Kautsky laboriously proves that the Paris Commune of 1871 was not "artificially" prepared, but emerged unexpectedly, taking the revolutionaries by surprise—in contrast to the November revolution, which was carefully prepared by our party. This is incontestable. Not daring clearly to formulate his profoundly reactionary ideas, Kautsky does not say outright whether the Paris revolutionaries of 1871 deserve praise for not having foreseen the proletarian insurrection, and for not having foreseen the inevitable and consciously gone to meet it. However, all Kautsky's picture was built up in such a way as to produce in the reader just this idea: the Communards were simply overtaken by misfortune (the Bavarian philistine, Vollmar, once expressed his regret that the Communards had not gone to bed instead of taking power into their hands), and, therefore, deserve pity. The Bolsheviks consciously went to meet misfortune (the conquest of power), and, therefore, there is no forgiveness for them either in this or the future world. Such a formulation of the question may seem incredible in its internal inconsistency. None the less, it follows quite inevitably from the position of the Kautskian "Independents," who draw their heads into their shoulders in order to see and foresee nothing; and, if they do move forward, it is only after having received a preliminary stout blow in the rear.
"To humiliate Paris," writes Kautsky, "not to give it self-government, to deprive it of its position as capital, to disarm it in order afterwards to attempt with greater confidence a monarchist coup d'état—such was the most important task of the National Assembly and the chief of the executive power it elected, Thiers. Out of this situation arose the conflict which led to the Paris insurrection.
"It is clear how different from this was the character of the coup d'état carried out by the Bolsheviks, which drew its strength from the yearning for peace; which had the peasantry behind it; which had in the National Assembly against it, not monarchists, but S.R.s and Menshevik Social-Democrats.
"The Bolsheviks came to power by means of a well-prepared coup d'état; which at one blow handed over to them the whole machinery of the State—immediately utilized in the most energetic and merciless manner for the purpose of suppressing their opponents, amongst them their proletarian opponents.
"No one, on the other hand, was more surprised by the insurrection of the Commune than the revolutionaries themselves, and for a considerable number amongst them the conflict was in the highest degree undesirable." (Page 56.)
In order more clearly to realize the actual sense of what Kautsky has written here of the Communards, let us bring forward the following evidence.
"On March 1, 1871," writes Lavrov, in his very instructive book on the Commune, "six months after the fall of the Empire, and a few days before the explosion of the Commune, the guiding personalities in the Paris International still had no definite political programme." (Pages 64-65.)
"After March 18," writes the same author, "Paris was in the hands of the proletariat, but its leaders, overwhelmed by their unexpected power, did not take the most elementary measures." (Page 71.)
"'Your part is too big for you to play, and your sole aim is to get rid of responsibility,' said one member of the Central Committee of the National Guard. In this was a great deal of truth," writes the Communard and historian of the Commune, Lissagaray. "But at the moment of action itself the absence of preliminary organization and preparation is very often a reason why parts are assigned to men which are too big for them to play." (Brussels, 1876; page 106.)
From this one can already see (later on it will become still more obvious) that the absence of a direct struggle for power on the part of the Paris Socialists was explained by their theoretical shapelessness and political helplessness, and not at all by higher considerations of tactics.