Karl Berngardovich Radek

“ The European proletariat will, without doubt, march forward so quickly in the near future that it will not have time to learn the experiences of the Russian Revolution out of learned books, but it will learn them practically, before it is in a position to learn them out of the documents of the Revolution. We, who have the immeasurable good fortune after four years of horror, the horror of the world war, to be living, that is, to be fighting, in the midst of a newly created society, we do not flatter ourselves that we can be the teachers of the international proletariat. ”

“ Should the leaders of the workers' organizations decide upon the strike if parliamentary action should fail, if the enemy through his reckless policy should drive the masses to despair—should it be a pistol, then, held in readiness to back up the parliamentary struggle, or should it be the actual mode of the struggle itself, emerging spontaneously out of the increasingly acute class conflicts, prepared not in the conference chambers of the leaders but preparing every hour in the shops and in the factory prisons—not only through the growing agitation, the stimulated action of the proletariat. ”

“ From San Francisco to Vladivostok, whether one goes by way of the Atlantic or the Pacific, from all points of the world we are receiving proofs daily of the fact that in spite of the lies of the bourgeois press, in spite of the cowardice of the traitors to Socialism, the workers of all countries, when they are just beginning to stir, or just feeling the desire for the struggle, turn their eyes to blood-drenched Russia, to that Russia in which the working class is battling with a world of foes, and, as we hope, to conquer. ”

“ The idea that the proletariat will not begin the revolution until it has proofs that the majority of the people are behind it, is absurd, if only for the fact that capitalist Democracy will never remain unchanged long enough for the proletariat to assure itself that the majority of the people is behind it. Nowhere do the highly exploited young men and women workers enjoy full rights. If they did, the bourgeoisie would sooner turn out the Parliament, long before the workers reached a point where they could perform the will of the people by peaceful means. ”

“ The most active, a minority, rises, accomplishes the Revolution, and its success depends upon whether this Revolution follows the line of historic development, that is whether it responds to the needs of the masses, who can then sever themselves from the former ruling class. The creative and dynamic force of the Revolution was necessary to arouse the masses of the people, to free them from the intellectual slavery of Capitalism, to bring them into that camp which was defending their interests. ”

“ Communism is a theory of revolution and therefore it can only be understood in its entire significance during a period of revolution. On this account we can see that in the long period of quiet development which preceded the era of revolution only a few keen intellects were in a position to comprehend the theory of Communism so completely and clearly as when, during the revolutionary epoch of rising Capitalism, it was born in the brains of those children of the period of storm and stress, in the brains of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ”

“ The first question of the Social Revolution which confronts the working class is this: When can the Social Revolution come? As Marxism showed the workers that the victory of Socialism is dependent on the development of the forces of production, a perverted conception became rooted in the ranks of the Marxists that the Social Revolution would only then become possible when Capitalism had the entire economic life of the nation in its grasp, when, so to say, it had divided it relentlessly into a small group of capitalists and oppressed proletariat. ”

“ Just because the country has been unbelievably shattered through the war, Communism is the only way by which the workers can hope to emerge from the want and misery of the shattered capitalistic society. To forego beforehand the chance to organize this economic life in its own interest would mean to rush into capitalistic misery for fear that the inexperienced proletariat would be incapable of directing the main forces of national economic life concentrated by Capitalism. ”

“ Capitalism leads to the bloodiest anarchy, to the destruction of the few cultural achievements which have been created, to the deepest misery of the masses and their literal enslavement, so that this lesson might be converted out of a theoretical thesis into a crying and burning certainty, at least in the minds of the front ranks of the working class. ”

“ One might say: every Revolution is begun by the minority, the majority rallies to its aid while the revolution is going on, and so determines its victory. Were it not so, the dictatorship in a country like Russia, which possesses a proletarian minority, would not only be harmful as the Kautskys maintain, but in a country with a proletarian majority, to which the Kautskys graciously permit the dictatorship, it would be unnecessary. In these countries the capitalist class forms such a very small minority, that it would not be able to use weapons against the proletariat. ”

“ The seventy years which seperate us from the day on which these magnificent young men saw the future of mankind sharply illumined and pointed it out to us in the unforgetable Communist Manifesto, have caused many changes in the capitalist structure, to comprehend which has been the not always well performed task of successors of Marx. But the outlines of the development have not changed and only at the present time, during the first Socialist Revolution which the world has ever experienced, do we really comprehend the theory of Communism. ”

