Thorstein Veblen "Bolshevism Is a Menace to Whom?" "DIAL. A Fortnightly", (New York: The Dial Publishing Company, Inc.) Vol. LXVI (Dec., 28, 1918, to June, 28, 1919) February 22, 1919, pp. 174-179. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [174] Bolshevism Is a Menace to Whom? WHEN TAKEN at its face value and translated into its nearest English equivalent "bolshevism" means "majority rule." Another equivalent would be "popular government," and still another, "democracy" although the latter two terms are not so close a translation as the former, particularly not as "democracy" is understood in America. In American usage "democracy" denotes a particular form of political organization, without reference to the underlying economic organization; whereas "bolshevism" has primarily no political signification, being a form of economic organization, with incidental consequences mostly negative in the field of politics. But in the case of any word that gets tangled up in controversial argument and so becomes a storm-center of ugly sentiments, its etymology is no safe guide to the meaning which the word has in the mind of those who shout it abroad in the heat of applause or of denunciation. By immediate derivation, as it is now used to designate that revolutionary faction which rules the main remnants of the Russian empire, "Bolsheviki" signifies that particular wing of the Russian Socialists which was in a majority on a test vote at a congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Party in 1903; since which time the name has attached to that particular faction. It happens that the wing of the Social-Democratic Party which so came in for this name at that time was the left wing, the out-and-outers of the Socialist profession. And these are they to whom it has fallen today to carry the burden of humanity's dearest hopes or fears, according as one may be inclined to see it. Beyond the Russian frontiers the name has been carried over to designate the out-and-outers elsewhere, wherever they offer to break bounds and set aside the underlying principles of the established order, economic and political. Bolshevism is a menace. No thoughtful person today is free to doubt that, whether he takes sides for or against according as his past habituation and his present circumstances may dictate. Indeed it would even be the same for any reasonably intelligent person who might conceivably be standing footloose in the middle, as a disinterested by-stander possessed of that amiably ineffectual gift, a perfectly balanced mind. He would still have to admit the fact that Bolshevism is a menace. Only that, in the absence of partisan heat, he would also be faced with the question: A menace to whom? Bolshevism is revolutionary. It aims to carry democracy and majority rule over into the domain of industry. Therefore it is a menace to the established order and to those persons whose fortunes are bound up with the established order. It is charged with being a menace to private property, to business, to industry, to state and church, to law and morals, to the world's peace, to civilization, and to mankind at large. And it might prove sufficiently difficult for any person with a balanced mind to clear the Bolshevist movement of any one or all of these charges. In point of its theoretical aims and its professions, as regards its underlying principles of equity and reconstruction, this movement can presumably make out about as good and wholesome a case as any other revolutionary movement. But in point of practical fact, as regards the effectual working-out of its aims and policies under existing conditions, the evidence which has yet come to hand, it must be admitted, is evidence of a trail of strife, privation, and bloodshed, more or less broad but in any case plain to be seen. No doubt the available evidence of this working-out of Bolshevism in the Russian lands is to be taken with a much larger allowance than anything that could be called "a grain of salt"; no doubt much of it is biased testimony, and no doubt much of the rest is maliciously false. But when all is said in abatement there still remains the trail of disorder, strife, privation, and bloodshed, plain to be "seen. How much of all this disastrous run of horror and distress is to be set down to the account of Bolshevism, simply in its own right, and how much to the tactics of the old order and its defenders, or how the burden of blame is fairly to be shared between them all that is not so plain. Bolshevism is a revolutionary movement, and as such it has necessarily met with forcible opposition, and in the nature of things it is bound to meet opposition, more or less stubborn and with more or less unhappy consequences. Any subversive project such as Bolshevism can be carried through only by overcoming resistance, which means an appeal to force. The Russian democratic revolution of the spring of 1917 was a political and military revolution which involved a number of economic readjustments. The merits of that move are not in question here. In the present connection it is chiefly significant as having prepared the ground for the [175] later revolution of November 1917 out of which the rule of the Soviets and the Bolshevik dictatorship have grown. This latter is an economic revolution in intention and in its main effect, although it involves also certain political undertakings and adjustments. Its political and military undertakings and policies are, at least in theory, wholly provisional and subsidiary to its economic program. Any slight attention to the Declaration of Rights and the provisions of the Constitution, promulgated by the All-Russian Convention of