Programme of the World Revolution

Front matter

PROGRAMME

OF THE

WORLD REVOLUTION

Publisher's Preface

PUBLISHER'S PREFACE.

The author of the "Programme of the World Revolution" is Comrade Bucharin, who is one of the ablest exponents of Socialism in the international revolutionary movement. With the exception of a very small pamphlet, nothing of importance has yet been published in English from Bucharin's brilliant pen. While Lenin is the dialectical champion of the revolutionary theories of Communism in Russia, Bucharin may be looked upon as the most popular expounder of those views. This function of popularising the aims and objects of Socialism is ably performed by Bucharin, due to his wonderful gift of being able to interpret the most difficult social theories in a manner which is as brilliant as it is clear and elementary. We doubt if the case for Socialism, and its revolutionary tactics, has ever been presented in such simple language as that used by Bucharin in the present work.

"The Programme of the World Revolution" has been printed and circulated in many languages. Millions of copies of this famous work have been distributed among the workers throughout Europe. And as the S.L. Press is the only printing establishment in Britain which is devoted to the publication of Socialist literature, we have very great pleasure in recommending Bucharin's volume to the wage-workers of this country. While the capitalist-imperialists of the world are seeking to smash Soviet Russia by adopting savage tactics which range from corruption, through violence, on to murder—our Russian comrades, as part of their offensive, content themselves with assailing Capitalism by the publication of literature!

S.L. PRESS.

Chapter I: The Reign of Capital, The Working Class and The Poorer Elements of the Village Population

CHAPTER I.

THE REIGN OF CAPITAL, THE WORKING CLASS, AND THE POORER ELEMENTS OF THE VILLAGE POPULATION.

In all countries, except in Russia, Capital is predominant. Whatever State one takes, whether semi-despotic Prussia, or Republican France, or so-called democratic America, everywhere power is wholly concentrated in the hands of big capital. A small group of people, landowners, manufacturers and the richest bankers, hold millions and hundreds of millions of town workers and rural poor in slavery and bondage, compelling them to toil, sweating them and throwing them on the street as soon as they become useless and worn out and incapable of being a source of further profit to Lord Capital.

This terrible power of the bankers and manufacturers over millions of toilers is given to them by wealth. Why does a poor man who is thrown on the streets have to starve to death? Because he possesses nothing but a pair of hands which he can sell to the capitalist should the capitalist want them. How is it that a rich banker or business man can do nothing, and yet lead an easy life free of care, getting a solid income, and raking in profits daily, hourly, and even by the minute? Because he possesses not only a pair of hands, but also those means of production without which work is impossible nowadays: factories, land, machines, railroads, mines, ships and steamers, and all kinds of apparatus and instruments. All over the world, except in present day Russia, this wealth accumulated by man belongs only to capitalists and landowners who have also become capi And it is no wonder that in such a state of affairs a group of men, having in their hands all that is indispensable, the most necessary things, dominate the rest who possess nothing. Let us take the instance of a poor man from the country coming to town to seek work. Who does he go to? To the proprietor, the man who owns a factory or works. And this same proprietor becomes the complete master of the man's life. If his, the master's loyal servants, directors and bookkeepers, have calculated that it is possible to squeeze more profits out of fresh workers than out of the old ones, then he "gives a job." If not, he tells him to "pass along." At the factory the capitalist is monarch of all he surveys. He is obeyed by all, and his directions are implicitly carried out. The factory is extended or reduced at his will. At his command, through foremen and managers, workmen are employed or dismissed. He decides how long they are to work and what pay they are to get. And all this happens because the factory is his factory, the works, his works; they belong to him, are his private property. It is this right of private property over the means of production that is the cause of the terrible power which is in the hands of capital.

The same thing holds good with regard to land. Take the freest and the most democratic country—the United States. Thousands of workers cultivate land that does not belong to them, land owned by landowning capitalists. Here everything is organised on the plan of a large factory: there are tens and hundreds of electric ploughs, reaping machines, reaping and sheaf-binding machines, at which hired slaves toil from dawn till night. And just as at the factory, they work not for themselves, but for a master. That is because land itself as well as the seeds and machines, in a word, everything, except the working hands, is the private property of the capitalist master. He is autocrat here. He commands and conducts the business in such a way as to convert the very sweat and blood into shining yellow metal. The workmen, grumbling sometimes, obey, and go on making money for the master because he possesses everything, whilst the worker, the poor agricultural labourer, possesses nothing.

