Our Revolution: Essays on Working-Class and International Revolution, 1904-1917

The events of January 9th have given us a revolutionary beginning. We must never fall below this. We must make this our starting point in moving the revolution forward. We must imbue our work of propaganda and organization with the political ideas and revolutionary aspirations of the uprising of the Petersburg workers.

The Russian revolution has approached its climax—a national uprising. The organization of this uprising, which would determine the fate of the entire revolution, becomes the day's task for our Party.

No one can accomplish it, but we. Priest Gapon could appear only once. He cherished extraordinary illusions, that is why he could do what he has done. Yet he could remain at the head of the masses for a brief period only. The memory of George Gapon will always be dear to the revolutionary proletariat. Yet his memory will be that of a hero who opened the sluices of the revolutionary torrent. Should a new figure step to the front now, equal to Gapon in energy, revolutionary enthusiasm and power of political illusions, his arrival would be too late. What was great in George Gapon may now look ridiculous. There is no room for a second George Gapon, as the thing now needed is not an illusion, but clear revolutionary thinking, a decisive plan of action, a flexible revolutionary organization which would be able to give the masses a slogan, to lead them into the field of battle, to launch an attack all along the line and bring the revolution to a victorious conclusion.

Such an organization can be the work of Social-Democracy only. No other party is able to create it. No other party can give the masses a revolutionary slogan, as no one outside our Party has freed himself from all considerations not pertaining to the interests of the revolution. No other party, but Social-Democracy, is able to organize the action of the masses, as no one but our Party is closely connected with the masses.

Our Party has committed many errors, blunders, almost crimes. It wavered, evaded, hesitated, it showed inertia and lack of pluck. At times it hampered the revolutionary movement.

However, there is no revolutionary party but the Social-Democratic Party!

Our organizations are imperfect. Our connections with the masses are insufficient. Our technique is primitive.

Yet, there is no party connected with the masses but the Social-Democratic Party!

At the head of the Revolution is the Proletariat. At the head of the Proletariat is Social-Democracy!

Let us exert all our power, comrades! Let us put all our energy and all our passion into this. Let us not forget for a moment the great responsibility vested in our Party: a responsibility before the Russian Revolution and in the sight of International Socialism.

The proletariat of the entire world looks to us with expectation. Broad vistas are being opened for humanity by a victorious Russian revolution. Comrades, let us do our duty!

Let us close our ranks, comrades! Let us unite, and unite the masses! Let us prepare, and prepare the masses for the day of decisive actions! Let us overlook nothing. Let us leave no power unused for the Cause.

Brave, honest, harmoniously united, we shall march forward, linked by unbreakable bonds, brothers in the Revolution!

EXPLANATORY NOTES

Osvoboshdenie (Emancipation) was the name of a liberal magazine published in Stuttgart, Germany, and smuggled into Russia to be distributed among the Zemstvo-liberals and other progressive elements grouped about the Zemstvo-organization. The Osvoboshdenie advocated a constitutional monarchy; it was, however, opposed to revolutionary methods.

Peter Struve, first a Socialist, then a Liberal, was the editor of the Osvoboshdenie. Struve is an economist and one of the leading liberal journalists in Russia.

Zemstvo-petitions, accepted in form of resolutions at the meetings of the liberal Zemstvo bodies and forwarded to the central government, were one of the means the liberals used in their struggle for a Constitution. The petitions, worded in a very moderate language, demanded the abolition of "lawlessness" on the part of the administration and the introduction of a "legal order," i.e., a Constitution.

Sergius Witte, Minister of Finance in the closing years of the 19th Century and up to the revolution of 1905, was known as a bureaucrat of a liberal brand.

The Ukase of December 12th, 1905, was an answer of the government to the persistent political demands of the "Spring" time. The Ukase promised a number of insignificant bureaucratic reforms, not even mentioning a popular representation and threatening increased punishments for "disturbances of peace and order."

Trepov was one of the most hated bureaucrats, a devoted pupil of Von Plehve's in the work of drowning revolutionary movements in blood.

George Gapon was the priest who organized the march of January 9th. Trotzky's admiration for the heroism of Gapon was originally shared by many revolutionists. Later it became known that Gapon played a dubious rôle as a friend of labor, and an agent of the government.

The "Political illusions" of George Gapon, referred to in this essay, was his assumption that the Tzar was a loving father to his people. Gapon hoped to reach the Emperor of all the Russias and to make him "receive the workingmen's petition from hand to hand."

