Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/90



The important characteristic of the program of the Bolsheviki is that it is an expression of general revolutionary Socialist policy; it is particular in applying itself to the concrete problems of the Russian Revolution, but international in the scope of the universality of its general principles.

Bolshevism, as an expression of Socialism, is not a peculiar Russian product; it prevails in all nations where the proletariat and Socialism are in action,, and it represents everywhere the revolutionary opposition equally to Capitalism and moderate, opportunistic Socialism. Nor is the program of the Bolsheviki a spontaneous and temporary development of the peculiar conditions prevailing in Russia during the Revolution of 1917; this program in its fundamentals was developed prior to, during, and subsequent to, the Revolution of 1905, and rigidity adhered to by the Bolsheviki. Until .the; Revolution of 1917, the program of the Bolsheviki was a brilliant formulation of revolutionary Marxian Socialism; during the Revolution, it was a brilliant performance in applied revolutionary tactics.

A determining phase of the Russian Revolution was the implacable struggle waged between the moderate and the revolutionary Socialists. It was the decisive struggle of the Revolution. Nor was this struggle determined by peculiarly Russian conditions; these conditions simply brought it to a violent climax. The struggle between the moderate and revolutionary Socialists is in action throughout the International Socialist movement; the movement everywhere is split into warring groups, and the struggle between the Socialist factions is often as bitter as the struggle against Capitalism itself. The fundamental issues in dispute are in general the same as the issues between the Bolsheviki and the Mensheviki. Moderate Socialism, which is dominant and which acted with the imperialistic governments during the war, represents the old labor movement, hesitant, interested in middle class reforms, controlled by reactionary skilled labor and animated by the petty bourgeois ideology; and moderate Socialism, in its extreme social-patriotic expression, represents a conscious, counter-revolutionary compromise with Imperialism. The revolutionary Socialists, on the contrary, represent the new facts of the labor movement, as determined by the epoch of Imperialism and the emergence to consciousness and action of the great industrial proletariat, the masses of unskilled labor. Imperialism, in its form of expression as State Capitalism, has united into one reactionary bloc all layers of the ruling class, including skilled labor; this unity has swept along with it the dominant Socialism, representing skilled labor and the small bourgeoisie. Under the conditions of imperialistic State Capital-