The difficulty is that they haven’t power to use. Neither the President nor Congress nor the common people, under any form of organization whatever, can legally dispose of the oil of Rockefeller or the gold in the vaults of Morgan. If they try, they will be checked by other branches of government, which was designed as a system of checks and balances precisely to prevent such “usurpation of power.”

... What were the conditions which made the Bolsheviks establish a dictatorship? Why could they not wait until they were voted into power, and then take over one by one, by government decree or by taxation, the large-scale properties which they believed must be socially owned?

... The power of ownership over the means of life is the day-by-day power which works incessantly, buying brains, corrupting or confusing governments, persistently re-establishing itself against any “will of the people.”

This is a great explanation for why revolution is not an option taken out of recklessness and hate, but because there is no way around it. The system is built in such a way that no real change can come from within, it can only happen after the basis of the system is crushed and stripped of its powers.

They at once gave land to the peasants, repudiated all state debts, nationalized banks and transport and created a state monopoly of foreign trade. Industry was left in private hands, but “workers’ control” committees were established from the workers in each industry. These examined all accounts, studied the source of raw materials and fought to keep up production against the attempt of private capitalists to close down the factories as unprofitable. Internal trade remained private; on the second day of the Revolution a proclamation urged traders to continue business as usual. A policy however was announced for the gradual combining of factories into large-scale trusts, which should then be nationalized, and for the gradual socializing of internal trade through co-operatives.

I love the way she gives specifics like this about the different eras of the revolution, it makes it clear that there was so much thought behind every decision taken, constantly innovating ways to cooperate with different strata of classes for ulterior goals and then reaching a point where more power can be given safely to the working class. The description of why and how the War Economy, NEP and final attack on capitalism as she calls it, were done are great and can only truly be understood in context and not alone.

A vivid example of dictatorship in this period is given by Lenin, in a contrast drawn between dictatorship by property and dictatorship by workers. “The state has forcibly to evict a family from a house. This is done time and again by the capitalist state and will be done by our proletarian state. . . . The capitalist state evicts the workers’ family which has lost its breadwinner and is unable to pay rent.” After describing the enforcement by a squad of police of the rights of property against poor people, Lenin continues with the picture of the dispossession of a rich man by the workers’ state.

This hits hard and vividly, so many years later this is still the exact state of living under capitalist "democracy". Countless vulnerable families, disabled people and the weakest and most in need, are still being forcefully thrown out of their home with nowhere to go, even beaten up or killed sometimes in the process, for the unforgivable crime of not being able to keep up in a system built to exploit them. Still the capitalists will try to paint their punishment as a worse fate if they are forced to temporarily host some other people in their home until more housing is built.