V. I. LENIN
THE
PROLETARIAN
REVOLUTION
AND THE
RENEGADE
KAUTSKY
SUBSERVIENCY TO THE BOURGEOISIE
IN THE GUISE
OF "ECONOMIC ANALYSIS"
As has already been said, if the title of Kautsky's book were properly to reflect its contents, it should have been called, not
The Dictatorship of the Proletariat but A Rehash of Bourgeois Attacks on the Bolsheviks.
The old Menshevik "theories" about the bourgeois character of the Russian revolution, i.e., the old distortion of Marxism by the Mensheviks (rejected by Kautsky in 1905!) are now once again being rehashed by our theoretician. We must deal with this question, however boring it may be for Russian Marxists.
The Russian revolution is a bourgeois revolution, said all the Marxists of Russia before 1905. The Mensheviks, substituting liberalism for Marxism, drew the conclusion from this that, hence, the proletariat must not go beyond what was acceptable to the bourgeoisie and must pursue a policy of compromise with it. The Bolsheviks said that this was a bourgeois liberal theory. The bourgeoisie was trying to bring about the reform of the state on bourgeois,
reformist, not revolutionary lines, while preserving the monarchy,
landlordism, etc., as far as possible. The proletariat must carry through the bourgeois-democratic revolution to the end, not allowing itself to be "bound" by the reformism of the bourgeoisie. The Bolsheviks formulated the alignment of
class forces in the bourgeois revolution as follows: the proletariat, joining to itself the peasantry, will neutralize the liberal bourgeoisie and utterly destroy the monarchy, medievalism and landlordism.
It is the alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry in general that reveals the bourgeois character of the revolution, for the
peasantry in general are small producers who exist on the basis of commodity production. Further, the Bolsheviks then added, the proletariat will join to itself
the entire semi-proletariat (all the toilers and exploited), will neutralize the middle peasantry and
overthrow the bourgeoisie; this will be a socialist revolution, as distinct from a bourgeois-democratic revolution. (See my pamphlet
Two Tactics, published in 1905 and reprinted in
Twelve Years, St. Petersburg, 1907.)
Kautsky took an indirect part in this controversy in 1905, when, in reply to an inquiry by the then Menshevik Plekhanov, he expressed an opinion that was essentially
against Plekhanov, which provoked particular ridicule in the Bolshevik press at the time. But now Kautsky does not say a
single word about the controversies of that time (for fear of being exposed by his own statements!), and thereby makes it utterly impossible for the German reader to understand the essence of the matter. Mr. Kautsky
could not very well tell the German workers in 1918 that in 1905 he had been in favour of an alliance of the workers with the peasants and not with the liberal bourgeoisie, and on what conditions he
had advocated this alliance, and what program he had out lined for it.
<"p92">Backing out from his old position, Kautsky, under the guise of an "economic analysis," and talking proudly about "historical materialism," now advocates the subordination of the workers to the bourgeoisie, and, with the aid of quotations from the Menshevik Maslov, chews the cud of the old liberal views of the Mensheviks; quotations are used to prove the brand-new idea of the backwardness of Russia; but the deduction drawn from this new idea is the old one that in a bourgeois revolution one must not go further than the bourgeoisie! And this in spite of all that Marx and Engels said when comparing the bourgeois revolution of 1789-93 in France with the bourgeois revolution of 1848 in Germany!
[36]
Before passing to the chief "argument" and the main content of Kautsky's "economic analysis," let us note that Kautsky's very first sentences reveal a curious confusion, or superficiality, of thought.
"Agriculture, and specifically small peasant farming," our "theoretician" announces, "to this day represents the economic foundation of Russia. About four-fifths, perhaps even five-sixths, of the population live by it." (P. 45.) First of all, my dear theoretician, have you considered how many exploiters there may be among this mass of small producers? Certainly not more than one-tenth of the total, and in the towns still less, for there large-scale production is more highly developed. Take even an incredibly high figure; assume that one-fifth of the small producers are exploiters who are deprived of the franchise. Even then you will find that the 66 per cent of the votes held by the Bolsheviks at the Fifth Congress of Soviets represented the
majority of the <"p93">population. To this it must be added that there was always a considerable section of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries which was in favour of the Soviet power -- in principle all the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries were in favour of the Soviet power, and when a section of them, in July 1918, started an adventurous revolt, two new parties split away from their old party, viz., the "Narodnik-Communists" and the "Revolutionary Communists"[37] (of the prominent Left Socialist-Revolutionaries who had been nominated for important posts in the government by the old party, to the first-mentioned belongs Zaks, for instance, and to the second Kolegayev). Hence, Kautsky has himself -- inadvertently -- refuted the ridiculous fable that the Bolsheviks only have the backing of a minority of the population.
Secondly, my dear theoretician, have you considered the fact that the small peasant producer
inevitably vacillates between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie? This Marxian truth, which has been confirmed by the whole modern history of Europe, Kautsky very conveniently "forgot," for it just demolishes the Menshevik "theory" that he keeps repeating! Had Kautsky not "forgotten" this he could not have denied the need for a proletarian dictatorship in a country in which the small peasant producers predominate.---
Let us examine the main content of our theoretician's "economic analysis."
That the Soviet power is a dictatorship cannot be disputed, says Kautsky. "But is it a dictatorship
of the proletariat?" (P. 34.)
