TERRORISM

The chief theme of Kautsky's book is terrorism. The view that

terrorism is of the essence of revolution Kautsky proclaims to be a

widespread delusion. It is untrue that he who desires revolution must

put up with terrorism. As far as he, Kautsky, is concerned, he is,

generally speaking, for revolution, but decidedly against terrorism.

From there, however, complications begin.

"The revolution brings us," Kautsky complains, "a bloody terrorism

carried out by Socialist governments. The Bolsheviks in Russia first

stepped on to this path, and were, consequently, sternly condemned by

all Socialists who had not adopted the Bolshevik point of view,

including the Socialists of the German Majority. But as soon as the

latter found themselves threatened in their supremacy, they had

recourse to the methods of the same terrorist regime which they

attacked in the East." (Page 9.) It would seem that from this follows

the conclusion that terrorism is much more profoundly bound up with

the nature of revolution than certain sages think. But Kautsky makes

an absolutely opposite conclusion. The gigantic development of White

and Red terrorism in all the last revolutions--the Russian, the

German, the Austrian, and the Hungarian--is evidence to him that these

revolutions turned aside from their true path and turned out to be not

the revolution they ought to have been according to the theoretical

visions of Kautsky. Without going into the question whether terrorism

"as such" is "immanent" to the revolution "as such," let us consider a

few of the revolutions as they pass before us in the living history of

mankind.

Let us first regard the religious Reformation, which proved the

watershed between the Middle Ages and modern history: the deeper were

the interests of the masses that it involved, the wider was its sweep,

the more fiercely did the civil war develop under the religious

banner, and the more merciless did the terror become on the other

side.

In the seventeenth century England carried out two revolutions. The

first, which brought forth great social upheavals and wars, brought

amongst other things the execution of King Charles I, while the second

ended happily with the accession of a new dynasty. The British

bourgeoisie and its historians maintain quite different attitudes to

these two revolutions: the first is for them a rising of the mob--the

"Great Rebellion"; the second has been handed down under the title of

the "Glorious Revolution." The reason for this difference in estimates

was explained by the French historian, Augustin Thierry. In the first

English revolution, in the "Great Rebellion," the active force was the

people; while in the second it was almost "silent." Hence, it follows

that, in surroundings of class slavery, it is difficult to teach the

oppressed masses good manners. When provoked to fury they use clubs,

stones, fire, and the rope. The court historians of the exploiters are

offended at this. But the great event in modern "bourgeois" history

is, none the less, not the "Glorious Revolution," but the "Great

Rebellion."

The greatest event in modern history after the Reformation and the

"Great Rebellion," and far surpassing its two predecessors in

significance, was the great French Revolution of the eighteenth

century. To this classical revolution there was a corresponding

classical terrorism. Kautsky is ready to forgive the terrorism of the

Jacobins, acknowledging that they had no other way of saving the

republic. But by this justification after the event no one is either

helped or hindered. The Kautskies of the end of the eighteenth century

(the leaders of the French Girondists) saw in the Jacobins the

personification of evil. Here is a comparison, sufficiently

instructive in its banality, between the Jacobins and the Girondists

from the pen of one of the bourgeois French historians: "Both one side

and the other desired the republic." But the Girondists "desired a

free, legal, and merciful republic. The Montagnards desired a despotic

and terrorist republic. Both stood for the supreme power of the

people; but the Girondist justly understood all by the people, while

the Montagnards considered only the working class to be the people.

That was why only to such persons, in the opinion of the Montagnards,

did the supremacy belong." The antithesis between the noble champions

of the Constituent Assembly and the bloodthirsty agents of the

revolutionary dictatorship is here outlined fairly clearly, although

in the political terms of the epoch.

The iron dictatorship of the Jacobins was evoked by the monstrously

difficult position of revolutionary France. Here is what the bourgeois

historian says of this period: "Foreign troops had entered French

territory from four sides. In the north, the British and the

Austrians, in Alsace, the Prussians, in Dauphine and up to Lyons, the

Piedmontese, in Roussillon the Spaniards. And this at a time, when

civil war was raging at four different points: in Normandy, in the

Vendee, at Lyons, and at Toulon." (Page 176). To this we must add

internal enemies in the form of numerous secret supporters of the old

regime, ready by all methods to assist the enemy.

The severity of the proletarian dictatorship in Russia, let us point

out here, was conditioned by no less difficult circumstances. There

was one continuous front, on the north and south, in the east and

west. Besides the Russian White Guard armies of Kolchak, Denikin and

others, there are attacking Soviet Russia, simultaneously or in turn:

Germans, Austrians, Czecho-Slovaks, Serbs, Poles, Ukrainians,

Roumanians, French, British, Americans, Japanese, Finns, Esthonians,

Lithuanians.... In a country throttled by a blockade and strangled by

hunger, there are conspiracies, risings, terrorist acts, and

destruction of roads and bridges.

"The government which had taken on itself the struggle with countless

external and internal enemies had neither money, nor sufficient

troops, nor anything except boundless energy, enthusiastic support on

the part of the revolutionary elements of the country, and the

gigantic courage to take all measures necessary for the safety of the

country, however arbitrary and severe they were." In such words did

once upon a time Plekhanov describe the government of the--Jacobins.

(_Sozial-demokrat_, a quarterly review of literature and politics.

Book I, February, 1890, London. The article on "The Centenary of the

Great Revolution," pages 6-7).

Let us now turn to the revolution which took place in the second half

of the nineteenth century, in the country of "democracy"--in the

United States of North America. Although the question was not the

abolition of property altogether, but only of the abolition of

property in negroes, nevertheless, the institutions of democracy

proved absolutely powerless to decide the argument in a peaceful way.

The southern states, defeated at the presidential elections in 1860,

decided by all possible means to regain the influence they had

hitherto exerted in the question of slave-owning; and uttering, as was

right, the proper sounding words about freedom and independence, rose

in a slave-owners' insurrection. Hence inevitably followed all the

later consequences of civil war. At the very beginning of the

struggle, the military government in Baltimore imprisoned in Fort

MacHenry a few citizens, sympathizers with the slave-holding South, in

spite of Habeas Corpus. The question of the lawfulness or the

unlawfulness of such action became the object of fierce disputes

between so-called "high authorities." The judge of the Supreme Court,

decided that the President had neither the right to arrest the

operation of Habeas Corpus nor to give plenipotentiary powers to that

end to the military authorities. "Such, in all probability, is the

correct Constitutional solution of the question," says one of the

first historians of the American Civil War. "But the state of affairs

was to such a degree critical, and the necessity of taking decisive

measures against the population of Baltimore so great, that not only

the Government but the people of the United States also supported the

most energetic measures."[4]

[4] (The History of the American War, by Fletcher,

Lieut.-Colonel in the Scots Guards, St. Petersburg, 1867,

page 95.)

Some goods that the rebellious South required were secretly supplied

by the merchants of the North. Naturally, the Northerners had no other

course but to introduce methods of repression. On August 6, 1861, the

President confirmed a resolution of Congress as to "the confiscation

of property used for insurrectionary purposes." The people, in the

shape of the most democratic elements, were in favor of extreme

measures. The Republican Party had a decided majority in the North,

and persons suspected of secessionism, _i.e._, of sympathizing with

the rebellious Southern states, were subjected to violence. In some

northern towns, and even in the states of New England, famous for

their order, the people frequently burst into the offices of

newspapers which supported the revolting slave-owners and smashed

their printing presses. It occasionally happened that reactionary

publishers were smeared with tar, decorated with feathers, and carried

in such array through the public squares until they swore an oath of

loyalty to the Union. The personality of a planter smeared in tar bore

little resemblance to the "end-in-itself;" so that the categorical

imperative of Kautsky suffered in the civil war of the states a

considerable blow. But this is not all. "The government, on its part,"

the historian tells us, "adopted repressive measures of various kinds

against publications holding views opposed to its own: and in a short

time the hitherto free American press was reduced to a condition

_scarcely superior to that prevailing in the autocratic European

States_." The same fate overtook the freedom of speech. "In this way,"

Lieut.-Colonel Fletcher continues, "the American people at this time

denied itself the greater part of its freedom. It should be observed,"

he moralizes, "that _the majority of the people_ was to such an

extent occupied with the war, and to such a degree imbued with the

readiness for any kind of sacrifice to attain its end, that it not

only did not regret its vanished liberties, but scarcely even noticed

their disappearance."[5]

[5] Fletcher's History of the American War, pages 162-164.

Infinitely more ruthlessly did the bloodthirsty slave-owners of the

South employ their uncontrollable hordes. "Wherever there was a

majority in favor of slavery," writes the Count of Paris, "public

opinion behaved despotically to the minority. All who expressed pity

for the national banner ... were forced to be silent. But soon this

itself became insufficient; as in all revolutions, the indifferent

were forced to express their loyalty to the new order of things....

Those who did not agree to this were given up as a sacrifice to the

hatred and violence of the mass of the people.... In each centre of

growing civilization (South-Western states) vigilance committees were

formed, composed of all those who had been distinguished by their

extreme views in the electoral struggle.... A tavern was the usual

place of their sessions, and a noisy orgy was mingled with a

contemptible parody of public forms of justice. A few madmen sitting

around a desk on which gin and whisky flowed judged their present

and absent fellow citizens. The accused, even before having been

questioned, could see the rope being prepared. He who did not appear

at the court learned his sentence when falling under the bullets

of the executioner concealed in the forest...." This picture is

extremely reminiscent of the scenes which day by day took place in

the camps of Denikin, Kolchak, Yudenich, and the other heroes of

Anglo-Franco-American "democracy."

We shall see later how the question of terrorism stood in regard to

the Paris Commune of 1871. In any case, the attempts of Kautsky to

contrast the Commune with us are false at their very root, and only

bring the author to a juggling with words of the most petty character.

The institution of hostages apparently must be recognized as "immanent"

in the terrorism of the civil war. Kautsky is against terrorism and

against the institution of hostages, but in favor of the Paris

Commune. (N.B.--The Commune existed fifty years ago.) Yet the Commune

took hostages. A difficulty arises. But what does the art of exegesis

exist for?

The decree of the Commune concerning hostages and their execution in

reply to the atrocities of the Versaillese arose, according to the

profound explanation of Kautsky, "from a striving to preserve human

life, not to destroy it." A marvellous discovery! It only requires to

be developed. It could, and must, be explained that in the civil war

we destroyed White Guards in order that they should not destroy the

workers. Consequently, our problem is not the destruction of human

life, but its preservation. But as we have to struggle for the

preservation of human life with arms in our hands, it leads to the

destruction of human life--a puzzle the dialectical secret of which

was explained by old Hegel, without reckoning other still more ancient

sages.

The Commune could maintain itself and consolidate its position only by

a determined struggle with the Versaillese. The latter, on the other

hand, had a large number of agents in Paris. Fighting with the agents

of Thiers, the Commune could not abstain from destroying the

Versaillese at the front and in the rear. If its rule had crossed the

bounds of Paris, in the provinces it would have found--during the

process of the civil war with the Army of the National Assembly--still

more determined foes in the midst of the peaceful population. The

Commune when fighting the royalists could not allow freedom of speech

to royalist agents in the rear.

Kautsky, in spite of all the happenings in the world to-day, completely

fails to realize what war is in general, and the civil war in

particular. He does not understand that every, or nearly every,

sympathizer with Thiers in Paris was not merely an "opponent" of the

Communards in ideas, but an agent and spy of Thiers, a ferocious enemy

ready to shoot one in the back. The enemy must be made harmless, and in

wartime this means that he must be destroyed.

The problem of revolution, as of war, consists in breaking the will of

the foe, forcing him to capitulate and to accept the conditions of the

conqueror. The will, of course, is a fact of the physical world, but

in contradistinction to a meeting, a dispute, or a congress, the

revolution carries out its object by means of the employment of

material resources--though to a less degree than war. The bourgeoisie

itself conquered power by means of revolts, and consolidated it by the

civil war. In the peaceful period, it retains power by means of a

system of repression. As long as class society, founded on the most

deep-rooted antagonisms, continues to exist, repression remains a

necessary means of breaking the will of the opposing side.

Even if, in one country or another, the dictatorship of the proletariat

grew up within the external framework of democracy, this would by

no means avert the civil war. The question as to who is to rule

the country, _i.e._, of the life or death of the bourgeoisie, will

be decided on either side, not by references to the paragraphs of

the constitution, but by the employment of all forms of violence.

However deeply Kautsky goes into the question of the food of the

anthropopithecus (see page 122 et seq. of his book) and other immediate

and remote conditions which determine the cause of human cruelty, he

will find in history no other way of breaking the class will of the

enemy except the systematic and energetic use of violence.

The degree of ferocity of the struggle depends on a series of internal

and international circumstances. The more ferocious and dangerous is

the resistance of the class enemy who have been overthrown, the more

inevitably does the system of repression take the form of a system of

terror.

But here Kautsky unexpectedly takes up a new position in his struggle

with Soviet terrorism. He simply waves aside all reference to the

ferocity of the counter-revolutionary opposition of the Russian

bourgeoisie.

"Such ferocity," he says, "could not be noticed in November, 1917, in

Petrograd and Moscow, and still less more recently in Budapest." (Page

149.) With such a happy formulation of the question, revolutionary

terrorism merely proves to be a product of the blood-thirstiness of

the Bolsheviks, who simultaneously abandoned the traditions of the

vegetarian anthropopithecus and the moral lessons of Kautsky.

The first conquest of power by the Soviets at the beginning of

November, 1917 (new style), was actually accomplished with

insignificant sacrifices. The Russian bourgeoisie found itself to such

a degree estranged from the masses of the people, so internally

helpless, so compromised by the course and the result of the war, so

demoralized by the regime of Kerensky, that it scarcely dared show any

resistance. In Petrograd the power of Kerensky was overthrown almost

without a fight. In Moscow its resistance was dragged out, mainly owing

to the indecisive character of our own actions. In the majority of the

provincial towns, power was transferred to the Soviet on the mere

receipt of a telegram from Petrograd or Moscow. If the matter had ended

there, there would have been no word of the Red Terror. But in

November, 1917, there was already evidence of the beginning of the

resistance of the propertied classes. True, there was required the

intervention of the imperialist governments of the West in order to

give the Russian counter-revolution faith in itself, and to add

ever-increasing power to its resistance. This can be shown from facts,

both important and insignificant, day by day during the whole epoch of

the Soviet revolution.

Kerensky's "Staff" felt no support forthcoming from the mass of the

soldiery, and was inclined to recognize the Soviet Government, which

had begun negotiations for an armistice with the Germans. But there

followed the protest of the military missions of the Entente, followed

by open threats. The Staff was frightened; incited by "Allied"

officers, it entered the path of opposition. This led to armed

conflict and to the murder of the chief of the field staff, General

Dukhonin, by a group of revolutionary sailors.

In Petrograd, the official agents of the Entente, especially the

French Military Mission, hand in hand with the S.R.s and the

Mensheviks, openly organized the opposition, mobilizing, arming,

inciting against us the cadets, and the bourgeois youth generally,

from the second day of the Soviet revolution. The rising of the

junkers on November 10 brought about a hundred times more victims than

the revolution of November 7. The campaign of the adventurers Kerensky

and Krasnov against Petrograd, organized at the same time by the

Entente, naturally introduced into the struggle the first elements of

savagery. Nevertheless, General Krasnov was set free on his word of

honor. The Yaroslav rising (in the summer of 1918) which involved so

many victims, was organized by Savinkov on the instructions of the

French Embassy, and with its resources. Archangel was captured

according to the plans of British naval agents, with the help of

British warships and aeroplanes. The beginning of the empire of

Kolchak, the nominee of the American Stock Exchange, was brought about

by the foreign Czecho-Slovak Corps maintained by the resources of the

French Government. Kaledin and Krasnov (liberated by us), the first

leaders of the counter-revolution on the Don, could enjoy partial

success only thanks to the open military and financial aid of Germany.

In the Ukraine the Soviet power was overthrown in the beginning of

1918 by German militarism. The Volunteer Army of Denikin was created

with the financial and technical help of Great Britain and France.

Only in the hope of British intervention and of British military

support was Yudenich's army created. The politicians, the diplomats,

and the journalists of the Entente have for two years on end been

debating with complete frankness the question of whether the financing

of the civil war in Russia is a sufficiently profitable enterprise. In

such circumstances, one needs truly a brazen forehead to seek the

reason for the sanguinary character of the civil war in Russia in the

malevolence of the Bolsheviks, and not in the international situation.

The Russian proletariat was the first to enter the path of the social

revolution, and the Russian bourgeoisie, politically helpless, was

emboldened to struggle against its political and economic

expropriation only because it saw its elder sister in all countries

still in power, and still maintaining economic, political, and, to a

certain extent, military supremacy.

If our November revolution had taken place a few months, or even a few

weeks, after the establishment of the rule of the proletariat in

Germany, France, and England, there can be no doubt that our

revolution would have been the most "peaceful," the most "bloodless"

of all possible revolutions on this sinful earth. But this historical

sequence--the most "natural" at the first glance, and, in any case,

the most beneficial for the Russian working class--found itself

infringed--not through our fault, but through the will of events.

Instead of being the last, the Russian proletariat proved to be the

first. It was just this circumstance, after the first period of

confusion, that imparted desperation to the character of the

resistance of the classes which had ruled in Russia previously, and

forced the Russian proletariat, in a moment of the greatest peril,

foreign attacks, and internal plots and insurrections, to have

recourse to severe measures of State terror. No one will now say that

those measures proved futile. But, perhaps, we are expected to

consider them "intolerable"?

The working class, which seized power in battle, had as its object and

its duty to establish that power unshakeably, to guarantee its own

supremacy beyond question, to destroy its enemies' hankering for a new

revolution, and thereby to make sure of carrying out Socialist

reforms. Otherwise there would be no point in seizing power.

The revolution "logically" does not demand terrorism, just as

"logically" it does not demand an armed insurrection. What a profound

commonplace! But the revolution does require of the revolutionary

class that it should attain its end by all methods at its

disposal--if necessary, by an armed rising: if required, by

terrorism. A revolutionary class which has conquered power with arms

in its hands is bound to, and will, suppress, rifle in hand, all

attempts to tear the power out of its hands. Where it has against it

a hostile army, it will oppose to it its own army. Where it is

confronted with armed conspiracy, attempt at murder, or rising, it

will hurl at the heads of its enemies an unsparing penalty. Perhaps

Kautsky has invented other methods? Or does he reduce the whole

question to the _degree_ of repression, and recommend in all

circumstances imprisonment instead of execution?

The question of the form of repression, or of its degree, of course,

is not one of "principle." It is a question of expediency. In a

revolutionary period, the party which has been thrown from power,

which does not reconcile itself with the stability of the ruling

class, and which proves this by its desperate struggle against the

latter, cannot be terrorized by the threat of imprisonment, as it does

not believe in its duration. It is just this simple but decisive fact

that explains the widespread recourse to shooting in a civil war.

Or, perhaps, Kautsky wishes to say that execution is not expedient,

that "classes cannot be cowed." This is untrue. Terror is

helpless--and then only "in the long run"--if it is employed by

reaction against a historically rising class. But terror can be very

efficient against a reactionary class which does not want to leave the

scene of operations. _Intimidation_ is a powerful weapon of policy,

both internationally and internally. War, like revolution, is founded

upon intimidation. A victorious war, generally speaking, destroys

only an insignificant part of the conquered army, intimidating the

remainder and breaking their will. The revolution works in the same

way: it kills individuals, and intimidates thousands. In this sense,

the Red Terror is not distinguishable from the armed insurrection,

the direct continuation of which it represents. The State terror

of a revolutionary class can be condemned "morally" only by a man

who, as a principle, rejects (in words) every form of violence

whatsoever--consequently, every war and every rising. For this one has

to be merely and simply a hypocritical Quaker.

"But, in that case, in what do your tactics differ from the tactics of

Tsarism?" we are asked, by the high priests of Liberalism and

Kautskianism.

You do not understand this, holy men? We shall explain to you. The

terror of Tsarism was directed against the proletariat. The

gendarmerie of Tsarism throttled the workers who were fighting for the

Socialist order. Our Extraordinary Commissions shoot landlords,

capitalists, and generals who are striving to restore the capitalist

order. Do you grasp this ... distinction? Yes? For us Communists it is

quite sufficient.

"FREEDOM OF THE PRESS"

One point particularly worries Kautsky, the author of a great many

books and articles--the freedom of the Press. Is it permissible to

suppress newspapers?

During war all institutions and organs of the State and of public

opinion become, directly or indirectly, weapons of warfare. This is

particularly true of the Press. No government carrying on a serious

war will allow publications to exist on its territory which, openly or

indirectly, support the enemy. Still more so in a civil war. The

nature of the latter is such that each of the struggling sides has in

the rear of its armies considerable circles of the population on the

side of the enemy. In war, where both success and failure are repaid

by death, hostile agents who penetrate into the rear are subject to

execution. This is inhumane, but no one ever considered war a school

of humanity--still less civil war. Can it be seriously demanded that,

during a civil war with the White Guards of Denikin, the publications

of parties supporting Denikin should come out unhindered in Moscow and

Petrograd? To propose this in the name of the "freedom" of the Press

is just the same as, in the name of open dealing, to demand the

publication of military secrets. "A besieged city," wrote a Communard,

Arthur Arnould of Paris, "cannot permit within its midst that hopes

for its fall should openly be expressed, that the fighters defending

it should be incited to treason, that the movements of its troops

should be communicated to the enemy. Such was the position of Paris

under the Commune." Such is the position of the Soviet Republic during

the two years of its existence.

Let us, however, listen to what Kautsky has to say in this connection.

"The justification of this system (_i.e._, repressions in connection

with the Press) is reduced to the naive idea that an absolute truth

(!) exists, and that only the Communists possess it (!). Similarly,"

continues Kautsky, "it reduces itself to another point of view, that

all writers are by nature liars (!) and that only Communists are

fanatics for truth (!). In reality, liars and fanatics for what they

consider truth are to be found in all camps." And so on, and so on,

and so on. (Page 176.)

In this way, in Kautsky's eyes, the revolution, in its most acute

phase, when it is a question of the life and death of classes,

continues as hitherto to be a literary discussion with the object of

establishing ... the truth. What profundity!... Our "truth," of

course, is not absolute. But as in its name we are, at the present

moment, shedding our blood, we have neither cause nor possibility to

carry on a literary discussion as to the relativity of truth with

those who "criticize" us with the help of all forms of arms.

Similarly, our problem is not to punish liars and to encourage just

men amongst journalists of all shades of opinion, but to throttle the

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

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

fanatics and liars.

"The Soviet Government," Kautsky thunders, "has destroyed the sole

remedy that might militate against corruption: the freedom of the

Press. Control by means of unlimited freedom of the Press alone could

have restrained those bandits and adventurers who will inevitably

cling like leeches to every unlimited, uncontrolled power." (Page

188.) And so on.

The Press as a trusty weapon of the struggle with corruption! This

liberal recipe sounds particularly pitiful when one remembers the two

countries with the greatest "freedom" of the Press--North America and

France--which, at the same time, are countries of the most highly

developed stage of capitalist corruption.

Feeding on the old scandal of the political ante-rooms of the Russian

revolution, Kautsky imagines that without Cadet and Menshevik freedom

the Soviet apparatus is honey-combed with "bandits" and "adventurers."

Such was the voice of the Mensheviks a year or eighteen months ago.

Now even they will not dare to repeat this. With the help of Soviet

control and party selection, the Soviet Government, in the intense

atmosphere of the struggle, has dealt with the bandits and adventurers

who appeared on the surface at the moment of the revolution

incomparably better than any government whatsoever, at any time

whatsoever.

We are fighting. We are fighting a life-and-death struggle. The Press

is a weapon not of an abstract society, but of two irreconcilable,

armed and contending sides. We are destroying the Press of the

counter-revolution, just as we destroyed its fortified positions, its

stores, its communications, and its intelligence system. Are we

depriving ourselves of Cadet and Menshevik criticisms of the

corruption of the working class? In return we are victoriously

destroying the very foundations of capitalist corruption.

But Kautsky goes further to develop his theme. He complains that we

suppress the newspapers of the S.R.s and the Mensheviks, and

even--such things have been known--arrest their leaders. Are we not

dealing here with "shades of opinion" in the proletarian or the

Socialist movement? The scholastic pedant does not see facts beyond

his accustomed words. The Mensheviks and S.R.s for him are simply

tendencies in Socialism, whereas, in the course of the revolution,

they have been transformed into an organization which works in active

co-operation with the counter-revolution and carries on against us

an open war. The army of Kolchak was organized by Socialist

Revolutionaries (how that name savours to-day of the charlatan!), and

was supported by Mensheviks. Both carried on--and carry on--against

us, for a year and a half, a war on the Northern front. The Mensheviks

who rule the Caucasus, formerly the allies of Hohenzollern, and to-day

the allies of Lloyd George, arrested and shot Bolsheviks hand in hand

with German and British officers. The Mensheviks and S.R.s of the

Kuban Rada organized the army of Denikin. The Esthonian Mensheviks who

participate in their government were directly concerned in the last

advance of Yudenich against Petrograd. Such are these "tendencies" in

the Socialist movement. Kautsky considers that one can be in a state

of open and civil war with the Mensheviks and S.R.s, who, with the

help of the troops they themselves have organized for Yudenich,

Kolchak and Denikin, are fighting for their "shade of opinions" in

Socialism, and at the same time to allow those innocent "shades of

opinion" freedom of the Press in our rear. If the dispute with the

S.R.s and the Mensheviks could be settled by means of persuasion and

voting--that is, if there were not behind their backs the Russian and

foreign imperialists--there would be no civil war.

Kautsky, of course, is ready to "condemn"--an extra drop of ink--the

blockade, and the Entente support of Denikin, and the White Terror.

But in his high impartiality he cannot refuse the latter certain

extenuating circumstances. The White Terror, you see, does not

infringe their own principles, while the Bolsheviks, making use of the

Red Terror, betray the principle of "the sacredness of human life

which they themselves proclaimed." (Page 210.)

What is the meaning of the principle of the sacredness of human life

in practice, and in what does it differ from the commandment, "Thou

shalt not kill," Kautsky does not explain. When a murderer raises his

knife over a child, may one kill the murderer to save the child? Will

not thereby the principle of the "sacredness of human life" be

infringed? May one kill the murderer to save oneself? Is an

insurrection of oppressed slaves against their masters permissible?

Is it permissible to purchase one's freedom at the cost of the

life of one's jailers? If human life in general is sacred and

inviolable, we must deny ourselves not only the use of terror, not

only war, but also revolution itself. Kautsky simply does not realize

the counter-revolutionary meaning of the "principle" which he attempts

to force upon us. Elsewhere we shall see that Kautsky accuses us of

concluding the Brest-Litovsk peace: in his opinion we ought to have

continued war. But what then becomes of the sacredness of human life?

Does life cease to be sacred when it is a question of people talking

another language, or does Kautsky consider that mass murders organized

on principles of strategy and tactics are not murders at all? Truly it

is difficult to put forward in our age a principle more hypocritical

and more stupid. As long as human labor-power, and, consequently, life

itself, remain articles of sale and purchase, of exploitation and

robbery, the principle of the "sacredness of human life" remains a

shameful lie, uttered with the object of keeping the oppressed slaves

in their chains.

We used to fight against the death penalty introduced by Kerensky,

because that penalty was inflicted by the courts-martial of the old

army on soldiers who refused to continue the imperialist war. We tore

this weapon out of the hands of the old courts-martial, destroyed the

courts-martial themselves, and demobilized the old army which had

brought them forth. Destroying in the Red Army, and generally

throughout the country, counter-revolutionary conspirators who strive

by means of insurrections, murders, and disorganization, to restore

the old regime, we are acting in accordance with the iron laws of a

war in which we desire to guarantee our victory.

If it is a question of seeking formal contradictions, then obviously

we must do so on the side of the White Terror, which is the weapon of

classes which consider themselves "Christian," patronize idealist

philosophy, and are firmly convinced that the individuality (their

own) is an end-in-itself. As for us, we were never concerned with the

Kantian-priestly and vegetarian-Quaker prattle about the "sacredness

of human life." We were revolutionaries in opposition, and have

remained revolutionaries in power. To make the individual sacred we

must destroy the social order which crucifies him. And this problem

can only be solved by blood and iron.

There is another difference between the White Terror and the Red,

which Kautsky to-day ignores, but which in the eyes of a Marxist is

of decisive significance. The White Terror is the weapon of the

historically reactionary class. When we exposed the futility of the

repressions of the bourgeois State against the proletariat, we never

denied that by arrests and executions the ruling class, under certain

conditions, might temporarily retard the development of the social

revolution. But we were convinced that they would not be able to

bring it to a halt. We relied on the fact that the proletariat is the

historically rising class, and that bourgeois society could not

develop without increasing the forces of the proletariat. The

bourgeoisie to-day is a falling class. It not only no longer plays an

essential part in production, but by its imperialist methods of

appropriation is destroying the economic structure of the world and

human culture generally. Nevertheless, the historical persistence of

the bourgeoisie is colossal. It holds to power, and does not wish to

abandon it. Thereby it threatens to drag after it into the abyss the

whole of society. We are forced to tear it off, to chop it away. The

Red Terror is a weapon utilized against a class, doomed to

destruction, which does not wish to perish. If the White Terror can

only retard the historical rise of the proletariat, the Red Terror

hastens the destruction of the bourgeoisie. This hastening--a pure

question of acceleration--is at certain periods of decisive

importance. Without the Red Terror, the Russian bourgeoisie, together

with the world bourgeoisie, would throttle us long before the coming

of the revolution in Europe. One must be blind not to see this, or a

swindler to deny it.

The man who recognizes the revolutionary historic importance of the

very fact of the existence of the Soviet system must also sanction the

Red Terror. Kautsky, who, during the last two years, has covered

mountains of paper with polemics against Communism and Terrorism, is

obliged, at the end of his pamphlet, to recognize the facts, and

unexpectedly to admit that the Russian Soviet Government is to-day the

most important factor in the world revolution. "However one regards

the Bolshevik methods," he writes, "the fact that a proletarian

government in a large country has not only reached power, but has

retained it for two years up to the present time, amidst great

difficulties, extraordinarily increases the sense of power amongst the

proletariat of all countries. For the actual revolution the Bolsheviks

have thereby accomplished a great work--_grosses geleistet_." (Page

233.)

This announcement stuns us as a completely unexpected recognition of

historical truth from a quarter whence we had long since ceased to

await it. The Bolsheviks have accomplished a great historical task by

existing for two years against the united capitalist world. But the

Bolsheviks held out not only by ideas, but by the sword. Kautsky's

admission is an involuntary sanctioning of the methods of the Red

Terror, and at the same time the most effective condemnation of his

own critical concoction.