Dictatorship vs. Democracy Part 13

Some comrades look on the apparatus of industrial administration first and foremost as on a school. This is, of course, absolutely erroneous.

The task of administration is to administer. If a man desires and is able to learn administration, let him go to school, to the special courses of instruction: let him go as an a.s.sistant, watching and acquiring experience: but a man who is appointed to control a factory is not going to school, but to a responsible post of economic administration. And, even if we look at this question in the limited, and therefore incorrect light of a "school," I will say that when the one-man principle prevails the school is ten times better: because just as you cannot replace one good worker by three immature workers, similarly, having placed a board of three immature workers in a responsible post, you deprive them of the possibility of realizing their own defects. Each looks to the others when decisions are being made, and blames the others when success is not forthcoming.

That this is not a question of principle for the opponents of the one-man principle is shown best of all by their not demanding the collegiate principle for the actual workshops, jobs, and pits. They even say with indignation that only a madman can demand that a board of three or five should manage a workshop. There must be one manager, and one only. Why? If collegiate administration is a "school," why do we not require an elementary school? Why should we not introduce boards into the workshops? And, if the collegiate principle is not a sacred gospel for the workshops, why is it compulsory for the factories?

Abramovich said here that, as we have few experts--thanks to the Bolsheviks, he repeats after Kautsky--we shall replace them by boards of workers. That is nonsense. No board of persons who do not know the given business can replace one man who knows it. A board of lawyers will not replace one switchman. A board of patients will not replace the doctor. The very idea is incorrect. A board in itself does not give knowledge to the ignorant. It can only hide the ignorance of the ignorant. If a person is appointed to a responsible administrative post, he is under the watch, not only of others but of himself, and sees clearly what he knows and what he does not know. But there is nothing worse than a board of ignorant, badly-prepared workers appointed to a purely practical post, demanding expert knowledge. The members of the board are in a state of perpetual panic and mutual dissatisfaction, and by their helplessness introduce hesitation and chaos into all their work. The working cla.s.s is very deeply interested in raising its capacity for administration, that is, in being educated; but this is attained in the sphere of industry by the periodical report of the administrative body of a factory before the whole factory, and the discussion of the economic plan for the year or for the current month. All the workers who display serious interest in the work of industrial organization are registered by the directors of the undertaking, or by special commissions; are taken through appropriate courses closely bound up with the practical work of the factory itself; and are then appointed, first to less responsible, and then to more responsible posts. In such a way we shall embrace many thousands, and, in the future, tens of thousands. But the question of "threes" and "fives" interests, not the laboring ma.s.ses, but the more backward, weaker, less fitted for independent work, section of the Soviet labor bureaucracy. The foremost, intelligent, determined administrator naturally strives to take the factory into his hands as a whole, and to show both to himself and to others that he can carry out his work. While if that administrator is a weakling, who does not stand very steadily on his feet, he attempts to a.s.sociate another with himself, for in the company of another his own weakness will be unnoticed. In such a collegiate principle there is a very dangerous foundation--the extinction of personal responsibility. If a worker is capable but not experienced, he naturally requires a guide: under his control he will learn, and to-morrow we shall appoint him the foreman of a little factory. That is the way by which he will go forward. In an accidental board, in which the strength and the weakness of each are not clear, the feeling of responsibility inevitably disappears.

Our resolution speaks of a systematic _approach_ to the one-man principle--naturally, not by one stroke of the pen. Variants and combinations are possible here. Where the worker can manage alone, let us put him in charge of the factory and give him an expert as an a.s.sistant. Where there is a good expert, let us put him in charge and give him as a.s.sistants two or three of the workers. Finally, where a "board" has in practice shown its capacity for work, let us preserve it. This is the sole serious att.i.tude to take up, and only in such a way shall we reach the correct organization of production.

