Karl Kautsky - Terrorism and Communism: A Contribution to the Natural History of Revolution

Routledge Revivals

First published in English in 1920, this is a reissue of Karl Kautskys seminal work dealing with the origins and history of the forces at work in revolutionary epochs, which offers path breaking insights into the development of civilisation.

The opening chapters, dealing with eighteenth century France, are of special interest to the student of the French revolution. The section devoted to the Commune of Paris offers a stimulating and provocative description of this famous government of the working class.

The reissue of this controversial and extraordinary work will be welcomed by all those interested in the history of Communism in particular and the theory and history of revolution in general.

A Contribution to the Natural History of Revolution

Karl Kautsky

Translated by

W. H. Kerridge

First published 2011

by George Allen & Unwin

This edition first published in 2011 by Routledge

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A Library of Congress record exists under LC Control Number: 21006887

ISBN 13: 978-0-415-68519-1 (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-0-203-80232-8 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9780203802328

A CONTRIBUTION to the NATURAL HISTORY OF REVOLUTION

BY

KARL KAUTSKY

Translated by W. H. KERRIDGE

THE NATIONAL LABOUR PRESS LTD.

LONDON: 8&9, JOHNSON'S COURT, E.C.4.

MANCHESTER: 30, BLACKFRIARS STREET.

First published in 1920.

All rights reserved)

The following work was begun about a year ago, but was dropped as the result of the Revolution of November 9; for the Revolution brought me other obligations than merely theoretical and historical research. It was only after several months that I could return to the work in order, with occasional interruptions, to bring this book to a close.

The course of recent events did not minister to the uniformity of this work. It was rendered more difficult by the fact that, as time went on, the examination of this subject shifted itself to some extent. My starting point represented the central problem of modern Socialism, the attitude of Social Democracy to Bolshevik methods. But since Bolshevism had, of its own accord, referred to the Paris Commune of 1871 as being to some extent its precursor and its prototype, and as having received the sanction of Marx himself, and since the Commune is little known and understood by the present generation, I undertook to draw a parallel between the Commune and the Soviet Eepublic.

In order to make the Commune comprehensible I had to refer to the Paris Commune, and afterwards to the French Revolution and its Eeign of Terror. This gave me fresh means for another parallel to the Soviet Eepublic; hence an examination of the Commune led to an examination of Terrorism, its origin and its consequences.

Thus there are two lines of thought which become merged in this book, the one occasionally leading away from the other. At first I felt this to be rather disturbing, and even considered whether it would not be better to divide the work into two separate sections, the one representing the exposition of the Commune, the other a discussion of Terrorism. However, in regard to my starting point, the Soviet Eepublic is in such very close connection with these two events in history, that it seemed to me impossible to treat them separately. I hope therefore that, in spite of the difficulties inherent in the dual nature of this book, I shall have succeeded in preserving uniformity in the structure of the thoughts contained therein.

However academic the reader may think many of my illustrations and expositions, they are all of the highest practical importance, especially at such a wildly fermented time as the present. This does not mean to say that I have adapted, as it were, the truth to the needs of the moment. Instead I have always sought, even in those sections where I was referring to a period long past, to treat only of that side of the subject which seemed calculated to throw light upon the chaos that surrounds us.

If we regard only this chaos as it exists in Eussia and Germany at the present moment, our prospects at the moment and our future must be very far from cheering. We see a world sinking under economic ruin and fratricidal murder. In both countries we find Socialists under the Governments acting against other Socialists, with similar cruelty to that practised more than half a century ago by the Versailles butchers of the Commune cruelty which has earned the most laudable indignation of the whole International Proletariat ever since.

Nevertheless, the outlook becomes brighter so soon as we consider the International. The workers of West Europe have arisen. It rests with them to accomplish actual results, only with more worthy methods than those practised up to the present in the East.

Hence it is necessary that they should learn from us, and that they should learn to recognise the different methods of struggle, as well as of construction, by their results. It is not so much a blind adulation of the methods of the Revolution hitherto prevailing, but the strictest criticism which is necessary, and especially necessary just at present, when the Revolution and the Socialist Parties are passing through a most difficult crisis, in which different methods are struggling to gain the ascendancy.

The success of the, Revolution will depend not a little on whether or not it discovers the right methods of carrying the revolutionary message to the Proletariat. To examine methods is at the present moment our highest duty. To help with this examination and thus to further the Revolution is the object of this present work.

Karl Kautsky.

Charlottenburg, June, 1919.

Terrorism and Communism.

DOI: 10.4324/9780203802328-1

Up to the outbreak of war, the idea was current in the widest circles of social democracy that the time for revolutions, not only for West Europe, but also for Germany and Austria, was long since past. Whoever thought differently was scoffed at as a revolutionary romancer.

Now we have the Revolution with us, and it is taking on forms of barbarity, which even the most fantastic of revolutionary romancers could scarce have expected.

The abolition of the death penalty was for every social democrat a perfectly obvious claim. The Revolution, however, has brought with it the most bloody terrorism practised by Socialist Governments. The Bolsheviks in Russia started this, and were in consequence condemned in the most bitter terms by all who did not accept the Bolshevik standpoint. Among them are the German Majority Socialists. But these latter hardly felt their own power threatened before they resorted to the same means practised by the Regiment of Terror, which have characterised the Revolution in the East. Noske has boldly followed in Trotskys footsteps; certainly with this difference, that he himself does not regard his dictatorship as the dictatorship of the proletariat. But both justify their slaughter on the grounds of the rights of the Revolution