Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/95

 propaganda of classsclass [sic] war using the opportunity of an imperialistic war to develop the proletarian revolution and overthrow the bourgeoisie. Pacifism depends upon existing social relations and the bourgeois governments to introduce a democratic peace; the Bolshevist attitude emphasized that pacifism inevitably promotes Imperialism, that during a war the proletariat must use all its forces to overthrow the government and establish its own supremacy. Having established a dictatorship of the proletariat, revolutionary Socialism will then proceed to act upon the problems of war and peace according to its own policy and the facts of the prevailing situation. And the action of a proletarian dictatorship might conceivably be the promotion of a revolutionary war, or the conclusion of a temporary peace; in either case, the facts of the whole international and national situation must determine the immediate policy adopted.

The Bolsheviki proceeded upon the theory that the proletarian revolution was the only adequate Socialist answer to the imperialistic war, and one of their objectives was to assist in developing the proletarian revolution in Europe. Unlike the moderate Socialists, however, who everywhere aspired and worked for a revolution in the enemy country, the Bolsheviki struggled for their own proletarian revolution as the only acceptable revolutionary Socialist tactics and the only adequate means of inspiring the proletariat of the other nations to revolt. Revolutions are not determined by mathematical considerations, but by opportunity; and the Socialist must create his own opportunity and use it whether the other nations act or not.

Imperialism means, generally, Capitalism at the climax of its development, Capitalism ripe for the introduction of Socialism. The west European countries are ripe for the Socialist community; they have the material basis in the maturity of the industrial development of Capitalism which is indispensable for the complete establishment of Socialism. These countries must act for the Social Revolution; their proletariat must be encouraged to initiate the revolution against Capitalism. This is precisely what the Bolsheviki meant by "a civil war of the oppressed against the oppressors, and for Socialism." Not in Russia alone, but throughout Europe, the proletariat must be called to revolutionary action, Russian revolutionary Socialism using its power and strategic position to arouse that international proletarian class struggle which would transform itself into the Social Revolution. Two forces are necessary to establish Socialism: the material—Capitalism in the fullness of its development of the forces of production; the dynamic—a revolutionary, class conscious proletariat. The material force exists in west Europe, but not fully in Russia; the dynamic exists in Russia, but, as yet, not in west Europe. Now, consider Europe as one great social arena, as it is in fact. The revolutionary energy of the Russian proletariat, uniting with the impulse of a war that is developing intense revolutionary currents, might conceivably arouse the European proletariat to initiate the Social Revolution.

It is clear, accordingly, that the program of the Bolsheviki did not depend upon any one single feature. There are Socialists, for and against the Bolsheviki, who for motives of their own separate the Bolshevist policy into two phases, internal and international, agreeing with one and disagreeing with the other, in accordance with the peculiar considerations dominant