East. From Russia it passed over into Hungary to Bavaria and, doubtless, it will march westward .through Europe. This march of events is taking place contrary to prejudices, allegedly Marxist and rather widespread among broad cireles of intellectuals, and not those of Russia alone.
The revolution through which we are now living is proletarian, and the proletariat is strongest in the old capitalist COunurICS where it is much larger numericallv. better organised. -more class-conscious. It is seemingly in the nature of things to expect that the revolution in Europe ought to unfold approximately along the same paths as those of capitalist development: England - the first-born capitalist country, to be followed by France, to be followed by Germany, Austria and, finally, at the bottom of the list - Russia.
The fact is that the revolution began and led to the victory of the proletariat in the most backward major country of Europe — Russia. Hungary is unquestionably the more back ward half of the Jorme Austro-hungaran monareny, which as a whole, in the sense of capitalist and even cultural-political development, stood between Russia and Germanv. Bavaria where, following Hungarv. Soviet power has been established, represents with respect to capitalist development not the advanced but, on the contrary, a back ward section of Germany. Thus the proletarian revolution after starting in the most back ward country of Europe, keeps mounting upwards, rung by rung, toward countries more highly developed economically.
What is the explanation for this "incongruity"?
The oldest capitalist country in curope ana tne worla Is - Englana. Meanwhile England, especially during the last half-century, has been from the standpoint of the proletarian revolution the most conservative country. The consistent social-reformists, ie:, those who try to make both ends meet, hence drew all the conclusions they needed, asserting that it was precisely England that indicated to other countries the possible path olitical development and that in t e the entire European proleta ald renounce the programme of the social revolution.
For the Marxists, however, the 'inalthough remaining quite hollow in content, invariably created when the need arose an artificial political safety-valve Tor use aisconteuto ule workine masses This was supplemented by the fiendish dexterity of the ruling bourgeois clique in the business of spiritually crippling and bribing, quite 'exquisitely' at times, th leaders of the working class Thus thanks to England's early capitalist development her bourgeoisie disposed of resources that enabled them systematically to counteract the prozeraran revo unon. winee proletariat itself, or more correctly, within its upper layer, the same conditions gave shape to the most extreme conservative tendencies which manifested themselves in the course of decades prior to the World War...
capitalist development from West to East, While Marxism teaches that class relations arise in the process of production and that these relations correspond to a certain level of productive forces; while Marxism further teaches that all forms of ideology Toremost, politics correspond to class relations, this does not at all mean that between politics, class groupings and production there exist simple mechanical relations, calculable by the four rules of arithmetic. un the • contrary, ine reciprocal relations are extremely complex. It is possible to interpret dialectically the course of a country's development, only by proceeding from the action, reaction and interaction of all the material and superstructural factors, national and world-wide alike, and not through superficial juxtapositions, or through formal analogles England accomplished her bourgeois revolution in the 17th century; France — at the end of the 18th century. France was for a long time the most advanced, the most 'cultured' country on the European continent. The French social-patriots still sincerely believed even at the beginning of this war that the entire fate of mankind rotated around Paris. But once again, just because of her early bourgeois civilisation, France developed powerful consci valive tendencies within her capitalism. The slow organic growth of capitalism did not mechanically destroy French handicrafts, but pulled them along, simply relegating them to different positions, assigning them a more and more subordinate role. The revolution, by selling the feudal estates at auction to the peasantry, created the French village, exly tense in practice, kept the French bourgeoisie constantly on guard and compelled it to go over early to the export of finance capital.
While on the one hand seducing the popular masses, including the workers, by a dramatic display of anti-dynastic, anti-clerical, republican, radical and other tendencies, the French bourgeoisie, on the other hand, availed itself of the advantages accruing trom primogeniture and from its position of world usurer in order to check the growth of new and revolutionising forms of industrialism within France herself. An analysis of the economic and political conditions of French evolution, and furtermore not oniy on a nanonal but ar international scale, can alone provide an explanation of why the French proletariat, split up after the heroic eruption of the Paris Commune into groups and sects, anarchist on the one wing, anc 'possibilist' (reformist) on the other, proved incapable of engaging in open revolutionary class action, of struggling directly for state power.
For Germany the period of vigorous capitalist flowering began after the victorious wars of 1864-1866-1871. The soil of national unity, drenched by the golden flood of French billions, became the bed of a glittering reign of boundless speculation, but also that of an unprecedented technical development. In contrast to the French proletariat, the working class of Germany grew at an extraordinary rate and expended most of its energies on gathering, fusing, organising its own ranks. In its irresistable upsurge the working class of Germany got great satisfaction adding up its automatically growing forces in the reports of parliamentary elections or in unc slalclucus o urauc unos ueasunes. The victorious competition of Germany on the world market created conditions equally favourable for the growth of the trade unions as well as for the unquesnonabie improvement in tne aving Standard of a section of the working class.
In these circumstances the German Social Democracy became a living — and later on ever more moribund — incarnation of organisational fetishism. With its roots deeply intertwined in the national state and national industry, and in the process of adaptation to the entire complexity and entanglement of German social-ponucal relanons, wmcn are d combination of modern capitalism and medieval barbarism, the German Social Democracy along with the trade unions under its leadership became in the end the most counter-revolutionary force in the political evolution of Europe. The danger of such a degeneration of the German Social Democracy had long ago been pointed out by Marxists, although we'must admit that no one had foreseen how catastrophic would be the character of this process in the end...
As regards the development of Austria-Hungary, it is impossible from the viewpoint of interest to us to say Knopf established English textile factories in the central Moscow area, and when the Belgians, the French and the Americans transplanted to the virginal Ukrainian and N brussian steppes the huge metallurgical CHICIOIISC COl structed in accordance with the latest WOrG •117 ana American technology, they did not consult textbooks to learn whether they should wait until Russian handicraft developed into manufacture, while manufacture in Ils turn brougat us lo une targe-scaic factory.
On this soil, i.e., on the soil of poorly digested economic textbooks, there once arose the famous but essentially pucnie contoversy over waetner Kusslan capitalism was 'natural' or 'artificial' in character. If one were to vulgarise Marx and look upon English capitalism not as the historical starting-moment of capilanst development our ratner as tne all-imperative stereotype, then Russian capitalism would appear as an artificial formation, implanted from without. But if we analyse capitalism in the spirit of Marx's genuine teachings, that is, an an economic process which first evolved a Lypica nauonal fom dn waen cnen development of Australia is natural only from the standpoint of the historical pro. cess taken on a world scale. On a different scale, on a national, provincial scale it is, generally speaking, impossible to analyse a single one of the major social manifestations of our epoch.
Just because the Russian arge-scalt industry violated the 'natural' order of succession national economic development, by taking a gigantic economic leap over transitional epochs, 'it thereby prepared not only the possibility but the inevitability of the proletarian leap over Tne epoch bourgeols The ideologist of democracy, Jaures pictured democracy the nation's supreme tribunal, rising above the warring classes centuries-long history of handicrafts and In France, Winne of handicraft urban culture, with her strugg es ot citv communes and. late her revolutionary battles of bourgeois democracy, and, finally, with her conservatism of a petty-bourgeois variety, democratic ideology has until recently still rested on a certain historical soil.
An ardent defender of the interests of the proletariat, and profoundly devoted
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'In contradistinction to the direction of the proletarian revolution unfolds from East to West'.
'Our October revolution was an uprising not only against the Russian bourgeoisie but also against English and French capitalism®