His imagination fired by the manner in which the Soviet of which he was
president held the loyalty of the masses during the revolutionary uprising,
and the representative character it developed, Trotzky conceived the idea
that it lent itself admirably to the scheme of proletarian dictatorship.
Parliamentary government cannot be used to impose and maintain a
dictatorship, whether of autocracy or oligarchy, bourgeoisie or
proletariat. In the Soviet, as a result of six weeks' experience in
abnormal times, during which it was never for a moment subjected to the
test of maintaining the economic life of the nation, Trotzky saw the ideal
proletarian government. He once described the Soviet as "a true,
unadulterated democracy," but, unless we are to dismiss the description as
idle and vain rhetoric, we must assume that the word "democracy" was used
in an entirely new sense, utterly incompatible with its etymological and
historical meaning. Democracy has always meant absence of class rule;
proletarian dictatorship is class rule.
In the foregoing analysis of the theoretical and tactical views which
Trotzky held during and immediately after the First Revolution, it is easy
to see the genesis of the policies of the Bolshevik government which came
twelve years later.
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