151

p An examination of the problems of the socialist revolution must begin with the development of the bourgeoisdemocratic revolution into the socialist revolution. Interest in this problem is by no means purely historical. Although the idea of the development of the revolution had been put 152 forward by Marx and Engels and later comprehensively dealt with by Lenin and embodied in the practice of the revolutionary struggle, it continues to be the subject of fierce debates. Those who keep to the letter of Marxism argue that the theory of development is dated because many new problems have arisen in the more than 60 years since Lenin had amplified it. Moreover, it is argued that in many countries the revolution did not exactly follow the path predicted by Lenin.

p Indeed, more than 60 years have passed since the theory of the development of the revolution was enlarged on by Lenin. Indeed, the revolutions that have taken place did not confirm some of the concrete ideas expounded by Lenin. But this in no way refutes the substance of Lenin’s theory. It must be remembered that Lenin worked out a concrete plan applicable to Russia, and we would be going against the spirit of Leninism if we expected an exact repetition of the Russian revolution in other countries. It would be a disservice to Leninism if the Communists of other countries were to copy the Russian experience exactly.

p That is why the fraternal parties unfailingly stress that Lenin’s ideas have to be applied creatively, and .their entire wealth must be used in analysing the present-day/conditions for the development of the revolution. It was not accidental that at the 1969 Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties the speakers named Lenin’s Two Tactics of SocialDemocracy in the Democratic Revolution an inestimable aid in charting the strategy and tactics of the struggle under present-day conditions.

p Lenin’s elaboration of the theory of the development of the revolution was a scientific and political achievement in the true sense of the word. It opened a revolutionary prospect for the working masses of Russia and the whole world and inspired them to fight the exploiting classes until final victory. It was precisely this theory that helped to determine the strategy and tactics of the Bolsheviks at various stages of the revolutionary movement.

p In framing the theory that the bourgeois-democratic revolution grows into a socialist revolution Lenin based himself on the teaching of Marx and Engels on the proletarian revolution and, in particular, on their brilliant thesis of continuous revolution and the importance of combining 153 the peasant revolutionary movement with the proletarian revolution.

p The continuous revolution thesis was formulated by Marx back in the 1840s. In an article levelled at the German pettybourgeois democrat Karl Heinzen, he wrote that the workers “can and should take part in the bourgeois revolution inasmuch as it is the prerequisite of the proletarian revolution. But at no time can the workers regard the bourgeois revolution as their end objective”.  [153•*  The same idea, drawn from the experience of the revolutions of 1848-1849, was re-emphasised by Marx and Engels in the “Appeal of the Central Committee to the Communist League" in March 1850: “While the democratic petty bourgeois wish to bring the revolution to a conclusion as quickly as possible ... it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent, until all the more or less possessing classes have been forced out of their position of dominance, until the proletariat has conquered state power.”  [153•** 

p For the Communists, the founders of Marxism wrote, it is not a matter of modifying private ownership but of abolishing it, not of glossing over class contradictions but of destroying classes, not of improving the existing society but of establishing a new society. The militant slogan of the working class, Marx and Engels underscored, must be: “Permanent revolution.”

p Further, the experience of the revolutions of 1848-1849 led Marx and Engels to the conclusion that the peasant revolutionary movement had to be combined with the proletarian revolution. In a letter to Engels in 1856 Marx wrote that in Germany everything would depend on the possibility of supporting the proletarian revolution by some second edition of the peasant war. Later, when they analysed the lessons of the Paris Commune, Marx and Engels drew the conclusion that had the leaders of the Commune appreciated the full significance of the need for an alliance between the proletariat and the working masses of peasants and had they actively pursued this aim “the peasants would soon have acclaimed the urban proletariat as their own leader 154 and elder brother”.  [154•*  And lastly, shortly before his death Engels wrote in the article “The Peasant Question in France and Germany" that in order to conquer political power the party of the working class “must first go to the country, must become a power in the countryside”.  [154•** 

p Though their significance was colossal, the propositions on the continuous revolution and on the need to combine the peasant revolutionary movement with the proletarian revolution were not concretely enlarged in the works of Marx and Engels. The founders of scientific communism lived in the period of pre-monopoly capitalism and could not clearly and distinctly see the new conditions of the development of capitalism which had set in at the close of the 19th century, when capitalism entered its last, imperialist stage of development. It fell to Lenin to elaborate the theory of the development of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist revolution.

