Luigi Carlo Fraina

“ The struggle between the masses and the bourgeoisie was determined not only by purposes, but by methods: the bourgeosie tried to limit the revolution within parliamentary bounds, conciliation and understanding with the monarchy; while the masses insisted upon revolutionary mass action, placing the centre of the revolution among the people, instead of among the parliamentary "representatives of the people." The answer of the masses to the hesitation, intrigues and betrayals of the bourgeoisie was the Jacobin terror, which preserved the revolution. ”

“ The Russian Revolution will not retreat before the bayonets of conquerors and it will not allow itself to be trampled to pieces by outside military force. We call upon you to throw off the yoke of your absolutist regime, as the Russian people have shaken off the autocracy of the Czar. Refuse to serve as the tools of conquest and power in the hands of the kings, junkers and bankers and we shall, with common efforts, put an end to the fearful butchery that dishonors humanity and darkens the great days of the birth of Russian liberty. ”

“ But the problem of whether or not the Russian Revolution was a bourgeois revolution was a practical problem, and not, as misinterpreted by the Socialist moderates, an abstract one in historical theory. It is indisputable that an agrarian revolution was in "the order of the day" in Russia, and yet the bourgeoisie did all in its power to prevent an agrarian revolution. This was simply one problem of the Revolution which determined the Revolution in a merciless struggle against the bourgeoisie, not as a matter of theory but as a matter of practice. ”

“ These countries must act for the Social Revolution; their proletariat must be encouraged to initiate the revolution against Capitalism. This is precisely what the Bolsheviki meant by "a civil war of the oppressed against the oppressors, and for Socialism." Not in Russia alone, but throughout Europe, the proletariat must be called to revolutionary action, Russian revolutionary Socialism using its power and strategic position to arouse that international proletarian class struggle which would transform itself into the Social Revolution. ”

“ The persistence of Czarism in Russia after its historical necessity had ceased, its clinging to power after Capitalism had come into being, produced a dual political and social development. Within the shell of Czarism developed the bourgeoisie, the class of capitalists, and the proletariat,—a, mature and aggressive proletariat. As the bourgeoisie developed power, the proletariat simultaneously developed its own power, while politically and officially Czarism retained ascendancy. ”

“ The Revolution, operating exclusively by means of the Soviets, would proceed logically on its course of reconstruction, unhesitatingly and uncompromisingly; for the Soviets, representing exclusively workers and peasants, would be compelled by the force of circumstances to introduce revolutionary measures, as a necessity of practice and not of theory. Separate the Soviets, and consequently the workers and peasants, from an alliance with and dependence upon the bourgeoisie, emphasize the proletarian class struggle and class policy, and the Revolution was an assured success. ”

“ The revolutionary Socialists, on the contrary, represent the new facts of the labor movement, as determined by the epoch of Imperialism and the emergence to consciousness and action of the great industrial proletariat, the masses of unskilled labor. Imperialism, in its form of expression as State Capitalism, has united into one reactionary bloc all layers of the ruling class, including skilled labor; this unity has swept along with it the dominant Socialism, representing skilled labor and the small bourgeoisie. ”

“ The central factor is the existence of Imperialism, which not only makes a national democratic revolution of the bourgeoisie in semi-feudal, capitalistic countries incompatible with the requirements of modem Capitalism, but which equally makes Europe as a whole ripe for the immediate revolutionary struggle for Socialism. Imperialism determines Capitalism in a reactionary policy; but, simultaneously, it creates the conditions under which the proletariat may express its revolutionary action for the overthrow of Capitalism. ”

“ Unlike the moderate Socialists, however, who everywhere aspired and worked for a revolution in the enemy country, the Bolsheviki struggled for their own proletarian revolution as the only acceptable revolutionary Socialist tactics and the only adequate means of inspiring the proletariat of the other nations to revolt. Revolutions are not determined by mathematical considerations, but by opportunity; and the Socialist must create his own opportunity and use it whether the other nations act or not. ”

“ The bourgeois democratic revolution is not an indispensable necessity at all stages of the development of Capitalism ; it occurs at particular stages and under certain conditions, and may be dispensed with, as in Germany. Imperialism negates democracy, projecting a new autocracy necessary to maintain the proletariat in subjection, expressing the requirements of concentrated industry, and indispensable in the armed struggles produced by imperialistic competition. Without a revolutionary, class conscious proletariat in Russia, there would in all probability have been no overthrow of Czarism. ”

