This is how history is written! From a “free” press of the capitalists and Dutov men Kautsky would have received information about factories being taken over by the workers...This “serious savant” who stands above classes is magnificent, indeed! About the countless facts which show that the factories are being turned over to the Republic only, that they are managed by an organ of Soviet power, the Supreme Economic Council, which is constituted mainly of workers elected by the trade unions, Kautsky refuses to say a single word. With the obstinacy of the “man in the muffler”, he stubbornly keeps repeating one thing: give me peaceful democracy, without civil war, without a dictatorship and with good statistics (the Soviet Republic has created a statistical service in which the best statistical experts in Russia are employed, but, of course, ideal statistics cannot be obtained so quickly). In a word, what Kautsky demands is a revolution without revolution, without fierce struggle, without violence. It is equivalent to asking for strikes in which workers and employers do not get excited. Try to find the difference between this kind of “socialist” and common liberal bureaucrat!
So, relying upon such “factual material”, i.e., deliberately and contemptuously ignoring the innumerable facts, Kautsky “concludes”: “It is doubtful whether the Russian proletariat has obtained more in the sense of real practical gains, and not of mere decrees, under the Soviet Republic than it would have obtained from a Constituent Assembly, in which, as in the Soviets, socialists, although of a different hue, predominated” (p. 58).
A gem, is it not? We would advise Kautsky’s admirers to circulate this utterance as widely as possible among the Russian workers, for Kautsky could not have provided better material for gauging the depth of his political degradation. Comrade workers, Kerensky, too, was a “socialist”, only of a “different hue”! Kautsky the historian is satisfied with the name, the title which the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks “appropriated” to themselves. Kautsky the historian refuses even to listen to the facts which show that under Kerensky the Mensheviks and the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries supported the imperialist policy and marauding practices of the bourgeoisie: he is discreetly silent about the fact that the majority in the Constituent Assembly consisted of these very champions of imperialist war and bourgeois dictatorship. And this is called “economic analysis”!
In conclusion let me quote another sample of this “economic analysis”: “...After nine months’ existence, the Soviet Republic, instead of spreading general well-being, felt itself obliged to explain why there is general want” (p. 41).
We are accustomed to hear such arguments from the lips of the Cadets. All the flunkeys of the bourgeoisie in Russia argue in this way: show us, after nine months, your general well-being—and this after four years of devastating war, with foreign capital giving all-round support to the sabotage and rebellions of the bourgeoisie in Russia. Actually, there has remained absolutely no difference whatever, not a shadow of difference, between Kautsky and a counter-revolutionary bourgeois. His honeyed talk, cloaked in the guise of “socialism”, only repeats what the Kornilov men, the Dutov men and Krasnov men in Russia say bluntly, straightforwardly and without embellishment.
The above lines were written on November 9, 1918. That same night news was received from Germany announcing the beginning of a victorious revolution, first in Kiel and other northern towns and ports, where power has passed into the hands of Councils of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, then in Berlin, where, too, power has passed into the hands of a Council.
The conclusion which still remained to be written to my pamphlet on Kautsky and on the proletarian revolution is now superfluous.
Appendix I. Theses on the Constituent Assembly 1. The demand for the convocation of a Constituent Assembly was a perfectly legitimate part of the programme of revolutionary Social-Democracy, because in a bourgeois republic the Constituent Assembly represents the highest form of democracy and because, in setting up a Pre-parliament, the imperialist republic headed by Kerensky was preparing to rig the elections and violate democracy in a number of ways.
2. While demanding the convocation of a Constituent Assembly, revolutionary Social-Democracy has ever since the beginning of the Revolution of 1917 repeatedly emphasised that a republic of Soviets is a higher form of democracy than the usual bourgeois republic with a Constituent Assembly.
3. For the transition from the bourgeois to the socialist system, for the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Republic of Soviets (of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies) is not only a higher type of democratic institution (as compared with the usual bourgeois republic crowned by a Constituent Assembly), but is the only form capable of securing the most painless transition to socialism.
4. The convocation of the Constituent Assembly in our revolution on the basis of lists submitted in the middle of October 1917 is taking place under conditions which preclude the possibility of the elections to this Constituent Assembly faithfully expressing the will of the people in general and of the working people in particular.
