V. I. Lenin

Session of the All-Russia C.E.C..

April 29 1918 [1]

Table of Contents

1. Report On The Immediate Tasks Of The Soviet Government

2. Reply To The Debate On The Report On The Immediate Tasks .

1

Report On The Immediate Tasks Of The Soviet Government

Comrades, as regards my report, I shall have to present the
question today in a somewhat unusual fashion. The point is that
the real report is my article on the immediate tasks of the Soviet government , which was
published on Sunday in two newspapers, and with which I presume
the majority of those present are acquainted.

Hence I consider that there is no need for me now to repeat
here what was said in the report and I can confine myself merely
to additions to and explanations of the report. I think that the
most suitable form for such explanations now will be that of a
polemic, because the question I have touched on in these theses on
immediate tasks is nothing but a development of the resolution
already adopted by the All-Russia Extraordinary Congress in Moscow on March 15 , a resolution
which was not confined to the question of peace then under
discussion, but pointed out also the chief task of the present
time, the organisational task, the task of self-discipline, the
task of combating disorganisation.

It is this that has been the basis, it seems to me, of our political
trends, or the chief lines of our political trends, which have become fairly
definitely marked in the recent period. I think, therefore, that a polemical
form can most clearly confirm what I tried to sketch in a positive form in
my article on immediate tasks.

Comrades, if you look at the political trends of contemporary Russia you
are above all confronted with the task—here too, as always, so as not
to make any mistake in your appraisal—of trying to look at all the
trends taken together, for only in this way, only on this condition, can we
safeguard ourselves from the errors involved in selecting particular
examples. It is clearly possible to find any number of examples to confirm
some particular proposition. But that is not the essence of the matter. We
can try to get near to elucidating the connection between what is happening
to the political trends in the country, taking these trends as a whole, and
what is happening to the class interests, which are always manifested in
big, serious and powerful political trends, only if we examine these trends
as a whole, in their totality.

And so, if we take a look at the big political trends in Russia, it
cannot be disputed, I think, that they are clearly and unquestionably
divisible into three big groups. In the first group we have the entire
bourgeoisie, united wholly and strongly, as one man, in the most determined,
one might say reckless, “opposition” to the Soviet government. It is, of course, an opposition in quotation marks, because in
fact we have here a furious struggle, which at this moment has drawn to the
side of the bourgeoisie all those petty-bourgeois parties which agreed with
Kerensky during the revolution. These are the Mensheviks, the Novaya Zhizn adherents and the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, who outdid
even the bourgeoisie in the fury of their attacks on us, for it is well
known that very often the fury of attacks and the loudness of yelping are
inversely proportional to the strength of the political elements from which
the furious attacks proceed. ( Applause. )

The entire bourgeoisie and all its yes-men and servitors, of the Chernov
and Tsereteli type, joined in furious attacks against the Soviet
system. With an eye to the pleasant prospect which has been realised by
their friends, their political fellow-thinkers in the Ukraine, they are all
longing to conclude a peace which would allow them, with the help of German
bayonets and the bourgeoisie at home, to suppress the influence of the
Bolsheviks. This is only too well known. We see a beautiful example of such
friends in the shape of Chkhenkeli in the Caucasus. Everyone will remember
this from the newspapers.

It is obvious that the proletariat, having taken power and launched the
dictatorship of the working people, the dictatorship of the very poor over
the exploiters, could not, of course, meet with anything else.

On the one hand, we have one flank, one front, completely united. If we
are sometimes proffered dreams of a united democratic front, I at least, in
the rare moments when I have occasion to pick up bourgeois newspapers, in
the rare event of having the pleasure of reading such newspapers as Nash Vek , Dyelo Naroda , etc., even if only glancing at all these
newspapers, I always think: what more do you need for unity of the
democratic front?

All this unity of the democratic front they have to the full, and we can
only rejoice at this unity, for—in so far as fragments of this
bourgeois journalism come the way of the masses—it is not unity of a
democratic front but unity of attacks on the Bolsheviks. And this unity of
the front, from Milyukov to Martov, has deserved that we should put it on a
roll of honour on May Day for excellent propaganda in favour of the
Bolsheviks.

Comrades, if you take the other, opposite camp, you will see there now
only our Party, the Party of Communist Bolsheviks. Events have developed in
such a way that our allies during a great part of the post-October
period—the Left S.R.s—have at present resigned from formal
participation in the government. Their last Congress marked especially
vividly the extreme vacillation in this party, [2] and this has now been shown more
clearly than ever, since even in the press this party also gives expression
to its complete confusion and complete vacillation.

If you decided to draw a graph showing how this party from February
1917—of course, prior to the split of the S.R.s into a Left and a
Right wing—if you decided to draw a graph showing month by month on
which side this party stood, on the side of the proletariat or on the side
of the bourgeoisie, and if you were to continue drawing it for a year, the
result would be a graph looking like a medical chart, at the sight of which
everyone would say: here is a remarkable case of fever, a remarkably
persistent fever!

In point of fact, hardly any other party has undergone such permanent and
continual vacillations in the history of the revolution.

And so, if we take all these three main trends and look at them, it
will become clear to us that such an alignment is not accidental, that it
fully confirms what we Bolsheviks had occasion to point out in 1915, while
still abroad, when the first news began to arrive that the revolution in
Russia was growing, that it was inevitable—and when we had to answer
questions about what the situation of the party would be if events put it in
power while the war was still going on. At that time we had to say: it is
possible that the revolution will win a decisive victory, this is possible
from the class standpoint if at the decisive moments and decisive points the
leading elements of the petty bourgeoisie waver to the side of the
proletariat [See present edition, Vol. 21, p. 403. —Editor ;] ; and that is literally what happened,
that is the course the history of the Russian revolution took and is taking
at the present moment. Of course, in these vacillations of the
petty-bourgeois elements we cannot find the slightest grounds for pessimism,
not to speak of despair. It is clear that revolution in a country which has
turned against the imperialist war earlier than other countries, revolution
in a backward country which, to a considerable extent owing to this
backwardness, events have put—of course, for a short time and, of
course, in particular questions—in front of other, more advanced
countries, this revolution, of course, is inevitably doomed to experience
moments of the greatest difficulty and gravity, and most disheartening as
well in the near future. For it to hold its front and its allies, for it to
manage without waverers at such moments, would be absolutely unnatural; it
would mean completely leaving out of account the class character of the
revolution, and the nature of the parties and political groupings.

And so, if we look at the sum total of the political trends in Russia
from the standpoint of the immediate tasks, from the standpoint of how the
real, immediate and prime tasks confront us, the tasks of organisation and
discipline, the tasks of accounting and control, we see that there is not
the slightest attempt to make a real assessment of this task in the camp
which is united in a single democratic front from Milyukov to Martov. There
is not and cannot be such an assessment because there is only a single
malevolent desire there—and the more vicious it is, the more it does
honour to us—to find some possibility, or hint, or dream, of the
overthrow of the Soviet regime, and nothing else. Unfortunately,
representatives of the party of Left S.R.s have actually expressed most of
all—in spite of the very great devotion to the revolution displayed by
a large number of members of this party who have always shown much
initiative and energy—they have displayed vacillation precisely over
the immediate tasks of the present moment in regard to proletarian
discipline, accounting, organisation and control, tasks which became natural
for socialists when power had been won and the military attacks ranging from
the Kerenskys and Krasnovs to the Kornilovs, Gegechkoris and Alexeyevs had
been repulsed.

Now, when for the first time we have come to the vital core of the
development of the revolution, the question is whether proletarian
discipline and organisation will prevail, or whether victory will go to the
petty-bourgeois element, which is especially strong in Russia.

For our opponents from the petty-bourgeois camp, the chief arena of
struggle against us is the sphere of home policy and economic construction;
their weapon is the undermining of everything that the proletariat decrees
and endeavours to bring about in the matter of building an organised,
socialist economy. Here the petty-bourgeois element—the element of
petty proprietors and unbridled selfishness—acts as the determined
enemy of the proletariat.

And in the graph shown by the petty bourgeoisie through out the events of
the revolution we see their most marked withdrawal from us. Naturally we
find here in this camp the chief opposition to the immediate and current
tasks of the moment, opposition in the more exact sense of the word; here
we have the opposition of people who do not reject agreement with us in
principle, who support us on more essential questions than those on which
they criticise, an opposition that is combined with support.

