V. I. LENIN
THE
PROLETARIAN
REVOLUTION
AND THE
RENEGADE
KAUTSKY
FOREIGN LANGUAGES PRESS
PEKING 1972
First Edition 1972
.GIF)
V. I. LENINTHE |
|
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
|
HOW KAUTSKY TRANSFORMED MARX INTO AN ORDINARY
BOURGEOIS AND PROLETARIAN DEMOCRACY
CAN THERE BE EQUALITY BETWEEN THE EXPLOITED AND THE
THE SOVIETS DARE NOT BECOME STATE ORGANIZATIONS
THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY AND THE SOVIET REPUBLIC
SUBSERVIENCY TO THE BOURGEOISIE IN THE GUISE OF
APPENDIX I. THESES ON THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY
APPENDIX II. VADERVELDE'S NEW BOOK ON THE STATE |
1 |
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Kautsky's pamphlet, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, recently published in Vienna (Wien, I918, Ignaz Brand, 63 pp.) is a most lucid example of that utter and ignominious bankruptcy of the Second International about which all honest Socialists in all countries have been talking for a long time. The proletarian revolution is now becoming a practical issue in a number of countries, and an examination of Kautsky's renegade sophistries and complete renunciation of Marxism is therefore essential.
First of all, however, it should be emphasized that the present writer has had numerous occasions, from the very beginning of the war, to point to Kautsky's rupture with Marxism. A number of articles published in the course of 1914-16 in the Sotsial-Demokrat[1] and the Kommunist,[2] issued abroad, dealt with this subject. These articles were afterwards collected and published by the Petrograd Soviet under the title Against the Stream, by G. Zinoviev and N. Lenin (Petrograd, 1918, 550 pp.). In a pamphlet published in Geneva in 1915 and translated into German and French [3] in the same year I wrote about "Kautskyism" as follows:
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"Kautsky, the biggest authority in the Second International, gives us a highly typical and glaring example of how the verbal recognition of Marxism has led actually to its conversion into 'Struveism,' or into 'Brentanoism' (that is, into a liberal bourgeois doctrine, which recognizes a non-revolutionary 'class' struggle of the proletariat, and which was most shockingly expressed by the Russian writer Struve and the German economist Brentano). We see this also from the example of Plekhanov. By means of obvious sophistry they rob Marxism of its revolutionary living spirit; they recognize everything in Marxism except revolutionary methods of struggle, preaching and preparing them, training the masses precisely in this direction. Kautsky, in an unprincipled fashion, 'reconciles' the fundamental idea of social-chauvinism, recognition of defence of the fatherland in the present war, with a diplomatic, sham concession to the Lefts in the shape of abstaining from voting credits, the verbal claim of being in the opposition, etc. Kautsky, who in 1909 wrote a whole book on the approaching epoch of revolutions and on the connection between war and revolutions, Kautsky, who in 1912 signed the Basle Manifesto on taking revolutionary advantage of the impending war, is now, in every key, justifying and embellishing social-chauvinism and, like Plekhanov, joins the bourgeoisie in ridiculing all thought of revolution, all steps towards the directly revolutionary struggle.
"The working class cannot play its world-revolutionary role unless it wages a ruthless struggle against this renegacy, spinelessness, subservience to opportunism and unexampled vulgarization of the theories of Marxism. Kautskyism is not a fortuity, but a social product of the contradictions
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within the Second International, a combination of loyalty to Marxism in words and subordination to opportunism in deeds." (G. Zinoviev and N. Lenin, Socialism and War, Geneva, 1915, pp. 13-14.)
Again, in my book Imperialism, as the Latest Stage of Capitalism,[4] which was written in 1916 and published in Petrograd in 1917, I examined in detail the theoretical fallacy of all Kautsky's arguments about imperialism. I quoted Kautsky's definition of imperialism: "Imperialism is a product of highly developed industrial capitalism. It consists in the striving of every industrial capitalist nation to bring under its control or to annex larger and larger areas of agrarian (Kautsky's italics) territory, irrespective of what nations inhabit those regions." I showed how utterly incorrect this definition was, and how it was "adapted" to the glossing over of the most profound contradictions of imperialism, and then to reconciliation with opportunism. I gave my own definition of imperialism: "Imperialism is capitalism in that stage of development in which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital has established itself; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun; in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed."[5] I showed that Kautsky's critique of imperialism is at an even lower level than the bourgeois, philistine critique. Finally, in August and September 1917 -- that is, before the proletarian revolution in Russia (October 25 [November 7], 1917) I wrote a pamphlet (published in Petrograd at the beginning of 1918) entitled The State and Revolution, Marxist Teaching on the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the
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Revotution. In Chapter VI of this book, entitled "The Vulgarization of Marxism by the Opportunists," I devoted special attention to Kautsky, showing that he had completely distorted Marx's teaching, trimming it up to suit opportunism and that he had "repudiated the revolution in deeds, while accepting it in words."
In substance, the chief theoretical mistake Kautsky makes in his pamphlet on the dictatorship of the proletariat lies precisely in those opportunist distortions of Marx's teachings on the state which I have exposed in detail in my pamphlet, The State and Revolution.
It was necessary to make these preliminary remarks for they show that I had openly accused Kautsky of being a renegade long before the Bolsheviks assumed state power and were condemned by him on that account.
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The fundamental question that Kautsky discusses in his pamphlet is that of the root content of proletarian revolution, namely, the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is a question that is of the greatest importance for all countries, especially for the advanced ones, especially for the belligerent countries, and especially at the present time. One may say without fear of exaggeration that this is the most important problem of the entire proletarian class struggle. Hence it is necessary to deal with it with particular attention.
Kautsky formulates the question as follows: "The contrast between the two socialist trends" (i.e., the Bolsheviks and the non-Bolsheviks) is "the contrast between two radically different methods: the democratic and the dictatorial." (P. 3.)
Let us point out, in passing, that when calling the non-Bolsheviks in Russia, i.e., the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, Socialists, Kautsky was guided by their appellation, that is, by a word, and not by the actual place they are occupying in the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. What an excellent understanding and application of Marxism! But of this more anon.
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At present we must deal with the main point, viz., with Kautsky's great discovery of the "fundamental contrast" between the "democratic and dictatorial methods." That is the crux of the matter; that is the essence of Kautsky's pamphlet. And that is such a monstrous theoretical muddle, such a complete renunciation of Marxism, that Kautsky, it must be confessed, has far excelled Bernstein.
The question of the dictatorship of the proletariat is a question of the relation of the proletarian state to the bourgeois state, of proletarian democracy to bourgeois democracy. One would think that this is as plain as noonday. But Kautsky, like a schoolmaster who has become as dry as dust from repeating the same old textbooks on history, persistently turns his back on the twentieth century and his face to the eighteenth century, and for the hundredth time, in a number of paragraphs, incredibly tediously chews the old cud over the relation of bourgeois democracy to absolutism and medievalism!
It sounds indeed as if he were chewing rags in his sleep!
But this means that he utterly fails to understand what is what! One cannot help smiling at Kautsky's efforts to make it appear that there are people who preach "contempt for democracy" (p. 11) and so forth. It is by such twaddle that ( Kautsky finds himself compelled to befog and confuse the issue, for he poses it in the manner of the liberals, speaks of democracy in general, and not of bourgeois democracy; he even avoids using this precise, class term, and, instead, tries to speak about "pre-socialist" democracy. This windbag devotes almost one-third of his pamphlet, twenty pages out of a total of sixty-three, to this twaddle, which is so agreeable to the bourgeoisie, for it is tantamount to embellishing bour-
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geois democracy, and obscures the question of the proletarian revolution.
But, after all, the title of Kautsky's pamphlet is The Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Everybody knows that this is the very essence of Marx's doctrine; and after a lot of irrelevant twaddle Kautsky was obliged to quote Marx's words on the dictatorship of the proletariat.
But the way in which he, the "Marxist," did it was simply farcical! Listen to this:
"This view" (which Kautsky dubs "contempt for democracy") "rests upon a single word of Karl Marx's." This is what Kautsky literally says on page 20. And on page 60 the same thing is repeated even in the form that they (the Bolsheviks) "opportunely recalled the little word" (that is literally what he says -- des Wörtchens!!) "about the dictatorship of the proletariat which Marx once used in 1875 in a letter."
Here is Marx's "little word":
"Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. There corresponds to this also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat."[6]
First of all, to call this celebrated proposition of Marx's, which sums up the whole of his revolutionary teaching, "a single word" and even "a little word," is an insult to and complete renunciation of Marxism. It must not be forgotten that Kautsky knows Marx almost by heart, and, judging by all he has written, he has in his desk, or in his head, a number of pigeonholes in which all that was ever written by Marx is most carefully filed so as to be ready at hand for quotation. Kautsky cannot but know that both Marx and Engels, in their
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letters as well as in their published works, repeatedly spoke about the dictatorship of the proletariat, before and especially after the Paris Commune. Kautsky cannot but know that the formula "dictatorship of the proletariat" is merely a more historically concrete and scientifically exact formulation of the proletariat's task of "smashing" the bourgeois state machine, about which both Marx and Engels, in summing up the experience of the Revolution of 1848, and, still more so, of 1871, spoke for forty years, between 1852 and 1891.
How is this monstrous distortion of Marxism by that Marxist textualist Kautsky to be explained? As far as the philosophical roots of this phenomenon are concerned, it amounts to the substitution of eclecticism and sophistry for dialectics. Kautsky is a past master in this sort of substitution. Regarded from the standpoint of practical politics, it amounts to subserviency to the opportunists, that is, in the last analysis to the bourgeoisie. Since the outbreak of the war, Kautsky has made increasingly rapid progress in this art of being a Marxist in words and a lackey of the bourgeoisie in deeds, until he has become a virtuoso in it.
One feels still more convinced of this when one examines the remarkable way in which Kautsky "interprets" Marx's "little word" about the dictatorship of the proletariat. Listen:
"Marx, unfortunately, neglected to show us in greater detail how he conceived this dictatorship.". . . (This is the utterly mendacious phrase of a renegade, for Marx and Engels gave us, indeed, quite a number of most detailed indications, which Kautsky, the Marxist textualist, has deliberately ignored.) "Literally, the word dictatorship means the abolition of democracy. But, of course, taken literally, this word also means the undivided rule of a single person unrestricted by any laws -- an autocracy, which differs from despotism only in the fact that it is not regarded as a permanent state institution, but as a transient emergency measure.
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that Marx in this connection had in mind a dictatorship in the literal sense of the term.
We have deliberately quoted this argument in full in order that the reader may clearly see the methods Kautsky the "theoretician" employs.
Kautsky chose to approach the question in such a way as to begin with a definition of the "word" dictatorship.
Very well. Everyone has a sacred right to approach a question in whatever way he pleases. One must only distinguish a serious and honest approach from a dishonest one. Anyone who wanted to be serious in approaching the question in this way ought to have given his own definition of the "word." Then the question would have been put fairly and squarely. But Kautsky does not do that. "Literally," he writes, "the word dictatorship means the abolition of democracy."
