the militancy of the proletariat. What is needed is the dictatorship of the
proletariat. Now, only a very small part of the peasantry, the very poor
peasants, can be safely linked to the proletariat--and even these must be
carefully watched. It was a phase of the old and familiar conflict between
agrarian and industrial groups in the Socialist movement. It is not very
many years since the Socialist party of America was convulsed by a similar
discussion. Could the farmer ever be a genuine and sincere and trustworthy
Socialist? The question was asked in the party papers in all seriousness,
and in one or two state organizations measures were taken to limit the
number of farmers entering the party, so that at all times there might be
the certainty of a preponderance of proletarian over farmer votes.

Similar distrust, only upon a much bigger scale, explains the fight for and
against the Constituent Assembly. Lenine and his followers distrusted the
peasants as a class whose interests were akin to the class of small
property-owners. He would only unite with the poor, propertyless peasants.
The leaders of the peasantry, on the other hand, supported by the more
liberal Marxians, would expand the meaning of the term "working class" and
embrace within its meaning all the peasants as well as all city workers,
most of the professional classes, and so on. We can get some idea of this
strife from a criticism which Lenine directs against the Mensheviki:

In its class composition this party is not Socialist at all. It
does not represent the toiling masses. It represents fairly
prosperous peasants and working-men, petty traders, many small and
some even fairly large capitalists, and a certain number of real
but gullible proletarians who have been caught in the bourgeois
net.[36]

It is clear from this criticism that Lenine does not believe that a genuine
Socialist party--and, presumably, therefore, the same must apply to a
Socialist government--can represent "fairly prosperous peasants and
working-men." We now know how to appraise the Soviet government. The
constitution of Russia under the rule of the Bolsheviki is required by law
to be posted in all public places in Russia. In Article II, Chapter V,
paragraph 9, of this document it is set forth that "the Constitution of the
Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic involves, in view of the
present transition period, the establishment of a dictatorship of the u