p He came to grips with this problem as early as the 1890s and the beginning of the 1900s. In What the “Friends of the People" Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats he wrote: “... the Russian WORKER, rising at the head of all the democratic elements, will overthrow absolutism and lead the RUSSIAN PROLETARIAT (side by side with the proletariat of ALL COUNTRIES) along the straight road of open political struggle to THE VICTORIOUS COMMUNIST REVOLUTION.”  [154•***  In the same work he pointed, for the first time, to the alliance between the working class and the peasants as a vital condition of the victory of the revolution.

p In subsequent works, particularly in The Tasks of the Russian Social-Democrats, Draft of a Declaration of the Editorial Board of “Iskra” and “Zarya” and To the Village Poor, Lenin drew on the concrete experience of the revolutionary struggle in Russia to show that after its victory in the bourgeois-democratic revolution the proletariat had to lead the working people to the socialist revolution, that the Russian revolutionaries would inevitably have to resolve both the democratic and the socialist tasks of the revolution. He 155 put it clearly that the support of the Russian rural proletariat was necessary for a successful struggle against the bourgeoisie, that this was “an essential condition for the victory of the working class”.  [155•* 

p The theory of the development of the bourgeois- democratic revolution into a socialist revolution was expounded by Lenin most exhaustively and comprehensively in his famous Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution and other works written during and after the first Russian revolution. His propositions on strategy and tactics in the bourgeois-democratic revolution and on its growth into a socialist revolution were endorsed at the Third Congress of the Bolshevik Party in the spring of 1905.

p The following ideas found expression in Lenin’s works and in the decisions of that congress: first, the working class had to be the hegemonic force at both the first and the second stage of the revolution; second, there should be no barrier, no Chinese Wall between the bourgeois-democratic and the socialist revolution, and the first must grow into the second, with the tasks of the general democratic and the socialist revolution frequently intertwining and leading to a considerable shortening of the period of transition; third, the forces round the proletariat were to be regrouped (as suggested by an analysis of the class struggle in Russia during the first revolution) towards the end of the bourgeois-democratic revolution for the direct transition to the socialist revolution; fourth, they indicated the concrete ways and means ensuring the successful development of the revolution.

p Lenin wrote: “The proletariat must carry the democratic revolution to completion, allying to itself the mass of the peasantry in order to crush the autocracy’s resistance by force and paralyse the bourgeoisie’s instability. The proletariat must accomplish the socialist revolution, allying to itself the mass of the semi-proletarian elements of the population, so as to crush the bourgeoisie’s resistance by force and paralyse the instability of the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie.”  [155•** 

p In one of the resolutions adopted by the 3rd Congress 156 it was noted that “the proletariat being, by virtue of its position, the foremost and only consistently revolutionary class, is therefore called upon to play the leading role in the general democratic revolutionary movement in Russia”.  [156•* 

p Lenin explained the need for two stages of the revolution as follows: 

p “Imagine. .. that I have to remove two heaps of rubbish from my yard. I have only one cart. And no more than one heap can be removed on one cart. What should I do? Should I refuse altogether to clean out my yard on the grounds that it would be the greatest injustice to remove one heap of rubbish because they cannot both be removed at the same time?

p “I permit myself to believe that anyone who really wants to clean out his yard completely, who sincerely strives for cleanliness and not for dirt, for light and not for darkness, will have a different argument. If we really cannot remove both heaps at the same time, let us first remove the one that can be got at and loaded on to the cart immediately, and then empty the cart, return home and set to work on the other heap... .

