Page:Lenin - The Proletarian Revolution and Kautsky the Renegade (1920).pdf/83

 revolutionary manner, have been exhibited in all their nakedness.

When the proletarians of Europe are accused of treachery, Kautsky writes, it is an accusation against unknown persons. You are mistaken, Mr. Kautsky. Look in the glass, and you will see these "unknown persons" against whom the accusation is levelled. Kautsky assumes an air of innocence, and pretends not to understand who it is that has levelled the accusation, and what is its meaning. In reality Kautsky knows perfectly well that the accusation has been and is being still levelled by the German Left, by the Spartacists, by Liebknecht, and his friends. The accusation means that the German proletariat was committing a betrayal of the Russian, as well as of the international revolution when it was strangling Finland, the Ukraine, Latvia, and Esthonia. This accusation is directed chiefly and above all, not against the masses, who are always downtrodden, but against those leaders who, like the Scheidemanns and Kautskys, were failing in their duty of revolutionary agitation and revolutionary work among the masses in combating their inertness, who were practically working against the revolutionary instincts and aspirations ever а-glow in the depths of the hearts of the oppressed classes. The Scheidemanns were betraying the proletariat and deserting to the bourgeoisie, openly, grossly, cynically, and, for the most part, for corrupt motives. The Kautskys and the Longuets were doing the same thing, only in a hesitating and halting manner, cowardly casting side glances at those who might be strongest at the particular moment. Kautsky throughout the war was putting out the revolutionary spirit, instead of maintaining and fanning it.

It will remain an historical monument of the "Philistinization" of the "average" leader of the German Official Social-Democracy that Kautsky does not even understand what an enormous theoretical importance, and what a still greater importance from the point of view of