The Proletarian Revolution and Kautsky the Renegade/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
THE SOVIETS MUST NOT BECOME STATE
ORGANIZATIONS.
The Soviets are the Russian form of proletarian democracy. If a Marxist theoretician, writing on the dictatorship of the proletariat, seriously set himself to study the subject (and not merely to repeat the petty bourgeois lamentations over dictatorship, as Kautsky does in repeating the Menshevik elegies) he would first give a general definition of dictatorship, and then examine its peculiar national form, the Soviets, and give a criticism of them as one of the forms of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
It goes without saying that nothing of this kind is to be expected from Kautsky after his Liberal interpretation of Marx's theory of the dictatorship. It is, however, highly interesting to see how he approached the question of what the Soviets are, and how he dealt with it.
The Soviets, he says, recalling their rise in 1905, have created "a form of proletarian organization which is the most embracing of all, since it includes all wage workers" (p. 31). In 1905 they were local bodies, in 1917 they became national organizations for the entire country. "Already now" (Kautsky continues) "the Soviet organization has behind it a great and glorious history, and it has a still more mighty future before it, and this not in Russia alone. It appears everywhere that the old methods of economic and political warfare are no longer effectvie against the gigantic forces which financial capital has at its disposal, both politically and economically. The old methods cannot be discarded; they are still needed for normal times. But from time to time problems arise with which they are unable to cope, and which can only successfully be dealt with by the concentration of all the political and economic weapons of the working-class."
Then follows a disquisition about the mass-strike, and about the "trade-union bureaucracy" which is indispensable as the trade-unions themselves, but which "is not equal to the task of directing such mighty mass-battles as are becoming more and more the order of the day" … "Thus (Kauteky concludes) the Soviet organization is one of the most important phenomena of our time. It promises to acquire an importance in the great decisive battles between capital and labor which are looming in the near future." … "But are we justified in demanding of the Soviets more? The Bolsheviks who, after the November revolution obtained in conjuction with the Left Social Revolutionaries, a majority on the Soviets, after the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly, set out to turn the Soviets from a militant organization of one class into a State organization. They destroyed the democracy which the Russian people had won in the March revolution, and accordingly ceased to call themselves Social-Democrats and assumed the name of Communists" (p. 33).
Persons familiar with the Russian Menshevik literature will at once see what servile fidelity Kautsky has been copying Martoff, Axelrod, Stein, and Co. Yes, "servile fidelity," because Kautsky, to a ridiculous degree, distorts the fact in order to please Menshevik prejudices. Kautsky did not take the pains, for instance, of informing himself at his source (of Stein, at Berlin, or of Axelrod at Stockholm) when the question about changing the name of the Bolsheviks and about the importance of the Soviets as State institutions was first raised. If Kautsky had done so, he would not have penned these lines which are now calculated to provoke laughter, since both these questions were raised by the Bolsheviks in April, 1917 (as for instance, in my theses of April 4–17, 1917), that is, long before the November revolution of 1917 (and therefore a fortiori before the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in January, 1918).
But Kautsky's argument which I have just quoted, contains the crux of the entire question about the Soviets. This crux namely is: must the Soviets aspire to become State institutions (the Bolsheviks putt forward the demand, in April, 1917, that the whole power must belong to the Soviets, and at the party conference in the same month, they declared that they were no longer satisfied with a bourgeois parliamentary republic, but demanded a workers' and peasants' republic of the Commune or Soviet type); or must the Soviets not aspire to assume State authority and to become State institutions, and must they remain "militant organizations of one class" (as Martoff used to put it, discreetly concealing under this innocent wish the fact that the Soviets under Menshevik leadership were the instrument of subjection of the workers by the bourgeoisie)?
Kautsky, in a servile manner, has repeated Martoff's words, picking out fragments from a theoretical controversy between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, and transplanting them, without rhyme or reason, on to the general theoretical and European field. The result is such a quid pro quo muddle as to provoke Homeric laughter in every intelligent Russian worker who hears of these arguments of Kautsky. No doubt, with the same laughter, Mr. Kautsky will be greeted by every worker in Europe (except a handful of inveterate Socialist Imperialists) who learns what the question at issue is. Indeed, Kautsky has rendered Martoff a bad service by reducing to an obvious absurdity Martoff's error. Let us, indeed, examine the result of Kautsky's argument.
The Soviets embrace all wage workers. As against financial capital all the previous methods of economic and political struggle of the proletariat are inadequate. The Soviets have a great future before them even outside Russia. They will play a decisive part in the great final battles between capital and labor in Europe. This is what Kautsky says.
Very well. But will not the "final battles between capital and labor” decide the question, which of the two classes will get possession of the power in the State? God forbid anything of the kind. In the "final" battles the organizations which embrace all the wage workers must not become State institutions.
But what is the State? The State is nothing but a machine for the suppression of one class by another. It appears, then, that the oppressed class, the advance guard of all those who labor and are exploited in modern society, must take up the final battles between capital and labor, but must not touch the machine through which labor is oppressed by capital! It must not break up that machine: It must not make use of its all-embracing organization to suppress the exploiters! Excellent, magnificent, Mr. Kautsky! "We" recognise the class-war, as it is recognized by the Liberals: that is, without the overhtrow of the bourgeoisie!