We shall not be surprised if in the pages of the Left S.R. press we come
across such statements as those I found in Znamya Truda [3] of April 25. It
writes: “The Right-wing Bolsheviks are ratifiers” (a horribly
contemptuous nickname). What would happen if the opposite nickname was given
to the warriors? Would it produce a less horrible impression? Well, if one
encounters such trends in Bolshevism, it is an indication of something. It
was on April 25 that I happened to look at the theses in a newspaper that
gave a political characterisation of us. When I read this thesis I thought
this must be someone from Kommunist , the newspaper of the
“Left Communists” or from their magazine—there is so much
that is similar here; but I was destined to disillusionment, because it
turned out to be a thesis of Isuv’s, published in the newspaper
Vperyod. [4] ( Laughter , applause. )

And so, comrades, when we observe such political phenomena as the
solidarity of Znamya Truda with a particular trend of Bolshevism or
with some sort of formulation of Menshevik theses of the very party that
pursued the policy of an alliance with Kerensky, of the very party in which
Tsereteli concluded an agreement with the bourgeoisie, when we meet with
attacks exactly coinciding with those emanating from the group of Left
Communists and the new magazine—there is something amiss here. There
is something here which sheds light on the real significance of these
attacks, and it is worth while paying attention to these attacks if only
because we have here an opportunity of assessing the chief tasks of the
Soviet government in disputes with people with whom it is worth while
disputing, because here we have Marxist theory, and we can take into
consideration the significance of the events of the revolution and the
undoubted desire to seek out the truth. Here the main basis for a real
debate is provided by devotion to socialism and the obvious resolve to be on
the side of the proletariat, against the bourgeoisie, whatever
errors—in the opinion of particular persons, groups or trends—may have been committed in this respect by the proletariat in
fighting against the bourgeoisie.

When I say that it is worth while disputing with them, I mean by a
worth-while dispute, of course, not a polemic, but the fact that the
question concerns a dispute over the most essential, fundamental problem of
the present time. It is no accident that it is along this line that disputes
are taking place. Objectively, it is along this line that the cardinal task
lies at the present time—the task of the revolutionary struggle of the
proletariat, which is dictated by the existing conditions in Russia and
which has to be carried out in every way in the presence of an abundance of
the most diverse petty-bourgeois trends, and when there is every need for
the proletariat to say to itself that on this point it cannot make any
concessions, because the socialist revolution, begun by wresting power from
the bourgeoisie and continued by smashing all resistance of the bourgeoisie,
places firmly in the forefront the problems of proletarian discipline and
organisation of the working people and ability to tackle the work with
strictly businesslike methods and knowledge of the interests of large-scale
industry. These problems the proletariat must solve in practice, for
otherwise it will suffer defeat.—Here is the chief, real difficulty of
the socialist revolution.—This is the reason why it is so worth while,
so important, in the historical and political sense of the word, to argue
with the representatives of the group of Left Communists, in spite of the
fact that, taking their position and theory and examining it, we see there,
I repeat—and I shall prove it in a moment—absolutely nothing but
the same petty-bourgeois waverings. The comrades of the group of Left
Communists, whatever they call themselves, strike a blow primarily at their
own theses. I assume that their views are known to the great majority of
those at this meeting, because we have discussed the essence of them in
Bolshevik circles, starting from the beginning of March, while those who
have not taken an interest in the major political literature must have got
to know and must have discussed these views in connection with the disputes
that arose at the last All-Russia Congress of Soviets.

And so, we see in their theses primarily the same thing that we see now
in the whole S.R. party, the same thing that we see now both in the
Right-wing camp and in the camp of the bourgeoisie from Milyukov to Martov,
for whom these present difficulties of the situation for Russia are
especially painful from the point of view of the loss of her position as a
Great Power, from the point of view of her conversion from the old nation,
an oppressing state, into an oppressed country, from the standpoint of
deciding not on paper but in practice whether the hardships of the road to
socialism are worth while, whether the hardships of the newly-begun
socialist revolution are worth while, whether it is worth while that the
country should undergo the most difficult situations as regards its
statehood, as regards its national independence.

Here the deepest division of all is between those for whom that state
independence is, as it is for all the bourgeoisie, an ideal and a boundary,
their holy of holies—a boundary which must not be crossed and an
encroachment on which is a denial of socialism—and those who say that
in the age of frenzied imperialist slaughter for redivision of the world the
socialist revolution cannot proceed without very heavy defeats for many
nations which were formerly considered oppressors. And so, however painful
it is for mankind, socialists, class-conscious socialists are ready to
undergo all such trials.

The Left S.R.s have wavered most of all on this basis, which is most of
all unacceptable to them, and it is just on this basis that we see the
greatest waverings among the Left Communists.

In their theses, which, as we know, they discussed with us on April 4, [5] and which
they published on April 20, they keep returning to the question of
peace.

They devote the greatest attention to appraising the question of peace
and thereby try to prove that peace is a manifestation of the psychology of
the exhausted and declassed masses.

How very comic their arguments are, when they quote their figures: that
12 were against and 28 were for the conclusion of peace. [6] But if one is to
collect statistics, and if the vote of a month and a half ago is to be
recalled, should one not take more recent figures. If political significance
is to be attached to that vote, should one not call to mind the vote of the
All-Ukraine Congress of Soviets [7] before saying that the healthy South was against
peace, while the exhausted, declassed, industrially weakened North was
allegedly for peace. Should one not call to mind the vote of the majority of
the group at the All-Russia Congress of Soviets, in which not even one-tenth
were against peace. If figures are to be recalled and political significance
attached to them, the political voting needs to be taken as a whole, and
then you will see at once that the parties which learnt certain slogans by
heart, which made a fetish of these slogans, proved to be on the side of the
petty bourgeoisie, while the mass of the working and exploited people, the
mass of workers, soldiers and peasants, did not reject peace.

And now, when alongside the criticism of this stand for peace the
allegation is made that it was insisted upon by the exhausted, declassed
masses, while we see clearly that it was the declassed intelligentsia that
was against peace, when we are given the appraisal of events that I read in
the newspapers—this fact shows us that on the question of the
conclusion of peace the majority of our Party was absolutely right, that
when we were told that the game was not worth the candle, that all the
imperialists had already combined against us and would in any case strangle
us, bring us into disgrace, etc.—we nevertheless concluded peace. It
not only seemed to them disgraceful, it seems to them of no avail. They told
us that we would not gain a respite. And when we replied: it is impossible
to know how international relations will develop, but we do know that the
imperialist enemies are fighting one another, events confirmed this, and it
was acknowledged by the group of Left Communists, our opponents in ideology
and principle, who by and large adopt the standpoint of communism.

This phrase alone is a complete recognition of the correctness of our
tactics and the fullest condemnation of those waverings on the question of
peace which most of all drove away from us a certain wing of our supporters,
both the entire wing grouped in the party of Left S.R.s, and the wing which
has existed and still exists in our Party, and which one can confidently say
will remain there, and which in its vacillations especially clearly reveals
the source of these vacillations. Yes, the peace which we have arrived at is
in the highest degree unstable; the respite which we have gained may be cut
short any day both from the West and from the East—of this there is no
doubt. Our international situation is so critical that we must exert all our
strength to hold out as long as possible, until the Western revolution
matures, the Western revolution which is maturing much more slowly than we
expected and desired, but is undoubtedly maturing; it is undoubtedly
absorbing and accumulating more and more inflammable material.

If we, as a separate contingent of the world proletariat, have been the
first to go forward, it is not because this contingent has been more
strongly organised than others. No, it is worse, more weakly and less
organised than others, but it would be the height of stupidity and pedantry
to argue, as many do: well, if things had been begun by the most organised
contingent, and if it had been followed by one less well organised, and
after that by one with a third-rate organisation, then we should willingly
have been supporters of the socialist revolution. But since things did not
go according to the book, since it turned out that the leading contingent
was not supported by other contingents, our revolution is doomed to
perish. We, on the other hand, say: no, our task is to transform the
organisation in general; our task, since we are alone, is to maintain the
revolution, to preserve for it at least a certain bastion of socialism,
however weak and moderately sized, until the revolution matures in other
countries, until other contingents come up to us. But to expect history to
set the socialist contingents of the various countries in motion in strict
sequence and according to a plan, means to have no notion of revolution or,
out of stupidity, to renounce support of the socialist revolution.

