Page:Karl Radek - The Development of Socialism from Science to Action.djvu/22

 put an end to the confusion of the economic life of the country but only shift the consequences of this confusion upon the workers. The communistic system of economy is the utilization of all the forces of production according to a distinct plan, in the interest of the masses of the people. Just because the country has been unbelievably shattered through the war, Communism is the only way by which the workers can hope to emerge from the want and misery of the shattered capitalistic society. To forego beforehand the chance to organize this economic life in its own interest would mean to rush into capitalistic misery for fear that the inexperienced proletariat would be incapable of directing the main forces of national economic life concentrated by Capitalism. This would not only be historical suicide but is furthermore impossible-practically. What does the return to Capitalism mean? It means in the first place giving back the power of the state to the capitalists, for naturally a proletarian state could not undertake to protect capitalistic profits. The purpose of showing this is to reveal the whole utopianism of the solution "back to Capitalism." It was certainly not chance that the Russian proletariat took the power into its hands in November 1917. The proletariat conquered power because the capitalistic regime had lost all confidence not only in the eyes of the proletarian but also of the agrarian masses. The first representatives of Russian capital, the Guchkovs, Milyukovs, Tereshchenkos, and their Socialist fig-leaves, the Tseretellis, Kerenskys, and Chernovs, were so hateful to the masses of the people that the people drove them away. Had the workers not seized the reins of power, the representatives of Capitalism would not have been one whit more able to master the situation. Russia would have sailed without a rudder into the sea of anarchy, headed for chaos, out of which the star of Socialism could not have crystalized, but also not a capitalist regime either. Russia was simply the prey of foreign capital, which is certainly not "riper", or more called upon to "set in order" the disrupted country in the interests of the masses of the people than the young, but energetic Russian proletariat itself.