"According to the Soviet Constitution, the peasants form the majority of the population entitled to participate in legislation and administration. What is presented to us as a dictatorship
of the proletariat would prove to be -- if carried out consistently, and if, generally speaking, a class could
directly exercise a dictatorship, which in reality can only be exercised by a party -- a dictatorship
of the peasantry." (p. 35.)
And, highly elated over so profound and clever an argument, our good Kautsky tries to be witty and says: "It would appear, therefore, that the most painless achievement of Socialism is best assured when it is placed in the hands of the peasants." (P. 35.)
In the greatest detail, and citing a number of extremely learned quotations from the semi-liberal Maslov, our theoretician labours to prove the new idea that the peasants are interested in high grain prices, in low wages for the urban workers, etc., etc. Incidentally, the enunciation of these new ideas is the more tedious the less attention our author pays to the really new phenomena of the postwar period -- such as, for example, that the peasants demand for their grain, not money, but goods, and that they have not enough agricultural implements, which cannot be obtained in sufficient quantities for any amount of money. But of this more anon.
Thus, Kautsky charges the Bolsheviks, the party of the proletariat, with having surrendered the dictatorship, the work of achieving Socialism, to the petty-bourgeois peasantry. Excellent, Mr. Kautsky! But what, in your enlightened opinion, should have been the attitude of the proletarian party towards the petty-bourgeois peasantry?
Our theoretician preferred to say nothing on this score -- evidently bearing in mind the proverb: "Speech is silver, silence is gold." But he gives himself away by the following argument:
"In the beginning of the existence of the Soviet Republic the peasants' Soviets were organizations of the
peasantry in general. Now this Republic proclaims that the Soviets are organizations of the proletarians and
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the poor peasants. The well-to-do peasants are deprived of the suffrage in the elections to the Soviets. The poor peasant is here recognized to be a permanent and mass product of the socialist agrarian reform under the 'dictatorship of the proletariat.' " (P. 48.)
What deadly irony! It is the kind that may be heard in Russia from the lips of any bourgeois: they all jeer and gloat over the fact that the Soviet Republic openly admits the existence of poor peasants. They ridicule Socialism. That is their right. But a "Socialist" who jeers at the fact that after four years of a most ruinous war there remain (and will remain for a long time) poor peasants in Russia -- 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 redistributing the land. In order to relieve the bread shortage in the towns, detachments of armed workers are sent into the countryside to take away the rich peasants' surplus stocks of grain. Part of that stock is given to the urban population, another -- to the poorer peasants." (P. 48.)
Of course, Kautsky, the Socialist and Marxist, is profoundly indignant at the idea that such a measure should be extended beyond the environs of the large towns (and we have extended it to the whole of the country). With the matchless, incomparable and admirable coolness (or pig-headedness) of a philistine, Kautsky, the Socialist and Marxist, sermonizes: . . . "It (the expropriation of the well-to-do peasants) introduces a new element of unrest and civil war into the process of production" . . . (civil war introduced into the "process of production" -- that is something supernatural!) . . . "which stands in urgent need of peace and security for its recovery." (P. 49.)
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<"p96">
Oh, yes, of course, Kautsky, the Marxist and Socialist, must sigh and shed tears over the subject of peace and security for the exploiters and grain profiteers who hoard their surplus stocks, sabotage the grain monopoly law, and reduce the urban population to famine. "We are all Socialists and Marxists and Internationalists," the Kautskys, Heinrich Webers[38] (Vienna), Longuet (Paris), MacDonald (London), etc., sing in chorus "we are all in favour of a working-class revolution. Only . . . only we would like a revolution that does not infringe upon peace and security of the grain profiteers! And we camouflage this sordid subservience to the capitalists by a 'Marxist' reference to the 'process of production.' . . ." If this is Marxism, what is servility to the bourgeoisie?
Just see what our theoretician arrives at. He accuses the Bolsheviks of presenting 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 rural districts (which we think is to our
credit), of despatching into the countryside armed detachments of workers, who publicly proclaim that they are exercising the "dictatorship of the proletariat and the poor peasantry," assist the latter and confiscate from the profiteers and the rich peasants the surplus stocks of grain which they are hoarding in contravention of the grain monopoly law.
On the one hand our Marxist theoretician stands for pure democracy, for the subordination of the revolutionary class, the leader of the toilers and exploited, to the majority of the population (including, therefore, the exploiters). On the other hand, as an argument
against us, he explains that the revolution must inevitably bear a bourgeois character -- bourgeois, because the life of the peasantry as a whole is
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based on bourgeois social relations -- and at the same time he pretends to uphold the proletarian, class, Marxian point of view!
Instead of an "economic analysis" we have a first-class hodgepodge and muddle. Instead of Marxism we have fragments of liberal doctrines and the preaching of servility to the bourgeoisie and the kulaks.
The question which Kautsky has so tangled up was fully explained by the Bolsheviks as far back as 1905. Yes, our revolution is a bourgeois revolution
so long as we march with the peasantry as a whole. This has been as clear as clear can be to us, we have said it hundreds and thousands of times since 1905, and we have never attempted to skip this necessary stage of the historical process or abolish it by decrees. Kautsky's efforts to "expose" us on this point merely expose his own confusion of mind and his fear to recall what he wrote in 1905, when he was not yet a renegade.
