Agony of the petty-bourgeois dictatorship

I.
The official doctrine reads: “We have entered the period of socialism. There are two systems in the world - capitalist and socialist. There is a crisis, we have prosperity, there the impoverishment of the masses, here the unceasing growth of their well-being, etc.”

The statement that there are two systems is correct in that they are two different forms of exploitation. But this is not new, even in the advanced capitalist countries there are some differences, peculiarities of the forms and means of exploitation. In America, the bribery of the labor aristocracy, the trade union bureaucracy, and the organization of armed gangs of strikebreakers are more advanced than in European countries. In the post-war years, American methods, multiplied by fascism, began to internationalize.

The existing forms of exploitation in our country are unique because they grew out of the defeat of the proletarian revolution. The subject of exploitation (bureaucracy) covers up the cruelest exploitation, up to fascist methods, with verbal communism and false internationalism, and therefore its methods seem less cynical.

In this sense, there are two economic systems, or rather, two systems of exploitation, but the very fact of exploitation remains. The degree of exploitation on the basis of poverty and mismanagement is stronger in our country. The statement about the period of socialism does not abolish exploitation, but covers up and strengthens it.

Socialism is a form of organization of labor in which not things dominate man, but man over things. Relations between people are established by their conscious will, without the mediation of things, and the exploitation of man by man is abolished. Then, instead of the division of labor, “an organization of production should arise, where, on the one hand, no one could blame others for his share of participation in productive labor, this natural condition of human existence, and where, on the other hand, productive labor, instead of to be a means of enslaving people, it would become a means of their liberation, giving everyone the opportunity to develop in all directions and effectively manifest all their abilities, both physical and spiritual, - where, consequently, productive labor will turn from a heavy burden into pleasure ”(Engels, "Anti-Dühring").

State-owned "economists" assert that such a situation can exist only under communism. Engels, in Anti-Dühring, wrote that this "is given by the very fact of the socialization of the productive forces." And we know from experience that work on communist subbotniks, after October, was a pleasure for the communards. Bureaucratic "socialism", as well as "the capitalist way of using machines, is compelled to continue to preserve the old division of labor with its ossified partial functions" (Engels). State ownership of the means of production does not change this situation. In exposing Dühring, Engels proved by examples that not every nationalization of the means of production is their socialization.
If we have nationalized means of production, and state power is not in the hands of the working class, then the very fact of the absence of private ownership of the means of production indicates that the subject of exploitation (the owner) has changed, and not the object (working class).

When the means of production belong to the working class (the whole of society), i.e. when they are really socialized, then the working class turns from an object of exploitation into a subject - into a "conscious builder of a new society". “Once society takes possession of the means of production, commodity production will be abolished, and with it the dominance of the product over the producers. Anarchy within social production is replaced by a planned, conscious organization. The struggle for separate existence ceases. Thus, man is now - in a certain sense, completely - separated from the animal kingdom and passes from animal conditions of existence into truly human conditions ”(Engels).

The production of such a society is organized, controlled and protected both from the bourgeoisie and from its own officials by the "state of armed workers" (Lenin). Let's see what kind of production and what kind of relations between people have developed to date in our country.

II.
Mocking the “communist” society of Dühring, Engels wrote: “Society as a whole must become the master of the means of production only so that each individual member of society remains a slave to his means of production, having only the right to choose which means of production should enslave him. ". Each member of our society is a slave of production, with the only difference that he does not choose the “tools of enslavement”, but he is chained to them “until the end of the five-year plan”.

The position of the working class in our country is basically the same as in the whole world, i.e., the existence of its labor power as a commodity. Wages are set by the arbitrariness of government officials. The workers not only do not take part in determining the price of their commodity—labour power—but they are deprived even of the possibility of influencing this determination. Labor power here is not only a commodity, but a commodity that is sold in worse conditions than in a capitalist society. The worker is deprived of the elementary right to choose his own work. He is deprived of any means of protection from cruel exploitation by the entrepreneur - the state.

The internal factory routine is also established by the arbitrariness of government officials. Labor inspectors, the so-called trade unions not only are not defenders of the interests of the working class, but they do not have the minimum rights of factory inspectors of capitalist production. All the gains of October and even some of the gains of the 1905 revolution have been taken away from the workers. When a worker was dismissed for no reason after the revolution of 1905, he was given a salary two weeks in advance. Now they are fired without any compensation, and often with a wolf ticket.

Unemployment insurance has been abolished by government law, and unemployment itself has been declared non-existent. The unemployed are deprived even of a bread ration.

To all this is added the forced nature of labor and the enslaving conditions of the so-called collective agreements. Workers and employees are forcibly assigned to enterprises or institutions even when enterprises are closed for several months and the workers do not receive wages. Starve, but do not dare to leave for another job - this is the motto of the bureaucrat. The sweatshop system practiced in our factories has far left behind it the same system in the capitalist countries.

In order to divert the working masses from the tasks of the class struggle, the bureaucracy builds artificial partitions among these masses, separating the qualified from the unskilled, singling out some as shock workers, branding others as "loafers" and "selfish people." The class consciousness of the worker in the eyes of the bureaucracy is a vice, while scabs and denunciations are a virtue. The communist slogan of equality is mockingly called bourgeois egalitarianism, and bourgeois piece work (moreover, progressive!) is a communist slogan.

