The Peaceful Revolution
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The people must not only conduct revolutionary propaganda. The people must move towards a revolution.
To move towards a revolution does not necessarily mean to fix a date for an insurrection and to prepare for that day. You never can fix a day and an hour for a revolution. The people have never made a revolution by command.
What can be done is, in view of the fatally impending catastrophe, to choose the most appropriate positions, to arm and inspire the masses with a revolutionary slogan, to lead simultaneously all the reserves into the field of battle, to make them practice in the art of fighting, to keep them ready under arms,—and to send an alarm all over the lines when the time has arrived.
Would that mean a series of exercises. only, and not a decisive combat with the enemy forces? Would that be mere manoeuvers, and not a street revolution?
Yes, that would be mere manoeuvers. There is a difference, however, between revolutionary and military manoeuvers. Our preparations can turn, at any time and independent of our will, into a real battle which would decide the long drawn revolutionary war. Not only can it be so, it must be. This is vouched for by the acuteness of the present political situation which holds in its depths a tremendous amount of revolutionary explosives.
At what time mere manoeuvers would turn into a real battle, depends upon the volume and the revolutionary compactness of the masses, upon the atmosphere of popular sympathy which surrounds them and upon the attitude of the troops which the government moves against the people.
Those three elements of success must determine our work of preparation. A revolutionary public exists. We ought to be able to call them into the streets, at a given time, all over the country; we ought to be able to unite them by a general slogan.
All classes and groups of the people are permeated with hatred towards absolutism, and that means with sympathy for the struggle for freedom. We ought to be able to concentrate this sympathy as a revolutionary power which alone can be the vanguard of the people in their fight to save the future. We ought to do all at our command to make the army detach itself from absolutism at the time of a decisiveness.
Let us first survey the last two conditions, which determine the course and the outcome of the campaign.
We have just gone through a period of "political renewal" opened under the blare of trumpets. The coming days will reap the fruit of stirred popular hopes and unfulfilled government’s pledges. Political interest has lately taken more definite shape; dissatisfaction has grown deeper and is founded on a more outspoken basis. Popular thinking, yesterday utterly primitive, now takes to the work of political analysis.
The pent up feelings are seeking an outlet. Thought strives to turn into action. The mainstream media, however, while feeding popular unrest, tends to divert its current into a small channel; it spreads superstitious reverence for "public opinion,” helpless, unorganized "public opinion,” which does not discharge itself into action. It upholds the illusion of legality; it centers all the attention and all the hopes of the embittered groups around the current campaign, thus systematically preparing a great debacle for the popular movement. Acute dissatisfaction, finding no outlet, discouraged by the inevitable failure of the campaign which has no traditions of revolutionary struggle in the past and no clear prospects in the future, must necessarily manifest itself in an outbreak of desperate terrorism, leaving radical intellectuals in the role of helpless, passive, though sympathetic onlookers, leaving liberals to choke in a fit of platonic enthusiasm while lending doubtful assistance.
This ought not to take place. We ought to take hold of the current of popular excitement; we ought to turn the attention of numerous dissatisfied social groups to one colossal undertaking headed by the people - a National Revolution.
We ought to do all in our power to draw the attention and gain the sympathy of the poor. A political strike, as a single combat of the middle class with the police and the army, the remaining population being hostile or even indifferent, is doomed to failure. The indifference of the population would tell primarily on the morale of the people itself, and then on the attitude of the soldiers. Under such conditions, the stand of the administration must necessarily be more determined.
A political strike of the people ought to turn into a political demonstration of the population, this is the first prerequisite of success.
The second important prerequisite is the mood of the army. A dissatisfaction among the soldiers, a vague sympathy for the "revoluters," is an established fact. Only part of this sympathy may rightly be attributed to our direct use of propaganda among the soldiers. The major part is done by the practical clashes between army units and protesting masses. An overwhelming majority of the soldiers are loathe to serve as executioners; this is unanimously admitted by all correspondents describing the battles of the army with unarmed people. The average soldier aims above the heads of the crowd. It would be unnatural if the reverse were the case. We have gone through a few years of war. It is hardly possible to measure the influence of the past year on the minds of the army. The influence, however, must be enormous. War draws not only the attention of the people, it arouses also the professional interest of the army.
