The Socialists and the Passing Order
The real interest of an epoch of great leaps consists in this: that the abundance of fragments of the old order which sometimes accumulate more rapidly than the germs of the new order (which are not always immediately discernible), requires ability to distinguish the most essential in the line or chain of development. There are historical periods when it is most important for the success of the revolution to smash as many fragments as possible—that is, to blow up as many old institutions as possible. But there are periods when enough has been blown up, and it becomes necessary to turn to the "prosaic" work of clearing the ground of the fragments, which work the bourgeoise revolutionists calls "tedious." And there are periods when it is most important to tend carefully the germs of the new growth under the fragments, on the soil that is yet full of rubbish.
It is not enough to be a revolutionist and an adherent of Socialism or Communism in general. One must be able to find at any moment that particular link in the chain that must be grasped with full strength lest the chain slip away, and to prepare a sound passage to the next link. The order of the links, their form, their connections, their distinction, from one to another in the historical chain of events is not so simple as in an ordinary chain which is made by a blacksmith.
The outcome of struggle with the bureaucratic distortion of the Soviet organizations is assured by the firm bond between the Soviets and the people (in the sense of the exploited toilers), by the flexibility and elasticity of this bond. The bourgeois parliaments even in the most democratic 'capitalist republic are never looked upon by the poor as "their" institutions. But the Soviets are for the masses of the workers and peasants, "their own," and not alien institutions. The modern "social-democrats" of the Scheidemann kind or, what is almost synonymous of the Martov kind, are just as averse to the Soviets, are just as much attracted to the well-behaved bourgeois parliament, or to the
