human will.

THE COMMUNIST DICTATORSHIP

How is that will expressed? What is the organization welded by adversity
which, in this crisis, supersedes even the Soviet Constitution, and
stands between this people and chaos?

It is a commonplace to say that Russia is ruled, driven if you like,
cold, starving as she is, to effort after effort by the dictatorship of
a party. It is a commonplace alike in the mouths of those who wish to
make the continued existence of that organization impossible and in the
mouths of the Communists themselves. At the second congress of the Third
International, Trotsky remarked. "A party as such, in the course of the
development of a revolution, becomes identical with the revolution."
Lenin, on the same occasion, replying to a critic who said that he
differed from, the Communists in his understanding of what was meant by
the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, said, "He says that we understand
by the words 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' what is actually the
dictatorship of its determined and conscious minority. And that is the
fact." Later he asked, "What is this minority? It may be called a party.
If this minority is actually conscious, if it is able to draw the masses
after it, if it shows itself capable of replying to every question on
the agenda list of the political day, it actually constitutes a party."
And Trotsky again, on the same occasion, illustrated the relative
positions of the Soviet Constitution and the Communist Party when he
said, "And today, now that we have received an offer of peace from the
Polish Government, who decides the question? Whither are the workers to
turn? We have our Council of People's Commissaries, of course, but that,
too, must be under a certain control. Whose control? The control of the
working class as a formless chaotic mass? No. The Central Committee of
the party is called together to discuss and decide the question. And
when we have to wage war, to form new divisions, to find the best
elements for them-to whom do we turn? To the party, to the Central
Committee. And it gives directives to the local committees, 'Send
Communists to the front.' The case is precisely the same with the
Agrarian question, with that of supply, and with all other questions
whatsoever."

No one denies these facts, but their mere statement is quite inadequate
to explain what is being done in Russia and how it is being done. I
do not think it would be a waste of time