The Proletarian Revolution in Russia/Introduction
INTRODUCTION
I
History is the history of class struggles. Revolution is the culmination of the class struggle; and history, accordingly, is equally a history of revolutions, of cataclysmic epochs when the antagonisms of the class struggle flare up into revolutionary and decisive action. In these great crises of universal history, the ordinary aspects of the class struggle assume a violent, catastrophic expression, developing into war, civil war, and into the searing, magnificent upheavals of the Revolution.
Every revolution has, during its time, been characterized as the end of all things, as a reversion to savagery, as the rapacious terrorism of men become again primordial brutes; and after each revolution the "excesses" previously stigmatized assume their right proportions, and the revolution is visioned as a fundamental, dynamic expression of the onward and upward development of the world.
The French Revolution is a great exemplar of the revolutions in history. The antagonisms of class against class implacably assumed a revolutionary character, and the Revolution aroused new and more violent antagonisms. As these new antagonisms became more acute, the course of the Revolution became more violent and ruthless, until its whole aspect appeared superficially as one bloody insanity of assassination and ruthless terrorism. The culmination of this process was The Terror, which the world at that time—that is to say, the world of aristocracy and privilege—characterized as the great infamy of the ages; and yet today, the historian declares that The Terror, much maligned and even more misunderstood, saved the Revolution. As the monarchy was overthrown and a mortal blow delivered at the feudal relations of society, the bourgeois revolution was on the verge of being accomplished definitely; but the consequent antagonisms aroused the fears of the bourgeoisie, and they hesitated, paltered, temporized. Marat and the Jacobins, representatives of the immature proletariat and the really great men of the Revolution, resorted to the drastic means of The Terror, equally against the bourgeoisie and the nobility, to continue the Revolution against all opposition. The antipathy aroused in France by the Revolution was enormous, and violent was the opposition; but the antipathy and the opposition were not confined to France: the whole world of aristocracy and privilege was aroused against the Revolution. As the Revolution verged on success, its international aspects were emphasized: if it succeeded in annihilating monarchy and feudal privilege in France, monarchy and feudal privilege in all Europe would verge on collapse. Europe, aristocratic Europe and "Commercial England," moaned over the "anarchy" in France, denounced the "mass murder," villified Marat and the Jacobins—and even the "revolutionary" conservatives—as fiends in human form, enemies of civilization and scourges of humanity. Intrigues, corruption, propaganda of the emigres, the organizing of counter-revolutionary plots,—all these were resorted to by England, Prussia, Russia, and Austria to crush the French Revolution from within, through the action of the people of France; and when these maneuvres failed, when the Revolution conquered in spite of all and everything, monarchical Europe attempted "intervention" in France to crush the Revolution by alien force. The answer of revolutionary France was the wonderful series of revolutionary wars and the conquests of Napoleon. The national antagonisms generated by the Revolution had become international; the class struggle of the bourgeoisie against the feudal class waged within France by means of revolution and civil war became an international class struggle waged by means of revolutionary wars provoked by the "intervention" of that feudal, monarchic Europe threatened by the French Revolution.
At Waterloo, the French Revolution, objectively expressed in Napoleon, was militarily defeated. The defeat was merely objective; it was not subjective. Metternich and the Concert of Europe, particularly the "Holy Alliance," were confident that the revolutionary ideas of France had been conquered and monarchic reaction restored. It was a characteristic error. Revolutionary France had been conquered largely by the national ideas and conditions of bourgeois emergence which it developed in Europe by its military conquests. And the fundamental purposes of the French Revolution—the overthrow of the absolute monarchy and feudal domination, the introduction of the democratic parliamentary system, the supremacy of the capitalist class economically and politically, and the definite establishment of the nation—ultimately conquered in Europe. But during the intervening period the Revolution was maligned by scholars and historians; it appeared as the crime of the ages, a senseless orgy of primitive passions; and English history for years after Waterloo accepted Napoleon as the "Corsican Ogre." After, however, the ideas of the Revolution had become ascendant, after the major nations of the world definitely emerged as bourgeois, parliamentary republics, as democrat-ic nations, the ascendancy of the bourgeois altered the prevailing conceptions of the Revolution. To-day, and for many years past, the French Revolution has been accepted without prejudice and distortion, as a really great event in the history of the world.
