The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It

This is Lenin’s important work on Bolshevik Party’s economic programme, Russia’s development path and its future. It was written on September 10-14, 1917. It was published at the end of October 1917 in pamphlet form by “Priboi Publishers”. The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 32 of the second revised edition of Complete Works of Lenin.

The February Revolution in 1917 had overthrown the Tsarist government, but it created a situation in which the provisional government and the Soviets. Faced with the worsening economic situation in Russia due to the World War I, the provisional government not only failed to take measures, but also formulated a series of reactionary policies representing the interests of their own class, which aggravated the “catastrophe” of the Russian people: war, famine, unemployment and financial bankruptcy. The provisional government did so in an attempt to destroy the Soviets. Menshevik and the Social Revolutionary Party, which had long dominated the Soviets, completely sided with the bourgeois provisional government in solving the problems facing Russia and embarked on the road of compromise and “alliance” with the bourgeoisie, which greatly misled the revolutionary masses. For this reason, Lenin wrote this book, exposed and criticized the reactionary stand of the Menshevik and the social revolutionaries. Through the analysis on how to get Russia out of the economic difficulties, he concluded that a proletarian revolution was necessary, and pointed out the fundamental solution to Russia’s “catastrophe”.

Lenin analyzed and argued that the serious social problems Russia faced at that time, such as famine and unemployment, were entirely caused by the reactionary policies of the provisional government and the support from Menshevik and the Social Revolutionary Party. After the February Revolution, the democratic republic government, which replaced the tsarist autocracy, represented the interests of the bourgeoisie and replaced the monarchy with democratic republic management. This by no means changed the economic essence of the capitalist exploitation system.

Lenin clearly put forward that the main approach to overcome the war-caused economic difficulties, to end the disaster and to overcome famine was state supervision, monitor, distribution and regulation. The specific measures were: nationalize both banks and syndicates; stop protecting the privileges of a small group of people and their trade secrets of making huge profits from military orders; and require large enterprises and the rich to hand in complete financial statements that are subject to review and supervision; learn from Germany and force enterprises to unite or form syndicates. In addition to the bread rationing system, all residents should join consumer cooperatives to fully supervise consumption. Lenin clearly pointed out the essence of supervision: the whole issue of supervision lies in who supervises whom. The key to implementing supervision was that the proletariat overthrows the bourgeois government through revolution, take the state power, and resolutely implements the supervision of landlords and capitalists by workers and peasants. This was the way out for the proletarian revolution to solve Russia’s “catastrophe”.

Lenin deeply demonstrated the possibility of Russia taking the socialist road. He refuted the views of the social revolutionary party, Menshevik, Plekhanov and others that socialism was a distant, unknown and uncertain future. He pointed out that even if the supervision of economic activities did not change the capitalist relations of production, it was a step for capitalism to develop to state monopoly capitalism and then to socialism. The war accelerated the transition from monopoly capitalism to state monopoly capitalism, thus making the world close to socialism extraordinarily quickly. The imperialist war was the eve of the socialist revolution. This was not only because the disasters brought by the war led to the uprising of the proletariat, but also because state monopoly capitalism represents the most sufficient material preparation for socialism. Capitalism was the former stage of socialism or previous step on the historical ladder. There was no intermediate level between capitalism and the level called “socialism”. In Russia, with a republic system and democracy, monopoly capitalism had transformed into state monopoly capitalism. We could not march forward without choosing the socialist road. There was no middle way here.

This article has helped the proletariat, especially the peasants, to recognize the essence of the serious situation facing Russia. It has educated and inspired them, and directly facilitated the October Revolution.