The Proletarian Revolution and Kautsky the Renegade/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III.
CAN THERE BE EQUALITY BETWEEN THE
EXPLOITERS AND THE EXPLOITED?
Kautsky says: “The exploiters always formed but a small minority of the population" (p. 14).
This is certainly true. Taking it as the starting point, what should be the argument? One may argue in a Marxist, in a Socialist way, taking as a basis the relation between the exploited and the exploiter, or one may argue in a Liberal, in a bourgeois-democratic way, taking as a basis the relation of the majority to the minority.
If we argue in a Marxist way, we must say: the exploiters must inevitably turn the State (we are speaking of a Democracy, that is, of one of the forms of State) into an instrument of domination of their class over the class of exploited. Hence, so long as there are exploiters ruling the majority of exploited, the democratic State must inevitably be a democracy for the exploiters. The State of the exploited must fundamentally differ from such a State; it must be a democracy for the exploited, political order of suppression of the exploiters. But the suppression of a class means inequality in so far as this class is concerned, and its exemption from the privileges of "democracy."
If, on the other hand, we argue in a bourgeois Liberal way, we have to say: the majority decides and the minority obeys. Those who do not obey are punished. And this is all. There is no need of talking about the class character of the State in general, or about "pure democracy," in particular, since it would not be relevant. The majority is the majority, and the minority is the minority. That ends the matter. And this is just Kautsky's way of reasoning. He says:
"Why should the rule of the proletariat necessarily receive a form which is incompatible with democracy?" (p. 21). There follows a very detailed and a very verbose explanation, garnished with a quotation from Marx and the figures of the elections to the Paris Commune, of the fact that the proletariat is always in a majority. The conclusion is: "A régime which is so strongly rooted in the masses has not the slightest reason for infringing democracy. It cannot, it is true, always do without violence, as for instance in cases when violence is employed to put down democracy. Force is the only reply to force. But a régime which is aware of the support) of the masses will only employ force and violence for the protection, and not for the destruction of democracy. It would simply commit suicide if it wanted to destroy its own most secure basis—universal suffrage, that deep source of mighty moral authority" (p. 22.).
You see that the relation between the exploited and the exploiters has entirely vanished in Kautsky's arguments, and all that remains is a majority in general, a minority in general, a democracy in general, that is, the "pure democracy" which is already familiar to us. And all this, mark you, is said a propos of the Commune of Paris! Let us quote, by way of illustration, how Marx and Engels discuss the subject of dictatorship, also a propos of the Commune: Marx: "When the workers put in the place of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie … their revolutionary dictatorship … in order to break down the resistance of the bourgeoisie … the workers invest the State with a revolutionary and temporary form …" Engels: "The party which has triumphed in the revolution is necessarily compelled to maintain its rule by means of that fear with which its arms inspire the reactionaries. If the Commune of Paris had not based itself on the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie, would it have maintained itself more than twenty-four hours? Are we not, on the contrary, justified in blaming the Commune for having made too little use of its authority?"
Engels: "As the State is only a temporary institution which is to be made use of in the revolution, in order forcibly to suppress the opponents, it is a perfect absurdity to speak about the free popular State: so long as the proletariat still needs the State, it needs it, not in the interest of freedom, but in order to suppress its opponents, and when it becomes possible to speak of freedom, the State as such ceases to exist."
The distance between Kautsky, on the one hand, and Marx and Engels, on the other, is as great as between heaven and earth, as between the bourgeois Liberal and the proletarian revolutionary. Pure democracy, or simple "democracy," of which Kautsky speaks, is but a paraphrase of the "free popular State," that is, a perfect absurdity. Kautsky, with the learned air of a most learned arm-chair fool, or else with the innocent air of a ten-year-old girl, is asking: Why do we need a dictatorship, when we have a majority? And Marx and Engels explain: In order to break down the resistance of the bourgeoisie; in order to inspire the reactionaries with fear; in order to maintain the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie; in order that the proletariat may forcibly suppress its enemies!
