Thorstein Veblen
"Bolshevism is a Menace to the Vested Interests."
Editorial
"DIAL. A Fortnightly", (New York: The Dial Publishing Company, Inc.)
Vol. LXVI (Dec., 28, 1918, to June, 28, 1919)
April 5, 1919, pp. 360-361.
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BOLSHEVISM IS A MENACE TO THE VESTED INTERESTS of privilege and property. 
This is the golden text which illuminates the policies pursued by the 
statesmen of the Great Powers in all their dealings with Soviet Russia. Not 
that this axiom of imperialist statecraft is formally written into the 
Covenant of the League. It is only that the policies pursued by the Elder 
Statesmen of the Great Powers have impeccably followed its line. What is 
formally written into the documents is the broad principle of self-
determination. But in the measures taken by the Elder Statesmen, unasked, for 
the regularization of Soviet Russia there enters no shadow of regard for the 
principle of self-determination. All of which appears quite reasonable and 
regular so soon as it is illuminated by this golden text of the Elder 
Statesmen, that Bolshevism is a menace to the vested interests of privilege 
and property. The high merit as well as the high necessity o the resulting 
maneuvers of repression may be taken for granted as a matter of course. No 
question of the merit of these maneuvers is admitted either by the 
substantial citizens or by their safe and sane statesmen. But it may still be 
in order to entertain a question as to what measures had best be taken in 
these premises, considering the means in hand and the circumstances of the 
case, considering the difficulties of any effectual intervention and the 
uneasy temper of the underlying peoples with which these Elder Statesmen will 
have to make up their account. The Russian situation is by no means simple 
and its details are sufficiently obscure. Yet the outlines of it are visible 
in a large way, and" it is not without a certain consistency. And it is a 
perplexing situation that faces the Elder Statesmen of the Great Powers. By 
and large Soviet Russia is self-supporting, beyond any other considerable 
body of population in Europe, and it is correspondingly difficult to regulate 
by forcible measures from outside. The Russian people at large are still in a 
"backward state" industrially. So that they are used to depending on a home-
grown food supply and on local and household industry for the ordinary 
necessities of life in the way of clothing, shelter, fuel, and transport^ At 
the same time they also have the use of something appreciable in the way of a 
machine industry, widely scattered both along their borders and through the 
country inland enough to serve somewhat sparingly as a sufficient auxiliary 
to their farm and household industry in case of urgent need. It follows that 
any protracted continuation of the existing blockade of imports will scarcely 
starve Soviet Russia into submission. In fact it could scarcely do more than 
starve the remnants of the vested interests in Russia. This would hold true 
even in the improbable event that the Great Powers should succeed in closing 
the ports of the Pacific, Baltic, and Black Sea to all sea-borne trade. To 
hold such a country in a perpetual stage of siege would scarcely be a 
profitable enterprise, since there is no prospect of a favorable outcome, and 
since a perpetuation of this state of siege would bring no gain to the vested 
interests in whose behalf the enterprise is undertaken. At the same time an 
extensive campaign of occupation and forcible control promises no better 
solution, inasmuch as the Soviet Republic is proving to be quite formidable 
in the field, and since the amorphous country on which it draws is not 
vulnerable in any vital part. It has the defects of its qualities, but it has 
also the qualities of its defects. It is incapable of serious aggression, but 
it is also incapable of conclusive defeat by force.

Meantime Soviet Russia offers an attractive market for such American products 
as machine tools and factory equipment, railway material and rolling stock, 
electrical supplies, farm implements and tools, textiles, wrought leather 
goods, certain foodstuffs and certain metals; and at the same time there is 
waiting a large volume of export trade, including such things as grain and 
other foodstuffs, flax, hemp, and lumber. Should the blockade be maintained 
for any time it is not to be doubted that the illicit trade into Soviet 
Russia in all these things will rise to unexampled proportions to the very 
substantial profit of the Scandinavians and other expert smugglers and 
blockade runners. Meantime, too, the Great Powers whose national integrity 
has now been provisionally stabilized by America's decisive participation in 
the war are placing an embargo on the import of many articles into the 
European market in practical effect an embargo on the importation of these 
American products for which Soviet Russia is now making a cash offer. Soviet 
Russia is today the only country that places no obstacles in the way of 
import trade. So it becomes an interesting question: How long will those 
American vested interests which derive an income from foreign trade have the 
patience to forego an assured profit from open trade with Soviet Russia in 
order to afford certain European vested interests a dubiously problematical 
chance to continue getting something for nothing in the way of class 
privilege and unearned income?

THORSTEIN VEBLEN
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