Dictatorship vs. Democracy (Terrorism and Communism): a reply to Karl Kantsky
Kant · en
In the seventeenth century England carried out two revolutions. The
first, which brought forth great social upheavals and wars, brought
amongst other things the execution of King Charles I, while the second
ended happily with the accession of a new dynasty. The British
bourgeoisie and its historians maintain quite different attitudes to
these two revolutions: the first is for them a rising of the mob--the
"Great Rebellion"; the second has been handed down under the title of
the "Glorious Revolution." The reason for this difference in estimates
was explained by the French historian, Augustin Thierry. In the first
English revolution, in the "Great Rebellion," the active force was the
people; while in the second it was almost "silent." Hence, it follows
that, in surroundings of class slavery, it is difficult to teach the
oppressed masses good manners. When provoked to fury they use clubs,
stones, fire, and the rope. The court historians of the exploiters are
offended at this. But the great event in modern "bourgeois" history
is, none the less, not the "Glorious Revolution," but the "Great
Rebellion."
The greatest event in modern history after the Reformation and the
"Great Rebellion," and far surpassing its two predecessors in
significance, was the great French Revolution of the eighteenth
century. To this classical revolution there was a corresponding
classical terrorism. Kautsky is ready to forgive the terrorism of the
Jacobins, acknowledging that they had no other way of saving the
republic. But by this justification after the event no one is either
helped or hindered. The Kautskies of the end of the eighteenth century
(the leaders of the French Girondists) saw in the Jacobins the
personification of evil. Here is a comparison, sufficiently
instructive in its banality, between the Jacobins and the Girondists
from the pen of one of the bourgeois French historians: "Both one side
and the other desired the republic." But the Girondists "desired a
free, legal, and merciful republic. The Montagnards desired a despotic
and terrorist republic. Both stood for the supreme power of the
people; but the Girondist justly understood all by the people, while
the Montagnards considered only the working class to be the people.
That was why only to such persons, in the opinion of the Montagnards,
did the supremacy belong." The antithesis between the noble champions
of the Constituent Assembly and the bloodthirsty agents of the
revolutionary dictatorship is here outlined fairly clearly, although
in the political terms of the epoch.