But Kautsky does not understand these explanations. He is infatuated with the "pure democracy," he does not see its bourgeois character, and "consistently" urges that the majority, once it is the majority, has no need "to break down the resistance" of the minority, has no need "forcibly to suppress" it: it is sufficient to suppress cases of infraction of the democrcay. Infatuated with the "purity" of democracy, Kautsky unwittingly commits the same little error which is committed by all bourgeois democrats, namely, he accepts the formal equality, which under Capitalism is only a fraud and a piece of hypocrisy, at its face value as a de facto equality. Quite a bagatelle!
But the exploiter cannot be equal to the exploited. This is a truth which, however disgraceful to Kautsky, is nevertheless of the essence of Socialism. Another truth is that there can be, in reality, no de facto equality, unless and until the possibility of exploitation of one class by another has been abolished.
It is possible, by means of a successful insurrection in the centre or of a mutiny in the army, to defeat the exploiters at one blow, but except in very rare and particular cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at once. It is impossible to expropriate at one blow all the landlords and capitalists of a large country. In addition, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not by far settle the matter, since it is necessary practically to replace the landlords and capitalists, to substitute for theirs another, a working class, management of the factories and estates. There can be no equality between the exploiters, who, for many generations have enjoyed education and the advantages and habits of prosperity, and the exploited, the majority of whom, even in the most advanced and the most democratic bourgeois republics, are cowed, frightened, ignorant, unorganized. It is inevitable that the exploiters should still enjoy a large number of great practical advantages for a considerable period after the revolution. They still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money at once), some movable property (often of a considerable extent), social connections, habits of organization and management, knowledge of all the secrets (customs methods, means, and possibilties) of administration, higher education, closeness to the higher personnel of technical experts (who live and think after the bourgeois style), and incomparably higher knowledge and experience in military affairs (which is very important), and so forth ,and so forth. If the exploiters are defeated in one country only—and this, of course is the rule, since a simultaneous revolution in a number of countries is a rare exception—they still remain stronger than the exploited, because the international connections of the exploiters are enormous. And that a portion of the exploited from among the least intelligent section of the "middle" peasant and artisan class may and, indeed, do follow the exploiters, has been shown hitherto by all revolutions, including the Commune of Paris (since there were proletarians also among the troops of Versailles, which the most learned Kautsky seems to have forgotten).
In these circumstances to suppose that in any serious revolution the issue is decided by the simple relation between majority and minority, is the acme of stupidity, a typical delusion of an ordinary bourgeois Liberal, as well as a deception of the masses from whom a well-established historical truth is concealed. This truth is that in any and every serious revolution a long, obstinate, desperate resistance of the exploiters, who for many years will yet enjoy great advantages over the exploited, constitutes the rule. Never, except in the sentimental Utopia of the sentimental Mr. Kautsky, will the exploiters submit to the decision of the exploited majority without making use of their advantages in a last desperate battle, or in a series of battles.
The transition from Capitalism to Communism forms a whole historical epoch. Until it is complete, the exploiters will still retain the hope of a restoration, and this hope will inevitably express itself in attempts at restoration. After the first serious defeat the overthrown exploiters who did not expect their overthrow, did not believe in it, did not admit even the thought of it, will with ten-fold energy, with mad passion, and with a hate intensified to an extreme degree, throw themselves into the fray in order to get back their lost paradise for themselves and their families, who formerly led such a pleasant life, and who are now condemned by the "rascals," the "mob," to ruin or penury (or "ordinary" labor). And these capitalist exploiters will necessarily be followed by a wide stream of the petty bourgeoisie, as to whom decades of historical experience of all countries bear witness that are constantly oscillating and hesitating, to-day following the proletariat, and to-morrow taking fright at the difficulties of the revolution, succumbing with panic after the first defeat or semi-defeat of the workers, giving way to "nerves," whining, running hither and thither, deserting from one camp to another—just like our Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries!
And in face of this condition of things, at the time of a most desperate war, when history is placing on the order of the day the question of the life and death of age-long privileges—at this time to talk about majority and minority, about pure democracy, about the superfluity of the dictatorship, and equality between the exploiter and the exploited—what bottomless stupidity and philistinism are needed to do it! But, of course, the decades of comparatively "peaceful" Capitalism between 1871 and 1914 had accumulated in the opportunist-minded Socialist parties whole Augean stables of Philistinism, imbecility, and mockery.