At a time when we have found out for ourselves and proved that we have a
firm position in Russia but do not have forces to oppose international
imperialism, we have only one task, our tactics become those of manoeuvring,
waiting and retreat. I am very well aware that these words cannot claim to
be popular and that if they are given an appropriate turn and put in
association with the word “coalition”, then the way is wide open
here for piquant comparisons and for all kinds of reproaches and
scoffing. But however much our adversaries—the bourgeoisie—on
the Right and Our friends of yesterday on the Left, the Left S.R.s, and our
friends—friends, I am sure, of yesterday, today and tomorrow—the
Left Communists, however much they aim the shafts of their wit at this, and
whatever proofs they give of their petty-bourgeois vacillations, they cannot
refute these facts. Events have confirmed us, we have gained a respite
solely because the imperialist slaughter in the West continues, and in the
Far East imperialist rivalry nares up ever more extensively—only this
explains the existence of the Soviet Republic, for the time being hanging by
the weakest of threads, to which we are holding tight in this political
situation. Of course, no piece of paper, no peace treaty, will protect us,
nor the circumstance that we do not want to fight against Japan; it is true
that she is plundering us, without being deterred by any treaties or
formalities. We shall be protected, of course, not by a paper treaty or
“state of peace”, but by the continuing struggle between the two
“giants” of imperialism in the West, and by our endurance. We
have not forgotten the basic Marxist lesson which has been so clearly
confirmed by the Russian revolution: that it is necessary to reckon forces
in tens of millions; anything less is not taken into account in politics;
politics discard anything less as a magnitude of no importance. If we look
at the international revolution from this aspect, the matter is as clear as
it could possibly be: a backward country can easily begin because its
adversary has become rotten, because its bourgeoisie is not organised, but
for it to continue demands of that country a hundred thousand times more
circumspection, caution and endurance. It will be different in Western
Europe; there it will be immeasurably more difficult to begin but
immeasurably easier to go on. It could not be otherwise, because the degree
of organisation and solidarity of the proletariat there is incomparably
greater. So long as we are alone, we must say to ourselves, taking all the
forces into account: we have just one chance until the outbreak of the
European revolution, which will solve all our difficulties—the
continuation of the struggle of the international imperialist giants; we
have estimated this chance correctly, we have held on to it for several
weeks, but it may be shattered tomorrow. Hence the conclusion is: to
continue in our foreign policy what we began in March, which can be
formulated in the words: to manoeuvre, to retreat, to wait. When the words
“an active foreign policy” turn up in this Left-wing
Kommunist , when the expression defence of the socialist fatherland
is put in quotation marks, which are bound to be ironical, then I say to
myself: these people have understood absolutely nothing of the position of
the Western proletariat. While they call themselves Left Communists, they
are going over to the standpoint of the wavering petty bourgeoisie, which
regards the revolution as a means for ensuring its own specific
system. International relations indicate as plainly as could be: any Russian
who contemplated the task of overthrowing international imperialism on the
basis of Russian forces would be a lunatic. While over there in the West the
revolution is maturing, although it is now maturing more rapidly than
yesterday, our task is only this: we, being the contingent that has come to
the forefront despite our weakness, must do everything, take advantage of
every chance, so as to hold out in the positions we have won. AIl other
considerations must be subordinated to this, to taking full advantage of our
chance, so that we can put off for a few weeks the moment when international
imperialism will unite against us. If we act in that way we shall advance
along a road that will be approved by every class-conscious worker in the
European countries, for he knows what we have learnt since 1905, whereas
France and Britain have been learning it for centuries—he knows how
slowly revolution grows in the free society of the united bourgeoisie, he
knows that against such forces it will be necessary to set in operation an
agitational bureau which will conduct propaganda in the true sense of the
word when we stand side by side with the German, French and British
proletariat which have risen in revolt. Until then, however distressing it
may be, however repugnant to revolutionary traditions, the only tactics are:
to wait, manoeuvre and retreat.

When people say that we have no foreign, international policy, I say:
every other policy consciously or unconsciously slips into playing a
provocatory role and makes Russia a tool of alliance with imperialists of
the type of Chkhenkeli or Semyonov.

And we say: it is better to endure and be patient, to suffer infinitely
greater national and state humiliations and hardships, but to remain at our
post as a socialist contingent that has been cut off by the force of events
from the ranks of the socialist army and compelled to wait until the
socialist revolution in other countries comes to its aid. And it is coming
to our aid. It comes slowly but it is coming. The war that is now going on
in the West is revolutionising the masses more than before and is bringing
near the hour of an uprising.

The propaganda conducted up to now has said that the imperialist war is
a most criminal and most reactionary war for the sake of annexations. But it
is now being confirmed that on the Western front, where there are hundreds
of thousands and millions of French and German soldiers engaged in
slaughter, the revolution cannot fail to mature more rapidly than hitherto,
although this revolution is coming more slowly than we expected.

I have dwelt on the question of foreign policy more than I intended, but
it seems to me that we see here very clearly that in this question we are,
strictly speaking, faced with two main lines—the proletarian line,
which says that the socialist revolution is what is dearest and highest for
us, and that we must take account of whether it will soon break out in the
West, and the other line—the bourgeois line—which says that for
it the character of the state as a Great Power and national independence are
dearer and higher than anything else.

In regard to domestic issues, we see the same thing on the part of the
group of Left Communists, who repeat the main arguments levelled against us
from the bourgeois camp. For example, the main argument of the group of Left
Communists against us is that there can be observed a Right Bolshevik
deviation, which threatens the revolution by directing it along the path of
state capitalism.

Evolution in the direction of state capitalism, there you have the evil,
the enemy, which we are invited to combat.

When I read these references to such enemies in the newspaper of the
Left Communists, I ask: what has happened to these people that fragments of
book-learning can make them forget reality? Reality tells us that state
capitalism would be a step forward. If in a small space of time we could
achieve state capitalism in Russia, that would be a victory.

How is it that they cannot see that it is the petty proprietor, small
capital, that is our enemy? How can they regard state capitalism as the
chief enemy? They ought not to for get that in the transition from
capitalism to socialism our chief enemy is the petty bourgeoisie, its
habits and customs, its economic position. The petty proprietor fears
state capitalism above all, because he has only one desire—to grab,
to get as much as possible for himself, to ruin and smash the big
landowners, the big exploiters. In this the petty proprietor eagerly
supports us.

Here he is more revolutionary than the workers, because he is more
embittered and more indignant, and therefore he readily marches forward to
smash the bourgeoisie—but not as a socialist does in order, after
breaking the resistance of the bourgeoisie, to begin building a socialist
economy based on the principles of firm labour discipline, within the
framework of a strict organisation, and observing correct methods of control
and accounting—but in order, by grabbing as much as possible for
himself, to exploit the fruits of victory for himself and for his own ends,
without the least concern for general state interests and the interests of
the class of working people as a whole.

What is state capitalism under Soviet power? To achieve state capitalism
at the present time means putting into effect the accounting and control
that the capitalist classes carried out. We see a sample of state capitalism
in Germany. We know that Germany has proved superior to us. But if you
reflect even slightly on what it would mean if the foundations of such state
capitalism were established in Russia, Soviet Russia, everyone who is not
out of his senses and has not stuffed his head with fragments of book
learning, would have to say that state capitalism would be our
salvation.

I said that state capitalism would be our salvation; if we had it in
Russia, the transition to full socialism would he easy, would be within our
grasp, because state capitalism is something centralised, calculated,
controlled and socialised, and that is exactly what we lack: we are
threatened by the element of petty-bourgeois slovenliness, which more than
anything else has been developed by the whole history of Russia and her
economy, and which prevents us from taking the very step on which the
success of socialism depends. Allow me to remind you that I had occasion to
write my statement about state capitalism some time before the revolution
and it is a howling absurdity to try to frighten us with state capitalism. I
remind you that in my pamphlet the Impending Catastrophe See present edition, Vol. 25, pp. 319-65. —Editor. I then wrote. . . . (He reads the
passage.)

