The Trend of the Twentieth Century

The Russian Revolution and the election campaign

Comrades, our meeting tonight, dedicated jointly to the celebration of the 32nd anniversary of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the wind-up of the municipal election campaign of the Socialist Workers' Party, recognizes the kinship of these two occasions. The Russian Revolution carried the independent action of the working class to its highest goal, the conquest of government power in the poorest and most backward of the great states, old Russia.

The municipal election campaign of our party represents a determined effort to point the political action of the working class in the same direction and toward the same goal in the richest and most advanced country of modern capitalism, the United States. It is quite right to make these two actions the subject of a single meeting, for they are one and the same in purpose and in goal. Nor are they so greatly different in the magnitude of their importance as might appear at first glance. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 did not begin with the victory on the 7th of November, but rather with the foundation of the Bolshevik Party at the turn of the century. The Russian Revolution was developed and prepared by innumerable, apparently small actions throughout the intervening period, including municipal election campaigns. By the same token, the political struggle of the revolutionary vanguard of the American working class will not end with the election campaign of 1949, but it will proceed from here through a series of coordinated actions, great and small, to the final goal.

The significance of social events can be best appraised if we understand that they have been prepared by and proceed from events and developments of the past. If we link the present and the past together in a continuing process, we can understand and foresee more clearly the most probable course of developments in the future. From this point of view, I think we can broaden and enrich our consideration of the two matters which immediately concern us tonight, the celebration of the 32nd anniversary of the Russian Revolution and the conclusion of our municipal election campaign, if we place them in their historic setting, if we see them as part of a process in the great stream of history, which is never fixed but always flowing and changing. The stream of history became a torrential flood in the first half of the 20th century and rages and flows even higher toward the second half. Never have events moved so fast. Never have social convulsions been so deep and so destructive of old and apparently fixed conditions as in the first half of the 20th century.

Capitalism's century and the Communist Manifesto

In a few brief months this first half of our century will be behind us, and our concern now turns to the second half. But if we want to see what this second half of the century has in store for humanity, we must first look back into the 50 years now expiring and mark out their most important events and developments. From the examination of these events and developments, we can best ascertain the course and the direction which will determine the shape of things to come in the years which lie ahead of us.

The 19th century was that brief space in the vast history of mankind which was especially assigned to the triumph and development of the capitalist system of production and the social and political institutions based upon it. Under the mighty impulse of the great French Revolution, which freed the productive forces from the constricting fetters of the outlived feudal society, capitalism flourished and expanded and developed the productive forces of society, the true foundation of all social progress, with a speed and efficiency unknown before and even undreamed of in all the centuries since men had begun to make their history and to record it. All the past achievements in this field put together were dwarfed beside the accomplishments of capitalism in a single century, the 19th. The whole of the 19th century now stands out in history as an unprecedented march of triumph of the capitalist class, which had overthrown feudalism by revolution and cleared a path for the development of a new and progressive system of production.

To be sure, the expansive productivity of capitalism, even in the century of its heyday, was interrupted by periodic economic crises which the capitalists themselves could neither foresee nor understand. But these economic crises of the 19th century, which paralyzed the forces of production at approximately ten-year intervals, turned out every time to be the new starting points from which the productivity of labor was intensified and raised to new heights. In the periods of prosperity which emerged from every crisis, the capitalist machine of production expanded and the products of labor flooded the world in unprecedented volume. This gave rise to a vast illusion, a blind confidence in the camp of the triumphant capitalist class and their ideologists in a continuing progressive development of the forces of production under capitalism without limit and without foreseeable end.

But already in the middle of the 19th century, at the height of the progress of capitalism, with the publication of the Communist Manifesto of 1848, Marx and Engels challenged the prevailing opinion. Analyzing the economic laws by which capitalism operates and placing the epoch of capitalism in its historic context, Marx and Engels declared that capitalism is not the fixed and final form of human society but only a stage in its organic development. The contradictions which represent the dynamics of capitalism will eventually, and, historically speaking, rapidly, bring it to a blind alley from which no exit and no further development will be possible for the social system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their confinement within the outlived borders of the national states.