p “To begin with, the Russian people have to carry away on their cart all that rubbish that is known as feudal, landed proprietorship, and then come back with the empty cart to a cleaner yard, and begin loading the second heap, begin clearing out the rubbish of capitalist exploitation!"  [156•** 

p Let us take a closer look at the principal theses of Lenin’s theory of the development of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into the socialist revolution.

p The bourgeoisie, it will be recalled, was the leader of all the bourgeois revolutions in the West. The proletariat, willy-nilly, played the role of its helper, its adjunct, because it lacked development and organisation, was not armed with an advanced revolutionary theory and had no political party of its own. The bourgeoisie, on the other hand, was better organised, had its own parties and could attract the peasants to its side in the struggle against feudalism. Such, in particular, was the case during the revolution of 1789-1794 in France, and during the bourgeois revolutions of 1848-1849. In view 157 of the fact that in Russia the revolution was of a bourgeoisdemocratic nature, the Mensheviks and all the opportunists of the Second International drew the dogmatic conclusion that, as in the West, only the liberal bourgeoisie could be the leader of that revolution. Lenin completely demolished the rotten Menshevik policy and tactics, showing that this was a policy of tail-endism, that it only bewildered, disorganised and confused the proletariat, and belittled the Social-Democratic tactics.

p He noted that in Russia the revolution was taking place under a sufficiently high level of capitalist development, which had created a united industrial proletariat in the country and given rise to a working-class movement on a nation-wide scale, and that this was one of the reasons that the revolutions of the end of the 18th and first half of the 19th century in the West could not be equated to the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia as the Mensheviks did. Although the revolution was of a bourgeois-democratic nature, Lenin pointed out, its leader could and should be solely the proletariat as the only thoroughly revolutionary class, and that the peasants were the natural allies of the proletariat. The liberal bourgeoisie, who were a counterrevolutionary force, had to be isolated.

p Another reason the proletariat could be the principal driving force of the bourgeois-democratic revolution was, above all, that its interests had merged with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the people. Lenin pointed out that although in Russia the proletariat did not comprise the majority of the population, this could not be regarded as an obstacle to its final victory, first, because the strength of the working class was immeasurably greater than its numbers, and, second, in its revolutionary struggle for socialism the proletariat would have reliable allies in the broad mass of the working peasants.

p The forces accomplishing the democratic revolution—the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants—were capable of prolonging it to the socialist revolution and the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship. Lenin taught that as the hegemonic force of the bourgeois-democratic revolution the working class had to use its leading role in the revolution to advance it as far as possible, win the greatest possible freedom, destroy the remnants of serfdom 158 and tackle purely proletarian class tasks. He stressed: “It would be a radical mistake to think that the struggle for democracy was capable of diverting the proletariat from the socialist revolution or of hiding, overshadowing it, etc. On the contrary, in the same way as there can be no victorious socialism that does not practise full democracy, so the proletariat cannot prepare for its victory over the bourgeoisie without an all-round, consistent and revolutionary struggle for democracy.”  [158•* 

p The proletariat needed the bourgeois-democratic revolution as a means of clearing the ground for the socialist revolution because the abolition of the remnants of serfdom ensured a much faster development of society’s productive forces, and this, naturally, led to the accelerated maturing of the prerequisites for the socialist revolution, the eradication of capitalist practices and the creation of the conditions for the development of the proletariat’s class organisations. On this point Lenin wrote: “We Social-Democrats always stand for democracy, not ’in the name of capitalism’, but in the name of clearing the path for our movement, which clearing is impossible without the development of capitalism.”  [158•**  Writing of the first stage of the revolution, of the struggle against absolutism, Lenin warned the Social-Democrats that they should not for a moment lose sight of the fact (which they had to bring home to the working class) that the struggle against these institutions was “necessary only as a means of facilitating the struggle against the bourgeoisie, that the worker needs the achievement of the general democratic demands only to clear the road to victory over the working people’s chief enemy, over an institution that is purely democratic by nature, capital".  [158•*** 