PROSPECTS OF A LABOR DICTATORSHIP

This is, perhaps, the most remarkable piece of political writing the Revolution has produced. Written early in 1906, after the great upheavals of the fall of 1905, at a time when the Russian revolution was obviously going down hill, and autocracy, after a moment of relaxation, was increasing its deadly grip over the country, the essays under the name Sum Total and Prospectives (which we have here changed into a more comprehensible name, Prospects of Labor Dictatorship) aroused more amazement than admiration. They seemed so entirely out of place. They ignored the liberal parties as quite negligible quantities. They ignored the creation of the Duma to which the Constitutional Democrats attached so much importance as a place where democracy would fight the battles of the people and win. They ignored the very fact that the vanguard of the revolution, the industrial proletariat, was beaten, disorganized, downhearted, tired out.

The essays met with opposition on the part of leading Social-Democratic thinkers of both the Bolsheviki and Mensheviki factions. The essays seemed to be more an expression of Trotzky's revolutionary ardor, of his unshakable faith in the future of the Russian revolution, than a reflection of political realities. It was known that he wrote them within prison walls. Should not the very fact of his imprisonment have convinced him that in drawing a picture of labor dictatorship he was only dreaming?

History has shown that it was not a dream. Whatever our attitude towards the course of events in the 1917 revolution may be, we must admit that, in the main, this course has taken the direction predicted in Trotzky's essays. There is a labor dictatorship now in Russia. It is a labor dictatorship, not a "dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasants." The liberal and radical parties have lost influence. The labor government has put collective ownership and collective management of industries on the order of the day. The labor government has not hesitated in declaring Russia to be ready for a Socialist revolution. It was compelled to do so under the pressure of revolutionary proletarian masses. The Russian army has been dissolved in the armed people. The Russian revolution has called the workingmen of the world to make a social revolution.

All this had been outlined by Trotzky twelve years ago. When one reads this series of essays, one has the feeling that they were written not in the course of the first Russian upheaval (the essays appeared in 1906 as part of a book by Trotzky, entitled Our Revolution, Petersburg, N. Glagoleff, publisher) but as if they were discussing problems of the present situation. This, more than anything else, shows the continuity of the revolution. The great overthrow of 1917 was completed by the same political and social forces that had met and learned to know each other in the storms of 1905 and 1906. The ideology of the various groups and parties had hardly changed. Even the leaders of the major parties were, in the main, the same persons. Of course, the international situation was different. But even the possibility of a European war and its consequences had been foreseen by Trotzky in his essays.

Twelve years ago those essays seemed to picture an imaginary world. To-day they seem to tell the history of the Russian revolution. We may agree or disagree with Trotzky, the leader, nobody can deny the power and clarity of his political vision.

In the first chapter, entitled "Peculiarities of Our Historic Development," the author gives a broad outline of the growth of absolutism in Russia. Development of social forms in Russia, he says, was slow and primitive. Our social life was constructed on an archaic and meager economic foundation. Yet, Russia did not lead an isolated life. Russia was under constant pressure of higher politico-economical organisms,—the neighboring Western states. The Russian state, in its struggle for existence, outgrew its economic basis. Historic development in Russia, therefore, was taking place under a terrific straining of national economic forces. The state absorbed the major part of the national economic surplus and also part of the product necessary for the maintenance of the people. The state thus undermined its own foundation. On the other hand, to secure the means indispensable for its growth, the state forced economic development by bureaucratic measures. Ever since the end of the seventeenth century, the state was most anxious to develop industries in Russia. "New trades, machines, factories, production on a large scale, capital, appear from a certain angle to be an artificial graft on the original economic trunk of the people. Similarly, Russian science may appear from the same angle to be an artificial graft on the natural trunk of national ignorance." This, however, is a wrong conception. The Russian state could not have created something out of nothing. State action only accelerated the processes of natural evolution of economic life. State measures that were in contradiction to those processes were doomed to failure. Still, the rôle of the state in economic life was enormous. When social development reached the stage where the bourgeoisie classes began to experience a desire for political institutions of a Western type, Russian autocracy was fully equipped with all the material power of a modern European state. It had at its command a centralized bureaucratic machinery, incapable of regulating modern relations, yet strong enough to do the work of oppression. It was in a position to overcome distance by means of the telegraph and railroads,—a thing unknown to the pre-revolutionary autocracies in Europe. It had a colossal army, incompetent in wars with foreign enemies, yet strong enough to maintain the authority of the state in internal affairs.