But beginning with April 1917, long before the October Revolution, that is, long before we assumed power, we publicly declared and explained to the people: the revolution cannot now stop at this stage, for the country has marched forward, capitalism has advanced, ruin has reached unprecedented dimensions, which (whether one likes it or not) will
demand steps forward, to Socialism. For there is no other way of advancing, of saving the country which is exhausted by war, and of
alleviating the sufferings of the toilers and exploited.
Things have turned out just as we said they would. The course taken by the revolution has confirmed the correctness of our reasoning.
First, with the "whole" of the peasantry against the monarchy, against the landlords, against the medieval regime (and to that extent, the revolution remains
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bourgeois, bourgeois-democratic).
Then, with the poor peasants, with the semi-proletarians, with all the exploited,
against capitalism, including the rural rich, the kulaks, the profiteers, and to that extent the revolution becomes a
socialist one. To attempt to raise an artificial Chinese Wall between the first and second, to separate them by anything else
than the degree of preparedness of the proletariat and the degree of its unity with the poor peasants, means monstrously to distort Marxism, to vulgarize it, to substitute liberalism in its place. It means smuggling in a reactionary defence of the bourgeoisie against the socialist proletariat by means of quasi-scientific references to the progressive character of the bourgeoisie as compared with medievalism.
<"p98">Incidentally, the Soviets represent an immensely higher form and type of democracy just because, by uniting and drawing
the masses of workers and peasants into political life, they serve as a most sensitive barometer, the one closest to the "people" (in the sense in which Marx, in 1871, spoke of a real people's revolution),[39] of the growth and development of the political, class maturity of the masses. The Soviet Constitution was not drawn up according to some "plan"; it was not drawn up in a study, and was not foisted on the working people by bourgeois lawyers. No, this constitution
grew up in the course of the development of the class struggle in proportion as
class antagonisms matured. The very facts which Kautsky himself has to admit prove this.
At first, the Soviets embraced the peasantry as a whole. It was owing to the immaturity, the backwardness, the ignorance precisely of the poor peasants, that the leadership passed into the hands of the kulaks, the rich, the capitalists and the petty-bourgeois intellectuals. That was the period of the
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domination of the petty bourgeoisie, of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries (only fools or renegades like Kautsky can regard either of these as Socialists). The petty bourgeoisie inevitably and unavoidably vacillated between the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (Kerensky, Kornilov, Savinkov) and the dictatorship of the proletariat; for owing to the basic features of its economic position, the petty bourgeoisie is incapable of doing anything independently. By the way, Kautsky completely renounces Marxism by confining himself in his analysis of the Russian revolution to the legal and formal concept of "democracy," which serves the bourgeoisie as a screen to conceal its domination and as a means of deceiving the masses, and by
forgetting that in practice "democracy" sometimes stands for the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, sometimes for the impotent reformism of the petty bourgeoisie which submits to that dictatorship, and so on. According to Kautsky, in a capitalist country there were bourgeois parties and there was a proletarian party (the Bolsheviks), which led the majority, the mass of the proletariat,
but there were no petty-bourgeois parties! The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries had no
class roots, no petty-bourgeois roots!
The vacillations of the petty bourgeoisie, of the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, helped to enlighten the masses and to repel the overwhelming majority of them, all the "lower strata," all the proletarians and semi-proletarians, from such "leaders." Predominance in the Soviets was secured by the Bolsheviks (in Petrograd and Moscow by October 1917); the split among the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks became more pronounced.
The victorious Bolshevik revolution meant the end of vacillation, it meant the complete destruction of the monarchy
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and of landlordism (which had not been destroyed before the October Revolution). We carried the
bourgeois revolution to its conclusion. The peasantry supported us
as a whole. Its antagonism to the socialist proletariat could not reveal itself all at once. The Soviets united the peasantry
in general. The class divisions among the peasantry had not yet matured, had not yet come into the open.
That process took place in the summer and autumn of 1918. The Czechoslovak counter-revolutionary mutiny roused the kulaks. A wave of kulak revolts swept over Russia. The poor peasantry learned, not from books or newspapers,
but from life itself that its interests were irreconcilably antagonistic to those of the kulaks, the rich, the rural bourgeoisie. Like every other petty-bourgeois party, the "Left Socialist-Revolutionaries" reflected the vacillation of the masses, and precisely in the summer of 1918 they split: one section joined forces with the Czechoslovaks (the rebellion in Moscow, when Proshyan, having seized the telegraph office -- for one hour! -- announced to Russia that the Bolsheviks had been overthrown; then the treachery of Muravyov, Commander-in-Chief of the army that was fighting the Czechoslovaks, etc.), while another section, that mentioned above, remained with the Bolsheviks.
The growing food shortage in the towns lent increasing urgency to the question of the grain monopoly (this Kautsky the theoretician completely "forgot" in his economic analysis, which is a mere repetition of platitudes gleaned from Maslov's writings of ten years ago!).
The old landlord and bourgeois, and even democratic republican, state had sent to the rural districts armed detachments which were practically at the beck and call of the bourgeoisie. Mr. Kautsky does not know this! He does not regard that as the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie" -- God
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forbid! That is "pure democracy," especially if endorsed by a bourgeois parliament! Nor has Kautsky "heard" that, in the summer and autumn of 1917, Avksentyev and S. Maslov, in company with the Kerenskys, the Tseretelis and other Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, arrested members of the Land Committee; he does not say a word about that!
