The power of the Bolshevics lay in their slogans, which harmonised 
with the “moods” of the masses — proclaiming pacifism. i. e., an imme- 
diate cessation of the war — and an immediate expropriation by means 
of personal violence. The method of action consisted of the much recommen- 
ded anarcho-syndicalistic principle, viz., that each group should manage 
its own affairs. This was the Soviet idea, which destroyed any kind of 
State organisation; each company, regiment, factory, town and urban- 
district, decided “their” affairs in their separate Soviet, whether they wers 
to fight, to work or to seize strange property, etc.; and as a rule they 
decided not to fight, not to work and to seize strange property. This meant 
elevating actual disorder to a principle. In this sense did the Bolshevics 
alone remain congenial with it to the very last; in this consisted their power. 
Their political slogan: “all power to the Soviets”, permitted the com- 
pletion of this process, and blended into one, the actual happening and the 
socialist idea. 
The disintegration of any other organisation carried out by the Bol- 
shevics served their purpose of consolidating their own organisation. There 
only remained the confirmation of their power, and to this end the suppress- 
ion of riot. In this manner they brought the process of rioting to final 
perfection, by taking possession of it and adapting it to their own aims. 
For the future a new problem faced them, viz., the immediate intro- 
duction of Socialism in accordance with their program, and to secure their 
power in a form brought about by the riot, and consisting of a Bolshevic 
party in a Soviet system. However, three and a half years after having 
come into power (in 1921) they had to give up the attempt of immediately 
erecting a communistic State, for it menaced them with self-destruction. 
But they had succeeded in establishing their power, and the problem of the 
future was, to defend it in the conditions of the new regime. 
In ten years the Bolshevics had zig-zagged about very much in the 
attempt at fulfilling this task. Nevertheless they faithfully safe-guarded 
the foundations of a Soviet system. My object is now to elucidate these 
foundations. 
The Monopoly of Organising. 
The Bolshevic-Soviet system, arose from three separate developments: 
out of a terroristic suppression of boundless riots; out of an attempt to 
establish by force and in circumstances of disorganisation and misery, a 
communistic system proclaiming the omnipotence of a collective body over 
the individual; out of the terroristic destruction of the former high and 
middle classes, as well as of the inevitably arising strata of bourgeoisie 
of new formation. This accounts for its character of a terroristic dictator- 
Chapter L 
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