Page:Lenin - The Proletarian Revolution and Kautsky the Renegade (1920).pdf/16

 in whatever manner he desires. One must only distinguish a businesslike and honest approach to a question from a dishonest. Anyone who wanted to be serious in approaching this question ought to have given his own definition of that "word"; then the question would have been put fairly and squarely. But Kautsky did not do that. "Literally," he writes, "the word 'dictatorship' means the abrogation of democracy."

First, this is not a definition. If it was Kautsky's design not to give a definition of the idea of dictatorship, why did he choose this particular approach to the question? Second, it is obviously untrue. It is natural for a Liberal to speak of democracy in general, but a Marxist will never fail to ask the question: for what class? Everybody, for instance, knows (and Kautsky the historian also knows it) that the rebellions and even the mere "unrest" of the slaves in antiquity each time revealed the essential nature the ancient State as a dictatorship of the slave-owner. Did this dictatorship abrogate democracy among the slave-owners for them? Everbody knows that it did not. Kautsky "the Marxist." uttered a masterpiece of nonsense and untruth, because he “forgot" the class-struggle.

To make a true and Marxist proposition out of the false and liberal one given by Kautsky, it is necessary to state as follows: a dictatorship does not necessarily mean the abrogation of democracy for that class which wields it against the other class, but it necessarily means the abrogation, or at least an essential restriction (which is but one of the forms of abrogation), of democracy for that class against which the dictatorship is wielded.

But however true this proposition is, it does not give us a definition of dictatorship.

Let us examine Kautsky's next sentence: "But of course, take literally, this also means the undivided rule of one individual who is not bound by any laws." Like a blind puppy which accidentally hits with his nose