The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 23, 1924, Page 8

a LENIN SEIZES POWER OR Nicolai Lenin ihe question of the necessity of the seizure of power by the proletariat had been settled from the first moment of our present revolution and the question was only about the choice of a suitable oppor- tunity. In the July days of 1917 our entire central committee was opposed to the immediate seizure of power. Lenin was of the same opinion. when on July 16, the wave of popu- lar revolt rose high, Lenin became alert, and here, upstairs, in the re- freshment room of the Taurida Pal- ance, a sinall conference took place at which Trotsky, Lenin, and my- self were present. Lenin laughingly asked us, “Shall we not attempt now ?”. and he added: “No, it would not do to. assume power now, as nething will come out of it, the sol- diers at the front being largely on the other side and would come and massacre the Petrograd workers.” As a matter of fact, you will remember in those Juty days Kerensky did succeed in bringing over soldiers from the front against us. What became ripe two or three months later was still immature in July, and the cap- ture of power at that time might have been fatal. At any rate, Lenin never hesitated for a moment on the question as to whether the prole- tariat, in our revolution, ought to seize the reins of power, or_not. All his hesitations turned round the ques- tion as to whether it could not be done earlier. You know how things developed subsequently. We passed thru a time when it seemed that everything was lost. Comrade Lenin for a moment even doubted whether the Soviets, corrupted by the compromise-mong- ers, could play a decisive part, and he gave out the watchword that we might perhaps have to seize power without the Soviets. But he never for a moment doubted that sooner or later the power would be in our hands, and that it was necessary to hurl the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries to the ground. At first, during the July days, we could not realize what was occur- ring, One night, on July 16th, Com- rade Lenin alone came into the edi- torial offices of the “Pravda” to hand over a manuscript. Half an hour af- terwards, ensigns were already sack. ing those offices. On the morning of July 16th Lieber took me to the military staff of the district to ob. tain redress in the matter of the sacking of the offices of the “Pray- da.’ General Polovtseff, the head of the Staff, received me with great respect. -He at that time did not know what to do with us. But an hour later the Bolsheviks were being arrested and massacred, Then the persecutions started. Lenin and myself went into hiding. We had formerly decided to be ar- rested—such was still our faith in the Mensheviks and the Right So- cialist Revolutionaries. But the party did not permit us to do so. We, therefore, decided to go in hiding ourselves. A week later Comrade Lenin told me: “How could we have been so Silly as to think for one mo- ment.of trusting to this band and getting ourselves arrested? There is no other way but to fight this band ruthlessly.” In the same way as Comrade Lenin in July, 1917, wisely declared that there’ must he no attempt to seize power, so after the Korniloff rebel- Hon—especially since the end of Sep- tember, 1917, Lenin began urging the workers to seize power, or else it would be too late. But | When, after that rebeliion, the so- called Democratic Conference assem- bled at Petrograd, Lenin ‘at first came out with an article on “Com- promise.” He invited for the last time the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries to break with the bourgeoisie, to renounce their policy of treason, and té come to a settle- ment with. the working class with-a view to-action against the followers of Korniioff. But these two parties“ were rotten to, the core. They had already sold their souls and. could, | not accept Lenin’s invitation. “There- upon Lenin sent a letter from his Finnish exile to the central commit- tee of our party saying that the time | derground hiding, hesitated, castigating those who were afraid, and writing and agitat- ing for an early rising. succeeded, At present everybody sees that Lenin was right. It was all a mat- ter of touch and go. If we had not takeh power into our hands, Savin- koff and Paltchinsky would have crushed us a month later. The ques- tion was raised by history in no am- biguous manner. Either we or they. Either the dictatorship of the bour- geoisie, mad with fear and — hatred towards the workers, or the dictator- ship of the proletariat mercilessly sweeping away the bourgeoisie, And he ——___________. By GREGORY ZINOVIEY was preparing a rebellion, arguing with those who than even Lenin anticipated. But no other way was open to the working class than the one trodden in November. Both on the question of the nation- alization of the banks and on that of our food policy, as- well as military: policy, the decisive word was said by Lenin. He alone drew up in all its details the scheme of practical meas- ures in all these domains long before November 7th. Clearness, precision, concreteness—such are the chief fea- tures in Lenin’s work, and he alone has generalized all these individual measures in his work of the “State,” “which, to my mind, is the most im- ‘portant one after Marx’s “Capital.” |The Soviet State has found in Lenin Now, of course,’ it is all clear,’ but |not only ~ its’ chief political leader, :at the time, amidst the whirlpool ‘of : events it required the exact eye of |gandist, poet and singer, but Lenin, his genius or intrition, in or- der to declare: “Not a week later, now or never,” And it also required j the unbending strength ‘of will of a Lenin to surmount all the obstacles and to start, at the appointed time had come to drop all procrastination, | the greatest revolution ever known that it was necessary to surround the /in history. It is not that Comrade Alexandra Theatre (where the Demo-' Lenin did not realize the tremendous cratic Conference was holding its session), to disperse all the scum there by force, and to seize power. Our central committee at that time did not agree with Comrade Lenin. Almost everybody thought that it was too early, and that the Men- sheviks and Socialist revolutionaries still had a large following. Lenin then, without hesitating long, left his asylum, and without consulting any- body, without considering the fears of his friends, came to Petrograd in order to preach an immediate rising. Kerensky and Avxentyeff were at that time issuing writs for the arrest of Lenin, while Lenin, from his un- Where Lenin Breathed His Last difficulties with which the working class would be confronted