[Marxism] Lenin on the character of the coming revolution

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Marxists are absolutely convinced of the bourgeois character of the Russian
revolution. What does this mean? It means that the democratic reforms in
the political system and the social and economic reforms, which have become
a necessity for Russia, do not in themselves imply the undermining of
capitalism, the undermining of bourgeois rule; on the contrary, they will,
for the first time, really clear the ground for a wide and rapid, European,
and not Asiatic, development of capitalism; they will, for the first time,
make it possible for the bourgeoisie to rule as a class. The
Socialist-Revolutionaries cannot grasp this idea, for they are ignorant of
the rudiments of the laws of development of commodity and capitalist
production; they fail to see that even the complete success of a peasant
insurrection, even the redistribution of the whole of the land for the
benefit of the peasants and in accordance with their desires ("Black
Redistribution" or something of that kind), will not destroy capitalism at
all, but will, on the contrary, give an impetus to its development and
hasten the class disintegration of the peasantry itself. The failure to
grasp this truth makes the Socialist-Revolutionaries unconscious
ideologists of the petty bourgeoisie. Insistence on this truth is of
enormous importance for Social-Democracy, not only from the theoretical
standpoint but also from the standpoint of practical politics, for from it
follows that the complete class independence of the party of the
proletariat in the present "general democratic" movement is obligatory.

But it does not at all follow from this that a democratic revolution
(bourgeois in its social and economic substance) is not of enormous
interest for the proletariat. It does not at all follow from this that the
democratic revolution cannot take place in a form advantageous mainly to
the big capitalist, the financial magnate and the "enlightened" landlord,
as well as in a form advantageous to the peasant and to the worker.

full: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/tactics/ch06.htm

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