Whether democratic Socialism be
wise or unwise, a practical possibility or an unrealizable idea, at least
it has nothing in common with such reactionary views as are expressed in
the following:
That the dictatorship of individuals has very frequently in the
history of revolutionary movements served as an expression and
means of realization of the dictatorship of the revolutionary
classes is confirmed by the undisputed experience of history. With
bourgeois democratic principles, the dictatorship of individuals
has undoubtedly been compatible. But this point is always treated
adroitly by the bourgeois critics of the Soviet rule and by their
petty bourgeois aides. On one hand, they declared the Soviet rule
simply something absurd and anarchically wild, carefully avoiding
all our historical comparisons and theoretical proofs that the
Soviets are a higher form of democracy; nay, more, the beginning
of a _Socialist_ form of democracy. On the other hand, they demand
of us a higher democracy than the bourgeois and argue: with your
Bolshevist (_i.e._, Socialist, not bourgeois) democratic
principles, with the Soviet democratic principles, individual
dictatorship is absolutely incompatible.
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