initial commit of ebook 38982HEADmain

11 files changed, 24922 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/38982-8.txt b/38982-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84d4f20
--- /dev/null
+++ b/38982-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,7816 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dictatorship vs. Democracy, by Leon Trotsky
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Dictatorship vs. Democracy
+       (Terrorism and Communism)
+
+Author: Leon Trotsky
+
+Release Date: February 25, 2012 [EBook #38982]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DICTATORSHIP VS. DEMOCRACY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Odessa Paige Turner and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+produced from scanned images of public domain material
+from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+WORKERS PARTY LIBRARY, Vol. I
+
+
+DICTATORSHIP vs. DEMOCRACY
+
+(_TERRORISM AND COMMUNISM_)
+
+
+A Reply to Karl Kautsky by
+LEON TROTSKY
+
+
+With a Preface by
+H. N. BRAILSFORD
+and Foreword by Max Bedact
+
+[Illustration: WORKERS PARTY OF AMERICA. WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE.]
+
+
+Published 1922 by
+WORKERS PARTY OF AMERICA
+799 Broadway, Room 405
+New York City
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+FOREWORD                                      V
+
+PREFACE                                      XI
+
+INTRODUCTION                                  5
+
+THE BALANCE OF POWER                         12
+
+THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT          20
+
+DEMOCRACY                                    28
+
+TERRORISM                                    48
+
+THE PARIS COMMUNE AND SOVIET RUSSIA          69
+
+MARX AND ... KAUTSKY                         91
+
+THE WORKING CLASS AND ITS SOVIET POLICY      98
+
+PROBLEMS OF THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR       128
+
+KARL KAUTSKY, HIS SCHOOL AND HIS BOOK       177
+
+IN PLACE OF AN EPILOGUE                     188
+
+
+
+
+Foreword
+
+By MAX BEDACT
+
+
+In a land where "democracy" is so deeply entrenched as in our United
+States of America it may seem futile to try to make friends for a
+dictatorship, by a close comparison of the principles of the
+two--Dictatorship versus Democracy. But then, confiding in the
+inviting gesture of the Goddess of Liberty many of our friends and
+fellow citizens have tested that sacred principle of democracy,
+freedom of speech, a little too freely--and landed in the penitentiary
+for it. Others again, relying on the not less sacred principle of
+democracy, freedom of assembly, have come in unpleasant contact with a
+substantial stick of hardwood, wielded by an unwieldily guardian of
+the law, and awoke from the immediate effects of this collision in
+some jail. Again others, leaning a little too heavily against the
+democratic principle of freedom of press broke down that pasteboard
+pillar of democracy, and incidentally into prison.
+
+Looking at this side of the bright shining medal of our beloved
+democracy it seems that there is not the slightest bit of difference
+between the democracy of capitalist America and the dictatorship of
+Soviet Russia. But there is a great difference. The dictatorship in
+Russia is bold and upright class rule, which has as its ultimate
+object the abolition of all class rule and all dictatorships. Our
+democracy, on the other hand, is a Pecksniffian Dictatorship, is
+hypocrisy incarnate, promising all liberty in phrases, but in reality
+even penalizing free thinking, consistently working only for one
+object: to perpetuate the rule of the capitalist class, the capitalist
+dictatorship.
+
+"Dictatorship versus Democracy" is, therefore, enough of an open
+question even in our own country to deserve some consideration. To
+give food for thought on this subject is the object of the publication
+of Trotsky's book.
+
+This book is an answer to a book by Karl Kautsky, "Terrorism and
+Communism." It is polemical in character. Polemical writings are,
+as a rule, only thoroughly understood if one reads both sides of
+the question. But even if we could not take for granted that the
+proletarian reader is fully familiar with the question at issue we
+could not conscientiously advise a worker to get Kautsky's book. It is
+really asking our readers to undertake the superhuman task of reading a
+book which in the guise of a scientific treatise is foully hitting him
+below the belt, and then expect him to pay two dollars for it in the
+bargain.
+
+Anyhow, to read Kautsky's book is an ordeal for any revolutionist.
+Kautsky, in his book, tries to prove that the humanitarian instincts
+of the masses must defeat any attempt to overpower and suppress the
+bourgeoisie by terrorist means. But to read his book must kill in the
+proletarian reader the last remnants of those instincts on which
+Kautsky's hope for the safety of the bourgeoisie is based. There would
+even not be enough of those instincts left to save Kautsky from the
+utter contempt of the proletarian masses, a fate he so richly deserves.
+
+Mr. Kautsky was once the foremost exponent of Marxism. Many of those
+fighting to-day in the front ranks of the proletarian army revered
+Kautsky as their teacher. But even in his most glorious days as a
+Marxist his was the musty pedantry of the German professor, which was
+hardly ever penetrated by a live spark of revolutionary spirit. Still,
+the Russian revolution of 1905 found a friend in him. That revolution
+did not commit the unpardonable sin of being successful. But when the
+tornado of the first victorious proletarian revolution swept over
+Russia and destroyed in its fury some of the tormentors and exploiters
+of the working class--then Kautsky's "humanitarianism" killed the last
+remnant of revolutionary spirit and instinct in him and left only a
+pitiful wreck of an apologist for capitalism, that was once Kautsky,
+the Marxist.
+
+July, 1914. The echoes of the shots fired in Sarajewo threaten to set
+the world in flames. Will it come, the seeming inevitable? No!--A
+thousand times no! Had not the forces of a future order, had not the
+International of Labor--the Second International--solemnly declared in
+1907 in Stuttgart, in 1911 in Copenhagen and in 1912 in Basel: "We will
+fight war by all means at our disposal. Let the exploiters start a war.
+It will begin as a war of capitalist governments against each other; it
+will end--it must end--as a war of the working class of the world
+against world capitalism; it must end in the proletarian revolution."
+We, the socialists of the world, comrades from England and Russia, from
+America and Germany, from France and Austria; we comrades from all over
+the world, had solemnly promised ourselves: "War against war!" We had
+promised ourselves and our cause to answer the call of capitalism for a
+world war with a call on the proletariat for a world revolution.
+
+Days passed. July disappeared in the ocean of time. The first days of
+August brought the booming of the cannon to our ears, messengers of
+the grim reality of war. And then the news of the collapse of the
+Second International; reports of betrayal by the socialists; betrayal
+in London and Vienna; betrayal in Berlin and Brussels; betrayal in
+Paris; betrayal everywhere. What would Kautsky say to this rank
+betrayal, Kautsky, the foremost disciple of Marx, Kautsky, the
+foremost theoretician of the Second International? Will he at least
+speak up? He did not speak up. Commenting on the betrayal he wrote in
+"Die Neue Zeit": "Die Kritik der Waffen hat eingesetzt; jetzt hat die
+Waffe der Kritik zu schweigen."[1] With this one sentence Kautsky
+replaced Marxism as the basis of his science with rank and undisguised
+hypocrisy. From then on although trying to retain the toga of a
+Marxist scholar on his shoulders, with thousands of "if's" and
+"when's" and "but's" he became the apologist for the betrayal of the
+German Social-Democracy, and the betrayal of the Second International.
+
+          [1] The arbitrament of arms is on; now the weapon of
+          criticism must rest.
+
+It is true that his "if's" and "when's" and "but's" did not satisfy
+the Executive Committee of the Social-Democratic Party. They hoped for
+a victory of the imperial army and wanted to secure a full and
+unmitigated share of the glory of "His Majesty's" victory. That is why
+they did not appreciate Kautsky's excellent service. So they helped
+the renegade to a cheap martyrdom by removing him from the editorship
+of "Die Neue Zeit." After 1918 it may have dawned upon Scheidemann and
+Ebert how much better Kautsky served the capitalist cause by couching
+his betrayal in words that did not lose him outright all the
+confidence of the proletariat. And Kautsky himself is now exhausting
+every effort to prove to Noske and Scheidemann how cruelly he was
+mistreated and how well he deserves to be taken back to their bosom.
+
+Kautsky's book "Terrorism and Communism" is dictated by hatred of the
+Russian revolution. It is influenced by fear of a like revolution in
+Germany. It is written with tears for the counter-revolutionary
+bourgeoisie and its pseudo-"socialist" henchmen who have been
+sacrificed on the altar of revolution by the proletarian dictatorship
+in Russia. Kautsky prefers to sacrifice the revolution and the
+revolutionists on the altar of "humanitarianism." The author of
+"Ethics and the Materialist Conception of History" knows--must
+know--that humanitarianism under capitalism is capitalist
+humanitarianism. This humanitarianism mints gold out of the bones, the
+blood, the health and the suffering of the whole working class while
+it sheds tears about an individual case of cruelty to one human being.
+This humanitarianism punishes murder with death and beats to death the
+pacifist who protests against war as an act of mass murder. Under the
+cloak of "humanitarian instincts" Kautsky only hides the enemy of the
+proletarian revolution. The question at issue is not _terrorism_. It
+is the _dictatorship_; it is _revolution_ itself. If the Russian
+proletariat was justified in taking over power it was in duty bound to
+use _all_ means necessary to keep it. If it is a crime for them to use
+terrorist means then it was a crime to take a power which they could
+maintain only by terrorist means. And that is really Kautsky's point.
+The crime of the Bolsheviki is that they took power. If Kautsky were a
+mere sentimentalist and yet a revolutionist he could shed tears over
+the unwillingness of the bourgeoisie to give up power without a
+struggle. But not being a revolutionist he condemns the proletariat
+for having taken and maintained power by the only means possible, by
+_force_. Kautsky would much prefer to shed crocodile tears over
+tens of thousands of proletarian revolutionists slaughtered by a
+successful counter-revolution. He scorns the Russian Communists
+because they robbed him of the opportunity to parade his petit
+bourgeois and consequently pro-capitalist "humanitarian" sentiments in
+a pro-revolutionary cloak. But he must parade them at any cost. So he
+parades them without disguise as a mourner for the suppressed
+bourgeoisie in Russia.
+
+Trotsky's answer to Kautsky is not only one side of a controversy. It
+is one of the literary fruits of the revolution itself. It breathes
+the breath of revolution. It conquers the gray scholastic theory of
+the renegade with the irresistible weapon of the revolutionary
+experience of the Russian proletariat. It refuses to shed tears over
+the victims of Gallifet and shows what alone saved the Russian
+revolution from the Russian Gallifets, the Kolchaks, Wrangels, etc.
+
+Trotsky's book is not only an answer to Karl Kautsky; it is an answer
+to the thousands of Kautskys in the socialist movement the world over
+who want the proletariat to drown the memory of seas of proletarian
+blood shed by their treachery in an ocean of tears shed for the
+suppressed bourgeoisie of Russia.
+
+Trotsky's book is one of the most effective weapons in the literary
+arsenal of the revolutionary proletariat in its fight against the
+social traitors for leadership of the proletarian masses.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+By H. N. BRAILSFORD
+
+
+It has been said of the Bolsheviks that they are more interesting than
+Bolshevism. To those who hold to the economic interpretation of
+history that may seem a heresy. None the less, I believe that the
+personality not merely of the leaders but also of their party goes far
+to explain the making and survival of the Russian Revolution. To us in
+the West they seem a wholly foreign type. With Socialist leaders and
+organizations we and our fathers have been familiar for three-quarters
+of a century. There has been no lack of talent and even of genius
+among them. The movement has produced its great theorist in Marx, its
+orator in Jaurès, its powerful tacticians like Bebel, and it has
+influenced literature in Morris, Anatole France and Shaw. It bred,
+however, no considerable man of action, and it was left for the
+Russians to do what generations of Western Socialists had spent their
+lives in discussing. There was in this Russian achievement an almost
+barbaric simplicity and directness. Here were man who really believed
+the formulæ of our theorists and the resolutions of our Congresses.
+What had become for us a sterilized and almost respectable orthodoxy
+rang to their ears as a trumpet call to action. The older generation
+has found it difficult to pardon their sincerity. The rest of us want
+to understand the miracle.
+
+The real audacity of the Bolsheviks lay in this, that they made a
+proletarian revolution precisely in that country which, of all
+portions of the civilized world, seemed the least prepared for it by
+its economic development. For an agrarian revolt, for the subdivision
+of the soil, even for the overthrow of the old governing class, Russia
+was certainly ready. But any spontaneous revolution, with its
+foundations laid in the masses of the peasantry, would have been
+individualistic and not communistic. The daring of the Bolsheviks lay
+in their belief that the minute minority of the urban working class
+could, by its concentration, its greater intelligence and its relative
+capacity for organization, dominate the inert peasant mass, and give
+to their outbreak of land-hunger the character and form of a
+constructive proletarian revolution. The bitter struggle among Russian
+parties which lasted from March, 1917, down to the defeat of Wrangel
+in November, 1920, was really an internecine competition among them
+for the leadership of the peasants. Which of these several groups
+could enlist their confidence, to the extent of inducing them not
+merely to fight, but to accept the discipline, military and civilian,
+necessary for victory? At the start the Bolsheviks had everything
+against them. They are nearly all townsmen. They talked in terms of a
+foreign and very German doctrine. Few of them, save Lenin, grasped the
+problems of rural life at all. The landed class should at least have
+known the peasant better. Their chief rivals were the Social
+Revolutionaries, a party which from its first beginnings had made a
+cult of the Russian peasant, studied him, idealized him and courted
+him, which even seemed in 1917 to have won him. Many circumstances
+explain the success of the Bolsheviks, who proved once again in
+history the capacity of the town, even when its population is
+relatively minute, for swift and concentrated action. They also had
+the luck to deal with opponents who committed the supreme mistake of
+invoking foreign aid. But none of these advantages would have availed
+without an immense superiority of character. The Slav temperament,
+dreamy, emotional, undisciplined, showed itself at its worst in the
+incorrigible self-indulgence of the more aristocratic "Whites," while
+the "intellectuals" of the moderate Socialist and Liberal groups have
+been ruined for action by their exclusively literary and æsthetic
+education. The Bolsheviks may be a less cultivated group, but, in
+their underground life of conspiracy, they had learned sobriety,
+discipline, obedience, and mutual confidence. Their rigid dogmatic
+Marxist faith gives to them the power of action which belongs only to
+those who believe without criticism or question. Their ability to lead
+depends much less than most Englishmen suppose, on their ruthlessness
+and their readiness to practise the arts of intimidation and
+suppression. Their chief asset is their self-confidence. In every
+emergency they are always sure that they have the only workable plan.
+They stand before the rest of Russia as one man. They never doubt or
+despair, and even when they compromise, they do it with an air of
+truculence. Their survival amid invasion, famine, blockade, and
+economic collapse has been from first to last a triumph of the
+unflinching will and the fanatical faith. They have spurred a lazy and
+demoralized people to notable feats of arms and to still more
+astonishing feats of endurance. To hypnotize a nation in this fashion
+is, perhaps, the most remarkable feat of the human will in modern
+times.
+
+This book is, so far, by far the most typical expression of the
+Bolshevik temperament which the revolution has produced.
+Characteristically it is a polemic, and not a constructive essay. Its
+self-confidence, its dash, even its insolence, are a true expression
+of the movement. Its author bears a world-famous name. Everyone can
+visualize the powerful head, the singularly handsome features, the
+athletic figure of the man. He makes in private talk an impression of
+decision and definiteness. He is not rapid or expansive in speech, for
+everything that he says is calculated and clear cut. One has the sense
+that one is in the presence of abounding yet disciplined vitality. The
+background is an office which by its military order and punctuality
+rebukes the habitual slovenliness of Russia. On the platform his
+manner was much quieter than I expected. He spoke rather slowly, in a
+pleasant tenor voice, walking to and fro across the stage and choosing
+his words, obviously anxious to express his thoughts forcibly but also
+exactly. A flash of wit and a striking phrase came frequently, but the
+manner was emphatically not that of a demagogue. The man, indeed, is a
+natural aristocrat, and his tendency, which Lenin, the aristocrat by
+birth, corrects, is towards military discipline and authoritative
+regimentation.
+
+There is nothing surprising to-day in the note of authority which one
+hears in Trotsky's voice and detects in his writing, for he is the
+chief of a considerable army, which owes everything to his talent for
+organization. It was at Brest-Litovsk that he displayed the audacity
+which is genius. Up to that moment there was little in his career to
+distinguish him from his comrades of the revolutionary under-world--a
+university course cut short by prison, an apprenticeship to agitation
+in Russia, some years of exile spent in Vienna, Paris, and New York,
+the distinction which he shares with Tchitcherin of "sitting" in a
+British prison, a ready wit, a gift of trenchant speech, but as yet
+neither the solid achievement nor the legend which gives confidence.
+Yet this obscure agitator, handicapped in such a task by his Jewish
+birth, faced the diplomatist and soldiers of the Central Empires,
+flushed as they were with victory and the insolence of their kind,
+forced them into public debate, staggered them by talking of first
+principles as though the defeat and impotence of Russia counted for
+nothing, and actually used the negotiations to shout across their
+heads his summons to their own subjects to revolt. He showed in this
+astonishing performance the grace and audacity of a "matador." This
+unique bit of drama revealed the persistent belief of the Bolsheviks
+in the power of the defiant challenge, the magnetic effect of sheer
+will. Since this episode his services to the revolution have been more
+solid but not less brilliant. He had no military knowledge or
+experience, yet he took in hand the almost desperate task of creating
+an army. He has often been compared to Carnot. But, save that both had
+lost officers, there was little in common between the French and the
+Russian armies in the early stages of the two revolutions. The French
+army had not been demoralized by defeat, or wearied by long inaction,
+or sapped by destructive propaganda. Trotsky had to create his Red
+Army from the foundations. He imposed firm discipline, and yet
+contrived to preserve the élan of the revolutionary spirit. Hampered
+by the inconceivable difficulties that arose from ruined railways and
+decayed industries, he none the less contrived to make a military
+machine which overthrew the armies of Kolchak, Denikin and Wrangel,
+with the flower of the old professional officers at their head. As a
+feat of organization under inordinate difficulties, his work ranks as
+the most remarkable performance of the revolution.
+
+It is not the business of a preface to anticipate the argument of a
+book, still less to obtrude personal opinions. Kautsky's labored
+essay, to which this book is the brilliant reply, has been translated
+into English, and is widely known. The case against the possibility of
+political democracy in a capitalist society could hardly be better put
+than in these pages, and the polemic against purely evolutionary
+methods is formidable. The English reader of to-day is aware, however,
+that the Russian revolution has not stood still since Trotsky wrote.
+We have to realize that, even in the view of the Bolsheviks
+themselves, the evolution towards Communism is in Russia only in its
+early stages. The recent compromises imply, at the best, a very long
+period of transition, through controlled capitalist production, to
+Socialism. Experience has proved that catastrophic revolution and the
+seizure of political power do not in themselves avail to make a
+Socialist society. The economic development in that direction has
+actually been retarded, and Russia, under the stress of civil war, has
+retrograded into a primitive village system of production and
+exchange. To every reader's mind the question will be present whether
+the peculiar temperament of the Bolsheviks has led them to
+over-estimate the importance of political power, to underestimate the
+inert resistance of the majority, and to risk too much for the
+illusion of dictating. To that question history has not yet given the
+decisive answer. The dæmonic will that made the revolution and
+defended it by achieving the impossible, may yet vindicate itself
+against the dull trend of impersonal forces.
+
+
+
+
+Dictatorship vs. Democracy
+
+
+
+
+Introduction
+
+
+The origin of this book was the learned brochure by Kautsky with the
+same name. My work was begun at the most intense period of the
+struggle with Denikin and Yudenich, and more than once was interrupted
+by events at the front. In the most difficult days, when the first
+chapters were being written, all the attention of Soviet Russia was
+concentrated on purely military problems. We were obliged to defend
+first of all the very possibility of Socialist economic
+reconstruction. We could busy ourselves little with industry, further
+than was necessary to maintain the front. We were obliged to expose
+Kautsky's economic slanders mainly by analogy with his political
+slanders. The monstrous assertions of Kautsky--to the effect that the
+Russian workers were incapable of labor discipline and economic
+self-control--could, at the beginning of this work, nearly a year ago,
+be combatted chiefly by pointing to the high state of discipline and
+heroism in battle of the Russian workers at the front created by the
+civil war. That experience was more than enough to explode these
+bourgeois slanders. But now a few months have gone by, and we can turn
+to facts and conclusions drawn directly from the economic life of
+Soviet Russia.
+
+As soon as the military pressure relaxed after the defeat of Kolchak
+and Yudenich and the infliction of decisive blows on Denikin, after
+the conclusion of peace with Esthonia and the beginning of
+negotiations with Lithuania and Poland, the whole country turned its
+mind to things economic. And this one fact, of a swift and
+concentrated transference of attention and energy from one set of
+problems to another--very different, but requiring not less
+sacrifice--is incontrovertible evidence of the mighty vigor of the
+Soviet order. In spite of political tortures, physical sufferings and
+horrors, the laboring masses are infinitely distant from political
+decomposition, from moral collapse, or from apathy. Thanks to a regime
+which, though it has inflicted great hardships upon them, has given
+their life a purpose and a high goal, they preserve an extraordinary
+moral stubbornness and ability unexampled in history, and concentrate
+their attention and will on collective problems. To-day, in all
+branches of industry, there is going on an energetic struggle for the
+establishment of strict labor discipline, and for the increase of the
+productivity of labor. The party organizations, the trade unions, the
+factory and workshop administrative committees, rival one another in
+this respect, with the undivided support of the public opinion of the
+working class as a whole. Factory after factory willingly, by
+resolution at its general meeting, increases its working day.
+Petrograd and Moscow set the example, and the provinces emulate
+Petrograd. Communist Saturdays and Sundays--that is to say, voluntary
+and unpaid work in hours appointed for rest--spread ever wider and
+wider, drawing into their reach many, many hundreds of thousands of
+working men and women. The industry and productivity of labor at the
+Communist Saturdays and Sundays, according to the report of experts
+and the evidence of figures, is of a remarkably high standard.
+
+Voluntary mobilizations for labor problems in the party and in the
+Young Communist League are carried out with just as much enthusiasm as
+hitherto for military tasks. Voluntarism supplements and gives life to
+universal labor service. The Committees for universal labor service
+recently set up have spread all over the country. The attraction of
+the population to work on a mass scale (clearing snow from the roads,
+repairing railway lines, cutting timber, chopping and bringing up of
+wood to the towns, the simplest building operations, the cutting of
+slate and of peat) become more and more widespread and organized every
+day. The ever-increasing employment of military formations on the
+labor front would be quite impossible in the absence of elevated
+enthusiasm for labor.
+
+True, we live in the midst of a very difficult period of economic
+depression--exhausted, poverty-stricken, and hungry. But this is no
+argument against the Soviet regime. All periods of transition have
+been characterized by just such tragic features. Every class society
+(serf, feudal, capitalist), having exhausted its vitality, does not
+simply leave the arena, but is violently swept off by an intense
+struggle, which immediately brings to its participants even greater
+privations and sufferings than those against which they rose.
+
+The transition from feudal economy to bourgeois society--a step of
+gigantic importance from the point of view of progress--gave us a
+terrifying list of martyrs. However the masses of serfs suffered under
+feudalism, however difficult it has been, and is, for the proletariat
+to live under capitalism, never have the sufferings of the workers
+reached such a pitch as at the epochs when the old feudal order was
+being violently shattered, and was yielding place to the new. The
+French Revolution of the eighteenth century, which attained its
+titanic dimensions under the pressure of the masses exhausted with
+suffering, itself deepened and rendered more acute their misfortunes
+for a prolonged period and to an extraordinary extent. Can it be
+otherwise?
+
+Palace revolutions, which end merely by personal reshufflings at the
+top, can take place in a short space of time, having practically no
+effect on the economic life of the country. Quite another matter are
+revolutions which drag into their whirlpool millions of workers.
+Whatever be the form of society, it rests on the foundation of labor.
+Dragging the mass of the people away from labor, drawing them for a
+prolonged period into the struggle, thereby destroying their
+connection with production, the revolution in all these ways strikes
+deadly blows at economic life, and inevitably lowers the standard
+which it found at its birth. The more perfect the revolution, the
+greater are the masses it draws in; and the longer it is prolonged,
+the greater is the destruction it achieves in the apparatus of
+production, and the more terrible inroads does it make upon public
+resources. From this there follows merely the conclusion which did not
+require proof--that a civil war is harmful to economic life. But to
+lay this at the door of the Soviet economic system is like accusing a
+new-born human being of the birth-pangs of the mother who brought him
+into the world. The problem is to make a civil war a short one; and
+this is attained only by resoluteness in action. But it is just
+against revolutionary resoluteness that Kautsky's whole book is
+directed.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+Since the time that the book under examination appeared, not only in
+Russia, but throughout the world--and first of all in Europe--the
+greatest events have taken place, or processes of great importance
+have developed, undermining the last buttresses of Kautskianism.
+
+In Germany, the civil war has been adopting an ever fiercer character.
+The external strength in organization of the old party and trade union
+democracy of the working class has not only not created conditions for
+a more peaceful and "humane" transition to Socialism--as follows from
+the present theory of Kautsky--but, on the contrary, has served as one
+of the principal reasons for the long-drawn-out character of the
+struggle, and its constantly growing ferocity. The more German
+Social-Democracy became a conservative, retarding force, the more
+energy, lives, and blood have had to be spent by the German
+proletariat, devoted to it, in a series of systematic attacks on the
+foundation of bourgeois society, in order, in the process of the
+struggle itself, to create an actually revolutionary organization,
+capable of guiding the proletariat to final victory. The conspiracy of
+the German generals, their fleeting seizure of power, and the bloody
+events which followed, have again shown what a worthless and wretched
+masquerade is so-called democracy, during the collapse of imperialism
+and a civil war. This democracy that has outlived itself has not
+decided one question, has not reconciled one contradiction, has not
+healed one wound, has not warded off risings either of the Right or of
+the Left; it is helpless, worthless, fraudulent, and serves only to
+confuse the backward sections of the people, especially the lower
+middle-classes.
+
+The hope expressed by Kautsky, in the conclusion of his book, that the
+Western countries, the "old democracies" of France and England--crowned
+as they are with victory--will afford us a picture of a healthy,
+normal, peaceful, truly Kautskian development of Socialism, is one
+of the most puerile illusions possible. The so-called Republican
+democracy of victorious France, at the present moment, is nothing but
+the most reactionary, grasping government that has ever existed in the
+world. Its internal policy is built upon fear, greed, and violence, in
+just as great a measure as its external policy. On the other hand, the
+French proletariat, misled more than any other class has ever been
+misled, is more and more entering on the path of direct action. The
+repressions which the government of the Republic has hurled upon
+the General Confederation of Labor show that even syndicalist
+Kautskianism--_i.e._, hypocritical compromise--has no legal place
+within the framework of bourgeois democracy. The revolutionizing of
+the masses, the growing ferocity of the propertied classes, and the
+disintegration of intermediate groups--three parallel processes which
+determine the character and herald the coming of a cruel civil
+war--have been going on before our eyes in full blast during the last
+few months in France.
+
+In Great Britain, events, different in form, are moving along the
+self-same fundamental road. In that country, the ruling class of which
+is oppressing and plundering the whole world more than ever before,
+the formulæ of democracy have lost their meaning even as weapons of
+parliamentary swindling. The specialist best qualified in this sphere,
+Lloyd George, appeals now not to democracy, but to a union of
+Conservative and Liberal property holders against the working class.
+In his arguments there remains not a trace of the vague democracy of
+the "Marxist" Kautsky. Lloyd George stands on the ground of class
+realities, and for this very reason speaks in the language of civil
+war. The British working class, with that ponderous learning by
+experience which is its distinguishing feature, is approaching that
+stage of its struggle before which the most heroic pages of Chartism
+will fade, just as the Paris Commune will grow pale before the coming
+victorious revolt of the French proletariat.
+
+Precisely because historical events have, with stern energy, been
+developing in these last months their revolutionary logic, the author
+of this present work asks himself: Does it still require to be
+published? Is it still necessary to confute Kautsky theoretically? Is
+there still theoretical necessity to justify revolutionary terrorism?
+
+Unfortunately, yes. Ideology, by its very essence, plays in the
+Socialist movement an enormous part. Even for practical England the
+period has arrived when the working class must exhibit an
+ever-increasing demand for a theoretical statement of its experiences
+and its problems. On the other hand, even the proletarian psychology
+includes in itself a terrible inertia of conservatism--the more that,
+in the present case, there is a question of nothing less than the
+traditional ideology of the parties of the Second International which
+first roused the proletariat, and recently were so powerful. After the
+collapse of official social-patriotism (Scheidemann, Victor Adler,
+Renaudel, Vandervelde, Henderson, Plekhanov, etc.), international
+Kautskianism (the staff of the German Independents, Friedrich Adler,
+Longuet, a considerable section of the Italians, the British
+Independent Labor Party, the Martov group, etc.) has become the chief
+political factor on which the unstable equilibrium of capitalist
+society depends. It may be said that the will of the working masses of
+the whole of the civilized world, directly influenced by the course of
+events, is at the present moment incomparably more revolutionary than
+their consciousness, which is still dominated by the prejudices of
+parliamentarism and compromise. The struggle for the dictatorship of
+the working class means, at the present moment, an embittered struggle
+with Kautskianism within the working class. The lies and prejudices of
+the policy of compromise, still poisoning the atmosphere even in
+parties tending towards the Third International, must be thrown aside.
+This book must serve the ends of an irreconcilable struggle against
+the cowardice, half-measures, and hypocrisy of Kautskianism in all
+countries.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+P.S.--To-day (May, 1920) the clouds have again gathered over Soviet
+Russia. Bourgeois Poland, by its attack on the Ukraine, has opened the
+new offensive of world imperialism against the Soviet Republic. The
+gigantic perils again growing up before the revolution, and the great
+sacrifices again imposed on the laboring masses by the war, are once
+again pushing Russian Kautskianism on to the path of open opposition
+to the Soviet Government--_i.e._, in reality, on to the path of
+assistance to the world murderers of Soviet Russia. It is the fate of
+Kautskianism to try to help the proletarian revolution when it is in
+satisfactory circumstances, and to raise all kinds of obstacles in its
+way when it is particularly in need of help. Kautsky has more than
+once foretold our destruction, which must serve as the best proof of
+his, Kautsky's, theoretical rectitude. In his fall, this "successor of
+Marx" has reached a stage at which his sole serious political
+programme consists in speculations on the collapse of the proletarian
+dictatorship.
+
+He will be once again mistaken. The destruction of bourgeois Poland by
+the Red Army, guided by Communist working men, will appear as a new
+manifestation of the power of the proletarian dictatorship, and will
+thereby inflict a crushing blow on bourgeois scepticism (Kautskianism)
+in the working class movement. In spite of mad confusion of external
+forms, watchwords, and appearances, history has extremely simplified
+the fundamental meaning of its own process, reducing it to a struggle
+of imperialism against Communism. Pilsudsky is fighting, not only for
+the lands of the Polish magnates in the Ukraine and in White Russia,
+not only for capitalist property and for the Catholic Church, but also
+for parliamentary democracy and for evolutionary Socialism, for the
+Second International, and for the right of Kautsky to remain a
+critical hanger-on of the bourgeoisie. We are fighting for the
+Communist International, and for the international proletarian
+revolution. The stakes are great on either side. The struggle will be
+obstinate and painful. We hope for the victory, for we have every
+historical right to it.
+
+L. TROTSKY.
+
+Moscow, May 29, 1920.
+
+
+
+
+Dictatorship vs. Democracy
+
+_A Reply to Karl Kautsky_
+
+_By_ LEON TROTSKY
+
+
+
+
+1
+
+THE BALANCE OF POWER
+
+
+The argument which is repeated again and again in criticisms of the
+Soviet system in Russia, and particularly in criticisms of
+revolutionary attempts to set up a similar structure in other
+countries, is the argument based on the balance of power. The Soviet
+regime in Russia is utopian--"because it does not correspond to the
+balance of power." Backward Russia cannot put objects before itself
+which would be appropriate to advanced Germany. And for the
+proletariat of Germany it would be madness to take political power
+into its own hands, as this "at the present moment" would disturb the
+balance of power. The League of Nations is imperfect, but still
+corresponds to the balance of power. The struggle for the overthrow of
+imperialist supremacy is utopian--the balance of power only requires a
+revision of the Versailles Treaty. When Longuet hobbled after Wilson
+this took place, not because of the political decomposition of
+Longuet, but in honor of the law of the balance of power. The Austrian
+president, Seitz, and the chancellor, Renner, must, in the opinion of
+Friedrich Adler, exercise their bourgeois impotence at the central
+posts of the bourgeois republic, for otherwise the balance of power
+would be infringed. Two years before the world war, Karl Renner, then
+not a chancellor, but a "Marxist" advocate of opportunism, explained
+to me that the regime of June 3--that is, the union of landlords and
+capitalists crowned by the monarchy--must inevitably maintain itself
+in Russia during a whole historical period, as it answered to the
+balance of power.
+
+What is this balance of power after all--that sacramental formula
+which is to define, direct, and explain the whole course of history,
+wholesale and retail? Why exactly is it that the formula of the
+balance of power, in the mouth of Kautsky and his present school,
+inevitably appears as a justification of indecision, stagnation,
+cowardice and treachery?
+
+By the balance of power they understand everything you please: the
+level of production attained, the degree of differentiation of
+classes, the number of organized workers, the total funds at the
+disposal of the trade unions, sometimes the results of the last
+parliamentary elections, frequently the degree of readiness for
+compromise on the part of the ministry, or the degree of effrontery of
+the financial oligarchy. Most frequently, it means that summary
+political impression which exists in the mind of a half-blind pedant,
+or a so-called realist politician, who, though he has absorbed the
+phraseology of Marxism, in reality is guided by the most shallow
+manoeuvres, bourgeois prejudices, and parliamentary "tactics." After
+a whispered conversation with the director of the police department,
+an Austrian Social-Democratic politician in the good, and not so far
+off, old times always knew exactly whether the balance of power
+permitted a peaceful street demonstration in Vienna on May Day. In the
+case of the Eberts, Scheidemanns and Davids, the balance of power was,
+not so very long ago, calculated exactly by the number of fingers
+which were extended to them at their meeting in the Reichstag with
+Bethmann-Hollweg, or with Ludendorff himself.
+
+According to Friedrich Adler, the establishment of a Soviet
+dictatorship in Austria would be a fatal infraction of the balance of
+power; the Entente would condemn Austria to starvation. In proof of
+this, Friedrich Adler, at the July congress of Soviets, pointed to
+Hungary, where at that time the Hungarian Renners had not yet, with
+the help of the Hungarian Adlers, overthrown the dictatorship of the
+Soviets. At the first glance, it might really seem that Friedrich
+Adler was right in the case of Hungary. The proletarian dictatorship
+was overthrown there soon afterwards, and its place was filled by the
+ministry of the reactionary Friedrich. But it is quite justifiable to
+ask: Did the latter correspond to the balance of power? At all events,
+Friedrich and his Huszar might not even temporarily have seized power
+had it not been for the Roumanian army. Hence, it is clear that, when
+discussing the fate of the Soviet Government in Hungary, it is
+necessary to take account of the "balance of power," at all events in
+two countries--in Hungary itself, and in its neighbor, Roumania. But
+it is not difficult to grasp that we cannot stop at this. If the
+dictatorship of the Soviets had been set up in Austria before the
+maturing of the Hungarian crisis, the overthrow of the Soviet regime
+in Budapest would have been an infinitely more difficult task.
+Consequently, we have to include Austria also, together with the
+treacherous policy of Friedrich Adler, in that balance of power which
+determined the temporary fall of the Soviet Government in Hungary.
+
+Friedrich Adler himself, however, seeks the key to the balance of
+power, not in Russia and Hungary, but in the West, in the countries of
+Clemenceau and Lloyd George. They have in their hands bread and
+coal--and really bread and coal, especially in our time, are just as
+foremost factors in the mechanism of the balance of power as cannon in
+the constitution of Lassalle. Brought down from the heights, Adler's
+idea consists, consequently, in this: that the Austrian proletariat
+must not seize power until such time, as it is permitted to do so by
+Clemenceau (or Millerand--_i.e._, a Clemenceau of the second
+order).
+
+However, even here it is permissible to ask: Does the policy of
+Clemenceau himself really correspond to the balance of power? At the
+first glance it may appear that it corresponds well enough, and, if
+it cannot be proved, it is, at least, guaranteed by Clemenceau's
+gendarmes, who break up working-class meetings, and arrest and
+shoot Communists. But here we cannot but remember that the
+terrorist measures of the Soviet Government--that is, the same
+searches, arrests, and executions, only directed against the
+counter-revolutionaries--are considered by some people as a proof that
+the Soviet Government does _not_ correspond to the balance of power.
+In vain would we, however, begin to seek in our time, anywhere in the
+world, a regime which, to preserve itself, did not have recourse to
+measures of stern mass repression. This means that hostile class
+forces, having broken through the framework of every kind of
+law--including that of "democracy"--are striving to find their new
+balance by means of a merciless struggle.
+
+When the Soviet system was being instituted in Russia, not only the
+capitalist politicians, but also the Socialist opportunists of all
+countries proclaimed it an insolent challenge to the balance of
+forces. On this score, there was no quarrel between Kautsky, the
+Austrian Count Czernin, and the Bulgarian Premier, Radoslavov. Since
+that time, the Austro-Hungarian and German monarchies have collapsed,
+and the most powerful militarism in the world has fallen into dust.
+The Soviet regime has held out. The victorious countries of the
+Entente have mobilized and hurled against it all they could. The
+Soviet Government has stood firm. Had Kautsky, Friedrich Adler, and
+Otto Bauer been told that the system of the dictatorship of the
+proletariat would hold out in Russia--first against the attack of
+German militarism, and then in a ceaseless war with the militarism of
+the Entente countries--the sages of the Second International would
+have considered such a prophecy a laughable misunderstanding of the
+"balance of power."
+
+The balance of political power at any given moment is determined under
+the influence of fundamental and secondary factors of differing
+degrees of effectiveness, and only in its most fundamental quality is
+it determined by the stage of the development of production. The
+social structure of a people is extraordinarily behind the development
+of its productive forces. The lower middle-classes, and particularly
+the peasantry, retain their existence long after their economic
+methods have been made obsolete, and have been condemned, by the
+technical development of the productive powers of society. The
+consciousness of the masses, in its turn, is extraordinarily behind
+the development of their social relations, the consciousness of the
+old Socialist parties is a whole epoch behind the state of mind of the
+masses, and the consciousness of the old parliamentary and trade union
+leaders, more reactionary than the consciousness of their party,
+represents a petrified mass which history has been unable hitherto
+either to digest or reject. In the parliamentary epoch, during the
+period of stability of social relations, the psychological
+factor--without great error--was the foundation upon which all current
+calculations were based. It was considered that parliamentary
+elections reflected the balance of power with sufficient exactness.
+The imperialist war, which upset all bourgeois society, displayed the
+complete uselessness of the old criteria. The latter completely
+ignored those profound historical factors which had gradually been
+accumulating in the preceding period, and have now, all at once,
+appeared on the surface, and have begun to determine the course of
+history.
+
+The political worshippers of routine, incapable of surveying the
+historical process in its complexity, in its internal clashes and
+contradictions, imagined to themselves that history was preparing the
+way for the Socialist order simultaneously and systematically on all
+sides, so that concentration of production and the development of a
+Communist morality in the producer and the consumer mature
+simultaneously with the electric plough and a parliamentary majority.
+Hence the purely mechanical attitude towards parliamentarism, which,
+in the eyes of the majority of the statesmen of the Second
+International, indicated the degree to which society was prepared for
+Socialism as accurately as the manometer indicates the pressure of
+steam. Yet there is nothing more senseless than this mechanized
+representation of the development of social relations.
+
+If, beginning with the productive bases of society, we ascend the
+stages of the superstructure--classes, the State, laws, parties, and
+so on--it may be established that the weight of each additional part
+of the superstructure is not simply to be added to, but in many cases
+to be multiplied by, the weight of all the preceding stages. As a
+result, the political consciousness of groups which long imagined
+themselves to be among the most advanced, displays itself, at a moment
+of change, as a colossal obstacle in the path of historical
+development. To-day it is quite beyond doubt that the parties of the
+Second International, standing at the head of the proletariat, which
+dared not, could not, and would not take power into their hands at the
+most critical moment of human history, and which led the proletariat
+along the road of mutual destruction in the interests of imperialism,
+proved a _decisive factor_ of the counter-revolution.
+
+The great forces of production--that shock factor in historical
+development--were choked in those obsolete institutions of the
+superstructure (private property and the national State) in which they
+found themselves locked by all preceding development. Engendered by
+capitalism, the forces of production were knocking at all the walls of
+the bourgeois national State, demanding their emancipation by means of
+the Socialist organization of economic life on a world scale. The
+stagnation of social groupings, the stagnation of political forces,
+which proved themselves incapable of destroying the old class
+groupings, the stagnation, stupidity and treachery of the directing
+Socialist parties, which had assumed to themselves in reality the
+defense of bourgeois society--all these factors led to an elemental
+revolt of the forces of production, in the shape of the imperialist
+war. Human technical skill, the most revolutionary factor in history,
+arose with the might accumulated during scores of years against the
+disgusting conservatism and criminal stupidity of the Scheidemanns,
+Kautskies, Renaudels, Vanderveldes and Longuets, and, by means of its
+howitzers, machine-guns, dreadnoughts and aeroplanes, it began a
+furious pogrom of human culture.
+
+In this way the cause of the misfortunes at present experienced by
+humanity is precisely that the development of the technical command of
+men over nature has _long ago_ grown ripe for the socialization
+of economic life. The proletariat has occupied a place in production
+which completely guarantees its dictatorship, while the most
+intelligent forces in history--the parties and their leaders--have
+been discovered to be still wholly under the yoke of the old
+prejudices, and only fostered a lack of faith among the masses in
+their own power. In quite recent years Kautsky used to understand
+this. "The proletariat at the present time has grown so strong," wrote
+Kautsky in his pamphlet, _The Path to Power_, "that it can calmly
+await the coming war. There can be no more talk of a _premature
+revolution_, now that the proletariat has drawn from the present
+structure of the State such strength as could be drawn therefrom, and
+now that its reconstruction has become a condition of the
+proletariat's further progress." From the moment that the development
+of productive forces, outgrowing the framework of the bourgeois
+national State, drew mankind into an epoch of crises and convulsions,
+the consciousness of the masses was shaken by dread shocks out of the
+comparative equilibrium of the preceding epoch. The routine and
+stagnation of its mode of living, the hypnotic suggestion of peaceful
+legality, had already ceased to dominate the proletariat. But it had
+not yet stepped, consciously and courageously, on to the path of open
+revolutionary struggle. It wavered, passing through the last moment of
+unstable equilibrium. At such a moment of psychological change, the
+part played by the summit--the State, on the one hand, and the
+revolutionary Party on the other--acquires a colossal importance. A
+determined push from left or right is sufficient to move the
+proletariat, for a certain period, to one or the other side. We saw
+this in 1914, when, under the united pressure of imperialist
+governments and Socialist patriotic parties, the working class was all
+at once thrown out of its equilibrium and hurled on to the path of
+imperialism. We have since seen how the experience of the war, the
+contrasts between its results and its first objects, is shaking the
+masses in a revolutionary sense, making them more and more capable of
+an open revolt against capitalism. In such conditions, the presence of
+a revolutionary party, which renders to itself a clear account of the
+motive forces of the present epoch, and understands the exceptional
+role amongst them of a revolutionary class; which knows its
+inexhaustible, but unrevealed, powers; which believes in that class
+and believes in itself; which knows the power of revolutionary method
+in an epoch of instability of all social relations; which is ready to
+employ that method and carry it through to the end--the presence of
+such a party represents a factor of incalculable historical
+importance.
+
+And, on the other hand, the Socialist party, enjoying traditional
+influence, which does _not_ render itself an account of what is going
+on around it, which does _not_ understand the revolutionary situation,
+and, therefore, finds no key to it, which does _not_ believe in either
+the proletariat or itself--such a party in our time is the most
+mischievous stumbling block in history, and a source of confusion and
+inevitable chaos.
+
+Such is now the role of Kautsky and his sympathizers. They teach the
+proletariat not to believe in itself, but to believe its reflection in
+the crooked mirror of democracy which has been shattered by the
+jack-boot of militarism into a thousand fragments. The decisive factor
+in the revolutionary policy of the working class must be, in their
+view, not the international situation, not the actual collapse of
+capitalism, not that social collapse which is generated thereby, not
+that concrete necessity of the supremacy of the working class for
+which the cry arises from the smoking ruins of capitalist
+civilization--not all this must determine the policy of the
+revolutionary party of the proletariat--but that counting of votes
+which is carried out by the capitalist tellers of parliamentarism.
+Only a few years ago, we repeat, Kautsky seemed to understand the real
+inner meaning of the problem of revolution. "Yes, the proletariat
+represents the sole revolutionary class of the nation," wrote Kautsky
+in his pamphlet, _The Path to Power_. It follows that every collapse
+of the capitalist order, whether it be of a moral, financial, or
+military character, implies the bankruptcy of all the bourgeois
+parties responsible for it, and signifies that the sole way out of the
+blind alley is the establishment of the power of the _proletariat_.
+And to-day the party of prostration and cowardice, the party of
+Kautsky, says to the working class: "The question is not whether you
+to-day are the sole creative force in history; whether you are capable
+of throwing aside that ruling band of robbers into which the
+propertied classes have developed; the question is not whether anyone
+else can accomplish this task on your behalf; the question is not
+whether history allows you any postponement (for the present condition
+of bloody chaos threatens to bury you yourself, in the near future,
+under the last ruins of capitalism). The problem is for the ruling
+imperialist bandits to succeed--yesterday or to-day--to deceive,
+violate, and swindle public opinion, by collecting 51 per cent. of the
+votes against your 49. Perish the world, but long live the
+parliamentary majority!"
+
+
+
+
+2
+
+THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT
+
+
+"Marx and Engels hammered out the idea of the dictatorship of the
+proletariat, which Engels stubbornly defended in 1891, shortly before
+his death--the idea that the political autocracy of the proletariat is
+the sole form in which it can realize its control of the state."
+
+That is what Kautsky wrote about ten years ago. The sole form of power
+for the proletariat he considered to be not a Socialist majority in a
+democratic parliament, but the political autocracy of the proletariat,
+its dictatorship. And it is quite clear that, if our problem is the
+abolition of private property in the means of production, the only
+road to its solution lies through the concentration of State power in
+its entirety in the hands of the proletariat, and the setting up for
+the transitional period of an exceptional regime--a regime in which
+the ruling class is guided, not by general principles calculated for a
+prolonged period, but by considerations of revolutionary policy.
+
+The dictatorship is necessary because it is a case, not of partial
+changes, but of the very existence of the bourgeoisie. No agreement is
+possible on this ground. Only force can be the deciding factor. The
+dictatorship of the proletariat does not exclude, of course, either
+separate agreements, or considerable concessions, especially in
+connection with the lower middle-class and the peasantry. But the
+proletariat can only conclude these agreements after having gained
+possession of the apparatus of power, and having guaranteed to itself
+the possibility of independently deciding on which points to yield and
+on which to stand firm, in the interests of the general Socialist
+task.
+
+Kautsky now repudiates the dictatorship of the proletariat at the very
+outset, as the "tyranny of the minority over the majority." That is,
+he discerns in the revolutionary regime of the proletariat those very
+features by which the honest Socialists of all countries invariably
+describe the dictatorship of the exploiters, albeit masked by the
+forms of democracy.
+
+Abandoning the idea of a revolutionary dictatorship, Kautsky
+transforms the question of the conquest of power by the proletariat
+into a question of the conquest of a majority of votes by the
+Social-Democratic Party in one of the electoral campaigns of the
+future. Universal suffrage, according to the legal fiction of
+parliamentarism, expresses the will of the citizens of all classes in
+the nation, and, consequently, gives a possibility of attracting a
+majority to the side of Socialism. While the theoretical possibility
+has not been realized, the Socialist minority must submit to the
+bourgeois majority. This fetishism of the parliamentary majority
+represents a brutal repudiation, not only of the dictatorship of the
+proletariat, but of Marxism and of the revolution altogether. If, in
+principle, we are to subordinate Socialist policy to the parliamentary
+mystery of majority and minority, it follows that, in countries where
+formal democracy prevails, there is no place at all for the
+revolutionary struggle. If the majority elected on the basis of
+universal suffrage in Switzerland pass draconian legislation against
+strikers, or if the executive elected by the will of a formal majority
+in Northern America shoots workers, have the Swiss and American
+workers the "right" of protest by organizing a general strike?
+Obviously, no. The political strike is a form of extra-parliamentary
+pressure on the "national will," as it has expressed itself through
+universal suffrage. True, Kautsky himself, apparently, is ashamed to
+go as far as the logic of his new position demands. Bound by some sort
+of remnant of the past, he is obliged to acknowledge the possibility
+of correcting universal suffrage by action. Parliamentary elections,
+at all events in principle, never took the place, in the eyes of the
+Social-Democrats, of the real class struggle, of its conflicts,
+repulses, attacks, revolts; they were considered merely as a
+contributory fact in this struggle, playing a greater part at one
+period, a smaller at another, and no part at all in the period of
+dictatorship.
+
+In 1891, that is, not long before his death, Engels, as we just heard,
+obstinately defended the dictatorship of the proletariat as the only
+possible form of its control of the State. Kautsky himself more than
+once repeated this definition. Hence, by the way, we can see what an
+unworthy forgery is Kautsky's present attempt to throw back the
+dictatorship of the proletariat at us as a purely Russian invention.
+
+Who aims at the end cannot reject the means. The struggle must be
+carried on with such intensity as actually to guarantee the supremacy
+of the proletariat. If the Socialist revolution requires a
+dictatorship--"the sole form in which the proletariat can achieve
+control of the State"--it follows that the dictatorship must be
+guaranteed at all cost.
+
+To write a pamphlet about dictatorship one needs an ink-pot and a pile
+of paper, and possibly, in addition, a certain number of ideas in
+one's head. But in order to establish and consolidate the
+dictatorship, one has to prevent the bourgeoisie from undermining the
+State power of the proletariat. Kautsky apparently thinks that this
+can be achieved by tearful pamphlets. But his own experience ought to
+have shown him that it is not sufficient to have lost all influence
+with the proletariat, to acquire influence with the bourgeoisie.
+
+It is only possible to safeguard the supremacy of the working class by
+forcing the bourgeoisie accustomed to rule, to realize that it is too
+dangerous an undertaking for it to revolt against the dictatorship of
+the proletariat, to undermine it by conspiracies, sabotage,
+insurrections, or the calling in of foreign troops. The bourgeoisie,
+hurled from power, must be forced to obey. In what way? The priests
+used to terrify the people with future penalties. We have no such
+resources at our disposal. But even the priests' hell never stood
+alone, but was always bracketed with the material fire of the Holy
+Inquisition, and with the scorpions of the democratic State. Is it
+possible that Kautsky is leaning to the idea that the bourgeoisie can
+be held down with the help of the categorical imperative, which in his
+last writings plays the part of the Holy Ghost? We, on our part, can
+only promise him our material assistance if he decides to equip a
+Kantian-humanitarian mission to the realms of Denikin and Kolchak. At
+all events, there he would have the possibility of convincing himself
+that the counter-revolutionaries are not naturally devoid of
+character, and that, thanks to their six years' existence in the fire
+and smoke of war, their character has managed to become thoroughly
+hardened. Every White Guard has long ago acquired the simple truth
+that it is easier to hang a Communist to the branch of a tree than to
+convert him with a book of Kautsky's. These gentlemen have no
+superstitious fear, either of the principles of democracy or of the
+flames of hell--the more so because the priests of the church and of
+official learning act in collusion with them, and pour their combined
+thunders exclusively on the heads of the Bolsheviks. The Russian White
+Guards resemble the German and all other White Guards in this
+respect--that they cannot be convinced or shamed, but only terrorized
+or crushed.
+
+The man who repudiates terrorism in principle--_i.e._, repudiates
+measures of suppression and intimidation towards determined and armed
+counter-revolution, must reject all idea of the political supremacy of
+the working class and its revolutionary dictatorship. The man who
+repudiates the dictatorship of the proletariat repudiates the
+Socialist revolution, and digs the grave of Socialism.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the present time, Kautsky has no theory of the social revolution.
+Every time he tries to generalize his slanders against the revolution
+and the dictatorship of the proletariat, he produces merely a
+réchauffé of the prejudices of Jaurèsism and Bernsteinism.
+
+"The revolution of 1789," writes Kautsky, "itself put an end to the
+most important causes which gave it its harsh and violent character,
+and prepared the way for milder forms of the future revolution." (Page
+140.)[2] Let us admit this, though to do so we have to forget the June
+days of 1848 and the horrors of the suppression of the Commune. Let us
+admit that the great revolution of the eighteenth century, which by
+measures of merciless terror destroyed the rule of absolutism, of
+feudalism, and of clericalism, really prepared the way for more
+peaceful and milder solutions of social problems. But, even if we
+admit this purely liberal standpoint, even here our accuser will prove
+to be completely in the wrong; for the Russian Revolution, which
+culminated in the dictatorship of the proletariat, began with just
+that work which was done in France at the end of the eighteenth
+century. Our forefathers, in centuries gone by, did not take the
+trouble to prepare the democratic way--by means of revolutionary
+terrorism--for milder manners in our revolution. The ethical mandarin,
+Kautsky, ought to take these circumstances into account, and accuse
+our forefathers, not us.
+
+          [2] Translator's Note--For convenience sake, the references
+          throughout have been altered to fall in the English
+          translation of Kautsky's book. Mr. Kerridge's translation,
+          however, has not been adhered to.
+
+Kautsky, however, seems to make a little concession in this direction.
+"True," he says, "no man of insight could doubt that a military
+monarchy like the German, the Austrian, or the Russian could be
+overthrown only by violent methods. But in this connection there was
+always less thought" (amongst whom?), "of the bloody use of arms, and
+more of the working class weapon peculiar to the proletariat--the
+mass strike. And that a considerable portion of the proletariat,
+after seizing power, would again--as at the end of the eighteenth
+century--give vent to its rage and revenge in bloodshed could not be
+expected. This would have meant a complete negation of all progress."
+(Page 147.)
+
+As we see, the war and a series of revolutions were required to enable
+us to get a proper view of what was going on in reality in the heads of
+some of our most learned theoreticians. It turns out that Kautsky did
+not think that a Romanoff or a Hohenzollern could be put away by means
+of conversations; but at the same time he seriously imagined that a
+military monarchy could be overthrown by a general strike--_i.e._, by
+a peaceful demonstration of folded arms. In spite of the Russian
+revolution, and the world discussion of this question, Kautsky, it
+turns out, retains the anarcho-reformist view of the general strike.
+We might point out to him that, in the pages of its own journal, the
+_Neue Zeit_, it was explained twelve years ago that the general strike
+is only a mobilization of the proletariat and its setting up against
+its enemy, the State; but that the strike in itself cannot produce
+the solution of the problem, because it exhausts the forces of the
+proletariat sooner than those of its enemies, and this, sooner or
+later, forces the workers to return to the factories. The general
+strike acquires a decisive importance only as a preliminary to a
+conflict between the proletariat and the armed forces of the
+opposition--_i.e._, to the open revolutionary rising of the workers.
+Only by breaking the will of the armies thrown against it can the
+revolutionary class solve the problem of power--the root problem of
+every revolution. The general strike produces the mobilization of both
+sides, and gives the first serious estimate of the powers of resistance
+of the counter-revolution. But only in the further stages of the
+struggle, after the transition to the path of armed insurrection, can
+that bloody price be fixed which the revolutionary class has to pay for
+power. But that it will have to pay with blood, that, in the struggle
+for the conquest of power and for its consolidation, the proletariat
+will have not only to be killed, but also to kill--of this no serious
+revolutionary ever had any doubt. To announce that the existence of a
+determined life-and-death struggle between the proletariat and the
+bourgeoisie "is a complete negation of all progress," means simply that
+the heads of some of our most reverend theoreticians take the form of a
+camera-obscura, in which objects are represented upside down.
+
+But, even when applied to more advanced and cultured countries with
+established democratic traditions, there is absolutely no proof of
+the justice of Kautsky's historical argument. As a matter of fact, the
+argument itself is not new. Once upon a time the Revisionists gave it a
+character more based on principle. They strove to prove that the growth
+of proletarian organizations under democratic conditions guaranteed the
+gradual and imperceptible--reformist and evolutionary--transition to
+Socialist society--without general strikes and risings, without the
+dictatorship of the proletariat.
+
+Kautsky, at that culminating period of his activity, showed that,
+in spite of the forms of democracy, the class contradictions of
+capitalist society grew deeper, and that this process must inevitably
+lead to a revolution and the conquest of power by the proletariat.
+
+No one, of course, attempted to reckon up beforehand the number of
+victims that will be called for by the revolutionary insurrection of
+the proletariat, and by the regime of its dictatorship. But it was
+clear to all that the number of victims will vary with the strength of
+resistance of the propertied classes. If Kautsky desires to say in his
+book that a democratic upbringing has not weakened the class egoism of
+the bourgeoisie, this can be admitted without further parley.
+
+If he wishes to add that the imperialist war, which broke out and
+continued for four years, _in spite of_ democracy, brought about
+a degradation of morals and accustomed men to violent methods and
+action, and completely stripped the bourgeoisie of the last vestige of
+awkwardness in ordering the destruction of masses of humanity--here
+also he will be right.
+
+All this is true on the face of it. But one has to struggle in real
+conditions. The contending forces are not proletarian and bourgeois
+manikins produced in the retort of Wagner-Kautsky, but a real
+proletariat against a real bourgeoisie, as they have emerged from the
+last imperialist slaughter.
+
+In this fact of merciless civil war that is spreading over the whole
+world, Kautsky sees only the result of a fatal lapse from the
+"experienced tactics" of the Second International.
+
+"In reality, since the time," he writes, "that Marxism has dominated
+the Socialist movement, the latter, up to the world war, was, in spite
+of its great activities, preserved from great defeats. And the idea of
+insuring victory by means of terrorist domination had completely
+disappeared from its ranks.
+
+"Much was contributed in this connection by the fact that, at the time
+when Marxism was the dominating Socialist teaching, democracy threw
+out firm roots in Western Europe, and began there to change from an
+end of the struggle to a trustworthy basis of political life." (Page
+145.)
+
+In this "formula of progress" there is not one atom of Marxism. The
+real process of the struggle of classes and their material conflicts
+has been lost in Marxist propaganda, which, thanks to the conditions
+of democracy, guarantees, forsooth, a painless transition to a new and
+"wiser" order. This is the most vulgar liberalism, a belated piece of
+rationalism in the spirit of the eighteenth century--with the
+difference that the ideas of Condorcet are replaced by a vulgarisation
+of the Communist Manifesto. All history resolves itself into an
+endless sheet of printed paper, and the centre of this "humane"
+process proves to be the well-worn writing table of Kautsky.
+
+We are given as an example the working-class movement in the period of
+the Second International, which, going forward under the banner of
+Marxism, never sustained great defeats whenever it deliberately
+challenged them. But did not the whole working-class movement, the
+proletariat of the whole world, and with it the whole of human
+culture, sustain an incalculable defeat in August, 1914, when history
+cast up the accounts of all the forces and possibilities of the
+Socialist parties, amongst whom, we are told, the guiding role
+belonged to Marxism, "on the firm footing of democracy"? _Those
+parties proved bankrupt._ Those features of their previous work
+which Kautsky now wishes to render permanent--self-adaptation,
+repudiation of "illegal" activity, repudiation of the open fight,
+hopes placed in democracy as the road to a painless revolution--all
+these fell into dust. In their fear of defeat, holding back the masses
+from open conflict, dissolving the general strike discussions, the
+parties of the Second International were preparing their own
+terrifying defeat; for they were not able to move one finger to avert
+the greatest catastrophe in world history, the four years' imperialist
+slaughter, which foreshadowed the violent character of the civil war.
+Truly, one has to put a wadded night-cap not only over one's eyes, but
+over one's nose and ears, to be able to-day, after the inglorious
+collapse of the Second International, after the disgraceful bankruptcy
+of its leading party--the German Social-Democracy--after the bloody
+lunacy of the world slaughter and the gigantic sweep of the civil war,
+to set up in contrast to us, the profundity, the loyalty, the
+peacefulness and the sobriety of the Second International, the
+heritage of which we are still liquidating.
+
+
+
+
+3
+
+DEMOCRACY
+
+
+"EITHER DEMOCRACY, OR CIVIL WAR"
+
+Kautsky has a clear and solitary path to salvation: _democracy_. All
+that is necessary is that every one should acknowledge it and bind
+himself to support it. The Right Socialists must renounce the
+sanguinary slaughter with which they have been carrying out the will of
+the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie itself must abandon the idea of using
+its Noskes and Lieutenant Vogels to defend its privileges to the last
+breath. Finally, the proletariat must once and for all reject the idea
+of overthrowing the bourgeoisie by means other than those laid down in
+the Constitution. If the conditions enumerated are observed, the social
+revolution will painlessly melt into democracy. In order to succeed it
+is sufficient, as we see, for our stormy history to draw a nightcap
+over its head, and take a pinch of wisdom out of Kautsky's snuffbox.
+
+"There exist only two possibilities," says our sage, "either democracy,
+or civil war." (Page 220.) Yet, in Germany, where the formal elements
+of "democracy" are present before our eyes, the civil war does not
+cease for a moment. "Unquestionably," agrees Kautsky, "under the
+present National Assembly Germany cannot arrive at a healthy condition.
+But that process of recovery will not be assisted, but hindered, if we
+transform the struggle against the present Assembly into a struggle
+against the democratic franchise." (Page 230.) As if the question in
+Germany really did reduce itself to one of electoral forms and not to
+one of the real possession of power!
+
+The present National Assembly, as Kautsky admits, cannot "bring the
+country to a healthy condition." Therefore let us begin the game again
+at the beginning. But will the partners agree? It is doubtful. If the
+rubber is not favorable to us, obviously it is so to them. The National
+Assembly which "is incapable of bringing the country to a healthy
+condition," is quite capable, through the mediocre dictatorship of
+Noske, of preparing the way for the dictatorship of Ludendorff. So it
+was with the Constituent Assembly which prepared the way for Kolchak.
+The historical mission of Kautsky consists precisely in having waited
+for the revolution to write his (n + 1th) book, which should explain
+the collapse of the revolution by all the previous course of history,
+from the ape to Noske, and from Noske to Ludendorff. The problem before
+the revolutionary party is a difficult one: its problem is to foresee
+the peril in good time, and to forestall it by _action_. And for this
+there is no other way at present than to tear the power out of the
+hands of its real possessors, the agrarian and capitalist magnates, who
+are only temporarily hiding behind Messrs. Ebert and Noske. Thus, from
+the present National Assembly, the path divides into two: either the
+dictatorship of the imperialist clique, or the dictatorship of the
+proletariat. On neither side does the path lead to "democracy." Kautsky
+does not see this. He explains at great length that democracy is of
+great importance for its political development and its education in
+organization of the masses, and that through it the proletariat can
+come to complete emancipation. One might imagine that, since the day on
+which the Erfurt Programme was written, nothing worthy of notice had
+ever happened in the world!
+
+Yet meanwhile, for decades, the proletariat of France, Germany, and
+the other most important countries has been struggling and developing,
+making the widest possible use of the institutions of democracy, and
+building up on that basis powerful political organizations. This path
+of the education of the proletariat through democracy to Socialism
+proved, however, to be interrupted by an event of no inconsiderable
+importance--the world imperialist war. The class state at the
+moment when, thanks to its machinations, the war broke out succeeded
+in enlisting the assistance of the guiding organizations of
+Social-Democracy to deceive the proletariat and draw it into the
+whirlpool. So that, taken as they stand, the methods of democracy, in
+spite of the incontestable benefits which they afford at a certain
+period, displayed an extremely limited power of action; with the result
+that two generations of the proletariat, educated under conditions of
+democracy, by no means guaranteed the necessary political preparation
+for judging accurately an event like the world imperialist war. That
+experience gives us no reasons for affirming that, if the war had
+broken out ten or fifteen years later, the proletariat would have been
+more prepared for it. The bourgeois democratic state not only creates
+more favorable conditions for the political education of the workers,
+as compared with absolutism, but also sets a limit to that development
+in the shape of bourgeois legality, which skilfully accumulates and
+builds on the upper strata of the proletariat opportunist habits
+and law-abiding prejudices. The school of democracy proved quite
+insufficient to rouse the German proletariat to revolution when the
+catastrophe of the war was at hand. The barbarous school of the war,
+social-imperialist ambitions, colossal military victories, and
+unparalleled defeats were required. After these events, which made a
+certain amount of difference in the universe, and even in the Erfurt
+Programme, to come out with common-places as to meaning of democratic
+parliamentarism for the education of the proletariat signifies a fall
+into political childhood. This is just the misfortune which has
+overtaken Kautsky.
+
+"Profound disbelief in the political struggle of the proletariat," he
+writes, "and in its participation in politics, was the characteristic
+of Proudhonism. To-day there arises a similar (!!) view, and it is
+recommended to us as the new gospel of Socialist thought, as the result
+of an experience which Marx did not, and could not, know. In reality,
+it is only a variation of an idea which half a century ago Marx was
+fighting, and which he in the end defeated." (Page 79.)
+
+Bolshevism proves to be warmed-up Proudhonism! From a purely theoretical
+point of view, this is one of the most brazen remarks in the pamphlet.
+
+The Proudhonists repudiated democracy for the same reason that they
+repudiated the political struggle generally. They stood for the
+economic organization of the workers without the interference of the
+State, without revolutionary outbreaks--for self-help of the workers on
+the basis of production for profit. As far as they were driven by the
+course of events on to the path of the political struggle, they, as
+lower middle-class theoreticians, preferred democracy, not only to
+plutocracy, but to revolutionary dictatorship. What thoughts have they
+in common with us? While we repudiate democracy in the name of the
+concentrated power of the proletariat, the Proudhonists, on the other
+hand, were prepared to make their peace with democracy, diluted by a
+federal basis, in order to avoid the revolutionary monopoly of power by
+the proletariat. With more foundation Kautsky might have compared us
+with the opponents of the Proudhonists, the _Blanquists_, who
+understood the meaning of a revolutionary government, but did not
+superstitiously make the question of seizing it depend on the formal
+signs of democracy. But in order to put the comparison of the
+Communists with the Blanquists on a reasonable footing, it would have
+to be added that, in the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils, we had at our
+disposal such an organization for revolution as the Blanquists could
+not even dream of; in our party we had, and have, an invaluable
+organization of political leadership with a perfected programme of the
+social revolution. Finally, we had, and have, a powerful apparatus of
+economic transformation in our trade unions, which stand as a whole
+under the banner of Communism, and support the Soviet Government. Under
+such conditions, to talk of the renaissance of Proudhonist prejudices
+in the shape of Bolshevism can only take place when one has lost all
+traces of theoretical honesty and historical understanding.
+
+
+THE IMPERIALIST TRANSFORMATION OF DEMOCRACY
+
+It is not for nothing that the word "democracy" has a double meaning
+in the political vocabulary. On the one hand, it means a state system
+founded on universal suffrage and the other attributes of formal
+"popular government." On the other hand, by the word "democracy" is
+understood the mass of the people itself, in so far as it leads a
+political existence. In the second sense, as in the first, the meaning
+of democracy rises above class distinctions. This peculiarity of
+terminology has its profound political significance. Democracy as a
+political system is the more perfect and unshakable the greater is the
+part played in the life of the country by the intermediate and less
+differentiated mass of the population--the lower middle-class of the
+town and the country. Democracy achieved its highest expression in the
+nineteenth century in Switzerland and the United States of North
+America. On the other side of the ocean the democratic organization of
+power in a federal republic was based on the agrarian democracy of the
+farmers. In the small Helvetian Republic, the lower middle-classes of
+the towns and the rich peasantry constituted the basis of the
+conservative democracy of the united cantons.
+
+Born of the struggle of the Third Estate against the powers of
+feudalism, the democratic State very soon becomes the weapon of defence
+against the class antagonisms generated within bourgeois society.
+Bourgeois society succeeds in this the more, the wider beneath it is
+the layer of the lower middle-class, the greater is the importance of
+the latter in the economic life of the country, and the less advanced,
+consequently, is the development of class antagonism. However, the
+intermediate classes become ever more and more helplessly behind
+historical development, and, thereby, become ever more and more
+incapable of speaking in the name of the nation. True, the lower
+middle-class doctrinaires (Bernstein and Company) used to demonstrate
+with satisfaction that the disappearance of the middle-classes was not
+taking place with that swiftness that was expected by the Marxian
+school. And, in reality, one might agree that, numerically, the
+middle-class elements in the town, and especially in the country, still
+maintain an extremely prominent position. But the chief meaning of
+evolution has shown itself in the decline in importance on the part of
+the middle-classes from the point of view of production: the amount of
+values which this class brings to the general income of the nation has
+fallen incomparably more rapidly than the numerical strength of the
+middle-classes. Correspondingly, falls their social, political, and
+cultural importance. Historical development has been relying more and
+more, not on these conservative elements inherited from the past, but
+on the polar classes of society--_i.e._, the capitalist bourgeoisie and
+the proletariat.
+
+The more the middle-classes lost their social importance, the less they
+proved capable of playing the part of an authoritative arbitral judge
+in the historical conflict between capital and labor. Yet the very
+considerable numerical proportion of the town middle-classes, and still
+more of the peasantry, continues to find direct expression in the
+electoral statistics of parliamentarism. The formal equality of all
+citizens as electors thereby only gives more open indication of the
+incapacity of democratic parliamentarism to settle the root questions
+of historical evolution. An "equal" vote for the proletariat, the
+peasant, and the manager of a trust formally placed the peasant in the
+position of a mediator between the two antagonists; but, in reality,
+the peasantry, socially and culturally backward and politically
+helpless, has in all countries always provided support for the most
+reactionary, filibustering, and mercenary parties which, in the long
+run, always supported capital against labor.
+
+Absolutely contrary to all the prophecies of Bernstein, Sombart,
+Tugan-Baranovsky, and others, the continued existence of the middle
+classes has not softened, but has rendered to the last degree
+acute, the revolutionary crisis of bourgeois society. If the
+proletarianization of the lower middle-classes and the peasantry had
+been proceeding in a chemically purified form, the peaceful conquest
+of power by the proletariat through the democratic parliamentary
+apparatus would have been much more probable than we can imagine at
+present. Just the fact that was seized upon by the partisans of the
+lower middle-class--its longevity--has proved fatal even for the
+external forms of political democracy, now that capitalism has
+undermined its essential foundations. Occupying in parliamentary
+politics a place which it has lost in production, the middle-class has
+finally compromised parliamentarism, and has transformed it into an
+institution of confused chatter and legislative obstruction. From this
+fact alone, there grew up before the proletariat the problem of
+seizing the apparatus of state power as such, independently of the
+middle-class, and even against it--not against its interests, but
+against its stupidity and its policy, impossible to follow in its
+helpless contortions.
+
+"Imperialism," wrote Marx of the Empire of Napoleon III, "is the most
+prostituted, and, at the same time, perfected form of the state which
+the bourgeoisie, having attained its fullest development, transforms
+into a weapon for the enslavement of labor by capital." This definition
+has a wider significance than for the French Empire alone, and includes
+the latest form of imperialism, born of the world conflict between the
+national capitalisms of the great powers. In the economic sphere,
+imperialism pre-supposed the final collapse of the rule of the
+middle-class; in the political sphere, it signified the complete
+destruction of democracy by means of an internal molecular
+transformation, and a universal subordination of all democracy's
+resources to its own ends. Seizing upon all countries, independently of
+their previous political history, imperialism showed that all political
+prejudices were foreign to it, and that it was equally ready and
+capable of making use, after their transformation and subjection, of
+the monarchy of Nicholas Romanoff or Wilhelm Hohenzollern, of the
+presidential autocracy of the United States of North America, and of
+the helplessness of a few hundred chocolate legislators in the French
+parliament. The last great slaughter--the bloody font in which the
+bourgeois world attempted to be re-baptised--presented to us a picture,
+unparalleled in history, of the mobilization of all state forms,
+systems of government, political tendencies, religious, and schools of
+philosophy, in the service of imperialism. Even many of those pedants
+who slept through the preparatory period of imperialist development
+during the last decades, and continued to maintain a traditional
+attitude towards ideas of democracy and universal suffrage, began to
+feel during the war that their accustomed ideas had become fraught with
+some new meaning. Absolutism, parliamentary monarchy, democracy--in the
+presence of imperialism (and, consequently, in the presence of the
+revolution rising to take its place), all the state forms of bourgeois
+supremacy, from Russian Tsarism to North American quasi-democratic
+federalism, have been given equal rights, bound up in such combinations
+as to supplement one another in an indivisible whole. Imperialism
+succeeded by means of all the resources it had at its disposal,
+including parliamentarism, irrespective of the electoral arithmetic of
+voting, to subordinate for its own purposes at the critical moment the
+lower middle-classes of the towns and country and even the upper layers
+of the proletariat. The national idea, under the watchword of which the
+Third Estate rose to power, found in the imperialist war its rebirth in
+the watchword of national defence. With unexpected clearness, national
+ideology flamed up for the last time at the expense of class ideology.
+The collapse of imperialist illusions, not only amongst the vanquished,
+but--after a certain delay--amongst the victorious also, finally laid
+low what was once national democracy, and, with it, its main weapon,
+the democratic parliament. The flabbiness, rottenness, and helplessness
+of the middle-classes and their parties everywhere became evident with
+terrifying clearness. In all countries the question of the control of
+the State assumed first-class importance as a question of an open
+measuring of forces between the capitalist clique, openly or secretly
+supreme and disposing of hundreds of thousands of mobilized and
+hardened officers, devoid of all scruple, and the revolting,
+revolutionary proletariat; while the intermediate classes were living
+in a state of terror, confusion, and prostration. Under such
+conditions, what pitiful nonsense are speeches about the peaceful
+conquest of power by the proletariat by means of democratic
+parliamentarism!
+
+The scheme of the political situation on a world scale is quite clear.
+The bourgeoisie, which has brought the nations, exhausted and bleeding
+to death, to the brink of destruction--particularly the victorious
+bourgeoisie--has displayed its complete inability to bring them out of
+their terrible situation, and, thereby, its incompatibility with the
+future development of humanity. All the intermediate political groups,
+including here first and foremost the social-patriotic parties, are
+rotting alive. The proletariat they have deceived is turning against
+them more and more every day, and is becoming strengthened in its
+revolutionary convictions as the only power that can save the peoples
+from savagery and destruction. However, history has not at all
+secured, just at this moment, a formal parliamentary majority on the
+side of the party of the social revolution. In other words, history
+has not transformed the nation into a debating society solemnly voting
+the transition to the social revolution by a majority of votes. On the
+contrary, the violent revolution has become a necessity precisely
+because the imminent requirements of history are helpless to find a
+road through the apparatus of parliamentary democracy. The capitalist
+bourgeois calculates: "while I have in my hands lands, factories,
+workshops, banks; while I possess newspapers, universities, schools;
+while--and this most important of all--I retain control of the army:
+the apparatus of democracy, however you reconstruct it, will remain
+obedient to my will. I subordinate to my interests spiritually the
+stupid, conservative, characterless lower middle-class, just as it
+is subjected to me materially. I oppress, and will oppress, its
+imagination by the gigantic scale of my buildings, my transactions, my
+plans, and my crimes. For moments when it is dissatisfied and murmurs,
+I have created scores of safety-valves and lightning-conductors. At
+the right moment I will bring into existence opposition parties, which
+will disappear to-morrow, but which to-day accomplish their mission by
+affording the possibility of the lower middle-class expressing their
+indignation without hurt therefrom for capitalism. I shall hold the
+masses of the people, under cover of compulsory general education, on
+the verge of complete ignorance, giving them no opportunity of rising
+above the level which my experts in spiritual slavery consider safe. I
+will corrupt, deceive, and terrorize the more privileged or the more
+backward of the proletariat itself. By means of these measures, I
+shall not allow the vanguard of the working class to gain the ear of
+the majority of the working class, while the necessary weapons of
+mastery and terrorism remain in my hands."
+
+To this the revolutionary proletarian replies: "Consequently, the
+first condition of salvation is to tear the weapons of domination out
+of the hands of the bourgeoisie. It is hopeless to think of a peaceful
+arrival to power while the bourgeoisie retains in its hands all the
+apparatus of power. Three times over hopeless is the idea of coming to
+power by the path which the bourgeoisie itself indicates and, at the
+same time, barricades--the path of parliamentary democracy. There is
+only one way: to seize power, taking away from the bourgeoisie the
+material apparatus of government. Independently of the superficial
+balance of forces in parliament, I shall take over for social
+administration the chief forces and resources of production. I shall
+free the mind of the lower middle-class from their capitalist
+hypnosis. I shall show them in practice what is the meaning of
+Socialist production. Then even the most backward, the most ignorant,
+or most terrorized sections of the nation will support me, and
+willingly and intelligently will join in the work of social
+construction."
+
+When the Russian Soviet Government dissolved the Constituent Assembly,
+that fact seemed to the leading Social-Democrats of Western Europe, if
+not the beginning of the end of the world, at all events a rude and
+arbitrary break with all the previous developments of Socialism. In
+reality, it was only the inevitable outcome of the new position
+resulting from imperialism and the war. If Russian Communism was the
+first to enter the path of casting up theoretical and practical
+accounts, this was due to the same historical reasons which forced the
+Russian proletariat to be the first to enter the path of the struggle
+for power.
+
+All that has happened since then in Europe bears witness to the fact
+that we drew the right conclusion. To imagine that democracy can be
+restored in its general purity means that one is living in a pitiful,
+reactionary utopia.
+
+
+THE METAPHYSICS OF DEMOCRACY
+
+Feeling the historical ground shaking under his feet on the question
+of democracy, Kautsky crosses to the ground of metaphysics. Instead of
+inquiring into what is, he deliberates about what ought to be.
+
+The principles of democracy--the sovereignty of the people, universal
+and equal suffrage, personal liberties--appear, as presented to him,
+in a halo of moral duty. They are turned from their historical meaning
+and presented as unalterable and sacred things-in-themselves. This
+metaphysical fall from grace is not accidental. It is instructive that
+the late Plekhanov, a merciless enemy of Kantism at the best period of
+his activity, attempted at the end of his life, when the wave of
+patriotism had washed over him, to clutch at the straw of the
+categorical imperative.
+
+That real democracy with which the German people is now making
+practical acquaintance Kautsky confronts with a kind of ideal
+democracy, as he would confront a common phenomenon with the
+thing-in-itself. Kautsky indicates with certitude not one country in
+which democracy is really capable of guaranteeing a painless
+transition to Socialism. But he does know, and firmly, that such
+democracy ought to exist. The present German National Assembly, that
+organ of helplessness, reactionary malice, and degraded solicitations,
+is confronted by Kautsky with a different, real, true National
+Assembly, which possesses all virtues--excepting the small virtue of
+reality.
+
+The doctrine of formal democracy is not scientific Socialism, but the
+theory of so-called natural law. The essence of the latter consists in
+the recognition of eternal and unchanging standards of law, which
+among different peoples and at different periods find a different,
+more or less limited and distorted expression. The natural law of the
+latest history--_i.e._, as it emerged from the middle ages--included
+first of all a protest against class privileges, the abuse of despotic
+legislation, and the other "artificial" products of feudal positive
+law. The theoreticians of the, as yet, weak Third Estate expressed its
+class interests in a few ideal standards, which later on developed
+into the teaching of democracy, acquiring at the same time an
+individualist character. The individual is absolute; all persons have
+the right of expressing their thoughts in speech and print; every man
+must enjoy equal electoral rights. As a battle cry against feudalism,
+the demand for democracy had a progressive character. As time went on,
+however, the metaphysics of natural law (the theory of formal
+democracy) began to show its reactionary side--the establishment of an
+ideal standard to control the real demands of the laboring masses and
+the revolutionary parties.
+
+If we look back to the historical sequence of world concepts, the
+theory of natural law will prove to be a paraphrase of Christian
+spiritualism freed from its crude mysticism. The Gospels proclaimed to
+the slave that he had just the same soul as the slave-owner, and in
+this way established the equality of all men before the heavenly
+tribunal. In reality, the slave remained a slave, and obedience became
+for him a religious duty. In the teaching of Christianity, the slave
+found an expression for his own ignorant protest against his degraded
+condition. Side by side with the protest was also the consolation.
+Christianity told him:--"You have an immortal soul, although you
+resemble a pack-horse." Here sounded the note of indignation. But the
+same Christianity said:--"Although you are like a pack-horse, yet your
+immortal soul has in store for it an eternal reward." Here is the
+voice of consolation. These two notes were found in historical
+Christianity in different proportions at different periods and amongst
+different classes. But as a whole, Christianity, like all other
+religions, became a method of deadening the consciousness of the
+oppressed masses.
+
+Natural law, which developed into the theory of democracy, said to the
+worker: "all men are equal before the law, independently of their
+origin, their property, and their position; every man has an equal
+right in determining the fate of the people." This ideal criterion
+revolutionized the consciousness of the masses in so far as it was a
+condemnation of absolutism, aristocratic privileges, and the property
+qualification. But the longer it went on, the more it sent the
+consciousness to sleep, legalizing poverty, slavery and degradation:
+for how could one revolt against slavery when every man has an equal
+right in determining the fate of the nation?
+
+Rothschild, who has coined the blood and tears of the world into the
+gold napoleons of his income, has one vote at the parliamentary
+elections. The ignorant tiller of the soil who cannot sign his name,
+sleeps all his life without taking his clothes off, and wanders
+through society like an underground mole, plays his part, however, as
+a trustee of the nation's sovereignty, and is equal to Rothschild in
+the courts and at the elections. In the real conditions of life, in
+the economic process, in social relations, in their way of life,
+people became more and more unequal; dazzling luxury was accumulated
+at one pole, poverty and hopelessness at the other. But in the sphere
+of the legal edifice of the State, these glaring contradictions
+disappeared, and there penetrated thither only unsubstantial legal
+shadows. The landlord, the laborer, the capitalist, the proletarian,
+the minister, the bootblack--all are equal as "citizens" and as
+"legislators." The mystic equality of Christianity has taken one step
+down from the heavens in the shape of the "natural," "legal" equality
+of democracy. But it has not yet reached earth, where lie the economic
+foundations of society. For the ignorant day-laborer, who all his life
+remains a beast of burden in the service of the bourgeoisie, the ideal
+right to influence the fate of the nations by means of the
+parliamentary elections remained little more real than the palace
+which he was promised in the kingdom of heaven.
+
+In the practical interests of the development of the working class,
+the Socialist Party took its stand at a certain period on the path of
+parliamentarism. But this did not mean in the slightest that it
+accepted in principle the metaphysical theory of democracy, based on
+extra-historical, super-class rights. The proletarian doctrines
+examined democracy as the instrument of bourgeois society entirely
+adapted to the problems and requirements of the ruling classes; but as
+bourgeois society lived by the labor of the proletariat and could not
+deny it the legalization of a certain part of its class struggle
+without destroying itself, this gave the Socialist Party the
+possibility of utilizing, at a certain period, and within certain
+limits, the mechanism of democracy, without taking an oath to do so as
+an unshakable principle.
+
+The root problem of the party, at all periods of its struggle, was to
+create the conditions for real, economic, living equality for mankind
+as members of a united human commonwealth. It was just for this reason
+that the theoreticians of the proletariat had to expose the
+metaphysics of democracy as a philosophic mask for political
+mystification.
+
+The democratic party at the period of its revolutionary enthusiasm,
+when exposing the enslaving and stupefying lie of church dogma,
+preached to the masses:--"You are lulled to sleep by promises of
+eternal bliss at the end of your life, while here you have no rights
+and you are bound with the chains of tyranny." The Socialist Party, a
+few decades later, said to the same masses with no less right:--"You
+are lulled to sleep with the fiction of civic equality and political
+rights, but you are deprived of the possibility of realizing those
+rights. Conditional and shadowy legal equality has been transformed
+into the convicts' chain with which each of you is fastened to the
+chariot of capitalism."
+
+In the name of its fundamental task, the Socialist Party mobilized the
+masses on the parliamentary ground as well as on others; but nowhere
+and at no time did any party bind itself to bring the masses to
+Socialism only through the gates of democracy. In adapting ourselves
+to the parliamentary regime, we stopped at a theoretical exposure of
+democracy, because we were still too weak to overcome it in practice.
+But the path of Socialist ideas which is visible through all
+deviations, and even betrayals, foreshadows no other outcome but this:
+to throw democracy aside and replace it by the mechanism of the
+proletariat, at the moment when the latter is strong enough to carry
+out such a task.
+
+We shall bring one piece of evidence, albeit a sufficiently striking
+one. "Parliamentarism," wrote Paul Lafargue in the Russian review,
+_Sozialdemokrat_, in 1888, "is a system of government in which the
+people acquires the illusion that it is controlling the forces of the
+country itself, when, in reality, the actual power is concentrated in
+the hands of the bourgeoisie--and not even of the whole bourgeoisie,
+but only of certain sections of that class. In the first period of its
+supremacy the bourgeoisie does not understand, or, more correctly,
+does not feel, the necessity for making the people believe in the
+illusion of self-government. Hence it was that all the parliamentary
+countries of Europe began with a limited franchise. Everywhere the
+right of influencing the policy of the country by means of the
+election of deputies belonged at first only to more or less large
+property holders, and was only gradually extended to less substantial
+citizens, until finally in some countries it became from a privilege
+the universal right of all and sundry.
+
+"In bourgeois society, the more considerable becomes the amount of
+social wealth, the smaller becomes the number of individuals by whom
+it is appropriated. The same takes place with power: in proportion as
+the mass of citizens who possess political rights increases, and the
+number of elected rulers increases, the actual power is concentrated
+and becomes the monopoly of a smaller and smaller group of
+individuals." Such is the secret of the majority.
+
+For the Marxist, Lafargue, parliamentarism remains as long as the
+supremacy of the bourgeoisie remains. "On the day," writes Lafargue,
+"when the proletariat of Europe and America seizes the State, it will
+have to organize a revolutionary government, and govern society as a
+dictatorship, until the bourgeoisie has disappeared as a class."
+
+Kautsky in his time knew this Marxist estimate of parliamentarism, and
+more than once repeated it himself, although with no such Gallic
+sharpness and lucidity. The theoretical apostasy of Kautsky lies just
+in this point: having recognized the principle of democracy as
+absolute and eternal, he has stepped back from materialist dialectics
+to natural law. That which was exposed by Marxism as the passing
+mechanism of the bourgeoisie, and was subjected only to temporary
+utilization with the object of preparing the proletarian revolution,
+has been newly sanctified by Kautsky as the supreme principle standing
+above classes, and unconditionally subordinating to itself the methods
+of the proletarian struggle. The counter-revolutionary degeneration of
+parliamentarism finds its most perfect expression in the deification
+of democracy by the decaying theoreticians of the Second
+International.
+
+
+THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY
+
+Speaking generally, the attainment of a majority in a democratic
+parliament by the party of the proletariat is not an absolute
+impossibility. But such a fact, even if it were realized, would not
+introduce any new principle into the course of events. The
+intermediate elements of the intelligentsia, under the influence of
+the parliamentary victory of the proletariat, might possibly display
+less resistance to the new regime. But the fundamental resistance of
+the bourgeoisie would be decided by such facts as the attitude of the
+army, the degree to which the workers were armed, the situation in the
+neighboring states: and the civil war would develop under the pressure
+of these most real circumstances, and not by the mobile arithmetic of
+parliamentarism.
+
+Our party has never refused to lead the way for proletarian
+dictatorship through the gates of democracy, having clearly summed up
+in its mind certain agitational and political advantages of such a
+"legalized" transition to the new regime. Hence, our attempt to call
+the Constituent Assembly. The Russian peasant, only just awakened by
+the revolution to political life, found himself face to face with half
+a dozen parties, each of which apparently had made up its mind to
+confuse his mind. The Constituent Assembly placed itself across the
+path of the revolutionary movement, and was swept aside.
+
+The opportunist majority in the Constituent Assembly represented only
+the political reflection of the mental confusion and indecision
+which reigned amidst the middle-classes in the town and country
+and amidst the more backward elements of the proletariat. If we
+take the viewpoint of isolated historical possibilities, one
+might say that it would have been more painless if the Constituent
+Assembly had worked for a year or two, had finally discredited the
+Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks by their connection
+with the Cadets, and had thereby led to the formal majority of the
+Bolsheviks, showing the masses that in reality only two forces
+existed: the revolutionary proletariat, led by the Communists, and
+the counter-revolutionary democracy, headed by the generals and the
+admirals. But the point is that the pulse of the internal relations of
+the revolution was beating not at all in time with the pulse of the
+development of its external relations. If our party had thrown all
+responsibility on to the objective formula of "the course of events"
+the development of military operations might have forestalled us.
+German imperialism might have seized Petrograd, the evacuation of
+which the Kerensky Government had already begun. The fall of Petrograd
+would at that time have meant a death-blow to the proletariat, for all
+the best forces of the revolution were concentrated there, in the
+Baltic Fleet and in the Red capital.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+Our party may be accused, therefore, not of going against the course
+of historical development, but of having taken at a stride several
+political steps. It stepped over the heads of the Mensheviks and the
+Socialist-Revolutionaries, in order not to allow German imperialism to
+step across the head of the Russian proletariat and conclude peace
+with the Entente on the back of the revolution before it was able to
+spread its wings over the whole world.
+
+From the above it will not be difficult to deduce the answers to the
+two questions with which Kautsky pestered us. Firstly: Why did we
+summon the Constituent Assembly when we had in view the dictatorship
+of the proletariat? Secondly: If the first Constituent Assembly which
+we summoned proved backward and not in harmony with the interests of
+the revolution, why did we reject the idea of a new Assembly? The
+thought at the back of Kautsky's mind is that we repudiated democracy,
+not on the ground of principle, but only because it proved against us.
+In order to seize this insinuation by its long ears, let us establish
+the facts.
+
+The watchword, "All power to the Soviets," was put forward by our
+Party at the very beginning of the revolution--_i.e._, long before,
+not merely the decree as to the dissolution of the Constituent
+Assembly, but the decree as to its convocation. True, we did not set
+up the Soviets in opposition to the future Constituent Assembly, the
+summoning of which was constantly postponed by the Government of
+Kerensky, and consequently became more and more problematical. But in
+any case, we did not consider the Constituent Assembly, after the
+manner of the democrats, as the future master of the Russian land, who
+would come and settle everything. We explained to the masses that the
+Soviets, the revolutionary organizations of the laboring masses
+themselves, can and must become the true masters. If we did not
+formally repudiate the Constituent Assembly beforehand, it was only
+because it stood in contrast, not to the power of the Soviets, but to
+the power of Kerensky himself, who, in his turn, was only a screen for
+the bourgeoisie. At the same time we did decide beforehand that, if,
+in the Constituent Assembly, the majority proved in our favor, that
+body must dissolve itself and hand over the power to the Soviets--as
+later on the Petrograd Town Council did, elected as it was on the
+basis of the most democratic electoral franchise. In my book on the
+October Revolution, I tried to explain the reasons which made the
+Constituent Assembly the out-of-date reflection of an epoch through
+which the revolution had already passed. As we saw the organization of
+revolutionary power only in the Soviets, and at the moment of the
+summoning of the Constituent Assembly the Soviets were already the de
+facto power, the question was inevitably decided for us in the sense
+of the violent dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, since it would
+not dissolve itself in favor of the Government of the Soviets.
+
+"But why," asks Kautsky, "did you not summon a new Constituent
+Assembly?"
+
+Because we saw no need for it. If the first Constituent Assembly could
+still play a fleeting progressive part, conferring a sanction upon the
+Soviet regime in its first days, convincing for the middle-class
+elements, now, after two years of victorious proletarian dictatorship
+and the complete collapse of all democratic attempts in Siberia, on
+the shores of the White Sea, in the Ukraine, and in the Caucasus, the
+power of the Soviets truly does not need the blessing of the faded
+authority of the Constituent Assembly. "Are we not right in that case
+to conclude," asks Kautsky in the tone of Lloyd George, "that the
+Soviet Government rules by the will of the minority, since it avoids
+testing its supremacy by universal suffrage?" Here is a blow that
+misses its mark.
+
+If the parliamentary regime, even in the period of "peaceful," stable
+development, was a rather crude method of discovering the opinion of
+the country, and in the epoch of revolutionary storm completely lost
+its capacity to follow the course of the struggle and the development
+of revolutionary consciousness, the Soviet regime, which is more
+closely, straightly, honestly bound up with the toiling majority of
+the people, does achieve meaning, not in statically reflecting a
+majority, but in dynamically creating it. Having taken its stand on
+the path of revolutionary dictatorship, the working class of Russia
+has thereby declared that it builds its policy in the period of
+transition, not on the shadowy art of rivalry with chameleon-hued
+parties in the chase for peasant votes, but on the actual attraction
+of the peasant masses, side by side with the proletariat, into the
+work of ruling the country in the real interests of the laboring
+masses. Such democracy goes a little deeper down than parliamentarism.
+
+To-day, when the main problem--the question of life and death--of the
+revolution consists in the military repulse of the various attacks of
+the White Guard bands, does Kautsky imagine that any form of
+parliamentary "majority" is capable of guaranteeing a more energetic,
+devoted, and successful organization of revolutionary defence? The
+conditions of the struggle are so defined, in a revolutionary country
+throttled by the criminal ring of the blockade, that all the
+middle-class groups are confronted only with the alternative of
+Denikin or the Soviet Government. What further proof is needed when
+even parties, which stand for compromise in principle, like the
+Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, have split along that
+very line?
+
+When suggesting to us the election of a Constituent Assembly, does
+Kautsky propose the stopping of the civil war for the purpose of the
+elections? By whose decision? If he intends for this purpose to bring
+into motion the authority of the Second International, we hasten to
+inform him that that institution enjoys in Denikin's camp only a
+little more authority than it does in ours. But to the extent that the
+civil war between the Workers' and Peasants' Army and the imperialist
+bands is still going on, the elections must of necessity be limited to
+Soviet territory. Does Kautsky desire to insist that we should allow
+the parties which support Denikin to come out into the open? Empty and
+contemptible chatter! There is not one government, at any time and
+under any conditions, which would allow its enemies to mobilize
+hostile forces in the rear of its armies.
+
+A not unimportant place in the discussion of the question is occupied
+by the fact that the flower of the laboring population is at present
+on active service. The foremost workers and the most class-conscious
+peasants, who take the first place at all elections, as in all
+important political activities, directing the public opinion of the
+workers, are at present fighting and dying as commanders, commissars,
+or rank and file in the Red Army. If the most "democratic" governments
+in the bourgeois states, whose regime is founded on parliamentarism,
+consider it impossible to carry on elections to parliament in
+wartime, it is all the more senseless to demand such elections during
+the war of the Soviet Republic, the regime of which is not for one
+moment founded on parliamentarism. It is quite sufficient that the
+revolutionary government of Russia, in the most difficult months and
+times, never stood in the way of periodic re-elections of its _own_
+elective institutions--the local and central Soviets.
+
+Finally, as a last argument--the last and the least--we have to
+present to the notice of Kautsky that even the Russian Kautskians, the
+Mensheviks like Martov and Dan, do not consider it possible to put
+forward at the present moment a demand for a Constituent Assembly,
+postponing it to better times in the future. Will there be any need of
+it then? Of this one may be permitted to doubt. When the civil war is
+over, the dictatorship of the working class will disclose all its
+creative energy, and will, in practice, show the most backward masses
+what it can give them. By means of a systematically applied universal
+labor service, and a centralized organization of distribution, the
+whole population of the country will be drawn into the general Soviet
+system of economic arrangement and self-government. The Soviets
+themselves, at present the organs of government, will gradually melt
+into purely economic organizations. Under such conditions it is
+doubtful whether any one will think of erecting, over the real fabric
+of Socialist society, an archaic crown in the shape of the Constituent
+Assembly, which would only have to register the fact that everything
+necessary has already been "constituted" before it and without it.[3]
+
+          [3] In order to charm us in favor of a Constituent Assembly
+          Kautsky brings forward an argument based on the rate of
+          exchange to the assistance of his argument, based on the
+          categorical imperative. "Russia requires," he writes, "the
+          help of foreign capital, but this help will not come to the
+          Soviet Republic if the latter does not summon a Constituent
+          Assembly, and does not give freedom of the Press; not
+          because the capitalists are democratic idealists--to Tsarism
+          they gave without any hesitation many milliards--but because
+          they have no business faith in a revolutionary government."
+          (Page 218.)
+
+          There are scraps of truth in this rubbish. The Stock
+          Exchange did really support the government of Kolchak when
+          it relied for support on the Constituent Assembly. From its
+          experience of Kolchak the Stock Exchange became confirmed in
+          its conviction that the mechanism of bourgeois democracy can
+          be utilized in capitalist interests, and then thrown aside
+          like a worn-out pair of puttees. It is quite possible that
+          the Stock Exchange would again give a parliamentary loan on
+          the guarantee of a Constituent Assembly, believing, on the
+          basis of its former experience, that such a body would prove
+          only an intermediate step to capitalist dictatorship. We do
+          not propose to buy the "business faith" of the Stock
+          Exchange at such a price, and decidedly prefer the "faith"
+          which is aroused in the realist Stock Exchange by the weapon
+          of the Red Army.
+
+
+
+
+4
+
+TERRORISM
+
+
+The chief theme of Kautsky's book is terrorism. The view that
+terrorism is of the essence of revolution Kautsky proclaims to be a
+widespread delusion. It is untrue that he who desires revolution must
+put up with terrorism. As far as he, Kautsky, is concerned, he is,
+generally speaking, for revolution, but decidedly against terrorism.
+From there, however, complications begin.
+
+"The revolution brings us," Kautsky complains, "a bloody terrorism
+carried out by Socialist governments. The Bolsheviks in Russia first
+stepped on to this path, and were, consequently, sternly condemned by
+all Socialists who had not adopted the Bolshevik point of view,
+including the Socialists of the German Majority. But as soon as the
+latter found themselves threatened in their supremacy, they had
+recourse to the methods of the same terrorist regime which they
+attacked in the East." (Page 9.) It would seem that from this follows
+the conclusion that terrorism is much more profoundly bound up with
+the nature of revolution than certain sages think. But Kautsky makes
+an absolutely opposite conclusion. The gigantic development of White
+and Red terrorism in all the last revolutions--the Russian, the
+German, the Austrian, and the Hungarian--is evidence to him that these
+revolutions turned aside from their true path and turned out to be not
+the revolution they ought to have been according to the theoretical
+visions of Kautsky. Without going into the question whether terrorism
+"as such" is "immanent" to the revolution "as such," let us consider a
+few of the revolutions as they pass before us in the living history of
+mankind.
+
+Let us first regard the religious Reformation, which proved the
+watershed between the Middle Ages and modern history: the deeper were
+the interests of the masses that it involved, the wider was its sweep,
+the more fiercely did the civil war develop under the religious
+banner, and the more merciless did the terror become on the other
+side.
+
+In the seventeenth century England carried out two revolutions. The
+first, which brought forth great social upheavals and wars, brought
+amongst other things the execution of King Charles I, while the second
+ended happily with the accession of a new dynasty. The British
+bourgeoisie and its historians maintain quite different attitudes to
+these two revolutions: the first is for them a rising of the mob--the
+"Great Rebellion"; the second has been handed down under the title of
+the "Glorious Revolution." The reason for this difference in estimates
+was explained by the French historian, Augustin Thierry. In the first
+English revolution, in the "Great Rebellion," the active force was the
+people; while in the second it was almost "silent." Hence, it follows
+that, in surroundings of class slavery, it is difficult to teach the
+oppressed masses good manners. When provoked to fury they use clubs,
+stones, fire, and the rope. The court historians of the exploiters are
+offended at this. But the great event in modern "bourgeois" history
+is, none the less, not the "Glorious Revolution," but the "Great
+Rebellion."
+
+The greatest event in modern history after the Reformation and the
+"Great Rebellion," and far surpassing its two predecessors in
+significance, was the great French Revolution of the eighteenth
+century. To this classical revolution there was a corresponding
+classical terrorism. Kautsky is ready to forgive the terrorism of the
+Jacobins, acknowledging that they had no other way of saving the
+republic. But by this justification after the event no one is either
+helped or hindered. The Kautskies of the end of the eighteenth century
+(the leaders of the French Girondists) saw in the Jacobins the
+personification of evil. Here is a comparison, sufficiently
+instructive in its banality, between the Jacobins and the Girondists
+from the pen of one of the bourgeois French historians: "Both one side
+and the other desired the republic." But the Girondists "desired a
+free, legal, and merciful republic. The Montagnards desired a despotic
+and terrorist republic. Both stood for the supreme power of the
+people; but the Girondist justly understood all by the people, while
+the Montagnards considered only the working class to be the people.
+That was why only to such persons, in the opinion of the Montagnards,
+did the supremacy belong." The antithesis between the noble champions
+of the Constituent Assembly and the bloodthirsty agents of the
+revolutionary dictatorship is here outlined fairly clearly, although
+in the political terms of the epoch.
+
+The iron dictatorship of the Jacobins was evoked by the monstrously
+difficult position of revolutionary France. Here is what the bourgeois
+historian says of this period: "Foreign troops had entered French
+territory from four sides. In the north, the British and the
+Austrians, in Alsace, the Prussians, in Dauphine and up to Lyons, the
+Piedmontese, in Roussillon the Spaniards. And this at a time, when
+civil war was raging at four different points: in Normandy, in the
+Vendée, at Lyons, and at Toulon." (Page 176). To this we must add
+internal enemies in the form of numerous secret supporters of the old
+regime, ready by all methods to assist the enemy.
+
+The severity of the proletarian dictatorship in Russia, let us point
+out here, was conditioned by no less difficult circumstances. There
+was one continuous front, on the north and south, in the east and
+west. Besides the Russian White Guard armies of Kolchak, Denikin and
+others, there are attacking Soviet Russia, simultaneously or in turn:
+Germans, Austrians, Czecho-Slovaks, Serbs, Poles, Ukrainians,
+Roumanians, French, British, Americans, Japanese, Finns, Esthonians,
+Lithuanians.... In a country throttled by a blockade and strangled by
+hunger, there are conspiracies, risings, terrorist acts, and
+destruction of roads and bridges.
+
+"The government which had taken on itself the struggle with countless
+external and internal enemies had neither money, nor sufficient
+troops, nor anything except boundless energy, enthusiastic support on
+the part of the revolutionary elements of the country, and the
+gigantic courage to take all measures necessary for the safety of the
+country, however arbitrary and severe they were." In such words did
+once upon a time Plekhanov describe the government of the--Jacobins.
+(_Sozial-demokrat_, a quarterly review of literature and politics.
+Book I, February, 1890, London. The article on "The Centenary of the
+Great Revolution," pages 6-7).
+
+Let us now turn to the revolution which took place in the second half
+of the nineteenth century, in the country of "democracy"--in the
+United States of North America. Although the question was not the
+abolition of property altogether, but only of the abolition of
+property in negroes, nevertheless, the institutions of democracy
+proved absolutely powerless to decide the argument in a peaceful way.
+The southern states, defeated at the presidential elections in 1860,
+decided by all possible means to regain the influence they had
+hitherto exerted in the question of slave-owning; and uttering, as was
+right, the proper sounding words about freedom and independence, rose
+in a slave-owners' insurrection. Hence inevitably followed all the
+later consequences of civil war. At the very beginning of the
+struggle, the military government in Baltimore imprisoned in Fort
+MacHenry a few citizens, sympathizers with the slave-holding South, in
+spite of Habeas Corpus. The question of the lawfulness or the
+unlawfulness of such action became the object of fierce disputes
+between so-called "high authorities." The judge of the Supreme Court,
+decided that the President had neither the right to arrest the
+operation of Habeas Corpus nor to give plenipotentiary powers to that
+end to the military authorities. "Such, in all probability, is the
+correct Constitutional solution of the question," says one of the
+first historians of the American Civil War. "But the state of affairs
+was to such a degree critical, and the necessity of taking decisive
+measures against the population of Baltimore so great, that not only
+the Government but the people of the United States also supported the
+most energetic measures."[4]
+
+          [4] (The History of the American War, by Fletcher,
+          Lieut.-Colonel in the Scots Guards, St. Petersburg, 1867,
+          page 95.)
+
+Some goods that the rebellious South required were secretly supplied
+by the merchants of the North. Naturally, the Northerners had no other
+course but to introduce methods of repression. On August 6, 1861, the
+President confirmed a resolution of Congress as to "the confiscation
+of property used for insurrectionary purposes." The people, in the
+shape of the most democratic elements, were in favor of extreme
+measures. The Republican Party had a decided majority in the North,
+and persons suspected of secessionism, _i.e._, of sympathizing with
+the rebellious Southern states, were subjected to violence. In some
+northern towns, and even in the states of New England, famous for
+their order, the people frequently burst into the offices of
+newspapers which supported the revolting slave-owners and smashed
+their printing presses. It occasionally happened that reactionary
+publishers were smeared with tar, decorated with feathers, and carried
+in such array through the public squares until they swore an oath of
+loyalty to the Union. The personality of a planter smeared in tar bore
+little resemblance to the "end-in-itself;" so that the categorical
+imperative of Kautsky suffered in the civil war of the states a
+considerable blow. But this is not all. "The government, on its part,"
+the historian tells us, "adopted repressive measures of various kinds
+against publications holding views opposed to its own: and in a short
+time the hitherto free American press was reduced to a condition
+_scarcely superior to that prevailing in the autocratic European
+States_." The same fate overtook the freedom of speech. "In this way,"
+Lieut.-Colonel Fletcher continues, "the American people at this time
+denied itself the greater part of its freedom. It should be observed,"
+he moralizes, "that _the majority of the people_ was to such an
+extent occupied with the war, and to such a degree imbued with the
+readiness for any kind of sacrifice to attain its end, that it not
+only did not regret its vanished liberties, but scarcely even noticed
+their disappearance."[5]
+
+          [5] Fletcher's History of the American War, pages 162-164.
+
+Infinitely more ruthlessly did the bloodthirsty slave-owners of the
+South employ their uncontrollable hordes. "Wherever there was a
+majority in favor of slavery," writes the Count of Paris, "public
+opinion behaved despotically to the minority. All who expressed pity
+for the national banner ... were forced to be silent. But soon this
+itself became insufficient; as in all revolutions, the indifferent
+were forced to express their loyalty to the new order of things....
+Those who did not agree to this were given up as a sacrifice to the
+hatred and violence of the mass of the people.... In each centre of
+growing civilization (South-Western states) vigilance committees were
+formed, composed of all those who had been distinguished by their
+extreme views in the electoral struggle.... A tavern was the usual
+place of their sessions, and a noisy orgy was mingled with a
+contemptible parody of public forms of justice. A few madmen sitting
+around a desk on which gin and whisky flowed judged their present
+and absent fellow citizens. The accused, even before having been
+questioned, could see the rope being prepared. He who did not appear
+at the court learned his sentence when falling under the bullets
+of the executioner concealed in the forest...." This picture is
+extremely reminiscent of the scenes which day by day took place in
+the camps of Denikin, Kolchak, Yudenich, and the other heroes of
+Anglo-Franco-American "democracy."
+
+We shall see later how the question of terrorism stood in regard to
+the Paris Commune of 1871. In any case, the attempts of Kautsky to
+contrast the Commune with us are false at their very root, and only
+bring the author to a juggling with words of the most petty character.
+
+The institution of hostages apparently must be recognized as "immanent"
+in the terrorism of the civil war. Kautsky is against terrorism and
+against the institution of hostages, but in favor of the Paris
+Commune. (N.B.--The Commune existed fifty years ago.) Yet the Commune
+took hostages. A difficulty arises. But what does the art of exegesis
+exist for?
+
+The decree of the Commune concerning hostages and their execution in
+reply to the atrocities of the Versaillese arose, according to the
+profound explanation of Kautsky, "from a striving to preserve human
+life, not to destroy it." A marvellous discovery! It only requires to
+be developed. It could, and must, be explained that in the civil war
+we destroyed White Guards in order that they should not destroy the
+workers. Consequently, our problem is not the destruction of human
+life, but its preservation. But as we have to struggle for the
+preservation of human life with arms in our hands, it leads to the
+destruction of human life--a puzzle the dialectical secret of which
+was explained by old Hegel, without reckoning other still more ancient
+sages.
+
+The Commune could maintain itself and consolidate its position only by
+a determined struggle with the Versaillese. The latter, on the other
+hand, had a large number of agents in Paris. Fighting with the agents
+of Thiers, the Commune could not abstain from destroying the
+Versaillese at the front and in the rear. If its rule had crossed the
+bounds of Paris, in the provinces it would have found--during the
+process of the civil war with the Army of the National Assembly--still
+more determined foes in the midst of the peaceful population. The
+Commune when fighting the royalists could not allow freedom of speech
+to royalist agents in the rear.
+
+Kautsky, in spite of all the happenings in the world to-day, completely
+fails to realize what war is in general, and the civil war in
+particular. He does not understand that every, or nearly every,
+sympathizer with Thiers in Paris was not merely an "opponent" of the
+Communards in ideas, but an agent and spy of Thiers, a ferocious enemy
+ready to shoot one in the back. The enemy must be made harmless, and in
+wartime this means that he must be destroyed.
+
+The problem of revolution, as of war, consists in breaking the will of
+the foe, forcing him to capitulate and to accept the conditions of the
+conqueror. The will, of course, is a fact of the physical world, but
+in contradistinction to a meeting, a dispute, or a congress, the
+revolution carries out its object by means of the employment of
+material resources--though to a less degree than war. The bourgeoisie
+itself conquered power by means of revolts, and consolidated it by the
+civil war. In the peaceful period, it retains power by means of a
+system of repression. As long as class society, founded on the most
+deep-rooted antagonisms, continues to exist, repression remains a
+necessary means of breaking the will of the opposing side.
+
+Even if, in one country or another, the dictatorship of the proletariat
+grew up within the external framework of democracy, this would by
+no means avert the civil war. The question as to who is to rule
+the country, _i.e._, of the life or death of the bourgeoisie, will
+be decided on either side, not by references to the paragraphs of
+the constitution, but by the employment of all forms of violence.
+However deeply Kautsky goes into the question of the food of the
+anthropopithecus (see page 122 et seq. of his book) and other immediate
+and remote conditions which determine the cause of human cruelty, he
+will find in history no other way of breaking the class will of the
+enemy except the systematic and energetic use of violence.
+
+The degree of ferocity of the struggle depends on a series of internal
+and international circumstances. The more ferocious and dangerous is
+the resistance of the class enemy who have been overthrown, the more
+inevitably does the system of repression take the form of a system of
+terror.
+
+But here Kautsky unexpectedly takes up a new position in his struggle
+with Soviet terrorism. He simply waves aside all reference to the
+ferocity of the counter-revolutionary opposition of the Russian
+bourgeoisie.
+
+"Such ferocity," he says, "could not be noticed in November, 1917, in
+Petrograd and Moscow, and still less more recently in Budapest." (Page
+149.) With such a happy formulation of the question, revolutionary
+terrorism merely proves to be a product of the blood-thirstiness of
+the Bolsheviks, who simultaneously abandoned the traditions of the
+vegetarian anthropopithecus and the moral lessons of Kautsky.
+
+The first conquest of power by the Soviets at the beginning of
+November, 1917 (new style), was actually accomplished with
+insignificant sacrifices. The Russian bourgeoisie found itself to such
+a degree estranged from the masses of the people, so internally
+helpless, so compromised by the course and the result of the war, so
+demoralized by the regime of Kerensky, that it scarcely dared show any
+resistance. In Petrograd the power of Kerensky was overthrown almost
+without a fight. In Moscow its resistance was dragged out, mainly owing
+to the indecisive character of our own actions. In the majority of the
+provincial towns, power was transferred to the Soviet on the mere
+receipt of a telegram from Petrograd or Moscow. If the matter had ended
+there, there would have been no word of the Red Terror. But in
+November, 1917, there was already evidence of the beginning of the
+resistance of the propertied classes. True, there was required the
+intervention of the imperialist governments of the West in order to
+give the Russian counter-revolution faith in itself, and to add
+ever-increasing power to its resistance. This can be shown from facts,
+both important and insignificant, day by day during the whole epoch of
+the Soviet revolution.
+
+Kerensky's "Staff" felt no support forthcoming from the mass of the
+soldiery, and was inclined to recognize the Soviet Government, which
+had begun negotiations for an armistice with the Germans. But there
+followed the protest of the military missions of the Entente, followed
+by open threats. The Staff was frightened; incited by "Allied"
+officers, it entered the path of opposition. This led to armed
+conflict and to the murder of the chief of the field staff, General
+Dukhonin, by a group of revolutionary sailors.
+
+In Petrograd, the official agents of the Entente, especially the
+French Military Mission, hand in hand with the S.R.s and the
+Mensheviks, openly organized the opposition, mobilizing, arming,
+inciting against us the cadets, and the bourgeois youth generally,
+from the second day of the Soviet revolution. The rising of the
+junkers on November 10 brought about a hundred times more victims than
+the revolution of November 7. The campaign of the adventurers Kerensky
+and Krasnov against Petrograd, organized at the same time by the
+Entente, naturally introduced into the struggle the first elements of
+savagery. Nevertheless, General Krasnov was set free on his word of
+honor. The Yaroslav rising (in the summer of 1918) which involved so
+many victims, was organized by Savinkov on the instructions of the
+French Embassy, and with its resources. Archangel was captured
+according to the plans of British naval agents, with the help of
+British warships and aeroplanes. The beginning of the empire of
+Kolchak, the nominee of the American Stock Exchange, was brought about
+by the foreign Czecho-Slovak Corps maintained by the resources of the
+French Government. Kaledin and Krasnov (liberated by us), the first
+leaders of the counter-revolution on the Don, could enjoy partial
+success only thanks to the open military and financial aid of Germany.
+In the Ukraine the Soviet power was overthrown in the beginning of
+1918 by German militarism. The Volunteer Army of Denikin was created
+with the financial and technical help of Great Britain and France.
+Only in the hope of British intervention and of British military
+support was Yudenich's army created. The politicians, the diplomats,
+and the journalists of the Entente have for two years on end been
+debating with complete frankness the question of whether the financing
+of the civil war in Russia is a sufficiently profitable enterprise. In
+such circumstances, one needs truly a brazen forehead to seek the
+reason for the sanguinary character of the civil war in Russia in the
+malevolence of the Bolsheviks, and not in the international situation.
+
+The Russian proletariat was the first to enter the path of the social
+revolution, and the Russian bourgeoisie, politically helpless, was
+emboldened to struggle against its political and economic
+expropriation only because it saw its elder sister in all countries
+still in power, and still maintaining economic, political, and, to a
+certain extent, military supremacy.
+
+If our November revolution had taken place a few months, or even a few
+weeks, after the establishment of the rule of the proletariat in
+Germany, France, and England, there can be no doubt that our
+revolution would have been the most "peaceful," the most "bloodless"
+of all possible revolutions on this sinful earth. But this historical
+sequence--the most "natural" at the first glance, and, in any case,
+the most beneficial for the Russian working class--found itself
+infringed--not through our fault, but through the will of events.
+Instead of being the last, the Russian proletariat proved to be the
+first. It was just this circumstance, after the first period of
+confusion, that imparted desperation to the character of the
+resistance of the classes which had ruled in Russia previously, and
+forced the Russian proletariat, in a moment of the greatest peril,
+foreign attacks, and internal plots and insurrections, to have
+recourse to severe measures of State terror. No one will now say that
+those measures proved futile. But, perhaps, we are expected to
+consider them "intolerable"?
+
+The working class, which seized power in battle, had as its object and
+its duty to establish that power unshakeably, to guarantee its own
+supremacy beyond question, to destroy its enemies' hankering for a new
+revolution, and thereby to make sure of carrying out Socialist
+reforms. Otherwise there would be no point in seizing power.
+
+The revolution "logically" does not demand terrorism, just as
+"logically" it does not demand an armed insurrection. What a profound
+commonplace! But the revolution does require of the revolutionary
+class that it should attain its end by all methods at its
+disposal--if necessary, by an armed rising: if required, by
+terrorism. A revolutionary class which has conquered power with arms
+in its hands is bound to, and will, suppress, rifle in hand, all
+attempts to tear the power out of its hands. Where it has against it
+a hostile army, it will oppose to it its own army. Where it is
+confronted with armed conspiracy, attempt at murder, or rising, it
+will hurl at the heads of its enemies an unsparing penalty. Perhaps
+Kautsky has invented other methods? Or does he reduce the whole
+question to the _degree_ of repression, and recommend in all
+circumstances imprisonment instead of execution?
+
+The question of the form of repression, or of its degree, of course,
+is not one of "principle." It is a question of expediency. In a
+revolutionary period, the party which has been thrown from power,
+which does not reconcile itself with the stability of the ruling
+class, and which proves this by its desperate struggle against the
+latter, cannot be terrorized by the threat of imprisonment, as it does
+not believe in its duration. It is just this simple but decisive fact
+that explains the widespread recourse to shooting in a civil war.
+
+Or, perhaps, Kautsky wishes to say that execution is not expedient,
+that "classes cannot be cowed." This is untrue. Terror is
+helpless--and then only "in the long run"--if it is employed by
+reaction against a historically rising class. But terror can be very
+efficient against a reactionary class which does not want to leave the
+scene of operations. _Intimidation_ is a powerful weapon of policy,
+both internationally and internally. War, like revolution, is founded
+upon intimidation. A victorious war, generally speaking, destroys
+only an insignificant part of the conquered army, intimidating the
+remainder and breaking their will. The revolution works in the same
+way: it kills individuals, and intimidates thousands. In this sense,
+the Red Terror is not distinguishable from the armed insurrection,
+the direct continuation of which it represents. The State terror
+of a revolutionary class can be condemned "morally" only by a man
+who, as a principle, rejects (in words) every form of violence
+whatsoever--consequently, every war and every rising. For this one has
+to be merely and simply a hypocritical Quaker.
+
+"But, in that case, in what do your tactics differ from the tactics of
+Tsarism?" we are asked, by the high priests of Liberalism and
+Kautskianism.
+
+You do not understand this, holy men? We shall explain to you. The
+terror of Tsarism was directed against the proletariat. The
+gendarmerie of Tsarism throttled the workers who were fighting for the
+Socialist order. Our Extraordinary Commissions shoot landlords,
+capitalists, and generals who are striving to restore the capitalist
+order. Do you grasp this ... distinction? Yes? For us Communists it is
+quite sufficient.
+
+
+"FREEDOM OF THE PRESS"
+
+One point particularly worries Kautsky, the author of a great many
+books and articles--the freedom of the Press. Is it permissible to
+suppress newspapers?
+
+During war all institutions and organs of the State and of public
+opinion become, directly or indirectly, weapons of warfare. This is
+particularly true of the Press. No government carrying on a serious
+war will allow publications to exist on its territory which, openly or
+indirectly, support the enemy. Still more so in a civil war. The
+nature of the latter is such that each of the struggling sides has in
+the rear of its armies considerable circles of the population on the
+side of the enemy. In war, where both success and failure are repaid
+by death, hostile agents who penetrate into the rear are subject to
+execution. This is inhumane, but no one ever considered war a school
+of humanity--still less civil war. Can it be seriously demanded that,
+during a civil war with the White Guards of Denikin, the publications
+of parties supporting Denikin should come out unhindered in Moscow and
+Petrograd? To propose this in the name of the "freedom" of the Press
+is just the same as, in the name of open dealing, to demand the
+publication of military secrets. "A besieged city," wrote a Communard,
+Arthur Arnould of Paris, "cannot permit within its midst that hopes
+for its fall should openly be expressed, that the fighters defending
+it should be incited to treason, that the movements of its troops
+should be communicated to the enemy. Such was the position of Paris
+under the Commune." Such is the position of the Soviet Republic during
+the two years of its existence.
+
+Let us, however, listen to what Kautsky has to say in this connection.
+
+"The justification of this system (_i.e._, repressions in connection
+with the Press) is reduced to the naive idea that an absolute truth
+(!) exists, and that only the Communists possess it (!). Similarly,"
+continues Kautsky, "it reduces itself to another point of view, that
+all writers are by nature liars (!) and that only Communists are
+fanatics for truth (!). In reality, liars and fanatics for what they
+consider truth are to be found in all camps." And so on, and so on,
+and so on. (Page 176.)
+
+In this way, in Kautsky's eyes, the revolution, in its most acute
+phase, when it is a question of the life and death of classes,
+continues as hitherto to be a literary discussion with the object of
+establishing ... the truth. What profundity!... Our "truth," of
+course, is not absolute. But as in its name we are, at the present
+moment, shedding our blood, we have neither cause nor possibility to
+carry on a literary discussion as to the relativity of truth with
+those who "criticize" us with the help of all forms of arms.
+Similarly, our problem is not to punish liars and to encourage just
+men amongst journalists of all shades of opinion, but to throttle the
+class lie of the bourgeoisie and to achieve the class truth of the
+proletariat, irrespective of the fact that in both camps there are
+fanatics and liars.
+
+"The Soviet Government," Kautsky thunders, "has destroyed the sole
+remedy that might militate against corruption: the freedom of the
+Press. Control by means of unlimited freedom of the Press alone could
+have restrained those bandits and adventurers who will inevitably
+cling like leeches to every unlimited, uncontrolled power." (Page
+188.) And so on.
+
+The Press as a trusty weapon of the struggle with corruption! This
+liberal recipe sounds particularly pitiful when one remembers the two
+countries with the greatest "freedom" of the Press--North America and
+France--which, at the same time, are countries of the most highly
+developed stage of capitalist corruption.
+
+Feeding on the old scandal of the political ante-rooms of the Russian
+revolution, Kautsky imagines that without Cadet and Menshevik freedom
+the Soviet apparatus is honey-combed with "bandits" and "adventurers."
+Such was the voice of the Mensheviks a year or eighteen months ago.
+Now even they will not dare to repeat this. With the help of Soviet
+control and party selection, the Soviet Government, in the intense
+atmosphere of the struggle, has dealt with the bandits and adventurers
+who appeared on the surface at the moment of the revolution
+incomparably better than any government whatsoever, at any time
+whatsoever.
+
+We are fighting. We are fighting a life-and-death struggle. The Press
+is a weapon not of an abstract society, but of two irreconcilable,
+armed and contending sides. We are destroying the Press of the
+counter-revolution, just as we destroyed its fortified positions, its
+stores, its communications, and its intelligence system. Are we
+depriving ourselves of Cadet and Menshevik criticisms of the
+corruption of the working class? In return we are victoriously
+destroying the very foundations of capitalist corruption.
+
+But Kautsky goes further to develop his theme. He complains that we
+suppress the newspapers of the S.R.s and the Mensheviks, and
+even--such things have been known--arrest their leaders. Are we not
+dealing here with "shades of opinion" in the proletarian or the
+Socialist movement? The scholastic pedant does not see facts beyond
+his accustomed words. The Mensheviks and S.R.s for him are simply
+tendencies in Socialism, whereas, in the course of the revolution,
+they have been transformed into an organization which works in active
+co-operation with the counter-revolution and carries on against us
+an open war. The army of Kolchak was organized by Socialist
+Revolutionaries (how that name savours to-day of the charlatan!), and
+was supported by Mensheviks. Both carried on--and carry on--against
+us, for a year and a half, a war on the Northern front. The Mensheviks
+who rule the Caucasus, formerly the allies of Hohenzollern, and to-day
+the allies of Lloyd George, arrested and shot Bolsheviks hand in hand
+with German and British officers. The Mensheviks and S.R.s of the
+Kuban Rada organized the army of Denikin. The Esthonian Mensheviks who
+participate in their government were directly concerned in the last
+advance of Yudenich against Petrograd. Such are these "tendencies" in
+the Socialist movement. Kautsky considers that one can be in a state
+of open and civil war with the Mensheviks and S.R.s, who, with the
+help of the troops they themselves have organized for Yudenich,
+Kolchak and Denikin, are fighting for their "shade of opinions" in
+Socialism, and at the same time to allow those innocent "shades of
+opinion" freedom of the Press in our rear. If the dispute with the
+S.R.s and the Mensheviks could be settled by means of persuasion and
+voting--that is, if there were not behind their backs the Russian and
+foreign imperialists--there would be no civil war.
+
+Kautsky, of course, is ready to "condemn"--an extra drop of ink--the
+blockade, and the Entente support of Denikin, and the White Terror.
+But in his high impartiality he cannot refuse the latter certain
+extenuating circumstances. The White Terror, you see, does not
+infringe their own principles, while the Bolsheviks, making use of the
+Red Terror, betray the principle of "the sacredness of human life
+which they themselves proclaimed." (Page 210.)
+
+What is the meaning of the principle of the sacredness of human life
+in practice, and in what does it differ from the commandment, "Thou
+shalt not kill," Kautsky does not explain. When a murderer raises his
+knife over a child, may one kill the murderer to save the child? Will
+not thereby the principle of the "sacredness of human life" be
+infringed? May one kill the murderer to save oneself? Is an
+insurrection of oppressed slaves against their masters permissible?
+Is it permissible to purchase one's freedom at the cost of the
+life of one's jailers? If human life in general is sacred and
+inviolable, we must deny ourselves not only the use of terror, not
+only war, but also revolution itself. Kautsky simply does not realize
+the counter-revolutionary meaning of the "principle" which he attempts
+to force upon us. Elsewhere we shall see that Kautsky accuses us of
+concluding the Brest-Litovsk peace: in his opinion we ought to have
+continued war. But what then becomes of the sacredness of human life?
+Does life cease to be sacred when it is a question of people talking
+another language, or does Kautsky consider that mass murders organized
+on principles of strategy and tactics are not murders at all? Truly it
+is difficult to put forward in our age a principle more hypocritical
+and more stupid. As long as human labor-power, and, consequently, life
+itself, remain articles of sale and purchase, of exploitation and
+robbery, the principle of the "sacredness of human life" remains a
+shameful lie, uttered with the object of keeping the oppressed slaves
+in their chains.
+
+We used to fight against the death penalty introduced by Kerensky,
+because that penalty was inflicted by the courts-martial of the old
+army on soldiers who refused to continue the imperialist war. We tore
+this weapon out of the hands of the old courts-martial, destroyed the
+courts-martial themselves, and demobilized the old army which had
+brought them forth. Destroying in the Red Army, and generally
+throughout the country, counter-revolutionary conspirators who strive
+by means of insurrections, murders, and disorganization, to restore
+the old regime, we are acting in accordance with the iron laws of a
+war in which we desire to guarantee our victory.
+
+If it is a question of seeking formal contradictions, then obviously
+we must do so on the side of the White Terror, which is the weapon of
+classes which consider themselves "Christian," patronize idealist
+philosophy, and are firmly convinced that the individuality (their
+own) is an end-in-itself. As for us, we were never concerned with the
+Kantian-priestly and vegetarian-Quaker prattle about the "sacredness
+of human life." We were revolutionaries in opposition, and have
+remained revolutionaries in power. To make the individual sacred we
+must destroy the social order which crucifies him. And this problem
+can only be solved by blood and iron.
+
+There is another difference between the White Terror and the Red,
+which Kautsky to-day ignores, but which in the eyes of a Marxist is
+of decisive significance. The White Terror is the weapon of the
+historically reactionary class. When we exposed the futility of the
+repressions of the bourgeois State against the proletariat, we never
+denied that by arrests and executions the ruling class, under certain
+conditions, might temporarily retard the development of the social
+revolution. But we were convinced that they would not be able to
+bring it to a halt. We relied on the fact that the proletariat is the
+historically rising class, and that bourgeois society could not
+develop without increasing the forces of the proletariat. The
+bourgeoisie to-day is a falling class. It not only no longer plays an
+essential part in production, but by its imperialist methods of
+appropriation is destroying the economic structure of the world and
+human culture generally. Nevertheless, the historical persistence of
+the bourgeoisie is colossal. It holds to power, and does not wish to
+abandon it. Thereby it threatens to drag after it into the abyss the
+whole of society. We are forced to tear it off, to chop it away. The
+Red Terror is a weapon utilized against a class, doomed to
+destruction, which does not wish to perish. If the White Terror can
+only retard the historical rise of the proletariat, the Red Terror
+hastens the destruction of the bourgeoisie. This hastening--a pure
+question of acceleration--is at certain periods of decisive
+importance. Without the Red Terror, the Russian bourgeoisie, together
+with the world bourgeoisie, would throttle us long before the coming
+of the revolution in Europe. One must be blind not to see this, or a
+swindler to deny it.
+
+The man who recognizes the revolutionary historic importance of the
+very fact of the existence of the Soviet system must also sanction the
+Red Terror. Kautsky, who, during the last two years, has covered
+mountains of paper with polemics against Communism and Terrorism, is
+obliged, at the end of his pamphlet, to recognize the facts, and
+unexpectedly to admit that the Russian Soviet Government is to-day the
+most important factor in the world revolution. "However one regards
+the Bolshevik methods," he writes, "the fact that a proletarian
+government in a large country has not only reached power, but has
+retained it for two years up to the present time, amidst great
+difficulties, extraordinarily increases the sense of power amongst the
+proletariat of all countries. For the actual revolution the Bolsheviks
+have thereby accomplished a great work--_grosses geleistet_." (Page
+233.)
+
+This announcement stuns us as a completely unexpected recognition of
+historical truth from a quarter whence we had long since ceased to
+await it. The Bolsheviks have accomplished a great historical task by
+existing for two years against the united capitalist world. But the
+Bolsheviks held out not only by ideas, but by the sword. Kautsky's
+admission is an involuntary sanctioning of the methods of the Red
+Terror, and at the same time the most effective condemnation of his
+own critical concoction.
+
+
+THE INFLUENCE OF THE WAR
+
+Kautsky sees one of the reasons for the extremely bloody character of
+the revolution in the war and in its hardening influence on manners.
+Quite undeniable. That influence, with all the consequences that
+follow from it, might have been foreseen earlier--approximately in the
+period when Kautsky was not certain whether one ought to vote for the
+war credits or against them.
+
+"Imperialism has violently torn society out of its condition of
+unstable equilibrium," he wrote five years ago in our German
+book--_The War and the International_. "It has blown up the sluices
+with which Social-Democracy held back the current of the revolutionary
+energy of the proletariat, and has directed that current into its own
+channels. This monstrous historical experiment, which at one blow has
+broken the back of the Socialist International, represents a deadly
+danger for bourgeoisie society itself. The hammer has been taken from
+the hand of the worker, and has been replaced by the sword. The
+worker, bound hand and foot by the mechanism of capitalist society,
+has suddenly burst out of its midst, and is learning to put the aims
+of the community higher than his own domestic happiness and than life
+itself.
+
+"With this weapon, which he himself has forged, in his hand, the
+worker is placed in a position in which the political destiny of the
+State depends directly on him. Those who in former times oppressed and
+despised him now flatter and caress him. At the same time he is
+entering into intimate relations with those same guns which, according
+to Lassalle, constitute the most important integral part of the
+constitution. He crosses the boundaries of states, participates in
+violent requisitions, and under his blows towns pass from hand to
+hand. Changes take place such as the last generation did not dream of.
+
+"If the most advanced workers were aware that force was the mother of
+law, their political thought still remained saturated with the spirit
+of opportunism and self-adaptation to bourgeois legality. To-day the
+worker has learned in practice to despise that legality, and violently
+to destroy it. The static moments in his psychology are giving place
+to the dynamic. Heavy guns are knocking into his head the idea that,
+in cases where it is impossible to avoid an obstacle, there remains
+the possibility of destroying it. Nearly the whole adult male
+population is passing through this school of war, terrible in its
+social realism, which is bringing forth a new type of humanity.
+
+"Over all the criteria of bourgeois society--its law, its morality,
+its religion--is now raised the fist of iron necessity. 'Necessity
+knows no law' was the declaration of the German Chancellor (August 4,
+1914). Monarchs come out into the market-place to accuse one another
+of lying in the language of fishwives; governments break promises they
+have solemnly made, while the national church binds its Lord God like
+a convict to the national cannon. Is it not obvious that these
+circumstances must create important alterations in the psychology of
+the working class, radically curing it of that hypnosis of legality
+which was created by the period of political stagnation? The
+propertied classes will soon, to their sorrow, have to be convinced of
+this. The proletariat, after passing through the school of war, at the
+first serious obstacle within its own country will feel the necessity
+of speaking with the language of force. 'Necessity knows no law,' he
+will throw in the face of those who attempt to stop him by laws of
+bourgeois legality. And the terrible economic necessity which will
+arise during the course of this war, and particularly at its end, will
+drive the masses to spurn very many laws." (Page 56-57.)
+
+All this is undeniable. But to what is said above one must add that
+the war has exercised no less influence on the psychology of the
+ruling classes. As the masses become more insistent in their demands,
+so the bourgeoisie has become more unyielding.
+
+In times of peace, the capitalists used to guarantee their interests
+by means of the "peaceful" robbery of hired labor. During the war they
+served those same interests by means of the destruction of countless
+human lives. This has imparted to their consciousness as a master
+class a new "Napoleonic" trait. The capitalists during the war became
+accustomed to send to their death millions of slaves--fellow-countrymen
+and colonials--for the sake of coal, railway, and other profits.
+
+During the war there emerged from the ranks of the bourgeoisie--large,
+middle, and small--hundreds of thousands of officers, professional
+fighters, men whose character has received the hardening of battle,
+and has become freed from all external restraints: qualified soldiers,
+ready and able to defend the privileged position of the bourgeoisie
+which produced them with a ferocity which, in its way, borders on
+heroism.
+
+The revolution would probably be more humane if the proletariat had
+the possibility of "buying off all this band," as Marx once put it.
+But capitalism during the war has imposed upon the toilers too great a
+load of debt, and has too deeply undermined the foundations of
+production, for us to be able seriously to contemplate a ransom in
+return for which the bourgeoisie would silently make its peace with
+the revolution. The masses have lost too much blood, have suffered too
+much, have become too savage, to accept a decision which economically
+would be beyond their capacity.