There is another consideration of a social and educational character which seems to me most important. Our guiding layer of the working cla.s.s is too thin. That layer which knew underground work, which long carried on the revolutionary struggle, which was abroad, which read much in prisons and in exile, which had political experience and a broad outlook, is the most precious section of the working cla.s.s. Then there is a younger generation which has consciously been making the revolution, beginning with 1917. This is a very valuable section of the working cla.s.s. Wherever we cast our eye--on Soviet construction, on the trade unions, on the front of the civil war--everywhere we find the princ.i.p.al part being played by this upper layer of the proletariat. The chief work of the Soviet Government during these two and a half years consisted in manoeuvring and throwing the foremost section of the workers from one front to another. The deeper layers of the working cla.s.s, which emerged from the peasant ma.s.s, are revolutionarily inclined, but are still too poor in initiative. The disease of our Russian peasant is the herd instinct, the absence of personality: in other words, the same quality that used to be extolled by our reactionary Populists, and that Leo Tolstoy extolled in the character of Platon Karatayev: the peasant melting into his village community, subjecting himself to the land. It is quite clear that Socialist economy is founded not on Platon Karatayev, but on the thinking worker endowed with initiative. That personal initiative it is necessary to develop in the worker. The personal basis under the bourgeoisie meant selfish individualism and compet.i.tion. The personal basis under the working cla.s.s is in contradiction neither to solidarity nor to brotherly co-operation. Socialist solidarity can rely neither on absence of personality nor on the herd instinct. And it is just absence of personality that is frequently hidden behind the collegiate principle.

In the working cla.s.s there are many forces, gifts, and talents. They must be brought out and displayed in rivalry. The one-man principle in the administrative and technical sphere a.s.sists this. That is why it is higher and more fruitful than the collegiate principle.

CONCLUSION OF THE REPORT

Comrades, the arguments of the Menshevik orators, particularly of Abramovich, reflect first of all their complete detachment from life and its problems. An observer stands on the bank of a river which he has to swim over, and deliberates on the qualities of the water and on the strength of the current. He has to swim over: that is his task!

But our Kautskian stands first on one foot and then on the other. "We do not deny," he says, "the necessity of swimming over, but at the same time, as realists, we see the danger--and not only one, but several: the current is swift, there are submerged stones, people are tired, etc., etc. But when they tell you that we deny the very necessity of swimming over, that is not true--no, not under any circ.u.mstances. Twenty-three years ago we did not deny the necessity of swimming over...."

And on this is built all, from beginning to end. First, say the Mensheviks, we do not deny, and never did deny, the necessity of self-defence: consequently we do not repudiate the army. Secondly, we do not repudiate in principle general labor service. But, after all, where is there anyone in the world, with the exception of small religious sects, who denies self-defence "in principle"! Nevertheless, the matter does not move one step forward as a result of your abstract admission. When it came to a real struggle, and to the creation of a real army against the real enemies of the working cla.s.s, what did you do then? You opposed, you sabotaged--while not repudiating self-defence in principle. You said and wrote in your papers: "Down with the civil war!" at the time when we were surrounded by White Guards, and the knife was at our throat. Now you, approving our victorious self-defence after the event, transfer your critical gaze to new problems, and attempt to teach us. "In general, we do not repudiate the principle of general labor service," you say, "but ...

without legal compulsion." Yet in these very words there is a monstrous internal contradiction! The idea of "obligatory service"

itself includes the element of compulsion. A man is _obliged_, he is bound to do something. If he does not do it, obviously he will suffer compulsion, a penalty. Here we approach the question of what penalty. Abramovich says: "Economic pressure, yes; but not legal compulsion." Comrade Holtzman, the representative of the Metal Workers' Union, excellently demonstrated all the scholasticism of this idea. Even under the capitalism, that is to say under the regime of "free" labor, economic pressure is inseparable from legal compulsion.

Still more so now.

In my report I attempted to explain that the adaptation of the workers on new social foundations to new forms of labor, and the attainment of a higher level of productivity of labor, are possible only by means of the simultaneous application of various methods--economic interest, legal compulsion, the influence of an internally co-ordinated economic organization, the power of repression, and, first and last, moral influence, agitation, propaganda, and the general raising of the cultural level.

Only by the combination of all these methods can we attain a high level of Socialist economy.

If even under capitalism economic interest is inevitably combined with legal compulsion, behind which stands the material force of the State, in the Soviet State--that is, the State of transition to Socialism--we can draw no water-tight compartment at all between economic and legal compulsion. All our most important industries are in the hands of the State. When we say to the turner Ivanov, "You are bound at once to work at the Sormovo factory; if you refuse, you will not receive your ration," what are we to call it? Economic pressure or legal compulsion? He cannot go to another factory, for all factories are in the hands of the State, which will not allow such a change.

