# The State and Revolution (n. d.)/Chapter 6

CHAPTER VI.
THE VULGARIZATION OF MARX BY THE OPPORTUNISTS
The question of the relation of the State to the Social Revolution, and of the Social Revolution to the State, like the question of revolution generally, was little considered by the best known theoreticians of the Second International (1889–1914). But the most characteristic thing in that process of the gradual growth of Opportunism, which led to the collapse of the Second International in 1914, is this that even when they actually came into contact with this question they did their best to evade it, or else to pass it by unnoticed.
It may be said, in general, that the evasiveness on this question of the relation of the proletarian revolution to the State, an evasiveness which was both convenient to the Opportunists and which bred and fed them—resulted in a distortion of Marxism and in its complete vulgarization.
To characterize this lamentable process, if only in brief, let us take the best-known theoreticians of Marxism: Plekhanoff and Kautsky.
1. The Controversy Between Plekhanoff and the Anarchists.
Piekhanoff devoted a special pamphlet to the question of the relation of Socialism to Anarchism, entitled Anarchism and Socialism, published in Germany in 1894. He managed somehow to treat this question without touching on the most vital controversial point, the essential point politically, in the struggle with the Anarchists: the relation of the Revolution to the State, and the question of the State in general. His pamphlet may be divided into two parts: one, historico-literary, containing valuable material for the history of the ideas of Stirner, Proudhon and others; the second, ignorant and narrow minded, containing a clumsy disquisition on the theme "that an Anarchist cannot be distinguished from a bandit," an amusing combination of subjects and most characteristic of the entire activity of Plekhanoff on the eve of Revolution and during the revolutionary period in Russia." Indeed, ​in the years 1908 to 1917 Plekhanoff showed himself to be half doctrinaire and half philistine, walking politically in the wake of the bourgeoisie.
We saw how Marx and Engels, in their polemics against the Anarchists, explained most thoroughly their views on the relation of the Revolution to the State. Engels, when editing in 1891 Marx's Criticism of the Gotha Program, wrote that "we"—that is, Engels and Marx—"were then in the fiercest phase of our battle with Bakunin and his Anarchists; hardly two years had then passed since the Hague Congress of the International" (the First). The Anarchists had tried to claim the Paris Commune as their "own"—as a confirmation of their teachings, thus showing that they had not in the least understood the lessons of the Commune or the analysis of those lessons by Marx. Anarchism has given nothing approaching a true solution of the concrete political problems; we are to break up the old State machine, and what shall we put in its place?
But to speak of "Anarchism and Socialism" and to leave the whole question of the State out of account, taking no notice at all of the whole development of Marxism before and after the Commune—that meant an inevitable fall into the pit of Opportunism. For that is just what Opportunism wants—to keep these two questions in abeyance. To secure this is, in itself, a victory for Opportunism.
2. Kautsky's Controversy with the Opportunists.
Undoubtedly an immeasurably larger number of Kautsky's works have been translated into Russian than into any other language. It is not without some justification that German Social-Democrats sometimes make the joke that Kautsky is more read in Russia than in German—and we may say, in parentheses, that there is deeper historical significance in this joke than those who first made it suspected. For in 1905 the Russian workers manifested an extraordinarily strong, an unexampled demand for the best works, the best Social-Democratic literature in the world, and translations and editions of these works appeared in quantities unheard of in other countries. Thereby, with one sweep, the immense experience of the neighboring, more advanced country was transplanted on to the almost virgin soil of our proletarian movement.
Besides his popularization of Marxism, Kautsky is particularly well known in our country by his controversies with the ​Oportunists, with Bernstein at their head. But one fact is almost unknown, which, however, cannot be passed over if we are to apply ourselves to the task of investigating how it was that Kautsky rolled down into the disgraceful morass of confusion and defense of Social-Chauvinism at the time of greatest crisis, in 1914–1915. This fact is that before he came forward against the best-known representatives of Opportunism in France (Millerand, Jaures), and Germany (Bernstein), Kautsky had shown very great vaciliation.
