conflicts in capitalist society. What they do not recognize is the necessity of this conflict; that it is based on contradictions inherent in the very nature of the capitalist system and that, therefore, the struggle can only culminate in and end with the destruction of the system itself and its replacement by a new, higher system of society. So they seek to mitigate the class conflict, to tone it down and reconcile the opposing classes, or to stamp it out, and so to preserve the system intact. And precisely this bourgeois understanding of the class conflict is brought into the labor movement by Social Democracy.

It is in opposition to such a shallow, metaphysical way of understanding class conflict that Lenin points out:

“The main point in the teaching of Marx is the class struggle. This has very often been said and written. But this is not true. Out of this error, here and there, springs an opportunist distortion of Marxism, such a falsification of it as to make it acceptable to the bourgeoisie. The theory of the class struggle was ''not''created by Marx, but by the bourgeoisie ''before'' Marx and is, generally speaking, ''acceptable'' to the bourgeoisie. He who recognizes ''only'' the class struggle is not yet a Marxist; he may be found not to have gone beyond the boundaries of bourgeois reasoning and politics. To limit Marxism to the teaching of the class struggle means to curtail Marxism—to distort it, to reduce it to something which is acceptable to the bourgeoisie. A Marxist is one who ''extends'' the acceptance of the class struggle to the acceptance of the ''dictatorship of the proletariat.'' Herein lies the deepest difference between a Marxist and an ordinary petty or big bourgeois. On this touchstone it is necessary to test a ''real''understanding and acceptance of Marxism.”<ref>V. I. Lenin, <cite>The State and Revolution</cite>, Chapter II, Section 3, N. Y., 1932.</ref>

In general, we understand contradiction as inherent in, belonging to the very essence of, a given system or process; the struggle through which development takes place is not an external clash of accidentally opposed factors, but is based on contradictions in the very essence of things; and thus is determined the necessary outcome, the necessary solution of the contradiction.

Of course, conflicts of an external, accidental character also occur in nature and society. But these are not of decisive importance in determining the course of development.

==== The Contradiction Between Old and New, Past and Future ====

If we consider a process of development as a whole, as, in Stalin’s words, “an onward and upward movement” involving at each stage “a transition from an old qualitative state to a new qualitative state,” then it reveals itself as the continuous posing and solution of a series of contradictions.

The new stage of development comes into being from the working out of the contradiction and struggle inherent in the old. And the new stage itself contains the germ of a new contradiction. For it comes into being containing something of the past from which it springs and something of the future to which it leads. It has, therefore, its “negative and positive sides, a past and a future, something dying away and something developing.” On this basis there once again arises within it “the struggle between the old and the new, between that which is dying away and that which is being born, between that which is disappearing and that which is developing.”

Hence development continually drives forward to fresh development; the whole process at each stage is in essence the struggle between the old and the new, that which is dying and that which is being born.

This dialectical character of development is strikingly exemplified in social development—in, for example, the stage of development with which we ourselves are specially concerned, the development from capitalism to socialism.

The basic contradiction of capitalism is that between socialized production and capitalist appropriation. This itself is the contradiction between the new and the old in society.

Capitalist appropriation carries on the old institution of private property in the implements of production, under which the owner of the implements of production appropriated the product. The artisan owned his tools and his product. This private ownership of the implements of production and of the product by the individual producer is carried over and transformed into the ownership and appropriation by the capitalist. But while private ownership and appropriation is carried on from the former state of society, what is quite new, what is newly born, arising and advancing in capitalist society, is the socialization of production. The old, petty individual production is destroyed; production is carried on in a new socialized way in great workshops by hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands of workers. The old individual producer is expropriated from his means of production (the peasant is turned off his bit of land, the artisan loses his little workshop), yet the means of production are still privately owned and the product still appropriated—by the individual capitalist or capitalist concern. What the capitalist appropriates, however, is no longer the product of his own labor, but the social product of the social labor of others. Hence this private capitalist appropriation now contradicts the new socialized character of production. In this way, as capitalist society comes into being and develops, the old contradicts the new.

At first capitalism continues to expand, bringing all aspects of economy under its sway and extending its sway over the whole world. But then begins its process of decline. The contradictions reach a breaking point. Capitalism enters into its period of death throes, the general crisis of capitalism. A handful of great monopolists stands opposed to the working class in the capitalist countries; and not only to the working class in the capitalist countries but to the millions of oppressed peoples in the colonial territories. The old masters of the world stand opposed to its future masters—the past to the future. Moreover, rival groups of monopolists stand opposed to one another, as new imperialist claimants to world domination rise and confront the older-established powers. The system begins to break at its weakest points; first in one country, then in a series of countries, the capitalists are overpowered and the new system of socialism begins to arise, so that a new socialist power building up in part of the world confronts the old capitalist power dying but fighting for life in the rest of the world.

Thus the old goes down, fighting against the new. The new grows strong, overpowers and supplants the old. Such is the pattern of development.

==== The Forward Movement of Development ====

This pattern of development is the dialectic of forward movement—“in which,” as Engels said, “in spite of all seeming accidents and all temporary retrogression, a progressive development asserts itself in the end.”<ref>Engels, <cite>Ludwig Feuerbach</cite>, Chapter IV.</ref> The process moves forward from stage to stage, each stage being a genuine advance to something new, not a falling back to some stage already past.

In this process of development there are processes of advance, the birth and surging forward of the new, and processes of decay, the decline and fall of the old. Of course, there are times and occasions when the process of decay may become paramount, and when the forces of advance are not sufficiently strong to overcome the old and to supplant it. This has occurred in the past, for instance, in the history of society, when civilizations have disintegrated and disappeared, because they decayed and the forces of advance were not strongly enough developed in them to carry them forward. No matter. Despite such “temporary retrogression,” the “progressive development asserts itself in the end.”

At the present day there are people who talk about the likelihood of “the end of civilization.” If we considered only the capitalist forces, such an end might well be expected. If there were no Soviet Union, if there were no People’s China, if there were no organized working-class movement, no national liberation movement, no peace movement, then the capitalists would quite certainly destroy their own civilization. But in fact there have already risen and grown tens of millions strong the new forces which will carry civilization forward from capitalism to socialism.

The overall, long-term, forward-moving process of development takes place, not in a straight line, but in a series of zig-zags, of particular and seemingly accidental occurrences, of temporary setbacks; for the development as a whole is but the summation of an entire complex of infinitely various changes and interrelations. If, then, we want to understand how the development proceeds in the concrete case, we have to see it as taking its course through a series of particular, concrete events. On the other hand, if we want to understand these particular events themselves, we should understand them, not in isolation, but in their context within the process of development as a whole.

As concerns particular changes of particular things which take part in the process of development, they do not, of course, all fall into a single pattern of “forward movement.” There are manifold comings and goings and interactions of particular things, changes of form and changes of state, changes of one thing into another and destruction of one thing by another, cycles of change which revert again to the original starting point, and so on. Dialectics, as the study of processes in all their concreteness, in all their manifold changes and interconnections, is concerned with all these processes. Here, however, we are concerned with the general laws of the overall process of development, as an “onward and upward movement” manifested in a series of “transitions from an old qualitative state to a new qualitative state.”

==== The Role of Negation in Development ====

This general forward movement, as we have seen, infinitely complex as it is in detail, takes place through the struggle of the new and the old and the overcoming of the old and dying by the new and rising.

This dialectical conception of development is opposed to the older liberal conception favored by bourgeois theoreticians. The bourgeois liberals recognize development and assert that progress is a universal law of nature and society. But they see development as a gradual and smooth process, proceeding through a series of easy and imperceptible changes. They may recognize struggle where they cannot help but notice it; but to them it seems an unfortunate interruption of orderly progress, more likely to impede development than to help it forward. For them, what exists has not to be supplanted by what is coming into existence, the old has not to be overcome by the new, but it has to be ''preserved,'' so that it can gradually improve itself and become a higher existence.

True to this philosophy, which they took over from the capitalists, the Social Democrats strove to preserve capitalism, with the idea that it could imperceptibly grow into socialism; and thus striving to preserve capitalism, they end by fighting, not for socialism, but against it. When the struggle is on, these exponents of social peace and class collaboration cannot avoid struggle: they simply enter into it on the other side.

Comparing the dialectical materialist, or revolutionary, conception of development with this liberal, reformist conception of development, we may say that the one recognizes and embraces, while the other fails to recognize and shrinks from, the role of ''negation'' in development.

Of course, we cannot assert that the transition from the old state to the new, from one quality to another, must always take place in exactly the same way. For, as we have already seen, dialectics does not mean applying some preconceived scheme to every process, but, on the contrary, every process has its own dialectic, which must be deduced from the study of the process itself. Thus while dialectics teaches us to recognize how the old supplants the new in a sudden, revolutionary way, by a blow in which the old is abolished and the new established in its place, we must also take into account how the transition to a new quality takes place in a different way—not by a sudden blow, but “by the gradual and prolonged accumulation of the elements of the new quality… and the gradual dying away of the elements of the old quality.”<ref>Joseph Stalin, <cite>Marxism and Linguistics</cite>, Chapter I, N. Y., 1951.</ref> Both types of transition are exemplified in nature, and also in society. The gradual process is manifested, for example, as Stalin has recently pointed out, in the development of languages. And again, while fundamental changes in society take place through revolutionary upheavals so long as antagonistic classes exist, such revolutions are no longer necessary after antagonistic classes have been finally abolished in socialist society.

The liberal’s mistake lies, not in recognizing the occurrence of gradual changes, but in recognizing nothing else and failing to comprehend the role of negation in development. Dialectics teaches us to understand that the new must struggle with and overcome the old, that the old must give way to and be supplanted by the new—in other words, that the old must be ''negated.''

The liberal, who thinks metaphysically, understands negation simply as saying: “No.” To him negation is merely the end to something. Far from meaning advance, it means retreat; far from meaning gain, it means loss. Dialectics, on the other hand, teaches us not to be afraid of negation, but to understand how it becomes a condition of progress, a means to positive advance.

=== 10. The Negation of Negation ===

<blockquote>''The dialectical conception of development through negation is opposed to the liberal conception of development. For the liberal, negation is simply a blow which destroys something. But on the contrary, negation is the condition for positive advance, in which the old is abolished only after it has already produced the conditions for the transition to the new, and in which all the positive achievement belonging to the old stage is carried forward into the new.''

''Moreover, a stage already passed can be re-created on a higher level as a result of double negation, the negation of the negation. According to the liberal conception of development, if a given stage of development is to be raised to a higher level this must take place gradually and peacefully, without the process of negation. But on the contrary, it is only through a double negation that the higher stage can be reached.''

''The repetition of the old stage on a higher level taking place through the negation of negation is a comprehensive and important law of development, the operation of which is exemplified in many processes of nature, history and thought.''
</blockquote>
==== The Positive Character of Negation ====

“Negation in dialectics does not mean simply saying no,” wrote Engels.<ref>Engels, <cite>Anti-Dühring</cite>, Part I, Chapter XIII.</ref>

When in the process of development the old stage is negated by the new, then, in the first place, that new stage could not have come about except as arising from and in opposition to the old. The conditions for the existence of the new arose and matured within the old. The negation is a positive advance, brought about only by the development of that which is negated. The old is not simply abolished, leaving things as though it had never existed: it is abolished only after it has itself given rise to the conditions for the new stage of advance.

In the second place, the old stage, which is negated, itself constitutes a stage of advance in the forward-moving process of development as a whole. It is negated, but the advance which took place in it is not negated. On the contrary, this advance is carried forward to the new stage, which takes into itself and carries forward all the past achievement.

For example: socialism replaces capitalism—it negates it. But the conditions for the rise and victory of socialism were born of capitalism, and socialism comes into existence as the next stage of social development after capitalism. Every achievement, every advance in the forces of production, and likewise every cultural achievement, which took place under capitalism, is not destroyed when capitalism is destroyed, but, on the contrary, is preserved and carried further.

This positive content of negation is not understood by liberals, for whom negation is “simply saying no.” Moreover, they think of negation as coming only from outside, externally. Something is developing very well, and then something else comes from outside and negates it—destroys it. That is their conception. That something by its own development leads to its own negation, and thereby to a higher stage of development—lies outside their comprehension.

Thus the liberals conceive of social revolution not only as a catastrophe, as an end to ordered progress, but they believe that such a catastrophe can be brought about only by outside forces. If a revolution threatens to upset the capitalist system, that is not because of the development of the contradictions of that system itself, but is due to “agitators.”

Of course, there ''is'' negation which takes the form simply of a blow from outside which destroys something. For instance, if I am walking along the road and am knocked down by a car, I suffer negation of a purely negative sort. Such occurrences are frequent both in nature and in society. But this is not how we must understand negation if we are to understand the positive role of negation in the process of development.

At each stage in the process of development there arises the struggle of the new with the old. The new arises and grows strong within the old conditions, and when it is strong enough it overcomes and destroys the old. This is the negation of the past stage of development, of the old qualitative state; and it means the coming into being of the new and higher stage of development, the new qualitative state.

==== Negation of Negation ====

This brings us to a further dialectical feature of development— the negation of negation.

According to the liberal idea that negation “means simply saying no,” if the negation is negated, then the original position is restored once more without change. According to this idea, negation is simply a negative, a taking away. Hence if the negation, the taking away, is itself negated, that merely means putting back again what was taken away. If a thief takes my watch, and then I take it away from him, we are back where we started—I have the watch again. Similarly, if I say, “It’s going to be a fine day,” and you say, “No, it’s going to be a wet day,” to which I reply, “No, it’s not going to be a wet day,” I have simply, by negating your negation, restated my original proposition.

This is enshrined in the principle of formal logic, “not not-A equals A.” According to this principle, negation of negation is a fruitless proceeding. It just takes you back where you started.

Let us, however, consider a real process of development and the dialectical negation which takes place in it.

Society develops from primitive communism to the slave system. The next stage is feudalism. The next stage is capitalism. Each stage arises from the previous one, and negates it. So far we have simply a succession of stages, each following as the negation of the other and constituting a higher stage of development. But what comes next? Communism. Here there is a return to the beginning, but at a higher level of development. In place of primitive communism, based on extremely primitive forces of production, comes communism based on extremely advanced forces of production and containing within itself tremendous new potentialities of development. The old, primitive classless society has become the new and higher classless society. It has been raised, as it were, to a higher power, has reappeared on a higher level. But this has happened only because the old classless society was negated by the appearance of classes and the development of class society, and because finally class society, when it had gone through its whole development, was itself negated by the working class taking power, ending exploitation of man by man, and establishing a new classless society on the foundation of all the achievements of the whole previous development.

This is the negation of negation. But it does not take us back to the original starting point. It takes us forward to a new starting point, which is the original one raised, through its negation and the negation of the negation, to a higher level.

Thus we see that in the course of development, as a result of a double negation, a later stage can repeat an earlier stage, but repeat it on a higher level of development.

There is “a development that seemingly repeats the stages already passed, but repeats them otherwise (in a new way), on a higher basis… a development, so to speak, in spirals, not in a straight line.”<ref>V. I. Lenin, <cite>The Teachings of Karl Marx</cite>, N. Y., 1930.</ref>

This is a conception of development, like that of dialectical negation in general, which the liberal outlook cannot stomach. To the liberal outlook development seems to be a smooth, upward course proceeding through a series of small changes. If a given stage of development is to be raised to a higher level, then this must take place gradually and peacefully, through the “harmonious unfolding” of all the higher potentialities latent in the original stage. But on the contrary, the facts show that it is only through struggle and through negation that the higher stage is won. The development takes place not as “a harmonious unfolding” but as “a disclosure of contradictions,” in which the lower stage is negated—destroyed; in which the development which follows its negation is itself negated; and in which the higher stage is reached only as a result of that double negation.

As Hegel put it, the higher end of development is reached only through “the suffering, the patience and the labor of the negative.”<ref>Hegel, <cite>The Phenomenology of Mind</cite>, Preface.</ref>

==== A Comprehensive and Important Law of Development ====

In discussing the negation of negation we must again stress what was said earlier, namely, that the essence of dialectics is to study a process “in all its concreteness,” to work out how it actually takes place, and not to impose on it some preconceived scheme and then try to “prove” the necessity of the real process reproducing the ideal scheme. We do not say in advance that every process will exemplify the negation of negation. Still less do we use this conception to try to “prove” anything.

Referring to Marx’s demonstration of the occurrence of the negation of negation in history, Engels said:

“In characterizing the process as the negation of the negation, therefore, Marx does not dream of attempting to prove by this that the process was historically necessary. On the contrary: after he has proved from history that in fact the process has partially already occurred, and partially must occur in the future, he then also characterizes it as a process which develops in accordance with a definite historical law. That is all.”<ref>Engels, <cite>Anti-Dühring</cite>, Part I, Chapter XIII.</ref> Dialectics teaches us that we shall understand the laws of development of each particular process by studying that process itself, in its development. But when we do that, we shall discover the repetition of the old stage on a higher level taking place through the negation of negation.

“What, therefore, is the negation of the negation?” wrote Engels. “An extremely general—and for this reason extremely comprehensive and important—law of development of nature, history and thought…. It is obvious that in describing any evolutionary process as the negation of the negation I do not say anything concerning the ''particular'' process of development…. When I say that all these processes are the negation of negation, I bring them all together under this one law of motion, and for this very reason I leave out of account the peculiarities of each separate process. Dialectics is nothing more than the science of the general laws of motion and development of nature, human society and thought.”<ref><cite>Ibid.</cite></ref>

How “extremely comprehensive and important” is this law of development can be shown in numerous examples.

We have already seen how the negation of the negation occurs in history in the development from primitive communism to communism. It occurs again in the development of individual property. Marx pointed out that the pre-capitalist “individual private property founded on the labors of the proprietor” is negated—destroyed—by capitalist private property. For capitalist private property arises only on the ruin and expropriation of the pre-capitalist individual producers. The individual producer used to own his instruments of production and his product—both were taken away from him by the capitalists. But when capitalist private property is itself negated—when “the expropriators are expropriated”—then the individual property of the producers is restored once more, but in a new form, on a higher level.

“This does not re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him individual property based on the acquisitions of the capitalist era, ''i.e.'' on co-operation and the possession in common of the land and of the means of production.”<ref>Marx, <cite>Capital</cite>, Vol. I, Chapter XXXII.</ref>

The producer, as a participant in socialized production, then enjoys, as his individual property, a share of the social product— “according to his labor,” in the first stage of communist society, and “according to his needs” in the fully developed communist society.

When capitalism arose, the only way forward was through this negation of negation. Some of the British Chartists put forward in their land policy demands aimed at arresting the new capitalist process and at restoring the ''old'' private property of the producer. This was vain. The only road forward for the producers was by the struggle against capitalism and for socialism—not to restore the ''old'' individual property which capitalism had destroyed, but to destroy capitalism and so create individual property again on a ''new,'' socialist basis.

Again, in the history of thought, the “primitive, natural materialism” of the earliest philosophers is negated by philosophical idealism, and modern materialism arises as the negation of that idealism.

“This modern materialism, the negation of negation, is not the mere re-establishment of the old, but adds to the permanent foundations of this old materialism the whole thought content of two thousand years of development of philosophy and natural science.”<ref>Engels, <cite>Anti-Dühring</cite>, Part I, Chapter XIII.</ref>

The negation of negation, as Engels also pointed out, is a very familiar phenomenon to the plant breeder. If he has some seed and wants to get from it some better seed, then he has to grow the seed under definite conditions for its development—which means bringing about the negation of the seed by its growing into a plant and then controlling the conditions of development of the plant until it brings about its own negation in the production of more seed.

Some experts, it is true, have lately advocated going another and more direct way about it, namely, changing the seed directly by treating it with chemicals or X-rays. The result of this, however, is simply a number of haphazard changes in the properties of the seed, and not a controlled process of development.

“Furthermore, the whole of geology is a series of negated negations,” wrote Engels, “a series arising from the successive shattering of old and the depositing of new rock formations…. But the result of this process has been a very positive one: the creation, out of the most varied chemical elements, of a mixed and mechanically pulverized soil which makes possible the most abundant and diverse vegetation.”

“It is the same in mathematics,” he continued. If you want to raise a number ''a'' to a higher power, then this can be done by first operating on ''a'' so as to get —''-a,'' and then making the additional operation of multiplying ''2'' ''2'' ''—a'' by itself, which results in ''a'' ''.'' Thus ''a,''

the second power of ''a,'' is reached by a negation of negation. In this case it is also possible to get 2 ''a'' from ''a'' by a single process, namely, multiplying ''a'' by ''a.'' Nevertheless, as Engels pointed out, “the negated negation is so securely entrenched in ''2'' ''a'' that the latter always has two square roots, namely ''a'' and — ''a.''”<ref><cite>Ibid.</cite></ref>

The negation of negation is found in the series of chemical elements, in which properties of elements of lower atomic weight disappear and then reappear again in elements of higher atomic weight.

And the development of life itself obeys the law of negation of negation. The most primitive living organisms are comparatively speaking immortal, continuing themselves in being by continually dividing. The development of higher organisms, with sexual reproduction, was possible only at the cost of death. The organism becomes mortal. The higher development of life takes place through its negation, death.

And after that, these mortal organisms advance further. The process of the evolution of species of plants and animals begins. With the birth of man, social evolution begins, the whole process of social development from primitive communism, through its negation, class society, to the classless society of communism. Moreover, man begins to master nature. And when, with communism, he brings his own social organization under his own conscious control, then an entirely new epoch in the evolution of life opens up.

=== 11. Criticism and Self-Criticism ===

<blockquote>''Development through contradiction, the struggle between the new and the old, will continue to be the rule in the future development of communist society. But with the ending of all exploitation of man by man, this development will no longer take place through violent social conflicts and upheavals but through the rational method of criticism and self-criticism, which will become the new level of development.''

''From the whole discussion of the Marxist dialectical method the conclusion follows that Marxism is a creative science which must continually advance in application to new conditions of development. Criticism and self-criticism lies at the very heart of the Marxist dialectical method.''
</blockquote>
==== A New Type of Development ====

What, now, of the future development of society, after the stage of communism has been reached? Are we to suppose that the same dialectical laws of development will continue to operate? Or that development will cease?

Development will not cease. On the contrary, it is only with the achievement of communism that human development in the proper sense, that is to say, a development consciously planned and controlled by men themselves, really begins; all the rest was only the painful preparation for it, the birth-pangs of the human race.

When all the means of production are brought fully under planned social direction, then it may be expected that men’s mastery over nature will enormously increase, and the conquest and transformation of nature by man will in turn mean profound changes in men’s mode of life. For instance, ability to produce an absolute abundance of products with a minimum expenditure of human labor, abolition of the antithesis between town and countryside, abolition of the antithesis between manual and intellectual labor, clearly imply profound changes in social organization, in outlook, in habits, in mode of life generally. But the effecting of such changes cannot but involve, at each stage, the overcoming of forms of social organization, of outlooks and habits, belonging to the past. Development, therefore, will continue to take place through the disclosure of contradictions, the struggle between the new and the old, the future and the past. How else can we expect things to move forward? New tendencies will arise out of the existing conditions at each stage, which will come into contradiction with the existing conditions and hence lead to their passing and giving way to new conditions.

But there is no reason to expect that this development will take place, as hitherto, through violent conflicts and social upheavals.

On the contrary, with communism there will have taken place, as Engels expressed it, “humanity’s leap from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom.” And that means that the elemental conflicts characteristic of the “realm of necessity” will give place to changes controlled and planned.

“The laws of his own social activity, which have hitherto confronted him as external, dominating laws of nature, will then be applied by man with complete understanding, and hence will be dominated by man. Men’s own social organization which has hitherto stood in opposition to them as if arbitrarily decreed by nature and history, will then become the voluntary act of men themselves… men with full consciousness will fashion their own history.”<ref>Engels, <cite>Anti-Dühring</cite>, Part III, Chapter II; ''Socialism, Utopian and Scientific'', Chapter III.</ref>

When men understand the laws of their own social organization and have it under their own co-operative control, when there is no exploitation of man by man, when what is new and rising and its contradiction with the old is fully understood, then it is possible to do away with old conditions and create new conditions in a deliberate and planned way, without conflict or upheaval. Contradiction and the overcoming of the old by the new remain; but the element of antagonism and conflict as between men in society disappears and gives way to the properly human method of deciding affairs by rational discussion—criticism and self-criticism.

This mode of social development is already beginning in the Soviet Union today.

“In our Soviet society,” said A. A. Zhdanov, “where antagonistic classes have been liquidated, the struggle between the old and the new, and consequently the development from the lower to the higher, proceeds not in the form of struggle between antagonistic classes and of cataclysms, as is the case under capitalism, but in the form of criticism and self-criticism, which is the real motive force of our development, a powerful instrument in the hands of the Communist Party. This is incontestably a new aspect of movement, a new type of development, a new dialectical law.”<ref>Zhdanov, <cite>Essays on Literature, Philosophy, and Music</cite>, Chapter II.</ref>

==== Human Perspectives ====

In the first phase of the transition from socialism to communism, development takes place through continued struggle against the old heritage of capitalism.

What will happen when the last traces of old class society have been obliterated throughout the world? We can at all events predict certain initial features of the development of world communist society—associated humanity. Thus the organization of the state and of a government party will become outmoded, and state and party will disappear. This was already foreseen by Marx and Engels.

Again, Stalin has pointed out that the fullest development of national cultures and national languages, which is the task first arising from the abolition of the national oppression of capitalism, will provide the basis for an eventual universal human culture and human language. When “socialism has become part and parcel of the life of the peoples, and when practice has convinced the nations of the superiority of a common language over national languages,” then “national differences and languages will begin to die away and make room for a world language, common to all nations.”<ref>Joseph Stalin, <cite>The National Question and Leninism</cite>, N. Y., 1951.</ref>

As for the more remote future, we have no data on which to base predictions—though we can be quite sure that vast changes will take place, and that the people of the future, masters of nature and knowing no oppression of man by man, will be well able to look after the destinies of the human race.

Bernard Shaw, in his ''Back to Methuselah,'' speculated on the possibility of the span of human life being greatly extended, and eventually extended indefinitely. True, he thought this would happen through the mysterious operation of “the life force.” Yet it was a profound speculation, for such a result may well be brought about through the development of physiological knowledge and medical science. And Shaw was quite right in supposing that such a development would make a tremendous difference in the whole mode of human life and in all social institutions. This is, indeed, one of the ways in which the advance of science and of men’s mastery over nature (our own nature, in this case) could lead to developments of vast, transforming significance for human life and society.

At all events, we cannot set limits to the powers of human achievement. And bearing this in mind, we may well believe that our descendants a few hundred generations hence will in their manner of life resemble us far less than we resemble our own ancestors among the primitive savages.

==== Creative Marxism ====

With this, we may try to sum up the main conclusions about dialectics.

Dialectics is concerned with interconnection, change and development. Understood in the materialist way, dialectics is “the science of the general laws of motion and development of nature, human society and thought.”

The dialectical method is the method of approach by the application of which we advance our materialist understanding of nature and history, and all particular processes of nature and history. It is a ''method''—not a general formula, and not an abstract philosophical system. It guides us in understanding things so as to change them.

Such being the nature of dialectics and of the dialectical method, it should be clear that the science of dialectics itself grows and develops, and that the method is enhanced and enriched with each further application. Every new social development and every new advance of the sciences and the arts provides the basis for enriching and extending the understanding of dialectics and of the dialectical method. We cannot understand and master new material simply by repeating what has already been learned, but on the contrary, we learn more, and extend, correct and enrich our ideas in the light of new problems and new experiences.

Thus Marxism is a developing, progressive science.

“There is dogmatic Marxism and creative Marxism. I stand by the latter,” said Stalin.<ref>See <cite>History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union</cite>, Chapter VII, Section 4, N. Y., 1939.</ref>

Creative Marxism:

“Concentrates its attention upon… the path and means of realizing Marxism for various situations, changing the path and means when the situation changes…. It takes its directives and guiding lines not from historical analogies and parallels, but from the study of surrounding conditions. In its activities it relies, not on quotations and aphorisms but on practical experience, testing every step it takes by experience, learning from its mistakes and teaching others to build a new life.”<ref>Joseph Stalin, <cite>Lenin</cite>, “Lenin as Organizer and Leader of the Communist Party,” N. Y., 1934.</ref>

“Mastering the Marxist-Leninist theory means assimilating ''the substance'' of this theory and learning to use it in the solution of the practical problems of the revolutionary movement under the varying conditions of the class struggle of the proletariat.

“Mastering the Marxist-Leninist theory means being able to enrich this theory with the new experience of the revolutionary movement, with new propositions and conclusions, it means being able ''to develop it and advance it'' without hesitating to replace—in accordance with the substance of the theory—such of its propositions and conclusions as have become antiquated by the new ones corresponding to the new historical situation.”<ref><cite>History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union</cite>, Conclusion.</ref>

Creative Marxism is the very opposite of revisionism. This must be stressed, because revisionism usually begins by announcing that Marxism “must not become a dogma.” Revisionism means going backward from Marxism: in the name of opposing dogmas, it abandons Marxism in favor of the dogmas of bourgeois theory. Creative Marxism preserves and cherishes the substance of the Marxist materialist theory. Thus Stalin said of Lenin:

“Lenin was, and remains, the most loyal and consistent pupil of Marx and Engels, and he wholly and entirely based himself on the principles of Marxism. But Lenin did not merely carry out the doctrines of Marx and Engels. He was also the continuator of these doctrines…. He developed the doctrines of Marx and Engels still further in application to the new conditions of development.”<ref>Stalin, <cite>Interview with the First American Labor Delegation</cite>, 1927.</ref>

==== Criticism and Self-Criticism, a Lever of Progress ====

In order, then, to master the method of Marxism-Leninism, the method of dialectics, we must use it and develop it in use. And this demands criticism and self-criticism in all spheres of theoretical and practical activity.

Criticism and self-criticism, which belongs at the very heart of the Marxist dialectical method, means that theory and practice must always be matched up one with the other. Theory must not be allowed to lag behind practice; theory must keep not only level with practice but in advance of it, so as to serve as a true and reliable guide. Practice must not be allowed to grope in the dark without the light of theory, nor to be distorted by wrong and antiquated theory. And this matching up of theory and practice can only be achieved by constant alertness, by constant readiness to criticize and to learn, by continuous check-up of ideas and actions both from above and from below, by readiness to recognize what is new and to correct or cast aside what is old and no longer applicable, by frank recognition of mistakes. Mistakes are inevitable. But by the check up which recognizes mistakes in time, by examining critically the roots of those mistakes and correcting them, by learning from mistakes, we advance to new successes.

“A party is invincible,” wrote Stalin, “if it does not fear criticism and self-criticism, if it does not gloss over the mistakes and defects in its work, if it teaches and educates its cadres by drawing the lessons from the mistakes in party work, and if it knows how to correct its mistakes in time.”<ref><cite>History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union</cite>, Conclusion.</ref>

Mistakes are seldom mere accidental errors of judgment. Most often mistakes arise because we cling to old habits and old formulations which have become antiquated and inapplicable to new conditions and new tasks. When this happens, and when, as a result, things do not turn out as anticipated, then, if we are ready critically to examine what has gone wrong, we learn something new and grow in strength, stature and experience.

“We are advancing in the process of struggle, in the process of the development of contradictions, in the process of overcoming these contradictions, in the process of bringing these contradictions to light and liquidating them,” said Stalin.

“Something in life is always dying. But that which is dying refuses to die quietly; it fights for its existence, defends its moribund cause.

“Something new in life is always being born. But that which is being born does not come into the world quietly; it comes in squealing and screaming, defending its right to existence.

“The struggle between the old and the new, between the dying and the nascent—such is the foundation of development. By failing openly and honestly, as befits Bolsheviks, to point to, to bring to light, the defects and mistakes in our work, we close our road to progress. But we want to go forward. And precisely because we want to go forward, we must make honest and revolutionary self-criticism of our most important tasks. Without this there is no progress. Without this there is no development.”<ref>Joseph Stalin, <cite>Report to Fifteenth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union</cite>.</ref>

=== 12. Dialectical Materialism and Science ===

<blockquote>''Dialectical materialism is a scientific world outlook. Its scientific character is manifested especially in that it turns socialism into a science and, by developing the science of society, shows how the whole of science can be developed in the service of mankind. In general, dialectical materialism is a scientific world outlook in that it does not seek to establish any philosophy “above science” but bases its conception of the world on the discoveries of the sciences.''

''The entire advance of the sciences is an advance of materialism against idealism; and further, science shows that our materialist conception of the world must be dialectical. Such great past discoveries as the law of the transformation of energy, the Darwinian theory of evolution and the theory of the cell have demonstrated the dialectic of nature.''

''Nevertheless science in the capitalist world has entered into a state of crisis, due primarily to (1) the subjugation of scientific research to the capitalist monopolies and to military purposes, and (2) the conflict between new discoveries and old idealist and metaphysical ideas. Dialectical materialism is not only a generalization of the achievements of science, but a weapon for the self-criticism and for the advancement of science.''
</blockquote>
==== A Scientific World Outlook ====

Dialectical materialism, the world outlook of the Marxist-Leninist party, is a truly scientific world outlook. For it is based on considering things as they are, without arbitrary, preconceived assumptions (idealist fantasies); it insists that our conceptions of things must be based on actual investigation and experience, and must be constantly tested and re-tested in the light of practice and further experience.

Indeed, “dialectical materialism” means: understanding things just as they are (“materialism”), in their actual interconnection and movement (“dialectics”).

The same cannot be said about other philosophies. They all make arbitrary assumptions of one kind or another, and try to erect a “system” on the basis of those assumptions. But such assumptions are arbitrary only in appearance; in fact they express the various prejudices and illusions of definite classes.

The scientific character of Marxism is manifested especially in this, that it makes ''socialism'' into a ''science.''

We do not base our socialism, as the utopians did, on a conception of abstract human nature. The utopians worked out schemes for an ideal society, but could not show how to achieve socialism in practice. Marxism made socialism into a science by basing it on an analysis of the actual movement of history, of the economic law of motion of capitalist society in particular, thus showing how socialism arises as the necessary next stage in the evolution of society, and how it can come about only by the waging of the working-class struggle, through the defeat of the capitalist class and the institution of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Thus Marxism treats man himself, society and history, scientifically.

“Socialism, having become a science, demands the same treatment as every other science—it must be studied. The task of the leaders will be to bring understanding, thus acquired and clarified, to the working masses, to spread it with increased enthusiasm, to close the ranks of the party organizations and of the labor unions with even greater energy.”<ref>Frederick Engels, <cite>Peasant War in Germany</cite>, Preface to second edition, N. Y., 1926.</ref>

Scientific study of society shows that human history develops from stage to stage according to definite laws. Men themselves are the active force in this development. By understanding the laws of development of society, therefore, we can guide our own struggles and create our own socialist future.

Thus scientific socialism is the greatest and most important of all the sciences.

The practitioners of the natural sciences are now getting worried because they feel that governments do not know how to put their discoveries to proper use. They have good cause to worry about this. Science is discovering the secrets of atomic energy, for example; but its discoveries are being used to create weapons of destruction. Many people are even coming to believe that it would be better if we had no science, since its discoveries open up such terrifying possibilities of disaster.

How can we insure that the discoveries of science are put to proper use for the benefit of mankind? It is scientific socialism, Marxism-Leninism, alone which answers this problem. It teaches us what are the forces which make history and thereby shows us how we can make our own history today, change society and determine our own future. It teaches us, therefore, how to develop the sciences in the service of mankind, how to carry them forward in today’s crisis. Physics can teach us how to release atomic energy, it cannot teach us how to control the social use of that energy. For this there is required, not the science of the atom, but the science of society.

==== Science and Materialism ====

Dialectical materialism is in no sense a philosophy “above science.”

Others have set philosophy “above science,” in the sense that they have thought they could discover what the world was like just by thinking about it, without relying on the data of the sciences, on practice and experience. And then, from this lofty standpoint, they have tried to dictate to the scientists, to tell them where they were wrong, what their discoveries “really meant,” and so on.

But Marxism makes an end of the old philosophy which claimed to stand above science and to explain “the world as a whole.”

“Modern materialism… no longer needs any philosophy standing above the sciences,” wrote Engels. “As soon as each separate science is required to get clarity as to its position in the great totality of things and of our knowledge of things a special science dealing with this totality is superfluous.”<ref>Engels, <cite>Anti-Dühring</cite>, Introduction, I.</ref>

Dialectical materialism, he further wrote:

“Is in fact no longer a philosophy, but a simple world outlook which has to establish its validity and be applied not in a science of sciences standing apart, but within the positive sciences…. Philosophy is therefore… ‘both overcome and preserved’; overcome as regards its form, and preserved as regards its real content.”<ref><cite>Ibid.</cite>, Part I, Chapter XIII.</ref>

Our picture of the world about us, of nature, of natural objects and processes, their interconnections and laws of motion, is not to be derived from philosophical speculation, but from the investigations of the natural sciences.

The scientific picture of the world and its development is not complete, and never will be. But it has advanced far enough for us to realize that philosophical speculation is superfluous. And we refuse to fill in gaps in scientific knowledge by speculation.

For instance, we do know that life is the mode of existence of certain types of organic bodies—proteins; but we do not yet know exactly how such bodies, how life, originated. It is no use speculating about this; we will have to find out, the hard way, by intensive scientific investigation. Only so will we come to understand “the mystery of life.” Thus:

“Science is already able to control life, can control living and dead protein. But science cannot yet say definitely what protein is, what life is, as to the derivation of it. Why? Engels in his day put it excellently when he said that ‘in order to gain an exhaustive knowledge of what life is, we should have to go through all the forms in which it appears, from the lowest to the highest.’ Consequently, in order to understand and learn what protein is, it is also necessary to go through all the forms of manifestation, from the lowest to the highest. And for this we need ''experiment, experiment and again experiment''.”<ref>T. D. Lysenko and others, <cite>The Situation in Biological Science</cite>, Speech of S. G. Petrov, August 2, 1948, N. Y., 1949. The quotation from Engels is from ''Anti-Dühring'', Part I, Chapter VIII.</ref>

The growing picture of the world which natural science unfolds is a materialist picture—despite the many efforts of bourgeois philosophers to make out the contrary. For step by step as science advances it shows how the rich variety of things and processes and changes to be found in the real world can be explained and understood in terms of material causes, without bringing in God or spirit or any supernatural agency.

Every advance of science is an advance of materialism against idealism, a conquest for materialism—although when driven out of one position idealism has always taken up another position and manifested itself again in new forms, so that in the past the sciences have never been consistently materialist.

For every advance of science means showing the order and development of the material world “from the material world itself.”

==== Science and Dialectics ====

As science has advanced, not only has this materialist picture of the world become less shadowy, more definite and more convincing, but Engels pointed out: “With each epoch-making discovery even in the sphere of natural science materialism has to change its form.”<ref>Engels, <cite>Ludwig Feuerbach</cite>, Chapter II.</ref>

The discoveries of the natural sciences over the past hundred years or more have this significance—that the materialist picture which they unfold is a dialectical one.

Thus Engels wrote:

“The revolution which is being forced on theoretical natural science by the mere need to set in order the purely empirical discoveries… is of such a kind that it must bring the dialectical character of natural events more and more to the consciousness even of those… who are most opposed to it.”<ref>Engels, <cite>Anti-Dühring</cite>, Preface.</ref>

“Nature is the test of dialectics, and it must be said for modern natural science that it has furnished extremely rich and daily increasing materials for this test, and has thus proved that in the last analysis nature’s process is dialectical.”<ref><cite>Ibid.</cite>, Introduction.</ref>

Three great discoveries of science in the nineteenth century above all contributed to this result, Engels pointed out.<ref>Engels, <cite>Ludwig Feuerbach</cite>, Chapter IV.</ref> These were:

The discovery that the cell is the unit from whose multiplication and division the whole plant or animal body develops (announced by Schwann in 1839).

The law of the transformation of energy (announced by Mayer in 1845).

The Darwinian theory of evolution (announced in 1859).

Let us briefly consider the dialectical significance of these discoveries.

First, the transformation of energy.

It used to be thought that heat, for example, was a “substance,” which passed in and out of bodies; and that electricity, magnetism and so on were separate “forces,” acting on bodies. In this way different types of physical processes were considered each separate from the other, in isolation. Each was placed in a separate compartment as the manifestation of a separate “substance” or “force” and their essential interconnection wan not understood.

But science in the nineteenth century, with the principle of the conservation and transformation of energy, discovered that: “mechanical force… heat, radiation (light or radiant heat), electricity, magnetism and chemical energy are different forum of manifestation of universal motion, which pass into one another in definite proportions so that in place of a certain quantity of one which disappears a certain quantity of another makes its appearance, and thus the whole motion of nature is reduced to this incessant process of transformation from one form into another.”<ref><cite>Ibid.</cite></ref>

The clue to this discovery was not found in any abstract philosophy, by any process of pure thought. No, it was closely related to the development of steam engines and to the working out of their principles of operation.

In a steam engine the burning of coal releases heat energy, which heats up steam, which is then forced through a cylinder where it drives the piston forward and turns the wheels of the engine. Heat is transformed into mechanical motion.

Where did the energy released from the coal come from? We now know that it came from the sun’s radiations, was stored up in the plants which formed the coal seams, and was finally released when the coal was burned. A lot of it came from the solar atoms in the process of building heavier elements from hydrogen in the interior of the sun.

This discovery was first formulated as a conservation law— energy cannot be created or destroyed, the quantity which disappears in one form reappears in another form. But it is fundamentally, as Engels pointed out, a transformation law—one form of motion of matter is transformed into another.

Thus physics becomes a science of transformations—no longer studying the different types of physical processes, or forms of motion, each in isolation, but studying their interconnections and how one is transformed into another.

(Transformation laws are laws of motion and interconnection, concerning the interconnection of the forms of motion of matter and their passage one into the other; they are not laws of the transformation of quantity into quality. Knowledge of the transformation laws is essential for understanding the passage from quantity to quality in particular cases. For example, knowledge of the laws of the transformation of heat into mechanical motion will show how much heat energy must be released before enough steam-pressure is generated to drive the piston.)

The Darwinian theory of evolution is in the same way dialectical and materialist.

In place of separate species, each created by God, Darwin showed us a picture of the evolutionary development of species by means of natural selection. The sharp divisions were broken down, it was shown how species are inter-related and how living nature is transformed. For instance, the swimming-bladder of the fish becomes the lung of the land animal, the scales of the reptile become the feathers of the bird, and so on.

Closely related to this was the development of geology, which also became an evolutionary science, studying the evolution of the earth’s crust.

Lastly, the discovery that the cell was the unit from whose multiplication and division the whole plant or animal body developed replaced the older conception of the body as made up of separate tissues. The cell theory was also a theory of motion and interconnection, showing how all the tissues and organs arose by differentiation.

Thus we see how natural science, step by step, unfolds a picture of nature’s dialectic.

When we say “a picture,” we must add that it is a picture in the sense that, so far as it goes, it is a faithful image. But we did not make it by just observing nature and writing down what we observed, nor does it serve as something which we merely admire, an object of contemplation and intellectual enjoyment.

It is sometimes said that the essential feature of science is that it is based on observations. Of course, science is based on observations; but this is not its most essential feature. The basis of science is not mere observation, but experiment. Science is based on an activity of interfering with nature, changing it—and we learn about things, not just by observing them, but by changing them.

Thus science would never have found out the secrets of the transformation of heat into mechanical motion solely by observing nature. They were found out as a result of building steam engines; we learned the secrets of the process in proportion as we ourselves learned how to reproduce that process.

Nor could Darwin have written ''The Origin of Species'' on the sole basis of the observations he made on the voyage of the ''Beagle.'' He made use of the practical experience and results of English animal breeders and plant breeders.

The scientific picture is based, not just on observing things, but on changing them.

And we test it, develop it and use it also in changing nature. Science is not a dogma, but a guide to action. On the other hand, if it becomes divorced from practice, it degenerates into a dogma.

Natural science, then, proves that nature’s process is dialectical, and gives us an ever more concrete, detailed picture of the real dialectical motion and interconnection in nature.

==== The Crisis of Science in the Capitalist World ====

But, while pointing this out, Engels also pointed to the very great confusion which exists in the sciences.

“The scientists who have learned to think dialectically are still few and far between, and hence the conflict between the discoveries made and the old traditional mode of thought is the explanation of the boundless confusion which now reigns in theoretical natural science and reduces both teachers and students, writers and readers to despair.”<ref>Engels, <cite>Anti-Dühring</cite>, Introduction.</ref>

This confusion has become very much worse today. In fact, as the general crisis of capitalism has developed and become more acute, so has the confusion in scientific theory and the distortion of scientific practice developed and increased with it.

Science which by its discoveries lays bare the true dialectics of nature is nevertheless in a state of crisis in the capitalist world.

What is the nature of this crisis? It has a double nature.

In the first place, science is an activity of research and discovery. In capitalist society it has grown enormously, along with the other forces of production. Scientific research can no longer be carried out by individuals on their own: it requires great institutes, vast equipment, elaborate organization, big financial expenditure.

But the more scientific research expands and the greater these requirements become, the more it falls under the control of the monopolies and of their governments, and particularly of the military.

Science has to contribute to profits and to war. Such science as does not so contribute is increasingly starved of the resources necessary to carry on.

“For example, the whole important field of plant physiology remains relatively undeveloped. This is, to put it crudely, because there is no money in it. The state of agriculture under capitalism is such that the conditions are not created for fundamental researches in this field…. It is interesting to note, too, that while some fields of science are neglected because there is no money in them, others suffer because there is too much. Thus geo-chemistry is hampered, for instance, because the very powerful oil interests impose conditions of secrecy on such researches. Science is called upon to answer just those particular problems in which the capitalist monopolies are interested, which is by no means the same as answering the problems which are bound up with the further development of science and with the interests of the people. This warps the whole development of science.”<ref>J. D. Bernal and Maurice Cornforth, <cite>Science for Peace and Socialism</cite>, London, 1948.</ref>

Thus science becomes more and more commercialized—and militarized. And as a result science is more and more disorganized and distorted. This is what is happening to science in the capitalist world. Science can contribute mightily, not only to giving us knowledge, but through that knowledge to human welfare, to developing our powers of production, to conquering disease. Yet it is not being developed as it could be toward these ends.

How can the disorganization and distortion of science be overcome?

We can and must resist the misuse of science here and now. But only the advance to socialism can ensure the full development and use of science in the service of mankind. Just as socialism means that the development of all the forces of production can be planned and organized in the service of man, not for profit and war, so it means the same for science in particular.

The second aspect is that of theory—the crisis of scientific ideas.

How does this arise?

The primary role of science is to discover the interconnections and laws operating in the world, so as to equip men with the knowledge necessary to improve their production and live better and more fully.

But to develop research and formulate discovery, ideas are necessary. To work out and guide the strategy of advance of science, theory is necessary.

And in this sphere of ideas and theory, the great achievements of science in capitalist society come into collision with the traditional forms of bourgeois ideology.

As Engels stated, there develops “the conflict between the discoveries made and the old traditional modes of thought.”

In two words, the ''idealism'' and the ''metaphysics'' characteristic of and ingrained in bourgeois ideology have penetrated deeply into the ideas and theories of the sciences.

Thanks to the way in which, in field after field, scientific discovery reveals the real dialectic of nature, it follows that, as Engels put it, the further development of scientific discovery demands “the dialectical synthesis.”<ref>Engels, <cite>Anti-Dühring</cite>, Preface.</ref> But this would carry theory far beyond the limits imposed on it by the bourgeois outlook.

==== The New Against the Old in Science ====

So it is that we find that in field after field bourgeois science turns back from its own achievements, gives up vantage grounds won, and instead of going forward suffers a theoretical collapse. Here, indeed, is a case of the struggle of the new against the old—of advancing scientific discovery against the old ideas in terms of which scientific theory is formulated. Understanding it thus, we can be quite sure that the retrogressive trend will be but temporary, and that the advance of science will break through the barriers of old ideas and outworn dogmas.

In biology, it was the fate of the Darwinian theory to have a dogma imposed on it—the theory of the gene. The same thing happened to the cell theory, with Virchow’s dogma that the cell comes only from the cell. In each case a dialectical theory of development had imposed on it a metaphysical dogma which denied development.

In physics, the great discoveries about the electron, the atomic nucleus, the quantum of action—about physical transformations— were interpreted, and not by idealist philosophers alone but by theoretical physicists, as meaning that matter had disappeared and that the limits of investigation had been reached. In the allied science of cosmology, scientists, having found out so much about the universe and its development, began to have recourse to ideas of creation.

In all these cases, a dogma is imposed upon science, strangling its further development. Hence the crisis.

The “crime” of Soviet science is that it is successfully challenging and removing such dogmas.

In the Soviet Union scientists have followed Stalin’s wise advice, when he called for the progress of:

“Science whose devotees, while understanding the power and significance of the established scientific traditions and ably utilizing them in the interests of science, are nevertheless not willing to be slaves of these traditions; the science which has the courage and determination to smash the old traditions, standards and views when they become antiquated and begin to act as a fetter on progress, and which is able to create new traditions, new standards and new views.”<ref>Joseph Stalin, Speech to Higher Educational Workers, delivered in 1938.</ref>

== Conclusions ==

We have now briefly surveyed the principal features of the Marxist materialist conception of the world and of the Marxist dialectical method. What conclusions can we draw at this stage?

(1) The world outlook of dialectical materialism is a consistent and reasoned outlook, which derives its strength from the fact that it arises directly from the attempt to solve the outstanding problems of our time.

The epoch of capitalism is an epoch of stormy development in society. It is marked by revolutionary advances of the forces of production and of scientific discovery, and by consequent uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions. This sets one theoretical task above all, and that is to arrive at an adequate conception of the laws of change and development in nature and society.

To this theoretical task dialectical materialism addresses itself.

(2) This is not the task of working out a philosophical system, in the old sense. What is required is not any system of ideas spun out of the heads of philosophers, which we can then admire and contemplate as a system of “absolute truth.”

Capitalist society is a society rent with contradictions, and the more it has developed, the more menacing and intolerable for the working people have the consequences of these contradictions become. The new powers of production are not utilized for the benefit of society as a whole but for the profit of an exploiting minority. Instead of leading to universal plenty, the growth of the powers of production leads to recurrent economic crises, to unemployment, to poverty and to hideously destructive wars.

Therefore the philosophical problem of arriving at a true conception of the laws of change and development in nature and society becomes, for the working people, a practical political problem of finding how to change society, so that the vast new forces of production can be used in the service of humanity. For the first time in history the possibility of a full and rich life for everyone exists. The task is to find how to make that possibility a reality.

It is to the solution of this practical task that the theory of dialectical materialism is devoted.

(3) Addressing itself to this task, dialectical materialism is and can only be a partisan philosophy, the philosophy of a party, namely, of the party of the working class, whose object is to lead the millions of working people to the socialist revolution and the building of communist society.

(4) Dialectical materialism cannot but stand out in sharp contrast to the various contemporary schools of bourgeois philosophy.

What have these various schools of philosophy to offer at the present time? Systems and arguments by the bucketful—none of them either original or cogent, if one takes the trouble to analyze them closely. But no solution to the problems pressing upon the people of the capitalist countries and the colonies. How to end poverty? How to end war? How to utilize production for the benefit of all? How to end the oppression of one nation by another? How to end the exploitation of man by man? How to establish the brotherhood of men? These are our problems. We must judge philosophies by whether or not they show how to solve them. By that criterion, the philosophical schools of capitalism must one and all be judged—“weighed in the balance and found wanting.”

The prevailing bourgeois philosophies, with all their differences, have in common a retreat from the great positive ideas which inspired progressive movements in the past. They emphasize men’s helplessness and limitations; they speak of a mysterious universe; and they counsel either trust in God or else hopeless resignation to fate or blind chance. Why is this? It is because all these philosophies are rooted in acceptance of capitalism and cannot see beyond capitalism. From start to finish they reflect the insoluble crisis of the capitalist world. And their function is to help entangle the people “in a web of lies.”

(5) Dialectical materialism asks to be judged and will be judged by whether it serves as an effective instrument to show the way out of capitalist crisis and war, to show the way for the working people to win and wield political power, to show the way to build a socialist society in which there is no more exploitation of man by man and in which men win increasing mastery over nature.

Dialectical materialism is a philosophy of practice, indissolubly united with the practice of the struggle for socialism.

It is the philosophy born out of the great movement of our times—the movement of the people who labor, who “create all the good things of life and feed and clothe the world,” to rise at last to their full stature. It is wholly, entirely dedicated to the service of that movement. This is the source of all its teachings, and in that service its conclusions are continually tried, tested and developed. Without such a philosophy, the movement cannot achieve consciousness of itself and of its tasks, cannot achieve unity, cannot win its battles.

Since the greatest task facing us is that of ending capitalist society and building socialism, it follows that the chief problem to which dialectical materialism addresses itself, and on the solution of which the whole philosophy of dialectical materialism turns, is the problem of understanding the forces of development of society. The chief problem is to reach such an understanding of society, of men’s social activity and of the development of human consciousness, as will show us how to achieve and build the new socialist society and the new socialist consciousness. The materialist conception and dialectical method with which we have been concerned in this volume are applied to this task in the materialist conception of history and in the Marxist-Leninist theory of knowledge. These will form the subject matter of the second volume.

== Bibliography ==

We mention here only works by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin in which the general underlying principles of dialectical materialism are expounded and developed.

The best general introduction is contained in Engels’ <cite>Socialism, Utopian and Scientific</cite> and in Stalin’s <cite>Anarchism or Socialism?</cite> After these it is necessary to study the <cite>Communist Manifesto</cite>, by Marx and Engels.

It is advisable to become acquainted with these three works before studying the two short books in which the basic ideas of dialectical materialism are brought together and summarized—Lenin’s <cite>The Teachings of Karl Marx</cite> and Stalin’s <cite>Dialectical and Historical Materialism.</cite> The latter is of absolutely fundamental importance for the student, containing as it does a systematic exposition of the principal features of the Marxist dialectical method, Marxist philosophical materialism and the Marxist science of history, generalizing the conclusions of the whole experience of the application and development of Marxist theory in the course of the working-class struggle for socialism.

The place occupied by dialectical materialism in the whole theory and practice of Marxism is dealt with in Lenin’s “The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism,” in connection with which should also be read his “Marxism and Revisionism” (both in Lenin, <cite>Selected Works</cite>, Vol. 11).

The creative, developing character of Marxism, and the role of history in the working-class movement are dealt with in the “Conclusion” of Stalin’s <cite>History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union</cite>.

The essential difference between materialism and idealism, between dialectical and mechanistic materialism, and between the Marxist and Hegelian dialectics is to be found in Engels’ <cite>Ludwig Feuerbach</cite>, with its appendix, Marx’s “Eleven Theses on Feuerbach.”

Along with this we may draw attention to Engels’ “Introduction” to <cite>Dialectics of Nature</cite>, and to Lenin’s “The Attitude of the Workers’ Party toward Religion” (<cite>Selected Works</cite>, Vol. 11).

Of fundamental importance then are three longer and more difficult works: Engels’ <cite>Anti-Dühring</cite>, especially Part I; Engels’ <cite>Dialectics of Nature</cite>; Lenin’s <cite>Materialism and Empirio-Criticism</cite>.

A part of Lenin’s <cite>Philosophical Notebooks</cite> is translated into English under the title “On Dialectics”; and he deals with the fight for materialism in “On the Significance of Militant Materialism” (both in <cite>Selected Works</cite>, Vol. 11). Important statements summarizing the essentials of the dialectical method are contained in Lenin’s “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back,” Section R, “Something About Dialectics” (<cite>Selected Works</cite>, Vol. 2), and “Once Again on the Trade Unions,” section on “Dialectics and Eclecticism” (<cite>Selected Works</cite>, Vol. 9). See also Lenin’s “What the ‘Friends of the People’ Are and How They Fight for the Social Democrats” (<cite>Selected Works</cite>, Vol. 11), which is concerned mainly with historical materialism, the subject of the next volume.

<references />

Library:Dialectical Materialism: The Theoretical Foundation of Marxism-Leninism

2025-12-07T02:47:38Z

ComradeEd: Import notes and cleanup pandoc leftovers

{{Library work|title=Dialectical Materialism|author=Vladimir Adoratsky|published_date=1934|source=https://comlib.encryptionin.space/epubs/adoratsky/|pdf=https://redstarpublishers.org/adoratsky.pdf}}

== MARXISM AS THE THEORY AND TACTICS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE OF THE PROLETARIAT ==

Lenin defined Marxism as the revolutionary theory and tactics of the revolutionary class struggle of the proletariat.

The task of the proletariat is “to take a conscious part in the historical process of the transformation of society that is going on under our eyes.”<ref>Karl Marx, <cite>Herr Vogt</cite>, 1860.</ref>

Because of the position it occupies in production and society the proletariat must act as the leader and organiser of all the oppressed and exploited in the struggle for communism. In 1846 Marx wrote:

<blockquote>We do not regard communism as a ''state of affairs'' that has to be brought about; nor as an ideal to which reality must conform. By communism we mean an ''actual'' movement that will sweep away the present state of affairs. The conditions for that movement arise out of already existing premises.<ref group="1.">All quotations are taken from English editions unless otherwise indicated in the reference notes at the back of this book.—''Ed''.</ref>
</blockquote>
By these postulates Marx meant: the growth of the working class (both in numbers and in class consciousness), large-scale industry and socialised production developed by capitalism.

<blockquote>The development of the productive forces of social labour is the historical task and privilege of capital. It is precisely in this way that it unconsciously creates the material requirements of a higher mode of production.<ref>Marx, <cite>Capital</cite>, Vol. III, p. 304, Kerr edition, Chicago.</ref>
</blockquote>
But private property in the means of production—which is the very foundation of capitalism—hampers and fetters the further development of the productive forces. The proletariat alone can break those fetters; after it has established its dictatorship the proletariat must smash the machinery of the bourgeois state; it must defend its own state power in civil war and crush the opposition of the bourgeoisie; it must take over large-scale industry and transform the means of production into social property, in order to reshape production on socialist lines, and, on the ruins of capitalism and using the material left over from capitalism, give the widest possible development to socialist production with all possible speed. The proletariat assumes the leadership of the non-proletarian sections of society that are oppressed and exploited by capitalism. Under the guidance of the industrial proletariat, and with the help of its dictatorship, a complete transformation of production takes place and the small producers are turned into members of a socialist society. The proletariat thereby creates a new material basis for human relationships. By means of the class struggle, and with the help of its dictatorship, it abolishes classes and achieves a classless society. Such is the historical mission of the proletariat throughout the whole world.<ref>''Cf.'' V. I. Lenin, <cite>State and Revolution</cite> (International Publishers).</ref>

Revolutionary theory, ''i.e.'', scientific deductions and generalisations based on the experience of revolution and of the working class movement in all countries, is of vital importance to the revolutionary struggle of the working class at the present time. “Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement,” Lenin said. The foundations of this theory were laid down by Marx and Engels and further developed by Lenin. During the course of several decades the proletariat has had the opportunity to test this theory by their own experience in the class struggle. This theory has played, and continues to play, a tremendous part in the struggle of the working class. For instance, in Russia, we could neither have seized, nor retained power, nor could we have correctly tackled the problems of building up socialism, were it not for the firm hand and consistent leadership of the Communist Party, based on the revolutionary theory of Marxism, and were it not for the fact that the working class realised that this leadership was the right one. If the working class is guided in its struggles by the theory of Marxism and Leninism, it will defeat the bourgeoisie all over the world.

Marxism provides no ready-made recipes, that can be applied uniformly in any and every circumstance without further reflection. The Marxian theory “is not a dogma, but a guide to action.” It gives the general line as to how the fight of the working class should be conducted. Having studied all the social phenomena of the time, having himself led the working-class movement, Marx made certain deductions, indicated the general trend of development and pointed out what must be the inevitable course of future events. He showed that the revolutionary transformation of capitalist society into a communist society was inevitable, that the proletariat would take the leading part in this transformation, that a transition period from capitalism to communism was unavoidable and that the form of state during that transition period would be the dictatorship of the proletariat. But Marx, of course, could not forecast, and never attempted to forecast, the detailed events of the progress of the world revolution. Marx thought that in order to decide what should be done at a given historical moment, in a given country and under given conditions, one must carefully study (with the help of the method of scientific communism) all the specific features of the given situation (which is constantly changing) and the situation existing not only within the given country itself, but in all the other countries of the world. Marxism considers that only by such a study can the

<blockquote>...thinking representatives of the given class [acquire] the necessary knowledge, the necessary experience—and, apart from all knowledge and experience—the necessary political instinct for the quick and correct solution of intricate political problems.<ref>Lenin, <cite>“Left-Wing” Communism, an Infantile Disorder</cite> (International Publishers).</ref>
</blockquote>
Marxism draws its ideas from the actual struggle of the masses. The Marxian theory is worked out in close conjunction with the mass revolutionary movement. It is not based on ideas “invented or discovered by this or that would-be universal reformer” but represents “...merely... in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes.”<ref><cite>The Manifesto of the Communist Party</cite> (International Publishers), p. 23.</ref>

The theory of Marxism helps the proletariat to understand “the conditions and nature of its own actions.”<ref>Frederick Engels, <cite>Herr Eugene Dühring’s Revolution in Science</cite> [''Anti-Dühring''] (International Publishers).</ref>

The duty of the proletarian theoretician is not to create socialist plans out of his own head; his duty is to discover the conditions for emancipation from exploitation that are created in the very process of social and economic development; he must find in the very progress of events the path that leads to the solution of the problems of the exploited masses; he must help the latter in their fight for communism and guide them in the struggle, so that society based on exploitation may be destroyed as rapidly as possible and with the least sacrifice on the part of the proletariat and the toiling classes in general. As we have said, owing to the position it occupies in production and society, the proletariat can, and must, take upon itself the duty of organising a communist society. The theory of Marxism should help the proletariat in the task of exterminating all forms of exploitation as rapidly and as easily as possible. General postulates are not enough, precise solutions of the daily problems of the political struggle and the building up of socialism are required. That implies a scientific leadership and foresight based on the study of the actual state of affairs, using for this purpose the Marxist-Leninist theory. As Comrade Stalin said:

<blockquote>Theory... alone, can give to the movement confidence, guidance, strength and understanding of the inner relations between events; it alone can help practice to clarify the process and direction of class movements in the present and near future.<ref>J. Stalin, <cite>Foundations of Leninism</cite>, p. 27 (International Publishers).</ref>
</blockquote>
In the article “Our Immediate Task,” written in 1899, Lenin pointed out that the duty of a revolutionary party

<blockquote>does not consist merely in serving the working class movement; its duty is to ''link up socialism with the working class movement''... to introduce definite socialist ideals into the spontaneous movement, to link it up with socialist convictions consistent with the level of modern science, and connect it with the systematic political struggle for democracy [this was written six years before the Revolution of 1905, ''V.A.''], as a means for the realisation of socialism—in a word, to fuse this spontaneous movement with the activities of the ''revolutionary party'', into a single indivisible whole. The history of socialism and democracy in Western Europe, the history of the revolutionary movement in Russia, and the experience of our working class movement—such is the ''material'' that must be studied and mastered in order to work out the correct forms of organisation and the correct tactics of our party.<ref>Lenin, <cite>Collected Works</cite>, Vol. II, pp. 496-497, Russian edition.</ref>
</blockquote>
In the same article Lenin says that ready-made formulas must not be automatically applied to new and specific conditions:

<blockquote>The material must be analysed... independently, for we shall not find ready-made samples.<ref><cite>Ibid.</cite>, p. 497.</ref>
</blockquote>
Lenin points out that “the conditions of the Russian working-class movement are entirely different from those of the Western European movement.”

Nor could the earlier revolutionary parties in Russia be taken as examples in every respect. While recognising “the necessity of learning revolutionary and conspirative technique from the old Russian leaders,” Lenin pointed out, that “by no means relieves us of the duty of examining them critically and of working out our own form of organisation.”<ref><cite>Ibid.</cite>, p. 497.</ref>

That is how Lenin, scrupulously observing the Marxian method, defines the scope of theory, and indicates the necessity of independently studying every fresh experience and of making use of all that was valuable in past development.

We have already stated that, according to Marx, the proletarian theoretician must give expression to the revolutionary aims of the mass movement; he must guide that movement, yet at the same time learn from it and avail himself of the experience of the whole international revolution. This was the spirit in which Lenin wrote and acted. He valued very highly theoreticians who kept in close touch with the masses.

In 1918 he wrote:

<blockquote>... a revolutionary Marxist is distinguished from the ordinary philistine by his ability and willingness to preach to the still ignorant masses the necessity of the approaching revolution, to prove that it is inevitable, to explain its advantage to the people, and to prepare the proletariat and all the toiling and exploited masses for it.<ref>Lenin, <cite>The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky</cite> (International Publishers).</ref>
</blockquote>
In this passage Lenin emphasised the importance of the ability to maintain contact with the unenlightened masses, the ability to draw them into the movement and to lead them into revolutionary positions, so that “the masses by their own experience may convince themselves of the correctness of the Party line.” That is one of the fundamental principles of Leninism. It is embodied in the Programme of the Communist International and is one of the characteristic and distinguishing features of the activities of both Marx and Engels.

<blockquote>For the whole task of the Communists—said Lenin—is to be able to ''convince'' the backward, to work among them, and not to ''fence themselves off'' from them by means of fantastic, childishly “Left” slogans.<ref><cite>“Left-Wing” Communism</cite>.</ref>
</blockquote>
In 1914 the liberal newspaper ''Rech'', discussing the fight the Bolsheviks were waging against the Liquidators,<ref group="1.">Reformist Socialists—Mensheviks—who proposed liquidation of the underground party organisation and instead favoured legal activities exclusively.—''Ed''.</ref> bewailed the “carrying of the dissension into the ranks of the workers.” Lenin in an article entitled “The Methods Used by the Bourgeois Intellectuals in the Fight Against the Workers,” wrote:

<blockquote>We ''welcome'' the “carrying of dissension into the ranks of the workers,” for it is the workers, and the workers alone, who will distinguish dissensions from differences, from disagreements on principle, who will understand the significance of these disagreements and form their own opinion and decide not “with whom” to go, but where to go, ''i.e.'', decide on a definite, clear, well-considered and tested line of action.
</blockquote>
This line of action can be worked out and the political enlightenment of the masses of the workers can be accomplished only in the course of “a consistent and stubborn fight to a finish, of proletarian influences and strivings directed against the bourgeoisie.”<ref><cite>Collected Works</cite>, Vol. XVII, Russian edition.</ref>

Moreover, it must never be forgotten that the masses learn by their own experience, from events, and not only from books. In his preface to the 1890 German edition of ''The Communist Manifesto'', Engels wrote:

<blockquote>For Marx, the sole guarantee of the ultimate triumph of the theories contained in the ''Manifesto'' was the intellectual development of the working class that would result from joint action and discussion. The events and fluctuations of fortune in the struggle against capitalism, their victories, and still more their defeats, would reveal to the combatants the ineffectiveness of the panaceas they had hitherto believed in, and would make their minds more receptive for the thorough understanding of the real conditions of working class emancipation.
</blockquote>
Thus, it is out of the actual mass struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie and the conscious leadership of the struggle on the part of the vanguard of the proletariat—the Communist Party—that scientific communism arises, differing fundamentally from utopian and petty-bourgeois reformist socialism. Scientific communism is not based on good intentions, but on the class struggle of the proletariat and the recognition of the necessity for the dictatorship of the proletariat. The theoretical statement of the principles of scientific communism is Marxism and Leninism, the latter being an elaboration of Marxism in the light of new conditions. This theory embraces general questions of philosophy and method as well as their concrete application. It is essential to the proletariat in its struggles: it imparts consciousness, self-assurance, and decision to the movement. Those who are able to wield it are saved from aberrations and uncertainties; it enables us to determine the correct path to follow and renders the achievement and the consolidation of victory easier and surer.

== THE INTERNATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF LENINISM ==

Because of the intimate relation that exists between theory and reality, the great changes that have occurred since the death of Marx and Engels had to find their reflections in theory.

The theoretical basis that Lenin took over from Marx, namely, dialectical materialism, was further developed by him independently.

Lenin lived and acted in new and different conditions and a number of questions had to be considered afresh. Using the method of Marx, he solved the difficult problem of how the fight for revolutionary Marxism must be conducted in the new and complex conditions created by the era of imperialism and the beginnings of the world proletarian revolution. Since the death of Marx none of the important theoreticians and leaders of the Second International has been able to cope with this problem. Lenin was able to solve it because he maintained the closest contact with the mass movement of the proletariat and had mastered the Marxist theory as no one else had. Lenin, himself, was the truest expression of the world-wide and historical mission of the proletariat. Having himself led the struggle in the course of three revolutions, he was able to advance and develop the Marxist theory in all its component parts. We are therefore quite justified in describing Leninism as Marxism of the epoch of imperialism and the proletarian revolution.

The epoch of Lenin differed from the epoch of Marx and Engels. Marx and Engels lived and developed their theory at a time when the proletariat was just beginning to come out definitely as an independent force, as a result of which the bourgeoisie became more and more inclined to come to terms with the forces of reaction. In his book, ''The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte'', written in 1852, Marx stated that the nineteenth century saw the beginning of the proletarian revolution. He based his statement on the theoretical conclusions he had arrived at as a result of the Revolution of 1848. In a speech delivered in the spring of 1852 on the occasion of the anniversary of the ''People’s Paper''<ref group="2.">A Chartist paper.—''Ed''.</ref> he said:

<blockquote>The so-called revolutions of 1848 were but poor incidents, small fractures and fissures in the dry crust of European society. But they revealed an abyss. Beneath the apparently solid surface they betrayed oceans of liquid matter only needing expansion to rend into fragments continents of hard rock. Noisily and confusedly they proclaimed the emancipation of the proletariat, ''i.e.'', the secret of the nineteenth century and of the revolution of that century.
</blockquote>
And in concluding his speech he said:

<blockquote>...the English working men are the firstborn sons of modern industry. Certainly, then, they will not be the last to aid the social revolution produced by that industry—a revolution which means the emancipation of their class all over the world, which is as universal as capital—rule and wage slavery.<ref>“The Revolution of 1848 and the Proletariat,” <cite>Karl Marx, Man, Thinker and Revolutionist</cite> (International Publishers), p. 74.</ref>
</blockquote>
Marx proclaimed the inevitability of the proletarian revolution, but it had not yet fully begun during the lifetime of Marx and Engels.

Marx foresaw that the course of events was bound to lead to the monopoly of big capital. But it was only after the death of Marx and Engels that the extension of the rule of monopoly capitalism throughout the whole world really took place, leading in its turn to the rule of finance capital and to imperialism. In the ’sixties England was the centre of the development and rule of big capital (and of the plundering of the colonies). But by the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth capitalism had developed in a number of other countries (particularly in Germany and the United States) much more powerfully than in England. All the colonies had already been seized. And so, at the end of the nineteenth century, a desperate struggle broke out among the big predatory imperialist powers, not for the division of the world, but for its redivision. There began the epoch of imperialism—the fusion of usurious banking capital with industrial capital to form finance capital. What Lenin called “decaying, moribund capitalism” set in. For the peculiarities of this condition and for the main features of the economics of imperialism—the latest and last stage of the development of capitalism—consult Lenin’s great work ''Imperialism'', and his article, “Imperialism and the Split in the Socialist Movement.”<ref><cite>Collected Works</cite>, Vol. XIX (International Publishers).</ref>

Prior even to the imperialist war, but particularly on its outbreak, a revolutionary situation was created in the countries where capitalism was most highly developed as a result of the extreme aggravation of the contradictions of capitalism, the high cost of living, increased oppression and general deterioration of the condition of the working class. The revolution began to spread even before the war. In the East, the revolution followed on the heels of the 1905 Revolution in Russia; in 1906 it broke out in Persia, in 1908 in Turkey and in 1911 in China. In the European countries the approach of revolution was heralded by big strikes in England (the general strike on the railways in 1911, the miners’ strike in 1912), the struggles of the workers in Germany (the demonstrations in favour of universal suffrage in Prussia in 1910), and working class demonstrations in Russia (the protest strikes against the Lena shootings in 1912, the strikes in Baku and other cities in the summer of 1914, the demonstrations in St. Petersburg, accompanied by armed clashes and the erection of barricades, etc.).

The proletarian revolution loomed in all capitalist countries. The fundamental conditions for the transition to socialism had ripened; a proletarian revolution had become an objective necessity. The dictatorship of the bourgeoisie had to be replaced by the dictatorship of the proletariat, since of all the classes in modern society the proletariat alone was capable of leading the toilers out of the ''impasse'' to which the bourgeoisie had brought it.

Of all the workers’ parties of the world, however, the Russian Bolsheviks alone, headed by Lenin, proved to be actually prepared to assume the leadership of the proletarian revolution. In the West European countries, in the long period of reaction that followed the suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871, the workers’ parties had grown accustomed to pursue only legal forms of the class struggle. Opportunism was rife: a good deal of “opportunist garbage,” as Lenin called it, had accumulated.

One of the chief reasons for the strength of opportunism was the fact that in all imperialist countries the capitalist class bribed the upper stratum of the working class (the numerically small labour aristocracy) out of the super-profits obtained from the plunder of the colonies and semi-colonies. Thus, there was a section, a numerically small section, it is true, of the working class, that sided with the bourgeoisie and served as the vehicle of its influence to the proletariat. But the situation completely changed with the outbreak of the imperialist war. Then in the Western countries, in the “free” constitutional monarchies and republics, armed revolt and the transformation of the imperialist war into civil war became an urgent necessity, for there was no way of escaping from exploitation except by bitter struggle.

Of all the European parties, the Russian Bolshevik Party, alone, had made serious preparation for this struggle, owing to the fact that in Russia a revolutionary situation had been developing since the middle of the nineteenth century. The Russian revolutionary movement was the most powerful in Europe.

In Russia all the contradictions of the modern period of imperialism were prevalent: the oppression of enslaved nationalities by a dominant nation, the military-feudal oppression of tsarism, which was the most brutal form of political oppression then existing. The landowning nobility still survived in Russia and there were many survivals of serfdom in economic life (particularly that of the peasants), habits and customs and in political institutions. At the same time capitalism was developing rapidly: large-scale industry grew apace and became concentrated in a few centres; this was accompanied by the growth of the working class. Bank capital, syndicates and trusts, those highest forms of imperialist finance capital, developed also, particularly after 1905. The proletarian class war against the bourgeoisie spread and this was accompanied by the growth of the peasants’ war against the landowning nobility. In other words, we had a combination of two class wars, which Marx viewed as unusually favourable for proletarian victory.

Marx and Engels had pointed out in their time the approach of the revolution in Russia, the extremely rapid development of capitalism in that vast country, and the unbearable yoke of tsarism.

They had understood: 1, the complexity of the social structure in Russia, ''viz''., the existence of the most primitive together with the most modern forms (“every stage of social development is represented from the primitive commune to modern large-scale industry and high finance,” as Engels wrote to V. I. Zasulich in 1885); 2, they took into account the existence of a revolutionary situation; they saw that the revolution required only a jolt to bring vast masses of people into action; 3, they foresaw that the revolutionary explosion would be of tremendous power and that it would inevitably assume a most violent and bitter character (“Russia is heading towards a most violent revolution,” Marx wrote to Engels in 1870); 4, they foresaw that in this ''last'' of the great European countries to pass through the capitalist industrial revolution, the conflict would assume unprecedented dimensions. “This time the crash will beat anything known before; all the factors are there: intensity, universal extension, entanglement of all possessing and ruling social elements,” so Engels wrote to Marx on April 14, 1856; 5, they realised the tremendous significance of the Russian revolution for the world revolution. That the latter would be a socialist revolution Marx and Engels never doubted.<ref>''Cf.'' Marx’s letters to Engels, Nov. 13, 1859; Feb. 13, 1863; Sept. 27, 1877, etc.</ref>

Of enormous importance for the Russian revolution and for the development of the Leninist theory was the fact that quite an extensive experience in revolution and working class organisation had already been accumulated, and that the theory of Marx and Engels had been worked out in detail and adopted and tested by the revolutionary proletarian party and by the masses. The Bolshevik Party grew and gained strength in the course of a long struggle and the experience of a number of revolutions. It accumulated the experience of the international working-class movement and of West European revolutions and conveyed this experience to the masses.

In his “''Left-Wing’ Communism'', Lenin wrote:

<blockquote>Russia achieved Marxism, as the only correct revolutionary theory, virtually through ''suffering'', by a half century of unprecedented torments and sacrifice, of unprecedented revolutionary heroism, incredible energy, painstaking search and study, testing in practice, disappointments, checking, and comparison with European experience.
</blockquote>
Lenin also emphasised the value and significance of the direct experience gained by the Bolshevik Party in the long struggle against the autocracy, the liberal bourgeoisie, petty-bourgeois wavering and uncertain revolutionaries (such as the Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Anarchists, and so forth), and against the various tendencies and deviations within its own ranks. These deviations and bourgeois influences were overcome in the struggle waged against the various forms of opportunism that successively manifested themselves: Economism,<ref group="2.">A tendency in Russian Social-Democracy which advocated “pure and simple” trade unionism.—''Ed''.</ref> Menshevism, the Liquidationist movement, social-patriotism and the tendencies that disguised themselves by “Left” phraseology, such as “''Otzovism'',” “''Vperyodism'',”<ref group="2.">''Otzovism''—from, the Russian, meaning a tendency favoring the ''recall'' of the Socialist deputies from the Duma; ''Vperyodism''—a tendency represented by Socialists grouped around the newspaper ''Vperyod'' (Forward).—''Ed''.</ref> “Left Communism,” etc., as well as against conciliationism, a disguised and therefore particularly dangerous form of opportunism.

Lenin subjected the Russian revolution and the development of Bolshevism to a detailed analysis in a number of his writings, ''e.g.'', “The Tasks of the Russian Social-Democrats,” “Speech on the Revolution of 1905,” “The Stages, the Trend and Prospects of the Revolution,” “Farewell Letter to the Swiss Workers,” “Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution,” “Our Revolution,” especially “Left-Wing” Communism.

We have dealt particularly with the Russian revolution, because it was in Russia that the Bolshevik Party developed. But it would be a mistake to assume that Bolshevism (in other words, Leninism) is based only on the experiences of Russia and that it is a purely Russian phenomenon. Leninism was drawn from international experience and its significance is international. Only by a proletarian revolution can the revolutionary proletariat and the oppressed masses who are struggling against imperialism throughout the world, achieve their emancipation. Leninism is the theory of the proletariat, it sums up and explains this experience, it teaches the working class how to conduct its fight and how to secure victory, seize power, consolidate its gains and lead the toilers in their struggle against exploitation. It also teaches us how socialism is to be built.

In his pamphlet ''The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky'', Lenin says that the popularity of Bolshevism throughout the world is due to the profound sympathy the masses have for genuinely revolutionary tactics, because the revolution has begun to mature all over the world. He enumerates the achievements of Bolshevism and declares that Bolshevik tactics were based on a correct appreciation of the revolutionary situation that had arisen all over Europe.

Bolshevism exposed and routed the old, putrid international of social-traitors. It laid down the ideological and tactical foundations of the Third International, which took into account the gains achieved in the epoch of peace as well as the experience of the epoch of revolution which had commenced. The example of the Soviet state showed that the workers and poor peasants are capable of taking political power, of defending it against attacks of the world bourgeoisie, and of building socialism.

With Russia as an example, the masses throughout the world were in a position to convince themselves that Bolshevism had indicated “the true path of salvation from the horrors of the war and of imperialism and that Bolshevism ''could serve as an example in tactics to all''” (Lenin).

The long training and hardening that the Bolshevik Party had obtained in the struggle guaranteed it an important place in the international struggle against opportunism and for the creation of the Third, Communist, International. While crystallising the rich experience of the Russian revolution, Bolshevism at the same time reflected the experience of the international working-class movement (particularly the European) which had entered the era of the socialist revolution.

Before the war, during the war, and after the war, Lenin in his writings constantly bore in mind the experience of the whole international struggle. Under his leadership, a bitter struggle was waged against opportunism wherever it was found. It was in this spirit, the spirit of revolutionary Marxism, that the Communist Parties in every European country were trained. Lenin wrote letters to workers in various countries on questions of the international revolution, pointing out that the urgent and essential task in the present period of history was to fight for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat all over the world. It was under Lenin’s leadership that the Communist International was created and the fundamental principles of its programme, organisation and tactics laid down.

Leninism, therefore, is Marxism in the epoch of imperialism and of the proletarian revolution. In this epoch, the proletarian movement reaches new, higher, levels. The proletariat has grown numerically; it has become better organised and more class conscious; its historical activity has increased; it has learned to employ new methods in the struggle, for it has now conquered power and established its dictatorship in a vast country. In his activities and in his writings, Lenin expressed and analysed the new phenomena of the new epoch. Leading the struggle of the proletariat in these new conditions, Lenin advanced and developed Marxist theory and introduced fresh elements into all its phases. Hence Leninism is a new stage in the development of Marxism.

== MATERIALIST DIALECTICS AS THE THEORETICAL FOUNDATION OF MARXISM-LENINISM ==

The essence of Marxism is materialist dialectics. Lenin called materialist dialectics “the living soul of Marxism,” “its fundamental theoretical root.” The importance of mastering the dialectical method will therefore be obvious. It is needed in the study of nature and of society, in the theoretical struggle, in the practical leadership of the proletariat and its constructive work.

The articles collected in Volume XI of the ''Selected Works''<ref group="3.">To be published in English Translation—''Ed''.</ref> provide a general exposition of materialist dialectics and its application to the study of nature and of the history of human society and of human thought. We must learn how to apply this method by studying the works of Marx and Engels and the masterly application of materialist dialectics by Lenin. All his life Lenin was a diligent student of the works of Marx and Engels; he read them over and over again, and turned to them particularly at every turn of history and at every new stage of the revolution, when new problems arose for solution. Lenin took his revolutionary materialist dialectics from Marx and Engels, he repeatedly advocated the necessity of studying their works for this purpose. But to say that Lenin mastered the Marxist method is not enough; he developed it and raised it to a still higher level.

What do we mean by dialectics? By dialectics Hegel meant the progress of ideas (thought) by means of contradiction, the process of its development toward a supreme and absolute spirit. Hegel emphasised that such progress, such development is self-motion. He considered that every phenomenon had its own motion, its own process of development, and that this self-motion is the result of an inherent impulse to development. In ancient Greece, dialectics was the name given to the art of disputation. It was considered that in the course of an argument, rich in fertile ideas, the opinions of the disputing parties underwent a change and that something new and of a higher nature resulted. By analogy, all motion by means of contradiction came to be called dialectics. This was the sense in which Hegel used the term. He believed that motion was universally produced in this way, ''i.e.'', by a conflict of contradictions, the negation of the old and the creation of the new. That is how development takes place.

But the dialectics of Hegel are idealistic. It is the movement of thought that lies at the root of his whole philosophy. Marx, on the contrary, employed dialectics materialistically. He created dialectic materialism. ''Materialist dialectics'' is the general movement and development caused by the conflict of contradictions that takes place throughout the universe both in nature and in society, and which is reflected in human thought. ''Dialectic materialism'' is the philosophy and method of revolutionary Marxism-Leninism, an instrument for the study and transformation of everything that exists. Dialectic materialism is not confined merely to theoretical study: it involves practical revolutionary action.

Dialectic thought strives to achieve a complete and all-embracing conception of phenomena. Every expressed opinion is more or less one-sided.

Lenin, after conversing with an individual who had attended the “''Vperyod''” school at Capri conducted by A. Bogdanov, who politically was a follower of the “Otzovist” faction, wrote a letter to Maxim Gorky dated November 29, 1909, in which he stated that his (Lenin’s) previous conception of the Capri school had been one-sided. He wrote:

<blockquote>By gad, the philosopher Hegel was right—life does progress by contradictions; and living contradictions are much richer, more varied and pithier than the mind of man originally conceived. I thought that the school was ''merely'' the centre of a new faction. It turns out not to be so: not in the sense that the school was not the centre of a new faction (it was, and is so to-day), but in the sense that this is not the whole truth. Subjectively, certain individuals made the school such a centre; objectively, it was such a centre, and, moreover, the school drew from real working-class surroundings genuine and advanced workers. And so it turned out that at Capri, beside the contradictions between the old and new factions, a contradiction developed between a section of the Social-Democratic intellectuals and the Russian workers, who are bound, ''whatever happens'', to bring the Social-Democracy out on the true path, and will do so in spite of all the intrigues, “brawls and incidents,” etc., etc., that go on abroad.
</blockquote>
From this example we see that there are several sides to every object and to every phenomenon. When considering certain phases, we must not forget those that are temporarily overshadowed and forced into the background, but which may assume prime importance in the further development of the conflict of contradictions. One must be able to view the development of a given phenomenon in its perspective, to see the interrelation of all its component parts, and at the same time distinguish the “main link” of each given concrete situation and historical moment. The complexity of the phenomena of reality, their contradictory nature and their constant flux and change are reflected in our judgment of them, which also cannot help but be contradictory and in a constant state of flux. That, however, does not exclude, but, on the contrary, imposes the necessity for finding clear and definite answers to the problems that arise at any given moment. Dialectic materialism teaches us to distinguish the contradictions of reality, to understand their significance and to study their development (objective dialectics). Correspondingly, the progress of concepts (subjective dialectics), by properly reflecting reality, must conform to what is proceeding in the external (objective) world and must not allow itself to be severed from its base. Consciousness must strive to adapt itself to the (dialectical) progress of the reflected object.

The importance of the works of Hegel lies in the fact that he was the first to create a philosophy that attempted (and to a certain extent successfully) to study the general laws of dialectics. The great merit of Hegel consists in the fact that he made dialectics the basis of his philosophy. As Marx said, Hegel was the “first to give a complete and conscious picture of the general forms of motion” [''i.e.'', of dialectics.—''V. A.'']. It would, however, be a mistake to believe that one can simply take and use the Hegelian dialectics without first radically re-shaping it.

Marx himself declared that his method not only differed fundamentally from that of Hegel “but is its direct opposite.” Marx said, that to Hegel

<blockquote>the process of thinking, which under the name of “the idea” he even transformed into an independent subject, is the ''demiurge'' of the world, and the real world is only the extreme phenomenal form of “the idea.” With me the idea is nothing else than the material reflected by the human mind and translated into forms of thought.
</blockquote>
The Hegelian dialectics, accordingly, requires thorough overhauling. It must be “turned right side up again” in order to reveal “the rational kernel within the mystical shell.”

Engels also dwelt on the same theme and treated it in a similar spirit. To the question, wherein lies the error of Hegel, he replies: in the fact that the laws of dialectics “are not drawn from nature and history, but imposed on the latter as laws of thought.” Hence the nonsensical concept that “the world must conform to a logical system, which is itself only the product of definite stages of development of human thought.”

Engels declares that “this relationship must be reversed,” whereupon everything will appear normal and plain.

<blockquote>The dialectical laws, which in the idealistic philosophy are extremely mysterious, will then immediately become simple and clear.
</blockquote>
On another occasion Engels stated that the mysticism of Hegel consisted in the fact that

<blockquote>the category [''i.e.'', concept—''V.A.''] was to him something antecedent, while the dialectics of the real universe was its mere reflection. Actually the opposite is true: the dialectics of the mind is only the reflection of the real world both of nature and of history.<ref>F. Engels, <cite>The Dialectics of Nature</cite>.</ref> (''The Dialectics of Nature''.)
</blockquote>
Lenin, like Marx, completely remoulded Hegel, reversed his theses, put them right side up and interpreted them materialistically.

<blockquote>Hegel’s logic, he wrote, cannot be applied in its present form: it cannot be ''taken for granted''. We must select from it its logical (gnosiological) shades and purge it of ''mystical ideas''; that is still a big task.
</blockquote>
A valuable guide to the study of Hegel are his synopses: ''The Science of Logic'' and ''The History of Philosophy''.

Throughout the universe, development proceeds not as the result of any external cause (God), not because of any “purpose” inherent in events, but because of the inherent contradictions that are contained in all things and in all phenomena. “Contradiction is the root of all motion and of all life,” Hegel wrote. “It is only because a thing contains a contradiction within itself, that it moves and acquires impulse and activity. That is the process of all motion and all development.”<ref group="3.">Such a conception was essentially inimical to belief in God. The shrewd priests who controlled religious education in Russia very soon realised (in the ’sixties) that the theories of Hegel contained certain very dangerous elements. Accordingly the study of Hegel was prohibited in theological seminaries and academies in spite of the fact that the Hegelian philosophy is an idealistic philosophy and preserves God under the guise of the absolute idea.</ref>

Lenin in his article ''On Dialectics'' points out that contradictions exist universally: repulsion and attraction, positive and negative electricity, the division into parts, and the union of the parts to form a whole, etc. In all the phenomena and processes of nature and society there are contradictory, opposite, mutually exclusive, and at the same time associated, tendencies. Dialectics, ''i.e.'', the contradictions, union and conflict of opposites, prevails in the material world and is reflected in consciousness.

The general laws of dialectics are universal: they are to be found in the movement and development of the immeasurably vast luminous nebulae from which in the spaces of the universe the stellar systems are formed (these spaces are measured by light years, ''i.e.'', the distance through which light travels in one year, moving at a speed of 300,000 kilometres per second), in the internal structure of molecules and atoms and in the movement of electrons and protons; the latter are also opposite and mutually connected and undergo transformation, change and development, in other words, they also reveal the laws of dialectics in their existence and in their movements.

The development of the animal kingdom also proceeds by contradictions and the conflict of opposites (the struggle for existence, procreation by sex, etc.).

In human society the driving force of development is the class struggle. In the conditions of contemporary society, the struggle of the revolutionary class, the proletariat, causes the transition from one form of society to another—the transition from capitalism to communism. (We shall deal with this in somewhat greater detail below.)

It is this dialectical movement of the material universe that forms the subject matter of materialist dialectics.

Lenin said that “contradiction” is the salt of dialectics; its “kernel” is unity and the conflict of opposites.

Dialectics emphasises not only contradiction and opposites, but also unity. Lenin thus explains the formula “unity of opposites”:

<blockquote>We are unable to imagine, express, measure or depict motion without interrupting that which is continuous, without simplifying, approximating, separating and petrifying that which is alive. The depiction of the movement of thought is always an approximation, an act of petrification—and not merely of thought, but also of sensation, and not merely of motion, but of all conceptions. Therein lies the essence of dialectics. And it is this essence that is expressed in the formula, the unity, the identity of opposites.
</blockquote>
The Greek eclectic philosopher Zeno (fifth century B.C.), known as the father of the dialectical method, was the first to give clear expression to the idea of the contradictoriness of motion. Certain of his arguments have come down to us and these show that thought is bound to arrive at an ''impasse'' if dialectical methods are not employed and if the unity of opposites is not understood. Here is one of his arguments. An arrow in the course of its flight is bound to be at some definite point of its path and occupy some definite place. If that be so, then at each given moment it is at a definite point in a state of rest, that is, motionless; hence, it is not moving at all. We therefore see that motion cannot be expressed without resorting to contradictory statements. The arrow is in a given place, yet at the same time is not in that place. It is only by expressing both these contradictory affirmations coincidentally that we can depict motion. If we were to rest on only half of a phrase, either motion would disappear, or the object itself. And that is true of any judgment, for a judgment expresses only one or a few sides of an object, whereas the object has innumerable sides and innumerable contacts with the surrounding world. Hence, a contrary judgment may be made regarding any thing or phenomenon and yet to a certain extent it will be correct. Explosive substances employed in war cause tremendous destruction. But employed in industry they serve the cause of culture. Because of the antagonism of classes all things and phenomena assume opposite significance for each of the combatant sides: for the proletariat, the Soviet state means victory; for the capitalists it means defeat and the end of their rule, and so forth.

The formula “unity of opposites” is particularly important because it expresses the principal distinguishing feature of dialectic motion, the most fundamental property of all phenomena.

In order to avoid misunderstanding it should be stated here, that the application of the dialectical method does not mean arbitrarily combining all and every contradictory assertion. The unity of opposites must not be taken to mean the simple repetition of arbitrarily chosen postulates and opposite assertions; it is the combination and conflict of opposites as they exist in reality and the discovery of the contradictions in reality that are the driving forces and bases of motion.

In order that the specific features of dialectical thinking may be better understood it will be useful to compare and contrast it with other, non-dialectical methods and forms of thinking. This will help to bring out more clearly the fundamental features of materialist dialectics and to give a more precise idea of its laws, particularly its basic law: motion is the result of contradiction, the unity and conflict of opposites.

Opposed to dialectics are metaphysics, eclectics, sophistry, and the puerile “evolutionary” conception of development. Materialist dialectics does not tolerate the use of stereotyped and ready-made schemes. It demands the profound study of concrete circumstances, the precise formulation of the real process of development; it also demands revolutionary action.

Dialectical thinking is the opposite of metaphysics, which regards things and phenomena, not in their unity and interrelationship, but each separate from the other, ''outside'' of the grand, ''general'' relationship, and consequently, not in motion, but in a state of rest, frozen, unchanging and lifeless. Metaphysical thinking is incapable of depicting the real inter-relations and development of phenomena.

How, for instance, is one to regard capitalist, bourgeois democracy? To approach this phenomenon with a ready-made answer would be metaphysics. It would be untrue to say that capitalism is an evil at all times and under all conditions. Compared with the serf system, capitalism was beneficial: to a certain extent it freed the toilers and placed them in more favourable conditions for their development and their struggle for emancipation. The serf system, on the other hand, was beneficial compared with slavery. As long as the serf system exists, as long as it predominates, the movement towards capitalism is a progressive movement. But when the serf system is abolished, the workers are left facing one main enemy—capitalism. In relation to the past, capitalism is beneficial; in relation to the future, in relation to the more perfect system, ''i.e.'', socialism, capitalism is an evil that must be destroyed.

For the proletariat, bourgeois democracy is, of course, preferable to a tsarist autocracy. The proletariat cannot but strive to overthrow autocracy. But even a democratic republic is one of the forms of the class rule of the exploiters, ''viz.'', the bourgeois dictatorship, which must be replaced by a Soviet state—by proletarian democracy.

Slavery is abominable. But slavery was necessary at a given phase of the historical development of humanity, in the remote past, at a given level of development of productive forces. At that time it represented a necessary stage of development, a definite advance. At a particular stage of development of productive forces, enemies, instead of being killed, were turned into slaves and their labour power was thus preserved and put to use.

If we are asked, what interest has the past to us, we reply that development throughout the world takes place unevenly. In one place (the U.S.S.R.) bourgeois democracy is a thing of the past; in other places (outside the U.S.S.R.) it is a thing of the present. Moreover, feudal relations, and even slave relations (at least survivals of them) continue to exist in Asia and Africa and even in Europe and America. At the present time all these are dominated by the fundamental contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, between wage slavery and the struggle against wage slavery, between the system of capitalist states and the U.S.S.R. Yet at the same time, old forms of oppression continue to exist. Only by its own efforts, without the aid of God (who we do know does not exist) can mankind escape from its bestial existence, its semi-barbaric conditions of life, and from the grip of poverty, oppression and ignorance. In this struggle for emancipation the proletariat takes the lead. Its fight is against the fundamental and dominating relations of wage slavery; but parallel with this form of exploitation there remain the survivals of preceding forms of oppression, against which the proletariat must also wage a bitter war.

Dialectic materialism is the theory that guides the proletariat in its struggles. The proletariat wages war on the bourgeoisie and in time will overthrow it; it will abolish the rule of the bourgeoisie and destroy the relations of exploitation; but at the same time it must take over and still further develop the cultural achievements that were amassed under the rule of the bourgeoisie.

The bourgeois, the capitalist, is our enemy. But having defeated the enemy and broken his resistance, we must take advantage of his knowledge and experience. We must make use of the cultural and scientific developments achieved under the bourgeoisie and compel the bourgeois specialists to work for the cause of communism.

In the process of development all things give way to others, all things are negated. But the characteristic feature of dialectical negation is that it does not merely throw to one side, it abolishes by first overcoming. Socialism cannot be brought about without mastering and remoulding all that which was accumulated in the preceding stage of historical development and all that which was taken over from the past and developed by the bourgeoisie. Such a dialectic negation of the bourgeoisie can be accomplished only by the proletariat, the class most closely associated with modern large-scale industry, which is the most valuable product of bourgeois development.

We thus see that nothing is immutable; everything changes, everything passes from one state to another. For this reason metaphysical thought, which regards things in isolation and treats them as immutable, cannot correctly reflect the ceaseless process of motion and the inter- relationship of all phenomena.

As we have stated, development arises out of inherent contradictions. For instance, the capitalist system is a unity of opposites: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The dialectics of this contradiction was brilliantly set forth by Marx in ''The Communist Manifesto''<ref>Lenin, “Karl Marx,” <cite>Collected Works</cite>, Vol. XVIII.</ref> and in ''Capital''. The bourgeoisie and the proletariat are opposites; but at the same time they comprise a definite unity: they are the classes of a single social and economic formation—capitalism—in a state of irreconcilable contradiction. This contradiction will be logically solved dialectically by the internal struggle, the proletarian revolution. The logic arises out of the mass struggle. In the process of revolution, the proletariat becomes transformed, it becomes trained for the performance of its historic mission. In 1846 Marx wrote:

<blockquote>The revolution is essential not merely because the dominant class cannot be overthrown by any other means, but also because only in the course of the revolution can the class which overthrows cleanse itself of the mire of the old society and become fit to create a new society.
</blockquote>
This is one of the fundamental ideas of Marxism. Marx returned to it time and again. Thus, in 1850 in his speech to the Communist League, Marx said, addressing himself to the workers:

<blockquote>You must pass through fifteen, twenty, perhaps fifty years of civil war and national conflict, not merely in order to change the system, but also to change yourselves and to render yourselves fit for political rule.
</blockquote>
And again in 1871, in his pamphlet, ''The Civil War in France'', repeating the same thought, Marx said:

<blockquote>They [the working class] know that in order to work out their own emancipation, and along with it that higher form to which present society is irresistibly tending, by its own economical agencies, they will have to pass through long struggles, through a series of historic processes, transforming circumstances and men.<ref>Karl Marx, <cite>The Civil War in France</cite> (International Publishers), p. 44.</ref>
</blockquote>
Here we discern the same unity of opposites, the mutual conflict of these opposites and the inevitable solution of the conflicts by a transition to a new form of society. Without the long and severe training obtained in its struggles the proletariat cannot fit itself to perform its historical mission.

It is the task of materialist dialectics to study the conflict of opposites proceeding in the world around us and to reveal it in its true form. It must seek the dialectic foundations of the contradictions and not select symptoms and phases of phenomena casually and eclectically (that is, arbitrarily and independently of their essential inter-relationship). It must seek to discover the driving forces of development. At the same time it must actively participate in the struggle on the side of the revolutionary class and lead the mass struggle of the proletariat.

<blockquote>My ideals for the upbuilding of new Russia will not be chimerical only if they express the interests of an actually existing class that is compelled by conditions to act in a definite direction. In adopting the viewpoint of the objectivity of the class struggle I do not thereby justify reality; on the contrary, I point to the profound (if at a first glance invisible) sources and forces that exist within that reality and make for its transformation.<ref>Lenin, “The Political Line,” <cite>Collected Works</cite>, Vol. XVI, pp. 143-144, Russian edition.</ref>
</blockquote>
Eclecticism employs methods repugnant to dialectic materialism. Dialectics is opposed to the habit of the eclectics of arbitrarily selecting isolated phases, and their inability to grasp an object or a phenomenon as a whole, in its totality, and in its systematic and inevitable interrelationships and development as they exist in reality. Instead of taking the phenomenon as a whole in all its complexity, but at the same time in its unity and totality, they one-sidedly exaggerate isolated features, component parts and phases. Materialist dialectics demands that the important factor should be singled out, but that at the same time attention should be devoted to those phases that are brought to the forefront by circumstances. It also demands that the phenomenon as a whole should not be lost sight of. Ideas must represent the interrelation of the various phases of phenomena as they exist in reality and emphasise the fundamental contradictions (the “main link,” as Lenin expressed it, ''i.e.'', that which is essential to the practical leadership of the class struggle of the proletariat). As one of many examples of the manner in which Lenin attacked eclecticism, one may mention his criticism of Comrade Bukharin in the discussion on the trade union question.<ref>Lenin, “Once More on the Trade Unions,” <cite>Collected Works</cite>, Vol. XXVI, pp. 109-145, Russian edition.</ref> As an example of his ability to single out the “main link,” and of the value of this ability to the proletarian revolution, we may refer to the change to the New Economic Policy effected by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union under Lenin’s leadership and to Lenin’s explanation and analysis of the circumstances that attended this measure.<ref>''Cf.'' Lenin, “The Significance of Gold, Now and After the Complete Victory of Socialism,” <cite>Collected Works</cite>, Vol. XXVII, pp. 79-85, Russian edition; also various articles in the same volume.</ref>

In contradistinction to the eclectic conception, dialectics teaches the doctrine of ''The Concreteness of Truth''. In his Introduction to the ''Critique of Political Economy'' Marx explained that the concrete is concrete by virtue of the fact that it combines within itself a multiformity of definitions, because it is “unity in multiformity.” The concrete is the whole of nature, the whole of reality, surrounding us: it embraces, combines and coalesces all contradictions. Our knowledge moves towards an ever more complete and more profound reflection of this complete (concrete) reality.

While realising the limitation and provisional nature of abstract postulates, dialectical thought employs abstractions within certain limits. An abstraction singles out a certain phase, concentrates on it and studies it. In his ''Foreword'' to the first volume of ''Capital'', Marx declares that in the study of social, and particularly economic forms, neither microscope nor chemical reagents are of any use. “The forces of abstraction must replace both.” And in Volume I, Chapter 1 of ''Capital'', in which he analyses the principal phenomena of bourgeois exchange society (commodity, value and money) Marx gives us an example of how to use abstractions and of the limits which they are invaluable to scientific research.<ref>''Cf.'' Lenin’s article “Karl Marx” and his Preface to Marx’s <cite>Letters to Kugelmann</cite>.</ref> (''Cf''. Lenin’s article, “Karl Marx,” and his Preface to Marx’s ''Letters to Kugelmann''.)

Of course, when Marx undertook to present a general picture of the laws of capitalist society he did not confine himself to this alone. When investigating reality in all its complexity we must endeavour to create a picture that most faithfully reflects that reality and to discover the concrete truths that reflect the real situation in all its totality and in the unity of its contradictions and opposites.

In the notes Lenin made on his reading of Hegel, he declares that “concreteness... is the spirit and essence of dialectics.” And in his popular exposition of the nature of dialectics,<ref>''Cf.'' Lenin, “Once More on the Trade Unions,” <cite>Collected Works</cite>, Vol. XXVI, pp. 109-145, Russian edition.</ref> he states that one of the fundamentals of dialectical logic is that “there is no abstract truth, truth is concrete.” This means that one must not be content with general arguments: it means that reality demands clear and precise replies to the concrete problems that arise in the course of historical development and the struggle of the working class, and it means further, that if one wants to express an opinion with a full knowledge of the subject, one’s mind must be able to reflect all the relationships and the full complexity of the concrete conditions of the given phenomena and to express the general laws of development of those phenomena.

In contrast to the ''dialectic'' conception of development, which reveals the full complexity of a process, we have the puerile and superficial conception of “peaceful” development, “''evolution''” without contradictions and without leaps, upheavals and revolution. This conception is impotent in the face of the actual process of development. As a matter of fact a genuine conception of evolution, answering actual reality, must embrace not only gradual changes, but also sudden changes, “leaps,” breaks in continuity. Without such leaps no phenomenon can be explained, for it would be necessary to assume that nothing new can arise, that everything already exists in an imperceptibly minute form liable to subsequent growth. As a matter of fact, however, we continually meet with breaks in continuity and with the appearance of new qualities that formerly did not exist. Changes of form always take place in reality by means of revolution, leaps. In the process of development old forms are negated and new forms take their place which in their turn are negated.

The act of birth is an act of revolution. Yet the period during which the child is carried in the womb of the mother is one of slow and gradual change. Social development proceeds by the struggle of classes and by revolution. Dialectics gives a true and profound theory of development; it represents it as pursuing a complex, not a direct path, and as comprising, not merely the accumulation of slow and gradual changes, but also periods of cataclysm, sudden change, leaps, revolutions, reverse movements (as though taking a run for a sudden leap forward), ebb and flow, and so forth; evolution as represented by the bourgeois ideologists is a simple, ''smooth'' and tranquil process. The dialectic is difficult and complex, “cunning” as Hegel expressed it; it is very hard to understand and master. But what would you have, when the world of reality and the process of its development are themselves complex, and not the simple processes the good, respectable citizen would have them be.

The dying of the old and the birth of the new is a complicated and difficult process. In all development it is the process as a whole that is important, and not merely the result.

It is sheer self-deception to believe that fruits may be gathered without long and arduous labour. Those who fear revolution, who shrink from the methods of struggle that reality imposes, are, in practice, supporters of the exploiters and traitors to the cause of emancipating the working class from wage slavery.

In 1918 Lenin explained the meaning and importance of the class struggle that was taking place at that time as follows:

<blockquote>When the bourgeoisie, and the government officials, clerks, doctors, engineers, etc., who are accustomed to serve it, resort to extreme measures of resistance, the intellectuals are horrified. They tremble in fear and whine pitifully about the necessity of a return to “compromise.” We, on the contrary, like all true friends of the oppressed classes, only rejoice at the extreme resistance offered by the exploiters; for we expect the proletariat to grow to manhood and to mature for power not by persuasion and pleading, not in the school of dulcet preaching and edifying declamations, but in the school of life, the school of struggle. The proletariat must ''learn'' how to become the ruling class and how to gain complete victory over the bourgeoisie, for it cannot obtain this knowledge ready-made. It must learn by struggle. And it is only serious, bitter and desperate struggle that teaches anything. The more extreme the resistance of the exploiters is the more energetically, firmly, mercilessly and successfully will they be suppressed by the exploited. The more varied the efforts and pains the exploiters take to defend the old, the sooner will the proletariat learn to drive its class enemies out of their last hiding places, tear out the roots of their domination and remove the very soil on which wage slavery, mass poverty, and the profits and the insolence of the moneybags could (and, indeed, had to) spring up.

With the growing resistance of the bourgeoisie and its hangers-on, the strength of the proletariat and of the peasantry which ally themselves with it also grows. The exploited gain in strength and manhood, they grow and learn to throw off the “old Adam” of wage slavery in proportion as the resistance of their enemies, the exploiters, increases. Victory is bound to be on the side of the exploited, for on their side is life itself, the strength of numbers, the strength of the masses, the strength of the inexhaustible springs of self- sacrifice and of the idealistic and honest reserves of energy and talent of the so-called “common” people, the workers and peasants, awakened and eager to build up a new order. Victory is on their side.<ref>Lenin, <cite>Collected Works</cite>, Vol. XXII, p. 157, Russian edition.</ref>
</blockquote>
These lines describing the dialectics of the class struggle, although written in 1918, still preserve their force. As long as classes and class society exist, the class struggle of the proletariat is essential for the development of society and for its progress to a higher form of organisation, ''viz''., communism. Those who fail to understand this, who refuse to understand the necessity for treading the difficult path to communism, who are terrified at the difficulties and anxious to escape them by endeavouring to create peace between the exploited and the exploiters, in practice are enemies of communism; for they are hindering the cause of the exploited masses and diverting them from the only path of escape from an exploiting, slave society.

Another serious violation of dialectics is the refusal to reckon with actual and inevitable causes, and the intellectual evasion of stages that must be passed through in reality. Those who thus evade and anticipate tend to become isolated from the masses in practical politics and cease to lead the revolutionary struggle of the masses, thereby playing into the hands of the bourgeoisie.

Dialectics demands that the successive stages of transition should be clearly defined.

Innumerable instances may be cited of Lenin’s ability to define transitions. Here we will only mention the transition (transformation) of the imperialist war into civil war, a transition of world historical importance, which Lenin not only studied in all its details, but in which he directly took part. The basis of this transition is the development of the proletarian revolution, which, by means of the dictatorship of the proletariat, brings about the transition from capitalism to communism. He calculated the course of this development in all its complexity. In 1916 he wrote that the impending socialist revolution would be

<blockquote>an outburst of mass struggle on the part of all the various oppressed and discontented elements. Sections of the petty bourgeoisie and of the backward workers will inevitably participate in it—without such participation ''mass'' struggle is ''impossible'', without it no revolution is possible—and just as inevitably will they bring into the movement their prejudices, their reactionary phantasies, their weaknesses and errors. But ''objectively'' they will attack ''capitalism'', and the class conscious vanguard of the revolution, the advanced proletariat expressing this objective truth for a heterogeneous and discordant, motley and outwardly uncohesive mass struggle, will be able to unify and direct it, to gain power, to seize the banks, to expropriate the trusts, which are hated by all (though for different reasons) and introduce other dictatorial measures which will amount to the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the victory of socialism, but which will by no means immediately be “purged” of petty bourgeois slag.<ref>Lenin, “The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up,” <cite>Collected Works</cite>, Vol. XIX.</ref>
</blockquote>
The scientific forecast contained in this passage was subsequently fully corroborated. Lenin’s works written in the period 1917-23 deal with a number of questions connected with the leadership of the class struggle of the proletariat in the transition period from the capitalist exploiting system to a classless, communist society. In a series of articles he analysed the various stages of the revolution, and the various phases of the transition period itself. He picks out the fundamental features of current phenomena and shows whence and whither the transition is proceeding. This is necessary in order that every effort be made to extend and deepen the proletarian revolution and to secure the triumph of its cause.<ref>''Cf.'' Lenin, “New Times and New Errors in a New Guise,” and "The Significance of Gold, Now and After the Complete Victory of Socialism.”</ref> Only thanks to its theoretical grasp of the meaning of revolutionary struggle was the leadership of the Party of Lenin able to secure the victory of the proletariat, the dictatorship of the proletariat and the subsequent development of socialist construction.

As has been stated, the ability to distinguish the logical sequence of the stages of transition is not only of theoretical importance; it is also of great practical importance in the leadership of the struggle of the proletariat and in determining its strategy and tactics.<ref>See Lenin, “Letters on Tactics,” <cite>Collected Works</cite>, Vol. XX, pp. 118-129.</ref>

Lenin possessed the faculty of discerning the conflict of contradictions and of opposites as they took place in actual reality. We have already said that dialectic materialism demands the expression and formulation of the actual process of development.

Genuine (objective) ''dialectics'' is distinguished from ''sophistry'', which does not study the actual process of development in its totality, but indulges in an arbitrary play of ideas (''i.e.'', subjective dialectics, applied arbitrarily and severed from the dialectic movement of the external world).

Many examples of sophistry can be found in the war waged by the opportunists against revolutionary Marxism and particularly in the utterances of Kautsky and Plekhanov after they had become traitors to revolutionary Marxism. An examination of the sophisms of the opportunists is given by Lenin in his “Collapse of the Second International,” where he states that:

<blockquote>The dialectic method demands a many-sided investigation of a given social phenomenon in its development; it demands that we proceed from the exterior, from the apparent, to the fundamental moving forces, to the development of productive forces and to the class struggle.<ref>Lenin, <cite>Collected Works</cite>, Vol. XVIII (International Publishers), p. 283.</ref>
</blockquote>
The sophist, however, picks out a postulate which is only correct under certain conditions, instead of undertaking an all-sided investigation, and ignores the most important point, ''viz''., that the conditions under which the given postulate is correct soon cease to exist, that the whole environment changes and that, as a result, everything else radically changes. For instance, Marx and Engels spoke of the legitimacy of the wars for national emancipation that took place in Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century, ''e.g.'', in Prussia in 1813. Kautsky takes these words of Marx and Engels and applies them in a different epoch, namely, to the wars of the twentieth century, which are essentially imperialistic and predatory.

<blockquote>It is the method of all the sophists of all times to quote examples obviously relating to basically dissimilar cases.<ref><cite>Ibid.</cite>, p. 285.</ref>
</blockquote>
The whole article, “Collapse of the Second International,” is a brilliant example of materialist dialectics. The article gives a detailed and precise explanation of the nature of the sophistry of the opportunists. In Lenin’s works we find innumerable examples of how to apply materialist dialectics and how to combat the false, truth-distorting views of the opportunists. We find it in his polemical writings against the Populists—“Who are the Friends of the People and How They Fight against Social-Democracy”; against Struve—“The Economic Content of Populism and the Criticism of it in Mr. Struve’s Book”; against the Economists—''What Is To Be Done?'' against the Mensheviks, the Liquidationists, the “Otzovists” and against Trotsky—“Two Tactics,” “Notes of a Publicist,” “Debatable Questions,” “Violation of Unity under Pretence of Unity.” We also find it in his philosophical polemic against the Machists—''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism''. The true dialectical method of overcoming the opposition argument is the only correct method, namely, not to brush it aside (that is not difficult), but to make a detailed analysis, a conscientious investigation of the question in all its detail, based on a profound study of the object of dispute as a whole (at the same time not sacrificing the general grasp of the whole subject to details). The result is a profound and all-round conception; things become revealed in the relationships in which they stand to each other in reality. We thus arrive at a concrete truth approximating to a complete and exhaustive comprehension of the subject as a unity of opposites.

We cannot understand capitalism unless we grasp the unity of opposites made up of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat and unless we realise the inevitability of the transition from capitalism to communism by means of the class struggle of the proletariat. We cannot understand the unity of the opposites: ether and matter, negative and positive electricity, attraction and repulsion.<ref>''Cf.'' Lenin’s note “On Dialectics,” <cite>Materialism and Empirio-Criticism</cite> (<cite>Collected Works</cite>), Vol. XIII, p. 321.</ref> A struggle of opposites, a perpetual succession of forms, transitions from state to state, from form to form—such is the dialectics of the world that surrounds us.

In our description of dialectics so far we have dwelt only on its basic law, ''viz''., on the unity of opposites. We did this because this law is the most important of all and the one that has been least dealt with in popular literature. This law, as well as the other laws, “the transformation of quantity into quality” and the “negation of negations” is brilliantly explained in Engels’ ''Anti- Dühring''.<ref>Engels, <cite>Anti-Dühring</cite>, Section 1, Chap. 12, “Dialectics: Quantity," and Chap. 13, “Dialectics: The Negation of the Negation.” A very good explanation of the dialectical method is given by Engels in his brochure <cite>Socialism, Utopian and Scientific</cite>, compiled from three chapters of <cite>Anti-Dühring</cite>. The second chapter of this pamphlet deals with the nature of the dialectical method.</ref>

In the next chapter we shall have to deal with the dialectical law of the “transformation of quantity into quality.”

== THE FIGHT FOR DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM ==

We have seen that dialectic materialism demands the study of phenomena in their totality (concretely) just as they occur in reality. It also demands of those who desire to be guided by the Marxist theory in the study of the driving forces of development that they take a conscious part in the process of development on the side of the revolutionary class, organising it and directing its forces. Such a philosophy is acceptable only to a revolutionary class.

The only real revolutionary class in present-day society is the proletariat, the class that “has nothing to lose but its chains.” Contemporary dialectic materialism is the theoretical reflection of the proletarian revolution of the present day.

Only by organisation and struggle can the proletariat defend its interests, achieve its aims and throw off the yoke of exploitation. And it must conduct an organised and irreconcilable struggle for its revolutionary philosophy also. The theoretical struggle is an important and inseparable part of the class struggle of the proletariat.<ref>''Cf.'' Lenin, <cite>What Is To Be Done?</cite> (International Publishers).</ref> We have referred above to the tremendous importance of revolutionary theory. The importance of the fight for dialectic materialism must be particularly emphasised.

Two main forces are in constantly increasing conflict in the class struggle of the present day, ''viz''., the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Correspondingly, we have the conflict of two systems of state organisation, ''viz''., the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, on the one hand, which protects the system of wage slavery and is based on the brutal suppression of the proletarian revolution (at the present time, chiefly by fascist methods) and on the other hand, the dictatorship of the proletariat, which overthrows the bourgeoisie and suppresses the exploiters and the task of which is to raise the level of the toiling masses, to develop socialist production and create a classless society. In modern philosophy we correspondingly find two main tendencies, ''viz''., dialectic materialism, the philosophy of the revolutionary proletariat, and philosophical tendencies hostile to revolutionary Marxism, which are anti-materialist and anti-dialectical and which in various forms defend reactionary views, clericalism and so forth, their ultimate aim being to keep the proletariat under the ideological influence of the bourgeoisie.

Philosophy in general is closely connected with politics. In one of his letters to C. Schmidt (October 27, 1890), Engels wrote that “political, legal and moral reflexes... exercise the greatest direct influence upon philosophy,” ''i.e.'', philosophy is inseparably bound up with politics. The predominance of any particular line in a philosophy has an overwhelming effect on the conduct of those who have come under the influence of that philosophy. That, for instance, explains why the bourgeoisie so zealously support religion and the belief in God, using them in furtherance of their political aims, and why, as the capitalist system more and more approaches its decline, they increasingly support reactionary idealism and clericalism in philosophy. The defence of any particular philosophic view is intimately connected with the class struggle, for philosophy is essentially party philosophy.<ref group="4.">Philosophy is not—“impartial,” or “non-political”; every school of philosophy represents a certain set of political views, the views of a political party. On the subject of parties in philosophy, see Lenin’s ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism'' (International Publishers), p. 290.</ref> The direct interests of the bourgeoisie compel it “to perpetuate theoretical confusion” and to strive to keep the proletariat under its intellectual influence. It is in the interests of the proletariat to resist all attempts to distort materialist dialectics, which is its own theoretical weapon.

Lenin himself, during the whole course of his active life, fought bourgeois philosophy and idealism in all their forms and manifestations. He also fought that crude, non-dialectic and mechanical materialism which is absolutely impotent and helpless in face of idealism. In the ’nineties, Lenin fought professorial objectivism, as represented by Struve, the subjectivism of the Populist,<ref>''Cf.'' Lenin, <cite>The Economic Content of Populism and the Criticism of It in Mr. Struve's Book</cite>, Chapter 2, entitled “Criticism of the Sociology of the Populists.”</ref> and neo-Kantism, as advocated by the revisionists headed by Bernstein in Germany and by Struve in Russia (neo-Kantism today is the official philosophy of the German Social- Democrats, or social-fascists). In the beginning of this century Lenin fought the idealist philosophy of Mach and Avenarius and their followers, who in Russia were headed by A. Bogdanov. The philosophical views of Bogdanov were at one time fairly popular in our Party (just as were the views of E. Dühring among the German Social-Democrats in the ’seventies) and it became urgently necessary to fight them.

Lenin persistently fought the philosophy of Bogdanov and from 1906 to 1908 he subjected Bogdanov’s idealism and eclecticism to merciless criticism. In his letters to Bogdanov (unfortunately they were not published at the time and have not been found since, and so they have remained unstudied) and in his book ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism'', which appeared in 1909, Lenin explains and criticises the essence of Bogdanov’s philosophy. In 1914 Lenin wrote:

<blockquote>The sum total of the literary activities of A. Bogdanov may be reduced to an attempt to inoculate the mind of the proletariat with camouflaged idealistic conceptions of the bourgeois philosophers.... For many years A. Bogdanov has been an opponent of the philosophy of Marxism and a supporter of bourgeois idealistic views hostile to the materialism of Marx and Engels.
</blockquote>
Lenin attached great importance to philosophic questions and carefully studied the literature on philosophy, and on a number of occasions he subjected the reactionary views of the bourgeois philosophers and their various henchmen to devastating criticism.<ref>Lenin, “The Importance of Militant Materialism,” <cite>Collected Works</cite>, Vol. XXVII, pp. 180-190, Russian edition.</ref>

During the whole course of his active life Lenin studied materialist dialectics, applied it, fought for it and explained the necessity of studying and applying this theoretical weapon of Marxism. See, for example, his pamphlet “Once More on the Trade Unions,” “The Present Situation and the Errors of Comrades Trotsky and Bukharin,” which appeared in 1921, and his article “The Importance of Militant Materialism,” dated March 12, 1922.

In the years 1913 to 1916 Lenin collected material apparently with the intention of writing a special work on materialist dialectics. Preoccupation with more urgent matters and the approach of the revolution prevented him from writing this book, but the material he collected is very rich and voluminous. Extracts and notes have been preserved in philosophical notebooks that are of extreme theoretical value.<ref>These notebooks have now been published in Vols. IX and XII of the <cite>Lenin Miscellany</cite>, Russian edition.</ref>

Such, in general, was the fight that Lenin conducted on behalf of dialectic materialism.

Apart from the main enemy of dialectic materialism—its opponents at the present day are represented by the revisionist tendencies in philosophy, against which an irreconcilable war must be waged. Anti-Marxian and anti-Leninist tendencies are to be found in the mechanistic revision of Marxism (Comrade Bukharin, for example, has been guilty of mechanistic errors), which is the chief danger, and in Menshevist idealism (Comrade Deborin and his group).

The mechanistic outlook is hostile to dialectics; it repudiates it, considers it as scholastic, metaphysical, etc. The mechanists regard themselves as materialists; but, in fact, because of their inability to think dialectically, they are impotent in the face of idealism and are themselves forced to abandon the materialist position. As an example, one may cite the inability of the mechanists to deal with the question of quantity and quality. This is one of the questions on which the limitations and shortcomings and the metaphysical nature of the mechanistic philosophy are particularly revealed. We shall therefore dwell on this question in a little more detail.

According to the mechanist conception, the explanation of all phenomena must be sought in the mechanical motion of qualitatively identical and unchanging units (atoms, electrons). All qualitative differences between things are due to the difference in the composition of these units and to the difference in their simple mechanical motion (transplacement in space). Hence, quality does not exist in actual reality but depends entirely on our subjective perceptions. Objectively there exists only the mechanical motion of atoms and their quantitative relations. In the note he made during his study of natural science Engels referred to the tendency to reduce everything to mechanical motion and to regard that as the sole aim of science, and said that “It ignored the specific nature of other forms of motion.” While considering it erroneous to explain everything in mechanical motion alone, Engels nevertheless did not deny that mechanical motion is universal and is associated, in one way or another, with every phenomenon.

<blockquote>Every higher form of movement is always essentially associated with real mechanical (external or molecular) motion, just as higher forms of motion simultaneously cause other forms of motion: chemical reaction is impossible without changes in temperature and electricity; organic life is impossible without mechanical, molecular, chemical, thermal, electrical and other changes. But the presence of these supplementary forms does not in any given case exhaust the essential nature of the main form. Some day we shall undoubtedly “reduce” thought experimentally to molecular and chemical motion in the brain; but will this exhaust the essential nature of thinking?<ref>Engels, <cite>The Dialectics of Nature</cite>.</ref>
</blockquote>
Thus, Engels declares that although there can be no thought unaccompanied by mechanical and chemical processes within the brain, these alone do not explain the specific nature of thinking. Thinking must be regarded as a whole; its internal, subjective side must be considered together with all the qualities and conditions that determine and produce it, ''i.e.'', in its concrete reality, and not merely from the point of view of mechanical motion. This example clearly illustrates the attitude of dialectic materialism to every specific “quality,” particularly to so popular a phenomenon as our processes of thinking. It explains the difference between the conceptions of dialectic materialism and of mechanistic conceptions.

The materialist dialectician declares that mind cannot be separated from matter; our mind (“spirit”) is a property of specifically organised matter, ''viz''., the brain of man, who is a member of a specific historically developed society. This qualitatively specific phenomenon actually exists in objective reality. We ourselves are the best proof of this, for we are thinking beings, performing intellectual labour. We do actually think, it does not merely seem to us that we do. Even imagination is, in a manner of speaking, thought. The external world is reflected in the mind of man. Thought is not the object itself reflected in the mind; it is but the reflection of the object. The theory that the external world is “reflected” in the mind is fundamental to the theory of knowledge of dialectical materialism. The movement of atoms takes place both in a cobblestone and in a man’s head and both the cobblestone and the head reflect the action of the external world; but it is perfectly obvious that the movement and the reflection are qualitatively different in each case. In the next chapter we shall deal in greater detail with the question of our knowledge.

Mechanical materialism denies the reality of a specific quality of thinking; it regards it merely as mechanical motion of atoms (electrons) and considers matter and mind as being equal, identical. This materialism, which denies the reality of higher forms of motion and reduces everything to gross and simple mechanical motion, to transplacement, proves to be absolutely helpless before idealism. For idealism also asserts that thought and the objective world are identical.<ref>''Cf.'' Lenin, <cite>Materialism and Empirio-Criticism</cite>, Introduction, in which is outlined the views of Berkeley, who reduces the whole world to our sensations.</ref> Mechanical materialism, therefore, paves the way for idealism of the most subjective kind. It leads to the inevitable conclusion that the only reality is one’s own sensations, for however much theoretical thinking may be denied, this reality cannot be denied. Moreover, mechanical materialism cannot resist the idealistic belief in a creator, in some force external to the world, for the reason that mechanical materialism cannot explain what it is that sets in motion the gigantic mechanism that the world appears to him to be. The world machine of mechanical materialism requires some external impulse, the universal clock requires somebody to wind it up. There is no way out of this dilemma except to acknowledge the existence of God.

And so, true dialectics acknowledges the reality (actual existence) of qualities as specific forms, as the sum of the properties and peculiarities of things. Within the limits of a definite quality, quantitative changes may occur without affecting that quality, without changing it; but only within definite limits. When quantitative changes go beyond a definite limit they result in a leap and a change in quality; there occurs what Hegel termed the transformation of quantity into quality and which we meet with in the surrounding world of nature and society at every step. Within the limits of from 0° to 100° C. under ordinary terrestrial conditions (atmospheric pressure, etc.) water remains a liquid, preserves this quality. One hundred degrees is the boiling point; water becomes transformed from a liquid into a gas. Zero is freezing point, water becomes transformed into ice, ''i.e.'', into a solid. Thus arise new qualities, formerly non-existent.

With the appearance of a new quality, new quantitative relations come into effect, so that we may also speak of the transformation of quality into quantity. The high quality of class consciousness, discipline, organisation and firmness of principle of the Communist Party, which at first represented the numerically small, but actually most advanced section of the proletariat, subsequently resulted in the Bolshevik Party’s being able to assume the leadership of the movement of millions and to obtain a following of tens of millions. Thus, in the course of time, quality was transformed into quantity.

Another example, which strikingly illustrates the transformation of quantity into quality and the rise of new quantitative relations on the basis of the new quality, is the process that is now taking place in the Soviet Union of the mass transition of the middle individual peasant to collectivisation. A new social stratum is being created, new qualities are arising. The middle peasant was the ally of the Soviet state, but the collective farm peasant is now becoming the bulwark of the Soviet state. We would here mention the fact referred to by Comrade Stalin in one of his speeches, ''viz''., that the pooling of the farm implements of the individual peasants results in a far greater productivity of labour in the collective farms than the same quantity of implements and forces represent in the individual farms. Collectivisation creates a new quality of social relationships, expressing itself in an enhanced productivity of labour and in better results of labour, both qualitatively and quantitatively.

Examples of the transformation of quantity into quality, and ''vice versa'', may be cited without end. They demonstrate the correctness of dialectic materialism, which teaches that these two aspects of phenomena are closely associated, become transformed one into the other, but that both are real. The confusion of the mechanists arises from the fact that they deny the objective existence of qualities, that they regard quantitative factors as the only reality and do not see the peculiarities or, as it is scientifically called, the specific nature of phenomena. The inability to use the dialectic method also leads the mechanists to rely on the conclusions of a single science (mechanics) and to ignore the experience of the other sciences, with the result that they regard the conclusions of that science as the sole and ultimate truth.

As far back as 1908, Lenin advanced important and fundamental arguments against mechanical materialism. “The recognition of unchanging elements, of the unchanging essence of things is not materialism, but metaphysics, ''i.e.'', anti-dialectic materialism,” he declares in ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism'', and goes on to state that dialectic materialism insists on the approximate and relative character of all scientific theories regarding the structure of matter and its properties, on the absence of absolute boundaries in nature, on the transformation of moving matter from one state into another, seemingly incompatible state, and so forth. In conclusion, Lenin declares himself to be in complete agreement with Engels’ statement to the effect that from the point of view of dialectic materialism, only one thing is immutable, ''viz''., the recognition of a world existing outside of us and reflected in our minds.

<blockquote>From the point of view of Engels, only one thing is immutable, ''viz''., the reflection in the human mind (when there is a human mind) of the external world that exists and develops independently of that mind. For Marx and Engels there is no “immutability,” no other “essence,” no other “absolute substance” in the sense that this concept has been depicted by futile professorial philosophy. The “essence” of things or “substance” are also relative: they represent only the deepening of the human knowledge of objects. Yesterday the deepening of human knowledge took in the atom, today electrons and the ether, but dialectic materialism insists on the temporary, relative and approximate character of all knowledge of nature obtained by the advancing science of man. The electron is as ''inexhaustible'' as the atom, nature is infinite, but it infinitely ''exists''. And it is this single, categorical and only absolute recognition of the ''existence'' of nature outside of human consciousness and sensation that distinguishes dialectic materialism from relative agnosticism and idealism.
</blockquote>
In addition to the recognition of this “relativity and approximateness” of the picture of the world created on the basis of our knowledge, which becomes ever deeper, but which is never completed and never exhausts the multiform content of the objective world, dialectic materialism differs from metaphysical, mechanical materialism in its ability to handle flexible concepts and to rest content with results achieved.

It should here be pointed out that mechanistic materialism is essentially the methodology of the Right deviationists. Theoretically, it expresses and justifies the class interests of the last of the capitalist classes remaining in the Soviet Union and therefore represents the chief danger on the theoretical front.

Such anti-dialectical, counter-revolutionary theories, as, for instance, the conception of opposites as being only an external, and not internal, property of phenomena, are, in the conditions prevailing in the Soviet Union, theoretical expressions of the interests of the bourgeoisie. They provide a theoretical justification for the denial of class contradictions and the class war (of the proletariat) and support the advocacy of class peace (between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat). One such theory is the mechanistic theory of equilibrium, of the correlation between a system and its environment. This provides a theoretical basis for the theory that the kulak enterprises will grow into socialism through the medium of the cooperative societies. According to the arguments of the Right theoreticians, the “kulak system” should merge with the socialist “environment” and they claim that there are “scientific” grounds for this. Obviously this is a very useful theory for a class that is being completely liquidated. It justifies and corroborates the policy of the Rights, who consider that the kulak should not be disturbed.

Hence, the mechanistic philosophy is essentially bourgeois and anti-proletarian. Its general traits are that it underestimates the value of theory, it fails to understand dialectics and is hostile to it. This theoretical nihilism and failure to understand the necessity for the study of dialectic materialism in practice lead to the surrender of the materialist position to idealism and to a general submission to the ideology of the bourgeoisie. Mechanistic materialism is impotent in the face of idealism; it connives at and assists idealism.

There is yet another danger, namely, of falling, in company with the idealists (Hegel), under the influence of abstractions, of losing contact with concrete reality, of confining oneself to dialectic conceptions without connecting those conceptions with the development of the objective world, of not distinguishing categories from the material relationships of the objective world—in a word, the danger of straying onto the path of idealism and of forgetting the requirements of materialism. This danger is threatened by the Menshevistic idealism of the Deborin group, who conceal idealistic and anti-Marxian views under the guise of Marxian phraseology and the pretence of fighting for dialectic materialism.

While the mechanist theory has no profound social roots in our midst, Menshevistic idealism is nevertheless a real and serious danger. Clothed in the garb of orthodox Marxism, it acts as a channel of bourgeois influences to the proletariat.

Some of the distinguishing features characteristic of certain representatives of this tendency, and which in fact are common to the whole school of Menshevistic idealism are: the severance of theory from practice; the denial of the party nature of philosophy; professorial, contemplative “objectivism”; failure to appreciate Lenin as a materialist and dialectician; failure to appreciate Lenin’s contribution to the development of dialectic materialism; the disguise of non-Marxian and idealistic views by Marxian phraseology; priggish “scholarliness” which is totally unjustified because this ostensible “scholarliness” is not backed by any practical work or by a positive study of the subject.

The idealistic revision of Marxism effected by the Menshevistic idealists is clearly illustrated by the fact that this tendency makes the materialist dialectics of Marx identical with the dialectics of Hegel. Hence, their revisionism is essentially of a Hegelian character.

The founders of scientific socialism always emphasised the importance of studying the method of dialectic materialism. They even pointed out how this should be done, namely, by studying the history of philosophy, and in particular, Hegel. In one of his Forewords to ''Anti-Dühring'' (1878) Engels wrote:

<blockquote>Theoretical thinking is an inborn property only in the form of capability. It must be developed and perfected, and for this no other method has so far been found except the study of the history of philosophy.
</blockquote>
By studying the history of philosophy we learn the experience of scientific thinking accumulated over a period of more than two thousand years. In his letters to Conrad Schmidt, Engels recommended that in studying the history of philosophy, particular attention should be paid to Hegel. Hegel is extremely difficult to study. Those who undertake to study him require assistance and this assistance is given by Marx, Engels and Lenin (particularly valuable are the latter’s philosophical notebooks to which we referred above).

Menshevistic idealism distorts the views of Marx, Engels and Lenin and regards the logic of Hegel as identical with the logic of Marx. As we have seen, Hegel and Marx approach the question of the relation of mind to existence from fundamentally different points of view.

In his article, “Hegel and Dialectical Materialism,” Deborin declares that:

<blockquote>Hegelian logic should serve as the starting point for the development or structure of materialist dialectics.
</blockquote>
And he concludes by saying:

<blockquote>At any rate, the need for a theory of materialist dialectics has long been felt. Hegelian logic cannot fully satisfy this need, but it should serve as the starting point for materialist dialectics.
</blockquote>
This school not only regards Hegel’s logic as the starting point, but also considers that its structure requires no radical alteration. Marx put Hegel’s logic “right side up,” ''i.e.'', he reconstructed it and endowed it with new principles. Deborin, on the contrary, asserts that “in general, the Hegelian structure must be considered as correct even from the materialist point of view.”

The idealist view of dialectics is further revealed in the conception and application of the laws of dialectics. Take for instance the fundamental law of the unity of opposites. Engels and Lenin consider that this law expresses the very essence, the “kernel” of dialectics. Lenin says:

<blockquote>Unity (coincidence, identity, interaction) of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory and relative. The conflict of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute.<ref><cite>Lenin Miscellany</cite>, Vol. XII, p. 324, Russian edition.</ref>
</blockquote>
And according to Lenin this dialectical law signifies:

<blockquote>The recognition (discovery) of contradictory, ''mutually'' exclusive and opposite tendencies in ''all'' manifestations and processes of nature (''including'' spirit and society).<ref><cite>Ibid.</cite></ref>
</blockquote>
Thus, according to Lenin (and Lenin expresses the point of view of dialectic materialism), the conflict of opposites is absolute and inherent in all phenomena of the external world.

Deborin treats the question entirely differently. In his article, “Marx and Engels” (which, by the way, is thoroughly idealist), he completely adopts the Hegelian idealist scheme: he asserts that at first there are ''only'' differences, which then pass into contradictions, and the latter pass into opposites. Hence, Deborin admits the possibility of opposites and the conflict of opposites not existing at certain stages. For him, accordingly, contradiction is not the starting point. He thus falls a victim to the very mechanists, against whom he has written so much, who also repudiate the existence of opposites that are inherent in absolutely every form of motion of matter.

As we have repeatedly pointed out, one of the fundamental and distinguishing features of the dialectic materialism of Marx is the prominence it gives to the necessity for practical revolutionary activity. Marx criticised the contemplative character of the materialists that preceded him. Deborin, on the other hand, in his Foreword to the ''Works of Hegel'', does not say a word about this feature of dialectic materialism, but, on the contrary, emphasises its passive and contemplative character.

<blockquote>The task of the dialectic... method is not to introduce anything of its own into an object, but to observe the process of its development. In this sense the dialectic method is indeed the only real scientific and objective method. The dialectic method merely reproduces the process of development of an object.
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During the whole course of this long article the author says not a single word about the most important component part of materialist dialectics, ''viz''., practical revolutionary work. That is not a mere accident.

One of the most obvious features of Menshevik idealism, which reveals its anti-proletarian character, is the severance of theory from practice. In a speech delivered in 1920 to the Third All-Russian Congress of the Russian Young Communist League, Lenin declared:

<blockquote>Without work and without struggle, book knowledge of Communism derived from communist pamphlets and books is worth exactly nothing at all, since it but perpetuates the old severance of theory from practice, which was the most objectionable feature of the old bourgeois society.
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The separation of theory from practice is characteristic of Menshevik idealism. The representatives of this school occupied themselves with philosophy completely isolated from the tasks of socialist construction in the U.S.S.R. and from the international working class movement. They separated philosophy from politics, instead of placing it at the service of the proletarian party. It is no mere accident that practically all the writers of this school were unwilling to participate in the fight against Trotskyism and to expose the methodological errors of the factionalists who were opposing the general line of the Party. By divorcing philosophy from proletarian Marxism and Leninist politics, Menshevistic idealism in practice places its service at the disposal of bourgeois politics.

The whole standpoint of Menshevistic idealism was bound to lead to the separation of theory from practice. This was clearly revealed in all the activities of the representatives of this school. The bulk of their literature consists of “writing about other people’s writing.”<ref group="4.">This expression was used by Engels in one of his letters written in the ’eighties in which he gave characterisations of the writers who contributed to the ''Neue Zeit''. The majority of these writers were opportunists. These “people,” Engels wrote, “who refuse to study questions of principle and who create a literature on literature and litterateurs (nine-tenths of present-day German writing is writing about other people’s writing), will, of course, produce a far greater number of printed pages in a year than those who seriously study a certain thing and who desire to write about other books only, firstly, if they have themselves mastered these books and, secondly, if the books contain anything worth writing about.” This description most aptly fits the representatives of present-day opportunist and Menshevistic idealism and the petty-bourgeois radicals of the Trotskyist type who masquerade in the garb of orthodox Marxism.</ref>

Not a single problem of historical materialism is treated by the Menshevistic idealists from the standpoint of the new experiences of the revolutionary period. They have ignored Lenin’s instructions as to how dialectics should be studied. In his article, “The Significance of Militant Materialism,” Lenin states that dialectics must be studied from the materialist point of view, ''i.e.'', one must study the dialectics that “Marx applied practically in his ''Capital''” and in his historical and political works, and, also, that dialectics must be studied on the basis of the examples of dialectics “in the sphere of economic and political relations which modern history, particularly the present imperialist war and the revolution, provide in great abundance.” The representatives of Menshevik idealism were incapable of making such a study. The whole line they adopted prevented them from doing so; prevented them from understanding Lenin as a philosopher and from appreciating and fulfilling his instructions. They were hampered by their idealistic, abstract and formal point of view and their class position as petty-bourgeois radicals.

In a number of writings, notes and utterances, Lenin declared that abstractness, the severance of theory from reality, the use of schemes and formalism, were contrary to materialist dialectics. For instance in the notes he wrote on the margins of his copy of Bukharin’s ''Economics of the Transition Period'', opposite the passage in which Bukharin says that in the pre-war period “the so-called ‘national state’ was already a ''pure'' (Lenin’s italics) fiction,” Lenin wrote:

<blockquote>Not a ''pure fiction'', but an impure form. The violation of “dialectical materialism” consists in the logical (not material) ''leap'' over ''several'' concrete stages.<ref><cite>Lenin Miscellany</cite>, Vol. XI, p. 399, Russian edition.</ref>
</blockquote>
Opposite the passage in which Bukharin speaks of “dialectic negation,” but fails to give a concrete explanation of the nature of negation and to support the formula by facts, Lenin makes the note:

<blockquote>the author abuses ''the phrase'' “dialectic negation”: it must not be used without ''first'' demonstrating it by facts, it must be used ''cautiously''.<ref><cite>Ibid.</cite>, p. 378.</ref>
</blockquote>
In his notebook of excerpts, ''Marxism on the State'', Lenin copied out the following critical remark directed by Engels against the opportunists. Engels stated that the opportunists

<blockquote>give prominence to generalised and abstract political questions, thereby concealing the immediate concrete problems, which automatically arise at the first outbreak of events, and at the first political crisis. The only thing that can result from this is that at the critical moment the Party will suddenly find itself impotent and that uncertainty and lack of unity will reign within the Party on important questions, owing to the fact that these questions ''were never discussed''.
</blockquote>
Against this passage Lenin makes the marginal note:

<blockquote>Prominence to the abstract, the concrete obscured!! Excellent! That is the main point!<ref><cite>Lenin Miscellany</cite>, Vol. XIV, pp. 227-229, Russian edition.</ref>
</blockquote>
Many similar notes could be cited.

Lenin, therefore, condemns the application of ready-made schemes, the inability, or lack of desire, to formulate theoretically the actual situation, with all its contradictions and complexity, and the inability to think concretely. Lenin untiringly exposed and condemned every departure from this fundamental demand of dialectic materialism.

It is not possible here to give a complete analysis of the whole system of false views and misguided utterances of the Menshevistic idealists. Much space would be required for a historical, not dogmatic, approach to the study of the theory of knowledge. In studying the problems of knowledge, the whole of human experience must be taken into account; it must be made sure that the theory of knowledge shall be a really materialistic one; that there shall be no rupture with the cognised object and finally, that the materialist path shall be selected, ''viz''., from things to concepts, and not from concepts to things. The fact that dialectics is made identical with the theory of knowledge is a guarantee against the creation of some special sphere isolated from concrete reality, a system of abstractions and eternal categories ''a la'' Hegel.

As an instance of the erroneousness of such methods, Marx, in a letter to Annenkov, cites the doctrinaires, who on the eve of the Great French Revolution endeavoured to preserve the throne, the Chamber of Deputies and the Upper Chamber as essential components of social life and as eternal categories. Marx says:

<blockquote>...In the eighteenth century, a number of mediocre minds were busy finding the true formula which would bring the social order, king, nobility, parliament, etc., into equilibrium, and they woke up one morning to find that there was in fact no longer any king, nobility or parliament. The true equilibrium in this antagonism was the overthrow of all the social conditions which served as a basis for these feudal existences and their antagonisms.
</blockquote>
“Mediocre minds” do not link up their knowledge with constantly changing material and objective reality, or do so only in words.

The fact that dialectics, which demands concrete thinking and a grasp of objective reality as one whole, is the theory of knowledge, serves as a guarantee that those who are guided by dialectics will not find themselves in the unpleasant and ludicrous position in which the doctrinaires found themselves.

Revolutionary Marxism, ''i.e.'', dialectic materialism, teaches us to approach questions of knowledge dialectically, to study the transition from not knowing to knowing. Dialectics is a property of human knowledge, since our knowledge reflects the dialectic motion of the objective world (nature and society). Dialectic materialism does not regard the results of knowledge as final; at the same time, however, it does not doubt the vitality, fertility, integrity and objectivity of human knowledge, and of its ability to overcome all obstacles in the process of social development.

The development of human thought is based on the development of social productive labour. Lenin declared that “the continuation of the work of Hegel and Marx must consist in the ''dialectic'' study of the history of human thought, science, and technology.”<ref><cite>Lenin Miscellany</cite>, Vol. IX, p. 139, Russian edition.</ref>

It is on this basis that we must study the unity of opposites, ''viz''., the theory and practice of the actual relations existing in the surrounding world and of the abstract conceptions that arise in the human brain as a reflection of these actual relations.

We must be guided by Leninism in the study of materialist dialectics and combat the mechanistic repudiation of dialectics and its mutilation at the hands of the idealistic and Menshevistic idealists. We must expose the errors of both these schools and correct them. Theory must be placed at the service of the proletarian revolution and adapted to the practical class struggle. Philosophy must be completely party philosophy.

In class society, and as long as classes exist, Marxism and Leninism can exist and develop only by combating all bourgeois and petty-bourgeois tendencies, influences and ideas.

== THE DIALECTICS OF NATURE AND HUMAN KNOWLEDGE ==

As we have said, materialist dialectics is an invaluable instrument for the study of the surrounding world, nature and human society. Marx and Engels were keenly interested in every sphere of natural science. Engels did a great deal in this sphere. He set forth the conclusions drawn from his studies in Part I of ''Anti-Dühring''. In addition, he wrote a large work on ''The Dialectics of Nature'', which unfortunately he never succeeded in publishing (the manuscript however was preserved and has been published by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute). The conclusion Engels arrived at, ''viz.'', that development in nature takes place in accordance with dialectical, and not metaphysical laws, is strikingly borne out by modern science. This has been pointed out by Lenin, who, after Engels, was the first of the Marxian theoreticians to study one of the most important branches of modern science, namely, physics.

Science has made considerable strides since Engels pursued his studies in the ’seventies. Lenin examined the new material from the standpoint of a materialist dialectician. He explained the crisis in modern physics from the Marxian standpoint and indicated the path that must be pursued by scientific research.

In his criticism of modern theory he attacks the clericalism (idealism) that refuses to seek a scientific explanation of phenomena and which evades recognition of what is actually proceeding in nature, thus leading to stagnation of thought and intellectual reaction.

As we have stated, in connection with the disputes that arose among Marxian writers after the 1905 Revolution, Lenin carefully worked out the dialectic materialist theory of knowledge. He showed that there were two lines of philosophy—idealism and materialism—on every one of the questions in dispute: matter and experience, sensation and knowledge, space and time, cause and effect, absolute and relative truth, etc. Idealism considers that a spiritual principle (''i.e.'', God) lies at the basis of everything and is identical, or akin to our mind (which latter the idealists sever from its actual contact with matter). Lenin analyses the philosophy of the Englishman, Bishop Berkeley, as typical of the idealist philosophy.<ref>''Cf.'' Lenin, <cite>Materialism and Empirio-Criticism</cite>, and Note 23 in Vol. XI of <cite>Selected Works</cite>.</ref> Materialism considers it wrong to place spirit at the base of all phenomena. It regards matter as the basis of everything and asserts that matter exists independently, and outside of our mind. The external material world reacts on our mind, is reflected in it and determines it. Matter is the primary, the fundamental; mind is secondary and derivative. Mind is inseparably associated with matter; it is a property of matter organised in a special way, ''viz.'', our brain, and is a product of the latter’s activity. Mind reflects the external world. There can be no mind or thought without brain. The idealists, on the other hand, sever thought from the brain and consider that spirit is the beginning of all things. The idealists turn the whole course of things upside down. In their opinion matter is derived from spirit. Materialism declares that there is no “spirit world,” there is no “transcendental” world; the world is unitary, and its unity lies, as Engels says, in its materialness.

Through our sense organs we receive impressions of the material world existing outside of us (human society and nature). These sense perceptions provide the material for our knowledge. The world is reflected in our mind because we ourselves are part of that world. Such is the conception of knowledge proclaimed by dialectic materialism. A material object and our minds comprise the unity of opposites, with which we are familiar. We must not, as idealists like Berkeley do, confuse the external world with our consciousness of the external world and make them identical. External objects and our consciousness of them are opposites, not identical things. But the opposite is not absolute: the external world and our consciousness are not isolated from each other. The unity we have here is unity in the sense that without a material world and without the brain of man, consciousness of the world cannot exist. It is unity also in the sense that our consciousness, in general, faithfully reflects the objective world. This is very well explained by Lenin in the sections on “Absolute and Relative Truth” and “The Criterion of Practice in the Theory of Knowledge” in Chap. II of his philosophical work ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism''.<ref><cite>Collected Works</cite>, Vol. XIII.</ref>

The essence of the explanation given by Engels and Lenin is that, while we must realise that at any given stage of its development our knowledge is relative, conditional and approximate, nevertheless, in every scientific theory, in spite of its shortcomings, we must discern the grain of objective truth, the fragment that correctly reflects the surrounding world. We must learn how to assimilate and develop this truth, although our knowledge is historical and transitory. In the works of Hegel there is much that is mystical, idealistic and clericalist, but they contain the fundamentals of the dialectical method. We must be able to select that which is true and the product of a brilliant mind from that which is untrue, fantastic and antiquated. That is what the great masters of materialist dialectics, Marx, Engels and Lenin, did.

Our knowledge contains an absolute (unconditional and unquestionable) truth, ''viz.'', that it reflects the external world. The truth of our knowledge is tested and confirmed by practice.

Neither the old metaphysical materialists nor Hegel were able properly to apply the dialectical method to the process of development of our knowledge. This was done by Marx and Engels, and subsequently by Lenin. In one of his philosophic notebooks Lenin wrote:

<blockquote>The approach of the mind (of man) to a particular thing, the taking of a cast of it (in other words, an impression) is not a simple, direct act; a lifeless mirror reflection, but a complex, twofold and zig-zag act, which harbours the possibility that the phantasy may entirely fly away from reality; what is more, it harbours the possibility that the abstract conception, the idea, may be transformed (imperceptibly and unwittingly on the part of man) into phantasy (and in the long run, into God). For even the simplest generalisation and the most elementary general idea is a fragment of phantasy.<ref><cite>Lenin Miscellany</cite>, Vol. XII, p. 399; ''cf.'' also “On Dialectics,” <cite>Selected Works</cite>, Vol. XI.</ref>
</blockquote>
The creation of phantasies (''e.g.'', regarding the power of the dead, demons, god, disincarnate powers, etc.) is due to various complex causes, chief of which is the dependence of man on circumstances which enslave him, such as natural and social forces, and which appear to him to be external and alien. This also explains the various religions and faiths.<ref>''Cf.'' Lenin, <cite>Selected Works</cite>, Vol. XI.</ref>

Properly applied to our knowledge, ''i.e.'', if it is realised that the mind of man is determined by the development of the material world which proceeds independently of the mind, and of which thinking man is himself a part, materialist dialectics is the best weapon against clericalism, against stultification of thought and against the substitution of the living work of the mind by lifeless abstractions that end in intellectual stagnation.

The old theory of matter was that it consisted of indivisible and simple particles—atoms. Recent discoveries have shown that the atoms are not simple, but extremely complex. Atoms have been divided into still more minute particles, electrons.<ref>''Cf.'' Chapter 5, Part 1, “The Crisis in Modern Physics," <cite>Materialism and Empirio-Criticism</cite>, p. 213.</ref> Science has revealed that the laws of motion of these particles differ from the laws governing the incomparably slower motion of large masses of matter. Not being acquainted with dialectic materialism, scientists began to draw the conclusion that with the disappearance of the atom, matter also disappears, that our knowledge is impotent and that we are not destined to know the real world; in other words, they began to adopt the standpoint of idealism and agnosticism. (“We are not fated to know!”)<ref><cite>Ibid.</cite>, pp. 259-269.</ref>

Lenin, however, showed that the new discoveries, while compelling us to reject the old theories of science, deepen our knowledge of matter and confirm the correctness of dialectic materialism, which teaches us to regard scientific truths not as unshakable dogmas, but as approximately true reflections of objective processes; reflections that are bound to be corrected and perfected by every new development of science. The new discoveries do not shake the basic standpoint, ''viz.'', that which we know as matter.

Chapter Five of Lenin’s ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism'', entitled “The Latest Revolution in Natural Science and Philosophic Idealism,” shows that the recent discoveries of physics serve as striking corroborations of dialectic materialism.

Thanks to his genius for mastering materialist dialectics, Lenin was able to contribute something also to the study of natural phenomena. He gave precise indications of the nature of the errors of the natural scientists—who are materialists rather by instinct—and showed wherein they deviated from materialism because of their lack of knowledge of dialectics.

Lenin criticised their theory dialectically, separating that which was true and correcting that which was untrue, and showed how research should be conducted. As an example we cite his analysis of the address of the English physicist, A. W. Rücker,<ref><cite>Materialism and Empirio-Criticism</cite>, pp. 233 et seq.</ref> who represented “the instinctive materialist point of view” and whose errors were due to his ignorance of dialectic materialism. Or take his criticism of the works of Duhem and Stallo<ref><cite>Ibid.</cite>, pp. 265-269.</ref> in which, for instance, he points out where Duhem comes close to dialectic materialism and wherein lies his weakness, and also shows how he descends to a reactionary philosophy because of his inability to raise himself from metaphysical materialism to dialectic materialism.

On the subject of the dialectics of nature, Engels in 1885 wrote in his Foreword to the second edition of ''Anti-Dühring'', as follows:

<blockquote>It is possible to reach this standpoint because the accumulating facts of natural science compel us to do so.... Natural science has now advanced so far that it can no longer escape the dialectical synthesis. But it will make this process easier for itself if it does not lose sight of the fact that the results in which its experiences are summarised are ideas; but that the art of working with ideas is not inborn and also is not given with ordinary everyday consciousness, but requires real thought, and that this thought similarly has a long empirical history, not more and not less than empirical natural science. Only by learning to assimilate results of the development of philosophy during the past two and a half thousand years will it be able to rid itself on the one hand, of any isolated natural philosophy standing apart from it, outside it and above it and, on the other hand, also of its own limited method of thought, which was its inheritance from English empiricism.
</blockquote>
We conceive nature as the sum total of all bodies (from the stars to the atoms, electrons and the ether), which are in a constant state of interaction and motion, constantly changing their forms and qualities and passing from one into the other. It is impossible to understand their movement and the transformation of one form into another (''e.g.'', inorganic matter into organic matter) without using the dialectic method.

Moreover, it is necessary to grasp the difference between the philosophic and the physical conception of matter. It is absolutely correct to recognise the existence of matter and the objective world, independently and outside of our mind. The external world reacts on our senses and is reflected in our mind. The recognition of the objective reality of the external world is an absolute truth, confirmed every minute by fact and by practice. This is the foundation of the materialist philosophy. The material world is essentially cognisable, since the “cognising apparatus,” if we may so express ourselves, does not exist outside of the world, but is a part of the world. This “cognising apparatus,” ''i.e.'', thinking people and human society, is the fruit of a long development. The existence and development of humanity is the best proof of its strength and vitality, and also of the strength and vitality of the human mind.

Theories of physics, as well as other scientific theories, are but relative truths. They are ever approaching closer to an understanding of the objective world, for instance, of the physical structure of matter; their knowledge becomes progressively deeper; but they can never result in final and exhaustive knowledge, in ultimate truth. In his ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism'' (p. 152) Lenin says:

<blockquote>The scientific doctrine of the structure of substance, the chemical composition of food, and the electron may become antiquated with time; but the truth that man is unable to subsist on thoughts and beget children by platonic love alone can never become antiquated!
</blockquote>

== THE DIALECTICS OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT ==

The development of society also proceeds by contradiction. Here, too, materialist dialectics is essential not only for the study of social phenomena, but also in order to lead the struggle of the proletariat and to guide historical activity. History is made by men. But hitherto there could be no conscious guidance of the development of history. Mankind can become the master of its development only after the complete triumph of communism. Engels in ''Anti-Dühring'' says:

<blockquote>The seizure of the means of production by society puts an end to commodity production, and therewith to the domination of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by conscious organisation on a planned basis. The struggle for individual existence comes to an end. And at this point, in a certain sense, man finally cuts himself off from the animal world, leaves the conditions of animal existence behind him and enters conditions which are really human. The conditions of existence forming man’s environment, which up to now have dominated man, at this point pass under the dominion and control of man, who now for the first time becomes the real conscious master of nature, because and in so far as he has become master of his own social organisation. The laws of his own social activity, which have hitherto confronted him as external, dominating laws of nature, will then be consciously applied by man with complete understanding, and hence will be dominated by man.... It is only from this point that men, with full consciousness, will fashion their own history; it is only from this point that the social causes set in motion by men will have, predominantly, and in constantly increasing measure, the effects willed by men. It is humanity’s leap from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom.
</blockquote>
Of course, it must not be thought that this “leap” will take place in a single instant; for it represents a “change which marks a turning point in world history,” a transition to a new type of society. Such leaps, as Marx, Engels and Lenin pointed out, may extend over ten or more years.<ref>''Cf.'' Lenin, “Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Power,” <cite>Collected Works</cite>, Vol. XXII, p. 466; Russian edition.</ref> In the Soviet Union the “leap from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom” is being accomplished by the dictatorship of the proletariat led by the Party of Lenin and armed with revolutionary theory. The advantages of planning in economic life and the rapidity of development of socialist economy are already apparent.

In the sphere of social development, the law of the unity of opposites and of motion by contradiction manifests itself in the productive activities of society and in the class struggle. In modern society, large-scale production predominates and the fundamental contradiction is between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. As has been stated, Marx, Engels and Lenin attached the greatest significance to the struggle of the proletariat. They considered it their prime duty to lead the class struggle of the proletariat, and to subordinate everything to its interests.

Applying dialectic materialism to the study of society, Marx discovered that the basis of social development is the development of production. Material production is the foundation of social life because on it depends man’s very existence. In order to exist men must eat, drink, clothe themselves, and provide themselves with dwellings; only then can they occupy themselves with politics, science, art and so forth (Engels). Labour is required to create the material things necessary for men’s existence. The productive activities of human society consist in extracting things from nature, in working them up and in adapting them to the needs of man. Human labour, which is essential to man’s existence, exercises decisive influence on the whole structure of human society.