But sometimes it so happens that the landowner does not hire labourers, hut lets his land on lease. Here in Russia, for instance, the poor peasantry, holding small allotments hardly enough to pasture a hen, were obliged to rent land from the landowners. They cultivated it with their own horses, ploughs and harrows. Hut oven here they were mercilessly fleeced. The greater the peasant's need for land, the greater was the rent charged by the landowners, thus holding the pour peasant in real bondage. What enabled him to do that? The fact that the land was his, the landowner's land; the fact that the land constituted the private property of the landowning class.

Capitalist society is divided into two classes: those who work a great deal and feed scantily, and those who work little or not at all, hut eat well and plentifully. That is not at all in accordance with the Scriptures, where it says: "He that does not work, neither shall he eat." This circumstance, however, does not prevent the priests of all faiths and tongues from lauding the capitalist order; for these priests everywhere (except in the Soviet Republic) are maintained by increment derived from private or church property.

Another question now arises. How is it possible for a group of parasites to retain private ownership over the means of labour, so indispensable to all? How has it come about that private ownership by the idle classes is maintained to the present day? Where does the reason lie?

The reason lies in the perfect organisation of the enemies of the labouring class. To-day there does not exist a single capitalist country where the capitalists act individually. On the contrary, each one of them is infallibly a member of some economic organisation. And it is these economic unions that hold everything in their hands, having tens of thousands of faithful agents to serve them, not out of fear, but as a matter of conscience. The entire economic life of every capitalist country is at the complete disposal of special economic organisations: syndicates, trusts, and unions of many banking concerns. These combines own and direct everything.

The most important industrial and financial combine is the Bourgeois State. This combine holds in its hands the reins of government and power. Here everything is weighed and measured, everything is premeditated and arranged in such a manner, as to crush instantly any attempt at rebellion on the part of the working class against the domination of capital. The State has at its disposal, forces (such as spies, police, judges, executioners, and trained soldiers, who have become soulless machines), as well as mental influences which gradually pervert the workers and poorer elements of society, imbuing them with fallacious ideas. For this purpose the bourgeois State utilises schools and the Church, aided by the capitalist press. It is a known fact that pig-breeders can breed such stock as are incapable of moving owing to the vast accumulation of fat; but such pigs are extremely suitable for slaughter. They are bred artificially on special fattening food. The bourgeoisie deals with the working class in exactly the same way. It is true it gives them little enough substantial food—not enough to get fat on. But day by day it offers to the workers a specially-prepared mental food which fattens their brains and makes them incapable of thought. The bourgeoisie wants to turn the working class into a herd of swine, docile and fit for slaughter, not capable of thinking and ever subservient. This is the reason why, with the help of schools and the Church, the bourgeoisie tries to instil into the minds of children the idea that it is necessary to obey the Authorities, as they hold their power from heaven (and the Bolsheviks, instead of prayers, have drawn on themselves the curses of the Church, because they have refused to grant any State subsidies to these cassocked frauds). This is also the reason why the bourgeoisie is so anxious to circulate its lying press far and wide.

The powerful organisation of the bourgeois class enables them to retain private property. The rich are few in number, but they are surrounded by a large number of faithful, devoted and handsomely-paid servants: ministers, directors of works, directors of banks, and so on; these latter are again surrounded by a still greater number of retainers who get paid less, but who are entirely dependent on them, and are educated along the same lines. They are themselves on the look-out for such posts, should they be lucky enough to attain them. These again are followed by minor officials, agents of capital, etc., etc. It is just as the Russian nursery tale has it: "Grandad holds on to the turnip, grandma on to grandad, grandchild on to grandma," and so on; in short they follow one another in an interminable chain united by the general organisation of the bourgeois State and other industrial combines. These organisations cover all countries with a net out of which the working class struggles in vain to get free. Every capitalist State is in reality one vast economic union. The workers toil—the masters enjoy themselves. The workers carry out orders—the masters lord it over them. The workers are deceived the masters deceive them. Such is the state of things called capitalistic, which the capitalists and their servants—the priests, intellectual classes, men socialist revolutionaries, and the rest of that fraternity, are inviting the workers and peasants to obey.

Chapter II: Plundering Wars. The Oppression of the Working Classes, and the Beginning of the Fall of Capitalism

CHAPTER II.

PLUNDERING WARS. THE OPPRESSION OF THE WORKING CLASSES, AND THE BEGINNING OF THE FALL OF CAPITALISM.

