Within the limits of a revolution at the beginning of the twentieth century, which is also a bourgeois revolution in its immediate objective aims, there looms up a prospect of an inevitable, or at least possible, supremacy of the working class in the near future. That this supremacy should not turn out to be a passing episode, as many a realistic Philistine may hope, is a task which the working class will have at heart. It is, then, legitimate to ask: is it inevitable that the dictatorship of the proletariat should clash against the limitations of a bourgeois revolution and collapse, or is it not possible that under given international conditions it may open a way for an ultimate victory by crushing those very limitations? Hence a tactical problem: should we consciously strive toward a labor government as the development of the revolution will bring us nearer to that stage, or should we look upon political power as upon a calamity which the bourgeois revolution is ready to inflict upon the workingmen, and which it is best to avoid?
CHAPTER V
THE PROLETARIAT IN POWER AND THE PEASANTRY
In case of a victorious revolution, political power passes into the hands of the class that has played in it a dominant rôle, in other words, it passes into the hands of the working class. Of course, revolutionary representatives of non-proletarian social groups may not be excluded from the government; sound politics demands that the proletariat should call into the government influential leaders of the lower middle class, the intelligentzia and the peasants. The problem is, Who will give substance to the politics of the government, who will form in it a homogeneous majority? It is one thing when the government contains a labor majority, which representatives of other democratic groups of the people are allowed to join; it is another, when the government has an outspoken bourgeois-democratic character where labor representatives are allowed to participate in the capacity of more or less honorable hostages.
The policies of the liberal capitalist bourgeoisie, notwithstanding all their vacillations, retreats and treacheries, are of a definite character. The policies of the proletariat are of a still more definite, outspoken character. The policies of the intelligentzia, however, a result of intermediate social position and political flexibility of this group; the politics of the peasants, a result of the social heterogeneity, intermediate position, and primitiveness of this class; the politics of the lower middle class, a result of muddle-headedness, intermediate position and complete want of political traditions,—can never be clear, determined, and firm. It must necessarily be subject to unexpected turns, to uncertainties and surprises.
To imagine a revolutionary democratic government without representatives of labor is to see the absurdity of such a situation. A refusal of labor to participate in a revolutionary government would make the very existence of that government impossible, and would be tantamount to a betrayal of the cause of the revolution. A participation of labor in a revolutionary government, however, is admissible, both from the viewpoint of objective probability and subjective desirability, only in the rôle of a leading dominant power. Of course, you can call such a government "dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry," "dictatorship of the proletariat, the peasantry, and the intelligentzia," or "a revolutionary government of the workingmen and the lower middle class." This question will still remain: Who has the hegemony in the government and through it in the country? When we speak of a labor government we mean that the hegemony belongs to the working class.
The proletariat will be able to hold this position under one condition: if it broadens the basis of the revolution.
Many elements of the working masses, especially among the rural population, will be drawn into the revolution and receive their political organization only after the first victories of the revolution, when the revolutionary vanguard, the city proletariat, shall have seized governmental power. Under such conditions, the work of propaganda and organization will be conducted through state agencies. Legislative work itself will become a powerful means of revolutionizing the masses. The burden thrust upon the shoulders of the working class by the peculiarities of our social and historical development, the burden of completing a bourgeois revolution by means of labor struggle, will thus confront the proletariat with difficulties of enormous magnitude; on the other hand, however, it will offer the working class, at least in the first period, unusual opportunities. This will be seen in the relations between the proletariat and the peasants.
In the revolutions of 1789-93, and 1848, governmental power passed from absolutism into the hands of the moderate bourgeois elements which emancipated the peasants before revolutionary democracy succeeded or even attempted to get into power. The emancipated peasantry then lost interest in the political ventures of the "city-gentlemen," i.e., in the further course of the revolution; it formed the dead ballast of "order," the foundation of all social "stability," betraying the revolution, supporting a Cesarian or ultra-absolutist reaction.
The Russian revolution is opposed to a bourgeois constitutional order which would be able to solve the most primitive problems of democracy. The Russian revolution will be against it for a long period to come. Reformers of a bureaucratic brand, such as Witte and Stolypin, can do nothing for the peasants, as their "enlightened" efforts are continually nullified by their own struggle for existence. The fate of the most elementary interests of the peasantry—the entire peasantry as a class—is, therefore, closely connected with the fate of the revolution, i.e., with the fate of the proletariat.