The reader will have noticed that Kautsky, in the above-quoted passage from his pamphlet, speaks of an attempt against uinversal suffrage (extolling it, by the way, as a deep source of mighty moral authority, as against Engels who a propos of the same Commune and of the same question of dictatorship spoke of the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie—a very characteristic difference between the Philistine's and the revolutionst's view of "authority"). One may say in this connection that the question about the suppression of the franchise of the exploiter is entirely a Russian question, and not at all one of the dictatorship of the proletariat in general. If Kautsky, without hypocrisy, had entitled his pamphlet: "Against the Bolsheviks," the title would have corresponded to the contents of the pamphlet, and Kautsky would have been justified in speaking of the question of franchise. But Kautsky wanted to write as a "theoretician." He called his pamphlet "The Dictatorship of the Proletariat." He speaks about the Soviets and about Russia in the second part of the pamphlet only, beginning with its fifth section. In its first part from which I quoted, the subject matter is democracy and dictatorship in general. Kautsky, by raising the question of the franchise, has given himself away as a literary opponent of the Bolsheviks, who cares a brass farthing for theory. For a theoretical discussion of the general (in contradiction to national and particular) class-basis of democracy and dictatorship ought to deal, not with a special question, such as that of the franchise, but with the general question whether democracy can be preserved for the rich and the exploiters as well as for the exploited, at the historical moment of the overthrow of the former, and the substitution, in the place of their State, of the State of the exploited? This is the only form in which the question can be put by a theoretical inquirer.
We all know the example of the Commune, we all know what the founders of Marxism said in connection with it. On the strength of their pronouncement I examined the question of democracy and dictatorship in my book: "The State and Revolution," which I wrote before the November revolution. The restriction of the franchise was not touched by me at all. At present it might be added that the question of the restriction of the franchise is a specific national question, and not one relating to dictatorship in general. One must study the question of the restriction of the franchise in the light of the specific conditions of Russian revolution and the specific course of its development. This will be done in subsequent pages. But it would be rash to guarantee in advance that the impending proletarian revolution in Europe will, all or for the most part, be accompanied by a restriction of the franchise in the case of the bourgeoisie. This may be so. In fact, after the war and after the experience of the Russian revolution it will probably be so. But it is not absolutely necessary for the establishment of a dictatorship. It is not necessarily implied in the idea of dictatorship, it does not enter as a necessary condition into the historical or class conception of dictatorship. What forms a necessary aspect, or a necessary condition of dictatorship, it the forcible suppression of the exploiters as a class, and consequently an infringement of "pure democracy," that is, of equality and freedom, in respect of that class.
In this way alone can the question be theoretically discussed; and, by not doing so, Kautsky has proved that he came forward against the Bolsheviks, not as a theoretical inquirer, but as a sycophant of the opportunists and of the bourgeoisie.
The question: in what countries and under what nation, peculiarities of this or that Capitalism a wholesale or partial restriction of democracy will be applied to exploiters, is the question of just those national peculiarities of capitalism and of this or that revolution, and has nothing to do with the theoretical question at issue, which is this: is a dictatorship of the proletariat possible without an infringement of democracy in respect of the class of exploiters? Kautsky has evaded this, the only theoretically important, question. He has quoted all sorts of passages from Marx and Engels, except the one relating to the subject, and quoted by me. He talks about everything that may be pleasant to bourgeois Liberals and democrats and does not go beyond their system of ideas. As for the main thing, namely, that the proletariat cannot triumph without breaking the resistance of the bourgeoisie, without forcibly suppressing its enemies, and that where there is forcible suppression there is, of course, no "freedom," no democracy—this Kautsky did not understand.
We shall now pass to the consideration of the experience of the Russian revolution and of that divergence between the Soviets and the Constituent Assembly, which led to the forcible dissolution of the latter and to the withdrawal of the franchise from the bourgeoisie.