Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/76

 munistic party) from the petty bourgeois elements, correctly expresses the interests of the movement in two possible events: in the event that Russia will yet go through a specific, independent "dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry," not subordinate to the bourgeoisie, or in the event that the petty bourgeois elements will not tear away from the bourgeoisie and will always (that is, until Socialism) vaccilate between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

He who is guided in his activity only by a simple formula, "the bourgeois-democratic revolution has not been completed," assumes by that very fact something like a guarantee that the petite bourgeoisie is surely capable of securing its independence from the bourgeoisie. By this, at the present moment, he surrenders helplessly to the mercy of the petite bourgeoisie.

By the way, it would not be out of place to remember that I especially emphasied in "Two Tactics" (July, 1905) two phases of the "formula" dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry:

"The revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry has, as everything else in the world, a past and a future. Its past—autocracy, bondage, monarchy, privileges; its future—struggle against private property, struggle of the wage laborer, against his employer, struggle for Socialism."

The error of Comrade Kamennev is, that, even in 1917, he looks only at the past of the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. But in fact its future has already begun, as the interests and politics of the worker have been sundered from those of his employer on such an important question as "national (or 'revolutionary') defense," and their attitude towards the imperialistic war.

And here I come to the second error in the criticism of Comrade Kamenev. He attacks my plan as being "based upon an immediate transformation of this (bourgeois-democratic) revolution into a Socialist Revolution."

It is not true. I not only do not count upon an "immediate tarnsformationtransformation [sic] of our revolution into a Socialist revolution," but directly warn against it, I directly state in No. 8 of my "theses":

"Not the introduction of Socialism, as our immediate problem."

Is it not clear that a man who counts upon the immediate transformation of our revolution into a Socialist revolution could not oppose an immediate introduction of Socialism?

Not only that. It is even impossible to introduce immediately a "communistic state" in Russia that is, a state organized on the