The Proletarian Revolution and Kautsky the Renegade/Chapter 8

by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

CHAPTER VIII.

SUBSERVIENCY TO THE BOURGEOISIE IN THE
GUISE OF ECONOMIC ANALYSIS.

As I have said already, Kautsky's book ought to have been called, if the title had faithfully reflected its contents, "Variations on the bourgeois attacks against the Bolsheviks," and not "The Dictatorship of the Proletariat."

The old Menshevik theories about the bourgeois character of the Russian revolution—that is, the old misinterpretation of Marxism by the Mensheviks which was rejected by Kautsky in 1905—are now once more warmed up by our theoretician. However tedious the process may be for Russian Marxists, we must stop to dwell upon this subject.

The Russian revolution would be a bourgeois revolution, so said all the Marxists in Russia before 1905. The Mensheviks, however, adulterated Marxism by Liberalism, in that they reasoned therefrom that the proletariat must not go beyond what was acceptable to the bourgeoisie, and must pursue a policy of compromise with it. The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, argued that that was a bourgeois Liberal theory. The bourgeoisie they said, was trying to effect a change of the State, on bourgeois, on reformist, not on revolutionary lines, by preserving so far as possible, the monarchy, landlordism, etc. The proletariat must not allow itself to be crippled by the reformism of the bourgeoisie, but must carry through the bourgeois democratic revolution to the end. As for the class correlation of strength in the time of a bourgeois revolution, the Bolsheviks gave the following formula: the proletariat, by gaining the adhesion of the peasantry, would neutralize the Liberal bourgeoisie, and would raze to the ground the monrachy, landlordism, and all the survivals of the Middle Ages. The bourgeois character of the revolution will be manifested precisely in this alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry as a whole, since peasantry as a whole consists of small producers who adhere to the system of commodity production. Subsequently, the Bolsheviks were arguing further, the proletariat would ally with itself the semi-proletariat (that is, all those who are exploited and toil), would neutralize the middle peasantry and would overthrow the bourgeoisie: this would be the Socialist revolution, as distinguished from the bourgeois democratic revolution (see my pamphlet: "The Two Tactics," issued in 1905, and reprinted at Petrograd in 1907, in the collected volume: "Twelve Years").

Kautsky took an indirect share in this discussion in 1905, in connection with the symposium got up by Plekhanoff, then a Menshevik, and expressed the opinion which, on the main issue, was directed against Plekhanoff. This provoked at the time a particular ridicule of the Bolshevik press. But now Kautsky does not even hint at those old discussions for fear of being exposed to ridicule by his own statements, and thereby deprives the German reader of any chance of gaining an insight into the gist of the matter. Indeed, Mr. Kautsky cannot well tell the German workers in 1918 that in 1905 he had been in favor of an alliance of the workers with the peasants, and not with the Liberal bourgeoisie, and on what conditions he advocated such an alliance, and what a programme he had been proposing for it.

Having withdrawn from his old position, Kautsky, in the guise of an "economic analysis," with proud words about "historical materialism," is now advocating the subjection of the workers to the bourgeoisie, chewing, with the help of quotations from the Menshevik Masloff, the cud of the old Liberal views of the Mensheviks, the quotations serving the purpose of proving the brand-new idea about the backwardness of Russia, and helping to draw from this brand-new idea the old deduction that the proletariat in time of a bourgeois revolution must not go beyond the bourgeoisie. And this in the teeth of all that Marx and Engels said when comparing the bourgeois revolution in France, in 1789–93, with the bourgeois revolution in Germany in 1848!

Before taking up the chief "argument" and the leading ideas of the so-called "economic analysis," let me point out that the very first sentences in Kautsky's disquisition show a curious confusion or superficiality, of thought. Our sage says: "Agriculture, and, to be more precise, small peasant production, has hitherto been the economic foundation of Russia. About four-fifths, and even perhaps five-sixths of the population live by it" (p. 45).

First of all, most respected theoretician, have you replected upon how many exploiters there might be among this mass of small producers? Of course, not more than 10 per cent, of the total number, and in towns still less, because production on a large scale is more highly developed there. Take even an incredibly high figure, and suppose that 20 per cent, of the small producers are exploiters, who, therefore, lose their franchise. You will then arrive at the fact that the 66 per cent, majority of Bolsheviks at the fifth Congress of the Soviets were reppresenting the majority of the population. To this must be added that a considerable section among the Left Social Revolutionaries were in favor of the Soviet régime, and when a section of them raised, in July, 1918, the adventurous banner of an insurrection, two new parties split away from them, the so-called "Populist Communists" and the "Revolutionary Communists," consisting of prominent Social-Revolutionaries whom the old party had been putting forward for important posts in the Government, as, for instance, Gacks and Kolegayeff respectively. Hence Kautsky has himself unwittingly refuted the ridiculous story of the Bolsheviks being supported only by a minority of the population.

Second, my dear theoretician, has it ever occurred to you that the small peasant producer inevitably oscillates between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie? This Marxist truth borne out by the entire modern history of Europe has been very conveniently "forgotten" by Kautsky as it destroys the entire Menshevik theory which he is so fond of repeating. If Kautsky had still remembered it, he could not have denied the need for a proletarian dictatorship in a country in which the small peasant producer is predominant.

Let us examine the chief proposition of the "economic analysis" of our theoretician. That the Soviet authority is a dictatorship admits of no doubt—so Kautsky says. "But is it a dictatorship of the proletariat? (p. 34.) The peasants, according to the Soviet constitution, form the majority of that population which is entitled to a share in the legislation and administration. What has been offered to us as a dictatorship of the proletariat, if carried out consistently, and if, generally speaking, one single class could directly exercise a dictatorship which in reality can only be exercised by a party, would turn out to be a dictatorship of the peasantry (pp. 34 and 35)!" And elated over such profound and clever reasoning, our good-natured Kautsky even attempts to be humorous and remarks: "It appears, therefore, that the most painless realization of Socialism is best secured by its capitulation to the peasants (p. 35)."