Based on its military and fiscal apparatus, absorbing the major part of the country's resources, the government increased its annual budget to an enormous amount of two billions of rubles, it made the stock-exchange of Europe its treasury and the Russian tax-payer a slave to European high finance. Gradually, the Russian state became an end in itself. It evolved into a power independent of society. It left unsatisfied the most elementary wants of the people. It was unable even to defend the safety of the country against foreign foes. Yet, it seemed strong, powerful, invincible. It inspired awe.

It became evident that the Russian state would never grant reforms of its own free will. As years passed, the conflict between absolutism and the requirements of economic and cultural progress became ever more acute. There was only one way to solve the problem: "to accumulate enough steam inside the iron kettle of absolutism to burst the kettle." This was the way outlined by the Marxists long ago. Marxism was the only doctrine that had correctly predicted the course of development in Russia.

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In the second chapter, "City and Capital," Trotzky attempts a theoretical explanation to the weakness of the middle-class in Russia. Russia of the eighteenth, and even of the major part of the nineteenth, century, he writes, was marked by an absence of cities as industrial centers. Our big cities were administrative rather than industrial centers. Our primitive industries were scattered in the villages, auxiliary occupations of the peasant farmers. Even the population of our so called "cities," in former generations maintained itself largely by agriculture. Russian cities never contained a prosperous, efficient and self-assured class of artisans—that real foundation of the European middle class which in the course of revolutions against absolutism identified itself with the "people." When modern capitalism, aided by absolutism, appeared on the scene of Russia and turned large villages into modern industrial centers almost over night, it had no middle-class to build on. In Russian cities, therefore, the influence of the bourgeoisie is far less than in western Europe. Russian cities practically contain great numbers of workingmen and small groups of capitalists. Moreover, the specific political weight of the Russian proletariat is larger than that of the capital employed in Russia, because the latter is to a great extent imported capital. Thus, while a large proportion of the capital operating in Russia exerts its political influence in the parliaments of Belgium or France, the working class employed by the same capital exert their entire influence in the political life of Russia. As a result of these peculiar historic developments, the Russian proletariat, recruited from the pauperized peasant and ruined rural artisans, has accumulated in the new cities in very great numbers, "and nothing stood between the workingmen and absolutism but a small class of capitalists, separated from the 'people' (i.e., the middle-class in the European sense of the word), half foreign in its derivation, devoid of historic traditions, animated solely by a hunger for profits."

History does not repeat itself. You are free to compare the Russian revolution with the Great French Revolution, yet this would not make the former resemble the latter. The nineteenth century passed not in vain.

Already the year of 1848 is widely different from 1789. As compared with the Great Revolution, the revolutions in Prussia or Austria appear amazingly small. From one viewpoint, the revolutions of 1848 came too early; from another, too late. That gigantic exertion of power which is necessary for the bourgeois society to get completely square with the masters of the past, can be achieved either through powerful unity of an entire nation arousing against feudal despotism, or through a powerful development of class struggle within a nation striving for freedom. In the first case—of which a classic example are the years 1789-1793,—the national energy, compressed by the terrific resistance of the old régime, was spent entirely in the struggle against reaction. In the second case—which has never appeared in history as yet, and which is treated here as hypothetical—the actual energy necessary for a victory over the black forces of history is being developed within the bourgeois nation through "civil war" between classes. Fierce internal friction characterizes the latter case. It absorbs enormous quantities of energy, prevents the bourgeoisie from playing a leading rôle, pushes its antagonist, the proletariat, to the front, gives the workingman decades' experience in a month, makes them the central figures in political struggles, and puts very tight reins into their hands. Strong, determined, knowing no doubts, the proletariat gives events a powerful twist.

Thus, it is either—or. Either a nation gathered into one compact whole, as a lion ready to leap; or a nation completely divided in the process of internal struggles, a nation that has released her best part for a task which the whole was unable to complete. Such are the two polar types, whose purest forms, however, can be found only in logical contraposition.

Here, as in many other cases, the middle road is the worst. This was the case in 1848.

