Page:Lenin - The Proletarian Revolution and Kautsky the Renegade (1920).pdf/125

 all the main centres of the capitalist world. … This is an hypothesis, but one which has nothing intrinsically incredible about it, at a time when it is becoming patent to everybody that the post-war period will in many countries see unprecedented class conflicts and social convulsions. … But if the failure of the Commune of Paris, not to speak of the difficulties of the Russian revolution, proves anything at all, it is the impossibility of finishing with the capitalist order of society until the proletariat has been sufficiently prepared for taking proper advantage of the power which might fall into its hands by reason of certain circumstances" (p. 73).

And this is all we find on the main question! Such are the leaders and representatives of the Second International. In 1912 they subscribed the Basel Manifesto, in which they publicly speak about the connection of that very war which broke out in 1914 with the proletarian revolution, and actually threaten it; and when the war actually broke out, leading to a revolutionary situation, they, the Kautskys and Vanderveldes, at once began to make all attempts to get away from the revolution. A revolution after the Commune type, don't you see, is only "not an incredible hypothesis!" This is quite analogous to Kautsky's arguments about the possible role of the Soviets in Europe.

But this is just the argument of an ordinary intelligent Liberal, who will, no doubt, agree that a new Commune is "not improbable," that the Soviets have a great future before them, etc. The proletarian revolutionary differs from the Liberal in this, that he, as a theoretician, analyzes the new State importance of the Commune and the Soviets. Vandervelde, on the other hand, is quite silent on all that has been said by Marx and Engels on the subject in their analyses of the experience of the Commune. As a practical politican, the Marxist ought to make it clear that only traitors to Socialism can refuse at present to discharge the duty of elucidating the