Our theoretician then proceeds to argue in great detail, on the strength of most learned quotations from the semi-Liberal Massloff, about the interest which peasants have in high corn prices, in a lower wage rate in the towns, etc., etc.—all brand-new ideas which are set out the more tediously as but little attention is paid to the really new phenomena of the post-war period, such as that the peasants demand for their bread, not money, but goods, and that they lack the necessary agricultural implements which cannot be obtained in sufficient quantities for any money. But of this more anon.

Kautsky then charges the Bolsheviks, the party of the proletariat, with having surrendered the dictatorship and the work of carrying out Socialism unto the hands of the small bourgeois peasantry. Excellent, Mr. Kautsky! But what, in your enlightened opinion, ought to have been the attitude of the proletarian party towards the small-bourgeois peasantry? Our theoretician, bearing in mind that silence is golden, prefers not to say anything on the subject, but gives himself away by the following statement: "At the beginning of the Soviet Republic the peasants' Soviets were organizations of the peasantry as a whole. But now the Soviet Republic proclaims that the Soviets are organizations of the proletariat and the poorer peasantry. The well-to-do peasants are thus disfranchised for the Soviets. The poor peasant is declared to be the permanent and wholesale product of the Socialist agrarian reform under the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat" (p. 48).

What a deadly irony! It can be heard from the lips of any bourgeois in Russia! They all mock and sarcastically note that the Soviet Republic openly admits the existence of the poorest peasantry. They laugh at Socialism; but this is their right. But a "Socialist" who laughs at the idea that after a most ruinous four years' war there should remain in Russia (and would remain yet for a long time) poor peasants—such a Socialist could only have been born at a time of wholesale apostasy.

Listen further: "The Soviet Republic interferes in the relations between the rich and poor peasants, but not by way of a new distribution of land. In order to relieve the scarcity of corn in the towns, detachments of workers are sent into the villages where they take away all surplus stocks from the richer peasants. Part of that stock is distributed among the town population, the other part among the poor peasants" (p. 48).

Of course, Kautsky, the Socialist and the Marxist, is deeply revolted at the idea that such a measure should be extended beyond the neighborhood of large towns (it does extend with us over the entire country). With the matchless and delicious coolness (or pig-headedness) of a Philistine, Kautsky, the Socialist and Marxist, moralises as follows: "They [the expropriations of well-to-do peasants] introduce a new element of uneasiness and civil war into the process of production" [a civil war which has been introduced into the process of production—this is something supernatural!] "which for its recovery urgently needs order and security" (p. 49). … … …

Oh, yes, as regards order and security for the exploiters and corn speculators who are hiding their surpluses, or trying to reck the corn monopoly laws, and are reducing the urban population to sheer famine, it is, of course, only meet and proper that Kautsky, the Marxist and Socialist, should sigh and shed tears. "We are all Socialist and Marxists and Internationalists," sing the Kautskys, the Heinrich Webers, the Longuets, the Macdonalds, etc., in a chorus, "we all are in favor of a working class revolution, only we should like it not to disturb the order and security of the corn speculators." And this dirty subserviency to the capitalists is masked by a "Marxist" reference to the "process of production"! If this be Marxism, what is flunkeyism before the bourgeoisie?

Observe what our theoretician has arrived at. He accuses the Bolsheviks of palming off the dictatorship of the peasantry as the dictatorship of the proletariat, but at the same time he accuses us of introducing civil war into the villages (which we regard as our merit) and of despatching armed detachments into the villages who publicly proclaim the dictatorship of the proletariat and the poorer peasantry, assist the latter and take away from the speculating richer peasants the surplus corn which they hide in contravention of the corn monopoly law!

On the one hand, our Marxist theoretician is in favor of pure democracy, in favor of the subordination of the revolutionary class, the leader of all who toil and are exploited, to the majority of the population (including therefore, the exploiters.) On the other hand, he insists, as against ourselves, upon the inevitableness of the bourgeois character of the revolution—bourgeois because the peasantry as a whole is still in the grip of bourgeois social relations—and yet pretends to defend the proletarian, the class and Marxist point of view! Instead of an "economic analysis," we have a first-class olla podrida. Marxism is replaced by all sorts of fragments of Liberal doctrines, and by a propaganda in favor of flunkey-like subserviency to the bourgeoisie and the village vultures.

The question so hopelessly muddled up by Kautsky, was elucidated by the Bolsheviks so far back as 1905. Yes, our revolution is a bourgeois revolution as long as we go hand in hand with the peasantry as a whole. We were fully aware of this, had repeated it a thousand times from 1905 onwards, and never attemptted either to skip over this necessary stage of the historical process, or to "abolish" it by decrees. Kautsky's endeavors to convict us on this point has in fact convicted his own confusion of mind and his own fear to recall what he wrote in 1905, when he was not yet a turncoat.