+
+To this there must be added other circumstances working in the same
+direction. The bourgeoisie of the conquered countries has been
+embittered by defeat, the responsibility for which it is inclined to
+throw on the rank and file--on the workers and peasants who proved
+incapable of carrying on "the great national war" to a victorious
+conclusion. From this point of view, one finds very instructive those
+explanations, unparalleled for their effrontery, which Ludendorff gave
+to the Commission of the National Assembly. The bands of Ludendorff
+are burning with the desire to take revenge for their humiliation
+abroad on the blood of their own proletariat. As for the bourgeoisie
+of the victorious countries, it has become inflated with arrogance,
+and is more than ever ready to defend its social position with the
+help of the bestial methods which guaranteed its victory. We have seen
+that the bourgeoisie is incapable of organizing the division of the
+booty amongst its own ranks without war and destruction. Can it,
+without a fight, abandon its booty altogether? The experience of the
+last five years leaves no doubt whatsoever on this score: if even
+previously it was absolutely utopian to expect that the expropriation
+of the propertied classes--thanks to "democracy"--would take place
+imperceptibly and painlessly, without insurrections, armed conflicts,
+attempts at counter-revolution, and severe repression, the state of
+affairs we have inherited from the imperialist war predetermines,
+doubly and trebly, the tense character of the civil war and the
+dictatorship of the proletariat.
+
+
+
+
+5
+
+THE PARIS COMMUNE AND SOVIET RUSSIA
+
+_"The short episode of the first revolution carried out by the
+proletariat for the proletariat ended in the triumph of its enemy.
+This episode--from March 18 to May 28--lasted seventy-two days."--"The
+Paris Commune" of March 18, 1871, P. L. Lavrov, Petrograd. 'Kolos'
+Publishing House, 1919, pp. 160._
+
+
+THE IMMATURITY OF THE SOCIALIST PARTIES IN THE COMMUNE.
+
+The Paris Commune of 1871 was the first, as yet weak, historic attempt
+of the working class to impose its supremacy. We cherished the memory
+of the Commune in spite of the extremely limited character of its
+experience, the immaturity of its participants, the confusion of its
+programme, the lack of unity amongst its leaders, the indecision of
+their plans, the hopeless panic of its executive organs, and the
+terrifying defeat fatally precipitated by all these. We cherish in the
+Commune, in the words of Lavrov, "the first, though still pale, dawn
+of the proletarian republic." Quite otherwise with Kautsky. Devoting a
+considerable part of his book to a crudely tendencious contrast
+between the Commune and the Soviet power, he sees the main advantages
+of the Commune in features that we find are its misfortune and its
+fault.
+
+Kautsky laboriously proves that the Paris Commune of 1871 was not
+"artificially" prepared, but emerged unexpectedly, taking the
+revolutionaries by surprise--in contrast to the November revolution,
+which was carefully prepared by our party. This is incontestable. Not
+daring clearly to formulate his profoundly reactionary ideas, Kautsky
+does not say outright whether the Paris revolutionaries of 1871
+deserve praise for not having foreseen the proletarian insurrection,
+and for not having foreseen the inevitable and consciously gone to
+meet it. However, all Kautsky's picture was built up in such a way as
+to produce in the reader just this idea: the Communards were simply
+overtaken by misfortune (the Bavarian philistine, Vollmar, once
+expressed his regret that the Communards had not gone to bed instead
+of taking power into their hands), and, therefore, deserve pity. The
+Bolsheviks consciously went to meet misfortune (the conquest of
+power), and, therefore, there is no forgiveness for them either in
+this or the future world. Such a formulation of the question may seem
+incredible in its internal inconsistency. None the less, it follows
+quite inevitably from the position of the Kautskian "Independents,"
+who draw their heads into their shoulders in order to see and foresee
+nothing; and, if they do move forward, it is only after having
+received a preliminary stout blow in the rear.
+
+"To humiliate Paris," writes Kautsky, "not to give it self-government,
+to deprive it of its position as capital, to disarm it in order
+afterwards to attempt with greater confidence a monarchist _coup
+d'état_--such was the most important task of the National Assembly
+and the chief of the executive power it elected, Thiers. Out of this
+situation arose the conflict which led to the Paris insurrection.
+
+"It is clear how different from this was the character of the _coup
+d'état_ carried out by the Bolsheviks, which drew its strength from
+the yearning for peace; which had the peasantry behind it; which had
+in the National Assembly against it, not monarchists, but S.R.s and
+Menshevik Social-Democrats.
+
+"The Bolsheviks came to power by means of a well-prepared _coup
+d'état_; which at one blow handed over to them the whole machinery
+of the State--immediately utilized in the most energetic and merciless
+manner for the purpose of suppressing their opponents, amongst them
+their proletarian opponents.
+
+"No one, on the other hand, was more surprised by the insurrection of
+the Commune than the revolutionaries themselves, and for a
+considerable number amongst them the conflict was in the highest
+degree undesirable." (Page 56.)
+
+In order more clearly to realize the actual sense of what Kautsky has
+written here of the Communards, let us bring forward the following
+evidence.
+
+"On March 1, 1871," writes Lavrov, in his very instructive book on the
+Commune, "six months after the fall of the Empire, and a few days
+before the explosion of the Commune, the guiding personalities in the
+Paris International still had no definite political programme." (Pages
+64-65.)
+
+"After March 18," writes the same author, "Paris was in the hands of
+the proletariat, but its leaders, overwhelmed by their unexpected
+power, did not take the most elementary measures." (Page 71.)
+
+"'Your part is too big for you to play, and your sole aim is to get
+rid of responsibility,' said one member of the Central Committee of
+the National Guard. In this was a great deal of truth," writes the
+Communard and historian of the Commune, Lissagaray. "But at the moment
+of action itself the absence of preliminary organization and
+preparation is very often a reason why parts are assigned to men which
+are too big for them to play." (Brussels, 1876; page 106.)
+
+From this one can already see (later on it will become still more
+obvious) that the absence of a direct struggle for power on the part
+of the Paris Socialists was explained by their theoretical
+shapelessness and political helplessness, and not at all by higher
+considerations of tactics.
+
+We have no doubt that Kautsky's own loyalty to the traditions of the
+Commune will be expressed mainly in that extraordinary surprise with
+which he will greet the proletarian revolution in Germany as "a
+conflict in the highest degree undesirable." We doubt, however,
+whether this will be ascribed by posterity to his credit. In reality,
+one must describe his historical analogy as a combination of
+confusion, omission, and fraudulent suggestion.
+
+The intentions which were entertained by Thiers towards Paris were
+entertained by Miliukov, who was openly supported by Tseretelli and
+Chernov, towards Petrograd. All of them, from Kornilov to Potressov,
+affirmed day after day that Petrograd had alienated itself from the
+country, had nothing in common with it, was completely corrupted, and
+was attempting to impose its will upon the community. To overthrow and
+humiliate Petrograd was the first task of Miliukov and his assistants.
+And this took place at a period when Petrograd was the true centre of
+the revolution, which had not yet been able to consolidate its
+position in the rest of the country. The former president of the Duma,
+Rodzianko, openly talked about handing over Petrograd to the Germans
+for educative purposes, as Riga had been handed over. Rodzianko only
+called by its name what Miliukov was trying to carry out, and what
+Kerensky assisted by his whole policy.
+
+Miliukov, like Thiers, wished to disarm the proletariat. More than
+that, thanks to Kerensky, Chernov, and Tseretelli, the Petrograd
+proletariat was to a considerable extent disarmed in July, 1917. It
+was partially re-armed during Kornilov's march on Petrograd in August.
+And this new arming was a serious element in the preparation of the
+November insurrection. In this way, it is just the points in which
+Kautsky contrasts our November revolution to the March revolt of the
+Paris workers that, to a very large extent, coincide.
+
+In what, however, lies the difference between them? First of all, in
+the fact that Thiers' criminal plans succeeded: Paris was throttled by
+him, and tens of thousands of workers were destroyed. Miliukov, on the
+other hand, had a complete fiasco: Petrograd remained an impregnable
+fortress of the proletariat, and the leader of the bourgeoisie went to
+the Ukraine to petition that the Kaiser's troops should occupy Russia.
+For this difference we were to a considerable extent responsible--and
+we are ready to bear the responsibility. There is a capital difference
+also in the fact--that this told more than once in the further course
+of events--that, while the Communards began mainly with considerations
+of patriotism, we were invariably guided by the point of view of the
+international revolution. The defeat of the Commune led to the
+practical collapse of the First International. The victory of the
+Soviet power has led to the creation of the Third International.
+
+But Marx--on the eve of the insurrection--advised the Communards not
+to revolt, but to create an organization! One might understand Kautsky
+if he adduced this evidence in order to show that Marx had
+insufficiently gauged the acuteness of the situation in Paris. But
+Kautsky attempts to exploit Marx's advice as a proof of his
+condemnation of insurrection in general. Like all the mandarins of
+German Social-Democracy, Kautsky sees in organization first and
+foremost a method of hindering revolutionary action.
+
+But limiting ourselves to the question of organization as such, we
+must not forget that the November revolution was preceded by nine
+months of Kerensky's Government, during which our party, not without
+success, devoted itself not only to agitation, but also to
+organization. The November revolution took place after we had achieved
+a crushing majority in the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils of
+Petrograd, Moscow, and all the industrial centres in the country, and
+had transformed the Soviets into powerful organizations directed by
+our party. The Communards did nothing of the kind. Finally, we had
+behind us the heroic Commune of Paris, from the defeat of which we had
+drawn the deduction that revolutionaries must foresee events and
+prepare for them. For this also we are to blame.
+
+Kautsky requires his extensive comparison of the Commune and Soviet
+Russia only in order to slander and humiliate a living and victorious
+dictatorship of the proletariat in the interests of an attempted
+dictatorship, in the already fairly distant past.
+
+Kautsky quotes with extreme satisfaction the statement of the Central
+Committee of the National Guard on March 19 in connection with the
+murder of the two generals by the soldiery. "We say indignantly: the
+bloody filth with the help of which it is hoped to stain our honor is
+a pitiful slander. We never organized murder, and never did the
+National Guard take part in the execution of crime."
+
+Naturally, the Central Committee had no cause to assume responsibility
+for murders with which it had no concern. But the sentimental,
+pathetic tone of the statement very clearly characterises the
+political timorousness of these men in the face of bourgeois public
+opinion. Nor is this surprising. The representatives of the National
+Guard were men in most cases with a very modest revolutionary past.
+"Not one well-known name," writes Lissagaray. "They were petty
+bourgeois shop-keepers, strangers to all but limited circles, and, in
+most cases, strangers hitherto to politics." (Page 70.)
+
+"The modest and, to some extent, fearful sense of terrible historical
+responsibility, and the desire to get rid of it as soon as possible,"
+writes Lavrov of them, "is evident in all the proclamations of this
+Central Committee, into the hands of which the destiny of Paris had
+fallen." (Page 77.)
+
+After bringing forward, to our confusion, the declamation concerning
+bloodshed, Kautsky later on follows Marx and Engels in criticizing the
+indecision of the Commune. "If the Parisians (_i.e._, the Communards)
+had persistently followed up the tracts of Thiers, they would,
+perhaps, have managed to seize the government. The troops falling back
+from Paris would not have shown the least resistance ... but they let
+Thiers go without hindrance. They allowed him to lead away his troops
+and reorganize them at Versailles, to inspire a new spirit in, and
+strengthen, them." (Page 49.)
+
+Kautsky cannot understand that it was the same men, and for the very
+same reasons, who published the statement of March 19 quoted above,
+who allowed Thiers to leave Paris with impunity and gather his forces.
+If the Communards had _conquered_ with the help of resources of a
+purely moral character, their statement would have acquired great
+weight. But this did not take place. In reality, their sentimental
+humaneness was simply the obverse of their revolutionary passivity.
+The men who, by the will of fate, had received power in Paris, could
+not understand the necessity of immediately utilizing that power to
+the end, of hurling themselves after Thiers, and, before he recovered
+his grasp of the situation, of crushing him, of concentrating the
+troops in their hands, of carrying out the necessary weeding-out of
+the officer class, of seizing the provinces. Such men, of course, were
+not inclined to severe measures with counter-revolutionary elements.
+The one was closely bound up with the other. Thiers could not be
+followed up without arresting Thiers' agents in Paris and shooting
+conspirators and spies. When one considered the execution of
+counter-revolutionary generals as an indelible "crime," one could not
+develop energy in following up troops who were under the direction of
+counter-revolutionary generals.
+
+In the revolution in the highest degree of energy is the highest
+degree of humanity. "Just the men," Lavrov justly remarks, "who hold
+human life and human blood dear must strive to organize the
+possibility for a swift and decisive victory, and then to act with the
+greatest swiftness and energy, in order to crush the enemy. For only
+in this way can we achieve the minimum of inevitable sacrifice and the
+minimum of bloodshed." (Page 225.)
+
+The statement of March 19 will, however, be considered with more
+justice if we examine it, not as an unconditional confession of faith,
+but as the expression of transient moods the day after an unexpected
+and bloodless victory. Being an absolute stranger to the understanding
+of the dynamics of revolution, and the internal limitations of its
+swiftly-developing moods, Kautsky thinks in lifeless schemes, and
+distorts the perspective of events by arbitrarily selected analogies.
+He does not understand that soft-hearted indecision is generally
+characteristic of the masses in the first period of the revolution.
+The workers pursue the offensive only under the pressure of iron
+necessity, just as they have recourse to the Red Terror only under the
+threat of destruction by the White Guards. That which Kautsky
+represents as the result of the peculiarly elevated moral feeling of
+the Parisian proletariat in 1871 is, in reality, merely a
+characteristic of the first stage of the civil war. A similar
+phenomenon could have been witnessed in our case.
+
+In Petrograd we conquered power in November, 1917, almost without
+bloodshed, and even without arrests. The ministers of Kerensky's
+Government were set free very soon after the revolution. More, the
+Cossack General, Krasnov, who had advanced on Petrograd together with
+Kerensky after the power had passed to the Soviet, and who had been
+made prisoner by us at Gatchina, was set free on his word of honor the
+next day. This was "generosity" quite in the spirit of the first
+measures of the Commune. But it was a mistake. Afterwards, General
+Krasnov, after fighting against us for about a year in the South, and
+destroying many thousands of Communists, again advanced on Petrograd,
+this time in the ranks of Yudenich's army. The proletarian revolution
+assumed a more severe character only after the rising of the junkers
+in Petrograd, and particularly after the rising of the Czecho-Slovaks
+on the Volga organized by the Cadets, the S.R.s, and the Mensheviks,
+after their mass executions of Communists, the attempt on Lenin's
+life, the murder of Uritsky, etc., etc.
+
+The same tendencies, only in an embryonic form, we see in the history
+of the Commune.
+
+Driven by the logic of the struggle, it took its stand in principle on
+the path of intimidation. The creation of the Committee of Public
+Safety was dictated, in the case of many of its supporters, by the
+idea of the Red Terror. The Committee was appointed "to cut off the
+heads of traitors" (Journal Officiel No. 123), "to avenge treachery"
+(No. 124). Under the head of "intimidatory" decrees we must class the
+order to seize the property of Thiers and of his ministers, to destroy
+Thiers' house, to destroy the Vendome column, and especially the
+decree on hostages. For every captured Communard or sympathizer with
+the Commune shot by the Versaillese, three hostages were to be shot.
+The activity of the Prefecture of Paris controlled by Raoul Rigault
+had a purely terroristic, though not always a useful, purpose.
+
+The effect of all these measures of intimidation was paralyzed by the
+helpless opportunism of the guiding elements in the Commune, by their
+striving to reconcile the bourgeoisie with the _fait accompli_ by
+the help of pitiful phrases, by their vacillations between the fiction
+of democracy and the reality of dictatorship. The late Lavrov
+expresses the latter idea splendidly in his book on the Commune.
+
+"The Paris of the rich bourgeois and the poor proletarians, as a
+political community of different classes, demanded, in the name of
+liberal principles, complete freedom of speech, of assembly, of
+criticism of the government, etc. The Paris which had accomplished the
+revolution in the interests of the proletariat, and had before it the
+task of realizing this revolution in the shape of institutions, Paris,
+as the community of the emancipated working-class proletariat,
+demanded revolutionary--_i.e._, dictatorial, measures against the
+enemies of the new order." (Pages 143-144.)
+
+If the Paris Commune had not fallen, but had continued to exist in the
+midst of a ceaseless struggle, there can be no doubt that it would
+have been obliged to have recourse to more and more severe measures
+for the suppression of the counter-revolution. True, Kautsky would not
+then have had the possibility of contrasting the humane Communards
+with the inhumane Bolsheviks. But in return, probably, Thiers, would
+not have had the possibility of inflicting his monstrous bloodletting
+upon the proletariat of Paris. History, possibly, would not have been
+the loser.
+
+
+THE IRRESPONSIBLE CENTRAL COMMITTEE AND THE "DEMOCRATIC" COMMUNE
+
+"On March 19," Kautsky informs us, "in the Central Committee of the
+National Guard, some demanded a march on Versailles, others an appeal
+to the electors, and a third party the adoption first of all of
+revolutionary measures; as if every one of these steps," he proceeds
+very learnedly to inform us, "were not equally necessary, and as if
+one excluded the other." (Page 72.) Further on, Kautsky, in connection
+with these disputes in the Commune, presents us with various warmed-up
+platitudes as to the mutual relations of reform and revolution. In
+reality, the following was the situation. If it were decided to march
+on Versailles, and to do this without losing an hour it was necessary
+immediately to reorganize the National Guard, to place at its head the
+best fighting elements of the Paris proletariat, and thereby
+temporarily to weaken Paris from the revolutionary point of view. But
+to organize elections in Paris, while at the same time sending out of
+its walls the flower of the working class, would have been senseless
+from the point of view of the revolutionary party. Theoretically, a
+march on Versailles and elections to the Commune, of course, did not
+exclude each other in the slightest degree, but in practice they did
+exclude each other: for the success of the elections, it was necessary
+to postpone the attack; for the attack to succeed, the elections must
+be put off. Finally, leading the proletariat out to the field and
+thereby temporarily weakening Paris, it was essential to obtain some
+guarantee against the possibility of counter-revolutionary attempts in
+the capital; for Thiers would not have hesitated at any measures to
+raise a white revolt in the rear of the Communards. It was essential
+to establish a more military--_i.e._, a more stringent regime in
+the capital. "They had to fight," writes Lavrov, "against many
+internal foes with whom Paris was full, who only yesterday had been
+rioting around the Exchange and the Vendome Square, who had their
+representatives in the administration and in the National Guard, who
+possessed their press, and their meetings, who almost openly
+maintained contact with the Versaillese, and who became more
+determined and more audacious at every piece of carelessness, at every
+check of the Commune." (Page 87.)
+
+It was necessary, side by side with this, to carry out revolutionary
+measures of a financial and generally of an economic character: first
+and foremost, for the equipment of the revolutionary army. All these
+most necessary measures of revolutionary dictatorship could with
+difficulty be reconciled with an extensive electoral campaign. But
+Kautsky has not the least idea of what a revolution is in practice. He
+thinks that theoretically to reconcile is the same as practically to
+accomplish.
+
+The Central Committee appointed March 22 as the day of elections for
+the Commune; but, not sure of itself, frightened at its own
+illegality, striving to act in unison with more "legal" institutions,
+entered into ridiculous and endless negotiations with a quite helpless
+assembly of mayors and deputies of Paris, showing its readiness to
+divide power with them if only an agreement could be arrived at.
+Meanwhile precious time was slipping by.
+
+Marx, on whom Kautsky, through old habit, tries to rely, did not under
+any circumstances propose that, at one and the same time, the Commune
+should be elected and the workers should be led out into the field for
+the war. In his letter to Kugelmann, Marx wrote, on April 12, 1871,
+that the Central Committee of the National Guard had too soon given up
+its power in favor of the Commune. Kautsky, in his own words, "does
+not understand" this opinion of Marx. It is quite simple. Marx at any
+rate understood that the problem was not one of chasing legality, but
+of inflicting a fatal blow upon the enemy. "If the Central Committee
+had consisted of real revolutionaries," says Lavrov, and rightly, "it
+ought to have acted differently. It would have been quite unforgivable
+for it to have given the enemy ten days' respite before the election
+and assembly of the Commune, while the leaders of the proletariat
+refused to carry out their duty and did not recognize that they had
+the right immediately to _lead_ the proletariat. As it was, the
+feeble immaturity of the popular parties created a Committee which
+considered those ten days of inaction incumbent upon it." (Page 78.)
+
+The yearning of the Central Committee to hand over power as soon as
+possible to a "legal" Government was dictated, not so much by the
+superstitions of former democracy, of which, by the way, there was no
+lack, as by fear of responsibility. Under the plea that it was a
+temporary institution, the Central Committee avoided the taking of the
+most necessary and absolutely pressing measures, in spite of the fact
+that all the material apparatus of power was centred in its hands. But
+the Commune itself did not take over political power in full from the
+Central Committee, and the latter continued to interfere in all
+business quite unceremoniously. This created a dual Government, which
+was extremely dangerous, particularly under military conditions.
+
+On May 3 the Central Committee sent deputies to the Commune demanding
+that the Ministry for War should be placed under its control. Again
+there arose, as Lissagaray writes, the question as to whether "the
+Central Committee should be dissolved, or arrested, or entrusted with
+the administration of the Ministry for War."
+
+Here was a question, not of the principles of democracy, but of the
+absence, in the case of both parties, of a clear programme of action,
+and of the readiness, both of the irresponsible revolutionary
+organizations in the shape of the Central Committee and of the
+"democratic" organization of the Commune, to shift the responsibility
+on to the other's shoulders, while at the same time not entirely
+renouncing power.
+
+These were political relations which it might seem no one could call
+worthy of imitation.
+
+"But the Central Committee," Kautsky consoles himself, "never
+attempted to infringe the principle in virtue of which the supreme
+power must belong to the delegates elected by universal suffrage." In
+this respect the "Paris Commune was the direct antithesis of the
+Soviet Republic." (Page 74.) There was no unity of government, there
+was no revolutionary decision, there existed a division of power, and,
+as a result, there came swift and terrible destruction. But to
+counter-balance this--is it not comforting?--there was no infringement
+of the "principle" of democracy.
+
+
+THE DEMOCRATIC COMMUNE AND THE REVOLUTIONARY DICTATORSHIP
+
+Comrade Lenin has already pointed out to Kautsky that attempts to
+depict the Commune as the expression of formal democracy constitute a
+piece of absolute theoretical swindling. The Commune, in its tradition
+and in the conception of its leading political party--the Blanquists--was
+the expression of _the dictatorship of the revolutionary city over the
+country_. So it was in the great French Revolution; so it would have
+been in the revolution of 1871 if the Commune had not fallen in the
+first days. The fact that in Paris itself a Government was elected
+on the basis of universal suffrage does not exclude a much more
+significant fact--namely, that of the military operations carried on
+by the Commune, one city, against peasant France, that is the whole
+country. To satisfy the great democrat, Kautsky, the revolutionaries
+of the Commune ought, as a preliminary, to have consulted, by means of
+universal suffrage, the whole population of France as to whether it
+permitted them to carry on a war with Thiers' bands.
+
+Finally, in Paris itself the elections took place after the
+bourgeoisie, or at least its most active elements, had fled, and after
+Thiers' troops had been evacuated. The bourgeoisie that remained in
+Paris, in spite of all its impudence, was still afraid of the
+revolutionary battalions, and the elections took place under the
+auspices of that fear, which was the forerunner of what in the future
+would have been inevitable--namely, of the Red Terror. But to console
+oneself with the thought that the Central Committee of the National
+Guard, under the dictatorship of which--unfortunately a very feeble
+and formalist dictatorship--the elections to the Commune were held,
+did not infringe the principle of universal suffrage, is truly to
+brush with the shadow of a broom.
+
+Amusing himself by barren analogies, Kautsky benefits by the
+circumstance that his reader is not acquainted with the facts. In
+Petrograd, in November, 1917, we also elected a Commune (Town Council)
+on the basis of the most "democratic" voting, without limitations for
+the bourgeoisie. These elections, being boycotted by the bourgeoisie
+parties, gave us a crushing majority. The "democratically" elected
+Council voluntarily submitted to the Petrograd Soviet--_i.e._, placed
+the fact of the dictatorship of the proletariat higher than the
+"principle" of universal suffrage, and, after a short time, dissolved
+itself altogether by its own act, in favor of one of the sections of
+the Petrograd Soviet. Thus the Petrograd Soviet--that true father of
+the Soviet regime--has upon itself the seal of a formal "democratic"
+benediction in no way less than the Paris Commune.[6]
+
+          [6] It is not without interest to observe that in the
+          Communal elections of 1871 in Paris there participated
+          230,000 electors. At the Town elections of November, 1917,
+          in Petrograd, in spite of the boycott of the election on the
+          part of all parties except ourselves and the Left Social
+          Revolutionaries, who had no influence in the capital, there
+          participated 390,000 electors. In Paris, in 1871, the
+          population numbered two millions. In Petrograd, in November,
+          1917, there were not more than two millions. It must be
+          noticed that our electoral system was infinitely more
+          democratic. The Central Committee of the National Guard
+          carried out the elections on the basis of the electoral law
+          of the empire.
+
+"At the elections of March 26, eighty members were elected to the
+Commune. Of these, fifteen were members of the government party
+(Thiers), and six were bourgeois radicals who were in opposition to
+the Government, but condemned the rising (of the Paris workers).
+
+"The Soviet Republic," Kautsky teaches us, "would never have allowed
+such counter-revolutionary elements to stand as candidates, let alone
+be elected. The Commune, on the other hand, out of respect for
+democracy, did not place the least obstacle in the way of the election
+of its bourgeois opponents." (Page 74.)
+
+We have already seen above that here Kautsky completely misses the
+mark. First of all, at a similar stage of development of the Russian
+Revolution, there did not take place democratic elections to the
+Petrograd Commune, in which the Soviet Government placed no obstacle
+in the way of the bourgeois parties; and if the Cadets, the S.R.s and
+the Mensheviks, who had their press which was openly calling for the
+overthrow of the Soviet Government, boycotted the elections, it was
+only because at that time they still hoped soon to make an end of us
+with the help of armed force. Secondly, no democracy expressing all
+classes was actually to be found in the Paris Commune. The bourgeois
+deputies--Conservatives, Liberals, Gambettists--found no place in it.
+
+"Nearly all these individuals," says Lavrov, "either immediately or
+very soon, left the Council of the Commune. They might have been
+representatives of Paris as a free city under the rule of the
+bourgeoisie, but were quite out of place in the Council of the
+Commune, which, willy-nilly, consistently or inconsistently,
+completely or incompletely, did represent the revolution of the
+proletariat, and an attempt, feeble though it might be, of building up
+forms of society corresponding to that revolution." (Pages 111-112.)
+If the Petrograd bourgeoisie had not boycotted the municipal
+elections, its representatives would have entered the Petrograd
+Council. They would have remained there up to the first Social
+Revolutionary and Cadet rising, after which--with the permission or
+without the permission of Kautsky--they would probably have been
+arrested if they did not leave the Council in good time, as at a
+certain moment did the bourgeois members of the Paris Commune. The
+course of events would have remained the same: only on their surface
+would certain episodes have worked out differently.
+
+In supporting the democracy of the Commune, and at the same time
+accusing it of an insufficiently decisive note in its attitude to
+Versailles, Kautsky does not understand that the Communal elections,
+carried out with the ambiguous help of the "lawful" mayors and
+deputies, reflected the hope of a peaceful agreement with Versailles.
+This is the whole point. The leaders were anxious for a compromise,
+not for a struggle. The masses had not yet outlived their illusions.
+Undeserved revolutionary reputations had not yet had time to be
+exposed. Everything taken together was called democracy.
+
+"We must rise above our enemies by moral force...." preached Vermorel.
+"We must not infringe liberty and individual life...." Striving to
+avoid fratricidal war, Vermorel called upon the liberal bourgeoisie,
+whom hitherto he had so mercilessly exposed, to set up "a lawful
+Government, recognized and respected by the whole population of
+Paris." The _Journal Officiel_, published under the editorship of
+the Internationalist Longuet, wrote: "The sad misunderstanding, which
+in the June days (1848) armed two classes of society against each
+other, cannot be renewed.... Class antagonism has ceased to exist...."
+(March 30.) And, further: "Now all conflicts will be appeased, because
+all are inspired with a feeling of solidarity, because never yet was
+there so little social hatred and social antagonism." (April 3.)
+
+At the session of the Commune of April 25, Jourdé, and not without
+foundation, congratulated himself on the fact that the Commune had
+"never yet infringed the principle of private property." By this means
+they hoped to win over bourgeois public opinion and find the path to
+compromise.
+
+"Such a doctrine," says Lavrov, and rightly, "did not in the least
+disarm the enemies of the proletariat, who understood excellently with
+what its success threatened them, and only sapped the proletarian
+energy and, as it were, deliberately blinded it in the face of its
+irreconcilable enemies." (Page 137.) But this enfeebling doctrine was
+inextricably bound up with the fiction of democracy. The form of mock
+legality it was that allowed them to think that the problem would be
+solved without a struggle. "As far as the mass of the population is
+concerned," writes Arthur Arnould, a member of the Commune, "it was to
+a certain extent justified in the belief in the existence of, at the
+very least, a hidden agreement with the Government." Unable to attract
+the bourgeoisie, the compromisers, as always, deceived the
+proletariat.
+
+The clearest evidence of all that, in the conditions of the inevitable
+and already beginning civil war, democratic parliamentarism expressed
+only the compromising helplessness of the leading groups, was the
+senseless procedure of the supplementary elections to the Commune of
+April 6. At this moment, "it was no longer a question of voting,"
+writes Arthur Arnould. "The situation had become so tragic that there
+was not either the time or the calmness necessary for the correct
+functioning of the elections.... All persons devoted to the Commune
+were on the fortifications, in the forts, in the foremost
+detachments.... The people attributed no importance whatever to these
+supplementary elections. The elections were in reality merely
+parliamentarism. What was required was not to count voters, but to
+have soldiers: not to discover whether we had lost or gained in the
+Commune of Paris, but to defend Paris from the Versaillese." From
+these words Kautsky might have observed why in practice it is not so
+simple to combine class war with interclass democracy.
+
+"The Commune is not a Constituent Assembly," wrote in his book,
+Millière, one of the best brains of the Commune. "It is a military
+Council. It must have one aim, victory; one weapon, force; one law,
+the law of social salvation."
+
+"They could never understand," Lissagaray accuses the leaders, "that
+the Commune was a barricade, and not an administration."
+
+They began to understand it in the end, when it was too late. Kautsky
+has not understood it to this day. There is no reason to believe that
+he will ever understand it.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Commune was the living negation of formal democracy, for in its
+development it signified the dictatorship of working class Paris over
+the peasant country. It is this fact that dominates all the rest.
+However much the political doctrinaires, in the midst of the Commune
+itself, clung to the appearances of democratic legality, every action
+of the Commune, though insufficient for victory, was sufficient to
+reveal its illegal nature.
+
+The Commune--that is to say, the Paris City Council--repealed the
+national law concerning conscription. It called its official organ
+_The Official Journal of the French Republic_. Though cautiously,
+it still laid hands on the State Bank. It proclaimed the separation of
+Church and State, and abolished the Church Budgets. It entered into
+relations with various embassies. And so on, and so on. It did all
+this in virtue of the revolutionary dictatorship. But Clemenceau,
+young democrat as he was then, would not recognize that virtue.
+
+At a conference with the Central Committee, Clemenceau said: "The
+rising had an unlawful beginning.... Soon the Committee will become
+ridiculous, and its decrees will be despised. Besides, Paris has not
+the right to rise against France, and must unconditionally accept the
+authority of the Assembly."
+
+The problem of the Commune was to dissolve the National Assembly.
+Unfortunately it did not succeed in doing so. To-day Kautsky seeks to
+discover for its criminal intentions some mitigating circumstances.
+
+He points out that the Communards had as their opponents in the
+National Assembly the monarchists, while we in the Constituent
+Assembly had against us ... Socialists, in the persons of the S.R.s,
+and the Mensheviks. A complete mental eclipse! Kautsky talks about the
+Mensheviks and the S.R.s, but forgets our sole serious foe--the
+Cadets. It was they who represented our Russian Thiers party--_i.e._,
+a bloc of property owners in the name of property: and Professor
+Miliukov did his utmost to imitate the "little great man." Very soon
+indeed--long before the October Revolution--Miliukov began to seek his
+Gallifet in the generals Kornilov, Alexeiev, then Kaledin, Krasnov, in
+turn. And after Kolchak had thrown aside all political parties, and
+had dissolved the Constituent Assembly, the Cadet Party, the sole
+serious bourgeois party, in its essence monarchist through and
+through, not only did not refuse to support him, but on the contrary
+devoted more sympathy to him than before.
+
+The Mensheviks and the S.R.s played no independent role amongst
+us--just like Kautsky's party during the revolutionary events
+in Germany. They based their whole policy upon a coalition with
+the Cadets, and thereby put the Cadets in a position to dictate
+quite irrespective of the balance of political forces. The
+Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik Parties were only an
+intermediary apparatus for the purpose of collecting, at meetings
+and elections, the political confidence of the masses awakened
+by the revolution, and for handing it over for disposal by the
+counter-revolutionary imperialist party of the Cadets--independently
+of the issue of the elections.
+
+The purely vassal-like dependence of the S.R.s and Menshevik _majority_
+on the Cadet _minority_ itself represented a very thinly-veiled
+insult to the idea of "democracy." But this is not all.
+
+In all districts of the country where the regime of "democracy" lived
+too long, it inevitably ended in an open _coup d'etat_ of the
+counter-revolution. So it was in the Ukraine, where the democratic
+Rada, having sold the Soviet Government to German imperialism, found
+itself overthrown by the monarchist Skoropadsky. So it was in the
+Kuban, where the democratic Rada found itself under the heel of
+Denikin. So it was--and this was the most important experiment of our
+"democracy"--in Siberia, where the Constituent Assembly, with the
+formal supremacy of the S.R.s and the Mensheviks, in the absence of
+the Bolsheviks, and the _de facto_ guidance of the Cadets, led in
+the end to the dictatorship of the Tsarist Admiral Kolchak. So it was,
+finally, in the north, where the Constituent Assembly government of
+the Socialist-Revolutionary Chaikovsky became merely a tinsel
+decoration for the rule of counter-revolutionary generals, Russian and
+British. So it was, or is, in all the small Border States--in Finland,
+Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Georgia, Armenia--where, under
+the formal banner of "democracy," there is being consolidated the
+supremacy of the landlords, the capitalists, and the foreign
+militarists.
+
+
+THE PARIS WORKER OF 1871 AND THE PETROGRAD PROLETARIAN OF 1917
+
+One of the most coarse, unfounded, and politically disgraceful
+comparisons which Kautsky makes between the Commune and Soviet Russia
+is touching the character of the Paris worker in 1871 and the Russian
+proletarian of 1917-19. The first Kautsky depicts as a revolutionary
+enthusiast capable of a high measure of self-sacrifice; the second, as
+an egoist and a coward, an irresponsible anarchist.
+
+The Parisian worker has behind him too definite a past to need
+revolutionary recommendations--or protection from the praises of the
+present Kautsky. None the less, the Petrograd proletarian has not, and
+cannot have, any reason for avoiding a comparison with his heroic
+elder brother. The continuous three years' struggle of the Petrograd
+workers--first for the conquest of power, and then for its maintenance
+and consolidation--represents an exceptional story of collective
+heroism and self-sacrifice, amidst unprecedented tortures in the shape
+of hunger, cold, and constant perils.
+
+Kautsky, as we can discover in another connection, takes for contrast
+with the flower of the Communards the most sinister elements of the
+Russian proletariat. In this respect also he is in no way different
+from the bourgeois sycophants, to whom dead Communards always appear
+infinitely more attractive than the living.
+
+The Petrograd proletariat seized power four and a half decades after
+the Parisian. This period has told enormously in our favor. The
+petty bourgeois craft character of old and partly of new Paris is
+quite foreign to Petrograd, the centre of the most concentrated
+industry in the world. The latter circumstances has extremely
+facilitated our tasks of agitation and organization, as well as the
+setting up of the Soviet system.
+
+Our proletariat did not have even a faint measure of the rich
+revolutionary traditions of the French proletariat. But, instead,
+there was still very fresh in the memory of the older generation of
+our workers, at the beginning of the present revolution, the great
+experiment of 1905, its failure, and the duty of vengeance it had
+handed down.
+
+The Russian workers had not, like the French, passed through a long
+school of democracy and parliamentarism, which at a certain epoch
+represented an important factor in the political education of the
+proletariat. But, on the other hand, the Russian working class had not
+had seared into its soul the bitterness of dissolution and the poison
+of scepticism, which up to a certain, and--let us hope--not very
+distant moment, still restrain the revolutionary will of the French
+proletariat.
+
+The Paris Commune suffered a military defeat before economic problems
+had arisen before it in their full magnitude. In spite of the splendid
+fighting qualities of the Paris workers, the military fate of the
+Commune was at once determined as hopeless. Indecision and
+compromise-mongering above brought about collapse below.
+
+The pay of the National Guard was issued on the basis of the existence
+of 162,000 rank and file and 6,500 officers; the number of those who
+actually went into battle, especially after the unsuccessful sortie of
+April 3, varied between twenty and thirty thousand.
+
+These facts do not in the least compromise the Paris workers, and do
+not give us the right to consider them cowards and deserters--although,
+of course, there was no lack of desertion. For a fighting army there
+must be, first of all, a centralized and accurate apparatus of
+administration. Of this the Commune had not even a trace.
+
+The War Department of the Commune, was, in the expression of one
+writer, as it were a dark room, in which all collided. The office of
+the Ministry was filled with officers and ordinary Guards, who
+demanded military supplies and food, and complained that they were not
+relieved. They were sent to the garrison....
+
+"One battalion remained in the trenches for 20 and 30 days, while
+others were constantly in reserve.... This carelessness soon killed
+any discipline. Courageous men soon determined to rely only on
+themselves; others avoided service. In the same way did officers
+behave. One would leave his post to go to the help of a neighbor who
+was under fire; others went away to the city...." (Lavrov, page 100.)
+
+Such a regime could not remain unpunished; the Commune was drowned in
+blood. But in this connection Kautsky has a marvelous solution.
+
+"The waging of war," he says, sagely shaking his head, "is, after all,
+not a strong side of the proletariat." (Page 76.)
+
+This aphorism, worthy of Pangloss, is fully on a level with the other
+great remark of Kautsky, namely, that the International is not a
+suitable weapon to use in wartime, being in its essence an "instrument
+of peace."
+
+In these two aphorisms, in reality, may be found the present Kautsky,
+complete, in his entirety--_i.e._, just a little over a round
+zero.
+
+The waging of war, do you see, is on the whole, not a strong side of
+the proletariat, the more that the International itself was not
+created for wartime. Kautsky's ship was built for lakes and quiet
+harbors, not at all for the open sea, and not for a period of storms.
+If that ship has sprung a leak, and has begun to fill, and is now
+comfortably going to the bottom, we must throw all the blame upon the
+storm, the unnecessary mass of water, the extraordinary size of the
+waves, and a series of other unforeseen circumstances for which
+Kautsky did not build his marvelous instrument.
+
+The international proletariat put before itself as its problem the
+conquest of power. Independently of whether civil war, "generally,"
+belongs to the inevitable attributes of revolution, "generally," this
+fact remains unquestioned--that the advance of the proletariat, at
+any rate in Russia, Germany, and parts of former Austro-Hungary, took
+the form of an intense civil war not only on internal but also on
+external fronts. If the waging of war is not the strong side of the
+proletariat, while the workers' International is suited only for
+peaceful epochs, then we may as well erect a cross over the revolution
+and over Socialism; for the waging of war is a fairly _strong_ side
+of the capitalist State, which _without_ a war will not admit the
+workers to supremacy. In that case there remains only to proclaim the
+so-called "Socialist" democracy to be merely the accompanying feature
+of capitalist society and bourgeois parliamentarism--_i.e._, openly to
+sanction what the Eberts, Schneidermanns, Renaudels, carry out in
+practice and what Kautsky still, it seems, protests against in words.
+
+The waging of war was not a strong side of the Commune. Quite so; that
+was why it was crushed. And how mercilessly crushed!
+
+"We have to recall the proscriptions of Sulla, Antony, and Octavius,"
+wrote in his time the very moderate liberal, Fiaux, "to meet such
+massacres in the history of civilized nations. The religious wars
+under the last Valois, the night of St. Bartholomew, the Reign of
+Terror were, in comparison with it, child's play. In the last week of
+May alone, in Paris, 17,000 corpses of the insurgent Federals were
+picked up ... the killing was still going on about June 15."
+
+"The waging of war, after all, is not the strong side of the
+proletariat."
+
+It is not true! The Russian workers have shown that they are capable
+of wielding the "instrument of war" as well. We see here a gigantic
+step forward in comparison with the Commune. It is not a renunciation
+of the Commune--for the traditions of the Commune consist not at all
+in its helplessness--but the continuation of its work. The Commune was
+weak. To complete its work we have become strong. The Commune was
+crushed. We are inflicting blow after blow upon the executioners of
+the Commune. We are taking vengeance for the Commune, and we shall
+avenge it.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+Out of 167,000 National Guards who received pay, only twenty or thirty
+thousand went into battle. These figures serve as interesting material
+for conclusions as to the role of formal democracy in a revolutionary
+epoch. The vote of the Paris Commune was decided, not at the
+elections, but in the battles with the troops of Thiers. One hundred
+and sixty-seven thousand National Guards represented the great mass of
+the electorate. But in reality, in the battles, the fate of the
+Commune was decided by twenty or thirty thousand persons; the most
+devoted fighting minority. This minority did not stand alone: it
+simply expressed, in a more courageous and self-sacrificing manner,
+the will of the majority. But none the less it was a minority. The
+others who hid at the critical moment were not hostile to the Commune;
+on the contrary, they actively or passively supported it, but they
+were less politically conscious, less decisive. On the arena of
+political democracy, their lower level of political consciousness
+afforded the possibility of their being deceived by adventurers,
+swindlers, middle-class cheats, and honest dullards who really
+deceived themselves. But, at the moment of open class war, they, to a
+greater or lesser degree, followed the self-sacrificing minority. It
+was this that found its expression in the organization of the National
+Guard. If the existence of the Commune had been prolonged, this
+relationship between the advance guard and the mass of the proletariat
+would have grown more and more firm.
+
+The organization which would have been formed and consolidated in the
+process of the open struggle, as the organization of the laboring
+masses, would have become the organization of their dictatorship--the
+Council of Deputies of the armed proletariat.
+
+
+
+
+6
+
+MARX AND ... KAUTSKY.
+
+
+Kautsky loftily sweeps aside Marx's views on terror, expressed by him
+in the _Neue Rheinische Zeitung_--as at that time, do you see, Marx
+was still very "young," and consequently his views had not yet had
+time to arrive at that condition of complete enfeeblement which is so
+clearly to be observed in the case of certain theoreticians in the
+seventh decade of their life. As a contrast to the green Marx of
+1848-49 (the author of the _Communist Manifesto_!) Kautsky quotes the
+mature Marx of the epoch of the Paris Commune--and the latter, under
+the pen of Kautsky, loses his great lion's mane, and appears before us
+as an extremely respectable reasoner, bowing before the holy places
+of democracy, declaiming on the sacredness of human life, and filled
+with all due reverence for the political charms of Schneidermann,
+Vandervelde, and particularly of his own physical grandson, Jean
+Longuet. In a word, Marx, instructed by the experience of life, proves
+to be a well-behaved Kautskian.
+
+From the deathless _Civil War in France_, the pages of which have been
+filled with a new and intense life in our own epoch, Kautsky has
+quoted only those lines in which the mighty theoretician of the social
+revolution contrasted the generosity of the Communards with the
+bourgeois ferocity of the Versaillese. Kautsky has devastated these
+lines and made them commonplace. Marx, as the preacher of detached
+humanity, as the apostle of general love of mankind! Just as if we
+were talking about Buddha or Leo Tolstoy.... It is more than natural
+that, against the international campaign which represented the
+Communards as _souteneurs_ and the women of the Commune as
+prostitutes, against the vile slanders which attributed to the
+conquered fighters ferocious features drawn from the degenerate
+imagination of the victorious bourgeoisie, Marx should emphasize and
+underline those features of tenderness and nobility which not
+infrequently were merely the reverse side of indecision. Marx was
+Marx. He was neither an empty pedant, nor, all the more, the legal
+defender of the revolution: he combined a scientific analysis of the
+Commune with its revolutionary apology. He not only explained and
+criticised--he defended and struggled. But, emphasizing the mildness
+of the Commune which failed, Marx left no doubt possible concerning
+the measures which the Commune ought to have taken in order not to
+fail.
+
+The author of the _Civil War_ accuses the Central Committee--_i.e._,
+the then Council of National Guards' Deputies, of having too soon
+given up its place to the elective Commune. Kautsky "does not
+understand" the reason for such a reproach. This conscientious
+non-understanding is one of the symptoms of Kautsky's mental decline
+in connection with questions of the revolution generally. The first
+place, according to Marx, ought to have been filled by a purely
+fighting organ, a centre of the insurrection and of military
+operations against Versailles, and not the organized self-government
+of the labor democracy. For the latter the turn would come later.
+
+Marx accuses the Commune of not having at once begun an attack against
+the Versailles, and of having entered upon the defensive, which always
+appears "more humane," and gives more possibilities of appealing to
+moral law and the sacredness of human life, but in conditions of civil
+war never leads to victory. Marx, on the other hand, first and
+foremost wanted a revolutionary victory. Nowhere, by one word, does he
+put forward the principle of democracy as something standing above the
+class struggle. On the contrary, with the concentrated contempt of the
+revolutionary and the Communist, Marx--not the young editor of the
+_Rhine Paper_, but the mature author of _Capital_: our genuine Marx
+with the mighty leonine mane, not as yet fallen under the hands of the
+hairdressers of the Kautsky school--with what concentrated contempt he
+speaks about the "artificial atmosphere of parliamentarism" in which
+physical and spiritual dwarfs like Thiers seem giants! The _Civil
+War_, after the barren and pedantic pamphlet of Kautsky, acts like
+a storm that clears the air.
+
+In spite of Kautsky's slanders, Marx had nothing in common with the
+view of democracy as the last, absolute, supreme product of history.
+The development of bourgeois society itself, out of which contemporary
+democracy grew up, in no way represents that process of gradual
+democratization which figured before the war in the dreams of the
+greatest Socialist illusionist of democracy--Jean Jaurès--and now in
+those of the most learned of pedants, Karl Kautsky. In the empire of
+Napoleon III, Marx sees "the only possible form of government in the
+epoch in which the bourgeoisie has already lost the possibility of
+governing the people, while the working class has not yet acquired
+it." In this way, not democracy, but Bonapartism, appears in Marx's
+eyes as the final form of bourgeois power. Learned men may say that
+Marx was mistaken, as the Bonapartist empire gave way for half a
+century to the "Democratic Republic." But Marx was not mistaken. In
+essence he was right. The Third Republic has been the period of the
+complete decay of democracy. Bonapartism has found in the Stock
+Exchange Republic of Poincaré-Clémenceau, a more finished expression
+than in the Second Empire. True, the Third Republic was not crowned by
+the imperial diadem; but in return there loomed over it the shadow of
+the Russian Tsar.
+
+In his estimate of the Commune, Marx carefully avoids using the worn
+currency of democratic terminology. "The Commune was," he writes, "not
+a parliament, but a working institution, and united in itself both
+executive and legislative power." In the first place, Marx puts
+forward, not the particular democratic form of the Commune, but its
+class essence. The Commune, as is known, abolished the regular army
+and the police, and decreed the confiscation of Church property. It
+did this in the right of the revolutionary dictatorship of Paris,
+without the permission of the general democracy of the State, which at
+that moment formally had found a much more "lawful" expression in the
+National Assembly of Thiers. But a revolution is not decided by votes.
+"The National Assembly," says Marx, "was nothing more nor less than
+one of the episodes of that revolution, the true embodiment of which
+was, nevertheless, armed Paris." How far this is from formal
+democracy!
+
+"It only required that the Communal order of things," says Marx,
+"should be set up in Paris and in the secondary centres, and the old
+central government would in the provinces also have yielded to the
+_self-government of the producers_." Marx, consequently, sees the
+problem of revolutionary Paris, not in appealing from its victory to
+the frail will of the Constituent Assembly, but in covering the whole
+of France with a centralized organization of Communes, built up not on
+the external principles of democracy but on the genuine
+self-government of the producers.
+
+Kautsky has cited as an argument against the Soviet Constitution the
+indirectness of elections, which contradicts the fixed laws of
+bourgeois democracy. Marx characterizes the proposed structure of
+labor France in the following words:--"The management of the general
+affairs of the village communes of every district was to devolve on
+the Assembly of plenipotentiary delegates meeting in the chief town of
+the district; while the district assemblies were in turn to send
+delegates to the National Assembly sitting in Paris."
+
+Marx, as we can see, was not in the least degree disturbed by the many
+degrees of indirect election, in so far as it was a question of the
+State organization of the proletariat itself. In the framework of
+bourgeois democracy, indirectness of election confuses the demarcation
+line of parties and classes; but in the "self-government of the
+producers"--_i.e._, in the class proletarian State, indirectness
+of election is a question not of politics, but of the technical
+requirements of self-government, and within certain limits may present
+the same advantages as in the realm of trade union organization.
+
+The Philistines of democracy are indignant at the inequality in
+representation of the workers and peasants which, in the Soviet
+Constitution, reflects the difference in the revolutionary roles of
+the town and the country. Marx writes: "The Commune desired to bring
+the rural producers under the intellectual leadership of the central
+towns of their districts, and there to secure to them, in the workmen
+of the towns, the natural guardians of their interests." The question
+was not one of making the peasant equal to the worker on paper, but of
+spiritually raising the peasant to the level of the worker. All
+questions of the proletarian State Marx decides according to the
+revolutionary dynamics of living forces, and not according to the play
+of shadows upon the market-place screen of parliamentarism.
+
+In order to reach the last confines of mental collapse, Kautsky denies
+the universal authority of the Workers' Councils on the ground that
+there is no legal boundary between the proletariat and the
+bourgeoisie. In the indeterminate nature of the social divisions
+Kautsky sees the source of the arbitrary authority of the Soviet
+dictatorship. Marx sees directly the contrary. "The Commune was an
+extremely elastic form of the State, while all former forms of
+government had suffered from narrowness. Its secret consists in this,
+that in its very essence it was the government of the working class,
+the result of the struggle between the class of producers and the
+class of appropriators, the political form, long sought, under which
+there could be accomplished the economic emancipation of labor." The
+secret of the Commune consisted in the fact that by its very essence
+it was a government of the working class. This secret, explained by
+Marx, has remained, for Kautsky, even to this day, a mystery sealed
+with seven seals.
+
+The Pharisees of democracy speak with indignation of the repressive
+measures of the Soviet Government, of the closing of newspapers, of
+arrests and shooting. Marx replies to "the vile abuse of the lackeys
+of the Press" and to the reproaches of the "well-intentioned bourgeois
+doctrinaries," in connection with the repressive measures of the
+Commune in the following words:--"Not satisfied with their open waging
+of a most bloodthirsty war against Paris, the Versaillese strove
+secretly to gain an entry by corruption and conspiracy. Could the
+Commune at such a time _without shamefully betraying its trust_,
+have observed the customary forms of liberalism, just as if profound
+peace reigned around it? Had the government of the Commune been akin
+in spirit to that of Thiers, there would have been no more occasion to
+suppress newspapers of the party of order in Paris than there was to
+suppress newspapers of the Commune at Versailles." In this way, what
+Kautsky demands in the name of the sacred foundations of democracy
+Marx brands as a shameful betrayal of trust.
+
+Concerning the destruction of which the Commune is accused, and of
+which now the Soviet Government is accused, Marx speaks as of "an
+inevitable and comparatively insignificant episode in the titanic
+struggle of the new-born order with the old in its collapse."
+Destruction and cruelty are inevitable in any war. Only sycophants
+can consider them a crime "in the war of the slaves against their
+oppressors, _the only just war in history_." (Marx.) Yet our dread
+accuser Kautsky, in his whole book, does not breathe a word of the
+fact that we are in a condition of perpetual revolutionary
+self-defence, that we are waging an intensive war against the
+oppressors of the world, the "only just war in history."
+
+Kautsky yet again tears his hair because the Soviet Government, during
+the Civil War, has made use of the severe method of taking hostages.
+He once again brings forward pointless and dishonest comparisons
+between the fierce Soviet Government and the humane Commune. Clear and
+definite in this connection sounds the opinion of Marx. "When Thiers,
+from the very beginning of the conflict, had enforced the humane
+practice of shooting down captured Communards, the Commune, to protect
+the lives of those prisoners, _had nothing left for it_ but to
+resort to the Prussian custom of taking hostages. The lives of the
+hostages had been forfeited over and over again by the continued
+shooting of the prisoners on the part of the Versaillese. _How could
+their lives be spared any longer_ after the blood-bath with which
+MacMahon's Pretorians celebrated their entry into Paris?" How
+otherwise we shall ask together with Marx, can one act in conditions
+of civil war, when the counter-revolution, occupying a considerable
+portion of the national territory, seizes wherever it can the unarmed
+workers, their wives, their mothers, and shoots or hangs them: how
+otherwise can one act than to seize as hostages the beloved or the
+trusted of the bourgeoisie, thus placing the whole bourgeois class
+under the Damocles' sword of mutual responsibility?
+
+It would not be difficult to show, day by day through the history of
+the civil war, that all the severe measures of the Soviet Government
+were forced upon it as measures of revolutionary self-defense. We
+shall not here enter into details. But, to give though it be but a
+partial criterion for valuing the conditions of the struggle, let us
+remind the reader that, at the moment when the White Guards, in
+company with their Anglo-French allies, shoot every Communist without
+exception who falls into their hands, the Red Army spares all
+prisoners without exception, including even officers of high rank.
+
+"Fully grasping its historical task, filled with the heroic decision
+to remain equal to that task," Marx wrote, "the working class may
+reply with a smile of calm contempt to the vile abuse of the lackeys
+of the Press and to the learned patronage of well-intentioned
+bourgeois doctrinaires, who utter their ignorant stereotyped
+common-places, their characteristic nonsense, with the profound tone of
+oracles of scientific immaculateness."
+
+If the well-intentioned bourgeois doctrinaires sometimes appear in the
+guise of retired theoreticians of the Second International, this in no
+way deprives their characteristic nonsense of the right of remaining
+nonsense.
+
+
+
+
+7
+
+THE WORKING CLASS AND ITS SOVIET POLICY
+
+
+THE RUSSIAN PROLETARIAT
+
+The initiative in the social revolution proved, by the force of
+events, to be imposed, not upon the old proletariat of Western Europe,
+with its mighty economic and political organization, with its
+ponderous traditions of parliamentarism and trade unionism, but upon
+the young working-class of a backward country. History, as always,
+moved along the line of least resistance. The revolutionary epoch
+burst upon us through the least barricaded door. Those extraordinary,
+truly superhuman, difficulties which were thus flung upon the Russian
+proletariat have prepared, hastened, and to a considerable extent
+assisted the revolutionary work of the West European proletariat which
+still lies before us.
+
+Instead of examining the Russian Revolution in the light of the
+revolutionary epoch that has arrived throughout the world, Kautsky
+discusses the theme of whether or no the Russian proletariat has taken
+power into its hands too soon.
+
+"For Socialism," he explains, "there is necessary a high development
+of the people, a high morale amongst the masses, strongly-developed
+social instincts, sentiments of solidarity, etc. Such a form of
+morale," Kautsky further informs us, "was very highly developed
+amongst the proletariat of the Paris Commune. It is absent amongst the
+masses which at the present time set the tone amongst the Bolshevik
+proletariat." (Page 177.)
+
+For Kautsky's purpose, it is not sufficient to fling mud at the
+Bolsheviks as a political party before the eyes of his readers.
+Knowing that Bolshevism has become amalgamated with the Russian
+proletariat, Kautsky makes an attempt to fling mud at the Russian
+proletariat as a whole, representing it as an ignorant, greedy mass,
+without any ideals, which is guided only by the instincts and impulses
+of the moment.
+
+Throughout his booklet Kautsky returns many times to the question of
+the intellectual and moral level of the Russian workers, and every
+time only to deepen his characterization of them as ignorant, stupid
+and barbarous. To bring about the most striking contrasts, Kautsky
+adduces the example of how a workshop committee in one of the war
+industries during the Commune decided upon compulsory night duty in
+the works for _one_ worker so that it might be possible to
+distribute repaired arms by night. "As under present circumstances it
+is absolutely necessary to be extremely economical with the resources
+of the Commune," the regulation read, "the night duty will be rendered
+without payment...." "Truly," Kautsky concludes, "these working men
+did not regard the period of their dictatorship as an opportune moment
+for the satisfaction of their personal interests." (Page 90.) Quite
+otherwise is the case with the Russian working class. That class has
+no intelligence, no stability, no ideals, no steadfastness, no
+readiness for self-sacrifice, and so on. "It is just as little capable
+of choosing suitable plenipotentiary leaders for itself," Kautsky
+jeers, "as Munchausen was able to drag himself from the swamp by means
+of his own hair." This comparison of the Russian proletariat with the
+impostor Munchausen dragging himself from the swamp is a striking
+example of the brazen tone in which Kautsky speaks of the Russian
+working class.
+
+He brings extracts from various speeches and articles of ours in which
+undesirable phenomena amongst the working class are shown up, and
+attempts to represent matters in such a way as if the life of the
+Russian proletariat between 1917-20--_i.e._, in the greatest of
+revolutionary epochs--is fully described by passivity, ignorance, and
+egotism.
+
+Kautsky, forsooth, does not know, has never heard, cannot guess, may
+not imagine, that during the civil war the Russian proletariat had
+more than one occasion of freely giving its labour, and even of
+establishing "unpaid" guard duties--not of _one_ worker for the
+space of _one_ night, but of tens of thousands of workers for the
+space of a long series of disturbed nights. In the days and weeks of
+Yudenich's advance on Petrograd, one telephonogram of the Soviet was
+sufficient to ensure that many thousands of workers should spring to
+their posts in all the factories, in all the wards of the city. And
+this not in the first days of the Petrograd Commune, but after a two
+years' struggle in cold and hunger.
+
+Two or three times a year our party mobilizes a high proportion of its
+numbers for the front. Scattered over a distance of 8,000 versts, they
+die and teach others to die. And when, in hungry and cold Moscow,
+which has given the flower of its workers to the front, a Party Week
+is proclaimed, there pour into our ranks from the proletarian masses,
+in the space of seven days, 15,000 persons. And at what moment? At the
+moment when the danger of the destruction of the Soviet Government had
+reached its most acute point. At the moment when Orel had been taken,
+and Denikin was approaching Tula and Moscow, when Yudenich was
+threatening Petrograd. At that most painful moment, the Moscow
+proletariat, in the course of a week, gave to the ranks of our party
+15,000 men, who only waited a new mobilization for the front. And it
+can be said with certainty that never yet, with the exception of the
+week of the November rising in 1917, was the Moscow proletariat so
+single-minded in its revolutionary enthusiasm, and in its readiness
+for devoted struggle, as in those most difficult days of peril and
+self-sacrifice.
+
+When our party proclaimed the watchword of Subbotniks and Voskresniks
+(Communist Saturdays and Sundays), the revolutionary idealism of the
+proletariat found for itself a striking expression in the shape of
+voluntary labor. At first tens and hundreds, later thousands, and now
+tens and hundreds of thousands of workers every week give up several
+hours of their labor without reward, for the sake of the economic
+reconstruction of the country. And this is done by half-starved
+people, in torn boots, in dirty linen--because the country has neither
+boots nor soap. Such, in reality, is that Bolshevik proletariat to
+whom Kautsky recommends a course of self-sacrifice. The facts of the
+situation, and their relative importance, will appear still more
+vividly before us if we recall that all the egoist, bourgeois,
+coarsely selfish elements of the proletariat--all those who avoid
+service at the front and in the Subbotniks, who engage in speculation
+and in weeks of starvation incite the workers to strikes--all of them
+vote at the Soviet elections for the Mensheviks; that is, for the
+Russian Kautskies.
+
+Kautsky quotes our words to the effect that, even before the November
+Revolution, we clearly realized the defects in education of the
+Russian proletariat, but, recognizing the inevitability of the
+transference of power to the working class, we considered ourselves
+justified in hoping that during the struggle itself, during its
+experience, and with the ever-increasing support of the proletariat of
+other countries, we should deal adequately with our difficulties, and
+be able to guarantee the transition of Russia to the Socialist order.
+In this connection, Kautsky asks: "Would Trotsky undertake to get on a
+locomotive and set it going, in the conviction that he would during
+the journey have time to learn and to arrange everything? One must
+preliminarily have acquired the qualities necessary to drive a
+locomotive before deciding to set it going. Similarly the proletariat
+ought beforehand to have acquired those necessary qualities which make
+it capable of administering industry, once it had to take it over."
+(Page 173.)
+
+This instructive comparison would have done honor to any village
+clergyman. None the less, it is stupid. With infinitely more
+foundation one could say: "Will Kautsky dare to mount a horse before
+he has learned to sit firmly in the saddle, and to guide the animal in
+all its steps?" We have foundations for believing that Kautsky would
+not make up his mind to such a dangerous purely Bolshevik experiment.
+On the other hand, we fear that, through not risking to mount the
+horse, Kautsky would have considerable difficulty in learning the
+secrets of riding on horse-back. For the fundamental Bolshevik
+prejudice is precisely this: that one learns to ride on horse-back
+only when sitting on the horse.
+
+Concerning the driving of the locomotive, this principle is at first
+sight not so evident; but none the less it is there. No one yet has
+learned to drive a locomotive sitting in his study. One has to get up
+on to the engine, to take one's stand in the tender, to take into
+one's hands the regulator, and to turn it. True, the engine allows
+training manoeuvres only under the guidance of an old driver. The
+horse allows of instructions in the riding school only under the
+guidance of experienced trainers. But in the sphere of State
+administration such artificial conditions cannot be created. The
+bourgeoisie does not build for the proletariat academies of State
+administration, and does not place at its disposal, for preliminary
+practice, the helm of the State. And besides, the workers and peasants
+learn even to ride on horse-back not in the riding school, and without
+the assistance of trainers.
+
+To this we must add another consideration, perhaps the most important.
+No one gives the proletariat the opportunity of choosing whether it
+will or will not mount the horse, whether it will take power
+immediately or postpone the moment. Under certain conditions the
+working class is bound to take power, under the threat of political
+self-annihilation for a whole historical period.
+
+Once having taken power, it is impossible to accept one set of
+consequences at will and refuse to accept others. If the capitalist
+bourgeoisie consciously and malignantly transforms the disorganization
+of production into a method of political struggle, with the object of
+restoring power to itself, the proletariat is _obliged_ to resort
+to Socialization, independently of whether this is beneficial or
+otherwise at the _given moment_.
+
+And, once having taken over production, the proletariat is obliged,
+under the pressure of iron necessity, to learn by its own experience a
+most difficult art--that of organizing Socialist economy. Having
+mounted the saddle, the rider is obliged to guide the horse--on the
+peril of breaking his neck.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+To give his high-souled supporters, male and female, a complete
+picture of the moral level of the Russian proletariat, Kautsky
+adduces, on page 172 of his book, the following mandate, issued,
+it is alleged, by the Murzilovka Soviet: "The Soviet hereby
+empowers Comrade Gregory Sareiev, in accordance with his choice and
+instructions, to requisition and lead to the barracks, for the use of
+the Artillery Division stationed in Murzilovka, Briansk County, sixty
+women and girls from the bourgeois and speculating class, September
+16, 1918." (_What are the Bolshevists doing?_ Published by Dr. Nath.
+Wintch-Malejeff. Lausanne, 1919. Page 10.)
+
+Without having the least doubt of the forged character of this
+document and the lying nature of the whole communication, I gave
+instructions, however, that careful inquiry should be made, in order
+to discover what facts and episodes lay at the root of this invention.
+A carefully carried out investigation showed the following:--
+
+(1) In the Briansk County there is absolutely no village by the name
+of Murzilovka. There is no such village in the neighboring counties
+either. The most similar in name is the village of Muraviovka, Briansk
+County; but no artillery division has ever been stationed there, and
+altogether nothing ever took place which might be in any way connected
+with the above "document."
+
+(2) The investigation was also carried on along the line of the
+artillery units. Absolutely nowhere were we able to discover even an
+indirect allusion to a fact similar to that adduced by Kautsky from
+the words of his inspirer.
+
+(3) Finally the investigation dealt with the question of whether there
+had been any rumors of this kind on the spot. Here, too, absolutely
+nothing was discovered; and no wonder. The very contents of the
+forgery are in too brutal a contrast with the morals and public
+opinion of the foremost workers and peasants who direct the work of
+the Soviets, even in the most backward regions.
+
+In this way, the document must be described as a pitiful forgery,
+which might be circulated only by the most malignant sycophants in the
+most yellow of the gutter press.
+
+While the investigation described above was going on, Comrade
+Zinovieff showed me a number of a Swedish paper (_Svenska Dagbladet_)
+of November 9, 1919, in which was printed the facsimile of a mandate
+running as follows:--
+
+"_Mandate._ The bearer of this, Comrade Karaseiev, has the right
+of socializing in the town of Ekaterinodar (obliterated) girls aged
+from 16 to 36 at his pleasure.--GLAVKOM IVASHCHEFF."
+
+This document is even more stupid and impudent than that quoted by
+Kautsky. The town of Ekaterinodar--the centre of the Kuban--was, as is
+well known, for only a very short time in the hands of the Soviet
+Government. Apparently the author of the forgery, not very well up in
+his revolutionary chronology, rubbed out the date on this document,
+lest by some chance it should appear that "Glavkom Ivashcheff"
+socialized the Ekaterinodar women during the reign of Denikin's
+militarism there. That the document might lead into error the
+thick-witted Swedish bourgeois is not at all amazing. But for the
+Russian reader it is only too clear that the document is not merely a
+forgery, but drawn up by a _foreigner, dictionary in hand_. It is
+extremely curious that the names of both the socializers of women,
+"Gregory Sareiev" and "Karaseiev" sound absolutely non-Russia. The
+ending "eiev" in Russian names is found rarely, and only in definite
+combinations. But the accuser of the Bolsheviks himself, the author of
+the English pamphlet on whom Kautsky bases his evidence, has a name
+that does actually end in "eiev." It seems obvious that this
+Anglo-Bulgarian police agent, sitting in Lausanne, creates socializers
+of women, in the fullest sense of the word, after his own likeness and
+image.
+
+Kautsky, at any rate, has original inspirers and assistants!
+
+
+SOVIETS, TRADE UNIONS, AND THE PARTY
+
+The Soviets, as a form of the organization of the working class,
+represents for Kautsky, "in relation to the party and professional
+organizations of more developed countries, not a higher form of
+organization, but first and foremost a substitute (Notbehelf), arising
+out of the absence of political organizations." (Page 68.)
+
+Let us grant that this is true in connection with Russia. But then,
+why have Soviets sprung up in Germany? Ought one not absolutely to
+repudiate them in the Ebert Republic? We note, however, that
+Hilferding, the nearest sympathizer of Kautsky, proposes to include
+the Soviets in the Constitution. Kautsky is silent.
+
+The estimate of Soviets as a "primitive" organization is true to the
+extent that the open revolutionary struggle is "more primitive" than
+parliamentarism. But the artificial complexity of the latter embraces
+only the upper strata, insignificant in their size. On the other hand,
+revolution is only possible where the masses have their vital
+interests at stake. The November Revolution raised on to their feet
+such deep layers as the pre-revolutionary Social-Democracy could not
+even dream of. However wide were the organizations of the party and
+the trade unions in Germany, the revolution immediately proved
+incomparably wider than they. The revolutionary masses found their
+direct representation in the most simple and generally comprehensive
+delegate organization--in the Soviet. One may admit that the Council
+of Deputies falls behind both the party and the trade union in the
+sense of the clearness of its programme, or the exactness of its
+organization. But it is far and away in front of the party and the
+trade unions in the size of the masses drawn by it into the organized
+struggle; and this superiority in quality gives the Soviet undeniable
+revolutionary preponderance.
+
+The Soviet embraces workers of all undertakings, of all professions,
+of all stages of cultural development, all stages of political
+consciousness--and thereby objectively is forced to formulate the
+general interests of the proletariat.
+
+The _Communist Manifesto_ viewed the problem of the Communist just
+in this sense--namely, the formulating of the general historical
+interests of the working class as a whole.
+
+"The Communists are only distinguished from other proletarian
+parties," in the words of the _Manifesto_, "by this: that in the
+different national struggles of the proletariat they point out, and
+bring to the fore, the common interests of the proletariat,
+independently of nationality; and again that, in the different stages
+of evolution through which the struggle between the proletariat and
+bourgeoisie passes, they constantly represent the interests of the
+movement taken as a whole."
+
+In the form of the all-embracing class organization of the Soviets,
+the movement takes itself "as a whole." Hence it is clear why the
+Communists could and had to become the guiding party in the Soviets.
+But hence also is seen all the narrowness of the estimate of Soviets
+as "substitutes for the party" (Kautsky), and all the stupidity of the
+attempt to include the Soviets, in the form of an auxiliary lever, in
+the mechanism of bourgeois democracy. (Hilferding.)
+
+The Soviets are the organization of the proletarian revolution, and
+have purpose either as an organ of the struggle for power or as the
+apparatus of power of the working class.
+
+Unable to grasp the revolutionary role of the Soviets, Kautsky sees
+their root defects in that which constitutes their greatest merit.
+"The demarcation of the bourgeois from the worker," he writes, "can
+never be actually drawn. There will always be something arbitrary in
+such demarcation, which fact transforms the Soviet idea into a
+particularly suitable foundation for dictatorial and arbitrary rule,
+but renders it unfitted for the creation of a clear, systematically
+built-up constitution." (Page 170.)
+
+Class dictatorship, according to Kautsky, cannot create for itself
+institutions answering to its nature, because there do not exist lines
+of demarcation between the classes. But in that case, what happens to
+the class struggle altogether? Surely it was just, in the existence of
+numerous transitional stages between the bourgeoisie and the
+proletariat, that the lower middle-class theoreticians always found
+their principal argument against the "principle" of the class
+struggle? For Kautsky, however, doubts as to principle begin just at
+the point where the proletariat, having overcome the shapelessness and
+unsteadiness of the intermediate class, having brought one part of
+them over to its side and thrown the remainder into the camp of the
+bourgeoisie, has actually organized its dictatorship in the Soviet
+Constitution.
+
+The very reason why the Soviets an absolutely irreplaceable apparatus
+in the proletarian State is that their framework is elastic and
+yielding, with the result that not only social but political changes
+in the relationship of classes and sections can immediately find their
+expression in the Soviet apparatus. Beginning with the largest
+factories and works, the Soviets then draw into their organization the
+workers of private workshops and shop-assistants, proceed to enter the
+village, organize the peasants against the landowners, and finally the
+lower and middle-class sections of the peasantry against the richest.
+
+The Labor State collects numerous staffs of employees, to a
+considerable extent from the ranks of the bourgeoisie and the
+bourgeois educated classes. To the extent that they become disciplined
+under the Soviet regime, they find representation in the Soviet
+system. Expanding--and at certain moments contracting--in harmony with
+the expansion and contraction of the social positions conquered by the
+proletariat, the Soviet system remains the State apparatus of the
+social revolution, in its internal dynamics, its ebbs and flows, its
+mistakes and successes. With the final triumph of the social
+revolution, the Soviet system will expand and include the whole
+population, in order thereby to lose the characteristics of a form of
+State, and melt away into a mighty system of producing and consuming
+co-operation.
+
+If the party and the trade unions were organizations of preparation
+for the revolution, the Soviets are the weapon of the revolution
+itself. After its victory, the Soviets become the organs of power. The
+role of the party and the unions, without decreasing is nevertheless
+essentially altered.
+
+In the hands of the party is concentrated the general control. It does
+not immediately administer, since its apparatus is not adapted for
+this purpose. But it has the final word in all fundamental questions.
+Further, our practice has led to the result that, in all moot
+questions, generally--conflicts between departments and personal
+conflicts within departments--the last word belongs to the Central
+Committee of the party. This affords extreme economy of time and
+energy, and in the most difficult and complicated circumstances gives
+a guarantee for the necessary unity of action. Such a regime is
+possible only in the presence of the unquestioned authority of the
+party, and the faultlessness of its discipline. Happily for the
+revolution, our party does possess in an equal measure both of these
+qualities. Whether in other countries which have not received from
+their past a strong revolutionary organization, with a great hardening
+in conflict, there will be created just as authoritative a Communist
+Party by the time of the proletarian revolution, it is difficult to
+foretell; but it is quite obvious that on this question, to a very
+large extent, depends the progress of the Socialist revolution in each
+country.
+
+The exclusive role of the Communist Party under the conditions of a
+victorious proletarian revolution is quite comprehensible. The
+question is of the dictatorship of a class. In the composition of that
+class there enter various elements, heterogeneous moods, different
+levels of development. Yet the dictatorship pre-supposes unity of
+will, unity of direction, unity of action. By what other path then can
+it be attained? The revolutionary supremacy of the proletariat
+pre-supposes within the proletariat itself the political supremacy of
+a party, with a clear programme of action and a faultless internal
+discipline.
+
+The policy of coalitions contradicts internally the regime of the
+revolutionary dictatorship. We have in view, not coalitions with
+bourgeois parties, of which of course there can be no talk, but a
+coalition of Communists with other "Socialist" organizations,
+representing different stages of backwardness and prejudice of the
+laboring masses.
+
+The revolution swiftly reveals all that is unstable, wears out all
+that is artificial; the contradictions glossed over in a coalition are
+swiftly revealed under the pressure of revolutionary events. We have
+had an example of this in Hungary, where the dictatorship of the
+proletariat assumed the political form of the coalition of the
+Communists with disguised Opportunists. The coalition soon broke up.
+The Communist Party paid heavily for the revolutionary instability and
+the political treachery of its companions. It is quite obvious that
+for the Hungarian Communists it would have been more profitable to
+have come to power later, after having afforded to the Left
+Opportunists the possibility of compromising themselves once and for
+all. It is quite another question as to how far this was possible. In
+any case, a coalition with the Opportunists, only temporarily hiding
+the relative weakness of the Hungarian Communists, at the same time
+prevented them from growing stronger at the expense of the
+Opportunists; and brought them to disaster.
+
+The same idea is sufficiently illustrated by the example of the
+Russian revolution. The coalition of the Bolsheviks with the Left
+Socialist Revolutionists, which lasted for several months, ended with
+a bloody conflict. True, the reckoning for the coalition had to be
+paid, not so much by us Communists as by our disloyal companions.
+Apparently, such a coalition, in which we were the stronger side and,
+therefore, were not taking too many risks in the attempt, at one
+definite stage in history, to make use of the extreme Left-wing of the
+bourgeois democracy, tactically must be completely justified. But,
+none the less, the Left S.R. episode quite clearly shows that the
+regime of compromises, agreements, mutual concessions--for that is the
+meaning of the regime of coalition--cannot last long in an epoch in
+which situations alter with extreme rapidity, and in which supreme
+unity in point of view is necessary in order to render possible unity
+of action.
+
+We have more than once been accused of having substituted for the
+dictatorship of the Soviets the dictatorship of our party. Yet it can
+be said with complete justice that the dictatorship of the Soviets
+became possible only by means of the dictatorship of the party. It is
+thanks to the clarity of its theoretical vision and its strong
+revolutionary organization that the party has afforded to the Soviets
+the possibility of becoming transformed from shapeless parliaments of
+labor into the apparatus of the supremacy of labor. In this
+"substitution" of the power of the party for the power of the working
+class there is nothing accidental, and in reality there is no
+substitution at all. The Communists express the fundamental interests
+of the working class. It is quite natural that, in the period in which
+history brings up those interests, in all their magnitude, on to the
+order of the day, the Communists have become the recognized
+representatives of the working class as a whole.
+
+But where is your guarantee, certain wise men ask us, that it is just
+your party that expresses the interests of historical development?
+Destroying or driving underground the other parties, you have thereby
+prevented their political competition with you, and consequently you
+have deprived yourselves of the possibility of testing your line of
+action.
+
+This idea is dictated by a purely liberal conception of the course of
+the revolution. In a period in which all antagonisms assume an open
+character, and the political struggle swiftly passes into a civil war,
+the ruling party has sufficient material standard by which to test its
+line of action, without the possible circulation of Menshevik papers.
+Noske crushes the Communists, but they grow. We have suppressed the
+Mensheviks and the S.R.s--and they have disappeared. This criterion is
+sufficient for us. At all events, our problem is not at every given
+moment statistically to measure the grouping of tendencies; but to
+render victory for our tendency secure. For that tendency is the
+tendency of the revolutionary dictatorship; and in the course of the
+latter, in its internal friction, we must find a sufficient criterion
+for self-examination.
+
+The continuous "independence" of the trade union movement, in the
+period of the proletarian revolution, is just as much an impossibility
+as the policy of coalition. The trade unions become the most important
+economic organs of the proletariat in power. Thereby they fall under
+the leadership of the Communist Party. Not only questions of principle
+in the trade union movement, but serious conflicts of organization
+within it, are decided by the Central Committee of our party.
+
+The Kautskians attack the Soviet Government as the dictatorship of a
+"section" of the working class. "If only," they say, "the dictatorship
+was carried out by the _whole_ class!" It is not easy to understand
+what actually they imagine when they say this. The dictatorship of the
+proletariat, in its very essence, signifies the immediate supremacy of
+the revolutionary vanguard, which relies upon the heavy masses, and,
+where necessary, obliges the backward tail to dress by the head. This
+refers also to the trade unions. After the conquest of power by the
+proletariat, they acquire a compulsory character. They must include
+all industrial workers. The party, on the other hand, as before,
+includes in its ranks only the most class-conscious and devoted; and
+only in a process of careful selection does it widen its ranks. Hence
+follows the guiding role of the Communist minority in the trade
+unions, which answers to the supremacy of the Communist Party in the
+Soviets, and represents the political expression of the dictatorship
+of the proletariat.
+
+The trade unions become the direct organizers of social production.
+They express not only the interests of the industrial workers, but the
+interests of industry itself. During the first period, the old
+currents in trade unionism more than once raised their head, urging
+the unions to haggle with the Soviet State, lay down conditions for
+it, and demand from it guarantees. The further we go, however, the
+more do the unions recognize that they are organs of production of the
+Soviet State, and assume responsibility for its fortunes--not opposing
+themselves to it, but identifying themselves with it. The unions
+become the organizers of labor discipline. They demand from the
+workers intensive labor under the most difficult conditions, to the
+extent that the Labor State is not yet able to alter those conditions.
+
+The unions become the apparatus of revolutionary repression against
+undisciplined, anarchical, parasitic elements in the working class.
+From the old policy of trade unionism, which at a certain stage is
+inseparable from the industrial movement within the framework of
+capitalist society, the unions pass along the whole line on to the new
+path of the policy of revolutionary Communism.
+
+
+THE PEASANT POLICY
+
+The Bolsheviks "hoped," Kautsky thunders, "to overcome the substantial
+peasants in the villages by granting political rights exclusively to
+the poorest peasants. They then again granted representation to the
+substantial peasantry." (Page 216.)
+
+Kautsky enumerates the external "contradictions" of our peasant
+policy, not dreaming to inquire into its general direction, and into
+the internal contradictions visible in the economic and political
+situation of the country.
+
+In the Russian peasantry as it entered the Soviet order there were
+three elements: the poor, living to a considerable extent by the sale
+of their labor-power, and forced to buy additional food for their
+requirements; the middle peasants, whose requirements were covered by
+the products of their farms, and who were able to a limited extent to
+sell their surplus; and the upper layer--_i.e._, the rich peasants,
+the vulture (kulak) class, which systematically bought labor-power and
+sold their agricultural produce on a large scale. It is quite
+unnecessary to point out that these groups are not distinguished by
+definite symptoms or by homogeneousness throughout the country.
+
+Still, on the whole, and generally speaking, the peasant poor
+represented the natural and undeniable allies of the town proletariat,
+whilst the vulture class represented its just as undeniable and
+irreconcilable enemies. The most hesitation was principally to be
+observed amongst the widest, the _middle_ section of the peasantry.
+
+Had not the country been so exhausted, and if the proletariat had had
+the possibility of offering to the peasant masses the necessary
+quantity of commodities and cultural requirements, the adaptation of
+the toiling majority of the peasantry to the new regime would have
+taken place much less painfully. But the economic disorder of the
+country, which was not the result of our land or food policy, but was
+generated by the causes which preceded the appearance of that policy,
+robbed the town for a prolonged period of any possibility of giving
+the village the products of the textile and metal-working industries,
+imported goods, and so on. At the same time, industry could not
+entirely cease drawing from the village all, albeit the smallest
+quantity, of its food resources. The proletariat demanded of the
+peasantry the granting of food credits, economic subsidies in respect
+of values which it is only now about to create. The symbol of those
+future values was the credit symbol, now finally deprived of all
+value. But the peasant mass is not very capable of historical
+detachment. Bound up with the Soviet Government by the abolition of
+landlordism, and seeing in it a guarantee against the restoration of
+Tsarism, the peasantry at the same time not infrequently opposes the
+collection of corn, considering it a bad bargain so long as it does
+not itself receive printed calico, nails, and kerosine.
+
+The Soviet Government naturally strove to impose the chief weight of
+the food tax upon the upper strata of the village. But, in the
+unformed social conditions of the village, the influential peasantry,
+accustomed to lead the middle peasants in its train, found scores of
+methods of passing on the food tax from itself to the wide masses of
+the peasantry, thereby placing them in a position of hostility and
+opposition to the Soviet power. It was necessary to awaken in the
+lower ranks of the peasantry suspicion and hostility towards the
+speculating upper strata. This purpose was served by the Committees of
+Poverty. They were built up of the rank and file, of elements who in
+the last epoch were oppressed, driven into a dark corner, deprived of
+their rights. Of course, in their midst there turned out to be a
+certain number of semi-parasitic elements. This served as the chief
+text for the demagogues amongst the populist "Socialists," whose
+speeches found a grateful echo in the hearts of the village vultures.
+But the mere fact of the transference of power to the village poor had
+an immeasurable revolutionary significance. For the guidance of the
+village semi-proletarians, there were despatched from the towns
+parties from amongst the foremost workers, who accomplished invaluable
+work in the villages. The Committees of Poverty became shock
+battalions against the vulture class. Enjoying the support of the
+State, they thereby obliged the middle section of the peasantry to
+choose, not only between the Soviet power and the power of the
+landlords, but between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the
+semi-proletarian elements of the village on the one hand, and the yoke
+of the rich speculators on the other. By a series of lessons, some of
+which were very severe, the middle peasantry was obliged to become
+convinced that the Soviet regime, which had driven away the landlords
+and bailiffs, in its turn imposes new duties upon the peasantry, and
+demands sacrifices from them. The political education of tens of
+millions of the middle peasantry did not take place as easily and
+smoothly as in the school-room, and it did not give immediate and
+unquestionable results. There were risings of the middle peasants,
+uniting with the speculators, and always in such cases falling under
+the leadership of White Guard landlords; there were abuses committed
+by local agents of the Soviet Government, particularly by those of the
+Committees of Poverty. But the fundamental political end was attained.
+The powerful class of rich peasantry, if it was not finally
+annihilated, proved to be shaken to its foundations, with its
+self-reliance undermined. The middle peasantry, remaining politically
+shapeless, just as it is economically shapeless, began to learn to
+find its representative in the foremost worker, as before it found it
+in the noisy village speculator. Once this fundamental result was
+achieved, the Committees of Poverty, as temporary institutions, as a
+sharp wedge driven into the village masses, had to yield their place
+to the Soviets, in which the village poor are represented side by side
+with the middle peasantry.
+
+The Committees of Poverty existed about six months, from June to
+December, 1918. In their institution, as in their abolition, Kautsky
+sees nothing but the "waverings" of Soviet policy. Yet at the same
+time he himself has not even a suspicion of any practical lessons to
+be drawn. And after all, how should he think of them? Experience such
+as we are acquiring in this respect knows no precedent; and questions
+and problems such as the Soviet Government is now solving in practice
+have no solution in books. What Kautsky calls contradictions in policy
+are, in reality, the _active manoeuvring_ of the proletariat in the
+spongy, undivided, peasant mass. The sailing ship has to manoeuvre
+before the wind; yet no one will see contradictions in the
+manoeuvres which finally bring the ship to harbor.
+
+In questions as to agricultural communes and Soviet farms, there could
+also be found not a few "contradictions," in which, side by side with
+individual mistakes, there are expressed various stages of the
+revolution. What quantity of land shall the Soviet State leave for
+itself in the Ukraine, and what quantity shall it hand over to the
+peasants; what policy shall it lay down for the agricultural communes;
+in what form shall it give them support, so as not to make them the
+nursery for parasitism; in what form is control to be organized over
+them--all these are absolutely new problems of Socialist economic
+construction, which have been settled beforehand neither theoretically
+nor practically, and in the settling of which the general principles
+of our programme have even yet to find their actual application and
+their testing in practice, by means of inevitable temporary deviations
+to right or left.
+
+But even the very fact that the Russian proletariat has found support
+in the peasantry Kautsky turns against us. "This has introduced into
+the Soviet regime an economically reactionary element which was spared
+(!) the Paris Commune, as its dictatorship did not rely on peasant
+Soviets."
+
+As if in reality we could accept the heritage of the feudal and
+bourgeois order with the possibility of excluding from it at will "an
+economically reactionary element"! Nor is this all. Having poisoned
+the Soviet regime by its "reactionary element," the peasantry has
+deprived us of its support. To-day it "hates" the Bolsheviks. All this
+Kautsky knows very certainly from the radios of Clémenceau and the
+squibs of the Mensheviks.
+
+In reality, what is true is that wide masses of the peasantry are
+suffering from the absence of the essential products of industry. But
+it is just as true that every other regime--and there were not a few
+of them, in various parts of Russia, during the last three
+years--proved infinitely more oppressive for the shoulders of the
+peasantry. Neither monarchical nor democratic governments were able to
+increase their stores of manufactured goods. Both of them found
+themselves in need of the peasant's corn and the peasant's horses. To
+carry out their policy, the bourgeois governments--including the
+Kautskian-Menshevik variety--made use of a purely bureaucratic
+apparatus, which reckons with the requirements of the peasant's farm
+to an infinitely less degree than the Soviet apparatus, which consists
+of workers and peasants. As a result, the middle peasant, in spite of
+his waverings, his dissatisfaction, and even his risings, ultimately
+always comes to the conclusion that, however difficult it is for him
+at present under the Bolsheviks, under every other regime it would be
+infinitely more difficult for him. It is quite true that the Commune
+was "spared" peasant support. But in return the Commune was not spared
+annihilation by the peasant armies of Thiers! Whereas our army,
+four-fifths of whom are peasants, is fighting with enthusiasm and with
+success for the Soviet Republic. And this one fact, controverting
+Kautsky and those inspiring him, gives the best possible verdict on
+the peasant policy of the Soviet Government.
+
+
+THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT AND THE EXPERTS
+
+"The Bolsheviks at first thought they could manage without the
+intelligentsia, without the experts," Kautsky narrates to us. (Page
+191.) But then, becoming convinced of the necessity of the
+intelligentsia, they abandoned their severe repressions, and attempted
+to attract them to work by all sorts of measures, incidentally by
+giving them extremely high salaries. "In this way," Kautsky says
+ironically, "the true path, the true method of attracting experts
+consists in first of all giving them a thorough good hiding." ( Page
+192.) Quite so. With all due respect to all philistines, the
+dictatorship of the proletariat does just consist in "giving a hiding"
+to the classes that were previously supreme, before forcing them to
+recognize the new order and to submit to it.
+
+The professional intelligentsia, brought up with a prejudice about the
+omnipotence of the bourgeoisie, long would not, could not, and did not
+believe that the working class is really capable of governing the
+country; that it seized power not by accident; and that the
+dictatorship of the proletariat is an insurmountable fact.
+Consequently, the bourgeois intelligentsia treated its duties to the
+Labor State extremely lightly, even when it entered its service; and
+it considered that to receive money from Wilson, Clémenceau or Mirbach
+for anti-Soviet agitation, or to hand over military secrets and
+technical resources to White Guards and foreign imperialists, is a
+quite natural and obvious course under the regime of the proletariat.
+It became necessary to show it in practice, and to show it severely,
+that the proletariat had not seized power in order to allow such jokes
+to be played off at its expense.
+
+In the severe penalties adopted in the case of the intelligentsia, our
+bourgeois idealist sees the "consequence of a policy which strove to
+attract the educated classes, not by means of persuasion, but by means
+of kicks from before and behind." (Page 193.) In this way, Kautsky
+seriously imagines that it is possible to attract the bourgeois
+intelligentsia to the work of Socialist construction by means of mere
+persuasion--and this in conditions when, in all other countries, there
+is still supreme the bourgeoisie which hesitates at no methods of
+terrifying, flattering, or buying over the Russian intelligentsia and
+making it a weapon for the transformation of Russia into a colony of
+slaves.
+
+Instead of analyzing the course of the struggle, Kautsky, when dealing
+with the intelligentsia, gives once again merely academical recipes.
+It is absolutely false that our party had the idea of managing without
+the intelligentsia, not realizing to the full its importance for the
+economic and cultural work that lay before us. On the contrary. When
+the struggle for the conquest and consolidation of power was in full
+blast, and the majority of the intelligentsia was playing the part of
+a shock battalion of the bourgeoisie, fighting against us openly or
+sabotaging our institutions, the Soviet power fought mercilessly with
+the experts, precisely because it knew their enormous importance from
+the point of view of organization so long as they do not attempt to
+carry on an independent "democratic" policy and execute the orders of
+one of the fundamental classes of society. Only after the opposition
+of the intelligentsia had been broken by a severe struggle did the
+possibility open before us of enlisting the assistance of the experts.
+We immediately entered that path. It proved not as simple as it might
+have seemed at first. The relations which existed under capitalist
+conditions between the working man and the director, the clerk and the
+manager, the soldier and the officer, left behind a very deep class
+distrust of the experts; and that distrust had become still more acute
+during the first period of the civil war, when the intelligentsia did
+its utmost to break the labor revolution by hunger and cold. It was
+not easy to outlive this frame of mind, and to pass from the first
+violent antagonism to peaceful collaboration. The laboring masses had
+gradually to become accustomed to see in the engineer, the
+agricultural expert, the officer, not the oppressor of yesterday but
+the useful worker of to-day--a necessary expert, entirely under the
+orders of the Workers' and Peasants' Government.
+
+We have already said that Kautsky is wrong when he attributes to the
+Soviet Government the desire to replace experts by proletarians. But
+that such a desire was bound to spring up in wide circles of the
+proletariat cannot be denied. A young class which had proved to its
+own satisfaction that it was capable of overcoming the greatest
+obstacles in its path, which had torn to pieces the veil of mystery
+which had hitherto surrounded the power of the propertied classes,
+which had realized that all good things on the earth were not the
+direct gift of heaven--that a revolutionary class was naturally
+inclined, in the person of the less mature of its elements, at first
+to over-estimate its capacity for solving each and every problem,
+without having recourse to the aid of experts educated by the
+bourgeoisie.
+
+It was not merely yesterday that we began the struggle with such
+tendencies, in so far as they assumed a definite character. "To-day,
+when the power of the Soviets has been set on a firm footing," we said
+at the Moscow City Conference on March 28, 1918, "the struggle with
+sabotage must express itself in the form of transforming the saboteurs
+of yesterday into the servants, executive officials, technical guides,
+of the new regime, wherever it requires them. If we do not grapple
+with this, if we do not attract all the forces necessary to us and
+enlist them in the Soviet service, our struggle of yesterday with
+sabotage would thereby be condemned as an absolutely vain and
+fruitless struggle.
+
+"Just as in dead machines, so into those technical experts, engineers,
+doctors, teachers, former officers, there is sunk a certain portion of
+our national capital, which we are obliged to exploit and utilize if
+we want to solve the root problems standing before us.
+
+"Democratization does not at all consist--as every Marxist learns in
+his A B C--in abolishing the meaning of skilled forces, the meaning of
+persons possessing special knowledge, and in replacing them everywhere
+and anywhere by elective boards.
+
+"Elective boards, consisting of the best representatives of the
+working class, but not equipped with the necessary technical
+knowledge, cannot replace one expert who has passed through the
+technical school, and who knows how to carry out the given technical
+work. That flood-tide of the collegiate principle which is at present
+to be observed in all spheres is the quite natural reaction of a
+young, revolutionary, only yesterday oppressed class, which is
+throwing out the one-man principle of its rulers of yesterday--the
+landlords and the generals--and everywhere is appointing its elected
+representatives. This, I say, is quite a natural and, in its origin,
+quite a healthy revolutionary reaction; but it is not the last word in
+the economic constructive work of the proletatarian proletarian class.
+
+"The next step must consist in the self-limitation of the collegiate
+principle, in a healthy and necessary act of self-limitation by the
+working class, which knows where the decisive word can be spoken by
+the elected representatives of the workers themselves, and where it is
+necessary to give way to a technical specialist, who is equipped with
+certain knowledge, on whom a great measure of responsibility must be
+laid, and who must be kept under careful political control. But it is
+necessary to allow the expert freedom to act, freedom to create;
+because no expert, be he ever so little gifted or capable, can work in
+his department when subordinate in his own technical work to a board
+of men who do not know that department. Political, collegiate and
+Soviet control everywhere and anywhere; but for the executive
+functions, we must appoint technical experts, put them in responsible
+positions, and impose responsibility upon them.
+
+"Those who fear this are quite unconsciously adopting an attitude of
+profound internal distrust towards the Soviet regime. Those who think
+that the enlisting of the saboteurs of yesterday in the administration
+of technically expert posts threatens the very foundations of the
+Soviet regime, do not realize that it is not through the work of some
+engineer or of some general of yesterday that the Soviet regime may
+stumble--in the political, in the revolutionary, in the military
+sense, the Soviet regime is unconquerable. But it may stumble through
+its own incapacity to grapple with the problems of creative
+organization. The Soviet regime is bound to draw from the old
+institutions all that was vital and valuable in them, and harness it
+on to the new work. If, comrades, we do not accomplish this, we shall
+not deal successfully with our principal problems; for it would be
+absolutely impossible for us to bring forth from our masses, in the
+shortest possible time, all the necessary experts, and throw aside all
+that was accumulated in the past.
+
+"As a matter of fact, it would be just the same as if we said that all
+the machines which hitherto had served to exploit the workers were now
+to be thrown aside. It would be madness. The enlisting of scientific
+experts is for us just as essential as the administration of the
+resources of production and transport, and all the wealth of the
+country generally. We must, and in addition we must immediately, bring
+under our control all the technical experts we possess, and introduce
+in practice for them the principle of compulsory labor; at the same
+time leaving them a wide margin of activity, and maintaining over them
+careful political control."[7]
+
+          [7] Labor, Discipline, and Order will save the Socialist
+          Soviet Republic (Moscow, 1918). Kautsky knows this pamphlet,
+          as he quotes from it several times. This, however, does not
+          prevent him passing over the passage quoted above, which
+          makes clear the attitude of the Soviet Government to the
+          intelligentsia.
+
+The question of experts was particularly acute, from the very
+beginning, in the War Department. Here, under the pressure of iron
+necessity, it was solved first.
+
+In the sphere of administration of industry and transport, the
+necessary forms of organization are very far from being attained, even
+to this day. We must seek the reason in the fact that during the first
+two years we were obliged to sacrifice the interests of industry and
+transport to the requirements of military defence. The extremely
+changeable course of the civil war, in its turn, threw obstacles in
+the way of the establishment of regular relations with the experts.
+Qualified technicians of industry and transport, doctors, teachers,
+professors, either went away with the retreating armies of Kolchak and
+Denikin, or were compulsorily evacuated by them.
+
+Only now, when the civil war is approaching its conclusion, is the
+intelligentsia in its mass making its peace with the Soviet
+Government, or bowing before it. Economic problems have acquired
+first-class importance. One of the most important amongst them is the
+problem of the scientific organization of production. Before the
+experts there opens a boundless field of activity. They are being
+accorded the independence necessary for creative work. The general
+control of industry on a national scale is concentrated in the hands
+of the Party of the proletariat.
+
+
+THE INTERNAL POLICY OF THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT
+
+"The Bolsheviks," Kautsky mediates, "acquired the force necessary for
+the seizure of political power through the fact that, amongst the
+political parties in Russia, they were the most energetic in their
+demands for peace--peace at any price, a separate peace--without
+interesting themselves as to the influence this would have on the
+general international situation, as to whether this would assist the
+victory and world domination of the German military monarchy, under
+the protection of which they remained for a long time, just like
+Indian or Irish rebels or Italian anarchists." (Page 53.)
+
+Of the reasons for our victory, Kautsky knows only the one that we
+stood for peace. He does not explain the Soviet Government has
+continued to exist now that it has again mobilized a most important
+proportion of the soldiers of the imperial army, in order for two
+years successfully to combat its political enemies.
+
+The watchword of peace undoubtedly played an enormous part in our
+struggle; but precisely because it was directed against the
+_imperialist_ war. The idea of peace was supported most strongly
+of all, not by the tired soldiers, but by the foremost workers, for
+whom it had the import, not for a rest, but of a pitiless struggle
+against the exploiters. It was those same workers who, under the
+watchword of peace, later laid down their lives on the Soviet fronts.
+
+The affirmation that we demanded peace without reckoning on the effect
+it would have on the international situation is a belated echo of
+Cadet and Menshevik slanders. The comparison of us with the
+Germanophile nationalists of India and Ireland seeks its justification
+in the fact that German imperialism did actually _attempt_ to
+make use of us as it did the Indians and the Irish. But the
+chauvinists of France spared no efforts to make use of Liebknecht and
+Luxemburg--even of Kautsky and Bernstein--in their own interests. The
+whole question is, did we allow ourselves to be utilized? Did we, by
+our conduct, give the European workers even the shadow of a ground to
+place us in the same category as German imperialism? It is sufficient
+to remember the course of the Brest negotiations, their breakdown, and
+the German advance of February, 1918, to reveal all the cynicism of
+Kautsky's accusation. In reality, there was no peace for a single day
+between ourselves and German imperialism. On the Ukrainian and
+Caucasian fronts, we, in the measure of our then extremely feeble
+energies, continued to wage war without openly calling it such. We
+were too weak to organize war along the whole Russo-German front. We
+maintained persistently the fiction of peace, utilizing the fact that
+the chief German forces were drawn away to the west. If German
+imperialism did prove sufficiently powerful, in 1917-18, to impose
+upon us the Brest Peace, after all our efforts to tear that noose from
+our necks, one of the principal reasons was the disgraceful behavior
+of the German Social-Democratic Party, of which Kautsky remained an
+integral and essential part. The Brest Peace was pre-determined on
+August 4, 1914. At that moment, Kautsky not only did not declare war
+against German militarism, as he later demanded from the Soviet
+Government, which was in 1918 still powerless from a military point of
+view; Kautsky actually proposed voting for the War Credits, "under
+certain conditions"; and generally behaved in such a way that for
+months it was impossible to discover whether he stood for the War or
+against it. And this political coward, who at the decisive moment gave
+up the principal positions of Socialism, dares to accuse us of having
+found ourselves obliged, at a certain moment, to retreat--not in
+principle, but materially. And why? Because we were betrayed by the
+German Social-Democracy, corrupted by Kautskianism--_i.e._, by
+political prostitution disguised by theories.
+
+We did concern ourselves with the international situation! In reality,
+we had a much more profound criterion by which to judge the
+international situation; and it did not deceive us. Already before the
+February Revolution the Russian Army no longer existed as a fighting
+force. Its final collapse was pre-determined. If the February
+Revolution had not taken place, Tsarism would have come to an
+agreement with the German monarchy. But the February Revolution which
+prevented that finally destroyed the army built on a monarchist basis,
+precisely because it was a revolution. A month sooner or later the
+army was bound to fall to pieces. The military policy of Kerensky was
+the policy of an ostrich. He closed his eyes to the decomposition of
+the army, talked sounding phrases, and uttered verbal threats against
+German imperialism.
+
+In such conditions, we had only one way out: to take our stand on the
+platform of peace, as the inevitable conclusion from the military
+powerlessness of the revolution, and to transform that watchword into
+the weapon of revolutionary influence on all the peoples of Europe.
+That is, instead of, together with Kerensky, peacefully awaiting the
+final military catastrophe--which might bury the revolution in its
+ruins--we proposed to take possession of the watchword of peace and to
+lead after it the proletariat of Europe--and first and foremost the
+workers of Austro-Germany. It was in the light of this view that we
+carried on our peace negotiations with the Central Empires, and it was
+in the light of this that we drew up our Notes to the governments of
+the Entente. We drew out the negotiations as long as we could, in
+order to give the European working masses the possibility of realizing
+the meaning of the Soviet Government and its policy. The January
+strike of 1918 in Germany and Austria showed that our efforts had not
+been in vain. That strike was the first serious premonition of the
+German Revolution. The German Imperialists understood then that it was
+just we who represented for them a deadly danger. This is very
+strikingly shown in Ludendorff's book. True, they could not risk any
+longer coming out against us in an open crusade. But wherever they
+could fight against us secretly deceiving the German workers with the
+help of the German Social-Democracy, they did so; in the Ukraine, on
+the Don, in the Caucasus. In Central Russia, in Moscow, Count Mirbach
+from the very first day of his arrival stood as the centre of
+counter-revolutionary plots against the Soviet Government--just as
+Comrade Yoffe in Berlin was in the closest possible touch with the
+revolution. The Extreme Left group of the German revolutionary
+movement, the party of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, all the
+time went hand in hand with us. The German revolution at once took on
+the form of Soviets, and the German proletariat, in spite of the Brest
+Peace, did not for a moment entertain any doubts as to whether we were
+with Liebknecht or Ludendorff. In his evidence before the Reichstag
+Commission in November, 1919, Ludendorff explained how "the High
+Command demanded the creation of an institution with the object of
+disclosing the connection of revolutionary tendencies in Germany with
+Russia. Yoffe arrived in Berlin, and in various towns there were set
+up Russian consulates. This had the most painful consequences in the
+army and navy." Kautsky, however, has the audacity to write that "if
+matters did come to a German revolution, truly it is not the
+Bolsheviks who are responsible for it." (Page 162.)
+
+Even if we had had the possibility in 1917-18, by means of
+revolutionary abstention, of supporting the old Imperial Army instead
+of hastening its destruction, we should have merely been assisting the
+Entente, and would have covered up by our aid its brigands' peace with
+Germany, Austria, and all the countries of the world generally. With
+such a policy we should at the decisive moment have proved absolutely
+disarmed in the face of the Entente--still more disarmed than Germany
+is to-day. Whereas, thanks to the November Revolution and the Brest
+Peace we are to-day the only country which opposes the Entente rifle
+in hand. By our international policy, we not only did not assist the
+Hohenzollern to assume a position of world domination; on the
+contrary, by our November Revolution we did more than anyone else to
+prepare his overthrow. At the same time, we gained a military
+breathing-space, in the course of which we created a large and strong
+army, the first army of the proletariat in history, with which to-day
+not all the unleashed hounds of the Entente can cope.
+
+The most critical moment in our international situation arose in the
+autumn of 1918, after the destruction of the German armies. In the
+place of two mighty camps, more or less neutralizing each other, there
+stood before us the victorious Entente, at the summit of its world
+power, and there lay broken Germany, whose Junker blackguards would
+have considered it a happiness and an honor to spring at the throat of
+the Russian proletariat for a bone from the kitchen of Clemenceau. We
+proposed peace to the Entente, and were again ready--for we were
+obliged--to sign the most painful conditions. But Clemenceau, in whose
+imperialist rapacity there have remained in their full force all the
+characteristics of lower-middle-class thick-headedness, refused the
+Junkers their bone, and at the same time decided at all costs to
+decorate the Invalides with the scalps of the leaders of the Soviet
+Republic. By this policy Clemenceau did us not a small service. We
+defended ourselves successfully, and held out.
+
+What, then, was the guiding principle of our external policy, once the
+first months of existence of the Soviet Government had made clear the
+considerable vitality as yet of the capitalist governments of Europe?
+Just that which Kautsky accepts to-day uncomprehendingly as an
+accidental result--_to hold out_!
+
+We realized too clearly that the very fact of the existence of the
+Soviet Government is an event of the greatest revolutionary
+importance; and this realization dictated to us our concessions and
+our temporary retirements--not in principle but in practical
+conclusions from a sober estimate of our own forces. We retreated like
+an army which gives up to the enemy a town, and even a fortress, in
+order, having retreated, to concentrate its forces not only for
+defence but for an advance. We retreated like strikers amongst whom
+to-day energies and resources have been exhausted, but who, clenching
+their teeth, are preparing for a new struggle. If we were not filled
+with an unconquerable belief in the world significance of the Soviet
+dictatorship, we should not have accepted the most painful sacrifices
+at Brest-Litovsk. If our faith had proved to be contradicted by the
+actual course of events, the Brest Peace would have gone down to
+history as the futile capitulation of a doomed regime. That is how the
+situation was judged _then_, not only by the Kühlmanns, but also
+by the Kautskies of all countries. But we proved right in our
+estimate, as of our weakness then, so of our strength in the future.
+The existence of the Ebert Republic, with its universal suffrage, its
+parliamentary swindling, its "freedom" of the Press, and its murder of
+labor leaders, is merely a necessary link in the historical chain of
+slavery and scoundrelism. The existence of the Soviet Government is a
+fact of immeasurable revolutionary significance. It was necessary to
+retain it, utilizing the conflict of the capitalist nations, the as
+yet unfinished imperialist war, the self-confident effrontery of the
+Hohenzollern bands, the thick-wittedness of the world-bourgeoisie as
+far as the fundamental questions of the revolution were concerned, the
+antagonism of America and Europe, the complication of relations within
+the Entente. We had to lead our yet unfinished Soviet ship over the
+stormy waves, amid rocks and reefs, completing its building and
+armament en route.
+
+Kautsky has the audacity to repeat the accusation that we did not, at
+the beginning of 1918, hurl ourselves unarmed against our mighty foe.
+Had we done this we would have been crushed.[8] The first great
+attempt of the proletariat to seize power would have suffered defeat.
+The revolutionary wing of the European proletariat would have been
+dealt the severest possible blow. The Entente would have made peace
+with the Hohenzollern over the corpse of the Russian Revolution, and
+the world capitalist reaction would have received a respite for a
+number of years. When Kautsky says that, concluding the Brest Peace,
+we did not think of its influence on the fate of the German
+Revolution, he is uttering a disgraceful slander. We considered the
+question from all sides, and our _sole criterion_ was the interests of
+the international revolution.
+
+          [8] The Vienna Arbeiterzeitung opposes, as is fitting, the
+          wise Russian Communists to the foolish Austrians. "Did not
+          Trotsky," the paper writes, "with a clear view and
+          understanding of possibilities, sign the Brest-Litovsk peace
+          of violence, notwithstanding that it served for the
+          consolidation of German imperialism? The Brest Peace was
+          just as harsh and shameful as is the Versailles Peace. But
+          does this mean that Trotsky had to be rash enough to
+          continue the war against Germany? Would not the fate of the
+          Russian Revolution long ago have been sealed? Trotsky bowed
+          before the unalterable necessity of signing the shameful
+          treaty in anticipation of the German revolution." The honor
+          of having foreseen all the consequences of the Brest Peace
+          belongs to Lenin. But this, of course, alters nothing in the
+          argument of the organ of the Viennese Kautskians.
+
+We came to the conclusion that those interests demanded that the only
+Soviet Government in the world should be preserved. And we proved
+right. Whereas Kautsky awaited our fall, if not with impatience, at
+least with certainty; and on this expected fall built up his whole
+international policy.
+
+The minutes of the session of the Coalition Government of November 19,
+1918, published by the Bauer Ministry, run:--"First, a continuation of
+the discussion as to the relations of Germany and the Soviet Republic.
+Haase advises a policy of procrastination. Kautsky agrees with Haase:
+_decision must be postponed_. _The Soviet Government will not last
+long. It will inevitably fall in the course of a few weeks_...."
+
+In this way, at the time when the situation of the Soviet Government
+was really extremely difficult--for the destruction of German
+militarism had given the Entente, it seemed, the full possibility of
+finishing with us "in the course of a few weeks"--at that moment
+Kautsky not only does not hasten to our aid, and even does not merely
+wash his hands of the whole affair; he participates in active
+treachery against revolutionary Russia. To aid Scheidemann in his role
+of _watch-dog_ of the bourgeoisie, instead of the "programme" role
+assigned to him of its "_grave-digger_," Kautsky himself hastens
+to become the grave-digger of the Soviet Government. But the Soviet
+Government is alive. It will outlive all its grave-diggers.
+
+
+
+
+8
+
+PROBLEMS OF THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR
+
+
+THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT AND INDUSTRY
+
+If, in the first period of the Soviet revolution, the principal
+accusation of the bourgeois world was directed against our savagery
+and blood-thirstiness, later, when that argument, from frequent use,
+had become blunted, and had lost its force, we were made responsible
+chiefly for the economic disorganization of the country. In harmony
+with his present mission, Kautsky methodically translates into the
+language of pseudo-Marxism all the bourgeois charges against the
+Soviet Government of destroying the industrial life of Russia. The
+Bolsheviks began socialization without a plan. They socialized what
+was not ready for socialization. The Russian working class,
+altogether, is not yet prepared for the administration of industry;
+and so on, and so on.
+
+Repeating and combining these accusations, Kautsky, with dull
+obstinacy, hides the real cause for our economic disorganization: the
+imperialist slaughter, the civil war, and the blockade.
+
+Soviet Russia, from the first months of its existence, found itself
+deprived of coal, oil, metal, and cotton. First the Austro-German and
+then the Entente imperialisms, with the assistance of the Russian
+White Guards, tore away from Soviet Russia the Donetz coal and
+metal-working region, the oil districts of the Caucasus, Turkestan
+with its cotton, Ural with its richest deposits of metals, Siberia
+with its bread and meat. The Donetz area had usually supplied our
+industry with 94 per cent. of its coal and 74 per cent. of its crude
+ore. The Ural supplied the remaining 20 per cent. of the ore and 4 per
+cent. of the coal. Both these regions, during the civil war, were cut
+off from us. We were deprived of half a milliard poods of coal
+imported from abroad. Simultaneously, we were left without oil: the
+oilfields, one and all, passed into the hands of our enemies. One
+needs to have a truly brazen forehead to speak, in face of these
+facts, of the destructive influence of "premature," "barbarous," etc.,
+socialization. An industry which is completely deprived of fuel and
+raw materials--whether that industry belongs to a capitalist trust or
+to the Labor State, whether its factories be socialized or not--its
+chimneys will not smoke in either case without coal or oil. Something
+might be learned about this, say, in Austria; and for that matter
+in Germany itself. A weaving factory administered according to the
+best Kautskian methods--if we admit that anything at all can be
+administered by Kautskian methods, except one's own inkstand--will not
+produce prints if it is not supplied with cotton. And we were
+simultaneously deprived both of Turkestan and American cotton. In
+addition, as has been pointed out, we had no fuel.
+
+Of course, the blockade and the civil war came as the result of the
+proletarian revolution in Russia. But it does not at all follow from
+this that the terrible devastation caused by the Anglo-American-French
+blockade and the robber campaigns of Kolchak and Denikin have to be
+put down to the discredit of the Soviet methods of economic
+organization.
+
+The imperialist war that preceded the revolution, with its
+all-devouring material and technical demands, imposed a much greater
+strain on our young industry than on the industry of more powerful
+capitalist countries. Our transport suffered particularly severely.
+The exploitation of the railways increased considerably; the wear and
+tear correspondingly; while repairs were reduced to a strict minimum.
+The inevitable hour of Nemesis was brought nearer by the fuel crisis.
+Our almost simultaneous loss of the Donetz coal, foreign coal, and the
+oil of the Caucasus, obliged us in the sphere of transport to have
+recourse to wood. And, as the supplies of wood fuel were not in the
+least calculated with a view to this, we had to stoke our boilers with
+recently stored raw wood, which has an extremely destructive effect on
+the mechanism of locomotives that are already worn out. We see, in
+consequence, that the chief reasons for the collapse of transport
+preceded November, 1917. But even those reasons which are directly or
+indirectly bound up with the November Revolution fall under the
+heading of political consequences of the revolution; and in no
+circumstances do they affect Socialist economic methods.
+
+The influence of political disturbances in the economic sphere was not
+limited only to questions of transport and fuel. If world industry,
+during the last decade, was more and more becoming a single organism,
+the more directly does this apply to national industry. On the other
+hand, the war and the revolution were mechanically breaking up and
+tearing asunder Russian industry in every direction. The industrial
+ruin of Poland, the Baltic fringe, and later of Petrograd, began under
+Tsarism and continued under Kerensky, embracing ever new and newer
+regions. Endless evacuations simultaneous with the destruction of
+industry, of necessity meant the destruction of transport also. During
+the civil war, with its changing fronts, evacuations assumed a more
+feverish and consequently a still more destructive character. Each
+side temporarily or permanently evacuated this or that industrial
+centre, and took all possible steps to ensure that the most important
+industrial enterprises could not be utilized by the enemy: all
+valuable machines were carried off, or at any rate their most delicate
+parts, together with the technical and best workers. The evacuation
+was followed by a re-evacuation, which not infrequently completed the
+destruction both of the property transferred and of the railways. Some
+most important industrial areas--especially in the Ukraine and in the
+Urals--changed hands several times.
+
+To this it must be added that, at the time when the destruction of
+technical equipment was being accomplished on an unprecedented scale,
+the supply of machines from abroad, which hitherto played a decisive
+part in our industry, had completely ceased.
+
+But not only did the dead elements of production--buildings, machines,
+rails, fuel, and raw material--suffer terrible losses under the
+combined blows of the war and the revolution. Not less, if not more,
+did the chief factor of industry, its living creative force--the
+proletariat--suffer. The proletariat was consolidating the November
+revolution, building and defending the apparatus of Soviet power, and
+carrying on a ceaseless struggle with the White Guards. The skilled
+workers are, as a rule, at the same time the most advanced. The civil
+war tore away many tens of thousands of the best workers for a long
+time from productive labor, swallowing up many thousands of them for
+ever. The Socialist revolution placed the chief burden of its
+sacrifices upon the proletarian vanguard, and consequently on
+industry.
+
+All the attention of the Soviet State has been directed, for the two
+and a half years of its existence, to the problem of military defence.
+The best forces and its principal resources were given to the front.
+
+In any case, the class struggle inflicts blows upon industry. That
+accusation, long before Kautsky, was levelled at it by all the
+philosophers of the social harmony. During simple economic strikes the
+workers consume, and do not produce. Still more powerful, therefore,
+are the blows inflicted upon economic life by the class struggle in
+its severest form--in the form of armed conflicts. But it is quite
+clear that the civil war cannot be classified under the heading of
+Socialist economic methods.
+
+The reasons enumerated above are more than sufficient to explain the
+difficult economic situation of Soviet Russia. There is no fuel, there
+is no metal, there is no cotton, transport is destroyed, technical
+equipment is in disorder, living labor-power is scattered over the
+face of the country, and a high percentage of it has been lost to the
+front--is there any need to seek supplementary reasons in the economic
+Utopianism of the Bolsheviks in order to explain the fall of our
+industry? On the contrary, each of the reasons quoted alone is
+sufficient to evoke the question: how is it possible at all that,
+under such conditions, factories and workshops should continue to
+function?
+
+And yet they do continue principally in the shape of war industry,
+which is at present living at the expense of the rest. The Soviet
+Government was obliged to re-create it, just like the army, out of
+fragments. War industry, set up again under these conditions of
+unprecedented difficulty, has fulfilled and is fulfilling its duty:
+the Red Army is clothed, shod, equipped with its rifle, its machine
+gun, its cannon, its bullet, its shell, its aeroplane, and all else
+that it requires.
+
+As soon as the dawn of peace made its appearance--after the
+destruction of Kolchak, Yudenich, and Denikin--we placed before
+ourselves the problem of economic organization in the fullest possible
+way. And already, in the course of three or four months of intensive
+work in this sphere, it has become clear beyond all possibility of
+doubt that, thanks to its most intimate connection with the popular
+masses, the elasticity of its apparatus, and its own revolutionary
+initiative, the Soviet Government disposes of such resources and
+methods for economic reconstruction as no other government ever had or
+has to-day.
+
+True, before us there arose quite new questions and new difficulties
+in the sphere of the organization of labor. Socialist theory had no
+answers to these questions, and could not have them. We had to find
+the solution in practice, and test it in practice. Kautskianism is a
+whole epoch behind the gigantic economic problems being solved at
+present by the Soviet Government. In the form of Menshevism, it
+constantly throws obstacles in our way, opposing the practical
+measures of our economic reconstruction by bourgeois prejudices and
+bureaucratic-intellectual scepticism.
+
+To introduce the reader to the very essence of the questions of the
+organization of labor, as they stand at present before us, we quote
+below the report of the author of this book at the Third All-Russian
+Congress of Trade Unions. With the object of the fullest possible
+elucidation of the question, the text of the speech is supplemented by
+considerable extracts from the author's reports at the All-Russian
+Congress of Economic Councils and at the Ninth Congress of the
+Communist Party.
+
+
+REPORT ON THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR
+
+Comrades, the internal civil war is coming to an end. On the western
+front, the situation remains undecided. It is possible that the Polish
+bourgeoisie will hurl a challenge at its fate.... But even in this
+case--we do not seek it--the war will not demand of us that
+all-devouring concentration of forces which the simultaneous struggle
+on four fronts imposed upon us. The frightful pressure of the war is
+becoming weaker. Economic requirements and problems are more and more
+coming to the fore. History is bringing us, along the whole line, to
+our fundamental problem--the organization of labor on new social
+foundations. The organization of labor is in its essence the
+organization of the new society: every historical form of society is
+in its foundation a form of organization of labor. While every
+previous form of society was an organization of labor in the interests
+of a minority, which organized its State apparatus for the oppression
+of the overwhelming majority of the workers, we are making the first
+attempt in world history to organize labor in the interests of the
+laboring majority itself. This, however, does not exclude the element
+of compulsion in all its forms, both the most gentle and the extremely
+severe. The element of State compulsion not only does not disappear
+from the historical arena, but on the contrary will still play, for a
+considerable period, an extremely prominent part.
+
+As a general rule, man strives to avoid labor. Love for work is not at
+all an inborn characteristic: it is created by economic pressure and
+social education. One may even say that man is a fairly lazy animal.
+It is on this quality, in reality, that is founded to a considerable
+extent all human progress; because if man did not strive to expend his
+energy economically, did not seek to receive the largest possible
+quantity of products in return for a small quantity of energy, there
+would have been no technical development or social culture. It would
+appear, then, from this point of view that human laziness is a
+progressive force, Old Antonio Labriola, the Italian Marxist, even
+used to picture the man of the future as a "happy and lazy genius." We
+must not, however, draw the conclusion from this that the party and
+the trade unions must propagate this quality in their agitation as a
+moral duty. No, no! We have sufficient of it as it is. The problem
+before the social organization is just to bring "laziness" within a
+definite framework, to discipline it, and to pull mankind together
+with the help of methods and measures invented by mankind itself.
+
+
+COMPULSORY LABOR SERVICE
+
+The key to economic organization is labor-power, skilled, elementarily
+trained, semi-trained, untrained, or unskilled. To work out methods
+for its accurate registration, mobilization, distribution, productive
+application, means practically to solve the problem of economic
+construction. This is a problem for a whole epoch--a gigantic problem.
+Its difficulty is intensified by the fact that we have to reconstruct
+labor on Socialist foundations in conditions of hitherto unknown
+poverty and terrifying misery.
+
+The more our machine equipment is worn out, the more disordered our
+railways grow, the less hope there is for us of receiving machines to
+any significant extent from abroad in the near future, the greater is
+the importance acquired by the question of living labor-power. At
+first sight it would seem that there is plenty of it. But how are we
+to get at it? How are we to apply it? How are we productively to
+organize it? Even with the cleaning of snow drifts from the railway
+tracks, we were brought face to face with very big difficulties. It
+was absolutely impossible to meet those difficulties by means of
+buying labor-power on the market, with the present insignificant
+purchasing power of money, and in the most complete absence of
+manufactured products. Our fuel requirements cannot be satisfied, even
+partially, without a mass application, on a scale hitherto unknown, of
+labor-power to work on wood, fuel, peat, and combustible slate. The
+civil war has played havoc with our railways, our bridges, our
+buildings, our stations. We require at once tens and hundreds of
+thousands of hands to restore order to all this. For production on a
+large scale in our timber, peat, and other enterprises, we require
+housing for our workers, if they be only temporary huts. Hence, again,
+the necessity of devoting a considerable amount of labor-power to
+building work. Many workers are required to organize river navigation;
+and so on, and so forth....
+
+Capitalist industry utilizes auxiliary labor-power on a large scale,
+in the shape of peasants employed on industry for only part of the
+year. The village, throttled by the grip of landlessness, always threw
+a certain surplus of labor-power on to the market. The State obliged
+it to do this by its demand for taxes. The market offered the peasant
+manufactured goods. To-day, we have none of this. The village has
+acquired more land; there is not sufficient agricultural machinery;
+workers are required for the land; industry can at present give
+practically nothing to the village; and the market no longer has an
+attractive influence on labor-power.
+
+Yet labor-power is required--required more than at any time before.
+Not only the worker, but the peasant also, must give to the Soviet
+State his energy, in order to ensure that laboring Russia, and with it
+the laboring masses, should not be crushed. The only way to attract
+the labor-power necessary for our economic problems is to introduce
+_compulsory labor service_.
+
+The very principle of compulsory labor service is for the Communist
+quite unquestionable. "He who works not, neither shall he eat." And as
+all must eat, all are obliged to work. Compulsory labor service is
+sketched in our Constitution and in our Labor Code. But hitherto it
+has always remained a mere principle. Its application has always had
+an accidental, impartial, episodic character. Only now, when along the
+whole line we have reached the question of the economic rebirth of
+the country, have problems of compulsory labor service arisen before
+us in the most concrete way possible. The only solution of economic
+difficulties that is correct from the point of view both of principle
+and of practice is to treat the population of the whole country as the
+reservoir of the necessary labor-power--an almost inexhaustible
+reservoir--and to introduce strict order into the work of its
+registration, mobilization, and utilization.
+
+How are we practically to begin the utilization of labor-power on the
+basis of compulsory military service?
+
+Hitherto only the War Department has had any experience in the sphere
+of the registration, mobilization, formation, and transference from
+one place to another of large masses. These technical methods and
+principles were inherited by our War Department, to a considerable
+extent, from the past.
+
+In the economic sphere there is no such heritage; since in that sphere
+there existed the principle of private property, and labor-power
+entered each factory separately from the market. It is consequently
+natural that we should be obliged, at any rate during the first
+period, to make use of the apparatus of the War Department on a large
+scale for labor mobilizations.
+
+We have set up special organizations for the application of the
+principle of compulsory labor service in the centre and in the
+districts: in the provinces, the counties, and the rural districts, we
+have already compulsory labor committees at work. They rely for the
+most part on the central and local organs of the War Department. Our
+economic centres--the Supreme Economic Council, the People's
+Commissariat for Agriculture, the People's Commissariat for Ways and
+Communications, the People's Commissariat for Food--work out estimates
+of the labor-power they require. The Chief Committee for Compulsory
+Labor Service receives these estimates, co-ordinates them, brings them
+into agreement with the local resources of labor-power, gives
+corresponding directions to its local organs, and through them carries
+out labor mobilizations. Within the boundaries of regions, provinces,
+and counties, the local bodies carry out this work independently, with
+the object of satisfying local economic requirements.
+
+All this organization is at present only in the embryo stage. It is
+still very imperfect. But the course we have adopted is unquestionably
+the right one.
+
+If the organization of the new society can be reduced fundamentally to
+the reorganization of labor, the organization of labor signifies in
+its turn the correct introduction of general labor service. This
+problem is in no way met by measures of a purely departmental and
+administrative character. It touches the very foundations of economic
+life and the social structure. It finds itself in conflict with the
+most powerful psychological habits and prejudices. The introduction of
+compulsory labor service pre-supposes, on the one hand, a colossal
+work of education, and, on the other, the greatest possible care in
+the practical method adopted.
+
+The utilization of labor-power must be to the last degree economical.
+In our labor mobilizations we have to reckon with the economic and
+social conditions of every region, and with the requirements of the
+principal occupation of the local population--_i.e._, of agriculture.
+We have, if possible, to make use of the previous auxiliary
+occupations and part-time industries of the local population. We have
+to see that the transference of mobilized labor-power should take
+place over the shortest possible distances--_i.e._, to the nearest
+sectors of the labor front. We must see that the number of workers
+mobilized correspond to the breadth of our economic problem. We must
+see that the workers mobilized be supplied in good time with the
+necessary implements of production, and with food. We must see that at
+their head be placed experienced and business-like instructors. We
+must see that the workers mobilized become convinced on the spot that
+their labor-power is being made use of cautiously and economically and
+is not being expended haphazard. Wherever it is possible, direct
+mobilization must be replaced by the labor task--_i.e._, by the
+imposition on the rural district of an obligation to supply, for
+example, in such a time such a number of cubic sazhens of wood, or to
+bring up by carting to such a station so many poods of cast-iron, etc.
+In this sphere, it is essential to study experience as it accumulates
+with particular care, to allow a great measure of elasticity to the
+economic apparatus, to show more attention to local interests and
+social peculiarities of tradition. In a word, we have to complete,
+ameliorate, perfect, the system, methods, and organs for the
+mobilization of labor-power. But at the same time it is necessary once
+for all to make clear to ourselves that the principle itself of
+compulsory labor service has just so radically and permanently
+replaced the principle of free hiring as the socialization of the
+means of production has replaced capitalist property.
+
+
+THE MILITARIZATION OF LABOR
+
+The introduction of compulsory labor service is unthinkable without
+the application, to a greater or less degree, of the methods of
+militarization of labor. This term at once brings us into the region
+of the greatest possible superstitions and outcries from the
+opposition.
+
+To understand what militarization of labor in the Workers' State
+means, and what its methods are, one has to make clear to oneself in
+what way the army itself was militarized--for, as we all know, in its
+first days the army did not at all possess the necessary "military"
+qualities. During these two years we mobilized for the Red Army nearly
+as many soldiers as there are members in our trade unions. But the
+members of the trade unions are workers, while in the army the workers
+constitute about 15 per cent., the remainder being a peasant mass.
+And, none the less, we can have no doubt that the true builder and
+"militarizer" of the Red Army has been the foremost worker, pushed
+forward by the party and the trade union organization. Whenever the
+situation at the front was difficult, whenever the recently-mobilized
+peasant mass did not display sufficient stability, we turned on the
+one hand to the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and on the
+other to the All-Russian Council of Trade Unions. From both these
+sources the foremost workers were sent to the front, and there built
+the Red Army after their own likeness and image--educating, hardening,
+and militarizing the peasant mass.
+
+This fact must be kept in mind to-day with all possible clearness
+because it throws the best possible light on the meaning of
+militarization in the workers' and peasants' State. The militarization
+of labor has more than once been put forward as a watchword and
+realized in separate branches of economic life in the bourgeois
+countries, both in the West and in Russia under Tsarism. But our
+militarization is distinguished from those experiments by its aims and
+methods, just as much as the class-conscious proletariat organized for
+emancipation is distinguished from the class-conscious bourgeoisie
+organized for exploitation.
+
+From the confusion, semi-unconscious and semi-deliberate, of two
+different historical forms of militarization--the proletarian or
+Socialist and the bourgeois--there spring the greater part of the
+prejudices, mistakes, protests, and outcries on this subject. It is on
+such a confusion of meanings that the whole position of the
+Mensheviks, our Russian Kautskies, is founded, as it was expressed in
+their theoretical resolution moved at the present Congress of Trade
+Unions.
+
+The Mensheviks attacked not only the militarization of labor, but
+general labor service also. They reject these methods as "compulsory."
+They preach that general labor service means a low productivity of
+labor, while militarization means senseless scattering of labor-power.
+
+"Compulsory labor always is unproductive labor,"--such is the exact
+phrase in the Menshevik resolution. This affirmation brings us right
+up to the very essence of the question. For, as we see, the question
+is not at all whether it is wise or unwise to proclaim this or that
+factory militarized, or whether it is helpful or otherwise to give the
+military revolutionary tribunal powers to punish corrupt workers who
+steal materials and instruments, so precious to us, or who sabotage
+their work. No, the Mensheviks have gone much further into the
+question. Affirming that compulsory labor is _always_ unproductive,
+they thereby attempt to cut the ground from under the feet of our
+economic reconstruction in the present transitional epoch. For it is
+beyond question that to step from bourgeois anarchy to Socialist
+economy without a revolutionary dictatorship, and without compulsory
+forms of economic organization, is impossible.
+
+In the first paragraph of the Menshevik resolution we are told that we
+are living in the period of transition from the capitalist method of
+production to the Socialist. What does this mean? And, first of all,
+whence does this come? Since what time has this been admitted by our
+Kautskians? They accused us--and this formed the foundation of our
+differences--of Socialist Utopianism; they declared--and this
+constituted the essence of their political teaching--that there can be
+no talk about the transition to Socialism in our epoch, and that our
+revolution is a bourgeois revolution, and that we Communists are only
+destroying capitalist economy, and that we are not leading the country
+forward but are throwing it back. This was the root difference--the
+most profound, the most irreconcilable--from which all the others
+followed. Now the Mensheviks tell us incidentally, in the introductory
+paragraph of their resolution, as something that does not require
+proof, that we are in the period of transition from capitalism to
+Socialism. And this quite unexpected admission, which, one might
+think, is extremely like a complete capitulation, is made the more
+lightly and carelessly that, as the whole resolution shows, it imposes
+no revolutionary obligations on the Mensheviks. They remain entirely
+captive to the bourgeois ideology. After recognizing that we are on
+the road to Socialism, the Mensheviks with all the greater ferocity
+attack those methods without which, in the harsh and difficult
+conditions of the present day, the transition to Socialism cannot be
+accomplished.
+
+Compulsory labor, we are told, is always unproductive. We ask what
+does compulsory labor mean here, that is, to what kind of labor is it
+opposed? Obviously, to free labor. What are we to understand, in that
+case, by free labor? That phrase was formulated by the progressive
+philosophers of the bourgeoisie, in the struggle against unfree,
+_i.e._, against the serf labor of peasants, and against the
+standardized and regulated labor of the craft guilds. Free labor meant
+labor which might be "freely" bought in the market; freedom was
+reduced to a legal fiction, on the basis of freely-hired slavery. We
+know of no other form of free labor in history. Let the very few
+representatives of the Mensheviks at this Congress explain to us what
+they mean by free, non-compulsory labor, if not the market of
+labor-power.
+
+History has known slave labor. History has known serf labor. History
+has known the regulated labor of the mediæval craft guilds. Throughout
+the world there now prevails hired labor, which the yellow journalists
+of all countries oppose, as the highest possible form of liberty, to
+Soviet "slavery." We, on the other hand, oppose capitalist slavery by
+socially-regulated labor on the basis of an economic plan, obligatory
+for the whole people and consequently compulsory for each worker in
+the country. Without this we cannot even dream of a transition to
+Socialism. The element of material, physical, compulsion may be
+greater or less; that depends on many conditions--on the degree of
+wealth or poverty of the country, on the heritage of the past, on the
+general level of culture, on the condition of transport, on the
+administrative apparatus, etc., etc. But obligation, and,
+consequently, compulsion, are essential conditions in order to bind
+down the bourgeois anarchy, to secure socialization of the means of
+production and labor, and to reconstruct economic life on the basis of
+a single plan.
+
+For the Liberal, freedom in the long run means the market. Can or
+cannot the capitalist buy labor-power at a moderate price--that is for
+him the sole measure of the freedom of labor. That measure is false,
+not only in relation to the future but also in connection with the
+past.
+
+It would be absurd to imagine that, during the time of bondage-right,
+work was carried entirely under the stick of physical compulsion, as
+if an overseer stood with a whip behind the back of every peasant.
+Mediæval forms of economic life grew up out of definite conditions of
+production, and created definite forms of social life, with which the
+peasant grew accustomed, and which he at certain periods considered
+just, or at any rate unalterable. Whenever he, under the influence of
+a change in material conditions, displayed hostility, the State
+descended upon him with its material force, thereby displaying the
+compulsory character of the organization of labor.
+
+The foundations of the militarization of labor are those forms of
+State compulsion without which the replacement of capitalist economy
+by the Socialist will for ever remain an empty sound. Why do we speak
+of _militarization_? Of course, this is only an analogy--but an
+analogy very rich in content. No social organization except the army
+has ever considered itself justified in subordinating citizens to
+itself in such a measure, and to control them by its will on all sides
+to such a degree, as the State of the proletarian dictatorship
+considers itself justified in doing, and does. Only the army--just
+because in its way it used to decide questions of the life or death of
+nations, States, and ruling classes--was endowed with powers of
+demanding from each and all complete submission to its problems, aims,
+regulations, and orders. And it achieved this to the greater degree,
+the more the problems of military organization coincided with the
+requirements of social development.
+
+The question of the life or death of Soviet Russia is at present being
+settled on the labor front; our economic, and together with them our
+professional and productive organizations, have the right to demand
+from their members all that devotion, discipline, and executive
+thoroughness, which hitherto only the army required.
+
+On the other hand, the relation of the capitalist to the worker, is
+not at all founded merely on the "free" contract, but includes the
+very powerful elements of State regulation and material compulsion.
+
+The competition of capitalist with capitalist imparted a certain very
+limited reality to the fiction of freedom of labor; but this
+competition, reduced to a minimum by trusts and syndicates, we have
+finally eliminated by destroying private property in the means of
+production. The transition to Socialism, verbally acknowledged by the
+Mensheviks, means the transition from anarchical distribution of
+labor-power--by means of the game of buying and selling, the movement
+of market prices and wages--to systematic distribution of the workers
+by the economic organizations of the county, the province, and the
+whole country. Such a form of planned distribution pre-supposes the
+subordination of those distributed to the economic plan of the State.
+And this is the essence of _compulsory labor service_, which
+inevitably enters into the programme of the Socialist organization of
+labor, as its fundamental element.
+
+If organized economic life is unthinkable without compulsory labor
+service, the latter is not to be realized without the abolition of
+fiction of the freedom of labor, and without the substitution for it
+of the obligatory principle, which is supplemented by real compulsion.
