Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/77

 type of the Paris Commune, since it is first necessary that the majority of the delegates in all (or in a majority) of the Soviets should clearly understand all the defects and the harm of the politics and tactics of the Social-Revolutionists, Cheidse, Steklov, and others. I state very precisely that I count, in this matter, only upon a "patient explanation" (is it essential to be patient in order to get a change which it is possible to realize "immediately"?)

Comrade Kamenev has been a little too "impatient" and hasty, and has repeated the bourgeois prejudices about the Paris Commune, that the Commune wanted "immediately" to introduce Socialism. It is not so. The Commune, unfortunately, was too slow with the introduction of Socialism. The actual content of the Commune, its importance and significance, is not where the bourgeois seeks, but in the creation of an original type of state. And such a state has already been born in Russia: the Soviets of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates!

Comrade Kamenev did not go deep, into the fact, into the significance, of the existing Soviets, into their identity as a type and as a social-political institution with the state of the Commune; and, instead of studying the fact, he speaks of what I "count" upon as an immediate future. Unfortunately, this is a repetition of the usual bourgeois way of considering things. From the question, what are the Soviets of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates, whether they are a higher type of government than the parliamentary republic, whether they are more useful for the people, more democratic, more efficient in the struggle against famine, etc.,—from these fundamental aspects of the question, the attention is turned aside, to consideration of a hollow, quasi-scientific, pedantic question about "the consideration of an immediate transformation."

An empty, falsely presented question. I only "count" upon the fact that the workers, soldiers, peasants will be able to master the difficult practical questions (as the greater production. of bread, the better provisioning of the soldiers, etc.) much better than the bureaucrats and the police.

I am deeply convinced that the Soviets of Soldiers,' Workmen's and Peasants' Delegates will realize the independence of the mass of the people much more rapidly and much more adequately than a parliamentary republic. They will, in a better way, and more practically and correctly, decide what steps could be and should be taken towards Socialism. Control of the banks, centralization of all the banks into one, this is not Socialism yet, but a step towards