The Proletarian Revolution and Kautsky the Renegade/Appendix 1
APPENDIX I.
THESES IN RESPECT OF THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY.
(Reprinted from the Pravda of January 8th, 1918.)
(1) The demand for the summoning of a Constituent Assembly formed in the past a perfectly legitimate part of the programme of the revolutionary Social-Democracy, because in a bourgeois republic the Constituent Assembly constitutes the highest form of democracy, and because the imperialist republic, with Kerensky at its head, in creating a parliament, was preparing an adulteration of the elections, accompanied by numerous infractions of democracy.
(2) While putting forward the demand for the summoning of a Constituent Assembly, the revolutionary Social-Democracy repeatedly, since the beginning of the revolution of 1917, emphasized its opinion that a republic of the Soviets is a higher form of democracy than the ordinary bourgeois republic with a Constituent Assembly.
(3) From the point of view of transition from the bourgeois to the Socialist order, from the point of view of the dictatorship of the proletariat, a republic of Soviets is not only a higher form or type of democratic institutions, as compared with the ordinary bourgeois republic crowned with a Constituent Assembly, but also the only form capable of securing the most painless transition to Socialism.
(4) The convocation of a Constituent Assembly in our revolution on the basis of lists drawn up and promulgated at the end of October, 1917, is taking place in conditions which exclude the possibility of a faithful expression of the will of the people in general, and of the laboring masses in particular, by the elections of teh Constituent Assembly.
(5) First, the proportional system of elections yields a faithful reflection of the will of the people only when the party lists correspond to the real division of the people in actual accordance with those party groupings which are reflected in those lists. But with us, as is well-known, the party wihch between May and October had the largest number of adherents among the people and especially among the peasantry, that is the party of Social Revolutionaries, presented united lists for the Constituent Assembly at the end of October, 1917, but split into two after the elections to, but before the meeting of the Constituent Assembly; hence, there is not and could not be even any formal correspondence between the will of the majority of the electors and the composition of the Constituent Assembly.
(6) Second, a still more important, not formal nor legal, but social and economic source of the discrepancy between the will of the people and, especially, of the laboring class, on the one hand, and the composition of the Constituent Assembly, on the other, is the circumstance that the elections to the Constituent Assembly took place at a time when the overwhelming majority of the people could hot yet know the whole extent and significance of the Soviet proletarian and peasants' revolution, which began on November 7th, 1917, that is, after the promulgation of the lists of candidates for the Constituent Assembly.
(7) The November revolution, which has handed over authority to the Soviets, and which has wrested the political predominance from the hands of the bourgeoisie and transferred it into the hands of the proletariat and poorer peasantry, is passing under our eyes through successive stages of development.
(8) It began with the victory of November 6–7th, in the capital, when the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, the advance guard of the proletarians and of, politically, the most active section of the peasantry, yielded a majority for the party of the Bolsheviks and placed it at the helm.
(9) Then, in the course of November and December, the revolution was taking hold of the entire army and the peasantry manifesting itself, first of all, in the dismissal and re-election of the old organization at the top (army committees, provincial and peasant committees, the Central Executive Committee of the All-Russia Council of Peasants' Delegates, etc.), which embodied the obsolete, compromising stage of the revolution, not the proletarian stage, and which were bound to disappear under the pressure of the lower and broader popular masses.
(10) This mighty movement of the exploited masses for the re-organization of the leading organs of their organizations is even now, at the end of December, 1917, not yet at an end, and the Railwaymens' Congress, which still continues, constitutes one of its stages.
(11) Hence, the grouping of the class forces in Russia in the course of their class struggle is taking an essentially different shape in November and December, 1917, from the one reflected in the party lists of candidates to the Constituent Assembly towards the end of October, 1917.
(12) Recent events in the Ukraine, partly also in Finland and Whitie Russia, as well as in the Caucasus, similarly revealed a re-grouping of the class forces, which is taking place in the course of the struggle between the bourgeois nationalism of the Ukrainian Rada, the Finnish Diet, etc., on the one hand, and the Soviet authority, the proletarian and peasant revolution in each of these national republics, on the other.