In the first place, this is not a definition. If Kautsky wanted to avoid giving a definition of the concept dictatorship, why did he choose this particular approach to the question?
Secondly, it is obviously wrong. It is natural for a liberal to speak of "democracy" in general; but a Marxist will never forget to ask: "for what class?" Everyone knows, for instance (and Kautsky the "historian" knows it too), that rebellions, or even strong ferment, among the slaves in antique times at once revealed the fact that the antique state was essentially a dictatorship of the slaveowners. Did this dictatorship
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abolish democracy among, and for, the slaveowners? Everybody knows that it did not.
Kautsky the "Marxist" said this monstrously absurd and untrue thing because he "forgot" the class struggle. . . .
In order to transform Kautsky's liberal and false assertion into a Marxian and true one, one must say: dictatorship does not necessarily mean the abolition of democracy for the class that exercises the dictatorship over the other classes; but it necessarily does mean the abolition (or very material restriction, which is also a form of abolition) of democracy for the class over which, or against which, the dictatorship is exercised.
But, however true this assertion may be, it does not give a definition of dictatorship.
Let us examine Kautsky's next sentence:
". . . But, of course, taken literally, this word also means the undivided rule of a single person unrestricted by any laws."
Like a blind puppy casually sniffing first in one direction and then in another, Kautsky accidentally stumbled upon one true idea (namely, that dictatorship is rule unrestricted by any laws), nevertheless, he failed to give a definition of dictatorship, and, moreover, he gave vent to an obvious historical falsehood, viz., that dictatorship means the rule of a single person. This is even grammatically incorrect, since dictatorship may also be exercised by a handful of persons, or by an oligarchy, or by a class, etc.
Kautsky then goes on to point out the difference between dictatorship and despotism, but, although what he says is obviously incorrect, we shall not dwell upon it, as it is wholly irrelevant to the question that interests us. Everyone knows Kautsky's inclination to turn from the twentieth century to the eighteenth, and from the eighteenth century
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to classical antiquity, and we hope that the German proletariat, after it has attained its dictatorship, will bear this inclination of his in mind and appoint him, say, teacher of ancient history at some high school. To try to evade a definition of the dictatorship of the proletariat by philosophizing about despotism is either crass stupidity or very clumsy trickery.
As a result, we find that, having undertaken to discuss the dictatorship, Kautsky rattled off a great deal of manifest lies, but has not given a definition! Yet, without trusting his mental faculties, he might have had recourse to his memory and extracted from his "pigeonholes" all those instances in which Marx speaks of dictatorship. Had he done so, he would certainly have arrived either at the following definition or at one in substance coinciding with it:
Dictatorship is rule based directly upon force and unrestricted by any laws.
The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is rule won and maintained by the use of violence by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws.
And this simple truth, a truth that is as plain as noonday to every class-conscious worker (who represents the masses, and not an upper stratum of petty-bourgeois scoundrels who have been bribed by the capitalists, such as are the social-imperialists of all countries), this truth, which is obvious to every representative of the exploited classes that are fighting for their emancipation, this truth, which is beyond dispute for every Marxist, has to be "extracted by main force" from the most learned M. Kautsky! How is it to be explained? Simply by that spirit of servility with which the leaders of the Second International, who have become contemptible sycophants in the service of the bourgeoisie, are imbued.
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Kautsky first committed a sleight of hand by proclaiming the obvious nonsense that the word dictatorship, in its literal sense, means the dictatorship of a single person, and then -- on the strength of this sleight of hand I -- he declared that "hence" Marx's words about the dictatorship of a class were not meant in the literal sense (but in one in which dictatorship does not imply revolutionary violence, but the "peaceful" winning of a majority under bourgeois -- mark you -- "democracy").
One must, if you please, distinguish between a "condition" and a "form of government." A wonderfully profound distinction; it is like drawing a distinction between the "condition" of stupidity of a man who reasons foolishly and the "form" of his stupidity.
Kautsky finds it necessary to interpret dictatorship as a "condition of rulership" (this is the literal expression he uses on the very next page, p. 21), because then revolutionary violence, and violent revolution, disappear. The "condition of rulership" is a condition in which any majority finds itself under . . . "democracy"! Thanks to such a fraudulent trick, revolution happily disappears !
But the trick is too crude and will not save Kautsky. One cannot hide the fact that dictatorship presupposes and implies a "condition," one so disagreeable to renegades, of revolutionary violence of one class against another. The absurdity of drawing a distinction between a "condition" and a "form of government" becomes patent. To speak of forms of government in this connection is trebly stupid, for every schoolboy knows that monarchy and republic are two different forms of government. It must be explained to Mr. Kautsky that both these forms of government, like all transitional "forms of government" under capitalism, are but varieties of the bourgeois state, that is, of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
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Lastly, to speak of forms of government is not only a stupid, but also a very crude falsification of Marx, who was very clearly speaking here of this or that form or type of state, and not of forms of government.
The proletarian revolution is impossible without the forcible destruction of the bourgeois state machine and the substitution for it of a new one which, in the words of Engels, is "no longer a state in the proper sense of the word."[7]
But Kautsky finds it necessary to befog and belie all this -- his renegade position demands it.
See to what wretched subterfuges he resorts.
First subterfuge. . . . "That Marx in this case did not have in mind a form of government is proved by the fact that he was of the opinion that in England and America a peaceful revolution was possible, i.e., by democratic means."
The form of government has absolutely nothing to do with the case here, for there are monarchies which are not typical of the bourgeois state, such, for instance, as have no military clique, and there are republics which are quite typical in this respect, such, for instance, as have a military clique and a bureaucracy. This is a universally known historical and political fact, and Kautsky will not succeed in falsifying it.
If Kautsky had wanted to argue in a serious and honest manner he would have asked himself: are there historical laws relating to revolution which know of no exception? And the reply would have been: no, there are no such laws. Such laws only apply to the typical, to what Marx once termed the "ideal," meaning average, normal, typical capitalism.
Further, was there in the seventies anything which made England and America exceptional in regard to what we are now discussing? It will be obvious to anyone at all familiar with the requirements of science in regard to the problems of
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history that this question must be put. To fail to put it is tantamount to falsifying science, to engaging in sophistry. And, the question having been put, there can be no doubt as to the reply: the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is violence against the bourgeoisie; and the necessity of such violence is particularly created, as Marx and Engels have repeatedly explained in detail (especially in The Civil War in France and in the preface to it), by the existence of a military clique and a bureaucracy. But it is precisely these institutions that were n o n - e x i s t e n t precisely in England and in America and precisely in the 1870's, when Marx made his observations (they do exist in England and in America now)!
Kautsky has to resort to trickery literally at every step to cover up his apostasy!
And note how he inadvertently betrayed the cloven hoof; he wrote: "peacefully, that is, in a democratic way"!!
In defining dictatorship, Kautsky tried his utmost to conceal from the reader the fundamental feature of this concept, namely, revolutionary violence. But now the truth is out: it is a question of the contrast between peaceful and violent revolutions.
That is where the trouble lies. Kautsky had to resort to all these subterfuges, sophistries and fraudulent falsifications only in order to dissociate himself from violent revolution, and to conceal his renunciation of it, his desertion to the liberal labour policy, i.e., to the bourgeoisie. That is where the trouble lies.
Kautsky the "historian" so shamelessly falsifies history that he "forgets" the fundamental fact that pre-monopoly capitalism -- which reached its zenith actually 1870's -- was by virtue of its fundamental economic traits, which found
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most typical expression in England and in America, distinguished by a, relatively-speaking, maximum fondness for peace and freedom. Imperialism, on the other hand, i.e., monopoly capitalism, which finally matured only in the twentieth century, is, by virtue of its fundamental economic traits, distinguished by a minimum fondness for peace and freedom, and by a maximum and universal development of militarism. To "fail to notice" this in discussing the extent to which a peaceful or violent revolution is typical or probable is to stoop to the position of a most ordinary lackey of the bourgeoisie.
Second subterfuge: The Paris Commune is a dictatorship of the proletariat, but it was elected by universal suffrage, i.e., without depriving the bourgeoisie of the franchise, i.e., "democratically." And Kautsky says triumphantly: ". . . The dictatorship of the proletariat was for Marx" (or: according to Marx) "a condition which necessarily follows from pure democracy, if the proletariat forms the majority" (bei überwiegendem Proletariat, S. 21).
This argument of Kautsky's is so amusing that one truly suffers from a veritable embarras de richesses (an embarrassment due to the wealth . . . of replies that can be made to it). Firstly, it is well known that the flower, the General Staff, the upper strata of the bourgeoisie had fled from Paris to Versailles. In Versailles there was the "Socialist" Louis Blanc -- which, by the way, proves the falsity of Kautsky's assertion that "all trends" of Socialism took part in the Paris Commune. Is it not ridiculous to represent the division of the inhabitants of Paris into two belligerent camps, one of which gathered the entire militant and politically active section of the bourgeoisie, as "pure democracy" with "universal suffrage"?
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Secondly, the Paris Commune waged war against Versailles as the workers' government of France against the bourgeois government. What has "pure democracy" and "universal suffrage" got to do with it, when Paris was deciding the fate of France? When Marx expressed the opinion that the Paris Commune had committed a mistake in failing to seize the bank, which belonged to the whole of France,[8] did he proceed from the principles and practice of "pure democracy"?
Really, it was obvious that Kautsky was writing in a country where the people are forbidden by the police to laugh "in crowds," otherwise Kautsky would have been killed by ridicule.
Thirdly, I would respectfully remind Mr. Kautsky, who knows Marx and Engels by heart, of the following appreciation of the Paris Commune given by Engels from the point of view of . . . "pure democracy":
"Have these gentlemen" (the anti-authoritarians) "ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon -- authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?"[9]
Here you have your "pure democracy"! How Engels would have ridiculed the vulgar petty bourgeois, the "Social Democrat" (in the French sense of the 'forties and the general
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European sense of 1914-18), who took it into his head to talk about "pure democracy" in a society divided into classes!
But enough. It is impossible to enumerate all the various absurdities Kautsky goes to the length of, since every phrase he utters is a bottomless pit of apostasy.
Marx and Engels analyzed the Paris Commune in a most detailed manner and showed that its merit lies in its attempt to smash, to break up the "ready-made state machinery." Marx and Engels considered this condition to be so important that this was the o n l y amendment they introduced in 1872 in the "obsolete" (in parts) program of the Communist Manifesto.[10] Marx and Engels showed that the Paris Commune had abolished the army and the bureaucracy, had abolished parliamentarism, had destroyed "that parasitic excrescence, the state," etc.; but the sage Kautsky, donning his nightcap, repeats the fairy tale about "pure democracy," which has been told a thousand times by liberal professors.
