onisms between workers and capitalists, and conquer
power. A determining phase of the proletarian revolution in Russia
was its acting against the dominant Socialist organizations,
sweeping these aside through its mass action before it could seize
social supremacy....

"Mass action is the proletariat itself in action, dispensing with
bureaucrats and intellectuals, acting through its own initiative;
and it is precisely this circumstance that horrifies the soul of
petty bourgeois Socialism. The masses are to act upon their own
initiative and the impulse of their own struggles....

"Mass action organizes and develops into the political strike and
demonstration, in which a general political issue is the source of
the action....

"The class power of the proletariat arises out of the intensity of
its struggles and revolutionary energy. It consists, moreover, of
undermining the bases of the morale of the capitalist state, a
process that requires extra parliamentary activity through mass
action. Capitalism trembles when it meets the impact of a strike in
a basic industry; Capitalism will more than tremble, it will
actually verge on a collapse, when it meets the impact of a general
mass action involving a number of correlated industries, and
developing into revolutionary mass action against the whole
capitalist regime. The value of this mass action is that it shows
the proletariat its power, weakens capitalism, and compels the
state largely to depend on the use of brute force in the struggle,
either the physical force of the military or the force of legal
terrorism; this emphasizes antagonisms between proletarian and
capitalist, widening the scope and deepening the intensity of the
proletarian struggle against capitalism....

"Mass action, being the proletariat itself in action, loosens its
energy, develops enthusiasm, and unifies the action of the workers
to its utmost measure....

"Moreover, mass action means the repudiation of bourgeois
democracy. Socialism will come not through the peaceful, democratic
parliamentary conquest of the state, but through the determined and
revolutionary mass action of a proletarian minority. The fetish of
democracy is a fetter upon the proletarian revolution; mass action
smashes the fetish, emphasizing that th