The application of dialectic materialism to the history of human society is very clearly illustrated in Marx’s theory of the class struggle. Marx showed that development in class society arises out of the class struggle, which attains maximum intensity during the period of revolution. Revolution is the result of the contradictions created between the productive forces of human society and the productive relations within which they operate and develop.<ref>''Cf.'' Lenin, “Karl Marx,” Section, “Materialist Conception of History and the Class Struggle.”</ref> Under capitalism the contradiction between the old productive relations and the productive forces that have outgrown and can no longer develop freely within these relations, manifests itself in the struggle of the revolutionary class, the proletariat, against the exploiting class, the bourgeoisie. Thus, the struggles of the revolutionary class advance the development of society. Marx called the class struggle “the battles of developing production.” (Letter to Weydemeyer, March 5, 1852.)

Marx was not the first to discover the existence of classes and the class war, as he himself states in the letter to his friend Weydemeyer. But Marx was the first to give an exhaustive explanation of the basis of class divisions (namely, a definite stage of development of production). He was the first to give a complete explanation of the meaning and significance of the struggle of the modern proletariat and the part it plays. He pointed out how and under what conditions the abolition of classes and the transition to a classless society would be accomplished with the help of a proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Marx was the first to discover the general law of social development and thereby transformed socialism from utopian to scientific.

In an article written in 1899 Lenin stated that Marx’s theory

<blockquote>transformed socialism from utopian to scientific; it laid firm foundations for the science and indicated the path of its further development and the elaboration of its parts. It has exposed the essential nature of modern capitalist economy by explaining how the hiring of workers and the purchase of labour power conceals the enslavement of millions of propertyless people by a handful of capitalists and owners of land, factories, mines, etc. It has shown how the whole development of modern capitalism tends to the squeezing out of small-scale production by large-scale production and creates conditions that render a socialist order of society both possible and essential. Beneath the layer of ingrained customs, political intrigues, astute laws and subtle doctrines it has taught us to discern the class war, the struggle between the various propertied classes and the propertyless masses and the proletariat that leads them. It has revealed the real task of a revolutionary socialist party, namely, not to invent plans for the reconstruction of society, not to plead with the capitalists and their hangers-on to improve the condition of the workers, not to plot conspiracies, but to organise the class struggle of the proletariat and to lead that struggle, the ultimate aim of which is to win political power for the proletariat and to organise socialist society.<ref>Lenin, “Our Programme,” <cite>Collected Works</cite>, Vol. II, p. 481, Russian edition.</ref>
</blockquote>
It would be a serious error to imagine that social production and social development takes place, like natural phenomena (change of seasons, the breaking of the ice on the river, eclipse of the sun, etc.) independently of the conscious efforts of men. History is made of men, by their productive activities, by their mass actions and by their class struggles. Men themselves build up their material and spiritual culture, using the foundations inherited from preceding generations. Historical development pursues an extremely complex path. Conflict arises between the productive forces of men and productive relations that no longer correspond to these productive forces. Once society has broken up into classes, development proceeds by the conflicts of those classes expressed in various forms: ideologically (in the sphere of philosophy), scientifically, politically, etc., as well as in purely physical forms—wars between classes and between nations. The inherent contradictions of social development are solved “by the practical and violent action of the masses.”<ref>Marx, “Letter to Annenkov,” 1846.</ref>

“Order” and oppression in class society are maintained by violence, by the organised state power of the exploiters. This “order” can be destroyed and replaced by a new kind of order only with the aid of the organised violence of the revolutionary class. In our times this must take the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, established by revolution with the aim of creating a classless communist society.<ref>Lenin, “The State,” <cite>Collected Works</cite>, Vol. XXIV, pp. 362-377, Russian edition; see also <cite>State and Revolution</cite>.</ref>

According to Marx and Lenin, revolutions are the most vital and decisive factors in the history of human society. “Revolutions are the locomotives of history,” Marx said. This aphorism was quoted by Lenin in his pamphlet, ''Two Tactics of the Social-Democrats in the Democratic Revolution'', in which he also referred to revolution as “the festival of the oppressed and exploited.” He wrote:

<blockquote>At no other time are the masses of the people in a position to come forward so actively as creators of a new social order as during the time of revolution.<ref>Lenin, <cite>Selected Works</cite>, Vol. VIII.</ref>
</blockquote>
In another article he writes:

<blockquote>Marxism differs from all other socialist theories by its admirable combination of sober scientific analysis of objective conditions and the objective process of evolution with the most emphatic recognition of the importance of the revolutionary energy, the revolutionary creative power and the revolutionary initiative of the masses, as well as, of course, of individuals, groups, organisations and parties that are able to establish contact with the masses.<ref>Lenin, <cite>Collected Works</cite>, Vol. XII, p. 32, Russian edition.</ref>
</blockquote>
This leads us to an extremely important phase of dialectic materialism, namely, its insistence on the importance of active revolutionary work. History is made by men. Historical science studies how this is done, what class forces participate in historical actions and how historical development is brought about. But mere study is not enough. We must not only study history, but make history; the “making” of history is much more important and much more interesting than studying it (although that, of course, is essential). Both Marx and Lenin considered that one of the defects of the old materialism was its inability “to understand the conditions and appreciate the significance of practical revolutionary activity,” without which materialism, in their opinion, was incomplete, one-sided and inanimate.

Revolutionary Marxism does not suffer from this defect. In all his activities Lenin (like Marx) was a prominent exponent of revolutionary materialist dialectics and a theoretician of the proletariat, who fully combined “sober, scientific analysis of the objective state of affairs” with “revolutionary initiative and energy.” He was a leader of the proletarian revolution, a strategist and tactician of the class struggle of the proletariat.

The reader will find a brilliant appreciation and description of the works of Marx and Engels and their activities from this point of view in the Preface to the Russian translation of Marx’s ''Letters to Kugelmann'', and in the Introduction to the Russian translation of ''The Letters of J. P. Becker, J. Dietzgen, F. Engels, K. Marx and Others to F. A. Sorge and Others''. This side of Lenin’s activities should be carefully studied. It is precisely this factor that makes Marxism a real revolutionary theory, for, as Lenin frequently emphasised, unless revolutionary theory is combined with revolutionary practice it is not Marxism, but opportunism.

The works of Lenin were inspired by revolutionary policy and were closely associated with the class struggle of the proletariat. The most complete summary of the basic principles of the strategy and tactics of Leninism will be found in the pamphlet, ''“Left-Wing” Communism, an Infantile Disorder'', while valuable indications will be found in ''What Is To Be Done?'', ''Two Tactics'', ''State and Revolution'', and ''The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky''.

To give a complete description of the great and complex work Lenin performed in leading the class struggle of the proletariat is a tremendous task that still remains to be done. Many phases of Lenin’s work as a leader and theoretician of the proletariat have still been barely studied (''e.g.'', his part in the leadership of the Civil War and his work in organising and directing the dictatorship of the proletariat; even his significance as the leader and theoretician of the Party has not yet been fully brought out and properly appreciated). This cannot be done in a single article, it would require a whole volume, or several volumes. In this article we can only deal with some of the most important postulates of the revolutionary tactics of Leninism and show how tremendously important the consistent and firm Leninist Party leadership, based upon a strictly scientific analysis of objective conditions, was for the success of the revolution.

It should first be noted that Leninism, while faithfully following the Marxian conception of the Party and of its role as the ''vanguard of the working class'', developed this conception still further on the basis of the new experience gained in the revolutionary struggle.

In order to lead the class struggle of the proletariat, an organisation of its vanguard is necessary in the shape of a Communist Party, which “acts as a driving force,” which “comprehends the conditions, course and general results of the working-class movement,” which can champion those general interests of the movement as a whole at every stage of the struggle and which can estimate the movement “not only from the point of view of the past, but also from the point of view of the future.”<ref>''Cf.'' <cite>The Communist Manifesto</cite>.</ref>

The Party must be trained and steeled in consistency of principles by prolonged participation in the struggle.

<blockquote>Apparently—Engels wrote to Bernstein in 1882—a workers’ party in any large country can develop only by internal conflict, which indeed is, in general, consistent with the dialectic laws of development. The German party became what it is in the struggle of the Eisenachers against the Lassalians, a struggle in which the fight itself was the most important factor. Infantile disorders cannot be cured by moral precepts; under present conditions these disorders have to be gone through once.
</blockquote>
This, of course, does not mean that various shades of opinion are always to be permitted in the Party. The strength of the Party lies in its unity, a unity based upon consistency of programme and tactics. This unity is achieved by fighting every deviation from revolutionary Marxism: Right opportunism, which minimises the significance of the class struggle and strives to bring the proletariat under bourgeois influence and leadership (as instanced by Menshevism), and the virtual rejection of the class struggle which masquerades under Leftist slogans and phrases (instances of which were the “Left” Liquidators, the Otzovists, the Ultimatumists and the ''Vperyod-ists'' during the years of reaction 1908-10 and Trotskyism during the years 1924-26). Extremely important also is the fight against the conciliators, who act as a shield for opportunism: while verbally recognising the correctness of revolutionary Marxism, in practice the conciliators make no attempt to combat distortions of revolutionary Marxism. Conciliationism is therefore an extremely dangerous form of opportunism. Under present conditions the chief danger is Right opportunism.

Lenin always insisted on the necessity of waging a consistent and merciless fight against all forms of opportunism and he himself showed us how this fight should be conducted. He persistently fought against Right opportunism.<ref>''Cf.'' <cite>What Is To Be Done?</cite>, <cite>One Step Forward, Two Steps Back</cite>, and “The Collapse of the Second International.”</ref> Yet at the same time he conducted war on the “Left” doctrinarism, which is particularly important for the purpose of winning the masses; for the masses are inexperienced, unorganised, have not yet sufficiently abandoned petty-bourgeois prejudices, and when driven to desperation and rage by the hopelessness of their position are, as a rule, greatly influenced by anarchist phrases, and “Left” demagogy (which is the reverse side of Right opportunism, “a punishment for its sins,” as Lenin expressed it). A general review of the Party’s fight for Bolshevism on two fronts is given by Lenin in his pamphlet, ''“Left-Wing” Communism, an Infantile Disorder'', in which he writes:

<blockquote>While the first historical task (''viz.'', that of winning over the class conscious vanguard of the proletariat to the side of the Soviet power and the dictatorship of the working class) could not be accomplished without a complete ideological and political victory over opportunism and social-chauvinism, the second task, which now becomes the immediate task, and which is to lead the ''masses'' to the new position that will assure the victory of the vanguard in the revolution, this immediate task cannot be accomplished without the liquidation of Left doctrinarism, without completely overcoming and getting rid of its mistakes.
</blockquote>
What are the distinguishing features of the Marxist-Leninist tactics? As we have pointed out, Marxist-Leninist theory, policy and tactics are based on ''contact with the masses'', on the ability to guide the struggle of the masses toward communism, and to increase the conscious purpose and organisation of the masses. The Communist Party lends consciousness, organisation and invincibility to the mass movement. It draws its ideas from the experience of the revolutionary mass struggle in all countries.

Lenin said that the fundamental law of all great revolutions was the experience gained by the masses. He frequently referred to the great importance that Marx attached to “the historical initiative of the masses.” What Marx and Engels criticised most in English and American socialism was exactly this isolation from the working-class movement.<ref>''Cf.'' Introduction to the Russian translation of <cite>The Letters of J. P. Becker, J. Dietzgen, F. Engels, K. Marx and Others to F. A. Sorge and Others</cite>.</ref> The victory of the revolution can be assured only if the initiative and energy of the masses is widely developed and if their instinctive struggle is given conscious leadership and organisation.

Success of revolutionary tactics can be assured if the profound sympathy of the masses is gained. This sympathy must be gained by prolonged and stubborn struggle, both before the proletariat gains power and after it has set up its dictatorship.

<blockquote>The proletarian revolution is impossible unless the vast majority of the toilers sympathise with and support their vanguard—the proletariat. This sympathy, however, is not given immediately and is not decided by vote, but must be ''won'' in the process of long, arduous and bitter class struggle. The class struggle of the proletariat to win the sympathy and support of the majority of the toilers does not end with the conquest of political power by the proletariat. The struggle ''continues'' after the conquest of power but in ''other forms''. In the Russian revolution circumstances proved to be exceptionally favourable for the proletariat (its struggle for dictatorship), for the proletarian revolution took place at a time when the whole people was armed and when the whole of the peasantry was anxious for the overthrow of the power of the landlords and was outraged by the “Kautskyian” policy of the social-traitors, the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries.

But even in Russia, where at the moment of the proletarian revolution circumstances proved to be exceptionally favourable, where remarkable unity between the whole proletariat, the whole army and the whole of the peasantry was immediately established, even in Russia the struggle of the proletariat for the sympathy and support of the majority of the toilers took months and years after it had set up its dictatorship.<ref>Lenin, “Greetings to the Italian, French and German Communists,” <cite>Collected Works</cite>, Vol. XXIV, pp. 481-483, Russian edition.</ref>
</blockquote>
The long and persistent fight for the sympathy of the masses must be carried on systematically. The sympathy of the masses must be won by the tactical methods and by the aims and purposes for which the Communist Party is striving.

In its tactical leadership of the revolutionary struggle the proletariat must be guided by two basic postulates. ''First'', Leninism does not prescribe any particular form of struggle to the proletarian movement, but strives to master all forms, for example: demonstrations, the parliamentary struggle, the revolutionary use of parliament when the situation dictates it, as well as higher forms of struggle, ''viz.'', armed insurrection, civil war and the dictatorship of the proletariat. ''Secondly'', Leninism adopts a historical approach to the question as to what particular form of struggle is to be selected at any moment, taking into account the concrete circumstance of the given situation. Maximum flexibility must be displayed in the selection of means.

In an article entitled “Guerilla Warfare,” written in September, 1906, Lenin wrote:

<blockquote>Marxism is distinguished from all primitive forms of socialism by the fact that it does not impose on the movement any one particular form of struggle. It admits the most varied forms of struggle. Moreover, it does not “invent” them, but only generalises, organises and lends conscious form to the methods of struggle practiced by the revolutionary classes and which arise spontaneously in the course of the movement itself. Uncompromisingly hostile to all abstract formulas and doctrinaire recipes, Marxism demands that the most careful attention be paid to the mass struggle of the moment, which, as the movement develops, as the consciousness of the masses grows and the economic and political crisis becomes increasingly acute, creates ever new and varied methods of defence and attack. Marxism, therefore, absolutely does not reject any form of struggle. Marxism cannot confine itself to the forms of struggle that are practiced and are possible at the given moment, but recognises the ''inevitable'' appearance of new forms of struggle, that are still unknown to those who are taking part in the struggle at the given period and which arrive with the change in circumstances. If one may so express it, Marxism learns from the practice of the masses and does not in the least claim to teach the masses the “systematic” forms of struggle, invented in the study.<ref>Lenin, <cite>Collected Works</cite>, Vol. X, p. 80, Russian edition.</ref>
</blockquote>
In ''“Left-Wing” Communism'', also, Lenin pointed to the necessity of learning and mastering every form of struggle and of being able to apply every one of them with equal facility, so as to be prepared for the changes of circumstances that occur so rapidly and unexpectedly during a period of revolution.

<blockquote>History generally, and the history of revolutions in particular—writes Lenin—is always richer in content, more varied, more many-sided, more lively and “subtle” than some of the best parties and some of the most class conscious vanguards of the most advanced class imagine. This is understandable because the best vanguards express the class consciousness, the will, the passion, the phantasy of tens of thousands, while the revolution is made at the moment of its climax and the exertion of ''all'' human capabilities by the class consciousness, the will, the passion, and the phantasy of tens of millions who are urged on by the very acutest class struggle. From this follow two very important practical conclusions: first, that the revolutionary class in order to fulfil its task must be able to master ''all'' forms or sides of social activity without exception (and complete after the capture of political power, sometimes with great risk and amidst very great dangers, what they did not complete before the capture of power); second, that the revolutionary class must be ready to pass from one form to another in the quickest and most unexpected manner.<ref>Lenin, <cite>“Left-Wing” Communism</cite>.</ref>
</blockquote>
The Communist Party must absolutely master every form of struggle: for the struggle of the proletariat and of the toiling masses will become a real class struggle and will lead to the goal of creating a communist society only when the organising and guiding influence of the vanguard that is consciously striving toward communism will be guaranteed.

In the article, “Guerilla Warfare,” Lenin pointed out that all forms of struggle may become distorted if they are not applied in a certain relationship one to another under the leadership of the Communist Party.

<blockquote>It is said that guerilla warfare reduces the class conscious proletariat to the level of degraded drunkards and tramps. That is true. But this only proves that the Party of the proletariat can never regard partisan warfare as the only, or even the principal method of struggle, and that this method must be subordinated and properly co-ordinated with the main methods of struggle, that are ennobled by the enlightening and organising influence of socialism. Without this latter condition every method of struggle in bourgeois society, without exception, will bring the proletariat to the level of the various non-proletarian strata above or below it, and being left to the mercy of the spontaneous course of events, will become bedraggled, corrupted and prostituted. Strikes, when left to the mercy of the spontaneous course of events, become transformed into “alliances” between the workers and employers against the consumers. Parliament becomes a brothel in which a gang of bourgeois politicians carry on wholesale and retail trade in the “freedom of the people,” “liberalism,” “democracy,” “republicanism,” “anti-clericalism,” “socialism” and in all kinds of popular merchandise. The newspapers become procurers, whom anybody can purchase, a means of debauching the masses and of pandering to the base instincts of the crowd, and so forth. No universal methods of struggle are known to Social-Democracy that would set up a Chinese wall between the proletariat and the social strata that are situated either a little above or below it. In different epochs, Social-Democracy applies different methods; but it applies them strictly in accordance with definite, ideological and organising conditions.<ref>Lenin, <cite>Collected Works</cite>, Vol. X, pp. 85-87, Russian edition.</ref>
</blockquote>
The selections of the methods of struggle must be determined by the concrete objective conditions. This leads us to the second basic principle we have referred to.

In this same article Lenin wrote:

<blockquote>Marxism insists that the question of the methods of struggle shall be investigated from an absolutely historical standpoint. Those who would treat this question apart from the concrete historical circumstances simply fail to understand the very elements of dialectic materialism. In the various periods of economic evolution and depending on the varying, political, national and cultural, social and other conditions, various methods of struggle assume prominence and become the chief methods of struggle, and accordingly the secondary and supplementary methods of struggle also change in their turn. To attempt to express a definite opinion, yes, or no, regarding any particular method of struggle, without subjecting the concrete circumstances of the given moment and the given stage of its development to careful analysis, simply means abandoning the standpoint of Marxism completely.
</blockquote>
Marxist-Leninist revolutionary tactics are based on an examination of the concrete circumstances of the given situation. The purpose of this is to prevent us from becoming separated from the masses, to enable us to move forward together with the masses, to lead them and help them to rise to a higher level. We must not retreat in face of difficulties, but strive to overcome them by drawing new forces into the fight. We must encourage the activity of the masses, improve their organisation and stimulate their class consciousness. The attack must be conducted systematically and consistently, avoiding in our leadership “''logical'' (that is, mental) ''leaps'' over ''several'' concrete stages,” as Lenin once expressed it, considering this to be a grievous sin against dialectic materialism.

Given such a leadership, the masses will rise to a higher level of political consciousness in the very course of events, learning from their own actions, mistakes, defeats and victories.

The essence of Marxist-Leninist tactics was brilliantly explained by Lenin in his article “Karl Marx,”<ref group="6.">Published in pamphlet form under the title, ''Teachings of Karl Marx'', Little Lenin Library, No. 1.—''Ed''.</ref> in which he wrote:

<blockquote>The fundamental task of proletarian tactics was defined by Marx in strict conformity with all the premises of his materialist-dialectical world outlook. Nothing but an objective calculation of the sum total of all the mutual relationships of all the classes of a given society without exception and consequently a calculation of the objective stage of development of this society as well as a calculation of the mutual relationship between it and other societies, can serve as the basis for the correct tactics of the class that forms the vanguard.<ref>Lenin, <cite>Collected Works</cite>, Vol. XVIII, Section, “Tactics of the Class Struggle of the Proletariat.”</ref>
</blockquote>
Valuable material on this subject will also be found in ''“Left-Wing” Communism''. To be a materialist dialectician it is not enough to reiterate the principles of Marxism in general form. We must study the experience of the class struggle of the proletariat and learn to give expression to the concrete circumstances of that struggle, to emphasise the main tasks and advance proper slogans to lead the proletarian struggle and be able to find the main link that will enable us to hold the whole chain.

== HOW TO STUDY LENIN ==

A few words should be said in conclusion as to how to study the works of Lenin. It should be borne in mind that Lenin was a leader of the proletariat. A study of his literary works must be closely combined with a study of his activities and of the conditions in which he worked. Only in this way will the works of Lenin be properly understood and appreciated. This study, however, must be linked up with the present-day struggle of the proletariat.

The manner in which Lenin studied the works of Marx and Engels is an example of how the works of Lenin should be studied. From a number of his articles, particularly those articles dealing with Marxism and with the works and correspondence of Marx and Engels, we see how he was able to draw the lessons of materialist dialectics from his study of Marx and Engels.

Lenin drew particular attention to the following formula contained in one of the letters of Engels: “Marxism is not a dogma, but a guide to action.” None of the Marxists who had studied the works of Marx and Engels had paid proper attention to this aphorism; but Lenin quite rightly pointed out that it gives a succinct and excellent description of the very essence of the Marxian theory.

Lenin pointed out that an outstanding feature of the method of Marx and Engels was the living contact they themselves maintained with the mass movement. In spite of their knowledge and tremendous erudition, they were free from the slightest tinge of pedantry or bookishness. As Engels said, the ''moment'' socialism was transformed from utopia to a science it became necessary to treat it as a science, namely, to study it. The valuable knowledge inherited from the past must be mastered. But that is not enough. We must be able to draw lessons from the experience of the current struggles of the masses and at the same time take an active part in it, lead it and lift it to higher levels. Marx and Engels possessed this capacity in a very high degree; and it was this that Lenin considered to be exceptionally valuable and worthy of imitation. In his Preface to the Russian translation of Marx’s ''Letters to Kugelmann'', Lenin says that:

<blockquote>''Above everything else'' he [''i.e.'', Marx—''V.A''.] put the fact that the working class heroically, self-sacrificingly and taking the initiative itself ''makes'' world history.
</blockquote>
Marx and Engels attached the greatest importance to the “historical initiative” of the masses and were not dismayed by the fact that the activity of the masses might be accompanied by errors. Indeed, whenever something new is being created and the old ruts abandoned errors are inevitable. The most vital revolutionary cause may be marred by mistakes, but the mass movement, the new experience gained, the creative spirit displayed and the new institutions initiated compensate for any mistakes that may be committed. In fact, there is no way the broad masses can be taught except by their own actions and by their own experiences.

Marx and Engels never dogmatically thrust upon the masses views which they held to be correct, but which the masses could understand as a result of their own experience and not merely as a result of verbal precepts and preaching. But this cautious attitude in respect of the education of the masses was accompanied by the most exacting demands in matters of theory. In his Introduction to the Russian translation of ''The Letters of J. P. Becker, J. Dietzgen, F. Engels, K. Marx and Others to F. A. Sorge and Others'', Lenin speaks of the merciless, even “ferocious” war that Marx waged against opportunism.

Previously expressed postulates must not be treated in a stereotyped way as universal precepts applicable to all times and all conditions without taking into consideration the changes that have taken place since those postulates were enunciated, and without a careful study of the new factors that have arisen and which the most penetrating minds formerly could not possibly foresee.

When studying the works of Marx and Lenin we must constantly bear in mind the circumstances in which they lived and acted, the conditions that gave rise to a particular slogan, or the persons against whom a particular polemic was directed: that is to say, their works must be studied with due appreciation of the concrete time and place in which they were written. The lessons drawn from the study must be applied to the present-day struggle of the proletariat, while the closest contact must be maintained with the movement and tasks of the class struggle of our time. Only in this way will the basic demand of Marxism-Leninism be observed, namely, that theory shall not be “a dogma, but a guide to action,” not a mere subject for academic study, but a science and a valuable weapon in the class struggle of the proletariat.

Lenin’s attitude towards science, the working-class movement and the mass struggle was exactly the same as that of Marx and Engels. Like Marx, Lenin prized in the revolutionary class its “ability to create the future.” He knew how to lead the mass struggle and to combat “ferociously” every distortion of revolutionary Marxism, in whatever sphere it might manifest itself and under whatever flag it might proclaim itself. Lenin was able to appreciate the peculiarities of concrete circumstances, to study the works of the founders of scientific communism and to apply them to the new conditions of the working class struggle.

In our own study of Lenin’s works, we must strive to adopt the methods he used. We must acquire the ability to fight for revolutionary Marxism-Leninism. For there have been many opportunist distortions of Lenin’s teachings since his death, and we shall encounter such distortions again in the future. We all know the efforts the Trotskyist opposition made to effect a revisionist distortion of Leninism, while similar attempts were made by the Right opposition and the semi-Trotskyist “Leftists” in the years 1928-29, and 1930.

An example of the way Lenin studied the works of Marx will be found in his article “Marx on the American ‘Black Redistribution’.”<ref>Lenin, <cite>Collected Works</cite>, Vol. VII, pp. 319-221, Russian edition.</ref> In this article, after describing the circumstances in which Marx wrote his article in opposition to H. Kriege (whose views closely resembled those of the Russian Socialist-Revolutionaries at the beginning of this century) and comparing the farmer’s movement in America in the middle of the nineteenth century with the peasant movement in Russia at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, Lenin shows how Marx combated the petty-bourgeois illusions of the peasantry, while appreciating the revolutionary democratic character of the peasant movement. Lenin used this example from Marx in order to strengthen his own hand in the fight against the Mensheviks, who entirely failed to understand the significance of the peasant movement and to realise that the peasantry was the principal ally of the working class in the struggle against tsarism.

Another example is Lenin’s work on the question of the state. Having studied everything that Marx and Engels ever wrote on the subject, Lenin was able to establish their real views, which had been completely mutilated by the opportunists. This alone was a tremendous service to the cause of revolutionary Marxism. But he did more than that. Basing himself on the theoretical views of Marx and Engels and applying their methods, Lenin used the experience provided by the revolutionary struggles of the proletariat in 1905 and 1917 to further develop the theory of Marx. He created the theory of the Soviet state, which arises with the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Studying the works of Lenin on this subject,<ref>Lenin, <cite>State and Revolution</cite>, <cite>Will the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?</cite>, <cite>The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky</cite>, “Theses and Speeches on Bourgeois Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” etc.</ref> we are able to follow step by step the manner in which Lenin used the Marxian method in order to solve one of the fundamental problems of the revolution—the organisation of the state power of the revolutionary proletariat.

A perusal of the fundamental work written by Lenin on this question, ''State and Revolution'', reveals how carefully he studied the works of Marx and Engels, how painstakingly he transcribed individual thoughts and even fleeting remarks the theoretical value of which, in spite of their brevity, is tremendous. In Lenin’s popular lecture on “The State,”<ref>Lenin, <cite>Collected Works</cite>, Vol. XXIV, pp. 362-377, Russian edition.</ref> which gives a general review of the question of the state and represents a valuable addition to the works above enumerated and an introduction to a more profound study of the question, we find several practical suggestions as to how the works of Marx and Engels should be studied.

These are only two examples of many that might be quoted. In the works of Lenin the three component parts of the Marxian theory: philosophy, political economy and socialism are dealt with. Lenin mastered the material in all three spheres, developing the theory of Marx and elaborating a number of important questions in the light of the facts provided, by the latest development of the proletarian revolution.

''In the sphere of philosophy'' he threw light on the problem of materialist dialectics: he elaborated the theory of knowledge of dialectic materialism,<ref>Lenin, <cite>Collected Works</cite>, Vol. XIII, pp. 326 and. 21-201.</ref> studied and explained the crisis of contemporary natural science,<ref><cite>Ibid.</cite>, Chap. 5.</ref> and treated the problems of historical materialism in a new way.

''In the sphere of economics'' attention should be drawn to his works on capitalism in Russia— “The Development of Capitalism in Russia,” ''Selected Works'', Vol. I; on imperialism— “Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism,” ''Selected Works'', Vol. V; on the agrarian question—“The Agrarian Programme of the Social-Democrats in the First Russian Revolution,” ''Selected Works'', Vol. XII; “The Agrarian Question at the End of the Nineteenth Century,” ''Selected Works'', Vol. I, and, finally, his work dealing with the economics of the transition period—“State and Revolution,” “The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government,” “Economics and Politics in the Era of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” all in ''Selected Works'', Vol. VII; “The Tax in Kind,” ''Selected Works'', Vol. IX, etc.

In the ''Selected Works'' much space is devoted to Lenin’s writings on the problems of socialism. The policy and tactics of the class struggle of the proletariat, the Party, its programme and organisation, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Soviet state and the building up of socialism. Here, too, Lenin bases himself on the theories of Marx and Engels, while at the same time making a concrete study of the complex factors of the class struggle of his own day.

Lenin mastered the very essence of these problems, painstakingly collecting all that could be found in Marx and Engels on the subject he was examining. Our aim should be to make a similar study and a similar application of the works of Lenin. The writings of Lenin are a storehouse of knowledge, essential to the proletariat and invaluable in the leadership of its fight for communism.

By studying the works of Lenin we shall learn to realise the significance and importance of revolutionary theory, we shall see how theory must be associated with the actual class movement and the struggle of the millions who are exploited and oppressed by capitalism. We shall learn what is meant by the Communist Party’s leading the proletarian revolution and under what conditions the revolution can triumph. And, following the example of Lenin, we must learn how to participate in the struggle ourselves.

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which was formed under Lenin’s guidance and trained in the spirit of revolutionary Marxism, is carrying on and developing the socialist construction begun under Lenin’s leadership and along the lines he indicated. Tens of millions of proletarians and toilers are participating in this gigantic task. Learning from the experience of the struggles and constructive work of the masses of proletarians and collective farmers, who are working for the establishment of communism, the Leninist Central Committee, headed by Comrade Stalin—best able to continue the cause of Lenin—and the whole of the Party, is developing the policy, the tactics and the theory of Marxism-Leninism.

For an understanding of Leninism it is important to study the present work of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the socialist construction now in progress under its guidance, as well as the international revolutionary movement and the fight of the Communist International, which was also founded under the direct leadership of Lenin. The full profundity of the theoretical works of Lenin becomes revealed only when they are associated with the struggle that is now proceeding. For they were written with the purpose of guiding the great struggle of the proletariat to victory.

An excellent guide for those undertaking a systematic study of Lenin’s writings is Comrade Stalin’s book, ''Leninism'', and this should serve as the principal guide to those who desire to obtain a thorough knowledge of the problems that Lenin so brilliantly expounded and solved.

Comrade Stalin, the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, is the most outstanding Leninist theoretician. It was under his leadership that, since the death of Lenin, the fight against Trotskyism, the Trotsky-Zinoviev opposition and the Right Opportunists was conducted. Alike in practical politics and in theory (and the two are intimately associated), Comrade Stalin is brilliantly carrying out the Leninist line.

The works of Lenin are of the utmost importance to the class struggle of the proletariat. Leninism generalises the experiences of the world proletarian revolution and studies all forms of the class struggle in order to make the best use of them and in order to develop the science that is essential to the proletariat as the vanguard of the struggle for emancipation from all forms of oppression and exploitation. This science must be made accessible to the vast proletarian army, for it will help it to achieve increased unity of action and consciousness of purpose. The better organised the vast numbers of proletarians and toilers are, and the more energetically and purposefully they wage the struggle against the domination of capitalism, the sooner the yoke of age-long slavery will be shattered.

== FOOTNOTES ==
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== REFERENCE NOTES ==

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Library:Dialectical Materialism: The Theoretical Foundation of Marxism-Leninism

2025-12-07T02:15:36Z

ComradeEd: Initial import from EPUB. Still need notes.

{{Library work|title=Dialectical Materialism|author=Vladimir Adoratsky|published_date=1934|source=https://comlib.encryptionin.space/epubs/adoratsky/|pdf=https://redstarpublishers.org/adoratsky.pdf}}

== MARXISM AS THE THEORY AND TACTICS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE OF THE PROLETARIAT ==

Lenin defined Marxism as the revolutionary theory and tactics of the revolutionary class struggle of the proletariat.

The task of the proletariat is “to take a conscious part in the historical process of the transformation of society that is going on under our eyes.”[[#endnotes.xhtml_en1|[1]]]

Because of the position it occupies in production and society the proletariat must act as the leader and organiser of all the oppressed and exploited in the struggle for communism. In 1846 Marx wrote:

<blockquote>We do not regard communism as a ''state of affairs'' that has to be brought about; nor as an ideal to which reality must conform. By communism we mean an ''actual'' movement that will sweep away the present state of affairs. The conditions for that movement arise out of already existing premises.[[#footnotes.xhtml_ch1_fn1|*]]
</blockquote>
By these postulates Marx meant: the growth of the working class (both in numbers and in class consciousness), large-scale industry and socialised production developed by capitalism.

<blockquote>The development of the productive forces of social labour is the historical task and privilege of capital. It is precisely in this way that it unconsciously creates the material requirements of a higher mode of production.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en2|[2]]]
</blockquote>
But private property in the means of production—which is the very foundation of capitalism—hampers and fetters the further development of the productive forces. The proletariat alone can break those fetters; after it has established its dictatorship the proletariat must smash the machinery of the bourgeois state; it must defend its own state power in civil war and crush the opposition of the bourgeoisie; it must take over large-scale industry and transform the means of production into social property, in order to reshape production on socialist lines, and, on the ruins of capitalism and using the material left over from capitalism, give the widest possible development to socialist production with all possible speed. The proletariat assumes the leadership of the non-proletarian sections of society that are oppressed and exploited by capitalism. Under the guidance of the industrial proletariat, and with the help of its dictatorship, a complete transformation of production takes place and the small producers are turned into members of a socialist society. The proletariat thereby creates a new material basis for human relationships. By means of the class struggle, and with the help of its dictatorship, it abolishes classes and achieves a classless society. Such is the historical mission of the proletariat throughout the whole world.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en3|[3]]]

Revolutionary theory, ''i.e.'', scientific deductions and generalisations based on the experience of revolution and of the working class movement in all countries, is of vital importance to the revolutionary struggle of the working class at the present time. “Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement,” Lenin said. The foundations of this theory were laid down by Marx and Engels and further developed by Lenin. During the course of several decades the proletariat has had the opportunity to test this theory by their own experience in the class struggle. This theory has played, and continues to play, a tremendous part in the struggle of the working class. For instance, in Russia, we could neither have seized, nor retained power, nor could we have correctly tackled the problems of building up socialism, were it not for the firm hand and consistent leadership of the Communist Party, based on the revolutionary theory of Marxism, and were it not for the fact that the working class realised that this leadership was the right one. If the working class is guided in its struggles by the theory of Marxism and Leninism, it will defeat the bourgeoisie all over the world.

Marxism provides no ready-made recipes, that can be applied uniformly in any and every circumstance without further reflection. The Marxian theory “is not a dogma, but a guide to action.” It gives the general line as to how the fight of the working class should be conducted. Having studied all the social phenomena of the time, having himself led the working-class movement, Marx made certain deductions, indicated the general trend of development and pointed out what must be the inevitable course of future events. He showed that the revolutionary transformation of capitalist society into a communist society was inevitable, that the proletariat would take the leading part in this transformation, that a transition period from capitalism to communism was unavoidable and that the form of state during that transition period would be the dictatorship of the proletariat. But Marx, of course, could not forecast, and never attempted to forecast, the detailed events of the progress of the world revolution. Marx thought that in order to decide what should be done at a given historical moment, in a given country and under given conditions, one must carefully study (with the help of the method of scientific communism) all the specific features of the given situation (which is constantly changing) and the situation existing not only within the given country itself, but in all the other countries of the world. Marxism considers that only by such a study can the

<blockquote>...thinking representatives of the given class [acquire] the necessary knowledge, the necessary experience—and, apart from all knowledge and experience—the necessary political instinct for the quick and correct solution of intricate political problems.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en4|[4]]]
</blockquote>
Marxism draws its ideas from the actual struggle of the masses. The Marxian theory is worked out in close conjunction with the mass revolutionary movement. It is not based on ideas “invented or discovered by this or that would-be universal reformer” but represents “...merely... in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes.”[[#endnotes.xhtml_en5|[5]]]

The theory of Marxism helps the proletariat to understand “the conditions and nature of its own actions.”[[#endnotes.xhtml_en6|[6]]]

The duty of the proletarian theoretician is not to create socialist plans out of his own head; his duty is to discover the conditions for emancipation from exploitation that are created in the very process of social and economic development; he must find in the very progress of events the path that leads to the solution of the problems of the exploited masses; he must help the latter in their fight for communism and guide them in the struggle, so that society based on exploitation may be destroyed as rapidly as possible and with the least sacrifice on the part of the proletariat and the toiling classes in general. As we have said, owing to the position it occupies in production and society, the proletariat can, and must, take upon itself the duty of organising a communist society. The theory of Marxism should help the proletariat in the task of exterminating all forms of exploitation as rapidly and as easily as possible. General postulates are not enough, precise solutions of the daily problems of the political struggle and the building up of socialism are required. That implies a scientific leadership and foresight based on the study of the actual state of affairs, using for this purpose the Marxist-Leninist theory. As Comrade Stalin said:

<blockquote>Theory... alone, can give to the movement confidence, guidance, strength and understanding of the inner relations between events; it alone can help practice to clarify the process and direction of class movements in the present and near future.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en7|[7]]]
</blockquote>
In the article “Our Immediate Task,” written in 1899, Lenin pointed out that the duty of a revolutionary party

<blockquote>does not consist merely in serving the working class movement; its duty is to ''link up socialism with the working class movement''... to introduce definite socialist ideals into the spontaneous movement, to link it up with socialist convictions consistent with the level of modern science, and connect it with the systematic political struggle for democracy [this was written six years before the Revolution of 1905, ''V.A.''], as a means for the realisation of socialism—in a word, to fuse this spontaneous movement with the activities of the ''revolutionary party'', into a single indivisible whole. The history of socialism and democracy in Western Europe, the history of the revolutionary movement in Russia, and the experience of our working class movement—such is the ''material'' that must be studied and mastered in order to work out the correct forms of organisation and the correct tactics of our party.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en8|[8]]]
</blockquote>
In the same article Lenin says that ready-made formulas must not be automatically applied to new and specific conditions:

<blockquote>The material must be analysed... independently, for we shall not find ready-made samples.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en9|[9]]]
</blockquote>
Lenin points out that “the conditions of the Russian working-class movement are entirely different from those of the Western European movement.”

Nor could the earlier revolutionary parties in Russia be taken as examples in every respect. While recognising “the necessity of learning revolutionary and conspirative technique from the old Russian leaders,” Lenin pointed out, that “by no means relieves us of the duty of examining them critically and of working out our own form of organisation.”[[#endnotes.xhtml_en10|[10]]]

That is how Lenin, scrupulously observing the Marxian method, defines the scope of theory, and indicates the necessity of independently studying every fresh experience and of making use of all that was valuable in past development.

We have already stated that, according to Marx, the proletarian theoretician must give expression to the revolutionary aims of the mass movement; he must guide that movement, yet at the same time learn from it and avail himself of the experience of the whole international revolution. This was the spirit in which Lenin wrote and acted. He valued very highly theoreticians who kept in close touch with the masses.

In 1918 he wrote:

<blockquote>... a revolutionary Marxist is distinguished from the ordinary philistine by his ability and willingness to preach to the still ignorant masses the necessity of the approaching revolution, to prove that it is inevitable, to explain its advantage to the people, and to prepare the proletariat and all the toiling and exploited masses for it.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en11|[11]]]
</blockquote>
In this passage Lenin emphasised the importance of the ability to maintain contact with the unenlightened masses, the ability to draw them into the movement and to lead them into revolutionary positions, so that “the masses by their own experience may convince themselves of the correctness of the Party line.” That is one of the fundamental principles of Leninism. It is embodied in the Programme of the Communist International and is one of the characteristic and distinguishing features of the activities of both Marx and Engels.

<blockquote>For the whole task of the Communists—said Lenin—is to be able to ''convince'' the backward, to work among them, and not to ''fence themselves off'' from them by means of fantastic, childishly “Left” slogans.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en12|[12]]]
</blockquote>
In 1914 the liberal newspaper ''Rech'', discussing the fight the Bolsheviks were waging against the Liquidators,[[#footnotes.xhtml_ch1_fn2|*]] bewailed the “carrying of the dissension into the ranks of the workers.” Lenin in an article entitled “The Methods Used by the Bourgeois Intellectuals in the Fight Against the Workers,” wrote:

<blockquote>We ''welcome'' the “carrying of dissension into the ranks of the workers,” for it is the workers, and the workers alone, who will distinguish dissensions from differences, from disagreements on principle, who will understand the significance of these disagreements and form their own opinion and decide not “with whom” to go, but where to go, ''i.e.'', decide on a definite, clear, well-considered and tested line of action.
</blockquote>
This line of action can be worked out and the political enlightenment of the masses of the workers can be accomplished only in the course of “a consistent and stubborn fight to a finish, of proletarian influences and strivings directed against the bourgeoisie.”[[#endnotes.xhtml_en13|[13]]]

Moreover, it must never be forgotten that the masses learn by their own experience, from events, and not only from books. In his preface to the 1890 German edition of ''The Communist Manifesto'', Engels wrote:

<blockquote>For Marx, the sole guarantee of the ultimate triumph of the theories contained in the ''Manifesto'' was the intellectual development of the working class that would result from joint action and discussion. The events and fluctuations of fortune in the struggle against capitalism, their victories, and still more their defeats, would reveal to the combatants the ineffectiveness of the panaceas they had hitherto believed in, and would make their minds more receptive for the thorough understanding of the real conditions of working class emancipation.
</blockquote>
Thus, it is out of the actual mass struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie and the conscious leadership of the struggle on the part of the vanguard of the proletariat—the Communist Party—that scientific communism arises, differing fundamentally from utopian and petty-bourgeois reformist socialism. Scientific communism is not based on good intentions, but on the class struggle of the proletariat and the recognition of the necessity for the dictatorship of the proletariat. The theoretical statement of the principles of scientific communism is Marxism and Leninism, the latter being an elaboration of Marxism in the light of new conditions. This theory embraces general questions of philosophy and method as well as their concrete application. It is essential to the proletariat in its struggles: it imparts consciousness, self-assurance, and decision to the movement. Those who are able to wield it are saved from aberrations and uncertainties; it enables us to determine the correct path to follow and renders the achievement and the consolidation of victory easier and surer.



II


== THE INTERNATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF LENINISM ==

Because of the intimate relation that exists between theory and reality, the great changes that have occurred since the death of Marx and Engels had to find their reflections in theory.

The theoretical basis that Lenin took over from Marx, namely, dialectical materialism, was further developed by him independently.

Lenin lived and acted in new and different conditions and a number of questions had to be considered afresh. Using the method of Marx, he solved the difficult problem of how the fight for revolutionary Marxism must be conducted in the new and complex conditions created by the era of imperialism and the beginnings of the world proletarian revolution. Since the death of Marx none of the important theoreticians and leaders of the Second International has been able to cope with this problem. Lenin was able to solve it because he maintained the closest contact with the mass movement of the proletariat and had mastered the Marxist theory as no one else had. Lenin, himself, was the truest expression of the world-wide and historical mission of the proletariat. Having himself led the struggle in the course of three revolutions, he was able to advance and develop the Marxist theory in all its component parts. We are therefore quite justified in describing Leninism as Marxism of the epoch of imperialism and the proletarian revolution.

The epoch of Lenin differed from the epoch of Marx and Engels. Marx and Engels lived and developed their theory at a time when the proletariat was just beginning to come out definitely as an independent force, as a result of which the bourgeoisie became more and more inclined to come to terms with the forces of reaction. In his book, ''The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte'', written in 1852, Marx stated that the nineteenth century saw the beginning of the proletarian revolution. He based his statement on the theoretical conclusions he had arrived at as a result of the Revolution of 1848. In a speech delivered in the spring of 1852 on the occasion of the anniversary of the ''People’s Paper''[[#footnotes.xhtml_ch2_fn1|*]] he said:

<blockquote>The so-called revolutions of 1848 were but poor incidents, small fractures and fissures in the dry crust of European society. But they revealed an abyss. Beneath the apparently solid surface they betrayed oceans of liquid matter only needing expansion to rend into fragments continents of hard rock. Noisily and confusedly they proclaimed the emancipation of the proletariat, ''i.e.'', the secret of the nineteenth century and of the revolution of that century.
</blockquote>
And in concluding his speech he said:

<blockquote>...the English working men are the firstborn sons of modern industry. Certainly, then, they will not be the last to aid the social revolution produced by that industry—a revolution which means the emancipation of their class all over the world, which is as universal as capital—rule and wage slavery.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en14|[14]]]
</blockquote>
Marx proclaimed the inevitability of the proletarian revolution, but it had not yet fully begun during the lifetime of Marx and Engels.

Marx foresaw that the course of events was bound to lead to the monopoly of big capital. But it was only after the death of Marx and Engels that the extension of the rule of monopoly capitalism throughout the whole world really took place, leading in its turn to the rule of finance capital and to imperialism. In the ’sixties England was the centre of the development and rule of big capital (and of the plundering of the colonies). But by the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth capitalism had developed in a number of other countries (particularly in Germany and the United States) much more powerfully than in England. All the colonies had already been seized. And so, at the end of the nineteenth century, a desperate struggle broke out among the big predatory imperialist powers, not for the division of the world, but for its redivision. There began the epoch of imperialism—the fusion of usurious banking capital with industrial capital to form finance capital. What Lenin called “decaying, moribund capitalism” set in. For the peculiarities of this condition and for the main features of the economics of imperialism—the latest and last stage of the development of capitalism—consult Lenin’s great work ''Imperialism'', and his article, “Imperialism and the Split in the Socialist Movement.”[[#endnotes.xhtml_en15|[15]]]

Prior even to the imperialist war, but particularly on its outbreak, a revolutionary situation was created in the countries where capitalism was most highly developed as a result of the extreme aggravation of the contradictions of capitalism, the high cost of living, increased oppression and general deterioration of the condition of the working class. The revolution began to spread even before the war. In the East, the revolution followed on the heels of the 1905 Revolution in Russia; in 1906 it broke out in Persia, in 1908 in Turkey and in 1911 in China. In the European countries the approach of revolution was heralded by big strikes in England (the general strike on the railways in 1911, the miners’ strike in 1912), the struggles of the workers in Germany (the demonstrations in favour of universal suffrage in Prussia in 1910), and working class demonstrations in Russia (the protest strikes against the Lena shootings in 1912, the strikes in Baku and other cities in the summer of 1914, the demonstrations in St. Petersburg, accompanied by armed clashes and the erection of barricades, etc.).

The proletarian revolution loomed in all capitalist countries. The fundamental conditions for the transition to socialism had ripened; a proletarian revolution had become an objective necessity. The dictatorship of the bourgeoisie had to be replaced by the dictatorship of the proletariat, since of all the classes in modern society the proletariat alone was capable of leading the toilers out of the ''impasse'' to which the bourgeoisie had brought it.

Of all the workers’ parties of the world, however, the Russian Bolsheviks alone, headed by Lenin, proved to be actually prepared to assume the leadership of the proletarian revolution. In the West European countries, in the long period of reaction that followed the suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871, the workers’ parties had grown accustomed to pursue only legal forms of the class struggle. Opportunism was rife: a good deal of “opportunist garbage,” as Lenin called it, had accumulated.

One of the chief reasons for the strength of opportunism was the fact that in all imperialist countries the capitalist class bribed the upper stratum of the working class (the numerically small labour aristocracy) out of the super-profits obtained from the plunder of the colonies and semi-colonies. Thus, there was a section, a numerically small section, it is true, of the working class, that sided with the bourgeoisie and served as the vehicle of its influence to the proletariat. But the situation completely changed with the outbreak of the imperialist war. Then in the Western countries, in the “free” constitutional monarchies and republics, armed revolt and the transformation of the imperialist war into civil war became an urgent necessity, for there was no way of escaping from exploitation except by bitter struggle.

Of all the European parties, the Russian Bolshevik Party, alone, had made serious preparation for this struggle, owing to the fact that in Russia a revolutionary situation had been developing since the middle of the nineteenth century. The Russian revolutionary movement was the most powerful in Europe.

In Russia all the contradictions of the modern period of imperialism were prevalent: the oppression of enslaved nationalities by a dominant nation, the military-feudal oppression of tsarism, which was the most brutal form of political oppression then existing. The landowning nobility still survived in Russia and there were many survivals of serfdom in economic life (particularly that of the peasants), habits and customs and in political institutions. At the same time capitalism was developing rapidly: large-scale industry grew apace and became concentrated in a few centres; this was accompanied by the growth of the working class. Bank capital, syndicates and trusts, those highest forms of imperialist finance capital, developed also, particularly after 1905. The proletarian class war against the bourgeoisie spread and this was accompanied by the growth of the peasants’ war against the landowning nobility. In other words, we had a combination of two class wars, which Marx viewed as unusually favourable for proletarian victory.

Marx and Engels had pointed out in their time the approach of the revolution in Russia, the extremely rapid development of capitalism in that vast country, and the unbearable yoke of tsarism.

They had understood: 1, the complexity of the social structure in Russia, ''viz''., the existence of the most primitive together with the most modern forms (“every stage of social development is represented from the primitive commune to modern large-scale industry and high finance,” as Engels wrote to V. I. Zasulich in 1885); 2, they took into account the existence of a revolutionary situation; they saw that the revolution required only a jolt to bring vast masses of people into action; 3, they foresaw that the revolutionary explosion would be of tremendous power and that it would inevitably assume a most violent and bitter character (“Russia is heading towards a most violent revolution,” Marx wrote to Engels in 1870); 4, they foresaw that in this ''last'' of the great European countries to pass through the capitalist industrial revolution, the conflict would assume unprecedented dimensions. “This time the crash will beat anything known before; all the factors are there: intensity, universal extension, entanglement of all possessing and ruling social elements,” so Engels wrote to Marx on April 14, 1856; 5, they realised the tremendous significance of the Russian revolution for the world revolution. That the latter would be a socialist revolution Marx and Engels never doubted.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en16|[16]]]

Of enormous importance for the Russian revolution and for the development of the Leninist theory was the fact that quite an extensive experience in revolution and working class organisation had already been accumulated, and that the theory of Marx and Engels had been worked out in detail and adopted and tested by the revolutionary proletarian party and by the masses. The Bolshevik Party grew and gained strength in the course of a long struggle and the experience of a number of revolutions. It accumulated the experience of the international working-class movement and of West European revolutions and conveyed this experience to the masses.

In his “''Left-Wing’ Communism'', Lenin wrote:

<blockquote>Russia achieved Marxism, as the only correct revolutionary theory, virtually through ''suffering'', by a half century of unprecedented torments and sacrifice, of unprecedented revolutionary heroism, incredible energy, painstaking search and study, testing in practice, disappointments, checking, and comparison with European experience.
</blockquote>
Lenin also emphasised the value and significance of the direct experience gained by the Bolshevik Party in the long struggle against the autocracy, the liberal bourgeoisie, petty-bourgeois wavering and uncertain revolutionaries (such as the Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Anarchists, and so forth), and against the various tendencies and deviations within its own ranks. These deviations and bourgeois influences were overcome in the struggle waged against the various forms of opportunism that successively manifested themselves: Economism,[[#footnotes.xhtml_ch2_fn2|*]] Menshevism, the Liquidationist movement, social-patriotism and the tendencies that disguised themselves by “Left” phraseology, such as “''Otzovism'',” “''Vperyodism'',”[[#footnotes.xhtml_ch2_fn3|†]] “Left Communism,” etc., as well as against conciliationism, a disguised and therefore particularly dangerous form of opportunism.

Lenin subjected the Russian revolution and the development of Bolshevism to a detailed analysis in a number of his writings, ''e.g.'', “The Tasks of the Russian Social-Democrats,” “Speech on the Revolution of 1905,” “The Stages, the Trend and Prospects of the Revolution,” “Farewell Letter to the Swiss Workers,” “Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution,” “Our Revolution,” especially “Left-Wing” Communism.

We have dealt particularly with the Russian revolution, because it was in Russia that the Bolshevik Party developed. But it would be a mistake to assume that Bolshevism (in other words, Leninism) is based only on the experiences of Russia and that it is a purely Russian phenomenon. Leninism was drawn from international experience and its significance is international. Only by a proletarian revolution can the revolutionary proletariat and the oppressed masses who are struggling against imperialism throughout the world, achieve their emancipation. Leninism is the theory of the proletariat, it sums up and explains this experience, it teaches the working class how to conduct its fight and how to secure victory, seize power, consolidate its gains and lead the toilers in their struggle against exploitation. It also teaches us how socialism is to be built.

In his pamphlet ''The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky'', Lenin says that the popularity of Bolshevism throughout the world is due to the profound sympathy the masses have for genuinely revolutionary tactics, because the revolution has begun to mature all over the world. He enumerates the achievements of Bolshevism and declares that Bolshevik tactics were based on a correct appreciation of the revolutionary situation that had arisen all over Europe.

Bolshevism exposed and routed the old, putrid international of social-traitors. It laid down the ideological and tactical foundations of the Third International, which took into account the gains achieved in the epoch of peace as well as the experience of the epoch of revolution which had commenced. The example of the Soviet state showed that the workers and poor peasants are capable of taking political power, of defending it against attacks of the world bourgeoisie, and of building socialism.

With Russia as an example, the masses throughout the world were in a position to convince themselves that Bolshevism had indicated “the true path of salvation from the horrors of the war and of imperialism and that Bolshevism ''could serve as an example in tactics to all''” (Lenin).

The long training and hardening that the Bolshevik Party had obtained in the struggle guaranteed it an important place in the international struggle against opportunism and for the creation of the Third, Communist, International. While crystallising the rich experience of the Russian revolution, Bolshevism at the same time reflected the experience of the international working-class movement (particularly the European) which had entered the era of the socialist revolution.

Before the war, during the war, and after the war, Lenin in his writings constantly bore in mind the experience of the whole international struggle. Under his leadership, a bitter struggle was waged against opportunism wherever it was found. It was in this spirit, the spirit of revolutionary Marxism, that the Communist Parties in every European country were trained. Lenin wrote letters to workers in various countries on questions of the international revolution, pointing out that the urgent and essential task in the present period of history was to fight for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat all over the world. It was under Lenin’s leadership that the Communist International was created and the fundamental principles of its programme, organisation and tactics laid down.

Leninism, therefore, is Marxism in the epoch of imperialism and of the proletarian revolution. In this epoch, the proletarian movement reaches new, higher, levels. The proletariat has grown numerically; it has become better organised and more class conscious; its historical activity has increased; it has learned to employ new methods in the struggle, for it has now conquered power and established its dictatorship in a vast country. In his activities and in his writings, Lenin expressed and analysed the new phenomena of the new epoch. Leading the struggle of the proletariat in these new conditions, Lenin advanced and developed Marxist theory and introduced fresh elements into all its phases. Hence Leninism is a new stage in the development of Marxism.



III


== MATERIALIST DIALECTICS AS THE THEORETICAL FOUNDATION OF MARXISM-LENINISM ==

The essence of Marxism is materialist dialectics. Lenin called materialist dialectics “the living soul of Marxism,” “its fundamental theoretical root.” The importance of mastering the dialectical method will therefore be obvious. It is needed in the study of nature and of society, in the theoretical struggle, in the practical leadership of the proletariat and its constructive work.

The articles collected in Volume XI of the ''Selected Works''[[#footnotes.xhtml_ch3_fn1|*]] provide a general exposition of materialist dialectics and its application to the study of nature and of the history of human society and of human thought. We must learn how to apply this method by studying the works of Marx and Engels and the masterly application of materialist dialectics by Lenin. All his life Lenin was a diligent student of the works of Marx and Engels; he read them over and over again, and turned to them particularly at every turn of history and at every new stage of the revolution, when new problems arose for solution. Lenin took his revolutionary materialist dialectics from Marx and Engels, he repeatedly advocated the necessity of studying their works for this purpose. But to say that Lenin mastered the Marxist method is not enough; he developed it and raised it to a still higher level.

What do we mean by dialectics? By dialectics Hegel meant the progress of ideas (thought) by means of contradiction, the process of its development toward a supreme and absolute spirit. Hegel emphasised that such progress, such development is self-motion. He considered that every phenomenon had its own motion, its own process of development, and that this self-motion is the result of an inherent impulse to development. In ancient Greece, dialectics was the name given to the art of disputation. It was considered that in the course of an argument, rich in fertile ideas, the opinions of the disputing parties underwent a change and that something new and of a higher nature resulted. By analogy, all motion by means of contradiction came to be called dialectics. This was the sense in which Hegel used the term. He believed that motion was universally produced in this way, ''i.e.'', by a conflict of contradictions, the negation of the old and the creation of the new. That is how development takes place.

But the dialectics of Hegel are idealistic. It is the movement of thought that lies at the root of his whole philosophy. Marx, on the contrary, employed dialectics materialistically. He created dialectic materialism. ''Materialist dialectics'' is the general movement and development caused by the conflict of contradictions that takes place throughout the universe both in nature and in society, and which is reflected in human thought. ''Dialectic materialism'' is the philosophy and method of revolutionary Marxism-Leninism, an instrument for the study and transformation of everything that exists. Dialectic materialism is not confined merely to theoretical study: it involves practical revolutionary action.

Dialectic thought strives to achieve a complete and all-embracing conception of phenomena. Every expressed opinion is more or less one-sided.

Lenin, after conversing with an individual who had attended the “''Vperyod''” school at Capri conducted by A. Bogdanov, who politically was a follower of the “Otzovist” faction, wrote a letter to Maxim Gorky dated November 29, 1909, in which he stated that his (Lenin’s) previous conception of the Capri school had been one-sided. He wrote:

<blockquote>By gad, the philosopher Hegel was right—life does progress by contradictions; and living contradictions are much richer, more varied and pithier than the mind of man originally conceived. I thought that the school was ''merely'' the centre of a new faction. It turns out not to be so: not in the sense that the school was not the centre of a new faction (it was, and is so to-day), but in the sense that this is not the whole truth. Subjectively, certain individuals made the school such a centre; objectively, it was such a centre, and, moreover, the school drew from real working-class surroundings genuine and advanced workers. And so it turned out that at Capri, beside the contradictions between the old and new factions, a contradiction developed between a section of the Social-Democratic intellectuals and the Russian workers, who are bound, ''whatever happens'', to bring the Social-Democracy out on the true path, and will do so in spite of all the intrigues, “brawls and incidents,” etc., etc., that go on abroad.
</blockquote>
From this example we see that there are several sides to every object and to every phenomenon. When considering certain phases, we must not forget those that are temporarily overshadowed and forced into the background, but which may assume prime importance in the further development of the conflict of contradictions. One must be able to view the development of a given phenomenon in its perspective, to see the interrelation of all its component parts, and at the same time distinguish the “main link” of each given concrete situation and historical moment. The complexity of the phenomena of reality, their contradictory nature and their constant flux and change are reflected in our judgment of them, which also cannot help but be contradictory and in a constant state of flux. That, however, does not exclude, but, on the contrary, imposes the necessity for finding clear and definite answers to the problems that arise at any given moment. Dialectic materialism teaches us to distinguish the contradictions of reality, to understand their significance and to study their development (objective dialectics). Correspondingly, the progress of concepts (subjective dialectics), by properly reflecting reality, must conform to what is proceeding in the external (objective) world and must not allow itself to be severed from its base. Consciousness must strive to adapt itself to the (dialectical) progress of the reflected object.

The importance of the works of Hegel lies in the fact that he was the first to create a philosophy that attempted (and to a certain extent successfully) to study the general laws of dialectics. The great merit of Hegel consists in the fact that he made dialectics the basis of his philosophy. As Marx said, Hegel was the “first to give a complete and conscious picture of the general forms of motion” [''i.e.'', of dialectics.—''V. A.'']. It would, however, be a mistake to believe that one can simply take and use the Hegelian dialectics without first radically re-shaping it.

Marx himself declared that his method not only differed fundamentally from that of Hegel “but is its direct opposite.” Marx said, that to Hegel

<blockquote>the process of thinking, which under the name of “the idea” he even transformed into an independent subject, is the ''demiurge'' of the world, and the real world is only the extreme phenomenal form of “the idea.” With me the idea is nothing else than the material reflected by the human mind and translated into forms of thought.
</blockquote>
The Hegelian dialectics, accordingly, requires thorough overhauling. It must be “turned right side up again” in order to reveal “the rational kernel within the mystical shell.”

Engels also dwelt on the same theme and treated it in a similar spirit. To the question, wherein lies the error of Hegel, he replies: in the fact that the laws of dialectics “are not drawn from nature and history, but imposed on the latter as laws of thought.” Hence the nonsensical concept that “the world must conform to a logical system, which is itself only the product of definite stages of development of human thought.”

Engels declares that “this relationship must be reversed,” whereupon everything will appear normal and plain.

<blockquote>The dialectical laws, which in the idealistic philosophy are extremely mysterious, will then immediately become simple and clear.
</blockquote>
On another occasion Engels stated that the mysticism of Hegel consisted in the fact that

<blockquote>the category [''i.e.'', concept—''V.A.''] was to him something antecedent, while the dialectics of the real universe was its mere reflection. Actually the opposite is true: the dialectics of the mind is only the reflection of the real world both of nature and of history.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en17|[17]]] (''The Dialectics of Nature''.)
</blockquote>
Lenin, like Marx, completely remoulded Hegel, reversed his theses, put them right side up and interpreted them materialistically.

<blockquote>Hegel’s logic, he wrote, cannot be applied in its present form: it cannot be ''taken for granted''. We must select from it its logical (gnosiological) shades and purge it of ''mystical ideas''; that is still a big task.
</blockquote>
A valuable guide to the study of Hegel are his synopses: ''The Science of Logic'' and ''The History of Philosophy''.

Throughout the universe, development proceeds not as the result of any external cause (God), not because of any “purpose” inherent in events, but because of the inherent contradictions that are contained in all things and in all phenomena. “Contradiction is the root of all motion and of all life,” Hegel wrote. “It is only because a thing contains a contradiction within itself, that it moves and acquires impulse and activity. That is the process of all motion and all development.”[[#footnotes.xhtml_ch3_fn2|*]]

Lenin in his article ''On Dialectics'' points out that contradictions exist universally: repulsion and attraction, positive and negative electricity, the division into parts, and the union of the parts to form a whole, etc. In all the phenomena and processes of nature and society there are contradictory, opposite, mutually exclusive, and at the same time associated, tendencies. Dialectics, ''i.e.'', the contradictions, union and conflict of opposites, prevails in the material world and is reflected in consciousness.

The general laws of dialectics are universal: they are to be found in the movement and development of the immeasurably vast luminous nebulae from which in the spaces of the universe the stellar systems are formed (these spaces are measured by light years, ''i.e.'', the distance through which light travels in one year, moving at a speed of 300,000 kilometres per second), in the internal structure of molecules and atoms and in the movement of electrons and protons; the latter are also opposite and mutually connected and undergo transformation, change and development, in other words, they also reveal the laws of dialectics in their existence and in their movements.

The development of the animal kingdom also proceeds by contradictions and the conflict of opposites (the struggle for existence, procreation by sex, etc.).

In human society the driving force of development is the class struggle. In the conditions of contemporary society, the struggle of the revolutionary class, the proletariat, causes the transition from one form of society to another—the transition from capitalism to communism. (We shall deal with this in somewhat greater detail below.)

It is this dialectical movement of the material universe that forms the subject matter of materialist dialectics.

Lenin said that “contradiction” is the salt of dialectics; its “kernel” is unity and the conflict of opposites.

Dialectics emphasises not only contradiction and opposites, but also unity. Lenin thus explains the formula “unity of opposites”:

<blockquote>We are unable to imagine, express, measure or depict motion without interrupting that which is continuous, without simplifying, approximating, separating and petrifying that which is alive. The depiction of the movement of thought is always an approximation, an act of petrification—and not merely of thought, but also of sensation, and not merely of motion, but of all conceptions. Therein lies the essence of dialectics. And it is this essence that is expressed in the formula, the unity, the identity of opposites.
</blockquote>
The Greek eclectic philosopher Zeno (fifth century B.C.), known as the father of the dialectical method, was the first to give clear expression to the idea of the contradictoriness of motion. Certain of his arguments have come down to us and these show that thought is bound to arrive at an ''impasse'' if dialectical methods are not employed and if the unity of opposites is not understood. Here is one of his arguments. An arrow in the course of its flight is bound to be at some definite point of its path and occupy some definite place. If that be so, then at each given moment it is at a definite point in a state of rest, that is, motionless; hence, it is not moving at all. We therefore see that motion cannot be expressed without resorting to contradictory statements. The arrow is in a given place, yet at the same time is not in that place. It is only by expressing both these contradictory affirmations coincidentally that we can depict motion. If we were to rest on only half of a phrase, either motion would disappear, or the object itself. And that is true of any judgment, for a judgment expresses only one or a few sides of an object, whereas the object has innumerable sides and innumerable contacts with the surrounding world. Hence, a contrary judgment may be made regarding any thing or phenomenon and yet to a certain extent it will be correct. Explosive substances employed in war cause tremendous destruction. But employed in industry they serve the cause of culture. Because of the antagonism of classes all things and phenomena assume opposite significance for each of the combatant sides: for the proletariat, the Soviet state means victory; for the capitalists it means defeat and the end of their rule, and so forth.

The formula “unity of opposites” is particularly important because it expresses the principal distinguishing feature of dialectic motion, the most fundamental property of all phenomena.

In order to avoid misunderstanding it should be stated here, that the application of the dialectical method does not mean arbitrarily combining all and every contradictory assertion. The unity of opposites must not be taken to mean the simple repetition of arbitrarily chosen postulates and opposite assertions; it is the combination and conflict of opposites as they exist in reality and the discovery of the contradictions in reality that are the driving forces and bases of motion.

In order that the specific features of dialectical thinking may be better understood it will be useful to compare and contrast it with other, non-dialectical methods and forms of thinking. This will help to bring out more clearly the fundamental features of materialist dialectics and to give a more precise idea of its laws, particularly its basic law: motion is the result of contradiction, the unity and conflict of opposites.

Opposed to dialectics are metaphysics, eclectics, sophistry, and the puerile “evolutionary” conception of development. Materialist dialectics does not tolerate the use of stereotyped and ready-made schemes. It demands the profound study of concrete circumstances, the precise formulation of the real process of development; it also demands revolutionary action.

Dialectical thinking is the opposite of metaphysics, which regards things and phenomena, not in their unity and interrelationship, but each separate from the other, ''outside'' of the grand, ''general'' relationship, and consequently, not in motion, but in a state of rest, frozen, unchanging and lifeless. Metaphysical thinking is incapable of depicting the real inter-relations and development of phenomena.

How, for instance, is one to regard capitalist, bourgeois democracy? To approach this phenomenon with a ready-made answer would be metaphysics. It would be untrue to say that capitalism is an evil at all times and under all conditions. Compared with the serf system, capitalism was beneficial: to a certain extent it freed the toilers and placed them in more favourable conditions for their development and their struggle for emancipation. The serf system, on the other hand, was beneficial compared with slavery. As long as the serf system exists, as long as it predominates, the movement towards capitalism is a progressive movement. But when the serf system is abolished, the workers are left facing one main enemy—capitalism. In relation to the past, capitalism is beneficial; in relation to the future, in relation to the more perfect system, ''i.e.'', socialism, capitalism is an evil that must be destroyed.

For the proletariat, bourgeois democracy is, of course, preferable to a tsarist autocracy. The proletariat cannot but strive to overthrow autocracy. But even a democratic republic is one of the forms of the class rule of the exploiters, ''viz.'', the bourgeois dictatorship, which must be replaced by a Soviet state—by proletarian democracy.

Slavery is abominable. But slavery was necessary at a given phase of the historical development of humanity, in the remote past, at a given level of development of productive forces. At that time it represented a necessary stage of development, a definite advance. At a particular stage of development of productive forces, enemies, instead of being killed, were turned into slaves and their labour power was thus preserved and put to use.

If we are asked, what interest has the past to us, we reply that development throughout the world takes place unevenly. In one place (the U.S.S.R.) bourgeois democracy is a thing of the past; in other places (outside the U.S.S.R.) it is a thing of the present. Moreover, feudal relations, and even slave relations (at least survivals of them) continue to exist in Asia and Africa and even in Europe and America. At the present time all these are dominated by the fundamental contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, between wage slavery and the struggle against wage slavery, between the system of capitalist states and the U.S.S.R. Yet at the same time, old forms of oppression continue to exist. Only by its own efforts, without the aid of God (who we do know does not exist) can mankind escape from its bestial existence, its semi-barbaric conditions of life, and from the grip of poverty, oppression and ignorance. In this struggle for emancipation the proletariat takes the lead. Its fight is against the fundamental and dominating relations of wage slavery; but parallel with this form of exploitation there remain the survivals of preceding forms of oppression, against which the proletariat must also wage a bitter war.

Dialectic materialism is the theory that guides the proletariat in its struggles. The proletariat wages war on the bourgeoisie and in time will overthrow it; it will abolish the rule of the bourgeoisie and destroy the relations of exploitation; but at the same time it must take over and still further develop the cultural achievements that were amassed under the rule of the bourgeoisie.

The bourgeois, the capitalist, is our enemy. But having defeated the enemy and broken his resistance, we must take advantage of his knowledge and experience. We must make use of the cultural and scientific developments achieved under the bourgeoisie and compel the bourgeois specialists to work for the cause of communism.

In the process of development all things give way to others, all things are negated. But the characteristic feature of dialectical negation is that it does not merely throw to one side, it abolishes by first overcoming. Socialism cannot be brought about without mastering and remoulding all that which was accumulated in the preceding stage of historical development and all that which was taken over from the past and developed by the bourgeoisie. Such a dialectic negation of the bourgeoisie can be accomplished only by the proletariat, the class most closely associated with modern large-scale industry, which is the most valuable product of bourgeois development.

We thus see that nothing is immutable; everything changes, everything passes from one state to another. For this reason metaphysical thought, which regards things in isolation and treats them as immutable, cannot correctly reflect the ceaseless process of motion and the inter- relationship of all phenomena.

As we have stated, development arises out of inherent contradictions. For instance, the capitalist system is a unity of opposites: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The dialectics of this contradiction was brilliantly set forth by Marx in ''The Communist Manifesto''[[#endnotes.xhtml_en18|[18]]] and in ''Capital''. The bourgeoisie and the proletariat are opposites; but at the same time they comprise a definite unity: they are the classes of a single social and economic formation—capitalism—in a state of irreconcilable contradiction. This contradiction will be logically solved dialectically by the internal struggle, the proletarian revolution. The logic arises out of the mass struggle. In the process of revolution, the proletariat becomes transformed, it becomes trained for the performance of its historic mission. In 1846 Marx wrote:

<blockquote>The revolution is essential not merely because the dominant class cannot be overthrown by any other means, but also because only in the course of the revolution can the class which overthrows cleanse itself of the mire of the old society and become fit to create a new society.
</blockquote>
This is one of the fundamental ideas of Marxism. Marx returned to it time and again. Thus, in 1850 in his speech to the Communist League, Marx said, addressing himself to the workers:

<blockquote>You must pass through fifteen, twenty, perhaps fifty years of civil war and national conflict, not merely in order to change the system, but also to change yourselves and to render yourselves fit for political rule.
</blockquote>
And again in 1871, in his pamphlet, ''The Civil War in France'', repeating the same thought, Marx said:

<blockquote>They [the working class] know that in order to work out their own emancipation, and along with it that higher form to which present society is irresistibly tending, by its own economical agencies, they will have to pass through long struggles, through a series of historic processes, transforming circumstances and men.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en19|[19]]]
</blockquote>
Here we discern the same unity of opposites, the mutual conflict of these opposites and the inevitable solution of the conflicts by a transition to a new form of society. Without the long and severe training obtained in its struggles the proletariat cannot fit itself to perform its historical mission.

It is the task of materialist dialectics to study the conflict of opposites proceeding in the world around us and to reveal it in its true form. It must seek the dialectic foundations of the contradictions and not select symptoms and phases of phenomena casually and eclectically (that is, arbitrarily and independently of their essential inter-relationship). It must seek to discover the driving forces of development. At the same time it must actively participate in the struggle on the side of the revolutionary class and lead the mass struggle of the proletariat.

<blockquote>My ideals for the upbuilding of new Russia will not be chimerical only if they express the interests of an actually existing class that is compelled by conditions to act in a definite direction. In adopting the viewpoint of the objectivity of the class struggle I do not thereby justify reality; on the contrary, I point to the profound (if at a first glance invisible) sources and forces that exist within that reality and make for its transformation.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en20|[20]]]
</blockquote>
Eclecticism employs methods repugnant to dialectic materialism. Dialectics is opposed to the habit of the eclectics of arbitrarily selecting isolated phases, and their inability to grasp an object or a phenomenon as a whole, in its totality, and in its systematic and inevitable interrelationships and development as they exist in reality. Instead of taking the phenomenon as a whole in all its complexity, but at the same time in its unity and totality, they one-sidedly exaggerate isolated features, component parts and phases. Materialist dialectics demands that the important factor should be singled out, but that at the same time attention should be devoted to those phases that are brought to the forefront by circumstances. It also demands that the phenomenon as a whole should not be lost sight of. Ideas must represent the interrelation of the various phases of phenomena as they exist in reality and emphasise the fundamental contradictions (the “main link,” as Lenin expressed it, ''i.e.'', that which is essential to the practical leadership of the class struggle of the proletariat). As one of many examples of the manner in which Lenin attacked eclecticism, one may mention his criticism of Comrade Bukharin in the discussion on the trade union question.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en21|[21]]] As an example of his ability to single out the “main link,” and of the value of this ability to the proletarian revolution, we may refer to the change to the New Economic Policy effected by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union under Lenin’s leadership and to Lenin’s explanation and analysis of the circumstances that attended this measure.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en22|[22]]]

In contradistinction to the eclectic conception, dialectics teaches the doctrine of ''The Concreteness of Truth''. In his Introduction to the ''Critique of Political Economy'' Marx explained that the concrete is concrete by virtue of the fact that it combines within itself a multiformity of definitions, because it is “unity in multiformity.” The concrete is the whole of nature, the whole of reality, surrounding us: it embraces, combines and coalesces all contradictions. Our knowledge moves towards an ever more complete and more profound reflection of this complete (concrete) reality.

While realising the limitation and provisional nature of abstract postulates, dialectical thought employs abstractions within certain limits. An abstraction singles out a certain phase, concentrates on it and studies it. In his ''Foreword'' to the first volume of ''Capital'', Marx declares that in the study of social, and particularly economic forms, neither microscope nor chemical reagents are of any use. “The forces of abstraction must replace both.” And in Volume I, Chapter 1 of ''Capital'', in which he analyses the principal phenomena of bourgeois exchange society (commodity, value and money) Marx gives us an example of how to use abstractions and of the limits which they are invaluable to scientific research.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en23|[23]]] (''Cf''. Lenin’s article, “Karl Marx,” and his Preface to Marx’s ''Letters to Kugelmann''.)

Of course, when Marx undertook to present a general picture of the laws of capitalist society he did not confine himself to this alone. When investigating reality in all its complexity we must endeavour to create a picture that most faithfully reflects that reality and to discover the concrete truths that reflect the real situation in all its totality and in the unity of its contradictions and opposites.

In the notes Lenin made on his reading of Hegel, he declares that “concreteness... is the spirit and essence of dialectics.” And in his popular exposition of the nature of dialectics,[[#endnotes.xhtml_en24|[24]]] he states that one of the fundamentals of dialectical logic is that “there is no abstract truth, truth is concrete.” This means that one must not be content with general arguments: it means that reality demands clear and precise replies to the concrete problems that arise in the course of historical development and the struggle of the working class, and it means further, that if one wants to express an opinion with a full knowledge of the subject, one’s mind must be able to reflect all the relationships and the full complexity of the concrete conditions of the given phenomena and to express the general laws of development of those phenomena.

In contrast to the ''dialectic'' conception of development, which reveals the full complexity of a process, we have the puerile and superficial conception of “peaceful” development, “''evolution''” without contradictions and without leaps, upheavals and revolution. This conception is impotent in the face of the actual process of development. As a matter of fact a genuine conception of evolution, answering actual reality, must embrace not only gradual changes, but also sudden changes, “leaps,” breaks in continuity. Without such leaps no phenomenon can be explained, for it would be necessary to assume that nothing new can arise, that everything already exists in an imperceptibly minute form liable to subsequent growth. As a matter of fact, however, we continually meet with breaks in continuity and with the appearance of new qualities that formerly did not exist. Changes of form always take place in reality by means of revolution, leaps. In the process of development old forms are negated and new forms take their place which in their turn are negated.

The act of birth is an act of revolution. Yet the period during which the child is carried in the womb of the mother is one of slow and gradual change. Social development proceeds by the struggle of classes and by revolution. Dialectics gives a true and profound theory of development; it represents it as pursuing a complex, not a direct path, and as comprising, not merely the accumulation of slow and gradual changes, but also periods of cataclysm, sudden change, leaps, revolutions, reverse movements (as though taking a run for a sudden leap forward), ebb and flow, and so forth; evolution as represented by the bourgeois ideologists is a simple, ''smooth'' and tranquil process. The dialectic is difficult and complex, “cunning” as Hegel expressed it; it is very hard to understand and master. But what would you have, when the world of reality and the process of its development are themselves complex, and not the simple processes the good, respectable citizen would have them be.

The dying of the old and the birth of the new is a complicated and difficult process. In all development it is the process as a whole that is important, and not merely the result.

It is sheer self-deception to believe that fruits may be gathered without long and arduous labour. Those who fear revolution, who shrink from the methods of struggle that reality imposes, are, in practice, supporters of the exploiters and traitors to the cause of emancipating the working class from wage slavery.

In 1918 Lenin explained the meaning and importance of the class struggle that was taking place at that time as follows:

<blockquote>When the bourgeoisie, and the government officials, clerks, doctors, engineers, etc., who are accustomed to serve it, resort to extreme measures of resistance, the intellectuals are horrified. They tremble in fear and whine pitifully about the necessity of a return to “compromise.” We, on the contrary, like all true friends of the oppressed classes, only rejoice at the extreme resistance offered by the exploiters; for we expect the proletariat to grow to manhood and to mature for power not by persuasion and pleading, not in the school of dulcet preaching and edifying declamations, but in the school of life, the school of struggle. The proletariat must ''learn'' how to become the ruling class and how to gain complete victory over the bourgeoisie, for it cannot obtain this knowledge ready-made. It must learn by struggle. And it is only serious, bitter and desperate struggle that teaches anything. The more extreme the resistance of the exploiters is the more energetically, firmly, mercilessly and successfully will they be suppressed by the exploited. The more varied the efforts and pains the exploiters take to defend the old, the sooner will the proletariat learn to drive its class enemies out of their last hiding places, tear out the roots of their domination and remove the very soil on which wage slavery, mass poverty, and the profits and the insolence of the moneybags could (and, indeed, had to) spring up.

With the growing resistance of the bourgeoisie and its hangers-on, the strength of the proletariat and of the peasantry which ally themselves with it also grows. The exploited gain in strength and manhood, they grow and learn to throw off the “old Adam” of wage slavery in proportion as the resistance of their enemies, the exploiters, increases. Victory is bound to be on the side of the exploited, for on their side is life itself, the strength of numbers, the strength of the masses, the strength of the inexhaustible springs of self- sacrifice and of the idealistic and honest reserves of energy and talent of the so-called “common” people, the workers and peasants, awakened and eager to build up a new order. Victory is on their side.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en25|[25]]]
</blockquote>
These lines describing the dialectics of the class struggle, although written in 1918, still preserve their force. As long as classes and class society exist, the class struggle of the proletariat is essential for the development of society and for its progress to a higher form of organisation, ''viz''., communism. Those who fail to understand this, who refuse to understand the necessity for treading the difficult path to communism, who are terrified at the difficulties and anxious to escape them by endeavouring to create peace between the exploited and the exploiters, in practice are enemies of communism; for they are hindering the cause of the exploited masses and diverting them from the only path of escape from an exploiting, slave society.

Another serious violation of dialectics is the refusal to reckon with actual and inevitable causes, and the intellectual evasion of stages that must be passed through in reality. Those who thus evade and anticipate tend to become isolated from the masses in practical politics and cease to lead the revolutionary struggle of the masses, thereby playing into the hands of the bourgeoisie.

Dialectics demands that the successive stages of transition should be clearly defined.

Innumerable instances may be cited of Lenin’s ability to define transitions. Here we will only mention the transition (transformation) of the imperialist war into civil war, a transition of world historical importance, which Lenin not only studied in all its details, but in which he directly took part. The basis of this transition is the development of the proletarian revolution, which, by means of the dictatorship of the proletariat, brings about the transition from capitalism to communism. He calculated the course of this development in all its complexity. In 1916 he wrote that the impending socialist revolution would be

<blockquote>an outburst of mass struggle on the part of all the various oppressed and discontented elements. Sections of the petty bourgeoisie and of the backward workers will inevitably participate in it—without such participation ''mass'' struggle is ''impossible'', without it no revolution is possible—and just as inevitably will they bring into the movement their prejudices, their reactionary phantasies, their weaknesses and errors. But ''objectively'' they will attack ''capitalism'', and the class conscious vanguard of the revolution, the advanced proletariat expressing this objective truth for a heterogeneous and discordant, motley and outwardly uncohesive mass struggle, will be able to unify and direct it, to gain power, to seize the banks, to expropriate the trusts, which are hated by all (though for different reasons) and introduce other dictatorial measures which will amount to the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the victory of socialism, but which will by no means immediately be “purged” of petty bourgeois slag.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en26|[26]]]
</blockquote>
The scientific forecast contained in this passage was subsequently fully corroborated. Lenin’s works written in the period 1917-23 deal with a number of questions connected with the leadership of the class struggle of the proletariat in the transition period from the capitalist exploiting system to a classless, communist society. In a series of articles he analysed the various stages of the revolution, and the various phases of the transition period itself. He picks out the fundamental features of current phenomena and shows whence and whither the transition is proceeding. This is necessary in order that every effort be made to extend and deepen the proletarian revolution and to secure the triumph of its cause.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en27|[27]]] Only thanks to its theoretical grasp of the meaning of revolutionary struggle was the leadership of the Party of Lenin able to secure the victory of the proletariat, the dictatorship of the proletariat and the subsequent development of socialist construction.

As has been stated, the ability to distinguish the logical sequence of the stages of transition is not only of theoretical importance; it is also of great practical importance in the leadership of the struggle of the proletariat and in determining its strategy and tactics.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en28|[28]]]

Lenin possessed the faculty of discerning the conflict of contradictions and of opposites as they took place in actual reality. We have already said that dialectic materialism demands the expression and formulation of the actual process of development.

Genuine (objective) ''dialectics'' is distinguished from ''sophistry'', which does not study the actual process of development in its totality, but indulges in an arbitrary play of ideas (''i.e.'', subjective dialectics, applied arbitrarily and severed from the dialectic movement of the external world).

Many examples of sophistry can be found in the war waged by the opportunists against revolutionary Marxism and particularly in the utterances of Kautsky and Plekhanov after they had become traitors to revolutionary Marxism. An examination of the sophisms of the opportunists is given by Lenin in his “Collapse of the Second International,” where he states that:

<blockquote>The dialectic method demands a many-sided investigation of a given social phenomenon in its development; it demands that we proceed from the exterior, from the apparent, to the fundamental moving forces, to the development of productive forces and to the class struggle.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en29|[29]]]
</blockquote>
The sophist, however, picks out a postulate which is only correct under certain conditions, instead of undertaking an all-sided investigation, and ignores the most important point, ''viz''., that the conditions under which the given postulate is correct soon cease to exist, that the whole environment changes and that, as a result, everything else radically changes. For instance, Marx and Engels spoke of the legitimacy of the wars for national emancipation that took place in Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century, ''e.g.'', in Prussia in 1813. Kautsky takes these words of Marx and Engels and applies them in a different epoch, namely, to the wars of the twentieth century, which are essentially imperialistic and predatory.

<blockquote>It is the method of all the sophists of all times to quote examples obviously relating to basically dissimilar cases.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en30|[30]]]
</blockquote>
The whole article, “Collapse of the Second International,” is a brilliant example of materialist dialectics. The article gives a detailed and precise explanation of the nature of the sophistry of the opportunists. In Lenin’s works we find innumerable examples of how to apply materialist dialectics and how to combat the false, truth-distorting views of the opportunists. We find it in his polemical writings against the Populists—“Who are the Friends of the People and How They Fight against Social-Democracy”; against Struve—“The Economic Content of Populism and the Criticism of it in Mr. Struve’s Book”; against the Economists—''What Is To Be Done?'' against the Mensheviks, the Liquidationists, the “Otzovists” and against Trotsky—“Two Tactics,” “Notes of a Publicist,” “Debatable Questions,” “Violation of Unity under Pretence of Unity.” We also find it in his philosophical polemic against the Machists—''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism''. The true dialectical method of overcoming the opposition argument is the only correct method, namely, not to brush it aside (that is not difficult), but to make a detailed analysis, a conscientious investigation of the question in all its detail, based on a profound study of the object of dispute as a whole (at the same time not sacrificing the general grasp of the whole subject to details). The result is a profound and all-round conception; things become revealed in the relationships in which they stand to each other in reality. We thus arrive at a concrete truth approximating to a complete and exhaustive comprehension of the subject as a unity of opposites.

We cannot understand capitalism unless we grasp the unity of opposites made up of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat and unless we realise the inevitability of the transition from capitalism to communism by means of the class struggle of the proletariat. We cannot understand the unity of the opposites: ether and matter, negative and positive electricity, attraction and repulsion.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en31|[31]]] A struggle of opposites, a perpetual succession of forms, transitions from state to state, from form to form—such is the dialectics of the world that surrounds us.

In our description of dialectics so far we have dwelt only on its basic law, ''viz''., on the unity of opposites. We did this because this law is the most important of all and the one that has been least dealt with in popular literature. This law, as well as the other laws, “the transformation of quantity into quality” and the “negation of negations” is brilliantly explained in Engels’ ''Anti- Dühring''.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en32|[32]]]

In the next chapter we shall have to deal with the dialectical law of the “transformation of quantity into quality.”



IV


== THE FIGHT FOR DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM ==

We have seen that dialectic materialism demands the study of phenomena in their totality (concretely) just as they occur in reality. It also demands of those who desire to be guided by the Marxist theory in the study of the driving forces of development that they take a conscious part in the process of development on the side of the revolutionary class, organising it and directing its forces. Such a philosophy is acceptable only to a revolutionary class.

The only real revolutionary class in present-day society is the proletariat, the class that “has nothing to lose but its chains.” Contemporary dialectic materialism is the theoretical reflection of the proletarian revolution of the present day.

Only by organisation and struggle can the proletariat defend its interests, achieve its aims and throw off the yoke of exploitation. And it must conduct an organised and irreconcilable struggle for its revolutionary philosophy also. The theoretical struggle is an important and inseparable part of the class struggle of the proletariat.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en33|[33]]] We have referred above to the tremendous importance of revolutionary theory. The importance of the fight for dialectic materialism must be particularly emphasised.

Two main forces are in constantly increasing conflict in the class struggle of the present day, ''viz''., the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Correspondingly, we have the conflict of two systems of state organisation, ''viz''., the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, on the one hand, which protects the system of wage slavery and is based on the brutal suppression of the proletarian revolution (at the present time, chiefly by fascist methods) and on the other hand, the dictatorship of the proletariat, which overthrows the bourgeoisie and suppresses the exploiters and the task of which is to raise the level of the toiling masses, to develop socialist production and create a classless society. In modern philosophy we correspondingly find two main tendencies, ''viz''., dialectic materialism, the philosophy of the revolutionary proletariat, and philosophical tendencies hostile to revolutionary Marxism, which are anti-materialist and anti-dialectical and which in various forms defend reactionary views, clericalism and so forth, their ultimate aim being to keep the proletariat under the ideological influence of the bourgeoisie.

Philosophy in general is closely connected with politics. In one of his letters to C. Schmidt (October 27, 1890), Engels wrote that “political, legal and moral reflexes... exercise the greatest direct influence upon philosophy,” ''i.e.'', philosophy is inseparably bound up with politics. The predominance of any particular line in a philosophy has an overwhelming effect on the conduct of those who have come under the influence of that philosophy. That, for instance, explains why the bourgeoisie so zealously support religion and the belief in God, using them in furtherance of their political aims, and why, as the capitalist system more and more approaches its decline, they increasingly support reactionary idealism and clericalism in philosophy. The defence of any particular philosophic view is intimately connected with the class struggle, for philosophy is essentially party philosophy.[[#footnotes.xhtml_ch4_fn1|*]] The direct interests of the bourgeoisie compel it “to perpetuate theoretical confusion” and to strive to keep the proletariat under its intellectual influence. It is in the interests of the proletariat to resist all attempts to distort materialist dialectics, which is its own theoretical weapon.

Lenin himself, during the whole course of his active life, fought bourgeois philosophy and idealism in all their forms and manifestations. He also fought that crude, non-dialectic and mechanical materialism which is absolutely impotent and helpless in face of idealism. In the ’nineties, Lenin fought professorial objectivism, as represented by Struve, the subjectivism of the Populist,[[#endnotes.xhtml_en34|[34]]] and neo-Kantism, as advocated by the revisionists headed by Bernstein in Germany and by Struve in Russia (neo-Kantism today is the official philosophy of the German Social- Democrats, or social-fascists). In the beginning of this century Lenin fought the idealist philosophy of Mach and Avenarius and their followers, who in Russia were headed by A. Bogdanov. The philosophical views of Bogdanov were at one time fairly popular in our Party (just as were the views of E. Dühring among the German Social-Democrats in the ’seventies) and it became urgently necessary to fight them.

Lenin persistently fought the philosophy of Bogdanov and from 1906 to 1908 he subjected Bogdanov’s idealism and eclecticism to merciless criticism. In his letters to Bogdanov (unfortunately they were not published at the time and have not been found since, and so they have remained unstudied) and in his book ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism'', which appeared in 1909, Lenin explains and criticises the essence of Bogdanov’s philosophy. In 1914 Lenin wrote:

<blockquote>The sum total of the literary activities of A. Bogdanov may be reduced to an attempt to inoculate the mind of the proletariat with camouflaged idealistic conceptions of the bourgeois philosophers.... For many years A. Bogdanov has been an opponent of the philosophy of Marxism and a supporter of bourgeois idealistic views hostile to the materialism of Marx and Engels.
</blockquote>
Lenin attached great importance to philosophic questions and carefully studied the literature on philosophy, and on a number of occasions he subjected the reactionary views of the bourgeois philosophers and their various henchmen to devastating criticism.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en35|[35]]]

During the whole course of his active life Lenin studied materialist dialectics, applied it, fought for it and explained the necessity of studying and applying this theoretical weapon of Marxism. See, for example, his pamphlet “Once More on the Trade Unions,” “The Present Situation and the Errors of Comrades Trotsky and Bukharin,” which appeared in 1921, and his article “The Importance of Militant Materialism,” dated March 12, 1922.

In the years 1913 to 1916 Lenin collected material apparently with the intention of writing a special work on materialist dialectics. Preoccupation with more urgent matters and the approach of the revolution prevented him from writing this book, but the material he collected is very rich and voluminous. Extracts and notes have been preserved in philosophical notebooks that are of extreme theoretical value.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en36|[36]]]

Such, in general, was the fight that Lenin conducted on behalf of dialectic materialism.

Apart from the main enemy of dialectic materialism—its opponents at the present day are represented by the revisionist tendencies in philosophy, against which an irreconcilable war must be waged. Anti-Marxian and anti-Leninist tendencies are to be found in the mechanistic revision of Marxism (Comrade Bukharin, for example, has been guilty of mechanistic errors), which is the chief danger, and in Menshevist idealism (Comrade Deborin and his group).

The mechanistic outlook is hostile to dialectics; it repudiates it, considers it as scholastic, metaphysical, etc. The mechanists regard themselves as materialists; but, in fact, because of their inability to think dialectically, they are impotent in the face of idealism and are themselves forced to abandon the materialist position. As an example, one may cite the inability of the mechanists to deal with the question of quantity and quality. This is one of the questions on which the limitations and shortcomings and the metaphysical nature of the mechanistic philosophy are particularly revealed. We shall therefore dwell on this question in a little more detail.

According to the mechanist conception, the explanation of all phenomena must be sought in the mechanical motion of qualitatively identical and unchanging units (atoms, electrons). All qualitative differences between things are due to the difference in the composition of these units and to the difference in their simple mechanical motion (transplacement in space). Hence, quality does not exist in actual reality but depends entirely on our subjective perceptions. Objectively there exists only the mechanical motion of atoms and their quantitative relations. In the note he made during his study of natural science Engels referred to the tendency to reduce everything to mechanical motion and to regard that as the sole aim of science, and said that “It ignored the specific nature of other forms of motion.” While considering it erroneous to explain everything in mechanical motion alone, Engels nevertheless did not deny that mechanical motion is universal and is associated, in one way or another, with every phenomenon.

<blockquote>Every higher form of movement is always essentially associated with real mechanical (external or molecular) motion, just as higher forms of motion simultaneously cause other forms of motion: chemical reaction is impossible without changes in temperature and electricity; organic life is impossible without mechanical, molecular, chemical, thermal, electrical and other changes. But the presence of these supplementary forms does not in any given case exhaust the essential nature of the main form. Some day we shall undoubtedly “reduce” thought experimentally to molecular and chemical motion in the brain; but will this exhaust the essential nature of thinking?[[#endnotes.xhtml_en37|[37]]]
</blockquote>
Thus, Engels declares that although there can be no thought unaccompanied by mechanical and chemical processes within the brain, these alone do not explain the specific nature of thinking. Thinking must be regarded as a whole; its internal, subjective side must be considered together with all the qualities and conditions that determine and produce it, ''i.e.'', in its concrete reality, and not merely from the point of view of mechanical motion. This example clearly illustrates the attitude of dialectic materialism to every specific “quality,” particularly to so popular a phenomenon as our processes of thinking. It explains the difference between the conceptions of dialectic materialism and of mechanistic conceptions.

The materialist dialectician declares that mind cannot be separated from matter; our mind (“spirit”) is a property of specifically organised matter, ''viz''., the brain of man, who is a member of a specific historically developed society. This qualitatively specific phenomenon actually exists in objective reality. We ourselves are the best proof of this, for we are thinking beings, performing intellectual labour. We do actually think, it does not merely seem to us that we do. Even imagination is, in a manner of speaking, thought. The external world is reflected in the mind of man. Thought is not the object itself reflected in the mind; it is but the reflection of the object. The theory that the external world is “reflected” in the mind is fundamental to the theory of knowledge of dialectical materialism. The movement of atoms takes place both in a cobblestone and in a man’s head and both the cobblestone and the head reflect the action of the external world; but it is perfectly obvious that the movement and the reflection are qualitatively different in each case. In the next chapter we shall deal in greater detail with the question of our knowledge.

Mechanical materialism denies the reality of a specific quality of thinking; it regards it merely as mechanical motion of atoms (electrons) and considers matter and mind as being equal, identical. This materialism, which denies the reality of higher forms of motion and reduces everything to gross and simple mechanical motion, to transplacement, proves to be absolutely helpless before idealism. For idealism also asserts that thought and the objective world are identical.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en38|[38]]] Mechanical materialism, therefore, paves the way for idealism of the most subjective kind. It leads to the inevitable conclusion that the only reality is one’s own sensations, for however much theoretical thinking may be denied, this reality cannot be denied. Moreover, mechanical materialism cannot resist the idealistic belief in a creator, in some force external to the world, for the reason that mechanical materialism cannot explain what it is that sets in motion the gigantic mechanism that the world appears to him to be. The world machine of mechanical materialism requires some external impulse, the universal clock requires somebody to wind it up. There is no way out of this dilemma except to acknowledge the existence of God.

And so, true dialectics acknowledges the reality (actual existence) of qualities as specific forms, as the sum of the properties and peculiarities of things. Within the limits of a definite quality, quantitative changes may occur without affecting that quality, without changing it; but only within definite limits. When quantitative changes go beyond a definite limit they result in a leap and a change in quality; there occurs what Hegel termed the transformation of quantity into quality and which we meet with in the surrounding world of nature and society at every step. Within the limits of from 0° to 100° C. under ordinary terrestrial conditions (atmospheric pressure, etc.) water remains a liquid, preserves this quality. One hundred degrees is the boiling point; water becomes transformed from a liquid into a gas. Zero is freezing point, water becomes transformed into ice, ''i.e.'', into a solid. Thus arise new qualities, formerly non-existent.

With the appearance of a new quality, new quantitative relations come into effect, so that we may also speak of the transformation of quality into quantity. The high quality of class consciousness, discipline, organisation and firmness of principle of the Communist Party, which at first represented the numerically small, but actually most advanced section of the proletariat, subsequently resulted in the Bolshevik Party’s being able to assume the leadership of the movement of millions and to obtain a following of tens of millions. Thus, in the course of time, quality was transformed into quantity.

Another example, which strikingly illustrates the transformation of quantity into quality and the rise of new quantitative relations on the basis of the new quality, is the process that is now taking place in the Soviet Union of the mass transition of the middle individual peasant to collectivisation. A new social stratum is being created, new qualities are arising. The middle peasant was the ally of the Soviet state, but the collective farm peasant is now becoming the bulwark of the Soviet state. We would here mention the fact referred to by Comrade Stalin in one of his speeches, ''viz''., that the pooling of the farm implements of the individual peasants results in a far greater productivity of labour in the collective farms than the same quantity of implements and forces represent in the individual farms. Collectivisation creates a new quality of social relationships, expressing itself in an enhanced productivity of labour and in better results of labour, both qualitatively and quantitatively.

Examples of the transformation of quantity into quality, and ''vice versa'', may be cited without end. They demonstrate the correctness of dialectic materialism, which teaches that these two aspects of phenomena are closely associated, become transformed one into the other, but that both are real. The confusion of the mechanists arises from the fact that they deny the objective existence of qualities, that they regard quantitative factors as the only reality and do not see the peculiarities or, as it is scientifically called, the specific nature of phenomena. The inability to use the dialectic method also leads the mechanists to rely on the conclusions of a single science (mechanics) and to ignore the experience of the other sciences, with the result that they regard the conclusions of that science as the sole and ultimate truth.

As far back as 1908, Lenin advanced important and fundamental arguments against mechanical materialism. “The recognition of unchanging elements, of the unchanging essence of things is not materialism, but metaphysics, ''i.e.'', anti-dialectic materialism,” he declares in ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism'', and goes on to state that dialectic materialism insists on the approximate and relative character of all scientific theories regarding the structure of matter and its properties, on the absence of absolute boundaries in nature, on the transformation of moving matter from one state into another, seemingly incompatible state, and so forth. In conclusion, Lenin declares himself to be in complete agreement with Engels’ statement to the effect that from the point of view of dialectic materialism, only one thing is immutable, ''viz''., the recognition of a world existing outside of us and reflected in our minds.

<blockquote>From the point of view of Engels, only one thing is immutable, ''viz''., the reflection in the human mind (when there is a human mind) of the external world that exists and develops independently of that mind. For Marx and Engels there is no “immutability,” no other “essence,” no other “absolute substance” in the sense that this concept has been depicted by futile professorial philosophy. The “essence” of things or “substance” are also relative: they represent only the deepening of the human knowledge of objects. Yesterday the deepening of human knowledge took in the atom, today electrons and the ether, but dialectic materialism insists on the temporary, relative and approximate character of all knowledge of nature obtained by the advancing science of man. The electron is as ''inexhaustible'' as the atom, nature is infinite, but it infinitely ''exists''. And it is this single, categorical and only absolute recognition of the ''existence'' of nature outside of human consciousness and sensation that distinguishes dialectic materialism from relative agnosticism and idealism.
</blockquote>
In addition to the recognition of this “relativity and approximateness” of the picture of the world created on the basis of our knowledge, which becomes ever deeper, but which is never completed and never exhausts the multiform content of the objective world, dialectic materialism differs from metaphysical, mechanical materialism in its ability to handle flexible concepts and to rest content with results achieved.

It should here be pointed out that mechanistic materialism is essentially the methodology of the Right deviationists. Theoretically, it expresses and justifies the class interests of the last of the capitalist classes remaining in the Soviet Union and therefore represents the chief danger on the theoretical front.

Such anti-dialectical, counter-revolutionary theories, as, for instance, the conception of opposites as being only an external, and not internal, property of phenomena, are, in the conditions prevailing in the Soviet Union, theoretical expressions of the interests of the bourgeoisie. They provide a theoretical justification for the denial of class contradictions and the class war (of the proletariat) and support the advocacy of class peace (between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat). One such theory is the mechanistic theory of equilibrium, of the correlation between a system and its environment. This provides a theoretical basis for the theory that the kulak enterprises will grow into socialism through the medium of the cooperative societies. According to the arguments of the Right theoreticians, the “kulak system” should merge with the socialist “environment” and they claim that there are “scientific” grounds for this. Obviously this is a very useful theory for a class that is being completely liquidated. It justifies and corroborates the policy of the Rights, who consider that the kulak should not be disturbed.

Hence, the mechanistic philosophy is essentially bourgeois and anti-proletarian. Its general traits are that it underestimates the value of theory, it fails to understand dialectics and is hostile to it. This theoretical nihilism and failure to understand the necessity for the study of dialectic materialism in practice lead to the surrender of the materialist position to idealism and to a general submission to the ideology of the bourgeoisie. Mechanistic materialism is impotent in the face of idealism; it connives at and assists idealism.

There is yet another danger, namely, of falling, in company with the idealists (Hegel), under the influence of abstractions, of losing contact with concrete reality, of confining oneself to dialectic conceptions without connecting those conceptions with the development of the objective world, of not distinguishing categories from the material relationships of the objective world—in a word, the danger of straying onto the path of idealism and of forgetting the requirements of materialism. This danger is threatened by the Menshevistic idealism of the Deborin group, who conceal idealistic and anti-Marxian views under the guise of Marxian phraseology and the pretence of fighting for dialectic materialism.

While the mechanist theory has no profound social roots in our midst, Menshevistic idealism is nevertheless a real and serious danger. Clothed in the garb of orthodox Marxism, it acts as a channel of bourgeois influences to the proletariat.

Some of the distinguishing features characteristic of certain representatives of this tendency, and which in fact are common to the whole school of Menshevistic idealism are: the severance of theory from practice; the denial of the party nature of philosophy; professorial, contemplative “objectivism”; failure to appreciate Lenin as a materialist and dialectician; failure to appreciate Lenin’s contribution to the development of dialectic materialism; the disguise of non-Marxian and idealistic views by Marxian phraseology; priggish “scholarliness” which is totally unjustified because this ostensible “scholarliness” is not backed by any practical work or by a positive study of the subject.

The idealistic revision of Marxism effected by the Menshevistic idealists is clearly illustrated by the fact that this tendency makes the materialist dialectics of Marx identical with the dialectics of Hegel. Hence, their revisionism is essentially of a Hegelian character.

The founders of scientific socialism always emphasised the importance of studying the method of dialectic materialism. They even pointed out how this should be done, namely, by studying the history of philosophy, and in particular, Hegel. In one of his Forewords to ''Anti-Dühring'' (1878) Engels wrote:

<blockquote>Theoretical thinking is an inborn property only in the form of capability. It must be developed and perfected, and for this no other method has so far been found except the study of the history of philosophy.
</blockquote>
By studying the history of philosophy we learn the experience of scientific thinking accumulated over a period of more than two thousand years. In his letters to Conrad Schmidt, Engels recommended that in studying the history of philosophy, particular attention should be paid to Hegel. Hegel is extremely difficult to study. Those who undertake to study him require assistance and this assistance is given by Marx, Engels and Lenin (particularly valuable are the latter’s philosophical notebooks to which we referred above).

Menshevistic idealism distorts the views of Marx, Engels and Lenin and regards the logic of Hegel as identical with the logic of Marx. As we have seen, Hegel and Marx approach the question of the relation of mind to existence from fundamentally different points of view.

In his article, “Hegel and Dialectical Materialism,” Deborin declares that:

<blockquote>Hegelian logic should serve as the starting point for the development or structure of materialist dialectics.
</blockquote>
And he concludes by saying:

<blockquote>At any rate, the need for a theory of materialist dialectics has long been felt. Hegelian logic cannot fully satisfy this need, but it should serve as the starting point for materialist dialectics.
</blockquote>
This school not only regards Hegel’s logic as the starting point, but also considers that its structure requires no radical alteration. Marx put Hegel’s logic “right side up,” ''i.e.'', he reconstructed it and endowed it with new principles. Deborin, on the contrary, asserts that “in general, the Hegelian structure must be considered as correct even from the materialist point of view.”

The idealist view of dialectics is further revealed in the conception and application of the laws of dialectics. Take for instance the fundamental law of the unity of opposites. Engels and Lenin consider that this law expresses the very essence, the “kernel” of dialectics. Lenin says:

<blockquote>Unity (coincidence, identity, interaction) of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory and relative. The conflict of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en39|[39]]]
</blockquote>
And according to Lenin this dialectical law signifies:

<blockquote>The recognition (discovery) of contradictory, ''mutually'' exclusive and opposite tendencies in ''all'' manifestations and processes of nature (''including'' spirit and society).[[#endnotes.xhtml_en40|[40]]]
</blockquote>
Thus, according to Lenin (and Lenin expresses the point of view of dialectic materialism), the conflict of opposites is absolute and inherent in all phenomena of the external world.

Deborin treats the question entirely differently. In his article, “Marx and Engels” (which, by the way, is thoroughly idealist), he completely adopts the Hegelian idealist scheme: he asserts that at first there are ''only'' differences, which then pass into contradictions, and the latter pass into opposites. Hence, Deborin admits the possibility of opposites and the conflict of opposites not existing at certain stages. For him, accordingly, contradiction is not the starting point. He thus falls a victim to the very mechanists, against whom he has written so much, who also repudiate the existence of opposites that are inherent in absolutely every form of motion of matter.

As we have repeatedly pointed out, one of the fundamental and distinguishing features of the dialectic materialism of Marx is the prominence it gives to the necessity for practical revolutionary activity. Marx criticised the contemplative character of the materialists that preceded him. Deborin, on the other hand, in his Foreword to the ''Works of Hegel'', does not say a word about this feature of dialectic materialism, but, on the contrary, emphasises its passive and contemplative character.

<blockquote>The task of the dialectic... method is not to introduce anything of its own into an object, but to observe the process of its development. In this sense the dialectic method is indeed the only real scientific and objective method. The dialectic method merely reproduces the process of development of an object.
</blockquote>
During the whole course of this long article the author says not a single word about the most important component part of materialist dialectics, ''viz''., practical revolutionary work. That is not a mere accident.

One of the most obvious features of Menshevik idealism, which reveals its anti-proletarian character, is the severance of theory from practice. In a speech delivered in 1920 to the Third All-Russian Congress of the Russian Young Communist League, Lenin declared:

<blockquote>Without work and without struggle, book knowledge of Communism derived from communist pamphlets and books is worth exactly nothing at all, since it but perpetuates the old severance of theory from practice, which was the most objectionable feature of the old bourgeois society.
</blockquote>
The separation of theory from practice is characteristic of Menshevik idealism. The representatives of this school occupied themselves with philosophy completely isolated from the tasks of socialist construction in the U.S.S.R. and from the international working class movement. They separated philosophy from politics, instead of placing it at the service of the proletarian party. It is no mere accident that practically all the writers of this school were unwilling to participate in the fight against Trotskyism and to expose the methodological errors of the factionalists who were opposing the general line of the Party. By divorcing philosophy from proletarian Marxism and Leninist politics, Menshevistic idealism in practice places its service at the disposal of bourgeois politics.

The whole standpoint of Menshevistic idealism was bound to lead to the separation of theory from practice. This was clearly revealed in all the activities of the representatives of this school. The bulk of their literature consists of “writing about other people’s writing.”[[#footnotes.xhtml_ch4_fn2|*]]

Not a single problem of historical materialism is treated by the Menshevistic idealists from the standpoint of the new experiences of the revolutionary period. They have ignored Lenin’s instructions as to how dialectics should be studied. In his article, “The Significance of Militant Materialism,” Lenin states that dialectics must be studied from the materialist point of view, ''i.e.'', one must study the dialectics that “Marx applied practically in his ''Capital''” and in his historical and political works, and, also, that dialectics must be studied on the basis of the examples of dialectics “in the sphere of economic and political relations which modern history, particularly the present imperialist war and the revolution, provide in great abundance.” The representatives of Menshevik idealism were incapable of making such a study. The whole line they adopted prevented them from doing so; prevented them from understanding Lenin as a philosopher and from appreciating and fulfilling his instructions. They were hampered by their idealistic, abstract and formal point of view and their class position as petty-bourgeois radicals.

In a number of writings, notes and utterances, Lenin declared that abstractness, the severance of theory from reality, the use of schemes and formalism, were contrary to materialist dialectics. For instance in the notes he wrote on the margins of his copy of Bukharin’s ''Economics of the Transition Period'', opposite the passage in which Bukharin says that in the pre-war period “the so-called ‘national state’ was already a ''pure'' (Lenin’s italics) fiction,” Lenin wrote:

<blockquote>Not a ''pure fiction'', but an impure form. The violation of “dialectical materialism” consists in the logical (not material) ''leap'' over ''several'' concrete stages.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en41|[41]]]
</blockquote>
Opposite the passage in which Bukharin speaks of “dialectic negation,” but fails to give a concrete explanation of the nature of negation and to support the formula by facts, Lenin makes the note:

<blockquote>the author abuses ''the phrase'' “dialectic negation”: it must not be used without ''first'' demonstrating it by facts, it must be used ''cautiously''.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en42|[42]]]
</blockquote>
In his notebook of excerpts, ''Marxism on the State'', Lenin copied out the following critical remark directed by Engels against the opportunists. Engels stated that the opportunists

<blockquote>give prominence to generalised and abstract political questions, thereby concealing the immediate concrete problems, which automatically arise at the first outbreak of events, and at the first political crisis. The only thing that can result from this is that at the critical moment the Party will suddenly find itself impotent and that uncertainty and lack of unity will reign within the Party on important questions, owing to the fact that these questions ''were never discussed''.
</blockquote>
Against this passage Lenin makes the marginal note:

<blockquote>Prominence to the abstract, the concrete obscured!! Excellent! That is the main point![[#endnotes.xhtml_en43|[43]]]
</blockquote>
Many similar notes could be cited.

Lenin, therefore, condemns the application of ready-made schemes, the inability, or lack of desire, to formulate theoretically the actual situation, with all its contradictions and complexity, and the inability to think concretely. Lenin untiringly exposed and condemned every departure from this fundamental demand of dialectic materialism.

It is not possible here to give a complete analysis of the whole system of false views and misguided utterances of the Menshevistic idealists. Much space would be required for a historical, not dogmatic, approach to the study of the theory of knowledge. In studying the problems of knowledge, the whole of human experience must be taken into account; it must be made sure that the theory of knowledge shall be a really materialistic one; that there shall be no rupture with the cognised object and finally, that the materialist path shall be selected, ''viz''., from things to concepts, and not from concepts to things. The fact that dialectics is made identical with the theory of knowledge is a guarantee against the creation of some special sphere isolated from concrete reality, a system of abstractions and eternal categories ''a la'' Hegel.

As an instance of the erroneousness of such methods, Marx, in a letter to Annenkov, cites the doctrinaires, who on the eve of the Great French Revolution endeavoured to preserve the throne, the Chamber of Deputies and the Upper Chamber as essential components of social life and as eternal categories. Marx says:

<blockquote>...In the eighteenth century, a number of mediocre minds were busy finding the true formula which would bring the social order, king, nobility, parliament, etc., into equilibrium, and they woke up one morning to find that there was in fact no longer any king, nobility or parliament. The true equilibrium in this antagonism was the overthrow of all the social conditions which served as a basis for these feudal existences and their antagonisms.
</blockquote>
“Mediocre minds” do not link up their knowledge with constantly changing material and objective reality, or do so only in words.

The fact that dialectics, which demands concrete thinking and a grasp of objective reality as one whole, is the theory of knowledge, serves as a guarantee that those who are guided by dialectics will not find themselves in the unpleasant and ludicrous position in which the doctrinaires found themselves.

Revolutionary Marxism, ''i.e.'', dialectic materialism, teaches us to approach questions of knowledge dialectically, to study the transition from not knowing to knowing. Dialectics is a property of human knowledge, since our knowledge reflects the dialectic motion of the objective world (nature and society). Dialectic materialism does not regard the results of knowledge as final; at the same time, however, it does not doubt the vitality, fertility, integrity and objectivity of human knowledge, and of its ability to overcome all obstacles in the process of social development.

The development of human thought is based on the development of social productive labour. Lenin declared that “the continuation of the work of Hegel and Marx must consist in the ''dialectic'' study of the history of human thought, science, and technology.”[[#endnotes.xhtml_en44|[44]]]

It is on this basis that we must study the unity of opposites, ''viz''., the theory and practice of the actual relations existing in the surrounding world and of the abstract conceptions that arise in the human brain as a reflection of these actual relations.

We must be guided by Leninism in the study of materialist dialectics and combat the mechanistic repudiation of dialectics and its mutilation at the hands of the idealistic and Menshevistic idealists. We must expose the errors of both these schools and correct them. Theory must be placed at the service of the proletarian revolution and adapted to the practical class struggle. Philosophy must be completely party philosophy.

In class society, and as long as classes exist, Marxism and Leninism can exist and develop only by combating all bourgeois and petty-bourgeois tendencies, influences and ideas.



V


== THE DIALECTICS OF NATURE AND HUMAN KNOWLEDGE ==

As we have said, materialist dialectics is an invaluable instrument for the study of the surrounding world, nature and human society. Marx and Engels were keenly interested in every sphere of natural science. Engels did a great deal in this sphere. He set forth the conclusions drawn from his studies in Part I of ''Anti-Dühring''. In addition, he wrote a large work on ''The Dialectics of Nature'', which unfortunately he never succeeded in publishing (the manuscript however was preserved and has been published by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute). The conclusion Engels arrived at, ''viz.'', that development in nature takes place in accordance with dialectical, and not metaphysical laws, is strikingly borne out by modern science. This has been pointed out by Lenin, who, after Engels, was the first of the Marxian theoreticians to study one of the most important branches of modern science, namely, physics.

Science has made considerable strides since Engels pursued his studies in the ’seventies. Lenin examined the new material from the standpoint of a materialist dialectician. He explained the crisis in modern physics from the Marxian standpoint and indicated the path that must be pursued by scientific research.

In his criticism of modern theory he attacks the clericalism (idealism) that refuses to seek a scientific explanation of phenomena and which evades recognition of what is actually proceeding in nature, thus leading to stagnation of thought and intellectual reaction.

As we have stated, in connection with the disputes that arose among Marxian writers after the 1905 Revolution, Lenin carefully worked out the dialectic materialist theory of knowledge. He showed that there were two lines of philosophy—idealism and materialism—on every one of the questions in dispute: matter and experience, sensation and knowledge, space and time, cause and effect, absolute and relative truth, etc. Idealism considers that a spiritual principle (''i.e.'', God) lies at the basis of everything and is identical, or akin to our mind (which latter the idealists sever from its actual contact with matter). Lenin analyses the philosophy of the Englishman, Bishop Berkeley, as typical of the idealist philosophy.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en45|[45]]] Materialism considers it wrong to place spirit at the base of all phenomena. It regards matter as the basis of everything and asserts that matter exists independently, and outside of our mind. The external material world reacts on our mind, is reflected in it and determines it. Matter is the primary, the fundamental; mind is secondary and derivative. Mind is inseparably associated with matter; it is a property of matter organised in a special way, ''viz.'', our brain, and is a product of the latter’s activity. Mind reflects the external world. There can be no mind or thought without brain. The idealists, on the other hand, sever thought from the brain and consider that spirit is the beginning of all things. The idealists turn the whole course of things upside down. In their opinion matter is derived from spirit. Materialism declares that there is no “spirit world,” there is no “transcendental” world; the world is unitary, and its unity lies, as Engels says, in its materialness.

Through our sense organs we receive impressions of the material world existing outside of us (human society and nature). These sense perceptions provide the material for our knowledge. The world is reflected in our mind because we ourselves are part of that world. Such is the conception of knowledge proclaimed by dialectic materialism. A material object and our minds comprise the unity of opposites, with which we are familiar. We must not, as idealists like Berkeley do, confuse the external world with our consciousness of the external world and make them identical. External objects and our consciousness of them are opposites, not identical things. But the opposite is not absolute: the external world and our consciousness are not isolated from each other. The unity we have here is unity in the sense that without a material world and without the brain of man, consciousness of the world cannot exist. It is unity also in the sense that our consciousness, in general, faithfully reflects the objective world. This is very well explained by Lenin in the sections on “Absolute and Relative Truth” and “The Criterion of Practice in the Theory of Knowledge” in Chap. II of his philosophical work ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism''.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en46|[46]]]

The essence of the explanation given by Engels and Lenin is that, while we must realise that at any given stage of its development our knowledge is relative, conditional and approximate, nevertheless, in every scientific theory, in spite of its shortcomings, we must discern the grain of objective truth, the fragment that correctly reflects the surrounding world. We must learn how to assimilate and develop this truth, although our knowledge is historical and transitory. In the works of Hegel there is much that is mystical, idealistic and clericalist, but they contain the fundamentals of the dialectical method. We must be able to select that which is true and the product of a brilliant mind from that which is untrue, fantastic and antiquated. That is what the great masters of materialist dialectics, Marx, Engels and Lenin, did.

Our knowledge contains an absolute (unconditional and unquestionable) truth, ''viz.'', that it reflects the external world. The truth of our knowledge is tested and confirmed by practice.

Neither the old metaphysical materialists nor Hegel were able properly to apply the dialectical method to the process of development of our knowledge. This was done by Marx and Engels, and subsequently by Lenin. In one of his philosophic notebooks Lenin wrote:

<blockquote>The approach of the mind (of man) to a particular thing, the taking of a cast of it (in other words, an impression) is not a simple, direct act; a lifeless mirror reflection, but a complex, twofold and zig-zag act, which harbours the possibility that the phantasy may entirely fly away from reality; what is more, it harbours the possibility that the abstract conception, the idea, may be transformed (imperceptibly and unwittingly on the part of man) into phantasy (and in the long run, into God). For even the simplest generalisation and the most elementary general idea is a fragment of phantasy.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en47|[47]]]
</blockquote>
The creation of phantasies (''e.g.'', regarding the power of the dead, demons, god, disincarnate powers, etc.) is due to various complex causes, chief of which is the dependence of man on circumstances which enslave him, such as natural and social forces, and which appear to him to be external and alien. This also explains the various religions and faiths.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en48|[48]]]

Properly applied to our knowledge, ''i.e.'', if it is realised that the mind of man is determined by the development of the material world which proceeds independently of the mind, and of which thinking man is himself a part, materialist dialectics is the best weapon against clericalism, against stultification of thought and against the substitution of the living work of the mind by lifeless abstractions that end in intellectual stagnation.

The old theory of matter was that it consisted of indivisible and simple particles—atoms. Recent discoveries have shown that the atoms are not simple, but extremely complex. Atoms have been divided into still more minute particles, electrons.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en49|[49]]] Science has revealed that the laws of motion of these particles differ from the laws governing the incomparably slower motion of large masses of matter. Not being acquainted with dialectic materialism, scientists began to draw the conclusion that with the disappearance of the atom, matter also disappears, that our knowledge is impotent and that we are not destined to know the real world; in other words, they began to adopt the standpoint of idealism and agnosticism. (“We are not fated to know!”)[[#endnotes.xhtml_en50|[50]]]

Lenin, however, showed that the new discoveries, while compelling us to reject the old theories of science, deepen our knowledge of matter and confirm the correctness of dialectic materialism, which teaches us to regard scientific truths not as unshakable dogmas, but as approximately true reflections of objective processes; reflections that are bound to be corrected and perfected by every new development of science. The new discoveries do not shake the basic standpoint, ''viz.'', that which we know as matter.

Chapter Five of Lenin’s ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism'', entitled “The Latest Revolution in Natural Science and Philosophic Idealism,” shows that the recent discoveries of physics serve as striking corroborations of dialectic materialism.

Thanks to his genius for mastering materialist dialectics, Lenin was able to contribute something also to the study of natural phenomena. He gave precise indications of the nature of the errors of the natural scientists—who are materialists rather by instinct—and showed wherein they deviated from materialism because of their lack of knowledge of dialectics.

Lenin criticised their theory dialectically, separating that which was true and correcting that which was untrue, and showed how research should be conducted. As an example we cite his analysis of the address of the English physicist, A. W. Rücker,[[#endnotes.xhtml_en51|[51]]] who represented “the instinctive materialist point of view” and whose errors were due to his ignorance of dialectic materialism. Or take his criticism of the works of Duhem and Stallo[[#endnotes.xhtml_en52|[52]]] in which, for instance, he points out where Duhem comes close to dialectic materialism and wherein lies his weakness, and also shows how he descends to a reactionary philosophy because of his inability to raise himself from metaphysical materialism to dialectic materialism.

On the subject of the dialectics of nature, Engels in 1885 wrote in his Foreword to the second edition of ''Anti-Dühring'', as follows:

<blockquote>It is possible to reach this standpoint because the accumulating facts of natural science compel us to do so.... Natural science has now advanced so far that it can no longer escape the dialectical synthesis. But it will make this process easier for itself if it does not lose sight of the fact that the results in which its experiences are summarised are ideas; but that the art of working with ideas is not inborn and also is not given with ordinary everyday consciousness, but requires real thought, and that this thought similarly has a long empirical history, not more and not less than empirical natural science. Only by learning to assimilate results of the development of philosophy during the past two and a half thousand years will it be able to rid itself on the one hand, of any isolated natural philosophy standing apart from it, outside it and above it and, on the other hand, also of its own limited method of thought, which was its inheritance from English empiricism.
</blockquote>
We conceive nature as the sum total of all bodies (from the stars to the atoms, electrons and the ether), which are in a constant state of interaction and motion, constantly changing their forms and qualities and passing from one into the other. It is impossible to understand their movement and the transformation of one form into another (''e.g.'', inorganic matter into organic matter) without using the dialectic method.

Moreover, it is necessary to grasp the difference between the philosophic and the physical conception of matter. It is absolutely correct to recognise the existence of matter and the objective world, independently and outside of our mind. The external world reacts on our senses and is reflected in our mind. The recognition of the objective reality of the external world is an absolute truth, confirmed every minute by fact and by practice. This is the foundation of the materialist philosophy. The material world is essentially cognisable, since the “cognising apparatus,” if we may so express ourselves, does not exist outside of the world, but is a part of the world. This “cognising apparatus,” ''i.e.'', thinking people and human society, is the fruit of a long development. The existence and development of humanity is the best proof of its strength and vitality, and also of the strength and vitality of the human mind.

Theories of physics, as well as other scientific theories, are but relative truths. They are ever approaching closer to an understanding of the objective world, for instance, of the physical structure of matter; their knowledge becomes progressively deeper; but they can never result in final and exhaustive knowledge, in ultimate truth. In his ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism'' (p. 152) Lenin says:

<blockquote>The scientific doctrine of the structure of substance, the chemical composition of food, and the electron may become antiquated with time; but the truth that man is unable to subsist on thoughts and beget children by platonic love alone can never become antiquated!
</blockquote>


VI


== THE DIALECTICS OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT ==

The development of society also proceeds by contradiction. Here, too, materialist dialectics is essential not only for the study of social phenomena, but also in order to lead the struggle of the proletariat and to guide historical activity. History is made by men. But hitherto there could be no conscious guidance of the development of history. Mankind can become the master of its development only after the complete triumph of communism. Engels in ''Anti-Dühring'' says:

<blockquote>The seizure of the means of production by society puts an end to commodity production, and therewith to the domination of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by conscious organisation on a planned basis. The struggle for individual existence comes to an end. And at this point, in a certain sense, man finally cuts himself off from the animal world, leaves the conditions of animal existence behind him and enters conditions which are really human. The conditions of existence forming man’s environment, which up to now have dominated man, at this point pass under the dominion and control of man, who now for the first time becomes the real conscious master of nature, because and in so far as he has become master of his own social organisation. The laws of his own social activity, which have hitherto confronted him as external, dominating laws of nature, will then be consciously applied by man with complete understanding, and hence will be dominated by man.... It is only from this point that men, with full consciousness, will fashion their own history; it is only from this point that the social causes set in motion by men will have, predominantly, and in constantly increasing measure, the effects willed by men. It is humanity’s leap from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom.
</blockquote>
Of course, it must not be thought that this “leap” will take place in a single instant; for it represents a “change which marks a turning point in world history,” a transition to a new type of society. Such leaps, as Marx, Engels and Lenin pointed out, may extend over ten or more years.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en53|[53]]] In the Soviet Union the “leap from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom” is being accomplished by the dictatorship of the proletariat led by the Party of Lenin and armed with revolutionary theory. The advantages of planning in economic life and the rapidity of development of socialist economy are already apparent.

In the sphere of social development, the law of the unity of opposites and of motion by contradiction manifests itself in the productive activities of society and in the class struggle. In modern society, large-scale production predominates and the fundamental contradiction is between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. As has been stated, Marx, Engels and Lenin attached the greatest significance to the struggle of the proletariat. They considered it their prime duty to lead the class struggle of the proletariat, and to subordinate everything to its interests.

Applying dialectic materialism to the study of society, Marx discovered that the basis of social development is the development of production. Material production is the foundation of social life because on it depends man’s very existence. In order to exist men must eat, drink, clothe themselves, and provide themselves with dwellings; only then can they occupy themselves with politics, science, art and so forth (Engels). Labour is required to create the material things necessary for men’s existence. The productive activities of human society consist in extracting things from nature, in working them up and in adapting them to the needs of man. Human labour, which is essential to man’s existence, exercises decisive influence on the whole structure of human society.

The application of dialectic materialism to the history of human society is very clearly illustrated in Marx’s theory of the class struggle. Marx showed that development in class society arises out of the class struggle, which attains maximum intensity during the period of revolution. Revolution is the result of the contradictions created between the productive forces of human society and the productive relations within which they operate and develop.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en54|[54]]] Under capitalism the contradiction between the old productive relations and the productive forces that have outgrown and can no longer develop freely within these relations, manifests itself in the struggle of the revolutionary class, the proletariat, against the exploiting class, the bourgeoisie. Thus, the struggles of the revolutionary class advance the development of society. Marx called the class struggle “the battles of developing production.” (Letter to Weydemeyer, March 5, 1852.)

Marx was not the first to discover the existence of classes and the class war, as he himself states in the letter to his friend Weydemeyer. But Marx was the first to give an exhaustive explanation of the basis of class divisions (namely, a definite stage of development of production). He was the first to give a complete explanation of the meaning and significance of the struggle of the modern proletariat and the part it plays. He pointed out how and under what conditions the abolition of classes and the transition to a classless society would be accomplished with the help of a proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Marx was the first to discover the general law of social development and thereby transformed socialism from utopian to scientific.

In an article written in 1899 Lenin stated that Marx’s theory

<blockquote>transformed socialism from utopian to scientific; it laid firm foundations for the science and indicated the path of its further development and the elaboration of its parts. It has exposed the essential nature of modern capitalist economy by explaining how the hiring of workers and the purchase of labour power conceals the enslavement of millions of propertyless people by a handful of capitalists and owners of land, factories, mines, etc. It has shown how the whole development of modern capitalism tends to the squeezing out of small-scale production by large-scale production and creates conditions that render a socialist order of society both possible and essential. Beneath the layer of ingrained customs, political intrigues, astute laws and subtle doctrines it has taught us to discern the class war, the struggle between the various propertied classes and the propertyless masses and the proletariat that leads them. It has revealed the real task of a revolutionary socialist party, namely, not to invent plans for the reconstruction of society, not to plead with the capitalists and their hangers-on to improve the condition of the workers, not to plot conspiracies, but to organise the class struggle of the proletariat and to lead that struggle, the ultimate aim of which is to win political power for the proletariat and to organise socialist society.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en55|[55]]]
</blockquote>
It would be a serious error to imagine that social production and social development takes place, like natural phenomena (change of seasons, the breaking of the ice on the river, eclipse of the sun, etc.) independently of the conscious efforts of men. History is made of men, by their productive activities, by their mass actions and by their class struggles. Men themselves build up their material and spiritual culture, using the foundations inherited from preceding generations. Historical development pursues an extremely complex path. Conflict arises between the productive forces of men and productive relations that no longer correspond to these productive forces. Once society has broken up into classes, development proceeds by the conflicts of those classes expressed in various forms: ideologically (in the sphere of philosophy), scientifically, politically, etc., as well as in purely physical forms—wars between classes and between nations. The inherent contradictions of social development are solved “by the practical and violent action of the masses.”[[#endnotes.xhtml_en56|[56]]]

“Order” and oppression in class society are maintained by violence, by the organised state power of the exploiters. This “order” can be destroyed and replaced by a new kind of order only with the aid of the organised violence of the revolutionary class. In our times this must take the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, established by revolution with the aim of creating a classless communist society.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en57|[57]]]

According to Marx and Lenin, revolutions are the most vital and decisive factors in the history of human society. “Revolutions are the locomotives of history,” Marx said. This aphorism was quoted by Lenin in his pamphlet, ''Two Tactics of the Social-Democrats in the Democratic Revolution'', in which he also referred to revolution as “the festival of the oppressed and exploited.” He wrote:

<blockquote>At no other time are the masses of the people in a position to come forward so actively as creators of a new social order as during the time of revolution.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en58|[58]]]
</blockquote>
In another article he writes:

<blockquote>Marxism differs from all other socialist theories by its admirable combination of sober scientific analysis of objective conditions and the objective process of evolution with the most emphatic recognition of the importance of the revolutionary energy, the revolutionary creative power and the revolutionary initiative of the masses, as well as, of course, of individuals, groups, organisations and parties that are able to establish contact with the masses.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en59|[59]]]
</blockquote>
This leads us to an extremely important phase of dialectic materialism, namely, its insistence on the importance of active revolutionary work. History is made by men. Historical science studies how this is done, what class forces participate in historical actions and how historical development is brought about. But mere study is not enough. We must not only study history, but make history; the “making” of history is much more important and much more interesting than studying it (although that, of course, is essential). Both Marx and Lenin considered that one of the defects of the old materialism was its inability “to understand the conditions and appreciate the significance of practical revolutionary activity,” without which materialism, in their opinion, was incomplete, one-sided and inanimate.

Revolutionary Marxism does not suffer from this defect. In all his activities Lenin (like Marx) was a prominent exponent of revolutionary materialist dialectics and a theoretician of the proletariat, who fully combined “sober, scientific analysis of the objective state of affairs” with “revolutionary initiative and energy.” He was a leader of the proletarian revolution, a strategist and tactician of the class struggle of the proletariat.

The reader will find a brilliant appreciation and description of the works of Marx and Engels and their activities from this point of view in the Preface to the Russian translation of Marx’s ''Letters to Kugelmann'', and in the Introduction to the Russian translation of ''The Letters of J. P. Becker, J. Dietzgen, F. Engels, K. Marx and Others to F. A. Sorge and Others''. This side of Lenin’s activities should be carefully studied. It is precisely this factor that makes Marxism a real revolutionary theory, for, as Lenin frequently emphasised, unless revolutionary theory is combined with revolutionary practice it is not Marxism, but opportunism.

The works of Lenin were inspired by revolutionary policy and were closely associated with the class struggle of the proletariat. The most complete summary of the basic principles of the strategy and tactics of Leninism will be found in the pamphlet, ''“Left-Wing” Communism, an Infantile Disorder'', while valuable indications will be found in ''What Is To Be Done?'', ''Two Tactics'', ''State and Revolution'', and ''The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky''.

To give a complete description of the great and complex work Lenin performed in leading the class struggle of the proletariat is a tremendous task that still remains to be done. Many phases of Lenin’s work as a leader and theoretician of the proletariat have still been barely studied (''e.g.'', his part in the leadership of the Civil War and his work in organising and directing the dictatorship of the proletariat; even his significance as the leader and theoretician of the Party has not yet been fully brought out and properly appreciated). This cannot be done in a single article, it would require a whole volume, or several volumes. In this article we can only deal with some of the most important postulates of the revolutionary tactics of Leninism and show how tremendously important the consistent and firm Leninist Party leadership, based upon a strictly scientific analysis of objective conditions, was for the success of the revolution.

It should first be noted that Leninism, while faithfully following the Marxian conception of the Party and of its role as the ''vanguard of the working class'', developed this conception still further on the basis of the new experience gained in the revolutionary struggle.

In order to lead the class struggle of the proletariat, an organisation of its vanguard is necessary in the shape of a Communist Party, which “acts as a driving force,” which “comprehends the conditions, course and general results of the working-class movement,” which can champion those general interests of the movement as a whole at every stage of the struggle and which can estimate the movement “not only from the point of view of the past, but also from the point of view of the future.”[[#endnotes.xhtml_en60|[60]]]

The Party must be trained and steeled in consistency of principles by prolonged participation in the struggle.

<blockquote>Apparently—Engels wrote to Bernstein in 1882—a workers’ party in any large country can develop only by internal conflict, which indeed is, in general, consistent with the dialectic laws of development. The German party became what it is in the struggle of the Eisenachers against the Lassalians, a struggle in which the fight itself was the most important factor. Infantile disorders cannot be cured by moral precepts; under present conditions these disorders have to be gone through once.
</blockquote>
This, of course, does not mean that various shades of opinion are always to be permitted in the Party. The strength of the Party lies in its unity, a unity based upon consistency of programme and tactics. This unity is achieved by fighting every deviation from revolutionary Marxism: Right opportunism, which minimises the significance of the class struggle and strives to bring the proletariat under bourgeois influence and leadership (as instanced by Menshevism), and the virtual rejection of the class struggle which masquerades under Leftist slogans and phrases (instances of which were the “Left” Liquidators, the Otzovists, the Ultimatumists and the ''Vperyod-ists'' during the years of reaction 1908-10 and Trotskyism during the years 1924-26). Extremely important also is the fight against the conciliators, who act as a shield for opportunism: while verbally recognising the correctness of revolutionary Marxism, in practice the conciliators make no attempt to combat distortions of revolutionary Marxism. Conciliationism is therefore an extremely dangerous form of opportunism. Under present conditions the chief danger is Right opportunism.

Lenin always insisted on the necessity of waging a consistent and merciless fight against all forms of opportunism and he himself showed us how this fight should be conducted. He persistently fought against Right opportunism.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en61|[61]]] Yet at the same time he conducted war on the “Left” doctrinarism, which is particularly important for the purpose of winning the masses; for the masses are inexperienced, unorganised, have not yet sufficiently abandoned petty-bourgeois prejudices, and when driven to desperation and rage by the hopelessness of their position are, as a rule, greatly influenced by anarchist phrases, and “Left” demagogy (which is the reverse side of Right opportunism, “a punishment for its sins,” as Lenin expressed it). A general review of the Party’s fight for Bolshevism on two fronts is given by Lenin in his pamphlet, ''“Left-Wing” Communism, an Infantile Disorder'', in which he writes:

<blockquote>While the first historical task (''viz.'', that of winning over the class conscious vanguard of the proletariat to the side of the Soviet power and the dictatorship of the working class) could not be accomplished without a complete ideological and political victory over opportunism and social-chauvinism, the second task, which now becomes the immediate task, and which is to lead the ''masses'' to the new position that will assure the victory of the vanguard in the revolution, this immediate task cannot be accomplished without the liquidation of Left doctrinarism, without completely overcoming and getting rid of its mistakes.
</blockquote>
What are the distinguishing features of the Marxist-Leninist tactics? As we have pointed out, Marxist-Leninist theory, policy and tactics are based on ''contact with the masses'', on the ability to guide the struggle of the masses toward communism, and to increase the conscious purpose and organisation of the masses. The Communist Party lends consciousness, organisation and invincibility to the mass movement. It draws its ideas from the experience of the revolutionary mass struggle in all countries.

Lenin said that the fundamental law of all great revolutions was the experience gained by the masses. He frequently referred to the great importance that Marx attached to “the historical initiative of the masses.” What Marx and Engels criticised most in English and American socialism was exactly this isolation from the working-class movement.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en62|[62]]] The victory of the revolution can be assured only if the initiative and energy of the masses is widely developed and if their instinctive struggle is given conscious leadership and organisation.

Success of revolutionary tactics can be assured if the profound sympathy of the masses is gained. This sympathy must be gained by prolonged and stubborn struggle, both before the proletariat gains power and after it has set up its dictatorship.

<blockquote>The proletarian revolution is impossible unless the vast majority of the toilers sympathise with and support their vanguard—the proletariat. This sympathy, however, is not given immediately and is not decided by vote, but must be ''won'' in the process of long, arduous and bitter class struggle. The class struggle of the proletariat to win the sympathy and support of the majority of the toilers does not end with the conquest of political power by the proletariat. The struggle ''continues'' after the conquest of power but in ''other forms''. In the Russian revolution circumstances proved to be exceptionally favourable for the proletariat (its struggle for dictatorship), for the proletarian revolution took place at a time when the whole people was armed and when the whole of the peasantry was anxious for the overthrow of the power of the landlords and was outraged by the “Kautskyian” policy of the social-traitors, the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries.

But even in Russia, where at the moment of the proletarian revolution circumstances proved to be exceptionally favourable, where remarkable unity between the whole proletariat, the whole army and the whole of the peasantry was immediately established, even in Russia the struggle of the proletariat for the sympathy and support of the majority of the toilers took months and years after it had set up its dictatorship.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en63|[63]]]
</blockquote>
The long and persistent fight for the sympathy of the masses must be carried on systematically. The sympathy of the masses must be won by the tactical methods and by the aims and purposes for which the Communist Party is striving.

In its tactical leadership of the revolutionary struggle the proletariat must be guided by two basic postulates. ''First'', Leninism does not prescribe any particular form of struggle to the proletarian movement, but strives to master all forms, for example: demonstrations, the parliamentary struggle, the revolutionary use of parliament when the situation dictates it, as well as higher forms of struggle, ''viz.'', armed insurrection, civil war and the dictatorship of the proletariat. ''Secondly'', Leninism adopts a historical approach to the question as to what particular form of struggle is to be selected at any moment, taking into account the concrete circumstance of the given situation. Maximum flexibility must be displayed in the selection of means.

In an article entitled “Guerilla Warfare,” written in September, 1906, Lenin wrote:

<blockquote>Marxism is distinguished from all primitive forms of socialism by the fact that it does not impose on the movement any one particular form of struggle. It admits the most varied forms of struggle. Moreover, it does not “invent” them, but only generalises, organises and lends conscious form to the methods of struggle practiced by the revolutionary classes and which arise spontaneously in the course of the movement itself. Uncompromisingly hostile to all abstract formulas and doctrinaire recipes, Marxism demands that the most careful attention be paid to the mass struggle of the moment, which, as the movement develops, as the consciousness of the masses grows and the economic and political crisis becomes increasingly acute, creates ever new and varied methods of defence and attack. Marxism, therefore, absolutely does not reject any form of struggle. Marxism cannot confine itself to the forms of struggle that are practiced and are possible at the given moment, but recognises the ''inevitable'' appearance of new forms of struggle, that are still unknown to those who are taking part in the struggle at the given period and which arrive with the change in circumstances. If one may so express it, Marxism learns from the practice of the masses and does not in the least claim to teach the masses the “systematic” forms of struggle, invented in the study.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en64|[64]]]
</blockquote>
In ''“Left-Wing” Communism'', also, Lenin pointed to the necessity of learning and mastering every form of struggle and of being able to apply every one of them with equal facility, so as to be prepared for the changes of circumstances that occur so rapidly and unexpectedly during a period of revolution.

<blockquote>History generally, and the history of revolutions in particular—writes Lenin—is always richer in content, more varied, more many-sided, more lively and “subtle” than some of the best parties and some of the most class conscious vanguards of the most advanced class imagine. This is understandable because the best vanguards express the class consciousness, the will, the passion, the phantasy of tens of thousands, while the revolution is made at the moment of its climax and the exertion of ''all'' human capabilities by the class consciousness, the will, the passion, and the phantasy of tens of millions who are urged on by the very acutest class struggle. From this follow two very important practical conclusions: first, that the revolutionary class in order to fulfil its task must be able to master ''all'' forms or sides of social activity without exception (and complete after the capture of political power, sometimes with great risk and amidst very great dangers, what they did not complete before the capture of power); second, that the revolutionary class must be ready to pass from one form to another in the quickest and most unexpected manner.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en65|[65]]]
</blockquote>
The Communist Party must absolutely master every form of struggle: for the struggle of the proletariat and of the toiling masses will become a real class struggle and will lead to the goal of creating a communist society only when the organising and guiding influence of the vanguard that is consciously striving toward communism will be guaranteed.

In the article, “Guerilla Warfare,” Lenin pointed out that all forms of struggle may become distorted if they are not applied in a certain relationship one to another under the leadership of the Communist Party.

<blockquote>It is said that guerilla warfare reduces the class conscious proletariat to the level of degraded drunkards and tramps. That is true. But this only proves that the Party of the proletariat can never regard partisan warfare as the only, or even the principal method of struggle, and that this method must be subordinated and properly co-ordinated with the main methods of struggle, that are ennobled by the enlightening and organising influence of socialism. Without this latter condition every method of struggle in bourgeois society, without exception, will bring the proletariat to the level of the various non-proletarian strata above or below it, and being left to the mercy of the spontaneous course of events, will become bedraggled, corrupted and prostituted. Strikes, when left to the mercy of the spontaneous course of events, become transformed into “alliances” between the workers and employers against the consumers. Parliament becomes a brothel in which a gang of bourgeois politicians carry on wholesale and retail trade in the “freedom of the people,” “liberalism,” “democracy,” “republicanism,” “anti-clericalism,” “socialism” and in all kinds of popular merchandise. The newspapers become procurers, whom anybody can purchase, a means of debauching the masses and of pandering to the base instincts of the crowd, and so forth. No universal methods of struggle are known to Social-Democracy that would set up a Chinese wall between the proletariat and the social strata that are situated either a little above or below it. In different epochs, Social-Democracy applies different methods; but it applies them strictly in accordance with definite, ideological and organising conditions.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en66|[66]]]
</blockquote>
The selections of the methods of struggle must be determined by the concrete objective conditions. This leads us to the second basic principle we have referred to.

In this same article Lenin wrote:

<blockquote>Marxism insists that the question of the methods of struggle shall be investigated from an absolutely historical standpoint. Those who would treat this question apart from the concrete historical circumstances simply fail to understand the very elements of dialectic materialism. In the various periods of economic evolution and depending on the varying, political, national and cultural, social and other conditions, various methods of struggle assume prominence and become the chief methods of struggle, and accordingly the secondary and supplementary methods of struggle also change in their turn. To attempt to express a definite opinion, yes, or no, regarding any particular method of struggle, without subjecting the concrete circumstances of the given moment and the given stage of its development to careful analysis, simply means abandoning the standpoint of Marxism completely.
</blockquote>
Marxist-Leninist revolutionary tactics are based on an examination of the concrete circumstances of the given situation. The purpose of this is to prevent us from becoming separated from the masses, to enable us to move forward together with the masses, to lead them and help them to rise to a higher level. We must not retreat in face of difficulties, but strive to overcome them by drawing new forces into the fight. We must encourage the activity of the masses, improve their organisation and stimulate their class consciousness. The attack must be conducted systematically and consistently, avoiding in our leadership “''logical'' (that is, mental) ''leaps'' over ''several'' concrete stages,” as Lenin once expressed it, considering this to be a grievous sin against dialectic materialism.

Given such a leadership, the masses will rise to a higher level of political consciousness in the very course of events, learning from their own actions, mistakes, defeats and victories.

The essence of Marxist-Leninist tactics was brilliantly explained by Lenin in his article “Karl Marx,”[[#footnotes.xhtml_ch6_fn1|*]] in which he wrote:

<blockquote>The fundamental task of proletarian tactics was defined by Marx in strict conformity with all the premises of his materialist-dialectical world outlook. Nothing but an objective calculation of the sum total of all the mutual relationships of all the classes of a given society without exception and consequently a calculation of the objective stage of development of this society as well as a calculation of the mutual relationship between it and other societies, can serve as the basis for the correct tactics of the class that forms the vanguard.[[#endnotes.xhtml_en67|[67]]]
</blockquote>
Valuable material on this subject will also be found in ''“Left-Wing” Communism''. To be a materialist dialectician it is not enough to reiterate the principles of Marxism in general form. We must study the experience of the class struggle of the proletariat and learn to give expression to the concrete circumstances of that struggle, to emphasise the main tasks and advance proper slogans to lead the proletarian struggle and be able to find the main link that will enable us to hold the whole chain.



VII


== HOW TO STUDY LENIN ==

A few words should be said in conclusion as to how to study the works of Lenin. It should be borne in mind that Lenin was a leader of the proletariat. A study of his literary works must be closely combined with a study of his activities and of the conditions in which he worked. Only in this way will the works of Lenin be properly understood and appreciated. This study, however, must be linked up with the present-day struggle of the proletariat.

The manner in which Lenin studied the works of Marx and Engels is an example of how the works of Lenin should be studied. From a number of his articles, particularly those articles dealing with Marxism and with the works and correspondence of Marx and Engels, we see how he was able to draw the lessons of materialist dialectics from his study of Marx and Engels.

Lenin drew particular attention to the following formula contained in one of the letters of Engels: “Marxism is not a dogma, but a guide to action.” None of the Marxists who had studied the works of Marx and Engels had paid proper attention to this aphorism; but Lenin quite rightly pointed out that it gives a succinct and excellent description of the very essence of the Marxian theory.

Lenin pointed out that an outstanding feature of the method of Marx and Engels was the living contact they themselves maintained with the mass movement. In spite of their knowledge and tremendous erudition, they were free from the slightest tinge of pedantry or bookishness. As Engels said, the ''moment'' socialism was transformed from utopia to a science it became necessary to treat it as a science, namely, to study it. The valuable knowledge inherited from the past must be mastered. But that is not enough. We must be able to draw lessons from the experience of the current struggles of the masses and at the same time take an active part in it, lead it and lift it to higher levels. Marx and Engels possessed this capacity in a very high degree; and it was this that Lenin considered to be exceptionally valuable and worthy of imitation. In his Preface to the Russian translation of Marx’s ''Letters to Kugelmann'', Lenin says that:

<blockquote>''Above everything else'' he [''i.e.'', Marx—''V.A''.] put the fact that the working class heroically, self-sacrificingly and taking the initiative itself ''makes'' world history.
</blockquote>
Marx and Engels attached the greatest importance to the “historical initiative” of the masses and were not dismayed by the fact that the activity of the masses might be accompanied by errors. Indeed, whenever something new is being created and the old ruts abandoned errors are inevitable. The most vital revolutionary cause may be marred by mistakes, but the mass movement, the new experience gained, the creative spirit displayed and the new institutions initiated compensate for any mistakes that may be committed. In fact, there is no way the broad masses can be taught except by their own actions and by their own experiences.

Marx and Engels never dogmatically thrust upon the masses views which they held to be correct, but which the masses could understand as a result of their own experience and not merely as a result of verbal precepts and preaching. But this cautious attitude in respect of the education of the masses was accompanied by the most exacting demands in matters of theory. In his Introduction to the Russian translation of ''The Letters of J. P. Becker, J. Dietzgen, F. Engels, K. Marx and Others to F. A. Sorge and Others'', Lenin speaks of the merciless, even “ferocious” war that Marx waged against opportunism.

Previously expressed postulates must not be treated in a stereotyped way as universal precepts applicable to all times and all conditions without taking into consideration the changes that have taken place since those postulates were enunciated, and without a careful study of the new factors that have arisen and which the most penetrating minds formerly could not possibly foresee.

When studying the works of Marx and Lenin we must constantly bear in mind the circumstances in which they lived and acted, the conditions that gave rise to a particular slogan, or the persons against whom a particular polemic was directed: that is to say, their works must be studied with due appreciation of the concrete time and place in which they were written. The lessons drawn from the study must be applied to the present-day struggle of the proletariat, while the closest contact must be maintained with the movement and tasks of the class struggle of our time. Only in this way will the basic demand of Marxism-Leninism be observed, namely, that theory shall not be “a dogma, but a guide to action,” not a mere subject for academic study, but a science and a valuable weapon in the class struggle of the proletariat.

Lenin’s attitude towards science, the working-class movement and the mass struggle was exactly the same as that of Marx and Engels. Like Marx, Lenin prized in the revolutionary class its “ability to create the future.” He knew how to lead the mass struggle and to combat “ferociously” every distortion of revolutionary Marxism, in whatever sphere it might manifest itself and under whatever flag it might proclaim itself. Lenin was able to appreciate the peculiarities of concrete circumstances, to study the works of the founders of scientific communism and to apply them to the new conditions of the working class struggle.

In our own study of Lenin’s works, we must strive to adopt the methods he used. We must acquire the ability to fight for revolutionary Marxism-Leninism. For there have been many opportunist distortions of Lenin’s teachings since his death, and we shall encounter such distortions again in the future. We all know the efforts the Trotskyist opposition made to effect a revisionist distortion of Leninism, while similar attempts were made by the Right opposition and the semi-Trotskyist “Leftists” in the years 1928-29, and 1930.

An example of the way Lenin studied the works of Marx will be found in his article “Marx on the American ‘Black Redistribution’.”[[#endnotes.xhtml_en68|[68]]] In this article, after describing the circumstances in which Marx wrote his article in opposition to H. Kriege (whose views closely resembled those of the Russian Socialist-Revolutionaries at the beginning of this century) and comparing the farmer’s movement in America in the middle of the nineteenth century with the peasant movement in Russia at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, Lenin shows how Marx combated the petty-bourgeois illusions of the peasantry, while appreciating the revolutionary democratic character of the peasant movement. Lenin used this example from Marx in order to strengthen his own hand in the fight against the Mensheviks, who entirely failed to understand the significance of the peasant movement and to realise that the peasantry was the principal ally of the working class in the struggle against tsarism.

Another example is Lenin’s work on the question of the state. Having studied everything that Marx and Engels ever wrote on the subject, Lenin was able to establish their real views, which had been completely mutilated by the opportunists. This alone was a tremendous service to the cause of revolutionary Marxism. But he did more than that. Basing himself on the theoretical views of Marx and Engels and applying their methods, Lenin used the experience provided by the revolutionary struggles of the proletariat in 1905 and 1917 to further develop the theory of Marx. He created the theory of the Soviet state, which arises with the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Studying the works of Lenin on this subject,[[#endnotes.xhtml_en69|[69]]] we are able to follow step by step the manner in which Lenin used the Marxian method in order to solve one of the fundamental problems of the revolution—the organisation of the state power of the revolutionary proletariat.

A perusal of the fundamental work written by Lenin on this question, ''State and Revolution'', reveals how carefully he studied the works of Marx and Engels, how painstakingly he transcribed individual thoughts and even fleeting remarks the theoretical value of which, in spite of their brevity, is tremendous. In Lenin’s popular lecture on “The State,”[[#endnotes.xhtml_en70|[70]]] which gives a general review of the question of the state and represents a valuable addition to the works above enumerated and an introduction to a more profound study of the question, we find several practical suggestions as to how the works of Marx and Engels should be studied.

These are only two examples of many that might be quoted. In the works of Lenin the three component parts of the Marxian theory: philosophy, political economy and socialism are dealt with. Lenin mastered the material in all three spheres, developing the theory of Marx and elaborating a number of important questions in the light of the facts provided, by the latest development of the proletarian revolution.

''In the sphere of philosophy'' he threw light on the problem of materialist dialectics: he elaborated the theory of knowledge of dialectic materialism,[[#endnotes.xhtml_en71|[71]]] studied and explained the crisis of contemporary natural science,[[#endnotes.xhtml_en72|[72]]] and treated the problems of historical materialism in a new way.

''In the sphere of economics'' attention should be drawn to his works on capitalism in Russia— “The Development of Capitalism in Russia,” ''Selected Works'', Vol. I; on imperialism— “Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism,” ''Selected Works'', Vol. V; on the agrarian question—“The Agrarian Programme of the Social-Democrats in the First Russian Revolution,” ''Selected Works'', Vol. XII; “The Agrarian Question at the End of the Nineteenth Century,” ''Selected Works'', Vol. I, and, finally, his work dealing with the economics of the transition period—“State and Revolution,” “The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government,” “Economics and Politics in the Era of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” all in ''Selected Works'', Vol. VII; “The Tax in Kind,” ''Selected Works'', Vol. IX, etc.

In the ''Selected Works'' much space is devoted to Lenin’s writings on the problems of socialism. The policy and tactics of the class struggle of the proletariat, the Party, its programme and organisation, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Soviet state and the building up of socialism. Here, too, Lenin bases himself on the theories of Marx and Engels, while at the same time making a concrete study of the complex factors of the class struggle of his own day.

Lenin mastered the very essence of these problems, painstakingly collecting all that could be found in Marx and Engels on the subject he was examining. Our aim should be to make a similar study and a similar application of the works of Lenin. The writings of Lenin are a storehouse of knowledge, essential to the proletariat and invaluable in the leadership of its fight for communism.

By studying the works of Lenin we shall learn to realise the significance and importance of revolutionary theory, we shall see how theory must be associated with the actual class movement and the struggle of the millions who are exploited and oppressed by capitalism. We shall learn what is meant by the Communist Party’s leading the proletarian revolution and under what conditions the revolution can triumph. And, following the example of Lenin, we must learn how to participate in the struggle ourselves.

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which was formed under Lenin’s guidance and trained in the spirit of revolutionary Marxism, is carrying on and developing the socialist construction begun under Lenin’s leadership and along the lines he indicated. Tens of millions of proletarians and toilers are participating in this gigantic task. Learning from the experience of the struggles and constructive work of the masses of proletarians and collective farmers, who are working for the establishment of communism, the Leninist Central Committee, headed by Comrade Stalin—best able to continue the cause of Lenin—and the whole of the Party, is developing the policy, the tactics and the theory of Marxism-Leninism.

For an understanding of Leninism it is important to study the present work of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the socialist construction now in progress under its guidance, as well as the international revolutionary movement and the fight of the Communist International, which was also founded under the direct leadership of Lenin. The full profundity of the theoretical works of Lenin becomes revealed only when they are associated with the struggle that is now proceeding. For they were written with the purpose of guiding the great struggle of the proletariat to victory.

An excellent guide for those undertaking a systematic study of Lenin’s writings is Comrade Stalin’s book, ''Leninism'', and this should serve as the principal guide to those who desire to obtain a thorough knowledge of the problems that Lenin so brilliantly expounded and solved.

Comrade Stalin, the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, is the most outstanding Leninist theoretician. It was under his leadership that, since the death of Lenin, the fight against Trotskyism, the Trotsky-Zinoviev opposition and the Right Opportunists was conducted. Alike in practical politics and in theory (and the two are intimately associated), Comrade Stalin is brilliantly carrying out the Leninist line.

The works of Lenin are of the utmost importance to the class struggle of the proletariat. Leninism generalises the experiences of the world proletarian revolution and studies all forms of the class struggle in order to make the best use of them and in order to develop the science that is essential to the proletariat as the vanguard of the struggle for emancipation from all forms of oppression and exploitation. This science must be made accessible to the vast proletarian army, for it will help it to achieve increased unity of action and consciousness of purpose. The better organised the vast numbers of proletarians and toilers are, and the more energetically and purposefully they wage the struggle against the domination of capitalism, the sooner the yoke of age-long slavery will be shattered.





== REFERENCE NOTES ==

Library:This Soviet World

2025-11-08T16:19:02Z

ComradeEd: Change written in to published date

{{Library work|title=This Soviet World|author=Anna Louise Strong|published_date=1936|publisher=Henry Holt and Company, Inc.|type=Book|source=https://comlib.encryptionin.space/epubs/this-soviet-world/|pdf=https://annas-archive.org/md5/3c2da922ea78b91c28c2b81b5c2da556}}

=== ON INTERPRETING A WORLD ===

A leading Russian Communist said to me a year ago “The mind of our people is changing so fast under the conditions of socialism that it is becoming increasingly difficult for us to speak to the rest of the world. We find it harder to understand them, and they us.”

We who go back and forth between the Soviet world and the world of capitalism—not only in space from New York to Moscow but also in spirit from intimate life with Soviet people to intimate life in America—feel keenly this difficulty. Important words like freedom, democracy, dictatorship have different meanings on different sides of the border. The Soviet world is sharply conscious of planning its future; the capitalist world is always arriving where it hadn’t intended. And Soviet officials are not always helpful in making their acts intelligible; they often assume that only deliberate malice can doubt them and that the only needed explanation is the appropriate citation from Marx.

