peasantry the natural allies of the petty bourgeois city democracy. Marx at that time expected the independent stage of the democratic revolution in Germany, that is, the temporary assumption of power by the city petty bour- geois radicals, supported by the peasantry. There's the rub! That, however, is just what did not happen. And not accidentally. Already in the middle of the past century, the petty bourgeois democracy showed itself to be powerless to carry out its revolution independently. And Marx took up this lesson in his calculations. On April 16, 1856 that is, six years after the circular men- tioned Marx wrote to Engels: "The whole matter in Germany will depend upon the possibility of supporting the proletarian revolution with a sort of second edition of the peasant war. Then the thing will be excellent."
These splendid words, completely forgotten by Radek, constitute a truly invaluable key to the October revolution as well as to the whole problem that occupies us here. Did Marx skip over the agrarian revolution? No, as we see, he did not skip over it. Did he consider the colla- boration of the proletariat and the peasantry necessary in the next revolution? Yes, he did. Did he grant the possibility of the leading, or even only the independent role of the peasantry in the revolution? No, he did not grant this possibility. He proceeded from the fact that the peasantry, which had not succeeded in supporting the bourgeois democracy in the independent democratic revo- lution (through the fault of the bourgeois democracy, not the peasantry), would be in a position to support the pro- letariat in the proletarian revolution. "Then the thing will be excellent." Radek, however, does not want to see that this is what happened in October, happen badly at that.
With regard to China, the conclusion this are quite clear. The dispute is nolj r61e of the peasantry as an ally, and PERMANENT REVOLUTION significance of the agrarian revolution, but over whether an independent agrarian democratic revolution is possible in China or whether "a second edition of the peasant war" will give support to the proletarian revolution. That is the only way the question stands. Whoever puts it differently, has learned nothing and understood nothing, only confuses the Chinese Communist Party and drives it off the right track.
In order for the proletariat of the Eastern countries to open the road to victory, the pedantic reactionary theory of Stalin-Martinov on "stages" and " steps" must be eliminated at the very outset, must be cast aside, demo- lished and swept away with a broom. Bolshevism grew in the struggle against this vulgar evolutionism. It is not to a line of march marked out a priori that we must adapt ourselves, but to the real course of the class struggle. Away with the Stalin-Kuusinen idea: to prescribe a suc- cession for the countries of various degrees of development, to apportion them in advance with revolutionary rations by card. One must adapt oneself to the real course of the class struggle. An inestimable guide for this is Lenin; only, the whole Lenin must be taken into consideration.
When in 1919, Lenin, especially in connection with the organization of the Communist International, combined into a unit the conclusions out of the period gone by, and gave it an ever more rounded-out theoretical formulation, he interpreted the experience of the Kerenskiad and the October as follows: In a bourgeois society with already developed class antagonisms there can only be either an open or disguised dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, or the dictatorship of the proletariat. There cannot be any talk of a transitional regime. Every democracy, every "dic- tatorship of democracy" (the ironical quotation marks are Lenin's) is only a veil for the rule of the bourgeoisie, as the experience of the most backward European country, Russia, showed in the epoch of the bourgeois revolution, that is, in an epoch favourable to the "dictatorship of MEANING OF DEMOCRATIC DICTATORSHIP democracy 55. This conclusion was taken by Lenin as the basis for his theses on democracy, which arose only as the sum of the experiences of the February and October revolutions.
Like many others, Radek also separates mechanically the question of democracy from the question of the demo- cratic dictatorship in general. The "democratic dictator- ship", however, can only be the masked rule of the bour- geoisie in the revolution. This is taught us by the experience of our "dual power " of.1917 as well as by the experience of the Chinese Kuo Min Tang.
The hopelessness of the epigones is most crassly expressed in the fact that even now they still attempt to contrast the democratic dictatorship to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, as well as to the dictatorship of the pro- letariat. But this means that the democratic dictatorship must have a transitional character, that is, a petty bour- geois content. The participation of the proletariat in it does not change the situation, for there is no arithmetical average in nature of the various class lines. If it is neither the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie nor the dictator- ship of the proletariat, then it means that the petty bourgeoisie must play the determining and decisive role. But this brings us back to the question to which the three Russian and the two Chinese revolutions have answered in practise: Is the petty bourgeoisie today, under the condi- tions of the world domination of imperialism, capable of playing a leading revolutionary role in the capitalist countries, which are still confronted with the solution of their democratic tasks?
