90 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THE NATIONAL CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY 91 have found support in that class which constitutes the backbone of the Revolution. No. The real kernel of the class revolution has come into irreconcilable conflict with its democratic shell. By this situation the fate of the Constituent Assembly had been sealed. Its dissolution became the only possible surgical remedy for the contradiction, which had been created, not by us, but by all the preceding course of events.
The National Constituent Assembly By Karl KAUTSKY ing in the Marxian theory to warrant the deduction that history always creates such conditions as are most favorable to the proletariat.
It is difficult to tell now how the course of the Revolution would have run if the Constituent Assembly had been convoked in its second or third month. It is quite probable that the then dominant Social Revolutionary and Menshevik parties would have compromised themselves, together with the Constituent Assembly, in the eyes of not only the more active elements supporting the Soviets, but also of the more backward democratic masses, who might have been attached, through their expectations not to the side of the Soviets, but to that of the Constituent Assembly. Under such circumstances the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly might have led to new elections, in which the party of the Left could have secured a majority. But the course of events has been different. The elections for the Constituent Assembly occurred in the ninth month of the Revolution. By that time the class struggle had assumed such intensity that it broke the formal frames of democracy by sheer internal force.
The proletariat drew the army and the peasantry after it.
These classes were in a state of direct and bitter war with the Right Social Revolutionists. This party, owing to the clumsy electoral democratic machinery, received a majority in the Constituent Assembly, reflecting the pre October epoch of the revolution. The result was a contradiction which was absolutely irreducible within the limits of formal democracy.
And only political pedants who do not take into account the revolutionary logic of class relations, can, in the face of the post October situation, deliver futile lectures to the proletariat on the benefits and advantages of democracy for the cause of the class struggle.
The question was put by history far more concretely and sharply. The Constituent Assembly, owing to the character of its majority, was bound to turn over the government to the Chernov, Kerensky and Tseretelli group. Could this group have guided the destinies of the Revolution? Could it Four great problems confront the government brought in by the revolution. The first is the conclusion of peace and bringing about of normal intercourse with the other countries. Second, making certain of the supply of food. Third, the rebuilding of the government machinery so as to make it suitable for a Socialist method of production. And lastly, the controlling of the steps of reconstruction, which is subdivided into the change from a war to a peace basis, and the transition from capitalist to a socialist society: This formulation of our problems is rejected by many revolutionists as being philistine and even bourgeois. They demand that the revolution be carried still further.
It is not quite clear what is meant by this very loose expression. Do they imply by the word Revolution that the present government must be overthrown? Who is to overthrow it, what is to replace it? The present government is composed of both the great Socialist parties of Germany. We will not here investigate as to who is to bear the blame for the split.
That this weakens the German proletariat at this very crucial movement, at a time when it needs all its strength to hold its own, will not be denied by the intelligent of either party. The See: Editorial The National Constituent Assembly.