Adam
Krzyzanowski (1873-1963)
Lawyer and economist. B. Feb.
1, 1873, Cracow. During World War I he was member of the Supreme
National Committee (Naczelny Komitet Narodowy). Between the wars
he belonged to the leading propagators of economic liberalism and
critics of étatist policy of the subsequent governments. Apart from
theoretical works in economics (Zasady ekonomiki ["Principles of Economics"],
1919); Nauka o pieniądzu i
kredycie ["The Science of Money and Credit"], 1919; Bierny bilans handlowy ["Passive Trade Balance"], 1928; Dolar i zloty ["The Dollar and the Zloty"],
1935), he also wrote books from the broadly conceived domain of
political thought (Socialism
a prawo natury ["Socialism and Natural Law"], 1911; Pauperyzacja Polski wspólczesnej ["Pauperization of Contemporary Poland],
1925; Rzady marszalka Pilsudskiego
["The Reign of Marshal Pilsudski"], 1927; and, above all, Chrześcijanska moralność polityczna ["Christian
Political Morality"], 1948). In Nov. 1939, with a group of UJ professors,
he was arrested by the Germans and exiled to the Sachsenhausen concentration
camp. Released in Feb. 1940. In 1945 he took part in the Moscow
conference discussing the creation of the Provisional Government
of National Unity; served as deputy to Polish National Council (Krajowa
Rada Narodowa) and the Sejm. D. Jan. 29, 1963, Cracow.
The selected fragments are
from Bolszewizm ("Bolshevism"),
Ksiegarnia S. A. Krzylanowskiego: Cracow 1920, pp.
3-13 and 24-29.
The Communist Manifesto ends in a call to revolution,
because the workers have nothing to lose but their chains. The Russian
worker who believed this was in for a disappointment. It is true
that many wealthy people had their properties and even their lives
taken away from them. The opponents of socialism claim: "Le
socialisme, c'est l'envie". So far only this kind of socialism
has been put into practice in Russia. The Bolshevik revolution satisfied
the instinct of hatred, since it impoverished the bourgeoisie more
than the workers. However, it did not make the workers richer. On
the contrary, under the Tsars the Russian worker was incomparably
better fed and clothed. He had more firewood in the winter. He worked
shorter hours and did not have hanging over his head the threat
of severe punishment for slacking. Thanks to better living conditions
he was less prone to diseases. The revolution has shortened his
life expectancy. It has increased infant mortality. What has it
given him in return? The appearance of power, in fact concentrated
in the hands of the commissars, appointed without his participation,
nothing more. The materialist historiosophy, identifying political
victories with economic ones, was also proved wrong in that the
peasant, though politically disadvantaged, has been better off under
the worker revolution than the worker himself. Before the revolution
the rural population migrated to the city in search of better pay,
now the urban population is fleeing to the countryside.
Nutrition standards have, to be sure, declined
less for peasants than for town-dwellers, but in general they probably
have not improved. The peasant is more shabbily dressed than before.
Not only the cities, but all of Russia wears rags. Under the Tsars
the peasant had more kerosene, more sugar. He was able to buy agricultural
implements. "He has more land at his disposal than before." True,
but those who use this argument in order to demonstrate that conditions
have improved in comparison with the pre-Revolutionary period, forget
that an agrarian reform had been under way in Russia. Because of
this reform the peasants' landholdings had been increasing at a
slower pace but without violent disturbances and it ensured a steady
growth of production and prosperity, which cannot be said about
the current revolution. There have been thoughts about abolishing
the commune (obshchina), fundamental in remedying peasant farming, as well as the
very positive activity of the zemstva.
Economically the peasant is worse off. [...]
General wealth has been reduced for a long time
to come.
Is this not a transient symptom, the result
of war and revolution, for which it would be wrong to blame the
Bolsheviks? The Bolsheviks have very clearly expressed their view
on this question. Their policy involves a rapid and thorough turning
away from the causes that they initially championed, because they
facilitated the seizure of power, but as they correctly noted, the
same causes made it more difficult to maintain power. They eclipsed
many "bourgeois" parties in their opportunism. "Religion is opium
for the masses". It is said that now they have significantly relaxed
the persecution of religion. As soon as they took power, they created
agrarian committees based on the principle of universal, direct,
equal, and secret ballots, because it was needed in the given circumstances.