There have been epochs in which the lower strata of the petty bourgeoisie were able to set up their revolu- tionary dictatorship. That we know. But they were epochs in which the proletariat or prescursors of the pro- letariat of the time was not distinguished from the petty bourgeoisie, but on the contrary constituted in its un- developed condition its fighting core. Quite different PERMANENT REVOLUTION today. We cannot speak of the ability of the petty bour- geoisie to direct the life of present-day, even if backward, bourgeois society, in so far as the proletariat has separated itself from the petty bourgeoisie and is pitted antagonistic- ally against the big bourgeoisie on the basis of capitalist development, which condemns the petty bourgeoisie to vegetation and puts the peasantry before the political choice between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Every time the peasantry seemingly decides for a petty bourgeois party, it actually supports on its back finance capital. If, in the period of the first Russian revolution, or in the period between the first two revolutions, there could still exist differences of opinion over the degree of independence (but only the degree!) of the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie in the democratic revolution, now this question has been decided by the whole course of the events of the last twelve years, and decided irrevocably.
It was raised anew in practise after the October in various countries, and in various forms and combinations, and everywhere it was settled the same way. The most fundamental experience after the Kerenskiad is, as already mentioned, the Kuo Min Tang. But no lesser importance is to be attached to the experiment of Fascism in Italy, where the petty bourgeoisie with arms in hand, snatched the power from the old bourgeois parties in order to surrender immediately, through its leaders, to the financial oligarchy. The same question arose in Poland, where the Pilsudski movement was aimed directly against the reactionary bourgeois landowning government and mirrored the hopes of the petty bourgeois masses and even a wide circle of the proletariat. It is no accident that the old Polish social democrat, Warski, out of fear of "under- estimating the peasantry", identified the Pilsudski over- throw with the "democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants' 5; It would lead us too far afield if I were to analyse here the Bulgarian experiences, that is, the dis- graceful policy of confusion of the Kolarovs and Kabakt- MEANING OF DEMOCRATIC DICTATORSHIP chievs towards the party of Stambuliski, or the shameful experiment with the Farmer-Labor party in the United States, or Zinoviev's romance with Raditch, or the experi- ments of the Communist Party of Rumania, and so on and so forth without end. Some of these questions are ana- lyzed in their essential parts in my Criticism of the Pro- gram of the Comintern. The fundamental conclusion con- firms and strengthens completely the lesson of October: The petty bourgeoisie, together with the peasantry, is in- capable of the r61e of leader in modern, even if backward, bourgeois society, in revolutionary as well as in re- actionary epochs. The peasantry can either support the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, or serve to prop up the dictatorship of the proletariat. Transitional forms are only a disguise of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie which has begun to totter or, after a shock, has come to its feet again (Kerenskiad, Fascism, Pilsudski regime).
The peasantry can go either with the bourgeoisie or with the proletariat. But when the proletariat attempts to march at all costs with the peasantry, which does not yet follow it, the proletariat proves inevitably to be in tow of finance capital: workers as defenders of the father- land in Russia in 1917; workers, including the Commu- nists as well, in the Kuo Min Tang in China; workers, among them the Communists in part as well, in the Polish Socialist Party in Poland in 1926, etc.
Whoever does not think this out to the end, and who has not understood the events from the fresh trail they have left behind, had better not delve into revolutionary politics.
The most fundamental conclusion which Lenin drew from the lessons of the February and the October revolu- tions, and drew exhaustively and comprehensively, thoroughly rejects the idea of the "democratic dictator- ship". The following was repeated by Lenin since 1918 more than once: "'All political economy if one has learned anything PERMANENT REVOLUTION at all from it the whole history of the revolution, the whole history of political development during the nine- teenth century, teaches us that the peasant goes either with the worker or with the bourgeois. If you do not know this, I would like to say to such citizens.. just reflect upon the development of any one of the great re- volutions of the eighteenth or the nineteenth centuries, .upon the political history of any country in the nineteenth century. It will tell you why. The economy of capita- list society is such that the ruling power can only be either capital or the proletariat which overthrows it. Other forces there are none in the economics of this society." (Volume XVI, page 217.)
It is not a matter here of modern England or Ger- many. On the basis of the lessons of any one of the great revolutions of the eighteenth or the nineteenth centuries, that is, of the bourgeois revolutions in the backward countries, Lenin comes to the conclusion that only the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or the dictator- ship of the proletariat is possible. There cannot be a "democratic", that is, an intermediate dictatorship.