To explain the swiftly growing Soviet world to that other world out of which it was born is a task that becomes steadily more complex. For if its outer achievements are every year more able to speak for themselves, its inner life more and diverges from that of capitalism in a hundred subtle ways.

In the Berlin station a giant sign greets me with three-foot letters: “Think of your hair!” My mind flashes back to the world I have left. What are Soviet people thinking of? The Stakhanov drive, the Moscow city plan, Marie and her sugar beets, the conquest of the north. And hair and perfume, O yes, of course. Everyone knows of the rising standard of living and firmly believes in a cultural life—more bath-tubs, radios, books and dramatic clubs and doubtless more hair. But their individuality is expressed not by possessions and polish but by the various ways in which men create. Dynamic is the word; their civilization is dynamic.

The regimentation of life by property is my next shock in the capitalist world. The obscene phrases “damages for alienation of affections” or “a $50,000 man” or the remark: “I do it only for the money that is in it”—what degradation they imply of human life and work! I see able engineers spending creative power on little models in a government relief job just to keep alive. I see a journal of high standard, the life-work of an able editor submerged by a new owner’s wish for quick profit. Lives are conditioned in the Soviet world also, by trends and sages of organization, but not by the profits of a boss.

The difference appears in the use of pronouns. People under capitalism are contrasting “I” and “they.” “Too bad it couldn’t have been on my land,” a man remarks of a California oil-strike. Soviet folk would be hailing “our new oil-wells”; to them the idea of a private oil-well is already as quaint as a private postal system. I note a remark about American unemployment: “If it gets any worse, they’ll have to do something.” Who is this ultimate, uncontrollable “they”? The term betrays the class society of which the speakers are unconscious; they are waiting for some boss to act. To hear a debate: “Is America going fascist?” and think how much less passively Soviet folk would word it. “Shall we go fascist? No. Then exactly how shall we prevent it?” Soviet folk say “we” of one-sixth of the earth’s surface. Uzbek cotton-pickers, toiling under the sun of Central Asia, say: “We are conquering the Arctic; we rescued the Chelyuskinites.” Ukrainian farmers who never went up in an airplane talk of “our stratosphere records” and “the loss of our Maxim Gorky airplane” as they take up collections to build ten new ones. But even Mrs. Roosevelt asks me: “Are Russian peasants getting more reconciled to accepting direction?” I feel the hopelessness of language as I answer: “No, they are learning better to organize and direct themselves.”

Americans often ask me whether Russians are not naturally more altruistic than Americans, more fit for communism, they imply. No, it is something quite different. Russians at the time of Revolution were more medieval than Americans, which means “naturally” more petty, unreliable, inefficient, given to bargaining and cheating. Traits of the Asiatic market-place were widespread and occasionally still annoy the visitor. But these traits are disappearing under the fact of joint ownership, which brings identity of individual with community good.

Joint possession of the country’s resources and productive mechanism is the economic reality which unifies Soviet life and makes it dynamic. It is this that washes out the antagonism between personal and public good, that makes men say “we.” It is this that makes men conscious planners of the future; for owners plan but non-owners can only fight or drift. The chief quality of Soviet civilization is the sense that the world is “ours,” to seize, understand and make over.

This Soviet world is my theme; I give scant space to those fast disintegrating forces that fought it. I tell not the “whole truth,” for truth is never “whole”; there are always at least two truths in conflict: the truth that is dying and the truth that is coming into existence. American Tories who intrigued for King George had their truth also, but it remains only as piquant sauce to romance; the truth of the Continental armies remained to build the modern republic. They themselves recalled the frozen feet of Valley Forge less as suffering than as heroism; their raids on hungry farms passed into memory not as banditry but as necessity and daring. History’s greatest gift to victors is that not only they, but their truth survives.

Yet I do no injustice to those many lives which in greater or less degree were wrenched or broken by the coming of the new Soviet order. Even for them the new years obliterate the past. They also change to seek their new future in the new system; Lives broken in terms of property are being remade in terms of work. Saboteurs reform and win posts of honor; kulaks come back from exile to factories and farms; children have an equal start now regardless of fathers. For this war differs from other battles in that all men, even the conquered foes, are absorbed into the ranks of the conquerors—joint heirs to all the fruits of victory.

A. L. S.

== PART I: MEN MAKE THE SOVIET WORLD ==

=== CHAPTER I: THE PLAN FOR REMAKING THE WORLD ===

{{Quote|“The philosophers have only interpreted the world; our business is to change it.”|Karl Marx|Theses on Feuerbach}}

Whenever I ask myself what brings increasing visitors to Moscow, what they want here and what they find, and why the eyes of the world turn more and more to the Soviet Union with a questing hope that hardly yet dares call itself belief, there flashes into my mind the remark made to me in 1930 at Dnieprostroy by the young and disillusioned son of a Wall Street millionaire.

Dnieprostroy in those days was the first of the famous giants of the new Soviet Russia, “the largest power dam in the world.”<ref>Since then surpassed by the Boulder Dam.</ref> Hour after hour we climbed the cliffs and ravines of its mighty construction. We fled from screaming sirens that warned of blasting rock. We saw great stone-crushing plants, saw-mills, locomotive repair shops, temporary power station—all sizable works harnessed to the task of making a greater power station which should in turn serve plants a hundred times their scope. We visited the “socialist city” where discussion raged between advocates of individual cottages or big apartment houses for the future town. We saw hurriedly constructed club houses where thousands of workers busily grabbed knowledge—reading, writing, political economy and the technique of their new job.

Night fell. We stood on the shore of the yet unharnessed river, destined to rise to bury those high banks beneath a man-impounded lake. We far down at the great sweep of electric brilliance that had already shattered the age-old darkness of the Ukrainian steppe. It was then that my companion said: “I think that Dnieprostroy has answered the question that brought me to Russia.”

“What question?” I asked.

“Whether the world is to be changed by trying one at a time to improve human beings or by changing the social environment that makes human beings.”

In the pause that followed the sounds of construction came to us incessantly, rising from the bowels of earth and filling the horizon. The short, sharp puffs of engines, the roar of cliffs torn asunder, the ceaseless beat of mills grinding stone into concrete, the rasp of drills eating down into river granite. Sharpened by night and softened by distance, they blended into a mighty symphony—music of man, the builder, subduing, the earth.

Dark beyond the circling lights lay Hortitz Island, in ancient days the last stand of free-booting bandit chieftains against oppressors. We remembered the husky peasant girl from the island whom we had seen in overalls that morning, gang-boss over twelve men who excavated rock by explosions of liquid air. Dnieprostroy had changed her in a few months from a farm servant to a “brigadier.” We remembered the blacksmith whom we had asked in the glare of foundry fires how he liked his work and who burst forth with fiery will: “You know, we’re going to finish her in 1932”—a simple workman pushing ahead by one year the estimate of Hugh L. Cooper’s world-experienced engineers.<ref>The workman’s estimate won out. The dam was finished in 1932 a year ahead of schedule.</ref>

We recalled how competitions between workers of right and left bank drove the dam ahead, doubling the concrete-laying estimates of the Americans by force of newly awakened will. Signals night by night across the raging torrent told in red and green lights the day’s total, celebrated over-fulfillment of plan by a great red star. Night by night, week by week each bank fought to keep its red star shining. We remembered motion pictures, dramas, concerts, lectures which brought the city’s culture to these thousands who had come from the scattered farms of the Ukraine. The fine new polytechnic institute where workers chosen from the river-gangs were being turned in forty classrooms into engineers. We saw on the high bank the homes of the American consultants, who understood better than the Russians the technique of the great job but were eternally puzzled by its spirit.

Yes, Dnieprostroy gave the answer to my companion’s question. Dnieprostroy was a new form of production under a new social system. It was remaking individuals by wholesale.

Increasingly in the past five years Americans have come to the Soviet Union, scientists, engineers, artists, economists all bent on their own pursuits, dogmatic or bewildered tourists, seeking proof of an old belief or material for a new one. Especially since the crash of 1929 smashed the world which was “inevitably getting better,” they have come, fleeing from the ruins of that earthquake to learn what, if anything, the Soviet Union offers. By no means all of them put their question as clearly as did my young companion; by no means all interpret so swiftly the essence of the first construction job they see. But the question he asked is basically what brings most of them, an ancient quest of man which has troubled philosophers no less than baffled tourists: “Can our world be remade? And how to remake it?”

The problem is especially pressing upon the American middle class of today, which has seen its old world taken from it in ways that it hardly understands. The independent small property owners, mostly farmers, who formed a hundred years ago 80 per cent of the American people except in the slave South, bequeathed to their descendants ideals of democracy and freedom, the “liberty and equality of men owning their own means of livelihood.”<ref>See Lewis Corey: “Crisis of the Middle Class” ''The Nation'', Aug. 14, 1935.</ref> But large scale industry, developing through a century, wiped out the small enterprisers, increased the number of salaried employees and made the farmer dependent on banks and markets, thus changing America to a “nation of hired workers.” Only 12 per cent of the people live by ownership of their own property, in place of 80 per cent a century ago.

The myth of property remained long after the reality had vanished. Millions of these salaried people still felt hat they owned something—no longer a store, a small workshop, an unencumbered farm, but savings in stocks, bonds, insurance—which lifted them somewhat above the ranks of laboring hands. Crashingly the world economic crisis destroyed this illusion. As if to emphasize how little control these small people had over their own property, the value of their liquid wealth shrank from twenty-seven billion dollars in 1929 to four billion in 1932.<ref>Figures from Robers R. Doane on liquid wealth of persons with incomes under $5,000. Quoted by Corey.</ref> Millions of the middle class were thrown into the same abyss of ruin with millions of wage-workers; they wait together on bread-lines, study together the government relief programs, hunt together for a boss. For all of them alike, as long as the capitalist world remains, most put their trust in bosses, someone who owns and will give them access to the means of production and of life.

Their situation is the more distressing because for most of our Western world the past hundred years has been what John Strachey aptly calls the “century of the great hope.”<ref>John Strachey, ''The Menace of Fascism''.</ref> Millions of men became better fed, better housed, better clothed through the industrial revolution which took production out of the home workshop into the factory and knit together the ends of earth by railroad, steamship, telegraph. Especially America—where the arrival of the new machines and technical methods coincided with a continent-wide expansion into lands of vast wealth, developed by energetic oilers from all nations for the first time unhampered by any remnants of feudalism the belief in inevitable progress and increasing prosperity was both a conscious and unconscious national faith. The little red schoolhouse bade every boy aspire to be president. “Go west, young man.” . . . “Don’t be a bear on America,” said successful plutocrats. But far deeper than these conscious preachings spread the atmosphere of determined optimism which made every man who was not a good booster seem subtly immoral to his friends. Did not the great lands of America, the efficient industries of America, the productive energy of America, offer the basis for a good standard of life for everyone—an “American standard”? It was easy to prove that they did—and do!

What happened to that faith in inevitable progress? If it still survives in some circles as a despairing habit, elsewhere it has been replaced by belief in inevitable doom. “Inevitable drift to fascism,” “inevitable twilight of the West,” “the old standard of prosperity can never return,” are phrases common on lips that not long since hailed inevitable advance. Others begin a frenzied search into the faiths of past ages, to know if elsewhere than with us abides the truth. These learn that belief in the inevitability of progress has never been a universal faith. It has been confined to definite periods of economic advancement, and to certain nations within those periods or certain classes within nations. Did not whole centuries of the Middle Ages view the world as an essentially unchanging garden of human souls from which religion culled a few for heaven, leaving the rest for hell? Even today do not hundreds of millions of people—those great suppressed races of the East—find life’s processes so fundamentally evil that their essential faith is Buddhism in which Nothingness is bliss?

Even in our West, as capitalism decays into fascism, there arise new denials of the inevitability of progress. Ideals of the past—the Roman Empire, the Germanic gods, the feudal Britain featured by fascist-striving novels—gild with emotional glamor the tenets of fascism: that science and machine production are evil, that democracy, peace and the conquest of poverty are futile dreams of a decadent society, that murderous war is man’s noblest end. For fascism is the last stand of a desperate capitalism which can no longer use the fruits of science and machine production, which dare no longer permit either peace or democracy, since it must brutally refuse to its victims that abolition of poverty which is already technically possible in the world.

Can human reason find a way to reorganize human society—a way which human wills can follow? Must we go backing blindly into the future, cheered now by faith in inevitable progress, damned now by faith in inevitable doom, and claiming from some supernatural world a just and rational balancing of the unjust, irrational chaos found in this? Or can that continuous, collective application of human thought known as science, which we have learned to take as our best, though still unperfected guide in rationalizing and controlling subhuman phenomena, be expanded to rationalize and control our human destiny? Can man master the machines he has made which today threaten increasingly to enslave him? Can he subdue to his will those tremendously productive forces which his science and technical knowledge have released, and which seem adequate to abolish poverty, yet which at present give increasing unemployment, economic crises, wars?

We are asking, in other words, can men master destiny? Are all those gleams of human reason which have given us increasing dominion over material phenomena but will-o’-the-wisps, luring to a swamp which will engulf us the more blackly for the false, brief light they gave? Or are they gleams of dawn that may brighten into an ever-increasing daylight, in which not only a few isolated phenomena but the whole of man’s own nature and his organized society can be planned by human reason and carried through by human wills?

No less than this is the search that brings men over the seas to the Soviet Union. For if to millions in our Western world the century now passing was the century of the great hope, there are other millions in two great half-continents uniting Europe and Asia, who look upon it rather as the century of the great plan. The reference is not to that Five-Year Plan which the Soviet Union made famous, but to a plan far more comprehensive which prepares and includes all five-year plans in all lands and all the future. A plan for remaking the world drawn up eighty-eight years ago on instructions from a London congress of working-men of many nations, and issued in 1848 under the title ''Communist Manifesto'', the work of the German economists Frederick Engels and Karl Marx.

The ''Communist Manifesto'' is usually thought of as the defiance flung at the world by an illegal revolutionary party of hunted people. So it was. But it was also man’s first attempt to apply science to the analysis of human society in order to draw up a plan for remaking the world. Previous attempts to analyze the world were exercises of philosophers, not directed towards change. Previous attempts to change the world were confined to threats or exhortations to secure specific conversions or reforms. Many Utopian pictures had existed of how beautiful society might be when once made over. But the ''Communist Manifesto'' tried to answer the question: How can the thing be done? Born in the middle years of that century in which the scientific method was consciously remaking the material world, it sought to analyze the elements of human society, the nature and cause of the changes we see in history, for the purpose of producing social change in a desired direction. That is why it claims to be Scientific Socialism.

The followers of Marx see in him the genius who combined the three chief currents of thought of the nineteenth century—classical German philosophy, classical English political economy and French revolutionary doctrines. The philosophic basis of Marxism is “dialectics,” which views every reality, whether of nature, the mind, or society, as in process of continual change through the development and clash of “inner contradictions.” This theory applied to the study of history shows how economic, political and social systems are constantly changing, at times slowly, at times by leaps, catastrophes, revolutions. American capitalism of the Civil War period is not the capitalism of today. The democracy of the New England town-meeting is not the democracy of the modern imperial nation. They may be called by the same but names deceive; the thing changes even while you look at it to disdain or admire. Even your disdain and admiration changes, the meaning of your words and concepts. What was true, right, desirable yesterday may not be true, right, desirable tomorrow. Systems have their day and cease to be.

Is there any law in this change? Is there in this constant interaction and conflict of systems and ideas anything basic, changing which will change the rest? “The economic structure,” says Marx, is “the real foundation. . . . The mode of production . . . determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual processes of life.”<ref>Preface to a ''Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy''.</ref> For Marx the fundamental thing about any human society is not its system of ideas or religions, nor the form of government nor the nature of its family life. These things are important but derivative. They are determined by the ways in which human beings get food, clothing, shelter, by the stage of their advance and the tools they use in these fundamental operations. In a world whose economic structure fails to reward honesty and altruism, a Marxist would not spend his efforts preaching these virtues, but in creating an economic system where honesty really prospered, where each man’s success must be build on the success, rather than the ruin, of others. The new economic system would make new people; under it, education in the new ideals would be swift and hopeful.

How then do economic systems change? Marx finds the key in his theory of “class struggle.” Man’s science and invention create new ways of production, and these in turn create new “classes” of human beings, i.e., groups of people who have different and conflicting relations to production. Between these classes a struggle goes on around the ownership of the process of production, which is the means of life. “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”<ref>''Communist Manifesto'', 10-11.</ref>

Thus at different stages of human history new classes arise from new ways of working and the struggle between them produces social change. Modern capitalism has not done away with class antagonisms, but it has this distinctive feature—it has simplified them. “Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into . . . two great classes directly facing each other—bourgeoisie and proletariat,”<ref>''Communist Manifesto'', 11.</ref> those who live by owning and those who can live only by selling their labor power, by seeking a boss.

Between these two remain for a time the middle classes, distraught survivors of those small property owners and independent craftsmen who once embodied the demand for private property against a feudal past. They suffer deeply under advancing capitalism which dislodges them steadily and painfully into the ranks of hired hands. They struggle against their fate, but their strivings are confused, for their instinctive desire is to go back to small scale property. Their cry is to “share the wealth,” to start over again that old society of small owners which led to the present-day monopolies and which would lead to them again if it could be revived. The right to private property was once revolutionary pledge of freedom, but this also has changed with the passing of history. Private property in farm plots and hand tools freed serfs from feudal masters; private property in steel mills creates a new slavery. Even small ownership today, wherever it survives or comes into being, is at the mercy of large scale finance.

Who owns the world? That is the basic question conditioning all hopes of social change. What is wrong with the world today, according to Marxists, is private ownership of the great productive processes which are socially operated. The way out is not backward to subsistence farms and handicrafts it is forward to social ownership. Not “share the wealth,” but jointly owned wealth, jointly organized by and for all who work. Only thus can the great machines be subjugated; only thus can science and modern technique produce plenty for all mankind. Only thus can the present vision of men into owners and workers be abolished, a division which is wrecking the world by social strife and international war. It must be superseded by one united class of people—joint worker-owners of the world. From this economic equality, all other forms of equality will grow. First a stage of socialism where men have equal access to labor and receive according to their work. Then when the habits of human beings have been changed by joint ownership, will come the stage of communism in which men freely co-operate in work according to their abilities and receive according to their needs.

Who will bring about this change of ownership? Clearly not the present private owners: their interests lie the other way. Nor can the disintegrating middle classes achieve it, except insofar as they come to understand that their future lies with the workers. Only one class of people can develop the will to carry through this difficult long epoch of change—the working class which is bound to the mighty mechanism of modern production, mastering it yet enslaved by it. Joint ownership is their only path to freedom; when they understand this, they will accomplish it. They are thus the “really revolutionary class,” in whom social ownership of modern production is a living need and can become a flaming passion carrying humanity forward to a higher stage.

The task of every Marxist is to help them understand, to make them “class-conscious,” aware of their power and function as creators of social progress. Millions of Americans resent the very idea of classes, and are indignant at “inflaming class-consciousness” where it does not yet exist. But Marxian classes are not epithets inciting to riot; they are categories in a scientific analysis. Marxists say that unless human society is to go down in a catastrophe of slavery, war and ruin, men must own their tools and the wealth which these create; that tools and wealth have grown too complexly social to be owned individually and must therefore be socially owned; and that only the working class can develop the fighting will to seize the power of ownership and through it remake society. The less the workers are organized, the less conscious they are of their power and function, the more will the coming changes in human society be protracted, painful and blind. The more conscious the workers are of their great task in history, the better they are organized, the more they are able to rally around them the middle classes, the swifter will be the change and the less will be the human suffering.

Two generations of economists in many countries developed the Marxian theory. Lenin built on it the Bolshevik Party which in 1917 carried through the Russian Revolution. Stalin is honored today by Bolsheviks not only as statesman and organizer, but as the far-seeing analyst and guider of social change, who continues and develops the scientific method of Marx, Engels, Lenin. One-sixth of the world today is being remade according to the Marxian program—the first consciously devised pattern that men ever applied to society as a whole.

=== CHAPTER II: THE PARTY OF REVOLUTION ===

{{Quote|“To distinguish those who worked from those who talked.”|Lenin}}

Not by accident did the first socialist revolution take place in Russia. The World War imposed great strains on many countries and the chain of world imperialism broke at its weakest link.<ref>Hillquit called the Russian revolution an “historical accident,” since it occurred in a backward peasant land. Norman Thomas on the contrary holds it occurred just because the Russians were so backward that they would endure a dictatorship such as no other people would stand. Stalin says: “The objective conditions for the revolution exist throughout the whole system of imperialist world economy, which is an integral unit.” Answering the theory that the revolution must come first “where the proletariat forms the majority, where culture is more advanced, where there is more democracy,” he says: “No, not necessarily where industry is most developed; it will be broken where the chain of imperialism is weakest, for the proletarian revolution is the result of the breaking of the of world imperialism at its weakest link.” From Stalin’s Lectures to Sverdlov Students.</ref> More than any other land, Russia was tormented by war and ravenous for peace. Tsardom, that hideous hangover from the Middle Ages, had lost all moral authority and was hated by the entire people. For decades revolution had been brewing in Russia.<ref>Marx noted this as far back as 1877 in his Letter to Zorge. See ''Letters of Marx and Engels''.</ref> The World War added the last unbearable pressure and the explosion came.

Not least among the factors which made the revolution possible and helped determine its form was the existence of the Bolshevik Party.<ref>Today called Communist Party (of Bolsheviks).</ref> This was no spontaneous creation, born at the moment of revolt; for fourteen years it had been consciously welded by painstaking thought and desperate struggle. Its traditions indeed went back much further. The whole last half of the nineteenth century advanced thinkers in Russia, under the oppression of tsardom, had sought eagerly for the effective revolutionary path. Through fifty years of torment, sacrifice, heroism, incredible energy, careful study, they had tested many methods. They had tried to educate and organize the peasantry; they had tried the terrorist assassination of tyrants. They had failed. They had checked their failures by the history of other nations and a section of them had come to Marxism as the correct program for remaking the world.

If Marx furnished the general program, it was Lenin who developed the theory and tactics, proletarian revolution, and built the organization for the seizure of power. Bolshevism, as a trend of political thought and a political party, exists since 1903, when the Social-Democratic Party of Russia split into groups known as Bolsheviks (majority) and Mensheviks (minority), which correspond to Communists and Social-Democrats today in other countries. The older leaders wanted to “widen” the Party, to take in all “supporters” and give them all a voice in determining the Party’s program. Lenin, though recognizing that any social change must rely on wide masses, not only of workers but of many other “allies,” insisted that membership in the Party itself “must be given a narrow definition to distinguish those who worked from those who talked.”<ref>Lenin’s Account of Second Congress, ''Selected Works'', II</ref>

To organize and train the Party of Revolution became thenceforth the central task and the greatest achievement of that world-renowned leader, Lenin, who gave his whole life to the study and practice of the science of political power. Power was to him no mere personal achievement of office; it was the organized lifting of the human race one stage forward in history. He studied how to ride the turbulent upheaval which the conflicts in modern society would inevitably produce, how to prepare and lead men for the seizure of the state and the creation of a new order, how at last to organize them for the conquest of nature and of their own destiny. This was to Lenin the science of power.

Starting with the Marxian thesis that the working class is the group in modern society which can be organized to take power and to build a new order, Lenin created for this class a “vanguard” of leaders. They must be men of intelligence, will, daring; yet they must act in a disciplined manner, reinforcing a common direction. They must make the revolution a life-long profession, steadily studying the economic, political and social forces of the society in which they live. They must apply this knowledge in action. They must take active part not only in elections and political movements, but in strikes, trade union work, demonstrations, distribution of literature and all the other prosaic or dangerous activities through which the working class becomes organized and conscious of its power. They must keep close to the workers, learning from them and assisting them, and win the right to lead by the confidence they inspire.

How are such leaders to be found among the great hordes of the dispossessed and discontented? How, if found, are they to be welded into a disciplined, fighting force? Lenin had no illusions; he knew that the mass of exploited men who are squeezed out by the dislocations of capitalism, and who turn in hope or despair towards communism, contains many fools, knaves, fanatics and self-pitying failures as well as men of intelligence and will. He foresaw a long period of difficult struggle, in which men fit to lead would be tested by fire, men capable of learning would be trained by experience, and others would weed themselves out by their follies. Lenin himself gave most of his years to the slow work of building up and training a not very large but thoroughly tested Party, which could give leadership when the hour of revolution came. I have met simple workers to whom Lenin devoted hours of individual teaching, and who remember today the exact phrases he used with them forty years ago. The making of real Communists able to lead the masses is a long and costly process.

Nothing could be more absurd than the two contradictory views of Communists promulgated today by their opponents. They are usually pictured as planless inciters to violence and riot, people who have a crazy desire for chaos, in the hope that something vaguely called communism may somehow ensue. A more sophisticated view, to which no less a person than Sinclair Lewis falls victim in ''It Can’t Happen Here'', portrays them as brainless sheep required to act in blind obedience to the orders of their superiors for the sake of discipline. Neither of these types could possibly lead a successful strike, much less a revolution. A communist who increased risks by recklessness would be early eliminated; a man who only took orders would be useless as a leader. Communists must learn the difficult combination of intelligence with daring; they must learn to act together but they must all know why.

“What we build cannot be built by passive people,” said one of the secretaries of the Russian Communist Party to me. “We all had strong convictions; we fought for them and went to jail for them,” said another veteran Bolshevik. “Then in jail we fought with our imprisoned comrades over details of past policies, studying and learning from past errors. Often we found that the mistake of a few words in our theory had cost us a year in prison.” Again and again groups which could not agree split off from the others. Lenin made no effort to detain them; he distinguished sharply between those allies with whom co-operation was possible for a longer or shorter period, and the smaller group which would stick through everything. Thus was built up that Party of men who had placed their lives in each other’s hands so often that they could rely on each other with absolute assurance, not through blind submission but through a habit of mutual consultation and swift acceptance of joint decisions.

The most famous picture of the ideal Communist is given by Krupskaia, widow of Lenin, in an article entitled: “What a Communist Should Be Like.” “First of all a Communist is a social person, with strongly developed social instincts, who desires that all people should be well and be happy. Second, he must understand what is happening about him in the world—the mechanism of the existing régime, the history of the growth of human society, the history of economic development, of the growth of property, the division of classes, the growth of state forms. He must clearly picture whither society is developing—to a régime where the happiness of some will not be based on the slavery of others and where there will be no compulsion except strongly developed social instincts. And the Communists must clear the road, as you clear a path in the wilderness, to hasten its coming.

“Third, the Communist must know how to organize creatively. If he is a medical worker, for instance, he must know medicine, then the history of medicine in Russia and other lands, then the Communist approach to the problem of medicine, i.e., how to organize wide masses to create from the ranks of the toilers a powerful sanitary organization in the cause of health. He must know not only what Communism is and what is coming, what his own job in it may be and his approach to the masses. Fourthly, his personal life must be submitted to and guided by the interests of Communism. No matter how much he regrets giving up the comforts and ties of home, he must if necessary cast all aside and go into danger wherever assigned. . . . Body and soul he must be devoted to the interests of the toiling masses, of Communism.”

Men who have risen high in the Communist Party are characterized by these qualities listed by Krupskaia. They are usually reticent about their deepest motives; it is not the thing to gush one’s devotion. One learns of their qualities chiefly through others. Krupskaia, speaking to intimate Party friends at the funeral of her husband Lenin, found the completest expression in the words: “Lenin deeply loved the people.” Radek tells how Stalin, answering greetings sent him by the Party on his fiftieth birthday, “said something which, in the mouth of such a reserved man, sounded as though it came from the very depths of his being. Stalin said that he was ready to shed his blood ‘drop by drop’ for the proletariat.”<ref>Radek, ''Problems of Soviet Literature'', 144.</ref><ref group="ProleWiki">This seems to refer to Radeks speech at the Soviet Writers Congress in August 1934. A copy is available on [https://www.marxists.org/archive/radek/1934/sovietwritercongress.htm marxists.org]</ref>

Men who would lead the masses in changing the world by the Marxian method must obviously strive for constant growth in two directions: in ever-deepening understanding of social and economic forces and in ever-widening participation in workers’ struggles. Perhaps the first thing that strikes an outsider is the amount of time which all Communists devote to the study of Marxian theory. Managers of great steel plants and busy county officials under the pressure of harvest will find time, at unearthly hours like eleven at night or seven in the morning, for their study of Marxism or their class in current events, deeming these things as essential as their other pressing work.

Visitors to the Soviet Union are not infrequently amazed to find that a Party secretary in a rural township can discuss international affairs with an assurance and abundance of detail which few foreign editors of an American metropolitan news-paper can show, and will handle statistics and history with a good deal more ease than the “Brain Trust.” A prominent American politician once expressed to me doubts of the accuracy of the published interview of H. G. Wells with Stalin. Stalin’s references to the Cromwellian revolution seemed to him too detailed to have been available for conversation. “People,” he said, “don’t talk that way” But any Communist in the Soviet Union who did not know the essentials of Cromwellian revolution, and of other historic revolutions from which he is expected to learn, would join a class to “raise his ideological level.” A Communist who allowed himself to become as ignorant of world affairs as is the average American politician would be ruthlessly “cleaned out” of the Party, or told to join the group of “sympathizers” to learn what he has to know.

The emotional vagueness which is a feature of all capitalist political platforms, and which is indeed desired in order to win wide support without being too definite, is the exact opposite of Communist statement. The Communists even seem to be painfully definite, to “take refuge in formulæ,” or to split hairs over the exact interpretation of phrases. All science and technical knowledge, however, advance by just this splitting of hairs to find the exact chemical formula which produces the alloy or the mathematical relation which strengthens the arch of the bridge; discussions in any congress of physiologists or electricians are full of this “dull theory” without which no scientific progress can be attained. Communists take Marxism as such a science; to rise to eminence among them demands years, even decades, of close and penetrating study of social forces. This is no dogma to be learned once for all; it is a developing body of thought, constantly applied to and affected by new conditions. By the very theory of dialectics, these forces are changing. The speeches of Lenin and Stalin and other Party leaders never deal in stirring oratory or spell-binding generalities but in close and careful analysis. Stalin would no more attempt to sway a Communist congress by “force of personality” expressed in brilliant oratory and colorful phrasing, than Edison would have expected to convince a group of American engineers of the reliability of some new formula by emotional words. One such attempt would ruin either an Edison or a Stalin.

But Communists must not only be scientific; they must also learn to work with the masses. In this they face a special difficulty; the man who has thought for years in Marxian categories may find it as hard to explain them to simple people as an electrical engineer would find it to explain the theory of turbines to men in a candle-lighted world. This is more serious for the Communist than for the engineer; for the latter can build his turbines without help from the candle-lighted individuals, but the Communist cannot make a revolution without the people. Fortunately actions may speak as well as words, and all Communists are required to do active work which brings them in touch with the masses. When intellectuals apply for Party membership, it is a common practice to give them some tasks around a factory, such as teaching night classes in Russian language, civics or Marxism, or practical assistance in trade union work. After a year or two of such testing, the opinion of the workers is taken as to whether the candidate is fit to be a Party member.

Any Communist Party at any stage in its development in any country considers persons who cannot co-operate with workers’ movements as unfit for Party membership. In the Soviet Union where the rank and file of non-Party workers have already considerable knowledge of the Party’s ideals, it has become a common thing for them to assist in helping the Party in its selection of members. Two hundred thousand workers who joined the Party some two years ago were actually nominated by the non-Party workers, through repeated meetings and discussions as to what persons in their ranks should be recommended for Party membership. From time to time the Party “cleans out” its membership, and this is always done at open meetings to which all workers of the given institution are invited. Each Communist in the institution must give before this public an extended account of his life and activities, submit to and answer all criticism, and prove before the assembled workers his fitness to remain in the “leading Party.” Members may be cleaned out not only as “hostile elements, double-dealers, violators of discipline, degenerates, career-seekers, self-seekers, morally degraded persons” but even for being merely “passive,” for having failed to keep learning and growing in knowledge and authority among the masses.

People admitted to the Communist Party—this admission demands a period of study and probation—must give considerable time to unpaid “Party work” i.e., the various tasks of strengthening the organization and organizing the masses around it. Having chosen as the chief purpose of their life the achievement of the socialist revolution, they must learn how to build a joint program. They take part in the discussions from which arise the decisions of the Party and they are expected to carry out these decisions energetically but never blindly. For they must know why the decisions are made; they must understand the Party Line and be able to promote it without bothering other people for orders. They must have strong opinions and fight for them; but they must know when to fight and when to yield. If they cannot learn this, they will find themselves outside the Party, thrown out either as “passive” or as “opposition.” It is not an easy lesson; there have been many political mortalities.

Party members must learn to decide and act collectively, not only in determining the general line, but also in deciding their own work in it. They must consult and accept their comrades’ judgment as to where they themselves can be of most use. In the Civil War Communists were expected to be the first to volunteer for every battle-front. In the Soviet Union today they are first to be sent to difficult posts in industry and farming. They may be torn from jobs in which they are successful and sent to work which they hate; they must there-upon cease to hate it and do it well as an important task. I know of a high official who was taken from a train by a telegram sent through an obscure local secretary in a town through which he passed, and ordered to return for a different assignment. But no order is ever the command of a superior officer; it is the decision of a group of comrades with whom one has chosen to work. This is the famous Party discipline; known as “iron” discipline but also as “conscious” discipline, for it is based not on passive submission but on understanding participation and collective choice. The reward for this discipline is conscious participation in the making of history.

The Communists expect not only to lead the masses, but to learn from them in a constant interaction. They must “organize the proletariat”; they must “guide it in its class struggle.”<ref>Program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.</ref> They must “see ahead of the working class,” and be the “experienced general staff” which “every army at war must have if it is to avoid certain defeat.”<ref>Stalin, ''Leninism'', I, 88-89, Cooperative Publishers, Moscow.</ref> But they do not consider themselves a separate caste of leaders, but a “vanguard” intimately a part of the working class they lead. They modify their program to grant temporarily some “backward” demand of the masses, or to include permanently some new form or method which the masses invent. An example of the first was Lenin’s response to the peasants’ demands for splitting up the land, a backward step taken to secure peasant support and “in order that they may educate themselves by fulfilling their desires.” An example of the second was the adoption of “soviets” in government and “artels” in farming, neither of which forms had been foreseen by the Party until they arose. It is the working class which must dictate and not the Party; in 1925 when Zinoviev argued for dictatorship by the Party, Stalin fought against this “narrow point of view,” saying that the confidence between the masses of the people and the Party must not be destroyed by any peculiar Party rights, “because in the first place, the Party might be mistaken, and even if it were not, the masses might take some time to see that it was right.”<ref>Stalin, ''Leninism'', I, 51.</ref>

How can three million Communists lead one hundred and seventy million people? Because they are not alien to those millions, but are the most energetic part of them, whose capacity to lead has been repeatedly tested and recognized by the others. Millions of non-Party people today in the Soviet Union work loyally, even enthusiastically under Party direction, yet do not venture to call themselves Communists. One of my best friends was a woman who gave her life to the care of homeless children, and who said to me once: “My life began with the Soviet Power; it alone gave me the chance to fight for children. . . . I care more for the Party’s success than for anything in life.” Yet when her fellow-workers voted her “worthy of being a Communist,” she declined the honor, knowing she could not honestly join while she disagreed on one or two points in the Party program.

A fifty-two-year-old wheelwright, Rosenberg, whom I met in the Jewish Autonomous Territory of Birobidjan, had courageously dismantled his home in the Ukraine and taken his family of ten to pioneer in the Far East. He had fought through incredible hardships to build a collective industry which made carts; he was now a member of the city government giving much unpaid time to civic work. “When the Party decided to develop Birobidjan,” he explained, “I knew it would be a great future. It goes higher and higher to the building of socialism. I myself can’t build it, but if I work and others work, we’ll build it.” Few could have expressed the Communist goal more sincerely than Rosenberg, yet he did not think of joining the Party. “I don’t know enough,” he said. “I am just studying the first political courses. Serious reading is not so easy for me. I am fifty-two years old.”

In the Far North fourteen years ago I met Rimpalle, who had risked his life to run the Finnish border and “help the Revolution.” He organized the first quarries and mines in a hungry Arctic land; he created a trade union, a co-operative and a night-school for illiterate natives of the forests. He made $100,000 for the state that first summer and got for himself—it was the time of War Communism—only “rations of potatoes and good, fat gravy and one resoling of my boots.” Rimpalle said to me: “It’s a useful job. Up here so near the border and the propaganda of the White Finns, we needed to have an industry to give food to the people.” He was already a candidate for the Communist Party, expecting to be admitted to full membership in a few months.

These examples show what is required of Communists. Devoted activity under Communist direction, such as the Jewish wheelwright gave, is not enough. Ninety per cent allegiance, such as the social worker offered, is not enough. Nor was it enough for Rimpalle to work self-sacrificingly to increase socially owned wealth; he must understand consciously the political purpose of his work. I have in the course of fifteen years in the Soviet Union met an occasional Communist who was a grafter, and many more who were stubborn bureaucrats and unenlightened fanatics. But I have also seen how the Party throws out dead wood—not always accurately—and renews itself from the working class it leads.

Such is the organized Party which carried through the Revolution and which today welds into shape the great masses of the Soviet Union, with its vast distances, its once backward populations, its hundred and eighty-two nationalities, its foes on all borders. It succeeds by choosing its members with discrimination, by keeping them firmly organized, forever studying and continuously on the job.

The Communist Party does not expect to last forever. “When classes disappear and the dictatorship of the proletariat dies out, the Party also will die out.”<ref>Stalin, ''Leninism'', I, 96.</ref> It sees its task as belonging to a definite stage in human society, with a beginning, a development and an end. No other political party in the world has this type of historic consciousness, this supreme confidence; all others live from election to election, and make no long time plans. The Communist Party considers that it has a specific job in history and confidently expects to stay in power for the time required to carry it through.
=== CHAPTER III: THE DICTATORSHIP ===

{{Quote|“The conquest by the proletariat of such political power as will enable it to suppress all resistance on the part of the exploiters.”|Program of Russian Communist Party}}

{{Quote|“The dictatorship of the proletariat is not an end in itself. . . . (It) is a means, a path leading to socialism”|Stalin in Address to Sverdlov Students, June 1925}}

Most Americans shrink from the word “dictatorship.” “I don’t want to be dictated to,” they say. Neither, in fact, does anyone. But why do they instinctively take the word in its passive meaning, and see themselves as the recipients of orders? Why do they never think that they might be the dictators? Is that such an impossible idea? Is it because they have been so long hammered by the subtly misleading propaganda about personal dictatorships, or is it because they have been so long accustomed to seek the right to life through a boss who hires them, that the word dictatorship arouses for them the utterly incredible picture of one man giving everybody orders?

No country is ruled by one man. This assumption is a favorite red herring to disguise the real rule. Power resides in ownership of the means of production—by private capitalists in Italy, Germany and also in America, by all workers jointly in the USSR. This is the real difference which today divides the world into two systems, in respect to the ultimate location of power. When a Marxist uses the word “dictatorship,” he is not alluding to personal rulers or to methods of voting; he is contrasting rule by property with rule by workers.

The heads of government in America are not the real rulers. I have talked with many of them from the President down. Some of them would really like to use power for the people. They feel baffled by their inability to do so; they blame other branches of government, legislatures, courts. But they haven’t analyzed the real reason. The difficulty is that they haven’t power to use. Neither the President nor Congress nor the common people, under any form of organization whatever, can legally dispose of the oil of Rockefeller or the gold in the vaults of Morgan. If they try, they will be checked by other branches of government, which was designed as a system of checks and balances precisely to prevent such “usurpation of power.” Private capitalists own the means of production and thus rule the lives of millions. Government, however chosen, is limited to the function of making regulations which will help capitalism run more easily by adjusting relations between property and protecting it against the “lawless” demands of non-owners. This constitutes what Marxists call the dictatorship of property. “The talk about pure democracy is but a bourgeois screen,” says Stalin, “to conceal the fact that equality between exploiters and exploited is impossible. . . . It was invented to hide the sores of capitalism . . . and lend it moral strength.”<ref>Stalin, ''Leninism'', I, 46.</ref>

Power over the means of production—that gives rule. Men who have it are dictators. This is the power the workers of the Soviet Union seized in the October Revolution. They abolished the previously sacred right of men to live by ownership of private property. They substituted the rule: “He who does not work, neither shall he eat.”

What characteristics of the new régime most obviously showed its dictatorial character? They were the following:

First, the Bolsheviks took power without waiting for a majority vote—in the elections to the Constituent Assembly they had just received nine million out of thirty-six million ballots—but relying on their overwhelming majority among the industrial workers, and an overwhelming superiority in that part of the army near the capital cities. They maintained power by a shrewd analysis of social classes, and by satisfying the demands of the sections of the population whose support they needed.

Second, they organized the new government on the basis of the workers’ organizations, thus dis-franchising those classes which lived by private ownership, and giving a greater proportionate representation in the higher government bodies to workers than to peasants during the first eighteen years when equal voting by great masses of illiterate small owners would have wrecked policies of social ownership.<ref>This difference is commonly stated as a five to one proportion, but such was not the case. Industrial districts had in the higher organs one representative for 25,000 ''electors'', while rural districts had one for 125,000 ''population'', which included children. The proportion is thus nearer two to one, a much less disproportion than exists (in the reverse direction) between rural and city votes for many state legislatures in America. This disproportion in the Soviet Union was abolished when the rural districts reached literacy and large-scale farming. See next chapter.</ref>

Third, they took control of schools, press and all means of expression, and while encouraging the widest latitude of criticism by workers interested in augmenting or improving the public properties, suppressed any expressions which seemed to the government likely to strengthen the rights of private property or injure the efficiency of socially owned production. At certain periods when they felt their social ownership of production threatened, whether by sabotage, graft, or the strengthening of private owners, they suppressed these dangers as drastically as they thought necessary by means which varied from economic discrimination to deportation or shooting.

These are real characteristics which constitute dictatorship rather than any personal prestige of Stalin. Great men attain leadership under all forms of government; the technical forms through which Stalin leads are fully as democratic as those by which an American president governs, and infinitely more democratic than the dominance of a Morgan. Nor is the existence of a single Party necessarily a bar to democratic self-expression, which can find its way as well through one party as a dozen, as later chapters will show. But the above characteristics are definite indications of dictatorship, a rule to which not all men have equal access. They are the tactics of all owners in all countries and all periods of history when they feel themselves threatened. They are the tactics to which owners of private property resorted in Italy and Germany when the rising votes of communist and socialist workers threatened their ownership. They are resorted to today in sections of America where property feels threatened, whether by farmhands in Imperial Valley or sharecroppers in Arkansas and Alabama. They will be resorted to on a wider scale if American capitalism really feels itself slipping. Nothing in Soviet history indicates that the Bolsheviks were any more “dictatorial” or ruthless than owners of property anywhere under similar stresses. Certainly they were far less bloody and oppressive than any of the “dictatorships of the right”—whether in Hungary, Finland, China, Italy or Germany—established in retaliation or prevention by private ownership which really felt itself in danger.

What were the conditions which made the Bolsheviks establish a dictatorship? Why could they not wait until they were voted into power, and then take over one by one, by government decree or by taxation, the large-scale properties which they believed must be socially owned? The history of fascist seizures of power in face of the threat of socialist voting is beginning to give the world the answer to this question. The Bolsheviks knew the answer from their Marxian analysis of history. No owning class ever gave up ownership without struggle. The holding of government office is not itself power.

The power of ownership over the means of life is the day-by-day power which works incessantly, buying brains, corrupting or confusing governments, persistently re-establishing itself against any “will of the people.” Anyone who has experienced in a single American city, as I have in Seattle, the intensity and variety of methods which the capitalists use to fight so mild a thing as public ownership of street-cars, anyone who knows what they did to the war-time government-owned railroads, or today to the Tennessee Valley Corporation, must realize the resources possessed by capitalism against anything so mild as a popular vote. When they can no longer prevent a municipally owned utility, they corrupt it. They make it inefficient through graft or sabotage; they subordinate it to control by private banks. Meantime they continue to play through all the arts of high-paid propaganda on the minds of the electors, who waver and turn to other cures.

“The change from capitalism to communism is a whole epoch of history,” said Lenin. “Till it is ended, the exploiters inevitably have the hope of restoration.” Even after capitalists are overthrown on a local scale or on the scale of a single country, they remain for some time “stronger than the workers who overthrew them.” Their strength lies in their foreign connections with international capital, in the money and movable property which they still possess, in their organizing and administrative ability, their superior education, their knowledge of all the secrets of administration, their superiority in the art of war. They are furthermore helped by the force of habit and traditional ways of thinking which remain even in the minds of workers and especially in large sections of the middle classes for a considerable period after capitalism is overthrown.<ref>Quoted and condensed from Lenin, ''The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky'', Chap. 3.</ref>

Marxists therefore hold that the working class must maintain a dictatorial power for an “entire epoch of history” both to prevent attempts at restoration of capitalism and to re-educate the entire population in habits suited to socially owned production. “You will have to go through fifteen, twenty, fifty years of civil wars and international wars,” said Marx to the workers, “not only to change external conditions, but in order to change yourselves and to make yourselves fit for the exercise of political power.”<ref>Marx, ''Revelations on the Communist Trial in Cologne'', 1851.</ref>

The tactics used by the dictatorship in the Soviet Union were conditioned by the economic development of the land and its international relations. In the first years they were affected by foreign intervention and civil war; in later, years they conformed to and created the rapid economic advance and increasing international prestige of the country. Four chief epochs may be noted: the period of Workers’ Control in the first year of the Revolution; War Communism for the two and a half years of intervention; the New Economic Policy from 1921 to 1928; and the final offensive against capitalism ushered in by the first Five-Year Plan.

The new workers’ state inherited a country economically broken by the strain of World War. Peasants were seizing lands of landlords; factories had closed and their workers were hungry; banking was demoralized by the rapid fall of the currency; soldiers without food or munitions were fleeing home from the front. “Peace, land and bread,” was the cry of the country. The capitalists could not satisfy it and this brought the Bolsheviks to power. They at once gave land to the peasants, repudiated all state debts, nationalized banks and transport and created a state monopoly of foreign trade. Industry was left in private hands, but “workers’ control” committees were established from the workers in each industry. These examined all accounts, studied the source of raw materials and fought to keep up production against the attempt of private capitalists to close down the factories as unprofitable. Internal trade remained private; on the second day of the Revolution a proclamation urged traders to continue business as usual. A policy however was announced for the gradual combining of factories into large-scale trusts, which should then be nationalized, and for the gradual socializing of internal trade through co-operatives.

These policies—the normal reaction of a workers’ government wishing to rebuild the economic life of a ruined country with as little upheaval and disruption as possible, for the sake not of profit but of human welfare—united around the government the overwhelming majority of the population, including both workers and peasants. Opposition came from landlords, capitalists and the upper strata of engineers, civil servants and professional people; but if these used violence or sabotage against the new policy, they were suppressed by governing organizations composed of great masses of the common people.

A vivid example of dictatorship in this period is given by Lenin, in a contrast drawn between dictatorship by property and dictatorship by workers. “The state has forcibly to evict a family from a house. This is done time and again by the capitalist state and will be done by our proletarian state. . . . The capitalist state evicts the workers’ family which has lost its breadwinner and is unable to pay rent.” After describing the enforcement by a squad of police of the rights of property against poor people, Lenin continues with the picture of the dispossession of a rich man by the workers’ state.

“Our detachment of workers’ militia consists, let us say, of fifteen people—two sailors, two soldiers, two class-conscious workers (of whom only one, let us assume, is a member of our Party or a sympathizer), one intellectual, and eight members of the toiling poor; at least five are necessarily women, domestic servants, unskilled workers, and so on. They come to the rich man’s house, inspect it, and find that there are five rooms occupied by two men and two women. “This winter, citizens, you must confine yourselves to two rooms and place two rooms at the disposal of two families that are now living in cellars. For the time being, until with the help of engineers (you are an engineer, I think?) we build good dwellings for all, you will have to put yourselves to inconvenience. Your telephone will serve ten families. This will save about a hundred hours’ work in running to the stores and so forth. The student citizen in our detachment will write out two copies of the text of this state order and you will be kind enough to give us a signed declaration that you undertake to abide by it faithfully.”<ref>Lenin, ''Will the Bolsheviks Retain Power?'' published October, 1917.</ref> This is a vivid example of a dictatorship over property enforced by great masses of the common people.

Under pressure of foreign intervention and civil war, the limited nationalization of “Workers’ Control” merged into the period of “War Communism.” Attacking armies separated Soviet Russia for two and a half years from her chief food and fuel bases. The granary of the Ukraine, the cotton of Turkestan, the coal of the Donetz, the oil of Baku, the mines of the Urals were in enemy hands. The dictatorship adopted “War Communism,” the tactics of a besieged land. It requisitioned all grain and necessities of life, and rationed them under direct government control; it seized all factories and used the broken machines of one as spares to repair the scarcely less broken machines of another. This policy alienated large sections of the peasantry by crop requisition. It ruined industry more thoroughly than any modern industry has ever been ruined, being an efficient device for using up the last ounce of raw material and the last spare bolt. But the policy of “War Communism” enabled an already exhausted land to carry on for two and a half more years against the attacking armies of the world.

Soviet power survived. With the coming of peace Lenin at once introduced the New Economic Policy, an attempt to build up the country’s economic life as rapidly as possible by a “two-sided process of the development of capitalism and the development of socialism.”<ref>Stalin, ''Leninism'', I, 314.</ref> Grain requisitions were replaced by limited taxes with permission for free trade. Private capitalists were allowed to enter both trade and industry, the state retaining the “commanding heights” of land, finance, heavy industry, transport, and foreign trade. This policy brought the peasant, small enterpriser and professional classes back to loyalty—a wavering loyalty, for if some had been won to socialism, others now hoped to grow personally rich. Capitalist nations abroad echoed the belief that Russia was swinging back to the ancient order. But the Soviet workers, led by the Communists, gave time on holidays to great collective drives for repairing factories, making street-cars and new equipment as donations to their country. During “War Communism” they had worked for rations; now they worked for low but steadily increasing wages, building up out of their own sacrifice the first socialist accumulation which should give them economic power for the final offensive against capitalism. Thus industry which in 1921 produced one-fifth the pre-war standard was driven by fivefold increase in 1928 to “normalcy.”

Russia in 1928 was only half socialist. Most of industry was socially owned but farming was in the hands of peasant proprietors, the stronger of whom were petty capitalists, struggling not only to survive but to grow. Class strife went on between these emerging rural capitalists and the impoverished farmhands. Youth was leaving the farms and flooding the cities with unemployment. Discussion had racked the Communist Party as to whether socialism could be built in a single country, particularly a backward peasant land. Following the analysis of Stalin, the Party decided that it could be done by swiftly creating modern heavy industry and simultaneously industrializing farming. The Soviet Union plunged into that now famous struggle known as the Five-Year Plan, and emerged with large-scale industry and the largest scale farming in the world, both of them socially owned.

It was a bitter fight, carried through against the upper sections of the peasantry and part of the middle class. An epidemic of sabotage broke out in the industries among the higher engineering staff, who had consciously or half-consciously expected to advance towards privilege and wealth. Men high in the canning industry put broken glass, animal hair and fish tails into food destined for workers. A township veterinary who hated collectivization inoculated six thousand horses with plague. An irrigation engineer tried to discourage the policy of settling yellow-skinned nomads on the soil by using antiquated surveys which he knew would not deliver the water. These cases and thousands more are taken from confessions of men who were later repentant. The dictatorship fought back, shooting the most serious offenders, imprisoning and exiling others. The energy of loyal workers and engineers carried through the Five-Year Plan. Its success won over many earlier saboteurs so that by 1931 Stalin was able to announce that the intellectuals were turning towards the Soviet Government, and should be met by a policy of co-operation.<ref>Speech delivered at Conference of Leaders of Industry, June 23, 1931.</ref>

The most spectacular act of ruthlessness which occurred in those years was the exiling of several hundred thousand kulaks—rural property-owners who lived by trade, money-lending or by exploiting small mills, threshers, and hired labor—from farm homes in European Russia and the Ukraine to Siberia or the northern woods. The usual assumption outside the Soviet Union is that this exiling occurred through arbitrary action by a mystically omnipotent G.P.U. That organization did of Course organize the deportation and final place of settlement in labor camps or on new land. But the listing of kulaks who “impede our farming by force and violence” was done by village meetings of poor peasants and farmhands who were feverishly and not too efficiently organizing collectively owned farms with government loans of machinery and credits. The meetings I personally attended were as seriously judicial as a court trial in America. One by one there came before the people the “best families,” who had grabbed the best lands, exploited labor by owning the tools of production as best families normally and historically do, and who were fighting the rise of the collective farm—which had the right to take the best lands away from them—by every means up to arson, cattle-killing and murder. Obviously the situation offered chances for wreaking private grudges. Obviously the occasional agitator from the city was unconcerned with kulak “rights.” The meeting of farmhands and poor peasants discussed each case in turn, questioned the kulaks, allowed most of them to remain but asked the government to deport some as “trouble-makers.”

It was a harsh, bitter and by no means bloodless conflict, but not one peculiar to Russia. I was reminded of it again in 1933 by the cotton-pickers’ strike in San Joaquin Valley of California. California local authorities deported pickets who interfered with the farming of ranchers; Soviet authorities deported kulaks who interfered with the collectively owned farming of the poor. In both cases central governments sent commissions to guard against the worst excesses. But the “property” which could count on government support was in California that of the wealthy rancher; in the USSR it was the collective property of the poor.

Through all these struggles of eighteen years in the Soviet Union the Marxists had guessed right—one class held firm. Steadily the industrial workers supported and fought for their socialist state. Theirs was the dictatorship, the ownership, the rule. Led by Communist analysis, they made alliances with other parts of the population—with the great mass of the people to overthrow big landlords and capitalists and later with the poorer peasants to overthrow the richer. The middle classes changed back and forth in their loyalty; but the workers held through.

Today the chief fight of the dictatorship is against corruption and bureaucracy. The workers, in other words, struggle with their own government, not to overthrow it but to improve it by weeding out inefficiency. A vivid example of this was given by a letter from three railway-workers published in ''Pravda''. They told how the workers of their station, hearing that Sizran station was considered a model, chose three delegates to go and study it. “The election fell on us. However, to our great regret, we convinced ourselves that Sizran is no model.” The letter proceeds to expose fictitious bookkeeping which compelled engineers to list repeated repairs as new in order to protect the reputation of the repair shops, and other false entries which hid inefficiencies. They noted employees who had been demoted for calling too open attention to troubles. They did a thorough and technically accurate job of debunking Sizran, a station on a different railroad to which they had gone in search of good methods. Imagine workers from a station on the Erie giving this attention to study, analyze and reform a station on the Pennsylvania! Imagine their securing ready access to all the records of an alien line! Imagine this as routine news in a metropolitan daily paper, leading to check-up and reprimands of railway superintendents for inaccuracy in reporting their work!

This is today’s routine in the Soviet Union. Scores of letters like this appear daily in the press throughout the land. Some of them are ironic, some statistical, some outraged. But all of them express men who know themselves owners, and through ownership dictators of the land in which they live.

=== CHAPTER IV: THE GROWING DEMOCRACY ===

{{Quote|“Soviet Power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.”|Lenin}}

Step by step the Soviet Union fights forward towards that complete democracy which has never yet existed anywhere on earth. For democracy is neither absolute nor static. It varies in type, extent and intensity. It may grow or diminish. In the Soviet Union it grows.

What are the functions of government in the Soviet Union? How wide is the participation of the people? How much of their life can they control? Whence come the ideas that are followed in the land? What initiative and creative energy is expressed? Who rises to high posts and by what means? All these questions must be considered in determining what kind of democracy exists.

Let us take first the formal facts of voting, though this is far from exhausting in the Soviet citizen’s participation in government. The Soviet Union has today the largest body of voters any where in the world. Moreover a larger percentage of them come out to elections than in any other country; they give more time to their elections and decide a greater variety of questions.

All “toilers” over the age of eighteen may elect and be elected; the word is interpreted to include students, housewives, old people who have passed the age of work as well as those more formally known as workers. Voting thus extends to a younger age than is common elsewhere, and there are no disqualifications for transient residents, paupers, migratory workers, soldiers, sailors, such as exist in most countries; even non-citizens may vote if they work in a Soviet industry. There are no restrictions for sex, creed or color, nor even for illiteracy. The only significant restriction relates to “exploiting elements,” but the steady decrease of privately owned enterprises has cut the disfranchised to 2.5 per cent of the population in the 1934 elections; by 1937 it is expected that all will have the vote. In the 1934 elections 91,000,000 people were entitled to vote, and of these 77,000,000, or 85 per cent, actually participated, which is double the proportion found in most countries.

Let us take a motion picture of a Soviet election. In December 1934 the Moscow streets were thronged with processions, continuing for several days. Special street-cars, gay with banners, carried people to meetings. Men and women gathered in side streets, formed in line with merry chatter and went with bands and flags to the building secured for their election meeting.

All over the country for more than a month elections had been going on in far-away factories and villages. Soviet elections do not take place on a single day but are determined by local convenience within a period of several weeks prior to the convening of an All-Union Congress. Localities choose dates which will enable their outgoing governments to finish their business, and give the incoming governments time to prepare demands for the All-Union Congress. These candidates and demands had been subjects of much discussion. But the attitude to the elections expressed itself rather in action than in talk. Hundreds of thousands of peasants were joining collective farms “to break with the past and enter the elections as collective farmers.” Factory workers were energetically completing new models of locomotives, turbines, inventions, to send as presents to the coming congress. There were, in fact, so many of these presents that the sending of most of them was ordered confined to reports.

In wooded mountains of Siberia the dark-skinned Oirots announced proudly: “We have abandoned the wandering life of wigwams; we have raised our literacy rate from 6 to 89 per cent; we enter these elections as educated farmers, settled on our own soil.” From the Turkoman Republic they were matching this claim with another: “Our once suppressed women have increased the proportion who turn out to elections from 2.5 per cent to 73 per cent in these eight years.” The historic city of Kiev was boasting: “Half our elected deputies are women. We lead the Soviet Union in the proportion of women elected to office; this means that we lead the world.” But their boast was matched by the textile city Tver, now renamed Kalinin, which has fully as many.

Young Pioneers were reciting poems to urge on their elders:

<blockquote>That we may build more firmly, Advancing more confidently to victory, We choose to our Soviets firm, tested fighters, Close-welded, the best of our best. </blockquote>

On the southern Kazak steppe an aged yellow-skinned herdsman, dying, sent a last message to his son who had been village president and who was now elected delegate to the All-Union Congress: “All the years of my life were dark with toil and hunger. But I lived to see the new day. Take care of the Soviet power, my son; it is our power, our happiness.”

Along the Arctic coast the autumn herring run began a few days before the date set for local elections. The fishermen went to sea. Some of the election commissioners held elections in the absence of a considerable number of voters and were roundly denounced for it by ''Pravda'', central organ of the Communist Party. “A gross violation of Soviet democracy! What right have commissioners to hold elections when workers cannot come? We are glad to note that many of the ﬁshermen had a better sense of their obligations. Many crews held their own meetings and sent deputies ashore with their instructions. But they should not have been forced to this irregularity. The proper course was found by those commissioners who held regular election meetings on the boats and thus combined enthusiastic work for a good herring catch with the collective decision of what to do with it.”

All of this, taken together and multiplied by millions, makes plain the essence of the Soviet election. It is an act of joint owners deciding what to do with their production, how to build a good life on the proceeds. The task of officials is not to enforce some precedent but to find ways of adjusting election machinery to voters. “The hottest elections we ever had,” they bragged of the 1934 elections, proud of the increasing popular participation in government, which is relied on to check bureaucracy and make state enterprises efficient.

The basic unit for government is the working institution, the factory or office; in rural districts it is the village. Deputies are chosen to the local government, the village or city soviet.<ref>The word “soviet” means “council.” City soviet is city council.</ref> The basis of representation and size of the local soviet depends on the size of the community: Gulin village, whose election I visited, has one deputy for every forty voters and a village soviet of thirteen members. Moscow city elects one deputy for fifteen hundred voters and has more than two thousand members in its city soviet. These local deputies meet soon after election to form the new government. They divide among themselves the various departments, which range from the five sections of Gulin village—farming, livestock, culture, roads and finance—to twenty-eight sections, each with over forty deputies, through which Moscow city does business. Besides the more commonly known functions, these local governments own and manage local industry, which in a large city like Moscow includes many municipally owned factories, the street-cars, subway, lights, water, and housing. They receive revenue from public properties, but their budgets may also be augmented by taxes and state loans. Some cities actually bring in revenue—it will be remembered that they get all the house rents; others need help from the higher governments.

On these local governments is built up the whole structure of central government.<ref>A new constitution is in preparation which will change many details, but it will hardly change the principle of close connection between local, state and central bodies in one system.</ref> Local soviets elect deputies to a congress of soviets; the township congress elects to the province, and so on up to the All-Union Congress of Soviets, the highest body in the country. Each of these congresses elects its executive committee and the heads of its various departments; for the highest government these are the great Commissariats of heavy and light industry, finance, health, and so forth. Local departments are both horizontally and vertically controlled, by local governments and by the corresponding department in the higher government. Thus a township health department is responsible both to the township executive committee and to the provincial health department. If orders clash, if a local soviet takes the hospital for some other use, its health department appeals to the provincial health department which brings pressure on the local soviet through the provincial government in the interests of public health.

The greater part of this intricate yet unified system of government is carried on by unpaid work. Elected deputies, whether to village or the All-Union Congress, receive no salaries of office. They draw their usual wages from the factory or institution which sends them and in which they keep on working, except insofar as they may be “released from production” for the needs of government; this varies with the importance of the work they do. There is thus no hard and fast line between the citizen and the man in office. Deputies are a link between the collective life of the factory and the larger collective life of the country. Any worker may approach them conveniently any day in their place of work to ask about the fulfillment of instructions given by the voters. They may be recalled by their constituents at any time simply through a factory meeting.

If voters thus constantly call on their deputies, the deputies are equally entitled to call on the voters for help in carrying out the election program they have voted. A deputy is no substitute for the people, no ruler; he is the representative who organizes them in their own tasks of voluntary government work. Millions of citizens take active part in the sections of the government—housing commissions, school commissions, taxing commissions, labor inspection and so on. Those who develop a taste for running public affairs will be chosen at some election for more continuous and responsible work. Those who specialize in some field, such as health, courts, housing, may be sent on pay for some months or years of study and become full-time civil servants in these departments.

The growth of democracy in the Soviet Union thus depends directly on the extent to which citizens can be interested in taking part in operations of government. This interest is in part assured by the fact that government is so clearly the direct organizing of all aspects of the citizen’s life. In a million matters the citizens give direct instructions during the election. They order the increase of school-houses or sound films, the improvement in the quality of bread, the increase of retail stores, the transport of goods in big cities by night; they demand the breaking-up of housing trusts into smaller co-operatives, or the introduction of a less specialized education in the schools. All of these were part of some 48,000 instructions issued directly by Moscow voters to their city government, which reported within three months on the fulfillment of many hundred demands and on the disposition made of all. When instructions clash, as when some citizens want an odorous industrial plant removed from their neighborhood while others want it to stay, commissions are formed which try to satisfy not merely the majority, but as nearly as possible everybody, not through a showing of hands in opposition, but through various adjustments to the suggestions made by all. Capitalist ownership of private property limits the citizen’s participation, in government to an approval or rejection—expressed in conflict—of general policies. Socialist ownership causes government policies to grow directly and naturally from the correlated demands of millions of people, all of whom are interested in improving the country’s wealth.

The interest of citizens in government is also consciously promoted by the Communist Party which stirs up wide competitions between factories, villages, cities, as to the extent and energy of their participation. An industrial plant where less than 95 per cent of the workers come to the election hangs its head in shame as an institution lacking in civic consciousness. Candidates never make speeches or election promises; this would be considered highly indelicate. But the voters pride themselves on picking deputies whose previous work has been notable and who therefore give promise of being widely useful. They select a fellow worker, not an outside politician. Students choose a student, auto-workers choose an auto-worker, the Moscow Grand Opera elects a famous singer. The future task of these deputies is to extend on a wider scale the type of work for which they are already known. The opera singer will organize connections between the Moscow Grand Opera and the villages, sending out artists to help rural singing classes. The printer on the ''Peasants’ Gazette'' who mechanized its mailing list of two million subscribers was elected to the Moscow city soviet with instructions to help mechanize all the newspapers of the city. A textile worker who helps organize a good day nursery in her factory will be elected by her fellow workers to help improve the city’s day nurseries, and will choose to work on the health section of the local government.

The operation of Soviet democracy is thus so intimate, continuous and organic that the observer fresh from capitalist politics hardly recognizes it as government. Where is the debate? Who determines general policies? Can the people throw out the upper officials? Can they throw out Stalin? The Communist Party? The Soviet voter, when asked these last questions, replies in a puzzled way: “Why should we want to?” The questioner thinks he has been evaded. But all elections presuppose an existing economic system, which voting is powerless to change. Voters in America cannot change Rockefeller’s method of operating oil companies for private profit. Similarly no Soviet election raises the issue of returning public properties to private hands: this was settled by the Revolution, and forms the foundation beneath the whole government.

Barring that question, there is nothing whatever that Soviet voters cannot change. They actually do change thousands of officials at every election, and as their acquaintance with the wider problems of the country grows, the forms of democracy are being widened to include direct control of the highest officials. Stalin’s chief post is not in the government, but as general secretary of the Communist Party, which would certainly remove him if his policy and actions should ever discredit him with the people; at present he is by far the most popular man in the country. To throw out the Communist Party bodily would be to throw out all the leading and organizing elements in all factories, farms, schools and enterprises; it could clearly be done only by upheaval leading to chaos. But the citizens are constantly at work changing the very membership of the Party, any member of which may be “cleaned out” on protest of his non-Party associates that he is too dictatorial, too rough towards workers, or merely not a fit leader.<ref>This is discussed in Chaps. 1 and 5.</ref>

Several elections which I attended will show concretely how soviet democracy functions. Four election meetings were held simultaneously in different hamlets of Gulin village, which had no assembly hall big enough for all. One of these meetings threw out the Party candidate, Borisov, because they felt that he neglected their instructions; they elected a non-Party woman who had displayed energy in improving the village and were praised by the election commissioner—himself a Party member—for having discovered good government timber which the Party had neglected. The central meeting in Gulin expected 235 voters; 227 appeared and were duly checked off by name at the door. There ensued personal discussion of every one of nine candidates, of whom seven were chosen. Mihailov “did good work on the roads.” The most enthusiasm developed over Menshina, a woman who “does everything assigned her energetically; checks farm property, tests seeds, collects state loans.” Dr. Sharkova, head of the Mothers’ Consultation, was pushed by the women: “We need a sanitary expert to clean up our village.” The incoming soviet was instructed to “increase harvest yield within two years to thirty bushels per acre, to organize a stud farm, get electricity and radio for every home, organize adult education courses, football and skiing teams, and satisfy a score of other needs.

In the Moscow Architectural Institute where 1,500 men and women are qualifying to become architects, every class in the school held three sessions on the elections, discussing first the shortcomings of the outgoing government, then instructions to the new government, and lastly candidates. The fourteen hundred instructions sent in by the students included more and better draughting pencils, evening schools in drawing, more money for students’ excursions to see new architecture, more exhibitions of foreign architecture, fruit trees to beautify Moscow, artists to be held responsible for designs of state-made texiles, township architects to be appointed to advise the new construction on farms. Similarly the 1,500 voters of the ''Peasants’ Gazette'' turned in 1,500 proposals, which were carefully worked over by committees, published in a special newspaper issued for the voters, and given to their deputy to put through with their help. These included adequate textbooks for all pupils in the schools, an increase in the number of children’s theaters, strengthening the fight against hooliganism, closing the sale of liquor on Suchevski Street opposite school Twenty-two—the latter being the common form of the fight against alcohol.

Instructions thus adopted become the program of incoming governments, which they use as a weapon to get what they require from provincial and central authorities. Some of the demands can be put through by the electors themselves with the help of their deputy; others need central assistance. When the All-Union Congress meets it knows how many villages are demanding air-dromes, sound films, textbooks, electrification. These demands, correlated by engineers and economists, form the content for future development of the life of the country in the direction its citizens choose. But the citizens themselves expect to work to accomplish it. If villagers ask for a seven-room school or a landing field for farm airplanes, they expect deputies to investigate possible fields, make recommendations, get the needed machines from some central authority; but they themselves expect to haul the timber or pay the men who haul it with labor days credited against the joint harvest.

Democracy in Soviet life is not confined to government. Trade unions organize many aspects of workers’ life; collective farms and co-operatives organize production and distribution for the farmers. Their organization is separate from that of government; it is also democratically controlled. In the past two years democracy has become more intimate and decentralized in both these directions. The administration of social insurance, which in 1936 will have eight billion rubles for hospitals, day nurseries, diet kitchens, invalid benefits, old-age pensions and the like, was two years ago given over to the trade unions, as was also the inspection of factories and of workers’ food stores. Similarly the whole organization of collective farming, including the relation between fields operated jointly and plots individually worked by farm members, is today in the hands of the farmers themselves, decided by the general meeting at which not less than two-thirds are present. Thus democracy grows more flexible, the intermediate apparatus is lessened, and the various functions of government are handled by those whom they most directly concern.

The extension of social ownership into the farms and the growth in the intelligence of the entire electorate has made possible a third extension of democracy. A new constitution is being drafted by the collective labor of thousands of people in all parts of the land. Economists and historians are studying the constitutions of all countries and considering every detail of democratic technique; their reports will be further discussed in every factory and farm of the country before the constitution takes final form. It is known, however, that it will include direct election, secret ballot, and equal representation for all citizens, replacing the inequality which hitherto obtained between city workers and peasants. At is also expected to abolish all disfranchised classes, since by 1937 social ownership will be universal and all citizens will belong to one toiling-owning class.

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” was said once of the democracy of capitalist society whereby small private owners protected their rights. But socialism demands more than vigilance. Eternally co-operating human energy is the price of socialism and of that complete democracy which operates jointly owned means of production for the expanding life of all. This is the final stage towards which the present Soviet democracy struggles and grows.

=== CHAPTER V: THE UNION OF NATIONS ===

{{Quote|“No nation can be free if it oppresses other nations.”|Lenin}}

{{Quote|“Soviet power is to toiling Kazaks like rain in the desert.”|Letter of Kazak peasant to Peasants’ Gazette.}}

When the All-Union Congress of Soviets meets in Moscow, it presents a vivid and colorful assembly. Flat-faced Tartars from old Kazan, yellow-skinned Uzbeks and Tajiks from the hills and irrigated valleys in the heart of Asia, slant-eyed Tunguz from the Far Northeast over against Alaska, mix with many score nationalities from the Caucasus to pass the laws which shall govern all these peoples. Many of them are dark-skinned peoples, formerly exploited by the Russians, but equal citizens now under the Soviets. It is as if Congress in Washington contained a score of southern Negroes, half a dozen Mexican farmers from Arizona and California, scattered representatives of the surviving tribes of Indians, an Eskimo, a Hawaiian, an Indian from Porto Rico, a mixed-blood from Panama, all legislating on equal terms with auto-workers from Detroit, steel-workers and miners from the Pittsburgh valley, and American farmers from the great west, A British governing assembly similarly formed would show an overwhelming majority from the dark-skinned peoples of Asia and Africa.

Tsarist Russia was known as the “prison of nations.” No imperialist power has a history of more brutal racial and national oppression, Nation after nation of the proud mountaineers in the Caucasus was literally driven into the Black Sea by the conquering Russians. The Tartars of Crimea perished by tens of thousands in their flight across the Black Sea to Turkey. The tribes of the great plains and the primitive peoples of the Arctic were debauched in the time-honored imperialist way by the vodka of their conqueror and subdued in soul by the emissaries of his religion, that they might be more easily robbed of lands and furs. Even more bitter, perhaps, than the robbery was the insulting “superiority of the conquerors. “They cheated us and afterwards despised us,” said a flashing-eyed woman Tunguz from the Arctic. "Eh, but it was bad in the old days; all my life I hated Russians.”

The country which fell to the Soviet power to organize was seething with national hates, incited and nurtured by the oppression of centuries. Tsarist imperialism, like all imperialisms, not only oppressed directly, but also set one nation against another. Turks massacred Armenians, Armenians massacred Turks, Ukrainian peasants, stirred up by Russian gendarmes, murdered Jews. The Soviet Government faced in all its intensity that “national problem" which made Austria and the Balkans for generations the tinder box of Europe and has added bitterness to the great conflicts of the modern world.

The Communist policy on nationality was developed over a period of decades by applying the Marxian analysis to the history of nations. Stalin, a Georgian, member of a proud nation which had for centuries been decimated by the wars of its greater neighbors in that hotbed of national hates, the Caucasus, was one of the ablest theoreticians. We find him in the years before the World War developing the exact definition of “nation” as a “historically evolved, stable community of language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a community of culture,"<ref>''Marxism and the National Question'', 1913.</ref> and defending this conception against those who viewed a nation as a matter of "race,” the precursors of today’s fascists, Capitalism both combines nations and drives them asunder. It knits together peoples of earth by the railroad, the steamboat, the rapid mail, the newspaper. It creates the material basis for the brotherhood of all nations but the methods of its expansion brutally thwart that hope It advances into the backward lands of earth by plunder and annexation. The “civilized” people rob the "uncivilized" ones and finally war among themselves for the right to rob. Imperialism steadily increases both the economic unity of the earth, and the national hates which tear the unity asunder.

The national policy adopted on the basis of the analysis by the Social-Democratic Party of Russia in the years before the war repudiated every form of compulsion of nationalities, recognized the right of each people to determine its destiny, and stated that a durable union of peoples could be accomplished only by voluntary consent and was possible only through the overthrow of capitalism. The first practical test of this principle came in May of 1917, when the Kerensky government of Russia refused the demand of Finland to secede. Lenin declared at the conference of the Social-Democratic Party on May 12: “We say to the Russian people: don’t dare rape Finland; no nation can be free that oppresses other nations.” Stalin expressed the belief that, “now after the overthrow of tsardom nine-tenths of the peoples will not desire secession,” but that those who did wish to, must if course be allowed to secede, while a system of regional economy should be set up for the peoples which decided to remain.

When the October Revolution brought the Bolsheviks into power, they at once renounced all rights to Finland, evacuated the Russian troops from northern Persia and canceled the claims of the Russian imperialists in Mongolia and China. The breaking up of tsarist Russia gave an opportunity to the imperialist powers of the world to fish in troubled waters. England, France, and Germany backed the aspirations of various border nationalities with funds. Yet it was the Bolsheviks and not those imperialist backers who first recognized Latvia, Esthonia, Lithuania as separate states. The Soviets, however, did not only recognize nations; they recognized the right of the workers and peasants to revolt. The Ukrainian workers and peasants overthrew the Ukrainian bourgeois Rada; the poor peasants of Turkestan threw out their so-called autonomous government; the “national councils” of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan were supported by foreign money but not by their own masses. Peasants’ and workers’ uprisings in these countries were assisted by the Bolsheviks as part of the October Revolution. The newly rising governments of workers and peasants were given military and economic and drawn into a socialist “federation.”

This federation at first was loosely organized. Regional autonomy expressed itself in a variety of flexible forms. Some of these local governments retained their own foreign offices; others issued their own money. Each nationality received the amount of freedom which its workers and peasants demanded. The Communists relied on the pressure of mutual common interests to bring and hold these peoples together, once capitalist exploitation, the source of their bitterness, was removed. Meanwhile, they paved the way by abolishing all the special privileges of the

“colonizers,” i.e., those Russian and Cossack groups which had received special lands and privileges from the tsar in return for their services in suppressing their neighbors. The Communists also pushed the policy of recruiting local governments from local people, established schools, courts, administrations, in the native languages, and rapidly trained from formerly illiterate and suppressed natives the future teachers and leaders of their people.

The fruits of this policy were seen on December 30, 1922, when, on the initiative of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia, later joined by the Ukraine and White Russia, the amalgamation of all the Soviet Republics into a union took place at the very time when the states if post-war Europe were increasingly dividing into hostile camps. Thus was formed the Soviet Union, a union of nations. The name “Russian" was dropped from the official title of the country which is known as the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, of which the Russian republic is only one.<ref>There are seven constituent republics, the Russian, the Ukrainian, the White Russian, the Transcaucasian, the Uzbek, the Turkoman, the Tajik. Many of these, and especially the Russian, which is by far the largest, contain smaller autonomous republics within them. The number of nations represented by delegates in the All-Union Council of Nationalities is forty-two.</ref> Nearly half of its 170 million people belong to nationalities other than Russian. The number of these nationalities is variously given; the census of December, 1926, showed 182 different nationalities with 149 languages. They are people of different races and colors. They range from the reindeer keeping Eskimo of the north, to the Kazak sheep herder of southern deserts, from the flax growers of White Russian swamps through the many-nationed Volga wheat lands to the cotton producers of Central Asia.

The classic statement of the contrast between the national policy of capitalism and that of socialism was given in the preamble to the Constitution of the new union: “There in the camp of capitalism we have national animosity and inequality, colonial slavery and chauvinism, national oppression and pogroms, imperialist brutalities and wars.

“Here, in the camp of socialism, we have mutual confidence and peace, national freedom and equality, the peaceful co-existence and fraternal collaboration of peoples.

"The attempts made by the capitalist world during the course of decades to solve the problem of nationalities by combining the free development of peoples with the system of exploitation of man by man have proved fruitless.... The bourgeoisie has proved itself utterly incapable of bringing about the collaboration of peoples.

“Only in the camp of the Soviets... has it proved possible to abolish national oppression root and branch, to create an atmosphere of mutual confidence, and to lay the foundations for the fraternal collaboration of peoples.”

The preamble mentioned, as reasons for a closer union, the economic needs of the war-ruined land, the need of a joint foreign and military policy in the midst of encircling foes, and said that “the very structure of Soviet government, which is internationalist in its class character, impels the toiling masses of the Soviet republics to unite into one socialist family.” It concluded with a guarantee of equal status for all people, the right of secession for each republic and the right of admission for “all Soviet Republics, whether now existing or hereafter to arise."

The Bolsheviks did not rest content with the formal act of union. The Central Congress, elected on the basis of population, which put the Russian nationality in a dominant position, was supplemented by a “council of nationalities." It is one of the two chambers of the legislative and administrative government of the country, no legislation involving national rights may be passed without it. Besides this legal status of equality, a policy was adopted assisting the more backward nationalities in their economic and cultural development, which alone could give them actual equality with the more developed nationalities. New industrial centers were established, modern methods of agriculture and irrigation introduced, peasant and handicraft co-operatives organized. Every national republic was encouraged in the fullest development of a culture, “national in form, socialist in content."

The meaning of that phrase, <nowiki>''</nowiki>national in form and socialist in content,” was vividly expressed for me by a Jew of Birobidjan, the autonomous Jewish territory rising in the Soviet Far East. “We distinguish between nationalism and nationality,” he said. "If we should claim that the Jews are a chosen people, the best and brainiest in the world, that’s nationalism. It’s dangerous nonsense, the kind of murderous nonsense that leads Turks to attack Armenians or white Americans to lynch Negroes. The assertion of the right of one culture to dominate another, or even to pre-eminence—that is the capitalist wish to exploit, and it leads to war. We have no right to exploit or to claim pre-eminence; but we have the same rights as others to develop our own characteristic culture in peace. The free development of all kinds of national culture adds to the variety and significance of the world. Our policy in this matter is part of the Soviet respect for human individuality—which again is different from individualism. We have no respect for the individuals who hold back history; but all those individuals who help push history forward—workers, writers, all productive elements—must be helped to fullest expression. Hence the Soviet Union has respect for even the smallest national culture, since each of them enriches all human culture and each of them is unique. Eventually, we shall no doubt all merge in one nation and one language, but the road to it is not by suppression and impoverishment, but by the fullest development of all variety.”

National prejudices still exist in the minds of some Russians, due to their past privilege of superiority. National grudges still remain in the minds of formerly suppressed peoples, who long learned to distrust the Russians. These form the final problem. If they lead to even minor conflicts based on nationality, they are firmly dealt with. Ordinary drunken brawls between Russians may be lightly handled as misdemeanors, but let a brawl occur between a Russian and a Jew in which national names are used in a way insulting to national dignity, and this becomes a serious political offense. Usually, the remnants of national antagonisms require no such drastic methods; they yield to education. But the American workers who helped build the Stalingrad Tractor Plant will long remember the clash which Lewis and Brown had with the Soviet courts after their fight with the Negro Robinson, in the course of which they called him “damn low-down nigger." The two white men went back to America, disgraced in Soviet eyes by a serious political offense; the Negro remained and is now a member of the Moscow City Government.

What has been the result of this national policy of the Communists, applied to people in all stages of development from the nomads of the great plains to the proudly cultured Georgians? It

has welded the strength of scores of formerly subject peoples around the Revolution and enabled the Russian workers to beat back their enemies. It has abolished age-long hates with unbelievable speed. It has released tremendous energy of devotion which gave a great economic and cultural impetus. It has dealt a mortal blow to that legend of “inferior” and “superior" races into which capitalism divided the earth, the former of which are the doomed objects of exploitation, while the latter bear “the white man’s burden,”—the mission to exploit. Over against this legend, exalted today by fascism into a religion, stands the whole experience of the USSR. The liberated non-European nations, once drawn into the channel of Soviet development, are no less capable than Europeans of truly progressive civilization.

New centers of industry have risen m the national republics more rapidly than in the rest of the Soviet Union, as part of the Communist policy to ‘equalize the backward districts with the center.’ During the first Five-Year Plan, when the industrial output of the entire country doubled, it increased 3.5 times in the national republics. The progress was most rapid in the most backward; the great plains of Kazakstan saw a 4.5 times increase in industrial output, which the Central Asian Republics attained a sixfold growth. Based on these economic achievements was the growth in education and culture. Seventy nationalities adopted the Latin alphabet during the first Five-Year Plan. Many nationalities had no alphabet at all before the Revolution; they received their written language as a gift from the Soviet power. Among all the nations spectacular increases had been made in literacy, in the growth of books and in the arts. The first All-Union Theatrical Olympiad held some years ago showed that many nations have developed a truly national theater, which in some cases has already reached the level of high art.

An important chapter in Soviet national policy is the story of how ten million nomads are being transformed into stable fanners. The Kirghiz, the Kalmyk, the Gypsy, the reindeer herders of the Far North and the mountain people of Central Asia and the Caucasus—tribes which for centuries led a semi-barbaric existence under the threefold oppression of the tsars’ officials, their native chieftains and the medicine men—arc already developing collective farms. Seven million of those who roamed the plains and hills and tundra have already settled, it is planned to settle the remaining three million by the end of the second Five-Year Plan. The Soviet Government gave them land for tilling and pasture, irrigated their fields; provided money and building materials for barns and blacksmith shops, homes and bath-houses, for the purchase of livestock and seed. Soviet farm experts taught them methods of farm cultivation.

Especially picturesque are the peoples of the Arctic tundra. Twenty-six nations have been listed in this vast region, the most populous of which, that of the Tunguz, numbers only 60,000. Before the Revolution none of these peoples had an alphabet, a written language or a school. Today most of them have received a written language, and printed books. Several hundred schools in the native tongue have pushed their way along the Arctic coast, some traveling with the reindeer herds of the nomads, others building dormitories where children spend the winter.

"Once they looked upon us as wild beasts," wrote a member of the Nentsi people, reindeer herders of the North. "There are still Nentsi living who were exhibited in the tsarist time in zoological gardens of Russia and foreign lands. They called us 'Samoyeds’ (cannibals) and the tsar's government legalized this as our shameful name—but now we begin to sing new songs.

For our tundra is new. An experimental farm center has risen beyond the Arctic circle; we have raised vegetables! On the Pechora meadows has appeared the first tractor. When the first radio came, how it frightened us Nentsi. But now every day the number of literate people grows.”

During the past year many of the national republics celebrated their fifteenth anniversary. Briefly they flamed across the columns of the Soviet press—Daghestan with its thirty languages; Kazakstan, largest and most arid of all the republics; northern Karelia of forests and marble mountains, “where every fisherman has a lake of his own"; far-south Armenia, centuries old in civilization and suffering; each of them told its achievements under Soviet power.

To Alma-Ata, new capital of the yellow-skinned, once nomad, Kazaks, who, as late as 1919 were believed by one of their own nationalist leaders to be “doomed to a slow death," came a congress of 748 scientific and cultural workers to report on the country's educational growth. Before the Revolution there were 13,000 children in the schools of this vast area; now there are half a million. A national theater, an opera, a symphony orchestra, seventeen institutions of higher learning are counted among the cultural achievements. They arise on the industrial basis of Karaganda copper, the Turksib railroad, the great mines at Ridder, the Emba-Orsk oil pipeline.

On the borders of Afghanistan the youngest Soviet republic, the Tajiks, celebrated ten years of existence. Soviet power has meant to them 100 million rubles’ worth of irrigation, the erection of great textile plants, the sinking of mines, the creation of a network of technical schools. Scientific excursions have mapped their high Pamirs, finding gold and precious minerals on the slopes. Tens of thousands of tractors, plows, harrows and modern farm implements have come to the cotton fields where once the camel pulled the wooden plow. On the site of an ancient village has grown the new capital, Stalinabad, an industrial center. Airplanes land in mountain villages whose inhabitants before the Revolution never saw a wheeled cart. Soviet power found only half of one per cent of the Tajiks literate; today nine-tenths of the children attend public school.

One by one the list unrolls of 182 nationalities, which have created industries, modern farming, schools and a national culture under Soviet power. Nor are the nationalities mere recipients of blessings from the more advanced Russians. Creative energy pours increasingly from them all to enrich their common Soviet life. Some of the smaller nationalities have already made records which place them in the vanguard of the Soviet Union. Armenia, once ravaged by national massacres, us today a model republic of the Transcaucasus, celebrated for its thriving industries. Kabardino-Balkaria, a district of two Mohammedan peoples on the northern slopes of the Caucasus, has created the most famous collective farms of the USSR. It developed the idea of “socialist farm cities” designed by architects, which is spreading through the whole Soviet Union, and the policy of making older farmers inspectors of quality, which brought happiness and self-respect to hundreds of thousands of aged men in the Soviet land.

The devotion of suppressed peoples, both within and without its borders, is the prize which the Soviet national policy has won. ‘Soviet power is toiling Kazaks like rain in the desert,” is a proverb of the Kazak old men quoted in the Soviet press by Kliumov, eighteen-year-old president of a Kazak village. “The Party of Lenin and Stalin has resurrected peoples from the dead, peoples who less than dust. Now these peoples have themselves conquered the earth and have come to report their victory to their leader," said the Tajik poet Lahuti, arriving in Moscow with a delegation of triumphant record-making cotton-pickers. “The past is a stairway of years carpeted with pain and beggary," said Arith Shakirov, one of the cotton-pickers. “The Uzbeks feared to go along the road of the Arabs, the Tajiks carried sticks when they walked through the Uzbek quarter. Hardly anyone could read. The past is gone. On its ruins we build a bright new life. Woe unto anyone who tries to take it away from us.”

When Turkoman horsemen made a spectacular run from their capital, Ashkhabad, to Moscow, in August, 1935, the cities through which they passed on their 4,300-kilometer way were decorated to meet them. “From beyond the boundless expanse of our great fatherland, across the hot sands of the Kara-Kum, the Ust-Urta steppes and the limitless collective fields," thus ran their greeting. They spoke of the “invincible brotherhood of nations replacing the prison of nations—tsarist Russia—which has gone into the past never to return.” One of the group, Chary Kary, had been in Moscow before. “But then," he said, “it was the city of my enemy and every person in it seemed my personal foe. Now Moscow is the heart of my great fatherland and every nationality in it is my nation."

"The friendship between the peoples of the USSR is a great and signal victory," said Stalin to one of those many delegations of Central Asiatic workers who stormed the Kremlin with their exploits in late 1935. “As long as this friendship exists the people of our country shall be free and invincible." But the influence of the Soviet national policy goes far beyond its borders. More than any other Soviet policy it has undermined the imperialisms of the world.

=== CHAPTER VI: THE TECHNIQUE OF LEADERSHIP ===

{{Quote|“Among the masses of people, we are but drops in the ocean, and we will be able to govern only when we properly express that which the people appreciate. Without this the Communist Party will not lead the proletariat, the proletariat will not take the lead of the masses, and the whole machine will fall to pieces.”|Lenin at Eleventh Party Congress}}

If by some cataclysm of war a section of the Soviet Union should be cut off from Moscow and compelled for a time to exist alone, government in these isolated areas would continue unchanged except insofar as it was crushed by invading armies. A picturesque example of this was given me by a Yakut woman, who boasted that her district of forests and tundra a thousand miles north of the Trans-Siberian Railway had had “Soviet Power” continuously since 1917. The years of civil war that raged along the railway had never penetrated so far north. To my query how this backward bit of territory knew what policies to follow she replied that a few Bolshevik exiles had remained among them and they got occasional news from Moscow over the Great Northern Telegraph which traversed their region. Many other sections of the country were isolated during the Civil War for considerable periods, yet continued to follow a common policy.

For eighteen years the authority of the Communist Party in the life of the Soviet Union has grown steadily stronger; it has kept power now for a considerably longer time than any Party in any other country in the world. The accumulating discontents which in other lands throw out governments do not seem to worry it. The Party itself organizes discontent for the sake of progress. In spite of exposures of graft, inefficiency, bureaucracy, and stupid excesses—indeed through these very exposures—the hold of the Communist Party increases.

To manage the state affairs of the most extensive republic on earth—covering one-sixth of the world’s land surface—might be considered enough for a political party. But to run the state is only one of the Communists’ tasks. For their plan of remaking the world the apparatus of government is insufficient. Great popular organizations like trade unions, co-operatives, physical culture societies and scores of voluntary social agencies must also move in a common, yet flexible plan. But the action of these organizations must be voluntary, arousing the initiative of their members, or their energy and life will die.

How then does the Communist Party lead the country? By the energy and discipline of its members, their contact with all organizations in the land, and by the authority of repeated success. In all government bodies and voluntary organizations the Communists belonging to them act together to induce them to follow the “Party Line.” This line, however, while firm, is not rigid; Party policy itself grows from the discussions and active struggles of its members, each of whom is in touch with some aspect of the country’s life. The members serve as a living conscious bridge between the Party and all the other organizations. They explain to the Party the desires of the people with whom they are associated, and explain to the people the policies developed by the Party in regard to their demands.

The primary Party organizations are set up in factories, offices, state farms, red army units, universities, villages, in any institution which has three Party members or more. In a typical iron and steel plant in the Ukraine, for instance, where 1,600 persons—workers, engineers, office staff—work in the rolling mill, 55 are Party members, 85 belong to the Young Communist League and 30 are enrolled as “sympathizers,” an organized group which is studying Communism with the presumable intent to join the Party. One Communist is paid a salary by the Party as full time organizer; the others are scattered in ordinary jobs through all the working gangs of the factory. Each of them has his assigned “Party work.” Some are editors of the sixteen “wall newspapers” which are posted in every working gang of the mill, filled with news and discussions of the gang’s successes and failures. Others read regular newspapers aloud during lunch hour and conduct discussions on current events. Others stir up “socialist competition” between different working gangs so that skill and production may increase. Others are active in the trade union or help promote sports. Every Communist, Young Communist and sympathizer does some unpaid public work of this kind; those who had none or failed to do it would be dropped from the Party as “passive.”

Some years ago I visited an open meeting of a Party organization in a factory near Moscow. Not only the Communists but many non-members had gathered to hear the semi-annual report of the Party secretary of the plant. As he sat down a storm of questions arose. “Why have we no report about the Young Pioneers? . . . Has the Party looked into the question of our workers’ club building and observed that we have no summer playground? Why haven’t we a sanitary organization? Why haven’t we a ‘Friends of Aviation’? Does the co-operative housing organization report regularly to the Party, and if so, when are we going to get the houses?” From the secretary’s answers it became clear that this factory had many voluntary organizations among its members: a “Friends for Children,” an “International Labor Defense,” an organization to “Increase Production,” a “Society for Contacts with Rural Districts,” and many more. All of these had been launched with Party co-operation, usually first as small committees, and had then grown into larger organizations by the influx of people who were not Communists. The number of organizations that would be started would depend partly on popular demand and partly on the capacity of Party members to stimulate and organize interest. It would be difficult for an organization to start without Party sanction; it would not be precisely forbidden, but a score of difficulties would discourage it. On the other hand, if a popular demand arose for any new kind of organization—from a drama club to an Anti-Tuberculosis Society—some Party members would take part in it either on their own initiative or by request of the workers or the Party, and would be expected by everyone to keep the organization in touch with any Party policies which affected it.

There were several ironic remarks and cat-calls in the meeting during a report by the plant’s director, who was clearly not popular with the workers. I happened to know that the Party secretary had recently recommended to the higher organizations that the director be removed to some other plant where he could profit by the mistakes he had made in this one and start without the accumulated friction. The manager also knew that his transfer had been recommended, and quite possibly concurred. At the meeting, however, the Party secretary said no word of this recommendation but put himself in the unenviable position of explaining the manager’s actions to a group which was almost howling him down. Both he and the manager were disciplined Communists, who did not wish to increase dissension but to work together for the good of the plant.

The proportion of Communists in rural districts is very much less than in factories, as might be expected from the fact that the factory workers were the most active elements in the Revolution and also more literate than the peasants. A typical Party organization in a village of two hundred families—I take here the collective farm “Postishev” in the Ukraine—has five Party members, ten “sympathizers,” and twenty-seven members of the Young Communist League. The latter organization is nearly always much larger than the Party in the villages, since it is the youth on the farms which is progressive.

Of the five Party members in this village, one of them, Povlichenko, is organizer, giving full time to Party work. He was born in the village, worked some years in a city factory, and was sent back in 1931 on Party order to help organize collectivization. From comments of peasant women I judge he was high-handed in that period and stirred up some antagonisms which he has not lived down. He is, however, a very energetic person, a once half-starved, half-educated farmhand with a passion for schooling which the Revolution enabled him to realize. He runs the Party school where members study Party history and current politics, teaches an elementary course in Leninism and the Soviet Constitution for the sympathizers, and organizes talks and discussions on special events, such as Party congresses, or new decrees affecting the farms. At the time of my visit these remote villagers were studying, more or less assiduously, the reports of Dimitroff and others at the recent congress of the Communist International. Povlichenko also takes active part in pushing the local school, the village club, the motion pictures, the local newspaper and all forms of education and culture.

The second Communist is a local peasant, president of the collective farm since 1931, but now leaving for a three-year course in an agricultural school. His salary comes from the farm, not from the Party. The third is an electrician sent to this village because “we needed a Communist in every field brigade.” When he came he was entirely ignorant of farming, but his craft made him useful in a village just beginning to import electricity from the great power plant on the Dnieper. Recently the Party planned to transfer him to township work, but the local farmers checked this by electing him president of the village. “The Party,” he said, “always considers the desires of the masses.” He may or may not have helped organize those desires. For Party work he is attached to the third field brigade and is also adviser of the Young Communist League. The fourth party member is a woman who earns her living as saleswoman in the co-operative store, and whose Party assignment is to help the village women organize a day nursery, a first-aid society and get vacation on pay from the collective farm at time of childbirth. This right is automatic in state-owned enterprises, but not all the farmers’ organizations give it yet. The fifth Party member is manager of the local co-operative store, who, since he makes twenty or more trips to the city every month, is used by the Party for city contacts rather than for regular village work.

It is plain that these five Party members have their hands on the whole life of the village. Besides their general work, the first three each keep in touch with a different field brigade of forty or more workers whom they are expected to know personally. “I must know what they want, their economic conditions and working abilities. This is called political watchfulness. If we did not know this, it would be bad for us. We could not possibly lead the masses,” said Povlichenko.

The Party organization of this village is open to criticism from strict Party principles in that its members hold too many local government jobs. They are supposed to keep a better balance between office-holders and members “in production,” and to stimulate and train non-Party people for some of the government work. Hogging the offices by Party members is considered a bad sign; it means that they have not stirred up wide enough interest. The Postishev organization is trying to do this through their work with the ten sympathizers and the Young Communists, each of whom has also Party work of a less responsible character. They read and discuss the newspapers in the field brigades, organize traveling libraries, chess games, football teams, initiate competitions in reaping and threshing, help start the musical or dramatic circle, or assist in the “cottage laboratory” where sixty farmers are studying scientific methods.

These primary Party organizations are correlated by the township<ref>Rayon, a district about equivalent to a township.</ref> organization which in turn comes under the larger regions up to the All-Union organization. The lower bodies elect the higher but are in turn subordinate to their decisions; the system is known as “democratic centralism.” The highest power within each organization is vested in its general meeting or congress which elects a standing committee to serve between sessions. The highest power of the entire Party is the All-Union Party Congress and between its sessions the Central Committee. The Central Committee organizes a political bureau for the day-by-day determination of political policy, an organizational bureau for general guidance of organizational work, and a secretariat. Stalin is general secretary of the Party, but there are several other secretaries who share this work.

Some years ago I saw a district congress of the Communist Party in action in the city of Red Lugansk of the Donetz Basin, the valley of coal and steel. Four or five hundred men and women gathered for a two day session—miners and mine managers, employees and head of the locomotive works, some teachers and health department officials—Communists all, sent as delegates from the local Party organizations of the factories and mines of the district. The problems for discussion were the policy for heavy industry and for minor nationalities. They had been announced by the Central Committee as the immediate pressing problems; “theses” on them had been published by the leading authorities and every local Party organization had discussed them for weeks.

The delegates wasted no time in preliminaries and compliments. Man after man spoke hotly and strongly on the concrete difficulties of heavy industry in the mines and factories they knew. They prepared reports based on the industry of their district and elected delegates to carry their hottest criticisms to the regional Party Congress in the coal center, Bakhmut, where delegates were again chosen to the All-Ukrainian Party Congress. Then all over the Soviet Union the special trains began running. From Kharkov, from Tiflis, from Minsk, from Central Asia and Siberia, they bore the chosen delegates to Moscow where two weeks’ discussion in the All-Union Party Congress hammered out the “Party Line.” Thence the results rolled back again to the Donetz, the Caucasus, the Far East to Vladivostok, borne by returning delegates whose first duty was to explain and carry through the decisions through trade unions, cooperatives, farms, government, whatever organizations they influenced.

This is the most widely organized thinking ever attempted in history. It is actually the energetic thinking of three million men and women, gathering up the ideas of tens of millions of their neighbors, which beats upon the All-Union Party Congress and affects its decisions. The ideas are worked over by the ablest economists of the Party, familiar with the experience of the revolutionary movement in all countries. The decisions reached are explained to the country through every channel of organized publicity; they are discussed and studied in every field brigade and factory and put into action simultaneously throughout the land. For the test of organized thinking is organized action.

The Communists do not merely reflect the will of the masses, as a ballot might, or a showing of hands. They do not merely analyze what the “majority want” and hand it out. It is their job to lead, to organize the people’s will. No group of unurged soldiers would ever vote to storm a trench. Certainly the workers of the Soviet Union would not have voted, unurged, unled, for the hardships of the Five-Year Plan of rapid industrialization taken out of their own food and comforts, for the painful speed of farm collectivization without adequate machines or organizers. But when the Communist Party analyzed, urged and demanded, showing the world situation and the need of making the USSR well prepared industrially and for defense, showing the enemy classes which must be abolished to attain the goal of a socialist state, they were able to find, organize and create, deep in the heart of the masses, a will that carried through. Without that will in tens of millions, the three million could have done little. “To bring about a revolution, a leading revolutionary minority is required,” Stalin told H. G. Wells. “But the most talented, devoted and energetic minority would be helpless if it did not rely upon the at least passive support of millions.”<ref>H. G. Wells’ Interview with Joseph Stalin, July 23, 1934</ref>

As an example of the interrelation of Party, government and voluntary workers in action, let me take the “mobilization” of automobiles and mechanics in the spring of 1931 to save flax sowing in Moscow province. Collective farming came that year to the province in a great drive of organization and propaganda backed by hundreds of new tractors, which were being used chiefly to increase the area of flax. In the first week of sowing, telegrams from the newly organized tractor stations poured into Moscow, announcing that there was a “break.” Tractors all over the province stood in the fields, not moving, for causes yet to be analyzed.

Who moves in such a case? The Moscow Committee of the Party moves. Sorting over in its office the reports of all Moscow’s daily emergencies, it decides that the break in flax is serious and calls for a “mobilization” of mechanics.

The call goes out to Party organizations in a hundred shops and factories. It is announced by trade-union shop committees and factory newspapers. Not a single mechanic is compelled to answer, but any mechanic willing to give a day or two for tractor repair to help the sowing will be helped by foreman and fellow workers to arrange his job. He may work at this sanctioned public task without forfeiting wages, while others fill in the gap in his regular work. What is the motive? The fun of participating in saving the sowing, of helping the country, of living a varied, useful life. Automobiles also are “mobilized” to carry the mechanics to the farms, and those who lend machines for such public work may hope for a cut in automobile taxes. I volunteered for a two-day trip.

One hundred and fifty miles north of Moscow we came to the tractor station to which we were assigned. Of thirty-three new tractors from Putiloff Works, eleven could not move out of the railway station. The rest were breaking down in the fields, under the hands of worried peasant boys and girls who had seen their first machine one month before. All night our volunteer mechanics repaired tractors. All night the local tractor drivers stood up to watch in their eagerness to learn. The following day I drove my car to Moscow with sleeping mechanics in the seats. They had worked twenty hours on end in a public emergency about which they would report next morning to their interested fellow workers in Moscow factories. They had also prepared a technical report charging the Putiloff tractor with certain grave defects. It was printed within two days in the Industrial Gazette, the organ of heavy industry, and led to a conference of industrial leaders on improving the Putiloff tractor. Three weeks later the flax sowing of Moscow province, which in early season threatened to lag at 50 per cent of plan, went over the top 108 per cent, the best flax record in the Union.

“It was the work of the social organizations that saved us,” said the Moscow Tractor Center. What were the organizations concerned? The state, the Party, the trade unions, the automobile association had all taken part. The state owned the Putiloff Works, financed the tractor stations, and also owned, through the Commissariat of Heavy Industry, the Industrial Gazette which exposed the defects. The trade unions organized the volunteers and took care of their jobs during absence. The automobile association organized autos. But the driving will that saved the situation was the will of thousands of Moscow workers organized and assigned to their tasks by the Moscow Committee of the Communist Party, of which most of the mechanics were not even members.

Even on vacations Communists are supposed to be always watchfully aware of their responsibility for organizing the life of the country. I was slipping down the mighty Volga on a large passenger steamer when I saw a sign asking members of the Party who might be traveling to register with the secretary of the boat organization. I learned that any Communist traveling on the boat was likely to be drafted into speaking at a meeting on deck among the peasants, or at a political school for Communists of the crew. Some of the city Communists used the occasion to criticize hotly the boat Communists for lack of attention to sanitation. The river Communists, mostly untrained sailors, thus got their first lesson in modern hygiene.

The ultimate destination towards which the Soviet ship of state is steering was fixed by the Revolution. The rate of speed and the daily and early course is charted by the Central Committee of the Party to take advantage of varying winds and tides. Yet it is a course which every active worker or farmer may take part in fixing. It arises from the experience of three million Party members, each keeping in touch with some section of the people, all of them interacting, discussing, comparing results. Communists of longest experience and best records have the greatest authority; but, be it noted, they do not call it “power.” “Power” resides in the will of the working masses; “authority” is that prestige of character and insight which enables its possessor to organize and release this power.

It is authority rather than power that Stalin possesses. Though his standing is far higher than that of any man in the Soviet Union, though he is cheered and quoted at all congresses as high authority, men never speak of “Stalin’s will” or “Stalin’s power,” but of the “Party Line” which Stalin reports but does not make. The Party Line is accessible to all to study, to know and to help formulate. The greatness of the man is known by the range over which he can do this. “I can plan with the workers of one plant for a year,” said a factory manager to me. “Others much wiser than I, like the men in our Central Committee, can plan with wider masses for years. Stalin in this is our ablest. He sees the inter-relation of our path with world events, and the order of each step, as a man sees the earth from the stratosphere.”

“The earth from the stratosphere”—the man who said this was himself an aviation engineer. Men in the Soviet Union tend to see Stalin in terms of their craft. Railway workers call him “locomotive driver of the Revolution.” An economist said to me, speaking of the leaders of Party and government in the Red Square on May-day: “Our brains are there in the tribune.” Harvester-combine operators addressed Stalin as “friend and teacher”; managers of industry say informally “the boss.” Yellow-skinned Kazaks of the desert on the fifteenth anniversary of their republic hailed him “great leader of toiling humanity.”

Millions of simple folk in all callings have felt the direct impact of Stalin’s analysis, giving a solution for the chief problem of their lives. It was sometimes a way that was harsh to follow, but it was the one clear path to the goal that the millions desired. There have been statements by Stalin that ushered in great changes, as when he told the agrarian Marxist conference that the time had come to “abolish kulaks as a class.” Yet he only announced the time for a process which every Marxist knew was on the program. His famous article “Dizziness from Success” which called sudden halt on March 2, 1930, to widespread excesses of Communists in rural regions, was regarded by foreign correspondents and peasants alike as an “order from Stalin.” Stalin at once disclaimed any personal prestige therefrom accruing, stating in the press: “Some people think that the article is the result of the personal initiative of Stalin. That of course is nonsense. The Central Committee does not exist to permit personal initiative of anybody in matters of this kind. It was a reconnaissance undertaken by the Central Committee.”

Stalin does not rule personally. To a lifelong habit of collective action he adds his personal genius, that of supreme analyst of situations, personalities, tendencies. He leads as supreme combiner of many minds and wills, When Emil Ludwig asked him who really made decisions, he answered: “Single persons cannot decide. . . . Experience of three revolutions has shown us that out of a hundred individual decisions which have not been tested and corrected collectively, ninety are biased. The leadership of our Party in the Central Committee, which directs all the Soviet and Communist organizations, consists of about seventy people. Among those seventy members of our Central Committee there are to be found the best of our industrial leaders, our cleverest specialists and the men who best understand every branch of our activities. It is in this Supreme Council that the whole wisdom of our Party is concentrated. Each man is entitled to challenge his neighbor’s opinion or suggestion. Each man may give the benefit of his own experience. If it were otherwise, if individual decisions were admitted, there would be serious mistakes in our work.”<ref>Joseph Stalin’s Interview with Emil Ludwig, Dec. 13, 1931.</ref>

“The art of leadership is a serious matter,” said Stalin earlier, in concluding his article “Dizziness from Success.” “One must not lag behind a movement because to do so is to become isolated from the masses. But one must not rush ahead, for this is to lose contact with the masses. . . . Our Party is strong and invincible because, while leading a movement, it knows how to maintain and multiply its contacts with the millions of the workers and peasant masses.” This may be taken as Stalin’s analysis of leadership.

There are plenty of stupidities and violences in the Soviet Union, yes-men and careerists, hardship and injustice, wastage of youth and life. All man’s essential progress costs heavily in human suffering; the Soviet Union has not escaped this law. What makes it endurable is just this fact that it is caused not by behest of one man or even of three million, but is part of the slow process—history will not call it slow—whereby the tens of millions achieve the organized and conscious planning of their lives.

=== CHAPTER VII: BUILDING THE NEW ECONOMY ===

{{Quote|“Either perish or overtake the advanced countries and surpass them. . . . This is how history has put the question.”|Lenin}}

{{Quote|“Millions make the plan.”|Stalin}}

One of the most striking characteristics of Soviet life to a new arrival is the passionate interest which citizens show in new industries, modern equipment, figures of carloadings, economic statistics generally. The “romantic passion” of the Russians for machinery, the visitor is apt to call it. He himself is long since bored by machinery which has recently put him out of work; he finds it difficult to understand this passion. He has come to see “the revolution,” to study the characteristics of planned economy or the amazing change in human concepts. He finds the revolutionary background taken for granted by Soviet citizens; they want to show him factories.

The mood of the Soviet Union today is a mood of tremendous struggle and incredible conquest in which individual values and problems pale before the brightness of one great problem whose solution is told off by the ever-rising curve of production, the opening of steel mills, the successful mastery of tractor plants, machine building works, textile factories. It is a mood in which a newly literate servant girl will hail the rain running into her leaky shoes if that rain means harvest. Harvest somewhere far off on farms she never sees.

It is not surprising that economic facts have a vital interest for Soviet citizens. The changes in the country’s economic life since the Revolution have been stupendous and the results are felt in every person’s daily living. Fifteen years ago when first I entered the Soviet Union, the country was ravaged by famine and pestilence. Civil war and foreign intervention had ruined farming, industry, transport. Street-cars were not running in Moscow, street lights had long since burned out without replacements, and two fuelless winters had so destroyed the entire city’s plumbing that water pressure could not rise above the second floors. In the best hospital of Samara, where I lay ill in 1921 with typhus, there were but two clinical thermometers for hundreds of patients. Thermometers, light bulbs, water pipes were only a few of the million articles which long war and blockade kept out of the Soviet Union and which could not be manufactured in the few and backward factories of that vast agricultural land.

I have lived through fifteen years of incredibly rapid progress which have almost wiped out all memory of the past. To dwellers in the Soviet Union, the pre-war period seems already pre-historic, and even 1921 seems a century ago. We have seen in these fifteen years a more than ten-fold increase in industrial production; we have seen a leap in farming from the sixteenth century into the twenty-first. We have lived through a series of epochs sharply distinct from each other in the regulations affecting our daily existence, but all these periods have been characterized by one continuous fury of energetic endeavor.

The reasons for energetic endeavor were very plain to the people of a land just emerging from foreign intervention and long blockade. “War is implacable,” said Lenin. “It puts the question with merciless sharpness. Either perish or overtake the advanced countries and surpass them. . . . Either full steam ahead or perish. This is how history has put the question.”<ref>Quoted by Stalin in Report on ''Results of the First Five-Year Plan''.</ref> All Communists hold that in the present epoch of worldwide imperialist expansion, it is the fate of economically backward lands to be parceled out among the imperial nations. Soviet Russia, unless she could make herself economically independent, had to fear the fate which has overtaken China, “a military field of operations of foreign enemies and pecked at by everybody who cares to do so.”<ref>Stalin, ''Results of the First Five-Year Flan''.</ref>

If a rapid rate of economic development was necessary to preserve even the independence of the country, it was still more necessary as a prerequisite for a socialist commonwealth. The abundant life for every toiler which socialism implies demands lavish production; it cannot be attained in a country where the means of production is the individually owned tool. The material conditions for a prosperous socialist commonwealth exist today in America far more than they ever existed in Russia. Sharing the wealth cannot take place until there is really wealth to share. Socially owned wealth must be based on socially owned factories. Russia had the problem of first building the factories.

The rapid development of Soviet Russia’s economic wealth was considered of crucial importance by Lenin, not only for the welfare of the Russian people, but even for the future of world-wide socialism. Faced by the handicap of a backward, semi-feudal land, the workers of the new revolutionary country had nonetheless one advantage—they were the joint owners of their country and all of its productive wealth. They must prove to the world that even against great difficulties this one advantage was decisive. Even in 1921 in the depths of economic ruin Lenin said: “We are exercising our main influence on the international revolution by our economic policy. All eyes are turned on the Soviet Russian republic. . . . If we solve this problem, then we shall have won on an international scale for certain and finally. That is why questions of economic construction assume for us absolutely exceptional significance.”<ref>May 28, 1921. ''All-Russian Conference of the Communist Party''</ref>

There is a strange paradox in the economic development of the Soviet Union which even foreign resident must notice. It is that every slight achievement costs infinite effort, yet mighty achievements are won in an incredibly short time. The penalty for Russia’s ancient backwardness is to be found in an inefficiency which hampers every movement—taking a tramway, buying a spool of thread, securing a room. The difficulty of making even one blast furnace function properly arouses frantic despair in the hearts of foreign specialists. Yet in spite of these difficulties, the Soviet Union advances at a speed unknown even to the most efficient capitalist countries.

This speed is due to the tremendous energy and initiative of millions of workers and farmers who are conscious owners now of their own means of production, and who know that whatever they create will be their own permanent gain. Their initiative is correlated by a system of social planning. Thus arises that paradoxical combination of individual inefficiency with tremendous social momentum. In the most developed capitalist countries the efficiencies of ten million individuals pull in conflicting directions, giving small gain to society. But each new achievement in the Soviet planned structure, attained with such painful difficulty, reinforces the sum total of a million gains.

So obvious and so widely known are these benefits of social planning in the Soviet Union that in recent years it has become a common dream in many countries to transfer painlessly the technique of planning to the capitalist system, thus gaining the blessings of socialism without the harsh shock of revolution. In America especially, where the highly developed processes of production could so obviously produce plenty for all, the illusion arises that somehow some genius, some group of super-brains sitting in New York or in Washington, ought to be able to find the magic secret of putting those processes to work. It is clear that an individual owner can plan his factory and bring it to a relatively high state of efficiency as compared with the days of handicraft. But can a government brain trust, however brilliant, plan the disposal of Rockefeller’s oil wells, or the internal organization of U. S. Steel? To ask this question is to answer it, if it has not been answered already by the history of the NRA. Only owners can plan an industry and dispose of its products. Under capitalism plans of different owners clash.

For a socialist state, the simplest and most basic act of government is the planning by worker-owners of the expansion and improvement of their jointly owned properties. Planning of this type takes place not only in those central institutions of Moscow where the foreign visitor habitually looks for it; it begins simultaneously at the workers’ bench. Production meetings after work discuss shop problems, what holds back production, how much it can be increased, and by what means. These discussions are enlarged on a factory scale; they go from the factory to the central offices of the industrial trusts. Word comes back from the central organizations to the shop that the country needs certain new machines. “Can we make them in our plant?” Delegates from other industries which need the machines arrive, explain, mutually consult. The inventions and suggestions of the local workers thus widen into a nation’s plan.

The plan is, however, no mere blueprint to be fulfilled with exactness. In the absolute and technical sense, one cannot speak of it as a final “plan” at all. For although every factory, farm, school and government institution checks its monthly and annual achievements by its plan, yet the proudest boast is always to have overfulfilled it, i.e., broken the plan by doing more than intended. The plan is therefore a standard of what is expected, a flag of challenge, but in no sense a limit. There is no limit set in the Soviet Union. The aim is the fullest development of the creative and productive powers of the country. The more production, the better. It will be seen at once how impossible such a conception of planning becomes under capitalism. It is based on the assumption that the worker-owners of the nation’s production will be able to use everything that they care to make.

Socialism is not created in a day; it is not achieved by voting and not even by seizure of power. Seizure of power is only a prerequisite. Socialism involves the expansion and organization of the collectively owned properties of the country and the building of a good life for everyone thereon. This was the purpose of the October Revolution, and in spite of all the accounts in the press of the world for eighteen years about Soviet “changes of policy,” this purpose has never changed in the slightest degree. The tactics used have, however, been conditioned by both internal strength and international relations. Not until 1921, when the new workers’ state had beaten back the armies of intervention, was it possible to begin the building of the national economy.

When the wars of invasion were over, industry had sunk to one-fifth of pre-war, the production of cotton goods was only 7 per cent of normal, iron and steel production had almost entirely ceased. Grain reserves were exhausted, and the drought of 1921 led directly to the greatest famine in Russian history. The New Economic Policy, adopted at that time, encouraged all forms of economic development, both those of capitalism and those of socialism. Meantime each year the Communists led the working class of the country to concentrate a desperate, organized struggle for victory in one important field after another—victories often achieved at the expense of heavy temporary sacrifices elsewhere.

The year 1922 saw the successful fight to establish a state bank and a partially stable currency by high banking charges which ruthlessly exploited all the industries of the country. In 1923 emphasis turned to the hard-pressed industries; for the first time since the revolution, their balance sheets reached “self-support,” at the expense of excessively high prices to the consumer. There followed a two years’ effort to cut prices; consumers’ co-operatives were widely developed as a link between the state factories and the peasants. By 1926 co-operative and government trade had increased threefold, successfully passing the private middle-man who had previously controlled over 80 per cent of the rural turnover. During the next two years, emphasis turned again to the restoration of industry, which reached by 1928 the pre-war standard of production. The Soviet workers had rebuilt their war-devastated country without the aid of the foreign credits which flowed to help all the war-injured capitalist lands of Europe.

Yet this attainment was still of low standard, the pre-war production of backward tsarist Russia. The ancient plants were working to full capacity, but they could not begin to supply the needs of workers and farmers who expected a higher standard of life than before the Revolution. Each year the shortage of goods increased. Soviet industry could not expand further except by extension of basic capital, new buildings, more machines. Any threatening war would still find the country lacking not only in commodities, but in that heavy industry on which, in our modern mechanized world, is based the means of production in peace and of defense in war.

Could Soviet Russia develop her industries rapidly and make herself economically independent, or must she live, as tsarist Russia did, by export of farm products, chancing her future on a hostile capitalist world? This problem set sharply the still more fundamental problem whether socialism could be built in one country and if so, by what means. Russia’s basic industry was state-owned but this industry was insufficient to supply the people with goods. The primitive farming system, made still more primitive by the splitting up of the former landlords’ estates into small subsistence farms, which partly consumed and partly wasted much formerly marketed grain, was increasingly failing to feed the growing cities. In 1927 the Russian farms attained the pre-war sown area of 280,000,000 acres and the pre-war grain production of somewhat over 80,000,000 tons, but only about half of the pre-war marketed grain was reaching the market. Socialized industry was like an island in an ocean of medieval agriculture, whose tides constantly threatened to undermine the base of socialism. “As long as we live in a small peasant country,” Lenin had said, “there will be a more solid economic basis for capitalism than for Communism.”<ref>''Collected Works'', Russian edition, XXVI, 46.</ref>

Farming must be brought out of the Middle Ages, modernized and made efficient. For this two roads of development were possible. The employing peasants, known as kulaks, who already owned the best of the rural means of production, better plows, more horses, occasional threshers, creameries and flour mills, might be allowed to expand, to acquire tractors, combines, and the additional land which these machines could cultivate, dispossessing more and more landless peasants into the ranks of unemployed. Thus capitalist farming grew in other countries out of the feudal ages. The price of such growth for Soviet Russia under the world conditions of the modern era would be not only continued class war in rural districts, not only swiftly increasing unemployment, not only the steady submergence of all socialist industry by an expanding capitalism, but the complete dependence of this young Russian capitalism on the financial oligarchs of the imperialist world. Such, at least, was the analysis made by Stalin and the Communist Party in adopting in 1928 the now famous Five-Year Plan.

The Five-Year Plan proposed the rapid industrialization of the country, more rapid than any industrialization known in the world before. Heavy industry must first be built, the machines that make machines for other industry and for farming. Lighter industries to raise the standard of living must rapidly follow. Farming must be industrialized, not by strengthening a class of rural capitalists, but by the voluntary uniting of all non-exploiting peasants, beginning with the poorest, into collective groups farming their lands jointly with machinery which the developing state industry would supply. This was necessary to make farming modern, while giving the benefits of its modernization to all farmers. It was necessary to make Russia socialist, or even to preserve the half-socialism which the city workers had begun. It was necessary for the independence of the country and the very existence of the Soviet government. “We could not refrain,” said Stalin, “from whipping up a country which was a hundred years behind and which owing to its backwardness was faced with mortal danger.”<ref>Report to Joint Plenum of Central Committee and Central Control Commission on ''Results of Five-Year Plan'', 1933.</ref>

In less than five years—for the Five-Year Plan was 96 per cent completed in four and a quarter years from October 1928 through December 1932—Stalin was able to announce that the former backward agricultural Russia had become the second industrial country in the world. The number employed in industry doubled from eleven million to twenty-two million. The volume of industrial output also doubled, from 15.7 billion rubles in 1928 to 34.3 billion in 1932 (calculated at prices prevailing in 1926-7); it was three times the pre-war production. At the same time a rapid industrialization of farming combined some twenty million tiny, uneconomic subsistence farms into 200,000 large collectively operated farms (by 1936 there were 250,000) based on machine power, scientific methods, division of labor. The relative proportion of industrial to agricultural output grew from 48 per cent at the beginning of the plan to 70 per cent at the end of 1932, thus changing Russia from an agricultural to a predominantly industrial country.

“Formerly we did not have an iron and steel industry. Now we have such an industry,” reported Stalin in January 1933 at the plenary session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.

“We did not have a tractor industry. Now we have one.

“We did not have an automobile industry. Now we have one.

“We did not have an engineering industry. Now we have one.

“We did not have a big and modern chemical industry. Now we have one.

“We did not have a real solid industry for the production of modern farm machinery. Now we have one.

“We did not have an aviation industry. Now we have one.

“In production of electric power we were last in the list. Now we are among the first in the list...

“And we have achieved these enormous new branches of industry on a scale that makes the scale of European industry pale into insignificance. . . .” Such was only part of the success reported.

The Five-Year Plan cost heavily in dislocation of populations, exhaustion of youth, disorganization of harvests and many privations which attended the rationing of food and other commodities. But never in history was such an advance gained at less cost and certainly never so swiftly; and it was gained unprecedentedly without long-term credits or foreign loans. Had the pace been less swift, had the Communists postponed this breathless drive towards full industrialization, they believe that Soviet Russia would already have had “not pacts of non-aggression, but war.” “We would have been unarmed in the midst of a capitalist environment which is armed with modern technique.”<ref>Stalin, ''Results of the First Five-Year Plan''.</ref> The advance of Japan into Manchuria in 1931 and the stated intention of Nazi Germany to expand into Soviet Ukraine are warnings today which anyone may read of the fate which might already have overtaken the Soviet Union but for its swiftly rising economic and military strength.

With the conclusion of the first Five-Year Plan at the end of 1932, the Soviet Union plunged into the second. “We have already laid the foundations of a socialist society . . . and all we have to do now is to erect the edifice—a task which undoubtedly is easier,” said Stalin at the Seventeenth Party Congress in early 1934. Industry and trade were already 99 per cent socialized; three-fourths of agricultural production was socialized. On the base thus established, the second Five-Year Plan proposed to abolish “all private property in the means of production, all class distinctions, all exploitation of man by man."<ref>Molotov, ''Tasks of the Second Five-Year Plan''.</ref> It proposed three times as much new construction as had been achieved in the first Five-Year Plan. It proposed a doubling and tripling of the standard of living through the final technical reconstruction of the whole national economy, the mastery of the most modern methods and the most complex machines.

Already as the year 1936 opens, it is clear that the second Five-Year Plan can be accomplished in less than five years. In the last months of 1935 the total monthly output of heavy industry was already five times as high as in 1928.<ref>From 404.9 million rubles, average monthly output in 1928 to 2,180.6 million in Nov. 1935, stable rubles of 1926-7.</ref> Grain production has known three record harvests surpassing all pre-collectivization years. Rapid increase in the standard of living—more food, better clothing, expanding art and science—is evident in all parts of the country. Cotton pickers, sugar-beet growers, combined-harvester operators, timber workers, machinists and miners are descending triumphantly on Moscow to celebrate their achievements in production and win the plaudits of the land.

With hammer blows the figures of the 1935 achievements were given by Molotov in January 1936 to the Central Executive Committee. A 20.4 per cent increase in industrial production over 1934, in place of the 16 per cent planned; 23 per cent increase in freight car loadings, 45 per cent in raw cotton, and 43 per cent in sugar beets. A grain harvest running close to one hundred million tons, nearly ten million above the highest previous harvest; horses up 5 per cent, cattle 18 per cent, sheep and goats 25 per cent, hogs 38 per cent—all increases of a single year.

The abolition of the card system of rationing, reported Grinko, Commissar of Finance, had lifted the trade turnover from 60 to 80 billion rubles; the profits from socialist economy were 7.8 billion rubles; the planned state budget receipts had been exceeded and the planned expenditures cut, leaving a surplus for expansion. But the most important result of the year, said Molotov, was the Stakhanov movement “which leads to an entire revolution in industry and transport, and opens the first page of the great advance in socialist productivity of labor.”

Then, with confidence born of experience, Valery Meshlauk, head of the State Planning Commission, gave page after page of the carefully plotted future. “The 1936 plan provides for a further and accelerated upsurge of the whole national economy.” The increase set for large-scale industry is 23 per cent, a 15 billion ruble advance, which is greater than the entire output of this industry in 1927. The increase set for agriculture is 24 per cent, for commodity circulation 25, railway transport 19.8, capital construction 34.8. The financial income of the population is to rise from 101 to 118 billion rubles, in the face of steadily dropping prices. Social and cultural services in the central and local budgets are to rise from 16 to 21 billion, the social insurance alone from 6.7 to 8 billion. But darkly across this shining future run figures of army expansion, from the 6.5 billion planned to 8.2 billion actually spent in 1935 and 14.8 billion planned for 1936. For beyond the borders of the triumphantly planned growth of Soviet national economy lie the unpredictable dangers of the chaotic capitalist world.

If a map of the Soviet world could be drawn pictorially and changed with each changing year, it would show countless new cities arising on formerly barren land. It would show tens of millions of tiny, uneconomic farm plots merging into a rhythm of horizon-touching fields. It would show thousands of geological expeditions penetrating uncharted wildernesses to discover and chart nationally owned wealth. Following these there would flash across the scene surveyors, engineers, new railroads, steel plants, textile mills. New timber areas open, new coal and oil fields. If the map had a sound film attachment one would hear the summons sent forth to young Communists, to workers in the older, better-organized factories, demanding heroic personnel for the conquest of the wastes. The conquering march of man reaches northward to settle the Arctic and eastward to the wild coasts opposite Alaska. And a long green strip of a million and a half acres of new forest-zone moves steadily southward across treeless plains of Kazakstan as a mighty screen to protect the grain lands of South Russia from the desert winds of Asia.

For the past two years the Communist leaders have begun to speak of socialism as “victorious”; its economic base is secure.

=== CHAPTER VIII: THE STRUGGLE FOR PEACE ===

{{Quote|“The Soviet Union needs no foreign wars for transforming the world.”|Manuilski at Congress of Communist International, 1935}}

A socialist country craves peace for development. As the life of the Soviet people grows richer and more varied, the one great dread which hangs above it is the threat of war. Soviet citizens are never subject to the illusion—most diabolical of all the contradictions of capitalism—that war may bring a feverish, blood-bought prosperity and eliminate unemployment by turning men into the pursuits of destruction. The prosperity of socialism is based on harmonious correlation of production and needs, and there is no unemployment. The Soviet world sees war as naked destruction of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Even the need of preparing for war it sees as a waste of resources which might otherwise go in direct benefits to the population.

In the eighteen years of its existence, the Soviet Union has been widely recognized as a champion of peace. Even its foes admit that the USSR does not want war for the present. Yet so confused is the world’s thinking on the subject of war and peace—a confusion promoted by diplomats and statesmen—so instinctive under capitalism has become the assumption that every advancing nation must seek in the end the test of war, that the Soviet hunger for peace is at times confused either with cowardice or hypocrisy. Are they not perhaps just watchfully waiting until their economic building is accomplished, and their strength is sure? What are they doing in the League of Nations? Why are they increasing the Red Army? Do they not after all want world revolution, which world war presumably might usher in? How permanent is the Soviet wish for peace? And, even if sincere, can it be effective?

There are two ways to approach this question: by the detailed examination of Soviet history and by understanding the theory behind every Soviet action. We shall take each of these methods in turn.

Behind all Soviet action is the Marxian theory that the cause of war is neither permanent in human nature, as militarists claim, nor to be found in lack of goodwill and in the character of rulers, as idealist pacifists think. Marxists hold that war arises from class conflicts. Wars in the present period of world history, according to this analysis, arise from the struggle of capitalism to survive and grow by investment in new markets. This leads the major nations to engage first in small wars of colonial oppression, the forcing of their goods and investment upon undeveloped peoples; these lead to wars between the imperialist nations over the territories which both sides wish to exploit. A socialist commonwealth where the people own jointly their means of production and receive all the fruits of their toil, wants no expanding market for surplus profits but only equal interchange of goods which encourages peace.

A socialist world would thus attain peace permanently. But a single socialist country lives in a world of foes. Can peace be attained under these conditions? Not permanently and not with assurance, as long as capitalism survives. The capitalist world system from its nature breeds war. None the less, each specific war has specific causes, which may be studied, analyzed, hampered and delayed. Peace may be won from month to month and year to year by specific, well-considered actions, as an able engineer postpones collapse inherent in a faulty structure by accurate balancing of specific strains and stresses. This is an unstable peace, but better than none, for every curtailment of war prevents human suffering.

In applying this analysis to our present period of history, Soviet policy holds that the economic world today is one and indivisible, and that every war must affect the whole world. No fair words of politicians can keep a nation out of it; no policy of isolation can be a guarantee. For behind all those words and beneath all such policies the economic pressures inexorably act. Trade in goods of war begins to flow towards even a minor conflict and steadily the traders are drawn further in. Thus was America drawn into the World War by increasing financial commitments, till at last an American ambassador cabled from London that a panic would shake the whole United States unless American boys followed American dollars into the battles of Britain and France. When that stage occurs, no country keeps out of it; the president who “kept us out of war” turns about and marches in.

Even those nations which are technically neutral—the number of these decreases with the seriousness of the war—are involved only slightly less than those who battle. “Any war,” says Litvinoff, “sooner or later, will bring distress to all countries, both to the combatants and the non-participants. We must never forget the lesson of the World War, the consequences of which are felt to this day by combatants and neutral countries alike. The impoverishment of the whole world, the lowering of the living standards of all categories of labor, both physical and mental, unemployment when no one is sure of tomorrow, to say nothing of the collapse of cultural values, the reversion of certain countries to medieval ideas—these are the consequences of the World War which are clearly felt sixteen years after its end.”

To maintain peace is therefore a permanent policy for the Soviet Union. To maintain peace not only for itself but in the world. But peace is not to be had by expecting it. It may not even be won by refusing to fight. China refuses to fight, but gets no peace. Neither preparedness nor unpreparedness is a safeguard; unarmed and well-armed folk have alike gone to war. The only safeguard for even that partial peace possible under capitalism is clear, sincere study of the whole world situation, the choosing of a policy which prevents war or lessens it, and the backing of that policy by all available power. One must struggle for peace; it will not come otherwise. The methods change as the situations change.

For eighteen years the Soviet Union has made this struggle. “Peace, land and bread” was the slogan of the October Revolution. The hunger for peace of a war-exhausted people brought the Bolsheviks to power. Their first official act on November 8, 1917, was to propose “to all warring peoples and their governments to begin immediate negotiations for a just and democratic peace.” As an attack upon the war and to remove causes of future war, the new revolutionary government exposed and denounced the secret treaties by which England, France and Russia had agreed to redivide the world. They annulled oppressive tsarist treaties which had been enforced on Persia and Turkey, and withdrew the Russian army from Persia.

The strength of the new government was not equal to its understanding. The Entente Powers—England, France and the United States—denounced the Bolsheviks for daring to speak of peace and left their former ally to the mercy of Germany. The German general staff marched onward into a prostrate country offering the Bolsheviks “robber terms.” The position of the Soviet state was further weakened by Trotsky’s attempt to deal with advancing troops by clever phrases. He refused to sign terms but protested in the formmula: “Neither war nor peace”—an appeal to the conscience of the German people. But general staffs are not expected to have a conscience, and no Germans acted to save the Russians. The invading army marched far into the Ukraine and took possession, giving in the end worse terms than those originally offered. Trotsky’s appeal reached the consciences of idealists; I recall that it thrilled me far out in Seattle. But it was Ukrainian peasants and workers who suffered; idealist gestures are dangerous tactics in war.

If Germany offered the Bolsheviks only a robbers’ peace, their former allies gave them no peace at all. On April 5, 1918, the Japanese landed in Vladivostok; following them the English, French and American armies invaded Siberia. Allied armies landed on the Arctic coast to seize the northern part of Russia; the British grabbed Baku, oil capital of the south. Agents of the Entente incited and participated in armed uprisings of Czechoslovak prisoners of war along the Volga, leading them against the Bolshevik government. From east and west and north and south the armies of all the major capitalist powers surrounded the Revolution with an iron ring of war and blockade.

Across this iron ring the starving people of the new state sent appeal after appeal to all those governments which refused to deal with them but especially to President Wilson. Beginning on November 24, 1918, and repeating their query through Raymond Robins, head of the American Red Cross in Russia, and also by direct cables to the State Department, they offered to consider any peace terms whatever: recognition of debts, concessions of territory, control of mines and natural resources. Rather than deal in any way with Bolsheviks, Wilson and the Allied governments sitting in Versailles issued a call to all the “organized groups in Russia” to meet at the Principo Islands, a proposal which clearly presaged the dividing of Russia into spheres of influence after the style of China. The Bolsheviks were not invited, but they accepted; the other governments refused and the scheme fell through. There followed the famous trip of William Christian Bullitt to Moscow in March 1919 as President Wilson’s semi-official representative. The hard-pressed Soviet government was ready to agree to Bullitt’s proposal that it accept all financial obligations of all past Russian governments, and divide the territory of Russia among all those governments which should be in armed possession when the treaty should be signed. But the treaty was never signed; President Wilson refused to receive the report of his own envoy. Bolsheviks were made to realize that no peace can be had from the imperialist powers of earth by any backward nation. Not even the price of slavish submission buys peace for China; nor could the offer of territory and gold buy it for Russia.

Not by appeals for peace and not by offers of concessions, but by the desperate struggle and courage of the Revolutionary Red Army was peace and independence finally won. It was secured in slow stages, first cessation of battle, then trade agreements, then, much more slowly, diplomatic recognition. At each stage the strength of the new state was again and again probed and tested by a capitalist world unwilling to yield it the right to exist. Under such conditions the Soviet government stabilized its borders by granting swift recognition to the new Baltic States. Then, in the first international conference to which it was admitted, in April 1922 in Genoa, the Soviet delegate proposed a plan for strengthening general peace in Europe.

“The forces directed towards restoration of world economy will be strangled as long as above Europe and above the world hangs the threat of new wars,” said Chicherin. “The Russian delegation intends to propose a general limitation of armaments and to support any proposition which has the aim of lightening the burdens of militarism.” The Soviet representatives again agreed to recognize debts of past Russian governments but now demanded in return the right to compensation for the destruction caused to Russia by unprovoked intervention. Failing to get response to either proposal, Soviet Russia signed with Germany the famous Rapallo agreement, whereby both nations canceled the debts of the other and renewed relations on the basis of equality. This was the first gesture made by any nation to cure the wounds of the World War and to deal with vanquished Germany on a basis which set foundations for peace. Had the other nations followed this example the bitter history of Europe of the past thirteen years might have been different.

After the Genoa Conference, the Soviet struggle for peace was marked by slow but steady establishment of diplomatic relations with the major powers of the world. This in itself was an element of stability in Europe, but normal relations were still much shaken by frequent raids on Soviet embassies and consulates in many countries, conducted on shallow pretexts and accompanied by forged letters and provocatory accusations unprecedented in diplomatic history.<ref>Such as the assassination of Vorovsky during the Lausanne conference, which coincided with an ultimatum from the British Foreign Office; the raid on the Soviet Embassy in Peking, April 1927, followed by the execution of many of its Chinese staff; the raid on the Soviet trading agency in London May 12, 1927; the forged “Zinoviev letter” which swayed a British election. These were only the most spectacular of a whole series of raids, attacks and attempted assassinations which made being a Soviet ambassador a hazardous occupation.</ref> Similar attacks on nations in the past have counted as causes of war. The Soviet Union responded to these attacks by steadily widening its pacts of non-aggression with minor or hard-pressed nations—Turkey first in December 1925, followed by Germany, Lithuania, Persia, Latvia, Afghanistan and others. Unlike all previous alliances and ententes, these pacts were non-exclusive. They were offered to all nations.

When the Preparatory Commission for Disarmament of the League of Nations held its fourth session on November 30, 1927, the newly invited Soviet delegation startled the world by proposing to disarm. Five years earlier Chicherin had made a similar proposition at Genoa; it went unnoticed and was soon forgotten. But Litvinoff’s statement in 1927 came from a nation which had proved its economic and political stability over a term of years. It came moreover at a time when the peoples of the world were beginning to be disillusioned by the ever-repeated fruitless conferences with which European governments sought to hide from their peoples the chaos which followed the World War.

Litvinoff broke the polite façade by suggesting actual disarmament, stating that the Soviet Government was ready to agree to total disarmament or any percentage of disarmament which the other powers would accept. He made this challenge time after time in the sight of the peoples of the world, until the constant evasion of the militarists made it apparent that no capitalist power was willing even to reduce armaments, and that the Disarmament Conference itself was little more than a mask for the old rearmament race.

As armaments grew, the Soviet Union steadily extended pacts of non-aggression and began to press for an internationally accepted “definition of the aggressor,” designed to mobilize world opinion against the provokers of war. None of the major imperialist powers was willing to accept Litvinoff’s definition, which denounced as aggression the sending of any armed forces into any other nation. A dozen or more of the smaller countries signed it; the Soviet Union began to win the post of champion of the rights of smaller powers, which it was later to expand by its participation in the League of Nations.

The will to peace of the Soviet Union and its intelligence in maneuvering to keep out of war was soon severely tested by the growing tensions in the Far East. Japan’s invasion of Manchuria has been recognized by the whole world as a violation of the League of Nations Covenant, the Washington Nine-Power Pact and the Kellogg-Briand Pact, to all of which Japan was signatory. It carried her troops to the Soviet borders and occasionally across them in forays by armed patrols which killed Soviet border guards and peasants. The most serious source of contention was the possession by the Soviet Government of the Chinese Eastern Railway, which crosses Manchuria as the shortest route to Vladivostok. Attacks by alleged bandits and arrests by Japanese military authorities put Soviet railway employees in peril hardly less than that of war. A report by the Soviet director of the road related over 3,000 cases of armed attack which had resulted in the murder of 56 people, the wounding of 825, the destruction of four kilometers of main line track and of hundreds of passenger and freight cars. On October 9, 1933, the USSR was able to publish four Japanese secret documents which discussed the “great necessity for assimilating the railway,” and made it plain that most of the attacks were inspired by Japanese military forces.

The answer of the USSR to these provocations was neither that of the strong capitalist nation which would long since have “protected its interests and citizens” by declaring war, nor was it that of a defenseless colonial nation like China, which continually submits. The Soviet Union built strong fortifications on its entire Far Eastern border, obviously of a defensive nature; and simultaneously removed a source of conflict by selling the railroad to Manchukuo at a price hardly one-fifth of the sum originally invested by the Russians. I was present in Tokyo when the sale occurred and noted the lessening of tension. “The Japanese people are for the time being convinced of our peaceful purposes; it will be some months before their militarists will be able to inflame them against us,” said a Soviet diplomat to me, making the distinction which Communists always make between people and governments. The Japanese militarists were even then laying a basis for further provocation by suggesting the purchase of Soviet Saghalin. Yet for even a temporary lessening of tension, the USSR thought it worth while to make concessions.

In September 1934 the Soviet Union entered the League of Nations, an act which startled both friend and foe. Yet it was the logical consequence of the changing conditions of Europe and the growing strength of the USSR. The Soviet Union views the League analytically rather than emotionally. What is it? What has it to give? The League is not a territory nor a state nor a super-power; still less is it an ideal or a formula which will somehow miraculously bring peace. The League is a diplomatic instrument through which a group of powers meet and come to an agreement. Its policy is decided by the powers that are in it and by the relative strength and courage of those powers.

Behind the idealistic phrases with which at different stages each participating power has veiled its use of the League, the purpose of the League changes. Wilson started it as the organization of Europe on a basis of nationality; his plan involved also “freedom of the seas.” But “freedom of the seas” meant to Britain the domination of the world by American gold instead of by the British fleet; and Europe on a basis of nationality appalled Clemenceau, who knew quite well that there are twice as many Germans as French in Europe, and that “the interests of France” demand the splitting up of the Germans into minorities among many nations. The League, with America out, became the arena where Britain and France struggled for control of Europe, France wishing to crush Germany utterly and Britain willing to help Germany expand slightly. as a balance against France. Wall Street helped Britain by the Dawes and Young plans of reparations, scaling them down to “Germany’s capacity to pay,” i.e., the amount which it was thought German capitalists could squeeze from industrious German workers for several generations without revolt. Germany came into the League, hailed by phrases on the “United States of Europe,” which meant to the Soviet Union the united attempt of world capitalism to placate Germany for the Versailles deprivations by financing her in a drive to the East.

But Dawes guessed wrong. The world economic crisis broke Germany’s “capacity to pay” and ability to wait. Japan and Germany both left the League to seek expansion by their own armed might. The war danger increased but the League itself became, by their disaffection, an organization of powers which had more to lose than to gain from immediate war. “The League might become a hindrance to warlike tendencies,” said Stalin. It still contained robber powers who exploited colonial peoples, and small unstable states built up on the loot of Versailles. The Soviet Union admits the justice of the German grievance, but never the right of war to enforce those claims. “Injustices perpetrated by one war,” said Litvinoff, “can never be rectified by a new one, which only perpetrates worse injustices.” The Soviet Union entered the League to strengthen it against the tendency of Germany, Japan and now Italy to throw a torch into the powder magazine of the world. She thus upholds territorial gains of robber nations in order to increase the chances of world peace.

She even goes further. By pacts of mutual assistance concluded with France and Czechoslovakia, she has placed the might of her increasing Red Army behind the status quo of Europe. She joins with these “robber powers” to blockade Italy, herself the first to agree to the sanctions. Yet when oil sanctions are not agreed to, she continues to sell this commodity to Italy,<ref>In steadily decreasing amounts, in spite of American headlines to the contrary. It is America’s sales that increase.</ref> bewildering the idealists of many nations. Why? Because no high example can check Italians in Abyssinia or stop the spread of the war infection through the trade channels of the world. Because idealist gestures are dangerous tactics against general staffs of armies: that lesson was learned at Brest-Litovsk. Because isolated action might turn against the Soviet Union a fascist drive from a disintegrating Europe, helped to disintegration by her choice of an individual stand. Only the threat of might may possibly halt the explosive drive towards war of a desperate fascism—the might of Europe organized through the League. The Soviet Union throws herself into the task of organizing it<ref>She tried first to organize an “Eastern Locarno,” a pact of many nations against anyone who started an aggression. It failed through the refusal of Poland and Germany. Soviet policy is still to expand security pacts to all possible nations, including Germany and Poland, not even the present pacts being exclusive in nature.</ref> through security pacts which she seeks to widen. For the status quo is evil, but war is worse.

To strengthen this might the Soviet Union increases her Red Army, the only armed force on which she can really depend. Britain and France are camps of conflicting interests; on this the Communists have no illusions. In both these countries are strong popular forces supporting the USSR and the League of Nations in the policy of collective security against aggressors, and other strong reactionary forces which would prefer to support Nazi Germany in the looting of Russia. This would launch world war with all the gigantic means of modern destruction. Hence the struggle against world war today becomes inextricably linked with the struggle against fascist tendencies in the major imperialist countries.

This war, if it comes, will be no mere war between nations. It will arouse class conflicts throughout the world. Not at first perhaps, but in the end in every country. This the Red Army understands thoroughly; its loyalty is not alone to Russia but to the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, wherever they exist or come into being. But not unless invaded will the Soviet Union intervene in any other country, either by war or by interference in its affairs. Marxian analysis tells them that this would hamper the revolutionary development of the other country; it would turn workers towards the capitalists of their own country under the name of patriotism. If the world war starts, the Red Army will advance with a rifle in one hand and pamphlets in the other It has shells to distribute tens of thousands of leaflets calling on the brotherhood of all workers; it has also the means of effective war. As the world’s most politically conscious, most mechanized army, trained in many languages, it is able to lead and equip partisan war on the territory of foes. It is told to get results with a minimum of suffering.

I well remember a talk in Moscow with a high Soviet authority on the subject of Japan in the tense winter of 1933. It was clear to us both that the Soviet air fleet was superior and in easy reach of Tokyo. We looked from high windows on the ice in Moscow river and discussed the chances of war.

“A good, industrious folk, the Japanese,” he said slowly. “It would be a pity to bomb them. Do you think any Communist likes to set aflame whole towns of toiling folk? . . . If war should come in the East between us and Japan, we have not the slightest doubt that it would be the end of capitalist Japan. Revolution would start in Manchukuo and spread southward through China, till all Asia was Communist. Every imperialist power in the world would fight this, till at last revolt flamed up in their own lands. The world revolution might thus be accomplished, but the world that survived would be badly ruined. It would cost the lives of tens of millions of toiling folk; it would mean famine and pestilence sweeping all Asia. The world revolution will be secured with much less suffering, if peace can be maintained.”

“The Soviet Union needs no foreign wars for transforming the world,” said Manuilski in 1935 at the Congress of the Communist International. Her struggle for peace is no temporary slogan. With every year of peace the Soviet Union strengthens, not only as a nation, but as a shining example which the world will follow. As socialism advances in the Soviet Union, it begins to attract scientists, engineers, artists; it draws away from allegiance to capitalism wider and wider hosts. With every year of peace—granted the steadily advancing Soviet Union—the international relation of world forces shifts to the side of the Soviet world and to the disadvantage of capitalism.

Capitalism breeds war, yet world war is not inevitable. For capitalism itself is no longer inevitable in the world. If the struggle for peace can avail month by month and year by year, to check, delay and hamper the forces that drive towards war, capitalism itself may collapse in one war-inciting country after another on a sufficient scale to prevent world war altogether. Or world war, if it comes, may be greatly shortened by the revolt of all those people who suffer unbearably from war.

This is the hope behind the Soviet struggle for peace. But whether in peace or in war, the growing strength and prosperity of the Soviet Union, achieved through two Five-Year Plans, insures the direction and is the pledge of the whole world’s future. The only question now is how deep and bitter will be the struggle—even the wars—before the far-flung peoples know and copy. But nothing any longer can stop the advance of their worldwide forces. They have both strength and knowledge and a conscience about the world.

== PART II: THE SOVIET WORLD MAKES MEN ==

=== CHAPTER IX: THE FACTORY COLLECTIVE ===

In all the recent congresses in Moscow, when miners, auto-workers, weavers, engineers and lathe-hands come up to celebrate their latest achievements in production and to receive honors for increasing a nation’s wealth, a phrase recurs which has no counterpart under capitalism, because the reality which it expresses could not exist there. Even in the Soviet Union the widening use of the phrase is recent, an instinctive expression of a new and growing reality.

“I bring you greetings from our factory collective.” “Our factory collective pledges its full support.”

The factory collective is not the plant administration. Nor is it the trade union, the shop committee or even the Party organization of the factory. All these organizations are a part of it, having their well-defined functions in its vivid life. The factory collective is the sum total of all the people in the plant in all their organized functions, the basic living cell of Soviet society.

The concept of the factory collective did not spring into being full grown. It derives steadily from the joint ownership of the means of production which has now existed for eighteen years. This is the economic reality which is steadily determining the minds of men and the forms of their social life. A worker attached to a machine must be either its slave or its owner; under capitalism he is its slave. In the Soviet Union he knows himself owner of the machine but not the sole owner. It is entrusted to him to master, to get from it all that modern technical skill can give. The product belongs to him and his fellows; through his work in the plant he connects with all society. This gives back to man the old unity of life around the process of production which was riven in twain when the tools by which men created passed into alien hands. It returns on a wider scale and at a higher level by as much as the modern machine is more powerful than the ancient tool.

An American who had worked for some years in a Soviet factory told me that two things especially impressed him: the relation of workers to administration and the cultural life around the factory. “The foreman always asks the workers’ advice in all problems; the relations are those of two friends instead of a boss. In America my factory was just a place to make a living, just another day to get through as soon as you could. Here it is your club, your center of culture, the thing that is closest in life.”

The life of the factory collective has three main aspects: production, workers’ life, and relation to the rest of the country. Each of these aspects has its own control. The director and his assistants are responsible for organizing production. The trade union is responsible for organizing the workers’ life, including factory conditions, insurance, education and social activities. The Party organization is responsible for the political training of the workers, for widening their knowledge of the country’s policies and of their plant’s function in the building of socialism.

These three together—director, trade union organizer, and Party secretary—form the “triangle,” the highest authority in the plant. Each has his clearly defined function; all three together consult on questions affecting the fundamental life of the factory. Orders of the director must be taken without question in production, and he is held responsible for everything that happens in the plant. But any director who failed to get on with the Party and trade union organization wouldn’t last long. As a Russian worker explained it: “If the factory collective doesn’t like the director you may be sure the Commissariat of Heavy Industry won’t leave him there.”<ref>See Chap. 6 for an example of this.</ref>

The relation between workers and management was thus described to me by the American worker: “The whole working gang is interested in production. The program for next month is discussed with all of us. The foreman calls a meeting and tells us that the administration wants us to put out 3,000 milling tools next month. How shall we do it? We discuss in detail; each of us says what he can do. It all adds up to 4,000. So the foreman goes to the administration and raises the plan to 4,000. If we fulfill or surpass our plan, we get a premium which we divide among the workers on the basis of what each has done. To help us estimate this, the shop economist gives us each month a list of each worker’s production, spoilage, idle time, breakdown of machines. Naturally we give the most of the premium to the best workers because they helped the whole gang win. The factory honors the winning brigade not only with a premium but with a red banner which waves each month among the lathes for everyone who passes to see. The best factories get honor and premiums from the whole country because everyone knows that the more we produce the more everyone will have.”

When conflicts occur in a factory between the management and the trade union, there are various ways in which they may be resolved. Often the Party organization of the plant can settle it by discussion within this wider group to which members both of administration and trade union belong. Serious disagreements are appealed by the shop committee to its central trade union, or even to the All-Union Council of Trade Unions which has governmental powers to enforce the rights of workers. For individual cases of injustice appeal is often made direct to the courts. These struggles may be time-consuming, but men who feel convinced enough of their case to fight it through rarely fail of satisfaction. The head of the Nijni Auto Works was removed in 1932 after an investigation by the trade unions which began with a fight over living conditions started by the foreign workers. In another case that I know, an engineer who sharply criticized the plant’s manager in the factory newspaper was later fired on grounds that he thought insufficient. Failing to interest the shop committee in his case he took it to the city organization of the Party, which ordered an investigation that resulted in his reinstatement, with wages paid for all time lost. The director was reprimanded, and the reprimand printed on the front page of the factory newspaper, in order, as one worker expressed it, that “the director may know he is not God.”

More common are the conflicts in which local management and trade union unite to compel action by the central offices of the trust. The shop committee demands certain safety appliances or new construction for the health of the workers. The manager replies that his budget does not allow it. He has no objection, however, to the shop committee making the strongest possible case through the trade union to the central organization which supplies the budget. Since the manager has no personal profit to make by cutting out improvements, but advances in reputation and position rather through his ability to maintain an enthusiastic organization of productive workers, his interest lies on the side of supplying their demands.

Workers, on the other hand, do not want a boss who is soft and sentimental. They want one who can efficiently organize their work. They know that their prosperity depends directly on the success of their factory. They themselves will ask to have workers transferred who make much spoilage, or even expelled if they steal or persistently disorganize production. They consider it desertion for a worker to shift jobs without reason or without training someone to take his place. If health or family matters require a change, or if a factory cannot use his highest skill or give him a chance to develop, he applies for and gets “release.” But to shift merely because another factory, better organized, can give him higher wages and better conditions is considered cowardly.

“Somebody has to make this factory a good one. Why shouldn’t he? His going makes it that much harder for the rest of us; we have to break in a green man. Why should he run off to another place that other folks organized because he finds things difficult here?” Here is an attitude similar to that of partners in a business.

Production, however, is only part of existence. Around this center of jointly owned production is built the whole unity of the worker’s life. Through his factory collective he enters into the duties and privileges of citizenship; it is the primary organization which elects deputies to the local Soviets. Through his shop committee he receives his social insurance, his opportunities for education, his excursions, sports and vacations, and takes part in a score of voluntary social activities from government commissions to parachute clubs.

Let us take an example of the internal organization of a factory collective, the Red Proletarian Plant in Moscow. The smallest unit in the plant is the production brigade which may have thirty to fifty workers. There are one hundred and fifty brigades in the plant, under one shop committee. These brigades not only compete in production records, rewarded by red banners and premiums, but also in social activity. Homiakov’s brigade, for instance, has twenty-nine workers, Every one of them does some social work. Some check the norms of production and standards of piece-work; some watch over the social insurance; three edit the wall newspaper which criticizes the shortcomings of the plant and of the workers. One middle-aged man was inactive socially and this was a great shame to the group, which tried to locate some tasks to interest him. They finally elected him president of the Red Aid Branch; within a month he signed up a big membership and had an active circle going.

The brigade decides the list of “udarniks,” champion workers who get special privileges; but its list will be further checked by the trade union if it is too large or if there are complaints. Does a worker need a free vacation at a sanatorium? The brigade discusses it and sends a recommendation to the shop committee, which has a definite quota of places, and can fight for more. Safety devices on machinery, raising the technical knowledge of each operator, financial help to workers who are in straits, are matters which start with the brigade and are sent with their recommendation to the trade union. The union itself as a whole is actively pushing the completion of the new model dining-room, the expansion of the day nursery and clinic facilities—all these on demands which originally start in the brigades. All this work is democratically initiated, organized, carried through and checked by the rank and file members.

Not the least important aspect of factory life is the cultural activity. Educational opportunities range from simple classes in reading and writing for newly arrived peasants, which characterized the earlier years of Soviet power, to the present university courses and institutions of scientific research. “You come to your factory to study, to attend a university,” said a worker to me. “You think, ‘My factory is going to make an engineer of me.’ After work you take a hot shower and go to the library or gliding club. Artists and singers come from the theaters to sing for us during the dinner hour. Famous authors come to discuss their books with us. If you want to write or act, you join the dramatic club or literary circle. Maybe some day you may go away to enter a theater or a newspaper, but even then you will sometimes come back to your factory.”

The intimate sense of possession which a Soviet worker feels in his factory was strikingly shown to me by my step-daughter Ducia, who worked in a large electric plant near Moscow. I accompanied her on her return to the factory after she had been ill at home with grippe. As we approached the plant she grew excited; a vividness came into her gestures which had been lacking during her two weeks at home. She insisted that I notice and admire the factory laboratory where she worked, the power plant, the restaurant, the big workers’ club building; she pointed out the pathway between the shops that led to the park and stadium. I suddenly realized that Ducia had been positively homesick for her factory.

Her reason for having chosen this particular factory to work in had little to do with wages. She chose it because it had a good reputation as an educational and social center, with a strong organization of Communist youth and a first class university. This offered her the well-rounded life which she demanded from her labor. Her working day was only six hours long, but she not infrequently spent twelve hours or more in and around the factory. She would go half an hour before her work began, drop into the Red Corner to get her newspaper or to discuss with the other girls the work of the political courses; she would come home late in the evening after her skiing club, German class or musical circle, or perhaps still later from a group party at the theater.

In Ducia’s set it is the accepted view, which she does not even stop to formulate, that every human being should engage in three kinds of serious activity: productive work whereby he justifies his right to a share in the commonly produced goods of the country; voluntary social work, which holds together the whole apparatus of society; and study which improves individual capacities. Besides this serious activity there are recreations. All this many-sided life Ducia finds in her factory.

The study takes different forms from year to year. In addition to courses in physics, German and political science which she takes regularly, various campaigns urge special study upon her. It may be her Young Communist League which makes a drive to have all members study the history of the Communist movement of youth. One year it was the drive for “technical minimum,” to raise the skill of all workers in the country. Ducia’s technical minimum was fixed for her by a committee of engineers who visited her laboratory, and discussed with each employee separately the special subjects needed for his work. She studied these subjects for several months, assisted by a voluntary teacher, one of the engineers of the plant who agreed to help several girls as his form of social work. “The whole laboratory is like a university,” said Ducia, “with the six hours’ work like practice on our subjects. When girls meet on the stairs, they are always asking whether you have finished such a formula.”

Like most of her associates, Ducia also does social work; in her case it is the organization of the twelve current-events’ courses for young people in the various shops of the factory She takes much pride in keeping these running well. Not all social work is as serious as Ducia’s. One of the girls organizes a group for parachute jumping, another gets up theater parties, a third helps to plan excursions. Social work is not something that an individual does “for others”; it is the extension of his own interests, the organization in a social manner of what he himself most likes to do. It is also of value to the community and a direct preparation for participation in government. In a sense it is already taking part in government, which is increasingly built up from these voluntary social activities. A man whose financial ability is shown as dues collector for his union, may rise to full or part-time work as assistant chief of the city taxes. A woman who shows interest and efficiency in organizing the factory day nursery may later become chief of the city’s motherhood and infancy bureau.

