Our Revolution: Essays on Working-Class and International Revolution, 1904-1917

In the leading European countries, city population numerically predominates over the rural population. Infinitely greater is its predominance through the aggregate of means of production represented by it, and through the qualities of its human material. The city attracts the most energetic, able and intelligent elements of the country.

Thus we arrive at the conclusion that economic evolution – the growth of industry, the growth of large enterprises, the growth of cities, the growth of the proletariat, especially the growth of the industrial proletariat – have already prepared the arena not only for the struggle of the proletariat for political power, but also for the conquest of that power.

3. Here we approach the third prerequisite to Socialism, the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Politics is the plane where objective prerequisites intersect with subjective. On the basis of certain technical and socio-economic conditions, a class puts before itself a definite task – to seize power. In pursuing this task, it unites its forces, it gauges the forces of the enemy, it weighs the circumstances. Yet, not even here is the proletariat absolutely free: besides subjective moments, such as understanding, readiness, initiative which have a logic of their own, there are a number of objective moments interfering with the policies of the proletariat, such are the policies of the governing classes, state institutions (the army, the class-school, the state-church), international relations, etc.

Let us first turn our attention to the subjective moment; let us ask, Is the proletariat ready for a Socialist change? It is not enough that development of technique should make Socialist economy profitable from the viewpoint of the productivity of national labor; it is not enough that social differentiation, based on technical progress, should create the proletariat, as a class objectively interested in Socialism. It is of prime importance that this class should understand its objective interests. It is necessary that this class should see in Socialism the only way of its emancipation. It is necessary that it should unite into an army powerful enough to seize governmental power in open combat.

It would be a folly to deny the necessity for the preparation of the proletariat. Only the old Blanquists could stake their hopes in the salutary initiative of an organization of conspirators formed independently of the masses. Only their antipodes, the anarchists, could build their system on a spontaneous elemental outburst of the masses whose results nobody can foresee. When Social-Democracy speaks of seizing power, it thinks of a deliberate action of a revolutionary class.

There are Socialists-ideologists (ideologists in the wrong sense of the word, those who turn all things upside down) who speak of preparing the proletariat for Socialism as a problem of moral regeneration. The proletariat, they say, and even "humanity" in general, must first free itself from its old selfish nature; altruistic motives must first become predominant in social life. As we are still very far from this ideal, they contend, and as human nature changes very slowly, Socialism appears to be a problem of remote centuries. This view seems to be very realistic, evolutionistic, etc. It is in reality a conglomeration of hackneyed moralistic considerations.

Those "ideologists" imagine that a Socialist psychology can be acquired before the establishment of Socialism; that in a world ruled by capitalism the masses can be imbued with a Socialist psychology. Socialist psychology as here conceived should not be identified with Socialist aspirations. The former presupposes the absence of selfish motives in economic relations, while the latter are an outcome of the class psychology of the proletariat. Class psychology, and Socialist psychology in a society not split into classes, may have many common features, yet they differ widely.

Coöperation in the struggle of the proletariat against exploitation has developed in the soul of the workingmen beautiful sprouts of idealism, brotherly solidarity, a spirit of self-sacrifice. Yet those sprouts cannot grow and blossom freely within capitalist society: individual struggle for existence, the yawning abyss of poverty, differentiations among the workingmen themselves, the corrupting influence of the bourgeois parties, – all this interferes with the growth of idealism among the masses.

However, it is a fact that, while remaining selfish as any of the lower middle class, while not exceeding the average representative of the bourgeois classes by the "human" value of his personality, the average workingman learns in the school of life's experience that his most primitive desires and most natural wants can be satisfied only on the debris of the capitalist order.

If Socialism should attempt to create a new human nature within the limits of the old world, it would be only a new edition of the old moralistic Utopias. The task of Socialism is not to create a Socialist psychology as a prerequisite to Socialism, but to create Socialist conditions of human life as a prerequisite to a Socialist psychology.

CHAPTER VIII

A LABOR GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA AND SOCIALISM

The objective prerequisites of a Social revolution, as we have shown above, have been already created by the economic progress of advanced capitalist countries. But how about Russia? Is it possible to think that the seizure of power by the Russian proletariat would be the beginning of a Socialist reconstruction of our national economy?

A year ago we thus answered this question in an article which was mercilessly bombarded by the organs of both our factions. We wrote:

"The workingmen of Paris, says Marx, had not expected miracles from the Commune. We cannot expect miracles from a proletarian dictatorship now. Governmental power is not almighty. It is folly to think that once the proletariat has seized power, it would abolish capitalism and introduce socialism by a number of decrees. The economic system is not a product of state activity. What the proletariat will be able to do is to shorten economic evolution towards Collectivism through a series of energetic state measures.

