[54]
Lenine's position is quite clear. "Only the proletariat leading on the
poorest peasants (the semi-proletariat as they are called in our program)
... may undertake the steps toward Socialism that have become absolutely
unavoidable and non-postponable.... The peasants want to retain their small
holdings and to arrive at some place of equal distribution.... So be it. No
sensible Socialist will quarrel with a pauper peasant on this ground. If
the lands are confiscated, _so long as the proletarians rule in the great
centers, and all political power is handed over to the proletariat_, the
rest will take care of itself."[55] Yet, in spite of Lenine's insistence
that all political power be "handed over to the proletariat," in spite of a
score of similar utterances which might be quoted, and, finally, in spite
of the Soviet Constitution which so obviously excludes from the right to
vote a large part of the adult population, an American Bolshevist
pamphleteer has the effrontery to insult the intelligence of his readers
by the stupidly and palpably false statement that "even at the present time
95 per cent. in Russia can vote, while in the United States only about 65
per cent.
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