n at least, that it must be maintained
as long as possible,[57] and in the letter of Johann von Miquel, already
quoted, we find the same thought expressed in the same terms, "as long as
possible." But even if we put aside these warnings of human experience and
of recorded history, and persuade ourselves that in Russia we have a wholly
new phenomenon, a class possessing powers of dictatorship animated by a
burning passion to relinquish those powers as quickly as possible, is it
not still evident that the social adjustments that must be made to reach
the stage where, according to the Bolshevik standards, political democracy
can be introduced, must, under the most favorable circumstances
conceivable, take many, many years? Even Lenine admits that "a sound
solution of the problem of increasing the productivity of labor" (which
lies at the very heart of the problem we are now discussing) "requires at
least (especially after a most distressing and destructive war) several
years."[58]

From the point of view of social democracy the basis of the Bolshevik state
is reactionary and unsound. The true Socialist policy is that set forth by
Wilhelm Liebknecht in the following words: "The political power which the
Social Democracy aims at and which it will win, no matter what its enemies
may do, _has not for its object the establishment of the dictatorship of
the proletariat, but the suppression of the dictatorship of the
bourgeoisie_."[59]

IV

Democracy in government and in industry must characterize any system of
society which can be justly called Socialist. Thirteen years ago I wrote,
"Socialism without democracy is as impossible as a shadow without
light."[60] That seemed to me then, as it seems to-day, axiomatic. And so
the greatest Socialist thinkers and leaders always regarded it. "We have
perceived that Socialism and democracy are inseparable," declared William
Liebknecht, the well-beloved, in 1899.[61] Thirty years earlier, in 1869,
he had given lucid expression to the same conviction in these words:
"Socialism and democracy are not the same, but they are only different
expressions of the same fundamental idea. They belong to each other, round
out each other, and can never stand in contradiction to each other.
Socialism without democracy is pseudo-Socialism, just as democracy without
Socialism is pseudo-democracy."[62] Democracy in industry is, as I have
insisted in my writing with unfailing consistency, as inseparable