Page:Lenin - The State and Revolution.pdf/88

 but just this question of the State was ignored. Throughout the pamphlet the author speaks of the conquest of the power of the State—and that is all. That is to say, the question is so formulated as to constitute a concession to Opportunism, since the possibility of the conquest of power is admitted without the destruction of the State machine. The very thing which Marx in 1872 had declared to be out of date in the program of the Communist Manifesto is revived by Kautsky in 1902!

The pamphlet also contains a special paragraph on "the forms and weapons of the Social Revolution." Here he treats of the general political strike, of the question of civil war, and of "the instruments of force at the disposal of the modern large States such as the bureaucracy and the Army"; but of that which the Commune had already taught the workers, not a syllable. Evidently Engels had issued no idle warning, for the German Social-Democracy particularly, against "superstitious reverence" for the State.

Kautsky propounds the matter thus: the victorious proletariat "will release the democratic program," and he formulates its clauses; but of what the year 1871 taught us about the middle-class democracy being replaced by a proletarian one—not a word. He disposes of the question by such respectable banalities as: "It is obvious that we shall not attain supremacy under the present order of things. Revolution itself presupposes. a prolonged and far-reaching struggle, which, as it proceeds, will change our political and social structure."

"Obvious" this undoubtedly is: as much as that horses eat oats, or that the Volga flows into the Caspian Sea. The only pity is that he should use this empty and bombastic phrase "far-reaching" to slur over the essential question for the revolutionary proletariat as to wherein exactly lies this "far reaching" nature of its revolution in respect of the State and Democracy, as distinguished from the non-proletarian revolutions of the past.

Here is a most important point, by ignoring which Kautsky, in point of fact, gives over the whole position to the Opportunists, whilst declaring war against them in awe-inspiring words, emphasizing the importance of the "idea of revolution"—how much is this "idea" worth, if one is afraid to propagate it among the workers?—or "Revolutionary idealism above all," declaring that the English workers represent now little more than a lower middle-class.

"In a Socialist society [Kautsky writes], there can exist, side by side, the most varied forms of industrial undertakings—