288 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIALISM 289 fies simultaneously the intellectual control of the masses of the people, even in the most highly developed capitalist countries.
Under the pressure of misery and want, under the convulsing of the masses by such means as the war, all the oppressed and the exploited do not rise at once. The most active, a minority, rises, accomplishes the Revolution, and its success depends upon whether this Revolution follows the line of historic development, that is whether it responds to the needs of the masses, who can then sever themselves from the former ruling class. The creative and dynamic force of the Revolution was necessary to arouse the masses of the people, to free them from the intellectual slavery of capitalism, to bring them into that camp which was defending their interests.
One might say: every Revolution is begun by the minority, the majority rallies to its aid while the revolution is going on, and so determines its victory. Were it not so, the dictatorship in a country like Russia, which possesses a proletarian minority, would not only be harmful as the Kautskys maintain, but in a country with a proletarian majority, to which the Kautskys graciously permit the dictatorship, it would be unnecessary. The capitalist class forms in these countries such a very small minority, that it would not be able to use weapons against the proletariat.
The Marrian theory of the unavoidability of the proletarian dictatorship as a way to Socialism, is, therefore, either superunnuated, or this dictatorship is as much justified in Russia as in another country.
to the wide streets, etc. which will make an uprising so much more difficult. The Russian Revolution showed how the rising may occur on the field of battle, as well as in the trenches, not to speak of the streets; for the revolutionary idea may grip the hearts of the soldiers and form them into mass columns which march against the capitalistic elements of the army and of society. The Russian Revolution showed also how the attempt to organize new armies out of the capitalistic and the undecided elements, is one of the principal methods adopted by the bourgeois counter revolutionists. In the more highly developed capitalistic countries, with a well fed, strongly capitalistic peasantry, this tendency of the counter revolutionary bourgeoisie will result directly in the struggle between the regiments from the peasant capitalist localities and the proletarian regiments. The civil war between the Revolution and the Counter revolution will be a war in the literal sense of the word. The development of the Proletarian Revolution will change the imperialist fronts into revolutionary and counter revolutionary fronts. The German attack on the Ukraine and the French English Japanese attack on Russia is an indication of this evolution. The development of the Revolution and Counter revolution will bring up the problem of the strategy of the Socialist Revolution. The Russian Revolution shows in what way this question will develop. If the Russian Revolution suffers from the fact that it has no corps of officers, that it is compelled to educate the workers to be army administratives as well as factory administrators, that is not merely a Russian problem.
De te fabula narratur so speak the experiences of the Russian Revolution to the European proletariat, but at the same time these experiences show that, eventually, the Revolution is unconquerable from a military standpoint also. It conquers by the fact that the bourgeoisie, being a small minority, cannot get together a counter revolutionary army out of purely bourgeois elements, that it is compelled to take deluded, proletarian elements also, elements, which, while the battle with the armies of the Revolution is going on, will deteriorate, and sooner or later will rally to the side of the Revolution.
Just as it was not only power on which the rule of the bourgeoisie was based, but also on its function as the administrator of production, just so it does not try to overcome the proletariat by armed power alone, but also by the sabotage of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois intelligentsia. This sabotage, which in Russia reached its highest point in the period from the November uprising to March, is not a Russian product. From it the European proletariat may take a hint. And when the eunuchs of Marxism point to the fact that Revolution and Counter Revolution The Russian Revolution has shown us not only the Dictatorship of the proletariat, but also the concrete forms which the resistance of the bourgeoisie takes, in fact, it shows us in general, the typical features of a Workers Revolution. Friedrich Engels, in his anti Duehring has pointed out the process by which capitalism breeds militarism, militarizes the entire population (i. e. puts it at the mercy of the drill master. simultaneously, however, creating those elements that destroy militarism by means of the class opposition in the army. This opposition, at a certain point in the historical process, causes the army, which is the sword of capital, to go to pieces in the latter hand, by dividing the army into its proletarian and bourgeois components, into a Red Army and a White Army.
This the pupils of Marx and Engels forget when they continually cite the remark which Engels made in his introduction to the Class Wars in France, in which Engels draws attention