222

p According to this theory, the course of social development must lead to the most acute crises arising in one or several countries as a result of which the socialist revolution will win out. The rest of the world will remain bourgeois or prebourgeois for some time. This will, consequently, open up a new and most important period in world history, with the world divided into two systems. This will be a period of simultaneous existence on the globe of socialist, capitalist and also precapitalist countries. This will be a period of the extension and deepening of the world revolutionary process. In this period, crisis phenomena in the capitalist countries will gain and sharpen, the law-governed process of aggravation of the contradictions between labour and capital will enter a new phase, and the struggle for a fundamental revolutionary transformation of society on socialist lines will be intensified, because the working class and the other working people will see “how it’s done”.

p As for the precapitalist countries, with the advent of imperialism a new and important factor in the revolutionary process will emerge, namely, the anti-imperialist, national liberation struggle. In 1913, Lenin 223 wrote: “World capitalism and the 1905 movement in Russia have finally aroused Asia. Hundreds of millions of the downtrodden and benighted have awakened from medieval stagnation to a new life and are rising to fight for elementary human rights and democracy.

p “The workers of the advanced countries follow with interest and inspiration this powerful growth of the liberation movement, in all its various forms, in every part of the world. The bourgeoisie of Europe, scared by the might of the working-class movement, is embracing reaction, militarism, clericalism and obscurantism. But the proletariat of the European countries and the young democracy of Asia, fully confident of its strength and with abiding faith in the masses, are advancing to take the place of this decadent and moribund bourgeoisie.

p “The awakening of Asia and the beginning of the struggle for power by the advanced proletariat of Europe are a symbol of the new phase in world history that began early this century."  [223•31  That was a brilliant analysis of the changes in the world revolutionary process since Marx’s time.

p Lenin also resolutely opposed any effort to contrast Europe and the colonies, as the Polish Social-Democrats, for instance, were doing. He wrote: “A blow delivered against the power of the English imperialist bourgeoisie by a rebellion in Ireland is a hundred times more significant politically than a blow of equal force delivered in Asia or in Africa."  [223•32  All this action in the colonies shows their importance as forces “which help the real anti-imperialist force, the socialist proletariat, to make its appearance on the scene".  [223•33 

p Lenin’s basic idea was expressed in September 1916: “The social revolution can come only in the form of an epoch in which are combined civil war by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie in the advanced countries and a whole series of democratic and revolutionary movements, including the national liberation movement, in the undeveloped, backward and oppressed nations.”  [223•34  It is safe to say that Lenin, first, established that the socialist revolution took a whole epoch and that it was in no sense a short-lived or instantaneous act of history. Second, Lenin formulated the conception of a coherent worldwide revolutionary process, which includes the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie and also a number of democratic and revolutionary movements, including the national liberation struggle against colonialism.

p He said that “imperialism does not halt the development of capitalism and the growth of democratic tendencies among the mass of the 224 population. On the contrary, it accentuates the antagonism between their democratic aspirations and the antidemocratic tendency of the trusts".  [224•35  Elaborating on this idea, Lenin stressed that “imperialism seeks to replace democracy generally by oligarchy".  [224•36  This indicates an important feature of the deformation of the political organisation of capitalist society by the monopolies. Concerning the activity of the monopolies, Lenin recalled that “they do not confine themselves to economic means of eliminating rivals, but constantly resort to political, even criminal, methods".  [224•37  Those words were written in 1916 about the US monopolies but are even more relevant today, nearly 50 years later. The monopolies have deformed political life in the imperialist countries, conducting the anti-democratic tendency everywhere and running into antagonism with the democratic tendencies of the masses. On the strength of this analysis of Lenin’s, the world communist movement sets itself the task of uniting in a single anti-monopoly stream considerable sections of the population in the capitalist countries.

