“But by your own admission the people only change their master; they’re still exploited; what makes you think that they’ll put up with it?”
“Because they’ll damned well have to.
Under present conditions a dictator with planes to drop bombs and armoured cars to fire machine guns can quell any revolt.
The possessing classes could do the same, and no revolution would succeed, but the event has shown that they haven’t the nerve; they kill a hundred men, a thousand even, but then they get scared, they want to compromise, they offer to make concessions, but it’s too late then for concession or compromise and they’re swept away.
But the people will accept their master because they know that he is better and wiser than they are.”
“Why should he be better and wiser?”
“Because he’s stronger.
Because he has the power, what he says is right is right and what he says is good is good.”
“It’s as simple as A B C but even less convincing,” said Charley with some flippancy.
Simon gave him an angry scowl.
“You’d find it convincing enough if not only your bread and butter but your life depended on it.”
“And who, pray, is to choose the master?”
“Nobody.
He’s the ineluctable product of circumstances.”
“That’s a bit of a mouthful, isn’t it?”
“He rises to the top because he has the instinct to lead.
He has the will to power.
He has audacity and enthusiasm, ability, industry and energy.
He fears nothing because to him danger is the salt of life.”
“No one could say that you hadn’t a good conceit of yourself, Simon,” smiled Charley.
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, I suppose you imagine yourself to possess the qualities you’ve just enumerated.”
“What makes you suppose it?
I know myself as well as any man can know himself.
I know my capacities, but I also know my limitations.
A dictator must have a mystic appeal so that he excites his followers to a religious frenzy.
He must have a magnetism which makes it a privilege for them to lay down their lives for him.
In him they must feel that they more greatly live.
I have nothing in me of that.
I repel rather than attract.
I could make people fear me, I could never make them love me.
You remember what Lincoln said:
‘You can fool some of the people all the time, and all the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.’
But that’s just what a dictator must do; he must fool all the people all the time and there’s only one way he can do that, he must also fool himself.
None of the dictators has a lucid, logical brain; he has drive, force, magnetism, charm, but if you examine his words closely you’ll see that his intelligence is mediocre; he can act because he acts on instinct, but when he begins to think he gets muddled.
I have too good a brain and too little charm to be a dictator.
Besides, it’s better that the dictator brought to power by the proletariat should be a member of it.
The working classes will find it more easy to identify themselves with him and thus will give him more willingly their obedience and devotion.
The technique of revolution has been perfected.
Given the right conditions it’s easy for a resolute body of men to seize power; the difficulty is to hold it.
The Russian revolution in the clearest possible way, the Italian and the German revolutions in a lesser degree, have shown that there’s only one means by which it can be done.
Terror.
The working man who becomes head of a state is exposed to temptations that only a very strong character can resist.
He must be almost superhuman if his head isn’t turned by adulation and if his resolution isn’t enfeebled by unaccustomed luxury.
The working man is naturally sentimental; he’s kind-hearted and so accessible to pity; when he’s got what he wants he sits back and lets things slide; he forgives his enemies and is surprised when they stick a knife in him as soon as his back is turned.
He needs at his elbow someone who by his birth, education, training and character, is indifferent to the trappings of greatness and immune to the debilitating influence of success.”
Simon for some time had been walking up and down the studio, but now he came to an abrupt halt before his friend.
With his white unshaven face and dishevelled hair, in the dressing-gown huddled round his emaciated limbs, he presented a grotesque appearance.
But in a past that is not so distant other young men as pale, as thin, as unkempt as he, in shabby suits or in a student’s blouse, had walked about their sordid rooms and told of dreams seemingly as unrealizable; and yet time and opportunity had strangely made their dreams come true, and, fighting their way to power through blood, they held in their hands the life of millions.
“Have you ever heard of Dzerjinsky?”