Not without reason did Rosa Luxemburg declare, on August 4, 1914, that German Social-Democracy was now a stinking corpse.
Third subterfuge: "When we speak of the dictatorship as a form of government we cannot speak of the dictatorship of a class, since a class, as we have already pointed out, can only rule but not govern. . . ." It is "organizations" or "parties" that govern.
That is a muddle, a disgusting muddle, Mr. "Muddle Counsellor"! Dictatorship is not a "form of government"; that is ridiculous nonsense. And Marx does not speak of the "form of government" but of the form or type of state. That is something altogether different, altogether different. It is altogether wrong, too, to say that a class cannot govern: such an absurdity could only have been uttered by a "parlia-
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mentary cretin," who sees nothing but bourgeois parliaments and notices nothing but "ruling parties." Any European country will provide Kautsky with examples of government by a ruling class, for instance, by the landlords in the Middle Ages, in spite of their insufficient organization.
To sum up: Kautsky has in a most unparalleled manner distorted the concept dictatorship of the proletariat, and has transformed Marx into an ordinary liberal; that is, he himself has sunk to the level of a liberal who utters banal phrases about "pure democracy," embellishing and glossing over the class content of bourgeois democracy, and shrinking, above all, from the use of revolutionary violence by the oppressed class. By so "interpreting" the concept "revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat" as to expunge the revolutionary violence of the oppressed class against its oppressors, Kautsky beat the world record in the liberal distortion of Marx. The renegade Bernstein has proved to be a mere puppy compared with the renegade Kautsky.
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The question which Kautsky has so disgustingly muddled up really stands as follows.
If we are not to mock at common sense and history, it is obvious that we cannot speak of "pure Democracy" so long as different classes exist; we can only speak of class democracy. (Be it said in parenthesis that "pure democracy" is not only an ignorant phrase, revealing a lack of understanding both of the class struggle and of the nature of the state, but also a thrice-empty phrase, since in communist society democracy will wither away in the process of changing and becoming a habit, but will never be "pure" democracy.)
"Pure democracy" is the mendacious phrase of a liberal who wants to fool the workers. History knows of bourgeois democracy which takes the place of feudalism, and of proletarian democracy which takes the place of bourgeois democracy.
When Kautsky devotes dozens of pages to "proving" the truth that bourgeois democracy is progressive compared with medievalism, and that the proletariat must unfailingly utilize it in its struggle against the bourgeoisie, that in fact is just
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liberal twaddle intended to fool the workers. This is a truism, not only for educated Germany, but also for uneducated Russia. Kautsky is simply throwing "learned" dust in the eyes of the workers when, with an important mien, he talks about Weitling and the Jesuits of Paraguay and many other things, in order to avoid telling about the b o u r g e o i s essence of modern, i.e., capitalist, democracy.
Kautsky takes from Marxism what is acceptable to the liberals, to the bourgeoisie (the criticism of the Middle Ages, and the progressive historical role of capitalism in general and of capitalist democracy in particular), and discards, passes in silence, glosses over all that in Marxism which is unacceptable to the bourgeoisie (the revolutionary violence of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie for the latter's destruction). That is why Kautsky, by virtue of his objective position and irrespective of what his subjective convictions may be, inevitably proves to be a lackey of the bourgeoisie.
Bourgeois democracy, although a great historical advance in comparison with medievalism, always remains, and under capitalism cannot but remain, restricted, truncated, false and hypocritical, a paradise for the rich and a snare and a deception for the exploited, for the poor. It is this truth, which forms a most essential part of Marx's teachings, that Kautsky the "Marxist" has failed to understand. On this -- the fundamental -- issue Kautsky offers "delights" for the bourgeoisie, instead of a scientific criticism of those conditions which make every bourgeois democracy only a democracy for the rich.
Let us first recall to the mind of the most learned Mr. Kautsky the theoretical propositions of Marx and Engels which that textualist has so disgracefully "forgotten" (in
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order to please the bourgeoisie), and then explain the matter as popularly as possible.
Not only the ancient and feudal, but also "the modern representative state is an instrument of exploitation of wage labour by capital." (Engels, in his work on the state.)[11] "As, therefore, the state is only a transitional institution which is used in the struggle, in the revolution, in order to hold down one's adversaries by force, it is pure nonsense to talk of a free people's state: so long as the proletariat still uses the state, it does not use it in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom the state as such ceases to exist." (Engels, in his letter to Bebel, March 28, 1875.) "In reality the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy." (Engels, preface to The Civil War in France by Marx.)[12] Universal sufferage is "the gauge of the maturity of the working class. It cannot and never will be anything more than the present-day state." (Engels, in his work on the state.[13] Mr. Kautsky very tediously chews the cud over the first part of this proposition, which is acceptable to the bourgeoisie. But as to the second part, which we have italicized and which is not acceptable to the bourgeoisie, the renegade Kautsky passes in silence!) "The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentry, body, executive and legislative at the same time. . . . Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to represent and repress (ver- und zertreten) the people in parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people, constituted in Communes, as individual suffrage serves every other employer in the search for the workers, foremen and bookkeepers for his business." (Marx
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in his work on the Paris Commune, The Civil War in France.)[14]
Every one of these propositions, which are excellently known to the most learned Mr. Kautsky, is a slap in his face and lays bare his apostasy. Nowhere in his pamphlet does Kautsky reveal the slightest understanding of these truths. His whole pamphlet is a sheer mockery of Marxism!
Take the fundamental laws of modern states, take their administration, take the right of assembly, freedom of the press, or "equality of all citizens before the law," and you will see at every step evidence of the hypocrisy of bourgeois democracy with which every honest and class-conscious worker is familiar. There is not a single state, however democratic, which has no loopholes or reservations in its constitution guaranteeing the bourgeoisie the possibility of dispatching troops against the workers, of proclaiming martial law, and so forth, in case of a "violation of public order," and actually in case the exploited class "violates" its position of slavery and tries to behave in a nonslavish manner. Kautsky shamelessly embellishes bourgeois democracy and omits to mention, for instance, how the most democratic and republican bourgeois in America or Switzerland deal with workers on strike.
Oh, the wise and learned Kautsky keeps silent about these things! That learned politician does not realize that to remain silent on this matter is despicable. He prefers to tell the workers nursery tales of the kind that democracy means "protecting the minority." It is incredible, but it is a fact! In the summer of this year of our Lord 1918, in the fifth year of the world imperialist slaughter and the strangulation of internationalist minorities (i.e., those who have not despicably betrayed Socialism, like the Renaudels and
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Longuets, the Scheidemanns and Kautskys, the Hendersons and Webbs et al.) in all "democracies" of the world, the learned Mr. Kautsky sweetly, very sweetly, sings the praises of "protection of the minority." Those who are interested may read this on page 15 of Kautsky's pamphlet. And on page 16 this learned . . . individual tells you about the Whigs and Tories in England in the eighteenth century!
Oh, wonderful erudition! Oh, refined servility to the bourgeoisiel Oh, civilized belly-crawling and boot-licking before the capitalists! If I were Krupp or Scheidemann, or Clemenceau or Renaudel, I would pay Mr. Kautsky millions, reward him with Judas kisses, praise him before the workers and urge "socialist unity" with "honourable" men like him. To write pamphlets against the dictatorship of the proletariat, to talk about the Whigs and Tories in England in the eighteenth century, to assert that democracy means "protecting the minority," and remain silent about pogroms against internationalists in the "democratic" republic of America -- is this not rendering lackey service to the bourgeoisie?
The learned Mr. Kautsky has "forgotten" -- accidentally forgotten, probably . . . a "trifle"; namely, that the ruling party in a bourgeois democracy extends the protection of the minority only to another bourgeois party, while on all serious, profound and fundamental issues the proletariat gets martial law or pogroms, instead of the "protection of the minority." The more highly developed a democracy is, the more imminent are pogroms or civil war in connection with any profound political divergence which is dangerous to the bourgeoisie. The learned Mr. Kautsky could have studied this "law" of bourgeois democracy in connection with the Dreyfus case in republican France, with the lynching of
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Negroes and internationalists in the democratic republic of America, with the case of Ireland and Ulster in democratic Britain,[15] with the baiting of the Bolsheviks and the organization of pogroms against them in April 1917 in the democratic republic of Russia. I have purposely chosen examples not only from the time of the war but also from prewar time, the time of peace. But mealy-mouthed Mr. Kautsky is pleased to shut his eyes to these facts of the twentieth century, and instead to tell the workers wonderfully new, remarkably interesting, unusually edifying and incredibly important things about the Whigs and Tories of the eighteenth century!
Take the bourgeois parliament. Can it be that learned Kautsky has never heard that the more highly democracy is developed, the more the bourgeois parliaments are subjected by the stock exchange and the bankers? This does not mean that we must not make use of bourgeois parliaments (the Bolsheviks made better use of them than any other party in the world, for in 1912-14 we captured the entire workers' curia in the Fourth Duma). But it does mean that only a liberal can forget the historical limitations and conditional character of bourgeois parliamentarism as Kautsky does. Even in the most democratic bourgeois state the oppressed masses at every step encounter the crying contradiction between the formal equality proclaimed by the "democracy" of the capitalists and the thousands of real limitations and subterfuges which turn the proletarians into wage slaves. It is precisely this contradiction that is opening the eyes of the masses to the rottenness, mendacity and hypocrisy of capitalism. It is this contradiction that the agitators and propagandists of Socialism are constantly exposing to the masses, in order to prepare them for revolution! And now that the era of revolutions has begun, Kautsky turns his back upon
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it and begins to extol the charms of moribund bourgeois democracy.
Proletarian democracy, of which Soviet government is one of the forms, has brought a development and expansion of democracy hitherto unprecedented in the world, precisely for the vast majority of the population, for the exploited and toiling people. To write a whole pamphlet about democracy, as Kautsky did, in which two pages are devoted to dictatorship and scores to "pure democracy," and fail to notice this fact, means completely distorting the subject in a liberal way.
Take foreign policy. In no bourgeois state, not even in the most democratic, is it conducted openly. The masses are deceived everywhere, and in democratic France, Switzerland, America, England this is done on an incomparably wider scale and in an incomparably subtler manner than in other countries. The Soviet government has torn the veil of mystery from foreign policy in a revolutionary manner. Kautsky has not noticed this, he keeps silent about it, although in the era of predatory wars and secret treaties for the "division of spheres of influence" (i.e., for the partition of the world among the capitalist bandits) the subject is one of cardinal importance for on it depends the question of peace, the life and death of tens of millions of people.
