Page:Karl Kautsky - Georgia - tr. Henry James Stenning (1921).pdf/108

 possessed a character which distinguished it fundamentally from the Revolution.

The present-day Moscow régime has as little in common with the proletarian dominance of the State as the French Empire at the beginning of the last century had with the Republic.

The so-called Soviet Republic of to-day does not rest upon the power of the proletariat, but on the strength of its army and on the impotence of the proletariat against this army. As the strength of the army grows so the power of the rulers of the State increases, but simultaneously grows their dependence on the only element on which they are able to support themselves, the military. Accordingly, a new militarism is arising in Russia, and likewise a new imperialism. For the latter, the impulse towards constant extension of power and fields of exploitation is peculiar to militarism as well as to capitalism. The need for employing his army, and constantly providing fresh booty and advantages, drove Napoleon to that restless policy of conquest which finally collapsed at Moscow. The same conditions are to-day creating in Russia similar efforts on the part of the Moscow Imperialism.

Tо this policy Georgia has now been sacrificed.

It is important to make this quite clear. The effect upon us would be disastrous if it were a genuinely proletarian Republic which had suddenly invaded another proletarian Republic, a small, friendly and peaceful community. To invade it without any declaration of war, in the midst of peace, was indeed an infamy more wicked than the German invasion of Belgium in 1914. For then Germany was engaged in a war for its existence and the invasion was an episode of the world-war. The Bolshevist invasion threatens to paralyse the whole of the Socialist propaganda against the war, and to brand it as humbug.

Never before have wars wrought such destruction as to-day of technical appliances for the needs of production and of communication, and never before