In times of peace, the capitalists used to guarantee their interests by means of the "peaceful" robbery of hired labor. During the war they served those same interests by means of the destruction of countless human lives. This has imparted to their consciousness as a master class a new "Napoleonic" trait. The capitalists during the war became accustomed to send to their death millions of slaves—fellow-countrymen and colonials—for the sake of coal, railway, and other profits.
During the war there emerged from the ranks of the bourgeoisie—large, middle, and small—hundreds of thousands of officers, professional fighters, men whose character has received the hardening of battle, and has become freed from all external restraints: qualified soldiers, ready and able to defend the privileged position of the bourgeoisie which produced them with a ferocity which, in its way, borders on heroism.
The revolution would probably be more humane if the proletariat had the possibility of "buying off all this band," as Marx once put it. But capitalism during the war has imposed upon the toilers too great a load of debt, and has too deeply undermined the foundations of production, for us to be able seriously to contemplate a ransom in return for which the bourgeoisie would silently make its peace with the revolution. The masses have lost too much blood, have suffered too much, have become too savage, to accept a decision which economically would be beyond their capacity.
To this there must be added other circumstances working in the same direction. The bourgeoisie of the conquered countries has been embittered by defeat, the responsibility for which it is inclined to throw on the rank and file—on the workers and peasants who proved incapable of carrying on "the great national war" to a victorious conclusion. From this point of view, one finds very instructive those explanations, unparalleled for their effrontery, which Ludendorff gave to the Commission of the National Assembly. The bands of Ludendorff are burning with the desire to take revenge for their humiliation abroad on the blood of their own proletariat. As for the bourgeoisie of the victorious countries, it has become inflated with arrogance, and is more than ever ready to defend its social position with the help of the bestial methods which guaranteed its victory. We have seen that the bourgeoisie is incapable of organizing the division of the booty amongst its own ranks without war and destruction. Can it, without a fight, abandon its booty altogether? The experience of the last five years leaves no doubt whatsoever on this score: if even previously it was absolutely utopian to expect that the expropriation of the propertied classes—thanks to "democracy"—would take place imperceptibly and painlessly, without insurrections, armed conflicts, attempts at counter-revolution, and severe repression, the state of affairs we have inherited from the imperialist war predetermines, doubly and trebly, the tense character of the civil war and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
5
The Paris Commune and Soviet Russia
"The short episode of the first revolution carried out by the proletariat for the proletariat ended in the triumph of its enemy. This episode—from March 18 to May 28—lasted seventy-two days."—"The Paris Commune" of March 18, 1871, P. L. Lavrov, Petrograd. 'Kolos' Publishing House, 1919, pp. 160.
THE IMMATURITY OF THE SOCIALIST PARTIES IN THE COMMUNE.
The Paris Commune of 1871 was the first, as yet weak, historic attempt of the working class to impose its supremacy. We cherished the memory of the Commune in spite of the extremely limited character of its experience, the immaturity of its participants, the confusion of its programme, the lack of unity amongst its leaders, the indecision of their plans, the hopeless panic of its executive organs, and the terrifying defeat fatally precipitated by all these. We cherish in the Commune, in the words of Lavrov, "the first, though still pale, dawn of the proletarian republic." Quite otherwise with Kautsky. Devoting a considerable part of his book to a crudely tendencious contrast between the Commune and the Soviet power, he sees the main advantages of the Commune in features that we find are its misfortune and its fault.