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By October things had changed. In October the workers rose against the bourgeoisie who had trodden upon their necks in March. In October the peasants supported the workers. It clearly follows that the bourgeoisie grew to hate the workers' revolution, and in its mad hatred behaved no better than the landowners.
All the large property owners united against the working class and the poorest peasantry. They gathered around the so-called party of the people's freedom (in reality the party of the people's treason) against the people. And it is easy enough to understand that when the people succeed in getting the upper hand over their enemies the latter in their impotent fury cry, "usurpers," "violators," and so on.
The following is now clear to the workers and peasants. The party of the Communists not only allows no freedom (such as liberty of the press, speech, meetings, unions, etc.) for the bourgeois enemies of the people, but goes still further and demands of the government to be always ready to close the bourgeois press, to break up gatherings of the enemies of the people, to forbid their lying and libelling, and sowing panic; the party must mercilessly suppress all attempts of the bourgeoisie to return to power. And this is what is meant by dictatorship of the proletariat.
When there is a question of the press, we first ask which press—the bourgeois or the workers' press; when there is a question of gatherings, we ask what gatherings—workers' or counter-revolutionary; when a question arises of strikes, the first question for us is whether it is a strike of the workers against the capitalists, or a sabotage instigated by the bourgeoisie or the bourgeois intellectuals against the proletariat. He who makes no distinction between these two things is groping in the dark. The press, meetings, unions, etc., are weapons of the class struggle. And in a revolutionary epoch they are the weapons of civil war, together with munition stores, machine guns, powder and bombs. The great question is: which class is using them as a weapon against the other. The workers' revolution cannot possibly grant freedom for the organisation of such risings as those of Korniloff, Dutoff, or Miliukoff against the working masses. Neither can it allow full freedom of organisation, of speech, press, and of meetings of the counter-revolutionary bands who are stubbornly carrying on their own policy,
