Dictatorship vs. Democracy (Terrorism and Communism): a reply to Karl Kantsky
Kant · en
"If the most advanced workers were aware that force was the mother of
law, their political thought still remained saturated with the spirit
of opportunism and self-adaptation to bourgeois legality. To-day the
worker has learned in practice to despise that legality, and violently
to destroy it. The static moments in his psychology are giving place
to the dynamic. Heavy guns are knocking into his head the idea that,
in cases where it is impossible to avoid an obstacle, there remains
the possibility of destroying it. Nearly the whole adult male
population is passing through this school of war, terrible in its
social realism, which is bringing forth a new type of humanity.
"Over all the criteria of bourgeois society--its law, its morality,
its religion--is now raised the fist of iron necessity. 'Necessity
knows no law' was the declaration of the German Chancellor (August 4,
1914). Monarchs come out into the market-place to accuse one another
of lying in the language of fishwives; governments break promises they
have solemnly made, while the national church binds its Lord God like
a convict to the national cannon. Is it not obvious that these
circumstances must create important alterations in the psychology of
the working class, radically curing it of that hypnosis of legality
which was created by the period of political stagnation? The
propertied classes will soon, to their sorrow, have to be convinced of
this. The proletariat, after passing through the school of war, at the
first serious obstacle within its own country will feel the necessity
of speaking with the language of force. 'Necessity knows no law,' he
will throw in the face of those who attempt to stop him by laws of
bourgeois legality. And the terrible economic necessity which will
arise during the course of this war, and particularly at its end, will
drive the masses to spurn very many laws." (Page 56-57.)
All this is undeniable. But to what is said above one must add that
the war has exercised no less influence on the psychology of the
ruling classes. As the masses become more insistent in their demands,
so the bourgeoisie has become more unyielding.
In times of peace, the capitalists used to guarantee their interests
by means of the "peaceful" robbery of hired labor. During the war they
served those same interests by means of the destruction of countless
human lives. This has imparted to their consciousness as a master
class a new "Napoleonic" trait. The capitalists during the war became
accustomed to send to their death millions of slaves--fellow-countrymen
and colonials--for the sake of coal, railway, and other profits.