Dictatorship vs. Democracy

ommune and

d in the triumph of its enemy. This episode-from March 18 to May 28-lasted seventy-two days."-"The

THE SOCIALIST PART

programme, the lack of unity amongst its leaders, the indecision of their plans, the hopeless panic of its executive organs, and the terrifying defeat fatally precipitated by all these. We cherish in the Commune, in the words of Lavrov, "the first, though still pale, dawn o

ion, and for not having foreseen the inevitable and consciously gone to meet it. However, all Kautsky's picture was built up in such a way as to produce in the reader just this idea: the Communards were simply overtaken by misfortune (the Bavarian philistine, Vollmar, once expressed his regret that the Communards had not gone to bed instead of taking power into their hands), and, therefore, deserve pity. The Bolsheviks consciously went to meet misfortune (the

er afterwards to attempt with greater confidence a monarchist coup d'état-such was the most important task of the National Assembly

viks, which drew its strength from the yearning for peace; which had the peasantry behind it; which

er to them the whole machinery of the State-immediately utilized in the most energetic and mercile

ommune than the revolutionaries themselves, and for a considerable number a

e of what Kautsky has written here of the Commun

er the fall of the Empire, and a few days before the explosion of the Commune, the guiding pers

of the proletariat, but its leaders, overwhelmed by their unexpe

. In this was a great deal of truth," writes the Communard and historian of the Commune, Lissagaray. "But at the moment of action itself the absence of pr

a direct struggle for power on the part of the Paris Socialists was explained by their theoreti

ill greet the proletarian revolution in Germany as "a conflict in the highest degree undesirable." We doubt, however, whether this will be ascribed

, was completely corrupted, and was attempting to impose its will upon the community. To overthrow and humiliate Petrograd was the first task of Miliukov and his assistants. And this took place at a period when Petrograd was the true centre of the revolution, which had not yet been able to consolidate its pos

armed in July, 1917. It was partially re-armed during Kornilov's march on Petrograd in August. And this new arming was a serious element in the preparation of the November insu

er of the bourgeoisie went to the Ukraine to petition that the Kaiser's troops should occupy Russia. For this difference we were to a considerable extent responsible-and we are ready to bear the responsibility. There is a capital difference also in the fact-that this told more than once in the further course of events-t

order to show that Marx had insufficiently gauged the acuteness of the situation in Paris. But Kautsky attempts to exploit Marx's advice as a proof of his condemnation o

organization. The November revolution took place after we had achieved a crushing majority in the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils of Petrograd, Moscow, and all the industrial centres in the country, and had transformed the Soviets into powerful organizations di

rder to slander and humiliate a living and victorious dictatorship of the proletaria

th the murder of the two generals by the soldiery. "We say indignantly: the bloody filth with the help of which it is hoped to sta

political timorousness of these men in the face of bourgeois public opinion. Nor is this surprising. The representatives of the National Guard were men in most cases with a very modest revolutiona

re to get rid of it as soon as possible," writes Lavrov of them, "is evident in all the proclamati

the Communards) had persistently followed up the tracts of Thiers, they would, perhaps, have managed to seize the government. The troops falling back from Paris would not have shown the least

of their revolutionary passivity. The men who, by the will of fate, had received power in Paris, could not understand the necessity of immediately utilizing that power to the end, of hurling themselves after Thiers, and, before he recovered his grasp of the situation, of crushing him, of concentrating the troops in their hands, of carrying out the necessary weeding-out of the officer class, of seizing the provinces. Such men, of course

nd human blood dear must strive to organize the possibility for a swift and decisive victory, and then to act with the greatest swiftness and ener

y-developing moods, Kautsky thinks in lifeless schemes, and distorts the perspective of events by arbitrarily selected analogies. He does not understand that soft-hearted indecision is generally characteristic of the masses in the first period of the revolution. The workers pursue the offensive only under the pressure of iron necessity, just as th

s at Gatchina, was set free on his word of honor the next day. This was "generosity" quite in the spirit of the first measures of the Commune. But it was a mistake. Afterwards, General Krasnov, after fighting against us for about a year in the South, and destroying many thousands of Communists, again advanced on Petrograd, this time in the ranks of Yud

an embryonic form, we see i

heads of traitors" (Journal Officiel No. 123), "to avenge treachery" (No. 124). Under the head of "intimidatory" decrees we must class the order to seize the property of Thiers and of his ministers, to destroy Thiers' house, to destroy the Vendome column, and especially

their striving to reconcile the bourgeoisie with the fait accompli by the help of pitiful phrases, by their vacillations between the

of criticism of the government, etc. The Paris which had accomplished the revolution in the interests of the proletariat, and had before it the task of realizing this revolution in the shape

re severe measures for the suppression of the counter-revolution. True, Kautsky would not then have had the possibility of contrasting the humane Communards with the inhumane Bolsheviks.

