Page:Samuel Gompers - Out of Their Own Mouths (1921).djvu/149

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE AGRICULTURAL POPULATION
123

The work of our congress will be the more successful that we have achieved absolute agreement from the very beginning on two fundamental questions; the relations of the vanguard of the proletariat with the proletarian masses and its relations with the peasants.

We may stop the citation here to point out once more that the Bolshevist attitude towards the proletarian or industrial masses is almost the same as their attitude towards the peasants or agricultural masses. Lenin continues:

We know that the only force able to unite millions of scattered small proprietors who are constantly enduring great hardships, the only force able to unite them economically and politically against the exploiters, is the class-conscious proletariat.

Here is the same claim of the little group that controls the Communist Party that they are divinely or otherwise called to rule the masses without their consent. And, finally, Lenin proceeds to disclose the very foundations of Bolshevist policy. An alliance or partnership with foreign capital is absolutely indispensable because there must be at least a minimum of "benevolence" in the tyranny of the Soviets or the peasants by continued passive resistance and violence will not permit them to work. These political serfs cannot be permanently held in subjection unless something is done towards ameliorating the misery into which they hare fallen through Czarist and Bolshevist rule. On this point Lenin declares:

Relations will be normal then, and only then, when the proletariat is in possession of a large scale industry