Each of them shows contempt for the sphere in which the other ix working. Mr, Walling starts off with the statement that "What everybody wants to know is not what the Bolshevists claim to stand for, nor even what they honestly think they stand for, but what they actually cly stand for—according to fair summary of their own acknowledged words and deeds, Mir. Postgate agrees that "it is perfectly possible to hold that Bolshevism is merely an outburst of criminality. Soviet rule may mean only that, through the unaccountable inertia of everybody else, the criminal element in society has seized the power and exercised it for the purpose merely of satisfying its unpleasant predilections in the Way of murder, lust, and robbery. But in that case, Bolshevism ig not worth considering as a political theory. It could at the most give material for a pamphlet by a professor on criminal pathology.. Now obviously the author of this book does not hold this view. The first postulate we must make is of the general sincerity of the revolutionaries.""
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Anyone who reads Mr, Walling's book—and everyone should do so—will see that the official Bolshevist evidence damns the popular pro-Bolshevist idea of the merits and virtues of the Bol-shabist regime. What Mr. Post-gate says in rather grim humour is found to be largely true in fact. The evidence. is complete, and has been so for a long time on this side of the matter.
Nevertheless (says the "Times"), the theory of Bolshevism remains, and we may accept the sincerity of Lenin and a few others in declaring it. In discussing it we are in the realm of political theory The Bolshevist regime in Russia will pass away as soon as the Russian armies decide to change masters, but as a theory Bolshevism will remain. Only its opportunism,. its leaders'—capacity for altering their avowed methods to take advantage of every powerful manifestation of popular anger or weakness, makes it difficult for us to know what is the really official doctrine. Myr, Postage tells ug that where the Manifesto of the Third (Moscow) International Conference contradicts other Bolshevist authorities, it must be accepted as the ultimate authority, Unfortunately the translation before us is only a part of a much-garbled document; it is to be found, with some alterations and additions, in an appendix to Mr, Postgate's book. According to this manifesto, then, the aim of Bolshevism is to end the domination of capital, make wi impossible, wipe out State bound-3, transform the whole world into one cooperative commonwealth, and human brotherhood ang freedom, The means to this is proletarian dictatorship, which neither considers inherited privileges nor the Yights of property, but proceeds from the necessity of Saving the hungry masses, mobilizes all means and strength to thig end, introduces univer.
sal obligation to labour, establishes the regime of labour discipline, in order by this means in the course of a few years not only to heal the gaping wounds which the war has inflicted, but also to lift mankind on to a new and unsuspected level, The machinery "to assure for the proletariat the possibility of a revolutionary influence on' the further development of mankind" ig the Soviet or Workers' Council.
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One cannot argue about their aims with people who say they want to transform the whole world into a cooperative commonwealth; the discussion can only be about their methods and the probable results of these.
Except as a disfranchising weapon against. the bourgeoisie, the Soviet has no advantage over the older method. Few people will suppose that the principle of the proletarian dictatorship is justifiable or even possible, or that it can be removed after "the course of a few years" at the will of an admittedly small political party. In Russia the ruin of the old bourgeoisie has led to the rise of a new "Soviet bourgesisie"; the ruin of capitalist industry—ruin not so much of the capitalists as of the industry, be it noted—has been followed by the attempt to reorganize industry on the rudest American "scientific" methods, to say nothing of the militarization of labour. Zinoviev, quoted by Mr. Postgate, tells us that Bolshevist regime is the most highly centralized government that exists." In short, under new terms Bolshevism masks the oldest political impulses in the world—militarism, centralization, and domestic tyranny.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.