Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/393



The central feature of reconstruction in Russia is that it proceeds upon the basis of a proletarian state, functioning through a temporary dictatorship of the proletariat. The policy of the Bolsheviki, in complete harmony with Marxism, is that the first requirement of Socialism in action is the conquest of power by the proletariat, after which accomplishment reconstruction becomes fundamental reconstruction and assumes the tendency of making for Socialism, instead of promoting Capitalism.

The dictatorship of the proletariat, the dynamic mechanism of the introduction of Socialism, may be described as having three functions:

1. The annihilation of the political power of the bourgeoisie in all its ramifications. The assumption of state power by the revolutionary proletariat disposes of the bourgeoisie temporarily as a political force; the bourgeoisie must be disposed of permanently. This is accomplished in two ways: the political expropriation of the bourgeoisie and its complete exclusion from participation in politics and government; and then its economic expropriation. In the measure that the process of reconstruction absorbs the bourgeoisie into the ranks of the producers, will they again be allowed—as workers—to participate in politics and government.

2. The introduction of measures of temporary reconstruction. The transition from Capitalism to Socialism is not accomplished in a day: it is a process. But while the moderate and the revolutionary Socialist agree that the transition to Socialism is a process, there is violent disagreement as to the character of the process. The moderate Socialist assumes that it is a process operating upon the basis of Capitalism and the bourgeois state; a gradual penetration of Socialism into Capitalism; but this is a process that cannot and never will emerge into Socialism, being the process of petty bourgeois collectivism, and making for State Capitalism. The revolutionary Socialist assumes that the process must be a revolutionary process operating upon the basis of the proletarian state—a process of reconstruction which alone annihilates Capitalism and introduces Socialism. Moreover, the transition, the overthrow of the political power of the bourgeoisie, necessarily disorganizes industry, and creates a measure of demoralization; many of the measures of the dictatorship of the proletariat, accordingly, must be of a temporary nature in order to overcome this demoralization, and increase productive capacity. The rapid increase of production, a vital task of the proletarian state, is accomplished also by all the measures of reconstruction, by means of a dictatorial regulation of production.

3. But these temporary measures must be, and are, in accord with the fundamental tendency making for Socialism. Measures of reconstruction to solve immediate problems of disorganization may assume a