The resolution of the latest (Moscow) Congress of Soviets puts forward, as the foremost task of the moment, the creation of "well-organized order" and the raising of discipline[22]. Resolutions of this sort are now readily "voted" and "signed" by all, but people usually do not give thought to the fact that carrying them out in practice requires coercion – and coercion precisely in the form of dictatorship. And yet it would be the greatest foolishness and the most absurd utopianism to suppose that without coercion and without dictatorship it is possible to make the transition from capitalism to socialism. Marx's theory opposed this petty-bourgeois democratic and anarchistic nonsense long ago and with complete definiteness. And Russia in 1917–1918 confirms Marx's theory in this regard with such clarity, palpability, and convincingness that only people hopelessly obtuse or stubbornly determined to turn away from the truth can still be mistaken about it. Either the dictatorship of Kornilov (if we take him as the Russian type of bourgeois Cavaignac), or the dictatorship of the proletariat – there is no other outcome possible for a country undergoing extraordinarily rapid development with extraordinarily sharp turns, amid the desperate ruin created by the most harrowing of wars. All middle-ground solutions are either deception of the people by the bourgeoisie, which cannot tell the truth, cannot say that it needs Kornilov, or the stupidity of petty-bourgeois democrats – Chernovs, Tsereteli, and Martovs – with their chatter about the unity of democracy, the dictatorship of democracy, the all-democratic front, and such other nonsense. Anyone not taught by the very course of the Russian revolution of 1917–1918 that middle-ground solutions are impossible – we must simply give up on such a person.

On the other hand, it is not difficult to convince oneself that in any transition from capitalism to socialism dictatorship is necessary for two main reasons or in two main directions. First, one cannot overcome and eradicate capitalism without merciless suppression of the resistance of the exploiters, who cannot immediately be deprived of their wealth, their advantages in organization and knowledge, and consequently, over a fairly long period will inevitably attempt to overthrow the hated power of the poor. Second, every great revolution, and the socialist revolution especially, even if there were no external war, is unthinkable without internal war, that is, civil war, which means even greater ruin than external war – means thousands and millions of instances of wavering and crossings from one side to the other – means a state of the utmost uncertainty, disequilibrium, and chaos. And, of course, all the elements of decomposition of the old society, inevitably very numerous, connected primarily with the petty bourgeoisie (for every war and every crisis ruins and destroys it first of all), cannot help but "show themselves" in such a profound upheaval. And the elements of decomposition can "show themselves" in no other way than through an increase in crime, hooliganism, bribery, speculation, and outrages of every kind. To cope with this, time is needed and an iron hand is needed.

There has never been a great revolution in history when the people did not instinctively feel this and did not display salutary firmness, shooting thieves at the scene of the crime. The trouble with previous revolutions was that the revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses, which sustained their tense state and gave them the strength to apply merciless suppression of the elements of decomposition, did not last long. The social, that is, the class reason for such instability of the revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses was the weakness of the proletariat, which alone is capable (if it is sufficiently numerous, conscious, and disciplined) of drawing the majority of the laboring and exploited to itself (the majority of the poor, to speak more simply and popularly) and of holding power for long enough to completely suppress both all the exploiters and all the elements of decomposition.

This historical experience of all revolutions, this worldwide-historical – economic and political – lesson Marx summed up in a brief, sharp, precise, and striking formula: the dictatorship of the proletariat. And that the Russian revolution correctly approached the implementation of this worldwide-historical task was proved by the victorious march of Soviet organization across all the peoples and tongues of Russia. For Soviet power is nothing other than the organizational form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the dictatorship of the progressive class, raising tens and tens of millions of the laboring and exploited to a new democracy, to independent participation in state administration, who through their own experience learn to see in the disciplined and conscious vanguard of the proletariat their most reliable leader.

But dictatorship is a big word. And big words cannot be cast to the winds. Dictatorship is iron power, revolutionary in boldness and speed, merciless in suppressing both exploiters and hooligans. And our power – is excessively soft, throughout and everywhere more resembling kissel than iron. One must not forget for a moment that the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois element struggles against Soviet power in two ways: on the one hand, acting from without, by the methods of Savinkovs, Gotzs, Gegechkori, Kornilovs, by conspiracies and uprisings, by their filthy "ideological" reflection, by torrents of lies and slander in the press of the Cadets, right Socialist-Revolutionaries, and Mensheviks; – on the other hand, this element acts from within, using every element of decomposition, every weakness for bribery, for intensifying indiscipline, licentiousness, and chaos. The closer we approach complete military suppression of the bourgeoisie, the more dangerous to us becomes the element of petty-bourgeois anarchism. And the struggle against this element cannot be conducted solely through propaganda and agitation, solely through the organization of competition, solely through the selection of organizers – the struggle must also be conducted through coercion.

