V. I. Lenin

Speech At The First All-Russia Congress Of

Workers In Education and Socialist Culture

July 31, 1919 [1]

Comrades, it gives me great pleasure to greet your
Congress in the name of the Council of People’s Commissars.

In the sphere of education we have long had to struggle against
the same difficulties that Soviet power encounters in all
spheres of work and in all spheres of organisation. We saw that
organisations regarded as the only mass organisations were from
the very outset headed by people who, for a lengthy period, were
under the influence of bourgeois prejudices. In the first days
of Soviet power, in October 1917, we even saw how the army
swamped us in Petrograd with declarations to the effect that it
did not recognise Soviet power, threatened to go against
Petrograd and expressed solidarity with bourgeois governments. As long ago as that we were sure that these
declarations came from the top people in these organisations,
from the army committees of that time, who represented the past
in the development of the moods, convictions and views of our
army. The situation has since then repeated itself in all mass
organisations—in respect of the railway proletariat, and
again in respect of the post and telegraph employees. We have
always noted that at first the past maintains its power and
influence over mass organisations. We were, therefore, riot.at
all surprised at the lengthy and stubborn struggle that went on
among the school-teachers, the majority of whom, if not all,
from the very beginning took a stand hostile to Soviet power. We
saw how we gradually had to overcome bourgeois prejudices and
how the school-teachers, who were closely connected with the
workers and labouring peasantry, had to struggle against the
former bourgeois system to win for themselves rights and to
break a road to a genuine rapprochement with the working masses,
to a genuine understanding of the nature of the socialist
revolution that was under way. Until now you have had more than
anybody else to deal with the old prejudices of the bourgeois
intelligentsia, with their usual methods and arguments, with
their defence of bourgeois or capitalist society, with their
struggle, not usually direct but carried on under cover of some
outwardly pleasant slogans which are advanced to defend
capitalism in one way or another.

Comrades, you may remember how Marx describes the way the
worker got to the modern capitalist factory, how he analysed the
enslavement of the worker in a disciplined, cultured and "free"
capitalist society, studied the causes of the oppression of labour
by capital, how he approached the fundamentals of the production
process, how he described the worker’s entry into a capitalist factory where the robbery of surplus-value takes place
and the foundation of capitalist exploitation is laid down, where
capitalist society is built, the society that gives riches to the
few and holds the many in a state of oppression. When Marx reached
this most significant, most fundamental place in his book—the analysis of capitalist exploitation—he
accompanied his introduction to this analysis with the ironical
remark that the place he was taking the reader to, the place where
profit was extracted by the capitalists, was the place where
liberty, equality and Bentham ruled. [2] By this Marx stressed
the ideology up-held by the bourgeoisie in capitalist society and
which they justify because from their point of view, from the
point of view of the bourgeoisie who had won the fight against the
feudals, "Liberty, Equality and Bentham" ruled in capitalist
society which was based on the rule of money, the rule of capital
and the exploitation of the working people. What they call liberty
is liberty to make profit, liberty for the few to become rich, the
liberty of the trade turnover; what they call equality is equality
between capitalist, and worker; and the rule of Bentham is the
rule of the petty-bourgeois prejudice about liberty and equality.

If we look around us, if we take a look at those arguments that
were used in the struggle against us yesterday and which are
being used today by members of the old teachers’ union and
which we still meet with among our ideological opponents who
call themselves socialists (the Socialist-Revolutionaries and
Mensheviks), those arguments that we meet with in a not very
conscious form in our day-to-day talks with the peasant masses
who have not yet understood the significance of socialism—if you take a look at and give some thought to
the ideological meaning of these arguments you will find the
very same bourgeois motif that Marx stressed in Capital. All
these people reiterate the catch-phrase that Liberty, Equality
and Bentham rule in capitalist society. And when objections to
us are raised from this point of view and it is said that we,
the Bolsheviks and Soviet power, are contravening freedom and
equality, we refer those who say so to the elements of political
economy, to the basic doctrines of Marx. We maintain that the
freedom you accuse the Bolsheviks of contravening is the freedom
of capital, the freedom of an owner to sell grain on the open
market, i.e., the freedom for the few to make profit, for those
who have grain surpluses. That freedom of the press that the
Bolsheviks have constantly been accused of having violated—what is this freedom of the press in a capitalist
society? Everybody could see what the press was in our "free"
Russia. This was seen to a still greater extent by people who
were familiar with, have been able to observe closely or had had
dealings with press affairs in the advanced capitalist countries. Freedom of the press in capitalist society means
freedom to trade in publications and in their influence on the
masses. Freedom of the press means that the press, a powerful
medium for influencing the masses, is maintained at the expense
of the capitalists. Such is the freedom of the press that the
Bolsheviks violated and they are proud of having produced—the first press free of the capitalists, that in
a gigantic country they have for the first time set up a press
that does not depend on a handful of rich men and millionaires—a press that is devoted entirely to the
struggle against capital, the struggle to which we must
subordinate everything. Only the factory proletariat that is
capable of leading the peasant masses that are not class-conscious can be the leader, the vanguard, of the working
people in this struggle.