In the French Revolution we see an active, enlightened bourgeoisie, not yet aware of the contradictions of its situation; entrusted by history with the task of leadership in the struggle for a new order; fighting not only against the archaic institutions of France, but also against the forces of reaction throughout Europe. The bourgeoisie consciously, in the person of its various factions, assumes the leadership of the nation, it lures the masses into struggle, it coins slogans, it dictates revolutionary tactics. Democracy unites the nation in one political ideology. The people—small artisans, petty merchants, peasants, and workingmen—elect bourgeois as their representatives; the mandates of the communities are framed in the language of the bourgeoisie which becomes aware of its Messianic rôle. Antagonisms do not fail to reveal themselves in the course of the revolution, yet the powerful momentum of the revolution removes one by one the most unresponsive elements of the bourgeoisie. Each stratum is torn off, but not before it has given over all its energy to the following one. The nation as a whole continues to fight with ever increasing persistence and determination. When the upper stratum of the bourgeoisie tears itself away from the main body of the nation to form an alliance with Louis XVI, the democratic demands of the nation turn against this part of the bourgeoisie, leading to universal suffrage and a republican government as logically consequent forms of democracy.

The Great French Revolution is a true national revolution. It is more than that. It is a classic manifestation, on a national scale, of the world-wide struggle of the bourgeois order for supremacy, for power, for unmitigated triumph. In 1848, the bourgeoisie was no more capable of a similar rôle. It did not want, it did not dare take the responsibility for a revolutionary liquidation of a political order that stood in its way. The reason is clear. The task of the bourgeoisie—of which it was fully aware—was not to secure its own political supremacy, but to secure for itself a share in the political power of the old régime. The bourgeoisie of 1848, niggardly wise with the experience of the French bourgeoisie, was vitiated by its treachery, frightened by its failures. It did not lead the masses to storm the citadels of the absolutist order. On the contrary, with its back against the absolutist order, it resisted the onslaught of the masses that were pushing it forward.

The French bourgeoisie made its revolution great. Its consciousness was the consciousness of the people, and no idea found its expression in institutions without having gone through its consciousness as an end, as a task of political construction. It often resorted to theatrical poses to conceal from itself the limitations of its bourgeois world,—yet it marched forward.

The German bourgeoisie, on the contrary, was not doing the revolutionary work; it was "doing away" with the revolution from the very start. Its consciousness revolted against the objective conditions of its supremacy. The revolution could be completed not by the bourgeoisie, but against it. Democratic institutions seemed to the mind of the German bourgeois not an aim for his struggle, but a menace to his security.

Another class was required in 1848, a class capable of conducting the revolution beside the bourgeoisie and in spite of it, a class not only ready and able to push the bourgeoisie forward, but also to step over its political corpse, should events so demand. None of the other classes, however, was ready for the job.

The petty middle class were hostile not only to the past, but also to the future. They were still entangled in the meshes of medieval relations, and they were unable to withstand the oncoming "free" industry; they were still giving the cities their stamp, and they were already giving way to the influences of big capital. Steeped in prejudices, stunned by the clatter of events, exploiting and being exploited, greedy and helpless in their greed, they could not become leaders in matters of world-wide importance. Still less were the peasants capable of political initiative. Scattered over the country, far from the nervous centers of politics and culture, limited in their views, the peasants could have no great part in the struggles for a new order. The democratic intellectuals possessed no social weight; they either dragged along behind their elder sister, the liberal bourgeoisie, as its political tail, or they separated themselves from the bourgeoisie in critical moments only to show their weakness.

The industrial workingmen were too weak, unorganized, devoid of experience and knowledge. The capitalist development had gone far enough to make the abolition of old feudal relations imperative, yet it had not gone far enough to make the working class, the product of new economic relations, a decisive political factor. Antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat, even within the national boundaries of Germany, was sharp enough to prevent the bourgeoisie from stepping to the front to assume national hegemony in the revolution, yet it was not sharp enough to allow the proletariat to become a national leader. True, the internal frictions of the revolution had prepared the workingmen for political independence, yet they weakened the energy and the unity of the revolution and they caused a great waste of power. The result was that, after the first successes, the revolution began to plod about in painful uncertainty, and under the first blows of the reaction it started backwards. Austria gave the clearest and most tragic example of unfinished and unsettled relations in a revolutionary period. It was this situation that gave Lassalle occasion to assert that henceforward revolutions could find their support only in the class struggle of the proletariat. In a letter to Marx, dated October 24, 1849 he writes: "The experiences of Austria, Hungary and Germany in 1848 and 1849 have led me to the firm conclusion that no struggle in Europe can be successful unless it is proclaimed from the very beginning as purely Socialistic. No struggle can succeed in which social problems appear as nebulous elements kept in the background, while on the surface the fight is being conducted under the slogan of national revival of bourgeois republicanism."