In every capitalist country small capital has practically vanished; of late it has been eaten up by the big sharks of capitalism. At first, a struggle went on between the individual capitalists for customers; at the present time when there are only a few of them left (as the small fry is absolutely ruined), the remaining ones have united, organised, and have it their own way in their country, just as in the olden times the barons had full power over their domains; a few American bankers own the whole of America, just as formerly a single capitalist owned his factory. A few French usurers have subjugated the whole French people; five of the biggest banks hold the fate of the German people in their hands. The same thing happens in other capitalist countries. It may therefore be said that the present capitalist States, or as they are called, "Fatherlands," have become huge factories owned by an industrial combine, just as formerly a single capitalist owned his particular factory.

It is not surprising that such combines, unions of various capitalist countries, are now carrying on among themselves the same sort of struggle which was formerly carried on between individual capitalists; the English capitalist State is fighting the German capitalist State, just as formerly in England or in Germany respectively one individual manufacturer was struggling against another. Only now the State is a thousand times bigger, and the struggle for the increase of profits is being waged by means of human life and human blood.

In this struggle, which has spread over the whole globe, the first to perish were small weak countries. At the beginning it is always the small colonial people that perish. Weak, uncivilised tribes are dispossessed of their lands by the great plundering States. A struggle ensues for the division of the remaining "free" lands, i.e., lands not yet looted by the "civilised" States. Then begins a struggle for the re-division of that which has already been looted It is quite evident that the struggle for the re-division of the world must be bloody and furious as no war before it. It is conducted by monstrous giants, by the biggest States in the world, armed with perfected death-dealing machines.

The world war which broke out in the summer of 1914 was the first war for the final re-division of the world between the monsters of "civilised" robbery. It has drawn into its whirlpool four of the chief rival giants: England, Germany, America and Japan. And the struggle is being carried on to decide which of these plundering unions will put the world under the domination of its bloody iron heel.

This war has everywhere vastly deteriorated the position of the working class, which was bad enough as it was. Terrible calamities have fallen on the workers: millions of the best men were simply mown down on the battlefields; starvation was the fate of others. Those who dare to protest are menaced with severest punishments. Prisons are filled to overflowing; gendarmes with machine guns are held ready against the working classes. The rights of the workers have vanished even in the most "free" countries: the workers are even forbidden to strike; strikes are looked upon in the same light as treason. The Labour and Socialist Press is stifled. The best workers, the most loyal fighters for the revolution, are compelled to hide and build up their organisations secretly, just as we used to do in the time of the Czar, furtively hiding from crowds of spies and police. No wonder that all these consequences of the war have made the workers not only groan, but rise against their oppressors.

But now the bourgeois States which are responsible for the great slaughter are in their turn beginning to decay at the root and fall. The bourgeois States have "stuck," so to speak, They have stuck in the bloody swamp they have created in their hunt after profit, and there is no way out. To go back, to return empty-handed is impossible after such great losses in money, goods and blood. To go on, encountering new terrible risks, is also practically impossible. The policy of the war has led thorn into a blind alley from which there is no exit. And that is why the war is still continuing without either coming to an end or achieving any definite result. For the same reason the decaying capitalist order is beginning to totter, and will sooner or later have to make way for a new order of things, under which the imbecility of the world war for the sake of gain will have become impossible.

The longer the war lasts the poorer the combatant countries are becoming. The flower of the working class has either perished or is lying eaten alive by lice in the trenches, busily at work in the cause of destruction. Everything has been demolished in the course of the war: even brass door handles have been confiscated for war requirements. Objects of primary necessity are lacking because the war, like the insatiable locust, has devoured everything. There is no one to manufacture useful articles any longer; what there is, is being gradually used up. For nearly four years factories that previously turned out useful things are manufacturing shells and shrapnel instead. And now, without men, without producing what is indispensable, all the countries have reached a state of decline where people are beginning to howl like wolves with cold, hunger, poverty, want and oppression.

In German villages, where formerly electricity was used, they now burn dried wood chips for lack of coals. Life is coming to a standstill with the general growth of poverty of the people. In such well-kept towns as Berlin and Vienna, the streets are not traversable at night because of the robberies that take place. The press is wailing over the insufficiency of police. They refuse to see that the growth of crime is the consequence of the growth of pauperism, despair and exasperation. Cripples returning from the front find sheer starvation at home; the number of hungry and homeless, notwithstanding the number of various relief organisations, is constantly growing, because there is nothing to eat, and all the while the war proceeds, demanding new sacrifices.

