Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

“ And these capitalist exploiters will necessarily be followed by a wide stream of the petty bourgeoisie, as to whom decades of historical experience of all countries bear witness that are constantly oscillating and hesitating, to-day following the proletariat, and to-morrow taking fright at the difficulties of the revolution, succumbing with panic after the first defeat or semi-defeat of the workers, giving way to "nerves," whining, running hither and thither, deserting from one camp to another—just like our Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries! ”

“ With the obstinacy of a bookworm, he goes on repeating one demand: Give me a peaceful democracy, without civil war, without a dictatorship, with good statistics (the Soviet Republic has created a statistical organization, in which the best statistical authorities in Russia take part, but, of course an ideal system of statistics cannot be got rapidly) —in a word, give me a revolution without revolution, without force, without raging battles! This is what Kautsky wants. It is the same as if one wanted to have strikes without passion on either side. ”

“ We take you at your word, and demand in the interests of those masses the extension of your bourgeois democracy, in order to prepare the masses for revolution, for your overthrow. And if you, exploiters should attempt to offer resistance to our proletarian revolution, we shall ruthlessly suppress you; we shall deprive you of your rights, and, even more we shall not give you any bread, because in our proletarian republic the exploiters will lose their rights, will be deprived of fire and water, as we are Socialists in real earnest, and not in a Scheidemann or Kautskian fashion. ”

“ You must not destroy the State machinery of the bourgeoisie, you must not substitute in the place of the bourgeois State organization the proletarian State organization.
One who sincerely shares the Marxist view that the State is but a machine for the suppression of one class by another, and who has reflected upon this truth, could not have reached the absurd conclusion that the proletarian organizations capable of defeating financial capital must not become state organizations. ”

“ If, on the other hand, we argue in a bourgeois Liberal way, we have to say: the majority decides and the minority obeys. Those who do not obey are punished. And this is all. There is no need of talking about the class character of the State in general, or about "pure democracy," in particular, since it would not be relevant. The majority is the majority, and the minority is the minority. That ends the matter. And this is just Kautsky's way of reasoning. He says:
"Why should the rule of the proletariat necessarily receive a form which is incompatible with democracy?" ”

“ Kautsky is a true Socialist. You must not suspect sincerity of this most respectable family man, this most honest citizen. He is an ardent believer in the victory of the working class, in the proletarian revolution. He would only have liked that sweetly reasonable Philistines in night-caps should, in advance—that is, before the masses have begun to move, and before they have engaged in raging battles with the exploiters, and certainly without any civil war—have drawn up a nice and model set of rules for the development of the revolution! ”

“ This is a truth which, however disgraceful to Kautsky, is nevertheless of the essence of Socialism. Another truth is that there can be, in reality, no de facto equality, unless and until the possibility of exploitation of one class by another has been abolished.
It is possible, by means of a successful insurrection in the centre or of a mutiny in the army, to defeat the exploiters at one blow, but except in very rare and particular cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at once. It is impossible to expropriate at one blow all the landlords and capitalists of a large country. ”

“ And in face of this condition of things, at the time of a most desperate war, when history is placing on the order of the day the question of the life and death of age-long privileges—at this time to talk about majority and minority, about pure democracy, about the superfluity of the dictatorship, and equality between the exploiter and the exploited—what bottomless stupidity and philistinism are needed to do it! ”

“ As the State is only a temporary institution which is to be made use of in the revolution, in order forcibly to suppress the opponents, it is a perfect absurdity to speak about the free popular State: so long as the proletariat still needs the State, it needs it, not in the interest of freedom, but in order to suppress its opponents, and when it becomes possible to speak of freedom, the State as such ceases to exist. ”

“ The petty bourgeois, to whom the State is something standing outside or above classes, stands here fully revealed. Why, indeed, is the proletariat, "one class only," to be permitted to wage a "decisive" struggle against capital which dominates not only the proletariat, but also the entire people, including petty bourgeoisie and the entire peasantry, and yet not be permitted to turn its organization into a State organization? For the simple reason that the petty bourgeois is afraid of the calss-struggle, and breaks it off before it reaches its end. ”

“ If a reconciliation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat were possible, why did not the Mensheviks succeed in bringing it about? Why was the bourgeoisie holding itself aloof from the Soviets? Why did the Mensheviks themselves call the Soviets "Revolutionary Democracy," and the bourgeoisie the "propertied elements"? Kautsky has not told his German readers that it was precisely the Mensheviks who, in the period of their predominance, called the Soviets "Revolutionary Democracy," thereby admitting their superiority over all other institutions. ”

“ Kautsky could find in any country one single worker or agricultural laborer in a thousand who, on being informed of the fасts, would hesitate in replying to this question. Instinctively, through reading the bare fragments of truth in the bourgeois press, the workers of the entire world sympathize with the Soviet Republic, just because they see in it a proletarian democracy, a democracy for the poor, and not a democracy for the rich, as is the case with every bourgeois democracy, even the best. ”