Soviets last July, will make that clear. The political and military measures decided on have been taken with a view singly to carrying out a policy of economic changes. This economic policy is frankly subversive of the existing system of property rights and business enterprise, including, at least provisionally, repudiation of the Russian imperial obligations incurred by the Czar's Government. These documents of the Soviet Republic, together with later action taken in pursuance of the policies there outlined, give a summary answer to the question: A menace to whom? The documents in the case draw an unambiguous line of division between the vested interests and the common man; and the Bolshevist program foots up to a simple and comprehensive disallowance of all vested rights. That is substantially all that is aimed at; but the sequel of that high resolve, as it is now running its course, goes to say that that much is also more than a sufficient beginning of trouble. In its first intention, and in the pursuit of its own aim, therefore, in so far as this pursuit has not been hindered by interested parties, this Bolshevism is a menace to the vested interests, and to nothing and no one else. All of which is putting as favorable a construction on the professions and conduct of the Bolsheviki as may be ; and it is all to be taken as a description of the main purpose of the movement, not as an account of the past year's turmoil in Bolshevist Russia. But it is as well to keep in mind that the original substance and cause of this Bolshevist trouble is a cleavage and antagonism between the vested interests and the common man, and that the whole quarrel turns finally about the vested rights of property and privilege. The moderate liberals, such as the Cadets, and in its degree the Kerensky administration, are made up of those persons who are ready to disallow the vested rights of privilege, but who will not consent to the disallowance of the vested rights of ownership. And it is at this point that the European powers come into the case. These democratic or quasi-democratic powers and their democratic or pseudo- democratic statesmen are not so greatly concerned, though regretful, about the disallowance of class privileges and perquisites in Russia. Of course, it is disquieting enough, and the European statesmen of the status quo ante, to whom European affairs have been entrusted, will necessarily look with some distaste and suspicion on the discontinuance of class privilege and class rule in the dominions of the late Czar; all that sort of thing is disquieting to the system of vested rights within which these European statesmen live and move. But privilege simply as such is after all in the nature of an imponderable, and it may well be expedient to concede the loss of that much intangible assets with a good grace, lest a worse evil befall. But it is not so with the vested rights of ownership. These are of the essence of that same quasi-democratic status quo about the preservation of which these elder statesmen are concerned. "Discontinuance of the rights of ownership" is equivalent to "the day of judgment" for the regime of the elder statesmen and for the interests which they have at heart. These interests which the elder statesmen have at heart are primarily the interests of trade, investment, and national integrity, and beyond that the ordered system of law and custom and businesslike prosperity which runs on under the shadow of these interests of trade, investment, and national integrity. And these elder statesmen, being honorable gentlemen, and as such being faithful to their bread, see plainly that Russian Bolshevism is a menace to all the best interests of mankind. So there prevails among the astute keepers of law and order in other lands an uneasy statesmanlike dread of "Bolshevist infection," which it is considered will surely follow on any contact or communication across the Russian frontiers. There is a singular unanimity of apprehension on this matter of "Bolshevist infection" among the votaries of law and order. Precautionary measures of isolation are therefore devised something like quarantine to guard against the infection. It should be noted that this statesmanlike fear of Bolshevist infection is always a fear that the common man in these other countries may become infected. The elder statesmen have no serious apprehension that the statesmen themselves are likely to be infected with Bolshevism, even by fairly reckless exposure, or that the military class, or the clergy, or the landlords, or the business men at large are liable to such infection. Indeed it is assumed as a matter of course that the vested interests and the kept classes; are immune, and it will be admitted that the assumption is reasonable. The measures of quarantine are, accordingly, always designed to safeguard those classes in the community who have no vested rights to lose. It is always as a system of ideas, or "principles," [176] that Bolshevism spreads by communication; it is a contamination of ideas, of habits of thought. And it owes much of its insidious success to the fact that this new order of ideas which it proposes is extremely simple and is in the main of a negative character. The Bolshevist scheme of ideas comes easy to the common man because it does not require him to learn much that is new, but mainly to unlearn much that is old. It does not propose the adoption of a new range of preconceptions, so that it calls for little in the way of acquiring new habits of thought. In the main it is an emancipation from older preconceptions, older habitual convictions. And the proposed new order of ideas will displace the older