His theoretical and historical excursion is summed up by Radek, as we see, in the rather poor aphorism that the bourgeois revolution must be distinguished from the socialist. Sinking down to this "level", Radek straight- way stretches out a finger to Kuusinen who, proceeding from his one lone resource, that is, "healthy common sense", considers it improbable that the slogan of the proletarian dictatorship can be raised in the advanced as well as in the backward countries. With the candor of a man who understands nothing, Kuusinen convicts Trotsky of having "learned nothing" since 1905. Follow- ing Kuusinen, Radek also becomes ironical: for Trotsky "the peculiarity of the Chinese and Indian revolutions MEANING,OF DEMOCRATIC DICTATORSHIP consists precisely of the fact that they are in no way distinguished from the western European revolutions and must therefore, in the first steps (?!) lead to the dictator- ship of the proletariat".
Radek forgets one trifle in this connection: The dic- tatorship of the proletariat was not realized in a western European country, but precisely in a backward eastern European country. Is it Trotsky's fault that the histori- cal process overlooked the "peculiarity" of Russia? Radek forgets further that the bourgeoisie, that is, more precisely expressed, finance capital, rules in all the capitalist coun- tries, with all the multiplicity of the degrees of develop- ment of the social structures, traditions, etc., that it, with all their "peculiarity". Here again, the lock of respect for this peculiarity proceeds from the historical develop- ment but in no case from Trotsky.
Then wherein lies the distinction between the advanced and the backward countries? The distinction is great, but it still remains within the confines of the domination of capitalist relationships. The forms and methods of the rule of the bourgeoisie differ greatly in different countries. At one pole, the domination bears a stark and absolute character: the United States. At the other pole, finance capital adapts itself to the outlived institutions of the Asiatic Middle Ages, by subjecting them to it and imposing its methods upon them: India. But the bourgeoisie rules in both places. From this it follows that the dictatorship of the proletariat also will have a highly varied character with regard to the social basis, the political forms, the immediate tasks and the tempo of the work in the various capitalist countries. But to lead the masses of the people to victory over the bloc of the imperialists, the feudal find the national bourgeoisie, can be done only by the revolu- tionary hegemony of the proletariat, which transforms itself after the seizure of power into the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Radek fancies that when he has divided humanity into PERMANENT REVOLUTION two groups: into one which has "matured" for the socialist dictatorship, and into another which has "matured" only for the democratic dictatorship, he has by this alone, in contrast to me, taken into consideration the imaginary "peculiarity" of the individual countries. In reality, he has turned out a lifeless blueprint which can only divert the Communists from a genuine study of the peculiarity of every country. Yet, the correct system of the tasks and actions of a reliable program of struggle for influence upon the masses of workers and peasants can arise only out of the most minute study of the real peculiarity of a given country, that is, of the living texture of the levels and stages of historical development.
The peculiarities of a country which has not accom- plished or completed its democratic revolution are of such great significance that they must be taken as the basis for the program of the proletarian vanguard. Only upon the basis of such a national program can a Communist party develop its real and successful struggle for the majority of the working class and the toilers in general against the bourgeoisie and their democratic agents.
The possibility of success in this struggle is of course determined to a/ large extent by the role of the proletariat in the economy of the country, that is, by the degree of its capitalist development. This, however, is by no means the only criterion. No less important is the question whether so far-reaching and burning a "problem of the people" exists in the country, in the solution of which' the majority of the nation is interested, and which demands for its solution the boldest revolutionary measures. To problems of this kind are counted the agrarian question and the national question, in their most varied combina- tions. With the accentuated agrarian problems and with the insupportability of the national subjugation in the colonial countries, the young and relatively not numerous proletariat can come to power, on the basis of a national democratic revolution, sooner than the proletariat of an MEANINQ OF DEMOCRATIC DICTATORSHIP advanced country on the basis of a purely socialist revo- lution. It would seem that after the October it would not be necessary to prove this any more. But through the years of ideological reaction and through the theoretical depravity of the epigones, the elementary conceptions of the revolution have become so rank, so putrid and so...Kuusinified, that one is compelled each time to begin all over again.
