Page:Lenin - The Proletarian Revolution and Kautsky the Renegade (1920).pdf/60



As I have pointed out already, the disfranchisement of the bourgeoisie does not constitute a necessary element of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Nor did the Bolsheviks in Russia, when putting forward the demand for such a dictatorship, long before the November revolution anything in advance about the disfranchisement of the exploiters. This particular element of the dictatorship was not born according to a plan conceived by some party, but grew up spontaneously in the course of the fight. Of course, Kautsky, the historian, has not noticed this. He has not perceived that even at the time of the predominance of the Mensheviks, those advocates of a compromise with the bouregoisie, in the Soviets, the bourgeoisie of its own accord separated itself from the Soviets, boycotted them, put itself up and intrigued against them. The Soviets arose without any constitution, and existed for more than twelve months (from the spring of 1917 to the summer of 1918) without any constitution. The rage of the bourgeoisie against these independent and omnipotent (because all-embracing) organizations of the oppressed; the unscrupulous, self-seeking, and dirty fight of the bourgeoisie against the Soviets; and lastly, the overt participation of the bourgeoisie, from the Cadets to the Right Social-Revolutinaries, from Miliukoff to Kerensky in the Korniloff mutiny—all this had prepared the formal exclusion of the bourgeoisie from the Soviets.

Kautsky has heard about this Korniloff business, but majestically snaps his fingers at historical facts and at the course and the forms of the fight which had determined the forms of the dictatorship. Why, indeed, take stock of facts when "pure democracy" is the sole question at issue? Kautsky's criticism directed against