The Social Revolution/Part 2
Part II. On the Day After the Social
Revolution.
I must first of all clear away a suspicion which will be roused in many people by the title of this work. "On the Day after the Revolution!" Does not that mean that we "orthodox" Marxists are only disguised Blanquists who expect by a coup d' etat to make ourselves dictators, and is not it a return to Utopianism when I attempt to describe a movement of which we can know nothing as to the circumstances under which it will take place?
I hasten then to remark that I consider the revolution an historical process that may easily draw itself out into a decade of hard battles. On the other side I am thoroughly convinced that it is not our task to invent recipes for the kitchens of the future, and when more than ten years ago the German Social democracy proposed to include in its program demands for such measures as would accelerate the transformation from a capitalist to a socialist manner of production, I opposed this because I maintained that the party could not lay out a definite road for conditions of which we can have only a dim presentiment and which may easily surprise us with much that is wholly unexpected.
But I maintain that it is a help to political clearness to examine the problems that will grow out of the conquest of political power by us. This is also valuable for propaganda since our opponents frequently assert that our victory will give us unsoluble problems, and we have in our own ranks also people who are unable to paint the results of our victory black enough. According to these people the day of our victory is also the day of our downfall. Therefore it is important to investigate and know how far this is the case.
But if one wishes to attain definite results in this direction and not get lost in endless windings, then we must investigate these problems in a simple form such as never exists in reality and abstracted from all complications. This is a customary process in science whereby one remains entirely conscious that in reality things are never so simple, or develop so smoothly as is the case in the abstraction. I have already said that the social revolution is a process of many years. But to reduce things to their simplest forms we must proceed from the idea that on some fine day the proletariat captures entire political power without restrictions at one stroke and is enabled to exercise it in strict accord with its class interests. The first certainly could not occur and the latter can never be completely the case. The proletariat itself is not sufficiently united nor enough of a uniform mass to permit such a condition. The proletariat divides into perceptibly different grades, different in their rate of development, different also in their intellectual and economic stage of evolution. It is also very probable that simultaneous with the rise of the proletariat other social grades close to them will be raised, such for example as a portion of the small bourgeoisie, or the small farmers, whose intellectual attitude is not yet fully proletarian. Friction and mistakes of manifold forms will rise from this, so that we shall never come to just what we wish and shall never have exactly that which we should have. We must however at this time leave these disturbing factors out of consideration.
On the other hand we must proceed throughout this investigation from certain assumptions. We cannot accept as our foundation a picture of the conditions as they may develop in the future for this would lead us into fantasies. And yet it is certain that we shall not gain our victory under present conditions. Revolution itself presupposes a long and profound struggle that will in itself greatly change our present social and political structure. After the conquest of political power by the proletariat, problems will arise of which we know nothing and many with which we are occupied to-day will by that time be solved. New means to the solution of these different problems will also arise of which we to-day have no suspicion.
Just as in natural philosophy the laws of falling bodies are investigated in a vacuum and not in moving air so here we investigate the situation of the conquering proletariat under presumptions which cannot occur in their complete purity; that is under the postulate that some morning we shall at a single blow come into complete domination while the means which will be at hand for the solution of our task will be those that exist to-day. We can by this means attain results that will be differentiated from the actual course of coming events in exactly the same way as the laws of falling bodies differ from the actual fall of various substances. But in spite of these variations the laws of falling bodies actually exist and govern the fall of every single substance and the rate of fall of these can only be determined when we have first understood these laws.
So it is that the outlooks and obstacles for the conquering proletariat actually will be discovered in the road we shall take (taking it for granted that we apply our method correctly) and they will undoubtedly play an important role in the social revolution and its resultants, even if the actuality is something wholly different from that we here consider it. And it is only in this way that one can come to scientific- ally definite judgments concerning the outcome of the revolution. Those to whom this road appears too uncertain to form a basis for prognostication must remain silent whenever this subject is under discussion and simply declare: "Whoever lives will know how it will come out and what is undeniably the proper road."
Only such problems of the social revolution are capable of discussion as can be determined in this manner. Concerning all others no judgment can be made either in this or in any other direction.
THE EXPROPRIATION OF THE EXPROPRIATORS.
Let us imagine then that this fine day has already come, in which at one stroke all power is thrown into the lap of the proletariat. How would it begin? Not how would it begin upon the grounds of this or that theory, or opinion, but must begin, driven thereto by its class interests and the compulsion of economic necessity.
In the first place it is self-evident that it would recover what the bourgeoisie has lost. It would sweep all remnants of feudalism away and realize that democratic programme for which the bourgeoisie once stood. As the lowest of all classes it is also the most democratic of all classes. It would extend universal suffrage to every individual and establish complete freedom of press and assemblage. It would make the State completely independent of the church and abolish all rights of inheritance. It would establish complete autonomy in all individual communities and abolish militarism.