(13) Lastly, the civil war which the counter-revolutionary rebellion of the Kaledinites has started against the Soviet authority, against the workers' and peasants revolution, has finally brought the class struggle to an issue and has destroyed all chances of settling in a formal democratic way the acute problems raised by history before the peoples of Russia and more particularly before the Russian working-class and peasantry.
(14) Only a complete victory of the workers and peasants over the bourgeois and landlord rebellion (as illustrated by the movement of the Cadets and Kaledinites), only a ruthless military suppression of these revolting slave owners can practically safeguard the proletarian and peasant revolution. The course of events and the development of the class struggle in the revolution has brought about such a condition of affairs that the slogan "All power to the Constituent Assembly,” which takes no account of the conquests of the workers' and peasants' revolution or of the Soviet authority, and of the decision of the Second All-Russian Congress of Peasant Delegates, etc., has in practice become the slogan of the Cadets and Kaledinites, and of their myrmidons. It is becoming clear to the entire people that this slogan practically proclaims a war for the overthrow of the Soviet authority, and that the Constituent Assembly, if it parted company with the Soviet authority, would inevitably be condemned to political death.
(15) Among the most, urgents problems of our people's life is the problem of peace. The real revolutionary struggle for peace began in Russia only after the victory of the revolution on November 6th, and the first fruits of this victory were the "publication of the secret treaties, the conclusion of an armistice, and the beginning of public negotiations for a general peace without annexations or indemnities. Only now the wide popular masses have a chance to witness the policy of a revolutionary struggle for peace, and to study its results. At the time of the elections to the Constituent Assembly, the popular masses were deprived of such a chance. Hence, from this point of view also, the discrepancy, between the position of the Constituent Assembly and the real will of the people on the question of terminating the war is also inevitable.
(16) The combination of the circumstances set out above has for its result the fact that the Constituent Assembly, elected according to party lists previous to the proletarian and peasant revolution under the domination of the bourgeoisie, must inevitably conflict with the will and interests of the laboring and exploited masses who on November 7th began the Socialist revolution against the bourgeoisie. Naturally, the interests of this revolution stand above the formal rights of the Constituent Assembly, even if those formal rights had not been undermined by the absence in the law relating to the Constituent Assembly of a provision giving the people the right to recall and to re-elect its deputies at any moment.
(17) All attempts, direct or indirect, to view the question of the Constituent Assembly from the formal point of view of law, from the point of view of ordinary bourgeois democracy, without reference to the class struggle and civil war, constitute a betrayal of the proletarian cause, and a desertion to the bourgeois camp. It is the absolute duty of revolutionary Social-Democrats to warn all and everybody against this error, to which a few Bolshevik leaders have succumbed, who have not been able to realize the significance of the November rebellion and the problems of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
(18) The only chance for the painless solution of the conflict which has been brought about by the discrepancy between the elections to the Constituent Assembly and the will of the people as well as the interests of the laboring and exploited classes, is the earliest possible grant to the people of an extensive right to re-elect the members of the Constituent Assembly, the adhesion of the Constituent Assembly itself to the law of the Central Executive Committee relating to these re-elections, the unreserved recognition by the Constituent Assembly of the authority of the Soviets, of the Soviet revolution, and of its policy on the land question and on workers' control, and its unqualified support of the enemies of the Kaledinite and Cadet counter-revolution.
(19) Outside these conditions the conflict with the Constituent Assembly can only be settled in a revolutionary way, by energetic, rapid, resolute, and firm revolutionary measures on the part of the Soviet authority against the above-mentioned counter-revolution, by whatever slogans and institutions (including membership of the Constituent Assembly) this counter-revolution may screen itself. All attempts to hinder the Soviet authority in this fight would be tantamount to aiding and abetting the counter-revolution.