after tha conquest of power. Lenin knew all this to-perfection. From the very first days of his arrival at Petro- grad he had been carefully watch- ing the progréssive economic ruin. He valued the acquaintance of every bank clerk, trying to penetrate into the details of the bank business. He knew well the food and other diffi- culties, In one of his most remark- able books: “Will the Bolsheviks be Able to Keep the State Power?” Comrade Lenin dwelt in detail on these difficulties, It, is true that the latter proved still more formidable The Villa at Gorky, Near Moscow, Where Nikolai Lenin Spent His Last Days. Died on Monday, Jan. 21, 1924. practical organizer, ardent pa- t also its principal theoretician, its Karl Marx. The November. revolution—insofar as even in a revolution one may, and indeed must speak of the part played by. the individual—as well as the part played in connection with it by our army—are to the extent of nine- tenths the work of Lenin. If anybody could bring into line all those who doubted or hesitated, it was Lenin. I can say this for myself, that ff I shail repent in my life of anything, it will not be of the fifteen years I have been working under the guid- ance of Comrade Lenin, but of those few November days when-I thought that Lenin was too much in a hurry, was forcing events, was committing a mistake, and that I would have to oppose him. It is now as ‘lear as noonday that if the working class, under the guidance of Lenin, had not seized power in time, we should, a few weeks later, have had the dic- tatorship of the most ruthless, most unscrupulous bourgeois rascals. It is known now that it had been decided to massacre us all by the time of the meeting of the Constituent Assem- bly, and if the generals had had more soldiers at their disposal, they would have done so. Even after November 7th the Right Socialist Revolution- aries intended to massacre us, and one of their members, Massloff, even recruited soldiers for the purpose. He admitted very recently himself, that he had succeeded in scraping» to- gether only 5,000 champions of a very doubtful quality. There was the will, but there was not the way. Comrade Lenin calculated the ‘mo- ment to perfection. He did not want to delay even for a week, and knew how to raise the question to a direct issue. He wrote article after — publicly, ovey his signature, in a paper everybody could read, openly appealing for an armed rising, and fixing a definite date. And all this, while Kerensky was still in power and seemed to many to be still very strong. Lenin challenged the entire bourgeoisie and all compromise-mong- ers, telling them that tomorrow he and his friends would overthrow them. And everybody knew that on the lips of Lenin this was not an empty threat, that it would be fol- lowed by deed. This could only have been done by Lenin. Turkey-Trot From Texas to New York By J. 0. BENTALL. A TEXAS turkey has just earned a four-story heading in the New York World—earned it. . An uncouth citizen of our metrop- olis hag registered a kick at 45 cents a pound for an ordinary ten-pound turkey and stirred up a regular fight. This champion kicker had listened to some irresponsible “hayseeds” from the South who said that their wives were selling turkeys for 14 cents a pound in Texas. He went to the Worid and the World thought the stuff was good enough for a_sensa- tion, but makes the following apology: “A Texas ten-pound turkey at 14 cents a pound gave the farmer’s wife $1.40. The huckster who bought the turkey charged 1 cent the pound for transportation and 2 cents for profit. The cost of dressing was 2 cents the pound, grading and packing 2 cents the pound. The shipper who pur- chased the turkey charged 5 cents the pound to meet overhead expenses, The freight to New York was 3% cents the pound. The commission man charges 5 per cent. His charges bring the cost of the turkey up to 26.05 cents to the retailer, If the retailer adds 25 per cent he will eharge the consumer 45 cents the pound, which is in line with The World Fair Price of 42 cents the pound.” The World forgets to multiply and give the consumer the total as it did to show the big $1.40 that the farm- er’s wife’got. It tells you that the consumer pays only 45 cents a pound which looks rauch nicer than $4.50. . The difference betweer $1.40 and $4.50 is shout $3.10, which is the gap between the producer and the consumer, It is a big sum to throw away on only one turkey that weights ten pounds, A big working cluss family cannot get a good neal out of a tur- key this size. It should be a four- teen-pound turkey at least. Th see how the gap spreads. In that ease the farmer’s- wife gets $1.96, the retailer $6.30. The gap spreads to $4.34, ‘this gap is about the same on every article that the farmer pro- duces and the worker in: the city consumes. Take the matter of bread, It takes a little over two bushels of wheat to make 100 pounds of flour. To be exact, one busi] of wheat makes 47 pounds of flour so that two bushels make 94 pounds. The bran, other by-products more than the grinding and packing so 47 pounds of flour are net from the bushel of wheat that weighs 60 pounds, The farmer gets on an average that apparent price very materially, To furnish “capital” to the farmer It is merely a rer way to get his land away from is a mere mockery. im. Even at the lowest rate of interest it is impo the farmer to carry on his o Even if money were loaned to him free, with no interest, he would go under in the long run, If the Farmer-Labor ible ible for senators shorts, middlings and pay for t the less than 90 cents a bushel for his wheat. From this must be taken the dockage and grading which reduces ons. want to serve the farmers must | the go deeper than to merely save heres to the banks in the farming regions. The farmers do need money—not mortgages, Moreover, that pay must not be followed by a higher price to the consumer. That pay must be taken out of that big figure that constitutes the profit of the useless middleman. To add to the burden of the consumer will not help, He is hard pressed a ‘ That one point to tackle ig the capitalist. Not one of the senatorsor representatives dares to tackle him. In fact, these liberals and near lib- erals do not understand the situation. They flounder around with no clear knowledge of the problem. It is the task of the Communists to explain this whole wasteful method of handling the necessities of life, and to show that the two main factors, waste and exploitation, must go before we can have a social order worthy of its name. SS _ “We will make out of the Russian political revolution the prologue of European socialist revolution.” —Lenin, in 1905, em >