We shall not attempt to criticize this bold conclusion. One thing is evident, namely that already at the middle of the nineteenth century the national task of political emancipation could not be completed by a unanimous concerted onslaught of the entire nation. Only the independent tactics of the proletariat deriving its strength from no other source but its class position, could have secured a victory of the revolution.

The Russian working class of 1906 differs entirely from the Vienna working class of 1848. The best proof of it is the all-Russian practice of the Councils of Workmen's Deputies (Soviets). Those are no organizations of conspirators prepared beforehand to step forward in times of unrest and to seize command over the working class. They are organs consciously created by the masses themselves to coördinate their revolutionary struggle. The Soviets, elected by and responsible to the masses, are thoroughly democratic institutions following the most determined class policy in the spirit of revolutionary Socialism.

The differences in the social composition of the Russian revolution are clearly shown in the question of arming the people.

Militia (national guard) was the first slogan and the first achievement of the revolutions of 1789 and 1848 in Paris, in all the Italian states and in Vienna and Berlin. In 1846, the demand for a national guard (i.e., the armament of the propertied classes and the "intellectuals") was put forth by the entire bourgeois opposition, including the most moderate factions. In Russia, the demand for a national guard finds no favor with the bourgeois parties. This is not because the liberals do not understand the importance of arming the people: absolutism has given them in this respect more than one object lesson. The reason why liberals do not like the idea of a national guard is because they fully realize the impossibility of creating in Russia an armed revolutionary force outside of the proletariat and against the proletariat. They are ready to give up this demand, as they give up many others, just as the French bourgeoisie headed by Thiers preferred to give up Paris and France to Bismarck rather than to arm the working class.

The problem of an armed revolution in Russia becomes essentially a problem of the proletariat. National militia, this classic demand of the bourgeoisie of 1848, appears in Russia from the very beginning as a demand for arming the people, primarily the working class. Herein the fate of the Russian revolution manifests itself most clearly.

A revolution is an open contest of social forces in their struggle for political power.

The state is not an end in itself. It is only a working machine in the hands of the social force in power. As every machine, the state has its motor, transmission, and its operator. Its motive power is the class interest; its motor are propaganda, the press, influences of school and church, political parties, open air meetings, petitions, insurrections; its transmission is made up of legislative bodies actuated by the interest of a caste, a dynasty, a guild or a class appearing under the guise of Divine or national will (absolutism or parliamentarism); its operator is the administration, with its police, judiciary, jails, and the army.

The state is not an end in itself. It is, however, the greatest means for organizing, disorganizing and reorganizing social relations.

According to who is directing the machinery of the State, it can be an instrument of profoundest transformations, or a means of organized stagnation.

Each political party worthy of its name strives to get hold of political power and thus to make the state serve the interests of the class represented by the party. Social-Democracy, as the party of the proletariat, naturally strives at political supremacy of the working class.

The proletariat grows and gains strength with the growth of capitalism. From this viewpoint, the development of capitalism is the development of the proletariat for dictatorship. The day and the hour, however, when political power should pass into the hands of the working class, is determined not directly by the degree of capitalistic development of economic forces, but by the relations of class struggle, by the international situation, by a number of subjective elements, such as tradition, initiative, readiness to fight....

It is, therefore, not excluded that in a backward country with a lesser degree of capitalistic development, the proletariat should sooner reach political supremacy than in a highly developed capitalist state. Thus, in middle-class Paris, the proletariat consciously took into its hands the administration of public affairs in 1871. True it is, that the reign of the proletariat lasted only for two months, it is remarkable, however, that in far more advanced capitalist centers of England and the United States, the proletariat never was in power even for the duration of one day. To imagine that there is an automatic dependence between a dictatorship of the proletariat and the technical and productive resources of a country, is to understand economic determinism in a very primitive way. Such a conception would have nothing to do with Marxism.

It is our opinion that the Russian revolution creates conditions whereby political power can (and, in case of a victorious revolution, must) pass into the hands of the proletariat before the politicians of the liberal bourgeoisie would have occasion to give their political genius full swing.