We ought to make use of this situation. We ought to explain to the soldiers the meaning of the action which is being prepared. We ought to make profuse use of the slogan which is bound to unite the army with the revolutionary people, Away with the War! We ought to create a situation where the officers would not be able to trust their soldiers at the crucial moment. This would reflect on the attitude of the officers themselves.
The main factor, however, remain the revolutionary public. During war the most advanced elements of the masses, the intellectuals, have not stepped openly to the front with that degree of determination which was required by the critical historic moment.
The war has fallen upon our public life with all its colossal weight. The dreadful monster, breathing blood and fire, loomed up on the political horizon, shutting out everything, sinking its steel clutches into the body of the people, inflicting wound upon wound, causing mortal pain, which for a moment makes it even impossible to ask for the causes of the pain. The war, as every great disaster, accompanied by crisis, unemployment, mobilization, hunger and death, stunned the people, caused despair, but not protest. This is, however, only a beginning. Raw masses of the people, silent social strata, which yesterday had no connection with the revolutionary elements, were knocked by sheer mechanical power of facts to face the central event of the present day- the war. They were horrified, they could not catch their breaths. The revolutionary elements, who prior to the war had been ignored by the passive masses, were affected by the atmosphere of despair and concentrated horror. The voice of determined protest could hardly be raised in the midst of elemental .suffering. The revolutionary leaders were powerless to oppose the "call of the primitive.”
The year of war, however, passed not without results. Masses, yesterday primitive, today are confronted with the most tremendous events. They must seek to understand them. The very duration of the war has produced a desire for reasoning, for questioning as to the meaning of it all. Thus the war, while hampering for a period of time the revolutionary initiative of thousands, has awakened to life the political thought of millions.
The atmosphere our streets are breathing now is no longer an atmosphere of blank despair, it is an atmosphere of concentrated indignation which seeks for means and ways for revolutionary action. Each expedient action of the vanguard of our working masses would now carry away with it not only all our revolutionary reserves, but also thousands and hundreds of thousands of revolutionary recruits. This mobilization, unlike the mobilization of the government, would be carried out in the presence of general sympathy and active assistance of an overwhelming majority of the population.
In the presence of strong sympathies of the masses, in the presence of active assistance on the part of the democratic elements of the people; facing a government commonly hated, unsuccessful both in big and in small undertakings, a government defeated on the seas, defeated in the fields of battle, despised, discouraged, with no faith in the coming day, a government vainly struggling, currying favor, provoking and retreating, lying and suffering exposure, insolent and frightened; facing an army whose morale has been shattered by the entire course of the war, whose valor, energy, enthusiasm and heroism have met an insurmountable wall in the form of administrative anarchy, an army which has lost faith in the unshakable security of the regime it is called to serve, such will be the conditions under which the revolutionary public will walk out into the streets. It seems to us that no better conditions could have been created by history. History has done everything it was allowed by elemental wisdom. The people of the country have to do the rest.
A tremendous amount of revolutionary energy has been accumulated. It should not vanish with no avail, it should not be dissipated in scattered engagements and clashes, with no coherence and no definite plan. All efforts ought to be made to concentrate the bitterness, the anger, the protest, the rage, the hatred of the masses, to give those emotions a common language, a common goal, to unite, to solidify all the particles of the masses, to make them feel and understand that they are not isolated, that simultaneously, with the same slogan on the banner, with the same goal in mind, innumerable particles are rising everywhere. If this understanding is achieved, half of the revolution is done.
We have got to summon all revolutionary forces to simultaneous action. How can we do it?
First of all we ought to remember that the main scene of revolutionary events is bound to be the city. Nobody is likely to deny this. It is evident, further, that street demonstrations can turn into a popular revolution only when they are a manifestation of masses, i.e., when they embrace, in the first place, the working class. To make the workers quit their machines and stands; to make them walk out of the factories into the street; to lead them to the neighboring plants; to proclaim there a cessation of work; to make new masses walk out into the street; to go thus from factory to factory, from plant to plant, incessantly growing in numbers, sweeping police barriers, absorbing new masses that happened to come across, crowding the streets, taking possession of buildings suitable for popular meetings, fortifying those buildings, holding continuous revolutionary meetings with audiences coming and going, bringing order into the movements of the masses, arousing their spirit, explaining to them the aim and the meaning of what is going on; to turn, finally, the entire city into one revolutionary camp, this is, broadly speaking, the plan of action.