Here is where the complete rupture of Kautsky with Marxian Socialism becomes patent and obvious. This is, practically, a desertion to the camp of the bourgeoisie, which is also prepared to admit everything except the transformation of the organizations of the oppressed class into State institutions. Kautsky can no longer save his position in trying to reconcile everything and everybody and to avoid all contradiction by means of phrases. One of the two: either Kautsky rejects all transference of State power to the working-class, or he admits that the working-class may take over the old bourgeois State machinery, but objects to its being broken up and replaced by a new proletarian machine. Whether Kausky's arguments are interpreted one way or another, his break with Marxism and his desertion to the bourgeoisie are obvious.
Already in the "Communist Manifesto," when describing what sort of State a triumphant working-class needs, Marx defined it as "a State, that is, the proletariat organized as the ruling class." Now we have a man pretending to be a Marxist who says that the proletariat, organized to a man and waging a final battle against capital, must not make its class organization a State organization! Here Kautsky has betrayed that "superstitious faith in the State," of which Engels wrote as far back as 1891, аs "having passed in Germany into the common mind of the bourgeoisie, and even among the workers." Fight on, workers—our Philistine agrees (as every bourgeois agrees, since the workers are fighting all the same: one has only to find the means to blunt} their sword)—fight on, but dare not to win! You must not destroy the State machinery of the bourgeoisie, you must not substitute in the place of the bourgeois State organization the proletarian State organization.
One who sincerely shares the Marxist view that the State is but a machine for the suppression of one class by another, and who has reflected upon this truth, could not have reached the absurd conclusion that the proletarian organizations capable of defeating financial capital must not become state organizations. The petty bourgeois, to whom the State is something standing outside or above classes, stands here fully revealed. Why, indeed, is the proletariat, "one class only," to be permitted to wage a "decisive" struggle against capital which dominates not only the proletariat, but also the entire people, including petty bourgeoisie and the entire peasantry, and yet not be permitted to turn its organization into a State organization? For the simple reason that the petty bourgeois is afraid of the calss-struggle, and breaks it off before it reaches its end. that is, its chief object.
Kautsky has landed into a morass and has given himself away. Mark you, he himself admits that Europe is on the eve of decisive struggles between capital and labor, and that the former methods of economic and political warfare of the proletariat are inadequate. But these methods just consist in taking advantage of bourgeois democracy; hence—but Kautsky is afraid to think out what follows. But we can say: hence only a reactionary, only an enemy of the working-class, only a henchman of the bourgeoisie, can at present praise the charms of bourgeois democracy and talk about "pure" democracy, turning his face towards the dead past. Bourgeois democracy was an advance as compared with the Middle Ages, and it was necessary to take advantage of it. But now it is inadequate for the purposes of the working-class. Now we must look, not backward, but forward, to the substitution of a proletarian democracy in the place of a bourgeois democracy. And although the preparatory work for the proletarian revolution, the formation and the drilling of the proletarian army was possible and necessary within the framework of the bourgeois democratic State, yet, once we have come up to the decisive issue to the final battles, it is treachery to the working-class to try to confine the proletariat to this framework.
Kautsky has made himself the more ridiculous as he has repeated an argument by Martoff, without noticing that with Martoff it was based upon another argument which he, Kautsky, has not adduced. Martoff said (and Kautsky repeats it) that Russia was not yet ripe for Socialism. Hence followed the deduction that it was too early to turn the Soviets into State organizations (read: it is quite time to turn the Soviets, with the assistance of Menshevik leaders, into instruments of subjection of the workers to the Imperialist bourgeoisie). But Kautsky cannot argue directly that Europe is not ripe for Socialism. As far back as 1909, when he was not as yet a turn-coat, he argued that there was no reason to fear a premature revolution, and that he would be a traitor who should repudiate the revolution, for fear of defeat. This opinion Kautsky cannot repudiate directly, and so we get the absurdity which lays bare the entire imbecility and cowardice of the small borgeois: on the one hand, Europe is ripe for Socialism, and is on the eve of decisive battles between Capital and Labor; on the other hand, the fighting organization (which, moreover, consolidates and requires strength in battle), the organization of the proletariat which is the advance guard, the organizer and the leader of the oppressed masses, must not become a State organization!
From a practical point of view, the idea that the Soviets are necessary as fighting organizations, but must not become State institutions, is even more absurd than it is in the theoretical respect. Even in peaceful times, when the situation is not revolutionary, the mass struggle of the workers against the capitalists—for instance, a mass strike—causes passion to run very high on either side, provokes great bitterness and rage, the bourgeoisie constantly insisting that it must remain "master in its own house," etc. But in the time of revolution, when political life reaches, one may say, the boiling point, an organization like the Soviets, which embraces all workers, all industries, and ultimately also all soldiers, and the entire laboring and poor population of the villages, must inevitably, in the course of the struggle, and by the mere logic of attack and defence, bring the questions of power to a direct issue. All attempts to take up a middle position and to "reconcile" the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, appear then as acts of imbecility and prove a miserable failure. Such has been the fate of the efforts of Martoff and his friends in Russia, and such will inevitably also be the fate of similar attempts in Germany and other countries, if the Soviets should succeed in striking root), in gaining strength, and in linking up with one another. To tell the Soviets: fight, but do not take over the entire State authority, do not become State institutions, its tantamount to preaching the co-operation of classes and "social peace" between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The bare idea is preposterous that such a position amid passionate strife could lead to anything else than a disgraceful collapse. It is, however, the eternal fate of Kautsky to sit between two stools. He puts on an air as if he did not agree with the opportunists on any theoretical question, but in practice he agrees with them on everything that is essential (i. e., on everything that pertains to the revolution).