Prev | Current Page 225 | Next

Spargo, John, 1876-1966

"Bolshevism The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy"

[12]
The Bolsheviki at this period had as their program the following:
(1) The Soviets of Workers, Soldiers, and Peasants to constitute themselves
into the actual revolutionary government and establish the dictatorship of
the proletariat; (2) immediate confiscation of landed estates without
compensation, the seizure to be done by the peasants themselves, without
waiting for legal forms or processes, the peasants to organize into
Soviets; (3) measures for the control of production and distribution by the
revolutionary government, nationalization of monopolies, repudiation of the
national debt; (4) the workers to take possession of factories and operate
them in co-operation with the technical staffs; (5) refusal by the Soviets
to recognize any treaties made by the governments either of the Czar or the
bourgeoisie, and the immediate publication of all such treaties; (6) the
workers to propose at once and publicly an immediate truce and negotiations
of peace, these to be carried on by the proletariat and not by and with the
bourgeoisie; (7) bourgeois war debts to be paid exclusively by the
capitalists.
According to Litvinov, who is certainly not an unfriendly authority, as
soon as Lenine arrived in Russia he submitted a new program to his party
which was so novel, and so far a departure from accepted Socialist
principles, that "Lenine's own closest friends shrank from it and refused
to accept it.


Pages:
213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237