I wrote this about the revolutionary-democratic state, the state of
Kerensky, Chernov, Tsereteli, Kishkin and their confreres, about a state
which had a bourgeois basis and which did not and could not depart from
it. I wrote at that time that state capitalism is a step towards socialism;
I wrote that in September 1917, and now, in April 1918, after the
proletariat’s taking power in October, when it has proved its
capacity: many factories have been confiscated, enterprises and banks
nationalised, the armed resistance of the bourgeoisie and saboteurs
smashed—now, when they try to frighten us with capitalism, it is so
ludicrous, such a sheer absurdity and fabrication, that it becomes
surprising and one asks oneself: how could people have this idea? They have
forgotten the mere trifle that in Russia we have a petty-bourgeois mass
which sympathises with the abolition of the big bourgeoisie in all
countries, but does not sympathise with accounting, socialisation and
control— herein lies the danger for the revolution, here you have the
unity of social forces which ruined the great French revolution and could
not fail to do so, and which, if the Russian proletariat proves weak, can
alone ruin the Russian revolution. The petty bourgeoisie, as we see, steeps
the whole social atmosphere with petty-proprietor tendencies, with
aspirations which are bluntly expressed in the statement: I took from the
rich, what others do is not my affair.

Here is our main danger. If the petty bourgeois were subordinated to
other class elements, subordinated to state capitalism, the class-conscious
worker would be bound to greet that with open arms, for state capitalism
under Kerensky’s democracy would have been a step towards socialism,
and under the Soviet government it would be three-quarters of socialism,
because anyone who is the organiser of state capitalist enterprises can be
made one’s helper. The Left Communists, however, adopt a different
attitude, one of disdain, and when we had our first meeting with the Left
Communists on April 4, which incidentally proved that this question from
remote history, which had been long discussed, was already a thing of the
past, I said that it was necessary, if we properly understood our tasks, to
learn socialism from the organisers of the trusts.

These words made the Left Communists horribly indignant, and one of
them—Comrade Osinsky—devoted his whole article to inveighing
against them. That is substantially what his arguments amounted
to.—The fact is, we do not want to teach them, but to learn from
them.—We, “Right-wing” Bolsheviks, we want to learn from
the organisers of the trusts, but these “Left Communists” want
to teach them. But what do you want to teach them? Socialism, perhaps? Teach
socialism to merchants, to businessmen? ( Applause. ) No, take on the
job yourselves, if you like. We are not going to help you, it is labour in
vain. It is no use our teaching these engineers, businessmen and
merchants. It is no use teaching them socialism. If we had a bourgeois
revolution, then there would be nothing to learn from them—except
perhaps that you should grab what you can and have done with it, there is
nothing more to learn. But that is not a socialist revolution—that is
something that happened in France in 1793, that occurs where there is no
socialism but only an approach to socialism.

The landowners have to be overthrown, the bourgeoisie has to be
overthrown, and all the actions of the Bolsheviks, all their struggle, their
violence against the landowners and capitalists, expropriation and forcible
suppression of the resistance of the landowners and capitalists, will be
justified and proved a million times correct by history. Taken as a whole,
this was a very great historical task, but it was only the first step. What
matters now is the purpose for which we crushed them. Was it in order to say
that now, having finally crushed them, we shall bow down before their
capitalism? No, we shall now learn from them because we lack knowledge,
because we do not have this knowledge. We know about socialism, but
knowledge of organisation on a scale of millions, knowledge of the
organisation and distribution of goods, etc.—this we do not have. The
old Bolshevik leaders did not teach us this. The Bolshevik Party cannot
boast of this in its history. We have not done a course on this yet. And we
say, let him be a thorough-paced rascal even, but if he has organised a
trust, if he is a merchant who has dealt with the organisation of production
and distribution for millions and tens of millions, if he has acquired
experience—we must learn from him. If we do not learn this from them,
we shall not get socialism, the revolution will remain at the stage it has
now reached. Only the development of state capitalism, only the painstaking
establishment of accounting and control, only the strictest organisation and
labour discipline, will lead us to socialism. Without this there is no
socialism. ( Applause. )

It is no use our undertaking the ridiculous task of teaching the
organisers of trusts—there is nothing to teach them. We have to
expropriate them. That is not where the hitch lies. There is no difficulty
whatsoever in that. ( Applause. ) That we have sufficiently
demonstrated and proved.

I told every workers’ delegation with which I had to deal when they
came to me and complained that their factory was at a standstill: you would
like your factory to be confiscated. Very well, we have blank forms for a
decree ready, they can be signed in a minute. ( Applause. ) But tell
us: have you learnt how to take over production and have you calculated what
you will produce? Do you know the connection between what you are producing
and the Russian and international market? Whereupon it turns out that they
have not learnt this yet; there has not been anything about it yet in
Bolshevik pamphlets, and nothing is said about it in Menshevik pamphlets
either.

The situation is best among those workers who are carrying out this
state capitalism: among the tanners and in the textile and sugar industries,
because they have a sober, proletarian knowledge of their industry and they
want to preserve it and make it more powerful—because in that lies the
greatest socialism. [8] They say: I can’t cope with this task just
yet; I shall put in capitalists, giving them one-third of the posts, and I
shall learn from them. And when I read the ironical statement of the Left
Communists: it is yet to be seen who is taking advantage of whom, I find
their short-sightedness strange. Of course, if, after taking power in
October and after a victorious campaign against the whole bourgeoisie from
October to April, we could still be doubtful as to who is taking advantage
of whom—whether the workers of the trust organisers, or the
businessmen and rascals of the workers—if that were the case, we
should have to pack up our belongings and go home, leaving the field to the
Milyukovs and Martovs. But that is not the case. The class-conscious worker
will not believe it, and the fright of the petty bourgeoisie is laughable;
they know that socialism begins where larger-scale industry begins, that the
merchants and businessmen have learnt this by their own experience.

We have said: only these material conditions, the material conditions of
large-scale machine industry serving tens of millions of people, only these
are the basis of socialism, and to learn to deal with this in a
petty-bourgeois, peasant country is difficult, but possible. Revolution
comes at the price of civil war, but that is something that is the more
serious the more the country is civilised and developed. In Germany, state
capitalism prevails, and therefore the revolution in Germany will be a
hundred times more devastating and ruinous than in a petty-bourgeois
country—there, too, there will be gigantic difficulties and tremendous
chaos and imbalance. Therefore I do not see the slightest shadow of a reason
for despair or despondency in the fact that the Russian revolution
accomplished the easier task to start with—that of overthrowing the
landowners and bourgeoisie—and is faced now by the more difficult
socialist task of organising nation-wide accounting and control. It is
facing the task with which real socialism begins, a task which has the
backing of the majority of the workers and class-conscious working
people. Yes, the majority of the workers, who are better organised and have
gone through the school of the trade unions, are wholeheartedly with
us.

This majority raised the questions of piece-work and
Taylorism—questions which the gentlemen from Vperyod are
scoffingly trying to reject—in the trade union councils before we did,
even before the coming of Soviet power with its Soviets; they got busy and
set about working out standards of labour discipline. These people showed
that for all their proletarian modesty they were well acquainted with the
conditions of factory labour, they grasped the essence of socialism better
than those who spouted revolutionary phrases but in reality consciously or
unconsciously descended to the level of the petty bourgeoisie, whose
standpoint was: throw out the rich but it’s not worth while putting
oneself under the accounting and control of an organisation; that’s
not needed for small proprietors, they don’t want that—but in
that alone lies the guarantee of the stability and triumph of our
revolution.

Comrades, I shall not touch on further details and quotations from the
newspaper Levi Kommunist , [9] but I shall say briefly: it is time to cry out
when people have gone so far as to say that the introduction of labour
discipline will be a step back. And I must say that I regard this as such an
unheard-of reactionary thing, such a threat to the revolution, that if I did
not know that it was said by a group without any influence, and that it
would be refuted at any class-conscious meeting of workers, I would say: the
Russian revolution is lost.

