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
He points out that the Communards had as their opponents in the
National Assembly the monarchists, while we in the Constituent
Assembly had against us ... Socialists, in the persons of the S.R.s,
and the Mensheviks. A complete mental eclipse! Kautsky talks about the
Mensheviks and the S.R.s, but forgets our sole serious foe--the
Cadets. It was they who represented our Russian Thiers party--_i.e._,
a bloc of property owners in the name of property: and Professor
Miliukov did his utmost to imitate the "little great man." Very soon
indeed--long before the October Revolution--Miliukov began to seek his
Gallifet in the generals Kornilov, Alexeiev, then Kaledin, Krasnov, in
turn. And after Kolchak had thrown aside all political parties, and
had dissolved the Constituent Assembly, the Cadet Party, the sole
serious bourgeois party, in its essence monarchist through and
through, not only did not refuse to support him, but on the contrary
devoted more sympathy to him than before.
The Mensheviks and the S.R.s played no independent role amongst
us--just like Kautsky's party during the revolutionary events
in Germany. They based their whole policy upon a coalition with
the Cadets, and thereby put the Cadets in a position to dictate
quite irrespective of the balance of political forces. The
Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik Parties were only an
intermediary apparatus for the purpose of collecting, at meetings
and elections, the political confidence of the masses awakened
by the revolution, and for handing it over for disposal by the
counter-revolutionary imperialist party of the Cadets--independently
of the issue of the elections.
The purely vassal-like dependence of the S.R.s and Menshevik _majority_
on the Cadet _minority_ itself represented a very thinly-veiled
insult to the idea of "democracy." But this is not all.