Page:Karl Kautsky - Georgia - tr. Henry James Stenning (1921).pdf/109

 was peace so essential to the prosperity of the peoples.

It brings consolation, encouragement and hope to large sections of people when we Socialists point out that it is capitalism alone that renders war inevitable, and that the proletariat is the force that will bring peace and maintain it.

The world rule of the proletariat would be synonymous with lasting world peace! And now we have two Republics, governed by the proletariat, existing side by side, and one makes war upon the other with a treachery that is seldom met with among capitalist governments.

Were Russia still a proletarian republic, the events in Georgia would inflict a serious blow on the whole of our propaganda, in which we describe the proletariat as the firmest support of peace.

Yet, in reality, the Russian proletariat has borne no share in the invasion of Georgia, because it has ceased to exercise political power in Russia. We are justified in continuing to assert that the general rule of the proletariat will secure lasting world peace; that between two States, equally governed by the proletariat, no occasion for war will any longer arise; and that the international solidarity of the workers will be strong enough to settle peacefully any possible conflicts between two proletarian States.

For the Russia which has just made this execrable invasion into Georgia is no longer a proletarian, but a Bonapartist community.

Far from rejoicing over the conquest of Georgia, the proletariat of Russia vigorously condemned it, as was shown by the protest issued in Berlin on March 3rd by the Foreign Agency of the Social-Democratic Labour Party (signed by Abramovitch and Martoff). In Russia itself the proletariat is muzzled, and cannot express itself freely, but the Social-Democratic Party, that is, the Menshevists, is competent to speak in its name. Times have changed since Bolshevism forced Menshevism into the background and won to its side the