The Russian Revolution, in its determining proletarian phase, is an incomparably mightier event than any previous revolution; larger in scope and deeper in ultimate meaning than the French Revolution. Napoleon visualized Russia as a menace that might make all Europe Cossack; to-day, Capitalism visualizes the revolutionary Soviet Republic in Russia as the danger that may make Europe, and the world, all Socialist. Clearly, the antagonisms, national and international, generated by the proletarian revolution in Russia are necessarily more intense than the antagonisms of the French Revolution. That was a bourgeois revolution, a revolution that annihilated one form of class rule and tyranny in order to establish that of the capitalist class; it was not a fundamental social revolution, but overwhelmingly political in scope. This is a proletarian revolution, the start of the international Social Revolution against Capitalism, the purpose of which is not political reconstruction, but fundamental, intensive, economic and social reconstruction of the basis of the world. The French Revolution annihilated one form of property rights, the feudal, in order to introduce another form of property rights, the bourgeois; the proletarian revolution in Russia proposes the annihilation of bourgeois property rights, the annihilation of private property and its system of class oppression,—the end of the exploitation of man by man and class by class.
This is the Revolution, the initial action in the Social Revolution of the international proletariat against Capitalism and for Socialism. International Capitalism senses its great enemy in the proletarian revolution in Russia and the Soviet Republic: international Capitalism and Imperialism act accordingly. In this aspect, the parallel with the French Revolution is apparent: the Bolsheviki are stigmatized as perpetrators of "mass murder," as enemies of civilization, as makers of anarchy, as brutish tyrants; the world, the bourgeois world of class tyranny and hypocrisy, is against revolutionary, proletarian Russia. The years to come will make the other parallel apparent: when Europe and the world emerge into Socialism, organized on the basis of the Soviet Republic, then the world will admit, what only the forward-looking Socialist now appreciates, that the proletarian revolution in Russia is mightier than the French Revolution, the greatest event in all history,—since it initiates the coming of universal Socialism.
II
Bourgeois class interests and their ideology of class defense distort and misrepresent issues and events in Russia, and prejudice judgement. But in a very real sense, another circumstance is responsible for the general misunderstanding of the Russian situation, and that is the failure to appreciate the fact that there have been two revolutions in Russia since March, 1917, and that these two revolutions are mutually exclusive and antagonistic.
The revolution in March overthrew Czarism, the feudal absolute monarchy, and introduced the rule of the capitalist class, the bourgeois parliamentary republic. That was definitely a bourgeois revolution,—bourgeois, not in the sense that the bourgeoisie made the revolution, since the task was accomplished by the revolutionary action of the workers and peasants, but in the sense that the revolution materialized, immediately, in a bourgeois republic. The "freedoms" of bourgeois democracy were introduced; the capitalist class was politically ascendant: and the government was a bourgeois government operating in the interests of Capitalism, imperialistic Capitalism. This first stage of the Revolution was political, not social; it annihilated the autocracy of the Czar, but industry was still capitalist, the social system still bourgeois.
But the revolutionary breach in the old order was deepened and broadened by the war and the prevailing economic crisis. The Revolution broke through the fetters that the bourgeois government tried to rivet upon its action. Against the bourgeois republic organized the forces of a new, oncoming revolution, the revolution of the proletariat and proletarian peasantry, the forces of a social revolution. The revolutionary class struggle formerly directed against Czarism now marshalled its hosts against Capitalism, determined upon a new revolution that would expropriate the bourgeoisie politically and economically. On all fundamental issues the two revolutions opposed each other; the struggle was one of Socialism against Capitalism; and the proletarian revolution conquered, together with its program for the expropriation of Capitalism and the establishment of a Socialist Republic.
Much noise and capital has been made by the journalistic Praetorian Guard of Imperialism of the democratic character of some of the "Provisional Governments" organized during the counter-revolutionary campaign against the Soviet Republic. The personnel of these "governments," is the argument, consist of former enemies of Czarism and members of the dispersed Constituent Assembly, and accordingly represent democracy. But there are two forms of democracy in Russia struggling each against the other. The dispersed Constituent Assembly, these "democratic Provisional Governments," represent democracy, but it is the democracy of the bourgeois order,—simply a form of authority of the capitalists over the workers; that paltry democracy which depends upon an expropriated proletariat and impoverished peasantry. This democracy is counter-revolutionary, since it struggles against the fundamental democracy of Socialism. The term counter-revolutionary as used by the Soviets includes not alone the adherents of Czarism, who are unimportant, but equally the adherent of bourgeois democracy which is in reaction against the fundamental, oncoming communist democracy of Socialism,—industrial self-government of the workers.
The proletarian revolution in Russia marks a decisive break with the revolutionary traditions and ideology of the past To compare it with previous revolutions, fundamentally, is to miss its epochal significance and misrepresent its character and action. There are no real historic standards by which to measure the proletarian revolution in Russia; it is making its own history, creating the standards by which alone this revolution and subsequent proletarian revolutions may be measured. This circumstance is pivotal in interpreting the course of events in Russia and the meaning of the first general revolution of the proletariat.
In the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx declares that bourgeois revolutions hark to the past for inspiration; the old figures and ideology appear as means to intoxicate people with their revolutionary task. Cromwell and the English drew from the Old Testament the figures and the ideology for their bourgeois revolution. At one moment, the French Revolution is cloaked in the forms of the Roman Republic; at another, in the forms of Roman Empire. But, says Marx, "the Social Revolution [of the proletariat] cannot draw its poetry from the past, it can draw that only from the future. It cannot start upon its work before it has stricken off all superstition concerning the past. Former revolutions required historic reminiscences in order to intoxicate themselves with their own issues. The revolution [of the proletariat] must let the dead bury their dead in order to reach its issue. With the former, the phrase surpasses die substance; with this one, the substance surpasses the phrase."
It is only in minor phases, accordingly, that the proletarian revolution in Russia is comparable with previous revolutions. In one stage alone is this comparison actual, and that is the first stage, when, the proletariat having made the revolution, the Russian bourgeoisie seized power for its own class purposes,—as in the Paris Revolution of 1848. But this stage was the initial one: the subsequent stages are stages of a proletarian revolution against Capitalism, creating its own modes of action and its own standards, developing the modus operandi of the oncoming international proletarian revolution. The Russian Revolution marks the entry of a new character upon the stage of history—the revolutionary proletariat in action; it means a new revolution, the Proletarian Revolution, the Social Revolution against Capitalism; it establishes a new reality, the imminence of the Social Revolution, the transformation of the aspiration for the Social Revolution into a fact of immediate importance to the world and the proletariat.
The proletarian revolution in Russia is comparable only with the Paris Commune. These two great events are similar and yet vitally dissimilar. The proletarian revolution in Russia acts in accord with a fundamental canon of the Revolution developed by the Commune,—that the proletariat cannot lay hold of the ready-made machinery of the bourgeois state and use it for its purposes: the proletariat must annihilate this state, conquer power and establish a new state upon the basis of which the proletariat introduces the measures of the coming Socialist society. The Commune had neither the numbers, the disciplined class consciousness, nor the traditions of proletarian revolutionary action of the Russian proletariat; nor did it break completely with the superstitions and ideology of the past. Industrial development in France at that period had not produced the mass of the typical industrial proletariat which constitutes the revolutionary class in Capitalism, and which is the bone and sinew of the revolution in Russia. In spite of Russia being still largely a peasant community, its industry is substantial; and, moreover, is large scale, concentrated industry, producing a large mass of typical and potentially revolutionary proletarians. The Commune tried to secure the support of the peasants, and failed; the proletarian revolution in Russia succeeded, at least temporarily. The Parisian proletariat, again, did not act in conjunction with the rest of France, nor did it operate in an epoch of general revolutionary crisis; the conditions of Imperialism develop a revolutionary epoch; and Soviet Russia will act, immediately or ultimately, as the signal for the international proletarian revolution. The Commune was the final, magnificent expression of the first revolutionary period of the proletarian movment; and while it signalized the end of an epoch, it simultaneously projected the determining phase of the oncoming Revolution,—the dictatorship of the proletariat. The proletarian revolution in Russia, while it acts in accord with this phase of the Paris Commune, projects a new epoch in the proletarian movement,—the definite revolutionary epoch, the initiation of the final struggle and the decisive victory.
