Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/72

 advises waiting for the Constituent Assembly, although until now the date of its convocation has not been set.

It is possible that the peasants will adhere to and prolong their agreement with the bourgeoisie, an agreement concluded now by them with the aid of the Soviets of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates, not only formally but actually. Everything is possible. It would be the greatest error to forget the agrarian movement and the agrarian program. But it would be just as great an error to forget the reality, which shows the fact of agreement, or, using a less judicial and more exact expression, the fact of class co-operation between the bourgeoisie and the peasantry.

When this fact will cease to be a fact, when the peasantry will separate from the bourgeoisie, take the land and use their power against the bourgeoisie—then it will be a new stage of a bourgeois-democratic revolution.

A Marxist, who, in view of the possibility of the future stage, forgets his duties now when the peasantry is in agreement with the bourgeoisie, is liable to become a petit bourgeois himself. For he, in fact, would preach to the proletariat confidence in the petite bourgeoisie ("this petite bourgeoisie, this peasantry, must separate from the bourgeoisie even during the bourgeois-democratic revolution.") This Marxist, in view of the "possibility" of a sweet and pleasant future, when the peasantry will not be the tail of the bourgeois kite, will not be the ally of the Social-Revolutionists, the Cheidses, Tseretellis, Stieklovs, will not be the supplement of the bourgeois government—he, in view of the "possibility" of this pleasant future, would forget the unpleasant present. Now, while the peasantry still remains an appendage of the bourgeoisie, the Social-Revolutionists and Mensheviki, still plays the role of an auxiliary of the bourgeois government, opposed to "His Majesty" Lvov.

This hypothetical Marxist would resemble the milk and water Louis Blanc, or the sugary Kautskian, but never a revolutionary Marxist!

But aren't we in danger of falling into subjectivism, into a desire to jump from an incomplete revolution of a petty bourgeois