#kamenev

Trotskyists Expelled! | The Fifteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U.(B.) (1927) Stalin. Marxist Audiobook

lev kamenev

After the first blow of the proletarian revolution and the seizure of the central apparatus of power by the proletariat, the bourgeois inevitably needs a certain time for mobilization of its forces, the bringing up of reserves and their organization. Its passing to a counterattack opens up an epoch of undisguised warfare, and armed clash of the forces of both sides. It is just this period that the rule of the proletariat acquires the harsh features of a dictatorship: a Red Army, a terrorist suppression of the exploiters and their allies, the limitation of political liberty, becomes inevitable if the proletariat does not wish to give up without a fight the power it has won. The dictatorship of the proletariat is consequently a form of government of the state which is most adapted to the carrying on of such a war with the bourgeoisie, and to guarantee most rapidly the victory of the proletariat in such a war. Are there any grounds for presuming that such a war in Europe will be carried on in less acute forms? That the European bourgeoisie will submit with a lighter heart to the expropriation of its riches by the proletariat? Can any reasonable person build his tactics on the supposition that the European bourgeoisie will not show all the resistance of which it is capable against the proletariat which has seized power? Can one presume that, entering into the fight against the proletariat in power, the European bourgeoisie will prove to be less armed, less capable of fighting, less united, or less prudent than the bourgeoisie of Russia, Finland, or Hungary? Can one imagine that it will stop at any means, beginning with a far-reaching union with the betrayers of Socialism from the camp of the Second International and ending with the bombardment of the workmen’s quarters and the application of the latest technical methods for the suffocation of the enemy in war?