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IV.
And today? (1935, ed)
Has that “Communism” changed its nature?
Is it actually different from the “Communism” of 1921?
To my regret I must state that, in spite of all widely advertised changes and new economic policies, Bolshevik “Communism” is essentially the same as it was in 1921.
Today the peasantry in Soviet Russia is entirely dispossessed of the land.
The sovkhozi are government farms on which the peasant works as a hired man, just as the man in the factory.
This is known as “industrialization” of agriculture, “transforming the peasant into a proletarian.”
In the kolkhoz the land only nominally belongs to the villaoe.
Actually it is owned by the government.
The latter can at any moment—and often does—commandeer the kolkhoz members for work in other parts of the country or exile whole villages for disobedience.
The kolkhozi are worked collectively, but the government control of them amounts to expropriation.
It taxes them at its own will; it sets whatever price it chooses to pay for grain and other products, and neither the individual peasant nor the village Soviet has any say in the matter.
Under the mask of numerous levies and compulsory government loans, it appropriates the products of the kolkhoii, and for some actual or pretended offenses punishes them by taking away all their grain.
The fearful famine of 1921 was admittedly due chiefly to the razverstka, the ruthless expropriation practiced at the time.
It was because of it, and of the rebellion that resulted, that Lenin decided to introduce the NEP—the New Economic Policy which limited state expropriation and enabled the peasant to dispose of some of his surplus for his own benefit.
The NEP immediately improved economic conditions throughout the land.
The famine of 1932-1933 was due to similar “Communist” methods of the Bolsheviki: to enforced collectivization.
The same result as in 1921 followed.
It compelled Stalin to revise his policy somewhat.
He realized that the welfare of a country, particularly of one predominantly agricultural as Russia is, depends primarily on the peasantry.
The motto was proclaimed: the peasant must be given opportunity togreater “well-being.”
This “new” policy is admittedly only a breathing spell for the peasant.
It has no more of Communism in it than the previous agrarian policies.
From the beginning of Bolshevik rule to this day, it has been nothing but expropriation in one form or another, now and then differing in degree but always the same in kind—a continuous process of state robbery of the peasantry, of prohibitions, violence, chicanery and reprisals, exactly as in the worst days of Czarism and the World War.
The present policy is but a variation of the “military Communism” of 1920-1921, with more of the military and less of the Communist element in it.
Its “equality” is that of a penitentiary; its “freedom” that of a chain gang.
No wonder the Bolsheviki declare that liberty is a bourgeois prejudice.
Soviet apologists insist that the old “military Communism” was justified in the initial period of the Revolution in the days of the blockade and military fronts.
But more than sixteen years have passed since.
There are no more blockades, no more fighting fronts, no more counter-revolution.
Soviet Russia has secured the recognition of all the great governments of the world.
It emphasizes its good will toward the bourgeois states, solicits their cooperation and is doing a large business with them.
In fact, the Soviet government is on terms of friendship even with Mussolini and Hitler, those famous champions of liberty.
It is helping capitalism to weather its economic storms by buying millions of dollars' worth of products and opening new markets to it.
This is, in the main, what Soviet Russia has accomplished during seventeen years since the Revolution.
But as to Communism—that is another matter.
In this regard, the Bolshevik government has followed exactly the same course as before, and worse.
It has made some superficial changes politically and economically, but fundamentally it has remained exactly the same state, based on the same principle of violence and coercion and using the same methods of tenor and compulsion as in the period of 1920-1921.
There are more classes in Soviet Russia today than in 1917, more than in most other countries in the world.
The Bolsheviki have created a vast Soviet bureaucracy, enjoying special privileges and almost unlimited authority over the masses, industrial and agricultural.
Above that bureaucracy is the still more privileged class of “responsible comrades,” the new Soviet aristocracy.
The industrial class is divided and subdivided into numerous gradations.
There are the udarniki, the shock troops of labor, entitled to various privileges; the “specialists,” the artisans, the ordinary workers and laborers.
There are the factory “cells,” the shop committees, the pioneers, the komsomoltsi, the party members, all enjoying material advantages and authority.
There is the large class of lishentsi, persons deprived of civil rights, the greater number of them also of chance to work, of the right to live in certain places, practically cut off from all means of existence.
The notorious “pale” of the Czarist times, which forbade Jews to live in certain parts of the country, has been revived for the entire population by the introduction of the new Soviet passport system.
Over and above all these classes is the dreaded G.P.U., secret, powerful and arbitrary, a government within the government.
The G.P.U., in its turn, has its own class divisions.
It has its own armed forces, its own commercial and industrial establishments, its own laws and regulations, and a vast slave army of convict labor.
Aye, even in the Soviet prisons and concentration camps there are various classes with special privileges.
In the field of industry the same kind of “Communism” prevails as in agriculture.
A sovietized Taylor system is in vogue throughout Russia, combining a minimum standard of production and piece work—the highest degree of exploitation and human degradation, involving also endless differences in wages and salaries.
Payment is made in money, in rations, in reduced charges for rent, lighting, etc., not to speak of the special rewards and premiums for udarniki.
In short, it is the wage system which is in operation in Russia.
Need I emphasize that an economic arrangement based on the wage system cannot be considered as in any way related to Communism?
It is its antithesis.
(Continued tommorow, ed.)
This series of posts will insure that these anarchists' works live on in living memory.
If only a few.
Don't lose hope now, dear reader.
We've made it this far.
At some point the ride gets easier.
Rule by force has had it's day.
When everybody sees the iron fist in the velvet glove we win.
We just have to survive its death throes.
There is a reason these facts are not in the modern curriculums.
Setting rewards to burn only burns the author portion of the payout.
The crowd isn't silenced.
Please cheer loudly, if that is your thing.