On the Road to Insurrection/On the Slogan: "All Power to the Soviets"
On the Slogan: "All Power to the Soviets"
I.
ALL the work done by the Bolsheviks during a half-year of the revolution, and all their criticism of the Mensheviks and the S.R.'s who supported the policy of "conciliation" and transformed the soviets into talk-shops, demand from the Bolshevik Party the conscientious, sustained and strictly Marxian application of this slogan. It is regrettable to find that, at the head of the party, there are signs of hesitation, a kind of "fear" of the struggle for power, a tendency to replace this struggle by resolutions, protests and congresses.
II.
All the experience of the revolutions of 1905 to 1917, as well as all the decisions and political declarations of the Bolshevik party for many years, demonstrate and affirm that the soviets of workers' and soldiers' deputies are only to be considered in reality as organs of insurrection, as agents of revolutionary power. That is the real function of the soviets. Otherwise they are nothing but a vain plaything, and a fatal cause of apathy, indifference and the deception of the masses, who are disgusted (and justly so) by the continual repetition of resolutions and protests.
III.
At this moment, especially when the peasants' revolt, although repressed by Kerensky with the use of selected troops, is rapidly spreading all over the country; and when military measures applied in the country areas create a risk that the elections for the Constituent Assembly will be completely falsified; now that in Germany an insurrection has broken out in the fleet—the failure of the Bolsheviks to transform the soviets into organs of insurrection would be a betrayal of the peasants and of the international socialist revolution.
IV.
The seizure of power by the soviets depends on the success of the insurrection. For this reason the best forces of the party must be directed to the factories and military barracks to explain there to the masses what their tasks are, to estimate their state of mind and to choose exactly the moment for the overthrow of the Kerensky government.
To associate this task of taking power absolutely with the Congress of Soviets, to subordinate it to this Congress, is to play at insurrection by fixing its date in advance, by making it an easy matter for the government to prepare its troops, by giving the masses the illusion that a "resolution" by Congress can solve a question that can only be solved by the force of the insurgent working class.
V.
We must fight against the illusions of constitutionalism and the hopes founded on the Congress of Soviets; we must renounce the frame of mind of waiting at all costs for this Congress; we must concentrate all our forces on explaining to the masses that an insurrection is inevitable; and we must prepare the insurrection itself. If the Bolsheviks, with the soviets of the two capitals on their side, were to renounce this task and were to wait resignedly for the calling of the Constituent Assembly (that is to say, the falsified constituent assembly) by the Kerensky government, then they would reduce to an empty phrase their propaganda for the slogan: "Power to the soviets." And politically, they would cover themselves with shame as the party of the revolutionary working class.
VI.
This is particularly true now that the elections at Moscow have given 49½ per cent. of the votes to the Bolsheviks; and that these latter, with the support of the Left S.R.'s (a support which has been a reality for some time now), have an undisputed majority in the country.