Page:Karl Radek - The Development of Socialism from Science to Action.djvu/27

 the convulsing of the masses by such means as the war, all the oppressed and the exploited do not rise at once. The most active, a minority, rises, accomplishes the Revolution, and its success depends upon whether this Revolution follows the line of historic development, that is whether it responds to the needs of the masses, who can then sever themselves from the former ruling class. The creative and dynamic force of the Revolution was necessary to arouse the masses of the people, to free them from the intellectual slavery of Capitalism, to bring them into that camp which was defending their interests.

One might say: every Revolution is begun by the minority, the majority rallies to its aid while the revolution is going on, and so determines its victory. Were it not so, the dictatorship in a country like Russia, which possesses a proletarian minority, would not only be harmful as the Kautskys maintain, but in a country with a proletarian majority, to which the Kautskys graciously permit the dictatorship, it would be unnecessary. In these countries the capitalist class forms such a very small minority, that it would not be able to use weapons against the proletariat. The Marxian theory of the unavoidability of the proletarian dictatorship as a way to Socialism, is, therefore, either super-annuated, or this dictatorship is as much justified in Russia as in another country.

The Russian Revolution has shown us not only the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, but also the concrete forms which the resistance of the bourgeoisie takes, in fact, it shows us in general, the typical features of a Workers' Revolution. Friedrich Engels, in his "anti-Duehring”"has pointed out the process by which Capitalism breeds militarism, militarizes the entire population (i. e., puts it at the mercy of the drill-master), simultaneously, however, creating those elements that destroy militarism by means of the class opposition in the army. This opposition, at a certain point in the historical process, causes the