"EITHER DEMOCRACY, OR CIVIL WAR"
Kautsky has a clear and solitary path to salvation: _democracy_. All
that is necessary is that every one should acknowledge it and bind
himself to support it. The Right Socialists must renounce the
sanguinary slaughter with which they have been carrying out the will of
the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie itself must abandon the idea of using
its Noskes and Lieutenant Vogels to defend its privileges to the last
breath. Finally, the proletariat must once and for all reject the idea
of overthrowing the bourgeoisie by means other than those laid down in
the Constitution. If the conditions enumerated are observed, the social
revolution will painlessly melt into democracy. In order to succeed it
is sufficient, as we see, for our stormy history to draw a nightcap
over its head, and take a pinch of wisdom out of Kautsky's snuffbox.
"There exist only two possibilities," says our sage, "either democracy,
or civil war." (Page 220.) Yet, in Germany, where the formal elements
of "democracy" are present before our eyes, the civil war does not
cease for a moment. "Unquestionably," agrees Kautsky, "under the
present National Assembly Germany cannot arrive at a healthy condition.
But that process of recovery will not be assisted, but hindered, if we
transform the struggle against the present Assembly into a struggle
against the democratic franchise." (Page 230.) As if the question in
Germany really did reduce itself to one of electoral forms and not to
one of the real possession of power!
The present National Assembly, as Kautsky admits, cannot "bring the
country to a healthy condition." Therefore let us begin the game again
at the beginning. But will the partners agree? It is doubtful. If the
rubber is not favorable to us, obviously it is so to them. The National
Assembly which "is incapable of bringing the country to a healthy
condition," is quite capable, through the mediocre dictatorship of
Noske, of preparing the way for the dictatorship of Ludendorff. So it
was with the Constituent Assembly which prepared the way for Kolchak.
The historical mission of Kautsky consists precisely in having waited
for the revolution to write his (n + 1th) book, which should explain
the collapse of the revolution by all the previous course of history,
from the ape to Noske, and from Noske to Ludendorff. The problem before
the revolutionary party is a difficult one: its problem is to foresee
the peril in good time, and to forestall it by _action_. And for this
there is no other way at present than to tear the power out of the
hands of its real possessors, the agrarian and capitalist magnates, who
are only temporarily hiding behind Messrs. Ebert and Noske. Thus, from
the present National Assembly, the path divides into two: either the
dictatorship of the imperialist clique, or the dictatorship of the
proletariat. On neither side does the path lead to "democracy." Kautsky
does not see this. He explains at great length that democracy is of
great importance for its political development and its education in
organization of the masses, and that through it the proletariat can
come to complete emancipation. One might imagine that, since the day on
which the Erfurt Programme was written, nothing worthy of notice had
ever happened in the world!
Yet meanwhile, for decades, the proletariat of France, Germany, and
the other most important countries has been struggling and developing,
making the widest possible use of the institutions of democracy, and
building up on that basis powerful political organizations. This path
of the education of the proletariat through democracy to Socialism
proved, however, to be interrupted by an event of no inconsiderable
importance--the world imperialist war. The class state at the
moment when, thanks to its machinations, the war broke out succeeded
in enlisting the assistance of the guiding organizations of
Social-Democracy to deceive the proletariat and draw it into the
whirlpool. So that, taken as they stand, the methods of democracy, in
spite of the incontestable benefits which they afford at a certain
period, displayed an extremely limited power of action; with the result
that two generations of the proletariat, educated under conditions of
democracy, by no means guaranteed the necessary political preparation
for judging accurately an event like the world imperialist war. That
experience gives us no reasons for affirming that, if the war had
broken out ten or fifteen years later, the proletariat would have been
more prepared for it. The bourgeois democratic state not only creates
more favorable conditions for the political education of the workers,
as compared with absolutism, but also sets a limit to that development
in the shape of bourgeois legality, which skilfully accumulates and
builds on the upper strata of the proletariat opportunist habits
and law-abiding prejudices. The school of democracy proved quite
insufficient to rouse the German proletariat to revolution when the
catastrophe of the war was at hand. The barbarous school of the war,
social-imperialist ambitions, colossal military victories, and
unparalleled defeats were required. After these events, which made a
certain amount of difference in the universe, and even in the Erfurt
Programme, to come out with common-places as to meaning of democratic
parliamentarism for the education of the proletariat signifies a fall
into political childhood. This is just the misfortune which has
overtaken Kautsky.
"Profound disbelief in the political struggle of the proletariat," he
writes, "and in its participation in politics, was the characteristic
of Proudhonism. To-day there arises a similar (!!) view, and it is
recommended to us as the new gospel of Socialist thought, as the result
of an experience which Marx did not, and could not, know. In reality,
it is only a variation of an idea which half a century ago Marx was
fighting, and which he in the end defeated." (Page 79.)
Bolshevism proves to be warmed-up Proudhonism! From a purely theoretical
point of view, this is one of the most brazen remarks in the pamphlet.
The Proudhonists repudiated democracy for the same reason that they
repudiated the political struggle generally. They stood for the
economic organization of the workers without the interference of the
State, without revolutionary outbreaks--for self-help of the workers on
the basis of production for profit. As far as they were driven by the
course of events on to the path of the political struggle, they, as
lower middle-class theoreticians, preferred democracy, not only to
plutocracy, but to revolutionary dictatorship. What thoughts have they
in common with us? While we repudiate democracy in the name of the
concentrated power of the proletariat, the Proudhonists, on the other
hand, were prepared to make their peace with democracy, diluted by a
federal basis, in order to avoid the revolutionary monopoly of power by
the proletariat. With more foundation Kautsky might have compared us
with the opponents of the Proudhonists, the _Blanquists_, who
understood the meaning of a revolutionary government, but did not
superstitiously make the question of seizing it depend on the formal
signs of democracy. But in order to put the comparison of the
Communists with the Blanquists on a reasonable footing, it would have
to be added that, in the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils, we had at our
disposal such an organization for revolution as the Blanquists could
not even dream of; in our party we had, and have, an invaluable
organization of political leadership with a perfected programme of the
social revolution. Finally, we had, and have, a powerful apparatus of
economic transformation in our trade unions, which stand as a whole
under the banner of Communism, and support the Soviet Government. Under
such conditions, to talk of the renaissance of Proudhonist prejudices
in the shape of Bolshevism can only take place when one has lost all
traces of theoretical honesty and historical understanding.