The Attraction of State-Socialism
to the Downtrodden

Joseph Dana Miller

[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, May-June 1928]

An American, a large part of whose life and thought had been given to the study of American and European governments, has recently returned from an extended visit to Russia. Having justly earned a reputation as a man of liberal views his path was made easy and he was permitted to see what was going on with little interference. His conclusions have therefore a special value. He returns as one who having gazed upon a great experiment in the working is chiefly concerned that the public at large shall understand what is really happening.

From his report the following reflections are deduced. As Max Hirsch pointed out long ago the initial steps for the establishment of Communism involved the total negation of Democracy. There is no more pretense of Democracy in Russia today than there is in Italy under Mussolini. About one million class-conscious Communists control about nine million proletarians and, between them, they dominate one hundred and fifty millions of peasants of a mental development too primitive to be able to comprehend their relation to so large an entity as Russia.

The million communists, who are the effective government, are mostly honest fanatics. Even the highest officials receive no more than one hundred and twenty dollars a month, live in poor quarters and work long hours. Graft and opposition to the government are the only capital crimes. The utmost freedom of speech and action prevails in regard to every subject except the policy of the government. On this topic, if a man does not approve he had better keep silence. Not even a trial may be given in cases where persons are seriously suspected of communications with the enemy.

The rumors of subsidies paid to carry on propaganda abroad seem to have some substantiation in spite of the difficulty of believing that so poor a country can spend money for what looks like a pure abstraction, but we are dealing with the motive power of a new idea, which in its early stages at least partakes of the generative power which carried Mohammedanism to such lengths of conquest. The Soviets are working in India and China and Japan, and as a result the "Yellow Peril" may come to assume a totally new significance. The very crudeness of the Communist idea makes it easy for primitive peoples to grasp and wherever these are vast masses of propertyless people there is inflammable material.

Then there is the rising generation of young Russia to be counted with. Joseph Conrad foresaw that on account of the lack of education in Russia the effect of a war prolonged for any length of time and resulting in the destruction of the upper grades of the army would result in the practical deliquescence of the mass, because there were no middle class educated people to take their places as there were among all other civilized peoples. The Soviet managers were of course aware of this and when they came into power recognized the need for education if anything was to prove permanent under the new regime. Of course it had to be a slow, unperfect process. Czarists could not be used and most of the educated class, while they may have been disaffected to Imperialism, when compelled to make a choice between that and Communism showed themselves reactionary, so far as it was safe to do so. Even if they kept their views to themselves, they could hardly be trusted with the education of youth. And not only had schools to be organized where there were none before but a whole teaching staff had to be developed.

By this time they have largely succeeded in evolving it, though with much travail and many absurdities. In these public schools the dominant subject taught is Communism. Whatever intolerance our educational institutions have shown toward economic reform seems like enlightened liberality when compared with the rigid drilling in Communist tenets which the Russian school child receives.

What will the outcome be? Will the attempt to put the human mind in a strait-jacket have the same result there as elsewhere. Perhaps that out of it physical conflict may arise seems only too likely. A Europe burdened with crushing debts, broken up into small peoples divided by customs barriers with the great mass of people living lives of penury and hardship, will be an easy mark for a powerful nation preaching solidarity of the workers and a Communist basis.

Clearly the situation is such that it behooves the Nations to consider whether they must not, if they want to see Civilization survive, try the experiment of doing Justice to their disinherited. The only answer to Communism is Justice and Justice demands that the right of mankind to the Earth be recognized.

The peasants do not like the Communists. If the peasants did not fear that the Czarist restoration meant that their lands would be confiscated and turned over to their former masters the Communist rule would be unsafe today. But they know that however fair may be the promises of autocracy in distress, when once in the saddle its innate instinct forces it into tyranny and economic absolutism. And so Communism lowers over Europe because Europe holds no minds among its statesmen capable of making clear that free trade and free access to land can solve the problem which the leaders of the world cannot understand.