"It may be taken for granted that in the bloody conflicts that
are coming, as in the case of previous ones, the courage,
resolution, and sacrifice of the workers will be the chief
factor in the attainment of victory. As hitherto, so in this
struggle, the mass of the lower middle class will maintain an
attitude of delay, irresolution, and inactivity as long as
possible, in order that, as soon as victory is assured, to
arrogate it to themselves and call on the workers to remain
quiet, return to work, avoid so-called excesses, and to exclude
the proletariat from the fruits of victory. It is not in the
power of the workers to hinder the lower middle classes from
doing this, but it is within their power to render their success
over the armed proletariat very difficult, to dictate to them
such conditions that from the beginning the rule of the
middle-class democrats is doomed to failure, and its later
substitution by the rule of the proletariat is considerably
facilitated.
"The workers must, during the conflict and immediately
afterwards, as much as ever possible, oppose the compromises of
the middle class, and compel the democrats to execute their
present terrorist threats. They must aim at preventing the
subsiding of the revolutionary excitement immediately after the
victory. On the contrary, they must endeavour to maintain it as
long as possible.
"Far from opposing so-called excesses, and making examples of
hated individuals or public buildings to which hateful
remembrances are attached, by sacrificing them to the popular
rage, such examples must not only be tolerated, but their
direction must even be taken in hand. During the struggle and
after the struggle, the workers must seize every opportunity to
present their own demands side by side with those of the
middle-class democrats. The workers must demand guarantees as
soon as the middle-class democrats propose to take the
government in hand. If necessary, these guarantees must be
exacted, and the new rulers must be compelled to make every
possible promise and concession, which is the surest way to
compromise them. The workers must size up the conditions in a
cool and dispassionate fashion, and manifest open distrust of
the new Government, in order to quench, as much as possible, the
ardour for the new order of things and the elation which follows
every successful street fight. Against the new official
Government, they must set up a revolutionary workers'
government, either in the form of local committees, communal
councils, or workers' clubs or workers' committees, so that the
democratic middle-class government not only immediately loses
its support amongst the working classes, but from the
commencement finds itself supervised and threatened by a
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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