With such lack of rights, real wages are systematically reduced, while the workload is increasing. The bureaucracy covers up all this cruel exploitation with supposedly voluntary decisions of the workers. Such voluntary regulations are reminiscent of the petitions of the English workers in 1848, wrested from them by the factory owners after the law on the 10-hour day in rural flax-spinning. These petitions said: “We, petitioners-parents, believe that an extra hour of idleness cannot have any other result than the demoralization of our children, for idleness is the mother of all vices” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1).

The "socialism" - "collectivization" decreed in the countryside - is carried out by police measures. They expropriate from the peasants their implements, workers and all other livestock and even poultry, drag everything into a disorderly heap and call it socialism. Agriculture has been transformed from a private, small, though dispersed, but in its own way, anarchically organized way, into a "large", state-owned, but disorganized and devoid of a production stimulus. This "large" rural economy has no economic expediency and is maintained solely by state coercion. At the slightest movement of hostile forces, this "big" and "largest" farm will crumble like peas into small and tiny peasant farms. The result will be the same—a differentiation and pauperisation of the countryside unprecedented in history. With the disintegration of the "collective farms" all complex machines, working cattle will be captured by a strong, strong peasant. For the weak, if anything does fall, it will still pass into the hands of the new bourgeois through repurchase.

With the nationalization of agriculture, the peasant is separated from his means of production and works for the entrepreneur-state as a hired worker. The difference between a factory worker and a "collective farmer" is that the latter is not completely expropriated. He left a house, a vegetable garden and something else. His salary depends on the gross output of collective farms and ranges from 1 r. 50 kop. up to 21 kop. per day (see: Pravda, December 22, 1931). There are 150 working days in a year. When spread over 365 days, the salary is reduced to 70 and 10 kopecks. all this taken together makes the peasant from the state economy look into the dense forest of his smallest farms. Cries about the voluntariness of collectivization are sometimes overshadowed by reports from the state press about how the satraps agitate the peasants for collective farms: "Kolkhoz or Solovki", "Commune or Sakhalin".

In state trade, it is not capitalist competition that dominates in our country, but a state-capitalist monopoly with monopolistically speculative prices (surplus profits), with a forced assortment of goods.

Outside the borders of the state, our goods are subject to all the laws of capitalist competition. They are sold not only below cost, but generally at bargain prices. Therefore, the working class of the "Soviet Union" is exploited not only by the ruling bureaucracy within the country, but also, through its mediation, also by the world bourgeoisie.

All means of production, mainly both in the city and in the countryside, are state-owned, all products are the property of the state. The state organizes production, it also trades. An army of several million officials was created to conduct managerial, production and trade functions. This army does not produce, but consumes the best piece of what is produced. It has developed into a social stratum interested in the exploitation of the city and the countryside. Part of this bureaucracy came out of the ranks of the revolutionary proletariat, while the majority had nothing to do with the October Revolution. It was recruited partly from forces openly hostile to the working class, partly from the declassed petty bourgeoisie and the worst part of the semi-rural part of the working class. This bureaucracy was brought up not on the revolution, but on its strangulation. Therefore, it is hostile to both the revolution and the working class. It is at the same time anti-bourgeois, and therefore petty bourgeois. It is hostile to the working class because its rule precludes the existence of a parasitic bureaucracy. The bourgeoisie, on the other hand, does not need such a mediocre bureaucracy (and in general such a numerous bureaucracy is unnecessary even for the bourgeoisie). The bureaucracy knows this very well and therefore fights both against the working class and against the bourgeoisie. It also fights against private petty-bourgeois economy, because the development of the latter inevitably leads to the development of capitalism, and consequently to the loss of dominance by the bureaucracy. This was shown by the policy of 1923-27. and its result in 1928.

Hence its attempts, which began in 1929, without relying on the conscious will of any of the classes, to build an ideal bureaucratic, state capitalist economy. But these attempts are failing.

The dialectical contradiction of the existence of such a parasitic bureaucracy lies in the fact that it can dominate only if all classes are declassified. The latter occurs [due to] the destruction of the productive forces. This destruction inevitably leads to the death of the entire bureaucratic system of the economy, and with it the rule of the bureaucracy will perish.

III.
The result of bureaucratic management shows itself in the fact that over the past two years both industry and agriculture have been producing numbers, not products.

In industry, all our quantitative achievements come at the expense of quality deterioration and higher costs. And this leads not to an increase in the wealth of the country, but to its decrease, as evidenced by the progressively growing commodity hunger from month to month. Reason for it:
a) a hungry worker without technical improvements and on worn-out machines is given so many tasks that he is not able to perform without compromising the quality of the product; b) this results not only in the insufficient qualification of new workers, but also in the dequalification of old workers, which, in turn, is reflected not only in the quality of products, but also in the breakdown of machine tools and machines and the shutdown of entire units (Putilov, Stalingrad and other plants - see "Pravda" for 1930-31). Bureaucratic mismanagement and organizational helplessness lead to an incorrect distribution of the already insufficient technical forces and skilled workers.

