Union International, just passed. A foment was going on among the delegates about a number of Anarchists being in prison, and Bukharin made an explanation of the matter on behalf of the Government. During his talk he stated that the Government did not want to make an issue of the thing, and he requested several times that the congress pass on to the next order of business at the close of his speech. But no sooner had he finished than an Anarchist delegate heatedly demanded the floor to present his side of the question. And notwithstanding the contrary request of the Government and the fact that there were at least ten Communists to each Anarchist in the congress, the floor was granted him and the Soviet Government thereby virtually placed on trial. It seemed to me that in this instance, as in very many more, the dictatorship did not "dictate" very much.
The dictatorship of the proletariat, as expressed by the small, strongly organized Community Party, came into existence because of the general unripeness of the masses. Since the various social institutions, made up in the main of these unknowing elements, could not function spontaneously in a revolutionary manner, the Communist minorities in them were compelled to find a way, through organization, discipline, and militancy, to make them do so. The inevitable result of the situation was the Communist Party, with its elaborate system of control. Unquestionably any other class of revolutionaries than Communists trying to put through a profound revolutionary program under the circumstances, would have had to form an organization similar to the Communist Party, no matter what name they might have given it.
The Red Army furnishes a typical instance of the need for the dictatorship. The enormous mass of the soldiers were ignorant and non-revolutionary, and most of the officers were straightout counter-revolutionary. Such an institution, if left to its own devices, could not possibly function in the sense of the revolution. It would be bound to flounder around in a morass of stupidity and eventually become used against the revotion. It simply had to be controlled, and the Communists did the job through their yatchaykas and military Commissars. And what was true of the Red Army was true, for equally valid reasons, of all the
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