preconceptions all the more easily because these older habitual convictions that are due to be displaced, no longer have the support of those material circumstances which now condition the life of the common man, and which will therefore make the outcome by bending his habits of thought. The training given by the mechanical industries and strengthened by the experience of daily life in a mechanically organized community lends no support to prescriptive rights of ownership, class perquisites, and free income. This training bends the mental attitude of the common man at cross- purposes with the established system of rights, and makes it easy for him to deny their validity so soon as there is sufficient provocation. And it is scarcely necessary for him to find a substitute for these principles of vested right that so fall away from him. It is true, these prescriptive rights, about whose maintenance and repair the whole quarrel swings and centers, do have the consistent support of those habits of thought that are engendered by experience in business traffic; and business traffic is a very large and consequential part of life as it runs in these civilized countries. But business traffic is not the tone-giving factor in the life of the common man, nor are business interests his interests in so obvious a fashion as greatly to affect his habitual outlook. Under the new order of things there is, in effect, a widening gulf fixed between the business traffic and those industrial occupations that shape the habits of thought of the common man. The business community, who are engaged in this business traffic and whose habitual attention centers on the rights of ownership and income, are consistent votaries of the old order, as their training and interest would dictate. And these are also immune against any subversive propaganda, however insidious, as has already been remarked above. Indeed, it is out of this division of classes in respect of their habitual outlook and of their material interests that the whole difficulty arises, and it is by force of this division that this subversive propaganda becomes a menace. Both parties are acting on conviction, and there is, therefore, no middle ground for them to meet on. " Thrice is he armed who knows his quarrel just"; and in this case both parties to the quarrel are convinced of the justice of their own cause, at the same time that the material fortunes of both are at stake 1. Hence an unreserved recourse to force, with all its consequences. By first intention and by consistent aim Bolshevism is a menace to the vested rights of property and of privilege, and from this the rest follows. The vested interests are within their legal and moral rights, and it is not to be expected that they will yield these" rights amicably. All those classes, factions, and interests that stand to lose have made common cause against the out-and-outers, have employed armed force where that has been practicable, and have resorted to such measures of intrigue and sabotage as they can command. All of which is quite reasonable, in a way, since these vested interests are legally and morally in the right according to the best of their knowledge and belief; but the consequence of their righteous opposition, intrigue, and obstruction has been strife, disorder, privation and bloodshed, with a doubtful and evil prospect ahead. Among the immediate consequences of this quarrel, according to the reports which have been allowed to come through to the outside, is alleged to be a total disorganization and collapse of the industrial system throughout the Russian dominions, including the transportation system and the food supply. From which has followed famine, pestilence, and pillage, uncontrolled and uncontrollable. However, there are certain outstanding facts which it will be in place to recall, in part because they are habitually overlooked or not habitually drawn on for correction of the published reports. The Bolshevist administration has now been running for something over a year, which will include one crop season. During this time it has been gaining ground, particularly during the later months of this period; and this gain has been made in spite of a very considerable resistance, active and passive, more or less competently organized and more or less adequately supported from the outside. Meantime the "infection" is spreading in a way that does not signify a lost cause. All the while the administration has been carrying on military operations on a more or less extended scale; and on the whole, and particularly through the latter part of this period, its military operations appear to have been gaining in magnitude and to have met with increasing success, such as would [177] argue a more or less adequate continued supply of arms and munitions. These military operations have been carried on without substantial supplies from the outside, so that the administration will have had to supply its warlike needs and replace its wear and tear from within the country during this rather costly period. It has been said from time to time, of course, that the Bolshevist administration has drawn heavily on German support for funds and material supplies during this period. It has been said, but it is very doubtful if it has been believed. Quite notoriously the Bolsheviki have lost more than they have gained at the hands of the Germans. And imports of all warlike supplies from any source have been very nearly shut off. Such information as has been coming through from the inside, in the way of official reports, runs to the effect that the needed supplies of war material, including arms and ammunition, have in the main been provided