p In the struggle for the bourgeois-democratic revolution the working class acquires political training and steeling, and after the triumph of that revolution, which sweeps away the remnants of feudalism, the proletariat is brought face to face with the bourgeoisie, which until then has been employing semi-feudal practices against it. The working class, which moves in the van of the bourgeois-democratic 159 revolution has, therefore, one objective, namely, to complete that revolution as quickly as possible and at once, unswervingly and with determination, begin the liberation of labour from capitalist oppression and commence the building of a communist society.

p When we speak of what draws the bourgeois-democratic and socialist revolutions close together, we must reckon with the fact that the bourgeoisie and the feudal nobility become allies against the proletariat. Feudalism cannot, therefore, be abolished without a revolutionary struggle against capitalism.

p An objective factor bringing the bourgeois-democratic revolution close to the socialist revolution is that it does not end the given country’s dependence on foreign capital because it does not abolish the local bourgeoisie, which is interested in foreign capital. The experience of Russia has shown that only the victory of the socialist revolution brings deliverance from the pressure of foreign capital.

p To have a correct understanding of Lenin’s theory of the development of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into the socialist revolution it is of the utmost importance to bear in mind his postulate about the regrouping of the class forces in the countryside in the course of the revolution. He taught that in the period of the democratic revolution, in the period of the struggle for its growth into the socialist revolution, the rural poor would rally round the working class and would together with it and under its leadership go on to the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. He thoroughly exposed the anti-Marxist “theory” of the stability of the small-peasant economy, showing that the stratification of the peasants takes place as a result of the growth of capitalism in the countryside: the middle strata steadily diminishes, while the poorest section grows; the vast majority of the peasants are ruined, become impoverished and join .the ranks of the proletariat, and only a small section grows rich and joins the ranks of the bourgeoisie. The existence of this process is borne out by facts from the history of many capitalist countries. This process took place in prerevolutionary Russia, too. It creates favourable conditions for drawing the working peasants over to the side of the proletariat in its struggle against the remnants of feudalism and against capitalism, for the establishment of the 160 proletarian dictatorship and the building of the new, socialist system.

p The success achieved during the development of the revolution was linked by Lenin directly with the formation of a provisional revolutionary government, which was and could only be a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. The purpose of this dictatorship was not to complete the victory over tsarism and end the revolution there, but to prolong the revolution, break the resistance of the counter-revolution and begin the direct transition to the socialist revolution. Without the dictatorship of the proletariat apd the peasantry it would have been impossible to put all the revolutionary changes into effect because being in the interests of the proletariat and the peasants these changes provoked desperate resistance from the landowners, the big bourgeoisie and foreign imperialism.

p Communists had to adopt a correct attitude to the provisional revolutionary government. This, he said, was of immense importance. He considered that at the height of the revolution participation in such a government, even if it was bourgeois, was quite permissible, and even mandatory under favourable conditions. However, while participating in such a government the Communists had always to remember the proletariat’s class objectives and steadfastly champion its interests. Their task was to advance the bourgeois-democratic revolution as far as possible. The Communists in the provisional government had to preserve complete independence with the Party exercising undisputed control over their work.

p In showing that it was necessary for Communists to participate in the provisional revolutionary government, Lenin repeatedly stressed that led by the Marxist party the armed proletariat had constantly to pressure this government “from below”. This was necessary, first, in order to compel the provisional government to carry out all democratic reforms consistently and resolutely, and, second, in order to make full use of political freedoms to promote the revolutionary education of the working people, strengthen and enlarge working-class organisations and awaken the lower classes to conscious political life.