But in 1917, from April onwards, and long before the November revolution, that is, long before we assumed power, we said and explained publicly to the people: the revolution would no longer be able to stop at this stage, as the country had gone beyond that, as capitalism had advanced and as ruin had attained such gigantic dimensions as to demand, whether one wanted it or not, a further advance towards Socialism. For there was no other way of advancing, of saving the country, worn out by the war, and of relieving the sufferings of the workers and the exploited. It turned out just as we had predicted. The course of the revolution bore out the truth of our cratic one. Then it became a movement, in conjunction with the entire peasantry, against the monarchy, against the landlords, against mediaevalism, and to that extent the revolution remained a bourgeois, a bourgeois-democratic one. hen it became a movement, in conjunction with the poorest peasantry, with the semi-proletariat, with all the exploited, against Capitalism including the village rich, the village vultures and speculators, and to that extent the revolution became a Socialist one. To attempt to put artificially a Chinese wall between the two stages, and to separate them by any other factor than the degree of the preparedness of the proletariat and of its unity with the village poor, means completely to pervert and to vulgarize Marxism and to replace it by Liberalism. It means to smuggle through a reactionary defence of the bourgeoisie against the Socialist proletariat, under the cloak of quasi-learned references to the progressive character of the bourgeoisie as compared ith mediaevalism.

It is just because the Soviets, by uniting and drawing into political life the masses of workers and peasants, constitute the most sensitive and nearest to the people (in the sense in which Marx spoke in 1871 of a really popular revolution) index of the growth and development of the political maturity and class-consciousness of the masses, that they represent an immeasurably higher form and type of democracy.

The Soviet constitution was not drawn up "according to plan." It was not drawn up in a study, and was not imposed upon the laboring masses by bourgeois lawyers. No, this constitution grew up in the course of the development of the class-struggle in proportion as the class antagonisms were becoming more intensive. This is borne out by those very facts which Kautsky himself has to admit. At first the Soviets represented the peasantry as a whole, and the result was that the mental backwardness of the poorer peasants placed the leadership in the hands of the village vultures, of the prosperous peasants, of the petty bourgeois intellectuals. This was the period of the predominance of the petty bourgeois Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries, whom only fools or turncoats like Kautsky could regard as Socialists. This petty bourgeoisie necessarily, inevitably, wavered and hesitated between the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (Kerensky, Korniloff, Savinkoff), and the dictatorship of the proletariat: since the petty bourgeoisie, in virtue of its fundamental traits of character and its economic position, is incapable of any independent policy. It may be observed in passing, that Kautsky entirely runs away from Marxism by employing, in his analysis of the Russian revolution, the legal and formalistic conception (useful to the bourgeoisie as a screen for its domination over, and as a means of deceiving, the masses) of "Democracy," forgetting that "Democracy" means, in practice, sometimes the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and sometimes the impotent reformism of the petty bourgeoisie subject to that dictatorship, etc. According to Kautsky, then, there were in our capitalist conutry boiurgeois parties, and there was a proletarian party backed by the majority of the proletariat, but there were no petty bourgeois parties, that is, the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries had no class roots, no petty bourgeois origins!

The hesitations and oscillations of the petty bourgeois Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries enlightened the masses and drove the overwhelming majority of them, all the "lower depths," the proletarians and semi-proletarians, away from such "leaders." Finally, the Bolsheviks obtained a majority on the Soviets (by November, 1917, so far as Petrograd and Moscow were concerned), while among the Social-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks the scissions became more pronounced.

The victorious Bolshevik revolution meant the end of all hesitations and the complete destruction of the monarchy and landlordism (which had still been in existence till the November revolution). The bourgeois revolution was carried out by us to the end. The peasantry as a whole was supporting us, since its antagonism to the Socialist proletariat could not break out at once. The Soviets included at the time the peasantry as a whole, the class divisions among the latter being still in embryo, still latent.

The process of ripening took place in the summer and autumn of 1918. The Czecho-Slovak counter-revolutionary mutiny aroused the village vultures, and the wave of well-to-do peasant insurrections passed over the entire territory of Russia. The poorest peasantry was learning from life itself, and not from books or newspapers, the fact of the antagonism of its interests to those of the vultures and the village bourgeoisie in general. Like every other petty bourgeois party, the so-called Left Social-Revolutionaries were reflecting the hesitations of the masses, and in the summer of 1918 split into two. One section made common cause with the Czecho-Slovaks (insurrection in Moscow, when Proshyan having seized the telegraph office for one hour was informing Russia of the overthrow of the Bolsheviks; then the treachery of Muravioff, commander of the army against the Czecho-Slovaks, etc.), while another section, the one mentioned above, remained with the Bolsheviks.

The intensification of food distress in the towns was rendering the question about the corn monopoly more and more acute (Kautsky, the theoretician, has, in his "economic analysis" which is a mere repetition of platitudes gleaned from Masloff’s writings of ten years previously, quite forgotten about this monopoly). The old landlords' and capitalists' State, and even the democratic and republican one, had been sending into the villages, armed detachments, who were practically at the disposal of the capitalists. Mr. Kautsky knows, of course, nothing about it. He does not see in it the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. God forbid! That is "pure democracy," especially if it is approved by a bourgeois parliament. Nor does Kautsky know or speak about the fact in the summer and the autumn of 1917, Avksentieff and S. Masloff, in company with Kerensky, Tseretelii and other Social-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, were arresting the members of the land-committees. The truth is that a bourgeois State, which embodies and exercises the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie through a democratic republic, cannot confess to the people that it serves the interests of the bourgeoisie; it cannot tell them the plain truth, and is compelled to be hypocritical. But a State of the Commune or Soviet type tells the people the truth, proclaiming plainly and openly, that it is the dictatorship of the proletariat and of the poorer peasantry, thereby, by that very truth, rallying to itself scores of millions of new citizens, who are of no account under any democratic republic, but who are now drawn by the Soviets into political life, into democracy, into the administration of the State. The Soviet Republic sends into the villages detachments of armed workers (in the first place the most advanced) from the capitals, who carry Socialism into the country-side, rally to their side the poorer elements, organize and enlighten them, and help them to suppress the resistance of the bourgeoisie.