The overall result is a sharp deterioration in product quality and a colossal increase in defects. And the deterioration in the quality of products and the increase in cost in almost all branches of our industry, and especially in the leading sectors (metal and coal - plants ... steel increased the cost by 11.6%, Vostokostal plants - by 10.6% - "Pravda" from 8/IX -31g.) indicate that all our quantitative indicators are negative values.

Examples: if instead of one pair of boots, two pairs are now being produced, and their wear has accelerated six times, then it turns out that the amount produced has doubled, the cost of raw materials and human labor has become twice as much, but human needs are satisfied three times less . This means that the growth of our quantitative indicators is inversely proportional to the satisfaction of human needs, i.e., with the growth of the quantity of production, the hunger for goods also grows. This applies to all positive goods. This explains the ever-increasing shortage of goods for both personal and industrial consumption, such as: coal, oil, peat, all types of metal, paper, etc., etc., despite the victorious cries for the fulfillment of the five-year plan in some sectors three and even two and a half years.

The same situation, if not worse, has arisen with our new industrial and housing construction. Not to mention the fact that it is produced two or three times worse and more expensive than old construction, but even the quantitative indicators of this new construction are calculated not by the quantitative performance of work, but by the amount of millions of rubles spent.

In agriculture, the destruction of productive forces occurs more clearly. State farms and collective farms are not profitable - high cost and low labor productivity. Most collective farms and state farms live on subsidies from the state and the ruined individual peasant economy.

The mass death and destruction of workers and cattle increased again. Agricultural equipment, seed fund, mismanagement of agricultural tools and machines are being plundered, not to mention buildings and other capital structures that wear out and collapse without any accounting. As a result, the collective farms, which themselves can hardly keep themselves on a kind word, not only have not replaced the kulak farms, but they themselves destroy more values ​​and human labor than they give to the country.

The sown area is nominally increasing, but actually decreasing. If in 1930, compared with 1927. the sown area increased by 7.10%, this was due to late crops, which froze at least 15% of the total crop. In the autumn of 1931, the sown area again decreased, despite the fact that they were sown on frozen ground. The crops of 1931 will undoubtedly die out more than in 1930. The quality of field processing is catastrophically deteriorating. Even Yakovlev is forced to admit the latter. When harvesting grain in 1930, from 1 to 1 1/2 billion poods of grain perished, in 1931 even more. In state farms, with high technology, there were arrays of uncut wheat of several thousand hectares. From the harvested bread, according to Pravda, when threshed, 20-30% grains remained in the straw. Even threshed grain cannot be removed. And it rots in the open. In barns, elevators, wet grain is poured into dry grain, and both rot.

It is enough to look through one issue of Pravda (at least from November 28) to see the collapse of state farms. Everywhere and everywhere theft and theft of state property, concealment of grain, etc. The directors of state farms compose solemn reports about the "Bolshevik" rates of grain harvesting, and at that time the bread rots on the vine. In the Far Eastern Territory, in grain state farms, “57 thousand hectares of crops were not harvested on November 1, on 20/XI they harvested 26 thousand hectares, with a loss of 70%.” The same thing is happening in Siberia, Kazakhstan, in the Central Chernobyl region, in the Northern Caucasus, in Ukraine, etc. The same picture is in the state farms of cotton, flax, livestock, sugar beet, etc. In the same issue of Pravda (28/ XI) in the editorial it is said that when digging beets, up to 40% remained in the ground. This is no exception, as it is fashionable to verify from the "beet harvest" summary below the same editorial. It indicates that 98.7% of beet fields were dug up, and only 62% of beets were harvested, which means that more than 30% of all beets remained in the ground. But the losses don't end there. Of the 62% of the dug out beets, only 67% were brought to the factories. The rest freezes in the field; the one that was brought to the factory is also half-frozen.

The cotton fields of Central Asia, Transcaucasia and other regions present a terrible picture. In dry weather, unharvested cotton is blown across the fields, covering them with cotton like snow. In rainy weather, crumbling cotton is driven into the ground, mixing with dirt (social fertilizer fields).

The situation is no better when it comes to harvesting and storing vegetables. Pravda (November 29, 31) states that vegetables in Moscow are being dumped into premises unsuitable for storage. Some of them are under the latrines, from which sewage flows directly into the vegetables. In 15-degree [hellish] frost, potatoes fall off in open yards and become unfit for consumption. Moscow is no exception.

"Voroshilov, Voroshilov, the war is on the nose, and Budyonny's cavalry went to the sausage" - this song, sung by peasant youth, sums up the "collective farm" policy and gives it an exhaustive description.

Transport, the main nerve of the country, has fallen into complete disarray over the past three years and is not coping with its tasks. Road construction is out of hand. The newly built roads are in worse condition than the old ones. Two years ago, as a socialist measure, depersonalization was introduced, which further finished off transport, and in 1931. anathematize this impersonality and fervently carry out, as a new revelation of the Politburo, the paired ride that existed under the tsar. One by one, the Ministers of Communications are being changed, and things are going downhill. The percentage of sick locomotives is increasing, the repair of rolling stock is deteriorating. Late trains have become the rule.

With the onset of winter, many stations do not send trains for days due to lack of fuel. In deep winter, fuel hunger intensifies. Coal lies in the Donbass due to the lack of wagons, trains do not go due to the lack of fuel. Vicious circle of bureaucratic socialism.

