V. I.

Lenin

(1) Economic debacle is imminent. Therefore removal of the
bourgeoisie is a mistake.

( This is the conclusion of the bourgeoisie. The more imminent
the debacle, the more essential is it that the bourgeoisie be
removed.)

(2) Proletariat is unorganised, weak, lacking class-consciousness.

( True. Therefore, the whole task is to fight those petty-bourgeois leaders, the so-called
Social-Democrats–Chkheidze, Tsereteli, Steklov—who lull the
masses, encourage them to put their trust in the bourgeoisie.

Not unity with these petty bourgeois—Chkheidze, Steklov,
Tsereteli—but utter defeat of these
Social-Democrats, who are ruining the revolution of the
proletariat.)

(3) Revolution is bourgeois at the present stage. Therefore no
need for “socialist experiment”.

( This argument is an out-and-out bourgeois argument. No one talks about a
“socialist experiment” The concrete Marxist proposition
requires that institutions now as well as classes be taken
into account.)

Stranglers of the revolution, by honeyed phrases—Chkheidze,
Tsereteli, Steklov—are dragging the revolution back, away from the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies towards the
undivided sway of the bourgeoisie, towards the usual bourgeois
parliamentary republic.

We must ably, carefully, clear people’s minds and lead the
proletariat and poor peasantry forward , away from “dual
power” towards the full power of the Soviets of

Workers’ Deputies, and this is the commune in Marx’s sense, in
the sense of the experience of 1871.

The question is not how fast to move, but where to move.

The question is not whether the workers are prepared, but
how and for what they should be prepared.

Since the manifestos and appeals of the Soviet of Workers’
Deputies on the war, etc., are sheer petty-bourgeois humbug
designed merely to lull the people to sleep, it is our business
above all, as I have said, to clear people’s minds, to rid the
masses of the bourgeois influence of Chkheidze, Steklov, Tsereteli and Co.

The “revolutionary defencism” of the Soviet of Workers Deputies,
i.e., of Chkheidze, Tsereteli and Steklov, is a chauvinist trend
a hundred times more harmful for being cloaked in honeyed
phrases, an attempt to reconcile the masses with the
Provisional Revolutionary Government.

The dull, unenlightened masses duped by Chkheidze, Tsereteli,
Steklov and Co. do not realise that the war is a continuation of
policy, that wars are waged by governments .

It must be made clear that the “people” can stop the war or
change its character only by changing the class character of the government.

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