Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/258

 sheviki to the victorious chariot of the bourgeoisie with ropes, the 1st of July bound them with chains to serve the capitalists.

The anger aroused in the masses by the renewal of the war of conquest naturally increased more rapidly and became very powerful. On July 16–17 their indignation vented itself in an explosion, which the Bolsheviki had tried to restrain, and which it was their duty to organize.

The Social-Revolutionists and Mensheviki, faithful slaves of the bourgeoisie, chained to their masters, agreed to everything,—the sending of reactionary troops to Petrograd, the re-establishment of the death penalty in the army, the disarming of the workers and the revolutionary troops, arrests and persecutions, closing up the newspapers without trial. The bourgeoisie could not entirely assume power in the government and the Soviets did not want to take it; and this power, accordingly, was seized by the war clique, the Bonapartists, fully supported, of course, by the Cadets and the Black Hundreds, the landholders and the capitalists.

The thing went on step by step. Once moving along the inclined plane of an agreement with the bourgeoisie, the Social-Revolutionists and Mensheviki slid downward without stopping until they reached the bottom. On March 12 they promised, in the Petrograd Soviet, a conditional support of the bourgeois Provisional Government. On May 19 they saved themselves from ruin and consented to transform themselves into servants and defenders of the government, consenting to an offensive. On June 18 they united with the counter-revolutionary bourgeois in a crusade of insane malice, falsehood and libel against the revolutionary proletariat. On July 2 they approved the renewal of the predatory war, already accomplished. On July 16 they agreed to a summoning of the reactionary troops against the workers,—the beginning of a complete cession of power to the Bonapartists.

This disgraceful finale of the Social-Revolutionary and Menshevist party is not an accident, but the natural result, often seen in the experience of Europe, of the economic position of the petty employers, of the petite bourgeoisie. Every one must have observed how the petty business man exhausts himself to make his way in the world, to become a real business man and a "substantial" owner, a real bourgeois. Under the rule of Capitalism there is no other choice for the petty business man: either he must himself advance to the position of the capitalists (and in the most favorable circumstances this may be possible, for one in a hundred), or he must drop into