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
There are scraps of truth in this rubbish. The Stock
Exchange did really support the government of Kolchak when
it relied for support on the Constituent Assembly. From its
experience of Kolchak the Stock Exchange became confirmed in
its conviction that the mechanism of bourgeois democracy can
be utilized in capitalist interests, and then thrown aside
like a worn-out pair of puttees. It is quite possible that
the Stock Exchange would again give a parliamentary loan on
the guarantee of a Constituent Assembly, believing, on the
basis of its former experience, that such a body would prove
only an intermediate step to capitalist dictatorship. We do
not propose to buy the "business faith" of the Stock
Exchange at such a price, and decidedly prefer the "faith"
which is aroused in the realist Stock Exchange by the weapon
of the Red Army.
4
TERRORISM
The chief theme of Kautsky's book is terrorism. The view that
terrorism is of the essence of revolution Kautsky proclaims to be a
widespread delusion. It is untrue that he who desires revolution must
put up with terrorism. As far as he, Kautsky, is concerned, he is,
generally speaking, for revolution, but decidedly against terrorism.
From there, however, complications begin.
"The revolution brings us," Kautsky complains, "a bloody terrorism
carried out by Socialist governments. The Bolsheviks in Russia first
stepped on to this path, and were, consequently, sternly condemned by
all Socialists who had not adopted the Bolshevik point of view,
including the Socialists of the German Majority. But as soon as the
latter found themselves threatened in their supremacy, they had
recourse to the methods of the same terrorist regime which they
attacked in the East." (Page 9.) It would seem that from this follows
the conclusion that terrorism is much more profoundly bound up with
the nature of revolution than certain sages think. But Kautsky makes
an absolutely opposite conclusion. The gigantic development of White
and Red terrorism in all the last revolutions--the Russian, the
German, the Austrian, and the Hungarian--is evidence to him that these
revolutions turned aside from their true path and turned out to be not
the revolution they ought to have been according to the theoretical
visions of Kautsky. Without going into the question whether terrorism
"as such" is "immanent" to the revolution "as such," let us consider a
few of the revolutions as they pass before us in the living history of
mankind.
Let us first regard the religious Reformation, which proved the
watershed between the Middle Ages and modern history: the deeper were
the interests of the masses that it involved, the wider was its sweep,
the more fiercely did the civil war develop under the religious
banner, and the more merciless did the terror become on the other
side.