The Proletarian Revolution and Kautsky the Renegade/Appendix 2
APPENDIX II.
VANDERVELDE'S NEW BOOK ON THE STATE.
It was not until I finished reading Kautsky's book that I had occasion to see Vandervelde's book "Socialism versus the State" (Paris, 1918). A comparison of the two books suggests itself automatically. Kautsky was the theoretical leader of the Second International (1899-1914), while Vandervelde, in his capacity as President of the International Socialist Bureau, was its formal representative. The two represent the utter bankruptcy of the Second International, and both of them, with the skill of experienced journalists, "artfully" hide this bankruptcy, and their own collapse and desertion to the bourgeoisie, under Marxist shibbolets. The one is typical for German Opportunism, ponderous, academic, grossly adulterating Marxism by cutting away from it all that is unacceptable to the bourgeoisie. The other is typical for the Latin—one may ven say, for the Western European—variety of prevailing opportunism, which is more flexible, less ponderous, and adulterates Marxism by a similar method, but in a more refined manner. Both fundamentally distort the teachings of Marx on the State and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, Vandervelde dwelling more on the State and Kautsky on the Dictatorship. Both are at pains to obscure the very close, almost inseparable connection between the two subjects. Both of them are revolutionaries and Marxists in words, but both are renegades in practice, bending all their energies in order to get away from the revolution. In neither of them do we find even a trace of what pervades all the works of Marx and Engels, and of what distinguishes Socialism from the bourgeois caricature of it, namely, the elucidation of the problems of revolution, as distinguished from those of reform, the elucidation of revolutionary tactics, as distinguished from reformist, and the elucidation of the role of the proletariat of the Great Powers in sharing with the bourgeoisie to a fractional extent the latter's surplus value and surplus booty.
Let us quote a few most characteristic arguments of Vandervelde in support of his criticism. Like Kautsky, Vandervelde quotes Marx and Engels very copiously, and, like Kautsky, quotes from them everything except what is disagreeable to the bourgeoisie and what distinguishes a revolutionary from a reformist. He has got plenty to say about the conquest of political power by the proletariat, since practice has long ago enclosed it within strictly parliamentary limits. But you will look in vain for any mention of the fact that Marx and Engels, after the experience of the Commune, found it necessary to supplement the, in part, obsolete "Communist Manifesto” by an elucidation of the truth that the working-class cannot simply get hold of the available State machine, but must destroy it. Vandervelde, as well as Kautsky, as if by agreement, keep complete silence about what is most essential in the experience of the proletarian rvoluion, and what distinguished it from bourgeois reforms.
Like Kautsky, Vandervelde also speaks about the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, in order to repudiate it. Kautsky has done it by means of gross falsifications, while Vandervelde does it in a more refined way. In one of his sections (section 4), dealing with the "conquest of political power by the proletariat," he devotes one of the sub-sections to the question of the "collective Dictatorship of the Proletariat," "quotes" Marx and Engels (but omits all references to the main point, namely, to the destruction of the old bourgeois democratic State machine), and concludes:
"In Socialist circles, the Socialist revolution is commonly conceived in the following manner: a new Commune, but this time victorious, not in one centre, but in all the main centres of the capitalist world. … This is an hypothesis, but one which has nothing intrinsically incredible about it, at a time when it is becoming patent to everybody that the post-war period will in many countries see unprecedented class conflicts and social convulsions. … But if the failure of the Commune of Paris, not to speak of the difficulties of the Russian revolution, proves anything at all, it is the impossibility of finishing with the capitalist order of society until the proletariat has been sufficiently prepared for taking proper advantage of the power which might fall into its hands by reason of certain circumstances" (p. 73).
And this is all we find on the main question! Such are the leaders and representatives of the Second International. In 1912 they subscribed the Basel Manifesto, in which they publicly speak about the connection of that very war which broke out in 1914 with the proletarian revolution, and actually threaten it; and when the war actually broke out, leading to a revolutionary situation, they, the Kautskys and Vanderveldes, at once began to make all attempts to get away from the revolution. A revolution after the Commune type, don't you see, is only "not an incredible hypothesis!" This is quite analogous to Kautsky's arguments about the possible role of the Soviets in Europe.
But this is just the argument of an ordinary intelligent Liberal, who will, no doubt, agree that a new Commune is "not improbable," that the Soviets have a great future before them, etc. The proletarian revolutionary differs from the Liberal in this, that he, as a theoretician, analyzes the new State importance of the Commune and the Soviets. Vandervelde, on the other hand, is quite silent on all that has been said by Marx and Engels on the subject in their analyses of the experience of the Commune. As a practical politican, the Marxist ought to make it clear that only traitors to Socialism can refuse at present to discharge the duty of elucidating the necessity of the proletarian revolution (of the Commune, of the Soviet, or perhaps of some other type), of explaining the necessity of preparing for it, of propagating among the masses the idea of a revolution, of refuting the bourgeois democratic prejudices against it, etc. But neither Kautsky nor Vandervelde does anything of the sort, because they themselves are traitors to Socialism, who only want to maintain among the workers the reputation of Socialists and Marxists.
Take the theoretical formulation of the question, the State, even in a democratic republic, is nothing else than a machine for the suppression of one class by another. Kautsky is familiar with the truth, accepts it, but avoids the fundamental question as to what class and for what reasons and by what means the proletariat ought to suppress, on having conquered the proletarian State. Vandervelde, too, is familiar with, and approves of the fundamental propositions of Marxism, which he even quotes (p. 72 of his book), but does not say a single word on the highly unpleasant (for the capitalists) subject of the suppression of the resistance of the exploiters. Both Vandervelde and Kautsky have avoided this unpleasant subject, and this is just where their apostasy lies.