Take the organization of the state. Kautsky picks at all manner of "trifles," down to the argument that under the Soviet constitution elections are "indirect," but he misses the essence of the matter. He fails to see the class nature of the state apparatus, of the machinery of state. Under bourgeois dcmocracy the capitalists, by thousands of tricks -- which are the more artful and effective the more "pure" democracy is developed -- push the masses away from the work of administration, from freedom of the press, the right of
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assembly, etc. The Soviet government is the first in the world (or strictly speaking the second, because the Paris Commune began to do the same thing) to enlist the masses, specifically the exploited masses, in the work of administration. The toiling masses are barred from participation in bourgeois parliaments (which never decide important questions under bourgeois democracy; they are decided by the stock exchange and the banks) by thousands of obstacles, and the workers know and feel, see and realize perfectly well that the bourgeois parliaments are institutions alien to them, instruments for the oppression of the proletarians by the bourgeoisie, institutions of a hostile class, of the exploiting minority.
The Soviets are the direct organization of the toiling and exploited masses themselves, which helps them to organize and administer their own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the toilers and exploited, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the advantage of being best organized by the large enterprises; it is easier for it than for all others to elect and watch elections. The Soviet organization automatically helps to unite all the toilers and exploited around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus -- the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these practical privileges are the more varied, the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed) -- all this disappears under the Soviet form of organization. Freedom of the press ceases to be hypocrisy, because the printing plants and stocks of paper are taken away from the bourgeoisie. The same thing applies to the best buildings, the palaces, the mansions and manor houses. The Soviet power took thousands upon thousands of these best buildings from the exploiters at one
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stroke, and in this way made the right of assembly -- without which democracy is a fraud -- a m i l l i o n t i m e s more "democratic" for the masses. Indirect elections to nonlocal Soviets make it easier to hold Congresses of Soviets, they make the entire apparatus less costly, more flexible, more accessible to the workers and peasants at a time when life is seething and it is necessary to be able very quickly to recall one's local deputy or to delegate him to the general Congress of Soviets.
Proletarian democracy is a m i l l i o n t i m e s more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
To fail to see this one must either deliberately serve the bourgeoisie, or be politically as dead as a doornail, unable to see real life from behind the dusty pages of bourgeois books, be thoroughly imbued with bourgeois-democratic prejudices, and thereby objectively convert himself into a lackey of the bourgeoisie.
To fail to see this one must be incapable of presenting the question from the point of view of the oppressed classes.
Is there a single country in the world, even among the most democratic bourgeois countries, in which the average rank-and-file worker, the average rank-and-file village labourer, or village semi-proletarian generally (i.e., the representative of the oppressed masses, the overwhelming majority of the population), enjoys anything approaching such liberty of holding meetings in the best buildings, such liberty of using the largest printing plants and biggest stocks of paper to express his ideas and to defend his interests, such liberty of promoting men and women of his own class to administer and to "put into shape" the state, as in Soviet Russia?
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It is ridiculous to think that Mr. Kautsky could find in any country even one out of a thousand of well-informed workers or agricultural labourers who would have any doubts as to the reply to this question. Instinctively, from hearing fragments of admissions of the truth in the bourgeois press, the workers of the whole world sympathize with the Soviet Republic precisely because they regard it as a proletarian democracy, a democracy for the poor, and not a democracy for the rich that every bourgeois democracy, even the best, actually is.
We are governed (and our state is "put into shape") by bourgeois bureaucrats, by bourgeois members of parliament, by bourgeois judges -- such is the simple, obvious and indisputable truth, which tens and hundreds of millions of people belonging to the exploited classes in all bourgeois countries, including the most democratic, know from their living experience, feel and realize every day.
But in Russia the bureaucratic machine has been completely smashed, razed to the ground; the old judges have all been sent packing, the bourgeois parliament has been dispersed -- and far more accessible representation has been given to the workers and peasants; t h e i r Soviets have replaced the bureaucrats, t h e i r or Soviets have been placed in control of the bureaucrats, and t h e i r Soviets have been authorized to elect the judges. This fact alone is enough to cause all the oppressed classes to recognize that the Soviet power, i.e., the present form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
Kautsky does not understand this truth, which is so clear and obvious to every worker, because he has "forgotten," "unlearned" to put the question: democracy f o r w h a t
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c l a s s ? He argues from the point of view of "pure" (i.e., nonclass? or above-class?) democracy. He argues like Shylock: my "pound of flesh" and nothing else. Equality for all citizens -- otherwise there is no democracy.
We must ask the learned Kautsky, the "Marxist" and "Socialist" Kautsky:
Can there be equality between the exploited and the exploiters?
It is monstrous, it is incredible that one should have to put such a question in discussing a book written by the ideological leader of the Second International. But "having put your hand to the plough, don't look back," and having undertaken to write about Kautsky, I must explain to the learned man why there can be no equality between the exploiters and the exploited.
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Kautsky argues as follows:
(1) "The exploiters have always formed only a small minority of the population."
That is indisputably true. Taking this as the starting point, what should be the argument? One may argue in a Marxist, a socialist way; in which case one would take as the basis the relation between the exploited and the exploiters. Or one may argue in a liberal, a bourgeois-democratic way; and in that case one would take as the basis the relation between the majority and the minority.
If we argue in a Marxist way, we must say: the exploiters inevitably transform the state (and we are speaking of democracy, i.e., one of the forms of the state) into an instrument of the rule of their class, the exploiters, over the exploited. Hence, so long as there are exploiters who rule the majority, the exploited, the democratic state must inevitably be a democracy for the exploiters. A state of the exploited must fundamentally differ from such a state; it must be a
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democracy for the exploited, and a means of suppressing the exploiters; and the suppression of a class means inequality for that class, its exclusion from "democracy."
If we argue in a liberal way, we must say: the majority decides, the minority submits. Those who do not submit are punished. That is all. Nothing need be said about the class character of the state in general, or of "pure democracy" in particular, because it is irrelevant; for a majority is a majority and a minority is a minority. A pound of flesh is a pound of flesh, and that is all there is to it.
And this is exactly the way Kautsky argues.
(2) "Why should the rule of the proletariat assume, and necessarily assume, a form which is incompatible with democracy?" (P. 21.) Then follows a very detailed and a very verbose explanation, backed by a quotation from Marx and the election figures of the Paris Commune, to the effect that the proletariat is in the majority. The conclusion is: "A regime which is so strongly rooted in the masses has not the slightest reason for encroaching upon democracy. It cannot always dispense with violence in cases when violence is employed to suppress democracy. Violence can only be met with violence. But a regime which knows that it has the backing of the masses will employ violence only in order to protect democracy and not to destroy it. It would be simply suicidal if it attempted to do away with its most reliable basis -- universal suffrage, that deep source of mighty moral authority." (P. 22.)
You see, the relation between the exploited and the exploiters has vanished in Kautsky's argument. All that remains is majority in general, minority in general, democracy in general, the "pure democracy" with which we are already familiar.
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And all this, mark you, is said apropos of the Paris Commune! To make things clearer we will quote Marx and Engels to show what they said on the subject of dictatorship, apropos of the Paris Commune:
Marx: ". . . When the workers substitute their revolutionary dictatorship for the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie . . . in order to break down the resistance of the bourgeoisie . . . the workers invest the state with a revolutionary and transitional form. . . .''[16]
Engels: ". . . if the victorious party" (in a revolution) "does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?. . .''[17]
Engels: "As, therefore, the state is only a transitional institution which is used in the struggle, in the revolution, in order to hold down one's adversaries by force, it is pure nonsense to talk of a free people's state: so long as the proletariat still uses the state, it does not use it in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom the state as such ceases to exist. . . .''[18]
Kautsky is as far removed from Marx and Engels as heaven is from earth, as a liberal from a proletarian revolutionary. The pure democracy and simple "democray" that Kautsky talks about is merely a paraphrase of the "free people's state," i.e., pure nonsense. Kautsky, with the learned air of a most learned armchair fool, or with the innocent air of a ten-year-old schoolgirl, asks: why do we need a dictator-
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ship when we have a majority? And Marx and Engels explain:
-- In order to break down the resistance of the bourgeoisie;
-- in order to inspire the reactionaries with fear;
-- in order to maintain the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie;
-- in order that the proletariat may forcibly hold down its adversaries.
Kautsky does not understand these explanations. Infatuated with the "purity" of democracy, blind to its bourgeois character, he "consistently" urges that the majority, since it is the majority, need not "break down the resistance" of the minority, nor "forcibly hold it down" -- it is sufficient to suppress cases of infringement of democracy. Infatuated with the "purity" of democracy, Kautsky inadvertently commits the same little error that all bourgeois democrats always commit, namely, he takes formal equality (which is nothing but a fraud and hypocrisy under capitalism) for actual equality! Quite a trifle!
The exploiter and the exploited cannot be equal.
This truth, however unpleasant it may be to Kautsky, nevertheless forms the essential content of Socialism.
Another truth: there can be no real, actual equality until all possibility of the exploitation of one class by another has been totally destroyed.
The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landlords and capitalists of a country of any size at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a
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legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long way, because it is necessary to depose the landlords and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters -- who for many generations have stood out because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits -- and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to enjoy a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property -- often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organization and management, knowledge of all the "secrets" (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management, superior education, close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie), incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on, and so forth.
If the exploiters are defeated in one country only -- and this, of course, is typical, since a simultaneous revolution in a number of countries is a rare exception, they still remain stronger than the exploited, for the international connections of the exploiters are enormous. That a section of the exploited from the least advanced section of the middle peasant, artisan and similar masses, may, and indeed do, follow the exploiters has been proved hitherto by all revolutions, in cluding the Commune (for there were also proletarians among the Versailles troops, which the most learned Kautsky has "forgotten").
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In these circumstances, to assume that in a revolution which is at all profound and serious the issue is decided simply by the relation between the majority and the minority is the acme of stupidity, the silliest prejudice of a common or garden liberal, an attempt to deceive the masses by concealing from them a well-established historical truth. This historical truth is that in every profound revolution, a prolonged, stubborn and desperate resistance of the exploiters, who for a number of years retain important practical advantages over the exploited, is the rule. Never -- except in the sentimental fantasies of the sentimental fool Kautsky -- will the exploiters submit to the decision of the exploited majority without trying to make use of their advantages in a last desperate battle, or series of battles.
The transition from capitalism to Communism represents an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch has terminated, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this bope is converted into attempts at restoration. And after their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters -- who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it -- throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise," of which they have been deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labour . . .). In the train of the capitalist exploiters follow the broad masses of the petty bourgeoisie, with regard to whom decades of historical experience of all countries testify that they vacillate and hesitate, one day marching behind the proletariat and the next day taking fright at the difficulties of the revolution;
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that they become panic-stricken at the first defeat or semi-defeat of the workers, grow nervous, run about aimlessly, snivel, and rush from one camp into the other -- just like our Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries.
And in these circumstances, in an epoch of desperate acute war, when history has placed on the order of the day the question whether age-old and thousand-year-old privileges are to be or not to be -- at such a time to talk about majority and minority, about pure democracy, about dictatorship being unnecessary and about equality between the exploiter and the exploited!! What infinite stupidity and bottomless philistinism are needed for this!
But during the decades of comparatively "peaceful" capitalism, between 1871 and 1914, Augean stables[19] of philistinism, imbecility, and apostasy accumulated in the socialist parties which were adapting themselves to opportunism. . . .