5. Firstly, proportional representation results in a faithful expression of the will of the people only when the party lists correspond to the real division of the people according to the party groupings reflected in those lists. In our case, however, as is well known, the party which from May to October had the largest number of followers among the people, and especially among the peasants—the Socialist-Revolutionary Party—came out with united election lists for the Constituent Assembly in the middle of October 1917, but split in November 1917, after the elections and before the Assembly met.
For this reason, there is not, nor can there be, even a formal correspondence between the will of the mass of the electors and the composition of the elected Constituent Assembly.
6. Secondly, a still more important, not a formal nor legal, but a socio-economic, class source of the discrepancy between the will of the people, and especially the will of the working classes, on the one hand, and the composition of the Constituent Assembly, on the other, is due to the elections to the Constituent Assembly having taken place at a time when the overwhelming majority of tile people could not yet know the full scope and significance of the October, Soviet, proletarian-peasant revolution, which began on October 25, 1917, i.e., after the lists of candidates for the Constituent Assembly had been submitted.
7. The October Revolution is passing through successive stages of development before our very eyes, winning power for the Soviets and wresting political rule from the bourgeoisie and transferring it to the proletariat and poor peasantry.
8. It began with the victory of October 24-25 in the capital, when the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, the vanguard of the proletarians and of the most politically active section of the peasants, gave a majority to the Bo!shevik Party and put it in power.
9. Then, in the course of November and December, the revolution spread to the entire army and peasants, this being expressed first of all in the deposition of the old leading bodies (army committees, gubernia peasant committees, the Central Executive Committee of the All-Russia Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies, etc.)—which expressed the superseded, compromising phase of the revolution, its bourgeois, and not proletarian, phase, and which were therefore inevitably bound to disappear under the pressure of the deeper and broader masses of the people—and in the election of new leading bodies in their place.
10. This mighty movement of the exploited people for the reconstruction of the leading bodies of their organisations has not ended even now, in the middle of December 1917, and the Railwaymen’s Congress, which is still in session, represents one of its stages.
11. Consequently, the grouping of the class forces in Russia in the course of their class struggle is in fact assuming, in November and December 1917, a form differing in principle from the one that the party lists of candidates for the Constituent Assembly compiled in the middle of October 1917 could have reflected.
12. Recent events in the Ukraine (partly also in Finland and Byelorussia, as well as in the Caucasus) point similarly to a regrouping of class forces which is taking place in the process of the struggle between the bourgeois nationalism of the Ukrainian Bada, the Finnish Diet, etc., on the one hand, and Soviet power, the proletarian-peasant revolution in each of these national republics, on the other.
13. Lastly, the civil war which was started by the Cadet-Kaledin counter-revolutionary revolt against the Soviet authorities, against the workers’ and peasants’ government, has finally brought the class struggle to a head and has destroyed every chance of setting in a formally democratic way the very acute problems with which history has confronted the peoples of Russia, and in the first place her working class and peasants.
14. Only the complete victory of the workers and peasants over the bourgeois and landowner revolt (as expressed in the Cadet-Kaledin movement), only the ruthless military suppression of this revolt of the slave-owners can really safeguard the proletarian-peasant revolution. The course of events and the development of the class struggle in the revolution have resulted in the slogan "All Power to the Constituent Assembly!"—which disregards the gains of the workers’ and peasants’ revolution, which disregards Soviet power, which disregards the decisions of the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, of the Second All-Russia Congress of Peasants’ Deputies, etc.—becoming in fact the slogan of the Cadets and the Kaledinites and of their helpers. The entire people are now fully aware that the Constituent Assembly, if it parted ways with Soviet power, would inevitably be doomed to political extinction.
15. One of the particularly acute problems of national life is the problem of peace. A really revolutionary struggle for peace began in Russia only after the victory of the October 25 Revolution, and the first fruits of this victory were the publication of the secret treaties, the conclusion of an armistice, and the beginning of open negotiations for a general peace without annexations and indemnities.
Only now are the broad sections of the people actually receiving a chance fully and openly to observe the policy of revolutionary struggle for peace and to study its results.
At the time of the elections to the Constituent Assembly the mass of the people had no such chance.
It is clear that the discrepancy between the composition of the elected Constituent Assembly and the actual will of the people on the question of terminating the war is inevitable from this point of view too.
16. The result of all the above-mentioned circumstances taken together is that the Constituent Assembly, summoned on the basis of the election lists of the parties existing prior to the proletarian-peasant revolution under the rule of the bourgeoisie, must inevitably clash with the will and interests of the working and exploited classes which on October 25 began the socialist revolution against the bourgeoisie. Naturally, the interests of this revolution stand higher than the formal rights of the Constituent Assembly, even if those formal rights were not undermined by the absence in the law on the Constituent Assembly of a provision recognising the right of the people to recall their deputies and hold new elections at any moment.
