Page:Karl Radek - Proletarian Dictatorship and Terrorism - tr. Patrick Lavin (1921).djvu/40

33 would force them to resort, contrary to the spirit of the proletariat and of Socialism, to mass terrorism. In fact, since Marxism began to dominate the Socialist movement till the time of the world war, that movement has, in almost everything it has consciously undertaken, been preserved from serious defeat; and the idea that Socialism could be accomplished by means of a reign of terror has been entirely discarded by its adherents."

So says the professor in his book. Till the world war democracy and Marxism had shown fine results. And why did not democracy, with its much advertised relatively strong position and its tendency to soften manners, prevent this most savage form of destruction? We are certain that Herr Kautsky will declare triumphantly that the war came about because his democratic medicine had not been administered in sufficiently large doses to the Hohenzollerns, the Hapsburgs and the Romanoffs. Apart from the fact that, despite all the diplomatic documents which tell so heavily against these dynasties, no Marxist can forget the whole social and political history of the pre-war period, the will of the "democracy" must have been to defend by all means, even the most brutal, the interests of Entente capital against the piratical attempts at expansion of Imperial Germany if the Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs succeeded in unchaining the war. And does Herr Kautsky know nothing of the ignoble war of the Western "democracies" against Soviet Russia and Soviet Hungary? It is evident that this singular Marxist was still, in the summer of 1919, full of illusions about the readiness of capital to forcibly resist the attempts of the proletariat to liberate themselves. He quotes from my Foreword to Bucharin's pamphlet as follows: "The more developed Capitalism in any country is the more reckless and brutal will be its defensive fight, and therefore the bloodier will be the proletarian revolution and the more reckless will be the measures by means of which the victorious working class will bring the defeated capitalist class to its knees." Referring to