“ The Bolsheviki maintained as against this that Socialism was a problem of immediate revolutionary issues, that the proletarian revolution was a process which might consist of a series of revolutionary struggles, in which the decisive factor was the class power of the proletariat. The peasantry, argued the Bolsheviki, is a mass which must depend either upon the bourgeoisie or the proletariat: it is not itself capable of directing the Revolution; but it is not inevitable that the peasantry should depend upon the bourgeoisie ”

“ This is a proletarian revolution, the start of the international Social Revolution against Capitalism, the purpose of which is not political reconstruction, but fundamental, intensive, economic and social reconstruction of the basis of the world. ”

“ Every revolution has, during its time, been characterized as the end of all things, as a reversion to savagery, as the rapacious terrorism of men become again primordial brutes; and after each revolution the "excesses" previously stigmatized assume their right proportions, and the revolution is visioned as a fundamental, dynamic expression of the onward and upward development of the world. ”

“ History is the history of class struggles. Revolution is the culmination of the class struggle; and history, accordingly, is equally a history of revolutions, of cataclysmic epochs when the antagonisms of the class struggle flare up into revolutionary and decisive action. ”

“ In these great crises of universal history, the ordinary aspects of the class struggle assume a violent, catastrophic expression, developing into war, civil war, and into the searing, magnificent upheavals of the Revolution. ”

“ Industrial development in France at that period had not produced the mass of the typical industrial proletariat which constitutes the revolutionary class in Capitalism, and which is the bone and sinew of the revolution in Russia. ”

“ Thus, while the Russian proletariat is straining every nerve to destroy the reactionary powers which it has overthrown and save the country from the danger of counter-revolution, its appeal for international solidarity to wage the common fight for the salvation of all nations from the bloody butchery, is purposely misinterpreted and falsified to the workers and soldiers of England and France. ”

“ Our victory is a great victory of the freedom and democracy of the world. The principal supporter of reaction in the world, the 'gendarme of Europe,' no longer exists. May the earth over his grave become a heavy stone. ”

“ In this aspect, the parallel with the French Revolution is apparent: the Bolsheviki are stigmatized as perpetrators of "mass murder," as enemies of civilization, as makers of anarchy, as brutish tyrants; the world, the bourgeois world of class tyranny and hypocrisy, is against revolutionary, proletarian Russia. ”

“ During this revolution, betrayed and maligned by the "liberal" forces, the bourgeoisie beheld the spectre of a proletarian revolution, of a revolution that might not persist within the limits of bourgeois interests, and that might turn against the bourgeoisie,—as has actually been the case. The danger was too palpable: why take risks, particularly when the policy of Imperialism offered an apparently easy way out? ”

“ Conscious of its own revolutionary strength, the democracy of Russia declares that it will fight with all means against the policy of conquest of its ruling classes and it summons the peoples of Europe to united, decisive action for peace. ”

“ The dispersed Constituent Assembly, these "democratic Provisional Governments," represent democracy, but it is the democracy of the bourgeois order,—simply a form of authority of the capitalists over the workers; that paltry democracy which depends upon an expropriated proletariat and impoverished peasantry. This democracy is counter-revolutionary, since it struggles against the fundamental democracy of Socialism. ”

“ Moderate Socialism, which is dominant and which acted with the imperialistic governments during the war, represents the old labor movement, hesitant, interested in middle class reforms, controlled by reactionary skilled labor and animated by the petty bourgeois ideology; and moderate Socialism, in its extreme social-patriotic expression, represents a conscious, counter-revolutionary compromise with Imperialism. ”

“ It was this full-orbed character of the Bolshevist program, realized through uncompromising adherence to revolutionary Socialism and the class struggle, that, when their efforts for a revolution in the Central Empires temporarily failed, did not leave them stranded and helpless, but able to concentrate on the internal development of their own revolution as a preparation for the day when the international revolutionary struggle against Capitalism might break loose. ”

“ The Soviets, the Councils of Workers and Peasants, are a much higher form and definite expression of this tendency of the proletarian masses to become the state. Originally created as instruments of the revolution, the Soviets have become organs of government, functioning through a temporary dictatorship of the proletariat. The Soviets are revolutionary organizations of the masses ”

“ Capitalism and Socialism are mobilizing for the great, the final and decisive struggle. The call to action of the proletarian revolution in Russia will soon—now, perhaps—marshal the iron battalions of the international proletariat. ”

“ The French Revolution annihilated one form of property rights, the feudal, in order to introduce another form of property rights, the bourgeois; the proletarian revolution in Russia proposes the annihilation of bourgeois property rights, the annihilation of private property and its system of class oppression,—the end of the exploitation of man by man and class by class. ”