We are marching into battle—this is the meaning of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Gone is the time of naïve, utopian, fantastic, mechanical and intellectual socialism, when people imagined that it was sufficient to convince the majority, that it was sufficient to paint a beautiful picture of socialist society to persuade the majority to adopt socialism. Gone, too, is the time when it was possible to entertain oneself and others with these children’s fairy tales. Marxism, which recognises the necessity for the class struggle, asserts that mankind can reach the goal of socialism only through the dictatorship of the proletariat. The word dictatorship is a cruel, stern, bloody and painful one; it is not a word to play with. Socialists advance this slogan because they know that the exploiters will surrender only after a desperate and relentless struggle,and that they will try to cover up their own rule by means of all sorts of high sounding words. It is precisely after the bourgeoisie is overthrown that the class struggle assumes its acutest forms. And we have no use for those democrats and socialists who deceive themselves and deceive others by saying: “The bourgeoisie have been overthrown, the struggle is all over.” The struggle is not over, it has only just started, because, to this day, the bourgeoisie have not reconciled themselves to the idea that they have been overthrown. On the eve of the October Revolution they were very nice and polite, and Milyukov, Chernov and the Novaya Zhizn people said jestingly: “Now, please, Bolshevik gentlemen, form a Cabinet, take power yourselves for a few weeks, that would be a great help to us!” This is exactly what Chernov wrote on behalf of the Socialist Revolutionaries, what Milyukov wrote in Rech, and what the semi-Menshevik Novaya Zhizn wrote. They spoke in jest because they did not take matters seriously. But now they see that matters are serious, and the British, French and Swiss bourgeoisie, who thought that their “democratic republics” were armour which protected them, see and realise that matters have become serious, and now they are all arming. If only you could see what is going on in free Switzerland, how, literally, every bourgeois is arming, how they are forming a White Guard, because they know that it is now a matter of preserving the privileges which enable them to keep millions of people in a state of wage-slavery. The struggle has now assumed worldwide dimensions, and therefore, anybody who opposes us with such catchwords as “democracy”, and “freedom”, takes the side of the propertied classes, deceives the people, for he fails to understand that up to now freedom and democracy have meant freedom and democracy for the propertied classes and only crumbs from their table for the propertyless. - Lenin, DECEPTION OF THE PEOPLE WITH SLOGANS OF FREEDOM AND EQUALITY
Posted on: Sat, 24 Aug 2013 17:14:05 +0000
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