As the basic task of power becomes not military suppression but administration, – the typical manifestation of suppression and coercion will increasingly become not shooting on the spot but trial. And in this regard the revolutionary masses, after October 25, 1917, set foot on the right path and proved the viability of the revolution by beginning to establish their own, workers' and peasants', courts even before any decrees on the dissolution of the bourgeois-bureaucratic judicial apparatus. But our revolutionary and people's courts are excessively, incredibly weak. One can feel that the inherited view of the court as something foreign and state-like has not yet been completely broken – inherited from the yoke of landowners and bourgeoisie. There is insufficient awareness that a court is an organ for drawing precisely the poor, all of them, into state administration (for judicial activity is one of the functions of state administration), – that a court is an organ of power of the proletariat and the poorest peasantry, – that a court is an instrument for educating to discipline. There is insufficient awareness of that simple and obvious fact that if the main miseries of Russia are hunger and unemployment, then these calamities cannot be overcome by any spurts of effort, but only by comprehensive, all-encompassing, nationwide organization and discipline, in order to increase the production of bread for people and bread for industry (fuel), to deliver it on time and distribute it correctly; – that therefore everyone is guilty of the torments of hunger and unemployment who violates labor discipline in any factory, in any economy, in any enterprise, – that those guilty of this must be found, brought to trial, and punished mercilessly. The petty-bourgeois element, with which we must now conduct the most stubborn struggle, reveals itself precisely in the fact that there is weak awareness of the connection between hunger and unemployment from the standpoint of the national economy and politics with the licentiousness of everyone and each in the matter of organization and discipline, – in the fact that the petty-proprietorial view holds firmly: I should grab what I can, and then let the grass not grow.

In railroad work, which perhaps most clearly embodies the economic connections of the organism created by large-scale capitalism, this struggle of the petty-bourgeois element of licentiousness against proletarian organization manifests itself especially prominently. The "administrative" element supplies saboteurs and bribe-takers in great abundance; the proletarian element in its better part struggles for discipline; but among both these elements, of course, there are many wavering, "weak" ones, incapable of resisting the "temptation" of speculation, bribery, personal gain, purchased at the cost of spoiling the entire apparatus, on whose proper functioning depends victory over hunger and unemployment.

Characteristic is the struggle that unfolded on this soil around the latest decree on the administration of railways, a decree granting dictatorial powers (or "unlimited" powers) to individual leaders{71}. The conscious (and for the most part, probably, unconscious) representatives of petty-bourgeois licentiousness wanted to see in the granting of "unlimited" (that is, dictatorial) powers to individuals a retreat from the principle of collegiality and from democracy and from the principles of Soviet power. Among the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries in some places there even developed outright hooliganish, that is, appealing to base instincts and to petty-proprietorial striving to "grab," agitation against the decree on dictatorship. The question arose of truly enormous significance: first, a question of principle – whether the appointment of individuals vested with unlimited powers as dictators is at all compatible with the fundamental principles of Soviet power; second, in what relation does this case – this precedent, if you will – stand to the special tasks of power at this particular moment. Both questions must be considered very carefully.

That the dictatorship of individuals was very often in the history of revolutionary movements an expression, bearer, and conductor of the dictatorship of revolutionary classes – this is shown by the indisputable experience of history. Personal dictatorship was undoubtedly compatible with bourgeois democracy. But on this point the bourgeois detractors of Soviet power, and likewise their petty-bourgeois flunkeys, always display sleight of hand: on the one hand, they declare Soviet power simply to be something absurd, anarchistic, wild, carefully avoiding all our historical parallels and theoretical proofs that the Soviets are the highest form of democracy, more than that: the beginning of the socialist form of democracy; but on the other hand, they present to us demands for a democracy higher than the bourgeois kind and say: with your Bolshevik (that is, not bourgeois, but socialist), Soviet democracy personal dictatorship is absolutely incompatible.

Reasoning of this sort is utterly bad. If we are not anarchists, we must accept the necessity of the state, that is, coercion, for the transition from capitalism to socialism. The form of coercion is determined by the degree of development of the given revolutionary class, then by such special circumstances as, for example, the legacy of a long and reactionary war, then by the forms of resistance of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie. Therefore, there is absolutely no principled contradiction between Soviet (that is, socialist) democracy and the application of dictatorial power by individuals. The distinction between proletarian dictatorship and bourgeois dictatorship consists in the fact that the first directs its blows against an exploiting minority in the interests of an exploited majority, and further, in the fact that the first is carried out – and through individuals – not only by the masses of the laboring and exploited, but also by organizations constructed in such a way as to awaken precisely such masses, to raise them to historical creativity (Soviet organizations are of this kind).

On the second question, concerning the significance of personal dictatorial power from the point of view of the specific tasks of the given moment, it must be said that every large-scale machine industry – that is, precisely the material, productive source and foundation of socialism – requires absolutely strict unity of will directing the joint work of hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands of people. Technically, economically, and historically the necessity is obvious, has always been recognized by all those who thought about socialism as its precondition. But how can the strictest unity of will be secured? – Through the subordination of the will of thousands to the will of one.

