situation of a certain magnitude and momentum would not only remove the powers of the ruling authorities, but also the powers which a revolutionary organization had established in the unions and the government as official representative of the Labor Movement. At first glance it seems that the authority of the official revolutionaries would not carry much more weight in such a situation than the authority of the deposed foremen, managers, owners, branch heads, or the deposed President of the Republic.
Independent creative activity can in fact lead to the death of the old social order. —A mighty burst of creative enthusiasm, a revolutionary situation, is a historical possibility. Classical theory assumed that such a situation was the necessary condition for the seizure of power by a revolutionary organization. We have not been able to verify this assumption. On the contrary, we have seen that in the special case of a revolutionary organization which has established positions of power and prestige within the ongoing social order, the key assumption of classical revolutionary theory is false. A revolutionary situation in which the masses are the real heroes, in which they engage in independent creative work as makers of history, does not provide a fertile field for the growth of an already established revolutionary organization. In fact, the official revolutionary organization is swept away together with the rest of the old social order.
However, the fate of an already established revolutionary organization does not destroy the classical assumption that a revolutionary situation is the necessary condition for the growth of a revolutionary organization. Despite the fact that already established revolutionary organizations are the official representatives of revolution, despite the fact that they are almost universally regarded as the spokesmen of revolutionary classes, references to such organizations in classical revolutionary literature are extremely sparse. And the few references that can be found do not in fact treat an already established revolutionary organization as a likely candidate for the seizure of power in a situation where the old social order bursts. On the contrary, such organizations are not considered really revolutionary organizations, but part and parcel of the social order in which they have already established power. Revolutionary leaders who become officials under capitalism thereby cease to be really revolutionary leaders. The functionaries of our political organizations and trade unions are corrupted—or rather tend to be corrupted—by the conditions of capitalism and betray a tendency to become bureaucrats, i.e., privileged persons divorced from the people and standing above the people. That is the essence of bureaucracy. Furthermore, the positions attained by these revolutionary leaders within the dominant social order are not even considered real steps along the road to the seizure of power, but rather steps away from this path: Until the capitalists have been expropirated and the bourgeoisie overthrown,
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