The whole point is that a bourgeois state which is exercising the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie through a democratic republic cannot confess to the people that it is serving the bourgeoisie; it cannot tell the truth, and is compelled to play the hypocrite.
But a state of the Paris Commune type, a Soviet state, openly and frankly tells the people the
truth and declares that it is the dictatorship of the proletariat and the poor peasantry; and by this truth it wins over scores and scores of millions of new citizens who are kept down under any democratic republic, but who are drawn by the Soviets into political life, into
democracy, into the administration of the state. The Soviet Republic sends into the rural districts detachments of armed workers, primarily the more advanced, from the capitals. These workers carry Socialism into the countryside, win over the poor, organize and enlighten them, and help them
to suppress the resistance of the bourgeoisie.
All who are familiar with the situation and have been in the rural districts, declare that it is only now, in the summer and autumn of 1918, that the rural districts themselves are passing through the "October" (i.e., proletarian) revolution. A turn is coming. The wave of kulak revolts is giving way to a rise of the poor, to the growth of the "Committees of Poor Peasants." In the army, the number of workers who have become commissars, officers and commanders of divisions and armies is increasing. And at the very time that the im-
<"p102">
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becile Kautsky, frightened by the July (1918) crisis[40] and the lamentations of the bourgeoisie, was running after the latter like a "cockerel," and writing a whole pamphlet breathing the conviction that the Bolsheviks are on the eve of being overthrown by the peasantry; at the very time that this imbecile regarded the secession of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries as a "narrowing" (p. 37) of the circle of those who support the Bolsheviks -- at that very time the
real circle of supporters of Bolshevism was expanding enormously, because scores and scores of millions of the village poor were freeing themselves from the tutelage and influence of the kulaks and village bourgeoisie and were awakening to
independent political life.
We have lost hundreds of Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, spineless peasant intellectuals and kulaks; but we have gained millions of representatives of the poor.[*]
A year after the proletarian revolution in the capitals, and under its influence and with its assistance, the proletarian revolution began in the remote rural districts, and this has finally consolidated the power of the Soviets and Bolshevism, and has finally proved that there is no force within the country that can withstand it.
Having completed the bourgeois-democratic revolution in conjunction with the peasantry as a whole, the Russian proletariat passed on definitely to the socialist revolution when it succeeded in splitting the rural population, in winning over the rural proletarians and semi-proletarians, and in uniting
<"np102">
* At the Sixth Congress of Soviets (November 6-9, 1918), there were 967 voting delegates, 950 of whom were Bolsheviks, and 351 delegates with voice but no vote, of whom 335 were Bolsheviks, i.e., 97 per cent of the total number of delegates were Bolsheviks.
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them against the kulaks and the bourgeoisie, including the peasant bourgeoisie.
Now, if the Bolshevik proletariat in the capitals and large industrial centres had not been able to rally the village poor around itself against the rich peasants, this would indeed have proved that Russia was "unripe" for the socialist revolution. The peasantry would then have remained an "integral whole," i.e., it would have remained under the economic, political, and moral leadership of the kulaks, of the rich, of the bourgeoisie, and the revolution would not have passed beyond the limits of a bourgeois-democratic revolution. (But, let it be said in parenthesis, even this would not have proved that the proletariat should not have taken power, for it is the proletariat alone that has really carried the bourgeois-democratic revolution to its conclusion, it is the proletariat alone that has done something really important to bring nearer the world proletarian revolution, and the proletariat alone that has created the Soviet state, which, after the Paris Commune, is the second step towards the socialist state.)
<"p103">On the other hand, if the Bolshevik proletariat had tried at once, in October-November 1917, without waiting for the class differentiation in the rural districts, without being able to
prepere for it and bring it about, to "decree" a civil war or the "introduction of Socialism" in the rural districts, had tried to do without a temporary bloc with the peasants in general, without making a number of concessions to the middle peasants, etc., that would have been a
Blanquist [41] distortion of Marxism, an attempt of the
minority to impose its will upon the majority; it would have been a theoretical absurdity, revealing a failure to understand that a general peasant revolution is
still a bourgeois revolution, and
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that without a series of transitions,
of transitional stages, it cannot be transformed into a socialist revolution in a backward country.
Kautsky has confused evetything in this very important theoretical and political problem, and has, in practice, proved to be nothing but a servant of the bourgeoisie, howling against the dictatorship of the proletariat.
* * *
Kautsky has introduced a similar, if not greater, confusion into another extremely interesting and important question, namely: was the
legislative activity of the Soviet Republic in the sphere of agrarian reform -- that most difficult and yet most important of socialist reforms -- based on sound principles and then properly carried out? We should be grateful beyond words to any West-European Marxist who, after studying at least the most important documents, gave a
criticism of our policy, because he would thereby help us immensely, and would also help the revolution that is maturing throughout the world. But instead of criticism Kautsky produces an incredible theoretical muddle, which converts Marxism into liberalism and which, in practice, is a series of idle, venomous, vulgar sallies against the Bolsheviks. Let the reader judge for himself:
"Large landed estates could not be preserved. This was a result of the revolution. That was at once clear. The transfer of the large estates to the peasant population became inevitable. . . ." (That 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 bourgeois and the petty bourgeois, the Mensheviks and the So-
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<"p105">cialist-Revolutionaries, pursued a policy of preserving large landlordism. This was proved particularly by S. Maslov's bill and by the arrest of the members of the Land Committees.[42] Without the dictatorship of the proletariat, the "peasant population" would not have vanquished the landlords, who had joined forces with the capitalists.)