“ Kautsky writes, "with one single journeyman, may live and feel quite like a proletarian, but he has no vote!" (p. 36.) What a departure from bourgeois "democracy!" What an act of injustice! Up till now all Marxists thought—and proved it by thousands of facts—that the small masters were most unscrupulous exploiters of hired labor, but our Tartuffe takes not the class of small masters, of course (why keep on always recalling the mischievous theory of class war?) , but single individuals, single exploiters, who "live and feel and like proletarians." ”

“ While the workers of the entire world are realizing more and more clearly that the policy of the Scheidemanns and the Kautskys is not calculated to free them from the Imperialist war and from wage slavery under the Imperialist bourgeoisie, and that this policy cannot serve as a model for any country, they at the same time realize more and more that Bolshevism has shown the right way to escape from the horrors of war and imperialism, and is suitable as a model of tactics for all. ”

“ In these circumstances to suppose that in any serious revolution the issue is decided by the simple relation between majority and minority, is the acme of stupidity, a typical delusion of an ordinary bourgeois Liberal, as well as a deception of the masses from whom a well-established historical truth is concealed. This truth is that in any and every serious revolution a long, obstinate, desperate resistance of the exploiters, who for many years will yet enjoy great advantages over the exploited, constitutes the rule. ”

“ If the war is a reactionary Imperialist war, that is being waged by two world-coalitions of the Imperialist predatory bourgeoisie, then every bourgeoisie, even of the smallest country, becomes a participant in the brigandage, and my duty as representative of the revolutionary proletariat is to prepare the world-proletarian revolution as the only escape from the horrers of the world-war. ”

“ To view a ruthless civil war when the bourgeoisie is prepared to commit all sorts of crimes (the example of the Versaillese and their deals with Bismarck must have a meaning for every sane person who does not treat history like a Simple Simon) when the bourgeoisie summons to its assistance foreign States, and intrigues with them against the revolution—to consider such a war from the point of view of Parliamentary "opposition" is simply comical. ”

“ If the Soviets have disfranchised the exploiters, it means that they are not organs of petty bourgeois compromise with the capitalists, not parliamentary talking-shops after the heart of the Kautskys and the Macdonalds, but the organs of a real revolutionary proletariat who are waging a life-and-death struggle against the exploiters. ”

“ But in the time of revolution, when political life reaches, one may say, the boiling point, an organization like the Soviets, which embraces all workers, all industries, and ultimately also all soldiers, and the entire laboring and poor population of the villages, must inevitably, in the course of the struggle, and by the mere logic of attack and defence, bring the questions of power to a direct issue. All attempts to take up a middle position and to "reconcile" the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, appear then as acts of imbecility and prove a miserable failure. ”

“ The masses of the oppressed, the class-conscious and honest leaders of the revolutionary proletariats will be with us Such proletariats and such masses will only have to peruse our Soviet constitution, and they will at once say, here are our real men; here is a real labor party; here is a real workers' government, for it has not gulled the workers by talk about revolutions, as we used to be gulled by those leaders, and is really waging a war against the exploiters, is really carrying on a revolution, is really fighting for the complete emancipation of the working class! ”

“ But a State of the Commune or Soviet type tells the people the truth, proclaiming plainly and openly, that it is the dictatorship of the proletariat and of the poorer peasantry, thereby, by that very truth, rallying to itself scores of millions of new citizens, who are of no account under any democratic republic, but who are now drawn by the Soviets into political life, into democracy, into the administration of the State. ”

“ Socialism is opposed to outrage; therefore I prefer to be a traitor rather than to go to prison. The Frenchman, the German, or Italian who says: "Socialism is opposed to outrage on nations; therefore I defend myself when my country is invaded"—this man is betraying Socialism and Internationalism, since he only thinks of his own country, places above all his bourgeoisie, without reflecting upon the international connections which make the war an Imperialist war, and his bourgeoisie a link in the chain of Imperialist brigandage. ”

“ He who abandons this point of view is not a Socialist, and if a German, under Wilhelm, or a Frenchman, under Clemenceau, says: "I am justified, and, indeed, it is my duty as a Socialist to defend my country if it is invaded by an enemy"; he reasons not as a Socialist, not as an Internationalist, not as a revolutionary proletarian, but as a bourgeois nationalist. ”

“ By a thousand-and-one tricks the capitalists, in a bourgeois democracy—and these tricks are the more skillful and the more effective, the further "pure" democracy has developed—keep the masses out of the administration and frustrate the freedom of the press, the right of meeting, etc. The Soviet régime, on the contrary, is the first in the world (or strictly speaking, the second, because the Commune of Paris attempted to do the same thing) to attract the masses, that is, the exploited, masses, to the work of administration. ”

“ The Soviet system automatically facilitates the rallying of all those who work and are exploited around their advance guard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus, the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. which aге the more varied, the more highly bourgeois democracy has developed—all this disappears under the Soviet system. Freedom of the press ceases to be an hypocrisy because the printing presses and the paper are taken away from the bourgeoisie. ”