Does it follow from what has been said that all the countries of the world, in one way or another, are already to-day ripe for the socialist revolution? No, this is a false, a dead, scholastic, Stalinist-Bucharinist way of putting the question. World economy in its entirety is indubitably ripe for socialism. But this does not mean that every country in- dividually is ripe. Then what is to happen with the dictator- ship of the proletariat in the various backward countries, in China, India, etc,? To this we answer: History is not made to order. A country can become "ripe" for the dic- tatorship of the proletariat not only before it is ripe for the independent construction of socialism, v but even before it is ripe for far-reaching socialization measures. One must not proceed from a preconceived harmony of social evolution. The law of uneven development still lives, despite the tender theoretical embraces of Stalin. The force of this law operates not only in the relations of countries to each other, but also in the mutual relationships of the various processes within a country. A reconciliation of the uneven processes of economics and politics can be attained only on a world scale. Especially does this mean that the ques- tion of the dictatorship of the proletariat in China cannot be considered exclusively within the limits of Chinese eco- nomics a"nd Chinese politics.
Here we run right up against the two mutually ex- clusive standpoints: the international revolutionary theory of the permanent revolution and the national reformist theory of socialism in one country. Not only backward China, but in general, no country in the PERMANENT REVOLUTION world can build up socialism within its own national limits: the highly developed productive forces, which have grown out beyond the national boundaries, resist this just as do the forces insufficiently developed for nationalization. The dictatorship of the proletariat in England, for example, would encounter difficulties and contradictions, different in character, it is true, but not slighter ones than those that will offer opposition to the dictatorship of the proletariat in China. To surmount these contradictions is possible in both cases only by way of the international revolution. This standpoint leaves no room for the question of the "maturity" or "immaturity" of China for the socialist transformation. What remains indisputable here is that the backwardness of China makes the tasks of the prole- tarian dictatorship extremely difficult. But we repeat: history is not made to order, and nobody has placed the Chinese proletariat before a choice.
Does this at least mean that every country, including the most backward colonial country, is ripe, if not for socialism, then for the dictatorship of the proletariat? No, this is not what it means. Then what is to happen with the democratic revolution in general and in the colonies in particular? Where is it written I answer the question with another question that every colonial country is ripe for the immediate and thoroughgoing solution of its na- tional democratic problems? The question must be approached from the other end. Under the conditions of the imperialist age, the national democratic revolution can be carried through to a victorious end only when the social and political relationships of the country are mature for putting the proletariat in power as the leader of the masses of the people. 'And if this is not yet the case? Then the struggle for national liberation will produce only very partial results, results directed against the toiling masses. In 1905, the proletariat of Russia did not prove to be strong enough to unite the peasant masses around it and to conquer power. For this reason, the revolution remained standing half way MEANING OF DEMOCEATIC DICTATORSHIP along the road, and sank deeper and deeper. In China., where, in spite of the exceptional favorable situation, the leadership of the Communist International prevented the Chinese proletariat from fighting for power, the national problems found a miserable, vacillating, shabby solution in the regime of the Kuo Min Tang.
When and under what conditions a colonial country becomes ripe for the real revolutionary solution of its agra- rian and its national problems, cannot be foretold. But in any case, we can assert today with full certainty that not only China, but also India, will attain genuine popular democracy, only through the dictatorship of the proletariat. On that road, many stages, steps and phases can still arise. Under the pressure of the masses of the people, the bour- geoisise will still take various steps to the Left, in order then to turn all the more mercilessly against the people. Periods of dual power are possible and probable. But what there will not be, what there cannot be, is a genuine democratic dictatorship that is not the dictatorship of the proletariat. An "independent" democratic dictator- ship can only be of the type of the Kuo Min Tang, that is, directed entirely against the workers and the peasants. We must understand this at the outset and teach it to the masses, without hiding the class realities behind abstract formulae.
