Dictatorship vs. democracy (Terrorism and communism) a reply to Karl Kautsky, by Leon Trotsky [pseud.] With a preface by H. N. Brailsford, and a foreword by Max Bedact

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WORKERS PARTY LIBRARY. Vol. 1

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

Published 1922 by

WORKERS PARTY OF AMERICA

799 Broadway, Room 405
New York City

..2X^

HX

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 12S

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 unwieldly guard-
ian 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 dif-
ference. 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 hypocnsy incarnate, promis-
ing all liberty in phrases, but in reality even penalizing free
thinking, consistently working only for one object: to per-
petuate the rule of the capitalist class, the capitalist dictator-
ship.

"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, "Ter-
rorism and Communism." It is polemical in character. Po-
lemical 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 fa-
miliar 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 hit-
ting him below the belt, and then expect him to pay two dol-
lars for it in the bargain.

Anyhow, co 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 Marx-
ism. 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

VI

pedantry of the German professor, which was hardly ever
penterated by a live spark of revolutionary spirit. Still, the
Russian revolution of 1905 found a friend in him. That revo-
lution did not commit the unpardonable sin of being success-
ful. 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 revo-
lutionary 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 191 1 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 work-
ing 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 Ger-
many, 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 pro-
letariat for a world revolution.

Days passed. July disappeared in the ocean of time. The
first days of August brought the booming of the canon 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

VII

everywhere. What would Kautsky say to this rank betrayal,
Kautsky, the foremost disciple of Marx, Kautsky, the fore-
most 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."*
With this one sentence Kautsky replaced Marxism as the basis
^of his science with rank and undisguised hypocricy. P'rom
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 Ger-
man Social Democracy, and the betrayal of the Second Inter-
national.

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 ap-
preciate Kautsky's excellent service. So they helped the re-
negade 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 pro-
letariat. 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"

* The arbitrament of arms is on ; now the weapon of criticism
must rest.

VIII

henchmen who have been sacrificed on the altar of revokition
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 humani-
larianism 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
bemg. 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 nec-
essary 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 Kautsl<y's
point. The crime of the Bolsheviki is that they took power.
If Kautsky were a mere sentimentalist and yet a revolutibnist
he could shed tears over the unwillingness of the bourgeoisie
to give up power without a struggle. But not being a revo-
lutionist 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 Com-
munists because they robbed him of the opportunity to parade
his petit bourgeois and consequently pro-capitalist "humani-
tarian" 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

IX

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 pro-
letariat. 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 bour-
geoisie 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. Brailsfoed

IT has been said of the Bolsheviks that they are more inter-
esting 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 or-
ganizations 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 Mor-
ris, Anatole France and Shaw. It bred, however, no consider-
able man of action, and it was left for the Russians to do what
generations of Western Socialists had spent their lives in dis-
cussing. There was in this Russian achievement an almost
barbaric simplicity and directness. Here were mfn 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 undestand the
miracle.

XI

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 pre-
pared 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 foimdations 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 leader-
ship 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 civil-
ian, necessary for victory? At the start the Bolsheviks had
Everything against them. They are nearly ail 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 bet-
ter. 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 circum-
stances explain the success of the Bolsheviks, who proved once
again in history the capacity of the town, even v-Iien its pop-
ulation is relatively minute, for swift and concentrated ac-
tion. They also had the luck to deal with opponents who
committed the supreme mistake of invoking foreign aid. But

xn

none of these advantages would have availed without an im-
mense 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 ex-
clusively 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 lazyand demoralized people to notable feats of arm^
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 modem 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 es-
say. 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 de-

XIII

finiteness. He is not rapid or expansive in speech, for every-
thing 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 Rus-
sia. 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 frequent-
ly, 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 every-
thing 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 "sit-
ting" 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 pub-
lic debate, staggered them by talking of first principles as
though the defeat and impotence of Russia counted for no-
thing, and actually used the negotiations to shout across their
heads his summons to their own subjects to revolt. He showed

XIV

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 ser-
vices to the revolution have been more solid but not less bril-
liant. 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 rail-
ways 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 re-
markable performance of the revolution.

It is not the business of a preface to anticipate the argu-
ment 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, how-
ever, 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

XV

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 politi-
cal power do not in thelnselves avail to make a Socialist so-
ciety. The economic development in that direction has actually
been retarded, and Russia, under the stress of civil war, has
retrogaded into a primitive village system of production and
exchange. To every reader's mind the question will be pres-
ent whether the peculiar temperament of the Bolsheviks has
led them to overestimate 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.

XVI

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 Kaustky — 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 incontro-|

6 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

Wertitle evidence of the mighty vigor of the Soviet order.
In spite of political tortures, physical suiferings and horrors,
the laboring masses are infinitely distant from political decom-
position, 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, diey
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 in-
dustry, there is going on an energetic struggle for the establish-
ment 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 Yoimg Communist League are carried out with
just as much enthusiasm as hitherto for military tasks. Volun-
tarism 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 popula-
tion 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 wide-
spread and organized every day. The ever increasing employ-
ment 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

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 7

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 suffer-I'
ings than those against which they rose. V

The transition from feudal economy to bourgeois society- -
a step of gigantic importance from the point of view of pro-
gress — 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 Revo-
lution 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 mis-
fortunes for a prolonged period and to an extraordinary
extent. Can it be otherwise ?

Palace revolutions, which end merely by personal reshuffl- j
ings at the top, can take place in a short space of time, having j
practically no effect on the economic life of the country. Quite I
another matter are revolutions which drag into their whirl- j
pool 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
rolonged, the greater is the destruction it achieves in the
paratus of production, and the more terrible inroads does it \
...Alee upon public resources. From this there follows merely |
tiieco a c lusio n 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-bom human
being of the birth-pangs of the mother who brought him into

8 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

the world. The problem is to make a civil v^rar 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 pro-
cesses 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 pre-
sent 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, re-
tarding 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 actual-
ly 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 fol-
' lowed, 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 out-
lived itself has not decided one question, has not reconciled one
^contradiction, has not healed one wound, has not warded off
jrisings either of the Right or of the Left; it is helpless,
worthless, fraudulent, and serves only to confuse the backward
lections 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

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 9

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 enter-
ing on the path of direct action. The repressions which the
government of the Republic has hurled upon the General Con-
federation 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 pro-
cesses 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. I
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 democ-
racy 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 distinguish-
ing 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 logi<?, \
the author of this present work asks himself: Does it still I
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, play^

lo Dictatorship vs. Democracy

in the Socialist movement an enormous ^part. Even for practi-
cal England the period has arrived when the working class
must exhibit an ever-increasing demand for a theoretical state-
/ment of its experiences and its problems. On the other hand,
(even the proletarian psychology includes in itself a terrible
Vinertia of conservatism — the more that, in the present case,
{there is a question of nothing less than the traditional ideology
rof 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 Independ-
ents, 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 pre-
judices of parliamentarism and compromise. The struggle
Tor 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 com-
promise, 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 assist-
ance to the world murderers of Soviet Russia. It is the fate

Dictatorship vs. Democracy ii

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 distatorship, 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 j
hope for the victory, for we have every historical right to itJ

L. Trotsky.
Moscow, May 29, 1920.

Dictatorship vs. Democracy

A Reply to Karl Kaufsky
By LEON TROTSKY

I

The Balance of Power

THE argument which is repeated again and again in
criticisms of the Soviet system in Russia, and partic-
ularly in criticisms of revolutionary attempts to set
up a similar structure in other countries, is the argument based
'X>n 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 bour-
geois impotence at the central posts of the bourgeois republic,
for otherwise the balance of power would be infringed. Two

12

\

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 13

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 answ^ered 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 justifi-
cation of indecision, stagnation, cowardice and treachery?

By the balance of power they understand everything yotr
please: the level of production attained, the degree of dif-
ferentiation 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. MostN
frequently, it means that summary political impression which!
exists in the mind of a half-blind pedant, or a so-called realist i
politician, who, though he has absorbed the phraseology of ]
Marxism, in reality is guided by the most shallow manoeuvres, I
bourgeois prejudices, and parliamentary "tactics." After a'
whispered conversation with the director of the police depart-
ment, 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 demonstra-
tion 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.

14 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

At the first glance, it might really seem that Friedrich Adler
was right in the case of Hungary. The proletarian dictator-
ship 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

i 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

I permitted to do so by Clemenceau (or Millerand— t'.i?., 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

I of power ? At the first glance it may appear that it corresponds

", well enough, and, if it cannot be proved, it is, at least, guaran-
teed 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
1 Government — that is, the same searches, arrests, and execu-
Jtions, only directed against the counter-revolutionaries are

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 15

considered by some people as a proof that the Soviet Govern- \
ment does not correspond to the balance of power. In vain/
would we, however, begin to seek in our time, anywhere inj
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 frame-
work 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 op-
portunists 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 Czemin, and the Bulgari-
an Premier, Radoslavov. Since that time, the Austro-Hungari-
an 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, Fried-
rich 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 cease-
less 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 balan ce of political power at any given moment is
determined under the influence of fundamental and secondary
facfofslDT'differirig degrees of eflfecfiveness, and only in its
ifioist 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 peasant-/
ry, 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 conscious-
ness of the old Socialist parties is a whole epoch behind the I

i6 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

state of mmd 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
1 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 calcu-
lations were based. It was considered that parliamentary
elections reflected the balance of power with sufficient exact-
r^ess. 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 preceeding
period, and have now, all at once, appeared on the surface,
and have begun to determine the course of history.
-'"'Trhe political worshippers of routine, incapable of sur-
veying 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 pro-
duction 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 pre- /
pared for Socialism as accurately as the manometer indicates /
j the pressure of steam. Yet there is nothing more senseless ,/
I than this mechanized representation of the development of
\gocial relations.

j 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
jk^eight 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
j change, as a colossal obstacle in the path of historical develop-
iment. To-day it is quite beyond doubt that the parties of the

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 17

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 coimter-revolution. ^^

The great forces of production — that shock factor in
historical development — were choked in those obsolete institu-
tions of the superstructure (private property and the national
State) in which they found themselves locked by all preced-
ing 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

.^^M^ocialist 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 them-
selves 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 wa&/ Human technical skill,
the most revolutionary factor ia-Wstory, 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 aero-
planes, it began a furious pogrom of human culture.

In tills way the cause of the misfortunes at present ex-^
perienced 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

i8 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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
I moment that the development of productive forces, outgrowing
\ the framework of the bourgeois national State, drew mankind
I into an epoch of crises and convulsions, the consciousness
I of the masses was shaken by dread shocks out of the com-
I parative 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 prole-
tariat. But it had not yet stepped, consciously and courage-
ously, on to the path of open revolutionary struggle. It
wavered, passing through the last moment of unstable equi-
librium. 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 im-
portance. 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,
iT 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 revolu-
■ 1 tionary 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
j that method and carry it through to the end — ^the presence
/ of such a party represents a factor of incalculable historical
Jvwjportance.

f/'~' And, on the other hand, the Socialist party, eiyoying
traditional influence, which does not render itself an account
of what is going on around it, which does not understand the

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 19

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 parlia-
mentarism. Only a few years ago, we repeat, Kautsky seemed
to understand the real inner meaning of the problem of revo-
lution. "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 char-
acter, 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 ; tha 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 !"

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat

< tT% yrARX and Engels hammered out the idea of the dictator-
IVl ship of the proletariat, which Engels stubbornly de-
fended 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

Jt 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 con-
siderable 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

20

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 21

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 ofl a revolutionary dictatorship,
Kautsky transforms the question of the conquest of power
by the proletariat into a question of the conquest of a majori-
ty of votes by the Social-Democratic Party in one of the
electoral campaigns of the future^ Universal suffrage, accord-*
ing to the legal fiction of parliamentarism, expresses the
will of the citizens of all classes in the nation, and, consequent-
ly, 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 re- ''
presents 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. Ifj
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 Ameri-
can 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 elec-
tions, 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 mere-
ly 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.

22 _ Dictatorship vs. Democracy

In 189 1, 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 defini-
tion. 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.