This is in fact the normal path to political office in the Soviet Union. I recall, for instance, Gribkova, who ten years ago was a young, illiterate farm servant. Wishing to better herself, she got a job as longshoreman on the Volga, thus entering the public services where, as she put it, “the road lay open to all life.” Working downstream she reached a textile mill and took employment as unskilled worker. Here she found the natural center for education and advancement. She learned to read and write, took technical courses and to handle a machine, took political courses and became an “active one” in her factory. From this point her specialization was possible in two directions: through technical training to higher posts in industry, or through social work and political training to posts in government. Gribkova chose the latter; she became interested in the voluntary tasks of factory inspection, and was later chosen by her fellow workers as part of their quota for a two-year training course which prepared professional factory inspectors. She is now a full-time official, head of inspection for a township. Hundreds of thousands have followed a similar path; this is the typical relation between factory life and the public activities of the country.

The life of a great factory is continuous. Just as its productive life goes on for three shifts, so its social life continues nearly twenty-four hours a day. If one chances to come at six-thirty in the morning to the great Stalin Auto Works in Moscow, he may see in Day Nursery No. 41 the beginning of the day’s life. Mothers bring their children to the nursery before reporting to work. Each child receives a swift medical examination as he enters; if this indicates illness, the mother is excused from work to care for her child or to take it to the hospital. In the case of nurslings, the mother is given an hour off at the end of every three hours’ work to nurse her child. These day nurseries are considered as essential a public service as public schools of other countries. But whereas education is compulsory, day nurseries are not. The picture spread abroad of a stern Soviet government forcibly taking children from their mothers would arouse incredulous laughter in any Soviet home. The Soviet mother regards a day nursery as a facility which relieves her of the child certain hours of the day, and as a center of scientific information, whose employees can assist her in its proper care. She demands the day nursery and fights for its quality. If any factory administration fails to supply adequate funds to enlarge and improve its day nursery, the working women will see that the director is reminded.

About the time that the mothers are saying good-by to their children in the nursery, the newspaper office inside the plant begins to bustle with activity. Six thousand copies of Moscow daily papers and 8,500 copies of the four-page daily of the plant, ''Overtake and Surpass'', must be delivered by eight or nine o’clock to subscribers in various shops. The plant newspaper is full of the daily life of the 35,000 workers. It organizes campaigns for production, for quality, for good housing, co-operative stores, clubs, schools, day nurseries; it contains complaints by workers about all these facilities; it is the organ through which these thousands of workers communicate with each other.

In the midst of the great shops of the auto works, a small green square contains both the central dining room and the central polyclinic. The latter is maintained by the Moscow Board of Health, but its connection with the factory collective is very intimate. The health record of every worker is kept on file in a smaller dispensary in the shop where a doctor, medical assistant and statistician are constantly on hand for first aid and general care of this particular group of workers. For all special services the worker goes to the central polyclinic where a medical personnel of 300 includes specialists in all diseases. One interesting feature of this polyclinic is its direct connection with the diet kitchen of the factory which immediately gives the workers without extra charge the particular diet which the doctor prescribes.

It is no sentimental glorification of manual labor which causes the grouping of Soviet institutions around the factory. It derives naturally from the unity of man as owner, creator and user, which under socialism replaces the capitalist division of men into bosses, hands, and buyers of goods. Even under capitalism men feel a deep human joy in creation and mastery, a mastery which may be widened and deepened by the machine. But capitalism poisons this joy at its source. A crane man in Seattle once told me that when he sat aloft picking up great loads with power and deftness, he felt “like one of those Greek giants or ancient gods.” Then he suddenly realized that he had no claim to that crane, but might face any morning, at the owner’s whim, the sign: “Closed down,” and he felt himself degraded from a god to a slave.

Under capitalism the association of men in production is made hateful by a clash of interests; they seek their real life elsewhere, building it from disjointed fragments. Under socialism this association is strengthened by a thousand ties of mutual interest and becomes the solid foundation on which the whole structure of political and social life is frankly and realistically built. Life becomes unified; from worker to manager, to scientist, to artist there is at no point a break. A worker studies and becomes an engineer; he is active in the factory committee on inventions, and becomes a scientist; he shows talent in the dramatic circle and becomes an actor; he devotes himself to social work and rises in the government. Any of these interests may become professional and take him out of the factory into a wider or more specialized life. But the factory remains the social home from which he launched into life, and to which he often returns, either actually or emotionally.

=== CHAPTER X: FARMING A CONTINENT ===

Among the many flaming words which poured from the hearts of two hundred combined-harvester operators meeting in December 1935 in Moscow with the heads of Party and government, amid jubilation over present success and promises to make the future even more victorious, there was one poignant phrase of contrast with the past.

“We sons and daughters of peasants—had there been no Soviet power, no Party of Lenin-Stalin, our lot would have been slavery to kulaks, or dawnless poverty in the mire of small peasant farming.”

These words illumine with a piercing ray the tremendous changes that have taken place in the Soviet rural districts in a span of years so brief that the past still remains vivid in the minds of men not yet thirty years old. “When I worked as a fourteen-year-old farmhand under the tsar,” said the combine operator Kapusta, “I never saw the leaders of the government, never saw even the boss for whom I worked. . . . I never expected from life such happiness, such joy.”

Five years ago Kapusta was an unskilled worker. But not Kapusta alone; so were they all. What else but unskilled workers were there on the backward individual farms of peasant Russia, where fifteen years ago the tractor was stoned as a “devil machine?” Even five years ago, who among Russian peasants had ever seen a combine-harvester? Today not only are millions of peasants acquainted by sight with the most modern farm machinery, but hundreds of thousands have mastered its operation and make a more continuous use of it than is possible on the private farms of America, which are too small to utilize profitably this modern machine. The combine is already a machine too good for capitalism. The American average harvesting record per combine is 578 acres, while the Soviet average secured in 1935 was 643. The champion operators who met in Moscow spurned this average. They had made records of a thousand, two thousand and even twenty-five hundred acres for the harvest season, and were swearing a solemn oath to train before next harvest many more operators like themselves.

The time of this great advance has been so short that they can all look back as if to yesterday and recall the days of ignorance and poverty, when they slaved for wealthier farmers or wasted nine-tenths of their labor trudging from strip to strip of their medieval peasant fields. Today the very word “peasant” is passing from their vocabulary. They speak of themselves as “kolhozniks,” members of the collective economy, joint owners and users of the large-scale farm on which they work. They know quite well that if there had been no collectivization of farming, their slavery and darkness would have continued. For if modern machines had come to the Russian soil under capitalist conditions, a minority of successful farmers would have gained the means of production and risen to a brief wealth on the impoverishment of millions—brief until they in turn were robbed by the big banks of the cities, as farmers are under capitalism.

The years 1930 to 1933 will go down in mankind’s story as the turning point in the farm history of the world. No other events of those years will be so long remembered—not the struggles of the League of Nations, nor the American New Deal; not even the world-wide economic crisis which was but one more, the worst, of many crises. Even the rise of the Chinese Soviets and the turning of Central Europe to fascism may receive less space in future history books than the collectivization of Soviet farming, whereby men won the dream of centuries, security on the soil.

Security on the soil! Security from drought, from floods, from mortgages, from the chances of nature and the exploitations of man! Even to attain fragments of such security, if not for themselves then for their children, men of all ages have struggled and died. American families left the comforts of settled regions to homestead in dugouts, for the security promised by land ownership. Then drought or the foreclosure of mortgages showed that security based on private property in land is illusion. Markets collapsed and land was taken away for bare taxes. Soviet farmers today are winning not only security against taxes and mortgages and markets but even against drought and floods. Farming is industrialized on the basis of modern machinery and division of labor. Crop losses through “acts of God” are minimized by better tillage, crop insurance, and assistance from the more fortunate areas. The control of the joint farm is democratically organized; the general meeting not only elects the management, but decides the plan of the farm and the division of work. Security on the land thus co-exists with free initiative.

This change has occurred among people whose farming was formerly notoriously backward. Ten years ago in the central grain-growing regions of Russia, there were three homemade wooden plows for every metal plow. One-third of the peasants had no horse at all but labored for others to pay for the plowing of their own soil. Lands were divided according to a medieval system; the twenty acres of a single family might be divided into a dozen strips scattered miles apart. Scientific crop rotation and seed selection were unknown. The primitive methods of tillage steadily exhausted the soil. A typical study of grain crops in the Kirsanov district showed a steady decline of average yield from thirteen bushels per acre in 1896-1905 to ten and a half bushels in the five years preceding the World War. On this same land since the collective farm was organized in 1930 the yield rose by better tillage to an average of seventeen bushels in 1930-33, and twenty bushels in 1934-35.

In four earth-shaking years, the Soviet Union changed from a country of tiny, badly tilled holdings, worked with wooden plow and hand sickle, to the largest scale farms in the world.<ref>In the United States farms of a thousand acres or more comprise only 7.5 per cent of the total tilled area; in the USSR in 1935, nine-tenths of the tilled area was made up of farms averaging thirteen hundred acres.</ref> The initiative was taken by the poorer peasants and farm hands, urged and organized by the Communists, and assisted by government credits and machines. When the Five-Year Plan swiftly increased the farm machinery available, the new collective farm proved able to attract ever wider and wider groups of farmers. The movement was bitterly fought by the small rural capitalists known as kulaks, who farmed with hired labor, lived by money-lending, or owned small mills, threshers and other means of production and used these facilities to exploit their neighbors.<ref>Writers unacquainted with Russian rural life often confuse kulaks with peasants generally, which leads them to describe the whole collectivization movement as an attack on the peasants. But for half a century students of Russian rural districts have spoken of kulaks. In 1895 Stepniak wrote that “hard unflinching cruelty” was their main characteristic; in 1904 Wolf von Schierhand wrote of the kulak as a “usurer and oppressor in a peasant’s blouse.” In 1918 Dr. E. J. Dillon, in ''The Eclipse of Russia'', said: “Of all the human monsters I have ever met in my travels, I cannot recall any so malignant and odious as the Russian kulak.”</ref>

The state’s donation to farming and the technical help supplied by city workers proved decisive. During the years from 1930 to 1935, the Soviet government issued more than a billion dollars of direct credits to the farms for livestock and implements and spent an additional three billion for farm machinery loaned through the tractor stations;<ref>For tractor stations 5.5 billion rubles, for direct loans 1. billion; these were “hard rubles” whose value may be estimated as fifty cents.</ref> it also gave food and seed loans of 157 million bushels of grain to farms in distress. At the call of the Communist Party tens of thousands of skilled workers, bookkeepers, machine repairmen, teachers and organizers, poured into the rural districts to help organize the farms. The most difficult period was from the 1932 to the 1933 harvest when kulak sabotage, added to difficulties of inefficient organization, caused a grain shortage that put the whole country on short rations. Success was won by the 1933 harvest which reached nearly 90 million tons of grain, the largest harvest ever known in the Russian land; it was succeeded by an equal or larger grain crop in 1934 and 1935. These harvest successes helped create a government budget surplus in 1934 of 437 million rubles, which was at once applied to cancel debts owed to the state by the farmers for early expenses of organizing and equipping the collectives. This wiped out 53 per cent of the still outstanding indebtedness, including all debts incurred prior to 1933.

The economic results of collectivization have been an increase in the sown area of 30 million acres, from 293 to 323 million; a grain crop which for three years has been 15 to 20 million tons higher than the average for the five years before the collectives were formed;<ref>The average before collectivization was 78 to 80 million tons; in 1933 and 1934, 90 million; in 1935 nearly 100 million tons. Cotton area 688,700 hectares in 1913; 802,000 in 1927, and 2,051,000 in 1933. Sugar-beet area 648,700 in 1913; 665,000 in 1927, and 1,212,000 in 1933.</ref> an area sown to sugar beets which is double the pre-war or any previous record; and an area sown to cotton which is two and a half times either the pre-war or the re-collectivization area. Livestock suffered catastrophically during the early years of collectivization but has been climbing rapidly back in the past three years.<ref>See Chap. 7.</ref> The indications for the future are even brighter, since the rapidly improving methods of tillage and increase of fertilizer are counted upon to increase harvest yield year by year.<ref>As an example 46 per cent of all spring seeding in 1935 was done on winter-fallowed land, as compared with 25 per cent in 1930, and three-fourths of the autumn sowing in 1935 was done on summer-fallowed land as compared with 30 per cent in 1930. Similar increases have occurred in the use of selected seed, of fertilizer, scientifically planned crop rotations, and so forth.</ref> At the end of 1935 Stalin in conference with the harvester-combine operators announced that “in the very near future, in three or four years,” 120 to 130 million tons of grain would be expected from the farms.

By 1935, the new forms of collective farming were sufficiently stabilized for the permanent fixing of boundaries. For at least two years practically no members had wished to leave the collective farms to return to individual farming; crop rotations and the location of fields were becoming settled. The Soviet Government thereupon issued a decree granting “perpetual use of land” to the farm collectives. All over the country today rapid surveying of boundaries goes on followed by village celebrations which record the deed for perpetual use. Speakers celebrate the change of recent years, recalling days when most of the land was owned by landlords and tenant peasants worked in the slavery of debt, when freehold peasants sold their land bit by bit to pay taxes. “From perpetual debt to perpetual ownership is the change we have made,” said a Tartar farmer.

In place of the old disused boundary posts with the tsarist eagle and the inscription “Each for his own,” there arise new boundary posts with the sickle and hammer and the letters, “USSR.” All the land is unitedly owned by the whole country of workers and farmers, say these symbols; its use is granted perpetually to specific organizations of working farmers. As Soviet citizen, the farmer is ultimate owner, as working farmer, he is permanent user. Both ownership and use are democratically organized and the relation of the smaller group to the whole country is fixed in part by permanent law and in part by annual contracts designed to encourage efficient production and to guarantee right to the fruits of toil. Security is gained by the permanent use of land which cannot be alienated by sale, lease, or mortgage. Freedom is secured by the democratic organization of both farm and country.

What is this group which thus becomes permanent user? The model constitution adopted by the Congress of “Farm Udarniks”<ref>A delegate congress from the farms that have made the best records; their recommendations have weight as expressing the best farm practice.</ref> and ratified by the Soviet Government February 17, 1935, states that it is a “voluntary union of working farmers” who unite “in order to build with joint means of production and jointly organized labor a collective, i.e., a social husbandry, to secure full victory over the kulak and over all exploiters, to secure full victory over need and darkness, over the backwardness of small individual husbandry, to create high productivity of labor and thus insure a better life for the members.

“All boundaries formerly dividing the fields of the members are abolished. . . .

“All draft animals, farm implements, seed reserves, fodder for the collective livestock, and buildings necessary to carry on the joint farming and the processing of the farm products are socialized. . . .

“Living quarters, family cattle and fowls and the buildings necessary for their use are not socialized but remain for the private use of the members’ family.”<ref>Up to two head of milch cattle, one brood sow and her brood, ten sheep and goats, unlimited rabbits and chickens and twenty bee-hives in the grain, cotton, and beet regions; larger numbers are allowed for individual use in the regions devoted to livestock.</ref>

All persons over sixteen who toil on the farm have equal vote. The general meeting elects the management, accepts or expels members, decides in conference with state experts the plan for farm production, crop rotation and new improvements and sets aside within certain limits private family garden plots ranging from half to one and a half acres for the individual use of members. It also contracts for the use of machinery from the Machine Tractor Station, a service center which supplies machines and expert knowledge over about a fifteen mile radius. These stations were originally organized and financed by the state but are becoming in part co-operatively owned through shares taken by the collective farms they serve. The farm must make certain deliveries of crops to the state at low prices fixed by a state commission; it must also pay the tractor station in kind. These two payments amount to about one-fourth of the average Crop; as tractor station service increases and with it the payments for machinery, the direct deliveries to the state somewhat diminish, moving towards a time when the state will receive its quota as direct payment for machinery.

When these deliveries are made, and the seed and fodder fund set aside, the rest of the harvest may be divided among the members in proportion to the work they have done. The “work-day” is the unit for payment, but work-days are of different value according to the quantity and quality of work done. A tractor driver’s day may count as two ordinary work-days, a night watchman’s as three-quarters of a day. When possible, work-days are related to a definite amount of labor done—an area plowed or harvested—and additions or subtractions are made for work above or below the norm. The general meeting also sets aside part of the income for expansion and common uses such as field kitchens and day nurseries. This at first led to abuses by over-zealous farm officials wishing to build up central funds, but these amounts are now limited. In the past two years, the increased harvests have led to an increasing surplus above the government deliveries and the food required by the members. This may be freely sold, either individually or collectively, and either in town markets or through the village co-operatives, which have been greatly strengthened during the past year.

Some fifty miles from the railway, in a northern flax and rye district, the Kalinin Collective Farm showed me its “Farm Plan,” a document of eighteen long pages, neatly stitched into a pamphlet. It was a printed form issued by the Commissariat of Agriculture, with details filled out by the local organization. Acreage, meadows, arable land, orchards, crop rotations, farm implements, draft animals, cows, pigs and chickens—everything you could wish to know about the Kalinin farm is here recorded. Not only are all people listed but allowance is made for babies yet unborn; an estimated 2 per cent annual increase of population must be provided with a growing standard of living. The farm plans to provide food for people and animals, produce the marketable crops recommended for the district, erect new buildings, reclaim new fields and create an increasingly prosperous life for its members. To this end work must be assigned to use as far as possible the entire working-time of the hundred able-bodied members.

The farmer-members have discussed this plan for months before they adopted it. The township surveyor helped them plot the fields; the township land office and the Soviet newspapers have informed them that the country’s standard of living is to double by 1937, and that they must do their share. This involves increasing wheat at the expense of rye, doubling the oat ration of their horses, increasing fats and meats. They know that the state expects from them a certain amount of flax, the chief marketable crop of their district. On the basis of all this knowledge they plan for the coming year, counting on a constantly increasing crop yield through more machines and fertilizer and better methods, and on a constantly increasing prosperity through the rational assignment of work to the members. The plan includes the labor organization, with the number of total work-days needed for sowing and harvest, and the amount of labor left over for building a new library, equipping a playground and stadium or installing electricity and radios. No one need be out of a job, for all labor can be utilized to increase in various ways the prosperity and culture of the village; all will be paid by shares in the joint harvest, according to the quantity and quality of work done.

When the entire plan is accepted by the general meeting, it is registered with the township office and becomes part of the economic plan of the whole country, which is derived from and in turn controls all lesser plans. Sowing and harvest are not the affair of the individual farmer only; they are the great annual rhythm on which the nation’s life depends. The whole country knows this and relates itself consciously to the plans of the farmers. Scientific conferences consider questions of insect pests and seed selection; heavy industry makes plans to manufacture more tractors. Government and Party congresses outline the changing demands which the growing life of the land makes on farming—increase of area or yield, or a change in the proportion of crops. Congresses of farmers meet by township, province and on national scale to discuss problems of tillage and farm organization. The Russian winter which in former days was a season of hibernation in snow-bound villages, is today a season of active farm-planning on a nationwide scale. Not even the farthest farm is isolated; visits of experts and newspaper campaigns keep it in touch with the life of the country.

When spring begins in the south, hundreds of press correspondents pour forth to cover the sowing. ''Izvestia'' alone sends a dozen staff correspondents and tells sixty local correspondents to concentrate on farm news. The ''Peasants’ Gazette'' keeps several small airplanes busy, each as the center of a group of a dozen persons covering the farms. The news-gathering organization which some of the Soviet newspapers put on the sowing or harvest is beyond the scope of the biggest dailies in the capitalist world. Every provincial paper adds its reporters. The story is the world’s biggest annual story with more reporters than covered the World War!

These reporters are not mere observers; their reporting is planned to help the harvest. One journalist of my acquaintance spent forty-four days in an airplane covering harvest in the North Caucasus; he visited one hundred farms and forty Tractor Stations, and slept in the fields without one night in a bed. His reporting was for a concrete purpose; he would drop in a field, apply his yardstick and count the grain ears lost on a square yard of harvested ground; he compared various farms, discovered which ones harvested best and how they did it. Within three days he was meeting with other journalists who made similar surveys; they discussed the chief harvest problems of the season and the best ways in which these were being met. These results were at once radioed to all the farms and published through the press of the country for the benefit of other farmers as the harvest traveled north. Every season hundreds of new ideas are thus culled from the experience of the farmers and broadcast by press and radio for the use of other farms.

“A characteristic trait of the collective farm system,” says Vaviloff, chief of the Plant Institute. of Leningrad, “is its ability to assimilate new technical methods and make new scientific experiments.”

The most striking example of the organization of great masses of farmers under the leadership of science was shown by the united fight of 1934 against the great drought which affected the whole southern half of Europe, including large areas in the Ukraine and Crimea. In many places no rain fell from April till harvest. In days of individual peasant farming, the peasants would have killed cattle for food and gone to the cities for work, putting back agriculture for several years. The collective farmers met swiftly in delegate congresses to declare “War Against Drought.” They took stock of all resources and made plans to suit each region. Near the Dnieper river they seeded the overflow meadows. On the slopes of the Caucasus the Kabardinians dug thousands of miles of irrigation ditches, declaring: “We have mountains; we don’t need rain.” Other farms organized continuous hauling of water by fire-department wagons, or planted swamps and forest glades. Children stormed the fields in organized detachments to pull up every moisture-sucking weed. Scientists busily determined for each district what second crops could best grow where winter wheat had failed. The press gave directions about this second planting; the government shot in by fast freight the necessary seed. The USSR secured a crop equal to the bumper harvest of 1933, and even most farms in the drought-stricken regions came through with food for man and beast, and with organization strengthened.

The Soviet farmer has come out of his old isolation; he stands on the highways of the world. Through his collective farm, like the industrial worker through the factory collective, he connects with the wider life of science and art. Seven thousand farms in the Ukraine have established during the past two years their “laboratory cottages,” where the farmers carry on scientific experiments based on their own fields. In a typical one I found exhibits of wheat grown under varying conditions, samples of new crops, collections of insect pests, instruments for weather recording. “Sixty farmers take part in our experiments,” they told me. “We exchange data with the Zaporozhe Experimental Station.” These not long since illiterate peasants who grubbed the soil blindly are farmer-scientists now, collecting nationally useful data for the conquest of harvest yields.

More than a hundred thousand drama circles for self-expression have sprung up on Sovict farms. Sport and recreation of all types grow also with tremendous speed. Farmers learn gliding, parachute jumping, even aviation. The small farm airplane which can land on a harvested field is a not infrequent visitor in farm campaigns. Extra-early sowing done by air into the mud of melting snow is a recognized means of combating drought in many regions.

By no means all Soviet farms are yet well organized, but efficiency steadily increases. By no means all of them are prosperous, but prosperity steadily grows. The change which is most apparent is in the faces of the farmers. They have lost the dull, unresponsive stare of the peasant; they are more vivid, alert. “Formerly even the peasant with the best income lived like a pig,” said a Soviet farmer to me. “His only use for his surplus was to get drunk. Today he has a reading-room, a hospital, a school, a laboratory; he reads the newspapers and knows about the world. His children go from the village to build factories, to discover minerals, to conquer the Arctic, to become ‘heroes of the Soviet Union.’”

More than two million letters 2 year from farmers pour into the offices of the ''Peasants’ Gazette'' in Moscow, a high-piled mountain covering many tables. I asked an editor how their contents revealed the changing life of the farm. “When our paper began its existence,” he said, “in the years before collectivization, we got chiefly individual complaints and requests for simple information on farm technique. ‘My taxes are too high!’ ‘How shall I care for my cow?’ Such were the letters.

“What do they write about now? The education of children, the position of women, the farm theater, the economic crisis in foreign lands. We got five hundred original poems on the death of Kirov and seventy on the disaster to the Maxim Gorky airplane. They comment on world affairs, on China and Italy. You can’t compare them with what they were ten years ago. Instead of ‘my horse and cow,’ their interest is wide as the world.”

On the northern slopes of the Caucasus mountains, a small district of once suppressed non-Russians, known as Kabardinia, prides itself on creating “the farms of tomorrow.” Its collective farmers have been known to vote the greater part of a harvest surplus to add to the government’s school fund and build for their own village “the best school in the valley.” They bring architects from Moscow to help them plan “farm-cities,” settlements which shall combine expert farming with the culture of the town, high schools, laboratories, libraries, sound-film theaters. A forty-mile highway runs through the Kabardinian valley. Last summer travelers passing, on foot or by cart, found seven rest-stations at five-mile intervals. Brightly painted, tile-roofed pavilions were furnished with wash-basins and beds with fresh linen; large plates of watermelon were placed on the table to quench the visitor’s thirst. An old man attendant refused all payment for the refreshment, saying: “This is the farm ‘Dawn of Socialism’; we planted two extra acres of melons for the traveler.”

=== CHAPTER XI: THE FREEING OF WOMEN ===

{{Quote|“Every kitchen maid must learn to rule the state.”|Lenin}}

Throughout the world a struggle goes on for women’s equality and freedom, with varying methods and varying success. The methods most commonly known are those of different women’s organizations which fight, decade after decade, for new specific increases in women’s “rights.” They count their victories by the number of women who one by one attain high office, by the number of rights slowly secured, the right to vote, to enter industry, to inherit property, to divorce, to some individual status after marriage.

Undoubted gains they have known, and also many disillusions. A tireless woman in New England recently told me that she had fought for thirty years to get “a decent inspection of women’s labor in our state” and that they would “probably lose it at the next election.” Nor does the elevation of the occasional woman to high position necessarily improve the lot of women generally. From Cleopatra down to America’s women officials, exceptional women have occasionally been permitted to rule; it is not recorded that the mass of women gained more consideration from them than from men rulers. Women the world over are still unequal to men, bound by a thousand discriminations. In the backward lands of the East hundreds of millions of women are still a subject sex. Not even in the most advanced capitalist countries are they quite equal with men; the long list of disabilities against which the National Women’s Party protests in America is evidence of that. Nowhere in capitalist lands have they equal access to all universities, equal pay for equal work in all industry, equal right to advance in all professions, equal rights in marriage and in the care and custody of children. Even those rights which they have attained are today under attack by fascism, which under the phrases of chivalry drives women back to the Middle Ages.

It is therefore the more amazing that Soviet women should have gained so swiftly an equality unknown elsewhere in the world. They receive equal pay for equal work and no jobs are closed to them. They have equal opportunity in education and in government. They have equal rights and duties in marriage; they are free to have or not to have children. They have full political, economic, legal and social equality, as human beings and citizens. This has been attained in eighteen years in a country where women were once suppressed not only in the European but also in the Asiatic manner. Tsarist law made Russian wives the property of their husbands “in duty bound to render him love, respect and in all things obedience to his wishes.” They had no right to separate passports; if they ran away, the police returned them to their husbands. This law was reinforced by brutal peasant customs; Gorky relates the sight of an unfaithful wife bound naked to a cart and flogged by her peasant husband into unconsciousness in the midst of a jeering, applauding crowd. In tsarist Central Asia millions of dark-skinned Mohammedan women lived in the seclusion of harems and behind black veils.

The freeing of women takes place in the Soviet Union swiftly because it is not a woman’s fight alone. It comes as part of the freeing of human beings by giving them joint ownership over the country’s means of production, irrespective of sex, color or race. . . . “The emancipation of women is not only the work of women Communists but of men Communists also, just as the fight for socialism is a mutual fight,” said Krupskaia, widow of Lenin. The Communists hold that the gains in women’s freedom made through centuries have been chiefly due to change in methods of production. The modern factory freed women from the patriarchal home, but imposed its own form of slavery; it used women to cut down wages, thus increasing the antagonism of the sexes. Economic slavery is the basis of all other inequalities, the key-log in the jam which must first be loosed that all others may rush free.

No freedom comes without battle. The October Revolution created the economic, legal and political basis of woman’s equality. The industrialization of the country was the consciously applied weapon for making woman equal with man. Yet in every village and factory women still had to fight their way over the traditional habits of centuries, which lingered in their own souls and in the souls of men. But these barriers of the past were no longer buttressed by ancient law and by the need of private industry for cheap woman’s labor.

The first women to establish their freedom were the workers in the factories who took part with their men in the Revolution. I recall Dunia, who was once an illiterate textile worker, living with husband and children in the same room with another family, nine people in all. Dunia was one of those who in the first year of Revolution seized the manager’s house for a day nursery so that her children might have space to grow. She learned to read and began to rise in political and social work, as did simultaneously millions of others. She said to me: “Once life went on without us workers, still more without us women. The father gave her to the husband; she was slave to her man and her factory. Now I am slave to no one. The road is open to all life.” This phrase of the “open road to life” I have heard hundreds of times from working women.

The emancipation of peasant women came more slowly. Scores of women presidents of villages have told me of their difficulties with the peasant men who jeered at “petticoat rule.” “They laughed at the first woman we elected to the village Soviet so much that she could do nothing; at the next election we put in six women and now it is we who laugh.” This was a typical statement.

The widespread collectivization of farming in 1930 gave women’s freedom in the rural districts its needed economic base. Farm women everywhere in the collective farms are awakening to the implications of their independent income. Drunken husbands are no longer masters in the home. “I got for myself a warm new coat, a dress and shoes; I got clothes for the children,” said a farm woman displaying her purchases in the local market. “But my man spent his money on drink and I’ll buy him nothing. I’ve told him if he gets drunk again I’ll throw him out of the house and not even feed him. The farm will back me up, unless he quits drinking and loafing. I can get along without him in the collective farm.” Some thirty million farm women from Leningrad to Vladivostok are awakening to the amazing fact that they can get along economically without their husbands.

Most cruel and bloody of all was the fight for women’s freedom in those lands of Central Asia where for centuries veiled women had been sold like chattels to the harems. Here local religion and custom supported men who murdered their wives for the crime of unveiling. When young folks in Tashkent schools spent vacations agitating for women’s freedom, one girl’s body was sent back in a cart. Accompanying the hacked pieces were the words: “This is your women’s freedom.” In another locality of Central Asia, nine murders of women occurred before any were discovered by central authority; every attempt of a woman to get justice was met by local vengeance.

But the women of Central Asia, led by the hope which the new government gave them and the new industries encouraged, fought their way into freedom. The blood of martyrs stirred them to greater struggle; fifty thousand women marched at the funeral of the Tashkent girl student. In Bokhara, citadel of Mohammedan orthodoxy, a spectacular unveiling of women in great meetings and processions took place on International Women’s Day, March 8, 1928. Amid indescribable enthusiasm they tore off veils, stamped on them, threw them on the streets and at the feet of speakers. When one woman was murdered by her husband for this unveiling, a public trial was held in a great mass meeting; the murderer was swiftly condemned and executed. From that time women walked unveiled in holiest Bokhara. Today a woman, Abidova, who at the age of twelve was sold in marriage to pay a fifteen-ruble debt of her father, is vice-president of the Uzbek Republic, and its permanent representative in Moscow.

These women of the East are quite aware of the relation of their new freedom to the socially owned means of production.

<blockquote>The roar of the factory is in me. It gives me rhythm, It gives me energy,</blockquote>
sing the Uzbek girls of the state silk mill which brought them out of the harems. Another song makes the application wider:

<blockquote>Flower of the East, the time has come To cast off the veil and the paranja. . . . For a thousand years you slept in darkness under the yoke. When you awake, when you arise from deep sleep, The workers of the world await you!</blockquote>
Steadily the share of Soviet women in industry and in public life has climbed upward. The percentage of women among industrial workers has risen by a steady 3 per cent a year during the Five-Year Plan, and is now (1935) 42 per cent of all persons gainfully employed. In technical higher schools 36 per cent of the students are women, in medical schools 75 per cent; in no institution of learning is there any discrimination against women. The percentage of women who took part in elections rose from 28 per cent of all eligible women in 1926 to 80.3 per cent in 1934. Women constituted 18.2 per cent of the membership of city soviets in 1926; this rose to 32.1 per cent in 1934. The change in the rural districts was greater; a 9.9 percentage of women in 1926 in village soviets rose to 26.4 per cent in 1934. Only 0.6 per cent of the villages had women presidents in 1926, though even this figure testified to the successful fight of thousands of women; by 1934 the figure was over 8 per cent. More than a million women today hold some form of public office in the soviets, including 400,000 elected members of soviets, 400,000 members of local government commissions, 112,000 “co-judges” in the courts, a function similar to but somewhat more specialized than that of our jurors, and 100,000 members of managing boards of co-operatives.

The city of Tver, now renamed Kalinin, gives an example of the varied kinds of work done by women. As a textile town, its population included a large proportion of women textile workers before the Revolution, a fact which explains its present status as a progressive city, boasting itself among the first Soviet cities in which women attained their full half of the seats in the city government. (Other cities are steadily following, as women through initiative and education take advantage of their legal right to equality.) Tver’s two most important women are Anna Kaligina, city secretary of the Communist Party, than which no higher post in the city exists, and Feodorova, who held till recently the prize of “best weaver” for the USSR. Thousands of others follow in the footsteps of these leaders.

Policeman Lily travels fearlessly through dark woods about the city to round up criminal gangs. On one occasion, when she was convoying a prisoner caught setting fire to turf fields, she was set upon in the woods by two of his accomplices and brought back to jail not one criminal but three. That same evening she played the part of fragile heroine in lilac gown in the local dramatic club, for Lily is an ardent amateur actress specializing in dainty feminine parts. Black-eyed Katya is a street-car conductor, with the best record among the twenty-seven woman conductors of Tver. She is also in the second year of the workers’ college, where she studies Turgenieff and geometry. Morosov, the motorman, writes poems about her.

All the young men admire Nina, eighteen-year-old glider pilot, who three days a week sails through the air on light wings. Her regular job is in the car Works, making valves for railway cars. But her pastime is the aviation club and she expects some day to be an aviator. Zoya is champion motor mechanic in a clothing factory and also chairman of its shop committee, handling trade union affairs for five hundred and sixty women; in her spare time she is an enthusiastic ski runner, who took second place in a contest held by the clothing workers of five provinces. Marusia is studying to be a doctor; Tonia is a former spinner who did such good work on the wall newspaper that she is now a full time writer. Dusia was the first woman chauffeur in the city; the boys used to run after her yelling, “girl driver.” One by one the girls of Tver have conquered every trade and profession. So have the women throughout the USSR.

Foreign visitors are occasionally shocked to find women taking part in heavy and dirty labor, field work, street-cleaning, even digging the subway. But Soviet women are still of the generation of peasants, who worked in the fields. They know that in all ages women have done heavy labor; it is the skilled work from which they have been barred. They know that equal share in labor means in the USSR equal share in ruling and in all opportunities of life. So young girls fought for the right to equal work on the subway, against engineers and miners who didn’t want to let the women underground. They worked knee-deep in water alongside experienced men, challenged them to records and often beat them. “The subway was the richest experience of my life,” said a prize-winning girl.

There are, however, regulations governing women’s labor, which prohibit work proved by experience more dangerous to women than to men. Women may not engage in trades involving danger of lead poisoning, may not lift weights above a certain amount. Special regulations, reinforced by medical observation, surround the whole period of pregnancy, and the last six to eight weeks women may not work.<ref>Six weeks before and six weeks after childbirth for office jobs; eight weeks before and eight weeks after for physical labor; longer periods may be ordered at any time by the doctor, and are given without loss of wages.</ref> Many labor processes are constantly under investigation to determine whether or not they are injurious to women; when experiment shows that they are, they are prohibited. This is no sex discrimination but part of the ordinary routine of the public health service, which steadily investigates the effect of occupations and bars from them those groups of the population which might be injured. Thus sand-blasting trades are prohibited to youth, which is more susceptible than older people are to tuberculosis from sand-blasting. No trade or profession is prohibited in advance as “unwomanly”; any trade may be barred after investigation to any group or individual on grounds of public health.

Not access to heavy labor but to skilled professions distinguishes Soviet women from those of other lands. Anna Kofanova won fame as operator of a combined-harvester, harvesting 1,500 acres in one season, the township record. Natalia Mikhailova is director of a machine tractor station entirely manned by women which services the 15,000 acres of thirty-two collective farms. Shchetinina, a ship captain, navigates the ocean. The envelopes of Soviet stratostats were designed by a woman chemist. Irene Rousinova was the first woman polar explorer, wintering several seasons in the north; she has been followed by hosts of others, including Nina Demme, who for two years has managed the scientific station on North Land. Galina Medovnik weeded tobacco in tsarist days as a girl of eight, fought in the Red Army during the civil war and was several times condemned to death; she escaped to become today a representative of housewives in the Moscow Soviet, where she superintends the building of apartment houses for workers.

Equality in work has given to women equality in every field of life: education, politics, marriage. The assumption behind the Soviet marriage code is the equal human dignity of both parties in deciding their intimate relations—a decision with which the state has no right to interfere. State action is limited to protection of children and prevention of force or fraud. Young couples appearing at the Marriage Registry Bureau are therefore required to give name, residence, occupation, past marital history, any children, and the future name which each intends to take. Questions to each are identical. The same name is often taken but not always. A person who infects another with disease is criminally liable. Property owned before marriage remains individual; that later acquired is jointly owned. Any married person who desires a divorce gets it, nor has the state the right to ask the reason. Both parties are responsible for the care and support of children up to eighteen and for giving the other partner any needed temporary economic aid to establish the independent relation. Recent much publicized changes in the divorce code were only a better bookkeeping, insuring that both persons actually knew of the divorce and were actually held for the support of children.

Recent comments of Soviet leaders that more time should be given to family life are similarly part of the general emphasis on richer human relations now possible through increasing leisure rather than any belated recognition of the family. Casual attitudes toward marriage have been discouraged from the beginning; no one was more emphatic on this than Lenin. But the pressure is social rather than legal. Trade unions, collective farms and Party organizations will penalize, even to the point of expulsion, persons who cause social havoc through their sexual instability. But they consider concrete situations, not traditions. The continuous and open living together of two people is respected, whether or not they are “registered”; it constitutes marriage in both the social and legal sense. Taking advantage of another person is penalized, through whatever forms accomplished. Peasants who took advantage of the marriage code to secure brief brides for harvest work soon stopped when they found this gave the woman equal right to the harvest. One notorious case some years ago was that of a man who seduced a girl by marriage and threw her out next morning; he was convicted of rape, which is legally defined as sex relations obtained through force or fraud, and was punished by imprisonment. The fact of the marriage registration was rather an aggravation than otherwise; he had used a Soviet office to assist fraud.

Problems occasionally arise in marriage from the fact that both partners have jobs. I met a girl tractor-driver in Siberia who married a tractor-driver on another field brigade. They spent their honeymoon some miles apart; once each week the young man walked ten or twelve miles on his free day to stay with his bride. The girl never met him half-way; she was boss of the winning brigade and took no chances. To my casual query why they did not get into the same field-gang, both exclaimed: “Desert my brigade in sowing-time!”

A woman’s relation to the state is always individual; it is never through her husband. Not even the wives of great men may live by reflected glory. When Stalin’s wife died, the black-bordered announcements in the press gave her own name and occupation in the artificial silk industry, and only after this mentioned that she was the “close friend and companion of Stalin.” Kalinin’s wife wins recognition by creating a state farm and center of culture in the Altai Mountains, where they call her by her own name, not by the name of the president.

The tradition that love is “woman’s whole existence” is challenged by a new assumption, a refusal to admit that any human being’s happiness can be completely dependent on one other human being. When Salima, a young woman of Turkestan, accepted a scholarship to study in Tashkent, her husband ordered her to return, and, on her refusal, divorced her, boasting by letter that he had taken another wife “obedient and illiterate.” Salima showed her quality by replying: “I received your letter telling me that you have another wife. I will have my revenge. When I finish my studies I will come back to the village and teach your second wife to read and write.” The older generation may be horrified by the flippant Salima, but the new Soviet generation will applaud her as free and self-reliant citizen.

The freedom of every woman to dispose of her own body, to marry or not to marry, to have children or not to have them, irrespective of marriage, is taken for granted by Soviet law, and is restrained only by social opinion, not by legal penalry. Dr. Milashkevich, head of the Gynecological section of the great polyclinic, where a medical personnel of three hundred serves the thirty-five thousand workers of Stalin Auto Works, told me that all women working in the plant come to her as part of their routine health examination. “If they are married I ask them: ‘Do you want children?’ Then I give them medical advice according to their intentions. If they do not want children, the poly-clinic supplies the means of prevention.” She further informed me that every attempt was made to discourage abortion, by urging grounds of health, and by sending nurses and even neighbors to reason with the wife and husband, but never by absolute refusal. “To compel a woman either to have or not to have children we would consider an infringement of human rights,” said Dr. Milashkevich. “If she decides to have them, the state gives every assistance, through free medical and hospital care, special funds for milk and children’s clothing and the use of day nurseries to care for children during her working hours.” That the women are deciding to have children is clear from the average increase of population of three million annually—in the past two years of growing prosperity three and a half million<ref>Figures from Soviet Statistical Dept. 1936.</ref>—an increase unparalleled in any other land.

Every year the Soviet Union produces its crop of national heroes, who spring into fame for some notable achievement and whose methods are widely copied. In 1935 the names most heard were those of Stakhanov, a miner, and Marie Demchenko, a farm woman. A former farm servant of the sugar beet districts, Marie had risen through collectivization of farming, and the knowledge she gained in the laboratory cottage, to challenge in spring of 1935 all the beet growers of the land. Let us flood the land with sugar. My brigade will get twenty tons of beets per acre.” Hundreds of letters accepted; hundreds of visitors came to inspect the fields which Marie’s determined brigade of women nine times hoed, and eight times cleared of moths by setting fires at night. They conquered a rainless August by the local fire-fighting apparatus, pouring twenty thousand buckets of water on their fields. They won twenty-one tons per acre and came to the November celebrations in Moscow to receive the Order of Lenin amid the plaudits of the entire country.

Who were these women singled out for honor? They were women who got down in the dirt to dig sugar beets, who soiled their hands with slimy insects that a beet crop might be improved. What made their achievement honored? This—that their beets were no commodity for private profit, but sugar for the workers of a nation. They were leaders in the public task of farming a continent. This made of the hitherto unregarded toil of farm women a heroic collective epic, worthy to be classed with the work of explorers who raid the Arctic or scientists who storm the stratosphere.

=== CHAPTER XII: THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF SCIENCE ===

“Russian is now recognized in American universities as a scientific language,” said a young Californian who was visiting with me the Leningrad Institute for Plant Protection. “Four years ago the universities wouldn’t take it as one of the two languages required for a scientific degree. But now my professors tell me that for my specialty of farm pests, it is the most important language of all. More original work is appearing in it than in any other language. German and French research is older and was translated some years ago. But our universities haven’t funds today to translate all this new research appearing in Russian.”

This American youth hardly connected in his mind the decline in German and French research and the lack of American university funds for translation with the world-wide economic crisis. He knew little of the collectivization of Soviet farming and the stimulus it had given to his branch of science. But across two seas and two continents the results of these causes had reached the aloof halls of a university in California, interpreted thus “Russian—a scientific language—original research not yet found in translation.”

Visiting scientists at the Fifteenth International Physiology Congress which met in Leningrad in August 1935, expressed an appreciation not untinged with amazement at the high respect paid science by the Soviet government and the rapid strides made by Soviet science in recent years. “No government ever ‘took up’ science as has this government. . . .” “Even the Americans are startled by the amount of resources which can be placed at the disposal of science by a government planning on a national scale. . . .” Such were some of the comments which found their way into the press of New York. Professor Walter B. Cannon, of the Harvard Medical School, told the Congress how science suffers today in all the capitalist countries, and added: “In the Soviet Union, where the social importance of science is appreciated, the funds made available for the development and prosecution of science are greater than in any country in the world.” The report of the Congress later given in ''Science'', official organ of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, noted “the respect with which scientists are treated,” “the important position which science, pure as well as applied, occupies in the national economy,” and the “ardor of the army of young scientific workers.”

Soviet citizens take it for granted—Marxists in fact have taken it for granted ever since the days of Marx—that science must naturally reach a much freer and fuller development under socialism than is possible under capitalism. Capitalism, whose early expansion a century or more ago encouraged and boasted its science, has already reached the stage where science is an embarrassment, since the possibilities of human development which it reveals are unrealizable under private ownership. Science itself under capitalism suffers from a lack of aim. In England the head of the oldest agricultural experiment station in the world told a visiting Russian scientist that he hardly knew what to investigate since the declining condition of farming in England and the antagonisms in Egypt and India prevented the application of everything he discovered. In America the hostility between science and capitalism is only in its first stages, and is marked by increasing suppression of new knowledge which would interfere with profit. In Germany where a collapsing capitalism has taken the form of fascism, there is already a deep distrust of human reason and a propaganda against the very existence of science.

In the Soviet Union science is rapidly expanding. Communism demands the thorough-going application of science to remake all human life; it assumes that the intellect of man can progressively understand and subdue nature to his collective will. “A new historical epoch will begin,” said Engels, “when men and their work will improve to such an extent that all previous achievements will seem as but a feeble shadow.” “We are confident that in our epoch we are entering an era of unparalleled progress in science,” is a typical editorial comment today in 2 Moscow newspaper. President Karpinsky, of the All-Union Academy of Science, spoke of the USSR as “the country where science is given a place of honor,” when he greeted the visiting physiologists “on behalf of hundreds of research institutes.” Even the famous physiologist, L. P. Pavlov, who was always antagonistic to Bolshevik ideas, said recently that he wanted to live to be a hundred because “the Soviet government has given millions for my scientific work and my laboratories flourish as never before.”

Those doubters who fear that state subsidies for science interfere more with scientific freedom than do the subsidies of individual millionaires, and who promote abroad the idea that the Soviets “persecute scientists,” ignore the fact that a high esteem for science is quite consistent with a deep suspicion of individual scientists. Conflicts did persist between the Soviet government and certain scientists who used their knowledge to fight the Revolution. That sabotage by scientists and engineers occurred on a very wide scale during the early years of the first Five-Year Plan has been acknowledged by thousands of former saboteurs. Only when the victory of the Five-Year Plan was assured beyond question did these waverers finally come over to find that socialism gives far greater opportunities for their science than capitalism ever did or could.<ref>See details in Chap. 3, page 52-3.</ref> The Academy of Science has been greatly expanded from the three departments, mathematics, natural sciences, and historical philology, which it comprised before the Revolution. It is the center for planning and co-ordinating the scientific activity of the entire country through its twenty-one large departments and its frequent inter-departmental sessions. It works hand in hand with the State Planning Commission which indicates to it the requests for widespread scientific research in particular fields needed for the development of the country. It is also the court of appeal for all scientists who disagree with government departments or research institutes on questions of their work, or who want to do research for which no appropriation yet exists. In all conflicts on the objectives of research the Academy decides, being liberally financed directly under the All-Union government. The city of Moscow has recently assigned to the Academy 1,250 acres on the Moscow River, where the first of forty-two projected buildings are now being built.

More than one thousand scientific research institutes in the USSR, employing 41,000 scientific workers, were claimed at the Physiology Congress by Akulov, Secretary of the Central Executive Committee of the government. Many of these institutes are of monumental size and scope. The All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine, for instance, is the organizing center of all medical research in the USSR. Scientists, doctors and engineers worked for two years on the construction plan of its new home where 5,500 employees are to study “the biology and pathology of the human being from every aspect.” Hospitals of the institute make continuous study of typical cases of various diseases and healthy people are also studied as “controls.”

One of the largest of the scientific institutions is the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences, which correlates the work of nearly sixty institutes for research in soil chemistry, plant protection, livestock breeding, microbiology, agrometeorology and similar branches of science. The work of the agricultural institutes is based upon material obtained in 200 experiment stations and more than 1,500 smaller research stations in state and collective farms. Each of the subordinate institutes is an important organization in itself; the Institute for Plant Protection, for instance, has a central staff of 250 scientific workers and dozens of branches all over the country.

The expansion of Soviet science arises not only from the need of socialism for scientific planning, but from the wide interest and co-operation on the part of the people. The Academy of Science is no secluded institution of the aristocracy; it is the unity of the scientific brains of the country with the masses. Science in the Soviet Union is dear to all the people, for every citizen knows that its discoveries will become his own possession and not the property of a small privileged group. “We scientists used to feel ourselves rather unimportant, since we had already discovered so much more than people were able to apply, but now that the collective farms demand our science, we see our work for several thousand years,” said Vaviloff, Vice-Chairman of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences and world-famous discoverer and creator of new plants.

The wide interest of the Soviet population in science expresses itself not only in honor to scientists but in active participation in scientific work by great numbers of people. Every scientific institution receives much popular co-operation, from workers, farmers, even from children. When the All-Union geological survey sent some two thousand annual expeditions with seventy to eighty thousand participants to explore and map the resources of the Soviet Union during the first Five-Year Plan, these official expeditions became the correlating center of a still broader popular movement. Thousands of grammar school children became “discoverers of our country,” going with their teachers to study geological outcroppings. Tens of thousands of hikers learned from geologists what to look for on cliffs and mountain slopes and occasionally made discoveries of significance. One of the stimulating causes of the first great Pamir expedition came from a Khirghiz nomad who carried a gold nugget several days journey to Samarkand and fought his way through many bureaucratic offices because he “thought the government ought to know about the gold in the Pamirs.”

Every large factory has its bureau of workers’ inventions through which inventive genius of workers finds connection with the wider world. Workers and farmers who make practical discoveries are often asked to report them in their own non-technical words at scientific congresses. Scientists in turn give frequent lectures in factories on subjects applicable to the work of the plant. Analysis of steel by the spectrum method will be reported to a machine-building plant, and discussions on organic chemistry will be given by scientists at a rubber works to a large attendance of interested workers.

So deep and thorough is the interest taken by workers in science that the cleavage between workingmen and scientists already lessens, presaging that time predicted by Marx when the distinction between mental and manual labor will disappear. At a banquet held by the Academy of Science in the Neskuchny Palace in Moscow, a number of leading factory workers were present as guests. A foreign newspaperman, wishing to interview Professor Bach, a well-known member of the Academy, approached a man who was pointed out to him from 2 distance. They chatted half an hour about the revolution in culture, the creation of a new life, and the new type of human being now appearing under socialism. In parting, the correspondent asked for the Academician’s autograph. The man to whom he was speaking started in surprise. “My name Is Ivanov; Bach is the person sitting next to me,” he said, pointing to a man who had been attentively listening. “I myself am a locksmith from the ball-bearing plant.”

One of the most striking examples of the democratization of science is the “laboratory cottage,” which has developed in the last two years on the collective farms. Seven thousand of these centers of experiment are reported in the Ukraine alone. The head of the laboratory is sometimes a teacher of the village school, but more often a self-educated farmer who has the scientific instinct and whose enthusiasm has organized other farmers to make experiments in their fields and correspond with scientific stations.

“This scientific tendency in human beings takes such varied forms,” said an editor, “that one cannot even classify them. In the past these scientific instincts often died stillborn because of poverty. Today we seek them out through many agencies; one of these is our ''Peasants’ Gazette''. Today a new type of experimenter is developing who does not experiment secretly but organizes the masses around him to discover and carry out new ideas. There is often some waste of time and destruction of machinery in these experiments. But this does not worry us. What is important and valuable is that the human being is striving to change, to improve. Waste of time and destruction of materials matters nothing, if thereby we add even one drop of knowledge which enables man to increase his understanding and control of nature.”

One such natural scientist was Akulov, a peasant of the Genichesk district. As a World War prisoner in Austria, he saw one head of grain much bigger than the surrounding heads. He kept it and eventually brought it home to his own garden to breed new giant heads. When the collective farm was formed in his village in 1930, Akulov had four bushels of this special grain to give them. The big heads were planted and cherished until there were several score acres of them. The samples were then sent to the All-Union Institute of Plants and found to be a new variety existing nowhere else in the world.

Seventy-five-year-old illiterate Barashev was another such natural scientist. For nearly twenty years he worked to produce a frost-resistant flax; the collective fields of his farm are harvesting it this year. Pechtilief, in the Leningrad district, stirred up such an interest among his neighbors in discovering why two fields on the same farm gave such different yields, that the whole village became one vast experimental farm, planting several thousand acres in various ways and comparing the results of different types of tillage. Pechtilief appeared before the Congress of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences to demand that scientists find a way to produce a new variety of wheat which should combine the high milling quality of one variety with the non-shattering characteristics of a second. Kolosev, another collective farmer, has challenged the scientists to work out types of seeds and tillage which will insure different ripening times for the various crops and thus get an even load of work through a maximum period for the harvesting machine.

The assimilation of new scientific ideas proceeds far faster under the new collective farm system than under the old individual farming. Some entire districts have already become agricultural experiment stations. In Zhadryansk district, near Cheliabinsk, several thousand experiments were carried on in a single summer with oats, wheat, green peas, sunflower seeds and other crops. Special conferences were held attended by two hundred or more delegates from the various laboratory cottages. All these popular experiments are in constant touch with the scientific organizations of the Commissariat of Agriculture, and are protected against undue loss by a government policy of crop insurance.

Several achievements of Soviet agricultural science are already of world significance. The method of “vernalization,” which changes winter wheat to spring wheat, late cotton to early cotton and biennial to annual plants, has made it possible to grow Algerian wheat beyond the Polar circle, at 67.4 degrees of latitude in Khibiny. The northernmost botanical gardens in the world are on the Kola Peninsula, where experiments with six hundred plants found twenty-five that could be adapted to the Arctic. The Soviet Union has developed its own rubber industry from the newly discovered “rubber” plants, tau-sagiz and kok-sagiz, found in the mountains of Turkestan and cultivated later as far north as the Ukraine. The brilliant work of Michurin in developing frost-resistant varieties of fruits made him famous not only among scientists of the world but among millions of Soviet farmers, tens of thousands of whom journey annually to his plant-breeding station to report on their use of his varieties.

New machines have been developed, a machine for retching flax which is revolutionizing the flax industry, a “northern” combined-harvester suitable for grain of high moisture content. Even the ordinary combine first imported from America has undergone sixty improvements and is said by experts to be the best in the world. Research into soil microbiology has made, according to Vaviloff, “the role of micro-organisms in the soil a calculable factor.” The artificial fertilization of livestock, in which the spermatozoa are sent by mail or airplane from experimental stations to the laboratory cottages, is today applied to half the country’s livestock, insuring rapid improvement of stock from pure-bred males. Under the constant co-operation of collective farmers with scientific centers, the agricultural map of the country is rapidly changing. Sugar beets expand towards the Urals, cotton appears in South Ukraine, irrigation and tree-planting begins to reclaim the wastes beyond the Volga, and wheat marches steadily towards the Arctic. Thousands of acres are today successfully farmed in the Murmansk district on the Arctic Ocean, in place of a scant twelve acres a few years ago.

The most spectacular example of the planned advance of man under the leadership of science is the conquest of the Polar regions, which has stirred the imagination and enthusiasm of the whole Soviet land. Scientists of the All-Union Arctic Institute first seriously broached the idea of a Great Northern Sea Route in 1930, though other scientists declared that traffic along the northern coast of Europe and Asia was “impracticable during the present glacial epoch.” The Soviet government backed its bolder scientists, established the Central Administration of the Northern Sea Route and gave it ships and funds. Step by step the rapid advance was made, first by dozens of expeditions which mapped coasts and charted waters, then by thirty-nine Polar scientific stations, equipped with radio and airplane service, then by trading fleets led by ice-breakers first from the west, then from the east, and then along the whole Polar coast from Atlantic to Pacific.

The whole world remembers the epic of the Chelyushkin, its tragic wreck northwest of Bering Straits, the skillful landing on ice which was crashing around them, the two months of heroic organization of “normal life” in their floating home on the ice-floe, where Professor Schmidt, dressed in deer-skin coat and fur cap, delivered lectures on dialectic materialism or the Freudian theory, and found time to edit the galleys of the ''Unabridged Soviet Encyclopedia'' which he had brought from Moscow, and to write a preface to a book on higher mathematics. The history of Polar expeditions has known many examples of daring, but never such courageously casual organization of normal routine under abnormal conditions as this “Soviet Republic on the Ice” which got out its “wall newspaper” with cartoons and self-criticism, and comments on the Communist Party Congress then taking place in Moscow, received by the Chelyushkinites by radio.

Today special ships are built in Soviet shipyards, embodying the experience of the Chelyushkin for the conquest of the northern seas. Steadily the designs of airplanes and clothing have been adapted to Arctic weather and the plane is now the “eyes of the north.” Four ordinary freighters in the summer of 1935 made the whole trip around the north of Europe and Asia, and scores will follow in 1936. The network of heroic scientists, wintering in thirty-nine stations, begins to be supplemented by miners, timber-workers, even farmers. Extensive prospecting has been done for minerals, especially coal and oil to serve the northern trade route. A new type of man is following the explorers and scientists—engineers, technicians, builders of the Arctic. And science pushes farther north in the expedition of the Sadko, to discover, at latitude 82° 40’—the farthest north ever reached in free sailing—the re-emergence of a warm section of the Gulf Stream which may make the northern sea route practicable for more months of the year. Of all the world’s eight ships which have reached during the past half century the latitudes around 80°, two were American, two Scandinavian and four were Soviet ships of the past few years.

It is the support of the whole Soviet country which strengthens these men of the north in their conquests. The entire Soviet population regards these Arctic subduers as their representatives and champions. It shares their lives by radio hook-ups Moscow talks through the six months’ night with Dixon Island, which issues the Arctic Radio News. All Russia thrilled when a young ex-criminal, sent to the far north to “make himself over,” was reassured across three thousand frozen miles by the voice of his factory sweetheart urging him to make good. When a winter childbirth in a distant Arctic station developed complications, the neighbors got the Dixon Island surgeon on the radio and for more than three hours he directed over the air every detail while the whole of a much-worried Arctic listened in. When the child and mother were safe, congratulations poured in from thousands of miles of icebound waterfront.

Even under capitalism science breaks the boundaries of nations, steadily to lift the power of man. Under socialism it becomes the consciously applied and swiftly expanding strength of the whole population, conquering for man his world.

=== CHAPTER XIII: THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF ART ===

{{Quote|“Heroic people call into being heroic artists.”|Editorial in Soviet ''Literary Critic''}}

If science is the instrument of man’s dominance over nature, art is the means of his self-expression. Tens of millions of people from earth’s most backward races have awakened in the Soviet Union from long slumber. They are seeking self expression. They themselves write, sing and paint; they push up from their ranks novelists, poets and dramatists. They love these poets and dramatists; they criticize them and make serious demands from them. Soviet art is not private property, it is the wealth of the nation, and the nation is jealous and proud of its wealth.

When the first All-Union Congress of Soviet writers met in Moscow in August, 1934, thousands of letters poured in from all corners of the union, congratulating, greeting, giving practical suggestions and advice. Workers, collective farmers, students, Young Pioneers, scientists, engineers and artists thus expressed their interest in the Congress. In Moscow alone, more than two hundred factory conferences were held between readers and authors. Delegations representing millions of readers came to speak at the Congress. Each day after the meetings, authors found throngs of workers who had been unable to enter the crowded hall waiting outside to hail their favorite writers with applause. Throughout the country, millions of people concentrated their attention on questions of esthetics, the function of poetry, the form of literature best suiting the present age, subjects reported in detail in the press. Literary work in the land of the Soviets is becoming the affair of all the toilers.

There are no bounds to the desire for every variety of culture. Soviet Russia in its first fifteen years published five billion books, as contrasted with two billion in the last thirty years of tsardom. The number keeps growing. At the end of the first Five-Year Plan, book production in the USSR was greater than that of England, Germany and France together. Especially amazing is the growth of literature among the national minorities whose self-expression was suppressed under tsardom. Every year since 1929 has seen the publication of more books in the Ukrainian language than were published in the whole 118 years before the Revolution. One publishing house alone, the Moscow International Book House, publishes books in eighty-five languages, some of which had formerly no alphabet—novels, textbooks, folk tales, technical works, translations of classics, short stories and dictionaries.

The Soviet world feels itself the heir of the ages. Anniversaries of poets, scientists and artists of all countries are widely celebrated. The ancient Persian poet Firdousi, the English Shakespeare, the German Goethe, the famous French writers, are honored by mass meetings and columns in the press. The best works of Flaubert, Mérimée, Maupassant, Victor Hugo, Mark Twain and Jack London appear by the hundreds of thousands of copies and disappear almost as quickly from the shelves of bookstores which never expect to retain volumes more than a few weeks. Russian classics are even more popular. Lermontov, Nekrassov, Korolenko, Gogol, Turgenev, Chekhov appear in editions of seventy to a hundred thousand. The favorite poet Pushkin has been issued for several years in repeated editions of two hundred thousand copies, and his collected works in six volumes now face a subscription demand of three hundred thousand copies, exclusive of sales to the shops. Tolstoy is the most popular of all; eleven and a half million copies of his works have been sold since the Revolution.

The Soviet reader demands not only the art of the past but the art of today. The most popular novels are those like Sholokhov’s ''Quiet Don'' and ''Soil Upturned'', which paint on a wide canvas the personalities, difficulties, struggles and victories of the present. “No artist of the past had such material at his disposal as is given by the earth-shaking events occurring in the USSR in the last eighteen years,” said the Soviet writer Panferov speaking at a Paris congress. “The working class built a dam on the surging Dnieper and made its unruly waters serve man. It transformed the misty Urals into an industrial center, mastered the wild and distant Kuzbas. . . . In remaking the country the working class at the same time remade itself. . . . The outcast dweller of the mountains, the illiterate, solitary Yakut, the northern Nentsi, the wild Bashkir, the Mordvin with his trachoma, the persecuted Kalmyk—tens of millions of peoples in scores of scattered nationalities went into the furnace of civil war and are energetically rebuilding the country, conquering the strongholds of culture, bringing new life to the whole world. . . . Socialist realism was the inevitable phenomenon of the proletarian era—active, cheerful, bold and daring, like the era of the proletarian revolution itself.”

These tens of millions of people are not only the subjects for art, they are also the artists, readers and audience. They show a wide interest in all forms of artistic expression. Theaters are constantly crowded; art museums are packed with visitors; popular exhibitions sometimes have lines before the museum entrances waiting until there is room to go in. Nor are the factory workers and collective farmers at all backward in expressing their opinion on the products of brush and pen. Are they not all also writers, artists, musicians and actors, if and when the mood seizes them? They are not only consumers of art, millions of them are amateur producers of it.

More than one hundred thousand “circles for self-expression” have grown up in the past two years in the USSR. The drama circles alone have 1,200,000 members, while the total number in the singing, music, dancing and graphic art circles exceeds five million. Writers, cartoonists and photographers for the local press or wall newspapers are probably as many more. A chief characteristic of the new type of person now emerging in the Soviet Union is his dynamic energy in self-expression, usually in some collective form.

The first and most direct self-expression of large numbers takes the form of participation in the press. They write their opinions about corrupt officials or inefficient farm management for the hand-lettered sheet posted on a factory wall or a village tree-trunk; more important communications they send, often with several signatures, to the great metropolitan ''Pravda'' or ''Izvestia'' with their million and a half subscribers. Two million letters a year pour into the office of the ''Peasents’ Gazette'' in Moscow, reflecting the life and problems of the farm; only part of them can be published but all of them are answered, filed, and carefully studied as material for novels, for history, and for the lawmaking of the state.

In a northern township, fifty miles from the railroad, where before the Revolution only six people subscribed to any newspaper at all, I visited a congress of some two hundred rural press correspondents preparing for a sowing campaign. These were only part of the energetic writers of this township. Its collective farms had 470 field brigades, every one of which during the sowing campaign posted up a wall newspaper. One picturesque seventeen-year-old boy in a vivid shirt of old rose sateen under a black jacket proudly reported the overthrow of the corrupt management of his collective farm by his articles and editorials. “We got out nine numbers,” he explained to the meeting, “then we stopped for want of paper. But we had already aroused the farmers, and the general meeting removed the president and two members of the management.”

Nine single sheets of crude newsprint stuck in successive weeks on a tree, protected from the rain by an overhanging board, had deposed the management of a farm, shamed idlers, carried the sowing through to success, finished the hoeing and brought the brigade on record time to the haying season. The number of these collective farm wall-newspapers throughout the country is estimated by the ''Peasants’ Gazette'' as half a million, with at least ten village correspondents for each. There are more than three thousand factory newspapers; these range from weeklies of a few hundred copies to dailies with a circulation of twenty thousand and more in the larger plants. These newspapers are both an organizing center for factory and farm life and a training school for young writers. With such a writing and reading public, it is not surprising that there are more than eleven thousand printed newspapers in the Soviet Union with a circulation of more than thirty-six million copies—thirteen times as great as before the Revolution.

An ever-growing stream of writers enters literature through the gateway of the factory and farm newspapers, which make modest but insistent demands on the humblest worker able to use a pen. Literary groups arise in centers like the Urals and the Donetz basin, or around some tractor station which serves the nearby villages. Many of the Donbas group of writers embarked on their literary careers when through with their day’s work of furnishing coal. Their magazine ''Literary Donbas'' has produced a noteworthy crop of stories and poems widely popular among miners.

The literary society of collective farmers at the machine tractor station in Voronovo village had as members two stablemen, a blacksmith, a reaper, a tractor-driver, a bookkeeper, a warehouseman, four day-nursery attendants, three teachers, two presidents of collective farms, one village president, three editors of field newspapers and sixteen farm women. In one year the members published through their own printshop two books of verses, the play ''Miscalculated'', and 2 book of character sketches, ''Bolsheviks of the Politodels''. They announced for the following year a play, ''According to Merit'', a novel ''Quiet Subversion'', ''The Diary of a Tractor Driver'', and ''The History of the Machine Tractor Station''.

It is difficult to conceive of the wide extent of amateur art activities of all kinds. Thousands of short-line popular stanzas known as ''chastyshki'' appear in the most distant parts of the Soviet Union celebrating the freedom of woman, the heroism of tractor-drivers, the growing prosperity of collective life. They vary in merit from mere doggerel giving rhymed technical guidance for reapers and cattle herders to verse of real beauty. The Donetz coal region alone reports more than eight hundred brass bands, three hundred orchestras, two hundred and fifty choruses, thousands of dramatic circles and even forty-two ballet schools. Some of the Soviet dancers who attracted attention at a recent London dance festival came from these “self-expression groups.” Amateur circles in drawing and painting also exist all over the country, and give local exhibitions which often unearth talent.

A constant interchange of ideas and personnel goes on between professional and non-professional groups. The Soviet press takes active part in establishing these connections. The newspaper ''Culture and Sport'' publishes reproductions of the best art from famous galleries. It encourages would-be artists to correspond and send in their work to be judged by well-known artists; those who show talent are sent to art schools. The magazine ''Collective Farm Theater'' every month issues eight or ten special supplements containing plans of caravan theaters, rural pageants and festivals, choral programs, texts of one-act plays. It connects the self-expression groups with the nearest professional theater which can help them in their technique. There are today one hundred rural theaters of professional standing.

One among many movements which swept the farms in the summer of 1935 was a campaign to discover musical talent among children. Hundreds of local musical festivals were held to many of which professors from the Moscow Conservatory came by airplane to act as judges. As a result, 715 of the most talented children are being sent to special musical schools; the twenty-five best ones were brought to a specially created branch in the Moscow Conservatory of Music.

Not only in music but in poetry, drama and dancing, nation-wide “Olympiads were held in the summer of 1935. In Leningrad, for instance, juries of artists visited the factories to select eleven hundred contestants for the district Olympiad from fifteen thousand amateur musicians, singers, dancers, acrobats, orators, accordion players and even jugglers. On a collective farm in Smolensk, an illiterate peasant woman of sixty-four years wrote a play, dictating it to a younger woman; the young folks of the farm produced it at the Olympiad in Smolensk. Besides the Olympiads, many “culture expeditions” of both scholars and composers penetrate the wilderness where live Khirgiz, Buryat-Mongols, Tajiks, Uzbeks, to seek and preserve the music and poems which shed light on early culture. A symphony orchestra recently organized made its first tour, playing old Cossack melodies in modern style, across what not so long ago was the steppe of half-savage nomads. Collective farms sent delegations hundreds of miles to insist that the orchestra visit them.

Out of this artistic ferment in the lives of millions, arises the vigor of Soviet art, which feels itself called upon to find adequate expression for the awakening genius of the people. Soviet writers today, if they would be popular, must not confine themselves to delving in the depths of a single human soul; they must depict the vast variety of changing social relations. They spend much time in deepening their contacts with intimate details of factory or of farm; Sholokhov, for instance, makes his permanent residence in the village whose changing life is the subject of a whole series of novels.

Nor is the artist’s human material passive; the human material talks back. The Vakhtangov Theater invites the audience to discuss plays between the scenes and at the end with the actors; witty and fruitful discussions occur. Meetings between writers and readers have become a popular feature of factory life. Authors like Sholokhov and Tretyakov have long adopted the custom of reading drafts of semi-finished manuscripts to audiences of workers and farmers. Frequently a worker is able to give sound advice on the handling of an industrial character. “Our reader, while a friend, is also a very severe critic,” says the Soviet writer, Vsevolod-Ivanov. “Intercourse with him is the best and most precious school.”

Soviet readers demand simplicity and vividness of writing. They are not interested in complex analysis of burdened souls. Their whole life faces outward. Their interest is in people who do things, who change the relations of society. In the first decade after the Revolution, a typical theme in literature and drama was the hero who died in the moment of victory while the collective achievement marched on. The hero might be a Chapayev shot down before his victorious comrades appear on the scene, or a village organizer killed by a kulak and drawn to his grave in triumphal procession by the newly-arrived tractor which his labor had secured. The victory was collective, attained through the sacrifice of the heroic individual. Thus was the natural expression of the period of revolution and civil war.

New themes begin to dominate Soviet literature and drama of recent years. The hero no longer dies; he struggles, achieves, learns, and is himself made over, not by introspection but by the clash of action. He is the optimist—builder type creating a glorious and happy future. What the people demand of writers, they demand also of the graphic arts: an art that is inspired by and in torn inspires the great moods of the day. The workers of Stalingrad sent a famous open letter to the artists: “Don’t give us colored photographs, we are tired of them. We expect from you an art that is stirring and inspiring.”

If the responsive demand of a great new public is a constant stimulus to Soviet artists, a second stimulus is found in co-operation with members of their craft. Writers, actors, painters—all have their organizations. They maintain club houses for social contacts, discussions and exhibitions; they have country retreats to which members withdraw for rest and creative work. They assist beginners with loans and subsidies; they foster high standards; they assist members in the sale of their work. The writers’ organization issues literary journals, organizes courses, consultations and criticisms for new writers and runs a literary university for workers. The actors’ club holds special midnight performances where its members meet famous visiting artists and see the season’s best in music, dance and drama.

Four thousand artists belong to a co—operative which not only handles exhibitions all over the country, but also owns numerous factories producing artists’ supplies, workshops for stone-cutting, metal-casting and frame-making and studios for lithography and engraving. This co-operative has a yearly turnover of forty-two million rubles. It accepts on behalf of its members orders from city soviets, large industries, and workers’ clubs which wish decorations and paintings; some of these orders run over the million-ruble mark. When the ten-year reconstruction plan of Moscow creates a demand for architecture, sculpture, landscaping and monumental art, the artists’ organizations arrange discussions and excursions of sculptors and architects and initiate experimental fresco work on a large scale. Instead of being an isolated craftsman, the Soviet artist is part of a rich and influential organization which connects him with the government planning departments and the organized life of the country.

From this close association of artists with their fellow craftsmen and with their public has arisen a method of collective production which is becoming increasingly popular; it extends to the collective writing of books by a score of writers and even by whole factories. Thirty professional writers combined to produce ''Belomor'', the famous tale of the building of the Baltic-White Sea Canal. “We tried to tell how a canal was built in a far, cold and rocky place and how the chekists made new men out of prisoners,” said Vsevolod-Ivanov. “We were authors entirely different in taste and in age, but we all tried to make that book united, wide-horizoned and mighty. That book is dear to me even today. In writing it, I learned that we writers are really not such individualists as we like to call ourselves.” The Events of the High Mountain, which told the history of an iron mine in the Urals, was written by more than one hundred miners. The miners consulted, wrote and improved it in common, as together they created and improved their mine. The book is a great political and artistic document, energetic, fresh and vital.

''The History of the Civil War'', the ''History of Factories'' and the now projected ''History of the Russian Village'' contain whole series of books, each of which compiles the experiences of hundreds or even thousands of people. The characters are not described by others; they describe themselves, each seeking in consultation with the others a significant artistic form. The meeting of two hundred village correspondents which I attended, decided to issue a book giving artistic form to the history of the township. They selected the best writers from each of twenty-five villages to work with two professional authors who had come from Moscow. Each local writer chose with the help of his village some vivid and significant episode or character whose story illumined the changes made by the Revolution. One contrasted the intimate family relations in his father’s household with those in his own Soviet home. Another described the people who had successively looked out of the windows of a certain ancient building—once a school for the daughters of the nobility and now the central club of the collective farm. The result was a book which was lacking in style and finish but vivid and unforgettable with actual life. It was not yet art, but it made part of the rich soil out of which great art may well grow in the next few decades.

Great art movements in the past have followed periods of economic expansion which gave stimulus to new creative life. “We are already in the great epoch; artistic values of permanent worth are already appearing but not yet the great masterpieces. Where else in the world are there even high artistic values?” said a Soviet writer to me. In literature Ostrovski’s ''How Steel is Welded'', Sholokhov’s ''Quiet Don''; in motion pictures, ''Potemkin'', ''Chapayev'', the ''Youth of Maxim'', are among the many lasting contributions which the Soviets have already made to art. The Moscow subway is one of the first significant expressions of the epoch in architecture. As forums and temples expressed the spirit of ancient Rome, cathedrals and castles the Middle Ages, and skyscrapers the power of centralized finance, so this beautiful subway expresses the rhythm of millions of workers in efficient motion. The Lenin library in Moscow and the House of State Industry in Kharkov, and some of the new factories, children’s centers, and sanitoriums, also foreshadow the new architecture.

Are Soviet artists “in uniform?” Only in so far as they lack intelligence to respond to their social environment and the will to fight their way through to expression. Artists whose souls were formed by an old world felt the coming of the new as a thwarting of impulses. They had to find their way about among new publishers and new officials, who were trying more or less intelligently to protect the new order. Often groups of rising artists hogged the Revolution and organized to lord it over their fellows. Thus the RAPP (Association of Revolutionary Writers) succeeded in imposing its narrow standards for a considerable period, till other authors learned the new environment and smashed the RAPP. The social environment also changes; when that excellent play, ''Days of the Turbines'', featured a tsarist officer as hero before post-war audiences where budding capitalists cheered him, Young Communist organizations fresh from fighting those officers protested wrathfully and had the play suppressed. When Nepmen followed the civil war into the past, the play revived to more tolerant audiences.

All authors everywhere adjust themselves to editors, publishers and readers; these are necessary media no less than words or paint. Not even in America could “proletarian authors” come into being, until there were new readers who pushed them up. Soviet society also presses in various ways on artists. We authors deal with publishers who are worried by their paper quota; their criterion is “importance” rather than profit, since any half-good book is sure to sell. They rely in part on “political editors,” officials of the Commissariat of Education, whose function is to give advice on the demands of the educational field and the political significance of the work. My own conversations with these political editors—they dislike the name censors—are singularly like those with publishers’ readers in America. They make suggestions, some extremely valuable, some moderately useful and some of which I protest; they themselves yield to reason and prefer authors who know what they do. Only crude authors take them as enemies; through mutual discussion the product is improved. If differences lie too deep, one seeks another publisher; in the Soviet Union there is also the wider appeal. No one autocrat censors everything. Political editors more and more become highly educated specialists. Important plays are usually previewed by selected audiences of leading critics and persons familiar with their theme, both children and educators previewing a drama or motion picture destined for children. Only on military matters and material likely to injure the Soviets’ international relations is the censor absolute;<ref>The most striking recent example was the suppression of information during the difficult year of 1932, a suppression which turned several American journalists permanently against the Soviets. The Soviets believed with some reason that derailed knowledge of their difficulties would provoke the threatened Japanese invasion.</ref> and these matters are hardly the realm of art.

If art survived the censoring by the whims of princelings in the feudal ages, and by the profit-motives of American publishers, why should it not survive the decisions of educational authorities and experienced critics who estimate its importance for a socialist society? To the artist now growing up in a Soviet environment, art is the natural expression of the collective life of millions given significant form by his own special talent or genius. Such an artist feels no repression in this new environment; he feels its great creative urge. Millions of rural journalists, thousands of dramatic clubs, tens of thousands of farm and factory orchestras furnish an alert and appreciative public. The leisure made possible by the social ownership of great modern machines is already widely used in the Soviet Union for pursuits of science and art. The barriers thus begin to wear thin between manual and mental labor; the same person does both. Genius, wherever it arises, finds ready access to widening expression. From such a soil, watered by the artistic strivings of millions, great art must grow. More than great art—a people to whom art becomes man’s natural self-expression, which no longer flames and dies.

=== CHAPTER XIV: REMAKING HUMAN BEINGS ===

When the All-Union Song and Dance Olympiad was held in the summer of 1935 in Moscow, the first prize for dance groups was won by a troupe who would be classed in the capitalist world as convicts. They were sentenced criminals who were still living in Labor Commune Number Two, to which they had been sent for reformation. Their performance of an Ukrainian folk-dance “The Snowstorm” took first place against fifty thousand entrants. To anyone unfamiliar with the Soviet technique for handling criminals, the dancing of the group was less amazing than their free association with other groups of artists in all the local and provincial dance festivals, which brought them at last to Moscow.

The remaking of criminals is only one specialized form of the process of remaking human beings which goes on consciously today in the Soviet Union. Unlike those who justify ancient abuses with the formula, “You can’t change human nature,” the Marxist knows that human nature is constantly changing. The serf of the Middle Ages was a different human being from the highly skilled industrial worker of today, not only in methods of work but in mental outlook, nervous reactions, and even physical motions. Today a remaking of people in greater or less degree takes place across the entire Soviet Union. Illiterate, slow-moving peasants become attuned to rapid work in a collective labor process. Scientists, artists, engineers, doctors, once accustomed to depend upon capitalists for their living, adjust themselves to the new controls of a socialist state as employer. Some welcome the change, others resent it, but in all men the habits derived from the past are at war with the demands imposed by the present, and this struggle changes both the human beings and their environment.

To some the process of change is only half conscious, and therefore bewildering and painful. To the happiest it is a consciously welcomed process. For men in all ages have desired to change, to become in some direction “better.” Moral teachers have urged them to effect this by an emotional decision to be good, honest, industrious. But this is a struggle in the dark with forces which the human being does not understand. His emotional conversion lasts as long as he can focus will and attention. But if the old environment continues, the old habits reassert themselves.

To a limited extent a human being may change himself under any social system, not by efforts of will but by calmly analyzing himself and his environment and placing himself under the impact of other forces which will change him. So much free will man has. But these individual efforts are limited by the social possibilities. Can a prostitute change her environment so that street-walking will become unnecessary? Only if an honest job is somewhere accessible. Can gangsters reform? Only if honesty is really the best policy; for him who would prosper under capitalism there is a time to be honest and a time to steal, and the criminal is the unlucky or stupid person who stole at the wrong time and in the unaccepted manner. Only a social system which insures to ordinary honest labor greater rewards than can be obtained by even the luckiest dishonesty will produce instinctively honest men.

A remarkable tale of the change in social standards is written by a newspaper correspondent from the Ural gold fields. Formerly, according to the writer, everybody admired clever miners who were able to steal nuggets which legally belonged to the private owners of the fields. This attitude persisted long after the mines were owned by the government. But recently at a party given to celebrate a betrothal, the young man in the heat of dancing pulled out his handkerchief and with it a gold nugget which fell to the floor. There was a sudden silence and the party broke up without comment, even the girl turning away from the man thus revealed. “Everyone knew him for an enemy,” wrote the correspondent.

The sharpest test of conscious remaking of human character is found in the Soviet policy for handling law-breakers. The Soviet criminologist holds neither of the theories on which the prevalent systems of prison régime in capitalist countries are based. He does not believe in the existence of “born criminals” whose will must be broken by brutal suppression nor does he rely on emotional appeals to the “better nature” of the criminal, for he knows that this better nature exists as yet only in rudimentary form. “We don’t assume that a man of anti-social habits will be at once reclaimed by gifts of chocolate, nice bathrooms, and soft words,” a leading Soviet penologist told me. “Men are made over by a new social environment and especially by their work done collectively.”

Soviet law aims to make over social misfits while protecting society from their attacks. Punishment as vengeance has no place in such an aim: revenge merely incites revenge in return. To make prisoners sit in solitude and think of their sins produces a fixation on crime. To “break a man’s will” or lessen his human dignity in any way injures him material for a creative socialist society. Soviet justice therefore aims to give the criminal a new environment in which he will begin to act in a normal way as a responsible Soviet citizen. The less confinement the better; the less he feels himself in prison the better. Soviet justice began to fight crime under the harsh conditions of civil war, replying with ruthless measures to counter-revolutionary plots. “We have a double approach” said Attorney-General Vishinsky in an interview. “Active, confirmed enemies of our Soviet power who stick at nothing to injure us must be ruthlessly crushed. But even among these alien elements, among nobles, landlords, tsarist officers, capitalists, whom we had robbed of their private property, we had to be able even there to find those individuals who could be made over into useful workers. We cannot begin with clean hands and fresh bricks to build socialism; we must use even old bricks for the new building. But if we had tried to apply the idea of absolute humanitarianism to bitter enemies we wouldn’t be here today.”

Many social offenses are handled without bringing them into ordinary courts at all. A whole series of “comradely courts,” in factories, schools and apartment houses, try informally people who disturb their neighbors. These courts have the right to fix small fines for the benefit of the local club or library; they refer cases which they cannot handle to the public courts. There are even “children’s courts” in which children judge each other in the presence of interested adults. One such children’s court in an apartment house tried a boy for cruelty in killing a cat, and came finally to the conclusion that the real culprit was the superintendent of the apartment house who persistently failed to provide a place to play. The superintendent, who was present, accepted the decision, and organized with the children a committee to make good the shortcoming.

“Not only in the court but out of the court my job is social protection,” a rural judge told me. “I must prevent court cases when I can.” He told how he had prevented crime at a recent saints’ festival. “Men always drink hard on such occasions; they fight and knife each other. So I called together the presidents of collective farms an the Party members, and we went through the crowd before drinking began and took away the knives and canes. They got drunk later, but nobody was badly hurt.”

I sat in the court session which this judge held under the village trees and heard a dozen cases—stealing hay, bootlegging and the like—disposed of in an afternoon. The commonest sentence was “compulsory labor” which did not remove the offender from his home but required him to do without pay some socially useful work, such as road-building, school-construction or even office work in the village soviet. Only one serious case appeared: more than half the calves in a collective dairy had died under circumstances which seemed to implicate the dairy manager of something worse than the criminal negligence charge which had been brought. The judge found that he was “guilty of negligence at least,” but held the case over for further investigation to see whether he was guilty of “something more,” i.e., intentional conspiracy to smash the farm. In that case he would be “sent away” from the village to a labor camp for a period of perhaps three years.

The labor camp is the prevalent method for handling serious offenders of all kinds, whether criminal or political. Most of the old prisons have been abolished; I have found them in rural districts converted into schools. The labor camps have won high reputation throughout the Soviet Union as places where tens of thousands of men have been reclaimed. They have, however, been the center of some of the most spectacular attacks on the Soviet Union in recent years. Allegations of brutal treatment and even of torture have found their way widely into the foreign press. While it is clearly impossible to check every one of these accusations, they are contradicted by every competent observer who has ever seen the camps. Dr. Mary Stevens Callcott, the American penologist who has studied prisons all over the world and who has had the unique experience of visiting the larger part of the Soviet camps, including those for the worst—and for political—offenders, has commented both in her book ''Soviet justice'' and in conversations with me personally, on the “amazingly normal” life that differentiates these camps from prisons in any other part of the world.

She notes the freedom of movement over large areas of territory, the very small amount of guarding, the work done under normal conditions—seven hours for ordinary labor to ten for men whose tasks, such as driving a truck, permitted frequent rests during work. She could find no speed-up; laws of labor protection operated as in factories. Wages were the same as those outside, with deductions for living expenses; all above this could be sent by the prisoner to his family, saved or spent as he chose. “No uniforms with their psychological implications, no physical abuse; isolation only in extreme instances. Privileges and special rewards replace the system of special penalties.” Among these special rewards are the two weeks’ vacation in which the prisoner may leave the camp, and the opportunities given for his family not only to visit him but even to live with him for extended periods. Normal human association goes on; men and women meet and may even marry while serving sentence, in which case they are given separate quarters.

What most impressed Dr. Callcott, however, was the type of men in charge of these camps, and the relation they had to the prisoners. She tells of going through the Moscow-Volga Canal camp with its director. Prisoners hailed him with obvious pleasure and informality. A girl rushed up to detain him by seizing the belt of his uniform lest he get away before she could tell him something. A teacher whose term was about to expire expressed a wish to stay on and work under him. There were only five officials in the central administration office of this camp of many thousand prisoners; all the work, including most of the guarding, was done by the convicted men themselves. “In fact,” said Dr. Callcott, “I could never see what kept men in this camp unless they wanted to stay there. No convicts I have known would have any difficulty if they wanted to break away.” Both prisoners and officials, of whom Dr. Callcott asked this question—she talked with prisoners freely without the presence of officials—replied they didn’t run away because if they did, “nobody in my working gang would speak to me when I came back. They would say I disgraced them.” There are, however, a certain number of incorrigibles who run away repeatedly, and these are given somewhat closer guarding for a time. Political prisoners, she noted, were treated like everyone else, except that those who had been persistent and dangerous in their attacks on the government were sent further away from the possibility of connection with their past associates. In all her conversations with these “politicals,” she was unable to find one who had been sentenced merely for expressing anti-Soviet views. All were charged with definite action against the government.

“I did everything I could to destroy this government,” one such man frankly told her, “sabotage of the most serious kind. But the way they have treated me here has convinced me that they are right.”

Another prisoner, who had been in Sing Sing, San Quentin, as well as in jails of England, Spain and Germany, before he was picked up by the Soviets for grand larceny, had been reclaimed by the Baltic-White Sea Canal. He had done a bit of engineering in his youth, and was promptly given a chance to work at this specialty. He won a medal, pursued his studies further, and was doing brilliant work on the Moscow-Volga Canal when Dr. Callcott met him. To her query about his reformation he replied:

“In the other countries they treated me like a prisoner, clapped me in jail and taught me my place. Here they clapped me on the back and said ‘What can we do to make you into a useful citizen?’” Dr. Callcott conversed with many men now high in Soviet industry who had previously been reclaimed by the labor camps. Nothing in their attitude or that of those about them showed any stigma remaining from their prison life. “Of course, when it’s over, it’s forgotten,” one of them said to her. “That,” says Dr. Callcott, “is real restoration.”

Information from many other sources and from my own observation corroborates Dr. Callcott. In August 1935 I visited the town of Bear Mountain, center of the administration of the Baltic-White Sea Canal, which is widely known in the USSR not only as a great construction job but as the place where tens of thousands of men won new lives for old. It is still the distributing center for the labor camps of this district.

The chauffeur who drove me over twenty miles of wilderness without a guard in sight was one of the prisoners. He talked quite freely and said that he didn’t like the north but at least he had a chance to study a trade or become an engineer. A dozen types of industry had been established to utilize and train all kinds of workers. They took pride in their modern equipment and the high quality of goods produced. In the holiday celebration going on in the public square during my visit, one could not always tell who were prisoners, who were free workers and who were “guards.” The atmosphere was that of any new construction job in the country. Such, indeed, was the intention—to establish the atmosphere of normal constructive life, with certain old associations shut out.

What most interested me was the splendid theater, whose director boasted of his production of the opera ''Eugene Onegin'', the ''Red Poppy'' ballet, and many of the latest Moscow plays. We learned later that he was a well-known Moscow producer, sent north for a serious crime. The camp authorities at once decided to build a theater, in order to utilize his abilities to the full. The theater cast itself consisted of lawbreakers, government officials, free workers and the families of all of them, mixing in the democratic intimacy of a dramatic performance. One wonders which of all his achievements this director will most boast of in old age, his work in Moscow or the northern theater created in Bear Mountain.

Many former prisoners from the Baltic-White Sea Canal, after receiving freedom together with special prizes and high honors for their good work, went of free choice to help build the Moscow-Volga Canal, another convict-labor job. Here they were especially valued because through their own experience they understood the process through which new prisoners had to go and were especially skilled in helping them make themselves over. As in other Soviet construction camps, the workers on this canal had their art studio under professional direction, their musical circle and literary magazine, and their bureau of inventions through which four thousand proposals to improve the work of the canal have been offered by the prisoners themselves. Several prisoners, given their freedom because of inventions, refused to leave until the canal should be finished.

So well known and effective is the Soviet method of remaking human beings that criminals occasionally now apply to be admitted. I met one such man in Gulin village. Notorious locally as thief and drunkard, he had a dozen convictions to his discredit, till at last he went to the authorities saying: “I’m a man destroyed, but I want to be made over.” They sent him to a labor camp whence he returned a qualified worker. Bolshevo Commune, the most famous “cure” for criminals, can be entered only by application approved by the general meeting of members. Its waiting list is so long that it accepts only the most hardened cases, priding itself on being able to make over persons who cannot become cured in any other institution. Its strength lies in its large membership of intelligent former criminals, who apply to new entrants their intimate knowledge of the criminal mind.

Crime today is rapidly diminishing in the Soviet Union. From 1929 to 1934 sentences for murder decreased by one-half while sex crimes fell off to one-fourth. The cause is found in the growing strength of the Soviet environment to remake human beings; the penal policy is only a supplementary force. A striking example of the play of both causes may be found in the figures of prostitution. Pre-war Moscow had 25,000 to 30,000 prostitutes; these sank by 1928 to about 3,000,<ref>Material from Dr. V. Bronner, head of Institute of Venereal Diseases, Commissariat of Health.</ref> diminution clearly due to economic causes. In 1931, after the Five-Year Plan -had abolished unemployment, the number sank still further to about eight hundred. To reclaim the more habituated, prophylactoria were established. These rose to the number of thirty-four in the whole USSR in 1934, and then swiftly declined to nineteen as their work was done. They are still declining for want of inmates; only one of the original five is left in Moscow. No woman was ever compelled to go to a prophylactorium; the chief punishment for breaking rules was to be put out. Nine-tenths of those who entered left cured both of physical disease and of old habits and were accepted without comment into the normal working life of the city.

An eventual disappearance of crime is expected by Soviet authorities as the mental habits produced by a socialist system become established in Soviet life. For crime, in the Marxian view, arises from the conflicts of a class-exploiting society and will follow classes and exploitation into oblivion. In the first years of the new system, the sharp conflict with classes from whom it took privileges led to a decided increase both in crimes and in the repressive measures used by the state. Kulaks committed arson, cattle-killing, murder, and were exiled in large numbers; anti-Soviet engineers and officials sabotaged and were sent to labor camps. Today the kulaks have been amnestied, not only because many of them have recovered their civil status by honest labor, but also because the collective farms in the villages are strong enough to withstand their attack and absorb them. The labor camps which supplanted prisons are themselves diminishing, partly because they have “cured” their inmates, and still more because the normal free life of Soviet society is becoming strong and prosperous enough to have a direct regenerative influence on those social misfits that remain.

In unforgettably lyric language the Soviet writer Avdeyenko, who a few years ago was by his own confession 2 “two-legged beast of prey,” told the Congress of Soviets, to which in 1934 he was a delegate, the story of the degrading of a youth into a criminal and the subsequent remaking of the criminal into an honorable and famous man. “In 1926,” he said, “under one of the cars of the Moscow-Tashkent express, lay two little passengers, myself and my comrade, voyagers making our way closer to the sun, searching for good people who would not be offended when we robbed them.” He tells how the conductor threw them out on the damp earth, how they wandered in rain and sleet, seeking warmth and light, thrown out everywhere till exhaustion turned to anger, anger to despair, despair to a great hatred for mankind. In this hatred they fired a haystack set against a house. “A warm, calm feeling filled my heart. Tears of joy and vengeance came into our eyes. We embraced, laughing and crying, and spent the rest of the night in a public toilet, pressing against the warm wall to warm first our backs and then our chests till we fell asleep standing.

“I was destined to live many years—one—fifth of my life—with the feelings of hatred, malice, revenge that were born in me at that station. After that I robbed and threatened without remorse.” He tells how he stole fur coats and jars of butter, robbed drunkards in dark alleys, hooked vagrants off freight cars to steal their clothing, till he gradually became “a human beast, that most fearful two-legged blood-thirsty species without love or goodness or feeling or pity. Today it is frightful for me even to remember such a person.

“Today in this historic hall, I stand on the tribune, a member of government. I am a citizen with full rights. I am strong. I cherish the best human feelings: love, devotion, honesty, self-sacrifice, heroism. I write books. I dream of creating an unforgettable production. I love a girl unselfishly. I am continuing my race—it will be a happy one.

“I am happy, full of the joy of life, unshakably exuberant. I go to sleep with regret, I awake with joy. I shall live a hundred years. I can fly to the moon, go to the Arctic, make a new discovery, for my creative energy is not trod on by anyone.

“Today I recall my past for the last time. In filling out my application blank, under ‘places of work,’ I wrote: “Till 1931 socially harmful activity. I begin the story of life from 1931’ And they answered: ‘So be it.’ So you see I am four years old, the youngest here.”

Avdeyenko gives the stories of other former law-breakers who have been made over. He traces the source of their anti-social past to the heritage of capitalist exploitation; he finds the force that redeemed them in the new socialist industries and the life that arises around them. “All of you know the institutions where such people are re-educated. But our whole Soviet system is one big workshop for re-educating men. I know people of two generations whose lives were no better than mine. We are engineers, writers, aviators, journalists, machinists, administrators of cities, scientists, Arctic explorers. The industries of our country remade us, and the industries were established by the Stalinist policy of industrializing the country. Comrade Molotov spoke of the newly created factories, cities and whole industrial regions, but he did not refer to the giving of life, human life, to the two-legged beasts of prey I have described.”

=== CHAPTER XV: YOUTH SET FREE ===

{{Quote|“The generation which is now fifteen years old will see Communism and will itself build it.”|Lenin}}

“Life is good and to live is good—in such a land, in such an epoch! . . . We, young owners of our country, called upon to conquer space and time. . . .”

In June of 1935 these words of Anna Mlynek, young valedictorian of the first Moscow class to complete the new ten-year school, awakened in thousands of hearts the world over a realization of what youth’s outlook might be in a socialist land. To youth in capitalist countries the outlook is gloomy. They look outward and see unemployment; they look inward and find confusion. They are developing, rational beings propelled into a world whose irrationality even their parents and teachers cannot explain to them. Those who love them best offer only a host of illusions; they are taught to look at the past and go backing into the future. So there goes on within them what the well-known psychiatrist, Dr. Frankwood Williams, calls a “mighty struggle in the dark . . . with all the emotional complexities and uncertainties that home, school, community have woven into their being.”

Soviet youth have not escaped struggle. Their birth was in the flames of civil war. Their childhood endured the famine years. Their adolescence was strained by great tasks of constructing a country. Many young lives were cut short or crippled in heart or lung or nerve in those years of battle and building. Even today they see across the future the dark threat of world war which may be launched at any time by the capitalist chaos beyond their borders, and in which they know that many of them must perish.

What then is the source of the explosive joy which becomes increasingly plain in the words, the sports, the celebrations of Soviet youth? It lies in those words “young owners.” Men in the past have been subjects of kings or even proud citizens of democracies. Never till socialism dared they call themselves owners of the land in which they live. Ownership brings freedom in planning, clearness of goal, harmony of intellect and will in expanding life. Joint ownership brings comradeship reinforcing freedom, and a new, widened will to conquer space and time.

A letter sent by thirty-one young men and girls from a collective farm to Moscow to greet the assembling of congress in early 1935 expresses it: “We go a road that is rich with life. We know our goal. What we are doing we do with clear consciousness. We know that what we do is important, necessary, great and glorious. We know the aim of our collective farm tasks. We know what will be tomorrow for we ourselves create it. Today is good, tomorrow will be better, the day after tomorrow immeasurably better. We often think of the glorious future of our farm, our township, our dear district, all our beloved land. We think of the bright future of all mankind which will be freed by the world-wide proletarian revolution.”

Not on any mystic faith do these thirty-one young people base their hope for the future, but on homely details of daily fact that seem at first sight quite inadequate to explain their joy. They relate the changing of poor soil to good soil. “Our village never knew wheat till the Bolsheviks pushed it to the north!” They tell the expansion of music, drama, sport and science built on the firm economic foundation of their increasing harvest. They see the clear connection between their farm’s success and the success of their country, and base on this their expectation of international revolution. Their life is an integrated whole from the farm to the world. They have grown up and been formed by a new social order.

What are the qualities demanded of joint owners, which the Soviet schools seek consciously to develop? Neither the combativeness nor the submission which are the contradictory demands of capitalism, but a high degree of initiative and scientific interest, a high development of individual variety combined with highly developed social instincts. The aim of the Soviet school is not to create standardized people, suited to the demands of some undefined future boss, but to help youth discover and develop its own desires and capacities. In a hundred ways the schools are constantly asking: What do you most like to do? In a hundred ways they help this developing choice relate itself to the equally developing choice of others.

An American teacher who has taught for years in Soviet schools tells me that the approach to the child is far more individual than in America. Persistent efforts are made to find the child’s particular aptitudes and interests. In the elementary grades there are two types of teachers:—group teachers remain with one group of children for several years, visiting their homes, becoming thoroughly acquainted with them and relating them to the special teachers who develop special aptitudes. By the seventh grade, which is roughly equivalent to second year of high school in America, psychological tests help the child decide what he can do best; they tell him his capacities but impose no compulsion on his choice.

Summer camps and excursions are also planned to help children discover their special interests and widen the field of their choice. The best camps, such as the famous Artek in the Crimea, maintain amateur work of a high order in geology, botany, care of animals, study of sea-life and construction of airplane and automobile models. Children spending their summer in such camps discover and develop hobbies which may, or may not, develop into their life’s work. Newspaper discussions also draw out the self-expression of children; a special newspaper, the Pioneer Pravda, is written almost entirely by children.

Last summer I met twenty young “Arctic explorers” under sixteen years of age on the Murmansk train bound for Polar regions. Their energetic study of maps, Arctic cruises, Northern peoples had been sufficient to win from their teachers a recommendation which included them in an organized cruise of the north. They would meet adult Arctic explorers who would treat them smilingly but courteously as possible future colleagues. Ten of the best pupils in botany were similarly allowed to make an expedition at government expense to the Altai mountains, where they hiked two thousand kilometers and found twenty-seven new varieties of black currants and a type of onion which resists 45° of frost. Two of these young explorers went as delegates to deliver the plants to the aged plant-creator Michurin: When he asked: “Weren’t you afraid to cross wild rivers and sleep at night in the woods?” they answered: “Sometimes we were afraid. We feared that our expedition would fail to find any new plants and we would disgrace ourselves as Michurin’s grandchildren.”

Such trips are the reward of marked aptitude, but all children take some part in the “grown—up” activities of the country. In Molvitino township the farm children told me proudly of scores of tons of bird droppings and wood ashes collected to fertilize the exhausted fields. In the 1934 “war with drought,” when a chief harvest problem in the south was the low, dry stand of easily broken grain, children’s groups of gleaners followed the reapers and competed to save great piles of grain heads. Every Soviet child knows the heroism of Mitia who caught three harvest thieves red-handed. In Artek Camp I met a child who had prevented a train wreck by reporting a loose rail and another who saved an aviator by lighting a bonfire at night to guide the errant plane: these children won wide renown among other children and were rewarded by a summer at Artek. Children of railway workers in Tiflis built and operate a half-mile railroad in the Park of Culture and Rest; it is a serious enterprise which carries passengers, takes in a thousand rubles each holiday and spends the money in proper Soviet style to “expand the road.”

These out-of-school activities of children became at one time so absorbing that they threatened health and education. Young Pioneers “saved the harvest,” reclaimed drunken parents, denounced village grafters and debated whether their first duty was to the school or to “help the country.” Today children are reminded that “learn, learn, learn” is Lenin’s statement of the three most necessary things for young humans to do. School dominates and organizes all other child activities. But it never excludes them. In all their learning many forms of activity have part.

The early discipline of children is largely through mass pressure, highly effectively organized by the children themselves. Children often come to a teacher with suggestions about the best way to handle difficult cases. They inform the teacher of home conditions which have made certain children backward in study or in comradeliness. They organize committees to go with the teacher to the homes. Children will themselves expose violations of child labor laws, or write to the papers about parents who beat other children. The highest honor given to able children is to be asked to help more backward ones with their studies in a spirit not of condescension but of good team-work, like that of a basket-ball player who helps his team excel. The strongest penalty in any school is given when children ask to have a child excluded on the round that his conduct disturbs their work.

All these activities of children directly reflect and prepare for their coming adult life. The encouragement of individual variety harmonized by regard for the rights of others expands into the more definite yet wider interests of youth. By the end of the ten-year school, which is roughly equivalent to a combination of the American elementary grades and high school, the boy or girl usually has some interest which he wants to test in serious work. Some young folks go to work even earlier, spending part of the years between fourteen and eighteen in a factory trade school with part-time work. Some go direct from the secondary school to the university. But the commonly encouraged procedure is to finish ten years of school and then go to work in the late teens for a period of self-testing before deciding on specialization.

These are not odd jobs to earn one’s way through college, such as are known in American life. They are part of a youth’s conscious self-education in the actual world of production. They are related to his already appearing interests, which they test and develop. I know a boy of nineteen who chose to work on a farm in the summer. Since he already knew that he wanted to become an entomologist, the farm was expected to give him scientific work. He sorted apples for diseases, staked cabbages to count the bugs in sample areas, and otherwise used his special interest for farm production, improving his scientific technique while he worked. If an emergency had occurred, he would have helped in other ways, but emergencies which waste the time of young people in blind alley tasks are a blot on the reputation of any Soviet industry. When four girls of my acquaintance went to work in a chemical laboratory in Siberia and found it so disorganized that there was nothing really useful to do, they protested to the Party against this waste of their time, and the organization which was employing and paying them was censured and ordered to release them for other work. The time of youth is a precious treasure of the community. The most accepted reason which any youth can give for leaving a job is that it offers nothing more for him to learn.

At no time in life is there any gap between work and schooling. Education is not a commodity purchased by money and consumed in childhood or in four charmed years of isolated university life. It is a personal and public necessity, without limits, freely available from childhood to old age. Courses of general culture are not crammed into a special period; they are taken after work in any quantity desired. They are paid for by state or trade union; any group of workers anywhere may decide to study chemistry, music or parachute-jumping and call on their trade union to pay the teachers. When young people feel that they have chosen a permanent specialty, for which they need some years of concentrated study, they apply to enter a university or a research institute. For these institutions their ability and seriousness is tested by severe entrance examinations. If they pass, study becomes their regular work, paid for as such by the state. It is fully as strenuous as the factory; they spend six or seven hours a day in class rooms and laboratories in courses chosen on a broad basis, but all consciously directed towards preparation for their profession.

I visited the dormitory attached to three institutions of higher education in mining, metallurgy and non-ferrous metals. A pretty girl was specializing in blast furnaces, a former book-binder was studying mining engineering, a factory-worker was becoming a geologist for Central Asia, a broad-faced yellow Kazak was preparing to work in copper in the newly opened mines of Kazakstan. All of them were paid for their study by the Commissariat of Heavy Industry. Their stipends ranged from one to two hundred rubles monthly, the higher pay rewarding the best students. Every summer they chose their “practice work” from a dozen localities which offered, and as soon as they found some place where they wished to sign up for a job after graduation, they got additional wages from their chosen industry. The majority decided by the third or fourth year of the five-year course. Thereafter they felt themselves bound to work, for at least a time after they finished the university, for the institution which had paid for their education. This was not felt by them as compulsion but as the intelligent specializing of their own choice on the basis of a wide range of opportunities. Any good reason, such as personal health or the demand of some national emergency, would be recognized by them and their fellows as grounds for release. But a frivolous change of occupation without reason would brand a youth as undependable, while to give up a job because conditions proved difficult would be stigmatized as cowardly. For what was he trained if not to make the conditions better? Has he not at his disposal for this all the resources of the land?

What jobs does youth choose? By no means the easy ones. When has youth, when free to choose, ever asked for the easy way? Youth wants conquest. Youth is explosive energy, so explosive that under capitalism it must be befogged with illusions, lest it wreck the world’s ancient ways. Soviet youth is encouraged to make the world over; it responds to the call. In every difficult struggle faced by the Soviet state from its beginning, a mighty host of youth has volunteered.

Youth does not wait to be asked; it takes the initiative. Through its organization, the Young Communist League, it repeatedly demands the right to battle on each new important “front.” I know young women who fought in the civil war, divorcing the husbands who would have prevented their going. The Stalingrad Tractor Plant, the first Soviet conveyor, was built and manned by young folks coming from every part of the country. “We give our youth to this struggle,” they said to me six years ago. “We do not spend it in ease or amusement. We shall not stop till we have built the socialist city of Stalingrad.” I have vivid memory of the boat that came at eleven o’clock one night for a long-expected boat-ride after a hot day and was turned down by young voices, with-out a word from their elders, as too late. “Got to go home; got to be fresh for the line tomorrow,” they said as they turned away.

Thus was launched in the far northeast of Asia the new ship-building port Comsomolsk on the shores of the Ohotsk Sea, a city proudly carved from mosquito-ridden forests by the forces of youth alone. Thus was built the Moscow subway in a titanic drive by youth to create “the most beautiful subway in the world.” Moscow’s Young Communists left office jobs, postponed university courses and requalified as underground ditch-diggers to build it. Every great construction job has its special tasks seized by youth; they take over the building of a blast furnace in competition with one raised alongside by their elders. They organize special farms which make proud records. They pour into the new industries, master the new technique, form the new staff of engineers.

Like young folks everywhere, Soviet youths have the problem of the relation between work and marriage. This is never a question of whether they can afford to get married; that is taken for granted. The problem is to find time for a satisfying family life. One troubled youth writes to the ''Komsomolskaya Pravda'' in the discussion recently held on this question: “I am a turner. I am also a Young Communist. Besides that I am working on an invention. My days are so full that I don’t have time to breathe. I see my wife only at night and then I'm so dead tired that I fall down and sleep like a corpse. Lydia weeps. I am not a beast; I am sorry about Lydia. But I try to organize my time and I can’t even find an hour for my class on planning, much less for my family.”

This is an extreme case; it is balanced by young Kuznetsova who lays down her specifications for a husband: “I wouldn’t have a man who was not a good social worker. But neither will I live with one who is interested only in his factory. I don’t want a one-sided man. I want a husband who will play volley ball with me, do skiing, appreciate the theater, music, general culture, read a book with me and argue about it afterwards. All these things have place in a well-rounded life.” These are the problems of a rich, abundant existence, which needs only to be organized. Soviet youth never feels that it must renounce any of these satisfactions.

Each year when September First brings the International Youth celebration, hundreds of telegrams pour into the offices of ''Komsomolskaya Pravda'', organ of Communist Youth, announcing achievements of youth and the gifts which it offers the country. A group of young steel men wire that they have dismantled and reassembled an open hearth furnace in six days instead of the usual ten; a group of young miners sends an extra train of coal manned by a train crew especially chosen from scores who competed for the honor. Other groups announce the organization of “cultured field camps” where music, drama and books enliven the evening’s work on the farm. Still other groups blazon sport records on floats in the great demonstration which storms the Red Square. Young Communists of the Red Dawn Telephone Factory hiked to the Mongolian border, 5,400 miles in 180 days. Another group is back from climbing the Altai, covering 1,200 miles on foot. They celebrate the Baikal-Murmansk ski-run across half Asia and half northern Europe; they announce Alpine and parachute records made by youth. Nor is there any sharp line between records in sport and in steel-mills. All are one unified, advancing life.

Not in conflict with work but around it in the social life of the factory collective, Soviet youth develops activities of sport and recreation which make up a well-rounded life. Tsarist Russia possessed thirty thousand members of sport and athletic clubs; there are six million today. Tens of thousands of cheering spectators turn out to soccer matches between Moscow, Leningrad, Central Asia, Turkey and Spain. Soviet sportsmen begin to invade world records. But the characteristic of Soviet sport is not the straining for records in one field at the expense of all round physical fitness; its symbol is the GTO badge—“Ready for Labor and Defense”—to receive which one must pass certain standards in walking, running, swimming, rowing, skiing, jumping and every kind of summer and winter sport. Two and a half million persons have qualified for this symbol, and a second degree of GTO is now established, requiring high diving, parachute jumping and other difficult tests.

Parachute jumping has become almost a national sport in the Soviet Union, typical of its sky-storming youth. Flying, gliding, jumping, youth fills the heavens above Tushino field several times each summer with its aviation festivals. One hundred and fifty at a time they leap from great carrier airplanes and come sailing down under canopies of many-colored silk—red, white, blue, orange, lilac—covering the sky with rainbow hues. Week after week they make new records, young men and girls in individual or group jumps. Nina Kameneva, descending from icy space nearly twice the height of Mount Blanc and breaking a world’s record, made the remark which was seized by Soviet youth as a new slogan: “The sky of our country is the highest sky in the world.”

=== CHAPTER XVI: NEW MEN EMERGE ===

The emergence of new people has been noted with growing frequency in recent years by the Soviet press. Editorial writers have tried to analyze their qualities; novelists have attempted to portray them. A Russian author suggested a year ago to the Moscow News a series of half-column novelettes, each containing the snapshot of a life. To the editor’s query how many of these stories he had, he answered casually: “About a thousand.”

“A thousand!” exclaimed our editor.

“That’s not so many,” replied the author, “to describe the great variety of people now appearing in our world.”

Lincoln Steffens told me of meeting one of these new people, a Soviet youth in Hollywood, “so new that he could not understand these United States. . . . He was a unit; he thought and acted together. He was constantly puzzled by the tactics of American capitalists, considered from the standpoint of their own survival.”

Increasingly I also meet new people in the Soviet Union. Not infrequently I have misunderstood them; their approach to life was different from anything I had known. Their respect for my will, their unwillingness to use their personality to convince my intellect, I mistook for aloofness, so accustomed was I to the salesman’s method of putting himself over. On another occasion, traveling on a Siberian train, I made the opposite mistake and took for promiscuous flirtation the expansive joy of a high official whose deft approaches to every person he met drew forth answering flashes of life. Then I saw him evade a kiss from “Little Slant-Eyes,” a Tartar girl with whom for two days he had been joking.

“Kissing is for the beloved one,” he said, smiling. “But the joy of life is to be shared with everybody.”

“Do you know what they have thought of you on this train?” I asked him then.

“What they think affects them, not me. They will also learn if it is in them.”

Never had I seen a more poised personality. Later he remarked, “We Bolsheviks, as Kirov always said, must be the happiest people in the world. But I must be one of the happiest even among Bolsheviks. Our older men are marked by too many years of combat. Our younger men can hardly appreciate the grimness of what they have never known. But I spent my childhood in oppression and my youth fighting for freedom; I am old enough to know the conquered past, yet young enough for a whole new life.”

Is it possible yet to say in what direction this new humanity is developing? Are there any characteristics common to these millions of people who are becoming subtly differentiated from the past? Many attempts are being made to analyze them. When the Turkoman horsemen descended on Moscow after their amazing 4,300 kilometer run across the deserts, Stalin said: “Only clearness of goal, perseverance in attaining the goal, and firmness of character breaking through every hindrance can achieve such a glorious victory.” Pravda elaborated this theme into an editorial on the Soviet ideal of character, declaring it to be the exact opposite of that “unquestioning obedience” which Hitler had previously demanded in an impassioned speech to fascist youth.

“Strong and original individuality,” was claimed by Pravda as the basic quality of a Soviet citizen. Not the “rugged individualism” which capitalism in its early stages glorifies for its upper classes, and which sinks into gangsterism in the fascist decline. Not conforming obedience responding under all conditions to “God and country,” the capitalist ideal which under fascism becomes blinder submission for men whose destiny it is to be bossed. Not that ability to look on both sides of the question which intellectuals under capitalism prize as a sign of high intelligence, but which Pravda disdains as “division of personality and double-mindedness, Hamletism in romantic colors.”

“Not submission and blind faith does the Communist Party implant, but consciousness, daring, decision. It is just from the clear goal, seen by millions, from fighting perseverance and firmness that there grows that remarkable voluntary discipline which bourgeois society cannot even imagine. . . . Clearness of aim, perseverance and firmness won the victory in the civil war, restored our ruined economy and created socialist industry and collective farming. Clearness of aim, perseverance and firmness made way through the ice of the Arctic, lifted our heroes of the air into the stratosphere and brought close to the Communist Party many of the great representatives of science, literature and art. . . . The Communist Party draws out from all the toilers of our great fatherland the quality of strong individuality, inseparably connected with the strong collective of the toilers. . . .”

To many persons in capitalist countries these words will be only partly intelligible. They have been so accustomed to considering that their own life is “free” and Soviet life “regimented” that they cannot at once grasp a viewpoint which holds the exact opposite. Yet even the casual observer of human beings today in the Soviet Union notices that while they have certain characteristics in common they are by no means regimented into uniformity, but show a vivid individuality at least as great as is found anywhere in the world. A business man in Chicago who had never seen Moscow but who was something of an art critic, told me that he was especially impressed in all Soviet photographs, whether of demonstrations in the Red Square or of athletes and factory workers, by the quality of will in the faces. “Utterly different from the sheepish or brutal faces of Nazi pictures,” he added. It is clear to anyone who talks with Soviet workers or the more advanced of the collective farmers that they feel themselves possessed not only of freedom, but of a peculiar type of reinforced and collectively supported freedom which is strong enough to conquer all the obstacles in the world.

Freedom is never absolute; it is concrete and specific. It means different things to different classes and generations of men. The American pioneer faced the wilderness ax in hand with the mood of a free creator, saying: “What shall I build?” His freedom was conditioned by the loans he made or failed to make for his migration, by the railroad that came or failed to come, and by the subtler limitations of his own skill and character, yet with ax in hand, he felt free. His ownership of his primitive means of production was the source and guarantee of his sense of freedom.

When the means of production became the factory, the meaning of freedom slowly changed. Freedom became to the owner the right to fix prices and wages, to the worker the right to drift from job to job, seeking an easier boss. Freedom in government became the “right to choose one’s rulers,” not the right to own and rule. Freedom of thought and speech became the right to complain, to voice transient shifts of opinion, not the right to drive one firm consistent thought into life. As capitalism advanced, men became diversified in their work and capacities, but standardized in their instinctive reference to a boss. Soviet workers notice this quality in Americans who come to their factories. “They know how to complain and make suggestions, but not how to desire and will.”

“Desire and will” is the form which freedom takes when men are owners. When they are joint owners, a form of will develops—not unlike that in a family, a partnership or a committee—which determines itself by consultation. “He does not make individual decisions,” is already a compliment in the Soviet Union; it is applied to Stalin. It is as if one said of a scientist that he refuses to base conclusions on a single experiment. Men always have made up what they call their own minds through the influence of other minds as well; but now they grow conscious of these sources of their choice; they organize even these sources. They criticize, but from within, not from aloof isolation. Workers express discontent not by strikes against an alien owner, but by joint fights against bureaucracy to improve the organization of the land. Freedom becomes less a protest and more a steadily burning choice; not a fight, but a seeking. It is seen not as absence of restraint, but as conscious selection of one particular, individual place in a living complex mechanism whereby a thousand similar freedoms are welded into flame and power.

In the latter half of 1935 the Stakhanovites began to shake the country. People compared it to an explosion, an earthquake. The movement appeared simultaneously in a hundred places and a score of industries. Despite the great variety of its people, the fundamental characteristics were the same. Workmen operating new machines began to shatter past standards of production often against the indifference or opposition of engineers and managers but accompanied by the strained attention of their fellow workers. Each of them had to fight his way against old concepts and habits; one or two of them were killed by angry workers, outraged by this sudden burst of speed. But overwhelming public opinion hailed and copied the innovators. Swiftly, in the midst of their local elation, they found themselves acclaimed across the land as heroes.

Within two months every country in the world was forced to take notice, disguising the information as best they could under the name “speed-up.” For this was no mere routine news from Russia. This was a storming of the world frontiers of productivity and science. Miners in the Donbas were doubling Ruhr production. Blacksmiths in Gorky Auto Works broke standards set by Ford. Shoemakers in Leningrad made records 50 per cent higher than the world record held by the Bata factories of Czechoslovakia. Young girl weavers ran far ahead of America’s best achievements. Swedish saw-mill machinery, standardized to cut ninety-six cubic meters of lumber, was impertinently pushed to nearly three hundred by woodsmen in Archangel.

Hundreds of American engineers and workers, who tried five years ago to “teach the Russians,” and who today are scattered in jobs and out of jobs all over the world, must have grumbled glumly when they heard of it: “Why couldn’t they do it when we showed them how?” For the events which have happened are externally obvious. The Soviet Union equipped itself throughout with modern machinery and methods, and drew eleven million greenhorns into industry to operate them. The greenhorns broke machines, wasted material and learned. They could not learn at once when their teachers told them; it had to grow in their nervous systems. But what they have learned is not only the technical skill of America. It is all that skill with the pride of ownership added. Ownership of the whole great mechanized process that makes the modern world.

People who were allowed to attend the first All-Union Congress of Stakhanovites—and everyone in Moscow wanted to go—told of the indescribable enthusiasm, the irrepressible, thundering cheers. The Soviet press grew lyric over “taming the fiery steed of science,” “washing out the barriers between manual and mental labor,” “preparing the way from socialism to communism where each shall receive according to his needs.” Stalin was saying to the assembled delegates: “We leaders of the government have learned much from you. Thanks, comrades, for the lesson, many thanks.” Those men in the Congress believed—and the country believed with them—that the plan made by Marx was coming true. They had established a new economic system. They had painfully equipped it with modern methods. They had slowly learned to manage it jointly, and now the predicted results appeared. Socialism was beating capitalist production, just as capitalism beat feudalism.

What are the characteristics of these Stakhanovites? A joyously dynamic initiative, a pride in mastery of complex technical processes, a conscious co-operation with society, a hunger to learn. Every phrase dropped in their discussions shows exultant power in creation and desire to share the new skill with others. Busygin, the blacksmith who made the crankshaft record in the forge of the Gorky Auto Works, declares, “There’s nothing I dream of so much as studying. I want to be not only a smith but to know how hammers are made and to make them. . . .” Marie Demchenko who made the sugar-beet record asked as a reward a course at an agricultural college—and got it. Stakhanov himself went down in the mines to make his record as the chosen representative of his fellows. “International Youth Day was approaching and I wanted to mark the day with a record in productivity. For some time my comrades and I had been thinking how to break the shackles of the norm, give the miners free play, force the drills to work a full shift.” When Slavnikova wanted to beat the record on a machine she had carefully studied but never yet used, the foreman opposed her. “I'm a fearless parachute jumper; that norm doesn’t scare me; I'll upset it,” she replied. She drove the machine to a five-fold record. She relates the sequel: “At four in the afternoon we had a meeting and they gave us flowers for our good work.”

Bobilev, the steel smelter, wants you to know that he is a scientist: “We are no sportsmen. We tested out our open hearth; we repaired her and asked how much she could give. She told us 11.33 tons.” Vasiliev, the blacksmith who holds the record for forging connecting-rods, uses the words “boiled up” and “exploded” to describe his feelings about his forge. When his 1934 record was beaten by Andrianov, he “boiled up” and went back to the works with four days left of his vacation. I beat Sam Andrianov but I saw in a newspaper that a Kharkov smith had made more than a thousand. Then I exploded! I made 945 in one shift. The smith Stadnik also exploded and made 975. I consulted my gang how to organize our work-place; we got 1,036. We talked it over with the foreman and told him how to change the furnace; with true Stakhanov zeal he gave us in four days a furnace that could heat 1,500 in a shift. What stops us now? We talked it over and placed the metal in such order that it would be easier to take up. On October 27 I made an all-Union record 1,101 in a single shift. Comrades, I haven’t yet got out of that hammer all she’ll give, but I'm going to get it out to the very bottom.”

Characteristic of the Stakhanovites is their disdain for overtime work as a confession of inefficiency; their insistence that a rhythm shall be found which shall not be physically exhausting—“if the work is done right you feel better and stronger”; and their zeal in teaching the new skill to their fellows. The locomotive engineer Omelianov, demands the “worst engineer” as a pupil, and makes him also a beater of records. Slavnikova is asked by an inefficient woman: “You’re a Young Communist; why don’t you teach me?” She gives time to instruct the older woman, who also begins to improve.

Life in the new factories is by no means ease and harmony. It is more like an explosion or a battle. An engineer of my acquaintance finds the Stakhanovites frankly terrifying. “They put up signals over their lathes when out of material. These signals pop up everywhere and I have to keep them satisfied, or they’ll say I sabotage. You can lose your reputation. You can be cleaned out of the Party. I'm sitting up nights to plan the flow of work.” The demands of these new men are breaking the old technical processes. For “every worker knows,” says the weaver Lisakova, “that over-fulfillment of the norm will not only improve labor conditions in the factory, but also the kindergartens, nurseries, dining-rooms. All this depends on the efficiency of organization, the spirit of solidarity, the fulfillment of the plan.”

It no longer even occurs to these joint owners that a rise in productivity might throw men out of work. Shifts of workers there will be from one job to another; but industry bears the expense of retraining workers. Conflicts there will be, harsh problems and many, but they feel quite sure that they can plan and achieve. They have won through civil war, pestilence, famine; they tightened their belts to build the first Five-Year Plan. They are driving rapidly through a second, which increases food, clothing, housing visibly each year. They haven’t the faintest doubt that as owners of their country they will always have worthwhile things to do.

“Ten years hence,” said a Stakhanovite to me, “farming and industry may cease to be our main occupations. But there are other occupations when once we produce all the goods we need. Human development, exploration, science—to these there are no limits!”

Whatever kind of world will be made by these new builders, one thing is certain: it will be built on conscious planning and will. Not regimentation but choice will make it, a choice that develops its own social guidance. If more people want geology, there will be more geology; if more want medicine, there will be more medicine. More comforts or more leisure, more music or more exploration of the Arctic? Our new world will be what we choose to make it. And if excess of choice in one direction leaves any fields unfilled, the social ways of influencing choice are clear and conscious. A combination of material rewards with social recognition, is already the method of attracting volunteers. The announcement in January, 1933, that agriculture was the most important front, brought hosts of recruits from the ablest people of the country. Calls for help through the League of Communist Youth supplied the driving personnel for Stalingrad Tractor Plant and the Moscow subway. Increased wages and shortened hours have supplemented statements of public need to attract more people into fields as diverse as medicine and mining.

Are there any bounds whatever to man’s advance? These new men recognize none. “If in so short a time and with so backward folk we owners of one-sixth of earth have done so much, what shall we men not do when we own the resources of our planet, unhindered by the fear of wars? If the earth grows old, shall we not remake it to suit us? If the solar system runs down, shall we not find ways to give heat to our sun? Need we fix any limit to attainment, when the earth is our jointly owned workshop and home?”

Such is their confident philosophy. So they answer, when they take time to discuss at all. A new religion? No, that is a word disdained. A widening science, they would say. Their approach to ultimate reality is not one of faith and submission, on which all religions have been based. It is one of defiance and conquest through intellect and will. When the conflicts between slave and master, serf and baron, worker and capitalist are ended, and the classless society is attained, there begins the titanic conflict of conscious men with unconscious nature. Not by faith but by analysis, not by submission but by defiance shall we rise in that unending battle. Unending? Relatively only, not absolutely. But that end is beyond our present power even to imagine.

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[[Category:Library works by Anna Louise Strong]]
[[Category:Library works about the Soviet Union]]

Library:Trotskyism: Counter-Revolution in Disguise

2024-10-16T14:57:20Z

ComradeEd: Add Library_work

{{Library_work|title=Trotskyism: Counter-Revolution in Disguise|author=Moissaye Joseph Olgin}}
== The Danger of Trotskyism ==
<blockquote>“Nobody dares speak aloud in Russia.”

“The Russian workers have bad dwellings, bad clothes, bad food. In consequence of malnutrition and bad hygienic conditions, epidemics are spreading among them.”

“Instead of proclaimed beautiful perspectives and particularly beneficial privileges, the workers of heavy industry have obtained an official eight-hour workday plus two hours overtime—shock-brigader and super-shock-brigader work under conditions where there is a constant lack of materials and instruments, where the machines and apparatus are continually out of order, the work rooms are not heated and ventilation is absent.”

“The system of ‘dekulakization’ and large-scale collectivization has turned Russia from a country of booming agriculture into a country of widespread ruin. Instead of the advantages promised to follow from collective creativeness and large-scale application of machines, the peasants have remained exhausted. Hard forced labor in the collective farms has led to a situation where the peasant cannot be the creator of the most necessary products.”</blockquote>WHO are the authors of these statements? Do they emanate from the Trotskyite camp? They sound very much like Trotskyite declarations. Remember what Trotsky wrote about “bureaucratism” in Russia, about democracy being stifled, about absence of elementary rights under the “Stalinist regime”. Does it not resemble the statement that “nobody dares speak aloud in Russia”?

And now about the economic situation. Remember what Trotsky wrote about the conditions of the workers.<blockquote>“Economic tasks are being set without any account being taken of the actual means. An increasingly inhuman load is being dumped on the shoulders of the workers. . . . Malnutrition plus forced exertions. The combination of these two conditions is enough to do away with the equipment and to exhaust the producers themselves. . . . One cannot believe one’s eyes. . . . Poor nourishment and nervous fatigue engender an apathy to the surrounding environment. As a result not only the old factories. but also the new ones that have been built according to the last word in technology fall quickly into a moribund state.” (Leon Trotsky, ''Soviet Economy in Danger'', p. 21.)</blockquote>And this is what Trotsky wrote about the situation of the peasants:<blockquote>“The headlong chase after breaking records in collectivization, without taking any account of the economic and cultural potentialities of the rural economy, has led in actuality to ruinous consequences. It has destroyed the stimuli of the small commodity producer long before it was able to supplant them by other and much higher economic stimuli. The administrative pressure, which exhausts itself quickly in industry, turns out to be absolutely powerless in the sphere of rural economy. . . . One hundred per cent collectivization has resulted in one hundred per cent overgrowth of weeds on the fields.” (''Ibid.'', p. 23.)</blockquote>Is there any material difference between the last two quotations and the quotations at the beginning of this chapter? It is difficult to detect any. The spirit is the same. The substance is the same. Yet the first four quotations are taken from a publication called ''The Russian Fascist'' appearing in the United States of America in the Russian language (the magazine is published in Putnam, Connecticut, by a man named A. Vonsyatsky).

The Russian Fascists and the former leader of the October Revolution, Leon Trotsky, speak the same language.

What is the difference between them? One would be inclined to think that the fascists speak in the name of the dictatorship of capital whereas Trotsky speaks in the name of the Russian workers and peasants. But the fascists, too, profess to speak in the name of the masses. They appear in their publications as the great champions of the downtrodden and exploited—the oppressors and exploiters being, in their presentation, the Bolsheviks with Stalin at their head. The fascists, too, appeal in the name of democracy. They even say they are not against the Soviets. They only want “freedom of unhampered voting and the right to elect non-partisans into the Soviets”—a Trotskyite demand.

Are the fascists friends of the Russian masses? We do not think any enlightened person would believe that. Is Trotsky a friend of the Russian masses? Some people think so, but the fact that his statements so closely resemble those of the fascists should make them doubtful as to Trotsky’s real objective.

The difference between the fascists and the Trotskyites is this—that the fascist deception is easily detected by every thinking person whereas the Trotskyite deception is not so easily detected because it is covered with “revolutionary”, “Marxian”, even “Leninist” phrases.

Therein lies the danger of Trotskyism.

One great world-wide victory was achieved by the world proletariat in October, 1917: the Bolshevik Revolution which established the dictatorship of the proletariat. For over 17 years the dictatorship of the proletariat has been ruling in a gigantic country. Successes which could not have been dreamt of under the old régime have been achieved in the comparatively brief span of time after the end of the civil war. Progress of industry which made the U.S.S.R., as far as heavy metallurgy is concerned, the first country in Europe and the second in the world, has actually transfigured the vast land, opening before it still greater and more staggering possibilities. Progress of agriculture, which transformed a country of twenty million small backward individual peasant holdings into a country of the most modern large-scale collectivized agriculture, put the U.S.S.R. on a firm foundation as regards the production of foodstuffs and raw materials and made it to a large extent, independent of the caprices of weather conditions. Heights of culture have been achieved which in many respects place the country far ahead of anything known in the capitalist world.

All this was accomplished not without struggles. Struggles against the former owners of wealth. Struggle against the White forces of the landlords and capitalists. Struggles against the imperialist armies of intervention. Struggles against the enemies that penetrated into every crevice of Soviet life in order to damage and wreck. Struggle against the village exploiters, the kulaks. Struggle against the intellectual saboteurs who offered every possible resistance to the workers’ rule. Struggle against the inefficiency, the lack of education, the lack of training on the part of the workers. Struggle against the backwardness of the peasantry. Struggle against old habits, centuries-old customs, prejudices, superstitions. Struggle against alien elements within the Communist Party who threatened to destroy its unity and impede therefore the progress of the revolution.

Under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, with Lenin and Stalin and then Stalin at its head, all these difficulties have been overcome, most of the battles won, the foundations of socialism laid, the edifice of socialism nearly completed. The toilers of the Soviet Union are entering a new era, an era of abundance, of higher culture, of a more beautiful and colorful life.

For what is this economic progress if not a foundation for more and better goods to satisfy the masses? What is this cultural progress if not a means of raising Soviet humanity to a higher, more human level? What is the entire system if not the open road to still greater, still more marvelous progress?

Compare this with the downfall of industry and agriculture in the capitalist world, with factories shut down, cottonfields and wheatfields ploughed under, wheat burned, milk spilled into the rivers, tens of millions of workers thrown out into hunger and misery, thousands upon thousands dying, children destitute, young boys and girls roaming the roads, schools and colleges curtailed, teachers and technicians, high specialists and artists swelling the ranks of the unemployed and unable to produce culture. Compare the Soviet achievements with this huge waste of human energy, human talent, human possibilities—and the importance of the Soviet Union will stand out in a sharp light.

The Soviet Union is a beacon light for all the oppressed and exploited of the world. The Soviet Union has done away with the exploitation of man by man. It has done away with the oppression of minority nationalities, of colonies and semi-colonies. It has made the formerly oppressed sections of Russia inhabited by non-Russians into veritable gardens of national freedom where national culture blossoms—culture that is national in form and proletarian in content. It has developed the formerly backward regions to make them reach the level of the most highly developed regions.

The Soviet Union stands out as the example for the masses of the world. It shows how capitalist slavery and national oppression can be abolished. The Communist Party of the U.S.S.R. stands as the example of how the Parties of the proletariat in every country must be organized and how they must conduct their struggles in order to achieve the victory of the working class and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Communist International is the organization which unites all the Communist Parties and makes them into one great Bolshevik world party, leader of the world revolution.

There is not a single revolutionary group among the workers and oppressed nationalities in the world that is not stimulated by the example of the Soviet Union. There is not a single expression of revolt among the masses that is not heightened and made more conscious and more decisive in consequence of the existence of the Communist Parties and the Communist International. Remove the Soviet Union from the political scene, destroy the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R., crush the Communist International—and you bring about the greatest defeat of the exploited, and the greatest triumph for the exploiters.

This is why world capitalism hates the Soviet Union. This is why the world imperialist powers are always conspiring against the Soviet Union. This is why they are assiduously preparing for war against the Soviet Union. They know their enemy. They know the danger that threatens their domination and their very existence. They are bent on crushing, wrecking, destroying, wiping out the hated dictatorship of the proletariat.

He who helps them is an enemy of the working class and of all the oppressed. Trotsky and the Trotskyites belong to this camp.

There are soft-hearted and “fair-minded” intellectuals who think that Trotsky did not get a square deal. Those champions of “fair play” forget that it is Trotsky who did not give the Soviet Union a square deal. It is he that never was fair to the Russian workers and to their Communist Party. It is he who never came with a fair and square attitude but always kept skeletons in his closet. It is Trotsky who, while a member of the Central Committee and of its Political Bureau, plotted against the Party and therefore against the Soviet Union, against the very rule of the proletariat. When the Communist Party finally was forced to expel him, it was because he turned traitor to the revolution.

The stamp of renegade is burning on his forehead.

Those intellectuals who seem to be fascinated by the false glitter of his literary output should think a moment of what his activities actually amount to. He is supposed to be the champion of inner-Party democracy—he says so himself—but when it came to the trade unions of the U.S.S.R. he wanted to change them into a purely bureaucratic apparatus which ides from above, and for this purpose he proposed to give them “a severe shakeup”, to “rub them strongly with sand”. He was supposed to be the champion of rapid industrialization—for which he advanced unsound and essentially destructive measures—but when, under the leadership of the Communist Party and Stalin, industrialization did make phenomenal progress, he demands a halt, he laments the “break-neck” speed. He was supposed to be the champion of collectivization of the peasant holdings—if need be by force, which would have ruined the relationship between the workers and the poor and middle peasants and wrecked the revolution—but when collectivization finally did make rapid progress, he decries it as ruining agriculture and ruining the peasants. He was supposed to be “ultra revolutionary”, a ''Left'' oppositionist—by which he means a better Communist than all the other Commonists—but his activities have one aim: to undermine, to shatter, to weaken and consequently to destroy the Communist Party of the Soviet Union ''without which there can be no socialist construction and no Soviet Union either''. He is supposed to be against “bureaucratism” in the Party and in the State apparatus—a danger which the Party and the Soviet State themselves fight against and mitigate, and which he, Trotsky, exaggerates a million times—but what he is organizing is tiny ''cliques'' of disgruntled bureaucrats, renegades with small capabilities and tremendous ambitions, thwarted individuals who could not achieve leadership in real Communist Parties, creatures poisoned by all the vices of capitalist politicians and having nothing to do with the masses. He is supposed to be dissatisfied with the policies of the Communist International and the Communist Parties in the various countries because—to him, he says—they are not radical enough, but whenever his followers engage in any kind of activities among the workers they follow faithfully and obediently in the footsteps of the William Greens, Matthew Wolls, John Lewises and other misleaders of labor. He is supposed to be the great advocate of the united front, accusing the Communist International of having ruined the German revolution by not proposing a united front—which is an accusation based on his own fabrications—but when a united front is developing, like that in France and in the United States, his grouplets join with the reformists ''against'' the united front, thus trying to put a monkey wrench into the machinery of uniting the workers for common struggle. He is supposed to be displeased with the Communist International because, he says, it is not advancing the revolution rapidly enough, but he himself is creating that abortive contraption, the fourth international, which is meant to fight not for the socialist revolution but for bourgeois democracy, ''i.e.'', for the perpetuation of exploitation and oppression. He covers himself with the name of Lenin—whom he fought most of his life and with whom he never fully agreed—he boasts of carrying forward the traditions of Lenin, but he does it in order to abuse the great genius who is continuing the work of Lenin at the present epoch and who is leading the Soviet masses from victory to victory, Joseph Stalin.

Let no one think that Trotskyism is mere disagreement with one or the other policy of the Soviet government, that it is mere propaganda. To be sure, Trotskyism uses the weapon of propaganda, the “arms of criticism”, but only to pass to “criticism by arms”, to the attempts at overthrowing the Soviet system by armed force. The murdering of Kirov is only an instance of what methods of struggle Trotskyism would like to develop, to assume gigantic proportions.

It is precisely for the purpose of bringing about such “developments” that the “Fourth International” is being attempted. “Is it possible to remove the bureaucracy ‘peacefully’?” asks Trotsky in ''The Soviet Union and the Fourth International''(Pioneer Publishers, N.Y., English edition, 1934)—and the answer is negative. Of course Trotsky does not say that he wishes to destroy the Soviet Union. The Trotskyites speak about the “bureaucracy” only, ''i.e.'', about the Communist Party and the apparatus of the Soviet State. But it is quite clear from the outset that when these are removed, the Soviet system is overthrown. Trotsky advocates the formation in the U.S.S.R. of a party to accomplish this task. “The fundamental historic task,” he says, “is to create the revolutionary party in the U.S.S.R. from among the healthy elements of the old party and from among the youth.” (''Ibid.'', p. 24.) This party, which Trotsky calls “revolutionary” and composed of “healthy elements” in the same way as Hitler calls ''his''party “revolutionary” and “full of Germanic vigor”, is to wrest power ''not by the instrumentality of the existing Communist Party or the Soviet State institutions''. “After the experiences of the last few years, it would be childish to suppose that the Stalinist bureaucracy can be removed by means of a Party or Soviet congress,” says Trotsky (p. 24). “No normal ‘constitutional’ ways remain to remove the ruling clique” (p. 25), ''i.e.'', to remove the organization of power of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Trotsky advances his thesis frankly: “The bureaucracy [State organization of the proletariat and the collective peasantry.—M. J. O.] can be compelled to yield power into the hands of the proletarian vanguard [the counter-revolutionary plotters and murderers of the Nikolaiev type.—M. J. O.] only by ''force''.” (p. 25, emphasis by Trotsky.)

Does Trotsky envisage civil war? He prefers to call it by another name. He prefers to fire his followers by picturing a situation where they are so strong that “the Stalinist [Party and State] apparatus will remain suspended in mid-air”,—but he is at the same time very explicit. “Should it (the apparatus) still attempt to resist, it will then be necessary to apply against it not the measure of civil war, but rather measures of police character;” ''i.e.'', clubs, guns, gas bombs. But do not think that Trotsky shrinks before an armed uprising against the Soviet government. He says that an armed uprising is justified. “In any case what would be involved is not an armed insurrection against the dictatorship of the proletariat but the removal of a malignant growth upon it” (p. 25). Trotsky would have us believe that an uprising of counter-revolutionists—which by the nature of things must be assisted by the former landlords, manufacturers, kulaks and the officials of the tsar’s government—would not be an uprising against the dictatorship of the proletariat but the removal of what he chooses to call “a malignant growth” (he called ''Lenin'' “the leader of the reactionary wing” of the Social-Democratic Party). But not much acumen is needed to understand that an armed uprising against the Communist Party and the Soviet State would return the former exploiters to power. The Russian fascists in America also say that they want to preserve the Soviet system. They deserve as much credence as Trotsky.

A lurid light is thrown on Trotskyism by its open admission that it hopes for ''war'' to facilitate the overthrow of the Soviets. Which is closer, asks Trotsky in a delirium of wish-fulfillment: the collapse of the Soviet system by itself, ''without'' the action of the new party, or the emergence of such a party? Neither, would a reasonable human being say, because there is no danger of a collapse of the Soviet system and no prospect of the counter-revolution ever having a chance to build a mass party in the U.S.S.R. But here Trotsky reveals another angle of his outlook: “A major historical test—''which may be a war''—will determine the relation of forces” (p. 26). So this is it. The Trotskyites hope for an imperialist war to help the counter-revolution overthrow the Soviet system. They try to organize the “Fourth International” to “await a clear call” for an attack on the Soviet Union. War may be the occasion.

Nowhere have the Trotskyites revealed themselves to such an extent.

Trotskyism does the same work as the open counter-revolutionists. In substance there is no difference between Trotskyism and Hearstism. But Trotskyism represents that peculiar danger that it is cloaked as “Left” Communism and that it emits phrases about “world revolution”.

The capitalists need various classes of agents to delude the workers, to destroy their unity, to divert them from the path of revolutionary struggle. The capitalists have their Roosevelts with New-Deal phraseology and “social-security” demagogy. Where the workers are no more willing to accept the Roosevelt demagogy, the capitalists have another agent, the union bureaucracy which pretends to speak in the name of labor while delivering the workers to their exploiters. Where the workers have advanced still further, there are the Socialist leaders, who, in the name of “democracy” (bourgeois-democracy, exploiters’ democracy), keep the workers from joining the Communist Party and engaging in revolutionary struggles against capitalism for Soviet Power. Whenever the workers are so radicalized that even the socialist deception can no more keep them chained to the chariot of capitalism, the latter has another agent—Trotsky and the Trotskyites. These come in the name of “Left” Communism. They come as the “true Leninists”. But the effect of their activities is the same—aid to capitalism by undermining all that is really revolutionary, by disheartening the workers, by spreading among them a panic in relation to the Soviet Union, by making them join the Musteites and similar elements—under the banner of the counter-revolutionary “fourth international”.

Trotskyism does not sink roots into the masses of the proletariat, but its danger for the Communist Party, and particularly for those petty-bourgeois intellectuals who are moving towards the Communist Party in the capitalist countries, must not be underestimated. It is the petty bourgeoisie that is, through Trotskyism, trying to disorganize and demoralize the revolutionary forces that are mobilizing against capitalism. The petty-bourgeois elements, says Lenin, “surround the proletariat on all sides . . . . they saturate it . . . . they demoralize it, they continually make it relapse into petty-bourgeois spinelessness, disruption, individualism, transition from enthusiasm to dismay”. This is true about the capitalist countries no less than it was true about the Soviet Republic in 1920. The petty bourgeoisie is surrounding the proletariat on every side, and Trotskyism is being continually regenerated as the expression of this particular brand of counter-revolution. It is only natural that the intellectuals, hailing from the petty bourgeoisie, should be particularly exposed to the danger of Trotskyism. The lot of the intellectuals in the present crisis is far from enviable. Hundreds of thousands have been thrown out of work. Scientific, educational and cultural activities have been crippled. The intellectual youth has almost no hope of getting work that would enable it to develop its talents and to lead a comfortable existence. The intellectuals are becoming radicalized. But, being petty-bourgeois, many of them have an aversion for the Communist Party, for its theory and practice. Here Trotskyism comes in handy. It gives the intellectuals of this kind a “way out”. It makes it possible for them to pose as Communists without participating in the class struggle. It gives them the opportunity to pose as “critics” of the Communist Party “from the Left” and thus satisfy their desire to appear “radical”. It gives them a platform from which to ''fight'' the Communist Party and thus satisfy their petty-bourgeois inclinations—without at the same time appearing reactionary. It supplies them with material for the mouthing of phrases about Lenin and Stalin, the Communist International and the world revolution while sticking deeply in the petty-bourgeois mud. It makes them believe they are “Communists” while it caters to all their petty-bourgeois hatred for proletarian discipline and proletarian straightforward revolutionary action.

And this is precisely the reason why Trotskyism must be branded as the enemy of the working class, why Trotskyism should be shunned by anybody who has sympathy for the revolutionary movement of the exploited and oppressed the world over.

It must be the supreme task of the toilers in every country to build the Communist Party, as section of the Communist International, and to follow its line of struggle against capitalism and for the Soviet System.
[[Category:Library works by Moissaye Joseph Olgin]]
[[Category:Library works about the Soviet Union]]
[[Category:Library works about revisionism]]

Library:Fundamental problems of marxism

2024-10-16T14:52:42Z

ComradeEd: Fix title being with uppercase T

{{Library_work|title=Fundamental Problems of Marxism|author=Georgi Plekhanov|source=https://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1907/fundamental-problems.htm}}

Marxism is an integral world-outlook. Expressed in a nutshell, it is ''contemporary materialism'', at present the highest stage in the development of that ''view upon the world'' whose foundations were laid down in ancient Greece by Democritus, [1] and in part by the Ionian thinkers who preceded that philosopher. What was known as ''hylozoism'' was nothing but a naive ''materialism''. It is to Karl Marx and his friend Frederick Engels that the main credit for the development of present-day materialism must no doubt go. The historical and economic aspects of this world-outlook, that is, what is known as ''historical materialism'' and the closely related sum of views on the ''tasks, method and categories of political economy, and on the economic development of society, especially capitalist society'', are in their fundamentals almost entirely the work of Marx and Engels. That which was introduced into these fields by their ''precursors'' should be regarded merely as the preparatory work of amassing material, often copious and valuable, but not as yet systematized or illuminated by a single fundamental idea, and therefore not appraised or utilized in its real significance. What Marx and Engels’ ''followers'' in Europe and America have done in these fields is merely a more or less successful elaboration of specific problems, sometimes, it is true, of the utmost importance. That is why the term ‘Marxism’ is often used to signify only these two aspects of the present-day materialist world-outlook not only among the ‘general public’, who have not yet achieved a deep understanding of philosophical theories, but even among people, both in Russia and the entire civilized world, who consider themselves faithful followers of Marx and Engels. In such cases these two aspects are looked upon as something independent of ‘philosophical materialism’, and at times as something almost opposed to it. [2] And since these two aspects cannot but hang in mid-air when they are torn out of the general context of cognate views constituting their theoretical foundation, those who perform that tearing-out operation naturally feel an urge to ‘substantiate Marxism’ anew by joining it – again quite arbitrarily and most frequently under the influence of philosophical moods prevalent at the time among ''ideologists of the bourgeoisie –'' with some philosopher or another: with Kant, Mach, Avenarius or Ostwald, and of late with Joseph Dietzgen. [3] True, the philosophical views of J Dietzgen have arisen quite independently of bourgeois influences and are in considerable measure related to the philosophical views of Marx and Engels. The latter views, however, possess an incomparably more consistent and rich content, and for that reason alone cannot be ''supplemented'' by Dietzgen’s teachings but can only be ''popularized'' by them. No attempts have yet been made to ‘supplement Marx’ with Thomas Aquinas. It is however quite feasible that, despite the Pope’s recent encyclical against the Modernists, the Catholic world will at some time produce from its midst a thinker capable of performing this feat in the sphere of theory. [4]

== I. Philosophical writings of Marx and Engels ==
The excuse ordinarily put forward for “supplementing” Marxism by one philosophy or another is that Marx and Engels never expounded their own philosophical views. This is not a very convincing reason, and even if the statement were well-founded, that would not be a justification for replacing the philosophical views of Marx and Engels by those of the first-comer, who in many respects regards matters from an entirely different angle. But the actual fact is that we have at our disposal data entirely sufficient to give us an accurate notion of Marx’s and Engels’ philosophical views.*

The definitive form assumed by these views was fully expounded, although in a somewhat polemical way, in the first part of Engel’s book, ''Herrn Eugen Duhrings Umwalzung der Wissenchaft'' (known for short as ''Anti-Dühring''), of which several Russian translations exist. In the same author’s famous essay, ''Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der \lassichen deutschen Philosophie'' (which I have myself translated into Russian, supplying a preface and explanatory notes), the ideas that form the philosophical basis of Marxism are set forth in a categorical manner. A short but brilliant account of the same views, as related to agnosticism, is given by Engels in his preface to the English translation of part of Anti-Duhring entitled Socialism Utopian and Scientific, As regards Marx, I may mention as of great importance to the understanding of the philosophical aspects of his teaching: first of all, his description of dialectical materialism as contrasted with Hegel’s dialectic idealism in the preface to the second edition of the first volume of Capital^ secondly, to various remarks made in the course of the same volume. Certain pages of Marx’s ''Misère de la philosophie'' are also of great importance in this connection.^ Finally, the general development of the philosophical ideas of Marx and Engels can be clearly deduced from a study of their early writings, which have recently been published by F. Mehring under the tide Aus dem literarischen Nachlass von Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels und Ferdinand Lassalle (Stuttgart, 1902).

In his doctorial dissertation, entitled ''Differenz der demokritischen und epifureischen Naturphilosophie'', written when he was twenty-three years of age, Marx still discloses himself as an idealist of the Hegelian school; and the same remark applies to some of the articles reproduced by Mehring in the first volume of the ''Nachlass''. But in the articles from the “Deutsch- Französische Jahrbücher” reproduced in the same volume, Marx has already adopted Feuerbach’s humanist standpoint. So, at this date, has Engels, who collaborates with Marx in the “Jahrbücher.” In the work entided Die heilige Familie, oder Kritik der hritischen Kritik, published in 1845, and re-issued in the second volume of the Nachlass, Marx and Engels have made some important strides in the development of Feuerbach’s philosophy. The direction in which they have been moving is shown by the eleven ''Theses on Feuerbach'' drafted by Marx in the spring of 1845 and published by Engels as an appendix to the before-mentioned essay on ''Ludwig Feuerbach''. In a word, there is no lack of materials to throw light upon Marx’s and Engels’ philosophy, but those who want to use them must know how to do so, must be able to understand them. Now, present-day readers are not in a position to understand them, and, therefore, cannot make use of them.

Why is this? For various reasons. One of the chief reasons is that nowadays people are ill-informed : first, concerning the Hegelian philosophy, without a knowledge of which it is difficult to grasp Marx’s method; and, secondly, concerning the history of materialism, in default of a knowledge of which it is impossible to understand Feuerbach’s teachings clearly. Feuerbach, however, was in philosophy the immediate predecessor of Marx; and from Feuerbach was derived, in great measure, the philosophical foundation of Marx’s and Engels’ conception of the universe.

Generally speaking, Feuerbach’s “humanism” is portrayed as a very confused and vague doctrine. F. A. Lange, who has done so much to spread among the general public and the scientific world a completely erroneous idea of the essence of materialism and its history, refuses to regard Feuerbach’s humanism as a materialist doctrine. Lange’s example has been fob lowed by almost all subsequent writers on Feuerbach, whether in Russia or elsewhere. P. A. Berlin, who describes Feuerbach’s humanism as a sort of “bastard” materialism, has obviously been influenced by Lange. I must admit that I do not clearly understand what F. Mehring thinks about this question, although Mehring is the chief and perhaps the only expert in philosophy among the German social democrats. On the other hand, it is obvious that Marx and Engels regarded Feuerbach as a materialist. It is true that Engels drew attention to Feuerbach’s inconsistencies; but this did not prevent Engels from recognizing that the basic principles of Feuerbach’s philosophy were purely materialist. Nor could any one who has taken the trouble to make a careful study of Feuerbach’s teachings fail to hold that view.

== II. Feuerbach and Marx ==
When I say this, I am aware that I am likely to surprise many of my readers. I shall not let that probability alarm me, for I agree with the ancient thinker who said that astonishment was the mother of philosophy. But to help my readers to overcome their astonishment and to advance a stage, I shall recommend them, above all, to ask themselves what it was that Feuerbach meant when, giving a short but characteristic sketch of his philosophical curriculum vitae, he wrote: “God was my first thought; reason, my second; and man, my third and last.” I contend that, beyond question, the problem is solved by three very significant utterances by Feuerbach. To begin with, he writes : “In the controversy between materialism and spiritualism, the affair turns . . . upon the human head. . . . As soon as we have ascertained the nature of the matter out of which the brain is made, we shall speedily attain clear views, likewise, as to all other kinds of matter, as to matter in general.” Elsewhere, he declares that his anthropology, that is to say his humanism, means only this, that man regards his own essence, his own mind, as God. He goes on to say that Descartes himself was not alien to such an anthropological outlook. What does all this mean? It means that Feuerbach took “man” as the starting point of his philosophical reasoning solely because he hoped, by setting out from man, to reach his goal sooner; and his goal was to give a sound idea of matter in general and of the relations between matter and “spirit.” Here, then, we have to do with a methodological procedure whose value was conditioned by the circumstances of time and place, that is to say by the methods of reasoning in vogue among the savants and the educated Germans, of that epoch; but its value did not in any way depend upon a particular conception of the universe.

The previously quoted words concerning the “human head” show that for Feuerbach, at the time when he wrote, the question as to the nature of the substance out of which the brain is made had been settled in a purely materialist sense. The same solution of the question had been adopted by Marx and Engels. It became the foundation of their own philosophy, as can be seen clearly in the before-mentioned works by Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and Anti-Dühring, Let us proceed, therefore, to study this solution more closely, for in doing so we shall study the philosophical aspect of marxism.

In an article published in 1842, entitled Vorlaufige Thesen zur Reform der Philosophie (an article which, as we have seen, exercised a great deal of influence upon Marx), Feuerbach declared that : “the true relation between thought and being may be expressed as follows : being is the subject, and thought the predicate. Thought is conditioned by being, not being by thought. Being is conditioned by itself, has its basis in itself.”

Here we have a view of the relations between being and thought which was adopted by Marx and Engels and was by them made the foundation of their materialist conception of history. It was the most important outcome of the criticism of Hegelian idealism which, in its broad lines, had been made by Feuerbach himself. The general conclusions of that criticism can be summarised as follows: Feuerbach considered that the Hegelian philosophy had suppressed the contradiction between being and thought, a contradiction brought into striking relief by Kant. But, in Feuerbach’s opinion, it had only suppressed this contradiction by transferring the contradiction into the interior of one of the primary elements, namely thought. According to Hegel, thought is also being: “Thought is the subject; being is the predicate.” It follows that Hegel, and the idealists in general, only suppressed the contradiction by suppressing one of its constituent elements, by suppressing the being or the existence of matter, of nature. But the suppression of one of the constituent elements of the contradiction does not mean that the contradiction is solved. “Hegel’s doctrine that nature ‘is postulated’ by the idea, is nothing more than a translation into philosophical language of the theological doctrine according to which nature is created by God, material being by abstract or immaterial being.”t This does not apply only to the absolute idealism of Hegel. Kant’s transcendental idealism, according to which the outer world receives its laws from reason, instead of reason receiving its laws from the outer world, is closely akin to the theological conception according to which the divine reason dictates to the world the laws which regulate it.+ Idealism does not and cannot establish the unity of being and thought; on the con- trary, it ruptures that unity. The starting-point of the idealist philosophy (the ego as the basic philosophical principle) is utterly false. The starting-point of a true philosophy must not be the ego, but the ego and the tu, the “I” and the “you.” Only from this starting- point can we arrive at a sound understanding of the relations between thought and being, between subject and object. I am “I” for myself and simultaneously “you” for another person. I am at the same time subject and object. Furthermore, it is necessary to point out that “I” am not the abstract ego, the abstract being with which the idealist philosophy operates. I am a real being; my body is part of my essence; nay more, my body, considered as a whole, is my actual “self,” my true entity. What thinks is not the abstract being, but this real being, this body. Hence, in contradistinction to what the idealists contend, the real material being is the subject, and thought is the predicate. Herein we find the only possible solution of that contradiction between being and thought against which the waves of idealism beat in vain. This solution is not arrived at by suppressing one of the elements of the contradiction. Both elements are preserved and their true unity is made manifest. “That which for me, subjectively, is a purely spiritual, immaterial, non-sensible action, is in itself, objectively, a material, sensible action.”

The reader should note that Feuerbach, when he says this, is drawing near to the outlook of Spinoza, whose philosophy he already regarded with considerable sympathy at a time when he himself had scarcely begun to break away from idealism, at the time, that is to say, when he wrote his history of modern philosophy. In 1843, in his Grundsdtze, he remarked with much acuteness that pantheism is a theological materialism, is a negation of theology, but a negation which still professes a theological standpoint. Spinoza’s inconsistency is manifested by the way in which he mixes up materialism with theology; but, this inconsistency notwithstanding, Spinoza was able to give “a sound exposition, subject to the limitations of his day, of the materialist conceptions of the modern age.” Thus Feuerbach calls Spinoza “the Moses of the modern free-thinkers and materialists.”* In 1847, Feuerbach asks : “What does Spinoza mean when he speaks (logically or metaphysically) of substance and (theologically) of God?” To this question Feuerbach answers, categorically : “Nothing else but nature.” According to Feuerbach, the main fault of Spinozism is tliat “in this philosophy the sensible, anti-theological essence of nature assumes the aspect of an abstract metaphysical being.” Spinoza has suppressed the dualism of God and nature, for he regards natural phenomena as the actions of God. But, for the very reason that in his view natural phenomena are the actions of God, God becomes for him a kind of being distinct from nature and one on which nature rests. God is for him subject, and nature is predicate. Philosophy, now that it has at length definitely emancipated itself from theological traditions, must rid itself of this grave defect in the Spinozist doctrine, sound though that doctrine is at bottom. “Away with this contradiction!” exclaims Feuerbach. “Not Deus sive natura, but Aut Deus aut natura. That is where the truth lies.”t

Thus Feuerbach’s humanism is seen to be nothing else than Spinozism which has shed its theological lumber. This Spinozism, freed from its theological lumber by Feuerbach, was the philosophy which Marx and Engels adopted when they broke away from idealism.

But the freeing of Spinozism from its theological lumber implied the disclosure of the true materialist content of Spinoza’s philosophy. Consequently, the Spinozism of Marx and Engels is materialism in its most modern form.

Nor is this all. Thought is not the cause of being, but its consequence, or, to put the matter more precisely, its property or quality. Feuerbach said, “Folge und Eigenschaft” — its consequence and its property or quality. I feel and I think, not as a subject opposed to an object, but as a subject-object, as a real material being. And for me the object is, not only the thing which I perceive, but also the foundation, the indispensable prerequisite, of my perception. The outer world, the objective world, does not exist only outside me, but also within me, inside my own skin.'^ Man is only a part of nature, a part of being; that is why there can be no contradiction between his thought and his being. Space and time do not exist only as forms of thought. They are just as much forms of being. They arc forms of my contemplation. But they are this solely for the reason that I am myself a being that lives in time and space, and because I only perceive and feel in so far as I am such a being. Speaking generally, the laws of being are also the laws of thought. That was how Feuerbach put the matter.* Engels said the same thing, though in other words, in his polemic against Diihring.*’ It is already obvious how much of Feuerbach’s philosophy enters into the constitution of the philosophy of Marx and Engels.

