Page:Karl Radek - The Development of Socialism from Science to Action.djvu/30

 in order to drive the bourgeois elements into the service of the workers.

No proletariat will be spared the struggle which has forced the Russian working class to take the sharpest measures of a dictatorship; the struggle for bread. Nowhere will the peasants range themselves on the side of the Revolution, less in capitalist countries than they did in Russia, where the Revolution gave them land and soil. As the Revolution develops from a military standpoint, into a struggle between the workers' regiments and the regiments of the peasants, so also from the social standpoint, it will be fought out between the workers and peasants for bread; until the conquered peasantry learns that a Socialist society can offer them a life more worthy of a human being than a capitalist society can.

And this in a word indicates clearly enough what a mighty obstinacy or what an enormous lack of sense one must have in order to accuse the Russian Revolution of harming poor Democracy. Concretely considered, Democracy is the rule of Capital, and it is so strong, so fixed in the minds of the masses that it can allow itself the luxury of permitting the masses the liberty of discussing the affairs of state. There is, in modern history, no Democracy which goes any further than that, for as soon as the masses make the slightest attempt to convert their liberty of speech into right to decide any question of government, Democracy goes flying. Modern Democracy is the camouflage for the autocracy of capital. As the feeble proletariat is interested in free speech, in free voting, in order to collect its forces, it used this democracy and participated freely in the affairs of state, in order to mobilize the masses for Socialism. But abstractly considered, Democracy signifies the rule of the majority of the people. The idea that the proletariat will not begin the revolution until it has proofs that the majority of the people are behind it, is absurd, if only for the fact that capitalist Democracy will never remain unchanged long