Our Revolution · Leon Trotsky
EUROPE AND THE REVOLUTION
In June, 1905, we wrote: "More than half a century passed since 1848. Half a century of unprecedented victories of capitalism all over the world. Half a century of "organic" mutual adaptation of the forces of the bourgeois and the forces of feudal reaction. Half a century in which the bourgeoisie has manifested its mad appetite for power and its readiness to fight for it madly! "As a self-taught mechanic, in his search for perpetual motion, meets ever new obstacles and piles mechanism over mechanism to overcome them, so the bourgeoisie has changed and reconstructed the apparatus of its supremacy avoiding 'supra-legal' conflicts with hostile powers. And as the self-taught mechanic finally clashes against the ultimate insurmountable obstacle,--the law of conservation of energy,--so the bourgeoisie had to clash against the ultimate implacable barrier,--class antagonism, fraught with inevitable conflict.
"Capitalism, forcing its economic system and social relations on each and every country, has turned the entire world into one economic and political organism. As the effect of the modern credit system, with the invisible bonds it draws between thousands of enterprises, with the amazing mobility it lends to capital, has been to eliminate local and partial crises, but to give unusual momentum to general economic convulsions, so the entire economic and political work of capitalism, with its world commerce, with its system of monstrous foreign debts, with its political groupings of states, which have drawn all reactionary forces into one world-wide co-partnership, has prevented local political crises, but it has prepared a basis for a social crisis of unheard of magnitude. Driving unhealthy processes inside, evading difficulties, staving off the deep problems of national and international politics, glossing over all contradictions, the bourgeoisie has postponed the climax, yet it has prepared a radical world-wide liquidation of its power. It has clung to all reactionary forces no matter what their origin. It has made the Sultan not the last of its friends. It has not tied itself on the Chinese ruler only because he had no power: it was more profitable to rob his possessions than to keep him in the office of a world gendarme and to pay him from the treasury of the bourgeoisie. Thus the bourgeoisie made the stability of its political system wholly dependent upon the stability of the pre-capitalistic pillars of reaction.
"This gives events an international character and opens a magnificent perspective; political emancipation, headed by the working class of Russia, will elevate its leader to a height unparalleled in history, it will give Russian proletariat colossal power and make it the initiator of world-wide liquidation of capitalism, to which the objective prerequisites have been created by history." It is futile to guess how the Russian revolution will find its way to old capitalistic Europe. This way may be a total surprise. To illustrate our thought rather than to predict events, we shall mention Poland as the possible connecting link between the revolutionary East and the revolutionary West. [The author pictures the consequences of a revolution in Poland. A revolution in Poland would necessarily follow the victory of the revolution in Russia. This, however, would throw revolutionary sparks into the Polish provinces of Germany and Austria. A revolution in Posen and Galicia would move the Hohenzollerns and Hapsburgs to invade Poland. This would be a sign for the proletariat of Germany to get into a sharp conflict with their governments. A revolution becomes inevitable.]
A revolutionary Poland, however, is not the only possible starting point for a European revolution. The system of armed peace which became predominant in Europe after the Franco-Prussian war, was based on a system of European equilibrium. This equilibrium took for granted not only the integrity of Turkey, the dismemberment of Poland, the preservation of Austria, that ethnographic harlequin's robe, but also the existence of Russian despotism in the role of a gendarme of the European reaction, armed to his teeth. The Russo-Japanese war has given a mortal blow to this artificial system in which absolutism was the dominant figure. For an indefinite period Russia is out of the race as a first-class power. The equilibrium has been destroyed. On the other hand, the successes of Japan have incensed the conquest instincts of the capitalistic bourgeoisie, especially the Stock Exchange, which plays a colossal role in modern politics. _The possibilities of a war on European territory have grown enormously._ Conflicts are ripening here and there; so far they have been settled in a diplomatic way, but nothing can guarantee the near future. _A European war, however, means a European revolution._ Even without the pressure of such events as war or bankruptcy, a revolution may take place in the near future in one of the European countries as a result of acute class struggles. We shall not make computations as to which country would be first to take the path of revolution; it is obvious, however, that class antagonisms have for the last years reached a high degree of intensity in all the European countries.
The influence of the Russian revolution on the proletariat of Europe is immense. Not only does it destroy the Petersburg absolutism, that main power of European reaction; it also imbues the minds and the souls of the European proletariat with revolutionary daring. It is the purpose of every Socialist party to revolutionize the minds of the working class in the same way as development of capitalism has revolutionized social relations. The work of propaganda and organization among the proletariat, however, has its own intrinsic inertia. The Socialist parties of Europe--in the first place the most powerful of them, the German Socialist party--have developed a conservatism of their own, which grows in proportion as Socialism embraces ever larger masses and organization and discipline increase. Social-Democracy, personifying the political experience of the proletariat, can, therefore, at a certain juncture, become an immediate obstacle on the way of an open proletarian conflict with the bourgeois reaction. In other words, the propaganda-conservatism of a proletarian party can, at a certain moment, impede the direct struggle of the proletariat for power. The colossal influence of the Russian revolution manifests itself in killing party routine, in destroying Socialist conservatism, in making a clean contest of proletarian forces against capitalist reaction a question of the day. The struggle for universal suffrage in Austria, Saxony and Prussia has become more determined under the direct influence of the October strike in Russia. An Eastern revolution imbues the Western proletariat with revolutionary idealism and stimulates its desire to speak "Russian" to its foes.
The Russian proletariat in power, even if this were only the result of a passing combination of forces in the Russian bourgeois revolution, would meet organized opposition on the part of the world's reaction, and readiness for organized support on the part of the world's proletariat. Left to its own resources, the Russian working class must necessarily be crushed the moment it loses the aid of the peasants. Nothing remains for it but to link the fate of its political supremacy and the fate of the Russian revolution with the fate of a Socialist revolution in Europe. All that momentous authority and political power which is given to the proletariat by a combination of forces in the Russian bourgeois revolution, it will thrust on the scale of class struggle in the entire capitalistic world. Equipped with governmental power, having a counter-revolution behind his back, having the European reaction in front of him, the Russian workingman will issue to all his brothers the world over his old battle-cry which will now become the call for the last attack: _Proletarians of all the world, unite!_
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.