Bourgeois and Socialist Revolutions Contrasted
The main task of the toiling masses in the bourgeois revolutions consisted in performing the negative, destructive work—the destruction of feudalism and the monarchy. The positive, constructive work of organizing a new society was the function of the propertied bourgeois minority of the population. And they accomplished this task, in spite of the resistance of the workers and the poorest peasants, with comparative ease, not only because the resistance of the exploited masses was then extremely weak on account of their unorganized state and their ignorance, but also because the fundamental organizing force of the anarchic capitalistic society is provided by the natural, extensive and intensive growth of the national and international market.
In every Socialist revolution, however, the main task of the proletariat, and of the poorest peasantry led by it—and, hence, also in the socialist revolution in Russia inaugurated by us on November 7, 1917[1]—consists in the positive and constructive work of establishing an extremely complex and delicate net of newly organized relationships covering the systematic production and distribution of products which are necessary for the existence of tens of millions of people. The successful realization of such a revolution depends on the original historical creative work of the majority of the population, and first of all of the majority of the toilers. The victory of the Socialist revolution will not be assured, unless the proletariat and the poorest peasantry manifests sufficient consciousness, idealism, self-sacrifice and persistence. With the creation of a new type of state, the Soviet, offering to the oppressed toiling masses the opportunity to participate actively in the free construction of a new society, we have solved only
- ↑ November 7, 1917, is the date of the successful Bolshevik coup d'etat. The Kerensky coalition government was forced to abdicate on that day and the Soviet government, with the Bolshevik leaders, Nikolai Lenin and Leon Trotsky, at the helm, was instituted in its place.