When we are reproached with having established a dictatorship
of one party and, as you have heard, a united socialist front is
proposed, we say, "Yes, it is a dictatorship of one party! This is
what we stand for and we shall not shift from that position
because it is the party that has won, in the course of decades,
the position of vanguard of the entire factory and industrial
proletariat. This party had won that position even before the
revolution of 1905. It is the party that was at the head of the
workers in 1905 and which since then—even at the time of the
reaction after 1905 when the working-class movement was
rehabilitated with such difficulty under the Stolypin
Duma—merged with the working class and it alone could lead
that class to a profound, fundamental change in the old society."
When a united socialist front is proposed to us we say that it is
the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties that propose it,
and that they have wavered in favour of the bourgeoisie throughout
the revolution. We have had a double experience—the Kerensky
period when the Socialist-Revolutionaries formed a coalition
government that was helped by the Entente, that is, by the world
bourgeoisie, the imperialists of France, America and Britain. What
did that result in? Was there that gradual transition to socialism
they had promised? No, there was collapse, the absolute rule of
the imperialists, the rule of the bourgeoisie and the complete
bankruptcy of all sorts of illusions about class conciliation.

If that experience is not enough, take Siberia. There we saw
the same thing happen again. In Siberia the government was against
the Bolsheviks. At the beginning the entire bourgeoisie who had
fled from Soviet power came to the help of the Czechoslovak
uprising and the uprising of time Socialist-Revolutionaries and
Mensheviks. They were helped by the entire bourgeoisie and the
capitalists of the most powerful countries of Europe and America;
their aid was not merely ideological but financial and military
aid as well. And what was the result? What came of this rule that
was allegedly the rule of the Constituent Assembly, that allegedly
democratic government of Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks?
It led to the Kolchak gamble. Why did it lead to the collapse that
we have witnessed? Because here we saw the effect of the basic
truth, which the so-called socialists from the camp of our
opponents do not want to understand, that there can be only one of
two possible powers in capitalist society, either the power of the
capitalists or the power of the proletariat, no matter whether
that society is developing, is firmly on its feet, or is
declining. Every middle-of-the-road power is a dream, and every
attempt to set up something in between leads only to people, even
if they are absolutely sincere, shifting to one side or the
other. Only the power of the proletariat, only the rule of the
workers can ally to itself the majority of those who work, because
the peasant masses, although they constitute a mass of working
people, are nevertheless to a certain extent the owners of their
small properties, of their own grain. And that is the struggle
that has unfolded before our eyes, the struggle which shows how
the proletariat, in the course of lengthy political trials, during
the changes in governments that we see in various places on the
outskirts of Russia, is sweeping away everything that serves
exploitation; it shows how the proletariat is breaking its own
road and is becoming more and more the genuine, absolute leader of
the masses of working people in suppressing and eliminating the
resistance of capital.

