Page:Lenin - The Proletarian Revolution and Kautsky the Renegade (1920).pdf/21

 'seventies of the last century were just the highest point, was, in virtue of its fundamental economic traits (which were most typical in England and America), distinguished by, comparatively speaking, greatest attachment to peace and freedom. As against this, Imperialism, that is, capitalism of the monopolistic era, which has finally matured in the twentieth century, is in virtue of its fundamental economic traits distinguished by least attachment to peace and freedom ,and by the greatest development of militarism everywhere. To fail to notice this in discussing the question as to the extent to which a peaceful or forcible revolution is typical or probable, is to stoop to the position of a lackey-in-ordinary to the bourgeoisie.

Second trick. The Commune of Paris was a dictatorship of the proletariat, but it was elected by universal suffrage, without depriving- the bourgeoisie of the fгапchise, i. e., "democratically." Kautsky is elated: "The dictatorship of the proletariat is, for Marx, a state which flowed necessarily from pure democracy when the proletariat forms an overwhelming majority." (p. 21.)

This argument of Kautsky is so amusing that one almost suffers from an embarrass des richesses. First, it is known that the flower of the bourgeoisie had run away from Paris to Versailles. There, at Versailles, was also the "Socialist" Louis Blanc,—which circumstance, by the way, proves the baselessness of Kautsky's assertion that "all schools" of Socialism took part in the Commune. Is it not ridiculous to represent as "pure democracy," with "universal" suffrage, the division of the inhabitants of Paris into two belligerent camps, one of which had concentrated the entire militant and politically active section of the bourgeoisie?

Second, the Commune was at war with Versailles as the workers' Government of France against the bourgeois Government. What a "pure democracy" and "universal" suffrage it was when Paris was deciding the fate of all