We come now to a question which has been very frequently raised during the past year, a matter which has been brought once more into the limelight by the trials of opposition groups which have taken place in Moscow. This is the question of “freedom of opposition” under Soviet conditions, and the extent to which such freedom is justifiably limited in the interests of democratic discipline.
Now, if we consider any kind of democratic organization in any part of the world, we find that it has to be concerned, not only with preserving its members’ freedom of individual expression, but also with preserving the majority of members from individuals and minorities who occupy hours of valuable time with unpopular speeches, and who thus obstruct action in the interests of the majority. If we take a business men’s club with its proverbial bore, a shareholders’ meeting with the usual shareholder with a grievance, or the trade union branch with the member who is consistently a nuisance, we find that every organization, professing to be run in the interests of the majority, must take steps to protect this majority against undisciplined minorities. Democracy, therefore, does not mean simply giving individuals the opportunity to voice their personal views, but also it means that the people shall have the opportunity to refuse to hear those whose views are antagonistic to them, and the expression of which is an obstruction to the carrying out of a generally accepted policy. In democratic societies functioning within the capitalist State, such persons may be simply expelled from their organizations. But the Soviet State cannot simply expel recalcitrant “members,” for two principal reasons. First, the surrounding States might not accept the persons expelled; and secondly, such persons, once expelled, might be far more use to the enemies of the community than if kept within its frontiers. Trotsky was simply expelled from the Workers’ State—and his activities since have confirmed the view that less harm would have been done if he had been isolated in Siberia.
Once the problems of a democratic organization become those of a State as well, and of a State surrounded by hostile States, simple expulsion of minorities that obstruct the common business is no longer practicable. In dealing with such cases the Soviet State is forced by circumstances to remove such persons from society, while keeping them within its frontiers. This is why, in the U.S.S.R., certain offenders against the will of the majority may be sent into exile.
It is only when this question of political exile is seen as the Soviet equivalent of expulsion, as practised by democratic organizations elsewhere, that it can be fully understood. The Soviet State is a workers’ organization. Workers’ organizations expel obstructionists, and, however democratic they are, they will still have to face the problem of so dealing with such people. The Soviet State has the same problem, but it cannot expel these people from its territory as a rule, simply because they are not acceptable to the rulers of the territory outside the U.S.S.R. Further, the expulsion of people who are enemies of the majority of the people of the U.S.S.R. would be in general unwise, for it would be giving them an opportunity to carry on their activity from outside, thus strengthening the enemies of the U.S.S.R.
Some readers may be a little disturbed at this somewhat brutal statement of the case, under Soviet conditions, for exiling political opponents. But nobody must be misled by what I have said into thinking that anyone who disagrees with any person in authority is exiled in the U.S.S.R. On the contrary, there is a phenomenal amount of discussion in the U.S.S.R. by the general public on all vital issues. The Soviet citizen who is exiled is not a person who has simply disagreed. It is the person who, having made proposals and having been defeated, continues to obstruct all constructive business by repeatedly putting forward again and again the rejected point of view, and who thus becomes a thorn in the flesh of the whole of society. Such was Trotsky, who for years was putting forward his minority views at every popular gathering in opposition to the leaders of the Soviet Government, and who was finally exiled because he was organizing secret groups to oppose the policy democratically adopted by the whole people. He was thus obstructing the further development of the country in the direction decided upon by the people, and was expelled.
The extent to which the Soviet Government must be vigilant on such questions as discipline is determined, not by the structure of the Soviet State alone, but by the fact that it is surrounded by a hostile world. It is quite impossible to realize the full implications of discipline in the U.S.S.R. by simply comparing, as we have so far done, the Soviet State with democratic organizations elsewhere. In order to obtain a true picture we must make our comparison with other democratic organizations at a time when they are waging a struggle for their existence, when they are carrying on some great militant campaign in the interests of their members and are being subjected to every kind of attack. The Soviet State surrounded by a capitalist and partly Fascist world cannot be compared with a trade union in a period of industrial peace. It must be compared with a trade union during an industrial dispute. And we all know that, in an industrial dispute, a union will exercise disciplinary pressure on its members of a kind that will not be considered necessary in time of peace.