". . . But as to the forms in which it was to take place, there was no unity. Various solutions were conceivable. . . ." (Kautsky is most of all concerned about the "unity" of the "Socialists," no matter who called themselves by that name. He forgets that the principal classes in capitalist society are bound to arrive at different solutions.) ". . . From the socialist point of view, the most rational solution would have been to convert the large estates into state property and to allow the peasants who hitherto had been employed on them as wage-labourers to cultivate them in the form of cooperative societies. But such a solution presupposes the existence of a type of agricultural labourer that does not exist in Russia. Another solution would have been to convert the large estates into state property and to divide them up into small plots to be rented out to peasants who owned little land. Had that been done, at least something socialistic would have been achieved. . . ."
As usual, Kautsky confines himself to the celebrated: on the one hand it cannot but be admitted, and on the other hand it must be confessed. He places different solutions
side by side without a thought -- the only realistic and Marxian thought -- as to what must be the
transitional stages from capitalism to Communism in such and such specific conditions. There are agricultural labourers in Russia, but not many; and Kautsky did not touch on the question -- which the Soviet government did raise -- of the method of transi-
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tion to a communal and cooperative form of land cultivation. The most curious thing, however, is that Kautsky claims to see "something socialistic" in the renting out of small plots of land. In reality, this is a
petty-bourgeois slogan, and there is nothing "socialistic" in it. If the "state" that rents out the land is not a state of the Paris Commune type, but a parliamentary bourgeois republic (and precisely such is Kautsky's constant assumption), the renting of land in small plots is a typical
liberal reform.
That the Soviet power has abolished all private property in land, of that Kautsky says nothing. Worse than that: he resorts to an incredible forgery and quotes the decrees of the Soviet government in such a way as to omit the most essential.
After stating that "small production strives for complete private ownership of the means of production," and the Constituent Assembly would have been the "only authority" capable of preventing the dividing up of the land (an assertion which will evoke laughter in Russia, where everybody knows that the Soviets
alone are recognized as authoritative by the workers and peasants, while the Constituent Assembly has become the slogan of the Czechoslovaks and the landlords), Kautsky continues:
"One of the first decrees of the Soviet government declared that: I) Landlord ownership of land is abolished forthwith without any compensation. 2) The landed estates, as well as all crown, monasterial and church lands, with all their livestock, implements, buildings and everything pertaining thereto, shall be placed at the disposal of the volost Land Committees of the uyezd Soviets of Peasants' Deputies pending the settlement of the land question by the Constituent Assembly."
Having quoted o n l y t h e s e t w o c l a u s e s, Kautsky concludes:
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"The reference to the Constituent Assembly has remained a dead letter. In point of fact, the peasants in the separate volosts could do as they pleased with the land." tP. 47.)
Here you have an example of Kautsky's "criticism"! Here you have a "scientific" work which is more like a fraud. The German reader is induced to believe that the Bolsheviks capitulated before the peasantry on the question of private ownership of land! That the Bolsheviks permitted the peasants to act locally ("in the separate volosts") in whatever way they pleased!
<"p107">But in reality, the decree that Kautsky quotes -- the first to be promulgated, on October 26, 1917 (old style) -- consists not of two, but of five clauses,
plus eight clauses of the "Mandate,"[43] which, it was expressly stated, "shall serve as a guide."
Clause 3 of the decree states that the property is transfer red "t o t h e p e o p l e," and that "inventories of all property confiscated" shall be drawn up and the property "protected in a strictest revolutionary way." And the Mandate declares that "private ownership of land shall be abolished forever," that "lands on which high-level scientific farming is practised . . .
shall not be divided up," that "all livestock and farm implements of the confiscated estates shall pass into the exclusive use of the state or a community, depending on their size and importance, and no compensation shall be paid for this," and that "all land shall become part of the national land fund."
Further, simultaneously with the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly (January 5, 1918), the Third Congress of Soviets adopted the "Declaration of Rights of the Toiling and Exploited People," which now forms part of the fundamental law of the Soviet Republic. Article 2, paragraph I
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of this Declaration states that "private ownership of land is hereby abolished," and that "model estates and agricultural enterprises are proclaimed national property."
Hence, the reference to the Constituent Assembly did not remain a dead letter, because another national representative body, immeasurably more authoritative in the eyes of the peasants, took upon itself the solution of the agrarian problem.
Again, on February 6 (19), 1918, the Land Socialization Act was promulgated, which once more confirmed the abolition of all private ownership of land and placed the land and
all private stock and implements at the disposal of the Soviet authorities
under the control of the federal Soviet government. Among the duties connected with the disposal of the land, the law prescribed:
"The development of collective farming as more advantageous from the viewpoint of economy of labour and produce, at the expense of individual farming, with a view to the transition to socialist farming." (Article II, paragraph
e.)
The same law, in establishing the principle of equal land tenure, replied to the fundamental question: "Who has a right to the use of the land?" in the following manner:
(Article 20.) "Plots of land surface within the borders of the Russian Soviet Federative Republic may be used for public and private needs. A. For cultural and educational purposes: 1) by the state as represented by the organs of Soviet power (federal, as well as in regions, gubernias, uyezds, volosts, and villages), and 2) by public bodies (under the control, and with the permission, of the local Soviet authorities); B. For agricultural purposes: 3) by agricultural communes, 4) by agricultural cooperative 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
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absolutely false view of the agrarian policy and agrarian legislation of the proletarian state in Russia.