Like Kautsky, Vandervelde is a past master in the art of employing eclecticism in the place of dialectics. "On the one hand," "on the other hand" and so forth. On the one hand, the State may be understood to mean "the nation as a whole" (see Littré's Dictionary, a learned piece of work, no doubt, as Vandervelde points out on p. 87); on the other hand, the State may be understood to mean the "Government" (ibid.). This learned platitude is quoted by Vandervelde with the approval, side by side with the extracts from Marx!
The Marxist meaning of the State, Vandervelde tells us, differs from the ordinary. Hence "misundertsandings" are possible. "With Marx and Engels, the State is not a State in the particular sense of the word, not a State as an organ of guidance, as representative of the general interests of Society. It is a State as the embodiment of authority, as the organ of authority, as the instrument of domination of one class by another" (p. 75–76). It is not in this latter sense that Marx and Engels speak about the destruction of the State. "Propositions of too absolute a character would run the risk of being inexact. Between the capitalist State based upon the domination of one class only, and the proletarian State, which aims at the abolition of all classes, there are many stages of transition" (p. 156).
Here you have Vandervelde's style, which is slightly different from that of Kautsky, but in essence, identical with it. The dialectical method repudiates absolute truths, being engaged in the elucidation of the succession of opposites and the importance of crises in history. The eclectic does not want propositions which are "too absolute," in order to be able to forward is philistine desire to replace the revolution by "stages of transition." That the transition stage between the State as an organ of domination of the capitalist class, and the State as an organ of domination of the proletariat, is just the revolution, which consists in the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, and in the destruction, the breaking up of its State machine, is, of course, suppressed by the Kautskys and the Vanderveldes in silence. They are just as anxious to suppress the fact that the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie of one class, the proletariat, and that, after the "transition stages" of the revolution will follow the "transition stages" of the general withering away of the proletarian State.
This is just where their .political apostasy lies. This is just, from a theoretical or philosophical point of view, where they substitute eclecticism and sophistry for dialectics. The latter is concrete and revolutionary, and distinguishes between the "transition" from the dictatorship of one class to the dictatorship of another, from the "transition" of the democratic proletarian State to the non-State ("the withering away of the State"). The eclecticism and sophistry of the Kautskys and the Vanderveldes, on the other hand, tries to please the bourgeoisie by blurring all that is concrete and precise in the class struggle, and by substituting in their place the general idea of "transition" under which they can hide (nine-tenths of the official Social-Democrats of our time do hide) their repudiation of the revolution. Vandervelde, as an eclecticist and sophist, is more skilful and more refined than Kautsky, since the phrase: "transition from the State in the narrow sense of the word, to the State in the broad sense of the word," can be made to hush up all questions of revolution, all difference between revolution and reform, and even the difference between the Marxist and the Liberal. For what European bourgeois will think of denying "in general," "transition stages" in such "general" sense?
Vandervelde declares that he agrees with Jules Guesde in that it is impossible to socialize the means of production and exchange without the previous fulfilment of the following two conditions: "(1) the transformation of the present State as organ of domination of one class over another, into what Anton Menger calls a popular Labor State, through the conquest of political power by the proletariat; (2) the separation of the State as an organ of authority, from the State as an organ of guidance, or, to use the expression of Saint Simon, of the administration of persons from the administration of things" (p. 89).
This is written by Vandervelde in italics, in order to underline the importance of these propositions. But this is the purest eclectical olla podrida, a complete rupture with Marxism! The so-called "Popular Labor State" is but a paraphrase of the "Free People’s State," with which the German Social-Democrats paraded in the 'seventies, and which Engels denounced as an absurdity. The "Popular Labor State" is a phrase worthy of the petty bourgeois democrat (after the manner of our own Left Social-Revolutionaries), a phrase which replaces class conceptions by extra-class ones. Vandervelde puts side by side the conquest of State power by the proletariat, that is, by one class, and a "popular" State, without noticing the resulting muddle. Kautsky with his "pure democracy," arrives at the same confusion, at the same anti-revolutionary, philistine disregard of the problems of the class revolution, of the class (the proletarian) dictatorship, of the class (the proletarian) State.
Further, the administration of persons will only disappear and make room for the administration of things, when all State will have disappeared. By means of this comparatively distant future Vandervelde walls up, or pushes to the background the problem of to-morrow, namely, the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. Such a method, again, is equivalent to subserviency to the Liberal bourgeoisie. The Liberal is perfectly willing to discuss things which will happen when there will be no need to administer persons. Why not indulge in such innocent dreams? But as to the suppression by the proletariat of the resistance of the bourgeoisie, which fights against being expropriated,—well, silence is golden, and serves the class interests of the bourgeoisie.
"Socialism versus the State." This is Vandervelde's bow to the proletariat. It is not difficult to make a bow; every "democratic" politician can make a bow to his electors, and under the cover of such a bow we can smuggle through an anti-revolutionary and anti-proletarian cargo.
Vandervelde quotes copiously the Russian Ostrogorsky to show what an amount of deceit, brutal force, corruption, mendacity, hypocrisy, and oppression of the poor is hidden under the civilized, polished, and perfumed exterior of modern bourgeois democracy; but he draws no conclusion therefrom. He does not notice that bourgeois democracy suppresses and oppresses the laboring and exploited masses, and that in its turn, proletarian democracy will have to suppress the bourgeoisie. Kautsky and Vandervelde Vandervelde are completely blind on this subject, for the class interest of the bourgeoisie, in the wake of which these petty bourgeois traitors are floundering, demands that this question should be avoided or passed over in silence, or that the necessity of such suppression be directly denied.
Petty bourgeois Eclecticism versus Marxism, Sophistry versus Dialectics, Philistine Reformism versus Proletarian Revolution,—such ought to have been the title of Vandervelde's book.