<5^^ho 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. Kautslcy
apparently thinks that this can be achieved by tearful pam-
phlets. 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,
sj It is only possible to safeguard the supremacy of the

j 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 under-
mine it by conspiracies, sabotage, insurrections, or the calling
Jn of foreign troops. The bourgeoisie, hurled from power,
>;' must be forced to obey. In what way? The priests used to
j 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 In^jjisition, and with the scorpions of the demo-
Vcratic State, fls it possible that Kautsky is leaning to the
idea that the iJOurgeoisie can be held down with the help
of the categorical imperativfel which in his last writings plays
I A the part of the Holy GhosfTpWe, on our part, can only promise
I Thim our material assistance if he decides to equip a Kantian-
I J humanitarian mission to the realms of Denikin and Kolchak.
' At all events, there he would have the possibility of convincing

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 23

himself that the counter-revolutionaries are not naturally
devoid of character, and that, thanks to their six years' exist-
ence 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., re-
pudiates measures of suppression and intimidation towards '
determined and armed counter-revolution, must reject all ideal
of the political supremacy of the working class and its revo- 1
lutionary dictatorship. The man who repudiates the dictator-
ship 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 Bemsteinism.

"The revolution of 1789," writes Kaustky, "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.)* Let us admit this,
though to do so we have to forget the June days of 1848
and tfie horrors of the suppression of the Commune. Let us
admit that the great revolution of the eighteenth century,

* Translator's Note— For convenience sake, the references throngh-
nnt have been altered to fall in the English translation of Kautsky's
book Mr Kerridge's translation, however, has not been adhered to.

24 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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 stand-
point, 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 democractic way — by means
of revolutionary terrorism — for milder manners in our revolu-
tion. The ethical mandarin, Kautsky, ought to take these
circumstances into account, and accuse our forefathers,
not us.

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 prole-
tariat, 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 theore-
ticians. 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-reform-
ist view of the general strike. We might point out to him
that, in the pages of its own journal, the Neue Ze'it, it was
explained twelve years ago that the general strike is only
^a mobilization of the proletariat and its setting up against

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 25

its enemy, the State ; but that the strike in itself cannot produce |
the solution of the problem, because it exhausts the forces I
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 generak
strike produces the mobilization of both sides, and gives the \
first serious estimate of the powers of resistance of the counter- 1
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 1
for power. But that it will have to pay with blood, that, in/
the struggle for the conquest of power and for its consolida- 1
tion, the proletariat will have not only to be killed, but also
to kill — of thii^ 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 democractic 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 democractic con-
ditions guaranteed the gradual and imperceptibl^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 contradic-
tions of capitalist society grew deeper, and that this process

26 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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 revolution-
ary insurrection of the proletariat, and by the regime of its
pdictatorship. But it was clear to all that the number of
\ victims will vary with the strength of resistance of the proper-
Itied classes. If Kautsky desires to say in his book that a
aemocractic 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,
I brought about a degradation of morals and accustomed men
1 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
iscight.

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 faci that,
at the time when Marxism was the dominating Socialist teach-
ing, 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,

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 27

forsooth, a painless transition to a new and "wiser" order.
This is the most vulgar liberalism, a belated piece of rational-
ism 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
v.-hole working-class movement, the proletariat of the whole
v^orld, and with it the whole of htmian 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, dissolv-
ing 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 nightcap not only
over one's eyes, but over one's nose and ears, to be able to-day,
a<^ter 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
w in contrast to us, the profundity, the loyalty, the peace-
f ,lness and the sobriety of the Second International, the
heritage of which we are still liquidating.

3

Democracy
" either democracy, or civil war "

sj^JV'AUTSKY has a clear and solitary path to salvation:
ISl. 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
the 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 enumerat-
ed 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 §nufifbox.

"There exist only two possibilties," 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. "Un-
questionably," 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

28

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 29

partners agree? It is doubtful. If the rubber is not favor-
able 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 dictator-
ship of NoskeT of prepariri|T tVip_A»faY for the dictatorship of
J-^udMidbaiff. 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 + ith) 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 pro-N
blem 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." (Kautslqr 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 worldly

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 educa-
tion 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 Organ-
izations of Social-Democracy to deceive the proletariat and
draw it into the whirl-pool. So that, taken as they standi)
the methods of democracy, in spite of the incontestable bene-'

y.

30 Dictatorship vs. Demockacy

fits which they afford at a certain period, displayed an extreme-
ly limited power of action; with the result that two genera-
tions of the proletariat, educated under conditions of democ-
racy, by no means guaranteed the necessary political prepara-
tion for judging accurately an event like the world imperialist
war. That experience gives us no reasons for affirming that,
tf the war had broken out ten or fifteen years later, the
''''^proletariat would have been more prepared for it. The bour-
. geois democratic state not only creates more favorable con-
ditions for the political education of the workers, as compared
with absolutism, but also sets a limit to that development
i in the shape of bourgeois legality, which skilfully accumulates
I and builds on the upper strata of the proletariat opportunist
Vhabits 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 re-
quired. 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 prole-
tariat," he writes, "and in its participation in politics, was the
characteristic of Proudhonism. To-day there arises a simi-
lar ( ! !) 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
btazen 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 produc-

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 31

tion 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 democ- "^
racy 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 com-
pared us with the opponents of the Proudhonists, the Blan-\
quists, who understood the meaning of a revolutionary govern- <.
ment, but did not superstitiously make the question of seizingl
it depend on the formal signs of democracy. , But in ordef .
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 in-
valuable 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
cf 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
v/hen one has lost all traces of theoretical honesty and historical
understanding.

THE IMPERIALIST TRANSFORMATION OF DEMOCRACY

It is not for nothing that the v/ord "democracy" has a
double meaning in the political vocabulary. On the one hand, i
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. J)emocracy as a polit-

32 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

' ical system is the more perfect and unshakable the greater
is the part played in the life of the country by the inter-
mediate 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 democ-
lacy of the farmers. In the small Helvetian Republic, the
lower middle classes of the towns and the rich peasantry con-
stituted the basis of the conservative democracy of the united
cantpns.

/'■""^Bom of the struggle of the Third Estate against the
powers of feudalism, the democratic State very soon becomes
ilhe 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
,j class, the greater is the importance of the latter in the eco-
\ nomic life of the country, and the less advanced, consequent-
jly, 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 dis-
appearance 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
1 elements in the town, and especially in the country, still main-
/ tain 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 pro-
duction: 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.
Y Correspondingly, falls their social, political, and cultural im-
|^4)ortance. Historical development has been relying more and
i more, not on these conservative elements inherited from the
; past, but on the polar classes of society — i. e., the capitalist
I bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

i

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 33

The more the middle classes lost their social importanceTs
the less they proved capable of playing the part of an autho-
ritative 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, con-
tinues to find direct expression in the electoral statistics of
parliamentarism. The formal equality of all citizens as elec-
tors thereby only gives more open indication of the incapacity
of democratic parlialmentarism 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 peas-
ant 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 I
support for the most reactionary, filibustering, and mercenary /■
parties which, in the long run, always supported capital against)
labor. ___^

Absolutely contrary to all the prophecjgs of BernsteinT]
Sombart, Tugan-Baranovsky, and other^^e continued ex- j
.istence of the middle classes has not smtened, but has ren-
dered to the last degree acute, the revolutionary crisis of
bourgeois society. If the proletarization of the lower niiddld
classes and the peasantry had been proceeding in a chemically
purified form, the peaceful conquest of power by the pro-
letariat through the democratic parliamentary apparatus would
have been much more probable than we can imagine at pres-
ent 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 capi-
talism has undermined its essential foundations. Occupymg
in parliamentary politics a place which it has lost in produc-
tion the middle class has finally compromised parliamentar-
ism ' and has transformed it into an institution of confused
chatter and legislative obstruction. From this fact alone, there
Prew up before the proletariat the problem of seizing the
fpparatus of state power as such, mdependently of the middle
dass and even against it-not aga nst its interests, but against I
its stupidity and its policy, impossible to follow in its helplessy

'""'"Imperialism," wrote Marx of the Empire of Napoleon

34 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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 enslave-
ment of labor by capital." This definition has a wider sig-
nificance than for the French Empiie 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 mon-
archy 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 his-
tory, of the mobilization of all state forms, systems of govern-
ment, 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 de-
velopment during the last decades, and continued to maintain
a traditional attitude towards ideas of democracy and univer-
sal suffrage, began to feel during the war that their accus-
tomed ideas had become fraught with some new meaning.
Absolutism, parliamentary monarchy, democracy — in the pres-
ence of imperialism (and, consequently, in the presence of the
revolution rising to take its place), all the state forms of bour-
geois 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, includin<T parliamentarism,
xirrespective of the electoral arithmetic of voting, to subordin-
late for its own purposes at the critical moment the lower

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 3;

middle classes of the towns and country and even the upper I
layers of the proletariat. The national idea, under the watch-V
word of which the Third Estate rose to power, found in the
imperialist war its re-birth in the watchword of national de-
fence. With unexpected clearness, national ideology flamed
up for the last time at the expense of class ideology. ,Thq
collapse of imperialist illusions, not only amongst the van-
quished, but — after a certain delay — amongst the victorious j
also, finally laid low what was once national democracy, and,
with it, its main weapon, the democratic parliament.' The
fiabbiness, 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 pros-
tration. Under such conditions, what pitiful nonsense are
speeches about the peaceful conquest of power by the pro-
letariat by means of democratic parliamentarism!

The scheme of the political situation on a world scale
is quite clear. The bourgeoisie, vi^hich has brought the na-
tions, exhausted and bleeding to death, to the brink of de-
struction — particularly the victorious bourgeoisie — has dis-
played its complete inability to bring them out of their ter-
rible situation, and, thereby, its incompatibility with the
future development of humainty. All the intermediate poli-
tical 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 I
majority on the side of the party of the social revolution.
In other words, history has not transformed the nation into I
a debating society solemnly voting the transition to the,
social revolution by a majority of votes. On the contrary,'

36 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

i'the violent revolution has become a necessity precisely be-
I cause the imminent requirements of history are helpless to
I find a road through the apparatus of parliamentary democ-
racy.j The capitalist bourgeois calculates: "while I have
in my hands lands, factories, vi^orkshops, 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 re-
t main 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 op-
press, 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-con-
ductors. 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 indig-
nation without hurt therefrom for capitalism. I shall hold
the masses of the people, under cover of compulsory gen-
eral 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 back-
ward 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 nec-
essary weapons of mastery and terrorism remain in my
hands."

To this the revolutionary proletarian replies :. "Conse-
quently, the first condition of salvation is to tear the
yveapons of domination out of the hands of the bourgeoisie.
Clt is hopeless to think of a peaceful arrival to power while
1 the bourgeoisie retains in its hands all the apparatus of
l^Eower. 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 parliamen-
tary democracy. There is only one way : to seize power, taking
away from the bourgeoisie the material apparatus of gov-

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 37

eminent. 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 mean-
ing of Socialist production. Then even the most backward,
the most ignorant, or most terrorized sections of the na-
tion 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 So-
cial-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
leality, it was only the inevitable outcome of the new po-
sition 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 wit-
ness 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. • r ,

The principles of democracy— the sovereignty of the
people, universal and equal suffrage, personal liberties—ap-
pear as presented to him, in a halo of moral duty They
are turned from their historical meaning and presented as un-
alterable and sacred things-in-themselves. _ This metaphysical
fall from grace is not accidental. It is mstructive that the
late Plekhanov, a merciless enemy of Kantisni at the best
period of his activity, attempted at the end of his life, when
fhe wave of patriotism had washed over him, to clutch at the
straw of the categorical imperative.

38 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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 cap-
able 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 help-
lessness, reactionary malice, and degraded solicitations, is con-
fronted by Kautslcy with a different, real, true National As-
sembly, which possesses all virtues — excepting the small vir-
tue of reality.