All acquainted with the conditions who have been to the villages, declare that it was not until the summer and autumn of 1918, that our country-side passed through its November (that is, proletarian) revolution. The crisis is now passing. The wave of well-to-do peasant insurrections has given place to the rising of the poor and to the growth of the committees of the poor. In the army, too, the number of Commissaries and officers and commanders of divisions and armies recruited from the ranks of the working-class, is steadily growing. At the very time when Kautsky, frightened by the July (1918), crisis, and the lamentations of the bourgeoisie was hastening to the latter's assistance, and was writing a pamphlet inspired by the conviction that the Bolsheviks were on the of those who support the Bolsheviks,—at that very time, when Kautsky saw in the desertion of the Left-Social Revolutionaries the "contraction" (p. 37) of the circle of those who support the Bolsheviks,—at the very time, the real circle of the supporters of Bolshevism was extending immeasurably, as millions and millions of the village poor were freeing themselves from the tutelage of the village vultures and the village bourgeoisie, and were waking up to an independent political life. We, indeed, have lost hundreds of Left Social-Revolutionaries, hundreds of spineless intellectuals, hundreds of village vultures, but we have gained millions of the poorer peasantry.^[1] One year after the proletarian revolution in the capitals the turn came, under its influence and with its assistance, of the proletarian revolution in the country-side, which finally consolidated the power of the Soviets and Bolshevism, and finally proved that the latter had no longer to fear any hostile power in the interior. Thus, after completing the bourgeois-democratic revolution in alliance with the entire peasantry as a whole, the Russian proletariat has passed defnitely to the socialist revolution, having succeeded in splitting up the village, in rallying to its side the village proletariat and semi-proletariat, and in uniting them against the exploiters and the bourgeoisie, including the peasant one.

If the Bolshevik proletariat in the capitals and large industrial centres had not been able to rally to its side the village poor against the peasant rich, this would have proved Russia's unripeness for the socialist revolution. The peasantry would then have remained an undivided whole, that is, under the economic, political, and moral leadership of the village vultures, of the rich and the bourgeoisie, and the revolution would not have passed beyond the bourgeois-democratic limits. (It must be said that even so, it would not have meant that the proletariat ought not to have assumed power since only the proletariat has really carried out the bourgeois-democratic revolution to the end, only the proletariat has made a serious contribution towards the advent of the world proletarian revolution, only the proletariat has created the Soviet State, which is, after the Commune, the next step in the direction of a Socialist State.)

On the other hand, if the Bolshevik proletariat had attempted at once, in November, 1917, without waiting or without being able to prepare and to carry through the class cleavage in the village, to decree a civil war or the establishment of Socialism in the villages, had attempted to do without the temporary union with the peasants as a whole, had attempted to do without the necessary concessions to the middle peasantry, it would have been a Blanquist distortion of Marxism, an attempt of the minority to impose its will upon the mapority, a theoretical absurdity and a display of ignorance of the fact that a common peasant revolution is still a bourgeois revolution, and could not in a backward country be turned into a Socialist one, without a whole series of transitions and successive stages.

Kautsky has confused everything in this most important theoretical and practical problem, and has, in practice, proved a mere servant of the bourgeoisie screaming against the dictatorship of the proletariat.

A similar and, perhaps, even greater confusion has been introduced by Kautsky into another most interesting and important question, namely: was the activity of the Soviet Republic in the field of agrarian reform—the most difficult and yet most important social reform—scientifically conceived and properly carried out? We should be thankful beyond words to every European Marxist who, after studying the most important facts, would critically examine our policy, because he would then help us immensely, and would also help the growing revolution throughout the world. But Kautsky, instead of a criticism,, has produced a monstrous theoretical muddle which turns Marxism into Liberalism, and in practice amounts to a series of idle, angry, vulgar sallies against the Bolsheviks Let the reader judge for himself:

"Landownership on a large scale could no longer be maintained, and the revoultion had put an end to it. It became clear at once that it must be handed over to the peasant population" [this is not true, Mr. Kautsky. You substitute what is clear to you for the attitude of the different classes towards the question. The history of the revolution has shown that the Coalition Government of the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie, the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries were pursuing a policy of maintaining large ownership. This has in particular been proved by S. Masloff's law and by the arrests of the members of the land committees. Without the dictatorship of the proletariat, the peasant population would not have defeated the landlords who were allied with the capitalists.] "… But on the question as to the formsmin which it should be carried out, there was no unity. Several solutions were possible. …" [Kautsky is most of all concerned about "unity" among "Socialists," whoever these "Socialists" may be. That the main classes in capitalist society are bound to come to different decisions, is a thing which he forgets.] … "From a Socialist point of view, the most rational solution would have been to turn the large estates into State property and to allow the peasants who have hitherto been employed on them as hired laborers to cultivate them in the form of co-operative societies. But this decision assumes the existence of agricultural laborers such as Russia does not know. Another solution would have been the transfer of large estates to the State and their partition into small plots, to be rented out to peasants who had not sufficient land. Some fraction of Socialism would then have been realized." …

Kautsky, as usual, operates by means of his famous "on-one-hand-on-the-other-hand." He places side by side different solutions, without reflecting in the only realistic and Marxist way upon the kind of transitions that must take place from Capitalism to Communism in such and such conditions. There are in Russia agricultural laborers, but they are few, and the question raised by the Soviet Government as to the method of transition to a communal and co-operative land tillage has not been touched upon by Kautsky at all. The most curious thing, however, is that Kautsky sees a "fraction of Socialism" in the renting out of small land plots. In reality this is a petty bourgeois solution, and Socialism has absolutely nothing to do with it. If the State renting out the land is not a State of the type of the Commune, but a parliamentary bourgeois republic, such as is constantly implied by Kautsky, the renting out of the land in plots would be a typical Liberal reform.

