technology, Russian capitalism in the course of a few decades gave form to a million-headed working class, which cut like a sharp wedge into the milieu of All-Russian political barbarism. Without the massive traditions of the past behind it, the Russian workers, in contrast to the Western European proletariat, took on not only traits of cultural backwardness and ignorance - which the semi-literate, indigenous urban citizens never wearied of pointing out - but also traits of mobility, initiative, and receptivity to the most extreme conclusions deriving from their class position.
If Russia's economic backwardness conditioned the spasmodic, CaLaStrO phic development of capitalism, which immediately acquired the most concentrated character in Europe, then the same universal backwardness of the country the spasmodic, catastrophic development of the Russian proletariat permitted the latter to become -course only for a segment of a certain •nistorical perioa - ine most irrecon cilable, the most self-sacrificing bearer of the idea of social revolution in Europe and throughout the world.
Capitalist production in its 'natural' constantly expanding reproduction. Technology keeps rising, the amount of material boons keeps growing, the mass of the populatior becomes proletarianised. Expanded capitalist production deepens capitalist contradictions. The proletariat grows numerically, constitutes an ever-larger proportion of the country's population becomes organised and educated, anc thus forms an ever-growing power. But this does not at all mean to say that its class enemy - the bourgeoisie - remains at a standstill. On the contrary, expanded capitalist production presupposes a simultaneous growth of the economic and political might of the big bourgeoisie. It not only accumulates col ossal riches but also concentrates in its hands the state apparatus of administration which it subordinates to its aims. With an ever-perfected art it ac complishes its aims through ruthless cruelty alternating with democratic op portunism. Imperialist capitalism is abl to utilise more proficiently the forms of сетостаси proportion economic dependence of petty-bourgeois layers of the population upon big capital becomes more cruel and insurmountable. From this economic dependence the bourgeoisie is able, by means of universal suffrage, to derive — political dependence.
A mechanical conception of the social revolution reduces the historical process to an uninterrupted numerical growth steadily mounting organisational strength of the proletariat until, comprising the overwhelming majority of the population, the proletariat without a battle, or virtually without a fight, takes into its own hands the machinery of bourgeois economy and the state, like a fruit ripe for plucking. In reality, however, the growth of the proletariat's productive role parallels the growth of the bourgeoisie's might. As the proletariat becomes organisationally fused politically educated bourgeoisie is in its turn impelled to perfect its apparatus of rule and to arouse against the proletariat ever-newer layers of the population, including the so-called new third estate, ie., the protessional intellectuals who play a most prominent role in the mechanics of capitalist economy. Both enemies gain in strength simultaneously.
The more powerful a country is capitalistically - all other considerations being equal - the greater is the inertia of 'peaceful' class relations; all the more powerful must be the impulse necessary to drive both of the hostile classes - the proletariat and the bourgeoisie — out of the state of relative equilibrium and to transform the class truggle into open civil war. Once it ha lared, the civil war - all other conditions being equal — will be the more bitter and stubborn, the higher the country's attained level of capitalist develop. ment; the stronger and more organisec both of the enemies are; the greater the amount of material and ideological resources at the disposal of both.
The conceptions of proletarian revolution which prevailed in the Second International did not in reality transgress the framework of self-sufficient national capitalism. England, Germany, France, Russia vere regarded as worlds moving in one and the same orbit towards socialism, and located along the different stages of this path. The hour of all drawn into the imperialist war, their productive foundations, their class relations were shaken simultaneously. Given this condition the first countries to be driven out of the state of unstable capitalist equilibrium were those whose internal social energy was weakest, ie., precisely those countries voungest in terms of capitalist development.
Here an analogy virtually imposes itself - the analogy between the inception of imperialist war and the inception of civil war. Two years before the great slaughters, the Balkan Wall erupted. Basically, the selfsame forces and tendencies operated in the Balkans of things that upon these indicated basic causes there arise countless secondary causes, some or wnien tena to remorce and aggravate the action of the chief tactors while others tend to weaken this the development ol Kussian capitalism the leading role was played by European finance and industrial capital, particularly and especially that of -France. I have already underscored that the French bourgeoisie in developing its usurious imperialism was guided not only by economic but also by political con siderations. Fearful of the growth of the French proletariat in size and power, the French bourgeoisie preferred to export its capital and to reap profits from Russian indistrial enterprises; the task of curbing the Russian workers was therewith un loaded on the Russian Czar. In this way the economic might of the French bourgeoisie also rested directly on the labour of the Russian proletariat. This created a certain positive force in favour scale. Precisely because of the entire preceding development, the task of inInaung the revoluton, as we nave altad) seen, was not placed on an old proletaria with mighty political and trade union organisations, with massive traditions of parliamentarianism and trade unionism, but upon the young proletariat of a backward country. History took the line ot least resistance The revolutionar epoch burst in through the most weakly barricaded door. Those extraordinary and truly superhuman difficulties which thereupon fell upon the Russian pro letariat have prepared, have hastened and have to a certain degree made easier the revolutionary work that lies still ahead for the Western European proletariat.
In our analysis there is not an atom of The revolutionary "primogeniture' of the Russian proletariat is only temporary. The mightie the opportunist conservatism among the summits of the German, French or English proletariat, all the more gran-