526 THE CLASS STRUGGLE LETTER TO THE AMERICAN WORKINGMEN 527 Nevski Prospect. He is no revolutionist who would have the revolution of the proletariat only under the condition that it proceed smoothly and in an orderly manner, that guarantees against defeat be given beforehand, that the revolution go forward along the broad, free, straight path to victory, that there shall not be here and there the heaviest sacrifices, that we shall not have to lie in wait in besieged fortresses, shall not have to climb up along the narrowest path, the most impassible, winding, dangerous mountain roads. He is no revolutionist, he has not yet freed himself from the pendantry of bourgeois intellectualism, he will fall back, again and again, into the camp of the counter revolutionary bourgeoisie.
They are little more than imitators of the bourgeoisie, these gentlemen who delight in holding up to us the chaos of revolution, the destruction of industry, the unemployment, the lack of food. Can there be anything more hypocritical than such accusations from people who greeted and supported the imperialistic war and made common cause with Kerensky when he continued the war? Is not this imperialistic war the cause of all our misfortune? The revolution that was born by the war must necessarily go on through the terrible difficulties and sufferings that war created, through this heritage of destruction and reactionary mass murder. To accuse us of destruction of industries and terror is hypocrisy or clumsy pedantry, shows an incapability of understanding the most elemental fundamentals of the raging, climatic force of the class struggle, called Revolution.
In words our accusers recognize this kind of class struggle, in deeds they revert again and again to the middle class utopia of class harmony and the mutual interdependence of classes upon one another. In reality the class struggle in revolutionary times has always inevitably taken on the form of civil war, and civil war is unthinkable without the worst kind of destruction, without terror and limitations of form of democracy in the interests of the war. One must be a sickly sentimentalist not to be able to see, to understand and appreciate this necessity. Only the Tchechov type of the lifeless Man in the Box can denounce the Revolution for this reason instead of throwing himself into the fight with the whole vehemence and decision of his soul at a moment when history demands that the highest problems of humanity be solved by struggle and war.
The best representatives of the American proletariatthose representatives who have repeatedly given expression to their full solidarity with us, the Bolsheviki, are the expression of this revolutionary tradition in the life of the American people. This tradition originated in the war of liberation against the English in the 18th and the Civil War in the 19th century. Industry and commerce in 1870 were in a much worse position than in 1860. But where can you find an American so pendantic, so absolutely idiotic who would deny the revolutionary and progressive significance of the American Civil War of 1860 1865. The representatives of the bourgeoisie understand very well that the overthrow of slavery was well worth the three years of Civil War, the depth of destruction, devastation and terror that were its accompaniment. But these same gentlemen and the reform socialists who have allowed themselves to be cowed by the bourgeoisie and tremble at the thought of a revolution, cannot, nay will not, see the necessity and righteousness of a civil war in Russia, though it is facing a far greater task, the work of abolishing capitalist wage slavery and overthrowing the rule of the bourgeoisie.
The American working class will not follow the lead of its bourgeoisie. It will go with us against the bourgeoisie. The whole history of the American people gives me this confidence, this conviction. recall with pride the words of one of the best loved leaders of the American proletariat, Eugene Debs, who said in the Appeal to Reason at the end of 1915, when it was still a socialist paper, in an article entitled Why Should Fight? that he would rather be shot than vote for war credits to support the present criminal and reactionary war,