From Marx to Lenin Author:Morris Hillquit Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Chapter V THE TASK OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION The Russian Revolution represents a straight lean from an absolute and semi-feudal order to a political regime of... more » working-class Socialism. The intervening stage of bourgeois democratic government, which Marxian theorists always considered indispensable, was simply passed ovej", tor it surely cannot be seriously contended that the Lvoff-Kereriski government compressed within the eight months of its troubled existence a completed cycle of middle-class revolution. The Russian experiment thus contradicts the ac- ' cepted Marxian theory ot political evolution. But does it also set at naught the more fundamental Marxian laws of economic development? By no means. Political institutions are after all primarily .deliberate products bt the conscious mind, even though they are bound to adjust themselves in 'the long run to the existing material situation. But economic ron- ditions are physical and organic. Their development may be stimulated, but no radical change canbe effected in their substance by legislative jinactment or revolutionar The Russian revolution has nationalized the indus- tries, such as they were. It has put a Socialist government in the place of the former capitalist owners, but it lias not thereby changed their general character or state of maturity. Russia has a unique chance to devglop her industries under working-class instead of capitalist auspices, which may accelerate the process andeliminate much of the suffering by which it was accompanied in other countries. But she cannot jump over the inevitable phase of economic development from small production to large scale industry if she is to continue. on thp road toward Socialism. jC A Socialist or Communist society in the modern conception impjies not only th...« less