The Left Communists write: “The introduction of labour discipline,
coupled with restoring the leadership of capitalists in industry, cannot
substantially raise labour productivity but it will lower the class
initiative, activity and organised character of the proletariat. It
threatens serfdom for the working class. . . .” This is untrue; if it
were the case, our Russian revolution as regards its socialist tasks and its
socialist essence would be on the point of collapse. But this is not
true. The declassed petty-bourgeois intelligentsia does not understand that
the chief difficulty for socialism lies in ensuring labour
discipline. Socialists wrote about this long ago, they thought most of all
about this in the distant past, they devoted the greatest concern to it and
its analysis, they understood that the real difficulties for the socialist
revolution begin here. More than once up to now there have been revolutions
which ruthlessly overthrew the bourgeoisie, no less vigorously than we did,
but when we went so far as to establish Soviet power we thereby showed that
we were making the practical transition from the abolition of economic
serfdom to the self-discipline of labour, that our rule is one which must
really be the rule of labour. When people say to us that the dictatorship of
the proletariat is recognised in words but that in reality it is mere
phrases that are written, this actually shows that they have no notion of
the dictatorship of the proletariat, for it by no means merely consists in
over throwing the bourgeoisie or the landowners—that happened in all
revolutions—our dictatorship of the proletariat is the establishment
of order, discipline, labour productivity, accounting and control by the
proletarian Soviet power, which is more stable and firmly based than the
previous one. That is what you won’t solve, that is what we have not
yet taught, that is what is needed by the workers, that is why it is good to
show them a mirror in which all these shortcomings are plainly visible. I
consider that this is a useful task for it will cause all thinking,
class-conscious workers and peasants to devote their main efforts to
it. Yes, by overthrowing the landowners and bourgeoisie we cleared the way
but we did not build the edifice of socialism. On the ground cleared of one
bourgeois generation, new generations continually appear in history, as long
as the ground gives rise to them, and it does give rise to any number of
bourgeois. As for those who look at the victory over the capitalists in the
way that the petty proprietors look at it—"they grabbed, let me have a
go too"—indeed, every one of them is the source of a new generation of
bourgeois. When they tell us that the introduction of labour discipline
coupled with restoring capitalists as leaders is a threat to the revolution,
I say: it is just the socialist character of our revolution that these
people have failed to understand, they repeat the very thing that easily
unites them with the petty bourgeois, who fear discipline, organisation,
accounting and control as the devil fears holy water.

They may say: you are actually proposing here to give us capitalists as
leaders among the working-class leaders. Yes, they are being brought in
because in the matter of practical organisation they have knowledge that we
do not possess. The class-conscious worker will never be afraid of such a
leader, because he knows that Soviet power is his power, that it will stand
firm in his defence, because he knows that he wants to learn the practice of
organisation.

We organised thousands under the tsar and hundreds of thousands under
Kerensky. That is nothing, it does not count in politics. It was preparatory
work, it was a preparatory course. Until the leading workers have learnt to
organise tens of millions, they will not be socialists or creators of a
socialist society, they will not acquire the necessary knowledge of
organisation. The road of organisation is a long road and the tasks of
socialist construction demand stubborn, long-continued work and appropriate
knowledge, of which we do not have enough. Even the more developed
generation of the immediate future will hardly achieve the complete
transition to socialism.

Recall what former socialists wrote about the future socialist
revolution; it is doubtful whether it would be possible to pass to socialism
without learning from the organisers of trusts, for they have been concerned
with this type of production on a large scale. We do not need to teach them
socialism, we need to expropriate them and to break their sabotage. These
two tasks we have carried out. We have to make them submit to workers’
control. And if our critics among the Left Communists have levelled against
us the reproach that we are not leading to communism by our tactics but are
going back, their reproaches are ridiculous: they forget that we have lagged
behind with accounting and control because it has been very difficult to
smash this resistance and bring the bourgeoisie and its technicians and
bourgeois specialists into our service. But we need their knowledge, their
experience and labour, without which it is impossible, in fact, to gain
possession of the culture that was created by the old social relations and
has remained as the material basis of socialism. If the Left Communists have
not noticed this, it is because they do not see life as it really is but
concoct their slogans by counterposing state capitalism to ideal
socialism. We, however, must tell the workers: yes, it is a step back, but
we have to help ourselves to find a remedy. There is only one remedy:
organise to the last man, organise accounting over production, organise
accounting and control over consumption and act so that we do not have to
turn out hundreds of millions in currency from the printing press, [10] and so
that not a single hundred-ruble note is lost to the state treasury by
falling into the wrong hands. This cannot be done by any outburst of
revolutionary fervour, by any knock-out blow to the bourgeoisie. It can be
done only by self-discipline, only by organising the labour of the workers
and peasants, only by accounting and control. This we do not have yet and
for it we have paid tribute by paying the capitalist organisers a higher
remuneration than they paid you. This we have not learnt, but must learn, it
is the road to socialism, the sole road—that of teaching the workers
the practical business of managing gigantic enterprises, of organising big
industry and large-scale distribution.

Comrades, I am very well aware how easy it is to talk of accounting,
control, discipline and self-discipline when the speaker is someone
occupying a definite social position. What a lot of material for witticisms
this provides, and for saying: when your Party was not in power it promised
the workers rivers flowing with milk and honey, mountains of sugar candy,
but when these people are in power there is the usual transformation, they
begin to talk of accounting, discipline, self-discipline, control, etc. I am
very well aware what promising material this is for publicists of the type
of Milyukov and Martov.

I am very well aware what rich material this is for persons whose
concern is hack writing or showmanship, and who are inclined to use the
flimsiest arguments, which receive scant sympathy from class-conscious
workers.

In the newspaper Levi Kommunist I came across a review of my
book [11] by such an eminent publicist as Bukharin; it was moreover a sympathetic review, but anything of value in it lost all
its value for me when I had read through this review to the end. I
perceived that Bukharin had not seen what should have been seen, and this
happened because he wrote his review in April but quoted what had already
become out of date for April, what belonged to a previous day, viz., that
it was necessary to smash the old state. This we have already done, it is
a task which belongs to a previous day, and we have to go forward and look
not at the past but at the future and create a state based on the commune;
he wrote about what is already embodied in Soviet organisations, but said
nothing about accounting, control and discipline. What a frame of mind
these people have, and how their psychology coincides with the sentiments
of the petty bourgeoisie: let us overthrow the rich, but there is no need
for control. That is how they look at it; it holds them captive and it
divides the class-conscious proletarian from the petty bourgeoisie and
even from the extreme revolutionaries. This is when the proletarian says:
let us organise and brace up, or some petty kulak, and there are millions
of them, will overthrow us.

Here is the division between the class-conscious proletarian and the
petty bourgeois; here the revolution takes leave of the petty
bourgeoisie. And how blind are those people who do not say anything about
this.

I shall venture to remind you of some more of my quotations; I said that
people will be able to do without coercion when they are accustomed to act
without it; such a custom, of course, may be the result of long
training.

When the Left Communists hear this, they clutch their heads and say: how
is it that we didn’t notice this? Bukharin, why didn’t you
criticise it? We showed our strength in suppressing the landowners and the
bourgeoisie, and now we have to show our strength as regards self-discipline
and organisation, because this is known from thousands of years of past
experience and the people must be told that only in this lies the strength
of our Soviet power, of the workers’ dictatorship, of our proletarian
authority. The petty bourgeois, however, hide from this truth behind the
shield of revolutionary phraseology.

We have to show our strength. Yes, the small employers, petty
proprietors, are ready to help us proletarians to overthrow the landowners
and capitalists. But after this our paths diverge. They have no love for
organisation, discipline, they are hostile to it. And here we have to wage
the most determined, ruthless struggle against these proprietors and small
employers. Because it is here, in the sphere of organisation, that socialist
construction begins for us. And when I express my dissent to those people
who claim to be socialists and who promise the workers they shall enjoy as
much as they like and whatever they like, I say that communism presupposes a
productivity of labour that we do not have at present. Our productivity is too low, that is a
fact. Capitalism leaves us as a heritage, especially in a backward country,
a host of customs through which all state property, all public property, is
regarded as something that may be maliciously spoilt. This psychology of the
petty-bourgeois mass is felt at every step, and the struggle in this sphere
is a very difficult one. Only the organised proletariat can endure
everything. I wrote: “Until the higher phase of communism arrives, the
socialists demand the strictest control by society and by the state." [ The State and Revolution ]

I wrote this before the October Revolution and I stand by it now.

