Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/71

 er to the bourgeoisie, voluntarily converting itself into an appendage of the bourgeoisie. For we must not forget that in Petrograd, in fact, power is in the hands of the workmen and soldiers; the new government does not and cannot use violence against the workmen and soldiers, as there are neither police nor militia, or a bureaucracy, despotically ruling the people. This is a fact. And this is precisely the fact characteristic of a state of the type of the Paris Commune.

This fact does not fit into the old grooves.

One should know how to adapt theory to life, but not repeat the obsolete words "dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry" in general.

Let us approach this problem from another angle, in order the better to understand it.

A Marxist must not leave the firm ground of the analysis of class relations. The bourgeoisie is in power. But does not the mass of the peasants also constitute a bourgeoisie of a different type, of a different class character? Whence does it follow that this class can not come into power "completing" the bourgeois-democratic revolution? Thus often argue the "old Bolsheviki."

My answer is—it is fully possible. But a Marxist, in the consideration of the moment, must not consider the possible but the actual.

And reality shows us the fact that freely elected soldiers' and peasants' delegates freely enter the second, the accessory government, developing and strengthening it, and just as freely they yield power to the bourgeoisie—a phenomenon which does not violate the theory of Marxism, as we always knew and repeatedly pointed out that the bourgeoisie is in power not only by the use of violence, but by the lack of class consciousness and organization of the masses.

In the face of the reality of today, it is ridiculous to turn away from the fact and to speak of "possibilities."

It is possible that the peasantry will take all the land, and all power. Not only do I not forget this possibility, not only do I not limit my horizon to this one day, but directly and precisely I formulate an agrarian program in line with a new phenomenon: a deeper split between the workers and the poorest peasants on one, side, and the peasant owners on the other.

But another thing is possible: it is possible that the peasants will listen to the advice of the petty bourgeois party of Social-Revolutionists, which is under the influence of the bourgeoisie, which