Page:Karl Kautsky - Georgia - tr. Henry James Stenning (1921).pdf/21

 The International did not include any separate Georgian Social-Democratic Party.

By adopting this course, however, the Socialists of Georgia became involved in all the errors and confusions through which Russian Socialism has passed.

In contrast to Georgia, where the Proletarian movement has nearly always remained true, to Marxian Social-Democracy, the Socialist movement of Russia has been split into various sections.

On the one hand was the Social-Democracy, with tendencies in line with the thought of Western Europe, and postulating an advanced stage of capitalism as the indispensable preliminary to Socialism; and, on the other hand, was the Social Revolutionary Party, with a specific Russian Socialism, which it sought to base lather upon the peasants and the vestiges of village communism than upon the proletariat. These doctrines could scarcely find any support in Georgia, as in that country village communism had completely disappeared.

An antagonism soon arose within the ranks of the Russian Social-Democracy, between divergent conceptions of Marxism. The first conception, which may be called that of Western Europe, emphasised the importance of the economic movement, and the other, or Russian, conception perceived in force not merely the midwife but the creator of a new society. The first conception involved, in particular, the development of the self-consciousness and the independent activity of the proletariat, and consequently favoured Democracy, which alone formed the groundwork for this development; and the other conception saw in the proletariat merely a tool to be wielded by a small and resolute organisation of Socialists. Those holding the first conception remained true to the Marxian method, which they consistently employed in spite of all the difficulties which arose from the economic and political backwardness of the country; those holding the other conception began by substituting the dictatorship of a conspiracy society for democracy within the party organisation;