Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/91

 ism, the old conditions and ideology of democracy are passing away, and the struggle becomes the clear-cut one of Socialism against Capitalism,—the immediate struggle for the Social Revolution. This was the attitude of the Bolsheviki, the conviction that Imperialism has objectively introduced the social revolutionary era, and that the proletariat must act accordingly.

The upper and the lower bourgeoisie, which previously struggled each against the other, the strength of the lower bourgeoisie determining the expressions of radical bourgeois democracy, are now united in reaction, united by the imperative necessity of national and class solidarity in the struggles of Imperialism. This reactionary unity of the bourgeoisie is characteristic of all large nations. But in Russia this fact was at the same time emphasized and obscured by the existence of Czarism. The reactionary character of the Russian bourgeoisie was emphasized by weakening its struggle against Czarism in fear of the revolutionary proletariat, the action of which alone could overthrow Czarism, and by its desire to retain Czarism in the form of a capitalistic autocracy useful in the struggle against its proletariat and its international imperialistic rivals. The reactionary character of the Russian bourgeoisie was obscured by the fact that it was compelled to criticize Czarism in the attempt to make Czarism conform to capitalistic requirements, as the autocracy did in Germany; this developed an amorphous "liberalism" of the bourgeoisie which temporarily deceived the masses. This deception was emphasized by the moderate Socialists who argued that as the revolution was a revolution against Czarism, it was necessarily a bourgeois revolution. But the social and economic conditions of twentieth century Russia were not by any means similar to those of eighteenth century France. Then, the bourgeoisie was the consciously revolutionary force; now, it was the industrial proletariat. The historic milieu was a new one.

The insistence upon Russia being ripe only for the bourgeois revolution ignores a number of factors that completely alter the problem.

The central factor is the existence of Imperialism, which not only makes a national democratic revolution of the bourgeoisie in semi-feudal, capitalistic countries incompatible with the requirements of modem Capitalism, but which equally makes Europe as a whole ripe for the immediate revolutionary struggle for Socialism. Imperialism determines Capitalism in a reactionary policy; but, simultaneously, it creates the conditions under which the proletariat may express its revolutionary action for the overthrow of Capitalism.

The bourgeois democratic revolution is not an indispensable necessity at all stages of the development of Capitalism ; it occurs at particular stages and under certain conditions, and may be dispensed with, as in Germany. Imperialism negates democracy, projecting a new autocracy necessary to maintain the proletariat in subjection, expressing the requirements of concentrated industry, and indispensable in the armed struggles produced by imperialistic competition. Without a revolutionary, class conscious proletariat in Russia, there would in all probability have been no overthrow of Czarism. The Russian middle class had neither the will nor the homogeniety of class to overthrow Czarism; the larger bourgeoisie wished to convert Czarism into an instrument of its own. The situation, after the abortive revolution of 1905, was shaping itself as in Germany, where the