h Socialism was to come. Still calling himself a Marxist, and
believing as strongly as ever in the fundamental Marxian doctrines, as he
understood them, he naturally devoted his keen mind with its peculiar
aptitude for Talmudic hair-splitting to a new interpretation of Marxism. He
declared his belief that in Russia it was possible to change from
Absolutism to Socialism immediately, without the necessity of a prolonged
period of capitalist development. At the same time, he maintained a
scornful attitude toward the "Utopianism" of the peasant Socialists, who
had always made the same contention, because he believed they based their
hopes and their policy upon a wrong conception of Socialism. He had small
patience for their agrarian Socialism with its economic basis in
peasant-proprietorship and voluntary co-operation.

He argued that the Russian bourgeoisie was so thoroughly infected with the
ills of the bureaucratic system that it was itself decadent; not virile
and progressive as a class aiming to possess the future must be. Since it
was thus corrupted and weakened, and therefore incapable of fulfilling any
revolutionary historical role, that became the _immediate_ task of the
proletariat. Here was an example of the manner in which lifting over
revolutionary steps was accomplished. Of course, the peasantry was in a
backward and even primitive state which unfitted it for the proletarian
role. Nevertheless, it had a class consciousness of its own, and an
irresistible hunger for land. Without this class supporting it, or, at
least, acquiescing in its rule, the proletariat could never hope to seize
and hold the power of government. It would be possible to solve the
difficulty here presented, Trotzky contended, if the enactment of the
peasant program were permitted during the Revolution and accepted by the
proletariat as a _fait accompli_. This would satisfy the peasants and make
them content to acquiesce in a proletarian dictatorship. Once firmly
established in power, it would be possible for the proletariat to gradually
apply the true Socialist solution to the agrarian problem and to convert
the peasants. "Once in power, the proletariat will appear before the
peasantry as its liberator," he wrote.

His imagination fired by the manner in which the Soviet of which he was
president held the loyalty of the masses during the revolutionary uprising,
and the representative character it developed, Trotzky conceived the idea
that it