Stalin and Bucharin preached that, thanks to the yoke of imperialism, the bourgeoisie could carry out the national revolution in China. The attempt was made. With what results? The proletariat was put to the sword. Then it was said: the democratic dictatorship is next. The petty bourgeois dictatorship proved to be a masked dictatorship of capital. By accident? No. "The peasant goes either with the worker or with the bourgeois. " In the first case, the dictatorship of the proletariat arises, in the other, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. It would seem that the Chinese lesson is clear enough, even if studied from afar. "No," we are answered, "that was only an 10 PERMANENT REVOLUTION abortive attempt, we want to begin everything all over again and this time set up the 'genuine' democratic dictatorship." "In what way?" "On the social basis of the collaboration of the proletariat and the peasantry." It is Radek who presents us with this latest discovery. But, if you will permit, the Kuo Min Tang arose on that very same basis: workers and peasants "together" hauled the chestnuts out of the fire for the bourgeoisie. Tell us what the political mechanics of this collaboration will look like. How do you want to replace the Kuo Min Tang? What parties will be in power? Name them at least approximately, hint at them! To this Radek answers (in 1928!) that only people who are all done for, who are incapable of understanding the complexity of Marxism, can be interested in the incidental technical question of which class will be the horse and which the rider. A Bolshevik must "divert" attention from the political superstructure in favour of the class basis. Come, you will have your little joke! There has been enough "diversion"! More than enough! In China, they diverted attention from the question of the party expression of the collaboration of the classes, they led the proletariat into the Kuo Min Tang, they were enraptured by the Kuo Min Tang to the point of self-oblivion, they furiously resisted the withdrawal from the Kuo Min Tang, they cringed from political ques- tion of struggle by the repetition of abstract formulae; and after the bourgeoisie had very concretely broken the skull of the proletariat, they recommend to us: Let us try all over again. And as a beginning, we once more want to "divert" attention from the question of the parties and the revolutionary power. No, These are very poor jokes. We will not allow ourselves to be pulled back again!
All these acrobatics, as we have perceived, are pre- sented in the interest of an alliance of the workers and peasants. Radek warns the Opposition against an underestimation of the peasantry and recalls the struggle of Lenin against the Mensheviks. If one considers all the MEANING OF DEMOCRATIC DICTATORSHIP things that are contrived with Lenin's quotations, it is often enough to make one sick. Yes, Lenin said more than once that the denial of the revolutionary role of the peasantry is characteristic of the Mensheviks. And that was right. But besides these quotations, there nevertheless did come the year 1917, in which the Mensheviks spent the eight months which separated the Ferbuary from the October revolution, in a firm bloc with the Social Revolutionists. In that period, however, the Social Revolutionists re- presented the overwhelming majority of the peasantry awakened by the revolution. Together with the S. R.s, the Mensheviks called themselves the revolutionary democracy and remonstrated with us that they were the very ones who based themselves upon the alliance of the workers with the peasants (soldiers). Accordingly, the Mensheviks, so to speak, expropriated the Bolshevik formula of the alliance of the workers and peasants after the February revolution. The Bolsheviks were accused by them of wanting to split the proletarian vanguard from the peasantry and thereby to destroy the revolution. In other words, the Mensheviks accused Lenin of ignoring, or at least, of underestimating the peasantry.
The criticism of Kamenev, Zinoviev and others against Lenin was only an echo of the criticism of the Mensheviks. The present criticism of Radek in turn is only a belated echo of the criticism of Kamenev.
The policy of the epigones in China, including the policy of Radek, is the continuation and the further development of the Menshevik masquerade of 1917, The fact that the Communist party remained in the Kuo Min Tang was defended not only by Stalin, but also by Radek, with the same reference to the necessity of the alliance of the workers and peasants. But when it was "accidentally" shown that the Kuo Min Tang was a bourgeois party, the attempt was repeated with the "Left" Kuo Min Tang. The results were the same. Thereupon, the abstraction of the democratic dictatorship, in distinction from the dictator- PERMANENT REVOLUTION ship of the proletariat, was elevated above this sorry reality which had not fulfilled the high hopes. A new repetition of what we already had. In 1917, we heard a hundred times from Tseretelli, Dan and the others: "We have the dic- tatorship of the revolutionary democracy, but you are driving towards the dictatorship of the proletariat, that is, towards destruction." In truth, people have short memo- ries. The "revolutionary democratic dictatorship" of Stalin and Radek is in no way distinguished from the "dictatorship of the revolutionary democracy" of Tseretelli and Dan. And in spite of that, this formula not only runs through all the resolutions of the Comintern, but it has also penetrated into its program. It is hard to conceive a more cunning masquerade and at the same time a more bitter revenge of Menshevism for the affronts which Bolshevism heaped upon it in 1917.
