New Labor Herald

By Paul Dupres

REVOLUTIONS are commonly urged for the purpose of establishing, in addition to many other desirabilities, the most complete freedom of speech, press, and assembly. Yet, strange to say, the Russian Revolution, the most profound in history, has fallen far short of this goal. In Russia, as everyone knows, there are drastic limitations upon the right of the people to freely speak and write their thoughts. Indeed, this right is very largely restricted to the membership of the Communist party, and it finds but limited expression even there.

This state of affairs has brought the Russian revolution a lot of unceremonious condemnation. Capitalists and their hangers-on, yellow Socialists of the Scheidemann type, petty bourgeois labor leaders like Mr. Gompers, theoretical Anarchists of the Emma Goldman persuasion, etc., etc., have raised their voices in energetic protest. Each gives his complaint the necessary twist to conform to his particular philosophy or hypocrisy, but all are agreed that the prevailing restriction of popular rights in Russia is an abominable tyranny and disgrace to the sacred cause of revolution generally.

Now whence comes this undeniable limitation of free speech, free press, and free assembly? Is it because, as all the above types declare, Lenin, Trotzsky and the rest are heartless oppressors of the same stripe as the old Czars? Or is there another and deeper reason? In view of the clamor that has been raised and the unfavorable propaganda made against Russia, it will be well for us to look into the matter a little.

For all those who have had to do with the working masses in great struggles, and the Russian revolution is above all a tremendous mass struggle, the situation is, or should be, quite clear and understandable. These practical leaders know that in such severe tests of the workers’ courage and endurance the supreme thing that must be striven for is solidarity, a united front against the enemy. This can be achieved only through a rigid discipline, which, in turn, inevitably involves a heavy restriction of the rights of free speech, free press, etc. Every strike makes clear this fundamental proposition of mass action. When we understand why the workers, during struggles against employers under capitalism, deny themselves freedom of expression in their trade unions, then we will understand why they have taken similar action in the Russian revolution.

The Masses On Strike

All strikes are marked with a strong suppression of the workers’ rights of free expression in their organizations. In the early stages of such struggles this suppression is the work of the mass itself, later on it is done by a small minority. At the outbreak of nearly all strikes the discipline is practically spontaneous. Deeply infected with strike fever, the masses enter enthusiastically into the struggle. Everything looks rosy to them; they can see victory just around the corner. They are altogether intolerant of dissenters and critics. No matter how temperate or justified the latter may be they are promptly dubbed company agents or fools and then sat upon instantly. Under such circumstances “free speech” is altogether at a discount. What prevails is a spontaneous mass discipline.

But as the strike wears on a profound change takes place. Week after week goes by and the expected victory does not materialize. On the contrary, there come hardships piled upon hardships. The masses begin to weaken; for them it is a dismal prospect, based upon simple emotion rather than upon real understanding, gradually evaporates. They lose heart and take on a defensive attitude. They degenerate into carping critics, and become a prey to all sorts of propaganda destructive to the strike solidarity. In short they are psychologically licked.

In this critical situation, which comes in every protracted strike, the burden of maintaining the indispensable discipline falls upon a small minority. These are the true fighters. They are the only ones who really understand what the struggle is all about. Their unkillable enthusiasm and inexhaustible energies are drawn from intellectual sources and are very different from the semi-blind impulse which rules the masses. If the strike is to be won these fighters must make their psychology prevail. They must take the discouraged masses firmly in hand and literally make them fight. They must break up all sorts of defeatist movements among the rank and file, which, in turn, means the suppression of free speech to a very large extent. Indeed, only those tendencies are allowed to flourish which make directly for solidarity and the continuance of the strike. All the rest are ruthlessly smashed, no matter how many abstract rights are violated in the doing of it. That is the history of all great strikes.

It is a fact known to all labor men that most severe industrial struggles that were won have been won after the mass of the workers were licked; after they had reached the stage of defeatism and discouragement that they would have given up the fight had it not been for the discipline imposed upon them more or less arbitrarily by a small minority of undefeatable fighters.