Consequently, economic pressure melts here into the pressure of State compulsion. Abramovich apparently would like us, as regulators of the distribution of labor-power, to make use only of such means as the raising of wages, bonuses, etc., in order to attract the necessary workers to our most important factories. Apparently that comprises all his thoughts on the subject. But if we put the question in this way, every serious worker in the trade union movement will understand it is pure utopia. We cannot hope for a free influx of labor-power from the market, for to achieve this the State would need to have in its hands sufficiently extensive "reserves of manoeuvre," in the form of food, housing, and transport, _i.e._, precisely those conditions which we have yet only to create. Without systematically-organized transference of labor-power on a ma.s.s scale, according to the demands of the economic organization, we shall achieve nothing. Here the moment of compulsion arises before us in all its force of economic necessity. I read you a telegram from Ekaterinburg dealing with the work of the First Labor Army. It says that there have pa.s.sed through the Ural Committee for Labor Service over 4,000 workers. Whence have they appeared? Mainly from the former Third Army. They were not allowed to go to their homes, but were sent where they were required.

From the army they were handed over to the Committee for Labor Service, which distributed them according to their categories and sent them to the factories. This, from the Liberal point of view, is "violence" to the freedom of the individual. Yet an overwhelming majority of the workers went willingly to the labor front, as. .h.i.therto to the military, realizing that the common interest demanded this.

Part went against their will. These were compelled.

Naturally, it is quite clear that the State must, by means of the bonus system, give the better workers better conditions of existence.

But this not only does not exclude, but on the contrary pre-supposes, that the State and the trade unions--without which the Soviet State will not build up industry--acquire new rights of some kind over the worker. The worker does not merely bargain with the Soviet State: no, he is subordinated to the Soviet State, under its orders in every direction--for it is _his_ State.

"If," Abramovich says, "we were simply told that it is a question of industrial discipline, there would be nothing to quarrel about; but why introduce militarization?" Of course, to a considerable extent, the question is one of the discipline of the trade unions; but of the new discipline of new, _Productional_, trade unions. We live in a Soviet country, where the working cla.s.s is in power--a fact which our Kautskians do not understand. When the Menshevik Rubtzov said that there remained only the fragment of the trade union movement in my report, there was a certain amount of truth in it. Of the trade unions, as he understands them--that is to say, trade unions of the old craft type--there in reality has remained very little; but the industrial productional organization of the working cla.s.s, in the conditions of Soviet Russia, has the very greatest tasks before it.

What tasks? Of course, not the tasks involved in a struggle with the State, in the name of the interests of labor; but tasks involved in the construction, side by side with the State, of Socialist economy.

Such a form of union is in principle a new organization, which is distinct, not only from the trade unions, but also from the revolutionary industrial unions in bourgeois society, just as the supremacy of the proletariat is distinct from the supremacy of the bourgeoisie. The productional union of the ruling working cla.s.s no longer has the problems, the methods, the discipline, of the union for struggle of an oppressed cla.s.s. All our workers are _obliged_ to enter the unions. The Mensheviks are against this. This is quite comprehensible, because in reality they are against the _dictators.h.i.+p of the proletariat_. It is to this, in the long run, that the whole question is reduced. The Kautskians are against the dictators.h.i.+p of the proletariat, and are thereby against all its consequences. Both economic and political compulsion are only forms of the expression of the dictators.h.i.+p of the working cla.s.s in two closely connected regions. True, Abramovich demonstrated to us most learnedly that under Socialism there will be no compulsion, that the principle of compulsion contradicts Socialism, that under Socialism we shall be moved by the feeling of duty, the habit of working, the attractiveness of labor, etc., etc. This is unquestionable. Only this unquestionable truth must be a little extended. In point of fact, under Socialism there will not exist the apparatus of compulsion itself, namely, the State: for it will have melted away entirely into a producing and consuming commune. None the less, the road to Socialism lies through a period of the highest possible intensification of the principle of the State. And you and I are just pa.s.sing through that period. Just as a lamp, before going out, shoots up in a brilliant flame, so the State, before disappearing, a.s.sumes the form of the dictators.h.i.+p of the proletariat, _i.e._, the most ruthless form of State, which embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively in every direction.

Now just that insignificant little fact--that historical step of the State dictators.h.i.+p--Abramovich, and in his person the whole of Menshevism, did not notice; and consequently, he has fallen over it.