The reader will probably have noticed that Kautsky, in the passage from his pamphlet quoted above, speaks of an attempt to encroach upon universal suffrage (calling it, by the way, a deep source of mighty moral authority, whereas Engels, apropos of the same Paris Commune and the same question of dictatorship, spoke of the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie -- a very characteristic difference between the philistine's and the revolutionary's views on "authority". . .).
It should be observed that the question of depriving the exploiters of the franchise is purely a Russian question, and not a question of the dictatorship of the proletariat in general.
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Had Kautsky, casting aside hypocrisy, entitled his pamphlet Against the Bolsheviks, the title would have corresponded to the contents of the pamphlet, and Kautsky would have been justified in speaking bluntly about the franchise. But Kautsky wanted to come out primarily as a "theoretician." He called his pamphlet The Dictatorship of the Proletariat -- in general. He speaks about the Soviets and about Russia specially only in the second part of the pamphlet, beginning with the sixth paragraph. The subject dealt with in the first part (from which I took the quotation) is democracy and dictatorship i n g e n e r a l. In speaking about the franchise, Kautsky betrayed himself as an opponent of the Bolsheviks who does not care a brass farthing for theory. For theory, i.e., the discussion of the general (and not the nationally specific) class foundations of democracy and dictatorship, ought to deal not with a special question, such as the franchise, but with the general question of whether democracy can be preserved for the rich, for the exploiters in the historical period of the overthrow of the exploiters and the replacement of their state by the state of the exploited.
That is the way, the only way, a theoretician can present the question.
We know the example of the Paris Commune, we know all that was said by the founders of Marxism in connection with it and in reference to it. On the basis of this material I examined, for example, the question of democracy and dictatorship in my pamphlet, The State and Revolution, written before the October Revolution. I did not say any thing at all about restricting the franchise. And it must be said now that the question of restricting the franchise is a nationally specific and not a general question of the dictatorship. One must approach the question of restricting the
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franchise by studying the specific conditions of the Russian revolution and the specific path of its development. This will be done later on in this pamphlet. It would be a mistake, however, to guarantee in advance that the impending proletarian revolutions in Europe will all, or the majority of them, be necessarily accompanied by restriction of the franchise for the bourgeoisie. It may be so. After the war and the experience of the Russian revolution it probably will be so; but it is not absolutely necessary for the exercise of the dictatorship, it is not an indispensable characteristic of the logical concept "dictatorship," it does not enter as an indispensable condition in the historical and class concept "dictatorship."
The indispensable characteristic, the necessary condition of dictatorship, is the forcible suppression of the exploiters as a class, and, consequently, the infringement of "pure democracy," i.e., of equality and freedom in regard to that class.
This is the way, the only way, the question can be put theoretically. And by failing to put the question thus, Kautsky showed that he opposes the Bolsheviks not as a theoretician, but as a sycophant of the opportunists and the bourgeoisie.
In which countries, and given what special national features of this or that capitalism, democracy for the exploiters will be restricted in some or other manner, (wholly or in part) infringed upon, is a question of the special national features of this or that capitalism, of this or that revolution. The theoretical question is different, viz., is the dictatorship of the proletariat possible without infringing democracy in relation to the exploiting class?
It is precisely this question, the only theoretically important and essential one, that Kautsky has evaded. He has quoted all sorts of passages from Marx and Engels, except those which bear on this question, and which I quoted above.
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Kautsky talks about anything you like, about everything that is acceptable to liberals and bourgeois democrats and does not go beyond their circle of ideas, but he does not talk about the main thing, namely, the fact that the proletariat cannot achieve victory without breaking the resistance of the bourgeoisie, without forcibly suppressing its enemies, and that, where there is "forcible suppression," where there is no "freedom," there is, of course, no democracy.
This Kautsky has not understood.
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The Soviets are the Russian form of the proletarian dictatorship. If a Marxist theoretician, writing a work on the dictatorship of the proletariat, had really studied the subject (and not merely repeated the petty-bourgeois lamentations against dictatorship, as Kautsky does, singing to Menshevik tunes), he would first have given a general definition of dictatorship, and would then have examined its peculiar, national, form, the Soviets; he would have given his critique of them as one of the forms of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
It goes without saying that nothing serious could be expected from Kautsky after his liberalistic "interpretation" of Marx's teachings on the dictatorship; but the manner in which he approached the question of what the Soviets are and the way he dealt with this question is highly characteristic.
The Soviets, he says, recalling their rise in 1905, created "the most all-embracing (umfassendste) form of proletarian organization, for it embraced all the wage-workers" (p. 31). In 1905 they were only local bodies; in 1917 they became an all-Russian organization.
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"The Soviet organization," Kautsky continues "has already a great and glorious history behind it, and it has a still mightier future before it, and not in Russia alone. It appears that everywhere the old methods of the economic and political struggle of the proletariat are inadequate" (versagen; this German expression is somewhat stronger than "inadequate" and somewhat weaker than "impotent") "against the gigantic economic and political forces which finance capital has at its disposal. These old methods cannot be discarded; they are still indispensable for normal times; but from time to time tasks arise which they cannot cope with, tasks that can be accomplished successfully only as a result of a combination of all the political and economic instruments of force of the working class." (P. 32.)
Then follows a disquisition on the mass strike and on the "trade union bureaucracy" -- which is no less necessary than the trade unions -- being "useless for the purpose of directing the mighty class battles that are more and more becoming the sign of the times. . . ."
"Thus," Kautsky concludes, "the Soviet crganization is one of the most important phenomena of our time. It promises to acquire decisive importance in the great decisive battles between capital and labour towards which we are marching.
Those who are familiar with Russian Menshevik literature will at once see how slavishly Kautsky copies Martov, Axelrod, Stein and Co. Yes, "slavishly," because Kautsky ridiculously distorts the facts in order to pander to Menshevik
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prejudices. Kautsky did not take the trouble, for instance, to ask his informants (Stein of Berlin, or Axelrod of Stockholm) when the questions of changing the name of the Bolsheviks to Communists and of the significance of the Soviets as state organizations were first raised. Had Kautsky made this simple inquiry he would not have penned these laughter-provoking lines, for both these questions were raised by the Bolsheviks in April 1917, for example, in my "Theses" of April 4, 1917, i.e., long before the Revolution of October 1917 (and, of course, long before the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly on January 5, 1918).
But the passage from Kautsky's argument which I have just quoted in full represents the crux of the whole question of the Soviets. The crux is: should the Soviets aspire to become state organizations (in April 1917 the Bolsheviks put forward the slogan: "All Power to the Soviets!" and at the Bolshevik Party Conference held in the same month they declared that they were not satisfied with a bourgeois parliamentary republic but demanded a workers' and peasants' republic of the Paris Commune type, or Soviet type); or should the Soviets not strive for this, refrain from taking power into their hands, refrain from becoming state organizations and remain the "combat organizations" of one "class" (as Martov expressed it, embellishing by this innocent wish the fact that under Menshevik leadership the Soviets were an instrument for tbe subjection of the workers to the bourgeoisie )?
Kautsky slavishly repeats Martov's words, picks out fragments of the theoretical controversy between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, and uncritically and senselessly transplants them to the general theoretical and general European
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field. The result is such a hodgepodge as to provoke Homeric laughter in every class-conscious Russian worker who might hear of these arguments of Kautsky's.
And when we explain what the question at issue is, every worker in Europe (barring a handful of inveterate social-imperialists) will greet Kautsky with similar laughter.
Kautsky has rendered Martov a backhanded service by developing his mistake into a glaring absurdity. Indeed, look what Kautsky's argument amounts to.
The Soviets embrace all wage-workers. The old methods of economic and political struggle of the proletariat are inadequate against finance capital. The Soviets have a great role to play in the future, and not only in Russia. They will play a decisive role in great decisive battles between capital and labour in Europe. That is what Kautsky says.
Excellent. But will not the "decisive battles between capital and labour" decide which of the two classes will gain possession of the power of state?
Nothing of the kind! God forbid!
The Soviets, which embrace all the wage-workers, must not become state organizations in the "decisive" battles!
But what is the state?
The state is nothing but a machine for the suppression of one class by another.
Thus, the oppressed class, the vanguard of all the toilers and exploited in modern society, must strive towards the "decisive battles between capital and labour," but must not touch the machine by means of which capital suppresses labour! -- It must not break up that machine! -- It must not make use of its all-embracing organization for the purpose of suppressing the exploiters!
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Excellent, Mr. Kautsky, magnificent! "We" recognize the class struggle -- in the same way as all liberals recognize it, i.e., without the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. . . .
This is where Kautsky's complete rupture both with Marxism and with Socialism becomes obvious. Actually, it is desertion to the camp of the bourgeoisie, which is prepared to concede everything except the transformation of the organizations of the class which it oppresses into state organizations. Kautsky can no longer save his position of trying to reconcile everything and of getting away from all profound contradictions with mere phrases.
Kautsky either rejects the assumption of state power by the working class altogether, or he concedes that the working class may take over the old, bourgeois state machine; but he will by no means concede that it must break it up, smash it, and replace it by a new, proletarian machine. Whichever way Kautsky's arguments are "interpreted," or "explained," his rupture with Marxism and his desertion to the bourgeoisie are obvious.
Already in the Communist Manifesto, describing what sort of state the victorious working class needs, Marx wrote: "a state, that is, . . . the proletariat organized as the ruling class."[20] Now we have a man who claims to be still a Marxist coming forward and declaring that the proletariat, organized to a man and waging the "decisive battle" against capital, must not transform its class organization into a state organization! Here Kautsky has betrayed that "superstitious belief in the state" which in Germany, as Engels wrote in 1891, "has been carried over into the general consciousness of the bourgeoisie and even of many workers.''[21] Workers, fight! -- our philistine "agrees" to this (as every bourgeois "agrees," since the workers are fighting all the same, and the
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only thing to do is to devise means of blunting the edge of their sword) -- fight, but don't dare win ! Don't destroy the state machine of the bourgeoisie, don't put the proletarian "state organization" in the place of the bourgeois "state organization"!
Whoever sincerely shared the Marxian view that the state is nothing but a machine for the suppression of one class by another, and who has at all reflected upon this truth, could never have reached the absurd conclusion that the proletarian organizations capable of defeating finance capital must not transform themselves into state organizations. It was this point that betrayed the petty bourgeois who believes that "after all is said and done" the state is something outside of classes, or above classes. Indeed, why should the proletariat, "one class," be permitted to wage decisive war with capital, which rules not only over the proletariat, but over the whole people, over the whole petty bourgeoisie, over the whole peasantry, yet this proletariat, this "one class," is not to be permitted to transform its organization into a state organization? Because the petty bourgeois is afraid of the class struggle, and does not carry it to its logical conclusion, to its main object.
