Part 14 (1/2)
The black-and-yellow crew of social-patriotism (Austerlitz, Leitner, etc.) hurled at Adler the terrorist all the abuse of which the cowardly sentiments were capable.
But when the acute period was pa.s.sed, and the prodigal son returned from his convict prison into his father's house with the halo of a martyr, he proved to be doubly and trebly valuable in that form for the Austrian Social-Democracy. The golden halo of the terrorist was transformed by the experienced counterfeiters of the party into the sounding coin of the demagogue. Friedrich Adler became a trusted surety for the Austerlitzes and Renners in face of the ma.s.ses.
Happily, the Austrian workers are coming less and less to distinguish the sentimental lyrical prostration of Friedrich Adler from the pompous shallowness of Renner, the erudite impotence of Max Adler, or the a.n.a.lytical self-satisfaction of Otto Bauer.
The cowardice in thought of the theoreticians of the Austro-Marxian school has completely and wholly been revealed when faced with the great problems of a revolutionary epoch. In his immortal attempt to include the Soviet system in the Ebert-Noske Const.i.tution, Hilferding gave voice not only to his own spirit but to the spirit of the whole Austro-Marxian school, which, with the approach of the revolutionary epoch, made an attempt to become exactly as much more Left than Kautsky as before the revolution it was more Right. From this point of view, Max Adler's view of the Soviet system is extremely instructive.
The Viennese eclectic philosopher admits the significance of the Soviets. His courage goes so far that he adopts them. He even proclaims them the apparatus of the Social Revolution. Max Adler, of course, is for a social revolution. But not for a stormy, barricaded, terrorist, b.l.o.o.d.y revolution, but for a sane, economically balanced, legally canonized, and philosophically approved revolution.
Max Adler is not even terrified by the fact that the Soviets infringe the ”principle” of the const.i.tutional separation of powers (in the Austrian Social-Democracy there are many fools who see in such an infringement a great defect of the Soviet System!). On the contrary, Max Adler, the trade union lawyer and legal adviser of the social revolution, sees in the concentration of powers even an advantage, which allows the direct expression of the proletarian will. Max Adler is in favor of the direct expression of the proletarian will; but only not by means of the direct seizure of power through the Soviets. He proposes a more solid method. In each town, borough, and ward, the Workers' Councils must ”control” the police and other officials, imposing upon them the ”proletarian will.” What, however, will be the ”const.i.tutional” position of the Soviets in the republic of Zeiz, Renner and company? To this our philosopher replies: ”The Workers'
Councils in the long run will receive as much const.i.tutional power as they acquire by means of their own activity.” (_Arbeiterzeitung_, No. 179, July 1, 1919.)
The proletarian Soviets must gradually _grow up_ into the political power of the proletariat, just as previously, in the theories of reformism, all the proletarian organizations had to grow up into Socialism; which consummation, however, was a little hindered by the unforeseen misunderstandings, lasting four years, between the Central Powers and the Entente--and all that followed. It was found necessary to reject the economical programme of a gradual development into Socialism without a social revolution. But, as a reward, there opened the perspective of the gradual development of the Soviets into the social revolution, without an armed rising and a seizure of power.
In order that the Soviets should not sink entirely under the burden of borough and ward problems, our daring legal adviser proposes the propaganda of social-democratic ideas! Political power remains as before in the hands of the bourgeoisie and its a.s.sistants. But in the wards and the boroughs the Soviets control the policemen and their a.s.sistants. And, to console the working cla.s.s and at the same time to centralize its thought and will, Max Adler on Sunday afternoons will read lectures on the const.i.tutional position of the Soviets, as in the past he read lectures on the const.i.tutional position of the trade unions.
”In this way,” Max Adler promises, ”the const.i.tutional regulation of the position of the Workers Councils, and their power and importance, would be guaranteed along the whole line of public and social life; and--without the dictators.h.i.+p of the Soviets--the Soviet system would acquire as large an influence as it could possibly have even in a Soviet republic. At the same time we should not have to pay for that influence by political storms and economic destruction” (idem). As we see, in addition to all his other qualities, Max Adler remains still in agreement with the Austrian tradition: to make a revolution without quarrelling with his Excellency the Public Prosecutor.