Since it was first created, the Soviet State has been waging a struggle against enemies both inside and outside its territory. Being a democratic State of the working people, it came into conflict with the landowners and employers from the very beginning of its existence. These enemies, with foreign help, took up arms against the Soviet State. The State had to wage a war for its freedom. Later it had to wage a war against the small capitalist minority in the villages, and, all along, it has had to build up its defences and consolidate itself against a possible further attack from outside repeating the experiences of 1918 to 1922.
During a strike the members of a trade union have to fight a battle with the employers. Force is used on both sides—the workers try to force the employers to capitulate for fear of loss of profits, and the employers try to coerce the workers from sheer hunger. The workers may resort to putting machinery out of order, to the picketing of factories, and so on. The employers will undoubtedly call in the police on the side of themselves to “protect their property.” What is the attitude of the workers in such circumstances to recalcitrant minorities?
In every strike the employer usually finds some individual or group of individuals among the workers who, out of a desire for immediate personal gain, or simply through a lack of knowledge of the issues at stake, is ready to go on working or to persuade fellow workers to accept the bosses’ terms. The employer can find allies among such people, against their own comrades. In every strike the workers picket such deserters, and “peaceful picketing” may be carried, relatively speaking, quite as far as “exile to Siberia,” if we look at the two types of struggle in perspective.
The truth of the matter is that under all conditions a struggle by a democratic organization for its freedom is a limitation on the democratic rights of the opponents of that freedom. And once, in a critical situation, a minority continues to oppose the interests of the majority, such a minority becomes, consciously or not, a weapon of the enemy against the democracy concerned. Here again we only repeat what was said in our Introduction—that democracy and dictatorship are not mutually exclusive.
In the Soviet Union the application of all decisions by the Soviet authorities is the direct responsibility of every citizen, for every citizen is a worker in some State organization, and every member of a Soviet does work in one of the departments of that Soviet. In Britain, with its parliamentary system, there is no reason why, within certain limits, continual opposition in Parliament to the policy of the Government should obstruct the carrying out of that policy. If a majority in the British Parliament passes a certain law to-morrow, the opponents of the law may continue verbally to oppose it. But the Civil Service will have to carry it out all the same, and will have no right of criticism.
In the U.S.S.R. the Civil Service includes the people who oppose the policy decided upon as well as those who support it. In such circumstances it is clear that to continue actively to oppose a decision arrived at by a majority would, in practice, mean sabotaging its execution. So, from a purely organizational standpoint, we see the absolute necessity for the disciplined execution of democratic decisions in the U.S.S.R.
The idea that majority decisions should be binding on minorities is generally accepted in Britain as far as the practical execution of these decisions is concerned. But there often remains the idea that while the minority should carry out the decision in practice, it should have the right to oppose its execution in theory at the same time. Such a view, however, is invariably abandoned whenever there is some urgent problem on hand, such as a war, involving the country as a whole, or a strike, involving a trade union. For even in Britain it has been found that concerted action can be obstructed, not only by people refusing to act, but by their encouraging others not to act. Propaganda against carrying out a majority decision may be an even more effective form of sabotage of that decision than a direct refusal to carry it out personally.
In the U.S.S.R., where the whole community is in constant action for the general improvement of conditions and for strengthening itself against attack, it is clear that minority opposition to majority decisions might well become a serious obstruction to the carrying out of these decisions, and thus play directly into the hands of the enemies of the U.S.S.R. whose main requirement is to obstruct its internal development.
The recognition of the need for discipline in a democratic organization does not necessarily mean, however, any curtailment of the freedom of the ordinary citizen. For, if the ordinary citizen considers such discipline necessary to the common interest, he will personally be an enforcer of such discipline, not a violator, and the discipline will thus be an expression and a defence of his freedom, not a violation of it. This point is of particular importance in discussing such a question as freedom of speech in the U.S.S.R. to-day.
I have often been asked, since returning from the Soviet Union, whether a citizen in Moscow can get up in a park and attack the Government as he can in Hyde Park in this country. My first reply usually is, “God forbid that he should want to!”—for it is hard to imagine a more ineffective freedom than the ability to address a handful of regular Hyde Park listeners on a Sunday afternoon; that is, if one is interested in effective speech that influences people to act, and not simply in exercising one’s lungs, which can be equally well done in a bedroom with the window open.
Secondly, it is worth mentioning that the Soviet workers, able to hold their meetings in the assembly rooms of the country free of charge, and being able to meet in their factories to discuss all matters of interest to them, do not need to go to a park to air their views.