This subordination can, with ideal consciousness and discipline on the part of the participants in the common work, resemble the gentle direction of a conductor. It can take on sharp forms of dictatorship, – if there is not ideal discipline and consciousness. But, one way or another, unquestioning submission to a single will for the success of processes of work organized on the pattern of large-scale machine industry is absolutely necessary. For railways it is necessary twofold and threefold. And this very transition from one political task to another, on the surface completely unlike it, constitutes all the originality of the moment we are living through. The revolution has just smashed the oldest, most solid, heaviest chains to which masses were subjected under the lash. That was yesterday. But today the same revolution and precisely in the interests of its development and consolidation, precisely in the interests of socialism, demands unquestioning obedience of the masses to the single will of leaders of the labor process. It is understandable that such a transition is unthinkable all at once. It is understandable that it can be realized only at the cost of the greatest shocks, upheavals, reversions to the old, tremendous tension of energy of the proletarian vanguard leading the people to the new. Those who succumb to the petty-bourgeois hysteria of "Novaya Zhizn" or "Vpered"{72}, "Delo Naroda" or "Nash Vek"{73} do not reflect on this.

Take the psychology of an average, rank-and-file representative of the laboring and exploited mass, compare this psychology with the objective, material conditions of his social life. Before the October revolution he had not yet seen in practice the propertied, exploiting classes actually sacrifice anything truly serious for him, surrender anything in his interest. He had not yet seen himself given the land and liberty so many times promised, given peace, surrendered the interests of "great-powerism" and great-power secret treaties, surrendered capital and profits. He saw this only after October 25, 1917, when he himself took it by force and by force had to defend what he had taken from Kerensky, Gotzs, Gegechkori, Dutovs, Kornilovs. It is understandable that for a certain time all his attention, all his thoughts, all the forces of his soul were directed solely at catching his breath, straightening up, stretching out, taking the nearest goods of life that could be taken and that the overthrown exploiters had not given him. It is understandable that a certain time was necessary for the rank-and-file representative of the mass not only to see for himself, not only to be convinced, but also to feel that one cannot simply "take," grab, snatch things, that this leads to intensification of ruin, to destruction, to the return of Kornilovs. The corresponding transformation in the conditions of life (and consequently in the psychology) of the rank-and-file laboring mass is only just beginning. And our entire task, the task of the party of Communists (Bolsheviks), which is the conscious expression of the striving of the exploited for liberation, – is to recognize this transformation, to understand its necessity, to stand at the head of the exhausted and wearily searching mass, to lead it on the right path, on the path of labor discipline, on the path of reconciling the tasks of holding mass meetings about the conditions of work and the tasks of unquestioning obedience to the will of the Soviet leader, the dictator, during work.

People laugh at "mass meetings," and even more often the bourgeoisie, Mensheviks, Novaya Zhizn supporters, seeing in them only chaos, senselessness, explosions of petty-proprietorial egoism, hiss spitefully about them. But without mass meetings the mass of the oppressed could never have made the transition from discipline forced upon them by exploiters to conscious and voluntary discipline. Mass meetings – that is genuine democracy of the laboring masses, their straightening up, their awakening to a new life, their first steps on that field which they themselves cleared of vermin (exploiters, imperialists, landowners, capitalists) and which they themselves wish to learn to set in order in their own way, for themselves, on the basis of their own, Soviet, and not alien, not lordly, not bourgeois power. There was need precisely for the October victory of the laboring masses over the exploiters, there was need for an entire historical period of initial discussion by the laboring masses themselves of the new conditions of life and new tasks, in order to make possible the firm transition to higher forms of labor discipline, to the conscious assimilation of the idea of the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat, to unquestioning obedience to the personal directives of representatives of Soviet power during work.

This transition has now begun.

We have successfully accomplished the first task of the revolution, we have seen how the laboring masses developed within themselves the basic condition for its success: the union of efforts against the exploiters for their overthrow. Such stages as October 1905, February and October 1917, have worldwide-historical significance.

We have successfully accomplished the second task of the revolution: to awaken and raise up precisely those social "lower depths" whom the exploiters had cast down and who only after October 25, 1917, received complete freedom to overthrow them and to begin looking around and arranging things for themselves. The mass meetings precisely of the most oppressed and downtrodden, least prepared mass of laboring masses, their transition to the side of the Bolsheviks, their carrying out everywhere and in all places their Soviet organization – that is the second great stage of the revolution.

The third is beginning. It is necessary to consolidate what we ourselves fought for, what we ourselves decreed, legalized, discussed, outlined, – to consolidate it in firm forms of everyday labor discipline. This is the most difficult, but also the most rewarding task, for only the solution of it will give us socialist order. It is necessary to learn to combine together the turbulent, bursting with spring flood, overflowing all banks, mass-meeting democracy of the laboring masses with iron discipline during work, with unquestioning obedience – to the will of one person, the Soviet leader, during work.

We have not yet learned this.

We shall learn it.

The restoration of bourgeois exploitation threatened us yesterday in the persons of Kornilovs, Gotzs, Dutovs, Gegechkori, Bogaevskys. We defeated them. This restoration, that same restoration, threatens us today in another form, in the shape of the element of petty-bourgeois licentiousness and anarchism, petty-proprietorial: "my cabin is on the edge of the village," in the form of everyday, small, but all the more numerous assaults and onslaughts of this element against proletarian discipline. We must overcome this element of petty-bourgeois anarchy, and we shall overcome it.