Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/70

 crete political institutions which realize this relation and co-operation. "The Soviet of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates"—this is the "revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry" expressed in life itself.

This formula has already become old. Life has brought it out of the realm of formulae into the realm of reality, has clothed it with flesh and blood, and by thus making it concrete has changed its aspect.

In the "order of the day" there is a new problem: the split within this dictatorship between the proletarian elements (the anti-war internationalists and "communists" who stand for transition to the commune), and the petty bourgeois elements (Cheidse, Tseretelli, Stieklov, Social-Revolutionists and other "revolutionary" anti-defeatists opponents of the movement toward the commune, adherents of "support" of the bourgeoisie and the.bourgeois government.)

He who now speaks only of a "revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry" is behind the times, and because of that has de facto gone over to the petite bourgeoisie against the proletarian class struggle: he should be relegated to the museum of "Bolshevist" pre-revolutionary relics.

Revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry has already been realized, but in a very original way, with a number of new and important aspects and differences. It is now necessary to understand that incontestable truth. A Marxist must take into consideration the true facts and living reality of today,, and not continue clinging to the theory of yesterday, which, like every other theory, at its best only outlines the fundamtntalfundamental [sic] and the general, only approaches a conception of the complexity of life.

"Theory, my friend, is gray, but green is the eternal tree of life."

Whoever questions the "completeness" of the bourgeois revolution from the old standpoint sacrifices living Marxism to a dead letter.

According to the old conception, it follows that after the rule of the bourgeoisie may and must follow the rule of the proletariat and peasantry—their dictatorship.

But in reality, it has happened otherwise: a new and novel combination of one and the other. There is in existence together and at the same time the, rule of the bourgeoisie (the government of Lvov and Guchkov) and the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry which voluntarily relinquishes pow-