Page:Karl Radek - Proletarian Dictatorship and Terrorism - tr. Patrick Lavin (1921).djvu/28

21 ''army abolished, and the arming of the people effected; and the wealth of the possessing classes was devoted to the support of the army and of the poor. And all this happened in the epoch of the Terror, in the period in which the bourgeoisie were intimidated.''" (Unfortunately I have not the original by me, which appeared in "Die Neue Zeit," 1904–5, and am obliged to retranslate from a Polish version of Kautsky's work.) In 1905 Kautsky was still so befooled and brutalized by the terrorism of Robespierre that he saw in the destruction of feudal absolutism, of the standing army, etc., a glory which caused him to recognize the epoch of the Terror as one of historical progress. "Marxism" did not prevent him from understanding history: it was not then emasculated. Only the approaching epoch of the proletarian social revolution caused Kautsky to break the weapon of Marxian historical criticism, as he generally rejects it at every encounter with the bourgeoisie. He cannot find pleasure in turning away from that which was great in the bourgeois revolution. He sought for the virtues of the proletarian revolution in its vices and mistakes—in that which was the cause of its weakness. His praise goes out to the proletarians when they allow themselves to be shot down."

We come now to his treatment of the Paris Commune of 1871—to the second chapter of the "luminous" performance which has so enchanted Herr Haase.