Page:Building Up Socialism - Nikolai Bukharin (1926).pdf/20

 12 This, which no doubt was intended to serve as a poetic description, contains the following idea: Why do you Bolsheviks talk about-Socialism, international revolution and such like things? Why do you bring these questions to the front now? What is taking place now is not a process of the revolutionary advancement of society, but a process of collapse from decay caused by the war.

In the third chapter of this pamphlet entitled, "Future Prospects and Tasks" in which is described the "anarchy" resulting of the war, the writer openly states that his point of view applies not only to Russia but may be applied to the whole world: "From what I have said it is clear that Socialism at the present time is impossible of realisation."

It is not difficult to see that this argument follows from the opportunist premise of the "painless" transition of capitalism to Socialism. In complete contradiction to the revolution theory of Marx, which forecasted the birth of Socialism in, the midst of catastrophe ("Zusammenbruchstheorie") inevitably accompanied by the destruction of forces of production, the "critics" start out with the possibility of a truly idyllic progress of events. On the other hand the argument we are examining is linked up with the arithmetical conception of the pre-requisites of Socialist construction: it assumes that any deviation from definite phases in the development of the material basis of production immediately renders the transition to Socialism impossible.

The changing relation of class forces, the education and self-education of the proletariat in the course of its battles, etc., all these things are ignored. It is superfluous to mention that an empirical test of this postulate, i.e., the whole of the subsequent course of events completely refutes