Page:Lenin - The Proletarian Revolution and Kautsky the Renegade (1920).pdf/75

 régime; since the army is the most hardened bulwark of bourgeois discipline, of the rule of capitalism, of the maintenance and the strengthening of servile submissiveness and subjection of the toiling masses to capitalist domination. The Counter-Revolution never tolerated, and never could tolerate, armed workers side by side with the army. In France, Engels wrote, after each revolution the workers were found to be armed: "Hence the first commandment in the eyes of the bourgeoisie, on seizing the helm of the State, was to disarm the workers." The armed workers were the germ of а new army, and the nucleus of organization of a new social order. For this reason the first act of the bourgeoisie was to crush this germ, to prevent it from growing. On the other hand, the first commandment of every triumphant revolution, as Marx and Engels repeatedly pointed out, was to smash up this old army and replace it by a new one. The new social class struggling for supremacy never could (and still cannot) attain such supremacy or consolidate it except by dissolving the old army ("disorganizing it," as the reactionary or cowardly Philistines invariably howl), except by passing through a most difficult and painful period of absence of any army (as was the case also with the French revolution) and by forging, in the midst of terrible civil war, a new army and a discipline and military organization of a new class. In old days Kautsky, the historian, knew it, but now Kautsky, the renegade, has forgotten it.

By what right does Kautsky dub the Scheidemannites "Government Socialists," when he approves of the policy of the Mensheviks in the Russian revolution? By supporting Kerensky and by participating in his Ministry, the Mensheviks were also Government Socialists. Kautsky will not escape this conclusion, if only he asks what was the ruling class which was waging the Imperialist war. But Kautsky avoids raising this question, which must be