FOREWORD This is the sequence of thought in the book. In a brief historical summary are outlined the characteristic traits of the bourgeois revolutions of Europe, which derive from the historic task of these revolutions : to open the gates to capitalism as the new power in society. Because the Russian revolution appeared for a time with the ambition of a social and proletarian revolution, while it was basically only a belated and abortive bourgeois revolution, a special chapter is devoted to the examination of its character. Then the construction of the bourgeois state is described, as a living illustration of the principles and primary forms of capitalist management of the economy and organisation of economy. We get to know the authoritarian, centralist, national state, and understand why it has to be as it is. In connection with this we gain a proper understanding of parliamentarism, which transplants the type of the bourgeois commercial transaction into the legislation and finds in the parties the auxiliary organs of bourgeois politics, which exist and function only in combination with it. Akin to the parties, only without their pseudo-revolutionary disguise, are the trade unions, purely opportunistic organs which chain the proletariat to capital through a disastrous community of interests, instead of liberating it from capital. As pre-revolutionary instruments of bourgeois politics, parties and unions operate under the influence of a petty-bourgeois inclined professional leadership in an unrevolutionary, counter-revolutionary way. The demand to revolutionise the unions is shown up as a demagogic trick. The course of the German revolution from 1918 was a school for the proletariat in the knowledge that parties and unions are today the most powerful obstacles to the proletarian revolution. The proletariat must learn to take in hand itself the matter of its liberation. It is beginning to grasp that the proletarian revolution is primarily an economic phenomenon and that its preparation and unfolding has to follow from the factories out. It is gaining the requisite energies and qualifications through education to self-consciousness and self-reliance. The organisation of the capitalist economy shapes the foundation for the organisation of proletarian liberation. Struggle groups, workers' union and councils system (Betreibs-Organisation, Arbeiter-Union and Ratesystem) are the steps on the ascent to the achievement of power by the proletariat. The proletarian revolution is in extent, content, tendency, tactics of struggle and aim completely different from the bourgeois revolution. It is the social revolution and finds its conclusion with the establishment of leaderless, stateless authority-free socialism. Forward to the proletarian revolution ! |