The starting point ought to be the factories and plants of the common people. That means that street manifestations of a serious character, fraught with decisive events, ought to begin with political strikes of the masses.
It is easier to fix a date for a strike, than for a demonstration of the people, just as it is easier to move masses ready for action than to organize new masses.
A political strike, however, not a local, but a general political strike all over North America, ought to have a general political slogan. This slogan is: to stop the war and to call a National Constituent Assembly.
This demand ought to become nation-wide, and herein lies the task for our propaganda preceding the general strike. We ought to use all possible occasions to make the idea of a National Constituent Assembly popular among the people. Without losing one moment, we ought to put into operation all the technical means and all the powers of propaganda at our disposal. Proclamations and speeches, educational circles and mass-meetings ought to carry broadcast, to propound and to explain the demands of a Constituent Assembly. There ought to be not one man in a city who should not know that his demand is: a new National Constituency.
The people ought to be called to assemble on the day of the political strike and to pass resolutions demanding the calling of a new Constituent Assembly. People living in suburbs ought to be called into the cities to participate in the street movements of the masses gathered under the banner of the new Constituent Assembly. All societies and organizations, professional and learned bodies, organs of self-government and organs of the opposition press ought to be notified in advance by the workers that they are preparing for a nation-wide political strike, fixed for a certain date, to bring about the calling of a new Constituent Assembly. Workers ought to demand from all societies and corporations that, on the day appointed for the mass-manifestation, they should join in these demands. The workingmen ought to demand from the opposition press that it should popularize their slogan and that on the eve of the demonstration it should print an appeal to the population to join the manifestation under the banner of the new Constituency.
We must carry on the most intensive propaganda in the army in order that on the day of the strike, each soldier sent to curb the "rebels" should know that he is facing the common people, who are striking to demand a National Constituent Assembly.
--------------------------------
The sheer genius of Leon Trotsky
We need your help!
Please pass this on to your other forums and posting sites
--------------------------------
The people must not only conduct revolutionary propaganda. The people must move towards a revolution.
To move towards a revolution does not necessarily mean to fix a date for an insurrection and to prepare for that day. You never can fix a day and an hour for a revolution. The people have never made a revolution by command.
What can be done is, in view of the fatally impending catastrophe, to choose the most appropriate positions, to arm and inspire the masses with a revolutionary slogan, to lead simultaneously all the reserves into the field of battle, to make them practice in the art of fighting, to keep them ready under arms,—and to send an alarm all over the lines when the time has arrived.
Would that mean a series of exercises. only, and not a decisive combat with the enemy forces? Would that be mere manoeuvers, and not a street revolution?
Yes, that would be mere manoeuvers. There is a difference, however, between revolutionary and military manoeuvers. Our preparations can turn, at any time and independent of our will, into a real battle which would decide the long drawn revolutionary war. Not only can it be so, it must be. This is vouched for by the acuteness of the present political situation which holds in its depths a tremendous amount of revolutionary explosives.
At what time mere manoeuvers would turn into a real battle, depends upon the volume and the revolutionary compactness of the masses, upon the atmosphere of popular sympathy which surrounds them and upon the attitude of the troops which the government moves against the people.
Those three elements of success must determine our work of preparation. A revolutionary public exists. We ought to be able to call them into the streets, at a given time, all over the country; we ought to be able to unite them by a general slogan.
All classes and groups of the people are permeated with hatred towards absolutism, and that means with sympathy for the struggle for freedom. We ought to be able to concentrate this sympathy as a revolutionary power which alone can be the vanguard of the people in their fight to save the future. We ought to do all at our command to make the army detach itself from absolutism at the time of a decisiveness.
Let us first survey the last two conditions, which determine the course and the outcome of the campaign.
We have just gone through a period of "political renewal" opened under the blare of trumpets. The coming days will reap the fruit of stirred popular hopes and unfulfilled government’s pledges. Political interest has lately taken more definite shape; dissatisfaction has grown deeper and is founded on a more outspoken basis. Popular thinking, yesterday utterly primitive, now takes to the work of political analysis.
