previous historical movements were movements of minorities whereas the proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air. Without this preliminary condition, the specific project of a revolutionary organization cannot even be considered. Is it conceivable that such an organization can be created without first abolishing, destroying the state machine created by the bourgeoisie for themselves? This is not conceivable in classical revolutionary theory; the precondition of any real people's revolution is the break-up, the shattering of the ready-made state machinery. —Insurrection must rely upon a revolutionary upsurge of the people. Without such an upsurge on the part of the great masses, the activity of no matter how active a group of leaders would be reduced to the sterile efforts of a handful of people. As soon as such a revolutionary upsurge takes place, the revolutionary leaders must take power at once—otherwise a wave of real anarchy may become stronger than we are. And it is assumed by classical revolutionary theory that the initiative of millions, the independent creative activity of the producers, also creates the sufficient condition for the revolutionary organization to take power at once, namely that an organization which seizes the time and dares to win is bound to succeed: The entire history of the revolution proves that without the leadership of the working class the revolution fails, and that it succeeds with the leadership of the working class. —The leadership of the working class means that revolutionary leaders can and must take state power into their own hands. Furthermore, classical revolutionary theory even ventures to guarantee that once revolutionary leaders have seized State power, nothing will remove them until they have taken State power over the whole world into their own hands: Now that the class-conscious workers have built up a party to systematically lay hold of this apparatus and set it in motion with the support of all the working and exploited people—now that these conditions exist, no power on earth can prevent the Bolsheviks, if they do not allow themselves to be scared and if they succeed in taking power, from retaining it until the triumph of the world socialist revolution.
From the standpoint of revolutionary leaders who today face the possibility of failure, it is critical to re-examine these key assumptions of the classical theory of revolution, because it is this theory and only this theory that educates the vanguard of the proletariat and makes it capable of assuming power and leading the whole people to socialism, of directing and organizing the new system, of being the teacher, the guide, the leader of all the working and exploited people in organizing their social life without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie.
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