But a far more important point than these is the question: Do Soviet workers want to get up and attack their Government in public meetings? And, if certain individuals do want to do this, do the majority of workers want to listen to such speakers? The whole question of freedom of speech is fundamentally answered in the reply to these two questions.
First, it is only a supposition of the Englishman, two thousand miles away, that the workers in the U.S.S.R. want to get up and attack the Government. Actually, they are no more likely to want to attack the Soviet Government than trade unionists in Britain are likely to attack trade unionism. The Soviet State has been built up by the organized activity of the people themselves; it is their State, and as such they are interested in defending, not attacking it. Of course, a small minority of people might want to attack the Soviet State, and this was particularly true in the early days when the property-owning class still held considerable influence, and still could command a limited number of spokesmen among the workers and peasants themselves. But these people were a small minority, and cannot be described typical.
During five years in the U.S.S.R. I have invariably had the impression that the people have no desire to attack the Government, because they look upon it as their own, and as serving their own interests. Of course, I do not wish to say that there are no persons at all who would like to criticize the Government. There obviously are such people. But if these people are exceptions, and not the rule, then we must take it that there is freedom for the vast majority of the people to express themselves, but that a small minority does not enjoy such freedom.
But there is a second aspect to the matter. Freedom does not only consist in the freedom of the individual to harangue the masses, but in the freedom of the masses to choose who shall harangue them. No democratic organization in the world claims to give absolute freedom to every member to put forward indefinitely an unpopular point of view. For obviously such a person at a certain point obstructs the whole work of his democratic organization.
For example, during the period from 1924 to 1928, after the death of Lenin, and when Trotsky was repeatedly challenging the policy of the Government, opposition was openly expressed by Trotsky and his followers. But at last, exasperated by the continued attempts of small minorities of Trotskyists to obstruct all business in order to popularize a thoroughly unpopular point of view, the State finally took the step of suppressing this opposition. And this suppression received the general approval of the people, because this form of opposition had become a public nuisance.
In the Soviet Union to-day the freedom of workers to criticize their superiors and Government institutions does not extend to freedom to attack the Government as such, because the people as a whole support this Government and to not oppose it. If a foreigner visiting the U.S.S.R. tries, as sometimes happens, to criticize the Soviet Government in the Moscow Park of Culture and Rest—the nearest thing to, though very far from, our Hyde Park—he will have a whole mass of people arguing with him in defence of what they call “our Government.” They will defend this Government by argument, while probably respecting his person as a foreigner to a sufficient extent not to take violent measures. But if the enemy of the Government were a Soviet citizen, the people concerned in the argument might well call the militia to arrest this counter-revolutionary, just as, in Spain to-day, the people in Government territory would act towards a person who was chalking the walls with swastikas, or carrying on still more pernicious activity in the interests of Hitler and Franco, enemies of Spanish democracy.
The essential fact which must be appreciated is that in the U.S.S.R. to-day citizens are not interested in attacking the State or the Government; what concerns them is to improve its work. And every kind of discussion, and of criticism, calculated to improve the working of the Soviet State in the interests of the population is, as we have seen, not only allowed, but actively encouraged.
When the trials of Zinoviev and Kamenev, Radek and Sokolnikov, took place in Moscow, reference was made in many British newspapers to the significance of these trials as evidence of widespread opposition to the “Stalin régime,” and the impossibility of expressing this opposition by legal means. This interpretation of the facts is the reverse of the truth.
If, in the U.S.S.R. to-day, there were widespread opposition to the Government, there would be the same symptoms as in Fascist Germany: illegally printed leaflets would circulate in the factories, there would be organized discontent among the people throughout the country, occasionally showing itself in some lightning strike or demonstration against the authorities, and batches of workers would be arrested in groups of thirty and forty. But none of these things happen. And since, in Tsarist Russia, such things did occur, it cannot be said to be for lack of experience that they do not occur to-day. Therefore we can only conclude that such widespread opposition to the Government does not exist, and, whatever the trials do denote, it is not this widespread discontent that some newspaper editors would welcome.
But if the Moscow trials do not denote the existence of mass discontent, they do denote the existence of a number of cases of individual discontent so great as to lead to the most dastardly conspiracies against the community. What is the explanation of such cases of personal discontent? Is their existence a serious flaw in the Soviet system of democracy?
