172 THE CLASS STRUGGLE EXPLOITER AND EXPLOITED 173 pound of meat is a pound of meat the well known standpoint of Shakespeare Shylock.
ably in a new Socialist world. The wars of the past have shown that their peoples are not enemies, but friends. Already the Soviets of Russia are extending the hand of fraternity to their Chinese and Japanese brethren. The coming of Socialism will make their spiritual union a reality!
New York, March 11, 1919.
Can the Exploited and the Exploiter Be Equals? CHAPTER FROM LENIN New Book THE PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION AND THE BETRAYER KAUTSKY The exploiters have always been only a small minority of the population. Page 14 of Kautsky book The Dictatorship of the Proletariat. This is an undeniable fact. What conclusion must be drawn from this fact? It is possible to arrive at the Marxian, Socialistic, conclusion; in this case the relation of the exploited to the exploiters must be taken as the basis. It is possible to arrive at the liberal, bourgeois democratic conclusion; then the relation of the majority to the minority must be taken as the basis.
If the Marxian conclusion is to be drawn, there can be but one logical process of reasoning: the exploiters form the state, and a democracy in such a state must function absolutely as the weapon of the rule of this, the exploiting class, subjecting the exploited to its rule. Therefore a democratic state, as long as there are exploiters who dominate the majority composed of exploited, will become a democracy for the exploiters.
By the same process a state of the exploited must completely differ from such a state, it must be a democracy for the exploited and express itself as oppression of the exploiters; but the oppression of a class means that this class is not equal, that it is put outside of democracy.
If the liberal bourgeois conclusion is drawn, then it must be said: the majority decides, the minority obeys. The disobedient will be punished. Then there can be no question as to the class character of the state generally, or especially of the pure democratic state; it is out of the question, because majority is majority. Why should proletarian rule take on a form which is incompatible with democracy. Kautsky, Page 21. This question is followed by an explanation that the proletariat has on its side the majority, a very detailed and wordy explanation with numerous quotations from the works of Marx and election figures from the Paris Commune. The conclusion: system which is so strongly based on the masses has not the least cause to use force against democracy. It cannot always avoid the use of force in those cases when force is trying to overpower democracy. Force can be answered only by force. But a system which knows that the masses are behind it, will use force only to defend democracy, but not to destroy it. It would be suicidal to endeavor to abolish its most reliable basis the general suffrage, the deep source of strong moral authority. Page 22. You see: the relation of exploited to exploiters has completely disappeared from Kautsky reasoning. There is left only the majority in general, the minority in general, democracy in general, that pure democracy which is so dear to Kautsky.
Notice that this is said when discussing the Paris Commune!
Let us quote what Marx and Engels say when discussing the Commune.
Marx: If the workers supplant the bourgeois dictatorship by their own revolutionary dictatorship in order to crush the resistance of the bourgeoisie the workers are giving to the state a revolutionary form.
Engels: The party which wins in the revolution will be compelled to sustain its power with the fear which is created among the reactionaries by its weapons. If the Paris Commune had not used the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie, could it have held itself in power more than a day? Are we not on the contrary right when we charge them with having made too little use of this authority?
Engels says further: Because the state is only a transitory institution which is to be used in the struggle, in the revolution forcibly to crush the opponents, therefore to speak of a free people state is pure absurdity: as long as the proletariat yet needs the state, it needs it for the cause of freedom, and to crush its opponents, but when it is possible to speak of freedom, then the state, as such, will cease to exist.