The Russian Marxist journal The Dawn, which was published at Stuttgart in 1901–2, and advocated revolutionary proletarian doctrines, had to call Kautsky to account, denouncing his resolution at the Paris International Socialist Congress of 1900 as a "piece of elastic," because of its evasive, temporizing and conciliatory attitude towards the Opportunists. Letters have been published from Kautsky's pen in Germany revealing no less hesitancy before he took the field against Bernstein. Of immeasurably greater importance, however, is the circumstance that, in his very debates with the Opportunists, in his formulation of the question and his method of treating it we can observe, now that we are investigating the history of his latest betrayal of Marxism, his systematic gravitation towards Opportunism, and that precisely on this question of the State.
Let us take Kautsky's first big work against Opportunism: Bernstein and the Social-Democratic Program. Kautsky refutes Bernstein in detail; but the characteristic thing about it is this: Bernstein in his famous, or infamous, Socialist Fundamentals accuses Marx of Blanquism—an accusation since repeated thousands of times by the Opportunists and Liberals of Russia against the representatives of Revolutionary Marxism, the Bolsheviks. In this connection Bernstein dwells particularly on Marx's Civil War in France, and tries—as we saw, quite unsuccessfully—to identify Marx's view of the lessons of the Commune with that of Proudhon. He also pays particular attention to Marx's conclusion, emphasized by him in his preface of 1872 to the Communist Manifesto to the effect that "the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machine and set it going for its own purposes." The dictum pleased Bernstein so much that he repeated it no less than three times in his book—interpreting it in the most distorted Opportunist sense. We have seen what Marx means—that the working class must shatter, break, blow up ("sprengen," explode, is the expression used by Engels), the whole State machine; whereas, according to Bernstein, it would appear ​as though Marx by these words warned the working class against excessive revolutionary zeal when seizing power.
One cannot imagine a more vulgar and discreditable perversion of Marx's idea. How, then, did Kautsky act in his detailed refutation of Bernsteinism?
He avoided the examination of the entire enormity of the perversion of Marxism on this point. He cited the above-quoted passage from Engels' preface to Marx's Civil War in France, saying that, according to Marx, the working class cannot simply take possession of the ready-made State machine, but, generally speaking, it can take possession of it—and that is all. … As for the fact that Bernstein attributed to Marx the direct opposite of the latter's real views, and that the real task of the proletarian revolution, as formulated by Marx ever since 1852, was the shattering of the State machine—not a word of all this is to be found in Kautsky. The result was that the most important distinction between Marxism and Opportunism on the question of the proletarian revolution was glossed over! "The solution of the problem of the proletarian dictatorship," wrote Kautsky "in opposition" to Bernstein, "we can safely leave to the future." (P. 172, German edition.)
This is not a polemic against Bernstein, but really a concession to him, a surrender of the position to Opportunism: for at present the Opportunists ask nothing better than "safely to leave to the future" all the fundamental questions of the proletarian revolution.
Marx and Engels, from 1852 to 1891—for forty years—had taught the proletariat that it must break the State machine; but Kautsky, in 1899, confronted on this point with the complete betrayal of Marxism by Opportunists, fraudulently substitutes the question as to the concrete forms of the destruction of the State machine in the place of the more general one about the necessity of destroying it, and then saves himself behind the screen of the "indisputable"—and barren—truth, that concrete forms cannot be known in advance. …
Between Marx and Kautsky, between their respective attitudes towards the problem before the proletarian party as to how to prepare the working class for Revolution, there is a wide abyss.
Let us take the next, more mature, work by Kautsky, also devoted to a large extent to a refutation of Opportunist errors. This is his pamphlet on the Social Revolution. The author chose here as his special theme the question of "proletarian revolution" and the "proletarian regime." He gave us here much valuable ​matter; but just this question of the State was ignored. Throughout the pamphlet the author speaks of the conquest of the power of the State—and that is all. That is to say, the question is so formulated as to constitute a concession to Opportunism, since the possibility of the conquest of power is admitted without the destruction of the State machine. The very thing which Marx in 1872 had declared to be out of date in the program of the Communist Manifesto is revived by Kautsky in 1902!
