Either being truly a revolutionary democrat and therefore not fearing to take another step towards Socialism;
Or else dreading the approach of Socialism; condemning it, by suggesting as—the Piecheckonovs, the Dans and the Tchernovs suggest—that our revolution is a bourgeois revolution; and thus fatally slipping towards Kerensky, Miliukov and Kornilov (that is, the reactionary and bureaucratic repression of the "revolutionary democratic" aspirations of the workers and peasants).
There is no other alternative.
In this lies the fundamental contradiction of our revolution.
It is impossible usually—and above all in war-time—to stand still. We must go forward or back. In twentieth-century Russia, which has secured a republic and democratic rule by a revolution, it is impossible to go forward without approaching Socialism, without making one or more steps towards Socialism. (And these steps are conditioned by the level of our technique and of our culture; thus it is impossible in Russia to introduce machinery on a large scale into agriculture, although it is indispensable in sugar production.)
Those who fear to go forward must go back—this is what the Kerenskys do, applauded by the Miliukovs and the Plekhanovs and with the ignorant support of the Tseretellis and the Tchernovs.
The logic of history is such that the war has extraordinarily accelerated the transformation of monopoly capitalism into State capitalism and has, through this very fact, brought humanity considerably nearer to Socialism.
The imperialist war is on the eve of the social revolution. And that not only because, by its horror, the war leads to proletarian insurrection—for no insurrection will create Socialism if the economic conditions do not permit the establishment of it—but because monopolist State capitalism is the material preparation for Socialism, the vestibule to Socialism, the step of the historical ladder which is separated from the step called Socialism by no intervening step.
Our S.R.'s and our Mensheviks approach the question of Socialism as doctrinaires, from the point of view of a doctrine which they have learnt by heart, but ill understood.
They picture Socialism as a thing of the distant future, dim and unknown.