If Marx began the elaboration of his materialist conception of history by a criticism of the Hegelian philosophy of right, he was only able to do so because Feuerbach had already completed his criticism of Hegel’s speculative philosophy.

Even when criticising Feuerbach in the before-mentioned theses, Marx often enough develops and amplifies Feuerbach’s ideas. Here is an instance from the domain of “gnosiology” (epistemology, the theory of cognition). According to Feuerbach, man, before thinking about the object, experiences its action on himself, contemplates it, feels it.

Marx has in view this idea of Feuerbach’s when he says : “The main defect of materialism, Feuerbach’s included, has hitherto been that it has only considered reality, the objective and sensible world, under the form of object, or under the form of contemplation, not as concrete human activity, not as a practical exercise, not subjectively.” It is this defect of materialism, says Marx, further, which explains why Feuerbach, in his book on the Essence of Christianity, regards only theoretical activity as genuinely human activity. In other words, Feuerbach emphasises the view that our ego cognises an object solely by exposing itself to the action of that object;* but Marx says that our ego cognises an object by reacting upon it. Marx’s view is absolutely sound. As Faust said: “In the beginning was the Deed.” No doubt, in defence of Feuerbach we may point out that, even in the process of our action upon objects, we only know their qualities in proportion as they, in their turn, act on us. In both cases, thought is preceded by sensation; in both cases, we begin by becoming aware of the qualities of objects, and not until after that do we think about them. Marx never denied this. For him, what was at issue was, not the undeniable fact that sensation precedes thought, but the fact that man is led to thought mainly by the sensations which he experiences in the course of his own action on the outer world. Since this action on the outer world is forced on him by the struggle for existence, the theory of cognition is, in Marx’s philosophical outlook, intimately connected with his materialist conception of history. It was with good reason that this same thinker who had formulated in opposition to Feuerbach the thesis we have just been discussing, wrote in the first volume of Capital : ‘'By acting on nature outside himself, and changing it, man changes his own nature.” The innermost significance of this utterance is only disclosed in the light of the theory of cognition formulated by Marx. We shall see by-and-by how admirably that theory is confirmed by the history of civilisation, and also by linguistic science. It must, however, be admitted that Marx’s theory of cognition is directly derived from Feuerbach’s. If you like, we can even say that, strictly speaking, it is Feuerbach’s theory, brilliantly rectified and given a profounder meaning by Marx.

Let me add, in passing, that this brilliant rectification was suggested by the spirit of the time. The inclination to contemplate the action and reaction between the object and the subject primarily from the point of view of the active part played by the subject, was the reflexion of the state of mind which animated society in the days when Marx and Engels were forming their outlook on the universe. The revolution of 1848 was close at hand.

== III. Thinking and being in Feuerbach ==

== IV. Emergence of historical materialism ==

== V. The materialist dialectic as method ==

== VI. Productive forces and geography ==

== VII. Role of relations of production ==

== VIII. Base and culture ==

== IX. Interaction of base and superstructure ==

== X. Man and necessity in history ==

== XI. Economic base and ideology ==

== XII. Against one-sidedness and schematism ==

== XIII. Psychology of the epoch ==

== XIV. Class struggle and ideas ==

== XV. Necessity and freedom ==

== XVI. Necessity and revolution ==
[[Category:Library works by Georgi Plekhanov]]
[[Category:Library works about philosophy]]
[[Category:Incomplete library works]]

Library:Fundamental problems of marxism

2024-10-16T14:52:18Z

ComradeEd: Add Library_work and Incomplete_library_works

{{Library_work|Title=Fundamental Problems of Marxism|author=Georgi Plekhanov|source=https://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1907/fundamental-problems.htm}}

Marxism is an integral world-outlook. Expressed in a nutshell, it is ''contemporary materialism'', at present the highest stage in the development of that ''view upon the world'' whose foundations were laid down in ancient Greece by Democritus, [1] and in part by the Ionian thinkers who preceded that philosopher. What was known as ''hylozoism'' was nothing but a naive ''materialism''. It is to Karl Marx and his friend Frederick Engels that the main credit for the development of present-day materialism must no doubt go. The historical and economic aspects of this world-outlook, that is, what is known as ''historical materialism'' and the closely related sum of views on the ''tasks, method and categories of political economy, and on the economic development of society, especially capitalist society'', are in their fundamentals almost entirely the work of Marx and Engels. That which was introduced into these fields by their ''precursors'' should be regarded merely as the preparatory work of amassing material, often copious and valuable, but not as yet systematized or illuminated by a single fundamental idea, and therefore not appraised or utilized in its real significance. What Marx and Engels’ ''followers'' in Europe and America have done in these fields is merely a more or less successful elaboration of specific problems, sometimes, it is true, of the utmost importance. That is why the term ‘Marxism’ is often used to signify only these two aspects of the present-day materialist world-outlook not only among the ‘general public’, who have not yet achieved a deep understanding of philosophical theories, but even among people, both in Russia and the entire civilized world, who consider themselves faithful followers of Marx and Engels. In such cases these two aspects are looked upon as something independent of ‘philosophical materialism’, and at times as something almost opposed to it. [2] And since these two aspects cannot but hang in mid-air when they are torn out of the general context of cognate views constituting their theoretical foundation, those who perform that tearing-out operation naturally feel an urge to ‘substantiate Marxism’ anew by joining it – again quite arbitrarily and most frequently under the influence of philosophical moods prevalent at the time among ''ideologists of the bourgeoisie –'' with some philosopher or another: with Kant, Mach, Avenarius or Ostwald, and of late with Joseph Dietzgen. [3] True, the philosophical views of J Dietzgen have arisen quite independently of bourgeois influences and are in considerable measure related to the philosophical views of Marx and Engels. The latter views, however, possess an incomparably more consistent and rich content, and for that reason alone cannot be ''supplemented'' by Dietzgen’s teachings but can only be ''popularized'' by them. No attempts have yet been made to ‘supplement Marx’ with Thomas Aquinas. It is however quite feasible that, despite the Pope’s recent encyclical against the Modernists, the Catholic world will at some time produce from its midst a thinker capable of performing this feat in the sphere of theory. [4]

== I. Philosophical writings of Marx and Engels ==
The excuse ordinarily put forward for “supplementing” Marxism by one philosophy or another is that Marx and Engels never expounded their own philosophical views. This is not a very convincing reason, and even if the statement were well-founded, that would not be a justification for replacing the philosophical views of Marx and Engels by those of the first-comer, who in many respects regards matters from an entirely different angle. But the actual fact is that we have at our disposal data entirely sufficient to give us an accurate notion of Marx’s and Engels’ philosophical views.*

The definitive form assumed by these views was fully expounded, although in a somewhat polemical way, in the first part of Engel’s book, ''Herrn Eugen Duhrings Umwalzung der Wissenchaft'' (known for short as ''Anti-Dühring''), of which several Russian translations exist. In the same author’s famous essay, ''Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der \lassichen deutschen Philosophie'' (which I have myself translated into Russian, supplying a preface and explanatory notes), the ideas that form the philosophical basis of Marxism are set forth in a categorical manner. A short but brilliant account of the same views, as related to agnosticism, is given by Engels in his preface to the English translation of part of Anti-Duhring entitled Socialism Utopian and Scientific, As regards Marx, I may mention as of great importance to the understanding of the philosophical aspects of his teaching: first of all, his description of dialectical materialism as contrasted with Hegel’s dialectic idealism in the preface to the second edition of the first volume of Capital^ secondly, to various remarks made in the course of the same volume. Certain pages of Marx’s ''Misère de la philosophie'' are also of great importance in this connection.^ Finally, the general development of the philosophical ideas of Marx and Engels can be clearly deduced from a study of their early writings, which have recently been published by F. Mehring under the tide Aus dem literarischen Nachlass von Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels und Ferdinand Lassalle (Stuttgart, 1902).

In his doctorial dissertation, entitled ''Differenz der demokritischen und epifureischen Naturphilosophie'', written when he was twenty-three years of age, Marx still discloses himself as an idealist of the Hegelian school; and the same remark applies to some of the articles reproduced by Mehring in the first volume of the ''Nachlass''. But in the articles from the “Deutsch- Französische Jahrbücher” reproduced in the same volume, Marx has already adopted Feuerbach’s humanist standpoint. So, at this date, has Engels, who collaborates with Marx in the “Jahrbücher.” In the work entided Die heilige Familie, oder Kritik der hritischen Kritik, published in 1845, and re-issued in the second volume of the Nachlass, Marx and Engels have made some important strides in the development of Feuerbach’s philosophy. The direction in which they have been moving is shown by the eleven ''Theses on Feuerbach'' drafted by Marx in the spring of 1845 and published by Engels as an appendix to the before-mentioned essay on ''Ludwig Feuerbach''. In a word, there is no lack of materials to throw light upon Marx’s and Engels’ philosophy, but those who want to use them must know how to do so, must be able to understand them. Now, present-day readers are not in a position to understand them, and, therefore, cannot make use of them.

Why is this? For various reasons. One of the chief reasons is that nowadays people are ill-informed : first, concerning the Hegelian philosophy, without a knowledge of which it is difficult to grasp Marx’s method; and, secondly, concerning the history of materialism, in default of a knowledge of which it is impossible to understand Feuerbach’s teachings clearly. Feuerbach, however, was in philosophy the immediate predecessor of Marx; and from Feuerbach was derived, in great measure, the philosophical foundation of Marx’s and Engels’ conception of the universe.

Generally speaking, Feuerbach’s “humanism” is portrayed as a very confused and vague doctrine. F. A. Lange, who has done so much to spread among the general public and the scientific world a completely erroneous idea of the essence of materialism and its history, refuses to regard Feuerbach’s humanism as a materialist doctrine. Lange’s example has been fob lowed by almost all subsequent writers on Feuerbach, whether in Russia or elsewhere. P. A. Berlin, who describes Feuerbach’s humanism as a sort of “bastard” materialism, has obviously been influenced by Lange. I must admit that I do not clearly understand what F. Mehring thinks about this question, although Mehring is the chief and perhaps the only expert in philosophy among the German social democrats. On the other hand, it is obvious that Marx and Engels regarded Feuerbach as a materialist. It is true that Engels drew attention to Feuerbach’s inconsistencies; but this did not prevent Engels from recognizing that the basic principles of Feuerbach’s philosophy were purely materialist. Nor could any one who has taken the trouble to make a careful study of Feuerbach’s teachings fail to hold that view.

== II. Feuerbach and Marx ==
When I say this, I am aware that I am likely to surprise many of my readers. I shall not let that probability alarm me, for I agree with the ancient thinker who said that astonishment was the mother of philosophy. But to help my readers to overcome their astonishment and to advance a stage, I shall recommend them, above all, to ask themselves what it was that Feuerbach meant when, giving a short but characteristic sketch of his philosophical curriculum vitae, he wrote: “God was my first thought; reason, my second; and man, my third and last.” I contend that, beyond question, the problem is solved by three very significant utterances by Feuerbach. To begin with, he writes : “In the controversy between materialism and spiritualism, the affair turns . . . upon the human head. . . . As soon as we have ascertained the nature of the matter out of which the brain is made, we shall speedily attain clear views, likewise, as to all other kinds of matter, as to matter in general.” Elsewhere, he declares that his anthropology, that is to say his humanism, means only this, that man regards his own essence, his own mind, as God. He goes on to say that Descartes himself was not alien to such an anthropological outlook. What does all this mean? It means that Feuerbach took “man” as the starting point of his philosophical reasoning solely because he hoped, by setting out from man, to reach his goal sooner; and his goal was to give a sound idea of matter in general and of the relations between matter and “spirit.” Here, then, we have to do with a methodological procedure whose value was conditioned by the circumstances of time and place, that is to say by the methods of reasoning in vogue among the savants and the educated Germans, of that epoch; but its value did not in any way depend upon a particular conception of the universe.

The previously quoted words concerning the “human head” show that for Feuerbach, at the time when he wrote, the question as to the nature of the substance out of which the brain is made had been settled in a purely materialist sense. The same solution of the question had been adopted by Marx and Engels. It became the foundation of their own philosophy, as can be seen clearly in the before-mentioned works by Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and Anti-Dühring, Let us proceed, therefore, to study this solution more closely, for in doing so we shall study the philosophical aspect of marxism.

In an article published in 1842, entitled Vorlaufige Thesen zur Reform der Philosophie (an article which, as we have seen, exercised a great deal of influence upon Marx), Feuerbach declared that : “the true relation between thought and being may be expressed as follows : being is the subject, and thought the predicate. Thought is conditioned by being, not being by thought. Being is conditioned by itself, has its basis in itself.”

Here we have a view of the relations between being and thought which was adopted by Marx and Engels and was by them made the foundation of their materialist conception of history. It was the most important outcome of the criticism of Hegelian idealism which, in its broad lines, had been made by Feuerbach himself. The general conclusions of that criticism can be summarised as follows: Feuerbach considered that the Hegelian philosophy had suppressed the contradiction between being and thought, a contradiction brought into striking relief by Kant. But, in Feuerbach’s opinion, it had only suppressed this contradiction by transferring the contradiction into the interior of one of the primary elements, namely thought. According to Hegel, thought is also being: “Thought is the subject; being is the predicate.” It follows that Hegel, and the idealists in general, only suppressed the contradiction by suppressing one of its constituent elements, by suppressing the being or the existence of matter, of nature. But the suppression of one of the constituent elements of the contradiction does not mean that the contradiction is solved. “Hegel’s doctrine that nature ‘is postulated’ by the idea, is nothing more than a translation into philosophical language of the theological doctrine according to which nature is created by God, material being by abstract or immaterial being.”t This does not apply only to the absolute idealism of Hegel. Kant’s transcendental idealism, according to which the outer world receives its laws from reason, instead of reason receiving its laws from the outer world, is closely akin to the theological conception according to which the divine reason dictates to the world the laws which regulate it.+ Idealism does not and cannot establish the unity of being and thought; on the con- trary, it ruptures that unity. The starting-point of the idealist philosophy (the ego as the basic philosophical principle) is utterly false. The starting-point of a true philosophy must not be the ego, but the ego and the tu, the “I” and the “you.” Only from this starting- point can we arrive at a sound understanding of the relations between thought and being, between subject and object. I am “I” for myself and simultaneously “you” for another person. I am at the same time subject and object. Furthermore, it is necessary to point out that “I” am not the abstract ego, the abstract being with which the idealist philosophy operates. I am a real being; my body is part of my essence; nay more, my body, considered as a whole, is my actual “self,” my true entity. What thinks is not the abstract being, but this real being, this body. Hence, in contradistinction to what the idealists contend, the real material being is the subject, and thought is the predicate. Herein we find the only possible solution of that contradiction between being and thought against which the waves of idealism beat in vain. This solution is not arrived at by suppressing one of the elements of the contradiction. Both elements are preserved and their true unity is made manifest. “That which for me, subjectively, is a purely spiritual, immaterial, non-sensible action, is in itself, objectively, a material, sensible action.”

The reader should note that Feuerbach, when he says this, is drawing near to the outlook of Spinoza, whose philosophy he already regarded with considerable sympathy at a time when he himself had scarcely begun to break away from idealism, at the time, that is to say, when he wrote his history of modern philosophy. In 1843, in his Grundsdtze, he remarked with much acuteness that pantheism is a theological materialism, is a negation of theology, but a negation which still professes a theological standpoint. Spinoza’s inconsistency is manifested by the way in which he mixes up materialism with theology; but, this inconsistency notwithstanding, Spinoza was able to give “a sound exposition, subject to the limitations of his day, of the materialist conceptions of the modern age.” Thus Feuerbach calls Spinoza “the Moses of the modern free-thinkers and materialists.”* In 1847, Feuerbach asks : “What does Spinoza mean when he speaks (logically or metaphysically) of substance and (theologically) of God?” To this question Feuerbach answers, categorically : “Nothing else but nature.” According to Feuerbach, the main fault of Spinozism is tliat “in this philosophy the sensible, anti-theological essence of nature assumes the aspect of an abstract metaphysical being.” Spinoza has suppressed the dualism of God and nature, for he regards natural phenomena as the actions of God. But, for the very reason that in his view natural phenomena are the actions of God, God becomes for him a kind of being distinct from nature and one on which nature rests. God is for him subject, and nature is predicate. Philosophy, now that it has at length definitely emancipated itself from theological traditions, must rid itself of this grave defect in the Spinozist doctrine, sound though that doctrine is at bottom. “Away with this contradiction!” exclaims Feuerbach. “Not Deus sive natura, but Aut Deus aut natura. That is where the truth lies.”t

Thus Feuerbach’s humanism is seen to be nothing else than Spinozism which has shed its theological lumber. This Spinozism, freed from its theological lumber by Feuerbach, was the philosophy which Marx and Engels adopted when they broke away from idealism.

But the freeing of Spinozism from its theological lumber implied the disclosure of the true materialist content of Spinoza’s philosophy. Consequently, the Spinozism of Marx and Engels is materialism in its most modern form.

Nor is this all. Thought is not the cause of being, but its consequence, or, to put the matter more precisely, its property or quality. Feuerbach said, “Folge und Eigenschaft” — its consequence and its property or quality. I feel and I think, not as a subject opposed to an object, but as a subject-object, as a real material being. And for me the object is, not only the thing which I perceive, but also the foundation, the indispensable prerequisite, of my perception. The outer world, the objective world, does not exist only outside me, but also within me, inside my own skin.'^ Man is only a part of nature, a part of being; that is why there can be no contradiction between his thought and his being. Space and time do not exist only as forms of thought. They are just as much forms of being. They arc forms of my contemplation. But they are this solely for the reason that I am myself a being that lives in time and space, and because I only perceive and feel in so far as I am such a being. Speaking generally, the laws of being are also the laws of thought. That was how Feuerbach put the matter.* Engels said the same thing, though in other words, in his polemic against Diihring.*’ It is already obvious how much of Feuerbach’s philosophy enters into the constitution of the philosophy of Marx and Engels.

If Marx began the elaboration of his materialist conception of history by a criticism of the Hegelian philosophy of right, he was only able to do so because Feuerbach had already completed his criticism of Hegel’s speculative philosophy.

Even when criticising Feuerbach in the before-mentioned theses, Marx often enough develops and amplifies Feuerbach’s ideas. Here is an instance from the domain of “gnosiology” (epistemology, the theory of cognition). According to Feuerbach, man, before thinking about the object, experiences its action on himself, contemplates it, feels it.

Marx has in view this idea of Feuerbach’s when he says : “The main defect of materialism, Feuerbach’s included, has hitherto been that it has only considered reality, the objective and sensible world, under the form of object, or under the form of contemplation, not as concrete human activity, not as a practical exercise, not subjectively.” It is this defect of materialism, says Marx, further, which explains why Feuerbach, in his book on the Essence of Christianity, regards only theoretical activity as genuinely human activity. In other words, Feuerbach emphasises the view that our ego cognises an object solely by exposing itself to the action of that object;* but Marx says that our ego cognises an object by reacting upon it. Marx’s view is absolutely sound. As Faust said: “In the beginning was the Deed.” No doubt, in defence of Feuerbach we may point out that, even in the process of our action upon objects, we only know their qualities in proportion as they, in their turn, act on us. In both cases, thought is preceded by sensation; in both cases, we begin by becoming aware of the qualities of objects, and not until after that do we think about them. Marx never denied this. For him, what was at issue was, not the undeniable fact that sensation precedes thought, but the fact that man is led to thought mainly by the sensations which he experiences in the course of his own action on the outer world. Since this action on the outer world is forced on him by the struggle for existence, the theory of cognition is, in Marx’s philosophical outlook, intimately connected with his materialist conception of history. It was with good reason that this same thinker who had formulated in opposition to Feuerbach the thesis we have just been discussing, wrote in the first volume of Capital : ‘'By acting on nature outside himself, and changing it, man changes his own nature.” The innermost significance of this utterance is only disclosed in the light of the theory of cognition formulated by Marx. We shall see by-and-by how admirably that theory is confirmed by the history of civilisation, and also by linguistic science. It must, however, be admitted that Marx’s theory of cognition is directly derived from Feuerbach’s. If you like, we can even say that, strictly speaking, it is Feuerbach’s theory, brilliantly rectified and given a profounder meaning by Marx.

Let me add, in passing, that this brilliant rectification was suggested by the spirit of the time. The inclination to contemplate the action and reaction between the object and the subject primarily from the point of view of the active part played by the subject, was the reflexion of the state of mind which animated society in the days when Marx and Engels were forming their outlook on the universe. The revolution of 1848 was close at hand.

== III. Thinking and being in Feuerbach ==

== IV. Emergence of historical materialism ==

== V. The materialist dialectic as method ==

== VI. Productive forces and geography ==

== VII. Role of relations of production ==

== VIII. Base and culture ==

== IX. Interaction of base and superstructure ==

== X. Man and necessity in history ==

== XI. Economic base and ideology ==

== XII. Against one-sidedness and schematism ==

== XIII. Psychology of the epoch ==

== XIV. Class struggle and ideas ==

== XV. Necessity and freedom ==

== XVI. Necessity and revolution ==
[[Category:Library works by Georgi Plekhanov]]
[[Category:Library works about philosophy]]
[[Category:Incomplete library works]]

Library:Soviet Democracy

2024-10-12T17:32:37Z

ComradeEd: Import changes from EPUB

{{Infobox library work|title=Soviet Democracy|author=Pat Sloan|published_date=1937|type=Book|source=|pdf=https://ia601903.us.archive.org/34/items/sovietdemocracy1937/sovietdemocracy1937.pdf}}

== Introduction: Democracy and Dictatorship ==
A very great deal is being said and written nowadays about democracy and dictatorship. We repeatedly hear it said that democracy must be defended; and as an example of the kind of dictatorship of which we must beware the Soviet Union is often quoted. And yet, at the same time as this Soviet Union is described as a dictatorship, well-known people of different political views make statements which suggest that, in the Soviet Union to-day, there exists a system of government which possesses all the essential features of democracy.

Perhaps the most popular definition of democracy is that of Abraham Lincoln, who described it as “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” And this is how the well-known students of public administration, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, write about the Soviet Union:

“The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics does not consist of a Government and a people confronting each other, as all other great societies have hitherto been . . . the U.S.S.R. is a Government instrumented by all the adult inhabitants, organized in a varied array of collectives, having their several distinct functions, and among them carrying on, with a strangely new ‘political economy,’ nearly the whole wealth production the country” (''Soviet Communism'', p. 450).

If this description is correct, then the Soviet Union would appear to conform to the commonly accepted definition of democracy. But Sidney and Beatrice Webb are well-known Socialists, and therefore their description and conclusions might be prejudiced. It is, therefore, all the more significant that another writer, who has never had any sympathy with Socialism, but who knew Tsarist Russia, has recently confirmed the impression given by the Webbs. This is Sir Bernard Pares.

Sir Bernard Pares lived in Tsarist Russia. After the setting up of the Soviet Government in November 1917 he worked in Russia for the British Government, which spent at that time about 00,000,000 on armed intervention in the hope of suppressing the Soviets. In 1919 Sir Bernard returned to England and set himself “to counter the propaganda for an application of the Bolshevist principles and program in this country” by giving “public lectures in almost every county of England” (''Moscow Admits a Critic'', p. 10).

Only at the end of 1935 did Sir Bernard Pares again visit Russia, now the largest unit in a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. On his return home he wrote a little book on his impressions, and in it he asked: “To what extent was the Government a foreigner to the people?”

This is his answer: “In the times of Tsardom I never failed to feel it’s almost complete isolation. The Ministers of those times, and more especially in the last days of Tsardom, were for the most part obviously haphazard choices from a very narrow and by no means distinguished circle. I was, of course, one of those who longed to see the Russian public, as a whole, make its way into the precincts of government, and in 1917 for a short time I had that satisfaction. But even then there was the much less definable barrier, though a very real one, which separated the Russian intelligentsia from the great mass of the Russian public. . . . I have to say that in Moscow to-day this frontier seems to have disappeared altogether, and in my visits to public offices and great institutions Government and people were of the same stock” (ibid., p. 35).

The contention of the Webbs, then, that “the U.S.S.R. is a Government instrumented by all the adult inhabitants” is confirmed by the observations of Sir Bernard Pares. Both these authorities agree that the Government of the U.S.S.R. is a Government of the people. Both agree, then, that the Government of the U.S.S.R. contains features which we associate, not with dictatorship, but with democracy.

We are sometimes inclined, I think unwisely, to treat democracy and dictatorship as two mutually exclusive terms, when in actual fact they may often represent two aspects of the same system of government. For example, if we turn to the ''Encyclopedia Britannica'', to the article dealing with “Democracy,” we read: “Democracy is that form of government in which the people rules itself, either directly, as in the small city-states of Greece, or through representatives.”

But the same writer goes on to say this: “All the people in the city-state did not have the right to participate in government, but only those who were citizens, in the legal and original sense. Outside this charmed circle of the privileged were the slaves, who had no voice whatever in the making of the laws under which they toiled. They had no political and hardly any civil rights; they were not ‘people.’ Thus the democracy of the Greek city-state was in the strict sense no democracy at all.”

The Greek city-state has been cited time and again by historians as the birthplace of democracy. And yet, on reading the ''Encyclopedia Britannica'', we find that in fact this was a democracy only for a “charmed circle of the privileged,” while the slaves, who did the work of the community, “had no voice whatever in the making of the laws under which they toiled.”

The classical example of democracy was, then, a democracy only for certain people. For others, for those who did the hard work of the community, it was a dictatorship. At the very birthplace of democracy itself we find that democracy and dictatorship went hand in hand as two aspects of the same political system. To refer to the “democracy” of the Greek city-state without saying for whom this democracy existed is misleading. To describe the democracy of the Greek city-state without pointing out that it could only exist as a result of the toil of the slaves who “had no political and hardly any civil rights” falsifies the real history of the origin of democracy.

Democracy, then, from its origin, has not precluded the simultaneous existence of dictatorship. The essential question which must be asked, when social systems appear to include elements both of democracy and dictatorship, is, “for whom is there democracy?” and “over whom is there a dictatorship?”

Let us turn to the modern world. The Soviet Union, we have said, is often described as a dictatorship. Yet eminent authorities, describing the Soviet system of government, ascribe to it characteristics which we generally associate with democracy. Can it be that here, too, there is democracy for one section of the community, but dictatorship over another?

The answer to this question is found in the first Soviet Constitution of 1918. In this Constitution the purpose of the Soviet State was described as being “the establishment (in the form of a strong Soviet Government) of the dictatorship of the urban and rural workers, combined with the poorer peasantry, to secure . . . the abolition of the exploitation of man by man, and the establishment of Socialism.”

The urban and rural workers, together with the poorer peasantry, made up over 95 percent of the population of Russia; so that this “dictatorship” was to be a government by the vast majority of the people—those who worked. In this way the Soviet State was the exact opposite of the Greek city-state, in which those who worked had no say in the government.

The Soviet State introduced universal suffrage for working citizens, without property or residential qualifications, and irrespective of sex, nationality, or religion. The right to vote and to stand for election was made available to all such citizens from the age of eighteen upwards. But those who employed labour for profit were deprived of electoral rights. The Soviet State in this way provided a degree of democracy for the working people such as they do not enjoy in any other country even at the present time; but over the employers this democratic power exercised a dictatorship. The small circle of the employers of labour had no voice whatever in the making of the laws to which they were subject.

From its origin the Soviet State consciously embodied features of democracy and features of dictatorship. But the democracy was enjoyed by the vast majority of the population, and the dictatorship was over a small minority. At present I do not wish to go into the whys and wherefores of this, or into its rights and wrongs, but I just want to make one point absolutely clear: it is that democracy and dictatorship have never necessarily been mutually exclusive terms. To speak of “democracy” without saying for whom may be misleading.

To refer to dictatorship without specifying who dictates to whom is also liable to cause misunderstanding. The Soviet State, set up in October 1917, professed to give full democratic rights to the vast majority of the people. Did it do this? In Part I of this book I shall give my answer to this question by describing the organization of Soviet life as I have lived it, from 1931 to 1936. Soviet life, to one who has been brought up in a country where the factories and the land, the mines and the shops, are private property, is a new life, a life which differs in a vast number of ways from that of other countries. And, having lived this life, I find I can only agree with the Webbs and with Sir Bernard Pares, and refer to it as essentially democratic.

But if this life is so different, what is it that makes it differ? In what way is the Soviet State organized so that it can give, to visitors from democratic Britain, this impression of unity between Government and people, of real democracy? In Part II we shall see how the Soviet State came into existence, we shall analyse its structure, and note how it has developed together with changes in social relationships within the country. The new life described in Part I is the essential product of the new State described in Part II.

But if the Soviet State has provided democracy for the whole people, and democracy of a kind which even impresses those who come from democratic Britain, there may be something deficient, perhaps, in our own conceptions of democracy. For to us in Britain to-day it is hard to reconcile the idea of democracy with a dictatorship against any class, however small such a class may be. But perhaps our attitude to democracy is a little old-fashioned! Perhaps we overestimate the extent to which democracy exists in Britain to-day. Let us see in Part III!

But, first of all, let us visit the Soviet Union as it exists to-day and see the new life that they are building. Then let us examine the framework within which this new life is developing, a framework which itself has to be altered as life demands. Then, when we know the Soviet Union, let us come back to our own country, to make comparisons, and to draw conclusions!

== A New Life ==

=== Equality of Opportunity ===
A foreigner who takes up work in the U.S.S.R. is struck by many things. But, for an all-round view of what everyday life is like, few occupations could be better than that of a teacher. The foreign worker in the Soviet factory has the experience of being a wage-earner in a Soviet enterprise. But the worker in a Soviet school not only has this important experience, but also constant contact with the younger generation, with those who form the youngest and freshest ranks of Soviet citizens. For this reason I am glad that my first occupation in the U.S.S.R. was that of a teacher in a technical college, where I was able to see the working of a really democratic educational system at first hand.

There are two features of Soviet education which must strike every person who has taught outside the U.S.S.R. The first is that the students themselves appear to be drawn from people of every walk of life, who are always enabled to study if they have the necessary ability, without any economic burden through not earning a living while studying. The second feature is the extent to which the Soviet student, in school, technical college, and university, is trained to participate in the running of public affairs, starting in the school or university itself, and extending over every aspect of Soviet life. In the present chapter we shall deal with the first of these features of Soviet education. In the next chapter we shall consider the second.

A first decree of the Russian Soviet Government, adopted shortly after the seizure of power in 1917, dealt with education: “Every genuinely democratic power must, in the domain of education, in a country where ignorance and illiteracy reign supreme, make its first aim the struggle against this darkness . . . it must introduce universal, obligatory, and free tuition for all.” And, in the new Constitution of the U.S.S.R. adopted in December 1936, we find the Right to Education being guaranteed to every citizen by “universal compulsory elementary education, free of charge, including higher education, by a system of State stipends for the overwhelming majority of students in higher schools, instruction in schools in the native language, and organization of free vocational, technical, and agronomic education for the toilers of the factories, State farms, machine and tractor stations, and collective farms.”

The significance of these two declarations of Soviet educational policy can only be appreciated when certain basic facts are known. In pre-revolutionary Russia well over 80 percent of the adult population could not read or write. To-day the percentage of adult illiterates has been reduced to less than 10 percent. In the years before the Revolution the number of children attending school was round about 8 million, of whom only half a million received any secondary education. By 1934 the number of children attending school had reached 25 million—more than half the population of Great Britain, and over three times the pre-revolutionary figure. By the end of 1937 the number of children attending school is planned to reach 30 million.

This rapid extension of education has not taken place without the greatest difficulties. I remember how, between 1931 and 1934, there was the most acute shortage of accommodation for all educational institutions. In the towns the school-leaving age was being rapidly raised to seventeen and eighteen. But there were not enough schools: so the school buildings were used by two shifts of children, the younger ones in the first half of the day, the older ones in the later half. And as far as the higher educational institutions were concerned, I have taught university classes in the offices of State departments from six o’clock in the evening onwards because there was no accommodation available earlier in the day.

But that difficulty was temporary. In 1935 Moscow built over 70 new schools and another 120 in 1936. The shift system has now been abolished. Similar programs of school-building in other centres have put an end to the shift system there also. And to-day in the Soviet towns every child has schooling from the age of seven to the age of seventeen or eighteen, while an increasing number are attending kindergartens before they go to school, and attending the university or other higher educational institutions when they finish.

The Soviet educational system is not yet complete. At present every town child has compulsory education from the age of seven to the age of seventeen. This is an achievement of the past few years. In the villages the school-leaving age is still round about fourteen, but certain villages have already advanced ahead of this. In Yasnaya Polyana, the one-time home of Tolstoy, a school has been established in his memory which provides secondary education for the children up to the age of seventeen. In Chapaevka, in the Ukraine, the collective farm has provided the necessary funds for the raising of the school-leaving age to seventeen. In the latter case all the children of the village continue their schooling to seventeen, and some children from neighbouring villages also obtain a secondary education there. I mention these two villages because I happen to have visited them. There are a continually growing number of such village secondary schools.

From a Soviet secondary school any pupil who has achieved the necessary standard can enter a university. And, as a university student, he or she receives a maintenance allowance from the State while studying. The Soviet student is paid, and higher education is open to all without being a financial burden. All students who finish a Soviet secondary education have the opportunity, according to their abilities, to proceed to a higher educational institution.

But all children in the U.S.S.R. do not yet enjoy a compulsory secondary education. If they finish a village school at fourteen, they may then go to some industrial training school in the town, or start to work in the collective farms. Also, in industry itself, there are many workers, many of them still in their twenties, who have never had schooling after the age of fourteen. The school-leaving age has been raised very rapidly in the past few years, and certain children have finished school at fourteen only to find that if they had been born two years later they would have had the opportunity to continue until the age of seventeen. Have they missed their chance?

In no country of the world are so many facilities available for those who have, for some reason or other, missed the opportunity for a secondary school education. Sometime before I left Moscow I remember reading that, in certain villages where the school-leaving age was being raised, those who had left schools at fourteen, three or four years before, wanted to continue their education and to obtain the secondary education which had just been introduced. So the schools readmitted these students, who were now able to benefit from the raising of the school-leaving age, though they had left school several years previously. In these particular villages certain individuals who had left school at fourteen returned at the age of seventeen and eighteen for another three or four years’ study!

But that is not all. For the system of adult education in the U.S.S.R. is to-day so widespread that it is possible for almost every working citizen to qualify, by means of free evening classes, for entry to the university. In the cases of older workers, who finished school at fourteen and then had a purely industrial training, it is possible to obtain a secondary education free of charge at evening classes at their place of work, and then to become full-time university students, drawing the usual State allowance while studying.

I found that many of the students of English whom I was teaching in Moscow in 1932 had been recruited in this way. Young peasants from the villages, and young workers from the factories, who had left school at fourteen, had then continued to study in evening classes, had qualified for entrance to technical schools and universities, and were now full-time students, training to become teachers.

I say that it is possible for “almost” every working citizen to qualify for a higher education in the U.S.S.R. to-day. The word “almost” is used because there still are, in certain exceptional cases, technical difficulties which may prevent certain individuals from obtaining the kind of training that they would like. I have in mind one particular example. This was a young-dining-car attendant on the Trans-Siberian Railway.

He was particularly interested in the theatre, and wanted to become an actor. But since his work was on a dining-car, and he was travelling for ten days at a time, and then having several days off, he was not in a position to attend regular evening classes. He had left school at fourteen, and therefore could not, without such classes, qualify for entrance to one of the drama institutes or universities. Actually, he considered himself to be an unfortunate exception to the general Soviet rule that every working person can enter the university.

So far we have been considering equality of opportunity in the purely educational sphere. But equality of opportunity in the U.S.S.R. extends far beyond the realms of education.

Perhaps another of the most interesting features of Soviet life to a foreign visitor is the close link which exists between all kinds of amateur and professional activities. This starts in the school, in the form of an intimate connection between the children’s studies and their hobbies. The Soviet schoolchild has the opportunity, in the school buildings, or in other institutions specially created for the purpose, of being a young naturalist or photographer, scientist, engineer, or inventor, in his or her spare time. Equipment is supplied free of charge, and instructors are available.

Many Soviet children to-day go on to the university to specialize in that very subject which they found to be their most interesting hobby when at school.

In the Soviet factories and collective farms much of the leisure time of the people—and this leisure time is ample since the working day averages less than seven hours throughout Soviet industry—is spent on amateur activities such as dramatics, literature, sport, photography, art, and so on. But these amateur activities are not, as is usual in other countries, left to the care of the local enthusiasts, without professional assistance. For, in all Soviet amateur activities, the professional people in that particular sphere render organized assistance, so that the general level of the amateurs is raised so as rapidly to approach a professional standard.

A typical example of this is theatrical work. Practically every industrial enterprise in the U.S.S.R. has its workers’ dramatics circle. Agreements are made through the trade unions with professional theatres, and these promise to give assistance to such circles in the form of voluntary or paid help by trained actors and producers. The result is that the amateur group has the benefit of professional assistance, and can raise its standard of excellence considerably above that which in this country we term “amateur,” meaning inferior to “professional.”

Such an “amateur” dramatics group in the U.S.S.R. may at any time, having reached a certain standard, be offered by the authorities the opportunity of taking over a professional theatre as a full-time job. I have been present at a competition of village theatres in Moscow and seen a performance by a young theatrical group which was certainly up to the best British repertory standard. The whole company consisted of young working men and women who had previously been members of the dramatics club of the automobile plant in Gorky. They had received professional guidance from the Vachtangov Theatre in Moscow, and, at a certain stage, had been offered facilities by the Commissariat of Education to become a full-time theatrical company. They now had their own theatre in a Russian village. In this way workers in the factory had become professional actors and actresses, through their amateur theatricals.

Just as in the sphere of the theatre there is an opportunity for the ordinary amateur to become a professional, so, too, in painting and writing, in sport and in science.

A reference to sport in this connection may raise a query in the minds of certain readers. Does this mean that there is professionalism in Soviet sport? The answer is that in the U.S.S.R. to-day the facilities for sport are rapidly growing all over the country. New sports grounds are being laid out, and factories and collective farms, towns, and villages, have their teams, which compete against each other in separate matches and league competitions. But these teams require trainers. And the trainers are the “professionals” in the Soviet Union.

Any Soviet worker can participate in sport free of charge. Those who are good enough to play in their town or factory teams have their expenses paid when away from home, and draw the equivalent of their wages from the sports club when away for matches or training. Those who are outstanding at any sport become eligible for the whole-time work of instructor to other teams. In this way the road is open for the amateur sportsman to become a full-time professional instructor.

We have so far considered two aspects of equality of opportunity in the U.S.S.R.: first, the equal availability of education to all citizens; secondly, the possibility of development through amateur activities to professional activities, quite apart from the ordinary educational system of the country. Certain other aspects of equality of opportunity remain to be considered.

It is not every worker in the Soviet factory or collective farm who wants either to go to a university, or to convert some amateur activity into a full-time profession. There are hundreds of thousands of workers greatly interested in the particular jobs which they are at present doing, but who want advancement to more skilled or more responsible branches of the same work. Such advancement is possible in all Soviet enterprises.

A characteristic of every Soviet institution is the stress which is laid on the desirability for every working man and woman to raise their qualifications at their work. Whether it is a case of teachers in an elementary school or university, or workers at machines in a factory, or typists in an office, there are always available the means of further education, through evening classes free of charge. And in all this a leading part is played by the best workers in the enterprise, who often undertake voluntarily to train other workers up to their own level.

When, in 1935, the coal-miner Stakhanov became famous all over the world as the young man who in a six-hour shift had doubled output and had at the same time received a tremendous rise in earnings as a result, many people outside the U.S.S.R. asked the question: “Does this not mean that a new privileged category of workers will arise, having a monopoly of the jobs which earn high wages?” To those who were living in the U.S.S.R. at the time, this question appeared singularly divorced from real life, for in his spare time this same coal-miner Stakhanov was going round his own and other pits training the workers there to use his methods and to become more efficient organizers of their work, raising earnings accordingly. In this way leading workers in the U.S.S.R. train others up to their own level.

From the point of view of the ordinary worker this means that, in every sphere of work, the most highly skilled are willing helpers and trainers. Every working man and woman has the opportunity to learn to improve technique at the job, with the expert assistance of those who are best at that kind of work. Obviously, such a system is itself dependent on certain economic conditions! Leading workers in the U.S.S.R. would not be so willing to train others up to their own level of efficiency if, as in Britain to-day, they thought they might be replaced by these other workers as soon as they had trained them. Full co-operation on the part of all the skilled workers in a community in training others to their own level of skill can only be obtained in a society in which there is no unemployment, and where every sort of skilled work is in demand. In the U.S.S.R. there has been no unemployment since 1931, and there is a demand for every kind of qualified worker. It is in such circumstances that the skilled worker knows that by training others he is not endangering his own security, and that the community as a whole, and he as a member of it, will gain from a greater supply of skilled workers and the products of their labour.

There still remains one sphere of equality of opportunity in the U.S.S.R. which has not yet been discussed. This is public administration.

In the first Soviet Constitution of 1918 the vast majority of the population obtained electoral rights on a wider scale than have existed at any previous time in Russia or, with the exception of Soviet China, in any other country to this day. But it would be a great mistake to think that, under Soviet conditions, participation in public administration depended simply on the electoral rights of the population. It must be realized that in the U.S.S.R. to-day there no longer exists that distinction between “civil service” and other occupations which is typical of every other country. The reason for this is that since all industry and trade are in the hands of the State, the relation of the manager of a factory to a factory worker is no different in essentials from that of a director of a State clinic to a doctor working there, or of a headmaster of a State school to one of the teachers. All Soviet citizens are, in a sense, civil servants. And it follows from this that the opportunity to rise in any particular occupation to the most skilled and most responsible posts means, in effect, the possibility to rise to the highest posts in the public administration of the country.

There is a further feature of Soviet administration which must here be mentioned. While we have considered the case of the amateur actor, we have not yet mentioned the “amateur” administrator, the voluntary worker in various municipal and State departments, who is an essential part of the Soviet apparatus of State. Not only is it customary in Soviet elections to return members to the Soviets, or Councils, in whose hands lies the authority to govern the country ; but, in addition to this, it is the usual thing for the electors to nominate further additional representatives to work for the Soviets, in their various departments, voluntarily in their spare time. In this way voluntary public workers play a considerable part in the Soviet health, housing, educational, and other services; as also in the work of the militia.

In this sphere, as in the sphere of amateur activities in the factories, such voluntary work is a recruiting-ground for able administrators. The factory workers, men and women, who in their spare time do good work for the Soviet in one of its departments, may at any time be called upon to turn such work into a permanent job, and to transfer from their factory to some administrative position in the Soviet for which they have shown their aptitude as voluntary workers.

Equality of opportunity in the U.S.S.R., then, may be said to exist in education, and in the opportunities available both to youth and to adults for obtaining education. It may be said to exist in every profession, through the availability of the necessary training-facilities for all citizens to improve their skill. In the sphere of administration there are paths to the leading administrative positions, through election, through promotion, and by way of voluntary work in the various administrative bodies of the State. And, in cases where working people show ability at some amateur activity, there is the opportunity to turn their amateur activity into a profession.

Such a system not only gives every citizen an opportunity to qualify for every occupation, but the “square pegs in the round holes” can re-qualify for some other occupation if an earlier choice has proved unsuitable.

This system, the result of nineteen years’ development, is still far from complete. There are still a few dining-car attendants who would like to become actors (but who, because of the mobile location of their present jobs, cannot immediately qualify for the other occupation). But already the inequalities of opportunity are the exceptions, whereas elsewhere they are still the rule.

In conclusion, a word must be said on two kinds of equality which have existed since the Soviet State was set up, and which further contribute to make equality of opportunity effective for all citizens.

First, it must be realized that in the U.S.S.R. to-day every citizen enjoys the rights of citizenship irrespective of nationality. In 1918, in the first Soviet Constitution, it was declared “contrary to the fundamental laws of the Republic to institute or tolerate privileges, or any prerogative whatever, founded on such grounds, or to repress national minorities, or in any way to limit their rights.” And, in the new Constitution of 1936, the same point is stated with even more emphasis: “The equality of the rights of citizens of the U.S.S.R., irrespective of their nationality or race, in all fields of economic. State, cultural, social, and political life, is an irrevocable law.

“Any direct or indirect restriction of these rights, or conversely, the establishment of direct or indirect privileges for citizens on account of the race or nationality to which they belong, as well as any propagation of racial or national exceptionalism or hatred and contempt, is punishable by law.”

Citizens of every nationality are treated as equals. A Tartar may live and work in his own republic, or he may choose to live and work in one or other of the national republics of the Union, but wherever he goes he will have the same treatment as everyone else. Further, as far as education is concerned, every citizen has the right to education in his own language, provided only that there are sufficient fellow-nationals in the locality to make such education practicable in an organized way. In the U.S.S.R. no student is forced, as students are compelled, for example, in Wales to-day, to sit for examinations in their own national universities in a language which is strange to them. The advantage of this may not easily be appreciated by Englishmen, but I have known plenty of students in North Wales, many of whom found the English language extremely difficult, who will appreciate what this means to the students of all the nations of the Soviet Union.

The effect of the Soviet attitude to nationality has been a vast increase in national pride throughout Soviet territory at the same time as national antagonism has been eliminated. Particularly does this show itself among the Jewish population, who were as ruthlessly persecuted under Tsarism as they are in Nazi Germany to-day. In Tsarist Russia they did not have their own territory. To-day, to give them complete equality with other nationalities the Soviet Government has put Birobidjan at their disposal, and Jews, like citizens of all other nationalities of the Union, may settle in their own national territory or elsewhere, according to choice.

In his ''Russian Sketchbook'', David Low has a cartoon which is supposed to illustrate the Soviet solution of the Jewish problem. A foreigner, obviously Mr. Low himself, is interviewing a group of men with very large noses. Their nationality cannot be doubted. The Foreign Enquirer asks: “How do the Jews get on?” and a Comrade replies; “Well, you see, there aren’t Jews here any more. Jews is just Russians like ourthelvth.”

I quote this because as a rule Low showed very great insight into Soviet life. But this cartoon is an exception, for in this portrayal of the Soviet solution of the Jewish problem Low shows precisely the reverse of the truth. Contrary to Low’s conception, the U.S.S.R. is the one country in the world to-day where no Jew will be found who will not proudly state that he is a Jew. The Soviet Jew is a Jew and is proud of it, just as the Soviet Russian is Russian and proud of it. It is not the Soviet Jew, but the German and the Hungarian, the American and the English, the Jew of every other country of the world outside the U.S.S.R. who, at some time or another, feels it is in his interest to pretend he is just a German or Hungarian, American or Englishman, like everybody else. It is only in the U.S.S.R. that this feeling no longer exists. Low portrays the elimination of the Jewish problem as the negation of nationality, whereas in fact it lies in the full expression of national consciousness and the most extensive development of national pride.

Finally, equality of opportunity between the sexes in the U.S.S.R. must be mentioned. You do not hear in the U.S.S.R. references to “women’s jobs” as opposed to the jobs of men. Admission to all occupations is based on merit, irrespective of sex, and payment in all occupations is also based on merit, irrespective of sex. And, in so far as the role of women in society is complicated by their functions as mothers, this side of their lives is being increasingly cared for by the rapid development of social insurance and communal centers.

Equality of opportunity in the U.S.S.R., then, exists irrespective of the nationality or the sex of citizens. It exists in education, in every occupation, and in opportunities to change from one occupation to another. To say that exceptions do not occur would be fantastic, but the really significant feature of equality of opportunity in the U.S.S.R. To-day is that these words no longer express something to be vaguely attained at some future date, but a fact of Soviet life at the present time. In the U.S.S.R. every case of absence of equality of opportunity is now regarded as an exception, and as a serious fault in the working of the system. As faults, the people combat the existence of such exceptions.

And so we come to another aspect of Soviet democracy, the combating of faults in the system. How is this done? We begin to answer this question in the next chapter.

=== Education for Citizenship ===
Equality of opportunity to receive an education in the U.S.S.R. really exists to-day. This is important. But so is the kind of education that there is equality of opportunity to receive. While, in such a book as this, it is not appropriate to make a detailed study of the whole of the Soviet educational system, it is extremely important to examine it further, in so far as it provides the youth of the country not only with qualifications as future workers, but with the ability to fulfil the tasks of citizenship, to participate in running those concerns in which they are employed, to combat faults in the social organization of the community, and, in fact, to govern the country in which they live.

The young Soviet citizen, finishing his education, becomes a wage-earner in a State enterprise, or a member of a co-operative organization. For, at the present time, there are no longer private concerns which employ the labour of others. The young Soviet citizen, in either of these forms of organization, will be called upon to participate in running them. But he will participate in running these organizations in co-operation with others. He must, therefore, learn to accept responsibility— but responsibility to a group, to a collective.

If citizens are to participate effectively in running the country in which they dwell, they must have an appropriate education. Therefore, even in the elementary school in the Soviet Union the visitor is struck by the extent to which the student is treated as a citizen.

Corporal punishment is forbidden by law in the Soviet schools, and other punishment in any form is practically non-existent. The children are taught to look upon the teachers, not as vested with an almost supernatural authority, but as human beings like themselves, who have more experience. The headmaster or headmistress of a Soviet school is a senior comrade, who holds a position of such authority only by virtue of ability and good leadership.

Everything possible is done in the Soviet schools to bring the children into contact with the everyday life of the country. Their lessons include knowledge of current political questions and of industry and agriculture. In their spare time, facilities are provided in the schools and other institutions for hobbies such as natural history or engineering, literature or sport. The important fact in this connection is that the Soviet child is encouraged to take his hobbies seriously, and is given the possibility of doing useful work which may have positive value. Thus, groups of “Young Inventors” attached to Soviet schools, turn out some hundreds of inventions annually. And in the Moscow Zoo a group of child helpers participates in the research work that is being carried on there.

And once, on May and, a public holiday, the direction of traffic in the city of Kiev was in the hands of the children of the city. And the children in all the larger towns have their own theatres and cinemas, run by the Commissariat of Education in conjunction with the local school authorities.

At the children’s theatres the children are expected not only to be spectators but to criticize the performances and to make suggestions for their improvement. The Moscow children’s theatres arrange meetings between children and writers, at which writers read their latest children’s stories, and discuss their merits with the children prior to publication. The children learn to play a part in determining the kind of books that are going to be published for them.

These examples, taken at random from the life of Soviet children to-day, serve to emphasize the fact that the Soviet child is a citizen from his earliest days, receiving the respect of other citizens, and with the opportunity to utilize his or her spare time in some useful hobby which may be of actual scientific or artistic value.

But how is the life of the school itself organized?

To many teachers and parents in other countries it seems inconceivable that schools should be run throughout a vast country without the use of punishment and all the other devices for preserving the authority of the teacher to which we are accustomed in the rest of the world. But Soviet experience has proved conclusively, in a period of twenty years’ trial, that if children are treated as fellow citizens, and not as a kind of inferior being, they will behave as citizens. If an appeal is made to them as serious human beings, then they will answer by showing a sense of responsibility which can never be inculcated by the cane or by other forcible displays of the teacher’s authority and power.

If I were to draw a comparison between the typical Soviet school and the school in Britain, I would say from my own experience that the atmosphere of the Soviet classroom can only be compared with that of the British playing-field. All that voluntary discipline which is obtained in England, even among quite young children, in the sphere of games is obtained, in the U.S.S.R., in the actual work of learning. And when we ask how this comes about, I think we are bound to realize that in the British school, in general, it is only in the sports activities that the children are treated as citizens voluntarily carrying on certain social activities for their mutual benefit, whereas, in contrast to this, the ordinary school work is treated as a necessary 'evil’ enforced upon them by some higher authority.

In the Soviet school the greatest incentive is given to individual achievement, but only in such a way as is consistent with the developing of a team spirit. The marking of Soviet students does not consist of arranging them in order from first to last, but in classifying them into groups, marked “excellent,” “good,” “medium,” and “weak.” It is theoretically possible in any class for 100 percent of the students to obtain the mark of “excellent.” The good student is not prevented from obtaining the mark of “excellent” if someone else also does well, whereas, under the more antiquated system so common still in Britain, only one child can be first in the class, only one can be second, and so on. To the English child, marked in this way, it is of advantage not to help the others to do well; but the Soviet child gains no advantage whatever from other children in the class being marked “medium” or “weak.” In the U.S.S.R. there is not the individualistic system in which the success of one is obtained by displacing another from a leading position.

In addition to this, in the Soviet school collective competitions are regularly arranged between the different groups of students, for the best possible results in each class. While all the pupils in one class try to attain the individual achievement of “excellent,” the whole class competes with the other classes in the school for the maximum number of “excellents” and “goods” and for a minimum of “weaks.” This “Socialist Competition,” as it is called, emphasizes the Soviet class of children with something of the zeal for their studies as the English football team has for its game. And the result is that the best students voluntarily assist the weaker ones, in order that the best results may be obtained by the class as a whole.

It is these two features of the Soviet school system—the treating of all pupils as citizens, and giving them the opportunity to do useful work if they wish to do it—together with the organization of their work so as to introduce into it some of the fun that in Britain is associated purely with leisure, with activities rigidly separated from work, that lay the foundation for quite a different system of discipline in Soviet schools from that which exists in Britain.

The Soviet child, as a responsible citizen, and keen on the success of his or her work because it also means the success of the team in competition with other teams, is interested in having good results as an individual, and for the whole group. As a result, the desire to work has not to be enforced by punishment from above, any more than punishment proves necessary to make the boys of an English school take their football seriously.

In the English school, even where the use of the cane is common, it is not usually found necessary to employ it in order to stimulate concentration on such matters as football. The collective enthusiasm of the children themselves proves to be an adequate stimulus to each individual to exert the necessary energy. The slacker is reformed by the collective pressure of the other players, and the good player, in the interests of the team, coaches the weaker.

It is precisely this spirit which prevails in the Soviet school, not only within the limited sphere of sport, but throughout. And it is in such conditions that the relations of teacher to pupil are those of experienced adviser to willing learner, and that discipline is enforced almost entirely by the students themselves.

The Soviet classroom is a scene of collective team activity. The students elect their own leader, who is responsible for checking such matters as attendance and general discipline. A students’ committee decides matters of general importance to the class, and for the school as a whole there is an elected committee which is the recognized representative body of the students.

Under the leadership of this body groups of students, in their spare time, undertake various kinds of work in connection with the administration of the school. It is a common thing, in a Soviet school, to find a children’s sanitary commission that brings recommendations to the administration and to the other pupils concerning questions of cleanliness, and a kitchen committee that passes regular comment on the food supplied in the school dining-room. It is also common for the merits of teachers to be openly discussed at meetings, at which not only teachers have the right to criticize students, but students have the right to criticize the work of their teachers.

The Soviet teacher is also a member of the team—holding the office of “coach.” Here, too, the only apt comparison is with the sports activities in an English school. Whereas, on the one hand, we would find much scepticism in this country as to the advisability of pupils choosing their teachers, on the ground that they would choose those that gave them the least work, it would hardly be maintained that the boys in a school would not be capable of passing judgment on the question of which master was the best football coach.

In the latter case it would probably be generally agreed that the boys concerned would be good judges; whereas, in the former, it would be suggested that their judgment was quite unreliable. The only reason for this distinction, of course, lies in the justifiable assumption that, in general, in the English school, the children are not so interested in their academic learning as they are in their football. But in the U.S.S.R., with the status of children as described, and the competitive system in academic work having been developed along lines comparable only with sport activities in Britain, the spirit of the British playing-fields has been brought into the Soviet schools. If the playing-fields of Britain have been responsible for bringing up a race of Empire rulers, then the classrooms of the Soviet Union, by introducing that same spirit of collective sport into the work of the whole younger generation, is bringing up a race of people really capable of ruling, not an Empire, but themselves.

The Socialist competition between the classes of a Soviet school has been mentioned. It is important to note that, in this Socialist competition, the teachers are also participants. The children of the different classes compete against each other for the highest number of “excellents,” and the teachers of these classes compete against each other also for achieving the greatest number of “excellents” in the classes under their charge. In this way the children and teachers have the same common aim as is shared between the football team and its coach in an English school.

In order to check the results of this Socialist competition, regular meetings take place between teachers and pupils, together and separately, to discuss how the work is progressing. In such discussions the teachers’ methods may be discussed and criticized by the children. Further, in the Press, edited by the staff and children in Soviet schools, there is a vehicle for the written word. No Soviet schoolroom is complete without its wall-newspaper, a glorified notice-board, on which are pasted articles on school activities, and on matters of general local and national importance. Such newspapers are edited by the students and by the teachers, and contain full discussion of all problems facing the school.

A group of children, for example, may visit another school where the dining facilities are superior to their own. They return, and the wall-newspaper contains an article demanding that the school administration at once take steps to make the dining facilities as good as in the other school. Or members of the sanitary commission may find that the washing facilities in another school are better, and so, in meetings and in the wall newspaper, the demand is put forward that the administration take the necessary steps in their own school to improve conditions accordingly.

It is these children, and these students, trained to participate in the running of their schools and universities, who later go on to work in Soviet institutions of every kind. Clearly, such people would be intolerable employees for any ordinary employer of labour. Children, who, at school, have had their own representative committees which demanded that the administration improve the sanitary or feeding conditions, or supply better teachers, are not going to be docile wage-earners. They will tend to be disturbing elements, trade unionists always agitating for better conditions. Similarly, university students who, from the age of eighteen onwards become members of trade unions, and whose trade union committee puts forward all kinds of demands on the part of the students, are not, given their university training is over, going to be docile employees.

The type of person created by the Soviet educational system, then, is an intolerable type from the standpoint of any private employer. Such people, to use a common term, “would simply make a revolution.” And that is why, only in the U.S.S.R., and after the Revolution, an educational system has been developed which creates such people. For, in the U.S.S.R., the new system of production, where the power of the private employer has been first restricted, and then finally eliminated altogether, requires a type of citizen altogether different from the wage-earner of capitalist society.

This new type of citizen can only be understood when we know how he lives, and the conditions under which he works. Therefore, from the Soviet educational institutions let us now go with our young citizen to his first job, whether in a State institution or in a cooperative organization. We shall then see that the education of the Soviet school is a preparation for responsible citizenship in Soviet society.

=== The Rights of the Wage-Earner ===
Some time ago, when a certain well-known American business man was visiting the Soviet Union, he happened to boast to his guide that he employed several thousands of men in his various enterprises. The guide, not accustomed to such a situation, was unable to hide her dismay. “People get ten years for that in this country,” she said!

It is possible to-day to travel from Moscow to Vladivostok or from Archangel to Tiflis, and nowhere to find a landlord, an owner of a factory, or an employer of labour. People abound everywhere, but ask them how they gain a living and you will find that, without exception, they either work in some publicly owned institution, such as a factory or a coal-mine, a school or a clinic, or they are working members of a cooperative organization. About a tenth of the people of the U.S.S.R. do not fall into these two categories; these are individual peasants and individual handicraftsmen, who work for themselves, but do not employ the labour of others.

When we look at Soviet industry, education, entertainment, or scientific institutions, we find that they are to-day completely owned and controlled by public bodies, whether the Government of the U.S.S.R., one of the national republics, or a local authority. And, as a result of this, we find that practically every adult citizen in a Soviet town to-day is a wage-earner, or someone who, by domestic work, enables others to work for a wage.

In Tsarist Russia, as in Britain to-day, practically the whole of industry and agriculture was in private hands. In the towns of those days you would meet rich employers, owning the factories and the coal-mines and living on the profits of these enterprises. You would meet rich foreigners with capital invested in Russian industry, who drew each year a share of the profits; and, on the other hand, you would meet large numbers of people, the vast majority of the town dwellers, who worked for a living in all these enterprises which were owned by somebody else.

to-day in the Soviet Union the employers are extinct. Citizens are wage-earners or co-operators, and a large section of them are wage-earners. Every Soviet citizen, according to the Constitution of the U.S.S.R., enjoys the right to work, to leisure, and to security. The abolition of unemployment guarantees that all may work. Leisure is guaranteed by a working day which averages less than seven hours and by paid holidays for all workers. Security is safeguarded by social insurance against illness, by which wages are drawn during ill health; and by non-contributory pensions for the aged at sixty for men, fifty-five for women and at still lower ages in occupations considered particularly arduous or harmful to health. But, in addition to these rights, which workers in other countries may well envy their Soviet comrades, the Soviet worker has the right to participate in running the concern in which he works, for he, as a citizen of the Soviet State, is a partner in the ownership of this concern.

The Soviet State was set up in October 1917. One of its first decrees dealt with “Workers’ Control” in industry, and laid down that in every enterprise elected committees of the employees were to be set up, to express the will of the workers in that enterprise, and to supervise the running of it in the interests of the workers. At the same time such elected committees were to share responsibility with the employer “for the strictest order, discipline, and preservation of property.”

In January 1918, four months later, it was decided, rather than perpetuate a system varying from factory to factory, each with its own methods of electing the workers’ committee, that the work of controlling the management was to be henceforth in the hands of the elected committee of the trade union. In this way the Soviet Government gave a very great stimulus to trade union membership, for only by joining the trade union could the workers now play a part in electing the factory committee which was to represent them and control the management of the plant in their own interests.

The young Soviet State, however, not only enforced the representation of the workers on the management of privately owned factories; it also proceeded to take over the management of many of the large concerns, and also of those concerns which the employers refused any longer to operate. As this happened, a new problem arose; what was to be the relationship between the workers in these State enterprises and the management?

This question was discussed in 1921 at a special conference. It has decided that in, all socialized enterprises the trade unions were to safeguard the interests of the workers against what were termed “bureaucratic perversions” on the part of the management; while at the same time, as in the earlier decree, the unions were still responsible—together with the administration, which now represented the State—for the preservation of labour discipline and the protection of property. In this way the trade union committee became the officially recognized representative body of the workers in a Soviet factory, and, as such, had the right to participate with the management in all discussions of policy affecting the lives of the workers.

A foreigner, starting to work for the first time in the U.S.S.R., is at once struck by the relations between the managerial staff and the rank-and-file workers. The most significant fact that faces him is that the manager of a Soviet factory, as part of his duties, is under the obligation to improve the general living conditions of the workers, to increase the social amenities attached to the factory, to provide satisfactory service in the restaurant and medical centre, and to see that good care is given to the workers’ children in nursery and kindergarten. The Soviet factory manager is responsible to the State, not only for raising the output of the factory in his charge, and for lowering its costs of production, but for raising the welfare of the workers in his factory, and devoting a considerable amount of time and energy to this work.

I well remember how, a year or two ago, there took place in Moscow a conference of “industrial leaders”—managers of Soviet factories. One of the subjects of discussion was the question of housing. And in this conference of factory managers it was emphatically stated that it was the duty of every factory manager to take steps to put an end to the existence of bed-bugs in the dwellings of the workers in the factory under his care. Every factory manager was responsible for seeing that the workers had decent living-quarters.

Some readers, possibly, may think that such an example is ill chosen, only serving to show the backwardness of Soviet housing. I would draw the attention of such readers to a report which appeared in ''The Times'' of June 24th, 1936, in which the following statement is made: “It is estimated that 4,000,300 people suffer from the bed-bug in London alone”; but the fact is little known owing to “the public’s reticence in the matter, and their refusal to admit that bugs were in their homes even when they knew of their presence.”

So it is not the existence of bed-bugs in the workers’ dwellings that distinguishes the U.S.S.R. from Britain, or Moscow from London; it is the fact that the Soviet factory manager is under a definite obligation to help to exterminate the pest, thus improving the living conditions of the workers under his leadership—a duty not shared by the factory managers of Great Britain, whose responsibility is only to the owners of the factories and not to the workers.

This is one example of the responsibility of the Soviet factory administration for the welfare of its workers. Here is another. In the autumn of 1932 I travelled in the Caucasus with a group of workers on holiday. In the group there were two girls, workers in a chemical factory. At their jobs they had a six-hour day, as their work was considered arduous. They received six weeks’ holiday on full pay. I was then amazed to hear that, in addition to this, they had each received a grant from the administration of their factory to help them to travel during their holiday. Later on, after more experience, I found that every Soviet organization has considerable funds which are used exclusively for the welfare of the workers, and contributions for holiday purposes may be made out of such funds.

A matter which has some bearing on the relationship between the workers in a Soviet enterprise and the administrative staff is the fact that, on such an administrative staff to-day, the vast majority of people are themselves workers who have been promoted. A visit to any Soviet factory shows that in almost every case the manager of that factory was once an ordinary manual worker, and, very often, was a worker in that same factory. The fact that the personnel of the managerial staff is drawn from the rank and file of the workers themselves prevents that difference in attitude which arises when managers and workers are drawn from different classes in society, each with its own traditions and conventions, and even with separate educational systems, is the case in Britain.

Just as, under Soviet conditions, factory managers are obliged to pay attention to the welfare of the workers as well as to problems of production and costs, it must be pointed out that the Soviet workers are interested in raising production as well as in increasing their immediate welfare. Since 1928 the whole of Soviet industry has been publicly owned and controlled, and production has been subject to a general plan for the purpose of meeting the growing needs of the community. In 1931 unemployment was completely eliminated, and it has not recurred since.

It is under these conditions that the Soviet workers find no reason whatever to restrict production. Further, they have definite reasons for increasing production as rapidly as possible, for this is the only way of raising the general standard of life.

Under capitalism, where part of the value of every product goes to the employer as profit, the workers in any single enterprise, or in a whole industry, can force the employers to raise their wages or otherwise to improve their conditions by direct action. If strikes are successful, wages rise at the expense of profits, which is satisfactory to the workers though unsatisfactory to the employers. When, however, as in the U.S.S.R. to-day, the whole of the means of production are owned and controlled by public bodies in the public interest, a strike by the workers in any factory or industry for higher wages can only react to the disadvantage of the working population itself. For, by a strike, production is restricted. And this is contrary to the public interest in a community in which every extra product is required and is utilized. A strike, therefore, is to the disadvantage of the workers of the Soviet community as a whole.

The method of fixing wages by means of strikes in a Socialist country is highly undesirable, for it is no longer possible for any workers to raise their wages at the expense of employers’ profits. If, as a result of a strike, higher wages are won, then they are won at the expense of the general fund which goes to paying the wages of all citizens. If the coalminers of the U.S.S.R. strike to-day for more wages, they are in fact fighting to force the Government to give to them what otherwise it would be dividing up among other workers. Strikes, then, in such conditions, can only represent sectional demands against the whole community, and in themselves are contrary to the general interest because they restrict production.

In a diary of a visit of a few weeks’ duration to the U.S.S.R., Sir Walter Citrine has said that “it was too much to assume a complete identity of interest between the director and the workers. The director was concerned with efficiency and output, and the worker with the amount he could earn, and the conditions under which it was earned” (''I Search for Truth in Russia'', p. 129). And, in a later passage, he says that “liberty of association and the right to strike are the essential features of legitimate trade unionism” (p. 361).

It is clear, from what has been said here, that Sir Walter’s estimation of the relations between director and worker in the Soviet factory is based on a lack of understanding of the situation. Sir Walter ignores the unique fact that the Soviet director, as part of his job, is responsible for increasing the welfare of the workers. He ignores the fact that the workers, no longer working for an employer who takes part of their product in the form of profit, know that everything they produce is distributed to the community—that is, to themselves. Finally, he ignores the also important fact that, under such conditions as these, a strike is an attack by a small minority on the economic resources of the whole community; and at the same time, by holding up production, reacts to the disadvantage of all citizens.

As to the other matter—freedom of association—no other State in the world has ever given the encouragement to trade unionism which has been given in the U.S.S.R. We have already seen how the young Soviet State, in its first months of existence, made the trade union committees the official representative bodies of the workers in all industrial enterprises, with powers of control over the management. This was a tremendous stimulus to trade union development, as is shown by the figures of trade union membership. In October 1917, at the time when the Soviets seized power, there were 2 million trade unionists. By 1928 this figure had increased to 11 million, and was 18 million in 1934.

No other country can show such figures, and it is absurd to suggest that the U.S.S.R. has ever done anything but encourage, to the greatest possible extent, the organization of the workers in trade unions.

At the same time, however, as a result of the changes in the relations between worker and administration which have followed the socialization of industry, the position of the trade unions in the Soviet State is certainly different from their position under capitalism. This matter will concern us more deeply in the following chapter.

A question which will be in the mind of many readers is this: If, in the U.S.S.R., production is organized to-day in the common interest, so that strikes are contrary to the general interest and so that the aims of factory managers and workers coincide, how do these changes show themselves in the organization of the factory ? Is there not a danger that the workers may be even worse exploited by the State than they previously were by their private employers?

The answer to this question lies in the organization of the Soviet factory, and, indeed, of every Soviet institution. And this organization is very different from the factory under capitalism.

No worker in a Soviet factory can go long without becoming aware of the existence of what is known as the “Triangle,” and he will find that decisions of the Triangle are made on all kinds of matters which, under capitalism, would lie within the realm of the employer and manager and nobody else. What is this “Triangle”?

We have already seen how, when the factories of Russia were taken over by the Soviet State, their managers became responsible to the State for the organization of production and for improving the welfare of the workers. We have also seen how the trade union committee became the official body entitled to represent the workers, and to fight “bureaucratic perversions” on the part of the management. At a very early stage in the history of Soviet industry the device was evolved of joint discussion between manager and trade union representative on all important matters affecting the welfare of the factory and of its workers. Decisions would be issued over the signature of manager and trade union representative together, showing that they had been discussed, both from the point of view of the State and of the workers in the enterprise itself, before a decision had been reached. But a triangle has three angles, not two. Where is the third angle to our triangle?

It may surprise British readers to know that, in the Triangle, which is the supreme authority in every Soviet enterprise, the third angle is the representative of a political party. In the Soviet factory the body which discusses all questions affecting the interests of the workers is the Triangle; consisting of the manager, appointed by a State department and responsible to it; the representative of the trade union, elected by the workers in the factory, and responsible to them; and a representative of the “Party”—that is, of the organization in the factory of the Bolshevik or Communist Party of the U.S.S.R.

While it may be clear that the manager represents the State, and that the trade unionist represents the workers in the factory, it may well not be clear to the reader exactly whose interests are represented by the Party. This question will occupy us in detail in Chapter XV. It is important, however, here and now, to state the impression of a foreign worker, taking up a position in the Soviet Union for the first time, on this question.

In every Soviet enterprise I found that the relationship between fellow workers was a friendly one. The status of the manager was that of a human being like every other worker. It was the status of the leading personality in the institution, a fellow-worker but a good one, the person most equipped to take the responsibility for running it. In the average Soviet enterprise to-day over 80 percent of the workers are members of a trade union. Those who are not members are usually new arrivals, or people who have lapsed from membership, or in a small minority of cases, individuals who have been actually expelled for some offence against union discipline. The elected representative of the trade unionists, then, can be taken as being the most popular figure among the workers of those considered suitable effectively to represent their interests.

Now, quite apart from their official position, their job, or their status as members of the trade union committee, a certain number of persons are “Party members.” These people are members of the Party, which is a voluntary political organization. In general, I always found that the Party members tended to be the most respected workers, whatever their skill or position, and the Party organization was looked upon as being a kind of organized group of leading personalities, of people who were more devoted than the average to work of social usefulness. The workers as a whole looked to the Party members for leadership, and, in the majority of cases, when asked why they were not themselves “in the Party,” the answer was that they had enough to do already, without taking on extra responsibilities.

I say this now because it is important to realize that in the Soviet factory the representation of the Party, along with administration and trade union, on the Triangle, is looked upon as something absolutely natural. The Party is considered as a sort of organization of the best and most responsible citizens, and the Triangle thus becomes a body representing the State, the rank-and-file worker, and the organized leadership of the working people as expressed in the Party.

It would entirely misrepresent the situation if the impression were given that control by this Triangle was the only feature which distinguished the Soviet enterprise from similar enterprises in other countries. Actually, while the presence of the elected representative of the trade union causes all important decisions to be made with the co-operation of the workers’ representative, it is possible for disputes to arise between the different persons composing the Triangle, and differences may arise between the workers and the administration.

In such cases of “industrial disputes” in the U.S.S.R. there is an elaborate machinery of negotiation and arbitration. Actually, if there is disagreement in the factory itself, it is usual for the trade union or Party representatives to take the question to a higher authority. If the factory trade union committee cannot obtain satisfaction from the administration, then the matter may be carried to the district committee of the union, which will then negotiate with the State organization which controls the factory concerned. As a rule such matters are settled in this way. But, if necessary, the Central Council of the Trade Unions of the U.S.S.R. may take up the matter with the Government if the dispute reaches that length without a settlement being reached. However, under present-day conditions the relations between employing organizations and the trade unions are so amicable that disputes are not likely to get so far before some sort of reasonable settlement is reached.

When it is realized that both the elected representatives of the workers and the appointed representatives of the State have the same common aims—to raise the general standard of life by increasing production and the welfare, of the workers concerned as rapidly as possible—it is clear that major industrial disputes are extremely unlikely to arise.

There are disputes of another kind, however, which cannot be settled by simple processes of negotiation. These are disputes in connection with the infringement of the law, as, for example, in cases where factory managers do not enforce the safety measures laid down by law, or do not pay the correct wages to a discharged worker, and so on. In the case of legal disputes, the question can either be referred to a higher authority—in which case the latter may bring pressure to bear on the factory manager to fulfil his obligations—or, if the case is in doubt, then it may be taken to the courts for a decision. These courts, as will be shown in Chapter VII, also represent the working people of the country, and administer the law with a good measure of working-class common sense.

So far we have considered what we may call the “formal” structure of the administration of a Soviet factory. But, quite apart from this, there is a wide range of questions which are decided by the Triangle, not in isolation from the rest of the workers, but in public discussion with these workers. For example, every year the manager of a Soviet factory addresses a general meeting of the workers, just as the chairman of a British joint-stock company addresses a general meeting of the shareholders. At such a meeting the Soviet manager reports on the past year, and on the fulfilment of the plan of production, and of the plan for improving the general living conditions of the workers.

This report is followed by a general discussion, in which every worker can participate, and in which serious criticisms may be made of the work of individuals and groups of individuals, the members of the administrative staff being not immune from criticism by the rank and file. As a result of such discussions certain workers may be moved to other posts, either upwards or downwards in the scale of responsibilities. The manager of a Soviet factory, in order to fulfil his tasks satisfactorily, must be able, in such meetings, to prove his leadership of those working under him. If, at such meetings, the workers show that they have no faith in their manager, the organization in charge of the factory will replace him. For a Soviet factory director must be able to lead; he must be recognized as the best representative of all the workers in the factory, or the rank and file will be against him, and there will be continual friction, resulting in inefficiency.

The manager’s report on past activity is followed by an outline of the plan for the coming year. This plan is submitted to the manager of the factory from above, from the trust or the local authority to which the factory is responsible. This plan forms part of a general plan for the industry concerned, and for the locality where the factory is placed, and such plans are drawn up from year to year by the State Planning Commission, subject to instructions given by the Government.

The plan submitted to each, separate factory is based on the estimated resources and needs of the community as seen by the State Planning Commission. But it may neglect certain local characteristics, or features of the particular factory. Therefore a discussion of all such plans by all the workers in a Soviet factory is considered essential. For this purpose there are not only general meetings of all workers, but in each workshop discussions take place, and suggestions are made for improving the details of the plan.

It may happen, for example, that a certain shop in a certain factory has been held up for raw materials during the past year. When the workers of such a shop point this out in the meeting, they may suggest that, if only the supply of materials is guaranteed, they will be able to increase output by twice the amount suggested in the plan. Or, to take another example, the workers of a particular workshop may state that if they could have one more machine of a particular kind, they would be able to perform a certain process, now performed by six men, with the use of only one worker. The remaining five would then be available for work where there is at present a shortage of labour, and thus output would be considerably raised.

Such general discussions, in which the plan is considered in detail by all those whose work it is to carry it out, are a feature of all Soviet industry. But discussion of this kind is not all, for throughout the year meetings are held, often monthly, to check up how the plan, once adopted, is being fulfilled. There are many working people who, though not vociferous at meetings, have opinions to which they want to give expression. Such workers might say in writing what they would not say in meetings. And we find that in every Soviet enterprise there exists a “Press,” in order that such people may air their views.

Few visitors to the Soviet Union return without mentioning the wall-newspaper, prominent in every Soviet organization, from the Government offices on the Red Square to the workshop in the factory, the classroom in the school, and the cow-shed in the collective farm. The wall-newspaper has already been mentioned in our discussion of education. The young worker leaves school, having written in the wall-newspaper there, to work in a Soviet enterprise, where again the wall-newspaper is a means of expression. And from week to week, and month to month, the newspaper on the wall of the Soviet factory’s workshops is a thermometer of public opinion, in which the workers express their views of their own work, of the work of other people, and in which they do not neglect to criticize managers and administrators, if they feel that their administration is at fault.

Now who, it may be asked, edits these wall-newspapers in the Soviet factory? Is it the manager? Or perhaps the Communist Party? Or is it just an ordinary working man or woman?

The answer is that the editor of the wall-newspaper in a Soviet factory is appointed by the elected trade union committee, and is responsible to that committee. The wall-newspaper is an organ of the workers, through their trade union. Similarly, it may be asked who organizes these meetings of the workers, to discuss the plans of production, and to watch over their fulfilment. Again the answer is: The trade union committee is responsible for organizing these meetings.

We are beginning to find that, in the Soviet factory, in whatever direction we turn, we cannot discuss the rights of the workers without coining up against the activities of the trade union committee. The trade union representative sits with the manager; the trade union committee organizes mass meetings to discuss the work of the factory; it controls the Press. The conditions of the Soviet wage-earner cannot be considered without, all the time, references being made to the trade unions. For this reason any further discussion of the rights of the Soviet wage-earner brings us to a consideration of the activities of the trade unions in the U.S.S.R.

Note.—Since going to press a meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R. has been held, at which questions were discussed arising out of the new Constitution. At this meeting the work of the factory Triangles was severely criticized as ''limiting'' democracy at the present time. Zhdanov referred to them as tending to become a “family compact, a conspiracy to make it more difficult to criticize. And once these three are in agreement, just go and try to criticize them!”

While, from the standpoint of the worker under capitalism, a situation in which the elected trade union representative participates in running the factory is a giant stride forward, already in the U.S.S.R. they are looking for more effective means of democratic control and criticism. We may expect modifications in the future which will lead to greater independence of administration, party, and trade union leadership, combined with still greater discussion of policy throughout the rank and file of the party and trade union organizations.

=== The Power of the Trade Unions ===
In the Constitution of the Russian Soviet Republic, adopted in 1918, we read that freedom of association is guaranteed to all citizens, and that the Soviet State “lends to the workers all its material and moral assistance to help them to unite and to organize themselves.” Lenin referred to the trade unions as a “school of Communism” in which the ordinary working people were able to learn the art of administering their own affairs. And, in my own experience, soon after I had started working in the Soviet Union I was urgently asked to join the trade union, membership of which means a great deal to the working man and woman in the U.S.S.R.

The trade union in every Soviet enterprise makes it its duty to draw all workers into active participation in the work of running the enterprise, and in the social and political life of the country. I remember how, when the question of my trade union membership was first discussed in Moscow, I was asked what “social work” I did. I had already, in my spare time, given a lecture on England. This was “social work”; I was admitted to the trade union.

This term “social work” has a very different meaning in the U.S.S.R. from what it has in Britain. Every Soviet trade unionist—which means eight out of every ten wage-earners in the U.S.S.R.—is expected to perform some socially useful activity, however small, in addition to his paid work. If you are on your trade union committee, or on the local Soviet, or an organizer of a dramatics group or a sports club, this is social work. If you give a course of lectures in your spare time, or take a study-group, or do voluntary work for the local Soviet or for the trade union committee, this is social work. The Soviet trade unions try to stimulate every citizen to be an active member of society, not only on his paid job, but, in addition to this, to do something of social use, in his spare time.

The Soviet trade unions are represented on the management of the factories, and, higher up, on the boards of the State trusts. In each factory the trade union mobilizes the workers for participation in the management. It organizes meetings to discuss the welfare of the workers and problems of production; and it runs a Press in which expression is given to the opinions of the workers. But such discussion, in words and in writing, has a purpose; the purpose is the raising of the standard of life of the whole population as rapidly as possible. And this, as we have seen, depends on increasing production. Therefore, on the one hand, the Soviet trade unions are interested in increasing production as the only way in which the standard of life of all the workers may be raised; while, on the other hand, in every Soviet enterprise the trade union is interested in immediately improving the living conditions of the workers, in improving their conditions of work, and, in general, in seeing that the increased production effectively reflects itself in a higher standard of life for the workers concerned.

In considering education we have already made our acquaintance with “Socialist competition,” that competition between individual and individual, group and group, for the best results. The young Soviet citizen is trained to compete with others in obtaining the best results. The Soviet worker, in his factory, competes with his fellow worker on the same principle. And it is the trade unions in the U.S.S.R. that are responsible, in the various productive enterprises, for the organization of this “Socialist competition,” which, during the first Five Year Plan, gave rise to the famous “shock-brigade” movement, and, in more recent times, to the movement called after the coal-miner Stakhanov.

It is often said, by those who identify their interests with the survival of capitalism, that Socialism restricts initiative. But they rarely stop to ask: The initiative of whom?

It is certainly a fact that in the U.S.S.R. to-day, no person’s initiative may express itself by setting up in business on his own. Furthermore, it cannot express itself by a person running a business so successfully that other businesses in the same line are ruined as a result of this successful competition. Also, it is not possible in the U.S.S.R. to show initiative in the private employment or discharging of workers, in dictating to them on what terms they shall work, and so on. And, for the managerial staff of factories, it is not possible to show initiative in a way so common in a capitalist concern—in browbeating the wretched employees, in degrading them, and in using every method, gentle and brutal, to get more work out of them during the working day. Such forms of individual initiative are suppressed in the U.S.S.R.; but these are only very limited examples of personal initiative; they are simply examples taken from capitalism. On the other hand, as far as concerns the initiative of working people to improve their methods of work and their conditions of work, the Soviet system gives the maximum of opportunity. And, since the whole population to-day consists of working people, this means that personal initiative is not thwarted, but encouraged, in all those activities in which the people of the country spend their time.

One of the main channels of personal initiative in the Soviet Union is Socialist competition. And the trade unions are the organisers of this. Socialist competition first began to be widely organised in 1928. Factories signed contracts with factories for the best fulfilment of their plans. These contracts were drawn up at general meetings of the workers. The Press published weekly accounts of how the competitors were faring, and the winners received banners and prizes. In each separate factory different groups of workers competed against each other for the best results, the factory Press reported the competition, and the winners were rewarded. But this competition was very different from the competition between capitalist firms, or even between groups of workers in capitalist industry. For whereas, under capitalist conditions the winning factory is that which manages to obtain the orders and put the other out of business, and the successful worker replaces the less successful, in the U.S.S.R. no successful factory puts another out of business, and no successful group of workers causes another group to lose their job. On the contrary, when a round of Socialist competition comes to an end, the best workers are often sent from the winning factory to help the more backward one; and, as between groups of workers, those in the best group help the others to raise their production to the same level. In this way, in the factory as in the school, Socialist competition is a means of stimulating production by introducing the spirit of the playground into the factory, and then ensuring the co-operation of winner and loser for the general benefit.

It was on the course of this Socialist competition that there developed the shock-brigades. These were groups of workers who, in their Socialist competition, achieved outstanding results. The title of “shock-worker” first began to be conferred on those workers who showed the best results in their Socialist competition. But these titles were not simply awarded from above by the manager of the factory, nor were they awarded by the Triangle. The workers themselves, at a trade union meeting, would elect a commission to check up the results of the competition. The commission would then report to the Triangle. The Triangle would make recommendations as to which workers deserved the title of shock-worker, and the meeting would then decide.

In this way, too, workers would be premiumed. There is no doubt that, for the British reader, reports that in the U.S.S.R. certain factory workers are premiumed with money or useful presents sometimes come rather as a shock. Does not this savour of the benevolent boss, who, at Christmas or at other times, presents the most faithful workers with a stimulus to further devotion—a carrot before the noses of all the rest?

And yet such a comparison, to anyone who has worked in a Soviet organization, is utterly remote from real life. In my work in Moscow I had plenty of opportunity to participate in Socialist competition. We ourselves drew up the contract, which included such things as quantity and quality of work, punctuality, tidiness at work, and the fulfilling of certain jobs within a certain period of time. When the time was up, we elected our own commissions to check up our fulfilment. Usually, on May 1st and November 7th, the two great revolutionary holidays, Soviet enterprises give premiums to the best workers. It was our elected commission that recommended who should be premiumed. The Triangle, in my own experience, always accepted the decision of the elected commission. The general meeting then endorsed the recommendation, in this way, if any one of us received a month’s extra pay as a premium for good work; it was we ourselves who had awarded it, because we felt it was deserved.

During 1935 and 1936 a new form of shock-work has developed in the form of “Stakhanovism.” In essence it is a very simple story. A certain coal-miner, by the name of Stakhanov, working in a pit in the Donets Basin in the Ukraine, reorganized the work of the group of which he was leader, so that output was greatly increased. His pit newspaper gave the matter publicity, it was taken up as a “scoop” by other newspapers—for the U.S.S.R. needs coal—and the rationalization proposals of Stakhanov became known throughout the world.

Many managers and engineers did not approve of Stakhanovism, for two main reasons. First, they felt that the wholesale reorganization of methods of work was their job, not that of the rank-and-file miners. The Soviet Government Press, however, immediately attacked such a view, pointing out that the welfare of the U.S.S.R. depends on the maximum expression of personal initiative by all workers. Secondly, in certain cases the managers and technicians objected to workers reorganizing their methods of work, because their wages then rose considerably above those of the technical and managerial staff! This attitude was also attacked in the Press, and the Stakhanov movement has spread throughout the country.

The Stakhanov movement, and the publicity and encouragement given to Stakhanov and his followers, stimulates every worker, however unskilled, to become a rationalizer, an organizer of his or her own labour. In this way every worker feels encouraged to utilize brain as well as hand. Large numbers of workers become more skilled and earn higher wages. There is a general rise in both material and cultural standards as a result. Further, the leading Stakhanov workers themselves are asked to become teachers of their methods. Stakhanov has been invited back to his native village, to use his organizing power to raise production in the collective farm. He also spends much time visiting different coal-mines, teaching the workers there how to reorganize their work for greater efficiency. A rank-and-file miner has become a technical expert and an engineer. And this is happening all the time in the Soviet Union to-day, affecting hundreds of thousands of workers.

It has been mentioned that the Stakhanovite workers raised their wages as a result of their greater output. How are wages paid in the U.S.S.R.? The answer is: Democratically, on the general principle, “To each according to his work.”

Every year, in every Soviet enterprise, a “collective agreement” is signed between the trade union and the administration. This agreement states the obligations of the administration towards the workers in the form of cultural and other services, and also includes detailed wage-scales for the enterprise. The general principles underlying such wage-scales are determined by the central committees of the unions in the various industries, in co-operation with the corresponding administrative State organization. The details, with adjustments for local conditions, are worked out in each enterprise separately. In this way, once a year at least, every working man or woman, on every job, has the chance to participate in a general discussion of the existing wage-rates. These are reviewed from top to bottom, and every worker has the opportunity to discuss the wage he is getting. At such discussions every anomaly is considered, so that the workers come to a general agreement as to what rate of wages is fair. The collective agreement is drawn up on the basis of such discussions. The result is that, while wages vary considerably, everyone knows the reason for each particular wage. They know, therefore, how they can raise their own earnings; and in our discussion of equality of opportunity we have already seen that there is a chance for practically all workers to raise their qualifications if they wish to do so.

But if earnings are unequal, some must live better than others. Is this Socialism? And, again, it is said that in the U.S.S.R. people may save, and that interest is actually paid by the State on savings, is this so? And may not a leisured class arise in the future as a result?

As far as saving is concerned, to take the latter question first, the Soviet Government actually paid interest on savings, at the rate of 7 and 8 percent until 1936. This was done during a period when every effort was being made throughout the country to build up the means of production. During such a period every voluntary economy in consumption was of value to the community, for it enabled more resources to be devoted to production. During the year 1936, however, by Government decree, the rate of interest was halved overnight. Savings had been increasing, and the urgency to encourage economy in consumption was declining. In the future, when the urgency to expand the means of production has fallen still further as compared with consumers’ goods, a further decree will abolish interest entirely.

Interest, in the Soviet State, is a purely temporary phenomenon. In no way do the people who receive interest thereby control the general planning of the economic life of the country. They are not employers, and they cannot decide what shall be produced or who shall work, and under what conditions. They do not participate in planning the economic life of the country except as workers and wage-earners. And, as will be seen later, they have no political rights whatever, except as workers. Further, it is the law of the U.S.S.R. that “work is an obligation on all citizens.” So it is illegal for them to become a leisured section of the community.

And now as to the question of unequal earnings. This inequality is a feature of Soviet society which has a definite and immediate purpose. This purpose is to achieve the greatest possible development of the forces of production as the only means of raising the general standard of life. And, right from the time of the Revolution, unequal wages have been paid in order to give the greatest stimulus to the best work. It is sometimes stated that the Soviet Union has “returned to” unequal wages comparatively recently. This is not true. Piece-wages have been paid since the Revolution; but, especially during the first Five Year Plan, there were a number of serious anomalies in wage-rates, so that certain skilled workers were paid less than unskilled, and good workers received no encouragement for their efforts. For that reason, during the first Five Year Plan, stress was laid on the need to work out rational wage-scales in all industries.

Is this Socialism? Karl Marx, the founder of the Communist Movement, considered that unequal earnings would be an essential feature of the first stage of Communist society. In 1875 he wrote that “as ''it emerges from capitalist society'', which is thus tainted economically, morally, and intellectually with the hereditary diseases of the old society from whose womb it is emerging,” individuals will have to receive from society shares in the total product according to their work.

“But one man will excel another physically or intellectually, and so contributes in the same time more labour, or can labour for a longer time.” Already, however, this first stage of Communism “recognizes no class differences, because every worker ranks as a worker like his fellows, but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus capacity for production, as natural privileges.” As soon as the means of production have been taken out of the hands of private employers, and are socially controlled by public organizations, whether the State, local authorities, or co-operatives, we have Socialism. Under this Socialist system all are workers, whether factory managers or unskilled labourers. But each earns according to his work, the rates of wages being fixed by the people themselves in the collective agreements between their trade unions and the employing organizations.

The fact that wages are not equal in the Soviet Union to-day must on no account be taken to imply that the workers do not receive more according to their needs than anywhere else. For, as compared with other countries in the world, the Soviet worker already receives many things according to his need. For example, in the case of housing, rent is charged at approximately 10 percent of earnings, so that he who earns most pays most. Similarly, when a worker is away from work owing to sickness, or because it is necessary to care for another sick person in the family, wages are paid out of the social insurance fund. Wages are paid to women for two months before and two months after childbirth, even though they are not called upon to work during this period. And if, by doctor’s orders, they must cease work sooner or return later, then they are relieved of work on full pay for a still longer period. Accommodation for children in nurseries, kindergartens, and meals for children at schools, are provided at prices which vary according to the means of the parents. Again, at holiday time, workers are given assistance, both by the factory administrations and by the trade unions, to enable them to have the best kind of holiday, both as recreation and for the benefit of their own health.

The administering of social insurance, a vast task which affects the lives of over 20 million wage-earners, is completely in the hands of the Soviet trade unions. In every factory, and in every workshop, a member of the union has the “social work” of “insurance delegate,” and is responsible for visiting those who are ill, for seeing that they receive their insurance money, and, wherever necessary, for ensuring that extra help is obtained from the administration and from the social insurance funds. In needy cases it is the duty of this comrade to obtain passes for rest-homes and sanatoria.

While such an insurance delegate is charged with the work of assisting those who are ill, it is also the work of such a delegate, representing the trade union, to prevent malingering. If a worker is off work through a street accident, and the insurance delegate finds that drunkenness was the cause, then that case will not receive great sympathy, and part of the insurance money may, in such a case, be withheld. Such a worker, of course, may appeal to the general meeting of the union, but his claim in such a case will probably not receive much sympathy.

The first decree of the Soviet Government dealing with social insurance was passed in 1917. All contributions to the social insurance fund were to be paid by the employers, and no contributions were to be lent from the workers. Where the State was the employer, it was responsible for making the necessary contributions. Benefit for absence from work through sickness or involuntary unemployment was to be at approximately average wages. The decree provided for “complete workers’ self-government of all insurance institutions.”

The control of social insurance until 1933 was in the hands of the Commissariat of Labour, the department of State most able to deal with it. Then, in 1933, it was handed over completely to the trade unions, together with the work of factory inspection and the enforcing of the laws relating to the protection of labour. Sir Walter Citrine, commenting on this growth in the power of the trade unions, remarks that they “were not comparable to any other trade unions in the world. They were, so far as I could see, entrusted with functions which in other countries were carried out by the State itself. They were, in fact State organizations, and I could not see that they had really any separate existence” (op. cit., p. 185).

Sidney and Beatrice Webb, on the other hand, after an exhaustive study of the internal administration of the U.S.S.R. such as Sir Walter Citrine could not begin to attempt in his tour of a few weeks, write as follows on this matter; “This vast addition to the work and influence of the Soviet trade unions has been curiously misunderstood in some quarters, as a degradation of their position to nothing more than friendly societies! But the trade unions retain and continue to exercise all the influence and authority in the administration of the factory and in the settlement of wages that they have possessed for the past fifteen years. The new control over social insurance, and the entire administration of funds and services of such magnitude, can hardly fail to strengthen the trade unions in their work of raising the standard of life of the workers, and even to knit more closely together their far-flung membership.”

However, “the constitutional change, important as it is, will not make so much difference in the administration of social insurance as might be imagined by those conversant only with the constitutions of Western Europe or America. It is not, for instance, in any way comparable to the abolition in the United Kingdom of the Minister of Labour, and the transfer of his functions, with regard to unemployment insurance and wages boards, to the British Trades Union Congress and its General Council!” (op. cit., p. 203). For, as the Webbs point out, the Commissar of Labour had always been appointed in the U.S.S.R. from a panel submitted by the trade unions themselves! Sir Walter Citrine refers to the trade unions as State organizations, because they control factory inspection and social insurance. But the question is: Is it not a feature of a democratic State, that the trade unions, and not the State, should control such matters? Would it be to the benefit of the workers—75 percent of the population—or to their disadvantage, if their elected trade union representatives administered the social insurance system in Britain?

The experience of the U.S.S.R. has shown that, even in a Socialist State, the official administrator of social insurances may become bureaucratic, and not pay sufficient attention to the individual needs of each case that comes before him. It was to prevent this that the administration of social insurance was turned over to the trade unions, so that to-day in the U.S.S.R. it is the directly elected representatives of the workers, and not employees of State departments, who administer the funds which the factories provide for the insurance of the workers against illness, disability, and old age; and in the case of women; pregnancy and childbirth.

Similarly with regard to the protection of labour, at one time, in the U.S.S.R., the inspection of factories was controlled by a State department—the Commissariat of Labour. The trade unions, if dissatisfied with conditions in any particular place of work, were obliged to call in the expert from the Commissariat. To-day, however, a member of the trade union, elected at a meeting of the members, performs the social work of factory inspection. This “labour protection delegate” is responsible for seeing that the laws are observed and that workers shall receive their full rights.

When I was working in a Soviet office, one of the typists complained that her table was too high. At that tine I was trade union organizer. On investigation, I found that the height of tables for typists in the U.S.S.R. is fixed by law. I called upon the labour protection delegate, and she insisted that the administration provide the typists with new tables. This was done within a few days.

It has already been seen how the factory administration is responsible for the welfare of its workers. According to Soviet law, every organization must provide meeting and feeding facilities for its workers, accommodation for the trade union office, and nurseries and kindergartens for the children. It is for the trade union committee to see that the management carries out its obligations in these respects, and for this purpose special delegates are elected, to deal with communal feeding, with the care of children, and so on. It is the work of such delegates, out of the social insurance funds, to give assistance to large families with low wages, to arrange for the children of such families to spend their holidays in camps free of charge, and also to deal with such problems as overcrowded housing conditions. Such workers are also responsible for supervising the quality of service provided in the nurseries, kindergartens, and camps.

In this way a low-paid worker with a family will receive considerable free services, provided out of State funds, and administered by elected trade union officials. In this way, too, families in overcrowded conditions may be found other accommodation, the trade union’s recommendations being taken into consideration by the administration whenever new accommodation becomes available.

A further word is appropriate here about education. It has already been described how the workers in Soviet institutions have the opportunity for free training in various spheres. It remains to be added here that the suspension of such training, and the task of seeing that it is universally provided, rests with the trade union members themselves. Thus, during 1934 a campaign was started for classes in all Soviet enterprises for the raising of the qualifications of workers. The cost of the classes was to be borne by the administration, and students were to study half in their own time, and half in their working time. The actual organizing of the classes, the determination of what subjects should be studied, and who should be the teachers, were in the hands of the “cultural organizers” appointed by the trade union committees.

Such cultural organizers, responsible to the trade union, are also responsible for all forms of leisure-time activity, such as amateur dramatics and sports. Funds for such activities come partly from the budget of the unions, partly from the “cultural fund” of the administration, to which a certain part of its income is devoted. In this way, while wages are strictly adjusted year by year in order to ensure that each worker shall earn according to his work, the social insurance fund, and other funds to which the various State organizations contribute, provide vast resources to be distributed almost entirely by the trade unions, to meet those needs of the workers that cannot be conveniently met out of their wages. In this way the needs of large families, the need for higher education, cultural life, and sport are satisfied on a scale which is quite out of proportion to the actual money wages.

Another feature of Soviet trade union activity which must be mentioned, since it leads to the linking up of the trade unionists of the U.S.S.R. with members of other unions, with workers in other enterprises, and with citizens whom, otherwise, they might not meet at all, is the institution known as “patronage.” It has been described already how, when a group of workers in Socialist competition happen to surpass another group, or a factory beats another factory, the winner frequently in an organized way gives assistance to the loser. Such assistance is sometimes termed “patronage.”

But such “patronage” also exists as a form of social co-operation between organizations of the most varied types; a factory trade union committee may conclude a “patronage agreement” with a regiment in the Red Army, or with a collective farm. By such an agreement the factory will send help to the collective farm during the harvest, and will supply it with certain industrial products throughout the year. The collective farm, in its turn, will supply the factory with agricultural products. In addition, social contact will be preserved between the parties to the agreement, and groups of workers and collective farmers will visit each other socially. Similarly, in the case of the Red Army, the regiment concerned will, among other things, teach the workers and collective farmers to use a rifle, the art of parachute jumping, and so on. In addition, it will come to the assistance of the factory in case of a breakdown, and to the assistance of the farm at harvest time. The members of the Red Army will attend social functions at the factory or farm, and workers and collective farmers will attend the functions of the Red Army, The workers in the factory will undertake certain technical jobs for their regiment; the collective farmers will send it agricultural produce. In this way the main sections of the Soviet population, workers, peasants, and soldiers, are brought into close social and practical contact with one another.

Again, we have referred to arrangements by which, under Soviet conditions, the amateur dramatics club at the factory obtains the assistance of professional theatrical workers. This, as a rule, is also arranged by the trade union. Sometimes they pay professional instructors, but on other occasions a “patronage” agreement is concluded with some theatre. In such a case as this the theatre workers undertake to give assistance to the factory dramatic group in their spare time, and the workers, in return, may undertake certain technical services for the theatre. Similarly, a well-known writer may take patronage over one or two workers’ literary circles. He will instruct them in their work. And he may try out his new books on them, and they will make their criticisms. In such a way the “intellectual” is brought into contact with the working masses of the population. How many first-class British writers to-day know the effect of their writings on the majority of the people—the 75 percent of wage-earners? Do they even imagine that the majority of the people—the wage-earners—might one day read their books?

This brings us to another aspect of “patronage”—the connection between trade union and State. So far, in considering the trade union as representing the working people, as distinct from the administration appointee by the State, we have not dealt at all with the positive part played by the trade unions in administering the Soviet State itself. Actually, this question will be dealt with more fully in Chapter XIII, after we have described the basic structure of the Soviet State.

However, it is important here to record the fact that the Soviet trade union organizes patronage, not only between collective farms and factories, factories and Red Army regiments, but also between factories and Government departments, Such as the Commissariats of Finance, of Health, of Education, and even over the office of the President of the U.S.S.R. himself, Comrade Kalinin. Thus, when working hours are over, a number of workers from the most important Moscow factories proceed to the offices of the Government, there to do important administrative work. And, locally, thousands of workers, when working hours are over, proceed to the offices of their local Soviet, there to work in its various departments. But this subject deserves almost a whole chapter to itself, and it shall have it.

The Soviet enterprise, we find, is a complex community in which the organization of the working people, the trade union, plays a leading part. Personal responsibility on the part of everyone for his own job, together with collective responsibility for the work as a whole, is the characteristic of the Soviet enterprise. And collective responsibility means collective discussion and criticism; it means that the people must run their own affairs. Under such conditions, with a reasonable working day and reasonable holidays, the worker even on a conveyor retrieves something of the joy of the craftsman. The factory is his, and he and his fellows benefit from more efficient and increasing production. He can always plan improvements in the productive processes, and knows that they will be adopted. Even on what, in itself, is the least interesting work, a certain standard of excellence can be obtained, and Socialist competition introduces even into the sweeping of a floor some of the thrill of a game of football. Under these conditions the Soviet worker feels that he is working for himself and for all, and he takes a pride in even the simplest work, a pride which it is hard to feel when the result is entirely to the benefit of somebody else, and when the greater the result, the nearer is brought the spectre of unemployment in the future.

=== Co-operatives in a Co-operative Commonwealth ===
In the Soviet Union the land and the factories, the mines and the dwelling-houses, are owned either by the State or by co-operative societies. And the State, as we shall see in detail in Part II, represents the people who work. It seems fair, then, to give to the Soviet State the title of “Co-operative Commonwealth.” But, once the State itself is a co-operative organization of the people, there is no longer a conflict in principle between State organizations and co-operative societies. In some spheres the State may perform functions more effectively; in others, the co-operatives. It is in this light that we must approach the problem of co-operation in the U.S.S.R. at the present time.

Consumers’ co-operation was encouraged in Tsarist Russia as one of the few working-class activities which the police considered “safe.” The people who ran the co-operatives under such conditions were not the types that, in 1917, were likely to support the Revolution. However, as co-operation was an extremely important means of combating the private trader in the interests of the working-class consumers, the Soviet State gave every encouragement to the development of co-operative societies of consumers. These did not pay dividends, but supplied goods at lower prices than the private traders. When the private traders put a new product on the market, the co-operatives sold it cheaper, and the community gained as a result. By 1934 there were about 73 million members of consumers’ co-operative societies in the U.S.S.R.

The Soviet co-operators elect their management committees. The various committees hold congresses, and a federal union of all consumers’ co-operative organizations, Centrosoyuz, co-ordinates all the co-operative trading in the U.S.S.R.

But co-operative trade has certain disadvantages. The most important of these, particularly to the town dweller, is the need to purchase in special shops, often some way from home. In a village, where distances anyway are not great, such an inconvenience is reduced to a minimum.

Soon after the beginning of the first Five Year Plan in 1928 the opening of co-operative shops at factories and other places of work began to take place on a large scale. At the same time, during the years 1926 to 1939, private trade was practically extinguished by heavy taxation on all private traders. The co-operatives were left with an almost complete monopoly of trade.

During this period, owing to the rapid growth of the town population, leading to a great increase in the demand for all products consumed by the working people, and owing to the reorganization of agriculture on a co-operative basis, which caused a temporary fall in the supply of foodstuffs, rationing of all food products and many industrial products was introduced as a temporary measure. Through the co-operatives, rationed quantities of goods could be obtained at comparatively low prices. Extra quantities could be obtained at State shops, but much higher prices were charged.

When, in 1931, I started to work in the U.S.S.R., the former importance of co-operatives as a means of carrying on trade in the interests of the consumer, in competition with private traders who traded for profit, had more or less dwindled to nothing. Since there were no longer private traders, it was possible to purchase rationed goods at low prices in the cooperatives, or unrationed goods in co-operative or other shops at high prices. The quantity of the rations allowed, and the general level of prices were already being fixed by the State. It was no surprise to me, or to others who were working in the Soviet Union when, in 1932, the co-operatives which were attached to the factories were transferred to the control of the factory administration.

As a result of this change, the manager of the factory shop, instead of being appointed by a committee elected by the customers, was appointed by the administration of the factory. At first sight this suggests that the control over the shop by the workers was slackened, but this was not the case. For, as we have shown, the representatives of the trade union participate in the management of the Soviet factories. When, in 1932, the co-operatives were transferred to the factory management, this simply meant the replacing of one form of workers’ control by another. Previously, the co-operators had elected a special committee to run the shop. Now the trade union committee appointed a delegate to supervise the running of the shop in the interests of all the workers. But the director of the factory was now responsible for seeing that the shop obtained adequate supplies. In this way the shop, like the dining-room and housing, became one of the responsibilities of the factory management, controlled by the trade union committee.

Since there was no longer private trade, this question of the status of co-operative trade and State trade no longer was a matter of principle, but of expediency. Whether the State controlled trade, or co-operative societies, in either case it was the people themselves. It was necessary simply to procure the best system of organization. And it proved that the director, together with the trade union committee of a factory, was more capable of controlling the work of the shop than a co-operative committee had been; for they represented the same people, but formed a more powerful body. The factory administration, it was found, was more able to supply the needs of the workers, for it was more influential in getting supplies than a committee whose only justification for existence was the running of a single shop.

Outside the factory, until 1935, the co-operatives had their own shops. However, with the growth of State trade the decisive factor in price-fixing became the State. As a result, all difference between co-operative prices and State prices disappeared. With the abolition of rationing, which rapidly followed the record harvest of 1933, it became no longer expedient for workers to be attached to particular shops where they drew their rations. As a result, all shops were thrown open to the public, and all goods were sold at uniform prices. This led, in 1935, to a Government decree which transferred all the co-operatives in the towns to the Commissariat of Home Trade. At the same time it was pointed out that in the villages the main distributing apparatus was still in the hands of the co-operatives, and that these were not adequately meeting the rising demands of the villagers. It was, therefore, decreed that all their resources should thenceforth be devoted to the supplying of the needs of the villages.

In the winter of 1935 and 1936 I visited certain villages a considerable distance from Moscow. The co-operative shops were well stocked with goods. Turnover had greatly increased since the decree had abolished co-operative trade in the towns. Nobody that I met looked upon the change as anything but an improvement, both in town and country. In the country, the co-operatives supplied goods which had previously gone to the town shops. In the towns, the Commissariat of Home Trade redecorated the shops of the co-operatives and re-stocked them with those increasing supplies of goods which industry was making available. At the same time prices continued to fall, while the quality of goods improved.

But such a change, it may be suggested, while it may have improved supplies, was an attack on the self-government of consumers. The answer to this is that, under Soviet conditions, it would be quite incorrect to suggest that the State shop is not subject to the control of the consumer. As a State concern, there is Socialist competition between the State shops, as there is between the State factories. The workers in the shops are interested in giving good service, just as the workers in the factories are interested in turning out good products. But, secondly, the consumer is invited to participate in judging such Socialist competition. No Soviet shop is without a “complaints book,” in which customers write their comments. Bad service may be reported, not only to the Commissariat of Home Trade, or to the local Soviet, but to the Press, and, as will be shown in the next chapter, the Soviet Press is one of the main ways of ventilating criticism. Finally, the State shops organize from time to time conferences of consumers, to discuss what goods should be supplied, and how the shops should be run.

Returning from Moscow to London in 1936, I discovered that, whereas three years previously I had found London bearing an aspect of a land of plenty in comparison with Moscow, in 1936 no such contrast was visible. And when I went to buy some luscious fruit in a London shop and was given goods which were about half the size of those displayed in the window, I realized what it was to be once more in a land of private trade! For in the U.S.S.R., both in the State shops in the towns and in the co-operatives in the villages, the goods supplied are the goods which are displayed. Since trade is not for profit and since the plan of every co-operative and State shop includes the supply of given ''quantities'' of goods of given ''quality'', there is no motive for adulteration, or for the sale of inferior goods. Of course, it still sometimes happens that a worker in a Soviet shop may try to make a small personal profit by selling inferior goods at the price of superior ones. But in the U.S.S.R. this is a criminal offence, while in Britain it is good business!

Consumers’ co-operation in the U.S.S.R. to-day continues in the Soviet villages, where there are about 40,000 co-operative shops. In the future, the question of whether the co-operative or the State shop will be the final centre of village trade will be decided, not as a matter of principle, but as a matter of expediency. If, with the growth of the production of consumers’ goods, the Commissariat of Home Trade opens shops in the villages, and if, as a result of its centralization and vast economic resources, it is able to give better service than the co-operatives, then State trade will replace co-operative trade. If, on the other hand, the efficiency of co-operative trade exceeds that of State trade, then the co-operatives will remain supreme. Essentially, no matter of principle is now involved, for in the U.S.S.R. the State itself is a vast co-operative commonwealth, and the existence of co-operatives within co-operatives, a complex structure of wheels within wheels, is only justified in so far as better service is provided as a result.

Another example of co-operation, of considerable importance in the Soviet town, is the housing cooperative. One of the first decrees of the Soviet Government in 1917 transferred all existing housing accommodation to the local Soviets, to be distributed according to the needs of the population. They were also empowered to build houses. But at that time there were vast demands on the resources of all Soviet authorities, both local and national. The Soviet State, therefore, also encouraged the formation of housing cooperatives, societies of individuals who desired to obtain better accommodation and who subscribed to the cooperative a certain portion of their income towards the building of blocks of flats. Such co-operatives were run by the members, who elected their boards of management and paid their own officials. At the present time a substantial portion of the housing accommodation in Soviet cities belongs to such co-operatives.

In the Soviet housing co-operative an elected committee of the members is responsible for supervising the building of the houses. As each building is completed, the members who are first on the list move into the flats. For the administration of the house they elect their own house committee, which employs a paid manager to carry on the work of administration. The manager is responsible for collecting rent, which is fixed at about 10 percent of the earnings of each householder.

This rent goes entirely to the upkeep of the house, central heating and water supply, repairs and the decoration of the flats. Out of this 10 percent the manager is paid, and the house committee is responsible for seeing that the funds are wisely expended. Sometimes, of course, there may be a gross act of mismanagement. In a house where I lived for over a year in Moscow the manager absconded, with a balance of 6,000 roubles! An emergency meeting of the inhabitants was called and a new committee was elected, instructed to be more vigilant in their appointment of a new manager. I do not know whether the militia caught the thief, and whether the money was recovered, as I left Moscow soon after.

I do not tell of this incident as being in any way typical. But it is essential for the reader always to remember that Soviet citizens are human beings like everybody else, with their merits and their frailties. So long as there exist individualists in Soviet Society, putting their immediate private interests before those of the community, there will be cases of persons in positions of trust betraying this trust. Such cases are dealt with by the Soviet courts of law as criminal offences; they have not yet been completely stamped out.

With regard to housing, then, we find a widespread system of co-operation, in which the dwellers in blocks of flats govern their own affairs. In cases where houses are owned by the local Soviet, as is the case with the greater part of town housing, or by industrial enterprises, as occurs in certain cases, the system of management is in general similar to that of the co-operatives. In these cases the house manager, however, is appointed by the local housing trust, subject to the authority of the Soviet, or by the administration of the factory, subject to the co-operation of the union, instead of by the elected committee of the inhabitants. At the same time, however, a house committee is also elected by the inhabitants in all State-owned houses, and the manager must work in co-operation with this committee, spending the money collected in rents on repairs and renewals, and in the general interest of the occupants.

The elected house committee is the Soviet, substitute for the private landlord; the actual owner of Soviet houses is either the State or a co-operative of the occupants. Ultimately, it is clear, as in the case of consumers’ co-operation, the system of housing control will develop according to expediency. If administration by the committees of co-operatives proves less efficient than administration by the State housing trusts, the latter will replace the former. If otherwise, the cooperative houses will develop in relation to the State houses. This is a matter which the future will decide.

So far we have been concerned with those forms of co-operative organization of which the ordinary wage-earners are members. But not all producers in the U.S.S.R. are wage-earners; a vast number of them are members of producers’ co-operatives. In industry, a very small part of total production is carried on by co-operatives of producers. In agriculture, by far the greatest part of the total output is produced in cooperatives of peasants, collective farms. Since, in principle, the organization of an industrial co-operative in no way differs from that of agriculture, and since agricultural co-operation is by far the most important form of producers’ co-operation in the U.S.S.R., we shall examine in detail the organization of the collective agriculture, bearing in mind that, in the towns, on a small scale, similar organizations of industrial producers also exist.

From the very foundation of the Soviet State encouragement was given to the peasants, small individual producers, to pool their land and instruments of production, and to farm on a large scale. It was emphasized that the peasants themselves must organize such co-operative farms on their own initiative, and that such a system, if enforced from above, would not work because it would not have the support of the people who, in the nature of things, had to run it. But so long as the actual method of cultivation was limited to the wooden plough there was little to be gained from cultivating the land in large areas rather than in small strips. Therefore collectivization did not take place on a large scale during the first decade of the Revolution.

But so long as agriculture continued to be carried on by the individual peasant households, each working on its own little strip of land, it was bound to be inefficient. Therefore the supply of food to the people of the country was bound to be constantly menaced as a result of a bad harvest. For this reason alone it was essential to introduce large-scale farming. And this could only be done in one of two ways. On the one hand, the same method could have been adopted as had been adopted everywhere else in the world—the subsidizing of every farmer who was better off than the majority, helping him to become a large-scale farmer with many possessions and many labourers. But this, it will be noted, would have meant capitalism in the village, and the employment of labour by private individuals for profit.

This system was turned down by the Soviet Government, as giving rise to a new powerful capitalist class controlling the main food supplies of the country, and thus a menace to the very existence of the Soviet State itself. The remedy for the backwardness of Soviet agriculture had to be a Socialist remedy, and must be, as Stalin pointed out in 1928, “in a transition from small, backward, and scattered peasant farming to concentrated, large-scale social farms, equipped with machinery, armed with the knowledge of science, and capable of producing the maximum quantity of marketable grain. The solution lies in the transition in agriculture from individual peasant farming to collective and communal farming” (Stalin, ''Leninism'', Vol. II, p. 102).

This transition was not easy. It was necessary to persuade the peasants to undertake the new methods. But that could only be done by making available for them the modern machinery which is essential to efficient large-scale production. Again, it was essential to show them that this increased production would enable them to obtain larger quantities of industrial products and to raise their standard of life. As Stalin put it in 1928; “We must maintain the present rate of development of industry, and, at the first opportunity, still more accelerate it, in order to pour cheap goods into the rural districts and obtain from them the maximum amount of grain; in order to supply machines to agriculture, particularly to the collective and Soviet farms, and in order to industrialize agriculture and increase its marketable surplus” (ibid., p. 108).

From 1928 onwards a widespread campaign was started to draw the peasants into collective farms. They were offered agricultural machinery and modern fertilizers, together with the assistance of trained experts, if they would pool their land and their instruments of production, elect their own boards of management, and farm the land co-operatively. For four years the countryside was in a state of turmoil. The peasants had no experience of large-scale agriculture, or of co-operative and disciplined large-scale production. Through the Soviets they had administered education and health services, and had built roads. But they had not had any experience at collectively managing the complicated processes of production, and they were not acquainted with modern methods.

The new system was violently opposed in the village by those few peasants who had larger farms, and who were small employers. They knew that they would lose their power in the new collectives, and used every method to prevent the success of the new co-operative system. As a result, the level of agricultural production sharply fell, and only began to recover with the record harvest of 1933, a record for the whole of Russian history.

Naturally the details of the best form of organization for the collective farms had to be worked out as a result of experience. Many changes were made as work proceeded, and only in 1935 was a special congress called, of the best collective farmers elected from all over the U.S.S.R., to adopt a “model constitution” for all the collective farms throughout the country. This congress discussed in detail a project submitted by the Government, a number of alterations were made, and then the model constitution was finally adopted by the congress. The Government accepted the draft which the congress put forward, and this has since become the basic structure of every collective farm.

In the collective farm all the land is cultivated collectively with the exception of small plots surrounding the houses of the members, which may be used by the peasant families for their own purposes as gardens and orchards and grazing-ground for small livestock. All instruments of cultivation, with the exception of simple gardening tools, are owned by the collective. All livestock, with the exception of a few animals for household use, is also owned by the collective.

The management of the collective farm is in the hands of an elected committee of the members. The management is allowed to appoint members to different jobs throughout the collective. The work is done in “brigades,” each with its own responsibilities, and competing with each other for the best results, just like groups of factory workers. The members of the collective farm do not draw wages, since they are not employees but joint owners. Each year, after the harvest, the total year’s income is calculated, in terms of revenue from the sale of products during the year together with all unsold produce in hand. After all debts have been paid, a certain quota is set aside for the following year’s seed fund, for the extension of the farm, and for social services to members. According to the model statutes, not more than 10 percent of the total revenue goes to this latter purpose. The rest is divided among the inhabitants, “to each according to his work.”

The unit by which work is measured in the collective farm is the “work-day.” This is roughly the amount of work which an ordinary unskilled worker can do in an eight-hour day. More than eight hours of ordinary unskilled work, or eight hours of skilled work, count as more than one work-day. A tractor driver in eight hours may be credited with, say, two work-days, as a skilled worker. The actual rates, like the actual rates of wages in the factory, are determined at general meetings.

I remember, in a village near Moscow, listening to an indignant old peasant woman, very rheumatic, who was furious because, during twelve hours’ work in the fields, she had not earned credit for one work-day. When I realized, however, that she was over seventy, and was already in receipt of an invalid pension, this fact hardly reacted to the discredit of the collective. If pensioned invalids of seventy were estimated to be only 30 percent less efficient than the healthy collective farmer, this would not say much either, for the average collective farmer or the system! I calmed the old lady by telling her that she should bring up the matter at the next meeting, and she showed signs of anticipating a really good row when the next general meeting was held!

In another collective farm, run by German peasants in the Ukraine, a large notice-board in the office displayed the names of all the members of the collective, with their earnings in terms of work-days every month. The manager received a regular 40 work-days a month, whereas the skilled workers, tractor drivers, milkmaids, and so on, received up to 60 and 70 work-days. In this farm, as a result of careful accounting, every member received an advance every month on the estimated year’s income. The manager told me with pride that neighbouring farms were now going to copy this method.

In the Soviet factory, as we have seen, and also in the State farms which cultivate a small proportion of the total area of the U.S.S.R., the administrative staff is appointed by the public authorities, and the trade union is the representative organization of the working people. In the collective farm the managerial staff is elected by the members, and must organize production in the general interest, and also supervise the social services and the raising of the general cultural life of the community. The collective farm, as a self-governing organization of citizens, is similar in status to a trade union. Its functions include, however, the organization of production, as well as the provision of insurance for its members against sickness and old age, communal feeding establishments, nurseries and kindergartens, and opportunities for higher education on the part of its members. Part of its funds, according to the decisions of general meetings, are devoted also to cultural and sport activities, the building of clubs and theatres and rest-homes for the members.

It is common nowadays in the U.S.S.R. to meet peasant students in the universities, sent there by their collective farms. In such cases maintenance allowances are often paid by the collective farms themselves to their members who are studying. There are collective farms which have their own theatres, built out of their own funds together with grants from the State, and which have permanent repertory companies.

And in the collective farm, as in the factory, Socialist competition and the wall-newspaper are universal features. Even the Stakhanov Movement, originating in a coal-mine, has spread through the collective farms of the U.S.S.R., The cultivator of sugar-beet, Maria Demchenko, has won fame throughout the country for the results which have been obtained under her leadership in a collective farm in the Ukraine. And not only do we read of Maria Demchenko on her farm, but also of how she, together with leading Stakhanov workers from all over the U.S.S.R., has visited Moscow and attended conferences with the Government. At such a conference Maria Demchenko promised Stalin that she would obtain a certain yield of sugar-beets on her land, and fulfilled that promise. The Soviet Government frequently summons conferences of the leading workers in all branches of Soviet life, Stakhanov and Maria Demchenko meet Kalinin, Molotov, and Stalin, discuss their problems, and their plans for the future. In this relationship with the working people the Soviet Government is simply repeating what every Government has always done in relation to the ruling class; it holds conferences with them to discuss policy. In the Soviet Constitution there is nothing to say that the Government shall hold conferences of workers to discuss policy with them, but, as a workers’ Government, it does hold such conferences. In Britain there is no law staling that the Government shall discuss matters behind the scenes with big business and the bankers, but we know that on the quiet it does hold such discussions, and the opinions of these people go a very long way towards determining the essentials of Government policy. In the U.S.S.R., however, such conferences take place in the open, as part of the recognized working of Soviet democracy, whereas, in the British system, conferences between Government and bankers are more often than not held on the quiet, since it is not considered expedient to advertise the extent to which a small plutocracy influences policy in our kind of democracy.

While co-operatives both of consumers and producers in the Soviet town are to-day of comparatively small importance, in the village they exist on a vast scale, both for consumption and production. The collective farm is the main form of productive organization in the Soviet countryside, and will continue to be so as long as co-operative production proves to be more efficient than State farming.

And why, it may be asked, has collective farming proved more popular than working in State farms? Is it that the material conditions are superior?

Certainly, up to the present, it cannot be said that in general the material conditions of collective farmers are necessarily better than those of workers doing similar work on a State farm. Where a collective farm reaps a good harvest, the members perhaps receive more than workers on the State farms doing similar work for a regular wage. But if the harvest is poor, then the collective farmers receive less than those who, on a State farm, are guaranteed a fixed wage for a given amount of work, whatever the harvest may be like.

No, it is not the actual material standard which determines the attitude of the Soviet peasantry to collective farming. The peasant for centuries, however poor he has been, has cultivated his own land, and has owned his own means of production, however primitive. Only when economic conditions became intolerable was it usual for the peasants to leave their plots of land, and to trek to the towns in search of work as wage-earners. Certainly, the rise in the status of the wage-earner which has taken place since the Soviets seized power has made wage-earning more attractive to the peasantry, but they still like to exercise direct ownership over their means of production, rather than indirect, through the State.

As a result of this attitude the peasants of the U.S.S.R. have shown an enthusiasm for forming their own producers’ co-operative organizations and running them themselves, which they never showed for becoming wage-earners in State farms. It is as a result of this preference of the people for a particular form of organization that this form has become widespread throughout the countryside. In the future, according to the desires of the people themselves, collective farms may, or may not, change their form, and may, or may not, become indistinguishable, as regards their organization, from the State farms and other enterprises which are run by the State at the present time.

=== A People's Press ===
In Tsarist Russia, 80 percent of the population was unable to read or write. In the first decree of the Commissar of Education, after October 1917, it was stated, as has been already pointed out, that “every democratic power must, in the domain of education, in a country where illiteracy and ignorance reign supreme, make its first aim the struggle against this darkness. It must acquire in the shortest time ''universal literacy''”. The people, under the Soviets, began to learn to read and write, to read the newspapers and to write in them. For, as we have also already seen, the newspaper has been introduced into every organization in the U.S.S.R.

The making of the Press really available to the people was not something which could be done without procuring the necessary supplies of paper and ink, and the printing presses with which newspapers are printed. But in 1917, when the Soviets seized State power, these things were practically all in the hands of the well-to-do—of those who were rich enough to own newspapers, the employers of labour. Therefore it is not surprising to find, in the first Soviet Constitution of 1918, the following clause: “To ensure for the workers effective liberty of opinion, the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic puts an end to the dependence of the Press upon capital; transfers to the working class and to the peasants all technical and material resources necessary for the publication of newspapers, pamphlets, books, and other printed matter: and guarantees their unobstructed circulation throughout the country.”

The Soviet Government realized that freedom of the Press could only exist together with the ownership of the printing presses and the other means for publishing newspapers. Therefore, so long as the printing presses and stocks of paper were in the hands of the well-to-do, there was only freedom of the Press for the well-to-do. Effective freedom of the Press for the working people could only be guaranteed by giving the ownership of the newspapers to these same working people. Hence the abolition of the private Press in the early days of the Revolution; its place being taken by the Press of the people themselves, from their wall-newspapers in the factories to the newspapers of the Soviet State itself.

The policy of putting an end to illiteracy, together with the transferring of the printing presses to the organizations of the working people, caused a tremendous development of the Press. The percentage of adult citizens who can read and write in the Soviet Union to-day is about 90. The daily circulation of newspapers has increased from 2·7 million in 1913 to 36·4 million in 1934, and the planned circulation for 1937 is 66 million. The only limit to the circulation of a Soviet newspaper to-day is the amount of paper available, so that we see how such a cultural question as the availability of literature has its economic foundation. Any evening in Moscow to-day, queues are visible about five o’clock, waiting for the evening paper. After an hour or, so all copies may be sold out. But this is not due to a shortage of papers compared with old Russia, for the circulation has greatly increased. It is due to the fact that the demand is now so great that limited resources of paper prevent enough being printed.

It would be a mistake to consider the large printed papers, whose daily circulation has been stated, to be fully representative of the Press in the Soviet Union. For, in addition to national and local papers, there are the factory papers and news-sheets, and the wall-newspapers which are everywhere. In considering the Press we must remember all these, from the wall-newspaper in the factory to the greatest national newspapers, ''Izvestia'', organ of the Government; ''Pravda'', the newspaper of the Party; and ''Trud'', the paper of the trade unions.

For some months, while working in Moscow, I was the editor of a wall-newspaper. Compared with the editorship of any kind of newspaper or magazine in Britain, work on a Soviet publication is particularly onerous, for the editor, whether of the wall-newspaper in a workshop or of one of the national papers, has certain obligations which do not exist for the newspaper editor under capitalism.

We all read, from time to time, the correspondence columns of our newspapers. We know how readers express their views on every subject under the sun. We also know that, as far as the editor is concerned, his only job is to see that the most interesting letters are printed, and, when heated controversies show signs of becoming out of hand, to terminate them abruptly with the short note in italics: “''This correspondence is now closed''”.

The editorial committee of a Soviet newspaper, whether of a factory wall-newspaper or of the Government’s newspaper ''Izvestia'', does not deal with its correspondence in this light-handed way. For on every Soviet newspaper, from the very smallest to the very largest, there are members of the editorial staff whose entire work is to deal with the complaints of readers, to investigate these complaints, and to see what can be done to remedy their grievances, if any real grievances exist.

To the wall-newspaper, for example, a worker may write to say that, after being off work owing to illness, he did not receive the full amount due to him. Another may write to say that a certain foreman appeared at work with the signs of drink on him, and such a writer may include a cartoon of the foreman concerned! Another may say that the safety devices on certain machines are inadequate; and another may write that, in spite of continual complaints, the administration continues to delay in the supplying of materials, and as a result the workers are being held up at their job.

The editorial staff of the wall-newspaper, receiving these topical comments on the life of the factory, is under an obligation, not merely to publish them, but to investigate the complaints; and to publish the letters with a statement of what has been done to redress the grievances expressed. In the case of the inadequate insurance money, the social insurance delegate must be asked to investigate. If he considers that there has been no injustice, he will be asked to write a short reply. If there has been an injustice, then the editorial board will announce that the matter has been set right. In the case of the foreman, if the facts are as stated, the article and cartoon will most certainly appear, with still more caustic remarks by the editorial staff, and possibly an appeal to the administration to take disciplinary measures. In the case of safety devices, this is a matter for the labour protection delegate of the trade union, who will be asked to make a statement on the matter. And, finally, where the administration holds up the supplies of materials it is the job of the editorial board itself to move heaven and earth to make the administration take the necessary steps to supply materials on time, and thus to avoid the delays.

The work of the editorial board of a wall-newspaper, then, is not simply the publication of a newspaper. It is also the investigation of complaints and the removal of grievances; so that the Press becomes an effective weapon of the people in the fight for better conditions in every respect. The national Press of the U.S.S.R. in no way differs from the local Press in this matter.

It will be remembered by many readers how, during the years of the first Five Year Plan, the most harrowing stories appeared in our Press in Britain about the failure of one large Soviet factory after another to achieve the planned output. And, to the confusion of the British reader who was sympathetic to the Soviet Union, Soviet sources would usually be quoted as the basis for these stories. We would read how at Stalingrad, for example, two tractors would come off the conveyor on one day, thirty the next, then a hundred, and then down to two again as some process in the production went wrong and held up the whole job. And editorial comments in the British Press would ruthlessly point out that “these Russians” would never learn to run machinery, and the whole Five Year Plan was therefore a giant fiasco.

But in spite of this adverse comment, and in spite of, or perhaps because of, the fact that it was the Soviet Press which gave full publicity to the difficulties of Stalingrad and other vast new enterprises, they have pulled through. And when we look more closely at the kind of facts which received such loud publicity at that time we find that all these difficulties and disorders which accompanied the first Five Year Plan were not necessarily peculiar to Soviet conditions, but operate in one form or another in every new large industrial enterprise anywhere. The fundamental difference between such enterprises in the U.S.S.R. and similar ones in capitalist countries is that in the Soviet Union their every difficulty was publicized in the Press, whereas, in the conditions of capitalism, the same difficulties are completely hushed up!

Suppose that a new Ford plant, after it has started working, for a few weeks turns out only half the planned output. Suppose that this story leaks into the Press. Down go the shares of Ford Ltd.; the credit of the firm seriously suffers; panic results. Such a panic, in certain cases, is all that is necessary to ruin a new firm which is just starting to operate its first factory.

But in the Soviet Union every one of those same difficulties, hushed up under capitalism because they damage the reputation of a firm, are given the fullest publicity in the Press. For, by interesting the whole of the people in those things which are unsatisfactory as well as in those which are satisfactory, the Soviet Press stimulates citizens to improve matters, and as a result the whole community is benefited.

It is as a result of this policy that, in the Soviet Press, the most appalling stories of all kinds of public abuses are given publicity. I remember how, a few years ago, a certain anti-Soviet propagandist organization in this country issued a leaflet containing parallel quotations from the British publication ''Russia To-day'' and from the Soviet Trade Union newspaper ''Trud'' (''Labour''). In ''Russia To-day'' it was stated, for example, that 1,000 new nurseries had been opened for the working-class mothers. And, from ''Trud'', there was quoted a horrifying story of how, in the town of, say, Minsk, at the “Hammer and Sickle” Factory, a new crèche had been opened where the floors were damp, and where, in the near neighbourhood, there was a pig-sty, the smell of which infected the whole establishment. By taking a whole series of such monstrosities, quoted in ''Trud'' as examples of disgraceful work on the part of one or another trade union organization, or on the part of the administration of one or another factory, the leaflet was able to offset each statement from ''Russia To-day'' about vast developments affecting the lives of 170 million people with a story of one fiasco, affecting the lives of some 1,000 people at the most, quoted in the Soviet Press in order to reduce such disorders to a minimum.

The Soviet citizen, writing to a newspaper in the Soviet Union, is aware of the fact that in expressing his opinion he is starting a sequence of actions which will, if his complaints are justified, lead to the removal of the grievance. In this way the Soviet citizen enjoys effective expression of opinion of a twofold nature. First, he can complain in the Press about things which, in other countries, it is impossible for the ordinary worker to criticize at all. Second, he knows that, when he has spoken, the authorities concerned will take action to see that the grievance is dealt with.

When I say that similar people, in other countries, cannot give public expression to the kind of very vital complaints which find their way in thousands into the Soviet Press, I have in mind the fact that, in Britain to-day, if I wish to express dissatisfaction about the service rendered by a firm or by an organization, or with the work of an individual, I have no right to call the attention of public opinion to the matter. For, in Britain, the airing of any grievance, however justifiable, against a person, or against an organization, if it is likely to damage their business or their reputation is libellous, and the person airing such a grievance may be sued for it. Not only do private firms hush up the kind of difficulties to which the Soviet Press gave publicity in the case of Stalingrad, but ordinary citizens, with grievances against all kinds of organizations and officials, are not permitted to direct public opinion to such grievances through the Press. The only form of action which is possible is litigation, and the cost of this is such that only major grievances of the well-to-do can be adequately settled in this way.

The Soviet Press, then, gives voice to two lands of criticism which are more or less non-existent in the Press of Britain: criticism of the working of all kinds of public institutions; and criticism of the working of responsible persons. Both these kinds of criticism, in a country of private enterprise, would be damaging to the firms concerned, also to the authority of employers over workers, and are therefore taboo.

In discussing the wall-newspaper in the factory, at an earlier stage, we raised the question of control and editorship. And we saw that the editor of the wall-newspaper was appointed by the trade union committee elected by, and responsible to, the workers. How are the national newspapers controlled?

There is no difference in principle between the control of the wall-newspaper in the factory, which is the organ of the participation in that factory, and the control of ''Izvestia'', ''Pravda'', or ''Trud'', the three main newspapers of the U.S.S.R. For in the Soviet Union all the Press is in the hands of the organizations of the working people, from their factory trade union committee on the one hand, to their national Trade Union General Council, their Government, and the Central Committee of their Party on the other. In the factory, the editor of the wall-newspaper is appointed by and responsible to the trade union in that factory. On an All-Union scale, the editor of ''Trud'', the central organ of the Soviet trade unions, is appointed by and responsible to the General Council of the Trade Unions. The Moscow evening paper is edited by a person appointed by and responsible to the Moscow Soviet. The All-Union Government newspaper, ''Izvestia'', is edited by someone who is appointed by and responsible to the Government of the U.S.S.R. ''Pravda'', the newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R., is edited by someone appointed by and responsible to the Central Committee of the Party.

In addition to the myriads of publications of the trade unions, the local Soviets and the All-Union Government, together with the various State departments and the Party, there are a number of further publications—weekly and monthly magazines—which are issued by the State Publishing House, and children’s periodicals, issued by the Children’s Publishing House.

There is a vast variety of publications, published by different organizations. But all these organizations have one feature in common—they are organizations responsible to the people, and not private firms owned by well-to-do individuals and working for profit.

It is only when the nature of the control of the Soviet Press is understood that we see that there is an absolutely fundamental difference between the “freedom of the press” which is guaranteed in the Soviet Constitutions—and always has been—and the “freedom of the press” which exists in Britain at the present time. If we look at the circulation of newspapers in Britain to-day, we find that an overwhelming majority of the daily, weekly, and monthly newspapers and magazines are private property, run for profit, and owned by those who are sufficiently wealthy to own newspapers. The ''Daily Herald'', incidentally, in which a majority of the shares is owned by a joint-stock company, must be included in this category. In contrast with this there stand out the ''Daily Worker'', the publication of the Communist Party, and ''Reynolds's Newspaper'', published by the Co-operative Movement, as the only national newspapers in the country which can even profess to represent working-class organizations. And yet 75 percent of the people of Britain are wage-earners. Then there are the various smaller weeklies and monthlies, among which the trade union and co-operative journals amount to a small proportion of the total. And, if we look at any bookstall in any railway station, or go into any newsagent’s, we again find that the overwhelming majority of the publications for sale are those, not of organizations of the working people, who are 75 percent of the population, but of the small minority, amounting to about 1 percent of the population of Britain, who in effect own the Press of the country.

It is absolutely true, of course, that in Britain, as compared with a Fascist country, working-class organizations have the right to publish their own newspapers and magazines, on condition that they have the necessary funds to do so. To this extent they are better off than they would be under Fascism. But a glance at the average bookstall, or at a list of the newspapers published in this country to-day, is sufficient to show that the freedom of the Press that actually does exist to-day operates in favour of the owners of property and against the organizations of the majority of the population, the wage-earners.

In Soviet Russia, “in the interests of effective freedom of expression for the working people,” the Press was transferred from private hands to the organizations of the workers, peasants, and soldiers. We have surveyed the results of this transfer of the ownership of the Press. And we have seen that the working citizen of the U.S.S.R. enjoys an effective freedom of expression, in two ways, which is not enjoyed by him in other countries. First, the material in the newspapers is what he writes, and not what a privileged few write for his consumption. Secondly, what he writes is effective in the sense that it leads to concrete action being taken against abuses, bad practices, inefficiency, and injustice. Compared with other countries, freedom of expression for the Soviet working citizen is a doubly effective weapon, a two-edged sword against all those who, through malice or laziness, negligence or simple inefficiency, obstruct the rapid raising of the general material and cultural level of the people. The Soviet Press can truly claim to be democratic.

Certain readers may, at this point, interject with the words: “Ah, but is this democratic, so long as there is no opposition Press in the U.S.S.R.?” The answer to this is another question: “What is opposition?” If, by opposition, you mean the public exposure of every land of injustice, abuse, and inefficiency, and of individuals who fail to fulfil their duties, then we see that such criticism exists in the Soviet Press to an extent unequalled anywhere else in the world. But if, on the other hand, you mean the right to express in Soviet newspapers anti-Soviet ideas, or in Soviet trade union newspapers anti-trade union views, then such opposition is not allowed by the editors of the Press of the U.S.S.R. But such “opposition” is not allowed in the official organs of any democratic body anywhere. No newspaper which is the organ of a particular social organization is going to be allowed by its owners to pursue a policy contrary to the interests of the organization that runs it; just as no privately owned paper can go contrary to the will of its proprietor. The Press lord will not allow his paper to oppose his policy, and the trade union journal in Britain will voice the views of the organization that publishes it, not oppose them. To ask that the Soviet Press should oppose the policy of the Soviets is to ask something that is never asked anywhere, of any newspaper, whether privately or democratically owned. It is the absurd request to oppose the policy of its owners instead of expressing that policy. The only serious question is: Who, in the U.S.S.R., are the owners? And the answer is: The people of the U.S.S.R. themselves, through their own organizations.

=== Justice among Comrades ===
It is frequently said that a system of society can be judged by the way in which it looks after its children. The Soviet Union passes an examination on this matter with high honours. But it would probably be just as true to say that a social system can be judged by the way in which it treats its criminals, those who offend against its laws.

A visitor to a Soviet court of law, accustomed to the courts of Britain, receives a general impression of informality. Such a room and such a gathering might be a trade union meeting, or just a small public lecture, to judge by the appearance of the people sitting in the body of the hall and on the platform. At one end of the room, on a raised dais, sit three people. The hall is fairly crowded. A discussion is going on between one of the people on the platform and someone on the floor. It appears to be a heated argument. The person on the platform is one of the judges; the speaker from the floor is a criminal facing judgment!

The informality, the heated discussion between criminal and judge, the essentially human atmosphere of the whole proceedings—these are characteristic of working-class meetings all over the world. And the Soviet court is, in fact, a working-class meeting for a particular purpose—the passing of judgment on a comrade who has committed an offence.

The fact that the administration of justice has become one of the ordinary activities of the working people in the Soviet Union has led to the breaking down of the barriers between what we may call “formal” justice on the one hand and informal justice on the other. I remember one night in Moscow returning home about ten o’clock and finding an enormous gathering on the staircase, with people arguing in loud voices, “What is it?” I asked. “A comradely court,” was the reply, “What has happened?” was my next rather obvious question. And I was at once told the whole story by a woman neighbour who seemed just as interested in relating the whole scandalous affair to me as she was in listening to the proceedings themselves.

The man in the flat below had assaulted a neighbour when drunk. The neighbour had complained to the house committee. There were witnesses. The house committee decided to hold a “comradely court” to try the case, and here on the stairs, at 10 p.m., the case was being tried. The judge was a member of the house committee; the jury was made up of the other inhabitants of the block of flats. The accused was proved guilty. The sentence was a public reprimand in front of all the neighbours. And at that the matter ended.

Is such a method of dealing with petty acts of assault, of negligence at work, of drunkenness, effective? Soviet experience shows that, in many cases which might take a person to the courts in Britain, such a comradely court, with a public reprimand, is quite an effective deterrent. If, however, the comradely court comes to the decision that a misdemeanour has been committed which merits more than a public reprimand, then it turns the case over to the People’s Court, the lowest rung in the ladder of “formal” justice in the U.S.S.R.

The People’s Court would correspond to the magistrate’s court in Britain. Hitherto, until the new Constitution of 1936, the judges were appointed from a panel submitted by the trade unions of the locality. Each judge then had a short legal training, lasting about six months, before taking up his position. Now, under the new Constitution, the judges will be elected by universal secret ballot, nominations being made by the trade unions, the Party, and other organizations of the working people. Together with the judge there sit two assistant judges, without any legal training, also appointed from panels drawn up by the trade unions in the district under the old system. They now will also be elected directly by the population.

The hearing of cases takes place in an atmosphere of the greatest informality. Criminal cases may alternate with applications for alimony against fathers who refuse to recognize their paternity, or, having recognized it, refuse to meet the financial obligations which follow. In every case the accused and the judges carry on lively back-chat, as there is no such “crime” as contempt of court. I remember a case where a young man was up on a charge of drunkenness. Late at night he had apparently demanded money while drunk from a passer-by. The judge, a woman, summed up the case with a reference to the “campaign against hooliganism,” and referred to the disgraceful behaviour of the young man in creating a disturbance in the middle of the night. The young man interjected: “It wasn’t the middle of the night, it was only twelve o’clock!” “Yes, it was the middle of the night,” said the judge, and continued with her homily on the fight against hooliganism. The young man was sentenced to several months “forced labour.”

Sentences in Soviet courts are usually to terms of “forced labour” or to imprisonment. Forced labour, terrifying as it may sound, is the lighter sentence, and in foot is the imposition of a fine, on the instalment system. The person who is sentenced to forced labour continues to work at his job, but every month there is a deduction from his pay which goes to the local authority. At the same time the fact that he is serving a term of forced labour is made known to the employing authority and to his trade union, and the latter is expected to pay special attention to that person, to see that he improves his ways and becomes a more satisfactory and conscientious citizen. The criminal, serving his sentence of forced labour, will not be immune from comment in the wall-newspaper of his place of work and general social disapproval, as well as exhortation to better work and citizenship in the future.

In more serious cases, the People’s Court imposes sentences of imprisonment. But here too, as compared with the significance of that term in Britain, Soviet imprisonment stands out as an almost enjoyable experience. For the essence of Soviet imprisonment is isolation from the rest of the community, together with other persons similarly isolated, with the possibility to do useful work at the place of isolation, to earn a wage for this work, and to participate in running the isolation settlement or “prison” in the same way as the children participate in running their school, or the workers their factory. The essential difference between Soviet imprisonment and freedom lies in: (''a'') The fact that the prisoners are bound to live where they are sent; (''b'') The fact that they get considerably lower wages than when free. Both these features are a sufficient deterrent to the ordinary citizen, but they make prison life comfortable as compared to the conditions normally prevailing elsewhere.

Soviet penal settlements are now usually situated in places where large-scale construction work is in progress. The Baltic-White Sea Canal was built to a great extent by penal labour, and the building of the Moscow-Volga canal is being undertaken in a similar way. An essential feature of such large construction enterprises is that they provide work for people of all specialities. Therefore it is unusual, when serving a sentence in the U.S.S.R., for people not to be able to practice their own speciality. And since, on such construction jobs, as on construction jobs all over the U.S.S.R., there is a continual need for skilled personnel, the unskilled prisoner may learn a trade during his sentence, and be finally released with considerably higher qualifications than he had when arrested!

Within the penal settlements themselves the prisoners earn wages according to their work. But these wages are considerably below trade union rates. Those who, in recent years, have been disappointed to find a change made in this direction (for at one time trade union rates were paid to all those serving sentences) must realize that in the U.S.S.R. since 1931 there has been no unemployment. Until that year, so long as there were workers out of work, it was correctly held that if prisoners of any kind did any form of work, this would be keeping other workers out of jobs, unless the prisoners received trade union conditions. This argument, incidentally, applies also to Britain to-day. It is often stated that prisoners in His Majesty’s prisons “only sew mailbags” as proof that their prison labour is not keeping others out of employment. But if they did not sew these mailbags gratis, then unemployed workers would be employed sewing them for a living, so that in Britain to-day the existing system of prison labour, and any system other than one in which prisoners receive trade union conditions, does contribute towards unemployment. This was also true in the U.S.S.R. till 1931, and till then the prisoners received trade union wages. To-day it is no longer the case, and therefore, though paid, they do not receive as good pay as if they were free.

The extent of self-government in the Soviet penal settlement is very considerable. The wall-newspaper is a means of expression for those serving time, just as it is a means of expression for those at liberty. Amateur social activities are carried on in various spheres, and the good workers receive rapid promotion to jobs of responsibility. The accountant who has embezzled funds while at liberty may become accountant to the penal settlement if he works well, and the leader of a gang of thieves may become the leader of a brigade of workers on a construction job.

The settlement near Moscow—Bolshevo—has received fame throughout the world. This settlement was started for the homeless children who, after the war which was forced on the Soviets from 1918 to 1922, and on which Britain spent £100,000,000, were wandering about the country living by crime. At Bolshevo they were encouraged to govern themselves in a commune, with their own elected committee of management. They built factories and learnt a trade. To-day, long after the sentences of the original inhabitants are completed, many of them remain living in the village of Bolshevo, working in its factories, and assisting new arrivals to become useful citizens also. The head of the commune is one of the original homeless children.

If we are to make a comparison between the Soviet penal system and any other aspect of Soviet life, we must consider it as a form of education. The regime in the Soviet school, giving the maximum incentive to the child to develop its sense of citizenship, is copied in the treatment of criminals, to give them, too, the greatest sense of social responsibility through the experience of constructive labour and the democratic running of their own affairs.

And, just as in the factory Socialist competition is combined with the material incentive of wages, so, too, in the penal settlement there is Socialist competition; the prisoners are paid, and the best workers are given reductions in their sentences which usually amount to the lopping of one-third off their time if they work well. In this way, if we can call Soviet education “education for citizenship,” then the Soviet penal system can only be termed “re-education for citizenship.”

A word must be said, in conclusion, of that side of the Soviet penal system which gets so much dark publicity in the world Press, that aspect of it which concerns the treatment, not of comrades who have gone wrong, but of those who act in a way which shows deliberate hostility to Soviet society. For there are individuals even to-day who are ready to take violent measures, and to co-operate with foreign Powers to overthrow the existing Soviet system.

There are many sympathizers of the Soviet regime who cannot understand how, twenty years after the Russian Revolution, there can really be enemies of the regime in the U.S.S.R. to-day. I think these people forget that open armed warfare against the Soviets was only finally defeated in 1922. Since then more than one attempt has been made to provoke cause for a new attack. And at the present time the avowed policy of the leading Fascist States is to launch an attack on the Soviet Union.

In preparation for that war, Hitler is not going to refrain from attempting to inject agents into the U.S.S.R., just as he is injecting them into other countries. If he finds it to his advantage to have agents in Spain and France, in North and South America, he will find it more necessary, not less so, to place them also in the U.S.S.R., the country an attack against which he has openly stated to be his main objective.

And, when we consider the internal position of the U.S.S.R. itself, it would be wildly Utopian to assume that to-day there are not still some persons who, for some reason or other, may have some grudge against the Soviet Government, and want to overthrow it. If these circumstances are recognized, then we see that there are definite reasons why the discovery of anti-Soviet plots in co-operation with Fascist States is likely to take place in the U.S.S.R. in the future just as it has occurred in the past.

Whereas, among comrades, justice in the U.S.S.R. is administered as a means of re-education for citizenship, the Soviet State treats those crimes which are in fact acts of war by the law of war. In the U.S.S.R. to-day the side of the system of justice which represents the future is the justice among comrades which has been described in detail. The law of war, applied to political enemies of the system—spies, saboteurs, and terrorists—will only continue so long as there are States in the world interested in fomenting war against the U.S.S.R. and in stirring up internal difficulties.

In the great Moscow trials which have taken place in 1936 and 1937 considerable confusion has been caused by the suggestion that these trials showed the undemocratic nature of the Soviet system. “If men like Radek and Zinoviev have to resort to armed terror,” it is said, “this can only be because they had no other means of expressing their views.” That statement, in essence, is true. But there are two possible reasons for this situation. First, it might be that the State authorities allowed no criticism or discussion whatever, and simply prevented the men concerned from expressing legitimate criticisms of policy. Secondly, it might be that these individuals had already, time and again, expressed their views until the whole of the democratic institutions of the country had finally decided by a vast majority that the propagation of such views was not in accordance with the interests of the community, In the latter case, the fact that these people could no longer speak their views would be because the people no longer wanted to hear them; in which case this fact illustrates, not the undemocratic, but the democratic character of such a prohibition.

So long as the threat of war hangs over the U.S.S.R. the laws of war will be enforced in those cases where, objectively speaking, citizens are in collaboration with the avowed enemies of the Soviet State. It is in these spheres that we may still find the death-penalty—“the highest measure of social defence”—being imposed on “enemies of the Republic.” At the same time, however, comradely justice, for the re-education of erring citizens, is applied to the overwhelming majority of cases tried in the Soviet courts.

Comradely justice and the law of war are applied side by side and simultaneously in the U.S.S.R. to-day. They must on no account be confused, for they represent two opposing tendencies—the struggle for security necessitated by the existing world situation, and the ordinary means operated by friends to regulate their relationships to the mutual interest of all. The law of war must still be applied in the U.S.S.R. to-day because of the external forces, identifying themselves with the mediæval past, which threatens the security of the Soviets. The other—the law of comrades, the law of future human society—is being applied more and more as an everyday activity of the working people themselves, for the purpose of preserving law and order for their own mutual benefit.

=== Is Woman's Place in the Home? ===
“Kirche, Kuche und Kinder”–“Church, Kitchen, and Children”–so runs a German saying which has received great official popularity since the coming of Hitler to power in 1933. These are the three spheres of social life to which women are allotted in the Third Reich. And in the English language, too, there is the old saying, “Woman’s place is in the home,” which still finds currency in many quarters, particularly so long as the country is racked by unemployment, and able-bodied men are out of work or in constant fear of being so. In the Russian language there are a host of old proverbs degrading woman to the level of something subhuman, and it is therefore all the more striking that in the U.S.S.R. to-day there is no occupation and no position which women may not occupy on the basis of complete equality with men.

In the Constitution of the U.S.S.R. adopted in 1936 it is written: “Women in the U.S.S.R. are accorded equal rights with men in all fields of economic, Stale, cultural, social, and political life

“The realization of these rights of women is ensured by affording women equally with men the right to work, payment for work, rest, social insurance and education, state protection of the interests of mother and child, granting pregnancy leave with pay, and the provision of a wide network of maternity homes, nurseries, and kindergartens.”

As a teacher in a Soviet university I have had some opportunity of observing this equality of the sexes at first hand. As a graduate of Cambridge, I could make comparisons between the complete equality in the Soviet university lecture-room and the procedure in Cambridge by which, whenever the women students enter a room, it is the convention for the men to stamp, as if something out of the ordinary was occurring. At least, that was the convention eight years ago. I presume it still is, as things move slowly in our older universities. I also had the opportunity of seeing the amusement of Soviet women students, when I said that their counterpart in England would probably accept a job until marriage, and then retire from such employment. The idea that a job was an alternative to marriage was looked upon as some sort of archaic survival by these young Soviet women, who considered it absolutely practicable to have a career, a husband, and a family into the bargain.

Among the students themselves, on the teaching staff, and throughout the Soviet organizations that I have visited during the past five years, I have hardly ever seen or heard anything which suggests that woman is considered either an inferior or weaker sex. In one case, on the construction of the Moscow underground, when a certain job was made available only to the male workers for reasons of health, a group of young women insisted that they should also do the work, formed a woman’s brigade, and competed with the men for the best results. If, at any time or in any place in the U.S.S.R. to-day, it is suggested that any job is not suitable for women, that is all that is necessary to ensure that within a short time women will be proving that such a job can be done by them as efficiently as by men, and that’s that.

I think we in Britain find it hard to realize the extent to which the idea of woman as a “weaker sex” is a product of industrial capitalism. In any country of the world where there is a large peasant population, whatever may be said of the social inferiority of women, the term “weaker sex” is unknown, because it is so patently untrue. We in Britain tend to assume that the physical inferiority of women in our own country to-day is considerably greater than it actually is. And, where such physical inferiority does exist, we are inclined to neglect the degree to which this is due to social causes. It is unlikely that the women of feudal Britain were any weaker physically than the men; and it seems to be to a great extent the responsibility of capitalist industrialism that their physique has deteriorated. A comparison of the physique of British townswomen to-day with that of peasant women in all countries bears this out.

Capitalist industrialism has made labour such a strain on the physique that on the one hand women have had to be excluded from many occupations because of their function as mothers. Socialist industry, by organizing all occupations in such a way as to develop the health and strength of the workers, makes it no longer necessary, except in rare cases, to exclude women from occupations on the grounds of health. In this way jobs which definitely develop the physique of the worker are available to women as well as to men in the U.S.S.R. In Britain, the woman’s “inferiority” is now used as a reason for exclusion, even where health conditions are adequate to permit of women’s work.

But, on the other hand, capitalism has reduced women to the position of a cheap reserve of labour by means of low wages. In this way the employment of women has been increasingly concentrated on the worst paid jobs, which are often the most unhealthy and the most degrading. This, too, has caused deterioration in women’s physique as compared, with that of men.

Finally, by combining household drudgery with every other occupation that a woman might undertake, capitalism has added one further burden to its women-folk, with disastrous effects on the physique of the women as compared with the men. As a result of these factors, the term “weaker sex” is not a misnomer in Britain to-day, though it must have been as unreal in the Britain of two hundred years ago as it is to-day in every country of the world where there is a large peasant population and where women do a more than full share in the general physical labour of the community. It is the aim of a Socialist country to preserve this physical equality, and to prevent the deterioration of women into the position of a “weaker sex.” At the same time, however, real equality demands that woman should be relieved of all the extra burdens imposed upon her in more primitive societies. This means that while, economically, she must receive equal pay and equal opportunities with man, she must be specially cared for socially in so far as she has additional social functions to perform.

Economic equality between women and men must be provided in two main ways. First, equality of opportunity and of wages must be provided. Secondly, women must be equally able with men to have a career. But this means that they must be relieved of certain burdens which they have to bear in capitalist countries, such as housework and the care of children. And, since only women can fulfil the function of bearing children, and since this necessitates an interruption of every woman’s work, special provision must be made for women in this respect. Once children have been born, it is essential to ensure that any economic burden connected with the upbringing of such children shall be as far as possible equally shared by the two parents.

In order to make equality of opportunity effective in the U.S.S.R., a great deal has already been done to provide socially those services which, in other countries, women must perform themselves as their regular household duties. Most important is the matter of feeding, and in the U.S.S.R. to-day a vast network of restaurants makes it possible for the people to feed at or near their places of work, and the communal kitchen replaces the work of the housewife.

But, in addition to cooking meals, the housewife under capitalism spends endless time on the care of her children. In this respect the Soviet Union has provided various means of relief. By a vast development of nurseries and kindergartens, by providing playgrounds for children in every public square or park, by providing out-of-school activities for children in the school buildings and children’s rooms in blocks of flats, the Soviet authorities have already to a great extent removed the burden of the care of children from the shoulders of the mothers. Recently, returning to London from Moscow, I was impressed by the number of dirty children playing in the streets, and by the number of infants seen in the care of children just a few years older than themselves. These sights are symptoms of the utter failure of the British community to cope with the problems of the working-class mother. Such problems in the U.S.S.R. are already solved in principle, and the detailed solution is being further worked out in practice from year to year.

It is sometimes suggested that the vast development of nurseries and kindergartens is likely to break down family affections. Such a view, in my experience, is absolutely unjustified. Is a working mother going to be less affectionate towards her child if she can have it fed and washed in a well-run nursery while she is occupied on other things? Is she going to love her child less if she has it with her only during those hours when she is free from other activities? It is an ironic fact, but well worthy of mention, that those who are most insistent in this country on the joys of family life are usually those who, owing to their fortunate economic position, can afford to pay trained nurses to look after their children for twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four, and who, during the remaining hour, are able to enjoy to the full the blessing of parentage without its labour!

While it is possible for society to relieve women of housework, and of the burden of the care of children, it is physically impossible to relieve women of the function of bearing children. Therefore, in this respect, equality of the sexes necessitates special privileges for the women. In the U.S.S.R. to-day the woman who is having a child is relieved from work on full pay for a period of four months. If the doctor considers it advisable, she may be put on lighter work, or completely relieved of work, without reduction of pay, at any time during pregnancy. The nursing mother, after returning to work, is allowed a special reduction in her working day. All medical attention and a layette for the child are provided free of charge.

The question of family relations arises in a particularly acute form in the case of responsibility for children. Right from the early years of the Revolution the State put an end to all distinction between the married and the unmarried mother. In this way the age-long distinction between ethical standards for men and for women was brought to an end. Also, no child started out in life with the social stigma of illegitimacy.