The revolutionists of the East, however, still have the right to demand a concrete answer to the question of the character of the "democratic dictatorship", based not upon old, a priori quotations, but upon facts and upon political experience. To the question: What is a "democratic dictatorship"? Stalin has repeatedly given the truly classic reply: For the East, for example, it is the same as "Lenin conceived it with regard to the 1905 revolution". This has become the official formula to a certain extent. It can be found in the books and resolutions devoted to China, India or Polynesia. Revolutionists are referred to Lenin 's "con- ceptions" concerning future events, which in the meantime have long ago become past events, and in addition, the hypothetical "conceptions" of Lenin are one-sidedly and crookedly interpreted, at all events, not in the way that Lenin himself construed them after the events.
"All right," says the Communist of the East, hanging his head, "we will try to conceive of it exactly as Lenin, according to your words, conceived of it before the revolu- tion. But won't you please tell us what this slogan looks Jike in actuality? How was it realized with you?"
MEANING OF DEMOCRATIC DICTATORSHIP "With us, it was realized as the Kerenskiad in the epoch of the dual power."
"Can we tell our workers that the s!6gan of the democratic dictatorship will be realized by us as a national Kerenskiad?"
"Come, come! Not at all! No worker will adopt such a slogan: the Kerenskiad is lackeydom before the bour- geoisie and a betrayal of the toilers."
"But how, then, must we say it to our workers?" the Communist of the East asks sadly.
"You must say," impatiently answers the sentinel Kuusinen, "that the democratic dictatorship is the one that Lenin conceived of with regard to the future demo- cratic revolution."
If the Communist of the East is not lacking in a certain thoughtfulness, he will seek to rejoin: "But didn't Lenin declare in 1918 that the democratic dictatorship first found its genuine and true realization in the October revolution through the setting up of the dic- tatorship of the proletariat? Would it not be better to orientate the party and the working class towards this perspective?"
"Under no circumstances. Do not even dare to think about it. Why, that is the per-r-r-manent r-r-r-evolution! That's Tr-r-r-otskyism! " After this harsh reprimand the Communist of the East turns paler than the snow on the highest peaks of the Himalayas and abandons any further craving for know- ledge. Let come what may!
And the consequences? We know them well: either contemptible grovelling before Chiang Kai-Shek, or heroic adventures.
CHAPTER EIGHT FROM MARXISM TO PACIFISM WHAT is perhaps most disquieting, symptomatically, is a passage in Radek's article which, as it were, stands apart from the central theme that interests us, but which is intimately bound up with this theme by the uni- formity of Radek's shift towards the present theoreticians of Centrism. It is a question of the somewhat disguised advances towards the theory of socialism in one country. One must dwell on this, for this "sideline" of Radek's errors can surpass all the other differences of opinion in its further development, and it may transpire that its quantity has in the end turned into quality.
It is a question of the dangers that threaten the revolu- tion from without. Radek writes that Lenin "...was conscious of the fact that with the degree of the economic development of Russia in 1905 this (the proletarian) dic- tatorship can maintain itself only if the western European proletariat comes to its aid". (My emphasis. L. T.)
One mistake after another, above all, a very crude violation of the historical perspective. In reality Lenin said and that more than once, that the democratic dictatorship (but not the proletarian) in Russia would be unable to maintain itself without the socialist revolution in Europe. This thought runs like a thread through all the articles and speeches of Lenin in the days of the Stockholm party con- vention in 1906 (polemic against Plechanov, questions of FROM MARXISM TO PACIFISM the nationalization of the land, dangers of the restoration, etc.). In that period, Lenin did not even raise the question of a proletarian dictatorship in Russia before the socialist revolution in western Europe. But it is not there that the most important thing lies for the moment. What is the meaning of "with the degree of the economic development of Russia in 1905"? And how do matters stand with the degree in 1917? It is on this difference in degree that the theory of socialism in one country is erected* The program of the Comintern has divided the whole globe into squares which are " adapted " to the independent construction of socialism and those which are "not adapted", and has thereby created the revolutionary strategy of a series of hopeless blind alleys. The difference in economic degree can undoubtedly be of decisive significance for the political power of the working class. In 1905, we could not raise ourselves to the dictatorship of the proletariat, just as for that matter, we were unable to rise to the democratic dic- tatorship. In 1917, we set up the dictatorship of the pro- letariat which embraced the democratic dictatorship. -But with the economic degree of development of 1917, as well as with the economic degree of 1905, the dictatorship can maintain itself and develop to socialism only when the western European proletariat comes opportunely to its assistance. It is obvious that this "opportuneness" cannot