"The Greatest Failure in All History": A Critical Examination of the Actual Workings of Bolshevism in RussiaSpargo, John
History
"The Greatest Failure in All History": A Critical Examination of the Actual Workings of Bolshevism in Russia
Spargo, John
Communism -- Russia
It is a significant fact that from the middle of the nineteenth
century right down to the present day the extreme radical left wing
of the Socialist movement in every country has been bitter in its
denunciation of those Socialists who assumed the continued existence
of the state, rivaling the most extreme individualists in abuse of
“the tyranny of the state.” Without a single noteworthy exception
the leaders of the radical left wing of the movement have been
identified with those revolts against “statism” which have manifested
themselves in the agitations for decentralized autonomy. They have been
anti-parliamentarians and direct-actionists almost to a man.
By a strange irony of history it has remained for the self-styled
Marxian Socialists of Russia, the Bolsheviki, who are so much more
Marxist than Marx himself, to give to the criticism we are discussing
the authority of history. They have lifted it from the shadowy regions
of fantastic speculation to the almost impregnable and unassailable
ground of established law and practice. The Code of Labor Laws of
Soviet Russia, recently published in this country by the official
bureau of the Russian Soviet Government, can henceforth be pointed
to by the enemies of social democracy as evidence of the truth of
the charge that Socialism aims to reduce mankind to a position of
hopeless servitude. Certainly no freedom-loving man or woman would
want to exchange life under capitalism, with all its drawbacks and
disadvantages, for the despotic, bureaucratic régime clearly indicated
in this most remarkable collection of laws.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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