+
+That free labor is more productive than compulsory labor is quite true
+when it refers to the period of transition from feudal society to
+bourgeois society. But one needs to be a Liberal or--at the present
+day--a Kautskian, to make that truth permanent, and to transfer its
+application to the period of transition from the bourgeois to the
+Socialist order. If it were true that compulsory labor is unproductive
+always and under every condition, as the Menshevik resolution says,
+all our constructive work would be doomed to failure. For we can have
+no way to Socialism except by the authoritative regulation of the
+economic forces and resources of the country, and the centralized
+distribution of labor-power in harmony with the general State plan.
+The Labor State considers itself empowered to send every worker to the
+place where his work is necessary. And not one serious Socialist will
+begin to deny to the Labor State the right to lay its hand upon the
+worker who refuses to execute his labor duty. But the whole point is
+that the Menshevik path of transition to "Socialism" is a milky way,
+without the bread monopoly, without the abolition of the market,
+without the revolutionary dictatorship, and without the militarization
+of labor.
+
+Without general labor service, without the right to order and demand
+fulfilment of orders, the trade unions will be transformed into a mere
+form without a reality; for the young Socialist State requires trade
+unions, not for a struggle for better conditions of labor--that is the
+task of the social and State organizations as a whole--but to organize
+the working class for the ends of production, to educate, discipline,
+distribute, group, retain certain categories and certain workers at
+their posts for fixed periods--in a word, hand in hand with the State
+to exercise their authority in order to lead the workers into the
+framework of a single economic plan. To defend, under such conditions,
+the "freedom" of labor means to defend fruitless, helpless, absolutely
+unregulated searches for better conditions, unsystematic, chaotic
+changes from factory to factory, in a hungry country, in conditions of
+terrible disorganization of the transport and food apparatus.... What
+except the complete collapse of the working-class and complete
+economic anarchy could be the result of the stupid attempt to
+reconcile bourgeois freedom of labor with proletarian socialization of
+the means of production?
+
+Consequently, comrades, militarization of labor, in the root sense
+indicated by me, is not the invention of individual politicians or an
+invention of our War Department, but represents the inevitable method
+of organization and disciplining of labor-power during the period of
+transition from capitalism to Socialism. And if the compulsory
+distribution of labor-power, its brief or prolonged retention at
+particular industries and factories, its regulation within the
+framework of the general State economic plan--if these forms of
+compulsion lead always and everywhere, as the Menshevik resolution
+states, to the lowering of productivity, then you can erect a monument
+over the grave of Socialism. For we cannot build Socialism on
+decreased production. Every social organization is in its foundation
+an organization of labor, and if our new organization of labor leads
+to a lowering of its productivity, it thereby most fatally leads to
+the destruction of the Socialist society we are building, whichever
+way we twist and turn, whatever measures of salvation we invent.
+
+That is why I stated at the very beginning that the Menshevik argument
+against militarization leads us to the root question of general labor
+service and its influence on the productivity of labor. It is true
+that compulsory labor is always unproductive? We have to reply that
+that is the most pitiful and worthless Liberal prejudice. The whole
+question is: who applies the principle of compulsion, over whom, and
+for what purpose? What State, what class, in what conditions, by what
+methods? Even the serf organization was in certain conditions a step
+forward, and led to the increase in the productivity of labor.
+Production has grown extremely under capitalism, that is, in the epoch
+of the free buying and selling of labor-power on the market. But free
+labor, together with the whole of capitalism, entered the stage of
+imperialism and blew itself up in the imperialist war. The whole
+economic life of the world entered a period of bloody anarchy,
+monstrous perturbations, the impoverishment, dying out, and
+destruction of masses of the people. Can we, under such conditions,
+talk about the productivity of free labor, when the fruits of that
+labor are destroyed ten times more quickly than they are created? The
+imperialistic war, and that which followed it, displayed the
+impossibility of society existing any longer on the foundation of free
+labor. Or perhaps someone possesses the secret of how to separate free
+labor from the delirium tremens of imperialism, that is, of turning
+back the clock of social development half a century or a century?
+
+If it were to turn out that the planned, and consequently compulsory,
+organization of labor which is arising to replace imperialism led to
+the lowering of economic life, it would mean the destruction of all
+our culture, and a retrograde movement of humanity back to barbarism
+and savagery.
+
+Happily, not only for Soviet Russia but for the whole of humanity, the
+philosophy of the low productivity of compulsory labor--"everywhere
+and under all conditions"--is only a belated echo of ancient Liberal
+melodies. The productivity of labor is the total productive meaning of
+the most complex combination of social conditions, and is not in the
+least measured or pre-determined by the legal form of labor.
+
+The whole of human history is the history of the organization and
+education of collective man for labor, with the object of attaining a
+higher level of productivity. Man, as I have already permitted myself
+to point out, is lazy; that is, he instinctively strives to receive
+the largest possible quantity of products for the least possible
+expenditure of energy. Without such a striving, there would have been
+no economic development. The growth of civilization is measured by the
+productivity of human labor, and each new form of social relations
+must pass through a test on such lines.
+
+"Free," that is, freely-hired labor, did not appear all at once upon
+the world, with all the attributes of productivity. It acquired a high
+level of productivity only gradually, as a result of a prolonged
+application of methods of labor organization and labor education. Into
+that education there entered the most varying methods and practices,
+which in addition changed from one epoch to another. First of all the
+bourgeoisie drove the peasant from the village to the high road with
+its club, having preliminarily robbed him of his land, and when he
+would not work in the factory it branded his forehead with red-hot
+irons, hung him, sent him to the gallows; and in the long run it
+taught the tramp who had been shaken out of his village to stand at
+the lathe in the factory. At this stage, as we see, "free" labor is
+little different as yet from convict labor, both in its material
+conditions and in its legal aspect.
+
+At different times the bourgeoisie combined the red-hot irons of
+repression in different proportions with methods of moral influence,
+and, first of all, the teaching of the priest. As early as the
+sixteenth century, it reformed the old religion of Catholicism, which
+defended the feudal order, and adapted for itself a new religion in
+the form of the Reformation, which combined the free soul with free
+trade and free labor. It found for itself new priests, who became the
+spiritual shop-assistants, pious counter-jumpers of the bourgeoisie.
+The school, the press, the market-place, and parliament were adapted
+by the bourgeoisie for the moral fashioning of the working-class.
+Different forms of wages--day-wages, piece wages, contract and
+collective bargaining--all these are merely changing methods in the
+hands of the bourgeoisie for the labor mobilization of the
+proletariat. To this there are added all sorts of forms for
+encouraging labor and exciting ambition. Finally, the bourgeoisie
+learned how to gain possession even of the trade unions--_i.e._,
+the organizations of the working class itself; and it made use of them
+on a large scale, particularly in Great Britain, to discipline the
+workers. It domesticated the leaders, and with their help inoculated
+the workers with the fiction of the necessity for peaceful organic
+labor, for a faultless attitude to their duties, and for a strict
+execution of the laws of the bourgeois State. The crown of all this
+work is Taylorism, in which the elements of the scientific
+organization of the process of production are combined with the most
+concentrated methods of the system of sweating.
+
+From all that has been said above, it is clear that the productivity
+of freely-hired labor is not something that appeared all at once,
+perfected, presented by history on a salver. No, it was the result of
+a long and stubborn policy of repression, education, organization, and
+encouragement, applied by the bourgeoisie in its relations with the
+working class. Step by step it learned to squeeze out of the workers
+ever more and more of the products of labor; and one of the most
+powerful weapons in its hand turned out to be the proclamation of free
+hiring as the sole free, normal, healthy, productive, and saving form
+of labor.
+
+A legal form of labor which would of its own virtue guarantee its
+productivity has not been known in history, and cannot be known. The
+legal superstructure of labor corresponds to the relations and current
+ideas of the epoch. The productivity of labor is developed, on the
+basis of the development of technical forces, by labor education, by
+the gradual adaptation of the workers to the changed methods of
+production and the new form of social relations.
+
+The creation of Socialist society means the organization of the
+workers on new foundations, their adaptation to those foundations, and
+their labor re-education, with the one unchanging end of the increase
+in the productivity of labor. The working class, under the leadership
+of its vanguard, must itself re-educate itself on the foundations of
+Socialism. Whoever has not understood this is ignorant of the A B C of
+Socialist construction.
+
+What methods have we, then, for the re-education of the workers?
+Infinitely wider than the bourgeoisie has--and, in addition, honest,
+direct, open methods, infected neither by hypocrisy nor by lies. The
+bourgeoisie had to have recourse to deception, representing its labor
+as free, when in reality it was not merely socially-imposed, but
+actually slave labor. For it was the labor of the majority in the
+interests of the minority. We, on the other hand, organize labor in
+the interests of the workers themselves, and therefore we can have no
+motives for hiding or masking the socially compulsory character of our
+labor organization. We need the fairy stories neither of the priests,
+nor of the Liberals, nor of the Kautskians. We say directly and openly
+to the masses that they can save, rebuild, and bring to a flourishing
+condition a Socialist country only by means of hard work,
+unquestioning discipline and exactness in execution on the part of
+every worker.
+
+The chief of our resources is moral influence--propaganda not only in
+word but in deed. General labor service has an obligatory character;
+but this does not mean at all that it represents violence done to the
+working class. If compulsory labor came up against the opposition of
+the majority of the workers it would turn out a broken reed, and with
+it the whole of the Soviet order. The militarization of labor, when
+the workers are opposed to it, is the State slavery of Arakcheyev. The
+militarization of labor by the will of the workers themselves is the
+Socialist dictatorship. That compulsory labor service and the
+militarization of labor do not force the will of the workers, as
+"free" labor used to do, is best shown by the flourishing,
+unprecedented in the history of humanity, of labor voluntarism in the
+form of "Subbotniks" (Communist Saturdays). Such a phenomenon there
+never was before, anywhere or at any time. By their own voluntary
+labor, freely given--once a week and oftener--the workers clearly
+demonstrate not only their readiness to bear the yoke of "compulsory"
+labor but their eagerness to give the State besides that a certain
+quantity of additional labor. The "Subbotniks" are not only a splendid
+demonstration of Communist solidarity, but also the best possible
+guarantee for the successful introduction of general labor service.
+Such truly Communist tendencies must be shown up in their true light,
+extended, and developed with the help of propaganda.
+
+The chief spiritual weapon of the bourgeoisie is religion; ours is the
+open explanation to the masses of the exact position of things, the
+extension of scientific and technical knowledge, and the initiation of
+the masses into the general economic plan of the State, on the basis
+of which there must be brought to bear all the labor-power at the
+disposal of the Soviet regime.
+
+Political economy provided us with the principal substance of our
+agitation in the period we have just left: the capitalist social order
+was a riddle, and we explained that riddle to the masses. To-day,
+social riddles are explained to the masses by the very mechanism of
+the Soviet order, which draws the masses into all branches of
+administration. Political economy will more and more pass into the
+realms of history. There move forward into the foreground the sciences
+which study nature and the methods of subordinating it to man.
+
+The trade unions must organize scientific and technical educational
+work on the widest possible scale, so that every worker in his own
+branch of industry should find the impulses for theoretical work of
+the brain, while the latter should again return him to labor,
+perfecting it and making him more productive. The press as a whole
+must fall into line with the economic problems of the country--not in
+that sense alone in which this is being done at present--_i.e._,
+not in the sense of a mere general agitation in favor of a revival of
+labor--but in the sense of the discussion and the weighing of concrete
+economic problems and plans, ways and means of their solution, and,
+most important of all, the testing and criticism of results already
+achieved. The newspapers must from day to day follow the production of
+the most important factories and other enterprises, registering their
+successes and failures encouraging some and pillorying others....
+
+Russian capitalism, in consequence of its lateness, its lack of
+independence, and its resulting parasitic features, has had much less
+time than European capitalism technically to educate the laboring
+masses, to train and discipline them for production. That problem is
+now in its entirety imposed upon the industrial organizations of the
+proletariat. A good engineer, a good mechanic, and a good carpenter,
+must have in the Soviet Republic the same publicity and fame as
+hitherto was enjoyed by prominent agitators, revolutionary fighters,
+and, in the most recent period, the most courageous and capable
+commanders and commissaries. Greater and lesser leaders of technical
+development must occupy the central position in the public eye. Bad
+workers must be made ashamed of doing their work badly.
+
+We still retain, and for a long time will retain, the system of wages.
+The further we go, the more will its importance become simply to
+guarantee to all members of society all the necessaries of life; and
+thereby it will cease to be a system of wages. But at present we are
+not sufficiently rich for this. Our main problem is to raise the
+quantity of products turned out, and to this problem all the remainder
+must be subordinated. In the present difficult period the system of
+wages is for us, first and foremost, not a method for guaranteeing the
+personal existence of any separate worker, but a method of estimating
+what that individual worker brings by his labor to the Labor Republic.
+
+Consequently, wages, in the form both of money and of goods, must be
+brought into the closest possible touch with the productivity of
+individual labor. Under capitalism, the system of piece-work and of
+grading, the application of the Taylor system, etc., have as their
+object to increase the exploitation of the workers by the
+squeezing-out of surplus value. Under Socialist production,
+piece-work, bonuses, etc., have as their problem to increase the
+volume of social product, and consequently to raise the general
+well-being. Those workers who do more for the general interest than
+others receive the right to a greater quantity of the social product
+than the lazy, the careless, and the disorganizers.
+
+Finally, when it rewards some, the Labor State cannot but punish
+others--those who are clearly infringing labor solidarity, undermining
+the common work, and seriously impairing the Socialist renaissance of
+the country. Repression for the attainment of economic ends is a
+necessary weapon of the Socialist dictatorship.
+
+All the measures enumerated above--and together with them a number of
+others--must assist the development of rivalry in the sphere of
+production. Without this we shall never rise above the average, which
+is a very unsatisfactory level. At the bottom of rivalry lies the
+vital instinct--the struggle for existence--which in the bourgeois
+order assumes the character of competition. Rivalry will not disappear
+even in the developed Socialist society; but with the growing
+guarantee of the necessary requirements of life rivalry will acquire
+an ever less selfish and purely idealist character. It will express
+itself in a striving to perform the greatest possible service for
+one's village, county, town, or the whole of society, and to receive
+in return renown, gratitude, sympathy, or, finally, just internal
+satisfaction from the consciousness of work well done. But in the
+difficult period of transition, in conditions of the extreme shortage
+of material goods, and the as yet insufficiently developed state of
+social solidarity, rivalry must inevitably be to a greater or less
+degree bound up with a striving to guarantee for oneself one's own
+requirements.
+
+This, comrades, is the sum of resources at the disposal of the Labor
+State in order to raise the productivity of labor. As we see, there is
+no ready-made solution here. We shall find it written in no book. For
+there could not be such a book. We are now only beginning, together
+with you, to write that book in the sweat and the blood of the
+workers. We say: working men and women, you have crossed to the path
+of regulated labor. Only along that road will you build the Socialist
+society. Before you there lies a problem which no one will settle for
+you: the problem of increasing production on new social foundations.
+Unless you solve that problem, you will perish. If you solve it, you
+will raise humanity by a whole head.
+
+
+LABOR ARMIES
+
+The question of the application of armies to labor purposes, which has
+acquired amongst us an enormous importance from the point of view of
+principle, was approached by us by the path of practice, not at all on
+the foundations of theoretical consideration. On certain borders of
+Soviet Russia, circumstances had arisen which had left considerable
+military forces free for an indefinite period. To transfer them to
+other active fronts, especially in the winter, was difficult in
+consequence of the disorder of railway transport. Such, for example,
+proved the position of the Third Army, distributed over the provinces
+of the Ural and the Ural area. The leading workers of that army,
+understanding that as yet it could not be demobilized, themselves
+raised the question of its transference to labor work. They sent to
+the centre a more or less worked-out draft decree for a labor army.
+
+The problem was novel and difficult. Would the Red soldiers work?
+Would their work be sufficiently productive? Would it pay for itself?
+In this connection there were doubts even in our own ranks. Needless
+to say, the Mensheviks struck up a chorus of opposition. The same
+Abramovich, at the Congress of Economic Councils called in January or
+the beginning of February--that is to say, when the whole affair was
+still in draft stage--foretold that we should suffer an inevitable
+failure, for the whole undertaking was senseless, an Arakcheyev
+Utopia, etc., etc. We considered the matter otherwise. Of course the
+difficulties were great, but they were not distinguishable in
+principle from many other difficulties of Soviet constructive work.
+
+Let us consider in fact what was the organism of the Third Army. Taken
+all in all, one rifle division and one cavalry division--a total of
+fifteen regiments--and, in addition, special units. The remaining
+military formations had already been transformed to other armies and
+fronts. But the apparatus of military administration had remained
+untouched as yet, and we considered it probable that in the spring we
+should have to transfer it along the Volga to the Caucasus front,
+against Denikin, if by that time he were not finally broken. On the
+whole, in the Third Army there remained about 120,000 Red soldiers in
+administrative posts, institutions, military units, hospitals, etc. In
+this general mass, mainly peasant in its composition, there were
+reckoned about 16,000 Communists and members of the organization of
+sympathizers--to a considerable extent workers of the Ural. In this
+way, in its composition and structure, the Third Army represented a
+peasant mass bound together into a military organization under the
+leadership of the foremost workers. In the army there worked a
+considerable number of military specialists, who carried out important
+military functions while remaining under the general control of the
+Communists. If we consider the Third Army from this general point of
+view, we shall see that it represents in miniature the whole of Soviet
+Russia. Whether we take the Red Army as a whole, or the organization
+of the Soviet regime in the county, province, or the whole Republic,
+including the economic organs, we shall find everywhere the same
+scheme of organization: millions of peasants drawn into new forms of
+political, economic, and social life by the organized workers, who
+occupy a controlling position in all spheres of Soviet construction.
+To posts requiring special knowledge, we send experts of the bourgeois
+school. They are given the necessary independence, but control over
+their work remains in the hands of the working class, in the person of
+its Communist Party. The introduction of general labor service is
+again only conceivable for us as the mobilization of mainly peasant
+labor-power under the guidance of the most advanced workers. In this
+way there were not, and could not, be any obstacles in principle in
+the way of application of the army to labor. In other words, the
+opposition in principle to labor armies, on the part of those same
+Mensheviks, was in reality opposition to "compulsory" labor generally,
+and consequently against general labor service and against Soviet
+methods of economic reconstruction as a whole. This opposition did not
+trouble us a great deal.
+
+Naturally, the military apparatus as such is not adapted directly to
+the process of labor. But we had no illusions about that. Control had
+to remain in the hands of the appropriate economic organs; the army
+supplied the necessary labor-power in the form of organized, compact
+units, suitable in the mass for the execution of the simplest
+homogeneous types of work: the freeing of roads from snow, the storage
+of fuel, building work, organization of cartage, etc., etc.
+
+To-day we have already had considerable experience in the work of the
+labor application of the army, and can give not merely a preliminary
+or hypothetical estimate. What are the conclusions to be drawn from
+that experience? The Mensheviks have hastened to draw them. The same
+Abramovich, again, announced at the Miners' Congress that we had
+become bankrupt, that the labor armies represent parasitic formations,
+in which there are 100 officials for every ten workers. Is this true?
+No. This is the irresponsible and malignant criticism of men who stand
+on one side, do not know the facts, collect only fragments and
+rubbish, and are concerned in any way and every way either to declare
+our bankruptcy or to prophecy it. In reality, the labor armies have
+not only not gone bankrupt, but, on the contrary, have had important
+successes, have displayed their fidelity, are developing and are
+becoming stronger and stronger. Just those prophets have gone bankrupt
+who foretold that nothing would come of the whole plan, that nobody
+would begin to work, and that the Red soldiers would not go to the
+labor front but would simply scatter to their homes.
+
+These criticisms were dictated by a philistine scepticism, lack of
+faith in the masses, lack of faith in bold initiative, and
+organization. But did we not hear exactly the same criticism, at
+bottom, when we had recourse to extensive mobilizations for military
+problems? Then too we were frightened, we were terrified by stories of
+mass desertion, which was absolutely inevitable, it was alleged, after
+the imperialist war. Naturally, desertion there was, but considered by
+the test of experience it proved not at all on such a mass scale as
+was foretold; it did not destroy the army; the bond of morale and
+organization--Communist voluntarism and State compulsion
+combined--allowed us to carry out mobilizations of millions to carry
+through numerous formations and redistributions, and to solve the most
+difficult military problems. In the long run, the army was victorious.
+In relation to labor problems, on the foundation of our military
+experience, we awaited the same results; and we were not mistaken. The
+Red soldiers did not scatter when they were transformed from military
+to labor service, as the sceptics prophesied. Thanks to our
+splendidly-organized agitation, the transference itself took place
+amidst great enthusiasm. True, a certain portion of the soldiers tried
+to leave the army, but this always happens when a large military
+formation is transferred from one front to another, or is sent from
+the rear to the front--in general when it is shaken up--and when
+potential desertion becomes active. But immediately the political
+sections, the press, the organs of struggle with desertion, etc.,
+entered into their rights; and to-day the percentage of deserters from
+our labor armies is in no way higher than in our armies on active
+service.
+
+The statement that the armies, in view of their internal structure,
+can produce only a small percentage of workers, is true only to a
+certain extent. As far as the Third Army is concerned, I have already
+pointed out that it retained its complete apparatus of administration
+side by side with an extremely insignificant number of military units.
+While we--owing to military and not economic considerations--retained
+untouched the staff of the army and its administrative apparatus, the
+percentage of workers produced by the army was actually extremely low.
+From the general number of 120,000 Red soldiers, 21% proved to be
+employed in administrative and economic work; 16% were engaged in
+daily detail work (guards, etc.) in connection with the large number
+of army institutions and stores; the number of sick, mainly typhus
+cases, together with the medico-sanitary personnel, was about 13%;
+about 25% were not available for various reasons (detachment, leave,
+absence without leave, etc.). In this way, the total personnel
+available for work constitutes no more than 23%; this is the maximum
+of what can be drawn for labor from the given army. Actually, at
+first, there worked only about 14%, mainly drawn from the two
+divisions, rifle and cavalry, which still remained with the army.
+
+But as soon as it was clear that Denikin had been crushed, and that we
+should not have to send the Third Army down the Volga in the spring to
+assist the forces on the Caucasus front, we immediately entered upon
+the disbanding of the clumsy army apparatus and a more regular
+adaptation of the army institutions to problems of labor. Although
+this work is not yet complete, it has already had time to give some
+very significant results. At the present moment (March, 1920), the
+former Third Army gives about 38% of its total composition as workers.
+As for the military units of the Ural military area working side by
+side with it, they already provide 49% of their number as workers.
+This result is not so bad, if we compare it with the amount of work
+done in factories and workshops, amongst which in the case of many
+quite recently, in the case of some even to-day, absence from work for
+legal and illegal reasons reached 50% and over.[9] To this one must
+add that workers in factories and workshops are not infrequently
+assisted by the adult members of their family, while the Red soldiers
+have no auxiliary force but themselves.
+
+          [9] Since that time this percentage has been considerably
+          lowered (June, 1920).
+
+If we take the case of the 19-year-olds, who have been mobilized in
+the Ural with the help of the military apparatus--principally for wood
+fuel work--we shall find that, out of their general number of over
+30,000, over 75% attend work. This is already a very great step
+forward. It shows that, using the military apparatus for mobilization
+and formation, we can introduce such alterations in the construction
+of purely labor units as guarantee an enormous increase in the
+percentage of those who participate directly in the material process
+of production.
+
+Finally, in connection with the productivity of military labor, we can
+also now judge on the basis of experience. During the first days, the
+productivity of labor in the principal departments of work, in spite
+of the great moral enthusiasm, was in reality very low, and might seem
+completely discouraging when one reads the first labor communiqués.
+Thus, for the preparation of a cubic sazhen of wood, at first, one had
+to reckon thirteen to fifteen labor days; whereas the standard--true,
+rarely attained at the present day--is reckoned at three days. One
+must add, in addition, that artistes in this sphere are capable, under
+favorable conditions, of producing one cubic sazhen per day per man.
+What happened in reality? The military units were quartered far from
+the forest to be felled. In many cases it was necessary to march to
+and from work 6 to 8 versts, which swallowed up a considerable portion
+of the working day. There were not sufficient axes and saws on the
+spot. Many Red soldiers, born in the plains, did not know the forests,
+had never felled trees, had never chopped or sawed them up. The
+provincial and county Timber Committees were very far from knowing at
+first how to use the military units, how to direct them where they
+were required, how to equip them as they should be equipped. It is not
+wonderful that all this had as its result an extremely low level of
+productivity. But after the most crying defects in organization were
+eliminated, results were achieved that were much more satisfactory.
+Thus, according to the most recent data, in that same First Labor
+Army, four and a half working days are now devoted to one sazhen of
+wood, which is not so far from the present standard. What is most
+comforting, however, is the fact that the productivity of labor
+systematically increases, in the measure of the improvement of its
+conditions.
+
+While as to what can be achieved in this respect, we have a brief but
+very rich experience in the Moscow Engineer Regiment. The Chief Board
+of Military Engineers, which controlled this experiment, began with
+fixing the standard of production as three working days for a cubic
+sazhen of wood. This standard soon proved to be surpassed. In January
+there were spent on a cubic sazhen of wood two and one-third working
+days; in February, 2.1; in March, 1.5; which represents an exclusively
+high level of productivity. This result was achieved by moral
+influence, by the exact registration of the individual work of each
+man, by the awakening of labor pride, by the distribution of bonuses
+to the workers who produced more than the average result--or, to speak
+in the language of the trade unions, by a sliding scale adaptable to
+all individual changes in the productivity of labor. This experiment,
+carried out almost under laboratory conditions, clearly indicates the
+path along which we have to go in future.
+
+At present we have functioning a series of labor armies--the First,
+the Petrograd, the Ukrainian, the Caucasian, the South Volga, the
+Reserve. The latter, as is known, assisted considerably to raise the
+traffic capacity of the Kazan-Ekaterinburg Railway; and, wherever the
+experiment of the adaptation of military units for labor problems was
+carried out with any intelligence at all, the results showed that this
+method is unquestionably live and correct.
+
+The prejudice concerning the inevitably parasitic nature of military
+organization--under each and every condition--proves to be shattered.
+The Soviet Army reproduces within itself the tendencies of the Soviet
+social order. We must not think in the petrifying terms of the last
+epoch: "militarism," "military organization," "the unproductiveness of
+compulsory labor." We must approach the phenomena of the new epoch
+without any prejudices, and with eyes wide open; and we must remember
+that Saturday exists for man, and not vice versa; that all forms of
+organization, including the military, are only weapons in the hands of
+the working class in power, which has both the right and the
+possibility of adapting, altering, refashioning, those weapons, until
+it has achieved the requisite result.
+
+
+THE SINGLE ECONOMIC PLAN
+
+The widest possible application of the principle of general labor
+service, together with measures for the militarization of labor, can
+play a decisive part only in case they are applied on the basis of a
+single economic plan covering the whole country and all branches of
+productive activity. This plan must be drawn up for a number of years,
+for the whole epoch that lies before us. It is naturally broken up
+into separate periods or stages, corresponding to the inevitable
+stages in the economic rebirth of the country. We shall have to begin
+with the most simple and at the same time most fundamental problems.
+
+We have first of all to afford the working class the very possibility
+of living--though it be in the most difficult conditions--and thereby
+to preserve our industrial centres and save the towns. This is the
+point of departure. If we do not wish to melt the town into
+agriculture, and transform the whole country into a peasant State, we
+must support our transport, even at the minimum level, and secure
+bread for the towns, fuel and raw materials for industry, fodder for
+the cattle. Without this we shall not make one step forward.
+Consequently, the first part of the plan comprises the improvement of
+transport, or, in any case, the prevention of its further
+deterioration and the preparation of the most necessary supplies of
+food, raw materials, and fuel. The whole of the next period will be in
+its entirety filled with the concentration and straining of
+labor-power to solve these root problems; and only in this way shall
+we lay the foundations for all that is to come. It was such a problem,
+incidentally, that we put before our labor armies. Whether the first
+or the following periods will be measured by months or by years, it is
+fruitless at present to guess. This depends on many reasons, beginning
+with the international situation and ending with the degree of
+single-mindedness and steadfastness of the working class.
+
+The second period is the period of machine-building in the interests
+of transport and the storage of raw material and fuel. Here the core
+is in the locomotive.
+
+At the present time the repairing of locomotives is carried on in too
+haphazard a fashion, swallowing up energies and resources beyond all
+measure. We must reorganize the repairing of our rolling-stock, on the
+basis of the mass production of spare parts. To-day, when the whole
+network of the railways and the factories is in the hands of one
+master, the Labor State, we can and must fix single types of
+locomotives and trucks for the whole country, standardize their
+constituent parts, draw all the necessary factories into the work of
+the mass production of spare parts, reduce repairing to the simple
+replacing of worn-out parts by new, and thereby make it possible to
+build new locomotives on a mass scale out of spare parts.
+
+Now that the sources of fuel and raw material are again open to us, we
+must concentrate our exclusive attention on the building of
+locomotives.
+
+The third period will be one of machine-building in the interests of
+the production of articles of primary necessity.
+
+Finally, the fourth period, reposing on the conquests of the first
+three, will allow us to begin the production of articles of personal
+or secondary significance on the widest possible scale.
+
+This plan has great significance, not only as a general guide for the
+practical work of our economic organs, but also as a line along which
+propaganda amongst the laboring masses in connection with our economic
+problems is to proceed. Our labor mobilization will not enter into
+real life, will not take root, if we do not excite the living interest
+of all that is honest, class-conscious, and inspired in the working
+class. We must explain to the masses the whole truth as to our
+situation and as to our views for the future; we must tell them openly
+that our economic plan, with the maximum of exertion on the part of
+the workers, will neither to-morrow nor the day after give us a land
+flowing with milk and honey: for during the first period our chief
+work will consist in preparing the conditions for the production of
+the means of production. Only after we have secured, though on the
+smallest possible scale, the possibility of rebuilding the means of
+transport and production, shall we pass on to the production of
+articles for general consumption. In this way the fruit of their
+labor, which is the direct object of the workers, in the shape of
+articles for personal consumption, will arrive only in the last, the
+fourth, stage of our economic plan; and only then shall we have a
+serious improvement in our life. The masses, who for a prolonged
+period will still bear all the weight of labor and of privation, must
+realize to the full the inevitable internal logic of this economic
+plan if they are to prove capable of carrying it out.
+
+The sequence of the four economic periods outlined above must not be
+understood too absolutely. We do not, of course, propose to bring
+completely to a standstill our textile industry: we could not do this
+for military considerations alone. But in order that our attention and
+our forces should not be distracted under the pressure of requirements
+and needs crying to us from all quarters, it is essential to make use
+of the economic plan as the fundamental criterion, and separate the
+important and the fundamental from the auxiliary and secondary.
+Needless to say, under no circumstances are we striving for a narrow
+"national" Communism: the raising of the blockade, and the European
+revolution all the more, would introduce the most radical alterations
+in our economic plan, cutting down the stages of its development and
+bringing them together. But we do not know when these events will take
+place; and we must act in such a way that we can hold out and become
+stronger under the most unfavorable circumstances--that is to say, in
+face of the slowest conceivable development of the European and the
+world revolution. In case we are able actually to establish trading
+relations with the capitalist countries, we shall again be guided by
+the economic plan sketched above. We shall exchange part of our raw
+material for locomotives or for necessary machines, but under no
+circumstances for clothing, boots, or colonial products: our first
+item is not articles of consumption, but the implements of transport
+and production.
+
+We should be short-sighted sceptics, and the most typical bourgeois
+curmudgeons, if we imagined that the rebirth of our economic life will
+take the form of a gradual transition from the present economic
+collapse to the conditions that preceded that collapse, _i.e._,
+that we shall reascend the same steps by which we descended, and only
+after a certain, quite prolonged, period will be able to raise our
+Socialist economy to the level at which it stood on the eve of the
+imperialist war. Such a conception would not only be not consoling,
+but absolutely incorrect. Economic collapse, which destroyed and broke
+up in its path an incalculable quantity of values, also destroyed a
+great deal that was poor and rotten, that was absolutely senseless;
+and thereby it cleared the path for a new method of reconstruction,
+corresponding to that technical equipment which world economy now
+possesses.
+
+If Russian capitalism developed not from stage to stage, but leaping
+over a series of stages, and instituted American factories in the
+midst of primitive steppes, the more is such a forced march possible
+for Socialist economy. After we have conquered our terrible misery,
+have accumulated small supplies of raw material and food, and have
+improved our transport, we shall be able to leap over a whole series
+of intermediate stages, benefiting by the fact that we are not bound
+by the chains of private property, and that therefore we are able to
+subordinate all undertakings and all the elements of economic life to
+a single State plan.
+
+Thus, for example, we shall undoubtedly be able to enter the period of
+electrification, in all the chief branches of industry and in the
+sphere of personal consumption, without passing through "the age of
+steam." The programme of electrification is already drawn up in a
+series of logically consequent stages, corresponding to the
+fundamental stages of the general economic plan.
+
+A new war may slow down the realization of our economic intentions;
+our energy and persistence can and must hasten the process of our
+economic rebirth. But, whatever be the rate at which economic events
+unfold themselves in the future, it is clear that at the foundation of
+all our work--labor mobilization, militarization of labor, Subbotniks,
+and other forms of Communist labor voluntarism--there must lie the
+_single economic plan_. And the period that is upon us requires from
+us the complete concentration of all our energies on the first
+elementary problems: food, fuel, raw material, transport. _Not to
+allow our attention to be distracted, not to dissipate our forces, not
+to waste our energies._ Such is the sole road to salvation.
+
+
+COLLEGIATE AND ONE-MAN MANAGEMENT
+
+The Mensheviks attempt to dwell on yet another question which seems
+favorable to their desire once again to ally themselves with the
+working class. This is the question of the method of administration of
+industrial enterprises--the question of the collegiate (board) or the
+one-man principle. We are told that the transference of factories to
+single directors instead of to a board is a crime against the working
+class and the Socialist revolution. It is remarkable that the most
+zealous defenders of the Socialist revolution against the principle of
+one-man management are those same Mensheviks who quite recently still
+considered that the idea of a Socialist revolution was an insult to
+history and a crime against the working class.
+
+The first who must plead guilty in the face of the Socialist
+revolution is our Party Congress, which expressed itself in favor of
+the principle of one-man management in the administration of industry,
+and above all in the lowest grades, in the factories and plants. It
+would be the greatest possible mistake, however, to consider this
+decision as a blow to the independence of the working class. The
+independence of the workers is determined and measured not by whether
+three workers or one are placed at the head of a factory, but by
+factors and phenomena of a such more profound character--the
+construction of the economic organs with the active assistance of the
+trade unions; the building up of all Soviet organs by means of the
+Soviet congresses, representing tens of millions of workers; the
+attraction into the work of administration, or control of
+administration, of those who are administered. It is in such things
+that the independence of the working class can be expressed. And if
+the working class, on the foundation of its existence, comes through
+its congresses, Soviet party and trade union, to the conclusion that
+it is better to place one person at the head of a factory, and not a
+board, it is making a decision dictated by the independence of the
+working class. It may be correct or incorrect from the point of view
+of the technique of administration, but it is not imposed upon the
+proletariat, it is dictated by its own will and pleasure. It would
+consequently be a most crying error to confuse the question as to the
+supremacy of the proletariat with the question of boards of workers at
+the head of factories. The dictatorship of the proletariat is
+expressed in the abolition of private property in the means of
+production, in the supremacy over the whole Soviet mechanism of the
+collective will of the workers, and not at all in the form in which
+individual economic enterprises are administered.
+
+Here it is necessary to reply to another accusation directed against
+the defenders of the one-man principle. Our opponents say: "This is
+the attempt of the Soviet militarists to transfer their experience in
+the military sphere to the sphere of economics. Possibly in the army
+the one-man principle is satisfactory, but it does not suit economical
+work." Such a criticism is incorrect in every way. It is untrue that
+in the army we began with the one-man principle: even now we are far
+from having completely adopted it. It is also untrue that in defence
+of one-man forms of administration of our economic enterprises with
+the attraction of experts, we took our stand only on the foundation of
+our military experience. In reality, in this question we took our
+stand, and continue to do so on purely Marxist views of the
+revolutionary problems and creative duties of the proletariat when it
+has taken power into its own hands. The necessity of making use of
+technical knowledge and methods accumulated in the past, the necessity
+of attracting experts and of making use of them on a wide scale, in
+such a way that our technique should go not backwards but
+forwards--all this was understood and recognized by us, not only from
+the very beginning of the revolution, but even long before October. I
+consider that if the civil war had not plundered our economic organs
+of all that was strongest, most independent, most endowed with
+initiative, we should undoubtedly have entered the path of one-man
+management in the sphere of economic administration much sooner, and
+much less painfully.
+
+Some comrades look on the apparatus of industrial administration first
+and foremost as on a school. This is, of course, absolutely erroneous.
+The task of administration is to administer. If a man desires and is
+able to learn administration, let him go to school, to the special
+courses of instruction: let him go as an assistant, watching and
+acquiring experience: but a man who is appointed to control a factory
+is not going to school, but to a responsible post of economic
+administration. And, even if we look at this question in the limited,
+and therefore incorrect light of a "school," I will say that when the
+one-man principle prevails the school is ten times better: because
+just as you cannot replace one good worker by three immature workers,
+similarly, having placed a board of three immature workers in a
+responsible post, you deprive them of the possibility of realizing
+their own defects. Each looks to the others when decisions are being
+made, and blames the others when success is not forthcoming.
+
+That this is not a question of principle for the opponents of the
+one-man principle is shown best of all by their not demanding the
+collegiate principle for the actual workshops, jobs, and pits. They
+even say with indignation that only a madman can demand that a board
+of three or five should manage a workshop. There must be one manager,
+and one only. Why? If collegiate administration is a "school," why do
+we not require an elementary school? Why should we not introduce
+boards into the workshops? And, if the collegiate principle is not a
+sacred gospel for the workshops, why is it compulsory for the
+factories?
+
+Abramovich said here that, as we have few experts--thanks to the
+Bolsheviks, he repeats after Kautsky--we shall replace them by boards
+of workers. That is nonsense. No board of persons who do not know the
+given business can replace one man who knows it. A board of lawyers
+will not replace one switchman. A board of patients will not replace
+the doctor. The very idea is incorrect. A board in itself does not
+give knowledge to the ignorant. It can only hide the ignorance of the
+ignorant. If a person is appointed to a responsible administrative
+post, he is under the watch, not only of others but of himself, and
+sees clearly what he knows and what he does not know. But there is
+nothing worse than a board of ignorant, badly-prepared workers
+appointed to a purely practical post, demanding expert knowledge. The
+members of the board are in a state of perpetual panic and mutual
+dissatisfaction, and by their helplessness introduce hesitation and
+chaos into all their work. The working class is very deeply interested
+in raising its capacity for administration, that is, in being
+educated; but this is attained in the sphere of industry by the
+periodical report of the administrative body of a factory before the
+whole factory, and the discussion of the economic plan for the year or
+for the current month. All the workers who display serious interest in
+the work of industrial organization are registered by the directors of
+the undertaking, or by special commissions; are taken through
+appropriate courses closely bound up with the practical work of the
+factory itself; and are then appointed, first to less responsible, and
+then to more responsible posts. In such a way we shall embrace many
+thousands, and, in the future, tens of thousands. But the question of
+"threes" and "fives" interests, not the laboring masses, but the more
+backward, weaker, less fitted for independent work, section of the
+Soviet labor bureaucracy. The foremost, intelligent, determined
+administrator naturally strives to take the factory into his hands as
+a whole, and to show both to himself and to others that he can carry
+out his work. While if that administrator is a weakling, who does not
+stand very steadily on his feet, he attempts to associate another with
+himself, for in the company of another his own weakness will be
+unnoticed. In such a collegiate principle there is a very dangerous
+foundation--the extinction of personal responsibility. If a worker is
+capable but not experienced, he naturally requires a guide: under his
+control he will learn, and to-morrow we shall appoint him the foreman
+of a little factory. That is the way by which he will go forward. In
+an accidental board, in which the strength and the weakness of each
+are not clear, the feeling of responsibility inevitably disappears.
+
+Our resolution speaks of a systematic _approach_ to the one-man
+principle--naturally, not by one stroke of the pen. Variants and
+combinations are possible here. Where the worker can manage alone, let
+us put him in charge of the factory and give him an expert as an
+assistant. Where there is a good expert, let us put him in charge and
+give him as assistants two or three of the workers. Finally, where a
+"board" has in practice shown its capacity for work, let us preserve
+it. This is the sole serious attitude to take up, and only in such a
+way shall we reach the correct organization of production.
+
+There is another consideration of a social and educational character
+which seems to me most important. Our guiding layer of the working
+class is too thin. That layer which knew underground work, which long
+carried on the revolutionary struggle, which was abroad, which read
+much in prisons and in exile, which had political experience and a
+broad outlook, is the most precious section of the working class. Then
+there is a younger generation which has consciously been making the
+revolution, beginning with 1917. This is a very valuable section of
+the working class. Wherever we cast our eye--on Soviet construction,
+on the trade unions, on the front of the civil war--everywhere we find
+the principal part being played by this upper layer of the
+proletariat. The chief work of the Soviet Government during these two
+and a half years consisted in manoeuvring and throwing the foremost
+section of the workers from one front to another. The deeper layers of
+the working class, which emerged from the peasant mass, are
+revolutionarily inclined, but are still too poor in initiative. The
+disease of our Russian peasant is the herd instinct, the absence of
+personality: in other words, the same quality that used to be extolled
+by our reactionary Populists, and that Leo Tolstoy extolled in the
+character of Platon Karatayev: the peasant melting into his village
+community, subjecting himself to the land. It is quite clear that
+Socialist economy is founded not on Platon Karatayev, but on the
+thinking worker endowed with initiative. That personal initiative it
+is necessary to develop in the worker. The personal basis under the
+bourgeoisie meant selfish individualism and competition. The personal
+basis under the working class is in contradiction neither to
+solidarity nor to brotherly co-operation. Socialist solidarity can
+rely neither on absence of personality nor on the herd instinct. And
+it is just absence of personality that is frequently hidden behind the
+collegiate principle.
+
+In the working class there are many forces, gifts, and talents. They
+must be brought out and displayed in rivalry. The one-man principle in
+the administrative and technical sphere assists this. That is why it
+is higher and more fruitful than the collegiate principle.
+
+
+CONCLUSION OF THE REPORT
+
+Comrades, the arguments of the Menshevik orators, particularly of
+Abramovich, reflect first of all their complete detachment from life
+and its problems. An observer stands on the bank of a river which he
+has to swim over, and deliberates on the qualities of the water and on
+the strength of the current. He has to swim over: that is his task!
+But our Kautskian stands first on one foot and then on the other. "We
+do not deny," he says, "the necessity of swimming over, but at the
+same time, as realists, we see the danger--and not only one, but
+several: the current is swift, there are submerged stones, people are
+tired, etc., etc. But when they tell you that we deny the very
+necessity of swimming over, that is not true--no, not under any
+circumstances. Twenty-three years ago we did not deny the necessity of
+swimming over...."
+
+And on this is built all, from beginning to end. First, say the
+Mensheviks, we do not deny, and never did deny, the necessity of
+self-defence: consequently we do not repudiate the army. Secondly, we
+do not repudiate in principle general labor service. But, after all,
+where is there anyone in the world, with the exception of small
+religious sects, who denies self-defence "in principle"! Nevertheless,
+the matter does not move one step forward as a result of your abstract
+admission. When it came to a real struggle, and to the creation of a
+real army against the real enemies of the working class, what did you
+do then? You opposed, you sabotaged--while not repudiating
+self-defence in principle. You said and wrote in your papers: "Down
+with the civil war!" at the time when we were surrounded by White
+Guards, and the knife was at our throat. Now you, approving our
+victorious self-defence after the event, transfer your critical gaze
+to new problems, and attempt to teach us. "In general, we do not
+repudiate the principle of general labor service," you say, "but ...
+without legal compulsion." Yet in these very words there is a
+monstrous internal contradiction! The idea of "obligatory service"
+itself includes the element of compulsion. A man is _obliged_, he
+is bound to do something. If he does not do it, obviously he will
+suffer compulsion, a penalty. Here we approach the question of what
+penalty. Abramovich says: "Economic pressure, yes; but not legal
+compulsion." Comrade Holtzman, the representative of the Metal
+Workers' Union, excellently demonstrated all the scholasticism of this
+idea. Even under the capitalism, that is to say under the regime of
+"free" labor, economic pressure is inseparable from legal compulsion.
+Still more so now.
+
+In my report I attempted to explain that the adaptation of the workers
+on new social foundations to new forms of labor, and the attainment of
+a higher level of productivity of labor, are possible only by means of
+the simultaneous application of various methods--economic interest,
+legal compulsion, the influence of an internally co-ordinated economic
+organization, the power of repression, and, first and last, moral
+influence, agitation, propaganda, and the general raising of the
+cultural level.
+
+Only by the combination of all these methods can we attain a high
+level of Socialist economy.
+
+If even under capitalism economic interest is inevitably combined with
+legal compulsion, behind which stands the material force of the State,
+in the Soviet State--that is, the State of transition to Socialism--we
+can draw no water-tight compartment at all between economic and legal
+compulsion. All our most important industries are in the hands of the
+State. When we say to the turner Ivanov, "You are bound at once to
+work at the Sormovo factory; if you refuse, you will not receive your
+ration," what are we to call it? Economic pressure or legal
+compulsion? He cannot go to another factory, for all factories are in
+the hands of the State, which will not allow such a change.
+Consequently, economic pressure melts here into the pressure of State
+compulsion. Abramovich apparently would like us, as regulators of the
+distribution of labor-power, to make use only of such means as the
+raising of wages, bonuses, etc., in order to attract the necessary
+workers to our most important factories. Apparently that comprises all
+his thoughts on the subject. But if we put the question in this way,
+every serious worker in the trade union movement will understand it is
+pure utopia. We cannot hope for a free influx of labor-power from the
+market, for to achieve this the State would need to have in its hands
+sufficiently extensive "reserves of manoeuvre," in the form of food,
+housing, and transport, _i.e._, precisely those conditions which
+we have yet only to create. Without systematically-organized
+transference of labor-power on a mass scale, according to the demands
+of the economic organization, we shall achieve nothing. Here the
+moment of compulsion arises before us in all its force of economic
+necessity. I read you a telegram from Ekaterinburg dealing with the
+work of the First Labor Army. It says that there have passed through
+the Ural Committee for Labor Service over 4,000 workers. Whence have
+they appeared? Mainly from the former Third Army. They were not
+allowed to go to their homes, but were sent where they were required.
+From the army they were handed over to the Committee for Labor
+Service, which distributed them according to their categories and sent
+them to the factories. This, from the Liberal point of view, is
+"violence" to the freedom of the individual. Yet an overwhelming
+majority of the workers went willingly to the labor front, as hitherto
+to the military, realizing that the common interest demanded this.
+Part went against their will. These were compelled.
+
+Naturally, it is quite clear that the State must, by means of the
+bonus system, give the better workers better conditions of existence.
+But this not only does not exclude, but on the contrary pre-supposes,
+that the State and the trade unions--without which the Soviet State
+will not build up industry--acquire new rights of some kind over the
+worker. The worker does not merely bargain with the Soviet State: no,
+he is subordinated to the Soviet State, under its orders in every
+direction--for it is _his_ State.
+
+"If," Abramovich says, "we were simply told that it is a question of
+industrial discipline, there would be nothing to quarrel about; but
+why introduce militarization?" Of course, to a considerable extent,
+the question is one of the discipline of the trade unions; but of the
+new discipline of new, _Productional_, trade unions. We live in a
+Soviet country, where the working class is in power--a fact which our
+Kautskians do not understand. When the Menshevik Rubtzov said that
+there remained only the fragment of the trade union movement in my
+report, there was a certain amount of truth in it. Of the trade
+unions, as he understands them--that is to say, trade unions of the
+old craft type--there in reality has remained very little; but the
+industrial productional organization of the working class, in the
+conditions of Soviet Russia, has the very greatest tasks before it.
+What tasks? Of course, not the tasks involved in a struggle with the
+State, in the name of the interests of labor; but tasks involved in
+the construction, side by side with the State, of Socialist economy.
+Such a form of union is in principle a new organization, which is
+distinct, not only from the trade unions, but also from the
+revolutionary industrial unions in bourgeois society, just as the
+supremacy of the proletariat is distinct from the supremacy of the
+bourgeoisie. The productional union of the ruling working class no
+longer has the problems, the methods, the discipline, of the union for
+struggle of an oppressed class. All our workers are _obliged_ to
+enter the unions. The Mensheviks are against this. This is quite
+comprehensible, because in reality they are against the
+_dictatorship of the proletariat_. It is to this, in the long
+run, that the whole question is reduced. The Kautskians are against
+the dictatorship of the proletariat, and are thereby against all its
+consequences. Both economic and political compulsion are only forms of
+the expression of the dictatorship of the working class in two closely
+connected regions. True, Abramovich demonstrated to us most learnedly
+that under Socialism there will be no compulsion, that the principle
+of compulsion contradicts Socialism, that under Socialism we shall be
+moved by the feeling of duty, the habit of working, the attractiveness
+of labor, etc., etc. This is unquestionable. Only this unquestionable
+truth must be a little extended. In point of fact, under Socialism
+there will not exist the apparatus of compulsion itself, namely, the
+State: for it will have melted away entirely into a producing and
+consuming commune. None the less, the road to Socialism lies through a
+period of the highest possible intensification of the principle of the
+State. And you and I are just passing through that period. Just as a
+lamp, before going out, shoots up in a brilliant flame, so the State,
+before disappearing, assumes the form of the dictatorship of the
+proletariat, _i.e._, the most ruthless form of State, which
+embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively in every direction.
+Now just that insignificant little fact--that historical step of the
+State dictatorship--Abramovich, and in his person the whole of
+Menshevism, did not notice; and consequently, he has fallen over it.
+
+No organization except the army has ever controlled man with such
+severe compulsion as does the State organization of the working class
+in the most difficult period of transition. It is just for this reason
+that we speak of the militarization of labor. The fate of the
+Mensheviks is to drag along at the tail of events, and to recognize
+those parts of the revolutionary programme which have already had time
+to lose all practical significance. To-day the Mensheviks, albeit with
+reservations, do not deny the lawfulness of stern measures with the
+White Guards and with deserters from the Red Army: they have been
+forced to recognize this after their own lamentable experiments with
+"democracy." They have to all appearances understood--very late in the
+day--that, when one is face to face with the counter-revolutionary
+bands, one cannot live by phrases about the great truth that under
+Socialism we shall need no Red Terror. But in the economic sphere, the
+Mensheviks still attempt to refer us to our sons, and particularly to
+our grandsons. None the less, we have to rebuild our economic life
+to-day, without waiting, under circumstances of a very painful
+heritage from bourgeois society and a yet unfinished civil war.
+
+Menshevism, like all Kautskianism generally, is drowned in democratic
+analogies and Socialist abstractions. Again and again it has been
+shown that for it there do not exist the problems of the transitional
+period, _i.e._, of the proletarian revolution. Hence the lifelessness
+of its criticism, its advice, its plans, and its recipes. The question
+is not what is going to happen in twenty or thirty years' time--at
+that date, of course, things will be much better--but of how to-day to
+struggle out of our ruins, how immediately to distribute labor-power,
+how to-day to raise the productivity of labor, and how, in particular,
+to act in the case of those 4,000 skilled workers whom we combed out
+of the army in the Ural. To dismiss them to the four corners of the
+earth, saying "seek for better conditions where you can find them,
+comrades"? No, we could not act in this way. We put them into military
+echelons, and distributed them amongst the factories and the works.
+
+"Wherein, then, does your Socialism," Abramovich cries, "differ from
+Egyptian slavery? It was just by similar methods that the Pharaohs
+built the pyramids, forcing the masses to labor." Truly an inimitable
+analogy for a "Socialist"! Once again the little insignificant fact
+has been forgotten--the class nature of the government! Abramovich
+sees no difference between the Egyptian regime and our own. He has
+forgotten that in Egypt there were Pharaohs, there were slave-owners
+and slaves. It was not the Egyptian peasants who decided through their
+Soviets to build the pyramids; there existed a social order based upon
+hierarchial caste; and the workers were obliged to toil by a class
+that was hostile to them. Our compulsion is applied by a workers' and
+peasants' government, in the name of the interests of the laboring
+masses. That is what Abramovich has not observed. We learn in the
+school of Socialism that all social evolution is founded on classes
+and their struggle, and all the course of human life is determined by
+the fact of what class stands at the head of affairs, and in the name
+of what caste is applying its policy. That is what Abramovich has not
+grasped. Perhaps he is well acquainted with the Old Testament, but
+Socialism is for him a book sealed with seven seals.
+
+Going along the path of shallow Liberal analogies, which do not reckon
+with the class nature of the State, Abramovich might (and in the past
+the Mensheviks did more than once) identify the Red and the White
+Armies. Both here and there went on mobilizations, principally of the
+peasant masses. Both here and there the element of compulsion has its
+place. Both here and there there were not a few officers who had
+passed through one and the same school of Tsarism. The same rifles,
+the same cartridges in both camps. Where is the difference? There is a
+difference, gentlemen, and it is defined by a fundamental test: who is
+in power? The working class or the landlord class, Pharaohs or
+peasants, White Guards or the Petrograd proletariat? There is a
+difference, and evidence on the subject is furnished by the fate of
+Yudenich, Kolchak, and Denikin. Our peasants were mobilized by the
+workers; in Kolchak's camp, by the White Guard officer class. Our army
+has pulled itself together, and has grown strong; the White Army has
+fallen asunder in dust. Yes, there is a difference between the Soviet
+regime and the regime of the Pharaohs. And it is not in vain that the
+Petrograd proletarians began their revolution by shooting the Pharaohs
+on the steeples of Petrograd.[10]
+
+          [10] This was the name given to the imperial police, whom
+          the Minister for Home Affairs, Protopopoff, distributed at
+          the end of February, 1917, over the roofs of houses and in
+          the belfries.
+
+One of the Menshevik orators attempted incidentally to represent me as
+a defender of militarism in general. According to his information, it
+appears, do you see, that I am defending nothing more or less than
+German militarism. I proved, you must understand, that the German
+N.C.O. was a marvel of nature, and all that he does is above
+criticism. What did I say in reality? Only that militarism, in which
+all the features of social evolution find their most finished, sharp,
+and clear expression, could be examined from two points of view. First
+from the political or Socialist--and here it depends entirely on the
+question of what class is in power; and secondly, from the point of
+view of organization, as a system of the strict distribution of
+duties, exact mutual relations, unquestioning responsibility, and
+harsh insistence on execution. The bourgeois army is the apparatus of
+savage oppression and repression of the workers; the Socialist army is
+a weapon for the liberation and defence of the workers. But the
+unquestioning subordination of the parts to the whole is a
+characteristic common to every army. A severe internal regime is
+inseparable from the military organization. In war every piece of
+slackness, every lack of thoroughness, and even a simple mistake, not
+infrequently bring in their train the most heavy sacrifices. Hence the
+striving of the military organization to bring clearness,
+definiteness, exactness of relations and responsibilities, to the
+highest degree of development. "Military" qualities in this connection
+are valued in every sphere. It was in this sense that I said that
+every class prefers to have in its service those of its members who,
+other things being equal, have passed through the military school. The
+German peasant, for example, who has passed out of the barracks in the
+capacity of an N.C.O. was for the German monarchy, and remains for the
+Ebert Republic, much dearer and more valuable than the same peasant
+who has not passed through military training. The apparatus of the
+German railways was splendidly organized, thanks to a considerable
+degree to the employment of N.C.O.'s and officers in administrative
+posts in the transport department. In this sense we also have
+something to learn from militarism. Comrade Tsiperovich, one of our
+foremost trade union leaders, admitted here that the trade union
+worker who has passed through military training--who has, for example,
+occupied the responsible post of regimental commissary for a
+year--does not become worse from the point of view of trade union work
+as a result. He is returned to the union the same proletarian from
+head to foot, for he was fighting for the proletariat; but he has
+returned a veteran--hardened, more independent, more decisive--for he
+has been in very responsible positions. He had occasions to control
+several thousands of Red soldiers of different degrees of
+class-consciousness--most of them peasants. Together with them he has
+lived through victories and reverses, he has advanced and retreated.
+There were cases of treachery on the part of the command personnel, of
+peasant risings, of panic--but he remained at his post, he held
+together the less class-conscious mass, directed it, inspired it with
+his example, punished traitors and cowards. This experience is a great
+and valuable experience. And when a former regimental commissary
+returns to his trade union, he becomes not a bad organizer.
+
+On the question of the _collegiate principle_, the arguments of
+Abramovich are just as lifeless as on all other questions--the
+arguments of a detached observer standing on the bank of a river.
+
+Abramovich explained to us that a good board is better than a bad
+manager, that into a good board there must enter a good expert. All
+this is splendid--only why do not the Mensheviks offer us several
+hundred boards? I think that the Supreme Economic Council will find
+sufficient use for them. But we--not observers, but workers--must
+build from the material at our disposal. We have specialists, we have
+experts, of whom, shall we say, one-third are conscientious and
+educated, another third only half-conscientious and half-educated, and
+the last third are no use at all. In the working class there are many
+talented, devoted, and energetic people. Some--unfortunately few--have
+already the necessary knowledge and experience. Some have character
+and capacity, but have not knowledge or experience. Others have
+neither one nor the other. Out of this material we have to create our
+factory and other administrative bodies; and here we cannot be
+satisfied with general phrases. First of all, we must select all the
+workers who have already in experience shown that they can direct
+enterprises, and give such men the possibility of standing on their
+own feet. Such men themselves ask for one-man management, because the
+work of controlling a factory is not a school for the backward. A
+worker who knows his business thoroughly desires to _control_. If
+he has decided and ordered, his decision must be accomplished. He may
+be replaced--that is another matter; but while he is the master--the
+Soviet, proletarian master--he controls the undertaking entirely and
+completely. If he has to be included in a board of weaker men, who
+interfere in the administration, nothing will come of it. Such a
+working-class administrator must be given an expert assistant, one or
+two according to the enterprise. If there is no suitable working-class
+administrator, but there is a conscientious and trained expert, we
+shall put him at the head of an enterprise, and attach to him two or
+three prominent workers in the capacity of assistants, in such a way
+that every decision of the expert should be known to the assistants,
+but that they should not have the right to reverse that decision. They
+will, step by step, follow the specialist in his work, will learn
+something, and in six months or a year will thus be able to occupy
+independent posts.
+
+Abramovich quoted from my own speech the example of the hairdresser
+who has commanded a division and an army. True! But what, however,
+Abramovich does not know is that, if our Communist comrades have
+begun to command regiments, divisions, and armies, it is because
+previously they were commissaries attached to expert commanders.
+The responsibility fell on the expert, who knew that, if he made a
+mistake, he would bear the full brunt, and would not be able to say
+that he was only an "adviser" or a "member of the board." To-day in
+our army the majority of the posts of command, particularly in the
+lower--_i.e._, politically the most important--grades, are filled
+by workers and foremost peasants. But with what did we begin? We put
+officers in the posts of command, and attached to them workers as
+commissaries; and they learned, and learned with success, and learned
+to beat the enemy.
+
+Comrades, we stand face to face with a very difficult period, perhaps
+the most difficult of all. To difficult periods in the life of peoples
+and classes there correspond harsh measures. The further we go the
+easier things will become, the freer every citizen will feel, the more
+imperceptible will become the compelling force of the proletarian
+State. Perhaps we shall then even allow the Mensheviks to have papers,
+if only the Mensheviks remain in existence until that time. But
+to-day we are living in the period of dictatorship, political and
+economic. And the Mensheviks continue to undermine that dictatorship.
+When we are fighting on the civil front, preserving the revolution
+from its enemies, and the Menshevik paper writes: "Down with the
+civil war," we cannot permit this. A dictatorship is a dictatorship,
+and war is war. And now that we have crossed to the path of the
+greatest concentration of forces on the field of the economic rebirth
+of the country, the Russian Kautskies, the Mensheviks, remain true to
+their counter-revolutionary calling. Their voice, as hitherto, sounds
+as the voice of doubt and decomposition, of disorganization and
+undermining, of distrust and collapse.
+
+Is it not monstrous and grotesque that, at this Congress, at which
+1,500 representatives of the Russian working class are present, where
+the Mensheviks constitute less than 5%, and the Communists about 90%,
+Abramovich should say to us: "Do not be attracted by methods which
+result in a little band taking the place of the people." "All through
+the people," says the representative of the Mensheviks, "no guardians
+of the laboring masses! All through the laboring masses, through their
+independent activity!" And, further, "It is impossible to convince a
+class by arguments." Yet look at this very hall: here is that class!
+The working class is here before you, and with us; and it is just you,
+an insignificant band of Mensheviks, who are attempting to convince it
+by bourgeois arguments! It is you who wish to be the guardians of that
+class. And yet it has its own high degree of independence, and that
+independence, it has displayed, incidentally, in having overthrown you
+and gone forward along its own path!
+
+
+
+
+9
+
+KARL KAUTSKY, HIS SCHOOL AND HIS BOOK.
+
+
+The Austro-Marxian school (Bauer, Renner, Hilferding, Max Adler,
+Friedrich Adler) in the past more than once was contrasted with the
+school of Kautsky, as veiled opportunism might be contrasted with true
+Marxism. This has proved to be a pure historical misunderstanding,
+which deceived some for a long time, some for a lesser period, but
+which in the end was revealed with all possible clearness. Kautsky is
+the founder and the most perfect representative of the Austrian
+forgery of Marxism. While the real teaching of Marx is the theoretical
+formula of action, of attack, of the development of revolutionary
+energy, and of the carrying of the class blow to its logical
+conclusion, the Austrian school was transformed into an academy of
+passivity and evasiveness, because of a vulgar historical and
+conservative school, and reduced its work to explaining and
+justifying, not guiding and overthrowing. It lowered itself to the
+position of a hand-maid to the current demands of parliamentarism and
+opportunism, replaced dialectic by swindling sophistries, and, in the
+end, in spite of its great play with ritual revolutionary phraseology,
+became transformed into the most secure buttress of the capitalist
+State, together with the altar and throne that rose above it. If the
+latter was engulfed in the abyss, no blame for this can be laid upon
+the Austro-Marxian school.
+
+What characterizes Austro-Marxism is repulsion and fear in the face of
+revolutionary action. The Austro-Marxist is capable of displaying a
+perfect gulf of profundity in the explanation of yesterday, and
+considerable daring in prophesying concerning to-morrow--but for
+to-day he never has a great thought or capacity for great action.
+To-day for him always disappears before the wave of little opportunist
+worries, which later are explained as the most inevitable link between
+the past and the future.
+
+The Austro-Marxist is inexhaustible when it is a question of
+discovering reasons to prevent initiative and render difficult
+revolutionary action. Austro-Marxism is a learned and boastful theory
+of passivity and capitulation. Naturally, it is not by accident that
+it was just in Austria, in that Babylon torn by fruitless national
+antagonisms, in that State which represented the personified
+impossibility to exist and develop, that there arose and was
+consolidated the pseudo-Marxian philosophy of the impossibility of
+revolutionary action.
+
+The foremost Austrian Marxists represent, each in his own way, a
+certain "individuality." On various questions they more than once did
+not see eye to eye. They even had political differences. But in
+general they are fingers of the same hand.
+
+_Karl Renner_ is the most pompous, solid, and conceited representative
+of this type. The gift of literary imitation, or, more simply, of
+stylist forgery, is granted to him to an exceptional extent. His
+May Day article represented a charming combination of the most
+revolutionary words. And, as both words and their combinations live,
+within certain limits, with their own independent life, Renner's
+articles awakened in the hearts of many workers a revolutionary
+fire which their author apparently never knew. The tinsel of
+Austro-Viennese culture, the chase of the external, of title of rank,
+was more characteristic of Renner than of his other colleagues. In
+essence he always remained merely an imperial and royal officer, who
+commanded Marxist phraseology to perfection.
+
+The transformation of the author of the jubilee article on Karl Marx,
+famous for its revolutionary pathos, into a comic-opera-Chancellor,
+who expresses his feelings of respect and thanks to the Scandinavian
+monarchs, is in reality one of the most instructive paradoxes of
+history.
+
+_Otto Bauer_ is more learned and prosaic, more serious and more
+boring, than Renner. He cannot be denied the capacity to read books,
+collect facts, and draw conclusions adapted to the tasks imposed upon
+him by practical politics, which in turn are guided by others. Bauer
+has no political will. His chief art is to reply to all acute
+practical questions by commonplaces. His political thought always
+lives a parallel life to his will--it is deprived of all courage. His
+words are always merely the scientific compilation of the talented
+student of a University seminar. The most disgraceful actions of
+Austrian opportunism, the meanest servility before the power of the
+possessing classes on the part of the Austro-German Social-Democracy,
+found in Bauer their grave elucidator, who sometimes expressed himself
+with dignity against the form, but always agreed in the essence. If it
+ever occurred to Bauer to display anything like temperament and
+political energy, it was exclusively in the struggle against the
+revolutionary wing--in the accumulation of arguments, facts,
+quotations, _against_ revolutionary action. His highest period
+was that (after 1907) in which, being as yet too young to be a deputy,
+he played the part of secretary of the Social-Democratic group,
+supplied it with materials, figures, substitutes for ideas, instructed
+it, drew up memoranda, and appeared almost to be the inspirer of great
+actions, when in reality he was only supplying substitutes, and
+adulterated substitutes, for the parliamentary opportunists.
+
+_Max Adler_ represents a fairly ingenuous variety of the Austro-Marxian
+type. He is a lyric poet, a philosopher, a mystic--a philosophical
+lyric poet of passivity, as Renner is its publicist and legal expert,
+as Hilferding is its economist, as Bauer is its sociologist. Max Adler
+is cramped in a world of three dimensions, although he had found a
+very comfortable place for himself with the framework of Viennese
+bourgeois Socialism and the Hapsburg State. The combination of the
+petty business activity of an attorney and of political humiliation,
+together with barren philosophical efforts and the cheap tinsel
+flowers of idealism, have imbued that variety which Max Adler
+represented with a sickening and repulsive quality.
+
+_Rudolf Hilferding_, a Viennese like the rest, entered the German
+Social-Democratic Party almost as a mutineer, but as a mutineer of the
+Austrian stamp, _i.e._, always ready to capitulate without a fight.
+Hilferding took the external mobility and bustle of the Austrian
+policy which brought him up for revolutionary initiative; and for a
+round dozen of months he demanded--true, in the most moderate terms--a
+more intelligent policy on the part of the leaders of the German
+Social-Democracy. But the Austro-Viennese bustle swiftly disappeared
+from his own nature. He soon became subjected to the mechanical
+rhythm of Berlin and the automatic spiritual life of the German
+Social-Democracy. He devoted his intellectual energy to the purely
+theoretical sphere, where he did not say a great deal, true--no
+Austro-Marxist has ever said a great deal in any sphere--but in which
+he did, at any rate, write a serious book. With this book on his back,
+like a porter with a heavy load, he entered the revolutionary epoch.
+But the most scientific book cannot replace the absence of will, of
+initiative, of revolutionary instinct and political decision, without
+which action is inconceivable. A doctor by training, Hilferding is
+inclined to sobriety, and, in spite of his theoretical education, he
+represents the most primitive type of empiricist in questions of
+policy. The chief problem of to-day is for him not to leave the lines
+laid down for him by yesterday, and to find for this conservative and
+bourgeois apathy a scientific, economic explanation.
+
+_Friedrich Adler_ is the most balanced representative of the
+Austro-Marxian type. He has inherited from his father the latter's
+political temperament. In the petty exhausting struggle with the
+disorder of Austrian conditions, Friedrich Adler allowed his ironical
+scepticism finally to destroy the revolutionary foundations of his
+world outlook. The temperament inherited from his father more than
+once drove him into opposition to the school created by his father. At
+certain moments Friedrich Adler might seem the very revolutionary
+negation of the Austrian school. In reality, he was and remains its
+necessary coping-stone. His explosive revolutionism foreshadowed acute
+attacks of despair amidst Austrian opportunism, which from time to
+time became terrified at its own insignificance.
+
+Friedrich Adler is a sceptic from head to foot: he does not believe in
+the masses, or in their capacity for action. At the time when Karl
+Liebknecht, in the hour of supreme triumph of German militarism, went
+out to the Potsdamerplatz to call the oppressed masses to the open
+struggle, Friedrich Adler went into a bourgeois restaurant to
+assassinate there the Austrian Premier. By his solitary shot,
+Friedrich Adler vainly attempted to put an end to his own scepticism.
+After that hysterical strain, he fell into still more complete
+prostration.
+
+The black-and-yellow crew of social-patriotism (Austerlitz, Leitner,
+etc.) hurled at Adler the terrorist all the abuse of which the
+cowardly sentiments were capable.
+
+But when the acute period was passed, and the prodigal son returned
+from his convict prison into his father's house with the halo of a
+martyr, he proved to be doubly and trebly valuable in that form for
+the Austrian Social-Democracy. The golden halo of the terrorist was
+transformed by the experienced counterfeiters of the party into the
+sounding coin of the demagogue. Friedrich Adler became a trusted
+surety for the Austerlitzes and Renners in face of the masses.
+Happily, the Austrian workers are coming less and less to distinguish
+the sentimental lyrical prostration of Friedrich Adler from the
+pompous shallowness of Renner, the erudite impotence of Max Adler, or
+the analytical self-satisfaction of Otto Bauer.
+
+The cowardice in thought of the theoreticians of the Austro-Marxian
+school has completely and wholly been revealed when faced with the
+great problems of a revolutionary epoch. In his immortal attempt to
+include the Soviet system in the Ebert-Noske Constitution, Hilferding
+gave voice not only to his own spirit but to the spirit of the whole
+Austro-Marxian school, which, with the approach of the revolutionary
+epoch, made an attempt to become exactly as much more Left than
+Kautsky as before the revolution it was more Right. From this point of
+view, Max Adler's view of the Soviet system is extremely instructive.
+
+The Viennese eclectic philosopher admits the significance of the
+Soviets. His courage goes so far that he adopts them. He even
+proclaims them the apparatus of the Social Revolution. Max Adler, of
+course, is for a social revolution. But not for a stormy, barricaded,
+terrorist, bloody revolution, but for a sane, economically balanced,
+legally canonized, and philosophically approved revolution.
+
+Max Adler is not even terrified by the fact that the Soviets infringe
+the "principle" of the constitutional separation of powers (in the
+Austrian Social-Democracy there are many fools who see in such an
+infringement a great defect of the Soviet System!). On the contrary,
+Max Adler, the trade union lawyer and legal adviser of the social
+revolution, sees in the concentration of powers even an advantage,
+which allows the direct expression of the proletarian will. Max Adler
+is in favor of the direct expression of the proletarian will; but only
+not by means of the direct seizure of power through the Soviets. He
+proposes a more solid method. In each town, borough, and ward, the
+Workers' Councils must "control" the police and other officials,
+imposing upon them the "proletarian will." What, however, will be the
+"constitutional" position of the Soviets in the republic of Zeiz,
+Renner and company? To this our philosopher replies: "The Workers'
+Councils in the long run will receive as much constitutional power as
+they acquire by means of their own activity." (_Arbeiterzeitung_,
+No. 179, July 1, 1919.)
+
+The proletarian Soviets must gradually _grow up_ into the political
+power of the proletariat, just as previously, in the theories of
+reformism, all the proletarian organizations had to grow up into
+Socialism; which consummation, however, was a little hindered by the
+unforeseen misunderstandings, lasting four years, between the Central
+Powers and the Entente--and all that followed. It was found necessary
+to reject the economical programme of a gradual development into
+Socialism without a social revolution. But, as a reward, there opened
+the perspective of the gradual development of the Soviets into the
+social revolution, without an armed rising and a seizure of power.
+
+In order that the Soviets should not sink entirely under the burden of
+borough and ward problems, our daring legal adviser proposes the
+propaganda of social-democratic ideas! Political power remains as
+before in the hands of the bourgeoisie and its assistants. But in the
+wards and the boroughs the Soviets control the policemen and their
+assistants. And, to console the working class and at the same time to
+centralize its thought and will, Max Adler on Sunday afternoons will
+read lectures on the constitutional position of the Soviets, as in the
+past he read lectures on the constitutional position of the trade
+unions.
+
+"In this way," Max Adler promises, "the constitutional regulation of
+the position of the Workers Councils, and their power and importance,
+would be guaranteed along the whole line of public and social life;
+and--without the dictatorship of the Soviets--the Soviet system would
+acquire as large an influence as it could possibly have even in a
+Soviet republic. At the same time we should not have to pay for that
+influence by political storms and economic destruction" (idem). As we
+see, in addition to all his other qualities, Max Adler remains still
+in agreement with the Austrian tradition: to make a revolution without
+quarrelling with his Excellency the Public Prosecutor.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+The founder of this school, and its highest authority, is Kautsky.
+Carefully protecting, particularly after the Dresden party congress
+and the first Russian Revolution, his reputation as the keeper of the
+shrine of Marxist orthodoxy, Kautsky from time to time would shake his
+head in disapproval of the more compromising outbursts of his Austrian
+school. And, following the example of the late Victor Adler, Bauer,
+Renner, Hilferding--altogether and each separately--considered Kautsky
+too pedantic, too inert, but a very reverend and a very useful father
+and teacher of the church of quietism.
+
+Kautsky began to cause serious mistrust in his own school during the
+period of his revolutionary culmination, at the time of the first
+Russian Revolution, when he recognized as necessary the seizure of
+power by the Russian Social-Democracy, and attempted to inoculate the
+German working class with his theoretical conclusions from the
+experience of the general strike in Russia. The collapse of the first
+Russian Revolution at once broke off Kautsky's evolution along the
+path of radicalism. The more plainly was the question of mass action
+in Germany itself put forward by the course of events, the more
+evasive became Kautsky's attitude. He marked time, retreated, lost his
+confidence; and the pedantic and scholastic features of his thought
+more and more became apparent. The imperialist war, which killed every
+form of vagueness and brought mankind face to face with the most
+fundamental questions, exposed all the political bankruptcy of
+Kautsky. He immediately became confused beyond all hope of
+extrication, in the most simple question of voting the War Credits.
+All his writings after that period represent variations of one and the
+same theme: "I and my muddle." The Russian Revolution finally slew
+Kautsky. By all his previous development he was placed in a hostile
+attitude towards the November victory of the proletariat. This
+unavoidably threw him into the camp of the counter-revolution. He lost
+the last traces of historical instinct. His further writings have
+become more and more like the yellow literature of the bourgeois
+market.
+
+Kautsky's book, examined by us, bears in its external characteristics
+all the attributes of a so-called objective scientific study. To
+examine the extent of the Red Terror, Kautsky acts with all the
+circumstantial method peculiar to him. He begins with the study of the
+social conditions which prepared the great French Revolution, and also
+the physiological and social conditions which assisted the development
+of cruelty and humanity throughout the history of the human race. In a
+book devoted to Bolshevism, in which the whole question is examined in
+234 pages, Kautsky describes in detail on what our most remote human
+ancestor fed, and hazards the guess that, while living mainly on
+vegetable products, he devoured also insects and possibly a few birds.
+(See page 122.) In a word, there was nothing to lead us to expect that
+from such an entirely respectable ancestor--one obviously inclined to
+vegetarianism--there should spring such descendants as the Bolsheviks.
+That is the solid scientific basis on which Kautsky builds the
+question!...
+
+But, as is not infrequent with productions of this nature, there is
+hidden behind the academic and scholastic cloak a malignant political
+pamphlet. This book is one of the most lying and conscienceless of its
+kind. Is it not incredible, at first glance, that Kautsky should
+gather up the most contemptible stories about the Bolsheviks from the
+rich table of Havas, Reuter and Wolff, thereby displaying from under
+his learned night-cap the ears of the sycophant? Yet these
+disreputable details are only mosaic decorations on the fundamental
+background of solid, scientific lying about the Soviet Republic and
+its guiding party.
+
+Kautsky depicts in the most sinister colors our savagery towards the
+bourgeoisie, which "displayed no tendency to resist."
+
+Kautsky attacks our ruthlessness in connection with the Socialist
+Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks, who represent "shades" of
+Socialism.
+
+
+KAUTSKY DEPICTS THE SOVIET ECONOMY AS THE CHAOS OF COLLAPSE
+
+Kautsky represents the Soviet workers, and the Russian working class
+as a whole, as a conglomeration of egoists, loafers, and cowards.
+
+He does not say one word about the conduct of the Russian bourgeoisie,
+unprecedented in history for the magnitude of its scoundrelism;
+about its national treachery; about the surrender of Riga to the
+Germans, with "educational" aims; about the preparations for a
+similar surrender of Petrograd; about its appeals to foreign
+armies--Czecho-Slovakian, German, Roumanian, British, Japanese,
+French, Arab and Negro--against the Russian workers and peasants;
+about its conspiracies and assassinations, paid for by Entente money;
+about its utilization of the blockade, not only to starve our children
+to death, but systematically, tirelessly, persistently to spread over
+the whole world an unheard-of web of lies and slander.
+
+He does not say one word about the most disgraceful misrepresentations
+of and violence to our party on the part of the government of the
+S.R.s and Mensheviks before the November Revolution; about the
+criminal persecution of several thousand responsible workers of the
+party on the charge of espionage in favor of Hohenzollern Germany;
+about the participation of the Mensheviks and S.R.s in all the plots
+of the bourgeoisie; about their collaboration with the imperial
+generals and admirals, Kolchak, Denikin and Yudenich; about the
+terrorist acts carried out by the S.R.s at the order of the Entente;
+about the risings organized by the S.R.s with the money of the foreign
+missions in our army, which was pouring out its blood in the struggle
+against the monarchical bands of imperialism.
+
+Kautsky does not say one word about the fact that we not only repeated
+more than once, but proved in reality our readiness to give peace to
+the country, even at the cost of sacrifices and concessions, and that,
+in spite of this, we were obliged to carry on an intensive struggle on
+all fronts to defend the very existence of our country, and to prevent
+its transformation into a colony of Anglo-French imperialism.
+
+Kautsky does not say one word about the fact that in this heroic
+struggle, in which we are defending the future of world Socialism, the
+Russian proletariat is obliged to expend its principal energies, its
+best and most valuable forces, taking them away from economic and
+cultural reconstruction.
+
+In all his book, Kautsky does not even mention the fact that first of
+all German militarism, with the help of its Scheidemanns and the
+apathy of its Kautskies, and then the militarism of the Entente
+countries with the help of its Renaudels and the apathy of its
+Longuets, surrounded us with an iron blockade; seized all our ports;
+cut us off from the whole of the world; occupied, with the help of
+hired White bands, enormous territories, rich in raw materials; and
+separated us for a long period from the Baku oil, the Donetz coal, the
+Don and Siberian corn, the Turkestan cotton.
+
+Kautsky does not say one word about the fact that in these conditions,
+unprecedented for their difficulty, the Russian working class for
+nearly three years has been carrying on a heroic struggle against its
+enemies on a front of 8,000 versts; that the Russian working class
+learned how to exchange its hammer for the sword, and created a mighty
+army; that for this army it mobilized its exhausted industry and, in
+spite of the ruin of the country, which the executioners of the whole
+world had condemned to blockade and civil war, for three years with
+its own forces and resources it has been clothing, feeding, arming,
+transporting an army of millions--an army which has learned how to
+conquer.
+
+About all these conditions Kautsky is silent, in a book devoted to
+Russian Communism. And his silence is the fundamental, capital,
+principal lie--true, a passive lie, but more criminal and more
+repulsive than the active lie of all the scoundrels of the
+international bourgeois Press taken together.
+
+Slandering the policy of the Communist Party, Kautsky says nowhere
+what he himself wants and what he proposes. The Bolsheviks were not
+alone in the arena of the Russian Revolution. We saw and see in
+it--now in power, now in opposition--S.R.s (not less than five groups
+and tendencies), Mensheviks (not less than three tendencies),
+Plekhanovists, Maximalists, Anarchists.... Absolutely all the "shades
+of Socialism" (to speak in Kautsky's language) tried their hand, and
+showed what they would and what they could. There are so many of these
+"shades" that it is difficult now to pass the blade of a knife between
+them. The very origin of these "shades" is not accidental: they
+represent, so to speak, different degrees in the adaptation of the
+pre-revolutionary Socialist parties and groups to the conditions of
+the greater revolutionary epoch. It would seem that Kautsky had a
+sufficiently complete political keyboard before him to be able to
+strike the note which would give a true Marxian key to the Russian
+Revolution. But Kautsky is silent. He repudiates the Bolshevik melody
+that is unpleasant to his ear, but does not seek another. The solution
+is simple: _the old musician refuses altogether to play on the
+instrument of the revolution_.
+
+
+
+
+10
+
+IN PLACE OF AN EPILOGUE
+
+
+This book appears at the moment of the Second Congress of the
+Communist International. The revolutionary movement of the proletariat
+has made, during the months that have passed since the First Congress,
+a great step forward. The positions of the official, open
+social-patriots have everywhere been undermined. The ideas of
+Communism acquire an ever wider extension. Official dogmatized
+Kautskianism has been gradually compromised. Kautsky himself, within
+that "Independent" Party which he created, represents to-day a not
+very authoritative and a fairly ridiculous figure.
+
+None the less, the intellectual struggle in the ranks of the
+international working class is only now blazing up as it should. If,
+as we just said, dogmatized Kautskianism is breathing its last days,
+and the leaders of the intermediate Socialist parties are hastening to
+renounce it, still Kautskianism as a bourgeois attitude, as a
+tradition of passivity, as political cowardice, still plays an
+enormous part in the upper ranks of the working-class organizations of
+the world, in no way excluding parties tending to the Third
+International, and even formally adhering to it.
+
+The Independent Party in Germany, which has written on its banner the
+watchword of the dictatorship of the proletariat, tolerates in its
+ranks the Kautsky group, all the efforts of which are devoted
+theoretically to compromise and misrepresent the dictatorship of the
+proletariat in the shape of its living expression--the Soviet regime.
+In conditions of civil war, such a form of co-habitation is
+conceivable only and to such an extent as far and as long as the
+dictatorship of the proletariat represents for the leaders of the
+"Independent" Social-Democracy a noble aspiration, a vague protest
+against the open and disgraceful treachery of Noske, Ebert,
+Scheidemann and others, and--last but not least--a weapon of electoral
+and parliamentary demagogy.
+
+The vitality of vague Kautskianism is most clearly seen in the example
+of the French Longuetists. Jean Longuet himself has most sincerely
+convinced himself, and has for long been attempting to convince
+others, that he is marching in step with us, and that only
+Clemenceau's censorship and the calumnies of our French friends
+Loriot, Monatte, Rosmer, and others hinder our comradship in arms. Yet
+is it sufficient to make oneself acquainted with any parliamentary
+speech of Longuet's to realize that the gulf separating him from us at
+the present moment is possibly still wider than at the first period of
+the imperialist war? The revolutionary problems now arising before the
+international proletariat have become more serious, more immediate,
+more gigantic, more direct, more definite, than five or six years ago;
+and the politically reactionary character of the Longuetists, the
+parliamentary representatives of eternal passivity, has become more
+impressive than ever before, in spite of the fact that formally they
+have returned to the fold of parliamentary opposition.
+
+The Italian Party, which is within the Third International, is not at
+all free from Kautskianism. As far as the leaders are concerned, a
+very considerable part of them bear their internationalist honors only
+as a duty and as an imposition from below. In 1914-1915, the Italian
+Socialist Party found it infinitely more easy than did the other
+European parties to maintain an attitude of opposition to the war,
+both because Italy entered the war nine months later than other
+countries, and particularly because the international position of
+Italy created in it even a powerful bourgeois group (Giolittians in
+the widest sense of the word) which remained to the very last moment
+hostile to Italian intervention in the war.
+
+These conditions allowed the Italian Socialist Party, without the fear
+of a very profound internal crisis to refuse war credits to the
+Government, and generally to remain outside the interventionist block.
+But by this very fact the process of internal cleansing of the party
+proved to be unquestionably delayed. Although an integral part of the
+Third International, the Italian Socialist Party to this very day can
+put up with Turati and his supporters in its ranks. This very powerful
+group--unfortunately we find it difficult to define to any extent of
+accuracy its numerical significance in the parliamentary group, in the
+press, in the party, and in the trade union organizations--represents
+a less pedantic, not so demagogic, more declamatory and lyrical, but
+none the less malignant opportunism--a form of romantic Kautskianism.
+
+A passive attitude to the Kautskian, Longuetist, Turatist groups is
+usually cloaked by the argument that the time for revolutionary
+activity in the respective countries has not yet arrived. But such a
+formulation of the question is absolutely false. Nobody demands from
+Socialists striving for Communism that they should appoint a
+revolutionary outbreak for a definite week or month in the near
+future. What the Third International demands of its supporters is a
+recognition, not in words but in deeds, that civilized humanity has
+entered a revolutionary epoch; that all the capitalist countries are
+speeding towards colossal disturbances and an open class war; and that
+the task of the revolutionary representatives of the proletariat is to
+prepare for that inevitable and approaching war the necessary
+spiritual armory and buttress of organization. The internationalists
+who consider it possible at the present time to collaborate with
+Kautsky, Longuet and Turati, to appear side by side with them before
+the working masses, by that very act renounce in practice the work of
+preparing in ideas and organization for the revolutionary rising of
+the proletariat, independently of whether it comes a month or a year
+sooner or later. In order that the open rising of the proletarian
+masses should not fritter itself away in belated searches for paths
+and leadership, we must see to it to-day that wide circles of the
+proletariat should even now learn to grasp all the immensity of the
+tasks before them, and of their irreconcilability with all variations
+of Kautskianism and opportunism.
+
+A truly revolutionary, _i.e._, a Communist wing, must set itself
+up in opposition, in face of the masses, to all the indecisive,
+half-hearted groups of doctrinaires, advocates, and panegyrists of
+passivity, strengthening its positions first of all spiritually and
+then in the sphere of organization--open, half-open, and purely
+conspirative. The moment of formal split with the open and disguised
+Kautskians, or the moment of their expulsion from the ranks of the
+working-class party, is, of course, to be determined by considerations
+of usefulness from the point of view of circumstances; but all the
+policy of real Communists must turn in that direction.
+
+That is why it seems to me that this book is still not out of date--to
+my great regret, if not as an author, at any rate as a Communist.
+
+_June 17, 1920._
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Dictatorship vs. Democracy, by Leon Trotsky
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DICTATORSHIP VS. DEMOCRACY ***
+
+***** This file should be named 38982-8.txt or 38982-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/3/8/9/8/38982/
+
+Produced by Odessa Paige Turner and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+produced from scanned images of public domain material
+from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/38982-8.zip b/38982-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32987af
--- /dev/null
+++ b/38982-8.zip
diff --git a/38982-h.zip b/38982-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9210f1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/38982-h.zip
diff --git a/38982-h/38982-h.htm b/38982-h/38982-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dcf0d5b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/38982-h/38982-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,9274 @@
+<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
+"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
+<html>
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Dictatorship vs. Democracy
+(Terrorism and Communism), by Leon Trotsky</title>
+<style type="text/css">
+
+	body {margin-left: 10%;
+		margin-right: 10%;}
+
+	p {text-indent: 0em;
+		text-align: justify;
+		margin-top: .85em;
+		margin-bottom: .85em;
+		line-height: 1.25em;}
+
+	.hang {text-align: justify;
+		padding-left: 2em;
+		text-indent: -2em;}
+
+	.ralign {text-align: right;}
+
+	.ctr {text-align: center;}
+
+	.ctrspace {text-align: center;
+		margin-bottom: 2em;
+		margin-top: 0em;}
+
+	.smallercaps {font-size: 90%;}
+
+	.sig {margin-left: 65%;}
+
+	.sc {font-variant: small-caps;}
+
+	.foot {margin-left: 4%;
+		margin-right: 4%;
+		margin-top: 0em;
+		margin-bottom: 1.2em;
+		text-align: justify;
+		text-indent: 0em;
+		font-size: 96%;}
+
+	.section {margin-top: 2em;
+		margin-bottom: 2.5em;
+		text-align: center;
+		font-size: 108%;
+		font-weight: bold;}
+
+	.firstchapter {margin-top: 1em;
+		margin-bottom: 1em;
+		text-align: center;
+		font-size: 110%;
+		font-weight: bold;}
+
+	.chapter {margin-top: 3em;
+		margin-bottom: 1em;
+		text-align: center;
+		font-size: 130%;
+		font-weight: bold;}
+
+	.head {margin-top: 1em;
+		margin-bottom: 2.5em;
+		text-align: center;
+		font-size: 120%;
+		font-weight: bold;}
+
+	.subhead {margin-top: 2.25em;
+		margin-bottom: 1.25em;
+		text-align: center;
+		font-weight: bold;}
+
+	.figcenter {margin-left: auto;
+		margin-right: auto;
+		text-align: center;
+		margin-bottom: 1em;
+		margin-top: 1em;
+		width: auto;}
+
+	h1 {text-align: center;
+		margin-top: 1em;
+		margin-bottom: 1em;
+		line-height: 1.3em;
+		letter-spacing: 4px;
+		font-size: 130%;}
+
+	h2 {text-align: center;
+		margin-top: 1em;
+		margin-bottom: 1em;
+		line-height: 1.3em;
+		font-size: 115%;}
+
+	h3 {text-align: center;
+		margin-top: 1em;
+		margin-bottom: 1em;
+		line-height: 1.3em;
+		font-size: 100%;}
+
+	h4 {text-align: center;
+		margin-top: 1em;
+		margin-bottom: 1em;
+		line-height: 1.3em;
+		font-size: 96%;}
+
+	h5 {text-align: center;
+		margin-top: 1em;
+		margin-bottom: 1em;
+		line-height: 1.3em;
+		font-size: 90%;}
+
+	hr.med {width: 65%;
+		height: 1px;
+		margin-top: 2.5em;
+		margin-bottom: 2.5em;}
+
+	hr.short {width: 35%;
+		height: 1px;
+		margin-top: 2.25em;
+		margin-bottom: 2.25em;}
+
+	table {margin-left: auto;
+		margin-right: auto;}
+
+	td.txt {vertical-align: top;
+		text-align: left;
+		padding-right: 15px;}
+
+	td.pg {vertical-align: bottom;
+		text-align: right;}
+
+	a:link {color:#0000ff;
+		text-decoration:none;}
+	a:visited {color:#6633cc;
+		text-decoration:none;}
+
+</style>
+</head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dictatorship vs. Democracy, by Leon Trotsky
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Dictatorship vs. Democracy
+       (Terrorism and Communism)
+
+Author: Leon Trotsky
+
+Release Date: February 25, 2012 [EBook #38982]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DICTATORSHIP VS. DEMOCRACY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Odessa Paige Turner and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+produced from scanned images of public domain material
+from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/001.jpg" alt="Photo of Leon Trotsky" width="326" height="500">
+</p>
+<br>
+<h4>
+<u>WORKERS PARTY LIBRARY, Vol. I</u>
+</h4>
+
+<br>
+<h1>
+DICTATORSHIP vs. DEMOCRACY
+</h1>
+
+<h2>
+(<i>TERRORISM AND COMMUNISM</i>)
+</h2>
+
+<br>
+<h3>
+A Reply to Karl Kautsky by<br>
+LEON TROTSKY
+</h3>
+
+<br>
+<h3>
+<small>With a Preface by</small><br>
+H. N. BRAILSFORD<br>
+<small>and Foreword by Max Bedact</small>
+</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<img src="images/002.jpg" alt="Logo: WORKERS PARTY OF AMERICA. WORKERS OF THE WORLD" width="120" height="119">
+</p>
+
+
+<h4>
+<small>Published 1922 by</small><br>
+WORKERS PARTY OF AMERICA<br>
+799 Broadway, Room 405<br>
+New York City
+</h4>
+
+<hr class="med">
+
+
+<p class="section">
+CONTENTS
+</p>
+
+<table summary="Contents">
+<tr>
+<td class="txt"><span class="sc">Foreword</span></td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#foreword"><span class="smallercaps">V</span></a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="txt"><span class="sc">Preface</span></td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#preface"><span class="smallercaps">XI</span></a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="txt"><span class="sc">Introduction</span></td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#intro">5</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="txt"><span class="sc">The Balance of Power</span></td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#balance">12</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="txt"><span class="sc">The Dictatorship of the Proletariat</span></td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#dictatorship">20</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="txt"><span class="sc">Democracy</span></td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#democracy">28</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="txt"><span class="sc">Terrorism</span></td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#terrorism">48</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="txt"><span class="sc">The Paris Commune and Soviet Russia</span></td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#paris">69</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="txt"><span class="sc">Marx and &#8230; Kautsky</span></td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#marx">91</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="txt"><span class="sc">The Working Class and its Soviet Policy</span></td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#working">98</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="txt"><span class="sc">Problems of the Organization of Labor</span></td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#problems">128</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="txt"><span class="sc">Karl Kautsky, His School and His Book</span></td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#karl">177</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="txt"><span class="sc">In Place of an Epilogue</span></td>
+<td class="pg"><a href="#place">188</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<hr class="med">
+
+<a name="foreword">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="firstchapter">
+Foreword
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctrspace">
+By <span class="sc">Max Bedact</span>
+</p>
+
+
+<p>
+In a land where "democracy" is so deeply entrenched as in our United
+States of America it may seem futile to try to make friends for a
+dictatorship, by a close comparison of the principles of the
+two&#8212;Dictatorship versus Democracy. But then, confiding in the
+inviting gesture of the Goddess of Liberty many of our friends and
+fellow citizens have tested that sacred principle of democracy,
+freedom of speech, a little too freely&#8212;and landed in the penitentiary
+for it. Others again, relying on the not less sacred principle of
+democracy, freedom of assembly, have come in unpleasant contact with a
+substantial stick of hardwood, wielded by an unwieldily guardian of
+the law, and awoke from the immediate effects of this collision in
+some jail. Again others, leaning a little too heavily against the
+democratic principle of freedom of press broke down that pasteboard
+pillar of democracy, and incidentally into prison.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Looking at this side of the bright shining medal of our beloved
+democracy it seems that there is not the slightest bit of difference
+between the democracy of capitalist America and the dictatorship of
+Soviet Russia. But there is a great difference. The dictatorship in
+Russia is bold and upright class rule, which has as its ultimate
+object the abolition of all class rule and all dictatorships. Our
+democracy, on the other hand, is a Pecksniffian Dictatorship, is
+hypocrisy incarnate, promising all liberty in phrases, but in reality
+even penalizing free thinking, consistently working only for one
+object: to perpetuate the rule of the capitalist class, the capitalist
+dictatorship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dictatorship versus Democracy" is, therefore, enough of an open
+question even in our own country to deserve some consideration. To
+give food for thought on this subject is the object of the publication
+of Trotsky's book.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This book is an answer to a book by Karl Kautsky, "Terrorism and
+Communism." It is polemical in character. Polemical writings are, as a
+rule, only thoroughly understood if one reads both sides of the
+question. But even if we could not take for granted that the
+proletarian reader is fully familiar with the question at issue we
+could not conscientiously advise a worker to get Kautsky's book. It is
+really asking our readers to undertake the superhuman task of reading
+a book which in the guise of a scientific treatise is foully hitting
+him below the belt, and then expect him to pay two dollars for it in
+the bargain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Anyhow, to read Kautsky's book is an ordeal for any revolutionist.
+Kautsky, in his book, tries to prove that the humanitarian instincts
+of the masses must defeat any attempt to overpower and suppress the
+bourgeoisie by terrorist means. But to read his book must kill in the
+proletarian reader the last remnants of those instincts on which
+Kautsky's hope for the safety of the bourgeoisie is based. There would
+even not be enough of those instincts left to save Kautsky from the
+utter contempt of the proletarian masses, a fate he so richly
+deserves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Kautsky was once the foremost exponent of Marxism. Many of those
+fighting to-day in the front ranks of the proletarian army revered
+Kautsky as their teacher. But even in his most glorious days as a
+Marxist his was the musty pedantry of the German professor, which was
+hardly ever penetrated by a live spark of revolutionary spirit. Still,
+the Russian revolution of 1905 found a friend in him. That revolution
+did not commit the unpardonable sin of being successful. But when the
+tornado of the first victorious proletarian revolution swept over
+Russia and destroyed in its fury some of the tormentors and exploiters
+of the working class&#8212;then Kautsky's "humanitarianism" killed the last
+remnant of revolutionary spirit and instinct in him and left only a
+pitiful wreck of an apologist for capitalism, that was once Kautsky,
+the Marxist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+July, 1914. The echoes of the shots fired in Sarajewo threaten to set
+the world in flames. Will it come, the seeming inevitable? No!&#8212;A
+thousand times no! Had not the forces of a future order, had not the
+International of Labor&#8212;the Second International&#8212;solemnly declared in
+1907 in Stuttgart, in 1911 in Copenhagen and in 1912 in Basel: "We
+will fight war by all means at our disposal. Let the exploiters start
+a war. It will begin as a war of capitalist governments against each
+other; it will end&#8212;it must end&#8212;as a war of the working class of the
+world against world capitalism; it must end in the proletarian
+revolution." We, the socialists of the world, comrades from England
+and Russia, from America and Germany, from France and Austria; we
+comrades from all over the world, had solemnly promised ourselves:
+"War against war!" We had promised ourselves and our cause to answer
+the call of capitalism for a world war with a call on the proletariat
+for a world revolution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Days passed. July disappeared in the ocean of time. The first days of
+August brought the booming of the cannon to our ears, messengers of
+the grim reality of war. And then the news of the collapse of the
+Second International; reports of betrayal by the socialists; betrayal
+in London and Vienna; betrayal in Berlin and Brussels; betrayal in
+Paris; betrayal everywhere. What would Kautsky say to this rank
+betrayal, Kautsky, the foremost disciple of Marx, Kautsky, the
+foremost theoretician of the Second International? Will he at least
+speak up? He did not speak up. Commenting on the betrayal he wrote in
+"Die Neue Zeit": "Die Kritik der Waffen hat eingesetzt; jetzt hat die
+Waffe der Kritik zu schweigen."<a href="#note1" name="noteref1">
+<small>[1]</small></a> With this one sentence Kautsky
+replaced Marxism as the basis of his science with rank and undisguised
+hypocrisy. From then on although trying to retain the toga of a
+Marxist scholar on his shoulders, with thousands of "if's" and
+"when's" and "but's" he became the apologist for the betrayal of the
+German Social-Democracy, and the betrayal of the Second International.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is true that his "if's" and "when's" and "but's" did not satisfy
+the Executive Committee of the Social-Democratic Party. They hoped for
+a victory of the imperial army and wanted to secure a full and
+unmitigated share of the glory of "His Majesty's" victory. That is why
+they did not appreciate Kautsky's excellent service. So they helped
+the renegade to a cheap martyrdom by removing him from the editorship
+of "Die Neue Zeit." After 1918 it may have dawned upon Scheidemann and
+Ebert how much better Kautsky served the capitalist cause by couching
+his betrayal in words that did not lose him outright all the
+confidence of the proletariat. And Kautsky himself is now exhausting
+every effort to prove to Noske and Scheidemann how cruelly he was
+mistreated and how well he deserves to be taken back to their bosom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kautsky's book "Terrorism and Communism" is dictated by hatred of the
+Russian revolution. It is influenced by fear of a like revolution in
+Germany. It is written with tears for the counter-revolutionary
+bourgeoisie and its pseudo-"socialist" henchmen who have been
+sacrificed on the altar of revolution by the proletarian dictatorship
+in Russia. Kautsky prefers to sacrifice the revolution and the
+revolutionists on the altar of "humanitarianism." The author of
+"Ethics and the Materialist Conception of History" knows&#8212;must
+know&#8212;that humanitarianism under capitalism is capitalist
+humanitarianism. This humanitarianism mints gold out of the bones, the
+blood, the health and the suffering of the whole working class while
+it sheds tears about an individual case of cruelty to one human being.
+This humanitarianism punishes murder with death and beats to death the
+pacifist who protests against war as an act of mass murder. Under the
+cloak of "humanitarian instincts" Kautsky only hides the enemy of the
+proletarian revolution. The question at issue is not <i>terrorism</i>.
+It is the <i>dictatorship</i>; it is <i>revolution</i> itself. If the
+Russian proletariat was justified in taking over power it was in duty
+bound to use <i>all</i> means necessary to keep it. If it is a crime
+for them to use terrorist means then it was a crime to take a power
+which they could maintain only by terrorist means. And that is really
+Kautsky's point. The crime of the Bolsheviki is that they took power.
+If Kautsky were a mere sentimentalist and yet a revolutionist he could
+shed tears over the unwillingness of the bourgeoisie to give up power
+without a struggle. But not being a revolutionist he condemns the
+proletariat for having taken and maintained power by the only means
+possible, by <i>force</i>. Kautsky would much prefer to shed crocodile
+tears over tens of thousands of proletarian revolutionists slaughtered
+by a successful counter-revolution. He scorns the Russian Communists
+because they robbed him of the opportunity to parade his petit
+bourgeois and consequently pro-capitalist "humanitarian" sentiments in
+a pro-revolutionary cloak. But he must parade them at any cost. So he
+parades them without disguise as a mourner for the suppressed
+bourgeoisie in Russia.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Trotsky's answer to Kautsky is not only one side of a controversy. It
+is one of the literary fruits of the revolution itself. It breathes
+the breath of revolution. It conquers the gray scholastic theory of
+the renegade with the irresistible weapon of the revolutionary
+experience of the Russian proletariat. It refuses to shed tears over
+the victims of Gallifet and shows what alone saved the Russian
+revolution from the Russian Gallifets, the Kolchaks, Wrangels, etc.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Trotsky's book is not only an answer to Karl Kautsky; it is an answer
+to the thousands of Kautskys in the socialist movement the world over
+who want the proletariat to drown the memory of seas of proletarian
+blood shed by their treachery in an ocean of tears shed for the
+suppressed bourgeoisie of Russia.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Trotsky's book is one of the most effective weapons in the literary
+arsenal of the revolutionary proletariat in its fight against the
+social traitors for leadership of the proletarian masses.
+</p>
+
+
+<hr class="med">
+
+<a name="preface">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="firstchapter">
+PREFACE
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctrspace">
+By <span class="sc">H. N. Brailsford</span>
+</p>
+
+
+<p>
+It has been said of the Bolsheviks that they are more interesting than
+Bolshevism. To those who hold to the economic interpretation of
+history that may seem a heresy. None the less, I believe that the
+personality not merely of the leaders but also of their party goes far
+to explain the making and survival of the Russian Revolution. To us in
+the West they seem a wholly foreign type. With Socialist leaders and
+organizations we and our fathers have been familiar for three-quarters
+of a century. There has been no lack of talent and even of genius
+among them. The movement has produced its great theorist in Marx, its
+orator in Jaur&#232;s, its powerful tacticians like Bebel, and it has
+influenced literature in Morris, Anatole France and Shaw. It bred,
+however, no considerable man of action, and it was left for the
+Russians to do what generations of Western Socialists had spent their
+lives in discussing. There was in this Russian achievement an almost
+barbaric simplicity and directness. Here were man who really believed
+the formul&#230; of our theorists and the resolutions of our Congresses.
+What had become for us a sterilized and almost respectable orthodoxy
+rang to their ears as a trumpet call to action. The older generation
+has found it difficult to pardon their sincerity. The rest of us want
+to understand the miracle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The real audacity of the Bolsheviks lay in this, that they made a
+proletarian revolution precisely in that country which, of all
+portions of the civilized world, seemed the least prepared for it by
+its economic development. For an agrarian revolt, for the subdivision
+of the soil, even for the overthrow of the old governing class, Russia
+was certainly ready. But any spontaneous revolution, with its
+foundations laid in the masses of the peasantry, would have been
+individualistic and not communistic. The daring of the Bolsheviks lay
+in their belief that the minute minority of the urban working class
+could, by its concentration, its greater intelligence and its relative
+capacity for organization, dominate the inert peasant mass, and give
+to their outbreak of land-hunger the character and form of a
+constructive proletarian revolution. The bitter struggle among Russian
+parties which lasted from March, 1917, down to the defeat of Wrangel
+in November, 1920, was really an internecine competition among them
+for the leadership of the peasants. Which of these several groups
+could enlist their confidence, to the extent of inducing them not
+merely to fight, but to accept the discipline, military and civilian,
+necessary for victory? At the start the Bolsheviks had everything
+against them. They are nearly all townsmen. They talked in terms of a
+foreign and very German doctrine. Few of them, save Lenin, grasped the
+problems of rural life at all. The landed class should at least have
+known the peasant better. Their chief rivals were the Social
+Revolutionaries, a party which from its first beginnings had made a
+cult of the Russian peasant, studied him, idealized him and courted
+him, which even seemed in 1917 to have won him. Many circumstances
+explain the success of the Bolsheviks, who proved once again in
+history the capacity of the town, even when its population is
+relatively minute, for swift and concentrated action. They also had
+the luck to deal with opponents who committed the supreme mistake of
+invoking foreign aid. But none of these advantages would have availed
+without an immense superiority of character. The Slav temperament,
+dreamy, emotional, undisciplined, showed itself at its worst in the
+incorrigible self-indulgence of the more aristocratic "Whites," while
+the "intellectuals" of the moderate Socialist and Liberal groups have
+been ruined for action by their exclusively literary and &#230;sthetic
+education. The Bolsheviks may be a less cultivated group, but, in
+their underground life of conspiracy, they had learned sobriety,
+discipline, obedience, and mutual confidence. Their rigid dogmatic
+Marxist faith gives to them the power of action which belongs only to
+those who believe without criticism or question. Their ability to lead
+depends much less than most Englishmen suppose, on their ruthlessness
+and their readiness to practise the arts of intimidation and
+suppression. Their chief asset is their self-confidence. In every
+emergency they are always sure that they have the only workable plan.
+They stand before the rest of Russia as one man. They never doubt or
+despair, and even when they compromise, they do it with an air of
+truculence. Their survival amid invasion, famine, blockade, and
+economic collapse has been from first to last a triumph of the
+unflinching will and the fanatical faith. They have spurred a lazy and
+demoralized people to notable feats of arms and to still more
+astonishing feats of endurance. To hypnotize a nation in this fashion
+is, perhaps, the most remarkable feat of the human will in modern
+times.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This book is, so far, by far the most typical expression of the
+Bolshevik temperament which the revolution has produced.
+Characteristically it is a polemic, and not a constructive essay. Its
+self-confidence, its dash, even its insolence, are a true expression
+of the movement. Its author bears a world-famous name. Everyone can
+visualize the powerful head, the singularly handsome features, the
+athletic figure of the man. He makes in private talk an impression of
+decision and definiteness. He is not rapid or expansive in speech, for
+everything that he says is calculated and clear cut. One has the sense
+that one is in the presence of abounding yet disciplined vitality. The
+background is an office which by its military order and punctuality
+rebukes the habitual slovenliness of Russia. On the platform his
+manner was much quieter than I expected. He spoke rather slowly, in a
+pleasant tenor voice, walking to and fro across the stage and choosing
+his words, obviously anxious to express his thoughts forcibly but also
+exactly. A flash of wit and a striking phrase came frequently, but the
+manner was emphatically not that of a demagogue. The man, indeed, is a
+natural aristocrat, and his tendency, which Lenin, the aristocrat by
+birth, corrects, is towards military discipline and authoritative
+regimentation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There is nothing surprising to-day in the note of authority which one
+hears in Trotsky's voice and detects in his writing, for he is the
+chief of a considerable army, which owes everything to his talent for
+organization. It was at Brest-Litovsk that he displayed the audacity
+which is genius. Up to that moment there was little in his career to
+distinguish him from his comrades of the revolutionary under-world&#8212;a
+university course cut short by prison, an apprenticeship to agitation
+in Russia, some years of exile spent in Vienna, Paris, and New York,
+the distinction which he shares with Tchitcherin of "sitting" in a
+British prison, a ready wit, a gift of trenchant speech, but as yet
+neither the solid achievement nor the legend which gives confidence.
+Yet this obscure agitator, handicapped in such a task by his Jewish
+birth, faced the diplomatist and soldiers of the Central Empires,
+flushed as they were with victory and the insolence of their kind,
+forced them into public debate, staggered them by talking of first
+principles as though the defeat and impotence of Russia counted for
+nothing, and actually used the negotiations to shout across their
+heads his summons to their own subjects to revolt. He showed in this
+astonishing performance the grace and audacity of a "matador." This
+unique bit of drama revealed the persistent belief of the Bolsheviks
+in the power of the defiant challenge, the magnetic effect of sheer
+will. Since this episode his services to the revolution have been more
+solid but not less brilliant. He had no military knowledge or
+experience, yet he took in hand the almost desperate task of creating
+an army. He has often been compared to Carnot. But, save that both had
+lost officers, there was little in common between the French and the
+Russian armies in the early stages of the two revolutions. The French
+army had not been demoralized by defeat, or wearied by long inaction,
+or sapped by destructive propaganda. Trotsky had to create his Red
+Army from the foundations. He imposed firm discipline, and yet
+contrived to preserve the &#233;lan of the revolutionary spirit. Hampered
+by the inconceivable difficulties that arose from ruined railways and
+decayed industries, he none the less contrived to make a military
+machine which overthrew the armies of Kolchak, Denikin and Wrangel,
+with the flower of the old professional officers at their head. As a
+feat of organization under inordinate difficulties, his work ranks as
+the most remarkable performance of the revolution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is not the business of a preface to anticipate the argument of a
+book, still less to obtrude personal opinions. Kautsky's labored
+essay, to which this book is the brilliant reply, has been translated
+into English, and is widely known. The case against the possibility of
+political democracy in a capitalist society could hardly be better put
+than in these pages, and the polemic against purely evolutionary
+methods is formidable. The English reader of to-day is aware, however,
+that the Russian revolution has not stood still since Trotsky wrote.
+We have to realize that, even in the view of the Bolsheviks
+themselves, the evolution towards Communism is in Russia only in its
+early stages. The recent compromises imply, at the best, a very long
+period of transition, through controlled capitalist production, to
+Socialism. Experience has proved that catastrophic revolution and the
+seizure of political power do not in themselves avail to make a
+Socialist society. The economic development in that direction has
+actually been retarded, and Russia, under the stress of civil war, has
+retrograded into a primitive village system of production and
+exchange. To every reader's mind the question will be present whether
+the peculiar temperament of the Bolsheviks has led them to
+over-estimate the importance of political power, to underestimate the
+inert resistance of the majority, and to risk too much for the
+illusion of dictating. To that question history has not yet given the
+decisive answer. The d&#230;monic will that made the revolution and
+defended it by achieving the impossible, may yet vindicate itself
+against the dull trend of impersonal forces.
+</p>
+
+
+<hr class="med">
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<b><big>Dictatorship vs. Democracy</big></b>
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<a name="intro">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="chapter">
+Introduction
+</p>
+
+
+<p>
+The origin of this book was the learned brochure by Kautsky with the
+same name. My work was begun at the most intense period of the
+struggle with Denikin and Yudenich, and more than once was interrupted
+by events at the front. In the most difficult days, when the first
+chapters were being written, all the attention of Soviet Russia was
+concentrated on purely military problems. We were obliged to defend
+first of all the very possibility of Socialist economic
+reconstruction. We could busy ourselves little with industry, further
+than was necessary to maintain the front. We were obliged to expose
+Kautsky's economic slanders mainly by analogy with his political
+slanders. The monstrous assertions of Kautsky&#8212;to the effect that the
+Russian workers were incapable of labor discipline and economic
+self-control&#8212;could, at the beginning of this work, nearly a year ago,
+be combatted chiefly by pointing to the high state of discipline and
+heroism in battle of the Russian workers at the front created by the
+civil war. That experience was more than enough to explode these
+bourgeois slanders. But now a few months have gone by, and we can turn
+to facts and conclusions drawn directly from the economic life of
+Soviet Russia.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as the military pressure relaxed after the defeat of Kolchak
+and Yudenich and the infliction of decisive blows on Denikin, after
+the conclusion of peace with Esthonia and the beginning of
+negotiations with Lithuania and Poland, the whole country turned its
+mind to things economic. And this one fact, of a swift and
+concentrated transference of attention and energy from one set of
+problems to another&#8212;very different, but requiring not less
+sacrifice&#8212;is incontrovertible evidence of the mighty vigor of the
+Soviet order. In spite of political tortures, physical sufferings and
+horrors, the laboring masses are infinitely distant from political
+decomposition, from moral collapse, or from apathy. Thanks to a regime
+which, though it has inflicted great hardships upon them, has given
+their life a purpose and a high goal, they preserve an extraordinary
+moral stubbornness and ability unexampled in history, and concentrate
+their attention and will on collective problems. To-day, in all
+branches of industry, there is going on an energetic struggle for the
+establishment of strict labor discipline, and for the increase of the
+productivity of labor. The party organizations, the trade unions, the
+factory and workshop administrative committees, rival one another in
+this respect, with the undivided support of the public opinion of the
+working class as a whole. Factory after factory willingly, by
+resolution at its general meeting, increases its working day.
+Petrograd and Moscow set the example, and the provinces emulate
+Petrograd. Communist Saturdays and Sundays&#8212;that is to say, voluntary
+and unpaid work in hours appointed for rest&#8212;spread ever wider and
+wider, drawing into their reach many, many hundreds of thousands of
+working men and women. The industry and productivity of labor at the
+Communist Saturdays and Sundays, according to the report of experts
+and the evidence of figures, is of a remarkably high standard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Voluntary mobilizations for labor problems in the party and in the
+Young Communist League are carried out with just as much enthusiasm as
+hitherto for military tasks. Voluntarism supplements and gives life to
+universal labor service. The Committees for universal labor service
+recently set up have spread all over the country. The attraction of
+the population to work on a mass scale (clearing snow from the roads,
+repairing railway lines, cutting timber, chopping and bringing up of
+wood to the towns, the simplest building operations, the cutting of
+slate and of peat) become more and more widespread and organized every
+day. The ever-increasing employment of military formations on the
+labor front would be quite impossible in the absence of elevated
+enthusiasm for labor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+True, we live in the midst of a very difficult period of economic
+depression&#8212;exhausted, poverty-stricken, and hungry. But this is no
+argument against the Soviet regime. All periods of transition have
+been characterized by just such tragic features. Every class society
+(serf, feudal, capitalist), having exhausted its vitality, does not
+simply leave the arena, but is violently swept off by an intense
+struggle, which immediately brings to its participants even greater
+privations and sufferings than those against which they rose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The transition from feudal economy to bourgeois society&#8212;a step of
+gigantic importance from the point of view of progress&#8212;gave us a
+terrifying list of martyrs. However the masses of serfs suffered under
+feudalism, however difficult it has been, and is, for the proletariat
+to live under capitalism, never have the sufferings of the workers
+reached such a pitch as at the epochs when the old feudal order was
+being violently shattered, and was yielding place to the new. The
+French Revolution of the eighteenth century, which attained its
+titanic dimensions under the pressure of the masses exhausted with
+suffering, itself deepened and rendered more acute their misfortunes
+for a prolonged period and to an extraordinary extent. Can it be
+otherwise?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Palace revolutions, which end merely by personal reshufflings at the
+top, can take place in a short space of time, having practically no
+effect on the economic life of the country. Quite another matter are
+revolutions which drag into their whirlpool millions of workers.
+Whatever be the form of society, it rests on the foundation of labor.
+Dragging the mass of the people away from labor, drawing them for a
+prolonged period into the struggle, thereby destroying their
+connection with production, the revolution in all these ways strikes
+deadly blows at economic life, and inevitably lowers the standard
+which it found at its birth. The more perfect the revolution, the
+greater are the masses it draws in; and the longer it is prolonged,
+the greater is the destruction it achieves in the apparatus of
+production, and the more terrible inroads does it make upon public
+resources. From this there follows merely the conclusion which did not
+require proof&#8212;that a civil war is harmful to economic life. But to
+lay this at the door of the Soviet economic system is like accusing a
+new-born human being of the birth-pangs of the mother who brought him
+into the world. The problem is to make a civil war a short one; and
+this is attained only by resoluteness in action. But it is just
+against revolutionary resoluteness that Kautsky's whole book is
+directed.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short">
+
+<p>
+Since the time that the book under examination appeared, not only in
+Russia, but throughout the world&#8212;and first of all in Europe&#8212;the
+greatest events have taken place, or processes of great importance
+have developed, undermining the last buttresses of Kautskianism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In Germany, the civil war has been adopting an ever fiercer character.
+The external strength in organization of the old party and trade union
+democracy of the working class has not only not created conditions for
+a more peaceful and "humane" transition to Socialism&#8212;as follows from
+the present theory of Kautsky&#8212;but, on the contrary, has served as one
+of the principal reasons for the long-drawn-out character of the
+struggle, and its constantly growing ferocity. The more German
+Social-Democracy became a conservative, retarding force, the more
+energy, lives, and blood have had to be spent by the German
+proletariat, devoted to it, in a series of systematic attacks on the
+foundation of bourgeois society, in order, in the process of the
+struggle itself, to create an actually revolutionary organization,
+capable of guiding the proletariat to final victory. The conspiracy of
+the German generals, their fleeting seizure of power, and the bloody
+events which followed, have again shown what a worthless and wretched
+masquerade is so-called democracy, during the collapse of imperialism
+and a civil war. This democracy that has outlived itself has not
+decided one question, has not reconciled one contradiction, has not
+healed one wound, has not warded off risings either of the Right or of
+the Left; it is helpless, worthless, fraudulent, and serves only to
+confuse the backward sections of the people, especially the lower
+middle-classes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The hope expressed by Kautsky, in the conclusion of his book, that the
+Western countries, the "old democracies" of France and England&#8212;crowned
+as they are with victory&#8212;will afford us a picture of a healthy,
+normal, peaceful, truly Kautskian development of Socialism, is one
+of the most puerile illusions possible. The so-called Republican
+democracy of victorious France, at the present moment, is nothing but
+the most reactionary, grasping government that has ever existed in the
+world. Its internal policy is built upon fear, greed, and violence, in
+just as great a measure as its external policy. On the other hand, the
+French proletariat, misled more than any other class has ever been
+misled, is more and more entering on the path of direct action. The
+repressions which the government of the Republic has hurled upon
+the General Confederation of Labor show that even syndicalist
+Kautskianism&#8212;<i>i.e.</i>, hypocritical compromise&#8212;has no legal place
+within the framework of bourgeois democracy. The revolutionizing of
+the masses, the growing ferocity of the propertied classes, and the
+disintegration of intermediate groups&#8212;three parallel processes which
+determine the character and herald the coming of a cruel civil
+war&#8212;have been going on before our eyes in full blast during the last
+few months in France.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In Great Britain, events, different in form, are moving along the
+self-same fundamental road. In that country, the ruling class of which
+is oppressing and plundering the whole world more than ever before,
+the formul&#230; of democracy have lost their meaning even as weapons of
+parliamentary swindling. The specialist best qualified in this sphere,
+Lloyd George, appeals now not to democracy, but to a union of
+Conservative and Liberal property holders against the working class.
+In his arguments there remains not a trace of the vague democracy of
+the "Marxist" Kautsky. Lloyd George stands on the ground of class
+realities, and for this very reason speaks in the language of civil
+war. The British working class, with that ponderous learning by
+experience which is its distinguishing feature, is approaching that
+stage of its struggle before which the most heroic pages of Chartism
+will fade, just as the Paris Commune will grow pale before the coming
+victorious revolt of the French proletariat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Precisely because historical events have, with stern energy, been
+developing in these last months their revolutionary logic, the author
+of this present work asks himself: Does it still require to be
+published? Is it still necessary to confute Kautsky theoretically? Is
+there still theoretical necessity to justify revolutionary terrorism?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Unfortunately, yes. Ideology, by its very essence, plays in the
+Socialist movement an enormous part. Even for practical England the
+period has arrived when the working class must exhibit an
+ever-increasing demand for a theoretical statement of its experiences
+and its problems. On the other hand, even the proletarian psychology
+includes in itself a terrible inertia of conservatism&#8212;the more that,
+in the present case, there is a question of nothing less than the
+traditional ideology of the parties of the Second International which
+first roused the proletariat, and recently were so powerful. After the
+collapse of official social-patriotism (Scheidemann, Victor Adler,
+Renaudel, Vandervelde, Henderson, Plekhanov, etc.), international
+Kautskianism (the staff of the German Independents, Friedrich Adler,
+Longuet, a considerable section of the Italians, the British
+Independent Labor Party, the Martov group, etc.) has become the chief
+political factor on which the unstable equilibrium of capitalist
+society depends. It may be said that the will of the working masses of
+the whole of the civilized world, directly influenced by the course of
+events, is at the present moment incomparably more revolutionary than
+their consciousness, which is still dominated by the prejudices of
+parliamentarism and compromise. The struggle for the dictatorship of
+the working class means, at the present moment, an embittered struggle
+with Kautskianism within the working class. The lies and prejudices of
+the policy of compromise, still poisoning the atmosphere even in
+parties tending towards the Third International, must be thrown aside.
+This book must serve the ends of an irreconcilable struggle against
+the cowardice, half-measures, and hypocrisy of Kautskianism in all
+countries.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short">
+
+<p>
+P.S.&#8212;To-day (May, 1920) the clouds have again gathered over Soviet
+Russia. Bourgeois Poland, by its attack on the Ukraine, has opened the
+new offensive of world imperialism against the Soviet Republic. The
+gigantic perils again growing up before the revolution, and the great
+sacrifices again imposed on the laboring masses by the war, are once
+again pushing Russian Kautskianism on to the path of open opposition
+to the Soviet Government&#8212;<i>i.e.</i>, in reality, on to the path of
+assistance to the world murderers of Soviet Russia. It is the fate of
+Kautskianism to try to help the proletarian revolution when it is in
+satisfactory circumstances, and to raise all kinds of obstacles in its
+way when it is particularly in need of help. Kautsky has more than
+once foretold our destruction, which must serve as the best proof of
+his, Kautsky's, theoretical rectitude. In his fall, this "successor of
+Marx" has reached a stage at which his sole serious political
+programme consists in speculations on the collapse of the proletarian
+dictatorship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He will be once again mistaken. The destruction of bourgeois Poland by
+the Red Army, guided by Communist working men, will appear as a new
+manifestation of the power of the proletarian dictatorship, and will
+thereby inflict a crushing blow on bourgeois scepticism (Kautskianism)
+in the working class movement. In spite of mad confusion of external
+forms, watchwords, and appearances, history has extremely simplified
+the fundamental meaning of its own process, reducing it to a struggle
+of imperialism against Communism. Pilsudsky is fighting, not only for
+the lands of the Polish magnates in the Ukraine and in White Russia,
+not only for capitalist property and for the Catholic Church, but also
+for parliamentary democracy and for evolutionary Socialism, for the
+Second International, and for the right of Kautsky to remain a
+critical hanger-on of the bourgeoisie. We are fighting for the
+Communist International, and for the international proletarian
+revolution. The stakes are great on either side. The struggle will be
+obstinate and painful. We hope for the victory, for we have every
+historical right to it.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sig">
+<span class="sc">L. Trotsky.</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Moscow, May 29, 1920.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="med">
+
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<b><big>Dictatorship vs. Democracy</big></b>
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>A Reply to Karl Kautsky</i>
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<i>By</i> LEON TROTSKY
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<a name="balance">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="chapter">
+1
+</p>
+
+<p class="head">
+<span class="sc">The Balance of Power</span>
+</p>
+
+
+<p>
+The argument which is repeated again and again in criticisms of the
+Soviet system in Russia, and particularly in criticisms of
+revolutionary attempts to set up a similar structure in other
+countries, is the argument based on the balance of power. The Soviet
+regime in Russia is utopian&#8212;"because it does not correspond to the
+balance of power." Backward Russia cannot put objects before itself
+which would be appropriate to advanced Germany. And for the
+proletariat of Germany it would be madness to take political power
+into its own hands, as this "at the present moment" would disturb the
+balance of power. The League of Nations is imperfect, but still
+corresponds to the balance of power. The struggle for the overthrow of
+imperialist supremacy is utopian&#8212;the balance of power only requires a
+revision of the Versailles Treaty. When Longuet hobbled after Wilson
+this took place, not because of the political decomposition of
+Longuet, but in honor of the law of the balance of power. The Austrian
+president, Seitz, and the chancellor, Renner, must, in the opinion of
+Friedrich Adler, exercise their bourgeois impotence at the central
+posts of the bourgeois republic, for otherwise the balance of power
+would be infringed. Two years before the world war, Karl Renner, then
+not a chancellor, but a "Marxist" advocate of opportunism, explained
+to me that the regime of June 3&#8212;that is, the union of landlords and
+capitalists crowned by the monarchy&#8212;must inevitably maintain itself
+in Russia during a whole historical period, as it answered to the
+balance of power.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What is this balance of power after all&#8212;that sacramental formula
+which is to define, direct, and explain the whole course of history,
+wholesale and retail? Why exactly is it that the formula of the
+balance of power, in the mouth of Kautsky and his present school,
+inevitably appears as a justification of indecision, stagnation,
+cowardice and treachery?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By the balance of power they understand everything you please: the
+level of production attained, the degree of differentiation of
+classes, the number of organized workers, the total funds at the
+disposal of the trade unions, sometimes the results of the last
+parliamentary elections, frequently the degree of readiness for
+compromise on the part of the ministry, or the degree of effrontery of
+the financial oligarchy. Most frequently, it means that summary
+political impression which exists in the mind of a half-blind pedant,
+or a so-called realist politician, who, though he has absorbed the
+phraseology of Marxism, in reality is guided by the most shallow
+man&#339;uvres, bourgeois prejudices, and parliamentary "tactics." After
+a whispered conversation with the director of the police department,
+an Austrian Social-Democratic politician in the good, and not so far
+off, old times always knew exactly whether the balance of power
+permitted a peaceful street demonstration in Vienna on May Day. In the
+case of the Eberts, Scheidemanns and Davids, the balance of power was,
+not so very long ago, calculated exactly by the number of fingers
+which were extended to them at their meeting in the Reichstag with
+Bethmann-Hollweg, or with Ludendorff himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+According to Friedrich Adler, the establishment of a Soviet
+dictatorship in Austria would be a fatal infraction of the balance of
+power; the Entente would condemn Austria to starvation. In proof of
+this, Friedrich Adler, at the July congress of Soviets, pointed to
+Hungary, where at that time the Hungarian Renners had not yet, with
+the help of the Hungarian Adlers, overthrown the dictatorship of the
+Soviets. At the first glance, it might really seem that Friedrich
+Adler was right in the case of Hungary. The proletarian dictatorship
+was overthrown there soon afterwards, and its place was filled by the
+ministry of the reactionary Friedrich. But it is quite justifiable to
+ask: Did the latter correspond to the balance of power? At all events,
+Friedrich and his Huszar might not even temporarily have seized power
+had it not been for the Roumanian army. Hence, it is clear that, when
+discussing the fate of the Soviet Government in Hungary, it is
+necessary to take account of the "balance of power," at all events in
+two countries&#8212;in Hungary itself, and in its neighbor, Roumania. But
+it is not difficult to grasp that we cannot stop at this. If the
+dictatorship of the Soviets had been set up in Austria before the
+maturing of the Hungarian crisis, the overthrow of the Soviet regime
+in Budapest would have been an infinitely more difficult task.
+Consequently, we have to include Austria also, together with the
+treacherous policy of Friedrich Adler, in that balance of power which
+determined the temporary fall of the Soviet Government in Hungary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Friedrich Adler himself, however, seeks the key to the balance of
+power, not in Russia and Hungary, but in the West, in the countries of
+Clemenceau and Lloyd George. They have in their hands bread and
+coal&#8212;and really bread and coal, especially in our time, are just as
+foremost factors in the mechanism of the balance of power as cannon in
+the constitution of Lassalle. Brought down from the heights, Adler's
+idea consists, consequently, in this: that the Austrian proletariat
+must not seize power until such time, as it is permitted to do so by
+Clemenceau (or Millerand&#8212;<i>i.e.</i>, a Clemenceau of the second
+order).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, even here it is permissible to ask: Does the policy of
+Clemenceau himself really correspond to the balance of power? At the
+first glance it may appear that it corresponds well enough, and, if it
+cannot be proved, it is, at least, guaranteed by Clemenceau's
+gendarmes, who break up working-class meetings, and arrest and shoot
+Communists. But here we cannot but remember that the terrorist
+measures of the Soviet Government&#8212;that is, the same searches,
+arrests, and executions, only directed against the
+counter-revolutionaries&#8212;are considered by some people as a proof that
+the Soviet Government does <i>not</i> correspond to the balance of
+power. In vain would we, however, begin to seek in our time, anywhere
+in the world, a regime which, to preserve itself, did not have
+recourse to measures of stern mass repression. This means that hostile
+class forces, having broken through the framework of every kind of
+law&#8212;including that of "democracy"&#8212;are striving to find their new
+balance by means of a merciless struggle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the Soviet system was being instituted in Russia, not only the
+capitalist politicians, but also the Socialist opportunists of all
+countries proclaimed it an insolent challenge to the balance of
+forces. On this score, there was no quarrel between Kautsky, the
+Austrian Count Czernin, and the Bulgarian Premier, Radoslavov. Since
+that time, the Austro-Hungarian and German monarchies have collapsed,
+and the most powerful militarism in the world has fallen into dust.
+The Soviet regime has held out. The victorious countries of the
+Entente have mobilized and hurled against it all they could. The
+Soviet Government has stood firm. Had Kautsky, Friedrich Adler, and
+Otto Bauer been told that the system of the dictatorship of the
+proletariat would hold out in Russia&#8212;first against the attack of
+German militarism, and then in a ceaseless war with the militarism of
+the Entente countries&#8212;the sages of the Second International would
+have considered such a prophecy a laughable misunderstanding of the
+"balance of power."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The balance of political power at any given moment is determined under
+the influence of fundamental and secondary factors of differing
+degrees of effectiveness, and only in its most fundamental quality is
+it determined by the stage of the development of production. The
+social structure of a people is extraordinarily behind the development
+of its productive forces. The lower middle-classes, and particularly
+the peasantry, retain their existence long after their economic
+methods have been made obsolete, and have been condemned, by the
+technical development of the productive powers of society. The
+consciousness of the masses, in its turn, is extraordinarily behind
+the development of their social relations, the consciousness of the
+old Socialist parties is a whole epoch behind the state of mind of the
+masses, and the consciousness of the old parliamentary and trade union
+leaders, more reactionary than the consciousness of their party,
+represents a petrified mass which history has been unable hitherto
+either to digest or reject. In the parliamentary epoch, during the
+period of stability of social relations, the psychological
+factor&#8212;without great error&#8212;was the foundation upon which all current
+calculations were based. It was considered that parliamentary
+elections reflected the balance of power with sufficient exactness.
+The imperialist war, which upset all bourgeois society, displayed the
+complete uselessness of the old criteria. The latter completely
+ignored those profound historical factors which had gradually been
+accumulating in the preceding period, and have now, all at once,
+appeared on the surface, and have begun to determine the course of
+history.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The political worshippers of routine, incapable of surveying the
+historical process in its complexity, in its internal clashes and
+contradictions, imagined to themselves that history was preparing the
+way for the Socialist order simultaneously and systematically on all
+sides, so that concentration of production and the development of a
+Communist morality in the producer and the consumer mature
+simultaneously with the electric plough and a parliamentary majority.
+Hence the purely mechanical attitude towards parliamentarism, which,
+in the eyes of the majority of the statesmen of the Second
+International, indicated the degree to which society was prepared for
+Socialism as accurately as the manometer indicates the pressure of
+steam. Yet there is nothing more senseless than this mechanized
+representation of the development of social relations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If, beginning with the productive bases of society, we ascend the
+stages of the superstructure&#8212;classes, the State, laws, parties, and
+so on&#8212;it may be established that the weight of each additional part
+of the superstructure is not simply to be added to, but in many cases
+to be multiplied by, the weight of all the preceding stages. As a
+result, the political consciousness of groups which long imagined
+themselves to be among the most advanced, displays itself, at a moment
+of change, as a colossal obstacle in the path of historical
+development. To-day it is quite beyond doubt that the parties of the
+Second International, standing at the head of the proletariat, which
+dared not, could not, and would not take power into their hands at the
+most critical moment of human history, and which led the proletariat
+along the road of mutual destruction in the interests of imperialism,
+proved a <i>decisive factor</i> of the counter-revolution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The great forces of production&#8212;that shock factor in historical
+development&#8212;were choked in those obsolete institutions of the
+superstructure (private property and the national State) in which they
+found themselves locked by all preceding development. Engendered by
+capitalism, the forces of production were knocking at all the walls of
+the bourgeois national State, demanding their emancipation by means of
+the Socialist organization of economic life on a world scale. The
+stagnation of social groupings, the stagnation of political forces,
+which proved themselves incapable of destroying the old class
+groupings, the stagnation, stupidity and treachery of the directing
+Socialist parties, which had assumed to themselves in reality the
+defense of bourgeois society&#8212;all these factors led to an elemental
+revolt of the forces of production, in the shape of the imperialist
+war. Human technical skill, the most revolutionary factor in history,
+arose with the might accumulated during scores of years against the
+disgusting conservatism and criminal stupidity of the Scheidemanns,
+Kautskies, Renaudels, Vanderveldes and Longuets, and, by means of its
+howitzers, machine-guns, dreadnoughts and aeroplanes, it began a
+furious pogrom of human culture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In this way the cause of the misfortunes at present experienced by
+humanity is precisely that the development of the technical command of
+men over nature has <i>long ago</i> grown ripe for the socialization
+of economic life. The proletariat has occupied a place in production
+which completely guarantees its dictatorship, while the most
+intelligent forces in history&#8212;the parties and their leaders&#8212;have
+been discovered to be still wholly under the yoke of the old
+prejudices, and only fostered a lack of faith among the masses in
+their own power. In quite recent years Kautsky used to understand
+this. "The proletariat at the present time has grown so strong," wrote
+Kautsky in his pamphlet, <i>The Path to Power</i>, "that it can calmly
+await the coming war. There can be no more talk of a <i>premature
+revolution</i>, now that the proletariat has drawn from the present
+structure of the State such strength as could be drawn therefrom, and
+now that its reconstruction has become a condition of the
+proletariat's further progress." From the moment that the development
+of productive forces, outgrowing the framework of the bourgeois
+national State, drew mankind into an epoch of crises and convulsions,
+the consciousness of the masses was shaken by dread shocks out of the
+comparative equilibrium of the preceding epoch. The routine and
+stagnation of its mode of living, the hypnotic suggestion of peaceful
+legality, had already ceased to dominate the proletariat. But it had
+not yet stepped, consciously and courageously, on to the path of open
+revolutionary struggle. It wavered, passing through the last moment of
+unstable equilibrium. At such a moment of psychological change, the
+part played by the summit&#8212;the State, on the one hand, and the
+revolutionary Party on the other&#8212;acquires a colossal importance. A
+determined push from left or right is sufficient to move the
+proletariat, for a certain period, to one or the other side. We saw
+this in 1914, when, under the united pressure of imperialist
+governments and Socialist patriotic parties, the working class was all
+at once thrown out of its equilibrium and hurled on to the path of
+imperialism. We have since seen how the experience of the war, the
+contrasts between its results and its first objects, is shaking the
+masses in a revolutionary sense, making them more and more capable of
+an open revolt against capitalism. In such conditions, the presence of
+a revolutionary party, which renders to itself a clear account of the
+motive forces of the present epoch, and understands the exceptional
+role amongst them of a revolutionary class; which knows its
+inexhaustible, but unrevealed, powers; which believes in that class
+and believes in itself; which knows the power of revolutionary method
+in an epoch of instability of all social relations; which is ready to
+employ that method and carry it through to the end&#8212;the presence of
+such a party represents a factor of incalculable historical
+importance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, on the other hand, the Socialist party, enjoying traditional
+influence, which does <i>not</i> render itself an account of what is
+going on around it, which does <i>not</i> understand the revolutionary
+situation, and, therefore, finds no key to it, which does <i>not</i>
+believe in either the proletariat or itself&#8212;such a party in our time
+is the most mischievous stumbling block in history, and a source of
+confusion and inevitable chaos.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such is now the role of Kautsky and his sympathizers. They teach the
+proletariat not to believe in itself, but to believe its reflection in
+the crooked mirror of democracy which has been shattered by the
+jack-boot of militarism into a thousand fragments. The decisive factor
+in the revolutionary policy of the working class must be, in their
+view, not the international situation, not the actual collapse of
+capitalism, not that social collapse which is generated thereby, not
+that concrete necessity of the supremacy of the working class for
+which the cry arises from the smoking ruins of capitalist
+civilization&#8212;not all this must determine the policy of the
+revolutionary party of the proletariat&#8212;but that counting of votes
+which is carried out by the capitalist tellers of parliamentarism.
