Vladimir Lenin
The Dual Power
Written: April 9, 1917
Source: Lenin Collected Works Volume 24 -- pp. 38 - 41
Publisher: Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1964
First Published: Pravda -- No. 28; April 9, 1917
Translated: Bernard Isaacs
Online Version: marxists.org 1999
Transcribed/HTML Markup: David Walters and Brian Basgen
The basic question of every revolution is that of state power. Unless this
question is understood, there can be no intelligent participation in the
revolution, not to speak of guidance of the revolution.
The highly remarkable feature of our revolution is that it has brought about a
dual power. This fact must be grasped first and foremost: unless it is
understood, we cannot advance. We must know how to supplement and amend old
"formulas", for example, those of Bolshevism, for while they have been found to
be correct on the whole, their concrete realisation has turned out to
bedifferent. Nobody previously thought, or could have thought, of a dual power.
What is this dual power? Alongside the Provisional Government, the government of
bourgeoisie, another governmenthas arisen, so far weak and incipient, but
undoubtedly a government that actually exists and is growing -- the Soviets of
Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies.
What is the class composition of this other government? It consists of the
proletariat and the peasants (in soldiers' uniforms). What is the political
nature of this government? It is a revolutionary dictatorship, i.e., a power
directly based on revolutionary seizure, on the direct initiative of the people
from below, and not on a law enactedby a centralised state power. It is an
entirely different kind of power from the one that generally exists in the
parliamentary bourgeois-democratic republics of the usual type still prevailing
in the advanced countries of Europe and America. This circumstance often over
looked, often not given enough thought, yet it is the crux of the matter. This
power is of the same type as the Paris Commune of 1871. The fundamental
characteristics of this type are:
(1) the source of power is not a law previously discussed and enacted by
parliament, but the direct initiative of the people from below, in their local
areas -- direct "seizure", to use a current expression;
(2) the replacement of the police and the army, which are institutions divorced
from the people and set against the people, by the direct arming of the whole
people; order in the state under such a power is maintained by the armed workers
and peasants themselves, by the armed people themselves;
(3) officialdom, the bureaucracy, are either similarly replaced by the direct
rule of the people themselves or at least placed under special control; they not
only become elected officials, but are also subject to recall at the people's
first demand; they are reduced to the position of simple agents; from a
privileged group holding"jobs" remunerated on a high, bourgeois scale, they
become workers of a special "arm of the service", whose remuneration does not
exceedthe ordinary pay of a competent worker.
This, and this alone, constitutes the essence of the Paris Commune as a special
type of state. This essence has been forgotten or perverted by the Plekhanovs
(downright chauvinists who have betrayed Marxism), the Kautskys (the men of the
"Centre", i.e., those who vacillate between chauvinism and Marxism), and
generally by all those Social-Democrats, Socialist-Revolutionaries, etc., etc.,
who now rule the roost.
They are trying to get away with empty phrases, evasions, subterfuges; they
congratulate each other a thousand times upon the revolution, but refuse to
consider what the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies are. They refuse to
recognise the obvious truth that in as much as these Soviets exist, in as much
as they are a power, we have in Russia a state of the typeof the Paris Commune.
I have emphasised the words "in as much as", for it is only an incipient power.
By direct agreement with the bourgeois Provisional Government and by a series of
actual concessions, it has itself surrendered and is surrenderingits positions
to the bourgeoisie.
Why? Is it because Chkheidze, Tsereteli, Steklov and Co. are making a "mistake"?
Nonsense. Only a philistine can think so: -- not a Marxist. The reason is
insulficient class-consciousness and organisation of the proletarians and
peasants. The "mistake" of the leaders I have named lies in their
petty-bourgeois position, in the fact that instead of clarifying the minds of
the workers, they are befogging them; instead of dispelling petty-bourgeois
illusions,they are instilling them; instead of freeing the people from bourgeois
influence, they are strengthening that influence.
It should be clear from this why our comrades, too, make so many mistakes when
putting the question "simply": Should the Provisional Government be overthrown
immediately?
My answer is:
(1) it should be overthrown, for it is an oligarchic, bourgeois, and not a
people's government, and is unable to provide peace, bread, or full freedom;
(2) It cannot be overthrown just now, for it is being kept in power by a direct
and indirect, a formal and actual agreementwith the Soviets of Workers'
Deputies, and primarily with the chief Soviet, the Petrograd Soviet;
(3) generally, it can not be "overthrown" in the ordinary way, for it rests on
the "support" given to the bourgeoisie by the second government -- the Soviet of
Workers' Deputies, and that government is the only possible revolutionary
government, which directly expresses the mind and will of the majority of the
workers and peasants. Humanity has not yet evolved and we do not as yet know a
type of government superior to and better than the Soviets of Workers',
Agricultural Labourers', Peasants', and Soldiers' Deputies.
To become a power the class-conscious workers must win the majority to their
side.As long as no violence is used against the people there is no other road to
power. We are not Blancists, we do not stand for the seizure of power by a
minority. We are Marxists, we stand for proletarian class struggle against
petty-bourgeois intoxication, against chauvinism-defencism, phrase-mongering and
dependence on the bourgeoisie.
Let us create a proletarian Communist Party; its elements have already been
created by the best adherents of Bolshevism; let us rally our ranks for
proletarian class work; and larger and larger numbers from among the
proletarians,from among the poorest peasants will range themselves on our side.
For actual experience will from day to day shatter the petty-bourgeois illusions
of those "Social-Democrats", the Chkheidzes, Tseretelis, Steklovsand others, the
"Socialist Revolutionaries", the petty bourgeois of an even purer water, and so
on and so forth.
The bourgeoisie stands for the undivided power of the bourgeoisie.
The class-conscious workers stand for the undivided power of the Soviets of
Workers', Agricultural Labourers', Peasants', and Soldiers' Deputies -- for
undivided power made possible not by adventurist acts, but by clarifying
proletarian minds, by emancipating them from the influence of the bourgeoisie.
The petty bourgeoisie -- "Social-Democrats", Socialist- Revolutionaries, etc.,
etc.-- vacillate and, thereby, hinder this clarification and emancipation.
This is the actual, the class alignment of forces that determines our tasks.
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