Kautsky has got himself completely mixed up and has given himself away entirely. Mark you, he himself admits that Europe is heading for decisive battles between capital and labour, and that the old methods of the economic and political struggle of the proletariat are inadequate. But these old methods were precisely the utilization of bourgeois democracy. It therefore follows?. . .
But Kautsky was afraid to think of what follows.
. . . Hence, only a reactionary, an enemy of the working class, a henchman of the bourgeoisie, can now turn his face
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to the obsolete past, paint the charms of bourgeois democracy and babble about pure democracy. Bourgeois democracy was progressive compared with medievalism, and it was necessary to utilize it. But now it is not sufficient for the working class. Now we must look, not backward, but forward -- to replacing bourgeois democracy by proletarian democracy. And while the preparatory work for the proletarian revolution, the formation and training of the proletarian army were possible (and necessary) within the framework of the bourgeois-democratic state, now that we have reached the stage of "decisive battles," to confine the proletariat to this framework means betraying the cause of the proletariat, means being a renegade.
Kautsky has made himself particularly ridiculous by repeating Martov's argument without noticing that in Martov's case this argument was based on another argument which he, Kautsky, does not use! Martov said (and Kautsky repeats after him) that Russia is not yet ripe for Socialism; from which it logically follows that it is too early to transform the Soviets from organs of struggle into state organizations (read: it is timely to transform the Soviets, with the assistance of the Menshevik leaders, into instruments for subjecting the workers to the imperialist bourgeoisie). Kautsky, however, cannot say outright that Europe is not ripe for Socialism. In 1909, when he was not yet a renegade, he wrote that there was now no reason to fear a premature revolution, that whoever renounced revolution for fear of defeat would be a traitor. Kautsky does not dare renounce this outright. And so we get an absurdity, which completely reveals the stupidity and cowardice of the petty bourgeois: on the one hand, Europe is ripe for Socialism and is heading towards decisive battles between capital and labour; but, on the other hand,
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the combat organization (i.e., the organization which arises, grows and gains strength in combat), the organization of the proletariat, the vanguard and organizer, the leader of the oppressed, must not be transformed into a state organization!
From the point of view of practical politics the idea that the Soviets are necessary as a combat organization but must not be transformed into state organizations is even infinitely more absurd than from the point of view of theory. Even in peacetime, when there is no revolutionary situation, the mass struggle of the workers against the capitalists -- for instance, the mass strike -- gives rise to great bitterness on both sides, to fierce passions in the struggle, the bourgeoisie constantly insisting that it remains and means to remain "master in its own house," etc., and in time of revolution when political life reaches boiling point, an organization like the Soviets, which embraces all the workers in all branches of industry, all the soldiers, and all the toiling and poorest sections of the rural population -- such an organization, of its own accord, with the development of the struggle, by the simple "logic" of attack and defence, comes inevitably to raise the question point-blank. The attempt to take up a middle position and to "reconcile" the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is sheer stupidity and is doomed to miserable failure. That is what happened in Russia to the preachings of Martov and other Mensheviks, and that will inevitably happen in Germany and other countries if the Soviets succeed in developing on any wide scale, manage to unite and strengthen. To say to the Soviets: fight, but do not take the entire state power into your hands, do not become state
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organizations -- is tantamount to preaching class collaboration and "social peace" between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. It is ridiculous even to think that such a position in the midst of fierce struggle could lead to anything but ignominious failure. But it is Kautsky's everlasting fate to sit between two stools. He pretends to disagree with the opportunists on everything in theory, but actually he agrees with them on everything essential (i.e., on everything that pertains to revolution), in practice.
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The question of the Constituent Assembly and its dispersal by the Bolsheviks is the crux of Kautsky's entire pamphlet. He constantly reverts to it, and the whole of this literary production of the ideological leader of the Second International is replete with innuendoes to the effect that the Bolsheviks have "destroyed democracy" (see one of the quotations from Kautsky above). The question is really an interesting and important one, because the relation between bourgeois democracy and proletarian democracy here confronted the revolution in a practical form. Let us see how our "Marxist theoretician" has dealt with the question.
He quotes the "Theses on the Constituent Assembly," which were written by me and published in the Pravda on December 26,1917. One would think that no better evidence of Kautsky's serious approach to the subject, quoting as he does the documents, could be desired. But observe h o w he quotes. He does not say that there were nineteen of these theses; he does not say that they dealt with the relation between the ordinary bourgeois republic, with a Constituent Assembly. and a Soviet republic, as well as with the history
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of the divergence in our revolution between the Constituent Assembly and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Kautsky ignores all that, and simply tells the reader that "two of them" (of the theses) "are particularly important"; one stating that a split occurred among the Socialist-Revolutionaries after the elections to the Constituent Assembly, but before it was convened (Kautsky does not mention that this was the fifth thesis), and the other, that the republic of Soviets is in general a higher democratic form than the Constituent Assembly (Kautsky does not mention that this was the third thesis).
And only from this third thesis does Kautsky quote a part in full, namely, the following passage:
"The republic of Soviets is not only the form of a higher type of democratic institution (as compared with the usual bourgeois republic crowned by a Constituent Assembly), but is the only form capable of securing the most painless* transition to Socialism" (Kautsky omits the word "usual" and the introductory words of the thesis: "For the transition from the bourgeois to the socialist system, for the dictatorship of the proletariat").
After quoting these words, Kautsky, with magnificent irony, exclaims:
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"It is a pity that this conclusion was arrived at only after the Bolsheviks found themselves in the minority in the Constituent Assembly. Before that no one had demanded it more clamorously than Lenin."
This is literally what Kautsky says on page 31 of his book!
It is positively a gem! Only a sycophant of the bourgeoisie was capable of presenting the question in such a false way as to give the reader the impression that all the Bolsheviks' talk about a higher type of state was an invention which saw the light of day after they found themselves in the minority in the Constituent Assembly!! Such an infamous lie could only have been uttered by a scoundrel who has sold himself to the bourgeoisie, or, what is absolutely the same thing, who has placed his trust in P. Axelrod and is concealing the source of his information.
For everyone knows that on the very day of my arrival in Russia, on April 4, 1917, I publicly read my theses in which I proclaimed the superiority of the Paris Commune type of state over the bourgeois parliamentary republic. Afterwards, I repeatedly stated this in print, as, for instance, in a pamphlet on political parties, which was translated into English[22] and was published in January 1918 in The New York Evening Post.[23] More than that, the conference of the Bolshevik Party held at the end of April 1917 adopted a resolution to the effect that a proletarian and peasant republic was superior to a bourgeois parliamentary republic, that our Party would not be satisfied with the latter, and that the program of the Party should be modified accordingly.
In face of these facts, what name can be given to Kautsky's trick of assuring his German readers that I had been clamorously demanding the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, and that I began to "belittle" the honour and dignity of the Constituent Assembly only after the Bolsheviks
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found themselves in the minority in it? How can one excuse such a trick?[*] By pleading that Kautsky did not know the facts? If that is the case, why did he undertake to write about them? Or why did he not honestly announce that he was writing on the strength of information supplied by the Mensheviks Stein and P. Axelrod and Co.? By pretending to be objective, Kautsky wants to conceal his role as the servant of the Mensheviks, who are disgruntled because they have been defeated.
But this is a mere trifle compared with what is to come.
Let us assume that Kautsky would not or could not (??) obtain from his informants a translation of the Bolshevik resolutions and declarations on the question of whether they would be satisfied with a bourgeois parliamentary democratic republic or not. Let us assume this, although it is incredible. But Kautsky directly mentions my theses of December 26, 1917, on page 30 of his book.
Does he know these theses in full, or does he know only what was translated for him by the Steins, the Axelrods and Co.? Kautsky quotes the third thesis on the fundamental question of whether the Bolsheviks, before the elections to the Constituent Assembly, realized that a Soviet republic is superior to a bourgeois republic, and whether they told the people that. B u t h e k e e p s s i l e n t a b o u t t h e s e c o n d t h e s i s.
The second thesis reads as follows:
"While demanding the convocation of a Constituent Assembly, revolutionary Social-Democracy has ever since the beginning of the revolution of 1917 repeatedly emphasied that
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a republic of Soviets is a higher form of democracy than the usual bourgeois republic with a Constituent Assembly." (My italics.)
In order to represent the Bolsheviks as unprincipled people, as "revolutionary opportunists" (this is a term which Kautsky employs somewhere in his book, I forget in which connection), Mr. Kautsky has concealed from his German readers the fact that the theses contain a direct reference to "r e p e a t e d " declarations!
Such are the petty, miserable and contemptible methods Mr. Kautsky employs! That is the way he has evaded the theoretical question.
Is it true or not that the bourgeois-democratic parliamentary republic is inferior to the republic of the Paris Commune or Soviet type? This is the crux of the question, and Kautsky has evaded it. Kautsky has "forgotten" all that Marx said in his analysis of the Paris Commune. He has also "forgotten" Engels' letter to Bebel of March 28, 1875, in which this same idea of Marx is formulated in a particularly clear and comprehensible fashion: "The Commune was no longer a state in the proper sense of the word."
Here is the most prominent theoretician of the Second International, in a special pamphlet on The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, specially dealing with Russia, where the question of a form of state that is higher than a democratic bourgeois republic has been raised directly and repeatedly, ignoring this very question. In what way does this differ in fact from desertion to the bourgeois camp?
(Let us observe in parenthesis that in this respect, too, Kautsky is merely trailing after the Russian Mensheviks. Among the latter there are any number of people who know "all the quotations" from Marx and Engels; but not a single
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Menshevik, from April to October 1917 and from October 1917 to October 1918, has ever made a single attempt to examine the question of the Paris Commune type of state. Plekhanov, too, has evaded the question. Evidently he was obliged to remain silent.)
It goes without saying that to discuss the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly with people who call themselves Socialists and Marxists, but who in practice desert to the bourgeoisie on the main question, the question of the Paris Commune type of state, would be casting pearls before swine. It will be sufficient for me to give the complete text of my theses on the Constituent Assembly as an appendix to the present book. The reader will then see that the question was presented on December 26, 1917, in the light of theory, history and practical politics.
If Kautsky has completely renounced Marxism as a theoretician he might at least have examined the question of the struggle of the Soviets with the Constituent Assembly as a historian. We know from many of Kautsky's works that he knew how to be a Marxian historian, and that such works of his will remain a permanent possession of the proletariat in spite of his subsequent apostasy. But on this question Kautsky, even as a historian, turns his back on the truth, ignores well-known facts and behaves like a sycophant. He wants to represent the Bolsheviks as being devoid of principles and he tells his readers that they tried to mitigate the conflict with the Constituent Assembly before dispersing it. There is absolutely nothing wrong about it, we have nothing to recant: I give the theses in full and there it is said as clear as clear can be: Gentlemen of the vacillating petty bourgeoisie entrenched in the Constituent Assembly, either recon-
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cile yourselves to the proletarian dictatorship, or else we shall vanquish you by "revolutionary means" (theses 18 and 19).
