Leon Trotsky, The Lessons of October - Platypus

22 The Lessons of Octoberthat we should overthrow the Provisional Government. It appearedin print prior to the last crisis, and this slogan was laterrejected as tending to disorganization; and it was recognizedas adventuristic. This implies that our comrades learned somethingduring this crisis. The resolution which is now proposed[by Lenin-L.T.] repeats that mistake.”This manner of formulating the question is most highly significant. Lenin,after the experience of the reconnoiter, withdrew the slogan of the immediateoverthrow of the Provisional Government. But he did not withdrawit for any set period of time for so many weeks or months but strictly independence upon how quickly the revolt of the masses against the conciliationistswould grow. The opposition, on the contrary, considered theslogan itself to be a blunder. In the temporary retreat of Lenin there wasnot even a hint of a change in the political line. He did not proceed fromthe fact that the democratic revolution was still uncompleted. He basedhimself exclusively on the idea that the masses were not at the moment capableof overthrowing the Provisional Government and that, therefore, everythingpossible had to be done to enable the working class to overthrowthe Provisional Government on the morrow.The whole of the April Party Conference was devoted to the following fundamentalquestion: Are we heading toward the conquest of power in thename of the socialist revolution or are we helping (anybody and everybody)to complete the democratic revolution? Unfortunately, the report ofthe April Conference remains unpublished to this very day, though thereis scarcely another congress in the history of our party that had such anexceptional and immediate bearing on the destiny of our revolution as theconference of April 1917.Lenin’s position was this: an irreconcilable struggle against defensism andits supporters; the capture of the soviet majority; the overthrow of the ProvisionalGovernment; the seizure of power through the soviets; a revolutionarypeace policy and a program of socialist revolution at home and ofinternational revolution abroad. In distinction to this, as we already know,the opposition held the view that it was necessary to complete the democraticrevolution by exerting pressure on the Provisional Government, andin this process the soviets would remain the organs of ”control” over thepower of the bourgeoisie. Hence flows quite another and incomparablymore conciliatory attitude to defensism.One of the opponents of Lenin’s position argued in the following mannerat the April Conference:”We speak of the soviets of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies as