368 THE CLASS STRUGGLE WORK, DISCIPLINE, AND ORDER 369 possessed certain formal advantages over the solder peasant mass in their ability to express their thoughts more or less articulately, their knowledge of reading and writing, and the like.
For this reason the cadres of the compromise parties increased in the first epoch of the Revolution. They depended upon the many millions of the peasant army. And the working class insofar as they strove not to cut itself loose from the strong peasant reserves evinced a certain inclination toward compromise, for an understanding was the bridge which connected it with the peasant and soldier masses. Here is the cause by virtue of which the Social Revolutionists and the Mensheviki impressed the stamps of an all determining influence upon the development of the Revolution during its first period. Their influence, however, found expression solely in the circumstance that they did not proceed to the fulfillment of a single demand, drew out and obstructed all measures, increased all difficulties, and imposed the character of a terrible historic burden upon the heritage which devolved upon us in October.
When the inner logic of the class struggle brought our party, which stands at the head of the proletariat, into power, the third camp, the camp of the working class, which from its very nature appears to be the only power capable of solving the basic problems of the Revolution, was put to the test.
Politically and from the point of view of actual fighting, the October Revolution proceeded with unexpected and incomparable success. In all history there has never yet been an example of such a powerful offensive on the part of an oppressed class, shaking off the domination of the possessing and ruling classes so systematically and swiftly in all parts of the country, as we have done in extending the dominion of the working class from Petrograd and Moscow to every nook and corner of Russia This triumph of the October revolt showed the political weakness of the bourgeois classes, a weakness which has its roots in the peculiar mode of development of Russian capitalism. For since Russian capitalism arose to triumph of a complete dissolution of small and moderate industry and the old capitalistic ideology in Western Europe, it appeared in the most concentrated form and undoubtably developed great economic power and incidentally the innate capacity for a transition to more perfect economic forms, that is, it prepared the ground for nationalization of industry. But simultaneously these conditions transformed Russia representatives of commercial and financial capital into a small privileged class, small numerically and unconnected with the large masses of the people, having no idealogical roots deep in the soil of the common people, no political army.
Hence the scant political opposition which our bourgeoisie was able to direct against us in October, November, and the months following, when at different points throughout the country the uprisings of various Kaledins, Kornilloffs, Dutovs took place, or the revolt of the Ukrainian Rada. If the Ukrainian Rada has triumphed, or is at the present moment overcoming the Soviet power in the Ukraine, it is accomplishing this only with the aid of the powerful machine of German militarism. which in the meantime has collapsed just as miserably as the former Czarist army. Ed. Just as in the progressive, so also in the backward, least industrial parts of the country, everywhere, far and wide, our possessing classes proved themselves powerless to resist unaided the military revolutionary offensive of the proletariat in its fight for the control of the state. This indicates above all, Comrades, that if, by force and the will of fate we should be driven from power which doubt, and which you too will not believe that this would be merely an episode, lasting a mere span of time for the development that has taken place up to the present moment would continue along the same fundamental lines. The deep social abyss between the upper strata of bourgeois society and the working classes and the welding together of all the disinherited masses with the proletariat indicates this and guarantees it.
Even should the proletariat for the time being be driven from power, it would still remain at the head of the vast majority of the laboring masses of the country, and the next wave would inevitably sweep it into power. From this assurance we must draw the deepest inner conviction to guide all our political work. The whole social structure of Russia and the international environment in which we live make us in the fullest sense of the word unconquerable, despite all difficulties and even in spite of our own shortcomings, faults and errors, of which shall speak presently.
The military opposition of the bourgeoisie was broken in a very short time. So the bourgeoisie selected another mechanism of opposition in the form of sabotage by officials and technicians, all the specialized and semi specialized intellectual elements who serve in bourgeois society as the natural mechanism of technical administration and incidentally of class rule and class government.