That the Soviet régime has abolished all private property in land is entirely ignored by Kautsky. He does even worse than that. He quotes the decrees of the Soviet authority in such a way as to omit the most important clauses, thus rendering himself guilty of a most incredible forgery. Having declared that "small producers aspire to full private property in the means of production," and that the Constituent Assembly would have been the "sole authority" capable of preventing the division of lands (an assertion which will cause laughter throughout Russia, where everybody knows that only the Soviets are regarded by the workers and peasants as authoritative institutions, while the Constituent Assembly has become a watch-word of the Czecho-Slovaks and the landlords) Kautsky continues: "One of the first decrees of the Soviet Government resolved that (1) all landlords' property in land is abolshed immediately without compensation; (2) All landlords' estates, as well as all estates belonging to the Tsar's family, to monastic institutions, to the church, with all their live and dead stock, with all their buildings and appurtenances are placed under the control of the cantonal land committees and the district Soviets' and peasants' delegates, pending the solution of the land question by the Constituent Assembly."

Having quoted these two clauses only, Kautsky concludes- "The reference to the Constituent Assembly has remained a dead letter. In point of fact, the peasants in the cantons were able to dispose of the land as they wanted" (p. 4).

Here you have an example of Kautksy's criticisms. Here you have a learned work which is uncommonly like a forgery. Kautsky suggests to the German reader that the Bolshevisk have capuitulated to the peasantry on the question of private property in land, and that they have permitted the peasants to deal locally with the land as they wanted. But in reality the decree quoted by Kautsky (it was first promulgated publicly on November 7th, 1917), consisted not of two, but of five clauses, plus eight clauses of an Instruction which, it was expressly stated, "must serve for guidance." Now, in the third clause of the Decree it is stated that the farms are transferred to the people and that an "exact inventory of the property" must be drawn up, and a "strict revolutionary watch over it" must be established. In its turn, the Instruction declares that "the right of private property in land is abolished forever," that farms of high cultural development are "not subject to division," and that "the entire agricultural stock, live and dead, of the confiscated estates is placed at the disposal of the State or the Commune, according to their size and value, without compensation," and that "the entire land becomes a land reserve for the entire people."

Then, simultaneously with the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly on January 5th, 1918, the Third Congress of Soviets adopted a "Declaration of Rights of the Laboring and Exploited Masses," which now forms part of the Fundamental Statute of the Soviet Republic. Article 2, par. 1. of this Declaration proclaims that "private property in land is abolished," and that "model estates and farms are proclaimed national property." Hence, the reference to the Constituent Assembly did not remain a dead letter, as another national representative body, immeasurably more authoritative in the eyes of the peasants, undertook the solution of the agrarian question.

Again, on February 19th, 1918, we published the Land Socialization Law, which once more confirmed the abolition of all land property and transferred the land and all private stock to the Soviet authorities under the control of the Federal Soviet Government. It also included, under the head of duties of the new authorities "the development of collective farming as the more advantageous in respect of economy of labor and produce, at the expense of individual farming, with a view to the transition to Socialist agricultural economy" (article 2, par. d). The same Law, in establishing the "equalized" form of land tenure, replied to the fundamental question as to who is to use the land, in the following manner: "Land plots for public and private needs, within the frontiers of the Russian Soviet Federal Republic, may be used: A. For cultural and educational purposes: (1) by the State as represented by the Federal, regional, provincial, cantorial, and village organs of Soviet authority, and (2) by public bodies (under the control, and with the consent of the local Soviet authorities); B., For purposes of agriculture: (3) by agricultural communes, (4) by agricultural co-operative associations, (5) by village communities, (6) by individual families and persons." …

The reader will perceive that Kautsky has completely distorted the facts, and has given the German reader an absolutely false view of the agrarian policy and legislation of the Russian proletarian State. Kautksy has not been able to formulate the most important questions with theoretical accuracy. These questions are (the equalization of the use of land; (2) nationalization of the land (the importance of that or this measure from the point of view of Socialism in general, and of the transition from Capitalism to Communism in particular); and (3) public farming as a transition from individual farming on a small scale to Socialist farming on a large scale. In this latter case, the question arises as to whether the treatment of the problem by the Soviet legislation satisfies the demand of Socialism.

On the first question it is necessary to bear in mind two fundamental facts: (a) The Bolsheviks, in examining the lessons of the revolution of 1905 (I may refer, for instance, to my own study of the agrarian question in the first Russian revolution), used to point out the democratic and progressive, and even revolutionary value of the claim for "equalizations," and continued to do so in 1917 up to the time of the November revolution; (b) when adopting the Land Socialization law, the crux of which is just that same equalization of land tenure, the Bolsheviks most explicitly declared that that idea was not theirs, that they were not agreed with such a claim, but regarded it as their duty to satisfy it, because it was the claim of the overwhelming majority of the peasantry. We said at the time that the ideas and demands of the majority of the laboring masses ought to be practically tested and discarded by themselves, that such demands could not be abolished or skipped over, and that that the Bolsheviks would help the peasantry in that process of testing the petty bourgeois ideas, in order to pass from them as speedily and as painlessly as possible to the Socialist demands.

A Marxist theoretician, if he wanted to help the working-class revolution by his scientific analysis, ought to have found the necessary answer to the questions: (1) Is it true that the idea of equalized land tenure has a democratic and revolutionary value, that is, possesses the value of carrying through the bourgeois democratic revolution to an end? And (2) did the Bolsheviks act correctly in carrying through by their votes (and by observing most loyally) the petty bourgeois law on equalization?