III
The entry of Russia into the war in August, 1914, decreed by the government of the Czar, was signal for a great outburst of patriotic enthusiasm among the bourgeoisie, which allied itself with Czarism all along the line. Instead of using the war in the struggle against the autocratic regime, the bourgeoisie used it to promote its imperialistic interests. The Russian bourgeoisie was no longer revolutionary: it had become imperialistic; and this circumstance was a determining issue in the course of the Revolution.
The Revolution of 1905 supplemented the earlier abolition of serfdom in creating the partial conditions for the development of capitalistic industry. The bourgeoisie acquired new powers and influence, and a new ideology. Industry developed in great proportions, absorbed from without and reproducing all the features of large scale, concentrated industry. The industrial technology, not being developed slowly from within but acquired full-grown from without, did not reproduce normally all stages of the historical development of Capitalism. One consequence of this was that a large industrial middle class never developed in Russia, that class of industrial petty bourgeois which historically is the carrier of democracy and revolution. The Russian bourgeoisie was the bourgeoisie of Big Capital, of trusts and financial capital, in short, of modern Imperialism; while the "middle class" was dominantly a socially anemic class of intellectuals and professionals. (During the Revolution, the historic role of the middle class was usurped by the soldier-peasantry, temporarily, and by the bourgeois-peasants, permanently.) You had these two extremes: on the one hand, backward, undeveloped peasant production; and on the other, the typical concentrated industry of imperialistic Capitalism.
The inner conditions of Russian Capitalism required the intensive development and exploitation of the home market. But this meant a revolutionary struggle against Czarism. The bourgeoisie rejected this policy, mortally afraid of the consequences it might have in arousing the strength and revolutionary class consciousness of the proletariat. The home market was allowed to remain largely undeveloped; and the bourgeoisie embarked upon a .policy of export trade, exploiting Asia Minor, Persia and the Far East,—in short, Imperialism. The monopoly of military power, dominantly, instead of the monopoly of finance-capital, was the instrument of Imperialism. This was a policy apparently of no revolutionary consequences, and that promised, immediately, larger profits than the intensive development of the home market. But it also meant the end of the bourgeoisie as a liberal and revolutionary force, it meant immediately and ultimately a compromise with Czarism.
The revolution of 1905 marked the turning point of this development. During this revolution, betrayed and maligned by the "liberal" forces, the bourgeoisie beheld the spectre of a proletarian revolution, of a revolution that might not persist within the limits of bourgeois interests, and that might turn against the bourgeoisie,—as has actually been the case. The danger was too palpable: why take risks, particularly when the policy of Imperialism offered an apparently easy way out? But such are the contradictions of Capitalism, that the bourgeoisie inevitably digs its own grave no matter which way it may turn. The new policy had momentous consequences. It made the bourgeoisie reactionary; moreover, it assisted in clarifying the class consciousness of the proletariat by constituting it the revolutionary force.
The significance of Russian Imperialism in the course of the Revolution should not be confused because of the fact that Imperialism generally means the maturity of the industrial development of Capitalism. Events are not interpreted simply by formula. Japan is imperialistic in its policy, and yet it is not a fully-developed industrial country. The prevailing historical situation and modifying factors are of the first importance. The Russian bourgeoisie adopted the policy of export trade and Imperialism because of historical impulses: this Imperialism might differ in minor characteristics, but its general purposes were identical with the Imperialism of the western nations. The social consequences were identical with those in other countries: the liberals and intellectuals generally became lackeys of Imperialism; democracy and liberal ideas were accepted within the limits of the new autocracy necessary to promote the interests of die imperialistic bourgeoisie. All social groups, on the whole and essentially, except the proletariat, became reactionary and counter-revolutionary.
