V. I.

Lenin

The chief thing in the doctrine of Marx is that it brings
out the historic role of the proletariat as the builder of socialist
society. Has the course of events all over the world confirmed this
doctrine since it was expounded by Marx?

Marx first advanced it in 1844. The Communist Manifesto of Marx and
Engels, published in 1848, gave an integral and systematic exposition of
this doctrine, an exposition which has remained the best to this day. Since
then world history has clearly been divided into three main periods:
(1) from the revolution of 1848 to the Paris Commune (1871);
(2) from the Paris Commune to the Russian revolution (1905);
(3) since the Russian revolution.

Let us see what has been the destiny of Marx’s doctrine in each of
these periods.

## I

At the beginning of the first period Marx’s doctrine by no means
dominated. It was only one of the very numerous groups or trends of
socialism. The forms of socialism that did dominate were in the main akin
to our Narodism: in comprehension of the materialist basis of historical
movement, inability to single out the role and significance of each class
in capitalist society, concealment of the bourgeois nature of democratic
reforms under diverse, quasi-socialist phrases about the “people”,
“justice”, “right”, and so on.

The revolution of 1848 struck a deadly blow at all these vociferous,
motley and ostentatious forms of pre-Marxian socialism. In all countries, the revolution revealed the various classes of
society in action. The shooting of the workers by the republican
bourgeoisie in Paris in the June days of 1848 finally revealed that the
proletariat alone was socialist by nature. The liberal bourgeoisie
dreaded the independence of this class a hundred times more than it did any
kind of reaction. The craven liberals grovelled before reaction. The
peasantry were content with the abolition of the survivals of feudalism and
joined the supporters of order, wavering but occasionally between
workers’ democracy and bourgeois liberalism. All doctrines of
non-class socialism and non -class politics proved to be sheer
nonsense.

The Paris Commune (1871) completed this development of bourgeois
changes; the republic, i.e., the form of political organisation in which
class relations appear in their most unconcealed form, owed its
consolidation solely to the heroism of the proletariat.

In all the other European countries, a more tangled and less complete
development led to the same result—a bourgeois society that had taken
definite shape. Towards the end of the first period (1848–71), a period of
storms and revolutions, pre-Marxian socialism was dead. Independent proletarian parties came into being:
the First International (1864–72) and the German Social-Democratic Party.

## II

The second period (1872–1904) was distinguished from the first by its
“peaceful” character, by the absence of revolutions. The West had
finished with bourgeois revolutions. The East had not yet risen to them.

The West entered a phase of “peaceful” preparations for the changes
to come. Socialist parties, basically proletarian, were formed everywhere,
and learned to use bourgeois parliamentarism and to found their own daily
press, their educational institutions, their trade unions and their
co-operative societies. Marx’s doctrine gained a complete victory and
began to spread. The selection and mustering of the forces of the
proletariat and its preparation for the coming battles made slow but steady
progress.

The dialectics of history were such that the theoretical victory of
Marxism compelled its enemies to disguise themselves as
Marxists. Liberalism, rotten within, tried to revive itself in the form of
socialist opportunism. They interpreted the period of preparing
the forces for great battles as renunciation of these battles. Improvement
of the conditions of the slaves to fight against wage slavery they took to
mean the sale by the slaves of their right to liberty for a few pence. They
cravenly preached “social peace” (i.e., peace with the slave-owners),
renunciation of the class struggle, etc. They had very many adherents among
socialist members of parliament, various officials of the working-class
movement, and the “sympathising” intelligentsia.

## III

However, the opportunists had scarcely congratulated themselves on
“social peace” and on the non-necessity of storms under “democracy”
when a new source of great world storms opened up in Asia. The Russian
revolution was followed by revolutions in Turkey, Persia and China. It is
in this era of storms and their “repercussions” in Europe that we are now
living. No matter what the fate of the great Chinese republic, against
which various “civilised” hyenas are now whetting their teeth, no power
on earth can restore the old serfdom in Asia or wipe out the heroic
democracy of the masses in the Asiatic and semi-Asiatic countries.

Certain people who were inattentive to the conditions for preparing and
developing the mass struggle were driven to despair and to anarchism by the
lengthy delays in the decisive struggle against capitalism in Europe. We
can now see how short-sighted and faint-hearted this anarchist despair is.

The fact that Asia, with its population of eight hundred million, has
been drawn into the struggle for these same European ideals should inspire
us with optimism and not despair.

The Asiatic revolutions have again shown us the spinelessness and
baseness of liberalism, the exceptional importance of the independence of the democratic masses, and the pronounced
demarcation between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie of all kinds. After
the experience both of Europe and Asia, anyone who speaks of non-class
politics and non-class socialism, ought simply to be put in a cage and
exhibited alongside the Australian kangaroo or something like that.

After Asia, Europe has also begun to stir, although not in the Asiatic
way. The “peaceful” period of 1872–1904 has passed, never to return. The
high cost of living and the tyranny of the trusts are leading to an
unprecedented sharpening of the economic struggle, which has set into
movement even the British workers who have been most corrupted by
liberalism. We, see a political crisis brewing even in the most
“diehard”, bourgeois-Junker country, Germany. The frenzied arming and the
policy of imperialism are turning modern Europe into a “social peace”
which is more like a gunpowder barrel. Meanwhile the decay of all
the bourgeois parties and the maturing of the proletariat are making steady
progress.

Since the appearance of Marxism, each of the three great periods of
world history has brought Marxism new confirmation and new triumphs. But a
still greater triumph awaits Marxism, as the doctrine of the proletariat,
in the coming period of history.

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