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
Kautsky's book, examined by us, bears in its external characteristics
all the attributes of a so-called objective scientific study. To
examine the extent of the Red Terror, Kautsky acts with all the
circumstantial method peculiar to him. He begins with the study of the
social conditions which prepared the great French Revolution, and also
the physiological and social conditions which assisted the development
of cruelty and humanity throughout the history of the human race. In a
book devoted to Bolshevism, in which the whole question is examined in
234 pages, Kautsky describes in detail on what our most remote human
ancestor fed, and hazards the guess that, while living mainly on
vegetable products, he devoured also insects and possibly a few birds.
(See page 122.) In a word, there was nothing to lead us to expect that
from such an entirely respectable ancestor--one obviously inclined to
vegetarianism--there should spring such descendants as the Bolsheviks.
That is the solid scientific basis on which Kautsky builds the
question!...
But, as is not infrequent with productions of this nature, there is
hidden behind the academic and scholastic cloak a malignant political
pamphlet. This book is one of the most lying and conscienceless of its
kind. Is it not incredible, at first glance, that Kautsky should
gather up the most contemptible stories about the Bolsheviks from the
rich table of Havas, Reuter and Wolff, thereby displaying from under
his learned night-cap the ears of the sycophant? Yet these
disreputable details are only mosaic decorations on the fundamental
background of solid, scientific lying about the Soviet Republic and
its guiding party.
Kautsky depicts in the most sinister colors our savagery towards the
bourgeoisie, which "displayed no tendency to resist."
Kautsky attacks our ruthlessness in connection with the Socialist
Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks, who represent "shades" of
Socialism.
KAUTSKY DEPICTS THE SOVIET ECONOMY AS THE CHAOS OF COLLAPSE
Kautsky represents the Soviet workers, and the Russian working class
as a whole, as a conglomeration of egoists, loafers, and cowards.
He does not say one word about the conduct of the Russian bourgeoisie,
unprecedented in history for the magnitude of its scoundrelism;
about its national treachery; about the surrender of Riga to the
Germans, with "educational" aims; about the preparations for a
similar surrender of Petrograd; about its appeals to foreign
armies--Czecho-Slovakian, German, Roumanian, British, Japanese,
French, Arab and Negro--against the Russian workers and peasants;
about its conspiracies and assassinations, paid for by Entente money;
about its utilization of the blockade, not only to starve our children
to death, but systematically, tirelessly, persistently to spread over
the whole world an unheard-of web of lies and slander.