We cannot deny that there is a certain justification for the opinion of the bolsheviks, that the parole, "All power to the Soviets; no power to the party," is useful to the counter-revolution. In some cases it has been shown that in the soviet elections the bourgeoisie got the majority through election frauds, trickery, or other manipulations, yes, many times through pure slipshodiness, or that they, when in the minority, had prevented the workers from coming to the Soviets, through obstruction or sabotage, so that there was no quorum. The counter-revolutionaries pointed to this, and it was easy for them to show that the revolution did not bring what they had hoped for. The road was smoothed for the counter-revolution.
But these are only a few cases against which we can bring in a great number of other cases which show the opposite. The fault of which the bolsheviks here are guilty is, that they are drawing general conclusions and thus wish to handle everything according to one recipe. By this route they themselves come to the position of contra-revolution. In order to arrive at one-sided party rule there is, naturally, no> revolution necessary. The revolution is supposed to create the freest political forms, and even a social revolution has to take note of that. Although in a social revolution the change in economic conditions, the abolition of private property, just forms of possessions, equal rights of consumption, rational production of the necessities, are the most important points, such a revolution must mean progress even on the political field and not retrogression or stagnation. But the rule of one party is not to be considered a revolutionary conquest, for such a party rule we had in the pre-revolutionary epochs and have in countries where the revolution has not yet taken place. Even if we in Marxian fashion call this class rule, this rule in politics always manifests itself as the rule of one or more parties. And it is exactly against this rule that the revolution turns.
As will be seen, the slogan, "All power to the Soviets, no power to the party," is originally and practically a revolutionary parole and one cannot on account of a few cases permit a wholesale condemnation of the Soviets as counter-revolutionary. For we can also present examples from the revolution in the Ukraine, which show the exact opposite.