Page:Building Up Socialism - Nikolai Bukharin (1926).pdf/29

Rh generally admitted. Marx long ago said, stated this old bookman, that no new society can arise until the old society has exhausted all its productive possibilities. Consequently, Socialism is impossible if the previous stage of social development has not been completed, if the old society has not utterly exhausted itself. Thus armed, he commences a bold attack against the Bolsheviks who, from his point of view, have become absorbed in the role of midwife, but are performing it very clumsily, for they are trying to stimulate the mother to give birth long before she is supposed to, according to the laws of Nature. As a matter of fact, he argues, the Bolsheviks are not accoucheurs at all, but simply charlatan-quacks who advertised themselves as having undergone a course of training in the school of revolutionary midwifery, in the school of Marx. As a matter of fact they have no connection with the school of Marx, he cries. Mother Russia is not giving birth to Socialism at all; she is simply being experimented on by Bolshevik scoundrels.

In a word, capitalism in Russia is backward, immature and therefore it is no place to construct Socialism, is the precept contained in one of the works of the Pope of Social Compromise.

Simultaneously with that of Pope Kautsky we must examine the point of view held on this question by Otto Bauer who, to be fair, should be revered as a prelate of social-compromise. It must be said that this prelate has proved far more able and subtle than the Pope. The point of view of Otto Bauer is more cunning and clever than that of Kautsky.

He presents the question in the following manner.