The Soviet State took further steps to ensure that marriage should be a voluntary contract, and the family a voluntary social unit. Whereas a marriage and a family based on mutual love and respect has always been encouraged in the U.S.S.R., the holding of people unwillingly together, by force of law or by economic compulsion, has always been opposed. Divorce has been made easy, subject to one condition—that there is equal parental responsibility for the upbringing of every child. Whether marriage is registered or not, according to Soviet law every parent has an economic responsibility for his or her children. As a rule it is the mother who brings up a child if parents are living separately, and therefore, as a rule, it is the father who is bound to meet his responsibilities financially. And these responsibilities are not small. For, to ensure that a Soviet woman shall not have to bear the economic burden of bringing up children alone, every father, if not living with the mother of his children, must pay to her 30 percent of his earnings for one, 40 percent for two, and 50 percent for three children or more until they are of working age. In this way real economic equality of the sexes is established with regard to parental responsibility, while, at the same time, people are not forced to live together if they have no longer any further natural affection for one another.

A matter which has raised considerable doubts in the minds of many protagonists of sex-equality in this country is the law, passed in 1936, making abortion illegal except in cases where it is justified by consideration for a woman’s health or the danger of hereditary disease. This change in the law has been treated as an attack on sex-equality.

It is of the greatest importance, in this connection, to refer back to the text of the original law which legalized abortion in Soviet Russia in 1921. It is important to note that in this law not a word was said about sex-equality, and the right to have an abortion was never put forward as a fundamental right of the Soviet woman. On the contrary, abortion was treated as a social evil, but an evil which was likely to be less harmful when practised legally than when carried out under conditions of secrecy. Here is part of the text of the original law permitting abortion:

“During the past decades the number of women resorting to artificial discontinuation of pregnancy has grown both in the West and in this country. The legislation of all countries combats this evil by punishing the woman who chooses to have an abortion and the doctor who performs it. Without leading to favourable results, this method of combating abortion has driven the operation underground and made the woman a victim of mercenary and often ignorant quacks who make a profession of secret operations. As a result, up to 50 percent of such women are infected in the course of the operation, and up to 4 percent of them die.

“The Workers’ and Peasants’ Government is conscious of this serious evil to the community. It combats this evil by propaganda against abortions among working women. By working for Socialism, and by introducing the protection of maternity and infancy on an extensive scale, it feels assured of achieving the gradual disappearance of this evil. But as moral survivals of the past and the difficult economic conditions of the present still compel many women to resort to this operation . . .” it is allowed in State hospitals.

The essential feature of this law is that it was based on “difficult economic conditions,” and was of a temporary nature. The right to abortion was never introduced as one of the rights of Soviet women, to be enjoyed in all circumstances. It was considered an “evil,” and was introduced as a makeshift to combat the serious mortality rate from illegal abortions carried out under unsatisfactory conditions. There is evidence that, at the present time, owing to the increased knowledge of contraceptives on the one hand and the growing sense of economic security on the other, women will not now practice abortion in this way, and that therefore the permissive law is no longer necessary in the interests of health. Abortion in Soviet legislation has always been regarded primarily as a question of health, not of equality. Since thousands of women have been neglecting the use of contraceptives because they could obtain an abortion, the legality of the less satisfactory method of discontinuing pregnancy has actually to some extent prevented more satisfactory methods from being used of avoiding pregnancy altogether.

A fact that must be fully realized in this connection is that the whole formulation of sex-equality in the U.S.S.R. has always tended to be different from its formulation among feminists in capitalist countries. The stress in the U.S.S.R. has always been; Equal economic and social rights and opportunities, with special privileges to compensate for any burden arising from the bearing of children. On the other hand, in countries such as Britain, where years of unemployment have given rise to all sorts of theories of “over-population,” the emphasis is usually placed on the right of women not to have children as an essential aspect of sex-equality. In the U.S.S.R., where there is no illegitimacy and where unemployment was finally wiped out in 1931 and shows no signs of ever again recurring, “over-population” is an impossibility, since the whole of the economic planning of the country is based on the number of workers available, and the more workers there are the better for the welfare of all.

In such a community there is no social reason for artificially limiting population. Therefore the formulation of sex-equality will have a different emphasis: instead of pressing the right of women not to have children because men do not have to bear children, the whole emphasis will be on providing such conditions that every woman may bear as many children as is consistent with her health without at the same time suffering any greater economic or social burden than men as a result. This is the emphasis given in Soviet society to this matter, and is, I think, the likely formulation for every progressive Socialist community once unemployment has been finally abolished.

In the U.S.S.R., then, the woman’s place is not in the home. But this does not mean disrespect either for maternity or for the family, so long as the latter is in no way a unit preserved by force and economic compulsion as opposed to the free will of the parties to a marriage. By giving equal opportunities to workers of both sexes, by making social insurance cover all incapacity for work due to pregnancy and childbirth, by ensuring the equal responsibility of both parents for their children whether they are married or not, and, finally, by socializing those services which, under capitalism, have to be performed by the energy of the individual housewife, the Soviet Union has gone a long way towards the freeing of women as citizens from bondage as housewives, wives, and mothers. But this does not mean that the role of women as wives and mothers is abolished; it means that wife and husband, mother and father, are equal citizens in every respect, with equal opportunities for a career, with effective equality of rights in every sphere of social, economic, and political life, and with equal moral, social, and economic responsibilities to society, to each other, and to their children.

== A New State ==

=== What Are Soviets? ===
We have now reached a point where the fact that a new life is developing in the U.S.S.R. for the vast majority of the people is already established. The Soviet Union is a country where every citizen, irrespective of sex or nationality, has an opportunity to develop his abilities to the full, and, having developed them, to utilize them in the interests of society. Every citizen has an opportunity to participate in the economic, social, and political life of the country, not only as a subordinate, but as a responsible person. Personal initiative in everything that benefits society is encouraged. The trade unions and the co-operatives exist on a scale, and have powers, unknown elsewhere; though in the case of the latter the fact that the community itself bears now the main features of a co-operative commonwealth makes the organization of co-operative societies as such no longer a matter of principle, but one of expediency. The Press is owned and controlled by the organizations of the people, from the collective farm, or factory trade union committee to the Government itself and the General Council of Trade Unions. Women play an equal part with men in economic, social, and political life, and are compensated in so far as they suffer disabilities due to their natural function of bearing children. All these are features of the new life that is growing up in the Soviet Union. And this new life has grown up within the framework of a new kind of State, without which it could not have developed at all. This is the Soviet State, and, in order fully to understand the new life of the U.S.S.R., we must also understand something about this new State framework within which it has been created.

For the origin of the word “Soviet” in its present-day sense we must go back to the year 1905. Until that time the word “soviet” was used frequently in Russian to denote any kind of “council.” A “council of war” or a “council of ministers” were both “soviets,” and there were many other kinds of councils for which this word was used. Early in the year 1905 the workers of the textile town of Ivanovo-Vosnesensk set up a committee to co-ordinate strike action and to force the employers to bargain collectively. This committee consisted of delegates elected by show of hands at general meetings of the workers in the various factories of that town.

As the year 1905 went on, and the workers all over Russia were striking and demonstrating for better conditions, they copied the example of Ivanovo, and set up their own delegate committees or councils in their towns to lead the struggle. These councils came to be known as Soviets of Workers’ Delegates. In each case they consisted of elected delegates from the workers in the factories, led the struggle against the employers by organizing strikes, and put forward political demands for freedom of speech, the Press, and assembly. They were fighting organizations, led demonstrations, and in certain cases actually seized complete municipal power and passed laws to the disadvantage of the employers in their territory. They became a new form of municipal authority, passing decrees in the exclusive interests of the working people, the majority of the town dwellers.

But the Revolution of 1905 was suppressed. For more than ten years the working-class movement of Russia had no legal opportunity to express itself. Only towards the end of 1916 and the beginning of 1917, with the growing disgust at the way in which the Tsarist Government was conducting the war, the workers, peasants, and soldiers, together with many of the employers and even the allied Governments, began to express open opposition to the Government of the Tsar.

In February 1917 the Tsar abdicated and a new Government was set up by the employers. Side by side with this “Provisional Government” the workers of Petrograd once more organized a Soviet, and their example was followed in other cities. So great was the activity of the working-class movement at this time that the Provisional Government was forced to respect the existence of the Soviets and did not dare to try to suppress them.

In 1917, unlike 1905, the setting up of Soviets was not confined to the workers in the towns. In the villages the peasants elected their own councils, or Soviets, through which they demanded the immediate confiscation of the landed estates and their division among the peasantry. And in the army the soldiers in the ranks elected their own committees, in certain cases arrested their officers, and proceeded to govern themselves.

In this way, between February and October 1917, there were set up by the people of Russia—by the workers, peasants, and soldiers—a vast network of elected councils or committees, called Soviets, which led their struggle for better conditions of life.

So powerful were these Soviets that the Government itself was obliged to grant many of their demands. For example, on the very day that the Provisional Government came into existence, the Petrograd Soviet issued an order stating that committees of the ranks in the army should be set up everywhere, and that they were to elect representatives to the Soviet. In this way the elected representatives of workers and soldiers combined their political activities. “In all matters of policy,” said this order, “the military should submit to the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies and to their own committees.” The Government agreed to this order of the Soviet.

At the end of March 1917 a conference was held in Petrograd, attended by over 400 delegates from local Soviets throughout the country. It was decided that an All-Russian Congress should be called in the near future, and the elected Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, together with ten delegates elected at the conference, was made responsible for the calling of this Congress.

It was as a result of this decision that in June 1917 an All-Russian Congress of Soviets was held, at which there were nearly 800 delegates from Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviets all over Russia. The Congress elected an Executive Committee to co-ordinate and lead the work of the Soviets until the next Congress.

Now let us pause a moment and examine what had happened in Russia during this short period of five months, A Completely new form of organization had come into being, covering the whole country and representing the working people, the peasants, and the soldiers— the vast majority of the population.

In its structure this network of Soviets bore a striking resemblance to democratic working-class organizations all over the world. Locally, there were the directly elected Soviets. Nationally, the supreme authority was a Congress of delegates from all the local Soviets. And to co-ordinate the work of these Soviets between Congresses, and to carry out its general instructions, the Congress elected an Executive Committee.

The Soviets had developed in a period of a few months into a nation-wide organization. The structure of this organization was like that of working-class organizations all over the world. There were local elected committees, which sent delegates to Congresses, and the Congress elected an Executive Committee to lead the organization between Congresses.

But this Soviet system was broader than the usual working-class organization in one very important respect. It not only represented the industrial workers: it represented both the industrial workers and the soldiers. And, at the same time, the peasants in the villages were electing their own delegates to Soviets of peasants. In this way the new Soviet organization embraced practically the whole of the people of the country; only the landlords, employers of labour, high officials of the Government, and people associated with these categories, did not take part in their activity.

Between June 1917, when the first Congress of Soviets met in Petrograd, and October 1917, the Provisional Government of Russia continued to carry on the war. But the people became increasingly opposed to its continuation, and the demand for peace was more and more put forward at the election of delegates to the Soviets.

At the same time the Government was becoming increasingly disturbed at the growing demands of the people, and at the political activity of the workers and peasants. This resulted in a danger that, as soon as it was in a position to do so, the Government might impose a military dictatorship and smash the rapidly growing democratic organizations of the workers, peasants, and soldiers, including the Soviets.

It was in this situation, when the people of Russia were faced with the imminent suppression of their own organizations and the deprival of that freedom of discussion which the Soviets had given them, that, in October 1917, an armed uprising, led by the Bolsheviks took place in Petrograd; and, on the following day, at the Second Congress of Soviets, a new Government was set up, responsible to the Soviets themselves.

A few extracts from the resolution of this Congress, setting up the new form of government, may be of interest:

“The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies has opened. The enormous majority of the Soviets are represented in it. A number of delegates from the Peasants’ Soviets are present at the Congress. . . . The Congress takes power into its hands, relying on the will of the enormous majority of the workers, soldiers, and peasants, supported by the victorious uprising of the workers and the garrison which has taken place in Petrograd . . .

“The Congress decrees: all power throughout the country passes into the hands of Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies.”

The new Government consisted of a Council of People’s Commissars, a People’s Commissar being the head of a State Department. These Commissars were directly responsible to the Congress, and, between Congresses, to the Executive Committee which the Congress elected.

At the Second Congress of Soviets, however, while the workers and soldiers were well represented, there were present only a comparatively small number of delegates from the Peasants’ Soviets, which had their own Executive Committee, and which were preparing for their own separate Congress a week later. At this Congress of Peasants’ Soviets, after Lenin had explained the reasons for the seizure of power ten days previously and the decree which had been already adopted on the land question, it was decided that the Peasants’ Congress should elect a number of representatives to the Central Executive Committee, and that thus a united Government should be formed representing the workers, peasants, and soldiers. It was this united Executive Committee which now became the supreme authority, and which summoned the Third Congress of Soviets in January 1918 at which there were over 700 delegates, representing workers, peasants, and soldiers from all over Russia.

In a period of a few weeks there had come into being in Russia a new kind of State. In structure this new State corresponded to democratic organizations of working people all over the world. But whereas a trade union represents only the wage-earners in particular occupations, the Soviet State embraced all working citizens, in industry, on the land, and in the army. Only a very small percentage—less than 5 percent of the Russian population—did not participate in the work of the Soviets.

Sometimes, I think, the reason why certain types of citizen did not participate in the Soviets is misunderstood. And the misunderstanding arises from the fact that the essential nature of the Soviet State, as a State of a new type, is not fully appreciated. When, however, we watch the historical development of the Soviets, it should be quite clear that, as fighting organizations of the working people against the employers, they naturally excluded the employers from participation in running them; just as trade unions in Britain to-day, as organizations of the workers against the employers, exclude the employers from the right to participate in their affairs. Similarly, in the country, where the Soviets were used by the peasants for confiscating and dividing-up the landlords’ estates, they were not going to invite the landlords to join with them in the work of these Soviets!

It is as a fighting organization of the vast majority of the population against the small minority of landlords and employers and their officials that the Soviet State came into being in 1917. It is, therefore, not surprising that, in the Declaration of Rights of the Labouring and Exploited Masses which was adopted at the Third Congress, it is expressly stated that “now, at the decisive moment in the struggle between the workers and their exploiters, there can be no place for the latter on any organ of government.” The Soviet State was a democratic organization of the vast majority of the people, but it deprived the small minority of property-owners of political rights. For the working people, for all but the small minority of employers, together with certain sections of the population closely allied to them, universal suffrage was introduced for men and women alike, at the age of eighteen, irrespective of sex, nationality, or religion. All working citizens, and housewives who made it possible for others to work, had the right to vote, and to stand for election without property or residential qualifications, so long as they had reached eighteen years of age. In this way a degree of democracy for over 95 percent of the population was introduced, such as they had never previously enjoyed. On the other hand, for less than 5 percent of the population—those who lived on unearned incomes—there no longer existed the right to participate in government.

Similarly, with regard to the Press, steps were taken by the Soviet Government which has already been described, and which, from the standpoint of the overwhelming majority of the people of Russia, can only be regarded as democratic. But, from the point of view of the private Press lords, these steps were an outrageous attack on their rights! For, in the Constitution of the Russian Soviet Republic, adopted at the Fifth Congress of Soviets in July 1918, we find “effective liberty of opinion” for the working population being ensured by putting “an end to the dependence of the Press upon capital.” Freedom to own the Press passed from the Press lords to the people.

In England, at the beginning of May 1926, just before the General Strike, the workers on the ''Daily Mail'' refused to print certain articles with which they disagreed. In an official statement from Downing Street this was described as a “gross interference with the freedom of the Press.” The men that produced the paper had claimed a say in what they printed! The Soviet Government, early in 1918, went far further than the workers on the ''Daily Mail''. It confiscated all the privately owned printing presses and transferred them in their entirely to the organizations of the workers, peasants, and soldiers. From the point of view of the private owners of newspapers, the young Soviet Government was guilty of the most outrageous interference with the freedom of the Press.

But look at the same situation from the standpoint, not of the small minority of people in Russia who were rich enough to own newspapers, but of the overwhelming majority of the people who had never before had at their disposal the columns of the Press! For these people—for practically the whole of the people of Russia—the newspapers became their own, collectively controlled through the Soviets and other organizations. To these people the Soviet Government had given a freedom of the Press such as they had never before dreamt of possessing.

In our Introduction we saw that the Soviet State, from its very inception, combined features both of democracy and dictatorship. We are now in a position to see why it combined these features. It combined them because, as a democratic fighting organization of the working people—of the overwhelming majority of the people of Russia—it took steps to put an end to the power of the employing class, a small minority. While granting universal suffrage to all citizens, men and women alike, that worked for a living, it deprived of political rights that small minority that lived by employing others. Similarly, in granting the use of the printing presses to the organizations of the overwhelming majority of the people, it withdrew the use of these presses from those who, hitherto, had owned them only because they had been rich enough to do so.

The Soviet State is fundamentally different from other States in the world to-day. It is in essence an organization of the working people, of the vast majority of the population, in their struggle for better conditions. Many of the steps which it took, democratic when considered from the point of view of the vast majority of the people, were sheer outrages to the owners of property, against whom such measures were taken.

That is why, from 1918 to 1922, the new Soviet State had to fight for its very existence against the combined forces of more than ten foreign Powers.

=== A Workers' State ===
The Soviets were built up in Russia over a period of seven months before they seized power and became the new State. Clearly, during such a period, with continuous conflict between the workers and the employers, with periods of advance and periods of temporary defeat for the working people, it was not possible for anyone to sit down and theoretically work out, according to plan, the general form of organization into which the Soviets were evolving. But, in spite of this fact, we find that the actual form which developed was almost exactly similar to the form of other working-class organizations, in other parts of the world, even at the present time.

The structure of democratic working-class organizations is almost always on the same general lines. Members join branches which elect local committees. On territories which cover a number of branches, either delegate committees, or conferences which elect a coordinating committee, are the supreme authority. And, nationally, the supreme authority is usually a congress, with a committee elected at the congress taking its place as the supreme authority between congresses. This form of working-class organization is universal because it is the most satisfactory form for working-class purposes. By means of delegate congresses the supreme authority mainly represents the rank and file of the members, who give their delegates instructions. By means of a small executive committee elected at the congress the number of permanent officers is reduced to a minimum, so that most of the delegates can return to their regular jobs in their localities. Such a system will be more or less satisfactory according as the delegates really represent those who elect them. The Soviets, from their very origin, made all members of the Soviets subject to recall if they ceased to give their electors satisfaction. In this way the Soviets were more democratic than many democratic organizations of the working people in other countries even at the present time.

For the first months of its existence the new Soviet Government was occupied with passing legislation in the interests of the working people, the vast majority of the population. An immediate decision was passed on the necessity for concluding a “democratic peace, without indemnities or annexations,” and an appeal was broadcast to the peoples of the world to do likewise. In January 1918, at the Third Congress of Soviets, the Declaration of Rights already mentioned was adopted. In this declaration “Russia is declared a Republic of Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies. All central and local authority is vested in these Soviets. . . . The Russian Soviet Republic is established on the basis of a free union of free nations, as a federation of national Soviet Republics.” And, in order to ensure that this federation should be really voluntary, the Congress leaves “to the workers and peasants of each nationality the right to decide freely, at their own national Congress of Soviets, whether they desire to participate in the federal Government and in other federal Soviet institutions.” When Finland and Armenia declared their independence, this declaration was welcomed by the Congress of Soviets, together with the policy of the Soviet Government of withdrawing Russian troops from Persia.

Another of the first decrees of the Soviet Government was on the nationalization of the land. The local Soviets were empowered to confiscate the landed estates, and to distribute this land to the peasants according to their needs. A little later, in the towns, all housing accommodation was nationalized, and the towns Soviets were given authority to distribute this housing according to the needs of the population. This meant that workers from the most overcrowded quarters were brought to the centre of the town, the houses of the well-to-do were divided into flats, and, while the original owner was allowed one of these flats, the rest were put at the disposal of workers from the worst slums. Similarly, where houses were empty, workers were moved into them from the most overcrowded areas. From that day to this it has been impossible in Soviet territory to see what is such a common sight in Britain—houses standing empty, or partly used, while in basements in the same street whole families are living in one room.

Programmes of universal education, social insurance, and the nationalization of the banks and large-scale industry were decided on during the first months of Soviet rule. The eight-hour working day was introduced, and paid holidays of at least two weeks annually were granted to all workers.

In the Declaration of Rights the purpose of the Soviet State was described as the “fundamental aim of suppressing all exploitation of man by man, of abolishing the division, of society into classes . . . of bringing about the Socialist organization of society. . . .” With this end in view, “work useful to the community is made compulsory upon all.”

It was not, however, until the Fifth Congress of Soviets, in July 1918, that a Constitution was adopted for the first Soviet Republic. This Constitution was a composite document, including the Declaration of Rights, and adding to it a number of provisions to ensure democracy for the working population at the same time as it deprived the employing class of all political power. The Constitution also included a description of the organization of the Soviet State.

We have seen how the Press was turned over from private hands to the organizations of the workers, peasants, and soldiers. Similarly, with regard to the meeting-halls, measures were taken to ensure that all premises “suitable for public gatherings, together with lighting, heating, and furniture,” should be at the disposal of the working people. It is according to this original law of the Soviet Republic that the administration of the Soviet factory to-day is bound to allow the workers to use the factory buildings as a meeting-place out of working hours, and to allow accommodation there for the trade union offices. At the same time, with regard to freedom of association, the new State “lends to the workers all its material and moral assistance to help them unite and to organize themselves.” We have already seen how this attitude to trade unionism led to a phenomenal growth both in trade union membership and in the powers of the trade unions.

Particularly important were the early decrees of the Soviet Government on the question of military service. In one such decree it was stated that “one of the basic aims of Socialism is to liberate humanity from the burden of militarism and from the barbarism of sanguinary clashes between peoples. The objective of Socialism is general disarmament, perpetual peace, and brotherly co-operation of all the peoples which inhabit the earth.” But “in all countries the imperialist bourgeoisie is in power. Its policy is directed towards the suppression of the Communist Revolution and the enslavement of all weak peoples.” Therefore the Soviet Republic “must create its own powerful army.” But “to arm the bourgeoisie would mean the bringing of continual strife into the army and would therefore paralyse its strength in the struggle against foreign enemies.” Therefore “the parasitic and exploiting elements in society, which do not wish to assume equal rights and obligations with others, cannot be permitted to bear arms. The Workers’ and Peasants’ Government will seek out means to impose on the bourgeoisie in some form part of the burden of the defence of the Republic.”

We now come to the description, in the Constitution of 1918, of the structure of the Soviet State. For the first time in history universal suffrage was introduced for every citizen, from the age of eighteen upwards, irrespective of religion, sex, or nationality, and without residential or property qualifications. Every such person could vote at elections, and stand for election. But because, as has already been pointed out, the Soviet State was an organization of the working population for defending their interests against the property-owners, the latter had no political rights in the Soviet State. Universal suffrage was enjoyed by all who lived by their own labour, those who by performing domestic duties enabled others to carry on productive work, those working people who through invalidity were unable to work, and those who were in the army or navy defending the Soviet Republic. On the other hand, however, employee and those who lived on unearned income, agents and middlemen, monies and priests, agents of the former police, members of the former royal family, and the mentally deranged, were not allowed the right to participate in elections.

Some surprise may be felt that the priests and monks were deprived of the right to vote and to stand for election. It must be remembered, however, that the Church in Tsarist Russia was the largest single land-owner, and when the landed estates were confiscated the priests and monks, together with the other land-lords, almost without exception, joined forces with the armed counter-revolution. Religious freedom was guaranteed from the first days of the Revolution, and “freedom of religious and anti-religious propaganda” was assured to every citizen by the Constitution. At the same time, however, the Church was disestablished, and deprived of its income from land and industry, and the schools were completely taken over by the State. In this way religion became a private, as opposed to a State, concern; religious groups had now to pay their own priests without any form of State subsidy or unearned income from property.

Universal suffrage was established in 1918 for the vast majority of the population of Russia at a lower age than in any other country. At the same time, for a small minority the right to vote and to stand for election was not permitted. Writing in 1919, Lenin pointed out that this was a temporary measure, in the interest of the working people at a time when every means was being used by the property-owners, nationally and internationally, to overthrow the Soviet State. Here are his words:

“The Russian Communist Party must explain to the toiling masses, in order to avoid a wrong generalization from transient historical needs, that the disfranchisement of a section of citizens does not in the Soviet Republic affect, as was the case in the majority of bourgeois-democratic republics, a definite category of citizens disfranchised for life, but applies only to the exploiters, only to those who, in violation of the fundamental laws of the Socialist Soviet Republic, persist in defending their position as exploiters, in pre-serving capitalist relationships. Consequently, in the Soviet Republic, on the one hand, every day of added strength to Socialism and diminution in the number of those who have objective possibilities of remaining exploiters or of preserving capitalist relationships, automatically reduces the percentage of disfranchised persons. In Russia at the present time this percentage is hardly more than 2 or 3. On the other hand, in the not distant future, the cessation of foreign invasion and the completion of the expropriation of the expropriators may, under certain conditions, create a situation in which the proletarian State power will choose other methods of suppressing the resistance of the exploiters and will introduce universal suffrage ''without any restrictions''.”

The structure of the Soviet State, as described in the Constitution of 1918, was not evolved by a group of politicians and lawyers sitting in conference and drawing up a Constitution. It was a description of the existing Soviet State as it had come into existence during the preceding year. The local Soviets, as we have seen, were simply councils of delegates, elected by the workers at their factory meetings, and by the peasants at meetings in the villages. At these meetings the workers and peasants discussed the merits of the various candidates proposed, and then voted in the simplest and most straightforward way, by show of hands.

So, in the Constitution itself, we find that the basic unit of the Soviet State is the town and village Soviet, directly elected by the whole working population of the age of eighteen and upwards. In the village, on the consent of the local authority, the voting age could be lowered to sixteen.

For areas larger than the town or village, such as counties, provinces, and national territories covering a number of towns and villages, the supreme authority was a Congress of Soviets for that area, to which delegates were sent from all the local Soviets. Such Congresses elected their own Executive Committees, which carried on the work of government between Congresses.

For the Russian Soviet Republic as a whole the supreme authority was an All-Russian Congress of Soviets. According to the Constitution, this “All-Russian Congress of Soviets is composed of representatives of town Soviets, on the basis of one deputy for every 25,000 electors, and representatives of provincial Congresses of Soviets, on the basis of one deputy for every 125,000 inhabitants.” At first sight this form of representation gave great over-representation to the town population, but this view is somewhat illusory.

It must be noted that the representation of the towns is stated in terms of the number of electors, of the provinces in terms of inhabitants. Now the electors were all working citizens over the age of eighteen whereas the number of inhabitants included the non-voters, whether employers of labour or juveniles. Therefore one representative for every 25,000 voters was not very much greater than one for every 125,000 inhabitants.

As against this, however, must be set the fact that in the provincial Congresses, the towns as well as the villages of the province were represented. Therefore in the election of the provincial delegates the representatives of the town workers also participated. In this respect there was a certain element of dual representation of the town electors. The citizens of Moscow sent delegates to the All-Russian Congress from the Moscow Soviet. But the Moscow Soviet was also represented at the Moscow Provincial Congress of Soviets. And this Congress also sent delegates to the All-Russian Congress. In this way the representation of the towns was definitely greater, in proportion to population, than the representation of the villages.

How did this inequality of representation arise? The answer is that the detailed structure of the Soviet State developed between February 1917 and the seizure of power in October, and between October 1917 and the adoption of the Constitution in June 1918, not as a result of a conscious and premeditated plan, but as a result of the direct political activity of the people. It has been mentioned already that until after the seizure of power in October 1917 the Peasants’ Congress met separately. While the first two Congresses of Soviets, representing the workers and soldiers, were attended by delegates elected in proportion to the number of voters, at the Peasants’ Congress the representation happened to be according to village population. When, after the Second Congress, the peasants joined the workers and soldiers in the Central Executive Committee, the dual system of election was continued.

It also happened that the most active section of the people in building up the Soviets was the working class of the towns. This led to a large representation of the town workers at the early Congresses. Similarly, in the provincial Congresses the workers played an active part. And in this way there evolved the system of dual representation which has been mentioned.

Now it would have been possible, at the Fifth Congress of Soviets, when the Constitution was adopted, to have eliminated the inequality in representation between town and country, but this was not done, and quite consciously. The reason was that the working class of Russia had so far played a leading part in the building up of the Soviets, and it was because of this practical leadership that its representation was large in proportion to its numbers. Was it desirable that the most active section of the community in the new State should be deprived of part of its representation in the name of an abstract “Equality”? Or, alternatively, was it desirable that the class which had shown the initiative in setting up the Soviet State should for the time being continued to enjoy greater representation than the other main class in society, which had proved less active? The Congress decided to preserve the predominance of working-class representation, of that leadership which had given rise to the Soviet State, the leadership of the class which had shown the greatest energy in defending the Soviets against attack.

Three outstanding features of the Soviet elections should here be mentioned. First, all delegates to the Soviets, to Congresses, and members of Executive Committees were made subject to recall if their electors were dissatisfied with their work. In this way the permanency of every official’s post depended on the agreement of his electors. Secondly, every elected delegate to any Soviet body was bound, not only to sit on the Soviet as a committee member, but also to participate in the day-to-day work of the Soviet. In this way every member not only passed laws, but was one of those responsible for carrying them out. There was thus no divorce between legislature and executive, between those who made the laws and those who enforced them.

Thirdly, a word must be said as to the nature of the elections. In the Soviet State, as in working-class organizations in this country to-day, the system of election was based on the desire to return to the organs of government those who were best suited to represent their fellows. At every election meeting a discussion took place on the work of the Soviet authorities, and general instructions were adopted as to the policy to be pursued in the future. Each delegate who was elected was instructed to pursue the policy agreed upon at the meeting. And at intervals he had to report back to the electors on how he was carrying out this policy on the Soviet. Members of the Soviets were delegates with a mandate from their electors, and subject to recall if they did not carry out this mandate to the satisfaction of their supporters. This system stands in sharp contrast to the parliamentary system, where candidates come forward with a cut-and-dried statement of policy, the electors choose the program which they think they prefer, and the candidate who is returned then proceeds to carry it out or not, as the spirit moves him. The system of election in the Soviet Union is only comparable with that which prevails in democratic working-class organizations in the capitalist world, with the right of recall making it even more democratic.

The All-Russian Congress of Soviets elected a Central Executive Committee. This Executive Committee was the supreme authority between Congresses. The Executive Committee was responsible for appointing the “Government,” or Council of People’s Commissars, which consisted of the heads of all the different State departments. The People’s Commissars were responsible to the Central Executive Committee for their work. The Council of People’s Commissars could meet together and issue decrees, and each Commissar, individually, could issue decrees in his own department. Any such decrees were subject to the approval of the Central Executive Committee.

In this way we see that the structure of the Soviet State combined the elective principle, through the Soviets, while at the same time, leadership and appointment, through the State departments. The Central Executive Committee was responsible to the Congress; the Congress consisted of delegates from the local Soviets, and these were responsible to the people. On the other hand, the Executive Committee appointed the People’s Commissars, who appointed their various departmental officials, who were responsible for appointing the workers in the various State organizations right down to the smallest State factory or workshop. But here again, side by side with the managers appointed from above, and who are ultimately responsible to the Commissar, sit the representatives of the workers, in the person of elected trade union officials. So that throughout the Soviet system there is a most intricate combination of election and appointment, responsibility to the rank and file and responsibility to a higher authority, the election and recall of representatives by the electors, and the appointment and dismissal of workers by the authorities. Every Soviet organization is controlled by representatives of the people. The factory manager is responsible to some trust, which is responsible to one of the State Commissariats. The Commissar is responsible to the Central Executive Committee, which, indirectly, is responsible to the electors. The trade union representative is responsible to the workers, who are also electors to the Soviets. It is this complex system of government, combining the maximum of rank-and-file responsibility with the elective principle, and with appointment by higher authorities of lower officials, that is responsible for the status of all Soviet citizens as masters as well as servants, as described in Part I.

It was this new kind of State, too, which inspired Lenin, in reply to Kautsky’s accusation that the Soviet Government was undemocratic, enthusiastically to exclaim:

“Is there a single country in the world, even among the most democratic bourgeois countries, in which the ''average rank-and-file'' worker, the average rank-and-file ''village labourer'' . . . enjoys anything approaching such ''liberty'' to hold meetings in the best buildings, such ''liberty'' to use the best printing works and the largest stocks of paper, to express his ideas and to protect his interests, such liberty to promote men and women of his own class to administer and to ‘run’ the State as in Soviet Russia?” (''Proletarian Revolution'', p. 31)

=== Democratic Defence—The Red Army ===
In 1931, when I first went to the U.S.S.R., I had certain pacifist sympathies. It was not encouraging, therefore, to see factory workers sometimes marching through the streets carrying rifles, and to find that military training of some kind was available in practically every Soviet institution. Since then, however, my personal experiences while living in the U.S.S.R., together with certain events that have taken place in the rest of the world, have convinced me that effective democracy is something which must be defended by arms against those who, at the present time, are doing their utmost to smash it by force.

And, once this need to defend the achievements of the Revolution by force against armed intervention is realized, then the extent to which the people of the U.S.S.R. receive military training is to be appreciated as one of the greatest proofs of real democracy. To make a comparison with Britain I would put it this way: In Britain, in the “public schools” where the sons of the well-to-do receive their expensive education, the “Officers’ Training Corps” is a voluntary organization of which practically 100 percent of the boys are members. In the universities such corps also flourish. But I have yet to find the industrial enterprises in Britain, where the breadwinners of some 75 percent of the population earn their living, where there are Officers’ Training Corps, so that the people may become skilled in the art of defence. By contrast, it just happens in the U.S.S.R. to be in the factories and in the collective farms, as well as in the universities and scientific institutions, that citizens may receive the elements of military knowledge, and are thus trained to defend themselves against any enemy. In this way the military training which in Britain is confined to a small section of the population is at the disposal of the whole community. Every Soviet citizen has the opportunity to be trained as a military leader.

This relationship between the people of the U.S.S.R. and the army is nothing new. It has existed since the setting up of the Soviet State in 1917. In January 1918 it was declared by the Third Congress of Soviets that “in order to secure the supremacy of the labouring masses, and to guard against any possibility of the exploiters regaining power, the Congress decrees the arming of the workers, the formation of a Socialist Red Army of workers and peasants, and the complete disarmament of the propertied classes.” At the same time it was declared “the duty of all citizens to defend the Socialist fatherland” and “the honour of bearing arms in defence of the Revolution is granted only to the workers. The leisured section of the population will fulfil other military duties.” In this way the “public school class” of Russia was deprived of the right to participate in defence, because the working people distrusted this class in the defence of the Revolution; while the military training of the people, which in Britain is confined within the walls of the “public schools” and universities, was extended to the whole population.

In the early days of the Revolution the Soviet Government issued a decree for the arming of the whole people. The arsenals of the State were thrown open to the workers and peasants, and the authorities were instructed that the people were to be allowed arms for the defence of the Revolution. When, in 1918, a war broke out which was to last for four years, the exigencies of war ‘taught the same lesson as Spain has learned during 1936. This was that the “armed people” were defenceless against a well-organized trained army unless they, too, achieved first-class organization and discipline. And a disciplined and well-organized army is impossible without centralized command.

As a result of the necessities of the war itself, the unorganized arming of the people and the defence of the Revolution by badly trained groups of armed workers could not be allowed to continue. The necessary steps were therefore taken by the Soviet Government to build up a regular army, with a centralized command and the enforcement of the necessary discipline, even though this meant the elimination of certain features which were defended by some as being necessary to a democratic army. It must not be imagined that such a reorganization was easy, for the Revolution itself had been made possible only as a result of the complete breakdown of the old army discipline, the seizure of power by the rank-and-file soldiers and their elected committees, and the replacing of the old army officers by elected commanders. It took time to persuade the rank-and-file soldiers, once the commanders were really drawn from the ranks and there was an equal opportunity for all to rise to the highest positions of command, that a disciplined subordination to the commanders was still essential while in action, whatever might be the relationship of the men in the ranks to the commanders when off duty.

The experience of Soviet Russia in fighting against the armed intervention of ten foreign Powers was that the arming of the people must be followed at once by the organizing of a strong people’s army, with a centralized command, and well disciplined. While the old relationship between soldier and officer was completely abandoned, and all ranks mixed together as equals when off duty, the behaviour of every soldier when on duty had to conform to the necessary military discipline. The fact, however, that in the new army which was being built up the commanders themselves were drawn from the best elements in the ranks meant that the old antagonism between officer and soldier, reflecting the class relationships in society, no longer existed. In this way the Red Army was built up, an army which to-day is officered to the extent of some 95 percent by men drawn from the working class and the collective farm peasantry.

The structure of the Red Army and its administration is in general similar to that of other organizations of the Soviet State. The supreme authority is vested in the Commissar of Defence, who is appointed by the supreme authority of the State. Officers are appointed from above, but at the same time committees of the rank and file play a large part in the management of the barracks and in all matters immediately affecting the welfare of the soldiers, their social and political life, their education, feeding, housing conditions, and so on. In this way the Soviet barracks has its wall-newspaper like the factory, and the commander who does not treat the men with the necessary politeness may be criticized for his uncomradely attitude in the same way as a factory foreman may be criticized by the rank and file.

Just as, in the factory, there are opportunities for every worker to study and to obtain promotion, so, too, in the Red Army, every facility is available for free study and so for promotion. Any rank-and-file soldier may apply for admission to one of the military academies, and will be accepted as soon as he has the necessary qualifications.

Military service in the U.S.S.R. is an obligation on all citizens. So long, however, as there was an employing class, it was expressly stated that the employing class was not to be given military work for the defence of the country. To-day, however, now that the employers no longer exist as a class of the Soviet population, the new Constitution simply states; “Universal military service is the law. Military service in the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army represents the honourable duty of the citizens of the U.S.S.R.”

It has already been shown, when we were considering trade unions in the Soviet State, how the regiments of the Red Army freely mix with the workers and peasants in social and cultural activities of various kinds, as well as giving them active assistance in production in times of emergency. Similarly, when we discussed the setting up of the Soviet State, we saw that the soldiers, like the other citizens, had the full right to vote and to participate in elections. In the army of the U.S.S.R.—and this is a feature of every really democratic army—politics have always played an important part, for the Soviet Government has nothing to hide from its soldiers, and it is to the greatest advantage that they should know for what they are fighting.

In discussing the Soviet factory we saw how the work of the factory manager included, in addition to responsibility for production, the work of caring for the welfare of the workers employed. So, too, in the Red Army, the duty of the commander, not only to his superior staff but to the men under him, is stressed in the official field regulations which state: “Care for the Red Army man is the first obligation of the commander, and is his direct duty.”

An interesting feature of the field regulations of the Red Army is a paragraph which deals with the treatment of prisoners of war. We have already seen how, in general, prisoners in the Soviet Union are treated as deserving of education rather than punishment. However, with regard to deliberate enemies of the State, the law is applied as between enemies and not as between comrades. In preparing the Red Army for action, however, we find the following paragraph in the field regulations: “The troops of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army are generous to prisoners of war, and render them all kind of help for the purpose of preserving their lives.” This, at a time when the aeroplanes of Hitler and Mussolini were bombing the defenceless women and children fleeing from Malaga, was one of the field regulations issued by the Soviet Government.

I remember how, when working in Moscow, I happened to see a letter sent to the U.S.S.R. from an English worker. During the period of British intervention he had been sent to the north of Russia, and had been taken prisoner. In his letter he recalled his experiences—how he had been given work to do, was paid for this work, and allowed to spend his free time wandering about the town in the evenings just as he wished. This was no accidental treatment; it was typical of the treatment of prisoners during the last war against the U.S.S.R.; and, from the field regulations quoted, we see that it will probably be true of the next.

What is the explanation of this leniency, of this friendliness, to the prospective prisoners of the Red Army in a war? The answer is that the leaders of the Red Army look upon it, not simply as a military machine, but as a political organization capable of winning to its side the workers and peasants, the vast majority of the people, in any territory which it may enter. For this reason the regulations definitely state: “The winning over to the side of the proletarian revolution of the working and peasant masses of the enemy army as well as the population of the field of action is the principal condition for victory.”

The Fascists, in their attack on Spain, bomb defenceless women and children who are fleeing from a captured town. The Red Army, when there was a serious dispute with the Chinese in Manchuria a few years ago, entered Manchurian territory. When it entered a town or village the first thing it did was to hand over all stores of food and clothing to the most impoverished of the population, thus endearing itself to the women and children instead of murdering them. Such a policy is consistent only with a democratic army, not interested in the preservation, but with the destruction, of the power of private property. And it is for this reason that in a war against Fascism the Red Army has not only its own morale in its favour, but the opportunity to gain very rapidly the sympathy of all the democratic forces in the country with whose Government it happens to be at war. The Red Army, at a time when the whole world is menaced by ever more flagrant acts of Fascist aggression, stands out as a bulwark of democracy, as a political as well as a military organization, rooted in, and recruited from, the rank and file of the people, a people’s army which will respect the people of any territory which it may ever have cause to enter.

Such an army, however, representing a people so organized that they have no unemployment—and there are among them no citizens who can gain anything from war—is not likely to enter foreign territory unless absolutely compelled to do so by an act of aggression, either against the Soviet State itself, or against a State with which it has a pact of mutual assistance. In 1917 one of the main slogans of the, Congress of Soviets was “Peace.” To-day, twenty years later, no citizen of the U.S.S.R. wants war. Therefore we find that Voroshilov, Commissar for Defence of the U.S.S.R., recently made the following public statement:

“We are proud of our army, its organization, its military training, its splendid equipment, but without hesitation we would send this army back to the factories and the collective farm fields, we would disarm it completely if the capitalist countries would accept our disarmament proposals.”

Only the U.S.S.R. could contemplate such demobilization without fearing unemployment. Only the U.S.S.R. has jobs waiting for every ex-soldier, and only in the U.S.S.R.—a country where not one citizen can gain anything from war—can such a demobilization be looked upon as highly desirable, if only the security of the country could be guaranteed in other ways.

=== A Union of Nations ===
The Russian Soviet Republic, in January 1918, was declared “a free union of free nations,” a federation of national republics. Every nationality within the territory covered by the Soviets was given the right to decide, at its own Congress of Soviets, the conditions under which it would join this federation. And when certain nations which had previously been part of the former Russian Empire declared their complete independence, this was welcomed by the All-Russian Congress of Soviets.

But though, from its birth, the Soviet Republic recognized the rights of nations to determine their own fate, the surrounding States did not recognize the right of the Russian people to determine theirs. The result was that the actual seizure of power, which had been almost bloodless, was followed by four years of devastating “civil war,” when at least ten foreign armies co-operated in an attempt to suppress the Soviets. Finally, as a result of the united struggle of the Russian people, and the support which they received from the workers of other countries, peace was restored in the West in 1921, and in the Far East in the following year.

During this war the Russian Soviet Government again had an opportunity to state its position in relation to other nations. For, in 1920, urged on by France, the Polish Government was preparing openly to declare war on the Soviets. At that time the Soviet Government issued a manifesto which was reprinted throughout the world, and was widely circulated in Britain.

Here is an extract from this manifesto: “Your enemies, who are ours, speak falsely when they tell you that the Russian Soviet Government intends to force Communism on the Polish people with the help of the bayonets of the Red Army. Communism is only possible in countries where the vast majority of the working people have the will to secure it by their own initiative. . . . The reorganization of Poland in accordance with the interests of the Polish masses must be the work of these working masses themselves.” The essence of this manifesto was repeated by Stalin in 1936 in his interview with Roy Howard: “Every country will make its own revolution if it wants to, and if it does not there will be no revolution. For example, our country wanted to make a revolution and made it, and now we are building a new, classless society. But to assert that we want to make a revolution in other countries, to interfere in their lives, means saying what is untrue, and what we have never advocated.”

These two passages are extremely important, the one from 1920 and the other from 1936. For if the Soviet Government really recognized the right of nations to self-determination, and then it essentially had to hold this democratic view of the revolution in other countries.

The restoration of peace in 1921 and 1922 found the territory covered by the Soviets considerably extended. For in the process of the struggle there had been set up additional Soviet Republics in the Ukraine and White Russia, in Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. At the same time, however, the economic position of all these territories was far worse than it had been in 1917, for the retreating armies of intervention had done their utmost to wreck everything which they left behind them. Railways were blown up and factories burnt to the ground. The Soviet Republics were faced with the problem of economic reconstruction at the same time as they knew that at any moment another attack might be launched against them, perhaps by one State, or perhaps by all the members of the League of Nations together; for, in the eyes of its founder, this institution was to act as a “bulwark against Bolshevism.”

The experience of the war itself, and the economic problems which it created, brought the different Soviet Republics into the closest contact with each other. Experience showed that still closer union was essential to future security. Therefore, in December 1922, a Treaty of Union was signed between the Soviet Republics; and the U.S.S.R.—the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—was in this way brought into being.

In this treaty it was pointed out that the world was now divided into two camps, capitalist and Socialist. “Only in the camp of the Soviets,” it goes on, “has it been found possible to root out national persecution, to create conditions of mutual trust, and to lay the foundations of fraternal co-operation. . . .

“But the years of war were not without their heritage. The ruined fields and idle factories, the breakdown of production and the exhaustion of economic resources which follow from the war, render the isolated efforts of the separate Republics towards economic reconstruction inadequate. The revival of the economic life of the country has proved impossible so long as the Republics lead a divided existence. Furthermore, the unsettled state of international relations, and the danger of new attacks, render imperative the creation of a common front by the Soviet Republics against capitalist encirclement.

“Finally, the very structure of the Soviet power, which is international in its class character, urges the working masses of the Soviet Republics along the path of union into one Socialist family.”

According to the Treaty of Union, a central federal Government was to be formed which would control defence and foreign affairs—including the establishment of one form of Soviet citizenship to cover the whole union, and also including the admission of new republics. The Government of the Union would also be responsible for introducing a general economic plan for the whole territory; for regulating trade, currency, and taxation; for deciding on the best methods of utilizing the land; and for controlling transport and communications, weights and measures. In addition, the Government of the Union was to lay down the general principles governing such matters as education and health protection.

The Governments of the republics which joined the Union were to have complete self-government on every matter that was not included in the treaty, and every republic had the right to secede from the Union if it wished to do so. On the other hand, however, if a republic passed any law which was contrary to the terms of the treaty, then this law could be annulled by the Government of the Union.

The Treaty of Union was signed in 1922, and ratified by the first All-Union Congress of Soviets, which was elected in the same way as the All-Russian Congress. Delegates were elected from all the territory now covered by the Union, in the proportion of one to every 25,000 town electors, and one to every 125,000 inhabitants of the provinces. The Congress elected a Central Executive Committee, which started to draw up a Constitution for the Union.

The original conception of the structure of the Union Government was that it should be an almost exact copy of the Russian Soviet Republic, but covering all the territory now within the Union. However, it was mainly as a result of the initiative of Stalin personally, himself a Georgian and an expert on the national question, that special features were incorporated in the Constitution of the Union in order to protect the rights of all the national republics from a possible domination by the Russians, who formed an overwhelming majority of the total population of the Union, and who thus would hold a majority of the votes in the Congress of Soviets. The Constitution was adopted in its final form at the Second All-Union Congress of Soviets in 1924.

The supreme authority in the U.S.S.R., as in each republic, was to be the Congress of Soviets. Delegates were to be sent to this Congress elected in the same proportion to population as the delegates to the Russian Congress. But the Central Executive Committee was to be given a special structure, peculiar to its position as Government of a Union of independent and equal national republics. Instead of being, as in the separate republics, a single body elected at the Congress of Soviets, the Central Executive Committee was to be divided into two separate councils, with completely equal powers in every respect. Each could introduce new legislation, but no law could be passed without being accepted by a majority in each of these councils separately.

How were these councils to be elected?

On the one hand, the Council of the Union was to be elected in precisely the same way as the Central Executive Committee had previously been; that is, by direct election at the Congress of Soviets. The Council of the Union would represent the delegates at the Congress, and, since an absolute majority of these delegates came from the Russian Soviet Republic, the Council of the Union would have a Russian majority. But this Council of the Union could do nothing without the agreement of a majority of the members of the Council of Nationalities.

The Council of Nationalities was to consist of representatives of the different republican Governments appointed in equal numbers. In the Council of Nationalities the Russians would, therefore, be a small minority, quite out-voted by the Ukrainians and the Georgians, the White Russians and the Armenians, together with the Uzbeks and Tadjiks and Turkmenians who had joined the Union later.

The Government of the U.S.S.R., then, was a unique compromise between the representation of the people, as individual voters irrespective of their nationality, and of the nations of the Union, as equal nations. Only in extreme cases was it likely that the two councils would not reach agreement on any particular question; while the scheme gave the smaller nations of the Union, though a minority of the total population, a large say in determining policy.

In case of disagreement, and if no attempt at conciliation proved successful, disputes were to be referred to a Congress of Soviets specially called for the purpose. However, no occasion has arisen where this was necessary, for the two councils have been able to work in complete harmony.

The problems involved in setting up this multinational State were difficult ones. In his speech to the Eighth All-Union Congress of Soviets, where the new Constitution of 1936 was adopted, Stalin says on this matter; “The Constitution now in operation, adopted in 1924, was the first Constitution of the U.S.S.R. That was a period when the relations between the peoples had not yet been properly adjusted, when survivals of distrust towards the Great Russians had not yet disappeared, and when centrifugal forces still continued to operate. Under these conditions it was necessary to establish fraternal co-operation between the peoples on the basis of economic, political, and military mutual aid by uniting them in a single, federated, multi-national State. The Soviet Government could not but realize the difficulties of this task. It had before it the unsuccessful experiments of multinational states in bourgeois countries. It had before it the failure of the experiment of the old Austria-Hungary. Nevertheless, it resolved to make the experiment of creating a multi-national State, for it knew that a multi-national State which has arisen on the basis of Socialism is bound to stand every test.

“Since then fourteen years have elapsed, a period long enough to test the experiment. And what do we find? This period has shown beyond doubt that the experiment of forming a multi-national State based on Socialism has been completely successful. This is the undoubted victory of Lenin’s national policy.

“How is this victory to be explained?

“By the absence of exploiting classes, which are the principal organizers of strife between nations; the absence of exploitation, which cultivates mutual distrust and kindles nationalist passions; the fact that power is in the hands of the working class, which is an enemy of all enslavement and the true vehicle of the ideas of internationalism; the actual practice of mutual aid among the peoples in all spheres of economic and social life; and, finally, the flourishing national culture of the peoples of the U.S.S.R., culture which is national in form and Socialist in content—all these and similar factors have brought about a radical change in the aspect of the peoples of the U.S.S.R.; their feeling of mutual distrust has disappeared, a feeling of mutual friendship has developed among them, and thus real fraternal co-operation between the peoples has been established within the system of a single federated State.”

And within this great federation, as we have already seen, the treatment of all nations as equals, and of all citizens as equals, irrespective of their nationality, has led to a great growth of national pride. In the U.S.S.R. to-day no citizen, Jew or German, Abyssinian or Italian, Negro or American, Indian or English, is ashamed of his nationality, is privileged because of his nationality, or, because of his nationality or colour, and is deprived of any privilege due to him as a working-citizen of the U.S.S.R. Such a country can indeed be called a Union of Nations, and many of the peoples of the British Empire will envy a unity based upon such an equality of peoples.

=== Electors and Administrators ===
For those who worked, the young Soviet State gave its citizens the right to vote and to stand for election at an earlier age than in any other country. The representatives that the people elected, if they proved unsatisfactory, were subject to recall by their electors. And, when elected, every representative of the people was bound, not only to participate in the making of decisions, but also in their execution. In addition, so as to draw into the work of administration a vast number of working people—far more than could actually be elected to membership of the Soviets—a system was early evolved by which working men and women, in their spare time, should represent their fellows in the various organs of State administration, national and local, and participate in their work.

The result is that, whether we take a local Soviet or the Central Executive Committee of the U.S.S.R., we find in its offices three categories of workers. First, elected members of the Soviet or Executive Committee, who are bound to participate in the work of one of the departments of the public authority to which they have been elected. Secondly, there are paid employees, appointed by, and responsible to, the elected body. And thirdly, voluntary workers, not bound by any law to do this work, but who have been elected in their trade union meetings to participate in the work of the Soviets, or of an Executive Committee.

I have, while working in the Soviet Union, participated in an election. I, too, had a right to vote, as I was a working member of the community, and nationality and citizenship is no bar to electoral rights. The procedure was extremely simple. A general meeting of all the workers in our organization was called by the trade union committee, candidates were discussed, and a vote was taken by show of hands. Anybody present had the right to propose a candidate, and the one who was elected was not personally a member of the Party. In considering the claims of the candidates their past activities were discussed, they themselves had to answer questions as to their qualifications, anybody could express an opinion, for or against them, and the basis of all the discussion was: What justification had the candidates to represent their comrades on the local Soviet?

As far as the elections in the villages were concerned, these took place at open village meetings, all peasants of voting age, other than those who employed labour, having the right to vote and to stand for election. As in the towns, any organization or individual could put forward candidates, anyone could ask the candidate questions, and anybody could support or oppose the candidature. It is usual for the Communist Party to put forward a candidate, trade unions and other organizations can also do so, and there is nothing to prevent the Party’s candidate from not being elected, if he has not sufficient prestige among the voters.

In the towns the “electoral district” has hitherto consisted of a factory, or a group of small factories sufficient to form a constituency. But there was one section of the town population which has always had to vote geographically, since they did not work together in one organization. This was the housewives. As a result, the housewives met separately in each district, had their own constituencies, and elected their own representatives to the Soviet. Here, too, vital interest has always been shown in the personality of every candidate. Why should this woman be elected? What right had she to represent her fellow housewives on the local Soviet? In the district next to my own at the last election the housewife who was elected was well known as an organizer of a communal dining-room in the district. This was the land of person that the housewives wanted to represent them on the Soviet. Another candidate, a Communist, proposed by the local organization of the Party, was turned down in her favour.

It will be clear from this description that a Soviet election has, up to the present, been a most simple and informal affair, for the purpose of sending forward the best representatives of the people to sit on the local and national organs of government. Organizations and individuals have both been able to put forward candidates, and in cases where the Communist Party has supported candidates they have not always necessarily been members of the Party itself, and, whether they have been members or not, there has never been any guarantee of their election, other than their desirability as candidates to a majority of those present at the meeting. If since November 1917 the Communist Party in the U.S.S.R. has continued to have its members as a majority of the delegates to the Congresses of Soviets, this is purely due to the fact that the Communist Party has put up for election those very people that the electors were likely to respect, and has not as a rule put up people whom the electors were likely to reject.

The election of delegates to the local Soviet is not the only function of voters in the Soviet Union, It is not a question here of various parties presenting candidates to the electorate, each with his own policy to offer. The Soviet electorate has to select a personality from its midst to represent it, and instruct this person in the policy which is to be followed when elected. At a Soviet election meeting, therefore, as much or more time may be spent on discussion of the instructions to the delegate as is spent on discussing the personality of the candidates.

At the last election to the Soviets, in which I personally participated, we must have spent three or four times as much time on the working out of instructions as we did on the selection of our candidate. About three weeks before the election was to take place the trade union secretary in every department of our organization was told by the committee that it was time to start to prepare our instructions to the delegate. Every worker was asked to make suggestions concerning policy which he felt should be brought to the notice of the new personnel of the Moscow Soviet. As a result, about forty proposals concerning the general government of Moscow were handed in from a group of about twenty people. We then held a meeting in our department at which we discussed the proposals, and adopted some and rejected others. We then handed our list of proposals to a commission, appointed by the trade union committee, and representing all the workers in our organization. This Commission coordinated the proposals received, placed them in order according to the various departments of the Soviet, and this coordinated list was read at the election meeting itself, again discussed, and adopted in its final form.

The proposals which were made were of an extremely practical character. For when we set out as citizens to make constructive proposals for our local authority to carry out, the general atmosphere of practicability is very much greater than it can ever possibly be in an election carried out on the basis of party antagonism, where each side will throw exorbitant challenges at the other, hoping to make electoral capital as a result, but having no illusions as to the ultimate practicability of the suggested policy.

To take a concrete example, let us compare the L.C.C. elections of March 1937 with the elections to the Moscow Soviet which took place in 1935, and in which I participated personally. In the former we notice that the Labour Party made great and justifiable play with the increase in housing construction since it came to power. On the other hand, the “moderate” and other candidates tended to centre their anti-Labour propaganda on the so-called “extravagance,” not of building so many more houses, but in spending in certain isolated cases of more on individual buildings than was necessary. In this way the issue was put to the electorate as: Labour—More Houses; Anti-Labour—Less Extravagance. The accusation of extravagance might quite well cause people who wanted more houses to vote “anti-Labour,” to discover afterwards that the real meaning of less extravagance was to cut down the housing program to what it had been before Labour was elected! And, in elections on a party basis, such a false contrasting of issues is bound to arise continuously, to the utter confusion of electors.

But let us return to the election in Moscow. Here we found no spectacular demands for more houses, since the Moscow Soviet was already building increasing numbers of houses each year. But we did have very strong comments suggesting that the new Soviet should be particularly careful not to build any more large blocks without having a universal store included, that hot water should always be laid on, and that in future the approach to new blocks should be completed together with the houses, instead of having an approach of mud for three months or more after the houses themselves were already inhabited. The question of housing was raised in the Moscow election as well as in the London one, but in the former it took the shape of citizens’ definite instructions; in the latter, it was a propaganda weapon which could easily be made a luxurious cloak for a policy that could not command support among the voters at all if it had been fully revealed.

Since, in the U.S.S.R., practically the whole of trade is now controlled by public authorities, a number of instructions dealt with the shops. Those who lived in outlying areas stated the sites where they felt that the Soviet should place shops in the immediate future, and so on. Then there was a question dealing with the manners of the militia! Several years ago the Moscow Soviet opened a series of enquiry bureaus scattered about the city. Since these were opened, several of us had found that the militia, instead of answering enquiries as to where various places were, would always refer the questioner to the nearest enquiry office. We recommended that this be stopped, and I am glad to find that before I left this had been done.

It is not only questions of local importance, however, which are discussed by Soviet citizens. The Central Executive Committee, in considering legislation of major importance, has often called conferences or congresses of those particularly concerned, for consultative purposes, before such legislation is adopted. Or, in cases where it is considered that the proposed legislation affects the personal interests of the whole population, then it may be submitted to the whole country for consideration.

As an example of the former, we may mention the model statutes for the collective farm, which were adopted in 1935. The Central Executive Committee, two years after the record harvest of 1933 had conclusively proved the effectiveness of collective farming, decided that the time had come when an official model set of statutes for the collective farms should be adopted. It therefore drew up a project, based on the experience of the most successful collectives. It then called the Congress of Collective Farm shock-workers. This meant that the collective farmers were asked to appoint their best shock-workers as delegates, and these elected delegates came to Moscow to discuss the new statutes. Then, after the congress had adopted what it considered the ideal statutes, the Central Executive Committee endorsed these statutes and they became law. In this way a new law was passed only after the fullest consultation with those whom it intimately affected.

Examples of the other procedure, of submitting laws to the whole population for discussion, are more frequent in the case of matters which relate to the personal lives of the population. Thus, between 1917 and 1920 there were conferences and discussions throughout Soviet Russia on the subject of abortion. Finally, in spite of considerable opposition, the law was passed, which has already been quoted, making abortion legal in State clinics. In 1925, when a number of changes were proposed in the marriage law, a discussion took place for a whole year before the law was altered. And again, in 1936, when the Government considered that the time had come when legal abortion was no longer justified by circumstances, there was a general discussion in factories and collective farms, and in the pages of the Press, before the altered law was finally adopted. Again, in 1936, after the Seventh Congress of Soviets had decided to bring up to date the Constitution of the U.S.S.R., a special committee elected at the Congress drew up the draft, and it was then submitted to the whole population for almost six months’ discussion before it was finally amended and ratified at the Eighth Congress. As a result of this discussion, and of the discussion in the Congresses of Soviets in each of the constituent republics, the final draft contained over forty amendments to that which had been originally submitted.

Just as, in the sphere of discussion, the elected authorities of the U.S.S.R. refer to the general public for their opinion, so, too, in the sphere of action, they draw into the administration of the State large numbers of ordinary citizens. The meetings of workers in the factories, and villagers in the country, not only elect their delegates to the Soviets, but also put forward thousands of voluntary workers who are then attached to the different sections of the Soviets. These form the third category mentioned at the beginning of this chapter—workers who voluntarily participate in the various administrative bodies, both local and national. Already, in discussing equality of opportunity, we pointed out how, in this way, many “amateur” administrators find their way into the State apparatus as permanent workers.

The work of every Soviet is divided into departments, such as health, housing, transport, industry, trade, education, and so on. In each of these sections there is ample scope for voluntary workers, as inspectors of existing conditions, to see that laws are enforced, and to report where improvements should be made and money should be spent. In Moscow alone, hundreds of volunteers do work for the housing department, inspecting dwellings and recommending improvements or demolition; finding suitable building sites; and discovering suitable positions for the creation of open spaces and playgrounds.

Workers for the health department organize campaigns against epidemics, and run meetings and lectures on all subjects of importance to health. Such workers may become professional lecturers if they show ability, thus joining the ever-growing health service of the U.S.S.R. In the case of the education department, section workers become acquainted with the work of the schools, get to know the children personally, and attend the meetings of teachers and of students. By going from school to school they are able to make suggestions for better work, on each occasion describing how the best school in each particular sphere organizes its activities. The experience of all such voluntary workers, reported back to the Soviet, is a basis for new legislation.

But voluntary work for the Soviets does not stop at such matters as health, housing, and education. The militia, the organization for preserving law and order, is also assisted by voluntary workers, usually young enthusiasts from the big factories. We may say, in fact, if the comparison is permissible, that the Soviet “Special” is the young man who, at a trade union meeting, is selected as one who is suited to do voluntary work in the department of the militia, dealing with cases of drunkenness, theft, or other disorders, when a uniformed militiaman is not in sight!

The work of volunteers in the Soviet State is not, however, limited to local government. It also extends upwards throughout the Soviet State, right to the offices of the Central Executive Committee itself. Here, for example, in the Complaints Bureau of the President, Kalinin, there work a number of volunteers from Moscow’s largest factories, sent there by their trade unions, and dealing with letters addressed to the President from all parts of the U.S.S.R. For the Soviet citizen not only has his Press to which to write, but also his President; and letters to Kalinin play an important part in exposing abuses by local authorities and the administration of factories when the complainant is unable locally to obtain redress.

It is only when the Soviet State is considered in detail, with its elected deputies, its voluntary workers, and its paid workers promoted according to merit from the rank and file of the population that we see how, in the words of Sir Bernard Pares, “Government and people are of the same stock.” This has happened because it is the people who have built up the Government of the U.S.S.R., republic by republic, institution by institution, as the demands of the welfare of the community have necessitated. The working people themselves participate in running the State; there are no longer, as the Webbs put it, “a Government and a people confronting each other.”

=== A Socialist Constitution ===
According to the Constitution of the Russian Soviet Republic, adopted in the heat of the struggle of the Russian people for liberty, the fundamental aim of the Republic was stated to be “suppressing all exploitation of man by man, abolishing forever the division of society into classes, bringing about the Socialist organization of society.” With this end in view, “work useful to the community is made compulsory upon all,” and “now, at the decisive moment in the struggle between the workers and their exploiters, there can be no place for the latter on any organ of government.” There follow, as we have already seen, a number of concrete measures, increasing the freedom of the vast majority of the population and giving them democratic rights that they had never previously enjoyed; but, on the other hand, the employers of labour, the property-owners, were deprived of all political rights, of the ownership of the meeting halls and the printing presses, and, as the State was able to take them over, of all other means of production.

These essential features of the Russian Soviet Constitution were later made part of the Constitutions of other Soviet republics: both those which later joined the Union, and those which were formed in Hungary, in China, and in Bavaria. When, in 1922, the Union was formed, each of the constituent republics included the same fundamental ideas in its Constitution.

Now it is clear that if the Constitution of any State, or of any other kind of organization, includes a statement of aims, and measures directed towards the achievement of these aims, a time may come when, the aims having been fulfilled, the old Constitution is out of date. When, therefore, from about 1933 onwards, it has been possible in the U.S.S.R. to say that capitalism no longer exists, and that there are no longer employers of labour; when it has become possible to refer to the U.S.S.R. as a society in which everyone either works for himself or for the community, and nobody works for the profit of an employer—under these conditions it can be said that the main aims expressed in the earlier Constitutions have been accomplished, and a revised Constitution is required to establish this fact.

That is why, at the Seventh Congress of Soviets in 1935, it was decided to introduce a new Constitution for the U.S.S.R. On December 5th, 1936, this Constitution was adopted in its final form at the Eighth All-Union Congress of Soviets. What are the essential features of this new Constitution of the U.S.S.R.?

First, the Soviets remain, as before, the supreme authority in the country. But the Soviet State is now described as a “Socialist State of workers and peasants,” whereas, in the original Constitution of 1918, we only read of the “fundamental aim” of establishing Socialism. Second, there follows a definition of public and of private property, all the means of production being now publicly owned; but citizens are allowed the private ownership of their earnings, savings, and the necessities of human comfort. The small independent producer, working on his own, but not employing others for profit, is allowed to possess his necessary materials and means of production. Third, reference is made to the existence of an economic plan, whereas, in the first Constitution of the Union of 1924, reference was only made to the future establishment of such a plan by the Government of the Union. According to the Constitution of 1936, “The economic life of the U.S.S.R. is determined and directed by the national economic State plan for the purpose of increasing public wealth, of a steady rise in the material and cultural level of the toilers, of strengthening the independence of the U.S.S.R. and its defence capacity.” An important part of the new Constitution deals with the structure of the State, in which certain major changes are made. Finally, a section is included which deals with the Rights and Obligations of Citizens.

The main changes in the structure of the State which have been adopted in the Constitution of 1936 are: the making of suffrage universal without any exceptions; the introduction of equality of representation of town and village; the introduction of secret ballot in place of voting by show of hands; and the provision that henceforth every governing authority, not only the local one, shall be directly elected by the people. These changes, it will be noted, all introduce features, hitherto absent, which are generally accepted as democratic in character. They ensure still closer contact between the higher organs of Government and the ranks of the people. And they make the whole apparatus of the State considerably less complicated, by wiping out the intricate system of election by steps or stages.

It is impossible to understand the significance of the changes which have been introduced in the Soviet Constitution of 1936 without recalling the reason why, in the earlier Constitutions, the particular system then prevailing was adopted. We know that the Soviets were set up throughout Russia as fighting organizations of the workers, peasants, and soldiers against the employing classes and their Government. The Soviets, therefore, naturally excluded from participation in their activity persons and officials against whom they were fighting. It was natural that when the Soviets seized the reins of government, the “exploiters” were not allowed to participate in the running of the country. Universal suffrage was adopted, with exceptions. In 1936, when the employers of labour as a class were extinct in the Soviet Union, and when former employees and former officials of the Tsarist State were either dead, abroad, or peacefully working in Soviet institutions, the franchise had already become practically universal, with the exception of some 50,000 priests. As it is not considered likely that these 50,000 priests, given full political rights, will in any way be able to obstruct the progress of the Soviet Union, they are not any longer deprived of the right to vote. Universal suffrage for all citizens of the age of eighteen and over, ''with exceptions'', has simply become universal suffrage for all citizens of the age of eighteen and over. The half-witted, it should be noted, are, however, still deprived of the right to vote; and the courts may deprive citizens of this right as a result of a misdemeanour.

The unequal representation of town and village arose as a result of the leading part which the town workers played in the organization of the Soviets and of the Soviet State. At the time of the drawing up of the first Constitution it was considered desirable that the workers, who were introducing Socialism in industry, should continue to play a leading part in the Soviet Government. But with the final wiping out of capitalist enterprise in the villages, and the triumph of collective farming, it can no longer be said that the leadership of the workers in the towns must be specially safeguarded in the interests of Socialism, or that any discrimination in their favour can now be justified. Therefore, by 1936, the inequalities between town and country have been removed, and there is now completely equal representation of all citizens.

Voting by show of hands, we have seen, took place in the factories and at village meetings, because it was the most simple way in which a vote could be taken. And this method of voting had also its very definite utility at a time when a fierce struggle was being carried on between the working people and their employers. For, though the employers were deprived of all voting rights, there was no means of preventing them, if they so wished, from persuading or bribing certain of those who had full political rights to put up and to support candidates who would be sympathetic to them. In the factories, the office staff had the right to participate in the elections. In outlook they were often close to the employers. If, when the vote was taken, those who were known to be close to the employer were seen to be supporting a particular candidate, this was a warning that the candidate was likely to be a “bosses’ man,” an undesirable candidate! And if this was true of the town, it was still more true of the village, where the petty employer, the local usurer, the “kulak,” often had many people over whom he could exert influence. The “kulak vote” could be detected at an open meeting, which meant that the rest of the people were warned where lay the interests of property.

In the U.S.S.R. to-day, now that there is no longer an employing class at all, the system of open voting by show of hands no longer has the positive value which it used to have. At the same time, it still retains those negative features which it has always had, and which centre on the fact that, if candidates know who votes for whom, the way is open for various methods of personal pressure and persuasion, even in the conditions of Socialist society. Even in the U.S.S.R. to-day there may be people who are not above cadging for votes. But these people are disarmed if there is secret ballot. So we find the introduction of secret ballot in the new Constitution.

We come now to the change which has perhaps aroused the greatest comment outside the Soviet Union. It has even been suggested that the replacing of indirect election by direct election means the end of all that was essential in the Soviet system! Up to the present the structure of the Soviet State has been modelled on the lines of a working-class organization. Now, it appears, it is to be reconstructed along the lines of a capitalist republic. Is not this a retreat from the essentials of the Soviet system?

It should first be said quite emphatically that never, at any time, has particular stress been laid, inside the U.S.S.R., on the structure of the Soviet State as being something permanent and unalterable. The point that has been emphasized, again and again, is the fact that power in the Soviet State is in the hands of the working population. And, as we have seen in Part I, there is no tendency at the present time to make this power of the workers any less effective than it has hitherto been. As far as the structure of the State is concerned, this has always been regarded as something which would be altered to suit changing circumstances, and so, as early, as 1917, we find Lenin writing these words: “The transition from capitalism to Communism will certainly bring a great variety and abundance of political forms, but the essence will inevitably be only one: ''the dictatorship of the proletariat''.” And, as we saw in our short Introduction, these words simply mean that the Government shall be in the hands of the urban and rural workers, combined with the poorer peasantry; that is, to-day, the whole population of workers, collective farmers, and small individual producers.

When we examined the formation of the Soviet State we saw that it was never built up according to a preconceived plan, but grew up in the way in which, in their struggle for better conditions, the working people happened to build it. It naturally took the form of an ordinary working-class organization, with authority centred in a Congress, and an Executive Committee between Congresses. Such a system, as has already been pointed out, is economical; because many people can attend a Congress that lasts a few days who, because they are working as producers, could not sit for a great part of the year on a more permanent body. On the other hand, however, every organization which is governed by periodical congresses, and by an executive committee between these congresses, is in danger of an isolation of the executive committee at the top from the membership at the bottom.

If we examine the development of the Congresses of Soviets of the Russian Soviet Republic, we find that at first they were called very often, four being held in 1918 alone; whereas they were later held only once a year. As far as concerns the U.S.S.R., we find that the first and second Congresses met in 1922 and 1924, three more were held before the end of 1929, the sixth in 1931, the seventh in 1935, and the eighth, to deal exclusively with the amendment of the Constitution, in 1936. Thus there has been a tendency, with the passage of time, for rather greater periods to elapse between the Congresses, and for more time to be spent between them on carrying out the policy which they have decided upon.

This tendency, at first sight, might seem alarming to the democrat. But it is in fact an inevitable tendency in a community in which the problems of Government are becoming increasingly bound up with the day-to-day management of affairs, and less and less a matter of deciding general principles. In all working-class organizations the function of a congress is to establish the general principles on which the organization is to work. The principles having been decided, the delegates return to their localities, and it is for the executive committee to see that they are carried out. Congresses, because of their very nature, are unable to exercise a detailed control of day-to-day work, for they only meet for short periods, whereas the work of any organization or government goes on continuously. It follows from this that the more the work of government becomes the detailed carrying out of a generally agreed policy, the less work is there for a congress to do; and the greater the need for some more permanent executive body directly controlling the activities of the various organs of administration.

That is why, in the history of the Soviet State, we find that at first the Congresses of Soviets met frequently, and, later on, less often. At first there were numerous questions of principle to be settled—the rights of the working people as against those of the employers, the organization of defense by arming the people, the position of the Soviet State as regards the rights of nationalities ; all these matters had to be decided in principle. After 1922, with the defeat of the armed intervention, the question of economic development became the main problem. When, in 1928 and 1929, it was decided finally to eliminate capitalism from the countryside and to launch a general plan of economic development to cover the whole life of the country, a final question of principle was decided. It now had to be worked out.

The weakness of the Congress of Soviets as a means of effectively controlling the day-to-day activity of the many organs of Government has been well expressed by Sidney and Beatrice Webb in Soviet Communism. They describe the All-Union Congress of Soviets in these terms: “This huge assembly, made up of delegates of scores of races speaking different tongues, might meet only for a week or so and then ‘surrender their mandates,’ and do not even know in advance each other’s names, cannot, of course, develop the corporate life of a Parliament, or deal adequately with the details of legislation or administration. The Congress has been described, in fact, as little better than a picturesque ‘biennial picnic’ in Moscow for locally elected visitors from all parts of the U.S.S.R., whose expenses are provided from U.S.S.R. funds. Even if this were true, it would not imply that the Congress is of no political importance. . . . The mere fact that no delegate is ’denied the floor,’ even if there is no effective voting, makes so representative a gathering of real political importance” (p. 83).

In these words Sidney and Beatrice Webb make crystal clear, at the present stage of Soviet development, when the basic questions of principle are to-day settled and opening Congresses to discuss matters of principle are no longer required, the need for some more permanent body, having a “corporate life,” and dealing with the day-to-day details of legislation and administration. What is required is a representative body which sits for longer periods, and which has direct contact with those people whose interests it represents. This is the new form of supreme authority which has been set up by the Constitution of 1936.

Instead of a Congress of delegates electing an Executive Committee, the supreme authority of every territory in the U.S.S.R. will now be a directly elected Supreme Soviet or Council. The citizens will directly elect their deputies not only to the local Soviet, but to the provincial and district Soviets, to the Supreme Council of their Republic, and to the Supreme Council of the U.S.S.R., which will replace the Congress of Soviets and the Central Executive Committee.

At the same time, in the Government of the U.S.S.R. the two Councils, formerly parts of the Central Executive Committee, will remain. The Council of the Union will consist of delegates, each of whom represents 300,000 inhabitants, from all over the U.S.S.R. The Council of Nationalities will consist of the same number of delegates as the Council of the Union, directly elected by the population in such a way that there will be an equal number of delegates from each main national republic of the Union, and smaller numbers of delegates from each of the smaller republics within them and other smaller national territories. In this way there is a “two-chamber” system, in which each chamber has absolutely equal powers in every respect, one chamber representing the people as a whole, the other representing the people organized as equal nations.

According to the new Constitution, then, the supreme authority of the U.S.S.R. will be directly responsible to the people as individuals, and to the people as nations. The Supreme Council will sit for about four months each year, and, between sessions, its elected Presidium will exercise very limited powers in its absence. Such a matter of importance to the people as the declaration of war, a matter which is usually in the hands of the “cabinets” of other countries, can now only be decided by the directly elected Supreme Council of the U.S.S.R. However, an exception is made in the case of honoring treaties of mutual assistance, which the Presidium may fulfill without calling a session of the Supreme Council.

Should a situation arise in which the two chambers of the Soviet Government cannot agree, there is provision for the setting up of a joint conciliation committee. If this is ineffective, then the matter can only be referred to the whole country for decision, by means of new elections. If, after that, a majority in the Council of Nationalities and a majority in the Council of the Union disagreed, the contentious piece of legislation would have to be buried! It is hard to imagine, however, at the present time, so serious a dispute arising between the two Councils of the Soviet Government. On what could the representatives of the nations of the Union so disagree with the representatives of the people as a whole as to necessitate a new election? Perhaps small disagreements may arise as to the placing of new industries: shall they be on the territory of the Russian Soviet Republic, or in the smaller republics of the Union? Or a budgetary question might arise: the Russians in the Council of the Union, representing a majority of the population of the U.S.S.R., might want more centralization of funds in the Commissariat of Finance of the U.S.S.R. The smaller republics might oppose this, and turn down such a proposition in the Council of Nationalities. But could such a dispute prove to be irreconcilable without a new election? This seems unlikely, so that the provisions for such a dispute, while necessary on paper, may never actually have to be applied.

The last section of the new Constitution which is of interest here is that which deals with the Rights and Obligations of Citizens. The striking feature of this chapter is the small number of obligations, and the large number of rights, of the Soviet citizen.

“Work in the U.S.S.R. is the obligation of each citizen capable of working, according to the principle; ‘He who does not work shall not eat.’ In the U.S.S.R. the principle of Socialism is being realized: ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his work.’” Further, every Soviet citizen must abide by the Constitution of the U.S.S.R. and obey its laws. Finally, every citizen is under the obligation to defend the U.S.S.R.

To the working man and woman in other countries these obligations of citizens will not seem unduly arduous. To those who live on rent and interest, however, who spend their lives on the Lido and the Riviera, and appear regularly each year at Ascot and spend thousands of pounds during each “season” in London—to these, and to poorer people who imitate them in a smaller way, the idea that work should be an obligation on all may well seem an unjustifiable interference with individual liberty. But to such people, for this very reason, the dictatorship of the proletariat must inevitably be distasteful.

The Soviet State imposes the obligation to work. But it makes it possible to fulfill this obligation by granting the right to work to all citizens. This right, until 1931, could not have appeared in the Constitution of the U.S.S.R., for, until then, the Soviet State had still to face the problem of unemployment. To-day, as a result of the replacing of capitalist by Socialist production, economic crises have been made impossible in the U.S.S.R. Production is planned for use, and the only brake on increasing production is the number of people available for work. It can never be to the interest of the Soviet State to allow people to be out of work, for by employing them the general welfare must necessarily be increased.

Work without leisure is a doubtful blessing. So, by the guarantee of leisure, the new Soviet Constitution ensures that work shall not be excessive. The seven-hour day in practically the whole of industry, and paid holidays for all workers, make this right a reality at the present time. But work and leisure are not enough. In addition, the worker wants security. And this, too, is guaranteed in the new Soviet Constitution by a social insurance system which pays wages during illness, and pensions at sixty for men, fifty-five for women, and at an earlier age in dangerous occupations or in cases of invalidity. The control of the social insurance funds, as we have seen, is in the hands of the people’s own elected representatives in the trade unions. Further rights, the enjoyment of which has been fully described in earlier chapters, are national equality, sex equality, and education. All these things, guaranteed in the new Constitution of the U.S.S.R., are not promises for some distant future, but accomplished facts.

In the Constitution of the U.S.S.R. as adopted in 1924 a special chapter was devoted to the United State Political Department, or O.G.P.U., an organization which was created “for the purpose of combining the revolutionary efforts of the United Republics to combat political and economic counter-revolution, espionage, and banditry.” In the new Constitution no mention is made of this organization, now incorporated in the Commissariat of Home Affairs. On the other hand, provisions are included which provide for the inviolability of the person and the home, and for the secrecy of correspondence. This does not mean, of course, that at a time when certain of the most aggressively inclined Fascist States are openly preparing for an attack on the U.S.S.R., and are undoubtedly sending their agents there to prepare the way for armies at a later date, they will meet with no resistance. But whereas in 1924 one of the primary tasks of the united Government was to defend the Union against capitalist influences, both inside and outside the country, to-day the internal struggle is no longer of such importance. On the other hand, however, defense against foreign aggression is even more important than before. Hence a Commissariat of Defense Industries has been set up in the new Constitution of 1936.

In concluding this chapter, two general points should be mentioned. First, it has been said in many quarters that the new Constitution of the U.S.S.R. represents a “weakening” of the dictatorship of the proletariat; that this dictatorship is now coming to an end. Such a view can only arise as a result of a misunderstanding of the term “dictatorship of the proletariat.” In our Introduction we showed how the Soviet State was set up to ensure the power of the working people of town and village—that is, the power of the vast majority of the population. This power was guaranteed by giving unprecedented democratic rights to the vast majority, while the rights of the small minority of employers were ruthlessly curtailed.

It is this form of government which is termed the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” But if this is what the term means, then the new Constitution, which reflects the complete extinction of the employing class, can only be termed a strengthening of this “dictatorship,” not its weakening. For to strengthen the democracy of the working people, now the whole population, is synonymous with strengthening the “dictatorship of the proletariat”—democracy for the whole working population.

And the second point is this. Throughout Part I there were described institutions and customs, methods of discussion and of government, which are hardly referred to at all in the Constitution, either before 1936 or after. Similarly, when we discussed the system of election, the part played by section workers in the Soviets and by public discussion, we were describing features of Soviet procedure which are not included in any Constitution. In all that we say and read about the Soviet Constitution, therefore, the following words of the Webbs must be seriously borne in mind: “In the Soviet Union, what the Western jurist is tempted to regard as the constitutional structure, namely, the pyramid of Soviets, is plainly only a fragment of it, and, as some may say, not the most important fragment. Whether by statutory enactment or accepted practice, the constitution of the U.S.S.R. provides for the active participation of the people in the work of government in more than one way” (p. 3).

The fact that the Soviet Constitution does not cover every aspect of the work of government is not a feature that distinguishes it from the Constitutions of other countries. In no capitalist country does the Constitution express the relationship between the Treasury and the big bankers, or the War Ministry and the armament firms; and yet we know that the latter play an important part in molding Government decisions. Similarly, in Britain, an ordinary text-book description of the system of government does not usually explain how it is that only “public schoolboys” find their way to the higher posts in the Civil Service. In every country there are facts about the control of the Government which are not described in detail in the Constitution or in text-books of political science. The facts in the U.S.S.R. have been explored by us in detail, and we can only conclude in this case that if, on paper, the Soviet system provides for the representation of the people in all organs of government, in practice this representation is far greater than any written Constitution could ever show.

=== State and Party ===
“The new Soviet Constitution is really not democratic at all, for in the U.S.S.R. there is only one political party.” How often, in speeches and articles in this country, have such phrases been used by those who wished to prove that the new Constitution of the U.S.S.R. was not really democratic! But a vital question in this connection is never asked: Do the people of the U.S.S.R. want more than one political party? Is it by the will of the vast majority, or against their will, that a situation has arisen in which there is only one lawful political party in the Soviet Union? It is on the answer to this question that the reality of Soviet Democracy stands or falls.

How did it come about that in Soviet Russia and in the Soviet Union there is only one political party? That is the first question to be answered. Secondly, what is the relationship between this one political party and the people of the country? That is the second conclusion. Thirdly, what is the part played by this particular party in the running of the Soviet State; the position of its leader Stalin, for example, in relation to the government of the country? And, finally, is there not a danger to democracy in the fact that in the Soviet Union to-day only one political party is allowed by law? This last question will occupy us in the next chapter; the first three we shall examine here.

In the year 1905, when the first Soviets were set up by the workers of Russia, some of the most active members of these Soviets were “Bolsheviks”—that is, members of the section, of the Social Democratic Party of Russia that followed the leadership of Lenin, and that obtained a majority at the Second Congress of the Social Democratic Party in 1903, The Russian word ''bolshinstvo'' means majority, and, when the minority at this Congress split off from the majority, the two fractions became known as “Bolshevik” and “Menshevik” respectively, the majority and minority groups. The “Bolsheviks,” led by Lenin, were the majority at this Congress.

The Bolsheviks in Russia based their political activity on the teachings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. They worked for the continual improvement of the conditions of the working class, for the transfer of the landed estates to the peasants, and for the self-determination of all the nations which formed the Russian Empire. Their ultimate aim was the revolutionary overthrow, not only of Tsarism, but of capitalist production, and the social ownership and control of the productive forces of the country.

Writing in 1903, in a book which became the basic statement of Bolshevik policy at that time, Lenin wrote: “It would be a grievous error indeed to build up the party organization in the expectation only of outbreaks of street fighting, or only upon the ‘forward march of the drab, everyday struggle.’ We must ''always'' carry on our everyday work, and always be prepared for everything. And the Revolution itself must not by any means be regarded as a single act . . . but as a series of more or less powerful outbreaks rapidly alternating with more or less intense calm. For that reason the principal content of the activity of our party organization . . . should be, to carry on work that is possible and necessary both in the period of the most powerful outbreaks as well as in periods of complete calm; that is to say: work of political agitation linked up over the whole of Russia, that will enlighten all aspects of life and will be carried on among the broadest possible strata of the masses. But this work ''cannot possibly be carried on'' in contemporary Russia without an All-Russian newspaper, issued very frequently. An organization that is built up round this newspaper . . . will be ready ''for everything'', from protecting the honor, the prestige, and continuity of the party in our periods of acute revolutionary ‘depression’ to preparing for, commencing, and carrying out the ''national armed insurrection''” (''What Is To Be Done?'' p. 131).

The main feature of such a political party lay in the fact that it was to lead the working people in every one of their activities for improving their conditions of life. It was to be a leader and organizer of the working people and peasants in a fight for improved conditions. Therefore, such a party must demand that every one of its members play an active part in the organization; and, while the leading bodies were elected at congresses of delegates from the branches, between congresses there must be a disciplined carrying out of their decisions, and disciplined obedience to the instructions of the leading bodies in the party. The election of leaders must be accompanied by an “almost military discipline” in the execution of instructions, for the struggle that this party had to lead would be, in certain circumstances, a military struggle.

Towards the end of 1916, when the people of Russia were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the policy of the Tsarist Government, the Bolsheviks played a prominent part, particularly in the towns and in the army, in leading strikes and demonstrations, and in carrying on propaganda for peace among the soldiers. When, in February 1917, as a result of strikes, mass demonstrations, and the refusal of the ranks in the army to continue to obey the orders of officers whom they did not respect, the Bolsheviks played a leading part in directing this unrest into channels which would force the Tsarist Government to resign. Immediately after the abdication, when the workers set up Soviets in one town after another, the Bolsheviks were among the most active participants in these Soviets, At the end of March, returning to Petrograd from exile in Siberia, Stalin wrote: “The more compact these Soviets, and the more strongly they are organized, the more genuinely do they express the revolutionary power of the revolutionary people, and the more certain is the guarantee provided against counter-revolution.

“Revolutionary Social Democrats must work to strengthen these Soviets, to make them universal, to establish contact between them under a Central Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies as the organ of the revolutionary power of the people.”

And when, in April, Lenin returned from exile in Switzerland, he at once put forward the slogan, “All Power to the Soviets,” and the Party proceeded everywhere to carry on propaganda for the Soviets to seize State power, to put an end to the war, to confiscate the landlords’ estates, and to nationalize the main industrial enterprises. In June 1917 there took place the first Congress of Soviets. The Bolsheviks had 100 delegates out of a total of 781. Their demands were turned down by the Congress. They continued their propaganda among the people; they continued to organize the workers in trade unions and to mobilize the peasants round the village Soviets. They continued their propaganda against the war.

Between April and October 1917 a number of leading Bolsheviks were arrested by the Provisional Government. But, in spite of this, their influence grew by leaps and bounds. When, at the beginning of November, it was clear that at any time the Government might set up a military dictatorship and suppress all organizations of the workers and peasants, the Bolsheviks in Petrograd organized an armed uprising. On the following day the second Congress of Soviets met in Petrograd. A majority of the delegates were Bolsheviks, there being 390 Bolsheviks out of a total of 649 delegates. Now that they were in a majority in the Congress of Soviets the Bolsheviks proceeded to put their policy into practice. At once a manifesto was issued on peace, the land was socialized and the big estates handed over to the peasants’ Soviets, and the workers in the factories were given those powers of control over the employers which have been described earlier in this book.

At this stage there were two other political parties represented in the Soviets. One, the Menshevik Party, had opposed the seizure of power by the Soviets and demanded the calling of a “Constituent Assembly” or All-Russian Parliament. But this demand received but little support from the population, who already had power in their own hands through the Soviets, and found that the Soviet Government was pursuing a policy which was completely in their interests. The other party was that of the Social Revolutionaries, a party of the peasantry, whose main demand had been the socialization of the land. As soon as the Second Congress had declared the transfer of the landed estates to the peasantry, the main item in the Social Revolutionary program was fulfilled, and from then on the Social Revolutionaries had no really important matters of policy on which they could appeal to the mass of the people against the Bolsheviks. As a result, a large section of the Social Revolutionaries joined the Central Executive Committee and worked in co-operation with the Bolsheviks. And, as the prestige of the Bolshevik Party grew, many of the members from the ranks of the other parties came over to them and joined the Party.

Once the new Soviet Government was in existence it was possible to support it and be represented in it, or to work against it and try to overthrow it. The landlords deprived of their estates, the big financiers and employers of labor, and all those who, in principle, were opposed to a workers’ State organized like any other working-class organization, prepared to unite their forces for an armed attack on the Soviet State. It so came about that the Mensheviks lined up with the employers, and proceeded to armed action against the Soviets. And, at a later stage, the core of that part of the Social Revolutionary Party that still preserved its independence, and which was ready to oppose the Bolshevik majority in the Soviets by every means within its power, democratic or otherwise, attempted to organize an armed uprising against the Soviet Government. Recognizing the impossibility of being returned to the Soviets in a majority by the democratic votes of the people, these parties attempted to seize power by armed force. The State, therefore, used armed force against them, and they were deprived of their legality.

It so came about that the party which had a majority of delegates in the Soviets became the only political party. Of the other parties, some of the members joined the Bolsheviks, and others tried to organize an armed uprising against the Soviet State. The former went to increase the membership of the Party, which already was supported by the vast majority of the population, and the others joined the armed counter-revolutionary forces, and were suppressed as a result.

In this way, as a result of the fact that their policy appealed to a majority of the whole people, the Bolsheviks won control of the Soviets between February and October 1917. And, when they already had a majority and their prestige was increasing from day to day, they were still ready to work together with any other party that supported the Soviet State and was ready to work peacefully within it. As, however, the other parties split into those who supported the Soviets and came increasingly close to the Bolsheviks, and those who opposed the Soviets and tried to overthrow them by force, the latter were suppressed by force by the Soviet State, which had the support of the vast majority of the people. The Bolshevik Party, which had caused the Soviets to seize power, was in the end left as the only party faithful to the Soviet State that it had brought into being, but it was now an organization with great prestige throughout the country.

As soon as the Bolshevik Party was left as the only political party in the Soviet State, a danger arose that this organization, because it was in power, might draw to itself careerists, unscrupulous individualists, and individuals who had not the welfare of the people at heart, but merely their own personal advancement. In 1920, in face of this danger, Lenin wrote: “We are afraid of too wide a growth of the Party, as place-seekers and adventurers, who deserve only to be shot, do their utmost to get into the ruling Party. The last time we opened wide the doors of the Party for work-men and peasants only was . . . when the Soviet Republic was in mortal danger, and when the adventurers, place-seekers, charlatans, and unreliable persons generally could in no way rely upon making a profitable career (in fact could sooner expect the gallows and torture) by joining the Communists” (''Left-Wing Communism''). In fact, the Party, in order effectively to represent the very best elements in the working population, must restrict its membership. Party membership must not become cheap!

And how, it may be asked, was it to be ensured that those who were in the Party should not become divorced from the rest of the population? Were there not dangers that a small political organization, holding great power in its hands, might become isolated from the people whom it professed to represent? It was precisely in order to combat this danger that Lenin took the initiative in organizing what has come to be known as the “Party Cleansing,” which consists of public meetings, in town, village, and the army, where, every few years. Party members must in public justify their membership of this Party which claims to be the “organized vanguard of the working people.”

At such cleansings, which I have personally attended, every Party member must give an account of his or her life, of the part they have played in the struggle for improved conditions of the working people, and of the work they are doing to-day. Any person present may put questions. Any person present may speak. And so the merits of each Party member are fully discussed. If, at such meetings, certain people prove not to command the respect of their fellows, not to be considered worthy of membership of an organization made up of the best elements in the population; they are expelled from the Party. It is thus a fact, in a way which can be said of no other political party in the world, that there is democratic control by the people over the membership of the Bolshevik Party of the Soviet Union. And, with this control actually in force, it may be truly said that this Party will represent the best elements of the working people.

Sir Walter Citrine, in his “''Search for Truth in Russia''”, describes the process of the Party Cleansing in these words: “A Commission is sent to the factory. The members of the Party are called up before them in front of the workers, both Party and non-Party. He is required to tell his life’s history, especially what he has done and is doing for the Revolution. Anyone can question him regarding both private and public matters, and, after he has been turned inside out, the Commission makes its decision.

“I remarked that this system made a spy of every man on his neighbour, and my companion again admitted that it was the duty of every worker to keep an eye on the actions and words of his fellows, and to report anything which seemed hostile to the interests of the working class ” (p. 255).

Sir Walter called it “spying” if every worker watched his comrade in the Party to see that his words and actions were never hostile to the interests of the working class! And yet what could be more in the interests of the working people, and of democracy for the working people, than that every member of the Party which professed to represent them should be subject to such supervision, and to public criticism if he did not fulfil all the conditions generally considered necessary to a member of the “organized vanguard”?

It is this particular relationship between the Party in the U.S.S.R. and the people which causes the people to look upon the Party members, in general, as their best representatives. For they themselves play a part in seeing that only their best representatives shall be members of the Party! Under such conditions it is not surprising that, more often than not, at elections to the Soviets, to the committees of trade unions, and, to the boards of management of collective farms, members of the Party are elected! It is in this way, and in this way only, that the Bolshevik Party dominates the Soviet Union at the present time. But, since it has the status of the recognized leadership of the whole people, the Bolshevik Party dominates the policy of the country.

In ''Left-Wing Communism'', written as early as 1920, Lenin said: “Not a single important political or organizational question is decided by any State institution in our Republic without the guiding instructions of the Central Committee of the Party.” But this power of the Party, Lenin goes on to show, rests on the will of the working people themselves: “In carrying out its work, the Party rests directly on the trade unions. . . . Without the closest connection with the trade unions, without their hearty support and self-sacrificing work, not only in the economic, but also in military organization, it would have been, of course, impossible to govern the country and to maintain the dictatorship for two and a half years, or even for two and a half months.”

Actually, the formal relationship between the Party and the State in the Soviet Union is not fundamentally different from that of, say, the Conservative Party in Britain to-day and the British State. The policy of the patty which has a majority in the British Parliament becomes the policy of the Government. So, in the U.S.S.R., the decisions of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, since the Bolsheviks are an absolute majority in the Government, become decisions of the Government.

But under the conditions of Socialism every member of the ruling Party is also usually a worker in some State or other collective organization. Therefore he receives instructions as a Party member from the Central Committee at the same time as he receives State instructions as a State employee. When in the U.S.S.R. to-day the Central Committee of the Party decides that a new decree is necessary, it circulates its decision to its members; and those who are in the Government see that it becomes law; those that are working throughout the U.S.S.R. in every kind of occupation see that, locally, this Party decision and State law is carried out. Purely as a matter of convenience, the informing of Party members of decisions of their Central Committee which are also made law by the Government, and the publication of the law itself, are often telescoped together into one act. It happens that a new decree of the Soviet Government may appear signed by the representative of the Government, and by Stalin, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party. Actually this simply means that a certain decision of the Party, signed by Stalin, has been adopted as a decree of the Government, signed by the representative of the Government. Publication over the two signatures simultaneously, for the two organizations, merely saves time and space. It does not mean that Stalin or the Party have any right to sign Government documents, or vice versa.

It is often asked: What is the position of Stalin in the Soviet State? Constitutionally, the answer is that Stalin’s position in the U.S.S.R. is similar to that of Mr. Baldwin in Britain to-day. He is the recognized and elected leader of the ruling party. On the other hand, there is this difference—that whereas Mr. Baldwin chooses, as is the British convention, to be Prime Minister as well, Stalin prefers, as leader of his party, not to accept an important Government position as well, since he has enough to do already. In actual practice, whereas Mr. Baldwin can only claim to represent a certain section of the population of Britain, Stalin can claim that he and his party have the support of the overwhelming majority of the people of the country. Therefore, in the U.S.S.R., Stalin, as the leader of a very popular ruling party, is acclaimed as the leader of the whole people, a thing which even the most sycophantic Press would hardly try to claim for Mr. Baldwin in Britain to-day!

In connection with the status of Stalin in the U.S.S.R. I feel I must refer to one point of criticism which is raised in common by the Webbs, by Andre Gide, and by Sir Walter Citrine. This is the phenomenon described by the Webbs in their book as “the adulation of Stalin.” Any reader of the Soviet Press, with an eye and ear trained to the English language, is likely to be sometimes shocked by references to “our dearly beloved Stalin,” “our glorious leader,” and so on. This matter has often struck foreign observers, and is cited time and again as evidence of a servile attitude on the part of the population towards Stalin, and thus as symptomatic of a lack of democracy.

Personally, I must frankly admit that for at least three years in the U.S.S.R. I was often unfavourably impressed by the lavish way in which love and praise of Stalin was expressed in public utterances of all types of Soviet citizens. To the English ear such words seemed to be more appropriate to religion than to modern politics, and there is no doubt that I, too, was at first affected in the same way as the Webbs by this. But my feelings on this matter were completely changed when I happened one day to see a letter from a young worker to his brother. It began: “Honoured Beloved Brother!” These were the same words, or words closely similar to, those which had been thoroughly unpleasing to me when addressed to Stalin, because in English they suggested degradation and servility! But the young Russian used them to his brother. And when I suggested that he should simply write “Dear Brother” he was literally shocked. The English have a reputation for being a cold-blooded nation!

When André Gide began a letter to Stalin in the same words which he would have used in French, his guide suggested that a little verbal embroidery was necessary. Gide was shocked. But if I wrote to André Gide in French to-morrow, and finished up “yours sincerely,” Gide would certainly consider that I did not know French, or that I was being rude. The French, you see, happen to conclude their letters with a rigmarole which, to the English, seems artificial and somewhat servile.

When the Webbs discover a “deliberate exploitation by the governing junta of the emotion of hero-worship, of the traditional reverence of the Russian people for a personal autocrat,” they substantiate this view by examples of an apparent extravagance of language such as we have mentioned, which in English appears utterly ridiculous. And, while it is obviously not going to be the policy of the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R. to try to stimulate hatred of its leaders, but the opposite, I feel that the translation of the language used gives an utterly unreal picture of the situation.

When the people of the U.S.S.R. wish to express their loyalty to their recognized leader they can only do it in their own language. Actually, the language of the oriental peoples of the U.S.S.R. is even more flowery than Russian. If the Russian worker writes to his brother as “dearly beloved,” we must not consider these words to be servile when coming from a group of collective farmers and addressed to Stalin. On the contrary, they are fraternal words, brotherly words, and not servile words. When these facts are taken into account I think it is true to say that not one example of the “adulation of Stalin” which the Webbs give contains any example of adulation greater than the words expressed by millions of British workers about Dimitrov at the time of the Leipzig trial.

All people when in foreign countries tend to assume that they understand the language better than they do, and are happy if they can translate sentences phrase by phrase without a dictionary. Both the Webbs and André Gide, cultured people as they are, have not absorbed the ''idiom'' of the Russian language. By mechanical translation they have made errors of interpretation which can have serious political repercussions; for the question of whether the Russian workers address Stalin in the way that Lady Houston wrote about the late King or as the Archbishop of Canterbury addresses God, or as one workman addresses his brother, is a question of vital importance in considering the degree of democracy which exists to-day in the U.S.S.R. Actually, as I discovered after three years, the workers of the U.S.S.R. use the same words in writing to Stalin as in writing to a much admired brother.

The relations between the Soviet State and the Communist International have also aroused curiosity. But there should be no mystery about this matter. In Brussels there is located the Labour land Socialist International. If, in Belgium, the people return the Socialist Party to power, a situation would exist in which the ruling party was a member of the Socialist International located on Belgian territory. But that would not make the Belgian Government and the International synonymous organizations. Now it unfortunately happens that only a country where the Communist Party is in power will allow the Communist International the right to be located on its territory. Therefore the Communist International is situated in Moscow, on Soviet territory. But the connection goes no further than this. It is true, of course, that Stalin is a member of the Executive Committee of the Communist International. But so is Harry Pollitt. And, in Belgium, the leader of the Socialist Party is a member of the Executive of the Labour and Socialist International.

There is one final aspect of the status of the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R. which may raise questions in the minds of many readers. We have already mentioned, in dealing with factory management in the U.S.S.R., that on the Triangle, which virtually controls the affairs of a Soviet factory, there sits a representative of the Party organization in the factory. To those who look upon political parties as ''parliamentary'' parties, such a state of affairs suggests something abnormal—that a political party should enjoy the same status as the appointed representative of the State, the manager; or the elected representative of the workers, the trade union organizer.

But it should now be clear that the Party in the U.S.S.R. is not a parliamentary party. It is the organized political leadership of the people; the organization of their best political representatives. As such, the Party holds the respect of the people, and they are absolutely willing that this organization of theirs should be represented on such bodies as the Triangle in the factory. The democratic importance of political representation of the working people, as distinct from their mass representation through the State and trade unions, is being clearly demonstrated at the present time in Spain. As soon as the armed struggle began between the Fascist rebels and the elected Government, the parties of the Workers’ Alliance, which together formed the recognized leadership of the people, just as the Communist Party does in the U.S.S.R. to-day, began to undertake all kinds of activities which previously had been activities of the State. They undertook these activities because the people supported such action, and the Workers’ Alliance continued to be, not merely a parliamentary combination of forces, but a leader and organizer of the working people in their fight for democracy. As a result of this, it is reported from Spain that, attached to every regiment, there are “political commissars,” representing the parties of the Workers’ Alliance. So, alongside the organizations of State, such as the army and the organs of administration, there is a political leadership, consisting of “political commissars,” representatives of those parties who form the organized vanguard of the people in their struggle. Such political leadership no doubt also exists to-day in all the factories that have been taken over by the State.

In the Soviet Union, in the course of the transfer of the factories from private hands to the State, this same political leadership became necessary, just as it did in the army during the fight against foreign intervention. The Party began in this way to play a leading part in the administration, together with the appointed official of the State, and the elected representative of the trade unions. While, if a party that did not command the support of the vast majority of the population acted in this way, the people would resent such action and oppose it; when it is done by a party of a new kind, consisting only of the recognized best elements drawn from the ranks of the people themselves, they give it their full support.

The one-party system in the U.S.S.R. has developed as a result of the will of the people. Having once returned to power a party which immediately passed a number of laws, basically changing the relations between worker and employer, peasant and landlord, to the advantage of the working people, they found that this party was their very own in a way in which no political organization had ever previously been. Finding that they were able to exercise control over the membership of this party by cleaning out all elements which they considered hostile to their interests, they found that they could really ensure that this party contained all that was best among them. In this way, at every election, the members of the party tended to be returned in a majority; and the idea of allowing other parties to be organized, trying to oust this party from power, was rejected by the people as being a means by which the enemies of the working people might try to return to power.

In the Soviet State there has developed a one-party system. It arose as a result of the operation of the will of the vast majority of the people. It occurred democratically.

But now, to-day, when the Soviet system is securely on its feet, does not this one-party system prove a limitation to real democracy? This is the question which must now be answered.

=== Is a “Party System” Necessary ===
The Soviet State, we have seen, was set up as an organization of the whole working population of the country, for the purpose of pursuing their common interests, and for improving their own conditions at the expense of the employing class. The Soviet State has always had the structure of a workers’ organization.

But does anyone ever suggest that a “party system” is necessary to democracy in an organization of the working people for a common purpose? Has anyone ever criticized trade unions as being undemocratic on the grounds that there is no system of political parties within them? And the same question may be asked concerning the myriads of other democratic organizations that exist in the capitalist world to-day, from trade unions to the businessmen’s West End clubs, from the League of Nations Union to table-tennis societies. In all these organizations the officers are elected by the members to carry out the will of the members. These organizations may differ in the degree of their democracy, but nobody attacks them as undemocratic because, at their elections of officers, rival parties do not put up rival candidates.

The essential fact about democratic organizations is this: in every organisation of people for pursuing a ''common'' purpose there is no question of a system of parties being associated with democracy. Elections of officers take place on their merits, just as, in the U.S.S.R., the election of delegates to the Soviets has always taken place. When, on the other hand, we find that there is some form of a “party system” in operation, as occurs only in the parliamentary State, we find that, instead of elections being held in order to return the best representatives, they take place in order to return one or another party with a majority, in order to carry our a particular type of policy. But these conflicting policies can only exist with any degree of continuity on the basis of continuous conflicts of interest among the population. And these continuous conflicts can only be based on rival—as opposed to common—interests among the people themselves.

If we look back at the historical development of the British Parliament we find that it arose as a means, not for uniting the community in a common interest, but for reconciling conflicting interests. In its origin Parliament was an institution in which the conflicting interests of the two classes, landowners and industrialists, were reconciled. The Tory Party in its early days was the direct instrument of the landowners, the Whig Party—of the capitalists. Each party, at elections, tried to include within its program sufficient promises to win a majority of the electorate, in order to be returned to office and to pursue a policy consistent with the interests of the class which it represented.

As time went on, the landlords of Britain became increasingly fused with the industrialists. The landlords went into business, and the business men acquired land by purchase or marriage. The landlord and capitalist classes in Britain became fused into one; and the development of Whig and Tory Parties into Liberal and Conservative reflected this uniting of the two classes. The two parties now began to represent rival factions in the one ruling class of the country.

But such a system, in which the political parties represented conflicting tendencies within one class, only continued for the very short historical period when the power of the landowner-capitalists was uncontested. Soon the working class forced its way into politics, and a new alignment began to develop a Conservative-Liberal Coalition against Labour. To-day the property-owning class in Britain is almost completely united behind a single political party—the so-called “National” Coalition. As far as the employers are concerned, we have the operation, with only a small minority of dissentients, of the principle “One class, one party.” The Labour Movement, in so far as it does not also realize this principle, is unable to put forward an effective challenge to the ruling “National” Government of the employers, so that we see that the Party system is closely bound up with the existence of classes in society and their conflicting interests.

It is completely misleading to refer to a “party system” as in any way typical of democratic institutions. The “party system” is a very particular form of democracy, of an exceptional character, which has arisen only in the parliamentary State as a means by which conflicting classes could reconcile their differences without resort to arms. As we have seen from examples of working-class organizations and peaceful clubs of business men, when a society exists for pursuing the common aims of its members there is no place within it for a “party system.”

But the Soviet State was set up by the people of Russia for pursuing their common interests. The system of election, adopted from the very start, was that of discussing each candidate, his merits and shortcomings, with a view to deciding whether he was suitable to represent the electors on the public authorities of the country. Would this delegate be the best representative of the electors? Would he be the best equipped of them to see that their instructions were carried out on the Soviet to which he was elected? Clearly, where elections took the form of sending delegates to the public authorities, with instructions as to the policy they were to pursue, there was no longer any place for “parties” presenting opposing programs to the people.

So a “party system” became out of place in the Soviet State, just as a “party system” is quite out of place in a working-class organization in any capitalist country at the present time.

Other questions are sometimes raised in this connection: Surely in the U.S.S.R. everyone does not agree? Surely there must be discussion on various questions ? Certainly there is disagreement and there is discussion. And, as most foreign observers are bound to admit, there is, if anything, too much discussion, rather than too little, from the standpoint of efficient execution. But disagreement and discussion are no basis for the formation of political parties unless there are groups of people, with certain continuous common interests, who are ready to unite together for a continuous period on a number of basic issues.

For example, to take recent legislation in the U.S.S.R., many people did not approve of the law prohibiting abortion; many had amendments to propose to the draft of the new Constitution; many may not have approved of the model statutes for the collective farms; and many may not have liked the reduction of interest on State loans from 8 and 7 to 4 and 3 percent overnight! But an opposition political party could hardly have been organized out of these individuals, because there was no definite group of citizens affected by all these issues in the same way. There is no reason why the same person that disliked certain clauses in the abortion law should have opposed any of the other measures. There is no reason why the person who disliked the reduction in rates of interest should also have been a strong supporter of legal abortion. There is no reason why a person who did not like the model statutes for the collective farm should have opposed the new Constitution of the Soviet State. In this way, since there exist no longer permanently conflicting group interests in the Soviet State, where all are working for the general improvement in the living conditions of the whole community, there can be no basis for a political “party system” such as exists in the parliamentary State in a class society.

But say; there is one recruiting-ground for an “opposition party.” There are still people—disgruntled individuals; ex-employers or Tsarist officials; deposed leaders from the working-class movement itself; people who are constitutionally “counter-suggestible” and for whom Soviet psychologists have not yet evolved a cure; people with personal grievances against certain Government officials; people who oppose every measure of the Soviet Government, not on its merits, but because it is a measure passed by the Government; and others like them—who may be “against the Government,” though having no alternative positive program to propose. Such types of citizens exist in the Soviet Union to-day. It is only they who have anything in common that would bring them together continually as a permanent opposition party.

But such elements are well known to the working-class movement, and to every democratic organization throughout the world. They are the people who, in every democratic organization, do not command respect, and therefore resort to every form of obstruction in order to draw attention to themselves or to avenge themselves for being ignored. Is the Soviet State to encourage such people to form a political party, to carry on purely negative propaganda on every issue, attacking each measure of the Government, not on its merits, but on principle? The people of the U.S.S.R. do not want such a party, and they support the Government in seeing that such disruptive organizations shall not come into existence.

For what would the effect of such a party be under existing conditions in the U.S.S.R.? It would be a resort of every remnant of opposition to the working-class movement of the Soviet Union. Ex-employers and ex-opponents of the system, agents of foreign Powers and people who were under their influence—all the social undesirables would flock round such an organization in order to discredit the Soviet Government and to impede the progress which it is making. Thus, an “opposition party” would be the means by which all that is hostile to the Soviet system would find expression and a means of organizing itself. This is a procedure which the people of the U.S.S.R., with the exception of the types already mentioned, are unanimous in preventing.

We come to the conclusion that in the Soviet Union to-day a party system would be as incongruous as a party system within, say, a British trade union. In a community or an organization where the members have common interests there is no place for a party system. In so far as, in the British trade unions, something approaching party disputes has developed, this is a weakness of the movement, and not its strength. Anything approaching conflicting parties in the trade unions can only arise as a result of serious conflicts within the working class. Not much investigation is necessary to discover that such disputes invariably centre round one question: Shall the trade unions be fighting organizations against the employers or not? The faction that answers “No” to this question can be looked upon as an employers’ “party” within the trade unions, the existence of which causes the trade unions to be less effective as a democratic organization of the workers ''against'' the employers. Really effective trade unionism would include no employers’ “party,” and would be united on the basis of militant struggle.

But the case against the existence of a “party system” is not necessarily a justification for the continued existence of a single political party. Therefore we must now consider further the role of the single party in the U.S.S.R. to-day, and whether its existence is consistent with democracy or not.

Let us imagine that at some future date, in Britain, a Labour Party was returned to power, pledged to a radical program of change in the interests of the hand-and-brain workers of Britain, who amount to over 90 percent of the population of the country. Suppose that, to meet the opposition of the property-owners, emergency measures had to be taken, which received the support of the vast majority of the people of the country, who organized strikes and demonstrations of support. Suppose that the property-owners then organized armed opposition, and that the people took up arms on behalf of their own Government. Suppose that, in the course of the struggle, all that was best in the other political organizations of the country came over to the support of the Government, as representing the will of the democracy of Britain. And suppose that what remained of other political organizations, representing the interests of private property at all costs, supported the taking up of arms against the State. In such conditions would not the prestige of the party in power grow? Would not the people, as they fought for the Government of this party which represented their interests, come to the conclusion that this party, which represented them against the attacks of the property-owners, should never again go out of office?

Suppose, moreover, that this party of the working-people, finding itself in a position in which it was called upon to lead its supporters, not only by appealing to them at elections, but in organizing their struggle against the counter-attack of the employers in every locality and in every factory, decided only to admit as members those who played an active part in its work, and abolished such offices as that of “subscribing member.” Suppose, too, that in order to prevent careerists creeping into its ranks, it started to hold public cleansings, in which all workers would report on the actions and speeches of the party members, with a view to eliminating all that did not loyally represent the working people: would not the introduction of such features strengthen this one party, so that the people would become determined to improve its personnel more and more, but never to let this party, as such, be put out of office again?

It is by regarding the question of a single party in this light—as a possible line of future development in our own country—that I think the question can be most clearly seen in its correct perspective. We can see that in certain conditions, the people might democratically support a “one-party” system. They would do this in conditions similar to the experience of the Russian Revolution, when a serious conflict occurred between the people and their party on the one hand and the property-owners on the other, and when the party of the people in such circumstances led their struggle for democratic rights against the attempts of property to suppress them. A party that led the people in such a struggle would gain enormously in prestige. When, at the victorious conclusion of the struggle, a situation arose in which this one party now combined all the most active fighters for the liberty of the people, is it likely that the people would ask that the other parties, the parties of their enemies, should once more be given an opportunity to rule? Is it likely that the people would want the political organizations that had taken up arms against them to be again afforded legal rights as soon as they had been defeated in the military struggle? Obviously the reverse is the case. At the end of such a struggle the people would not ask that the other parties be allowed to operate again, but, on the contrary, they would do everything to strengthen the one party that had shown itself to be their leader in the struggle. The people would choose in the future to have a one-party system, since now the one party would be the only one that they could absolutely trust.

But might they not ask that this party be disbanded, and that a system without any political party be introduced? Here, I think, the answer is in the negative. For, in the course of the struggle, the party would have established itself, not as a parliamentary party of the old type, but as the organized leadership of the people. And it is as such, not as a parliamentary organization, that they would want it to continue to exist. Lenin, writing in 1920, made the following illuminating comment on the position of the party after the workers have established a system of real democracy:

“Classes remain, and will remain for years, everywhere after the proletarian conquest of power. Perhaps in England, where there is no peasantry, the period will be shorter, but even there the small proprietors, holders of property, exist. . . . The dictatorship of the proletariat is a resolute persistent struggle, sanguinary and bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and economic, educational and administrative, against the forces and traditions of the old society. . . . Without an iron party, hardened in fight, without a party possessing the confidence of all that is honest in the given class, without a party capable of observing the disposition of the masses and of influencing it successfully, to conduct such a struggle is impossible. . . . Whoever in the least weakens the iron discipline of the party of the proletariat (especially during its dictatorship) aids in reality the bourgeoisie against the proletariat” (''Left-Wing Communism'').

In the view of Lenin, the party, as the organized leadership of the mass of the people, must not be disbanded after the seizure of power, but, on the contrary, must be strengthened, in order to ensure that the real democracy achieved should not again be overthrown by the armed forces of the property-owners. And in dealing with this one party Lenin stresses the essential need for discipline in a period of historic struggle between the working people on the one hand and the owners of property on the other. In the next chapter we shall discuss this question of discipline further, for it is the greatest of errors to assume, as is sometimes done, that democracy and discipline are mutually exclusive terms. Actually, the only effective democracy of the people must be a disciplined democracy, for “democracy” of the people without discipline is sheer anarchy, and no anarchy has ever been able to preserve its independence against the opposition of an organized enemy.

And now, in conclusion, a few words must be said about one more problem. Criticism is often raised that in the U.S.S.R. to-day the ruling party consists of only about 2 million members out of a total population of 170 million. It is maintained that this organization is so small that its domination in the State cannot be anything but undemocratic. First, as a matter of information, it is worth pointing out that not only are there 2 million members of the Communist Party in the U.S.S.R., but an additional 5 or 6 million members of the Communist Youth, from which the best representatives later join the Party. However, this is a minor point, and the actual criticism can be faced even if we take the critic’s minimum figure of 2 million Party members in the U.S.S.R.

Two facts must be borne in mind about the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R. First, it is a party of active workers; there are no “paying members” who do no work. Every member is an active member. Secondly, as stressed by Lenin, the Party must not be allowed to grow too rapidly, for that would mean deterioration in quality, and deterioration in the quality of a body which forms the “organized leadership” of the community would have disastrous results. Finally, in order to appreciate the size of the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R. in comparison with the political parties of Britain we must have our facts clear, and not misrepresent them.

The individual membership of the Labour Party in Britain to-day amounts to between 300,000 and 400,000. But it would probably not be going too far to estimate that less than one in 20 of these are active members. So that the proportion of the Labour Party membership which is strictly comparable to the membership of the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R.—all of which is active—is about 5 percent. The membership of the British Labour Party that is active in doing the party’s work among the people of Britain can be put at about 15,000 or 20,000. This is about one in every 3,200 of population at the minimum, and at the most about one in every 2,400 of the population. And yet, if a Labour Government were returned to power, I cannot imagine anyone complaining that the party did not represent the people “because it is so small.” Yet, as compared with the U.S.S.R., a ruling party that comprised only one person in every 2,000 or 3,000 of the population would be regarded as a very small party. For the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R. includes 2 million members—one in every 85 citizens! So, while the Labour Party in Britain may boast of its size, and claim one active worker for every 2,000 or 3,000 of the people, in the U.S.S.R. the Communist Party is criticized as being unrepresentative because one in every 85 citizens is an active member!

But the argument does not finish here. For, if it is true that the Labour Party in Britain can claim one in every 2,000 or 3,000 inhabitants as its active members, the other political parties certainly each have less active members than the Labour Party. Therefore, taking all the political parties in Britain together their combined active membership cannot amount to more than one in every 1,000 of the population. So that, taking the whole of our parliamentary system, the political parties that are the only organizations putting up candidates at elections comprise about one active member for every thousand of the people of the country. Dictatorship by a small minority? Yes, indeed, whereas in the U.S.S.R. the Communist Party claims one in every 85 of the population, and can thus claim to be comparatively representative!

Lastly, let me again remind you of the Party Cleansing in the U.S.S.R., by which the ordinary citizen exercises control over the membership of his Party. What control have we poor British citizens over the one thousandth of our population that makes itself active in politics? If I do not like the type of people who become politicians in this country, I have no opportunity of seeing that others take their place. We have no cleansing of our political parties at public meetings to ensure that they shall only represent the very best elements of the people! No wonder, then, that in disgust many British citizens never exercise their right to vote at all, disliking all the politicians who are thrust at them by the one-thousandth of the population organized as active members of our great political parties!

No; the criticism that the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R, is too small to represent the people is nonsense. It is the greatest political party in any country of the world. It is also the greatest in proportion to population. It is greater in proportion to the total population that it represents than all the active members of political parties in Britain put together. And it is subject to democratic control by the people themselves in the institution of the Party Cleansing. It is not incomprehensible that such an organization commands the respect of the whole population, and that Soviet democrats demand that this form of leadership shall be preserved, and that rival organizations aiming at disuniting the people shall not be permitted.

=== Democratic Discipline and Freedom of Opposition ===
We come now to a question which has been very frequently raised during the past year, a matter which has been brought once more into the limelight by the trials of opposition groups which have taken place in Moscow. This is the question of “freedom of opposition” under Soviet conditions, and the extent to which such freedom is justifiably limited in the interests of democratic discipline.

Now, if we consider any kind of democratic organization in any part of the world, we find that it has to be concerned, not only with preserving its members’ freedom of individual expression, but also with preserving the majority of members from individuals and minorities who occupy hours of valuable time with unpopular speeches, and who thus obstruct action in the interests of the majority. If we take a business men’s club with its proverbial bore, a shareholders’ meeting with the usual shareholder with a grievance, or the trade union branch with the member who is consistently a nuisance, we find that every organization, professing to be run in the interests of the majority, must take steps to protect this majority against undisciplined minorities. Democracy, therefore, does not mean simply giving individuals the opportunity to voice their personal views, but also it means that the people shall have the opportunity to refuse to hear those whose views are antagonistic to them, and the expression of which is an obstruction to the carrying out of a generally accepted policy. In democratic societies functioning within the capitalist State, such persons may be simply expelled from their organizations. But the Soviet State cannot simply expel recalcitrant “members,” for two principal reasons. First, the surrounding States might not accept the persons expelled; and secondly, such persons, once expelled, might be far more use to the enemies of the community than if kept within its frontiers. Trotsky was simply expelled from the Workers’ State—and his activities since have confirmed the view that less harm would have been done if he had been isolated in Siberia.

Once the problems of a democratic organization become those of a State as well, and of a State surrounded by hostile States, simple expulsion of minorities that obstruct the common business is no longer practicable. In dealing with such cases the Soviet State is forced by circumstances to remove such persons from society, while keeping them within its frontiers. This is why, in the U.S.S.R., certain offenders against the will of the majority may be sent into exile.

It is only when this question of political exile is seen as the Soviet equivalent of expulsion, as practised by democratic organizations elsewhere, that it can be fully understood. The Soviet State is a workers’ organization. Workers’ organizations expel obstructionists, and, however democratic they are, they will still have to face the problem of so dealing with such people. The Soviet State has the same problem, but it cannot expel these people from its territory as a rule, simply because they are not acceptable to the rulers of the territory outside the U.S.S.R. Further, the expulsion of people who are enemies of the majority of the people of the U.S.S.R. would be in general unwise, for it would be giving them an opportunity to carry on their activity from outside, thus strengthening the enemies of the U.S.S.R.

Some readers may be a little disturbed at this somewhat brutal statement of the case, under Soviet conditions, for exiling political opponents. But nobody must be misled by what I have said into thinking that anyone who disagrees with any person in authority is exiled in the U.S.S.R. On the contrary, there is a phenomenal amount of discussion in the U.S.S.R. by the general public on all vital issues. The Soviet citizen who is exiled is not a person who has simply disagreed. It is the person who, having made proposals and having been defeated, continues to obstruct all constructive business by repeatedly putting forward again and again the rejected point of view, and who thus becomes a thorn in the flesh of the whole of society. Such was Trotsky, who for years was putting forward his minority views at every popular gathering in opposition to the leaders of the Soviet Government, and who was finally exiled because he was organizing secret groups to oppose the policy democratically adopted by the whole people. He was thus obstructing the further development of the country in the direction decided upon by the people, and was expelled.

The extent to which the Soviet Government must be vigilant on such questions as discipline is determined, not by the structure of the Soviet State alone, but by the fact that it is surrounded by a hostile world. It is quite impossible to realize the full implications of discipline in the U.S.S.R. by simply comparing, as we have so far done, the Soviet State with democratic organizations elsewhere. In order to obtain a true picture we must make our comparison with other democratic organizations at a time when they are waging a struggle for their existence, when they are carrying on some great militant campaign in the interests of their members and are being subjected to every kind of attack. The Soviet State surrounded by a capitalist and partly Fascist world cannot be compared with a trade union in a period of industrial peace. It must be compared with a trade union during an industrial dispute. And we all know that, in an industrial dispute, a union will exercise disciplinary pressure on its members of a kind that will not be considered necessary in time of peace.

Since it was first created, the Soviet State has been waging a struggle against enemies both inside and outside its territory. Being a democratic State of the working people, it came into conflict with the landowners and employers from the very beginning of its existence. These enemies, with foreign help, took up arms against the Soviet State. The State had to wage a war for its freedom. Later it had to wage a war against the small capitalist minority in the villages, and, all along, it has had to build up its defences and consolidate itself against a possible further attack from outside repeating the experiences of 1918 to 1922.

During a strike the members of a trade union have to fight a battle with the employers. Force is used on both sides—the workers try to force the employers to capitulate for fear of loss of profits, and the employers try to coerce the workers from sheer hunger. The workers may resort to putting machinery out of order, to the picketing of factories, and so on. The employers will undoubtedly call in the police on the side of themselves to “protect their property.” What is the attitude of the workers in such circumstances to recalcitrant minorities?

In every strike the employer usually finds some individual or group of individuals among the workers who, out of a desire for immediate personal gain, or simply through a lack of knowledge of the issues at stake, is ready to go on working or to persuade fellow workers to accept the bosses’ terms. The employer can find allies among such people, against their own comrades. In every strike the workers picket such deserters, and “peaceful picketing” may be carried, relatively speaking, quite as far as “exile to Siberia,” if we look at the two types of struggle in perspective.

The truth of the matter is that under all conditions a struggle by a democratic organization for its freedom is a limitation on the democratic rights of the opponents of that freedom. And once, in a critical situation, a minority continues to oppose the interests of the majority, such a minority becomes, consciously or not, a weapon of the enemy against the democracy concerned. Here again we only repeat what was said in our Introduction—that democracy and dictatorship are not mutually exclusive.

In the Soviet Union the application of all decisions by the Soviet authorities is the direct responsibility of every citizen, for every citizen is a worker in some State organization, and every member of a Soviet does work in one of the departments of that Soviet. In Britain, with its parliamentary system, there is no reason why, within certain limits, continual opposition in Parliament to the policy of the Government should obstruct the carrying out of that policy. If a majority in the British Parliament passes a certain law to-morrow, the opponents of the law may continue verbally to oppose it. But the Civil Service will have to carry it out all the same, and will have no right of criticism.

In the U.S.S.R. the Civil Service includes the people who oppose the policy decided upon as well as those who support it. In such circumstances it is clear that to continue actively to oppose a decision arrived at by a majority would, in practice, mean sabotaging its execution. So, from a purely organizational standpoint, we see the absolute necessity for the disciplined execution of democratic decisions in the U.S.S.R.

The idea that majority decisions should be binding on minorities is generally accepted in Britain as far as the practical execution of these decisions is concerned. But there often remains the idea that while the minority should carry out the decision in practice, it should have the right to oppose its execution in theory at the same time. Such a view, however, is invariably abandoned whenever there is some urgent problem on hand, such as a war, involving the country as a whole, or a strike, involving a trade union. For even in Britain it has been found that concerted action can be obstructed, not only by people refusing to act, but by their encouraging others not to act. Propaganda against carrying out a majority decision may be an even more effective form of sabotage of that decision than a direct refusal to carry it out personally.

In the U.S.S.R., where the whole community is in constant action for the general improvement of conditions and for strengthening itself against attack, it is clear that minority opposition to majority decisions might well become a serious obstruction to the carrying out of these decisions, and thus play directly into the hands of the enemies of the U.S.S.R. whose main requirement is to obstruct its internal development.

The recognition of the need for discipline in a democratic organization does not necessarily mean, however, any curtailment of the freedom of the ordinary citizen. For, if the ordinary citizen considers such discipline necessary to the common interest, he will personally be an enforcer of such discipline, not a violator, and the discipline will thus be an expression and a defence of his freedom, not a violation of it. This point is of particular importance in discussing such a question as freedom of speech in the U.S.S.R. to-day.

I have often been asked, since returning from the Soviet Union, whether a citizen in Moscow can get up in a park and attack the Government as he can in Hyde Park in this country. My first reply usually is, “God forbid that he should want to!”—for it is hard to imagine a more ineffective freedom than the ability to address a handful of regular Hyde Park listeners on a Sunday afternoon; that is, if one is interested in effective speech that influences people to act, and not simply in exercising one’s lungs, which can be equally well done in a bedroom with the window open.

Secondly, it is worth mentioning that the Soviet workers, able to hold their meetings in the assembly rooms of the country free of charge, and being able to meet in their factories to discuss all matters of interest to them, do not need to go to a park to air their views.

But a far more important point than these is the question: Do Soviet workers want to get up and attack their Government in public meetings? And, if certain individuals do want to do this, do the majority of workers want to listen to such speakers? The whole question of freedom of speech is fundamentally answered in the reply to these two questions.

First, it is only a supposition of the Englishman, two thousand miles away, that the workers in the U.S.S.R. want to get up and attack the Government. Actually, they are no more likely to want to attack the Soviet Government than trade unionists in Britain are likely to attack trade unionism. The Soviet State has been built up by the organized activity of the people themselves; it is ''their'' State, and as such they are interested in defending, not attacking it. Of course, a small minority of people might want to attack the Soviet State, and this was particularly true in the early days when the property-owning class still held considerable influence, and still could command a limited number of spokesmen among the workers and peasants themselves. But these people were a small minority, and cannot be described typical.

During five years in the U.S.S.R. I have invariably had the impression that the people have no desire to attack the Government, because they look upon it as their own, and as serving their own interests. Of course, I do not wish to say that there are no persons at all who would like to criticize the Government. There obviously are such people. But if these people are exceptions, and not the rule, then we must take it that there is freedom for the vast majority of the people to express themselves, but that a small minority does not enjoy such freedom.

But there is a second aspect to the matter. Freedom does not only consist in the freedom of the individual to harangue the masses, but in the freedom of the masses to choose who shall harangue them. No democratic organization in the world claims to give absolute freedom to every member to put forward indefinitely an unpopular point of view. For obviously such a person at a certain point obstructs the whole work of his democratic organization.

For example, during the period from 1924 to 1928, after the death of Lenin, and when Trotsky was repeatedly challenging the policy of the Government, opposition was openly expressed by Trotsky and his followers. But at last, exasperated by the continued attempts of small minorities of Trotskyists to obstruct all business in order to popularize a thoroughly unpopular point of view, the State finally took the step of suppressing this opposition. And this suppression received the general approval of the people, because this form of opposition had become a public nuisance.

In the Soviet Union to-day the freedom of workers to criticize their superiors and Government institutions does not extend to freedom to attack the Government as such, because the people as a whole support this Government and to not oppose it. If a foreigner visiting the U.S.S.R. tries, as sometimes happens, to criticize the Soviet Government in the Moscow Park of Culture and Rest—the nearest thing to, though very far from, our Hyde Park—he will have a whole mass of people arguing with him in defence of what they call “our Government.” They will defend this Government by argument, while probably respecting his person as a foreigner to a sufficient extent not to take violent measures. But if the enemy of the Government were a Soviet citizen, the people concerned in the argument might well call the militia to arrest this counter-revolutionary, just as, in Spain to-day, the people in Government territory would act towards a person who was chalking the walls with swastikas, or carrying on still more pernicious activity in the interests of Hitler and Franco, enemies of Spanish democracy.

The essential fact which must be appreciated is that in the U.S.S.R. to-day citizens are not interested in attacking the State or the Government; what concerns them is to improve its work. And every kind of discussion, and of criticism, calculated to improve the working of the Soviet State in the interests of the population is, as we have seen, not only allowed, but actively encouraged.

When the trials of Zinoviev and Kamenev, Radek and Sokolnikov, took place in Moscow, reference was made in many British newspapers to the significance of these trials as evidence of widespread opposition to the “Stalin régime,” and the impossibility of expressing this opposition by legal means. This interpretation of the facts is the reverse of the truth.

If, in the U.S.S.R. to-day, there were widespread opposition to the Government, there would be the same symptoms as in Fascist Germany: illegally printed leaflets would circulate in the factories, there would be organized discontent among the people throughout the country, occasionally showing itself in some lightning strike or demonstration against the authorities, and batches of workers would be arrested in groups of thirty and forty. But none of these things happen. And since, in Tsarist Russia, such things did occur, it cannot be said to be for lack of experience that they do not occur to-day. Therefore we can only conclude that such widespread opposition to the Government does not exist, and, whatever the trials do denote, it is not this widespread discontent that some newspaper editors would welcome.

But if the Moscow trials do not denote the existence of mass discontent, they do denote the existence of a number of cases of individual discontent so great as to lead to the most dastardly conspiracies against the community. What is the explanation of such cases of personal discontent? Is their existence a serious flaw in the Soviet system of democracy?

It is the experience of the working-class movement in all countries that persons who, at one time or another have played a leading part, have at other times had to be expelled from the movement in which they once fought, and have become its avowed enemies. Sir Oswald Mosley can claim to be an old member of the Labour Party, and Mussolini of the Socialist Party of Italy. J. H. Thomas and Ramsay MacDonald were once admired Labour leaders, and Doriot, now one of the most active pro-Fascists in France, was in the Communist Party. Why, in this respect, should the U.S.S.R. differ from all other countries?

In the U.S.S.R., as I have shown, the “expulsion” of members means, in fact, exile. It is therefore more usual than elsewhere that any leading personality rather than accept “expulsion” and retire from activity into exile, will accept majority decisions against himself, and promise henceforth to carry out these decisions as a loyal worker in the Soviet State. But if such loyalty is not genuine, and if the individual concerned is not ready whole-heartedly to accept a decision against himself, he may continue his opposition. How can this be done?

Once a majority decision has been arrived at in the U.S.S.R. the people are not going to tolerate continual propaganda against this decision. Therefore, any sponsor of an unpopular policy knows that, after democratic defeat, he will have to cease publicly to propagate his policy. Having no mass support, such a person may start loyally to work for the accepted policy or, determined to put his own leadership and policy across, whether the people want it or not, he may resort to underground means of trying to displace the existing leadership, and thus altering policy. In this way underground opposition activity by rejected leading personalities, people whom the democracy has turned down, is as possible in the U.S.S.R. as such open opposition is possible under capitalism by the expelled Socialists or Communists who become Fascist. It is also clear, I think, that any really democratic State must be ruthless in its treatment of such opposition by people who are rejected by the democracy, and therefore resort to other means of obtaining power in spite of the will of the people which has rejected them.

The vital fact which many people are unable to grasp about the U.S.S.R. to-day, whether they are spokesmen of the Press, the Government, or well-known trade union leaders like Sir Walter Citrine, is that in the U.S.S.R. the Government has the full support of the people. In capitalist countries the idea of a Government with the whole people behind it seems so strange that people are inclined to believe that such a thing is impossible. In the British trade union movement to-day, also, we can understand Sir Walter Citrine imagining that such a tiling as a Labour movement in which leaders and rank and file are united is impossible. But let us have no illusions on this score. So long as the trade union movement is divided, it will be weak. And, once it is united on the basis of a real working-class policy, it too will have to fight its enemy minorities and to use means of putting an end to their anti-working-class activities. The U.S.S.R. to-day stands out in the world as a country where people and Government are at one with each other; this is the great strength of the U.S.S.R.; but it is one of the things hardest to understand in a country torn by class antagonisms, and in a labour movement into which the influence of the possessing class has, crept and dug itself well in.

Democracy, contrary to many illusory views, does not mean freedom of every kind. It means the rule of the people, and this means the suppression of the enemies of the people. Democracy, therefore, is also dictatorship, as far as concerns those who reject the decisions of the people and combat these decisions by every possible means. Soviet democracy, without discipline, would have led to the complete defeat of the Soviet State in 1918 to 1922. Democracy without discipline would have made the building up of the Red Army impossible. Democracy without discipline would have made the Five Year Plan an impossibility, for no great industrial progress could have been undertaken in conditions of anarchy. The U.S.S.R. to-day combines the features of real democracy for the people with the disciplined enforcement by the people of the decisions of this democracy. To the minority of property-owners such a system has always been a ruthless dictatorship, but this dictatorship has been in the interests of the vast majority of the people. It has, therefore, been essentially democratic.

“You say that in order to build our Socialist society we sacrificed personal liberty and suffered privation,” said Stalin to the American correspondent Roy Howard. “But we did not build this society in order to restrict personal liberty, but in order that the human individual may feel really free. We built it for the sake of real personal liberty, liberty without quotation marks. It is difficult for me to imagine what ‘personal liberty’ is enjoyed by an unemployed person who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment. Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being to-morrow deprived of work, of home, and of bread, only in such a society is real, and not paper, personal and every other liberty possible.”

Such a liberty as described here by Stalin has had to be fought for, won, and has to be defended. But the defence of liberty is the suppression of its enemies. The defence of democracy, therefore, necessitates discipline over its opponents. Democracy for the people means discipline among the people and dictatorship over the enemies of the people.

== A New Democracy ==

=== What Is Democracy? ===
We have defined democracy as government of the people, by the people, for the people. We must now ask what these words imply if a democratic system is to be really effective. What are the conditions in which it can be said that there really is government of, by, and for the people?

First and foremost, the people themselves must actively participate in the work of government, for only if they do this can any state really be a government of the people, and not a government over the people carried on by somebody else. Therefore, if government of the people by the people is really to exist, the people must be admitted to every branch of State administration, for otherwise there will automatically arise a separation of the governing authorities from the people which means that democracy will not be fully operative.

If the administration of any State is to be really accessible to the whole people, every administrative post must be open to all according only to the qualifications of citizens for fulfilling any particular job. But the qualifications of citizens are not something rigidly predetermined, but depend on the opportunities available for education and on the extent to which every citizen may qualify for responsible posts even though, in the first instance, he was not qualified at all. In the interest of democracy, then, every citizen must have equal opportunities for education, and to qualify for all positions in the running of the State. All citizens must have the opportunity to develop their natural abilities to the full, and to use them in the most responsible positions.

If, in any society, certain citizens are barred from the right to participate in the work of government, as a result of such peculiarities as sex or nationality, then this is a limitation of democracy. A really effective democracy will make no distinction between its citizens on the ground of nationality or sex, and every one of them will have an equal right to participate in government according only to his qualifications for the job, qualifications which he will have an opportunity to develop if he has the necessary ability.

Since, in every present-day community, the use of force may be necessary in the interests of the majority and against the interests of antagonistic minorities or external enemies, it is likely, in every present-day democracy, that some form of army and police force will be inevitable. But if this army is to be representative of the people themselves, and not become isolated from the people whom it is supposed to defend, it must essentially be recruited from their own ranks, and its commanders as well as its ordinary soldiers must be really representative of the people of the democracy. For, if the officers of an army do not represent the people that this army is supposed to defend, there is absolutely no guarantee that the same thing may not occur as has occurred in Spain, that the generals of such an army will not revolt against the government of the people, and co-operate with the most anti-democratic foreign States to suppress their own people and their own people’s democratic government.

In the preservation of law and order within the country, also, a real democracy would ensure that the police and the judges were drawn from the people themselves, in order to be truly representative, for only then can the people be guaranteed justice.

Every real democracy will always give freedom to every nation to determine its own fate and its own form of government. The oppression of individuals because of their nationality, or of whole nations because they are in a minority in the territory of any State—or even in spite of the fact that they are the majority of the people coming under a particular Government—as happens in certain empires, cannot be justified on any democratic grounds whatever. A real democracy will not only give to majority nations within its territory the right to self-determination, but will secure for small nations also the right of self-government so long as such a right is not abused to the disadvantage of the community of nations as a whole.

The governing of the people by themselves necessitates, among other things, the complete equality of freedom of expression on the part of citizens. Not only must there be equality of opportunity to participate in the work of administration, but also in the expression of opinions about the work of government. Therefore the Press and the meeting-halls must be equally at the disposal of all citizens in a real democracy, and any limitation of the control of such things to the hands of a small class is a restriction of the democratic rights of the people.

We are very much inclined, particularly in Great Britain, to discuss questions of democracy as if they concerned only the running of the State, without referring to the very important other activities in which the overwhelming majority of the people spend the greater part of their lives. In Britain the breadwinners of 90 percent of the population make their livelihood by working for somebody else in institutions and firms owned by somebody else. In such places of work the employee is subject to the dictates of the employer from morning to night, and even the question of whether he shall continue in the same job to-morrow is something which the employer may decide without any reference whatever to the will of the worker concerned.

Therefore, in the economic life of this country to-day there is not the slightest pretence at democracy. Every employer has the right to run his own concern as he wishes, to take on and to discharge workers, and to impose such conditions of work as prove profitable to him. In his own factory every employer is boss, and the people who print the newspapers and run the railways, who work in the factories and toil in the mines, have not the slightest say in the way in which these organizations shall be run, or the workers treated. In their daily lives the vast majority of our people spend their time under the dictatorship of an employer, of a man who happens to possess the means of production with which others must work in order to make a living.

Any real democracy, quite apart from the control of the State itself, would have to give to the people the right to run all those organizations in which they spend their time and earn their living. This would mean that, so long as there were privately owned factories, the workers would have to be represented as well as the owner on the board of management; and, for economic democracy to be really effective, the whole of the Economic concerns of the country would have to be taken over by the democratic State or by co-operatives. In such circumstances it could be ensured that the people who worked in a concern would be directly represented on its management as workers, while, at the same time, responsibility for general administration would rest with a manager appointed by the State, and responsible to the democratic Government of the people themselves. Only in this way could democracy be introduced in economic life, and without democracy in economic life any talk of real democracy is to a great extent illusory.

I think that most readers will agree that the essential characteristics of a real democracy which are described here do not exist in Britain to-day. I think that, if they have read Parts I and II and not skipped to this part first, they will agree with me that such a democratic system does already exist in the U.S.S.R. But how does it come about that people who refer to Britain as a democracy often refer to the U.S.S.R. as a dictatorship, when we find that the real essentials of democracy exist in the U.S.S.R. and not in Britain.

It is true, of course, that in Britain to-day we enjoy very valuable democratic rights as compared with the peoples of Fascist countries. We may make speeches in any meeting-halls that we can afford to hire and that the owners will let us have, or in any streets where the police do not decide that we are causing an obstruction—other, that is, than outside a labour exchange, where such meetings have been banned by Lord Trenchard; we may publish literature if we can afford a printing press, so long as the police and the courts do not consider such matter to be obscene or seditious, libellous or blasphemous; and we may form organizations as wage-earners, to force the employers to improve the conditions of their employees, though we may also get the sack for doing so. Further, when political parties whose active membership comprises about one-thousandth part of the population of the country offer us candidates at elections, we may choose between them or not choose at all. And, if we can persuade one of these political parties to put us up as a candidate at an election, and to finance our campaign for us, or if we are rich enough to finance ourselves and stand as “independents,” we may stand for election to Parliament or local government. If, when elected, we decide not to fulfil the policy for which we were elected, this matter is our own affair until the next election! All these rights, it will be noted, include an element of democracy, and a non-democratic element. In so far as they represent democracy, such rights are to be defended and extended; in so far as they are limited, they fall short of the really effective democracy which we have outlined. The U.S.S.R. has introduced something new into democracy, because it has made democracy really effective in one respect after another in which, in other countries, it is still narrowly limited.

How does it come about that so many of the most loud-voiced supporters of democracy in Britain to-day, quite irrespective of their political affiliations, can denounce the U.S.S.R. and the Fascist States in one breath, while Britain alone, it would seem, stands proudly as the standard-bearer of democracy in a distracted world? How can we explain the fact that when examining the U.S.S.R. we found that from bottom to top, from the management of a factory or a block of flats to the administration of the President’s office itself, the people themselves are taking part in government, and yet such a system is condemned from 2,000 miles away as a dictatorship only rivalled in its viciousness by Fascism?

The answer lies in the existence of different conceptions of democracy itself. One conception, defining democracy in terms of certain traditional institutions which exist to-day, attacks all other systems as contrary to democratic principles. This is the orthodox defence of the British system at the present time. The other conception starts out with a study of the actual economic and social position of the people in society, and then asks to what extent they can or cannot be said to be governing themselves. And it must be admitted that, when the British system is approached in this way, though much preferable to a Fascist dictatorship, it appears to be anything but a system of effective democracy when compared with the situation existing in the Soviet Union. To take the economic life of the people alone, in Britain they play no part in running the concerns in which they spend a major part of their lives. They have to work under the dictates of a master, and the masters taken together only amount to a minute proportion of the total population.

Why, then, if in the economic life of the country there is such a dictatorship, do the people tolerate this state of affairs, having, as they do, a variety of democratic means of expressing opposition at their disposal? If the British State is democratic, then the people must have chosen to work daily for other people for wages and under conditions over which they have no control. Or is it, perhaps, that the extent of democracy is really so limited that the people have no opportunity through the State of effectively limiting the power of the owners of the means of production? Certainly, so long as they believe that a highly limited democracy is really an effective system of democracy, they will not try to extend their democratic rights, but will be passive victims to every kind of encroachment. Therefore, it is essential that the people appreciate the role of the property-owners in British democracy, a matter which we shall discuss in detail in the next chapter.

In general, so long as the factories and the mines, the newspapers and the meeting-halls, are privately owned, to such an extent also are the working people subject to a certain degree of dictatorship. The work-man is told by the employer when he may earn a living, and under what conditions. And the working people as a whole, who cannot afford to own large newspapers and meeting-halls, are at the mercy of the continual propaganda of those who can. The extent of democracy is in this way limited in every community by the degree to which there exists the private ownership of the means of production, thus subjecting the working citizen to the dictatorship of an employer; and by the extent to which there is private ownership of the means of propaganda, thus subjecting the ordinary citizen to a perpetual bombardment of those ideas which the property-owners desire to propagate. Finally, as will be shown in the next chapter, in a a democratic State in which the means of production and propaganda are still in private hands, the State, too, is subject to the control of these property-owners to an overwhelming degree.

When we survey the world to-day we find that the extent to which effective democracy is enjoyed by the people varies from country to country. In Fascist countries, where there is an open terroristic dictatorship, and the property-owners retain their power, we find that the Workers and peasants who form the majority of the population are not allowed to combine their forces at all in order to fight for better conditions; they are forbidden to have their own newspapers or to hold their own meetings. The workers play absolutely no part in the running of the concerns in which they are employed, and they cannot even organize themselves in order to ensure that they will be paid a living minimum wage. To express their opinion, either of the employer or of the State, in a way which offends either of these, is a crime. Fascism thus completely destroys all vestiges of democracy. The democratic organizations of the people for improving their conditions of life are driven into illegality, and forced to take on a revolutionary form.

Fascist States combine an open dictatorship with the existence of private ownership of property concentrated in a few hands. In contrast to these countries, we have the democratic States in which, though the means of production are in private hands, and the means of propaganda are mainly so, the working people have the right to organize in trade unions, to hold meetings, and to publish their own newspapers in so far as they can afford to do so. If, in such countries, the workers can sufficiently well organize themselves, they can force the employers and the State to grant them better conditions of life: While such a system as this is vastly superior to Fascism, it still suffers very great short-comings, for there is still nothing approaching real equality of rights for all citizens. Even under conditions of democratic government, so long as the means of production and propaganda are privately owned, the owners have always reserves of property which the workers have not, and these reserves give an economic power in bargaining with the workers and a political power in propaganda, education, and in running the State, that can hardly be over-estimated.

Only when, as in the U.S.S.R. to-day, the means of production and propaganda are socially owned and controlled, is there no longer the domination of society by a small class that owns the property. In the U.S.S.R. no man owns a factory, and therefore no man can dictate to another man at will whether or not he shall have a job, and, if so, on what conditions. And, together with this, the socialization of the meeting-halls and the newspapers has made the means of expression equally available to all, instead of being only at the disposal of private owners. In addition, in the running of the Soviet State the ordinary citizens are drawn into the work of administration, while universal suffrage is enjoyed by all without such things as property and residential qualifications which elsewhere favour the owners of property.

Democracy is not something absolute. A Fascist State may, in particular circumstances, make some concession to public opinion which gives an opportunity for the people to express their views on some matter which intimately affects them. Such a measure would be of value to the people as a step in the direction of democracy. It would be to their interest to use such a concession as a means for obtaining further concessions and further democratic rights. A democratic capitalist State may impose limitations of certain kinds on the power of the property-owners by laying down legislation for the protection of the working people, by setting limits to the amount of money which may be spent in elections, and so on. But a democratic State may also curtail democracy, as, for example, in Britain, when Lord Trenchard banned the holding of meetings outside labour exchanges, or when, after the General Strike in 1926, the Government placed a number of restrictions on the rights of the working people to organize themselves and to unite their forces in a struggle for better conditions against the dictates of private property.

Every Fascist State includes in its population a majority of people who live by their own labour, and who will use every opportunity to wring better conditions of life from the property-owners. Because Fascism cannot kill the people who work, it cannot pluck out from its State those forces which continually demand expression—the democratic forces of the working people. The organizations of the people may be forced underground by a Fascist dictatorship, but they cannot be wiped out, for the people who make such a movement are the vast majority of the population, and the employers cannot live without them.

In the democratic State in which the power of the property-owners remains intact, tendencies towards greater or lesser democracy are both possible, according to the organized strength of the majority of the people on the one hand, and of the property-owning minority on the other. To the great property-owners the ideal State would be one in which the political rights of the workers were no more than their economic rights when working in the factory. For in such a State the property-owners could pursue whatever policy they desired without fear of opposition. Therefore the interests of the great property-owners are always bound up with the curtailment of democratic rights and with a tendency towards Fascism.

On the other hand, to the working people in every capitalist democracy any curtailment for the rights of the property-owners in favour of the workers represents a growth in democratic freedom. The extension of the right to hold street meetings and demonstrations can only benefit the working people, those who are least able to hire meeting-halls. The limitation of the rights of private individuals to use their newspapers for political purposes by greater working-class control over the Press can only benefit the working people—the majority of the population—and is, therefore, democratic. The replacing of property-owners by working men and women in the Civil Service, army, and law courts leads to a greater representation of the working people in the running of the State, and is a democratic measure. So, from the standpoint of the working people, the prospects of increasing their democratic rights are always present. The extent to which these opportunities are utilized depends on the degree to which the working people are aware of their position and organized to improve it. In the last analysis it is the relative strength of these two sections of the population that decides whether Fascism or democracy shall triumph, and, if democracy, the extent to which this democracy shall be made real by the limitation, and finally the complete annihilation, of the powers of property, economically and politically.

It would be a great error, however, to assume that any capitalist country consists only of workers and big employers. Actually, there is in most countries a considerable middle-class, consisting of small employers. These small employers, under present-day conditions, are continually menaced by the growth of monopoly, and are increasingly desirous of utilizing all democratic means of controlling the operations of the great property-owners. As a result, the small capitalists find themselves lining up with the democratic forces, with the working people, against the great monopolies and Fascism. In this fact of the present day lies the economic basis for a Popular Front, for Democracy and the small man, against Fascism and monopoly.

Perhaps the greatest danger, in Britain to-day, which faces the democratic forces, the vast majority of the population of the country, lies in the fact that the power of property in the British democratic system is grossly under-estimated in practically all public utterances on the matter. Therefore, bearing in mind all that we now know about the democracy of the U.S.S.R. let us turn to a short study of democracy in Britain to-day. Nowhere in the world could a better example be found of the power of property to utilize democracy for its own ends, thus rendering it almost ineffective as a weapon of the people of the country. Moreover, the ineffectiveness of democracy creates an acute danger of open dictatorship. For the less the people of the country realize the extent to which their democratic rights are already seriously limited, and threatened with still further limitations in the future, the more easily they may be induced to believe that democracy itself, rather than the imperfections of that democracy, is at fault when the system does not work satisfactorily for their interests.

=== Democracy and Property ===
In order to examine the relationship between democracy and property, no better example could be taken than Great Britain. For in Britain we possess a much-vaunted democratic system, and at the same time practically the whole of the property of the country is in the hands of a few people who live by employing labour, whilst the vast majority of the population have to work for someone else in order to make a livelihood. According to census figures, about 90 percent of the people of Britain work for somebody else. The question of whether they shall be allowed to work or not is decided by an employer. The question of the conditions under which they work is decided by an employer. The rate of wages which they are paid is finally decided by an employer. And the employers in Britain to-day only amount to some 850,000 people. They and their families make up about 4 percent of the population. So that, in their everyday working life, in everything which determines the security of their livelihood and their standard of life, about 90 percent of the population of Britain are dependent on the will of about 4 percent. Since the majority must work to live, they must accept work when it is going. And, as the owners of property have reserves at their disposal, they can always postpone taking on workers in order to obtain terms which satisfy them. In so far as the workers organize in trade unions they can to some extent build up reserves and bargain for better conditions, but always, fundamentally, the owner of property has the advantage over the man who lives by his labour; for he has reserves of property on which to live, while the worker has very little on which to live unless he is drawing an income from selling his labour.

In the economic sphere in Britain to-day, 4 percent of the population are masters or dictators, 90 percent are servants. And the fact that the relationship of master to servant is also the relationship of property to poverty is illustrated by the figures of the distribution of the national income. The 90 percent of the population that is dependent on its wages receives about 64 percent of the national income. The 4 percent of property-owners, plus about 6 percent of independent workers, absorb annually about 36 percent of the total national income. And, of these property-owners, a very few receive a tremendous income. It is estimated by Professor Bowley that just over 1 percent of the population, the richest property-owners, received, in 1910, 30 percent of the national income. On the other hand, 94½ percent of the population received only 50 percent of the national income.

The conclusion which we arrive at, after reading these figures, is that the class of the population that owns the factories and the coal-mines, the shops, and so on, is a small minority—but a wealthy minority. The majority of the population, on the other hand, work for this minority for a small income. The minority dictate to the majority when, where, and under what conditions they shall make a living. How does this affect the whole system of government of the country?

The supreme authority in Britain—which, by the way, unlike the U.S.S.R. has no written Constitution—is Parliament. The British Parliament consists of two Houses. The so-called “Upper House,” the House of Lords, is not an elected body. It consists of the Peers of the Realm, who are appointed by the Crown, or happen to be the descendants of people who were at one time so appointed. It also includes the bishops. It represents, in fact, the wealthy section of the population, since working men do not become peers, while big landlords and employers do. The House of Lords is drawn from the small section of the community that owns property and employs labour, and not from the vast majority who own nothing and work for somebody else.

The fact that the House of Lords is not a democratic institution is generally admitted. It is even a thing which certain property-owners boast about. Professor Laski shows how, for example, “as early as 1906 Lord Balfour had told his supporters that it was their bounden duty to see that ‘the great Unionist Party should still control, whether in power or in opposition, the destinies of this great Empire.’ What he meant he revealed to the House of Commons three months later, when, on the third reading of the Liberal Government’s abortive Educational Bill of 1906, he declared that ‘the real discussion must be elsewhere’. It was an explicit claim for the right of property to rule the country whatever the will of the people, and no one who reads the utterances of eminent peers about that Budget can doubt that in their minds they felt entitled to safeguard themselves against any measure they might choose to regard as confiscatory. Mr. Asquith was right when he warned the electorate that implicit in the claim of the Lords was the threat of revolution. . . .

“There has been no essential change in the last twenty-five years. For the claim is still made that it in the function of the House of Lords to safeguard the country against a Labour Government which should seek to translate Socialist principles into terms of legislation; and all proposals made by the Conservative Party for the reform of the House of Lords have no end in view but to hinder such a Government, from legislating in the way that is open to its rivals” (Laski, ''The State in Theory and Practice'', pp. 275-6). The House of Lords exists to defend property against the majority of the population. The House of Lords, representing a small minority of the people, is a non-democratic; and its policy, because of the interests which it represents, is anti-democratic.

But let us now consider the “Lower House,” or House of Commons. This is the elected part of Parliament, and is often claimed to be an effective means of expressing the will of the people. Now, if the House of Commons is to express the will of the people effectively, there must exist in the country an equal right for all citizens to vote, to stand for election, to support their candidates effectively, and an equal right for all citizens, on the basis of merit only, to participate in the work of administration, of carrying out the decisions arrived at by the elected Parliament. Actually, as will be shown, not one of these conditions for a really democratic parliamentary system exists in Britain at the present time.

The right to be an elector in Britain to-day is enjoyed by every man and woman over the age of twenty-one, as contrasted with eighteen in the U.S.S.R., on condition that they can claim residence in a constituency for a period of not less than six months. If a citizen can claim occupation of premises in two constituencies, he can enjoy a vote in each. A property-owner, therefore, has the right to two votes if he has property in two constituencies. Further, graduates of the Universities, who are in the main drawn from the employing class and highly paid salaried workers, have two votes at elections.

There are a number of constituencies where the majority of the inhabitants are wage-earners, and yet a majority of the votes can be obtained by the property-owners because they have factories and offices in those areas in sufficient numbers to out-vote the wage-earners living there. In local government, registration as a voter goes with the ownership or renting of residential or office property, and ''there is no limit to the number of votes which one person may exercise in a series of constituencies''. To be considered an occupier, for local government elections, persons must furnish the premises which they occupy. As a result, those who live on premises furnished by someone else have no vote. These people, in general, are wage-earners.

It is true, as far as numbers are concerned, that the total extra votes going to the propertied classes in this way is not large, and cannot outweigh the working-class influence in the country as a while. ''On the other hand, it is of significance'' as a matter of principle, for it brings out vividly the fact that the existing system of election is based, not on citizenship as in the U.S.S.R., but on the ownership of property.

In theory, every person who has the right to vote also has the right to stand for election, if nominated by eight electors. The right of anybody to stand for election, however, is deceptive, for two reasons. First, in the case of parliamentary elections every candidate must deposit £150, which is forfeited if he does not obtain a certain number of votes. Secondly, to stand for election necessitates an election campaign—that is, the effective supporting of candidates by propaganda. The Labour Party, which is not likely to make extravagant estimates on this score, considers that, in addition to the £150 deposit, which may be returned to the candidate, an additional expenditure of at least £500 is necessary to contest a parliamentary seat. A total of £650 must be laid out. It is clear that a small number of rich citizens are in a position to put up candidates in all the parliamentary seats in the country without any great material sacrifice. The vast majority of the population, however, consists of wage-earners, who must pool their meagre resources at considerable sacrifice in order to run candidates.

There are about 600 seats in the House of Commons. There are about 100,000 super-tax payers in the country, with an income of over £2,000 a year. Each one of these people could finance a candidate out of his annual income, and still have £1,200 to live on. Each of these individuals could afford, at his own expense, to contest a constituency. On the other hand, of the 19 million wage-earners, the average wage is not more than £2 5''s''. a week, or, £117 a year. It would, therefore, take a working man—one of the 19 million wage-earners—the total earnings of four years to finance himself, or someone else, as a parliamentary candidate. So the right to stand for election, and to carry out the necessary publicity campaign for a candidate, is enjoyed by the small class of property-owners ''to an enormous degree'' compared with the majority of the population, the wage-earners.