Summing up the results of the revolution and counter-revolution in 1848 and 1849, Marx wrote in his correspondences to the New York Tribune: "The working class in Germany is, in its social and political development, as far behind that of England and France as the German bourgeoisie is behind the bourgeoisie of those countries. Like master, like man. The evolution of the conditions of existence for a numerous, strong, concentrated, and intelligent proletariat goes hand in hand with the development of the conditions of existence for a numerous, wealthy, concentrated and powerful middle class. The working class movement itself never is independent, never is of an exclusively proletarian character until all the different factions of the middle class, and particularly its most progressive faction, the large manufacturers, have conquered political power, and remodeled the State according to their wants. It is then that the inevitable conflict between employer and the employed becomes imminent, and cannot be adjourned any longer."[1] This quotation must be familiar to the reader, as it has lately been very much abused by scholastic Marxists. It has been used as an iron-clad argument against the idea of a labor government in Russia. If the Russian capitalistic bourgeoisie is not strong enough to take governmental power into its hands, how is it possible to think of an industrial democracy, i.e., a political supremacy of the proletariat, was the question.

Let us give this objection closer consideration.

Marxism is primarily a method of analysis,—not the analysis of texts, but the analysis of social relations. Applied to Russia, is it true that the weakness of capitalistic liberalism means the weakness of the working class? Is it true, not in the abstract, but in relation to Russia, that an independent proletarian movement is impossible before the bourgeoisie assume political power? It is enough to formulate these questions in order to understand what hopeless logical formalism there is hidden behind the attempt to turn Marx's historically relative remark into a super-historic maxim.

Our industrial development, though marked in times of prosperity by leaps and bounds of an "American" character, is in reality miserably small in comparison with the industry of the United States. Five million persons, forming 16.6 per cent. of the population engaged in economic pursuits, are employed in the industries of Russia; six millions and 22.2 per cent. are the corresponding figures for the United States. To have a clear idea as to the real dimensions of industry in both countries, we must remember that the population of Russia is twice as large as the population of the United States, and that the output of American industries in 1900 amounted to 25 billions of rubles whereas the output of Russian industries for the same year hardly reached 2.5 billions.

There is no doubt that the number of the proletariat, the degree of its concentration, its cultural level, and its political importance depend upon the degree of industrial development in each country.

This dependence, however, is not a direct one. Between the productive forces of a country on one side and the political strength of its social classes on the other, there is at any given moment a current and cross current of various socio-political factors of a national and international character which modify and sometimes completely reverse the political expression of economic relations. The industry of the United States is far more advanced than the industry of Russia, while the political rôle of the Russian workingmen, their influence on the political life of their country, the possibilities of their influence on world politics in the near future, are incomparably greater than those of the American proletariat.

In his recent work on the American workingman, Kautsky arrives at the conclusion that there is no immediate and direct dependence between the political strength of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat of a country on one hand and its industrial development on the other. "Here are two countries," he writes, "diametrically opposed to each other: in one of them, one of the elements of modern industry is developed out of proportion, i.e., out of keeping with the stage of capitalistic development; in the other, another; in America it is the class of capitalists; in Russia, the class of labor. In America there is more ground than elsewhere to speak of the dictatorship of capital, while nowhere has labor gained as much influence as in Russia, and this influence is bound to grow, as Russia has only recently entered the period of modern class struggle." Kautsky then proceeds to state that Germany can, to a certain degree, study her future from the present conditions in Russia, then he continues: "It is strange to think that it is the Russian proletariat which shows us our future as far as, not the organization of capital, but the protest of the working class is concerned. Russia is the most backward of all the great states of the capitalist world. This may seem to be in contradiction with the economic interpretation of history which considers economic strength the basis of political development. This is, however, not true. It contradicts only that kind of economic interpretation of history which is being painted by our opponents and critics who see in it not a method of analysis, but a ready pattern."[2] These lines ought to be recommended to those of our native Marxians who substitute for an independent analysis of social relations a deduction from texts selected for all emergencies of life. No one can compromise Marxism as shamefully as these bureaucrats of Marxism do.

