lish an ultimate agrarian program. The Social-Revolutionary Party, pluming itself on representing the peasantry, prated of the "socialization of the land," but neglected the fact that the agrarian revolution could be accomplished only by means of an agrarian class struggle equally against the agricultural bourgeoisie, the nobility and the financial bourgeoisie, a class struggle acting in accord with the struggle of the industrial proletariat against Capitalism and Imperialism. The Bolsheviki, accordingly, tried by all means in their power to intensify the agrarian class struggle, to awaken to consciousness and action the great mass of the impoverished, proletarian peasantry. Councils of Farm-Workers' Delegates were organized, representing the agricultural wage-workers. Other means were adopted of rescuing the mass of the peasantry from the domination of the wealthier peasants. All this, together with the chicanery of the Provisional Government on the land question, aroused the action of the peasants. And the unifying feature of this program was the slogan of the Bolsheviki calling upon the peasants not to wait for the Constituent Assemly, but to seize the lands immediately through their Soviets and put into operation the agrarian revolution.[1]
This awakening of the proletarian peasantry had to be directs to the channels of co-operation with the industrial proletariat, the acceptance of the guidance of revolutionary Socialism. The Bolsheviki argued in this way: The peasants want the land, they want the abolition of hired labor on the farms. Capital, through the banks, has great financial interests in the lands that are to be confiscated without compensation; in case of a partial division on the basis of capitalist property, the financial interests of capital will inevitably get control of the land through loans, etc., and all the evils of private ownership prevail. The peasants can not get the land except through immediate seizure, the abolition of private ownership, and the nationalization of the banks and lands. This procedure, however, emphasized the Bolsheviki, means a relentless struggle against capital and the bourgeoisie, the creation of a revolutionary proletarian dictatorship representing exclusively the interests of the workers and pauperized peasants. This dictatorship would proceed with gradual measures for the complete overthrow of the rule of capital, based upon the immediate handing over of the land to the peasants and establishing workers' control over industry, and operating through a democratic state of workers and peasants, functioning, however, as a dictatorship in relation to the other classes.
The Bolshevist attitude toward peace was determined by the class struggle: they objected not to war, but to the character of the particular war being waged and to the class in control of its direction and purposes. The peace propaganda of the Bolsheviki was in accord with the policy of revolutionary Socialism; it was in no sense a pacifist propaganda, but a
- ↑ In a report concerning a unification meeting of Socialist groups, published in 1906, Lenin argued against the confiscation of Lands as a party demand. Lenin favored the seizure of lands by the peasants; later the Constituent Assembly, or a similar body, would ratify the seizure and "confiscate" the lands. Confiscation, argued Lenin, is a juridical process, and must be preceded by the revolutionary action of seizure, Lenin, accordingly, favored seizure as a general revolutionary principle of action; during the Revolution of 1917, the problem of seizure had an immediate practical importance—the resumption of agricultural production to prevent starvation and crush the conscious sabotage practized by the rich peasants.
