Page:Lenin - The Proletarian Revolution and Kautsky the Renegade (1920).pdf/41

 Russia in the second part of the pamphlet only, beginning with its fifth section. In its first part from which I quoted, the subject matter is democracy and dictatorship in general. Kautsky, by raising the question of the franchise, has given himself away as a literary opponent of the Bolsheviks, who cares a brass farthing for theory. For a theoretical discussion of the general (in contradiction to national and particular) class-basis of democracy and dictatorship ought to deal, not with a special question, such as that of the franchise, but with the general question whether democracy can be preserved for the rich and the exploiters as well as for the exploited, at the historical moment of the overthrow of the former, and the substitution, in the place of their State, of the State of the exploited? This is the only form in which the question can be put by a theoretical inquirer.

We all know the example of the Commune, we all know what the founders of Marxism said in connection with it. On the strength of their pronouncement I examined the question of democracy and dictatorship in my book: "The State and Revolution," which I wrote before the November revolution. The restriction of the franchise was not touched by me at all. At present it might be added that the question of the restriction of the franchise is a specific national question, and not one relating to dictatorship in general. One must study the question of the restriction of the franchise in the light of the specific conditions of Russian revolution and the specific course of its development. This will be done in subsequent pages. But it would be rash to guarantee in advance that the impending proletarian revolution in Europe will, all or for the most part, be accompanied by a restriction of the franchise in the case of the bourgeoisie. This may be so. In fact, after the war and after the experience of the Russian revolution it will probably be so. But it is not absolutely necessary for the establishment of a dictatorship. It is not necessarily implied in the idea of dictatorship, it does