Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/248

 Frederick Engels placed special emphasis on the lesson to be learned from the experience unifying to a certain extent the peasant uprisings of the 16th century and the revolution of 1848 in Germany, namely: the lack of unity of action and of centralization among the oppressed masses, due to their petty bourgeois form of life. And, from this point of view, we come to this conclusion: the simple majority of the pettybourgeois mass does not, as yet, decide anything and cannot decide anything, as long as the organization, the political consciousness and its centralization (inevitable for victory) is such that it gives the millions of petty bourgeois only the position of serving as the instrument either of the bourgeoisie or of the proletariat.

Finally, as we know, the problems of social organization are solved by the class struggle in its most aggressive, most violent form, namely, in the form of civil war. And in this civil war, as in every war the deciding factor—which as a fact and in principle is disputed by no one—is economic. It is extremely characteristic and significant that neither the Social-Revolutionists nor the Mensheviki deny this in principle, and, acknowledging the capitalistic character of contemporary Russia, dare not soberly look the truth in the face. They fear to acknowledge the truth, the fundamental division of every capitalistic country, Russia included, into three fundamental and decsivedecisive [sic] divisions: the bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The first and the third are universally spoken about, universally acknowledged. The second—which happens to be the majority in point of number—is refused sober recognition from an economic, from a political, from a military point of view.

The truth is painful—that is the conclusion to which the fear of self-analysis of the Social-Revolutionists and Mensheviki leads.