One of the most coarse, unfounded, and politically disgraceful
comparisons which Kautsky makes between the Commune and Soviet Russia
is touching the character of the Paris worker in 1871 and the Russian
proletarian of 1917-19. The first Kautsky depicts as a revolutionary
enthusiast capable of a high measure of self-sacrifice; the second, as
an egoist and a coward, an irresponsible anarchist.
The Parisian worker has behind him too definite a past to need
revolutionary recommendations--or protection from the praises of the
present Kautsky. None the less, the Petrograd proletarian has not, and
cannot have, any reason for avoiding a comparison with his heroic
elder brother. The continuous three years' struggle of the Petrograd
workers--first for the conquest of power, and then for its maintenance
and consolidation--represents an exceptional story of collective
heroism and self-sacrifice, amidst unprecedented tortures in the shape
of hunger, cold, and constant perils.
Kautsky, as we can discover in another connection, takes for contrast
with the flower of the Communards the most sinister elements of the
Russian proletariat. In this respect also he is in no way different
from the bourgeois sycophants, to whom dead Communards always appear
infinitely more attractive than the living.
The Petrograd proletariat seized power four and a half decades after
the Parisian. This period has told enormously in our favor. The
petty bourgeois craft character of old and partly of new Paris is
quite foreign to Petrograd, the centre of the most concentrated
industry in the world. The latter circumstances has extremely
facilitated our tasks of agitation and organization, as well as the
setting up of the Soviet system.
Our proletariat did not have even a faint measure of the rich
revolutionary traditions of the French proletariat. But, instead,
there was still very fresh in the memory of the older generation of
our workers, at the beginning of the present revolution, the great
experiment of 1905, its failure, and the duty of vengeance it had
handed down.
The Russian workers had not, like the French, passed through a long
school of democracy and parliamentarism, which at a certain epoch
represented an important factor in the political education of the
proletariat. But, on the other hand, the Russian working class had not
had seared into its soul the bitterness of dissolution and the poison
of scepticism, which up to a certain, and--let us hope--not very
distant moment, still restrain the revolutionary will of the French
proletariat.
The Paris Commune suffered a military defeat before economic problems
had arisen before it in their full magnitude. In spite of the splendid
fighting qualities of the Paris workers, the military fate of the
Commune was at once determined as hopeless. Indecision and
compromise-mongering above brought about collapse below.
The pay of the National Guard was issued on the basis of the existence
of 162,000 rank and file and 6,500 officers; the number of those who
actually went into battle, especially after the unsuccessful sortie of
April 3, varied between twenty and thirty thousand.
These facts do not in the least compromise the Paris workers, and do
not give us the right to consider them cowards and deserters--although,
of course, there was no lack of desertion. For a fighting army there
must be, first of all, a centralized and accurate apparatus of
administration. Of this the Commune had not even a trace.
The War Department of the Commune, was, in the expression of one
writer, as it were a dark room, in which all collided. The office of
the Ministry was filled with officers and ordinary Guards, who
demanded military supplies and food, and complained that they were not
relieved. They were sent to the garrison....
"One battalion remained in the trenches for 20 and 30 days, while
others were constantly in reserve.... This carelessness soon killed
any discipline. Courageous men soon determined to rely only on
themselves; others avoided service. In the same way did officers
behave. One would leave his post to go to the help of a neighbor who
was under fire; others went away to the city...." (Lavrov, page 100.)
Such a regime could not remain unpunished; the Commune was drowned in
blood. But in this connection Kautsky has a marvelous solution.
"The waging of war," he says, sagely shaking his head, "is, after all,
not a strong side of the proletariat." (Page 76.)
This aphorism, worthy of Pangloss, is fully on a level with the other
great remark of Kautsky, namely, that the International is not a
suitable weapon to use in wartime, being in its essence an "instrument
of peace."
In these two aphorisms, in reality, may be found the present Kautsky,
complete, in his entirety--_i.e._, just a little over a round
zero.
The waging of war, do you see, is on the whole, not a strong side of
the proletariat, the more that the International itself was not
created for wartime. Kautsky's ship was built for lakes and quiet
harbors, not at all for the open sea, and not for a period of storms.
If that ship has sprung a leak, and has begun to fill, and is now
comfortably going to the bottom, we must throw all the blame upon the
storm, the unnecessary mass of water, the extraordinary size of the
waves, and a series of other unforeseen circumstances for which
Kautsky did not build his marvelous instrument.
The international proletariat put before itself as its problem the
conquest of power. Independently of whether civil war, "generally,"
belongs to the inevitable attributes of revolution, "generally," this
fact remains unquestioned--that the advance of the proletariat, at
any rate in Russia, Germany, and parts of former Austro-Hungary, took
the form of an intense civil war not only on internal but also on
external fronts. If the waging of war is not the strong side of the
proletariat, while the workers' International is suited only for
peaceful epochs, then we may as well erect a cross over the revolution
and over Socialism; for the waging of war is a fairly _strong_ side
of the capitalist State, which _without_ a war will not admit the
workers to supremacy. In that case there remains only to proclaim the
so-called "Socialist" democracy to be merely the accompanying feature
of capitalist society and bourgeois parliamentarism--_i.e._, openly to
sanction what the Eberts, Schneidermanns, Renaudels, carry out in
practice and what Kautsky still, it seems, protests against in words.
The waging of war was not a strong side of the Commune. Quite so; that
was why it was crushed. And how mercilessly crushed!
"We have to recall the proscriptions of Sulla, Antony, and Octavius,"
wrote in his time the very moderate liberal, Fiaux, "to meet such
massacres in the history of civilized nations. The religious wars
under the last Valois, the night of St. Bartholomew, the Reign of
Terror were, in comparison with it, child's play. In the last week of
May alone, in Paris, 17,000 corpses of the insurgent Federals were
picked up ... the killing was still going on about June 15."
"The waging of war, after all, is not the strong side of the
proletariat."
It is not true! The Russian workers have shown that they are capable
of wielding the "instrument of war" as well. We see here a gigantic
step forward in comparison with the Commune. It is not a renunciation
of the Commune--for the traditions of the Commune consist not at all
in its helplessness--but the continuation of its work. The Commune was
weak. To complete its work we have become strong. The Commune was
crushed. We are inflicting blow after blow upon the executioners of
the Commune. We are taking vengeance for the Commune, and we shall
avenge it.
* * * * *
Out of 167,000 National Guards who received pay, only twenty or thirty
thousand went into battle. These figures serve as interesting material
for conclusions as to the role of formal democracy in a revolutionary
epoch. The vote of the Paris Commune was decided, not at the
elections, but in the battles with the troops of Thiers. One hundred
and sixty-seven thousand National Guards represented the great mass of
the electorate. But in reality, in the battles, the fate of the
Commune was decided by twenty or thirty thousand persons; the most
devoted fighting minority. This minority did not stand alone: it
simply expressed, in a more courageous and self-sacrificing manner,
the will of the majority. But none the less it was a minority. The
others who hid at the critical moment were not hostile to the Commune;
on the contrary, they actively or passively supported it, but they
were less politically conscious, less decisive. On the arena of
political democracy, their lower level of political consciousness
afforded the possibility of their being deceived by adventurers,
swindlers, middle-class cheats, and honest dullards who really
deceived themselves. But, at the moment of open class war, they, to a
greater or lesser degree, followed the self-sacrificing minority. It
was this that found its expression in the organization of the National
Guard. If the existence of the Commune had been prolonged, this
relationship between the advance guard and the mass of the proletariat
would have grown more and more firm.
The organization which would have been formed and consolidated in the
process of the open struggle, as the organization of the laboring
masses, would have become the organization of their dictatorship--the
Council of Deputies of the armed proletariat.
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