TRAL COMMITTEE AND TH

e best fighting elements of the Paris proletariat, and thereby temporarily to weaken Paris from the revolutionary point of view. But to organize elections in Paris, while at the same time sending out of its walls the flower of the working class, would have been senseless from the point of view of the revolutionary party. Theoretically, a march on Versailles and elections to the Commune, of course, did not exclude each other in the slightest degree, but in practice they did exclude each other: for the success of the elections, it was necessary to postpone the attack; for the attack to succeed, the elections must be put off. Finally, leading the proletariat out to the field and thereby temporarily weakening Paris, it was essential to obtain some gua

uipment of the revolutionary army. All these most necessary measures of revolutionary dictatorship could with difficulty be reconciled with an extensive electoral

ng to act in unison with more "legal" institutions, entered into ridiculous and endless negotiations with a quite helpless assembly of mayors and d

tsky, in his own words, "does not understand" this opinion of Marx. It is quite simple. Marx at any rate understood that the problem was not one of chasing legality, but of inflicting a fatal blow upon the enemy. "If the Central Committee had consisted of real revolutionaries," says Lavrov, and rightly, "it ought to have acted differently. It would have been quite unforgivable for it to

plea that it was a temporary institution, the Central Committee avoided the taking of the most necessary and absolutely pressing measures, in spite of the fact that all the material apparatus of power was centred in its hands. But the Commune itsel

placed under its control. Again there arose, as Lissagaray writes, the question as to whether "the Central

and of the readiness, both of the irresponsible revolutionary organizations in the shape of the Central Committee and of the "democratic"

s which it might seem no one

rage." In this respect the "Paris Commune was the direct antithesis of the Soviet Republic." (Page 74.) There was no unity of government, there was no revolutionary decision, there existed

UNE AND THE REVOLUT

ty over the country. So it was in the great French Revolution; so it would have been in the revolution of 1871 if the Commune had not fallen in the first days. The fact that in Paris itself a Government was elected on the basis of universal suffrage does not exclude a much more significant fact-namely, that of the military operations c

f the revolutionary battalions, and the elections took place under the auspices of that fear, which was the forerunner of what in the future would have been inevitable-namely, of the Red Terror. But to console oneself with the thought that the Central Com

ese elections, being boycotted by the bourgeoisie parties, gave us a crushing majority. The "democratically" elected Council voluntarily submitted to the Petrograd Soviet-i.e., placed the fact of the dictatorship of the proletariat higher than the "principle" of universal suffrage, and,

fteen were members of the government party (Thiers), and six were bourgeois radicals wh

to stand as candidates, let alone be elected. The Commune, on the other hand, out of respect for democr

placed no obstacle in the way of the bourgeois parties; and if the Cadets, the S.R.s and the Mensheviks, who had their press which was openly calling for the overthrow of the Soviet Government, boycotted the elections, it was only because at that ti

revolution of the proletariat, and an attempt, feeble though it might be, of building up forms of society corresponding to that revolution." (Pages 111-112.) If the Petrograd bourgeoisie had not boycotted the municipal elections, its representatives would have entered the Petrograd Council. They would have remained there up to the first Social Revolutionary and

ns, carried out with the ambiguous help of the "lawful" mayors and deputies, reflected the hope of a peaceful agreement with Versailles. This is the whole point. The leaders were anxious for a com

Government, recognized and respected by the whole population of Paris." The Journal Officiel, published under the editorship of the Internationalist Longuet, wrote: "The sad misunderstanding, which in the June days (1848) armed two classes of society against each ot

mself on the fact that the Commune had "never yet infringed the principle of private property."