The pamphlet also contains a special paragraph on "the forms and weapons of the Social Revolution." Here he treats of the general political strike, of the question of civil war, and of "the instruments of force at the disposal of the modern large States such as the bureaucracy and the Army"; but of that which the Commune had already taught the workers, not a syllable. Evidently Engels had issued no idle warning, for the German Social-Democracy particularly, against "superstitious reverence" for the State.
Kautsky propounds the matter thus: the victorious proletariat "will release the democratic program," and he formulates its clauses; but of what the year 1871 taught us about the middle-class democracy being replaced by a proletarian one—not a word. He disposes of the question by such respectable banalities as: "It is obvious that we shall not attain supremacy under the present order of things. Revolution itself presupposes. a prolonged and far-reaching struggle, which, as it proceeds, will change our political and social structure."
"Obvious" this undoubtedly is: as much as that horses eat oats, or that the Volga flows into the Caspian Sea. The only pity is that he should use this empty and bombastic phrase "far-reaching" to slur over the essential question for the revolutionary proletariat as to wherein exactly lies this "far reaching" nature of its revolution in respect of the State and Democracy, as distinguished from the non-proletarian revolutions of the past.
Here is a most important point, by ignoring which Kautsky, in point of fact, gives over the whole position to the Opportunists, whilst declaring war against them in awe-inspiring words, emphasizing the importance of the "idea of revolution"—how much is this "idea" worth, if one is afraid to propagate it among the workers?—or "Revolutionary idealism above all," declaring that the English workers represent now little more than a lower middle-class.
"In a Socialist society [Kautsky writes], there can exist, side by side, the most varied forms of industrial undertakings— ​bureaucratic (? ? ? ), trade-unionist, co-operative, individual. There are, for instance, such enterprises as cannot do without a bureaucratic (? ? ?) organization: such are the railways. Here democratic organization might take the following form: The workers elect delegates, who form something in the nature of a parliament, and this parliament determines the condition of work, and superintends the management of the bureaucratic apparatus. Other enterprises might be handed over to the workers' unions, which again could be organized on a co-operative basis."
This view is erroneous, and represents a step backwards by comparison with the deductions of Marx and Engels in the 'seventies from the examples of the Commune.
So far as this assumed necessity of "bureaucratic" organization is concerned, there is no difference whatever between railways and any other form of big industry, any factory, great commercial undertaking, or extensive capitalist form. The conduct of all such enterprises requires the strictest discipline, the nicest accuracy in the apportionment of work under peril of damage to mechanism or product, or even the confusion and stoppage of the whole business. In all such enterprises the workers will, of course, "choose delegates who will form something in the nature of a parliament."
But herein lies the crux: this "something in the nature of a parliament" will not be a parliament in the middle-class sense. Kautsky's ideas do not go beyond the boundaries of middle-class parliamentarism. "This something in the nature of a parliament" will not merely "determine the conditions of work, and superintend the management of the bureaucratic apparatus," as imagined by Kautsky. In a Socialist society this "something in the nature of parliament," consisting of workers' delegates, will determine the conditions of work, and superintend the management of the "apparatus"—but this apparatus will not be "bureaucratic." The workers, having conquered political power, will break up the old bureaucratic apparatus, they will shatter it from its foundations up, until not one stone is left standing upon another; and the new machine, which they will fashion to take its place, will be formed out of these same workers and employees themselves. To guard against their transformation into bureaucrats, measures will be taken at once, which have been analyzed in detail by Marx and Engels—(1) Not only will they be elected, but they will be subject to recall at any time; (2) They will receive payment no higher than that of ordinary workers; (3) There will be an immediate preparation for a state of things when all ​shall fulfill the functions of control and superintendence, so that all shall become "bureaucratic" for a time, and no one should, therefore, have the opportunity of becoming "bureaucrat" at all.
Kautsky has not reflected at all on Marx's words: "The Commune was not a parliamentary but a working corporation, at one and the same time making the laws and executing them." He has not in the least understood the difference between a middle-class parliament combining democracy (not for the people) with bureaucracy (against the people), and proletarian democracy, which will take immediate steps to cut bureaucracy down at the roots, and which will be able to carry out measures to their logical conclusion, to the complete destruction of bureaucracy, and the final establishment of democracy for the people. Kautsky reveals here again the same old "superstitious respect" for the State, and "superstitious faith" in bureaucracy.
Let us pass to the last and best of Kautsky's works against the Opportunists, his pamphlet The Road to Power, published in 1909. This pamphlet constitutes a considerable step in advance, inasmuch as it does not treat of the revolutionary program in general (as in the book of 1899 against Bernstein), nor of the problems of a social revolution independently of the time of its occurrence (as in the pamphlet The Social Revolution, of 1902), but of the concrete conditions which compel us to recognize that the revolutionary era is approaching.
The author distinctly points out the intensification of class antagonisms in general and the growth of Imperialism, which plays a particularly important part in this connection. After the "revolutionary period of 1789–1871" in Western Europe an analogous period begins for the East in 1905. A world-war is coming nearer with threatening rapidity. "The proletariat can no longer talk of a premature revolution." "We have entered upon a revolutionary period." "The revolutionary era is beginning."
These declarations are perfectly clear. The pamphlet offers us a measure of comparison between the high promise of German Social-Democracy before the Imperialist war and the depth of degradation to which it fell—carrying with it Kautsky himself—when the war broke out. "The present situation," Kautsky wrote in the pamphlet under review, "contains this danger, that we, the German Social-Democracy may easily be considered more moderate than we are in reality." But when it came to the test, the German Social-Democratic Party turned out even more moderate and opportunist than it had seemed. It is the more characteristic ​that, side by side with such definite declarations regarding the revolutionary era already upon us, Kautsky, in the pamphlet which—he says himself—is devoted to precisely the "political revolution," again quite passes over the question of the State.
The sum total of these evasions of the subject, omissions and shufflings inevitably led to that complete surrender to opportunism of which we shall soon have to speak.
German Social-Democracy, as it were, in the person of Kautsky, declared: I still uphold revolutionary views (1899); I recognize, in particular, the inevitability of the social revolution of the proletariat (1902); I recognize that a new revolutionary era is upon us (1909); still I disavow that which Marx said so early as 1852—if once the question is definitely raised as to the tasks confronting a proletarian revolution in respect to the State (1913).
It was precisely in this bald form that the question was put in the debate with Pannekoek.
3. The Debate Between Kautsky and Pannekoek.
Pannekoek came out against Kautsky as one of the representatives of the "Left Radical" group, which counted in its ranks Rosa Luxembourg, Karl Radek and others, which, while upholding revolutionary tactics, was united in the conviction that Kautsky was passing over to a "central" position, wavering, without principle, between Marxism and Opportunism. The correctness of this view has been fully proved by the war, when this "central" current of Kautskianism, wrongly called Marxist, revealed itself in all its pitiful helplessness.
In an article touching en the question of the State, entitled "Mass Action and Revolution" (Neue Zeit, 1912, xxx., 3), Pannekoek characterized Kautsky's position as an attitude of "passive radicalism," as "a theory of inactive expectancy." "Kautsky does not want to see the process of revolution" (p. 616). In treating this subject, Pannekoek approached the problem which interests us, of the tasks of a proletarian revolution in relation to the State.
"The struggle of the proletariat (he wrote), is not merely a struggle against the capitalist class to control the State, but a struggle against the State. … The essence of a proletarian revolution is the destruction of the organized forces of the State, and their forcible suppression (Ablösung) by the organized forces of the proletariat. … Until the entire State organization is destroyed, the struggle will not end. That is its aim. The ​organization of the majority demonstrates its superiorty by destroying the organized force of the ruling minority" (p. 548).
Pannekoek did not expound his ideas very skilfully, but theideas are sufficiently clear; and it is interesting to note how Kautsky combated them. "Up till now," he wrote, "the difference between Social-Democrats and Anarchists has consisted in this: the first desired to conquer the State authority, while the Anarchists' aim was to destroy it: Pannekoek wants to do both" (p. 724). If Pannekoek's exposition lacks precision and concreteness—not to speak of other defects which have no bearing on the present subject—Kautsky seized on just that one point in Pannekoek's article which is the essence of the whole matter; and on this fundamental question of principle Kautsky forsakes the Marxian position entirely and surrenders himself without reserve to the Opportunists. His definition of the difference between Social-Democrats and Anarchists is absolutely wrong; and Marxism is finally vulgarized and distorted.
This is what the difference between the Marxists and the Anarchists is: (1) The Marxists aim at the complete destruction of the State but recognize that this aim is only attainable after the extinction of classes by a Socialist revolution as the result of the establishment of Socialism, leading to the withering away of the State. The Anarchists, on the other hand, want the complete destruction of the State within twenty-four hours, and do not understand the conditions under which alone such a destruction can be carried out. (2) The Marxists recognize that when once the proletariat has won political power, it must utterly break up the old machinery of the. State, and substitute for it a new machinery of organized armed workers, after the type of the Commune. Anarchists, on the other hand, while advocating the destruction of the State, have no clear idea as to what the proletariat will put in its place and how it will use its revolutionary power; they even deny that the revolutionary proletariat has any need to make use of the State and to establish its revolutionary dictatorship. (3) Marxists insist upon making use of the modern State as a means of preparing the workers for revolution; Anarchists reject all this.
In this controversy it is Pannekoek, not Kautsky, who represents Marxism, seeing that it was Marx himself who taught that the mere transference of the old State machine into new hands is no conquest of power at all: the proletariat must smash up this apparatus and replace it by something altogether new. Kautsky rats from Marxism to the Opportunists because, under his ​hands, this destruction of the State, which is utterly repugnant to the Opportunists, completely disappears. Nothing remains but an opportunists loophole in his interpretation of "conquest" as the gaining of a majority.
In order to cover up his distortion of Marxism, Kautsky radiates erudition, offering us "quotations" from Marx himself. Marx wrote in 1850 of the necessity of a "decisive centralization of force in the hands of the State," and Kautsky triumphantly asks: "Does Pannekoek want to destroy 'Centralism'?" This is nothing but a conjuring trick. It is the same sort of thing as Bernstein on "Federation versus Centralism."
Kautsky's "quotation" is neither here nor there. The new form of the State admits Centralism as much as the old; if the workers voluntarily unify their armed forces this will be Centralism; but it will be based on the complete destruction of centralized government apparatus—the army, police, bureaucracy. Kautsky's behaviour is certainly not honest here; the well-known dissertations of Marx and Engels on the Commune are ignored in favor of a quotation which has no relevance at all.
"Perhaps Pannekoek wants to destroy the State functions of the officials (Kautsky continues). But we cannot do without officials even in our party and trade union organizations, much less in the State administration. For state officials our program demands, not annihilation but election by the people. It is not a question as to the precise form which the administrative apparatus will take in the future State, but as to whether our political struggle destroys (literally: dissolves, "auflost") the State before we have conquered it (Kautsky's italics). What Ministry, with its officials, could be destroyed? (Here follows an enumeration of the Ministries of Education, Justice, Finance and War). No, not one of the present Ministries will be abolished in our political struggles against the Government. … I repeat, to avoid misunderstanding, it is not here a question as to what form a victorious Social-Democracy will give to the 'future State,' but as to how our opposition changes the present State" (p. 725).
This is an obvious trick: Revolution was the question Pannekoek raised. Both the title of his article and the passages quoted above clearly enough show that. But Kautsky shifts and changes the point of view from one of Revolution to one of Opportunism, when he jumps over to the question of "opposition." According to him, we must for the present confine ourselves to opposition; after we have won power we can have a talk about other things. ​The Revolution has vanished; that is precisely what the Opportunists wanted.
Opposition and general political struggle is beside the point; we are concerned with the Revolution. And revolution is when the administrative apparatus and the whole machinery of government are destroyed, and a new proletarian power of the armed workers has filled their place.
Kautsky reveals a "superstitious respect" for the Ministries; but why cannot they be replaced, say, by committees of specialists working under sovereign all-powerful councils of workers' and soldiers' delegates? The essence of the matter is not at all whether the Ministries shall remain or be turned into committees of specialists or any other kind of institution; all this is quite unimportant. The main thing is whether we are still to have the old machinery of government saturated through and through with routine and inertia, and connected by thousands of threads with the capitalist class; or shall it be broken up andreplaced by something altogether new? The essence of revolution is not that a new class shall govern by means of the old governmental machinery, but that it shall smash up this machinery and govern by means of a new machine.
