An introduction to the issue of the struggle for power

The Question of States' Rights:

Fraina The great, the decisive problem of the Russian Revolution was the problem of state power, the problem of which class should control the State and what form the state should assume. Every phase and tendency of the Revolution is interwoven with this problem of state power, every crisis of the Revolution is a crisis of power.

Within two weeks of the overthrow of Czarism and the organization of the Provisional Government and the Soviets of Workers, Soldiers and Peasants, the problem of state power appeared and swiftly became the determinant issue, of which all other issues were simply an expression.

The bourgeoisie, which at first desired a constitutional monarchy, reconciled itself under the pressure of events to a republic; its conception of state power was a bourgeois parliamentary republic retaining in its machinery all the essential features of the government of Czarism — a capitalist autocracy disguised in the mask of democratic forms.

At the start, the Provisional Government was dominated by the ultra-reactionaries of the Guchkov and Miliukov type; but after the crisis of Maythe government came under the control of bourgeois liberals, the Cadets and the Moderate Socialists. The Cadets were avowedly imperialist, a policy dictated by their class relations while the moderate Socialists were compelled to acquiesce in an imperialist policy because of their alliance with the bourgeoisie and their refusal to assume all power through the Soviets, by which means alone an independent, revolutionary policy could be formulated and put into practice.

The entry of Socialist representatives of the Soviets into the ministry was a flagrant violation of revolutionary Socialist policy and a contemptuous disregard of the prevailing situation. The only actual power in the nation was the power of the revolutionary masses, organized in the Soviets; the surrender of authority to the bourgeois government could not alter the actual relations of power nor eliminate the antagonisms between the revolutionary masses and the bourgeoisie.

Coalition meant a dodging of the problem of power, not its solution. In words, the Soviet leaders might relinquish all power to the government; in fact, the Soviets were compelled by the pressure of events and class antagonisms to limit the authority of the Provisional Government, often actually to repudiate it, to assume an attitude that prevented equally the development of a bourgeois power and policy or of a proletarian policy and power.

The situation was intolerable: The increasing resentment against the coalition concluded on May 18, compelled the Executive Committee of the Soviets early in June to issue an explanatory declaration: Socialist participation in the Government does not mean a cessation of the struggle of the classes, but, on the contrary, its prolongation by political power.

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It was for this reason that the entry of Socialists into the Ministry with representatives of the bourgeois parties was impossible until some of the enemies of the Russian proletariat were interned and others were removed from power by the movement of the revolutionary masses of May 2nd and 3rd.

The participation of the Socialists in the Government is being carried out on conditions of the most complete liberty being enjoyed by the proletariat and the army, this liberty being entirely unaffected by martial law, political censorship or other restrictions.

Organized control by the working classes of their representatives is effective enough. The entry of its representatives into the Government does not mean for the Russian proletariat the weakening of the bonds uniting it with Socialists of all countries who are struggling against imperialism, but, on the contrary, the strengthening of these bonds by a more intense common struggle for a general peace.

The purpose of coalition, directly and indirectly, consciously and unconsciously, was to castrate the revolutionary struggle by transforming it from a struggle of revolutionary mass action into the wrangles and bickerings in the ministry between the Socialist representatives and the Cadets.

Instead of action, words; instead of revolution, conciliation!

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But conciliation breaks down miserably under the impact of violent class antagonisms, in the stress of revolutionary events. The Menshevik and Social Revolutionary policy might have prevailed in a pre-revolutionary period; it was utterly futile during a revolution.

The policy of conciliation, of the cooperation of classes, is possible when the masses are apathetic, for then the masses do not act against the inevitable conversion of the cooperation of the classes into the supremacy of the capitalist class. But in a revolution, the masses are in motion; the developments of years are compressed into months and days; class relations and class antagonisms are revealed acutely, starkly, and uncompromisingly.

Conciliation requires compromise; but in a revolution with its crises and upheavals, compromise must go to the root of things, must be fundamental: Now neither the proletariat nor the bourgeoisie was willing to make the necessary compromise, which would have meant abdication; and the situation necessarily resolved itself into a dual struggle against the coalition — a struggle from the right, that of the imperialist bourgeoisie, and a struggle from the left, that of the revolutionary proletariat and its ally, the impoverished peasantry.

The principle of conciliation supposedly animating the Coalition Ministry expressed itself in practice in one acute ministerial crisis after another. The coalition was agreed upon on May 18; on May Konovalov CadetMinister of Trade and Industry, resigned his portfolio owing to a complete divergence of views with Minister of Labour Skobolev Menshevik-Socialist concerning appropriate economic and financial measures, particularly the measures necessary to deal with the prevailing internal crisis.

And this divergence was inevitable. Action to meet the internal crisis required measures limiting equally the power and the profits of the capitalist class, and the bourgeois representatives in the Ministry would never consent to these measures, even when they assumed the comparatively moderate form of measures proposed by a Menshevik.

In economic policy as on war and peace, conciliation was a broken reed that could sustain nothing. The Coalition Government was in an untenable position: Either it honestly tried to represent both the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the revolution and the reaction, in which ease it might talk but could not act, because of the antagonisms of class interests; or else, under the pressure of events, it might act, but in the interests of one or the other class.

It was no accident of history that the chief personality of this government was Kerensky and Kerensky was its guiding spirit even before he became Premier — an orator, a master of words, an adept in the psychology of promises.

Only words, only fine phrases and glittering slogans, instruments for the deception of the masses, could be the expression of a two-class government in a revolutionary situation. And where the Coalition Government acted, it acted fatedly against the Revolution.Mary Wollstonecraft held unto John Locke's philosophies about social contract which discusses about basic human rights.

With this, Wollstonecraft closes her introduction by pointing out that in the struggle for social power, the governing force will always be the intellect. Suppressing conflict can also suppress getting at what can be the meaningful essence of an issue or idea struggle.

Do not manufacture power power struggle. Issues in this realm seem to be symptoms of developmental disturbances and the solutions to finding balance probably lie elsewhere than directly confronting power and control behaviors.

It's. An introduction to how issues about Africa are covered, the legacy of colonialism and some additional context for many of Africa’s woes. “WISHING WON’T MAKE IT SO” Metaphysics is the fundamental branch of philosophy, which shapes all the rest. In particular, Rand held that the issue of the primacy of existence vs.

the primacy of consciousness is a basic divide, with life-and-death consequences. Understanding and Avoiding Power Struggles to lure us into a power struggle? and get distracted from the real issue at hand in that moment.