Date: 1922
Source: ru:PSS/v54

Source: PSS vol 54

Imperialist wars—wars waged for global domination, for markets to serve banking capital, for the subjugation of small and weak nations—are inevitable under such conditions. And it is precisely this that characterized the First Great Imperialist War of 1914–1917.

The extraordinarily high stage of development reached by world capitalism as a whole; the transition from free competition to monopoly capitalism; the emergence of banking institutions—and, alongside them, capitalist associations—dedicated to the systematic regulation of the production process and the distribution of goods; and, finally, the horrors, calamities, ruin, and barbarization wrought by imperialist war—all these factors conspire to transform the present stage of capitalist development into an era of proletarian, socialist revolution.

This era has begun.

Only a proletarian, socialist revolution can lead humanity out of the deadlock created by imperialism and imperialist wars. No matter how great the difficulties confronting the revolution, or how frequent the temporary setbacks—or even the waves of counterrevolution—final victory for the proletariat is inevitable.

Given the objective conditions of the epoch we are living through, the immediate, comprehensive preparation of the proletariat for revolution has thus become a pressing task of the day, along with a resolute break from that bourgeois distortion of socialism which has come to dominate the official social‑democratic parties in the form of social‑chauvinism (that is, socialism in word only, chauvinism in deed, or the use of the slogan “defense of the fatherland” as a cover for the defense of capitalist interests in imperialist wars), as well as from the “center” tendency—which, devoid of principle and utterly lacking in resolve, oscillates between social‑chauvinism and the revolutionary, internationalist struggle of the proletariat* for the conquest of political power, in order to implement the economic and political measures that constitute the substance of socialist revolution.

* The text “a resolute break from… the proletarian struggle” was crossed out in the manuscript. Ed.

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The fulfillment of this task—requiring complete trust, the closest fraternal alliance, and the direct unity of revolutionary action among the working class of all advanced countries—is impossible without an immediate and principled break from that bourgeois distortion of socialism which has triumphed at the highest levels of the vast majority of official social‑democratic parties. On one side, this distortion takes the form of social‑chauvinism: socialism in words, chauvinism in deeds, cloaked behind the slogan “defense of the fatherland” in order to protect the predatory interests of “one’s own” national bourgeoisie; on the other side, there is the equally broad and international tendency known as the “center,” which stands in solidarity with the social‑chauvinists, seeking to preserve or reform the bankrupt Second International, vacillating between social‑chauvinism and the revolutionary, internationalist struggle of the proletariat for the realization of a socialist system.

* * *

The experience of the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917—revolutions that gave rise to the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies and a host of similar organizations—confirmed the lesson of the Paris Commune: that the proletariat requires a state for the transitional period leading to socialism. Yet this state,* far from being a conventional state, must be a direct, mass-based, universally inclusive organization of armed workers, replacing the old instruments of governance—the standing army, the police, and the bureaucratic apparatus. For the proletariat to grasp the tasks of such a state—capable of both

* The text “The experience of the Russian revolutions… but this state” was crossed out in the manuscript. The end of the paragraph was inadvertently left uncrossed; it had been written on a separate page, at the end of which an annotation in an unknown hand read: “Add: the preparedness of the apparatus for regulating production in the form of trusts and bank concentrations” (see V. I. Lenin’s insertion in the ‘Draft Amendments to the Theoretical, Political, and Certain Other Sections of the Program.’ Collected Works, 5th ed., vol. 32, pp. 139–140). Ed.