Our vaunted plans exist on paper, but in reality anarchy reigns in production to an even greater extent than in capitalist society. The disproportion exists not only between industry, transport and agriculture, but also within industry itself, and not only between its individual branches, but also within these branches, but quite often and within enterprises between shops and even within the shops themselves.

Transport does not fulfill transportation plans for industry and agriculture, industry does not satisfy either agriculture or transport, and agriculture does not provide enough food and raw materials for industry and transport, etc. Entire branches of industry are being built that are not provided with raw materials (the textile industry - see Kuibyshev's speech), a number of buildings of large factories are being built, but there are no machines or they will bring machines, and there is nowhere to put them ( Donbass, Chelyabstroy, Stalingrad, Putilov plant, etc.).

Not a single capitalist enterprise could withstand competition with such predatory production even for 2 months. Only on gratuitous labor, on the strangulation of the working class, can such a mode of production exist for so many years. And this is called the dictatorship of the proletariat!

It is not the proletariat and the poor peasantry that can plunder their labor so ruthlessly, but this can be done by an irresponsible, uncontrolled, parasitic bureaucracy.

IV.
A cursory analysis of our economy inevitably requires the conclusion that this economy, from the point of view of scientific socialism, cannot be summed up under any other definition than that of a peculiar, ugly state capitalism.
To prove that our economy is allegedly socialist, the official "economists" cite the fact of the nationalization of the means of production and the supposedly planned economy. What our planning is, we have seen above and we will not return to it.

In Anti-Dühring, Engels wrote: “In the trusts, free competition turns into a monopoly, and the unplanned production of capitalist society capitulates to the planned production of the coming socialist society” “The development of socialism from utopia to science” - [A. G.]. In the end, the state "is forced to take over the leadership of production." Such an economy is state capitalist. Under state capitalism, although the planned economy of socialist society "invades" it, it is still not socialism.

"But neither the transfer into the hands of joint-stock companies, nor the transformation into state ownership does not destroy the capitalist character of the productive forces." Under state capitalism, instead of private, large and small owners, the state [as] the "ideal total capitalist" (Engels) appears.

If we do not have a bourgeoisie, if the bureaucracy is in power, it also disposes of the means of production, and the worker remains a wage slave, then the character of production does not become socialist.

Only renegades of communism can identify the state capitalist economy with the socialist one. And this is not new. “Since Bismarck rushed to the path of statehood, a special kind of false socialism has appeared, degenerating in places into a peculiar kind of voluntary servility, declaring, without circumambulation, all statehood, even Bismarckian, to be socialist. If the state tobacco monopoly is socialism, then Napoleon and Metternich must undoubtedly be listed among the founders of socialism. When the Belgian state, from the most ordinary political and financial considerations, itself undertook the construction of the main railways; when Bismarck, without the slightest economic necessity, turned the main Prussian railway lines into state property simply for the sake of convenience of adapting and using them in case of war, in order to train railway officials and make of them an obedient herd voting for the government, and mainly in order to have a new source of income independent of parliament—then all this was by no means a step towards socialism, neither direct nor indirect, neither conscious nor unconscious” (Engels). Who doubts that our army of millions of officials is an obedient herd in the hands of the oligarchic elite?

Not all state capitalism Marx and Engels considered progressive. "When their [means of production] nationalization becomes economically inevitable, only then - even if it is done by the modern state - will it be economic progress." But this is not yet socialism, and not a quarter, and not even a hundredth part of socialism, but is only "a new step on the way to society itself taking over all the productive forces." Everyone knows that the nationalization of peasant livestock in 1929-31. was a giant step towards … [inaudible] (nerazborchivo) slaughter of cattle.

From the point of view of the historical development of capitalism, far from being the highest form of development of capitalism, our state capitalism is, rather, its primary form, the form—under peculiar conditions—of primitive capitalist accumulation; it is transitional from proletarian revolution to private capitalism. Just as in England (in the 16th and 17th centuries) the small commodity producer was deprived of the means of production by means of "fencing" (see Capital, vol. 1), so in our country the so-called "collectivization" separated our small peasant commodity producer from his means. production. Although if in England "the sheep ate the peasants", in our country the bureaucratic "collective farms" ate both the sheep and the peasants.

The existing mode of production educates not collectivism, but individualism, the psychology of the private owner, the grabber and the speculator. One can test this even on the cream of "communism", on the bureaucracy itself, on its individualistic, egoistic, isolated life from each other. It is difficult to find two bureaucrats who would trust each other.

The entire policy of the bureaucratic regime, the concentration of the means of production in town and countryside in its hands and its inability to organize production while strangling the working class inevitably leads to the transfer of the means of production into the hands of the domestic and world bourgeoisie.

V.
The state is a product of social development. At a certain stage of this development, society broke up into classes. The interests of these classes turned out to be irreconcilable. The further the classes developed, the more hostile they became to each other. So that these "classes with conflicting economic interests do not devour each other and society in a fruitless struggle, force became necessary for this" (Engels).

“The state is a special organization of power” (Lenin) of the ruling class, an organ for the oppression and enslavement of one class by another.

