The Classics, Revolution, Part 9b
The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky
Note: Our review
of the Marxist classics includes original material from before and after the
proletarian Russian Revolution of October 1917, but no account of the
revolution itself.
One famous eye-witness
account is that of John Reed, called
“Ten Days that Shook
the World”, first published in 1919.
Lenin’s Introduction to
Reed’s book says: “With the greatest interest and with never slackening
attention I read John Reed’s book, Ten
Days that Shook the World. Unreservedly do I recommend it to the
workers of the world. Here is a book which I should like to see published in
millions of copies and translated into all languages. It gives a truthful and
most vivid exposition of the events so significant to the comprehension of what
really is the Proletarian Revolution and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
These problems are widely discussed, but before one can accept or reject these
ideas, he must understand the full significance of his decision. John Reed’s
book will undoubtedly help to clear this question, which is the fundamental
problem of the international labor movement.”
The Renegade
Kautsky
Karl Kautsky had
gone as a young intellectual from Germany to visit Karl Marx and Frederick
Engels in London. This was in 1881, two years before Marx’s death. Kautsky subsequently
became a principal leader of the German Social Democrats at a time when the
German party was far larger and more highly-developed than any other socialist
party in the world. Kautsky procured himself a reputation as the “Pope” of
communism. Lenin called him “the
ideological leader of the Second International.”
Lenin had difficulties with the German Social-Democrats in
the early 1900s as we have seen in this course already. Among these German
Social-Democrats, the person who was bold enough to challenge Lenin openly was
Rosa Luxemburg. Lenin answered her directly. They remained comrades. Lenin
later quoted Rosa in “The April Theses”, in a very critical moment. Rosa and
the Spartacists, like Lenin and the Bolsheviks, opposed the Imperialist war.
Kautsky was less prominent during those earlier
controversies but in 1914 he was one of those mainly responsible for the open betrayal
of anti-Imperialist working-class internationalism when the German
Social-Democrats under his leadership backed their bourgeois-Imperialist
government in its catastrophic war against England and France, whose equally craven
Social-Democrats in turn also backed their bourgeois-Imperialist governments.
Lenin called this kind of betrayal “Social-Imperialism”.
“The
Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky” (a downloadable
compilation of Chapters 1, 2 and 3 is linked below) is a response to a 1918 pamphlet
written by Kautsky called “The Dictatorship
of the Proletariat”, which was an attack on the Russian Bolsheviks, as
well as a betrayal of Marx.
In Chapter 1 of “The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade
Kautsky”, Lenin takes Kautsky’s general argument, deals with it, and then makes
the following definitions:
“Dictatorship is rule
based directly upon force and unrestricted by any laws.
“The revolutionary
dictatorship of the proletariat is rule won and maintained by the use of
violence by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted
by any laws.”
In other words, the Revolution does not ask permission, and
it does not apologise. The Revolution breaks the old rules, and it makes new,
revolutionary rules. This is the part of revolution that the bourgeoisie
particularly dislikes, as we can see in South Africa, today. In Chapter 2,
Lenin notes:
“Kautsky takes from
Marxism what is acceptable to the liberals, to the bourgeoisie (the criticism
of the Middle Ages, and the progressive historical role of capitalism in
general and of capitalist democracy in particular), and discards, passes over
in silence, glosses over all that in Marxism which is unacceptable to the
bourgeoisie (the revolutionary violence of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie
for the latter’s destruction). That is why Kautsky, by virtue of his objective
position and irrespective of what his subjective convictions may be, inevitably
proves to be a lackey of the bourgeoisie.”
We still have many such “Marxists”, of the Kautsky kind, even in South Africa.
In Chapter 3, Lenin sharpens the point as follows:
“If the exploiters are defeated in one country
only—and this, of course, is typical, since a simultaneous revolution in a
number of countries is a rare exception—they still remain stronger than the
exploited, for the international connections of the exploiters are enormous.
That a section of the exploited from the least advanced middle-peasant, artisan
and similar groups of the population may, and indeed does, follow the exploiters
has been proved by all revolutions, including the Commune (for there were also
proletarians among the Versailles troops, which the most learned Kautsky has
“forgotten”).
“In these circumstances, to assume that in a
revolution which is at all profound and serious the issue is decided simply by
the relation between the majority and the minority is the acme of stupidity,
the silliest prejudice of a common liberal, an attempt to deceive the people by
concealing from them a well-established historical truth. This historical truth
is that in every profound revolution, the prolonged, stubborn and desperate
resistance of the exploiters, who for a number of years retain important
practical advantages over the exploited, is the rule. Never—except in the sentimental
fantasies of the sentimental fool Kautsky—will the exploiters submit to the
decision of the exploited majority without trying to make use of their
advantages in a last desperate battle, or series of battles.
“The transition from capitalism to communism
takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters
inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts
at restoration.”
Not even Lenin’s Great October Soviet Socialist Revolution
was automatically permanent.
This classic work is easy to read and is full of lessons
that are applicable today.
Please download and read the text via the following
link:
Further
reading:
The
State and Revolution, Chapters 2 and 3, 1917, Lenin (11279 words)
The April Theses, 1917, Lenin
(1773 words)
No comments:
Post a Comment