Kautsky proved even unable to formulate the theoretically important fundamental questions!
These questions are:
(1) Equal land tenure and
(2) Nationalization of the land -- the relation of these two measures to Socialism in general, and to the transition from capitalism to Communism in particular.
(3) Collective cultivation of the soil as a transition from small, parcellized farming to large-scale collective farming; does the manner in which this question is dealt with in Soviet legislation meet the requirements of Socialism?
On the first question it is necessary, first of all, to establish the following two fundamental facts: (a) in reviewing the experience of 1905 (I may refer, for instance, to my work on the agrarian problem in the first Russian revolution), the Bolsheviks pointed to the democratically progressive, the democratically revolutionary meaning of the slogan "equal land tenure," and in 1917,
before the October Revolution, they spoke of this quite definitely; (b) when enforcing the Land Socialization Act -- the "spirit" of which is equal land tenure -- the Bolsheviks most explicitly and definitely declared: this is not our idea, we do not agree with this slogan, but we think it our duty to enforce it because this is the demand of the overwhelming majority of the peasants. And the idea and demands of the majority of the toilers are things that the toilers must
discard of their own accord: such demands cannot be either "abolished" or "skipped over." We Bolsheviks will
help the peasantry to discard petty-bourgeois slogans, to pass from them as quickly and as easily as possible to socialist slogans.
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A Marxist theoretician who wanted to help the working-class revolution by his scientific analysis should have answered the questions: first, is it true that the idea of equal land tenure is of democratic-revolutionary value in that it carries the
bourgeois-democratic revolution to its conclusion? Secondly, did the Bolsheviks act rightly in helping to pass by their votes (and in most loyally observing) the petty-bourgeois equal tenure law?
Kautsky failed even to perceive what, theoretically, was the crux of the problem!
Kautsky will never be able to refute the view that the idea of equal land tenure has a progressive and revolutionary value in the bourgeois-democratic revolution. Such a revo lution cannot go beyond this. By reaching its limit, it
all the more clearly, rapidly and easily reveals to the masses the
i n a d e q u a c y of bourgeois-democratic solutions and the necessity of proceeding beyond their limits, of passing on to
Socialism.
The peasantry, which has overthrown tsarism and the landlords, dreams of equal land tenure, and no power on earth could have hindered the peasantry, once they had been freed both from the landlords and from the
bourgeois parliamentary republican state. The proletarians said to the peasants: we will help you to reach "ideal" capitalism, for equal land tenure is the idealization of capitalism from the point of view of the small producer. At the same time we will prove to you its inadequacy and the necessity of passing to the social cultivation of the land.
It would be interesting to see Kautsky attempt to disprove that this kind of leadership of the peasant struggle by the proletariat was right.
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But Kautsky preferred to evade the question altogether. . . .
Next, Kautsky deliberately deceived his German readers by withholding from them the fact that in its land
law the Soviet government gave direct preference to communes and cooperative associations by putting them in the forefront.
With the peasantry to the encd of the bourgeois-democratic revolution; and with the poor, the proletarian and semi-proletarian section of the peasantry, forward to the socialist revolution! That has been the policy of the Bolsheviks, and it is the only Marxian policy.
But Kautsky is all muddled up and incapable of formulating a single question! On the one hand, he
dare not say that the proletarians should have parted company with the peasantry over the question of equal land tenure, for he realizes that it would have been absurd (and, moreover, in 1905, when he was not yet a renegade, he himself had clearly and explicitly advocated an alliance between the workers and peasants as a condition for the victory of the revolution). On the other hand, he sympathetically quotes the liberal platitudes of the Menshevik Maslov, who "proves" that petty-bourgeois equal land tenure is utopian and reactionary
from the point of view of Socialism, but hushes up the progressive and revolutionary character of the petty-bourgeois struggle for equality and equal tenure
from the point of view of the bourgeois-democratic revolution.
Kautsky is in a hopeless muddle: note that he (in 1918) insists on the bourgeois character of the Russian revolution. He (in 1918) peremptorily says: don't go beyond these limits! Yet this very same Kautsky sees "something
socialistic" (for a bourgeois revolution) in the petty-bourgeois reform
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of renting out small plots of land to the
poor peasants (which is an approximation to equal land tenure)!!
Let them understand this who can!
In addition to all this, Kautsky displays a philistine inability to take into account the real policy of a definite party. He quotes the
phrases of the Menshevik Maslov and refuses to see the r e a I
policy the Menshevik Party pursued in 1917, when, in "coalition" with the landlords and Cadets, they advocated what was virtually a
liberal agrarian reform and compromise with the landlords (proof: the arrests of the members of the Land Committees and S. Maslov's land bill).
Kautsky failed to notice that P. Maslov's phrases about the reactionary and utopian character of petty-bourgeois equality are really a screen to conceal the Menshevik policy of
compromise between the peasants and the landlords (i.e., of helping the landlords to dupe the peasants), instead of the
revolutionary overthrow of the landlords by the peasants.
What a "Marxist" Kautsky is!