The state is a force consisting of special detachments: troops, gendarmes, police, all kinds of fascist detachments, etc. This also includes fascist and other strike-breaking trade unions, parliaments, etc., plus courts, prisons, concentration camps and exile. The crown of everything is state power.

Since the state arose in the struggle of classes, "then, as a general rule, it is the state of the most powerful, economically dominant class" (Engels). Therefore, the entire political superstructure - the state machine - rushes to the oppression and exploitation of the enslaved classes.

“Thus, the ancient state was, first of all, the state of slave-owners for the suppression of slaves, the feudal state was an organ of the nobility for the suppression of serfs and dependent peasants, and the modern representative state is an instrument for the exploitation of wage labor by capital. As an exception, however, there are periods when the fighting classes achieve such a balance of power that state power temporarily acquires a certain independence in relation to both classes, as an apparent mediator between them ”(Engels). Such is the absolute monarchy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Bonapartism of the 1st and 3rd empires in France, and Bismarck in Germany. Such, Lenin adds, is the government of Kerensky. More than this, we will add, he has greater "independence" due to the fact that in his hands are the means of production - the government of Stalin. Another difference is that the “balance” of class forces has been achieved in our country thanks to the declassification and strangulation of classes, hence the wider field for “manoeuvres”.
The ruling classes need the state as an instrument for the exploitation of the enslaved classes. The proletariat is against the exploitation of man by man, therefore it is against the state as such. But since the ruling classes will not voluntarily renounce exploitation, the proletariat must overthrow the bourgeoisie by means of a social revolution. It must oppose the strength of the exploiters with its own strength, the "State of Armed Workers."

"The first step in the workers' revolution is the transformation of the proletariat into the ruling class" (Marx) and the realization of democracy for the producer class.

Democracy exists in all forms of state: in a slave-owning state, for the slave-owners; in a feudal state, for the landowner; in a bourgeois state, for the bourgeoisie; democracy for a handful of robbers, providing this handful [opportunity] to freely rob, oppress the overwhelming majority of society — the working people. In a proletarian state, complete, developed democracy for the working class, for the overwhelming majority of society, against an insignificant handful of robbers.

Since the state is imposed on the proletariat as a necessary evil, it “just like the Commune will be forced to immediately cut off the worst aspects of this evil” (Engels) in order to pursue a policy towards the withering away of the state. The proletariat needs a state that is “withering away”, “going to sleep”, and the Paris Commune ceased to be a state, since it had to suppress not the majority of the population, but a minority” (Lenin). The same can be said about the Commune of the October Revolution. Both the Paris Commune and the state of Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies were a "state of armed workers" against an insignificant handful of exploiters.

Analyzing the vulgar (similar to the socialism of our bureaucracy) socialism of Dühring, Engels wrote: “The first act in which the state really acts as a representative of the whole of society — taking possession of the means of production on behalf of society — is at the same time its last independent act as a state. ". Engels says "the last independent act" because the subsequent acts, the suppression of the bourgeoisie, are not independent, but subordinate, or rather, are a continuation of the act of taking the means of production from the state, generated by the October Revolution and then reborn, the subsequent independent acts were a coup d'état against the working class and strangulation of the latter.

The first victory of the working class—the taking of the means of production—far from ensures its final victory. He will be threatened for a long time not only by the bourgeoisie, but also by his own officials. Therefore, Engels wrote: “In order not to lose again its newly won domination, the working class must, on the one hand, eliminate all the old machine of oppression hitherto used against it, and, on the other hand, must secure itself against its own deputies and officials. declaring them all, without any exception, replaceable at any time" (Preface to the "The Civil War in France"). This is what the Paris Commune did, this is what the proletariat did after the October Revolution. Both proletarian states perished - the first in the battle with the bourgeoisie, the second after the victory over the bourgeoisie, at the hands of the renegades of communism, at the hands of their own officials.

The state born of October was not a self-sufficient force, it was not a state in the usual sense. This state is the essence of the proletarian party, soviets, trade unions, factory committees and the Red Guard. In other words, the state born of October is the armed workers themselves. State power is a simple tool for suppressing the enemy.

What is power in the hands of the working class? It is the same as the rifle, machine guns, puffs, muzzles and vents of which are directed in the hands of the working class against the counter-revolution. In peacetime, state power is the same as the machine tool and the anvil in the hands of the workers, or the plow and tractor in the hands of the peasants. The working class, with its instrument called the proletarian power, acts according to the proverb: “wherever I want, I will turn there,” and, of course, not against itself. Individuals commit suicide, classes never.

The state and power that have developed to date represent a self-sufficient force. The state power betrayed the working class, usurped its rights, took from it the means of production and directed them and the entire state machine against the proletariat, for its exploitation and oppression.

The working class as the creator of the new life, as the conscious builder of socialist society, does not exist. He again turned into a wage slave in production and politically disenfranchised in the country. Prisons, exiles and concentration camps are overflowing with workers and the poor peasantry.

Government officials, from servants of the working class, from servants of society, have become its overlords, its enslavers and exploiters.

“Public power is strengthened as the class contradictions within the state become more acute, and as the states in contact with each other become larger and more populous. Just look at present-day Europe, in which the class struggle and competition for conquest have raised public power to such a height that it threatens to swallow up the whole of society and even the state” (Engels).