+Only a few years ago, we repeat, Kautsky seemed to understand the real
+inner meaning of the problem of revolution. "Yes, the proletariat
+represents the sole revolutionary class of the nation," wrote Kautsky
+in his pamphlet, <i>The Path to Power</i>. It follows that every
+collapse of the capitalist order, whether it be of a moral, financial,
+or military character, implies the bankruptcy of all the bourgeois
+parties responsible for it, and signifies that the sole way out of the
+blind alley is the establishment of the power of the
+<i>proletariat</i>. And to-day the party of prostration and cowardice,
+the party of Kautsky, says to the working class: "The question is not
+whether you to-day are the sole creative force in history; whether you
+are capable of throwing aside that ruling band of robbers into which
+the propertied classes have developed; the question is not whether
+anyone else can accomplish this task on your behalf; the question is
+not whether history allows you any postponement (for the present
+condition of bloody chaos threatens to bury you yourself, in the near
+future, under the last ruins of capitalism). The problem is for the
+ruling imperialist bandits to succeed&#8212;yesterday or to-day&#8212;to
+deceive, violate, and swindle public opinion, by collecting 51 per
+cent. of the votes against your 49. Perish the world, but long live
+the parliamentary majority!"
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<a name="dictatorship">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="chapter">
+2
+</p>
+
+<p class="head">
+<span class="sc">The Dictatorship of the Proletariat</span>
+</p>
+
+
+<p>
+"Marx and Engels hammered out the idea of the dictatorship of the
+proletariat, which Engels stubbornly defended in 1891, shortly before
+his death&#8212;the idea that the political autocracy of the proletariat is
+the sole form in which it can realize its control of the state."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That is what Kautsky wrote about ten years ago. The sole form of power
+for the proletariat he considered to be not a Socialist majority in a
+democratic parliament, but the political autocracy of the proletariat,
+its dictatorship. And it is quite clear that, if our problem is the
+abolition of private property in the means of production, the only
+road to its solution lies through the concentration of State power in
+its entirety in the hands of the proletariat, and the setting up for
+the transitional period of an exceptional regime&#8212;a regime in which
+the ruling class is guided, not by general principles calculated for a
+prolonged period, but by considerations of revolutionary policy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The dictatorship is necessary because it is a case, not of partial
+changes, but of the very existence of the bourgeoisie. No agreement is
+possible on this ground. Only force can be the deciding factor. The
+dictatorship of the proletariat does not exclude, of course, either
+separate agreements, or considerable concessions, especially in
+connection with the lower middle-class and the peasantry. But the
+proletariat can only conclude these agreements after having gained
+possession of the apparatus of power, and having guaranteed to itself
+the possibility of independently deciding on which points to yield and
+on which to stand firm, in the interests of the general Socialist
+task.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kautsky now repudiates the dictatorship of the proletariat at the very
+outset, as the "tyranny of the minority over the majority." That is,
+he discerns in the revolutionary regime of the proletariat those very
+features by which the honest Socialists of all countries invariably
+describe the dictatorship of the exploiters, albeit masked by the
+forms of democracy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Abandoning the idea of a revolutionary dictatorship, Kautsky
+transforms the question of the conquest of power by the proletariat
+into a question of the conquest of a majority of votes by the
+Social-Democratic Party in one of the electoral campaigns of the
+future. Universal suffrage, according to the legal fiction of
+parliamentarism, expresses the will of the citizens of all classes in
+the nation, and, consequently, gives a possibility of attracting a
+majority to the side of Socialism. While the theoretical possibility
+has not been realized, the Socialist minority must submit to the
+bourgeois majority. This fetishism of the parliamentary majority
+represents a brutal repudiation, not only of the dictatorship of the
+proletariat, but of Marxism and of the revolution altogether. If, in
+principle, we are to subordinate Socialist policy to the parliamentary
+mystery of majority and minority, it follows that, in countries where
+formal democracy prevails, there is no place at all for the
+revolutionary struggle. If the majority elected on the basis of
+universal suffrage in Switzerland pass draconian legislation against
+strikers, or if the executive elected by the will of a formal majority
+in Northern America shoots workers, have the Swiss and American
+workers the "right" of protest by organizing a general strike?
+Obviously, no. The political strike is a form of extra-parliamentary
+pressure on the "national will," as it has expressed itself through
+universal suffrage. True, Kautsky himself, apparently, is ashamed to
+go as far as the logic of his new position demands. Bound by some sort
+of remnant of the past, he is obliged to acknowledge the possibility
+of correcting universal suffrage by action. Parliamentary elections,
+at all events in principle, never took the place, in the eyes of the
+Social-Democrats, of the real class struggle, of its conflicts,
+repulses, attacks, revolts; they were considered merely as a
+contributory fact in this struggle, playing a greater part at one
+period, a smaller at another, and no part at all in the period of
+dictatorship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In 1891, that is, not long before his death, Engels, as we just heard,
+obstinately defended the dictatorship of the proletariat as the only
+possible form of its control of the State. Kautsky himself more than
+once repeated this definition. Hence, by the way, we can see what an
+unworthy forgery is Kautsky's present attempt to throw back the
+dictatorship of the proletariat at us as a purely Russian invention.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Who aims at the end cannot reject the means. The struggle must be
+carried on with such intensity as actually to guarantee the supremacy
+of the proletariat. If the Socialist revolution requires a
+dictatorship&#8212;"the sole form in which the proletariat can achieve
+control of the State"&#8212;it follows that the dictatorship must be
+guaranteed at all cost.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To write a pamphlet about dictatorship one needs an ink-pot and a pile
+of paper, and possibly, in addition, a certain number of ideas in
+one's head. But in order to establish and consolidate the
+dictatorship, one has to prevent the bourgeoisie from undermining the
+State power of the proletariat. Kautsky apparently thinks that this
+can be achieved by tearful pamphlets. But his own experience ought to
+have shown him that it is not sufficient to have lost all influence
+with the proletariat, to acquire influence with the bourgeoisie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is only possible to safeguard the supremacy of the working class by
+forcing the bourgeoisie accustomed to rule, to realize that it is too
+dangerous an undertaking for it to revolt against the dictatorship of
+the proletariat, to undermine it by conspiracies, sabotage,
+insurrections, or the calling in of foreign troops. The bourgeoisie,
+hurled from power, must be forced to obey. In what way? The priests
+used to terrify the people with future penalties. We have no such
+resources at our disposal. But even the priests' hell never stood
+alone, but was always bracketed with the material fire of the Holy
+Inquisition, and with the scorpions of the democratic State. Is it
+possible that Kautsky is leaning to the idea that the bourgeoisie can
+be held down with the help of the categorical imperative, which in his
+last writings plays the part of the Holy Ghost? We, on our part, can
+only promise him our material assistance if he decides to equip a
+Kantian-humanitarian mission to the realms of Denikin and Kolchak. At
+all events, there he would have the possibility of convincing himself
+that the counter-revolutionaries are not naturally devoid of
+character, and that, thanks to their six years' existence in the fire
+and smoke of war, their character has managed to become thoroughly
+hardened. Every White Guard has long ago acquired the simple truth
+that it is easier to hang a Communist to the branch of a tree than to
+convert him with a book of Kautsky's. These gentlemen have no
+superstitious fear, either of the principles of democracy or of the
+flames of hell&#8212;the more so because the priests of the church and of
+official learning act in collusion with them, and pour their combined
+thunders exclusively on the heads of the Bolsheviks. The Russian White
+Guards resemble the German and all other White Guards in this
+respect&#8212;that they cannot be convinced or shamed, but only terrorized
+or crushed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man who repudiates terrorism in principle&#8212;<i>i.e.</i>, repudiates
+measures of suppression and intimidation towards determined and armed
+counter-revolution, must reject all idea of the political supremacy of
+the working class and its revolutionary dictatorship. The man who
+repudiates the dictatorship of the proletariat repudiates the
+Socialist revolution, and digs the grave of Socialism.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short">
+
+<p>
+At the present time, Kautsky has no theory of the social revolution.
+Every time he tries to generalize his slanders against the revolution
+and the dictatorship of the proletariat, he produces merely a
+r&#233;chauff&#233; of the prejudices of Jaur&#232;sism and Bernsteinism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The revolution of 1789," writes Kautsky, "itself put an end to the
+most important causes which gave it its harsh and violent character,
+and prepared the way for milder forms of the future revolution." (Page
+140.)<a href="#note2" name="noteref2">
+<small>[2]</small></a> Let us admit this, though to do so we have to forget the June
+days of 1848 and the horrors of the suppression of the Commune. Let us
+admit that the great revolution of the eighteenth century, which by
+measures of merciless terror destroyed the rule of absolutism, of
+feudalism, and of clericalism, really prepared the way for more
+peaceful and milder solutions of social problems. But, even if we
+admit this purely liberal standpoint, even here our accuser will prove
+to be completely in the wrong; for the Russian Revolution, which
+culminated in the dictatorship of the proletariat, began with just
+that work which was done in France at the end of the eighteenth
+century. Our forefathers, in centuries gone by, did not take the
+trouble to prepare the democratic way&#8212;by means of revolutionary
+terrorism&#8212;for milder manners in our revolution. The ethical mandarin,
+Kautsky, ought to take these circumstances into account, and accuse
+our forefathers, not us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kautsky, however, seems to make a little concession in this direction.
+"True," he says, "no man of insight could doubt that a military
+monarchy like the German, the Austrian, or the Russian could be
+overthrown only by violent methods. But in this connection there was
+always less thought" (amongst whom?), "of the bloody use of arms, and
+more of the working class weapon peculiar to the proletariat&#8212;the mass
+strike. And that a considerable portion of the proletariat, after
+seizing power, would again&#8212;as at the end of the eighteenth
+century&#8212;give vent to its rage and revenge in bloodshed could not be
+expected. This would have meant a complete negation of all progress."
+(Page 147.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As we see, the war and a series of revolutions were required to enable
+us to get a proper view of what was going on in reality in the heads
+of some of our most learned theoreticians. It turns out that Kautsky
+did not think that a Romanoff or a Hohenzollern could be put away by
+means of conversations; but at the same time he seriously imagined
+that a military monarchy could be overthrown by a general
+strike&#8212;<i>i.e.</i>, by a peaceful demonstration of folded arms. In
+spite of the Russian revolution, and the world discussion of this
+question, Kautsky, it turns out, retains the anarcho-reformist view of
+the general strike. We might point out to him that, in the pages of
+its own journal, the <i>Neue Zeit</i>, it was explained twelve years
+ago that the general strike is only a mobilization of the proletariat
+and its setting up against its enemy, the State; but that the strike
+in itself cannot produce the solution of the problem, because it
+exhausts the forces of the proletariat sooner than those of its
+enemies, and this, sooner or later, forces the workers to return to
+the factories. The general strike acquires a decisive importance only
+as a preliminary to a conflict between the proletariat and the armed
+forces of the opposition&#8212;<i>i.e.</i>, to the open revolutionary
+rising of the workers. Only by breaking the will of the armies thrown
+against it can the revolutionary class solve the problem of power&#8212;the
+root problem of every revolution. The general strike produces the
+mobilization of both sides, and gives the first serious estimate of
+the powers of resistance of the counter-revolution. But only in the
+further stages of the struggle, after the transition to the path of
+armed insurrection, can that bloody price be fixed which the
+revolutionary class has to pay for power. But that it will have to pay
+with blood, that, in the struggle for the conquest of power and for
+its consolidation, the proletariat will have not only to be killed,
+but also to kill&#8212;of this no serious revolutionary ever had any doubt.
+To announce that the existence of a determined life-and-death struggle
+between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie "is a complete negation of
+all progress," means simply that the heads of some of our most
+reverend theoreticians take the form of a camera-obscura, in which
+objects are represented upside down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, even when applied to more advanced and cultured countries with
+established democratic traditions, there is absolutely no proof of the
+justice of Kautsky's historical argument. As a matter of fact, the
+argument itself is not new. Once upon a time the Revisionists gave it
+a character more based on principle. They strove to prove that the
+growth of proletarian organizations under democratic conditions
+guaranteed the gradual and imperceptible&#8212;reformist and
+evolutionary&#8212;transition to Socialist society&#8212;without general strikes
+and risings, without the dictatorship of the proletariat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kautsky, at that culminating period of his activity, showed that, in
+spite of the forms of democracy, the class contradictions of
+capitalist society grew deeper, and that this process must inevitably
+lead to a revolution and the conquest of power by the proletariat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No one, of course, attempted to reckon up beforehand the number of
+victims that will be called for by the revolutionary insurrection of
+the proletariat, and by the regime of its dictatorship. But it was
+clear to all that the number of victims will vary with the strength of
+resistance of the propertied classes. If Kautsky desires to say in his
+book that a democratic upbringing has not weakened the class egoism of
+the bourgeoisie, this can be admitted without further parley.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If he wishes to add that the imperialist war, which broke out and
+continued for four years, <i>in spite of</i> democracy, brought about
+a degradation of morals and accustomed men to violent methods and
+action, and completely stripped the bourgeoisie of the last vestige of
+awkwardness in ordering the destruction of masses of humanity&#8212;here
+also he will be right.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All this is true on the face of it. But one has to struggle in real
+conditions. The contending forces are not proletarian and bourgeois
+manikins produced in the retort of Wagner-Kautsky, but a real
+proletariat against a real bourgeoisie, as they have emerged from the
+last imperialist slaughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In this fact of merciless civil war that is spreading over the whole
+world, Kautsky sees only the result of a fatal lapse from the
+"experienced tactics" of the Second International.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In reality, since the time," he writes, "that Marxism has dominated
+the Socialist movement, the latter, up to the world war, was, in spite
+of its great activities, preserved from great defeats. And the idea of
+insuring victory by means of terrorist domination had completely
+disappeared from its ranks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Much was contributed in this connection by the fact that, at the time
+when Marxism was the dominating Socialist teaching, democracy threw
+out firm roots in Western Europe, and began there to change from an
+end of the struggle to a trustworthy basis of political life." (Page
+145.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In this "formula of progress" there is not one atom of Marxism. The
+real process of the struggle of classes and their material conflicts
+has been lost in Marxist propaganda, which, thanks to the conditions
+of democracy, guarantees, forsooth, a painless transition to a new and
+"wiser" order. This is the most vulgar liberalism, a belated piece of
+rationalism in the spirit of the eighteenth century&#8212;with the
+difference that the ideas of Condorcet are replaced by a vulgarisation
+of the Communist Manifesto. All history resolves itself into an
+endless sheet of printed paper, and the centre of this "humane"
+process proves to be the well-worn writing table of Kautsky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We are given as an example the working-class movement in the period of
+the Second International, which, going forward under the banner of
+Marxism, never sustained great defeats whenever it deliberately
+challenged them. But did not the whole working-class movement, the
+proletariat of the whole world, and with it the whole of human
+culture, sustain an incalculable defeat in August, 1914, when history
+cast up the accounts of all the forces and possibilities of the
+Socialist parties, amongst whom, we are told, the guiding role
+belonged to Marxism, "on the firm footing of democracy"? <i>Those
+parties proved bankrupt.</i> Those features of their previous work
+which Kautsky now wishes to render permanent&#8212;self-adaptation,
+repudiation of "illegal" activity, repudiation of the open fight,
+hopes placed in democracy as the road to a painless revolution&#8212;all
+these fell into dust. In their fear of defeat, holding back the masses
+from open conflict, dissolving the general strike discussions, the
+parties of the Second International were preparing their own
+terrifying defeat; for they were not able to move one finger to avert
+the greatest catastrophe in world history, the four years' imperialist
+slaughter, which foreshadowed the violent character of the civil war.
+Truly, one has to put a wadded night-cap not only over one's eyes, but
+over one's nose and ears, to be able to-day, after the inglorious
+collapse of the Second International, after the disgraceful bankruptcy
+of its leading party&#8212;the German Social-Democracy&#8212;after the bloody
+lunacy of the world slaughter and the gigantic sweep of the civil war,
+to set up in contrast to us, the profundity, the loyalty, the
+peacefulness and the sobriety of the Second International, the
+heritage of which we are still liquidating.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<a name="democracy">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="chapter">
+3
+</p>
+
+<p class="head">
+<span class="sc">Democracy</span>
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="subhead">
+"EITHER DEMOCRACY, OR CIVIL WAR"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kautsky has a clear and solitary path to salvation: <i>democracy</i>.
+All that is necessary is that every one should acknowledge it and bind
+himself to support it. The Right Socialists must renounce the
+sanguinary slaughter with which they have been carrying out the will
+of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie itself must abandon the idea of
+using its Noskes and Lieutenant Vogels to defend its privileges to the
+last breath. Finally, the proletariat must once and for all reject the
+idea of overthrowing the bourgeoisie by means other than those laid
+down in the Constitution. If the conditions enumerated are observed,
+the social revolution will painlessly melt into democracy. In order to
+succeed it is sufficient, as we see, for our stormy history to draw a
+nightcap over its head, and take a pinch of wisdom out of Kautsky's
+snuffbox.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There exist only two possibilities," says our sage, "either
+democracy, or civil war." (Page 220.) Yet, in Germany, where the
+formal elements of "democracy" are present before our eyes, the civil
+war does not cease for a moment. "Unquestionably," agrees Kautsky,
+"under the present National Assembly Germany cannot arrive at a
+healthy condition. But that process of recovery will not be assisted,
+but hindered, if we transform the struggle against the present
+Assembly into a struggle against the democratic franchise." (Page
+230.) As if the question in Germany really did reduce itself to one of
+electoral forms and not to one of the real possession of power!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The present National Assembly, as Kautsky admits, cannot "bring the
+country to a healthy condition." Therefore let us begin the game again
+at the beginning. But will the partners agree? It is doubtful. If the
+rubber is not favorable to us, obviously it is so to them. The
+National Assembly which "is incapable of bringing the country to a
+healthy condition," is quite capable, through the mediocre
+dictatorship of Noske, of preparing the way for the dictatorship of
+Ludendorff. So it was with the Constituent Assembly which prepared the
+way for Kolchak. The historical mission of Kautsky consists precisely
+in having waited for the revolution to write his (n + 1th) book, which
+should explain the collapse of the revolution by all the previous
+course of history, from the ape to Noske, and from Noske to
+Ludendorff. The problem before the revolutionary party is a difficult
+one: its problem is to foresee the peril in good time, and to
+forestall it by <i>action</i>. And for this there is no other way at
+present than to tear the power out of the hands of its real
+possessors, the agrarian and capitalist magnates, who are only
+temporarily hiding behind Messrs. Ebert and Noske. Thus, from the
+present National Assembly, the path divides into two: either the
+dictatorship of the imperialist clique, or the dictatorship of the
+proletariat. On neither side does the path lead to "democracy."
+Kautsky does not see this. He explains at great length that democracy
+is of great importance for its political development and its education
+in organization of the masses, and that through it the proletariat can
+come to complete emancipation. One might imagine that, since the day
+on which the Erfurt Programme was written, nothing worthy of notice
+had ever happened in the world!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet meanwhile, for decades, the proletariat of France, Germany, and
+the other most important countries has been struggling and developing,
+making the widest possible use of the institutions of democracy, and
+building up on that basis powerful political organizations. This path
+of the education of the proletariat through democracy to Socialism
+proved, however, to be interrupted by an event of no inconsiderable
+importance&#8212;the world imperialist war. The class state at the moment
+when, thanks to its machinations, the war broke out succeeded in
+enlisting the assistance of the guiding organizations of
+Social-Democracy to deceive the proletariat and draw it into the
+whirlpool. So that, taken as they stand, the methods of democracy, in
+spite of the incontestable benefits which they afford at a certain
+period, displayed an extremely limited power of action; with the
+result that two generations of the proletariat, educated under
+conditions of democracy, by no means guaranteed the necessary
+political preparation for judging accurately an event like the world
+imperialist war. That experience gives us no reasons for affirming
+that, if the war had broken out ten or fifteen years later, the
+proletariat would have been more prepared for it. The bourgeois
+democratic state not only creates more favorable conditions for the
+political education of the workers, as compared with absolutism, but
+also sets a limit to that development in the shape of bourgeois
+legality, which skilfully accumulates and builds on the upper strata
+of the proletariat opportunist habits and law-abiding prejudices. The
+school of democracy proved quite insufficient to rouse the German
+proletariat to revolution when the catastrophe of the war was at hand.
+The barbarous school of the war, social-imperialist ambitions,
+colossal military victories, and unparalleled defeats were required.
+After these events, which made a certain amount of difference in the
+universe, and even in the Erfurt Programme, to come out with
+common-places as to meaning of democratic parliamentarism for the
+education of the proletariat signifies a fall into political
+childhood. This is just the misfortune which has overtaken Kautsky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Profound disbelief in the political struggle of the proletariat," he
+writes, "and in its participation in politics, was the characteristic
+of Proudhonism. To-day there arises a similar (!!) view, and it is
+recommended to us as the new gospel of Socialist thought, as the
+result of an experience which Marx did not, and could not, know. In
+reality, it is only a variation of an idea which half a century ago
+Marx was fighting, and which he in the end defeated." (Page 79.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bolshevism proves to be warmed-up Proudhonism! From a purely
+theoretical point of view, this is one of the most brazen remarks in
+the pamphlet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Proudhonists repudiated democracy for the same reason that they
+repudiated the political struggle generally. They stood for the
+economic organization of the workers without the interference of the
+State, without revolutionary outbreaks&#8212;for self-help of the workers
+on the basis of production for profit. As far as they were driven by
+the course of events on to the path of the political struggle, they,
+as lower middle-class theoreticians, preferred democracy, not only to
+plutocracy, but to revolutionary dictatorship. What thoughts have they
+in common with us? While we repudiate democracy in the name of the
+concentrated power of the proletariat, the Proudhonists, on the other
+hand, were prepared to make their peace with democracy, diluted by a
+federal basis, in order to avoid the revolutionary monopoly of power
+by the proletariat. With more foundation Kautsky might have compared
+us with the opponents of the Proudhonists, the <i>Blanquists</i>, who
+understood the meaning of a revolutionary government, but did not
+superstitiously make the question of seizing it depend on the formal
+signs of democracy. But in order to put the comparison of the
+Communists with the Blanquists on a reasonable footing, it would have
+to be added that, in the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils, we had at
+our disposal such an organization for revolution as the Blanquists
+could not even dream of; in our party we had, and have, an invaluable
+organization of political leadership with a perfected programme of the
+social revolution. Finally, we had, and have, a powerful apparatus of
+economic transformation in our trade unions, which stand as a whole
+under the banner of Communism, and support the Soviet Government.
+Under such conditions, to talk of the renaissance of Proudhonist
+prejudices in the shape of Bolshevism can only take place when one has
+lost all traces of theoretical honesty and historical understanding.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="subhead">
+THE IMPERIALIST TRANSFORMATION OF DEMOCRACY
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is not for nothing that the word "democracy" has a double meaning
+in the political vocabulary. On the one hand, it means a state system
+founded on universal suffrage and the other attributes of formal
+"popular government." On the other hand, by the word "democracy" is
+understood the mass of the people itself, in so far as it leads a
+political existence. In the second sense, as in the first, the meaning
+of democracy rises above class distinctions. This peculiarity of
+terminology has its profound political significance. Democracy as a
+political system is the more perfect and unshakable the greater is the
+part played in the life of the country by the intermediate and less
+differentiated mass of the population&#8212;the lower middle-class of the
+town and the country. Democracy achieved its highest expression in the
+nineteenth century in Switzerland and the United States of North
+America. On the other side of the ocean the democratic organization of
+power in a federal republic was based on the agrarian democracy of the
+farmers. In the small Helvetian Republic, the lower middle-classes of
+the towns and the rich peasantry constituted the basis of the
+conservative democracy of the united cantons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Born of the struggle of the Third Estate against the powers of
+feudalism, the democratic State very soon becomes the weapon of
+defence against the class antagonisms generated within bourgeois
+society. Bourgeois society succeeds in this the more, the wider
+beneath it is the layer of the lower middle-class, the greater is the
+importance of the latter in the economic life of the country, and the
+less advanced, consequently, is the development of class antagonism.
+However, the intermediate classes become ever more and more helplessly
+behind historical development, and, thereby, become ever more and more
+incapable of speaking in the name of the nation. True, the lower
+middle-class doctrinaires (Bernstein and Company) used to demonstrate
+with satisfaction that the disappearance of the middle-classes was not
+taking place with that swiftness that was expected by the Marxian
+school. And, in reality, one might agree that, numerically, the
+middle-class elements in the town, and especially in the country,
+still maintain an extremely prominent position. But the chief meaning
+of evolution has shown itself in the decline in importance on the part
+of the middle-classes from the point of view of production: the amount
+of values which this class brings to the general income of the nation
+has fallen incomparably more rapidly than the numerical strength of
+the middle-classes. Correspondingly, falls their social, political,
+and cultural importance. Historical development has been relying more
+and more, not on these conservative elements inherited from the past,
+but on the polar classes of society&#8212;<i>i.e.</i>, the capitalist
+bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The more the middle-classes lost their social importance, the less
+they proved capable of playing the part of an authoritative arbitral
+judge in the historical conflict between capital and labor. Yet the
+very considerable numerical proportion of the town middle-classes, and
+still more of the peasantry, continues to find direct expression in
+the electoral statistics of parliamentarism. The formal equality of
+all citizens as electors thereby only gives more open indication of
+the incapacity of democratic parliamentarism to settle the root
+questions of historical evolution. An "equal" vote for the
+proletariat, the peasant, and the manager of a trust formally placed
+the peasant in the position of a mediator between the two antagonists;
+but, in reality, the peasantry, socially and culturally backward and
+politically helpless, has in all countries always provided support for
+the most reactionary, filibustering, and mercenary parties which, in
+the long run, always supported capital against labor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Absolutely contrary to all the prophecies of Bernstein, Sombart,
+Tugan-Baranovsky, and others, the continued existence of the middle
+classes has not softened, but has rendered to the last degree acute,
+the revolutionary crisis of bourgeois society. If the
+proletarianization of the lower middle-classes and the peasantry had
+been proceeding in a chemically purified form, the peaceful conquest
+of power by the proletariat through the democratic parliamentary
+apparatus would have been much more probable than we can imagine at
+present. Just the fact that was seized upon by the partisans of the
+lower middle-class&#8212;its longevity&#8212;has proved fatal even for the
+external forms of political democracy, now that capitalism has
+undermined its essential foundations. Occupying in parliamentary
+politics a place which it has lost in production, the middle-class has
+finally compromised parliamentarism, and has transformed it into an
+institution of confused chatter and legislative obstruction. From this
+fact alone, there grew up before the proletariat the problem of
+seizing the apparatus of state power as such, independently of the
+middle-class, and even against it&#8212;not against its interests, but
+against its stupidity and its policy, impossible to follow in its
+helpless contortions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Imperialism," wrote Marx of the Empire of Napoleon III, "is the most
+prostituted, and, at the same time, perfected form of the state which
+the bourgeoisie, having attained its fullest development, transforms
+into a weapon for the enslavement of labor by capital." This
+definition has a wider significance than for the French Empire alone,
+and includes the latest form of imperialism, born of the world
+conflict between the national capitalisms of the great powers. In the
+economic sphere, imperialism pre-supposed the final collapse of the
+rule of the middle-class; in the political sphere, it signified the
+complete destruction of democracy by means of an internal molecular
+transformation, and a universal subordination of all democracy's
+resources to its own ends. Seizing upon all countries, independently
+of their previous political history, imperialism showed that all
+political prejudices were foreign to it, and that it was equally ready
+and capable of making use, after their transformation and subjection,
+of the monarchy of Nicholas Romanoff or Wilhelm Hohenzollern, of the
+presidential autocracy of the United States of North America, and of
+the helplessness of a few hundred chocolate legislators in the French
+parliament. The last great slaughter&#8212;the bloody font in which the
+bourgeois world attempted to be re-baptised&#8212;presented to us a
+picture, unparalleled in history, of the mobilization of all state
+forms, systems of government, political tendencies, religious, and
+schools of philosophy, in the service of imperialism. Even many of
+those pedants who slept through the preparatory period of imperialist
+development during the last decades, and continued to maintain a
+traditional attitude towards ideas of democracy and universal
+suffrage, began to feel during the war that their accustomed ideas had
+become fraught with some new meaning. Absolutism, parliamentary
+monarchy, democracy&#8212;in the presence of imperialism (and,
+consequently, in the presence of the revolution rising to take its
+place), all the state forms of bourgeois supremacy, from Russian
+Tsarism to North American quasi-democratic federalism, have been given
+equal rights, bound up in such combinations as to supplement one
+another in an indivisible whole. Imperialism succeeded by means of all
+the resources it had at its disposal, including parliamentarism,
+irrespective of the electoral arithmetic of voting, to subordinate for
+its own purposes at the critical moment the lower middle-classes of
+the towns and country and even the upper layers of the proletariat.
+The national idea, under the watchword of which the Third Estate rose
+to power, found in the imperialist war its rebirth in the watchword
+of national defence. With unexpected clearness, national ideology
+flamed up for the last time at the expense of class ideology. The
+collapse of imperialist illusions, not only amongst the vanquished,
+but&#8212;after a certain delay&#8212;amongst the victorious also, finally laid
+low what was once national democracy, and, with it, its main weapon,
+the democratic parliament. The flabbiness, rottenness, and
+helplessness of the middle-classes and their parties everywhere became
+evident with terrifying clearness. In all countries the question of
+the control of the State assumed first-class importance as a question
+of an open measuring of forces between the capitalist clique, openly
+or secretly supreme and disposing of hundreds of thousands of
+mobilized and hardened officers, devoid of all scruple, and the
+revolting, revolutionary proletariat; while the intermediate classes
+were living in a state of terror, confusion, and prostration. Under
+such conditions, what pitiful nonsense are speeches about the peaceful
+conquest of power by the proletariat by means of democratic
+parliamentarism!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The scheme of the political situation on a world scale is quite clear.
+The bourgeoisie, which has brought the nations, exhausted and bleeding
+to death, to the brink of destruction&#8212;particularly the victorious
+bourgeoisie&#8212;has displayed its complete inability to bring them out of
+their terrible situation, and, thereby, its incompatibility with the
+future development of humanity. All the intermediate political groups,
+including here first and foremost the social-patriotic parties, are
+rotting alive. The proletariat they have deceived is turning against
+them more and more every day, and is becoming strengthened in its
+revolutionary convictions as the only power that can save the peoples
+from savagery and destruction. However, history has not at all
+secured, just at this moment, a formal parliamentary majority on the
+side of the party of the social revolution. In other words, history
+has not transformed the nation into a debating society solemnly voting
+the transition to the social revolution by a majority of votes. On the
+contrary, the violent revolution has become a necessity precisely
+because the imminent requirements of history are helpless to find a
+road through the apparatus of parliamentary democracy. The capitalist
+bourgeois calculates: "while I have in my hands lands, factories,
+workshops, banks; while I possess newspapers, universities, schools;
+while&#8212;and this most important of all&#8212;I retain control of the army:
+the apparatus of democracy, however you reconstruct it, will remain
+obedient to my will. I subordinate to my interests spiritually the
+stupid, conservative, characterless lower middle-class, just as it is
+subjected to me materially. I oppress, and will oppress, its
+imagination by the gigantic scale of my buildings, my transactions, my
+plans, and my crimes. For moments when it is dissatisfied and murmurs,
+I have created scores of safety-valves and lightning-conductors. At
+the right moment I will bring into existence opposition parties, which
+will disappear to-morrow, but which to-day accomplish their mission by
+affording the possibility of the lower middle-class expressing their
+indignation without hurt therefrom for capitalism. I shall hold the
+masses of the people, under cover of compulsory general education, on
+the verge of complete ignorance, giving them no opportunity of rising
+above the level which my experts in spiritual slavery consider safe. I
+will corrupt, deceive, and terrorize the more privileged or the more
+backward of the proletariat itself. By means of these measures, I
+shall not allow the vanguard of the working class to gain the ear of
+the majority of the working class, while the necessary weapons of
+mastery and terrorism remain in my hands."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To this the revolutionary proletarian replies: "Consequently, the
+first condition of salvation is to tear the weapons of domination out
+of the hands of the bourgeoisie. It is hopeless to think of a peaceful
+arrival to power while the bourgeoisie retains in its hands all the
+apparatus of power. Three times over hopeless is the idea of coming to
+power by the path which the bourgeoisie itself indicates and, at the
+same time, barricades&#8212;the path of parliamentary democracy. There is
+only one way: to seize power, taking away from the bourgeoisie the
+material apparatus of government. Independently of the superficial
+balance of forces in parliament, I shall take over for social
+administration the chief forces and resources of production. I shall
+free the mind of the lower middle-class from their capitalist
+hypnosis. I shall show them in practice what is the meaning of
+Socialist production. Then even the most backward, the most ignorant,
+or most terrorized sections of the nation will support me, and
+willingly and intelligently will join in the work of social
+construction."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the Russian Soviet Government dissolved the Constituent Assembly,
+that fact seemed to the leading Social-Democrats of Western Europe, if
+not the beginning of the end of the world, at all events a rude and
+arbitrary break with all the previous developments of Socialism. In
+reality, it was only the inevitable outcome of the new position
+resulting from imperialism and the war. If Russian Communism was the
+first to enter the path of casting up theoretical and practical
+accounts, this was due to the same historical reasons which forced the
+Russian proletariat to be the first to enter the path of the struggle
+for power.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All that has happened since then in Europe bears witness to the fact
+that we drew the right conclusion. To imagine that democracy can be
+restored in its general purity means that one is living in a pitiful,
+reactionary utopia.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="subhead">
+THE METAPHYSICS OF DEMOCRACY
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Feeling the historical ground shaking under his feet on the question
+of democracy, Kautsky crosses to the ground of metaphysics. Instead of
+inquiring into what is, he deliberates about what ought to be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The principles of democracy&#8212;the sovereignty of the people, universal
+and equal suffrage, personal liberties&#8212;appear, as presented to him,
+in a halo of moral duty. They are turned from their historical meaning
+and presented as unalterable and sacred things-in-themselves. This
+metaphysical fall from grace is not accidental. It is instructive that
+the late Plekhanov, a merciless enemy of Kantism at the best period of
+his activity, attempted at the end of his life, when the wave of
+patriotism had washed over him, to clutch at the straw of the
+categorical imperative.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That real democracy with which the German people is now making
+practical acquaintance Kautsky confronts with a kind of ideal
+democracy, as he would confront a common phenomenon with the
+thing-in-itself. Kautsky indicates with certitude not one country in
+which democracy is really capable of guaranteeing a painless
+transition to Socialism. But he does know, and firmly, that such
+democracy ought to exist. The present German National Assembly, that
+organ of helplessness, reactionary malice, and degraded solicitations,
+is confronted by Kautsky with a different, real, true National
+Assembly, which possesses all virtues&#8212;excepting the small virtue of
+reality.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctrine of formal democracy is not scientific Socialism, but the
+theory of so-called natural law. The essence of the latter consists in
+the recognition of eternal and unchanging standards of law, which
+among different peoples and at different periods find a different,
+more or less limited and distorted expression. The natural law of the
+latest history&#8212;<i>i.e.</i>, as it emerged from the middle
+ages&#8212;included first of all a protest against class privileges, the
+abuse of despotic legislation, and the other "artificial" products of
+feudal positive law. The theoreticians of the, as yet, weak Third
+Estate expressed its class interests in a few ideal standards, which
+later on developed into the teaching of democracy, acquiring at the
+same time an individualist character. The individual is absolute; all
+persons have the right of expressing their thoughts in speech and
+print; every man must enjoy equal electoral rights. As a battle cry
+against feudalism, the demand for democracy had a progressive
+character. As time went on, however, the metaphysics of natural law
+(the theory of formal democracy) began to show its reactionary
+side&#8212;the establishment of an ideal standard to control the real
+demands of the laboring masses and the revolutionary parties.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If we look back to the historical sequence of world concepts, the
+theory of natural law will prove to be a paraphrase of Christian
+spiritualism freed from its crude mysticism. The Gospels proclaimed to
+the slave that he had just the same soul as the slave-owner, and in
+this way established the equality of all men before the heavenly
+tribunal. In reality, the slave remained a slave, and obedience became
+for him a religious duty. In the teaching of Christianity, the slave
+found an expression for his own ignorant protest against his degraded
+condition. Side by side with the protest was also the consolation.
+Christianity told him:&#8212;"You have an immortal soul, although you
+resemble a pack-horse." Here sounded the note of indignation. But the
+same Christianity said:&#8212;"Although you are like a pack-horse, yet your
+immortal soul has in store for it an eternal reward." Here is the
+voice of consolation. These two notes were found in historical
+Christianity in different proportions at different periods and amongst
+different classes. But as a whole, Christianity, like all other
+religions, became a method of deadening the consciousness of the
+oppressed masses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Natural law, which developed into the theory of democracy, said to the
+worker: "all men are equal before the law, independently of their
+origin, their property, and their position; every man has an equal
+right in determining the fate of the people." This ideal criterion
+revolutionized the consciousness of the masses in so far as it was a
+condemnation of absolutism, aristocratic privileges, and the property
+qualification. But the longer it went on, the more it sent the
+consciousness to sleep, legalizing poverty, slavery and degradation:
+for how could one revolt against slavery when every man has an equal
+right in determining the fate of the nation?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rothschild, who has coined the blood and tears of the world into the
+gold napoleons of his income, has one vote at the parliamentary
+elections. The ignorant tiller of the soil who cannot sign his name,
+sleeps all his life without taking his clothes off, and wanders
+through society like an underground mole, plays his part, however, as
+a trustee of the nation's sovereignty, and is equal to Rothschild in
+the courts and at the elections. In the real conditions of life, in
+the economic process, in social relations, in their way of life,
+people became more and more unequal; dazzling luxury was accumulated
+at one pole, poverty and hopelessness at the other. But in the sphere
+of the legal edifice of the State, these glaring contradictions
+disappeared, and there penetrated thither only unsubstantial legal
+shadows. The landlord, the laborer, the capitalist, the proletarian,
+the minister, the bootblack&#8212;all are equal as "citizens" and as
+"legislators." The mystic equality of Christianity has taken one step
+down from the heavens in the shape of the "natural," "legal" equality
+of democracy. But it has not yet reached earth, where lie the economic
+foundations of society. For the ignorant day-laborer, who all his life
+remains a beast of burden in the service of the bourgeoisie, the ideal
+right to influence the fate of the nations by means of the
+parliamentary elections remained little more real than the palace
+which he was promised in the kingdom of heaven.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the practical interests of the development of the working class,
+the Socialist Party took its stand at a certain period on the path of
+parliamentarism. But this did not mean in the slightest that it
+accepted in principle the metaphysical theory of democracy, based on
+extra-historical, super-class rights. The proletarian doctrines
+examined democracy as the instrument of bourgeois society entirely
+adapted to the problems and requirements of the ruling classes; but as
+bourgeois society lived by the labor of the proletariat and could not
+deny it the legalization of a certain part of its class struggle
+without destroying itself, this gave the Socialist Party the
+possibility of utilizing, at a certain period, and within certain
+limits, the mechanism of democracy, without taking an oath to do so as
+an unshakable principle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The root problem of the party, at all periods of its struggle, was to
+create the conditions for real, economic, living equality for mankind
+as members of a united human commonwealth. It was just for this reason
+that the theoreticians of the proletariat had to expose the
+metaphysics of democracy as a philosophic mask for political
+mystification.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The democratic party at the period of its revolutionary enthusiasm,
+when exposing the enslaving and stupefying lie of church dogma,
+preached to the masses:&#8212;"You are lulled to sleep by promises of
+eternal bliss at the end of your life, while here you have no rights
+and you are bound with the chains of tyranny." The Socialist Party, a
+few decades later, said to the same masses with no less right:&#8212;"You
+are lulled to sleep with the fiction of civic equality and political
+rights, but you are deprived of the possibility of realizing those
+rights. Conditional and shadowy legal equality has been transformed
+into the convicts' chain with which each of you is fastened to the
+chariot of capitalism."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the name of its fundamental task, the Socialist Party mobilized the
+masses on the parliamentary ground as well as on others; but nowhere
+and at no time did any party bind itself to bring the masses to
+Socialism only through the gates of democracy. In adapting ourselves
+to the parliamentary regime, we stopped at a theoretical exposure of
+democracy, because we were still too weak to overcome it in practice.
+But the path of Socialist ideas which is visible through all
+deviations, and even betrayals, foreshadows no other outcome but this:
+to throw democracy aside and replace it by the mechanism of the
+proletariat, at the moment when the latter is strong enough to carry
+out such a task.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We shall bring one piece of evidence, albeit a sufficiently striking
+one. "Parliamentarism," wrote Paul Lafargue in the Russian review,
+<i>Sozialdemokrat</i>, in 1888, "is a system of government in which
+the people acquires the illusion that it is controlling the forces of
+the country itself, when, in reality, the actual power is concentrated
+in the hands of the bourgeoisie&#8212;and not even of the whole
+bourgeoisie, but only of certain sections of that class. In the first
+period of its supremacy the bourgeoisie does not understand, or, more
+correctly, does not feel, the necessity for making the people believe
+in the illusion of self-government. Hence it was that all the
+parliamentary countries of Europe began with a limited franchise.
+Everywhere the right of influencing the policy of the country by means
+of the election of deputies belonged at first only to more or less
+large property holders, and was only gradually extended to less
+substantial citizens, until finally in some countries it became from a
+privilege the universal right of all and sundry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In bourgeois society, the more considerable becomes the amount of
+social wealth, the smaller becomes the number of individuals by whom
+it is appropriated. The same takes place with power: in proportion as
+the mass of citizens who possess political rights increases, and the
+number of elected rulers increases, the actual power is concentrated
+and becomes the monopoly of a smaller and smaller group of
+individuals." Such is the secret of the majority.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the Marxist, Lafargue, parliamentarism remains as long as the
+supremacy of the bourgeoisie remains. "On the day," writes Lafargue,
+"when the proletariat of Europe and America seizes the State, it will
+have to organize a revolutionary government, and govern society as a
+dictatorship, until the bourgeoisie has disappeared as a class."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kautsky in his time knew this Marxist estimate of parliamentarism, and
+more than once repeated it himself, although with no such Gallic
+sharpness and lucidity. The theoretical apostasy of Kautsky lies just
+in this point: having recognized the principle of democracy as
+absolute and eternal, he has stepped back from materialist dialectics
+to natural law. That which was exposed by Marxism as the passing
+mechanism of the bourgeoisie, and was subjected only to temporary
+utilization with the object of preparing the proletarian revolution,
+has been newly sanctified by Kautsky as the supreme principle standing
+above classes, and unconditionally subordinating to itself the methods
+of the proletarian struggle. The counter-revolutionary degeneration of
+parliamentarism finds its most perfect expression in the deification
+of democracy by the decaying theoreticians of the Second
+International.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="subhead">
+THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Speaking generally, the attainment of a majority in a democratic
+parliament by the party of the proletariat is not an absolute
+impossibility. But such a fact, even if it were realized, would not
+introduce any new principle into the course of events. The
+intermediate elements of the intelligentsia, under the influence of
+the parliamentary victory of the proletariat, might possibly display
+less resistance to the new regime. But the fundamental resistance of
+the bourgeoisie would be decided by such facts as the attitude of the
+army, the degree to which the workers were armed, the situation in the
+neighboring states: and the civil war would develop under the pressure
+of these most real circumstances, and not by the mobile arithmetic of
+parliamentarism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our party has never refused to lead the way for proletarian
+dictatorship through the gates of democracy, having clearly summed up
+in its mind certain agitational and political advantages of such a
+"legalized" transition to the new regime. Hence, our attempt to call
+the Constituent Assembly. The Russian peasant, only just awakened by
+the revolution to political life, found himself face to face with half
+a dozen parties, each of which apparently had made up its mind to
+confuse his mind. The Constituent Assembly placed itself across the
+path of the revolutionary movement, and was swept aside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The opportunist majority in the Constituent Assembly represented only
+the political reflection of the mental confusion and indecision which
+reigned amidst the middle-classes in the town and country and amidst
+the more backward elements of the proletariat. If we take the
+viewpoint of isolated historical possibilities, one might say that it
+would have been more painless if the Constituent Assembly had worked
+for a year or two, had finally discredited the
+Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks by their connection with
+the Cadets, and had thereby led to the formal majority of the
+Bolsheviks, showing the masses that in reality only two forces
+existed: the revolutionary proletariat, led by the Communists, and the
+counter-revolutionary democracy, headed by the generals and the
+admirals. But the point is that the pulse of the internal relations of
+the revolution was beating not at all in time with the pulse of the
+development of its external relations. If our party had thrown all
+responsibility on to the objective formula of "the course of events"
+the development of military operations might have forestalled us.
+German imperialism might have seized Petrograd, the evacuation of
+which the Kerensky Government had already begun. The fall of Petrograd
+would at that time have meant a death-blow to the proletariat, for all
+the best forces of the revolution were concentrated there, in the
+Baltic Fleet and in the Red capital.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short">
+
+<p>
+Our party may be accused, therefore, not of going against the course
+of historical development, but of having taken at a stride several
+political steps. It stepped over the heads of the Mensheviks and the
+Socialist-Revolutionaries, in order not to allow German imperialism to
+step across the head of the Russian proletariat and conclude peace
+with the Entente on the back of the revolution before it was able to
+spread its wings over the whole world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the above it will not be difficult to deduce the answers to the
+two questions with which Kautsky pestered us. Firstly: Why did we
+summon the Constituent Assembly when we had in view the dictatorship
+of the proletariat? Secondly: If the first Constituent Assembly which
+we summoned proved backward and not in harmony with the interests of
+the revolution, why did we reject the idea of a new Assembly? The
+thought at the back of Kautsky's mind is that we repudiated democracy,
+not on the ground of principle, but only because it proved against us.
+In order to seize this insinuation by its long ears, let us establish
+the facts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The watchword, "All power to the Soviets," was put forward by our
+Party at the very beginning of the revolution&#8212;<i>i.e.</i>, long
+before, not merely the decree as to the dissolution of the Constituent
+Assembly, but the decree as to its convocation. True, we did not set
+up the Soviets in opposition to the future Constituent Assembly, the
+summoning of which was constantly postponed by the Government of
+Kerensky, and consequently became more and more problematical. But in
+any case, we did not consider the Constituent Assembly, after the
+manner of the democrats, as the future master of the Russian land, who
+would come and settle everything. We explained to the masses that the
+Soviets, the revolutionary organizations of the laboring masses
+themselves, can and must become the true masters. If we did not
+formally repudiate the Constituent Assembly beforehand, it was only
+because it stood in contrast, not to the power of the Soviets, but to
+the power of Kerensky himself, who, in his turn, was only a screen for
+the bourgeoisie. At the same time we did decide beforehand that, if,
+in the Constituent Assembly, the majority proved in our favor, that
+body must dissolve itself and hand over the power to the Soviets&#8212;as
+later on the Petrograd Town Council did, elected as it was on the
+basis of the most democratic electoral franchise. In my book on the
+October Revolution, I tried to explain the reasons which made the
+Constituent Assembly the out-of-date reflection of an epoch through
+which the revolution had already passed. As we saw the organization of
+revolutionary power only in the Soviets, and at the moment of the
+summoning of the Constituent Assembly the Soviets were already the de
+facto power, the question was inevitably decided for us in the sense
+of the violent dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, since it would
+not dissolve itself in favor of the Government of the Soviets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But why," asks Kautsky, "did you not summon a new Constituent
+Assembly?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Because we saw no need for it. If the first Constituent Assembly could
+still play a fleeting progressive part, conferring a sanction upon the
+Soviet regime in its first days, convincing for the middle-class
+elements, now, after two years of victorious proletarian dictatorship
+and the complete collapse of all democratic attempts in Siberia, on
+the shores of the White Sea, in the Ukraine, and in the Caucasus, the
+power of the Soviets truly does not need the blessing of the faded
+authority of the Constituent Assembly. "Are we not right in that case
+to conclude," asks Kautsky in the tone of Lloyd George, "that the
+Soviet Government rules by the will of the minority, since it avoids
+testing its supremacy by universal suffrage?" Here is a blow that
+misses its mark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If the parliamentary regime, even in the period of "peaceful," stable
+development, was a rather crude method of discovering the opinion of
+the country, and in the epoch of revolutionary storm completely lost
+its capacity to follow the course of the struggle and the development
+of revolutionary consciousness, the Soviet regime, which is more
+closely, straightly, honestly bound up with the toiling majority of
+the people, does achieve meaning, not in statically reflecting a
+majority, but in dynamically creating it. Having taken its stand on
+the path of revolutionary dictatorship, the working class of Russia
+has thereby declared that it builds its policy in the period of
+transition, not on the shadowy art of rivalry with chameleon-hued
+parties in the chase for peasant votes, but on the actual attraction
+of the peasant masses, side by side with the proletariat, into the
+work of ruling the country in the real interests of the laboring
+masses. Such democracy goes a little deeper down than parliamentarism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To-day, when the main problem&#8212;the question of life and death&#8212;of the
+revolution consists in the military repulse of the various attacks of
+the White Guard bands, does Kautsky imagine that any form of
+parliamentary "majority" is capable of guaranteeing a more energetic,
+devoted, and successful organization of revolutionary defence? The
+conditions of the struggle are so defined, in a revolutionary country
+throttled by the criminal ring of the blockade, that all the
+middle-class groups are confronted only with the alternative of
+Denikin or the Soviet Government. What further proof is needed when
+even parties, which stand for compromise in principle, like the
+Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, have split along that
+very line?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When suggesting to us the election of a Constituent Assembly, does
+Kautsky propose the stopping of the civil war for the purpose of the
+elections? By whose decision? If he intends for this purpose to bring
+into motion the authority of the Second International, we hasten to
+inform him that that institution enjoys in Denikin's camp only a
+little more authority than it does in ours. But to the extent that the
+civil war between the Workers' and Peasants' Army and the imperialist
+bands is still going on, the elections must of necessity be limited to
+Soviet territory. Does Kautsky desire to insist that we should allow
+the parties which support Denikin to come out into the open? Empty and
+contemptible chatter! There is not one government, at any time and
+under any conditions, which would allow its enemies to mobilize
+hostile forces in the rear of its armies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A not unimportant place in the discussion of the question is occupied
+by the fact that the flower of the laboring population is at present
+on active service. The foremost workers and the most class-conscious
+peasants, who take the first place at all elections, as in all
+important political activities, directing the public opinion of the
+workers, are at present fighting and dying as commanders, commissars,
+or rank and file in the Red Army. If the most "democratic" governments
+in the bourgeois states, whose regime is founded on parliamentarism,
+consider it impossible to carry on elections to parliament in
+wartime, it is all the more senseless to demand such elections during
+the war of the Soviet Republic, the regime of which is not for one
+moment founded on parliamentarism. It is quite sufficient that the
+revolutionary government of Russia, in the most difficult months and
+times, never stood in the way of periodic re-elections of its
+<i>own</i> elective institutions&#8212;the local and central Soviets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finally, as a last argument&#8212;the last and the least&#8212;we have to
+present to the notice of Kautsky that even the Russian Kautskians, the
+Mensheviks like Martov and Dan, do not consider it possible to put
+forward at the present moment a demand for a Constituent Assembly,
+postponing it to better times in the future. Will there be any need of
+it then? Of this one may be permitted to doubt. When the civil war is
+over, the dictatorship of the working class will disclose all its
+creative energy, and will, in practice, show the most backward masses
+what it can give them. By means of a systematically applied universal
+labor service, and a centralized organization of distribution, the
+whole population of the country will be drawn into the general Soviet
+system of economic arrangement and self-government. The Soviets
+themselves, at present the organs of government, will gradually melt
+into purely economic organizations. Under such conditions it is
+doubtful whether any one will think of erecting, over the real fabric
+of Socialist society, an archaic crown in the shape of the Constituent
+Assembly, which would only have to register the fact that everything
+necessary has already been "constituted" before it and without it.<a href="#note3" name="noteref3">
+<small>[3]</small></a>
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<a name="terrorism">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="chapter">
+4
+</p>
+
+<p class="head">
+<span class="sc">Terrorism</span>
+</p>
+
+
+<p>
+The chief theme of Kautsky's book is terrorism. The view that
+terrorism is of the essence of revolution Kautsky proclaims to be a
+widespread delusion. It is untrue that he who desires revolution must
+put up with terrorism. As far as he, Kautsky, is concerned, he is,
+generally speaking, for revolution, but decidedly against terrorism.
+From there, however, complications begin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The revolution brings us," Kautsky complains, "a bloody terrorism
+carried out by Socialist governments. The Bolsheviks in Russia first
+stepped on to this path, and were, consequently, sternly condemned by
+all Socialists who had not adopted the Bolshevik point of view,
+including the Socialists of the German Majority. But as soon as the
+latter found themselves threatened in their supremacy, they had
+recourse to the methods of the same terrorist regime which they
+attacked in the East." (Page 9.) It would seem that from this follows
+the conclusion that terrorism is much more profoundly bound up with
+the nature of revolution than certain sages think. But Kautsky makes
+an absolutely opposite conclusion. The gigantic development of White
+and Red terrorism in all the last revolutions&#8212;the Russian, the
+German, the Austrian, and the Hungarian&#8212;is evidence to him that these
+revolutions turned aside from their true path and turned out to be not
+the revolution they ought to have been according to the theoretical
+visions of Kautsky. Without going into the question whether terrorism
+"as such" is "immanent" to the revolution "as such," let us consider a
+few of the revolutions as they pass before us in the living history of
+mankind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Let us first regard the religious Reformation, which proved the
+watershed between the Middle Ages and modern history: the deeper were
+the interests of the masses that it involved, the wider was its sweep,
+the more fiercely did the civil war develop under the religious
+banner, and the more merciless did the terror become on the other
+side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the seventeenth century England carried out two revolutions. The
+first, which brought forth great social upheavals and wars, brought
+amongst other things the execution of King Charles I, while the second
+ended happily with the accession of a new dynasty. The British
+bourgeoisie and its historians maintain quite different attitudes to
+these two revolutions: the first is for them a rising of the mob&#8212;the
+"Great Rebellion"; the second has been handed down under the title of
+the "Glorious Revolution." The reason for this difference in estimates
+was explained by the French historian, Augustin Thierry. In the first
+English revolution, in the "Great Rebellion," the active force was the
+people; while in the second it was almost "silent." Hence, it follows
+that, in surroundings of class slavery, it is difficult to teach the
+oppressed masses good manners. When provoked to fury they use clubs,
+stones, fire, and the rope. The court historians of the exploiters are
+offended at this. But the great event in modern "bourgeois" history
+is, none the less, not the "Glorious Revolution," but the "Great
+Rebellion."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The greatest event in modern history after the Reformation and the
+"Great Rebellion," and far surpassing its two predecessors in
+significance, was the great French Revolution of the eighteenth
+century. To this classical revolution there was a corresponding
+classical terrorism. Kautsky is ready to forgive the terrorism of the
+Jacobins, acknowledging that they had no other way of saving the
+republic. But by this justification after the event no one is either
+helped or hindered. The Kautskies of the end of the eighteenth century
+(the leaders of the French Girondists) saw in the Jacobins the
+personification of evil. Here is a comparison, sufficiently
+instructive in its banality, between the Jacobins and the Girondists
+from the pen of one of the bourgeois French historians: "Both one side
+and the other desired the republic." But the Girondists "desired a
+free, legal, and merciful republic. The Montagnards desired a despotic
+and terrorist republic. Both stood for the supreme power of the
+people; but the Girondist justly understood all by the people, while
+the Montagnards considered only the working class to be the people.
+That was why only to such persons, in the opinion of the Montagnards,
+did the supremacy belong." The antithesis between the noble champions
+of the Constituent Assembly and the bloodthirsty agents of the
+revolutionary dictatorship is here outlined fairly clearly, although
+in the political terms of the epoch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The iron dictatorship of the Jacobins was evoked by the monstrously
+difficult position of revolutionary France. Here is what the bourgeois
+historian says of this period: "Foreign troops had entered French
+territory from four sides. In the north, the British and the
+Austrians, in Alsace, the Prussians, in Dauphine and up to Lyons, the
+Piedmontese, in Roussillon the Spaniards. And this at a time, when
+civil war was raging at four different points: in Normandy, in the
+Vend&#233;e, at Lyons, and at Toulon." (Page 176). To this we must add
+internal enemies in the form of numerous secret supporters of the old
+regime, ready by all methods to assist the enemy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The severity of the proletarian dictatorship in Russia, let us point
+out here, was conditioned by no less difficult circumstances. There
+was one continuous front, on the north and south, in the east and
+west. Besides the Russian White Guard armies of Kolchak, Denikin and
+others, there are attacking Soviet Russia, simultaneously or in turn:
+Germans, Austrians, Czecho-Slovaks, Serbs, Poles, Ukrainians,
+Roumanians, French, British, Americans, Japanese, Finns, Esthonians,
+Lithuanians&#8230;. In a country throttled by a blockade and strangled by
+hunger, there are conspiracies, risings, terrorist acts, and
+destruction of roads and bridges.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The government which had taken on itself the struggle with countless
+external and internal enemies had neither money, nor sufficient
+troops, nor anything except boundless energy, enthusiastic support on
+the part of the revolutionary elements of the country, and the
+gigantic courage to take all measures necessary for the safety of the
+country, however arbitrary and severe they were." In such words did
+once upon a time Plekhanov describe the government of the&#8212;Jacobins.
+(<i>Sozial-demokrat</i>, a quarterly review of literature and
+politics. Book I, February, 1890, London. The article on "The
+Centenary of the Great Revolution," pages 6-7).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Let us now turn to the revolution which took place in the second half
+of the nineteenth century, in the country of "democracy"&#8212;in the
+United States of North America. Although the question was not the
+abolition of property altogether, but only of the abolition of
+property in negroes, nevertheless, the institutions of democracy
+proved absolutely powerless to decide the argument in a peaceful way.
+The southern states, defeated at the presidential elections in 1860,
+decided by all possible means to regain the influence they had
+hitherto exerted in the question of slave-owning; and uttering, as was
+right, the proper sounding words about freedom and independence, rose
+in a slave-owners' insurrection. Hence inevitably followed all the
+later consequences of civil war. At the very beginning of the
+struggle, the military government in Baltimore imprisoned in Fort
+MacHenry a few citizens, sympathizers with the slave-holding South, in
+spite of Habeas Corpus. The question of the lawfulness or the
+unlawfulness of such action became the object of fierce disputes
+between so-called "high authorities." The judge of the Supreme Court,
+decided that the President had neither the right to arrest the
+operation of Habeas Corpus nor to give plenipotentiary powers to that
+end to the military authorities. "Such, in all probability, is the
+correct Constitutional solution of the question," says one of the
+first historians of the American Civil War. "But the state of affairs
+was to such a degree critical, and the necessity of taking decisive
+measures against the population of Baltimore so great, that not only
+the Government but the people of the United States also supported the
+most energetic measures."<a href="#note4" name="noteref4">
+<small>[4]</small></a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some goods that the rebellious South required were secretly supplied
+by the merchants of the North. Naturally, the Northerners had no other
+course but to introduce methods of repression. On August 6, 1861, the
+President confirmed a resolution of Congress as to "the confiscation
+of property used for insurrectionary purposes." The people, in the
+shape of the most democratic elements, were in favor of extreme
+measures. The Republican Party had a decided majority in the North,
+and persons suspected of secessionism, <i>i.e.</i>, of sympathizing
+with the rebellious Southern states, were subjected to violence. In
+some northern towns, and even in the states of New England, famous for
+their order, the people frequently burst into the offices of
+newspapers which supported the revolting slave-owners and smashed
+their printing presses. It occasionally happened that reactionary
+publishers were smeared with tar, decorated with feathers, and carried
+in such array through the public squares until they swore an oath of
+loyalty to the Union. The personality of a planter smeared in tar bore
+little resemblance to the "end-in-itself;" so that the categorical
+imperative of Kautsky suffered in the civil war of the states a
+considerable blow. But this is not all. "The government, on its part,"
+the historian tells us, "adopted repressive measures of various kinds
+against publications holding views opposed to its own: and in a short
+time the hitherto free American press was reduced to a condition
+<i>scarcely superior to that prevailing in the autocratic European
+States</i>." The same fate overtook the freedom of speech. "In this
+way," Lieut.-Colonel Fletcher continues, "the American people at this
+time denied itself the greater part of its freedom. It should be
+observed," he moralizes, "that <i>the majority of the people</i> was
+to such an extent occupied with the war, and to such a degree imbued
+with the readiness for any kind of sacrifice to attain its end, that
+it not only did not regret its vanished liberties, but scarcely even
+noticed their disappearance."<a href="#note5" name="noteref5">
+<small>[5]</small></a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Infinitely more ruthlessly did the bloodthirsty slave-owners of the
+South employ their uncontrollable hordes. "Wherever there was a
+majority in favor of slavery," writes the Count of Paris, "public
+opinion behaved despotically to the minority. All who expressed pity
+for the national banner &#8230; were forced to be silent. But soon this
+itself became insufficient; as in all revolutions, the indifferent
+were forced to express their loyalty to the new order of things&#8230;.
+Those who did not agree to this were given up as a sacrifice to the
+hatred and violence of the mass of the people&#8230;. In each centre of
+growing civilization (South-Western states) vigilance committees were
+formed, composed of all those who had been distinguished by their
+extreme views in the electoral struggle&#8230;. A tavern was the usual
+place of their sessions, and a noisy orgy was mingled with a
+contemptible parody of public forms of justice. A few madmen sitting
+around a desk on which gin and whisky flowed judged their present and
+absent fellow citizens. The accused, even before having been
+questioned, could see the rope being prepared. He who did not appear
+at the court learned his sentence when falling under the bullets of
+the executioner concealed in the forest&#8230;." This picture is extremely
+reminiscent of the scenes which day by day took place in the camps of
+Denikin, Kolchak, Yudenich, and the other heroes of
+Anglo-Franco-American "democracy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We shall see later how the question of terrorism stood in regard to
+the Paris Commune of 1871. In any case, the attempts of Kautsky to
+contrast the Commune with us are false at their very root, and only
+bring the author to a juggling with words of the most petty character.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The institution of hostages apparently must be recognized as
+"immanent" in the terrorism of the civil war. Kautsky is against
+terrorism and against the institution of hostages, but in favor of the
+Paris Commune. (N.B.&#8212;The Commune existed fifty years ago.) Yet the
+Commune took hostages. A difficulty arises. But what does the art of
+exegesis exist for?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The decree of the Commune concerning hostages and their execution in
+reply to the atrocities of the Versaillese arose, according to the
+profound explanation of Kautsky, "from a striving to preserve human
+life, not to destroy it." A marvellous discovery! It only requires to
+be developed. It could, and must, be explained that in the civil war
+we destroyed White Guards in order that they should not destroy the
+workers. Consequently, our problem is not the destruction of human
+life, but its preservation. But as we have to struggle for the
+preservation of human life with arms in our hands, it leads to the
+destruction of human life&#8212;a puzzle the dialectical secret of which
+was explained by old Hegel, without reckoning other still more ancient
+sages.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Commune could maintain itself and consolidate its position only by
+a determined struggle with the Versaillese. The latter, on the other
+hand, had a large number of agents in Paris. Fighting with the agents
+of Thiers, the Commune could not abstain from destroying the
+Versaillese at the front and in the rear. If its rule had crossed the
+bounds of Paris, in the provinces it would have found&#8212;during the
+process of the civil war with the Army of the National Assembly&#8212;still
+more determined foes in the midst of the peaceful population. The
+Commune when fighting the royalists could not allow freedom of speech
+to royalist agents in the rear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kautsky, in spite of all the happenings in the world to-day,
+completely fails to realize what war is in general, and the civil war
+in particular. He does not understand that every, or nearly every,
+sympathizer with Thiers in Paris was not merely an "opponent" of the
+Communards in ideas, but an agent and spy of Thiers, a ferocious enemy
+ready to shoot one in the back. The enemy must be made harmless, and
+in wartime this means that he must be destroyed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The problem of revolution, as of war, consists in breaking the will of
+the foe, forcing him to capitulate and to accept the conditions of the
+conqueror. The will, of course, is a fact of the physical world, but
+in contradistinction to a meeting, a dispute, or a congress, the
+revolution carries out its object by means of the employment of
+material resources&#8212;though to a less degree than war. The bourgeoisie
+itself conquered power by means of revolts, and consolidated it by the
+civil war. In the peaceful period, it retains power by means of a
+system of repression. As long as class society, founded on the most
+deep-rooted antagonisms, continues to exist, repression remains a
+necessary means of breaking the will of the opposing side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even if, in one country or another, the dictatorship of the proletariat
+grew up within the external framework of democracy, this would by no
+means avert the civil war. The question as to who is to rule the
+country, <i>i.e.</i>, of the life or death of the bourgeoisie, will
+be decided on either side, not by references to the paragraphs of
+the constitution, but by the employment of all forms of violence.
+However deeply Kautsky goes into the question of the food of the
+anthropopithecus (see page 122 et seq. of his book) and other
+immediate and remote conditions which determine the cause of human
+cruelty, he will find in history no other way of breaking the class
+will of the enemy except the systematic and energetic use of violence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The degree of ferocity of the struggle depends on a series of internal
+and international circumstances. The more ferocious and dangerous is
+the resistance of the class enemy who have been overthrown, the more
+inevitably does the system of repression take the form of a system of
+terror.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But here Kautsky unexpectedly takes up a new position in his struggle
+with Soviet terrorism. He simply waves aside all reference to the
+ferocity of the counter-revolutionary opposition of the Russian
+bourgeoisie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Such ferocity," he says, "could not be noticed in November, 1917, in
+Petrograd and Moscow, and still less more recently in Budapest." (Page
+149.) With such a happy formulation of the question, revolutionary
+terrorism merely proves to be a product of the blood-thirstiness of the
+Bolsheviks, who simultaneously abandoned the traditions of the
+vegetarian anthropopithecus and the moral lessons of Kautsky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first conquest of power by the Soviets at the beginning of
+November, 1917 (new style), was actually accomplished with
+insignificant sacrifices. The Russian bourgeoisie found itself to such
+a degree estranged from the masses of the people, so internally
+helpless, so compromised by the course and the result of the war, so
+demoralized by the regime of Kerensky, that it scarcely dared show any
+resistance. In Petrograd the power of Kerensky was overthrown almost
+without a fight. In Moscow its resistance was dragged out, mainly
+owing to the indecisive character of our own actions. In the majority
+of the provincial towns, power was transferred to the Soviet on the
+mere receipt of a telegram from Petrograd or Moscow. If the matter had
+ended there, there would have been no word of the Red Terror. But in
+November, 1917, there was already evidence of the beginning of the
+resistance of the propertied classes. True, there was required the
+intervention of the imperialist governments of the West in order to
+give the Russian counter-revolution faith in itself, and to add
+ever-increasing power to its resistance. This can be shown from facts,
+both important and insignificant, day by day during the whole epoch of
+the Soviet revolution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kerensky's "Staff" felt no support forthcoming from the mass of the
+soldiery, and was inclined to recognize the Soviet Government, which
+had begun negotiations for an armistice with the Germans. But there
+followed the protest of the military missions of the Entente, followed
+by open threats. The Staff was frightened; incited by "Allied"
+officers, it entered the path of opposition. This led to armed
+conflict and to the murder of the chief of the field staff, General
+Dukhonin, by a group of revolutionary sailors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In Petrograd, the official agents of the Entente, especially the
+French Military Mission, hand in hand with the S.R.s and the
+Mensheviks, openly organized the opposition, mobilizing, arming,
+inciting against us the cadets, and the bourgeois youth generally,
+from the second day of the Soviet revolution. The rising of the
+junkers on November 10 brought about a hundred times more victims than
+the revolution of November 7. The campaign of the adventurers Kerensky
+and Krasnov against Petrograd, organized at the same time by the
+Entente, naturally introduced into the struggle the first elements of
+savagery. Nevertheless, General Krasnov was set free on his word of
+honor. The Yaroslav rising (in the summer of 1918) which involved so
+many victims, was organized by Savinkov on the instructions of the
+French Embassy, and with its resources. Archangel was captured
+according to the plans of British naval agents, with the help of
+British warships and aeroplanes. The beginning of the empire of
+Kolchak, the nominee of the American Stock Exchange, was brought about
+by the foreign Czecho-Slovak Corps maintained by the resources of the
+French Government. Kaledin and Krasnov (liberated by us), the first
+leaders of the counter-revolution on the Don, could enjoy partial
+success only thanks to the open military and financial aid of Germany.
+In the Ukraine the Soviet power was overthrown in the beginning of
+1918 by German militarism. The Volunteer Army of Denikin was created
+with the financial and technical help of Great Britain and France.
+Only in the hope of British intervention and of British military
+support was Yudenich's army created. The politicians, the diplomats,
+and the journalists of the Entente have for two years on end been
+debating with complete frankness the question of whether the financing
+of the civil war in Russia is a sufficiently profitable enterprise. In
+such circumstances, one needs truly a brazen forehead to seek the
+reason for the sanguinary character of the civil war in Russia in the
+malevolence of the Bolsheviks, and not in the international situation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Russian proletariat was the first to enter the path of the social
+revolution, and the Russian bourgeoisie, politically helpless, was
+emboldened to struggle against its political and economic
+expropriation only because it saw its elder sister in all countries
+still in power, and still maintaining economic, political, and, to a
+certain extent, military supremacy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If our November revolution had taken place a few months, or even a few
+weeks, after the establishment of the rule of the proletariat in
+Germany, France, and England, there can be no doubt that our
+revolution would have been the most "peaceful," the most "bloodless"
+of all possible revolutions on this sinful earth. But this historical
+sequence&#8212;the most "natural" at the first glance, and, in any case,
+the most beneficial for the Russian working class&#8212;found itself
+infringed&#8212;not through our fault, but through the will of events.
+Instead of being the last, the Russian proletariat proved to be the
+first. It was just this circumstance, after the first period of
+confusion, that imparted desperation to the character of the
+resistance of the classes which had ruled in Russia previously, and
+forced the Russian proletariat, in a moment of the greatest peril,
+foreign attacks, and internal plots and insurrections, to have
+recourse to severe measures of State terror. No one will now say that
+those measures proved futile. But, perhaps, we are expected to
+consider them "intolerable"?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The working class, which seized power in battle, had as its object and
+its duty to establish that power unshakeably, to guarantee its own
+supremacy beyond question, to destroy its enemies' hankering for a new
+revolution, and thereby to make sure of carrying out Socialist
+reforms. Otherwise there would be no point in seizing power.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The revolution "logically" does not demand terrorism, just as
+"logically" it does not demand an armed insurrection. What a profound
+commonplace! But the revolution does require of the revolutionary
+class that it should attain its end by all methods at its disposal&#8212;if
+necessary, by an armed rising: if required, by terrorism. A
+revolutionary class which has conquered power with arms in its hands
+is bound to, and will, suppress, rifle in hand, all attempts to tear
+the power out of its hands. Where it has against it a hostile army, it
+will oppose to it its own army. Where it is confronted with armed
+conspiracy, attempt at murder, or rising, it will hurl at the heads of
+its enemies an unsparing penalty. Perhaps Kautsky has invented other
+methods? Or does he reduce the whole question to the <i>degree</i> of
+repression, and recommend in all circumstances imprisonment instead of
+execution?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The question of the form of repression, or of its degree, of course,
+is not one of "principle." It is a question of expediency. In a
+revolutionary period, the party which has been thrown from power,
+which does not reconcile itself with the stability of the ruling
+class, and which proves this by its desperate struggle against the
+latter, cannot be terrorized by the threat of imprisonment, as it does
+not believe in its duration. It is just this simple but decisive fact
+that explains the widespread recourse to shooting in a civil war.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Or, perhaps, Kautsky wishes to say that execution is not expedient,
+that "classes cannot be cowed." This is untrue. Terror is
+helpless&#8212;and then only "in the long run"&#8212;if it is employed by
+reaction against a historically rising class. But terror can be very
+efficient against a reactionary class which does not want to leave the
+scene of operations. <i>Intimidation</i> is a powerful weapon of
+policy, both internationally and internally. War, like revolution, is
+founded upon intimidation. A victorious war, generally speaking,
+destroys only an insignificant part of the conquered army,
+intimidating the remainder and breaking their will. The revolution
+works in the same way: it kills individuals, and intimidates
+thousands. In this sense, the Red Terror is not distinguishable from
+the armed insurrection, the direct continuation of which it
+represents. The State terror of a revolutionary class can be condemned
+"morally" only by a man who, as a principle, rejects (in words) every
+form of violence whatsoever&#8212;consequently, every war and every rising.
+For this one has to be merely and simply a hypocritical Quaker.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, in that case, in what do your tactics differ from the tactics of
+Tsarism?" we are asked, by the high priests of Liberalism and
+Kautskianism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You do not understand this, holy men? We shall explain to you. The
+terror of Tsarism was directed against the proletariat. The
+gendarmerie of Tsarism throttled the workers who were fighting for the
+Socialist order. Our Extraordinary Commissions shoot landlords,
+capitalists, and generals who are striving to restore the capitalist
+order. Do you grasp this &#8230; distinction? Yes? For us Communists it is
+quite sufficient.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="subhead">
+"FREEDOM OF THE PRESS"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One point particularly worries Kautsky, the author of a great many
+books and articles&#8212;the freedom of the Press. Is it permissible to
+suppress newspapers?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During war all institutions and organs of the State and of public
+opinion become, directly or indirectly, weapons of warfare. This is
+particularly true of the Press. No government carrying on a serious
+war will allow publications to exist on its territory which, openly or
+indirectly, support the enemy. Still more so in a civil war. The
+nature of the latter is such that each of the struggling sides has in
+the rear of its armies considerable circles of the population on the
+side of the enemy. In war, where both success and failure are repaid
+by death, hostile agents who penetrate into the rear are subject to
+execution. This is inhumane, but no one ever considered war a school
+of humanity&#8212;still less civil war. Can it be seriously demanded that,
+during a civil war with the White Guards of Denikin, the publications
+of parties supporting Denikin should come out unhindered in Moscow and
+Petrograd? To propose this in the name of the "freedom" of the Press
+is just the same as, in the name of open dealing, to demand the
+publication of military secrets. "A besieged city," wrote a Communard,
+Arthur Arnould of Paris, "cannot permit within its midst that hopes
+for its fall should openly be expressed, that the fighters defending
+it should be incited to treason, that the movements of its troops
+should be communicated to the enemy. Such was the position of Paris
+under the Commune." Such is the position of the Soviet Republic during
+the two years of its existence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Let us, however, listen to what Kautsky has to say in this connection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The justification of this system (<i>i.e.</i>, repressions in
+connection with the Press) is reduced to the naive idea that an
+absolute truth (!) exists, and that only the Communists possess it
+(!). Similarly," continues Kautsky, "it reduces itself to another
+point of view, that all writers are by nature liars (!) and that only
+Communists are fanatics for truth (!). In reality, liars and fanatics
+for what they consider truth are to be found in all camps." And so on,
+and so on, and so on. (Page 176.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In this way, in Kautsky's eyes, the revolution, in its most acute
+phase, when it is a question of the life and death of classes,
+continues as hitherto to be a literary discussion with the object of
+establishing &#8230; the truth. What profundity!&#8230; Our "truth," of
+course, is not absolute. But as in its name we are, at the present
+moment, shedding our blood, we have neither cause nor possibility to
+carry on a literary discussion as to the relativity of truth with
+those who "criticize" us with the help of all forms of arms.
+Similarly, our problem is not to punish liars and to encourage just
+men amongst journalists of all shades of opinion, but to throttle the
+class lie of the bourgeoisie and to achieve the class truth of the
+proletariat, irrespective of the fact that in both camps there are
+fanatics and liars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The Soviet Government," Kautsky thunders, "has destroyed the sole
+remedy that might militate against corruption: the freedom of the
+Press. Control by means of unlimited freedom of the Press alone could
+have restrained those bandits and adventurers who will inevitably
+cling like leeches to every unlimited, uncontrolled power." (Page
+188.) And so on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Press as a trusty weapon of the struggle with corruption! This
+liberal recipe sounds particularly pitiful when one remembers the two
+countries with the greatest "freedom" of the Press&#8212;North America and
+France&#8212;which, at the same time, are countries of the most highly
+developed stage of capitalist corruption.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Feeding on the old scandal of the political ante-rooms of the Russian
+revolution, Kautsky imagines that without Cadet and Menshevik freedom
+the Soviet apparatus is honey-combed with "bandits" and "adventurers."
+Such was the voice of the Mensheviks a year or eighteen months ago.
+Now even they will not dare to repeat this. With the help of Soviet
+control and party selection, the Soviet Government, in the intense
+atmosphere of the struggle, has dealt with the bandits and adventurers
+who appeared on the surface at the moment of the revolution
+incomparably better than any government whatsoever, at any time
+whatsoever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We are fighting. We are fighting a life-and-death struggle. The Press
+is a weapon not of an abstract society, but of two irreconcilable,
+armed and contending sides. We are destroying the Press of the
+counter-revolution, just as we destroyed its fortified positions, its
+stores, its communications, and its intelligence system. Are we
+depriving ourselves of Cadet and Menshevik criticisms of the
+corruption of the working class? In return we are victoriously
+destroying the very foundations of capitalist corruption.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Kautsky goes further to develop his theme. He complains that we
+suppress the newspapers of the S.R.s and the Mensheviks, and
+even&#8212;such things have been known&#8212;arrest their leaders. Are we not
+dealing here with "shades of opinion" in the proletarian or the
+Socialist movement? The scholastic pedant does not see facts beyond
+his accustomed words. The Mensheviks and S.R.s for him are simply
+tendencies in Socialism, whereas, in the course of the revolution,
+they have been transformed into an organization which works in active
+co-operation with the counter-revolution and carries on against us an
+open war. The army of Kolchak was organized by Socialist
+Revolutionaries (how that name savours to-day of the charlatan!), and
+was supported by Mensheviks. Both carried on&#8212;and carry on&#8212;against
+us, for a year and a half, a war on the Northern front. The Mensheviks
+who rule the Caucasus, formerly the allies of Hohenzollern, and to-day
+the allies of Lloyd George, arrested and shot Bolsheviks hand in hand
+with German and British officers. The Mensheviks and S.R.s of the
+Kuban Rada organized the army of Denikin. The Esthonian Mensheviks who
+participate in their government were directly concerned in the last
+advance of Yudenich against Petrograd. Such are these "tendencies" in
+the Socialist movement. Kautsky considers that one can be in a state
+of open and civil war with the Mensheviks and S.R.s, who, with the
+help of the troops they themselves have organized for Yudenich,
+Kolchak and Denikin, are fighting for their "shade of opinions" in
+Socialism, and at the same time to allow those innocent "shades of
+opinion" freedom of the Press in our rear. If the dispute with the
+S.R.s and the Mensheviks could be settled by means of persuasion and
+voting&#8212;that is, if there were not behind their backs the Russian and
+foreign imperialists&#8212;there would be no civil war.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kautsky, of course, is ready to "condemn"&#8212;an extra drop of ink&#8212;the
+blockade, and the Entente support of Denikin, and the White Terror.
+But in his high impartiality he cannot refuse the latter certain
+extenuating circumstances. The White Terror, you see, does not
+infringe their own principles, while the Bolsheviks, making use of the
+Red Terror, betray the principle of "the sacredness of human life
+which they themselves proclaimed." (Page 210.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What is the meaning of the principle of the sacredness of human life
+in practice, and in what does it differ from the commandment, "Thou
+shalt not kill," Kautsky does not explain. When a murderer raises his
+knife over a child, may one kill the murderer to save the child? Will
+not thereby the principle of the "sacredness of human life" be
+infringed? May one kill the murderer to save oneself? Is an
+insurrection of oppressed slaves against their masters permissible?
+Is it permissible to purchase one's freedom at the cost of the
+life of one's jailers? If human life in general is sacred and
+inviolable, we must deny ourselves not only the use of terror, not
+only war, but also revolution itself. Kautsky simply does not realize
+the counter-revolutionary meaning of the "principle" which he attempts
+to force upon us. Elsewhere we shall see that Kautsky accuses us of
+concluding the Brest-Litovsk peace: in his opinion we ought to have
+continued war. But what then becomes of the sacredness of human life?
+Does life cease to be sacred when it is a question of people talking
+another language, or does Kautsky consider that mass murders organized
+on principles of strategy and tactics are not murders at all? Truly it
+is difficult to put forward in our age a principle more hypocritical
+and more stupid. As long as human labor-power, and, consequently, life
+itself, remain articles of sale and purchase, of exploitation and
+robbery, the principle of the "sacredness of human life" remains a
+shameful lie, uttered with the object of keeping the oppressed slaves
+in their chains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We used to fight against the death penalty introduced by Kerensky,
+because that penalty was inflicted by the courts-martial of the old
+army on soldiers who refused to continue the imperialist war. We tore
+this weapon out of the hands of the old courts-martial, destroyed the
+courts-martial themselves, and demobilized the old army which had
+brought them forth. Destroying in the Red Army, and generally
+throughout the country, counter-revolutionary conspirators who strive
+by means of insurrections, murders, and disorganization, to restore
+the old regime, we are acting in accordance with the iron laws of a
+war in which we desire to guarantee our victory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If it is a question of seeking formal contradictions, then obviously
+we must do so on the side of the White Terror, which is the weapon of
+classes which consider themselves "Christian," patronize idealist
+philosophy, and are firmly convinced that the individuality (their
+own) is an end-in-itself. As for us, we were never concerned with the
+Kantian-priestly and vegetarian-Quaker prattle about the "sacredness
+of human life." We were revolutionaries in opposition, and have
+remained revolutionaries in power. To make the individual sacred we
+must destroy the social order which crucifies him. And this problem
+can only be solved by blood and iron.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There is another difference between the White Terror and the Red,
+which Kautsky to-day ignores, but which in the eyes of a Marxist is of
+decisive significance. The White Terror is the weapon of the
+historically reactionary class. When we exposed the futility of the
+repressions of the bourgeois State against the proletariat, we never
+denied that by arrests and executions the ruling class, under certain
+conditions, might temporarily retard the development of the social
+revolution. But we were convinced that they would not be able to bring
+it to a halt. We relied on the fact that the proletariat is the
+historically rising class, and that bourgeois society could not
+develop without increasing the forces of the proletariat. The
+bourgeoisie to-day is a falling class. It not only no longer plays an
+essential part in production, but by its imperialist methods of
+appropriation is destroying the economic structure of the world and
+human culture generally. Nevertheless, the historical persistence of
+the bourgeoisie is colossal. It holds to power, and does not wish to
+abandon it. Thereby it threatens to drag after it into the abyss the
+whole of society. We are forced to tear it off, to chop it away. The
+Red Terror is a weapon utilized against a class, doomed to
+destruction, which does not wish to perish. If the White Terror can
+only retard the historical rise of the proletariat, the Red Terror
+hastens the destruction of the bourgeoisie. This hastening&#8212;a pure
+question of acceleration&#8212;is at certain periods of decisive
+importance. Without the Red Terror, the Russian bourgeoisie, together
+with the world bourgeoisie, would throttle us long before the coming
+of the revolution in Europe. One must be blind not to see this, or a
+swindler to deny it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man who recognizes the revolutionary historic importance of the
+very fact of the existence of the Soviet system must also sanction the
+Red Terror. Kautsky, who, during the last two years, has covered
+mountains of paper with polemics against Communism and Terrorism, is
+obliged, at the end of his pamphlet, to recognize the facts, and
+unexpectedly to admit that the Russian Soviet Government is to-day the
+most important factor in the world revolution. "However one regards
+the Bolshevik methods," he writes, "the fact that a proletarian
+government in a large country has not only reached power, but has
+retained it for two years up to the present time, amidst great
+difficulties, extraordinarily increases the sense of power amongst the
+proletariat of all countries. For the actual revolution the Bolsheviks
+have thereby accomplished a great work&#8212;<i>grosses geleistet</i>."
+(Page 233.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This announcement stuns us as a completely unexpected recognition of
+historical truth from a quarter whence we had long since ceased to
+await it. The Bolsheviks have accomplished a great historical task by
+existing for two years against the united capitalist world. But the
+Bolsheviks held out not only by ideas, but by the sword. Kautsky's
+admission is an involuntary sanctioning of the methods of the Red
+Terror, and at the same time the most effective condemnation of his
+own critical concoction.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="subhead">
+THE INFLUENCE OF THE WAR
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kautsky sees one of the reasons for the extremely bloody character of
+the revolution in the war and in its hardening influence on manners.
+Quite undeniable. That influence, with all the consequences that
+follow from it, might have been foreseen earlier&#8212;approximately in the
+period when Kautsky was not certain whether one ought to vote for the
+war credits or against them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Imperialism has violently torn society out of its condition of
+unstable equilibrium," he wrote five years ago in our German
+book&#8212;<i>The War and the International</i>. "It has blown up the
+sluices with which Social-Democracy held back the current of the
+revolutionary energy of the proletariat, and has directed that current
+into its own channels. This monstrous historical experiment, which at
+one blow has broken the back of the Socialist International,
+represents a deadly danger for bourgeoisie society itself. The hammer
+has been taken from the hand of the worker, and has been replaced by
+the sword. The worker, bound hand and foot by the mechanism of
+capitalist society, has suddenly burst out of its midst, and is
+learning to put the aims of the community higher than his own domestic
+happiness and than life itself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"With this weapon, which he himself has forged, in his hand, the
+worker is placed in a position in which the political destiny of the
+State depends directly on him. Those who in former times oppressed and
+despised him now flatter and caress him. At the same time he is
+entering into intimate relations with those same guns which, according
+to Lassalle, constitute the most important integral part of the
+constitution. He crosses the boundaries of states, participates in
+violent requisitions, and under his blows towns pass from hand to
+hand. Changes take place such as the last generation did not dream of.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If the most advanced workers were aware that force was the mother of
+law, their political thought still remained saturated with the spirit
+of opportunism and self-adaptation to bourgeois legality. To-day the
+worker has learned in practice to despise that legality, and violently
+to destroy it. The static moments in his psychology are giving place
+to the dynamic. Heavy guns are knocking into his head the idea that,
+in cases where it is impossible to avoid an obstacle, there remains
+the possibility of destroying it. Nearly the whole adult male
+population is passing through this school of war, terrible in its
+social realism, which is bringing forth a new type of humanity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Over all the criteria of bourgeois society&#8212;its law, its morality,
+its religion&#8212;is now raised the fist of iron necessity. 'Necessity
+knows no law' was the declaration of the German Chancellor (August 4,
+1914). Monarchs come out into the market-place to accuse one another
+of lying in the language of fishwives; governments break promises they
+have solemnly made, while the national church binds its Lord God like
+a convict to the national cannon. Is it not obvious that these
+circumstances must create important alterations in the psychology of
+the working class, radically curing it of that hypnosis of legality
+which was created by the period of political stagnation? The
+propertied classes will soon, to their sorrow, have to be convinced of
+this. The proletariat, after passing through the school of war, at the
+first serious obstacle within its own country will feel the necessity
+of speaking with the language of force. 'Necessity knows no law,' he
+will throw in the face of those who attempt to stop him by laws of
+bourgeois legality. And the terrible economic necessity which will
+arise during the course of this war, and particularly at its end, will
+drive the masses to spurn very many laws." (Page 56-57.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All this is undeniable. But to what is said above one must add that
+the war has exercised no less influence on the psychology of the
+ruling classes. As the masses become more insistent in their demands,
+so the bourgeoisie has become more unyielding.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In times of peace, the capitalists used to guarantee their interests
+by means of the "peaceful" robbery of hired labor. During the war they
+served those same interests by means of the destruction of countless
+human lives. This has imparted to their consciousness as a master
+class a new "Napoleonic" trait. The capitalists during the war became
+accustomed to send to their death millions of slaves&#8212;fellow-countrymen
+and colonials&#8212;for the sake of coal, railway, and other profits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the war there emerged from the ranks of the bourgeoisie&#8212;large,
+middle, and small&#8212;hundreds of thousands of officers, professional
+fighters, men whose character has received the hardening of battle,
+and has become freed from all external restraints: qualified soldiers,
+ready and able to defend the privileged position of the bourgeoisie
+which produced them with a ferocity which, in its way, borders on
+heroism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The revolution would probably be more humane if the proletariat had
+the possibility of "buying off all this band," as Marx once put it.
+But capitalism during the war has imposed upon the toilers too great a
+load of debt, and has too deeply undermined the foundations of
+production, for us to be able seriously to contemplate a ransom in
+return for which the bourgeoisie would silently make its peace with
+the revolution. The masses have lost too much blood, have suffered too
+much, have become too savage, to accept a decision which economically
+would be beyond their capacity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To this there must be added other circumstances working in the same
+direction. The bourgeoisie of the conquered countries has been
+embittered by defeat, the responsibility for which it is inclined to
+throw on the rank and file&#8212;on the workers and peasants who proved
+incapable of carrying on "the great national war" to a victorious
+conclusion. From this point of view, one finds very instructive those
+explanations, unparalleled for their effrontery, which Ludendorff gave
+to the Commission of the National Assembly. The bands of Ludendorff
+are burning with the desire to take revenge for their humiliation
+abroad on the blood of their own proletariat. As for the bourgeoisie
+of the victorious countries, it has become inflated with arrogance,
+and is more than ever ready to defend its social position with the
+help of the bestial methods which guaranteed its victory. We have seen
+that the bourgeoisie is incapable of organizing the division of the
+booty amongst its own ranks without war and destruction. Can it,
+without a fight, abandon its booty altogether? The experience of the
+last five years leaves no doubt whatsoever on this score: if even
+previously it was absolutely utopian to expect that the expropriation
+of the propertied classes&#8212;thanks to "democracy"&#8212;would take place
+imperceptibly and painlessly, without insurrections, armed conflicts,
+attempts at counter-revolution, and severe repression, the state of
+affairs we have inherited from the imperialist war predetermines,
+doubly and trebly, the tense character of the civil war and the
+dictatorship of the proletariat.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<a name="paris">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="chapter">
+5
+</p>
+
+<p class="head">
+<span class="sc">The Paris Commune and Soviet Russia</span>
+</p>
+
+<p class="hang">
+<i>"The short episode of the first revolution carried out by the
+proletariat for the proletariat ended in the triumph of its enemy.
+This episode&#8212;from March 18 to May 28&#8212;lasted seventy-two days."&#8212;"The
+Paris Commune" of March 18, 1871, P. L. Lavrov, Petrograd. 'Kolos'
+Publishing House, 1919, pp. 160.</i>
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="subhead">
+THE IMMATURITY OF THE SOCIALIST PARTIES IN THE COMMUNE.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Paris Commune of 1871 was the first, as yet weak, historic attempt
+of the working class to impose its supremacy. We cherished the memory
+of the Commune in spite of the extremely limited character of its
+experience, the immaturity of its participants, the confusion of its
+programme, the lack of unity amongst its leaders, the indecision of
+their plans, the hopeless panic of its executive organs, and the
+terrifying defeat fatally precipitated by all these. We cherish in the
+Commune, in the words of Lavrov, "the first, though still pale, dawn
+of the proletarian republic." Quite otherwise with Kautsky. Devoting a
+considerable part of his book to a crudely tendencious contrast
+between the Commune and the Soviet power, he sees the main advantages
+of the Commune in features that we find are its misfortune and its
+fault.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kautsky laboriously proves that the Paris Commune of 1871 was not
+"artificially" prepared, but emerged unexpectedly, taking the
+revolutionaries by surprise&#8212;in contrast to the November revolution,
+which was carefully prepared by our party. This is incontestable. Not
+daring clearly to formulate his profoundly reactionary ideas, Kautsky
+does not say outright whether the Paris revolutionaries of 1871
+deserve praise for not having foreseen the proletarian insurrection,
+and for not having foreseen the inevitable and consciously gone to
+meet it. However, all Kautsky's picture was built up in such a way as
+to produce in the reader just this idea: the Communards were simply
+overtaken by misfortune (the Bavarian philistine, Vollmar, once
+expressed his regret that the Communards had not gone to bed instead
+of taking power into their hands), and, therefore, deserve pity. The
+Bolsheviks consciously went to meet misfortune (the conquest of
+power), and, therefore, there is no forgiveness for them either in
+this or the future world. Such a formulation of the question may seem
+incredible in its internal inconsistency. None the less, it follows
+quite inevitably from the position of the Kautskian "Independents,"
+who draw their heads into their shoulders in order to see and foresee
+nothing; and, if they do move forward, it is only after having
+received a preliminary stout blow in the rear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To humiliate Paris," writes Kautsky, "not to give it self-government,
+to deprive it of its position as capital, to disarm it in order
+afterwards to attempt with greater confidence a monarchist <i>coup
+d'&#233;tat</i>&#8212;such was the most important task of the National Assembly
+and the chief of the executive power it elected, Thiers. Out of this
+situation arose the conflict which led to the Paris insurrection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is clear how different from this was the character of the <i>coup
+d'&#233;tat</i> carried out by the Bolsheviks, which drew its strength from
+the yearning for peace; which had the peasantry behind it; which had
+in the National Assembly against it, not monarchists, but S.R.s and
+Menshevik Social-Democrats.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The Bolsheviks came to power by means of a well-prepared <i>coup
+d'&#233;tat</i>; which at one blow handed over to them the whole machinery
+of the State&#8212;immediately utilized in the most energetic and merciless
+manner for the purpose of suppressing their opponents, amongst them
+their proletarian opponents.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No one, on the other hand, was more surprised by the insurrection of
+the Commune than the revolutionaries themselves, and for a
+considerable number amongst them the conflict was in the highest
+degree undesirable." (Page 56.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In order more clearly to realize the actual sense of what Kautsky has
+written here of the Communards, let us bring forward the following
+evidence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"On March 1, 1871," writes Lavrov, in his very instructive book on the
+Commune, "six months after the fall of the Empire, and a few days
+before the explosion of the Commune, the guiding personalities in the
+Paris International still had no definite political programme." (Pages
+64-65.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"After March 18," writes the same author, "Paris was in the hands of
+the proletariat, but its leaders, overwhelmed by their unexpected
+power, did not take the most elementary measures." (Page 71.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'Your part is too big for you to play, and your sole aim is to get
+rid of responsibility,' said one member of the Central Committee of
+the National Guard. In this was a great deal of truth," writes the
+Communard and historian of the Commune, Lissagaray. "But at the moment
+of action itself the absence of preliminary organization and
+preparation is very often a reason why parts are assigned to men which
+are too big for them to play." (Brussels, 1876; page 106.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From this one can already see (later on it will become still more
+obvious) that the absence of a direct struggle for power on the part
+of the Paris Socialists was explained by their theoretical
+shapelessness and political helplessness, and not at all by higher
+considerations of tactics.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We have no doubt that Kautsky's own loyalty to the traditions of the
+Commune will be expressed mainly in that extraordinary surprise with
+which he will greet the proletarian revolution in Germany as "a
+conflict in the highest degree undesirable." We doubt, however,
+whether this will be ascribed by posterity to his credit. In reality,
+one must describe his historical analogy as a combination of
+confusion, omission, and fraudulent suggestion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The intentions which were entertained by Thiers towards Paris were
+entertained by Miliukov, who was openly supported by Tseretelli and
+Chernov, towards Petrograd. All of them, from Kornilov to Potressov,
+affirmed day after day that Petrograd had alienated itself from the
+country, had nothing in common with it, was completely corrupted, and
+was attempting to impose its will upon the community. To overthrow and
+humiliate Petrograd was the first task of Miliukov and his assistants.
+And this took place at a period when Petrograd was the true centre of
+the revolution, which had not yet been able to consolidate its
+position in the rest of the country. The former president of the Duma,
+Rodzianko, openly talked about handing over Petrograd to the Germans
+for educative purposes, as Riga had been handed over. Rodzianko only
+called by its name what Miliukov was trying to carry out, and what
+Kerensky assisted by his whole policy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miliukov, like Thiers, wished to disarm the proletariat. More than
+that, thanks to Kerensky, Chernov, and Tseretelli, the Petrograd
+proletariat was to a considerable extent disarmed in July, 1917. It
+was partially re-armed during Kornilov's march on Petrograd in August.
+And this new arming was a serious element in the preparation of the
+November insurrection. In this way, it is just the points in which
+Kautsky contrasts our November revolution to the March revolt of the
+Paris workers that, to a very large extent, coincide.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In what, however, lies the difference between them? First of all, in
+the fact that Thiers' criminal plans succeeded: Paris was throttled by
+him, and tens of thousands of workers were destroyed. Miliukov, on the
+other hand, had a complete fiasco: Petrograd remained an impregnable
+fortress of the proletariat, and the leader of the bourgeoisie went to
+the Ukraine to petition that the Kaiser's troops should occupy Russia.
+For this difference we were to a considerable extent responsible&#8212;and
+we are ready to bear the responsibility. There is a capital difference
+also in the fact&#8212;that this told more than once in the further course
+of events&#8212;that, while the Communards began mainly with considerations
+of patriotism, we were invariably guided by the point of view of the
+international revolution. The defeat of the Commune led to the
+practical collapse of the First International. The victory of the
+Soviet power has led to the creation of the Third International.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Marx&#8212;on the eve of the insurrection&#8212;advised the Communards not
+to revolt, but to create an organization! One might understand Kautsky
+if he adduced this evidence in order to show that Marx had
+insufficiently gauged the acuteness of the situation in Paris. But
+Kautsky attempts to exploit Marx's advice as a proof of his
+condemnation of insurrection in general. Like all the mandarins of
+German Social-Democracy, Kautsky sees in organization first and
+foremost a method of hindering revolutionary action.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But limiting ourselves to the question of organization as such, we
+must not forget that the November revolution was preceded by nine
+months of Kerensky's Government, during which our party, not without
+success, devoted itself not only to agitation, but also to
+organization. The November revolution took place after we had achieved
+a crushing majority in the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils of
+Petrograd, Moscow, and all the industrial centres in the country, and
+had transformed the Soviets into powerful organizations directed by
+our party. The Communards did nothing of the kind. Finally, we had
+behind us the heroic Commune of Paris, from the defeat of which we had
+drawn the deduction that revolutionaries must foresee events and
+prepare for them. For this also we are to blame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kautsky requires his extensive comparison of the Commune and Soviet
+Russia only in order to slander and humiliate a living and victorious
+dictatorship of the proletariat in the interests of an attempted
+dictatorship, in the already fairly distant past.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kautsky quotes with extreme satisfaction the statement of the Central
+Committee of the National Guard on March 19 in connection with the
+murder of the two generals by the soldiery. "We say indignantly: the
+bloody filth with the help of which it is hoped to stain our honor is
+a pitiful slander. We never organized murder, and never did the
+National Guard take part in the execution of crime."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Naturally, the Central Committee had no cause to assume responsibility
+for murders with which it had no concern. But the sentimental,
+pathetic tone of the statement very clearly characterises the
+political timorousness of these men in the face of bourgeois public
+opinion. Nor is this surprising. The representatives of the National
+Guard were men in most cases with a very modest revolutionary past.
+"Not one well-known name," writes Lissagaray. "They were petty
+bourgeois shop-keepers, strangers to all but limited circles, and, in
+most cases, strangers hitherto to politics." (Page 70.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The modest and, to some extent, fearful sense of terrible historical
+responsibility, and the desire to get rid of it as soon as possible,"
+writes Lavrov of them, "is evident in all the proclamations of this
+Central Committee, into the hands of which the destiny of Paris had
+fallen." (Page 77.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After bringing forward, to our confusion, the declamation concerning
+bloodshed, Kautsky later on follows Marx and Engels in criticizing the
+indecision of the Commune. "If the Parisians (<i>i.e.</i>, the
+Communards) had persistently followed up the tracts of Thiers, they
+would, perhaps, have managed to seize the government. The troops
+falling back from Paris would not have shown the least resistance &#8230;
+but they let Thiers go without hindrance. They allowed him to lead
+away his troops and reorganize them at Versailles, to inspire a new
+spirit in, and strengthen, them." (Page 49.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kautsky cannot understand that it was the same men, and for the very
+same reasons, who published the statement of March 19 quoted above,
+who allowed Thiers to leave Paris with impunity and gather his forces.
+If the Communards had <i>conquered</i> with the help of resources of a
+purely moral character, their statement would have acquired great
+weight. But this did not take place. In reality, their sentimental
+humaneness was simply the obverse of their revolutionary passivity.
+The men who, by the will of fate, had received power in Paris, could
+not understand the necessity of immediately utilizing that power to
+the end, of hurling themselves after Thiers, and, before he recovered
+his grasp of the situation, of crushing him, of concentrating the
+troops in their hands, of carrying out the necessary weeding-out of
+the officer class, of seizing the provinces. Such men, of course, were
+not inclined to severe measures with counter-revolutionary elements.
+The one was closely bound up with the other. Thiers could not be
+followed up without arresting Thiers' agents in Paris and shooting
+conspirators and spies. When one considered the execution of
+counter-revolutionary generals as an indelible "crime," one could not
+develop energy in following up troops who were under the direction of
+counter-revolutionary generals.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the revolution in the highest degree of energy is the highest
+degree of humanity. "Just the men," Lavrov justly remarks, "who hold
+human life and human blood dear must strive to organize the
+possibility for a swift and decisive victory, and then to act with the
+greatest swiftness and energy, in order to crush the enemy. For only
+in this way can we achieve the minimum of inevitable sacrifice and the
+minimum of bloodshed." (Page 225.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The statement of March 19 will, however, be considered with more
+justice if we examine it, not as an unconditional confession of faith,
+but as the expression of transient moods the day after an unexpected
+and bloodless victory. Being an absolute stranger to the understanding
+of the dynamics of revolution, and the internal limitations of its
+swiftly-developing moods, Kautsky thinks in lifeless schemes, and
+distorts the perspective of events by arbitrarily selected analogies.
+He does not understand that soft-hearted indecision is generally
+characteristic of the masses in the first period of the revolution.
+The workers pursue the offensive only under the pressure of iron
+necessity, just as they have recourse to the Red Terror only under the
+threat of destruction by the White Guards. That which Kautsky
+represents as the result of the peculiarly elevated moral feeling of
+the Parisian proletariat in 1871 is, in reality, merely a
+characteristic of the first stage of the civil war. A similar
+phenomenon could have been witnessed in our case.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In Petrograd we conquered power in November, 1917, almost without
+bloodshed, and even without arrests. The ministers of Kerensky's
+Government were set free very soon after the revolution. More, the
+Cossack General, Krasnov, who had advanced on Petrograd together with
+Kerensky after the power had passed to the Soviet, and who had been
+made prisoner by us at Gatchina, was set free on his word of honor the
+next day. This was "generosity" quite in the spirit of the first
+measures of the Commune. But it was a mistake. Afterwards, General
+Krasnov, after fighting against us for about a year in the South, and
+destroying many thousands of Communists, again advanced on Petrograd,
+this time in the ranks of Yudenich's army. The proletarian revolution
+assumed a more severe character only after the rising of the junkers
+in Petrograd, and particularly after the rising of the Czecho-Slovaks
+on the Volga organized by the Cadets, the S.R.s, and the Mensheviks,
+after their mass executions of Communists, the attempt on Lenin's
+life, the murder of Uritsky, etc., etc.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The same tendencies, only in an embryonic form, we see in the history
+of the Commune.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Driven by the logic of the struggle, it took its stand in principle on
+the path of intimidation. The creation of the Committee of Public
+Safety was dictated, in the case of many of its supporters, by the
+idea of the Red Terror. The Committee was appointed "to cut off the
+heads of traitors" (Journal Officiel No. 123), "to avenge treachery"
+(No. 124). Under the head of "intimidatory" decrees we must class the
+order to seize the property of Thiers and of his ministers, to destroy
+Thiers' house, to destroy the Vendome column, and especially the
+decree on hostages. For every captured Communard or sympathizer with
+the Commune shot by the Versaillese, three hostages were to be shot.
+The activity of the Prefecture of Paris controlled by Raoul Rigault
+had a purely terroristic, though not always a useful, purpose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The effect of all these measures of intimidation was paralyzed by the
+helpless opportunism of the guiding elements in the Commune, by their
+striving to reconcile the bourgeoisie with the <i>fait accompli</i> by
+the help of pitiful phrases, by their vacillations between the fiction
+of democracy and the reality of dictatorship. The late Lavrov
+expresses the latter idea splendidly in his book on the Commune.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The Paris of the rich bourgeois and the poor proletarians, as a
+political community of different classes, demanded, in the name of
+liberal principles, complete freedom of speech, of assembly, of
+criticism of the government, etc. The Paris which had accomplished the
+revolution in the interests of the proletariat, and had before it the
+task of realizing this revolution in the shape of institutions, Paris,
+as the community of the emancipated working-class proletariat,
+demanded revolutionary&#8212;<i>i.e.</i>, dictatorial, measures against the
+enemies of the new order." (Pages 143-144.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If the Paris Commune had not fallen, but had continued to exist in the
+midst of a ceaseless struggle, there can be no doubt that it would
+have been obliged to have recourse to more and more severe measures
+for the suppression of the counter-revolution. True, Kautsky would not
+then have had the possibility of contrasting the humane Communards
+with the inhumane Bolsheviks. But in return, probably, Thiers, would
+not have had the possibility of inflicting his monstrous bloodletting
+upon the proletariat of Paris. History, possibly, would not have been
+the loser.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="subhead">
+THE IRRESPONSIBLE CENTRAL COMMITTEE AND THE "DEMOCRATIC" COMMUNE
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"On March 19," Kautsky informs us, "in the Central Committee of the
+National Guard, some demanded a march on Versailles, others an appeal
+to the electors, and a third party the adoption first of all of
+revolutionary measures; as if every one of these steps," he proceeds
+very learnedly to inform us, "were not equally necessary, and as if
+one excluded the other." (Page 72.) Further on, Kautsky, in connection
+with these disputes in the Commune, presents us with various warmed-up
+platitudes as to the mutual relations of reform and revolution. In
+reality, the following was the situation. If it were decided to march
+on Versailles, and to do this without losing an hour it was necessary
+immediately to reorganize the National Guard, to place at its head the
+best fighting elements of the Paris proletariat, and thereby
+temporarily to weaken Paris from the revolutionary point of view. But
+to organize elections in Paris, while at the same time sending out of
+its walls the flower of the working class, would have been senseless
+from the point of view of the revolutionary party. Theoretically, a
+march on Versailles and elections to the Commune, of course, did not
+exclude each other in the slightest degree, but in practice they did
+exclude each other: for the success of the elections, it was necessary
+to postpone the attack; for the attack to succeed, the elections must
+be put off. Finally, leading the proletariat out to the field and
+thereby temporarily weakening Paris, it was essential to obtain some
+guarantee against the possibility of counter-revolutionary attempts in
+the capital; for Thiers would not have hesitated at any measures to
+raise a white revolt in the rear of the Communards. It was essential
+to establish a more military&#8212;<i>i.e.</i>, a more stringent regime in
+the capital. "They had to fight," writes Lavrov, "against many
+internal foes with whom Paris was full, who only yesterday had been
+rioting around the Exchange and the Vendome Square, who had their
+representatives in the administration and in the National Guard, who
+possessed their press, and their meetings, who almost openly
+maintained contact with the Versaillese, and who became more
+determined and more audacious at every piece of carelessness, at every
+check of the Commune." (Page 87.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was necessary, side by side with this, to carry out revolutionary
+measures of a financial and generally of an economic character: first
+and foremost, for the equipment of the revolutionary army. All these
+most necessary measures of revolutionary dictatorship could with
+difficulty be reconciled with an extensive electoral campaign. But
+Kautsky has not the least idea of what a revolution is in practice. He
+thinks that theoretically to reconcile is the same as practically to
+accomplish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Central Committee appointed March 22 as the day of elections for
+the Commune; but, not sure of itself, frightened at its own
+illegality, striving to act in unison with more "legal" institutions,
+entered into ridiculous and endless negotiations with a quite helpless
+assembly of mayors and deputies of Paris, showing its readiness to
+divide power with them if only an agreement could be arrived at.
+Meanwhile precious time was slipping by.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marx, on whom Kautsky, through old habit, tries to rely, did not under
+any circumstances propose that, at one and the same time, the Commune
+should be elected and the workers should be led out into the field for
+the war. In his letter to Kugelmann, Marx wrote, on April 12, 1871,
+that the Central Committee of the National Guard had too soon given up
+its power in favor of the Commune. Kautsky, in his own words, "does
+not understand" this opinion of Marx. It is quite simple. Marx at any
+rate understood that the problem was not one of chasing legality, but
+of inflicting a fatal blow upon the enemy. "If the Central Committee
+had consisted of real revolutionaries," says Lavrov, and rightly, "it
+ought to have acted differently. It would have been quite unforgivable
+for it to have given the enemy ten days' respite before the election
+and assembly of the Commune, while the leaders of the proletariat
+refused to carry out their duty and did not recognize that they had
+the right immediately to <i>lead</i> the proletariat. As it was, the
+feeble immaturity of the popular parties created a Committee which
+considered those ten days of inaction incumbent upon it." (Page 78.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The yearning of the Central Committee to hand over power as soon as
+possible to a "legal" Government was dictated, not so much by the
+superstitions of former democracy, of which, by the way, there was no
+lack, as by fear of responsibility. Under the plea that it was a
+temporary institution, the Central Committee avoided the taking of the
+most necessary and absolutely pressing measures, in spite of the fact
+that all the material apparatus of power was centred in its hands. But
+the Commune itself did not take over political power in full from the
+Central Committee, and the latter continued to interfere in all
+business quite unceremoniously. This created a dual Government, which
+was extremely dangerous, particularly under military conditions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On May 3 the Central Committee sent deputies to the Commune demanding
+that the Ministry for War should be placed under its control. Again
+there arose, as Lissagaray writes, the question as to whether "the
+Central Committee should be dissolved, or arrested, or entrusted with
+the administration of the Ministry for War."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here was a question, not of the principles of democracy, but of the
+absence, in the case of both parties, of a clear programme of action,
+and of the readiness, both of the irresponsible revolutionary
+organizations in the shape of the Central Committee and of the
+"democratic" organization of the Commune, to shift the responsibility
+on to the other's shoulders, while at the same time not entirely
+renouncing power.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These were political relations which it might seem no one could call
+worthy of imitation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But the Central Committee," Kautsky consoles himself, "never
+attempted to infringe the principle in virtue of which the supreme
+power must belong to the delegates elected by universal suffrage." In
+this respect the "Paris Commune was the direct antithesis of the
+Soviet Republic." (Page 74.) There was no unity of government, there
+was no revolutionary decision, there existed a division of power, and,
+as a result, there came swift and terrible destruction. But to
+counter-balance this&#8212;is it not comforting?&#8212;there was no infringement
+of the "principle" of democracy.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="subhead">
+THE DEMOCRATIC COMMUNE AND THE REVOLUTIONARY DICTATORSHIP
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Comrade Lenin has already pointed out to Kautsky that attempts to
+depict the Commune as the expression of formal democracy constitute a
+piece of absolute theoretical swindling. The Commune, in its tradition
+and in the conception of its leading political party&#8212;the
+Blanquists&#8212;was the expression of <i>the dictatorship of the
+revolutionary city over the country</i>. So it was in the great French
+Revolution; so it would have been in the revolution of 1871 if the
+Commune had not fallen in the first days. The fact that in Paris
+itself a Government was elected on the basis of universal suffrage
+does not exclude a much more significant fact&#8212;namely, that of the
+military operations carried on by the Commune, one city, against
+peasant France, that is the whole country. To satisfy the great
+democrat, Kautsky, the revolutionaries of the Commune ought, as a
+preliminary, to have consulted, by means of universal suffrage, the
+whole population of France as to whether it permitted them to carry on
+a war with Thiers' bands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finally, in Paris itself the elections took place after the
+bourgeoisie, or at least its most active elements, had fled, and after
+Thiers' troops had been evacuated. The bourgeoisie that remained in
+Paris, in spite of all its impudence, was still afraid of the
+revolutionary battalions, and the elections took place under the
+auspices of that fear, which was the forerunner of what in the future
+would have been inevitable&#8212;namely, of the Red Terror. But to console
+oneself with the thought that the Central Committee of the National
+Guard, under the dictatorship of which&#8212;unfortunately a very feeble
+and formalist dictatorship&#8212;the elections to the Commune were held,
+did not infringe the principle of universal suffrage, is truly to
+brush with the shadow of a broom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Amusing himself by barren analogies, Kautsky benefits by the
+circumstance that his reader is not acquainted with the facts. In
+Petrograd, in November, 1917, we also elected a Commune (Town Council)
+on the basis of the most "democratic" voting, without limitations for
+the bourgeoisie. These elections, being boycotted by the bourgeoisie
+parties, gave us a crushing majority. The "democratically" elected
+Council voluntarily submitted to the Petrograd Soviet&#8212;<i>i.e.</i>,
+placed the fact of the dictatorship of the proletariat higher than the
+"principle" of universal suffrage, and, after a short time, dissolved
+itself altogether by its own act, in favor of one of the sections of
+the Petrograd Soviet. Thus the Petrograd Soviet&#8212;that true father of
+the Soviet regime&#8212;has upon itself the seal of a formal "democratic"
+benediction in no way less than the Paris Commune.<a href="#note6" name="noteref6">
+<small>[6]</small></a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"At the elections of March 26, eighty members were elected to the
+Commune. Of these, fifteen were members of the government party
+(Thiers), and six were bourgeois radicals who were in opposition to
+the Government, but condemned the rising (of the Paris workers).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The Soviet Republic," Kautsky teaches us, "would never have allowed
+such counter-revolutionary elements to stand as candidates, let alone
+be elected. The Commune, on the other hand, out of respect for
+democracy, did not place the least obstacle in the way of the election
+of its bourgeois opponents." (Page 74.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We have already seen above that here Kautsky completely misses the
+mark. First of all, at a similar stage of development of the Russian
+Revolution, there did not take place democratic elections to the
+Petrograd Commune, in which the Soviet Government placed no obstacle
+in the way of the bourgeois parties; and if the Cadets, the S.R.s and
+the Mensheviks, who had their press which was openly calling for the
+overthrow of the Soviet Government, boycotted the elections, it was
+only because at that time they still hoped soon to make an end of us
+with the help of armed force. Secondly, no democracy expressing all
+classes was actually to be found in the Paris Commune. The bourgeois
+deputies&#8212;Conservatives, Liberals, Gambettists&#8212;found no place in it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nearly all these individuals," says Lavrov, "either immediately or
+very soon, left the Council of the Commune. They might have been
+representatives of Paris as a free city under the rule of the
+bourgeoisie, but were quite out of place in the Council of the
+Commune, which, willy-nilly, consistently or inconsistently,
+completely or incompletely, did represent the revolution of the
+proletariat, and an attempt, feeble though it might be, of building up
+forms of society corresponding to that revolution." (Pages 111-112.)
+If the Petrograd bourgeoisie had not boycotted the municipal
+elections, its representatives would have entered the Petrograd
+Council. They would have remained there up to the first Social
+Revolutionary and Cadet rising, after which&#8212;with the permission or
+without the permission of Kautsky&#8212;they would probably have been
+arrested if they did not leave the Council in good time, as at a
+certain moment did the bourgeois members of the Paris Commune. The
+course of events would have remained the same: only on their surface
+would certain episodes have worked out differently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In supporting the democracy of the Commune, and at the same time
+accusing it of an insufficiently decisive note in its attitude to
+Versailles, Kautsky does not understand that the Communal elections,
+carried out with the ambiguous help of the "lawful" mayors and
+deputies, reflected the hope of a peaceful agreement with Versailles.
+This is the whole point. The leaders were anxious for a compromise,
+not for a struggle. The masses had not yet outlived their illusions.
+Undeserved revolutionary reputations had not yet had time to be
+exposed. Everything taken together was called democracy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We must rise above our enemies by moral force&#8230;." preached Vermorel.
+"We must not infringe liberty and individual life&#8230;." Striving to
+avoid fratricidal war, Vermorel called upon the liberal bourgeoisie,
+whom hitherto he had so mercilessly exposed, to set up "a lawful
+Government, recognized and respected by the whole population of
+Paris." The <i>Journal Officiel</i>, published under the editorship of
+the Internationalist Longuet, wrote: "The sad misunderstanding, which
+in the June days (1848) armed two classes of society against each
+other, cannot be renewed&#8230;. Class antagonism has ceased to exist&#8230;."
+(March 30.) And, further: "Now all conflicts will be appeased, because
+all are inspired with a feeling of solidarity, because never yet was
+there so little social hatred and social antagonism." (April 3.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the session of the Commune of April 25, Jourd&#233;, and not without
+foundation, congratulated himself on the fact that the Commune had
+"never yet infringed the principle of private property." By this means
+they hoped to win over bourgeois public opinion and find the path to
+compromise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Such a doctrine," says Lavrov, and rightly, "did not in the least
+disarm the enemies of the proletariat, who understood excellently with
+what its success threatened them, and only sapped the proletarian
+energy and, as it were, deliberately blinded it in the face of its
+irreconcilable enemies." (Page 137.) But this enfeebling doctrine was
+inextricably bound up with the fiction of democracy. The form of mock
+legality it was that allowed them to think that the problem would be
+solved without a struggle. "As far as the mass of the population is
+concerned," writes Arthur Arnould, a member of the Commune, "it was to
+a certain extent justified in the belief in the existence of, at the
+very least, a hidden agreement with the Government." Unable to attract
+the bourgeoisie, the compromisers, as always, deceived the
+proletariat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The clearest evidence of all that, in the conditions of the inevitable
+and already beginning civil war, democratic parliamentarism expressed
+only the compromising helplessness of the leading groups, was the
+senseless procedure of the supplementary elections to the Commune of
+April 6. At this moment, "it was no longer a question of voting,"
+writes Arthur Arnould. "The situation had become so tragic that there
+was not either the time or the calmness necessary for the correct
+functioning of the elections&#8230;. All persons devoted to the Commune
+were on the fortifications, in the forts, in the foremost
+detachments&#8230;. The people attributed no importance whatever to these
+supplementary elections. The elections were in reality merely
+parliamentarism. What was required was not to count voters, but to
+have soldiers: not to discover whether we had lost or gained in the
+Commune of Paris, but to defend Paris from the Versaillese." From
+these words Kautsky might have observed why in practice it is not so
+simple to combine class war with interclass democracy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The Commune is not a Constituent Assembly," wrote in his book,
+Milli&#232;re, one of the best brains of the Commune. "It is a military
+Council. It must have one aim, victory; one weapon, force; one law,
+the law of social salvation."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"They could never understand," Lissagaray accuses the leaders, "that
+the Commune was a barricade, and not an administration."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They began to understand it in the end, when it was too late. Kautsky
+has not understood it to this day. There is no reason to believe that
+he will ever understand it.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short">
+
+<p>
+The Commune was the living negation of formal democracy, for in its
+development it signified the dictatorship of working class Paris over
+the peasant country. It is this fact that dominates all the rest.
+However much the political doctrinaires, in the midst of the Commune
+itself, clung to the appearances of democratic legality, every action
+of the Commune, though insufficient for victory, was sufficient to
+reveal its illegal nature.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Commune&#8212;that is to say, the Paris City Council&#8212;repealed the
+national law concerning conscription. It called its official organ
+<i>The Official Journal of the French Republic</i>. Though cautiously,
+it still laid hands on the State Bank. It proclaimed the separation of
+Church and State, and abolished the Church Budgets. It entered into
+relations with various embassies. And so on, and so on. It did all
+this in virtue of the revolutionary dictatorship. But Clemenceau,
+young democrat as he was then, would not recognize that virtue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At a conference with the Central Committee, Clemenceau said: "The
+rising had an unlawful beginning&#8230;. Soon the Committee will become
+ridiculous, and its decrees will be despised. Besides, Paris has not
+the right to rise against France, and must unconditionally accept the
+authority of the Assembly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The problem of the Commune was to dissolve the National Assembly.
+Unfortunately it did not succeed in doing so. To-day Kautsky seeks to
+discover for its criminal intentions some mitigating circumstances.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He points out that the Communards had as their opponents in the
+National Assembly the monarchists, while we in the Constituent
+Assembly had against us &#8230; Socialists, in the persons of the S.R.s,
+and the Mensheviks. A complete mental eclipse! Kautsky talks about the
+Mensheviks and the S.R.s, but forgets our sole serious foe&#8212;the
+Cadets. It was they who represented our Russian Thiers party&#8212;<i>i.e.</i>, a
+bloc of property owners in the name of property: and Professor
+Miliukov did his utmost to imitate the "little great man." Very soon
+indeed&#8212;long before the October Revolution&#8212;Miliukov began to seek his
+Gallifet in the generals Kornilov, Alexeiev, then Kaledin, Krasnov, in
+turn. And after Kolchak had thrown aside all political parties, and
+had dissolved the Constituent Assembly, the Cadet Party, the sole
+serious bourgeois party, in its essence monarchist through and
+through, not only did not refuse to support him, but on the contrary
+devoted more sympathy to him than before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Mensheviks and the S.R.s played no independent role amongst
+us&#8212;just like Kautsky's party during the revolutionary events
+in Germany. They based their whole policy upon a coalition with
+the Cadets, and thereby put the Cadets in a position to dictate
+quite irrespective of the balance of political forces. The
+Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik Parties were only an
+intermediary apparatus for the purpose of collecting, at meetings
+and elections, the political confidence of the masses awakened
+by the revolution, and for handing it over for disposal by the
+counter-revolutionary imperialist party of the Cadets&#8212;independently
+of the issue of the elections.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The purely vassal-like dependence of the S.R.s and Menshevik <i>majority</i>
+on the Cadet <i>minority</i> itself represented a very thinly-veiled
+insult to the idea of "democracy." But this is not all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In all districts of the country where the regime of "democracy" lived
+too long, it inevitably ended in an open <i>coup d'etat</i> of the
+counter-revolution. So it was in the Ukraine, where the democratic
+Rada, having sold the Soviet Government to German imperialism, found
+itself overthrown by the monarchist Skoropadsky. So it was in the
+Kuban, where the democratic Rada found itself under the heel of
+Denikin. So it was&#8212;and this was the most important experiment of our
+"democracy"&#8212;in Siberia, where the Constituent Assembly, with the
+formal supremacy of the S.R.s and the Mensheviks, in the absence of
+the Bolsheviks, and the <i>de facto</i> guidance of the Cadets, led in
+the end to the dictatorship of the Tsarist Admiral Kolchak. So it was,
+finally, in the north, where the Constituent Assembly government of
+the Socialist-Revolutionary Chaikovsky became merely a tinsel
+decoration for the rule of counter-revolutionary generals, Russian and
+British. So it was, or is, in all the small Border States&#8212;in Finland,
+Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Georgia, Armenia&#8212;where, under
+the formal banner of "democracy," there is being consolidated the
+supremacy of the landlords, the capitalists, and the foreign
+militarists.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="subhead">
+THE PARIS WORKER OF 1871 AND THE PETROGRAD PROLETARIAN OF 1917
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of the most coarse, unfounded, and politically disgraceful
+comparisons which Kautsky makes between the Commune and Soviet Russia
+is touching the character of the Paris worker in 1871 and the Russian
+proletarian of 1917-19. The first Kautsky depicts as a revolutionary
+enthusiast capable of a high measure of self-sacrifice; the second, as
+an egoist and a coward, an irresponsible anarchist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Parisian worker has behind him too definite a past to need
+revolutionary recommendations&#8212;or protection from the praises of the
+present Kautsky. None the less, the Petrograd proletarian has not, and
+cannot have, any reason for avoiding a comparison with his heroic
+elder brother. The continuous three years' struggle of the Petrograd
+workers&#8212;first for the conquest of power, and then for its maintenance
+and consolidation&#8212;represents an exceptional story of collective
+heroism and self-sacrifice, amidst unprecedented tortures in the shape
+of hunger, cold, and constant perils.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kautsky, as we can discover in another connection, takes for contrast
+with the flower of the Communards the most sinister elements of the
+Russian proletariat. In this respect also he is in no way different
+from the bourgeois sycophants, to whom dead Communards always appear
+infinitely more attractive than the living.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Petrograd proletariat seized power four and a half decades after
+the Parisian. This period has told enormously in our favor. The
+petty bourgeois craft character of old and partly of new Paris is
+quite foreign to Petrograd, the centre of the most concentrated
+industry in the world. The latter circumstances has extremely
+facilitated our tasks of agitation and organization, as well as the
+setting up of the Soviet system.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our proletariat did not have even a faint measure of the rich
+revolutionary traditions of the French proletariat. But, instead,
+there was still very fresh in the memory of the older generation of
+our workers, at the beginning of the present revolution, the great
+experiment of 1905, its failure, and the duty of vengeance it had
+handed down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Russian workers had not, like the French, passed through a long
+school of democracy and parliamentarism, which at a certain epoch
+represented an important factor in the political education of the
+proletariat. But, on the other hand, the Russian working class had not
+had seared into its soul the bitterness of dissolution and the poison
+of scepticism, which up to a certain, and&#8212;let us hope&#8212;not very
+distant moment, still restrain the revolutionary will of the French
+proletariat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Paris Commune suffered a military defeat before economic problems
+had arisen before it in their full magnitude. In spite of the splendid
+fighting qualities of the Paris workers, the military fate of the
+Commune was at once determined as hopeless. Indecision and
+compromise-mongering above brought about collapse below.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The pay of the National Guard was issued on the basis of the existence
+of 162,000 rank and file and 6,500 officers; the number of those who
+actually went into battle, especially after the unsuccessful sortie of
+April 3, varied between twenty and thirty thousand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These facts do not in the least compromise the Paris workers, and do
+not give us the right to consider them cowards and
+deserters&#8212;although, of course, there was no lack of desertion. For a
+fighting army there must be, first of all, a centralized and accurate
+apparatus of administration. Of this the Commune had not even a trace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The War Department of the Commune, was, in the expression of one
+writer, as it were a dark room, in which all collided. The office of
+the Ministry was filled with officers and ordinary Guards, who
+demanded military supplies and food, and complained that they were not
+relieved. They were sent to the garrison&#8230;.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"One battalion remained in the trenches for 20 and 30 days, while
+others were constantly in reserve&#8230;. This carelessness soon killed
+any discipline. Courageous men soon determined to rely only on
+themselves; others avoided service. In the same way did officers
+behave. One would leave his post to go to the help of a neighbor who
+was under fire; others went away to the city&#8230;." (Lavrov, page 100.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such a regime could not remain unpunished; the Commune was drowned in
+blood. But in this connection Kautsky has a marvelous solution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The waging of war," he says, sagely shaking his head, "is, after all,
+not a strong side of the proletariat." (Page 76.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This aphorism, worthy of Pangloss, is fully on a level with the other
+great remark of Kautsky, namely, that the International is not a
+suitable weapon to use in wartime, being in its essence an "instrument
+of peace."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In these two aphorisms, in reality, may be found the present Kautsky,
+complete, in his entirety&#8212;<i>i.e.</i>, just a little over a round
+zero.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The waging of war, do you see, is on the whole, not a strong side of
+the proletariat, the more that the International itself was not
+created for wartime. Kautsky's ship was built for lakes and quiet
+harbors, not at all for the open sea, and not for a period of storms.
+If that ship has sprung a leak, and has begun to fill, and is now
+comfortably going to the bottom, we must throw all the blame upon the
+storm, the unnecessary mass of water, the extraordinary size of the
+waves, and a series of other unforeseen circumstances for which
+Kautsky did not build his marvelous instrument.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The international proletariat put before itself as its problem the
+conquest of power. Independently of whether civil war, "generally,"
+belongs to the inevitable attributes of revolution, "generally," this
+fact remains unquestioned&#8212;that the advance of the proletariat, at any
+rate in Russia, Germany, and parts of former Austro-Hungary, took the
+form of an intense civil war not only on internal but also on external
+fronts. If the waging of war is not the strong side of the
+proletariat, while the workers' International is suited only for
+peaceful epochs, then we may as well erect a cross over the revolution
+and over Socialism; for the waging of war is a fairly <i>strong</i>
+side of the capitalist State, which <i>without</i> a war will not
+admit the workers to supremacy. In that case there remains only to
+proclaim the so-called "Socialist" democracy to be merely the
+accompanying feature of capitalist society and bourgeois
+parliamentarism&#8212;<i>i.e.</i>, openly to sanction what the Eberts,
+Schneidermanns, Renaudels, carry out in practice and what Kautsky
+still, it seems, protests against in words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The waging of war was not a strong side of the Commune. Quite so; that
+was why it was crushed. And how mercilessly crushed!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We have to recall the proscriptions of Sulla, Antony, and Octavius,"
+wrote in his time the very moderate liberal, Fiaux, "to meet such
+massacres in the history of civilized nations. The religious wars
+under the last Valois, the night of St. Bartholomew, the Reign of
+Terror were, in comparison with it, child's play. In the last week of
+May alone, in Paris, 17,000 corpses of the insurgent Federals were
+picked up &#8230; the killing was still going on about June 15."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The waging of war, after all, is not the strong side of the
+proletariat."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is not true! The Russian workers have shown that they are capable
+of wielding the "instrument of war" as well. We see here a gigantic
+step forward in comparison with the Commune. It is not a renunciation
+of the Commune&#8212;for the traditions of the Commune consist not at all
+in its helplessness&#8212;but the continuation of its work. The Commune was
+weak. To complete its work we have become strong. The Commune was
+crushed. We are inflicting blow after blow upon the executioners of
+the Commune. We are taking vengeance for the Commune, and we shall
+avenge it.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short">
+
+<p>
+Out of 167,000 National Guards who received pay, only twenty or thirty
+thousand went into battle. These figures serve as interesting material
+for conclusions as to the role of formal democracy in a revolutionary
+epoch. The vote of the Paris Commune was decided, not at the
+elections, but in the battles with the troops of Thiers. One hundred
+and sixty-seven thousand National Guards represented the great mass of
+the electorate. But in reality, in the battles, the fate of the
+Commune was decided by twenty or thirty thousand persons; the most
+devoted fighting minority. This minority did not stand alone: it
+simply expressed, in a more courageous and self-sacrificing manner,
+the will of the majority. But none the less it was a minority. The
+others who hid at the critical moment were not hostile to the Commune;
+on the contrary, they actively or passively supported it, but they
+were less politically conscious, less decisive. On the arena of
+political democracy, their lower level of political consciousness
+afforded the possibility of their being deceived by adventurers,
+swindlers, middle-class cheats, and honest dullards who really
+deceived themselves. But, at the moment of open class war, they, to a
+greater or lesser degree, followed the self-sacrificing minority. It
+was this that found its expression in the organization of the National
+Guard. If the existence of the Commune had been prolonged, this
+relationship between the advance guard and the mass of the proletariat
+would have grown more and more firm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The organization which would have been formed and consolidated in the
+process of the open struggle, as the organization of the laboring
+masses, would have become the organization of their dictatorship&#8212;the
+Council of Deputies of the armed proletariat.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<a name="marx">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="chapter">
+6
+</p>
+
+<p class="head">
+<span class="sc">Marx and &#8230; Kautsky.</span>
+</p>
+
+
+<p>
+Kautsky loftily sweeps aside Marx's views on terror, expressed by him
+in the <i>Neue Rheinische Zeitung</i>&#8212;as at that time, do you see,
+Marx was still very "young," and consequently his views had not yet
+had time to arrive at that condition of complete enfeeblement which is
+so clearly to be observed in the case of certain theoreticians in the
+seventh decade of their life. As a contrast to the green Marx of
+1848-49 (the author of the <i>Communist Manifesto</i>!) Kautsky quotes
+the mature Marx of the epoch of the Paris Commune&#8212;and the latter,
+under the pen of Kautsky, loses his great lion's mane, and appears
+before us as an extremely respectable reasoner, bowing before the holy
+places of democracy, declaiming on the sacredness of human life, and
+filled with all due reverence for the political charms of
+Schneidermann, Vandervelde, and particularly of his own physical
+grandson, Jean Longuet. In a word, Marx, instructed by the experience
+of life, proves to be a well-behaved Kautskian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the deathless <i>Civil War in France</i>, the pages of which have
+been filled with a new and intense life in our own epoch, Kautsky has
+quoted only those lines in which the mighty theoretician of the social
+revolution contrasted the generosity of the Communards with the
+bourgeois ferocity of the Versaillese. Kautsky has devastated these
+lines and made them commonplace. Marx, as the preacher of detached
+humanity, as the apostle of general love of mankind! Just as if we
+were talking about Buddha or Leo Tolstoy&#8230;. It is more than natural
+that, against the international campaign which represented the
+Communards as <i>souteneurs</i> and the women of the Commune as
+prostitutes, against the vile slanders which attributed to the
+conquered fighters ferocious features drawn from the degenerate
+imagination of the victorious bourgeoisie, Marx should emphasize and
+underline those features of tenderness and nobility which not
+infrequently were merely the reverse side of indecision. Marx was
+Marx. He was neither an empty pedant, nor, all the more, the legal
+defender of the revolution: he combined a scientific analysis of the
+Commune with its revolutionary apology. He not only explained and
+criticised&#8212;he defended and struggled. But, emphasizing the mildness
+of the Commune which failed, Marx left no doubt possible concerning
+the measures which the Commune ought to have taken in order not to
+fail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The author of the <i>Civil War</i> accuses the Central
+Committee&#8212;<i>i.e.</i>, the then Council of National Guards' Deputies,
+of having too soon given up its place to the elective Commune. Kautsky
+"does not understand" the reason for such a reproach. This
+conscientious non-understanding is one of the symptoms of Kautsky's
+mental decline in connection with questions of the revolution
+generally. The first place, according to Marx, ought to have been
+filled by a purely fighting organ, a centre of the insurrection and of
+military operations against Versailles, and not the organized
+self-government of the labor democracy. For the latter the turn would
+come later.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marx accuses the Commune of not having at once begun an attack against
+the Versailles, and of having entered upon the defensive, which always
+appears "more humane," and gives more possibilities of appealing to
+moral law and the sacredness of human life, but in conditions of civil
+war never leads to victory. Marx, on the other hand, first and
+foremost wanted a revolutionary victory. Nowhere, by one word, does he
+put forward the principle of democracy as something standing above the
+class struggle. On the contrary, with the concentrated contempt of the
+revolutionary and the Communist, Marx&#8212;not the young editor of the
+<i>Rhine Paper</i>, but the mature author of <i>Capital</i>: our
+genuine Marx with the mighty leonine mane, not as yet fallen under the
+hands of the hairdressers of the Kautsky school&#8212;with what
+concentrated contempt he speaks about the "artificial atmosphere of
+parliamentarism" in which physical and spiritual dwarfs like Thiers
+seem giants! The <i>Civil War</i>, after the barren and pedantic
+pamphlet of Kautsky, acts like a storm that clears the air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In spite of Kautsky's slanders, Marx had nothing in common with the
+view of democracy as the last, absolute, supreme product of history.
+The development of bourgeois society itself, out of which contemporary
+democracy grew up, in no way represents that process of gradual
+democratization which figured before the war in the dreams of the
+greatest Socialist illusionist of democracy&#8212;Jean Jaur&#232;s&#8212;and now in
+those of the most learned of pedants, Karl Kautsky. In the empire of
+Napoleon III, Marx sees "the only possible form of government in the
+epoch in which the bourgeoisie has already lost the possibility of
+governing the people, while the working class has not yet acquired
+it." In this way, not democracy, but Bonapartism, appears in Marx's
+eyes as the final form of bourgeois power. Learned men may say that
+Marx was mistaken, as the Bonapartist empire gave way for half a
+century to the "Democratic Republic." But Marx was not mistaken. In
+essence he was right. The Third Republic has been the period of the
+complete decay of democracy. Bonapartism has found in the Stock
+Exchange Republic of Poincar&#233;-Cl&#233;menceau, a more finished expression
+than in the Second Empire. True, the Third Republic was not crowned by
+the imperial diadem; but in return there loomed over it the shadow of
+the Russian Tsar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In his estimate of the Commune, Marx carefully avoids using the worn
+currency of democratic terminology. "The Commune was," he writes, "not
+a parliament, but a working institution, and united in itself both
+executive and legislative power." In the first place, Marx puts
+forward, not the particular democratic form of the Commune, but its
+class essence. The Commune, as is known, abolished the regular army
+and the police, and decreed the confiscation of Church property. It
+did this in the right of the revolutionary dictatorship of Paris,
+without the permission of the general democracy of the State, which at
+that moment formally had found a much more "lawful" expression in the
+National Assembly of Thiers. But a revolution is not decided by votes.
+"The National Assembly," says Marx, "was nothing more nor less than
+one of the episodes of that revolution, the true embodiment of which
+was, nevertheless, armed Paris." How far this is from formal
+democracy!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It only required that the Communal order of things," says Marx,
+"should be set up in Paris and in the secondary centres, and the old
+central government would in the provinces also have yielded to the
+<i>self-government of the producers</i>." Marx, consequently, sees the
+problem of revolutionary Paris, not in appealing from its victory to
+the frail will of the Constituent Assembly, but in covering the whole
+of France with a centralized organization of Communes, built up not on
+the external principles of democracy but on the genuine
+self-government of the producers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kautsky has cited as an argument against the Soviet Constitution the
+indirectness of elections, which contradicts the fixed laws of
+bourgeois democracy. Marx characterizes the proposed structure of
+labor France in the following words:&#8212;"The management of the general
+affairs of the village communes of every district was to devolve on
+the Assembly of plenipotentiary delegates meeting in the chief town of
+the district; while the district assemblies were in turn to send
+delegates to the National Assembly sitting in Paris."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marx, as we can see, was not in the least degree disturbed by the many
+degrees of indirect election, in so far as it was a question of the
+State organization of the proletariat itself. In the framework of
+bourgeois democracy, indirectness of election confuses the demarcation
+line of parties and classes; but in the "self-government of the
+producers"&#8212;<i>i.e.</i>, in the class proletarian State, indirectness
+of election is a question not of politics, but of the technical
+requirements of self-government, and within certain limits may present
+the same advantages as in the realm of trade union organization.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Philistines of democracy are indignant at the inequality in
+representation of the workers and peasants which, in the Soviet
+Constitution, reflects the difference in the revolutionary roles of
+the town and the country. Marx writes: "The Commune desired to bring
+the rural producers under the intellectual leadership of the central
+towns of their districts, and there to secure to them, in the workmen
+of the towns, the natural guardians of their interests." The question
+was not one of making the peasant equal to the worker on paper, but of
+spiritually raising the peasant to the level of the worker. All
+questions of the proletarian State Marx decides according to the
+revolutionary dynamics of living forces, and not according to the play
+of shadows upon the market-place screen of parliamentarism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In order to reach the last confines of mental collapse, Kautsky denies
+the universal authority of the Workers' Councils on the ground that
+there is no legal boundary between the proletariat and the
+bourgeoisie. In the indeterminate nature of the social divisions
+Kautsky sees the source of the arbitrary authority of the Soviet
+dictatorship. Marx sees directly the contrary. "The Commune was an
+extremely elastic form of the State, while all former forms of
+government had suffered from narrowness. Its secret consists in this,
+that in its very essence it was the government of the working class,
+the result of the struggle between the class of producers and the
+class of appropriators, the political form, long sought, under which
+there could be accomplished the economic emancipation of labor." The
+secret of the Commune consisted in the fact that by its very essence
+it was a government of the working class. This secret, explained by
+Marx, has remained, for Kautsky, even to this day, a mystery sealed
+with seven seals.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Pharisees of democracy speak with indignation of the repressive
+measures of the Soviet Government, of the closing of newspapers, of
+arrests and shooting. Marx replies to "the vile abuse of the lackeys
+of the Press" and to the reproaches of the "well-intentioned bourgeois
+doctrinaries," in connection with the repressive measures of the
+Commune in the following words:&#8212;"Not satisfied with their open waging
+of a most bloodthirsty war against Paris, the Versaillese strove
+secretly to gain an entry by corruption and conspiracy. Could the
+Commune at such a time <i>without shamefully betraying its trust</i>,
+have observed the customary forms of liberalism, just as if profound
+peace reigned around it? Had the government of the Commune been akin
+in spirit to that of Thiers, there would have been no more occasion to
+suppress newspapers of the party of order in Paris than there was to
+suppress newspapers of the Commune at Versailles." In this way, what
+Kautsky demands in the name of the sacred foundations of democracy
+Marx brands as a shameful betrayal of trust.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Concerning the destruction of which the Commune is accused, and of
+which now the Soviet Government is accused, Marx speaks as of "an
+inevitable and comparatively insignificant episode in the titanic
+struggle of the new-born order with the old in its collapse."
+Destruction and cruelty are inevitable in any war. Only sycophants can
+consider them a crime "in the war of the slaves against their
+oppressors, <i>the only just war in history</i>." (Marx.) Yet our
+dread accuser Kautsky, in his whole book, does not breathe a word of
+the fact that we are in a condition of perpetual revolutionary
+self-defence, that we are waging an intensive war against the
+oppressors of the world, the "only just war in history."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kautsky yet again tears his hair because the Soviet Government, during
+the Civil War, has made use of the severe method of taking hostages.
+He once again brings forward pointless and dishonest comparisons
+between the fierce Soviet Government and the humane Commune. Clear and
+definite in this connection sounds the opinion of Marx. "When Thiers,
+from the very beginning of the conflict, had enforced the humane
+practice of shooting down captured Communards, the Commune, to protect
+the lives of those prisoners, <i>had nothing left for it</i> but to
+resort to the Prussian custom of taking hostages. The lives of the
+hostages had been forfeited over and over again by the continued
+shooting of the prisoners on the part of the Versaillese. <i>How could
+their lives be spared any longer</i> after the blood-bath with which
+MacMahon's Pretorians celebrated their entry into Paris?" How
+otherwise we shall ask together with Marx, can one act in conditions
+of civil war, when the counter-revolution, occupying a considerable
+portion of the national territory, seizes wherever it can the unarmed
+workers, their wives, their mothers, and shoots or hangs them: how
+otherwise can one act than to seize as hostages the beloved or the
+trusted of the bourgeoisie, thus placing the whole bourgeois class
+under the Damocles' sword of mutual responsibility?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It would not be difficult to show, day by day through the history of
+the civil war, that all the severe measures of the Soviet Government
+were forced upon it as measures of revolutionary self-defense. We
+shall not here enter into details. But, to give though it be but a
+partial criterion for valuing the conditions of the struggle, let us
+remind the reader that, at the moment when the White Guards, in
+company with their Anglo-French allies, shoot every Communist without
+exception who falls into their hands, the Red Army spares all
+prisoners without exception, including even officers of high rank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Fully grasping its historical task, filled with the heroic decision
+to remain equal to that task," Marx wrote, "the working class may
+reply with a smile of calm contempt to the vile abuse of the lackeys
+of the Press and to the learned patronage of well-intentioned
+bourgeois doctrinaires, who utter their ignorant stereotyped
+common-places, their characteristic nonsense, with the profound tone of
+oracles of scientific immaculateness."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If the well-intentioned bourgeois doctrinaires sometimes appear in the
+guise of retired theoreticians of the Second International, this in no
+way deprives their characteristic nonsense of the right of remaining
+nonsense.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<a name="working">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="chapter">
+7
+</p>
+
+<p class="head">
+<span class="sc">The Working Class and Its Soviet Policy</span>
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="subhead">
+THE RUSSIAN PROLETARIAT
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The initiative in the social revolution proved, by the force of
+events, to be imposed, not upon the old proletariat of Western Europe,
+with its mighty economic and political organization, with its
+ponderous traditions of parliamentarism and trade unionism, but upon
+the young working-class of a backward country. History, as always,
+moved along the line of least resistance. The revolutionary epoch
+burst upon us through the least barricaded door. Those extraordinary,
+truly superhuman, difficulties which were thus flung upon the Russian
+proletariat have prepared, hastened, and to a considerable extent
+assisted the revolutionary work of the West European proletariat which
+still lies before us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Instead of examining the Russian Revolution in the light of the
+revolutionary epoch that has arrived throughout the world, Kautsky
+discusses the theme of whether or no the Russian proletariat has taken
+power into its hands too soon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"For Socialism," he explains, "there is necessary a high development
+of the people, a high morale amongst the masses, strongly-developed
+social instincts, sentiments of solidarity, etc. Such a form of
+morale," Kautsky further informs us, "was very highly developed
+amongst the proletariat of the Paris Commune. It is absent amongst the
+masses which at the present time set the tone amongst the Bolshevik
+proletariat." (Page 177.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For Kautsky's purpose, it is not sufficient to fling mud at the
+Bolsheviks as a political party before the eyes of his readers.
+Knowing that Bolshevism has become amalgamated with the Russian
+proletariat, Kautsky makes an attempt to fling mud at the Russian
+proletariat as a whole, representing it as an ignorant, greedy mass,
+without any ideals, which is guided only by the instincts and impulses
+of the moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Throughout his booklet Kautsky returns many times to the question of
+the intellectual and moral level of the Russian workers, and every
+time only to deepen his characterization of them as ignorant, stupid
+and barbarous. To bring about the most striking contrasts, Kautsky
+adduces the example of how a workshop committee in one of the war
+industries during the Commune decided upon compulsory night duty in
+the works for <i>one</i> worker so that it might be possible to
+distribute repaired arms by night. "As under present circumstances it
+is absolutely necessary to be extremely economical with the resources
+of the Commune," the regulation read, "the night duty will be rendered
+without payment&#8230;." "Truly," Kautsky concludes, "these working men
+did not regard the period of their dictatorship as an opportune moment
+for the satisfaction of their personal interests." (Page 90.) Quite
+otherwise is the case with the Russian working class. That class has
+no intelligence, no stability, no ideals, no steadfastness, no
+readiness for self-sacrifice, and so on. "It is just as little capable
+of choosing suitable plenipotentiary leaders for itself," Kautsky
+jeers, "as Munchausen was able to drag himself from the swamp by means
+of his own hair." This comparison of the Russian proletariat with the
+impostor Munchausen dragging himself from the swamp is a striking
+example of the brazen tone in which Kautsky speaks of the Russian
+working class.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He brings extracts from various speeches and articles of ours in which
+undesirable phenomena amongst the working class are shown up, and
+attempts to represent matters in such a way as if the life of the
+Russian proletariat between 1917-20&#8212;<i>i.e.</i>, in the greatest of
+revolutionary epochs&#8212;is fully described by passivity, ignorance, and
+egotism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kautsky, forsooth, does not know, has never heard, cannot guess, may
+not imagine, that during the civil war the Russian proletariat had
+more than one occasion of freely giving its labour, and even of
+establishing "unpaid" guard duties&#8212;not of <i>one</i> worker for the
+space of <i>one</i> night, but of tens of thousands of workers for the
+space of a long series of disturbed nights. In the days and weeks of
+Yudenich's advance on Petrograd, one telephonogram of the Soviet was
+sufficient to ensure that many thousands of workers should spring to
+their posts in all the factories, in all the wards of the city. And
+this not in the first days of the Petrograd Commune, but after a two
+years' struggle in cold and hunger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Two or three times a year our party mobilizes a high proportion of its
+numbers for the front. Scattered over a distance of 8,000 versts, they
+die and teach others to die. And when, in hungry and cold Moscow,
+which has given the flower of its workers to the front, a Party Week
+is proclaimed, there pour into our ranks from the proletarian masses,
+in the space of seven days, 15,000 persons. And at what moment? At the
+moment when the danger of the destruction of the Soviet Government had
+reached its most acute point. At the moment when Orel had been taken,
+and Denikin was approaching Tula and Moscow, when Yudenich was
+threatening Petrograd. At that most painful moment, the Moscow
+proletariat, in the course of a week, gave to the ranks of our party
+15,000 men, who only waited a new mobilization for the front. And it
+can be said with certainty that never yet, with the exception of the
+week of the November rising in 1917, was the Moscow proletariat so
+single-minded in its revolutionary enthusiasm, and in its readiness
+for devoted struggle, as in those most difficult days of peril and
+self-sacrifice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When our party proclaimed the watchword of Subbotniks and Voskresniks
+(Communist Saturdays and Sundays), the revolutionary idealism of the
+proletariat found for itself a striking expression in the shape of
+voluntary labor. At first tens and hundreds, later thousands, and now
+tens and hundreds of thousands of workers every week give up several
+hours of their labor without reward, for the sake of the economic
+reconstruction of the country. And this is done by half-starved
+people, in torn boots, in dirty linen&#8212;because the country has neither
+boots nor soap. Such, in reality, is that Bolshevik proletariat to
+whom Kautsky recommends a course of self-sacrifice. The facts of the
+situation, and their relative importance, will appear still more
+vividly before us if we recall that all the egoist, bourgeois,
+coarsely selfish elements of the proletariat&#8212;all those who avoid
+service at the front and in the Subbotniks, who engage in speculation
+and in weeks of starvation incite the workers to strikes&#8212;all of them
+vote at the Soviet elections for the Mensheviks; that is, for the
+Russian Kautskies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kautsky quotes our words to the effect that, even before the November
+Revolution, we clearly realized the defects in education of the
+Russian proletariat, but, recognizing the inevitability of the
+transference of power to the working class, we considered ourselves
+justified in hoping that during the struggle itself, during its
+experience, and with the ever-increasing support of the proletariat of
+other countries, we should deal adequately with our difficulties, and
+be able to guarantee the transition of Russia to the Socialist order.
+In this connection, Kautsky asks: "Would Trotsky undertake to get on a
+locomotive and set it going, in the conviction that he would during
+the journey have time to learn and to arrange everything? One must
+preliminarily have acquired the qualities necessary to drive a
+locomotive before deciding to set it going. Similarly the proletariat
+ought beforehand to have acquired those necessary qualities which make
+it capable of administering industry, once it had to take it over."
+(Page 173.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This instructive comparison would have done honor to any village
+clergyman. None the less, it is stupid. With infinitely more
+foundation one could say: "Will Kautsky dare to mount a horse before
+he has learned to sit firmly in the saddle, and to guide the animal in
+all its steps?" We have foundations for believing that Kautsky would
+not make up his mind to such a dangerous purely Bolshevik experiment.
+On the other hand, we fear that, through not risking to mount the
+horse, Kautsky would have considerable difficulty in learning the
+secrets of riding on horse-back. For the fundamental Bolshevik
+prejudice is precisely this: that one learns to ride on horse-back
+only when sitting on the horse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Concerning the driving of the locomotive, this principle is at first
+sight not so evident; but none the less it is there. No one yet has
+learned to drive a locomotive sitting in his study. One has to get up
+on to the engine, to take one's stand in the tender, to take into
+one's hands the regulator, and to turn it. True, the engine allows
+training man&#339;uvres only under the guidance of an old driver. The
+horse allows of instructions in the riding school only under the
+guidance of experienced trainers. But in the sphere of State
+administration such artificial conditions cannot be created. The
+bourgeoisie does not build for the proletariat academies of State
+administration, and does not place at its disposal, for preliminary
+practice, the helm of the State. And besides, the workers and peasants
+learn even to ride on horse-back not in the riding school, and without
+the assistance of trainers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To this we must add another consideration, perhaps the most important.
+No one gives the proletariat the opportunity of choosing whether it
+will or will not mount the horse, whether it will take power
+immediately or postpone the moment. Under certain conditions the
+working class is bound to take power, under the threat of political
+self-annihilation for a whole historical period.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once having taken power, it is impossible to accept one set of
+consequences at will and refuse to accept others. If the capitalist
+bourgeoisie consciously and malignantly transforms the disorganization
+of production into a method of political struggle, with the object of
+restoring power to itself, the proletariat is <i>obliged</i> to resort
+to Socialization, independently of whether this is beneficial or
+otherwise at the <i>given moment</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, once having taken over production, the proletariat is obliged,
+under the pressure of iron necessity, to learn by its own experience a
+most difficult art&#8212;that of organizing Socialist economy. Having
+mounted the saddle, the rider is obliged to guide the horse&#8212;on the
+peril of breaking his neck.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short">
+
+<p>
+To give his high-souled supporters, male and female, a complete
+picture of the moral level of the Russian proletariat, Kautsky
+adduces, on page 172 of his book, the following mandate, issued, it is
+alleged, by the Murzilovka Soviet: "The Soviet hereby empowers Comrade
+Gregory Sareiev, in accordance with his choice and instructions, to
+requisition and lead to the barracks, for the use of the Artillery
+Division stationed in Murzilovka, Briansk County, sixty women and
+girls from the bourgeois and speculating class, September 16, 1918."
+(<i>What are the Bolshevists doing?</i> Published by Dr. Nath.
+Wintch-Malejeff. Lausanne, 1919. Page 10.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Without having the least doubt of the forged character of this
+document and the lying nature of the whole communication, I gave
+instructions, however, that careful inquiry should be made, in order
+to discover what facts and episodes lay at the root of this invention.
+A carefully carried out investigation showed the following:&#8212;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+(1) In the Briansk County there is absolutely no village by the name
+of Murzilovka. There is no such village in the neighboring counties
+either. The most similar in name is the village of Muraviovka, Briansk
+County; but no artillery division has ever been stationed there, and
+altogether nothing ever took place which might be in any way connected
+with the above "document."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+(2) The investigation was also carried on along the line of the
+artillery units. Absolutely nowhere were we able to discover even an
+indirect allusion to a fact similar to that adduced by Kautsky from
+the words of his inspirer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+(3) Finally the investigation dealt with the question of whether there
+had been any rumors of this kind on the spot. Here, too, absolutely
+nothing was discovered; and no wonder. The very contents of the
+forgery are in too brutal a contrast with the morals and public
+opinion of the foremost workers and peasants who direct the work of
+the Soviets, even in the most backward regions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In this way, the document must be described as a pitiful forgery,
+which might be circulated only by the most malignant sycophants in the
+most yellow of the gutter press.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While the investigation described above was going on, Comrade
+Zinovieff showed me a number of a Swedish paper (<i>Svenska
+Dagbladet</i>) of November 9, 1919, in which was printed the facsimile
+of a mandate running as follows:&#8212;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Mandate.</i> The bearer of this, Comrade Karaseiev, has the right
+of socializing in the town of Ekaterinodar (obliterated) girls aged
+from 16 to 36 at his pleasure.&#8212;<span class="sc">Glavkom Ivashcheff.</span>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This document is even more stupid and impudent than that quoted by
+Kautsky. The town of Ekaterinodar&#8212;the centre of the Kuban&#8212;was, as is
+well known, for only a very short time in the hands of the Soviet
+Government. Apparently the author of the forgery, not very well up in
+his revolutionary chronology, rubbed out the date on this document,
+lest by some chance it should appear that "Glavkom Ivashcheff"
+socialized the Ekaterinodar women during the reign of Denikin's
+militarism there. That the document might lead into error the
+thick-witted Swedish bourgeois is not at all amazing. But for the
+Russian reader it is only too clear that the document is not merely a
+forgery, but drawn up by a <i>foreigner, dictionary in hand</i>. It is
+extremely curious that the names of both the socializers of women,
+"Gregory Sareiev" and "Karaseiev" sound absolutely non-Russia. The
+ending "eiev" in Russian names is found rarely, and only in definite
+combinations. But the accuser of the Bolsheviks himself, the author of
+the English pamphlet on whom Kautsky bases his evidence, has a name
+that does actually end in "eiev." It seems obvious that this
+Anglo-Bulgarian police agent, sitting in Lausanne, creates socializers
+of women, in the fullest sense of the word, after his own likeness and
+image.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kautsky, at any rate, has original inspirers and assistants!
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="subhead">
+SOVIETS, TRADE UNIONS, AND THE PARTY
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Soviets, as a form of the organization of the working class,
+represents for Kautsky, "in relation to the party and professional
+organizations of more developed countries, not a higher form of
+organization, but first and foremost a substitute (Notbehelf), arising
+out of the absence of political organizations." (Page 68.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Let us grant that this is true in connection with Russia. But then,
+why have Soviets sprung up in Germany? Ought one not absolutely to
+repudiate them in the Ebert Republic? We note, however, that
+Hilferding, the nearest sympathizer of Kautsky, proposes to include
+the Soviets in the Constitution. Kautsky is silent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The estimate of Soviets as a "primitive" organization is true to the
+extent that the open revolutionary struggle is "more primitive" than
+parliamentarism. But the artificial complexity of the latter embraces
+only the upper strata, insignificant in their size. On the other hand,
+revolution is only possible where the masses have their vital
+interests at stake. The November Revolution raised on to their feet
+such deep layers as the pre-revolutionary Social-Democracy could not
+even dream of. However wide were the organizations of the party and
+the trade unions in Germany, the revolution immediately proved
+incomparably wider than they. The revolutionary masses found their
+direct representation in the most simple and generally comprehensive
+delegate organization&#8212;in the Soviet. One may admit that the Council
+of Deputies falls behind both the party and the trade union in the
+sense of the clearness of its programme, or the exactness of its
+organization. But it is far and away in front of the party and the
+trade unions in the size of the masses drawn by it into the organized
+struggle; and this superiority in quality gives the Soviet undeniable
+revolutionary preponderance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Soviet embraces workers of all undertakings, of all professions,
+of all stages of cultural development, all stages of political
+consciousness&#8212;and thereby objectively is forced to formulate the
+general interests of the proletariat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The <i>Communist Manifesto</i> viewed the problem of the Communist
+just in this sense&#8212;namely, the formulating of the general historical
+interests of the working class as a whole.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The Communists are only distinguished from other proletarian
+parties," in the words of the <i>Manifesto</i>, "by this: that in the
+different national struggles of the proletariat they point out, and
+bring to the fore, the common interests of the proletariat,
+independently of nationality; and again that, in the different stages
+of evolution through which the struggle between the proletariat and
+bourgeoisie passes, they constantly represent the interests of the
+movement taken as a whole."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the form of the all-embracing class organization of the Soviets,
+the movement takes itself "as a whole." Hence it is clear why the
+Communists could and had to become the guiding party in the Soviets.
+But hence also is seen all the narrowness of the estimate of Soviets
+as "substitutes for the party" (Kautsky), and all the stupidity of the
+attempt to include the Soviets, in the form of an auxiliary lever, in
+the mechanism of bourgeois democracy. (Hilferding.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Soviets are the organization of the proletarian revolution, and
+have purpose either as an organ of the struggle for power or as the
+apparatus of power of the working class.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Unable to grasp the revolutionary role of the Soviets, Kautsky sees
+their root defects in that which constitutes their greatest merit.
+"The demarcation of the bourgeois from the worker," he writes, "can
+never be actually drawn. There will always be something arbitrary in
+such demarcation, which fact transforms the Soviet idea into a
+particularly suitable foundation for dictatorial and arbitrary rule,
+but renders it unfitted for the creation of a clear, systematically
+built-up constitution." (Page 170.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Class dictatorship, according to Kautsky, cannot create for itself
+institutions answering to its nature, because there do not exist lines
+of demarcation between the classes. But in that case, what happens to
+the class struggle altogether? Surely it was just, in the existence of
+numerous transitional stages between the bourgeoisie and the
+proletariat, that the lower middle-class theoreticians always found
+their principal argument against the "principle" of the class
+struggle? For Kautsky, however, doubts as to principle begin just at
+the point where the proletariat, having overcome the shapelessness and
+unsteadiness of the intermediate class, having brought one part of
+them over to its side and thrown the remainder into the camp of the
+bourgeoisie, has actually organized its dictatorship in the Soviet
+Constitution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The very reason why the Soviets an absolutely irreplaceable apparatus
+in the proletarian State is that their framework is elastic and
+yielding, with the result that not only social but political changes
+in the relationship of classes and sections can immediately find their
+expression in the Soviet apparatus. Beginning with the largest
+factories and works, the Soviets then draw into their organization the
+workers of private workshops and shop-assistants, proceed to enter the
+village, organize the peasants against the landowners, and finally the
+lower and middle-class sections of the peasantry against the richest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Labor State collects numerous staffs of employees, to a
+considerable extent from the ranks of the bourgeoisie and the
+bourgeois educated classes. To the extent that they become disciplined
+under the Soviet regime, they find representation in the Soviet
+system. Expanding&#8212;and at certain moments contracting&#8212;in harmony with
+the expansion and contraction of the social positions conquered by the
+proletariat, the Soviet system remains the State apparatus of the
+social revolution, in its internal dynamics, its ebbs and flows, its
+mistakes and successes. With the final triumph of the social
+revolution, the Soviet system will expand and include the whole
+population, in order thereby to lose the characteristics of a form of
+State, and melt away into a mighty system of producing and consuming
+co-operation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If the party and the trade unions were organizations of preparation
+for the revolution, the Soviets are the weapon of the revolution
+itself. After its victory, the Soviets become the organs of power. The
+role of the party and the unions, without decreasing is nevertheless
+essentially altered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the hands of the party is concentrated the general control. It does
+not immediately administer, since its apparatus is not adapted for
+this purpose. But it has the final word in all fundamental questions.
+Further, our practice has led to the result that, in all moot
+questions, generally&#8212;conflicts between departments and personal
+conflicts within departments&#8212;the last word belongs to the Central
+Committee of the party. This affords extreme economy of time and
+energy, and in the most difficult and complicated circumstances gives
+a guarantee for the necessary unity of action. Such a regime is
+possible only in the presence of the unquestioned authority of the
+party, and the faultlessness of its discipline. Happily for the
+revolution, our party does possess in an equal measure both of these
+qualities. Whether in other countries which have not received from
+their past a strong revolutionary organization, with a great hardening
+in conflict, there will be created just as authoritative a Communist
+Party by the time of the proletarian revolution, it is difficult to
+foretell; but it is quite obvious that on this question, to a very
+large extent, depends the progress of the Socialist revolution in each
+country.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The exclusive role of the Communist Party under the conditions of a
+victorious proletarian revolution is quite comprehensible. The
+question is of the dictatorship of a class. In the composition of that
+class there enter various elements, heterogeneous moods, different
+levels of development. Yet the dictatorship pre-supposes unity of
+will, unity of direction, unity of action. By what other path then can
+it be attained? The revolutionary supremacy of the proletariat
+pre-supposes within the proletariat itself the political supremacy of
+a party, with a clear programme of action and a faultless internal
+discipline.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The policy of coalitions contradicts internally the regime of the
+revolutionary dictatorship. We have in view, not coalitions with
+bourgeois parties, of which of course there can be no talk, but a
+coalition of Communists with other "Socialist" organizations,
+representing different stages of backwardness and prejudice of the
+laboring masses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The revolution swiftly reveals all that is unstable, wears out all
+that is artificial; the contradictions glossed over in a coalition are
+swiftly revealed under the pressure of revolutionary events. We have
+had an example of this in Hungary, where the dictatorship of the
+proletariat assumed the political form of the coalition of the
+Communists with disguised Opportunists. The coalition soon broke up.
+The Communist Party paid heavily for the revolutionary instability and
+the political treachery of its companions. It is quite obvious that
+for the Hungarian Communists it would have been more profitable to
+have come to power later, after having afforded to the Left
+Opportunists the possibility of compromising themselves once and for
+all. It is quite another question as to how far this was possible. In
+any case, a coalition with the Opportunists, only temporarily hiding
+the relative weakness of the Hungarian Communists, at the same time
+prevented them from growing stronger at the expense of the
+Opportunists; and brought them to disaster.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The same idea is sufficiently illustrated by the example of the
+Russian revolution. The coalition of the Bolsheviks with the Left
+Socialist Revolutionists, which lasted for several months, ended with
+a bloody conflict. True, the reckoning for the coalition had to be
+paid, not so much by us Communists as by our disloyal companions.
+Apparently, such a coalition, in which we were the stronger side and,
+therefore, were not taking too many risks in the attempt, at one
+definite stage in history, to make use of the extreme Left-wing of the
+bourgeois democracy, tactically must be completely justified. But,
+none the less, the Left S.R. episode quite clearly shows that the
+regime of compromises, agreements, mutual concessions&#8212;for that is the
+meaning of the regime of coalition&#8212;cannot last long in an epoch in
+which situations alter with extreme rapidity, and in which supreme
+unity in point of view is necessary in order to render possible unity
+of action.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We have more than once been accused of having substituted for the
+dictatorship of the Soviets the dictatorship of our party. Yet it can
+be said with complete justice that the dictatorship of the Soviets
+became possible only by means of the dictatorship of the party. It is
+thanks to the clarity of its theoretical vision and its strong
+revolutionary organization that the party has afforded to the Soviets
+the possibility of becoming transformed from shapeless parliaments of
+labor into the apparatus of the supremacy of labor. In this
+"substitution" of the power of the party for the power of the working
+class there is nothing accidental, and in reality there is no
+substitution at all. The Communists express the fundamental interests
+of the working class. It is quite natural that, in the period in which
+history brings up those interests, in all their magnitude, on to the
+order of the day, the Communists have become the recognized
+representatives of the working class as a whole.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But where is your guarantee, certain wise men ask us, that it is just
+your party that expresses the interests of historical development?
+Destroying or driving underground the other parties, you have thereby
+prevented their political competition with you, and consequently you
+have deprived yourselves of the possibility of testing your line of
+action.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This idea is dictated by a purely liberal conception of the course of
+the revolution. In a period in which all antagonisms assume an open
+character, and the political struggle swiftly passes into a civil war,
+the ruling party has sufficient material standard by which to test its
+line of action, without the possible circulation of Menshevik papers.
+Noske crushes the Communists, but they grow. We have suppressed the
+Mensheviks and the S.R.s&#8212;and they have disappeared. This criterion is
+sufficient for us. At all events, our problem is not at every given
+moment statistically to measure the grouping of tendencies; but to
+render victory for our tendency secure. For that tendency is the
+tendency of the revolutionary dictatorship; and in the course of the
+latter, in its internal friction, we must find a sufficient criterion
+for self-examination.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The continuous "independence" of the trade union movement, in the
+period of the proletarian revolution, is just as much an impossibility
+as the policy of coalition. The trade unions become the most important
+economic organs of the proletariat in power. Thereby they fall under
+the leadership of the Communist Party. Not only questions of principle
+in the trade union movement, but serious conflicts of organization
+within it, are decided by the Central Committee of our party.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Kautskians attack the Soviet Government as the dictatorship of a
+"section" of the working class. "If only," they say, "the dictatorship
+was carried out by the <i>whole</i> class!" It is not easy to
+understand what actually they imagine when they say this. The
+dictatorship of the proletariat, in its very essence, signifies the
+immediate supremacy of the revolutionary vanguard, which relies upon
+the heavy masses, and, where necessary, obliges the backward tail to
+dress by the head. This refers also to the trade unions. After the
+conquest of power by the proletariat, they acquire a compulsory
+character. They must include all industrial workers. The party, on the
+other hand, as before, includes in its ranks only the most
+class-conscious and devoted; and only in a process of careful
+selection does it widen its ranks. Hence follows the guiding role of
+the Communist minority in the trade unions, which answers to the
+supremacy of the Communist Party in the Soviets, and represents the
+political expression of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The trade unions become the direct organizers of social production.
+They express not only the interests of the industrial workers, but the
+interests of industry itself. During the first period, the old
+currents in trade unionism more than once raised their head, urging
+the unions to haggle with the Soviet State, lay down conditions for
+it, and demand from it guarantees. The further we go, however, the
+more do the unions recognize that they are organs of production of the
+Soviet State, and assume responsibility for its fortunes&#8212;not opposing
+themselves to it, but identifying themselves with it. The unions
+become the organizers of labor discipline. They demand from the
+workers intensive labor under the most difficult conditions, to the
+extent that the Labor State is not yet able to alter those conditions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The unions become the apparatus of revolutionary repression against
+undisciplined, anarchical, parasitic elements in the working class.
+From the old policy of trade unionism, which at a certain stage is
+inseparable from the industrial movement within the framework of
+capitalist society, the unions pass along the whole line on to the new
+path of the policy of revolutionary Communism.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="subhead">
+THE PEASANT POLICY
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Bolsheviks "hoped," Kautsky thunders, "to overcome the substantial
+peasants in the villages by granting political rights exclusively to
+the poorest peasants. They then again granted representation to the
+substantial peasantry." (Page 216.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kautsky enumerates the external "contradictions" of our peasant
+policy, not dreaming to inquire into its general direction, and into
+the internal contradictions visible in the economic and political
+situation of the country.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the Russian peasantry as it entered the Soviet order there were
+three elements: the poor, living to a considerable extent by the sale
+of their labor-power, and forced to buy additional food for their
+requirements; the middle peasants, whose requirements were covered by
+the products of their farms, and who were able to a limited extent to
+sell their surplus; and the upper layer&#8212;<i>i.e.</i>, the rich
+peasants, the vulture (kulak) class, which systematically bought
+labor-power and sold their agricultural produce on a large scale. It
+is quite unnecessary to point out that these groups are not
+distinguished by definite symptoms or by homogeneousness throughout
+the country.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still, on the whole, and generally speaking, the peasant poor
+represented the natural and undeniable allies of the town proletariat,
+whilst the vulture class represented its just as undeniable and
+irreconcilable enemies. The most hesitation was principally to be
+observed amongst the widest, the <i>middle</i> section of the
+peasantry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Had not the country been so exhausted, and if the proletariat had had
+the possibility of offering to the peasant masses the necessary
+quantity of commodities and cultural requirements, the adaptation of
+the toiling majority of the peasantry to the new regime would have
+taken place much less painfully. But the economic disorder of the
+country, which was not the result of our land or food policy, but was
+generated by the causes which preceded the appearance of that policy,
+robbed the town for a prolonged period of any possibility of giving
+the village the products of the textile and metal-working industries,
+imported goods, and so on. At the same time, industry could not
+entirely cease drawing from the village all, albeit the smallest
+quantity, of its food resources. The proletariat demanded of the
+peasantry the granting of food credits, economic subsidies in respect
+of values which it is only now about to create. The symbol of those
+future values was the credit symbol, now finally deprived of all
+value. But the peasant mass is not very capable of historical
+detachment. Bound up with the Soviet Government by the abolition of
+landlordism, and seeing in it a guarantee against the restoration of
+Tsarism, the peasantry at the same time not infrequently opposes the
+collection of corn, considering it a bad bargain so long as it does
+not itself receive printed calico, nails, and kerosine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Soviet Government naturally strove to impose the chief weight of
+the food tax upon the upper strata of the village. But, in the
+unformed social conditions of the village, the influential peasantry,
+accustomed to lead the middle peasants in its train, found scores of
+methods of passing on the food tax from itself to the wide masses of
+the peasantry, thereby placing them in a position of hostility and
+opposition to the Soviet power. It was necessary to awaken in the
+lower ranks of the peasantry suspicion and hostility towards the
+speculating upper strata. This purpose was served by the Committees of
+Poverty. They were built up of the rank and file, of elements who in
+the last epoch were oppressed, driven into a dark corner, deprived of
+their rights. Of course, in their midst there turned out to be a
+certain number of semi-parasitic elements. This served as the chief
+text for the demagogues amongst the populist "Socialists," whose
+speeches found a grateful echo in the hearts of the village vultures.
+But the mere fact of the transference of power to the village poor had
+an immeasurable revolutionary significance. For the guidance of the
+village semi-proletarians, there were despatched from the towns
+parties from amongst the foremost workers, who accomplished invaluable
+work in the villages. The Committees of Poverty became shock
+battalions against the vulture class. Enjoying the support of the
+State, they thereby obliged the middle section of the peasantry to
+choose, not only between the Soviet power and the power of the
+landlords, but between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the
+semi-proletarian elements of the village on the one hand, and the yoke
+of the rich speculators on the other. By a series of lessons, some of
+which were very severe, the middle peasantry was obliged to become
+convinced that the Soviet regime, which had driven away the landlords
+and bailiffs, in its turn imposes new duties upon the peasantry, and
+demands sacrifices from them. The political education of tens of
+millions of the middle peasantry did not take place as easily and
+smoothly as in the school-room, and it did not give immediate and
+unquestionable results. There were risings of the middle peasants,
+uniting with the speculators, and always in such cases falling under
+the leadership of White Guard landlords; there were abuses committed
+by local agents of the Soviet Government, particularly by those of the
+Committees of Poverty. But the fundamental political end was attained.
+The powerful class of rich peasantry, if it was not finally
+annihilated, proved to be shaken to its foundations, with its
+self-reliance undermined. The middle peasantry, remaining politically
+shapeless, just as it is economically shapeless, began to learn to
+find its representative in the foremost worker, as before it found it
+in the noisy village speculator. Once this fundamental result was
+achieved, the Committees of Poverty, as temporary institutions, as a
+sharp wedge driven into the village masses, had to yield their place
+to the Soviets, in which the village poor are represented side by side
+with the middle peasantry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Committees of Poverty existed about six months, from June to
+December, 1918. In their institution, as in their abolition, Kautsky
+sees nothing but the "waverings" of Soviet policy. Yet at the same
+time he himself has not even a suspicion of any practical lessons to
+be drawn. And after all, how should he think of them? Experience such
+as we are acquiring in this respect knows no precedent; and questions
+and problems such as the Soviet Government is now solving in practice
+have no solution in books. What Kautsky calls contradictions in policy
+are, in reality, the <i>active man&#339;uvring</i> of the proletariat in the
+spongy, undivided, peasant mass. The sailing ship has to man&#339;uvre
+before the wind; yet no one will see contradictions in the
+man&#339;uvres which finally bring the ship to harbor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In questions as to agricultural communes and Soviet farms, there could
+also be found not a few "contradictions," in which, side by side with
+individual mistakes, there are expressed various stages of the
+revolution. What quantity of land shall the Soviet State leave for
+itself in the Ukraine, and what quantity shall it hand over to the
+peasants; what policy shall it lay down for the agricultural communes;
+in what form shall it give them support, so as not to make them the
+nursery for parasitism; in what form is control to be organized over
+them&#8212;all these are absolutely new problems of Socialist economic
+construction, which have been settled beforehand neither theoretically
+nor practically, and in the settling of which the general principles
+of our programme have even yet to find their actual application and
+their testing in practice, by means of inevitable temporary deviations
+to right or left.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But even the very fact that the Russian proletariat has found support
+in the peasantry Kautsky turns against us. "This has introduced into
+the Soviet regime an economically reactionary element which was spared
+(!) the Paris Commune, as its dictatorship did not rely on peasant
+Soviets."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As if in reality we could accept the heritage of the feudal and
+bourgeois order with the possibility of excluding from it at will "an
+economically reactionary element"! Nor is this all. Having poisoned
+the Soviet regime by its "reactionary element," the peasantry has
+deprived us of its support. To-day it "hates" the Bolsheviks. All this
+Kautsky knows very certainly from the radios of Cl&#233;menceau and the
+squibs of the Mensheviks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In reality, what is true is that wide masses of the peasantry are
+suffering from the absence of the essential products of industry. But
+it is just as true that every other regime&#8212;and there were not a few
+of them, in various parts of Russia, during the last three
+years&#8212;proved infinitely more oppressive for the shoulders of the
+peasantry. Neither monarchical nor democratic governments were able to
+increase their stores of manufactured goods. Both of them found
+themselves in need of the peasant's corn and the peasant's horses. To
+carry out their policy, the bourgeois governments&#8212;including the
+Kautskian-Menshevik variety&#8212;made use of a purely bureaucratic
+apparatus, which reckons with the requirements of the peasant's farm
+to an infinitely less degree than the Soviet apparatus, which consists
+of workers and peasants. As a result, the middle peasant, in spite of
+his waverings, his dissatisfaction, and even his risings, ultimately
+always comes to the conclusion that, however difficult it is for him
+at present under the Bolsheviks, under every other regime it would be
+infinitely more difficult for him. It is quite true that the Commune
+was "spared" peasant support. But in return the Commune was not spared
+annihilation by the peasant armies of Thiers! Whereas our army,
+four-fifths of whom are peasants, is fighting with enthusiasm and with
+success for the Soviet Republic. And this one fact, controverting
+Kautsky and those inspiring him, gives the best possible verdict on
+the peasant policy of the Soviet Government.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="subhead">
+THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT AND THE EXPERTS
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The Bolsheviks at first thought they could manage without the
+intelligentsia, without the experts," Kautsky narrates to us. (Page
+191.) But then, becoming convinced of the necessity of the
+intelligentsia, they abandoned their severe repressions, and attempted
+to attract them to work by all sorts of measures, incidentally by
+giving them extremely high salaries. "In this way," Kautsky says
+ironically, "the true path, the true method of attracting experts
+consists in first of all giving them a thorough good hiding." ( Page
+192.) Quite so. With all due respect to all philistines, the
+dictatorship of the proletariat does just consist in "giving a hiding"
+to the classes that were previously supreme, before forcing them to
+recognize the new order and to submit to it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The professional intelligentsia, brought up with a prejudice about the
+omnipotence of the bourgeoisie, long would not, could not, and did not
+believe that the working class is really capable of governing the
+country; that it seized power not by accident; and that the
+dictatorship of the proletariat is an insurmountable fact.
+Consequently, the bourgeois intelligentsia treated its duties to the
+Labor State extremely lightly, even when it entered its service; and
+it considered that to receive money from Wilson, Cl&#233;menceau or Mirbach
+for anti-Soviet agitation, or to hand over military secrets and
+technical resources to White Guards and foreign imperialists, is a
+quite natural and obvious course under the regime of the proletariat.
+It became necessary to show it in practice, and to show it severely,
+that the proletariat had not seized power in order to allow such jokes
+to be played off at its expense.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the severe penalties adopted in the case of the intelligentsia, our
+bourgeois idealist sees the "consequence of a policy which strove to
+attract the educated classes, not by means of persuasion, but by means
+of kicks from before and behind." (Page 193.) In this way, Kautsky
+seriously imagines that it is possible to attract the bourgeois
+intelligentsia to the work of Socialist construction by means of mere
+persuasion&#8212;and this in conditions when, in all other countries, there
+is still supreme the bourgeoisie which hesitates at no methods of
+terrifying, flattering, or buying over the Russian intelligentsia and
+making it a weapon for the transformation of Russia into a colony of
+slaves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Instead of analyzing the course of the struggle, Kautsky, when dealing
+with the intelligentsia, gives once again merely academical recipes.
+It is absolutely false that our party had the idea of managing without
+the intelligentsia, not realizing to the full its importance for the
+economic and cultural work that lay before us. On the contrary. When
+the struggle for the conquest and consolidation of power was in full
+blast, and the majority of the intelligentsia was playing the part of
+a shock battalion of the bourgeoisie, fighting against us openly or
+sabotaging our institutions, the Soviet power fought mercilessly with
+the experts, precisely because it knew their enormous importance from
+the point of view of organization so long as they do not attempt to
+carry on an independent "democratic" policy and execute the orders of
+one of the fundamental classes of society. Only after the opposition
+of the intelligentsia had been broken by a severe struggle did the
+possibility open before us of enlisting the assistance of the experts.
+We immediately entered that path. It proved not as simple as it might
+have seemed at first. The relations which existed under capitalist
+conditions between the working man and the director, the clerk and the
+manager, the soldier and the officer, left behind a very deep class
+distrust of the experts; and that distrust had become still more acute
+during the first period of the civil war, when the intelligentsia did
+its utmost to break the labor revolution by hunger and cold. It was
+not easy to outlive this frame of mind, and to pass from the first
+violent antagonism to peaceful collaboration. The laboring masses had
+gradually to become accustomed to see in the engineer, the
+agricultural expert, the officer, not the oppressor of yesterday but
+the useful worker of to-day&#8212;a necessary expert, entirely under the
+orders of the Workers' and Peasants' Government.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We have already said that Kautsky is wrong when he attributes to the
+Soviet Government the desire to replace experts by proletarians. But
+that such a desire was bound to spring up in wide circles of the
+proletariat cannot be denied. A young class which had proved to its
+own satisfaction that it was capable of overcoming the greatest
+obstacles in its path, which had torn to pieces the veil of mystery
+which had hitherto surrounded the power of the propertied classes,
+which had realized that all good things on the earth were not the
+direct gift of heaven&#8212;that a revolutionary class was naturally
+inclined, in the person of the less mature of its elements, at first
+to over-estimate its capacity for solving each and every problem,
+without having recourse to the aid of experts educated by the
+bourgeoisie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was not merely yesterday that we began the struggle with such
+tendencies, in so far as they assumed a definite character. "To-day,
+when the power of the Soviets has been set on a firm footing," we said
+at the Moscow City Conference on March 28, 1918, "the struggle with
+sabotage must express itself in the form of transforming the saboteurs
+of yesterday into the servants, executive officials, technical guides,
+of the new regime, wherever it requires them. If we do not grapple
+with this, if we do not attract all the forces necessary to us and
+enlist them in the Soviet service, our struggle of yesterday with
+sabotage would thereby be condemned as an absolutely vain and
+fruitless struggle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Just as in dead machines, so into those technical experts, engineers,
+doctors, teachers, former officers, there is sunk a certain portion of
+our national capital, which we are obliged to exploit and utilize if
+we want to solve the root problems standing before us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Democratization does not at all consist&#8212;as every Marxist learns in
+his A B C&#8212;in abolishing the meaning of skilled forces, the meaning of
+persons possessing special knowledge, and in replacing them everywhere
+and anywhere by elective boards.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Elective boards, consisting of the best representatives of the
+working class, but not equipped with the necessary technical
+knowledge, cannot replace one expert who has passed through the
+technical school, and who knows how to carry out the given technical
+work. That flood-tide of the collegiate principle which is at present
+to be observed in all spheres is the quite natural reaction of a
+young, revolutionary, only yesterday oppressed class, which is
+throwing out the one-man principle of its rulers of yesterday&#8212;the
+landlords and the generals&#8212;and everywhere is appointing its elected
+representatives. This, I say, is quite a natural and, in its origin,
+quite a healthy revolutionary reaction; but it is not the last word in
+the economic constructive work of the proletatarian proletarian class.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The next step must consist in the self-limitation of the collegiate
+principle, in a healthy and necessary act of self-limitation by the
+working class, which knows where the decisive word can be spoken by
+the elected representatives of the workers themselves, and where it is
+necessary to give way to a technical specialist, who is equipped with
+certain knowledge, on whom a great measure of responsibility must be
+laid, and who must be kept under careful political control. But it is
+necessary to allow the expert freedom to act, freedom to create;
+because no expert, be he ever so little gifted or capable, can work in
+his department when subordinate in his own technical work to a board
+of men who do not know that department. Political, collegiate and
+Soviet control everywhere and anywhere; but for the executive
+functions, we must appoint technical experts, put them in responsible
+positions, and impose responsibility upon them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Those who fear this are quite unconsciously adopting an attitude of
+profound internal distrust towards the Soviet regime. Those who think
+that the enlisting of the saboteurs of yesterday in the administration
+of technically expert posts threatens the very foundations of the
+Soviet regime, do not realize that it is not through the work of some
+engineer or of some general of yesterday that the Soviet regime may
+stumble&#8212;in the political, in the revolutionary, in the military
+sense, the Soviet regime is unconquerable. But it may stumble through
+its own incapacity to grapple with the problems of creative
+organization. The Soviet regime is bound to draw from the old
+institutions all that was vital and valuable in them, and harness it
+on to the new work. If, comrades, we do not accomplish this, we shall
+not deal successfully with our principal problems; for it would be
+absolutely impossible for us to bring forth from our masses, in the
+shortest possible time, all the necessary experts, and throw aside all
+that was accumulated in the past.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"As a matter of fact, it would be just the same as if we said that all
+the machines which hitherto had served to exploit the workers were now
+to be thrown aside. It would be madness. The enlisting of scientific
+experts is for us just as essential as the administration of the
+resources of production and transport, and all the wealth of the
+country generally. We must, and in addition we must immediately, bring
+under our control all the technical experts we possess, and introduce
+in practice for them the principle of compulsory labor; at the same
+time leaving them a wide margin of activity, and maintaining over them
+careful political control."<a href="#note7" name="noteref7">
+<small>[7]</small></a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The question of experts was particularly acute, from the very
+beginning, in the War Department. Here, under the pressure of iron
+necessity, it was solved first.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the sphere of administration of industry and transport, the
+necessary forms of organization are very far from being attained, even
+to this day. We must seek the reason in the fact that during the first
+two years we were obliged to sacrifice the interests of industry and
+transport to the requirements of military defence. The extremely
+changeable course of the civil war, in its turn, threw obstacles in
+the way of the establishment of regular relations with the experts.
+Qualified technicians of industry and transport, doctors, teachers,
+professors, either went away with the retreating armies of Kolchak and
+Denikin, or were compulsorily evacuated by them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Only now, when the civil war is approaching its conclusion, is the
+intelligentsia in its mass making its peace with the Soviet
+Government, or bowing before it. Economic problems have acquired
+first-class importance. One of the most important amongst them is the
+problem of the scientific organization of production. Before the
+experts there opens a boundless field of activity. They are being
+accorded the independence necessary for creative work. The general
+control of industry on a national scale is concentrated in the hands
+of the Party of the proletariat.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="subhead">
+THE INTERNAL POLICY OF THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The Bolsheviks," Kautsky mediates, "acquired the force necessary for
+the seizure of political power through the fact that, amongst the
+political parties in Russia, they were the most energetic in their
+demands for peace&#8212;peace at any price, a separate peace&#8212;without
+interesting themselves as to the influence this would have on the
+general international situation, as to whether this would assist the
+victory and world domination of the German military monarchy, under
+the protection of which they remained for a long time, just like
+Indian or Irish rebels or Italian anarchists." (Page 53.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of the reasons for our victory, Kautsky knows only the one that we
+stood for peace. He does not explain the Soviet Government has
+continued to exist now that it has again mobilized a most important
+proportion of the soldiers of the imperial army, in order for two
+years successfully to combat its political enemies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The watchword of peace undoubtedly played an enormous part in our
+struggle; but precisely because it was directed against the
+<i>imperialist</i> war. The idea of peace was supported most strongly
+of all, not by the tired soldiers, but by the foremost workers, for
+whom it had the import, not for a rest, but of a pitiless struggle
+against the exploiters. It was those same workers who, under the
+watchword of peace, later laid down their lives on the Soviet fronts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The affirmation that we demanded peace without reckoning on the effect
+it would have on the international situation is a belated echo of
+Cadet and Menshevik slanders. The comparison of us with the
+Germanophile nationalists of India and Ireland seeks its justification
+in the fact that German imperialism did actually <i>attempt</i> to
+make use of us as it did the Indians and the Irish. But the
+chauvinists of France spared no efforts to make use of Liebknecht and
+Luxemburg&#8212;even of Kautsky and Bernstein&#8212;in their own interests. The
+whole question is, did we allow ourselves to be utilized? Did we, by
+our conduct, give the European workers even the shadow of a ground to
+place us in the same category as German imperialism? It is sufficient
+to remember the course of the Brest negotiations, their breakdown, and
+the German advance of February, 1918, to reveal all the cynicism of
+Kautsky's accusation. In reality, there was no peace for a single day
+between ourselves and German imperialism. On the Ukrainian and
+Caucasian fronts, we, in the measure of our then extremely feeble
+energies, continued to wage war without openly calling it such. We
+were too weak to organize war along the whole Russo-German front. We
+maintained persistently the fiction of peace, utilizing the fact that
+the chief German forces were drawn away to the west. If German
+imperialism did prove sufficiently powerful, in 1917-18, to impose
+upon us the Brest Peace, after all our efforts to tear that noose from
+our necks, one of the principal reasons was the disgraceful behavior
+of the German Social-Democratic Party, of which Kautsky remained an
+integral and essential part. The Brest Peace was pre-determined on
+August 4, 1914. At that moment, Kautsky not only did not declare war
+against German militarism, as he later demanded from the Soviet
+Government, which was in 1918 still powerless from a military point of
+view; Kautsky actually proposed voting for the War Credits, "under
+certain conditions"; and generally behaved in such a way that for
+months it was impossible to discover whether he stood for the War or
+against it. And this political coward, who at the decisive moment gave
+up the principal positions of Socialism, dares to accuse us of having
+found ourselves obliged, at a certain moment, to retreat&#8212;not in
+principle, but materially. And why? Because we were betrayed by the
+German Social-Democracy, corrupted by Kautskianism&#8212;<i>i.e.</i>, by
+political prostitution disguised by theories.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We did concern ourselves with the international situation! In reality,
+we had a much more profound criterion by which to judge the
+international situation; and it did not deceive us. Already before the
+February Revolution the Russian Army no longer existed as a fighting
+force. Its final collapse was pre-determined. If the February
+Revolution had not taken place, Tsarism would have come to an
+agreement with the German monarchy. But the February Revolution which
+prevented that finally destroyed the army built on a monarchist basis,
+precisely because it was a revolution. A month sooner or later the
+army was bound to fall to pieces. The military policy of Kerensky was
+the policy of an ostrich. He closed his eyes to the decomposition of
+the army, talked sounding phrases, and uttered verbal threats against
+German imperialism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In such conditions, we had only one way out: to take our stand on the
+platform of peace, as the inevitable conclusion from the military
+powerlessness of the revolution, and to transform that watchword into
+the weapon of revolutionary influence on all the peoples of Europe.
+That is, instead of, together with Kerensky, peacefully awaiting the
+final military catastrophe&#8212;which might bury the revolution in its
+ruins&#8212;we proposed to take possession of the watchword of peace and to
+lead after it the proletariat of Europe&#8212;and first and foremost the
+workers of Austro-Germany. It was in the light of this view that we
+carried on our peace negotiations with the Central Empires, and it was
+in the light of this that we drew up our Notes to the governments of
+the Entente. We drew out the negotiations as long as we could, in
+order to give the European working masses the possibility of realizing
+the meaning of the Soviet Government and its policy. The January
+strike of 1918 in Germany and Austria showed that our efforts had not
+been in vain. That strike was the first serious premonition of the
+German Revolution. The German Imperialists understood then that it was
+just we who represented for them a deadly danger. This is very
+strikingly shown in Ludendorff's book. True, they could not risk any
+longer coming out against us in an open crusade. But wherever they
+could fight against us secretly deceiving the German workers with the
+help of the German Social-Democracy, they did so; in the Ukraine, on
+the Don, in the Caucasus. In Central Russia, in Moscow, Count Mirbach
+from the very first day of his arrival stood as the centre of
+counter-revolutionary plots against the Soviet Government&#8212;just as
+Comrade Yoffe in Berlin was in the closest possible touch with the
+revolution. The Extreme Left group of the German revolutionary
+movement, the party of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, all the
+time went hand in hand with us. The German revolution at once took on
+the form of Soviets, and the German proletariat, in spite of the Brest
+Peace, did not for a moment entertain any doubts as to whether we were
+with Liebknecht or Ludendorff. In his evidence before the Reichstag
+Commission in November, 1919, Ludendorff explained how "the High
+Command demanded the creation of an institution with the object of
+disclosing the connection of revolutionary tendencies in Germany with
+Russia. Yoffe arrived in Berlin, and in various towns there were set
+up Russian consulates. This had the most painful consequences in the
+army and navy." Kautsky, however, has the audacity to write that "if
+matters did come to a German revolution, truly it is not the
+Bolsheviks who are responsible for it." (Page 162.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even if we had had the possibility in 1917-18, by means of
+revolutionary abstention, of supporting the old Imperial Army instead
+of hastening its destruction, we should have merely been assisting the
+Entente, and would have covered up by our aid its brigands' peace with
+Germany, Austria, and all the countries of the world generally. With
+such a policy we should at the decisive moment have proved absolutely
+disarmed in the face of the Entente&#8212;still more disarmed than Germany
+is to-day. Whereas, thanks to the November Revolution and the Brest
+Peace we are to-day the only country which opposes the Entente rifle
+in hand. By our international policy, we not only did not assist the
+Hohenzollern to assume a position of world domination; on the
+contrary, by our November Revolution we did more than anyone else to
+prepare his overthrow. At the same time, we gained a military
+breathing-space, in the course of which we created a large and strong
+army, the first army of the proletariat in history, with which to-day
+not all the unleashed hounds of the Entente can cope.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The most critical moment in our international situation arose in the
+autumn of 1918, after the destruction of the German armies. In the
+place of two mighty camps, more or less neutralizing each other, there
+stood before us the victorious Entente, at the summit of its world
+power, and there lay broken Germany, whose Junker blackguards would
+have considered it a happiness and an honor to spring at the throat of
+the Russian proletariat for a bone from the kitchen of Clemenceau. We
+proposed peace to the Entente, and were again ready&#8212;for we were
+obliged&#8212;to sign the most painful conditions. But Clemenceau, in whose
+imperialist rapacity there have remained in their full force all the
+characteristics of lower-middle-class thick-headedness, refused the
+Junkers their bone, and at the same time decided at all costs to
+decorate the Invalides with the scalps of the leaders of the Soviet
+Republic. By this policy Clemenceau did us not a small service. We
+defended ourselves successfully, and held out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What, then, was the guiding principle of our external policy, once the
+first months of existence of the Soviet Government had made clear the
+considerable vitality as yet of the capitalist governments of Europe?
+Just that which Kautsky accepts to-day uncomprehendingly as an
+accidental result&#8212;<i>to hold out</i>!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We realized too clearly that the very fact of the existence of the
+Soviet Government is an event of the greatest revolutionary
+importance; and this realization dictated to us our concessions and
+our temporary retirements&#8212;not in principle but in practical
+conclusions from a sober estimate of our own forces. We retreated like
+an army which gives up to the enemy a town, and even a fortress, in
+order, having retreated, to concentrate its forces not only for
+defence but for an advance. We retreated like strikers amongst whom
+to-day energies and resources have been exhausted, but who, clenching
+their teeth, are preparing for a new struggle. If we were not filled
+with an unconquerable belief in the world significance of the Soviet
+dictatorship, we should not have accepted the most painful sacrifices
+at Brest-Litovsk. If our faith had proved to be contradicted by the
+actual course of events, the Brest Peace would have gone down to
+history as the futile capitulation of a doomed regime. That is how the
+situation was judged <i>then</i>, not only by the K&#252;hlmanns, but also
+by the Kautskies of all countries. But we proved right in our
+estimate, as of our weakness then, so of our strength in the future.
+The existence of the Ebert Republic, with its universal suffrage, its
+parliamentary swindling, its "freedom" of the Press, and its murder of
+labor leaders, is merely a necessary link in the historical chain of
+slavery and scoundrelism. The existence of the Soviet Government is a
+fact of immeasurable revolutionary significance. It was necessary to
+retain it, utilizing the conflict of the capitalist nations, the as
+yet unfinished imperialist war, the self-confident effrontery of the
+Hohenzollern bands, the thick-wittedness of the world-bourgeoisie as
+far as the fundamental questions of the revolution were concerned, the
+antagonism of America and Europe, the complication of relations within
+the Entente. We had to lead our yet unfinished Soviet ship over the
+stormy waves, amid rocks and reefs, completing its building and
+armament en route.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kautsky has the audacity to repeat the accusation that we did not, at
+the beginning of 1918, hurl ourselves unarmed against our mighty foe.
+Had we done this we would have been crushed.<a href="#note8" name="noteref8">
+<small>[8]</small></a> The first great
+attempt of the proletariat to seize power would have suffered defeat.
+The revolutionary wing of the European proletariat would have been
+dealt the severest possible blow. The Entente would have made peace
+with the Hohenzollern over the corpse of the Russian Revolution, and
+the world capitalist reaction would have received a respite for a
+number of years. When Kautsky says that, concluding the Brest Peace,
+we did not think of its influence on the fate of the German
+Revolution, he is uttering a disgraceful slander. We considered the
+question from all sides, and our <i>sole criterion</i> was the
+interests of the international revolution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We came to the conclusion that those interests demanded that the only
+Soviet Government in the world should be preserved. And we proved
+right. Whereas Kautsky awaited our fall, if not with impatience, at
+least with certainty; and on this expected fall built up his whole
+international policy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The minutes of the session of the Coalition Government of November 19,
+1918, published by the Bauer Ministry, run:&#8212;"First, a continuation of
+the discussion as to the relations of Germany and the Soviet Republic.
+Haase advises a policy of procrastination. Kautsky agrees with Haase:
+<i>decision must be postponed</i>. <i>The Soviet Government will not
+last long. It will inevitably fall in the course of a few
+weeks</i>&#8230;."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In this way, at the time when the situation of the Soviet Government
+was really extremely difficult&#8212;for the destruction of German
+militarism had given the Entente, it seemed, the full possibility of
+finishing with us "in the course of a few weeks"&#8212;at that moment
+Kautsky not only does not hasten to our aid, and even does not merely
+wash his hands of the whole affair; he participates in active
+treachery against revolutionary Russia. To aid Scheidemann in his role
+of <i>watch-dog</i> of the bourgeoisie, instead of the "programme"
+role assigned to him of its "<i>grave-digger</i>," Kautsky himself
+hastens to become the grave-digger of the Soviet Government. But the
+Soviet Government is alive. It will outlive all its grave-diggers.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<a name="problems">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="chapter">
+8
+</p>
+
+<p class="head">
+<span class="sc">Problems of the Organization of Labor</span>
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="subhead">
+THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT AND INDUSTRY
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If, in the first period of the Soviet revolution, the principal
+accusation of the bourgeois world was directed against our savagery
+and blood-thirstiness, later, when that argument, from frequent use,
+had become blunted, and had lost its force, we were made responsible
+chiefly for the economic disorganization of the country. In harmony
+with his present mission, Kautsky methodically translates into the
+language of pseudo-Marxism all the bourgeois charges against the
+Soviet Government of destroying the industrial life of Russia. The
+Bolsheviks began socialization without a plan. They socialized what
+was not ready for socialization. The Russian working class,
+altogether, is not yet prepared for the administration of industry;
+and so on, and so on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Repeating and combining these accusations, Kautsky, with dull
+obstinacy, hides the real cause for our economic disorganization: the
+imperialist slaughter, the civil war, and the blockade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soviet Russia, from the first months of its existence, found itself
+deprived of coal, oil, metal, and cotton. First the Austro-German and
+then the Entente imperialisms, with the assistance of the Russian
+White Guards, tore away from Soviet Russia the Donetz coal and
+metal-working region, the oil districts of the Caucasus, Turkestan
+with its cotton, Ural with its richest deposits of metals, Siberia
+with its bread and meat. The Donetz area had usually supplied our
+industry with 94 per cent. of its coal and 74 per cent. of its crude
+ore. The Ural supplied the remaining 20 per cent. of the ore and 4 per
+cent. of the coal. Both these regions, during the civil war, were cut
+off from us. We were deprived of half a milliard poods of coal
+imported from abroad. Simultaneously, we were left without oil: the
+oilfields, one and all, passed into the hands of our enemies. One
+needs to have a truly brazen forehead to speak, in face of these
+facts, of the destructive influence of "premature," "barbarous," etc.,
+socialization. An industry which is completely deprived of fuel and
+raw materials&#8212;whether that industry belongs to a capitalist trust or
+to the Labor State, whether its factories be socialized or not&#8212;its
+chimneys will not smoke in either case without coal or oil. Something
+might be learned about this, say, in Austria; and for that matter
+in Germany itself. A weaving factory administered according to the
+best Kautskian methods&#8212;if we admit that anything at all can be
+administered by Kautskian methods, except one's own inkstand&#8212;will not
+produce prints if it is not supplied with cotton. And we were
+simultaneously deprived both of Turkestan and American cotton. In
+addition, as has been pointed out, we had no fuel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of course, the blockade and the civil war came as the result of the
+proletarian revolution in Russia. But it does not at all follow from
+this that the terrible devastation caused by the Anglo-American-French
+blockade and the robber campaigns of Kolchak and Denikin have to be
+put down to the discredit of the Soviet methods of economic
+organization.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The imperialist war that preceded the revolution, with its
+all-devouring material and technical demands, imposed a much greater
+strain on our young industry than on the industry of more powerful
+capitalist countries. Our transport suffered particularly severely.
+The exploitation of the railways increased considerably; the wear and
+tear correspondingly; while repairs were reduced to a strict minimum.
+The inevitable hour of Nemesis was brought nearer by the fuel crisis.
+Our almost simultaneous loss of the Donetz coal, foreign coal, and the
+oil of the Caucasus, obliged us in the sphere of transport to have
+recourse to wood. And, as the supplies of wood fuel were not in the
+least calculated with a view to this, we had to stoke our boilers with
+recently stored raw wood, which has an extremely destructive effect on
+the mechanism of locomotives that are already worn out. We see, in
+consequence, that the chief reasons for the collapse of transport
+preceded November, 1917. But even those reasons which are directly or
+indirectly bound up with the November Revolution fall under the
+heading of political consequences of the revolution; and in no
+circumstances do they affect Socialist economic methods.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The influence of political disturbances in the economic sphere was not
+limited only to questions of transport and fuel. If world industry,
+during the last decade, was more and more becoming a single organism,
+the more directly does this apply to national industry. On the other
+hand, the war and the revolution were mechanically breaking up and
+tearing asunder Russian industry in every direction. The industrial
+ruin of Poland, the Baltic fringe, and later of Petrograd, began under
+Tsarism and continued under Kerensky, embracing ever new and newer
+regions. Endless evacuations simultaneous with the destruction of
+industry, of necessity meant the destruction of transport also. During
+the civil war, with its changing fronts, evacuations assumed a more
+feverish and consequently a still more destructive character. Each
+side temporarily or permanently evacuated this or that industrial
+centre, and took all possible steps to ensure that the most important
+industrial enterprises could not be utilized by the enemy: all
+valuable machines were carried off, or at any rate their most delicate
+parts, together with the technical and best workers. The evacuation
+was followed by a re-evacuation, which not infrequently completed the
+destruction both of the property transferred and of the railways. Some
+most important industrial areas&#8212;especially in the Ukraine and in the
+Urals&#8212;changed hands several times.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To this it must be added that, at the time when the destruction of
+technical equipment was being accomplished on an unprecedented scale,
+the supply of machines from abroad, which hitherto played a decisive
+part in our industry, had completely ceased.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But not only did the dead elements of production&#8212;buildings, machines,
+rails, fuel, and raw material&#8212;suffer terrible losses under the
+combined blows of the war and the revolution. Not less, if not more,
+did the chief factor of industry, its living creative force&#8212;the
+proletariat&#8212;suffer. The proletariat was consolidating the November
+revolution, building and defending the apparatus of Soviet power, and
+carrying on a ceaseless struggle with the White Guards. The skilled
+workers are, as a rule, at the same time the most advanced. The civil
+war tore away many tens of thousands of the best workers for a long
+time from productive labor, swallowing up many thousands of them for
+ever. The Socialist revolution placed the chief burden of its
+sacrifices upon the proletarian vanguard, and consequently on
+industry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the attention of the Soviet State has been directed, for the two
+and a half years of its existence, to the problem of military defence.
+The best forces and its principal resources were given to the front.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In any case, the class struggle inflicts blows upon industry. That
+accusation, long before Kautsky, was levelled at it by all the
+philosophers of the social harmony. During simple economic strikes the
+workers consume, and do not produce. Still more powerful, therefore,
+are the blows inflicted upon economic life by the class struggle in
+its severest form&#8212;in the form of armed conflicts. But it is quite
+clear that the civil war cannot be classified under the heading of
+Socialist economic methods.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The reasons enumerated above are more than sufficient to explain the
+difficult economic situation of Soviet Russia. There is no fuel, there
+is no metal, there is no cotton, transport is destroyed, technical
+equipment is in disorder, living labor-power is scattered over the
+face of the country, and a high percentage of it has been lost to the
+front&#8212;is there any need to seek supplementary reasons in the economic
+Utopianism of the Bolsheviks in order to explain the fall of our
+industry? On the contrary, each of the reasons quoted alone is
+sufficient to evoke the question: how is it possible at all that,
+under such conditions, factories and workshops should continue to
+function?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And yet they do continue principally in the shape of war industry,
+which is at present living at the expense of the rest. The Soviet
+Government was obliged to re-create it, just like the army, out of
+fragments. War industry, set up again under these conditions of
+unprecedented difficulty, has fulfilled and is fulfilling its duty:
+the Red Army is clothed, shod, equipped with its rifle, its machine
+gun, its cannon, its bullet, its shell, its aeroplane, and all else
+that it requires.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as the dawn of peace made its appearance&#8212;after the
+destruction of Kolchak, Yudenich, and Denikin&#8212;we placed before
+ourselves the problem of economic organization in the fullest possible
+way. And already, in the course of three or four months of intensive
+work in this sphere, it has become clear beyond all possibility of
+doubt that, thanks to its most intimate connection with the popular
+masses, the elasticity of its apparatus, and its own revolutionary
+initiative, the Soviet Government disposes of such resources and
+methods for economic reconstruction as no other government ever had or
+has to-day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+True, before us there arose quite new questions and new difficulties
+in the sphere of the organization of labor. Socialist theory had no
+answers to these questions, and could not have them. We had to find
+the solution in practice, and test it in practice. Kautskianism is a
+whole epoch behind the gigantic economic problems being solved at
+present by the Soviet Government. In the form of Menshevism, it
+constantly throws obstacles in our way, opposing the practical
+measures of our economic reconstruction by bourgeois prejudices and
+bureaucratic-intellectual scepticism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To introduce the reader to the very essence of the questions of the
+organization of labor, as they stand at present before us, we quote
+below the report of the author of this book at the Third All-Russian
+Congress of Trade Unions. With the object of the fullest possible
+elucidation of the question, the text of the speech is supplemented by
+considerable extracts from the author's reports at the All-Russian
+Congress of Economic Councils and at the Ninth Congress of the
+Communist Party.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="subhead">
+REPORT ON THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Comrades, the internal civil war is coming to an end. On the western
+front, the situation remains undecided. It is possible that the Polish
+bourgeoisie will hurl a challenge at its fate&#8230;. But even in this
+case&#8212;we do not seek it&#8212;the war will not demand of us that
+all-devouring concentration of forces which the simultaneous struggle
+on four fronts imposed upon us. The frightful pressure of the war is
+becoming weaker. Economic requirements and problems are more and more
+coming to the fore. History is bringing us, along the whole line, to
+our fundamental problem&#8212;the organization of labor on new social
+foundations. The organization of labor is in its essence the
+organization of the new society: every historical form of society is
+in its foundation a form of organization of labor. While every
+previous form of society was an organization of labor in the interests
+of a minority, which organized its State apparatus for the oppression
+of the overwhelming majority of the workers, we are making the first
+attempt in world history to organize labor in the interests of the
+laboring majority itself. This, however, does not exclude the element
+of compulsion in all its forms, both the most gentle and the extremely
+severe. The element of State compulsion not only does not disappear
+from the historical arena, but on the contrary will still play, for a
+considerable period, an extremely prominent part.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As a general rule, man strives to avoid labor. Love for work is not at
+all an inborn characteristic: it is created by economic pressure and
+social education. One may even say that man is a fairly lazy animal.
+It is on this quality, in reality, that is founded to a considerable
+extent all human progress; because if man did not strive to expend his
+energy economically, did not seek to receive the largest possible
+quantity of products in return for a small quantity of energy, there
+would have been no technical development or social culture. It would
+appear, then, from this point of view that human laziness is a
+progressive force, Old Antonio Labriola, the Italian Marxist, even
+used to picture the man of the future as a "happy and lazy genius." We
+must not, however, draw the conclusion from this that the party and
+the trade unions must propagate this quality in their agitation as a
+moral duty. No, no! We have sufficient of it as it is. The problem
+before the social organization is just to bring "laziness" within a
+definite framework, to discipline it, and to pull mankind together
+with the help of methods and measures invented by mankind itself.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="subhead">
+COMPULSORY LABOR SERVICE
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The key to economic organization is labor-power, skilled, elementarily
+trained, semi-trained, untrained, or unskilled. To work out methods
+for its accurate registration, mobilization, distribution, productive
+application, means practically to solve the problem of economic
+construction. This is a problem for a whole epoch&#8212;a gigantic problem.
+Its difficulty is intensified by the fact that we have to reconstruct
+labor on Socialist foundations in conditions of hitherto unknown
+poverty and terrifying misery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The more our machine equipment is worn out, the more disordered our
+railways grow, the less hope there is for us of receiving machines to
+any significant extent from abroad in the near future, the greater is
+the importance acquired by the question of living labor-power. At
+first sight it would seem that there is plenty of it. But how are we
+to get at it? How are we to apply it? How are we productively to
+organize it? Even with the cleaning of snow drifts from the railway
+tracks, we were brought face to face with very big difficulties. It
+was absolutely impossible to meet those difficulties by means of
+buying labor-power on the market, with the present insignificant
+purchasing power of money, and in the most complete absence of
+manufactured products. Our fuel requirements cannot be satisfied, even
+partially, without a mass application, on a scale hitherto unknown, of
+labor-power to work on wood, fuel, peat, and combustible slate. The
+civil war has played havoc with our railways, our bridges, our
+buildings, our stations. We require at once tens and hundreds of
+thousands of hands to restore order to all this. For production on a
+large scale in our timber, peat, and other enterprises, we require
+housing for our workers, if they be only temporary huts. Hence, again,
+the necessity of devoting a considerable amount of labor-power to
+building work. Many workers are required to organize river navigation;
+and so on, and so forth&#8230;.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Capitalist industry utilizes auxiliary labor-power on a large scale,
+in the shape of peasants employed on industry for only part of the
+year. The village, throttled by the grip of landlessness, always threw
+a certain surplus of labor-power on to the market. The State obliged
+it to do this by its demand for taxes. The market offered the peasant
+manufactured goods. To-day, we have none of this. The village has
+acquired more land; there is not sufficient agricultural machinery;
+workers are required for the land; industry can at present give
+practically nothing to the village; and the market no longer has an
+attractive influence on labor-power.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet labor-power is required&#8212;required more than at any time before.
+Not only the worker, but the peasant also, must give to the Soviet
+State his energy, in order to ensure that laboring Russia, and with it
+the laboring masses, should not be crushed. The only way to attract
+the labor-power necessary for our economic problems is to introduce
+<i>compulsory labor service</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The very principle of compulsory labor service is for the Communist
+quite unquestionable. "He who works not, neither shall he eat." And as
+all must eat, all are obliged to work. Compulsory labor service is
+sketched in our Constitution and in our Labor Code. But hitherto it
+has always remained a mere principle. Its application has always had
+an accidental, impartial, episodic character. Only now, when along the
+whole line we have reached the question of the economic rebirth of
+the country, have problems of compulsory labor service arisen before
+us in the most concrete way possible. The only solution of economic
+difficulties that is correct from the point of view both of principle
+and of practice is to treat the population of the whole country as the
+reservoir of the necessary labor-power&#8212;an almost inexhaustible
+reservoir&#8212;and to introduce strict order into the work of its
+registration, mobilization, and utilization.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How are we practically to begin the utilization of labor-power on the
+basis of compulsory military service?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hitherto only the War Department has had any experience in the sphere
+of the registration, mobilization, formation, and transference from
+one place to another of large masses. These technical methods and
+principles were inherited by our War Department, to a considerable
+extent, from the past.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the economic sphere there is no such heritage; since in that sphere
+there existed the principle of private property, and labor-power
+entered each factory separately from the market. It is consequently
+natural that we should be obliged, at any rate during the first
+period, to make use of the apparatus of the War Department on a large
+scale for labor mobilizations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We have set up special organizations for the application of the
+principle of compulsory labor service in the centre and in the
+districts: in the provinces, the counties, and the rural districts, we
+have already compulsory labor committees at work. They rely for the
+most part on the central and local organs of the War Department. Our
+economic centres&#8212;the Supreme Economic Council, the People's
+Commissariat for Agriculture, the People's Commissariat for Ways and
+Communications, the People's Commissariat for Food&#8212;work out estimates
+of the labor-power they require. The Chief Committee for Compulsory
+Labor Service receives these estimates, co-ordinates them, brings them
+into agreement with the local resources of labor-power, gives
+corresponding directions to its local organs, and through them carries
+out labor mobilizations. Within the boundaries of regions, provinces,
+and counties, the local bodies carry out this work independently, with
+the object of satisfying local economic requirements.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All this organization is at present only in the embryo stage. It is
+still very imperfect. But the course we have adopted is unquestionably
+the right one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If the organization of the new society can be reduced fundamentally to
+the reorganization of labor, the organization of labor signifies in
+its turn the correct introduction of general labor service. This
+problem is in no way met by measures of a purely departmental and
+administrative character. It touches the very foundations of economic
+life and the social structure. It finds itself in conflict with the
+most powerful psychological habits and prejudices. The introduction of
+compulsory labor service pre-supposes, on the one hand, a colossal
+work of education, and, on the other, the greatest possible care in
+the practical method adopted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The utilization of labor-power must be to the last degree economical.
+In our labor mobilizations we have to reckon with the economic and
+social conditions of every region, and with the requirements of the
+principal occupation of the local population&#8212;<i>i.e.</i>, of
+agriculture. We have, if possible, to make use of the previous
+auxiliary occupations and part-time industries of the local
+population. We have to see that the transference of mobilized
+labor-power should take place over the shortest possible
+distances&#8212;<i>i.e.</i>, to the nearest sectors of the labor front. We
+must see that the number of workers mobilized correspond to the
+breadth of our economic problem. We must see that the workers
+mobilized be supplied in good time with the necessary implements of
+production, and with food. We must see that at their head be placed
+experienced and business-like instructors. We must see that the
+workers mobilized become convinced on the spot that their labor-power
+is being made use of cautiously and economically and is not being
+expended haphazard. Wherever it is possible, direct mobilization must
+be replaced by the labor task&#8212;<i>i.e.</i>, by the imposition on the
+rural district of an obligation to supply, for example, in such a time
+such a number of cubic sazhens of wood, or to bring up by carting to
+such a station so many poods of cast-iron, etc. In this sphere, it is
+essential to study experience as it accumulates with particular care,
+to allow a great measure of elasticity to the economic apparatus, to
+show more attention to local interests and social peculiarities of
+tradition. In a word, we have to complete, ameliorate, perfect, the
+system, methods, and organs for the mobilization of labor-power. But
+at the same time it is necessary once for all to make clear to
+ourselves that the principle itself of compulsory labor service has
+just so radically and permanently replaced the principle of free
+hiring as the socialization of the means of production has replaced
+capitalist property.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="subhead">
+THE MILITARIZATION OF LABOR
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The introduction of compulsory labor service is unthinkable without
+the application, to a greater or less degree, of the methods of
+militarization of labor. This term at once brings us into the region
+of the greatest possible superstitions and outcries from the
+opposition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To understand what militarization of labor in the Workers' State
+means, and what its methods are, one has to make clear to oneself in
+what way the army itself was militarized&#8212;for, as we all know, in its
+first days the army did not at all possess the necessary "military"
+qualities. During these two years we mobilized for the Red Army nearly
+as many soldiers as there are members in our trade unions. But the
+members of the trade unions are workers, while in the army the workers
+constitute about 15 per cent., the remainder being a peasant mass.
+And, none the less, we can have no doubt that the true builder and
+"militarizer" of the Red Army has been the foremost worker, pushed
+forward by the party and the trade union organization. Whenever the
+situation at the front was difficult, whenever the recently-mobilized
+peasant mass did not display sufficient stability, we turned on the
+one hand to the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and on the
+other to the All-Russian Council of Trade Unions. From both these
+sources the foremost workers were sent to the front, and there built
+the Red Army after their own likeness and image&#8212;educating, hardening,
+and militarizing the peasant mass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This fact must be kept in mind to-day with all possible clearness
+because it throws the best possible light on the meaning of
+militarization in the workers' and peasants' State. The militarization
+of labor has more than once been put forward as a watchword and
+realized in separate branches of economic life in the bourgeois
+countries, both in the West and in Russia under Tsarism. But our
+militarization is distinguished from those experiments by its aims and
+methods, just as much as the class-conscious proletariat organized for
+emancipation is distinguished from the class-conscious bourgeoisie
+organized for exploitation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the confusion, semi-unconscious and semi-deliberate, of two
+different historical forms of militarization&#8212;the proletarian or
+Socialist and the bourgeois&#8212;there spring the greater part of the
+prejudices, mistakes, protests, and outcries on this subject. It is on
+such a confusion of meanings that the whole position of the
+Mensheviks, our Russian Kautskies, is founded, as it was expressed in
+their theoretical resolution moved at the present Congress of Trade
+Unions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Mensheviks attacked not only the militarization of labor, but
+general labor service also. They reject these methods as "compulsory."
+They preach that general labor service means a low productivity of
+labor, while militarization means senseless scattering of labor-power.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Compulsory labor always is unproductive labor,"&#8212;such is the exact
+phrase in the Menshevik resolution. This affirmation brings us right
+up to the very essence of the question. For, as we see, the question
+is not at all whether it is wise or unwise to proclaim this or that
+factory militarized, or whether it is helpful or otherwise to give the
+military revolutionary tribunal powers to punish corrupt workers who
+steal materials and instruments, so precious to us, or who sabotage
+their work. No, the Mensheviks have gone much further into the
+question. Affirming that compulsory labor is <i>always</i>
+unproductive, they thereby attempt to cut the ground from under the
+feet of our economic reconstruction in the present transitional epoch.
+For it is beyond question that to step from bourgeois anarchy to
+Socialist economy without a revolutionary dictatorship, and without
+compulsory forms of economic organization, is impossible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the first paragraph of the Menshevik resolution we are told that we
+are living in the period of transition from the capitalist method of
+production to the Socialist. What does this mean? And, first of all,
+whence does this come? Since what time has this been admitted by our
+Kautskians? They accused us&#8212;and this formed the foundation of our
+differences&#8212;of Socialist Utopianism; they declared&#8212;and this
+constituted the essence of their political teaching&#8212;that there can be
+no talk about the transition to Socialism in our epoch, and that our
+revolution is a bourgeois revolution, and that we Communists are only
+destroying capitalist economy, and that we are not leading the country
+forward but are throwing it back. This was the root difference&#8212;the
+most profound, the most irreconcilable&#8212;from which all the others
+followed. Now the Mensheviks tell us incidentally, in the introductory
+paragraph of their resolution, as something that does not require
+proof, that we are in the period of transition from capitalism to
+Socialism. And this quite unexpected admission, which, one might
+think, is extremely like a complete capitulation, is made the more
+lightly and carelessly that, as the whole resolution shows, it imposes
+no revolutionary obligations on the Mensheviks. They remain entirely
+captive to the bourgeois ideology. After recognizing that we are on
+the road to Socialism, the Mensheviks with all the greater ferocity
+attack those methods without which, in the harsh and difficult
+conditions of the present day, the transition to Socialism cannot be
+accomplished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Compulsory labor, we are told, is always unproductive. We ask what
+does compulsory labor mean here, that is, to what kind of labor is it
+opposed? Obviously, to free labor. What are we to understand, in that
+case, by free labor? That phrase was formulated by the progressive
+philosophers of the bourgeoisie, in the struggle against unfree,
+<i>i.e.</i>, against the serf labor of peasants, and against the
+standardized and regulated labor of the craft guilds. Free labor meant
+labor which might be "freely" bought in the market; freedom was
+reduced to a legal fiction, on the basis of freely-hired slavery. We
+know of no other form of free labor in history. Let the very few
+representatives of the Mensheviks at this Congress explain to us what
+they mean by free, non-compulsory labor, if not the market of
+labor-power.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+History has known slave labor. History has known serf labor. History
+has known the regulated labor of the medi&#230;val craft guilds. Throughout
+the world there now prevails hired labor, which the yellow journalists
+of all countries oppose, as the highest possible form of liberty, to
+Soviet "slavery." We, on the other hand, oppose capitalist slavery by
+socially-regulated labor on the basis of an economic plan, obligatory
+for the whole people and consequently compulsory for each worker in
+the country. Without this we cannot even dream of a transition to
+Socialism. The element of material, physical, compulsion may be
+greater or less; that depends on many conditions&#8212;on the degree of
+wealth or poverty of the country, on the heritage of the past, on the
+general level of culture, on the condition of transport, on the
+administrative apparatus, etc., etc. But obligation, and,
+consequently, compulsion, are essential conditions in order to bind
+down the bourgeois anarchy, to secure socialization of the means of
+production and labor, and to reconstruct economic life on the basis of
+a single plan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the Liberal, freedom in the long run means the market. Can or
+cannot the capitalist buy labor-power at a moderate price&#8212;that is for
+him the sole measure of the freedom of labor. That measure is false,
+not only in relation to the future but also in connection with the
+past.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It would be absurd to imagine that, during the time of bondage-right,
+work was carried entirely under the stick of physical compulsion, as
+if an overseer stood with a whip behind the back of every peasant.
+Medi&#230;val forms of economic life grew up out of definite conditions of
+production, and created definite forms of social life, with which the
+peasant grew accustomed, and which he at certain periods considered
+just, or at any rate unalterable. Whenever he, under the influence of
+a change in material conditions, displayed hostility, the State
+descended upon him with its material force, thereby displaying the
+compulsory character of the organization of labor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The foundations of the militarization of labor are those forms of
+State compulsion without which the replacement of capitalist economy
+by the Socialist will for ever remain an empty sound. Why do we speak
+of <i>militarization</i>? Of course, this is only an analogy&#8212;but an
+analogy very rich in content. No social organization except the army
+has ever considered itself justified in subordinating citizens to
+itself in such a measure, and to control them by its will on all sides
+to such a degree, as the State of the proletarian dictatorship
+considers itself justified in doing, and does. Only the army&#8212;just
+because in its way it used to decide questions of the life or death of
+nations, States, and ruling classes&#8212;was endowed with powers of
+demanding from each and all complete submission to its problems, aims,
+regulations, and orders. And it achieved this to the greater degree,
+the more the problems of military organization coincided with the
+requirements of social development.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The question of the life or death of Soviet Russia is at present being
+settled on the labor front; our economic, and together with them our
+professional and productive organizations, have the right to demand
+from their members all that devotion, discipline, and executive
+thoroughness, which hitherto only the army required.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the other hand, the relation of the capitalist to the worker, is
+not at all founded merely on the "free" contract, but includes the
+very powerful elements of State regulation and material compulsion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The competition of capitalist with capitalist imparted a certain very
+limited reality to the fiction of freedom of labor; but this
+competition, reduced to a minimum by trusts and syndicates, we have
+finally eliminated by destroying private property in the means of
+production. The transition to Socialism, verbally acknowledged by the
+Mensheviks, means the transition from anarchical distribution of
+labor-power&#8212;by means of the game of buying and selling, the movement
+of market prices and wages&#8212;to systematic distribution of the workers
+by the economic organizations of the county, the province, and the
+whole country. Such a form of planned distribution pre-supposes the
+subordination of those distributed to the economic plan of the State.
+And this is the essence of <i>compulsory labor service</i>, which
+inevitably enters into the programme of the Socialist organization of
+labor, as its fundamental element.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If organized economic life is unthinkable without compulsory labor
+service, the latter is not to be realized without the abolition of
+fiction of the freedom of labor, and without the substitution for it
+of the obligatory principle, which is supplemented by real compulsion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That free labor is more productive than compulsory labor is quite true
+when it refers to the period of transition from feudal society to
+bourgeois society. But one needs to be a Liberal or&#8212;at the present
+day&#8212;a Kautskian, to make that truth permanent, and to transfer its
+application to the period of transition from the bourgeois to the
+Socialist order. If it were true that compulsory labor is unproductive
+always and under every condition, as the Menshevik resolution says,
+all our constructive work would be doomed to failure. For we can have
+no way to Socialism except by the authoritative regulation of the
+economic forces and resources of the country, and the centralized
+distribution of labor-power in harmony with the general State plan.
+The Labor State considers itself empowered to send every worker to the
+place where his work is necessary. And not one serious Socialist will
+begin to deny to the Labor State the right to lay its hand upon the
+worker who refuses to execute his labor duty. But the whole point is
+that the Menshevik path of transition to "Socialism" is a milky way,
+without the bread monopoly, without the abolition of the market,
+without the revolutionary dictatorship, and without the militarization
+of labor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Without general labor service, without the right to order and demand
+fulfilment of orders, the trade unions will be transformed into a mere
+form without a reality; for the young Socialist State requires trade
+unions, not for a struggle for better conditions of labor&#8212;that is the
+task of the social and State organizations as a whole&#8212;but to organize
+the working class for the ends of production, to educate, discipline,
+distribute, group, retain certain categories and certain workers at
+their posts for fixed periods&#8212;in a word, hand in hand with the State
+to exercise their authority in order to lead the workers into the
+framework of a single economic plan. To defend, under such conditions,
+the "freedom" of labor means to defend fruitless, helpless, absolutely
+unregulated searches for better conditions, unsystematic, chaotic
+changes from factory to factory, in a hungry country, in conditions of
+terrible disorganization of the transport and food apparatus&#8230;. What
+except the complete collapse of the working-class and complete
+economic anarchy could be the result of the stupid attempt to
+reconcile bourgeois freedom of labor with proletarian socialization of
+the means of production?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Consequently, comrades, militarization of labor, in the root sense
+indicated by me, is not the invention of individual politicians or an
+invention of our War Department, but represents the inevitable method
+of organization and disciplining of labor-power during the period of
+transition from capitalism to Socialism. And if the compulsory
+distribution of labor-power, its brief or prolonged retention at
+particular industries and factories, its regulation within the
+framework of the general State economic plan&#8212;if these forms of
+compulsion lead always and everywhere, as the Menshevik resolution
+states, to the lowering of productivity, then you can erect a monument
+over the grave of Socialism. For we cannot build Socialism on
+decreased production. Every social organization is in its foundation
+an organization of labor, and if our new organization of labor leads
+to a lowering of its productivity, it thereby most fatally leads to
+the destruction of the Socialist society we are building, whichever
+way we twist and turn, whatever measures of salvation we invent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That is why I stated at the very beginning that the Menshevik argument
+against militarization leads us to the root question of general labor
+service and its influence on the productivity of labor. It is true
+that compulsory labor is always unproductive? We have to reply that
+that is the most pitiful and worthless Liberal prejudice. The whole
+question is: who applies the principle of compulsion, over whom, and
+for what purpose? What State, what class, in what conditions, by what
+methods? Even the serf organization was in certain conditions a step
+forward, and led to the increase in the productivity of labor.
+Production has grown extremely under capitalism, that is, in the epoch
+of the free buying and selling of labor-power on the market. But free
+labor, together with the whole of capitalism, entered the stage of
+imperialism and blew itself up in the imperialist war. The whole
+economic life of the world entered a period of bloody anarchy,
+monstrous perturbations, the impoverishment, dying out, and
+destruction of masses of the people. Can we, under such conditions,
+talk about the productivity of free labor, when the fruits of that
+labor are destroyed ten times more quickly than they are created? The
+imperialistic war, and that which followed it, displayed the
+impossibility of society existing any longer on the foundation of free
+labor. Or perhaps someone possesses the secret of how to separate free
+labor from the delirium tremens of imperialism, that is, of turning
+back the clock of social development half a century or a century?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If it were to turn out that the planned, and consequently compulsory,
+organization of labor which is arising to replace imperialism led to
+the lowering of economic life, it would mean the destruction of all
+our culture, and a retrograde movement of humanity back to barbarism
+and savagery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Happily, not only for Soviet Russia but for the whole of humanity, the
+philosophy of the low productivity of compulsory labor&#8212;"everywhere
+and under all conditions"&#8212;is only a belated echo of ancient Liberal
+melodies. The productivity of labor is the total productive meaning of
+the most complex combination of social conditions, and is not in the
+least measured or pre-determined by the legal form of labor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The whole of human history is the history of the organization and
+education of collective man for labor, with the object of attaining a
+higher level of productivity. Man, as I have already permitted myself
+to point out, is lazy; that is, he instinctively strives to receive
+the largest possible quantity of products for the least possible
+expenditure of energy. Without such a striving, there would have been
+no economic development. The growth of civilization is measured by the
+productivity of human labor, and each new form of social relations
+must pass through a test on such lines.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Free," that is, freely-hired labor, did not appear all at once upon
+the world, with all the attributes of productivity. It acquired a high
+level of productivity only gradually, as a result of a prolonged
+application of methods of labor organization and labor education. Into
+that education there entered the most varying methods and practices,
+which in addition changed from one epoch to another. First of all the
+bourgeoisie drove the peasant from the village to the high road with
+its club, having preliminarily robbed him of his land, and when he
+would not work in the factory it branded his forehead with red-hot
+irons, hung him, sent him to the gallows; and in the long run it
+taught the tramp who had been shaken out of his village to stand at
+the lathe in the factory. At this stage, as we see, "free" labor is
+little different as yet from convict labor, both in its material
+conditions and in its legal aspect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At different times the bourgeoisie combined the red-hot irons of
+repression in different proportions with methods of moral influence,
+and, first of all, the teaching of the priest. As early as the
+sixteenth century, it reformed the old religion of Catholicism, which
+defended the feudal order, and adapted for itself a new religion in
+the form of the Reformation, which combined the free soul with free
+trade and free labor. It found for itself new priests, who became the
+spiritual shop-assistants, pious counter-jumpers of the bourgeoisie.
+The school, the press, the market-place, and parliament were adapted
+by the bourgeoisie for the moral fashioning of the working-class.
+Different forms of wages&#8212;day-wages, piece wages, contract and
+collective bargaining&#8212;all these are merely changing methods in the
+hands of the bourgeoisie for the labor mobilization of the
+proletariat. To this there are added all sorts of forms for
+encouraging labor and exciting ambition. Finally, the bourgeoisie
+learned how to gain possession even of the trade unions&#8212;<i>i.e.</i>,
+the organizations of the working class itself; and it made use of them
+on a large scale, particularly in Great Britain, to discipline the
+workers. It domesticated the leaders, and with their help inoculated
+the workers with the fiction of the necessity for peaceful organic
+labor, for a faultless attitude to their duties, and for a strict
+execution of the laws of the bourgeois State. The crown of all this
+work is Taylorism, in which the elements of the scientific
+organization of the process of production are combined with the most
+concentrated methods of the system of sweating.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From all that has been said above, it is clear that the productivity
+of freely-hired labor is not something that appeared all at once,
+perfected, presented by history on a salver. No, it was the result of
+a long and stubborn policy of repression, education, organization, and
+encouragement, applied by the bourgeoisie in its relations with the
+working class. Step by step it learned to squeeze out of the workers
+ever more and more of the products of labor; and one of the most
+powerful weapons in its hand turned out to be the proclamation of free
+hiring as the sole free, normal, healthy, productive, and saving form
+of labor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A legal form of labor which would of its own virtue guarantee its
+productivity has not been known in history, and cannot be known. The
+legal superstructure of labor corresponds to the relations and current
+ideas of the epoch. The productivity of labor is developed, on the
+basis of the development of technical forces, by labor education, by
+the gradual adaptation of the workers to the changed methods of
+production and the new form of social relations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The creation of Socialist society means the organization of the
+workers on new foundations, their adaptation to those foundations, and
+their labor re-education, with the one unchanging end of the increase
+in the productivity of labor. The working class, under the leadership
+of its vanguard, must itself re-educate itself on the foundations of
+Socialism. Whoever has not understood this is ignorant of the A B C of
+Socialist construction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What methods have we, then, for the re-education of the workers?
+Infinitely wider than the bourgeoisie has&#8212;and, in addition, honest,
+direct, open methods, infected neither by hypocrisy nor by lies. The
+bourgeoisie had to have recourse to deception, representing its labor
+as free, when in reality it was not merely socially-imposed, but
+actually slave labor. For it was the labor of the majority in the
+interests of the minority. We, on the other hand, organize labor in
+the interests of the workers themselves, and therefore we can have no
+motives for hiding or masking the socially compulsory character of our
+labor organization. We need the fairy stories neither of the priests,
+nor of the Liberals, nor of the Kautskians. We say directly and openly
+to the masses that they can save, rebuild, and bring to a flourishing
+condition a Socialist country only by means of hard work,
+unquestioning discipline and exactness in execution on the part of
+every worker.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The chief of our resources is moral influence&#8212;propaganda not only in
+word but in deed. General labor service has an obligatory character;
+but this does not mean at all that it represents violence done to the
+working class. If compulsory labor came up against the opposition of
+the majority of the workers it would turn out a broken reed, and with
+it the whole of the Soviet order. The militarization of labor, when
+the workers are opposed to it, is the State slavery of Arakcheyev. The
+militarization of labor by the will of the workers themselves is the
+Socialist dictatorship. That compulsory labor service and the
+militarization of labor do not force the will of the workers, as
+"free" labor used to do, is best shown by the flourishing,
+unprecedented in the history of humanity, of labor voluntarism in the
+form of "Subbotniks" (Communist Saturdays). Such a phenomenon there
+never was before, anywhere or at any time. By their own voluntary
+labor, freely given&#8212;once a week and oftener&#8212;the workers clearly
+demonstrate not only their readiness to bear the yoke of "compulsory"
+labor but their eagerness to give the State besides that a certain
+quantity of additional labor. The "Subbotniks" are not only a splendid
+demonstration of Communist solidarity, but also the best possible
+guarantee for the successful introduction of general labor service.
+Such truly Communist tendencies must be shown up in their true light,
+extended, and developed with the help of propaganda.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The chief spiritual weapon of the bourgeoisie is religion; ours is the
+open explanation to the masses of the exact position of things, the
+extension of scientific and technical knowledge, and the initiation of
+the masses into the general economic plan of the State, on the basis
+of which there must be brought to bear all the labor-power at the
+disposal of the Soviet regime.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Political economy provided us with the principal substance of our
+agitation in the period we have just left: the capitalist social order
+was a riddle, and we explained that riddle to the masses. To-day,
+social riddles are explained to the masses by the very mechanism of
+the Soviet order, which draws the masses into all branches of
+administration. Political economy will more and more pass into the
+realms of history. There move forward into the foreground the sciences
+which study nature and the methods of subordinating it to man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The trade unions must organize scientific and technical educational
+work on the widest possible scale, so that every worker in his own
+branch of industry should find the impulses for theoretical work of
+the brain, while the latter should again return him to labor,
+perfecting it and making him more productive. The press as a whole
+must fall into line with the economic problems of the country&#8212;not in
+that sense alone in which this is being done at present&#8212;<i>i.e.</i>,
+not in the sense of a mere general agitation in favor of a revival of
+labor&#8212;but in the sense of the discussion and the weighing of concrete
+economic problems and plans, ways and means of their solution, and,
+most important of all, the testing and criticism of results already
+achieved. The newspapers must from day to day follow the production of
+the most important factories and other enterprises, registering their
+successes and failures encouraging some and pillorying others&#8230;.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Russian capitalism, in consequence of its lateness, its lack of
+independence, and its resulting parasitic features, has had much less
+time than European capitalism technically to educate the laboring
+masses, to train and discipline them for production. That problem is
+now in its entirety imposed upon the industrial organizations of the
+proletariat. A good engineer, a good mechanic, and a good carpenter,
+must have in the Soviet Republic the same publicity and fame as
+hitherto was enjoyed by prominent agitators, revolutionary fighters,
+and, in the most recent period, the most courageous and capable
+commanders and commissaries. Greater and lesser leaders of technical
+development must occupy the central position in the public eye. Bad
+workers must be made ashamed of doing their work badly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We still retain, and for a long time will retain, the system of wages.
+The further we go, the more will its importance become simply to
+guarantee to all members of society all the necessaries of life; and
+thereby it will cease to be a system of wages. But at present we are
+not sufficiently rich for this. Our main problem is to raise the
+quantity of products turned out, and to this problem all the remainder
+must be subordinated. In the present difficult period the system of
+wages is for us, first and foremost, not a method for guaranteeing the
+personal existence of any separate worker, but a method of estimating
+what that individual worker brings by his labor to the Labor Republic.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Consequently, wages, in the form both of money and of goods, must be
+brought into the closest possible touch with the productivity of
+individual labor. Under capitalism, the system of piece-work and of
+grading, the application of the Taylor system, etc., have as their
+object to increase the exploitation of the workers by the
+squeezing-out of surplus value. Under Socialist production,
+piece-work, bonuses, etc., have as their problem to increase the
+volume of social product, and consequently to raise the general
+well-being. Those workers who do more for the general interest than
+others receive the right to a greater quantity of the social product
+than the lazy, the careless, and the disorganizers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finally, when it rewards some, the Labor State cannot but punish
+others&#8212;those who are clearly infringing labor solidarity, undermining
+the common work, and seriously impairing the Socialist renaissance of
+the country. Repression for the attainment of economic ends is a
+necessary weapon of the Socialist dictatorship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the measures enumerated above&#8212;and together with them a number of
+others&#8212;must assist the development of rivalry in the sphere of
+production. Without this we shall never rise above the average, which
+is a very unsatisfactory level. At the bottom of rivalry lies the
+vital instinct&#8212;the struggle for existence&#8212;which in the bourgeois
+order assumes the character of competition. Rivalry will not disappear
+even in the developed Socialist society; but with the growing
+guarantee of the necessary requirements of life rivalry will acquire
+an ever less selfish and purely idealist character. It will express
+itself in a striving to perform the greatest possible service for
+one's village, county, town, or the whole of society, and to receive
+in return renown, gratitude, sympathy, or, finally, just internal
+satisfaction from the consciousness of work well done. But in the
+difficult period of transition, in conditions of the extreme shortage
+of material goods, and the as yet insufficiently developed state of
+social solidarity, rivalry must inevitably be to a greater or less
+degree bound up with a striving to guarantee for oneself one's own
+requirements.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This, comrades, is the sum of resources at the disposal of the Labor
+State in order to raise the productivity of labor. As we see, there is
+no ready-made solution here. We shall find it written in no book. For
+there could not be such a book. We are now only beginning, together
+with you, to write that book in the sweat and the blood of the
+workers. We say: working men and women, you have crossed to the path
+of regulated labor. Only along that road will you build the Socialist
+society. Before you there lies a problem which no one will settle for
+you: the problem of increasing production on new social foundations.
+Unless you solve that problem, you will perish. If you solve it, you
+will raise humanity by a whole head.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="subhead">
+LABOR ARMIES
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The question of the application of armies to labor purposes, which has
+acquired amongst us an enormous importance from the point of view of
+principle, was approached by us by the path of practice, not at all on
+the foundations of theoretical consideration. On certain borders of
+Soviet Russia, circumstances had arisen which had left considerable
+military forces free for an indefinite period. To transfer them to
+other active fronts, especially in the winter, was difficult in
+consequence of the disorder of railway transport. Such, for example,
+proved the position of the Third Army, distributed over the provinces
+of the Ural and the Ural area. The leading workers of that army,
+understanding that as yet it could not be demobilized, themselves
+raised the question of its transference to labor work. They sent to
+the centre a more or less worked-out draft decree for a labor army.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The problem was novel and difficult. Would the Red soldiers work?
+Would their work be sufficiently productive? Would it pay for itself?
+In this connection there were doubts even in our own ranks. Needless
+to say, the Mensheviks struck up a chorus of opposition. The same
+Abramovich, at the Congress of Economic Councils called in January or
+the beginning of February&#8212;that is to say, when the whole affair was
+still in draft stage&#8212;foretold that we should suffer an inevitable
+failure, for the whole undertaking was senseless, an Arakcheyev
+Utopia, etc., etc. We considered the matter otherwise. Of course the
+difficulties were great, but they were not distinguishable in
+principle from many other difficulties of Soviet constructive work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Let us consider in fact what was the organism of the Third Army. Taken
+all in all, one rifle division and one cavalry division&#8212;a total of
+fifteen regiments&#8212;and, in addition, special units. The remaining
+military formations had already been transformed to other armies and
+fronts. But the apparatus of military administration had remained
+untouched as yet, and we considered it probable that in the spring we
+should have to transfer it along the Volga to the Caucasus front,
+against Denikin, if by that time he were not finally broken. On the
+whole, in the Third Army there remained about 120,000 Red soldiers in
+administrative posts, institutions, military units, hospitals, etc. In
+this general mass, mainly peasant in its composition, there were
+reckoned about 16,000 Communists and members of the organization of
+sympathizers&#8212;to a considerable extent workers of the Ural. In this
+way, in its composition and structure, the Third Army represented a
+peasant mass bound together into a military organization under the
+leadership of the foremost workers. In the army there worked a
+considerable number of military specialists, who carried out important
+military functions while remaining under the general control of the
+Communists. If we consider the Third Army from this general point of
+view, we shall see that it represents in miniature the whole of Soviet
+Russia. Whether we take the Red Army as a whole, or the organization
+of the Soviet regime in the county, province, or the whole Republic,
+including the economic organs, we shall find everywhere the same
+scheme of organization: millions of peasants drawn into new forms of
+political, economic, and social life by the organized workers, who
+occupy a controlling position in all spheres of Soviet construction.
+To posts requiring special knowledge, we send experts of the bourgeois
+school. They are given the necessary independence, but control over
+their work remains in the hands of the working class, in the person of
+its Communist Party. The introduction of general labor service is
+again only conceivable for us as the mobilization of mainly peasant
+labor-power under the guidance of the most advanced workers. In this
+way there were not, and could not, be any obstacles in principle in
+the way of application of the army to labor. In other words, the
+opposition in principle to labor armies, on the part of those same
+Mensheviks, was in reality opposition to "compulsory" labor generally,
+and consequently against general labor service and against Soviet
+methods of economic reconstruction as a whole. This opposition did not
+trouble us a great deal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Naturally, the military apparatus as such is not adapted directly to
+the process of labor. But we had no illusions about that. Control had
+to remain in the hands of the appropriate economic organs; the army
+supplied the necessary labor-power in the form of organized, compact
+units, suitable in the mass for the execution of the simplest
+homogeneous types of work: the freeing of roads from snow, the storage
+of fuel, building work, organization of cartage, etc., etc.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To-day we have already had considerable experience in the work of the
+labor application of the army, and can give not merely a preliminary
+or hypothetical estimate. What are the conclusions to be drawn from
+that experience? The Mensheviks have hastened to draw them. The same
+Abramovich, again, announced at the Miners' Congress that we had
+become bankrupt, that the labor armies represent parasitic formations,
+in which there are 100 officials for every ten workers. Is this true?
+No. This is the irresponsible and malignant criticism of men who stand
+on one side, do not know the facts, collect only fragments and
+rubbish, and are concerned in any way and every way either to declare
+our bankruptcy or to prophecy it. In reality, the labor armies have
+not only not gone bankrupt, but, on the contrary, have had important
+successes, have displayed their fidelity, are developing and are
+becoming stronger and stronger. Just those prophets have gone bankrupt
+who foretold that nothing would come of the whole plan, that nobody
+would begin to work, and that the Red soldiers would not go to the
+labor front but would simply scatter to their homes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These criticisms were dictated by a philistine scepticism, lack of
+faith in the masses, lack of faith in bold initiative, and
+organization. But did we not hear exactly the same criticism, at
+bottom, when we had recourse to extensive mobilizations for military
+problems? Then too we were frightened, we were terrified by stories of
+mass desertion, which was absolutely inevitable, it was alleged, after
+the imperialist war. Naturally, desertion there was, but considered by
+the test of experience it proved not at all on such a mass scale as
+was foretold; it did not destroy the army; the bond of morale and
+organization&#8212;Communist voluntarism and State compulsion
+combined&#8212;allowed us to carry out mobilizations of millions to carry
+through numerous formations and redistributions, and to solve the most
+difficult military problems. In the long run, the army was victorious.
+In relation to labor problems, on the foundation of our military
+experience, we awaited the same results; and we were not mistaken. The
+Red soldiers did not scatter when they were transformed from military
+to labor service, as the sceptics prophesied. Thanks to our
+splendidly-organized agitation, the transference itself took place
+amidst great enthusiasm. True, a certain portion of the soldiers tried
+to leave the army, but this always happens when a large military
+formation is transferred from one front to another, or is sent from
+the rear to the front&#8212;in general when it is shaken up&#8212;and when
+potential desertion becomes active. But immediately the political
+sections, the press, the organs of struggle with desertion, etc.,
+entered into their rights; and to-day the percentage of deserters from
+our labor armies is in no way higher than in our armies on active
+service.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The statement that the armies, in view of their internal structure,
+can produce only a small percentage of workers, is true only to a
+certain extent. As far as the Third Army is concerned, I have already
+pointed out that it retained its complete apparatus of administration
+side by side with an extremely insignificant number of military units.
+While we&#8212;owing to military and not economic considerations&#8212;retained
+untouched the staff of the army and its administrative apparatus, the
+percentage of workers produced by the army was actually extremely low.
+From the general number of 120,000 Red soldiers, 21% proved to be
+employed in administrative and economic work; 16% were engaged in
+daily detail work (guards, etc.) in connection with the large number
+of army institutions and stores; the number of sick, mainly typhus
+cases, together with the medico-sanitary personnel, was about 13%;
+about 25% were not available for various reasons (detachment, leave,
+absence without leave, etc.). In this way, the total personnel
+available for work constitutes no more than 23%; this is the maximum
+of what can be drawn for labor from the given army. Actually, at
+first, there worked only about 14%, mainly drawn from the two
+divisions, rifle and cavalry, which still remained with the army.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But as soon as it was clear that Denikin had been crushed, and that we
+should not have to send the Third Army down the Volga in the spring to
+assist the forces on the Caucasus front, we immediately entered upon
+the disbanding of the clumsy army apparatus and a more regular
+adaptation of the army institutions to problems of labor. Although
+this work is not yet complete, it has already had time to give some
+very significant results. At the present moment (March, 1920), the
+former Third Army gives about 38% of its total composition as workers.
+As for the military units of the Ural military area working side by
+side with it, they already provide 49% of their number as workers.
+This result is not so bad, if we compare it with the amount of work
+done in factories and workshops, amongst which in the case of many
+quite recently, in the case of some even to-day, absence from work for
+legal and illegal reasons reached 50% and over.<a href="#note9" name="noteref9">
+<small>[9]</small></a> To this one must
+add that workers in factories and workshops are not infrequently
+assisted by the adult members of their family, while the Red soldiers
+have no auxiliary force but themselves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If we take the case of the 19-year-olds, who have been mobilized in
+the Ural with the help of the military apparatus&#8212;principally for wood
+fuel work&#8212;we shall find that, out of their general number of over
+30,000, over 75% attend work. This is already a very great step
+forward. It shows that, using the military apparatus for mobilization
+and formation, we can introduce such alterations in the construction
+of purely labor units as guarantee an enormous increase in the
+percentage of those who participate directly in the material process
+of production.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finally, in connection with the productivity of military labor, we can
+also now judge on the basis of experience. During the first days, the
+productivity of labor in the principal departments of work, in spite
+of the great moral enthusiasm, was in reality very low, and might seem
+completely discouraging when one reads the first labor communiqu&#233;s.
+Thus, for the preparation of a cubic sazhen of wood, at first, one had
+to reckon thirteen to fifteen labor days; whereas the standard&#8212;true,
+rarely attained at the present day&#8212;is reckoned at three days. One
+must add, in addition, that artistes in this sphere are capable, under
+favorable conditions, of producing one cubic sazhen per day per man.
+What happened in reality? The military units were quartered far from
+the forest to be felled. In many cases it was necessary to march to
+and from work 6 to 8 versts, which swallowed up a considerable portion
+of the working day. There were not sufficient axes and saws on the
+spot. Many Red soldiers, born in the plains, did not know the forests,
+had never felled trees, had never chopped or sawed them up. The
+provincial and county Timber Committees were very far from knowing at
+first how to use the military units, how to direct them where they
+were required, how to equip them as they should be equipped. It is not
+wonderful that all this had as its result an extremely low level of
+productivity. But after the most crying defects in organization were
+eliminated, results were achieved that were much more satisfactory.
+Thus, according to the most recent data, in that same First Labor
+Army, four and a half working days are now devoted to one sazhen of
+wood, which is not so far from the present standard. What is most
+comforting, however, is the fact that the productivity of labor
+systematically increases, in the measure of the improvement of its
+conditions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While as to what can be achieved in this respect, we have a brief but
+very rich experience in the Moscow Engineer Regiment. The Chief Board
+of Military Engineers, which controlled this experiment, began with
+fixing the standard of production as three working days for a cubic
+sazhen of wood. This standard soon proved to be surpassed. In January
+there were spent on a cubic sazhen of wood two and one-third working
+days; in February, 2.1; in March, 1.5; which represents an exclusively
+high level of productivity. This result was achieved by moral
+influence, by the exact registration of the individual work of each
+man, by the awakening of labor pride, by the distribution of bonuses
+to the workers who produced more than the average result&#8212;or, to speak
+in the language of the trade unions, by a sliding scale adaptable to
+all individual changes in the productivity of labor. This experiment,
+carried out almost under laboratory conditions, clearly indicates the
+path along which we have to go in future.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At present we have functioning a series of labor armies&#8212;the First,
+the Petrograd, the Ukrainian, the Caucasian, the South Volga, the
+Reserve. The latter, as is known, assisted considerably to raise the
+traffic capacity of the Kazan-Ekaterinburg Railway; and, wherever the
+experiment of the adaptation of military units for labor problems was
+carried out with any intelligence at all, the results showed that this
+method is unquestionably live and correct.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The prejudice concerning the inevitably parasitic nature of military
+organization&#8212;under each and every condition&#8212;proves to be shattered.
+The Soviet Army reproduces within itself the tendencies of the Soviet
+social order. We must not think in the petrifying terms of the last
+epoch: "militarism," "military organization," "the unproductiveness of
+compulsory labor." We must approach the phenomena of the new epoch
+without any prejudices, and with eyes wide open; and we must remember
+that Saturday exists for man, and not vice versa; that all forms of
+organization, including the military, are only weapons in the hands of
+the working class in power, which has both the right and the
+possibility of adapting, altering, refashioning, those weapons, until
+it has achieved the requisite result.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="subhead">
+THE SINGLE ECONOMIC PLAN
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The widest possible application of the principle of general labor
+service, together with measures for the militarization of labor, can
+play a decisive part only in case they are applied on the basis of a
+single economic plan covering the whole country and all branches of
+productive activity. This plan must be drawn up for a number of years,
+for the whole epoch that lies before us. It is naturally broken up
+into separate periods or stages, corresponding to the inevitable
+stages in the economic rebirth of the country. We shall have to begin
+with the most simple and at the same time most fundamental problems.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We have first of all to afford the working class the very possibility
+of living&#8212;though it be in the most difficult conditions&#8212;and thereby
+to preserve our industrial centres and save the towns. This is the
+point of departure. If we do not wish to melt the town into
+agriculture, and transform the whole country into a peasant State, we
+must support our transport, even at the minimum level, and secure
+bread for the towns, fuel and raw materials for industry, fodder for
+the cattle. Without this we shall not make one step forward.
+Consequently, the first part of the plan comprises the improvement of
+transport, or, in any case, the prevention of its further
+deterioration and the preparation of the most necessary supplies of
+food, raw materials, and fuel. The whole of the next period will be in
+its entirety filled with the concentration and straining of
+labor-power to solve these root problems; and only in this way shall
+we lay the foundations for all that is to come. It was such a problem,
+incidentally, that we put before our labor armies. Whether the first
+or the following periods will be measured by months or by years, it is
+fruitless at present to guess. This depends on many reasons, beginning
+with the international situation and ending with the degree of
+single-mindedness and steadfastness of the working class.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The second period is the period of machine-building in the interests
+of transport and the storage of raw material and fuel. Here the core
+is in the locomotive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the present time the repairing of locomotives is carried on in too
+haphazard a fashion, swallowing up energies and resources beyond all
+measure. We must reorganize the repairing of our rolling-stock, on the
+basis of the mass production of spare parts. To-day, when the whole
+network of the railways and the factories is in the hands of one
+master, the Labor State, we can and must fix single types of
+locomotives and trucks for the whole country, standardize their
+constituent parts, draw all the necessary factories into the work of
+the mass production of spare parts, reduce repairing to the simple
+replacing of worn-out parts by new, and thereby make it possible to
+build new locomotives on a mass scale out of spare parts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now that the sources of fuel and raw material are again open to us, we
+must concentrate our exclusive attention on the building of
+locomotives.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The third period will be one of machine-building in the interests of
+the production of articles of primary necessity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finally, the fourth period, reposing on the conquests of the first
+three, will allow us to begin the production of articles of personal
+or secondary significance on the widest possible scale.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This plan has great significance, not only as a general guide for the
+practical work of our economic organs, but also as a line along which
+propaganda amongst the laboring masses in connection with our economic
+problems is to proceed. Our labor mobilization will not enter into
+real life, will not take root, if we do not excite the living interest
+of all that is honest, class-conscious, and inspired in the working
+class. We must explain to the masses the whole truth as to our
+situation and as to our views for the future; we must tell them openly
+that our economic plan, with the maximum of exertion on the part of
+the workers, will neither to-morrow nor the day after give us a land
+flowing with milk and honey: for during the first period our chief
+work will consist in preparing the conditions for the production of
+the means of production. Only after we have secured, though on the
+smallest possible scale, the possibility of rebuilding the means of
+transport and production, shall we pass on to the production of
+articles for general consumption. In this way the fruit of their
+labor, which is the direct object of the workers, in the shape of
+articles for personal consumption, will arrive only in the last, the
+fourth, stage of our economic plan; and only then shall we have a
+serious improvement in our life. The masses, who for a prolonged
+period will still bear all the weight of labor and of privation, must
+realize to the full the inevitable internal logic of this economic
+plan if they are to prove capable of carrying it out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sequence of the four economic periods outlined above must not be
+understood too absolutely. We do not, of course, propose to bring
+completely to a standstill our textile industry: we could not do this
+for military considerations alone. But in order that our attention and
+our forces should not be distracted under the pressure of requirements
+and needs crying to us from all quarters, it is essential to make use
+of the economic plan as the fundamental criterion, and separate the
+important and the fundamental from the auxiliary and secondary.
+Needless to say, under no circumstances are we striving for a narrow
+"national" Communism: the raising of the blockade, and the European
+revolution all the more, would introduce the most radical alterations
+in our economic plan, cutting down the stages of its development and
+bringing them together. But we do not know when these events will take
+place; and we must act in such a way that we can hold out and become
+stronger under the most unfavorable circumstances&#8212;that is to say, in
+face of the slowest conceivable development of the European and the
+world revolution. In case we are able actually to establish trading
+relations with the capitalist countries, we shall again be guided by
+the economic plan sketched above. We shall exchange part of our raw
+material for locomotives or for necessary machines, but under no
+circumstances for clothing, boots, or colonial products: our first
+item is not articles of consumption, but the implements of transport
+and production.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We should be short-sighted sceptics, and the most typical bourgeois
+curmudgeons, if we imagined that the rebirth of our economic life will
+take the form of a gradual transition from the present economic
+collapse to the conditions that preceded that collapse, <i>i.e.</i>,
+that we shall reascend the same steps by which we descended, and only
+after a certain, quite prolonged, period will be able to raise our
+Socialist economy to the level at which it stood on the eve of the
+imperialist war. Such a conception would not only be not consoling,
+but absolutely incorrect. Economic collapse, which destroyed and broke
+up in its path an incalculable quantity of values, also destroyed a
+great deal that was poor and rotten, that was absolutely senseless;
+and thereby it cleared the path for a new method of reconstruction,
+corresponding to that technical equipment which world economy now
+possesses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If Russian capitalism developed not from stage to stage, but leaping
+over a series of stages, and instituted American factories in the
+midst of primitive steppes, the more is such a forced march possible
+for Socialist economy. After we have conquered our terrible misery,
+have accumulated small supplies of raw material and food, and have
+improved our transport, we shall be able to leap over a whole series
+of intermediate stages, benefiting by the fact that we are not bound
+by the chains of private property, and that therefore we are able to
+subordinate all undertakings and all the elements of economic life to
+a single State plan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus, for example, we shall undoubtedly be able to enter the period of
+electrification, in all the chief branches of industry and in the
+sphere of personal consumption, without passing through "the age of
+steam." The programme of electrification is already drawn up in a
+series of logically consequent stages, corresponding to the
+fundamental stages of the general economic plan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A new war may slow down the realization of our economic intentions;
+our energy and persistence can and must hasten the process of our
+economic rebirth. But, whatever be the rate at which economic events
+unfold themselves in the future, it is clear that at the foundation of
+all our work&#8212;labor mobilization, militarization of labor, Subbotniks,
+and other forms of Communist labor voluntarism&#8212;there must lie the
+<i>single economic plan</i>. And the period that is upon us requires
+from us the complete concentration of all our energies on the first
+elementary problems: food, fuel, raw material, transport. <i>Not to
+allow our attention to be distracted, not to dissipate our forces, not
+to waste our energies.</i> Such is the sole road to salvation.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="subhead">
+COLLEGIATE AND ONE-MAN MANAGEMENT
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Mensheviks attempt to dwell on yet another question which seems
+favorable to their desire once again to ally themselves with the
+working class. This is the question of the method of administration of
+industrial enterprises&#8212;the question of the collegiate (board) or the
+one-man principle. We are told that the transference of factories to
+single directors instead of to a board is a crime against the working
+class and the Socialist revolution. It is remarkable that the most
+zealous defenders of the Socialist revolution against the principle of
+one-man management are those same Mensheviks who quite recently still
+considered that the idea of a Socialist revolution was an insult to
+history and a crime against the working class.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first who must plead guilty in the face of the Socialist
+revolution is our Party Congress, which expressed itself in favor of
+the principle of one-man management in the administration of industry,
+and above all in the lowest grades, in the factories and plants. It
+would be the greatest possible mistake, however, to consider this
+decision as a blow to the independence of the working class. The
+independence of the workers is determined and measured not by whether
+three workers or one are placed at the head of a factory, but by
+factors and phenomena of a such more profound character&#8212;the
+construction of the economic organs with the active assistance of the
+trade unions; the building up of all Soviet organs by means of the
+Soviet congresses, representing tens of millions of workers; the
+attraction into the work of administration, or control of
+administration, of those who are administered. It is in such things
+that the independence of the working class can be expressed. And if
+the working class, on the foundation of its existence, comes through
+its congresses, Soviet party and trade union, to the conclusion that
+it is better to place one person at the head of a factory, and not a
+board, it is making a decision dictated by the independence of the
+working class. It may be correct or incorrect from the point of view
+of the technique of administration, but it is not imposed upon the
+proletariat, it is dictated by its own will and pleasure. It would
+consequently be a most crying error to confuse the question as to the
+supremacy of the proletariat with the question of boards of workers at
+the head of factories. The dictatorship of the proletariat is
+expressed in the abolition of private property in the means of
+production, in the supremacy over the whole Soviet mechanism of the
+collective will of the workers, and not at all in the form in which
+individual economic enterprises are administered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here it is necessary to reply to another accusation directed against
+the defenders of the one-man principle. Our opponents say: "This is
+the attempt of the Soviet militarists to transfer their experience in
+the military sphere to the sphere of economics. Possibly in the army
+the one-man principle is satisfactory, but it does not suit economical
+work." Such a criticism is incorrect in every way. It is untrue that
+in the army we began with the one-man principle: even now we are far
+from having completely adopted it. It is also untrue that in defence
+of one-man forms of administration of our economic enterprises with
+the attraction of experts, we took our stand only on the foundation of
+our military experience. In reality, in this question we took our
+stand, and continue to do so on purely Marxist views of the
+revolutionary problems and creative duties of the proletariat when it
+has taken power into its own hands. The necessity of making use of
+technical knowledge and methods accumulated in the past, the necessity
+of attracting experts and of making use of them on a wide scale, in
+such a way that our technique should go not backwards but
+forwards&#8212;all this was understood and recognized by us, not only from
+the very beginning of the revolution, but even long before October. I
+consider that if the civil war had not plundered our economic organs
+of all that was strongest, most independent, most endowed with
+initiative, we should undoubtedly have entered the path of one-man
+management in the sphere of economic administration much sooner, and
+much less painfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some comrades look on the apparatus of industrial administration first
+and foremost as on a school. This is, of course, absolutely erroneous.
+The task of administration is to administer. If a man desires and is
+able to learn administration, let him go to school, to the special
+courses of instruction: let him go as an assistant, watching and
+acquiring experience: but a man who is appointed to control a factory
+is not going to school, but to a responsible post of economic
+administration. And, even if we look at this question in the limited,
+and therefore incorrect light of a "school," I will say that when the
+one-man principle prevails the school is ten times better: because
+just as you cannot replace one good worker by three immature workers,
+similarly, having placed a board of three immature workers in a
+responsible post, you deprive them of the possibility of realizing
+their own defects. Each looks to the others when decisions are being
+made, and blames the others when success is not forthcoming.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That this is not a question of principle for the opponents of the
+one-man principle is shown best of all by their not demanding the
+collegiate principle for the actual workshops, jobs, and pits. They
+even say with indignation that only a madman can demand that a board
+of three or five should manage a workshop. There must be one manager,
+and one only. Why? If collegiate administration is a "school," why do
+we not require an elementary school? Why should we not introduce
+boards into the workshops? And, if the collegiate principle is not a
+sacred gospel for the workshops, why is it compulsory for the
+factories?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Abramovich said here that, as we have few experts&#8212;thanks to the
+Bolsheviks, he repeats after Kautsky&#8212;we shall replace them by boards
+of workers. That is nonsense. No board of persons who do not know the
+given business can replace one man who knows it. A board of lawyers
+will not replace one switchman. A board of patients will not replace
+the doctor. The very idea is incorrect. A board in itself does not
+give knowledge to the ignorant. It can only hide the ignorance of the
+ignorant. If a person is appointed to a responsible administrative
+post, he is under the watch, not only of others but of himself, and
+sees clearly what he knows and what he does not know. But there is
+nothing worse than a board of ignorant, badly-prepared workers
+appointed to a purely practical post, demanding expert knowledge. The
+members of the board are in a state of perpetual panic and mutual
+dissatisfaction, and by their helplessness introduce hesitation and
+chaos into all their work. The working class is very deeply interested
+in raising its capacity for administration, that is, in being
+educated; but this is attained in the sphere of industry by the
+periodical report of the administrative body of a factory before the
+whole factory, and the discussion of the economic plan for the year or
+for the current month. All the workers who display serious interest in
+the work of industrial organization are registered by the directors of
+the undertaking, or by special commissions; are taken through
+appropriate courses closely bound up with the practical work of the
+factory itself; and are then appointed, first to less responsible, and
+then to more responsible posts. In such a way we shall embrace many
+thousands, and, in the future, tens of thousands. But the question of
+"threes" and "fives" interests, not the laboring masses, but the more
+backward, weaker, less fitted for independent work, section of the
+Soviet labor bureaucracy. The foremost, intelligent, determined
+administrator naturally strives to take the factory into his hands as
+a whole, and to show both to himself and to others that he can carry
+out his work. While if that administrator is a weakling, who does not
+stand very steadily on his feet, he attempts to associate another with
+himself, for in the company of another his own weakness will be
+unnoticed. In such a collegiate principle there is a very dangerous
+foundation&#8212;the extinction of personal responsibility. If a worker is
+capable but not experienced, he naturally requires a guide: under his
+control he will learn, and to-morrow we shall appoint him the foreman
+of a little factory. That is the way by which he will go forward. In
+an accidental board, in which the strength and the weakness of each
+are not clear, the feeling of responsibility inevitably disappears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our resolution speaks of a systematic <i>approach</i> to the one-man
+principle&#8212;naturally, not by one stroke of the pen. Variants and
+combinations are possible here. Where the worker can manage alone, let
+us put him in charge of the factory and give him an expert as an
+assistant. Where there is a good expert, let us put him in charge and
+give him as assistants two or three of the workers. Finally, where a
+"board" has in practice shown its capacity for work, let us preserve
+it. This is the sole serious attitude to take up, and only in such a
+way shall we reach the correct organization of production.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There is another consideration of a social and educational character
+which seems to me most important. Our guiding layer of the working
+class is too thin. That layer which knew underground work, which long
+carried on the revolutionary struggle, which was abroad, which read
+much in prisons and in exile, which had political experience and a
+broad outlook, is the most precious section of the working class. Then
+there is a younger generation which has consciously been making the
+revolution, beginning with 1917. This is a very valuable section of
+the working class. Wherever we cast our eye&#8212;on Soviet construction,
+on the trade unions, on the front of the civil war&#8212;everywhere we find
+the principal part being played by this upper layer of the
+proletariat. The chief work of the Soviet Government during these two
+and a half years consisted in man&#339;uvring and throwing the foremost
+section of the workers from one front to another. The deeper layers of
+the working class, which emerged from the peasant mass, are
+revolutionarily inclined, but are still too poor in initiative. The
+disease of our Russian peasant is the herd instinct, the absence of
+personality: in other words, the same quality that used to be extolled
+by our reactionary Populists, and that Leo Tolstoy extolled in the
+character of Platon Karatayev: the peasant melting into his village
+community, subjecting himself to the land. It is quite clear that
+Socialist economy is founded not on Platon Karatayev, but on the
+thinking worker endowed with initiative. That personal initiative it
+is necessary to develop in the worker. The personal basis under the
+bourgeoisie meant selfish individualism and competition. The personal
+basis under the working class is in contradiction neither to
+solidarity nor to brotherly co-operation. Socialist solidarity can
+rely neither on absence of personality nor on the herd instinct. And
+it is just absence of personality that is frequently hidden behind the
+collegiate principle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the working class there are many forces, gifts, and talents. They
+must be brought out and displayed in rivalry. The one-man principle in
+the administrative and technical sphere assists this. That is why it
+is higher and more fruitful than the collegiate principle.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="subhead">
+CONCLUSION OF THE REPORT
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Comrades, the arguments of the Menshevik orators, particularly of
+Abramovich, reflect first of all their complete detachment from life
+and its problems. An observer stands on the bank of a river which he
+has to swim over, and deliberates on the qualities of the water and on
+the strength of the current. He has to swim over: that is his task!
+But our Kautskian stands first on one foot and then on the other. "We
+do not deny," he says, "the necessity of swimming over, but at the
+same time, as realists, we see the danger&#8212;and not only one, but
+several: the current is swift, there are submerged stones, people are
+tired, etc., etc. But when they tell you that we deny the very
+necessity of swimming over, that is not true&#8212;no, not under any
+circumstances. Twenty-three years ago we did not deny the necessity of
+swimming over&#8230;."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And on this is built all, from beginning to end. First, say the
+Mensheviks, we do not deny, and never did deny, the necessity of
+self-defence: consequently we do not repudiate the army. Secondly, we
+do not repudiate in principle general labor service. But, after all,
+where is there anyone in the world, with the exception of small
+religious sects, who denies self-defence "in principle"! Nevertheless,
+the matter does not move one step forward as a result of your abstract
+admission. When it came to a real struggle, and to the creation of a
+real army against the real enemies of the working class, what did you
+do then? You opposed, you sabotaged&#8212;while not repudiating
+self-defence in principle. You said and wrote in your papers: "Down
+with the civil war!" at the time when we were surrounded by White
+Guards, and the knife was at our throat. Now you, approving our
+victorious self-defence after the event, transfer your critical gaze
+to new problems, and attempt to teach us. "In general, we do not
+repudiate the principle of general labor service," you say, "but &#8230;
+without legal compulsion." Yet in these very words there is a
+monstrous internal contradiction! The idea of "obligatory service"
+itself includes the element of compulsion. A man is <i>obliged</i>, he
+is bound to do something. If he does not do it, obviously he will
+suffer compulsion, a penalty. Here we approach the question of what
+penalty. Abramovich says: "Economic pressure, yes; but not legal
+compulsion." Comrade Holtzman, the representative of the Metal
+Workers' Union, excellently demonstrated all the scholasticism of this
+idea. Even under the capitalism, that is to say under the regime of
+"free" labor, economic pressure is inseparable from legal compulsion.
+Still more so now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In my report I attempted to explain that the adaptation of the workers
+on new social foundations to new forms of labor, and the attainment of
+a higher level of productivity of labor, are possible only by means of
+the simultaneous application of various methods&#8212;economic interest,
+legal compulsion, the influence of an internally co-ordinated economic
+organization, the power of repression, and, first and last, moral
+influence, agitation, propaganda, and the general raising of the
+cultural level.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Only by the combination of all these methods can we attain a high
+level of Socialist economy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If even under capitalism economic interest is inevitably combined with
+legal compulsion, behind which stands the material force of the State,
+in the Soviet State&#8212;that is, the State of transition to Socialism&#8212;we
+can draw no water-tight compartment at all between economic and legal
+compulsion. All our most important industries are in the hands of the
+State. When we say to the turner Ivanov, "You are bound at once to
+work at the Sormovo factory; if you refuse, you will not receive your
+ration," what are we to call it? Economic pressure or legal
+compulsion? He cannot go to another factory, for all factories are in
+the hands of the State, which will not allow such a change.
+Consequently, economic pressure melts here into the pressure of State
+compulsion. Abramovich apparently would like us, as regulators of the
+distribution of labor-power, to make use only of such means as the
+raising of wages, bonuses, etc., in order to attract the necessary
+workers to our most important factories. Apparently that comprises all
+his thoughts on the subject. But if we put the question in this way,
+every serious worker in the trade union movement will understand it is
+pure utopia. We cannot hope for a free influx of labor-power from the
+market, for to achieve this the State would need to have in its hands
+sufficiently extensive "reserves of man&#339;uvre," in the form of food,
+housing, and transport, <i>i.e.</i>, precisely those conditions which
+we have yet only to create. Without systematically-organized
+transference of labor-power on a mass scale, according to the demands
+of the economic organization, we shall achieve nothing. Here the
+moment of compulsion arises before us in all its force of economic
+necessity. I read you a telegram from Ekaterinburg dealing with the
+work of the First Labor Army. It says that there have passed through
+the Ural Committee for Labor Service over 4,000 workers. Whence have
+they appeared? Mainly from the former Third Army. They were not
+allowed to go to their homes, but were sent where they were required.
+From the army they were handed over to the Committee for Labor
+Service, which distributed them according to their categories and sent
+them to the factories. This, from the Liberal point of view, is
+"violence" to the freedom of the individual. Yet an overwhelming
+majority of the workers went willingly to the labor front, as hitherto
+to the military, realizing that the common interest demanded this.
+Part went against their will. These were compelled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Naturally, it is quite clear that the State must, by means of the
+bonus system, give the better workers better conditions of existence.
+But this not only does not exclude, but on the contrary pre-supposes,
+that the State and the trade unions&#8212;without which the Soviet State
+will not build up industry&#8212;acquire new rights of some kind over the
+worker. The worker does not merely bargain with the Soviet State: no,
+he is subordinated to the Soviet State, under its orders in every
+direction&#8212;for it is <i>his</i> State.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If," Abramovich says, "we were simply told that it is a question of
+industrial discipline, there would be nothing to quarrel about; but
+why introduce militarization?" Of course, to a considerable extent,
+the question is one of the discipline of the trade unions; but of the
+new discipline of new, <i>Productional</i>, trade unions. We live in a
+Soviet country, where the working class is in power&#8212;a fact which our
+Kautskians do not understand. When the Menshevik Rubtzov said that
+there remained only the fragment of the trade union movement in my
+report, there was a certain amount of truth in it. Of the trade
+unions, as he understands them&#8212;that is to say, trade unions of the
+old craft type&#8212;there in reality has remained very little; but the
+industrial productional organization of the working class, in the
+conditions of Soviet Russia, has the very greatest tasks before it.
+What tasks? Of course, not the tasks involved in a struggle with the
+State, in the name of the interests of labor; but tasks involved in
+the construction, side by side with the State, of Socialist economy.
+Such a form of union is in principle a new organization, which is
+distinct, not only from the trade unions, but also from the
+revolutionary industrial unions in bourgeois society, just as the
+supremacy of the proletariat is distinct from the supremacy of the
+bourgeoisie. The productional union of the ruling working class no
+longer has the problems, the methods, the discipline, of the union for
+struggle of an oppressed class. All our workers are <i>obliged</i> to
+enter the unions. The Mensheviks are against this. This is quite
+comprehensible, because in reality they are against the
+<i>dictatorship of the proletariat</i>. It is to this, in the long
+run, that the whole question is reduced. The Kautskians are against
+the dictatorship of the proletariat, and are thereby against all its
+consequences. Both economic and political compulsion are only forms of
+the expression of the dictatorship of the working class in two closely
+connected regions. True, Abramovich demonstrated to us most learnedly
+that under Socialism there will be no compulsion, that the principle
+of compulsion contradicts Socialism, that under Socialism we shall be
+moved by the feeling of duty, the habit of working, the attractiveness
+of labor, etc., etc. This is unquestionable. Only this unquestionable
+truth must be a little extended. In point of fact, under Socialism
+there will not exist the apparatus of compulsion itself, namely, the
+State: for it will have melted away entirely into a producing and
+consuming commune. None the less, the road to Socialism lies through a
+period of the highest possible intensification of the principle of the
+State. And you and I are just passing through that period. Just as a
+lamp, before going out, shoots up in a brilliant flame, so the State,
+before disappearing, assumes the form of the dictatorship of the
+proletariat, <i>i.e.</i>, the most ruthless form of State, which
+embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively in every direction.
+Now just that insignificant little fact&#8212;that historical step of the
+State dictatorship&#8212;Abramovich, and in his person the whole of
+Menshevism, did not notice; and consequently, he has fallen over it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No organization except the army has ever controlled man with such
+severe compulsion as does the State organization of the working class
+in the most difficult period of transition. It is just for this reason
+that we speak of the militarization of labor. The fate of the
+Mensheviks is to drag along at the tail of events, and to recognize
+those parts of the revolutionary programme which have already had time
+to lose all practical significance. To-day the Mensheviks, albeit with
+reservations, do not deny the lawfulness of stern measures with the
+White Guards and with deserters from the Red Army: they have been
+forced to recognize this after their own lamentable experiments with
+"democracy." They have to all appearances understood&#8212;very late in the
+day&#8212;that, when one is face to face with the counter-revolutionary
+bands, one cannot live by phrases about the great truth that under
+Socialism we shall need no Red Terror. But in the economic sphere, the
+Mensheviks still attempt to refer us to our sons, and particularly to
+our grandsons. None the less, we have to rebuild our economic life
+to-day, without waiting, under circumstances of a very painful
+heritage from bourgeois society and a yet unfinished civil war.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Menshevism, like all Kautskianism generally, is drowned in democratic
+analogies and Socialist abstractions. Again and again it has been
+shown that for it there do not exist the problems of the transitional
+period, <i>i.e.</i>, of the proletarian revolution. Hence the
+lifelessness of its criticism, its advice, its plans, and its recipes.
+The question is not what is going to happen in twenty or thirty years'
+time&#8212;at that date, of course, things will be much better&#8212;but of how
+to-day to struggle out of our ruins, how immediately to distribute
+labor-power, how to-day to raise the productivity of labor, and how,
+in particular, to act in the case of those 4,000 skilled workers whom
+we combed out of the army in the Ural. To dismiss them to the four
+corners of the earth, saying "seek for better conditions where you can
+find them, comrades"? No, we could not act in this way. We put them
+into military echelons, and distributed them amongst the factories and
+the works.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Wherein, then, does your Socialism," Abramovich cries, "differ from
+Egyptian slavery? It was just by similar methods that the Pharaohs
+built the pyramids, forcing the masses to labor." Truly an inimitable
+analogy for a "Socialist"! Once again the little insignificant fact
+has been forgotten&#8212;the class nature of the government! Abramovich
+sees no difference between the Egyptian regime and our own. He has
+forgotten that in Egypt there were Pharaohs, there were slave-owners
+and slaves. It was not the Egyptian peasants who decided through their
+Soviets to build the pyramids; there existed a social order based upon
+hierarchial caste; and the workers were obliged to toil by a class
+that was hostile to them. Our compulsion is applied by a workers' and
+peasants' government, in the name of the interests of the laboring
+masses. That is what Abramovich has not observed. We learn in the
+school of Socialism that all social evolution is founded on classes
+and their struggle, and all the course of human life is determined by
+the fact of what class stands at the head of affairs, and in the name
+of what caste is applying its policy. That is what Abramovich has not
+grasped. Perhaps he is well acquainted with the Old Testament, but
+Socialism is for him a book sealed with seven seals.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Going along the path of shallow Liberal analogies, which do not reckon
+with the class nature of the State, Abramovich might (and in the past
+the Mensheviks did more than once) identify the Red and the White
+Armies. Both here and there went on mobilizations, principally of the
+peasant masses. Both here and there the element of compulsion has its
+place. Both here and there there were not a few officers who had
+passed through one and the same school of Tsarism. The same rifles,
+the same cartridges in both camps. Where is the difference? There is a
+difference, gentlemen, and it is defined by a fundamental test: who is
+in power? The working class or the landlord class, Pharaohs or
+peasants, White Guards or the Petrograd proletariat? There is a
+difference, and evidence on the subject is furnished by the fate of
+Yudenich, Kolchak, and Denikin. Our peasants were mobilized by the
+workers; in Kolchak's camp, by the White Guard officer class. Our army
+has pulled itself together, and has grown strong; the White Army has
+fallen asunder in dust. Yes, there is a difference between the Soviet
+regime and the regime of the Pharaohs. And it is not in vain that the
+Petrograd proletarians began their revolution by shooting the Pharaohs
+on the steeples of Petrograd.<a href="#note10" name="noteref10">
+<small>[10]</small></a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of the Menshevik orators attempted incidentally to represent me as
+a defender of militarism in general. According to his information, it
+appears, do you see, that I am defending nothing more or less than
+German militarism. I proved, you must understand, that the German
+N.C.O. was a marvel of nature, and all that he does is above
+criticism. What did I say in reality? Only that militarism, in which
+all the features of social evolution find their most finished, sharp,
+and clear expression, could be examined from two points of view. First
+from the political or Socialist&#8212;and here it depends entirely on the
+question of what class is in power; and secondly, from the point of
+view of organization, as a system of the strict distribution of
+duties, exact mutual relations, unquestioning responsibility, and
+harsh insistence on execution. The bourgeois army is the apparatus of
+savage oppression and repression of the workers; the Socialist army is
+a weapon for the liberation and defence of the workers. But the
+unquestioning subordination of the parts to the whole is a
+characteristic common to every army. A severe internal regime is
+inseparable from the military organization. In war every piece of
+slackness, every lack of thoroughness, and even a simple mistake, not
+infrequently bring in their train the most heavy sacrifices. Hence the
+striving of the military organization to bring clearness,
+definiteness, exactness of relations and responsibilities, to the
+highest degree of development. "Military" qualities in this connection
+are valued in every sphere. It was in this sense that I said that
+every class prefers to have in its service those of its members who,
+other things being equal, have passed through the military school. The
+German peasant, for example, who has passed out of the barracks in the
+capacity of an N.C.O. was for the German monarchy, and remains for the
+Ebert Republic, much dearer and more valuable than the same peasant
+who has not passed through military training. The apparatus of the
+German railways was splendidly organized, thanks to a considerable
+degree to the employment of N.C.O.'s and officers in administrative
+posts in the transport department. In this sense we also have
+something to learn from militarism. Comrade Tsiperovich, one of our
+foremost trade union leaders, admitted here that the trade union
+worker who has passed through military training&#8212;who has, for example,
+occupied the responsible post of regimental commissary for a
+year&#8212;does not become worse from the point of view of trade union work
+as a result. He is returned to the union the same proletarian from
+head to foot, for he was fighting for the proletariat; but he has
+returned a veteran&#8212;hardened, more independent, more decisive&#8212;for he
+has been in very responsible positions. He had occasions to control
+several thousands of Red soldiers of different degrees of
+class-consciousness&#8212;most of them peasants. Together with them he has
+lived through victories and reverses, he has advanced and retreated.
+There were cases of treachery on the part of the command personnel, of
+peasant risings, of panic&#8212;but he remained at his post, he held
+together the less class-conscious mass, directed it, inspired it with
+his example, punished traitors and cowards. This experience is a great
+and valuable experience. And when a former regimental commissary
+returns to his trade union, he becomes not a bad organizer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the question of the <i>collegiate principle</i>, the arguments of
+Abramovich are just as lifeless as on all other questions&#8212;the
+arguments of a detached observer standing on the bank of a river.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Abramovich explained to us that a good board is better than a bad
+manager, that into a good board there must enter a good expert. All
+this is splendid&#8212;only why do not the Mensheviks offer us several
+hundred boards? I think that the Supreme Economic Council will find
+sufficient use for them. But we&#8212;not observers, but workers&#8212;must
+build from the material at our disposal. We have specialists, we have
+experts, of whom, shall we say, one-third are conscientious and
+educated, another third only half-conscientious and half-educated, and
+the last third are no use at all. In the working class there are many
+talented, devoted, and energetic people. Some&#8212;unfortunately few&#8212;have
+already the necessary knowledge and experience. Some have character
+and capacity, but have not knowledge or experience. Others have
+neither one nor the other. Out of this material we have to create our
+factory and other administrative bodies; and here we cannot be
+satisfied with general phrases. First of all, we must select all the
+workers who have already in experience shown that they can direct
+enterprises, and give such men the possibility of standing on their
+own feet. Such men themselves ask for one-man management, because the
+work of controlling a factory is not a school for the backward. A
+worker who knows his business thoroughly desires to <i>control</i>. If
+he has decided and ordered, his decision must be accomplished. He may
+be replaced&#8212;that is another matter; but while he is the master&#8212;the
+Soviet, proletarian master&#8212;he controls the undertaking entirely and
+completely. If he has to be included in a board of weaker men, who
+interfere in the administration, nothing will come of it. Such a
+working-class administrator must be given an expert assistant, one or
+two according to the enterprise. If there is no suitable working-class
+administrator, but there is a conscientious and trained expert, we
+shall put him at the head of an enterprise, and attach to him two or
+three prominent workers in the capacity of assistants, in such a way
+that every decision of the expert should be known to the assistants,
+but that they should not have the right to reverse that decision. They
+will, step by step, follow the specialist in his work, will learn
+something, and in six months or a year will thus be able to occupy
+independent posts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Abramovich quoted from my own speech the example of the hairdresser
+who has commanded a division and an army. True! But what, however,
+Abramovich does not know is that, if our Communist comrades have begun
+to command regiments, divisions, and armies, it is because previously
+they were commissaries attached to expert commanders. The
+responsibility fell on the expert, who knew that, if he made a
+mistake, he would bear the full brunt, and would not be able to say
+that he was only an "adviser" or a "member of the board." To-day in
+our army the majority of the posts of command, particularly in the
+lower&#8212;<i>i.e.</i>, politically the most important&#8212;grades, are filled
+by workers and foremost peasants. But with what did we begin? We put
+officers in the posts of command, and attached to them workers as
+commissaries; and they learned, and learned with success, and learned
+to beat the enemy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Comrades, we stand face to face with a very difficult period, perhaps
+the most difficult of all. To difficult periods in the life of peoples
+and classes there correspond harsh measures. The further we go the
+easier things will become, the freer every citizen will feel, the more
+imperceptible will become the compelling force of the proletarian
+State. Perhaps we shall then even allow the Mensheviks to have papers,
+if only the Mensheviks remain in existence until that time. But to-day
+we are living in the period of dictatorship, political and economic.
+And the Mensheviks continue to undermine that dictatorship. When we
+are fighting on the civil front, preserving the revolution from its
+enemies, and the Menshevik paper writes: "Down with the civil war," we
+cannot permit this. A dictatorship is a dictatorship, and war is war.
+And now that we have crossed to the path of the greatest concentration
+of forces on the field of the economic rebirth of the country, the
+Russian Kautskies, the Mensheviks, remain true to their
+counter-revolutionary calling. Their voice, as hitherto, sounds as the
+voice of doubt and decomposition, of disorganization and undermining,
+of distrust and collapse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Is it not monstrous and grotesque that, at this Congress, at which
+1,500 representatives of the Russian working class are present, where
+the Mensheviks constitute less than 5%, and the Communists about 90%,
+Abramovich should say to us: "Do not be attracted by methods which
+result in a little band taking the place of the people." "All through
+the people," says the representative of the Mensheviks, "no guardians
+of the laboring masses! All through the laboring masses, through their
+independent activity!" And, further, "It is impossible to convince a
+class by arguments." Yet look at this very hall: here is that class!
+The working class is here before you, and with us; and it is just you,
+an insignificant band of Mensheviks, who are attempting to convince it
+by bourgeois arguments! It is you who wish to be the guardians of that
+class. And yet it has its own high degree of independence, and that
+independence, it has displayed, incidentally, in having overthrown you
+and gone forward along its own path!
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<a name="karl">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="chapter">
+9
+</p>
+
+<p class="head">
+<span class="sc">Karl Kautsky, His School and His Book.</span>
+</p>
+
+
+<p>
+The Austro-Marxian school (Bauer, Renner, Hilferding, Max Adler,
+Friedrich Adler) in the past more than once was contrasted with the
+school of Kautsky, as veiled opportunism might be contrasted with true
+Marxism. This has proved to be a pure historical misunderstanding,
+which deceived some for a long time, some for a lesser period, but
+which in the end was revealed with all possible clearness. Kautsky is
+the founder and the most perfect representative of the Austrian
+forgery of Marxism. While the real teaching of Marx is the theoretical
+formula of action, of attack, of the development of revolutionary
+energy, and of the carrying of the class blow to its logical
+conclusion, the Austrian school was transformed into an academy of
+passivity and evasiveness, because of a vulgar historical and
+conservative school, and reduced its work to explaining and
+justifying, not guiding and overthrowing. It lowered itself to the
+position of a hand-maid to the current demands of parliamentarism and
+opportunism, replaced dialectic by swindling sophistries, and, in the
+end, in spite of its great play with ritual revolutionary phraseology,
+became transformed into the most secure buttress of the capitalist
+State, together with the altar and throne that rose above it. If the
+latter was engulfed in the abyss, no blame for this can be laid upon
+the Austro-Marxian school.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What characterizes Austro-Marxism is repulsion and fear in the face of
+revolutionary action. The Austro-Marxist is capable of displaying a
+perfect gulf of profundity in the explanation of yesterday, and
+considerable daring in prophesying concerning to-morrow&#8212;but for
+to-day he never has a great thought or capacity for great action.
+To-day for him always disappears before the wave of little opportunist
+worries, which later are explained as the most inevitable link between
+the past and the future.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Austro-Marxist is inexhaustible when it is a question of
+discovering reasons to prevent initiative and render difficult
+revolutionary action. Austro-Marxism is a learned and boastful theory
+of passivity and capitulation. Naturally, it is not by accident that
+it was just in Austria, in that Babylon torn by fruitless national
+antagonisms, in that State which represented the personified
+impossibility to exist and develop, that there arose and was
+consolidated the pseudo-Marxian philosophy of the impossibility of
+revolutionary action.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The foremost Austrian Marxists represent, each in his own way, a
+certain "individuality." On various questions they more than once did
+not see eye to eye. They even had political differences. But in
+general they are fingers of the same hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Karl Renner</i> is the most pompous, solid, and conceited
+representative of this type. The gift of literary imitation, or, more
+simply, of stylist forgery, is granted to him to an exceptional
+extent. His May Day article represented a charming combination of the
+most revolutionary words. And, as both words and their combinations
+live, within certain limits, with their own independent life, Renner's
+articles awakened in the hearts of many workers a revolutionary fire
+which their author apparently never knew. The tinsel of
+Austro-Viennese culture, the chase of the external, of title of rank,
+was more characteristic of Renner than of his other colleagues. In
+essence he always remained merely an imperial and royal officer, who
+commanded Marxist phraseology to perfection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The transformation of the author of the jubilee article on Karl Marx,
+famous for its revolutionary pathos, into a comic-opera-Chancellor,
+who expresses his feelings of respect and thanks to the Scandinavian
+monarchs, is in reality one of the most instructive paradoxes of
+history.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Otto Bauer</i> is more learned and prosaic, more serious and more
+boring, than Renner. He cannot be denied the capacity to read books,
+collect facts, and draw conclusions adapted to the tasks imposed upon
+him by practical politics, which in turn are guided by others. Bauer
+has no political will. His chief art is to reply to all acute
+practical questions by commonplaces. His political thought always
+lives a parallel life to his will&#8212;it is deprived of all courage. His
+words are always merely the scientific compilation of the talented
+student of a University seminar. The most disgraceful actions of
+Austrian opportunism, the meanest servility before the power of the
+possessing classes on the part of the Austro-German Social-Democracy,
+found in Bauer their grave elucidator, who sometimes expressed himself
+with dignity against the form, but always agreed in the essence. If it
+ever occurred to Bauer to display anything like temperament and
+political energy, it was exclusively in the struggle against the
+revolutionary wing&#8212;in the accumulation of arguments, facts,
+quotations, <i>against</i> revolutionary action. His highest period
+was that (after 1907) in which, being as yet too young to be a deputy,
+he played the part of secretary of the Social-Democratic group,
+supplied it with materials, figures, substitutes for ideas, instructed
+it, drew up memoranda, and appeared almost to be the inspirer of great
+actions, when in reality he was only supplying substitutes, and
+adulterated substitutes, for the parliamentary opportunists.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Max Adler</i> represents a fairly ingenuous variety of the
+Austro-Marxian type. He is a lyric poet, a philosopher, a mystic&#8212;a
+philosophical lyric poet of passivity, as Renner is its publicist and
+legal expert, as Hilferding is its economist, as Bauer is its
+sociologist. Max Adler is cramped in a world of three dimensions,
+although he had found a very comfortable place for himself with the
+framework of Viennese bourgeois Socialism and the Hapsburg State. The
+combination of the petty business activity of an attorney and of
+political humiliation, together with barren philosophical efforts and
+the cheap tinsel flowers of idealism, have imbued that variety which
+Max Adler represented with a sickening and repulsive quality.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Rudolf Hilferding</i>, a Viennese like the rest, entered the German
+Social-Democratic Party almost as a mutineer, but as a mutineer of the
+Austrian stamp, <i>i.e.</i>, always ready to capitulate without a
+fight. Hilferding took the external mobility and bustle of the
+Austrian policy which brought him up for revolutionary initiative; and
+for a round dozen of months he demanded&#8212;true, in the most moderate
+terms&#8212;a more intelligent policy on the part of the leaders of the
+German Social-Democracy. But the Austro-Viennese bustle swiftly
+disappeared from his own nature. He soon became subjected to the
+mechanical rhythm of Berlin and the automatic spiritual life of the
+German Social-Democracy. He devoted his intellectual energy to the
+purely theoretical sphere, where he did not say a great deal, true&#8212;no
+Austro-Marxist has ever said a great deal in any sphere&#8212;but in which
+he did, at any rate, write a serious book. With this book on his back,
+like a porter with a heavy load, he entered the revolutionary epoch.
+But the most scientific book cannot replace the absence of will, of
+initiative, of revolutionary instinct and political decision, without
+which action is inconceivable. A doctor by training, Hilferding is
+inclined to sobriety, and, in spite of his theoretical education, he
+represents the most primitive type of empiricist in questions of
+policy. The chief problem of to-day is for him not to leave the lines
+laid down for him by yesterday, and to find for this conservative and
+bourgeois apathy a scientific, economic explanation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Friedrich Adler</i> is the most balanced representative of the
+Austro-Marxian type. He has inherited from his father the latter's
+political temperament. In the petty exhausting struggle with the
+disorder of Austrian conditions, Friedrich Adler allowed his ironical
+scepticism finally to destroy the revolutionary foundations of his
+world outlook. The temperament inherited from his father more than
+once drove him into opposition to the school created by his father. At
+certain moments Friedrich Adler might seem the very revolutionary
+negation of the Austrian school. In reality, he was and remains its
+necessary coping-stone. His explosive revolutionism foreshadowed acute
+attacks of despair amidst Austrian opportunism, which from time to
+time became terrified at its own insignificance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Friedrich Adler is a sceptic from head to foot: he does not believe in
+the masses, or in their capacity for action. At the time when Karl
+Liebknecht, in the hour of supreme triumph of German militarism, went
+out to the Potsdamerplatz to call the oppressed masses to the open
+struggle, Friedrich Adler went into a bourgeois restaurant to
+assassinate there the Austrian Premier. By his solitary shot,
+Friedrich Adler vainly attempted to put an end to his own scepticism.
+After that hysterical strain, he fell into still more complete
+prostration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The black-and-yellow crew of social-patriotism (Austerlitz, Leitner,
+etc.) hurled at Adler the terrorist all the abuse of which the
+cowardly sentiments were capable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But when the acute period was passed, and the prodigal son returned
+from his convict prison into his father's house with the halo of a
+martyr, he proved to be doubly and trebly valuable in that form for
+the Austrian Social-Democracy. The golden halo of the terrorist was
+transformed by the experienced counterfeiters of the party into the
+sounding coin of the demagogue. Friedrich Adler became a trusted
+surety for the Austerlitzes and Renners in face of the masses.
+Happily, the Austrian workers are coming less and less to distinguish
+the sentimental lyrical prostration of Friedrich Adler from the
+pompous shallowness of Renner, the erudite impotence of Max Adler, or
+the analytical self-satisfaction of Otto Bauer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cowardice in thought of the theoreticians of the Austro-Marxian
+school has completely and wholly been revealed when faced with the
+great problems of a revolutionary epoch. In his immortal attempt to
+include the Soviet system in the Ebert-Noske Constitution, Hilferding
+gave voice not only to his own spirit but to the spirit of the whole
+Austro-Marxian school, which, with the approach of the revolutionary
+epoch, made an attempt to become exactly as much more Left than
+Kautsky as before the revolution it was more Right. From this point of
+view, Max Adler's view of the Soviet system is extremely instructive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Viennese eclectic philosopher admits the significance of the
+Soviets. His courage goes so far that he adopts them. He even
+proclaims them the apparatus of the Social Revolution. Max Adler, of
+course, is for a social revolution. But not for a stormy, barricaded,
+terrorist, bloody revolution, but for a sane, economically balanced,
+legally canonized, and philosophically approved revolution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Max Adler is not even terrified by the fact that the Soviets infringe
+the "principle" of the constitutional separation of powers (in the
+Austrian Social-Democracy there are many fools who see in such an
+infringement a great defect of the Soviet System!). On the contrary,
+Max Adler, the trade union lawyer and legal adviser of the social
+revolution, sees in the concentration of powers even an advantage,
+which allows the direct expression of the proletarian will. Max Adler
+is in favor of the direct expression of the proletarian will; but only
+not by means of the direct seizure of power through the Soviets. He
+proposes a more solid method. In each town, borough, and ward, the
+Workers' Councils must "control" the police and other officials,
+imposing upon them the "proletarian will." What, however, will be the
+"constitutional" position of the Soviets in the republic of Zeiz,
+Renner and company? To this our philosopher replies: "The Workers'
+Councils in the long run will receive as much constitutional power as
+they acquire by means of their own activity." (<i>Arbeiterzeitung</i>,
+No. 179, July 1, 1919.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The proletarian Soviets must gradually <i>grow up</i> into the
+political power of the proletariat, just as previously, in the
+theories of reformism, all the proletarian organizations had to grow
+up into Socialism; which consummation, however, was a little hindered
+by the unforeseen misunderstandings, lasting four years, between the
+Central Powers and the Entente&#8212;and all that followed. It was found
+necessary to reject the economical programme of a gradual development
+into Socialism without a social revolution. But, as a reward, there
+opened the perspective of the gradual development of the Soviets into
+the social revolution, without an armed rising and a seizure of power.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In order that the Soviets should not sink entirely under the burden of
+borough and ward problems, our daring legal adviser proposes the
+propaganda of social-democratic ideas! Political power remains as
+before in the hands of the bourgeoisie and its assistants. But in the
+wards and the boroughs the Soviets control the policemen and their
+assistants. And, to console the working class and at the same time to
+centralize its thought and will, Max Adler on Sunday afternoons will
+read lectures on the constitutional position of the Soviets, as in the
+past he read lectures on the constitutional position of the trade
+unions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In this way," Max Adler promises, "the constitutional regulation of
+the position of the Workers Councils, and their power and importance,
+would be guaranteed along the whole line of public and social life;
+and&#8212;without the dictatorship of the Soviets&#8212;the Soviet system would
+acquire as large an influence as it could possibly have even in a
+Soviet republic. At the same time we should not have to pay for that
+influence by political storms and economic destruction" (idem). As we
+see, in addition to all his other qualities, Max Adler remains still
+in agreement with the Austrian tradition: to make a revolution without
+quarrelling with his Excellency the Public Prosecutor.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short">
+
+<p>
+The founder of this school, and its highest authority, is Kautsky.
+Carefully protecting, particularly after the Dresden party congress
+and the first Russian Revolution, his reputation as the keeper of the
+shrine of Marxist orthodoxy, Kautsky from time to time would shake his
+head in disapproval of the more compromising outbursts of his Austrian
+school. And, following the example of the late Victor Adler, Bauer,
+Renner, Hilferding&#8212;altogether and each separately&#8212;considered Kautsky
+too pedantic, too inert, but a very reverend and a very useful father
+and teacher of the church of quietism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kautsky began to cause serious mistrust in his own school during the
+period of his revolutionary culmination, at the time of the first
+Russian Revolution, when he recognized as necessary the seizure of
+power by the Russian Social-Democracy, and attempted to inoculate the
+German working class with his theoretical conclusions from the
+experience of the general strike in Russia. The collapse of the first
+Russian Revolution at once broke off Kautsky's evolution along the
+path of radicalism. The more plainly was the question of mass action
+in Germany itself put forward by the course of events, the more
+evasive became Kautsky's attitude. He marked time, retreated, lost his
+confidence; and the pedantic and scholastic features of his thought
+more and more became apparent. The imperialist war, which killed every
+form of vagueness and brought mankind face to face with the most
+fundamental questions, exposed all the political bankruptcy of
+Kautsky. He immediately became confused beyond all hope of
+extrication, in the most simple question of voting the War Credits.
+All his writings after that period represent variations of one and the
+same theme: "I and my muddle." The Russian Revolution finally slew
+Kautsky. By all his previous development he was placed in a hostile
+attitude towards the November victory of the proletariat. This
+unavoidably threw him into the camp of the counter-revolution. He lost
+the last traces of historical instinct. His further writings have
+become more and more like the yellow literature of the bourgeois
+market.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kautsky's book, examined by us, bears in its external characteristics
+all the attributes of a so-called objective scientific study. To
+examine the extent of the Red Terror, Kautsky acts with all the
+circumstantial method peculiar to him. He begins with the study of the
+social conditions which prepared the great French Revolution, and also
+the physiological and social conditions which assisted the development
+of cruelty and humanity throughout the history of the human race. In a
+book devoted to Bolshevism, in which the whole question is examined in
+234 pages, Kautsky describes in detail on what our most remote human
+ancestor fed, and hazards the guess that, while living mainly on
+vegetable products, he devoured also insects and possibly a few birds.
+(See page 122.) In a word, there was nothing to lead us to expect that
+from such an entirely respectable ancestor&#8212;one obviously inclined to
+vegetarianism&#8212;there should spring such descendants as the Bolsheviks.
+That is the solid scientific basis on which Kautsky builds the
+question!&#8230;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, as is not infrequent with productions of this nature, there is
+hidden behind the academic and scholastic cloak a malignant political
+pamphlet. This book is one of the most lying and conscienceless of its
+kind. Is it not incredible, at first glance, that Kautsky should
+gather up the most contemptible stories about the Bolsheviks from the
+rich table of Havas, Reuter and Wolff, thereby displaying from under
+his learned night-cap the ears of the sycophant? Yet these
+disreputable details are only mosaic decorations on the fundamental
+background of solid, scientific lying about the Soviet Republic and
+its guiding party.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kautsky depicts in the most sinister colors our savagery towards the
+bourgeoisie, which "displayed no tendency to resist."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kautsky attacks our ruthlessness in connection with the Socialist
+Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks, who represent "shades" of
+Socialism.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="subhead">
+KAUTSKY DEPICTS THE SOVIET ECONOMY AS THE CHAOS OF COLLAPSE
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kautsky represents the Soviet workers, and the Russian working class
+as a whole, as a conglomeration of egoists, loafers, and cowards.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He does not say one word about the conduct of the Russian bourgeoisie,
+unprecedented in history for the magnitude of its scoundrelism; about
+its national treachery; about the surrender of Riga to the Germans,
+with "educational" aims; about the preparations for a similar
+surrender of Petrograd; about its appeals to foreign
+armies&#8212;Czecho-Slovakian, German, Roumanian, British, Japanese,
+French, Arab and Negro&#8212;against the Russian workers and peasants;
+about its conspiracies and assassinations, paid for by Entente money;
+about its utilization of the blockade, not only to starve our children
+to death, but systematically, tirelessly, persistently to spread over
+the whole world an unheard-of web of lies and slander.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He does not say one word about the most disgraceful misrepresentations
+of and violence to our party on the part of the government of the
+S.R.s and Mensheviks before the November Revolution; about the
+criminal persecution of several thousand responsible workers of the
+party on the charge of espionage in favor of Hohenzollern Germany;
+about the participation of the Mensheviks and S.R.s in all the plots
+of the bourgeoisie; about their collaboration with the imperial
+generals and admirals, Kolchak, Denikin and Yudenich; about the
+terrorist acts carried out by the S.R.s at the order of the Entente;
+about the risings organized by the S.R.s with the money of the foreign
+missions in our army, which was pouring out its blood in the struggle
+against the monarchical bands of imperialism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kautsky does not say one word about the fact that we not only repeated
+more than once, but proved in reality our readiness to give peace to
+the country, even at the cost of sacrifices and concessions, and that,
+in spite of this, we were obliged to carry on an intensive struggle on
+all fronts to defend the very existence of our country, and to prevent
+its transformation into a colony of Anglo-French imperialism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kautsky does not say one word about the fact that in this heroic
+struggle, in which we are defending the future of world Socialism, the
+Russian proletariat is obliged to expend its principal energies, its
+best and most valuable forces, taking them away from economic and
+cultural reconstruction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In all his book, Kautsky does not even mention the fact that first of
+all German militarism, with the help of its Scheidemanns and the
+apathy of its Kautskies, and then the militarism of the Entente
+countries with the help of its Renaudels and the apathy of its
+Longuets, surrounded us with an iron blockade; seized all our ports;
+cut us off from the whole of the world; occupied, with the help of
+hired White bands, enormous territories, rich in raw materials; and
+separated us for a long period from the Baku oil, the Donetz coal, the
+Don and Siberian corn, the Turkestan cotton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kautsky does not say one word about the fact that in these conditions,
+unprecedented for their difficulty, the Russian working class for
+nearly three years has been carrying on a heroic struggle against its
+enemies on a front of 8,000 versts; that the Russian working class
+learned how to exchange its hammer for the sword, and created a mighty
+army; that for this army it mobilized its exhausted industry and, in
+spite of the ruin of the country, which the executioners of the whole
+world had condemned to blockade and civil war, for three years with
+its own forces and resources it has been clothing, feeding, arming,
+transporting an army of millions&#8212;an army which has learned how to
+conquer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About all these conditions Kautsky is silent, in a book devoted to
+Russian Communism. And his silence is the fundamental, capital,
+principal lie&#8212;true, a passive lie, but more criminal and more
+repulsive than the active lie of all the scoundrels of the
+international bourgeois Press taken together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Slandering the policy of the Communist Party, Kautsky says nowhere
+what he himself wants and what he proposes. The Bolsheviks were not
+alone in the arena of the Russian Revolution. We saw and see in
+it&#8212;now in power, now in opposition&#8212;S.R.s (not less than five groups
+and tendencies), Mensheviks (not less than three tendencies),
+Plekhanovists, Maximalists, Anarchists&#8230;. Absolutely all the "shades
+of Socialism" (to speak in Kautsky's language) tried their hand, and
+showed what they would and what they could. There are so many of these
+"shades" that it is difficult now to pass the blade of a knife between
+them. The very origin of these "shades" is not accidental: they
+represent, so to speak, different degrees in the adaptation of the
+pre-revolutionary Socialist parties and groups to the conditions of
+the greater revolutionary epoch. It would seem that Kautsky had a
+sufficiently complete political keyboard before him to be able to
+strike the note which would give a true Marxian key to the Russian
+Revolution. But Kautsky is silent. He repudiates the Bolshevik melody
+that is unpleasant to his ear, but does not seek another. The solution
+is simple: <i>the old musician refuses altogether to play on the
+instrument of the revolution</i>.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<a name="place">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="chapter">
+10
+</p>
+
+<p class="head">
+<span class="sc">In Place of an Epilogue</span>
+</p>
+
+
+<p>
+This book appears at the moment of the Second Congress of the
+Communist International. The revolutionary movement of the proletariat
+has made, during the months that have passed since the First Congress,
+a great step forward. The positions of the official, open
+social-patriots have everywhere been undermined. The ideas of
+Communism acquire an ever wider extension. Official dogmatized
+Kautskianism has been gradually compromised. Kautsky himself, within
+that "Independent" Party which he created, represents to-day a not
+very authoritative and a fairly ridiculous figure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+None the less, the intellectual struggle in the ranks of the
+international working class is only now blazing up as it should. If,
+as we just said, dogmatized Kautskianism is breathing its last days,
+and the leaders of the intermediate Socialist parties are hastening to
+renounce it, still Kautskianism as a bourgeois attitude, as a
+tradition of passivity, as political cowardice, still plays an
+enormous part in the upper ranks of the working-class organizations of
+the world, in no way excluding parties tending to the Third
+International, and even formally adhering to it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Independent Party in Germany, which has written on its banner the
+watchword of the dictatorship of the proletariat, tolerates in its
+ranks the Kautsky group, all the efforts of which are devoted
+theoretically to compromise and misrepresent the dictatorship of the
+proletariat in the shape of its living expression&#8212;the Soviet regime.
+In conditions of civil war, such a form of co-habitation is
+conceivable only and to such an extent as far and as long as the
+dictatorship of the proletariat represents for the leaders of the
+"Independent" Social-Democracy a noble aspiration, a vague protest
+against the open and disgraceful treachery of Noske, Ebert,
+Scheidemann and others, and&#8212;last but not least&#8212;a weapon of electoral
+and parliamentary demagogy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The vitality of vague Kautskianism is most clearly seen in the example
+of the French Longuetists. Jean Longuet himself has most sincerely
+convinced himself, and has for long been attempting to convince
+others, that he is marching in step with us, and that only
+Clemenceau's censorship and the calumnies of our French friends
+Loriot, Monatte, Rosmer, and others hinder our comradship in arms. Yet
+is it sufficient to make oneself acquainted with any parliamentary
+speech of Longuet's to realize that the gulf separating him from us at
+the present moment is possibly still wider than at the first period of
+the imperialist war? The revolutionary problems now arising before the
+international proletariat have become more serious, more immediate,
+more gigantic, more direct, more definite, than five or six years ago;
+and the politically reactionary character of the Longuetists, the
+parliamentary representatives of eternal passivity, has become more
+impressive than ever before, in spite of the fact that formally they
+have returned to the fold of parliamentary opposition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Italian Party, which is within the Third International, is not at
+all free from Kautskianism. As far as the leaders are concerned, a
+very considerable part of them bear their internationalist honors only
+as a duty and as an imposition from below. In 1914-1915, the Italian
+Socialist Party found it infinitely more easy than did the other
+European parties to maintain an attitude of opposition to the war,
+both because Italy entered the war nine months later than other
+countries, and particularly because the international position of
+Italy created in it even a powerful bourgeois group (Giolittians in
+the widest sense of the word) which remained to the very last moment
+hostile to Italian intervention in the war.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These conditions allowed the Italian Socialist Party, without the fear
+of a very profound internal crisis to refuse war credits to the
+Government, and generally to remain outside the interventionist block.
+But by this very fact the process of internal cleansing of the party
+proved to be unquestionably delayed. Although an integral part of the
+Third International, the Italian Socialist Party to this very day can
+put up with Turati and his supporters in its ranks. This very powerful
+group&#8212;unfortunately we find it difficult to define to any extent of
+accuracy its numerical significance in the parliamentary group, in the
+press, in the party, and in the trade union organizations&#8212;represents
+a less pedantic, not so demagogic, more declamatory and lyrical, but
+none the less malignant opportunism&#8212;a form of romantic Kautskianism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A passive attitude to the Kautskian, Longuetist, Turatist groups is
+usually cloaked by the argument that the time for revolutionary
+activity in the respective countries has not yet arrived. But such a
+formulation of the question is absolutely false. Nobody demands from
+Socialists striving for Communism that they should appoint a
+revolutionary outbreak for a definite week or month in the near
+future. What the Third International demands of its supporters is a
+recognition, not in words but in deeds, that civilized humanity has
+entered a revolutionary epoch; that all the capitalist countries are
+speeding towards colossal disturbances and an open class war; and that
+the task of the revolutionary representatives of the proletariat is to
+prepare for that inevitable and approaching war the necessary
+spiritual armory and buttress of organization. The internationalists
+who consider it possible at the present time to collaborate with
+Kautsky, Longuet and Turati, to appear side by side with them before
+the working masses, by that very act renounce in practice the work of
+preparing in ideas and organization for the revolutionary rising of
+the proletariat, independently of whether it comes a month or a year
+sooner or later. In order that the open rising of the proletarian
+masses should not fritter itself away in belated searches for paths
+and leadership, we must see to it to-day that wide circles of the
+proletariat should even now learn to grasp all the immensity of the
+tasks before them, and of their irreconcilability with all variations
+of Kautskianism and opportunism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A truly revolutionary, <i>i.e.</i>, a Communist wing, must set itself
+up in opposition, in face of the masses, to all the indecisive,
+half-hearted groups of doctrinaires, advocates, and panegyrists of
+passivity, strengthening its positions first of all spiritually and
+then in the sphere of organization&#8212;open, half-open, and purely
+conspirative. The moment of formal split with the open and disguised
+Kautskians, or the moment of their expulsion from the ranks of the
+working-class party, is, of course, to be determined by considerations
+of usefulness from the point of view of circumstances; but all the
+policy of real Communists must turn in that direction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That is why it seems to me that this book is still not out of date&#8212;to
+my great regret, if not as an author, at any rate as a Communist.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ralign">
+<i>June 17, 1920.</i>
+</p>
+
+<hr class="med">
+
+<p class="section">
+Footnotes
+</p>
+
+<a name="note1">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref1">[1]</a> The arbitrament of arms is on; now the weapon of criticism must
+rest.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note2">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref2">[2]</a> Translator's Note--For convenience sake, the references
+throughout have been altered to fall in the English translation of
+Kautsky's book. Mr. Kerridge's translation, however, has not been
+adhered to.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note3">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref3">[3]</a> In order to charm us in favor of a Constituent Assembly
+Kautsky brings forward an argument based on the rate of exchange to
+the assistance of his argument, based on the categorical imperative.
+"Russia requires," he writes, "the help of foreign capital, but this
+help will not come to the Soviet Republic if the latter does not
+summon a Constituent Assembly, and does not give freedom of the Press;
+not because the capitalists are democratic idealists--to Tsarism they
+gave without any hesitation many milliards--but because they have no
+business faith in a revolutionary government." (Page 218.)
+</p>
+
+<p class="foot">
+There are scraps of truth in this rubbish. The Stock Exchange did
+really support the government of Kolchak when it relied for support on
+the Constituent Assembly. From its experience of Kolchak the Stock
+Exchange became confirmed in its conviction that the mechanism of
+bourgeois democracy can be utilized in capitalist interests, and then
+thrown aside like a worn-out pair of puttees. It is quite possible
+that the Stock Exchange would again give a parliamentary loan on the
+guarantee of a Constituent Assembly, believing, on the basis of its
+former experience, that such a body would prove only an intermediate
+step to capitalist dictatorship. We do not propose to buy the
+"business faith" of the Stock Exchange at such a price, and decidedly
+prefer the "faith" which is aroused in the realist Stock Exchange by
+the weapon of the Red Army.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note4">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref4">[4]</a> (The History of the American War, by Fletcher,
+Lieut.-Colonel in the Scots Guards, St. Petersburg, 1867, page 95.)
+</p>
+
+<a name="note5">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref5">[5]</a> Fletcher's History of the American War, pages 162-164.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note6">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref6">[6]</a> It is not without interest to observe that in the
+Communal elections of 1871 in Paris there participated 230,000
+electors. At the Town elections of November, 1917, in Petrograd, in
+spite of the boycott of the election on the part of all parties except
+ourselves and the Left Social Revolutionaries, who had no influence in
+the capital, there participated 390,000 electors. In Paris, in 1871,
+the population numbered two millions. In Petrograd, in November, 1917,
+there were not more than two millions. It must be noticed that our
+electoral system was infinitely more democratic. The Central Committee
+of the National Guard carried out the elections on the basis of the
+electoral law of the empire.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note7">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref7">[7]</a> Labor, Discipline, and Order will save the Socialist
+Soviet Republic (Moscow, 1918). Kautsky knows this pamphlet, as he
+quotes from it several times. This, however, does not prevent him
+passing over the passage quoted above, which makes clear the attitude
+of the Soviet Government to the intelligentsia.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note8">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref8">[8]</a> The Vienna Arbeiterzeitung opposes, as is fitting, the
+wise Russian Communists to the foolish Austrians. "Did not Trotsky,"
+the paper writes, "with a clear view and understanding of
+possibilities, sign the Brest-Litovsk peace of violence,
+notwithstanding that it served for the consolidation of German
+imperialism? The Brest Peace was just as harsh and shameful as is the
+Versailles Peace. But does this mean that Trotsky had to be rash
+enough to continue the war against Germany? Would not the fate of the
+Russian Revolution long ago have been sealed? Trotsky bowed before the
+unalterable necessity of signing the shameful treaty in anticipation
+of the German revolution." The honor of having foreseen all the
+consequences of the Brest Peace belongs to Lenin. But this, of course,
+alters nothing in the argument of the organ of the Viennese
+Kautskians.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note9">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref9">[9]</a> Since that time this percentage has been considerably
+lowered (June, 1920).
+</p>
+
+<a name="note10">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref10">[10]</a> This was the name given to the imperial police, whom the
+Minister for Home Affairs, Protopopoff, distributed at the end of
+February, 1917, over the roofs of houses and in the belfries.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Dictatorship vs. Democracy, by Leon Trotsky
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DICTATORSHIP VS. DEMOCRACY ***
+
+***** This file should be named 38982-h.htm or 38982-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/3/8/9/8/38982/
+
+Produced by Odessa Paige Turner and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+produced from scanned images of public domain material
+from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+
+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
+
diff --git a/38982-h/images/001.jpg b/38982-h/images/001.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5894a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/38982-h/images/001.jpg
diff --git a/38982-h/images/002.jpg b/38982-h/images/002.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d5a0d25
--- /dev/null
+++ b/38982-h/images/002.jpg
diff --git a/38982.txt b/38982.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16beab9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/38982.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,7816 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dictatorship vs. Democracy, by Leon Trotsky
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Dictatorship vs. Democracy
+       (Terrorism and Communism)
+
+Author: Leon Trotsky
+
+Release Date: February 25, 2012 [EBook #38982]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DICTATORSHIP VS. DEMOCRACY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Odessa Paige Turner and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+produced from scanned images of public domain material
+from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+WORKERS PARTY LIBRARY, Vol. I
+
+
+DICTATORSHIP vs. DEMOCRACY
+
+(_TERRORISM AND COMMUNISM_)
+
+
+A Reply to Karl Kautsky by
+LEON TROTSKY
+
+
+With a Preface by
+H. N. BRAILSFORD
+and Foreword by Max Bedact
+
+[Illustration: WORKERS PARTY OF AMERICA. WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE.]
+
+
+Published 1922 by
+WORKERS PARTY OF AMERICA
+799 Broadway, Room 405
+New York City
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+FOREWORD                                      V
+
+PREFACE                                      XI
+
+INTRODUCTION                                  5
+
+THE BALANCE OF POWER                         12
+
+THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT          20
+
+DEMOCRACY                                    28
+
+TERRORISM                                    48
+
+THE PARIS COMMUNE AND SOVIET RUSSIA          69
+
+MARX AND ... KAUTSKY                         91
+
+THE WORKING CLASS AND ITS SOVIET POLICY      98
+
+PROBLEMS OF THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR       128
+
+KARL KAUTSKY, HIS SCHOOL AND HIS BOOK       177
+
+IN PLACE OF AN EPILOGUE                     188
+
+
+
+
+Foreword
+
+By MAX BEDACT
+
+
+In a land where "democracy" is so deeply entrenched as in our United
+States of America it may seem futile to try to make friends for a
+dictatorship, by a close comparison of the principles of the
+two--Dictatorship versus Democracy. But then, confiding in the
+inviting gesture of the Goddess of Liberty many of our friends and
+fellow citizens have tested that sacred principle of democracy,
+freedom of speech, a little too freely--and landed in the penitentiary
+for it. Others again, relying on the not less sacred principle of
+democracy, freedom of assembly, have come in unpleasant contact with a
+substantial stick of hardwood, wielded by an unwieldily guardian of
+the law, and awoke from the immediate effects of this collision in
+some jail. Again others, leaning a little too heavily against the
+democratic principle of freedom of press broke down that pasteboard
+pillar of democracy, and incidentally into prison.
+
+Looking at this side of the bright shining medal of our beloved
+democracy it seems that there is not the slightest bit of difference
+between the democracy of capitalist America and the dictatorship of
+Soviet Russia. But there is a great difference. The dictatorship in
+Russia is bold and upright class rule, which has as its ultimate
+object the abolition of all class rule and all dictatorships. Our
+democracy, on the other hand, is a Pecksniffian Dictatorship, is
+hypocrisy incarnate, promising all liberty in phrases, but in reality
+even penalizing free thinking, consistently working only for one
+object: to perpetuate the rule of the capitalist class, the capitalist
+dictatorship.
+
+"Dictatorship versus Democracy" is, therefore, enough of an open
+question even in our own country to deserve some consideration. To
+give food for thought on this subject is the object of the publication
+of Trotsky's book.
+
+This book is an answer to a book by Karl Kautsky, "Terrorism and
+Communism." It is polemical in character. Polemical writings are,
+as a rule, only thoroughly understood if one reads both sides of
+the question. But even if we could not take for granted that the
+proletarian reader is fully familiar with the question at issue we
+could not conscientiously advise a worker to get Kautsky's book. It is
+really asking our readers to undertake the superhuman task of reading a
+book which in the guise of a scientific treatise is foully hitting him
+below the belt, and then expect him to pay two dollars for it in the
+bargain.
+
+Anyhow, to read Kautsky's book is an ordeal for any revolutionist.
+Kautsky, in his book, tries to prove that the humanitarian instincts
+of the masses must defeat any attempt to overpower and suppress the
+bourgeoisie by terrorist means. But to read his book must kill in the
+proletarian reader the last remnants of those instincts on which
+Kautsky's hope for the safety of the bourgeoisie is based. There would
+even not be enough of those instincts left to save Kautsky from the
+utter contempt of the proletarian masses, a fate he so richly deserves.
+
+Mr. Kautsky was once the foremost exponent of Marxism. Many of those
+fighting to-day in the front ranks of the proletarian army revered
+Kautsky as their teacher. But even in his most glorious days as a
+Marxist his was the musty pedantry of the German professor, which was
+hardly ever penetrated by a live spark of revolutionary spirit. Still,
+the Russian revolution of 1905 found a friend in him. That revolution
+did not commit the unpardonable sin of being successful. But when the
+tornado of the first victorious proletarian revolution swept over
+Russia and destroyed in its fury some of the tormentors and exploiters
+of the working class--then Kautsky's "humanitarianism" killed the last
+remnant of revolutionary spirit and instinct in him and left only a
+pitiful wreck of an apologist for capitalism, that was once Kautsky,
+the Marxist.
+
+July, 1914. The echoes of the shots fired in Sarajewo threaten to set
+the world in flames. Will it come, the seeming inevitable? No!--A
+thousand times no! Had not the forces of a future order, had not the
+International of Labor--the Second International--solemnly declared in
+1907 in Stuttgart, in 1911 in Copenhagen and in 1912 in Basel: "We will
+fight war by all means at our disposal. Let the exploiters start a war.
+It will begin as a war of capitalist governments against each other; it
+will end--it must end--as a war of the working class of the world
+against world capitalism; it must end in the proletarian revolution."
+We, the socialists of the world, comrades from England and Russia, from
+America and Germany, from France and Austria; we comrades from all over
+the world, had solemnly promised ourselves: "War against war!" We had
+promised ourselves and our cause to answer the call of capitalism for a
+world war with a call on the proletariat for a world revolution.
+
+Days passed. July disappeared in the ocean of time. The first days of
+August brought the booming of the cannon to our ears, messengers of
+the grim reality of war. And then the news of the collapse of the
+Second International; reports of betrayal by the socialists; betrayal
+in London and Vienna; betrayal in Berlin and Brussels; betrayal in
+Paris; betrayal everywhere. What would Kautsky say to this rank
+betrayal, Kautsky, the foremost disciple of Marx, Kautsky, the
+foremost theoretician of the Second International? Will he at least
+speak up? He did not speak up. Commenting on the betrayal he wrote in
+"Die Neue Zeit": "Die Kritik der Waffen hat eingesetzt; jetzt hat die
+Waffe der Kritik zu schweigen."[1] With this one sentence Kautsky
+replaced Marxism as the basis of his science with rank and undisguised
+hypocrisy. From then on although trying to retain the toga of a
+Marxist scholar on his shoulders, with thousands of "if's" and
+"when's" and "but's" he became the apologist for the betrayal of the
+German Social-Democracy, and the betrayal of the Second International.
+
+          [1] The arbitrament of arms is on; now the weapon of
+          criticism must rest.
+
+It is true that his "if's" and "when's" and "but's" did not satisfy
+the Executive Committee of the Social-Democratic Party. They hoped for
+a victory of the imperial army and wanted to secure a full and
+unmitigated share of the glory of "His Majesty's" victory. That is why
+they did not appreciate Kautsky's excellent service. So they helped
+the renegade to a cheap martyrdom by removing him from the editorship
+of "Die Neue Zeit." After 1918 it may have dawned upon Scheidemann and
+Ebert how much better Kautsky served the capitalist cause by couching
+his betrayal in words that did not lose him outright all the
+confidence of the proletariat. And Kautsky himself is now exhausting
+every effort to prove to Noske and Scheidemann how cruelly he was
+mistreated and how well he deserves to be taken back to their bosom.
+
+Kautsky's book "Terrorism and Communism" is dictated by hatred of the
+Russian revolution. It is influenced by fear of a like revolution in
+Germany. It is written with tears for the counter-revolutionary
+bourgeoisie and its pseudo-"socialist" henchmen who have been
+sacrificed on the altar of revolution by the proletarian dictatorship
+in Russia. Kautsky prefers to sacrifice the revolution and the
+revolutionists on the altar of "humanitarianism." The author of
+"Ethics and the Materialist Conception of History" knows--must
+know--that humanitarianism under capitalism is capitalist
+humanitarianism. This humanitarianism mints gold out of the bones, the
+blood, the health and the suffering of the whole working class while
+it sheds tears about an individual case of cruelty to one human being.
+This humanitarianism punishes murder with death and beats to death the
+pacifist who protests against war as an act of mass murder. Under the
+cloak of "humanitarian instincts" Kautsky only hides the enemy of the
+proletarian revolution. The question at issue is not _terrorism_. It
+is the _dictatorship_; it is _revolution_ itself. If the Russian
+proletariat was justified in taking over power it was in duty bound to
+use _all_ means necessary to keep it. If it is a crime for them to use
+terrorist means then it was a crime to take a power which they could
+maintain only by terrorist means. And that is really Kautsky's point.
+The crime of the Bolsheviki is that they took power. If Kautsky were a
+mere sentimentalist and yet a revolutionist he could shed tears over
+the unwillingness of the bourgeoisie to give up power without a
+struggle. But not being a revolutionist he condemns the proletariat
+for having taken and maintained power by the only means possible, by
+_force_. Kautsky would much prefer to shed crocodile tears over
+tens of thousands of proletarian revolutionists slaughtered by a
+successful counter-revolution. He scorns the Russian Communists
+because they robbed him of the opportunity to parade his petit
+bourgeois and consequently pro-capitalist "humanitarian" sentiments in
+a pro-revolutionary cloak. But he must parade them at any cost. So he
+parades them without disguise as a mourner for the suppressed
+bourgeoisie in Russia.
+
+Trotsky's answer to Kautsky is not only one side of a controversy. It
+is one of the literary fruits of the revolution itself. It breathes
+the breath of revolution. It conquers the gray scholastic theory of
+the renegade with the irresistible weapon of the revolutionary
+experience of the Russian proletariat. It refuses to shed tears over
+the victims of Gallifet and shows what alone saved the Russian
+revolution from the Russian Gallifets, the Kolchaks, Wrangels, etc.
+
+Trotsky's book is not only an answer to Karl Kautsky; it is an answer
+to the thousands of Kautskys in the socialist movement the world over
+who want the proletariat to drown the memory of seas of proletarian
+blood shed by their treachery in an ocean of tears shed for the
+suppressed bourgeoisie of Russia.
+
+Trotsky's book is one of the most effective weapons in the literary
+arsenal of the revolutionary proletariat in its fight against the
+social traitors for leadership of the proletarian masses.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+By H. N. BRAILSFORD
+
+
+It has been said of the Bolsheviks that they are more interesting than
+Bolshevism. To those who hold to the economic interpretation of
+history that may seem a heresy. None the less, I believe that the
+personality not merely of the leaders but also of their party goes far
+to explain the making and survival of the Russian Revolution. To us in
+the West they seem a wholly foreign type. With Socialist leaders and
+organizations we and our fathers have been familiar for three-quarters
+of a century. There has been no lack of talent and even of genius
+among them. The movement has produced its great theorist in Marx, its
+orator in Jaures, its powerful tacticians like Bebel, and it has
+influenced literature in Morris, Anatole France and Shaw. It bred,
+however, no considerable man of action, and it was left for the
+Russians to do what generations of Western Socialists had spent their
+lives in discussing. There was in this Russian achievement an almost
+barbaric simplicity and directness. Here were man who really believed
+the formulae of our theorists and the resolutions of our Congresses.
+What had become for us a sterilized and almost respectable orthodoxy
+rang to their ears as a trumpet call to action. The older generation
+has found it difficult to pardon their sincerity. The rest of us want
+to understand the miracle.
+
+The real audacity of the Bolsheviks lay in this, that they made a
+proletarian revolution precisely in that country which, of all
+portions of the civilized world, seemed the least prepared for it by
+its economic development. For an agrarian revolt, for the subdivision
+of the soil, even for the overthrow of the old governing class, Russia
+was certainly ready. But any spontaneous revolution, with its
+foundations laid in the masses of the peasantry, would have been
+individualistic and not communistic. The daring of the Bolsheviks lay
+in their belief that the minute minority of the urban working class
+could, by its concentration, its greater intelligence and its relative
+capacity for organization, dominate the inert peasant mass, and give
+to their outbreak of land-hunger the character and form of a
+constructive proletarian revolution. The bitter struggle among Russian
+parties which lasted from March, 1917, down to the defeat of Wrangel
+in November, 1920, was really an internecine competition among them
+for the leadership of the peasants. Which of these several groups
+could enlist their confidence, to the extent of inducing them not
+merely to fight, but to accept the discipline, military and civilian,
+necessary for victory? At the start the Bolsheviks had everything
+against them. They are nearly all townsmen. They talked in terms of a
+foreign and very German doctrine. Few of them, save Lenin, grasped the
+problems of rural life at all. The landed class should at least have
+known the peasant better. Their chief rivals were the Social
+Revolutionaries, a party which from its first beginnings had made a
+cult of the Russian peasant, studied him, idealized him and courted
+him, which even seemed in 1917 to have won him. Many circumstances
+explain the success of the Bolsheviks, who proved once again in
+history the capacity of the town, even when its population is
+relatively minute, for swift and concentrated action. They also had
+the luck to deal with opponents who committed the supreme mistake of
+invoking foreign aid. But none of these advantages would have availed
+without an immense superiority of character. The Slav temperament,
+dreamy, emotional, undisciplined, showed itself at its worst in the
+incorrigible self-indulgence of the more aristocratic "Whites," while
+the "intellectuals" of the moderate Socialist and Liberal groups have
+been ruined for action by their exclusively literary and aesthetic
+education. The Bolsheviks may be a less cultivated group, but, in
+their underground life of conspiracy, they had learned sobriety,
+discipline, obedience, and mutual confidence. Their rigid dogmatic
+Marxist faith gives to them the power of action which belongs only to
+those who believe without criticism or question. Their ability to lead
+depends much less than most Englishmen suppose, on their ruthlessness
+and their readiness to practise the arts of intimidation and
+suppression. Their chief asset is their self-confidence. In every
+emergency they are always sure that they have the only workable plan.
+They stand before the rest of Russia as one man. They never doubt or
+despair, and even when they compromise, they do it with an air of
+truculence. Their survival amid invasion, famine, blockade, and
+economic collapse has been from first to last a triumph of the
+unflinching will and the fanatical faith. They have spurred a lazy and
+demoralized people to notable feats of arms and to still more
+astonishing feats of endurance. To hypnotize a nation in this fashion
+is, perhaps, the most remarkable feat of the human will in modern
+times.
+
+This book is, so far, by far the most typical expression of the
+Bolshevik temperament which the revolution has produced.
+Characteristically it is a polemic, and not a constructive essay. Its
+self-confidence, its dash, even its insolence, are a true expression
+of the movement. Its author bears a world-famous name. Everyone can
+visualize the powerful head, the singularly handsome features, the
+athletic figure of the man. He makes in private talk an impression of
+decision and definiteness. He is not rapid or expansive in speech, for
+everything that he says is calculated and clear cut. One has the sense
+that one is in the presence of abounding yet disciplined vitality. The
+background is an office which by its military order and punctuality
+rebukes the habitual slovenliness of Russia. On the platform his
+manner was much quieter than I expected. He spoke rather slowly, in a
+pleasant tenor voice, walking to and fro across the stage and choosing
+his words, obviously anxious to express his thoughts forcibly but also
+exactly. A flash of wit and a striking phrase came frequently, but the
+manner was emphatically not that of a demagogue. The man, indeed, is a
+natural aristocrat, and his tendency, which Lenin, the aristocrat by
+birth, corrects, is towards military discipline and authoritative
+regimentation.
+
+There is nothing surprising to-day in the note of authority which one
+hears in Trotsky's voice and detects in his writing, for he is the
+chief of a considerable army, which owes everything to his talent for
+organization. It was at Brest-Litovsk that he displayed the audacity
+which is genius. Up to that moment there was little in his career to
+distinguish him from his comrades of the revolutionary under-world--a
+university course cut short by prison, an apprenticeship to agitation
+in Russia, some years of exile spent in Vienna, Paris, and New York,
+the distinction which he shares with Tchitcherin of "sitting" in a
+British prison, a ready wit, a gift of trenchant speech, but as yet
+neither the solid achievement nor the legend which gives confidence.
+Yet this obscure agitator, handicapped in such a task by his Jewish
+birth, faced the diplomatist and soldiers of the Central Empires,
+flushed as they were with victory and the insolence of their kind,
+forced them into public debate, staggered them by talking of first
+principles as though the defeat and impotence of Russia counted for
+nothing, and actually used the negotiations to shout across their
+heads his summons to their own subjects to revolt. He showed in this
+astonishing performance the grace and audacity of a "matador." This
+unique bit of drama revealed the persistent belief of the Bolsheviks
+in the power of the defiant challenge, the magnetic effect of sheer
+will. Since this episode his services to the revolution have been more
+solid but not less brilliant. He had no military knowledge or
+experience, yet he took in hand the almost desperate task of creating
+an army. He has often been compared to Carnot. But, save that both had
+lost officers, there was little in common between the French and the
+Russian armies in the early stages of the two revolutions. The French
+army had not been demoralized by defeat, or wearied by long inaction,
+or sapped by destructive propaganda. Trotsky had to create his Red
+Army from the foundations. He imposed firm discipline, and yet
+contrived to preserve the elan of the revolutionary spirit. Hampered
+by the inconceivable difficulties that arose from ruined railways and
+decayed industries, he none the less contrived to make a military
+machine which overthrew the armies of Kolchak, Denikin and Wrangel,
+with the flower of the old professional officers at their head. As a
+feat of organization under inordinate difficulties, his work ranks as
+the most remarkable performance of the revolution.
+
+It is not the business of a preface to anticipate the argument of a
+book, still less to obtrude personal opinions. Kautsky's labored
+essay, to which this book is the brilliant reply, has been translated
+into English, and is widely known. The case against the possibility of
+political democracy in a capitalist society could hardly be better put
+than in these pages, and the polemic against purely evolutionary
+methods is formidable. The English reader of to-day is aware, however,
+that the Russian revolution has not stood still since Trotsky wrote.
+We have to realize that, even in the view of the Bolsheviks
+themselves, the evolution towards Communism is in Russia only in its
+early stages. The recent compromises imply, at the best, a very long
+period of transition, through controlled capitalist production, to
+Socialism. Experience has proved that catastrophic revolution and the
+seizure of political power do not in themselves avail to make a
+Socialist society. The economic development in that direction has
+actually been retarded, and Russia, under the stress of civil war, has
+retrograded into a primitive village system of production and
+exchange. To every reader's mind the question will be present whether
+the peculiar temperament of the Bolsheviks has led them to
+over-estimate the importance of political power, to underestimate the
+inert resistance of the majority, and to risk too much for the
+illusion of dictating. To that question history has not yet given the
+decisive answer. The daemonic will that made the revolution and
+defended it by achieving the impossible, may yet vindicate itself
+against the dull trend of impersonal forces.
+
+
+
+
+Dictatorship vs. Democracy
+
+
+
+
+Introduction
+
+
+The origin of this book was the learned brochure by Kautsky with the
+same name. My work was begun at the most intense period of the
+struggle with Denikin and Yudenich, and more than once was interrupted
+by events at the front. In the most difficult days, when the first
+chapters were being written, all the attention of Soviet Russia was
+concentrated on purely military problems. We were obliged to defend
+first of all the very possibility of Socialist economic
+reconstruction. We could busy ourselves little with industry, further
+than was necessary to maintain the front. We were obliged to expose
+Kautsky's economic slanders mainly by analogy with his political
+slanders. The monstrous assertions of Kautsky--to the effect that the
+Russian workers were incapable of labor discipline and economic
+self-control--could, at the beginning of this work, nearly a year ago,
+be combatted chiefly by pointing to the high state of discipline and
+heroism in battle of the Russian workers at the front created by the
+civil war. That experience was more than enough to explode these
+bourgeois slanders. But now a few months have gone by, and we can turn
+to facts and conclusions drawn directly from the economic life of
+Soviet Russia.
+
+As soon as the military pressure relaxed after the defeat of Kolchak
+and Yudenich and the infliction of decisive blows on Denikin, after
+the conclusion of peace with Esthonia and the beginning of
+negotiations with Lithuania and Poland, the whole country turned its
+mind to things economic. And this one fact, of a swift and
+concentrated transference of attention and energy from one set of
+problems to another--very different, but requiring not less
+sacrifice--is incontrovertible evidence of the mighty vigor of the
+Soviet order. In spite of political tortures, physical sufferings and
+horrors, the laboring masses are infinitely distant from political
+decomposition, from moral collapse, or from apathy. Thanks to a regime
+which, though it has inflicted great hardships upon them, has given
+their life a purpose and a high goal, they preserve an extraordinary
+moral stubbornness and ability unexampled in history, and concentrate
+their attention and will on collective problems. To-day, in all
+branches of industry, there is going on an energetic struggle for the
+establishment of strict labor discipline, and for the increase of the
+productivity of labor. The party organizations, the trade unions, the
+factory and workshop administrative committees, rival one another in
+this respect, with the undivided support of the public opinion of the
+working class as a whole. Factory after factory willingly, by
+resolution at its general meeting, increases its working day.
+Petrograd and Moscow set the example, and the provinces emulate
+Petrograd. Communist Saturdays and Sundays--that is to say, voluntary
+and unpaid work in hours appointed for rest--spread ever wider and
+wider, drawing into their reach many, many hundreds of thousands of
+working men and women. The industry and productivity of labor at the
+Communist Saturdays and Sundays, according to the report of experts
+and the evidence of figures, is of a remarkably high standard.
+
+Voluntary mobilizations for labor problems in the party and in the
+Young Communist League are carried out with just as much enthusiasm as
+hitherto for military tasks. Voluntarism supplements and gives life to
+universal labor service. The Committees for universal labor service
+recently set up have spread all over the country. The attraction of
+the population to work on a mass scale (clearing snow from the roads,
+repairing railway lines, cutting timber, chopping and bringing up of
+wood to the towns, the simplest building operations, the cutting of
+slate and of peat) become more and more widespread and organized every
+day. The ever-increasing employment of military formations on the
+labor front would be quite impossible in the absence of elevated
+enthusiasm for labor.
+
+True, we live in the midst of a very difficult period of economic
+depression--exhausted, poverty-stricken, and hungry. But this is no
+argument against the Soviet regime. All periods of transition have
+been characterized by just such tragic features. Every class society
+(serf, feudal, capitalist), having exhausted its vitality, does not
+simply leave the arena, but is violently swept off by an intense
+struggle, which immediately brings to its participants even greater
+privations and sufferings than those against which they rose.
+
+The transition from feudal economy to bourgeois society--a step of
+gigantic importance from the point of view of progress--gave us a
+terrifying list of martyrs. However the masses of serfs suffered under
+feudalism, however difficult it has been, and is, for the proletariat
+to live under capitalism, never have the sufferings of the workers
+reached such a pitch as at the epochs when the old feudal order was
+being violently shattered, and was yielding place to the new. The
+French Revolution of the eighteenth century, which attained its
+titanic dimensions under the pressure of the masses exhausted with
+suffering, itself deepened and rendered more acute their misfortunes
+for a prolonged period and to an extraordinary extent. Can it be
+otherwise?
+
+Palace revolutions, which end merely by personal reshufflings at the
+top, can take place in a short space of time, having practically no
+effect on the economic life of the country. Quite another matter are
+revolutions which drag into their whirlpool millions of workers.
+Whatever be the form of society, it rests on the foundation of labor.
+Dragging the mass of the people away from labor, drawing them for a
+prolonged period into the struggle, thereby destroying their
+connection with production, the revolution in all these ways strikes
+deadly blows at economic life, and inevitably lowers the standard
+which it found at its birth. The more perfect the revolution, the
+greater are the masses it draws in; and the longer it is prolonged,
+the greater is the destruction it achieves in the apparatus of
+production, and the more terrible inroads does it make upon public
+resources. From this there follows merely the conclusion which did not
+require proof--that a civil war is harmful to economic life. But to
+lay this at the door of the Soviet economic system is like accusing a
+new-born human being of the birth-pangs of the mother who brought him
+into the world. The problem is to make a civil war a short one; and
+this is attained only by resoluteness in action. But it is just
+against revolutionary resoluteness that Kautsky's whole book is
+directed.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+Since the time that the book under examination appeared, not only in
+Russia, but throughout the world--and first of all in Europe--the
+greatest events have taken place, or processes of great importance
+have developed, undermining the last buttresses of Kautskianism.
+
+In Germany, the civil war has been adopting an ever fiercer character.
+The external strength in organization of the old party and trade union
+democracy of the working class has not only not created conditions for
+a more peaceful and "humane" transition to Socialism--as follows from
+the present theory of Kautsky--but, on the contrary, has served as one
+of the principal reasons for the long-drawn-out character of the
+struggle, and its constantly growing ferocity. The more German
+Social-Democracy became a conservative, retarding force, the more
+energy, lives, and blood have had to be spent by the German
+proletariat, devoted to it, in a series of systematic attacks on the
+foundation of bourgeois society, in order, in the process of the
+struggle itself, to create an actually revolutionary organization,
+capable of guiding the proletariat to final victory. The conspiracy of
+the German generals, their fleeting seizure of power, and the bloody
+events which followed, have again shown what a worthless and wretched
+masquerade is so-called democracy, during the collapse of imperialism
+and a civil war. This democracy that has outlived itself has not
+decided one question, has not reconciled one contradiction, has not
+healed one wound, has not warded off risings either of the Right or of
+the Left; it is helpless, worthless, fraudulent, and serves only to
+confuse the backward sections of the people, especially the lower
+middle-classes.
+
+The hope expressed by Kautsky, in the conclusion of his book, that the
+Western countries, the "old democracies" of France and England--crowned
+as they are with victory--will afford us a picture of a healthy,
+normal, peaceful, truly Kautskian development of Socialism, is one
+of the most puerile illusions possible. The so-called Republican
+democracy of victorious France, at the present moment, is nothing but
+the most reactionary, grasping government that has ever existed in the
+world. Its internal policy is built upon fear, greed, and violence, in
+just as great a measure as its external policy. On the other hand, the
+French proletariat, misled more than any other class has ever been
+misled, is more and more entering on the path of direct action. The
+repressions which the government of the Republic has hurled upon
+the General Confederation of Labor show that even syndicalist
+Kautskianism--_i.e._, hypocritical compromise--has no legal place
+within the framework of bourgeois democracy. The revolutionizing of
+the masses, the growing ferocity of the propertied classes, and the
+disintegration of intermediate groups--three parallel processes which
+determine the character and herald the coming of a cruel civil
+war--have been going on before our eyes in full blast during the last
+few months in France.
+
+In Great Britain, events, different in form, are moving along the
+self-same fundamental road. In that country, the ruling class of which
+is oppressing and plundering the whole world more than ever before,
+the formulae of democracy have lost their meaning even as weapons of
+parliamentary swindling. The specialist best qualified in this sphere,
+Lloyd George, appeals now not to democracy, but to a union of
+Conservative and Liberal property holders against the working class.
+In his arguments there remains not a trace of the vague democracy of
+the "Marxist" Kautsky. Lloyd George stands on the ground of class
+realities, and for this very reason speaks in the language of civil
+war. The British working class, with that ponderous learning by
+experience which is its distinguishing feature, is approaching that
+stage of its struggle before which the most heroic pages of Chartism
+will fade, just as the Paris Commune will grow pale before the coming
+victorious revolt of the French proletariat.
+
+Precisely because historical events have, with stern energy, been
+developing in these last months their revolutionary logic, the author
+of this present work asks himself: Does it still require to be
+published? Is it still necessary to confute Kautsky theoretically? Is
+there still theoretical necessity to justify revolutionary terrorism?
+
+Unfortunately, yes. Ideology, by its very essence, plays in the
+Socialist movement an enormous part. Even for practical England the
+period has arrived when the working class must exhibit an
+ever-increasing demand for a theoretical statement of its experiences
+and its problems. On the other hand, even the proletarian psychology
+includes in itself a terrible inertia of conservatism--the more that,
+in the present case, there is a question of nothing less than the
+traditional ideology of the parties of the Second International which
+first roused the proletariat, and recently were so powerful. After the
+collapse of official social-patriotism (Scheidemann, Victor Adler,
+Renaudel, Vandervelde, Henderson, Plekhanov, etc.), international
+Kautskianism (the staff of the German Independents, Friedrich Adler,
+Longuet, a considerable section of the Italians, the British
+Independent Labor Party, the Martov group, etc.) has become the chief
+political factor on which the unstable equilibrium of capitalist
+society depends. It may be said that the will of the working masses of
+the whole of the civilized world, directly influenced by the course of
+events, is at the present moment incomparably more revolutionary than
+their consciousness, which is still dominated by the prejudices of
+parliamentarism and compromise. The struggle for the dictatorship of
+the working class means, at the present moment, an embittered struggle
+with Kautskianism within the working class. The lies and prejudices of
+the policy of compromise, still poisoning the atmosphere even in
+parties tending towards the Third International, must be thrown aside.
+This book must serve the ends of an irreconcilable struggle against
+the cowardice, half-measures, and hypocrisy of Kautskianism in all
+countries.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+P.S.--To-day (May, 1920) the clouds have again gathered over Soviet
+Russia. Bourgeois Poland, by its attack on the Ukraine, has opened the
+new offensive of world imperialism against the Soviet Republic. The
+gigantic perils again growing up before the revolution, and the great
+sacrifices again imposed on the laboring masses by the war, are once
+again pushing Russian Kautskianism on to the path of open opposition
+to the Soviet Government--_i.e._, in reality, on to the path of
+assistance to the world murderers of Soviet Russia. It is the fate of
+Kautskianism to try to help the proletarian revolution when it is in
+satisfactory circumstances, and to raise all kinds of obstacles in its
+way when it is particularly in need of help. Kautsky has more than
+once foretold our destruction, which must serve as the best proof of
+his, Kautsky's, theoretical rectitude. In his fall, this "successor of
+Marx" has reached a stage at which his sole serious political
+programme consists in speculations on the collapse of the proletarian
+dictatorship.
+
+He will be once again mistaken. The destruction of bourgeois Poland by
+the Red Army, guided by Communist working men, will appear as a new
+manifestation of the power of the proletarian dictatorship, and will
+thereby inflict a crushing blow on bourgeois scepticism (Kautskianism)
+in the working class movement. In spite of mad confusion of external
+forms, watchwords, and appearances, history has extremely simplified
+the fundamental meaning of its own process, reducing it to a struggle
+of imperialism against Communism. Pilsudsky is fighting, not only for
+the lands of the Polish magnates in the Ukraine and in White Russia,
+not only for capitalist property and for the Catholic Church, but also
+for parliamentary democracy and for evolutionary Socialism, for the
+Second International, and for the right of Kautsky to remain a
+critical hanger-on of the bourgeoisie. We are fighting for the
+Communist International, and for the international proletarian
+revolution. The stakes are great on either side. The struggle will be
+obstinate and painful. We hope for the victory, for we have every
+historical right to it.
+
+L. TROTSKY.
+
+Moscow, May 29, 1920.
+
+
+
+
+Dictatorship vs. Democracy
+
+_A Reply to Karl Kautsky_
+
+_By_ LEON TROTSKY
+
+
+
+
+1
+
+THE BALANCE OF POWER
+
+
+The argument which is repeated again and again in criticisms of the
+Soviet system in Russia, and particularly in criticisms of
+revolutionary attempts to set up a similar structure in other
+countries, is the argument based on the balance of power. The Soviet
+regime in Russia is utopian--"because it does not correspond to the
+balance of power." Backward Russia cannot put objects before itself
+which would be appropriate to advanced Germany. And for the
+proletariat of Germany it would be madness to take political power
+into its own hands, as this "at the present moment" would disturb the
+balance of power. The League of Nations is imperfect, but still
+corresponds to the balance of power. The struggle for the overthrow of
+imperialist supremacy is utopian--the balance of power only requires a
+revision of the Versailles Treaty. When Longuet hobbled after Wilson
+this took place, not because of the political decomposition of
+Longuet, but in honor of the law of the balance of power. The Austrian
+president, Seitz, and the chancellor, Renner, must, in the opinion of
+Friedrich Adler, exercise their bourgeois impotence at the central
+posts of the bourgeois republic, for otherwise the balance of power
+would be infringed. Two years before the world war, Karl Renner, then
+not a chancellor, but a "Marxist" advocate of opportunism, explained
+to me that the regime of June 3--that is, the union of landlords and
+capitalists crowned by the monarchy--must inevitably maintain itself
+in Russia during a whole historical period, as it answered to the
+balance of power.
+
+What is this balance of power after all--that sacramental formula
+which is to define, direct, and explain the whole course of history,
+wholesale and retail? Why exactly is it that the formula of the
+balance of power, in the mouth of Kautsky and his present school,
+inevitably appears as a justification of indecision, stagnation,
+cowardice and treachery?
+
+By the balance of power they understand everything you please: the
+level of production attained, the degree of differentiation of
+classes, the number of organized workers, the total funds at the
+disposal of the trade unions, sometimes the results of the last
+parliamentary elections, frequently the degree of readiness for
+compromise on the part of the ministry, or the degree of effrontery of
+the financial oligarchy. Most frequently, it means that summary
+political impression which exists in the mind of a half-blind pedant,
+or a so-called realist politician, who, though he has absorbed the
+phraseology of Marxism, in reality is guided by the most shallow
+manoeuvres, bourgeois prejudices, and parliamentary "tactics." After
+a whispered conversation with the director of the police department,
+an Austrian Social-Democratic politician in the good, and not so far
+off, old times always knew exactly whether the balance of power
+permitted a peaceful street demonstration in Vienna on May Day. In the
+case of the Eberts, Scheidemanns and Davids, the balance of power was,
+not so very long ago, calculated exactly by the number of fingers
+which were extended to them at their meeting in the Reichstag with
+Bethmann-Hollweg, or with Ludendorff himself.
+
+According to Friedrich Adler, the establishment of a Soviet
+dictatorship in Austria would be a fatal infraction of the balance of
+power; the Entente would condemn Austria to starvation. In proof of
+this, Friedrich Adler, at the July congress of Soviets, pointed to
+Hungary, where at that time the Hungarian Renners had not yet, with
+the help of the Hungarian Adlers, overthrown the dictatorship of the
+Soviets. At the first glance, it might really seem that Friedrich
+Adler was right in the case of Hungary. The proletarian dictatorship
+was overthrown there soon afterwards, and its place was filled by the
+ministry of the reactionary Friedrich. But it is quite justifiable to
+ask: Did the latter correspond to the balance of power? At all events,
+Friedrich and his Huszar might not even temporarily have seized power
+had it not been for the Roumanian army. Hence, it is clear that, when
+discussing the fate of the Soviet Government in Hungary, it is
+necessary to take account of the "balance of power," at all events in
+two countries--in Hungary itself, and in its neighbor, Roumania. But
+it is not difficult to grasp that we cannot stop at this. If the
+dictatorship of the Soviets had been set up in Austria before the
+maturing of the Hungarian crisis, the overthrow of the Soviet regime
+in Budapest would have been an infinitely more difficult task.
+Consequently, we have to include Austria also, together with the
+treacherous policy of Friedrich Adler, in that balance of power which
+determined the temporary fall of the Soviet Government in Hungary.
+
+Friedrich Adler himself, however, seeks the key to the balance of
+power, not in Russia and Hungary, but in the West, in the countries of
+Clemenceau and Lloyd George. They have in their hands bread and
+coal--and really bread and coal, especially in our time, are just as
+foremost factors in the mechanism of the balance of power as cannon in
+the constitution of Lassalle. Brought down from the heights, Adler's
+idea consists, consequently, in this: that the Austrian proletariat
+must not seize power until such time, as it is permitted to do so by
+Clemenceau (or Millerand--_i.e._, a Clemenceau of the second
+order).
+
+However, even here it is permissible to ask: Does the policy of
+Clemenceau himself really correspond to the balance of power? At the
+first glance it may appear that it corresponds well enough, and, if
+it cannot be proved, it is, at least, guaranteed by Clemenceau's
+gendarmes, who break up working-class meetings, and arrest and
+shoot Communists. But here we cannot but remember that the
+terrorist measures of the Soviet Government--that is, the same
+searches, arrests, and executions, only directed against the
+counter-revolutionaries--are considered by some people as a proof that
+the Soviet Government does _not_ correspond to the balance of power.
+In vain would we, however, begin to seek in our time, anywhere in the
+world, a regime which, to preserve itself, did not have recourse to
+measures of stern mass repression. This means that hostile class
+forces, having broken through the framework of every kind of
+law--including that of "democracy"--are striving to find their new
+balance by means of a merciless struggle.
+
+When the Soviet system was being instituted in Russia, not only the
+capitalist politicians, but also the Socialist opportunists of all
+countries proclaimed it an insolent challenge to the balance of
+forces. On this score, there was no quarrel between Kautsky, the
+Austrian Count Czernin, and the Bulgarian Premier, Radoslavov. Since
+that time, the Austro-Hungarian and German monarchies have collapsed,
+and the most powerful militarism in the world has fallen into dust.
+The Soviet regime has held out. The victorious countries of the
+Entente have mobilized and hurled against it all they could. The
+Soviet Government has stood firm. Had Kautsky, Friedrich Adler, and
+Otto Bauer been told that the system of the dictatorship of the
+proletariat would hold out in Russia--first against the attack of
+German militarism, and then in a ceaseless war with the militarism of
+the Entente countries--the sages of the Second International would
+have considered such a prophecy a laughable misunderstanding of the
+"balance of power."
+
+The balance of political power at any given moment is determined under
+the influence of fundamental and secondary factors of differing
+degrees of effectiveness, and only in its most fundamental quality is
+it determined by the stage of the development of production. The
+social structure of a people is extraordinarily behind the development
+of its productive forces. The lower middle-classes, and particularly
+the peasantry, retain their existence long after their economic
+methods have been made obsolete, and have been condemned, by the
+technical development of the productive powers of society. The
+consciousness of the masses, in its turn, is extraordinarily behind
+the development of their social relations, the consciousness of the
+old Socialist parties is a whole epoch behind the state of mind of the
+masses, and the consciousness of the old parliamentary and trade union
+leaders, more reactionary than the consciousness of their party,
+represents a petrified mass which history has been unable hitherto
+either to digest or reject. In the parliamentary epoch, during the
+period of stability of social relations, the psychological
+factor--without great error--was the foundation upon which all current
+calculations were based. It was considered that parliamentary
+elections reflected the balance of power with sufficient exactness.
+The imperialist war, which upset all bourgeois society, displayed the
+complete uselessness of the old criteria. The latter completely
+ignored those profound historical factors which had gradually been
+accumulating in the preceding period, and have now, all at once,
+appeared on the surface, and have begun to determine the course of
+history.
+
+The political worshippers of routine, incapable of surveying the
+historical process in its complexity, in its internal clashes and
+contradictions, imagined to themselves that history was preparing the
+way for the Socialist order simultaneously and systematically on all
+sides, so that concentration of production and the development of a
+Communist morality in the producer and the consumer mature
+simultaneously with the electric plough and a parliamentary majority.
+Hence the purely mechanical attitude towards parliamentarism, which,
+in the eyes of the majority of the statesmen of the Second
+International, indicated the degree to which society was prepared for
+Socialism as accurately as the manometer indicates the pressure of
+steam. Yet there is nothing more senseless than this mechanized
+representation of the development of social relations.
+
+If, beginning with the productive bases of society, we ascend the
+stages of the superstructure--classes, the State, laws, parties, and
+so on--it may be established that the weight of each additional part
+of the superstructure is not simply to be added to, but in many cases
+to be multiplied by, the weight of all the preceding stages. As a
+result, the political consciousness of groups which long imagined
+themselves to be among the most advanced, displays itself, at a moment
+of change, as a colossal obstacle in the path of historical
+development. To-day it is quite beyond doubt that the parties of the
+Second International, standing at the head of the proletariat, which
+dared not, could not, and would not take power into their hands at the
+most critical moment of human history, and which led the proletariat
+along the road of mutual destruction in the interests of imperialism,
+proved a _decisive factor_ of the counter-revolution.
+
+The great forces of production--that shock factor in historical
+development--were choked in those obsolete institutions of the
+superstructure (private property and the national State) in which they
+found themselves locked by all preceding development. Engendered by
+capitalism, the forces of production were knocking at all the walls of
+the bourgeois national State, demanding their emancipation by means of
+the Socialist organization of economic life on a world scale. The
+stagnation of social groupings, the stagnation of political forces,
+which proved themselves incapable of destroying the old class
+groupings, the stagnation, stupidity and treachery of the directing
+Socialist parties, which had assumed to themselves in reality the
+defense of bourgeois society--all these factors led to an elemental
+revolt of the forces of production, in the shape of the imperialist
+war. Human technical skill, the most revolutionary factor in history,
+arose with the might accumulated during scores of years against the
+disgusting conservatism and criminal stupidity of the Scheidemanns,
+Kautskies, Renaudels, Vanderveldes and Longuets, and, by means of its
+howitzers, machine-guns, dreadnoughts and aeroplanes, it began a
+furious pogrom of human culture.
+
+In this way the cause of the misfortunes at present experienced by
+humanity is precisely that the development of the technical command of
+men over nature has _long ago_ grown ripe for the socialization
+of economic life. The proletariat has occupied a place in production
+which completely guarantees its dictatorship, while the most
+intelligent forces in history--the parties and their leaders--have
+been discovered to be still wholly under the yoke of the old
+prejudices, and only fostered a lack of faith among the masses in
+their own power. In quite recent years Kautsky used to understand
+this. "The proletariat at the present time has grown so strong," wrote
+Kautsky in his pamphlet, _The Path to Power_, "that it can calmly
+await the coming war. There can be no more talk of a _premature
+revolution_, now that the proletariat has drawn from the present
+structure of the State such strength as could be drawn therefrom, and
+now that its reconstruction has become a condition of the
+proletariat's further progress." From the moment that the development
+of productive forces, outgrowing the framework of the bourgeois
+national State, drew mankind into an epoch of crises and convulsions,
+the consciousness of the masses was shaken by dread shocks out of the
+comparative equilibrium of the preceding epoch. The routine and
+stagnation of its mode of living, the hypnotic suggestion of peaceful
+legality, had already ceased to dominate the proletariat. But it had
+not yet stepped, consciously and courageously, on to the path of open
+revolutionary struggle. It wavered, passing through the last moment of
+unstable equilibrium. At such a moment of psychological change, the
+part played by the summit--the State, on the one hand, and the
+revolutionary Party on the other--acquires a colossal importance. A
+determined push from left or right is sufficient to move the
+proletariat, for a certain period, to one or the other side. We saw
+this in 1914, when, under the united pressure of imperialist
+governments and Socialist patriotic parties, the working class was all
+at once thrown out of its equilibrium and hurled on to the path of
+imperialism. We have since seen how the experience of the war, the
+contrasts between its results and its first objects, is shaking the
+masses in a revolutionary sense, making them more and more capable of
+an open revolt against capitalism. In such conditions, the presence of
+a revolutionary party, which renders to itself a clear account of the
+motive forces of the present epoch, and understands the exceptional
+role amongst them of a revolutionary class; which knows its
+inexhaustible, but unrevealed, powers; which believes in that class
+and believes in itself; which knows the power of revolutionary method
+in an epoch of instability of all social relations; which is ready to
+employ that method and carry it through to the end--the presence of
+such a party represents a factor of incalculable historical
+importance.
+
+And, on the other hand, the Socialist party, enjoying traditional
+influence, which does _not_ render itself an account of what is going
+on around it, which does _not_ understand the revolutionary situation,
+and, therefore, finds no key to it, which does _not_ believe in either
+the proletariat or itself--such a party in our time is the most
+mischievous stumbling block in history, and a source of confusion and
+inevitable chaos.
+
+Such is now the role of Kautsky and his sympathizers. They teach the
+proletariat not to believe in itself, but to believe its reflection in
+the crooked mirror of democracy which has been shattered by the
+jack-boot of militarism into a thousand fragments. The decisive factor
+in the revolutionary policy of the working class must be, in their
+view, not the international situation, not the actual collapse of
+capitalism, not that social collapse which is generated thereby, not
+that concrete necessity of the supremacy of the working class for
+which the cry arises from the smoking ruins of capitalist
+civilization--not all this must determine the policy of the
+revolutionary party of the proletariat--but that counting of votes
+which is carried out by the capitalist tellers of parliamentarism.
+Only a few years ago, we repeat, Kautsky seemed to understand the real
+inner meaning of the problem of revolution. "Yes, the proletariat
+represents the sole revolutionary class of the nation," wrote Kautsky
+in his pamphlet, _The Path to Power_. It follows that every collapse
+of the capitalist order, whether it be of a moral, financial, or
+military character, implies the bankruptcy of all the bourgeois
+parties responsible for it, and signifies that the sole way out of the
+blind alley is the establishment of the power of the _proletariat_.
+And to-day the party of prostration and cowardice, the party of
+Kautsky, says to the working class: "The question is not whether you
+to-day are the sole creative force in history; whether you are capable
+of throwing aside that ruling band of robbers into which the
+propertied classes have developed; the question is not whether anyone
+else can accomplish this task on your behalf; the question is not
+whether history allows you any postponement (for the present condition
+of bloody chaos threatens to bury you yourself, in the near future,
+under the last ruins of capitalism). The problem is for the ruling
+imperialist bandits to succeed--yesterday or to-day--to deceive,
+violate, and swindle public opinion, by collecting 51 per cent. of the
+votes against your 49. Perish the world, but long live the
+parliamentary majority!"
+
+
+
+
+2
+
+THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT
+
+
+"Marx and Engels hammered out the idea of the dictatorship of the
+proletariat, which Engels stubbornly defended in 1891, shortly before
+his death--the idea that the political autocracy of the proletariat is
+the sole form in which it can realize its control of the state."
+
+That is what Kautsky wrote about ten years ago. The sole form of power
+for the proletariat he considered to be not a Socialist majority in a
+democratic parliament, but the political autocracy of the proletariat,
+its dictatorship. And it is quite clear that, if our problem is the
+abolition of private property in the means of production, the only
+road to its solution lies through the concentration of State power in
+its entirety in the hands of the proletariat, and the setting up for
+the transitional period of an exceptional regime--a regime in which
+the ruling class is guided, not by general principles calculated for a
+prolonged period, but by considerations of revolutionary policy.
+
+The dictatorship is necessary because it is a case, not of partial
+changes, but of the very existence of the bourgeoisie. No agreement is
+possible on this ground. Only force can be the deciding factor. The
+dictatorship of the proletariat does not exclude, of course, either
+separate agreements, or considerable concessions, especially in
+connection with the lower middle-class and the peasantry. But the
+proletariat can only conclude these agreements after having gained
+possession of the apparatus of power, and having guaranteed to itself
+the possibility of independently deciding on which points to yield and
+on which to stand firm, in the interests of the general Socialist
+task.
+
+Kautsky now repudiates the dictatorship of the proletariat at the very
+outset, as the "tyranny of the minority over the majority." That is,
+he discerns in the revolutionary regime of the proletariat those very
+features by which the honest Socialists of all countries invariably
+describe the dictatorship of the exploiters, albeit masked by the
+forms of democracy.
+
+Abandoning the idea of a revolutionary dictatorship, Kautsky
+transforms the question of the conquest of power by the proletariat
+into a question of the conquest of a majority of votes by the
+Social-Democratic Party in one of the electoral campaigns of the
+future. Universal suffrage, according to the legal fiction of
+parliamentarism, expresses the will of the citizens of all classes in
+the nation, and, consequently, gives a possibility of attracting a
+majority to the side of Socialism. While the theoretical possibility
+has not been realized, the Socialist minority must submit to the
+bourgeois majority. This fetishism of the parliamentary majority
+represents a brutal repudiation, not only of the dictatorship of the
+proletariat, but of Marxism and of the revolution altogether. If, in
+principle, we are to subordinate Socialist policy to the parliamentary
+mystery of majority and minority, it follows that, in countries where
+formal democracy prevails, there is no place at all for the
+revolutionary struggle. If the majority elected on the basis of
+universal suffrage in Switzerland pass draconian legislation against
+strikers, or if the executive elected by the will of a formal majority
+in Northern America shoots workers, have the Swiss and American
+workers the "right" of protest by organizing a general strike?
+Obviously, no. The political strike is a form of extra-parliamentary
+pressure on the "national will," as it has expressed itself through
+universal suffrage. True, Kautsky himself, apparently, is ashamed to
+go as far as the logic of his new position demands. Bound by some sort
+of remnant of the past, he is obliged to acknowledge the possibility
+of correcting universal suffrage by action. Parliamentary elections,
+at all events in principle, never took the place, in the eyes of the
+Social-Democrats, of the real class struggle, of its conflicts,
+repulses, attacks, revolts; they were considered merely as a
+contributory fact in this struggle, playing a greater part at one
+period, a smaller at another, and no part at all in the period of
+dictatorship.
+
+In 1891, that is, not long before his death, Engels, as we just heard,
+obstinately defended the dictatorship of the proletariat as the only
+possible form of its control of the State. Kautsky himself more than
+once repeated this definition. Hence, by the way, we can see what an
+unworthy forgery is Kautsky's present attempt to throw back the
+dictatorship of the proletariat at us as a purely Russian invention.
+
+Who aims at the end cannot reject the means. The struggle must be
+carried on with such intensity as actually to guarantee the supremacy
+of the proletariat. If the Socialist revolution requires a
+dictatorship--"the sole form in which the proletariat can achieve
+control of the State"--it follows that the dictatorship must be
+guaranteed at all cost.
+
+To write a pamphlet about dictatorship one needs an ink-pot and a pile
+of paper, and possibly, in addition, a certain number of ideas in
+one's head. But in order to establish and consolidate the
+dictatorship, one has to prevent the bourgeoisie from undermining the
+State power of the proletariat. Kautsky apparently thinks that this
+can be achieved by tearful pamphlets. But his own experience ought to
+have shown him that it is not sufficient to have lost all influence
+with the proletariat, to acquire influence with the bourgeoisie.
+
+It is only possible to safeguard the supremacy of the working class by
+forcing the bourgeoisie accustomed to rule, to realize that it is too
+dangerous an undertaking for it to revolt against the dictatorship of
+the proletariat, to undermine it by conspiracies, sabotage,
+insurrections, or the calling in of foreign troops. The bourgeoisie,
+hurled from power, must be forced to obey. In what way? The priests
+used to terrify the people with future penalties. We have no such
+resources at our disposal. But even the priests' hell never stood
+alone, but was always bracketed with the material fire of the Holy
+Inquisition, and with the scorpions of the democratic State. Is it
+possible that Kautsky is leaning to the idea that the bourgeoisie can
+be held down with the help of the categorical imperative, which in his
+last writings plays the part of the Holy Ghost? We, on our part, can
+only promise him our material assistance if he decides to equip a
+Kantian-humanitarian mission to the realms of Denikin and Kolchak. At
+all events, there he would have the possibility of convincing himself
+that the counter-revolutionaries are not naturally devoid of
+character, and that, thanks to their six years' existence in the fire
+and smoke of war, their character has managed to become thoroughly
+hardened. Every White Guard has long ago acquired the simple truth
+that it is easier to hang a Communist to the branch of a tree than to
+convert him with a book of Kautsky's. These gentlemen have no
+superstitious fear, either of the principles of democracy or of the
+flames of hell--the more so because the priests of the church and of
+official learning act in collusion with them, and pour their combined
+thunders exclusively on the heads of the Bolsheviks. The Russian White
+Guards resemble the German and all other White Guards in this
+respect--that they cannot be convinced or shamed, but only terrorized
+or crushed.
+
+The man who repudiates terrorism in principle--_i.e._, repudiates
+measures of suppression and intimidation towards determined and armed
+counter-revolution, must reject all idea of the political supremacy of
+the working class and its revolutionary dictatorship. The man who
+repudiates the dictatorship of the proletariat repudiates the
+Socialist revolution, and digs the grave of Socialism.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the present time, Kautsky has no theory of the social revolution.
+Every time he tries to generalize his slanders against the revolution
+and the dictatorship of the proletariat, he produces merely a
+rechauffe of the prejudices of Jauresism and Bernsteinism.
+
+"The revolution of 1789," writes Kautsky, "itself put an end to the
+most important causes which gave it its harsh and violent character,
+and prepared the way for milder forms of the future revolution." (Page
+140.)[2] Let us admit this, though to do so we have to forget the June
+days of 1848 and the horrors of the suppression of the Commune. Let us
+admit that the great revolution of the eighteenth century, which by
+measures of merciless terror destroyed the rule of absolutism, of
+feudalism, and of clericalism, really prepared the way for more
+peaceful and milder solutions of social problems. But, even if we
+admit this purely liberal standpoint, even here our accuser will prove
+to be completely in the wrong; for the Russian Revolution, which
+culminated in the dictatorship of the proletariat, began with just
+that work which was done in France at the end of the eighteenth
+century. Our forefathers, in centuries gone by, did not take the
+trouble to prepare the democratic way--by means of revolutionary
+terrorism--for milder manners in our revolution. The ethical mandarin,
+Kautsky, ought to take these circumstances into account, and accuse
+our forefathers, not us.
+
+          [2] Translator's Note--For convenience sake, the references
+          throughout have been altered to fall in the English
+          translation of Kautsky's book. Mr. Kerridge's translation,
+          however, has not been adhered to.
+
+Kautsky, however, seems to make a little concession in this direction.
+"True," he says, "no man of insight could doubt that a military
+monarchy like the German, the Austrian, or the Russian could be
+overthrown only by violent methods. But in this connection there was
+always less thought" (amongst whom?), "of the bloody use of arms, and
+more of the working class weapon peculiar to the proletariat--the
+mass strike. And that a considerable portion of the proletariat,
+after seizing power, would again--as at the end of the eighteenth
+century--give vent to its rage and revenge in bloodshed could not be
+expected. This would have meant a complete negation of all progress."
+(Page 147.)
+
+As we see, the war and a series of revolutions were required to enable
+us to get a proper view of what was going on in reality in the heads of
+some of our most learned theoreticians. It turns out that Kautsky did
+not think that a Romanoff or a Hohenzollern could be put away by means
+of conversations; but at the same time he seriously imagined that a
+military monarchy could be overthrown by a general strike--_i.e._, by
+a peaceful demonstration of folded arms. In spite of the Russian
+revolution, and the world discussion of this question, Kautsky, it
+turns out, retains the anarcho-reformist view of the general strike.
+We might point out to him that, in the pages of its own journal, the
+_Neue Zeit_, it was explained twelve years ago that the general strike
+is only a mobilization of the proletariat and its setting up against
+its enemy, the State; but that the strike in itself cannot produce
+the solution of the problem, because it exhausts the forces of the
+proletariat sooner than those of its enemies, and this, sooner or
+later, forces the workers to return to the factories. The general
+strike acquires a decisive importance only as a preliminary to a
+conflict between the proletariat and the armed forces of the
+opposition--_i.e._, to the open revolutionary rising of the workers.
+Only by breaking the will of the armies thrown against it can the
+revolutionary class solve the problem of power--the root problem of
+every revolution. The general strike produces the mobilization of both
+sides, and gives the first serious estimate of the powers of resistance
+of the counter-revolution. But only in the further stages of the
+struggle, after the transition to the path of armed insurrection, can
+that bloody price be fixed which the revolutionary class has to pay for
+power. But that it will have to pay with blood, that, in the struggle
+for the conquest of power and for its consolidation, the proletariat
+will have not only to be killed, but also to kill--of this no serious
+revolutionary ever had any doubt. To announce that the existence of a
+determined life-and-death struggle between the proletariat and the
+bourgeoisie "is a complete negation of all progress," means simply that
+the heads of some of our most reverend theoreticians take the form of a
+camera-obscura, in which objects are represented upside down.
+
+But, even when applied to more advanced and cultured countries with
+established democratic traditions, there is absolutely no proof of
+the justice of Kautsky's historical argument. As a matter of fact, the
+argument itself is not new. Once upon a time the Revisionists gave it a
+character more based on principle. They strove to prove that the growth
+of proletarian organizations under democratic conditions guaranteed the
+gradual and imperceptible--reformist and evolutionary--transition to
+Socialist society--without general strikes and risings, without the
+dictatorship of the proletariat.
+
+Kautsky, at that culminating period of his activity, showed that,
+in spite of the forms of democracy, the class contradictions of
+capitalist society grew deeper, and that this process must inevitably
+lead to a revolution and the conquest of power by the proletariat.
+
+No one, of course, attempted to reckon up beforehand the number of
+victims that will be called for by the revolutionary insurrection of
+the proletariat, and by the regime of its dictatorship. But it was
+clear to all that the number of victims will vary with the strength of
+resistance of the propertied classes. If Kautsky desires to say in his
+book that a democratic upbringing has not weakened the class egoism of
+the bourgeoisie, this can be admitted without further parley.
+
+If he wishes to add that the imperialist war, which broke out and
+continued for four years, _in spite of_ democracy, brought about
+a degradation of morals and accustomed men to violent methods and
+action, and completely stripped the bourgeoisie of the last vestige of
+awkwardness in ordering the destruction of masses of humanity--here
+also he will be right.
+
+All this is true on the face of it. But one has to struggle in real
+conditions. The contending forces are not proletarian and bourgeois
+manikins produced in the retort of Wagner-Kautsky, but a real
+proletariat against a real bourgeoisie, as they have emerged from the
+last imperialist slaughter.
+
+In this fact of merciless civil war that is spreading over the whole
+world, Kautsky sees only the result of a fatal lapse from the
+"experienced tactics" of the Second International.
+
+"In reality, since the time," he writes, "that Marxism has dominated
+the Socialist movement, the latter, up to the world war, was, in spite
+of its great activities, preserved from great defeats. And the idea of
+insuring victory by means of terrorist domination had completely
+disappeared from its ranks.
+
+"Much was contributed in this connection by the fact that, at the time
+when Marxism was the dominating Socialist teaching, democracy threw
+out firm roots in Western Europe, and began there to change from an
+end of the struggle to a trustworthy basis of political life." (Page
+145.)
+
+In this "formula of progress" there is not one atom of Marxism. The
+real process of the struggle of classes and their material conflicts
+has been lost in Marxist propaganda, which, thanks to the conditions
+of democracy, guarantees, forsooth, a painless transition to a new and
+"wiser" order. This is the most vulgar liberalism, a belated piece of
+rationalism in the spirit of the eighteenth century--with the
+difference that the ideas of Condorcet are replaced by a vulgarisation
+of the Communist Manifesto. All history resolves itself into an
+endless sheet of printed paper, and the centre of this "humane"
+process proves to be the well-worn writing table of Kautsky.
+
+We are given as an example the working-class movement in the period of
+the Second International, which, going forward under the banner of
+Marxism, never sustained great defeats whenever it deliberately
+challenged them. But did not the whole working-class movement, the
+proletariat of the whole world, and with it the whole of human
+culture, sustain an incalculable defeat in August, 1914, when history
+cast up the accounts of all the forces and possibilities of the
+Socialist parties, amongst whom, we are told, the guiding role
+belonged to Marxism, "on the firm footing of democracy"? _Those
+parties proved bankrupt._ Those features of their previous work
+which Kautsky now wishes to render permanent--self-adaptation,
+repudiation of "illegal" activity, repudiation of the open fight,
+hopes placed in democracy as the road to a painless revolution--all
+these fell into dust. In their fear of defeat, holding back the masses
+from open conflict, dissolving the general strike discussions, the
+parties of the Second International were preparing their own
+terrifying defeat; for they were not able to move one finger to avert
+the greatest catastrophe in world history, the four years' imperialist
+slaughter, which foreshadowed the violent character of the civil war.
+Truly, one has to put a wadded night-cap not only over one's eyes, but
+over one's nose and ears, to be able to-day, after the inglorious
+collapse of the Second International, after the disgraceful bankruptcy
+of its leading party--the German Social-Democracy--after the bloody
+lunacy of the world slaughter and the gigantic sweep of the civil war,
+to set up in contrast to us, the profundity, the loyalty, the
+peacefulness and the sobriety of the Second International, the
+heritage of which we are still liquidating.
+
+
+
+
+3
+
+DEMOCRACY
+
+
+"EITHER DEMOCRACY, OR CIVIL WAR"
+
+Kautsky has a clear and solitary path to salvation: _democracy_. All
+that is necessary is that every one should acknowledge it and bind
+himself to support it. The Right Socialists must renounce the
+sanguinary slaughter with which they have been carrying out the will of
+the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie itself must abandon the idea of using
+its Noskes and Lieutenant Vogels to defend its privileges to the last
+breath. Finally, the proletariat must once and for all reject the idea
+of overthrowing the bourgeoisie by means other than those laid down in
+the Constitution. If the conditions enumerated are observed, the social
+revolution will painlessly melt into democracy. In order to succeed it
+is sufficient, as we see, for our stormy history to draw a nightcap
+over its head, and take a pinch of wisdom out of Kautsky's snuffbox.
+
+"There exist only two possibilities," says our sage, "either democracy,
+or civil war." (Page 220.) Yet, in Germany, where the formal elements
+of "democracy" are present before our eyes, the civil war does not
+cease for a moment. "Unquestionably," agrees Kautsky, "under the
+present National Assembly Germany cannot arrive at a healthy condition.
+But that process of recovery will not be assisted, but hindered, if we
+transform the struggle against the present Assembly into a struggle
+against the democratic franchise." (Page 230.) As if the question in
+Germany really did reduce itself to one of electoral forms and not to
+one of the real possession of power!
+
+The present National Assembly, as Kautsky admits, cannot "bring the
+country to a healthy condition." Therefore let us begin the game again
+at the beginning. But will the partners agree? It is doubtful. If the
+rubber is not favorable to us, obviously it is so to them. The National
+Assembly which "is incapable of bringing the country to a healthy
+condition," is quite capable, through the mediocre dictatorship of
+Noske, of preparing the way for the dictatorship of Ludendorff. So it
+was with the Constituent Assembly which prepared the way for Kolchak.
+The historical mission of Kautsky consists precisely in having waited
+for the revolution to write his (n + 1th) book, which should explain
+the collapse of the revolution by all the previous course of history,
+from the ape to Noske, and from Noske to Ludendorff. The problem before
+the revolutionary party is a difficult one: its problem is to foresee
+the peril in good time, and to forestall it by _action_. And for this
+there is no other way at present than to tear the power out of the
+hands of its real possessors, the agrarian and capitalist magnates, who
+are only temporarily hiding behind Messrs. Ebert and Noske. Thus, from
+the present National Assembly, the path divides into two: either the
+dictatorship of the imperialist clique, or the dictatorship of the
+proletariat. On neither side does the path lead to "democracy." Kautsky
+does not see this. He explains at great length that democracy is of
+great importance for its political development and its education in
+organization of the masses, and that through it the proletariat can
+come to complete emancipation. One might imagine that, since the day on
+which the Erfurt Programme was written, nothing worthy of notice had
+ever happened in the world!
+
+Yet meanwhile, for decades, the proletariat of France, Germany, and
+the other most important countries has been struggling and developing,
+making the widest possible use of the institutions of democracy, and
+building up on that basis powerful political organizations. This path
+of the education of the proletariat through democracy to Socialism
+proved, however, to be interrupted by an event of no inconsiderable
+importance--the world imperialist war. The class state at the
+moment when, thanks to its machinations, the war broke out succeeded
+in enlisting the assistance of the guiding organizations of
+Social-Democracy to deceive the proletariat and draw it into the
+whirlpool. So that, taken as they stand, the methods of democracy, in
+spite of the incontestable benefits which they afford at a certain
+period, displayed an extremely limited power of action; with the result
+that two generations of the proletariat, educated under conditions of
+democracy, by no means guaranteed the necessary political preparation
+for judging accurately an event like the world imperialist war. That
+experience gives us no reasons for affirming that, if the war had
+broken out ten or fifteen years later, the proletariat would have been
+more prepared for it. The bourgeois democratic state not only creates
+more favorable conditions for the political education of the workers,
+as compared with absolutism, but also sets a limit to that development
+in the shape of bourgeois legality, which skilfully accumulates and
+builds on the upper strata of the proletariat opportunist habits
+and law-abiding prejudices. The school of democracy proved quite
+insufficient to rouse the German proletariat to revolution when the
+catastrophe of the war was at hand. The barbarous school of the war,
+social-imperialist ambitions, colossal military victories, and
+unparalleled defeats were required. After these events, which made a
+certain amount of difference in the universe, and even in the Erfurt
+Programme, to come out with common-places as to meaning of democratic
+parliamentarism for the education of the proletariat signifies a fall
+into political childhood. This is just the misfortune which has
+overtaken Kautsky.
+
+"Profound disbelief in the political struggle of the proletariat," he
+writes, "and in its participation in politics, was the characteristic
+of Proudhonism. To-day there arises a similar (!!) view, and it is
+recommended to us as the new gospel of Socialist thought, as the result
+of an experience which Marx did not, and could not, know. In reality,
+it is only a variation of an idea which half a century ago Marx was
+fighting, and which he in the end defeated." (Page 79.)
+
+Bolshevism proves to be warmed-up Proudhonism! From a purely theoretical
+point of view, this is one of the most brazen remarks in the pamphlet.
+
+The Proudhonists repudiated democracy for the same reason that they
+repudiated the political struggle generally. They stood for the
+economic organization of the workers without the interference of the
+State, without revolutionary outbreaks--for self-help of the workers on
+the basis of production for profit. As far as they were driven by the
+course of events on to the path of the political struggle, they, as
+lower middle-class theoreticians, preferred democracy, not only to
+plutocracy, but to revolutionary dictatorship. What thoughts have they
+in common with us? While we repudiate democracy in the name of the
+concentrated power of the proletariat, the Proudhonists, on the other
+hand, were prepared to make their peace with democracy, diluted by a
+federal basis, in order to avoid the revolutionary monopoly of power by
+the proletariat. With more foundation Kautsky might have compared us
+with the opponents of the Proudhonists, the _Blanquists_, who
+understood the meaning of a revolutionary government, but did not
+superstitiously make the question of seizing it depend on the formal
+signs of democracy. But in order to put the comparison of the
+Communists with the Blanquists on a reasonable footing, it would have
+to be added that, in the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils, we had at our
+disposal such an organization for revolution as the Blanquists could
+not even dream of; in our party we had, and have, an invaluable
+organization of political leadership with a perfected programme of the
+social revolution. Finally, we had, and have, a powerful apparatus of
+economic transformation in our trade unions, which stand as a whole
+under the banner of Communism, and support the Soviet Government. Under
+such conditions, to talk of the renaissance of Proudhonist prejudices
+in the shape of Bolshevism can only take place when one has lost all
+traces of theoretical honesty and historical understanding.
+
+
+THE IMPERIALIST TRANSFORMATION OF DEMOCRACY
+
+It is not for nothing that the word "democracy" has a double meaning
+in the political vocabulary. On the one hand, it means a state system
+founded on universal suffrage and the other attributes of formal
+"popular government." On the other hand, by the word "democracy" is
+understood the mass of the people itself, in so far as it leads a
+political existence. In the second sense, as in the first, the meaning
+of democracy rises above class distinctions. This peculiarity of
+terminology has its profound political significance. Democracy as a
+political system is the more perfect and unshakable the greater is the
+part played in the life of the country by the intermediate and less
+differentiated mass of the population--the lower middle-class of the
+town and the country. Democracy achieved its highest expression in the
+nineteenth century in Switzerland and the United States of North
+America. On the other side of the ocean the democratic organization of
+power in a federal republic was based on the agrarian democracy of the
+farmers. In the small Helvetian Republic, the lower middle-classes of
+the towns and the rich peasantry constituted the basis of the
+conservative democracy of the united cantons.
+
+Born of the struggle of the Third Estate against the powers of
+feudalism, the democratic State very soon becomes the weapon of defence
+against the class antagonisms generated within bourgeois society.
+Bourgeois society succeeds in this the more, the wider beneath it is
+the layer of the lower middle-class, the greater is the importance of
+the latter in the economic life of the country, and the less advanced,
+consequently, is the development of class antagonism. However, the
+intermediate classes become ever more and more helplessly behind
+historical development, and, thereby, become ever more and more
+incapable of speaking in the name of the nation. True, the lower
+middle-class doctrinaires (Bernstein and Company) used to demonstrate
+with satisfaction that the disappearance of the middle-classes was not
+taking place with that swiftness that was expected by the Marxian
+school. And, in reality, one might agree that, numerically, the
+middle-class elements in the town, and especially in the country, still
+maintain an extremely prominent position. But the chief meaning of
+evolution has shown itself in the decline in importance on the part of
+the middle-classes from the point of view of production: the amount of
+values which this class brings to the general income of the nation has
+fallen incomparably more rapidly than the numerical strength of the
+middle-classes. Correspondingly, falls their social, political, and
+cultural importance. Historical development has been relying more and
+more, not on these conservative elements inherited from the past, but
+on the polar classes of society--_i.e._, the capitalist bourgeoisie and
+the proletariat.
+
+The more the middle-classes lost their social importance, the less they
+proved capable of playing the part of an authoritative arbitral judge
+in the historical conflict between capital and labor. Yet the very
+considerable numerical proportion of the town middle-classes, and still
+more of the peasantry, continues to find direct expression in the
+electoral statistics of parliamentarism. The formal equality of all
+citizens as electors thereby only gives more open indication of the
+incapacity of democratic parliamentarism to settle the root questions
+of historical evolution. An "equal" vote for the proletariat, the
+peasant, and the manager of a trust formally placed the peasant in the
+position of a mediator between the two antagonists; but, in reality,
+the peasantry, socially and culturally backward and politically
+helpless, has in all countries always provided support for the most
+reactionary, filibustering, and mercenary parties which, in the long
+run, always supported capital against labor.
+
+Absolutely contrary to all the prophecies of Bernstein, Sombart,
+Tugan-Baranovsky, and others, the continued existence of the middle
+classes has not softened, but has rendered to the last degree
+acute, the revolutionary crisis of bourgeois society. If the
+proletarianization of the lower middle-classes and the peasantry had
+been proceeding in a chemically purified form, the peaceful conquest
+of power by the proletariat through the democratic parliamentary
+apparatus would have been much more probable than we can imagine at
+present. Just the fact that was seized upon by the partisans of the
+lower middle-class--its longevity--has proved fatal even for the
+external forms of political democracy, now that capitalism has
+undermined its essential foundations. Occupying in parliamentary
+politics a place which it has lost in production, the middle-class has
+finally compromised parliamentarism, and has transformed it into an
+institution of confused chatter and legislative obstruction. From this
+fact alone, there grew up before the proletariat the problem of
+seizing the apparatus of state power as such, independently of the
+middle-class, and even against it--not against its interests, but
+against its stupidity and its policy, impossible to follow in its
+helpless contortions.
+
+"Imperialism," wrote Marx of the Empire of Napoleon III, "is the most
+prostituted, and, at the same time, perfected form of the state which
+the bourgeoisie, having attained its fullest development, transforms
+into a weapon for the enslavement of labor by capital." This definition
+has a wider significance than for the French Empire alone, and includes
+the latest form of imperialism, born of the world conflict between the
+national capitalisms of the great powers. In the economic sphere,
+imperialism pre-supposed the final collapse of the rule of the
+middle-class; in the political sphere, it signified the complete
+destruction of democracy by means of an internal molecular
+transformation, and a universal subordination of all democracy's
+resources to its own ends. Seizing upon all countries, independently of
+their previous political history, imperialism showed that all political
+prejudices were foreign to it, and that it was equally ready and
+capable of making use, after their transformation and subjection, of
+the monarchy of Nicholas Romanoff or Wilhelm Hohenzollern, of the
+presidential autocracy of the United States of North America, and of
+the helplessness of a few hundred chocolate legislators in the French
+parliament. The last great slaughter--the bloody font in which the
+bourgeois world attempted to be re-baptised--presented to us a picture,
+unparalleled in history, of the mobilization of all state forms,
+systems of government, political tendencies, religious, and schools of
+philosophy, in the service of imperialism. Even many of those pedants
+who slept through the preparatory period of imperialist development
+during the last decades, and continued to maintain a traditional
+attitude towards ideas of democracy and universal suffrage, began to
+feel during the war that their accustomed ideas had become fraught with
+some new meaning. Absolutism, parliamentary monarchy, democracy--in the
+presence of imperialism (and, consequently, in the presence of the
+revolution rising to take its place), all the state forms of bourgeois
+supremacy, from Russian Tsarism to North American quasi-democratic
+federalism, have been given equal rights, bound up in such combinations
+as to supplement one another in an indivisible whole. Imperialism
+succeeded by means of all the resources it had at its disposal,
+including parliamentarism, irrespective of the electoral arithmetic of
+voting, to subordinate for its own purposes at the critical moment the
+lower middle-classes of the towns and country and even the upper layers
+of the proletariat. The national idea, under the watchword of which the
+Third Estate rose to power, found in the imperialist war its rebirth in
+the watchword of national defence. With unexpected clearness, national
+ideology flamed up for the last time at the expense of class ideology.
+The collapse of imperialist illusions, not only amongst the vanquished,
+but--after a certain delay--amongst the victorious also, finally laid
+low what was once national democracy, and, with it, its main weapon,
+the democratic parliament. The flabbiness, rottenness, and helplessness
+of the middle-classes and their parties everywhere became evident with
+terrifying clearness. In all countries the question of the control of
+the State assumed first-class importance as a question of an open
+measuring of forces between the capitalist clique, openly or secretly
+supreme and disposing of hundreds of thousands of mobilized and
+hardened officers, devoid of all scruple, and the revolting,
+revolutionary proletariat; while the intermediate classes were living
+in a state of terror, confusion, and prostration. Under such
+conditions, what pitiful nonsense are speeches about the peaceful
+conquest of power by the proletariat by means of democratic
+parliamentarism!
+
+The scheme of the political situation on a world scale is quite clear.
+The bourgeoisie, which has brought the nations, exhausted and bleeding
+to death, to the brink of destruction--particularly the victorious
+bourgeoisie--has displayed its complete inability to bring them out of
+their terrible situation, and, thereby, its incompatibility with the
+future development of humanity. All the intermediate political groups,
+including here first and foremost the social-patriotic parties, are
+rotting alive. The proletariat they have deceived is turning against
+them more and more every day, and is becoming strengthened in its
+revolutionary convictions as the only power that can save the peoples
+from savagery and destruction. However, history has not at all
+secured, just at this moment, a formal parliamentary majority on the
+side of the party of the social revolution. In other words, history
+has not transformed the nation into a debating society solemnly voting
+the transition to the social revolution by a majority of votes. On the
+contrary, the violent revolution has become a necessity precisely
+because the imminent requirements of history are helpless to find a
+road through the apparatus of parliamentary democracy. The capitalist
+bourgeois calculates: "while I have in my hands lands, factories,
+workshops, banks; while I possess newspapers, universities, schools;
+while--and this most important of all--I retain control of the army:
+the apparatus of democracy, however you reconstruct it, will remain
+obedient to my will. I subordinate to my interests spiritually the
+stupid, conservative, characterless lower middle-class, just as it
+is subjected to me materially. I oppress, and will oppress, its
+imagination by the gigantic scale of my buildings, my transactions, my
+plans, and my crimes. For moments when it is dissatisfied and murmurs,
+I have created scores of safety-valves and lightning-conductors. At
+the right moment I will bring into existence opposition parties, which
+will disappear to-morrow, but which to-day accomplish their mission by
+affording the possibility of the lower middle-class expressing their
+indignation without hurt therefrom for capitalism. I shall hold the
+masses of the people, under cover of compulsory general education, on
+the verge of complete ignorance, giving them no opportunity of rising
+above the level which my experts in spiritual slavery consider safe. I
+will corrupt, deceive, and terrorize the more privileged or the more
+backward of the proletariat itself. By means of these measures, I
+shall not allow the vanguard of the working class to gain the ear of
+the majority of the working class, while the necessary weapons of
+mastery and terrorism remain in my hands."
+
+To this the revolutionary proletarian replies: "Consequently, the
+first condition of salvation is to tear the weapons of domination out
+of the hands of the bourgeoisie. It is hopeless to think of a peaceful
+arrival to power while the bourgeoisie retains in its hands all the
+apparatus of power. Three times over hopeless is the idea of coming to
+power by the path which the bourgeoisie itself indicates and, at the
+same time, barricades--the path of parliamentary democracy. There is
+only one way: to seize power, taking away from the bourgeoisie the
+material apparatus of government. Independently of the superficial
+balance of forces in parliament, I shall take over for social
+administration the chief forces and resources of production. I shall
+free the mind of the lower middle-class from their capitalist
+hypnosis. I shall show them in practice what is the meaning of
+Socialist production. Then even the most backward, the most ignorant,
+or most terrorized sections of the nation will support me, and
+willingly and intelligently will join in the work of social
+construction."
+
+When the Russian Soviet Government dissolved the Constituent Assembly,
+that fact seemed to the leading Social-Democrats of Western Europe, if
+not the beginning of the end of the world, at all events a rude and
+arbitrary break with all the previous developments of Socialism. In
+reality, it was only the inevitable outcome of the new position
+resulting from imperialism and the war. If Russian Communism was the
+first to enter the path of casting up theoretical and practical
+accounts, this was due to the same historical reasons which forced the
+Russian proletariat to be the first to enter the path of the struggle
+for power.
+
+All that has happened since then in Europe bears witness to the fact
+that we drew the right conclusion. To imagine that democracy can be
+restored in its general purity means that one is living in a pitiful,
+reactionary utopia.
+
+
+THE METAPHYSICS OF DEMOCRACY
+
+Feeling the historical ground shaking under his feet on the question
+of democracy, Kautsky crosses to the ground of metaphysics. Instead of
+inquiring into what is, he deliberates about what ought to be.
+
+The principles of democracy--the sovereignty of the people, universal
+and equal suffrage, personal liberties--appear, as presented to him,
+in a halo of moral duty. They are turned from their historical meaning
+and presented as unalterable and sacred things-in-themselves. This
+metaphysical fall from grace is not accidental. It is instructive that
+the late Plekhanov, a merciless enemy of Kantism at the best period of
+his activity, attempted at the end of his life, when the wave of
+patriotism had washed over him, to clutch at the straw of the
+categorical imperative.
+
+That real democracy with which the German people is now making
+practical acquaintance Kautsky confronts with a kind of ideal
+democracy, as he would confront a common phenomenon with the
+thing-in-itself. Kautsky indicates with certitude not one country in
+which democracy is really capable of guaranteeing a painless
+transition to Socialism. But he does know, and firmly, that such
+democracy ought to exist. The present German National Assembly, that
+organ of helplessness, reactionary malice, and degraded solicitations,
+is confronted by Kautsky with a different, real, true National
+Assembly, which possesses all virtues--excepting the small virtue of
+reality.
+
+The doctrine of formal democracy is not scientific Socialism, but the
+theory of so-called natural law. The essence of the latter consists in
+the recognition of eternal and unchanging standards of law, which
+among different peoples and at different periods find a different,
+more or less limited and distorted expression. The natural law of the
+latest history--_i.e._, as it emerged from the middle ages--included
+first of all a protest against class privileges, the abuse of despotic
+legislation, and the other "artificial" products of feudal positive
+law. The theoreticians of the, as yet, weak Third Estate expressed its
+class interests in a few ideal standards, which later on developed
+into the teaching of democracy, acquiring at the same time an
+individualist character. The individual is absolute; all persons have
+the right of expressing their thoughts in speech and print; every man
+must enjoy equal electoral rights. As a battle cry against feudalism,
+the demand for democracy had a progressive character. As time went on,
+however, the metaphysics of natural law (the theory of formal
+democracy) began to show its reactionary side--the establishment of an
+ideal standard to control the real demands of the laboring masses and
+the revolutionary parties.
+
+If we look back to the historical sequence of world concepts, the
+theory of natural law will prove to be a paraphrase of Christian
+spiritualism freed from its crude mysticism. The Gospels proclaimed to
+the slave that he had just the same soul as the slave-owner, and in
+this way established the equality of all men before the heavenly
+tribunal. In reality, the slave remained a slave, and obedience became
+for him a religious duty. In the teaching of Christianity, the slave
+found an expression for his own ignorant protest against his degraded
+condition. Side by side with the protest was also the consolation.
+Christianity told him:--"You have an immortal soul, although you
+resemble a pack-horse." Here sounded the note of indignation. But the
+same Christianity said:--"Although you are like a pack-horse, yet your
+immortal soul has in store for it an eternal reward." Here is the
+voice of consolation. These two notes were found in historical
+Christianity in different proportions at different periods and amongst
+different classes. But as a whole, Christianity, like all other
+religions, became a method of deadening the consciousness of the
+oppressed masses.
+
+Natural law, which developed into the theory of democracy, said to the
+worker: "all men are equal before the law, independently of their
+origin, their property, and their position; every man has an equal
+right in determining the fate of the people." This ideal criterion
+revolutionized the consciousness of the masses in so far as it was a
+condemnation of absolutism, aristocratic privileges, and the property
+qualification. But the longer it went on, the more it sent the
+consciousness to sleep, legalizing poverty, slavery and degradation:
+for how could one revolt against slavery when every man has an equal
+right in determining the fate of the nation?
+
+Rothschild, who has coined the blood and tears of the world into the
+gold napoleons of his income, has one vote at the parliamentary
+elections. The ignorant tiller of the soil who cannot sign his name,
+sleeps all his life without taking his clothes off, and wanders
+through society like an underground mole, plays his part, however, as
+a trustee of the nation's sovereignty, and is equal to Rothschild in
+the courts and at the elections. In the real conditions of life, in
+the economic process, in social relations, in their way of life,
+people became more and more unequal; dazzling luxury was accumulated
+at one pole, poverty and hopelessness at the other. But in the sphere
+of the legal edifice of the State, these glaring contradictions
+disappeared, and there penetrated thither only unsubstantial legal
+shadows. The landlord, the laborer, the capitalist, the proletarian,
+the minister, the bootblack--all are equal as "citizens" and as
+"legislators." The mystic equality of Christianity has taken one step
+down from the heavens in the shape of the "natural," "legal" equality
+of democracy. But it has not yet reached earth, where lie the economic
+foundations of society. For the ignorant day-laborer, who all his life
+remains a beast of burden in the service of the bourgeoisie, the ideal
+right to influence the fate of the nations by means of the
+parliamentary elections remained little more real than the palace
+which he was promised in the kingdom of heaven.
+
+In the practical interests of the development of the working class,
+the Socialist Party took its stand at a certain period on the path of
+parliamentarism. But this did not mean in the slightest that it
+accepted in principle the metaphysical theory of democracy, based on
+extra-historical, super-class rights. The proletarian doctrines
+examined democracy as the instrument of bourgeois society entirely
+adapted to the problems and requirements of the ruling classes; but as
+bourgeois society lived by the labor of the proletariat and could not
+deny it the legalization of a certain part of its class struggle
+without destroying itself, this gave the Socialist Party the
+possibility of utilizing, at a certain period, and within certain
+limits, the mechanism of democracy, without taking an oath to do so as
+an unshakable principle.
+
+The root problem of the party, at all periods of its struggle, was to
+create the conditions for real, economic, living equality for mankind
+as members of a united human commonwealth. It was just for this reason
+that the theoreticians of the proletariat had to expose the
+metaphysics of democracy as a philosophic mask for political
+mystification.
+
+The democratic party at the period of its revolutionary enthusiasm,
+when exposing the enslaving and stupefying lie of church dogma,
+preached to the masses:--"You are lulled to sleep by promises of
+eternal bliss at the end of your life, while here you have no rights
+and you are bound with the chains of tyranny." The Socialist Party, a
+few decades later, said to the same masses with no less right:--"You
+are lulled to sleep with the fiction of civic equality and political
+rights, but you are deprived of the possibility of realizing those
+rights. Conditional and shadowy legal equality has been transformed
+into the convicts' chain with which each of you is fastened to the
+chariot of capitalism."
+
+In the name of its fundamental task, the Socialist Party mobilized the
+masses on the parliamentary ground as well as on others; but nowhere
+and at no time did any party bind itself to bring the masses to
+Socialism only through the gates of democracy. In adapting ourselves
+to the parliamentary regime, we stopped at a theoretical exposure of
+democracy, because we were still too weak to overcome it in practice.
+But the path of Socialist ideas which is visible through all
+deviations, and even betrayals, foreshadows no other outcome but this:
+to throw democracy aside and replace it by the mechanism of the
+proletariat, at the moment when the latter is strong enough to carry
+out such a task.
+
+We shall bring one piece of evidence, albeit a sufficiently striking
+one. "Parliamentarism," wrote Paul Lafargue in the Russian review,
+_Sozialdemokrat_, in 1888, "is a system of government in which the
+people acquires the illusion that it is controlling the forces of the
+country itself, when, in reality, the actual power is concentrated in
+the hands of the bourgeoisie--and not even of the whole bourgeoisie,
+but only of certain sections of that class. In the first period of its
+supremacy the bourgeoisie does not understand, or, more correctly,
+does not feel, the necessity for making the people believe in the
+illusion of self-government. Hence it was that all the parliamentary
+countries of Europe began with a limited franchise. Everywhere the
+right of influencing the policy of the country by means of the
+election of deputies belonged at first only to more or less large
+property holders, and was only gradually extended to less substantial
+citizens, until finally in some countries it became from a privilege
+the universal right of all and sundry.
+
+"In bourgeois society, the more considerable becomes the amount of
+social wealth, the smaller becomes the number of individuals by whom
+it is appropriated. The same takes place with power: in proportion as
+the mass of citizens who possess political rights increases, and the
+number of elected rulers increases, the actual power is concentrated
+and becomes the monopoly of a smaller and smaller group of
+individuals." Such is the secret of the majority.
+
+For the Marxist, Lafargue, parliamentarism remains as long as the
+supremacy of the bourgeoisie remains. "On the day," writes Lafargue,
+"when the proletariat of Europe and America seizes the State, it will
+have to organize a revolutionary government, and govern society as a
+dictatorship, until the bourgeoisie has disappeared as a class."
+
+Kautsky in his time knew this Marxist estimate of parliamentarism, and
+more than once repeated it himself, although with no such Gallic
+sharpness and lucidity. The theoretical apostasy of Kautsky lies just
+in this point: having recognized the principle of democracy as
+absolute and eternal, he has stepped back from materialist dialectics
+to natural law. That which was exposed by Marxism as the passing
+mechanism of the bourgeoisie, and was subjected only to temporary
+utilization with the object of preparing the proletarian revolution,
+has been newly sanctified by Kautsky as the supreme principle standing
+above classes, and unconditionally subordinating to itself the methods
+of the proletarian struggle. The counter-revolutionary degeneration of
+parliamentarism finds its most perfect expression in the deification
+of democracy by the decaying theoreticians of the Second
+International.
+
+
+THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY
+
+Speaking generally, the attainment of a majority in a democratic
+parliament by the party of the proletariat is not an absolute
+impossibility. But such a fact, even if it were realized, would not
+introduce any new principle into the course of events. The
+intermediate elements of the intelligentsia, under the influence of
+the parliamentary victory of the proletariat, might possibly display
+less resistance to the new regime. But the fundamental resistance of
+the bourgeoisie would be decided by such facts as the attitude of the
+army, the degree to which the workers were armed, the situation in the
+neighboring states: and the civil war would develop under the pressure
+of these most real circumstances, and not by the mobile arithmetic of
+parliamentarism.
+
+Our party has never refused to lead the way for proletarian
+dictatorship through the gates of democracy, having clearly summed up
+in its mind certain agitational and political advantages of such a
+"legalized" transition to the new regime. Hence, our attempt to call
+the Constituent Assembly. The Russian peasant, only just awakened by
+the revolution to political life, found himself face to face with half
+a dozen parties, each of which apparently had made up its mind to
+confuse his mind. The Constituent Assembly placed itself across the
+path of the revolutionary movement, and was swept aside.
+
+The opportunist majority in the Constituent Assembly represented only
+the political reflection of the mental confusion and indecision
+which reigned amidst the middle-classes in the town and country
+and amidst the more backward elements of the proletariat. If we
+take the viewpoint of isolated historical possibilities, one
+might say that it would have been more painless if the Constituent
+Assembly had worked for a year or two, had finally discredited the
+Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks by their connection
+with the Cadets, and had thereby led to the formal majority of the
+Bolsheviks, showing the masses that in reality only two forces
+existed: the revolutionary proletariat, led by the Communists, and
+the counter-revolutionary democracy, headed by the generals and the
+admirals. But the point is that the pulse of the internal relations of
+the revolution was beating not at all in time with the pulse of the
+development of its external relations. If our party had thrown all
+responsibility on to the objective formula of "the course of events"
+the development of military operations might have forestalled us.
+German imperialism might have seized Petrograd, the evacuation of
+which the Kerensky Government had already begun. The fall of Petrograd
+would at that time have meant a death-blow to the proletariat, for all
+the best forces of the revolution were concentrated there, in the
+Baltic Fleet and in the Red capital.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+Our party may be accused, therefore, not of going against the course
+of historical development, but of having taken at a stride several
+political steps. It stepped over the heads of the Mensheviks and the
+Socialist-Revolutionaries, in order not to allow German imperialism to
+step across the head of the Russian proletariat and conclude peace
+with the Entente on the back of the revolution before it was able to
+spread its wings over the whole world.
+
+From the above it will not be difficult to deduce the answers to the
+two questions with which Kautsky pestered us. Firstly: Why did we
+summon the Constituent Assembly when we had in view the dictatorship
+of the proletariat? Secondly: If the first Constituent Assembly which
+we summoned proved backward and not in harmony with the interests of
+the revolution, why did we reject the idea of a new Assembly? The
+thought at the back of Kautsky's mind is that we repudiated democracy,
+not on the ground of principle, but only because it proved against us.
+In order to seize this insinuation by its long ears, let us establish
+the facts.
+
+The watchword, "All power to the Soviets," was put forward by our
+Party at the very beginning of the revolution--_i.e._, long before,
+not merely the decree as to the dissolution of the Constituent
+Assembly, but the decree as to its convocation. True, we did not set
+up the Soviets in opposition to the future Constituent Assembly, the
+summoning of which was constantly postponed by the Government of
+Kerensky, and consequently became more and more problematical. But in
+any case, we did not consider the Constituent Assembly, after the
+manner of the democrats, as the future master of the Russian land, who
+would come and settle everything. We explained to the masses that the
+Soviets, the revolutionary organizations of the laboring masses
+themselves, can and must become the true masters. If we did not
+formally repudiate the Constituent Assembly beforehand, it was only
+because it stood in contrast, not to the power of the Soviets, but to
+the power of Kerensky himself, who, in his turn, was only a screen for
+the bourgeoisie. At the same time we did decide beforehand that, if,
+in the Constituent Assembly, the majority proved in our favor, that
+body must dissolve itself and hand over the power to the Soviets--as
+later on the Petrograd Town Council did, elected as it was on the
+basis of the most democratic electoral franchise. In my book on the
+October Revolution, I tried to explain the reasons which made the
+Constituent Assembly the out-of-date reflection of an epoch through
+which the revolution had already passed. As we saw the organization of
+revolutionary power only in the Soviets, and at the moment of the
+summoning of the Constituent Assembly the Soviets were already the de
+facto power, the question was inevitably decided for us in the sense
+of the violent dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, since it would
+not dissolve itself in favor of the Government of the Soviets.
+
+"But why," asks Kautsky, "did you not summon a new Constituent
+Assembly?"
+
+Because we saw no need for it. If the first Constituent Assembly could
+still play a fleeting progressive part, conferring a sanction upon the
+Soviet regime in its first days, convincing for the middle-class
+elements, now, after two years of victorious proletarian dictatorship
+and the complete collapse of all democratic attempts in Siberia, on
+the shores of the White Sea, in the Ukraine, and in the Caucasus, the
+power of the Soviets truly does not need the blessing of the faded
+authority of the Constituent Assembly. "Are we not right in that case
+to conclude," asks Kautsky in the tone of Lloyd George, "that the
+Soviet Government rules by the will of the minority, since it avoids
+testing its supremacy by universal suffrage?" Here is a blow that
+misses its mark.
+
+If the parliamentary regime, even in the period of "peaceful," stable
+development, was a rather crude method of discovering the opinion of
+the country, and in the epoch of revolutionary storm completely lost
+its capacity to follow the course of the struggle and the development
+of revolutionary consciousness, the Soviet regime, which is more
+closely, straightly, honestly bound up with the toiling majority of
+the people, does achieve meaning, not in statically reflecting a
+majority, but in dynamically creating it. Having taken its stand on
+the path of revolutionary dictatorship, the working class of Russia
+has thereby declared that it builds its policy in the period of
+transition, not on the shadowy art of rivalry with chameleon-hued
+parties in the chase for peasant votes, but on the actual attraction
+of the peasant masses, side by side with the proletariat, into the
+work of ruling the country in the real interests of the laboring
+masses. Such democracy goes a little deeper down than parliamentarism.
+
+To-day, when the main problem--the question of life and death--of the
+revolution consists in the military repulse of the various attacks of
+the White Guard bands, does Kautsky imagine that any form of
+parliamentary "majority" is capable of guaranteeing a more energetic,
+devoted, and successful organization of revolutionary defence? The
+conditions of the struggle are so defined, in a revolutionary country
+throttled by the criminal ring of the blockade, that all the
+middle-class groups are confronted only with the alternative of
+Denikin or the Soviet Government. What further proof is needed when
+even parties, which stand for compromise in principle, like the
+Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, have split along that
+very line?
+
+When suggesting to us the election of a Constituent Assembly, does
+Kautsky propose the stopping of the civil war for the purpose of the
+elections? By whose decision? If he intends for this purpose to bring
+into motion the authority of the Second International, we hasten to
+inform him that that institution enjoys in Denikin's camp only a
+little more authority than it does in ours. But to the extent that the
+civil war between the Workers' and Peasants' Army and the imperialist
+bands is still going on, the elections must of necessity be limited to
+Soviet territory. Does Kautsky desire to insist that we should allow
+the parties which support Denikin to come out into the open? Empty and
+contemptible chatter! There is not one government, at any time and
+under any conditions, which would allow its enemies to mobilize
+hostile forces in the rear of its armies.
+
+A not unimportant place in the discussion of the question is occupied
+by the fact that the flower of the laboring population is at present
+on active service. The foremost workers and the most class-conscious
+peasants, who take the first place at all elections, as in all
+important political activities, directing the public opinion of the
+workers, are at present fighting and dying as commanders, commissars,
+or rank and file in the Red Army. If the most "democratic" governments
+in the bourgeois states, whose regime is founded on parliamentarism,
+consider it impossible to carry on elections to parliament in
+wartime, it is all the more senseless to demand such elections during
+the war of the Soviet Republic, the regime of which is not for one
+moment founded on parliamentarism. It is quite sufficient that the
+revolutionary government of Russia, in the most difficult months and
+times, never stood in the way of periodic re-elections of its _own_
+elective institutions--the local and central Soviets.
+
+Finally, as a last argument--the last and the least--we have to
+present to the notice of Kautsky that even the Russian Kautskians, the
+Mensheviks like Martov and Dan, do not consider it possible to put
+forward at the present moment a demand for a Constituent Assembly,
+postponing it to better times in the future. Will there be any need of
+it then? Of this one may be permitted to doubt. When the civil war is
+over, the dictatorship of the working class will disclose all its
+creative energy, and will, in practice, show the most backward masses
+what it can give them. By means of a systematically applied universal
+labor service, and a centralized organization of distribution, the
+whole population of the country will be drawn into the general Soviet
+system of economic arrangement and self-government. The Soviets
+themselves, at present the organs of government, will gradually melt
+into purely economic organizations. Under such conditions it is
+doubtful whether any one will think of erecting, over the real fabric
+of Socialist society, an archaic crown in the shape of the Constituent
+Assembly, which would only have to register the fact that everything
+necessary has already been "constituted" before it and without it.[3]
+
+          [3] In order to charm us in favor of a Constituent Assembly
+          Kautsky brings forward an argument based on the rate of
+          exchange to the assistance of his argument, based on the
+          categorical imperative. "Russia requires," he writes, "the
+          help of foreign capital, but this help will not come to the
+          Soviet Republic if the latter does not summon a Constituent
+          Assembly, and does not give freedom of the Press; not
+          because the capitalists are democratic idealists--to Tsarism
+          they gave without any hesitation many milliards--but because
+          they have no business faith in a revolutionary government."
+          (Page 218.)
+
+          There are scraps of truth in this rubbish. The Stock
+          Exchange did really support the government of Kolchak when
+          it relied for support on the Constituent Assembly. From its
+          experience of Kolchak the Stock Exchange became confirmed in
+          its conviction that the mechanism of bourgeois democracy can
+          be utilized in capitalist interests, and then thrown aside
+          like a worn-out pair of puttees. It is quite possible that
+          the Stock Exchange would again give a parliamentary loan on
+          the guarantee of a Constituent Assembly, believing, on the
+          basis of its former experience, that such a body would prove
+          only an intermediate step to capitalist dictatorship. We do
+          not propose to buy the "business faith" of the Stock
+          Exchange at such a price, and decidedly prefer the "faith"
+          which is aroused in the realist Stock Exchange by the weapon
+          of the Red Army.
+
+
+
+
+4
+
+TERRORISM
+
+
+The chief theme of Kautsky's book is terrorism. The view that
+terrorism is of the essence of revolution Kautsky proclaims to be a
+widespread delusion. It is untrue that he who desires revolution must
+put up with terrorism. As far as he, Kautsky, is concerned, he is,
+generally speaking, for revolution, but decidedly against terrorism.
+From there, however, complications begin.
+
+"The revolution brings us," Kautsky complains, "a bloody terrorism
+carried out by Socialist governments. The Bolsheviks in Russia first
+stepped on to this path, and were, consequently, sternly condemned by
+all Socialists who had not adopted the Bolshevik point of view,
+including the Socialists of the German Majority. But as soon as the
+latter found themselves threatened in their supremacy, they had
+recourse to the methods of the same terrorist regime which they
+attacked in the East." (Page 9.) It would seem that from this follows
+the conclusion that terrorism is much more profoundly bound up with
+the nature of revolution than certain sages think. But Kautsky makes
+an absolutely opposite conclusion. The gigantic development of White
+and Red terrorism in all the last revolutions--the Russian, the
+German, the Austrian, and the Hungarian--is evidence to him that these
+revolutions turned aside from their true path and turned out to be not
+the revolution they ought to have been according to the theoretical
+visions of Kautsky. Without going into the question whether terrorism
+"as such" is "immanent" to the revolution "as such," let us consider a
+few of the revolutions as they pass before us in the living history of
+mankind.
+
+Let us first regard the religious Reformation, which proved the
+watershed between the Middle Ages and modern history: the deeper were
+the interests of the masses that it involved, the wider was its sweep,
+the more fiercely did the civil war develop under the religious
+banner, and the more merciless did the terror become on the other
+side.
+
+In the seventeenth century England carried out two revolutions. The
+first, which brought forth great social upheavals and wars, brought
+amongst other things the execution of King Charles I, while the second
+ended happily with the accession of a new dynasty. The British
+bourgeoisie and its historians maintain quite different attitudes to
+these two revolutions: the first is for them a rising of the mob--the
+"Great Rebellion"; the second has been handed down under the title of
+the "Glorious Revolution." The reason for this difference in estimates
+was explained by the French historian, Augustin Thierry. In the first
+English revolution, in the "Great Rebellion," the active force was the
+people; while in the second it was almost "silent." Hence, it follows
+that, in surroundings of class slavery, it is difficult to teach the
+oppressed masses good manners. When provoked to fury they use clubs,
+stones, fire, and the rope. The court historians of the exploiters are
+offended at this. But the great event in modern "bourgeois" history
+is, none the less, not the "Glorious Revolution," but the "Great
+Rebellion."
+
+The greatest event in modern history after the Reformation and the
+"Great Rebellion," and far surpassing its two predecessors in
+significance, was the great French Revolution of the eighteenth
+century. To this classical revolution there was a corresponding
+classical terrorism. Kautsky is ready to forgive the terrorism of the
+Jacobins, acknowledging that they had no other way of saving the
+republic. But by this justification after the event no one is either
+helped or hindered. The Kautskies of the end of the eighteenth century
+(the leaders of the French Girondists) saw in the Jacobins the
+personification of evil. Here is a comparison, sufficiently
+instructive in its banality, between the Jacobins and the Girondists
+from the pen of one of the bourgeois French historians: "Both one side
+and the other desired the republic." But the Girondists "desired a
+free, legal, and merciful republic. The Montagnards desired a despotic
+and terrorist republic. Both stood for the supreme power of the
+people; but the Girondist justly understood all by the people, while
+the Montagnards considered only the working class to be the people.
+That was why only to such persons, in the opinion of the Montagnards,
+did the supremacy belong." The antithesis between the noble champions
+of the Constituent Assembly and the bloodthirsty agents of the
+revolutionary dictatorship is here outlined fairly clearly, although
+in the political terms of the epoch.
+
+The iron dictatorship of the Jacobins was evoked by the monstrously
+difficult position of revolutionary France. Here is what the bourgeois
+historian says of this period: "Foreign troops had entered French
+territory from four sides. In the north, the British and the
+Austrians, in Alsace, the Prussians, in Dauphine and up to Lyons, the
+Piedmontese, in Roussillon the Spaniards. And this at a time, when
+civil war was raging at four different points: in Normandy, in the
+Vendee, at Lyons, and at Toulon." (Page 176). To this we must add
+internal enemies in the form of numerous secret supporters of the old
+regime, ready by all methods to assist the enemy.
+
+The severity of the proletarian dictatorship in Russia, let us point
+out here, was conditioned by no less difficult circumstances. There
+was one continuous front, on the north and south, in the east and
+west. Besides the Russian White Guard armies of Kolchak, Denikin and
+others, there are attacking Soviet Russia, simultaneously or in turn:
+Germans, Austrians, Czecho-Slovaks, Serbs, Poles, Ukrainians,
+Roumanians, French, British, Americans, Japanese, Finns, Esthonians,
+Lithuanians.... In a country throttled by a blockade and strangled by
+hunger, there are conspiracies, risings, terrorist acts, and
+destruction of roads and bridges.
+
+"The government which had taken on itself the struggle with countless
+external and internal enemies had neither money, nor sufficient
+troops, nor anything except boundless energy, enthusiastic support on
+the part of the revolutionary elements of the country, and the
+gigantic courage to take all measures necessary for the safety of the
+country, however arbitrary and severe they were." In such words did
+once upon a time Plekhanov describe the government of the--Jacobins.
+(_Sozial-demokrat_, a quarterly review of literature and politics.
+Book I, February, 1890, London. The article on "The Centenary of the
+Great Revolution," pages 6-7).
+
+Let us now turn to the revolution which took place in the second half
+of the nineteenth century, in the country of "democracy"--in the
+United States of North America. Although the question was not the
+abolition of property altogether, but only of the abolition of
+property in negroes, nevertheless, the institutions of democracy
+proved absolutely powerless to decide the argument in a peaceful way.
+The southern states, defeated at the presidential elections in 1860,
+decided by all possible means to regain the influence they had
+hitherto exerted in the question of slave-owning; and uttering, as was
+right, the proper sounding words about freedom and independence, rose
+in a slave-owners' insurrection. Hence inevitably followed all the
+later consequences of civil war. At the very beginning of the
+struggle, the military government in Baltimore imprisoned in Fort
+MacHenry a few citizens, sympathizers with the slave-holding South, in
+spite of Habeas Corpus. The question of the lawfulness or the
+unlawfulness of such action became the object of fierce disputes
+between so-called "high authorities." The judge of the Supreme Court,
+decided that the President had neither the right to arrest the
+operation of Habeas Corpus nor to give plenipotentiary powers to that
+end to the military authorities. "Such, in all probability, is the
+correct Constitutional solution of the question," says one of the
+first historians of the American Civil War. "But the state of affairs
+was to such a degree critical, and the necessity of taking decisive
+measures against the population of Baltimore so great, that not only
+the Government but the people of the United States also supported the
+most energetic measures."[4]
+
+          [4] (The History of the American War, by Fletcher,
+          Lieut.-Colonel in the Scots Guards, St. Petersburg, 1867,
+          page 95.)
+
+Some goods that the rebellious South required were secretly supplied
+by the merchants of the North. Naturally, the Northerners had no other
+course but to introduce methods of repression. On August 6, 1861, the
+President confirmed a resolution of Congress as to "the confiscation
+of property used for insurrectionary purposes." The people, in the
+shape of the most democratic elements, were in favor of extreme
+measures. The Republican Party had a decided majority in the North,
+and persons suspected of secessionism, _i.e._, of sympathizing with
+the rebellious Southern states, were subjected to violence. In some
+northern towns, and even in the states of New England, famous for
+their order, the people frequently burst into the offices of
+newspapers which supported the revolting slave-owners and smashed
+their printing presses. It occasionally happened that reactionary
+publishers were smeared with tar, decorated with feathers, and carried
+in such array through the public squares until they swore an oath of
+loyalty to the Union. The personality of a planter smeared in tar bore
+little resemblance to the "end-in-itself;" so that the categorical
+imperative of Kautsky suffered in the civil war of the states a
+considerable blow. But this is not all. "The government, on its part,"
+the historian tells us, "adopted repressive measures of various kinds
+against publications holding views opposed to its own: and in a short
+time the hitherto free American press was reduced to a condition
+_scarcely superior to that prevailing in the autocratic European
+States_." The same fate overtook the freedom of speech. "In this way,"
+Lieut.-Colonel Fletcher continues, "the American people at this time
+denied itself the greater part of its freedom. It should be observed,"
+he moralizes, "that _the majority of the people_ was to such an
+extent occupied with the war, and to such a degree imbued with the
+readiness for any kind of sacrifice to attain its end, that it not
+only did not regret its vanished liberties, but scarcely even noticed
+their disappearance."[5]
+
+          [5] Fletcher's History of the American War, pages 162-164.
+
+Infinitely more ruthlessly did the bloodthirsty slave-owners of the
+South employ their uncontrollable hordes. "Wherever there was a
+majority in favor of slavery," writes the Count of Paris, "public
+opinion behaved despotically to the minority. All who expressed pity
+for the national banner ... were forced to be silent. But soon this
+itself became insufficient; as in all revolutions, the indifferent
+were forced to express their loyalty to the new order of things....
+Those who did not agree to this were given up as a sacrifice to the
+hatred and violence of the mass of the people.... In each centre of
+growing civilization (South-Western states) vigilance committees were
+formed, composed of all those who had been distinguished by their
+extreme views in the electoral struggle.... A tavern was the usual
+place of their sessions, and a noisy orgy was mingled with a
+contemptible parody of public forms of justice. A few madmen sitting
+around a desk on which gin and whisky flowed judged their present
+and absent fellow citizens. The accused, even before having been
+questioned, could see the rope being prepared. He who did not appear
+at the court learned his sentence when falling under the bullets
+of the executioner concealed in the forest...." This picture is
+extremely reminiscent of the scenes which day by day took place in
+the camps of Denikin, Kolchak, Yudenich, and the other heroes of
+Anglo-Franco-American "democracy."
+
+We shall see later how the question of terrorism stood in regard to
+the Paris Commune of 1871. In any case, the attempts of Kautsky to
+contrast the Commune with us are false at their very root, and only
+bring the author to a juggling with words of the most petty character.
+
+The institution of hostages apparently must be recognized as "immanent"
+in the terrorism of the civil war. Kautsky is against terrorism and
+against the institution of hostages, but in favor of the Paris
+Commune. (N.B.--The Commune existed fifty years ago.) Yet the Commune
+took hostages. A difficulty arises. But what does the art of exegesis
+exist for?
+
+The decree of the Commune concerning hostages and their execution in
+reply to the atrocities of the Versaillese arose, according to the
+profound explanation of Kautsky, "from a striving to preserve human
+life, not to destroy it." A marvellous discovery! It only requires to
+be developed. It could, and must, be explained that in the civil war
+we destroyed White Guards in order that they should not destroy the
+workers. Consequently, our problem is not the destruction of human
+life, but its preservation. But as we have to struggle for the
+preservation of human life with arms in our hands, it leads to the
+destruction of human life--a puzzle the dialectical secret of which
+was explained by old Hegel, without reckoning other still more ancient
+sages.
+
+The Commune could maintain itself and consolidate its position only by
+a determined struggle with the Versaillese. The latter, on the other
+hand, had a large number of agents in Paris. Fighting with the agents
+of Thiers, the Commune could not abstain from destroying the
+Versaillese at the front and in the rear. If its rule had crossed the
+bounds of Paris, in the provinces it would have found--during the
+process of the civil war with the Army of the National Assembly--still
+more determined foes in the midst of the peaceful population. The
+Commune when fighting the royalists could not allow freedom of speech
+to royalist agents in the rear.
+
+Kautsky, in spite of all the happenings in the world to-day, completely
+fails to realize what war is in general, and the civil war in
+particular. He does not understand that every, or nearly every,
+sympathizer with Thiers in Paris was not merely an "opponent" of the
+Communards in ideas, but an agent and spy of Thiers, a ferocious enemy
+ready to shoot one in the back. The enemy must be made harmless, and in
+wartime this means that he must be destroyed.
+
+The problem of revolution, as of war, consists in breaking the will of
+the foe, forcing him to capitulate and to accept the conditions of the
+conqueror. The will, of course, is a fact of the physical world, but
+in contradistinction to a meeting, a dispute, or a congress, the
+revolution carries out its object by means of the employment of
+material resources--though to a less degree than war. The bourgeoisie
+itself conquered power by means of revolts, and consolidated it by the
+civil war. In the peaceful period, it retains power by means of a
+system of repression. As long as class society, founded on the most
+deep-rooted antagonisms, continues to exist, repression remains a
+necessary means of breaking the will of the opposing side.
+
+Even if, in one country or another, the dictatorship of the proletariat
+grew up within the external framework of democracy, this would by
+no means avert the civil war. The question as to who is to rule
+the country, _i.e._, of the life or death of the bourgeoisie, will
+be decided on either side, not by references to the paragraphs of
+the constitution, but by the employment of all forms of violence.
+However deeply Kautsky goes into the question of the food of the
+anthropopithecus (see page 122 et seq. of his book) and other immediate
+and remote conditions which determine the cause of human cruelty, he
+will find in history no other way of breaking the class will of the
+enemy except the systematic and energetic use of violence.
+
+The degree of ferocity of the struggle depends on a series of internal
+and international circumstances. The more ferocious and dangerous is
+the resistance of the class enemy who have been overthrown, the more
+inevitably does the system of repression take the form of a system of
+terror.
+
+But here Kautsky unexpectedly takes up a new position in his struggle
+with Soviet terrorism. He simply waves aside all reference to the
+ferocity of the counter-revolutionary opposition of the Russian
+bourgeoisie.
+
+"Such ferocity," he says, "could not be noticed in November, 1917, in
+Petrograd and Moscow, and still less more recently in Budapest." (Page
+149.) With such a happy formulation of the question, revolutionary
+terrorism merely proves to be a product of the blood-thirstiness of
+the Bolsheviks, who simultaneously abandoned the traditions of the
+vegetarian anthropopithecus and the moral lessons of Kautsky.
+
+The first conquest of power by the Soviets at the beginning of
+November, 1917 (new style), was actually accomplished with
+insignificant sacrifices. The Russian bourgeoisie found itself to such
+a degree estranged from the masses of the people, so internally
+helpless, so compromised by the course and the result of the war, so
+demoralized by the regime of Kerensky, that it scarcely dared show any
+resistance. In Petrograd the power of Kerensky was overthrown almost
+without a fight. In Moscow its resistance was dragged out, mainly owing
+to the indecisive character of our own actions. In the majority of the
+provincial towns, power was transferred to the Soviet on the mere
+receipt of a telegram from Petrograd or Moscow. If the matter had ended
+there, there would have been no word of the Red Terror. But in
+November, 1917, there was already evidence of the beginning of the
+resistance of the propertied classes. True, there was required the
+intervention of the imperialist governments of the West in order to
+give the Russian counter-revolution faith in itself, and to add
+ever-increasing power to its resistance. This can be shown from facts,
+both important and insignificant, day by day during the whole epoch of
+the Soviet revolution.
+
+Kerensky's "Staff" felt no support forthcoming from the mass of the
+soldiery, and was inclined to recognize the Soviet Government, which
+had begun negotiations for an armistice with the Germans. But there
+followed the protest of the military missions of the Entente, followed
+by open threats. The Staff was frightened; incited by "Allied"
+officers, it entered the path of opposition. This led to armed
+conflict and to the murder of the chief of the field staff, General
+Dukhonin, by a group of revolutionary sailors.
+
+In Petrograd, the official agents of the Entente, especially the
+French Military Mission, hand in hand with the S.R.s and the
+Mensheviks, openly organized the opposition, mobilizing, arming,
+inciting against us the cadets, and the bourgeois youth generally,
+from the second day of the Soviet revolution. The rising of the
+junkers on November 10 brought about a hundred times more victims than
+the revolution of November 7. The campaign of the adventurers Kerensky
+and Krasnov against Petrograd, organized at the same time by the
+Entente, naturally introduced into the struggle the first elements of
+savagery. Nevertheless, General Krasnov was set free on his word of
+honor. The Yaroslav rising (in the summer of 1918) which involved so
+many victims, was organized by Savinkov on the instructions of the
+French Embassy, and with its resources. Archangel was captured
+according to the plans of British naval agents, with the help of
+British warships and aeroplanes. The beginning of the empire of
+Kolchak, the nominee of the American Stock Exchange, was brought about
+by the foreign Czecho-Slovak Corps maintained by the resources of the
+French Government. Kaledin and Krasnov (liberated by us), the first
+leaders of the counter-revolution on the Don, could enjoy partial
+success only thanks to the open military and financial aid of Germany.
+In the Ukraine the Soviet power was overthrown in the beginning of
+1918 by German militarism. The Volunteer Army of Denikin was created
+with the financial and technical help of Great Britain and France.
+Only in the hope of British intervention and of British military
+support was Yudenich's army created. The politicians, the diplomats,
+and the journalists of the Entente have for two years on end been
+debating with complete frankness the question of whether the financing
+of the civil war in Russia is a sufficiently profitable enterprise. In
+such circumstances, one needs truly a brazen forehead to seek the
+reason for the sanguinary character of the civil war in Russia in the
+malevolence of the Bolsheviks, and not in the international situation.
+
+The Russian proletariat was the first to enter the path of the social
+revolution, and the Russian bourgeoisie, politically helpless, was
+emboldened to struggle against its political and economic
+expropriation only because it saw its elder sister in all countries
+still in power, and still maintaining economic, political, and, to a
+certain extent, military supremacy.
+
+If our November revolution had taken place a few months, or even a few
+weeks, after the establishment of the rule of the proletariat in
+Germany, France, and England, there can be no doubt that our
+revolution would have been the most "peaceful," the most "bloodless"
+of all possible revolutions on this sinful earth. But this historical
+sequence--the most "natural" at the first glance, and, in any case,
+the most beneficial for the Russian working class--found itself
+infringed--not through our fault, but through the will of events.
+Instead of being the last, the Russian proletariat proved to be the
+first. It was just this circumstance, after the first period of
+confusion, that imparted desperation to the character of the
+resistance of the classes which had ruled in Russia previously, and
+forced the Russian proletariat, in a moment of the greatest peril,
+foreign attacks, and internal plots and insurrections, to have
+recourse to severe measures of State terror. No one will now say that
+those measures proved futile. But, perhaps, we are expected to
+consider them "intolerable"?
+
+The working class, which seized power in battle, had as its object and
+its duty to establish that power unshakeably, to guarantee its own
+supremacy beyond question, to destroy its enemies' hankering for a new
+revolution, and thereby to make sure of carrying out Socialist
+reforms. Otherwise there would be no point in seizing power.
+
+The revolution "logically" does not demand terrorism, just as
+"logically" it does not demand an armed insurrection. What a profound
+commonplace! But the revolution does require of the revolutionary
+class that it should attain its end by all methods at its
+disposal--if necessary, by an armed rising: if required, by
+terrorism. A revolutionary class which has conquered power with arms
+in its hands is bound to, and will, suppress, rifle in hand, all
+attempts to tear the power out of its hands. Where it has against it
+a hostile army, it will oppose to it its own army. Where it is
+confronted with armed conspiracy, attempt at murder, or rising, it
+will hurl at the heads of its enemies an unsparing penalty. Perhaps
+Kautsky has invented other methods? Or does he reduce the whole
+question to the _degree_ of repression, and recommend in all
+circumstances imprisonment instead of execution?
+
+The question of the form of repression, or of its degree, of course,
+is not one of "principle." It is a question of expediency. In a
+revolutionary period, the party which has been thrown from power,
+which does not reconcile itself with the stability of the ruling
+class, and which proves this by its desperate struggle against the
+latter, cannot be terrorized by the threat of imprisonment, as it does
+not believe in its duration. It is just this simple but decisive fact
+that explains the widespread recourse to shooting in a civil war.
+
+Or, perhaps, Kautsky wishes to say that execution is not expedient,
+that "classes cannot be cowed." This is untrue. Terror is
+helpless--and then only "in the long run"--if it is employed by
+reaction against a historically rising class. But terror can be very
+efficient against a reactionary class which does not want to leave the
+scene of operations. _Intimidation_ is a powerful weapon of policy,
+both internationally and internally. War, like revolution, is founded
+upon intimidation. A victorious war, generally speaking, destroys
+only an insignificant part of the conquered army, intimidating the
+remainder and breaking their will. The revolution works in the same
+way: it kills individuals, and intimidates thousands. In this sense,
+the Red Terror is not distinguishable from the armed insurrection,
+the direct continuation of which it represents. The State terror
+of a revolutionary class can be condemned "morally" only by a man
+who, as a principle, rejects (in words) every form of violence
+whatsoever--consequently, every war and every rising. For this one has
+to be merely and simply a hypocritical Quaker.
+
+"But, in that case, in what do your tactics differ from the tactics of
+Tsarism?" we are asked, by the high priests of Liberalism and
+Kautskianism.
+
+You do not understand this, holy men? We shall explain to you. The
+terror of Tsarism was directed against the proletariat. The
+gendarmerie of Tsarism throttled the workers who were fighting for the
+Socialist order. Our Extraordinary Commissions shoot landlords,
+capitalists, and generals who are striving to restore the capitalist
+order. Do you grasp this ... distinction? Yes? For us Communists it is
+quite sufficient.
+
+
+"FREEDOM OF THE PRESS"
+
+One point particularly worries Kautsky, the author of a great many
+books and articles--the freedom of the Press. Is it permissible to
+suppress newspapers?
+
+During war all institutions and organs of the State and of public
+opinion become, directly or indirectly, weapons of warfare. This is
+particularly true of the Press. No government carrying on a serious
+war will allow publications to exist on its territory which, openly or
+indirectly, support the enemy. Still more so in a civil war. The
+nature of the latter is such that each of the struggling sides has in
+the rear of its armies considerable circles of the population on the
+side of the enemy. In war, where both success and failure are repaid
+by death, hostile agents who penetrate into the rear are subject to
+execution. This is inhumane, but no one ever considered war a school
+of humanity--still less civil war. Can it be seriously demanded that,
+during a civil war with the White Guards of Denikin, the publications
+of parties supporting Denikin should come out unhindered in Moscow and
+Petrograd? To propose this in the name of the "freedom" of the Press
+is just the same as, in the name of open dealing, to demand the
+publication of military secrets. "A besieged city," wrote a Communard,
+Arthur Arnould of Paris, "cannot permit within its midst that hopes
+for its fall should openly be expressed, that the fighters defending
+it should be incited to treason, that the movements of its troops
+should be communicated to the enemy. Such was the position of Paris
+under the Commune." Such is the position of the Soviet Republic during
+the two years of its existence.
+
+Let us, however, listen to what Kautsky has to say in this connection.
+
+"The justification of this system (_i.e._, repressions in connection
+with the Press) is reduced to the naive idea that an absolute truth
+(!) exists, and that only the Communists possess it (!). Similarly,"
+continues Kautsky, "it reduces itself to another point of view, that
+all writers are by nature liars (!) and that only Communists are
+fanatics for truth (!). In reality, liars and fanatics for what they
+consider truth are to be found in all camps." And so on, and so on,
+and so on. (Page 176.)
+
+In this way, in Kautsky's eyes, the revolution, in its most acute
+phase, when it is a question of the life and death of classes,
+continues as hitherto to be a literary discussion with the object of
+establishing ... the truth. What profundity!... Our "truth," of
+course, is not absolute. But as in its name we are, at the present
+moment, shedding our blood, we have neither cause nor possibility to
+carry on a literary discussion as to the relativity of truth with
+those who "criticize" us with the help of all forms of arms.
+Similarly, our problem is not to punish liars and to encourage just
+men amongst journalists of all shades of opinion, but to throttle the
+class lie of the bourgeoisie and to achieve the class truth of the
+proletariat, irrespective of the fact that in both camps there are
+fanatics and liars.
+
+"The Soviet Government," Kautsky thunders, "has destroyed the sole
+remedy that might militate against corruption: the freedom of the
+Press. Control by means of unlimited freedom of the Press alone could
+have restrained those bandits and adventurers who will inevitably
+cling like leeches to every unlimited, uncontrolled power." (Page
+188.) And so on.
+
+The Press as a trusty weapon of the struggle with corruption! This
+liberal recipe sounds particularly pitiful when one remembers the two
+countries with the greatest "freedom" of the Press--North America and
+France--which, at the same time, are countries of the most highly
+developed stage of capitalist corruption.
+
+Feeding on the old scandal of the political ante-rooms of the Russian
+revolution, Kautsky imagines that without Cadet and Menshevik freedom
+the Soviet apparatus is honey-combed with "bandits" and "adventurers."
+Such was the voice of the Mensheviks a year or eighteen months ago.
+Now even they will not dare to repeat this. With the help of Soviet
+control and party selection, the Soviet Government, in the intense
+atmosphere of the struggle, has dealt with the bandits and adventurers
+who appeared on the surface at the moment of the revolution
+incomparably better than any government whatsoever, at any time
+whatsoever.
+
+We are fighting. We are fighting a life-and-death struggle. The Press
+is a weapon not of an abstract society, but of two irreconcilable,
+armed and contending sides. We are destroying the Press of the
+counter-revolution, just as we destroyed its fortified positions, its
+stores, its communications, and its intelligence system. Are we
+depriving ourselves of Cadet and Menshevik criticisms of the
+corruption of the working class? In return we are victoriously
+destroying the very foundations of capitalist corruption.
+
+But Kautsky goes further to develop his theme. He complains that we
+suppress the newspapers of the S.R.s and the Mensheviks, and
+even--such things have been known--arrest their leaders. Are we not
+dealing here with "shades of opinion" in the proletarian or the
+Socialist movement? The scholastic pedant does not see facts beyond
+his accustomed words. The Mensheviks and S.R.s for him are simply
+tendencies in Socialism, whereas, in the course of the revolution,
+they have been transformed into an organization which works in active
+co-operation with the counter-revolution and carries on against us
+an open war. The army of Kolchak was organized by Socialist
+Revolutionaries (how that name savours to-day of the charlatan!), and
+was supported by Mensheviks. Both carried on--and carry on--against
+us, for a year and a half, a war on the Northern front. The Mensheviks
+who rule the Caucasus, formerly the allies of Hohenzollern, and to-day
+the allies of Lloyd George, arrested and shot Bolsheviks hand in hand
+with German and British officers. The Mensheviks and S.R.s of the
+Kuban Rada organized the army of Denikin. The Esthonian Mensheviks who
+participate in their government were directly concerned in the last
+advance of Yudenich against Petrograd. Such are these "tendencies" in
+the Socialist movement. Kautsky considers that one can be in a state
+of open and civil war with the Mensheviks and S.R.s, who, with the
+help of the troops they themselves have organized for Yudenich,
+Kolchak and Denikin, are fighting for their "shade of opinions" in
+Socialism, and at the same time to allow those innocent "shades of
+opinion" freedom of the Press in our rear. If the dispute with the
+S.R.s and the Mensheviks could be settled by means of persuasion and
+voting--that is, if there were not behind their backs the Russian and
+foreign imperialists--there would be no civil war.
+
+Kautsky, of course, is ready to "condemn"--an extra drop of ink--the
+blockade, and the Entente support of Denikin, and the White Terror.
+But in his high impartiality he cannot refuse the latter certain
+extenuating circumstances. The White Terror, you see, does not
+infringe their own principles, while the Bolsheviks, making use of the
+Red Terror, betray the principle of "the sacredness of human life
+which they themselves proclaimed." (Page 210.)
+
+What is the meaning of the principle of the sacredness of human life
+in practice, and in what does it differ from the commandment, "Thou
+shalt not kill," Kautsky does not explain. When a murderer raises his
+knife over a child, may one kill the murderer to save the child? Will
+not thereby the principle of the "sacredness of human life" be
+infringed? May one kill the murderer to save oneself? Is an
+insurrection of oppressed slaves against their masters permissible?
+Is it permissible to purchase one's freedom at the cost of the
+life of one's jailers? If human life in general is sacred and
+inviolable, we must deny ourselves not only the use of terror, not
+only war, but also revolution itself. Kautsky simply does not realize
+the counter-revolutionary meaning of the "principle" which he attempts
+to force upon us. Elsewhere we shall see that Kautsky accuses us of
+concluding the Brest-Litovsk peace: in his opinion we ought to have
+continued war. But what then becomes of the sacredness of human life?
+Does life cease to be sacred when it is a question of people talking
+another language, or does Kautsky consider that mass murders organized
+on principles of strategy and tactics are not murders at all? Truly it
+is difficult to put forward in our age a principle more hypocritical
+and more stupid. As long as human labor-power, and, consequently, life
+itself, remain articles of sale and purchase, of exploitation and
+robbery, the principle of the "sacredness of human life" remains a
+shameful lie, uttered with the object of keeping the oppressed slaves
+in their chains.
+
+We used to fight against the death penalty introduced by Kerensky,
+because that penalty was inflicted by the courts-martial of the old
+army on soldiers who refused to continue the imperialist war. We tore
+this weapon out of the hands of the old courts-martial, destroyed the
+courts-martial themselves, and demobilized the old army which had
+brought them forth. Destroying in the Red Army, and generally
+throughout the country, counter-revolutionary conspirators who strive
+by means of insurrections, murders, and disorganization, to restore
+the old regime, we are acting in accordance with the iron laws of a
+war in which we desire to guarantee our victory.
+
+If it is a question of seeking formal contradictions, then obviously
+we must do so on the side of the White Terror, which is the weapon of
+classes which consider themselves "Christian," patronize idealist
+philosophy, and are firmly convinced that the individuality (their
+own) is an end-in-itself. As for us, we were never concerned with the
+Kantian-priestly and vegetarian-Quaker prattle about the "sacredness
+of human life." We were revolutionaries in opposition, and have
+remained revolutionaries in power. To make the individual sacred we
+must destroy the social order which crucifies him. And this problem
+can only be solved by blood and iron.
+
+There is another difference between the White Terror and the Red,
+which Kautsky to-day ignores, but which in the eyes of a Marxist is
+of decisive significance. The White Terror is the weapon of the
+historically reactionary class. When we exposed the futility of the
+repressions of the bourgeois State against the proletariat, we never
+denied that by arrests and executions the ruling class, under certain
+conditions, might temporarily retard the development of the social
+revolution. But we were convinced that they would not be able to
+bring it to a halt. We relied on the fact that the proletariat is the
+historically rising class, and that bourgeois society could not
+develop without increasing the forces of the proletariat. The
+bourgeoisie to-day is a falling class. It not only no longer plays an
+essential part in production, but by its imperialist methods of
+appropriation is destroying the economic structure of the world and
+human culture generally. Nevertheless, the historical persistence of
+the bourgeoisie is colossal. It holds to power, and does not wish to
+abandon it. Thereby it threatens to drag after it into the abyss the
+whole of society. We are forced to tear it off, to chop it away. The
+Red Terror is a weapon utilized against a class, doomed to
+destruction, which does not wish to perish. If the White Terror can
+only retard the historical rise of the proletariat, the Red Terror
+hastens the destruction of the bourgeoisie. This hastening--a pure
+question of acceleration--is at certain periods of decisive
+importance. Without the Red Terror, the Russian bourgeoisie, together
+with the world bourgeoisie, would throttle us long before the coming
+of the revolution in Europe. One must be blind not to see this, or a
+swindler to deny it.
+
+The man who recognizes the revolutionary historic importance of the
+very fact of the existence of the Soviet system must also sanction the
+Red Terror. Kautsky, who, during the last two years, has covered
+mountains of paper with polemics against Communism and Terrorism, is
+obliged, at the end of his pamphlet, to recognize the facts, and
+unexpectedly to admit that the Russian Soviet Government is to-day the
+most important factor in the world revolution. "However one regards
+the Bolshevik methods," he writes, "the fact that a proletarian
+government in a large country has not only reached power, but has
+retained it for two years up to the present time, amidst great
+difficulties, extraordinarily increases the sense of power amongst the
+proletariat of all countries. For the actual revolution the Bolsheviks
+have thereby accomplished a great work--_grosses geleistet_." (Page
+233.)
+
+This announcement stuns us as a completely unexpected recognition of
+historical truth from a quarter whence we had long since ceased to
+await it. The Bolsheviks have accomplished a great historical task by
+existing for two years against the united capitalist world. But the
+Bolsheviks held out not only by ideas, but by the sword. Kautsky's
+admission is an involuntary sanctioning of the methods of the Red
+Terror, and at the same time the most effective condemnation of his
+own critical concoction.
+
+
+THE INFLUENCE OF THE WAR
+
+Kautsky sees one of the reasons for the extremely bloody character of
+the revolution in the war and in its hardening influence on manners.
+Quite undeniable. That influence, with all the consequences that
+follow from it, might have been foreseen earlier--approximately in the
+period when Kautsky was not certain whether one ought to vote for the
+war credits or against them.
+
+"Imperialism has violently torn society out of its condition of
+unstable equilibrium," he wrote five years ago in our German
+book--_The War and the International_. "It has blown up the sluices
+with which Social-Democracy held back the current of the revolutionary
+energy of the proletariat, and has directed that current into its own
+channels. This monstrous historical experiment, which at one blow has
+broken the back of the Socialist International, represents a deadly
+danger for bourgeoisie society itself. The hammer has been taken from
+the hand of the worker, and has been replaced by the sword. The
+worker, bound hand and foot by the mechanism of capitalist society,
+has suddenly burst out of its midst, and is learning to put the aims
+of the community higher than his own domestic happiness and than life
+itself.
+
+"With this weapon, which he himself has forged, in his hand, the
+worker is placed in a position in which the political destiny of the
+State depends directly on him. Those who in former times oppressed and
+despised him now flatter and caress him. At the same time he is
+entering into intimate relations with those same guns which, according
+to Lassalle, constitute the most important integral part of the
+constitution. He crosses the boundaries of states, participates in
+violent requisitions, and under his blows towns pass from hand to
+hand. Changes take place such as the last generation did not dream of.
+
+"If the most advanced workers were aware that force was the mother of
+law, their political thought still remained saturated with the spirit
+of opportunism and self-adaptation to bourgeois legality. To-day the
+worker has learned in practice to despise that legality, and violently
+to destroy it. The static moments in his psychology are giving place
+to the dynamic. Heavy guns are knocking into his head the idea that,
+in cases where it is impossible to avoid an obstacle, there remains
+the possibility of destroying it. Nearly the whole adult male
+population is passing through this school of war, terrible in its
+social realism, which is bringing forth a new type of humanity.
+
+"Over all the criteria of bourgeois society--its law, its morality,
+its religion--is now raised the fist of iron necessity. 'Necessity
+knows no law' was the declaration of the German Chancellor (August 4,
+1914). Monarchs come out into the market-place to accuse one another
+of lying in the language of fishwives; governments break promises they
+have solemnly made, while the national church binds its Lord God like
+a convict to the national cannon. Is it not obvious that these
+circumstances must create important alterations in the psychology of
+the working class, radically curing it of that hypnosis of legality
+which was created by the period of political stagnation? The
+propertied classes will soon, to their sorrow, have to be convinced of
+this. The proletariat, after passing through the school of war, at the
+first serious obstacle within its own country will feel the necessity
+of speaking with the language of force. 'Necessity knows no law,' he
+will throw in the face of those who attempt to stop him by laws of
+bourgeois legality. And the terrible economic necessity which will
+arise during the course of this war, and particularly at its end, will
+drive the masses to spurn very many laws." (Page 56-57.)
+
+All this is undeniable. But to what is said above one must add that
+the war has exercised no less influence on the psychology of the
+ruling classes. As the masses become more insistent in their demands,
+so the bourgeoisie has become more unyielding.
+
+In times of peace, the capitalists used to guarantee their interests
+by means of the "peaceful" robbery of hired labor. During the war they
+served those same interests by means of the destruction of countless
+human lives. This has imparted to their consciousness as a master
+class a new "Napoleonic" trait. The capitalists during the war became
+accustomed to send to their death millions of slaves--fellow-countrymen
+and colonials--for the sake of coal, railway, and other profits.
+
+During the war there emerged from the ranks of the bourgeoisie--large,
+middle, and small--hundreds of thousands of officers, professional
+fighters, men whose character has received the hardening of battle,
+and has become freed from all external restraints: qualified soldiers,
+ready and able to defend the privileged position of the bourgeoisie
+which produced them with a ferocity which, in its way, borders on
+heroism.
+
+The revolution would probably be more humane if the proletariat had
+the possibility of "buying off all this band," as Marx once put it.
+But capitalism during the war has imposed upon the toilers too great a
+load of debt, and has too deeply undermined the foundations of
+production, for us to be able seriously to contemplate a ransom in
+return for which the bourgeoisie would silently make its peace with
+the revolution. The masses have lost too much blood, have suffered too
+much, have become too savage, to accept a decision which economically
+would be beyond their capacity.
+
+To this there must be added other circumstances working in the same
+direction. The bourgeoisie of the conquered countries has been
+embittered by defeat, the responsibility for which it is inclined to
+throw on the rank and file--on the workers and peasants who proved
+incapable of carrying on "the great national war" to a victorious
+conclusion. From this point of view, one finds very instructive those
+explanations, unparalleled for their effrontery, which Ludendorff gave
+to the Commission of the National Assembly. The bands of Ludendorff
+are burning with the desire to take revenge for their humiliation
+abroad on the blood of their own proletariat. As for the bourgeoisie
+of the victorious countries, it has become inflated with arrogance,
+and is more than ever ready to defend its social position with the
+help of the bestial methods which guaranteed its victory. We have seen
+that the bourgeoisie is incapable of organizing the division of the
+booty amongst its own ranks without war and destruction. Can it,
+without a fight, abandon its booty altogether? The experience of the
+last five years leaves no doubt whatsoever on this score: if even
+previously it was absolutely utopian to expect that the expropriation
+of the propertied classes--thanks to "democracy"--would take place
+imperceptibly and painlessly, without insurrections, armed conflicts,
+attempts at counter-revolution, and severe repression, the state of
+affairs we have inherited from the imperialist war predetermines,
+doubly and trebly, the tense character of the civil war and the
+dictatorship of the proletariat.
+
+
+
+
+5
+
+THE PARIS COMMUNE AND SOVIET RUSSIA
+
+_"The short episode of the first revolution carried out by the
+proletariat for the proletariat ended in the triumph of its enemy.
+This episode--from March 18 to May 28--lasted seventy-two days."--"The
+Paris Commune" of March 18, 1871, P. L. Lavrov, Petrograd. 'Kolos'
+Publishing House, 1919, pp. 160._
+
+
+THE IMMATURITY OF THE SOCIALIST PARTIES IN THE COMMUNE.
+
+The Paris Commune of 1871 was the first, as yet weak, historic attempt
+of the working class to impose its supremacy. We cherished the memory
+of the Commune in spite of the extremely limited character of its
+experience, the immaturity of its participants, the confusion of its
+programme, the lack of unity amongst its leaders, the indecision of
+their plans, the hopeless panic of its executive organs, and the
+terrifying defeat fatally precipitated by all these. We cherish in the
+Commune, in the words of Lavrov, "the first, though still pale, dawn
+of the proletarian republic." Quite otherwise with Kautsky. Devoting a
+considerable part of his book to a crudely tendencious contrast
+between the Commune and the Soviet power, he sees the main advantages
+of the Commune in features that we find are its misfortune and its
+fault.
+
+Kautsky laboriously proves that the Paris Commune of 1871 was not
+"artificially" prepared, but emerged unexpectedly, taking the
+revolutionaries by surprise--in contrast to the November revolution,
+which was carefully prepared by our party. This is incontestable. Not
+daring clearly to formulate his profoundly reactionary ideas, Kautsky
+does not say outright whether the Paris revolutionaries of 1871
+deserve praise for not having foreseen the proletarian insurrection,
+and for not having foreseen the inevitable and consciously gone to
+meet it. However, all Kautsky's picture was built up in such a way as
+to produce in the reader just this idea: the Communards were simply
+overtaken by misfortune (the Bavarian philistine, Vollmar, once
+expressed his regret that the Communards had not gone to bed instead
+of taking power into their hands), and, therefore, deserve pity. The
+Bolsheviks consciously went to meet misfortune (the conquest of
+power), and, therefore, there is no forgiveness for them either in
+this or the future world. Such a formulation of the question may seem
+incredible in its internal inconsistency. None the less, it follows
+quite inevitably from the position of the Kautskian "Independents,"
+who draw their heads into their shoulders in order to see and foresee
+nothing; and, if they do move forward, it is only after having
+received a preliminary stout blow in the rear.
+
+"To humiliate Paris," writes Kautsky, "not to give it self-government,
+to deprive it of its position as capital, to disarm it in order
+afterwards to attempt with greater confidence a monarchist _coup
+d'etat_--such was the most important task of the National Assembly
+and the chief of the executive power it elected, Thiers. Out of this
+situation arose the conflict which led to the Paris insurrection.
+
+"It is clear how different from this was the character of the _coup
+d'etat_ carried out by the Bolsheviks, which drew its strength from
+the yearning for peace; which had the peasantry behind it; which had
+in the National Assembly against it, not monarchists, but S.R.s and
+Menshevik Social-Democrats.
+
+"The Bolsheviks came to power by means of a well-prepared _coup
+d'etat_; which at one blow handed over to them the whole machinery
+of the State--immediately utilized in the most energetic and merciless
+manner for the purpose of suppressing their opponents, amongst them
+their proletarian opponents.
+
+"No one, on the other hand, was more surprised by the insurrection of
+the Commune than the revolutionaries themselves, and for a
+considerable number amongst them the conflict was in the highest
+degree undesirable." (Page 56.)
+
+In order more clearly to realize the actual sense of what Kautsky has
+written here of the Communards, let us bring forward the following
+evidence.
+
+"On March 1, 1871," writes Lavrov, in his very instructive book on the
+Commune, "six months after the fall of the Empire, and a few days
+before the explosion of the Commune, the guiding personalities in the
+Paris International still had no definite political programme." (Pages
+64-65.)
+
+"After March 18," writes the same author, "Paris was in the hands of
+the proletariat, but its leaders, overwhelmed by their unexpected
+power, did not take the most elementary measures." (Page 71.)
+
+"'Your part is too big for you to play, and your sole aim is to get
+rid of responsibility,' said one member of the Central Committee of
+the National Guard. In this was a great deal of truth," writes the
+Communard and historian of the Commune, Lissagaray. "But at the moment
+of action itself the absence of preliminary organization and
+preparation is very often a reason why parts are assigned to men which
+are too big for them to play." (Brussels, 1876; page 106.)
+
+From this one can already see (later on it will become still more
+obvious) that the absence of a direct struggle for power on the part
+of the Paris Socialists was explained by their theoretical
+shapelessness and political helplessness, and not at all by higher
+considerations of tactics.
+
+We have no doubt that Kautsky's own loyalty to the traditions of the
+Commune will be expressed mainly in that extraordinary surprise with
+which he will greet the proletarian revolution in Germany as "a
+conflict in the highest degree undesirable." We doubt, however,
+whether this will be ascribed by posterity to his credit. In reality,
+one must describe his historical analogy as a combination of
+confusion, omission, and fraudulent suggestion.
+
+The intentions which were entertained by Thiers towards Paris were
+entertained by Miliukov, who was openly supported by Tseretelli and
+Chernov, towards Petrograd. All of them, from Kornilov to Potressov,
+affirmed day after day that Petrograd had alienated itself from the
+country, had nothing in common with it, was completely corrupted, and
+was attempting to impose its will upon the community. To overthrow and
+humiliate Petrograd was the first task of Miliukov and his assistants.
+And this took place at a period when Petrograd was the true centre of
+the revolution, which had not yet been able to consolidate its
+position in the rest of the country. The former president of the Duma,
+Rodzianko, openly talked about handing over Petrograd to the Germans
+for educative purposes, as Riga had been handed over. Rodzianko only
+called by its name what Miliukov was trying to carry out, and what
+Kerensky assisted by his whole policy.
+
+Miliukov, like Thiers, wished to disarm the proletariat. More than
+that, thanks to Kerensky, Chernov, and Tseretelli, the Petrograd
+proletariat was to a considerable extent disarmed in July, 1917. It
+was partially re-armed during Kornilov's march on Petrograd in August.
+And this new arming was a serious element in the preparation of the
+November insurrection. In this way, it is just the points in which
+Kautsky contrasts our November revolution to the March revolt of the
+Paris workers that, to a very large extent, coincide.
+
+In what, however, lies the difference between them? First of all, in
+the fact that Thiers' criminal plans succeeded: Paris was throttled by
+him, and tens of thousands of workers were destroyed. Miliukov, on the
+other hand, had a complete fiasco: Petrograd remained an impregnable
+fortress of the proletariat, and the leader of the bourgeoisie went to
+the Ukraine to petition that the Kaiser's troops should occupy Russia.
+For this difference we were to a considerable extent responsible--and
+we are ready to bear the responsibility. There is a capital difference
+also in the fact--that this told more than once in the further course
+of events--that, while the Communards began mainly with considerations
+of patriotism, we were invariably guided by the point of view of the
+international revolution. The defeat of the Commune led to the
+practical collapse of the First International. The victory of the
+Soviet power has led to the creation of the Third International.
+
+But Marx--on the eve of the insurrection--advised the Communards not
+to revolt, but to create an organization! One might understand Kautsky
+if he adduced this evidence in order to show that Marx had
+insufficiently gauged the acuteness of the situation in Paris. But
+Kautsky attempts to exploit Marx's advice as a proof of his
+condemnation of insurrection in general. Like all the mandarins of
+German Social-Democracy, Kautsky sees in organization first and
+foremost a method of hindering revolutionary action.
+
+But limiting ourselves to the question of organization as such, we
+must not forget that the November revolution was preceded by nine
+months of Kerensky's Government, during which our party, not without
+success, devoted itself not only to agitation, but also to
+organization. The November revolution took place after we had achieved
+a crushing majority in the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils of
+Petrograd, Moscow, and all the industrial centres in the country, and
+had transformed the Soviets into powerful organizations directed by
+our party. The Communards did nothing of the kind. Finally, we had
+behind us the heroic Commune of Paris, from the defeat of which we had
+drawn the deduction that revolutionaries must foresee events and
+prepare for them. For this also we are to blame.
+
+Kautsky requires his extensive comparison of the Commune and Soviet
+Russia only in order to slander and humiliate a living and victorious
+dictatorship of the proletariat in the interests of an attempted
+dictatorship, in the already fairly distant past.
+
+Kautsky quotes with extreme satisfaction the statement of the Central
+Committee of the National Guard on March 19 in connection with the
+murder of the two generals by the soldiery. "We say indignantly: the
+bloody filth with the help of which it is hoped to stain our honor is
+a pitiful slander. We never organized murder, and never did the
+National Guard take part in the execution of crime."
+
+Naturally, the Central Committee had no cause to assume responsibility
+for murders with which it had no concern. But the sentimental,
+pathetic tone of the statement very clearly characterises the
+political timorousness of these men in the face of bourgeois public
+opinion. Nor is this surprising. The representatives of the National
+Guard were men in most cases with a very modest revolutionary past.
+"Not one well-known name," writes Lissagaray. "They were petty
+bourgeois shop-keepers, strangers to all but limited circles, and, in
+most cases, strangers hitherto to politics." (Page 70.)
+
+"The modest and, to some extent, fearful sense of terrible historical
+responsibility, and the desire to get rid of it as soon as possible,"
+writes Lavrov of them, "is evident in all the proclamations of this
+Central Committee, into the hands of which the destiny of Paris had
+fallen." (Page 77.)
+
+After bringing forward, to our confusion, the declamation concerning
+bloodshed, Kautsky later on follows Marx and Engels in criticizing the
+indecision of the Commune. "If the Parisians (_i.e._, the Communards)
+had persistently followed up the tracts of Thiers, they would,
+perhaps, have managed to seize the government. The troops falling back
+from Paris would not have shown the least resistance ... but they let
+Thiers go without hindrance. They allowed him to lead away his troops
+and reorganize them at Versailles, to inspire a new spirit in, and
+strengthen, them." (Page 49.)
+
+Kautsky cannot understand that it was the same men, and for the very
+same reasons, who published the statement of March 19 quoted above,
+who allowed Thiers to leave Paris with impunity and gather his forces.
+If the Communards had _conquered_ with the help of resources of a
+purely moral character, their statement would have acquired great
+weight. But this did not take place. In reality, their sentimental
+humaneness was simply the obverse of their revolutionary passivity.
+The men who, by the will of fate, had received power in Paris, could
+not understand the necessity of immediately utilizing that power to
+the end, of hurling themselves after Thiers, and, before he recovered
+his grasp of the situation, of crushing him, of concentrating the
+troops in their hands, of carrying out the necessary weeding-out of
+the officer class, of seizing the provinces. Such men, of course, were
+not inclined to severe measures with counter-revolutionary elements.
+The one was closely bound up with the other. Thiers could not be
+followed up without arresting Thiers' agents in Paris and shooting
+conspirators and spies. When one considered the execution of
+counter-revolutionary generals as an indelible "crime," one could not
+develop energy in following up troops who were under the direction of
+counter-revolutionary generals.
+
+In the revolution in the highest degree of energy is the highest
+degree of humanity. "Just the men," Lavrov justly remarks, "who hold
+human life and human blood dear must strive to organize the
+possibility for a swift and decisive victory, and then to act with the
+greatest swiftness and energy, in order to crush the enemy. For only
+in this way can we achieve the minimum of inevitable sacrifice and the
+minimum of bloodshed." (Page 225.)
+
+The statement of March 19 will, however, be considered with more
+justice if we examine it, not as an unconditional confession of faith,
+but as the expression of transient moods the day after an unexpected
+and bloodless victory. Being an absolute stranger to the understanding
+of the dynamics of revolution, and the internal limitations of its
+swiftly-developing moods, Kautsky thinks in lifeless schemes, and
+distorts the perspective of events by arbitrarily selected analogies.
+He does not understand that soft-hearted indecision is generally
+characteristic of the masses in the first period of the revolution.
+The workers pursue the offensive only under the pressure of iron
+necessity, just as they have recourse to the Red Terror only under the
+threat of destruction by the White Guards. That which Kautsky
+represents as the result of the peculiarly elevated moral feeling of
+the Parisian proletariat in 1871 is, in reality, merely a
+characteristic of the first stage of the civil war. A similar
+phenomenon could have been witnessed in our case.
+
+In Petrograd we conquered power in November, 1917, almost without
+bloodshed, and even without arrests. The ministers of Kerensky's
+Government were set free very soon after the revolution. More, the
+Cossack General, Krasnov, who had advanced on Petrograd together with
+Kerensky after the power had passed to the Soviet, and who had been
+made prisoner by us at Gatchina, was set free on his word of honor the
+next day. This was "generosity" quite in the spirit of the first
+measures of the Commune. But it was a mistake. Afterwards, General
+Krasnov, after fighting against us for about a year in the South, and
+destroying many thousands of Communists, again advanced on Petrograd,
+this time in the ranks of Yudenich's army. The proletarian revolution
+assumed a more severe character only after the rising of the junkers
+in Petrograd, and particularly after the rising of the Czecho-Slovaks
+on the Volga organized by the Cadets, the S.R.s, and the Mensheviks,
+after their mass executions of Communists, the attempt on Lenin's
+life, the murder of Uritsky, etc., etc.
+
+The same tendencies, only in an embryonic form, we see in the history
+of the Commune.
+
+Driven by the logic of the struggle, it took its stand in principle on
+the path of intimidation. The creation of the Committee of Public
+Safety was dictated, in the case of many of its supporters, by the
+idea of the Red Terror. The Committee was appointed "to cut off the
+heads of traitors" (Journal Officiel No. 123), "to avenge treachery"
+(No. 124). Under the head of "intimidatory" decrees we must class the
+order to seize the property of Thiers and of his ministers, to destroy
+Thiers' house, to destroy the Vendome column, and especially the
+decree on hostages. For every captured Communard or sympathizer with
+the Commune shot by the Versaillese, three hostages were to be shot.
+The activity of the Prefecture of Paris controlled by Raoul Rigault
+had a purely terroristic, though not always a useful, purpose.
+
+The effect of all these measures of intimidation was paralyzed by the
+helpless opportunism of the guiding elements in the Commune, by their
+striving to reconcile the bourgeoisie with the _fait accompli_ by
+the help of pitiful phrases, by their vacillations between the fiction
+of democracy and the reality of dictatorship. The late Lavrov
+expresses the latter idea splendidly in his book on the Commune.
+
+"The Paris of the rich bourgeois and the poor proletarians, as a
+political community of different classes, demanded, in the name of
+liberal principles, complete freedom of speech, of assembly, of
+criticism of the government, etc. The Paris which had accomplished the
+revolution in the interests of the proletariat, and had before it the
+task of realizing this revolution in the shape of institutions, Paris,
+as the community of the emancipated working-class proletariat,
+demanded revolutionary--_i.e._, dictatorial, measures against the
+enemies of the new order." (Pages 143-144.)
+
+If the Paris Commune had not fallen, but had continued to exist in the
+midst of a ceaseless struggle, there can be no doubt that it would
+have been obliged to have recourse to more and more severe measures
+for the suppression of the counter-revolution. True, Kautsky would not
+then have had the possibility of contrasting the humane Communards
+with the inhumane Bolsheviks. But in return, probably, Thiers, would
+not have had the possibility of inflicting his monstrous bloodletting
+upon the proletariat of Paris. History, possibly, would not have been
+the loser.
+
+
+THE IRRESPONSIBLE CENTRAL COMMITTEE AND THE "DEMOCRATIC" COMMUNE
+
+"On March 19," Kautsky informs us, "in the Central Committee of the
+National Guard, some demanded a march on Versailles, others an appeal
+to the electors, and a third party the adoption first of all of
+revolutionary measures; as if every one of these steps," he proceeds
+very learnedly to inform us, "were not equally necessary, and as if
+one excluded the other." (Page 72.) Further on, Kautsky, in connection
+with these disputes in the Commune, presents us with various warmed-up
+platitudes as to the mutual relations of reform and revolution. In
+reality, the following was the situation. If it were decided to march
+on Versailles, and to do this without losing an hour it was necessary
+immediately to reorganize the National Guard, to place at its head the
+best fighting elements of the Paris proletariat, and thereby
+temporarily to weaken Paris from the revolutionary point of view. But
+to organize elections in Paris, while at the same time sending out of
+its walls the flower of the working class, would have been senseless
+from the point of view of the revolutionary party. Theoretically, a
+march on Versailles and elections to the Commune, of course, did not
+exclude each other in the slightest degree, but in practice they did
+exclude each other: for the success of the elections, it was necessary
+to postpone the attack; for the attack to succeed, the elections must
+be put off. Finally, leading the proletariat out to the field and
+thereby temporarily weakening Paris, it was essential to obtain some
+guarantee against the possibility of counter-revolutionary attempts in
+the capital; for Thiers would not have hesitated at any measures to
+raise a white revolt in the rear of the Communards. It was essential
+to establish a more military--_i.e._, a more stringent regime in
+the capital. "They had to fight," writes Lavrov, "against many
+internal foes with whom Paris was full, who only yesterday had been
+rioting around the Exchange and the Vendome Square, who had their
+representatives in the administration and in the National Guard, who
+possessed their press, and their meetings, who almost openly
+maintained contact with the Versaillese, and who became more
+determined and more audacious at every piece of carelessness, at every
+check of the Commune." (Page 87.)
+
+It was necessary, side by side with this, to carry out revolutionary
+measures of a financial and generally of an economic character: first
+and foremost, for the equipment of the revolutionary army. All these
+most necessary measures of revolutionary dictatorship could with
+difficulty be reconciled with an extensive electoral campaign. But
+Kautsky has not the least idea of what a revolution is in practice. He
+thinks that theoretically to reconcile is the same as practically to
+accomplish.
+
+The Central Committee appointed March 22 as the day of elections for
+the Commune; but, not sure of itself, frightened at its own
+illegality, striving to act in unison with more "legal" institutions,
+entered into ridiculous and endless negotiations with a quite helpless
+assembly of mayors and deputies of Paris, showing its readiness to
+divide power with them if only an agreement could be arrived at.
+Meanwhile precious time was slipping by.
+
+Marx, on whom Kautsky, through old habit, tries to rely, did not under
+any circumstances propose that, at one and the same time, the Commune
+should be elected and the workers should be led out into the field for
+the war. In his letter to Kugelmann, Marx wrote, on April 12, 1871,
+that the Central Committee of the National Guard had too soon given up
+its power in favor of the Commune. Kautsky, in his own words, "does
+not understand" this opinion of Marx. It is quite simple. Marx at any
+rate understood that the problem was not one of chasing legality, but
+of inflicting a fatal blow upon the enemy. "If the Central Committee
+had consisted of real revolutionaries," says Lavrov, and rightly, "it
+ought to have acted differently. It would have been quite unforgivable
+for it to have given the enemy ten days' respite before the election
+and assembly of the Commune, while the leaders of the proletariat
+refused to carry out their duty and did not recognize that they had
+the right immediately to _lead_ the proletariat. As it was, the
+feeble immaturity of the popular parties created a Committee which
+considered those ten days of inaction incumbent upon it." (Page 78.)
+
+The yearning of the Central Committee to hand over power as soon as
+possible to a "legal" Government was dictated, not so much by the
+superstitions of former democracy, of which, by the way, there was no
+lack, as by fear of responsibility. Under the plea that it was a
+temporary institution, the Central Committee avoided the taking of the
+most necessary and absolutely pressing measures, in spite of the fact
+that all the material apparatus of power was centred in its hands. But
+the Commune itself did not take over political power in full from the
+Central Committee, and the latter continued to interfere in all
+business quite unceremoniously. This created a dual Government, which
+was extremely dangerous, particularly under military conditions.
+
+On May 3 the Central Committee sent deputies to the Commune demanding
+that the Ministry for War should be placed under its control. Again
+there arose, as Lissagaray writes, the question as to whether "the
+Central Committee should be dissolved, or arrested, or entrusted with
+the administration of the Ministry for War."
+
+Here was a question, not of the principles of democracy, but of the
+absence, in the case of both parties, of a clear programme of action,
+and of the readiness, both of the irresponsible revolutionary
+organizations in the shape of the Central Committee and of the
+"democratic" organization of the Commune, to shift the responsibility
+on to the other's shoulders, while at the same time not entirely
+renouncing power.
+
+These were political relations which it might seem no one could call
+worthy of imitation.
+
+"But the Central Committee," Kautsky consoles himself, "never
+attempted to infringe the principle in virtue of which the supreme
+power must belong to the delegates elected by universal suffrage." In
+this respect the "Paris Commune was the direct antithesis of the
+Soviet Republic." (Page 74.) There was no unity of government, there
+was no revolutionary decision, there existed a division of power, and,
+as a result, there came swift and terrible destruction. But to
+counter-balance this--is it not comforting?--there was no infringement
+of the "principle" of democracy.
+
+
+THE DEMOCRATIC COMMUNE AND THE REVOLUTIONARY DICTATORSHIP
+
+Comrade Lenin has already pointed out to Kautsky that attempts to
+depict the Commune as the expression of formal democracy constitute a
+piece of absolute theoretical swindling. The Commune, in its tradition
+and in the conception of its leading political party--the Blanquists--was
+the expression of _the dictatorship of the revolutionary city over the
+country_. So it was in the great French Revolution; so it would have
+been in the revolution of 1871 if the Commune had not fallen in the
+first days. The fact that in Paris itself a Government was elected
+on the basis of universal suffrage does not exclude a much more
+significant fact--namely, that of the military operations carried on
+by the Commune, one city, against peasant France, that is the whole
+country. To satisfy the great democrat, Kautsky, the revolutionaries
+of the Commune ought, as a preliminary, to have consulted, by means of
+universal suffrage, the whole population of France as to whether it
+permitted them to carry on a war with Thiers' bands.
+
+Finally, in Paris itself the elections took place after the
+bourgeoisie, or at least its most active elements, had fled, and after
+Thiers' troops had been evacuated. The bourgeoisie that remained in
+Paris, in spite of all its impudence, was still afraid of the
+revolutionary battalions, and the elections took place under the
+auspices of that fear, which was the forerunner of what in the future
+would have been inevitable--namely, of the Red Terror. But to console
+oneself with the thought that the Central Committee of the National
+Guard, under the dictatorship of which--unfortunately a very feeble
+and formalist dictatorship--the elections to the Commune were held,
+did not infringe the principle of universal suffrage, is truly to
+brush with the shadow of a broom.
+
+Amusing himself by barren analogies, Kautsky benefits by the
+circumstance that his reader is not acquainted with the facts. In
+Petrograd, in November, 1917, we also elected a Commune (Town Council)
+on the basis of the most "democratic" voting, without limitations for
+the bourgeoisie. These elections, being boycotted by the bourgeoisie
+parties, gave us a crushing majority. The "democratically" elected
+Council voluntarily submitted to the Petrograd Soviet--_i.e._, placed
+the fact of the dictatorship of the proletariat higher than the
+"principle" of universal suffrage, and, after a short time, dissolved
+itself altogether by its own act, in favor of one of the sections of
+the Petrograd Soviet. Thus the Petrograd Soviet--that true father of
+the Soviet regime--has upon itself the seal of a formal "democratic"
+benediction in no way less than the Paris Commune.[6]
+
+          [6] It is not without interest to observe that in the
+          Communal elections of 1871 in Paris there participated
+          230,000 electors. At the Town elections of November, 1917,
+          in Petrograd, in spite of the boycott of the election on the
+          part of all parties except ourselves and the Left Social
+          Revolutionaries, who had no influence in the capital, there
+          participated 390,000 electors. In Paris, in 1871, the
+          population numbered two millions. In Petrograd, in November,
+          1917, there were not more than two millions. It must be
+          noticed that our electoral system was infinitely more
+          democratic. The Central Committee of the National Guard
+          carried out the elections on the basis of the electoral law
+          of the empire.
+
+"At the elections of March 26, eighty members were elected to the
+Commune. Of these, fifteen were members of the government party
+(Thiers), and six were bourgeois radicals who were in opposition to
+the Government, but condemned the rising (of the Paris workers).
+
+"The Soviet Republic," Kautsky teaches us, "would never have allowed
+such counter-revolutionary elements to stand as candidates, let alone
+be elected. The Commune, on the other hand, out of respect for
+democracy, did not place the least obstacle in the way of the election
+of its bourgeois opponents." (Page 74.)
+
+We have already seen above that here Kautsky completely misses the
+mark. First of all, at a similar stage of development of the Russian
+Revolution, there did not take place democratic elections to the
+Petrograd Commune, in which the Soviet Government placed no obstacle
+in the way of the bourgeois parties; and if the Cadets, the S.R.s and
+the Mensheviks, who had their press which was openly calling for the
+overthrow of the Soviet Government, boycotted the elections, it was
+only because at that time they still hoped soon to make an end of us
+with the help of armed force. Secondly, no democracy expressing all
+classes was actually to be found in the Paris Commune. The bourgeois
+deputies--Conservatives, Liberals, Gambettists--found no place in it.
+
+"Nearly all these individuals," says Lavrov, "either immediately or
+very soon, left the Council of the Commune. They might have been
+representatives of Paris as a free city under the rule of the
+bourgeoisie, but were quite out of place in the Council of the
+Commune, which, willy-nilly, consistently or inconsistently,
+completely or incompletely, did represent the revolution of the
+proletariat, and an attempt, feeble though it might be, of building up
+forms of society corresponding to that revolution." (Pages 111-112.)
+If the Petrograd bourgeoisie had not boycotted the municipal
+elections, its representatives would have entered the Petrograd
+Council. They would have remained there up to the first Social
+Revolutionary and Cadet rising, after which--with the permission or
+without the permission of Kautsky--they would probably have been
+arrested if they did not leave the Council in good time, as at a
+certain moment did the bourgeois members of the Paris Commune. The
+course of events would have remained the same: only on their surface
+would certain episodes have worked out differently.
+
+In supporting the democracy of the Commune, and at the same time
+accusing it of an insufficiently decisive note in its attitude to
+Versailles, Kautsky does not understand that the Communal elections,
+carried out with the ambiguous help of the "lawful" mayors and
+deputies, reflected the hope of a peaceful agreement with Versailles.
+This is the whole point. The leaders were anxious for a compromise,
+not for a struggle. The masses had not yet outlived their illusions.
+Undeserved revolutionary reputations had not yet had time to be
+exposed. Everything taken together was called democracy.
+
+"We must rise above our enemies by moral force...." preached Vermorel.
+"We must not infringe liberty and individual life...." Striving to
+avoid fratricidal war, Vermorel called upon the liberal bourgeoisie,
+whom hitherto he had so mercilessly exposed, to set up "a lawful
+Government, recognized and respected by the whole population of
+Paris." The _Journal Officiel_, published under the editorship of
+the Internationalist Longuet, wrote: "The sad misunderstanding, which
+in the June days (1848) armed two classes of society against each
+other, cannot be renewed.... Class antagonism has ceased to exist...."
+(March 30.) And, further: "Now all conflicts will be appeased, because
+all are inspired with a feeling of solidarity, because never yet was
+there so little social hatred and social antagonism." (April 3.)
+
+At the session of the Commune of April 25, Jourde, and not without
+foundation, congratulated himself on the fact that the Commune had
+"never yet infringed the principle of private property." By this means
+they hoped to win over bourgeois public opinion and find the path to
+compromise.
+
+"Such a doctrine," says Lavrov, and rightly, "did not in the least
+disarm the enemies of the proletariat, who understood excellently with
+what its success threatened them, and only sapped the proletarian
+energy and, as it were, deliberately blinded it in the face of its
+irreconcilable enemies." (Page 137.) But this enfeebling doctrine was
+inextricably bound up with the fiction of democracy. The form of mock
+legality it was that allowed them to think that the problem would be
+solved without a struggle. "As far as the mass of the population is
+concerned," writes Arthur Arnould, a member of the Commune, "it was to
+a certain extent justified in the belief in the existence of, at the
+very least, a hidden agreement with the Government." Unable to attract
+the bourgeoisie, the compromisers, as always, deceived the
+proletariat.
+
+The clearest evidence of all that, in the conditions of the inevitable
+and already beginning civil war, democratic parliamentarism expressed
+only the compromising helplessness of the leading groups, was the
+senseless procedure of the supplementary elections to the Commune of
+April 6. At this moment, "it was no longer a question of voting,"
+writes Arthur Arnould. "The situation had become so tragic that there
+was not either the time or the calmness necessary for the correct
+functioning of the elections.... All persons devoted to the Commune
+were on the fortifications, in the forts, in the foremost
+detachments.... The people attributed no importance whatever to these
+supplementary elections. The elections were in reality merely
+parliamentarism. What was required was not to count voters, but to
+have soldiers: not to discover whether we had lost or gained in the
+Commune of Paris, but to defend Paris from the Versaillese." From
+these words Kautsky might have observed why in practice it is not so
+simple to combine class war with interclass democracy.
+
+"The Commune is not a Constituent Assembly," wrote in his book,
+Milliere, one of the best brains of the Commune. "It is a military
+Council. It must have one aim, victory; one weapon, force; one law,
+the law of social salvation."
+
+"They could never understand," Lissagaray accuses the leaders, "that
+the Commune was a barricade, and not an administration."
+
+They began to understand it in the end, when it was too late. Kautsky
+has not understood it to this day. There is no reason to believe that
+he will ever understand it.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Commune was the living negation of formal democracy, for in its
+development it signified the dictatorship of working class Paris over
+the peasant country. It is this fact that dominates all the rest.
+However much the political doctrinaires, in the midst of the Commune
+itself, clung to the appearances of democratic legality, every action
+of the Commune, though insufficient for victory, was sufficient to
+reveal its illegal nature.
+
+The Commune--that is to say, the Paris City Council--repealed the
+national law concerning conscription. It called its official organ
+_The Official Journal of the French Republic_. Though cautiously,
+it still laid hands on the State Bank. It proclaimed the separation of
+Church and State, and abolished the Church Budgets. It entered into
+relations with various embassies. And so on, and so on. It did all
+this in virtue of the revolutionary dictatorship. But Clemenceau,
+young democrat as he was then, would not recognize that virtue.
+
+At a conference with the Central Committee, Clemenceau said: "The
+rising had an unlawful beginning.... Soon the Committee will become
+ridiculous, and its decrees will be despised. Besides, Paris has not
+the right to rise against France, and must unconditionally accept the
+authority of the Assembly."
+
+The problem of the Commune was to dissolve the National Assembly.
+Unfortunately it did not succeed in doing so. To-day Kautsky seeks to
+discover for its criminal intentions some mitigating circumstances.
+
+He points out that the Communards had as their opponents in the
+National Assembly the monarchists, while we in the Constituent
+Assembly had against us ... Socialists, in the persons of the S.R.s,
+and the Mensheviks. A complete mental eclipse! Kautsky talks about the
+Mensheviks and the S.R.s, but forgets our sole serious foe--the
+Cadets. It was they who represented our Russian Thiers party--_i.e._,
+a bloc of property owners in the name of property: and Professor
+Miliukov did his utmost to imitate the "little great man." Very soon
+indeed--long before the October Revolution--Miliukov began to seek his
+Gallifet in the generals Kornilov, Alexeiev, then Kaledin, Krasnov, in
+turn. And after Kolchak had thrown aside all political parties, and
+had dissolved the Constituent Assembly, the Cadet Party, the sole
+serious bourgeois party, in its essence monarchist through and
+through, not only did not refuse to support him, but on the contrary
+devoted more sympathy to him than before.
+
+The Mensheviks and the S.R.s played no independent role amongst
+us--just like Kautsky's party during the revolutionary events
+in Germany. They based their whole policy upon a coalition with
+the Cadets, and thereby put the Cadets in a position to dictate
+quite irrespective of the balance of political forces. The
+Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik Parties were only an
+intermediary apparatus for the purpose of collecting, at meetings
+and elections, the political confidence of the masses awakened
+by the revolution, and for handing it over for disposal by the
+counter-revolutionary imperialist party of the Cadets--independently
+of the issue of the elections.
+
+The purely vassal-like dependence of the S.R.s and Menshevik _majority_
+on the Cadet _minority_ itself represented a very thinly-veiled
+insult to the idea of "democracy." But this is not all.
+
+In all districts of the country where the regime of "democracy" lived
+too long, it inevitably ended in an open _coup d'etat_ of the
+counter-revolution. So it was in the Ukraine, where the democratic
+Rada, having sold the Soviet Government to German imperialism, found
+itself overthrown by the monarchist Skoropadsky. So it was in the
+Kuban, where the democratic Rada found itself under the heel of
+Denikin. So it was--and this was the most important experiment of our
+"democracy"--in Siberia, where the Constituent Assembly, with the
+formal supremacy of the S.R.s and the Mensheviks, in the absence of
+the Bolsheviks, and the _de facto_ guidance of the Cadets, led in
+the end to the dictatorship of the Tsarist Admiral Kolchak. So it was,
+finally, in the north, where the Constituent Assembly government of
+the Socialist-Revolutionary Chaikovsky became merely a tinsel
+decoration for the rule of counter-revolutionary generals, Russian and
+British. So it was, or is, in all the small Border States--in Finland,
+Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Georgia, Armenia--where, under
+the formal banner of "democracy," there is being consolidated the
+supremacy of the landlords, the capitalists, and the foreign
+militarists.
+
+
+THE PARIS WORKER OF 1871 AND THE PETROGRAD PROLETARIAN OF 1917
+
+One of the most coarse, unfounded, and politically disgraceful
+comparisons which Kautsky makes between the Commune and Soviet Russia
+is touching the character of the Paris worker in 1871 and the Russian
+proletarian of 1917-19. The first Kautsky depicts as a revolutionary
+enthusiast capable of a high measure of self-sacrifice; the second, as
+an egoist and a coward, an irresponsible anarchist.
+
+The Parisian worker has behind him too definite a past to need
+revolutionary recommendations--or protection from the praises of the
+present Kautsky. None the less, the Petrograd proletarian has not, and
+cannot have, any reason for avoiding a comparison with his heroic
+elder brother. The continuous three years' struggle of the Petrograd
+workers--first for the conquest of power, and then for its maintenance
+and consolidation--represents an exceptional story of collective
+heroism and self-sacrifice, amidst unprecedented tortures in the shape
+of hunger, cold, and constant perils.
+
+Kautsky, as we can discover in another connection, takes for contrast
+with the flower of the Communards the most sinister elements of the
+Russian proletariat. In this respect also he is in no way different
+from the bourgeois sycophants, to whom dead Communards always appear
+infinitely more attractive than the living.
+
+The Petrograd proletariat seized power four and a half decades after
+the Parisian. This period has told enormously in our favor. The
+petty bourgeois craft character of old and partly of new Paris is
+quite foreign to Petrograd, the centre of the most concentrated
+industry in the world. The latter circumstances has extremely
+facilitated our tasks of agitation and organization, as well as the
+setting up of the Soviet system.
+
+Our proletariat did not have even a faint measure of the rich
+revolutionary traditions of the French proletariat. But, instead,
+there was still very fresh in the memory of the older generation of
+our workers, at the beginning of the present revolution, the great
+experiment of 1905, its failure, and the duty of vengeance it had
+handed down.
+
+The Russian workers had not, like the French, passed through a long
+school of democracy and parliamentarism, which at a certain epoch
+represented an important factor in the political education of the
+proletariat. But, on the other hand, the Russian working class had not
+had seared into its soul the bitterness of dissolution and the poison
+of scepticism, which up to a certain, and--let us hope--not very
+distant moment, still restrain the revolutionary will of the French
+proletariat.
+
+The Paris Commune suffered a military defeat before economic problems
+had arisen before it in their full magnitude. In spite of the splendid
+fighting qualities of the Paris workers, the military fate of the
+Commune was at once determined as hopeless. Indecision and
+compromise-mongering above brought about collapse below.
+
+The pay of the National Guard was issued on the basis of the existence
+of 162,000 rank and file and 6,500 officers; the number of those who
+actually went into battle, especially after the unsuccessful sortie of
+April 3, varied between twenty and thirty thousand.
+
+These facts do not in the least compromise the Paris workers, and do
+not give us the right to consider them cowards and deserters--although,
+of course, there was no lack of desertion. For a fighting army there
+must be, first of all, a centralized and accurate apparatus of
+administration. Of this the Commune had not even a trace.
+
+The War Department of the Commune, was, in the expression of one
+writer, as it were a dark room, in which all collided. The office of
+the Ministry was filled with officers and ordinary Guards, who
+demanded military supplies and food, and complained that they were not
+relieved. They were sent to the garrison....
+
+"One battalion remained in the trenches for 20 and 30 days, while
+others were constantly in reserve.... This carelessness soon killed
+any discipline. Courageous men soon determined to rely only on
+themselves; others avoided service. In the same way did officers
+behave. One would leave his post to go to the help of a neighbor who
+was under fire; others went away to the city...." (Lavrov, page 100.)
+
+Such a regime could not remain unpunished; the Commune was drowned in
+blood. But in this connection Kautsky has a marvelous solution.
+
+"The waging of war," he says, sagely shaking his head, "is, after all,
+not a strong side of the proletariat." (Page 76.)
+
+This aphorism, worthy of Pangloss, is fully on a level with the other
+great remark of Kautsky, namely, that the International is not a
+suitable weapon to use in wartime, being in its essence an "instrument
+of peace."
+
+In these two aphorisms, in reality, may be found the present Kautsky,
+complete, in his entirety--_i.e._, just a little over a round
+zero.
+
+The waging of war, do you see, is on the whole, not a strong side of
+the proletariat, the more that the International itself was not
+created for wartime. Kautsky's ship was built for lakes and quiet
+harbors, not at all for the open sea, and not for a period of storms.
+If that ship has sprung a leak, and has begun to fill, and is now
+comfortably going to the bottom, we must throw all the blame upon the
+storm, the unnecessary mass of water, the extraordinary size of the
+waves, and a series of other unforeseen circumstances for which
+Kautsky did not build his marvelous instrument.
+
+The international proletariat put before itself as its problem the
+conquest of power. Independently of whether civil war, "generally,"
+belongs to the inevitable attributes of revolution, "generally," this
+fact remains unquestioned--that the advance of the proletariat, at
+any rate in Russia, Germany, and parts of former Austro-Hungary, took
+the form of an intense civil war not only on internal but also on
+external fronts. If the waging of war is not the strong side of the
+proletariat, while the workers' International is suited only for
+peaceful epochs, then we may as well erect a cross over the revolution
+and over Socialism; for the waging of war is a fairly _strong_ side
+of the capitalist State, which _without_ a war will not admit the
+workers to supremacy. In that case there remains only to proclaim the
+so-called "Socialist" democracy to be merely the accompanying feature
+of capitalist society and bourgeois parliamentarism--_i.e._, openly to
+sanction what the Eberts, Schneidermanns, Renaudels, carry out in
+practice and what Kautsky still, it seems, protests against in words.
+
+The waging of war was not a strong side of the Commune. Quite so; that
+was why it was crushed. And how mercilessly crushed!
+
+"We have to recall the proscriptions of Sulla, Antony, and Octavius,"
+wrote in his time the very moderate liberal, Fiaux, "to meet such
+massacres in the history of civilized nations. The religious wars
+under the last Valois, the night of St. Bartholomew, the Reign of
+Terror were, in comparison with it, child's play. In the last week of
+May alone, in Paris, 17,000 corpses of the insurgent Federals were
+picked up ... the killing was still going on about June 15."
+
+"The waging of war, after all, is not the strong side of the
+proletariat."
+
+It is not true! The Russian workers have shown that they are capable
+of wielding the "instrument of war" as well. We see here a gigantic
+step forward in comparison with the Commune. It is not a renunciation
+of the Commune--for the traditions of the Commune consist not at all
+in its helplessness--but the continuation of its work. The Commune was
+weak. To complete its work we have become strong. The Commune was
+crushed. We are inflicting blow after blow upon the executioners of
+the Commune. We are taking vengeance for the Commune, and we shall
+avenge it.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+Out of 167,000 National Guards who received pay, only twenty or thirty
+thousand went into battle. These figures serve as interesting material
+for conclusions as to the role of formal democracy in a revolutionary
+epoch. The vote of the Paris Commune was decided, not at the
+elections, but in the battles with the troops of Thiers. One hundred
+and sixty-seven thousand National Guards represented the great mass of
+the electorate. But in reality, in the battles, the fate of the
+Commune was decided by twenty or thirty thousand persons; the most
+devoted fighting minority. This minority did not stand alone: it
+simply expressed, in a more courageous and self-sacrificing manner,
+the will of the majority. But none the less it was a minority. The
+others who hid at the critical moment were not hostile to the Commune;
+on the contrary, they actively or passively supported it, but they
+were less politically conscious, less decisive. On the arena of
+political democracy, their lower level of political consciousness
+afforded the possibility of their being deceived by adventurers,
+swindlers, middle-class cheats, and honest dullards who really
+deceived themselves. But, at the moment of open class war, they, to a
+greater or lesser degree, followed the self-sacrificing minority. It
+was this that found its expression in the organization of the National
+Guard. If the existence of the Commune had been prolonged, this
+relationship between the advance guard and the mass of the proletariat
+would have grown more and more firm.
+
+The organization which would have been formed and consolidated in the
+process of the open struggle, as the organization of the laboring
+masses, would have become the organization of their dictatorship--the
+Council of Deputies of the armed proletariat.
+
+
+
+
+6
+
+MARX AND ... KAUTSKY.
+
+
+Kautsky loftily sweeps aside Marx's views on terror, expressed by him
+in the _Neue Rheinische Zeitung_--as at that time, do you see, Marx
+was still very "young," and consequently his views had not yet had
+time to arrive at that condition of complete enfeeblement which is so
+clearly to be observed in the case of certain theoreticians in the
+seventh decade of their life. As a contrast to the green Marx of
+1848-49 (the author of the _Communist Manifesto_!) Kautsky quotes the
+mature Marx of the epoch of the Paris Commune--and the latter, under
+the pen of Kautsky, loses his great lion's mane, and appears before us
+as an extremely respectable reasoner, bowing before the holy places
+of democracy, declaiming on the sacredness of human life, and filled
+with all due reverence for the political charms of Schneidermann,
+Vandervelde, and particularly of his own physical grandson, Jean
+Longuet. In a word, Marx, instructed by the experience of life, proves
+to be a well-behaved Kautskian.
+
+From the deathless _Civil War in France_, the pages of which have been
+filled with a new and intense life in our own epoch, Kautsky has
+quoted only those lines in which the mighty theoretician of the social
+revolution contrasted the generosity of the Communards with the
+bourgeois ferocity of the Versaillese. Kautsky has devastated these
+lines and made them commonplace. Marx, as the preacher of detached
+humanity, as the apostle of general love of mankind! Just as if we
+were talking about Buddha or Leo Tolstoy.... It is more than natural
+that, against the international campaign which represented the
+Communards as _souteneurs_ and the women of the Commune as
+prostitutes, against the vile slanders which attributed to the
+conquered fighters ferocious features drawn from the degenerate
+imagination of the victorious bourgeoisie, Marx should emphasize and
+underline those features of tenderness and nobility which not
+infrequently were merely the reverse side of indecision. Marx was
+Marx. He was neither an empty pedant, nor, all the more, the legal
+defender of the revolution: he combined a scientific analysis of the
+Commune with its revolutionary apology. He not only explained and
+criticised--he defended and struggled. But, emphasizing the mildness
+of the Commune which failed, Marx left no doubt possible concerning
+the measures which the Commune ought to have taken in order not to
+fail.
+
+The author of the _Civil War_ accuses the Central Committee--_i.e._,
+the then Council of National Guards' Deputies, of having too soon
+given up its place to the elective Commune. Kautsky "does not
+understand" the reason for such a reproach. This conscientious
+non-understanding is one of the symptoms of Kautsky's mental decline
+in connection with questions of the revolution generally. The first
+place, according to Marx, ought to have been filled by a purely
+fighting organ, a centre of the insurrection and of military
+operations against Versailles, and not the organized self-government
+of the labor democracy. For the latter the turn would come later.
+
+Marx accuses the Commune of not having at once begun an attack against
+the Versailles, and of having entered upon the defensive, which always
+appears "more humane," and gives more possibilities of appealing to
+moral law and the sacredness of human life, but in conditions of civil
+war never leads to victory. Marx, on the other hand, first and
+foremost wanted a revolutionary victory. Nowhere, by one word, does he
+put forward the principle of democracy as something standing above the
+class struggle. On the contrary, with the concentrated contempt of the
+revolutionary and the Communist, Marx--not the young editor of the
+_Rhine Paper_, but the mature author of _Capital_: our genuine Marx
+with the mighty leonine mane, not as yet fallen under the hands of the
+hairdressers of the Kautsky school--with what concentrated contempt he
+speaks about the "artificial atmosphere of parliamentarism" in which
+physical and spiritual dwarfs like Thiers seem giants! The _Civil
+War_, after the barren and pedantic pamphlet of Kautsky, acts like
+a storm that clears the air.
+
+In spite of Kautsky's slanders, Marx had nothing in common with the
+view of democracy as the last, absolute, supreme product of history.
+The development of bourgeois society itself, out of which contemporary
+democracy grew up, in no way represents that process of gradual
+democratization which figured before the war in the dreams of the
+greatest Socialist illusionist of democracy--Jean Jaures--and now in
+those of the most learned of pedants, Karl Kautsky. In the empire of
+Napoleon III, Marx sees "the only possible form of government in the
+epoch in which the bourgeoisie has already lost the possibility of
+governing the people, while the working class has not yet acquired
+it." In this way, not democracy, but Bonapartism, appears in Marx's
+eyes as the final form of bourgeois power. Learned men may say that
+Marx was mistaken, as the Bonapartist empire gave way for half a
+century to the "Democratic Republic." But Marx was not mistaken. In
+essence he was right. The Third Republic has been the period of the
+complete decay of democracy. Bonapartism has found in the Stock
+Exchange Republic of Poincare-Clemenceau, a more finished expression
+than in the Second Empire. True, the Third Republic was not crowned by
+the imperial diadem; but in return there loomed over it the shadow of
+the Russian Tsar.
+
+In his estimate of the Commune, Marx carefully avoids using the worn
+currency of democratic terminology. "The Commune was," he writes, "not
+a parliament, but a working institution, and united in itself both
+executive and legislative power." In the first place, Marx puts
+forward, not the particular democratic form of the Commune, but its
+class essence. The Commune, as is known, abolished the regular army
+and the police, and decreed the confiscation of Church property. It
+did this in the right of the revolutionary dictatorship of Paris,
+without the permission of the general democracy of the State, which at
+that moment formally had found a much more "lawful" expression in the
+National Assembly of Thiers. But a revolution is not decided by votes.
+"The National Assembly," says Marx, "was nothing more nor less than
+one of the episodes of that revolution, the true embodiment of which
+was, nevertheless, armed Paris." How far this is from formal
+democracy!
+
+"It only required that the Communal order of things," says Marx,
+"should be set up in Paris and in the secondary centres, and the old
+central government would in the provinces also have yielded to the
+_self-government of the producers_." Marx, consequently, sees the
+problem of revolutionary Paris, not in appealing from its victory to
+the frail will of the Constituent Assembly, but in covering the whole
+of France with a centralized organization of Communes, built up not on
+the external principles of democracy but on the genuine
+self-government of the producers.
+
+Kautsky has cited as an argument against the Soviet Constitution the
+indirectness of elections, which contradicts the fixed laws of
+bourgeois democracy. Marx characterizes the proposed structure of
+labor France in the following words:--"The management of the general
+affairs of the village communes of every district was to devolve on
+the Assembly of plenipotentiary delegates meeting in the chief town of
+the district; while the district assemblies were in turn to send
+delegates to the National Assembly sitting in Paris."
+
+Marx, as we can see, was not in the least degree disturbed by the many
+degrees of indirect election, in so far as it was a question of the
+State organization of the proletariat itself. In the framework of
+bourgeois democracy, indirectness of election confuses the demarcation
+line of parties and classes; but in the "self-government of the
+producers"--_i.e._, in the class proletarian State, indirectness
+of election is a question not of politics, but of the technical
+requirements of self-government, and within certain limits may present
+the same advantages as in the realm of trade union organization.
+
+The Philistines of democracy are indignant at the inequality in
+representation of the workers and peasants which, in the Soviet
+Constitution, reflects the difference in the revolutionary roles of
+the town and the country. Marx writes: "The Commune desired to bring
+the rural producers under the intellectual leadership of the central
+towns of their districts, and there to secure to them, in the workmen
+of the towns, the natural guardians of their interests." The question
+was not one of making the peasant equal to the worker on paper, but of
+spiritually raising the peasant to the level of the worker. All
+questions of the proletarian State Marx decides according to the
+revolutionary dynamics of living forces, and not according to the play
+of shadows upon the market-place screen of parliamentarism.
+
+In order to reach the last confines of mental collapse, Kautsky denies
+the universal authority of the Workers' Councils on the ground that
+there is no legal boundary between the proletariat and the
+bourgeoisie. In the indeterminate nature of the social divisions
+Kautsky sees the source of the arbitrary authority of the Soviet
+dictatorship. Marx sees directly the contrary. "The Commune was an
+extremely elastic form of the State, while all former forms of
+government had suffered from narrowness. Its secret consists in this,
+that in its very essence it was the government of the working class,
+the result of the struggle between the class of producers and the
+class of appropriators, the political form, long sought, under which
+there could be accomplished the economic emancipation of labor." The
+secret of the Commune consisted in the fact that by its very essence
+it was a government of the working class. This secret, explained by
+Marx, has remained, for Kautsky, even to this day, a mystery sealed
+with seven seals.
+
+The Pharisees of democracy speak with indignation of the repressive
+measures of the Soviet Government, of the closing of newspapers, of
+arrests and shooting. Marx replies to "the vile abuse of the lackeys
+of the Press" and to the reproaches of the "well-intentioned bourgeois
+doctrinaries," in connection with the repressive measures of the
+Commune in the following words:--"Not satisfied with their open waging
+of a most bloodthirsty war against Paris, the Versaillese strove
+secretly to gain an entry by corruption and conspiracy. Could the
+Commune at such a time _without shamefully betraying its trust_,
+have observed the customary forms of liberalism, just as if profound
+peace reigned around it? Had the government of the Commune been akin
+in spirit to that of Thiers, there would have been no more occasion to
+suppress newspapers of the party of order in Paris than there was to
+suppress newspapers of the Commune at Versailles." In this way, what
+Kautsky demands in the name of the sacred foundations of democracy
+Marx brands as a shameful betrayal of trust.
+
+Concerning the destruction of which the Commune is accused, and of
+which now the Soviet Government is accused, Marx speaks as of "an
+inevitable and comparatively insignificant episode in the titanic
+struggle of the new-born order with the old in its collapse."
+Destruction and cruelty are inevitable in any war. Only sycophants
+can consider them a crime "in the war of the slaves against their
+oppressors, _the only just war in history_." (Marx.) Yet our dread
+accuser Kautsky, in his whole book, does not breathe a word of the
+fact that we are in a condition of perpetual revolutionary
+self-defence, that we are waging an intensive war against the
+oppressors of the world, the "only just war in history."
+
+Kautsky yet again tears his hair because the Soviet Government, during
+the Civil War, has made use of the severe method of taking hostages.
+He once again brings forward pointless and dishonest comparisons
+between the fierce Soviet Government and the humane Commune. Clear and
+definite in this connection sounds the opinion of Marx. "When Thiers,
+from the very beginning of the conflict, had enforced the humane
+practice of shooting down captured Communards, the Commune, to protect
+the lives of those prisoners, _had nothing left for it_ but to
+resort to the Prussian custom of taking hostages. The lives of the
+hostages had been forfeited over and over again by the continued
+shooting of the prisoners on the part of the Versaillese. _How could
+their lives be spared any longer_ after the blood-bath with which
+MacMahon's Pretorians celebrated their entry into Paris?" How
+otherwise we shall ask together with Marx, can one act in conditions
+of civil war, when the counter-revolution, occupying a considerable
+portion of the national territory, seizes wherever it can the unarmed
+workers, their wives, their mothers, and shoots or hangs them: how
+otherwise can one act than to seize as hostages the beloved or the
+trusted of the bourgeoisie, thus placing the whole bourgeois class
+under the Damocles' sword of mutual responsibility?
+
+It would not be difficult to show, day by day through the history of
+the civil war, that all the severe measures of the Soviet Government
+were forced upon it as measures of revolutionary self-defense. We
+shall not here enter into details. But, to give though it be but a
+partial criterion for valuing the conditions of the struggle, let us
+remind the reader that, at the moment when the White Guards, in
+company with their Anglo-French allies, shoot every Communist without
+exception who falls into their hands, the Red Army spares all
+prisoners without exception, including even officers of high rank.
+
+"Fully grasping its historical task, filled with the heroic decision
+to remain equal to that task," Marx wrote, "the working class may
+reply with a smile of calm contempt to the vile abuse of the lackeys
+of the Press and to the learned patronage of well-intentioned
+bourgeois doctrinaires, who utter their ignorant stereotyped
+common-places, their characteristic nonsense, with the profound tone of
+oracles of scientific immaculateness."
+
+If the well-intentioned bourgeois doctrinaires sometimes appear in the
+guise of retired theoreticians of the Second International, this in no
+way deprives their characteristic nonsense of the right of remaining
+nonsense.
+
+
+
+
+7
+
+THE WORKING CLASS AND ITS SOVIET POLICY
+
+
+THE RUSSIAN PROLETARIAT
+
+The initiative in the social revolution proved, by the force of
+events, to be imposed, not upon the old proletariat of Western Europe,
+with its mighty economic and political organization, with its
+ponderous traditions of parliamentarism and trade unionism, but upon
+the young working-class of a backward country. History, as always,
+moved along the line of least resistance. The revolutionary epoch
+burst upon us through the least barricaded door. Those extraordinary,
+truly superhuman, difficulties which were thus flung upon the Russian
+proletariat have prepared, hastened, and to a considerable extent
+assisted the revolutionary work of the West European proletariat which
+still lies before us.
+
+Instead of examining the Russian Revolution in the light of the
+revolutionary epoch that has arrived throughout the world, Kautsky
+discusses the theme of whether or no the Russian proletariat has taken
+power into its hands too soon.
+
+"For Socialism," he explains, "there is necessary a high development
+of the people, a high morale amongst the masses, strongly-developed
+social instincts, sentiments of solidarity, etc. Such a form of
+morale," Kautsky further informs us, "was very highly developed
+amongst the proletariat of the Paris Commune. It is absent amongst the
+masses which at the present time set the tone amongst the Bolshevik
+proletariat." (Page 177.)
+
+For Kautsky's purpose, it is not sufficient to fling mud at the
+Bolsheviks as a political party before the eyes of his readers.
+Knowing that Bolshevism has become amalgamated with the Russian
+proletariat, Kautsky makes an attempt to fling mud at the Russian
+proletariat as a whole, representing it as an ignorant, greedy mass,
+without any ideals, which is guided only by the instincts and impulses
+of the moment.
+
+Throughout his booklet Kautsky returns many times to the question of
+the intellectual and moral level of the Russian workers, and every
+time only to deepen his characterization of them as ignorant, stupid
+and barbarous. To bring about the most striking contrasts, Kautsky
+adduces the example of how a workshop committee in one of the war
+industries during the Commune decided upon compulsory night duty in
+the works for _one_ worker so that it might be possible to
+distribute repaired arms by night. "As under present circumstances it
+is absolutely necessary to be extremely economical with the resources
+of the Commune," the regulation read, "the night duty will be rendered
+without payment...." "Truly," Kautsky concludes, "these working men
+did not regard the period of their dictatorship as an opportune moment
+for the satisfaction of their personal interests." (Page 90.) Quite
+otherwise is the case with the Russian working class. That class has
+no intelligence, no stability, no ideals, no steadfastness, no
+readiness for self-sacrifice, and so on. "It is just as little capable
+of choosing suitable plenipotentiary leaders for itself," Kautsky
+jeers, "as Munchausen was able to drag himself from the swamp by means
+of his own hair." This comparison of the Russian proletariat with the
+impostor Munchausen dragging himself from the swamp is a striking
+example of the brazen tone in which Kautsky speaks of the Russian
+working class.
+
+He brings extracts from various speeches and articles of ours in which
+undesirable phenomena amongst the working class are shown up, and
+attempts to represent matters in such a way as if the life of the
+Russian proletariat between 1917-20--_i.e._, in the greatest of
+revolutionary epochs--is fully described by passivity, ignorance, and
+egotism.
+
+Kautsky, forsooth, does not know, has never heard, cannot guess, may
+not imagine, that during the civil war the Russian proletariat had
+more than one occasion of freely giving its labour, and even of
+establishing "unpaid" guard duties--not of _one_ worker for the
+space of _one_ night, but of tens of thousands of workers for the
+space of a long series of disturbed nights. In the days and weeks of
+Yudenich's advance on Petrograd, one telephonogram of the Soviet was
+sufficient to ensure that many thousands of workers should spring to
+their posts in all the factories, in all the wards of the city. And
+this not in the first days of the Petrograd Commune, but after a two
+years' struggle in cold and hunger.
+
+Two or three times a year our party mobilizes a high proportion of its
+numbers for the front. Scattered over a distance of 8,000 versts, they
+die and teach others to die. And when, in hungry and cold Moscow,
+which has given the flower of its workers to the front, a Party Week
+is proclaimed, there pour into our ranks from the proletarian masses,
+in the space of seven days, 15,000 persons. And at what moment? At the
+moment when the danger of the destruction of the Soviet Government had
+reached its most acute point. At the moment when Orel had been taken,
+and Denikin was approaching Tula and Moscow, when Yudenich was
+threatening Petrograd. At that most painful moment, the Moscow
+proletariat, in the course of a week, gave to the ranks of our party
+15,000 men, who only waited a new mobilization for the front. And it
+can be said with certainty that never yet, with the exception of the
+week of the November rising in 1917, was the Moscow proletariat so
+single-minded in its revolutionary enthusiasm, and in its readiness
+for devoted struggle, as in those most difficult days of peril and
+self-sacrifice.
+
+When our party proclaimed the watchword of Subbotniks and Voskresniks
+(Communist Saturdays and Sundays), the revolutionary idealism of the
+proletariat found for itself a striking expression in the shape of
+voluntary labor. At first tens and hundreds, later thousands, and now
+tens and hundreds of thousands of workers every week give up several
+hours of their labor without reward, for the sake of the economic
+reconstruction of the country. And this is done by half-starved
+people, in torn boots, in dirty linen--because the country has neither
+boots nor soap. Such, in reality, is that Bolshevik proletariat to
+whom Kautsky recommends a course of self-sacrifice. The facts of the
+situation, and their relative importance, will appear still more
+vividly before us if we recall that all the egoist, bourgeois,
+coarsely selfish elements of the proletariat--all those who avoid
+service at the front and in the Subbotniks, who engage in speculation
+and in weeks of starvation incite the workers to strikes--all of them
+vote at the Soviet elections for the Mensheviks; that is, for the
+Russian Kautskies.
+
+Kautsky quotes our words to the effect that, even before the November
+Revolution, we clearly realized the defects in education of the
+Russian proletariat, but, recognizing the inevitability of the
+transference of power to the working class, we considered ourselves
+justified in hoping that during the struggle itself, during its
+experience, and with the ever-increasing support of the proletariat of
+other countries, we should deal adequately with our difficulties, and
+be able to guarantee the transition of Russia to the Socialist order.
+In this connection, Kautsky asks: "Would Trotsky undertake to get on a
+locomotive and set it going, in the conviction that he would during
+the journey have time to learn and to arrange everything? One must
+preliminarily have acquired the qualities necessary to drive a
+locomotive before deciding to set it going. Similarly the proletariat
+ought beforehand to have acquired those necessary qualities which make
+it capable of administering industry, once it had to take it over."
+(Page 173.)
+
+This instructive comparison would have done honor to any village
+clergyman. None the less, it is stupid. With infinitely more
+foundation one could say: "Will Kautsky dare to mount a horse before
+he has learned to sit firmly in the saddle, and to guide the animal in
+all its steps?" We have foundations for believing that Kautsky would
+not make up his mind to such a dangerous purely Bolshevik experiment.
+On the other hand, we fear that, through not risking to mount the
+horse, Kautsky would have considerable difficulty in learning the
+secrets of riding on horse-back. For the fundamental Bolshevik
+prejudice is precisely this: that one learns to ride on horse-back
+only when sitting on the horse.
+
+Concerning the driving of the locomotive, this principle is at first
+sight not so evident; but none the less it is there. No one yet has
+learned to drive a locomotive sitting in his study. One has to get up
+on to the engine, to take one's stand in the tender, to take into
+one's hands the regulator, and to turn it. True, the engine allows
+training manoeuvres only under the guidance of an old driver. The
+horse allows of instructions in the riding school only under the
+guidance of experienced trainers. But in the sphere of State
+administration such artificial conditions cannot be created. The
+bourgeoisie does not build for the proletariat academies of State
+administration, and does not place at its disposal, for preliminary
+practice, the helm of the State. And besides, the workers and peasants
+learn even to ride on horse-back not in the riding school, and without
+the assistance of trainers.
+
+To this we must add another consideration, perhaps the most important.
+No one gives the proletariat the opportunity of choosing whether it
+will or will not mount the horse, whether it will take power
+immediately or postpone the moment. Under certain conditions the
+working class is bound to take power, under the threat of political
+self-annihilation for a whole historical period.
+
+Once having taken power, it is impossible to accept one set of
+consequences at will and refuse to accept others. If the capitalist
+bourgeoisie consciously and malignantly transforms the disorganization
+of production into a method of political struggle, with the object of
+restoring power to itself, the proletariat is _obliged_ to resort
+to Socialization, independently of whether this is beneficial or
+otherwise at the _given moment_.
+
+And, once having taken over production, the proletariat is obliged,
+under the pressure of iron necessity, to learn by its own experience a
+most difficult art--that of organizing Socialist economy. Having
+mounted the saddle, the rider is obliged to guide the horse--on the
+peril of breaking his neck.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+To give his high-souled supporters, male and female, a complete
+picture of the moral level of the Russian proletariat, Kautsky
+adduces, on page 172 of his book, the following mandate, issued,
+it is alleged, by the Murzilovka Soviet: "The Soviet hereby
+empowers Comrade Gregory Sareiev, in accordance with his choice and
+instructions, to requisition and lead to the barracks, for the use of
+the Artillery Division stationed in Murzilovka, Briansk County, sixty
+women and girls from the bourgeois and speculating class, September
+16, 1918." (_What are the Bolshevists doing?_ Published by Dr. Nath.
+Wintch-Malejeff. Lausanne, 1919. Page 10.)
+
+Without having the least doubt of the forged character of this
+document and the lying nature of the whole communication, I gave
+instructions, however, that careful inquiry should be made, in order
+to discover what facts and episodes lay at the root of this invention.
+A carefully carried out investigation showed the following:--
+
+(1) In the Briansk County there is absolutely no village by the name
+of Murzilovka. There is no such village in the neighboring counties
+either. The most similar in name is the village of Muraviovka, Briansk
+County; but no artillery division has ever been stationed there, and
+altogether nothing ever took place which might be in any way connected
+with the above "document."
+
+(2) The investigation was also carried on along the line of the
+artillery units. Absolutely nowhere were we able to discover even an
+indirect allusion to a fact similar to that adduced by Kautsky from
+the words of his inspirer.
+
+(3) Finally the investigation dealt with the question of whether there
+had been any rumors of this kind on the spot. Here, too, absolutely
+nothing was discovered; and no wonder. The very contents of the
+forgery are in too brutal a contrast with the morals and public
+opinion of the foremost workers and peasants who direct the work of
+the Soviets, even in the most backward regions.
+
+In this way, the document must be described as a pitiful forgery,
+which might be circulated only by the most malignant sycophants in the
+most yellow of the gutter press.
+
+While the investigation described above was going on, Comrade
+Zinovieff showed me a number of a Swedish paper (_Svenska Dagbladet_)
+of November 9, 1919, in which was printed the facsimile of a mandate
+running as follows:--
+
+"_Mandate._ The bearer of this, Comrade Karaseiev, has the right
+of socializing in the town of Ekaterinodar (obliterated) girls aged
+from 16 to 36 at his pleasure.--GLAVKOM IVASHCHEFF."
+
+This document is even more stupid and impudent than that quoted by
+Kautsky. The town of Ekaterinodar--the centre of the Kuban--was, as is
+well known, for only a very short time in the hands of the Soviet
+Government. Apparently the author of the forgery, not very well up in
+his revolutionary chronology, rubbed out the date on this document,
+lest by some chance it should appear that "Glavkom Ivashcheff"
+socialized the Ekaterinodar women during the reign of Denikin's
+militarism there. That the document might lead into error the
+thick-witted Swedish bourgeois is not at all amazing. But for the
+Russian reader it is only too clear that the document is not merely a
+forgery, but drawn up by a _foreigner, dictionary in hand_. It is
+extremely curious that the names of both the socializers of women,
+"Gregory Sareiev" and "Karaseiev" sound absolutely non-Russia. The
+ending "eiev" in Russian names is found rarely, and only in definite
+combinations. But the accuser of the Bolsheviks himself, the author of
+the English pamphlet on whom Kautsky bases his evidence, has a name
+that does actually end in "eiev." It seems obvious that this
+Anglo-Bulgarian police agent, sitting in Lausanne, creates socializers
+of women, in the fullest sense of the word, after his own likeness and
+image.
+
+Kautsky, at any rate, has original inspirers and assistants!
+
+
+SOVIETS, TRADE UNIONS, AND THE PARTY
+
+The Soviets, as a form of the organization of the working class,
+represents for Kautsky, "in relation to the party and professional
+organizations of more developed countries, not a higher form of
+organization, but first and foremost a substitute (Notbehelf), arising
+out of the absence of political organizations." (Page 68.)
+
+Let us grant that this is true in connection with Russia. But then,
+why have Soviets sprung up in Germany? Ought one not absolutely to
+repudiate them in the Ebert Republic? We note, however, that
+Hilferding, the nearest sympathizer of Kautsky, proposes to include
+the Soviets in the Constitution. Kautsky is silent.
+
+The estimate of Soviets as a "primitive" organization is true to the
+extent that the open revolutionary struggle is "more primitive" than
+parliamentarism. But the artificial complexity of the latter embraces
+only the upper strata, insignificant in their size. On the other hand,
+revolution is only possible where the masses have their vital
+interests at stake. The November Revolution raised on to their feet
+such deep layers as the pre-revolutionary Social-Democracy could not
+even dream of. However wide were the organizations of the party and
+the trade unions in Germany, the revolution immediately proved
+incomparably wider than they. The revolutionary masses found their
+direct representation in the most simple and generally comprehensive
+delegate organization--in the Soviet. One may admit that the Council
+of Deputies falls behind both the party and the trade union in the
+sense of the clearness of its programme, or the exactness of its
+organization. But it is far and away in front of the party and the
+trade unions in the size of the masses drawn by it into the organized
+struggle; and this superiority in quality gives the Soviet undeniable
+revolutionary preponderance.
+
+The Soviet embraces workers of all undertakings, of all professions,
+of all stages of cultural development, all stages of political
+consciousness--and thereby objectively is forced to formulate the
+general interests of the proletariat.
+
+The _Communist Manifesto_ viewed the problem of the Communist just
+in this sense--namely, the formulating of the general historical
+interests of the working class as a whole.
+
+"The Communists are only distinguished from other proletarian
+parties," in the words of the _Manifesto_, "by this: that in the
+different national struggles of the proletariat they point out, and
+bring to the fore, the common interests of the proletariat,
+independently of nationality; and again that, in the different stages
+of evolution through which the struggle between the proletariat and
+bourgeoisie passes, they constantly represent the interests of the
+movement taken as a whole."
+
+In the form of the all-embracing class organization of the Soviets,
+the movement takes itself "as a whole." Hence it is clear why the
+Communists could and had to become the guiding party in the Soviets.
+But hence also is seen all the narrowness of the estimate of Soviets
+as "substitutes for the party" (Kautsky), and all the stupidity of the
+attempt to include the Soviets, in the form of an auxiliary lever, in
+the mechanism of bourgeois democracy. (Hilferding.)
+
+The Soviets are the organization of the proletarian revolution, and
+have purpose either as an organ of the struggle for power or as the
+apparatus of power of the working class.
+
+Unable to grasp the revolutionary role of the Soviets, Kautsky sees
+their root defects in that which constitutes their greatest merit.
+"The demarcation of the bourgeois from the worker," he writes, "can
+never be actually drawn. There will always be something arbitrary in
+such demarcation, which fact transforms the Soviet idea into a
+particularly suitable foundation for dictatorial and arbitrary rule,
+but renders it unfitted for the creation of a clear, systematically
+built-up constitution." (Page 170.)
+
+Class dictatorship, according to Kautsky, cannot create for itself
+institutions answering to its nature, because there do not exist lines
+of demarcation between the classes. But in that case, what happens to
+the class struggle altogether? Surely it was just, in the existence of
+numerous transitional stages between the bourgeoisie and the
+proletariat, that the lower middle-class theoreticians always found
+their principal argument against the "principle" of the class
+struggle? For Kautsky, however, doubts as to principle begin just at
+the point where the proletariat, having overcome the shapelessness and
+unsteadiness of the intermediate class, having brought one part of
+them over to its side and thrown the remainder into the camp of the
+bourgeoisie, has actually organized its dictatorship in the Soviet
+Constitution.
+
+The very reason why the Soviets an absolutely irreplaceable apparatus
+in the proletarian State is that their framework is elastic and
+yielding, with the result that not only social but political changes
+in the relationship of classes and sections can immediately find their
+expression in the Soviet apparatus. Beginning with the largest
+factories and works, the Soviets then draw into their organization the
+workers of private workshops and shop-assistants, proceed to enter the
+village, organize the peasants against the landowners, and finally the
+lower and middle-class sections of the peasantry against the richest.
+
+The Labor State collects numerous staffs of employees, to a
+considerable extent from the ranks of the bourgeoisie and the
+bourgeois educated classes. To the extent that they become disciplined
+under the Soviet regime, they find representation in the Soviet
+system. Expanding--and at certain moments contracting--in harmony with
+the expansion and contraction of the social positions conquered by the
+proletariat, the Soviet system remains the State apparatus of the
+social revolution, in its internal dynamics, its ebbs and flows, its
+mistakes and successes. With the final triumph of the social
+revolution, the Soviet system will expand and include the whole
+population, in order thereby to lose the characteristics of a form of
+State, and melt away into a mighty system of producing and consuming
+co-operation.
+
+If the party and the trade unions were organizations of preparation
+for the revolution, the Soviets are the weapon of the revolution
+itself. After its victory, the Soviets become the organs of power. The
+role of the party and the unions, without decreasing is nevertheless
+essentially altered.
+
+In the hands of the party is concentrated the general control. It does
+not immediately administer, since its apparatus is not adapted for
+this purpose. But it has the final word in all fundamental questions.
+Further, our practice has led to the result that, in all moot
+questions, generally--conflicts between departments and personal
+conflicts within departments--the last word belongs to the Central
+Committee of the party. This affords extreme economy of time and
+energy, and in the most difficult and complicated circumstances gives
+a guarantee for the necessary unity of action. Such a regime is
+possible only in the presence of the unquestioned authority of the
+party, and the faultlessness of its discipline. Happily for the
+revolution, our party does possess in an equal measure both of these
+qualities. Whether in other countries which have not received from
+their past a strong revolutionary organization, with a great hardening
+in conflict, there will be created just as authoritative a Communist
+Party by the time of the proletarian revolution, it is difficult to
+foretell; but it is quite obvious that on this question, to a very
+large extent, depends the progress of the Socialist revolution in each
+country.
+
+The exclusive role of the Communist Party under the conditions of a
+victorious proletarian revolution is quite comprehensible. The
+question is of the dictatorship of a class. In the composition of that
+class there enter various elements, heterogeneous moods, different
+levels of development. Yet the dictatorship pre-supposes unity of
+will, unity of direction, unity of action. By what other path then can
+it be attained? The revolutionary supremacy of the proletariat
+pre-supposes within the proletariat itself the political supremacy of
+a party, with a clear programme of action and a faultless internal
+discipline.
+
+The policy of coalitions contradicts internally the regime of the
+revolutionary dictatorship. We have in view, not coalitions with
+bourgeois parties, of which of course there can be no talk, but a
+coalition of Communists with other "Socialist" organizations,
+representing different stages of backwardness and prejudice of the
+laboring masses.
+
+The revolution swiftly reveals all that is unstable, wears out all
+that is artificial; the contradictions glossed over in a coalition are
+swiftly revealed under the pressure of revolutionary events. We have
+had an example of this in Hungary, where the dictatorship of the
+proletariat assumed the political form of the coalition of the
+Communists with disguised Opportunists. The coalition soon broke up.
+The Communist Party paid heavily for the revolutionary instability and
+the political treachery of its companions. It is quite obvious that
+for the Hungarian Communists it would have been more profitable to
+have come to power later, after having afforded to the Left
+Opportunists the possibility of compromising themselves once and for
+all. It is quite another question as to how far this was possible. In
+any case, a coalition with the Opportunists, only temporarily hiding
+the relative weakness of the Hungarian Communists, at the same time
+prevented them from growing stronger at the expense of the
+Opportunists; and brought them to disaster.
+
+The same idea is sufficiently illustrated by the example of the
+Russian revolution. The coalition of the Bolsheviks with the Left
+Socialist Revolutionists, which lasted for several months, ended with
+a bloody conflict. True, the reckoning for the coalition had to be
+paid, not so much by us Communists as by our disloyal companions.
+Apparently, such a coalition, in which we were the stronger side and,
+therefore, were not taking too many risks in the attempt, at one
+definite stage in history, to make use of the extreme Left-wing of the
+bourgeois democracy, tactically must be completely justified. But,
+none the less, the Left S.R. episode quite clearly shows that the
+regime of compromises, agreements, mutual concessions--for that is the
+meaning of the regime of coalition--cannot last long in an epoch in
+which situations alter with extreme rapidity, and in which supreme
+unity in point of view is necessary in order to render possible unity
+of action.
+
+We have more than once been accused of having substituted for the
+dictatorship of the Soviets the dictatorship of our party. Yet it can
+be said with complete justice that the dictatorship of the Soviets
+became possible only by means of the dictatorship of the party. It is
+thanks to the clarity of its theoretical vision and its strong
+revolutionary organization that the party has afforded to the Soviets
+the possibility of becoming transformed from shapeless parliaments of
+labor into the apparatus of the supremacy of labor. In this
+"substitution" of the power of the party for the power of the working
+class there is nothing accidental, and in reality there is no
+substitution at all. The Communists express the fundamental interests
+of the working class. It is quite natural that, in the period in which
+history brings up those interests, in all their magnitude, on to the
+order of the day, the Communists have become the recognized
+representatives of the working class as a whole.
+
+But where is your guarantee, certain wise men ask us, that it is just
+your party that expresses the interests of historical development?
+Destroying or driving underground the other parties, you have thereby
+prevented their political competition with you, and consequently you
+have deprived yourselves of the possibility of testing your line of
+action.
+
+This idea is dictated by a purely liberal conception of the course of
+the revolution. In a period in which all antagonisms assume an open
+character, and the political struggle swiftly passes into a civil war,
+the ruling party has sufficient material standard by which to test its
+line of action, without the possible circulation of Menshevik papers.
+Noske crushes the Communists, but they grow. We have suppressed the
+Mensheviks and the S.R.s--and they have disappeared. This criterion is
+sufficient for us. At all events, our problem is not at every given
+moment statistically to measure the grouping of tendencies; but to
+render victory for our tendency secure. For that tendency is the
+tendency of the revolutionary dictatorship; and in the course of the
+latter, in its internal friction, we must find a sufficient criterion
+for self-examination.
+
+The continuous "independence" of the trade union movement, in the
+period of the proletarian revolution, is just as much an impossibility
+as the policy of coalition. The trade unions become the most important
+economic organs of the proletariat in power. Thereby they fall under
+the leadership of the Communist Party. Not only questions of principle
+in the trade union movement, but serious conflicts of organization
+within it, are decided by the Central Committee of our party.
+
+The Kautskians attack the Soviet Government as the dictatorship of a
+"section" of the working class. "If only," they say, "the dictatorship
+was carried out by the _whole_ class!" It is not easy to understand
+what actually they imagine when they say this. The dictatorship of the
+proletariat, in its very essence, signifies the immediate supremacy of
+the revolutionary vanguard, which relies upon the heavy masses, and,
+where necessary, obliges the backward tail to dress by the head. This
+refers also to the trade unions. After the conquest of power by the
+proletariat, they acquire a compulsory character. They must include
+all industrial workers. The party, on the other hand, as before,
+includes in its ranks only the most class-conscious and devoted; and
+only in a process of careful selection does it widen its ranks. Hence
+follows the guiding role of the Communist minority in the trade
+unions, which answers to the supremacy of the Communist Party in the
+Soviets, and represents the political expression of the dictatorship
+of the proletariat.
+
+The trade unions become the direct organizers of social production.
+They express not only the interests of the industrial workers, but the
+interests of industry itself. During the first period, the old
+currents in trade unionism more than once raised their head, urging
+the unions to haggle with the Soviet State, lay down conditions for
+it, and demand from it guarantees. The further we go, however, the
+more do the unions recognize that they are organs of production of the
+Soviet State, and assume responsibility for its fortunes--not opposing
+themselves to it, but identifying themselves with it. The unions
+become the organizers of labor discipline. They demand from the
+workers intensive labor under the most difficult conditions, to the
+extent that the Labor State is not yet able to alter those conditions.
+
+The unions become the apparatus of revolutionary repression against
+undisciplined, anarchical, parasitic elements in the working class.
+From the old policy of trade unionism, which at a certain stage is
+inseparable from the industrial movement within the framework of
+capitalist society, the unions pass along the whole line on to the new
+path of the policy of revolutionary Communism.
+
+
+THE PEASANT POLICY
+
+The Bolsheviks "hoped," Kautsky thunders, "to overcome the substantial
+peasants in the villages by granting political rights exclusively to
+the poorest peasants. They then again granted representation to the
+substantial peasantry." (Page 216.)
+
+Kautsky enumerates the external "contradictions" of our peasant
+policy, not dreaming to inquire into its general direction, and into
+the internal contradictions visible in the economic and political
+situation of the country.
+
+In the Russian peasantry as it entered the Soviet order there were
+three elements: the poor, living to a considerable extent by the sale
+of their labor-power, and forced to buy additional food for their
+requirements; the middle peasants, whose requirements were covered by
+the products of their farms, and who were able to a limited extent to
+sell their surplus; and the upper layer--_i.e._, the rich peasants,
+the vulture (kulak) class, which systematically bought labor-power and
+sold their agricultural produce on a large scale. It is quite
+unnecessary to point out that these groups are not distinguished by
+definite symptoms or by homogeneousness throughout the country.
+
+Still, on the whole, and generally speaking, the peasant poor
+represented the natural and undeniable allies of the town proletariat,
+whilst the vulture class represented its just as undeniable and
+irreconcilable enemies. The most hesitation was principally to be
+observed amongst the widest, the _middle_ section of the peasantry.
+
+Had not the country been so exhausted, and if the proletariat had had
+the possibility of offering to the peasant masses the necessary
+quantity of commodities and cultural requirements, the adaptation of
+the toiling majority of the peasantry to the new regime would have
+taken place much less painfully. But the economic disorder of the
+country, which was not the result of our land or food policy, but was
+generated by the causes which preceded the appearance of that policy,
+robbed the town for a prolonged period of any possibility of giving
+the village the products of the textile and metal-working industries,
+imported goods, and so on. At the same time, industry could not
+entirely cease drawing from the village all, albeit the smallest
+quantity, of its food resources. The proletariat demanded of the
+peasantry the granting of food credits, economic subsidies in respect
+of values which it is only now about to create. The symbol of those
+future values was the credit symbol, now finally deprived of all
+value. But the peasant mass is not very capable of historical
+detachment. Bound up with the Soviet Government by the abolition of
+landlordism, and seeing in it a guarantee against the restoration of
+Tsarism, the peasantry at the same time not infrequently opposes the
+collection of corn, considering it a bad bargain so long as it does
+not itself receive printed calico, nails, and kerosine.
+
+The Soviet Government naturally strove to impose the chief weight of
+the food tax upon the upper strata of the village. But, in the
+unformed social conditions of the village, the influential peasantry,
+accustomed to lead the middle peasants in its train, found scores of
+methods of passing on the food tax from itself to the wide masses of
+the peasantry, thereby placing them in a position of hostility and
+opposition to the Soviet power. It was necessary to awaken in the
+lower ranks of the peasantry suspicion and hostility towards the
+speculating upper strata. This purpose was served by the Committees of
+Poverty. They were built up of the rank and file, of elements who in
+the last epoch were oppressed, driven into a dark corner, deprived of
+their rights. Of course, in their midst there turned out to be a
+certain number of semi-parasitic elements. This served as the chief
+text for the demagogues amongst the populist "Socialists," whose
+speeches found a grateful echo in the hearts of the village vultures.
+But the mere fact of the transference of power to the village poor had
+an immeasurable revolutionary significance. For the guidance of the
+village semi-proletarians, there were despatched from the towns
+parties from amongst the foremost workers, who accomplished invaluable
+work in the villages. The Committees of Poverty became shock
+battalions against the vulture class. Enjoying the support of the
+State, they thereby obliged the middle section of the peasantry to
+choose, not only between the Soviet power and the power of the
+landlords, but between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the
+semi-proletarian elements of the village on the one hand, and the yoke
+of the rich speculators on the other. By a series of lessons, some of
+which were very severe, the middle peasantry was obliged to become
+convinced that the Soviet regime, which had driven away the landlords
+and bailiffs, in its turn imposes new duties upon the peasantry, and
+demands sacrifices from them. The political education of tens of
+millions of the middle peasantry did not take place as easily and
+smoothly as in the school-room, and it did not give immediate and
+unquestionable results. There were risings of the middle peasants,
+uniting with the speculators, and always in such cases falling under
+the leadership of White Guard landlords; there were abuses committed
+by local agents of the Soviet Government, particularly by those of the
+Committees of Poverty. But the fundamental political end was attained.
+The powerful class of rich peasantry, if it was not finally
+annihilated, proved to be shaken to its foundations, with its
+self-reliance undermined. The middle peasantry, remaining politically
+shapeless, just as it is economically shapeless, began to learn to
+find its representative in the foremost worker, as before it found it
+in the noisy village speculator. Once this fundamental result was
+achieved, the Committees of Poverty, as temporary institutions, as a
+sharp wedge driven into the village masses, had to yield their place
+to the Soviets, in which the village poor are represented side by side
+with the middle peasantry.
+
+The Committees of Poverty existed about six months, from June to
+December, 1918. In their institution, as in their abolition, Kautsky
+sees nothing but the "waverings" of Soviet policy. Yet at the same
+time he himself has not even a suspicion of any practical lessons to
+be drawn. And after all, how should he think of them? Experience such
+as we are acquiring in this respect knows no precedent; and questions
+and problems such as the Soviet Government is now solving in practice
+have no solution in books. What Kautsky calls contradictions in policy
+are, in reality, the _active manoeuvring_ of the proletariat in the
+spongy, undivided, peasant mass. The sailing ship has to manoeuvre
+before the wind; yet no one will see contradictions in the
+manoeuvres which finally bring the ship to harbor.
+
+In questions as to agricultural communes and Soviet farms, there could
+also be found not a few "contradictions," in which, side by side with
+individual mistakes, there are expressed various stages of the
+revolution. What quantity of land shall the Soviet State leave for
+itself in the Ukraine, and what quantity shall it hand over to the
+peasants; what policy shall it lay down for the agricultural communes;
+in what form shall it give them support, so as not to make them the
+nursery for parasitism; in what form is control to be organized over
+them--all these are absolutely new problems of Socialist economic
+construction, which have been settled beforehand neither theoretically
+nor practically, and in the settling of which the general principles
+of our programme have even yet to find their actual application and
+their testing in practice, by means of inevitable temporary deviations
+to right or left.
+
+But even the very fact that the Russian proletariat has found support
+in the peasantry Kautsky turns against us. "This has introduced into
+the Soviet regime an economically reactionary element which was spared
+(!) the Paris Commune, as its dictatorship did not rely on peasant
+Soviets."
+
+As if in reality we could accept the heritage of the feudal and
+bourgeois order with the possibility of excluding from it at will "an
+economically reactionary element"! Nor is this all. Having poisoned
+the Soviet regime by its "reactionary element," the peasantry has
+deprived us of its support. To-day it "hates" the Bolsheviks. All this
+Kautsky knows very certainly from the radios of Clemenceau and the
+squibs of the Mensheviks.
+
+In reality, what is true is that wide masses of the peasantry are
+suffering from the absence of the essential products of industry. But
+it is just as true that every other regime--and there were not a few
+of them, in various parts of Russia, during the last three
+years--proved infinitely more oppressive for the shoulders of the
+peasantry. Neither monarchical nor democratic governments were able to
+increase their stores of manufactured goods. Both of them found
+themselves in need of the peasant's corn and the peasant's horses. To
+carry out their policy, the bourgeois governments--including the
+Kautskian-Menshevik variety--made use of a purely bureaucratic
+apparatus, which reckons with the requirements of the peasant's farm
+to an infinitely less degree than the Soviet apparatus, which consists
+of workers and peasants. As a result, the middle peasant, in spite of
+his waverings, his dissatisfaction, and even his risings, ultimately
+always comes to the conclusion that, however difficult it is for him
+at present under the Bolsheviks, under every other regime it would be
+infinitely more difficult for him. It is quite true that the Commune
+was "spared" peasant support. But in return the Commune was not spared
+annihilation by the peasant armies of Thiers! Whereas our army,
+four-fifths of whom are peasants, is fighting with enthusiasm and with
+success for the Soviet Republic. And this one fact, controverting
+Kautsky and those inspiring him, gives the best possible verdict on
+the peasant policy of the Soviet Government.