But it must not for one moment be thought that the work of moulding public opinion, and of preparing a state of mind that is likely to support a particular type of parliamentary or municipal candidate, is created simply by means of an election campaign. The creation of this public opinion goes on, day by day, in every public expression of opinion that reaches the eyes and ears of the people.

In Britain we still enjoy freedom of speech. But freedom of speech, to mean anything, must be effective freedom—''of speech that reaches the people''. The degree of freedom of effective speech in Britain to-day depends entirely on the possession of wealth. The most powerful means of influencing public opinion is the Press. In Britain, “anyone” can start a newspaper, so long as it is not “obscene,” “blasphemous,” “seditious,” or “libellous.” But the cost of printing and publishing a newspaper is vastly greater than the cost of running an election campaign. It is so great that only the very richest individuals and groups of individuals as a rule can afford to own newspapers. It is so great that no ordinary daily paper could support itself without its revenue from advertisements, which are supplied by firms which have sufficient capital to be able to advertise. Our freedom of the Press is, therefore, mainly freedom of property-owners who are rich enough to finance the newspapers, and in this way to influence the thought of the whole population of the country. Taken as a whole, the Press represents the property-owners.

We must not, however, leave the matter at this point without drawing the necessary distinction between British conditions to-day and those of a Fascist State. In a Fascist State the workers are not permitted to run newspapers even if they can afford it. In Britain they are permitted to do so, and do so to a small degree. But shortage of capital, the fact that capitalist firms are unwilling to support workers’ papers with advertisements—the main source of revenue to the ordinary Press—and a boycott of the sale and distribution of working-class literature, make the difficulties of the workers’ Press extremely great as compared with the Press of the well-to-do. Only in 1926, when the workers throughout the country practically ceased to print the capitalist newspapers, and at the same time the Trades Councils and other workers’ organizations published their own bulletins, were there a few days when the Press of Britain was almost entirely a Press controlled by the organizations of the working class, the majority of the population. But even then the radio remained in Government hands, and was fully utilized on the side of the employers.

As with the Press, so with the ownership of the great meeting-halls of the country, and with the control of the radio. The trustees of the Albert Hall do not let it to everyone who can pay the rent. Even if a workers’ organization is able to pay, it may not be allowed the use of the hall if the owners do not approve of the purpose of the meeting. Sir Oswald Mosley could on one occasion obtain the use of the hall, while it was refused to a working-class organization shortly afterwards.

And now, having seen how the means of influencing public opinion, the means of effective propaganda, are in the hands of the minority of property-owners, let us come to the further problem— that of an elected Government which really represents the will of the wage-earners, if all the other obstacles have been overcome and such a majority has been returned to Parliament.

It should be clear that, whatever the majority in Parliament may be, any decisions of Parliament under the present system must be carried out by the Civil Service. Unless, therefore, this Civil Service is organically connected with the wage-earning majority of the population, it may show reluctance, and actually be guilty of sabotage, in carrying out the decisions of such a parliamentary majority.

But, before considering the Civil Service, one other point should be touched upon. This is the question of Education. For we have seen that a real equality between citizens, to vote and to be elected, to hold responsibility in every walk of life, and to rule themselves, depends on their having equal opportunities to develop their abilities to the full. In Britain to-day, however, they have not got this equality. For, according to R. H. Tawney, “the proportion of children leaving the elementary schools, who enter what have hitherto been known as secondary schools, is, in England and Wales as a whole, less than one-seventh, and in some areas less than one-tenth, while some three-quarters of them have hitherto entered full-time wage-earning employment at the age of fourteen” (''Equality'', p. 90). About 90 percent of the workers have no schooling over the age of fourteen. On the other hand, the children of the well-to-do do not go to the ordinary State elementary or secondary schools at all, but pass through an entirely different and very expensive system of private education, known, ironically enough, as the “public schools.” And we find that it is this small minority that passes through the “public schools” that commands practically all the leading positions in the social and economic life of the country and in the Civil Service.

“The evidence presented by Mr. Nightingale, who has made a statistical analysis of the social antecedents of the personnel of the Foreign Office and Diplomatic Service between 1851 and 1929, suggests that this statement is true of a more recent period. Sixty percent of it, he shows, has been drawn from the eleven most exclusive public schools, while of the remaining 40 percent, well over one half attended the lesser public schools, received a military or naval education, or were educated privately or abroad.

“The unchallengeable conclusion that emerges . . . is that the British Foreign Office and Diplomatic Service have been a preserve for the sons of the aristocratic, ''rentier'', and professional classes’” (op. cit., pp. 93-4). And, though possibly not quite so marked, this selection for the Civil Service from the small minority of the population that owns property, those who can afford an expensive “public school” education, is universal throughout. Remember that Lord Trenchard’s famous “reform” of the police force included the recruiting of more ex-public-school boys for its leading ranks. Similar efforts have been made to build up a public-school air force in recent years; and the “defence of the country” (and possibly of the rights of property against the people of the country) is also in the hands, not of representatives of the people, but of the products of Wellington and Sandhurst, the sons of those who can afford a “public school” education.

The whole Civil Service is so recruited that we have government, not by the people, but by the property-owners and their relatives. In addition, all those professions which are of particular importance to the security of property, we find, are recruited from the same small section of the population. “In the year 1926, 71 out of 80 bishops and deans for whom information is available, 139 out of 181 members of the judicial profession, 152 out of 210 highly placed members of public departments, 63 out of 88 members of the Indian Civil Service and Governors of Dominions, and 99 out of 132 directors of banks and railways, had been educated at public schools” (op. cit., pp. 94-5). The Civil Service, which has to carry out the decisions of Parliament; the bishops, who, like the Press, influence the opinion of the public; the judges; the railway directors and bank directors, together with the members of the legal profession,—are almost entirely drawn from one small class of the population. Not only, then, do the owners of the factories and mines run their own factories and mines, but they and their class may well be said to run the whole country as well.

With the property-owners running the Civil Service and the professions, having all the means at their disposal for broadcasting their ideas to the whole population, and the wealth necessary to hire or own the meeting-halls and newspapers, it is not surprising to find that the work of Government itself remains in the hands of these people. R. H. Tawney writes: “The association of political leadership with birth and wealth is a commonplace of English history; but it is not always realized how little that association was weakened after the advent of what is usually regarded as the age of democracy. Professor Laski, in his instructive analysis of British Cabinets between 1801 and 1924, has shown that, for nearly two generations after the Act of 1867 had enfranchised the urban working classes, the greater part of the business of government continued, nevertheless, to be conducted by a small group of owners of great properties, who were enabled by their economic advantages and social connections to step into the exercise of political power with a facility impossible to ordinary men. Of 69 Ministers who held office between 1885 and 1905, 40 were sons of nobility, 52 were educated at Oxford and Cambridge, and 46 were educated at public schools; while, even between 1906 and 1916, 25 out of 51 Ministers were sons of nobility” (op. cit., p. 92).

A further limitation of British democracy must now be mentioned. It has already been shown how a small class of property-owners dominates elections, dominates Governments, and dominates the Civil Service. Figures have also been cited to show how the directors of the banks, the railways, and, of course, the armament firms, are also all drawn from the same small class of the community. Therefore, any Government that is ever elected under existing conditions is likely, as a result of all the political influence of property, to represent only to a comparatively small degree the real interests of the majority of the population of the country, the working people. If, in any situation, such a Government is returned to Parliament, pledged to a policy in the interests of the working people, of socialism, and real democracy, then numerically this representation will not do justice to the real interests which it represents, since all the propaganda and social influences are working for the under-representation of such interests.

Once in power, such a Government would have to face up to the fact that the leading ranks of the Civil Service were against it. And sabotage by the Civil Service, even to the point of armed rebellion by the military leaders, as in Spain, is no small menace. But, in addition, such a Government would have to face the active opposition of the property-owning-class, as personified in the bank directors, railway directors, and factory-owners throughout the country. And the power of these people over any Government is tremendous, because they can threaten completely to hold up the economic life of the country if their demands are not satisfied. The bankers in the world to-day, though competing amongst themselves, can combine their forces to bring pressure to bear upon the most important Governments. They can move funds from one country to another, and cause financial crises. They can force elected Governments to resign.

In our discussion of the new Constitution of the U.S.S.R. we saw that the Supreme Council, directly elected by the people, is being given increased powers, whereas the powers of its Presidium are very strictly limited. It should be noted here that in Britain precisely the opposite tendency is operating—a tendency for Parliament, dominated by the parties representing the property-interests, to delegate its authority to small groups who become directors in their own sphere. In this respect “Orders in Council” play an important part.

In his ''General Strike'', R. Page Arnot writes:

“Let us turn to the form of government known as King in Council. Its origin and history are still a subject of investigation, but at one time the King in his Privy Council appeared to be about to supplant the Parliament. . . . During the Napoleonic Wars, the Privy Council was once more used as a formidable engine of government, and, by the famous Orders in Council, Pitt and his successors were able to meet Napoleon with swift and arbitrary decrees. After the Napoleonic Wars, the position of the form of government known as the King in Council had been clearly defined, and it was possible to regard it as a reserve instrument to meet great occasions.

“Of these, the greatest occasion was the outbreak of war in 1914. The declaration of war was followed by the passing of the Defence of the Realm Act, by the first clause of which power was given to His Majesty in Council to take the necessary measures to secure the safety of the realm. These powers, primarily exercised through the Privy Council in the shape of Orders in Council, were transferable to each Government Department; which thus acquired the power to legislate by the simple method of publishing its regulation in the ''London Gazette''” (p, 12).

After the war the Defence of the Realm Act was replaced by an Emergency Powers Act by which, in a “state of emergency,” Orders in Council would automatically become law. In this way any parliamentary majority can in fact institute an open dictatorship if it wishes to do so—that is, if it ever finds it expedient to declare a “state of emergency.” Such a state is likely to be declared primarily in connection with labour difficulties.

It is not often realized by the ordinary person that in Britain laws can be made also by the judges. There are two kinds of law in Britain: Statute Law—consisting of Acts of Parliament; and Case Law, consisting of all the decisions of the judges on the interpretation of these laws in actual cases that have arisen. If, in a particular case, a judge interprets the law in a particular way, this case then becomes a precedent, and the interpretation itself becomes law. Since the judges are, as has been seen, drawn from the ranks of the small minority of property-owners, such “interpretations” of the law naturally tend to operate in the interests of property in any circumstance that arises.

In concluding this examination of the power of the property-owners in the British State—and Britain is not untypical of those democratic States where the private ownership of the means of production and of propaganda remains unchecked— it is worth pointing out that for the British Empire as a whole the degree of democracy existing in Britain is far from typical. In describing the Soviet State, we saw how every nation enjoys the right to self-determination, and how there is complete equality of every nation within the Union. In the British Empire, on the contrary, the democratic rights of the inhabitants of Great Britain are not shared by the far greater population of India. Not only within the British Empire have we not got the rule of the nation which has a majority of the population, which is India; but we have the actual subjection of that nation so that its people enjoy no greater democracy than did the people of Tsarist Russia. When, therefore, we draw comparisons between the power of property in Britain and the new democracy of the U.S.S.R., let us not forget that property behalves comparatively democratically in Britain itself and the situation of the Indian and other peoples under British rule is far more akin to the lot of the peoples of the Tsarist Empire.

Enough has now been said to establish the relationship between private property and democracy. When we recall the situation existing in the U.S.S.R. at the present time, and compare it with Britain, we see that every democratic feature of the Soviet system that would be new to Britain is a derivative of one fact—the abolition of the power of property.

When, in early 1918, the Russian printing presses were transferred from the hands of their private owners to the organizations of the working people, this act symbolized all that the Soviet system stands for in opposition to the democracy of capitalism. But even under capitalism the limit to the enjoyment of democratic rights by the people is not rigidly fixed. In 1926 for a few days during the General Strike the British printing workers refused to issue the main newspapers of the country, while the Trades Councils and other workers’ organizations poured out news bulletins on a scale never exceeded before or since. In those few days Britain had a Press which predominantly represented the working people, and which, for a short and exceptional period, did not represent the views of a handful of rich Press lords.

In the year 1920, when the British Government was preparing to declare open war on the Soviet Government of Russia, the workers set up Councils of Action throughout the country with the slogan “Hands off Russia!” The democratic demands of the working people were put forward so forcibly that the Government, though utterly unsympathetic, was forced to take notice, and armed intervention against the Soviets was brought to an end. In the same year, in a speech in Russia, Lenin said: “The whole of the English bourgeois Press wrote that the Councils of Action were Soviets. And it was right. They were not called Soviets, but in actual fact they were.”

In Britain, as in Russia, the workers have always the possibility, by uniting their forces and fighting for better conditions, to restrict the disproportionate might of the property-owners, and thus to introduce more and more effective democracy. If we look back at the Russian Revolution we find that the Soviets actually seized power only when they were faced with two clear alternatives: either a military dictatorship, instituted by the owners of the land, the factories, and the mines; or the seizure of power by the most powerful organizations of the people, the Soviets, and the suppressing of the power of the property-owners in the interests of real democracy.

While, in Britain to-day, it is perfectly true that any elected Government of the people may be blackmailed by the bankers and sabotaged by the Civil Service if these representatives of the property-owners do not approve of its policy, it is equally true that any Government which represents the interests of the property-owners may be prevented from carrying out an anti-working-class policy by the direct action of the working-people themselves. The fact that the bankers and Civil Servants operate to-day behind the scenes to ensure that official policy shall be in the interests of property is all the more reason why the working people must act in an organized way to force the Government and the bankers and the Civil Servants to act more favourably to the people. And, so soon as the working people of the country are organized in such a way as to force their will on a property-owners’ Government, or on property-owners that oppose a people’s Government, they are beginning to make democracy more real and more effective.

In the ''Communist Manifesto'' Marx says: “The first step in the workers’ revolution is to make the proletariat the ruling class, to establish democracy.” This was the task which the Soviet Revolution in Russia set out to fulfil, and it has not been unsuccessful. But the democracy of to-day has only been won as a result of a united struggle by the whole people. The new democracy only survived because it had the united support of the workers and peasants of the various nationalities within the country, coupled with the support of the working people of other countries. The fact that it has survived for twenty years means that others can learn from its example. To-day the actual experience of the 170 million people that inhabit one-sixth of the earth has shown how real democracy can be, once the power of private property is finally broken. The inhabitants of the U.S.S.R. are proving in practice that the workers can rule themselves, and raise their living standards, without the help of the employers, whereas, on the other hand, the property-owners can never live without the forces of the working people, the forces making for real democracy and liberty. In this lies the guarantee of the ultimate victory of democracy over property.

=== Defending and Extending Democracy ===
In the year 1922, when the Treaty of Union was signed between the Soviet Republics as a means of mutual support and defence against a hostile world, the following declaration was issued by the Governments concerned:

“Since the formation of the Soviet Republics the world has been divided into two camps—the capitalist and the Socialist.

“In the capitalist camp reigns national hostility and inequality, colonial slavery, chauvinism, national suppression, pogroms, and imperialist brutality.

“Here, in the Socialist camp, is to be found mutual confidence and peace, national freedom and equality, and the tranquil community and fraternal co-operation of peoples. The attempt of the capitalist world through long decades to settle the problem of nationalities by the joint methods of the free development of peoples, and the exploitation of man by man has proved to be fruitless. On the contrary, the skein of nationalist contradictions is becoming more and more entangled, and threatens to overwhelm capitalism itself. The bourgeoisie has proved incapable of bringing about the co-operation of nations.

“Only in the camp of the Soviets, and under the proletarian dictatorship round which is rallied the majority of the population, has it been found possible to root out national persecution, to create conditions for mutual trust, and to lay the foundations of fraternal co-operation.”

These words were written in 1922, but how true they prove to be to-day! The Soviets came to power in Russia in 1917, when it had become clear to the people that this was the only way to peace and democracy. It was the only way to prevent a military dictatorship and the continuation of an imperialist war. “Peace, Bread, and Land,” was the main slogan of the Russian Revolution.

When, at the present time, we survey the world, we find that it is still divided into two camps. But the tremendous growth of the power of the country of Socialism on the one hand, and the seizure of power by Fascist dictatorships representing the most reactionary property interests on the other, has modified the frontier between these camps. Peace and democracy were the main aims of the Soviet Revolution. To-day, in the capitalist world itself, two camps have been formed, for peace and democracy on the one hand and for Fascism and war on the other. In the present world situation all the forces of peace and democracy are centring their attention on an alliance with the U.S.S.R. and Socialism; the forces of Fascism look upon the U.S.S.R. as the maintenance to their continued existence, because its example can never be effectively hidden for long from the people of all countries, and this is a stimulus to renewed activity in the interests of democracy.

The main dividing-line, then, in the present world situation, is between the forces of democracy and those of Fascism. What are the reasons for this change in emphasis which has taken place in the post-war period? The important feature of post-war capitalism, long ago foreseen as inevitable by Marx in the ''Communist Manifesto'', has been the growing power of the great financial and industrial monopolies and the concentration of wealth in the hands of these monopolists. Such a tendency in economic organization causes an ever-increasing number of the small producers, whether or not they employ a few workers, to feel themselves at the mercy of the great trusts, and to desire to use every political means to control these great organizations.

As a result, sections of the middle class that at one time considered themselves superior to the workers, tend to become willing to co-operate with the working people in limiting the power of the great trusts. Thus, the forces of democracy on the one hand are numerically increased, while, on the other, the great trusts and monopolies use every means of increasing their control of the State, if necessary, by even putting an end to every legal form of democratic expression.

Fascism, then, appears as the expression in politics of the growing tendency to monopoly in economics. Those of the employing class who find themselves being impoverished and increasingly insecure as a result of the operations of the great monopolies tend to move in the direction of the working class, both economically and politically. In this way the great monopolies and their fascist tendencies are opposed by the working people and a growing section of the middle class, the main constituents of a Popular Front.

In Spain these forces are to-day in open conflict. The cause of this conflict is that the people, as a result of uniting their forces in the cause of democracy, succeeded in electing a really democratic Government to power, a Government pledged to take a number of democratic measures against the interests of property, and in the interests of the people. The big property-owners, together with the generals in the army drawn from the propertied class, and with the support of foreign Fascism, launched their offensive on the Spanish people in a last desperate attempt to prevent the democratic forces from becoming effective. The result has been the “civil war,” a war of international Fascism against the Spanish people.

When, in relation to Spain, it is claimed that the Government did not really represent the people because it only received a minority of the votes at the last election, this is sheer deception. First, it is untrue that the parties fighting for the Spanish Government against the rebels received a minority of the votes. They received a majority. But General Franco still insists on referring to the Basque Nationalists as a party of the Right, though it has actually consistently supported the Government. But, secondly, even if there had been a minority of votes for the parties of the Right, this does not for one moment , mean that there was a majority for the armed uprising of General Franco and his foreign Fascist supporters.

The second point, however, which is relevant, is the fact that, as in Britain to-day, the last election in Spain took place in a country where the main means of production and propaganda were still privately owned. Therefore the property-owners had all those advantages which we have shown to be inconsistent with really effective democracy. In such conditions the votes for the popular front were bound to understate, not to overstate, the real interests which this group of parties represented. When, in addition, it is realized that the elections took place with considerable pressure from the Government, which then consisted of the parties of the Right, against the Popular Front, we see that all the forces operating in Spain, other than the demands of the people themselves, militated to minimize the Popular Front vote.

The Spanish Popular Front Government was returned in spite of all these disabilities of the people in the elections. If there had been real equality of propaganda, the votes for the Government would have been more, not less. Then came the Franco rebellion, backed by foreign Fascist States, The Spanish Government, though at that time consisting of Liberal republicans, armed the whole people. The fight for democracy in Spain caused a Liberal Government to do what only the Soviets had done in Russia—to take the vitally democratic step of putting arms into the hands of the people themselves. From that moment onwards on Government territory the scales were tipped in favour of real democracy; for, once the people themselves have arms, they can express their will more effectively than ever before. The example of Spain shows that, in the present world situation, the fight to defend democracy is also the fight to extend it. Democracy cannot be defended to-day without being extended. And, in every country, a development is taking place either towards greater democracy and the limitation of the rights of property, or to less democracy and Fascist dictatorship.

In this situation the Soviet Union stands out as a beacon. It shows the logical conclusion of the struggle to make democracy effective. At first, in this struggle, concrete steps had to be taken to limit the rights of the property owners in order to make democracy real for the vast majority of the people. And then the people started to plan production and produce without the mines and land being any longer privately owned. They could, in fact, only introduce a planned system when the land and means of production were already public property. They have established real democracy by completely abolishing class relationships, so that every citizen is a servant of the community, and, as a citizen, also a master.

To-day in the Soviet Union there is work for all, and equality of opportunity for all. Every adult citizen has the same economic and political rights, and no citizen, however much personal property he may own, can regulate the lives and livelihoods of others as a result of this ownership. I may have money in the U.S.S.R. to-day if I have earned it, but I cannot own a factory as a result, and I cannot tell people whether or not they shall have work, and at what wages, and for what hours, because I happen to own some money. My money cannot be used to give me any kind of say in the economic life of the country. And, though I may possess money, I cannot use it for propaganda purposes. I cannot own a newspaper or a meeting-hall, and I cannot even hire a meeting-hall for private political purposes. Therefore my money does not give me any political power whatever. As a result of this, power in the U.S.S.R., economically and politically, is vested in the citizens as such, according only to their abilities, and with no relationship whatever to their material possessions. In this way democracy has become real, and really effective. This is something new in the history of democracy.

It would be absolutely incorrect, however, to assume, because in the U.S.S.R. to-day a degree of democracy has been achieved such as exists nowhere else in the world, that there is no further democratic development possible for the U.S.S.R. For the Soviet Union is continually developing, and there are no limits to the way in which, in the future, Soviet democracy may not be further and further extended. Even to-day, Soviet citizens still receive wages according to their work. There are, therefore, highly and lowly paid workers. Even to-day, workers must to some extent still specialize on particular jobs, so that there are cultural workers, administrative workers, technical workers, and unskilled workers. While there is equal opportunity for all citizens to advance from any of these categories to a higher one, there is still the need for a certain degree of specialization, and for a certain material encouragement to each citizen to work according to his ability, and to develop his abilities to the full.

The present state of Soviet society—Socialism—is not regarded in the U.S.S.R. as any land of Utopia or final achievement. It is considered only as a stage in development towards Communist society, which will be a still more real democracy for the whole people. Writing in the 1870’s, Karl Marx, on whose studies of human society Bolshevik doctrine is based, wrote of the future:

“In a higher phase of Communist society, after the tyrannical subordination of individuals according to the distribution of labour, and therefore also the distinction between manual and intellectual work, have disappeared, after labour has become not only a means to live, but is itself the first necessity of living. after the powers of production have also increased and all the springs of co-operative wealth are gushing more freely together with the all-round development of the individual, then, and then only, can the narrow bourgeois horizon of rights be left far behind, and society will inscribe on its banner ‘From each according to his capacity, to each according to his need’” (''Critique of the Gotha Program'').

In these words Marx showed that beyond the democracy of Soviet society to-day there is a perspective of still further development and still greater personal freedom, until needs and not work will determine what share every citizen shall receive of the total production. And the process by which such a state of society will be reached includes the emancipation of every worker, not only by making him the equal of his neighbour, but by making work itself so interesting that it is voluntarily undertaken by all, so that no longer the compulsion of law and material want will be necessary in order that every citizen do his share. “Productive labour,” wrote Engels in 1878, “will become a means to their emancipation, by giving each individual the opportunity to develop and exercise all his faculties, physical and mental, in all directions; in which, therefore, productive labour will be a pleasure instead of a burden” (''Anti-Dühring'', p. 328).

Such a system of society will be run like a well-organized household. People will work as producers voluntarily, and they will help themselves from the common product. Shops will take the form of depots, from which people will take what they need, and, when the general poverty. of capitalism no longer exists, and a love of labour has developed, there is no reason to suppose that, under such conditions, anyone would want to appropriate more than was necessary for a reasonable standard of life.

Once such conditions have been established internationally, the State as such—as a means of guaranteeing security to the people who have power against class enemies within the community or warlike enemies outside—will no longer be necessary. For, once the people are governing their own institutions from top to bottom, and there are no enemies of the people trying to destroy such a free self-governing community, there is no need to defend such a system by organized force, by the State. Under such conditions the whole apparatus of the State, with its armed forces, will, as Marx put it, “wither away.”

The Soviet State as it exists to-day is, therefore, by no means the final form which democracy will take when the power of property is once and for all abolished, not only in one great country, but throughout the world. So long as the Soviet State stands alone, and is continually threatened by Fascist States outside and agents of Fascism within—and the Soviet State cannot build such a Chinese Wall of isolation to prevent some of them getting in—it will continue to be a fighting organization of the people, it will be armed, and it will have to use every means of securing its own defence. As a democratic organization that may at any time have to fight for its existence, the Soviet State must be highly disciplined, like a trade union in a strike, and the majority will use every necessary means of enforcing such a discipline.

But as, in the rest of the world, the forces of democracy triumph over the concentrated power of the great owners of property, the danger to Soviet democracy will be reduced and the whole world will move nearer to a State in which real democracy will be freed from the danger of aggression. In such circumstances we may look towards a world democratic community, in which the people who work shall rule, and in which, because all shall do their share of work, all shall do their share of ruling.

In 1919 the workers of Hungary set up a Soviet State which survived for several months in the face of almost overwhelming opposition. But finally, as a result of armed intervention from outside, the Hungarian Soviet Republic was suppressed and Fascist terror took its place. The Republic had lasted for four months. The Hungarian democratic writer, Jaszi, summing up the results of the experience of the Soviet Republic, wrote these words:

“The most important effect of the proletarian dictatorship will certainly be found in the radical change of outlook produced among the proletarian masses. It had the character of a violent moral explosion in the Hungarian social order. It planted in the minds of the great mass of semi-brutalized slaves perhaps the first seeds of faith and hope of liberation. To this day there lives in the hearts of millions the sense of the rights of the workers and of their superiority to the drones and killers. Above all, the dictatorship shook out of their age-long apathy the unhappy helots of Hungarian society, the agricultural workers.

“No less important was the service of the Soviet Revolution to the idea of internationalism, made livid and real in the minds of the people by the memory of hard and bloody conflicts.

“Finally, through the spirit of the Soviet constitution, despite much childish naiveté and many violent outbursts, the Republic did pioneer work for the ideals of more advanced types of democracy and self-government. It did this by its exposure of the defective organization, the shortcomings and hypocrisies of the bourgeois democracies of to-day, and its proclamation for all time of the ideal of the State, in which only those who work and produce shall have the right to control and govern society” (''Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Hungary'', p. 151).

This epitaph was written of the Hungarian Soviet Republic by one who was a democrat but not a Communist. It was written of the Hungarian Soviet Republic that only lived for four months. How much greater, then, is the significance to democracy of the Soviet State that has lived for twenty years, and in which the democratic rights of the people are constantly being extended. Finally, what a prospect for the world as a whole opens up before us, when the people of every country, as a result of an organized struggle for democratic rights in countries where they are deprived of them to-day, and through the defence and extension of these rights where they are already to some extent enjoyed, have established in every country a society in which all citizens have equal rights as citizens, and economic and political power no longer to the slightest extent depend on the possession of property.

The way to such a society, the world commonwealth of the future, is indicated by the U.S.S.R. And in that society the State itself, and even the word democracy, will become historical terms with no longer any significance. “For,” as Lenin puts it, “when ''all'' have learned to manage, and independently are actually managing by themselves, social production, keeping accounts, controlling the idlers, the gentlefolk, the swindlers, and similar ‘guardians of capitalist traditions’ then the escape from this national accounting and control was inevitably become so increasingly difficult, and such a rare exception, and will probably be accompanied by such swift and severe punishment (for the armed workers are men of practical life, not sentimental intellectuals, and they will scarcely allow anyone to trifle with them), that very soon the ''necessity'' of observing the simple, fundamental rules of everyday social life in common will have become a ''habit''.

“The door will then be open for the transition from the first phase of Communist society to its higher phase, and along with it to the complete withering away of the State. . . . The more complete the democracy, the nearer the moment when it begins to be unnecessary. The more democratic the ‘State’ consisting of armed workers, which is ‘no longer a State in the proper sense of the word,’ the more rapidly does ''every'' State begin to wither away” (''State and Revolution'').

In these words Lenin outlines the future of Soviet democracy—a community of citizens, governing themselves in every branch of social activity, and using the necessary measures to preserve discipline in the common interest. Democracy and written Constitutions in such a society will probably be as unnecessary as is the ordinary family, and the citizens will run their community peacefully and in the common interest, creating all the necessary means of livelihood with their common labor, and having, ever greater resources available for the arts and sciences, for the complete mastery of nature in the interests of humanity.

“Will this new civilization,” write Sidney and Beatrice Webb, of the U.S.S.R. to-day, “with its abandonment of the incentive of profit-making, its extinction of unemployment, its planned production for community consumption, and the consequent liquidation of the landlord and the capitalist, spread to other countries? Our own reply is: ‘Yes, it will.’ But how, when, where, with what modifications, and whether through violent revolution or by peaceful penetration, or even by conscious imitation, are questions we cannot answer” (''Soviet Communism'', p. 1143).

But the answer to these final questions is not a difficult one. We have seen that the essential feature of the Soviet system is the abolition of the power of the landlord and capitalist, the owner of property, to rule the productive life of the country and thus to dominate the State. But this is but the extension of democracy so as to wipe out all privileges of the great property-owners as against the ordinary citizen, the small producer, the ordinary working man or woman. The united struggle of all the forces in the world interested in defending democratic liberties against encroachment, and in extending these liberties beyond the limits set by the great property-owners at the present time, is the only way in which democracy and democratic peace can be preserved in face of the growing danger of Fascism and Fascist aggression. The logical process of such a struggle, at a certain point, will necessitate the complete expropriation of the property-owners and the replacement of capitalism by Socialism, the only final guarantee that the anti-democratic forces of property can never again rear their heads. Whether or not, in Britain or France or Spain, such a struggle takes the actual form of the getting up of Soviets, it is in essence the same struggle as that which the Russian people successfully fought in 1917, defending and extending democracy.

“Peace, Bread, and Land” was the slogan of the Russian Revolution; and a really democratic Government was the only way by which these aims could be achieved. The Soviets were, in Russia, the democratic organ of the people. When, in November 1917, the whole of the democratic liberties of the Russian people were threatened with suppression, and with the imposition from above of a military dictatorship, the workers and peasants of Russia seized complete power through their own organizations, the Soviets. Democracy was triumphant, and the military dictators and their foreign allies were driven from the country, he seizure of power by the Russian Soviets was a landmark in the history of democracy, for it has proved for all time the practicability of the principle that only those who work and produce shall have the right to govern society. And it has shown that in a really democratic society it is possible to ensure that every citizen shall work and produce.

We began this book with a few remarks on the nature of democracy and dictatorship. At that stage we were interested in making clear one thing only—that democracy and dictatorship are not mutually, exclusive terms. Any democracy for one group of people may simultaneously be a dictatorship over another. The shareholders’ meeting of a joint-stock company is democratic for the shareholders, but it is a dictatorship over the employees of the firm, who usually vastly outnumber the shareholders. So, too, in the capitalist State, the democratic rights which exist are in practice available to the few owners of property to a great extent as compared with the majority of the people—the people who work. Thus, as in the Greek city-state, though to a lesser degree, we may say that even in Britain to-day the really effective part in the running of the country is played by a “charmed circle of the privileged,” while the rest of the community—the people who do the work—“have no voice whatever in the making of the laws under which they toil.”

Democracy and dictatorship are not mutually exclusive. They are not absolutes. Therefore, in facing the practical problems of the people of the world as a whole, or of any single country, it is essential in every concrete instance to consider the actual situation, not from the standpoint of law only, but of everyday practice, in order to know to what extent the people are governing themselves, and to what extent they are not. On this basis, every measure which curtails the power of the people must be fought by every means that they can command, and every method of increasing their democratic rights, of making democracy more effective, must be constantly utilized.

The defence of democracy against Fascism means the extension of existing democratic rights against those limitations imposed by the property relationships in existing society. And every extension of democratic rights for the people brings nearer the time when, faced as the Spanish people are to-day, with the alternatives of making democracy real or submitting to military dictatorship, the people will be in a position of such unity and organizational strength that they will be able to defend their democracy and make it ever more real, as the people succeeded in doing in Russia some twenty years ago.
[[Category:Library works about the Soviet Union]]

Library:This Soviet World

2024-09-24T18:41:59Z

ComradeEd: Add pdf to Library work template

{{Library work|title=This Soviet World|author=Anna Louise Strong|written in=1936|publisher=Henry Holt and Company, Inc.|type=Book|source=https://comlib.encryptionin.space/epubs/this-soviet-world/|pdf=https://annas-archive.org/md5/3c2da922ea78b91c28c2b81b5c2da556}}

=== ON INTERPRETING A WORLD ===

A leading Russian Communist said to me a year ago “The mind of our people is changing so fast under the conditions of socialism that it is becoming increasingly difficult for us to speak to the rest of the world. We find it harder to understand them, and they us.”

We who go back and forth between the Soviet world and the world of capitalism—not only in space from New York to Moscow but also in spirit from intimate life with Soviet people to intimate life in America—feel keenly this difficulty. Important words like freedom, democracy, dictatorship have different meanings on different sides of the border. The Soviet world is sharply conscious of planning its future; the capitalist world is always arriving where it hadn’t intended. And Soviet officials are not always helpful in making their acts intelligible; they often assume that only deliberate malice can doubt them and that the only needed explanation is the appropriate citation from Marx.

To explain the swiftly growing Soviet world to that other world out of which it was born is a task that becomes steadily more complex. For if its outer achievements are every year more able to speak for themselves, its inner life more and diverges from that of capitalism in a hundred subtle ways.

In the Berlin station a giant sign greets me with three-foot letters: “Think of your hair!” My mind flashes back to the world I have left. What are Soviet people thinking of? The Stakhanov drive, the Moscow city plan, Marie and her sugar beets, the conquest of the north. And hair and perfume, O yes, of course. Everyone knows of the rising standard of living and firmly believes in a cultural life—more bath-tubs, radios, books and dramatic clubs and doubtless more hair. But their individuality is expressed not by possessions and polish but by the various ways in which men create. Dynamic is the word; their civilization is dynamic.

The regimentation of life by property is my next shock in the capitalist world. The obscene phrases “damages for alienation of affections” or “a $50,000 man” or the remark: “I do it only for the money that is in it”—what degradation they imply of human life and work! I see able engineers spending creative power on little models in a government relief job just to keep alive. I see a journal of high standard, the life-work of an able editor submerged by a new owner’s wish for quick profit. Lives are conditioned in the Soviet world also, by trends and sages of organization, but not by the profits of a boss.

The difference appears in the use of pronouns. People under capitalism are contrasting “I” and “they.” “Too bad it couldn’t have been on my land,” a man remarks of a California oil-strike. Soviet folk would be hailing “our new oil-wells”; to them the idea of a private oil-well is already as quaint as a private postal system. I note a remark about American unemployment: “If it gets any worse, they’ll have to do something.” Who is this ultimate, uncontrollable “they”? The term betrays the class society of which the speakers are unconscious; they are waiting for some boss to act. To hear a debate: “Is America going fascist?” and think how much less passively Soviet folk would word it. “Shall we go fascist? No. Then exactly how shall we prevent it?” Soviet folk say “we” of one-sixth of the earth’s surface. Uzbek cotton-pickers, toiling under the sun of Central Asia, say: “We are conquering the Arctic; we rescued the Chelyuskinites.” Ukrainian farmers who never went up in an airplane talk of “our stratosphere records” and “the loss of our Maxim Gorky airplane” as they take up collections to build ten new ones. But even Mrs. Roosevelt asks me: “Are Russian peasants getting more reconciled to accepting direction?” I feel the hopelessness of language as I answer: “No, they are learning better to organize and direct themselves.”

Americans often ask me whether Russians are not naturally more altruistic than Americans, more fit for communism, they imply. No, it is something quite different. Russians at the time of Revolution were more medieval than Americans, which means “naturally” more petty, unreliable, inefficient, given to bargaining and cheating. Traits of the Asiatic market-place were widespread and occasionally still annoy the visitor. But these traits are disappearing under the fact of joint ownership, which brings identity of individual with community good.

Joint possession of the country’s resources and productive mechanism is the economic reality which unifies Soviet life and makes it dynamic. It is this that washes out the antagonism between personal and public good, that makes men say “we.” It is this that makes men conscious planners of the future; for owners plan but non-owners can only fight or drift. The chief quality of Soviet civilization is the sense that the world is “ours,” to seize, understand and make over.

This Soviet world is my theme; I give scant space to those fast disintegrating forces that fought it. I tell not the “whole truth,” for truth is never “whole”; there are always at least two truths in conflict: the truth that is dying and the truth that is coming into existence. American Tories who intrigued for King George had their truth also, but it remains only as piquant sauce to romance; the truth of the Continental armies remained to build the modern republic. They themselves recalled the frozen feet of Valley Forge less as suffering than as heroism; their raids on hungry farms passed into memory not as banditry but as necessity and daring. History’s greatest gift to victors is that not only they, but their truth survives.

Yet I do no injustice to those many lives which in greater or less degree were wrenched or broken by the coming of the new Soviet order. Even for them the new years obliterate the past. They also change to seek their new future in the new system; Lives broken in terms of property are being remade in terms of work. Saboteurs reform and win posts of honor; kulaks come back from exile to factories and farms; children have an equal start now regardless of fathers. For this war differs from other battles in that all men, even the conquered foes, are absorbed into the ranks of the conquerors—joint heirs to all the fruits of victory.

A. L. S.

== PART I: MEN MAKE THE SOVIET WORLD ==

=== CHAPTER I: THE PLAN FOR REMAKING THE WORLD ===

{{Quote|“The philosophers have only interpreted the world; our business is to change it.”|Karl Marx|Theses on Feuerbach}}

Whenever I ask myself what brings increasing visitors to Moscow, what they want here and what they find, and why the eyes of the world turn more and more to the Soviet Union with a questing hope that hardly yet dares call itself belief, there flashes into my mind the remark made to me in 1930 at Dnieprostroy by the young and disillusioned son of a Wall Street millionaire.

Dnieprostroy in those days was the first of the famous giants of the new Soviet Russia, “the largest power dam in the world.”<ref>Since then surpassed by the Boulder Dam.</ref> Hour after hour we climbed the cliffs and ravines of its mighty construction. We fled from screaming sirens that warned of blasting rock. We saw great stone-crushing plants, saw-mills, locomotive repair shops, temporary power station—all sizable works harnessed to the task of making a greater power station which should in turn serve plants a hundred times their scope. We visited the “socialist city” where discussion raged between advocates of individual cottages or big apartment houses for the future town. We saw hurriedly constructed club houses where thousands of workers busily grabbed knowledge—reading, writing, political economy and the technique of their new job.

Night fell. We stood on the shore of the yet unharnessed river, destined to rise to bury those high banks beneath a man-impounded lake. We far down at the great sweep of electric brilliance that had already shattered the age-old darkness of the Ukrainian steppe. It was then that my companion said: “I think that Dnieprostroy has answered the question that brought me to Russia.”

“What question?” I asked.

“Whether the world is to be changed by trying one at a time to improve human beings or by changing the social environment that makes human beings.”

In the pause that followed the sounds of construction came to us incessantly, rising from the bowels of earth and filling the horizon. The short, sharp puffs of engines, the roar of cliffs torn asunder, the ceaseless beat of mills grinding stone into concrete, the rasp of drills eating down into river granite. Sharpened by night and softened by distance, they blended into a mighty symphony—music of man, the builder, subduing, the earth.

Dark beyond the circling lights lay Hortitz Island, in ancient days the last stand of free-booting bandit chieftains against oppressors. We remembered the husky peasant girl from the island whom we had seen in overalls that morning, gang-boss over twelve men who excavated rock by explosions of liquid air. Dnieprostroy had changed her in a few months from a farm servant to a “brigadier.” We remembered the blacksmith whom we had asked in the glare of foundry fires how he liked his work and who burst forth with fiery will: “You know, we’re going to finish her in 1932”—a simple workman pushing ahead by one year the estimate of Hugh L. Cooper’s world-experienced engineers.<ref>The workman’s estimate won out. The dam was finished in 1932 a year ahead of schedule.</ref>

We recalled how competitions between workers of right and left bank drove the dam ahead, doubling the concrete-laying estimates of the Americans by force of newly awakened will. Signals night by night across the raging torrent told in red and green lights the day’s total, celebrated over-fulfillment of plan by a great red star. Night by night, week by week each bank fought to keep its red star shining. We remembered motion pictures, dramas, concerts, lectures which brought the city’s culture to these thousands who had come from the scattered farms of the Ukraine. The fine new polytechnic institute where workers chosen from the river-gangs were being turned in forty classrooms into engineers. We saw on the high bank the homes of the American consultants, who understood better than the Russians the technique of the great job but were eternally puzzled by its spirit.

Yes, Dnieprostroy gave the answer to my companion’s question. Dnieprostroy was a new form of production under a new social system. It was remaking individuals by wholesale.

Increasingly in the past five years Americans have come to the Soviet Union, scientists, engineers, artists, economists all bent on their own pursuits, dogmatic or bewildered tourists, seeking proof of an old belief or material for a new one. Especially since the crash of 1929 smashed the world which was “inevitably getting better,” they have come, fleeing from the ruins of that earthquake to learn what, if anything, the Soviet Union offers. By no means all of them put their question as clearly as did my young companion; by no means all interpret so swiftly the essence of the first construction job they see. But the question he asked is basically what brings most of them, an ancient quest of man which has troubled philosophers no less than baffled tourists: “Can our world be remade? And how to remake it?”

The problem is especially pressing upon the American middle class of today, which has seen its old world taken from it in ways that it hardly understands. The independent small property owners, mostly farmers, who formed a hundred years ago 80 per cent of the American people except in the slave South, bequeathed to their descendants ideals of democracy and freedom, the “liberty and equality of men owning their own means of livelihood.”<ref>See Lewis Corey: “Crisis of the Middle Class” ''The Nation'', Aug. 14, 1935.</ref> But large scale industry, developing through a century, wiped out the small enterprisers, increased the number of salaried employees and made the farmer dependent on banks and markets, thus changing America to a “nation of hired workers.” Only 12 per cent of the people live by ownership of their own property, in place of 80 per cent a century ago.

The myth of property remained long after the reality had vanished. Millions of these salaried people still felt hat they owned something—no longer a store, a small workshop, an unencumbered farm, but savings in stocks, bonds, insurance—which lifted them somewhat above the ranks of laboring hands. Crashingly the world economic crisis destroyed this illusion. As if to emphasize how little control these small people had over their own property, the value of their liquid wealth shrank from twenty-seven billion dollars in 1929 to four billion in 1932.<ref>Figures from Robers R. Doane on liquid wealth of persons with incomes under $5,000. Quoted by Corey.</ref> Millions of the middle class were thrown into the same abyss of ruin with millions of wage-workers; they wait together on bread-lines, study together the government relief programs, hunt together for a boss. For all of them alike, as long as the capitalist world remains, most put their trust in bosses, someone who owns and will give them access to the means of production and of life.

Their situation is the more distressing because for most of our Western world the past hundred years has been what John Strachey aptly calls the “century of the great hope.”<ref>John Strachey, ''The Menace of Fascism''.</ref> Millions of men became better fed, better housed, better clothed through the industrial revolution which took production out of the home workshop into the factory and knit together the ends of earth by railroad, steamship, telegraph. Especially America—where the arrival of the new machines and technical methods coincided with a continent-wide expansion into lands of vast wealth, developed by energetic oilers from all nations for the first time unhampered by any remnants of feudalism the belief in inevitable progress and increasing prosperity was both a conscious and unconscious national faith. The little red schoolhouse bade every boy aspire to be president. “Go west, young man.” . . . “Don’t be a bear on America,” said successful plutocrats. But far deeper than these conscious preachings spread the atmosphere of determined optimism which made every man who was not a good booster seem subtly immoral to his friends. Did not the great lands of America, the efficient industries of America, the productive energy of America, offer the basis for a good standard of life for everyone—an “American standard”? It was easy to prove that they did—and do!

What happened to that faith in inevitable progress? If it still survives in some circles as a despairing habit, elsewhere it has been replaced by belief in inevitable doom. “Inevitable drift to fascism,” “inevitable twilight of the West,” “the old standard of prosperity can never return,” are phrases common on lips that not long since hailed inevitable advance. Others begin a frenzied search into the faiths of past ages, to know if elsewhere than with us abides the truth. These learn that belief in the inevitability of progress has never been a universal faith. It has been confined to definite periods of economic advancement, and to certain nations within those periods or certain classes within nations. Did not whole centuries of the Middle Ages view the world as an essentially unchanging garden of human souls from which religion culled a few for heaven, leaving the rest for hell? Even today do not hundreds of millions of people—those great suppressed races of the East—find life’s processes so fundamentally evil that their essential faith is Buddhism in which Nothingness is bliss?

Even in our West, as capitalism decays into fascism, there arise new denials of the inevitability of progress. Ideals of the past—the Roman Empire, the Germanic gods, the feudal Britain featured by fascist-striving novels—gild with emotional glamor the tenets of fascism: that science and machine production are evil, that democracy, peace and the conquest of poverty are futile dreams of a decadent society, that murderous war is man’s noblest end. For fascism is the last stand of a desperate capitalism which can no longer use the fruits of science and machine production, which dare no longer permit either peace or democracy, since it must brutally refuse to its victims that abolition of poverty which is already technically possible in the world.

Can human reason find a way to reorganize human society—a way which human wills can follow? Must we go backing blindly into the future, cheered now by faith in inevitable progress, damned now by faith in inevitable doom, and claiming from some supernatural world a just and rational balancing of the unjust, irrational chaos found in this? Or can that continuous, collective application of human thought known as science, which we have learned to take as our best, though still unperfected guide in rationalizing and controlling subhuman phenomena, be expanded to rationalize and control our human destiny? Can man master the machines he has made which today threaten increasingly to enslave him? Can he subdue to his will those tremendously productive forces which his science and technical knowledge have released, and which seem adequate to abolish poverty, yet which at present give increasing unemployment, economic crises, wars?

We are asking, in other words, can men master destiny? Are all those gleams of human reason which have given us increasing dominion over material phenomena but will-o’-the-wisps, luring to a swamp which will engulf us the more blackly for the false, brief light they gave? Or are they gleams of dawn that may brighten into an ever-increasing daylight, in which not only a few isolated phenomena but the whole of man’s own nature and his organized society can be planned by human reason and carried through by human wills?

No less than this is the search that brings men over the seas to the Soviet Union. For if to millions in our Western world the century now passing was the century of the great hope, there are other millions in two great half-continents uniting Europe and Asia, who look upon it rather as the century of the great plan. The reference is not to that Five-Year Plan which the Soviet Union made famous, but to a plan far more comprehensive which prepares and includes all five-year plans in all lands and all the future. A plan for remaking the world drawn up eighty-eight years ago on instructions from a London congress of working-men of many nations, and issued in 1848 under the title ''Communist Manifesto'', the work of the German economists Frederick Engels and Karl Marx.

The ''Communist Manifesto'' is usually thought of as the defiance flung at the world by an illegal revolutionary party of hunted people. So it was. But it was also man’s first attempt to apply science to the analysis of human society in order to draw up a plan for remaking the world. Previous attempts to analyze the world were exercises of philosophers, not directed towards change. Previous attempts to change the world were confined to threats or exhortations to secure specific conversions or reforms. Many Utopian pictures had existed of how beautiful society might be when once made over. But the ''Communist Manifesto'' tried to answer the question: How can the thing be done? Born in the middle years of that century in which the scientific method was consciously remaking the material world, it sought to analyze the elements of human society, the nature and cause of the changes we see in history, for the purpose of producing social change in a desired direction. That is why it claims to be Scientific Socialism.

The followers of Marx see in him the genius who combined the three chief currents of thought of the nineteenth century—classical German philosophy, classical English political economy and French revolutionary doctrines. The philosophic basis of Marxism is “dialectics,” which views every reality, whether of nature, the mind, or society, as in process of continual change through the development and clash of “inner contradictions.” This theory applied to the study of history shows how economic, political and social systems are constantly changing, at times slowly, at times by leaps, catastrophes, revolutions. American capitalism of the Civil War period is not the capitalism of today. The democracy of the New England town-meeting is not the democracy of the modern imperial nation. They may be called by the same but names deceive; the thing changes even while you look at it to disdain or admire. Even your disdain and admiration changes, the meaning of your words and concepts. What was true, right, desirable yesterday may not be true, right, desirable tomorrow. Systems have their day and cease to be.

Is there any law in this change? Is there in this constant interaction and conflict of systems and ideas anything basic, changing which will change the rest? “The economic structure,” says Marx, is “the real foundation. . . . The mode of production . . . determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual processes of life.”<ref>Preface to a ''Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy''.</ref> For Marx the fundamental thing about any human society is not its system of ideas or religions, nor the form of government nor the nature of its family life. These things are important but derivative. They are determined by the ways in which human beings get food, clothing, shelter, by the stage of their advance and the tools they use in these fundamental operations. In a world whose economic structure fails to reward honesty and altruism, a Marxist would not spend his efforts preaching these virtues, but in creating an economic system where honesty really prospered, where each man’s success must be build on the success, rather than the ruin, of others. The new economic system would make new people; under it, education in the new ideals would be swift and hopeful.

How then do economic systems change? Marx finds the key in his theory of “class struggle.” Man’s science and invention create new ways of production, and these in turn create new “classes” of human beings, i.e., groups of people who have different and conflicting relations to production. Between these classes a struggle goes on around the ownership of the process of production, which is the means of life. “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”<ref>''Communist Manifesto'', 10-11.</ref>

Thus at different stages of human history new classes arise from new ways of working and the struggle between them produces social change. Modern capitalism has not done away with class antagonisms, but it has this distinctive feature—it has simplified them. “Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into . . . two great classes directly facing each other—bourgeoisie and proletariat,”<ref>''Communist Manifesto'', 11.</ref> those who live by owning and those who can live only by selling their labor power, by seeking a boss.

Between these two remain for a time the middle classes, distraught survivors of those small property owners and independent craftsmen who once embodied the demand for private property against a feudal past. They suffer deeply under advancing capitalism which dislodges them steadily and painfully into the ranks of hired hands. They struggle against their fate, but their strivings are confused, for their instinctive desire is to go back to small scale property. Their cry is to “share the wealth,” to start over again that old society of small owners which led to the present-day monopolies and which would lead to them again if it could be revived. The right to private property was once revolutionary pledge of freedom, but this also has changed with the passing of history. Private property in farm plots and hand tools freed serfs from feudal masters; private property in steel mills creates a new slavery. Even small ownership today, wherever it survives or comes into being, is at the mercy of large scale finance.

Who owns the world? That is the basic question conditioning all hopes of social change. What is wrong with the world today, according to Marxists, is private ownership of the great productive processes which are socially operated. The way out is not backward to subsistence farms and handicrafts it is forward to social ownership. Not “share the wealth,” but jointly owned wealth, jointly organized by and for all who work. Only thus can the great machines be subjugated; only thus can science and modern technique produce plenty for all mankind. Only thus can the present vision of men into owners and workers be abolished, a division which is wrecking the world by social strife and international war. It must be superseded by one united class of people—joint worker-owners of the world. From this economic equality, all other forms of equality will grow. First a stage of socialism where men have equal access to labor and receive according to their work. Then when the habits of human beings have been changed by joint ownership, will come the stage of communism in which men freely co-operate in work according to their abilities and receive according to their needs.

Who will bring about this change of ownership? Clearly not the present private owners: their interests lie the other way. Nor can the disintegrating middle classes achieve it, except insofar as they come to understand that their future lies with the workers. Only one class of people can develop the will to carry through this difficult long epoch of change—the working class which is bound to the mighty mechanism of modern production, mastering it yet enslaved by it. Joint ownership is their only path to freedom; when they understand this, they will accomplish it. They are thus the “really revolutionary class,” in whom social ownership of modern production is a living need and can become a flaming passion carrying humanity forward to a higher stage.

The task of every Marxist is to help them understand, to make them “class-conscious,” aware of their power and function as creators of social progress. Millions of Americans resent the very idea of classes, and are indignant at “inflaming class-consciousness” where it does not yet exist. But Marxian classes are not epithets inciting to riot; they are categories in a scientific analysis. Marxists say that unless human society is to go down in a catastrophe of slavery, war and ruin, men must own their tools and the wealth which these create; that tools and wealth have grown too complexly social to be owned individually and must therefore be socially owned; and that only the working class can develop the fighting will to seize the power of ownership and through it remake society. The less the workers are organized, the less conscious they are of their power and function, the more will the coming changes in human society be protracted, painful and blind. The more conscious the workers are of their great task in history, the better they are organized, the more they are able to rally around them the middle classes, the swifter will be the change and the less will be the human suffering.

Two generations of economists in many countries developed the Marxian theory. Lenin built on it the Bolshevik Party which in 1917 carried through the Russian Revolution. Stalin is honored today by Bolsheviks not only as statesman and organizer, but as the far-seeing analyst and guider of social change, who continues and develops the scientific method of Marx, Engels, Lenin. One-sixth of the world today is being remade according to the Marxian program—the first consciously devised pattern that men ever applied to society as a whole.

=== CHAPTER II: THE PARTY OF REVOLUTION ===

{{Quote|“To distinguish those who worked from those who talked.”|Lenin}}

Not by accident did the first socialist revolution take place in Russia. The World War imposed great strains on many countries and the chain of world imperialism broke at its weakest link.<ref>Hillquit called the Russian revolution an “historical accident,” since it occurred in a backward peasant land. Norman Thomas on the contrary holds it occurred just because the Russians were so backward that they would endure a dictatorship such as no other people would stand. Stalin says: “The objective conditions for the revolution exist throughout the whole system of imperialist world economy, which is an integral unit.” Answering the theory that the revolution must come first “where the proletariat forms the majority, where culture is more advanced, where there is more democracy,” he says: “No, not necessarily where industry is most developed; it will be broken where the chain of imperialism is weakest, for the proletarian revolution is the result of the breaking of the of world imperialism at its weakest link.” From Stalin’s Lectures to Sverdlov Students.</ref> More than any other land, Russia was tormented by war and ravenous for peace. Tsardom, that hideous hangover from the Middle Ages, had lost all moral authority and was hated by the entire people. For decades revolution had been brewing in Russia.<ref>Marx noted this as far back as 1877 in his Letter to Zorge. See ''Letters of Marx and Engels''.</ref> The World War added the last unbearable pressure and the explosion came.

Not least among the factors which made the revolution possible and helped determine its form was the existence of the Bolshevik Party.<ref>Today called Communist Party (of Bolsheviks).</ref> This was no spontaneous creation, born at the moment of revolt; for fourteen years it had been consciously welded by painstaking thought and desperate struggle. Its traditions indeed went back much further. The whole last half of the nineteenth century advanced thinkers in Russia, under the oppression of tsardom, had sought eagerly for the effective revolutionary path. Through fifty years of torment, sacrifice, heroism, incredible energy, careful study, they had tested many methods. They had tried to educate and organize the peasantry; they had tried the terrorist assassination of tyrants. They had failed. They had checked their failures by the history of other nations and a section of them had come to Marxism as the correct program for remaking the world.

If Marx furnished the general program, it was Lenin who developed the theory and tactics, proletarian revolution, and built the organization for the seizure of power. Bolshevism, as a trend of political thought and a political party, exists since 1903, when the Social-Democratic Party of Russia split into groups known as Bolsheviks (majority) and Mensheviks (minority), which correspond to Communists and Social-Democrats today in other countries. The older leaders wanted to “widen” the Party, to take in all “supporters” and give them all a voice in determining the Party’s program. Lenin, though recognizing that any social change must rely on wide masses, not only of workers but of many other “allies,” insisted that membership in the Party itself “must be given a narrow definition to distinguish those who worked from those who talked.”<ref>Lenin’s Account of Second Congress, ''Selected Works'', II</ref>

To organize and train the Party of Revolution became thenceforth the central task and the greatest achievement of that world-renowned leader, Lenin, who gave his whole life to the study and practice of the science of political power. Power was to him no mere personal achievement of office; it was the organized lifting of the human race one stage forward in history. He studied how to ride the turbulent upheaval which the conflicts in modern society would inevitably produce, how to prepare and lead men for the seizure of the state and the creation of a new order, how at last to organize them for the conquest of nature and of their own destiny. This was to Lenin the science of power.

Starting with the Marxian thesis that the working class is the group in modern society which can be organized to take power and to build a new order, Lenin created for this class a “vanguard” of leaders. They must be men of intelligence, will, daring; yet they must act in a disciplined manner, reinforcing a common direction. They must make the revolution a life-long profession, steadily studying the economic, political and social forces of the society in which they live. They must apply this knowledge in action. They must take active part not only in elections and political movements, but in strikes, trade union work, demonstrations, distribution of literature and all the other prosaic or dangerous activities through which the working class becomes organized and conscious of its power. They must keep close to the workers, learning from them and assisting them, and win the right to lead by the confidence they inspire.

How are such leaders to be found among the great hordes of the dispossessed and discontented? How, if found, are they to be welded into a disciplined, fighting force? Lenin had no illusions; he knew that the mass of exploited men who are squeezed out by the dislocations of capitalism, and who turn in hope or despair towards communism, contains many fools, knaves, fanatics and self-pitying failures as well as men of intelligence and will. He foresaw a long period of difficult struggle, in which men fit to lead would be tested by fire, men capable of learning would be trained by experience, and others would weed themselves out by their follies. Lenin himself gave most of his years to the slow work of building up and training a not very large but thoroughly tested Party, which could give leadership when the hour of revolution came. I have met simple workers to whom Lenin devoted hours of individual teaching, and who remember today the exact phrases he used with them forty years ago. The making of real Communists able to lead the masses is a long and costly process.

Nothing could be more absurd than the two contradictory views of Communists promulgated today by their opponents. They are usually pictured as planless inciters to violence and riot, people who have a crazy desire for chaos, in the hope that something vaguely called communism may somehow ensue. A more sophisticated view, to which no less a person than Sinclair Lewis falls victim in ''It Can’t Happen Here'', portrays them as brainless sheep required to act in blind obedience to the orders of their superiors for the sake of discipline. Neither of these types could possibly lead a successful strike, much less a revolution. A communist who increased risks by recklessness would be early eliminated; a man who only took orders would be useless as a leader. Communists must learn the difficult combination of intelligence with daring; they must learn to act together but they must all know why.

“What we build cannot be built by passive people,” said one of the secretaries of the Russian Communist Party to me. “We all had strong convictions; we fought for them and went to jail for them,” said another veteran Bolshevik. “Then in jail we fought with our imprisoned comrades over details of past policies, studying and learning from past errors. Often we found that the mistake of a few words in our theory had cost us a year in prison.” Again and again groups which could not agree split off from the others. Lenin made no effort to detain them; he distinguished sharply between those allies with whom co-operation was possible for a longer or shorter period, and the smaller group which would stick through everything. Thus was built up that Party of men who had placed their lives in each other’s hands so often that they could rely on each other with absolute assurance, not through blind submission but through a habit of mutual consultation and swift acceptance of joint decisions.

The most famous picture of the ideal Communist is given by Krupskaia, widow of Lenin, in an article entitled: “What a Communist Should Be Like.” “First of all a Communist is a social person, with strongly developed social instincts, who desires that all people should be well and be happy. Second, he must understand what is happening about him in the world—the mechanism of the existing régime, the history of the growth of human society, the history of economic development, of the growth of property, the division of classes, the growth of state forms. He must clearly picture whither society is developing—to a régime where the happiness of some will not be based on the slavery of others and where there will be no compulsion except strongly developed social instincts. And the Communists must clear the road, as you clear a path in the wilderness, to hasten its coming.

“Third, the Communist must know how to organize creatively. If he is a medical worker, for instance, he must know medicine, then the history of medicine in Russia and other lands, then the Communist approach to the problem of medicine, i.e., how to organize wide masses to create from the ranks of the toilers a powerful sanitary organization in the cause of health. He must know not only what Communism is and what is coming, what his own job in it may be and his approach to the masses. Fourthly, his personal life must be submitted to and guided by the interests of Communism. No matter how much he regrets giving up the comforts and ties of home, he must if necessary cast all aside and go into danger wherever assigned. . . . Body and soul he must be devoted to the interests of the toiling masses, of Communism.”

Men who have risen high in the Communist Party are characterized by these qualities listed by Krupskaia. They are usually reticent about their deepest motives; it is not the thing to gush one’s devotion. One learns of their qualities chiefly through others. Krupskaia, speaking to intimate Party friends at the funeral of her husband Lenin, found the completest expression in the words: “Lenin deeply loved the people.” Radek tells how Stalin, answering greetings sent him by the Party on his fiftieth birthday, “said something which, in the mouth of such a reserved man, sounded as though it came from the very depths of his being. Stalin said that he was ready to shed his blood ‘drop by drop’ for the proletariat.”<ref>Radek, ''Problems of Soviet Literature'', 144.</ref><ref group="ProleWiki">This seems to refer to Radeks speech at the Soviet Writers Congress in August 1934. A copy is available on [https://www.marxists.org/archive/radek/1934/sovietwritercongress.htm marxists.org]</ref>

Men who would lead the masses in changing the world by the Marxian method must obviously strive for constant growth in two directions: in ever-deepening understanding of social and economic forces and in ever-widening participation in workers’ struggles. Perhaps the first thing that strikes an outsider is the amount of time which all Communists devote to the study of Marxian theory. Managers of great steel plants and busy county officials under the pressure of harvest will find time, at unearthly hours like eleven at night or seven in the morning, for their study of Marxism or their class in current events, deeming these things as essential as their other pressing work.

Visitors to the Soviet Union are not infrequently amazed to find that a Party secretary in a rural township can discuss international affairs with an assurance and abundance of detail which few foreign editors of an American metropolitan news-paper can show, and will handle statistics and history with a good deal more ease than the “Brain Trust.” A prominent American politician once expressed to me doubts of the accuracy of the published interview of H. G. Wells with Stalin. Stalin’s references to the Cromwellian revolution seemed to him too detailed to have been available for conversation. “People,” he said, “don’t talk that way” But any Communist in the Soviet Union who did not know the essentials of Cromwellian revolution, and of other historic revolutions from which he is expected to learn, would join a class to “raise his ideological level.” A Communist who allowed himself to become as ignorant of world affairs as is the average American politician would be ruthlessly “cleaned out” of the Party, or told to join the group of “sympathizers” to learn what he has to know.

The emotional vagueness which is a feature of all capitalist political platforms, and which is indeed desired in order to win wide support without being too definite, is the exact opposite of Communist statement. The Communists even seem to be painfully definite, to “take refuge in formulæ,” or to split hairs over the exact interpretation of phrases. All science and technical knowledge, however, advance by just this splitting of hairs to find the exact chemical formula which produces the alloy or the mathematical relation which strengthens the arch of the bridge; discussions in any congress of physiologists or electricians are full of this “dull theory” without which no scientific progress can be attained. Communists take Marxism as such a science; to rise to eminence among them demands years, even decades, of close and penetrating study of social forces. This is no dogma to be learned once for all; it is a developing body of thought, constantly applied to and affected by new conditions. By the very theory of dialectics, these forces are changing. The speeches of Lenin and Stalin and other Party leaders never deal in stirring oratory or spell-binding generalities but in close and careful analysis. Stalin would no more attempt to sway a Communist congress by “force of personality” expressed in brilliant oratory and colorful phrasing, than Edison would have expected to convince a group of American engineers of the reliability of some new formula by emotional words. One such attempt would ruin either an Edison or a Stalin.

But Communists must not only be scientific; they must also learn to work with the masses. In this they face a special difficulty; the man who has thought for years in Marxian categories may find it as hard to explain them to simple people as an electrical engineer would find it to explain the theory of turbines to men in a candle-lighted world. This is more serious for the Communist than for the engineer; for the latter can build his turbines without help from the candle-lighted individuals, but the Communist cannot make a revolution without the people. Fortunately actions may speak as well as words, and all Communists are required to do active work which brings them in touch with the masses. When intellectuals apply for Party membership, it is a common practice to give them some tasks around a factory, such as teaching night classes in Russian language, civics or Marxism, or practical assistance in trade union work. After a year or two of such testing, the opinion of the workers is taken as to whether the candidate is fit to be a Party member.

Any Communist Party at any stage in its development in any country considers persons who cannot co-operate with workers’ movements as unfit for Party membership. In the Soviet Union where the rank and file of non-Party workers have already considerable knowledge of the Party’s ideals, it has become a common thing for them to assist in helping the Party in its selection of members. Two hundred thousand workers who joined the Party some two years ago were actually nominated by the non-Party workers, through repeated meetings and discussions as to what persons in their ranks should be recommended for Party membership. From time to time the Party “cleans out” its membership, and this is always done at open meetings to which all workers of the given institution are invited. Each Communist in the institution must give before this public an extended account of his life and activities, submit to and answer all criticism, and prove before the assembled workers his fitness to remain in the “leading Party.” Members may be cleaned out not only as “hostile elements, double-dealers, violators of discipline, degenerates, career-seekers, self-seekers, morally degraded persons” but even for being merely “passive,” for having failed to keep learning and growing in knowledge and authority among the masses.

People admitted to the Communist Party—this admission demands a period of study and probation—must give considerable time to unpaid “Party work” i.e., the various tasks of strengthening the organization and organizing the masses around it. Having chosen as the chief purpose of their life the achievement of the socialist revolution, they must learn how to build a joint program. They take part in the discussions from which arise the decisions of the Party and they are expected to carry out these decisions energetically but never blindly. For they must know why the decisions are made; they must understand the Party Line and be able to promote it without bothering other people for orders. They must have strong opinions and fight for them; but they must know when to fight and when to yield. If they cannot learn this, they will find themselves outside the Party, thrown out either as “passive” or as “opposition.” It is not an easy lesson; there have been many political mortalities.

Party members must learn to decide and act collectively, not only in determining the general line, but also in deciding their own work in it. They must consult and accept their comrades’ judgment as to where they themselves can be of most use. In the Civil War Communists were expected to be the first to volunteer for every battle-front. In the Soviet Union today they are first to be sent to difficult posts in industry and farming. They may be torn from jobs in which they are successful and sent to work which they hate; they must there-upon cease to hate it and do it well as an important task. I know of a high official who was taken from a train by a telegram sent through an obscure local secretary in a town through which he passed, and ordered to return for a different assignment. But no order is ever the command of a superior officer; it is the decision of a group of comrades with whom one has chosen to work. This is the famous Party discipline; known as “iron” discipline but also as “conscious” discipline, for it is based not on passive submission but on understanding participation and collective choice. The reward for this discipline is conscious participation in the making of history.

The Communists expect not only to lead the masses, but to learn from them in a constant interaction. They must “organize the proletariat”; they must “guide it in its class struggle.”<ref>Program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.</ref> They must “see ahead of the working class,” and be the “experienced general staff” which “every army at war must have if it is to avoid certain defeat.”<ref>Stalin, ''Leninism'', I, 88-89, Cooperative Publishers, Moscow.</ref> But they do not consider themselves a separate caste of leaders, but a “vanguard” intimately a part of the working class they lead. They modify their program to grant temporarily some “backward” demand of the masses, or to include permanently some new form or method which the masses invent. An example of the first was Lenin’s response to the peasants’ demands for splitting up the land, a backward step taken to secure peasant support and “in order that they may educate themselves by fulfilling their desires.” An example of the second was the adoption of “soviets” in government and “artels” in farming, neither of which forms had been foreseen by the Party until they arose. It is the working class which must dictate and not the Party; in 1925 when Zinoviev argued for dictatorship by the Party, Stalin fought against this “narrow point of view,” saying that the confidence between the masses of the people and the Party must not be destroyed by any peculiar Party rights, “because in the first place, the Party might be mistaken, and even if it were not, the masses might take some time to see that it was right.”<ref>Stalin, ''Leninism'', I, 51.</ref>

How can three million Communists lead one hundred and seventy million people? Because they are not alien to those millions, but are the most energetic part of them, whose capacity to lead has been repeatedly tested and recognized by the others. Millions of non-Party people today in the Soviet Union work loyally, even enthusiastically under Party direction, yet do not venture to call themselves Communists. One of my best friends was a woman who gave her life to the care of homeless children, and who said to me once: “My life began with the Soviet Power; it alone gave me the chance to fight for children. . . . I care more for the Party’s success than for anything in life.” Yet when her fellow-workers voted her “worthy of being a Communist,” she declined the honor, knowing she could not honestly join while she disagreed on one or two points in the Party program.

A fifty-two-year-old wheelwright, Rosenberg, whom I met in the Jewish Autonomous Territory of Birobidjan, had courageously dismantled his home in the Ukraine and taken his family of ten to pioneer in the Far East. He had fought through incredible hardships to build a collective industry which made carts; he was now a member of the city government giving much unpaid time to civic work. “When the Party decided to develop Birobidjan,” he explained, “I knew it would be a great future. It goes higher and higher to the building of socialism. I myself can’t build it, but if I work and others work, we’ll build it.” Few could have expressed the Communist goal more sincerely than Rosenberg, yet he did not think of joining the Party. “I don’t know enough,” he said. “I am just studying the first political courses. Serious reading is not so easy for me. I am fifty-two years old.”

In the Far North fourteen years ago I met Rimpalle, who had risked his life to run the Finnish border and “help the Revolution.” He organized the first quarries and mines in a hungry Arctic land; he created a trade union, a co-operative and a night-school for illiterate natives of the forests. He made $100,000 for the state that first summer and got for himself—it was the time of War Communism—only “rations of potatoes and good, fat gravy and one resoling of my boots.” Rimpalle said to me: “It’s a useful job. Up here so near the border and the propaganda of the White Finns, we needed to have an industry to give food to the people.” He was already a candidate for the Communist Party, expecting to be admitted to full membership in a few months.

These examples show what is required of Communists. Devoted activity under Communist direction, such as the Jewish wheelwright gave, is not enough. Ninety per cent allegiance, such as the social worker offered, is not enough. Nor was it enough for Rimpalle to work self-sacrificingly to increase socially owned wealth; he must understand consciously the political purpose of his work. I have in the course of fifteen years in the Soviet Union met an occasional Communist who was a grafter, and many more who were stubborn bureaucrats and unenlightened fanatics. But I have also seen how the Party throws out dead wood—not always accurately—and renews itself from the working class it leads.

Such is the organized Party which carried through the Revolution and which today welds into shape the great masses of the Soviet Union, with its vast distances, its once backward populations, its hundred and eighty-two nationalities, its foes on all borders. It succeeds by choosing its members with discrimination, by keeping them firmly organized, forever studying and continuously on the job.

The Communist Party does not expect to last forever. “When classes disappear and the dictatorship of the proletariat dies out, the Party also will die out.”<ref>Stalin, ''Leninism'', I, 96.</ref> It sees its task as belonging to a definite stage in human society, with a beginning, a development and an end. No other political party in the world has this type of historic consciousness, this supreme confidence; all others live from election to election, and make no long time plans. The Communist Party considers that it has a specific job in history and confidently expects to stay in power for the time required to carry it through.
=== CHAPTER III: THE DICTATORSHIP ===

{{Quote|“The conquest by the proletariat of such political power as will enable it to suppress all resistance on the part of the exploiters.”|Program of Russian Communist Party}}

{{Quote|“The dictatorship of the proletariat is not an end in itself. . . . (It) is a means, a path leading to socialism”|Stalin in Address to Sverdlov Students, June 1925}}

Most Americans shrink from the word “dictatorship.” “I don’t want to be dictated to,” they say. Neither, in fact, does anyone. But why do they instinctively take the word in its passive meaning, and see themselves as the recipients of orders? Why do they never think that they might be the dictators? Is that such an impossible idea? Is it because they have been so long hammered by the subtly misleading propaganda about personal dictatorships, or is it because they have been so long accustomed to seek the right to life through a boss who hires them, that the word dictatorship arouses for them the utterly incredible picture of one man giving everybody orders?

No country is ruled by one man. This assumption is a favorite red herring to disguise the real rule. Power resides in ownership of the means of production—by private capitalists in Italy, Germany and also in America, by all workers jointly in the USSR. This is the real difference which today divides the world into two systems, in respect to the ultimate location of power. When a Marxist uses the word “dictatorship,” he is not alluding to personal rulers or to methods of voting; he is contrasting rule by property with rule by workers.

The heads of government in America are not the real rulers. I have talked with many of them from the President down. Some of them would really like to use power for the people. They feel baffled by their inability to do so; they blame other branches of government, legislatures, courts. But they haven’t analyzed the real reason. The difficulty is that they haven’t power to use. Neither the President nor Congress nor the common people, under any form of organization whatever, can legally dispose of the oil of Rockefeller or the gold in the vaults of Morgan. If they try, they will be checked by other branches of government, which was designed as a system of checks and balances precisely to prevent such “usurpation of power.” Private capitalists own the means of production and thus rule the lives of millions. Government, however chosen, is limited to the function of making regulations which will help capitalism run more easily by adjusting relations between property and protecting it against the “lawless” demands of non-owners. This constitutes what Marxists call the dictatorship of property. “The talk about pure democracy is but a bourgeois screen,” says Stalin, “to conceal the fact that equality between exploiters and exploited is impossible. . . . It was invented to hide the sores of capitalism . . . and lend it moral strength.”<ref>Stalin, ''Leninism'', I, 46.</ref>

Power over the means of production—that gives rule. Men who have it are dictators. This is the power the workers of the Soviet Union seized in the October Revolution. They abolished the previously sacred right of men to live by ownership of private property. They substituted the rule: “He who does not work, neither shall he eat.”

What characteristics of the new régime most obviously showed its dictatorial character? They were the following:

First, the Bolsheviks took power without waiting for a majority vote—in the elections to the Constituent Assembly they had just received nine million out of thirty-six million ballots—but relying on their overwhelming majority among the industrial workers, and an overwhelming superiority in that part of the army near the capital cities. They maintained power by a shrewd analysis of social classes, and by satisfying the demands of the sections of the population whose support they needed.

Second, they organized the new government on the basis of the workers’ organizations, thus dis-franchising those classes which lived by private ownership, and giving a greater proportionate representation in the higher government bodies to workers than to peasants during the first eighteen years when equal voting by great masses of illiterate small owners would have wrecked policies of social ownership.<ref>This difference is commonly stated as a five to one proportion, but such was not the case. Industrial districts had in the higher organs one representative for 25,000 ''electors'', while rural districts had one for 125,000 ''population'', which included children. The proportion is thus nearer two to one, a much less disproportion than exists (in the reverse direction) between rural and city votes for many state legislatures in America. This disproportion in the Soviet Union was abolished when the rural districts reached literacy and large-scale farming. See next chapter.</ref>

Third, they took control of schools, press and all means of expression, and while encouraging the widest latitude of criticism by workers interested in augmenting or improving the public properties, suppressed any expressions which seemed to the government likely to strengthen the rights of private property or injure the efficiency of socially owned production. At certain periods when they felt their social ownership of production threatened, whether by sabotage, graft, or the strengthening of private owners, they suppressed these dangers as drastically as they thought necessary by means which varied from economic discrimination to deportation or shooting.

These are real characteristics which constitute dictatorship rather than any personal prestige of Stalin. Great men attain leadership under all forms of government; the technical forms through which Stalin leads are fully as democratic as those by which an American president governs, and infinitely more democratic than the dominance of a Morgan. Nor is the existence of a single Party necessarily a bar to democratic self-expression, which can find its way as well through one party as a dozen, as later chapters will show. But the above characteristics are definite indications of dictatorship, a rule to which not all men have equal access. They are the tactics of all owners in all countries and all periods of history when they feel themselves threatened. They are the tactics to which owners of private property resorted in Italy and Germany when the rising votes of communist and socialist workers threatened their ownership. They are resorted to today in sections of America where property feels threatened, whether by farmhands in Imperial Valley or sharecroppers in Arkansas and Alabama. They will be resorted to on a wider scale if American capitalism really feels itself slipping. Nothing in Soviet history indicates that the Bolsheviks were any more “dictatorial” or ruthless than owners of property anywhere under similar stresses. Certainly they were far less bloody and oppressive than any of the “dictatorships of the right”—whether in Hungary, Finland, China, Italy or Germany—established in retaliation or prevention by private ownership which really felt itself in danger.

What were the conditions which made the Bolsheviks establish a dictatorship? Why could they not wait until they were voted into power, and then take over one by one, by government decree or by taxation, the large-scale properties which they believed must be socially owned? The history of fascist seizures of power in face of the threat of socialist voting is beginning to give the world the answer to this question. The Bolsheviks knew the answer from their Marxian analysis of history. No owning class ever gave up ownership without struggle. The holding of government office is not itself power.

The power of ownership over the means of life is the day-by-day power which works incessantly, buying brains, corrupting or confusing governments, persistently re-establishing itself against any “will of the people.” Anyone who has experienced in a single American city, as I have in Seattle, the intensity and variety of methods which the capitalists use to fight so mild a thing as public ownership of street-cars, anyone who knows what they did to the war-time government-owned railroads, or today to the Tennessee Valley Corporation, must realize the resources possessed by capitalism against anything so mild as a popular vote. When they can no longer prevent a municipally owned utility, they corrupt it. They make it inefficient through graft or sabotage; they subordinate it to control by private banks. Meantime they continue to play through all the arts of high-paid propaganda on the minds of the electors, who waver and turn to other cures.

“The change from capitalism to communism is a whole epoch of history,” said Lenin. “Till it is ended, the exploiters inevitably have the hope of restoration.” Even after capitalists are overthrown on a local scale or on the scale of a single country, they remain for some time “stronger than the workers who overthrew them.” Their strength lies in their foreign connections with international capital, in the money and movable property which they still possess, in their organizing and administrative ability, their superior education, their knowledge of all the secrets of administration, their superiority in the art of war. They are furthermore helped by the force of habit and traditional ways of thinking which remain even in the minds of workers and especially in large sections of the middle classes for a considerable period after capitalism is overthrown.<ref>Quoted and condensed from Lenin, ''The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky'', Chap. 3.</ref>

Marxists therefore hold that the working class must maintain a dictatorial power for an “entire epoch of history” both to prevent attempts at restoration of capitalism and to re-educate the entire population in habits suited to socially owned production. “You will have to go through fifteen, twenty, fifty years of civil wars and international wars,” said Marx to the workers, “not only to change external conditions, but in order to change yourselves and to make yourselves fit for the exercise of political power.”<ref>Marx, ''Revelations on the Communist Trial in Cologne'', 1851.</ref>

The tactics used by the dictatorship in the Soviet Union were conditioned by the economic development of the land and its international relations. In the first years they were affected by foreign intervention and civil war; in later, years they conformed to and created the rapid economic advance and increasing international prestige of the country. Four chief epochs may be noted: the period of Workers’ Control in the first year of the Revolution; War Communism for the two and a half years of intervention; the New Economic Policy from 1921 to 1928; and the final offensive against capitalism ushered in by the first Five-Year Plan.

The new workers’ state inherited a country economically broken by the strain of World War. Peasants were seizing lands of landlords; factories had closed and their workers were hungry; banking was demoralized by the rapid fall of the currency; soldiers without food or munitions were fleeing home from the front. “Peace, land and bread,” was the cry of the country. The capitalists could not satisfy it and this brought the Bolsheviks to power. They at once gave land to the peasants, repudiated all state debts, nationalized banks and transport and created a state monopoly of foreign trade. Industry was left in private hands, but “workers’ control” committees were established from the workers in each industry. These examined all accounts, studied the source of raw materials and fought to keep up production against the attempt of private capitalists to close down the factories as unprofitable. Internal trade remained private; on the second day of the Revolution a proclamation urged traders to continue business as usual. A policy however was announced for the gradual combining of factories into large-scale trusts, which should then be nationalized, and for the gradual socializing of internal trade through co-operatives.

These policies—the normal reaction of a workers’ government wishing to rebuild the economic life of a ruined country with as little upheaval and disruption as possible, for the sake not of profit but of human welfare—united around the government the overwhelming majority of the population, including both workers and peasants. Opposition came from landlords, capitalists and the upper strata of engineers, civil servants and professional people; but if these used violence or sabotage against the new policy, they were suppressed by governing organizations composed of great masses of the common people.

A vivid example of dictatorship in this period is given by Lenin, in a contrast drawn between dictatorship by property and dictatorship by workers. “The state has forcibly to evict a family from a house. This is done time and again by the capitalist state and will be done by our proletarian state. . . . The capitalist state evicts the workers’ family which has lost its breadwinner and is unable to pay rent.” After describing the enforcement by a squad of police of the rights of property against poor people, Lenin continues with the picture of the dispossession of a rich man by the workers’ state.

“Our detachment of workers’ militia consists, let us say, of fifteen people—two sailors, two soldiers, two class-conscious workers (of whom only one, let us assume, is a member of our Party or a sympathizer), one intellectual, and eight members of the toiling poor; at least five are necessarily women, domestic servants, unskilled workers, and so on. They come to the rich man’s house, inspect it, and find that there are five rooms occupied by two men and two women. “This winter, citizens, you must confine yourselves to two rooms and place two rooms at the disposal of two families that are now living in cellars. For the time being, until with the help of engineers (you are an engineer, I think?) we build good dwellings for all, you will have to put yourselves to inconvenience. Your telephone will serve ten families. This will save about a hundred hours’ work in running to the stores and so forth. The student citizen in our detachment will write out two copies of the text of this state order and you will be kind enough to give us a signed declaration that you undertake to abide by it faithfully.”<ref>Lenin, ''Will the Bolsheviks Retain Power?'' published October, 1917.</ref> This is a vivid example of a dictatorship over property enforced by great masses of the common people.

Under pressure of foreign intervention and civil war, the limited nationalization of “Workers’ Control” merged into the period of “War Communism.” Attacking armies separated Soviet Russia for two and a half years from her chief food and fuel bases. The granary of the Ukraine, the cotton of Turkestan, the coal of the Donetz, the oil of Baku, the mines of the Urals were in enemy hands. The dictatorship adopted “War Communism,” the tactics of a besieged land. It requisitioned all grain and necessities of life, and rationed them under direct government control; it seized all factories and used the broken machines of one as spares to repair the scarcely less broken machines of another. This policy alienated large sections of the peasantry by crop requisition. It ruined industry more thoroughly than any modern industry has ever been ruined, being an efficient device for using up the last ounce of raw material and the last spare bolt. But the policy of “War Communism” enabled an already exhausted land to carry on for two and a half more years against the attacking armies of the world.

Soviet power survived. With the coming of peace Lenin at once introduced the New Economic Policy, an attempt to build up the country’s economic life as rapidly as possible by a “two-sided process of the development of capitalism and the development of socialism.”<ref>Stalin, ''Leninism'', I, 314.</ref> Grain requisitions were replaced by limited taxes with permission for free trade. Private capitalists were allowed to enter both trade and industry, the state retaining the “commanding heights” of land, finance, heavy industry, transport, and foreign trade. This policy brought the peasant, small enterpriser and professional classes back to loyalty—a wavering loyalty, for if some had been won to socialism, others now hoped to grow personally rich. Capitalist nations abroad echoed the belief that Russia was swinging back to the ancient order. But the Soviet workers, led by the Communists, gave time on holidays to great collective drives for repairing factories, making street-cars and new equipment as donations to their country. During “War Communism” they had worked for rations; now they worked for low but steadily increasing wages, building up out of their own sacrifice the first socialist accumulation which should give them economic power for the final offensive against capitalism. Thus industry which in 1921 produced one-fifth the pre-war standard was driven by fivefold increase in 1928 to “normalcy.”

Russia in 1928 was only half socialist. Most of industry was socially owned but farming was in the hands of peasant proprietors, the stronger of whom were petty capitalists, struggling not only to survive but to grow. Class strife went on between these emerging rural capitalists and the impoverished farmhands. Youth was leaving the farms and flooding the cities with unemployment. Discussion had racked the Communist Party as to whether socialism could be built in a single country, particularly a backward peasant land. Following the analysis of Stalin, the Party decided that it could be done by swiftly creating modern heavy industry and simultaneously industrializing farming. The Soviet Union plunged into that now famous struggle known as the Five-Year Plan, and emerged with large-scale industry and the largest scale farming in the world, both of them socially owned.

It was a bitter fight, carried through against the upper sections of the peasantry and part of the middle class. An epidemic of sabotage broke out in the industries among the higher engineering staff, who had consciously or half-consciously expected to advance towards privilege and wealth. Men high in the canning industry put broken glass, animal hair and fish tails into food destined for workers. A township veterinary who hated collectivization inoculated six thousand horses with plague. An irrigation engineer tried to discourage the policy of settling yellow-skinned nomads on the soil by using antiquated surveys which he knew would not deliver the water. These cases and thousands more are taken from confessions of men who were later repentant. The dictatorship fought back, shooting the most serious offenders, imprisoning and exiling others. The energy of loyal workers and engineers carried through the Five-Year Plan. Its success won over many earlier saboteurs so that by 1931 Stalin was able to announce that the intellectuals were turning towards the Soviet Government, and should be met by a policy of co-operation.<ref>Speech delivered at Conference of Leaders of Industry, June 23, 1931.</ref>

The most spectacular act of ruthlessness which occurred in those years was the exiling of several hundred thousand kulaks—rural property-owners who lived by trade, money-lending or by exploiting small mills, threshers, and hired labor—from farm homes in European Russia and the Ukraine to Siberia or the northern woods. The usual assumption outside the Soviet Union is that this exiling occurred through arbitrary action by a mystically omnipotent G.P.U. That organization did of Course organize the deportation and final place of settlement in labor camps or on new land. But the listing of kulaks who “impede our farming by force and violence” was done by village meetings of poor peasants and farmhands who were feverishly and not too efficiently organizing collectively owned farms with government loans of machinery and credits. The meetings I personally attended were as seriously judicial as a court trial in America. One by one there came before the people the “best families,” who had grabbed the best lands, exploited labor by owning the tools of production as best families normally and historically do, and who were fighting the rise of the collective farm—which had the right to take the best lands away from them—by every means up to arson, cattle-killing and murder. Obviously the situation offered chances for wreaking private grudges. Obviously the occasional agitator from the city was unconcerned with kulak “rights.” The meeting of farmhands and poor peasants discussed each case in turn, questioned the kulaks, allowed most of them to remain but asked the government to deport some as “trouble-makers.”

It was a harsh, bitter and by no means bloodless conflict, but not one peculiar to Russia. I was reminded of it again in 1933 by the cotton-pickers’ strike in San Joaquin Valley of California. California local authorities deported pickets who interfered with the farming of ranchers; Soviet authorities deported kulaks who interfered with the collectively owned farming of the poor. In both cases central governments sent commissions to guard against the worst excesses. But the “property” which could count on government support was in California that of the wealthy rancher; in the USSR it was the collective property of the poor.

Through all these struggles of eighteen years in the Soviet Union the Marxists had guessed right—one class held firm. Steadily the industrial workers supported and fought for their socialist state. Theirs was the dictatorship, the ownership, the rule. Led by Communist analysis, they made alliances with other parts of the population—with the great mass of the people to overthrow big landlords and capitalists and later with the poorer peasants to overthrow the richer. The middle classes changed back and forth in their loyalty; but the workers held through.

Today the chief fight of the dictatorship is against corruption and bureaucracy. The workers, in other words, struggle with their own government, not to overthrow it but to improve it by weeding out inefficiency. A vivid example of this was given by a letter from three railway-workers published in ''Pravda''. They told how the workers of their station, hearing that Sizran station was considered a model, chose three delegates to go and study it. “The election fell on us. However, to our great regret, we convinced ourselves that Sizran is no model.” The letter proceeds to expose fictitious bookkeeping which compelled engineers to list repeated repairs as new in order to protect the reputation of the repair shops, and other false entries which hid inefficiencies. They noted employees who had been demoted for calling too open attention to troubles. They did a thorough and technically accurate job of debunking Sizran, a station on a different railroad to which they had gone in search of good methods. Imagine workers from a station on the Erie giving this attention to study, analyze and reform a station on the Pennsylvania! Imagine their securing ready access to all the records of an alien line! Imagine this as routine news in a metropolitan daily paper, leading to check-up and reprimands of railway superintendents for inaccuracy in reporting their work!

This is today’s routine in the Soviet Union. Scores of letters like this appear daily in the press throughout the land. Some of them are ironic, some statistical, some outraged. But all of them express men who know themselves owners, and through ownership dictators of the land in which they live.

=== CHAPTER IV: THE GROWING DEMOCRACY ===

{{Quote|“Soviet Power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.”|Lenin}}

Step by step the Soviet Union fights forward towards that complete democracy which has never yet existed anywhere on earth. For democracy is neither absolute nor static. It varies in type, extent and intensity. It may grow or diminish. In the Soviet Union it grows.

What are the functions of government in the Soviet Union? How wide is the participation of the people? How much of their life can they control? Whence come the ideas that are followed in the land? What initiative and creative energy is expressed? Who rises to high posts and by what means? All these questions must be considered in determining what kind of democracy exists.

Let us take first the formal facts of voting, though this is far from exhausting in the Soviet citizen’s participation in government. The Soviet Union has today the largest body of voters any where in the world. Moreover a larger percentage of them come out to elections than in any other country; they give more time to their elections and decide a greater variety of questions.

All “toilers” over the age of eighteen may elect and be elected; the word is interpreted to include students, housewives, old people who have passed the age of work as well as those more formally known as workers. Voting thus extends to a younger age than is common elsewhere, and there are no disqualifications for transient residents, paupers, migratory workers, soldiers, sailors, such as exist in most countries; even non-citizens may vote if they work in a Soviet industry. There are no restrictions for sex, creed or color, nor even for illiteracy. The only significant restriction relates to “exploiting elements,” but the steady decrease of privately owned enterprises has cut the disfranchised to 2.5 per cent of the population in the 1934 elections; by 1937 it is expected that all will have the vote. In the 1934 elections 91,000,000 people were entitled to vote, and of these 77,000,000, or 85 per cent, actually participated, which is double the proportion found in most countries.

Let us take a motion picture of a Soviet election. In December 1934 the Moscow streets were thronged with processions, continuing for several days. Special street-cars, gay with banners, carried people to meetings. Men and women gathered in side streets, formed in line with merry chatter and went with bands and flags to the building secured for their election meeting.

All over the country for more than a month elections had been going on in far-away factories and villages. Soviet elections do not take place on a single day but are determined by local convenience within a period of several weeks prior to the convening of an All-Union Congress. Localities choose dates which will enable their outgoing governments to finish their business, and give the incoming governments time to prepare demands for the All-Union Congress. These candidates and demands had been subjects of much discussion. But the attitude to the elections expressed itself rather in action than in talk. Hundreds of thousands of peasants were joining collective farms “to break with the past and enter the elections as collective farmers.” Factory workers were energetically completing new models of locomotives, turbines, inventions, to send as presents to the coming congress. There were, in fact, so many of these presents that the sending of most of them was ordered confined to reports.

In wooded mountains of Siberia the dark-skinned Oirots announced proudly: “We have abandoned the wandering life of wigwams; we have raised our literacy rate from 6 to 89 per cent; we enter these elections as educated farmers, settled on our own soil.” From the Turkoman Republic they were matching this claim with another: “Our once suppressed women have increased the proportion who turn out to elections from 2.5 per cent to 73 per cent in these eight years.” The historic city of Kiev was boasting: “Half our elected deputies are women. We lead the Soviet Union in the proportion of women elected to office; this means that we lead the world.” But their boast was matched by the textile city Tver, now renamed Kalinin, which has fully as many.

Young Pioneers were reciting poems to urge on their elders:

<blockquote>That we may build more firmly, Advancing more confidently to victory, We choose to our Soviets firm, tested fighters, Close-welded, the best of our best. </blockquote>

On the southern Kazak steppe an aged yellow-skinned herdsman, dying, sent a last message to his son who had been village president and who was now elected delegate to the All-Union Congress: “All the years of my life were dark with toil and hunger. But I lived to see the new day. Take care of the Soviet power, my son; it is our power, our happiness.”

Along the Arctic coast the autumn herring run began a few days before the date set for local elections. The fishermen went to sea. Some of the election commissioners held elections in the absence of a considerable number of voters and were roundly denounced for it by ''Pravda'', central organ of the Communist Party. “A gross violation of Soviet democracy! What right have commissioners to hold elections when workers cannot come? We are glad to note that many of the ﬁshermen had a better sense of their obligations. Many crews held their own meetings and sent deputies ashore with their instructions. But they should not have been forced to this irregularity. The proper course was found by those commissioners who held regular election meetings on the boats and thus combined enthusiastic work for a good herring catch with the collective decision of what to do with it.”

All of this, taken together and multiplied by millions, makes plain the essence of the Soviet election. It is an act of joint owners deciding what to do with their production, how to build a good life on the proceeds. The task of officials is not to enforce some precedent but to find ways of adjusting election machinery to voters. “The hottest elections we ever had,” they bragged of the 1934 elections, proud of the increasing popular participation in government, which is relied on to check bureaucracy and make state enterprises efficient.

The basic unit for government is the working institution, the factory or office; in rural districts it is the village. Deputies are chosen to the local government, the village or city soviet.<ref>The word “soviet” means “council.” City soviet is city council.</ref> The basis of representation and size of the local soviet depends on the size of the community: Gulin village, whose election I visited, has one deputy for every forty voters and a village soviet of thirteen members. Moscow city elects one deputy for fifteen hundred voters and has more than two thousand members in its city soviet. These local deputies meet soon after election to form the new government. They divide among themselves the various departments, which range from the five sections of Gulin village—farming, livestock, culture, roads and finance—to twenty-eight sections, each with over forty deputies, through which Moscow city does business. Besides the more commonly known functions, these local governments own and manage local industry, which in a large city like Moscow includes many municipally owned factories, the street-cars, subway, lights, water, and housing. They receive revenue from public properties, but their budgets may also be augmented by taxes and state loans. Some cities actually bring in revenue—it will be remembered that they get all the house rents; others need help from the higher governments.

On these local governments is built up the whole structure of central government.<ref>A new constitution is in preparation which will change many details, but it will hardly change the principle of close connection between local, state and central bodies in one system.</ref> Local soviets elect deputies to a congress of soviets; the township congress elects to the province, and so on up to the All-Union Congress of Soviets, the highest body in the country. Each of these congresses elects its executive committee and the heads of its various departments; for the highest government these are the great Commissariats of heavy and light industry, finance, health, and so forth. Local departments are both horizontally and vertically controlled, by local governments and by the corresponding department in the higher government. Thus a township health department is responsible both to the township executive committee and to the provincial health department. If orders clash, if a local soviet takes the hospital for some other use, its health department appeals to the provincial health department which brings pressure on the local soviet through the provincial government in the interests of public health.

The greater part of this intricate yet unified system of government is carried on by unpaid work. Elected deputies, whether to village or the All-Union Congress, receive no salaries of office. They draw their usual wages from the factory or institution which sends them and in which they keep on working, except insofar as they may be “released from production” for the needs of government; this varies with the importance of the work they do. There is thus no hard and fast line between the citizen and the man in office. Deputies are a link between the collective life of the factory and the larger collective life of the country. Any worker may approach them conveniently any day in their place of work to ask about the fulfillment of instructions given by the voters. They may be recalled by their constituents at any time simply through a factory meeting.

If voters thus constantly call on their deputies, the deputies are equally entitled to call on the voters for help in carrying out the election program they have voted. A deputy is no substitute for the people, no ruler; he is the representative who organizes them in their own tasks of voluntary government work. Millions of citizens take active part in the sections of the government—housing commissions, school commissions, taxing commissions, labor inspection and so on. Those who develop a taste for running public affairs will be chosen at some election for more continuous and responsible work. Those who specialize in some field, such as health, courts, housing, may be sent on pay for some months or years of study and become full-time civil servants in these departments.

The growth of democracy in the Soviet Union thus depends directly on the extent to which citizens can be interested in taking part in operations of government. This interest is in part assured by the fact that government is so clearly the direct organizing of all aspects of the citizen’s life. In a million matters the citizens give direct instructions during the election. They order the increase of school-houses or sound films, the improvement in the quality of bread, the increase of retail stores, the transport of goods in big cities by night; they demand the breaking-up of housing trusts into smaller co-operatives, or the introduction of a less specialized education in the schools. All of these were part of some 48,000 instructions issued directly by Moscow voters to their city government, which reported within three months on the fulfillment of many hundred demands and on the disposition made of all. When instructions clash, as when some citizens want an odorous industrial plant removed from their neighborhood while others want it to stay, commissions are formed which try to satisfy not merely the majority, but as nearly as possible everybody, not through a showing of hands in opposition, but through various adjustments to the suggestions made by all. Capitalist ownership of private property limits the citizen’s participation, in government to an approval or rejection—expressed in conflict—of general policies. Socialist ownership causes government policies to grow directly and naturally from the correlated demands of millions of people, all of whom are interested in improving the country’s wealth.

The interest of citizens in government is also consciously promoted by the Communist Party which stirs up wide competitions between factories, villages, cities, as to the extent and energy of their participation. An industrial plant where less than 95 per cent of the workers come to the election hangs its head in shame as an institution lacking in civic consciousness. Candidates never make speeches or election promises; this would be considered highly indelicate. But the voters pride themselves on picking deputies whose previous work has been notable and who therefore give promise of being widely useful. They select a fellow worker, not an outside politician. Students choose a student, auto-workers choose an auto-worker, the Moscow Grand Opera elects a famous singer. The future task of these deputies is to extend on a wider scale the type of work for which they are already known. The opera singer will organize connections between the Moscow Grand Opera and the villages, sending out artists to help rural singing classes. The printer on the ''Peasants’ Gazette'' who mechanized its mailing list of two million subscribers was elected to the Moscow city soviet with instructions to help mechanize all the newspapers of the city. A textile worker who helps organize a good day nursery in her factory will be elected by her fellow workers to help improve the city’s day nurseries, and will choose to work on the health section of the local government.

The operation of Soviet democracy is thus so intimate, continuous and organic that the observer fresh from capitalist politics hardly recognizes it as government. Where is the debate? Who determines general policies? Can the people throw out the upper officials? Can they throw out Stalin? The Communist Party? The Soviet voter, when asked these last questions, replies in a puzzled way: “Why should we want to?” The questioner thinks he has been evaded. But all elections presuppose an existing economic system, which voting is powerless to change. Voters in America cannot change Rockefeller’s method of operating oil companies for private profit. Similarly no Soviet election raises the issue of returning public properties to private hands: this was settled by the Revolution, and forms the foundation beneath the whole government.

Barring that question, there is nothing whatever that Soviet voters cannot change. They actually do change thousands of officials at every election, and as their acquaintance with the wider problems of the country grows, the forms of democracy are being widened to include direct control of the highest officials. Stalin’s chief post is not in the government, but as general secretary of the Communist Party, which would certainly remove him if his policy and actions should ever discredit him with the people; at present he is by far the most popular man in the country. To throw out the Communist Party bodily would be to throw out all the leading and organizing elements in all factories, farms, schools and enterprises; it could clearly be done only by upheaval leading to chaos. But the citizens are constantly at work changing the very membership of the Party, any member of which may be “cleaned out” on protest of his non-Party associates that he is too dictatorial, too rough towards workers, or merely not a fit leader.<ref>This is discussed in Chaps. 1 and 5.</ref>

Several elections which I attended will show concretely how soviet democracy functions. Four election meetings were held simultaneously in different hamlets of Gulin village, which had no assembly hall big enough for all. One of these meetings threw out the Party candidate, Borisov, because they felt that he neglected their instructions; they elected a non-Party woman who had displayed energy in improving the village and were praised by the election commissioner—himself a Party member—for having discovered good government timber which the Party had neglected. The central meeting in Gulin expected 235 voters; 227 appeared and were duly checked off by name at the door. There ensued personal discussion of every one of nine candidates, of whom seven were chosen. Mihailov “did good work on the roads.” The most enthusiasm developed over Menshina, a woman who “does everything assigned her energetically; checks farm property, tests seeds, collects state loans.” Dr. Sharkova, head of the Mothers’ Consultation, was pushed by the women: “We need a sanitary expert to clean up our village.” The incoming soviet was instructed to “increase harvest yield within two years to thirty bushels per acre, to organize a stud farm, get electricity and radio for every home, organize adult education courses, football and skiing teams, and satisfy a score of other needs.

In the Moscow Architectural Institute where 1,500 men and women are qualifying to become architects, every class in the school held three sessions on the elections, discussing first the shortcomings of the outgoing government, then instructions to the new government, and lastly candidates. The fourteen hundred instructions sent in by the students included more and better draughting pencils, evening schools in drawing, more money for students’ excursions to see new architecture, more exhibitions of foreign architecture, fruit trees to beautify Moscow, artists to be held responsible for designs of state-made texiles, township architects to be appointed to advise the new construction on farms. Similarly the 1,500 voters of the ''Peasants’ Gazette'' turned in 1,500 proposals, which were carefully worked over by committees, published in a special newspaper issued for the voters, and given to their deputy to put through with their help. These included adequate textbooks for all pupils in the schools, an increase in the number of children’s theaters, strengthening the fight against hooliganism, closing the sale of liquor on Suchevski Street opposite school Twenty-two—the latter being the common form of the fight against alcohol.

Instructions thus adopted become the program of incoming governments, which they use as a weapon to get what they require from provincial and central authorities. Some of the demands can be put through by the electors themselves with the help of their deputy; others need central assistance. When the All-Union Congress meets it knows how many villages are demanding air-dromes, sound films, textbooks, electrification. These demands, correlated by engineers and economists, form the content for future development of the life of the country in the direction its citizens choose. But the citizens themselves expect to work to accomplish it. If villagers ask for a seven-room school or a landing field for farm airplanes, they expect deputies to investigate possible fields, make recommendations, get the needed machines from some central authority; but they themselves expect to haul the timber or pay the men who haul it with labor days credited against the joint harvest.

Democracy in Soviet life is not confined to government. Trade unions organize many aspects of workers’ life; collective farms and co-operatives organize production and distribution for the farmers. Their organization is separate from that of government; it is also democratically controlled. In the past two years democracy has become more intimate and decentralized in both these directions. The administration of social insurance, which in 1936 will have eight billion rubles for hospitals, day nurseries, diet kitchens, invalid benefits, old-age pensions and the like, was two years ago given over to the trade unions, as was also the inspection of factories and of workers’ food stores. Similarly the whole organization of collective farming, including the relation between fields operated jointly and plots individually worked by farm members, is today in the hands of the farmers themselves, decided by the general meeting at which not less than two-thirds are present. Thus democracy grows more flexible, the intermediate apparatus is lessened, and the various functions of government are handled by those whom they most directly concern.

The extension of social ownership into the farms and the growth in the intelligence of the entire electorate has made possible a third extension of democracy. A new constitution is being drafted by the collective labor of thousands of people in all parts of the land. Economists and historians are studying the constitutions of all countries and considering every detail of democratic technique; their reports will be further discussed in every factory and farm of the country before the constitution takes final form. It is known, however, that it will include direct election, secret ballot, and equal representation for all citizens, replacing the inequality which hitherto obtained between city workers and peasants. At is also expected to abolish all disfranchised classes, since by 1937 social ownership will be universal and all citizens will belong to one toiling-owning class.

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” was said once of the democracy of capitalist society whereby small private owners protected their rights. But socialism demands more than vigilance. Eternally co-operating human energy is the price of socialism and of that complete democracy which operates jointly owned means of production for the expanding life of all. This is the final stage towards which the present Soviet democracy struggles and grows.

=== CHAPTER V: THE UNION OF NATIONS ===

{{Quote|“No nation can be free if it oppresses other nations.”|Lenin}}

{{Quote|“Soviet power is to toiling Kazaks like rain in the desert.”|Letter of Kazak peasant to Peasants’ Gazette.}}

When the All-Union Congress of Soviets meets in Moscow, it presents a vivid and colorful assembly. Flat-faced Tartars from old Kazan, yellow-skinned Uzbeks and Tajiks from the hills and irrigated valleys in the heart of Asia, slant-eyed Tunguz from the Far Northeast over against Alaska, mix with many score nationalities from the Caucasus to pass the laws which shall govern all these peoples. Many of them are dark-skinned peoples, formerly exploited by the Russians, but equal citizens now under the Soviets. It is as if Congress in Washington contained a score of southern Negroes, half a dozen Mexican farmers from Arizona and California, scattered representatives of the surviving tribes of Indians, an Eskimo, a Hawaiian, an Indian from Porto Rico, a mixed-blood from Panama, all legislating on equal terms with auto-workers from Detroit, steel-workers and miners from the Pittsburgh valley, and American farmers from the great west, A British governing assembly similarly formed would show an overwhelming majority from the dark-skinned peoples of Asia and Africa.

Tsarist Russia was known as the “prison of nations.” No imperialist power has a history of more brutal racial and national oppression, Nation after nation of the proud mountaineers in the Caucasus was literally driven into the Black Sea by the conquering Russians. The Tartars of Crimea perished by tens of thousands in their flight across the Black Sea to Turkey. The tribes of the great plains and the primitive peoples of the Arctic were debauched in the time-honored imperialist way by the vodka of their conqueror and subdued in soul by the emissaries of his religion, that they might be more easily robbed of lands and furs. Even more bitter, perhaps, than the robbery was the insulting “superiority of the conquerors. “They cheated us and afterwards despised us,” said a flashing-eyed woman Tunguz from the Arctic. "Eh, but it was bad in the old days; all my life I hated Russians.”

The country which fell to the Soviet power to organize was seething with national hates, incited and nurtured by the oppression of centuries. Tsarist imperialism, like all imperialisms, not only oppressed directly, but also set one nation against another. Turks massacred Armenians, Armenians massacred Turks, Ukrainian peasants, stirred up by Russian gendarmes, murdered Jews. The Soviet Government faced in all its intensity that “national problem" which made Austria and the Balkans for generations the tinder box of Europe and has added bitterness to the great conflicts of the modern world.

The Communist policy on nationality was developed over a period of decades by applying the Marxian analysis to the history of nations. Stalin, a Georgian, member of a proud nation which had for centuries been decimated by the wars of its greater neighbors in that hotbed of national hates, the Caucasus, was one of the ablest theoreticians. We find him in the years before the World War developing the exact definition of “nation” as a “historically evolved, stable community of language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a community of culture,"<ref>''Marxism and the National Question'', 1913.</ref> and defending this conception against those who viewed a nation as a matter of "race,” the precursors of today’s fascists, Capitalism both combines nations and drives them asunder. It knits together peoples of earth by the railroad, the steamboat, the rapid mail, the newspaper. It creates the material basis for the brotherhood of all nations but the methods of its expansion brutally thwart that hope It advances into the backward lands of earth by plunder and annexation. The “civilized” people rob the "uncivilized" ones and finally war among themselves for the right to rob. Imperialism steadily increases both the economic unity of the earth, and the national hates which tear the unity asunder.

The national policy adopted on the basis of the analysis by the Social-Democratic Party of Russia in the years before the war repudiated every form of compulsion of nationalities, recognized the right of each people to determine its destiny, and stated that a durable union of peoples could be accomplished only by voluntary consent and was possible only through the overthrow of capitalism. The first practical test of this principle came in May of 1917, when the Kerensky government of Russia refused the demand of Finland to secede. Lenin declared at the conference of the Social-Democratic Party on May 12: “We say to the Russian people: don’t dare rape Finland; no nation can be free that oppresses other nations.” Stalin expressed the belief that, “now after the overthrow of tsardom nine-tenths of the peoples will not desire secession,” but that those who did wish to, must if course be allowed to secede, while a system of regional economy should be set up for the peoples which decided to remain.

When the October Revolution brought the Bolsheviks into power, they at once renounced all rights to Finland, evacuated the Russian troops from northern Persia and canceled the claims of the Russian imperialists in Mongolia and China. The breaking up of tsarist Russia gave an opportunity to the imperialist powers of the world to fish in troubled waters. England, France, and Germany backed the aspirations of various border nationalities with funds. Yet it was the Bolsheviks and not those imperialist backers who first recognized Latvia, Esthonia, Lithuania as separate states. The Soviets, however, did not only recognize nations; they recognized the right of the workers and peasants to revolt. The Ukrainian workers and peasants overthrew the Ukrainian bourgeois Rada; the poor peasants of Turkestan threw out their so-called autonomous government; the “national councils” of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan were supported by foreign money but not by their own masses. Peasants’ and workers’ uprisings in these countries were assisted by the Bolsheviks as part of the October Revolution. The newly rising governments of workers and peasants were given military and economic and drawn into a socialist “federation.”

This federation at first was loosely organized. Regional autonomy expressed itself in a variety of flexible forms. Some of these local governments retained their own foreign offices; others issued their own money. Each nationality received the amount of freedom which its workers and peasants demanded. The Communists relied on the pressure of mutual common interests to bring and hold these peoples together, once capitalist exploitation, the source of their bitterness, was removed. Meanwhile, they paved the way by abolishing all the special privileges of the

“colonizers,” i.e., those Russian and Cossack groups which had received special lands and privileges from the tsar in return for their services in suppressing their neighbors. The Communists also pushed the policy of recruiting local governments from local people, established schools, courts, administrations, in the native languages, and rapidly trained from formerly illiterate and suppressed natives the future teachers and leaders of their people.

The fruits of this policy were seen on December 30, 1922, when, on the initiative of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia, later joined by the Ukraine and White Russia, the amalgamation of all the Soviet Republics into a union took place at the very time when the states if post-war Europe were increasingly dividing into hostile camps. Thus was formed the Soviet Union, a union of nations. The name “Russian" was dropped from the official title of the country which is known as the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, of which the Russian republic is only one.<ref>There are seven constituent republics, the Russian, the Ukrainian, the White Russian, the Transcaucasian, the Uzbek, the Turkoman, the Tajik. Many of these, and especially the Russian, which is by far the largest, contain smaller autonomous republics within them. The number of nations represented by delegates in the All-Union Council of Nationalities is forty-two.</ref> Nearly half of its 170 million people belong to nationalities other than Russian. The number of these nationalities is variously given; the census of December, 1926, showed 182 different nationalities with 149 languages. They are people of different races and colors. They range from the reindeer keeping Eskimo of the north, to the Kazak sheep herder of southern deserts, from the flax growers of White Russian swamps through the many-nationed Volga wheat lands to the cotton producers of Central Asia.

The classic statement of the contrast between the national policy of capitalism and that of socialism was given in the preamble to the Constitution of the new union: “There in the camp of capitalism we have national animosity and inequality, colonial slavery and chauvinism, national oppression and pogroms, imperialist brutalities and wars.

“Here, in the camp of socialism, we have mutual confidence and peace, national freedom and equality, the peaceful co-existence and fraternal collaboration of peoples.

"The attempts made by the capitalist world during the course of decades to solve the problem of nationalities by combining the free development of peoples with the system of exploitation of man by man have proved fruitless.... The bourgeoisie has proved itself utterly incapable of bringing about the collaboration of peoples.

“Only in the camp of the Soviets... has it proved possible to abolish national oppression root and branch, to create an atmosphere of mutual confidence, and to lay the foundations for the fraternal collaboration of peoples.”

The preamble mentioned, as reasons for a closer union, the economic needs of the war-ruined land, the need of a joint foreign and military policy in the midst of encircling foes, and said that “the very structure of Soviet government, which is internationalist in its class character, impels the toiling masses of the Soviet republics to unite into one socialist family.” It concluded with a guarantee of equal status for all people, the right of secession for each republic and the right of admission for “all Soviet Republics, whether now existing or hereafter to arise."

The Bolsheviks did not rest content with the formal act of union. The Central Congress, elected on the basis of population, which put the Russian nationality in a dominant position, was supplemented by a “council of nationalities." It is one of the two chambers of the legislative and administrative government of the country, no legislation involving national rights may be passed without it. Besides this legal status of equality, a policy was adopted assisting the more backward nationalities in their economic and cultural development, which alone could give them actual equality with the more developed nationalities. New industrial centers were established, modern methods of agriculture and irrigation introduced, peasant and handicraft co-operatives organized. Every national republic was encouraged in the fullest development of a culture, “national in form, socialist in content."

The meaning of that phrase, <nowiki>''</nowiki>national in form and socialist in content,” was vividly expressed for me by a Jew of Birobidjan, the autonomous Jewish territory rising in the Soviet Far East. “We distinguish between nationalism and nationality,” he said. "If we should claim that the Jews are a chosen people, the best and brainiest in the world, that’s nationalism. It’s dangerous nonsense, the kind of murderous nonsense that leads Turks to attack Armenians or white Americans to lynch Negroes. The assertion of the right of one culture to dominate another, or even to pre-eminence—that is the capitalist wish to exploit, and it leads to war. We have no right to exploit or to claim pre-eminence; but we have the same rights as others to develop our own characteristic culture in peace. The free development of all kinds of national culture adds to the variety and significance of the world. Our policy in this matter is part of the Soviet respect for human individuality—which again is different from individualism. We have no respect for the individuals who hold back history; but all those individuals who help push history forward—workers, writers, all productive elements—must be helped to fullest expression. Hence the Soviet Union has respect for even the smallest national culture, since each of them enriches all human culture and each of them is unique. Eventually, we shall no doubt all merge in one nation and one language, but the road to it is not by suppression and impoverishment, but by the fullest development of all variety.”

National prejudices still exist in the minds of some Russians, due to their past privilege of superiority. National grudges still remain in the minds of formerly suppressed peoples, who long learned to distrust the Russians. These form the final problem. If they lead to even minor conflicts based on nationality, they are firmly dealt with. Ordinary drunken brawls between Russians may be lightly handled as misdemeanors, but let a brawl occur between a Russian and a Jew in which national names are used in a way insulting to national dignity, and this becomes a serious political offense. Usually, the remnants of national antagonisms require no such drastic methods; they yield to education. But the American workers who helped build the Stalingrad Tractor Plant will long remember the clash which Lewis and Brown had with the Soviet courts after their fight with the Negro Robinson, in the course of which they called him “damn low-down nigger." The two white men went back to America, disgraced in Soviet eyes by a serious political offense; the Negro remained and is now a member of the Moscow City Government.

What has been the result of this national policy of the Communists, applied to people in all stages of development from the nomads of the great plains to the proudly cultured Georgians? It

has welded the strength of scores of formerly subject peoples around the Revolution and enabled the Russian workers to beat back their enemies. It has abolished age-long hates with unbelievable speed. It has released tremendous energy of devotion which gave a great economic and cultural impetus. It has dealt a mortal blow to that legend of “inferior” and “superior" races into which capitalism divided the earth, the former of which are the doomed objects of exploitation, while the latter bear “the white man’s burden,”—the mission to exploit. Over against this legend, exalted today by fascism into a religion, stands the whole experience of the USSR. The liberated non-European nations, once drawn into the channel of Soviet development, are no less capable than Europeans of truly progressive civilization.

New centers of industry have risen m the national republics more rapidly than in the rest of the Soviet Union, as part of the Communist policy to ‘equalize the backward districts with the center.’ During the first Five-Year Plan, when the industrial output of the entire country doubled, it increased 3.5 times in the national republics. The progress was most rapid in the most backward; the great plains of Kazakstan saw a 4.5 times increase in industrial output, which the Central Asian Republics attained a sixfold growth. Based on these economic achievements was the growth in education and culture. Seventy nationalities adopted the Latin alphabet during the first Five-Year Plan. Many nationalities had no alphabet at all before the Revolution; they received their written language as a gift from the Soviet power. Among all the nations spectacular increases had been made in literacy, in the growth of books and in the arts. The first All-Union Theatrical Olympiad held some years ago showed that many nations have developed a truly national theater, which in some cases has already reached the level of high art.

An important chapter in Soviet national policy is the story of how ten million nomads are being transformed into stable fanners. The Kirghiz, the Kalmyk, the Gypsy, the reindeer herders of the Far North and the mountain people of Central Asia and the Caucasus—tribes which for centuries led a semi-barbaric existence under the threefold oppression of the tsars’ officials, their native chieftains and the medicine men—arc already developing collective farms. Seven million of those who roamed the plains and hills and tundra have already settled, it is planned to settle the remaining three million by the end of the second Five-Year Plan. The Soviet Government gave them land for tilling and pasture, irrigated their fields; provided money and building materials for barns and blacksmith shops, homes and bath-houses, for the purchase of livestock and seed. Soviet farm experts taught them methods of farm cultivation.

Especially picturesque are the peoples of the Arctic tundra. Twenty-six nations have been listed in this vast region, the most populous of which, that of the Tunguz, numbers only 60,000. Before the Revolution none of these peoples had an alphabet, a written language or a school. Today most of them have received a written language, and printed books. Several hundred schools in the native tongue have pushed their way along the Arctic coast, some traveling with the reindeer herds of the nomads, others building dormitories where children spend the winter.

"Once they looked upon us as wild beasts," wrote a member of the Nentsi people, reindeer herders of the North. "There are still Nentsi living who were exhibited in the tsarist time in zoological gardens of Russia and foreign lands. They called us 'Samoyeds’ (cannibals) and the tsar's government legalized this as our shameful name—but now we begin to sing new songs.

For our tundra is new. An experimental farm center has risen beyond the Arctic circle; we have raised vegetables! On the Pechora meadows has appeared the first tractor. When the first radio came, how it frightened us Nentsi. But now every day the number of literate people grows.”

During the past year many of the national republics celebrated their fifteenth anniversary. Briefly they flamed across the columns of the Soviet press—Daghestan with its thirty languages; Kazakstan, largest and most arid of all the republics; northern Karelia of forests and marble mountains, “where every fisherman has a lake of his own"; far-south Armenia, centuries old in civilization and suffering; each of them told its achievements under Soviet power.

To Alma-Ata, new capital of the yellow-skinned, once nomad, Kazaks, who, as late as 1919 were believed by one of their own nationalist leaders to be “doomed to a slow death," came a congress of 748 scientific and cultural workers to report on the country's educational growth. Before the Revolution there were 13,000 children in the schools of this vast area; now there are half a million. A national theater, an opera, a symphony orchestra, seventeen institutions of higher learning are counted among the cultural achievements. They arise on the industrial basis of Karaganda copper, the Turksib railroad, the great mines at Ridder, the Emba-Orsk oil pipeline.

On the borders of Afghanistan the youngest Soviet republic, the Tajiks, celebrated ten years of existence. Soviet power has meant to them 100 million rubles’ worth of irrigation, the erection of great textile plants, the sinking of mines, the creation of a network of technical schools. Scientific excursions have mapped their high Pamirs, finding gold and precious minerals on the slopes. Tens of thousands of tractors, plows, harrows and modern farm implements have come to the cotton fields where once the camel pulled the wooden plow. On the site of an ancient village has grown the new capital, Stalinabad, an industrial center. Airplanes land in mountain villages whose inhabitants before the Revolution never saw a wheeled cart. Soviet power found only half of one per cent of the Tajiks literate; today nine-tenths of the children attend public school.

One by one the list unrolls of 182 nationalities, which have created industries, modern farming, schools and a national culture under Soviet power. Nor are the nationalities mere recipients of blessings from the more advanced Russians. Creative energy pours increasingly from them all to enrich their common Soviet life. Some of the smaller nationalities have already made records which place them in the vanguard of the Soviet Union. Armenia, once ravaged by national massacres, us today a model republic of the Transcaucasus, celebrated for its thriving industries. Kabardino-Balkaria, a district of two Mohammedan peoples on the northern slopes of the Caucasus, has created the most famous collective farms of the USSR. It developed the idea of “socialist farm cities” designed by architects, which is spreading through the whole Soviet Union, and the policy of making older farmers inspectors of quality, which brought happiness and self-respect to hundreds of thousands of aged men in the Soviet land.

The devotion of suppressed peoples, both within and without its borders, is the prize which the Soviet national policy has won. ‘Soviet power is toiling Kazaks like rain in the desert,” is a proverb of the Kazak old men quoted in the Soviet press by Kliumov, eighteen-year-old president of a Kazak village. “The Party of Lenin and Stalin has resurrected peoples from the dead, peoples who less than dust. Now these peoples have themselves conquered the earth and have come to report their victory to their leader," said the Tajik poet Lahuti, arriving in Moscow with a delegation of triumphant record-making cotton-pickers. “The past is a stairway of years carpeted with pain and beggary," said Arith Shakirov, one of the cotton-pickers. “The Uzbeks feared to go along the road of the Arabs, the Tajiks carried sticks when they walked through the Uzbek quarter. Hardly anyone could read. The past is gone. On its ruins we build a bright new life. Woe unto anyone who tries to take it away from us.”

When Turkoman horsemen made a spectacular run from their capital, Ashkhabad, to Moscow, in August, 1935, the cities through which they passed on their 4,300-kilometer way were decorated to meet them. “From beyond the boundless expanse of our great fatherland, across the hot sands of the Kara-Kum, the Ust-Urta steppes and the limitless collective fields," thus ran their greeting. They spoke of the “invincible brotherhood of nations replacing the prison of nations—tsarist Russia—which has gone into the past never to return.” One of the group, Chary Kary, had been in Moscow before. “But then," he said, “it was the city of my enemy and every person in it seemed my personal foe. Now Moscow is the heart of my great fatherland and every nationality in it is my nation."

"The friendship between the peoples of the USSR is a great and signal victory," said Stalin to one of those many delegations of Central Asiatic workers who stormed the Kremlin with their exploits in late 1935. “As long as this friendship exists the people of our country shall be free and invincible." But the influence of the Soviet national policy goes far beyond its borders. More than any other Soviet policy it has undermined the imperialisms of the world.

=== CHAPTER VI: THE TECHNIQUE OF LEADERSHIP ===

{{Quote|“Among the masses of people, we are but drops in the ocean, and we will be able to govern only when we properly express that which the people appreciate. Without this the Communist Party will not lead the proletariat, the proletariat will not take the lead of the masses, and the whole machine will fall to pieces.”|Lenin at Eleventh Party Congress}}

If by some cataclysm of war a section of the Soviet Union should be cut off from Moscow and compelled for a time to exist alone, government in these isolated areas would continue unchanged except insofar as it was crushed by invading armies. A picturesque example of this was given me by a Yakut woman, who boasted that her district of forests and tundra a thousand miles north of the Trans-Siberian Railway had had “Soviet Power” continuously since 1917. The years of civil war that raged along the railway had never penetrated so far north. To my query how this backward bit of territory knew what policies to follow she replied that a few Bolshevik exiles had remained among them and they got occasional news from Moscow over the Great Northern Telegraph which traversed their region. Many other sections of the country were isolated during the Civil War for considerable periods, yet continued to follow a common policy.

For eighteen years the authority of the Communist Party in the life of the Soviet Union has grown steadily stronger; it has kept power now for a considerably longer time than any Party in any other country in the world. The accumulating discontents which in other lands throw out governments do not seem to worry it. The Party itself organizes discontent for the sake of progress. In spite of exposures of graft, inefficiency, bureaucracy, and stupid excesses—indeed through these very exposures—the hold of the Communist Party increases.

To manage the state affairs of the most extensive republic on earth—covering one-sixth of the world’s land surface—might be considered enough for a political party. But to run the state is only one of the Communists’ tasks. For their plan of remaking the world the apparatus of government is insufficient. Great popular organizations like trade unions, co-operatives, physical culture societies and scores of voluntary social agencies must also move in a common, yet flexible plan. But the action of these organizations must be voluntary, arousing the initiative of their members, or their energy and life will die.

How then does the Communist Party lead the country? By the energy and discipline of its members, their contact with all organizations in the land, and by the authority of repeated success. In all government bodies and voluntary organizations the Communists belonging to them act together to induce them to follow the “Party Line.” This line, however, while firm, is not rigid; Party policy itself grows from the discussions and active struggles of its members, each of whom is in touch with some aspect of the country’s life. The members serve as a living conscious bridge between the Party and all the other organizations. They explain to the Party the desires of the people with whom they are associated, and explain to the people the policies developed by the Party in regard to their demands.

The primary Party organizations are set up in factories, offices, state farms, red army units, universities, villages, in any institution which has three Party members or more. In a typical iron and steel plant in the Ukraine, for instance, where 1,600 persons—workers, engineers, office staff—work in the rolling mill, 55 are Party members, 85 belong to the Young Communist League and 30 are enrolled as “sympathizers,” an organized group which is studying Communism with the presumable intent to join the Party. One Communist is paid a salary by the Party as full time organizer; the others are scattered in ordinary jobs through all the working gangs of the factory. Each of them has his assigned “Party work.” Some are editors of the sixteen “wall newspapers” which are posted in every working gang of the mill, filled with news and discussions of the gang’s successes and failures. Others read regular newspapers aloud during lunch hour and conduct discussions on current events. Others stir up “socialist competition” between different working gangs so that skill and production may increase. Others are active in the trade union or help promote sports. Every Communist, Young Communist and sympathizer does some unpaid public work of this kind; those who had none or failed to do it would be dropped from the Party as “passive.”

Some years ago I visited an open meeting of a Party organization in a factory near Moscow. Not only the Communists but many non-members had gathered to hear the semi-annual report of the Party secretary of the plant. As he sat down a storm of questions arose. “Why have we no report about the Young Pioneers? . . . Has the Party looked into the question of our workers’ club building and observed that we have no summer playground? Why haven’t we a sanitary organization? Why haven’t we a ‘Friends of Aviation’? Does the co-operative housing organization report regularly to the Party, and if so, when are we going to get the houses?” From the secretary’s answers it became clear that this factory had many voluntary organizations among its members: a “Friends for Children,” an “International Labor Defense,” an organization to “Increase Production,” a “Society for Contacts with Rural Districts,” and many more. All of these had been launched with Party co-operation, usually first as small committees, and had then grown into larger organizations by the influx of people who were not Communists. The number of organizations that would be started would depend partly on popular demand and partly on the capacity of Party members to stimulate and organize interest. It would be difficult for an organization to start without Party sanction; it would not be precisely forbidden, but a score of difficulties would discourage it. On the other hand, if a popular demand arose for any new kind of organization—from a drama club to an Anti-Tuberculosis Society—some Party members would take part in it either on their own initiative or by request of the workers or the Party, and would be expected by everyone to keep the organization in touch with any Party policies which affected it.

There were several ironic remarks and cat-calls in the meeting during a report by the plant’s director, who was clearly not popular with the workers. I happened to know that the Party secretary had recently recommended to the higher organizations that the director be removed to some other plant where he could profit by the mistakes he had made in this one and start without the accumulated friction. The manager also knew that his transfer had been recommended, and quite possibly concurred. At the meeting, however, the Party secretary said no word of this recommendation but put himself in the unenviable position of explaining the manager’s actions to a group which was almost howling him down. Both he and the manager were disciplined Communists, who did not wish to increase dissension but to work together for the good of the plant.

The proportion of Communists in rural districts is very much less than in factories, as might be expected from the fact that the factory workers were the most active elements in the Revolution and also more literate than the peasants. A typical Party organization in a village of two hundred families—I take here the collective farm “Postishev” in the Ukraine—has five Party members, ten “sympathizers,” and twenty-seven members of the Young Communist League. The latter organization is nearly always much larger than the Party in the villages, since it is the youth on the farms which is progressive.

Of the five Party members in this village, one of them, Povlichenko, is organizer, giving full time to Party work. He was born in the village, worked some years in a city factory, and was sent back in 1931 on Party order to help organize collectivization. From comments of peasant women I judge he was high-handed in that period and stirred up some antagonisms which he has not lived down. He is, however, a very energetic person, a once half-starved, half-educated farmhand with a passion for schooling which the Revolution enabled him to realize. He runs the Party school where members study Party history and current politics, teaches an elementary course in Leninism and the Soviet Constitution for the sympathizers, and organizes talks and discussions on special events, such as Party congresses, or new decrees affecting the farms. At the time of my visit these remote villagers were studying, more or less assiduously, the reports of Dimitroff and others at the recent congress of the Communist International. Povlichenko also takes active part in pushing the local school, the village club, the motion pictures, the local newspaper and all forms of education and culture.

The second Communist is a local peasant, president of the collective farm since 1931, but now leaving for a three-year course in an agricultural school. His salary comes from the farm, not from the Party. The third is an electrician sent to this village because “we needed a Communist in every field brigade.” When he came he was entirely ignorant of farming, but his craft made him useful in a village just beginning to import electricity from the great power plant on the Dnieper. Recently the Party planned to transfer him to township work, but the local farmers checked this by electing him president of the village. “The Party,” he said, “always considers the desires of the masses.” He may or may not have helped organize those desires. For Party work he is attached to the third field brigade and is also adviser of the Young Communist League. The fourth party member is a woman who earns her living as saleswoman in the co-operative store, and whose Party assignment is to help the village women organize a day nursery, a first-aid society and get vacation on pay from the collective farm at time of childbirth. This right is automatic in state-owned enterprises, but not all the farmers’ organizations give it yet. The fifth Party member is manager of the local co-operative store, who, since he makes twenty or more trips to the city every month, is used by the Party for city contacts rather than for regular village work.

It is plain that these five Party members have their hands on the whole life of the village. Besides their general work, the first three each keep in touch with a different field brigade of forty or more workers whom they are expected to know personally. “I must know what they want, their economic conditions and working abilities. This is called political watchfulness. If we did not know this, it would be bad for us. We could not possibly lead the masses,” said Povlichenko.

The Party organization of this village is open to criticism from strict Party principles in that its members hold too many local government jobs. They are supposed to keep a better balance between office-holders and members “in production,” and to stimulate and train non-Party people for some of the government work. Hogging the offices by Party members is considered a bad sign; it means that they have not stirred up wide enough interest. The Postishev organization is trying to do this through their work with the ten sympathizers and the Young Communists, each of whom has also Party work of a less responsible character. They read and discuss the newspapers in the field brigades, organize traveling libraries, chess games, football teams, initiate competitions in reaping and threshing, help start the musical or dramatic circle, or assist in the “cottage laboratory” where sixty farmers are studying scientific methods.

These primary Party organizations are correlated by the township<ref>Rayon, a district about equivalent to a township.</ref> organization which in turn comes under the larger regions up to the All-Union organization. The lower bodies elect the higher but are in turn subordinate to their decisions; the system is known as “democratic centralism.” The highest power within each organization is vested in its general meeting or congress which elects a standing committee to serve between sessions. The highest power of the entire Party is the All-Union Party Congress and between its sessions the Central Committee. The Central Committee organizes a political bureau for the day-by-day determination of political policy, an organizational bureau for general guidance of organizational work, and a secretariat. Stalin is general secretary of the Party, but there are several other secretaries who share this work.

Some years ago I saw a district congress of the Communist Party in action in the city of Red Lugansk of the Donetz Basin, the valley of coal and steel. Four or five hundred men and women gathered for a two day session—miners and mine managers, employees and head of the locomotive works, some teachers and health department officials—Communists all, sent as delegates from the local Party organizations of the factories and mines of the district. The problems for discussion were the policy for heavy industry and for minor nationalities. They had been announced by the Central Committee as the immediate pressing problems; “theses” on them had been published by the leading authorities and every local Party organization had discussed them for weeks.

The delegates wasted no time in preliminaries and compliments. Man after man spoke hotly and strongly on the concrete difficulties of heavy industry in the mines and factories they knew. They prepared reports based on the industry of their district and elected delegates to carry their hottest criticisms to the regional Party Congress in the coal center, Bakhmut, where delegates were again chosen to the All-Ukrainian Party Congress. Then all over the Soviet Union the special trains began running. From Kharkov, from Tiflis, from Minsk, from Central Asia and Siberia, they bore the chosen delegates to Moscow where two weeks’ discussion in the All-Union Party Congress hammered out the “Party Line.” Thence the results rolled back again to the Donetz, the Caucasus, the Far East to Vladivostok, borne by returning delegates whose first duty was to explain and carry through the decisions through trade unions, cooperatives, farms, government, whatever organizations they influenced.

This is the most widely organized thinking ever attempted in history. It is actually the energetic thinking of three million men and women, gathering up the ideas of tens of millions of their neighbors, which beats upon the All-Union Party Congress and affects its decisions. The ideas are worked over by the ablest economists of the Party, familiar with the experience of the revolutionary movement in all countries. The decisions reached are explained to the country through every channel of organized publicity; they are discussed and studied in every field brigade and factory and put into action simultaneously throughout the land. For the test of organized thinking is organized action.

The Communists do not merely reflect the will of the masses, as a ballot might, or a showing of hands. They do not merely analyze what the “majority want” and hand it out. It is their job to lead, to organize the people’s will. No group of unurged soldiers would ever vote to storm a trench. Certainly the workers of the Soviet Union would not have voted, unurged, unled, for the hardships of the Five-Year Plan of rapid industrialization taken out of their own food and comforts, for the painful speed of farm collectivization without adequate machines or organizers. But when the Communist Party analyzed, urged and demanded, showing the world situation and the need of making the USSR well prepared industrially and for defense, showing the enemy classes which must be abolished to attain the goal of a socialist state, they were able to find, organize and create, deep in the heart of the masses, a will that carried through. Without that will in tens of millions, the three million could have done little. “To bring about a revolution, a leading revolutionary minority is required,” Stalin told H. G. Wells. “But the most talented, devoted and energetic minority would be helpless if it did not rely upon the at least passive support of millions.”<ref>H. G. Wells’ Interview with Joseph Stalin, July 23, 1934</ref>

As an example of the interrelation of Party, government and voluntary workers in action, let me take the “mobilization” of automobiles and mechanics in the spring of 1931 to save flax sowing in Moscow province. Collective farming came that year to the province in a great drive of organization and propaganda backed by hundreds of new tractors, which were being used chiefly to increase the area of flax. In the first week of sowing, telegrams from the newly organized tractor stations poured into Moscow, announcing that there was a “break.” Tractors all over the province stood in the fields, not moving, for causes yet to be analyzed.

Who moves in such a case? The Moscow Committee of the Party moves. Sorting over in its office the reports of all Moscow’s daily emergencies, it decides that the break in flax is serious and calls for a “mobilization” of mechanics.

The call goes out to Party organizations in a hundred shops and factories. It is announced by trade-union shop committees and factory newspapers. Not a single mechanic is compelled to answer, but any mechanic willing to give a day or two for tractor repair to help the sowing will be helped by foreman and fellow workers to arrange his job. He may work at this sanctioned public task without forfeiting wages, while others fill in the gap in his regular work. What is the motive? The fun of participating in saving the sowing, of helping the country, of living a varied, useful life. Automobiles also are “mobilized” to carry the mechanics to the farms, and those who lend machines for such public work may hope for a cut in automobile taxes. I volunteered for a two-day trip.

One hundred and fifty miles north of Moscow we came to the tractor station to which we were assigned. Of thirty-three new tractors from Putiloff Works, eleven could not move out of the railway station. The rest were breaking down in the fields, under the hands of worried peasant boys and girls who had seen their first machine one month before. All night our volunteer mechanics repaired tractors. All night the local tractor drivers stood up to watch in their eagerness to learn. The following day I drove my car to Moscow with sleeping mechanics in the seats. They had worked twenty hours on end in a public emergency about which they would report next morning to their interested fellow workers in Moscow factories. They had also prepared a technical report charging the Putiloff tractor with certain grave defects. It was printed within two days in the Industrial Gazette, the organ of heavy industry, and led to a conference of industrial leaders on improving the Putiloff tractor. Three weeks later the flax sowing of Moscow province, which in early season threatened to lag at 50 per cent of plan, went over the top 108 per cent, the best flax record in the Union.

“It was the work of the social organizations that saved us,” said the Moscow Tractor Center. What were the organizations concerned? The state, the Party, the trade unions, the automobile association had all taken part. The state owned the Putiloff Works, financed the tractor stations, and also owned, through the Commissariat of Heavy Industry, the Industrial Gazette which exposed the defects. The trade unions organized the volunteers and took care of their jobs during absence. The automobile association organized autos. But the driving will that saved the situation was the will of thousands of Moscow workers organized and assigned to their tasks by the Moscow Committee of the Communist Party, of which most of the mechanics were not even members.

Even on vacations Communists are supposed to be always watchfully aware of their responsibility for organizing the life of the country. I was slipping down the mighty Volga on a large passenger steamer when I saw a sign asking members of the Party who might be traveling to register with the secretary of the boat organization. I learned that any Communist traveling on the boat was likely to be drafted into speaking at a meeting on deck among the peasants, or at a political school for Communists of the crew. Some of the city Communists used the occasion to criticize hotly the boat Communists for lack of attention to sanitation. The river Communists, mostly untrained sailors, thus got their first lesson in modern hygiene.

The ultimate destination towards which the Soviet ship of state is steering was fixed by the Revolution. The rate of speed and the daily and early course is charted by the Central Committee of the Party to take advantage of varying winds and tides. Yet it is a course which every active worker or farmer may take part in fixing. It arises from the experience of three million Party members, each keeping in touch with some section of the people, all of them interacting, discussing, comparing results. Communists of longest experience and best records have the greatest authority; but, be it noted, they do not call it “power.” “Power” resides in the will of the working masses; “authority” is that prestige of character and insight which enables its possessor to organize and release this power.

It is authority rather than power that Stalin possesses. Though his standing is far higher than that of any man in the Soviet Union, though he is cheered and quoted at all congresses as high authority, men never speak of “Stalin’s will” or “Stalin’s power,” but of the “Party Line” which Stalin reports but does not make. The Party Line is accessible to all to study, to know and to help formulate. The greatness of the man is known by the range over which he can do this. “I can plan with the workers of one plant for a year,” said a factory manager to me. “Others much wiser than I, like the men in our Central Committee, can plan with wider masses for years. Stalin in this is our ablest. He sees the inter-relation of our path with world events, and the order of each step, as a man sees the earth from the stratosphere.”

“The earth from the stratosphere”—the man who said this was himself an aviation engineer. Men in the Soviet Union tend to see Stalin in terms of their craft. Railway workers call him “locomotive driver of the Revolution.” An economist said to me, speaking of the leaders of Party and government in the Red Square on May-day: “Our brains are there in the tribune.” Harvester-combine operators addressed Stalin as “friend and teacher”; managers of industry say informally “the boss.” Yellow-skinned Kazaks of the desert on the fifteenth anniversary of their republic hailed him “great leader of toiling humanity.”

Millions of simple folk in all callings have felt the direct impact of Stalin’s analysis, giving a solution for the chief problem of their lives. It was sometimes a way that was harsh to follow, but it was the one clear path to the goal that the millions desired. There have been statements by Stalin that ushered in great changes, as when he told the agrarian Marxist conference that the time had come to “abolish kulaks as a class.” Yet he only announced the time for a process which every Marxist knew was on the program. His famous article “Dizziness from Success” which called sudden halt on March 2, 1930, to widespread excesses of Communists in rural regions, was regarded by foreign correspondents and peasants alike as an “order from Stalin.” Stalin at once disclaimed any personal prestige therefrom accruing, stating in the press: “Some people think that the article is the result of the personal initiative of Stalin. That of course is nonsense. The Central Committee does not exist to permit personal initiative of anybody in matters of this kind. It was a reconnaissance undertaken by the Central Committee.”

Stalin does not rule personally. To a lifelong habit of collective action he adds his personal genius, that of supreme analyst of situations, personalities, tendencies. He leads as supreme combiner of many minds and wills, When Emil Ludwig asked him who really made decisions, he answered: “Single persons cannot decide. . . . Experience of three revolutions has shown us that out of a hundred individual decisions which have not been tested and corrected collectively, ninety are biased. The leadership of our Party in the Central Committee, which directs all the Soviet and Communist organizations, consists of about seventy people. Among those seventy members of our Central Committee there are to be found the best of our industrial leaders, our cleverest specialists and the men who best understand every branch of our activities. It is in this Supreme Council that the whole wisdom of our Party is concentrated. Each man is entitled to challenge his neighbor’s opinion or suggestion. Each man may give the benefit of his own experience. If it were otherwise, if individual decisions were admitted, there would be serious mistakes in our work.”<ref>Joseph Stalin’s Interview with Emil Ludwig, Dec. 13, 1931.</ref>

“The art of leadership is a serious matter,” said Stalin earlier, in concluding his article “Dizziness from Success.” “One must not lag behind a movement because to do so is to become isolated from the masses. But one must not rush ahead, for this is to lose contact with the masses. . . . Our Party is strong and invincible because, while leading a movement, it knows how to maintain and multiply its contacts with the millions of the workers and peasant masses.” This may be taken as Stalin’s analysis of leadership.

There are plenty of stupidities and violences in the Soviet Union, yes-men and careerists, hardship and injustice, wastage of youth and life. All man’s essential progress costs heavily in human suffering; the Soviet Union has not escaped this law. What makes it endurable is just this fact that it is caused not by behest of one man or even of three million, but is part of the slow process—history will not call it slow—whereby the tens of millions achieve the organized and conscious planning of their lives.

=== CHAPTER VII: BUILDING THE NEW ECONOMY ===

{{Quote|“Either perish or overtake the advanced countries and surpass them. . . . This is how history has put the question.”|Lenin}}

{{Quote|“Millions make the plan.”|Stalin}}

One of the most striking characteristics of Soviet life to a new arrival is the passionate interest which citizens show in new industries, modern equipment, figures of carloadings, economic statistics generally. The “romantic passion” of the Russians for machinery, the visitor is apt to call it. He himself is long since bored by machinery which has recently put him out of work; he finds it difficult to understand this passion. He has come to see “the revolution,” to study the characteristics of planned economy or the amazing change in human concepts. He finds the revolutionary background taken for granted by Soviet citizens; they want to show him factories.

The mood of the Soviet Union today is a mood of tremendous struggle and incredible conquest in which individual values and problems pale before the brightness of one great problem whose solution is told off by the ever-rising curve of production, the opening of steel mills, the successful mastery of tractor plants, machine building works, textile factories. It is a mood in which a newly literate servant girl will hail the rain running into her leaky shoes if that rain means harvest. Harvest somewhere far off on farms she never sees.

It is not surprising that economic facts have a vital interest for Soviet citizens. The changes in the country’s economic life since the Revolution have been stupendous and the results are felt in every person’s daily living. Fifteen years ago when first I entered the Soviet Union, the country was ravaged by famine and pestilence. Civil war and foreign intervention had ruined farming, industry, transport. Street-cars were not running in Moscow, street lights had long since burned out without replacements, and two fuelless winters had so destroyed the entire city’s plumbing that water pressure could not rise above the second floors. In the best hospital of Samara, where I lay ill in 1921 with typhus, there were but two clinical thermometers for hundreds of patients. Thermometers, light bulbs, water pipes were only a few of the million articles which long war and blockade kept out of the Soviet Union and which could not be manufactured in the few and backward factories of that vast agricultural land.

I have lived through fifteen years of incredibly rapid progress which have almost wiped out all memory of the past. To dwellers in the Soviet Union, the pre-war period seems already pre-historic, and even 1921 seems a century ago. We have seen in these fifteen years a more than ten-fold increase in industrial production; we have seen a leap in farming from the sixteenth century into the twenty-first. We have lived through a series of epochs sharply distinct from each other in the regulations affecting our daily existence, but all these periods have been characterized by one continuous fury of energetic endeavor.

The reasons for energetic endeavor were very plain to the people of a land just emerging from foreign intervention and long blockade. “War is implacable,” said Lenin. “It puts the question with merciless sharpness. Either perish or overtake the advanced countries and surpass them. . . . Either full steam ahead or perish. This is how history has put the question.”<ref>Quoted by Stalin in Report on ''Results of the First Five-Year Plan''.</ref> All Communists hold that in the present epoch of worldwide imperialist expansion, it is the fate of economically backward lands to be parceled out among the imperial nations. Soviet Russia, unless she could make herself economically independent, had to fear the fate which has overtaken China, “a military field of operations of foreign enemies and pecked at by everybody who cares to do so.”<ref>Stalin, ''Results of the First Five-Year Flan''.</ref>

If a rapid rate of economic development was necessary to preserve even the independence of the country, it was still more necessary as a prerequisite for a socialist commonwealth. The abundant life for every toiler which socialism implies demands lavish production; it cannot be attained in a country where the means of production is the individually owned tool. The material conditions for a prosperous socialist commonwealth exist today in America far more than they ever existed in Russia. Sharing the wealth cannot take place until there is really wealth to share. Socially owned wealth must be based on socially owned factories. Russia had the problem of first building the factories.

The rapid development of Soviet Russia’s economic wealth was considered of crucial importance by Lenin, not only for the welfare of the Russian people, but even for the future of world-wide socialism. Faced by the handicap of a backward, semi-feudal land, the workers of the new revolutionary country had nonetheless one advantage—they were the joint owners of their country and all of its productive wealth. They must prove to the world that even against great difficulties this one advantage was decisive. Even in 1921 in the depths of economic ruin Lenin said: “We are exercising our main influence on the international revolution by our economic policy. All eyes are turned on the Soviet Russian republic. . . . If we solve this problem, then we shall have won on an international scale for certain and finally. That is why questions of economic construction assume for us absolutely exceptional significance.”<ref>May 28, 1921. ''All-Russian Conference of the Communist Party''</ref>

There is a strange paradox in the economic development of the Soviet Union which even foreign resident must notice. It is that every slight achievement costs infinite effort, yet mighty achievements are won in an incredibly short time. The penalty for Russia’s ancient backwardness is to be found in an inefficiency which hampers every movement—taking a tramway, buying a spool of thread, securing a room. The difficulty of making even one blast furnace function properly arouses frantic despair in the hearts of foreign specialists. Yet in spite of these difficulties, the Soviet Union advances at a speed unknown even to the most efficient capitalist countries.

This speed is due to the tremendous energy and initiative of millions of workers and farmers who are conscious owners now of their own means of production, and who know that whatever they create will be their own permanent gain. Their initiative is correlated by a system of social planning. Thus arises that paradoxical combination of individual inefficiency with tremendous social momentum. In the most developed capitalist countries the efficiencies of ten million individuals pull in conflicting directions, giving small gain to society. But each new achievement in the Soviet planned structure, attained with such painful difficulty, reinforces the sum total of a million gains.

So obvious and so widely known are these benefits of social planning in the Soviet Union that in recent years it has become a common dream in many countries to transfer painlessly the technique of planning to the capitalist system, thus gaining the blessings of socialism without the harsh shock of revolution. In America especially, where the highly developed processes of production could so obviously produce plenty for all, the illusion arises that somehow some genius, some group of super-brains sitting in New York or in Washington, ought to be able to find the magic secret of putting those processes to work. It is clear that an individual owner can plan his factory and bring it to a relatively high state of efficiency as compared with the days of handicraft. But can a government brain trust, however brilliant, plan the disposal of Rockefeller’s oil wells, or the internal organization of U. S. Steel? To ask this question is to answer it, if it has not been answered already by the history of the NRA. Only owners can plan an industry and dispose of its products. Under capitalism plans of different owners clash.

For a socialist state, the simplest and most basic act of government is the planning by worker-owners of the expansion and improvement of their jointly owned properties. Planning of this type takes place not only in those central institutions of Moscow where the foreign visitor habitually looks for it; it begins simultaneously at the workers’ bench. Production meetings after work discuss shop problems, what holds back production, how much it can be increased, and by what means. These discussions are enlarged on a factory scale; they go from the factory to the central offices of the industrial trusts. Word comes back from the central organizations to the shop that the country needs certain new machines. “Can we make them in our plant?” Delegates from other industries which need the machines arrive, explain, mutually consult. The inventions and suggestions of the local workers thus widen into a nation’s plan.

The plan is, however, no mere blueprint to be fulfilled with exactness. In the absolute and technical sense, one cannot speak of it as a final “plan” at all. For although every factory, farm, school and government institution checks its monthly and annual achievements by its plan, yet the proudest boast is always to have overfulfilled it, i.e., broken the plan by doing more than intended. The plan is therefore a standard of what is expected, a flag of challenge, but in no sense a limit. There is no limit set in the Soviet Union. The aim is the fullest development of the creative and productive powers of the country. The more production, the better. It will be seen at once how impossible such a conception of planning becomes under capitalism. It is based on the assumption that the worker-owners of the nation’s production will be able to use everything that they care to make.

Socialism is not created in a day; it is not achieved by voting and not even by seizure of power. Seizure of power is only a prerequisite. Socialism involves the expansion and organization of the collectively owned properties of the country and the building of a good life for everyone thereon. This was the purpose of the October Revolution, and in spite of all the accounts in the press of the world for eighteen years about Soviet “changes of policy,” this purpose has never changed in the slightest degree. The tactics used have, however, been conditioned by both internal strength and international relations. Not until 1921, when the new workers’ state had beaten back the armies of intervention, was it possible to begin the building of the national economy.

When the wars of invasion were over, industry had sunk to one-fifth of pre-war, the production of cotton goods was only 7 per cent of normal, iron and steel production had almost entirely ceased. Grain reserves were exhausted, and the drought of 1921 led directly to the greatest famine in Russian history. The New Economic Policy, adopted at that time, encouraged all forms of economic development, both those of capitalism and those of socialism. Meantime each year the Communists led the working class of the country to concentrate a desperate, organized struggle for victory in one important field after another—victories often achieved at the expense of heavy temporary sacrifices elsewhere.

The year 1922 saw the successful fight to establish a state bank and a partially stable currency by high banking charges which ruthlessly exploited all the industries of the country. In 1923 emphasis turned to the hard-pressed industries; for the first time since the revolution, their balance sheets reached “self-support,” at the expense of excessively high prices to the consumer. There followed a two years’ effort to cut prices; consumers’ co-operatives were widely developed as a link between the state factories and the peasants. By 1926 co-operative and government trade had increased threefold, successfully passing the private middle-man who had previously controlled over 80 per cent of the rural turnover. During the next two years, emphasis turned again to the restoration of industry, which reached by 1928 the pre-war standard of production. The Soviet workers had rebuilt their war-devastated country without the aid of the foreign credits which flowed to help all the war-injured capitalist lands of Europe.

Yet this attainment was still of low standard, the pre-war production of backward tsarist Russia. The ancient plants were working to full capacity, but they could not begin to supply the needs of workers and farmers who expected a higher standard of life than before the Revolution. Each year the shortage of goods increased. Soviet industry could not expand further except by extension of basic capital, new buildings, more machines. Any threatening war would still find the country lacking not only in commodities, but in that heavy industry on which, in our modern mechanized world, is based the means of production in peace and of defense in war.

Could Soviet Russia develop her industries rapidly and make herself economically independent, or must she live, as tsarist Russia did, by export of farm products, chancing her future on a hostile capitalist world? This problem set sharply the still more fundamental problem whether socialism could be built in one country and if so, by what means. Russia’s basic industry was state-owned but this industry was insufficient to supply the people with goods. The primitive farming system, made still more primitive by the splitting up of the former landlords’ estates into small subsistence farms, which partly consumed and partly wasted much formerly marketed grain, was increasingly failing to feed the growing cities. In 1927 the Russian farms attained the pre-war sown area of 280,000,000 acres and the pre-war grain production of somewhat over 80,000,000 tons, but only about half of the pre-war marketed grain was reaching the market. Socialized industry was like an island in an ocean of medieval agriculture, whose tides constantly threatened to undermine the base of socialism. “As long as we live in a small peasant country,” Lenin had said, “there will be a more solid economic basis for capitalism than for Communism.”<ref>''Collected Works'', Russian edition, XXVI, 46.</ref>

Farming must be brought out of the Middle Ages, modernized and made efficient. For this two roads of development were possible. The employing peasants, known as kulaks, who already owned the best of the rural means of production, better plows, more horses, occasional threshers, creameries and flour mills, might be allowed to expand, to acquire tractors, combines, and the additional land which these machines could cultivate, dispossessing more and more landless peasants into the ranks of unemployed. Thus capitalist farming grew in other countries out of the feudal ages. The price of such growth for Soviet Russia under the world conditions of the modern era would be not only continued class war in rural districts, not only swiftly increasing unemployment, not only the steady submergence of all socialist industry by an expanding capitalism, but the complete dependence of this young Russian capitalism on the financial oligarchs of the imperialist world. Such, at least, was the analysis made by Stalin and the Communist Party in adopting in 1928 the now famous Five-Year Plan.

The Five-Year Plan proposed the rapid industrialization of the country, more rapid than any industrialization known in the world before. Heavy industry must first be built, the machines that make machines for other industry and for farming. Lighter industries to raise the standard of living must rapidly follow. Farming must be industrialized, not by strengthening a class of rural capitalists, but by the voluntary uniting of all non-exploiting peasants, beginning with the poorest, into collective groups farming their lands jointly with machinery which the developing state industry would supply. This was necessary to make farming modern, while giving the benefits of its modernization to all farmers. It was necessary to make Russia socialist, or even to preserve the half-socialism which the city workers had begun. It was necessary for the independence of the country and the very existence of the Soviet government. “We could not refrain,” said Stalin, “from whipping up a country which was a hundred years behind and which owing to its backwardness was faced with mortal danger.”<ref>Report to Joint Plenum of Central Committee and Central Control Commission on ''Results of Five-Year Plan'', 1933.</ref>

In less than five years—for the Five-Year Plan was 96 per cent completed in four and a quarter years from October 1928 through December 1932—Stalin was able to announce that the former backward agricultural Russia had become the second industrial country in the world. The number employed in industry doubled from eleven million to twenty-two million. The volume of industrial output also doubled, from 15.7 billion rubles in 1928 to 34.3 billion in 1932 (calculated at prices prevailing in 1926-7); it was three times the pre-war production. At the same time a rapid industrialization of farming combined some twenty million tiny, uneconomic subsistence farms into 200,000 large collectively operated farms (by 1936 there were 250,000) based on machine power, scientific methods, division of labor. The relative proportion of industrial to agricultural output grew from 48 per cent at the beginning of the plan to 70 per cent at the end of 1932, thus changing Russia from an agricultural to a predominantly industrial country.

“Formerly we did not have an iron and steel industry. Now we have such an industry,” reported Stalin in January 1933 at the plenary session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.

“We did not have a tractor industry. Now we have one.

“We did not have an automobile industry. Now we have one.

“We did not have an engineering industry. Now we have one.

“We did not have a big and modern chemical industry. Now we have one.

“We did not have a real solid industry for the production of modern farm machinery. Now we have one.

“We did not have an aviation industry. Now we have one.

“In production of electric power we were last in the list. Now we are among the first in the list...

“And we have achieved these enormous new branches of industry on a scale that makes the scale of European industry pale into insignificance. . . .” Such was only part of the success reported.

The Five-Year Plan cost heavily in dislocation of populations, exhaustion of youth, disorganization of harvests and many privations which attended the rationing of food and other commodities. But never in history was such an advance gained at less cost and certainly never so swiftly; and it was gained unprecedentedly without long-term credits or foreign loans. Had the pace been less swift, had the Communists postponed this breathless drive towards full industrialization, they believe that Soviet Russia would already have had “not pacts of non-aggression, but war.” “We would have been unarmed in the midst of a capitalist environment which is armed with modern technique.”<ref>Stalin, ''Results of the First Five-Year Plan''.</ref> The advance of Japan into Manchuria in 1931 and the stated intention of Nazi Germany to expand into Soviet Ukraine are warnings today which anyone may read of the fate which might already have overtaken the Soviet Union but for its swiftly rising economic and military strength.

With the conclusion of the first Five-Year Plan at the end of 1932, the Soviet Union plunged into the second. “We have already laid the foundations of a socialist society . . . and all we have to do now is to erect the edifice—a task which undoubtedly is easier,” said Stalin at the Seventeenth Party Congress in early 1934. Industry and trade were already 99 per cent socialized; three-fourths of agricultural production was socialized. On the base thus established, the second Five-Year Plan proposed to abolish “all private property in the means of production, all class distinctions, all exploitation of man by man."<ref>Molotov, ''Tasks of the Second Five-Year Plan''.</ref> It proposed three times as much new construction as had been achieved in the first Five-Year Plan. It proposed a doubling and tripling of the standard of living through the final technical reconstruction of the whole national economy, the mastery of the most modern methods and the most complex machines.

Already as the year 1936 opens, it is clear that the second Five-Year Plan can be accomplished in less than five years. In the last months of 1935 the total monthly output of heavy industry was already five times as high as in 1928.<ref>From 404.9 million rubles, average monthly output in 1928 to 2,180.6 million in Nov. 1935, stable rubles of 1926-7.</ref> Grain production has known three record harvests surpassing all pre-collectivization years. Rapid increase in the standard of living—more food, better clothing, expanding art and science—is evident in all parts of the country. Cotton pickers, sugar-beet growers, combined-harvester operators, timber workers, machinists and miners are descending triumphantly on Moscow to celebrate their achievements in production and win the plaudits of the land.

With hammer blows the figures of the 1935 achievements were given by Molotov in January 1936 to the Central Executive Committee. A 20.4 per cent increase in industrial production over 1934, in place of the 16 per cent planned; 23 per cent increase in freight car loadings, 45 per cent in raw cotton, and 43 per cent in sugar beets. A grain harvest running close to one hundred million tons, nearly ten million above the highest previous harvest; horses up 5 per cent, cattle 18 per cent, sheep and goats 25 per cent, hogs 38 per cent—all increases of a single year.