p Lenin attached immense importance to the revolutionary 161 army as a means of bringing the bourgeois-democratic revolution to completion successfully and ensuring its growth into the socialist revolution. He held that alongside the provisional government the working people had to set up a revolutionary army consisting of: (1) the armed proletariat and peasantry, (2) organised advanced detachments of representatives of these classes, (3) army units prepared to go over to the side of the people. He specified the tasks of the detachments of the revolutionary army as follows: to proclaim the uprising; provide the masses with military leadership and set up strongpoints for an open nation-wide struggle; spread the uprising to neighbouring localities; ensure, first at least in part of the country, complete political freedom and, in this connection, give full scope to the revolutionary creativity of the masses. The successful solution of all these problems would create the conditions for a provisional revolutionary government.

p Noting the distinctions between democratic and socialist tasks, Lenin said that it was necessary to combine these tasks skilfully: “One should know how to combine the struggle for democracy and the struggle for the socialist revolution, subordinating the first to the second. In this lies the whole difficulty; in this is the whole essence.”  [161•* 

p He stressed that democratic demands had to be put forward without losing sight of the main thing—the socialist revolution: ”. . . the struggle for the main thing may blaze up even though it has begun with the struggle for something partial.”  [161•** 

p He insisted that democratic and socialist slogans should be concretely tied in with each other. Here, he wrote, “each proposition should be considered (a) only historically, (P) only in connection with others, (7) only in connection with the concrete experience of history”.  [161•***  He added that “in a certain sense for a certain period, all democratic aims . . . are capable of hindering the socialist revolution. In what sense? At what moment? When? How? For example, if the movement has already developed, the revolution has already begun, we have to seize the banks, and we are being 162 appealed to: wait, first consolidate, legitimise the republic, etc.!"  [162•* 

p The theory that the bourgeois-democratic revolution should be developed into the socialist revolution was evolved by Lenin in a bitter struggle not only with Russian but with international opportunism. Bernstein, Kautsky and other Social-Democratic leaders flatly refused even to entertain the idea that the working class could head the bourgeoisdemocratic revolution and lead it to the socialist revolution. They held that the working class had no role save that of blindly following the bourgeoisie and helping it to put the bourgeois-democratic slogans into effect. The opportunists propounded the idea that there was a Chinese Wall between the two revolutions and did not believe the peasants could become allies of the proletariat.

p Trotsky’s theory of “permanent revolution" was also a variety of opportunism. He argued that the peasants were incapable of revolutionary action, believing that the working class could not head the peasantry and should seize power without delay and in future count solely on the internationalist support of the proletariat of other countries. He said that the only way to the victory of the revolution in Russia was to turn it into a world revolution, declaring that it was absurd to raise the question of building socialism in Russia before the world revolution was accomplished. The arguments of Trotsky and other opportunists were completely refuted by developments, which have borne out Lenin’s ideas about the course and development of the bourgeois- democratic revolution and its growth into the socialist revolution.

p Socialism’s ideological adversaries are endeavouring to revive the idea of “permanent revolution”. That is why Lenin’s criticism of this theory has lost none of its cogency and practical and theoretical value.

p Lenin’s theory of the development of the revolution has played an incalculably important role in the history of the revolutionary movement.

p From the theoretical standpoint it was a new word in Marxism. The proposition on the hegemony of the proletariat at the two stages of the revolution and the thesis that 163 the proletariat’s social basis steadily expands provided all or almost all the elements of the conclusion, drawn by Lenin ten years later, that socialism could initially triumph in one or several countries.

p From the viewpoint of strategy and tactics Lenin’s theory of the development of the revolution was, to put it metaphorically, not only a reliable compass but a programme of action. It helped to determine the alignment of forces at various phases of the revolution and the possibilities of forming class alliances, and provided the foundation for drawing up concrete slogans of struggle.

