Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/96

 in their purposes. This constitutes an absurdity—it is either a negation of Socialist policy or a result of unclear thinking. The policy of the Bolsheviki, internally and internationally, was determined by the requirements of Socialism and the class struggle; of the immediate requirements of the Russian Revolution and of the international struggle for peace; of the necessity for promoting the proletarian revolution in Russia and of assisting in developing the proletarian revolution in Europe as the climax of the war. It was this full-orbed character of the Bolshevist program, realized through uncompromising adherence to revolutionary Socialism and the class struggle, that, when their efforts for a revolution in the Central Empires temporarily failed, did not leave them stranded and helpless, but able to concentrate on the internal development of their own revolution as a preparation for the day when the international revolutionary struggle against Capitalism might break loose.

In action, the central feature of Bolshevist policy is its emphasis upon mass action as the dynamic means of the proletarian revolution. In a crisis, and it is only in a crisis that a revolution develops, the government controls rigidly all the normal methods of action; through mass action the proletariat sweeps away the barriers of authority, rallies and unites the workers for action and the conquest of power, sweeps into the maelstrom of revolt all the physical and moral forces of the proletariat. Through mass action, the masses are awakened to consciousness and action, become the arbiters of their own destiny: no revolution is a revolution unless the masses actively and consciously step forth upon the stage of events. The revolution cannot operate within the orbit of legality: legality may become the expression of the accomplished facts of the revolution, it is never the mechanics of the revolution itself. Legality is the ideology of the ruling class; action the ideology of the revolutionary class. The first requirement is action that will produce accomplished facts.—revolutionary action, the seizure of revolutionary power through dynamic and creative mass action. It is a process of struggle. Otherwise, the revolution withers with compromises.

Sources: Chapter I, from an article on "Louis Blancism," in Pravda (April); II, from a pamphlet, "Aims of the Proletariat in Our Revolution;" and from an article in Pravda on "Workers and Peasants;" III, IV, V and IX, from "Aims of the Proletariat in Our Revolution;" VI, "The Collapse of the International," from The Communist, 1915; VII. "Disarmament," from the Sbornik Sotzial-Demokratia. Note: chapters VI and VII, written before the Revolution, are included because they are indispensable in understanding fundamental phase of the program and policy of the Bolsheviki.

L. C. F.