Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/41

 The Council, dominated by the moderates, allows every opportunity of action to escape it, becomes a conservative factor in the existing system of things. The Council realizes the immense task it has to perform, but shrinks before the immensity of the revolutionary requirements, shrinks into conservatism and the acceptance of the bourgeois policy of the Provisional Government.

The Council appeals to the proletariat to overthrow the imperialistic governments, and allows its own imperialistic bourgeoisie to assume power; it calls upon the Socialists to break the "civil peace" with the ruling class, and itself acquiesces in an amorphous but disastrous "national unity;" it calls for the proletarian revolution in Europe, but denies and postpones its own proletarian revolution. The Council hesitates, and out of hesitancy comes compromise and an emasculation of the Revolution. It imagines that the course of the Revolution may be determined by interminable discussions among the intellectuals: it acts only under pressure of the revolutionary masses. The Council talks revolution while the Provisional Government acts reaction. It takes refuge In proclamations, in discussion, in appeals to a pseudo-theory, in everything save the uncompromising revolutionary action of the masses directed aggressively to a solution of the pressing problems of the day. The moderates in the Council are tangled and paralyzed in the coils of pseudo-Marxism: Russia's primitive capitalist development is not yet prepared for Socialism, therefore the bourgeoisie must rule, a theory completely neglecting the fact that the coming of Socialism consists of a process of struggles in which the deteminingdetermining [sic] factor is the matuaritymaturity [sic] and class power of the proletariat. While indulging in this speculative theory, the moderates ignored the fact that the proletariat, and not the bourgeoisie, had made the Revolution; that the bourgeoisie were inimical to the Revolution; that the immediate problems of the Revolution could be solved only by the Councils, and that accordingly the Councils should assume control of the Revolution. But they who always had preached Socialism now shelve Socialism as a problem of the future, conceiving Socialism as an abstract problem of the days to come instead of as a dynamic theory of immediate revolutionary struggle. The Revolution was a proletarian revolution in fact—this was the great circumstance. Where revolutions do not act immediately and aggressively, particularly the proletarian revolution, reaction appears and controls the situation; and the formerly revolutionary representatives of the masses accept and strengthen this reaction. Once revolutionary ardor and action cool, the force of bourgeois institutions and (control of industry weight the balance in favor of the ruling class. Revolutions march from action to action: action, more action, again action, supplemented by an audacity that shrinks at nothing,—these are the tactics of the proletarian revolution. The revolution seizes power and uses this power aggressively and uncompromisingly; it allows nothing to stand in its way save its own lack of strength. But the Council hesitates and compromises, until the day comes when the accomplished fact of reaction stares it in the face. The Council hampers and tries to control the independence and action of the masses, instead of directing them in a way that leaves the initiative to the masses—developing the action of the masses out of which class power arises. Acquiring prestige through its criticism of the government, the Council lacks the revolutionary policy and consciousness of assuming full