ABSTRACT
It will naturally be objected, however, that such an appreciation of the Communist conception of the value of life seems at variance with their apparent contempt for the life and property of the bourgeoisie; or the acts of oppression against dissident Socialists incidental to the despotism which monopolizes all real political power for the small Communist Party. It is not, however, difficult to understand this apparent inconsistency if one compares the present state of affairs in Russia with what obtained in our own country at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when, as I have previously mentioned, the rulers of England set up what might be compared to a permanent ‘state of siege’ in defence of property and the ‘established order’ against danger of revolution. Communist ‘terrorism, ‘ dreadful though it is, is surely less dreadful than the terrorism sanctioned by our ancestors of three or 49four generations ago, and continued to a certain extent to times relatively recent. Thirdly, the Communist state of siege is a transition stage, whereas it may be doubtful whether the former rulers of England could ever sincerely have expected the golden age when the masses would finally have resigned themselves to serfdom, starvation, and every form of misery. And finally, if we are tempted to think that Humanity, apart from the Communists, has outgrown the use of political terrorism, let us not forget Fascism, nor our own persecution of C.O.s during the war. And what if a European war were to break out again? What if any body of workers in our country were to declare a ‘Peace strike’? What measures would seem to our rulers too extreme to break the will of those who refused support of a bourgeois war? Exactly the same arguments could be used to justify the extremest measures which the Communists have used and still use in their ‘proletarian’ war. Is there, indeed, any means of force or strategy which has ever been used by the Communists in prosecution of their struggle which has not been, and would not always be, fully exploited at times of crisis by bourgeois Governments? To our sophisticated minds such means are, in fact, justified or not justified according to the degree of importance we attach to the ends in view. Is a ‘vital interest’ at stake? That is the real point. The real reason why the tyrannies of the Communists are so widely 50denounced is simply, in the great majority of cases, because the denouncers do not sympathize with the ends in view. If the Government was a White Russian one struggling to suppress Communist plots, who can doubt for a moment that our Press and public would maintain a discreet silence? The language of the Morning Post, The Times, the Daily Mail would be found only in the New Leader.
