44 45 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THE PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION the war; peace negotiations should not be carried on by and with bourgeois governments, but with the proletariat in each of the warring countries.
French Commune of 1871, Marx shows that the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready made machinery of the state as built by the bourgeoisie, and use this machinery for its own purposes. The proletariat must break down this machinery. And this has been either concealed or denied by the opportunists. But that is the most valuable lesson of the Paris Commune and of the Revolution in Russia of 1905. The difference between us and the Anarchists is, that we admit the state is a necessity in the development of our Revolution. The difference with the opportunists and the Kautsky disciples is, that we claim we do not need the bourgeois state machinery as completed in the democratic bourgeois republics but the direct power of armed and organized workers.
The program of the Bolsheviki in its essential features was as follows: The Council of Workers, Soldiers and Peasants constitutes the actual revolutionary government; the dictatorship of the proletariat. Immediate confiscation of landed estates without compensation; the peasants must at once seize the land and organize in Councils of Peasants Delegates. Measures for the control of production and distribution by this revolutionary government. The nationalization of monopolistic organizations of Capitalism, manufacturing syndicates and the banks. Repudiation of national debts. The workers shall immediately take possession of factories and operate them in conjunction with the technical staffs.
Co operation between the industrial proletariat and the proletarian peasantry. The Council of Soldiers and Workers 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 Peace terms to be liberation of all oppressed peoples and of all colonies; a revolutionary peace dictated by the proletariat. declaration of distrust in all bourgeois governments; appeal to the working class to overthrow those governments.
The international character of the Bolshevist program was engphasized by Lenine in these words: 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.
The main result 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.
When in November, 1914, the Russian party demanded, transformation of the imperialistic war into a civil war of the oppressed against the oppressors, and for Socialism, this demand was considered ridiculous by social patriots, as well as by those who constitute the center.
The changing of the imperialistic war into a civil war has already started. Good luck to the proletarian revolution in Europe. Lenine has, moreover, insisted all along that the Bolsheviki, acting in accord with the class conscious proletariat, would be willing to wage a revolutionary war if necessary for the accomplishment of their program.
This was the policy and action that the Bolsheviki urged upon the Council, and which was rejected by the Mensheviki and moderates generally.
The moderates argued that the proletariat was not strong enough of itself to direct the revolution; that Russia with its mass of peasantry and primitive industrial development was not yet ripe for Socialism, and, accordingly, the bourgeoisie was necessary in the revolution. The Bolsheviki argued against this that the proletarian revolution was a process which might consist of a series of revolutionary struggles; that the decisive factor was