as though Marx by these words warned the working class against excessive revolutionary zeal when seizing power.
One cannot imagine a more vulgar and discreditable perversion of Marx's idea. How, then, did Kautsky act in his detailed refutation of Bernsteinism?
He avoided the examination of the entire enormity of the perversion of Marxism on this point. He cited the above-quoted passage from Engels' preface to Marx's Civil War in France, saying that, according to Marx, the working class cannot simply take possession of the ready-made State machine, but, generally speaking, it can take possession of it—and that is all. … As for the fact that Bernstein attributed to Marx the direct opposite of the latter's real views, and that the real task of the proletarian revolution, as formulated by Marx ever since 1852, was the shattering of the State machine—not a word of all this is to be found in Kautsky. The result was that the most important distinction between Marxism and Opportunism on the question of the proletarian revolution was glossed over! "The solution of the problem of the proletarian dictatorship," wrote Kautsky "in opposition" to Bernstein, "we can safely leave to the future." (P. 172, German edition.)
This is not a polemic against Bernstein, but really a concession to him, a surrender of the position to Opportunism: for at present the Opportunists ask nothing better than "safely to leave to the future" all the fundamental questions of the proletarian revolution.
Marx and Engels, from 1852 to 1891—for forty years—had taught the proletariat that it must break the State machine; but Kautsky, in 1899, confronted on this point with the complete betrayal of Marxism by Opportunists, fraudulently substitutes the question as to the concrete forms of the destruction of the State machine in the place of the more general one about the necessity of destroying it, and then saves himself behind the screen of the "indisputable"—and barren—truth, that concrete forms cannot be known in advance. …
Between Marx and Kautsky, between their respective attitudes towards the problem before the proletarian party as to how to prepare the working class for Revolution, there is a wide abyss.
Let us take the next, more mature, work by Kautsky, also devoted to a large extent to a refutation of Opportunist errors. This is his pamphlet on the Social Revolution. The author chose here as his special theme the question of "proletarian revolution" and the "proletarian regime." He gave us here much valuable mat-
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