“ The growing political reaction had the effect on the working class of a storm signal and showed them in all countries that not revolutionary Communism, but, on the contrary, the so-called "real" Reformism was a Utopia, not, to be sure, one that would give wings to the soul, that would stimulate the energies of the workers, that would make the journey of humanity seem shorter in the visions it presents, so that the sluggish ones might be encouraged to hasten their steps, but on the contrary one that would lame their stride, transforming them into creeping beasts. ”

“ The Social Revolution is a lengthy process, which begins with the dethronement of the capitalist class, but ends only with the transformation of the capitalist system into a workers' community. This process will require at least a generation in every country, and this space of time is precisely the period of the proletarian dictatorship, the period during which the proletariat must keep the capitalist in subjection with the one hand, while it can use the other for the work of Socialist construction. ”

“ No proletariat will be spared the struggle which has forced the Russian working class to take the sharpest measures of a dictatorship; the struggle for bread. Nowhere will the peasants range themselves on the side of the Revolution, less in capitalist countries than they did in Russia, where the Revolution gave them land and soil. As the Revolution develops from a military standpoint, into a struggle between the workers' regiments and the regiments of the peasants, so also from the social standpoint, it will be fought out between the workers and peasants for bread ”

“ In the epoch of quiet development the most diverse non-Communistic elements were mixed with Communism, and so under the name of Social Democracy, different substitutes for Communism were created which the international working class must discard if it wishes to be equal to its duty. It is the diluted and false Communism from which the living spirit has been purged, which makes it difficult for the workers to understand and take to heart the theories of the Russian Revolution. ”

“ In the much praised land of organization, in Germany, the number of workers who would be able today to guide hole branches of production is extraordinarily small, even the number of workers who would be able, as technicians, to administer the production of a factory is very small. Everyone knows this who has ever been active in the German workers' movement. The working class of every country will only be able to educate itself through thousands of mistakes, and nowhere will it be able to do without the services of bourgeois specialists. ”

“ But that it is a proletarian revolution, and that it is trying to overcome heroically the anarchistic-capitalistic economic methods through Socialist organization, that it is, therefore, a Socialist revolution, which can only be put down by the Attilas of imperialism, neither the Mensheviki nor their European parrots can deny, just as little as they can disclaim its Socialistic character: for its Socialist character shines above it like a star of destiny, it was created with iron necessity out of the imperialistic character of the war. ”

“ The hypothesis of a conception such as Cunow gives on the question of the stage of ripeness of Capitalism, gives rise to the idea that Capitalism will in fact do the work of socialization itself, and that Socialism will simply be invited to a table already set. When Cunow explains that Germany is not yet ripe for Socialism, he supports this theory by referring to the fact that the capitalist state must first take over all industry before the proletariat could receive it by seizing the reins of the government. ”

“ The form of the Worker-Delegate Councils, which can always be reelected, which always return to their native soil, the factory, this form will be the one with which the proletariat will conquer Capitalism, and with which it will become capable of accomplishing Socialism—And it is more than significant that all the "Marxists," who carp at the Russian Revolution, have not been able up to the present time to attack the idea of the Soviet Government. ”

“ The Socialist Revolution starts first in those countries in which the capitalist organization is not so strong. Those capitalist countries with the most unsettled organs for oppression are the breaches where Socialism may break through, there the social revolution will begin. It is difficult for it to break through within the national boundaries, because after crushing its own bourgeoisie, it is threatened by the bourgeoisie of the remaining capitalist countries. The Socialist Revolution can only be successful if it breaks out on the entire continent ”

“ Parliament does not manage any factories, nor build any railroads. The government machine, which is growing more and more from a police machine into a business office, could have become a bureaucratic, capitalist association, with Parliament as camouflage, otherwise bodies of workers had to be created, who together with professionals could set the economic life in motion and guide it. ”

“ When capitalist development in a country has reached a point where the most important branches of industry, those of credit and transportation, are controlled by a concentrated, capitalistic group, then the proletariat which has rebelled not only can but must try to take over industry into its own hands, into the hands of the victorious proletariat, a proletariat organized into the governing power. ”

“ Before the working class could be confronted with the problem of its organs of power, they first were compelled to experience all the consequences of their powerlessness—physical powerlessness in the literal sense. They had to wade through the horrors of war, to be torn in pieces by grenades; they had to bleed to death for the interests of the capitalists ”

“ The Russian Revolution does not need to defend itself before the tribunal of the international proletariat. When Socialism has really fulfilled the longings and strivings of the best proletarians, as we are sure that it has, they will recognize that fact in the Russian Revolution because it is the first step in the development of Socialism from a theory into action. ”