p Lastly, this theory is of unfading international significance. Evolved in the specific conditions of Russia, it mirrored the laws governing the development of all revolutions in the epoch of imperialism.

p Basing themselves on this theory, the Communist parties continue using as their point of departure the fact that the working class can and must be the hegemonic force of the revolution at both its stages; that no time-gap exists between the bourgeois-democratic and socialist stages, that these stages intermingle and merge; that a successive regrouping of the participating forces takes place in the course of the revolution; that many of Lenin’s concrete propositions on questions of strategy and tactics in the period of the development of the revolution retain their significance.

p Naturally, in working out questions of the strategy and tactics of the struggle, the Communist parties act on the principle that the present epoch demands the concretisation of Lenin’s teaching of the development of the revolution in accordance with the new conditions and the specifics of individual countries.

p In this connection let us note three factors.

p The socio-economic conditions obtaining in Russia and a number of other countries when Lenin evolved his theory cannot be exactly the same today. In many countries elements of feudalism, the forms of national oppression, and economic development have undergone substantial transformations. As a result, the nature of the democratic struggle has changed. Currently the general democratic tasks of the working-class movement in the developed capitalist countries stem from the anti-monopoly content of the popular struggle. We are witnessing a situation in which the 164 development of capitalism, begun under the slogan of a struggle for democracy, has brought about a sharp curtailment of democratic rights and liberties and has brought the question of extending democracy back to the agenda. The big monopoly bourgeoisie is opposing any extension of democracy, seeking to cut it down, while the working class, the peasantry and some segments of the petty and middle bourgeoisie are pressing for broader democratic rights.

p The second new factor is that under present-day conditions the social base of the socialist revolution is expanding. The most diverse sections of the working people can be allies of the proletariat in the revolution. Not only the peasantry, but also large groups of white-collar workers, intellectuals and other urban middle strata are actively participating in the struggle. The proletariat is more and more frequently taking action side by side with other forces oppressed by the monopoly bourgeoisie. This is not only influencing the character of the socialist revolution but hastening it.

p Lastly, the question of the time in which the revolution develops now poses itself differently. While in Lenin’s lifetime the period of the revolution’s development could be considerably shortened, today both the general-democratic and the socialist tasks may be carried out more or less simultaneously. This has been made possible because the imperialist system has, as a whole, matured for socialism, while the countries that have won liberation from colonial oppression can, while they are working on general democratic tasks, rely on assistance from the socialist world and go over to the achievement of socialist tasks through noncapitalist development.

p True, this does not mean that the period between the bourgeois-democratic and the socialist revolution will necessarily be short in all countries. In view of the complex conditions under which state-monopoly capitalism develops and as a result of the aggravation of the class struggle between socialism and capitalism on the world scene, the social and political aspects of pre-revolutionary and revolutionary development are growing complicated and intertwining in some countries, and new factors are emerging which are accelerating or slowing down revolutionary development. Therefore, the specific situation in each given country must 165 be taken into account when the question of the time in which the bourgeois-democratic revolution grows into the socialist revolution is considered.

p In many countries, chiefly in Europe, bourgeois revolutions have taken place long ago while socialist revolutions have not even begun. This concerns countries like the United States of America, Britain, France and the Scandinavian countries. Nonetheless, it cannot be said that in these countries we observe a process of the consolidation of capitalism and see no sign of the possibility of a socialist revolution. On the contrary, one can unquestionably draw the conclusion that there are many objective and subjective prerequisites of revolution. The Communist parties of these countries are scientifically analysing numerous factors determining the development of the present situation and, on that basis, mapping out correct strategy and tactics of the revolutionary struggle. ^

Lenin’s theory of the development of the revolution is a sure instrument of cognition making it possible to avoid errors of both Left and Right nature. It orients Communists on work among the masses, on preparing a general democratic assault on the monopolies. The success of this assault will open for the working people the road to socialist reforms. Lenin’s theory lives and is just as topical today as it was half a century ago.