but we are also paying the price of that privileged priority, and the price in part is our badly planned and congested towns, our back-to-back houses, our ugly factories and our smoke-laden atmosphere”. Here one must also add the fragmentation of British industry, its technical conservatism, and its organizational rigidity. For precisely this reason British industry is succumbing to German and American industry.

For its salvation it needs a broad and bold reorganization. It is necessary to look upon the soil and subsoil of Britain as the basis for a single economic system. Only in this way can the coal industry be reconstructed on a healthy footing.

Britain’s electrical industry is distinguished by its fragmented and backward character; attempts to reorganize it have at every step faced the opposition of private interests. Not only are British cities, by their historical origin, irrationally planned, but all British industry has “gradually” piled itself up, devoid of system or plan. New life can be poured into it only by tackling it as a single whole.

But this is inconceivable while private ownership of the means of production is preserved. The main aim of socialism is to raise the economic strength of the people. Only upon this basis is it possible to build a more cultured, a more harmonious and happier human society.

If Mr. Baldwin has, despite his sympathies for old British industry, been compelled to recognize that the new capitalist forms – the trusts and syndicates – represent a step forward, then we consider that a single socialist combine of industry represents a gigantic step forward in comparison with capitalist trusts.

But such a programme cannot be realized without the transfer of all the means of production into the hands of the working class, that is to say, without the expropriation of the bourgeoisie. Baldwin himself recalls the “titanic forces let loose by the industrial revolution of the eighteenth century, which changed the face of the country and all the features of our national life”.

Why does Baldwin in this instance speak about revolution and not of gradual development? Because at the end of the eighteenth century there took place within a short space of time fundamental changes which led, in particular, to the expropriation of the petty industrialists. To all those who pay attention to the essential logic of the historical process, it should be clear that the industrial revolution of the eighteenth century, which regenerated Great Britain from top to bottom, would have been impossible without the political revolution of the seventeenth century.

Without a revolution in the name of bourgeois rights and bourgeois enterprise, and against aristocratic privilege and genteel sloth, that great spirit of technical innovation would not have been aroused and there would have been nobody to apply it to economic ends. The political revolution of the seventeenth century, which had grown out of the entire previous development, prepared for the industrial revolution of the eighteenth century.

Now at this moment Britain, like all capitalist countries, needs an economic revolution far surpassing, in its historical significance, the industrial revolution of the eighteenth century. But this future economic revolution – the rebuilding of the whole economy according to a single socialist plan – cannot be achieved without a political revolution first.

Private ownership of the means of production today presents a far greater obstacle on the path of economic development than the craft privileges, which were a form of petty bourgeois property, presented in their time. As the bourgeoisie under no circumstances will renounce its property rights voluntarily, it is necessary that a bold revolutionary force must be set to work. History has not yet thought up any other method. And there will be no exception in the case of Britain.

As for the second quotation ascribed to me by Mr. Baldwin, here I find myself in the greatest perplexity. I firmly deny that I could have said anywhere or at any time that there exists some unalterable “Russian nature” against which revolution was powerless. Where is this quotation from? I know from long experience that not all men, not even all prime ministers, quote with complete precision. By complete chance I came across a passage in my book Problems of Cultural Work which deals fully with the question which concerns us. I quote it in full:

What are the grounds for our hopes of victory?

The first is that criticism and initiative has been aroused in the popular masses. Through the revolution our people have opened themselves up a window on Europe – meaning by “Europe” culture – just as two hundred or so years before, Peter’s Russia opened not a window but a ventilator on Europe for the top layers of the noble and bureaucratic statesmen.

Those passive qualities of humility and meekness which the official or voluntarily idiotic ideologues declared to be the specific, immutable and sacred qualities of the Russian people but in practice were merely the expression of its slavish, downtrodden state and its isolation from culture – those wretched and shameful qualities received a mortal blow in October 1917. This does not of course mean that we no longer carry the heritage of the past with us.

We do and shall continue to for a long time yet. But a great turning-point, not only materially, but also psychologically, has been passed. No one any longer dares to recommend the Russian people to build their destiny upon the precepts of humility, submissiveness and long-suffering. No, the virtues that are henceforth entering ever more deeply into the people’s consciousness are: criticism, initiative and collective creativity. And upon this, the greatest conquest of the national character rests above all our hope of success in all our work.

This, as we see, has very little similarity to what Mr. Baldwin ascribes to me. It should be said in mitigation that the British Constitution does not oblige prime ministers to quote correctly. And as for the precedents that play such a major part in British life there is certainly no shortage of them – just how many false quotations is one William Pitt good for?

It may be objected – what is the point of discussing revolution with a Tory leader? What importance can the historical philosophy of a Conservative Prime Minister have for the working class? But the fact of the matter is this: the philosophy of MacDonald, Snowden, Webb, and the other Labour Party leaders is merely an echo of Baldwin’s historical theories. And in due course we shall demonstrate this, with all appropriate … gradualness.

Notes

1. A peasant mystic who acquired a strong influence upon the Tsarina of Russia between 1911 and 1916. He was thought to be a German agent during the war and obtained high posts in the state for his nominees. He was assassinated in 1916 by a group of noblemen led by Prince Yusupov.
2. The popular titles given to the soldiers on the respective sides in the Civil War. “Roundheads” was a term of abuse for the forces of Puritanism, Parliament and bourgeois revolution, referring to the fact that they cut their hair short. “Cavaliers” were the more fashionably dressed, but less efficient, forces who supported the King.
3. Macaulay, History of England (1889 ed.), Chapter 1, p.63.
4. During the eighteenth century a number of legislative measures were passed forbidding trade union organization in different trades. The first general measure was passed in 1799 in the wake of other restrictions on the press and democratic rights, banning all trade unions and imposing fines and imprisonment. A further measure in 1800 slightly reduced the penalties. These laws were not repealed until 1824 and although trade unions were formed in this period and bargains even made with employers, workers’ organizations could be crushed at the will of the capitalists.
5. On 26th July 1830 French King Charles X dissolved the parliament – dominated by the liberal bourgeoisie – in order to remove opposition to his measures against democracy and in favour of the old aristocracy. For three days the workers of Paris fought on the barricades while many soldiers refused to fire. The liberals led by Thiers took fright and proposed handing the throne to a nominee of the French people (i.e., bourgeoisie). Louis-Philippe Orleans was installed, representing the interests of the financial bourgeoisie as opposed to the aristocracy.
6. In 1791 Canada had been partitioned at the Ottawa River into Lower Canada, chiefly French, and the British area of Upper Canada, which included “loyalists” who had fled from the American Revolution. In 1837 there was a revolt of French Canadians in Lower Canada led by Louis Papineau to establish an independent French state and another revolt in Upper Canada against ruling officialdom. After these revolts were put down the Earl of Durham was sent to Canada and though he was dismissed for showing too much leniency to the rebels his report was the basis of the 1840 Act of Union which unified the two parts of Canada under more rigorous British imperial rule.
7. Carried out by the Tories under the leadership of Lord Derby and Benjamin Disraeli in an unsuccessful bid to “dish the Whigs” in the face of rising pressure for an extension of the franchise, including enormous demonstrations in Hyde Park. They passed the Second Reform Act extending the franchise to prosperous urban workers and continuing the process of granting more parliamentary representation to urban centres.
8. Not wishing to overstep the limits of decency, we shall refrain from enquiring, for example, how forged documents attributed to a foreign state and exploited for electoral purposes can be regarded as a tool of “gradualness” in the development of so-called Christian morality in a civilized society. But without posing this delicate question we still cannot refrain from recollecting that,