On Slogans

Lenin’s article on commanding changes in the revolutionary line and slogans of the Russian proletarian socialist movement, written in mid-July 1917, which was published as a single booklet pamphlet by the Kronstadt Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (B) in 1917.The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 32 of the second revised edition of Complete Works of Lenin.

The February Revolution in 1917 overthrew the autocratic rule of the Tsarist government. But there occurred a situation wherein the dual powers as the Provisional Government and the Soviets coexisted in Russia. Lenin published the famous work “April Theses” and put forward the slogan of “All Power Must Be Transferred to the Soviets”. The general idea of the Party was to seize political power peacefully. However, in July 1917, the provisional bourgeois government suppressed the demonstration of 100,000 workers and soldiers in Petrograd which led to the July bloodshed in Russian history, which showed that the peaceful road was no longer possible and that a new Bolshevik tactic should be established. To this end, Lenin wrote this article, summarizing the characteristics and lessons of the class struggles since the February Revolution, analyzed the new situation after the July Incident, and clarified the new tactics and approaches for the proletarian revolution. According to Lenin, any political slogan should be based on the characteristics of a certain political situation, and the slogan “All Power Must Be Transferred to the Soviets” was only correct before the July Incident. But, in the current situation, things have changed, the petty-bourgeois parties, the Socialist Revolutionary Party and the Menshevik Party, have compromised with the counter-revolutionary Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets) and had in effect fallen into accomplices in the bourgeois counter-revolutionary massacre. The political power had completely fallen into the hands of the bourgeois provisional government. The present Soviets collapsed and went bankrupt because the leaders of its Social Revolutionary Party and Menshevik Party completely betrayed the revolutionary cause.

The slogan of “All Power to the Soviets” may be misinterpreted as “only” calling for the transfer of the political power to the present Soviets, such a slogan will deceive the people. This was the most dangerous deception and mistake in revolution. Therefore, this slogan obviously did not fit the current situation and must be abolished. It should be replaced by a slogan of resolute struggle against the counter-revolutionary forces who had usurped the political power.

Lenin pointed out that withdrawing the slogan of “All Power to the Soviets” did not mean giving up the new form of state brought by the Soviet assemblies, which would certainly reappear in the new stage of revolution, but at the new stage of revolution they will not reemerge as an organ of compromise with the bourgeoisie, but as an organ of revolutionary struggle against the bourgeoisie. The fundamental question of the revolution is that of power. The experience of July 1917 events has shown that the only way out for the proletariat is to take sole independent control of state power, without which the revolution cannot be won. The only way to achieve true power now is to wage a determined struggle to overthrow the bourgeois regime of the provisional government and to take power firmly into proletariat’s own hands.

A non-peaceful and most painful socialist revolution has become inevitable. However, Lenin reminded the party that an uprising could not be launched immediately at the moment, that armed struggle could only be waged when a new revolutionary upsurge would re-emerge among the broad masses of people, and that it was now necessary to re-organize and build up forces and wait for the right time.

Lenin’s tactics and ideas in this article, such as forming an alliance between the proletariat and the poor peasants, and preparing for an armed uprising to seize power, have pointed out the right direction for the activities of the Bolshevik Party.