The big problem is that revolutions abhor a vacuum. So, the good guys need to put in place a competent police/army structure like immediately. Or other forces will mobilize given the opportunity. This is not a pret a porter item. Cuba made the grade. Chile was nowhere near the point. Venezuela keeps teetering around.

Make sure the bad guys don’t have any guns. Get the civil war phase over with quickly. So whatever else has to take place it can stick.

Kautsky (via Blanc) and Moulian were addressing (if not answering) situations where the working masses see the road to power through elections and parliament, institutions that they identify in part as their own conquests, however inadequately they can be used to advance their class interests. Fidel correctly stresses the need to develop democratic mobilization independent of capitalist state institutions to counter the inevitable violent opposition of the capitalists to socialist revolution. How, then, can this be done where the masses still fasten their reformist illusions on capitalist state institutions?

Every successful socialist revolution to date—Russia, Yugoslavia, China, Indochina, and Cuba— has occurred where the existing institutional framework barred or foreclosed the electoral/parliamentary road. The armed forces of the capitalist state had been destroyed by war or revolution before or during the revolutionary victory. Only in Russia was there an attempt made to establish some form of “soviet” rule in place of parliament. And it was unsuccessful. So we need to think through and find ways to resolve the dilemma posed in the above question. For a critical account of how the Communist International grappled with these issues in its early years, I recommend this: http://links.org.au/the-communist-international-critical-analysis.

Fernando Claudín points to some of the illusions Comintern leaders held that prevented them from resolving these issues. We socialists in the 21st century have not progressed much further although we can learn much by studying attempts in many countries over the years to go beyond capitalism, both successful and unsuccessful (as in Allende’s Chile).

As Fidel told his Chilean supporters, it was up to them to “find a solution to all these problems.” That’s the challenge we all face, in our own countries. And these debates can help to clarify our thinking.