Those who say that the Bolsheviks violate freedom and who
propose the formation of a united socialist front, that is, an
alliance with those who vacillated, and twice in the history of
the Russian revolution went over to the side of the bourgeoisie—these people are very fond of accusing us of
resorting to terror. They say that the Bolsheviks have introduced
a system of terror in administration, and if Russia is to be
saved, the Bolsheviks must renounce it. This reminds me of a witty
French bourgeois who, in his bourgeois manner, said with reference
to the abolition of the death penalty, "Let the murderers be the
first to abolish the death penalty." I recall this when people
say, "Let the Bolsheviks renounce the terror." Let the Russian
capitalists and their allies, America, France and Britain, that
is, those who first imposed terror on Soviet Russia, let them
renounce it! They are the imperialists who attacked us and are
still attacking its with all their military might, which is a
thousand times greater than ours. Is it not terror for all the
Entente countries, all the imperialists of Britain, France and
America, to keep in their capitals servitors of international
capital—whether their names are Sazonov or
Maklakov—who have organised tens and hundreds of thousands
of the dissatisfied, ruined, hum’iliated and indignant representatives of capital and the bourgeoisie? You must have
heard about the plots among the military, you must have read about
the latest plot in Krasnaya Gorka, which nearly led to the loss of
Petrograd; what was this but a manifestation of terror on the part
of the bourgeoisie of the whole world, which will commit any
violence, crime and atrocity in order to reinstate the exploiters
in Russia and stamp out the flames of the socialist revolution,
which is now threatening even their own countries? There is the
source of terror, that is where the responsibility lies! That is
why we are sure that those who preach renunciation of terror in
Russia are nothing but conscious, or unwitting, tools and agents
of the imperialist terrorists, who are trying to crush Russia with
their blockades and aid to Denikin and Kolchak. But their cause is
a hopeless one.

Russia is the country assigned by history the role of trail-blazer of the socialist revolution, and that is just why so
much struggle and suffering has fallen to our lot. The capitalists
and imperialists of other countries realise that Russia is up in
arms, and that the future not only of Russian but of international
capital is being decided in Russia. That is why in all their
press—in all the bourgeois world press which they have bribed with their many millions—they spread the most
incredible slanders about the Bolsheviks.

They are attacking Russia in the name of the selfsame principles of "Liberty, Equality and Bentham". If you come across
someone in this country who thinks that when he speaks of freedom
and equality and of their violation by the Bolsheviks, he is
championing something that is quite independent, the principles of
democracy in general, ask him to have a look at the capitalist
press of Europe. What is the screen being used by Denikin and
Kolchak, what is the screen being used by European capitalists and
the bourgeoisie in their efforts to crush Russia? Liberty and
equality—that is all they talk about! When the Americans,
British and French seized Archangel, when they sent their troops
to the South, they did so in defence of liberty and equality. That
is the kind of slogan they use as camouflage, and that is why the
proletariat of Russia has risen against world capital in this
fierce struggle. Such is the purpose of these slogans of freedom
and equality which all agents of the bourgeoisie use to deceive
the people, and which intellectuals who really side with the
workers and peasants have to expose.

We see that as the attempts of the Entente imperialists become
more desperate and vicious they meet with ever greater resistance
on the part of the proletariat of their own countries. The first
attempt at an international strike by workers in Britain, France
and Italy against their governments that was made on July 21 had
as its slogan, "Hands off Russia, and an honest peace with the
Republic". This strike failed. Separate strikes broke out in
Britain, France and Italy. In America and Canada, everything that
looks like Bolshevism is fiercely persecuted. In the last few
years, we have gone through two great revolutions. We know how
hard it was for the vanguard of the Russian working people in 1905
to rise in the struggle against tsarism. We know that after the
first bloody lesson of January 9, 1905, the strike, movement
developed slowly and laboriously until October 1905, when the mass
strike scored its first success in Russia. We know how hard the
going was. This was proved by the experience of two revolutions,
although the situation in Russia was more revolutionary than in
other countries. We know with what difficulty the forces for the
struggle against capitalism are mobilised in a series of
strikes. That is why we are not surprised by the failure of this
first international strike of July 21. We know that there is much
greater resistance and opposition to the revolution in the
European countries than over here. We know that in fixing July 21
as the date for an international strike, the workers of Britain,
France and Italy had to overcome incredible difficulties. It was
an experiment unparalleled in history. It is not surprising that
it failed. But we also know that the working people of the leading
and most civilised countries are on our side despite the European
bourgeoisie’s rabid hatred of us, that they understand our
cause, and whatever the hardships of the revolution and the trials
ahead, whatever the atmosphere of lies and deception in the name
of the "freedom and equality" of capital, equality of the starved
and the overfed, whatever the atmosphere, we know that our cause
is the cause of the workers of all countries, and that is why this
cause will inevitably defeat international capital.

Endnotes

[1]
This Congress, held in Moscow from July 28 to August 1, 1919, was
attended by 230 delegates from 32 gubernias. The Congress heard
reports on the education programme, the current tasks in the field
of cultural development, trade union movement, the youth movement
in Russia and the West, and other questions. The Congress founded
the All-Russia Trade Union of Workers in Education and Socialist
Culture; it elected the Central Committee of the Union.

[2]
See Karl Marx, Capital, Moscow, 1959, Vol. I, p. 176.