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If Russia were governed democratically, according to the will of the majority, the inhabitants of Moscow and Petrograd would die of starvation.
we shall render the Soviet State unassailable and completely free to pursue the policy of promoting revolution everywhere.
the sole cure for the evils from which Russia is suffering is peace and trade. Peace and trade would put an end to the hostility of the peasants,
regarded as the successors of Peter the Great, they are performing a necessary though unamiable task. They are introducing, as far as they can, American efficiency among a lazy and undisciplined population.
Russia will endure great hardships, in the years to come as before. But the Russians are inured to misery as no Western nation is; they can live and work under conditions which we should find intolerable.
If we continue to antagonize the Bolsheviks, I do not see what force exists that can prevent them from acquiring the whole of Asia within ten years.
The present world-situation in politics places
events of world politics are inevitably concentrated round one centre of gravity: the struggle of the international bourgeoisie against the Soviet Republic,
Almost all the progress in the world from the earliest times is attributable to science and the scientific temper; almost all the major ills are attributable to religion.
emotional or authoritarian, not intellectual. By this definition, Bolshevism is a religion: that its dogmas go beyond or contrary to evidence,
Christianity and Buddhism are primarily personal religions, with mystical doctrines and a love of contemplation. Mohammedanism and Bolshevism are practical, social, unspiritual, concerned to win the empire of this world.
What Mohammedanism did for the Arabs, Bolshevism may do for the Russians.
We have a heritage of civilization and mutual tolerance which is important to ourselves and to the world.
There is, therefore, no logical connection either way between philosophic materialism and what is called the “materialistic conception of history.”
otherwise political theories are both supported and opposed for quite irrelevant reasons,
In the eighteenth century French aristocrats mostly became free-thinkers; now their descendants are mostly Catholics, because it has become necessary for all the forces of reaction to unite against the revolutionary proletariat.
traditional sexual morality collapsed, because its whole basis was the economic dependence of women upon their fathers and husbands.
The most obvious non-economic factor, and the one the neglect of which has led Socialists most astray, is nationalism.
Throughout the war wage-earners, with only a few exceptions, allowed themselves to be governed by nationalist feeling, and ignored the traditional Communist exhortation: “Workers of the world, unite.”
The capitalists were in the grip of nationalist instinct as much as their proletarian “dupes.”
Religion has been the most decisive factor in determining a man’s herd throughout long periods of the world’s history. Even now a Catholic working man will vote for a Catholic capitalist rather than for an unbelieving Socialist.
many working men prefer the advancement of their creed to the improvement of their livelihood. However deplorable such a state of mind may be, it is not necessarily due to capitalist lies.
They desire victory over rivals so profoundly that they will invent a rivalry for the unconscious purpose of making a victory possible.
Tungsten had no value until it was found to be useful in the manufacture of shells and electric light, but now people will, if necessary, kill each other in order to acquire tungsten.
I conclude that no swift method exists of establishing any desirable form of Socialism.
Marxians never sufficiently recognize that love of power is quite as strong a motive, and quite as great a source of injustice, as love of money; yet this must be obvious to any unbiased student of politics.
In England men have reached the point of suspecting a good speaker, but if a man speaks badly they think he must be honest.
desire for peace and land led to a widespread support of the Bolsheviks in November 1917 on the part of people who have subsequently shown no love for Communism.
if Socialism is not then carried without bloodshed, it will be due to the unconstitutional action of the rich, not to the need of revolutionary violence on the part of the advocates of the proletariat.
We, in the modern world, take it for granted that most people will be law-abiding, and we hardly realize what centuries of effort have gone to making such an assumption possible.
Civilization is not so stable that it cannot be broken up;
I have no hesitation in answering it in a manner favourable to Communism. It is clear that the present inequalities of wealth are unjust.
those who have never known poverty and therefore make light of it. Hunger brings an absorption in the question of food, which, to most people, makes life almost purely animal.
there would still be certain officials in control of the food supply, and these officials could govern as they pleased so long as they retained the support of the soldiers. This is not mere theory: it is the patent lesson of the present condition of Russia.
What motive would they have for not doing so? What motive is possible except idealism, love of mankind, non-economic motives of the sort that Bolsheviks decry?
My first impulse was to abandon political thinking as a bad job, and to conclude that the strong and ruthless must always exploit the weaker and kindlier sections of the population.
It is therefore imperative for those who do not believe in Bolshevism to put some other hope in its place.
do not think that mere inequality of wealth, in itself, is a very grave evil. If everybody had enough, the fact that some have more than enough would be unimportant.
the cinema has given them a new method of propaganda, by which they enlist the support of those who are too frivolous even for illustrated papers.
It is this sacrifice of the individual to the machine that is the fundamental evil of the modern world.
I did not feel, in the Bolsheviks, any consciousness of the magnitude of this misfortune, or any realization of the importance of the individual as against the State.
Self-government in industry, for example, is an indispensable condition of a good society. Those acts of an individual or a group which have no very great importance for outsiders ought to be freely decided by that individual or group. This is recognized as regards religion, but ought to be recognized over a much wider field.
right?
Owing to the fact that there is abundant food in the country, industrial and urban workers are perpetually attempting to abandon their employment for agriculture. This is illegal, and is severely punished, by imprisonment or convict labour.
he looks to the ideas of syndicalism or the I.W.W. to liberate him from a slavery far more complete than that of capitalism.
it may be that a revival of Peter the Great’s methods is essential to progress. From this point of view, much of what it is natural to criticize in the Bolsheviks becomes defensible; but this point of view has little affinity to Communism.
Some amiable Socialists have imagined that, when the private capitalist had been eliminated, men would work from a sense of obligation to the community.
In the principles of Bolshevism there is more desire to destroy ancient evils than to build up new goods; it is for this reason that success in destruction has been so much greater than in construction. The desire to destroy is inspired by hatred, which is not a constructive principle.
men must be persuaded to the attempt by hope, not driven to it by despair. To bring this about should be the aim of every Communist who desires the happiness of mankind more than the punishment of capitalists and their governmental satellites.
The fundamental ideas of Communism are by no means impracticable, and would, if realized, add immeasurably to the well-being of mankind.
All these things follow in a fatal sequence; and the end of them is almost certain to be something quite different from what genuine Communists desire.
