A Letter to American Workingmen, from the Socialist Soviet Republic of RussiaLenin, Vladimir Il'ich
Philosophy
A Letter to American Workingmen, from the Socialist Soviet Republic of Russia
Lenin, Vladimir Il'ich
Socialism; World War, 1914-1918 -- Economic aspects
Mistakes are being made in their revolutionary activity by the Soviets
which were first created in 1905 by the gigantic upheaval of the
masses. The Workmen's and Peasant's Soviets are a new type of state, a
new highest form of Democracy, a particular form of the dictatorship
of the proletariat, a mode of conducting the business of the state
without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie. For the first time
democracy is placed at the service of the masses, of the workers, and
ceases to be a democracy for the rich, as it is, in the last analysis,
in all capitalist, yes, in all democratic republics. For the first time
the masses of the people, in a nation of hundreds of millions, are
fulfilling the task of realizing the dictatorship of the proletariat
and the semi-proletariat, without which socialism is not to be thought
of.
Let incurable pedants, crammed full of bourgeois democratic and
parliamentary prejudices, shake their heads gravely over our Soviets,
let them deplore the fact that we have no direct elections. These
people have forgotten nothing, have learned nothing in the great
upheaval of 1914-1918. The combination of the dictatorship of the
proletariat with the new democracy of the proletariat, of civil war
with the widest application of the masses to political problems, such
a combination cannot be achieved in a day, cannot be forced into the
battered forms of formal parliamentary democratism. In the Soviet
Republic there arises before us a new world, the world of Socialism.
Such a world cannot be materialized as if by magic, complete in every
detail, as Minerva sprang from Jupiter's head.
While the old bourgeoisie democratic constitutions, for instance,
proclaimed formal equality and the right of free assemblage, the
constitution of the Soviet Republic repudiates the hypocrisy of a
formal equality of all human beings. When the bourgeoisie republicans
overturned feudal thrones, they did not recognize the rules of formal
equality of monarchists. Since we here are concerned with the task of
overthrowing the bourgeoisie, only fools or traitors will insist on the
formal equality of the bourgeoisie. The right of free assemblage is not
worth an iota to the workman and to the peasant when all better meeting
places are in the hands of the bourgeoisie. Our Soviets have taken over
all usable buildings in the cities and towns out of the hands of the
rich and have placed them at the disposal of the workmen and peasants
for meeting and organization purposes. That is how our right of
assemblage looks--for the workers. That is the meaning and content of
our Soviet, of our socialist constitution.
And for this reason we are all firmly convinced that the Soviet
Republic, whatever misfortune may still lie in store for it, is
unconquerable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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