Now, having suppressed the bourgeoisie and broken their sabotage, the
time has come when we have an opportunity of dealing with this matter. While
this was not the case, the heroes of the day and the heroes of the
revolution were the Red Guards who performed their great historic
deeds. They took up arms without the consent of the propertied classes. They
performed this great historic work. They took up arms in order to overthrow
the exploiters and make their arms an instrument for defence of the workers,
and in order to look after the standards of production and labour and the
standard of consumption.

We have not produced this, but it contains the kernel and the basis of
socialism. If there are any to whom such work seems boring and
uninteresting, they are representatives of petty-bourgeois laziness.

If our revolution halted here, it would go down in history no less than
the revolution of 1793. But people will say: that was in the eighteenth
century. For the eighteenth century that sufficed, but for the twentieth it
is not enough. Accounting and control—that is mainly what is needed
for the proper functioning of communist society. So I wrote before the
October Revolution. [ The State and Revolution ]
I repeat, it was impossible to tackle this matter until the Alexeyevs,
Kornilovs and Kerenskys were crushed. Now the armed resistance of the
bourgeoisie has been crushed. Our task is to put all the saboteurs to work
under our control, under the control of the Soviet power, to set up
managerial bodies so that accounting and control will be strictly carried
out. The country is being ruined because after the war it has been through
it lacks the elementary conditions for normal existence. Our enemies who are
attacking us seem terrible only because we have not instituted accounting
and control. When I hear hundreds of thousands of complaints about famine,
when you see and know that these complaints are justified, that we have
grain and cannot transport it, when we encounter the scoffing of the Left
Communists and their objections to such measures as our railway
decree—they have mentioned it twice—these are trifles.

At the meeting with the Left Communists on April 4, I said: give us your
draft of the decree; after all, you are citizens of the Soviet Republic,
members of Soviet institutions, you are not critics standing apart from us,
outside the gate, like the bourgeois traders and saboteurs who criticise in
order to vent their spleen. You, I repeat, are leaders of Soviet
organisations; try to give us your draft decree. They cannot give it and
will never be able to, because our railway decree is correct, because by
introducing dictatorship our decree has the sympathy of the masses and
class-conscious working people of the railways, but is opposed by those
managers who plunder and accept bribes, because a vacillating attitude to it
is shown by all those who waver between the Soviet government and its
enemies— whereas the proletariat, which learnt discipline from
large-scale production, knows that there cannot be socialism until
production is organised on a large scale and until there is even stricter
discipline.

This proletariat supports us in the railway movement; it will combat the
anarchy of the petty proprietors and will show that the Russian revolution,
which is capable of winning brilliant victories, is capable also of
overcoming its own lack of organisation. And among the May Day slogans, from
the standpoint of immediate tasks, it will appreciate the slogan of the
Central Committee which reads: “We conquered capital, we shall conquer
also our own lack of organisation”. Only then shall we reach the full
victory of socialism! ( Loud applause. )

2

Reply To The Debate On The Report On The Immediate Tasks

First of all I must reply to Comrade Bukharin’s speech. In my first
speech I remarked that we were nine-tenths in agreement with him, and so I
think it is a pity that we should disagree as regards the other tenth. He
is one-tenth in the position of having to spend half his speech
disassociating and exorcising himself from absolutely everyone who spoke
in support of him. And no matter how excellent his intentions and those of
his group, the falsity of their position is proved by the fact that he
always has to spend time making excuses and disassociating himself on the
issue of state capitalism.

Comrade Bukharin is completely wrong; and I shall make this known in the
press because this question is extremely important. I have a couple of words
to say about the Left Communists’ reproaching us on the grounds that a
deviation in the direction of state capitalism is to be observed in our
policy; now Comrade Bukharin wrongly states that under Soviet power state
capitalism is impossible. So he is contradicting himself when he says that
there can be no state capitalism under Soviet power—that is an obvious
absurdity. The large number of enterprises and factories under the control
of the Soviet government and owned by the state, this alone shows the
transition from capitalism to socialism, but Comrade Bukharin ignores
this. Instead, he recalls that we were against him in the Left Zimmerwald, [12] but
that was ages ago and to recall that now, after Soviet power has been in
existence for six months, after we have performed all the experiments we
could when we had expropriated, confiscated and nationalised—after all
that to recall what we wrote in 1915 is absurd. . . . Now we cannot help
bringing up the problem of state capitalism and socialism, of how to act in
the transitional period, in which you have bits of capitalism and socialism
existing side by side under Soviet power. Comrade Bukharin refuses to
understand this problem; but I think we cannot throw it out all at once, and
Comrade Bukharin does not propose throwing it out and does not deny that
this state capitalism is something higher than what is left of the small
proprietor’s mentality, economic conditions and way of life, which are
still extremely prevalent. Comrade Bukharin has not refuted that fact, for
it cannot be refuted without forgetting the word Marxist.

Ghe’s position that the proletariat in Europe is unclean, that in
Germany the proletariat is corrupted, [13] is so crudely nationalistic,
so obtuse that I don’t know what he will say next. The proletariat in
Europe is not one bit more unclean than in Russia, but to start a revolution
there is more difficult because the people in power are not idiots like
Romanov or boasters like Kerensky but serious leaders of capitalism, which
was not the case in Russia.

Finally I come to the chief objections that have been showered upon my
article and my speech from all sides. Particularly heavy fire was directed
at the slogan: “steal back the stolen”, a slogan in which, no
matter how I look at it, I can find nothing wrong, when history comes on the
scene. If we use the words “expropriate the expropriators”, why
can’t we do without Latin words? ( Applause. )

I think history will fully justify us, and the masses of the working
people are coming over to our side even before history; but if the slogan
“steal back the stolen” has shown itself unrestrainedly in the
activity of the Soviets, and if it turns out that in a practical and
fundamental matter like famine and unemployment we are confronted by
enormous difficulties, it is appropriate to say that after the words
“steal back what was stolen” the proletarian revolution makes a
distinction, which runs: “Count up what was stolen and don’t let
it be filched piecemeal, and if people start filching for themselves
directly or indirectly, these infringers of discipline must be
shot. . . .”

And when they start yelling and shouting that this is dictatorship, when
they start yelling about Napoleon III and Julius Caesar, when they say this
is the working class’s inability to act seriously, when they accuse
Trotsky, it means there is the same muddle-headedness, the same political
mood induced by petty-bourgeois anarchy, which has been protesting not
against the “steal back the stolen” slogan, but against the
slogan of strict accounting and correct distribution. There will be no
famine in Russia if we calculate how much grain there is, check up on all
stocks, and if any breaking of the regulations is followed by the most
severe punishment. That is where the difference lies. And it arises from the
situation that obtains when the socialist revolution is seriously supported
only by the proletariat while the petty bourgeoisie approaches it with
hesitation, a fact we have always been aware of and always taken into
account; and in this wavering they are against us. This will not make us
hesitate and we shall continue to follow our path in the certainty that half
the proletariat will follow us because it knows perfectly well how the
factory owners robbed and stole merely so that the poor should have
nothing.

It is just a lot of verbal trickery, all this talk about a dictatorship,
Napoleon III, Julius Caesar and so forth. People can be fooled with that
kind of talk here, but in the provinces, at every factory, in every village
they know perfectly well that we are lagging behind in this respect; no one
will question this slogan, everyone knows what it means. And there can be no
doubt either that we shall direct all our efforts towards organising
accounting, control and correct distribution.