p Lenin closely studied the question of what happened to bourgeoisdemocratic movements in the period of imperialist domination, and especially the question of the substance of bourgeois-democratic revolutions in that period. Let us recall that Lenin took the example of the 1905 revolution in Russia to formulate his theory of the development of bourgeois-democratic revolution into socialist revolution. On this problem Leninism was opposed by two “schools” of social thought, both of which ignored dialectics and materialism.

p Because the Right-wing leaders of the Second International took the metaphysical approach they were unable to see the real connection between the bourgeois-democratic and socialist revolutions in the imperialist epoch, for they did not go beyond stating the distinction between these two phenomena of the same historical process and had them listed under different “departments” and as belonging to different epochs. They held that the working class had to play roughly the same role in bourgeois-democratic revolutions in the 20th century as it did in the 18th and 19th centuries. Translated into political idiom, this social metaphysics meant that the working class had to tag along in the wake of the liberal bourgeoisie. With this kind of approach the bourgeoisdemocratic revolution could never develop into a socialist one.

p By contrast, Lenin took the consistently materialist dialectical approach and saw the revolutionary process in development. He emphasised that “from the democratic revolution we shall at once, and precisely in accordance with the measure of our strength, the strength of the class-conscious and organised proletariat, begin to pass to the 225 socialist revolution. We stand for uninterrupted revolution. We shall not stop half-way".  [225•38 

p On the other hand, “petty-bourgeois revolutionism" failed to see the distinctions between the bourgeois-democratic revolution and the socialist revolution. Lenin wrote: “Trotsky’s major mistake is that he ignores the bourgeois character of the revolution and has no clear conception of the transition from this revolution to the socialist revolution."  [225•39  This tended to distort the revolutionary process and to obscure its elements. In such theories there was, in effect, no development of revolution.

p Trotsky’s slogan—“no tsar, but a workers’ government" ignored the peasantry and completely distorted the question of the real possibility of the bourgeois-democratic revolution developing into a socialist one. Leftist slogans cannot, of course, help to change the course of the historical process. In practice, such slogans merely lead to a defeat of the revolutionary class, which has to pay the price for adventurism, because these slogans merely cover up the true state of affairs, which is a far cry from the substance of the slogan. In 1905, the working class was unable to establish its dictatorship right away, so that Trotsky’s slogan could in effect become no more than a screen for the activity of petty-bourgeois and bourgeois forces.

p All opportunists denied the importance of the alliance between the working class and the peasantry, an alliance which generates vast social energy capable of changing the world. Lenin and the Bolshevik Party formulated three slogans on the peasant question, expressing the stages of the revolutionary process, the transition from democratic tasks to socialist ones and further fulfilment of the latter. When one thinks of the importance of Lenin’s answer to the question concerning the role of democratic movements in the epoch of imperialism, one comes to realise that this is a great achievement of social thought.

p In our own day, Marxism-Leninism still has to fight against petty-bourgeois views of the revolutionary process. What then are the characteristic features of these petty-bourgeois theories which Marxism defeated?

p First, they all emphasised only the political side of the revolution and saw it mainly as a political revolution. That is understandable, because petty-bourgeois theorists dealt in categories of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, which confines itself to changing the political superstructure and is for that reason characterised, as Lenin said, chiefly as destructive. Underestimation of the creative element in socialist revolution and its most important distinction from bourgeois revolutions is a characteristic 226 feature of all the attempts to revive the petty-bourgeois view of socialist revolution.

p Second, they all try to obscure the role of the working class in the revolution. Petty-bourgeois revolutionaries preferred to speak of the people as a class consisting of three elements, with the Russian Narodniks stressing the role of the peasantry and insisting that the revolution must start in the countryside and only then spread to the cities. The Left-wing advocates of Russian Narodnik socialism, who denied the role of the proletariat, also said that the whole West European working class had lost its revolutionary spirit, had become “philistine”, so echoing the nationalistic, Slavophile ideas about the “rotten West”.

p Third, the revolution was presented only as an act of will, while the awakening of the will of the people was explained idealistically, because of its various ideals and faith in its right. All subsequent attempts to revive petty-bourgeois conceptions of the revolution were marked by voluntarism and calls for giving the revolution a “push” from outside.