Kautsky did not even see where, theoretically, the crux of the problem lay. He would never have been able to refute the view that the idea of "equalization" has a progressive and revolutionary importance in a bourgeois democratic revolution, since such a revolution cannot go beyond it, and by doing so (the revolution having reached its limit), must necessarily demonstrate to the masses, at once and with perfect clearness and ease, the inadequacy of the bourgeois democratic solutions, and the necessity of proceeding beyond them towards Socialism.

Having overthrown Tsardom and militarism, the peasantry was dreaming about "equalized" land tenure, and no power on earth would have been able to kill this dream in the peasantry, as it became free from landlordism and from the bourgeois parliamentary republican State. The proletarians were saying to the peasants: We shall help you to attain this "ideal" form of Capitalism (since equalization of land tenure is the idealization of Capitalism from the point of view of the small producer); but by doing so, we shall demonstrate to you its inadequacy, and the necessity of passing to the social tillage of the land.

It would have been interesting to see how Kautsky would have attempted to prove the fallacy of such a direction of the peasant movement by the proletariat. But Kautsky preferred to avoid this question altogether. In addition, he directly deceived his German readers by withholding from them the fact that in its land law the Soviet authority has given a direct preference to communes and co-operative associations by putting them in the first place. With the peasantry to the end of the bourgeois democratic revolution, and with the poorest, the proletarian and semi-proletarian section of the peasantry to the Socialist revolution,—such has been the policy of the Bolsheviks, and such is the only Marxist policy. But Kautsky is at sixes and sevens, and cannot even formulate a single question correctly. On the one hand, he dares not say that the proletarians ought to have parted company with the peasantry on the question of equalization, because he sees that such a rupture would have been absurd (especially when in 1905, when he was not yet a renegade, Kautsky explicitly advocated an alliance between the workers and peasants as one of the conditions of the victory of the revolution). On the other hand, he systematically quotes the Liberal platitudes of the Menshevik Masloff who "argues" against the utopian and reactionary character of a petty bourgeois equality from the point of view of Socialism, and fails to point out the progressive and revolutionary character of the petty bourgeois struggle for equality and equalized land tenure, from the point of view of a bourgeois democratic revolution.

Yet, mark you, Kautsky insists (in 1918) on the bourgeois character of the Russian revolution, and insists that we should not proceed further than the limit set by this character. At the same time he sees "something of Socialism" (for a bourgeois revolution) in the petty bourgeois reform of renting out small plots to the poor peasants (that is, in an approximation to equalized land tenure)! Make out what he means, if you can!

In addition, Kautsky displays a Philistine inability to take account of the real policy of this or that political party. He quotes the phrases of the Menshevik Masloff without any desire to see the real policy of the Menshevik party in 1917, when it practically advocated, in coalition with landlords and Cadets, a Liberal agrarian reform and compromise with the landlords (as proved by the arrests of members of the land committees and by S. Masloff’s Land Bill). Kautsky has not perceived that P. Masloff's phrases about the reactionary and Utopian character of the petty bourgeois equality in practice constituted a screen for the Menshevik policy of an agreement between the peasants and the landlords (that is, of helping the landlords to deceive the peasants), instead of the revolutionary overthrow of the landlords by the peasants. What a wonderful Marxist this Kautsky is!

The Bolsheviks alone had drawn a distinct line of demarcation between the bourgeois-democratic and the Socialist revolution, and by carrying through the former to the end, they opened the door for passing to the second. This was and is the only revolutionary and the only Marxist policy, and Kautsky in vain repeats the old Liberal platitudes that "the small peasants have never and nowhere yet passed to collective production under the infuence of theoretical arguments" (p. 15). How smart! But never as yet and nowhere have the small peasants of a large country been under the influence of a proletarian State! Never as yet and nowhere have the small peasants proceeded to engage in an open class struggle between the poor and the rich among them, to a civil war among them, with the propagandist, political, economic and military assistance of the poor by a proletarian State authority! Never as yet and nowhere has such an enrichment taken place of speculators and profiteers simultaneously with the utter ruin of the masses of the peasantry as the result of a war.

Kautsky is simply repeating and chewing the old cud, being afraid even to contemplate the new problems of proletarian dictatorship. What, for instance, if the peasants lack implements for small production, and the proletarian State helps them to obtain agricultural machinery for collective farming—what is it, dear Mr. Kautsky? A "theoretical argument"?

Or take the question of the nationalization of the land. Our Populists, including all the Left Social Revolutionaries, deny that the measure we have passed constitutes the nationalization of the land. They are theoretically wrong. In so far as we remain within the framework of commodity production and capitalism, the abolition of private property in land constitutes simply land nationalization, and the term "socialization" only expresses a tendency, a desire, a preparation of the transition towards Socialism.

What then ought to be the attitude of Marxists towards the nationalization of the land? Here, too, Kautsky is unable even theoretically to formulate the question, or, what is worse, deliberately avoids it; although it has long been known that Kautsky is well aware of the old controversies among Russian Marxists on the question of nationalization, or municipalization, or partition of the land. It is a direct mockery of Marxism when Kautsky asserts that the transfer of large estates to the State and their renting out to poor peasants would have realized some "fraction of Socialism." We have already said that there would be here no trace of Socialism. But this is not all. We should not even have here the bourgeois democratic revolution carried out to the end. It has been a great calamity for Kautsky that he has confided in the Mensheviks. Hence the curiosity of Kautsky's insisting upon the bourgeois character of our revolution and accusing the Bolsheviks of having conceived the idea of proceeding to Socialism, and yet himself proposing a Liberal reform in the guise of Socialism without carrying out this reform to the point of clearing away all the survivals of mediaevalism in land tenure. In other words, instead of urging a consistent bourgeois democratic revolution, Kautsky, like his Menshevik advisers, is simply siding with the Liberal bourgeoisie which is afraid of the revolution. Indeed, why should only the large estates, and not all land, be turned into State Property? By such a half-measure the Liberal bourgeoisie attains a maximum preservation of the old (that is, the least progress in revolution), and the maximum easiness of return to that old. It is only the radical bourgeoisie, that is, the one which wants to carry out the bourgeois democratic revolution to the end, that demands the nationalization of the land.

