Page:Lenin - The Proletarian Revolution and Kautsky the Renegade (1920).pdf/90

 you that the small peasant producer inevitably oscillates between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie? This Marxist truth borne out by the entire modern history of Europe has been very conveniently "forgotten" by Kautsky as it destroys the entire Menshevik theory which he is so fond of repeating. If Kautsky had still remembered it, he could not have denied the need for a proletarian dictatorship in a country in which the small peasant producer is predominant.

Let us examine the chief proposition of the "economic analysis" of our theoretician. That the Soviet authority is a dictatorship admits of no doubt—so Kautsky says. "But is it a dictatorship of the proletariat? (p. 34.) The peasants, according to the Soviet constitution, form the majority of that population which is entitled to a share in the legislation and administration. What has been offered to us as a dictatorship of the proletariat, if carried out consistently, and if, generally speaking, one single class could directly exercise a dictatorship which in reality can only be exercised by a party, would turn out to be a dictatorship of the peasantry (pp. 34 and 35)!" And elated over such profound and clever reasoning, our good-natured Kautsky even attempts to be humorous and remarks: "It appears, therefore, that the most painless realization of Socialism is best secured by its capitulation to the peasants (p. 35)."

Our theoretician then proceeds to argue in great detail, on the strength of most learned quotations from the semi-Liberal Massloff, about the interest which peasants have in high corn prices, in a lower wage rate in the towns, etc., etc.—all brand-new ideas which are set out the more tediously as but little attention is paid to the really new phenomena of the post-war period, such as that the peasants demand for their bread, not money, but goods, and that they lack the necessary agricultural implements which cannot be obtained in sufficient quantities for any money. But of this more anon.