The Classics, Part 9b
The
Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky
Note on the October Revolution: 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.
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.”
Another famous History of the
Russian Revolution was written in 1918 by Leon Trotsky. Here is an extract from Trotsky’s account relating to
May and June of 1917, in between revolutions:
“Almost all
the articles, without exception, in all the official and semi-official organs
were directed against the Bolsheviks. There was scarcely a charge, scarcely a
calumny, that was not levelled against us in that period. Of course, the
leading role in this campaign
was played by the Cadet bourgeoisie, whose class instinct led it to recognize
that the question at issue was not merely the offensive, but the entire further
course of the Revolution and, in the first place, the form of Government
authority. The whole bourgeois machinery for manufacturing ‘public opinion’ was
put into motion at full steam. All the Government offices and institutions,
publications, public platforms, and university chairs were drawn into the
service of this one general aim: of making the Bolsheviks impossible as a
political party. In this concentrated effort and in this dramatic newspaper
campaign against the Bolsheviks were already contained the first germs of the
civil war which was bound to accompany the next phase of the Revolution. The
sole aim of all this incitement and slander was to create an impenetrable wall
of estrangement and enmity between the labouring masses on the one hand and
‘educated society’ on the other.
“The Liberal
bourgeoisie understood that it could not win the support of the masses without
the help of the lower middle-class democrats, who, as we pointed out above, had
temporarily become the leaders of the revolutionary organizations.
Consequently, the immediate aim of the political incitements against the Bolsheviks
was to bring about an irreconcilable feeling of enmity between our party and
the wide ranks of the Socialist intellectuals, who, having broken away from the
proletariat, could not but fall into political bondage to the Liberal
bourgeoisie.”
The Renegade Kautsky
In 1881, two years before
Karl Marx’s death, Karl Kautsky, a
young intellectual from Germany, went to visit Marx and Frederick Engels in
London. Kautsky subsequently acquired a reputation as the “Pope” of communism.
Lenin called him “the ideological leader
of the Second International.” Kautsky became the 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.
Lenin had difficulties with
the German Social-Democrats in the early 1900s, as we have already seen in this
course. Among these German Social-Democrats, the person who was bold enough to
challenge Lenin openly was Rosa Luxemburg, and Lenin answered her directly.
They remained comrades. Lenin later quoted Rosa in “The April Theses” (1917),
in a very critical moment. Rosa and the Spartacists, like Lenin and the
Bolsheviks, had by then opposed the Imperialist war without any hesitation.
Kautsky had been less
prominent during the earlier controversies but by 1914 he was one of those
mainly responsible for the open betrayal of anti-Imperialist working-class
internationalism. This was when the German Social-Democrats, under Kautsky’s
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”.
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.