Produced by Odessa Paige Turner and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) WORKERS PARTY LIBRARY, Vol. I DICTATORSHIP vs. DEMOCRACY (_TERRORISM AND COMMUNISM_) A Reply to Karl Kautsky by LEON TROTSKY With a Preface by H. N. BRAILSFORD and Foreword by Max Bedact [Illustration: WORKERS PARTY OF AMERICA. WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE.] Published 1922 by WORKERS PARTY OF AMERICA 799 Broadway, Room 405 New York City CONTENTS FOREWORD V PREFACE XI INTRODUCTION 5 THE BALANCE OF POWER 12 THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT 20 DEMOCRACY 28 TERRORISM 48 THE PARIS COMMUNE AND SOVIET RUSSIA 69 MARX AND ... KAUTSKY 91 THE WORKING CLASS AND ITS SOVIET POLICY 98 PROBLEMS OF THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR 128 KARL KAUTSKY, HIS SCHOOL AND HIS BOOK 177 IN PLACE OF AN EPILOGUE 188 Foreword By MAX BEDACT In a land where "democracy" is so deeply entrenched as in our United States of America it may seem futile to try to make friends for a dictatorship, by a close comparison of the principles of the two--Dictatorship versus Democracy. But then, confiding in the inviting gesture of the Goddess of Liberty many of our friends and fellow citizens have tested that sacred principle of democracy, freedom of speech, a little too freely--and landed in the penitentiary for it. Others again, relying on the not less sacred principle of democracy, freedom of assembly, have come in unpleasant contact with a substantial stick of hardwood, wielded by an unwieldily guardian of the law, and awoke from the immediate effects of this collision in some jail. Again others, leaning a little too heavily against the democratic principle of freedom of press broke down that pasteboard pillar of democracy, and incidentally into prison. Looking at this side of the bright shining medal of our beloved democracy it seems that there is not the slightest bit of difference between the democracy of capitalist America and the dictatorship of Soviet Russia. But there is a great difference. The dictatorship in Russia is bold and upright class rule, which has as its ultimate object the abolition of all class rule and all dictatorships. Our democracy, on the other hand, is a Pecksniffian Dictatorship, is hypocrisy incarnate, promising all liberty in phrases, but in reality even penalizing free thinking, consistently working only for one object: to perpetuate the rule of the capitalist class, the capitalist dictatorship.