A few months later, in the constitution, they renounced these causes.
The soviets, which are assorted councils in the military, in the
civil administration, and in the factories, created in order to
enact the principle of collegiate power, are dropped for the sake
of one-person rule. Initially the Bolsheviks advocated decentralization,
favoring above all the self-government of the communes, as they
called them invoking the Paris Revolution of 1871. They soon became
fierce centralists. They stopped talking about communism in agriculture,
and they proclaim that they want to fulfil the wishes of the peasants.
We know what they did with industry. When they took power, many
predicted a rapid collapse of bolshevism. They are mistaken if they
think that they made an error of judgement. Bolshevism has already
collapsed, but the Bolsheviks are still in power, because they did
not insist in implementing their program. The more persistent they
are in deviating from the path of communism which they had entered,
the sooner and the more thoroughly they will rebuild the country
economically. [...]
That will suffice as regards an economic assessment,
which the Bolsheviks are the most concerned about. What about a
moral assessment? This is even more painful. General impoverishment,
a reduction of income from honest, arduous work, and an increase
of accidental, criminal profits and losses - these had to lead to
a moral breakdown, as always occurs in such circumstances. To make
matters worse, the Bolsheviks initiated their own method of implementing
freedom. They limited economic and political liberty. They restricted
the freedom of the press and the freedom of assembly more than the
Tsarist government had. They recompense these losses by relaxing
moral bonds. They often remove professional judges. They ask that
sentences be passed solely on the basis of conscience. One can easily
imagine the results. One obvious consequence is that they are closing
law departments as superfluous. They make divorce easier. They subvert
the authority of parents and schoolteachers over children. They
destroy family and educational values. They ruthlessly restore discipline
in the army and in the factory. Perhaps they will undertake a similar
reform of their own reforms in education. So far one hears nothing
about it. Even in the best scenario imaginable it will be long before
they repair the damage they have wrought. Always recommending violence
as the proper way to enact their plans, they undermined society's
respect for law. They undermined it by falsely claiming that law
is only an expression of the material interests of the ruling class.
They thereby diminished the authority of law in the eyes of their
followers.
I have no doubt that among the Bolsheviks one
could find people who are personally honest, animated by the best
of intentions, but their system is fundamentally immoral. The doctrine
of historical necessity, hardly proved, weakens the sense of personal
responsibility for one's own actions. Conceiving the whole of history
in terms of class struggle is surely wrong, if only because struggle
presupposes co-operation as people fight in groups. Secondly, class
interest is not necessarily what holds these groups together. Overemphasizing
the element of struggle surely does not foster morality. Combined
with the spurious doctrine of historical necessity, it may easily
serve as a justification for the worst abuses. The same effect is
produced by the essential discrepancy between ends and means which
is inherent in the doctrine of class struggle: they are recommending
class struggle only as a temporary measure which should lead to
the enhancement of the brotherhood of the people. The same discrepancy
is revealed in the conception of the relation between the state
and the individual: They want to abolish the state by making it
omnipotent (the higher and the lower stage of communism.)
French Revolution and French and English socialism
are the spiritual parents of the communism of Marx and the Bolsheviks.
The difference is in the lowering of the moral tone.
The Bolsheviks immensely hurt the cause to which
they devoted their lifetime efforts and in defense of which they
did not hesitate to shed oceans of blood. The point of socializing
the means of production is to replace a distribution of goods based
on free exchange within a system of private property with a distribution
according to norms regarded by the state as just. In reality the
abolition of exchange led above all to replacing a money economy
with barter, which became the source of general impoverishment,
as theory and experience said it would. Advocates of liberal economic
policy have always claimed that an attempt to realize communism
will inevitably spell economic and moral ruin. The course of events
in Russia has fully corroborated their predictions. Before the war
liberalism was discredited in public opinion. The Bolshevik experiment
will find its historical justification if it becomes a lesson about
the detrimental character of the socialist system and the beneficial
character of the liberal system, based on the principle of private
property.