after the serious lessons of the war, are getting sick of the Scheidemanns and the Kautskys.
"We" have always been in favor of democracy—Kautsky writes—and all of a sudden we are asked to renounce it! Yes, "we," the opportunists of Social-Democracy, have always been against the dictatorship of the proletariat, and Kolb and Co. proclaimed this long ago. Kautsky knows it, and it is futile for him to imagine that he can hide from the readers the obvious fact of his return to the fold of the Bernsteins and Kolbs.
But "we," revolutionary Marxists, never advised the people to worship so-called "pure"—that is, bourgeois—democracy. In 1903, as is well known, Plekhanoff was still a revolutionary Marxist (up to the time when he took the wrong turning which brought him to the position of a Russian Scheidemann.) Plekhanoff in that year declared at the congress of our party, which was at that time drawing up its programme, that in the revolution the proletariat would, if necessary, disfranchise the capitalists and suppress any parliament, if it should turn out counter-revolutionary. That this view is alone in agreement with Marxism will be clear to anybody from the statements by Marx and Engels which I have quoted above. In fact, it directly follows from all the fundamental principles of Marxism.
"We," revolutionary Marxists, never spoke to the people in the manner beloved of the Kautskians of all nations, who are fond of acting the flunkey to the bourgeoisie, of adapting themselves to the bourgeois parliament, and of keeping discreet silence as to the bourgeois character of modern democracy, and only demanding its extension to the extreme limit.
"We" used to say to the bourgeoisie: you, exploiters and hypocrites, you talk of democracy while placing at every step a thousand and one barriers to prevent the oppressed masses from taking part in politics. We take you at your word, and demand in the interests of those masses the
( 67 )