It was the Bolsheviks who strictly differentiated between the bourgeois-democratic revolution and the socialist revolution: by carrying the former to its end, they opened the door for the transition to the latter. This was the only policy that was revolutionary and Marxian.
It would be wiser for Kautsky not to repeat the feeble liberal witticism: "Never yet have the small peasants any where adopted collective farming under the influence of theoretical convictions." (P. 50.)
How very smart!
But never as yet and nowhere have the small peasants of any large country been under the influence of a proletarian state.
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Never as yet and nowhere have the small peasants any where engaged in an open class struggle reaching the extent of a civil war between the poor peasants and the rich peasants,
with propagandist, political, economic and military support given to the poor by a proletarian state.
Never as yet and nowhere have the profiteers and the rich amassed such wealth out of war, while the masses of the peasantry have been so utterly ruined. Kautsky just reiterates old stuff, he just chews the old cud, afraid even to ponder over the new tasks of the proletarian dictatorship.
But what, dear Kautsky, if the peasants lack implements for small-scale farming and the proletarian state
helps them to obtain machines for the collective cultivation of the soil -- is that a "theoretical conviction"?---
We shall now pass to the question of the nationalization of the land. Our Narodniks, including all the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, deny that the measure we have adopted is the nationalization of the land. They are wrong in theory. In so far as we remain within the framework of commodity production and capitalism, the abolition of private property in land is the nationalization of the land. The term "Socialization" merely expresses a tendency, a desire, the preparation, for the transition to Socialism.
What should be the attitude of Marxists towards the nationalization of the land?
Here, too, Kautsky fails even to formulate the theoretical question, or, which is still worse, he deliberately evades it, although one knows from Russian literature that Kautsky is aware of the old controversies among the Russian Marxists on the question of nationalization, municipalization (i.e.,
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the transfer of the large estates to the local self-government authorities), or division of the land.
Kautsky's assertion that to transfer the large estates to the state and rent them out in small plots to peasants with little land would be achieving "something socialistic" is a downright mockery of Marxism. We have already shown that there is nothing socialistic about it. But that is not all; it would not even be carrying the
bourgeois-democratic revolution to its conclusion. Kautsky's great misfortune is that he placed his trust in the Mensheviks. Hence the curious position that while insisting on the bourgeois character of our revolution and reproaching the Bolsheviks for taking it into their heads to proceed to Socialism, he
himself proposes a liberal reform under the guise of Socialism, without carrying this reform to the point of completely clearing away all the survivals of medievalism in land ownership! The arguments of Kautsky, as of his Menshevik advisers, amount to a defence of the liberal bourgeoisie, who fear revolution, instead of a defence of consistent bourgeois-democratic revolution.
<"p114">Indeed, why should only the large estates, and not all the land, be converted into state property? The liberal bourgeoisie thereby achieves the maximum preservation of the old conditions (i.e., the least consistency in revolution) and the maximum facility for a reversion to the old conditions. The radical bourgeoisie, i.e., the bourgeoisie that wants to carry the bourgeois revolution to its conclusion, puts forward the slogan of the
nationalization of the land.
Kautsky, who in the dim and distant past, some twenty years ago, wrote an excellent Marxian work on the agrarian question,[¥] cannot but know that Marx declared that land nationalization is in fact a
consistent slogan of the bour-
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<"p115">geoisie.[44] Kautsky cannot but be aware of Marx's controversy with Rodbertus, and Marx's remarkable passages in his
Theories of Surplus Value where the revolutionary significance -- in the bourgeois-democratic sense -- of land nationalization is explained with particular clarity.
The Menshevik P. Maslov, whom Kautsky, unfortunately for himself, chose as an adviser, denied that the Russian peasants would agree to the nationalization of all the land (including the peasants' lands). To a certain extent, this view of Maslov's could be connected with his "original" theory (which merely parrots the bourgeois critics of Marx), viz., his repudiation of absolute rent and his recognition of the "law" (or "fact," as Maslov expressed it) of the "diminishing fertility of the soil."
In point of fact, however, already the Revolution of 1905 revealed that the vast majority of the peasants in Russia, members of village communities as well as individual peasant proprietors, were in favour of the nationalization of all the land. The Revolution of 1917 confirmed this, and after the assumption of power by the proletariat this was done. The Bolsheviks remained loyal to Marxism and never tried (in spite of Kautsky, who, without a shadow of evidence, accuses us of doing so) to "skip" the bourgeois-democratic revolution. The Bolsheviks, first of all, helped the most radical, most revolutionary of the bourgeois-democratic ideologists of the peasantry, those who stood closest to the proletariat, namely, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, to carry out what was in effect the nationalization of the land. On October 26, 1917, i.e., on the very first day of the proletarian, socialist revolution, private ownership of land was abolished in Russia.
This laid the foundation, the most perfect from the point of view of the development of capitalism (Kautsky cannot
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deny this without breaking with Marx), and at the same time created an agrarian systern which is the
most flexible from the point of view of the transition to Socialism. From the bourgeois-democratic point of view, the revolutionary peasantry in Russia
could go no further: there can be nothing more "ideal" from this point of view, nothing more "radical" (from this same point of view) than the nationalization of the land and equal land tenure. It was the Bolsheviks, and only the Bolsheviks, who, thanks only to the victory of the
proletarian revolution, helped the peasantry to carry the bourgeois-democratic revolution really to its conclusion. And only in this way did they do the utmost to facilitate and accelerate the transition to the socialist revolution.