The imperialistic bourgeoisie, accordingly, enthusiastically accepted the war against Germany and Austria, and for the Dardanelles, Constantinople, Asia Minor, and the promotion of its imperialistic interests generally as against the Imperialism of Germany. But their hopes of a profitable victory lagged, as the corrupt and inefficient beaureaucracy of the Czar bungled the management of the war. Defeat, instead of victory, stared the imperialists in the face. The bougeoisie tried through extra-parliamentary means to avert the collapse. This was not sufficient. There was no decline in the patriotic enthusiasm of the bourgeoisie, but their representatives in the Duma began to criticize the policy of the government,—a criticism, mark you, strictly within the limits of legality, the Duma and the existing system. Not only was this criticism not at all revolutionary, it was distinctly counter-revolutionary. The bourgeoisie and the liberal land-owners, represented by the Constitutional-Democrats (the Cadets) did not want a revolution, nor did they want an overthrow of Czarism; their policy insisted upon an aggressive war against Germany, upon adequate bourgeois representation in the government, upon an international policy in accord with the Entente, upon using Czarism for the bourgeoisie. With the support of Anglo-French capital and the governments of the Entente, the bourgeoisie plotted to compel the abdication of Czar Nicholas, after coming to the realization of the imposibility of "reaching" Nicholas; they intrigued for a palace revolt to place upon the throne a "strong" Grand Duke who would recognize the necessity of an aggressive bourgeois policy in accord with the requirements of Russian capitalistic Imperialism.
But the bourgeoisie miscalculated. The workers and peasants did make a revolution against the bourgeoisie, and they definitely completed the proletarian tendency of the revolution by acting against the bourgeois republic and expropriating the bourgeoisie by means of the revolutionary dictatorship of the; proletariat. The threat of 1905 had become the reality of 1917.
IV
The persistence of Czarism in Russia after its historical necessity had ceased, its clinging to power after Capitalism had come into being, produced a dual political and social development. Within the shell of Czarism developed the bourgeoisie, the class of capitalists, and the proletariat,—a, mature and aggressive proletariat. As the bourgeoisie developed power, the proletariat simultaneously developed its own power, while politically and officially Czarism retained ascendancy. When the shell of Czarism was burst by revolutionary action, Czarism disappeared as easily as a dream upon awakening, in violent and suggestive contrast to the painful and prolonged struggles required to overthrow the absolute monarchy in France, and in England; and the failure of the revolutionary movement in Germany in 1848. This unparalleled rapidity of accomplishment in Russia was directly and largely traceable to the development of the revolutionary proletariat.
Upon the overthrow of Czarism, the bourgeoisie and proletariat faced each other in battle array; where previous revolutions found the proletariat scattered and without decisive power, the Russian Revolution found the proletariat disciplined and inspired by traditions of revolutionary struggle, organized by the mechanism of capitalist production itself,—stronger than the bourgeoisie, and able to conquer for itself the power of the state.
This emergence of the proletariat, its independent class policy and class organizations, the Soviets, constitutes the decisive feature of the Russian Revolution,—an emergence definite and sufficiently aggressive to conquer power for the revolutionary proletariat.
The emergence of the proletariat is not new in the Russian Revolution; it was latent and partially expressed in the French Revolution and other bourgeois revolutions. There were two tendencies in the French Revolution,—the bourgeois tendecy, which directed itself to a gradual transformation of the political forms, willing to satisfy itself with a compromise with the monarchy, providing that bourgeois class interests became ascendant; and the tendency of the masses of the people, the workers and the poorer peasants, which directed itself to a complete destruction of feudalism and the monarchy, and struggled to develop an economic revolution through the organization of a communistic society. Again and again the bourgeoisie compromised and dickered with the monarchy, terrified at the revolutionary economic aspirations of the masses; the bourgeoisie was willing to betray the revolution, it acted against the revolution, in order to crush the revolutionary masses, the proletariat of that epoch. The masses of the people instinctively acted independently, aggressively, under the impulse of its material conditions, tried to project the revolution beyond the political form imposed upon it by the bourgeoisie, into a new form—an economic revolution. The struggle between the masses and the bourgeoisie was determined not only by purposes, but by methods: the bourgeosie tried to limit the revolution within parliamentary bounds, conciliation and understanding with the monarchy; while the masses insisted upon revolutionary mass action, placing the centre of the revolution among the people, instead of among the parliamentary "representatives of the people." The answer of the masses to the hesitation, intrigues and betrayals of the bourgeoisie was the Jacobin terror, which preserved the revolution. The French Revolution developed into the Great Revolution only because of the revolutionary courage and action of the masses of the people. But while the workers and the poorer peasants were able, by an unparalleled expression of revolutionary energy and initiative to push the revolution on to a point where it became Great because it accomplished fundamental changes, they did not possess the means to definitely wrest all power permanently from the bourgeoisie. The proletariat was conquered: it had not developed to the objective power of the Russian proletariat; the white terror crushed the masses; Babeuf's conspiracy was the final desperate expression of the economic revolution of the masses of the people; but while the proletariat did not accomplish the economic revolution, it accomplished one magnificent thing—it sapped monarchy and feudalism so completely that political democracy was inevitable, and made the bourgeois revolution.
