The very meager
representation given to the working class, through Kerensky, was, in the
circumstances, remarkable for its stupid effrontery and its disregard of
the most obvious realities. Much has been said and written of the
doctrinaire attitude which has characterized the Bolsheviki in the later
phases of the struggle, but if by doctrinairism is meant subservience to
preconceived theories and disregard of realities, it must be said that the
statesmen of the bourgeoisie were as completely its victims as the
Bolsheviki later proved to be. They were subservient to dogma and
indifferent to fact.
The bourgeois leaders of Russia--and those Socialists who co-operated with
them--attempted to ignore the biggest and most vital fact in the whole
situation, namely, the fact that the Revolution was essentially a
Socialist Revolution in the sense that the overwhelming mass of the people
were bent upon the realization of a very comprehensive, though somewhat
crudely conceived, program of socialization. It was not a mere political
Revolution, and political changes which left the essential social structure
unchanged, which did not tend to bring about equality of democratic
opportunity, and which left the control of the nation in the hands of
landowners and capitalists, could never satisfy the masses nor fail to
invite their savage attack.
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