In Kautsky's estimation, Russia is characterized, economically, by a comparatively low level of capitalistic development; politically, by a weakness of the capitalistic bourgeoisie and by a great strength of the working class. This results in the fact, that "the struggle for the interests of Russia as a whole has become the task of the only powerful class in Russia, industrial labor. This is the reason why labor has gained such a tremendous political importance. This is the reason why the struggle of Russia against the polyp of absolutism which is strangling the country, turned out to be a single combat of absolutism against industrial labor, a combat where the peasantry can lend considerable assistance without, however, being able to play a leading rôle.[3]

Are we not warranted in our conclusion that the "man" will sooner gain political supremacy in Russia than his "master"?

There are two sorts of political optimism. One overestimates the advantages and the strength of the revolution and strives towards ends unattainable under given conditions. The other consciously limits the task of the revolution, drawing a line which the very logic of the situation will compel him to overstep.

You can draw limits to all the problems of the revolution by asserting that this is a bourgeois revolution in its objective aims and inevitable results, and you can close your eyes to the fact that the main figure in this revolution is the working class which is being moved towards political supremacy by the very course of events.

You can reassure yourself by saying that in the course of a bourgeois revolution the political supremacy of the working class can be only a passing episode, and you can forget that, once in power, the working class will offer desperate resistance, refusing to yield unless compelled to do so by armed force.

You can reassure yourself by saying that social conditions in Russia are not yet ripe for a Socialist order, and you can overlook the fact that, once master of the situation, the working class would be compelled by the very logic of its situation to organize national economy under the management of the state.

The term bourgeois revolution, a general sociological definition, gives no solution to the numerous political and tactical problems, contradictions and difficulties which are being created by the mechanism of a given bourgeois revolution.

Within the limits of a bourgeois revolution at the end of the eighteenth century, whose objective was the political supremacy of capital, the dictatorship of the Sans-Culottes turned out to be a fact. This dictatorship was not a passing episode, it gave its stamp to a whole century that followed the revolution, though it was soon crushed by the limitations of the revolution.

Within the limits of a revolution at the beginning of the twentieth century, which is also a bourgeois revolution in its immediate objective aims, there looms up a prospect of an inevitable, or at least possible, supremacy of the working class in the near future. That this supremacy should not turn out to be a passing episode, as many a realistic Philistine may hope, is a task which the working class will have at heart. It is, then, legitimate to ask: is it inevitable that the dictatorship of the proletariat should clash against the limitations of a bourgeois revolution and collapse, or is it not possible that under given international conditions it may open a way for an ultimate victory by crushing those very limitations? Hence a tactical problem: should we consciously strive toward a labor government as the development of the revolution will bring us nearer to that stage, or should we look upon political power as upon a calamity which the bourgeois revolution is ready to inflict upon the workingmen, and which it is best to avoid?

In case of a victorious revolution, political power passes into the hands of the class that has played in it a dominant rôle, in other words, it passes into the hands of the working class. Of course, revolutionary representatives of non-proletarian social groups may not be excluded from the government; sound politics demands that the proletariat should call into the government influential leaders of the lower middle class, the intelligentzia and the peasants. The problem is, Who will give substance to the politics of the government, who will form in it a homogeneous majority? It is one thing when the government contains a labor majority, which representatives of other democratic groups of the people are allowed to join; it is another, when the government has an outspoken bourgeois-democratic character where labor representatives are allowed to participate in the capacity of more or less honorable hostages.

The policies of the liberal capitalist bourgeoisie, notwithstanding all their vacillations, retreats and treacheries, are of a definite character. The policies of the proletariat are of a still more definite, outspoken character. The policies of the intelligentzia, however, a result of intermediate social position and political flexibility of this group; the politics of the peasants, a result of the social heterogeneity, intermediate position, and primitiveness of this class; the politics of the lower middle class, a result of muddle-headedness, intermediate position and complete want of political traditions,—can never be clear, determined, and firm. It must necessarily be subject to unexpected turns, to uncertainties and surprises.

To imagine a revolutionary democratic government without representatives of labor is to see the absurdity of such a situation. A refusal of labor to participate in a revolutionary government would make the very existence of that government impossible, and would be tantamount to a betrayal of the cause of the revolution. A participation of labor in a revolutionary government, however, is admissible, both from the viewpoint of objective probability and subjective desirability, only in the rôle of a leading dominant power. Of course, you can call such a government "dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry," "dictatorship of the proletariat, the peasantry, and the intelligentzia," or "a revolutionary government of the workingmen and the lower middle class." This question will still remain: Who has the hegemony in the government and through it in the country? When we speak of a labor government we mean that the hegemony belongs to the working class.