This is a fundamental idea of Marxism, which Kautsky either conceals or has not understood at all. This question of his about officials makes it plain how little he has understood the lessons of the Commune or the teachings of Marx. "We cannot do without officials even in our party and trade-union organizations"—we cannot do without officials under Capitalism; democracy is narrowed, crushed, curtailed, mutilated by Capitalism, wage-slavery, the poverty and misery of the masses. It is precisely the conditions of life under Capitalism, which are the cause, and there is no other, why the officials of our political parties and trade unions are corrupt—or, rather, have the tendency to become corrupt, to become bureaucrats, that is, privileged persons detached from the masses, and standing above it. This is just the essence of bureaucracy, and until the capitalists have been expropriated and the bourgeoisie overthrown, nothing can prevent even workers' officials from being to some extent "bureaucratized."
From what Kautsky says, one might think that a Socialism with elected employees would still tolerate bureaucrats and bureaucracy. That is the grand falsehood. Marx took the example of the Commune to show that under Socialism the workers' employees will cease to be "bureaucrats" and "officials"—especially when election is supplemented by the right of immediate recall; ​still more, when their pay is brought down to the level of the pay of the average worker; and still more again, when parliamentary institutions are replaced by "working bodies which both make and apply the laws."
All Kautsky's argument against Pannekoek, and particularly his triumphant point that we cannot do without officials even in our parties and trade unions, show nothing so much as that Kautsky has adopted the old "arguments" of Bernstein against Marxism itself. Bernstein's renegade book, Socialist Fundamentals, is an attack on "primitive democracy"—"doctrinaire democracy," as he calls it—on imperative mandates, functionaries who receive no remuneration, impotent central representative bodies, and so on. British trade union experience, as interpreted by the Webbs, is Bernstein's proof of how untenable "primitive democracy" is. Seventy odd years of development "in absolute freedom" (p. 187, German edition), have, forsooth, convinced the trade unions that primitive democracy is useless, and led them to replace it by ordinary parliamentarism combined with bureaucracy.
But the "absolute freedom" in which the trade unions developed was in reality complete capitalist enslavement under which—what more natural?—"one cannot do without" concessions to the evil power of force and falsehood by which the "lower" orders are excluded from the affairs of the "higher" administration.
Under Socialism much of the primitive democracy will inevitably be revived. For the first time in the history of civilized nations the mass of the population will rise beyond voting and elections, to direct control of the every-day administration of the affairs of the nation. Under Socialism all will take a turn in management and will soon become accustomed to the idea of. no managers at all.
Marx's wonderful critico-analytical mind perceived that the practical measures of the Commune contained that revolutionary departure of which the Opportunists are afraid, and which they do not want to recognize, out of cowardice, out of reluctance, to break irrevocably with the bourgeoisie; and which the Anarchists do not want to perceive either through haste or a general want of comprehension of the conditions of great social transformations. "One must not even think of such a thing as the break-up of the old machinery of government, for how shall we do without Ministries and without officials?"—thus argues the Opportunist, saturated through and through with philistinism, and in reality not merely bereft of faith in revolution, in the creative power of revolution, but actually in deadly fear of it (like our Social ​Revolutionaries and Mensheviks). "One must only think of the destruction of the old machinery of government; never mind searching for concrete lessons in earlier proletarian revolutionary movements, or analyzing by what and how to replace what has been destroyed"—thus argues the Anarchist: that is, the best of the Anarchists, not those who follow, with Kropotkin & Co., in the train of the bourgeoisie; and consequently the tactics of despair instead of a revolutionary grappling with concrete problems—ruthless, courageous, and, at the same time, cognizant of the conditions under which the masses progress.