Look at our state power, which the bureaucracy, in its struggle for domination, in its animal fear of impending doom, has so excited that it has swallowed up the entire proletarian community and the proletarian state.

If after October the state dissolved into the working class, and the government was enslaved by ... [inaudible] proletarian party spirit, now the party, trade unions, factory committees are state-owned, and the Soviets themselves, as organs of the dictatorship of the proletariat, have long ceased to exist, only signboards have survived. The striving of the proletariat for democracy, for equality, has been realized from the reverse side: "before the despot, everyone is equal to zero."

Not only is our state not dying out, its negative aspects are growing monstrously. Things, social phenomena Marx, Lenin taught to consider in their concrete content. One cannot call the dictatorship of the proletariat what is its direct opposite, a parasitic petty-bourgeois dictatorship. This does not mean that we have the dictatorship of the petty bourgeoisie, it is the dictatorship of the petty bourgeois oligarchic bureaucracy.

The state-capitalist character of our production and the petty-bourgeois parasitic dictatorship grew out of the defeat of the October Revolution, the latter being a proletarian socialist revolution. It "expropriated the expropriators", broke down the old state apparatus of the bourgeoisie, and replaced it with an elected and replaceable bureaucracy of the workers. From an oppressed proletariat, it turned into a ruling class, from an object of exploitation into a subject, into a conscious builder of a new society. In other words, the dictatorship of the proletariat was not only proclaimed, but also implemented.

By taking away the means of production from the bourgeoisie, the proletariat deprived it of economic domination, but since these means of production were inactive—the proletariat was occupied with civil war—the socialist state, the “state of armed workers,” could not bring under its political superstructure a solid economic base.

In open military combat, the workers defeated the bourgeoisie. At the same time, processes of rebirth began to take place within the workers' state. Their main reasons are: 1) the delay of the world revolution, and then a series of its defeats (in Italy in 1920, in Germany in 1921-23, in England in 1926 and finally , the defeat of the Chinese revolution); 2) The significant predominance of the small-bourgeois peasant majority in our country and in the imperialist encirclement [Perhaps it should be read: “and the imperialist encirclement” - [A. G.]; 3) extermination of the best cadres of the proletariat in the civil war; 4) the decline of the economic life of the country and, on the basis of this, the declassing of the proletariat; 5) the bureaucratization of the state apparatus and the influence on it of forces hostile to the proletariat. Thanks to all this, at the end of the civil war, the proletariat found itself face to face with the raging sea of ​​petty bourgeois elements and, in Lenin’s words, “far from being a proletarian state.”

The peasantry turned from an ally of the proletariat into its enemy. It came out against socialist policy, for free trade, and backed up its demands with Tambov and Kronstadt. The proletariat was forced to retreat, consciously allowing capitalist relations in the countryside. The bureaucracy took advantage of the weakness of the proletariat and gradually liquidated its gains. Back in 1923. the proletariat felt the loss of its rule and tried to restore it by strikes, but was defeated.

The discussion of 1923 was a direct continuation of the summer strikes, although this fact was not recognized by the entire opposition. The balance of forces in this discussion was such that the opposition had every chance of winning. She failed with her political indecision. Most of the leaders of the movement did not understand the depths of the rebirth, did not understand that now it was necessary to take power or never. The misunderstanding of the moment stemmed from the isolation of these leaders from the working class.

Not only were the ideologists of petty-bourgeois politics cut off from the working class, but also most of the leaders of the opposition. They stewed in the juice of a decaying bureaucracy and were themselves subject to this decay. The correctness of this assumption is confirmed by the subsequent incessant hesitation of the top of the opposition and then the desertion of some of the leaders of the opposition.

In the existing boundless decay and prostitution of morals, the top of the opposition is partly to blame. She often led her army into battle without direction, or even just abandoned it in battle. The abandoned army at the meetings voted with "heels" (ran away). The opposition army was smashed, and its leaders stood at their sides.

The opposition fenced itself off from the working class with a Chinese wall, trying to resolve all issues by internal party order. But the party from 1923 was already paralyzed.
The working class, in turn, retreated from the opposition, the army of the opposition itself, disorganized by the constant wavering and indecisiveness of its leaders, disintegrated.

Taking advantage of this situation, the bureaucracy, smashing the proletarian part of the party, openly pursued a petty-bourgeois, peasant policy, a vivid expression of which was the slogans “facing the countryside”, “industry, do not get ahead of yourself”, “less step”, etc. A course was taken for marketing and credit cooperation as opposed to collective farms and state farms. The slightly bourgeois policy of poisoning the consumer instincts of the peasantry, including the kulak, of lowering wholesale prices for manufactured goods led to the dispersal of industry. The theory of "growth of kulak nests into socialism", the slogan "enrich yourself" and, finally, "construction of socialism in one country" were the ideological crown of petty bourgeois politics.

Five years of petty-bourgeois utopian policy (1923-27) could not but lead it to a crisis. Economically, it expressed itself in the disruption of the economic balance (disproportion) in industry (rising prices, shortage of goods, unemployment), and socially, in the growth of capitalist elements in town and country; politically, in the merging of the economic-administrative apparatus with the kulak and the NEP (history of boils in Sochi, Smolensk, Astrakhan and other cities), in the kulak's striving for power, the growth of sabotage, and, finally, in the liquidation of the party and trade unions as proletarian organizations.

