Epilogue: Revolutionary Optimism¶
Core Argument¶
This epilogue grounds its argument for revolutionary optimism in a personal and historical dialectic: the transformation of the author’s grandfather, George Woods, from a young volunteer in 1914, listed in a family bible under the slogan Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, into a committed Communist inspired by the Russian Revolution. The chapter uses this micro-narrative to illustrate a macro-historical claim: out of the blood-soaked ruins of the First World War, a new spirit of revolt was born. The South Wales Miners’ Federation and the Clydeside shop stewards, the author notes, voted to affiliate to the Communist International, and millions of workers rose in Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, and elsewhere.
The core argument is that pessimism, scepticism, and cynicism are forms of moral and intellectual cowardice. Those who draw pessimistic conclusions from objective conditions are accused of blaming the working class for their own apostasy. Lenin is held up as the counter-example: isolated in Swiss exile during the war, maintaining contact with only a tiny group, he never showed pessimism. He fought against the stream, convinced the tide would turn. The chapter contrasts Lenin’s revolutionary intransigence with the pacifists who “moaned about the evils of war but avoided drawing revolutionary conclusions.” A key polemical moment is Lenin’s retort to a pacifist who said war is terrible: “Yes, terribly profitable.”
The historical context is the First World War and its aftermath. The chapter argues that the imperialist war ended in revolution, contradicting pessimistic predictions. But the absence of a revolutionary leadership on an international scale aborted this possibility in one country after another, leading to a new and even more terrible imperialist war. This is presented as a lesson in historical dialectics: any situation, however hopeless, will turn into its opposite, and revolutionaries must prepare.
The epilogue then shifts to the present, arguing that capitalism is “horror without end,” a system exhausted and ripe for overthrow. Middle-class moralists and pacifists are dismissed for pointing to symptoms rather than the underlying cause: a diseased social system. The chapter concludes with a Leninist perspective: the working class has never been more powerful, but this power must be organised, mobilised, and provided with leadership. The ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky are presented as the sole guarantee of future victory. The perspective is not world war but an unprecedented upsurge in the class war; the horrors of the present are the death agony of capitalism and the birth pangs of a new society, which it is the task of revolutionaries to hasten.