p Fourth, petty-bourgeois theories of revolution said nothing about the law-governed development of the revolution as a process. They were characterised by an urge to leap over the necessary stages, any notion of staged historical development being branded by petty-bourgeois theorists as cowardice or attempts to slow down the revolution. In accordance with this conception, Bakunin attacked Marx and the Marxists for believing that the development of capitalism in Germany was progressive and paved the way for revolution.

p Petty-bourgeois revolutionaries frequently revived Utopian communist ideas about full-scale communism following in the wake of socialist revolution. Many petty-bourgeois theorists did not realise that socialism was a special and most important phase in the development of the new society.

p Fifth, petty-bourgeois theorists had a very confused idea of revolution as a worldwide process. These views were marked by national limitations, despite the fact that many petty-bourgeois revolutionaries, including Bakunin, loudly advertised their internationalism. Bakunin and various other petty-bourgeois revolutionaries classified the world revolutionary process according to the national or racial principle. Bakunin criticised Marx and the Marxists as follows: “Being alldevouring pan-Germans, they must reject the peasant revolution, if only because this revolution is specifically Slavonic."  [226•40 

p Sixth, Marx stressed that the main thing for Bakunin was the “levelling” of the whole of Europe, for instance, to the standard of the indigent street peddler. “He wants the European social revolution, resting on the economic basis of capitalist production, to take place on the level of the Russian or Slav agricultural or pastoral peoples and not to 227 go beyond that level."  [227•41  Thus, the world revolutionary process had to be essentially levelling in purpose, with the levelling off being done to the lowest standard of the peoples involved.

p Today, no levelling off to the lowest standard is possible if only because world capitalism would then find it easy to destroy the areas of the new social system. Success in economic development, consolidation of defence potential and development of the heavy industry in the socialist countries all add up to a gain for the world revolutionary process and a loss for imperialism. Those who fail to understand this simple truth have abandoned the most fundamental propositions of the Marxist theory of social development.

p Thus, the question of the two elements of the world revolutionary process and of the principal contingent of the revolutionary movement—the countries with the appropriate level of development of the productive forces and, consequently, of the working class, and the countries where because the productive forces were at a low level the population, chiefly of peasant stock, was in a state of extreme indigence and indignation—this question was first considered in Marx’s lifetime. The Russian revolutionary Narodniks pointed to the importance of the second stream of the world revolution but were unable to show the real connection between the two streams of the one worldwide revolutionary process. Engels stressed that in the presence of a proletarian dictatorship in the industrialised countries, nations whose population was mainly of peasant stock could go over to socialism as well. This problem was subsequently worked out by Lenin.

p He pointed out that the situation had changed since Marx’s lifetime and that a different combination of forces of international socialism had taken shape. But Lenin did not believe that the working-class struggle was receding into the background, or that the socialist revolution was to be identified with the national liberation movement.

p The national liberation revolution is now at different stages in the various countries, it is in its initial stages in some countries where the struggle for bourgeois-democratic change is in the forefront.

A correct view of the present-day revolutionary process rests on Lenin’s doctrine of the combination of the proletariat’s democratic and socialist tasks. Lenin developed his doctrine of the bourgeoisdemocratic revolution in the conditions of imperialism, of the hegemony of the proletariat in this revolution, of the democratic dictatorship of the working class and the peasantry, and further developed Marx’s idea about the development of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist one. Lenin’s profound and thoroughly formulated doctrine of the development of the alliance between the working class and the peasantry, which invests the socialist revolution and the subsequent 228 construction of the new society with tremendous power is of great importance. Lenin formulated the national-colonial problem in the new conditions and indicated the ways of developing the national liberation movement, which was mainly peasant, in close connection with the proletarian movement in the advanced capitalist countries. To this day, the tactics and strategy of the world communist movement are determined by Lenin’s doctrine of the world revolutionary process, which the Marxist-Leninist parties have elaborated and enriched with new experience of struggle.