oncilable enemies." (Page 137.) But this enfeebling doctrine was inextricably bound up with the fiction of democracy. The form of mock legality it was that allowed them to think that the problem would be solved without a struggle. "As far as the mass of the population is conc

hur Arnould. "The situation had become so tragic that there was not either the time or the calmness necessary for the correct functioning of the elections…. All persons devoted to the Commune were on the fortifications, in the forts, in the foremost detachments…. The people attributed no importance whatever to these supplementary elections. The elect

e of the best brains of the Commune. "It is a military Council. It must have

accuses the leaders, "that the Commune w

late. Kautsky has not understood it to this day. There

sant country. It is this fact that dominates all the rest. However much the political doctrinaires, in the midst of the Commune itself, clung to

Though cautiously, it still laid hands on the State Bank. It proclaimed the separation of Church and State, and abolished the Church Budgets. It entered into relations with var

. Soon the Committee will become ridiculous, and its decrees will be despised. Besides, Paris has n

nfortunately it did not succeed in doing so. To-day Kautsky seeks t

he Cadets. It was they who represented our Russian Thiers party-i.e., a bloc of property owners in the name of property: and Professor Miliukov did his utmost to imitate the "little great man." Very soon indeed-long before the October Revolution-Miliukov began to seek his Gallifet in the generals Kornilov, Alexeiev, then Ka

Cadets in a position to dictate quite irrespective of the balance of political forces. The Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik Parties were only an intermediary apparatus for the purpose of collecting, at meetings and

ajority on the Cadet minority itself represented a very thinly

. So it was-and this was the most important experiment of our "democracy"-in Siberia, where the Constituent Assembly, with the formal supremacy of the S.R.s and the Mensheviks, in the absence of the Bolsheviks, and the de facto guidance of the Cadets, led in the end to the dictatorship of the Tsarist Admiral Kolchak. So it was, finally, in the north, where the Constituent Assembly government of the S

1871 AND THE PETROGR

a is touching the character of the Paris worker in 1871 and the Russian proletarian of 1917-19. The first Kautsky depicts as a revo

not, and cannot have, any reason for avoiding a comparison with his heroic elder brother. The continuous three years' struggle of the Petrograd workers-first for the conquest of power, and then

e most sinister elements of the Russian proletariat. In this respect also he is in no way different from t

urgeois craft character of old and partly of new Paris is quite foreign to Petrograd, the centre of the most concentrated industry in the wor

But, instead, there was still very fresh in the memory of the older generation of our workers, at the beginning

ctor in the political education of the proletariat. But, on the other hand, the Russian working class had not had seared into its soul the bitterness of dissolut

gnitude. In spite of the splendid fighting qualities of the Paris workers, the military fate of the Commune

and file and 6,500 officers; the number of those who actually went into battle, especia

owards and deserters-although, of course, there was no lack of desertion. For a fighting army there must be,

ch all collided. The office of the Ministry was filled with officers and ordinary Guards, who demanded

any discipline. Courageous men soon determined to rely only on themselves; others avoided service. In the same way did officers beha

he Commune was drowned in blood. But in this

king his head, "is, after all, not a str

eat remark of Kautsky, namely, that the International is not a suitable

ound the present Kautsky, complete, in his e

uiet harbors, not at all for the open sea, and not for a period of storms. If that ship has sprung a leak, and has begun to fill, and is now comfortably going to the bottom, we must throw all th

se civil war not only on internal but also on external fronts. If the waging of war is not the strong side of the proletariat, while the workers' International is suited only for peaceful epochs, then we may as well erect a cross over the revolution and over Socialism; for the waging of war is a fairly strong side of the capitalist State, which without a war

f the Commune. Quite so; that was why it

istory of civilized nations. The religious wars under the last Valois, the night of St. Bartholomew, the Reign of Terror were, in comparison with it, chil

r all, is not the strong

is not a renunciation of the Commune-for the traditions of the Commune consist not at all in its helplessness-but the continuation of its work. The Commune was weak. To complete its wor

or thirty thousand persons; the most devoted fighting minority. This minority did not stand alone: it simply expressed, in a more courageous and self-sacrificing manner, the will of the majority. But none the less it was a minority. The others who hid at the critical moment were not hostile to the Commune; on the contrary, they actively or passively supported it, but they were less politically conscious, less decisive. On the arena of political democracy, their lower level of political consciousness af

e open struggle, as the organization of the laboring masses, would have become the