Page:Lenin - The Proletarian Revolution and Kautsky the Renegade (1920).pdf/126

 of the proletarian revolution (of the Commune, of the Soviet, or perhaps of some other type), of explaining the necessity of preparing for it, of propagating among the masses the idea of a revolution, of refuting the bourgeois democratic prejudices against it, etc. But neither Kautsky nor Vandervelde does anything of the sort, because they themselves are traitors to Socialism, who only want to maintain among the workers the reputation of Socialists and Marxists.

Take the theoretical formulation of the question, the State, even in a democratic republic, is nothing else than a machine for the suppression of one class by another. Kautsky is familiar with the truth, accepts it, but avoids the fundamental question as to what class and for what reasons and by what means the proletariat ought to suppress, on having conquered the proletarian State. Vandervelde, too, is familiar with, and approves of the fundamental propositions of Marxism, which he even quotes (p. 72 of his book), but does not say a single word on the highly unpleasant (for the capitalists) subject of the suppression of the resistance of the exploiters. Both Vandervelde and Kautsky have avoided this unpleasant subject, and this is just where their apostasy lies.

Like Kautsky, Vandervelde is a past master in the art of employing eclecticism in the place of dialectics. "On the one hand," "on the other hand" and so forth. On the one hand, the State may be understood to mean "the nation as a whole" (see Littré's Dictionary, a learned piece of work, no doubt, as Vandervelde points out on p. 87); on the other hand, the State may be understood to mean the "Government" (ibid.). This learned platitude is quoted by Vandervelde with the approval, side by side with the extracts from Marx!

The Marxist meaning of the State, Vandervelde tells us, differs from the ordinary. Hence "misundertsandings" are possible. "With Marx and Engels, the State is not a State in the particular sense of the word, not a State