The doctrine of formal democracy is not scientific Social-
ism, but the theory of so-called natural law. The essence of
the latter consists in the recognition of eternal and unchang-
ing standards of law, which among different peoples and at
different periods find a different, more or less limited and dis-
torted 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 legis-
lation, and the other "artificial" products of feudal positive
law. The theoreticians of the, as yet, weak Third Estate ex-
pressed 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 ab-
solute ; 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
dempcracy had a progressive character. As time went on,
however, the metaphysics of natural law (the theory of for-
mal democracy) began to show its reactionary side — the es-
tablishment of an ideal standard to control the real demands
J, of the laboring masses and the revolutionary parties.
/^ If we look back to the historical sequence of world con-
jcepts, 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 equal-
ity of all men before the heavenly tribunal. In reality, the
slave remained a slave, and obedience became for him a re-

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 39

ligious duty. In the teaching of Christianity, the slave found
an expression for his own ignorant protest against his de-
graded 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: — "Al-
though you are like a pack-horse, yet your immortal soul has
in store for it an eternal reward." Here is the voice of con-
solation. These two notes were found in historical Christianity
in different proportions at different periods and amongst dif-
ferent classes. But as a whole, Christianity, like all other re-"\
ligions, became a method of deadening the consciousness of thej
oppressed masses.

Natural law, which developed into the theory of democ-
racy, said to the worker: "all men are equal before the law,
independently of their origin, their property, and their posi-
tion ; every man has an equal right in determining the fate of
the people." This ideal criterion revolutionized the conscious-
ness of the masses in so far as it was a condemnation of ab-
solutism, aristocratic privileges, and the property qualifica-
tion. But the longer it went on, the more it sent the conscious-
ness 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 oflf, and wanders through society like an under-
ground mole, plays his part, however, as a trustee of the na-
tion's sovereignty, and is equal to Rothschild in the courts and
at the elections. In the real conditions of life, in the economicX
process in social relations, in their way of life, people became j
more and more unequal ; dazzling luxury was accumulated at ;
one pole poverty and hopelessness at the other. But in the \
sohere of the legal edifice of the State, these glaring contra- i
dictions disappeared, and there penetrated thither only un- ,
substantial legal shadows. The landlord the laborer the
rariitalist the proletarian, the minister, the bootblack— all are
equal as "citizens" and as "legislators." The mystic equality

40 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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 founda-
tions 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 work-
ing 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 instru-
ment of bourgeois society entirely adapted to the problems
(and requirements of the ruling classes; but as bourgeois so-
ciety lived by the labor of the proletariat and could not deny
it the legalization of a certain part of its class struggle with-
jout destroying itself, this gave the- Socialist Party the possi-
bility 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 strug-
le, was to create the conditions for real, economic, living
equality for mankind as members of a united human com-
monwealth. It was just for this reason that the theoreticians
of the proletariat Ead 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 trans-
formed into the convicts' chain with which each of you is
fastened to the chariot of capitalism."

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 41

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 it-
self 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 prac-
tice. But the path of Socialist ideas which is visible through
all deviations, and even betrayals, foreshadows no other out-
come 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 gov-
ernment 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 bourgeoi-
sie — and not even of the whole bourgeoisie, but only of cer-
tain 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 parlia-
mentary countries of Europe began with a limited franchise.
Everjrwhere 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 coun-
tries 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 i
political rights increases, and the number of elected rulers in-
creases, 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

42 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

day," writes Lafargue, "when the proletariat of Europe and
America seizes the State, it will have to organize a revolu-
tionary government, and govern society as a dictatorship,
until the bourgeoisie has disappeared as a class."

Kautsky in his time knew this Marxist estimate of parlia-
mentarism, and more than once repeated it himself, although
with no such Gallic sharpness and lucidity, ^he 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 utiliza-
tion 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 de-
caying 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 intelli-
gentsia, 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
I 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
' y the mobile arithmetic of parliamentarism.

Our party has never refused to lead the way for proletari-
an dictatorship through the gates of democracy, having clearly
summed up in its mind certain agitational and political ad-
vantages of such a "legalized" transition to the new regime.
Hence, our attempt to call the Constituent Assembly. The

I

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 43

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 Assemb'Jy
represented only the political reflection of the mental confu-
sion and indecision which reigned amidst the middle classes
in the town and country and amidst the more backward ele-
ments 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-Revolu-
tionaries 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 gen-
erals and the admirals. But the point is that the pulse of thej
internal relations of the revolution was beating not at all in |
time with the pulse of the development of its external rela-
tions. If our party had thrown all responsibility on to the [
objective formula of "the course of events" the development 1
of military operations might have forestalled us. German im-
perialism 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 goin,<r 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 difHcult to deduce the an-

44 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

swers 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 revolu-
tion, 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 for-
ward 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 convoca-
tion. 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 Rus-
sian land, who would come and settle everything. We ex-
plained to the masses that the Soviets, the revolutionary or-
ganizations 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 majoritv
proved in our favor, that body must dissolve itself and hand
ever the power to the Soviets — as later on the Petrograd Town
Council did, elected as it was on the basis of the most demo-
cratic electoral franchise. In my book on the October Revo-
lution, I tried to explain the reasons which made the Constit-
uent Assembly the out-of-date reflection of an epoch through
which the revolution had already passed. As we saw the or-
ganization of revolutionary power only in the Soviets, and as
the moment of the summoning of the Constituent Assembly the
Soviets were already the de facto power, the question was in-
evitably decided for us in the sense of the violent dissolution

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 45

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, confer-
ring a sanction upon the Soviet regime in its first days, con-
vincing for the middle-class elements, now, after two years
of victorious proletarian dictatorship and the complete col-
lapse 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 "peace-'
ful," stable development, was a rather crude method of dis-
covering the opinion of the country, and in the epoch of re-
volutionary storm completely lost its capacity to follow the
course of the struggle and the development of revolutionary I
consciousness, ^e Soviet regime, which is more closely.W
straightly, honestly bound up with the toiling majority of the I
people, does achieve meaning, not in statically reflecting a
majority, but in dynamically creating it. Having taken its J
stand on the path of revolutionary dictatorship, the working
class of Russia has thereby declared that it builds its policy
m 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 or-
ganization of revolutionary defence? The conditions of the

46 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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 As-
sembly, does Kautsky propose the stopping of the civil war for
the purpose of the elections? By whose decision? If he in-
tends 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 author-
ity than it does in ours. But to the extent that the civil war
between the Workers' and Peasants' Army and the inperialist
bands is still going on, the elections must of necessity be lim-
ited 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 conditipns,
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 popula-
tion 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 bour-
geois states, whose regime is founded on parliamentarism, con-
\sider it impossible to carry on elections to parliament in war-
jtime, 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

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 47

have to present to the notice of Kautsky that even the Rus-
sian Kautskians, the Mensheviks Hke Martov and Dan, do not
consider it possible to put forward at the present moment i
demand for a Constituent Assembly, postponing it to bettei
times in the future. Will there be any need of it then? Oi
this one may be permitted to doubt. When the civil war i;
over, the dictatorship of the working class will disclose al
its creative energy, and will, in practice, show the most back-
ward masses what it can give them. By means of a system-
atically applied universal labor service, and a centralized organ-
ization of distribution, the whole population of the country
will be dravra into the general Soviet system of economic ar-
rangement 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 "consti-
tuted" befoi'e it and without it. *

* 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. "Eussia
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 Con-
stituent 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 ijo
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 parlia-
mentary 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 Bed Army.

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 ter-
rorism. 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 Bolshe-
viks in Russia first stepped on to this path, and were, conse-
quently, 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 at-
tacked 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 theo-
retical 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 modem

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 49

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 becolme on the other side.

In the seventeenth century England carried out two revo-
lutions. 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 Re-
bellion," the active force was the people; while in the second
it was almost "silent." Hence, it follows that, in surround-^
ings 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 ex-^
ploiters are offended at this. But the great event in modern
"bourgeois" history is, none the less, not the "Glorious Revo-
lution," but the "Great Rebellion."

The greatest event in modern history after the Reforma-
tion 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 justi-
fication after the event no one is either helped or hindered.
The Kautskies of the end of the eighteenth century (the lead-
ers of the French Girondists) saw in the Jacobins the person-
ification of evil. Here is a comparison, sufi&cieritly 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 Montag-
nards desired a despotic and terrorist republic. Both stood
for the supreme power of the people; but the Girondist justly

50 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

understood all by the people, while the Montagnards con-
sidered 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 circum-
stances. 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 Cen-
tenary of the Great Revolution," pages 6-7).

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 51

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. Al-
though the question was not the abolition of property al
together, but only of the abolition of property in negroes
nevertheless, the institutions of democracy proved absoluteh
powerless to decide the argument in a peaceful way. Tb
southern states, defeated at the presidential elections in i860
decided by all possible means to regain the influence they haa
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 wilJi the slave-holding South, in spite of Habeas
Corpus. The question of the lawfulness or the imlawfulness
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 ques-
tion," 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 pop-
ulation of Baltimore so great, that not only the Government
but the people of the United States also supported the most
energetic measures." *

Some goods that the rebellious South required were se-
cretly 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 re-
solution 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 meas-
ures The Republican Party had a decided majority in the

* (The History of the American War, by Fletcher, Lieut.-Colonel
in the Scots Guards, St. Petersburg, 1867, page 95.)

52 Dictatorship vs. Demociiacy

North, and persons suspected of secessionism, i.e., of sympa-
thizing 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 re-
volting slave-owners and smashed their printing presses. It
occasionally happened that reactionary publishers were smear-
ed 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 cate-
gorical imperative of Kautsky suffered in the civil war of the
states a considerable blow. But this is not all. "The govern-
ment, 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 sac-
rifice to attain its end, that it not only did not regret its van-
inshed liberties, but scarcely even noticed their disappear-
ance." *

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 insuffi-
cient; as in all revolutions, the indifferent were forced to ex-
press 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) vigil-

* Fletcher's History of the American War, pages 162-164.

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 53

ance committees were formed, composed of all those who had
been distinguished by their extreme views in the electoral strug-
gle.... 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 or
which gin and whisky flowed judged their present and absent
fellow-citizens. The accused, even before having beer
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 at-
tempts 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 ex-
isted 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 de-
stroyed White Guards in order that they should not destroy
the workers. Consequently, our problem is not the destruc-
tion 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 tiie
dialectical secret of which was explained by old Hegel, with-
out reckoning other still more ancient sages.

The Commune could maintain itself and consolidate its
position only by a determined struggle with the Versaillese.

54 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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 destroyinjf the Versaillese at the

front and in the rear. If its rule had crossed the bounds

of Paris, in the provinces it w^ould 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 royal-

i ists could not allow freedom of speech to royalist agents in

Uhe rear.

Kautslcy, in spite of all the happenings in the world
to-day, completely fails to realize what war is in general,
and tiie 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 break-
ing 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 contradistiction 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, repres-
sion remains a necessary means of breaking the will of the op-
posing side.

f Even if, in one country or another, the dictatorship of the
1 proletariat grew up within the external framework of democ-
j racy, this would by no means avert the civil war. The ques-
/ tion 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 re-
ferences to the paragraphs of the constitution, but by the em-
ployment 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

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 55

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 fero-
cious 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-revolutior^ary op-
position of the Russian bourgeoisie.

"Such ferocity," he says, "could not be noticed in Novem-
ber, 1917, in Petrograd and Moscow, and still less more re-
cently in Budapest." (Page 149.) With such a happy formu-
lation of the question, revolutionary terrorism merely proves
to be a product of the bloodthirstiness of the Bolsheviks, who
simultaneously abandoned the traditions of the vegetarian an-
thropopithecus and the moral lessons of Kautsky.

The first conquest of power by the Soviets at the begin-
ning of November, 1917 (new style), was actually accom-
plished 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 trans-
ferred 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.

56 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

This can be shown from facts, both important and insignifi-
cant, day by day during the whole epoch of the Soviet revolu-
tion.

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 en-
tered 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 hun-
dred 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 re-
sources. 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 re-
sources 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

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 57

politicians, the diplomats, and the journalists of the Entente
have for two years on end been debating with complete frank-
ness the question of whether the financing of the civil war in
Russia is a sufficiently profitable enterprise. In such circum-
stances, 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 revo-
lutions on this sinful earth. But this historical sequence —
the most "natural" at the first glance, and, in any case, the
most beneficial for thfe Russian working class — found itself in-
fringed — 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 circimistance, after the first period
of confusion, that imparted desperation to the character of
the resistance of the classes which had ruled in Russia previ-
ously, and forced the Russian proletariat, in a moment of the
greatest peril, foreign attacks, and internal plots and insur-
rections, 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,

58 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

iust as "logically" it does not demand an armed insurrection.

/ What a profound commonplace ! But ^he revolution does re-
^l quire of the revolutionary class that if should attain its end

\ by all methods at its disposal — if necessary, by an armed ris-

\ing: 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 ex-
pediency. 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 dura-
tion. 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

Lterror 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. JVar, like revolution, is founded upon intimidation.
A victorious war, generally speaking, destroys only an in-
significant part of the conquered army, intimidating the re-
mainder 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 repre-
sents. 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

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 59

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 prole-
tariat. 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 I
warfare. This is particularly true of the Press. No govern- )
ment 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 sup-
porting 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 com-
municated' to the enemy. Such was the position of Paris

6o Dictatorship vs. Democracy

under the Commune." Such is the position of the Soviet
Republic during the two years of its existence.

Let us, however, Hsten 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
posses 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

I 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

I lie of the bourgeoisie and to achieve the class truth of the

I proletariat, irrespective of the fact that in both camps there

{are fanatics and liars.

"The Soviet Government," Kautsky thunders, "has de-
stroyed the sole remedy that might militate against corrup-
tion : 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 corrup-
tion! 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.

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 6i

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 govern-
ment whatsoever, at any time whatsoever.

We are fighting. We are fighting a life-and-death strug-
gle. 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 communica-
tions, 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 tend-
encies 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 organ-
ized 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 Hohenzollem, 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 govern-

62 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

ment were directly concerned in the last advance of Yudenich
against Petrograd. Such are these "tendencies" in the Soc-
ialist movement. Kautsky considers that one can be in a
state of open and civil w^ar 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 m^ans of persuasion and voting — that is, if there
were not behind their backs the Russian and foreign imperial-
igfs^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 circtmistances. ^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.)

TWhat is the meaning of the principle of the sacre4ness
of ntlman 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 insurrec-
tion 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 in-
violable, we must deny ourselves n_flt only the use of terror, not
.ralywar, but also revolution itselfA Kautsky simply does not
realize the counter-revolutionary-rneaning of the "principle"
^ which he attempts to force upon us. Elsewhere we shall
isee that Kautsky accuses us of concluding the Brest-Litovsk
jpeace: in his opinion we ought to have continued war. But
jwhat then becomes of the sacredness of human life? Does
ilife 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

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 63

at all ? Truly it is difficult to put forward ip. /^iir age a
principle more hypocritical and more stupid. [As long as^^
human labor power, and, consequently,, life kseff, remain
articles of sale 2ind purchase, of exploitation and robbery,
the principle of the "sacredness of human life" remains a
shameful lie, uttered with the object of keeping the oppressedy
slaves in their chains7\

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 them-
selves, 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 re-
store 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
"Chrisitian," patronize idealist philosophy, and are firmly con-
vinced that the individuality (their own) is an end-in-itself.
^ST^or us, we were never concerned with the Kantian-priestly
TiSS vegetarian-Quaker prattle about the "sacredness of human
life." We were revolutionaries in opposition, and have re-
mained revolutionaries in power. To make' the individuaTj
sacred we must destroy the social order which crucifieshim./
And this problem can only be solved by blood and iro^ J ^
— — There is another difference between the White Terror an3V^
the Red, which Kautsky to-day ignores, but which in the eyes U
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 lliey would not be able to bring
it to a halt. We relied on the fact that the proletariat is

64 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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 imperial-
ist methods of appropriation is destroying the economic struct-
I ure of the world and human culture generally. Nevertheless,
Hhe 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, ^'^e
-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 import-
ance of the very fact of the existence of the Soviet system
^lust also sanction the Red Terror, j 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 ac-
complished a great historical task by existing for two years
against the united capitalist world. But the Bolsheviks held

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 65

out not only by ideas, but by the sword. Kautsky's admission
is an involuntary sanctioning of the methods of the Red Ter-
ror, 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 in-
fluence 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 condi-
tion of unstable equilibrium," he wrote five years ago in our
German hook— 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 mon-
strous 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. ... ^ r

"If the most advanced workers were aware that lorce

66 . Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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 prac-
tice 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 con-
vict to the national cannon. Is it not obvious that these cir-
cumstances must create important alterations in the psychol-
ogy of the working class, radically curing it of that hypnosis
of legality which was created by the period of political stag-
nation? 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 bour-
geois legality. And the terrible economic necessity which will
arise during the course of this war, and particularly at its end,
win 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

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 67

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 re-
ceived the hardening of battle, and has become freed from all
external restraints: qualified soldiers, ready and able to de-
fend 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 econo-
mically would be beyond their capacity.

To this there must be added other circumstances working
in the same direction. The bourgeoisie of the conquered coun-
tries 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 explana-
tions, 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 be-
come inflated with arrogance, and is more than ever ready to
defend its social position with the help of the bestial method?
which guaranteed its victory. We have seen that the bourgeA
oisie is incapable of organizing the division of the booty
amonsst its own ranks without war and destruction. Can it,
without a fight, abandon its booty altogether? The experiencej
of the last five years leaves no doubt whatsoever on this

68 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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 dictator-
ship of the proletariat.

s

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 i8 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 supre-
macy. We cherished the memory of the Commune in
spite of tiie extremely limited character of its experience, the
immaturity of its participants, the confusion of its programme,
the lack of imity amongst its leaders, the indecision of their
plans, the hopeless panic of its executive organs, and the ter-
rifying 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 "artifically" prepared, but emerged unexpectedly, I
taking the revolutionaries by surprise — in contrast to the
November revolution, which was carefully prepared by our i
party. This is incontestable. Not daring clearly to formulate |
his profundly reactionary ideas, Kautsky does not say outright /

69

yo Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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
teimply overtaken by misfortune (the Bavarian philistine, Voll-
mar, once expressed his regret that the Communards had not
jgone 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 4he question may seem incred-
ible in its internal inconsistency. None the less, it follows
quite inevitably from the position of the Kautskian "Inde-
pendents," 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-pre-
pared 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 sup-
pressing their opponents, amongst them their proletarian op-
ponents.

"No one, on the other hand, was more surprised by the
insurrection of the Commune than the revolutionaries them-
selves, and for a considerable number amongst them the con-
flict was in the highest degree undesirable." (Page 56.)

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 71

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 i, 1871," writes Lavrov, in his very instruc-
tive 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 Com-
mune, 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 mose 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 tra-
ditions of the Commune will be expressed mainly in that ex-
traordinary surprise with which he will greet the proletarian
revolution in Germany as "a conflict in the highest degree un-
desirable." 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 entertamed by Thiers towards
Paris were entertained by Miliukov, who was openly supported
by Tseretelli and Chernov, towards Petrograd. All of them,
from Komilov 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 at-
tempting to impose its will upon the community. To over-

72 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

throw 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. Rod-
zianko 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 dis-
armed in July, 1917. It was partially re-armed during Kor-
nilov'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 peti-
tion 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 in-
variably guided by the point of view of the international revo-
lution. The defeat of the Commune led to the practical col-
lapse 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 acute-
ness of the situation in Paris. But Kautsky attempts to ex-
ploit Marx's advice as a proof of his condemnation of insur-

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 73

rection in general. Like all the mandarins of German Social]
Democracy, Kautsky sees in organization first and foremosti
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 revo-
lution took place after we had achieved a crushing majority
hi the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils of Petrograd, Moscow,
and all the industrial centres in the country, and had trans-
formed 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 de-
feat 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 Com-
mune 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 m the
face of bourgeois public opinion. Nor is this surprising. The
representatives of the National Guard were men m most cases
with a very modest revolutionary past. "Not one well-known
name " writes Lissagaray. "They were pettybourgeois shop-
keepers strangers to all but limited circles, and, m most cases,
strsmgers hitherto to politics." (Page 70.) , , ., ,

"The modest and, to some extent, fearful sense of terrible

74 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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 ']'].')

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 char-
acter, their statement would have acquired great weight. But
\ this did not take place. In reality, their sentimental humane-
j ness was sirnply 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
f shooting conspirators and spies. When one considered the
I 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 gen-
erals.

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

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 75

strive to organize the possibility for a swift and decisive vic-
tory, and then to act v^^ith 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 tlie dynamics of
revolution, and the internal limitations of its swiftly-develop-
ing 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 revo-
lution. The workers pursue the offensive only under the pres-
sure 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 1 87 1 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 m 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,

76 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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 Com-
mittee was apopinted "to cut off the heads of traitors" (Jour-
nal 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 Com-
munard or sympathizer with the Commune shot by the Ver-
saillese, 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 re-
volution in the shape of institutions, Paris, as the community
of the emancipated working-class proletariat, demanded revolu-
tionary — 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

Dictatorship vs. Democracy "jy

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 sense-
less from the point of view of the revolutionary party. Theore-
tically, 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. Fmal-
ly, leading the proletariat out to the field and thereby tempora-
rily weakening Paris, it was essential to obtain some guarantee
against the possibility of counter-revolutionary attempts m
the capital; for Thiers would not have hesitated at any
measures to raise a white revolt in the rear of the Commun-
ards 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 Pans
was full, 'who only yesterday had been noting around the

78 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

Exchange and the Vendome Square, who had their represent-
atives 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 care-
lesgness, 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 recon-
sciled 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.
J 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 Commime. Kautsky, in his own words,
"does not understand" this opinion of Marx. It is quite
I simple. Marx at any rate understod that the problem was
i 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 ^nd did not
recognize that they had the right immediately to lead the

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 79

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 overV
power as soon as possible to a "legal" Government was dictat-
ed, not so much by the superstitions of former democracy,
of which, by the way, there was no lack, as by fear of re- I
sponsibiHty. Under the plea that it was a temporary institu-
tion, 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 danger-
ous, particularly under military conditions^

On May 3 the Central Committee sent deputies to the
Commune demanding that the Ministry for War should be
placed imder 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 ad-
ministration 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 irre-
sponsible 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 revolutionarj^
decision, there existed a division of power, and, as a result, \
there came swift and terrible destruction. But to counter-'

8o Dictatorship vs. Democracy

balance this — is it not comforting? — there was no infringement
of the "principle" of democracy.

THE DEMOCRATIC COMMUNE AND THE REVOLUTIONARY
DICTATORSHIP

V 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
i leading political party — the Blanquists — was the expression
j of the dictatorship of the revolutionary city over the country. j
\ So it was in the great French Revolution ; so it would have been
i 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
I 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 Com-
mune 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

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 8i

a Commune (Town Council) on the basis of the most "demo-
cratic" 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 imiversal 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 tiie Soviet regime — has upon itself
the seal of a formal "democratic" benediction in no way
less than the Paris Commune. *

"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 con-
demned 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 develop-
ment 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

*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 tho
boycott of the election on the part of all parties except ourselves and
the Left Social Eevolutionaries, 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.

82 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

the overthrow of the Soviet Government, boycotted the elec-
tions, 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 — Conserva-
tives, Liberals, Gambettists^ — found no place in it.

"Nearly all these individuals," says Lavrov, "either imme-
diately 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 Commime, 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 Revo-
lutionary 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 re-
mained 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 dejnoc-
racy.

"We must rise above our enemies by. moral force ..."
preached Vermorel. "We must not infringe liberty and in-
dividual life ..." Striving to avoid fratricidal war, Vermorel
called upon the liberal bourgeoisie, whom hitherto he had so

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 83

mercilessly exposed, to set up "a lawful Government, re-
cognized 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 under-
stood excellently with what its sucess 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 popula-
tion is concerned," writes Arthur Arnould, a member of
the Commvme, "it was to a certain extent justified in the
belief in the existence of, at the very least, a hidden agree-
ment 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 parlia-
mentarism expressed only the compromizing helplessness of
the leading groups, was the senseless procedure of the supple-
mentary elections to the Commune of April 6. At this moment,
"it was no longer a question of voting," writes Arthur Ar-
nould. "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 fore-
most detachments The people attributed no importance

84 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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 airn, 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 ad-
ministration."

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.

■4/ / The Commune was the living negation of formal democ-
"^racy, for in its development it signified the dictatorship of
(working class Paris over the peasant country. It is this fact
Tthat dominates all the rest. However much the political
doctrinaires, in the midst of the Commune itself, clung to the
appearances of democractic legality, every action of the Com-
mune, 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

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 85

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 Na-
tional Assembly. Unfortunately it did not succeed in doing
so. To-day Kautsky seeks to discover for its criminal inten-
tions some mitigating circumstances.

He points out that the Communards had as their op-
ponents 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 Galifet 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 revo-
lutionary 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 elec-
tions.

The purely vassal-like dependence of the S.R.s and Men-
shevik majority on the Cadet minority itself represented a
very thinly-veiled insult to the idea of "democracy." But this
is not all.

86 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

In all districts of the country where the regime of "democ-
racy" 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 monar-
chist Skoropadsky. So it was in the Kuban, where the demo-
cratic 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-Revolution-
ary 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 be-
ing consolidated the supremacy of the landlords, the capital-
ists, and the foreign militarists.

THE PARIS WORKER OF 187I AND THE PETROGRAD
PROLETARIAN OF I917

One of the most coarse, unfounded, and politically dis-
graceful comparisons which Kautsky makes between the Com-
mune 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 frpm
the praises of the present Kautsky. None the less, the Petro-
grad 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 col-

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 87

lective heroism and self-sacrifice, amidst unprecedented tor-
tures 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 at-
tractive than the living. ^

The Petrograd proletariat seized power four and a half ]
decades after the Parisian. This period has told enormously /
m 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 sys-
tem.

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 J
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, i
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 magni-
tude. In spite of the splendid fighting qualities of the Paris
workers, the military fate of the Commune was at once de-
termined 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 ;
tKe number of those who actually went into battle, especially

88 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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
towards and deserters — although, of course, there was no lack

Iof 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 ex-
pression 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 care-
lessness soon killed any discipline. Courageous men soon de-
termined 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 Com-
mune 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, be-
ing 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 un-

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 89

necessary 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 prob-
lem the conquest of power. Independently of whether civil
war, "generally," belongs to the inevitable attributes of revo-
lution, "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 I
will not admit the workers to supremacy. In that case there j
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 Com-
mune. 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 help-
lessness — ^but the continuation of its work. The Commune

go Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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 ven-
geance 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 con-
solidated in the process of the open struggle, as the organiza-
tion of the laboring masses, would have become the organiza-
tion 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, de-
claiming 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 Tolstoyj . . 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

91

92 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

features drawn from the degenerate imagination of the vic-
torious bourgeoisie, Marx should emphasize and underline
those features of tenderness and nobility which not infre-
quently were merely the reverse side of indecision. JVlarx
•J 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 Com-
mune 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 Com-

mittee — 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 re-
proach, j 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, accord-
; ing 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
i 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 fore-
most 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 Com-
munist, 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 concen-
trated contempt he speaks about the "artificial atmosphere of
parliamentarism" in which physical and spiritual dwarfs like

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 93

Thiers se^m giants! The Civil War, after the barren and
pedantic pamhlet of Kautsky, acts Uke a storm that clears the
air.

In spite of Kautsky's slanders, Marx had nothing in com-
mon 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 gov-
ernment in the epoch in which the bourgeoisie has already \
lost the possibility of governing the people, while the work- 1
ing class has not yet acquired it." In this way, not democracy,!
but Bonapartism, appears in Marx's eyes as the final form oft
bourgeois power. Learned men may say that Marx was mis-j
taken, 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 es-
sence. 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 dicta-
torship of Paris, without the permission of the general democ-
racy 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

94 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

than one of the episodes of that revolution, the true embodi-
ment 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."

j'Marx, consequently, sees the problem of revolutionary Paris,

I not in appealing from its victory to the frail will of the Con-

\stituent Assembly, but in covering the whole of France with

a centralized organization of Communes, built up not on the

j external principles of democracy but on the genuine self-gov-

i^emment 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

i 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-gov-

Jemment, and within certain limits may present the same ad-

jvantages as in the realm of trade union organization.

The Philistines of democracy are indignant at the in-
equality in representation of the workers and peasants which,
in the Soviet Constitution, reflects the difference in the revo-
lutionary 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 dis-
1 tricts, and there to secure to them, in the workmen of the
towns, the natural guardians of their interests." The ques-

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 95

tion was not one of making the peasant equal to the worker A
on paper, but of spiritually raising the peasant to the level of \
the worker. All questions of the proletarian State Marx de- /
cides 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 be-
tween the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. In the indeter-
minate 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 govern-
ment 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, xmder which there could be accomplished the
economic emancipation of labor." The secret of the Com-
mune 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 coimection with the repressive measures of the Commune
in the following words : — "Not satisfied with their open wag-
ing 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 be-
traying its trust, have observed the customary forms of liber-
alism, just as if profound peace reigned around it? Had the
government of the Copimune 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 Commtme at Versailles." In this

96 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

way, what Kautsky demands in the name of the sacred
foundations of democracy Marx brands as a shameful be-
trayal of trust.

Concerning the destruction of which the Commune is ac-
cused, and of which now the Soviet Government is accused,
Marx speaks as of "an inevitable and comparatively insig-
nificant 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 op-
pressors of the world, the "only just war in history."

Kautsky yet again tears his hair because the Soviet Gov-
ernment, 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 he 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 con-
siderable 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

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 97

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 com-
pany 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 commonplaces, their characteristic
nonsense, with the profound tone of oracles of scientific im-
maculateness."

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 wei'e thus flung' upon the
Russian proletariat have prepared, hastened, and to a con-
siderable 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 prole-
tariat." (Page 177.)

For Kautsky's purpose, it is not sufEcient to fling mud at
the Bolsheviks as a political party before the eyes of his read-
ers. Knowing that Bolshevism has become amalgamated with

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 99

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 circum-
stances 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
legard 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 cl^ss.
That class has no intelligence, no stability, no ideals, no stead-
fastness, 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 \vorking
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 de-
scribed 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 labor, and even of establishing "unpaid" guard
duties — not of one worker for the space of one night, but of

ICX5 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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 approach-
ing Tula and Moscow, when Yudenich was threatening Petro-
grad. 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 191 7, 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

Dictatorship vs. Democracy ioi

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 efifect 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 quali-
ties necessary to drive a locomotive before deciding to set it
going. Similarly the proletariat ought beforehand to have
required those necessary qualities which make it capable of
administering industry, once it had to take it over." (Page

I73-)

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
fotuidations 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 learn-
ing 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.

102 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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 adminis-
.- tration such artificial conditions cannot be created. The bour-

/ geoisie does not build for the proletariat academies of State
administration, and does not place at its disposal, for prelimi-

Vnary 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 trans-
forms the disorganization of production into a method of

1 political struggle, with the object of restoring power to itself,
{ the proletariat is obliged to resort to Socialization, independent-
\ly 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 Sareiey, in
accordance with his choice and instructions, to requisition

Dictatorship- vs. Democracy 103

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 t Published by Dr.
Nath. Wintch-Malejefl. Lausanne, 1919. Page 10.)

Without having the least doubt of the forged character
of this document and the lying nature of the whole communica-
tion, 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: —

(i) In the Briansk County there is absolutely no village
b)' 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 divi-
sion 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 forernost 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 Zinovieflf showed me a number of a Swedish paper
(Svenska Dagbladet) of J^ovember 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 (obliterat-
ed) girls aged from 16 to 36 at his pleasure. — Glavkom Ivash-

CHEFF."

104 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

This document is even more stupid and impudent that
that quoted by Kautsky. The town of Ekaterinodar — the
Centre of the Kuban — was, as is well known, for only a very
fhort time in the hands of the Soviet Government. Apparently
Ihe 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 Ivashche'ff"
socialized the Ekaterinodar women during the reign of Deni-
kin'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 docu-
ment 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 "Kara-
seiev" sound absolutely non-Russia. The ending "eiev" in
Russian names is found rarely, and only in definite combina-
tions. 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 organiza-
tions." (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

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 105

"more primitive" than parliamentarism. But the artificial comA
plexity of the latter embraces only the upper strata, insignifi- |
cant in their size. On the other hand, revolution is only possi- I
ble 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
tlieir 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 pro-
gramme, 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 tiie 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 alPj
professions, of all stages of cultural development, all stages I
of political consciousness — and thereby objectively is forcedj
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 pro-
letarian 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" (Kautslgr), and all the stupidity of the attempt to

V

io6 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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 revo-
lution, 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 virhich constitutes their
greatest merit. "The demarcation of the bourgeois from the
Vvorker," 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 are absolutely irreplace-
able 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 work-
shops 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 staflfs of employees,
to a considerable extent from the ranks of the bourgeoisie

Dictatorship, vs. Democracy 107

and the bourgeois educated classes. To the extent that they
become disciplined under the Soviet regime, they find re-
presentation 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 sociaI\
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 oi
preparation for the revolution, the Soviets are the weapon oi
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 fimdamental questions. Further, our practice has led to
the result that, in all moot questions, generally — conflicts
between departments and personal conflicts within depart-
ments — 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. 'U^ether 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 tmder the ''
conditions of a victorious proletarian revolution is quite com-

io8 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

prehensible. 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 coali-
tions 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 imstable, wears
out all that is artificial; the contradictions glozed over in a
coalition are swiftly revealed under the pressure of revolu-
tionary 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 Op-
portunists. 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 pro-
fitable to have come to power later, after having afforded to
the Left Opportunists the possibility of compromising theta-
selves once and for all. It is quite another question as to how
far this was possible. In any case, a coalition with the Op-
portunists, 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 Com-
munists as by our disloyal companions. Apparently, such a
coalition, in which we were the stronger side and, therefore,

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 109

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 justi-
fied. 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 coali- ,
tion — cannot last long in an epoch in which situations alter
with extreme rapidity, and in which supreme unity in point )
cf view is necessary in order to render possible unity of /,
action.

We have more than once been accused of having sub-\
flituted for the dictatorship of the Soviets the dictatorship I
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 clarit^
of its theoretical vision and its strong revolutionary organiza-
tion 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 "sub-
stitution" 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 funda-
mental 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 Com-
munists 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 antago- '
risms assume an open character, and the political struggle
swiftfy 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

no Dictatorship vs. Democracy

Mensheviks and the S.R.s — and they have disappeared. This

jcriterion is sufficient for us. (At all events, our problem is

Nijnot at every given moment statistically to measure the group'

i'mg of tendencies; but to render victory for our tendency se-

/ cure. 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-examina-

'^tion^

1 he continuous "independence" of the trade union move-
ment, 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
ether 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 xmions, which
answers to the supremacy of the Communist Party in the
Soviets, and represents the political expression of the dictator-
^ship of the proletariat.

The trade unions become the direct organizers of social
production. They express not only the interests of the in-
dustrial 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

Dictatorship vs. Democracy hi

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. Theyi:
demand from the workers intensive labor under the mostl
difificult conditions, to the extent that the Labor State is not)
jet able to alter those conditions.

The unions become the apparatus of revolutionary re-
pression 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 tiie 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

2X6.)

Kautsky emmierates the external "contradictions" of our
peasant policy, not dreaming to inquire into its general direc-
tion, and into the internal contradictions visible in the econom-
ic and political situation of the country.

In the Russian peasantry as it entered the Soviet orderl
there were three elements: the poor, living to a considerable f
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 I
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

112 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

\poor represented the natural and undeniable allies of the
jtown proletariat, whilst the vulture class represented its just
las undeniable and irreconcilable enemies. The most hesita-
Ition was principally to be observed amongst the widest, the
middle section of the peasantry.

' Had not the country been so exhausted, and if the prole-
tariat had had the possibility of offering to the peasant masses
the necessary quantity of commodities and cultural require-
ments, the adaptation of the toiling majority of the peasantry
to the new regime would have taken place much less pain-
fully. 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
w^as 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 land-
lordism, 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

f village. But, in the unformed social conditions of the village,

[ the influential peasantry, accustomed to lead the middle peas-

, ants in its train, found scores of methods of passing on the

ifood tax from itself to the wide masses of the peasantry,

Ithereby placing them in a position of hostility and opposition

fo 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

Dictatorship vs. Democracy ti3

and file, of elements who in the last epoch were oppressed,
driven into a dark comer, 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 signifi-
cance. 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 Com-
mittees 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 shape-
less, 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,

114 Dictatorship vs. Democracy >

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,
bow 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
iin practice have no solution in books. What Kautsky calls
I 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
v/hat 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
cf 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

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 115

it at will "an economically reactionary eleiment"! Nor is
this all. Having poisoned the Soviet regime by its "reaction-
ary 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 peas-
antry 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 com and the peasant's horses. To carry
out their policy, the bourgeois governments — including the
Kautskian-Menshevik variety — made use of a purely bureau-
cractic 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 dis-
satisfaction, 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 nar-
rates 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

ii6 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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 dictator-
ship of the proletariat does just consist in "giving a hiding"
\ to the classes that were previously supreme, before forcing
i them to recognize the new order and to submit to it.

/^ The professional intelligentsia, brought up with a preju-
^ dice 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
I by accident ; and that the dictatorship of the proletariat is an
1 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 re-
sources 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 intelli-
gentsia, our bourgeois idealist sees the "consequence of a
policy which strove to attiact 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 intelligent-
sia 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 realiz-

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 117

ing 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
cf 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
v/as 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 yesterdav but the useful worker of to-dav — 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 ex-
perts 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, i
in the person of the less mature of its elements, at first to '
over-estimate its capacity for solving each and every problem,

1 18 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

' 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.

f "Democratization does not at all consist — as every

i Marxist learns in his A B C — in abolishing the meaning of

\ skilled forces, the meaning of persons possessing special

1 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 tech-
nical 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 yes-
terday 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 represen-
tatives. 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 class.

"The next step must consist in the self -limitation of the
collegiate principle, in a healthy and necessary act of self-

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 119

limitation by the working class, which knows where the de-
cisive 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 wtih certain knowl-
edge, 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 cap-
able, can work in his department when subordinate in his own
technical work to a board of men who do not know that de-
partment. Political, collegiate and Soviet control everywhere
and anywhere; but for the executive functions, we must ap-
point 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 inj
them, and harness it on to the new work. If, comrades, wej
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 wej
said that all the machines which hitherto had served to ex-|
ploit 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

120 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

in practice for them the principle of compulsory labor; at the
same time leaving them a wide margin of activity, and main-
taining over them careful political control." *

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 Deing
attained, even to this day. We must seek the reason in the
fact that during the first two years we were obliged to sac-
rifice the interests of industry and transport to the require-
ments 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. Quali-
fied 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 conclu-
sion, is tiie 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 import-
ant amongst them is the problem of the scientific organi.zation
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
Ion 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 demaids for peace — peace at any price.

* Labor, Discipline, and Order will save the Socialist Soviet Repnblic

(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.

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 121

a separate peace — without interesting themselves as to the in-
fluence this would have on the general international situation,
as to whether this would assist the victory and world domin-
ation 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
ixnperial 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 i
most strongly of all, not by the tired soldiers, but by the fore-/
most 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 reckon-
ing on the effect it would have on the international situation
is a belated echo of Cadet and Menshevik slanders. The com-
parison of us with the Germanophil nationalists of India and
Ireland seeks its justification in the fact that German imperi-
alism 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 im-
perialism? 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 ex-
tremely feeble energies, continued to wage war without openly
calling it such. We were too weak to organize war along the

122 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

whole RussO'German front. We maintained persistently the
fiction of peace, utilizing the fact that the chief German forces
i were drawn away to Ae 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 be-
havior 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 mo-
ment, 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,
j who at the decisive moment gave up the principal positions of
I 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 intei-national situ-
ation ! In reality, we had a much more profound criterion by
which to judge the international situation ; and it did not de-
ceive us. Already before the February Revolution the Rus-
sian 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

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 123

traisform 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
forenaost 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
out 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 repre-
sented for them a deadly danger. This is very strikingly
shown in LundendorfF's book. True, they could not risk any
longer coming out against us in an open crusade. But wher-
ever 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 Cen-
tral Russia, in Moscow, Count Mirbach from the very first
day of his arrival stood as the centre of counter-revolution-
ary plots against the Soviet Government — just as Comrade
Yoffe in Berlin was in the closest possible touch with the re-
volution. The Extreme Left group of the German revolu-
tionary 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 ex-
plained 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 ar-
rived in Berlin, and in various towns there were set up Rus-
sian consulates. This had the most painful consequences in

1^4 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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 dis-
armed in the face of the Entente — still more disarmed than
Germany is to-day. Whereas, thanks to the November Revo-
lution 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 Hohenzollem to assume
a position of world domination; on the contrary, by our No-
vember Revolution we did more than anyone else to prepare
his overthrow. At the same time, we gained a military breath-
ing-space, in the course of which we created a large and strong
army, the first army of the proletariat in historj', 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 Ger-
man armies. In the place of two mighty camps, more or less
neutralizing each other, there stood before us the victorious
Entene, at the summit of its world power, and there lay
broken Germany, whose Junker blackguards would have con-
sidered 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 de-
corate 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

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 125

policy, once tlie first months of existence of the Soviet Gov-
ernment 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 clea.rly that the very fact of the existence
of the Soviet Government is an event of the greatest revolu-
tionary 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 ad-
vance. We retreated like strikers amongst whom to-day
energies and resources have been exhausted, but who, clench-
ing their teeth, are preparing for a new struggle. If we were
not filled with an unconquerable belief in the world signifi-
cance 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 Kiihlmanns, but also by the
Kautskies of all countries. But we proved right in our esti-
mate, as of our weakness then, so of our strength in the
future. The existence of the Ebert Republic, with its uni-
versal suffrage, its parliamentary swindling, its "freedom" of
the Press, and its murder of labor leaders, is merely a nec-
cessary link in the historical chain of slavery and scoundrel-
ism. The existence of the Soviet Government is a fact of im-
measurable revolutionary significance. It was necessary to
retain it, utilizing the conflict of the capitalist nations, the as
yet unfinished imperialist war, the self-confident enffrontery of
the Hohenzollem bands, the thick-wittedness of the world-
bourgeoisie as far as the fundamental questions of the re-
volution 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.

126 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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* 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 Revolu-
tion, and the world capitalist reaction would have received a
respite for a number of years. When Kautsky says that, con-
cluding the Brest Peace, we did not think of its influence on
the fate of the German Revolution, he is uttering a dis-
graceful slander. We considered the question from all sides,
and our sole criterion was the interests of the international
revolution.

'' We came to the conclusion that those interests demanded

that the only Soviet Government in the world should be pre-

\ served. 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

* The Vienna Arbeiterzeitnn? opposes, as is fitting, the wise Bussian
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 Eevolution long ago
have been sealed? Trotsky bowed before the unalterable necessity
of signing the shameful treaty in anticipation of the German revolu-
tion." 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 Vienniese Kautskians.

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 127

Government was really extremely difficult — for the destrm-
tion of German militarism had given the Entente, it seemed,
the full possibihty 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 re-
volutionary Russia. To aid Scheidemann in his role of watch-
dog of the bourgeoisie, instead of the "programme" role as-
signed 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 v^rorld was directed against
our savagery and blood-thirstiness, later, when that argu-
ment, 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
pf industry; and so on, and so on.

/ Repeating and combining these accusations, Kautsky,
I with dull obstinacy, hides the real cause for our economic dis-
j organization: the imperialist slaughter, the civil war, and the
Vblockade.

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 indus-
try 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

128

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 129

civil_ war, were cut off from us. We were deprived of half
a milliard poods of coal imported from abroad. Simultane-
ously, 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., so-
cialization. An industry which is completely deprived of fuel
and raw materials — whether that industry belongs to a capi-
talist 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 cot-
ton. 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-Americaji-French blockade and the robber cam-
paigns 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 j
greater strain on our young industry than on the industry of J
more powerful capitalist countries. Our transport suffered/
particularly severely. The exploitation of the railways in-
creased considerably; the wear and tear correspondingly;
while repairs were reduced to a strict minimum. The inevi-
table hour of Nemesis was brought nearer by the fuel crisis.
Our almost simultaneous loss of the Ddnetz coal, foreign coal,
and the oil of the Caucasus, obliged us in the sphere of trans-
port 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 loco-
motives that are already worn out. We see, in consequence,
that the chief reasons for the collapse of transport preceded

130 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

Novenber, 191 7. 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
niethods.

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 un-
der Tsarism and continued under Kerensky, embracing ever
new and newer regions. Endless evacuations simultaneous
with the destruction of industry, of necessity meant the des-
truction 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 im-
portant 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 import-
ant 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 des-
truction of technieitl 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 — build-
ings, machines, rails, fuel, and raw material — suffer terrible
losses under the combined blows of the war and the revolu-
tion. Not less, if not more, did the chief factor of industry,
its living creative force — ^the proletariat — suffer. The prole-
tariat was consolidating the November revolution, building

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 131

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 revolu-
tion placed the chief burden of its sacrifices upon the prole-
tarian 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 re-
sources were given to the front.

In any case, the class struggle inflicts blows upon indus-
try. 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, trans-
port 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 Utopian-
ism of the Bolsheviks in order to explain the fall of our in-
dustry? 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 fulfiilling its duty: the Red Army is clothed, shod, equipped

132 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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 meth-
ods 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 Gov-
emnient. In the form of Menshevism, it constantly throws
obstacles in our way, opposing the practical measures of our
economic reconstruction by bourgeois prejudices and bureau-
cratic-intellectual scepticism.

To introduce the reader to the very essence of the ques-
tions 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 ques- •
tion, 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 Com-
munist 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 pos-
sible that the Polish bourgeoisie will hurl a challenge at its
fate. ... . But even in this case — we do not seek it — the war

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 133

will not demand of us that all-devouring concentration of
forces which the simultaneous struggle on four fronts im-
posed upon us. The frightful pressure of the war is becom-
ing 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 organ-
ization 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 over-
whelming 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 historcial arena, but on
the contrary will still play, for a considerable period, an ex-
tremely 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 eco-
nomic 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 econo-
mically, 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 to-
gether with the help of methods and measures invented by
mankind itself.

134 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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
V 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 insig-
nificant 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 sta-
tions. 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 re-
quire 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 de-

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 135

mand for taxes. The market offered the peasant manufac-
tured goods. To-day, we have none of this. The village has
acquired more land; there is not sufficient agricultural ma-
chinery; 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 neces-
sary for our economic problems is to introduce coml>ulsory
labo" service.

The very principle of compulsory labor service is for the\'
Communist quite unquestionable. "He who works not, neither 1
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 re-birth
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 ofits 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 \y
in the sphere of the registration, mobilization, formation, andi
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 f^
in that sphere there existed the principle of private property, \
and labor-power entered each factory separately from the 1
market. It is consequently natural that we should be obliged, y

136 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

at any rate during the first period, to make use of the apparatus
of the War Department on a large scale for labor mobiliza-
tions.

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 Com-
munications, the People's Commissariat for Food — work out
estimates of the labor-power they require. The Chief Com-
mittee 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 mobiliza-
tions. Within the boundaries of regions, provinces, and coun-
ties, 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 departamental 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 ot
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 in-

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 137

dustries 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 jupply, 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. Jn a word, we have to complete, ameliorate,i/
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 j
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 unthink-
able 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 m 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. Durmg these two

138 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

years we mobilized for the Red Army nearly as many soldiers
as there are members in our trade unions. But the memDers
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
difificult, whenever the recently-mobilized peasant mass did not
display sufHcient stability, we turned on the one hand to the
Central Committee of the Communist Party, and on the other
to the All-Russian Coimcil 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 mean-
ing of militarization in the workers' and peasants' State. The
'.militarization of labor has more than once been put forward
jas a watchword and realized in separate branches of economic
llife in the bourgeois countries, both in the West and in Russia
sunder Tsarism. But our militarization is distinguished from
Ithose experiments by its aims and methods, just as much as
jthe class-conscious proletariat organized for emancipation is
jdistinguished from the class-conscious bourgeoisie organized
ifor exploitation.

From the confusion, semi-unconscious and semi-deliberate,
of two different historical forms of militarization — the pro-
letarian 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 tiiese
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

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 139

is the exact phrase in the Menshevik resolution. This affirma-
tion brings us right up to the very essence of the question.
For, as we see, die question is not at all virhether it is wise
or unwise to proclaim this or that factory militarized, or
whether it is helpful or otherwise to give the military revolu-
tionary tribimal 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
tarnsitional epoch. For it is beyond question that to step
from bourgeois anarchy to Socialist economy without a re-
volutionary 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 1 brow-
ing 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 capitula-
tion, 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 con-

I40 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

ditions of the present day, the transition to Socialism cannot

bg. acomplished.

r'''^ Compulsory labor, we are told, is always unproductive.

I We ask what does compulsory labor mean here, that is, to

I what kind of labor is it opposed? Obviously, to free labor.

\ What are we to understand, in that case, by free labor? That

I 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 re-

l gulated 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 aparatus,
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
singje plan.

. — For the Liberal, freedom in the long run means the market.
/Can or canno*- the capitalist buy labor-power at a moderate
Iprice — that iis for him the sole measure of the freedom oi
jlabor. That measure is false, not only in relation to the
'future but also in connection with the past.

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 141

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 eco-
nomic life grew up out of definite conditions of production,
and created definite forms of social life, with which the peas-
ant grew accustomed, and which he at certain periods con-
sidered 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 ita material force,
thereby displaying the compulsory character of the organiza-
tion 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 sub-
mission 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 Russian is at
present being settled on the labor front; our economic,. and
together with them our professional and productive organiza-
tions, haA'e the right to demand from their members all that
devotion, discipline, and executive thoroughness, which hither-
to 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

142 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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 Social-
\] ism, 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 distribut-
ed 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 funda-
mental element.
\i If organized economic life is unthinkable without compul-

sory 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 sup-
plemented 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
i our constructive work would be doomed to failure. \For we
h can have no way to Socialism except by the authoritative re-
/ gulation of the economic forces and resources of the country,
j 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 aboli-
tion of the market, without the revolutionary dictatorship, and

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 143

without the militarization of labor.

Without general labor service, without the right to orderV
and demand fulfilment of orders, the trade unions will be \
transformed into a mere form without a reality; for the 1
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 himgry country, in conditions of terrible
disorganization of the transport and food apparatus... What
except the complete collapse of the working-class and com-
plete economic anarchy could be the result of the stupid
attempt to reconcile bourgeois freedom of labor with prole-
tarian socialization of the means of production? v^^

Consequently, comrades, militarization of labor, in the V
root sense indicated by me, is not the invention of invidual
politicians or an invention of our War Department, but re- j
presents the inevitable method of organization and disciplining |
of labor-power during the period of transition from capitalism J
to Socialism_j; 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 Men-

144 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

shevik argument against militarization leads us to the root
question of general labor service and its influence on the pro-
.•^ductivity of labor. It is true that compulsory labor is always
( unproductive? We have to reply that that is the most pitiful
1 and worthless Liberal prejudice. The whole question is : who
I applies the principle of compulsion, over whom, and for what
I 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 pro-
ductivity 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, mon-
strous perturbations, the impoverishment, dying out, and des-
truction of masses of the people. Can we, under such con-
ditions, 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 fol-
lowed 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
clo ck 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 compul-
sory 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
jcombination of social conditions, and is not in the least meas-
,ured or pre-determined by the legal form of labor.
'^ The whole of human history is the history of the organ-
ization and education of collective man for labor, with the ob-
ject of attaining a higher level of productivity. Man, as I

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 145

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. With-
out such a striving, there would have been no economic devel-
opment. The growth of civilization is measured by the pro-
ductivity of human labor, and each new form of social rela-
tions 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 organ-
ization 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 bourge-
oisie 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 fore-
head 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 I
moral influence, and, first of all, the teaching of the priest, j
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 anibi-
tion. Finally, the bourgeoisie learned how to gain possession

146 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

ev«n of the trade unions — i.e., the organizations of the work-
ing 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 scien-
tific organization of the process of production are combined
with the most concentrated methods of the system of sweat-

/ From all that has been said above, it is clear that the
'productivity of freely-hired labor is not something that ap-
\peared all at once, perfected, presented by history on a salver.
No, it was the result of a long and stubborn policy of repres-
sion, 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 power-
ful 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
I cannot be known. The legal superstructure of labor corres-
\ponds to the relations and current ideas of the epoch. The
productivity of labor is developed, on the basis of the devel-
opment of technical forces, by labor education, by the gradual
adaptation of the workers to the changed methods of produc-
tion 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 un-
changing 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. Who-
ever 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 thdn the bourgeoisie has — and, in

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 147

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 j
it was the labor of the majority in the interests of the mi-/
nority. 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 char-
acter of our labor organization. We need the fairy stories
neither of the priests, nor of the Liberals, nor of the Kauts-
kians. We say directly and openly to the masses that they
can save, rebuild, and bring to a flourishing condition a So-
cialist country only by means of hard work, imquestioning
discipline and exactness in execution on the part of every
worker.

The chief of our resources is moral influence — propa-
ganda 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 com-
pulsory 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
Arakeheyev. The militarization of labor by the will of the
workers themselves is the Socialist dictatorship. That com-
pulsory 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, unprecendented in the history
of humanity, of labor voluntarism in the form of "Subbot-
niks" (Communist Saturdays). Such a phenomenon there
never was before, anywhere or at any time. By their own
voltmtary 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.

J^S Dictatorship vs. Democracy

/^ The chief spiritual weapon of the bourgeoisie is religion;

[ ours is the open explanation to the masses of the exact posi-

\ tion of things, the extension of scientific and technical knowl-

\ edge, and the initiation of the masses into the general eco-

I nomic plan of the State, on the basis of which there must be

j brought to bear all the labor-power at the disposal of the

Soviet regime.

Political economy provided us with the principal sub-
stance of our agitation in the period we have just left: the
capitalist social order was a riddle, and we explained that rid-
dle to the masses. To-day, social riddles are explained to the
masses by the very mechanism of the Soviet order, which
V j draws the masses into all branches of adrninistration. Poli-
\ tical 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.

r' 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 shoud find the impulses
\for theoretical work of the brain, while the latter should
jagain 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 produc-
tion. 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

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 149

Soviet Republic the same publicity and fame as hitherto was'^
enjoyed by prominent agitators, revolutionary fighters, and, j
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 im-
portance 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. Out 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 guarantee-
ing 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 ex-
ploitation 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
Tight 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 commoii work, and seriously im-
pairing 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

ISO Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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 guaran-
tee of the necessary requirements of life rivalry will acquire
t 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 wilbsettle for you: the problem of increasing produc-
tion 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 pur-
poses, 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 theo-
letical 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

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 151

active fronts, especially in the winter, was difficult in conse-
quence of the disorder of railway transport. Such, for
example, proved the position of the Third Anny, 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 Coimcils 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 in-
evitable 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 appa-
ratus 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, institu-
tions, 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 sym-
pathizers — 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

152 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

specialists, who carried out important military fimctions 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, pro-
vince, 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, eco-
nomic, 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 work-
ing class, in the person of its Communist Party. The introduc-
tion 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 ap-
propriate 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 Abramo-
vich, again, announced at the Miners' Congress that we had

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 153

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 abso-
lutely 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 voltmtarism and State compul-
sion combined — allowed us to carry out mobilizations of mil-
lions 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

154 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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 com-
plete apparatus of administration side by side with an extreme-
ly insignificant number of military units. While we — owing
to military and not economic considerations — retained un-
touched the staff of the army and its administrative appa-
ratus, 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 composi-
tion 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

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 155

for legal and illegal reasons reached 50% and over* 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.

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 percen-
tage of those who participate directly in the material process
of production.

Finally, in connection with the producfivity of miKtary
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 discourag-
ing when one read 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 q)herc
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, bom in the plains, did not
know the forests, had never felled trees, had never chopped or
sawed them up. The provincial and county Timber Com-
mittees 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

* Since that time this percentage has been considerably lowered
(June, 1920).

156 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

wonderful that all tliis 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, acocrding 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 systematic-

jally increases, in the measure of the improvement of its condi-

Itions.

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 repre-
rsents an exclusively high level of productivity. This result
jwas achieved by moral influence, by the exact registration of
I 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 ex-
periment, 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-Ekaterin-
burg 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: "milita-

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 157

rism," "military organization," "the unproductiveness of com-
pulsory labor." We must approach the phenomena of the
new epoch without any prejudices, and widi eyes wide open;
and we must remember that Saturday exists for man, and not
vice versa ; that all forms of organization, including the milita-
ry, 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 con-
ditions — and thereby to preserve our industrial centres and
save the towns. This is the point of departure. If we doj
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
tiie 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 improve- \
ment of transport, or, in any case, the prevention of its further \
deterioration and the preparation of the most necessary sup-
plies 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

158 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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
Y the interests of transport and the storage of raw material
Vand 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 repair-
ing 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 t)T)es 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
" <Si personal or secondary significance on the widest possible
s^cale.

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

1 openly that our economic plan, with the maximum of exertion

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 150

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 c;f production.
Only after we have secured, though on the smallest prssiblel
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 second-
ary. Needless to say, under no circumstances are we strivings
for a narrow "national" Communism : the raising of the ]
blockade, and the European revolution all the more, would I
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 circum-
stances — ^that is to say, in face of the slowest conceivable de-
velopment 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

i6o Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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

i and broke up in its path an incalculable quantity of values, also

I 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 elecrification, in all the chief branches of industry
and in the sphere of personal consumption, without passing
through "the age of steam." The programme of electrifica-
tion 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 eco-
nomic 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 —

Dictatorship vs. Democracy i6i

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 direct^
ors instead of to a board is a crime against the working class |
and the Socialist revolution. It is remarkable that the most 1
zealous defenders of the Socialist revolution against the princi-
ple of one-man management are those same Mensheviks who '
quite recently still considered that the idea of a Socialist revo- '
lution 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 ad-
ministration 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 i
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 assist-
ance 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 administra-
tion, or control of administration, of those who are adminis-
tered. It is in such things that the independence of the work-

i62 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

ing class can be expressed. And if the working class, on the
foundation of its existence, comes though 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 im-
posed 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
jyith the question of boards of workers at the head of
^factories. The dictatorship of the proletariat is expressed in
jthe abolition of private property in the means of production, in
Ithe supremacy over the whole Soviet mechanism of the col-
lective will of the workers, and not at all in the form in
mhich individual economic enterprises are administered.

Here it is necessary to reply to another accusation direct-
ed against the defenders of the one-man principle. Our op-
ponents 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 eco-
nomic 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 back-
wards 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 tfiat if the civil
war had not plundered our economic organs of all that was
strongest, most independent, most endowed with initiative,

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 163

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 tiie apparatus of industrial ad-
ministration 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 admis-
tration, let him go to school, to the special courses of instruc-
tion: let him go as an assistant, watching and acquiring ex-
perience: 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
s^ 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 j
deprive them of the possibility of realizing their own defects. 1
Each looks to the others when decisions are being made, and j
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 busines.s 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]

164 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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 adminis-
tration, that is, in being educated; but this is attained in the
sphere of industry by the periodical report of the administrat-
ive body of a factory before the whole factory, and the dis-
cussion 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" in-
terests, not the laboring masses, but the more backward,
weaker, less fitted for independent work, section of the Soviet
labor bureaucracy. The foremost, intelligent, determined ad-
ministrator 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 com-
pany of another his own weakness will be unnoticed. In
such a collegiate principle there is a very dangerous founda-
tion — 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.

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 165

Variants and combinations are possible here. Where the
worker can rnanage 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 revolu- I
tionary 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 j
class. Then there is a younger generation which has con- 1
sciously been making the revolution, beginning with 1917.;
This is a very valuable section of the working class. Wher-/
ever we cast our eye — on Soviet construction, on the trade
imions, 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 year« 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 RussianA
peasant is the herd instinct, the absence of personality: in J
other words, the same quality that used to be extolled by our I
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

itb Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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

^han the collegiate principle.