The proletariat will be able to hold this position under one condition: if it broadens the basis of the revolution.

Many elements of the working masses, especially among the rural population, will be drawn into the revolution and receive their political organization only after the first victories of the revolution, when the revolutionary vanguard, the city proletariat, shall have seized governmental power. Under such conditions, the work of propaganda and organization will be conducted through state agencies. Legislative work itself will become a powerful means of revolutionizing the masses. The burden thrust upon the shoulders of the working class by the peculiarities of our social and historical development, the burden of completing a bourgeois revolution by means of labor struggle, will thus confront the proletariat with difficulties of enormous magnitude; on the other hand, however, it will offer the working class, at least in the first period, unusual opportunities. This will be seen in the relations between the proletariat and the peasants.

In the revolutions of 1789-93, and 1848, governmental power passed from absolutism into the hands of the moderate bourgeois elements which emancipated the peasants before revolutionary democracy succeeded or even attempted to get into power. The emancipated peasantry then lost interest in the political ventures of the "city-gentlemen," i.e., in the further course of the revolution; it formed the dead ballast of "order," the foundation of all social "stability," betraying the revolution, supporting a Cesarian or ultra-absolutist reaction.

The Russian revolution is opposed to a bourgeois constitutional order which would be able to solve the most primitive problems of democracy. The Russian revolution will be against it for a long period to come. Reformers of a bureaucratic brand, such as Witte and Stolypin, can do nothing for the peasants, as their "enlightened" efforts are continually nullified by their own struggle for existence. The fate of the most elementary interests of the peasantry—the entire peasantry as a class—is, therefore, closely connected with the fate of the revolution, i.e., with the fate of the proletariat.

Once in power, the proletariat will appear before the peasantry as its liberator.

Proletarian rule will mean not only democratic equality, free self-government, shifting the burden of taxation on the propertied classes, dissolution of the army among the revolutionary people, abolition of compulsory payments for the Church, but also recognition of all revolutionary changes made by the peasants in agrarian relations (seizures of land). These changes will be taken by the proletariat as a starting point for further legislative measures in agriculture. Under such conditions, the Russian peasantry will be interested in upholding the proletarian rule ("labor democracy"), at least in the first, most difficult period, not less so than were the French peasants interested in upholding the military rule of Napoleon Bonaparte who by force guaranteed to the new owners the integrity of their land shares.

But is it not possible that the peasants will remove the workingmen from their positions and take their place? No, this can never happen. This would be in contradiction to all historical experiences. History has convincingly shown that the peasantry is incapable of an independent political rôle.

The history of capitalism is the history of subordination of the village by the city. Industrial development had made the continuation of feudal relations in agriculture impossible. Yet the peasantry had not produced a class which could live up to the revolutionary task of destroying feudalism. It was the city which made rural population dependent on capital, and which produced revolutionary forces to assume political hegemony over the village, there to complete revolutionary changes in civic and political relations. In the course of further development, the village becomes completely enslaved by capital, and the villagers by capitalistic political parties, which revive feudalism in parliamentary politics, making the peasantry their political domain, the ground for their preëlection huntings. Modern peasantry is driven by the fiscal and militaristic system of the state into the clutches of usurers' capital, while state-clergy, state-schools and barrack depravity drive it into the clutches of usurers' politics.

The Russian bourgeoisie yielded all revolutionary positions to the Russian proletariat. It will have to yield also the revolutionary hegemony over the peasants. Once the proletariat becomes master of the situation, conditions will impel the peasants to uphold the policies of a labor democracy. They may do it with no more political understanding than they uphold a bourgeois régime. The difference is that while each bourgeois party in possession of the peasants' vote uses its power to rob the peasants, to betray their confidence and to leave their expectations unfulfilled, in the worst case to give way to another capitalist party, the working class, backed by the peasantry, will put all forces into operation to raise the cultural level of the village and to broaden the political understanding of the peasants.

Our attitude towards the idea of a "dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry" is now quite clear. It is not a question whether we think it "admissible" or not, whether we "wish" or we "do not wish" this form of political coöperation. In our opinion, it simply cannot be realized, at least in its direct meaning. Such a coöperation presupposes that either the peasantry has identified itself with one of the existing bourgeois parties, or it has formed a powerful party of its own. Neither is possible, as we have tried to point out.