That is how a really revolutionary proletariat has always behaved and always will behave towards the vacillating petty bourgeoisie.
Kautsky adopts a formal standpoint on the question of the Constituent Assembly. My theses say clearly and repeatedly that the interests of the revolution are higher than the formal rights of the Constituent Assembly (see theses 16 and 17). The formal democratic point of view is precisely the point of view of the bourgeois democrat who refuses to admit that the interests of the proletariat and of the proletarian class struggle are supreme. As a historian, Kautsky would not have been able to deny that bourgeois parliaments are the organs of this or that class; but now (for the sordid purpose of renouncing revolution) Kautsky finds it necessary to forget his Marxism, and he refrains from putting the question: the organ of what class was the Constituent Assembly of Russia? Kautsky does not examine the concrete conditions; he does not want to face the facts; he does not say a single word to his German readers about the fact that the theses contained not only a theoretical elucidation of the question of the limited character of bourgeois democracy (theses 1-3), not only a description of the concrete conditions which determined the discrepancy between the party lists of candidates in the middle of October 1917 and the real state of affairs in December 1917 (theses 4-6), but also a history of the class struggle and the civil war in October-December 1917 (theses 7-15). From this concrete history we drew the conclusion (thesis 14) that the slogan: "All Power to the Constituent Assembly!" had, in reality, become the slogan of the Cadets and the Kaledinites and their abettors.
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Kautsky the historian fails to see this. Kautsky the historian has never heard that universal suffrage sometimes produces petty-bourgeois, sometimes reactionary and counter-revolutionary parliaments. Kautsky the Marxian historian has never heard that the form of elections, the form of democracy, is one thing, and the class content of the given institution is another. This question of the class content of the Constituent Assembly is directly put and answered in my theses. Perhaps my answer is wrong. Nothing would have been more welcome to us than a Marxian criticism of our analysis by an outsider. Instead of writing utterly silly phrases (of which there are plenty in Kautsky's book) about somebody preventing criticism of Bolshevism, he ought to have set out to make such a criticism. But the point is that he offers no criticism. He does not even raise the question of a class analysis of the Soviets on the one hand, and of the Constituent Assembly on the other. Hence it is impossible to argue, to debate with Kautsky; and all we can do is to demonstrate to the reader why Kautsky cannot be called anything else than a renegade.
The divergence between the Soviets and the Constituent Assembly has its history, which even a historian who does not share the point of view of the class struggle could not have ignored. Kautsky would not touch upon this actual history. Kautsky has concealed from his German readers the universally known fact (which only malignant Mensheviks now suppress) that the divergence between the Soviets and the "general state" (that is, bourgeois) institutions existed even under the rule of the Mensheviks, i.e., from the end of February to October 1917. Actually, Kautsky adopts the position of conciliation, compromise and collaboration between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. However much Kautsky may repudiate this, it is a fact which is borne
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out by his whole pamphlet. To say that the Constituent Assembly should not have been dispersed is tantamount to saying that the fight against the bourgeoisie should not have been fought to a finish, that the bourgeoisie should not have been overthrown and that the proletariat should have made peace with it.
Why has Kautsky passed in silence the fact that the Mensheviks were engaged in this inglorious work between February and October 1917 and did not achieve anything? If it was possible to reconcile the bourgeoisie with the proletariat, why did not the Mensheviks succeed in doing so? Why did the bourgeoisie stand aloof from the Soviets? Why did the Mensheviks call the Soviets "revolutionary democracy," and the bourgeoisie the "propertied elements"?
Kautsky has concealed from his German readers that it was precisely the Mensheviks who, in the "epoch" of their rule (February to October 1917), called the Soviets "revolutionary democracy," thereby admitting their superiority over all other institutions. It is only by concealing this fact that the historian Kautsky made it appear that the divergence between the Soviets and the bourgeoisie had no history, that it arose instantaneously, suddenly, without cause, because of the bad behaviour of the Bolsheviks. And in actual fact, it was precisely the more than six months' (an enormous period in time of revolution) experience of Menshevik compromise, of their attempts to reconcile the proletariat with the bourgeoisie, that convinced the people of the fruitlessness of these attempts and drove the proletariat away from the Mensheviks.
Kautsky admits that the Soviets are an excellent combat organization of the proletariat, and that they have a great future before them. But, that being the case, Kautsky's posi-
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tion collapses like a house of cards, or like the dreams of a petty bourgeois that the acute struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie can be avoided. For revolution is one continuous and moreover desperate struggle, and the proletariat is the vanguard class of all the oppressed, the focus and centre of all the aspirations of all the oppressed for their emancipation! Naturally, therefore, the Soviets, as the organ of struggle of the oppressed masses, reflected and expressed the moods and changes of opinions of these masses ever so much more quickly, fully, and faithfully than any other institution (that, incidentally, is one of the reasons why Soviet democracy is the highest type of democracy).
In the period between February 28 (old style) and October 25, 1917, the Soviets managed to convene two All-Russian Congresses of representatives of the overwhelming majority of the population of Russia, of all the workers and soldiers, and of 70 or 80 per cent of the peasantry, not to mention the vast number of local, uyezd, urban, gubernia, and regional congresses. During this period the bourgeoisie did not succeed in convening a single institution that represented the majority (except that obvious sham and mockery called the "Democratic Conference," which enraged the proletariat). The Constituent Assembly reflected the same mood of the masses and the same political grouping as the First (June) All-Russian Congress of Soviets. By the time the Constituent Assembly was convened (January 1918), the Second (October 1917) and Third (January 1918) Congresses of Soviets had met, both of which had demonstrated as clear as dear could be that the masses had swung to the Left, had become revolu tionized, had turned away from the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, and had passed over to the side of the Bolsheviks; that is, had turned away from petty-bour-
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geois leadership, from the illusion that it was possible to reach a compromise with the bourgeoisie, and had joined the proletarian revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie.
Hence, even the external history of the Soviets shows that the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly was inevitable and that this Assembly was a reactionary body. But Kautsky sticks firmly to his "slogan": let "pure democracy" prevail though the revolution perish and the bourgeoisie triumph over the proletariat! Fiat justitia, pereat mundus![24]
Here are the brief figures relating to the All-Russian Congresses of Soviets in the course of the history of the Russian revolution:
All-Russian Congress Number of
Number of
Percentage of
First (June 3, 1917)
790
103
13
Second (October 25, 1917)
675
343
51
Third (January 10, 1918)
710
434
61
Fourth (March 14, 1918)
1,232
795
64
Fifth (July 4,1918)
1,164
773
66
It is enough to glance at these figures to understand why the defence of the Constituent Assembly and talk (like Kautsky's) about the Bolsheviks not having a majority of the population behind them is just ridiculed in Russia.
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As I have already pointed out, the disfranchisement of the bourgeoisie is not a necessary and indispensable feature of the dictatorship of the proletariat. And in Russia, the Bolsheviks, who long before October put forward the slogan of proletarian dictatorship, did not say anything in advance about disfranchising the exploiters. This element of the dictatorship did not make its appearance "according to the plan" of any particular party; it emerged of itself in the course of the struggle. Of course, Kautsky the historian failed to notice this. He failed to understand that even when the Mensheviks (who compromised with the bourgeoisie) still ruled the Soviets, the bourgeoisie severed itself from the Soviets of its own accord, boycotted them, put itself up in opposition to them and intrigued against them. The Soviets arose without any constitution and existed without one for more than a year (from the spring of 1917 to the summer of 1918). The fury of the bourgeoisie against this independent and omnipotent (because all-embracing) organization of the oppressed; the fight, the unscrupulous, self-seeking and sordid fight the bourgeoisie waged against the Soviets; and, lastly, the overt participation of the bourgeoisie (from the Cadets to the Right
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Socialist-Revolutionaries, from Milyukov to Kerensky) in the Kornilov mutiny, -- all this paved the way for the formal exclusion of the bourgeoisie from the Soviets.
Kautsky has heard about the Kornilov mutiny, but he majestically scorns historical facts and the course and forms of the struggle which determine the forms of the dictatorship. Indeed, who should care about facts where "pure" democracy is involved? That is why Kautsky's "criticism" of the disfranchisement of the bourgeoisie is distinguished by such a . . . sweet naïveté, which would be touching in a child but is repulsive in a person who has not yet been officially certified as feeble-minded.
". . . If the capitalists found themselves in an insignihcant minority under universal suffrage they would more readily become reconciled to their fate" (p. 33). . . . Charming, is it not? Clever Kautsky has seen many cases in history, and, generally, knows perfectly well from his own observations of life, of landlords and capitalists reckoning with the will of the majority of the oppressed. Clever Kautsky firmly adopts the point of view of an "opposition," i.e., the point of view of the struggle within the parliaments. That is literally what he says: "opposition" (p. 34 and elsewhere).
Oh, learned historian and politician! It would not harm you to know that "opposition" is a concept that belongs to the peaceful and only to the parliamentary struggle, i.e., a concept that corresponds to a non-revolutionary situation, a concept that corresponds to an absence of revolution. During revolution we have to deal with a ruthless enemy in civil war; and no reactionary jeremiads of a petty bourgeois who fears such a war, as Kautsky does, will alter the fact. To examine the problems of ruthless civil war from the point of view of "opposition" at a time when the bourgeoisie is pre-
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pared to commit any crime -- the example of the Versaillese and their deals with Bismarck must mean something to every person who does not treat history like Gogol's Petrushka[25] -- when the bourgeoisie is summoning foreign states to its aid and intriguing with them against the revolution -- is simply comical. The revolutionary proletariat is to put on a nightcap, like "Muddleheaded Counsellor" Kautsky, and regard the bourgeoisie, which is organizing Dutov, Krasnov and Czechoslovak counter-revolutionary insurrections and is paying millions to saboteurs, as a legal "opposition." Oh, what profundity!
Kautsky is interested exclusively in the formal, legal aspect of the question, and, reading his disquisitions on the Soviet constitution, one involuntarily recalls Bebel's words: Lawyers are thoroughpaced reactionaries. "In reality," Kautsky writes, "the capitalists alone cannot be disfranchised. What is a capitalist in the legal sense of the term? A property owner? Even in a country which has advanced so far along the path of economic progress as Germany, where the proletariat is so numerous, the establishment of a Soviet Republic would disfranchise large masses of the people. In 1907, the number of persons in the German Empire engaged in the three great occupational groups -- agriculture, industry and commerce -- together with their families amounted roughly to thirty-five million in the wage earners' and salaried employees' group, and seventeen million in the independent group. Hence, a party might well form a majority among the wage-workers but a minority among the population as a whole." (P. 33.)
This is an example of Kautsky's manner of argument. Is it not the counter-revolutionary whining of a bourgeois? Why, Mr. Kautsky, have you relegated all in the "independent" group to the category of the disfranchised, when you know
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very well that the overwhelming majority of the Russian peasants do not employ hired labour, and do not, therefore, lose their franchise? Is this not falsification?