at home from stocks on hand and by taking over various industrial works and operating them for war purposes under administrative control which would argue that the industrial collapse and disorganization cannot have been so complete or so far-reaching as had been feared, or hoped. Indeed these reports are singularly out of touch and out of sympathy with the Associated Press news bearing on the same general topic. It appears, dimly, from the circumstantial evidence that the Bolshevist administration in Russia has met with somewhat the same surprising experience as the Democratic administration in America that in spite of the haste, confusion, and blundering, incident to taking over the control of industrial works, the same works have after all proved t6 run at a higher efficiency under administrative management than they previously have habitually done when managed by their owners for private gain. The point is in doubt, it must be admitted, but the circumstantial evidence, backed by the official reports, appears on the whole to go that way. Something to a similar effect will apparently hold true for the transportation system. The administration has apparently been able to take over more of the means of transport than the Associated Press news would indicate, and to have kept it all in a more nearly reasonable state of repair. As is well known, the conduct of successful military operations today quite imperatively requires a competent transport system; and, in spite of many reverses, it is apparently necessary to admit that the military operations of the Bolshevist administration have on the whole been successful rather than the reverse. The inference is plain, so far as concerns the point immediately in question here. Doubtless the Russian transportation system is in sufficiently bad shape, but it can scarcely be in so complete a state of collapse as had been reported, feared, and hoped by those who go on the information given out by the standard news agencies. If one discounts the selectively standardized news dispatches of these agencies, one is left with an impression that the railway system, for example, is better furnished with rolling-stock and in better repair in European Russia than in Siberia, where the Bolshevist administration is not in control. This may be due in good part to the fact that the working personnel of the railways and their repair shops are Bolsheviki at heart, both in Siberia and in European Russia, and that they have therefore withdrawn from the train service and repair shops of the Siberian roads as fast as these roads have fallen into non-Bolshevist hands, and have migrated into Russia to take up the same work among their own friends. The transportation system does not appear to have precisely broken down; the continuance of military operations goes to show that much. Also, the crop year of 1918 is known to have been rather exceptionally good in European Russia, on the whole, so that there will be at least a scant sufficiency of food-stuff back in the country and available for those portions of the population who can get at it. Also, it will be noted that, by all accounts, the civilian population of the cities has fallen off to a fraction of its ordinary number, by way of escape to the open country or to foreign parts. Those classes who were fit to get a living elsewhere have apparently escaped. In the absence of reliable information one would, on this showing, be inclined to say that the remaining civilian population of the cities will be made up chiefly, perhaps almost wholly, of such elements of the so-called middle classes as could not get away or had nowhere to go with any prospect of bettering their lot. These will for the most part have been trades people and their specialized employees, persons who are of slight use in any productive industry and stand a small chance of gaining a livelihood by actually necessary work. They belong to the class of smaller "middle-men," who are in great part' superfluous in any case, and whose business traffic has been virtually discontinued by the Bolshevist administration. These displaced small business men of the Russian cities are as useless and as helpless under the Bolshevist regime as nine-tenths of the population of the American country towns in the prairie states would be if the retail trade of the prairie states were reorganized in such a way as to do away with all useless duplication. The difference is that the Bolshevist administration of Russia has discontinued much of the superfluous retail trade, whereas the democratic administration of America takes pains to safeguard the reasonable [178] profits of its superfluous retailers. Bolshevism is a menace to the retail trade and to the retailers. Accordingly it is to be noted that when details and concrete instances "of extreme hardship in the cities are given, they will commonly turn out to be hardships which have fallen on some member or class of what the Socialists call the Bourgeoisie, the middle class, the business community, the kept classes more commonly than anything of lower social value or nearer to the soil. Those that belong nearer to the soil appear largely to have escaped from the cities and returned to the soil. Now, on a cold and harsh appraisal such as the Germans have made familiar to civilized people under the name of "military necessity," these "Bourgeois" are in part to be considered useless and in part mischievous for all purposes of Bolshevism. Under the Bolshevist regime they are "undesirable citizens," who consume without producing and who may be counted on to intrigue against the administration and obstruct its operation whenever a chance