CONCLUSION OF THE REPORT

Comrades, the arguments of the Menshevik orators, partic-
ularly of Abramovich, reflect first of all their complete de-
tachment 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 re-
pudiating 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

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 167

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. . .with-
out 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 ap-
proach 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 imder the capitalism, that is to say under the regime of
"free" labor, economic pressure is inseparable from legal com-
pulsion. Still more so now.

In my report I attempted to explain that the adaptation
of the workers on new social foimdations to new forms of
labor, and the attainment of a higher level of productivity of
labor, are possible only by means of the simultaneous applica-
tion of various methods — economic interest, legal compulsion,
the influence of an internally co-ordinated economic organ-
ization, the power of repression, and, first and last, moral in-
fluence, agitation, propaganda, and the general raising of the
cultural level.

Only by the combination of all these methods can we at-
tain a high level of Socialist economy.

If even under capitalism economic interest Is inevitably
combined witE 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 compul-
sion. All our most important industries are in the hands of ^
the State. When we say to the turner Tvanov, "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 compukion? He cannot go to another fac- l
tory, for all factories are in the hands of the State, which will \
not allow such a change. Consequently, economic pressure j
melts here into the pressure of State compulsion. Abramovich '
apparently would like us, as regulators of the distribution of

i68 Dictatorship vs. Democila.cy

labor power, to make use only of such means as the raising
of wages, bonuses, etc., in order-to attract the necessary work-
ers to our most important factories. Apparently that com-
prises all his thoughts on the subject. JBut if we put the ques-
tion 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 suffi-
ciently 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 noth-
ing. 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 accord-
ing to their categories and sent them to the factories. This,
from the Liberal point of vie-nr. is "violence" to the freedom
of the individual. Yet an overwhelming majority of the work-
ers went willingly to the labor front, as hitherto to the mili-
tary, 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 sub-
ordinated to the Soviet State, under its orders in every direc-
tion — 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,

Dictatorship vs. Democracy igo

to a considerable extent, the question is one of the discipline
of the trade unions ; but of the new discipline of new, Produc-
Uonal, 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 Ihe construction, ride
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 revolution-
ary industrial unions in bourgeois society, just as the suprem-
acy 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. Jhe ^
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 re-
gions. True, Abramovich demonstrated to us most learnedly \
that under Socialism there will be no compulsion, that the
principle of compulsion contradicts Socialism, that under So-
cialism we shall be moved by the feeling of duty, the habit of
working, the attractiveness of labor, etc., etc. This is un-
questionable. 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

I70 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

' 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, as-
sumes 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 in-
significant little fact — that historical step of the State dicta-
torship — Abramovich, and in his person the whole of Men-
shevism, did not notice; and consequently, he has fallen over
it.
y" No organization except the army has ever controlled man
j 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
yabory 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 ex-
periments 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 Men-
sheviks 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 prob-
lems of the transitional period, i.e., of the proletarian revolu-
tion. 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

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 171

of our ruins, how immediately to distribute labor-power, how
to-day to raise the productivity of labor, and how, in parti-
cular, 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 comers of the earth, saying "seek for better condi-
tions where you can find them, comrades"? No, we could
not act in this way. We put them into military echelones, 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 meth-
ods 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 dif-
ference between the Egyptian regime and our own. He has
forgotten that in Egypt tiiere were Pharaohs, there were slave-
owners and slaves. It was not the Egyptian peasants who
decided through their Soviets to build the pyramids ; there ex-
isted 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. Per-
haps he is well acquainted with the Old Testament, but So-
cialism 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 &ere
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 *« difference ?
There is a differlnce. gentlemen, and it is defined by a funda-

172 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

mental test : who is in power ? The working class or the land-
lord class, Pharoahs or peasants, White Guards or the Petro-
grad 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 shootirig the Pharaohs on the steeples of
Petrograd.*

One of the Menshevik orators attempted incidentally to
represent me as a defender of militarism in general. Accord-
ing to his information, it appears, do you see, that I am de-
fending nothing more or less than German militarism.! proved,
you must understand, that the German N.C.O. was a marvel
of nature, and all that he does is above criticism. vWhat did
I say in reality? Only that militarism, in which all the fea-
tures 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 en-
tirely on the question of what class is in power ; and secondly,
from the point of veiw of organization, as a system of the
strict distribution of duties, exact mutual relations, unques-
tioning responsibility, and harsh insistence on execution. The
bourgeois army is the apparatus of savage oppression and re-
pression of the workers ; the Socialist army is a weapon for
the liberation and defence of the workers. But the unques-
tioning subordination of the parts to the whole is a character-
istic common to every army. A severe internal regime is in-
separable 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 res-

* 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.

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 173

ponsibilities, to the highest degree of development. "Military"
qualities in tliis 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 equaU
have passed through the military school^ The German pea:^-
ant, for example, who has passed out of the barracks in tlie
capacity of an N.C.O. was for the German monarchy, and
remains for the Ebert Republic, much dearer and more valu-
able than the same peasant who has not passed through mili-
tary 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 some-
thing 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 regi-
mental commissary for a year — does not become worse from
the point of view of trade union work as a result. He is re-
turned 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 de-
grees of class-consciousness — ^most of them peasants. To-
gether 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

174 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

a good expert. All this is splendid — only why do not the Men-
sheviks 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 ex-
perts, of whom, shall \ve say, one-third are conscientious and
/ educated, another third only half-conscientious and half-edu-
\ Gated, and the last third are no use at all. In the working
I class there are many talented, devoted, and energetic people.
j Some — unfortunately few — ^have already the necessary knowl-
I edge 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
Ihey can direct enterprises, and give such men tlie possibility
of standing on their own feet. Such men themselves ask for
one-man management, because the work of controlling a fac-
tory 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 enter-
prise. 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 re-
verse that decision. They will, step by step, follow the spe-
cialist 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,

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 175

if our Communist comrades have begun to command regi-
ments, divisions, and armies, it is because previously they
were commissaries attached to expert commanders. The res-
ponsibiUty 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 com-
mand, particularly in the lower — i.e., politically the most im-
portant — 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,J
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, pre-
serving 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 mat we have crossed to the path of the greatest concen-
tration 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 disorgan-
ization 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 liie representative of the Mensheviks, "no guardians of

176 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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 v/ith us; and it is just you, an insignificant band of Men-
sheviks, who are attempting to convince it by bourgeois argu-
ments ! 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 over-
thrown 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 thi^
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 evasive-
ness, 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 oppor-
tunism, replaced dialectic by swindling sophistries, and, in the
end, in spite of its great play with ritual revolutionary phrase-
ology, 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 ex-
planation of yesterday, and considerable daring in prophesy-
ing concerning to-morrow— but for to-day he never has_ a
great thought or capacity for great action. To-day for him

177

1/8 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

always disappears before the wave of little opportunist wor-
ries, which later are explained as the most inevitable link be-
tween the past and the future.

The Austro-Marxist is inexaustible when it is a question
of discovering reasons to prevent initiative and render dif-
ficult 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 ex-
ceptional extent. His May-Day article represented a charm-
ing 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 es-
sence he always remained merely an imperial and royal ofHcer,
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 "oi)e 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

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 179

chief art is to reply to all acute practical questions by com-
monplaces. 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 stu-
dent of a University seminar. The most disgraceful actions
of Austrian opportimism the meanest servility before the
power of the possessing classes on the part of the Austro-
German Social Democracy, found in Bauer their grave eluci-
dator, who sometimes expressed himself with dignity against
the form, but always agreed in the essence. If it ever occured
to Bauer to display anything like temperament and political
energy, it was exclusively in the struggle against the revolu-
tionary wing — in the accumulation of arguments, facts, quota-
tions, 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-Democ-
ratic 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 par-
liamentary 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 comfort-
able place for himself with the framework of Viennese bour-
geois 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-Democractic 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 mobili-
ty and bustle of the Austrian policy which brought him up
for revolutionary initiative ; and for a round dozen of months

i8o Dictatorship vs. Democracy

he dananded — true, in the most moderate terms — a more in-
telligent 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 in-
tellectual 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 bour-
geois 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 tempera-
ment 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 revolu-
tionary negation of the Austrian school. In reality, he was
and remains its necessary coping-stone. His explosive revolu-
tionism 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 tht

Dictatorship vs. Democracy i8i

Austrian Premier. By his solitaiy shot, Friedrich Adler
vainly attempted to put an end to his own scepticism. After
that hysterical strain, he fell into still more complete prostra-
tion.

The black-and-yellow crew of social-patriotism (Auster-
litz, 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 prodigaH
son returned from his convict prison into his father's house 1
with the halo of a martyr, he proved to be doubly and trebly I
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 re-
vealed 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 Revolu-
tion. 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

i82 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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 "con-
trol" the police and other officials, imposing upon them the
"proletarian will." What, however, will be the "constitu-
tional" 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." (Ar-
beiterzeitung, No. 179, July i, 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 bour-
geoisie 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

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 183

regulation of the position of the Workers Councils, and their
power and importance, would be guaranteed along the whole

r 1.° c? • ^^ ^°*^'^^ ^^^^' 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 foimder 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 Kaut-
sky 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 neces-
sary 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 Revolu-
tion 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 v/ar, which killed every form of vagueness
and brought mankind face to face with the most fundamental
questions, exposed all the political bankruptcy of Kautsky.

184 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

He immediately became confused beyond all hope of extrica-
tion, 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 develop-
ment 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 scien-
tific 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 contempti-
ble stories about the Bolsheviks from the rich table of Havas,
Renter and Wolflf, thereby displaying from under his learned
night-cap the ears of the sycophant? Yet these disreputable
details are only mosaic decorations on the fundamental back-
ground of solid, scientific lying about the Soviet Republic
and its guiding party.

Kautsky depicts in the most sinister colors our savagery

Dictatorship vs. Democracy 185

towards the bourgeoisie, which "displayed no tendency to
resist."

Kautsky attacks our ruthlessness in connection with the
SociaHst 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 magni-
tude 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-Slova-
kian, 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 violance 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 sever-
al 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

i86 Dictatorship vs. Democracy

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, t^ing
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 Scheide-
manns 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 of? 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 worjcing 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

Dictatorship vs. Democracy iS?

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), Plekhaiiovists,

Maximalists, Anarchists Absolutely all the "shades of

Socialism" (to speak in Kautsky's language) tried their hand,
and showed what they would and wha*; 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 represaif , so to speak, differ-
ent degrees in the adaptation of the pre-revolutionary Socialist
parties and groups to the conditions of ihe greater revolution-
ary 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 Bolshe-
vik melody that is unpleasant to his ear, but does not seek
another. The solution is simple : the old tnuiician refuses aU
together to play on the instrument of the revolution.

In Place of an Epilogue

THIS book appears at the moment of the Second Congress
of the Communist International. The revolutionary move-
ment 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 every-
where 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 prole-
tariat, tolerates in its ranks the Kautsky group, all the efforts
of which are devoted theoretically to compromise and mis-
represent 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 "Inde-
pendent" Social Democracy a noble aspiration, a vague protest
against the open and disgraceful treachery of Noske, Ebert,

188

Dictatorship Vs. Democracy 189

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 im-
pressive 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 Interna-
tional, 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 im-
position 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 (Giolitti-
ans 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, with-
out 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

iQO Dictatorship Vs. Democracy

group — unfortimately 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
organi^a-tiaQS— represents a less oedantic, not so demagogic,
more declamatmy and lyrical, bjit none the less malignant
opportunism — a fbrm of romMfic Kautskianism.

A passive attitude to thgrTCautskian, Longuetist, Turatist
groups is usually cloaked 1(^ the argument that the time for
revolutionary activity in Ine respective countries has not yet
arrived. But such /a formulation of the question is absolutely
false. Nobody demaiMs from Socialists striving for Com-
munism 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 organiza-
tion. 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 op-
portunism.

A truly revolutionary, i.e., a Commvmist wing, must set
itself up in opposition, in face of the masses, to all the in-
decisive, 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 forinal split
with the open and disguised Kautskians, or the mcwnent of

Dictatorship Vs. Democracy 191

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.