Capitalism, said Marx and Engels, produces the modern proletariat, the wage workers who are alienated from any stake in the ownership of the vast machinery of production which they operate, and have nothing to lose but their chains. At the same time, the capitalist owners are completely alienated from any necessary part in production and have become a parasitic obstruction to its further development. The wage workers, the useful producers, are condemned to accumulating misery and poverty, while the parasitic capitalists accumulate wealth and riches beyond the dreams of avarice. Capitalism will be broken by this contradiction, said Marx and Engels. In the modern working class, said Marx and Engels, capitalism is producing its own grave digger. The workers will be driven inexorably by the very conditions of their existence to revolt against capitalism, to overthrow it, and to replace it by a socialist order which will plan and develop economy for the benefit of all. The downfall of capitalism and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable. So said the voices crying in the wilderness, the far-seeing prophets, Marx and Engels, in 1848.

The new century: optimism and reformism

When these two great geniuses of the working class formulated their theory and confidently uttered their prediction, capitalism had not yet reached the apex of its development. On the contrary, it was only really beginning its most spectacular expansion and development. The 50-odd years which followed the publication of the Communist Manifesto saw world capitalism attain ever greater stability, ever wider scope of increasing productivity, and ever greater confidence in its thousand-year destiny.

This is the way matters stood at the beginning of the 20th century, which opened with the great fireworks of capitalist progress in the field of production and in scientific achievements. Capitalism ruled the world securely and confidently. Everything appeared to be fixed and final, and the ideologists of triumphant capitalism had a field day celebrating the refutation of the Marxist prophecy. The watchword of the ruling circles at the beginning of the century was progress, evermore progress along the same line. In the prevailing psychology of the time, optimism was uppermost. The belief in gradual, uninterrupted, peaceful and harmonious development within the framework of things as they were took possession of the masters of society and all their retinue like a smug revision [?], religion revealed to the chosen few. There was no room in their outlook for the social convulsions, wars and revolutions which had been the motive forces of the previous history of mankind.

The socialist and labor movements which had grown up in Europe on the revolutionary teachings of Marx and Engels began to succumb to the prevailing atmosphere. A stratum of privileged workers who had shared in the crumbs of capitalist prosperity at the expense of the great mass of the unskilled workers and the colonial slaves began to adapt themselves to the prevailing state of affairs. They traded off their vision and hope of the socialist future for a few privileges and comforts of the present. A conservative bureaucracy, likewise sharing in the crumbs of prosperity and privilege, imposed on the workers' organizations the opportunist theory of a gradual, peaceful transition to socialism by the road of social reform. The conquest of the world labor and socialist movement by theories of reformist gradualism was well underway.

Against this whole tide of things as they seemed to be in the first years of the 20th century, and against all the theories and beliefs founded on this apparent reality, a small minority in the labor movement, Lenin and the Bolsheviks, Trotsky, Luxemburg, Liebknecht, a small left wing in various countries, contended that the basic analysis and prognosis of Marx and Engels retained all their validity. They held that the period of the peaceful expansion of capitalism was approaching its culmination. They proclaimed that the accumulating contradictions of ascending capitalism were destined to explode in a mighty series of social convulsions, wars, and revolutions, which could have no outcome short of the revolutionary transformation of society and the replacement of capitalism by a new social order.

War, revolution and the stalemate

In the tumultuous developments which were to unfold in the first quarter of the 20th century, these conflicting theories confronted each other like armies in battle. They influenced the course of developments, for social theories are not merely views of history but also active factors in shaping the course of its development. Men make their own history, as Marx and Engels said, even if they don't make it out of the whole cloth, and ideas are active forces in this making of history, for progress if they read reality aright, or for derailment and temporary regression if they read it falsely.

Events did not wait long to pass their judgment on this great conflict of theories. In the first quarter of the 20th century, the contradictions of capitalism, which had been pointed out by the Marxists and overlooked by their opponents, began to assert themselves and to take their revenge on the high priests of bourgeois optimism and socialist reformism. The private ownership of the means of production and the exploitation of the wage laborers led to an enormous overproduction of goods and capital in all the countries of the great powers. This anomaly irresistibly drove each of them to seek new markets and fields of investment. But since there were no new continents to discover and exploit, and since the world market did not and could not expand with the expansion of the productive powers of modern society, and moreover since the geographically limited world was already divided up by the dominant and competing powers, none of them could expand its markets and dispose of its surpluses except at the expense of the others.