offers. From which it follows, on a cold and harsh calculation of "military necessity," that whether the necessary supplies are to be had in the country or not, and whether the transportation system is capable of handling the necessary supplies or not, it might still appear the part of wisdom, or of Bolshevist expediency, to leave this prevailingly Bourgeois and disaffected civilian population of the cities without the necessaries of life. The result would be famine, of course, together with the things that go with famine; but the Bolsheviki would be in a position to say that they are applying famine selectively, as a measure of defense against their enemies within the frontiers, very much as the nations of the Entente once were in a position to argue that the exclusion of foodstuffs from Germany during the war was a weapon employed against the enemies of the world's peace. These considerations are, unhappily, very loose and general. They amount to little better than cautious speculations on the general drift and upshot of things. On the evidence which has yet come to hand and which is in any degree reliable it would be altogether hazardous, just yet, to attempt an analysis of events in detail. But it is at least plain that Bolshevism is a menace to the vested interests, at home and abroad. So long as its vagaries run their course within the Russian dominions it is primarily and immediately a menace to the vested rights of the landowners, the banking establishments, the industrial corporations, and not least to the retail traders in the Russian towns. The last named are perhaps the hardest hit, because they have relatively little to lose and that little is they all. The greater sympathy is, doubtless properly, according to the accepted scheme of social values, given to the suffering members of the privileged classes, the kept classes par excellence, but the larger and more acute hardship doubtless falls to the share of the smaller trades-people. These, of course, are all to be classified with the vested interests. But the common man also comes in for his portion. He finally bears the cost of it all, and its cost runs finally in terms of privation and blood. But it menaces also certain vested interests outside of Russia, particularly the vested rights of investors in Russian industries and natural resources, as well as of concerns which have an interest in the Russian import and export trade. So also the vested rights of investors in Russian securities. Among the latter claimants are now certain governments lately associated with Russia in the conduct of the war, and more particularly the holders of Russian imperial bonds. Of the latter many are French citizens, it is said ; and it has been remarked that the French statesmen realize the menace of Bolshevism perhaps even more acutely than the common run of those elder statesmen who are now deliberating on the state of mankind at large and the state of Russian Bolshevism in particular. But the menace of Bolshevism extends also to the common man in those other countries whose vested interests have claims on Russian income and resources. These vested rights of these claimants in foreign parts are good and valid in law and morals, and therefore by settled usage it is the duty of these foreign governments to enforce these vested rights of their several citizens who have a claim on Russian income and resources; indeed it is the duty of these governments, to which they are in honor bound and to which they are addicted by habit, to enforce these vested claims to Russian income and resources by force of arms if necessary. And it is well known, and also it is right and good by law and custom, that when recourse is had to arms the common man pays the cost. He pays it in lost labor, anxiety, privation, blood and wounds; and by way of returns he comes in for an increase of just national pride in the fact that the vested interests which find shelter under the same national establishment with himself are duly preserved from loss on their Russian investments. So that, by a "roundabout process of production," Bolshevism is also a menace to the common man. How it stands with the menace of Bolshevism in the event of its infection reaching any other of the civilized countries as, for example, America or France that is a sufficiently perplexing problem to which the substantial citizens and the statesmen to whose keeping the fortunes of the substantial citizens [179] are entrusted, have already begun to give their best attention. They are substantially of one mind, and all are sound on the main fact, that Bolshevism is a menace; and now and again they will specify that it is a menace to property and business. And with that contention there can be no quarrel. How it stands, beyond that and at the end of the argument, with the eventual bearing of Bolshevism on the common man and his fortunes, is less clear and is a less immediate object of solicitude. On scant reflection it should seem that, since the common man has substantially no vested rights to lose, he should come off indifferently well in such an event. But such a hasty view overlooks the great lesson of history that when anything goes askew in the national economy, or anything is to be set to rights, the common man eventually pays the cost and he pays it eventually in lost labor, anxiety, privation, blood, and wounds. The Bolshevik is the common man who has faced the question: What do I stand to lose? and has come away with the answer: Nothing. And the elder statesmen are busy with arrangements for disappointing that indifferent hope. THORSTEIN VEBLEN. ------------------------------------------------------------------------