In the ill-fated revolution of 1848 in Germany, the proletariat again emerged, as the left wing of the revolution, as the one aggressive force in the revolution, crushed by the betrayals and cowardice of the bourgeois liberals who united with the monarchic reaction. Again, in the French Revolution of 1848, in Paris, the proletariat emerged as the carrier of aggressive revolutionary action and a program of economic revolution, but crushed ruthlessly by the bourgeois reaction.
During the struggle against Czarism the proletarian class struggle against Capitalism emerged, becoming more definite and aggressive in the measure that the bourgeois liberals approached toward a conciliation with the monarchy and Capitalism developed in the masses the consciousness of an economic revolution. The original joint struggle against Czarism developed, in reality though often unconsciously, into a struggle of the masses against Czarism—Capitalism; the proletarian class struggle against the bourgeoisie did not arise during the 1917 Revolution, it has already acquired definite character and power. The struggle between bourgeois and proletarian appeared clearly during the 1905 Revolution, acquired a sharper character during the following period of Czarist—bourgeois counter-revolutionary activity, and flared up implacably in the 1917 Revolution. The period 1905–1917 may be compared, very superficially, of course, and yet suggestively, to the period I789–1792 of the French Revolution; and 1917–1918 to 1792–1793, with this vital difference: that the masses in France met disaster, while the Russian proletariat and poor peasants conquered power.
The proletariat in the Russian Revolution acted instinctively as the proletariat acted in previous revolutions. Its infinitely larger success was determined by the prevailing historic conditions, by the fact that it had developed much more maturity than the masses during the French Revolution. Capitalism was much more developed and much more typical, the proletariat consequently much more powerful and class conscious: it was able, accordingly, because of the revolutionary breach created in the old order by the momentarily joint revolution against Czarism, to conquer the bourgeoisie, to project definitely and decisively a proletarian revolution. United with the superior material development was an uncompromisingly revolutionary Socialism, able to direct the masses of the people to the conquest of power and the introduction of forms competent to maintain and extend that conquest in the direction of a new society,—the successful expression of an economic and social revolution.
The proletarian revolution in Russia accordmgly, is not alone in accord with the purposes of revolutionary Socialism, but it is equally the definite expression of a dynamic tendency, the revolutionary economic tendency of the masses, latent and apparent but unsuccessful in previous revolutions, characteristic of Capitalism and acquiring maturity and ascendancy as Capitalism develops.
As the tendency of action of the Russian proletariat was adumbrated in previous revolutions, so its class organizations, the Soviets, are, in general features, partially, incompletely apparent in these previous revolutions in which the proletariat instinctively tried to emerge for the conquest of power.
The revolutionary masses of the people, during the French Revolution, particularly in Paris, organized their own forms of revolutionary struggle and government, the sections and the Commune. While the average historian dwells minutely upon the action of the various parliaments and the Clubs, the sections and the Commune of the masses were of decisive importance. These sections and the Commune were not alone instruments of revolutionary action, but usurped certain functions of government, the tendency being to place all government power in the Commune, which was simply the organized masses trying to act independently of parliamentary forms and bourgeois representatives. This tendency was expressed in a more definite form in the Paris Commune of 1871, which completely dispensed with the forms and functions of the bourgeois parliamentary state, its purpose being to unite all France by means of self-governing communes, and from which Marx derived that fundamental canon of the proletarian revolution: the proletariat can not simply lay hold of the ready-made machinery of the bourgeois state, and use it for its own purposes.
