The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism · Chapter
Revolution and Dictatorship explained
Russell critically examines the Bolshevik program for achieving Communism, focusing on the necessity of armed conflict, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the eventual withering away of the state.
What happens
Russell critically examines the Bolshevik program for achieving Communism, focusing on the necessity of armed conflict, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the eventual withering away of the state. He poses three key questions: whether the ultimate Communist state is desirable, whether the cost of achieving it is worth the gain, and whether Bolshevik methods will actually lead to their intended goal. While conceding the desirability of Communism in principle, Russell argues that the price—including widespread poverty, loss of liberty, and potential world war—is too high, and that the dictatorship of a minority is likely to perpetuate tyranny rather than lead to freedom and equality.
Themes in this chapter
Power and Dictatorship
Russell analyzes the Bolshevik theory that a small minority must seize and hold power through dictatorship, and questions whether such power will ever be voluntarily surrendered, leading instead to permanent tyranny.
Fanaticism and Cruelty
The chapter highlights the Bolshevik acceptance of armed conflict and the potential for immense suffering, including a prophesied world war that would unleash savage and ruthless instincts.
Individual vs. State
Russell criticizes the suppression of free intelligence and liberty under the Bolshevik regime, comparing it to a 'hothouse condition' where all independent thought is banned as bourgeois.
Methods of Transition to Socialism
The chapter is centrally concerned with the Bolshevik method of achieving Communism through armed revolution, dictatorship, and propaganda, and Russell questions whether these methods can lead to the desired outcome.
Characters to notice
- Lenin
Lenin is referenced as the primary exponent of the Bolshevik programme for achieving Communism, particularly in his replies to the Independent Labour Party.
Key passages
“The Communists, who represent the class-conscious wage-earners, wait for some propitious moment when events have caused a mood of revolutionary discontent with the existing Government. They then put themselves at the head of the discontent, carry through a successful revolution, and in so doing acquire the arms, the railways, the State treasure, and all the other resources upon which the power of modern Governments is built.”
Bolsheviks plan to seize a moment of popular unrest, lead a revolution, and take control of all state resources like weapons, railways, and treasury.
Russell outlines the Bolshevik strategy for revolution as described by Lenin.
“The country comes to resemble an immensely magnified Jesuit College. Every kind of liberty is banned as being 'bourgeois'; but it remains a fact that intelligence languishes where thought is not free.”
Russia under Bolshevik rule is like a vast religious institution where all freedom is suppressed, and intellectual life withers without free thought.
Russell criticizes the suppression of intellectual freedom in Soviet Russia.
“The system created by violence and the forcible rule of a minority must necessarily allow of tyranny and exploitation; and if human nature is what Marxians assert it to be, why should the rulers neglect such opportunities of selfish advantage?”
A system built on violence and minority rule will inevitably lead to tyranny and exploitation, and if human nature is selfish as Marxists claim, rulers will take advantage.
Russell argues that Bolshevik methods will lead to a new ruling class rather than equality.