first steps on the road of the development of Socialism from science into action means that at the same time that Revolution marks a mighty stride in the development of the science of Communism. Communism is the theory of the condition for the victory of the working class. These conditions become clearest in the process of victory, on that account the comprehension of the Russian Revolution is a preliminary condition of the development of Communism from a science into action.
The Lessons of the Russian Revolution—The Ripening of Capitalism and the Social Revolution.
The first question of the Social Revolution which confronts the working class is this: When can the Social Revolution come? As Marxism showed the workers that the victory of Socialism is dependent on the development of the forces of production, a perverted conception became rooted in the ranks of the Marxists that the Social Revolution would only then become possible when Capitalism had the entire economic life of the nation in its grasp, when, so to say, it had divided it relentlessly into a small group of capitalists and oppressed proletariat. Yes, those who were the most consistent in their falsification of Communism, the revisionists, declared that Socialism could not come in Europe until capital had subjugated the entire world: on that fact they based—as is well known—the necessity of having the working class support the colonial policy. The whole argument of the pseudo-Socialist parties of Russia, which rallied to the support of the bourgeoisie during the Revolution, and since the Workers' Reyolution have fought in the ranks of the counter-revolutionists—the Mensheviki—consists of this fact: Socialism in Russia is impossible because the proletariat does not constitute a majority of the Russian nation. This argument won much approbation in Europe from those who had made out of Marxism a mechanical arithmetical problem. But to show the absurdity of this attitude it will suffice to point out that in Germany, the European state most highly developed economically, men as scientifically important as Heinrich Cunow
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