Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/110

 kind. The less experienced the Russian people is with organization the more aggressively we must proceed with the constructive organization of the people itself, not merely through bourgeois politicians and bureaucrats.

The sooner we cast off the prejudices instilled by the pseudo-Marxism of Plekhanov, Kautsky & Co., the more actively we will help the people everywhere organize Councils of Workers and Peasants.

We must expect blunders in the first attempt at structural organization of the people, but it is better to blunder ahead than to lag behind; for while we lag the bourgeois professors and jurists prepare bills for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, for the perpetuation of the parliamentary bourgeois republic and the suppression of the Councils of Workers' and Peasants' Delegates.

If we organize and conduct an energetic propaganda, not only the proletariat but nine-tenths of the peasantry will rise against the re-establishment of the police, against an immovable and privileged bureaucracy, against an army which is separate from the nation. And such will be the new type of government. The substitution of a national militia for the police is a change which results logically from the whole course of the revolution and which has been adopted in most Russian communities. We must make it clear to the masses that in the majority of revolutions of the usual bourgeois type, a change of that sort was very ephemeral and that the bourgeoisie, however democratic and republican it may have been, soon returned to the former police system, the kind of police which is alien to the people, which is commanded by bourgeois and is ready to assist in any attempt at oppression of the people.

The only way to prevent a return to the old police system is to organize a national militia and make it part of the army, the army being replaced by an armed citizenry. The militia would comprise all citizens of both sexes between the ages of 15 and 65, these age limits being selected approximately to exclude minors and old people. Capitalists should pay their employes, servants and other subordinates for days which they have to serve in the militia. Unless women feel called upon to take an active part not only in political life generally, but and particularly in continuous general social work, it is idle to speak not only of Socialism but of complete democracy. Certain special functions of the police, such as the care of the side, of abandoned children, the supervision of foodstuffs,