Bukharin told us: “I disassociate myself from those who embrace
me.” But there are so many of them that Bukharin cannot extricate
himself. They don’t tell us what their proposals are because they have
nothing to propose. Do you know what to propose? I have reproached you in
the press and in my speeches. Over the matter of the railway decree we had
the pleasure of recalling April 4. There is a reference to this in your
magazine, and I have said that if you are not quite satisfied with the
decree, give us a new decree. But there has not been a word about this in
the

first issue, nor in the second issue, the proofs of which have kindly been
given to me to look at; and there was not a word about it in Comrade
Bukharin’s speech either—a complete coincidence. Both Comrade
Bukharin and Comrade Martov have got on their hobby horse—the
railway decree—and are riding it to death. They talk about the
dictatorship of Napoleon III, Julius Caesar and so on, providing material
for a hundred issues that no one will read. But this is a little nearer
the point. This is about the workers and the railways. Without railways
not only will there be no socialism but everyone will starve to death like
dogs while there is grain to be had close by. Everyone knows this
perfectly well. Why don’t you answer? You are closing your eyes. You
are throwing dust in the eyes of the workers—the adherents of
Novaya Zhizn and the Mensheviks deliberately, Comrade Bukharin by
mistake. You are concealing the main issue from the workers when you talk
of construction. What can be constructed without railways? And when I see
some merchant or other, who tells me during a meeting of some kind, or
when I am receiving a delegation, that there has been some improvement on
such and such a railway, that praise is worth a million times more to me
than 20 resolutions by Communists or anyone else, or any speeches.

When the practical people—engineers, merchants and so on—say
that if this government copes at least to some extent with the railways,
they will admit that it is a government, their opinion matters more than
anything else. Because the railways are the key, they are one of the most
striking manifestations of the connection between town and country, between
industry and agriculture, on which socialism is entirely based. To make this
connection good for the sake of planned activity in the interests of the
whole population, we need railways.

All these phrases about dictatorship and so on, over which the Martovs
and Karelins have found common ground and which have been masticated twice
over by the Constitutional-Democratic press—they amount to
nothing.

I have given you the example of the workers’ organisations that
are doing it, and the state capitalism of other enterprises, other branches
of industry; the tobacco workers and tanners have more state capitalism than
others, and their affairs are in better order, and their road to socialism
is more certain. There is no concealing this fact, and another thing you
can’t do is to come out with absurd phrases as Ghe does, when he says
that with a rifle he can force anyone. That is a complete absurdity and a
complete failure to understand what a rifle is for. After that one might
think that a rifle is a bad thing, unless it is anarchist Ghe’s head
that is the bad thing. ( Applause. ) A rifle was a very good thing
when the capitalist who was waging war against us had to be shot, when
thieves had to be caught at their thievery and shot. But when Comrade
Bukharin said there were people who were receiving salaries of 4,000 and
they ought to be put up against a wall and shot, he was wrong. We have got
to find such people. We have not very many posts where people get 4,000. We
pick them up here and there. The whole point is that we have no experts,
that is why we have got to enlist 1,000 people, first-class experts in their
fields, who value their work, who like large-scale industry because they
know that it means improvements in technology. When people here say that
socialism can be won without learning from the bourgeoisie, I know this is
the psychology of an inhabitant of Central Africa. The only socialism we can
imagine is one based on all the lessons learned through large-scale
capitalist culture. Socialism without postal and telegraph services, without
machines is the emptiest of phrases. But it is impossible to sweep aside the
bourgeois atmosphere and bourgeois habits all at once; it needs the kind of
organisation on which all modern science and technology are based. To say a
rifle will do the job is the greatest stupidity. Everything depends on
nation-wide organisation—the whole population’s paying income
tax, the introduction of labour service, everyone’s being registered;
while a person is not registered, we have to pay him. When Bukharin said he
could not see the principle, he was missing the point. Marx envisaged buying
up the bourgeoisie as a class. He was writing about Britain, before Britain
had imperialism, when a peaceful transition to socialism was
possible—it certainly is not a reference to the earlier type of
socialism. [14] We are talking not about the bourgeoisie but
about recruiting experts. I have given one example. One could cite
thousands. It is simply a question of attracting people who can be attracted
either by buying them with high salaries or by ideological organisation,
because you can’t deny the fact that it is they who are receiving all
the high wages. We know from the example I gave—up to now you have
been criticising only tacitly, yet the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries know
perfectly well that the salaries paid are high. And the Left Communists and
Novaya Zhizn adherents know it too.

And they don’t criticise this. That’s their sincere criticism of the Soviet government! When they saw that their engineers were
getting 1,500, they kept quiet. Far better to pay these engineers. And no
mention of Julius Caesar or dictatorship. This is political education of the
masses. But if I say we are going to pay from 1,500 to 2,000 a month,
that’s a step back. Then out come Julius Caesar and Napoleon III and
the Brest-Litovsk peace and everything; but not a word about your experts,
about your engineers. And when they say, when Bukharin says, this is no
violation of principle, I say that here we have a violation of the principle
of the Paris Commune. State capitalism is not money but social relations. If
we pay 2,000 in accordance with the railway decree, that is state
capitalism. Comrade Bukharin referred to the Zimmerwald resolution of 1915
and he can’t free himself of that ill-digested theory. Free yourself,
Comrade Bukharin. Now Comrade Bukharin has said that I am attacking the
petty-bourgeois element.

I was not attacking the working peasants when I spoke of the
petty-bourgeois element. Let us leave the working peasants
alone—that’s not what I am talking about. But among the
peasantry there are working peasants and petty-bourgeois peasants, who live
like petty proprietors at the expense of others; the working peasants are
exploited by others, but they want to live at their own expense. So Comrade
Karelin in thinking that the working peasants are being attacked is
wrong. The poor peasants who have nothing to gain from stealing what is
stolen are on our side. They will accept our slogans. We know very well and
have seen how people in the villages understand the slogan “steal back
the stolen”. If people go there agitating about dictatorship and
spouting phrases about the Brest peace and so forth, these people who are
arguing against us will find themselves isolated and will receive no
support. The proletariat, the mass of the peasants, who are ruined and have
no hopes as regards individual farming, will be on our side because they
know perfectly well that Russia cannot be kept going simply by stealing. We
all know that quite well and everyone can see and feel it in his own,
everyday affairs.

In this we are keeping up with economic demands and the mood of the
masses of the working people. So when the declassed intellectuals among the
Left Communists hurl their thunderbolts at us, we must remain confident that
no matter how much they curse us, this slogan of the socialist revolution is
the only correct slogan, which the masses of the working people must
understand and use if we are to consolidate and complete the socialist
revolution. You won’t wriggle out of that problem at any
workers’ meeting; you will be pursued with this decree, this
problem. We do not claim to be infallible; many of our decrees are bad. Put
them right; you have various magazines and groups of writers. Tell us what
is wrong with the railway decree. We suggested you should do so at the
meeting of April 4, and today it is April 29th. Twenty-five days have passed
and a whole group of splendid writers is silent because they have nothing to
say.

You know that our railway decree, in spite of all its mistakes, which we
are quite ready to correct, got down to the core of what is needed. It
pivots on that mass of workers who respond to the strictest discipline, who
need to be organised by a single authority which the Soviets can appoint and
which the Soviets can replace and from whom they demand unfailing execution
of assignments so that large-scale industry will operate like a machine and
thousands of people will be directed by a single will, obey the orders of a
single Soviet manager. ( Applause. ) And to bring up Napoleon and
Julius Caesar on these grounds is either to go mad or to become completely
lost in the literature of the privileged classes whose sole purpose in life
is to curse the Bolsheviks. The railway decree, comrades, is a step that
shows we are on the right road. In my speech I informed you why we had taken
that road; in the Council of People’s Commissars we did not spend our
time discussing Napoleon the Great and Julius Caesar but we did go over the
question a hundred times of how to get the railways in order, and we know
the response from the provinces, and we know from any number of talks with
the railway organisations that the proletarians are for us, that they seek
discipline and expect order. They see that people in Central Russia are
starving while there is grain, but that owing to the transport muddle it is
hard to deliver it.

But if there are people who are wavering, lost, in a petty-bourgeois
mood, who have been frightened by one-man management, who go into hysterics
and refuse to support us, why is this? Is it because there is a Right wing,
or because people have got hysterics, particularly the Left
Socialist-Revolutionaries? In their case the confusion is complete, no one
could sort it out. So to avoid a lot of useless argument we say: get down to
the main issue and deal with it in specific terms.

