Theory of the Transformation From Democratic Revolution to Socialist Revolution

The important thought of the interrelationship between the bourgeois democratic revolution and the proletarian socialist revolution in relatively backward countries in the era of imperialism put forward by Lenin.

Before the 20th century, after the victory of the bourgeois revolution, a capitalist society with bourgeois dictatorship was established. According to this historical experience, during the Russian Revolution of 1905, the Mensheviks argued that after the victory of the Russian bourgeoisie, capitalist rule should also be established, the proletarian revolution can only be carried out when the proletariat will account for the majority of the population. Trotsky confused the boundary between the democratic revolution and the socialist revolution, put forward the slogan of “No Tsar, but a workers’ government”, trying to skip the stage of democratic revolution and directly realize the socialist revolution. In the struggle against these erroneous ideas, Lenin combined Marx’s theory of continuous revolution with the theory of stages of revolutionary development, and put forward the theory of transforming democratic revolution into socialist revolution.

In his work “What the ‘Friends of the People’ Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats”, Lenin divided the Russian revolution into two stages: democratic revolution and socialist revolution. The democratic revolution opposes autocratic system and strives for political freedom, while the socialist revolution opposes the bourgeoisie and realizes socialism. The democratic revolution had to “always maintain” the “inseparable link between the tasks of socialism and the tasks of the democratic revolution” and clear the way for the socialist revolution. After the outbreak of the revolution in 1905, Lenin further developed the idea of changing from democratic revolution to socialist revolution in his works such as Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, forming a more complete theory.

Lenin argued that the bourgeois democratic revolution and the socialist revolution were two links in the complete chain of the Russian revolution, and since their tasks, nature, dynamics and objects were different, the two revolutions were both distinct and linked, and any disparagement of the proletariat’s participation in the democratic revolution and its leading role in the revolution was absurd and reactionary. The Social-Democrats have always maintained that the socialist task is inseparably linked to the democratic task, and that this link lies in the fact that the democratic revolution can expand the foundations and create the conditions for the socialist revolution and be transformed into a socialist revolution. The more fully, firmly and thoroughly the bourgeois democratic revolution is carried out, the more guaranteed the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie in order to strive for socialism, and the closer the task of socialist reform will be. After the victory of the democratic revolution, either the bourgeoisie takes away all the fruits of the victory of the workers and the peasants, or the proletariat and the peasantry open up their own way forward and make an immediate transition from the democratic revolution to the socialist revolution in accordance with our strength. Lenin pointed out that we advocate continuous revolution, and we will never give up halfway. In order to realize the transformation from democratic revolution to socialist revolution, we must reallocate our forces. The proletariat should carry out the democratic revolution to the end, which means uniting the peasants with their own side, so as to smash the resistance of the autocratic system and paralyze the instability of the bourgeoisie. The proletariat should realize the socialist revolution, which means uniting the semi proletarian masses among the residents with their own side, so as to destroy the bourgeois resistance with force and paralyze the instability of the peasants and the petty bourgeoisie. Lenin stressed that the proletariat must master the leadership of the democratic revolution, realize the Revolutionary Alliance between the proletariat and the peasants, and establish the democratic dictatorship of workers and peasants. Only in this way can we make full use of the achievements of the democratic revolution and transform it into a socialist revolution as soon as possible and smoothly.

The Russian Revolution in February 1917 overthrew the Czar’s rule, there appeared a peculiar situation in which the Soviet regime and the bourgeois provisional government coexisted. On April 4, 1917, Lenin made a report “The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution” at the Bolshevik Party’s representatives meeting (i.e., the famous “April Theses”).

Lenin pointed out that the first stage of the Russian revolution has been completed, and the current situation in Russia is characterized by a transition from the first stage of the revolution to the second stage of the revolution. In the first stage, due to the lack of consciousness and organization of the proletariat, the regime fell into the hands of the bourgeoisie. In the second stage, political power should be transferred to the proletariat and the poor peasants. The strategy of Bolsheviks’ struggle for the socialist revolution is: to give no support to the interim government and to expose its lies completely; it is necessary to publicize the necessity of returning all political power to the engineers and soldiers to represent the Soviet, and criticizing the erroneous words and deeds of the engineers representing the Socialist Revolutionary Party and the Mensheviks in the Soviet Union, so that more and more proletarians and poor peasants realized the ugly faces of these people from practical experience and gradually turned to the Bolsheviks. At that time, Lenin planned to end the coexistence of the two regimes in the way of peaceful development, with engineers and soldiers taking charge of the Soviet regime alone, and then transferring the regime to the Bolsheviks through the free struggle among various factions within the Soviet Union. Later, due to the change of the situation, the armed uprising took the place of peaceful development. Lenin clearly put forward in the “April Theses” that the engineers represented the Soviet Union and rebuilt the Paris Commune type country, it is the most appropriate form of Russian proletarian dictatorship that engineers, soldiers and peasants represent the Soviet Republic.

It also stipulated the confiscation of landlords’ land and nationalization of all the land, the merging of all the banks under state ownership and into a national bank, which would be supervised by workers on behalf of the state, as well as the specific economic measures for the transition to socialism, such as the supervision of social production and product distribution.

Lenin’s theory of passage from bourgeois democratic revolution to socialist revolution enriched and developed Marxism, and the new democracy theory of Mao Zedong has further developed this theory.