Marx teaches us to avoid both classes of error. He teaches us dauntless courage to destroy the old machinery of government, and at the same time shows us how to put the question concretely: The Commune was able, within a few weeks, to start the building of a new proletarian State machinery by introducing the measures indicated above to secure a wider democracy, in which bureaucracy should be uprooted. Let us learn revolutionary courage from the Communards. In their practical measures we can see an indication of practical every-day and immediately possible measures; it is along such a path that we shall arrive at the complete destruction of bureaucracy.
It can be destroyed. When Socialism has shortened the working day, raised the masses to a new life, created such conditions for the majority of the population as to enable everybody, without exception, to perform the functions of government, then every form of the State will completely wither away.
"To destroy the State [Kautsky wrote] can never be the object of a general strike, but only to wring concessions from the Government on some particular question, or to replace a hostile Government by one willing to meet the proletariat half way. … But never, under no conditions, can it [a proletarian victory over a hostile Government] lead to the destruction of the State. It can only lead to a certain rearrangement (Verschiebung) of forces within the State. … The aim of our political struggle remains as before, the conquest of power within the State by the gaining of a majority in Parliament, and the conversion of Parliament into the master of the Government" (pp. 726, 727, 732).
This is nothing but the most vulgar Opportunism, a repudiation of revolution in deeds, whilst upholding it in words. Kautsky's imagination goes no further than a "Government willing to meet the proletariat half way"—further backwards towards philistinism than we were since 1847, when the Communist Manifesto proclaimed "the organization of the proletariat as the ruling ​class." Kautsky will have to realize his beloved "unity" with the Scheidemanns, Plekhanoffs, and Vanderveldes: all the lot will agree to fight for a Government "meeting the proletariat half way."
But we shall go forward to a break with these traitors to Socialism. We are working for a complete destruction of the old machinery of government, in such a way that the armed workers themselves shall be the Government, which will then be a very different thing. Kautsky may enjoy the pleasant company of the Legiens, Davids, Plekhanoffs, Potressoffs, Tseretellis and Tchernoffs, who are quite willing to work for the "rearrangement of forces within the State, … the gaining of a majority in Parliament, and the supremacy of Parliament over the Government." A most worthy object, wholly acceptable to the Opportunists, in which everything remains within the framework of a middle-class parliamentary republic.
We, however, shall go forward to a break with the Opportunists. And the whole of the class-conscious proletariat will be with us—not for "a rearrangement of forces" but for the overthrow of the capitalist class, the destruction of bourgeois parliamentarism, the building up of a democratic republic after the type of the Commune, for a republic of Soviets (Councils) of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies—the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.
Further to the "right" of Kautsky there are, in international Socialism, such tendencies as the Socialist Monthly (Socialistische Monatshefte) in Germany (Legien, David, Kolb and many others, including the Scandinavians, Stauning and Branting) ; the followers of Jaures and Vandervelde in France and Belgium; Turati, Treves and other representatives of the right wing of the Italian party; the Fabians and "Independents" (the Independent Labor Party, dependent always, as a matter of fact, on the Liberals) in England; and similar sections. All these gentry, while playing a great, very often a predominant role in parliamentary work and in the journalism of the party, decisively reject the dictatorship of the proletariat and carry out a policy of unconcealed Opportunism. In the eyes of these gentry the dictatorship of the proletariat "contradicts" democracy! There is really nothing seriously to distinguish them from the lower middle-class democrats.
Taking these circumstances into consideration we have a right to conclude that the Second International, in the persons of the overwhelming majority of its official representatives, has ​completely sunk down into Opportunism. The experience of the Commune has been not only forgotten, but also distorted. Far from making vivid in the workers' minds the near approach of the time when they are to smash the old machinery of the State and substitute a new one, thereby making their political domination the foundation for a Socialist reconstruction of society, they have actually taught the workers the direct opposite and have represented the "conquest of power" in a way that left thousands of loopholes to Opportunism.
It was a fateful thing to have confused and hushed up the question of the relation of a proletarian revolution to the State at a time when the States, with their swollen military apparatus in a whirlwind of Imperialist rivalry, had become monstrous military beasts devouring the lives of millions of people, in order to decide whether England or Germany—this or that group of financial capitalists—should dominate the world.
END OF PART ONE.