Page:Karl Radek - Proletarian Dictatorship and Terrorism - tr. Patrick Lavin (1921).djvu/36

29 the Town Hall and said to him smilingly, "You see, Ferré, the members of the Minority are fighting." "The members of the Majority will also do their duty," replied Ferré. And the Communard Lissagaray says: "These two men, who met death so nobly, showed to the people a generous spirit of of emulation." But Socialists who, like Louis Blanc, remained with the country people at Versailles and did not even raise their voices when captive Communards were shot down before their eyes, have passed into history as traitors to the proletariat. A Socialist historian says of Louis Blanc: Elected in Paris to the National Assembly, he remained at Versailles when the Assembly declared war on Paris. He supported the Government in its struggle against the Commune. His illusions of liberating the proletariat through cooperation with the aristocratic and progressive sections of the bourgeoisie ended in cooperation with the brutal and reactionary Junkers for the purpose of throttling the proletariat. His views and sympathies were thereby but little altered. ''But class antagonisms are stronger than pious aspirations. He who comes from the camp of the bourgeoisie and does not possess sufficient courage and capacity for sacrifice to write definitely with the proletariat and destroy the bridges behind him—such a one will, despite all his sympathy for the proletariat, be found on the side of the enemies of the people, when a decisive moment comes.''" These are the words of Karl Kautsky, who thus showed he had a presentiment of what would happen to himself. The quiet comfortable study is the bridge which unites him with the bourgeoisie. He had not the courage to tread the way of the martyr as Rosa Luxemburg did, and we therefore see him now in Versailles as the successor of Louis Blanc. And when he says that the greatest virtue of the Commune was that Socialists did not prosecute Socialists we say to him: "Your praise is a slander alike on Majority and Minority of the Commune, which consisted of comrades-in-arms who had no reason to mutually persecute one another. You falsify history unnecessarily. Should the proletarian