Page:Lenin - The Proletarian Revolution and Kautsky the Renegade (1920).pdf/36

 (p. 21). There follows a very detailed and a very verbose explanation, garnished with a quotation from Marx and the figures of the elections to the Paris Commune, of the fact that the proletariat is always in a majority. The conclusion is: "A régime which is so strongly rooted in the masses has not the slightest reason for infringing democracy. It cannot, it is true, always do without violence, as for instance in cases when violence is employed to put down democracy. Force is the only reply to force. But a régime which is aware of the support) of the masses will only employ force and violence for the protection, and not for the destruction of democracy. It would simply commit suicide if it wanted to destroy its own most secure basis—universal suffrage, that deep source of mighty moral authority" (p. 22.).

You see that the relation between the exploited and the exploiters has entirely vanished in Kautsky's arguments, and all that remains is a majority in general, a minority in general, a democracy in general, that is, the "pure democracy" which is already familiar to us. And all this, mark you, is said a propos of the Commune of Paris! Let us quote, by way of illustration, how Marx and Engels discuss the subject of dictatorship, also a propos of the Commune: Marx: "When the workers put in the place of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie … their revolutionary dictatorship … in order to break down the resistance of the bourgeoisie … the workers invest the State with a revolutionary and temporary form …" Engels: "The party which has triumphed in the revolution is necessarily compelled to maintain its rule by means of that fear with which its arms inspire the reactionaries. If the Commune of Paris had not based itself on the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie, would it have maintained itself more than twenty-four hours? Are we not, on the contrary, justified in blaming the Commune for having made too little use of its authority?"