The harder the position of the warring States, the more friction, quarrels and misunderstandings arise between the different sections of the bourgeoisie, who formerly went hand in hand for the sake of their mutual aims. In Austria-Hungary, Bohemians, Ukrainians, Germans, Poles and others are fighting each other. In Germany, with the conquest of new provinces, the same bourgeoisie (Esthonian, Lettish, Ukrainian, Polish) which welcomed the German troops, are now quarrelling furiously with their liberators. In England, the English bourgeoisie is in mortal conflict with the enslaved Irish bourgeoisie. And in the midst of this tumult and general disorganisation is heard the voice of the labouring class, before which history has laid the problem of putting an end to war and of overthrowing the yoke of capitalism. Thus approaches the hour of the decay of capitalism and the communist revolution of the working class.

The first stone was laid by the Russian October Revolution. The reason why capitalism in Russia became disorganised before it did in any other country, was that the burden of the world war was heaviest for the young capitalist State of our country. We had not the monstrous organisation of the bourgeoisie which they have in England, Germany or America; and our bourgeoisie could not therefore cope with the demands laid on it by the war. Nor could they withstand the mighty onset of the Russian labouring class and of the poor elements of the peasantry who, in the October days, knocked the bourgeoisie out of their seats and put at the head of the Government the party of the working class—the Communist Bolsheviks.

Sooner or later the same fate will overtake the bourgeoisie of Western Europe, where the working class is joining more and more the ranks of the communists. Everywhere, organisations of native "bolsheviks " are growing; in Austria and America, in Germany and in Norway, in France and in Italy. The programme of the communist party is becoming the programme of the universal proletarian revolution.

Chapter III: General Sharing, or Co-operative Communist Production

CHAPTER III.

GENERAL SHARING, OR CO-OPERATIVE COMMUNIST PRODUCTION.

We already know that the root of the evil of all plundering wars, of oppression of the working classes and of all the atrocities of capitalism, is that the world has been enslaved by a few State organised capitalist bands, who own all the wealth of the earth as their private property. The capitalist ownership of the means of production—this is the reason of reasons which explains the barbarity of the present order of things. To deprive the rich of their power by depriving them of their wealth, by force, that is the paramount duty of the working class, of the Labour Party, the party of communists.

Some think that, after depriving the rich of their possessions, these should be religiously, justly and equally divided between everybody, and thru all will be well. Everyone, the say, would have just as much as everyone rise; all would be equal, and freed from inequality, oppression and exploitation. Thanks to tills equal share-out, general division and allotment of all the riches amongst the poor, every body will look alter himself, will own all things convenient for his use, and the domination of man over man will vanish.

But this is not the point of view of the Communist Party. The Communist Party considers that such equal sharing would lead to nothing good, and to no other result than confusion and a return to the old order.

Firstly, there are quite a number of things which are impossible to divide. How, for instance, would you divide the railway? If one man gets the rails, another the steel plate, a third one of the screws, and a fourth begins smashing up the carriages to light his stove, a fifth breaks a mirror, to have a piece of glass for shaving purposes, and so on—it is plain that this kind of division would not be fair at all, and would only lead to an idiotic plundering and destruction of useful things. It is just as impossible to divide a machine. For, if one takes a, pinion, another a lever, and the rest, other parts, the machine will cease to be a machine, and the whole thing will go to ruin. And the same thing holds good with regard to all complicated machinery, which is so important as a means of further production. We have only to think of telegraph and telephone apparatus, and the apparatus at chemical works, etc. It is evident that only an unintelligent man or a direct enemy of the working class would advise this kind of sharing.

This, however, is not the only reason why such a sharing is harmful. Let us suppose that by some kind of miracle, a more or less equal division was attained of everything taken from the rich; even that would not lead to any desirable result in the end. What is the meaning of a division? It means that instead of a few large owners there would spring up a large number of small ones. It means not the abolition of private ownership, but its dispersion over a larger area. In the place of large ownership there would arise ownership on a small scale. Hut such a period we have already had in the past. We know very well that capitalism and largo capitalists have developed out of the competition between one small owner and another. If we bred a number of small owners as a result of our division, we should get the following result: part of them (and quite a considerable part) would, on the very next day, get rid of their share on some market or other (say the Soucharev Market in Moscow), and their property would thus fall into the hands of wealthier owners; between the remaining ones a struggle would ensue for the buyers, and in this struggle, too, the wealthier ones would soon get the upper hand of the less well-to-do. The latter would soon be ruined and turn into proletarians, and their lucky rivals would amass fortunes, employing men to work for them, and thus be gradually transformed into first-rate capitalists. And so we should, in a very short time, return to the same order which we have just destroyed, and find ourselves once again before the old problem of capitalist exploitation.

