the Soviets
advocates, as the most important problem at present, the creation
of "efficient organization" and higher discipline. Such
resolutions are now readily supported by everybody. But that their
realization requires compulsion, and _compulsion in the form of a
dictatorship_, is ordinarily not comprehended. And yet, it would
be the greatest stupidity and the most absurd opportunism to
suppose that the transition from capitalism to Socialism is
possible without compulsion and dictatorship. The Marxian theory
has long ago criticized beyond misunderstanding this petty
bourgeois-democratic and anarchistic nonsense. And Russia of
1917-18 confirms in this respect the Marxian theory so clearly,
palpably, and convincingly that only those who are hopelessly
stupid or who have firmly determined to ignore the truth can still
err in this respect. Either a Kornilov dictatorship (if Kornilov
be taken as Russian type of a bourgeois Cavaignac) or a
dictatorship of the proletariat--no other alternative is possible
for a country which is passing through an unusually swift
development with unusually difficult transitions and which suffers
from desperate disorganization created by the most horrible
war.[71]

This dictatorship is to be no light affair, no purely nominal force, but a
relentless iron-hand rule. Lenine is afraid that the proletariat is too
soft-hearted and lenient. He says:

But "dictatorship" is a great word. And great words must not be
used in vain. A dictatorship is an iron rule, with revolutionary
daring and swift and merciless in the suppression of the
exploiters as well as of the thugs (hooligans). And our rule is
too mild, quite frequently resembling jam rather than iron.[72]

And so the dictatorship of the proletariat becomes the _dictatorship of a
single person_, a super-boss and industrial autocrat: We must learn to
combine the stormy, energetic breaking of all restraint on the part of the
toiling masses _with iron discipline during work, with absolute submission
to the will of one person, the Soviet director, during work_.[73]

As I copy these words from Lenine's book my memory recalls the days, more
than twenty years ago, when as a workman in England and as shop steward of
my union I joined with my comrades in breaking down the very things Lenine
here proposes to set up in the name of Socialism. "Absolute su