17. Every direct or indirect attempt to consider the question of the Constituent Assembly from a formal, legal point of view, within the framework of ordinary bourgeois democracy and disregarding the class struggle and civil war, would be a betrayal of the proletariat’s cause, and the adoption of the bourgeois standpoint. The revolutionary Social-Democrats are duty bound to warn all and sundry against this error, into which a few Bolshevik leaders, who have been unable to appreciate the significance of the October uprising and the tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat, have strayed.
18. The only chance of securing a painless solution to the crisis which has arisen owing to the divergence between the elections to the Constituent Assembly, on the one hand, and the will of the people and the interests of the working and exploited classes, on the other, is for the people to exercise as broadly and as rapidly as possible the right to elect the members of the Constituent Assembly anew, and for the Constituent Assembly to accept the law of the Central Executive Committee on these new elections, to proclaim that it unreservedly recognises Soviet power, the Soviet revolution, and its policy on the questions of peace, the land and workers’ control, and to resolutely join the camp of the enemies of the Cadet-Kaledin counter-revolution.
19. Unless these conditions are fulfilled, the crisis in connection with the Constituent Assembly can be settled only in a revolutionary way, by Soviet power adopting the most energetic, speedy, firm and determined revolutionary measures against the Cadet-Kaledin counter-revolution, no matter behind what slogans and institutions (even participation in the Constituent Assembly) this counter-revolution may hide. Any attempt to tie the hands of Soviet power in this struggle would be tantamount to aiding counterrevolution.
Appendix II. Vandervelde's New Book on the State It was only after I had read Kautsky’s book that I had the opportunity to acquaint myself with Vandervelde’s Socialism versus the State (Paris, 1918). A comparison of the two books involuntarily suggests itself. Kautsky is the ideological leader of the Second International (1889–1914), while Vandervelde, in his capacity of Chairman of the International Socialist Bureau, is its official representative. Both represent the complete bankruptcy of the Second International, and both with the dexterity of experienced journalists “skilfully” mask this bankruptcy and their own bankruptcy and desertion to the bourgeoisie with Marxist catchwords. One gives us a striking example of what is typical of German opportunism, ponderous, theorising and grossly falsifying Marxism by trimming it of all that is unacceptable to the bourgeoisie. The other is typical of the Latin—to a certain extent, one may say, of the West-European (that is, west of Germany)—variety of prevailing opportunism, which is more flexible, less ponderous, and which falsifies Marxism by the same fundamental method, but in a more subtle manner.
Both radically distort Marx’s teaching on the state as well as his teaching on the dictatorship of the proletariat; Vandervelde deals more with the former subject, Kautsky with the latter. Both obscure the very close and inseparable connection that exists between the two subjects. Both are revolutionaries and Marxists in word, but renegades in practice, who strain every effort to dissociate themselves from revolution. Neither of them has anything that permeates the works of Marx and Engels, and that actually distinguishes socialism from a bourgeois caricature of it, namely, the elucidation of the tasks of revolution as distinct from the tasks of reform, the elucidation of revolutionary tactics as distinct from reformist tactics, the elucidation of the role of the proletariat in the abolition of the system, order or regime of wage-slavery as distinct from the role of the proletariat of the “Great” Powers which shares with the bourgeoisie a particle of the latter’s imperialist superprofits and superbooty.
We shall quote a few of Vandervelde’s most important arguments in support of this opinion.
Like Kautsky, Vandervelde quotes Marx and Engels with great zeal, and like Kautsky, he quotes from Marx and Engels anything you like except what is absolutely unacceptable to the bourgeoisie and what distinguishes a revolutionary from a reformist. He speaks volubly about the conquest of political power by the proletariat, since practice has already confined this within strictly parliamentary limits. But as regards the fact that after the experience of the Paris Commune, Marx and Engels found it necessary to supplement the partially obsolete Communist Manifesto with an elucidation of the truth that the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, but must smash it—not a single word has he to say about that! Vandervelde and Kautsky, as if by agreement, pass over in complete silence what is most essential in the experience of the proletarian revolution, precisely that which distinguishes proletarian revolution from bourgeois reforms.