Dividing up into small property-holders is not the ideal of the worker or the agricultural labourer. It is rather the dream of the small shopkeeper oppressed by the big one, who wants to become a large shopkeeper himself. How to become a "boss," how to get hold of as much as possible and retain it in his greedy clutch—that is what the shopkeeper is aiming at. To think of others and consider what this may result in is not his affair so long as he gets an extra sixpence clinking in his pocket. He is not to be frightened by a possible return to capitalism, for he is cherishing a faint hope that he himself, John Smith, may become a capitalist. And that would not be so bad for him.

No; there is an entirely different road along which the working class should go, and is going. The working class is interested in such a reconstruction of society as would make return to capitalism impossible. Sharing of wealth would mean driving capitalism out of the front door only to see it return by the back door. The only way out of this dilemma is a co-operative labour (communist) system.

In a communist order, all the wealth belongs not to individuals or classes, but to society as a whole, which become it were, one great labour association; no one man is master over it. All are equal comrades. There are no classes; capitalists do not employ labour, nor do workers sell their labour to employers. The work is carried out jointly, according to a pre-arranged labour plan. A central bureau of statistics calculates how much it is required to manufacture in a year: such and such a number of hoots, trousers, sausages, blacking, wheat, cloth, and so on. It will also calculate that for this purpose such and such a number of men must work on the fields and in the sausage work respectively, and such and such a number in the large communal tailoring workshops, etc., and working hands will be distributed accordingly.

The whole of production is conducted on a strictly calculated and adjusted plan, on the basis of an exact estimate of all the machines, apparatus, all raw material, and all the labour power in the community. There is also an exact account kept of the annual requirements of the community. The manufactured product is stored in a communal warehouse, from whence it is distributed amongst the workers. All work is carried out only in the largest works and on the best machines, thereby saving labour. The management of production is conducted along the most economical lines: all unnecessary expenditure is avoided, owing to work being carried out on one general plan of production. We do not have here the kind of order that allows one kind of management in one place and another kind of management in another; or that one factory, for example, should not know how things are done at another factory, Here, on the contrary, the whole world is weighed and accounted for. Cotton is only grown where the soil is most suitable. The production of coal is concentrated in the richest mines; iron foundries are built in the neighbourhood of coal and in parts where the soil is fit for wheat, it will not be employed for building monstrous city edifices on, but will be used for sowing wheat. Everything, in short, is arranged in such a manner that each kind of production should be carried out in a place most sutable for it, where work could be done most successfully, where things could be obtained easiest, where human labour would be most productive. All this can be attained only by working to a single plan and by organising the whole community into one vast labour commune.

People in this communistic order do not benefit at one another's expense. There are no rich here, no parvenus, no bosses and no bottom dogs; society is not divided into classes of which one rules over the other. And there being no classes means that there are not two sorts of people (poor and rich), gnashing their teeth against one another, the oppressor against the oppressed, and vice versa. For this same reason we have no such organisation as the State, because there is no dominating class requiting a special organisation to keep their class opponents under their heel. There is no Government to rule men, and there is no power of one man over another. There is administration of things only, management of machines; there is the power of human society over Nature. Mankind is not divided up into hostile camps; it is united by common labour and by a common struggle against the elements. The political barriers that divide nations are done away with. Separate fatherlands are abolished. The whole of humanity, without distinction of nationality, is bound together in. all its parts and organised into one united whole. All peoples form one great united labour association.

Chapter IV: An Anarchist or a Communist Order

CHAPTER IV.

AN ANARCHIST OR A COMMUNIST ORDER.

There are people who call themselves Anarchists, that is to say, adherents to an order of things where there is no Government. They affirm that the Bolshevik-Communists are on the wrong path, because they wish to preserve order, and that any kind of power or authority, and any kind of state, means oppression and violence. We have seen that such an opinion of communism is not right. A communist order of life is an order in which there are neither workers nor capitalists, nor any kind of State. The difference between an anarchist and a communist order is not in the fact that there is a State in one and none in the other. No; there is no State in either of them. The real difference is in the following:—

Anarchists think that human life will be better and freer when they sub-divide all production into small labour-commune organisations. A group or association, say, of ten men is formed who have united by their own free will. Very well. These ten men begin to work on their own account and at their own risk. In another place there has arisen a similar association; in a third another. In time all these associations enter into negotiations and agreements with one another concerning the things which are lacking in each respective union. Gradually they come to an understanding, and "free contracts" or agreements are drawn up.