The Soviets, the Councils of Workers and Peasants, are a much higher form and definite expression of this tendency of the proletarian masses to become the state. Originally created as instruments of the revolution, the Soviets have become organs of government, functioning through a temporary dictatorship of the proletariat. The Soviets are revolutionary organizations of the masses; but they are more: they are forms for the creation of a new type of government, which shall supersede the bourgeois political state. Instead of being amorphous "mass organizations" as were the sections and Communes in the French Revolution, the Soviets are industrial organizations uniting the functions of industry and government. In the Soviets appears the true form of government of the proletariat, based upon the producers organized in the workshops. In the workshops lies not only the power of the workers for the revolution, but equally the groupings upon which is based the self-government of the oncoming communist society of Socialism. And the Soviets, combining temporarily political and industrial functions, are developing the forms out of which will emerge the communist, industrial "government" of the days to come. The tendency of previous revolutions is the dominant fact of the Russian Revolution.
The proletarian revolution in Russia has revealed clearly and in definite form the methods and the purposes, the action and the "state" by means of which the proletariat can conquer power and accomplish its emancipation.
The definite success of the proletarian revolution in Russia depends not alone upon the Russian masses, but much more upon the revolutionary action of the masses in the rest of Europe. The Russian Revolution cannot accomplish that which the French Revolution accomplished—wage war upon the whole of Europe. The strength and the weakness of the proletarian revolution in Russia is precisely that the other European nations are much more highly developed economically. Revolutionary France was the most advanced nation economically in Europe (except England), and this greater economic power was a source of unparalleled political and military vigor to France, making feasible a war against all of Europe. But the proletarian revolution in Russia is vulnerable to a concerted attack of European Imperialism, because the other nations of Europe can mobilize infinitely superior economic forces; simultaneously, this situation is one favorable to the Russian Revolution, since the higher stage of economic development in the other nations prepares the conditions for supplementary revolutionary action, which alone can ultimately preserve the Russian Revolution. Monarchic Europe could not produce a revolution in accord with that in France; modern Europe can produce a proletarian revolution in accord with that in Russia. The proletarian revolution in Russia requires and struggles for the Social Revolution in Europe. The revolution of the proletariat is an international revolution.
V
The proletarian revolution in Russia, the climax of the war, marks the entry of the international proletariat into a new revolutionary epoch. In this epoch the Social Revolution is no longer an aspiration, but a dynamic process of immediate revolutionary struggles.
The new epoch is an epoch of revolutionary struggles, in which the proletariat acts definitely for the conquest of power. This new revolutionary epoch has been objectively introduced by Imperialism, and subjectively initiated by the proletarian revolution in Russia. Imperialism creates a revolutionary situation, a crisis and a breach in the old order through which the proletariat may break through for action and the conquest of power.
This is an historic fact of the utmost importance. It means the preparation of the proletariat for the final struggle against Capitalism, the necessity of clear-cut, uncompromising action in the activity of Socialism;—it means, moreover, the revolutionary reconstruction of Socialist policy and tactics, in accord with the imperative requirements of the new revolutionary epoch.
The proletarian revolution in Russia marks a recovery from the great collapse of Socialism upon the declaration of war in 1914, and during the war; but at the same time it emphasizes that collapse. Moderate Socialism, which during the war betrayed the proletariat and Socialism by accepting the policy of imperialistic governments, developed into a counter-revolutionary force; and it acted against and betrayed the proletarian revolution in Russia by rejecting the call to action of revolutionary Russia. After having overcome moderate, petty bourgeois Socialism in its own councils, the proletarian revolution in Russa had to struggle, must struggle against moderate Socialism throughout the world.
