The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution

This is a pamphlet which proposed and discussed the action programme of the Russia’s proletarian revolution, as well as further elaborated on the thoughts in the “April Theses”. It was written on April 23, 1917; was published as a pamphlet by “Priboi Publishers” in September 1917. The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 29 of the second revised edition of Complete Works of Lenin.

When published, “April Theses” were opposed by all bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties. The Bolshevik Party also had differences on the “April Theses”. They argued Russia was still in the stage of bourgeois democratic revolution and needed to cooperate with the provisional bourgeois government. In order to lead the Party in grasping the policy of socialist revolution which was proposed in “April Theses” at the Seventh National Congress of the Party, Lenin wrote this article to further elaborate the line and strategy of transition from bourgeois democratic revolution to socialist revolution.

First of all, Lenin clarified the basic characteristics of Russia in the new historical period after the February Revolution, and pointed out that the state power in Russia had passed to a new class, namely, the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois landlords. In this regard, Russia’s bourgeois democratic revolution was completed. The main feature of the Russian revolution was the coexistence of the bourgeois provisional government, which controlled all the organs of political power, and the Petrograd engineers, who represented the Soviet, two regimes. This showed that the Russian revolution had gone beyond the scope of the ordinary bourgeois democratic revolution, but it had not yet reached the “pure” dictatorship of the proletariat and peasants and that the Russian revolution was entered in a transitional and unstable stage. Now in Russia the situation of dual power should be overcome, this dual power situation would not last for a long time. Therefore, Lenin demanded the Bolshevik Party to educate the masses ideologically, explain and expose the reactionary nature of the provisional government to the masses, push the people to grasp the situation that the bourgeoisie cannot be trusted, and free the credulous and unconscious proletariat from the “general” petty-bourgeois revolutionary patriotism.

Lenin explained the necessity and importance of revolutionary transition in order to end the imperialist war. He pointed out that the revolutionary patriotism was the sworn enemy that hindered Russian revolution’s progress and victory. Any concession to the revolutionary patriotism was a betrayal of socialism and a complete betrayal of internationalism. Objectively, War could only be dealt with through revolutionary means. The February Revolution was the beginning of turning the imperialist war into a domestic war and took the first step to break through the front of capital interests and stop the war. However, only by taking the second step, that is, transferring the state power to the hands of the proletariat through the proletarian revolution, could we guarantee to stop the war and bring lasting peace to mankind.

Lenin demonstrated that the Soviet was a new form and new type of state, namely, the type of state created by the Paris Commune, which was different from and superior than the parliamentary democratic republic of the bourgeois state. This was because the Soviet assemblies which represented the workers and soldiers would smash and eradicate the old oppression tools of the state—the standing army, the police and the old bureaucratic machine, thus allowing the masses to directly participate from bottom up in the political life of the country.

Lenin further elaborated a series of economic measures for Russia’s transition to socialism. The measures included implementing land reform, confiscating the landlords’ land, nationalizing all the land and handing it over to local peasants which will till them as the operators and managers of the nationalized land. The confiscated landlord farms would be converted into large-scale demonstration farms managed and owned by the state, which would be supervised by the employed peasants on behalf of the Soviet. The measures also included nationalization of all banks and capitalist trusts or syndicates or at least immediate supervision by workers on behalf of the Soviet, etc. These measures did not directly “implement” socialism but were necessary steps towards socialism and could be fully realized economically.

Lenin clarified the situation of socialist international and pointed out that during the two odd years of the war the international socialist and working-class movement in every country there had emerged three trends: (1) Socialism in word and chauvinists in deed. Most of the official leaders of Social-Democratic parties in various countries were from this faction. (2) The “Centrists”. (3) The true internationalists. Based on the distortion and betrayal of Marxism and socialism by most leaders of the Social-Democratic Party of the Second International, Lenin called for an immediate break with the Second International and the establishment of a revolutionary new international, namely the Third International. He proposed to change the name of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (Bolshevik). They should call themselves the Communist Party, like Marx and Engels. It is scientifically correct and politically helpful to inspire proletarian consciousness. He stressed that in order to end the imperialist war through the proletarian revolution, one must take off the “used” and “lovely” dirty shirts and put on clean ones.