"The starting point will be the reforms enumerated in our so-called minimum program. The very situation of the proletariat, however, will compel it to move along the way of collectivist practice.

"It will be comparatively easy to introduce the eight hour workday and progressive taxation, though even here the center of gravity is not the issuance of a 'decree,' but the organization of its practical application. It will be difficult, however, – and here we pass to Collectivism – to organize production under state management in such factories and plants as would be closed down by their owners in protest against the new law.

"It will be comparatively simple to issue a law abolishing the right of inheritance, and to put it into operation. Inheritances in the form of money capital will not embarrass the proletariat and not interfere with its economy. To be, however, the inheritor of capital invested in land and industry, would mean for a labor government to organize economic life on a public basis.

"The same phenomenon, on a vastly larger scale, is represented by the question of expropriation (of land), with or without compensation. Expropriation with compensation has political advantages, but it is financially difficult; expropriation without compensation has financial advantages, but it is difficult politically. Greater than all the other difficulties, however, will be those of an economic nature, the difficulties of organization.

"To repeat: a labor government does not mean a government of miracles.

"Public management will begin in those branches where the difficulties are smallest. Publicly managed enterprises will originally represent kind of oases linked with private enterprises by the laws of exchange of commodities. The wider the field of publicly managed economy will grow, the more flagrant its advantages will become, the firmer will become the position of the new political régime, and the more determined will be the further economic measures of the proletariat. Its measures it will base not only on the national productive forces, but also on international technique, in the same way as it bases its revolutionary policies not only on the experience of national class relations but also on the entire historic experience of the international proletariat."

Political supremacy of the proletariat is incompatible with its economic slavery. Whatever may be the banner under which the proletariat will find itself in possession of power, it will be compelled to enter the road of Socialism. It is the greatest Utopia to think that the proletariat, brought to the top by the mechanics of a bourgeois revolution, would be able, even if it wanted, to limit its mission by creating a republican democratic environment for the social supremacy of the bourgeoisie. Political dominance of the proletariat, even if it were temporary, would extremely weaken the resistance of capital which is always in need of state aid, and would give momentous opportunities to the economic struggle of the proletariat.

A proletarian régime will immediately take up the agrarian question with which the fate of vast millions of the Russian people is connected. In solving this, as many another question, the proletariat will have in mind the main tendency of its economic policy: to get hold of a widest possible field for the organization of a Socialist economy. The forms and the tempo of this policy in the agrarian question will be determined both by the material resources that the proletariat will be able to get hold of, and by the necessity to coördinate its actions so as not to drive possible allies into the ranks of the counter-revolution.

It is evident that the agrarian question, i.e., the question of rural economy and its social relations, is not covered by the land question which is the question of the forms of land ownership. It is perfectly clear, however, that the solution of the land question, even if it does not determine the future of the agrarian evolution, would undoubtedly determine the future agrarian policy of the proletariat. In other words, the use the proletariat will make of the land must be in accord with its general attitude towards the course and requirements of the agrarian evolution. The land question will, therefore, be one of the first to interest the labor government.

One of the solutions, made popular by the Socialist-Revolutionists, is the socialization of the land. Freed from its European make-up, it means simply "equal distribution" of land. This program demands an expropriation of all the land, whether it is in possession of landlords, of peasants on the basis of private property, or it is owned by village communities. It is evident that such expropriation, being one of the first measures of the new government and being started at a time when capitalist exchange is still in full swing, would lead the peasants to believe that they are "victims of the reform." One must not forget that the peasants have for decades made redemption payments in order to turn their land into private property; many prosperous peasants have made great sacrifices to secure a large portion of land as their private possession. Should all this land become state property, the most bitter resistance would be offered by the members of the communities and by private owners. Starting out with a reform of this kind, the government would make itself most unpopular among the peasants.

And why should one confiscate the land of the communities and the land of small private owners? According to the Socialist-Revolutionary program, the only use to be made of the land by the state is to turn it over to all the peasants and agricultural laborers on the basis of equal distribution. This would mean that the confiscated land of the communities and small owners would anyway return to individuals for private cultivation. Consequently, there would be no economic gain in such a confiscation and redistribution. Politically, it would be a great blunder on the part of the labor government as it would make the masses of peasants hostile to the proletarian leadership of the revolution.