Like Kautsky, Vandervelde talks about the dictatorship of the proletariat only to dissociate himself from it. Kautsky did it by gross falsifications. Vandervelde does it in a more subtle way. In the part of his book, Section 4, on the subject of the “conquest of political power by the proletariat”, he devotes sub-section b to the question of the “collective dictatorship of the proletariat”, “quotes” Marx and Engels (I repeat: omitting precisely what pertains to the main point, namely, the smashing of the old, bourgeois-democratic state machine), and concludes: “...In socialist circles, the social revolution is commonly conceived in the following manner: a new Commune, this time victorious, and not in one place but in the main centres of the capitalist world.
“A hypothesis, but a hypothesis which has nothing improbable about it at a time when it is becoming evident that the post-war period will see in many countries unprecedented class antagonisms and social convulsions.
“But if the failure of the Paris Commune, not to speak of the difficulties of the Russian revolution, proves anything at all, it proves that it is impossible to put an end to the capitalist system until the proletariat has sufficiently prepared itself to make proper use of the power the force of circumstances may place into its hands” (p. 73).
And absolutely nothing more on the point at issue!
Here they are, the leaders and representatives of the Second International! In 1912 they signed the Basle Manifesto, which explicitly speaks of the connection between that very war which broke out in 1914 and a proletarian revolution, and actually holds it up as a threat. And when the war broke out and a revolutionary situation arose, the Kautskys and Vanderveldes began to dissociate themselves from revolution. A revolution of the Paris Commune type is only a not improbable hypothesis! This is quite analogous to Kautsky’s argument about the possible role of the Soviets in Europe.
But that is just the way every educated liberal argues; he will, no doubt, agree now that a new Commune is “not improbable”, that the Soviets have a great role to play, etc. The proletarian revolutionary differs from the liberal precisely in that he, as a theoretician, analyses the new significance of the Commune and the Soviets as a state. Vandervelde, however, passes over in silence everything Marx and Engels said at such length on the subject when analysing the experience of the Paris Commune.
As a practical worker, as a politician, a Marxist should have made it clear that only traitors to socialism can now evade the task of elucidating the need for a proletarian revolution (of the Commune type, the Soviet type, or perhaps of some third type), of explaining the necessity of preparing for it, of conducting propaganda for revolution among the people, of refuting the petty-bourgeois prejudices against it, etc.
But neither Kautsky nor Vandervelde does anything of the sort, precisely because they themselves are traitors to socialism, who want to maintain their reputation as socialists and Marxists among the workers.
Take the theoretical formulation of the question.
The state, even in a democratic republic, is nothing but a machine for the suppression of one class by another. Kautsky is familiar with this truth, admits it, agrees with it, but...he evades the fundamental question as to what particular class the proletariat must suppress when it establishes the proletarian state, for what reasons, and by what means.
Vandervelde is familiar with, admits, agrees with and quotes this fundamental proposition of Marxism (p. 72 of his book), but...he does not say a single word on the “unpleasant” (for the capitalist gentlemen) subject of the suppression of the resistance of the exploiters!
Both Vandervelde and Kautsky have completely evaded this “unpleasant” subject. Therein lies their apostasy.
Like Kautsky, Vandervelde is a past master in the art of substituting eclecticism for dialectics. On the one hand it cannot but be admitted, and on the other hand it must be confessed. On the one hand, the term state may mean “the nation as a whole” (see Littrés dictionary—a learned work, it cannot be denied—and Vandervelde, p. 87); on the other hand, the term state may mean the “government” (ibid.). Vandervelde quotes this learned platitude, with approval, side by side with quotations from Marx.
The Marxist meaning of the word “state” differs from the ordinary meaning, writes Vandervelde. Hence, “misunderstandings” may arise. “Marx and Engels regard the state not as the state in the broad sense, not as an organ of guidance, as the representative of the general interests of society (intérêts généraux de la société). It is the state as the power, the state as the organ of authority, the state as the instrument of the rule of one class over another” (pp. 75–76 of Vandervelde’s book).
Marx and Engels speak about the abolition of the state only in its second meaning...“Too absolute affirmations run the risk of being inexact. There are many transitional stages between the capitalist state, which is based on the exclusive rule of one class, and the proletarian state, the aim of which is to abolish all classes” (p. 156).
There you have an example of Vandervelde’s “manner”, which is only slightly different from that of Kautsky’s, and, in essence, identical with it. Dialectics repudiate absolute truths and explain the successive changes of opposites and the significance of crises in history. The eclectic does not want propositions that are “too absolute”, because he wants to push forward his philistine desire to substitute “transitional stages” for revolution.