This crisis could be resolved in two ways: either by a sharp turn towards the positions of the proletarian revolution, or by the transition to the path of private-capitalist development. The bureaucracy is organically incapable of embarking on the first path, and the proletariat was already so exhausted that it could not throw it off; The bureaucracy was afraid of the second path because it knew that the bourgeoisie would drive it away—that is why the bureaucracy remained true to itself and sought a way out on the paths of its utopias.

At the 15th congress, under the cover of "left" slogans, a coup d'état against the proletariat was carried out, which was economically and organizationally prepared by politics 1923-27. The crisis was not only not resolved by this, but grew into a direct threat to the dominance of the bureaucracy. The working class turned away from it completely, and the fist “nurtured” by it began to advance.

The frightened bureaucracy replaced the policy of maneuvering between classes with maneuvering within classes, between groups. In response to the kulak's grain strike, the bureaucracy issued the slogan "Take the kulak's bread by force," while trying to rely on the poor peasant. But by this time the Soviet apparatus in the countryside had fallen into the hands of the kulak, and the barns had been swept away by both the middle peasant and the poor. As a result, a united front of the entire peasantry was created against their own power. In the summer of 1928, a new turn of "face" towards the entire peasantry, including the kulak: an increase in the prices of grain and raw materials. The policy of vacillation gave rise to a broad counter-revolutionary wave in town and country.

By this time, the poverty of the proletariat had grown terribly: supplies were deteriorating, wages were dropping, and the army of unemployed had grown to over 3 million. In the spring of 1928, a wave of strikes and riots broke out among the unemployed at the labor exchanges. The brutal reprisal against them was the answer of the bureaucracy.

The animal fear of the bureaucracy for its domination pushed it onto the path of "industrialization" and "collectivization". The bureaucracy, lulling the vigilance of the proletariat, developed grandiose plans and published dizzying figures, it declared equality and almost communism in factories, introducing at that time an increase in production standards, a decrease in wages, a deterioration in social insurance and a code of labor laws. Any speech in defense of the interests of the working class was stigmatized as selfishness, sabotage, etc. Entire work collectives were harassed, and their leaders were thrown into prison and exile.

By the end of 1929, the bureaucracy, declaring the poor peasants and farm laborers their ally, began a continuous "collectivization". This "collectivization" led to the complete slaughter of livestock and even poultry. At the beginning of the campaign, in some places the poor supported "collectivization", but when they saw the ruin of the countryside instead of socialism, they rebelled. The wave of peasant uprisings was so formidable that the bureaucracy was counting the days and hours of its rule. Fear of tomorrow made her "blood and iron" to suppress these uprisings. But they were suppressed not only by weapons, but mainly by deceit - the promise to abolish the expropriation of the small proprietor.

The uprisings of the peasants were suppressed, but the crisis was not only not resolved, but escalated. Now the "collective farmer" - whether he be a poor peasant, a middle peasant, or a kulak - is declared the backbone of the power of the bureaucracy in the countryside, and the individual peasant, even if he is ten times poor, is the enemy. However, since 1930, kulaks have been defined not on social grounds, but on ideological grounds - he crossed the pompadour’s “ndrava”, which means a kulak.

All this policy has led the petty-bourgeois dictatorship to the agony that it is now experiencing, and to the unprecedented impoverishment of the working class and all the working masses.

The bureaucracy seeks salvation not in the unity of the working class and the consolidation of its forces, but in its split, in setting its separate detachments against each other.

In the declassification of the working class, in its lack of rights, in the declassification of the peasants at the cost of destroying the productive forces, in the persecution of the poor and middle peasants, the parasitic dictatorship seeks salvation. But such a policy does not save, but only somewhat delays the death of this dictatorship.

The longer such delays last, the more catastrophic its fall will be.

VII.
The majority of the opposition 1923 agrees on criticism of the economy and the existing regime, but many oppositionists, from a correct analysis, contrive to draw conclusions that are qualitatively the same as those of the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy claims that we have entered the period of socialism and that we have a genuine dictatorship of the proletariat. The said oppositionists say that our industry [has] a socialist character, since it has been nationalized, and the dictatorship, though tarnished, is still proletarian. The difference between these conclusions is only quantitative. In defense of the existence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the ridiculous conclusion is often made that soviets formally exist. At the same time, the Marxist truth is forgotten: form without content is empty.

It is forgotten that “the transition from capitalism to communism, of course, cannot but give an enormous abundance and variety of political forms, but the essence will inevitably be the same - the dictatorship of the proletariat” (Lenin, “State [state] and revolution]”). The dictatorship of the proletariat, on the other hand, means a "state of armed workers," be it in the form of Soviets, factory committees, etc.

Back in 1917, when the soviets were Menshevik-Socialist-Revolutionary, the Bolsheviks intended to turn the factory committees into organs of insurrection; only the rapid Bolshevization of the soviets prevented this plan.

History has shown that even Milyukov is not against the Soviets, but without the Communists, all the more so for the renegades of communism, when destroying the content of the Soviets, it is advantageous to hide behind their uniforms.

