Page:Karl Radek - Proletarian Dictatorship and Terrorism - tr. Patrick Lavin (1921).djvu/31

24 machine-guns, renounce the Homeric duel of words." These statements of mine, written in the summer of 1918 show that. even the Russian Communists saw that the abolition of the right of the bourgeoisie to vote was by no means a characteristic of the dictatorship of the proletariat. They were merely convinced that during the period of the civil war the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie assumes such an acute form that the common ground of the democratic franchise, Parliament as the theatre of war, disappears. What is demonstrated in this connection by the Paris Commune? It was (and Herr Kautsky takes good care to conceal the fact) an insurrection against the results of universal suffrage in France. On the basis of this Kautskyan panacea the National Assembly of France came into being in 1871 and showed 400 Monarchists and 200 Republicans (and such Republicans!). It was a faithful reflection of the reaction which prevailed in the country districts and in the small towns. The National Assembly not only concluded peace with Bismark, but prepared to make war on revolutionary Paris. And then—Paris rose against the National Assembly. "Paris has no right to rebel against France; it must, on the contrary, unreservedly recognize the supremacy of the National Assembly"—thus was Paris apostrophized by one of its representatives and mayors, M. Clemenceau, the "Tiger" of today; and the Socialistic ancestor of Kautsky, Louis Blanc, said to the delegates of the Commune, "you are rebels against a most freely elected Assembly." Mr. Thiers declared "The Government would betray the Assembly, France and civilization if it allowed the forces of Communism and rebellion to be built up alongside of the lawful power called into being by the general voice of the people." Herr Kautsky quietly suppresses the whole controversy on principle in which not only counter-revolutionaries like Thiers, but bourgeois Radicals and Socialists like Louis Blanc reproached the Commune with treachery against democracy. The Communards defended themselves against this charge by claiming that the National Assembly had no right to exist after the conclusion of peace, as it was