congruity' between England's capitalist development and her soclalist movement, as conditioned by a temporary combination of historical forces, did not contain anything disheartening. It was England's early entry onto the path of capitalist development and world robbery that created a privileged position not only for her bourgeoisie but also for a section of her working class. England's Insular positon spared her the direct burden of maintaining militarism on land. Her mighty naval milllarism, although requiring huge expenditures, rested nevertheless on numerically small cadres of hirelings and did not require a transition to universal military service.
The British bourgeoisie skillfully utilised these conditions in order to separate the top labour layer from the bottom strata, creating an aristocracy of skilled' labour and instilling into it a trade union caste spirit. Flexible despite all its conservatism, the parliamentary machinery of Great Britain, the incessant rivalry between two historical parties the Liberals and the Tories - a rivalry tremely viable, tenacious, stubborn and etty-bourgeois The great French Revolution of th 18th century, bourgeois both in its most extreme objectives as well as results, was at the same time profoundly national — in the sense that it rallied round itself the majority of the nation and, first and foremost, all of its creative classes. For a century and a quarter this revolution established the bond of common remembrances and traditions between a considerable section of the French working class and the left elements of bourgeois democracy. Jaurès was the greatest and last representative of this conservative ideological bond.
Under these conditions France's political atmosphere couldn't fail to infect broad layers of the French prolelanal. especially the semihandicraftsmen with petty-bourgeois ilusions. Conversely, it was precisely th ich revolutionary past that gave th French proletariat an inclination to settle scores with the bourgeoisie on the barricades. The character of the class struganything which would not likewise apply in a clearer form to the development of Russia. The belated development of Russian capitalism immediately imparted to it an extremely concentrated character. When in the 'torties of the last century outgrew this national framework and evolved world ties; and which in order to bring the backward countries under its sway sees no need of returning to the Too s ane usages orus muranl davs. our employs instead the last word in tccnnology, une last word in capilaust cx ploitation and political blackmail - if we analyse capitalism in this spirit, then the development of Russian capitalism with all its peculiarities will appear wholly 'natural, as an indispensable, component part of the world capitalist process.
This applies not alone to Russia. The railways which have cut across Australia were not the 'natural' outgrowth of the living conditions either of the Australian aborigines or of the tirst generations 01 malefactors who were, beginning with the epoch of the French revolution, shipped off to Australia by the magnanimous English metropolises. The capitalist to socialism, Jaurès, as the tribune of a democratic nation, came out against imperialism. Imperialism, however, has demonstrated quite convincingly that it is mightier than 'the democratic nation whose political will imperialism is so easily able to falsify by means of the parliamentary mechanism. In July 1914 the imperialist oligarchy, on its way to war, strode over the tribune's corpse; while in March 1919, through the 'supreme tribunal' of the democratic nation, it officially exonerated the murderer of Jaures.
In Russia these illusions from the outset did not have any kind of support beneath them. With the ponderous sluggishness of its meagre development our country didn't have time to create an urban handicraft culture. Nurtured under the high pressure of foreign finance capital and aided by foreign
WHAT PLACE does the development of European politics since 1968 occupy in the overall march of socialism? Since the mid-1970s, the working class in Western Europe has been forced onto the defensive. The steps forward in the international class struggle -Central America, in Southern Africa, in the Philippines have taken place outside the advanced capitalist countries. This corresponds to the history of the twentieth century: socialist revolution has taken place in the colonial and semi-colonial world and, with the exception of Russia, capitalism has continued to exist in the imperialist states. Events since 1968 therefore are not an aberration but follow a clear logic. To help understand this process we reprint here a 1919 essay by Trotsky. Entitled En route, thoughts on the process of the proletarian revolution, it studies the general development of world socialism with brilliant thumbnail sketches of the chief European states an ideal historical background to understanding events in Western Europe since 1968. the coming of socialism strikes when capitalism attains its utmost limits of maturity and thereby the bourgeoisie is compelled to surrender its place to the proletariat, as the builder of socialism. This nationally-limited conception of capitalist development provides the theoretical and psychological grounds of social patriotism: 'Socialists' of each country deem themselves duty-bound to defend the national state as the natural and self-sufficient foundation of socialist development.
But this conception is false to the core and profoundly reactionary. By becoming world-wide, capitalist development thereby snapped those threads which in the past epoch bound the fate of the social revolution with the fate of one or another more highly developed capitalist country. The closer capitalism knit together the countries of the whole world into a single complex organism, all the more inexorably did social revolution, not only in une sense drus common destiny but also in the sense of its place and time of origin, fall into dependence aponord factor and primarily as world factor, primarily dependence upon those military conflicts which imperialism must inevitably provoke and which, in their turn, must shake the equilibrium of the capitalist system to its roots...
Growing out of capitalist development as a whole, and at the same time appearing before the national consciousness of each individual capitalist countrv as an external tactor. perialism acts as if to discount the difference in levels attained by the development of the respective capitalist countries. At one and the same time, they were peninsula. With an earlier start the Balkan war found an easier solution.
The World War started later precisely because each of the belligerents kept glancing fearfully down into the abyss toward which it was being dragged by unbridled class interests. Germany's extraordinarily augmented power, counterposed to the ancient power of Great Britain, constituted, as is well known, the historical mainspring of the war but this same power long kept the enemies from an open break. When the war did break out, however, the power of both camps conditioned. the prolonged and bitter character of the conflict.
The imperialist war, in its turn, push ed the proletariat along the path of civil war. And here we observe an analogous order: countries with a younger capitalist culture are the first to enter the path of civil war inasmuch as the unstable equilibrium of class forces is most easily disrupted precisely in these countries Such are the general reasons for a phenomenon which seems inexplicable at first sight, namely, that in contradistinction to the direction of capitalist development from West to East, the proletarian revolution unfolds from East to West. But since we are dealing with a mos complex process, it is quite in the nature Socialist Action cruelest blow to the social power of the European bourgeoisie. This alone sutTICES to explain why the counterrevolutionary intervention of the Entente imperialists was inevitable. On the other hand, this intervention Wal rendered possible oniv because the Rus sian proletariat found itself placed by history in a position which compelled the Russian workers to accomplish their revolution before it could be accomplished by their older and much stronger European brother. Hence flow those supreme difficulties which the Russian proletariat is compelled to overcome upon taking power.
The Social-Democratic philistines have sought to conclude from this, that there was no need of going out into the streets in October. Unquestionably it would have been tar more 'economical for us to have begun our revolution afte the English, the French and the Germa: revolutions. But, in the first place, history does not at all offer a free choice in this connection to the revolutionary class and nobody has yet proved that the Russian brocalal assured. a revolution 'economical' in character Second, the very question of revolu tionary 'economy' of forces has to b reviewed not on a national but on a world
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"The great French revolution of the 18th century, bourgeois both in its most extreme objects as well as results, was at the same time profoundly national!