And by "moderate Socialism" is meant not simply the Socialism of the "right" which accepted the war, but equally the Socialism of the "centre," which either opposed the war from the start or adopted an oppositional attitude after preliminary acceptance. It was not simply the Socialism of the "right," of Plekhanov and the other social-patriots, but equally the Socialism of the "centre," of Cheidse and Tseretelli, that the revolution in Russia had to overcome. This moderate Socialism in other belligerent nations refused to act in solidarity with the revolutionary proletariat of Russia, or else camouflaged its petty bourgeois soul by means of honeyed words, while refusing to accept the struggle for deeds. The collapse of the "centre" is particularly emphasized,—that Socialism which is neither fish, flesh nor yet fowl; expressing an atrophied Marxism, which is neither revolutionary nor of Marx; in the attitude of which the phrase surpasses the substance; and which, precisely because it uses Marxist and revolutionary phrases in its criticism of the "right," is particularly dangerous. Plekhanov was not much of a problem to the Russian revolutionary proletariat: he was ignominiously cast aside; but it required much more initiative and energy to cast aside Tseretelli and Cheidse. When the proletariat of Germany acts, it will unceremoniously cast aside the Scheidemanns and the Cunows; but it may be directed into the swamps of compromise by the Kautskys and and the Haases. The proletarian revolution must discard the miserable masters of the phrase and the poltroons in action.
The proletarian revolution in Russia, accordingly, in its dominant Bolshevist phase, initiates not alone a new revolutionary epoch in the proletarian struggle, but equally a new epoch in Socialism, makes mandatory the reconstruction of Socialism in accord with the policy and practice of the proletarian revolution in Russia.
There are two vital stages in the development of Socialism—the stage of its theory, and the stage of its practice.
The Communist Manifesto, roughly, marked the first stage. The Manifesto, supplemented by the general theoretical activity of Marx,, provided the proletariat with a theory of its historic mission, and developed the understanding of the conditions necessary for its emancipation. This was an epochal and revolutionary fact. The proletariat, a despised and lowly class, was conceived as a class socially the only necessary class, destined to overthrow Capitalism and realize the dream of the ages—social, economic and individual freedom. Itself an oppressed class, the proletariat, through the expression of its class interests, was to annihilate all oppression. The proletariat, through the theory of Socialism, was intellectually made equal to its historic mission—socially, economically and intellectually, the proletariat was a revolutionary class upon which history imposed a revolutionary mission. The actual practice of the movement, however, was conservative, a conservatism determined by the conditions under which it operated: Socialism was only intellectually an essentially revolutionary thing—in ultimate purpose, but not as yet in immediate practice. The genius of Marx, to be sure, projected a general conception of revolutionary practice; but this part of his ideas played only a secondary role in a movement dominated by conservative policy.
The proletarian revolution in Russia, as determined by the practice and program of the Bolsheviki, marks the second vital stage in the development of Socialism—the stage of its revolutionary practice. The epoch of Marx developed the theory of Socialism, the epoch of Lenin is developing its practice: and this is precisely the great fact in Russia—the fact of Socialism and the revolutionary proletariat in action. The left wing of the Socialism of yesterday becomes through the compulsion of events the Socialism of revolutionary action in the days to come. As Marx is the source of Socialist theory, so the proletarian revolution in Russia is the source of Socialist practice. Its uncompromising spirit, its sense of reality, its emphasis on the general mass action of the revolutionary proletariat, its realization of the deceptive character of the parliamentary regime and the necessity of annihilating that regime, its use of all means compatible with its purposes in the revolutionary struggle—all this and more marks the proletarian revolution in Russia as peculiary characteristic of the Social Revolution of the proletariat that will annihilate the rapacious regime of Capitalism and Imperialism.
Capitalism and Socialism are mobilizing for the great, the final and decisive struggle. The call to action of the proletarian revolution in Russia will soon—now, perhaps—marshal the iron battalions of the international proletariat.
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The material comprised in this volume, consists largely of a mass of articles written by Lenin and Trotzky during the actual course of the Revolution; the material accordingly is not alone a record of history, but a maker of history—original sources. I have knit the material together by means of supplementary chapters of my own. The bulk of the material is here published for the first time in this country, either in Russian or in English; a small part has already appeared in The Novy Mir, The New International and The Class Struggle. I wish to express my appreciation to A. Menshoy, Nicholas I. Hourwich and Gregory Weinstein, editors of The Novy Mir, who provided me with a part of this material, and to John Reed, who provided me with the material comprised in Chapter III of Part One, the final chapter of Part Three, and the chapters by Trotzky in Part Six.
October, 1918