Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/144

 factions (the faction which howls "betrayal" and rings the alarm bell, and the faction which is unable to see any betrayal) and the strife which went on in former years. Kautsky never says a word about it; he refuses to consider factions and tendencies. There used to be diverging tendencies hitherto. Now there are not any more. Now we only hear about big names, authorities, to whom every lackey kowtows. How handy it is for all of them to "pass the buck" to the other fellow. "What is that opportunism," Martov cried in Berne (see No. 36 of the Social Democrat), "when … Guesde, Plekhanov, Kautsky. …" "We must not be so ready to bandy accusations of opportunism against men like Guesde," writes Axelrod (Golos No. 86 and 87). "I shall not defend myself," writes Kautsky, but … Vaillant and Guesde, Hyndman and Plekhanov. …"

In the ardor of his slavish zeal, Kautsky went as far as paying homage to Hyndman, whom he not so long ago had described as standing on the side of Imperialism.

How many times had Kautsky assailed Hyndman's Imperialism in his own Neue Zeit and in all the papers of the Socialist party. If Kautsky would pay some attention to the political biographies of the various men he mentions by name, he would find in those biographies a mass of facts which would show that their right-about-face toward Imperialism was not accomplished in a day, but had been prepared for years. Wasn't Vaillant trailing after the Jauresista, and wasn't Plekhanov trailing after the Mensheviki and "liquidators"? Did he not see Guesdism die out before his very eyes in the columns of Guesde's paper, Socialism, a lifeless arid organ, unable to take any definite stand on any question? Did not Kautsky himself (we add this for those who very justly place him in the same class with Hyndman and Plekhanov) show his lack of principles in regard to Millerandism and when the; struggle against Bersteinism began?

But I do not see any scientific interest in studying the biographies of those leaders. Little we care whether in order to defend themselves they use their own arguments or the arguments generally used by opportunists and bourgeois. What gave the conduct of those leaders a serious political importance? Their own activities Or the fact that they united themselves to a really active group, supported by the military organizations, that is the bourgeoisie? Kautsky doesn't even try to investigate that side of the problem. The only thing he cares for is to throw dust into people's eyes, to