Lenin CW-Vol. 23.pdf - From Marx to Mao

LETTERS FROM AFAR341only if, from the very first step, the workers are supported bythe vast majority of the peasants fighting for the confiscationof the landed estates (and for the nationalisation ofall the land, if we assume that the agrarian programmeof the “104” is still essentially the agrarian programme ofthe peasantry 146 ). (8) In connection with such a peasantrevolution, and on its basis, the proletariat can and must,in alliance with the poorest section of the peasantry, takefurther steps towards control of the production and distributionof the basic products, towards the introductionof “universal labour service”, etc. These steps are dictated,with absolute inevitability, by the conditions createdby the war, which in many respects will become still moreacute in the post-war period. In their entirety and in theirdevelopment these steps will mark the transition to socialism,which cannot be achieved in Russia directly, at one stroke,without transitional measures, but is quite achievable andurgently necessary as a result of such transitional measures.(9) In this connection, the task of immediately organisingspecial Soviets of Workers’ Deputies in the rural districts,i.e., Soviets of agricultural wage-workers separate from theSoviets of the other peasant deputies, comes to the forefrontwith extreme urgency.Such, briefly, is the programme we have outlined, basedon an appraisal of the class forces in the Russian and worldrevolution, and also on the experience of 1871 and 1905.Let us now attempt a general survey of this programmeas a whole and, in passing, deal with the way the subjectwas approached by K. Kautsky, the chief theoretician of the“Second” (1889-1914) International and most prominentrepresentative of the “Centre”, “marsh” trend that is now tobe observed in all countries, the trend that oscillates betweenthe social-chauvinists and the revolutionary internationalists.Kautsky discussed this subject in his magazineDie Neue Zeit of April 6, 1917 (new style) in an articleentitled, “The Prospects of the Russian Revolution”.“First of all,” writes Kautsky, “we must ascertain whattasks confront the revolutionary proletarian regime” (statesystem).“Two things,” continues the author, “are urgently neededby the proletariat: democracy and socialism.”