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[introduction.]

Reactionary ideologists, frightened by the working people’s resistance to exploitation, try to represent the class struggle as an obstacle to progress, a dangerous deviation from the normal course of social development. Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, far from hindering progress, the class struggle is on the contrary the driving force of development of society.

The Law of Class Struggle

p The class struggle permeates the whole history of exploiting society. Its creative, progressive significance is felt even under conditions of the “peaceful”, evolutionary development of each formation.

p The bourgeoisie likes to take the credit for the immense technical progress achieved in the epoch of capitalism. But the capitalist is least of all interested in the development of technology as such. He would prefer to swell his profits by such “simple” and “cheap” methods as cutting wages and lengthening the working day. Not only competition, but also the persistent struggle of the working class for the protection of its own interests to a great extent forces the capitalist to seek other sources of increased profit, such as the introduction of new machinery, improvement of technological processes and adoption of inventions.

p The struggle of the oppressed classes plays a tremendously progressive part in political life. It is known, for example, that the French bourgeoisie in the epoch of bourgeois revolutions did not set themselves the aim of creating a republic, that they were for retaining the monarchy as a form of government which would make it easier to suppress the working people. But gradually, under the influence of the constantly widening struggle of the proletariat and all the working people, they were, as Lenin writes, "completely transformed into republicans, re-educated, retrained, and regenerated”,^^77^^ and were compelled to set up a political system more acceptable to the working people.

p If it were not for the persistent struggle of the working classes, the political life of the present-day capitalist countries would present a very different picture. We know that in the epoch of imperialism the bourgeoisie does all it can to cut down and abolish democratic freedoms, to limit the power of representative bodies, of parliaments in particular, and to crush all that is democratic and progressive in the culture of the capitalist countries. Only the determined class struggle of the working masses, led by the proletariat, is able to check these anti-popular tendencies. In present-day circumstances such a struggle can bring excellent results in defending peace, 161 democracy and national sovereignty, and barring the way to fascism, reaction and war.

The more persistent the struggle of the oppressed classes against their exploiters, the more successful their resistance to their oppressors, the more rapid, as a rule, is the progress made in all spheres of the life of society.

Social Revolution

p The part played by the class struggle as the driving force in the development of an exploiting society is particularly evident in a period when one socio-economic formation is being replaced by another, i.e., in a period of social revolutions.

p The conflict between the productive forces and production relations, which forms the economic basis of the social revolution, matures slowly and gradually, in the course of the evolution of the old mode of production. The solution of this conflict, however, requires a fundamental break-up of the prevailing production relations, and this can never be achieved by means of gradual changes. For the interests of the ruling classes remain inseparably bound up with these relations even when the latter have ceased to correspond to the level of the productive forces. The ruling classes can carry on their parasitic existence and maintain their power and privileged position only while the form of property prevailing in the particular society remains inviolate. Hence no exploiting class ever has given up, or ever will give up, its property voluntarily.

p The obsolete ruling class is not simply a small group of people with interests that differ from the rest of society; it is an organised force, which has held the reins of power for a very long time. It controls the state, a powerful apparatus of coercion; its interests are defended by the political and ideological superstructure. The dominant position of the old production relations rests on the whole apparatus of the economic, political and spiritual domination of the class in power. That is why the replacement of these relations by new ones demands not evolution but revolution, which sweeps aside all the obstacles in the path of the development of new economic relations, including in the first place the political domination of the obsolete classes. Resolute struggle on the part of the oppressed classes is needed to achieve such a social revolution. The key question of revolution is the question of political power, of its transference into the hands of the class that embodies the new production relations. It is this new political power that is the force that introduces the changes in the economic and social relations of society that have matured.

p But not every political upheaval is a revolution. An upheaval aimed at restoring obsolete institutions and social relations is, on the contrary, a counter-revolution. It brings not progress but stagnation, social retrogression, and multiplies the sacrifices and sufferings of millions of people to no purpose.

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Although the transition from one formation to another, higher formation is determined in the final analysis by the development of the productive forces, this situation should not be understood to mean that under all historical conditions social revolution begins in those countries that have reached the highest level of technical progress and productivity. In the highest, imperialist stage of capitalism, when the capitalist system as a whole has grown ripe for the transition to socialism, the socialist revolution may occur first in the less developed countries, if the social and political contradictions there have become sufficiently acute. This conclusion of Lenin’s, which will be further discussed in later sections, has been confirmed, as we know, by the practical experience of history.

The Character and Driving Forces of Social Revolutions

p History knows of various kinds of social revolution. They differ in character and in their driving forces. By the character of a revolution is meant its objective content, i. e., the essence of the social contradictions it resolves and the system it ultimately establishes. Thus, the revolution of 1789 in France was bourgeois in character, because it was confronted with the tasks of liquidating feudal relations and establishing a capitalist system. The October Revolution of 1917 in Russia had the aim of abolishing capitalist relations and setting up socialist relations. Thus it was socialist in character.

The driving forces of a revolution are the classes that carry it out. They depend not only on the character of the revolution but also on the concrete historical conditions under which it is accomplished. For this reason revolutions of the same type, the same character not infrequently differ as regards their driving forces. Thus, the driving force of the bourgeois revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the West European countries was not only the bourgeoisie, but also the peasantry, the poor townspeople, and the pettybourgeois strata. The leader of these revolutions was the bourgeoisie. But in Russia, in the revolution of 1905–07, and in the bourgeoisdemocratic (February) revolution of 1917, the bourgeoisie, which had become a reactionary force, frightened by the struggle of the revolutionary proletariat, far from being the leader, did not even act as a driving force; the bourgeois-democratic revolution was carried out by the working class and the peasantry.

Creative Role of the Social Revolution

p The ruling classes have a panic fear of revolution and try to portray it as a blood-thirsty monster, a blind destructive force that brings nothing but death, suffering and ruin.

p As regards sacrifices, bloodshed and human suffering, they abound throughout the history of societies based on exploitation and 163 oppression of the working masses. This is true even of the periods of evolutionary development of such societies. The creation of a centralised state in place of the scattered petty principalities of feudalism, for example, constitutes a bloody page in the history of many countries. In exactly the same way the evolutionary development of capitalism has inflicted upon mankind incomparably greater sufferings and sacrifices than any social revolution.lt suffices to recall the world wars, the horrors of fascist terror, and the atrocities of the imperialist powers in the colonial countries. As regards sacrifices and sufferings, the social revolution, when it is placed on the agenda by historical development, helps to diminish them. And, on the contrary, postponement of a revolution that is due multiplies the bloody tribute that antagonistic class society exacts from humanity.

p This does not mean, of course, that the social revolution occurs without sacrifices. It is, after all, the culmination, the peak of a struggle between classes. A victorious revolution is unthinkable without the overcoming of the resistance of the obsolete classes, which, as a rule, do not stop at the use of force. But the social revolution by no means consists merely of uprisings and battles at the barricades. Such forms of struggle are characteristic only of certain of its stages (political revolution, suppression of counter-revolution, etc.).

p But even in those cases when owing to concrete historical circumstances armed struggle played a large part in social revolution, it was not an aim in itself. The chief aim in every social revolution is (he creation of conditions for society’s rapid advance along the path of progress. Like the surgeon’s knife, it removes what is preventing the development of the social organism, what is causing stagnation and all kinds of social disasters.

p But revolution is not only the amputation of everything that is obsolete, rotten and an obstacle to progress. In place of what is destroyed it creates a new, advanced social system and social relations. The solution of such creative tasks is, as we shall see later, particularly characteristic of the socialist revolution.

p On the other hand, the upheaval caused by the social revolution by no means involves complete rejection of everything in the old society, denial of all its achievements. If this were the case, the development of society in general would be inconceivable; after every social revolution society would have to be rebuilt from nothing, and mankind would simply mark time at the most primitive level. In reality, social revolution rejects by no means everything that existed in the old society but merely that which has become out-of-date and hinders social progress. All the rest is retained and developed further. This fully applies to the productive forces and to a very great extent to culture—to science, literature and art—where they are not directly concerned with defence of the old system and with the ideology of the obsolete classes.

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p Revolutions are periods when I lie struggle between the classes reaches maximum intensity. In these periods the political consciousness, will-power and emotional energy of the masses show themselves with particular force. Never, wrote Lenin, is the mass of the people capable of becoming such an active creator of a new social syslcm as during a revolution. At such times social development is trenu ndously accelerated and society makes its most rapid and resolute advance along the path of progress. That is why Marx called revolutions the "locomotives of history”.

p Thus, both in the evolutionary and the revolutionary periods of the development of antagonistic class society the class struggle is the chief driving force of the historical process.

Hence it follows that those who gloss over class contradictions, who propose abandoning the struggle of the working classes, who try to blunt and weaken it, and preach peace between the classes are, no matter what fine words they use for concealment, enemies of progress, defenders of stagnation and reaction. Such a position is not acceptable to the workers, or to any progressive people, who regard it as their task to develop the struggle of the oppressed classes against the exploiters. From the point of view of both the immediate and the more remote tasks confronting society this struggle is in the interests of the majority of mankind and furthers its progress.