"Universal suffrage is an index of the maturity of the working-class: it cannot, and will not, give anything more in the present State" (Engels, in his book on the State. Mr. Kautsky tediously chews at great length the first part of the proposition, which is acceptable to the bourgeoisie, but, as a renegade, conveniently omits the second half, which is not agreeable to the bourgeoisie). "The Commune was to be not a parliament, but a working body, legislating and executing at the same time. … Instead of deciding once in three or six years what member of the ruling class was to represent and repress the people in parliament, universal suffrage was to be the means whereby the people, organized in Communes, was to seek out, for its gigantic business, workers, foremen, book-keepers, just in the same way in which employers use their individual suffrage" (Marx, in his "Civil War in France").
Every one of these propositions, which are well-known to the most learned Mr. Kautsky is a direct challenge to him and lays bare his apostasy. Kautsky nowhere in his pamphlet shows the slightest understanding of these truths. The whole of his pamphlet is but a mockery of Marxism.
Take the fundamental laws of modern States, take their internal administration, take the right of meeting and the freedom of the press and the so-called equality of all citizens before the law and you will see at every step evidence of the hypocrisy of bourgeois democracy, with which every honest and intelligent worker is familiar. There is not a single State ,however democratic, which does not contain loopholes or limiting clauses in its constitution which guarantee the bourgeoisie the legal possibility of dispatching troops against the workers, of proclaiming martial law, and so forth, in case of the disturbance of public order, that is, in case of the "disturbance" by the servile class of its servile condition, and of attempts to strike up a non-servile attitude. Kautsky
( 25 )