Closely connected with this program is the question of hired agricultural labor. Equal distribution presupposes the prohibition of using hired labor on farms. This, however, can be only a consequence of economic reforms, it cannot be decreed by a law. It is not enough to forbid an agricultural capitalist to hire laborers; one must first secure agricultural laborers a fair existence; furthermore, this existence must be profitable from the viewpoint of social economy. To declare equal distribution of land and to forbid hired labor, would mean to compel agricultural proletarians to settle on small lots, and to put the state under obligation to provide them with implements for their socially unprofitable production.

It is clear that the intervention of the proletariat in the organization of agriculture ought to express itself not in settling individual laborers on individual lots, but in organizing state or communal management of large estates. Later, when socialized production will have established itself firmly, a further step will be made towards socialization by forbidding hired labor. This will eliminate small capitalistic enterprises in agriculture; it will, however, leave unmolested those private owners who work their land wholly or to a great extent by the labor of their families. To expropriate such owners can by no means be a desire of the Socialistic proletariat.

The proletariat can never indorse a program of "equal distribution" which on one hand demands a useless, purely formal expropriation of small owners, and on the other hand it demands a very real parceling of large estates into small lots. This would be a wasteful undertaking, a pursuance of a reactionary and Utopian plan, and a political harm for the revolutionary party.

How far, however, can the Socialist policy of the working class advance in the economic environment of Russia? One thing we can say with perfect assurance: it will meet political obstacles long before it will be checked by the technical backwardness of the country. Without direct political aid from the European proletariat the working class of Russia will not be able to retain its power and to turn its temporary supremacy into a permanent Socialist dictatorship. We cannot doubt this for a moment. On the other hand, there is no doubt that a Socialist revolution in the West would allow us to turn the temporary supremacy of the working class directly into a Socialist dictatorship.

CHAPTER IX

EUROPE AND THE REVOLUTION

In June, 1905, we wrote:

"More than half a century passed since 1848. Half a century of unprecedented victories of capitalism all over the world. Half a century of "organic" mutual adaptation of the forces of the bourgeois and the forces of feudal reaction. Half a century in which the bourgeoisie has manifested its mad appetite for power and its readiness to fight for it madly!

"As a self-taught mechanic, in his search for perpetual motion, meets ever new obstacles and piles mechanism over mechanism to overcome them, so the bourgeoisie has changed and reconstructed the apparatus of its supremacy avoiding 'supra-legal' conflicts with hostile powers. And as the self-taught mechanic finally clashes against the ultimate insurmountable obstacle, – the law of conservation of energy, – so the bourgeoisie had to clash against the ultimate implacable barrier, – class antagonism, fraught with inevitable conflict.

"Capitalism, forcing its economic system and social relations on each and every country, has turned the entire world into one economic and political organism. As the effect of the modern credit system, with the invisible bonds it draws between thousands of enterprises, with the amazing mobility it lends to capital, has been to eliminate local and partial crises, but to give unusual momentum to general economic convulsions, so the entire economic and political work of capitalism, with its world commerce, with its system of monstrous foreign debts, with its political groupings of states, which have drawn all reactionary forces into one world-wide co-partnership, has prevented local political crises, but it has prepared a basis for a social crisis of unheard of magnitude. Driving unhealthy processes inside, evading difficulties, staving off the deep problems of national and international politics, glossing over all contradictions, the bourgeoisie has postponed the climax, yet it has prepared a radical world-wide liquidation of its power. It has clung to all reactionary forces no matter what their origin. It has made the Sultan not the last of its friends. It has not tied itself on the Chinese ruler only because he had no power: it was more profitable to rob his possessions than to keep him in the office of a world gendarme and to pay him from the treasury of the bourgeoisie. Thus the bourgeoisie made the stability of its political system wholly dependent upon the stability of the pre-capitalistic pillars of reaction.

"This gives events an international character and opens a magnificent perspective; political emancipation, headed by the working class of Russia, will elevate its leader to a height unparalleled in history, it will give Russian proletariat colossal power and make it the initiator of world-wide liquidation of capitalism, to which the objective prerequisites have been created by history."

It is futile to guess how the Russian revolution will find its way to old capitalistic Europe. This way may be a total surprise. To illustrate our thought rather than to predict events, we shall mention Poland as the possible connecting link between the revolutionary East and the revolutionary West.

[The author pictures the consequences of a revolution in Poland. A revolution in Poland would necessarily follow the victory of the revolution in Russia. This, however, would throw revolutionary sparks into the Polish provinces of Germany and Austria. A revolution in Posen and Galicia would move the Hohenzollerns and Hapsburgs to invade Poland. This would be a sign for the proletariat of Germany to get into a sharp conflict with their governments. A revolution becomes inevitable.]