The modern capitalist states, which had been consolidated by smashing feudal provincialism to provide a broader arena for the unrestricted development of the capitalist productive forces, were already becoming too small to permit any further development within their restricted borders. Expansion is the law of life for the capitalist system of production, and the separate national states could no longer provide the field for it. The forces of production, in Trotsky's winged phrase, began to revolt against their national barriers. The tension between the great powers in the struggle for markets and fields of investment in a world already divided up increased and mounted from year to year. Behind an imposing facade of pacifist talk and diplomatic hypocrisy, a feverish armaments race got underway, and finally the accumulating contradictions exploded in the great world war of 1914-1918.

Bourgeois optimism in regard to the prospects of uninterrupted, peaceful, and harmonious development of the productive forces crashed up against the greatest orgy of destruction of human life and material culture in the war. The pernicious theory of reformist gradualism, which had taken possession of the aristocracy and bureaucracy of the labor movement, paralyzed the workers in each of the warring countries and drove them into the slaughter against each other in the interests of their exploiters. The downfall of international socialism was widely celebrated in 1914. Marxism was subjected to ridicule in the camp of the imperialists and the renegades who had joined them. But this celebration of the death of Marxism and the refutation of its revolutionary theory was premature. The revolutionary Marxists, reduced as they were to a small handful by the great betrayal, carried on their work in all countries, even under the most onerous conditions.

Meanwhile the drawn-out war was doing its work of sapping and undermining the economy of the contending powers and destroying the illusions of the masses who had been told that somehow or other good would come from evil and that the suspension of the class struggle in war would bring progress toward socialism. The very fact of the war, conducted on such a scale and at such a cost, was a demonstration that the capitalist system of production had already passed the peak of its peaceful development and had entered into the stage of its decline and decay. By the very fact of the war, capitalism branded itself as a reactionary obstacle to the aspirations of the people to live secure and prosperous lives.

The revolutionary storm which was preparing was first heralded by the sheet lightning of the revolution which overthrew the Russian Tsar in February 1917. And then, eight months later, the storm itself broke in all its magnificent fury with a Bolshevik revolution which put the Russian working class in power. We do well to celebrate this revolution on the 32nd anniversary and to dedicate our meeting to it, for never before in the history of the human race was such a gigantic leap forward taken. Never before was there such a beneficent promise and assurance of the good future of mankind written into deed than on that day 32 years ago when the Russian workers took power into their own hands and declared an end to the old things and the beginning of the new. The Bolshevik Revolution abolished the private ownership of the industries in the land and demonstrated in practice that neither capitalists nor landlords are necessary to modern production, but are rather parasitic obstacles to it. The Bolshevik revolution demonstrated that the working class, even in a backward country, is capable of taking power from the palsied hands of the outlived exploiters and is capable likewise of forging out of its own ranks a vanguard party capable of leading the struggle. The Russian Revolution was a magnificent triumph and vindication of the theories of Marxism in economics, in politics, and in organization.

The leaders of the great Russian Revolution, Lenin and Trotsky most outstanding among them, were genuine Marxists and therefore internationalists to the core. They did not think, nor did they ever dream, that it would be possible to construct a socialist society in a single country, and a backward country at that, isolated from the rest of the world. That is why, even during the war, when the revolutionary Marxists were isolated and dispersed, they had labored to gather them together to form the nucleus of a new international organization to replace the old one, which had perished by its betrayal in the war. That is why from the first day of the victorious revolution they appealed to the workers of Europe to join the revolutionary struggle, take power in their own countries, and join with victorious Russia in a socialist United States of Europe. That is why the genius leaders of the Russian Revolution preoccupied themselves, in the midst of famine and civil war at home, with the task of uniting the revolutionary workers of all countries in the new communist international.

The Russian Revolution released all the pent-up rage and hatred of the betrayed workers of Europe. It inspired them with the aspiration and the will to follow the Russian example by Russian methods. The Russian Revolution awakened tens of millions of colonial slaves to political life and an aspiration for independence for the first time. The revolutionary will of the masses, especially of Europe, was so strong, and bourgeois economy and self-confidence had been so weakened and shaken by the war, that successful revolutions in one country after another sweeping the whole of Europe were undoubtedly possible in the years immediately following the termination of the war of 1914-18. The situation was there. The opportunity was there. But the revolutionary party capable of organizing and leading the revolutionary struggle was lacking. Reformist social democracy, still controlling the apparatus of the workers' organizations, although greatly discredited and weakened by their treachery in the war, was still strong enough to paralyze and defeat the revolutionary struggle of the masses.

