THE COLLAPSE OF RUSSIAN COMMUNISM.
[To THE EDITOR OP TYIE " SPECTATOR."] Sta,—Tour article under the above title, in the Spectator of November hilt, is, as usual, a confused misrepresentation of the real state of affairs regarding Russia. In the first instance, there is no such thing as " Russian " Communism. Com- munism is not a national but an international system. Secondly, as Communism has never yet been established in Russia, it cannot be said to have collapsed there. It has been repeatedly pointed out by Lenin and others that many years must elapse before Communism can be fully established in Russia. Again, Lenin is not the author or the head of the organization that administers Communism by means of the Soviets. He is simply a member of the Communist Party of Russia, and at the present time is a prominent member of its official administration. Further, seeing that Communism has never been established in Russia, the Soviets cannot be the means of its administration. The Soviets are really the mode of organization adopted by the working class to carry on their industrial and political affairs during the revolutionary crisis and the period of transition immediately following. One might go through the other statements in your article in the same way, pointing out similar misrepresentations, but the fore- going is sufficient for may purpose, which is to point out the real fundamental reason why the attempt to set up the machinery which was to lead the Russian people towards Communism has temporarily failed. I say temporarily advisedly, because you state that the Russian experimenters have failed and will never again have so good a chance. They have not completely failed,
and either they or their successors will have a much better chance at some future time when the country districts of Russia have fully developed and the peasants have become tired of the supposed magic of owning a plot of land. Why have the Russian experimenters temporarily failed? The answer is supplied by the Communist Workers' Party, recently formed in Germany, the promoters of the fourth Communist Inter- national. Their manifesto states the case perfectly as follows :—
" The proletarian revolution . . . a revolution with the
object of establishing proletarian common property relations. can be set in motion only when the bourgeoisie in consequence of the capitalist property relations created by it have become the ruling class. . . . When the revolution began there in 1917 Russia was . . . a country of feudal character. Till then it had no bourgeois revolution. . . . When the Bol- sheviks seized the power it looked as if in Russia the great exception would be demonstrated which would prove the rule. . . . This supposition was mistaken. Even the Bblsheviki could not evade the law of history; they were compelled to bow to its hard dictates against their own inclinations.. Their heroic will was wrecked on the iron facts of necessity."
The foregoing extracts point out clearly the true reason why Lenin and his associates have had to abandon their attempt to proceed towards Communism at the present stage. The town workers were more advanced and ready to proceed towards Communism, but the peasants were not. They had only been liberated from feudal serfdom, and, suddenly finding themselves in possession of the land, they found they possessed economic power, and thus became the bourgeoisie, the ruling class, and their interests immediately began to clash with those of the town proletariat. It is now becoming increasingly clear to all close students of the state of affairs in Russia at present that the country districts of Russia must go through a period of economic development along capitalistic lines of production and exchange, and the towns must perforce follow suit, as it it impossible for two classes to rule at the same time, cense• quently one is .forced to give way to the other in this instance. It is the Russian peasantry who are now the ruling class, because they are in possession of the land, which gives them economic power. This being so, it remains for the workers of every country to assist in hastening the time when they will have their own organization ready to take over and hold the means of production and distribution for the use and benefit or the proletariat of the world, and thus assist their comrades in Russia to develop their country as peacefully as possible.--I am,
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