Outside of socialism there is no deliverance of humanity from wars, from hunger, from the destruction of still more millions

and millions of human beings. C. 24, p. 37 The basic question of every revolution is that of state power. Unless this question is understood, there can be no intelligent participation in the revolution, not to speak of guidance of the revolution. The highly remarkable feature of our revolution is that it has brought about a dual power. C. 24, p. 38 What is this dual power? Alongside the Provisional Government, the government of bourgeoisie, another governmenthas arisen, so far weak and incipient, but undoubtedly a government that actually exists and is growingthe Soviets of Workers and Soldiers Deputies. What is the class composition of this other government? It consists of the proletariat and the peasants (in soldiers uniforms). What is the political nature of this government? It is a revolutionary dictatorship, i.e., a power directly based on revolutionary seizure, on the direct initiative of the people from below, and not on a law enacted by a centralised state power. C. 24, p. 38 My answer is: (1) it should be overthrown, for it is an oligarchic, bourgeois, and not a peoples government, and is unable to provide peace, bread, or full freedom; (2) It cannot be overthrown just now, for it is being kept in power by a direct and indirect, a formal and actual agreementwith the Soviets of Workers Deputies, and primarily with the chief Soviet, the Petrograd Soviet; (3) generally, it can not be overthrown in the ordinary way, for it rests on the support given to the bourgeoisie by the second governmentthe Soviet of Workers Deputies, and that government is the only possible revolutionary government,

which directly expresses the mind and will of the majority of the workers and peasants. Humanity has not yet evolved and we do not as yet know a type of government superior to and better than the Soviets of Workers, Agricultural Labourers, Peasants, and Soldiers Deputies. C. 24, p. 40

I am deeply convinced that the Soviets will make the independent activity of the masses a reality more quickly and effectively than will a parliamentary republic (I shall compare the two types of states in greater detail in another letter). They will more effectively, more practically and more correctly decide what steps can be taken towards socialism and how these steps should be taken. Control over abank, the merging of all banks into one, is not yet socialism, but it is a step towards socialism. Today such steps are being taken in Germany by the Junkers and the bourgeoisie against the people. C. 24, p. 53 The dual power merely expresses a transitionalphase in the revolutions development, when it has gone farther than the ordinary bourgeois-democratic revolution, but has not yet reacheda pure dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. C. 24, p. 61 The war is not a product of the evil will of rapacious capitalists, although it is undoubtedly being fought onlyin their interests and they alone are being enriched by it. The war is a product of half a century of development of world capitalism and of its billions of threads and connections. C. 24, p. 67 Marxism differs from anarchism in that it recognises the need for a state and for state power in the period of

revolution in general, and in the period of transition from capitalism to socialism in particular. Marxism differs from the petty-bourgeois, opportunist socialdemocratism of Plekhanov, Kautsky and Co. in that it recognises that what is required during these two periods is not a state of the usual parliamentary bourgeois republican type, but a state of the Paris Commune type. The main distinctions between a state of the latter type and the old state are as follows. It is quite easy (as history proves) to revert from a parliamentary bourgeois republic to a monarchy, for all the machinery of oppression the army, the police, and the bureaucracy is left intact. The Commune and the Soviets smash that machinery and do away with it. The parliamentary bourgeois republic hampers and stifles the independent political life of the masses, their direct participation in the democratic organisation of the life of the state from the bottom up. The opposite is the case with the Soviets. The latter reproduce the type of state which was being evolved by the Paris Commune and which Marx described as the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economic emancipation of labour. C. 24, p. 6869
All officials and all and every kind of deputy must not only be elective, but displaceable at any moment. Their pay must not exceed that of a competent worker. C. 24, p. 100

The capitalists, in whose hands the state power now rests, desire a parliamentary bourgeois republic, that is, a state system where there is no tsar, but where power remains in the hands of the capitalists who govern the country by means of the old institutions, namely: the police, the bureaucracy, and the standing army. We desire a different republic, one more in keeping with the interests of the

people, more democratic. C. 24, p. 107 We are not pacifists, and we cannot repudiate a revolutionary war. In what way does a revolutionary war differ from a capitalist war? The difference is, above all, a class difference: which class is interested in the war? What policy does the interested class pursue in that war? C. 24, p. 237 The Russian revolution is only the first stage of the first of the proletarian revolutions which are the inevitable result of war. C. 24, p. 310 What the people need is a really democratic, workers and peasants republic, whose authorities have been elected by the people and are displaceable by the people any time they may wish it. C. 24, p. 323 All power to the Soviets of Workers and Soldiers Deputies! No confidence in the government of the capitalists! C. 24, p. 334 A peoples militia instead of the police force and the standing army is a prerequisite of effective municipal reforms in the interests of the working people. At a time of revolution this prerequisite is practicable A peoples militia would mean education of the masses in the practices of democracy. A peoples militia would mean government of the poor by the people themselves, chiefly by the poor, and not by the rich, not through their police. A peoples militia would mean that control (over factories, dwellings, the distribution of products, etc.) would be real and not merely on paper. A peoples militia would mean distribution without any bread queues, without any privileges for the rich. A peoples militia would mean that quite a number of

the serious and radical reforms listed also by the Narodniks and the Mensheviks would not remain mere pious wishes. C. 24, p. 352-353 The workers and peasants are the majority of the population. The power and the functions of administration must belong to their Soviets, not to the bureaucracy. C. 24, p. 374 We Marxists do not belong to that category of people who are unqualified opponents of all war. We say: our aim is to achieve a socialist system of society, which, by eliminating the division of mankind into classes, by eliminating all exploitation of man by man and nation by nation, will inevitably eliminate the very possibility of war Therefore, we cannot rule out the possibility of revolutionary wars, i.e., wars arising from the class struggle, wars waged by revolutionary classes, wars which are of direct and immediate revolutionary significance. C. 24, p. 398-399 There is no other way out. Either we go back to supreme rule by the capitalists, or forward towards real democracy, towards majority decisions. This dual power cannot last long. C. 24, p. 448 World capitalism has at the present time, i.e., since about the beginning of the twentieth century, reached the stage of imperialism.. Imperialist wars, i.e., wars for world domination, for markets for banking capital and for the subjugation of small and weaker nations, are inevitable under such a state of affairs. The first great imperialist war, the war of 191417, is precisely such a war. C. 24, p. 459 Imperialism, in fact, does not and cannot transform capitalism from top to bottom. Imperialism complicates and sharpens the contradictions of capitalism, it ties up

monopoly with free competition, but it cannot do away with exchange, the market, competition, crises, etc. Imperialism is moribund capitalism, capitalism which is dying but not dead. The essential feature of imperialism, by and large, is not monopolies pure and simple, but monopolies in conjunction with exchange, markets, competition, crises. C. 24, p. 464 The only way to avert disaster is to establish effectual workers control over the production and distribution of goods. For the purpose of such control it is necessary, first of all, that the workers should have a majority of not less than three-fourths of all the votes in all the decisive institutions and that the owners who have not withdrawn from their business and the engineering staffs should be enlisted without fail; secondly, that shop committees, the central and local Soviets, as well as the trade unions, should have the right to participate in this control, that all commercial and bank books be open to their inspection, and that the management supply them with all the necessary information; third, that a similar right should be granted to representatives of all the major democratic and socialist parties. C. 24, p. 464 Workers control should similarly be extended to all financial and banking operations with the aim of discovering the true financial state of affairs; such control to be participated in by councils and conventions of bank, syndicate and other employees, which are to be organised forthwith. C. 24, p. 464