Dictatorship vs. Democracy (Terrorism and Communism): a reply to Karl Kantsky — Kant — John Shaqi
Dictatorship vs. Democracy (Terrorism and Communism): a reply to Karl Kantsky
Kant · en
This plan has great significance, not only as a general guide for the
practical work of our economic organs, but also as a line along which
propaganda amongst the laboring masses in connection with our economic
problems is to proceed. Our labor mobilization will not enter into
real life, will not take root, if we do not excite the living interest
of all that is honest, class-conscious, and inspired in the working
class. We must explain to the masses the whole truth as to our
situation and as to our views for the future; we must tell them openly
that our economic plan, with the maximum of exertion on the part of
the workers, will neither to-morrow nor the day after give us a land
flowing with milk and honey: for during the first period our chief
work will consist in preparing the conditions for the production of
the means of production. Only after we have secured, though on the
smallest possible scale, the possibility of rebuilding the means of
transport and production, shall we pass on to the production of
articles for general consumption. In this way the fruit of their
labor, which is the direct object of the workers, in the shape of
articles for personal consumption, will arrive only in the last, the
fourth, stage of our economic plan; and only then shall we have a
serious improvement in our life. The masses, who for a prolonged
period will still bear all the weight of labor and of privation, must
realize to the full the inevitable internal logic of this economic
plan if they are to prove capable of carrying it out.