Other comrades agree that our government is petty bourgeois, but the state is proletarian. Again, the fact of nationalization is cited as an argument. Leaving aside the fact that if the means of production are in the hands of the bureaucracy, this does not mean that they are in the hands of the proletariat, but it must be noted that here there is a confusion of two factors: the economic base with the political superstructure. It has happened in history that the political superstructure - the state and power - did not correspond to the economic base, but it has never been and cannot be that the state belongs to one class, and the power to another. From the notion that the state and power are not one and the same, one cannot conclude that they exist separately. To imagine a state without state power means to imagine a person without a head (it happens in fairy tales).

Against the characterization of our economy as state capitalist, there are also such "objections" that there is no capitalism without capitalists. At the same time, they forget about the "aggregate capitalist" - the state - and they forget that even under socialism, for a certain time, there will be a "bourgeois state - without the bourgeoisie" (Lenin). Whether the proletarians are exploited by a handful of capitalists or by a million-strong army of the bureaucracy, and through it the world bourgeoisie, this does not change the fact that the worker remains a wage-slave, and the means of production do not lose their capitalist character.

Proceeding from the point of view that we have a dictatorship of the proletariat, the slogan of a coalition Central Committee is put forward. To join the Central Committee with the representatives of the kulak, the Nepman and the bureaucrat means (whether the authors of the slogan want it or not) to join a party that will be engaged in the restoration of capitalism, it means joining a kind of Kuomintang, while refusing to organize a party of the working class.

After the abolition of Bismarck's exceptional socialist law, the German social-democracy adopted an opportunistic tactic out of fear of a new law against the socialists. Engels pointed out in his letter to Bebel [I mean the work of Engels "On the Criticism of the Draft Social-Democratic Program of 1891" - [A. G.] that such tactics will lead the party on a false path, and that the party "at the decisive moment will be helpless." He continues: “This forgetfulness of great, fundamental considerations because of the momentary interests of the day, this pursuit of momentary successes and the struggle for them without regard to further consequences, this sacrificing the future movement for the present, perhaps also occurs because of "honest" motives. But this is opportunism and remains opportunism, and "honest" opportunism is perhaps more dangerous than all others.

Our comrades, drawing incorrect conclusions from correct criticism, are guided by undoubtedly "honest" motives (although they are the only ones known to them), "but this is opportunism," even if it is "honest", and "honest" opportunism is always, in our time, all the more "More dangerous than anyone else."

VIII.
The Russian revolution, smitten by imperialism, was the beginning of a world revolution, and it could only win as a world socialist revolution. Thanks to the betrayal of the Second International, the revolution in Europe in 1918-20. suffered its first defeat. At the Third Congress of the Communist International, Lenin declared that if the proletariat did not overthrow the bourgeoisie at this stage, then the latter would not have a hopeless situation.

After the aforementioned Congress, following the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, petty-bourgeois waverings began in the Executive Committee of the Comintern. Later, to the betrayal of the Second International was added betrayal of the working class by the Executive Committee of the Third International (its behavior in the revolution in Germany in 1923, its role in the English general strike, betrayal of the Chinese revolution, substitution of pacifism for the struggle against imperialism, etc.). All this helped the bourgeoisie to crush the proletariat. The defeat of the October Revolution and the established state capitalist forms of economy with the dictatorship of the bureaucracy are a phenomenon of the world order with the peculiarities of Russian reality.

The reaction took different forms in different countries. In Russia it is a form of Asiatic "socialism" and Asiatic despotism, in Italy it is fascism, in Poland it is Pilsudschina, in England it is conservatism, in Hungary and the Balkans it is also a kind of fascism. The regime of each country has its own specific features, but its essence is the same - reaction as a consequence of the defeat of the socialist revolution.

The first stage of the period of imperialist wars and socialist revolutions ended in the defeat of the proletariat. The elimination of the October Revolution under the flag of communism and the identification of the petty-bourgeois dictatorship with the dictatorship of the proletariat helps the bourgeoisie to divert the working class from the socialist revolution and temporarily win over part of it to its side. She tells him: if you want communism, then get the Stalinist chaos and the poverty it created. Elections to the British Parliament are a characteristic indicator of this. According to Bernard Shaw, and according to the organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of England, the British voters were frightened to death by the anarchy of Bolshevism, which meant Stalinism. The trick worked, the workers voted for the conservatives.

The second round of imperialist wars and socialist revolutions is coming, the task of real Communist-Bolsheviks is to learn from the past, the present and lead the proletariat along the right path, into the upcoming battle.

We must explain to the working class that the communists have nothing in common with this policy and the petty bourgeois dictatorship, this is the policy of the renegades of communism. In our factories, not socialism, but capitalist forms of exploitation, not socialist competition, but an ultra-bourgeois sweatshop. There are no collective farms in the countryside, but there are state enterprises of a compulsory nature; there is no socialization, but the expropriation of small proprietors, including the peasant poor.

To call our economy socialist means committing a crime against the working class and discrediting the ideas of communism, and consequently indirectly helping the bourgeoisie.

Our goal remains unchanged - communism, the means - the social revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, hence the struggle should be not only against the bourgeoisie, but also against all those who replace the idea of ​​​​communism with all sorts of petty bourgeois nonsense.

1933