In those few sentences are stated the main reason, one might even say the only reason, why the Russian Revolution was not extended and consolidated over the continent of Europe in the five or six years which followed the victory of 1917. Revolutionary situations and opportunities must be seized when they present themselves. They do not remain indefinitely. Capitalism declines and decays but does not disappear of its own weight by any automatic process. Governmental power, the indispensable instrument for carrying through the proletarian revolution, does not fall into the hands of the workers. They must take it out of the hands of their enemies. The failure of the European workers to take the power, for the reasons already stated, enabled the European bourgeoisie to regain a certain measure of their self-confidence and to reestablish and eventually restore a shaky stabilization of their economy and their rule.

On the other hand, the Russian Revolution consolidated its victory, prevailed in the Civil War against the bourgeois counter-revolution, and defeated the numerous military interventions of the capitalist powers. The revolution firmly established its rule over one-sixth of the earth's surface, but remained isolated there. The first quarter of the 20th century thus ended in an inconclusive stalemate. But it was a stalemate on a far different basis than that which prevailed at the beginning of the century, when capitalism ruled securely everywhere, when the capitalists were everything and the workers nothing. A great bridgehead had been established, so to speak, and the revolutionary workers had the opportunity and the space to dig in, entrench themselves, and prepare for the next assault. The working class on a world scale was immeasurably stronger than it had been at the beginning of the century, and the capitalist class was weaker. The capitalist system on a world scale had irrevocably entered the period of its decline and decay. The workers, due to inadequate leadership, had not been strong enough to extend the Russian Revolution to Europe and thus to assure the victory permanently, but the imperialists had not been strong enough to overthrow the Revolution on the ground where it had first established itself, and it remained as a fortress and a rallying ground of the world revolution.

Stalinism and socialism in one country

This is the way matters stood at the end of the first quarter of the 20th century. One great battle in the worldwide struggle between socialism and capitalism had been decided in favor of the workers, and other still greater battles remained yet to be decided. The inconclusive stalemate in the great historic conflict between socialism and capitalism, which marked the beginning of the second quarter of the 20th century, gave rise to a new set of illusions, misconceptions, and improvised theories as ill-founded as those which had dominated mass thinking at the beginning of the century. These misconceptions and false theories penetrated deeply into the revolutionary labor movement, disoriented and demoralized it, and thus had their effect on social developments.

The isolation of the Soviet Union, combined with the harsh poverty of the country, inherited from Tsarism and aggravated by the heavy costs of the civil war and the interventions, created the conditions for the rise of a privileged bureaucracy. This bureaucracy, like all privileged strata of society, grew conservative. They sought to protect their privilege at all costs. They developed the mentality of all privileged bureaucrats in the labor movement of all countries, which is summed up in the fervent desire to let well enough alone. Looking at the world with a myopia of narrow self-interest, they imagined those things which appeared momentarily under their eyes to be the only reality. They saw the temporary recovery of capitalist economy, enormously exaggerated its stability, and endowed it with a quality of permanence. They saw the stagnation of the European communist movement after the great post-war revolutionary wave had subsided, and lost faith in its potentiality to expand and grow again with a new revolutionary revival.

In the service of these moods and sentiments, in order to justify and try to maintain the status quo which had brought a limited prosperity at least to the Soviet bureaucrats, the leaders of the conservative bureaucracy began to tinker with theory. The crowning monstrosity of this irresponsible theoretical tinkering was the Stalinist theory of socialism in one country. This theory, which the Stalinist faction passed off as an extension and development of revolutionary Marxism, was in fact blood brother to the revisionism of the social democratic reformists who had wrought such havoc in the labor movement in the first quarter of the century. The theory of socialism in one country signified an expression of the overpowering desire of the privileged bureaucracy to preserve their privileges within the borders of the Soviet Union and let the rest of the world labor movement go hang. It signified a renunciation of the perspective of international revolution, the recognition and expectation of the permanent existence of capitalism in five-sixths of the world, and the willingness of the Soviet bureaucracy to adapt themselves to it and live with it.

