Karl Kautsky

“ The only power whose interference in the internal affairs of Georgia was to be feared was the Russian Soviet Republic, and should they do so, the late landlords would fall out of the frying-pan into the fire. The Social-Democratic regime has, indeed, taken the land from them without compensation, except for the peasant-holding which enables them to live by the labour of their hands; but it has not mishandled their persons, It has respected their humanity. It shared the view of Marx that we are not fighting the capitalists as persons, but are attacking their functions. ”

“ The proletarians must aim at the common ownership and social management of the means of production, but the peasant is the most tenacious and fanatical champion of private property in the means of production. ”

“ The workers also know exactly the fearsome oppression which weighs upon the working class of Russia, and the complete loss of rights and impotence of all sections of the proletariat which do not cower in servile obedience before the Dictatorship; they perceive clearly that the Dictatorship, which is supposed to be a dictatorship of the proletariat, has led and must lead to the dictatorship over the entire population, including the proletariat, as dictatorship, by its essence, means that even the ranks of the nominal ruling class are subjected to the despotism of the Government. ”

“ The future of the Socialist regime, on the basis of democracy, depends upon the peasantry. This is the case not alone, in Georgia, but in all States where the proletariat docs not form the majority of the population. If democracy should be unfavourable to the proletariat, this is not due to the capitalists, whose numbers are relatively small, but to the peasants. If the peasants form the majority of the population, and are hostile to the proletariat, the latter cannot hope, to establish its rule under democratic conditions. ”

“ The alternative which confronted them—the Bolshevist regime—was too terrible.
Feudal lords belong to the past. The capitalist constitutes the exploiting power of the present. We have already seen why their political power in Georgia was negligible. Only a few of them are engaged in industry, and most of them represent the parasitic forms of capitalism—as usurers, profiteers, and landlords in towns. Among them, Armenians preponderate, and they are not loved by the Georgian people. ”

“ The Dictatorship is acquainted with only one method of solving every problem—brute force. The tribute required is forcibly collected from the recalcitrant peasant.
With the exception of peasant revolts and the devastation of villages, this method has only achieved one thing—the complete suspension of all efforts on the part of the peasant to make their industry yield a surplus. The cultivation of the land deteriorates. Lack of bread and hunger grow.
Once more an appeal was made to force. A demand was being put forward in Soviet Russia that the peasant should be compelled to raise more crops. ”

“ If the peasants exhibited a willingness to bear this taxation, it would have been possible to give better guarantees for the feeding of the towns than before; to permanently stabilise the exchange, and thereby give a rapid impulse to the growth of industry and trade, and the improvement of agriculture itself. Georgia would then have surmounted the crisis which followed in the wake of the war more easily and quickly than moist of the European States and gained a secure economic basis. No great extension of agriculture is needed for the country to become self-supporting. ”

“ The co-operation of the two classes is not less rendered easier by the consumers' co-operative societies, which unite town workers and peasants, than by the fact that the priests as well as the nobles have lost all influence over the peasantry. The historical moment, the tradition, which plays such a big part with the conservative peasant, is in Georgia associated with the Social-Democracy, as it was the latter which, from the commencement led the struggle for the peasants' emancipation from the Russian bureaucracy and Absolutism, and from native serfdom. ”

“ As soon as the peasant emerges from his revolutionary period and becomes the undisputed owner of his land, he supports the readiest that government which not only respects his property, but also protects it from devastation through foreign invasion and civil war. This explains the support given by the French peasants to the victorious Napoleonic Empire, and their hostility to the urban revolutionaries as soon as the latter appeared to be the instigators of civil war. ”

“ The antagonism between workers and peasants, which would otherwise be so sharp, is softened by the circumstances just described. Even the imposition of new taxes need not harden this opposition.
A Government emanating from the towns, hostile to the peasants, and not subject to his control, which demands from him contributions for purely urban purposes, is quite a different thing from a Government which is partly elected by the peasant, through universal suffrage, is controlled by deputies elected by himself, and aims at promoting his own welfare together with that of the town population. ”

“ No Government of the day was more firmly established than the Georgian Government. We have seen how unusually large was the majority of the Social Democratic Party in the Georgian Parliament. None of the Opposition parties dreamed of over-turning the Government or altering its policy. ”

“ So far as the functions of capitalists are indispensable, we propose they should be changed from private functions to social functions; so far as their functions are superfluous or harmful, we shall abolish them in an economic organisation in which there will be no place for them. ”

“ The industrial proletariat is able to coerce the peasants as little as the peasants can coerce it. They must both learn to settle their differences peacefully, which is more likely to be done in a democracy than in a state of permanent separation of one class from the other. ”

“ The socialisation of the great monopolistic undertakings starting with the mines and forests, is as much in the interests of the peasant as of the working-class, when it is carried out in a manner which will lead to increased productivity. ”

“ The Social-Democratic Government of Georgia has not only liberated the peasants from the feudal burdens, but its foreign policy, as we shall presently see, in spite of stupendous difficulties, had till February 1920 saved the country from foreign invasion. ”

“ The plight of Soviet Russia is all the worse because it has lost the most fertile districts, which yielded the most abundant harvests. Its armies have been numerous enough to lay waste large tracts of land, but not sufficiently victorious to conquer new territory beyond the borders from which to provision themselves. ”

“ For we know as Marxists that in the last resort State policy is decided not by machine guns, but by economic necessities. Upon this we base our belief in the effect of a mass strike. Upon this, too, is based the power of the peasantry in the kind of State we have been considering. ”

“ The aristocrats of the great French Revolution, likewise those of the present Russian Revolution, would have accepted their fate as an inescapable dispensation, had they not found allies abroad to arouse in them hopes of a restoration. The Georgian princes have not enough friends abroad who would seek to intervene in their favour. ”

“ It is in no way altered by the Soviet system, which is also obliged to make terms with the peasants, and grant them Peasants' Councils.
The division into Workers' and Peasants' Councils makes the workers the masters of the towns and the peasants the masters of the countryside. Both classes may work together quite well so long as one does not interfere with the other, and each is permitted freedom to act in its own sphere. ”

“ Within recent years, when rebellions have broken out almost everywhere from the Rhine to the Pacific Ocean, Georgia was the only country, with the exception of German Austria, that has escaped violence. ”

“ One of the causes which, during the French Revolution, led to peasant revolts lay in the diversity of the peasants' conditions within the separate provinces of the country. There were some backward districts in which the feudal lord and the Church functioned as protectors and advisers, and not as exploiters, of the peasants. ”

“ In capitalist circles, complaint was made that unreasonable measures were often adopted, so that not merely were the parasitic activities of capital restricted, but obstacles were set up to its functioning in cases where it promotes the development of the productive forces. ”

“ But it is possible, and even probable, that many mistakes of this order were committed in the excitement of a revolutionary period, among the difficulties of an economic system which had suffered destruction and confusion through the war, and in view of the lack of resources essential to the needs of capitalist production, which it is not the business of any capitalist interest to provide. ”

“ In reality they have acquiesced in their fate, which overtook them with all the force of a natural catastrophe; they know they are played out, and that any attempt to re-establish the old order would raise against them the entire nation. ”

“ The co-operation of the classes, was assisted by the fact that they are often brought together in personal association. Many industrial workers possess small plots of land, and many peasants are still obliged to perform temporary wage-labour. ”