One can judge from this what an incredible muddle Kautsky offers to his readers when he accuses the Bolsheviks of failing to understand the bourgeois character of the revolution, and yet himself betrays such a departure from Marxism that he
says nothing about the nationalization of the land and presents the least revolutionary (from the bourgeois point of view) liberal agrarian reform as "something socialistic"!---
We have now come to the third question formulated above, namely, to what extent the proletarian dictatorship in Russia has taken into account the necessity of passing to the collective cultivation of the soil. Here again, Kautsky commits something very much in the nature of a forgery: he quotes only the "theses" of one Bolshevik which speak of the task of passing to the collective cultivation of the soil! After quoting one of these theses, our "theoretician" triumphantly exclaims:
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"Unfortunately, a task is not accomplished by the fact that it is called a task. For the time being, collective farming in Russia is doomed to remain on paper only. Never yet have the small peasants anywhere adopted collective farming under the influence of theoretical convictions." (P. 50.)
Never yet has a literary swindle been perpetrated any where equal to that to which Kautsky has stooped. He quotes "theses," but says nothing about the law of the Soviet government. He talks about "theoretical convictions," but says nothing about the proletarian state power which holds in its hands the factories and goods! All that Kautsky the Marxist wrote in 1899 in his
Agrarian Question about the means at the disposal of the proletarian state for bringing about the gradual transition 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 (i.e., large farms cultivated by as sociations of workers on behalf of the state) are very little; but can Kautsky's ignoring of this fact be called "criticism"? The nationalization of the land that has been carried out in Russia by the proletarian dictatorship has best ensured the carrying of the bourgeois-democratic revolution to its conclusion -- even in the event of a victory of the counter-revolution causing a reversion from land nationalization to land division (I made a special examination of this possibility in my pamphlet on the agrarian program of the Marxists in the 1905 Revolution). In addition, the nationalization of the land has given the proletarian state the maximum opportunity of passing to Socialism in agriculture.
To sum up, Kautsky has presented us, as far as theory is concerned, with an incredible hodgepodge which is a com plete renunciation of Marxism, and, as far as practice is
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concerned, with a policy of servility to the bourgeoisie and its reformism. A fine criticism indeed!
* * *
Kautsky begins his "economic analysis" of industry with the following magnificent argument:
Russia has a large-scale capitalist industry. Cannot a socialist system of production be built up on this foundation? "One might think so if Socialism meant that the workers of the separate factories and mines made these their property" (literally appropriated these for themselves) "in order to carry on production separately at each factory." (P. 52.) "This very day, August 5, as I am writing these lines," Kautsky adds, "a speech is reported from Moscow delivered by Lenin on August 2, in which he is stated to have declared: 'The workers are holding the factories firmly in their hands, and the peasants will not return the land to the landlords.' Hitherto, the slogan: the factories to the workers, and the land to the peasants -- has been an anarcho-syndicalist slogan, not a Social-Democratic one." (Pp. 52-53.)
I have quoted this passage in full in order that the Russian workers, who formerly respected Kautsky, and quite rightly, might see for themselves the methods employed by this deserter to the bourgeois camp.
Just think: on August 5, when numerous decrees on the nationalization of factories in Russia had been issued -- and not a single factory had been "appropriated" by the workers, but had
all been converted into the property of the Republic -- on August 5, Kautsky, on the strength of an obviously crooked interpretation of one sentence in my speech, tries to make the German readers believe that in Russia the fac-
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tories are being turned over to the individual groups of workers! And after that Kautsky, at great length, chews the cud about its being wrong to turn over factories to the individual groups of workers!
This is not criticism, it is the trick of a lackey of the bourgeoisie, whom the capitalists have hired to belie the workers' revolution.
The factories must be turned over to the state, or to the municipalities, or the consumers' cooperative societies, says Kautsky over and over again, and finally adds:
"This is what they are now trying to do in Russia. . . ." Now!! What does that mean? In August? Why, could not Kautsky have commissioned his friends Stein, or Axelrod, or any of the other friends of the Russian bourgeoisie to translate at least one of the decrees on the factories?
"How far they have gone in this direction, we cannot yet tell. At all events, this aspect of the activity of the Soviet Republic is of the greatest interest for us, but it still remains entirely shrouded in darkness. There is no lack of decrees". . . (that is why Kautsky ignores their
content, or conceals it from his readers!) "but there is no reliable information as to the effect of these decrees. Socialist production is impossible with out all-round, detailed, reliable and rapidly informing statistics. The Soviet Republic cannot possibly have created such statistics yet. What we learn about its economic activities is highly contradictory and can in no way 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! From a "free" press of the capitalists and Dutovites Kautsky would have received in formation about factories being turned over to 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 Repub-
<"p120">lic only, that they are managed by an organ of the Soviet power, the Supreme Council of National Economy, 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,"[45] 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 display furious passion. Try to find the difference between this kind of "Socialist" and an ordinary bureaucrat!
And 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. Comrades 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 under the necessity of explaining 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 prosperity! -- 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 Kornilovites, the Dutovites and Krasnovites in Russia say bluntly, straight forwardly 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 the power has passed into the hands of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies,
then in Berlin, where, too, power has passed into the hands of a Soviet.
The conclusion which still remained to be written to my pamphlet on Kautsky and on the proletarian revolution is now superfluous.
November 10, 1918
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