When people here talk of conciliation with the bourgeoisie, as Karelin
and Martov have done, that is nonsense. I will remind you from
Kautsky’s authoritative pamphlet how he conceived life the day after
the social revolution. I will tell you approximately what he wrote; the
trust organisers will not be left without work to do. That was written by a
man who realised that to organise tens of millions of people for the
production and distribution of goods is some job! We have not learned this
and there is nowhere to learn it, but the trust organisers know that without
this there will be no socialism. And we need to know it too. So all these
phrases about conciliation and agreement with the bourgeoisie are empty
chatter. You cannot refute Kautsky’s premise that large-scale industry
must be learned through experience.

Endnotes

[1] The
politically active workers of Moscow and many Party and Soviet workers were
invited to a meeting of the All-Russia C.E.C. on April 29, 1918.

N. K. Krupskaya wrote of Lenin’s speech at this meeting, “To
enable the workers’ active of Moscow to hear Ilyich’s report
on the immediate tasks of the Soviet government, the meeting was held at
the Polytechnical Museum. Ilyich was greeted with a tumultuous ovation and
listened to with rapt attention. Obviously, the question was one of keen
interest to everybody. Ilyich spoke there with extraordinary
fervour” (see N. K. Krupskaya, Reminiscences of Lenin .

[2]
The reference is to the Second Congress of the Left
Socialist-Revolutionary Party, which was held from April 17 to 25, 1918 in
Moscow. Two trends emerged during the discussion of the party’s
tasks in the current situation. One section of the delegates led by
B. D. Kamkov defended the activities of the Central Committee directed
against the conclusion of the Brest peace and approved the Left
Socialist-Revolutionaries’ refusal to work in the central organs of
the Soviet Government because the treaty had been ratified by the
Extraordinary Fourth Congress of Soviets. Another section, led by
M. A. Spiridonova, criticised the Central Committee, accused it of extreme
“Leftism” and insisted that the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries
should participate in the Soviet Government in order to get their agrarian
programme adopted. After a heated debate the Congress passed an ambivalent
decision. While approving the position of the Central Committee on the
question of the Brest peace and the withdrawal of the Left
Socialist-Revolutionaries from the Council of People’s Commissars,
it advocated participation in the central and local administrative bodies
with the aim of “straightening out the general line of Soviet
policy”.

[3]
Znamya Truda ( Banner of Labour )—daily newspaper of the Petrograd Committee of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. It first
appeared on August 23 (September 5), 1917. After the First All-Russia
Congress of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party, as from No. 105, which
appeared on December 28, 1917 (January 10, 1918), the newspaper became the
central organ of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party. It was banned in
July 1918 during the Left Socialist-Revolutionary revolt.

[4]
This refers to the third point in the theses passed at the proposal of the
Menshevik I. A. Isuv by the plenum of the Moscow Regional Committee of
Social-Democrats (Mensheviks), held in April 1918. In his article “
’Left-Wing’ Childishness and the Petty-Bourgeois
Mentality” Lenin compared this thesis (a “perfect example of
bourgeois provocatory speech-making") with the economic propositions put
forward by the “Left Communists”, showing that they were the
same and that the position the “Left Communists” had taken up
meant their complete renunciation of communism in practice and complete
desertion to the camp of the petty bourgeoisie” (see this volume,
p. 348).

[5]
Theses on the Present Situation put forward by the “Left
Communists” were discussed at a joint meeting of members of the
Party Central Committee and the “Left Communist” group on
April 4, 1918. Lenin examined and criticised these theses in detail in his
article “Left-Wing” Childishness and the Petty-Bourgeois
Mentality” (see this volume, pp. 323-54).

[6]

The reference is to the voting on the ratification of the peace treaty at
the Extraordinary Seventh Congress of the R.C.P.(B). Distorting the facts,
the “Left Communists” quoted the number who voted for the
peace treaty according to the results of the preliminary voting on the two
resolutions—Lenin’s and that of the “Left
Communists” (the former, Lenin’s resolution, gained 28 votes,
the latter only 9, and was immediately turned down). But when speaking of
how many votes were cast against conclusion of the peace treaty the
“Left Communists” quoted the results of the final voting on
Lenin’s resolution alone (30 votes in favour, 12 against, and 4
abstentions).

[7]
The Second All-Ukraine Congress of Soviets was held in
Ekaterinoslav (now Dniepropetrovsk) March 17-19, 1918. The Congress was
attended by 964 delegates: 428 Bolsheviks, 414 Left Socialist-
Revolutionaries, 82 non-Party, and 40 other delegates. The Bolsheviks had
to fight not only the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and the bourgeois
nationalists but also the “Left Communists”, who tried to use
the Congress to promote their adventuristic policy and put forward a
disruptive motion of censure against the Soviet Government’s
conclusion of the Brest Treaty. The Bolshevik group, however led by
Y. B. Gamarnik, A. V. Ivanov, F. A. Sergeyev (Artyom) and N. A. Skrypnik,
staunchly defended Lenin’s position over the matter of peace and got
the Congress to approve the decision of the Fourth All-Russia Congress of
Soviets on the ratification of the peace treaty with Germany.

In its Resolution on the Political Situation, which expressed the will of
the Ukrainian people, the Congress stated that the mass of the working
people of the Ukraine together with the workers and peasants of Russia and
the other republics would fight resolutely for Soviet power. In view of
the situation that had arisen in connection with the Brest peace, the
Congress declared the Ukraine an independent Soviet republic and called on
the working people of the Ukraine to wage a ruthless struggle against the
Austro-German invaders and the Central Rada. At the same time the Congress
stressed that the terms of the peace treaty insisted on by imperialist
Germany were unjust, that the Ukraine’s federative connection with
Russia was only formally broken, and that essentially her relations with
the R.S.F.S.R. remained unchanged.

[8]
Lenin is referring to the state-capitalist combines set up in the leather,
textile and sugar industries. At the beginning of 1918 the Tanners’
Union came to an agreement with the All-Russia Society of Manufacturers
and Factory-owners of the Leather Industry, under which the tanneries were
to work on a subsidised basis for the Soviet Government and place all
their output at the disposal of the state. The industry was administered
by the Central Leather Board (Glavkozha), on which two-thirds of the seats
were held by workers and one-third by private manufacturers and bourgeois
technical experts. Analogous agreements were concluded in textiles, sugar
and some other branches of the light and food industries. The state
retained the right to confiscate any enterprises that were part of a
state-capitalist combine.

Lenin approved the “proletariat’s attempts to make contracts
with the manufacturers’ associations” under conditions of the
dictatorship of the proletariat, and stated that agreements of this kind
could ensure the workers’ control over whole branches of
industry”.

[9]
Levi Kommunist (Left Communist) was how Lenin ironically dubbed
the magazine Kommunist , the mouthpiece of the anti-Party group of
“Left Communists”.

[10]
Lenin is referring to the issue of money and banknotes by the Soviet
Government to make good its insufficient revenues from the usual sources
(industry, transport, regular taxes and so on). Thanks to Party and
Government measures to improve the country’s financial position,
this emission was reduced in the middle of 1918.

[11]
The reference is to Lenin’s book The State and Revolution , which
was reviewed on April 20, 1918 in the “Left Communist” magazine Kommunist No. 1.

[12]
The Left Zimmerwald —a group of Left Internationalists founded on Lenin’s initiative at the International Socialist
Conference in Zimmerwald, September 1915. See also Glossary Entry for Zimmerwald Left .

[13]
Speaking on Lenin’s report at a meeting of the All-Russia C.E.C.,
the anarchist A. Y. Ghe stated that “hope of assistance from the
German proletariat is a utopia”. According to Ghe, the German
proletariat, like the whole West-European proletariat was
“unclean” and “hypnotised by its depraving orthodox
Social Democratic education”.

[14]
Karl Marx spoke of the possibility of a peaceful transition to socialism
under certain specific conditions in a speech at a meeting in Amsterdam on
September 8, 1872 (Marx/Engels, Werke , Band 18, S. 160, Dietz
Verlag, Berlin). Marx regarded purchasing the means of production from the
capitalists as one of the specific ways of bringing about such a
transition. Engels wrote: “We are certainly not of the opinion that
buying up is inadmissible under any circumstances; Marx has stated his
opinion to me—and how often!—that the cheapest thing for us
would be if we could buy off the whole gang of them” (Marx/Engels,
Werke , Band 22, S. 504).