A revolutionary Poland, however, is not the only possible starting point for a European revolution. The system of armed peace which became predominant in Europe after the Franco-Prussian war, was based on a system of European equilibrium. This equilibrium took for granted not only the integrity of Turkey, the dismemberment of Poland, the preservation of Austria, that ethnographic harlequin's robe, but also the existence of Russian despotism in the rôle of a gendarme of the European reaction, armed to his teeth. The Russo-Japanese war has given a mortal blow to this artificial system in which absolutism was the dominant figure. For an indefinite period Russia is out of the race as a first-class power. The equilibrium has been destroyed. On the other hand, the successes of Japan have incensed the conquest instincts of the capitalistic bourgeoisie, especially the Stock Exchange, which plays a colossal rôle in modern politics. The possibilities of a war on European territory have grown enormously. Conflicts are ripening here and there; so far they have been settled in a diplomatic way, but nothing can guarantee the near future. A European war, however, means a European revolution.

Even without the pressure of such events as war or bankruptcy, a revolution may take place in the near future in one of the European countries as a result of acute class struggles. We shall not make computations as to which country would be first to take the path of revolution; it is obvious, however, that class antagonisms have for the last years reached a high degree of intensity in all the European countries.

The influence of the Russian revolution on the proletariat of Europe is immense. Not only does it destroy the Petersburg absolutism, that main power of European reaction; it also imbues the minds and the souls of the European proletariat with revolutionary daring.

It is the purpose of every Socialist party to revolutionize the minds of the working class in the same way as development of capitalism has revolutionized social relations. The work of propaganda and organization among the proletariat, however, has its own intrinsic inertia. The Socialist parties of Europe – in the first place the most powerful of them, the German Socialist party – have developed a conservatism of their own, which grows in proportion as Socialism embraces ever larger masses and organization and discipline increase. Social-Democracy, personifying the political experience of the proletariat, can, therefore, at a certain juncture, become an immediate obstacle on the way of an open proletarian conflict with the bourgeois reaction. In other words, the propaganda-conservatism of a proletarian party can, at a certain moment, impede the direct struggle of the proletariat for power. The colossal influence of the Russian revolution manifests itself in killing party routine, in destroying Socialist conservatism, in making a clean contest of proletarian forces against capitalist reaction a question of the day. The struggle for universal suffrage in Austria, Saxony and Prussia has become more determined under the direct influence of the October strike in Russia. An Eastern revolution imbues the Western proletariat with revolutionary idealism and stimulates its desire to speak "Russian" to its foes.

The Russian proletariat in power, even if this were only the result of a passing combination of forces in the Russian bourgeois revolution, would meet organized opposition on the part of the world's reaction, and readiness for organized support on the part of the world's proletariat. Left to its own resources, the Russian working class must necessarily be crushed the moment it loses the aid of the peasants. Nothing remains for it but to link the fate of its political supremacy and the fate of the Russian revolution with the fate of a Socialist revolution in Europe. All that momentous authority and political power which is given to the proletariat by a combination of forces in the Russian bourgeois revolution, it will thrust on the scale of class struggle in the entire capitalistic world. Equipped with governmental power, having a counter-revolution behind his back, having the European reaction in front of him, the Russian workingman will issue to all his brothers the world over his old battle-cry which will now become the call for the last attack: Proletarians of all the world, unite!

EXPLANATORY NOTES

The first Council of Workmen's Deputies was formed in Petersburg, on October 13th, 1905, in the course of the great general October strike that compelled Nicholas Romanoff to promise a Constitution. It represented individual factories, labor unions, and included also delegates from the Socialist parties. It looked upon itself as the center of the revolution and a nucleus of a revolutionary labor government. Similar Councils sprung up in many other industrial centers. It was arrested on December 3d, having existed for fifty days. Its members were tried and sent to Siberia.

Intelligentzia is a term applied in Russia to an indefinite, heterogeneous group of "intellectuals," who are not actively and directly involved in the industrial machinery of capitalism, and at the same time are not members of the working class. It is customary to count among the Intelligentzia students, teachers, writers, lawyers, physicians, college professors, etc. However, the term Intelligentzia implies also a certain degree of idealism and radical aspirations.

Witte was the first prime-minister under the quasi-constitution granted on October 17th, 1905. Stolypin was appointed prime minister after the dissolution of the first Duma in July, 1906.

Under the minimum program the Social-Democrats understand all that range of reforms which can be obtained under the existing capitalist system of "private ownership of the means of production," such as an eight hour workday, social insurance, universal suffrage, a republican order. The maximum program demands the abolition of private property and public management of industries, i.e., Socialism.