The abolition of the card system of rationing, reported Grinko, Commissar of Finance, had lifted the trade turnover from 60 to 80 billion rubles; the profits from socialist economy were 7.8 billion rubles; the planned state budget receipts had been exceeded and the planned expenditures cut, leaving a surplus for expansion. But the most important result of the year, said Molotov, was the Stakhanov movement “which leads to an entire revolution in industry and transport, and opens the first page of the great advance in socialist productivity of labor.”

Then, with confidence born of experience, Valery Meshlauk, head of the State Planning Commission, gave page after page of the carefully plotted future. “The 1936 plan provides for a further and accelerated upsurge of the whole national economy.” The increase set for large-scale industry is 23 per cent, a 15 billion ruble advance, which is greater than the entire output of this industry in 1927. The increase set for agriculture is 24 per cent, for commodity circulation 25, railway transport 19.8, capital construction 34.8. The financial income of the population is to rise from 101 to 118 billion rubles, in the face of steadily dropping prices. Social and cultural services in the central and local budgets are to rise from 16 to 21 billion, the social insurance alone from 6.7 to 8 billion. But darkly across this shining future run figures of army expansion, from the 6.5 billion planned to 8.2 billion actually spent in 1935 and 14.8 billion planned for 1936. For beyond the borders of the triumphantly planned growth of Soviet national economy lie the unpredictable dangers of the chaotic capitalist world.

If a map of the Soviet world could be drawn pictorially and changed with each changing year, it would show countless new cities arising on formerly barren land. It would show tens of millions of tiny, uneconomic farm plots merging into a rhythm of horizon-touching fields. It would show thousands of geological expeditions penetrating uncharted wildernesses to discover and chart nationally owned wealth. Following these there would flash across the scene surveyors, engineers, new railroads, steel plants, textile mills. New timber areas open, new coal and oil fields. If the map had a sound film attachment one would hear the summons sent forth to young Communists, to workers in the older, better-organized factories, demanding heroic personnel for the conquest of the wastes. The conquering march of man reaches northward to settle the Arctic and eastward to the wild coasts opposite Alaska. And a long green strip of a million and a half acres of new forest-zone moves steadily southward across treeless plains of Kazakstan as a mighty screen to protect the grain lands of South Russia from the desert winds of Asia.

For the past two years the Communist leaders have begun to speak of socialism as “victorious”; its economic base is secure.

=== CHAPTER VIII: THE STRUGGLE FOR PEACE ===

{{Quote|“The Soviet Union needs no foreign wars for transforming the world.”|Manuilski at Congress of Communist International, 1935}}

A socialist country craves peace for development. As the life of the Soviet people grows richer and more varied, the one great dread which hangs above it is the threat of war. Soviet citizens are never subject to the illusion—most diabolical of all the contradictions of capitalism—that war may bring a feverish, blood-bought prosperity and eliminate unemployment by turning men into the pursuits of destruction. The prosperity of socialism is based on harmonious correlation of production and needs, and there is no unemployment. The Soviet world sees war as naked destruction of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Even the need of preparing for war it sees as a waste of resources which might otherwise go in direct benefits to the population.

In the eighteen years of its existence, the Soviet Union has been widely recognized as a champion of peace. Even its foes admit that the USSR does not want war for the present. Yet so confused is the world’s thinking on the subject of war and peace—a confusion promoted by diplomats and statesmen—so instinctive under capitalism has become the assumption that every advancing nation must seek in the end the test of war, that the Soviet hunger for peace is at times confused either with cowardice or hypocrisy. Are they not perhaps just watchfully waiting until their economic building is accomplished, and their strength is sure? What are they doing in the League of Nations? Why are they increasing the Red Army? Do they not after all want world revolution, which world war presumably might usher in? How permanent is the Soviet wish for peace? And, even if sincere, can it be effective?

There are two ways to approach this question: by the detailed examination of Soviet history and by understanding the theory behind every Soviet action. We shall take each of these methods in turn.

Behind all Soviet action is the Marxian theory that the cause of war is neither permanent in human nature, as militarists claim, nor to be found in lack of goodwill and in the character of rulers, as idealist pacifists think. Marxists hold that war arises from class conflicts. Wars in the present period of world history, according to this analysis, arise from the struggle of capitalism to survive and grow by investment in new markets. This leads the major nations to engage first in small wars of colonial oppression, the forcing of their goods and investment upon undeveloped peoples; these lead to wars between the imperialist nations over the territories which both sides wish to exploit. A socialist commonwealth where the people own jointly their means of production and receive all the fruits of their toil, wants no expanding market for surplus profits but only equal interchange of goods which encourages peace.

A socialist world would thus attain peace permanently. But a single socialist country lives in a world of foes. Can peace be attained under these conditions? Not permanently and not with assurance, as long as capitalism survives. The capitalist world system from its nature breeds war. None the less, each specific war has specific causes, which may be studied, analyzed, hampered and delayed. Peace may be won from month to month and year to year by specific, well-considered actions, as an able engineer postpones collapse inherent in a faulty structure by accurate balancing of specific strains and stresses. This is an unstable peace, but better than none, for every curtailment of war prevents human suffering.

In applying this analysis to our present period of history, Soviet policy holds that the economic world today is one and indivisible, and that every war must affect the whole world. No fair words of politicians can keep a nation out of it; no policy of isolation can be a guarantee. For behind all those words and beneath all such policies the economic pressures inexorably act. Trade in goods of war begins to flow towards even a minor conflict and steadily the traders are drawn further in. Thus was America drawn into the World War by increasing financial commitments, till at last an American ambassador cabled from London that a panic would shake the whole United States unless American boys followed American dollars into the battles of Britain and France. When that stage occurs, no country keeps out of it; the president who “kept us out of war” turns about and marches in.

Even those nations which are technically neutral—the number of these decreases with the seriousness of the war—are involved only slightly less than those who battle. “Any war,” says Litvinoff, “sooner or later, will bring distress to all countries, both to the combatants and the non-participants. We must never forget the lesson of the World War, the consequences of which are felt to this day by combatants and neutral countries alike. The impoverishment of the whole world, the lowering of the living standards of all categories of labor, both physical and mental, unemployment when no one is sure of tomorrow, to say nothing of the collapse of cultural values, the reversion of certain countries to medieval ideas—these are the consequences of the World War which are clearly felt sixteen years after its end.”

To maintain peace is therefore a permanent policy for the Soviet Union. To maintain peace not only for itself but in the world. But peace is not to be had by expecting it. It may not even be won by refusing to fight. China refuses to fight, but gets no peace. Neither preparedness nor unpreparedness is a safeguard; unarmed and well-armed folk have alike gone to war. The only safeguard for even that partial peace possible under capitalism is clear, sincere study of the whole world situation, the choosing of a policy which prevents war or lessens it, and the backing of that policy by all available power. One must struggle for peace; it will not come otherwise. The methods change as the situations change.

For eighteen years the Soviet Union has made this struggle. “Peace, land and bread” was the slogan of the October Revolution. The hunger for peace of a war-exhausted people brought the Bolsheviks to power. Their first official act on November 8, 1917, was to propose “to all warring peoples and their governments to begin immediate negotiations for a just and democratic peace.” As an attack upon the war and to remove causes of future war, the new revolutionary government exposed and denounced the secret treaties by which England, France and Russia had agreed to redivide the world. They annulled oppressive tsarist treaties which had been enforced on Persia and Turkey, and withdrew the Russian army from Persia.

The strength of the new government was not equal to its understanding. The Entente Powers—England, France and the United States—denounced the Bolsheviks for daring to speak of peace and left their former ally to the mercy of Germany. The German general staff marched onward into a prostrate country offering the Bolsheviks “robber terms.” The position of the Soviet state was further weakened by Trotsky’s attempt to deal with advancing troops by clever phrases. He refused to sign terms but protested in the formmula: “Neither war nor peace”—an appeal to the conscience of the German people. But general staffs are not expected to have a conscience, and no Germans acted to save the Russians. The invading army marched far into the Ukraine and took possession, giving in the end worse terms than those originally offered. Trotsky’s appeal reached the consciences of idealists; I recall that it thrilled me far out in Seattle. But it was Ukrainian peasants and workers who suffered; idealist gestures are dangerous tactics in war.

If Germany offered the Bolsheviks only a robbers’ peace, their former allies gave them no peace at all. On April 5, 1918, the Japanese landed in Vladivostok; following them the English, French and American armies invaded Siberia. Allied armies landed on the Arctic coast to seize the northern part of Russia; the British grabbed Baku, oil capital of the south. Agents of the Entente incited and participated in armed uprisings of Czechoslovak prisoners of war along the Volga, leading them against the Bolshevik government. From east and west and north and south the armies of all the major capitalist powers surrounded the Revolution with an iron ring of war and blockade.

Across this iron ring the starving people of the new state sent appeal after appeal to all those governments which refused to deal with them but especially to President Wilson. Beginning on November 24, 1918, and repeating their query through Raymond Robins, head of the American Red Cross in Russia, and also by direct cables to the State Department, they offered to consider any peace terms whatever: recognition of debts, concessions of territory, control of mines and natural resources. Rather than deal in any way with Bolsheviks, Wilson and the Allied governments sitting in Versailles issued a call to all the “organized groups in Russia” to meet at the Principo Islands, a proposal which clearly presaged the dividing of Russia into spheres of influence after the style of China. The Bolsheviks were not invited, but they accepted; the other governments refused and the scheme fell through. There followed the famous trip of William Christian Bullitt to Moscow in March 1919 as President Wilson’s semi-official representative. The hard-pressed Soviet government was ready to agree to Bullitt’s proposal that it accept all financial obligations of all past Russian governments, and divide the territory of Russia among all those governments which should be in armed possession when the treaty should be signed. But the treaty was never signed; President Wilson refused to receive the report of his own envoy. Bolsheviks were made to realize that no peace can be had from the imperialist powers of earth by any backward nation. Not even the price of slavish submission buys peace for China; nor could the offer of territory and gold buy it for Russia.

Not by appeals for peace and not by offers of concessions, but by the desperate struggle and courage of the Revolutionary Red Army was peace and independence finally won. It was secured in slow stages, first cessation of battle, then trade agreements, then, much more slowly, diplomatic recognition. At each stage the strength of the new state was again and again probed and tested by a capitalist world unwilling to yield it the right to exist. Under such conditions the Soviet government stabilized its borders by granting swift recognition to the new Baltic States. Then, in the first international conference to which it was admitted, in April 1922 in Genoa, the Soviet delegate proposed a plan for strengthening general peace in Europe.

“The forces directed towards restoration of world economy will be strangled as long as above Europe and above the world hangs the threat of new wars,” said Chicherin. “The Russian delegation intends to propose a general limitation of armaments and to support any proposition which has the aim of lightening the burdens of militarism.” The Soviet representatives again agreed to recognize debts of past Russian governments but now demanded in return the right to compensation for the destruction caused to Russia by unprovoked intervention. Failing to get response to either proposal, Soviet Russia signed with Germany the famous Rapallo agreement, whereby both nations canceled the debts of the other and renewed relations on the basis of equality. This was the first gesture made by any nation to cure the wounds of the World War and to deal with vanquished Germany on a basis which set foundations for peace. Had the other nations followed this example the bitter history of Europe of the past thirteen years might have been different.

After the Genoa Conference, the Soviet struggle for peace was marked by slow but steady establishment of diplomatic relations with the major powers of the world. This in itself was an element of stability in Europe, but normal relations were still much shaken by frequent raids on Soviet embassies and consulates in many countries, conducted on shallow pretexts and accompanied by forged letters and provocatory accusations unprecedented in diplomatic history.<ref>Such as the assassination of Vorovsky during the Lausanne conference, which coincided with an ultimatum from the British Foreign Office; the raid on the Soviet Embassy in Peking, April 1927, followed by the execution of many of its Chinese staff; the raid on the Soviet trading agency in London May 12, 1927; the forged “Zinoviev letter” which swayed a British election. These were only the most spectacular of a whole series of raids, attacks and attempted assassinations which made being a Soviet ambassador a hazardous occupation.</ref> Similar attacks on nations in the past have counted as causes of war. The Soviet Union responded to these attacks by steadily widening its pacts of non-aggression with minor or hard-pressed nations—Turkey first in December 1925, followed by Germany, Lithuania, Persia, Latvia, Afghanistan and others. Unlike all previous alliances and ententes, these pacts were non-exclusive. They were offered to all nations.

When the Preparatory Commission for Disarmament of the League of Nations held its fourth session on November 30, 1927, the newly invited Soviet delegation startled the world by proposing to disarm. Five years earlier Chicherin had made a similar proposition at Genoa; it went unnoticed and was soon forgotten. But Litvinoff’s statement in 1927 came from a nation which had proved its economic and political stability over a term of years. It came moreover at a time when the peoples of the world were beginning to be disillusioned by the ever-repeated fruitless conferences with which European governments sought to hide from their peoples the chaos which followed the World War.

Litvinoff broke the polite façade by suggesting actual disarmament, stating that the Soviet Government was ready to agree to total disarmament or any percentage of disarmament which the other powers would accept. He made this challenge time after time in the sight of the peoples of the world, until the constant evasion of the militarists made it apparent that no capitalist power was willing even to reduce armaments, and that the Disarmament Conference itself was little more than a mask for the old rearmament race.

As armaments grew, the Soviet Union steadily extended pacts of non-aggression and began to press for an internationally accepted “definition of the aggressor,” designed to mobilize world opinion against the provokers of war. None of the major imperialist powers was willing to accept Litvinoff’s definition, which denounced as aggression the sending of any armed forces into any other nation. A dozen or more of the smaller countries signed it; the Soviet Union began to win the post of champion of the rights of smaller powers, which it was later to expand by its participation in the League of Nations.

The will to peace of the Soviet Union and its intelligence in maneuvering to keep out of war was soon severely tested by the growing tensions in the Far East. Japan’s invasion of Manchuria has been recognized by the whole world as a violation of the League of Nations Covenant, the Washington Nine-Power Pact and the Kellogg-Briand Pact, to all of which Japan was signatory. It carried her troops to the Soviet borders and occasionally across them in forays by armed patrols which killed Soviet border guards and peasants. The most serious source of contention was the possession by the Soviet Government of the Chinese Eastern Railway, which crosses Manchuria as the shortest route to Vladivostok. Attacks by alleged bandits and arrests by Japanese military authorities put Soviet railway employees in peril hardly less than that of war. A report by the Soviet director of the road related over 3,000 cases of armed attack which had resulted in the murder of 56 people, the wounding of 825, the destruction of four kilometers of main line track and of hundreds of passenger and freight cars. On October 9, 1933, the USSR was able to publish four Japanese secret documents which discussed the “great necessity for assimilating the railway,” and made it plain that most of the attacks were inspired by Japanese military forces.

The answer of the USSR to these provocations was neither that of the strong capitalist nation which would long since have “protected its interests and citizens” by declaring war, nor was it that of a defenseless colonial nation like China, which continually submits. The Soviet Union built strong fortifications on its entire Far Eastern border, obviously of a defensive nature; and simultaneously removed a source of conflict by selling the railroad to Manchukuo at a price hardly one-fifth of the sum originally invested by the Russians. I was present in Tokyo when the sale occurred and noted the lessening of tension. “The Japanese people are for the time being convinced of our peaceful purposes; it will be some months before their militarists will be able to inflame them against us,” said a Soviet diplomat to me, making the distinction which Communists always make between people and governments. The Japanese militarists were even then laying a basis for further provocation by suggesting the purchase of Soviet Saghalin. Yet for even a temporary lessening of tension, the USSR thought it worth while to make concessions.

In September 1934 the Soviet Union entered the League of Nations, an act which startled both friend and foe. Yet it was the logical consequence of the changing conditions of Europe and the growing strength of the USSR. The Soviet Union views the League analytically rather than emotionally. What is it? What has it to give? The League is not a territory nor a state nor a super-power; still less is it an ideal or a formula which will somehow miraculously bring peace. The League is a diplomatic instrument through which a group of powers meet and come to an agreement. Its policy is decided by the powers that are in it and by the relative strength and courage of those powers.

Behind the idealistic phrases with which at different stages each participating power has veiled its use of the League, the purpose of the League changes. Wilson started it as the organization of Europe on a basis of nationality; his plan involved also “freedom of the seas.” But “freedom of the seas” meant to Britain the domination of the world by American gold instead of by the British fleet; and Europe on a basis of nationality appalled Clemenceau, who knew quite well that there are twice as many Germans as French in Europe, and that “the interests of France” demand the splitting up of the Germans into minorities among many nations. The League, with America out, became the arena where Britain and France struggled for control of Europe, France wishing to crush Germany utterly and Britain willing to help Germany expand slightly. as a balance against France. Wall Street helped Britain by the Dawes and Young plans of reparations, scaling them down to “Germany’s capacity to pay,” i.e., the amount which it was thought German capitalists could squeeze from industrious German workers for several generations without revolt. Germany came into the League, hailed by phrases on the “United States of Europe,” which meant to the Soviet Union the united attempt of world capitalism to placate Germany for the Versailles deprivations by financing her in a drive to the East.

But Dawes guessed wrong. The world economic crisis broke Germany’s “capacity to pay” and ability to wait. Japan and Germany both left the League to seek expansion by their own armed might. The war danger increased but the League itself became, by their disaffection, an organization of powers which had more to lose than to gain from immediate war. “The League might become a hindrance to warlike tendencies,” said Stalin. It still contained robber powers who exploited colonial peoples, and small unstable states built up on the loot of Versailles. The Soviet Union admits the justice of the German grievance, but never the right of war to enforce those claims. “Injustices perpetrated by one war,” said Litvinoff, “can never be rectified by a new one, which only perpetrates worse injustices.” The Soviet Union entered the League to strengthen it against the tendency of Germany, Japan and now Italy to throw a torch into the powder magazine of the world. She thus upholds territorial gains of robber nations in order to increase the chances of world peace.

She even goes further. By pacts of mutual assistance concluded with France and Czechoslovakia, she has placed the might of her increasing Red Army behind the status quo of Europe. She joins with these “robber powers” to blockade Italy, herself the first to agree to the sanctions. Yet when oil sanctions are not agreed to, she continues to sell this commodity to Italy,<ref>In steadily decreasing amounts, in spite of American headlines to the contrary. It is America’s sales that increase.</ref> bewildering the idealists of many nations. Why? Because no high example can check Italians in Abyssinia or stop the spread of the war infection through the trade channels of the world. Because idealist gestures are dangerous tactics against general staffs of armies: that lesson was learned at Brest-Litovsk. Because isolated action might turn against the Soviet Union a fascist drive from a disintegrating Europe, helped to disintegration by her choice of an individual stand. Only the threat of might may possibly halt the explosive drive towards war of a desperate fascism—the might of Europe organized through the League. The Soviet Union throws herself into the task of organizing it<ref>She tried first to organize an “Eastern Locarno,” a pact of many nations against anyone who started an aggression. It failed through the refusal of Poland and Germany. Soviet policy is still to expand security pacts to all possible nations, including Germany and Poland, not even the present pacts being exclusive in nature.</ref> through security pacts which she seeks to widen. For the status quo is evil, but war is worse.

To strengthen this might the Soviet Union increases her Red Army, the only armed force on which she can really depend. Britain and France are camps of conflicting interests; on this the Communists have no illusions. In both these countries are strong popular forces supporting the USSR and the League of Nations in the policy of collective security against aggressors, and other strong reactionary forces which would prefer to support Nazi Germany in the looting of Russia. This would launch world war with all the gigantic means of modern destruction. Hence the struggle against world war today becomes inextricably linked with the struggle against fascist tendencies in the major imperialist countries.

This war, if it comes, will be no mere war between nations. It will arouse class conflicts throughout the world. Not at first perhaps, but in the end in every country. This the Red Army understands thoroughly; its loyalty is not alone to Russia but to the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, wherever they exist or come into being. But not unless invaded will the Soviet Union intervene in any other country, either by war or by interference in its affairs. Marxian analysis tells them that this would hamper the revolutionary development of the other country; it would turn workers towards the capitalists of their own country under the name of patriotism. If the world war starts, the Red Army will advance with a rifle in one hand and pamphlets in the other It has shells to distribute tens of thousands of leaflets calling on the brotherhood of all workers; it has also the means of effective war. As the world’s most politically conscious, most mechanized army, trained in many languages, it is able to lead and equip partisan war on the territory of foes. It is told to get results with a minimum of suffering.

I well remember a talk in Moscow with a high Soviet authority on the subject of Japan in the tense winter of 1933. It was clear to us both that the Soviet air fleet was superior and in easy reach of Tokyo. We looked from high windows on the ice in Moscow river and discussed the chances of war.

“A good, industrious folk, the Japanese,” he said slowly. “It would be a pity to bomb them. Do you think any Communist likes to set aflame whole towns of toiling folk? . . . If war should come in the East between us and Japan, we have not the slightest doubt that it would be the end of capitalist Japan. Revolution would start in Manchukuo and spread southward through China, till all Asia was Communist. Every imperialist power in the world would fight this, till at last revolt flamed up in their own lands. The world revolution might thus be accomplished, but the world that survived would be badly ruined. It would cost the lives of tens of millions of toiling folk; it would mean famine and pestilence sweeping all Asia. The world revolution will be secured with much less suffering, if peace can be maintained.”

“The Soviet Union needs no foreign wars for transforming the world,” said Manuilski in 1935 at the Congress of the Communist International. Her struggle for peace is no temporary slogan. With every year of peace the Soviet Union strengthens, not only as a nation, but as a shining example which the world will follow. As socialism advances in the Soviet Union, it begins to attract scientists, engineers, artists; it draws away from allegiance to capitalism wider and wider hosts. With every year of peace—granted the steadily advancing Soviet Union—the international relation of world forces shifts to the side of the Soviet world and to the disadvantage of capitalism.

Capitalism breeds war, yet world war is not inevitable. For capitalism itself is no longer inevitable in the world. If the struggle for peace can avail month by month and year by year, to check, delay and hamper the forces that drive towards war, capitalism itself may collapse in one war-inciting country after another on a sufficient scale to prevent world war altogether. Or world war, if it comes, may be greatly shortened by the revolt of all those people who suffer unbearably from war.

This is the hope behind the Soviet struggle for peace. But whether in peace or in war, the growing strength and prosperity of the Soviet Union, achieved through two Five-Year Plans, insures the direction and is the pledge of the whole world’s future. The only question now is how deep and bitter will be the struggle—even the wars—before the far-flung peoples know and copy. But nothing any longer can stop the advance of their worldwide forces. They have both strength and knowledge and a conscience about the world.

== PART II: THE SOVIET WORLD MAKES MEN ==

=== CHAPTER IX: THE FACTORY COLLECTIVE ===

In all the recent congresses in Moscow, when miners, auto-workers, weavers, engineers and lathe-hands come up to celebrate their latest achievements in production and to receive honors for increasing a nation’s wealth, a phrase recurs which has no counterpart under capitalism, because the reality which it expresses could not exist there. Even in the Soviet Union the widening use of the phrase is recent, an instinctive expression of a new and growing reality.

“I bring you greetings from our factory collective.” “Our factory collective pledges its full support.”

The factory collective is not the plant administration. Nor is it the trade union, the shop committee or even the Party organization of the factory. All these organizations are a part of it, having their well-defined functions in its vivid life. The factory collective is the sum total of all the people in the plant in all their organized functions, the basic living cell of Soviet society.

The concept of the factory collective did not spring into being full grown. It derives steadily from the joint ownership of the means of production which has now existed for eighteen years. This is the economic reality which is steadily determining the minds of men and the forms of their social life. A worker attached to a machine must be either its slave or its owner; under capitalism he is its slave. In the Soviet Union he knows himself owner of the machine but not the sole owner. It is entrusted to him to master, to get from it all that modern technical skill can give. The product belongs to him and his fellows; through his work in the plant he connects with all society. This gives back to man the old unity of life around the process of production which was riven in twain when the tools by which men created passed into alien hands. It returns on a wider scale and at a higher level by as much as the modern machine is more powerful than the ancient tool.

An American who had worked for some years in a Soviet factory told me that two things especially impressed him: the relation of workers to administration and the cultural life around the factory. “The foreman always asks the workers’ advice in all problems; the relations are those of two friends instead of a boss. In America my factory was just a place to make a living, just another day to get through as soon as you could. Here it is your club, your center of culture, the thing that is closest in life.”

The life of the factory collective has three main aspects: production, workers’ life, and relation to the rest of the country. Each of these aspects has its own control. The director and his assistants are responsible for organizing production. The trade union is responsible for organizing the workers’ life, including factory conditions, insurance, education and social activities. The Party organization is responsible for the political training of the workers, for widening their knowledge of the country’s policies and of their plant’s function in the building of socialism.

These three together—director, trade union organizer, and Party secretary—form the “triangle,” the highest authority in the plant. Each has his clearly defined function; all three together consult on questions affecting the fundamental life of the factory. Orders of the director must be taken without question in production, and he is held responsible for everything that happens in the plant. But any director who failed to get on with the Party and trade union organization wouldn’t last long. As a Russian worker explained it: “If the factory collective doesn’t like the director you may be sure the Commissariat of Heavy Industry won’t leave him there.”<ref>See Chap. 6 for an example of this.</ref>

The relation between workers and management was thus described to me by the American worker: “The whole working gang is interested in production. The program for next month is discussed with all of us. The foreman calls a meeting and tells us that the administration wants us to put out 3,000 milling tools next month. How shall we do it? We discuss in detail; each of us says what he can do. It all adds up to 4,000. So the foreman goes to the administration and raises the plan to 4,000. If we fulfill or surpass our plan, we get a premium which we divide among the workers on the basis of what each has done. To help us estimate this, the shop economist gives us each month a list of each worker’s production, spoilage, idle time, breakdown of machines. Naturally we give the most of the premium to the best workers because they helped the whole gang win. The factory honors the winning brigade not only with a premium but with a red banner which waves each month among the lathes for everyone who passes to see. The best factories get honor and premiums from the whole country because everyone knows that the more we produce the more everyone will have.”

When conflicts occur in a factory between the management and the trade union, there are various ways in which they may be resolved. Often the Party organization of the plant can settle it by discussion within this wider group to which members both of administration and trade union belong. Serious disagreements are appealed by the shop committee to its central trade union, or even to the All-Union Council of Trade Unions which has governmental powers to enforce the rights of workers. For individual cases of injustice appeal is often made direct to the courts. These struggles may be time-consuming, but men who feel convinced enough of their case to fight it through rarely fail of satisfaction. The head of the Nijni Auto Works was removed in 1932 after an investigation by the trade unions which began with a fight over living conditions started by the foreign workers. In another case that I know, an engineer who sharply criticized the plant’s manager in the factory newspaper was later fired on grounds that he thought insufficient. Failing to interest the shop committee in his case he took it to the city organization of the Party, which ordered an investigation that resulted in his reinstatement, with wages paid for all time lost. The director was reprimanded, and the reprimand printed on the front page of the factory newspaper, in order, as one worker expressed it, that “the director may know he is not God.”

More common are the conflicts in which local management and trade union unite to compel action by the central offices of the trust. The shop committee demands certain safety appliances or new construction for the health of the workers. The manager replies that his budget does not allow it. He has no objection, however, to the shop committee making the strongest possible case through the trade union to the central organization which supplies the budget. Since the manager has no personal profit to make by cutting out improvements, but advances in reputation and position rather through his ability to maintain an enthusiastic organization of productive workers, his interest lies on the side of supplying their demands.

Workers, on the other hand, do not want a boss who is soft and sentimental. They want one who can efficiently organize their work. They know that their prosperity depends directly on the success of their factory. They themselves will ask to have workers transferred who make much spoilage, or even expelled if they steal or persistently disorganize production. They consider it desertion for a worker to shift jobs without reason or without training someone to take his place. If health or family matters require a change, or if a factory cannot use his highest skill or give him a chance to develop, he applies for and gets “release.” But to shift merely because another factory, better organized, can give him higher wages and better conditions is considered cowardly.

“Somebody has to make this factory a good one. Why shouldn’t he? His going makes it that much harder for the rest of us; we have to break in a green man. Why should he run off to another place that other folks organized because he finds things difficult here?” Here is an attitude similar to that of partners in a business.

Production, however, is only part of existence. Around this center of jointly owned production is built the whole unity of the worker’s life. Through his factory collective he enters into the duties and privileges of citizenship; it is the primary organization which elects deputies to the local Soviets. Through his shop committee he receives his social insurance, his opportunities for education, his excursions, sports and vacations, and takes part in a score of voluntary social activities from government commissions to parachute clubs.

Let us take an example of the internal organization of a factory collective, the Red Proletarian Plant in Moscow. The smallest unit in the plant is the production brigade which may have thirty to fifty workers. There are one hundred and fifty brigades in the plant, under one shop committee. These brigades not only compete in production records, rewarded by red banners and premiums, but also in social activity. Homiakov’s brigade, for instance, has twenty-nine workers, Every one of them does some social work. Some check the norms of production and standards of piece-work; some watch over the social insurance; three edit the wall newspaper which criticizes the shortcomings of the plant and of the workers. One middle-aged man was inactive socially and this was a great shame to the group, which tried to locate some tasks to interest him. They finally elected him president of the Red Aid Branch; within a month he signed up a big membership and had an active circle going.

The brigade decides the list of “udarniks,” champion workers who get special privileges; but its list will be further checked by the trade union if it is too large or if there are complaints. Does a worker need a free vacation at a sanatorium? The brigade discusses it and sends a recommendation to the shop committee, which has a definite quota of places, and can fight for more. Safety devices on machinery, raising the technical knowledge of each operator, financial help to workers who are in straits, are matters which start with the brigade and are sent with their recommendation to the trade union. The union itself as a whole is actively pushing the completion of the new model dining-room, the expansion of the day nursery and clinic facilities—all these on demands which originally start in the brigades. All this work is democratically initiated, organized, carried through and checked by the rank and file members.

Not the least important aspect of factory life is the cultural activity. Educational opportunities range from simple classes in reading and writing for newly arrived peasants, which characterized the earlier years of Soviet power, to the present university courses and institutions of scientific research. “You come to your factory to study, to attend a university,” said a worker to me. “You think, ‘My factory is going to make an engineer of me.’ After work you take a hot shower and go to the library or gliding club. Artists and singers come from the theaters to sing for us during the dinner hour. Famous authors come to discuss their books with us. If you want to write or act, you join the dramatic club or literary circle. Maybe some day you may go away to enter a theater or a newspaper, but even then you will sometimes come back to your factory.”

The intimate sense of possession which a Soviet worker feels in his factory was strikingly shown to me by my step-daughter Ducia, who worked in a large electric plant near Moscow. I accompanied her on her return to the factory after she had been ill at home with grippe. As we approached the plant she grew excited; a vividness came into her gestures which had been lacking during her two weeks at home. She insisted that I notice and admire the factory laboratory where she worked, the power plant, the restaurant, the big workers’ club building; she pointed out the pathway between the shops that led to the park and stadium. I suddenly realized that Ducia had been positively homesick for her factory.

Her reason for having chosen this particular factory to work in had little to do with wages. She chose it because it had a good reputation as an educational and social center, with a strong organization of Communist youth and a first class university. This offered her the well-rounded life which she demanded from her labor. Her working day was only six hours long, but she not infrequently spent twelve hours or more in and around the factory. She would go half an hour before her work began, drop into the Red Corner to get her newspaper or to discuss with the other girls the work of the political courses; she would come home late in the evening after her skiing club, German class or musical circle, or perhaps still later from a group party at the theater.

In Ducia’s set it is the accepted view, which she does not even stop to formulate, that every human being should engage in three kinds of serious activity: productive work whereby he justifies his right to a share in the commonly produced goods of the country; voluntary social work, which holds together the whole apparatus of society; and study which improves individual capacities. Besides this serious activity there are recreations. All this many-sided life Ducia finds in her factory.

The study takes different forms from year to year. In addition to courses in physics, German and political science which she takes regularly, various campaigns urge special study upon her. It may be her Young Communist League which makes a drive to have all members study the history of the Communist movement of youth. One year it was the drive for “technical minimum,” to raise the skill of all workers in the country. Ducia’s technical minimum was fixed for her by a committee of engineers who visited her laboratory, and discussed with each employee separately the special subjects needed for his work. She studied these subjects for several months, assisted by a voluntary teacher, one of the engineers of the plant who agreed to help several girls as his form of social work. “The whole laboratory is like a university,” said Ducia, “with the six hours’ work like practice on our subjects. When girls meet on the stairs, they are always asking whether you have finished such a formula.”

Like most of her associates, Ducia also does social work; in her case it is the organization of the twelve current-events’ courses for young people in the various shops of the factory She takes much pride in keeping these running well. Not all social work is as serious as Ducia’s. One of the girls organizes a group for parachute jumping, another gets up theater parties, a third helps to plan excursions. Social work is not something that an individual does “for others”; it is the extension of his own interests, the organization in a social manner of what he himself most likes to do. It is also of value to the community and a direct preparation for participation in government. In a sense it is already taking part in government, which is increasingly built up from these voluntary social activities. A man whose financial ability is shown as dues collector for his union, may rise to full or part-time work as assistant chief of the city taxes. A woman who shows interest and efficiency in organizing the factory day nursery may later become chief of the city’s motherhood and infancy bureau.

This is in fact the normal path to political office in the Soviet Union. I recall, for instance, Gribkova, who ten years ago was a young, illiterate farm servant. Wishing to better herself, she got a job as longshoreman on the Volga, thus entering the public services where, as she put it, “the road lay open to all life.” Working downstream she reached a textile mill and took employment as unskilled worker. Here she found the natural center for education and advancement. She learned to read and write, took technical courses and to handle a machine, took political courses and became an “active one” in her factory. From this point her specialization was possible in two directions: through technical training to higher posts in industry, or through social work and political training to posts in government. Gribkova chose the latter; she became interested in the voluntary tasks of factory inspection, and was later chosen by her fellow workers as part of their quota for a two-year training course which prepared professional factory inspectors. She is now a full-time official, head of inspection for a township. Hundreds of thousands have followed a similar path; this is the typical relation between factory life and the public activities of the country.

The life of a great factory is continuous. Just as its productive life goes on for three shifts, so its social life continues nearly twenty-four hours a day. If one chances to come at six-thirty in the morning to the great Stalin Auto Works in Moscow, he may see in Day Nursery No. 41 the beginning of the day’s life. Mothers bring their children to the nursery before reporting to work. Each child receives a swift medical examination as he enters; if this indicates illness, the mother is excused from work to care for her child or to take it to the hospital. In the case of nurslings, the mother is given an hour off at the end of every three hours’ work to nurse her child. These day nurseries are considered as essential a public service as public schools of other countries. But whereas education is compulsory, day nurseries are not. The picture spread abroad of a stern Soviet government forcibly taking children from their mothers would arouse incredulous laughter in any Soviet home. The Soviet mother regards a day nursery as a facility which relieves her of the child certain hours of the day, and as a center of scientific information, whose employees can assist her in its proper care. She demands the day nursery and fights for its quality. If any factory administration fails to supply adequate funds to enlarge and improve its day nursery, the working women will see that the director is reminded.

About the time that the mothers are saying good-by to their children in the nursery, the newspaper office inside the plant begins to bustle with activity. Six thousand copies of Moscow daily papers and 8,500 copies of the four-page daily of the plant, ''Overtake and Surpass'', must be delivered by eight or nine o’clock to subscribers in various shops. The plant newspaper is full of the daily life of the 35,000 workers. It organizes campaigns for production, for quality, for good housing, co-operative stores, clubs, schools, day nurseries; it contains complaints by workers about all these facilities; it is the organ through which these thousands of workers communicate with each other.

In the midst of the great shops of the auto works, a small green square contains both the central dining room and the central polyclinic. The latter is maintained by the Moscow Board of Health, but its connection with the factory collective is very intimate. The health record of every worker is kept on file in a smaller dispensary in the shop where a doctor, medical assistant and statistician are constantly on hand for first aid and general care of this particular group of workers. For all special services the worker goes to the central polyclinic where a medical personnel of 300 includes specialists in all diseases. One interesting feature of this polyclinic is its direct connection with the diet kitchen of the factory which immediately gives the workers without extra charge the particular diet which the doctor prescribes.

It is no sentimental glorification of manual labor which causes the grouping of Soviet institutions around the factory. It derives naturally from the unity of man as owner, creator and user, which under socialism replaces the capitalist division of men into bosses, hands, and buyers of goods. Even under capitalism men feel a deep human joy in creation and mastery, a mastery which may be widened and deepened by the machine. But capitalism poisons this joy at its source. A crane man in Seattle once told me that when he sat aloft picking up great loads with power and deftness, he felt “like one of those Greek giants or ancient gods.” Then he suddenly realized that he had no claim to that crane, but might face any morning, at the owner’s whim, the sign: “Closed down,” and he felt himself degraded from a god to a slave.

Under capitalism the association of men in production is made hateful by a clash of interests; they seek their real life elsewhere, building it from disjointed fragments. Under socialism this association is strengthened by a thousand ties of mutual interest and becomes the solid foundation on which the whole structure of political and social life is frankly and realistically built. Life becomes unified; from worker to manager, to scientist, to artist there is at no point a break. A worker studies and becomes an engineer; he is active in the factory committee on inventions, and becomes a scientist; he shows talent in the dramatic circle and becomes an actor; he devotes himself to social work and rises in the government. Any of these interests may become professional and take him out of the factory into a wider or more specialized life. But the factory remains the social home from which he launched into life, and to which he often returns, either actually or emotionally.

=== CHAPTER X: FARMING A CONTINENT ===

Among the many flaming words which poured from the hearts of two hundred combined-harvester operators meeting in December 1935 in Moscow with the heads of Party and government, amid jubilation over present success and promises to make the future even more victorious, there was one poignant phrase of contrast with the past.

“We sons and daughters of peasants—had there been no Soviet power, no Party of Lenin-Stalin, our lot would have been slavery to kulaks, or dawnless poverty in the mire of small peasant farming.”

These words illumine with a piercing ray the tremendous changes that have taken place in the Soviet rural districts in a span of years so brief that the past still remains vivid in the minds of men not yet thirty years old. “When I worked as a fourteen-year-old farmhand under the tsar,” said the combine operator Kapusta, “I never saw the leaders of the government, never saw even the boss for whom I worked. . . . I never expected from life such happiness, such joy.”

Five years ago Kapusta was an unskilled worker. But not Kapusta alone; so were they all. What else but unskilled workers were there on the backward individual farms of peasant Russia, where fifteen years ago the tractor was stoned as a “devil machine?” Even five years ago, who among Russian peasants had ever seen a combine-harvester? Today not only are millions of peasants acquainted by sight with the most modern farm machinery, but hundreds of thousands have mastered its operation and make a more continuous use of it than is possible on the private farms of America, which are too small to utilize profitably this modern machine. The combine is already a machine too good for capitalism. The American average harvesting record per combine is 578 acres, while the Soviet average secured in 1935 was 643. The champion operators who met in Moscow spurned this average. They had made records of a thousand, two thousand and even twenty-five hundred acres for the harvest season, and were swearing a solemn oath to train before next harvest many more operators like themselves.

The time of this great advance has been so short that they can all look back as if to yesterday and recall the days of ignorance and poverty, when they slaved for wealthier farmers or wasted nine-tenths of their labor trudging from strip to strip of their medieval peasant fields. Today the very word “peasant” is passing from their vocabulary. They speak of themselves as “kolhozniks,” members of the collective economy, joint owners and users of the large-scale farm on which they work. They know quite well that if there had been no collectivization of farming, their slavery and darkness would have continued. For if modern machines had come to the Russian soil under capitalist conditions, a minority of successful farmers would have gained the means of production and risen to a brief wealth on the impoverishment of millions—brief until they in turn were robbed by the big banks of the cities, as farmers are under capitalism.

The years 1930 to 1933 will go down in mankind’s story as the turning point in the farm history of the world. No other events of those years will be so long remembered—not the struggles of the League of Nations, nor the American New Deal; not even the world-wide economic crisis which was but one more, the worst, of many crises. Even the rise of the Chinese Soviets and the turning of Central Europe to fascism may receive less space in future history books than the collectivization of Soviet farming, whereby men won the dream of centuries, security on the soil.

Security on the soil! Security from drought, from floods, from mortgages, from the chances of nature and the exploitations of man! Even to attain fragments of such security, if not for themselves then for their children, men of all ages have struggled and died. American families left the comforts of settled regions to homestead in dugouts, for the security promised by land ownership. Then drought or the foreclosure of mortgages showed that security based on private property in land is illusion. Markets collapsed and land was taken away for bare taxes. Soviet farmers today are winning not only security against taxes and mortgages and markets but even against drought and floods. Farming is industrialized on the basis of modern machinery and division of labor. Crop losses through “acts of God” are minimized by better tillage, crop insurance, and assistance from the more fortunate areas. The control of the joint farm is democratically organized; the general meeting not only elects the management, but decides the plan of the farm and the division of work. Security on the land thus co-exists with free initiative.

This change has occurred among people whose farming was formerly notoriously backward. Ten years ago in the central grain-growing regions of Russia, there were three homemade wooden plows for every metal plow. One-third of the peasants had no horse at all but labored for others to pay for the plowing of their own soil. Lands were divided according to a medieval system; the twenty acres of a single family might be divided into a dozen strips scattered miles apart. Scientific crop rotation and seed selection were unknown. The primitive methods of tillage steadily exhausted the soil. A typical study of grain crops in the Kirsanov district showed a steady decline of average yield from thirteen bushels per acre in 1896-1905 to ten and a half bushels in the five years preceding the World War. On this same land since the collective farm was organized in 1930 the yield rose by better tillage to an average of seventeen bushels in 1930-33, and twenty bushels in 1934-35.

In four earth-shaking years, the Soviet Union changed from a country of tiny, badly tilled holdings, worked with wooden plow and hand sickle, to the largest scale farms in the world.<ref>In the United States farms of a thousand acres or more comprise only 7.5 per cent of the total tilled area; in the USSR in 1935, nine-tenths of the tilled area was made up of farms averaging thirteen hundred acres.</ref> The initiative was taken by the poorer peasants and farm hands, urged and organized by the Communists, and assisted by government credits and machines. When the Five-Year Plan swiftly increased the farm machinery available, the new collective farm proved able to attract ever wider and wider groups of farmers. The movement was bitterly fought by the small rural capitalists known as kulaks, who farmed with hired labor, lived by money-lending, or owned small mills, threshers and other means of production and used these facilities to exploit their neighbors.<ref>Writers unacquainted with Russian rural life often confuse kulaks with peasants generally, which leads them to describe the whole collectivization movement as an attack on the peasants. But for half a century students of Russian rural districts have spoken of kulaks. In 1895 Stepniak wrote that “hard unflinching cruelty” was their main characteristic; in 1904 Wolf von Schierhand wrote of the kulak as a “usurer and oppressor in a peasant’s blouse.” In 1918 Dr. E. J. Dillon, in ''The Eclipse of Russia'', said: “Of all the human monsters I have ever met in my travels, I cannot recall any so malignant and odious as the Russian kulak.”</ref>

The state’s donation to farming and the technical help supplied by city workers proved decisive. During the years from 1930 to 1935, the Soviet government issued more than a billion dollars of direct credits to the farms for livestock and implements and spent an additional three billion for farm machinery loaned through the tractor stations;<ref>For tractor stations 5.5 billion rubles, for direct loans 1. billion; these were “hard rubles” whose value may be estimated as fifty cents.</ref> it also gave food and seed loans of 157 million bushels of grain to farms in distress. At the call of the Communist Party tens of thousands of skilled workers, bookkeepers, machine repairmen, teachers and organizers, poured into the rural districts to help organize the farms. The most difficult period was from the 1932 to the 1933 harvest when kulak sabotage, added to difficulties of inefficient organization, caused a grain shortage that put the whole country on short rations. Success was won by the 1933 harvest which reached nearly 90 million tons of grain, the largest harvest ever known in the Russian land; it was succeeded by an equal or larger grain crop in 1934 and 1935. These harvest successes helped create a government budget surplus in 1934 of 437 million rubles, which was at once applied to cancel debts owed to the state by the farmers for early expenses of organizing and equipping the collectives. This wiped out 53 per cent of the still outstanding indebtedness, including all debts incurred prior to 1933.

The economic results of collectivization have been an increase in the sown area of 30 million acres, from 293 to 323 million; a grain crop which for three years has been 15 to 20 million tons higher than the average for the five years before the collectives were formed;<ref>The average before collectivization was 78 to 80 million tons; in 1933 and 1934, 90 million; in 1935 nearly 100 million tons. Cotton area 688,700 hectares in 1913; 802,000 in 1927, and 2,051,000 in 1933. Sugar-beet area 648,700 in 1913; 665,000 in 1927, and 1,212,000 in 1933.</ref> an area sown to sugar beets which is double the pre-war or any previous record; and an area sown to cotton which is two and a half times either the pre-war or the re-collectivization area. Livestock suffered catastrophically during the early years of collectivization but has been climbing rapidly back in the past three years.<ref>See Chap. 7.</ref> The indications for the future are even brighter, since the rapidly improving methods of tillage and increase of fertilizer are counted upon to increase harvest yield year by year.<ref>As an example 46 per cent of all spring seeding in 1935 was done on winter-fallowed land, as compared with 25 per cent in 1930, and three-fourths of the autumn sowing in 1935 was done on summer-fallowed land as compared with 30 per cent in 1930. Similar increases have occurred in the use of selected seed, of fertilizer, scientifically planned crop rotations, and so forth.</ref> At the end of 1935 Stalin in conference with the harvester-combine operators announced that “in the very near future, in three or four years,” 120 to 130 million tons of grain would be expected from the farms.

By 1935, the new forms of collective farming were sufficiently stabilized for the permanent fixing of boundaries. For at least two years practically no members had wished to leave the collective farms to return to individual farming; crop rotations and the location of fields were becoming settled. The Soviet Government thereupon issued a decree granting “perpetual use of land” to the farm collectives. All over the country today rapid surveying of boundaries goes on followed by village celebrations which record the deed for perpetual use. Speakers celebrate the change of recent years, recalling days when most of the land was owned by landlords and tenant peasants worked in the slavery of debt, when freehold peasants sold their land bit by bit to pay taxes. “From perpetual debt to perpetual ownership is the change we have made,” said a Tartar farmer.

In place of the old disused boundary posts with the tsarist eagle and the inscription “Each for his own,” there arise new boundary posts with the sickle and hammer and the letters, “USSR.” All the land is unitedly owned by the whole country of workers and farmers, say these symbols; its use is granted perpetually to specific organizations of working farmers. As Soviet citizen, the farmer is ultimate owner, as working farmer, he is permanent user. Both ownership and use are democratically organized and the relation of the smaller group to the whole country is fixed in part by permanent law and in part by annual contracts designed to encourage efficient production and to guarantee right to the fruits of toil. Security is gained by the permanent use of land which cannot be alienated by sale, lease, or mortgage. Freedom is secured by the democratic organization of both farm and country.

What is this group which thus becomes permanent user? The model constitution adopted by the Congress of “Farm Udarniks”<ref>A delegate congress from the farms that have made the best records; their recommendations have weight as expressing the best farm practice.</ref> and ratified by the Soviet Government February 17, 1935, states that it is a “voluntary union of working farmers” who unite “in order to build with joint means of production and jointly organized labor a collective, i.e., a social husbandry, to secure full victory over the kulak and over all exploiters, to secure full victory over need and darkness, over the backwardness of small individual husbandry, to create high productivity of labor and thus insure a better life for the members.

“All boundaries formerly dividing the fields of the members are abolished. . . .

“All draft animals, farm implements, seed reserves, fodder for the collective livestock, and buildings necessary to carry on the joint farming and the processing of the farm products are socialized. . . .

“Living quarters, family cattle and fowls and the buildings necessary for their use are not socialized but remain for the private use of the members’ family.”<ref>Up to two head of milch cattle, one brood sow and her brood, ten sheep and goats, unlimited rabbits and chickens and twenty bee-hives in the grain, cotton, and beet regions; larger numbers are allowed for individual use in the regions devoted to livestock.</ref>

All persons over sixteen who toil on the farm have equal vote. The general meeting elects the management, accepts or expels members, decides in conference with state experts the plan for farm production, crop rotation and new improvements and sets aside within certain limits private family garden plots ranging from half to one and a half acres for the individual use of members. It also contracts for the use of machinery from the Machine Tractor Station, a service center which supplies machines and expert knowledge over about a fifteen mile radius. These stations were originally organized and financed by the state but are becoming in part co-operatively owned through shares taken by the collective farms they serve. The farm must make certain deliveries of crops to the state at low prices fixed by a state commission; it must also pay the tractor station in kind. These two payments amount to about one-fourth of the average Crop; as tractor station service increases and with it the payments for machinery, the direct deliveries to the state somewhat diminish, moving towards a time when the state will receive its quota as direct payment for machinery.

When these deliveries are made, and the seed and fodder fund set aside, the rest of the harvest may be divided among the members in proportion to the work they have done. The “work-day” is the unit for payment, but work-days are of different value according to the quantity and quality of work done. A tractor driver’s day may count as two ordinary work-days, a night watchman’s as three-quarters of a day. When possible, work-days are related to a definite amount of labor done—an area plowed or harvested—and additions or subtractions are made for work above or below the norm. The general meeting also sets aside part of the income for expansion and common uses such as field kitchens and day nurseries. This at first led to abuses by over-zealous farm officials wishing to build up central funds, but these amounts are now limited. In the past two years, the increased harvests have led to an increasing surplus above the government deliveries and the food required by the members. This may be freely sold, either individually or collectively, and either in town markets or through the village co-operatives, which have been greatly strengthened during the past year.

Some fifty miles from the railway, in a northern flax and rye district, the Kalinin Collective Farm showed me its “Farm Plan,” a document of eighteen long pages, neatly stitched into a pamphlet. It was a printed form issued by the Commissariat of Agriculture, with details filled out by the local organization. Acreage, meadows, arable land, orchards, crop rotations, farm implements, draft animals, cows, pigs and chickens—everything you could wish to know about the Kalinin farm is here recorded. Not only are all people listed but allowance is made for babies yet unborn; an estimated 2 per cent annual increase of population must be provided with a growing standard of living. The farm plans to provide food for people and animals, produce the marketable crops recommended for the district, erect new buildings, reclaim new fields and create an increasingly prosperous life for its members. To this end work must be assigned to use as far as possible the entire working-time of the hundred able-bodied members.

The farmer-members have discussed this plan for months before they adopted it. The township surveyor helped them plot the fields; the township land office and the Soviet newspapers have informed them that the country’s standard of living is to double by 1937, and that they must do their share. This involves increasing wheat at the expense of rye, doubling the oat ration of their horses, increasing fats and meats. They know that the state expects from them a certain amount of flax, the chief marketable crop of their district. On the basis of all this knowledge they plan for the coming year, counting on a constantly increasing crop yield through more machines and fertilizer and better methods, and on a constantly increasing prosperity through the rational assignment of work to the members. The plan includes the labor organization, with the number of total work-days needed for sowing and harvest, and the amount of labor left over for building a new library, equipping a playground and stadium or installing electricity and radios. No one need be out of a job, for all labor can be utilized to increase in various ways the prosperity and culture of the village; all will be paid by shares in the joint harvest, according to the quantity and quality of work done.

When the entire plan is accepted by the general meeting, it is registered with the township office and becomes part of the economic plan of the whole country, which is derived from and in turn controls all lesser plans. Sowing and harvest are not the affair of the individual farmer only; they are the great annual rhythm on which the nation’s life depends. The whole country knows this and relates itself consciously to the plans of the farmers. Scientific conferences consider questions of insect pests and seed selection; heavy industry makes plans to manufacture more tractors. Government and Party congresses outline the changing demands which the growing life of the land makes on farming—increase of area or yield, or a change in the proportion of crops. Congresses of farmers meet by township, province and on national scale to discuss problems of tillage and farm organization. The Russian winter which in former days was a season of hibernation in snow-bound villages, is today a season of active farm-planning on a nationwide scale. Not even the farthest farm is isolated; visits of experts and newspaper campaigns keep it in touch with the life of the country.

When spring begins in the south, hundreds of press correspondents pour forth to cover the sowing. ''Izvestia'' alone sends a dozen staff correspondents and tells sixty local correspondents to concentrate on farm news. The ''Peasants’ Gazette'' keeps several small airplanes busy, each as the center of a group of a dozen persons covering the farms. The news-gathering organization which some of the Soviet newspapers put on the sowing or harvest is beyond the scope of the biggest dailies in the capitalist world. Every provincial paper adds its reporters. The story is the world’s biggest annual story with more reporters than covered the World War!

These reporters are not mere observers; their reporting is planned to help the harvest. One journalist of my acquaintance spent forty-four days in an airplane covering harvest in the North Caucasus; he visited one hundred farms and forty Tractor Stations, and slept in the fields without one night in a bed. His reporting was for a concrete purpose; he would drop in a field, apply his yardstick and count the grain ears lost on a square yard of harvested ground; he compared various farms, discovered which ones harvested best and how they did it. Within three days he was meeting with other journalists who made similar surveys; they discussed the chief harvest problems of the season and the best ways in which these were being met. These results were at once radioed to all the farms and published through the press of the country for the benefit of other farmers as the harvest traveled north. Every season hundreds of new ideas are thus culled from the experience of the farmers and broadcast by press and radio for the use of other farms.

“A characteristic trait of the collective farm system,” says Vaviloff, chief of the Plant Institute. of Leningrad, “is its ability to assimilate new technical methods and make new scientific experiments.”

The most striking example of the organization of great masses of farmers under the leadership of science was shown by the united fight of 1934 against the great drought which affected the whole southern half of Europe, including large areas in the Ukraine and Crimea. In many places no rain fell from April till harvest. In days of individual peasant farming, the peasants would have killed cattle for food and gone to the cities for work, putting back agriculture for several years. The collective farmers met swiftly in delegate congresses to declare “War Against Drought.” They took stock of all resources and made plans to suit each region. Near the Dnieper river they seeded the overflow meadows. On the slopes of the Caucasus the Kabardinians dug thousands of miles of irrigation ditches, declaring: “We have mountains; we don’t need rain.” Other farms organized continuous hauling of water by fire-department wagons, or planted swamps and forest glades. Children stormed the fields in organized detachments to pull up every moisture-sucking weed. Scientists busily determined for each district what second crops could best grow where winter wheat had failed. The press gave directions about this second planting; the government shot in by fast freight the necessary seed. The USSR secured a crop equal to the bumper harvest of 1933, and even most farms in the drought-stricken regions came through with food for man and beast, and with organization strengthened.

The Soviet farmer has come out of his old isolation; he stands on the highways of the world. Through his collective farm, like the industrial worker through the factory collective, he connects with the wider life of science and art. Seven thousand farms in the Ukraine have established during the past two years their “laboratory cottages,” where the farmers carry on scientific experiments based on their own fields. In a typical one I found exhibits of wheat grown under varying conditions, samples of new crops, collections of insect pests, instruments for weather recording. “Sixty farmers take part in our experiments,” they told me. “We exchange data with the Zaporozhe Experimental Station.” These not long since illiterate peasants who grubbed the soil blindly are farmer-scientists now, collecting nationally useful data for the conquest of harvest yields.

More than a hundred thousand drama circles for self-expression have sprung up on Sovict farms. Sport and recreation of all types grow also with tremendous speed. Farmers learn gliding, parachute jumping, even aviation. The small farm airplane which can land on a harvested field is a not infrequent visitor in farm campaigns. Extra-early sowing done by air into the mud of melting snow is a recognized means of combating drought in many regions.

By no means all Soviet farms are yet well organized, but efficiency steadily increases. By no means all of them are prosperous, but prosperity steadily grows. The change which is most apparent is in the faces of the farmers. They have lost the dull, unresponsive stare of the peasant; they are more vivid, alert. “Formerly even the peasant with the best income lived like a pig,” said a Soviet farmer to me. “His only use for his surplus was to get drunk. Today he has a reading-room, a hospital, a school, a laboratory; he reads the newspapers and knows about the world. His children go from the village to build factories, to discover minerals, to conquer the Arctic, to become ‘heroes of the Soviet Union.’”

More than two million letters 2 year from farmers pour into the offices of the ''Peasants’ Gazette'' in Moscow, a high-piled mountain covering many tables. I asked an editor how their contents revealed the changing life of the farm. “When our paper began its existence,” he said, “in the years before collectivization, we got chiefly individual complaints and requests for simple information on farm technique. ‘My taxes are too high!’ ‘How shall I care for my cow?’ Such were the letters.

“What do they write about now? The education of children, the position of women, the farm theater, the economic crisis in foreign lands. We got five hundred original poems on the death of Kirov and seventy on the disaster to the Maxim Gorky airplane. They comment on world affairs, on China and Italy. You can’t compare them with what they were ten years ago. Instead of ‘my horse and cow,’ their interest is wide as the world.”

On the northern slopes of the Caucasus mountains, a small district of once suppressed non-Russians, known as Kabardinia, prides itself on creating “the farms of tomorrow.” Its collective farmers have been known to vote the greater part of a harvest surplus to add to the government’s school fund and build for their own village “the best school in the valley.” They bring architects from Moscow to help them plan “farm-cities,” settlements which shall combine expert farming with the culture of the town, high schools, laboratories, libraries, sound-film theaters. A forty-mile highway runs through the Kabardinian valley. Last summer travelers passing, on foot or by cart, found seven rest-stations at five-mile intervals. Brightly painted, tile-roofed pavilions were furnished with wash-basins and beds with fresh linen; large plates of watermelon were placed on the table to quench the visitor’s thirst. An old man attendant refused all payment for the refreshment, saying: “This is the farm ‘Dawn of Socialism’; we planted two extra acres of melons for the traveler.”

=== CHAPTER XI: THE FREEING OF WOMEN ===

{{Quote|“Every kitchen maid must learn to rule the state.”|Lenin}}

Throughout the world a struggle goes on for women’s equality and freedom, with varying methods and varying success. The methods most commonly known are those of different women’s organizations which fight, decade after decade, for new specific increases in women’s “rights.” They count their victories by the number of women who one by one attain high office, by the number of rights slowly secured, the right to vote, to enter industry, to inherit property, to divorce, to some individual status after marriage.

Undoubted gains they have known, and also many disillusions. A tireless woman in New England recently told me that she had fought for thirty years to get “a decent inspection of women’s labor in our state” and that they would “probably lose it at the next election.” Nor does the elevation of the occasional woman to high position necessarily improve the lot of women generally. From Cleopatra down to America’s women officials, exceptional women have occasionally been permitted to rule; it is not recorded that the mass of women gained more consideration from them than from men rulers. Women the world over are still unequal to men, bound by a thousand discriminations. In the backward lands of the East hundreds of millions of women are still a subject sex. Not even in the most advanced capitalist countries are they quite equal with men; the long list of disabilities against which the National Women’s Party protests in America is evidence of that. Nowhere in capitalist lands have they equal access to all universities, equal pay for equal work in all industry, equal right to advance in all professions, equal rights in marriage and in the care and custody of children. Even those rights which they have attained are today under attack by fascism, which under the phrases of chivalry drives women back to the Middle Ages.

It is therefore the more amazing that Soviet women should have gained so swiftly an equality unknown elsewhere in the world. They receive equal pay for equal work and no jobs are closed to them. They have equal opportunity in education and in government. They have equal rights and duties in marriage; they are free to have or not to have children. They have full political, economic, legal and social equality, as human beings and citizens. This has been attained in eighteen years in a country where women were once suppressed not only in the European but also in the Asiatic manner. Tsarist law made Russian wives the property of their husbands “in duty bound to render him love, respect and in all things obedience to his wishes.” They had no right to separate passports; if they ran away, the police returned them to their husbands. This law was reinforced by brutal peasant customs; Gorky relates the sight of an unfaithful wife bound naked to a cart and flogged by her peasant husband into unconsciousness in the midst of a jeering, applauding crowd. In tsarist Central Asia millions of dark-skinned Mohammedan women lived in the seclusion of harems and behind black veils.

The freeing of women takes place in the Soviet Union swiftly because it is not a woman’s fight alone. It comes as part of the freeing of human beings by giving them joint ownership over the country’s means of production, irrespective of sex, color or race. . . . “The emancipation of women is not only the work of women Communists but of men Communists also, just as the fight for socialism is a mutual fight,” said Krupskaia, widow of Lenin. The Communists hold that the gains in women’s freedom made through centuries have been chiefly due to change in methods of production. The modern factory freed women from the patriarchal home, but imposed its own form of slavery; it used women to cut down wages, thus increasing the antagonism of the sexes. Economic slavery is the basis of all other inequalities, the key-log in the jam which must first be loosed that all others may rush free.

No freedom comes without battle. The October Revolution created the economic, legal and political basis of woman’s equality. The industrialization of the country was the consciously applied weapon for making woman equal with man. Yet in every village and factory women still had to fight their way over the traditional habits of centuries, which lingered in their own souls and in the souls of men. But these barriers of the past were no longer buttressed by ancient law and by the need of private industry for cheap woman’s labor.

The first women to establish their freedom were the workers in the factories who took part with their men in the Revolution. I recall Dunia, who was once an illiterate textile worker, living with husband and children in the same room with another family, nine people in all. Dunia was one of those who in the first year of Revolution seized the manager’s house for a day nursery so that her children might have space to grow. She learned to read and began to rise in political and social work, as did simultaneously millions of others. She said to me: “Once life went on without us workers, still more without us women. The father gave her to the husband; she was slave to her man and her factory. Now I am slave to no one. The road is open to all life.” This phrase of the “open road to life” I have heard hundreds of times from working women.

The emancipation of peasant women came more slowly. Scores of women presidents of villages have told me of their difficulties with the peasant men who jeered at “petticoat rule.” “They laughed at the first woman we elected to the village Soviet so much that she could do nothing; at the next election we put in six women and now it is we who laugh.” This was a typical statement.

The widespread collectivization of farming in 1930 gave women’s freedom in the rural districts its needed economic base. Farm women everywhere in the collective farms are awakening to the implications of their independent income. Drunken husbands are no longer masters in the home. “I got for myself a warm new coat, a dress and shoes; I got clothes for the children,” said a farm woman displaying her purchases in the local market. “But my man spent his money on drink and I’ll buy him nothing. I’ve told him if he gets drunk again I’ll throw him out of the house and not even feed him. The farm will back me up, unless he quits drinking and loafing. I can get along without him in the collective farm.” Some thirty million farm women from Leningrad to Vladivostok are awakening to the amazing fact that they can get along economically without their husbands.

Most cruel and bloody of all was the fight for women’s freedom in those lands of Central Asia where for centuries veiled women had been sold like chattels to the harems. Here local religion and custom supported men who murdered their wives for the crime of unveiling. When young folks in Tashkent schools spent vacations agitating for women’s freedom, one girl’s body was sent back in a cart. Accompanying the hacked pieces were the words: “This is your women’s freedom.” In another locality of Central Asia, nine murders of women occurred before any were discovered by central authority; every attempt of a woman to get justice was met by local vengeance.

But the women of Central Asia, led by the hope which the new government gave them and the new industries encouraged, fought their way into freedom. The blood of martyrs stirred them to greater struggle; fifty thousand women marched at the funeral of the Tashkent girl student. In Bokhara, citadel of Mohammedan orthodoxy, a spectacular unveiling of women in great meetings and processions took place on International Women’s Day, March 8, 1928. Amid indescribable enthusiasm they tore off veils, stamped on them, threw them on the streets and at the feet of speakers. When one woman was murdered by her husband for this unveiling, a public trial was held in a great mass meeting; the murderer was swiftly condemned and executed. From that time women walked unveiled in holiest Bokhara. Today a woman, Abidova, who at the age of twelve was sold in marriage to pay a fifteen-ruble debt of her father, is vice-president of the Uzbek Republic, and its permanent representative in Moscow.

These women of the East are quite aware of the relation of their new freedom to the socially owned means of production.

<blockquote>The roar of the factory is in me. It gives me rhythm, It gives me energy,</blockquote>
sing the Uzbek girls of the state silk mill which brought them out of the harems. Another song makes the application wider:

<blockquote>Flower of the East, the time has come To cast off the veil and the paranja. . . . For a thousand years you slept in darkness under the yoke. When you awake, when you arise from deep sleep, The workers of the world await you!</blockquote>
Steadily the share of Soviet women in industry and in public life has climbed upward. The percentage of women among industrial workers has risen by a steady 3 per cent a year during the Five-Year Plan, and is now (1935) 42 per cent of all persons gainfully employed. In technical higher schools 36 per cent of the students are women, in medical schools 75 per cent; in no institution of learning is there any discrimination against women. The percentage of women who took part in elections rose from 28 per cent of all eligible women in 1926 to 80.3 per cent in 1934. Women constituted 18.2 per cent of the membership of city soviets in 1926; this rose to 32.1 per cent in 1934. The change in the rural districts was greater; a 9.9 percentage of women in 1926 in village soviets rose to 26.4 per cent in 1934. Only 0.6 per cent of the villages had women presidents in 1926, though even this figure testified to the successful fight of thousands of women; by 1934 the figure was over 8 per cent. More than a million women today hold some form of public office in the soviets, including 400,000 elected members of soviets, 400,000 members of local government commissions, 112,000 “co-judges” in the courts, a function similar to but somewhat more specialized than that of our jurors, and 100,000 members of managing boards of co-operatives.

The city of Tver, now renamed Kalinin, gives an example of the varied kinds of work done by women. As a textile town, its population included a large proportion of women textile workers before the Revolution, a fact which explains its present status as a progressive city, boasting itself among the first Soviet cities in which women attained their full half of the seats in the city government. (Other cities are steadily following, as women through initiative and education take advantage of their legal right to equality.) Tver’s two most important women are Anna Kaligina, city secretary of the Communist Party, than which no higher post in the city exists, and Feodorova, who held till recently the prize of “best weaver” for the USSR. Thousands of others follow in the footsteps of these leaders.

Policeman Lily travels fearlessly through dark woods about the city to round up criminal gangs. On one occasion, when she was convoying a prisoner caught setting fire to turf fields, she was set upon in the woods by two of his accomplices and brought back to jail not one criminal but three. That same evening she played the part of fragile heroine in lilac gown in the local dramatic club, for Lily is an ardent amateur actress specializing in dainty feminine parts. Black-eyed Katya is a street-car conductor, with the best record among the twenty-seven woman conductors of Tver. She is also in the second year of the workers’ college, where she studies Turgenieff and geometry. Morosov, the motorman, writes poems about her.

All the young men admire Nina, eighteen-year-old glider pilot, who three days a week sails through the air on light wings. Her regular job is in the car Works, making valves for railway cars. But her pastime is the aviation club and she expects some day to be an aviator. Zoya is champion motor mechanic in a clothing factory and also chairman of its shop committee, handling trade union affairs for five hundred and sixty women; in her spare time she is an enthusiastic ski runner, who took second place in a contest held by the clothing workers of five provinces. Marusia is studying to be a doctor; Tonia is a former spinner who did such good work on the wall newspaper that she is now a full time writer. Dusia was the first woman chauffeur in the city; the boys used to run after her yelling, “girl driver.” One by one the girls of Tver have conquered every trade and profession. So have the women throughout the USSR.

Foreign visitors are occasionally shocked to find women taking part in heavy and dirty labor, field work, street-cleaning, even digging the subway. But Soviet women are still of the generation of peasants, who worked in the fields. They know that in all ages women have done heavy labor; it is the skilled work from which they have been barred. They know that equal share in labor means in the USSR equal share in ruling and in all opportunities of life. So young girls fought for the right to equal work on the subway, against engineers and miners who didn’t want to let the women underground. They worked knee-deep in water alongside experienced men, challenged them to records and often beat them. “The subway was the richest experience of my life,” said a prize-winning girl.

There are, however, regulations governing women’s labor, which prohibit work proved by experience more dangerous to women than to men. Women may not engage in trades involving danger of lead poisoning, may not lift weights above a certain amount. Special regulations, reinforced by medical observation, surround the whole period of pregnancy, and the last six to eight weeks women may not work.<ref>Six weeks before and six weeks after childbirth for office jobs; eight weeks before and eight weeks after for physical labor; longer periods may be ordered at any time by the doctor, and are given without loss of wages.</ref> Many labor processes are constantly under investigation to determine whether or not they are injurious to women; when experiment shows that they are, they are prohibited. This is no sex discrimination but part of the ordinary routine of the public health service, which steadily investigates the effect of occupations and bars from them those groups of the population which might be injured. Thus sand-blasting trades are prohibited to youth, which is more susceptible than older people are to tuberculosis from sand-blasting. No trade or profession is prohibited in advance as “unwomanly”; any trade may be barred after investigation to any group or individual on grounds of public health.

Not access to heavy labor but to skilled professions distinguishes Soviet women from those of other lands. Anna Kofanova won fame as operator of a combined-harvester, harvesting 1,500 acres in one season, the township record. Natalia Mikhailova is director of a machine tractor station entirely manned by women which services the 15,000 acres of thirty-two collective farms. Shchetinina, a ship captain, navigates the ocean. The envelopes of Soviet stratostats were designed by a woman chemist. Irene Rousinova was the first woman polar explorer, wintering several seasons in the north; she has been followed by hosts of others, including Nina Demme, who for two years has managed the scientific station on North Land. Galina Medovnik weeded tobacco in tsarist days as a girl of eight, fought in the Red Army during the civil war and was several times condemned to death; she escaped to become today a representative of housewives in the Moscow Soviet, where she superintends the building of apartment houses for workers.

Equality in work has given to women equality in every field of life: education, politics, marriage. The assumption behind the Soviet marriage code is the equal human dignity of both parties in deciding their intimate relations—a decision with which the state has no right to interfere. State action is limited to protection of children and prevention of force or fraud. Young couples appearing at the Marriage Registry Bureau are therefore required to give name, residence, occupation, past marital history, any children, and the future name which each intends to take. Questions to each are identical. The same name is often taken but not always. A person who infects another with disease is criminally liable. Property owned before marriage remains individual; that later acquired is jointly owned. Any married person who desires a divorce gets it, nor has the state the right to ask the reason. Both parties are responsible for the care and support of children up to eighteen and for giving the other partner any needed temporary economic aid to establish the independent relation. Recent much publicized changes in the divorce code were only a better bookkeeping, insuring that both persons actually knew of the divorce and were actually held for the support of children.

Recent comments of Soviet leaders that more time should be given to family life are similarly part of the general emphasis on richer human relations now possible through increasing leisure rather than any belated recognition of the family. Casual attitudes toward marriage have been discouraged from the beginning; no one was more emphatic on this than Lenin. But the pressure is social rather than legal. Trade unions, collective farms and Party organizations will penalize, even to the point of expulsion, persons who cause social havoc through their sexual instability. But they consider concrete situations, not traditions. The continuous and open living together of two people is respected, whether or not they are “registered”; it constitutes marriage in both the social and legal sense. Taking advantage of another person is penalized, through whatever forms accomplished. Peasants who took advantage of the marriage code to secure brief brides for harvest work soon stopped when they found this gave the woman equal right to the harvest. One notorious case some years ago was that of a man who seduced a girl by marriage and threw her out next morning; he was convicted of rape, which is legally defined as sex relations obtained through force or fraud, and was punished by imprisonment. The fact of the marriage registration was rather an aggravation than otherwise; he had used a Soviet office to assist fraud.

Problems occasionally arise in marriage from the fact that both partners have jobs. I met a girl tractor-driver in Siberia who married a tractor-driver on another field brigade. They spent their honeymoon some miles apart; once each week the young man walked ten or twelve miles on his free day to stay with his bride. The girl never met him half-way; she was boss of the winning brigade and took no chances. To my casual query why they did not get into the same field-gang, both exclaimed: “Desert my brigade in sowing-time!”

A woman’s relation to the state is always individual; it is never through her husband. Not even the wives of great men may live by reflected glory. When Stalin’s wife died, the black-bordered announcements in the press gave her own name and occupation in the artificial silk industry, and only after this mentioned that she was the “close friend and companion of Stalin.” Kalinin’s wife wins recognition by creating a state farm and center of culture in the Altai Mountains, where they call her by her own name, not by the name of the president.

The tradition that love is “woman’s whole existence” is challenged by a new assumption, a refusal to admit that any human being’s happiness can be completely dependent on one other human being. When Salima, a young woman of Turkestan, accepted a scholarship to study in Tashkent, her husband ordered her to return, and, on her refusal, divorced her, boasting by letter that he had taken another wife “obedient and illiterate.” Salima showed her quality by replying: “I received your letter telling me that you have another wife. I will have my revenge. When I finish my studies I will come back to the village and teach your second wife to read and write.” The older generation may be horrified by the flippant Salima, but the new Soviet generation will applaud her as free and self-reliant citizen.

The freedom of every woman to dispose of her own body, to marry or not to marry, to have children or not to have them, irrespective of marriage, is taken for granted by Soviet law, and is restrained only by social opinion, not by legal penalry. Dr. Milashkevich, head of the Gynecological section of the great polyclinic, where a medical personnel of three hundred serves the thirty-five thousand workers of Stalin Auto Works, told me that all women working in the plant come to her as part of their routine health examination. “If they are married I ask them: ‘Do you want children?’ Then I give them medical advice according to their intentions. If they do not want children, the poly-clinic supplies the means of prevention.” She further informed me that every attempt was made to discourage abortion, by urging grounds of health, and by sending nurses and even neighbors to reason with the wife and husband, but never by absolute refusal. “To compel a woman either to have or not to have children we would consider an infringement of human rights,” said Dr. Milashkevich. “If she decides to have them, the state gives every assistance, through free medical and hospital care, special funds for milk and children’s clothing and the use of day nurseries to care for children during her working hours.” That the women are deciding to have children is clear from the average increase of population of three million annually—in the past two years of growing prosperity three and a half million<ref>Figures from Soviet Statistical Dept. 1936.</ref>—an increase unparalleled in any other land.

Every year the Soviet Union produces its crop of national heroes, who spring into fame for some notable achievement and whose methods are widely copied. In 1935 the names most heard were those of Stakhanov, a miner, and Marie Demchenko, a farm woman. A former farm servant of the sugar beet districts, Marie had risen through collectivization of farming, and the knowledge she gained in the laboratory cottage, to challenge in spring of 1935 all the beet growers of the land. Let us flood the land with sugar. My brigade will get twenty tons of beets per acre.” Hundreds of letters accepted; hundreds of visitors came to inspect the fields which Marie’s determined brigade of women nine times hoed, and eight times cleared of moths by setting fires at night. They conquered a rainless August by the local fire-fighting apparatus, pouring twenty thousand buckets of water on their fields. They won twenty-one tons per acre and came to the November celebrations in Moscow to receive the Order of Lenin amid the plaudits of the entire country.

Who were these women singled out for honor? They were women who got down in the dirt to dig sugar beets, who soiled their hands with slimy insects that a beet crop might be improved. What made their achievement honored? This—that their beets were no commodity for private profit, but sugar for the workers of a nation. They were leaders in the public task of farming a continent. This made of the hitherto unregarded toil of farm women a heroic collective epic, worthy to be classed with the work of explorers who raid the Arctic or scientists who storm the stratosphere.

=== CHAPTER XII: THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF SCIENCE ===

“Russian is now recognized in American universities as a scientific language,” said a young Californian who was visiting with me the Leningrad Institute for Plant Protection. “Four years ago the universities wouldn’t take it as one of the two languages required for a scientific degree. But now my professors tell me that for my specialty of farm pests, it is the most important language of all. More original work is appearing in it than in any other language. German and French research is older and was translated some years ago. But our universities haven’t funds today to translate all this new research appearing in Russian.”

This American youth hardly connected in his mind the decline in German and French research and the lack of American university funds for translation with the world-wide economic crisis. He knew little of the collectivization of Soviet farming and the stimulus it had given to his branch of science. But across two seas and two continents the results of these causes had reached the aloof halls of a university in California, interpreted thus “Russian—a scientific language—original research not yet found in translation.”

Visiting scientists at the Fifteenth International Physiology Congress which met in Leningrad in August 1935, expressed an appreciation not untinged with amazement at the high respect paid science by the Soviet government and the rapid strides made by Soviet science in recent years. “No government ever ‘took up’ science as has this government. . . .” “Even the Americans are startled by the amount of resources which can be placed at the disposal of science by a government planning on a national scale. . . .” Such were some of the comments which found their way into the press of New York. Professor Walter B. Cannon, of the Harvard Medical School, told the Congress how science suffers today in all the capitalist countries, and added: “In the Soviet Union, where the social importance of science is appreciated, the funds made available for the development and prosecution of science are greater than in any country in the world.” The report of the Congress later given in ''Science'', official organ of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, noted “the respect with which scientists are treated,” “the important position which science, pure as well as applied, occupies in the national economy,” and the “ardor of the army of young scientific workers.”

Soviet citizens take it for granted—Marxists in fact have taken it for granted ever since the days of Marx—that science must naturally reach a much freer and fuller development under socialism than is possible under capitalism. Capitalism, whose early expansion a century or more ago encouraged and boasted its science, has already reached the stage where science is an embarrassment, since the possibilities of human development which it reveals are unrealizable under private ownership. Science itself under capitalism suffers from a lack of aim. In England the head of the oldest agricultural experiment station in the world told a visiting Russian scientist that he hardly knew what to investigate since the declining condition of farming in England and the antagonisms in Egypt and India prevented the application of everything he discovered. In America the hostility between science and capitalism is only in its first stages, and is marked by increasing suppression of new knowledge which would interfere with profit. In Germany where a collapsing capitalism has taken the form of fascism, there is already a deep distrust of human reason and a propaganda against the very existence of science.

In the Soviet Union science is rapidly expanding. Communism demands the thorough-going application of science to remake all human life; it assumes that the intellect of man can progressively understand and subdue nature to his collective will. “A new historical epoch will begin,” said Engels, “when men and their work will improve to such an extent that all previous achievements will seem as but a feeble shadow.” “We are confident that in our epoch we are entering an era of unparalleled progress in science,” is a typical editorial comment today in 2 Moscow newspaper. President Karpinsky, of the All-Union Academy of Science, spoke of the USSR as “the country where science is given a place of honor,” when he greeted the visiting physiologists “on behalf of hundreds of research institutes.” Even the famous physiologist, L. P. Pavlov, who was always antagonistic to Bolshevik ideas, said recently that he wanted to live to be a hundred because “the Soviet government has given millions for my scientific work and my laboratories flourish as never before.”

Those doubters who fear that state subsidies for science interfere more with scientific freedom than do the subsidies of individual millionaires, and who promote abroad the idea that the Soviets “persecute scientists,” ignore the fact that a high esteem for science is quite consistent with a deep suspicion of individual scientists. Conflicts did persist between the Soviet government and certain scientists who used their knowledge to fight the Revolution. That sabotage by scientists and engineers occurred on a very wide scale during the early years of the first Five-Year Plan has been acknowledged by thousands of former saboteurs. Only when the victory of the Five-Year Plan was assured beyond question did these waverers finally come over to find that socialism gives far greater opportunities for their science than capitalism ever did or could.<ref>See details in Chap. 3, page 52-3.</ref> The Academy of Science has been greatly expanded from the three departments, mathematics, natural sciences, and historical philology, which it comprised before the Revolution. It is the center for planning and co-ordinating the scientific activity of the entire country through its twenty-one large departments and its frequent inter-departmental sessions. It works hand in hand with the State Planning Commission which indicates to it the requests for widespread scientific research in particular fields needed for the development of the country. It is also the court of appeal for all scientists who disagree with government departments or research institutes on questions of their work, or who want to do research for which no appropriation yet exists. In all conflicts on the objectives of research the Academy decides, being liberally financed directly under the All-Union government. The city of Moscow has recently assigned to the Academy 1,250 acres on the Moscow River, where the first of forty-two projected buildings are now being built.

More than one thousand scientific research institutes in the USSR, employing 41,000 scientific workers, were claimed at the Physiology Congress by Akulov, Secretary of the Central Executive Committee of the government. Many of these institutes are of monumental size and scope. The All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine, for instance, is the organizing center of all medical research in the USSR. Scientists, doctors and engineers worked for two years on the construction plan of its new home where 5,500 employees are to study “the biology and pathology of the human being from every aspect.” Hospitals of the institute make continuous study of typical cases of various diseases and healthy people are also studied as “controls.”

One of the largest of the scientific institutions is the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences, which correlates the work of nearly sixty institutes for research in soil chemistry, plant protection, livestock breeding, microbiology, agrometeorology and similar branches of science. The work of the agricultural institutes is based upon material obtained in 200 experiment stations and more than 1,500 smaller research stations in state and collective farms. Each of the subordinate institutes is an important organization in itself; the Institute for Plant Protection, for instance, has a central staff of 250 scientific workers and dozens of branches all over the country.

The expansion of Soviet science arises not only from the need of socialism for scientific planning, but from the wide interest and co-operation on the part of the people. The Academy of Science is no secluded institution of the aristocracy; it is the unity of the scientific brains of the country with the masses. Science in the Soviet Union is dear to all the people, for every citizen knows that its discoveries will become his own possession and not the property of a small privileged group. “We scientists used to feel ourselves rather unimportant, since we had already discovered so much more than people were able to apply, but now that the collective farms demand our science, we see our work for several thousand years,” said Vaviloff, Vice-Chairman of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences and world-famous discoverer and creator of new plants.

The wide interest of the Soviet population in science expresses itself not only in honor to scientists but in active participation in scientific work by great numbers of people. Every scientific institution receives much popular co-operation, from workers, farmers, even from children. When the All-Union geological survey sent some two thousand annual expeditions with seventy to eighty thousand participants to explore and map the resources of the Soviet Union during the first Five-Year Plan, these official expeditions became the correlating center of a still broader popular movement. Thousands of grammar school children became “discoverers of our country,” going with their teachers to study geological outcroppings. Tens of thousands of hikers learned from geologists what to look for on cliffs and mountain slopes and occasionally made discoveries of significance. One of the stimulating causes of the first great Pamir expedition came from a Khirghiz nomad who carried a gold nugget several days journey to Samarkand and fought his way through many bureaucratic offices because he “thought the government ought to know about the gold in the Pamirs.”

Every large factory has its bureau of workers’ inventions through which inventive genius of workers finds connection with the wider world. Workers and farmers who make practical discoveries are often asked to report them in their own non-technical words at scientific congresses. Scientists in turn give frequent lectures in factories on subjects applicable to the work of the plant. Analysis of steel by the spectrum method will be reported to a machine-building plant, and discussions on organic chemistry will be given by scientists at a rubber works to a large attendance of interested workers.

So deep and thorough is the interest taken by workers in science that the cleavage between workingmen and scientists already lessens, presaging that time predicted by Marx when the distinction between mental and manual labor will disappear. At a banquet held by the Academy of Science in the Neskuchny Palace in Moscow, a number of leading factory workers were present as guests. A foreign newspaperman, wishing to interview Professor Bach, a well-known member of the Academy, approached a man who was pointed out to him from 2 distance. They chatted half an hour about the revolution in culture, the creation of a new life, and the new type of human being now appearing under socialism. In parting, the correspondent asked for the Academician’s autograph. The man to whom he was speaking started in surprise. “My name Is Ivanov; Bach is the person sitting next to me,” he said, pointing to a man who had been attentively listening. “I myself am a locksmith from the ball-bearing plant.”

One of the most striking examples of the democratization of science is the “laboratory cottage,” which has developed in the last two years on the collective farms. Seven thousand of these centers of experiment are reported in the Ukraine alone. The head of the laboratory is sometimes a teacher of the village school, but more often a self-educated farmer who has the scientific instinct and whose enthusiasm has organized other farmers to make experiments in their fields and correspond with scientific stations.

“This scientific tendency in human beings takes such varied forms,” said an editor, “that one cannot even classify them. In the past these scientific instincts often died stillborn because of poverty. Today we seek them out through many agencies; one of these is our ''Peasants’ Gazette''. Today a new type of experimenter is developing who does not experiment secretly but organizes the masses around him to discover and carry out new ideas. There is often some waste of time and destruction of machinery in these experiments. But this does not worry us. What is important and valuable is that the human being is striving to change, to improve. Waste of time and destruction of materials matters nothing, if thereby we add even one drop of knowledge which enables man to increase his understanding and control of nature.”

One such natural scientist was Akulov, a peasant of the Genichesk district. As a World War prisoner in Austria, he saw one head of grain much bigger than the surrounding heads. He kept it and eventually brought it home to his own garden to breed new giant heads. When the collective farm was formed in his village in 1930, Akulov had four bushels of this special grain to give them. The big heads were planted and cherished until there were several score acres of them. The samples were then sent to the All-Union Institute of Plants and found to be a new variety existing nowhere else in the world.

Seventy-five-year-old illiterate Barashev was another such natural scientist. For nearly twenty years he worked to produce a frost-resistant flax; the collective fields of his farm are harvesting it this year. Pechtilief, in the Leningrad district, stirred up such an interest among his neighbors in discovering why two fields on the same farm gave such different yields, that the whole village became one vast experimental farm, planting several thousand acres in various ways and comparing the results of different types of tillage. Pechtilief appeared before the Congress of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences to demand that scientists find a way to produce a new variety of wheat which should combine the high milling quality of one variety with the non-shattering characteristics of a second. Kolosev, another collective farmer, has challenged the scientists to work out types of seeds and tillage which will insure different ripening times for the various crops and thus get an even load of work through a maximum period for the harvesting machine.

The assimilation of new scientific ideas proceeds far faster under the new collective farm system than under the old individual farming. Some entire districts have already become agricultural experiment stations. In Zhadryansk district, near Cheliabinsk, several thousand experiments were carried on in a single summer with oats, wheat, green peas, sunflower seeds and other crops. Special conferences were held attended by two hundred or more delegates from the various laboratory cottages. All these popular experiments are in constant touch with the scientific organizations of the Commissariat of Agriculture, and are protected against undue loss by a government policy of crop insurance.

Several achievements of Soviet agricultural science are already of world significance. The method of “vernalization,” which changes winter wheat to spring wheat, late cotton to early cotton and biennial to annual plants, has made it possible to grow Algerian wheat beyond the Polar circle, at 67.4 degrees of latitude in Khibiny. The northernmost botanical gardens in the world are on the Kola Peninsula, where experiments with six hundred plants found twenty-five that could be adapted to the Arctic. The Soviet Union has developed its own rubber industry from the newly discovered “rubber” plants, tau-sagiz and kok-sagiz, found in the mountains of Turkestan and cultivated later as far north as the Ukraine. The brilliant work of Michurin in developing frost-resistant varieties of fruits made him famous not only among scientists of the world but among millions of Soviet farmers, tens of thousands of whom journey annually to his plant-breeding station to report on their use of his varieties.

New machines have been developed, a machine for retching flax which is revolutionizing the flax industry, a “northern” combined-harvester suitable for grain of high moisture content. Even the ordinary combine first imported from America has undergone sixty improvements and is said by experts to be the best in the world. Research into soil microbiology has made, according to Vaviloff, “the role of micro-organisms in the soil a calculable factor.” The artificial fertilization of livestock, in which the spermatozoa are sent by mail or airplane from experimental stations to the laboratory cottages, is today applied to half the country’s livestock, insuring rapid improvement of stock from pure-bred males. Under the constant co-operation of collective farmers with scientific centers, the agricultural map of the country is rapidly changing. Sugar beets expand towards the Urals, cotton appears in South Ukraine, irrigation and tree-planting begins to reclaim the wastes beyond the Volga, and wheat marches steadily towards the Arctic. Thousands of acres are today successfully farmed in the Murmansk district on the Arctic Ocean, in place of a scant twelve acres a few years ago.

The most spectacular example of the planned advance of man under the leadership of science is the conquest of the Polar regions, which has stirred the imagination and enthusiasm of the whole Soviet land. Scientists of the All-Union Arctic Institute first seriously broached the idea of a Great Northern Sea Route in 1930, though other scientists declared that traffic along the northern coast of Europe and Asia was “impracticable during the present glacial epoch.” The Soviet government backed its bolder scientists, established the Central Administration of the Northern Sea Route and gave it ships and funds. Step by step the rapid advance was made, first by dozens of expeditions which mapped coasts and charted waters, then by thirty-nine Polar scientific stations, equipped with radio and airplane service, then by trading fleets led by ice-breakers first from the west, then from the east, and then along the whole Polar coast from Atlantic to Pacific.

The whole world remembers the epic of the Chelyushkin, its tragic wreck northwest of Bering Straits, the skillful landing on ice which was crashing around them, the two months of heroic organization of “normal life” in their floating home on the ice-floe, where Professor Schmidt, dressed in deer-skin coat and fur cap, delivered lectures on dialectic materialism or the Freudian theory, and found time to edit the galleys of the ''Unabridged Soviet Encyclopedia'' which he had brought from Moscow, and to write a preface to a book on higher mathematics. The history of Polar expeditions has known many examples of daring, but never such courageously casual organization of normal routine under abnormal conditions as this “Soviet Republic on the Ice” which got out its “wall newspaper” with cartoons and self-criticism, and comments on the Communist Party Congress then taking place in Moscow, received by the Chelyushkinites by radio.

Today special ships are built in Soviet shipyards, embodying the experience of the Chelyushkin for the conquest of the northern seas. Steadily the designs of airplanes and clothing have been adapted to Arctic weather and the plane is now the “eyes of the north.” Four ordinary freighters in the summer of 1935 made the whole trip around the north of Europe and Asia, and scores will follow in 1936. The network of heroic scientists, wintering in thirty-nine stations, begins to be supplemented by miners, timber-workers, even farmers. Extensive prospecting has been done for minerals, especially coal and oil to serve the northern trade route. A new type of man is following the explorers and scientists—engineers, technicians, builders of the Arctic. And science pushes farther north in the expedition of the Sadko, to discover, at latitude 82° 40’—the farthest north ever reached in free sailing—the re-emergence of a warm section of the Gulf Stream which may make the northern sea route practicable for more months of the year. Of all the world’s eight ships which have reached during the past half century the latitudes around 80°, two were American, two Scandinavian and four were Soviet ships of the past few years.

It is the support of the whole Soviet country which strengthens these men of the north in their conquests. The entire Soviet population regards these Arctic subduers as their representatives and champions. It shares their lives by radio hook-ups Moscow talks through the six months’ night with Dixon Island, which issues the Arctic Radio News. All Russia thrilled when a young ex-criminal, sent to the far north to “make himself over,” was reassured across three thousand frozen miles by the voice of his factory sweetheart urging him to make good. When a winter childbirth in a distant Arctic station developed complications, the neighbors got the Dixon Island surgeon on the radio and for more than three hours he directed over the air every detail while the whole of a much-worried Arctic listened in. When the child and mother were safe, congratulations poured in from thousands of miles of icebound waterfront.

Even under capitalism science breaks the boundaries of nations, steadily to lift the power of man. Under socialism it becomes the consciously applied and swiftly expanding strength of the whole population, conquering for man his world.

=== CHAPTER XIII: THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF ART ===

{{Quote|“Heroic people call into being heroic artists.”|Editorial in Soviet ''Literary Critic''}}

If science is the instrument of man’s dominance over nature, art is the means of his self-expression. Tens of millions of people from earth’s most backward races have awakened in the Soviet Union from long slumber. They are seeking self expression. They themselves write, sing and paint; they push up from their ranks novelists, poets and dramatists. They love these poets and dramatists; they criticize them and make serious demands from them. Soviet art is not private property, it is the wealth of the nation, and the nation is jealous and proud of its wealth.

When the first All-Union Congress of Soviet writers met in Moscow in August, 1934, thousands of letters poured in from all corners of the union, congratulating, greeting, giving practical suggestions and advice. Workers, collective farmers, students, Young Pioneers, scientists, engineers and artists thus expressed their interest in the Congress. In Moscow alone, more than two hundred factory conferences were held between readers and authors. Delegations representing millions of readers came to speak at the Congress. Each day after the meetings, authors found throngs of workers who had been unable to enter the crowded hall waiting outside to hail their favorite writers with applause. Throughout the country, millions of people concentrated their attention on questions of esthetics, the function of poetry, the form of literature best suiting the present age, subjects reported in detail in the press. Literary work in the land of the Soviets is becoming the affair of all the toilers.

There are no bounds to the desire for every variety of culture. Soviet Russia in its first fifteen years published five billion books, as contrasted with two billion in the last thirty years of tsardom. The number keeps growing. At the end of the first Five-Year Plan, book production in the USSR was greater than that of England, Germany and France together. Especially amazing is the growth of literature among the national minorities whose self-expression was suppressed under tsardom. Every year since 1929 has seen the publication of more books in the Ukrainian language than were published in the whole 118 years before the Revolution. One publishing house alone, the Moscow International Book House, publishes books in eighty-five languages, some of which had formerly no alphabet—novels, textbooks, folk tales, technical works, translations of classics, short stories and dictionaries.

The Soviet world feels itself the heir of the ages. Anniversaries of poets, scientists and artists of all countries are widely celebrated. The ancient Persian poet Firdousi, the English Shakespeare, the German Goethe, the famous French writers, are honored by mass meetings and columns in the press. The best works of Flaubert, Mérimée, Maupassant, Victor Hugo, Mark Twain and Jack London appear by the hundreds of thousands of copies and disappear almost as quickly from the shelves of bookstores which never expect to retain volumes more than a few weeks. Russian classics are even more popular. Lermontov, Nekrassov, Korolenko, Gogol, Turgenev, Chekhov appear in editions of seventy to a hundred thousand. The favorite poet Pushkin has been issued for several years in repeated editions of two hundred thousand copies, and his collected works in six volumes now face a subscription demand of three hundred thousand copies, exclusive of sales to the shops. Tolstoy is the most popular of all; eleven and a half million copies of his works have been sold since the Revolution.

The Soviet reader demands not only the art of the past but the art of today. The most popular novels are those like Sholokhov’s ''Quiet Don'' and ''Soil Upturned'', which paint on a wide canvas the personalities, difficulties, struggles and victories of the present. “No artist of the past had such material at his disposal as is given by the earth-shaking events occurring in the USSR in the last eighteen years,” said the Soviet writer Panferov speaking at a Paris congress. “The working class built a dam on the surging Dnieper and made its unruly waters serve man. It transformed the misty Urals into an industrial center, mastered the wild and distant Kuzbas. . . . In remaking the country the working class at the same time remade itself. . . . The outcast dweller of the mountains, the illiterate, solitary Yakut, the northern Nentsi, the wild Bashkir, the Mordvin with his trachoma, the persecuted Kalmyk—tens of millions of peoples in scores of scattered nationalities went into the furnace of civil war and are energetically rebuilding the country, conquering the strongholds of culture, bringing new life to the whole world. . . . Socialist realism was the inevitable phenomenon of the proletarian era—active, cheerful, bold and daring, like the era of the proletarian revolution itself.”

These tens of millions of people are not only the subjects for art, they are also the artists, readers and audience. They show a wide interest in all forms of artistic expression. Theaters are constantly crowded; art museums are packed with visitors; popular exhibitions sometimes have lines before the museum entrances waiting until there is room to go in. Nor are the factory workers and collective farmers at all backward in expressing their opinion on the products of brush and pen. Are they not all also writers, artists, musicians and actors, if and when the mood seizes them? They are not only consumers of art, millions of them are amateur producers of it.

More than one hundred thousand “circles for self-expression” have grown up in the past two years in the USSR. The drama circles alone have 1,200,000 members, while the total number in the singing, music, dancing and graphic art circles exceeds five million. Writers, cartoonists and photographers for the local press or wall newspapers are probably as many more. A chief characteristic of the new type of person now emerging in the Soviet Union is his dynamic energy in self-expression, usually in some collective form.

The first and most direct self-expression of large numbers takes the form of participation in the press. They write their opinions about corrupt officials or inefficient farm management for the hand-lettered sheet posted on a factory wall or a village tree-trunk; more important communications they send, often with several signatures, to the great metropolitan ''Pravda'' or ''Izvestia'' with their million and a half subscribers. Two million letters a year pour into the office of the ''Peasents’ Gazette'' in Moscow, reflecting the life and problems of the farm; only part of them can be published but all of them are answered, filed, and carefully studied as material for novels, for history, and for the lawmaking of the state.

In a northern township, fifty miles from the railroad, where before the Revolution only six people subscribed to any newspaper at all, I visited a congress of some two hundred rural press correspondents preparing for a sowing campaign. These were only part of the energetic writers of this township. Its collective farms had 470 field brigades, every one of which during the sowing campaign posted up a wall newspaper. One picturesque seventeen-year-old boy in a vivid shirt of old rose sateen under a black jacket proudly reported the overthrow of the corrupt management of his collective farm by his articles and editorials. “We got out nine numbers,” he explained to the meeting, “then we stopped for want of paper. But we had already aroused the farmers, and the general meeting removed the president and two members of the management.”

Nine single sheets of crude newsprint stuck in successive weeks on a tree, protected from the rain by an overhanging board, had deposed the management of a farm, shamed idlers, carried the sowing through to success, finished the hoeing and brought the brigade on record time to the haying season. The number of these collective farm wall-newspapers throughout the country is estimated by the ''Peasants’ Gazette'' as half a million, with at least ten village correspondents for each. There are more than three thousand factory newspapers; these range from weeklies of a few hundred copies to dailies with a circulation of twenty thousand and more in the larger plants. These newspapers are both an organizing center for factory and farm life and a training school for young writers. With such a writing and reading public, it is not surprising that there are more than eleven thousand printed newspapers in the Soviet Union with a circulation of more than thirty-six million copies—thirteen times as great as before the Revolution.

An ever-growing stream of writers enters literature through the gateway of the factory and farm newspapers, which make modest but insistent demands on the humblest worker able to use a pen. Literary groups arise in centers like the Urals and the Donetz basin, or around some tractor station which serves the nearby villages. Many of the Donbas group of writers embarked on their literary careers when through with their day’s work of furnishing coal. Their magazine ''Literary Donbas'' has produced a noteworthy crop of stories and poems widely popular among miners.

The literary society of collective farmers at the machine tractor station in Voronovo village had as members two stablemen, a blacksmith, a reaper, a tractor-driver, a bookkeeper, a warehouseman, four day-nursery attendants, three teachers, two presidents of collective farms, one village president, three editors of field newspapers and sixteen farm women. In one year the members published through their own printshop two books of verses, the play ''Miscalculated'', and 2 book of character sketches, ''Bolsheviks of the Politodels''. They announced for the following year a play, ''According to Merit'', a novel ''Quiet Subversion'', ''The Diary of a Tractor Driver'', and ''The History of the Machine Tractor Station''.

It is difficult to conceive of the wide extent of amateur art activities of all kinds. Thousands of short-line popular stanzas known as ''chastyshki'' appear in the most distant parts of the Soviet Union celebrating the freedom of woman, the heroism of tractor-drivers, the growing prosperity of collective life. They vary in merit from mere doggerel giving rhymed technical guidance for reapers and cattle herders to verse of real beauty. The Donetz coal region alone reports more than eight hundred brass bands, three hundred orchestras, two hundred and fifty choruses, thousands of dramatic circles and even forty-two ballet schools. Some of the Soviet dancers who attracted attention at a recent London dance festival came from these “self-expression groups.” Amateur circles in drawing and painting also exist all over the country, and give local exhibitions which often unearth talent.

A constant interchange of ideas and personnel goes on between professional and non-professional groups. The Soviet press takes active part in establishing these connections. The newspaper ''Culture and Sport'' publishes reproductions of the best art from famous galleries. It encourages would-be artists to correspond and send in their work to be judged by well-known artists; those who show talent are sent to art schools. The magazine ''Collective Farm Theater'' every month issues eight or ten special supplements containing plans of caravan theaters, rural pageants and festivals, choral programs, texts of one-act plays. It connects the self-expression groups with the nearest professional theater which can help them in their technique. There are today one hundred rural theaters of professional standing.

One among many movements which swept the farms in the summer of 1935 was a campaign to discover musical talent among children. Hundreds of local musical festivals were held to many of which professors from the Moscow Conservatory came by airplane to act as judges. As a result, 715 of the most talented children are being sent to special musical schools; the twenty-five best ones were brought to a specially created branch in the Moscow Conservatory of Music.

Not only in music but in poetry, drama and dancing, nation-wide “Olympiads were held in the summer of 1935. In Leningrad, for instance, juries of artists visited the factories to select eleven hundred contestants for the district Olympiad from fifteen thousand amateur musicians, singers, dancers, acrobats, orators, accordion players and even jugglers. On a collective farm in Smolensk, an illiterate peasant woman of sixty-four years wrote a play, dictating it to a younger woman; the young folks of the farm produced it at the Olympiad in Smolensk. Besides the Olympiads, many “culture expeditions” of both scholars and composers penetrate the wilderness where live Khirgiz, Buryat-Mongols, Tajiks, Uzbeks, to seek and preserve the music and poems which shed light on early culture. A symphony orchestra recently organized made its first tour, playing old Cossack melodies in modern style, across what not so long ago was the steppe of half-savage nomads. Collective farms sent delegations hundreds of miles to insist that the orchestra visit them.

Out of this artistic ferment in the lives of millions, arises the vigor of Soviet art, which feels itself called upon to find adequate expression for the awakening genius of the people. Soviet writers today, if they would be popular, must not confine themselves to delving in the depths of a single human soul; they must depict the vast variety of changing social relations. They spend much time in deepening their contacts with intimate details of factory or of farm; Sholokhov, for instance, makes his permanent residence in the village whose changing life is the subject of a whole series of novels.

Nor is the artist’s human material passive; the human material talks back. The Vakhtangov Theater invites the audience to discuss plays between the scenes and at the end with the actors; witty and fruitful discussions occur. Meetings between writers and readers have become a popular feature of factory life. Authors like Sholokhov and Tretyakov have long adopted the custom of reading drafts of semi-finished manuscripts to audiences of workers and farmers. Frequently a worker is able to give sound advice on the handling of an industrial character. “Our reader, while a friend, is also a very severe critic,” says the Soviet writer, Vsevolod-Ivanov. “Intercourse with him is the best and most precious school.”

Soviet readers demand simplicity and vividness of writing. They are not interested in complex analysis of burdened souls. Their whole life faces outward. Their interest is in people who do things, who change the relations of society. In the first decade after the Revolution, a typical theme in literature and drama was the hero who died in the moment of victory while the collective achievement marched on. The hero might be a Chapayev shot down before his victorious comrades appear on the scene, or a village organizer killed by a kulak and drawn to his grave in triumphal procession by the newly-arrived tractor which his labor had secured. The victory was collective, attained through the sacrifice of the heroic individual. Thus was the natural expression of the period of revolution and civil war.

New themes begin to dominate Soviet literature and drama of recent years. The hero no longer dies; he struggles, achieves, learns, and is himself made over, not by introspection but by the clash of action. He is the optimist—builder type creating a glorious and happy future. What the people demand of writers, they demand also of the graphic arts: an art that is inspired by and in torn inspires the great moods of the day. The workers of Stalingrad sent a famous open letter to the artists: “Don’t give us colored photographs, we are tired of them. We expect from you an art that is stirring and inspiring.”

If the responsive demand of a great new public is a constant stimulus to Soviet artists, a second stimulus is found in co-operation with members of their craft. Writers, actors, painters—all have their organizations. They maintain club houses for social contacts, discussions and exhibitions; they have country retreats to which members withdraw for rest and creative work. They assist beginners with loans and subsidies; they foster high standards; they assist members in the sale of their work. The writers’ organization issues literary journals, organizes courses, consultations and criticisms for new writers and runs a literary university for workers. The actors’ club holds special midnight performances where its members meet famous visiting artists and see the season’s best in music, dance and drama.

Four thousand artists belong to a co—operative which not only handles exhibitions all over the country, but also owns numerous factories producing artists’ supplies, workshops for stone-cutting, metal-casting and frame-making and studios for lithography and engraving. This co-operative has a yearly turnover of forty-two million rubles. It accepts on behalf of its members orders from city soviets, large industries, and workers’ clubs which wish decorations and paintings; some of these orders run over the million-ruble mark. When the ten-year reconstruction plan of Moscow creates a demand for architecture, sculpture, landscaping and monumental art, the artists’ organizations arrange discussions and excursions of sculptors and architects and initiate experimental fresco work on a large scale. Instead of being an isolated craftsman, the Soviet artist is part of a rich and influential organization which connects him with the government planning departments and the organized life of the country.

From this close association of artists with their fellow craftsmen and with their public has arisen a method of collective production which is becoming increasingly popular; it extends to the collective writing of books by a score of writers and even by whole factories. Thirty professional writers combined to produce ''Belomor'', the famous tale of the building of the Baltic-White Sea Canal. “We tried to tell how a canal was built in a far, cold and rocky place and how the chekists made new men out of prisoners,” said Vsevolod-Ivanov. “We were authors entirely different in taste and in age, but we all tried to make that book united, wide-horizoned and mighty. That book is dear to me even today. In writing it, I learned that we writers are really not such individualists as we like to call ourselves.” The Events of the High Mountain, which told the history of an iron mine in the Urals, was written by more than one hundred miners. The miners consulted, wrote and improved it in common, as together they created and improved their mine. The book is a great political and artistic document, energetic, fresh and vital.

''The History of the Civil War'', the ''History of Factories'' and the now projected ''History of the Russian Village'' contain whole series of books, each of which compiles the experiences of hundreds or even thousands of people. The characters are not described by others; they describe themselves, each seeking in consultation with the others a significant artistic form. The meeting of two hundred village correspondents which I attended, decided to issue a book giving artistic form to the history of the township. They selected the best writers from each of twenty-five villages to work with two professional authors who had come from Moscow. Each local writer chose with the help of his village some vivid and significant episode or character whose story illumined the changes made by the Revolution. One contrasted the intimate family relations in his father’s household with those in his own Soviet home. Another described the people who had successively looked out of the windows of a certain ancient building—once a school for the daughters of the nobility and now the central club of the collective farm. The result was a book which was lacking in style and finish but vivid and unforgettable with actual life. It was not yet art, but it made part of the rich soil out of which great art may well grow in the next few decades.

Great art movements in the past have followed periods of economic expansion which gave stimulus to new creative life. “We are already in the great epoch; artistic values of permanent worth are already appearing but not yet the great masterpieces. Where else in the world are there even high artistic values?” said a Soviet writer to me. In literature Ostrovski’s ''How Steel is Welded'', Sholokhov’s ''Quiet Don''; in motion pictures, ''Potemkin'', ''Chapayev'', the ''Youth of Maxim'', are among the many lasting contributions which the Soviets have already made to art. The Moscow subway is one of the first significant expressions of the epoch in architecture. As forums and temples expressed the spirit of ancient Rome, cathedrals and castles the Middle Ages, and skyscrapers the power of centralized finance, so this beautiful subway expresses the rhythm of millions of workers in efficient motion. The Lenin library in Moscow and the House of State Industry in Kharkov, and some of the new factories, children’s centers, and sanitoriums, also foreshadow the new architecture.

Are Soviet artists “in uniform?” Only in so far as they lack intelligence to respond to their social environment and the will to fight their way through to expression. Artists whose souls were formed by an old world felt the coming of the new as a thwarting of impulses. They had to find their way about among new publishers and new officials, who were trying more or less intelligently to protect the new order. Often groups of rising artists hogged the Revolution and organized to lord it over their fellows. Thus the RAPP (Association of Revolutionary Writers) succeeded in imposing its narrow standards for a considerable period, till other authors learned the new environment and smashed the RAPP. The social environment also changes; when that excellent play, ''Days of the Turbines'', featured a tsarist officer as hero before post-war audiences where budding capitalists cheered him, Young Communist organizations fresh from fighting those officers protested wrathfully and had the play suppressed. When Nepmen followed the civil war into the past, the play revived to more tolerant audiences.

All authors everywhere adjust themselves to editors, publishers and readers; these are necessary media no less than words or paint. Not even in America could “proletarian authors” come into being, until there were new readers who pushed them up. Soviet society also presses in various ways on artists. We authors deal with publishers who are worried by their paper quota; their criterion is “importance” rather than profit, since any half-good book is sure to sell. They rely in part on “political editors,” officials of the Commissariat of Education, whose function is to give advice on the demands of the educational field and the political significance of the work. My own conversations with these political editors—they dislike the name censors—are singularly like those with publishers’ readers in America. They make suggestions, some extremely valuable, some moderately useful and some of which I protest; they themselves yield to reason and prefer authors who know what they do. Only crude authors take them as enemies; through mutual discussion the product is improved. If differences lie too deep, one seeks another publisher; in the Soviet Union there is also the wider appeal. No one autocrat censors everything. Political editors more and more become highly educated specialists. Important plays are usually previewed by selected audiences of leading critics and persons familiar with their theme, both children and educators previewing a drama or motion picture destined for children. Only on military matters and material likely to injure the Soviets’ international relations is the censor absolute;<ref>The most striking recent example was the suppression of information during the difficult year of 1932, a suppression which turned several American journalists permanently against the Soviets. The Soviets believed with some reason that derailed knowledge of their difficulties would provoke the threatened Japanese invasion.</ref> and these matters are hardly the realm of art.

If art survived the censoring by the whims of princelings in the feudal ages, and by the profit-motives of American publishers, why should it not survive the decisions of educational authorities and experienced critics who estimate its importance for a socialist society? To the artist now growing up in a Soviet environment, art is the natural expression of the collective life of millions given significant form by his own special talent or genius. Such an artist feels no repression in this new environment; he feels its great creative urge. Millions of rural journalists, thousands of dramatic clubs, tens of thousands of farm and factory orchestras furnish an alert and appreciative public. The leisure made possible by the social ownership of great modern machines is already widely used in the Soviet Union for pursuits of science and art. The barriers thus begin to wear thin between manual and mental labor; the same person does both. Genius, wherever it arises, finds ready access to widening expression. From such a soil, watered by the artistic strivings of millions, great art must grow. More than great art—a people to whom art becomes man’s natural self-expression, which no longer flames and dies.

=== CHAPTER XIV: REMAKING HUMAN BEINGS ===

When the All-Union Song and Dance Olympiad was held in the summer of 1935 in Moscow, the first prize for dance groups was won by a troupe who would be classed in the capitalist world as convicts. They were sentenced criminals who were still living in Labor Commune Number Two, to which they had been sent for reformation. Their performance of an Ukrainian folk-dance “The Snowstorm” took first place against fifty thousand entrants. To anyone unfamiliar with the Soviet technique for handling criminals, the dancing of the group was less amazing than their free association with other groups of artists in all the local and provincial dance festivals, which brought them at last to Moscow.

The remaking of criminals is only one specialized form of the process of remaking human beings which goes on consciously today in the Soviet Union. Unlike those who justify ancient abuses with the formula, “You can’t change human nature,” the Marxist knows that human nature is constantly changing. The serf of the Middle Ages was a different human being from the highly skilled industrial worker of today, not only in methods of work but in mental outlook, nervous reactions, and even physical motions. Today a remaking of people in greater or less degree takes place across the entire Soviet Union. Illiterate, slow-moving peasants become attuned to rapid work in a collective labor process. Scientists, artists, engineers, doctors, once accustomed to depend upon capitalists for their living, adjust themselves to the new controls of a socialist state as employer. Some welcome the change, others resent it, but in all men the habits derived from the past are at war with the demands imposed by the present, and this struggle changes both the human beings and their environment.

To some the process of change is only half conscious, and therefore bewildering and painful. To the happiest it is a consciously welcomed process. For men in all ages have desired to change, to become in some direction “better.” Moral teachers have urged them to effect this by an emotional decision to be good, honest, industrious. But this is a struggle in the dark with forces which the human being does not understand. His emotional conversion lasts as long as he can focus will and attention. But if the old environment continues, the old habits reassert themselves.

To a limited extent a human being may change himself under any social system, not by efforts of will but by calmly analyzing himself and his environment and placing himself under the impact of other forces which will change him. So much free will man has. But these individual efforts are limited by the social possibilities. Can a prostitute change her environment so that street-walking will become unnecessary? Only if an honest job is somewhere accessible. Can gangsters reform? Only if honesty is really the best policy; for him who would prosper under capitalism there is a time to be honest and a time to steal, and the criminal is the unlucky or stupid person who stole at the wrong time and in the unaccepted manner. Only a social system which insures to ordinary honest labor greater rewards than can be obtained by even the luckiest dishonesty will produce instinctively honest men.

A remarkable tale of the change in social standards is written by a newspaper correspondent from the Ural gold fields. Formerly, according to the writer, everybody admired clever miners who were able to steal nuggets which legally belonged to the private owners of the fields. This attitude persisted long after the mines were owned by the government. But recently at a party given to celebrate a betrothal, the young man in the heat of dancing pulled out his handkerchief and with it a gold nugget which fell to the floor. There was a sudden silence and the party broke up without comment, even the girl turning away from the man thus revealed. “Everyone knew him for an enemy,” wrote the correspondent.

The sharpest test of conscious remaking of human character is found in the Soviet policy for handling law-breakers. The Soviet criminologist holds neither of the theories on which the prevalent systems of prison régime in capitalist countries are based. He does not believe in the existence of “born criminals” whose will must be broken by brutal suppression nor does he rely on emotional appeals to the “better nature” of the criminal, for he knows that this better nature exists as yet only in rudimentary form. “We don’t assume that a man of anti-social habits will be at once reclaimed by gifts of chocolate, nice bathrooms, and soft words,” a leading Soviet penologist told me. “Men are made over by a new social environment and especially by their work done collectively.”

Soviet law aims to make over social misfits while protecting society from their attacks. Punishment as vengeance has no place in such an aim: revenge merely incites revenge in return. To make prisoners sit in solitude and think of their sins produces a fixation on crime. To “break a man’s will” or lessen his human dignity in any way injures him material for a creative socialist society. Soviet justice therefore aims to give the criminal a new environment in which he will begin to act in a normal way as a responsible Soviet citizen. The less confinement the better; the less he feels himself in prison the better. Soviet justice began to fight crime under the harsh conditions of civil war, replying with ruthless measures to counter-revolutionary plots. “We have a double approach” said Attorney-General Vishinsky in an interview. “Active, confirmed enemies of our Soviet power who stick at nothing to injure us must be ruthlessly crushed. But even among these alien elements, among nobles, landlords, tsarist officers, capitalists, whom we had robbed of their private property, we had to be able even there to find those individuals who could be made over into useful workers. We cannot begin with clean hands and fresh bricks to build socialism; we must use even old bricks for the new building. But if we had tried to apply the idea of absolute humanitarianism to bitter enemies we wouldn’t be here today.”

Many social offenses are handled without bringing them into ordinary courts at all. A whole series of “comradely courts,” in factories, schools and apartment houses, try informally people who disturb their neighbors. These courts have the right to fix small fines for the benefit of the local club or library; they refer cases which they cannot handle to the public courts. There are even “children’s courts” in which children judge each other in the presence of interested adults. One such children’s court in an apartment house tried a boy for cruelty in killing a cat, and came finally to the conclusion that the real culprit was the superintendent of the apartment house who persistently failed to provide a place to play. The superintendent, who was present, accepted the decision, and organized with the children a committee to make good the shortcoming.

“Not only in the court but out of the court my job is social protection,” a rural judge told me. “I must prevent court cases when I can.” He told how he had prevented crime at a recent saints’ festival. “Men always drink hard on such occasions; they fight and knife each other. So I called together the presidents of collective farms an the Party members, and we went through the crowd before drinking began and took away the knives and canes. They got drunk later, but nobody was badly hurt.”

I sat in the court session which this judge held under the village trees and heard a dozen cases—stealing hay, bootlegging and the like—disposed of in an afternoon. The commonest sentence was “compulsory labor” which did not remove the offender from his home but required him to do without pay some socially useful work, such as road-building, school-construction or even office work in the village soviet. Only one serious case appeared: more than half the calves in a collective dairy had died under circumstances which seemed to implicate the dairy manager of something worse than the criminal negligence charge which had been brought. The judge found that he was “guilty of negligence at least,” but held the case over for further investigation to see whether he was guilty of “something more,” i.e., intentional conspiracy to smash the farm. In that case he would be “sent away” from the village to a labor camp for a period of perhaps three years.

The labor camp is the prevalent method for handling serious offenders of all kinds, whether criminal or political. Most of the old prisons have been abolished; I have found them in rural districts converted into schools. The labor camps have won high reputation throughout the Soviet Union as places where tens of thousands of men have been reclaimed. They have, however, been the center of some of the most spectacular attacks on the Soviet Union in recent years. Allegations of brutal treatment and even of torture have found their way widely into the foreign press. While it is clearly impossible to check every one of these accusations, they are contradicted by every competent observer who has ever seen the camps. Dr. Mary Stevens Callcott, the American penologist who has studied prisons all over the world and who has had the unique experience of visiting the larger part of the Soviet camps, including those for the worst—and for political—offenders, has commented both in her book ''Soviet justice'' and in conversations with me personally, on the “amazingly normal” life that differentiates these camps from prisons in any other part of the world.

She notes the freedom of movement over large areas of territory, the very small amount of guarding, the work done under normal conditions—seven hours for ordinary labor to ten for men whose tasks, such as driving a truck, permitted frequent rests during work. She could find no speed-up; laws of labor protection operated as in factories. Wages were the same as those outside, with deductions for living expenses; all above this could be sent by the prisoner to his family, saved or spent as he chose. “No uniforms with their psychological implications, no physical abuse; isolation only in extreme instances. Privileges and special rewards replace the system of special penalties.” Among these special rewards are the two weeks’ vacation in which the prisoner may leave the camp, and the opportunities given for his family not only to visit him but even to live with him for extended periods. Normal human association goes on; men and women meet and may even marry while serving sentence, in which case they are given separate quarters.

What most impressed Dr. Callcott, however, was the type of men in charge of these camps, and the relation they had to the prisoners. She tells of going through the Moscow-Volga Canal camp with its director. Prisoners hailed him with obvious pleasure and informality. A girl rushed up to detain him by seizing the belt of his uniform lest he get away before she could tell him something. A teacher whose term was about to expire expressed a wish to stay on and work under him. There were only five officials in the central administration office of this camp of many thousand prisoners; all the work, including most of the guarding, was done by the convicted men themselves. “In fact,” said Dr. Callcott, “I could never see what kept men in this camp unless they wanted to stay there. No convicts I have known would have any difficulty if they wanted to break away.” Both prisoners and officials, of whom Dr. Callcott asked this question—she talked with prisoners freely without the presence of officials—replied they didn’t run away because if they did, “nobody in my working gang would speak to me when I came back. They would say I disgraced them.” There are, however, a certain number of incorrigibles who run away repeatedly, and these are given somewhat closer guarding for a time. Political prisoners, she noted, were treated like everyone else, except that those who had been persistent and dangerous in their attacks on the government were sent further away from the possibility of connection with their past associates. In all her conversations with these “politicals,” she was unable to find one who had been sentenced merely for expressing anti-Soviet views. All were charged with definite action against the government.

“I did everything I could to destroy this government,” one such man frankly told her, “sabotage of the most serious kind. But the way they have treated me here has convinced me that they are right.”

Another prisoner, who had been in Sing Sing, San Quentin, as well as in jails of England, Spain and Germany, before he was picked up by the Soviets for grand larceny, had been reclaimed by the Baltic-White Sea Canal. He had done a bit of engineering in his youth, and was promptly given a chance to work at this specialty. He won a medal, pursued his studies further, and was doing brilliant work on the Moscow-Volga Canal when Dr. Callcott met him. To her query about his reformation he replied:

“In the other countries they treated me like a prisoner, clapped me in jail and taught me my place. Here they clapped me on the back and said ‘What can we do to make you into a useful citizen?’” Dr. Callcott conversed with many men now high in Soviet industry who had previously been reclaimed by the labor camps. Nothing in their attitude or that of those about them showed any stigma remaining from their prison life. “Of course, when it’s over, it’s forgotten,” one of them said to her. “That,” says Dr. Callcott, “is real restoration.”

Information from many other sources and from my own observation corroborates Dr. Callcott. In August 1935 I visited the town of Bear Mountain, center of the administration of the Baltic-White Sea Canal, which is widely known in the USSR not only as a great construction job but as the place where tens of thousands of men won new lives for old. It is still the distributing center for the labor camps of this district.

The chauffeur who drove me over twenty miles of wilderness without a guard in sight was one of the prisoners. He talked quite freely and said that he didn’t like the north but at least he had a chance to study a trade or become an engineer. A dozen types of industry had been established to utilize and train all kinds of workers. They took pride in their modern equipment and the high quality of goods produced. In the holiday celebration going on in the public square during my visit, one could not always tell who were prisoners, who were free workers and who were “guards.” The atmosphere was that of any new construction job in the country. Such, indeed, was the intention—to establish the atmosphere of normal constructive life, with certain old associations shut out.

What most interested me was the splendid theater, whose director boasted of his production of the opera ''Eugene Onegin'', the ''Red Poppy'' ballet, and many of the latest Moscow plays. We learned later that he was a well-known Moscow producer, sent north for a serious crime. The camp authorities at once decided to build a theater, in order to utilize his abilities to the full. The theater cast itself consisted of lawbreakers, government officials, free workers and the families of all of them, mixing in the democratic intimacy of a dramatic performance. One wonders which of all his achievements this director will most boast of in old age, his work in Moscow or the northern theater created in Bear Mountain.

Many former prisoners from the Baltic-White Sea Canal, after receiving freedom together with special prizes and high honors for their good work, went of free choice to help build the Moscow-Volga Canal, another convict-labor job. Here they were especially valued because through their own experience they understood the process through which new prisoners had to go and were especially skilled in helping them make themselves over. As in other Soviet construction camps, the workers on this canal had their art studio under professional direction, their musical circle and literary magazine, and their bureau of inventions through which four thousand proposals to improve the work of the canal have been offered by the prisoners themselves. Several prisoners, given their freedom because of inventions, refused to leave until the canal should be finished.

So well known and effective is the Soviet method of remaking human beings that criminals occasionally now apply to be admitted. I met one such man in Gulin village. Notorious locally as thief and drunkard, he had a dozen convictions to his discredit, till at last he went to the authorities saying: “I’m a man destroyed, but I want to be made over.” They sent him to a labor camp whence he returned a qualified worker. Bolshevo Commune, the most famous “cure” for criminals, can be entered only by application approved by the general meeting of members. Its waiting list is so long that it accepts only the most hardened cases, priding itself on being able to make over persons who cannot become cured in any other institution. Its strength lies in its large membership of intelligent former criminals, who apply to new entrants their intimate knowledge of the criminal mind.

Crime today is rapidly diminishing in the Soviet Union. From 1929 to 1934 sentences for murder decreased by one-half while sex crimes fell off to one-fourth. The cause is found in the growing strength of the Soviet environment to remake human beings; the penal policy is only a supplementary force. A striking example of the play of both causes may be found in the figures of prostitution. Pre-war Moscow had 25,000 to 30,000 prostitutes; these sank by 1928 to about 3,000,<ref>Material from Dr. V. Bronner, head of Institute of Venereal Diseases, Commissariat of Health.</ref> diminution clearly due to economic causes. In 1931, after the Five-Year Plan -had abolished unemployment, the number sank still further to about eight hundred. To reclaim the more habituated, prophylactoria were established. These rose to the number of thirty-four in the whole USSR in 1934, and then swiftly declined to nineteen as their work was done. They are still declining for want of inmates; only one of the original five is left in Moscow. No woman was ever compelled to go to a prophylactorium; the chief punishment for breaking rules was to be put out. Nine-tenths of those who entered left cured both of physical disease and of old habits and were accepted without comment into the normal working life of the city.

An eventual disappearance of crime is expected by Soviet authorities as the mental habits produced by a socialist system become established in Soviet life. For crime, in the Marxian view, arises from the conflicts of a class-exploiting society and will follow classes and exploitation into oblivion. In the first years of the new system, the sharp conflict with classes from whom it took privileges led to a decided increase both in crimes and in the repressive measures used by the state. Kulaks committed arson, cattle-killing, murder, and were exiled in large numbers; anti-Soviet engineers and officials sabotaged and were sent to labor camps. Today the kulaks have been amnestied, not only because many of them have recovered their civil status by honest labor, but also because the collective farms in the villages are strong enough to withstand their attack and absorb them. The labor camps which supplanted prisons are themselves diminishing, partly because they have “cured” their inmates, and still more because the normal free life of Soviet society is becoming strong and prosperous enough to have a direct regenerative influence on those social misfits that remain.

In unforgettably lyric language the Soviet writer Avdeyenko, who a few years ago was by his own confession 2 “two-legged beast of prey,” told the Congress of Soviets, to which in 1934 he was a delegate, the story of the degrading of a youth into a criminal and the subsequent remaking of the criminal into an honorable and famous man. “In 1926,” he said, “under one of the cars of the Moscow-Tashkent express, lay two little passengers, myself and my comrade, voyagers making our way closer to the sun, searching for good people who would not be offended when we robbed them.” He tells how the conductor threw them out on the damp earth, how they wandered in rain and sleet, seeking warmth and light, thrown out everywhere till exhaustion turned to anger, anger to despair, despair to a great hatred for mankind. In this hatred they fired a haystack set against a house. “A warm, calm feeling filled my heart. Tears of joy and vengeance came into our eyes. We embraced, laughing and crying, and spent the rest of the night in a public toilet, pressing against the warm wall to warm first our backs and then our chests till we fell asleep standing.

“I was destined to live many years—one—fifth of my life—with the feelings of hatred, malice, revenge that were born in me at that station. After that I robbed and threatened without remorse.” He tells how he stole fur coats and jars of butter, robbed drunkards in dark alleys, hooked vagrants off freight cars to steal their clothing, till he gradually became “a human beast, that most fearful two-legged blood-thirsty species without love or goodness or feeling or pity. Today it is frightful for me even to remember such a person.

“Today in this historic hall, I stand on the tribune, a member of government. I am a citizen with full rights. I am strong. I cherish the best human feelings: love, devotion, honesty, self-sacrifice, heroism. I write books. I dream of creating an unforgettable production. I love a girl unselfishly. I am continuing my race—it will be a happy one.

“I am happy, full of the joy of life, unshakably exuberant. I go to sleep with regret, I awake with joy. I shall live a hundred years. I can fly to the moon, go to the Arctic, make a new discovery, for my creative energy is not trod on by anyone.

“Today I recall my past for the last time. In filling out my application blank, under ‘places of work,’ I wrote: “Till 1931 socially harmful activity. I begin the story of life from 1931’ And they answered: ‘So be it.’ So you see I am four years old, the youngest here.”

Avdeyenko gives the stories of other former law-breakers who have been made over. He traces the source of their anti-social past to the heritage of capitalist exploitation; he finds the force that redeemed them in the new socialist industries and the life that arises around them. “All of you know the institutions where such people are re-educated. But our whole Soviet system is one big workshop for re-educating men. I know people of two generations whose lives were no better than mine. We are engineers, writers, aviators, journalists, machinists, administrators of cities, scientists, Arctic explorers. The industries of our country remade us, and the industries were established by the Stalinist policy of industrializing the country. Comrade Molotov spoke of the newly created factories, cities and whole industrial regions, but he did not refer to the giving of life, human life, to the two-legged beasts of prey I have described.”

=== CHAPTER XV: YOUTH SET FREE ===

{{Quote|“The generation which is now fifteen years old will see Communism and will itself build it.”|Lenin}}

“Life is good and to live is good—in such a land, in such an epoch! . . . We, young owners of our country, called upon to conquer space and time. . . .”

In June of 1935 these words of Anna Mlynek, young valedictorian of the first Moscow class to complete the new ten-year school, awakened in thousands of hearts the world over a realization of what youth’s outlook might be in a socialist land. To youth in capitalist countries the outlook is gloomy. They look outward and see unemployment; they look inward and find confusion. They are developing, rational beings propelled into a world whose irrationality even their parents and teachers cannot explain to them. Those who love them best offer only a host of illusions; they are taught to look at the past and go backing into the future. So there goes on within them what the well-known psychiatrist, Dr. Frankwood Williams, calls a “mighty struggle in the dark . . . with all the emotional complexities and uncertainties that home, school, community have woven into their being.”

Soviet youth have not escaped struggle. Their birth was in the flames of civil war. Their childhood endured the famine years. Their adolescence was strained by great tasks of constructing a country. Many young lives were cut short or crippled in heart or lung or nerve in those years of battle and building. Even today they see across the future the dark threat of world war which may be launched at any time by the capitalist chaos beyond their borders, and in which they know that many of them must perish.

What then is the source of the explosive joy which becomes increasingly plain in the words, the sports, the celebrations of Soviet youth? It lies in those words “young owners.” Men in the past have been subjects of kings or even proud citizens of democracies. Never till socialism dared they call themselves owners of the land in which they live. Ownership brings freedom in planning, clearness of goal, harmony of intellect and will in expanding life. Joint ownership brings comradeship reinforcing freedom, and a new, widened will to conquer space and time.

A letter sent by thirty-one young men and girls from a collective farm to Moscow to greet the assembling of congress in early 1935 expresses it: “We go a road that is rich with life. We know our goal. What we are doing we do with clear consciousness. We know that what we do is important, necessary, great and glorious. We know the aim of our collective farm tasks. We know what will be tomorrow for we ourselves create it. Today is good, tomorrow will be better, the day after tomorrow immeasurably better. We often think of the glorious future of our farm, our township, our dear district, all our beloved land. We think of the bright future of all mankind which will be freed by the world-wide proletarian revolution.”

Not on any mystic faith do these thirty-one young people base their hope for the future, but on homely details of daily fact that seem at first sight quite inadequate to explain their joy. They relate the changing of poor soil to good soil. “Our village never knew wheat till the Bolsheviks pushed it to the north!” They tell the expansion of music, drama, sport and science built on the firm economic foundation of their increasing harvest. They see the clear connection between their farm’s success and the success of their country, and base on this their expectation of international revolution. Their life is an integrated whole from the farm to the world. They have grown up and been formed by a new social order.

What are the qualities demanded of joint owners, which the Soviet schools seek consciously to develop? Neither the combativeness nor the submission which are the contradictory demands of capitalism, but a high degree of initiative and scientific interest, a high development of individual variety combined with highly developed social instincts. The aim of the Soviet school is not to create standardized people, suited to the demands of some undefined future boss, but to help youth discover and develop its own desires and capacities. In a hundred ways the schools are constantly asking: What do you most like to do? In a hundred ways they help this developing choice relate itself to the equally developing choice of others.

An American teacher who has taught for years in Soviet schools tells me that the approach to the child is far more individual than in America. Persistent efforts are made to find the child’s particular aptitudes and interests. In the elementary grades there are two types of teachers:—group teachers remain with one group of children for several years, visiting their homes, becoming thoroughly acquainted with them and relating them to the special teachers who develop special aptitudes. By the seventh grade, which is roughly equivalent to second year of high school in America, psychological tests help the child decide what he can do best; they tell him his capacities but impose no compulsion on his choice.

Summer camps and excursions are also planned to help children discover their special interests and widen the field of their choice. The best camps, such as the famous Artek in the Crimea, maintain amateur work of a high order in geology, botany, care of animals, study of sea-life and construction of airplane and automobile models. Children spending their summer in such camps discover and develop hobbies which may, or may not, develop into their life’s work. Newspaper discussions also draw out the self-expression of children; a special newspaper, the Pioneer Pravda, is written almost entirely by children.

Last summer I met twenty young “Arctic explorers” under sixteen years of age on the Murmansk train bound for Polar regions. Their energetic study of maps, Arctic cruises, Northern peoples had been sufficient to win from their teachers a recommendation which included them in an organized cruise of the north. They would meet adult Arctic explorers who would treat them smilingly but courteously as possible future colleagues. Ten of the best pupils in botany were similarly allowed to make an expedition at government expense to the Altai mountains, where they hiked two thousand kilometers and found twenty-seven new varieties of black currants and a type of onion which resists 45° of frost. Two of these young explorers went as delegates to deliver the plants to the aged plant-creator Michurin: When he asked: “Weren’t you afraid to cross wild rivers and sleep at night in the woods?” they answered: “Sometimes we were afraid. We feared that our expedition would fail to find any new plants and we would disgrace ourselves as Michurin’s grandchildren.”

Such trips are the reward of marked aptitude, but all children take some part in the “grown—up” activities of the country. In Molvitino township the farm children told me proudly of scores of tons of bird droppings and wood ashes collected to fertilize the exhausted fields. In the 1934 “war with drought,” when a chief harvest problem in the south was the low, dry stand of easily broken grain, children’s groups of gleaners followed the reapers and competed to save great piles of grain heads. Every Soviet child knows the heroism of Mitia who caught three harvest thieves red-handed. In Artek Camp I met a child who had prevented a train wreck by reporting a loose rail and another who saved an aviator by lighting a bonfire at night to guide the errant plane: these children won wide renown among other children and were rewarded by a summer at Artek. Children of railway workers in Tiflis built and operate a half-mile railroad in the Park of Culture and Rest; it is a serious enterprise which carries passengers, takes in a thousand rubles each holiday and spends the money in proper Soviet style to “expand the road.”

These out-of-school activities of children became at one time so absorbing that they threatened health and education. Young Pioneers “saved the harvest,” reclaimed drunken parents, denounced village grafters and debated whether their first duty was to the school or to “help the country.” Today children are reminded that “learn, learn, learn” is Lenin’s statement of the three most necessary things for young humans to do. School dominates and organizes all other child activities. But it never excludes them. In all their learning many forms of activity have part.

The early discipline of children is largely through mass pressure, highly effectively organized by the children themselves. Children often come to a teacher with suggestions about the best way to handle difficult cases. They inform the teacher of home conditions which have made certain children backward in study or in comradeliness. They organize committees to go with the teacher to the homes. Children will themselves expose violations of child labor laws, or write to the papers about parents who beat other children. The highest honor given to able children is to be asked to help more backward ones with their studies in a spirit not of condescension but of good team-work, like that of a basket-ball player who helps his team excel. The strongest penalty in any school is given when children ask to have a child excluded on the round that his conduct disturbs their work.

All these activities of children directly reflect and prepare for their coming adult life. The encouragement of individual variety harmonized by regard for the rights of others expands into the more definite yet wider interests of youth. By the end of the ten-year school, which is roughly equivalent to a combination of the American elementary grades and high school, the boy or girl usually has some interest which he wants to test in serious work. Some young folks go to work even earlier, spending part of the years between fourteen and eighteen in a factory trade school with part-time work. Some go direct from the secondary school to the university. But the commonly encouraged procedure is to finish ten years of school and then go to work in the late teens for a period of self-testing before deciding on specialization.

These are not odd jobs to earn one’s way through college, such as are known in American life. They are part of a youth’s conscious self-education in the actual world of production. They are related to his already appearing interests, which they test and develop. I know a boy of nineteen who chose to work on a farm in the summer. Since he already knew that he wanted to become an entomologist, the farm was expected to give him scientific work. He sorted apples for diseases, staked cabbages to count the bugs in sample areas, and otherwise used his special interest for farm production, improving his scientific technique while he worked. If an emergency had occurred, he would have helped in other ways, but emergencies which waste the time of young people in blind alley tasks are a blot on the reputation of any Soviet industry. When four girls of my acquaintance went to work in a chemical laboratory in Siberia and found it so disorganized that there was nothing really useful to do, they protested to the Party against this waste of their time, and the organization which was employing and paying them was censured and ordered to release them for other work. The time of youth is a precious treasure of the community. The most accepted reason which any youth can give for leaving a job is that it offers nothing more for him to learn.

At no time in life is there any gap between work and schooling. Education is not a commodity purchased by money and consumed in childhood or in four charmed years of isolated university life. It is a personal and public necessity, without limits, freely available from childhood to old age. Courses of general culture are not crammed into a special period; they are taken after work in any quantity desired. They are paid for by state or trade union; any group of workers anywhere may decide to study chemistry, music or parachute-jumping and call on their trade union to pay the teachers. When young people feel that they have chosen a permanent specialty, for which they need some years of concentrated study, they apply to enter a university or a research institute. For these institutions their ability and seriousness is tested by severe entrance examinations. If they pass, study becomes their regular work, paid for as such by the state. It is fully as strenuous as the factory; they spend six or seven hours a day in class rooms and laboratories in courses chosen on a broad basis, but all consciously directed towards preparation for their profession.

I visited the dormitory attached to three institutions of higher education in mining, metallurgy and non-ferrous metals. A pretty girl was specializing in blast furnaces, a former book-binder was studying mining engineering, a factory-worker was becoming a geologist for Central Asia, a broad-faced yellow Kazak was preparing to work in copper in the newly opened mines of Kazakstan. All of them were paid for their study by the Commissariat of Heavy Industry. Their stipends ranged from one to two hundred rubles monthly, the higher pay rewarding the best students. Every summer they chose their “practice work” from a dozen localities which offered, and as soon as they found some place where they wished to sign up for a job after graduation, they got additional wages from their chosen industry. The majority decided by the third or fourth year of the five-year course. Thereafter they felt themselves bound to work, for at least a time after they finished the university, for the institution which had paid for their education. This was not felt by them as compulsion but as the intelligent specializing of their own choice on the basis of a wide range of opportunities. Any good reason, such as personal health or the demand of some national emergency, would be recognized by them and their fellows as grounds for release. But a frivolous change of occupation without reason would brand a youth as undependable, while to give up a job because conditions proved difficult would be stigmatized as cowardly. For what was he trained if not to make the conditions better? Has he not at his disposal for this all the resources of the land?

What jobs does youth choose? By no means the easy ones. When has youth, when free to choose, ever asked for the easy way? Youth wants conquest. Youth is explosive energy, so explosive that under capitalism it must be befogged with illusions, lest it wreck the world’s ancient ways. Soviet youth is encouraged to make the world over; it responds to the call. In every difficult struggle faced by the Soviet state from its beginning, a mighty host of youth has volunteered.

Youth does not wait to be asked; it takes the initiative. Through its organization, the Young Communist League, it repeatedly demands the right to battle on each new important “front.” I know young women who fought in the civil war, divorcing the husbands who would have prevented their going. The Stalingrad Tractor Plant, the first Soviet conveyor, was built and manned by young folks coming from every part of the country. “We give our youth to this struggle,” they said to me six years ago. “We do not spend it in ease or amusement. We shall not stop till we have built the socialist city of Stalingrad.” I have vivid memory of the boat that came at eleven o’clock one night for a long-expected boat-ride after a hot day and was turned down by young voices, with-out a word from their elders, as too late. “Got to go home; got to be fresh for the line tomorrow,” they said as they turned away.

Thus was launched in the far northeast of Asia the new ship-building port Comsomolsk on the shores of the Ohotsk Sea, a city proudly carved from mosquito-ridden forests by the forces of youth alone. Thus was built the Moscow subway in a titanic drive by youth to create “the most beautiful subway in the world.” Moscow’s Young Communists left office jobs, postponed university courses and requalified as underground ditch-diggers to build it. Every great construction job has its special tasks seized by youth; they take over the building of a blast furnace in competition with one raised alongside by their elders. They organize special farms which make proud records. They pour into the new industries, master the new technique, form the new staff of engineers.

Like young folks everywhere, Soviet youths have the problem of the relation between work and marriage. This is never a question of whether they can afford to get married; that is taken for granted. The problem is to find time for a satisfying family life. One troubled youth writes to the ''Komsomolskaya Pravda'' in the discussion recently held on this question: “I am a turner. I am also a Young Communist. Besides that I am working on an invention. My days are so full that I don’t have time to breathe. I see my wife only at night and then I'm so dead tired that I fall down and sleep like a corpse. Lydia weeps. I am not a beast; I am sorry about Lydia. But I try to organize my time and I can’t even find an hour for my class on planning, much less for my family.”

This is an extreme case; it is balanced by young Kuznetsova who lays down her specifications for a husband: “I wouldn’t have a man who was not a good social worker. But neither will I live with one who is interested only in his factory. I don’t want a one-sided man. I want a husband who will play volley ball with me, do skiing, appreciate the theater, music, general culture, read a book with me and argue about it afterwards. All these things have place in a well-rounded life.” These are the problems of a rich, abundant existence, which needs only to be organized. Soviet youth never feels that it must renounce any of these satisfactions.

Each year when September First brings the International Youth celebration, hundreds of telegrams pour into the offices of ''Komsomolskaya Pravda'', organ of Communist Youth, announcing achievements of youth and the gifts which it offers the country. A group of young steel men wire that they have dismantled and reassembled an open hearth furnace in six days instead of the usual ten; a group of young miners sends an extra train of coal manned by a train crew especially chosen from scores who competed for the honor. Other groups announce the organization of “cultured field camps” where music, drama and books enliven the evening’s work on the farm. Still other groups blazon sport records on floats in the great demonstration which storms the Red Square. Young Communists of the Red Dawn Telephone Factory hiked to the Mongolian border, 5,400 miles in 180 days. Another group is back from climbing the Altai, covering 1,200 miles on foot. They celebrate the Baikal-Murmansk ski-run across half Asia and half northern Europe; they announce Alpine and parachute records made by youth. Nor is there any sharp line between records in sport and in steel-mills. All are one unified, advancing life.

Not in conflict with work but around it in the social life of the factory collective, Soviet youth develops activities of sport and recreation which make up a well-rounded life. Tsarist Russia possessed thirty thousand members of sport and athletic clubs; there are six million today. Tens of thousands of cheering spectators turn out to soccer matches between Moscow, Leningrad, Central Asia, Turkey and Spain. Soviet sportsmen begin to invade world records. But the characteristic of Soviet sport is not the straining for records in one field at the expense of all round physical fitness; its symbol is the GTO badge—“Ready for Labor and Defense”—to receive which one must pass certain standards in walking, running, swimming, rowing, skiing, jumping and every kind of summer and winter sport. Two and a half million persons have qualified for this symbol, and a second degree of GTO is now established, requiring high diving, parachute jumping and other difficult tests.

Parachute jumping has become almost a national sport in the Soviet Union, typical of its sky-storming youth. Flying, gliding, jumping, youth fills the heavens above Tushino field several times each summer with its aviation festivals. One hundred and fifty at a time they leap from great carrier airplanes and come sailing down under canopies of many-colored silk—red, white, blue, orange, lilac—covering the sky with rainbow hues. Week after week they make new records, young men and girls in individual or group jumps. Nina Kameneva, descending from icy space nearly twice the height of Mount Blanc and breaking a world’s record, made the remark which was seized by Soviet youth as a new slogan: “The sky of our country is the highest sky in the world.”

=== CHAPTER XVI: NEW MEN EMERGE ===

The emergence of new people has been noted with growing frequency in recent years by the Soviet press. Editorial writers have tried to analyze their qualities; novelists have attempted to portray them. A Russian author suggested a year ago to the Moscow News a series of half-column novelettes, each containing the snapshot of a life. To the editor’s query how many of these stories he had, he answered casually: “About a thousand.”

“A thousand!” exclaimed our editor.

“That’s not so many,” replied the author, “to describe the great variety of people now appearing in our world.”

Lincoln Steffens told me of meeting one of these new people, a Soviet youth in Hollywood, “so new that he could not understand these United States. . . . He was a unit; he thought and acted together. He was constantly puzzled by the tactics of American capitalists, considered from the standpoint of their own survival.”

Increasingly I also meet new people in the Soviet Union. Not infrequently I have misunderstood them; their approach to life was different from anything I had known. Their respect for my will, their unwillingness to use their personality to convince my intellect, I mistook for aloofness, so accustomed was I to the salesman’s method of putting himself over. On another occasion, traveling on a Siberian train, I made the opposite mistake and took for promiscuous flirtation the expansive joy of a high official whose deft approaches to every person he met drew forth answering flashes of life. Then I saw him evade a kiss from “Little Slant-Eyes,” a Tartar girl with whom for two days he had been joking.

“Kissing is for the beloved one,” he said, smiling. “But the joy of life is to be shared with everybody.”

“Do you know what they have thought of you on this train?” I asked him then.

“What they think affects them, not me. They will also learn if it is in them.”

Never had I seen a more poised personality. Later he remarked, “We Bolsheviks, as Kirov always said, must be the happiest people in the world. But I must be one of the happiest even among Bolsheviks. Our older men are marked by too many years of combat. Our younger men can hardly appreciate the grimness of what they have never known. But I spent my childhood in oppression and my youth fighting for freedom; I am old enough to know the conquered past, yet young enough for a whole new life.”

Is it possible yet to say in what direction this new humanity is developing? Are there any characteristics common to these millions of people who are becoming subtly differentiated from the past? Many attempts are being made to analyze them. When the Turkoman horsemen descended on Moscow after their amazing 4,300 kilometer run across the deserts, Stalin said: “Only clearness of goal, perseverance in attaining the goal, and firmness of character breaking through every hindrance can achieve such a glorious victory.” Pravda elaborated this theme into an editorial on the Soviet ideal of character, declaring it to be the exact opposite of that “unquestioning obedience” which Hitler had previously demanded in an impassioned speech to fascist youth.

“Strong and original individuality,” was claimed by Pravda as the basic quality of a Soviet citizen. Not the “rugged individualism” which capitalism in its early stages glorifies for its upper classes, and which sinks into gangsterism in the fascist decline. Not conforming obedience responding under all conditions to “God and country,” the capitalist ideal which under fascism becomes blinder submission for men whose destiny it is to be bossed. Not that ability to look on both sides of the question which intellectuals under capitalism prize as a sign of high intelligence, but which Pravda disdains as “division of personality and double-mindedness, Hamletism in romantic colors.”

“Not submission and blind faith does the Communist Party implant, but consciousness, daring, decision. It is just from the clear goal, seen by millions, from fighting perseverance and firmness that there grows that remarkable voluntary discipline which bourgeois society cannot even imagine. . . . Clearness of aim, perseverance and firmness won the victory in the civil war, restored our ruined economy and created socialist industry and collective farming. Clearness of aim, perseverance and firmness made way through the ice of the Arctic, lifted our heroes of the air into the stratosphere and brought close to the Communist Party many of the great representatives of science, literature and art. . . . The Communist Party draws out from all the toilers of our great fatherland the quality of strong individuality, inseparably connected with the strong collective of the toilers. . . .”

To many persons in capitalist countries these words will be only partly intelligible. They have been so accustomed to considering that their own life is “free” and Soviet life “regimented” that they cannot at once grasp a viewpoint which holds the exact opposite. Yet even the casual observer of human beings today in the Soviet Union notices that while they have certain characteristics in common they are by no means regimented into uniformity, but show a vivid individuality at least as great as is found anywhere in the world. A business man in Chicago who had never seen Moscow but who was something of an art critic, told me that he was especially impressed in all Soviet photographs, whether of demonstrations in the Red Square or of athletes and factory workers, by the quality of will in the faces. “Utterly different from the sheepish or brutal faces of Nazi pictures,” he added. It is clear to anyone who talks with Soviet workers or the more advanced of the collective farmers that they feel themselves possessed not only of freedom, but of a peculiar type of reinforced and collectively supported freedom which is strong enough to conquer all the obstacles in the world.

Freedom is never absolute; it is concrete and specific. It means different things to different classes and generations of men. The American pioneer faced the wilderness ax in hand with the mood of a free creator, saying: “What shall I build?” His freedom was conditioned by the loans he made or failed to make for his migration, by the railroad that came or failed to come, and by the subtler limitations of his own skill and character, yet with ax in hand, he felt free. His ownership of his primitive means of production was the source and guarantee of his sense of freedom.

When the means of production became the factory, the meaning of freedom slowly changed. Freedom became to the owner the right to fix prices and wages, to the worker the right to drift from job to job, seeking an easier boss. Freedom in government became the “right to choose one’s rulers,” not the right to own and rule. Freedom of thought and speech became the right to complain, to voice transient shifts of opinion, not the right to drive one firm consistent thought into life. As capitalism advanced, men became diversified in their work and capacities, but standardized in their instinctive reference to a boss. Soviet workers notice this quality in Americans who come to their factories. “They know how to complain and make suggestions, but not how to desire and will.”

“Desire and will” is the form which freedom takes when men are owners. When they are joint owners, a form of will develops—not unlike that in a family, a partnership or a committee—which determines itself by consultation. “He does not make individual decisions,” is already a compliment in the Soviet Union; it is applied to Stalin. It is as if one said of a scientist that he refuses to base conclusions on a single experiment. Men always have made up what they call their own minds through the influence of other minds as well; but now they grow conscious of these sources of their choice; they organize even these sources. They criticize, but from within, not from aloof isolation. Workers express discontent not by strikes against an alien owner, but by joint fights against bureaucracy to improve the organization of the land. Freedom becomes less a protest and more a steadily burning choice; not a fight, but a seeking. It is seen not as absence of restraint, but as conscious selection of one particular, individual place in a living complex mechanism whereby a thousand similar freedoms are welded into flame and power.

In the latter half of 1935 the Stakhanovites began to shake the country. People compared it to an explosion, an earthquake. The movement appeared simultaneously in a hundred places and a score of industries. Despite the great variety of its people, the fundamental characteristics were the same. Workmen operating new machines began to shatter past standards of production often against the indifference or opposition of engineers and managers but accompanied by the strained attention of their fellow workers. Each of them had to fight his way against old concepts and habits; one or two of them were killed by angry workers, outraged by this sudden burst of speed. But overwhelming public opinion hailed and copied the innovators. Swiftly, in the midst of their local elation, they found themselves acclaimed across the land as heroes.

Within two months every country in the world was forced to take notice, disguising the information as best they could under the name “speed-up.” For this was no mere routine news from Russia. This was a storming of the world frontiers of productivity and science. Miners in the Donbas were doubling Ruhr production. Blacksmiths in Gorky Auto Works broke standards set by Ford. Shoemakers in Leningrad made records 50 per cent higher than the world record held by the Bata factories of Czechoslovakia. Young girl weavers ran far ahead of America’s best achievements. Swedish saw-mill machinery, standardized to cut ninety-six cubic meters of lumber, was impertinently pushed to nearly three hundred by woodsmen in Archangel.

Hundreds of American engineers and workers, who tried five years ago to “teach the Russians,” and who today are scattered in jobs and out of jobs all over the world, must have grumbled glumly when they heard of it: “Why couldn’t they do it when we showed them how?” For the events which have happened are externally obvious. The Soviet Union equipped itself throughout with modern machinery and methods, and drew eleven million greenhorns into industry to operate them. The greenhorns broke machines, wasted material and learned. They could not learn at once when their teachers told them; it had to grow in their nervous systems. But what they have learned is not only the technical skill of America. It is all that skill with the pride of ownership added. Ownership of the whole great mechanized process that makes the modern world.

People who were allowed to attend the first All-Union Congress of Stakhanovites—and everyone in Moscow wanted to go—told of the indescribable enthusiasm, the irrepressible, thundering cheers. The Soviet press grew lyric over “taming the fiery steed of science,” “washing out the barriers between manual and mental labor,” “preparing the way from socialism to communism where each shall receive according to his needs.” Stalin was saying to the assembled delegates: “We leaders of the government have learned much from you. Thanks, comrades, for the lesson, many thanks.” Those men in the Congress believed—and the country believed with them—that the plan made by Marx was coming true. They had established a new economic system. They had painfully equipped it with modern methods. They had slowly learned to manage it jointly, and now the predicted results appeared. Socialism was beating capitalist production, just as capitalism beat feudalism.

What are the characteristics of these Stakhanovites? A joyously dynamic initiative, a pride in mastery of complex technical processes, a conscious co-operation with society, a hunger to learn. Every phrase dropped in their discussions shows exultant power in creation and desire to share the new skill with others. Busygin, the blacksmith who made the crankshaft record in the forge of the Gorky Auto Works, declares, “There’s nothing I dream of so much as studying. I want to be not only a smith but to know how hammers are made and to make them. . . .” Marie Demchenko who made the sugar-beet record asked as a reward a course at an agricultural college—and got it. Stakhanov himself went down in the mines to make his record as the chosen representative of his fellows. “International Youth Day was approaching and I wanted to mark the day with a record in productivity. For some time my comrades and I had been thinking how to break the shackles of the norm, give the miners free play, force the drills to work a full shift.” When Slavnikova wanted to beat the record on a machine she had carefully studied but never yet used, the foreman opposed her. “I'm a fearless parachute jumper; that norm doesn’t scare me; I'll upset it,” she replied. She drove the machine to a five-fold record. She relates the sequel: “At four in the afternoon we had a meeting and they gave us flowers for our good work.”

Bobilev, the steel smelter, wants you to know that he is a scientist: “We are no sportsmen. We tested out our open hearth; we repaired her and asked how much she could give. She told us 11.33 tons.” Vasiliev, the blacksmith who holds the record for forging connecting-rods, uses the words “boiled up” and “exploded” to describe his feelings about his forge. When his 1934 record was beaten by Andrianov, he “boiled up” and went back to the works with four days left of his vacation. I beat Sam Andrianov but I saw in a newspaper that a Kharkov smith had made more than a thousand. Then I exploded! I made 945 in one shift. The smith Stadnik also exploded and made 975. I consulted my gang how to organize our work-place; we got 1,036. We talked it over with the foreman and told him how to change the furnace; with true Stakhanov zeal he gave us in four days a furnace that could heat 1,500 in a shift. What stops us now? We talked it over and placed the metal in such order that it would be easier to take up. On October 27 I made an all-Union record 1,101 in a single shift. Comrades, I haven’t yet got out of that hammer all she’ll give, but I'm going to get it out to the very bottom.”

Characteristic of the Stakhanovites is their disdain for overtime work as a confession of inefficiency; their insistence that a rhythm shall be found which shall not be physically exhausting—“if the work is done right you feel better and stronger”; and their zeal in teaching the new skill to their fellows. The locomotive engineer Omelianov, demands the “worst engineer” as a pupil, and makes him also a beater of records. Slavnikova is asked by an inefficient woman: “You’re a Young Communist; why don’t you teach me?” She gives time to instruct the older woman, who also begins to improve.

Life in the new factories is by no means ease and harmony. It is more like an explosion or a battle. An engineer of my acquaintance finds the Stakhanovites frankly terrifying. “They put up signals over their lathes when out of material. These signals pop up everywhere and I have to keep them satisfied, or they’ll say I sabotage. You can lose your reputation. You can be cleaned out of the Party. I'm sitting up nights to plan the flow of work.” The demands of these new men are breaking the old technical processes. For “every worker knows,” says the weaver Lisakova, “that over-fulfillment of the norm will not only improve labor conditions in the factory, but also the kindergartens, nurseries, dining-rooms. All this depends on the efficiency of organization, the spirit of solidarity, the fulfillment of the plan.”

It no longer even occurs to these joint owners that a rise in productivity might throw men out of work. Shifts of workers there will be from one job to another; but industry bears the expense of retraining workers. Conflicts there will be, harsh problems and many, but they feel quite sure that they can plan and achieve. They have won through civil war, pestilence, famine; they tightened their belts to build the first Five-Year Plan. They are driving rapidly through a second, which increases food, clothing, housing visibly each year. They haven’t the faintest doubt that as owners of their country they will always have worthwhile things to do.

“Ten years hence,” said a Stakhanovite to me, “farming and industry may cease to be our main occupations. But there are other occupations when once we produce all the goods we need. Human development, exploration, science—to these there are no limits!”

Whatever kind of world will be made by these new builders, one thing is certain: it will be built on conscious planning and will. Not regimentation but choice will make it, a choice that develops its own social guidance. If more people want geology, there will be more geology; if more want medicine, there will be more medicine. More comforts or more leisure, more music or more exploration of the Arctic? Our new world will be what we choose to make it. And if excess of choice in one direction leaves any fields unfilled, the social ways of influencing choice are clear and conscious. A combination of material rewards with social recognition, is already the method of attracting volunteers. The announcement in January, 1933, that agriculture was the most important front, brought hosts of recruits from the ablest people of the country. Calls for help through the League of Communist Youth supplied the driving personnel for Stalingrad Tractor Plant and the Moscow subway. Increased wages and shortened hours have supplemented statements of public need to attract more people into fields as diverse as medicine and mining.

Are there any bounds whatever to man’s advance? These new men recognize none. “If in so short a time and with so backward folk we owners of one-sixth of earth have done so much, what shall we men not do when we own the resources of our planet, unhindered by the fear of wars? If the earth grows old, shall we not remake it to suit us? If the solar system runs down, shall we not find ways to give heat to our sun? Need we fix any limit to attainment, when the earth is our jointly owned workshop and home?”

Such is their confident philosophy. So they answer, when they take time to discuss at all. A new religion? No, that is a word disdained. A widening science, they would say. Their approach to ultimate reality is not one of faith and submission, on which all religions have been based. It is one of defiance and conquest through intellect and will. When the conflicts between slave and master, serf and baron, worker and capitalist are ended, and the classless society is attained, there begins the titanic conflict of conscious men with unconscious nature. Not by faith but by analysis, not by submission but by defiance shall we rise in that unending battle. Unending? Relatively only, not absolutely. But that end is beyond our present power even to imagine.

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[[Category:Library works by Anna Louise Strong]]
[[Category:Library works about the Soviet Union]]