The Masses In Revolution

The foregoing illustration of the course of a strike applies equally well to the course of the Russian revolution. And naturally so, because the latter, like the former, is a case of the masses in bitter struggle. What we have seen happen a thousand times in hard fought strikes is just what happened in the Russian revolution, except that the latter is upon a tremendously larger scale.

When the revolution began it was attended by the wild burst of emotion always accompanying mass uprisings. The masses were seized by an intense wave of enthusiasm, even as they are to a lesser degree by all great strikes. The thing was unanimous. Arbitrary revolutionary discipline was not to be thought of. Joy, hope, ecstasy, inspiration were the order of the day. Prodigies of valor were performed and oceans of energy expended by the transported masses. The whole people were swept away in a mighty, swirling, irresistible torrent of revolution.

This was the dream era, the idealistic period of the revolution. But it had to come to an end, just as does the similar period of unthinking enthusiasm in big strikes. Soon the period of cold, hard, unemotional realism set in, the period of long and bitter struggle. As the months rolled by the heaven on earth expected by the masses did not materialize. Instead, there came a whole series of soul-trying ordeals. Famines, blockades, civil wars, poverty, were the people’s portion. The revolution proved a hard taskmaster. The masses, with nothing but shallow enthusiasm to sustain them, did not understand. Somehow the revolution seemed a failure. They could not meet its severe requirements. Their revolutionary fervor waned, their original enthusiasm began to abate. More and more the responsibility for continuing the revolution fell upon the shoulders of the minority who are revolutionists, not through mere impulse and idealistic imaginings, but because of deep-seated intellectual convictions. They are the ones whose revolutionary spirit is inextinguishable, the Communists.

This process has gone on in Russia for many many months, until now we find a situation comparable in principle to that in the latter stages of a hard-fought strike. Great sections of the masses are pretty much defeated. For them the glamor of the thing has worn off. They want the easiest way out. If the revolution were left to them, it would be over in a hurry. They would not fight for it; they would not work for it; they would allow themselves to be made tools of by the 57 varieties of sophistry-mongering agents of the reaction. There would be a swift collapse.

But these tired, disillusioned, and disheartened masses are being held to the struggle by the minority of indomitable fighters in their midst, the Communists. The latter are maintaining the discipline essential to the life of the revolution, just as the fighters always do in severe strikes. This could not be done if they allowed absolute freedom of discussion to prevail. If given free rein the reaction, through the instrumentality of its intentional and unintentional assistants, would have easy picking among the rank and file, who, always gullible and easily led astray, are now even more susceptible than ever because of the hardships of the revolution. Soon solidarity on the political, industrial, and military fields would be ended, and serious, if not fatal, damage done to the revolution.

Because of this unlovely but inescapable fact, the workers literally have to be protected against themselves by means of discipline. Defeatist and disruptive tendencies must be broken up, even if this does involve the limitation of the rights of the individual. And it makes little difference whether such tendencies originate in the brains of scheming reactionaries or in those of impractical Socialist, Syndicalist, Anarchist, or Communist workers. They must be checked just the same.

Successful struggle by the masses unavoidably implies limitation of their rights of free speech in the name of discipline. That is the experience of every great strike; it is likewise the experience of the Russian revolution, the bitterest and most trying struggle ever undergone by the world’s working class. Reactionary labor men like Mr. Gompers (whose trade union practice would teach him the logic of the Russian situation if he were not too blinded by prejudice) may rail against this conclusion, and idealists like Emma Goldman (who lived in a realm of cloudy theory and disdains the crass inconsistencies of hard reality) may do likewise. But suppression of the individual for the sake of the mass remains an inescapable necessity of the labor movement, nevertheless. It is an inexorable condition of successful movements by the masses at this stage of their development.

When the Soviet Government establishes freedom of speech, press, and assembly for all classes in Russia-and that must soon occur it will be the unmistakable sign that the situation has passed beyond the stage of life and death struggle; the sure indication that the revolution has triumphed and that the new society is firmly established.