Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 09:47:53 +0200
From: "Tahir Wood" <twood-AT-uwc.ac.za>
Subject: AUT: The "revolutionary situation"


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I wonder if any comrades would like to offer critical comments on the
following from Lenin on the "revolutionary situation":

To the Marxist it is indisputable that a revolution is impossible
without a revolutionary situation; furthermore, it is not every
revolutionary situation that leads to revolution. What, generally
speaking, are the symptoms of a revolutionary situation? We shall
certainly not be mistaken if we indicate the following three major
symptoms: (1) when it is impossible for the ruling classes to maintain
their rule without any change; when there is a crisis, in one form or
another, among the "upper classes", a crisis in the policy of the ruling
class, leading to a fissure through which the discontent and indignation
of the oppressed classes burst forth. For a revolution to take place, it
is usually insufficient for "the lower classes not to want"to live in
the old way; it is also necessary that "the upper classes should be
unable"to live in the old way; (2) when the suffering and want of the
oppressed classes have grown more acute than usual; (3) when, as a
consequence of the above causes, there is a considerable increase in the
activity of the masses, who uncomplainingly allow themselves to be
robbed in "peace time", but, in turbulent times, are drawn both by all
the circumstances of the crisis and by the "upper classes"themselves
into independent historical action. Without these objective changes,
which are independent of the will, not only of individual groups and
parties but even of individual classes, a revolution, as a general rule,
is impossible. The totality of all these objective changes is called a
revolutionary situation. Such a situation existed in 1905 in Russia, and
in all revolutionary periods in the West; it also existed in Germany in
the sixties of the last century, and in Russia in 1859-61 and 1879-80,
although no revolution occurred in these instances. Why was that? It was
because it is not every revolutionary situation that gives rise to a
revolution; revolution arises only out of a situation in which the
above-mentioned objective changes are accompanied by a subjective
change, namely, the ability of the revolutionary class to take
revolutionary mass action strong enough to break (or dislocate) the old
government, which never, not even in a period of crisis, "falls", if it
is not toppled over. (The Collapse of the Second International, 1915)
Tahir

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