Why, oh learned economist, did you not quote the facts with which you are perfectly familiar and which are to be found in those same German statistical returns for 1907 relating to hired labour in agriculture according to size of farms? Why did you not quote these facts for the benefit of the German workers, the readers of your pamphlet, and thus enable them to see how many e x p l o i t e r s there are, and how few they are compared with the total number of "farmers" who figure in German statistics?
Because your apostasy has transformed you into a mere sycophant of the bourgeoisie.
The term capitalist, don't you see, is legally a vague concept, and Kautsky on several pages thunders against the "arbitrariness" of the Soviet Constitution. This "serious scholar" has no objection to the British bourgeoisie taking several centuries to work out and develop a new (new for the Middle Ages) bourgeois constitution, but, representative of lackey's science that he is, he will allow no time to us, the workers and peasants of Russia. He expects us to have a constitution all worked out to the very last letter in a few months. . . .
"Arbitrariness!" Just imagine what a depth of vilest subserviency to the bourgeoisie and most inept pedantry is contained in such a reproach. When thoroughly bourgeois and for the most part reactionary lawyers in the capitalist countries have for centuries or decades been drawing up most detailed rules and regulations and writing scores and hundreds of volumes of laws and interpretations of laws to oppress the workers, to bind the poor man hand and foot and to place thousands of hindrances and obstacles in the way of any of
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the common labouring people -- oh, there the bourgeois liberals and Mr. Kautsky see no "arbitrariness"! That is "law" and "order"! The ways in which the poor are to be "kept down" have all been thought out and written down. There are thousands of bourgeois lawyers and bureaucrats (about them Kautsky says nothing at all, probably just because Marx attached enormous significance to smashing the bureaucratic machine . . .) -- lawyers and bureaucrats who know how to interpret the laws in such a way that the worker and the average peasant can never break through the barbed-wire entanglements of these laws. This is not "arbitrariness" on the part of the bourgeoisie, it is not the dictatorship of the sordid and self-seeking exploiters who are sucking the blood of the people. Oh, nothing of the kind! It is "pure democracy," which is becoming purer and purer every day.
But now that the toiling and exploited classes, for the first time in history, while cut off by the imperialist war from their brothers across the frontier, have set up their own Soviets, have called to the work of political construction those masses which the bourgeoisie used to oppress, grind down and stupefy and have begun themselves to build a new, proletarian state, have begun in the heat of furious struggle, in the fire of civil war, to sketch the fundamental principles of a state without exploiters -- all the scoundrelly bourgeois, the whole gang of bloodsuckers, with Kautsky echoing them, howl about "arbitrariness"! Indeed, how will these ignorant people, these workers and peasants, this "mob," be able to interpret their laws? How can these common labourers acquire a sense of justice without the counsel of educated lawyers, of bourgeois writers, of the Kautskys and the wise old bureaucrats?
Mr. Kautsky quotes from my speech of April 28, 1918, the words: "The masses themselves determine the procedure and
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the time of elections." And Kautsky, the "pure democrat," infers from this:
". . . Hence, it would mean tbat every assembly of electors may determine the procedure of electiorls at their own discretion. Arbitrariness and the opportunity of getting rid of undesirable opposition elements in the ranks of the proletariat itself would thus be carried to extreme." (P. 37.)
Well, how does this differ from the talk of a hired capitalist hack who howls about the masses oppressing industrious workers who are "willing to work" during a strike? Why is the bourgeois bureaucratic method of determining electoral procedure under "pure" bourgeois democracy not arbitrariness? Why should the sense of justice among the masses who have risen to fight their agelong exploiters and who are being educated and steeled in this desperate struggle be less than that of a handful of bureaucrats, intellectuals and lawyers brought up in bourgeois prejudices?
Kautsky is a true Socialist. Don't dare suspect the sincerity of this very respectable father of a family, of this very honest citizen. He is an ardent and convinced supporter of the victory of the workers, of the proletarian revolution. All he wants is that the honey-mouthed petty-bourgeois intellectuals and philistines in nightcaps should first -- before the masses begin to move, before they enter into furious battle with the exploiters, and certainly without civil war -- draw up a moderate and precise set of rules for the development of the revolution. . . .
Burning with profound moral indignation, our most learned Judushka Golovlyov[26] tells the German workers that on June 14, 1918, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets resolved to expel the representatives of the Right Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties from the
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Soviets. "This measure," writes Judushka Kautsky, all afire with noble indignation, "is not directed against definite persons guilty of definite punishable offences. . . . The constitution of the Soviet Republic does not contain a single word about the immunity of Soviet deputies. It is not definite persons, but definite parties that are expelled from the Soviets." (P. 37.)
Yes, that is really awful, an intolerable departure from pure democracy, according to the rules of which our revolutionary Judushka Kautsky will make the revolution. We Russian Bolsheviks should first have guaranteed immunity to the Savinkovs and Co., to the Liberdans,[27] Potresovs ("activists") and Co., then drawn up a criminal code proclaiming participation in the Czechoslovak counter-revolutionary war, or in the alliance with the German imperialists in the Ukraine or in Georgia against the workers of one's own country, to be "punishable offences," and only then, on the basis of this criminal code, would we be entitled, in accordance with the principles of "pure democracy," to expel "definite persons" from the Soviets. It goes without saying that the Czechoslovaks, who were subsidized by the British and French capitalists through the medium (or thanks to the agitation) of the Savinkovs, Potresovs and Liberdans, and the Krasnovs, who received ammunition from the Germans through the medium of the Ukrainian and Tiflis Mensheviks, would have sat quietly waiting until we were ready with our proper criminal code, and, like the purest democrats they are, would have confined themselves to the role of an "opposition". . . .
No less profound moral indignation is aroused in Kautsky's breast by the fact that the Soviet Constitution disfranchises all those who "employ hired labour with a view to profit." "A home-worker, or a small owner employing only one jour-
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neyman," Kautsky writes, "may live and feel quite like a proletarian, but he has no vote." (P. 36.)
What a departure from "pure democracy"! What an injustice! True, up to now all Marxists have thought -- and thousands of facts have proved it -- that the small masters were the most unscrupulous and grasping exploiters of hired labour, but our Judushka Kautsky takes the small masters not as a class (who invented that pernicious theory of the class struggle?) but as single individuals, exploiters who "live and feel quite like proletarians." The famous "thrifty Agnes," who was considered dead and buried long ago, has come to life again under Kautsky's pen. This "thrifty Agnes" was invented and launched into German literature some decades ago by that "pure" democrat, the bourgeois Eugen Richter. He predicted untold calamities that would follow the dictatorship of the proletariat, the confiscation of the capital of the exploiters, and asked with an innocent air: what was a capitalist in the legal sense of the term? He took as an example a poor, thrifty seamstress ("thrifty Agnes") whom the wicked "dictators of the proletariat" rob of her last farthing. There was a time when the whole German Social-Democracy used to poke fun at this "thrifty Agnes" of the pure democrat, Eugen Richter. But that was a long, long time ago, when Bebel, who frankly and bluntly stated the truth that there were many National-Liberals[28] in his party, was still alive; that was very long ago, when Kautsky was not yet a renegade.
Now "thrifty Agnes" has come to life again in the person of the "small master who lives and feels quite like a proletarian, and who employs only one journeyman." The wicked Bolsheviks are wronging him, depriving him of his vote. It is true that "every assembly of electors" in the Soviet Republic, as Kautsky tells us, may admit into its midst a poor
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little master who, for instance, may be connected with this or that factory, if, by way of an exception, he is not an exploiter, and if he really "lives and feels quite like a proletarian." But can one rely on the knowledge of life, on the sense of justice of an irregular factory meeting of common workers acting (oh, horror!) without a written code? Would it not clearly be better to grant the vote to all exploiters, to all who employ hired labour, rather than risk the possibility of "thrifty Agnes" and the "small master who lives and feels quite like a proletarian" being wronged by the workers?
Let the contemptible scoundrelly renegades, amidst the applause of the bourgeoisie and the social-chauvinists,[*] abuse our Soviet Constitution for disfranchising the exploiters I That is well, because it will accelerate and widen the split between the revolutionary workers of Europe and the Scheidemanns and Kautskys, the Renaudels and Longuets, the Hendersons and Ramsay MacDonalds, the old leaders and old betrayers of Socialism.
The masses of the oppressed classes, the class-conscious and honest revolutionary proletarian leaders, will be on our side. It will be sufficient to acquaint such proletarians and such masses with our Soviet Constitution for them to say at once: "These are really o u r p e o p l e, this is a real workers' party, this is a real workers' government; for it does
INTO AN ORDINARY LIBERAL
"The term, 'dictatorship of the proletariat,' hence not the dictatorship of a single individual, but of a class, ipso facto precludes the possibility
"He speaks here not of a form of government, but of a condition, which must necessarily arise wherever the proletariat has gained political power. That Marx in this case did not have in mind a form of government is proved by the fact that he was of the opinion that in England and America the transition might take place peacefully, i.e., in a democratic way." (P. 20.)
DEMOCRACY
BETWEEN THE EXPLOITED
AND THE EXPLOITER?
(P. 14 of Kautsky's pamphlet.)
* * *
* * *
STATE ORGANIZATIONS
"But are we entitled to demand more of the Soviets? The Bolsheviks, after the Revolution of November" (new style, or October, according to our style) "1917, secured in conjunction with the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries a majority in the Russian Soviets of Workers' Deputies, and after the dispersion of the Constituent Assembly, they set out to transform the Soviets from a combat organization of one class as they had been till then, into a state organization. They destroyed the democracy which the Russian people had won in the March" (new style, or February, our style) "Revolution. In line with this, the Bolsheviks have ceased to call themselves Social-Democrats. They call themselves Communists." (p. 33 Kautsky's italics.)
* * *
AND THE SOVIET REPUBLIC
* Incidentally, Kautsky, obviously trying to be ironical, repeatedly quotes the expression "most painless" transition; but as the shaft misses its mark, a few pages further on he commits a slight forgery and falsely quotes it as a "painless" transition! Of course, by such means it is easy to put any absurdity into the mouth of an opponent. The forgery also helps him to evade the substance of the argument, namely, that the most painless transition to Socialism is possible only when all the poor are organized to a man (Soviets) and when the core of the state power (the proletariat) helps to organize them.
* Incidentally, there are many Menshevik lies of this kind in Kautsky's pamphlet! It is a lampoon written by an embittered Menshevik.
of Soviets
Delegates
Bolsheviks
Bolsheviks
* * *
* I have just read a leading article in the Frankfurter Zeitung [29] (No. 293, October 22, 1918), giving an enthusiastic summary of Kautsky's pamphlet. This organ of the Stock Exchange is satisfied. And no wonder! And a comrade writes to me from Berlin that Vorwärts,[30] the organ of the Scheidemanns, has declared in a special article that it subscribes to almost every line Kautsky has wri