The pent up feelings are seeking an outlet. Thought strives to turn into action. The mainstream media, however, while feeding popular unrest, tends to divert its current into a small channel; it spreads superstitious reverence for "public opinion,” helpless, unorganized "public opinion,” which does not discharge itself into action. It upholds the illusion of legality; it centers all the attention and all the hopes of the embittered groups around the current campaign, thus systematically preparing a great debacle for the popular movement. Acute dissatisfaction, finding no outlet, discouraged by the inevitable failure of the campaign which has no traditions of revolutionary struggle in the past and no clear prospects in the future, must necessarily manifest itself in an outbreak of desperate terrorism, leaving radical intellectuals in the role of helpless, passive, though sympathetic onlookers, leaving liberals to choke in a fit of platonic enthusiasm while lending doubtful assistance.
This ought not to take place. We ought to take hold of the current of popular excitement; we ought to turn the attention of numerous dissatisfied social groups to one colossal undertaking headed by the people - a National Revolution.
We ought to do all in our power to draw the attention and gain the sympathy of the poor. A political strike, as a single combat of the middle class with the police and the army, the remaining population being hostile or even indifferent, is doomed to failure. The indifference of the population would tell primarily on the morale of the people itself, and then on the attitude of the soldiers. Under such conditions, the stand of the administration must necessarily be more determined.
A political strike of the people ought to turn into a political demonstration of the population, this is the first prerequisite of success.
The second important prerequisite is the mood of the army. A dissatisfaction among the soldiers, a vague sympathy for the "revoluters," is an established fact. Only part of this sympathy may rightly be attributed to our direct use of propaganda among the soldiers. The major part is done by the practical clashes between army units and protesting masses. An overwhelming majority of the soldiers are loathe to serve as executioners; this is unanimously admitted by all correspondents describing the battles of the army with unarmed people. The average soldier aims above the heads of the crowd. It would be unnatural if the reverse were the case. We have gone through a few years of war. It is hardly possible to measure the influence of the past year on the minds of the army. The influence, however, must be enormous. War draws not only the attention of the people, it arouses also the professional interest of the army.
We ought to make use of this situation. We ought to explain to the soldiers the meaning of the action which is being prepared. We ought to make profuse use of the slogan which is bound to unite the army with the revolutionary people, Away with the War! We ought to create a situation where the officers would not be able to trust their soldiers at the crucial moment. This would reflect on the attitude of the officers themselves.
The main factor, however, remain the revolutionary public. During war the most advanced elements of the masses, the intellectuals, have not stepped openly to the front with that degree of determination which was required by the critical historic moment.
The war has fallen upon our public life with all its colossal weight. The dreadful monster, breathing blood and fire, loomed up on the political horizon, shutting out everything, sinking its steel clutches into the body of the people, inflicting wound upon wound, causing mortal pain, which for a moment makes it even impossible to ask for the causes of the pain. The war, as every great disaster, accompanied by crisis, unemployment, mobilization, hunger and death, stunned the people, caused despair, but not protest. This is, however, only a beginning. Raw masses of the people, silent social strata, which yesterday had no connection with the revolutionary elements, were knocked by sheer mechanical power of facts to face the central event of the present day- the war. They were horrified, they could not catch their breaths. The revolutionary elements, who prior to the war had been ignored by the passive masses, were affected by the atmosphere of despair and concentrated horror. The voice of determined protest could hardly be raised in the midst of elemental .suffering. The revolutionary leaders were powerless to oppose the "call of the primitive.”
The year of war, however, passed not without results. Masses, yesterday primitive, today are confronted with the most tremendous events. They must seek to understand them. The very duration of the war has produced a desire for reasoning, for questioning as to the meaning of it all. Thus the war, while hampering for a period of time the revolutionary initiative of thousands, has awakened to life the political thought of millions.
The atmosphere our streets are breathing now is no longer an atmosphere of blank despair, it is an atmosphere of concentrated indignation which seeks for means and ways for revolutionary action. Each expedient action of the vanguard of our working masses would now carry away with it not only all our revolutionary reserves, but also thousands and hundreds of thousands of revolutionary recruits. This mobilization, unlike the mobilization of the government, would be carried out in the presence of general sympathy and active assistance of an overwhelming majority of the population.