It is the experience of the working-class movement in all countries that persons who, at one time or another have played a leading part, have at other times had to be expelled from the movement in which they once fought, and have become its avowed enemies. Sir Oswald Mosley can claim to be an old member of the Labour Party, and Mussolini of the Socialist Party of Italy. J. H. Thomas and Ramsay MacDonald were once admired Labour leaders, and Doriot, now one of the most active pro-Fascists in France, was in the Communist Party. Why, in this respect, should the U.S.S.R. differ from all other countries?
In the U.S.S.R., as I have shown, the “expulsion” of members means, in fact, exile. It is therefore more usual than elsewhere that any leading personality rather than accept “expulsion” and retire from activity into exile, will accept majority decisions against himself, and promise henceforth to carry out these decisions as a loyal worker in the Soviet State. But if such loyalty is not genuine, and if the individual concerned is not ready whole-heartedly to accept a decision against himself, he may continue his opposition. How can this be done?
Once a majority decision has been arrived at in the U.S.S.R. the people are not going to tolerate continual propaganda against this decision. Therefore, any sponsor of an unpopular policy knows that, after democratic defeat, he will have to cease publicly to propagate his policy. Having no mass support, such a person may start loyally to work for the accepted policy or, determined to put his own leadership and policy across, whether the people want it or not, he may resort to underground means of trying to displace the existing leadership, and thus altering policy. In this way underground opposition activity by rejected leading personalities, people whom the democracy has turned down, is as possible in the U.S.S.R. as such open opposition is possible under capitalism by the expelled Socialists or Communists who become Fascist. It is also clear, I think, that any really democratic State must be ruthless in its treatment of such opposition by people who are rejected by the democracy, and therefore resort to other means of obtaining power in spite of the will of the people which has rejected them.
The vital fact which many people are unable to grasp about the U.S.S.R. to-day, whether they are spokesmen of the Press, the Government, or well-known trade union leaders like Sir Walter Citrine, is that in the U.S.S.R. the Government has the full support of the people. In capitalist countries the idea of a Government with the whole people behind it seems so strange that people are inclined to believe that such a thing is impossible. In the British trade union movement to-day, also, we can understand Sir Walter Citrine imagining that such a tiling as a Labour movement in which leaders and rank and file are united is impossible. But let us have no illusions on this score. So long as the trade union movement is divided, it will be weak. And, once it is united on the basis of a real working-class policy, it too will have to fight its enemy minorities and to use means of putting an end to their anti-working-class activities. The U.S.S.R. to-day stands out in the world as a country where people and Government are at one with each other; this is the great strength of the U.S.S.R.; but it is one of the things hardest to understand in a country torn by class antagonisms, and in a labour movement into which the influence of the possessing class has, crept and dug itself well in.
Democracy, contrary to many illusory views, does not mean freedom of every kind. It means the rule of the people, and this means the suppression of the enemies of the people. Democracy, therefore, is also dictatorship, as far as concerns those who reject the decisions of the people and combat these decisions by every possible means. Soviet democracy, without discipline, would have led to the complete defeat of the Soviet State in 1918 to 1922. Democracy without discipline would have made the building up of the Red Army impossible. Democracy without discipline would have made the Five Year Plan an impossibility, for no great industrial progress could have been undertaken in conditions of anarchy. The U.S.S.R. to-day combines the features of real democracy for the people with the disciplined enforcement by the people of the decisions of this democracy. To the minority of property-owners such a system has always been a ruthless dictatorship, but this dictatorship has been in the interests of the vast majority of the people. It has, therefore, been essentially democratic.
“You say that in order to build our Socialist society we sacrificed personal liberty and suffered privation,” said Stalin to the American correspondent Roy Howard. “But we did not build this society in order to restrict personal liberty, but in order that the human individual may feel really free. We built it for the sake of real personal liberty, liberty without quotation marks. It is difficult for me to imagine what ‘personal liberty’ is enjoyed by an unemployed person who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment. Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being to-morrow deprived of work, of home, and of bread, only in such a society is real, and not paper, personal and every other liberty possible.”
Such a liberty as described here by Stalin has had to be fought for, won, and has to be defended. But the defence of liberty is the suppression of its enemies. The defence of democracy, therefore, necessitates discipline over its opponents. Democracy for the people means discipline among the people and dictatorship over the enemies of the people.