And, on the other hand, the Socialist party, enjoying traditional influence, which does _not_ render itself an account of what is going on around it, which does _not_ understand the revolutionary situation, and, therefore, finds no key to it, which does _not_ believe in either the proletariat or itself--such a party in our time is the most mischievous stumbling block in history, and a source of confusion and inevitable chaos. Such is now the role of Kautsky and his sympathizers. They teach the proletariat not to believe in itself, but to believe its reflection in the crooked mirror of democracy which has been shattered by the jack-boot of militarism into a thousand fragments. The decisive factor in the revolutionary policy of the working class must be, in their view, not the international situation, not the actual collapse of capitalism, not that social collapse which is generated thereby, not that concrete necessity of the supremacy of the working class for which the cry arises from the smoking ruins of capitalist civilization--not all this must determine the policy of the revolutionary party of the proletariat--but that counting of votes which is carried out by the capitalist tellers of parliamentarism. Only a few years ago, we repeat, Kautsky seemed to understand the real inner meaning of the problem of revolution. "Yes, the proletariat represents the sole revolutionary class of the nation," wrote Kautsky in his pamphlet, _The Path to Power_. It follows that every collapse of the capitalist order, whether it be of a moral, financial, or military character, implies the bankruptcy of all the bourgeois parties responsible for it, and signifies that the sole way out of the blind alley is the establishment of the power of the _proletariat_. And to-day the party of prostration and cowardice, the party of Kautsky, says to the working class: "The question is not whether you to-day are the sole creative force in history; whether you are capable of throwing aside that ruling band of robbers into which the propertied classes have developed; the question is not whether anyone else can accomplish this task on your behalf; the question is not whether history allows you any postponement (for the present condition of bloody chaos threatens to bury you yourself, in the near future, under the last ruins of capitalism). The problem is for the ruling imperialist bandits to succeed--yesterday or to-day--to deceive, violate, and swindle public opinion, by collecting 51 per cent. of the votes against your 49. Perish the world, but long live the parliamentary majority!" 2 THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT "Marx and Engels hammered out the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which Engels stubbornly defended in 1891, shortly before his death--the idea that the political autocracy of the proletariat is the sole form in which it can realize its control of the state."