In the presence of strong sympathies of the masses, in the presence of active assistance on the part of the democratic elements of the people; facing a government commonly hated, unsuccessful both in big and in small undertakings, a government defeated on the seas, defeated in the fields of battle, despised, discouraged, with no faith in the coming day, a government vainly struggling, currying favor, provoking and retreating, lying and suffering exposure, insolent and frightened; facing an army whose morale has been shattered by the entire course of the war, whose valor, energy, enthusiasm and heroism have met an insurmountable wall in the form of administrative anarchy, an army which has lost faith in the unshakable security of the regime it is called to serve, such will be the conditions under which the revolutionary public will walk out into the streets. It seems to us that no better conditions could have been created by history. History has done everything it was allowed by elemental wisdom. The people of the country have to do the rest.
A tremendous amount of revolutionary energy has been accumulated. It should not vanish with no avail, it should not be dissipated in scattered engagements and clashes, with no coherence and no definite plan. All efforts ought to be made to concentrate the bitterness, the anger, the protest, the rage, the hatred of the masses, to give those emotions a common language, a common goal, to unite, to solidify all the particles of the masses, to make them feel and understand that they are not isolated, that simultaneously, with the same slogan on the banner, with the same goal in mind, innumerable particles are rising everywhere. If this understanding is achieved, half of the revolution is done.
We have got to summon all revolutionary forces to simultaneous action. How can we do it?
First of all we ought to remember that the main scene of revolutionary events is bound to be the city. Nobody is likely to deny this. It is evident, further, that street demonstrations can turn into a popular revolution only when they are a manifestation of masses, i.e., when they embrace, in the first place, the working class. To make the workers quit their machines and stands; to make them walk out of the factories into the street; to lead them to the neighboring plants; to proclaim there a cessation of work; to make new masses walk out into the street; to go thus from factory to factory, from plant to plant, incessantly growing in numbers, sweeping police barriers, absorbing new masses that happened to come across, crowding the streets, taking possession of buildings suitable for popular meetings, fortifying those buildings, holding continuous revolutionary meetings with audiences coming and going, bringing order into the movements of the masses, arousing their spirit, explaining to them the aim and the meaning of what is going on; to turn, finally, the entire city into one revolutionary camp, this is, broadly speaking, the plan of action.
The starting point ought to be the factories and plants of the common people. That means that street manifestations of a serious character, fraught with decisive events, ought to begin with political strikes of the masses.
It is easier to fix a date for a strike, than for a demonstration of the people, just as it is easier to move masses ready for action than to organize new masses.
A political strike, however, not a local, but a general political strike all over North America, ought to have a general political slogan. This slogan is: to stop the war and to call a National Constituent Assembly.
This demand ought to become nation-wide, and herein lies the task for our propaganda preceding the general strike. We ought to use all possible occasions to make the idea of a National Constituent Assembly popular among the people. Without losing one moment, we ought to put into operation all the technical means and all the powers of propaganda at our disposal. Proclamations and speeches, educational circles and mass-meetings ought to carry broadcast, to propound and to explain the demands of a Constituent Assembly. There ought to be not one man in a city who should not know that his demand is: a new National Constituency.
The people ought to be called to assemble on the day of the political strike and to pass resolutions demanding the calling of a new Constituent Assembly. People living in suburbs ought to be called into the cities to participate in the street movements of the masses gathered under the banner of the new Constituent Assembly. All societies and organizations, professional and learned bodies, organs of self-government and organs of the opposition press ought to be notified in advance by the workers that they are preparing for a nation-wide political strike, fixed for a certain date, to bring about the calling of a new Constituent Assembly. Workers ought to demand from all societies and corporations that, on the day appointed for the mass-manifestation, they should join in these demands. The workingmen ought to demand from the opposition press that it should popularize their slogan and that on the eve of the demonstration it should print an appeal to the population to join the manifestation under the banner of the new Constituency.
We must carry on the most intensive propaganda in the army in order that on the day of the strike, each soldier sent to curb the "rebels" should know that he is facing the common people, who are striking to demand a National Constituent Assembly.
--------------------------------
The sheer genius of Leon Trotsky
We need your help!
Please pass this on to your other forums and posting sites