Kautsky who, in the old days, some twenty years ago, wrote an excellent Marxist study of the agrarian question, could not but know Marx's references to the fact that land nationalization is the most consistent demand of the bourgeoisie. Kautsky could not but know the controversy of Marx with Rodbertus, and the remarkable arguments of Marx in his "Theories of Surplus Value," where the revolutionary importance of land nationalization from a bourgeois democratic point of view is set out with particular clearness. The Menshevik, P. Masloff, who has so disastrously been chosen by Kautsky as an adviser, used to deny that the Russian peasants would agree to the nationalization of all (including peasants') lands. To an extent, this view of Masloff's might have been connected with his "original" theory (which was in reality but a repetition of the bourgeois critics of Marx), his repudiation of absolute rent, and his recognition of the "law" (or "fact," as Masloff used to call it) of diminishing returns. In point of fact, however, already the revolution of 1905, had shown that the overwhelming majority of the peasants in Russia both those who were members of the village Commune, and those who were not, were in favor of the nationalization of the entire land. The revolution of 1917 confirmed this fact and, after the assumption of power by the proletariat, realized it. The Bolsheviks remained faithful to Marxism in that they did not attempt (contrary to Kautsky's charges levelled at us without the least proofs) to "skip over" the bourgeois-democratic revolution. The Bolsheviks, first of all, assisted the most radical, most revolutionary, the nearest to the proletariat, champions of the peasants among the bourgeois-democratic ideologists, namely, the Left Social Revolutionaries, in carrying out what practically constituted the nationalization of the land. Private property in land was abolished in Russia as from November 7th, 1917, that is, from the first day of the proletarian and Socialist revolution.

This act laid the foundation, the most perfect from the point of view of the development of Capitalism (without breaking with Marx, as Kautsky must admit) and at the same time created an agrarian order most elastic from the point of view of the transition to Socialism. From the bourgeois democratic point of view, the revolutionary peasantry in Russia could not proceed any further, since there can be nothing: more "ideal," nothing more "radical," from that point of view, than the nationalization of the land and the equalization of land tenure. It was the Bolsheviks, only the Bolsheviks, who, thanks to the triumph of the proletarian revolution, assisted the peasantry in carrying through the bourgeois democratic revolution to its uttermost limits. By this policy they contributed the utmost possible for the furtherance and the acceleration of the transition to a Socialist revolution.

One can judge by this what an incredible muddle Kautsky has offered to his readers by accusing the Bolsheviks of ignoring the bourgeois character of the revolution, and by himself betraying such a departure from Marxism that the nationalization of the land completely disappears in his arguments, and the least revolutionary (even from the bourgeois point of view) Liberal agrarian reform is put forward as a "fraction of Socialism."

Here we are approaching the third question formulated above, namely, to what extent has the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia foreseen the necessity of passing to Socialist land tillage. Kautsky again has, in this connection, committed something like a forgery in that he quotes only the "theses" of one Bolshevik relating to the problem of transition to collective farming. Having quoted one of these theses, our theoretician triumphantly exclaims: "It is most unfortunate that a problem cannot be solved by merely being called a problem. Collective farming in Russia is so far condemned to remain on paper only. Never yet and nowhere small peasants passed to collective production under the influence of mere theoretical arguments" (p. 50).

Never yet and nowhere has there been such a literary swindle as that to which Kautsky has now stooped. He quotes the "theses" but is silent about the law issued by the Soviet authority. He speaks about "theoretical arguments," and is silent about the proletarian State authority which holds in its hands the factories and goods of all sorts. All that Kautsky, the Marxist, wrote in 1899 in his "Agrarian Question" about the means which the proletarian State possesses in order to effect a gradual passage of the small peasants to Socialism, has been forgotten by Kautsky, the renegade, in 1918.

Of course, a few hundred State-supported agricultural communes and Soviet farms (run at the expense of the State by associations of laborers formerly employed on large estates) are not sufficient; but can the ignoring of this fact be called a criticism? The nationalization of the land which has been carried out in Russia by the proletarian dictatorship, has guaranteed in the highest degree the carrying out of the bourgeois democratic revolution to its uttermost limits,—even if a victory of the counter-revolution should turn back from land nationalization to land division (as examined by me in a pamphlet on the agrarian programme of Marxists in the revolution of 1905). In addition, the nationalization of the land has given the proletarian State the maximum opportunities for passing to Socialism in agriculture.

To sum up, Kautsky as put before us, from a theoretical point of view, a most horrid stew, in which the complete abjuration of Marxism forms the most distinct ingredient, and in practice, a flunkeylike subserviency to the bourgeois and its reformism. A fine critic, no doubt!

