s, when all men are
full of hope and faith. The new leaders of the local Soviets
of Russia were, and they still are, of the people, really.
That is one reason why their autocratic dictatorship is
acceptable. They have felt, they shared the passion of the
mob to destroy, but they had something in mind to destroy.

The soviet leaders used the revolution to destroy the system
of organized Russian life.

While the mobs broke windows, smashed wine cellars, and
pillaged buildings to express their rage, their leaders
directed their efforts to the annihilation of the system
itself. They pulled down the Tsar and his officers; they
abolished the courts, which had been used to oppress them;
they closed shops, stopped business generally, and
especially all competitive and speculative business; and
they took over all the great industries, monopolies,
concessions, and natural resources. This was their purpose.
This is their religion. This is what the lower-class culture
has been slowly teaching the people of the world for 50
years: that it is not some particular evil, but the whole
system of running business and railroads, shops, banks, and
exchanges, for speculation and profit that must be changed.
This is what causes poverty and riches, they teach, misery,
corruption, vice, and war. The people, the workers, or their
State, must own and run these things "for service."

Not political democracy, as with us; economic democracy is
the idea; democracy in the shop, factory, business.
Bolshevism is a literal interpretation, the actual
application of this theory, policy, or program. And so, in
the destructive period of the Russian revolution, the
Bolshevik leaders led the people to destroy the old system,
root and branch, fruit and blossom, too. And apparently this
was done. The blocks we saw in Petrograd and Moscow of
retail shops nailed up were but one sign of it. When we
looked back of these dismal fronts and inquired more deeply
into the work of the revolution we were convinced that the
Russians have literally and completely done their job. And
it was this that shocked us. It is this that has startled
the world; not the atrocities of the revolution, but the
revolution itself.

The organization of life as we know it in America, in the