Trotsky, and with him the Marxist vanguard whom he reassembled in the struggle, denounced the new improvisation. The theory of socialism in one country, and a backward country at that, is utopian, he said. The construction of a harmonious socialist order of society requires the highest productivity of labor with international collaboration and a division of labor between associated countries in order to produce plenty and abundance for all. The theory of socialism in one country is reactionary, he said, and downright false in its international perspectives. The stabilization of world capitalism is only limited and temporary. The conditions are maturing for a devastating crisis and new revolutionary explosions in various parts of the world. This is the underlying reality, said Trotsky and his movement [?]. There will be no lack of revolutionary situations, they assert, and there is no reason to change our course, which has had as its central aim the extension of the Russian Revolution to other countries and eventually to unite the whole world in one socialist federation.

Again, as in the first quarter of the 20th century, events did not wait long to pass judgment on the contending theories. The conservative international outlook of Stalinism completely misjudged great events in the making and at the same time worked mightily to influence their unfavorable development and outcome. The Chinese revolution of 1925-27, which had every reasonable chance of success, was a great demonstration and warning that the days of imperialist domination of the Orient were numbered. The British General Strike of 1927, fraught with enormous revolutionary potentialities, was a startling revelation of the shakiness of bourgeois rule in the most conservative of bourgeois countries. The devastating worldwide crisis touched off by the stock market crash in New York in 1929 served notice that the supposedly permanent stabilization of the capitalist economic system had already run its brief course and could never be fully restored. The Spanish Revolution in the mid-30s, the French sit-down strikes of June 1936, the breathtaking rise and sweep of industrial unionism in the United States under the banner of the CIO, all these events gave powerful testimony against the illusion that the struggle of the classes could be suspended and the status quo between the Soviet Union and the capitalist countries permanently maintained.

In this great complex of world-shaking events, all crowded together within the brief space of a dozen years in the second quarter of the century, there was undoubtedly the making of a world revolutionary movement of such power that nothing could have stood in its way. The uncontrollable crisis racking the capitalist system through those fateful years cried aloud for a revolutionary solution. The chief obstacle to this solution was international Stalinism, which had demoralized and corrupted the communist movement with the theory of socialism in one country and all the unbridled practices of class collaboration which flowed from this reactionary theory. The socialist hopes and aspirations of the workers were again betrayed. And humanity had to pay for this second betrayal of the leadership with the unspeakable horrors of fascism and another world war.

Fascism, the Second World War and the years ahead

The Second World War and all that led to it and followed from it changed many things, disappointed many expectations, and raised new problems for theoretical investigation. In summing up the frightful experiences of fascism and the results of the Second World War and its aftermath, as we face the years which lie before us and seek to light up our path by the light of these experiences, we are concerned most of all with the answer to two questions. One, have the experiences of the last half century in general, and the later years of fascism and war in particular, indicated any decisive change in the course of social development as the Marxists foresaw it at the beginning of the century and even 50 years before that? Two, is it necessary now to discard the Marxist method of social analysis and its theories of politics and organization and seek for new means and methods of orientation for the future?

Our answer, based on a clear view of all that has happened, without eliminating or concealing [?] anything important, is no to both questions. All other social theories have been refuted and discredited, but the theory of Marxism has once again been vindicated by the harsh test of events. We have no reason to change our course. In order to form a correct appraisal of everything that has happened, it is necessary first of all to get a clear view of the most important and decisive factors and to subordinate, and even to eliminate from consideration, those which are secondary and incidental.

The most important fact revealed by the experiments with fascism and similar experiments which may yet be made is the frightful crisis of the capitalist order, which makes it impossible for the capitalists to rule by the mechanism of bourgeois democracy, the traditional and most efficient form of bourgeois rule in the period of its healthy development and expansion. The most important fact revealed by the Second World War and the insane preparations for a third is its demonstration of the crisis and death agony of the capitalist system of production and its complete inability to operate any longer on the basis of social stability and peace. Its substitution of production for destruction for the expanding constructive production of capitalism in its prime.

In reasserting our thesis that capitalism has entered the period of its incurable crisis and death agony, we do not exclude the United States with all its apparent prosperity and stability. It is true that American economy recovered from its frightful crisis of the 30s, but it recovered only by production for war and only at the expense of Europe and the rest of a ruined and impoverished world. Capitalist America is fat from drinking the blood of Europe, but it will choke on it. America's prosperity boom is unhealthy, and certain to end in a catastrophic bust. The social crisis which is in the making here will bring the bloated and blood-stained system of American capitalism face to face with its nemesis, the all-powerful American working class. American economy has now been so extended that it has to rest on the crumbling foundations of capitalist economy throughout the world. American capitalism is now inextricably bound up with the rest of the capitalist world and is fated to perish with it.

