Polemic on General Line of International ... - From Marx to Mao

f. Nor will such emphasis make Communist Partiesgrow any stronger. On the contrary, if some CommunistParties should as a result obscure their revolutionary featuresand thus become confused with the social democraticparties in the eyes of the people, they would only beweakened.g. It is very hard to accumulate strength and preparefor the revolution, and after all parliamentary struggle iseasy in comparison. We must fully utilize the parliamentaryform of struggle, but its role is limited. What is most importantis to proceed with the hard work of accumulatingrevolutionary strength.3. To obtain a majority in parliament is not the sameas smashing the old state machinery (chiefly the armed forces)and establishing new state machinery (chiefly the armedforces). Unless the military-bureaucratic state machinery ofthe bourgeoisie is smashed, a parliamentary majority for theproletariat and its reliable allies will either be impossible(because the bourgeoisie will amend the constitution whenevernecessary in order to facilitate the consolidation of itsdictatorship) or undependable (for instance, elections may bedeclared null and void, the Communist Party may be outlawed,parliament may be dissolved, etc.).4. Peaceful transition to socialism should not be interpretedin such a way as solely to mean transition through aparliamentary majority. The main question is that of the statemachinery. In the 1870’s, Marx was of the opinion that therewas a possibility of achieving socialism in Britain by peacefulmeans, because “at that time England was a country in whichmilitarism and bureaucracy were less pronounced than inany other”. For a period after the February Revolution,Lenin hoped that through “all power to the Soviets” the revolutionwould develop peacefully and triumph, because atthat time “the arms were in the hands of the people”. NeitherMarx nor Lenin meant that peaceful transition could be107