The founder of this school, and its highest authority, is Kautsky.
Carefully protecting, particularly after the Dresden party congress and the first Russian Revolution, his reputation as the keeper of the shrine of Marxist orthodoxy, Kautsky from time to time would shake his head in disapproval of the more compromising outbursts of his Austrian school. And, following the example of the late Victor Adler, Bauer, Renner, Hilferding--altogether and each separately--considered Kautsky too pedantic, too inert, but a very reverend and a very useful father and teacher of the church of quietism.
Kautsky began to cause serious mistrust in his own school during the period of his revolutionary culmination, at the time of the first Russian Revolution, when he recognized as necessary the seizure of power by the Russian Social-Democracy, and attempted to inoculate the German working cla.s.s with his theoretical conclusions from the experience of the general strike in Russia. The collapse of the first Russian Revolution at once broke off Kautsky's evolution along the path of radicalism. The more plainly was the question of ma.s.s action in Germany itself put forward by the course of events, the more evasive became Kautsky's att.i.tude. He marked time, retreated, lost his confidence; and the pedantic and scholastic features of his thought more and more became apparent. The imperialist war, which killed every form of vagueness and brought mankind face to face with the most fundamental questions, exposed all the political bankruptcy of Kautsky. He immediately became confused beyond all hope of extrication, in the most simple question of voting the War Credits.
All his writings after that period represent variations of one and the same theme: ”I and my muddle.” The Russian Revolution finally slew Kautsky. By all his previous development he was placed in a hostile att.i.tude towards the November victory of the proletariat. This unavoidably threw him into the camp of the counter-revolution. He lost the last traces of historical instinct. His further writings have become more and more like the yellow literature of the bourgeois market.
Kautsky's book, examined by us, bears in its external characteristics all the attributes of a so-called objective scientific study. To examine the extent of the Red Terror, Kautsky acts with all the circ.u.mstantial method peculiar to him. He begins with the study of the social conditions which prepared the great French Revolution, and also the physiological and social conditions which a.s.sisted the development of cruelty and humanity throughout the history of the human race. In a book devoted to Bolshevism, in which the whole question is examined in 234 pages, Kautsky describes in detail on what our most remote human ancestor fed, and hazards the guess that, while living mainly on vegetable products, he devoured also insects and possibly a few birds.
(See page 122.) In a word, there was nothing to lead us to expect that from such an entirely respectable ancestor--one obviously inclined to vegetarianism--there should spring such descendants as the Bolsheviks.
That is the solid scientific basis on which Kautsky builds the question!...
But, as is not infrequent with productions of this nature, there is hidden behind the academic and scholastic cloak a malignant political pamphlet. This book is one of the most lying and conscienceless of its kind. Is it not incredible, at first glance, that Kautsky should gather up the most contemptible stories about the Bolsheviks from the rich table of Havas, Reuter and Wolff, thereby displaying from under his learned night-cap the ears of the sycophant? Yet these disreputable details are only mosaic decorations on the fundamental background of solid, scientific lying about the Soviet Republic and its guiding party.
Kautsky depicts in the most sinister colors our savagery towards the bourgeoisie, which ”displayed no tendency to resist.”
Kautsky attacks our ruthlessness in connection with the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks, who represent ”shades” of Socialism.
KAUTSKY DEPICTS THE SOVIET ECONOMY AS THE CHAOS OF COLLAPSE
Kautsky represents the Soviet workers, and the Russian working cla.s.s as a whole, as a conglomeration of egoists, loafers, and cowards.
He does not say one word about the conduct of the Russian bourgeoisie, unprecedented in history for the magnitude of its scoundrelism; about its national treachery; about the surrender of Riga to the Germans, with ”educational” aims; about the preparations for a similar surrender of Petrograd; about its appeals to foreign armies--Czecho-Slovakian, German, Roumanian, British, j.a.panese, French, Arab and Negro--against the Russian workers and peasants; about its conspiracies and a.s.sa.s.sinations, paid for by Entente money; about its utilization of the blockade, not only to starve our children to death, but systematically, tirelessly, persistently to spread over the whole world an unheard-of web of lies and slander.