The Second World War did not culminate in a series of successful revolutions, as the Marxists expected and hoped. But it is completely false to say that revolutionary situations did not arise, that the working class was definitively defeated, and that the bourgeoisie emerged with a secure and stable victory. Nothing could be a further misrepresentation of reality than that. The end of the war released such a tremendous revolutionary movement of the workers in Italy and France, as well as in Eastern Europe, that the capitalists were nowhere able to rule in their own name. In Italy, after 20 years of fascist suppression, during which all independent working class action and propaganda had been suppressed under the iron lid of fascism, the workers emerged from the war with an almost unanimous cry for communism or socialism. The Italian example is the most striking and reassuring proof of the indestructibility of the proletarian [?] and its socialist consciousness.

The overwhelming majority of the French working class at the end of the war followed the Communist Party only because of the mistaken belief that it could lead them to a French version of the great Russian Revolution. In neither France nor Italy, to say nothing of the countries of Eastern Europe, was it possible for the bourgeoisie to form a government without the Communist Party participating and taking the responsibility. It was only after the Communist Party had performed this task of maneuvering workers back into the path of class collaboration at the highest level of government that the bourgeois parties in France and Italy were able gradually to reestablish a shaky rule and to dispense with the services of the Stalinist ministers who had performed their task of demoralizing the revolutionary movement of the workers.

The essential facts are that the workers of Europe had their second chance for revolution in the immediate post-war period and that in the main they were ready for it. They failed of this objective once again only because they lacked a sufficiently influential revolutionary party to organize and lead the struggle. The conclusion to be drawn from this is not to write off the revolution, but to build a revolutionary party to organize and lead it. It is another essential fact that the decisive war of the classes was not carried to a conclusion after the war, that all the bourgeois regimes in post-war Europe are regimes of crisis with no semblance of the old stability of bourgeois rule, that the workers have nowhere been definitively defeated, and that the showdown struggle is yet to come.

A further result of the war is the unparalleled upsurge of the colonial masses, which have revealed the startling weakness of the Western imperialist powers and their inability to maintain and secure their domination anymore. The doom of Western imperialism is clearly written in the flaming skies of the Orient. The perspective of the coming years, as we read it in the course of events as they have transpired in the half century behind us, is that of a continuing crisis and increasing weakness of bankrupt capitalism, new colonial uprisings on an ever vaster scale, more strikes and class battles in the main countries of capitalism. In the course of these struggles, the workers will learn the hardest and most necessary lessons from their own experience. They will settle accounts with perfidious Stalinism and social democracy and drive them out of the workers' movement. They will forge revolutionary parties worthy of the epoch of blood and iron, and these parties will organize their struggles and lead them to their revolutionary goal.

In preparing this lecture, it was my original intention, my plan, to deal somewhat extensively with the new problems of fascism and Stalinism, which have arisen in the second quarter of the 20th century and will continue to constitute burning problems of the labor movement in the years which lie directly ahead. I have been forced to recognize, however, that my ambitious plan was bigger than the framework which a single lecture could accommodate. I hope to treat these two questions with a necessary elaboration and detail another time in a separate lecture. Here I can state the main lines of the Marxist thesis on the phenomena of fascism and Stalinism, which have disoriented so many people.

Fascism is the degenerate product of dying capitalism, which has remained too long on the scene after it has exhausted all its progressive potentialities and has become reactionary through and through. Stalinism is a degenerate growth on the labor movement, the product of undue retardation and delay of the proletarian revolution when all the conditions for it became rotten ripe. Neither fascism nor Stalinism represents the wave of the future. Both are transitory phenomena. Neither fascism nor Stalinism represents the main line of historic development. On the contrary, they are deviations from it which must and will be obliterated in the next tidal wave of social development and proletarian revolutions.

When I first planned this lecture on the 20th century, I had also intended to outline my conception of the way things will shape up and how the people will live in the first stages of the socialist society, for I have no doubt that the international socialist order will be securely established within the second half of the century under our consideration. But that also must be left for another time. I think, however, that the questions of the functioning of the socialist order are near enough to be of absorbing interest and that it is timely now for us to project our thoughts forward to this subject. I hope to have the opportunity to speak about it in a separate lecture.

The years of the first half of the 20th century have been years of storm and strife. Those who want peace and security without fighting or taking any risks have simply chosen the wrong time to be born.