The development of socialism from science to action

by Karl Radek

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38 pages, Paperback

First published August 9, 2015

About the author

Karl Berngardovich Radek (October 31, 1885 – May 19, 1939) was a Marxist active in the Polish and German social democratic movements before World War I, and an international Communist leader in the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution.

Reviews

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short work by Radek detailing the "falsification of Communism" starting with Lassalle into reformist/revisionist trends, and the collapse of those illusions upon the ramping up of militarism. Radek deals briefly with the issue of the mass strike in German Social-Democracy between Kautsky and Luxemburg, and then moves to defend the Russian Revolution against its liberal critics.

Radek pushes back against the mechanical interpretation of proletarian revolution, and correctly argues that not even having a majority of the population as proletariat does not disqualify conditions for a proletarain revolution:

"When capitalist development in a country has reached a point where the most important branches of industry...are controlled by a concentrated, capitalistic group, then the proletariat...must try to take over industry...[and make itself into] a proletariat organized into the governing power.

"Those capitalist countries with the most unsettled organs for oppression are the breaches where Socialism may break through...it can and will begin in every country in which the conditions created by capital for the working class become unbearable."

Radek closes with three sections dedicated to defending the dictatorship of the proletariat against critics who would attach significance to bourgeois right:

"Dictatorship is the form of government by which one class forces its will ruthlessly on the other classes...And the stronger Capitalism is developed in a country, just so much more ruthless...the measures by means of which the victorious working class will hold down the defeated Capitalist class."