140 THE CLASS STRUGGLE CURRENT AFFAIRS 141 they are praised and blamed by these papers. If refusing to join the second provisional Government, if the latter declared the war an Imperialistic war, Tscheidse was in harmony with the proletarian policy. But the fact that Tscheidse participated in the first provisional Government (the Duma Committee. his demand that a sufficient number of representatives of the Russian workers participate in this Government (which would mean that Internationalists would have to participate in the government of the Imperialistic war. and his further demand, together with Skobelef, that this Imperialistic Government initiate peace negotiations (instead of showing the workers that the bourgeoisie is tied hand and foot to the interests of financial capital and without any possibility of denouncing Imperialisin. then Tscheidse and his friends follow the worst bourgeois policy detrimental to the interests of the Revolution.
The programme of peace of Lenin and his group is as follows. The Council of Workmen and Soldiers declares that as a revolutionary government, it does not recognize any treaty of Czarism or the bourgeoisie. It publishes immediately these treaties of exploitation. It proposes at once and publicly a truce to all participants in the war. Peace terms are: liberation of all colonies and of all oppressed peoples. declaration of distrust in all bourgeois governments; appeal to the working class to overthrow those governments. The war debts of the bourgeoisie to be paid exclusively by the capitalists. By means of such a policy, the majority of the workers and small peasants can be won for the Social Democracy. The confiscation of feudal land property would be the result. Socialism would not yet be realized. But still, we would be willing to carry on a revolutionary war to enforce these peace terms. In such a revolutionary war we could expect the assistance of the revolutionary proletariat all over the world.
The course of the Russian Revolution has followed remarkably the program of the Lenin group. This was its program in April; what it is to day, we do not know; but we may be sure it is not what the bourgeois press or the Call says it is.
In his course of action, Lenin seems to be what one might call a revolutionary opportunist. He is not blind to the impracticability of establishing Socialism, but he wishes to use the present situation for revolutionary international action. In a letter to the Swiss comrades after his departure for Russia, reprinted in The New International of July 23, Lenin says. Historic conditions have made the Russians, perhaps for a short period, the leaders of the revolutionary world proletariat, but Socialism cannot now prevail in Russia. We can expect only an agrarian revolution, which will help to create more favorable conditions for further development of the proletarian forces and may result in measures for the control of production and distribution. The main result of the present Revolution will have to be the creation of more favorable conditions for further revolutionary development and to influence the more highly developed European countries into action.
The striking feature of this programme is that it is revolutionary without being hysterical or utopian. It cleaves to the fundamental facts of the Russian situation and of revolutionary Socialism.