*⁠*

His "economic analysis" of industry Kautsky begins with the following magnificent argument: Russia has a capitalist industry on a large scale. Can a Socialist system of production be built up on this foundation? "One might have thought so if Socialism meant that the workers of the various factories and mines should appropriate them in order to carry on independent production at each factory or mine. … Just to-day, on August 5th, when I am perusing these lines" [Kautsky adds], "Moscow reports a speech delivered by Lenin on August 2nd, in which he is stated to have declared: 'All the workers firmly hold the factories in their hands, and the peasants will not restore the land to the landlords.' The demand that the factories should belong to the workers, and the land to the peasants was up till now an Anarcho-Syndicalist, not a Social-Democratic, demand" (pp. 52–53).

I have quoted these arguments in full in order that the Russian workers, who formerly justly respected Kautsky, might judge for themselves of these methods of the deserter to the bourgeois camp. Only think: on August 5th, when numerous decrees about the nationalization of factories in Russia had been issued, transferring all factories to the public ownership of the Republic and no single factory had been appropriated by the workers—on that August 5th Kautsky, on the strength of an obviously dishonest interpretation of a sentence in a speech of mine, was suggesting to the German readers that in Russia the factories were being handed over to individual workers! And after that Kautsky at great length continues to chew the cud, repeating that the factories must not be handed over to single workers. This is not criticism, but the method of a lackey to the bourgeoisie, who is paid by it to libel the workers' revolution.

Again and again Kautsky writes that the factories must be handed over to the State or to the municipalities, or to co-operative societies, and lastly adds: "In Russia they are now attempting to enter upon this path. … " Now, what does this mean? In August? Surely, Kautsky could have commissioned one of his friends, Stein or Axelrod, or some other flunkey of the Russian bourgeoisie, to supply him with a translation of at least one of the decrees relating to factories?

"How far this process has gone, cannot yet be determined. Tihs aspect of the activity of the Soviet Republic has at any rate a maximum interest for us, but it still remains entirely shrouded in darkness. There is no lack of decrees" [is that the reason why Kautsky ignores or hides the contents of those decrees from his геаders?] "but reliable information as to their effects is practicallу non-existent. Socialist production is impossible without all-round, detailed, reliable, and rapidly informing statistics. But the Soviet Republic cannot possibly have created as yet such statistics. What we learn about, its economic activities is highly contradictory and cannot be verified. This, too, is a result of the dictatorship, and the suppression of democracy. There is no freedom of the press or of speech" (p. 53).

This is how history is written. No doubt Kautsky would have received from the "free" press of the capitalists and the Dutovites all the information about the factories which are being handed over to the workers. This learned savant, standing above classes, is really magnificent! Not one of the countless facts showing that factories are handed over to the Republic only, and that they are managed by the Supreme Economic Council the organ of Soviet authority which consists of delegates of the trade unions forming a majority, is touched upon by Kautsky. With the obstinacy of a bookworm, he goes on repeating one demand: Give me a peaceful democracy, without civil war, without a dictatorship, with good statistics (the Soviet Republic has created a statistical organization, in which the best statistical authorities in Russia take part, but, of course an ideal system of statistics cannot be got rapidly)—in a word, give me a revolution without revolution, without force, without raging battles! This is what Kautsky wants. It is the same as if one wanted to have strikes without passion on either side. Can you distinguish such a Socialist from the typical Liberal bureaucrat?

And so, relying upon such "facts," that is, deliberately ignoring with contempt numerous facts, Kautsky concludes: "It is doubtful whether the Russian proletariat has obtained under the Soviet Republic more, in the sense of real practical acquisitions and not of mere decrees, than it would have received under the Constituent Assembly, in which, as in the Soviets, the Socialists would have been in a majority, although of a different school" (p. 58).

A gem, is it not? We should advise the worshippers of Kautsky to circulate this sentence as widely as possible among the Russian workers, since no better material for gauging his political decadence could have been supplied by Kautsky himself. Kerensky, comrades and workers, was also a "Socialist," only of a different school! Kautsky, the historian, satisfied with the title which the Right Social-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks have appropriated Kautsky, the historian, refuses even to hear about the facts which loudly proclaim that under Kerensky, the Mensheviks and the Right Social-Revolutionaries were supporting the Imperialist policy and profiteering practices of the bourgeoisie, and discreetly suppresses the fact that it was just those heroes of the Imperialist war and bourgeois dictatorship, who were represented in the Constituent Assembly by a majority. And this is called an "economic analysis"!

In conclusion, let me quote another sample of that "economic analysis": "After an existence of nine months the Soviet Republic, instead of spreading general well-being, has seen itself compelled to explain the causes of the general distress" (p. 41).

We are accustomed to hear such arguments from the lips of the Cadets. This, in fact, is the argument of all the flunkeys of the bourgeoisie in Russia. They all want to see a general well-being brought about in nine months after a ruinous war of four years, and under a sabotage and numerous insurrection of the bourgeoisie, aided and abetted on all sides by foreign capitalists! There is absolutely no difference whatever between Kautsky and the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie so far as practice is concerned. His sweetly-reasonable arguments with the borrowed plumes of Socialism only repeat what is constantly said straightforwardly, without embellishments and without great refinement, by all the Kornilovites, the Dutovites, and Krasnovites in Russia.

•

The above lines were written on November 9th, 1918. In the night following news was received from Germany announcing the beginnig of a victorious revolution, at first at Kiel and other northern towns and ports, where power had passed into the hands of Councils of Workers' and Soldiers; Delegates, and then in Berlin, where the authority has also passed into the hands of the Soviet. The conclusion which I was going to write on Kautsky's pamphlet and on the proletarian revolution has thereby been rendered superfluous.

November 10, 1918.

N. LENIN.

1. The Sixth Congress of the Soviets, Nov. 7–9, 1918, was attended by 967 delegates with a decisive, and 351 delegates with a consultative, vote. The former included 950, and the latter 335 Boksheviks, that is, about 97 per cent. of the total number of delegates.