There must be administration, there must be officials who control
distribution. These men, in a Communist State, are the repositories of
power. So long as they control the army, they are able, as in Russia
at this moment, to wield despotic power even if they are a small
minority. The fact that there is Communism--to a certain extent--does
not mean that there is liberty. If the Communism were more complete,
it would not necessarily mean more freedom; there would still be
certain officials in control of the food supply, and these officials
could govern as they pleased so long as they retained the support of
the soldiers. This is not mere theory: it is the patent lesson of the
present condition of Russia. The Bolshevik theory is that a small
minority are to seize power, and are to hold it until Communism is
accepted practically universally, which, they admit, may take a long
time. But power is sweet, and few men surrender it voluntarily. It is
especially sweet to those who have the habit of it, and the habit
becomes most ingrained in those who have governed by bayonets, without
popular support. Is it not almost inevitable that men placed as the
Bolsheviks are placed in Russia, and as they maintain that the
Communists must place themselves wherever the social revolution
succeeds, will be loath to relinquish their monopoly of power, and
will find reasons for remaining until some new revolution ousts them?
Would it not be fatally easy for them, without altering economic
structure, to decree large salaries for high Government officials, and
so reintroduce the old inequalities of wealth? What motive would they
have for not doing so? What motive is possible except idealism, love
of mankind, non-economic motives of the sort that Bolsheviks decry?
The system created by violence and the forcible rule of a minority
must necessarily allow of tyranny and exploitation; and if human
nature is what Marxians assert it to be, why should the rulers