+
+
+THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT AND THE EXPERTS
+
+"The Bolsheviks at first thought they could manage without the
+intelligentsia, without the experts," Kautsky narrates to us. (Page
+191.) But then, becoming convinced of the necessity of the
+intelligentsia, they abandoned their severe repressions, and attempted
+to attract them to work by all sorts of measures, incidentally by
+giving them extremely high salaries. "In this way," Kautsky says
+ironically, "the true path, the true method of attracting experts
+consists in first of all giving them a thorough good hiding." ( Page
+192.) Quite so. With all due respect to all philistines, the
+dictatorship of the proletariat does just consist in "giving a hiding"
+to the classes that were previously supreme, before forcing them to
+recognize the new order and to submit to it.
+
+The professional intelligentsia, brought up with a prejudice about the
+omnipotence of the bourgeoisie, long would not, could not, and did not
+believe that the working class is really capable of governing the
+country; that it seized power not by accident; and that the
+dictatorship of the proletariat is an insurmountable fact.
+Consequently, the bourgeois intelligentsia treated its duties to the
+Labor State extremely lightly, even when it entered its service; and
+it considered that to receive money from Wilson, Clemenceau or Mirbach
+for anti-Soviet agitation, or to hand over military secrets and
+technical resources to White Guards and foreign imperialists, is a
+quite natural and obvious course under the regime of the proletariat.
+It became necessary to show it in practice, and to show it severely,
+that the proletariat had not seized power in order to allow such jokes
+to be played off at its expense.
+
+In the severe penalties adopted in the case of the intelligentsia, our
+bourgeois idealist sees the "consequence of a policy which strove to
+attract the educated classes, not by means of persuasion, but by means
+of kicks from before and behind." (Page 193.) In this way, Kautsky
+seriously imagines that it is possible to attract the bourgeois
+intelligentsia to the work of Socialist construction by means of mere
+persuasion--and this in conditions when, in all other countries, there
+is still supreme the bourgeoisie which hesitates at no methods of
+terrifying, flattering, or buying over the Russian intelligentsia and
+making it a weapon for the transformation of Russia into a colony of
+slaves.
+
+Instead of analyzing the course of the struggle, Kautsky, when dealing
+with the intelligentsia, gives once again merely academical recipes.
+It is absolutely false that our party had the idea of managing without
+the intelligentsia, not realizing to the full its importance for the
+economic and cultural work that lay before us. On the contrary. When
+the struggle for the conquest and consolidation of power was in full
+blast, and the majority of the intelligentsia was playing the part of
+a shock battalion of the bourgeoisie, fighting against us openly or
+sabotaging our institutions, the Soviet power fought mercilessly with
+the experts, precisely because it knew their enormous importance from
+the point of view of organization so long as they do not attempt to
+carry on an independent "democratic" policy and execute the orders of
+one of the fundamental classes of society. Only after the opposition
+of the intelligentsia had been broken by a severe struggle did the
+possibility open before us of enlisting the assistance of the experts.
+We immediately entered that path. It proved not as simple as it might
+have seemed at first. The relations which existed under capitalist
+conditions between the working man and the director, the clerk and the
+manager, the soldier and the officer, left behind a very deep class
+distrust of the experts; and that distrust had become still more acute
+during the first period of the civil war, when the intelligentsia did
+its utmost to break the labor revolution by hunger and cold. It was
+not easy to outlive this frame of mind, and to pass from the first
+violent antagonism to peaceful collaboration. The laboring masses had
+gradually to become accustomed to see in the engineer, the
+agricultural expert, the officer, not the oppressor of yesterday but
+the useful worker of to-day--a necessary expert, entirely under the
+orders of the Workers' and Peasants' Government.
+
+We have already said that Kautsky is wrong when he attributes to the
+Soviet Government the desire to replace experts by proletarians. But
+that such a desire was bound to spring up in wide circles of the
+proletariat cannot be denied. A young class which had proved to its
+own satisfaction that it was capable of overcoming the greatest
+obstacles in its path, which had torn to pieces the veil of mystery
+which had hitherto surrounded the power of the propertied classes,
+which had realized that all good things on the earth were not the
+direct gift of heaven--that a revolutionary class was naturally
+inclined, in the person of the less mature of its elements, at first
+to over-estimate its capacity for solving each and every problem,
+without having recourse to the aid of experts educated by the
+bourgeoisie.
+
+It was not merely yesterday that we began the struggle with such
+tendencies, in so far as they assumed a definite character. "To-day,
+when the power of the Soviets has been set on a firm footing," we said
+at the Moscow City Conference on March 28, 1918, "the struggle with
+sabotage must express itself in the form of transforming the saboteurs
+of yesterday into the servants, executive officials, technical guides,
+of the new regime, wherever it requires them. If we do not grapple
+with this, if we do not attract all the forces necessary to us and
+enlist them in the Soviet service, our struggle of yesterday with
+sabotage would thereby be condemned as an absolutely vain and
+fruitless struggle.
+
+"Just as in dead machines, so into those technical experts, engineers,
+doctors, teachers, former officers, there is sunk a certain portion of
+our national capital, which we are obliged to exploit and utilize if
+we want to solve the root problems standing before us.
+
+"Democratization does not at all consist--as every Marxist learns in
+his A B C--in abolishing the meaning of skilled forces, the meaning of
+persons possessing special knowledge, and in replacing them everywhere
+and anywhere by elective boards.
+
+"Elective boards, consisting of the best representatives of the
+working class, but not equipped with the necessary technical
+knowledge, cannot replace one expert who has passed through the
+technical school, and who knows how to carry out the given technical
+work. That flood-tide of the collegiate principle which is at present
+to be observed in all spheres is the quite natural reaction of a
+young, revolutionary, only yesterday oppressed class, which is
+throwing out the one-man principle of its rulers of yesterday--the
+landlords and the generals--and everywhere is appointing its elected
+representatives. This, I say, is quite a natural and, in its origin,
+quite a healthy revolutionary reaction; but it is not the last word in
+the economic constructive work of the proletatarian proletarian class.
+
+"The next step must consist in the self-limitation of the collegiate
+principle, in a healthy and necessary act of self-limitation by the
+working class, which knows where the decisive word can be spoken by
+the elected representatives of the workers themselves, and where it is
+necessary to give way to a technical specialist, who is equipped with
+certain knowledge, on whom a great measure of responsibility must be
+laid, and who must be kept under careful political control. But it is
+necessary to allow the expert freedom to act, freedom to create;
+because no expert, be he ever so little gifted or capable, can work in
+his department when subordinate in his own technical work to a board
+of men who do not know that department. Political, collegiate and
+Soviet control everywhere and anywhere; but for the executive
+functions, we must appoint technical experts, put them in responsible
+positions, and impose responsibility upon them.
+
+"Those who fear this are quite unconsciously adopting an attitude of
+profound internal distrust towards the Soviet regime. Those who think
+that the enlisting of the saboteurs of yesterday in the administration
+of technically expert posts threatens the very foundations of the
+Soviet regime, do not realize that it is not through the work of some
+engineer or of some general of yesterday that the Soviet regime may
+stumble--in the political, in the revolutionary, in the military
+sense, the Soviet regime is unconquerable. But it may stumble through
+its own incapacity to grapple with the problems of creative
+organization. The Soviet regime is bound to draw from the old
+institutions all that was vital and valuable in them, and harness it
+on to the new work. If, comrades, we do not accomplish this, we shall
+not deal successfully with our principal problems; for it would be
+absolutely impossible for us to bring forth from our masses, in the
+shortest possible time, all the necessary experts, and throw aside all
+that was accumulated in the past.
+
+"As a matter of fact, it would be just the same as if we said that all
+the machines which hitherto had served to exploit the workers were now
+to be thrown aside. It would be madness. The enlisting of scientific
+experts is for us just as essential as the administration of the
+resources of production and transport, and all the wealth of the
+country generally. We must, and in addition we must immediately, bring
+under our control all the technical experts we possess, and introduce
+in practice for them the principle of compulsory labor; at the same
+time leaving them a wide margin of activity, and maintaining over them
+careful political control."[7]
+
+          [7] Labor, Discipline, and Order will save the Socialist
+          Soviet Republic (Moscow, 1918). Kautsky knows this pamphlet,
+          as he quotes from it several times. This, however, does not
+          prevent him passing over the passage quoted above, which
+          makes clear the attitude of the Soviet Government to the
+          intelligentsia.
+
+The question of experts was particularly acute, from the very
+beginning, in the War Department. Here, under the pressure of iron
+necessity, it was solved first.
+
+In the sphere of administration of industry and transport, the
+necessary forms of organization are very far from being attained, even
+to this day. We must seek the reason in the fact that during the first
+two years we were obliged to sacrifice the interests of industry and
+transport to the requirements of military defence. The extremely
+changeable course of the civil war, in its turn, threw obstacles in
+the way of the establishment of regular relations with the experts.
+Qualified technicians of industry and transport, doctors, teachers,
+professors, either went away with the retreating armies of Kolchak and
+Denikin, or were compulsorily evacuated by them.
+
+Only now, when the civil war is approaching its conclusion, is the
+intelligentsia in its mass making its peace with the Soviet
+Government, or bowing before it. Economic problems have acquired
+first-class importance. One of the most important amongst them is the
+problem of the scientific organization of production. Before the
+experts there opens a boundless field of activity. They are being
+accorded the independence necessary for creative work. The general
+control of industry on a national scale is concentrated in the hands
+of the Party of the proletariat.
+
+
+THE INTERNAL POLICY OF THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT
+
+"The Bolsheviks," Kautsky mediates, "acquired the force necessary for
+the seizure of political power through the fact that, amongst the
+political parties in Russia, they were the most energetic in their
+demands for peace--peace at any price, a separate peace--without
+interesting themselves as to the influence this would have on the
+general international situation, as to whether this would assist the
+victory and world domination of the German military monarchy, under
+the protection of which they remained for a long time, just like
+Indian or Irish rebels or Italian anarchists." (Page 53.)
+
+Of the reasons for our victory, Kautsky knows only the one that we
+stood for peace. He does not explain the Soviet Government has
+continued to exist now that it has again mobilized a most important
+proportion of the soldiers of the imperial army, in order for two
+years successfully to combat its political enemies.
+
+The watchword of peace undoubtedly played an enormous part in our
+struggle; but precisely because it was directed against the
+_imperialist_ war. The idea of peace was supported most strongly
+of all, not by the tired soldiers, but by the foremost workers, for
+whom it had the import, not for a rest, but of a pitiless struggle
+against the exploiters. It was those same workers who, under the
+watchword of peace, later laid down their lives on the Soviet fronts.
+
+The affirmation that we demanded peace without reckoning on the effect
+it would have on the international situation is a belated echo of
+Cadet and Menshevik slanders. The comparison of us with the
+Germanophile nationalists of India and Ireland seeks its justification
+in the fact that German imperialism did actually _attempt_ to
+make use of us as it did the Indians and the Irish. But the
+chauvinists of France spared no efforts to make use of Liebknecht and
+Luxemburg--even of Kautsky and Bernstein--in their own interests. The
+whole question is, did we allow ourselves to be utilized? Did we, by
+our conduct, give the European workers even the shadow of a ground to
+place us in the same category as German imperialism? It is sufficient
+to remember the course of the Brest negotiations, their breakdown, and
+the German advance of February, 1918, to reveal all the cynicism of
+Kautsky's accusation. In reality, there was no peace for a single day
+between ourselves and German imperialism. On the Ukrainian and
+Caucasian fronts, we, in the measure of our then extremely feeble
+energies, continued to wage war without openly calling it such. We
+were too weak to organize war along the whole Russo-German front. We
+maintained persistently the fiction of peace, utilizing the fact that
+the chief German forces were drawn away to the west. If German
+imperialism did prove sufficiently powerful, in 1917-18, to impose
+upon us the Brest Peace, after all our efforts to tear that noose from
+our necks, one of the principal reasons was the disgraceful behavior
+of the German Social-Democratic Party, of which Kautsky remained an
+integral and essential part. The Brest Peace was pre-determined on
+August 4, 1914. At that moment, Kautsky not only did not declare war
+against German militarism, as he later demanded from the Soviet
+Government, which was in 1918 still powerless from a military point of
+view; Kautsky actually proposed voting for the War Credits, "under
+certain conditions"; and generally behaved in such a way that for
+months it was impossible to discover whether he stood for the War or
+against it. And this political coward, who at the decisive moment gave
+up the principal positions of Socialism, dares to accuse us of having
+found ourselves obliged, at a certain moment, to retreat--not in
+principle, but materially. And why? Because we were betrayed by the
+German Social-Democracy, corrupted by Kautskianism--_i.e._, by
+political prostitution disguised by theories.
+
+We did concern ourselves with the international situation! In reality,
+we had a much more profound criterion by which to judge the
+international situation; and it did not deceive us. Already before the
+February Revolution the Russian Army no longer existed as a fighting
+force. Its final collapse was pre-determined. If the February
+Revolution had not taken place, Tsarism would have come to an
+agreement with the German monarchy. But the February Revolution which
+prevented that finally destroyed the army built on a monarchist basis,
+precisely because it was a revolution. A month sooner or later the
+army was bound to fall to pieces. The military policy of Kerensky was
+the policy of an ostrich. He closed his eyes to the decomposition of
+the army, talked sounding phrases, and uttered verbal threats against
+German imperialism.
+
+In such conditions, we had only one way out: to take our stand on the
+platform of peace, as the inevitable conclusion from the military
+powerlessness of the revolution, and to transform that watchword into
+the weapon of revolutionary influence on all the peoples of Europe.
+That is, instead of, together with Kerensky, peacefully awaiting the
+final military catastrophe--which might bury the revolution in its
+ruins--we proposed to take possession of the watchword of peace and to
+lead after it the proletariat of Europe--and first and foremost the
+workers of Austro-Germany. It was in the light of this view that we
+carried on our peace negotiations with the Central Empires, and it was
+in the light of this that we drew up our Notes to the governments of
+the Entente. We drew out the negotiations as long as we could, in
+order to give the European working masses the possibility of realizing
+the meaning of the Soviet Government and its policy. The January
+strike of 1918 in Germany and Austria showed that our efforts had not
+been in vain. That strike was the first serious premonition of the
+German Revolution. The German Imperialists understood then that it was
+just we who represented for them a deadly danger. This is very
+strikingly shown in Ludendorff's book. True, they could not risk any
+longer coming out against us in an open crusade. But wherever they
+could fight against us secretly deceiving the German workers with the
+help of the German Social-Democracy, they did so; in the Ukraine, on
+the Don, in the Caucasus. In Central Russia, in Moscow, Count Mirbach
+from the very first day of his arrival stood as the centre of
+counter-revolutionary plots against the Soviet Government--just as
+Comrade Yoffe in Berlin was in the closest possible touch with the
+revolution. The Extreme Left group of the German revolutionary
+movement, the party of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, all the
+time went hand in hand with us. The German revolution at once took on
+the form of Soviets, and the German proletariat, in spite of the Brest
+Peace, did not for a moment entertain any doubts as to whether we were
+with Liebknecht or Ludendorff. In his evidence before the Reichstag
+Commission in November, 1919, Ludendorff explained how "the High
+Command demanded the creation of an institution with the object of
+disclosing the connection of revolutionary tendencies in Germany with
+Russia. Yoffe arrived in Berlin, and in various towns there were set
+up Russian consulates. This had the most painful consequences in the
+army and navy." Kautsky, however, has the audacity to write that "if
+matters did come to a German revolution, truly it is not the
+Bolsheviks who are responsible for it." (Page 162.)
+
+Even if we had had the possibility in 1917-18, by means of
+revolutionary abstention, of supporting the old Imperial Army instead
+of hastening its destruction, we should have merely been assisting the
+Entente, and would have covered up by our aid its brigands' peace with
+Germany, Austria, and all the countries of the world generally. With
+such a policy we should at the decisive moment have proved absolutely
+disarmed in the face of the Entente--still more disarmed than Germany
+is to-day. Whereas, thanks to the November Revolution and the Brest
+Peace we are to-day the only country which opposes the Entente rifle
+in hand. By our international policy, we not only did not assist the
+Hohenzollern to assume a position of world domination; on the
+contrary, by our November Revolution we did more than anyone else to
+prepare his overthrow. At the same time, we gained a military
+breathing-space, in the course of which we created a large and strong
+army, the first army of the proletariat in history, with which to-day
+not all the unleashed hounds of the Entente can cope.
+
+The most critical moment in our international situation arose in the
+autumn of 1918, after the destruction of the German armies. In the
+place of two mighty camps, more or less neutralizing each other, there
+stood before us the victorious Entente, at the summit of its world
+power, and there lay broken Germany, whose Junker blackguards would
+have considered it a happiness and an honor to spring at the throat of
+the Russian proletariat for a bone from the kitchen of Clemenceau. We
+proposed peace to the Entente, and were again ready--for we were
+obliged--to sign the most painful conditions. But Clemenceau, in whose
+imperialist rapacity there have remained in their full force all the
+characteristics of lower-middle-class thick-headedness, refused the
+Junkers their bone, and at the same time decided at all costs to
+decorate the Invalides with the scalps of the leaders of the Soviet
+Republic. By this policy Clemenceau did us not a small service. We
+defended ourselves successfully, and held out.
+
+What, then, was the guiding principle of our external policy, once the
+first months of existence of the Soviet Government had made clear the
+considerable vitality as yet of the capitalist governments of Europe?
+Just that which Kautsky accepts to-day uncomprehendingly as an
+accidental result--_to hold out_!
+
+We realized too clearly that the very fact of the existence of the
+Soviet Government is an event of the greatest revolutionary
+importance; and this realization dictated to us our concessions and
+our temporary retirements--not in principle but in practical
+conclusions from a sober estimate of our own forces. We retreated like
+an army which gives up to the enemy a town, and even a fortress, in
+order, having retreated, to concentrate its forces not only for
+defence but for an advance. We retreated like strikers amongst whom
+to-day energies and resources have been exhausted, but who, clenching
+their teeth, are preparing for a new struggle. If we were not filled
+with an unconquerable belief in the world significance of the Soviet
+dictatorship, we should not have accepted the most painful sacrifices
+at Brest-Litovsk. If our faith had proved to be contradicted by the
+actual course of events, the Brest Peace would have gone down to
+history as the futile capitulation of a doomed regime. That is how the
+situation was judged _then_, not only by the Kuehlmanns, but also
+by the Kautskies of all countries. But we proved right in our
+estimate, as of our weakness then, so of our strength in the future.
+The existence of the Ebert Republic, with its universal suffrage, its
+parliamentary swindling, its "freedom" of the Press, and its murder of
+labor leaders, is merely a necessary link in the historical chain of
+slavery and scoundrelism. The existence of the Soviet Government is a
+fact of immeasurable revolutionary significance. It was necessary to
+retain it, utilizing the conflict of the capitalist nations, the as
+yet unfinished imperialist war, the self-confident effrontery of the
+Hohenzollern bands, the thick-wittedness of the world-bourgeoisie as
+far as the fundamental questions of the revolution were concerned, the
+antagonism of America and Europe, the complication of relations within
+the Entente. We had to lead our yet unfinished Soviet ship over the
+stormy waves, amid rocks and reefs, completing its building and
+armament en route.
+
+Kautsky has the audacity to repeat the accusation that we did not, at
+the beginning of 1918, hurl ourselves unarmed against our mighty foe.
+Had we done this we would have been crushed.[8] The first great
+attempt of the proletariat to seize power would have suffered defeat.
+The revolutionary wing of the European proletariat would have been
+dealt the severest possible blow. The Entente would have made peace
+with the Hohenzollern over the corpse of the Russian Revolution, and
+the world capitalist reaction would have received a respite for a
+number of years. When Kautsky says that, concluding the Brest Peace,
+we did not think of its influence on the fate of the German
+Revolution, he is uttering a disgraceful slander. We considered the
+question from all sides, and our _sole criterion_ was the interests of
+the international revolution.
+
+          [8] The Vienna Arbeiterzeitung opposes, as is fitting, the
+          wise Russian Communists to the foolish Austrians. "Did not
+          Trotsky," the paper writes, "with a clear view and
+          understanding of possibilities, sign the Brest-Litovsk peace
+          of violence, notwithstanding that it served for the
+          consolidation of German imperialism? The Brest Peace was
+          just as harsh and shameful as is the Versailles Peace. But
+          does this mean that Trotsky had to be rash enough to
+          continue the war against Germany? Would not the fate of the
+          Russian Revolution long ago have been sealed? Trotsky bowed
+          before the unalterable necessity of signing the shameful
+          treaty in anticipation of the German revolution." The honor
+          of having foreseen all the consequences of the Brest Peace
+          belongs to Lenin. But this, of course, alters nothing in the
+          argument of the organ of the Viennese Kautskians.
+
+We came to the conclusion that those interests demanded that the only
+Soviet Government in the world should be preserved. And we proved
+right. Whereas Kautsky awaited our fall, if not with impatience, at
+least with certainty; and on this expected fall built up his whole
+international policy.
+
+The minutes of the session of the Coalition Government of November 19,
+1918, published by the Bauer Ministry, run:--"First, a continuation of
+the discussion as to the relations of Germany and the Soviet Republic.
+Haase advises a policy of procrastination. Kautsky agrees with Haase:
+_decision must be postponed_. _The Soviet Government will not last
+long. It will inevitably fall in the course of a few weeks_...."
+
+In this way, at the time when the situation of the Soviet Government
+was really extremely difficult--for the destruction of German
+militarism had given the Entente, it seemed, the full possibility of
+finishing with us "in the course of a few weeks"--at that moment
+Kautsky not only does not hasten to our aid, and even does not merely
+wash his hands of the whole affair; he participates in active
+treachery against revolutionary Russia. To aid Scheidemann in his role
+of _watch-dog_ of the bourgeoisie, instead of the "programme" role
+assigned to him of its "_grave-digger_," Kautsky himself hastens
+to become the grave-digger of the Soviet Government. But the Soviet
+Government is alive. It will outlive all its grave-diggers.
+
+
+
+
+8
+
+PROBLEMS OF THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR
+
+
+THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT AND INDUSTRY
+
+If, in the first period of the Soviet revolution, the principal
+accusation of the bourgeois world was directed against our savagery
+and blood-thirstiness, later, when that argument, from frequent use,
+had become blunted, and had lost its force, we were made responsible
+chiefly for the economic disorganization of the country. In harmony
+with his present mission, Kautsky methodically translates into the
+language of pseudo-Marxism all the bourgeois charges against the
+Soviet Government of destroying the industrial life of Russia. The
+Bolsheviks began socialization without a plan. They socialized what
+was not ready for socialization. The Russian working class,
+altogether, is not yet prepared for the administration of industry;
+and so on, and so on.
+
+Repeating and combining these accusations, Kautsky, with dull
+obstinacy, hides the real cause for our economic disorganization: the
+imperialist slaughter, the civil war, and the blockade.
+
+Soviet Russia, from the first months of its existence, found itself
+deprived of coal, oil, metal, and cotton. First the Austro-German and
+then the Entente imperialisms, with the assistance of the Russian
+White Guards, tore away from Soviet Russia the Donetz coal and
+metal-working region, the oil districts of the Caucasus, Turkestan
+with its cotton, Ural with its richest deposits of metals, Siberia
+with its bread and meat. The Donetz area had usually supplied our
+industry with 94 per cent. of its coal and 74 per cent. of its crude
+ore. The Ural supplied the remaining 20 per cent. of the ore and 4 per
+cent. of the coal. Both these regions, during the civil war, were cut
+off from us. We were deprived of half a milliard poods of coal
+imported from abroad. Simultaneously, we were left without oil: the
+oilfields, one and all, passed into the hands of our enemies. One
+needs to have a truly brazen forehead to speak, in face of these
+facts, of the destructive influence of "premature," "barbarous," etc.,
+socialization. An industry which is completely deprived of fuel and
+raw materials--whether that industry belongs to a capitalist trust or
+to the Labor State, whether its factories be socialized or not--its
+chimneys will not smoke in either case without coal or oil. Something
+might be learned about this, say, in Austria; and for that matter
+in Germany itself. A weaving factory administered according to the
+best Kautskian methods--if we admit that anything at all can be
+administered by Kautskian methods, except one's own inkstand--will not
+produce prints if it is not supplied with cotton. And we were
+simultaneously deprived both of Turkestan and American cotton. In
+addition, as has been pointed out, we had no fuel.
+
+Of course, the blockade and the civil war came as the result of the
+proletarian revolution in Russia. But it does not at all follow from
+this that the terrible devastation caused by the Anglo-American-French
+blockade and the robber campaigns of Kolchak and Denikin have to be
+put down to the discredit of the Soviet methods of economic
+organization.
+
+The imperialist war that preceded the revolution, with its
+all-devouring material and technical demands, imposed a much greater
+strain on our young industry than on the industry of more powerful
+capitalist countries. Our transport suffered particularly severely.
+The exploitation of the railways increased considerably; the wear and
+tear correspondingly; while repairs were reduced to a strict minimum.
+The inevitable hour of Nemesis was brought nearer by the fuel crisis.
+Our almost simultaneous loss of the Donetz coal, foreign coal, and the
+oil of the Caucasus, obliged us in the sphere of transport to have
+recourse to wood. And, as the supplies of wood fuel were not in the
+least calculated with a view to this, we had to stoke our boilers with
+recently stored raw wood, which has an extremely destructive effect on
+the mechanism of locomotives that are already worn out. We see, in
+consequence, that the chief reasons for the collapse of transport
+preceded November, 1917. But even those reasons which are directly or
+indirectly bound up with the November Revolution fall under the
+heading of political consequences of the revolution; and in no
+circumstances do they affect Socialist economic methods.
+
+The influence of political disturbances in the economic sphere was not
+limited only to questions of transport and fuel. If world industry,
+during the last decade, was more and more becoming a single organism,
+the more directly does this apply to national industry. On the other
+hand, the war and the revolution were mechanically breaking up and
+tearing asunder Russian industry in every direction. The industrial
+ruin of Poland, the Baltic fringe, and later of Petrograd, began under
+Tsarism and continued under Kerensky, embracing ever new and newer
+regions. Endless evacuations simultaneous with the destruction of
+industry, of necessity meant the destruction of transport also. During
+the civil war, with its changing fronts, evacuations assumed a more
+feverish and consequently a still more destructive character. Each
+side temporarily or permanently evacuated this or that industrial
+centre, and took all possible steps to ensure that the most important
+industrial enterprises could not be utilized by the enemy: all
+valuable machines were carried off, or at any rate their most delicate
+parts, together with the technical and best workers. The evacuation
+was followed by a re-evacuation, which not infrequently completed the
+destruction both of the property transferred and of the railways. Some
+most important industrial areas--especially in the Ukraine and in the
+Urals--changed hands several times.
+
+To this it must be added that, at the time when the destruction of
+technical equipment was being accomplished on an unprecedented scale,
+the supply of machines from abroad, which hitherto played a decisive
+part in our industry, had completely ceased.
+
+But not only did the dead elements of production--buildings, machines,
+rails, fuel, and raw material--suffer terrible losses under the
+combined blows of the war and the revolution. Not less, if not more,
+did the chief factor of industry, its living creative force--the
+proletariat--suffer. The proletariat was consolidating the November
+revolution, building and defending the apparatus of Soviet power, and
+carrying on a ceaseless struggle with the White Guards. The skilled
+workers are, as a rule, at the same time the most advanced. The civil
+war tore away many tens of thousands of the best workers for a long
+time from productive labor, swallowing up many thousands of them for
+ever. The Socialist revolution placed the chief burden of its
+sacrifices upon the proletarian vanguard, and consequently on
+industry.
+
+All the attention of the Soviet State has been directed, for the two
+and a half years of its existence, to the problem of military defence.
+The best forces and its principal resources were given to the front.
+
+In any case, the class struggle inflicts blows upon industry. That
+accusation, long before Kautsky, was levelled at it by all the
+philosophers of the social harmony. During simple economic strikes the
+workers consume, and do not produce. Still more powerful, therefore,
+are the blows inflicted upon economic life by the class struggle in
+its severest form--in the form of armed conflicts. But it is quite
+clear that the civil war cannot be classified under the heading of
+Socialist economic methods.
+
+The reasons enumerated above are more than sufficient to explain the
+difficult economic situation of Soviet Russia. There is no fuel, there
+is no metal, there is no cotton, transport is destroyed, technical
+equipment is in disorder, living labor-power is scattered over the
+face of the country, and a high percentage of it has been lost to the
+front--is there any need to seek supplementary reasons in the economic
+Utopianism of the Bolsheviks in order to explain the fall of our
+industry? On the contrary, each of the reasons quoted alone is
+sufficient to evoke the question: how is it possible at all that,
+under such conditions, factories and workshops should continue to
+function?
+
+And yet they do continue principally in the shape of war industry,
+which is at present living at the expense of the rest. The Soviet
+Government was obliged to re-create it, just like the army, out of
+fragments. War industry, set up again under these conditions of
+unprecedented difficulty, has fulfilled and is fulfilling its duty:
+the Red Army is clothed, shod, equipped with its rifle, its machine
+gun, its cannon, its bullet, its shell, its aeroplane, and all else
+that it requires.
+
+As soon as the dawn of peace made its appearance--after the
+destruction of Kolchak, Yudenich, and Denikin--we placed before
+ourselves the problem of economic organization in the fullest possible
+way. And already, in the course of three or four months of intensive
+work in this sphere, it has become clear beyond all possibility of
+doubt that, thanks to its most intimate connection with the popular
+masses, the elasticity of its apparatus, and its own revolutionary
+initiative, the Soviet Government disposes of such resources and
+methods for economic reconstruction as no other government ever had or
+has to-day.
+
+True, before us there arose quite new questions and new difficulties
+in the sphere of the organization of labor. Socialist theory had no
+answers to these questions, and could not have them. We had to find
+the solution in practice, and test it in practice. Kautskianism is a
+whole epoch behind the gigantic economic problems being solved at
+present by the Soviet Government. In the form of Menshevism, it
+constantly throws obstacles in our way, opposing the practical
+measures of our economic reconstruction by bourgeois prejudices and
+bureaucratic-intellectual scepticism.
+
+To introduce the reader to the very essence of the questions of the
+organization of labor, as they stand at present before us, we quote
+below the report of the author of this book at the Third All-Russian
+Congress of Trade Unions. With the object of the fullest possible
+elucidation of the question, the text of the speech is supplemented by
+considerable extracts from the author's reports at the All-Russian
+Congress of Economic Councils and at the Ninth Congress of the
+Communist Party.
+
+
+REPORT ON THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR
+
+Comrades, the internal civil war is coming to an end. On the western
+front, the situation remains undecided. It is possible that the Polish
+bourgeoisie will hurl a challenge at its fate.... But even in this
+case--we do not seek it--the war will not demand of us that
+all-devouring concentration of forces which the simultaneous struggle
+on four fronts imposed upon us. The frightful pressure of the war is
+becoming weaker. Economic requirements and problems are more and more
+coming to the fore. History is bringing us, along the whole line, to
+our fundamental problem--the organization of labor on new social
+foundations. The organization of labor is in its essence the
+organization of the new society: every historical form of society is
+in its foundation a form of organization of labor. While every
+previous form of society was an organization of labor in the interests
+of a minority, which organized its State apparatus for the oppression
+of the overwhelming majority of the workers, we are making the first
+attempt in world history to organize labor in the interests of the
+laboring majority itself. This, however, does not exclude the element
+of compulsion in all its forms, both the most gentle and the extremely
+severe. The element of State compulsion not only does not disappear
+from the historical arena, but on the contrary will still play, for a
+considerable period, an extremely prominent part.
+
+As a general rule, man strives to avoid labor. Love for work is not at
+all an inborn characteristic: it is created by economic pressure and
+social education. One may even say that man is a fairly lazy animal.
+It is on this quality, in reality, that is founded to a considerable
+extent all human progress; because if man did not strive to expend his
+energy economically, did not seek to receive the largest possible
+quantity of products in return for a small quantity of energy, there
+would have been no technical development or social culture. It would
+appear, then, from this point of view that human laziness is a
+progressive force, Old Antonio Labriola, the Italian Marxist, even
+used to picture the man of the future as a "happy and lazy genius." We
+must not, however, draw the conclusion from this that the party and
+the trade unions must propagate this quality in their agitation as a
+moral duty. No, no! We have sufficient of it as it is. The problem
+before the social organization is just to bring "laziness" within a
+definite framework, to discipline it, and to pull mankind together
+with the help of methods and measures invented by mankind itself.
+
+
+COMPULSORY LABOR SERVICE
+
+The key to economic organization is labor-power, skilled, elementarily
+trained, semi-trained, untrained, or unskilled. To work out methods
+for its accurate registration, mobilization, distribution, productive
+application, means practically to solve the problem of economic
+construction. This is a problem for a whole epoch--a gigantic problem.
+Its difficulty is intensified by the fact that we have to reconstruct
+labor on Socialist foundations in conditions of hitherto unknown
+poverty and terrifying misery.
+
+The more our machine equipment is worn out, the more disordered our
+railways grow, the less hope there is for us of receiving machines to
+any significant extent from abroad in the near future, the greater is
+the importance acquired by the question of living labor-power. At
+first sight it would seem that there is plenty of it. But how are we
+to get at it? How are we to apply it? How are we productively to
+organize it? Even with the cleaning of snow drifts from the railway
+tracks, we were brought face to face with very big difficulties. It
+was absolutely impossible to meet those difficulties by means of
+buying labor-power on the market, with the present insignificant
+purchasing power of money, and in the most complete absence of
+manufactured products. Our fuel requirements cannot be satisfied, even
+partially, without a mass application, on a scale hitherto unknown, of
+labor-power to work on wood, fuel, peat, and combustible slate. The
+civil war has played havoc with our railways, our bridges, our
+buildings, our stations. We require at once tens and hundreds of
+thousands of hands to restore order to all this. For production on a
+large scale in our timber, peat, and other enterprises, we require
+housing for our workers, if they be only temporary huts. Hence, again,
+the necessity of devoting a considerable amount of labor-power to
+building work. Many workers are required to organize river navigation;
+and so on, and so forth....
+
+Capitalist industry utilizes auxiliary labor-power on a large scale,
+in the shape of peasants employed on industry for only part of the
+year. The village, throttled by the grip of landlessness, always threw
+a certain surplus of labor-power on to the market. The State obliged
+it to do this by its demand for taxes. The market offered the peasant
+manufactured goods. To-day, we have none of this. The village has
+acquired more land; there is not sufficient agricultural machinery;
+workers are required for the land; industry can at present give
+practically nothing to the village; and the market no longer has an
+attractive influence on labor-power.
+
+Yet labor-power is required--required more than at any time before.
+Not only the worker, but the peasant also, must give to the Soviet
+State his energy, in order to ensure that laboring Russia, and with it
+the laboring masses, should not be crushed. The only way to attract
+the labor-power necessary for our economic problems is to introduce
+_compulsory labor service_.
+
+The very principle of compulsory labor service is for the Communist
+quite unquestionable. "He who works not, neither shall he eat." And as
+all must eat, all are obliged to work. Compulsory labor service is
+sketched in our Constitution and in our Labor Code. But hitherto it
+has always remained a mere principle. Its application has always had
+an accidental, impartial, episodic character. Only now, when along the
+whole line we have reached the question of the economic rebirth of
+the country, have problems of compulsory labor service arisen before
+us in the most concrete way possible. The only solution of economic
+difficulties that is correct from the point of view both of principle
+and of practice is to treat the population of the whole country as the
+reservoir of the necessary labor-power--an almost inexhaustible
+reservoir--and to introduce strict order into the work of its
+registration, mobilization, and utilization.
+
+How are we practically to begin the utilization of labor-power on the
+basis of compulsory military service?
+
+Hitherto only the War Department has had any experience in the sphere
+of the registration, mobilization, formation, and transference from
+one place to another of large masses. These technical methods and
+principles were inherited by our War Department, to a considerable
+extent, from the past.
+
+In the economic sphere there is no such heritage; since in that sphere
+there existed the principle of private property, and labor-power
+entered each factory separately from the market. It is consequently
+natural that we should be obliged, at any rate during the first
+period, to make use of the apparatus of the War Department on a large
+scale for labor mobilizations.
+
+We have set up special organizations for the application of the
+principle of compulsory labor service in the centre and in the
+districts: in the provinces, the counties, and the rural districts, we
+have already compulsory labor committees at work. They rely for the
+most part on the central and local organs of the War Department. Our
+economic centres--the Supreme Economic Council, the People's
+Commissariat for Agriculture, the People's Commissariat for Ways and
+Communications, the People's Commissariat for Food--work out estimates
+of the labor-power they require. The Chief Committee for Compulsory
+Labor Service receives these estimates, co-ordinates them, brings them
+into agreement with the local resources of labor-power, gives
+corresponding directions to its local organs, and through them carries
+out labor mobilizations. Within the boundaries of regions, provinces,
+and counties, the local bodies carry out this work independently, with
+the object of satisfying local economic requirements.
+
+All this organization is at present only in the embryo stage. It is
+still very imperfect. But the course we have adopted is unquestionably
+the right one.
+
+If the organization of the new society can be reduced fundamentally to
+the reorganization of labor, the organization of labor signifies in
+its turn the correct introduction of general labor service. This
+problem is in no way met by measures of a purely departmental and
+administrative character. It touches the very foundations of economic
+life and the social structure. It finds itself in conflict with the
+most powerful psychological habits and prejudices. The introduction of
+compulsory labor service pre-supposes, on the one hand, a colossal
+work of education, and, on the other, the greatest possible care in
+the practical method adopted.
+
+The utilization of labor-power must be to the last degree economical.
+In our labor mobilizations we have to reckon with the economic and
+social conditions of every region, and with the requirements of the
+principal occupation of the local population--_i.e._, of agriculture.
+We have, if possible, to make use of the previous auxiliary
+occupations and part-time industries of the local population. We have
+to see that the transference of mobilized labor-power should take
+place over the shortest possible distances--_i.e._, to the nearest
+sectors of the labor front. We must see that the number of workers
+mobilized correspond to the breadth of our economic problem. We must
+see that the workers mobilized be supplied in good time with the
+necessary implements of production, and with food. We must see that at
+their head be placed experienced and business-like instructors. We
+must see that the workers mobilized become convinced on the spot that
+their labor-power is being made use of cautiously and economically and
+is not being expended haphazard. Wherever it is possible, direct
+mobilization must be replaced by the labor task--_i.e._, by the
+imposition on the rural district of an obligation to supply, for
+example, in such a time such a number of cubic sazhens of wood, or to
+bring up by carting to such a station so many poods of cast-iron, etc.
+In this sphere, it is essential to study experience as it accumulates
+with particular care, to allow a great measure of elasticity to the
+economic apparatus, to show more attention to local interests and
+social peculiarities of tradition. In a word, we have to complete,
+ameliorate, perfect, the system, methods, and organs for the
+mobilization of labor-power. But at the same time it is necessary once
+for all to make clear to ourselves that the principle itself of
+compulsory labor service has just so radically and permanently
+replaced the principle of free hiring as the socialization of the
+means of production has replaced capitalist property.
+
+
+THE MILITARIZATION OF LABOR
+
+The introduction of compulsory labor service is unthinkable without
+the application, to a greater or less degree, of the methods of
+militarization of labor. This term at once brings us into the region
+of the greatest possible superstitions and outcries from the
+opposition.
+
+To understand what militarization of labor in the Workers' State
+means, and what its methods are, one has to make clear to oneself in
+what way the army itself was militarized--for, as we all know, in its
+first days the army did not at all possess the necessary "military"
+qualities. During these two years we mobilized for the Red Army nearly
+as many soldiers as there are members in our trade unions. But the
+members of the trade unions are workers, while in the army the workers
+constitute about 15 per cent., the remainder being a peasant mass.
+And, none the less, we can have no doubt that the true builder and
+"militarizer" of the Red Army has been the foremost worker, pushed
+forward by the party and the trade union organization. Whenever the
+situation at the front was difficult, whenever the recently-mobilized
+peasant mass did not display sufficient stability, we turned on the
+one hand to the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and on the
+other to the All-Russian Council of Trade Unions. From both these
+sources the foremost workers were sent to the front, and there built
+the Red Army after their own likeness and image--educating, hardening,
+and militarizing the peasant mass.
+
+This fact must be kept in mind to-day with all possible clearness
+because it throws the best possible light on the meaning of
+militarization in the workers' and peasants' State. The militarization
+of labor has more than once been put forward as a watchword and
+realized in separate branches of economic life in the bourgeois
+countries, both in the West and in Russia under Tsarism. But our
+militarization is distinguished from those experiments by its aims and
+methods, just as much as the class-conscious proletariat organized for
+emancipation is distinguished from the class-conscious bourgeoisie
+organized for exploitation.
+
+From the confusion, semi-unconscious and semi-deliberate, of two
+different historical forms of militarization--the proletarian or
+Socialist and the bourgeois--there spring the greater part of the
+prejudices, mistakes, protests, and outcries on this subject. It is on
+such a confusion of meanings that the whole position of the
+Mensheviks, our Russian Kautskies, is founded, as it was expressed in
+their theoretical resolution moved at the present Congress of Trade
+Unions.
+
+The Mensheviks attacked not only the militarization of labor, but
+general labor service also. They reject these methods as "compulsory."
+They preach that general labor service means a low productivity of
+labor, while militarization means senseless scattering of labor-power.
+
+"Compulsory labor always is unproductive labor,"--such is the exact
+phrase in the Menshevik resolution. This affirmation brings us right
+up to the very essence of the question. For, as we see, the question
+is not at all whether it is wise or unwise to proclaim this or that
+factory militarized, or whether it is helpful or otherwise to give the
+military revolutionary tribunal powers to punish corrupt workers who
+steal materials and instruments, so precious to us, or who sabotage
+their work. No, the Mensheviks have gone much further into the
+question. Affirming that compulsory labor is _always_ unproductive,
+they thereby attempt to cut the ground from under the feet of our
+economic reconstruction in the present transitional epoch. For it is
+beyond question that to step from bourgeois anarchy to Socialist
+economy without a revolutionary dictatorship, and without compulsory
+forms of economic organization, is impossible.
+
+In the first paragraph of the Menshevik resolution we are told that we
+are living in the period of transition from the capitalist method of
+production to the Socialist. What does this mean? And, first of all,
+whence does this come? Since what time has this been admitted by our
+Kautskians? They accused us--and this formed the foundation of our
+differences--of Socialist Utopianism; they declared--and this
+constituted the essence of their political teaching--that there can be
+no talk about the transition to Socialism in our epoch, and that our
+revolution is a bourgeois revolution, and that we Communists are only
+destroying capitalist economy, and that we are not leading the country
+forward but are throwing it back. This was the root difference--the
+most profound, the most irreconcilable--from which all the others
+followed. Now the Mensheviks tell us incidentally, in the introductory
+paragraph of their resolution, as something that does not require
+proof, that we are in the period of transition from capitalism to
+Socialism. And this quite unexpected admission, which, one might
+think, is extremely like a complete capitulation, is made the more
+lightly and carelessly that, as the whole resolution shows, it imposes
+no revolutionary obligations on the Mensheviks. They remain entirely
+captive to the bourgeois ideology. After recognizing that we are on
+the road to Socialism, the Mensheviks with all the greater ferocity
+attack those methods without which, in the harsh and difficult
+conditions of the present day, the transition to Socialism cannot be
+accomplished.
+
+Compulsory labor, we are told, is always unproductive. We ask what
+does compulsory labor mean here, that is, to what kind of labor is it
+opposed? Obviously, to free labor. What are we to understand, in that
+case, by free labor? That phrase was formulated by the progressive
+philosophers of the bourgeoisie, in the struggle against unfree,
+_i.e._, against the serf labor of peasants, and against the
+standardized and regulated labor of the craft guilds. Free labor meant
+labor which might be "freely" bought in the market; freedom was
+reduced to a legal fiction, on the basis of freely-hired slavery. We
+know of no other form of free labor in history. Let the very few
+representatives of the Mensheviks at this Congress explain to us what
+they mean by free, non-compulsory labor, if not the market of
+labor-power.
+
+History has known slave labor. History has known serf labor. History
+has known the regulated labor of the mediaeval craft guilds. Throughout
+the world there now prevails hired labor, which the yellow journalists
+of all countries oppose, as the highest possible form of liberty, to
+Soviet "slavery." We, on the other hand, oppose capitalist slavery by
+socially-regulated labor on the basis of an economic plan, obligatory
+for the whole people and consequently compulsory for each worker in
+the country. Without this we cannot even dream of a transition to
+Socialism. The element of material, physical, compulsion may be
+greater or less; that depends on many conditions--on the degree of
+wealth or poverty of the country, on the heritage of the past, on the
+general level of culture, on the condition of transport, on the
+administrative apparatus, etc., etc. But obligation, and,
+consequently, compulsion, are essential conditions in order to bind
+down the bourgeois anarchy, to secure socialization of the means of
+production and labor, and to reconstruct economic life on the basis of
+a single plan.
+
+For the Liberal, freedom in the long run means the market. Can or
+cannot the capitalist buy labor-power at a moderate price--that is for
+him the sole measure of the freedom of labor. That measure is false,
+not only in relation to the future but also in connection with the
+past.
+
+It would be absurd to imagine that, during the time of bondage-right,
+work was carried entirely under the stick of physical compulsion, as
+if an overseer stood with a whip behind the back of every peasant.
+Mediaeval forms of economic life grew up out of definite conditions of
+production, and created definite forms of social life, with which the
+peasant grew accustomed, and which he at certain periods considered
+just, or at any rate unalterable. Whenever he, under the influence of
+a change in material conditions, displayed hostility, the State
+descended upon him with its material force, thereby displaying the
+compulsory character of the organization of labor.
+
+The foundations of the militarization of labor are those forms of
+State compulsion without which the replacement of capitalist economy
+by the Socialist will for ever remain an empty sound. Why do we speak
+of _militarization_? Of course, this is only an analogy--but an
+analogy very rich in content. No social organization except the army
+has ever considered itself justified in subordinating citizens to
+itself in such a measure, and to control them by its will on all sides
+to such a degree, as the State of the proletarian dictatorship
+considers itself justified in doing, and does. Only the army--just
+because in its way it used to decide questions of the life or death of
+nations, States, and ruling classes--was endowed with powers of
+demanding from each and all complete submission to its problems, aims,
+regulations, and orders. And it achieved this to the greater degree,
+the more the problems of military organization coincided with the
+requirements of social development.
+
+The question of the life or death of Soviet Russia is at present being
+settled on the labor front; our economic, and together with them our
+professional and productive organizations, have the right to demand
+from their members all that devotion, discipline, and executive
+thoroughness, which hitherto only the army required.
+
+On the other hand, the relation of the capitalist to the worker, is
+not at all founded merely on the "free" contract, but includes the
+very powerful elements of State regulation and material compulsion.
+
+The competition of capitalist with capitalist imparted a certain very
+limited reality to the fiction of freedom of labor; but this
+competition, reduced to a minimum by trusts and syndicates, we have
+finally eliminated by destroying private property in the means of
+production. The transition to Socialism, verbally acknowledged by the
+Mensheviks, means the transition from anarchical distribution of
+labor-power--by means of the game of buying and selling, the movement
+of market prices and wages--to systematic distribution of the workers
+by the economic organizations of the county, the province, and the
+whole country. Such a form of planned distribution pre-supposes the
+subordination of those distributed to the economic plan of the State.
+And this is the essence of _compulsory labor service_, which
+inevitably enters into the programme of the Socialist organization of
+labor, as its fundamental element.
+
+If organized economic life is unthinkable without compulsory labor
+service, the latter is not to be realized without the abolition of
+fiction of the freedom of labor, and without the substitution for it
+of the obligatory principle, which is supplemented by real compulsion.
+
+That free labor is more productive than compulsory labor is quite true
+when it refers to the period of transition from feudal society to
+bourgeois society. But one needs to be a Liberal or--at the present
+day--a Kautskian, to make that truth permanent, and to transfer its
+application to the period of transition from the bourgeois to the
+Socialist order. If it were true that compulsory labor is unproductive
+always and under every condition, as the Menshevik resolution says,
+all our constructive work would be doomed to failure. For we can have
+no way to Socialism except by the authoritative regulation of the
+economic forces and resources of the country, and the centralized
+distribution of labor-power in harmony with the general State plan.
+The Labor State considers itself empowered to send every worker to the
+place where his work is necessary. And not one serious Socialist will
+begin to deny to the Labor State the right to lay its hand upon the
+worker who refuses to execute his labor duty. But the whole point is
+that the Menshevik path of transition to "Socialism" is a milky way,
+without the bread monopoly, without the abolition of the market,
+without the revolutionary dictatorship, and without the militarization
+of labor.
+
+Without general labor service, without the right to order and demand
+fulfilment of orders, the trade unions will be transformed into a mere
+form without a reality; for the young Socialist State requires trade
+unions, not for a struggle for better conditions of labor--that is the
+task of the social and State organizations as a whole--but to organize
+the working class for the ends of production, to educate, discipline,
+distribute, group, retain certain categories and certain workers at
+their posts for fixed periods--in a word, hand in hand with the State
+to exercise their authority in order to lead the workers into the
+framework of a single economic plan. To defend, under such conditions,
+the "freedom" of labor means to defend fruitless, helpless, absolutely
+unregulated searches for better conditions, unsystematic, chaotic
+changes from factory to factory, in a hungry country, in conditions of
+terrible disorganization of the transport and food apparatus.... What
+except the complete collapse of the working-class and complete
+economic anarchy could be the result of the stupid attempt to
+reconcile bourgeois freedom of labor with proletarian socialization of
+the means of production?
+
+Consequently, comrades, militarization of labor, in the root sense
+indicated by me, is not the invention of individual politicians or an
+invention of our War Department, but represents the inevitable method
+of organization and disciplining of labor-power during the period of
+transition from capitalism to Socialism. And if the compulsory
+distribution of labor-power, its brief or prolonged retention at
+particular industries and factories, its regulation within the
+framework of the general State economic plan--if these forms of
+compulsion lead always and everywhere, as the Menshevik resolution
+states, to the lowering of productivity, then you can erect a monument
+over the grave of Socialism. For we cannot build Socialism on
+decreased production. Every social organization is in its foundation
+an organization of labor, and if our new organization of labor leads
+to a lowering of its productivity, it thereby most fatally leads to
+the destruction of the Socialist society we are building, whichever
+way we twist and turn, whatever measures of salvation we invent.
+
+That is why I stated at the very beginning that the Menshevik argument
+against militarization leads us to the root question of general labor
+service and its influence on the productivity of labor. It is true
+that compulsory labor is always unproductive? We have to reply that
+that is the most pitiful and worthless Liberal prejudice. The whole
+question is: who applies the principle of compulsion, over whom, and
+for what purpose? What State, what class, in what conditions, by what
+methods? Even the serf organization was in certain conditions a step
+forward, and led to the increase in the productivity of labor.
+Production has grown extremely under capitalism, that is, in the epoch
+of the free buying and selling of labor-power on the market. But free
+labor, together with the whole of capitalism, entered the stage of
+imperialism and blew itself up in the imperialist war. The whole
+economic life of the world entered a period of bloody anarchy,
+monstrous perturbations, the impoverishment, dying out, and
+destruction of masses of the people. Can we, under such conditions,
+talk about the productivity of free labor, when the fruits of that
+labor are destroyed ten times more quickly than they are created? The
+imperialistic war, and that which followed it, displayed the
+impossibility of society existing any longer on the foundation of free
+labor. Or perhaps someone possesses the secret of how to separate free
+labor from the delirium tremens of imperialism, that is, of turning
+back the clock of social development half a century or a century?
+
+If it were to turn out that the planned, and consequently compulsory,
+organization of labor which is arising to replace imperialism led to
+the lowering of economic life, it would mean the destruction of all
+our culture, and a retrograde movement of humanity back to barbarism
+and savagery.
+
+Happily, not only for Soviet Russia but for the whole of humanity, the
+philosophy of the low productivity of compulsory labor--"everywhere
+and under all conditions"--is only a belated echo of ancient Liberal
+melodies. The productivity of labor is the total productive meaning of
+the most complex combination of social conditions, and is not in the
+least measured or pre-determined by the legal form of labor.
+
+The whole of human history is the history of the organization and
+education of collective man for labor, with the object of attaining a
+higher level of productivity. Man, as I have already permitted myself
+to point out, is lazy; that is, he instinctively strives to receive
+the largest possible quantity of products for the least possible
+expenditure of energy. Without such a striving, there would have been
+no economic development. The growth of civilization is measured by the
+productivity of human labor, and each new form of social relations
+must pass through a test on such lines.
+
+"Free," that is, freely-hired labor, did not appear all at once upon
+the world, with all the attributes of productivity. It acquired a high
+level of productivity only gradually, as a result of a prolonged
+application of methods of labor organization and labor education. Into
+that education there entered the most varying methods and practices,
+which in addition changed from one epoch to another. First of all the
+bourgeoisie drove the peasant from the village to the high road with
+its club, having preliminarily robbed him of his land, and when he
+would not work in the factory it branded his forehead with red-hot
+irons, hung him, sent him to the gallows; and in the long run it
+taught the tramp who had been shaken out of his village to stand at
+the lathe in the factory. At this stage, as we see, "free" labor is
+little different as yet from convict labor, both in its material
+conditions and in its legal aspect.
+
+At different times the bourgeoisie combined the red-hot irons of
+repression in different proportions with methods of moral influence,
+and, first of all, the teaching of the priest. As early as the
+sixteenth century, it reformed the old religion of Catholicism, which
+defended the feudal order, and adapted for itself a new religion in
+the form of the Reformation, which combined the free soul with free
+trade and free labor. It found for itself new priests, who became the
+spiritual shop-assistants, pious counter-jumpers of the bourgeoisie.
+The school, the press, the market-place, and parliament were adapted
+by the bourgeoisie for the moral fashioning of the working-class.
+Different forms of wages--day-wages, piece wages, contract and
+collective bargaining--all these are merely changing methods in the
+hands of the bourgeoisie for the labor mobilization of the
+proletariat. To this there are added all sorts of forms for
+encouraging labor and exciting ambition. Finally, the bourgeoisie
+learned how to gain possession even of the trade unions--_i.e._,
+the organizations of the working class itself; and it made use of them
+on a large scale, particularly in Great Britain, to discipline the
+workers. It domesticated the leaders, and with their help inoculated
+the workers with the fiction of the necessity for peaceful organic
+labor, for a faultless attitude to their duties, and for a strict
+execution of the laws of the bourgeois State. The crown of all this
+work is Taylorism, in which the elements of the scientific
+organization of the process of production are combined with the most
+concentrated methods of the system of sweating.
+
+From all that has been said above, it is clear that the productivity
+of freely-hired labor is not something that appeared all at once,
+perfected, presented by history on a salver. No, it was the result of
+a long and stubborn policy of repression, education, organization, and
+encouragement, applied by the bourgeoisie in its relations with the
+working class. Step by step it learned to squeeze out of the workers
+ever more and more of the products of labor; and one of the most
+powerful weapons in its hand turned out to be the proclamation of free
+hiring as the sole free, normal, healthy, productive, and saving form
+of labor.
+
+A legal form of labor which would of its own virtue guarantee its
+productivity has not been known in history, and cannot be known. The
+legal superstructure of labor corresponds to the relations and current
+ideas of the epoch. The productivity of labor is developed, on the
+basis of the development of technical forces, by labor education, by
+the gradual adaptation of the workers to the changed methods of
+production and the new form of social relations.
+
+The creation of Socialist society means the organization of the
+workers on new foundations, their adaptation to those foundations, and
+their labor re-education, with the one unchanging end of the increase
+in the productivity of labor. The working class, under the leadership
+of its vanguard, must itself re-educate itself on the foundations of
+Socialism. Whoever has not understood this is ignorant of the A B C of
+Socialist construction.
+
+What methods have we, then, for the re-education of the workers?
+Infinitely wider than the bourgeoisie has--and, in addition, honest,
+direct, open methods, infected neither by hypocrisy nor by lies. The
+bourgeoisie had to have recourse to deception, representing its labor
+as free, when in reality it was not merely socially-imposed, but
+actually slave labor. For it was the labor of the majority in the
+interests of the minority. We, on the other hand, organize labor in
+the interests of the workers themselves, and therefore we can have no
+motives for hiding or masking the socially compulsory character of our
+labor organization. We need the fairy stories neither of the priests,
+nor of the Liberals, nor of the Kautskians. We say directly and openly
+to the masses that they can save, rebuild, and bring to a flourishing
+condition a Socialist country only by means of hard work,
+unquestioning discipline and exactness in execution on the part of
+every worker.
+
+The chief of our resources is moral influence--propaganda not only in
+word but in deed. General labor service has an obligatory character;
+but this does not mean at all that it represents violence done to the
+working class. If compulsory labor came up against the opposition of
+the majority of the workers it would turn out a broken reed, and with
+it the whole of the Soviet order. The militarization of labor, when
+the workers are opposed to it, is the State slavery of Arakcheyev. The
+militarization of labor by the will of the workers themselves is the
+Socialist dictatorship. That compulsory labor service and the
+militarization of labor do not force the will of the workers, as
+"free" labor used to do, is best shown by the flourishing,
+unprecedented in the history of humanity, of labor voluntarism in the
+form of "Subbotniks" (Communist Saturdays). Such a phenomenon there
+never was before, anywhere or at any time. By their own voluntary
+labor, freely given--once a week and oftener--the workers clearly
+demonstrate not only their readiness to bear the yoke of "compulsory"
+labor but their eagerness to give the State besides that a certain
+quantity of additional labor. The "Subbotniks" are not only a splendid
+demonstration of Communist solidarity, but also the best possible
+guarantee for the successful introduction of general labor service.
+Such truly Communist tendencies must be shown up in their true light,
+extended, and developed with the help of propaganda.
+
+The chief spiritual weapon of the bourgeoisie is religion; ours is the
+open explanation to the masses of the exact position of things, the
+extension of scientific and technical knowledge, and the initiation of
+the masses into the general economic plan of the State, on the basis
+of which there must be brought to bear all the labor-power at the
+disposal of the Soviet regime.
+
+Political economy provided us with the principal substance of our
+agitation in the period we have just left: the capitalist social order
+was a riddle, and we explained that riddle to the masses. To-day,
+social riddles are explained to the masses by the very mechanism of
+the Soviet order, which draws the masses into all branches of
+administration. Political economy will more and more pass into the
+realms of history. There move forward into the foreground the sciences
+which study nature and the methods of subordinating it to man.
+
+The trade unions must organize scientific and technical educational
+work on the widest possible scale, so that every worker in his own
+branch of industry should find the impulses for theoretical work of
+the brain, while the latter should again return him to labor,
+perfecting it and making him more productive. The press as a whole
+must fall into line with the economic problems of the country--not in
+that sense alone in which this is being done at present--_i.e._,
+not in the sense of a mere general agitation in favor of a revival of
+labor--but in the sense of the discussion and the weighing of concrete
+economic problems and plans, ways and means of their solution, and,
+most important of all, the testing and criticism of results already
+achieved. The newspapers must from day to day follow the production of
+the most important factories and other enterprises, registering their
+successes and failures encouraging some and pillorying others....
+
+Russian capitalism, in consequence of its lateness, its lack of
+independence, and its resulting parasitic features, has had much less
+time than European capitalism technically to educate the laboring
+masses, to train and discipline them for production. That problem is
+now in its entirety imposed upon the industrial organizations of the
+proletariat. A good engineer, a good mechanic, and a good carpenter,
+must have in the Soviet Republic the same publicity and fame as
+hitherto was enjoyed by prominent agitators, revolutionary fighters,
+and, in the most recent period, the most courageous and capable
+commanders and commissaries. Greater and lesser leaders of technical
+development must occupy the central position in the public eye. Bad
+workers must be made ashamed of doing their work badly.
+
+We still retain, and for a long time will retain, the system of wages.
+The further we go, the more will its importance become simply to
+guarantee to all members of society all the necessaries of life; and
+thereby it will cease to be a system of wages. But at present we are
+not sufficiently rich for this. Our main problem is to raise the
+quantity of products turned out, and to this problem all the remainder
+must be subordinated. In the present difficult period the system of
+wages is for us, first and foremost, not a method for guaranteeing the
+personal existence of any separate worker, but a method of estimating
+what that individual worker brings by his labor to the Labor Republic.
+
+Consequently, wages, in the form both of money and of goods, must be
+brought into the closest possible touch with the productivity of
+individual labor. Under capitalism, the system of piece-work and of
+grading, the application of the Taylor system, etc., have as their
+object to increase the exploitation of the workers by the
+squeezing-out of surplus value. Under Socialist production,
+piece-work, bonuses, etc., have as their problem to increase the
+volume of social product, and consequently to raise the general
+well-being. Those workers who do more for the general interest than
+others receive the right to a greater quantity of the social product
+than the lazy, the careless, and the disorganizers.
+
+Finally, when it rewards some, the Labor State cannot but punish
+others--those who are clearly infringing labor solidarity, undermining
+the common work, and seriously impairing the Socialist renaissance of
+the country. Repression for the attainment of economic ends is a
+necessary weapon of the Socialist dictatorship.
+
+All the measures enumerated above--and together with them a number of
+others--must assist the development of rivalry in the sphere of
+production. Without this we shall never rise above the average, which
+is a very unsatisfactory level. At the bottom of rivalry lies the
+vital instinct--the struggle for existence--which in the bourgeois
+order assumes the character of competition. Rivalry will not disappear
+even in the developed Socialist society; but with the growing
+guarantee of the necessary requirements of life rivalry will acquire
+an ever less selfish and purely idealist character. It will express
+itself in a striving to perform the greatest possible service for
+one's village, county, town, or the whole of society, and to receive
+in return renown, gratitude, sympathy, or, finally, just internal
+satisfaction from the consciousness of work well done. But in the
+difficult period of transition, in conditions of the extreme shortage
+of material goods, and the as yet insufficiently developed state of
+social solidarity, rivalry must inevitably be to a greater or less
+degree bound up with a striving to guarantee for oneself one's own
+requirements.
+
+This, comrades, is the sum of resources at the disposal of the Labor
+State in order to raise the productivity of labor. As we see, there is
+no ready-made solution here. We shall find it written in no book. For
+there could not be such a book. We are now only beginning, together
+with you, to write that book in the sweat and the blood of the
+workers. We say: working men and women, you have crossed to the path
+of regulated labor. Only along that road will you build the Socialist
+society. Before you there lies a problem which no one will settle for
+you: the problem of increasing production on new social foundations.
+Unless you solve that problem, you will perish. If you solve it, you
+will raise humanity by a whole head.
+
+
+LABOR ARMIES
+
+The question of the application of armies to labor purposes, which has
+acquired amongst us an enormous importance from the point of view of
+principle, was approached by us by the path of practice, not at all on
+the foundations of theoretical consideration. On certain borders of
+Soviet Russia, circumstances had arisen which had left considerable
+military forces free for an indefinite period. To transfer them to
+other active fronts, especially in the winter, was difficult in
+consequence of the disorder of railway transport. Such, for example,
+proved the position of the Third Army, distributed over the provinces
+of the Ural and the Ural area. The leading workers of that army,
+understanding that as yet it could not be demobilized, themselves
+raised the question of its transference to labor work. They sent to
+the centre a more or less worked-out draft decree for a labor army.
+
+The problem was novel and difficult. Would the Red soldiers work?
+Would their work be sufficiently productive? Would it pay for itself?
+In this connection there were doubts even in our own ranks. Needless
+to say, the Mensheviks struck up a chorus of opposition. The same
+Abramovich, at the Congress of Economic Councils called in January or
+the beginning of February--that is to say, when the whole affair was
+still in draft stage--foretold that we should suffer an inevitable
+failure, for the whole undertaking was senseless, an Arakcheyev
+Utopia, etc., etc. We considered the matter otherwise. Of course the
+difficulties were great, but they were not distinguishable in
+principle from many other difficulties of Soviet constructive work.
+
+Let us consider in fact what was the organism of the Third Army. Taken
+all in all, one rifle division and one cavalry division--a total of
+fifteen regiments--and, in addition, special units. The remaining
+military formations had already been transformed to other armies and
+fronts. But the apparatus of military administration had remained
+untouched as yet, and we considered it probable that in the spring we
+should have to transfer it along the Volga to the Caucasus front,
+against Denikin, if by that time he were not finally broken. On the
+whole, in the Third Army there remained about 120,000 Red soldiers in
+administrative posts, institutions, military units, hospitals, etc. In
+this general mass, mainly peasant in its composition, there were
+reckoned about 16,000 Communists and members of the organization of
+sympathizers--to a considerable extent workers of the Ural. In this
+way, in its composition and structure, the Third Army represented a
+peasant mass bound together into a military organization under the
+leadership of the foremost workers. In the army there worked a
+considerable number of military specialists, who carried out important
+military functions while remaining under the general control of the
+Communists. If we consider the Third Army from this general point of
+view, we shall see that it represents in miniature the whole of Soviet
+Russia. Whether we take the Red Army as a whole, or the organization
+of the Soviet regime in the county, province, or the whole Republic,
+including the economic organs, we shall find everywhere the same
+scheme of organization: millions of peasants drawn into new forms of
+political, economic, and social life by the organized workers, who
+occupy a controlling position in all spheres of Soviet construction.
+To posts requiring special knowledge, we send experts of the bourgeois
+school. They are given the necessary independence, but control over
+their work remains in the hands of the working class, in the person of
+its Communist Party. The introduction of general labor service is
+again only conceivable for us as the mobilization of mainly peasant
+labor-power under the guidance of the most advanced workers. In this
+way there were not, and could not, be any obstacles in principle in
+the way of application of the army to labor. In other words, the
+opposition in principle to labor armies, on the part of those same
+Mensheviks, was in reality opposition to "compulsory" labor generally,
+and consequently against general labor service and against Soviet
+methods of economic reconstruction as a whole. This opposition did not
+trouble us a great deal.
+
+Naturally, the military apparatus as such is not adapted directly to
+the process of labor. But we had no illusions about that. Control had
+to remain in the hands of the appropriate economic organs; the army
+supplied the necessary labor-power in the form of organized, compact
+units, suitable in the mass for the execution of the simplest
+homogeneous types of work: the freeing of roads from snow, the storage
+of fuel, building work, organization of cartage, etc., etc.
+
+To-day we have already had considerable experience in the work of the
+labor application of the army, and can give not merely a preliminary
+or hypothetical estimate. What are the conclusions to be drawn from
+that experience? The Mensheviks have hastened to draw them. The same
+Abramovich, again, announced at the Miners' Congress that we had
+become bankrupt, that the labor armies represent parasitic formations,
+in which there are 100 officials for every ten workers. Is this true?
+No. This is the irresponsible and malignant criticism of men who stand
+on one side, do not know the facts, collect only fragments and
+rubbish, and are concerned in any way and every way either to declare
+our bankruptcy or to prophecy it. In reality, the labor armies have
+not only not gone bankrupt, but, on the contrary, have had important
+successes, have displayed their fidelity, are developing and are
+becoming stronger and stronger. Just those prophets have gone bankrupt
+who foretold that nothing would come of the whole plan, that nobody
+would begin to work, and that the Red soldiers would not go to the
+labor front but would simply scatter to their homes.
+
+These criticisms were dictated by a philistine scepticism, lack of
+faith in the masses, lack of faith in bold initiative, and
+organization. But did we not hear exactly the same criticism, at
+bottom, when we had recourse to extensive mobilizations for military
+problems? Then too we were frightened, we were terrified by stories of
+mass desertion, which was absolutely inevitable, it was alleged, after
+the imperialist war. Naturally, desertion there was, but considered by
+the test of experience it proved not at all on such a mass scale as
+was foretold; it did not destroy the army; the bond of morale and
+organization--Communist voluntarism and State compulsion
+combined--allowed us to carry out mobilizations of millions to carry
+through numerous formations and redistributions, and to solve the most
+difficult military problems. In the long run, the army was victorious.
+In relation to labor problems, on the foundation of our military
+experience, we awaited the same results; and we were not mistaken. The
+Red soldiers did not scatter when they were transformed from military
+to labor service, as the sceptics prophesied. Thanks to our
+splendidly-organized agitation, the transference itself took place
+amidst great enthusiasm. True, a certain portion of the soldiers tried
+to leave the army, but this always happens when a large military
+formation is transferred from one front to another, or is sent from
+the rear to the front--in general when it is shaken up--and when
+potential desertion becomes active. But immediately the political
+sections, the press, the organs of struggle with desertion, etc.,
+entered into their rights; and to-day the percentage of deserters from
+our labor armies is in no way higher than in our armies on active
+service.
+
+The statement that the armies, in view of their internal structure,
+can produce only a small percentage of workers, is true only to a
+certain extent. As far as the Third Army is concerned, I have already
+pointed out that it retained its complete apparatus of administration
+side by side with an extremely insignificant number of military units.
+While we--owing to military and not economic considerations--retained
+untouched the staff of the army and its administrative apparatus, the
+percentage of workers produced by the army was actually extremely low.
+From the general number of 120,000 Red soldiers, 21% proved to be
+employed in administrative and economic work; 16% were engaged in
+daily detail work (guards, etc.) in connection with the large number
+of army institutions and stores; the number of sick, mainly typhus
+cases, together with the medico-sanitary personnel, was about 13%;
+about 25% were not available for various reasons (detachment, leave,
+absence without leave, etc.). In this way, the total personnel
+available for work constitutes no more than 23%; this is the maximum
+of what can be drawn for labor from the given army. Actually, at
+first, there worked only about 14%, mainly drawn from the two
+divisions, rifle and cavalry, which still remained with the army.
+
+But as soon as it was clear that Denikin had been crushed, and that we
+should not have to send the Third Army down the Volga in the spring to
+assist the forces on the Caucasus front, we immediately entered upon
+the disbanding of the clumsy army apparatus and a more regular
+adaptation of the army institutions to problems of labor. Although
+this work is not yet complete, it has already had time to give some
+very significant results. At the present moment (March, 1920), the
+former Third Army gives about 38% of its total composition as workers.
+As for the military units of the Ural military area working side by
+side with it, they already provide 49% of their number as workers.
+This result is not so bad, if we compare it with the amount of work
+done in factories and workshops, amongst which in the case of many
+quite recently, in the case of some even to-day, absence from work for
+legal and illegal reasons reached 50% and over.[9] To this one must
+add that workers in factories and workshops are not infrequently
+assisted by the adult members of their family, while the Red soldiers
+have no auxiliary force but themselves.
+
+          [9] Since that time this percentage has been considerably
+          lowered (June, 1920).
+
+If we take the case of the 19-year-olds, who have been mobilized in
+the Ural with the help of the military apparatus--principally for wood
+fuel work--we shall find that, out of their general number of over
+30,000, over 75% attend work. This is already a very great step
+forward. It shows that, using the military apparatus for mobilization
+and formation, we can introduce such alterations in the construction
+of purely labor units as guarantee an enormous increase in the
+percentage of those who participate directly in the material process
+of production.
+
+Finally, in connection with the productivity of military labor, we can
+also now judge on the basis of experience. During the first days, the
+productivity of labor in the principal departments of work, in spite
+of the great moral enthusiasm, was in reality very low, and might seem
+completely discouraging when one reads the first labor communiques.
+Thus, for the preparation of a cubic sazhen of wood, at first, one had
+to reckon thirteen to fifteen labor days; whereas the standard--true,
+rarely attained at the present day--is reckoned at three days. One
+must add, in addition, that artistes in this sphere are capable, under
+favorable conditions, of producing one cubic sazhen per day per man.
+What happened in reality? The military units were quartered far from
+the forest to be felled. In many cases it was necessary to march to
+and from work 6 to 8 versts, which swallowed up a considerable portion
+of the working day. There were not sufficient axes and saws on the
+spot. Many Red soldiers, born in the plains, did not know the forests,
+had never felled trees, had never chopped or sawed them up. The
+provincial and county Timber Committees were very far from knowing at
+first how to use the military units, how to direct them where they
+were required, how to equip them as they should be equipped. It is not
+wonderful that all this had as its result an extremely low level of
+productivity. But after the most crying defects in organization were
+eliminated, results were achieved that were much more satisfactory.
+Thus, according to the most recent data, in that same First Labor
+Army, four and a half working days are now devoted to one sazhen of
+wood, which is not so far from the present standard. What is most
+comforting, however, is the fact that the productivity of labor
+systematically increases, in the measure of the improvement of its
+conditions.
+
+While as to what can be achieved in this respect, we have a brief but
+very rich experience in the Moscow Engineer Regiment. The Chief Board
+of Military Engineers, which controlled this experiment, began with
+fixing the standard of production as three working days for a cubic
+sazhen of wood. This standard soon proved to be surpassed. In January
+there were spent on a cubic sazhen of wood two and one-third working
+days; in February, 2.1; in March, 1.5; which represents an exclusively
+high level of productivity. This result was achieved by moral
+influence, by the exact registration of the individual work of each
+man, by the awakening of labor pride, by the distribution of bonuses
+to the workers who produced more than the average result--or, to speak
+in the language of the trade unions, by a sliding scale adaptable to
+all individual changes in the productivity of labor. This experiment,
+carried out almost under laboratory conditions, clearly indicates the
+path along which we have to go in future.
+
+At present we have functioning a series of labor armies--the First,
+the Petrograd, the Ukrainian, the Caucasian, the South Volga, the
+Reserve. The latter, as is known, assisted considerably to raise the
+traffic capacity of the Kazan-Ekaterinburg Railway; and, wherever the
+experiment of the adaptation of military units for labor problems was
+carried out with any intelligence at all, the results showed that this
+method is unquestionably live and correct.
+
+The prejudice concerning the inevitably parasitic nature of military
+organization--under each and every condition--proves to be shattered.
+The Soviet Army reproduces within itself the tendencies of the Soviet
+social order. We must not think in the petrifying terms of the last
+epoch: "militarism," "military organization," "the unproductiveness of
+compulsory labor." We must approach the phenomena of the new epoch
+without any prejudices, and with eyes wide open; and we must remember
+that Saturday exists for man, and not vice versa; that all forms of
+organization, including the military, are only weapons in the hands of
+the working class in power, which has both the right and the
+possibility of adapting, altering, refashioning, those weapons, until
+it has achieved the requisite result.
+
+
+THE SINGLE ECONOMIC PLAN
+
+The widest possible application of the principle of general labor
+service, together with measures for the militarization of labor, can
+play a decisive part only in case they are applied on the basis of a
+single economic plan covering the whole country and all branches of
+productive activity. This plan must be drawn up for a number of years,
+for the whole epoch that lies before us. It is naturally broken up
+into separate periods or stages, corresponding to the inevitable
+stages in the economic rebirth of the country. We shall have to begin
+with the most simple and at the same time most fundamental problems.
+
+We have first of all to afford the working class the very possibility
+of living--though it be in the most difficult conditions--and thereby
+to preserve our industrial centres and save the towns. This is the
+point of departure. If we do not wish to melt the town into
+agriculture, and transform the whole country into a peasant State, we
+must support our transport, even at the minimum level, and secure
+bread for the towns, fuel and raw materials for industry, fodder for
+the cattle. Without this we shall not make one step forward.
+Consequently, the first part of the plan comprises the improvement of
+transport, or, in any case, the prevention of its further
+deterioration and the preparation of the most necessary supplies of
+food, raw materials, and fuel. The whole of the next period will be in
+its entirety filled with the concentration and straining of
+labor-power to solve these root problems; and only in this way shall
+we lay the foundations for all that is to come. It was such a problem,
+incidentally, that we put before our labor armies. Whether the first
+or the following periods will be measured by months or by years, it is
+fruitless at present to guess. This depends on many reasons, beginning
+with the international situation and ending with the degree of
+single-mindedness and steadfastness of the working class.
+
+The second period is the period of machine-building in the interests
+of transport and the storage of raw material and fuel. Here the core
+is in the locomotive.
+
+At the present time the repairing of locomotives is carried on in too
+haphazard a fashion, swallowing up energies and resources beyond all
+measure. We must reorganize the repairing of our rolling-stock, on the
+basis of the mass production of spare parts. To-day, when the whole
+network of the railways and the factories is in the hands of one
+master, the Labor State, we can and must fix single types of
+locomotives and trucks for the whole country, standardize their
+constituent parts, draw all the necessary factories into the work of
+the mass production of spare parts, reduce repairing to the simple
+replacing of worn-out parts by new, and thereby make it possible to
+build new locomotives on a mass scale out of spare parts.
+
+Now that the sources of fuel and raw material are again open to us, we
+must concentrate our exclusive attention on the building of
+locomotives.
+
+The third period will be one of machine-building in the interests of
+the production of articles of primary necessity.
+
+Finally, the fourth period, reposing on the conquests of the first
+three, will allow us to begin the production of articles of personal
+or secondary significance on the widest possible scale.
+
+This plan has great significance, not only as a general guide for the
+practical work of our economic organs, but also as a line along which
+propaganda amongst the laboring masses in connection with our economic
+problems is to proceed. Our labor mobilization will not enter into
+real life, will not take root, if we do not excite the living interest
+of all that is honest, class-conscious, and inspired in the working
+class. We must explain to the masses the whole truth as to our
+situation and as to our views for the future; we must tell them openly
+that our economic plan, with the maximum of exertion on the part of
+the workers, will neither to-morrow nor the day after give us a land
+flowing with milk and honey: for during the first period our chief
+work will consist in preparing the conditions for the production of
+the means of production. Only after we have secured, though on the
+smallest possible scale, the possibility of rebuilding the means of
+transport and production, shall we pass on to the production of
+articles for general consumption. In this way the fruit of their
+labor, which is the direct object of the workers, in the shape of
+articles for personal consumption, will arrive only in the last, the
+fourth, stage of our economic plan; and only then shall we have a
+serious improvement in our life. The masses, who for a prolonged
+period will still bear all the weight of labor and of privation, must
+realize to the full the inevitable internal logic of this economic
+plan if they are to prove capable of carrying it out.
+
+The sequence of the four economic periods outlined above must not be
+understood too absolutely. We do not, of course, propose to bring
+completely to a standstill our textile industry: we could not do this
+for military considerations alone. But in order that our attention and
+our forces should not be distracted under the pressure of requirements
+and needs crying to us from all quarters, it is essential to make use
+of the economic plan as the fundamental criterion, and separate the
+important and the fundamental from the auxiliary and secondary.
+Needless to say, under no circumstances are we striving for a narrow
+"national" Communism: the raising of the blockade, and the European
+revolution all the more, would introduce the most radical alterations
+in our economic plan, cutting down the stages of its development and
+bringing them together. But we do not know when these events will take
+place; and we must act in such a way that we can hold out and become
+stronger under the most unfavorable circumstances--that is to say, in
+face of the slowest conceivable development of the European and the
+world revolution. In case we are able actually to establish trading
+relations with the capitalist countries, we shall again be guided by
+the economic plan sketched above. We shall exchange part of our raw
+material for locomotives or for necessary machines, but under no
+circumstances for clothing, boots, or colonial products: our first
+item is not articles of consumption, but the implements of transport
+and production.
+
+We should be short-sighted sceptics, and the most typical bourgeois
+curmudgeons, if we imagined that the rebirth of our economic life will
+take the form of a gradual transition from the present economic
+collapse to the conditions that preceded that collapse, _i.e._,
+that we shall reascend the same steps by which we descended, and only
+after a certain, quite prolonged, period will be able to raise our
+Socialist economy to the level at which it stood on the eve of the
+imperialist war. Such a conception would not only be not consoling,
+but absolutely incorrect. Economic collapse, which destroyed and broke
+up in its path an incalculable quantity of values, also destroyed a
+great deal that was poor and rotten, that was absolutely senseless;
+and thereby it cleared the path for a new method of reconstruction,
+corresponding to that technical equipment which world economy now
+possesses.
+
+If Russian capitalism developed not from stage to stage, but leaping
+over a series of stages, and instituted American factories in the
+midst of primitive steppes, the more is such a forced march possible
+for Socialist economy. After we have conquered our terrible misery,
+have accumulated small supplies of raw material and food, and have
+improved our transport, we shall be able to leap over a whole series
+of intermediate stages, benefiting by the fact that we are not bound
+by the chains of private property, and that therefore we are able to
+subordinate all undertakings and all the elements of economic life to
+a single State plan.
+
+Thus, for example, we shall undoubtedly be able to enter the period of
+electrification, in all the chief branches of industry and in the
+sphere of personal consumption, without passing through "the age of
+steam." The programme of electrification is already drawn up in a
+series of logically consequent stages, corresponding to the
+fundamental stages of the general economic plan.
+
+A new war may slow down the realization of our economic intentions;
+our energy and persistence can and must hasten the process of our
+economic rebirth. But, whatever be the rate at which economic events
+unfold themselves in the future, it is clear that at the foundation of
+all our work--labor mobilization, militarization of labor, Subbotniks,
+and other forms of Communist labor voluntarism--there must lie the
+_single economic plan_. And the period that is upon us requires from
+us the complete concentration of all our energies on the first
+elementary problems: food, fuel, raw material, transport. _Not to
+allow our attention to be distracted, not to dissipate our forces, not
+to waste our energies._ Such is the sole road to salvation.
+
+
+COLLEGIATE AND ONE-MAN MANAGEMENT
+
+The Mensheviks attempt to dwell on yet another question which seems
+favorable to their desire once again to ally themselves with the
+working class. This is the question of the method of administration of
+industrial enterprises--the question of the collegiate (board) or the
+one-man principle. We are told that the transference of factories to
+single directors instead of to a board is a crime against the working
+class and the Socialist revolution. It is remarkable that the most
+zealous defenders of the Socialist revolution against the principle of
+one-man management are those same Mensheviks who quite recently still
+considered that the idea of a Socialist revolution was an insult to
+history and a crime against the working class.
+
+The first who must plead guilty in the face of the Socialist
+revolution is our Party Congress, which expressed itself in favor of
+the principle of one-man management in the administration of industry,
+and above all in the lowest grades, in the factories and plants. It
+would be the greatest possible mistake, however, to consider this
+decision as a blow to the independence of the working class. The
+independence of the workers is determined and measured not by whether
+three workers or one are placed at the head of a factory, but by
+factors and phenomena of a such more profound character--the
+construction of the economic organs with the active assistance of the
+trade unions; the building up of all Soviet organs by means of the
+Soviet congresses, representing tens of millions of workers; the
+attraction into the work of administration, or control of
+administration, of those who are administered. It is in such things
+that the independence of the working class can be expressed. And if
+the working class, on the foundation of its existence, comes through
+its congresses, Soviet party and trade union, to the conclusion that
+it is better to place one person at the head of a factory, and not a
+board, it is making a decision dictated by the independence of the
+working class. It may be correct or incorrect from the point of view
+of the technique of administration, but it is not imposed upon the
+proletariat, it is dictated by its own will and pleasure. It would
+consequently be a most crying error to confuse the question as to the
+supremacy of the proletariat with the question of boards of workers at
+the head of factories. The dictatorship of the proletariat is
+expressed in the abolition of private property in the means of
+production, in the supremacy over the whole Soviet mechanism of the
+collective will of the workers, and not at all in the form in which
+individual economic enterprises are administered.
+
+Here it is necessary to reply to another accusation directed against
+the defenders of the one-man principle. Our opponents say: "This is
+the attempt of the Soviet militarists to transfer their experience in
+the military sphere to the sphere of economics. Possibly in the army
+the one-man principle is satisfactory, but it does not suit economical
+work." Such a criticism is incorrect in every way. It is untrue that
+in the army we began with the one-man principle: even now we are far
+from having completely adopted it. It is also untrue that in defence
+of one-man forms of administration of our economic enterprises with
+the attraction of experts, we took our stand only on the foundation of
+our military experience. In reality, in this question we took our
+stand, and continue to do so on purely Marxist views of the
+revolutionary problems and creative duties of the proletariat when it
+has taken power into its own hands. The necessity of making use of
+technical knowledge and methods accumulated in the past, the necessity
+of attracting experts and of making use of them on a wide scale, in
+such a way that our technique should go not backwards but
+forwards--all this was understood and recognized by us, not only from
+the very beginning of the revolution, but even long before October. I
+consider that if the civil war had not plundered our economic organs
+of all that was strongest, most independent, most endowed with
+initiative, we should undoubtedly have entered the path of one-man
+management in the sphere of economic administration much sooner, and
+much less painfully.
+
+Some comrades look on the apparatus of industrial administration first
+and foremost as on a school. This is, of course, absolutely erroneous.
+The task of administration is to administer. If a man desires and is
+able to learn administration, let him go to school, to the special
+courses of instruction: let him go as an assistant, watching and
+acquiring experience: but a man who is appointed to control a factory
+is not going to school, but to a responsible post of economic
+administration. And, even if we look at this question in the limited,
+and therefore incorrect light of a "school," I will say that when the
+one-man principle prevails the school is ten times better: because
+just as you cannot replace one good worker by three immature workers,
+similarly, having placed a board of three immature workers in a
+responsible post, you deprive them of the possibility of realizing
+their own defects. Each looks to the others when decisions are being
+made, and blames the others when success is not forthcoming.
+
+That this is not a question of principle for the opponents of the
+one-man principle is shown best of all by their not demanding the
+collegiate principle for the actual workshops, jobs, and pits. They
+even say with indignation that only a madman can demand that a board
+of three or five should manage a workshop. There must be one manager,
+and one only. Why? If collegiate administration is a "school," why do
+we not require an elementary school? Why should we not introduce
+boards into the workshops? And, if the collegiate principle is not a
+sacred gospel for the workshops, why is it compulsory for the
+factories?
+
+Abramovich said here that, as we have few experts--thanks to the
+Bolsheviks, he repeats after Kautsky--we shall replace them by boards
+of workers. That is nonsense. No board of persons who do not know the
+given business can replace one man who knows it. A board of lawyers
+will not replace one switchman. A board of patients will not replace
+the doctor. The very idea is incorrect. A board in itself does not
+give knowledge to the ignorant. It can only hide the ignorance of the
+ignorant. If a person is appointed to a responsible administrative
+post, he is under the watch, not only of others but of himself, and
+sees clearly what he knows and what he does not know. But there is
+nothing worse than a board of ignorant, badly-prepared workers
+appointed to a purely practical post, demanding expert knowledge. The
+members of the board are in a state of perpetual panic and mutual
+dissatisfaction, and by their helplessness introduce hesitation and
+chaos into all their work. The working class is very deeply interested
+in raising its capacity for administration, that is, in being
+educated; but this is attained in the sphere of industry by the
+periodical report of the administrative body of a factory before the
+whole factory, and the discussion of the economic plan for the year or
+for the current month. All the workers who display serious interest in
+the work of industrial organization are registered by the directors of
+the undertaking, or by special commissions; are taken through
+appropriate courses closely bound up with the practical work of the
+factory itself; and are then appointed, first to less responsible, and
+then to more responsible posts. In such a way we shall embrace many
+thousands, and, in the future, tens of thousands. But the question of
+"threes" and "fives" interests, not the laboring masses, but the more
+backward, weaker, less fitted for independent work, section of the
+Soviet labor bureaucracy. The foremost, intelligent, determined
+administrator naturally strives to take the factory into his hands as
+a whole, and to show both to himself and to others that he can carry
+out his work. While if that administrator is a weakling, who does not
+stand very steadily on his feet, he attempts to associate another with
+himself, for in the company of another his own weakness will be
+unnoticed. In such a collegiate principle there is a very dangerous
+foundation--the extinction of personal responsibility. If a worker is
+capable but not experienced, he naturally requires a guide: under his
+control he will learn, and to-morrow we shall appoint him the foreman
+of a little factory. That is the way by which he will go forward. In
+an accidental board, in which the strength and the weakness of each
+are not clear, the feeling of responsibility inevitably disappears.
+
+Our resolution speaks of a systematic _approach_ to the one-man
+principle--naturally, not by one stroke of the pen. Variants and
+combinations are possible here. Where the worker can manage alone, let
+us put him in charge of the factory and give him an expert as an
+assistant. Where there is a good expert, let us put him in charge and
+give him as assistants two or three of the workers. Finally, where a
+"board" has in practice shown its capacity for work, let us preserve
+it. This is the sole serious attitude to take up, and only in such a
+way shall we reach the correct organization of production.
+
+There is another consideration of a social and educational character
+which seems to me most important. Our guiding layer of the working
+class is too thin. That layer which knew underground work, which long
+carried on the revolutionary struggle, which was abroad, which read
+much in prisons and in exile, which had political experience and a
+broad outlook, is the most precious section of the working class. Then
+there is a younger generation which has consciously been making the
+revolution, beginning with 1917. This is a very valuable section of
+the working class. Wherever we cast our eye--on Soviet construction,
+on the trade unions, on the front of the civil war--everywhere we find
+the principal part being played by this upper layer of the
+proletariat. The chief work of the Soviet Government during these two
+and a half years consisted in manoeuvring and throwing the foremost
+section of the workers from one front to another. The deeper layers of
+the working class, which emerged from the peasant mass, are
+revolutionarily inclined, but are still too poor in initiative. The
+disease of our Russian peasant is the herd instinct, the absence of
+personality: in other words, the same quality that used to be extolled
+by our reactionary Populists, and that Leo Tolstoy extolled in the
+character of Platon Karatayev: the peasant melting into his village
+community, subjecting himself to the land. It is quite clear that
+Socialist economy is founded not on Platon Karatayev, but on the
+thinking worker endowed with initiative. That personal initiative it
+is necessary to develop in the worker. The personal basis under the
+bourgeoisie meant selfish individualism and competition. The personal
+basis under the working class is in contradiction neither to
+solidarity nor to brotherly co-operation. Socialist solidarity can
+rely neither on absence of personality nor on the herd instinct. And
+it is just absence of personality that is frequently hidden behind the
+collegiate principle.
+
+In the working class there are many forces, gifts, and talents. They
+must be brought out and displayed in rivalry. The one-man principle in
+the administrative and technical sphere assists this. That is why it
+is higher and more fruitful than the collegiate principle.
+
+
+CONCLUSION OF THE REPORT
+
+Comrades, the arguments of the Menshevik orators, particularly of
+Abramovich, reflect first of all their complete detachment from life
+and its problems. An observer stands on the bank of a river which he
+has to swim over, and deliberates on the qualities of the water and on
+the strength of the current. He has to swim over: that is his task!
+But our Kautskian stands first on one foot and then on the other. "We
+do not deny," he says, "the necessity of swimming over, but at the
+same time, as realists, we see the danger--and not only one, but
+several: the current is swift, there are submerged stones, people are
+tired, etc., etc. But when they tell you that we deny the very
+necessity of swimming over, that is not true--no, not under any
+circumstances. Twenty-three years ago we did not deny the necessity of
+swimming over...."
+
+And on this is built all, from beginning to end. First, say the
+Mensheviks, we do not deny, and never did deny, the necessity of
+self-defence: consequently we do not repudiate the army. Secondly, we
+do not repudiate in principle general labor service. But, after all,
+where is there anyone in the world, with the exception of small
+religious sects, who denies self-defence "in principle"! Nevertheless,
+the matter does not move one step forward as a result of your abstract
+admission. When it came to a real struggle, and to the creation of a
+real army against the real enemies of the working class, what did you
+do then? You opposed, you sabotaged--while not repudiating
+self-defence in principle. You said and wrote in your papers: "Down
+with the civil war!" at the time when we were surrounded by White
+Guards, and the knife was at our throat. Now you, approving our
+victorious self-defence after the event, transfer your critical gaze
+to new problems, and attempt to teach us. "In general, we do not
+repudiate the principle of general labor service," you say, "but ...
+without legal compulsion." Yet in these very words there is a
+monstrous internal contradiction! The idea of "obligatory service"
+itself includes the element of compulsion. A man is _obliged_, he
+is bound to do something. If he does not do it, obviously he will
+suffer compulsion, a penalty. Here we approach the question of what
+penalty. Abramovich says: "Economic pressure, yes; but not legal
+compulsion." Comrade Holtzman, the representative of the Metal
+Workers' Union, excellently demonstrated all the scholasticism of this
+idea. Even under the capitalism, that is to say under the regime of
+"free" labor, economic pressure is inseparable from legal compulsion.
+Still more so now.
+
+In my report I attempted to explain that the adaptation of the workers
+on new social foundations to new forms of labor, and the attainment of
+a higher level of productivity of labor, are possible only by means of
+the simultaneous application of various methods--economic interest,
+legal compulsion, the influence of an internally co-ordinated economic
+organization, the power of repression, and, first and last, moral
+influence, agitation, propaganda, and the general raising of the
+cultural level.
+
+Only by the combination of all these methods can we attain a high
+level of Socialist economy.
+
+If even under capitalism economic interest is inevitably combined with
+legal compulsion, behind which stands the material force of the State,
+in the Soviet State--that is, the State of transition to Socialism--we
+can draw no water-tight compartment at all between economic and legal
+compulsion. All our most important industries are in the hands of the
+State. When we say to the turner Ivanov, "You are bound at once to
+work at the Sormovo factory; if you refuse, you will not receive your
+ration," what are we to call it? Economic pressure or legal
+compulsion? He cannot go to another factory, for all factories are in
+the hands of the State, which will not allow such a change.
+Consequently, economic pressure melts here into the pressure of State
+compulsion. Abramovich apparently would like us, as regulators of the
+distribution of labor-power, to make use only of such means as the
+raising of wages, bonuses, etc., in order to attract the necessary
+workers to our most important factories. Apparently that comprises all
+his thoughts on the subject. But if we put the question in this way,
+every serious worker in the trade union movement will understand it is
+pure utopia. We cannot hope for a free influx of labor-power from the
+market, for to achieve this the State would need to have in its hands
+sufficiently extensive "reserves of manoeuvre," in the form of food,
+housing, and transport, _i.e._, precisely those conditions which
+we have yet only to create. Without systematically-organized
+transference of labor-power on a mass scale, according to the demands
+of the economic organization, we shall achieve nothing. Here the
+moment of compulsion arises before us in all its force of economic
+necessity. I read you a telegram from Ekaterinburg dealing with the
+work of the First Labor Army. It says that there have passed through
+the Ural Committee for Labor Service over 4,000 workers. Whence have
+they appeared? Mainly from the former Third Army. They were not
+allowed to go to their homes, but were sent where they were required.
+From the army they were handed over to the Committee for Labor
+Service, which distributed them according to their categories and sent
+them to the factories. This, from the Liberal point of view, is
+"violence" to the freedom of the individual. Yet an overwhelming
+majority of the workers went willingly to the labor front, as hitherto
+to the military, realizing that the common interest demanded this.
+Part went against their will. These were compelled.
+
+Naturally, it is quite clear that the State must, by means of the
+bonus system, give the better workers better conditions of existence.
+But this not only does not exclude, but on the contrary pre-supposes,
+that the State and the trade unions--without which the Soviet State
+will not build up industry--acquire new rights of some kind over the
+worker. The worker does not merely bargain with the Soviet State: no,
+he is subordinated to the Soviet State, under its orders in every
+direction--for it is _his_ State.
+
+"If," Abramovich says, "we were simply told that it is a question of
+industrial discipline, there would be nothing to quarrel about; but
+why introduce militarization?" Of course, to a considerable extent,
+the question is one of the discipline of the trade unions; but of the
+new discipline of new, _Productional_, trade unions. We live in a
+Soviet country, where the working class is in power--a fact which our
+Kautskians do not understand. When the Menshevik Rubtzov said that
+there remained only the fragment of the trade union movement in my
+report, there was a certain amount of truth in it. Of the trade
+unions, as he understands them--that is to say, trade unions of the
+old craft type--there in reality has remained very little; but the
+industrial productional organization of the working class, in the
+conditions of Soviet Russia, has the very greatest tasks before it.
+What tasks? Of course, not the tasks involved in a struggle with the
+State, in the name of the interests of labor; but tasks involved in
+the construction, side by side with the State, of Socialist economy.
+Such a form of union is in principle a new organization, which is
+distinct, not only from the trade unions, but also from the
+revolutionary industrial unions in bourgeois society, just as the
+supremacy of the proletariat is distinct from the supremacy of the
+bourgeoisie. The productional union of the ruling working class no
+longer has the problems, the methods, the discipline, of the union for
+struggle of an oppressed class. All our workers are _obliged_ to
+enter the unions. The Mensheviks are against this. This is quite
+comprehensible, because in reality they are against the
+_dictatorship of the proletariat_. It is to this, in the long
+run, that the whole question is reduced. The Kautskians are against
+the dictatorship of the proletariat, and are thereby against all its
+consequences. Both economic and political compulsion are only forms of
+the expression of the dictatorship of the working class in two closely
+connected regions. True, Abramovich demonstrated to us most learnedly
+that under Socialism there will be no compulsion, that the principle
+of compulsion contradicts Socialism, that under Socialism we shall be
+moved by the feeling of duty, the habit of working, the attractiveness
+of labor, etc., etc. This is unquestionable. Only this unquestionable
+truth must be a little extended. In point of fact, under Socialism
+there will not exist the apparatus of compulsion itself, namely, the
+State: for it will have melted away entirely into a producing and
+consuming commune. None the less, the road to Socialism lies through a
+period of the highest possible intensification of the principle of the
+State. And you and I are just passing through that period. Just as a
+lamp, before going out, shoots up in a brilliant flame, so the State,
+before disappearing, assumes the form of the dictatorship of the
+proletariat, _i.e._, the most ruthless form of State, which
+embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively in every direction.
+Now just that insignificant little fact--that historical step of the
+State dictatorship--Abramovich, and in his person the whole of
+Menshevism, did not notice; and consequently, he has fallen over it.
+
+No organization except the army has ever controlled man with such
+severe compulsion as does the State organization of the working class
+in the most difficult period of transition. It is just for this reason
+that we speak of the militarization of labor. The fate of the
+Mensheviks is to drag along at the tail of events, and to recognize
+those parts of the revolutionary programme which have already had time
+to lose all practical significance. To-day the Mensheviks, albeit with
+reservations, do not deny the lawfulness of stern measures with the
+White Guards and with deserters from the Red Army: they have been
+forced to recognize this after their own lamentable experiments with
+"democracy." They have to all appearances understood--very late in the
+day--that, when one is face to face with the counter-revolutionary
+bands, one cannot live by phrases about the great truth that under
+Socialism we shall need no Red Terror. But in the economic sphere, the
+Mensheviks still attempt to refer us to our sons, and particularly to
+our grandsons. None the less, we have to rebuild our economic life
+to-day, without waiting, under circumstances of a very painful
+heritage from bourgeois society and a yet unfinished civil war.
+
+Menshevism, like all Kautskianism generally, is drowned in democratic
+analogies and Socialist abstractions. Again and again it has been
+shown that for it there do not exist the problems of the transitional
+period, _i.e._, of the proletarian revolution. Hence the lifelessness
+of its criticism, its advice, its plans, and its recipes. The question
+is not what is going to happen in twenty or thirty years' time--at
+that date, of course, things will be much better--but of how to-day to
+struggle out of our ruins, how immediately to distribute labor-power,
+how to-day to raise the productivity of labor, and how, in particular,
+to act in the case of those 4,000 skilled workers whom we combed out
+of the army in the Ural. To dismiss them to the four corners of the
+earth, saying "seek for better conditions where you can find them,
+comrades"? No, we could not act in this way. We put them into military
+echelons, and distributed them amongst the factories and the works.
+
+"Wherein, then, does your Socialism," Abramovich cries, "differ from
+Egyptian slavery? It was just by similar methods that the Pharaohs
+built the pyramids, forcing the masses to labor." Truly an inimitable
+analogy for a "Socialist"! Once again the little insignificant fact
+has been forgotten--the class nature of the government! Abramovich
+sees no difference between the Egyptian regime and our own. He has
+forgotten that in Egypt there were Pharaohs, there were slave-owners
+and slaves. It was not the Egyptian peasants who decided through their
+Soviets to build the pyramids; there existed a social order based upon
+hierarchial caste; and the workers were obliged to toil by a class
+that was hostile to them. Our compulsion is applied by a workers' and
+peasants' government, in the name of the interests of the laboring
+masses. That is what Abramovich has not observed. We learn in the
+school of Socialism that all social evolution is founded on classes
+and their struggle, and all the course of human life is determined by
+the fact of what class stands at the head of affairs, and in the name
+of what caste is applying its policy. That is what Abramovich has not
+grasped. Perhaps he is well acquainted with the Old Testament, but
+Socialism is for him a book sealed with seven seals.
+
+Going along the path of shallow Liberal analogies, which do not reckon
+with the class nature of the State, Abramovich might (and in the past
+the Mensheviks did more than once) identify the Red and the White
+Armies. Both here and there went on mobilizations, principally of the
+peasant masses. Both here and there the element of compulsion has its
+place. Both here and there there were not a few officers who had
+passed through one and the same school of Tsarism. The same rifles,
+the same cartridges in both camps. Where is the difference? There is a
+difference, gentlemen, and it is defined by a fundamental test: who is
+in power? The working class or the landlord class, Pharaohs or
+peasants, White Guards or the Petrograd proletariat? There is a
+difference, and evidence on the subject is furnished by the fate of
+Yudenich, Kolchak, and Denikin. Our peasants were mobilized by the
+workers; in Kolchak's camp, by the White Guard officer class. Our army
+has pulled itself together, and has grown strong; the White Army has
+fallen asunder in dust. Yes, there is a difference between the Soviet
+regime and the regime of the Pharaohs. And it is not in vain that the
+Petrograd proletarians began their revolution by shooting the Pharaohs
+on the steeples of Petrograd.[10]
+
+          [10] This was the name given to the imperial police, whom
+          the Minister for Home Affairs, Protopopoff, distributed at
+          the end of February, 1917, over the roofs of houses and in
+          the belfries.
+
+One of the Menshevik orators attempted incidentally to represent me as
+a defender of militarism in general. According to his information, it
+appears, do you see, that I am defending nothing more or less than
+German militarism. I proved, you must understand, that the German
+N.C.O. was a marvel of nature, and all that he does is above
+criticism. What did I say in reality? Only that militarism, in which
+all the features of social evolution find their most finished, sharp,
+and clear expression, could be examined from two points of view. First
+from the political or Socialist--and here it depends entirely on the
+question of what class is in power; and secondly, from the point of
+view of organization, as a system of the strict distribution of
+duties, exact mutual relations, unquestioning responsibility, and
+harsh insistence on execution. The bourgeois army is the apparatus of
+savage oppression and repression of the workers; the Socialist army is
+a weapon for the liberation and defence of the workers. But the
+unquestioning subordination of the parts to the whole is a
+characteristic common to every army. A severe internal regime is
+inseparable from the military organization. In war every piece of
+slackness, every lack of thoroughness, and even a simple mistake, not
+infrequently bring in their train the most heavy sacrifices. Hence the
+striving of the military organization to bring clearness,
+definiteness, exactness of relations and responsibilities, to the
+highest degree of development. "Military" qualities in this connection
+are valued in every sphere. It was in this sense that I said that
+every class prefers to have in its service those of its members who,
+other things being equal, have passed through the military school. The
+German peasant, for example, who has passed out of the barracks in the
+capacity of an N.C.O. was for the German monarchy, and remains for the
+Ebert Republic, much dearer and more valuable than the same peasant
+who has not passed through military training. The apparatus of the
+German railways was splendidly organized, thanks to a considerable
+degree to the employment of N.C.O.'s and officers in administrative
+posts in the transport department. In this sense we also have
+something to learn from militarism. Comrade Tsiperovich, one of our
+foremost trade union leaders, admitted here that the trade union
+worker who has passed through military training--who has, for example,
+occupied the responsible post of regimental commissary for a
+year--does not become worse from the point of view of trade union work
+as a result. He is returned to the union the same proletarian from
+head to foot, for he was fighting for the proletariat; but he has
+returned a veteran--hardened, more independent, more decisive--for he
+has been in very responsible positions. He had occasions to control
+several thousands of Red soldiers of different degrees of
+class-consciousness--most of them peasants. Together with them he has
+lived through victories and reverses, he has advanced and retreated.
+There were cases of treachery on the part of the command personnel, of
+peasant risings, of panic--but he remained at his post, he held
+together the less class-conscious mass, directed it, inspired it with
+his example, punished traitors and cowards. This experience is a great
+and valuable experience. And when a former regimental commissary
+returns to his trade union, he becomes not a bad organizer.
+
+On the question of the _collegiate principle_, the arguments of
+Abramovich are just as lifeless as on all other questions--the
+arguments of a detached observer standing on the bank of a river.
+
+Abramovich explained to us that a good board is better than a bad
+manager, that into a good board there must enter a good expert. All
+this is splendid--only why do not the Mensheviks offer us several
+hundred boards? I think that the Supreme Economic Council will find
+sufficient use for them. But we--not observers, but workers--must
+build from the material at our disposal. We have specialists, we have
+experts, of whom, shall we say, one-third are conscientious and
+educated, another third only half-conscientious and half-educated, and
+the last third are no use at all. In the working class there are many
+talented, devoted, and energetic people. Some--unfortunately few--have
+already the necessary knowledge and experience. Some have character
+and capacity, but have not knowledge or experience. Others have
+neither one nor the other. Out of this material we have to create our
+factory and other administrative bodies; and here we cannot be
+satisfied with general phrases. First of all, we must select all the
+workers who have already in experience shown that they can direct
+enterprises, and give such men the possibility of standing on their
+own feet. Such men themselves ask for one-man management, because the
+work of controlling a factory is not a school for the backward. A
+worker who knows his business thoroughly desires to _control_. If
+he has decided and ordered, his decision must be accomplished. He may
+be replaced--that is another matter; but while he is the master--the
+Soviet, proletarian master--he controls the undertaking entirely and
+completely. If he has to be included in a board of weaker men, who
+interfere in the administration, nothing will come of it. Such a
+working-class administrator must be given an expert assistant, one or
+two according to the enterprise. If there is no suitable working-class
+administrator, but there is a conscientious and trained expert, we
+shall put him at the head of an enterprise, and attach to him two or
+three prominent workers in the capacity of assistants, in such a way
+that every decision of the expert should be known to the assistants,
+but that they should not have the right to reverse that decision. They
+will, step by step, follow the specialist in his work, will learn
+something, and in six months or a year will thus be able to occupy
+independent posts.
+
+Abramovich quoted from my own speech the example of the hairdresser
+who has commanded a division and an army. True! But what, however,
+Abramovich does not know is that, if our Communist comrades have
+begun to command regiments, divisions, and armies, it is because
+previously they were commissaries attached to expert commanders.
+The responsibility fell on the expert, who knew that, if he made a
+mistake, he would bear the full brunt, and would not be able to say
+that he was only an "adviser" or a "member of the board." To-day in
+our army the majority of the posts of command, particularly in the
+lower--_i.e._, politically the most important--grades, are filled
+by workers and foremost peasants. But with what did we begin? We put
+officers in the posts of command, and attached to them workers as
+commissaries; and they learned, and learned with success, and learned
+to beat the enemy.
+
+Comrades, we stand face to face with a very difficult period, perhaps
+the most difficult of all. To difficult periods in the life of peoples
+and classes there correspond harsh measures. The further we go the
+easier things will become, the freer every citizen will feel, the more
+imperceptible will become the compelling force of the proletarian
+State. Perhaps we shall then even allow the Mensheviks to have papers,
+if only the Mensheviks remain in existence until that time. But
+to-day we are living in the period of dictatorship, political and
+economic. And the Mensheviks continue to undermine that dictatorship.
+When we are fighting on the civil front, preserving the revolution
+from its enemies, and the Menshevik paper writes: "Down with the
+civil war," we cannot permit this. A dictatorship is a dictatorship,
+and war is war. And now that we have crossed to the path of the
+greatest concentration of forces on the field of the economic rebirth
+of the country, the Russian Kautskies, the Mensheviks, remain true to
+their counter-revolutionary calling. Their voice, as hitherto, sounds
+as the voice of doubt and decomposition, of disorganization and
+undermining, of distrust and collapse.
+
+Is it not monstrous and grotesque that, at this Congress, at which
+1,500 representatives of the Russian working class are present, where
+the Mensheviks constitute less than 5%, and the Communists about 90%,
+Abramovich should say to us: "Do not be attracted by methods which
+result in a little band taking the place of the people." "All through
+the people," says the representative of the Mensheviks, "no guardians
+of the laboring masses! All through the laboring masses, through their
+independent activity!" And, further, "It is impossible to convince a
+class by arguments." Yet look at this very hall: here is that class!
+The working class is here before you, and with us; and it is just you,
+an insignificant band of Mensheviks, who are attempting to convince it
+by bourgeois arguments! It is you who wish to be the guardians of that
+class. And yet it has its own high degree of independence, and that
+independence, it has displayed, incidentally, in having overthrown you
+and gone forward along its own path!
+
+
+
+
+9
+
+KARL KAUTSKY, HIS SCHOOL AND HIS BOOK.
+
+
+The Austro-Marxian school (Bauer, Renner, Hilferding, Max Adler,
+Friedrich Adler) in the past more than once was contrasted with the
+school of Kautsky, as veiled opportunism might be contrasted with true
+Marxism. This has proved to be a pure historical misunderstanding,
+which deceived some for a long time, some for a lesser period, but
+which in the end was revealed with all possible clearness. Kautsky is
+the founder and the most perfect representative of the Austrian
+forgery of Marxism. While the real teaching of Marx is the theoretical
+formula of action, of attack, of the development of revolutionary
+energy, and of the carrying of the class blow to its logical
+conclusion, the Austrian school was transformed into an academy of
+passivity and evasiveness, because of a vulgar historical and
+conservative school, and reduced its work to explaining and
+justifying, not guiding and overthrowing. It lowered itself to the
+position of a hand-maid to the current demands of parliamentarism and
+opportunism, replaced dialectic by swindling sophistries, and, in the
+end, in spite of its great play with ritual revolutionary phraseology,
+became transformed into the most secure buttress of the capitalist
+State, together with the altar and throne that rose above it. If the
+latter was engulfed in the abyss, no blame for this can be laid upon
+the Austro-Marxian school.
+
+What characterizes Austro-Marxism is repulsion and fear in the face of
+revolutionary action. The Austro-Marxist is capable of displaying a
+perfect gulf of profundity in the explanation of yesterday, and
+considerable daring in prophesying concerning to-morrow--but for
+to-day he never has a great thought or capacity for great action.
+To-day for him always disappears before the wave of little opportunist
+worries, which later are explained as the most inevitable link between
+the past and the future.
+
+The Austro-Marxist is inexhaustible when it is a question of
+discovering reasons to prevent initiative and render difficult
+revolutionary action. Austro-Marxism is a learned and boastful theory
+of passivity and capitulation. Naturally, it is not by accident that
+it was just in Austria, in that Babylon torn by fruitless national
+antagonisms, in that State which represented the personified
+impossibility to exist and develop, that there arose and was
+consolidated the pseudo-Marxian philosophy of the impossibility of
+revolutionary action.
+
+The foremost Austrian Marxists represent, each in his own way, a
+certain "individuality." On various questions they more than once did
+not see eye to eye. They even had political differences. But in
+general they are fingers of the same hand.
+
+_Karl Renner_ is the most pompous, solid, and conceited representative
+of this type. The gift of literary imitation, or, more simply, of
+stylist forgery, is granted to him to an exceptional extent. His
+May Day article represented a charming combination of the most
+revolutionary words. And, as both words and their combinations live,
+within certain limits, with their own independent life, Renner's
+articles awakened in the hearts of many workers a revolutionary
+fire which their author apparently never knew. The tinsel of
+Austro-Viennese culture, the chase of the external, of title of rank,
+was more characteristic of Renner than of his other colleagues. In
+essence he always remained merely an imperial and royal officer, who
+commanded Marxist phraseology to perfection.
+
+The transformation of the author of the jubilee article on Karl Marx,
+famous for its revolutionary pathos, into a comic-opera-Chancellor,
+who expresses his feelings of respect and thanks to the Scandinavian
+monarchs, is in reality one of the most instructive paradoxes of
+history.
+
+_Otto Bauer_ is more learned and prosaic, more serious and more
+boring, than Renner. He cannot be denied the capacity to read books,
+collect facts, and draw conclusions adapted to the tasks imposed upon
+him by practical politics, which in turn are guided by others. Bauer
+has no political will. His chief art is to reply to all acute
+practical questions by commonplaces. His political thought always
+lives a parallel life to his will--it is deprived of all courage. His
+words are always merely the scientific compilation of the talented
+student of a University seminar. The most disgraceful actions of
+Austrian opportunism, the meanest servility before the power of the
+possessing classes on the part of the Austro-German Social-Democracy,
+found in Bauer their grave elucidator, who sometimes expressed himself
+with dignity against the form, but always agreed in the essence. If it
+ever occurred to Bauer to display anything like temperament and
+political energy, it was exclusively in the struggle against the
+revolutionary wing--in the accumulation of arguments, facts,
+quotations, _against_ revolutionary action. His highest period
+was that (after 1907) in which, being as yet too young to be a deputy,
+he played the part of secretary of the Social-Democratic group,
+supplied it with materials, figures, substitutes for ideas, instructed
+it, drew up memoranda, and appeared almost to be the inspirer of great
+actions, when in reality he was only supplying substitutes, and
+adulterated substitutes, for the parliamentary opportunists.
+
+_Max Adler_ represents a fairly ingenuous variety of the Austro-Marxian
+type. He is a lyric poet, a philosopher, a mystic--a philosophical
+lyric poet of passivity, as Renner is its publicist and legal expert,
+as Hilferding is its economist, as Bauer is its sociologist. Max Adler
+is cramped in a world of three dimensions, although he had found a
+very comfortable place for himself with the framework of Viennese
+bourgeois Socialism and the Hapsburg State. The combination of the
+petty business activity of an attorney and of political humiliation,
+together with barren philosophical efforts and the cheap tinsel
+flowers of idealism, have imbued that variety which Max Adler
+represented with a sickening and repulsive quality.
+
+_Rudolf Hilferding_, a Viennese like the rest, entered the German
+Social-Democratic Party almost as a mutineer, but as a mutineer of the
+Austrian stamp, _i.e._, always ready to capitulate without a fight.
+Hilferding took the external mobility and bustle of the Austrian
+policy which brought him up for revolutionary initiative; and for a
+round dozen of months he demanded--true, in the most moderate terms--a
+more intelligent policy on the part of the leaders of the German
+Social-Democracy. But the Austro-Viennese bustle swiftly disappeared
+from his own nature. He soon became subjected to the mechanical
+rhythm of Berlin and the automatic spiritual life of the German
+Social-Democracy. He devoted his intellectual energy to the purely
+theoretical sphere, where he did not say a great deal, true--no
+Austro-Marxist has ever said a great deal in any sphere--but in which
+he did, at any rate, write a serious book. With this book on his back,
+like a porter with a heavy load, he entered the revolutionary epoch.
+But the most scientific book cannot replace the absence of will, of
+initiative, of revolutionary instinct and political decision, without
+which action is inconceivable. A doctor by training, Hilferding is
+inclined to sobriety, and, in spite of his theoretical education, he
+represents the most primitive type of empiricist in questions of
+policy. The chief problem of to-day is for him not to leave the lines
+laid down for him by yesterday, and to find for this conservative and
+bourgeois apathy a scientific, economic explanation.
+
+_Friedrich Adler_ is the most balanced representative of the
+Austro-Marxian type. He has inherited from his father the latter's
+political temperament. In the petty exhausting struggle with the
+disorder of Austrian conditions, Friedrich Adler allowed his ironical
+scepticism finally to destroy the revolutionary foundations of his
+world outlook. The temperament inherited from his father more than
+once drove him into opposition to the school created by his father. At
+certain moments Friedrich Adler might seem the very revolutionary
+negation of the Austrian school. In reality, he was and remains its
+necessary coping-stone. His explosive revolutionism foreshadowed acute
+attacks of despair amidst Austrian opportunism, which from time to
+time became terrified at its own insignificance.
+
+Friedrich Adler is a sceptic from head to foot: he does not believe in
+the masses, or in their capacity for action. At the time when Karl
+Liebknecht, in the hour of supreme triumph of German militarism, went
+out to the Potsdamerplatz to call the oppressed masses to the open
+struggle, Friedrich Adler went into a bourgeois restaurant to
+assassinate there the Austrian Premier. By his solitary shot,
+Friedrich Adler vainly attempted to put an end to his own scepticism.
+After that hysterical strain, he fell into still more complete
+prostration.
+
+The black-and-yellow crew of social-patriotism (Austerlitz, Leitner,
+etc.) hurled at Adler the terrorist all the abuse of which the
+cowardly sentiments were capable.
+
+But when the acute period was passed, and the prodigal son returned
+from his convict prison into his father's house with the halo of a
+martyr, he proved to be doubly and trebly valuable in that form for
+the Austrian Social-Democracy. The golden halo of the terrorist was
+transformed by the experienced counterfeiters of the party into the
+sounding coin of the demagogue. Friedrich Adler became a trusted
+surety for the Austerlitzes and Renners in face of the masses.
+Happily, the Austrian workers are coming less and less to distinguish
+the sentimental lyrical prostration of Friedrich Adler from the
+pompous shallowness of Renner, the erudite impotence of Max Adler, or
+the analytical self-satisfaction of Otto Bauer.
+
+The cowardice in thought of the theoreticians of the Austro-Marxian
+school has completely and wholly been revealed when faced with the
+great problems of a revolutionary epoch. In his immortal attempt to
+include the Soviet system in the Ebert-Noske Constitution, Hilferding
+gave voice not only to his own spirit but to the spirit of the whole
+Austro-Marxian school, which, with the approach of the revolutionary
+epoch, made an attempt to become exactly as much more Left than
+Kautsky as before the revolution it was more Right. From this point of
+view, Max Adler's view of the Soviet system is extremely instructive.
+
+The Viennese eclectic philosopher admits the significance of the
+Soviets. His courage goes so far that he adopts them. He even
+proclaims them the apparatus of the Social Revolution. Max Adler, of
+course, is for a social revolution. But not for a stormy, barricaded,
+terrorist, bloody revolution, but for a sane, economically balanced,
+legally canonized, and philosophically approved revolution.
+
+Max Adler is not even terrified by the fact that the Soviets infringe
+the "principle" of the constitutional separation of powers (in the
+Austrian Social-Democracy there are many fools who see in such an
+infringement a great defect of the Soviet System!). On the contrary,
+Max Adler, the trade union lawyer and legal adviser of the social
+revolution, sees in the concentration of powers even an advantage,
+which allows the direct expression of the proletarian will. Max Adler
+is in favor of the direct expression of the proletarian will; but only
+not by means of the direct seizure of power through the Soviets. He
+proposes a more solid method. In each town, borough, and ward, the
+Workers' Councils must "control" the police and other officials,
+imposing upon them the "proletarian will." What, however, will be the
+"constitutional" position of the Soviets in the republic of Zeiz,
+Renner and company? To this our philosopher replies: "The Workers'
+Councils in the long run will receive as much constitutional power as
+they acquire by means of their own activity." (_Arbeiterzeitung_,
+No. 179, July 1, 1919.)
+
+The proletarian Soviets must gradually _grow up_ into the political
+power of the proletariat, just as previously, in the theories of
+reformism, all the proletarian organizations had to grow up into
+Socialism; which consummation, however, was a little hindered by the
+unforeseen misunderstandings, lasting four years, between the Central
+Powers and the Entente--and all that followed. It was found necessary
+to reject the economical programme of a gradual development into
+Socialism without a social revolution. But, as a reward, there opened
+the perspective of the gradual development of the Soviets into the
+social revolution, without an armed rising and a seizure of power.
+
+In order that the Soviets should not sink entirely under the burden of
+borough and ward problems, our daring legal adviser proposes the
+propaganda of social-democratic ideas! Political power remains as
+before in the hands of the bourgeoisie and its assistants. But in the
+wards and the boroughs the Soviets control the policemen and their
+assistants. And, to console the working class and at the same time to
+centralize its thought and will, Max Adler on Sunday afternoons will
+read lectures on the constitutional position of the Soviets, as in the
+past he read lectures on the constitutional position of the trade
+unions.
+
+"In this way," Max Adler promises, "the constitutional regulation of
+the position of the Workers Councils, and their power and importance,
+would be guaranteed along the whole line of public and social life;
+and--without the dictatorship of the Soviets--the Soviet system would
+acquire as large an influence as it could possibly have even in a
+Soviet republic. At the same time we should not have to pay for that
+influence by political storms and economic destruction" (idem). As we
+see, in addition to all his other qualities, Max Adler remains still
+in agreement with the Austrian tradition: to make a revolution without
+quarrelling with his Excellency the Public Prosecutor.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+The founder of this school, and its highest authority, is Kautsky.
+Carefully protecting, particularly after the Dresden party congress
+and the first Russian Revolution, his reputation as the keeper of the
+shrine of Marxist orthodoxy, Kautsky from time to time would shake his
+head in disapproval of the more compromising outbursts of his Austrian
+school. And, following the example of the late Victor Adler, Bauer,
+Renner, Hilferding--altogether and each separately--considered Kautsky
+too pedantic, too inert, but a very reverend and a very useful father
+and teacher of the church of quietism.
+
+Kautsky began to cause serious mistrust in his own school during the
+period of his revolutionary culmination, at the time of the first
+Russian Revolution, when he recognized as necessary the seizure of
+power by the Russian Social-Democracy, and attempted to inoculate the
+German working class with his theoretical conclusions from the
+experience of the general strike in Russia. The collapse of the first
+Russian Revolution at once broke off Kautsky's evolution along the
+path of radicalism. The more plainly was the question of mass action
+in Germany itself put forward by the course of events, the more
+evasive became Kautsky's attitude. He marked time, retreated, lost his
+confidence; and the pedantic and scholastic features of his thought
+more and more became apparent. The imperialist war, which killed every
+form of vagueness and brought mankind face to face with the most
+fundamental questions, exposed all the political bankruptcy of
+Kautsky. He immediately became confused beyond all hope of
+extrication, in the most simple question of voting the War Credits.
+All his writings after that period represent variations of one and the
+same theme: "I and my muddle." The Russian Revolution finally slew
+Kautsky. By all his previous development he was placed in a hostile
+attitude towards the November victory of the proletariat. This
+unavoidably threw him into the camp of the counter-revolution. He lost
+the last traces of historical instinct. His further writings have
+become more and more like the yellow literature of the bourgeois
+market.
+
+Kautsky's book, examined by us, bears in its external characteristics
+all the attributes of a so-called objective scientific study. To
+examine the extent of the Red Terror, Kautsky acts with all the
+circumstantial method peculiar to him. He begins with the study of the
+social conditions which prepared the great French Revolution, and also
+the physiological and social conditions which assisted the development
+of cruelty and humanity throughout the history of the human race. In a
+book devoted to Bolshevism, in which the whole question is examined in
+234 pages, Kautsky describes in detail on what our most remote human
+ancestor fed, and hazards the guess that, while living mainly on
+vegetable products, he devoured also insects and possibly a few birds.
+(See page 122.) In a word, there was nothing to lead us to expect that
+from such an entirely respectable ancestor--one obviously inclined to
+vegetarianism--there should spring such descendants as the Bolsheviks.
+That is the solid scientific basis on which Kautsky builds the
+question!...
+
+But, as is not infrequent with productions of this nature, there is
+hidden behind the academic and scholastic cloak a malignant political
+pamphlet. This book is one of the most lying and conscienceless of its
+kind. Is it not incredible, at first glance, that Kautsky should
+gather up the most contemptible stories about the Bolsheviks from the
+rich table of Havas, Reuter and Wolff, thereby displaying from under
+his learned night-cap the ears of the sycophant? Yet these
+disreputable details are only mosaic decorations on the fundamental
+background of solid, scientific lying about the Soviet Republic and
+its guiding party.
+
+Kautsky depicts in the most sinister colors our savagery towards the
+bourgeoisie, which "displayed no tendency to resist."
+
+Kautsky attacks our ruthlessness in connection with the Socialist
+Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks, who represent "shades" of
+Socialism.
+
+
+KAUTSKY DEPICTS THE SOVIET ECONOMY AS THE CHAOS OF COLLAPSE
+
+Kautsky represents the Soviet workers, and the Russian working class
+as a whole, as a conglomeration of egoists, loafers, and cowards.
+
+He does not say one word about the conduct of the Russian bourgeoisie,
+unprecedented in history for the magnitude of its scoundrelism;
+about its national treachery; about the surrender of Riga to the
+Germans, with "educational" aims; about the preparations for a
+similar surrender of Petrograd; about its appeals to foreign
+armies--Czecho-Slovakian, German, Roumanian, British, Japanese,
+French, Arab and Negro--against the Russian workers and peasants;
+about its conspiracies and assassinations, paid for by Entente money;
+about its utilization of the blockade, not only to starve our children
+to death, but systematically, tirelessly, persistently to spread over
+the whole world an unheard-of web of lies and slander.
+
+He does not say one word about the most disgraceful misrepresentations
+of and violence to our party on the part of the government of the
+S.R.s and Mensheviks before the November Revolution; about the
+criminal persecution of several thousand responsible workers of the
+party on the charge of espionage in favor of Hohenzollern Germany;
+about the participation of the Mensheviks and S.R.s in all the plots
+of the bourgeoisie; about their collaboration with the imperial
+generals and admirals, Kolchak, Denikin and Yudenich; about the
+terrorist acts carried out by the S.R.s at the order of the Entente;
+about the risings organized by the S.R.s with the money of the foreign
+missions in our army, which was pouring out its blood in the struggle
+against the monarchical bands of imperialism.
+
+Kautsky does not say one word about the fact that we not only repeated
+more than once, but proved in reality our readiness to give peace to
+the country, even at the cost of sacrifices and concessions, and that,
+in spite of this, we were obliged to carry on an intensive struggle on
+all fronts to defend the very existence of our country, and to prevent
+its transformation into a colony of Anglo-French imperialism.
+
+Kautsky does not say one word about the fact that in this heroic
+struggle, in which we are defending the future of world Socialism, the
+Russian proletariat is obliged to expend its principal energies, its
+best and most valuable forces, taking them away from economic and
+cultural reconstruction.
+
+In all his book, Kautsky does not even mention the fact that first of
+all German militarism, with the help of its Scheidemanns and the
+apathy of its Kautskies, and then the militarism of the Entente
+countries with the help of its Renaudels and the apathy of its
+Longuets, surrounded us with an iron blockade; seized all our ports;
+cut us off from the whole of the world; occupied, with the help of
+hired White bands, enormous territories, rich in raw materials; and
+separated us for a long period from the Baku oil, the Donetz coal, the
+Don and Siberian corn, the Turkestan cotton.
+
+Kautsky does not say one word about the fact that in these conditions,
+unprecedented for their difficulty, the Russian working class for
+nearly three years has been carrying on a heroic struggle against its
+enemies on a front of 8,000 versts; that the Russian working class
+learned how to exchange its hammer for the sword, and created a mighty
+army; that for this army it mobilized its exhausted industry and, in
+spite of the ruin of the country, which the executioners of the whole
+world had condemned to blockade and civil war, for three years with
+its own forces and resources it has been clothing, feeding, arming,
+transporting an army of millions--an army which has learned how to
+conquer.
+
+About all these conditions Kautsky is silent, in a book devoted to
+Russian Communism. And his silence is the fundamental, capital,
+principal lie--true, a passive lie, but more criminal and more
+repulsive than the active lie of all the scoundrels of the
+international bourgeois Press taken together.
+
+Slandering the policy of the Communist Party, Kautsky says nowhere
+what he himself wants and what he proposes. The Bolsheviks were not
+alone in the arena of the Russian Revolution. We saw and see in
+it--now in power, now in opposition--S.R.s (not less than five groups
+and tendencies), Mensheviks (not less than three tendencies),
+Plekhanovists, Maximalists, Anarchists.... Absolutely all the "shades
+of Socialism" (to speak in Kautsky's language) tried their hand, and
+showed what they would and what they could. There are so many of these
+"shades" that it is difficult now to pass the blade of a knife between
+them. The very origin of these "shades" is not accidental: they
+represent, so to speak, different degrees in the adaptation of the
+pre-revolutionary Socialist parties and groups to the conditions of
+the greater revolutionary epoch. It would seem that Kautsky had a
+sufficiently complete political keyboard before him to be able to
+strike the note which would give a true Marxian key to the Russian
+Revolution. But Kautsky is silent. He repudiates the Bolshevik melody
+that is unpleasant to his ear, but does not seek another. The solution
+is simple: _the old musician refuses altogether to play on the
+instrument of the revolution_.
+
+
+
+
+10
+
+IN PLACE OF AN EPILOGUE
+
+
+This book appears at the moment of the Second Congress of the
+Communist International. The revolutionary movement of the proletariat
+has made, during the months that have passed since the First Congress,
+a great step forward. The positions of the official, open
+social-patriots have everywhere been undermined. The ideas of
+Communism acquire an ever wider extension. Official dogmatized
+Kautskianism has been gradually compromised. Kautsky himself, within
+that "Independent" Party which he created, represents to-day a not
+very authoritative and a fairly ridiculous figure.
+
+None the less, the intellectual struggle in the ranks of the
+international working class is only now blazing up as it should. If,
+as we just said, dogmatized Kautskianism is breathing its last days,
+and the leaders of the intermediate Socialist parties are hastening to
+renounce it, still Kautskianism as a bourgeois attitude, as a
+tradition of passivity, as political cowardice, still plays an
+enormous part in the upper ranks of the working-class organizations of
+the world, in no way excluding parties tending to the Third
+International, and even formally adhering to it.
+
+The Independent Party in Germany, which has written on its banner the
+watchword of the dictatorship of the proletariat, tolerates in its
+ranks the Kautsky group, all the efforts of which are devoted
+theoretically to compromise and misrepresent the dictatorship of the
+proletariat in the shape of its living expression--the Soviet regime.
+In conditions of civil war, such a form of co-habitation is
+conceivable only and to such an extent as far and as long as the
+dictatorship of the proletariat represents for the leaders of the
+"Independent" Social-Democracy a noble aspiration, a vague protest
+against the open and disgraceful treachery of Noske, Ebert,
+Scheidemann and others, and--last but not least--a weapon of electoral
+and parliamentary demagogy.
+
+The vitality of vague Kautskianism is most clearly seen in the example
+of the French Longuetists. Jean Longuet himself has most sincerely
+convinced himself, and has for long been attempting to convince
+others, that he is marching in step with us, and that only
+Clemenceau's censorship and the calumnies of our French friends
+Loriot, Monatte, Rosmer, and others hinder our comradship in arms. Yet
+is it sufficient to make oneself acquainted with any parliamentary
+speech of Longuet's to realize that the gulf separating him from us at
+the present moment is possibly still wider than at the first period of
+the imperialist war? The revolutionary problems now arising before the
+international proletariat have become more serious, more immediate,
+more gigantic, more direct, more definite, than five or six years ago;
+and the politically reactionary character of the Longuetists, the
+parliamentary representatives of eternal passivity, has become more
+impressive than ever before, in spite of the fact that formally they
+have returned to the fold of parliamentary opposition.
+
+The Italian Party, which is within the Third International, is not at
+all free from Kautskianism. As far as the leaders are concerned, a
+very considerable part of them bear their internationalist honors only
+as a duty and as an imposition from below. In 1914-1915, the Italian
+Socialist Party found it infinitely more easy than did the other
+European parties to maintain an attitude of opposition to the war,
+both because Italy entered the war nine months later than other
+countries, and particularly because the international position of
+Italy created in it even a powerful bourgeois group (Giolittians in
+the widest sense of the word) which remained to the very last moment
+hostile to Italian intervention in the war.
+
+These conditions allowed the Italian Socialist Party, without the fear
+of a very profound internal crisis to refuse war credits to the
+Government, and generally to remain outside the interventionist block.
+But by this very fact the process of internal cleansing of the party
+proved to be unquestionably delayed. Although an integral part of the
+Third International, the Italian Socialist Party to this very day can
+put up with Turati and his supporters in its ranks. This very powerful
+group--unfortunately we find it difficult to define to any extent of
+accuracy its numerical significance in the parliamentary group, in the
+press, in the party, and in the trade union organizations--represents
+a less pedantic, not so demagogic, more declamatory and lyrical, but
+none the less malignant opportunism--a form of romantic Kautskianism.
+
+A passive attitude to the Kautskian, Longuetist, Turatist groups is
+usually cloaked by the argument that the time for revolutionary
+activity in the respective countries has not yet arrived. But such a
+formulation of the question is absolutely false. Nobody demands from
+Socialists striving for Communism that they should appoint a
+revolutionary outbreak for a definite week or month in the near
+future. What the Third International demands of its supporters is a
+recognition, not in words but in deeds, that civilized humanity has
+entered a revolutionary epoch; that all the capitalist countries are
+speeding towards colossal disturbances and an open class war; and that
+the task of the revolutionary representatives of the proletariat is to
+prepare for that inevitable and approaching war the necessary
+spiritual armory and buttress of organization. The internationalists
+who consider it possible at the present time to collaborate with
+Kautsky, Longuet and Turati, to appear side by side with them before
+the working masses, by that very act renounce in practice the work of
+preparing in ideas and organization for the revolutionary rising of
+the proletariat, independently of whether it comes a month or a year
+sooner or later. In order that the open rising of the proletarian
+masses should not fritter itself away in belated searches for paths
+and leadership, we must see to it to-day that wide circles of the
+proletariat should even now learn to grasp all the immensity of the
+tasks before them, and of their irreconcilability with all variations
+of Kautskianism and opportunism.
+
+A truly revolutionary, _i.e._, a Communist wing, must set itself
+up in opposition, in face of the masses, to all the indecisive,
+half-hearted groups of doctrinaires, advocates, and panegyrists of
+passivity, strengthening its positions first of all spiritually and
+then in the sphere of organization--open, half-open, and purely
+conspirative. The moment of formal split with the open and disguised
+Kautskians, or the moment of their expulsion from the ranks of the
+working-class party, is, of course, to be determined by considerations
+of usefulness from the point of view of circumstances; but all the
+policy of real Communists must turn in that direction.
+
+That is why it seems to me that this book is still not out of date--to
+my great regret, if not as an author, at any rate as a Communist.
+
+_June 17, 1920._
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Dictatorship vs. Democracy, by Leon Trotsky
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DICTATORSHIP VS. DEMOCRACY ***
+
+***** This file should be named 38982.txt or 38982.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/3/8/9/8/38982/
+
+Produced by Odessa Paige Turner and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+produced from scanned images of public domain material
+from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/38982.zip b/38982.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ec5021
--- /dev/null
+++ b/38982.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6726005
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #38982 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38982)