The Kautskys and Vanderveldes say nothing about the fact that the transitional stage between the state as an organ of the rule of the capitalist class and the state as an organ of the rule of the proletariat is revolution, which means overthrowing the bourgeoisie and breaking up, smashing, their state machine.
The Kautskys and Vanderveldes obscure the fact that the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie must be replaced by the dictatorship of one class, the proletariat, and that the “transitional stages” of the revolution will be followed by the “transitional stages” of the gradual withering away of the proletarian state.
Therein lies their political apostasy.
Therein, theoretically, philosophically, lies their substitution of eclecticism and sophistry for dialectics. Dialectics are concrete and revolutionary and distinguish between the “transition” from the dictatorship of one class to the dictatorship of another and “transition” from the democratic proletarian state to the non-state (“the withering away of the state”). To please the bourgeoisie, the eclecticism and sophistry of the Kautskys and Vanderveldes blur all that is concrete and precise in the class struggle and advance instead the general concept “transition”, under which they may hide (as nine-tenths of the official Social-Democrats of our time do hide) their renunciation of revolution!
As an eclectic and sophist, Vandervelde is more skilful and subtle than Kautsky; for the phrase, “transition from the state in the narrow sense to the state in the broad sense”, can serve as a means of evading all and sundry problems of revolution, all the difference between revolution and reform, and even the difference between the Marxist and the liberal. For what bourgeois with European education would think of denying, “in general”, “transitional stages” in this “general” sense?
Vandervelde writes: “I agree with Guesde that it is impossible to socialise the means of production and exchange without the following two conditions having been fulfilled: “1. The transformation of the present state as the organ of the rule of one class over another into what Monger calls a people’s labour state, by the conquest of political power by the proletariat.
“2. Separation of the state as an organ of authority from the state as an organ of guidance, or, to use Saint-Simon’s expression, of the government of men from the administration of things” (p. 89).
Vandervelde puts this in italics, laying special emphasis on the importance of these propositions. But this is a sheer eclectical hodge-podge, a complete rupture with Marxism! The “people’s labour state” is just a paraphrase of the old “free people’s state”, which the German Social-Democrats paraded in the seventies and which Engels branded as an absurdity. The term “people’s labour state” is a phrase worthy of petty-bourgeois democrats (like our Left Socialist-Revolutionaries), a phrase which substitutes non-class concepts for class concepts. Vandervelde places the conquest of state power by the proletariat (by one class) alongside of the “people’s” state, and fails to see that the result is a hodge-podge. With Kautsky and his “pure democracy”, the result is a similar hodge-podge, and a similar anti-revolutionary, philistine disregard of the tasks of the class revolution, of the class, proletarian, dictatorship, of the class (proletarian) state.
Further, the government of men will disappear and give way to the administration of things only when the state in all forms withers away. But talking about this relatively distant future, Vandervelde overlays, obscures the task of tomorrow, namely, the overthrow of the bourgeoisie.
This trick is also equivalent to subserviency to the liberal bourgeoisie. The liberal is willing to talk about what will happen when it is not necessary to govern men. Why not indulge in such innocuous dreams? But about the proletariat having to crush the bourgeoisie’s resistance to their expropriation—not a word. The class interests of the bourgeoisie demand it.
Socialism versus the State. This is Vandervelde’s bow to the proletariat. It is not difficult to make a bow; every “democratic” politician knows how to make a how to his electors. And under cover of a “’bow”, an anti-revolutionary, anti-proletarian meaning is insinuated.
Vandervelde extensively paraphrases Ostrogorsky to show what amount of deceit, violence, corruption, mendacity, hypocrisy and oppression of the poor is hidden beneath the civilised, polished and perfumed exterior of modern bourgeois democracy. But he draws no conclusion from this. He fails to notice that bourgeois democracy suppresses the working and exploited people and that proletarian democracy will have to suppress the bourgeoisie. Kautsky and Vandervelde are blind to this. The class interests of the bourgeoisie, in whose wake these petty-bourgeois traitors to Marxism are floundering, demand that this question be evaded, that it be hushed up, or that the necessity of such suppression be directly denied.
Petty-bourgeois eclecticism versus Marxism, sophistry versus dialectics, philistine reformism versus proletarian revolution—that should have been the title of Vandervelde’s book.
Notes