No organization except the army has ever controlled man with such severe compulsion as does the State organization of the working cla.s.s in the most difficult period of transition. It is just for this reason that we speak of the militarization of labor. The fate of the Mensheviks is to drag along at the tail of events, and to recognize those parts of the revolutionary programme which have already had time to lose all practical significance. To-day the Mensheviks, albeit with reservations, do not deny the lawfulness of stern measures with the White Guards and with deserters from the Red Army: they have been forced to recognize this after their own lamentable experiments with "democracy." They have to all appearances understood--very late in the day--that, when one is face to face with the counter-revolutionary bands, one cannot live by phrases about the great truth that under Socialism we shall need no Red Terror. But in the economic sphere, the Mensheviks still attempt to refer us to our sons, and particularly to our grandsons. None the less, we have to rebuild our economic life to-day, without waiting, under circ.u.mstances of a very painful heritage from bourgeois society and a yet unfinished civil war.

Menshevism, like all Kautskianism generally, is drowned in democratic a.n.a.logies and Socialist abstractions. Again and again it has been shown that for it there do not exist the problems of the transitional period, _i.e._, of the proletarian revolution. Hence the lifelessness of its criticism, its advice, its plans, and its recipes. The question is not what is going to happen in twenty or thirty years' time--at that date, of course, things will be much better--but of how to-day to struggle out of our ruins, how immediately to distribute labor-power, how to-day to raise the productivity of labor, and how, in particular, to act in the case of those 4,000 skilled workers whom we combed out of the army in the Ural. To dismiss them to the four corners of the earth, saying "seek for better conditions where you can find them, comrades"? No, we could not act in this way. We put them into military echelons, and distributed them amongst the factories and the works.

"Wherein, then, does your Socialism," Abramovich cries, "differ from Egyptian slavery? It was just by similar methods that the Pharaohs built the pyramids, forcing the ma.s.ses to labor." Truly an inimitable a.n.a.logy for a "Socialist"! Once again the little insignificant fact has been forgotten--the cla.s.s nature of the government! Abramovich sees no difference between the Egyptian regime and our own. He has forgotten that in Egypt there were Pharaohs, there were slave-owners and slaves. It was not the Egyptian peasants who decided through their Soviets to build the pyramids; there existed a social order based upon hierarchial caste; and the workers were obliged to toil by a cla.s.s that was hostile to them. Our compulsion is applied by a workers' and peasants' government, in the name of the interests of the laboring ma.s.ses. That is what Abramovich has not observed. We learn in the school of Socialism that all social evolution is founded on cla.s.ses and their struggle, and all the course of human life is determined by the fact of what cla.s.s stands at the head of affairs, and in the name of what caste is applying its policy. That is what Abramovich has not grasped. Perhaps he is well acquainted with the Old Testament, but Socialism is for him a book sealed with seven seals.

Going along the path of shallow Liberal a.n.a.logies, which do not reckon with the cla.s.s nature of the State, Abramovich might (and in the past the Mensheviks did more than once) identify the Red and the White Armies. Both here and there went on mobilizations, princ.i.p.ally of the peasant ma.s.ses. Both here and there the element of compulsion has its place. Both here and there there were not a few officers who had pa.s.sed through one and the same school of Tsarism. The same rifles, the same cartridges in both camps. Where is the difference? There is a difference, gentlemen, and it is defined by a fundamental test: who is in power? The working cla.s.s or the landlord cla.s.s, Pharaohs or peasants, White Guards or the Petrograd proletariat? There is a difference, and evidence on the subject is furnished by the fate of Yudenich, Kolchak, and Denikin. Our peasants were mobilized by the workers; in Kolchak's camp, by the White Guard officer cla.s.s. Our army has pulled itself together, and has grown strong; the White Army has fallen asunder in dust. Yes, there is a difference between the Soviet regime and the regime of the Pharaohs. And it is not in vain that the Petrograd proletarians began their revolution by shooting the Pharaohs on the steeples of Petrograd.[10]

[10] This was the name given to the imperial police, whom the Minister for Home Affairs, Protopopoff, distributed at the end of February, 1917, over the roofs of houses and in the belfries.

One of the Menshevik orators attempted incidentally to represent me as a defender of militarism in general. According to his information, it appears, do you see, that I am defending nothing more or less than German militarism. I proved, you must understand, that the German N.C.O. was a marvel of nature, and all that he does is above criticism. What did I say in reality? Only that militarism, in which all the features of social evolution find their most finished, sharp, and clear expression, could be examined from two points of view. First from the political or Socialist--and here it depends entirely on the question of what cla.s.s is in power; and secondly, from the point of view of organization, as a system of the strict distribution of duties, exact mutual relations, unquestioning responsibility, and harsh insistence on execution. The bourgeois army is the apparatus of savage oppression and repression of the workers; the Socialist army is a weapon for the liberation and defence of the workers. But the unquestioning subordination of the parts to the whole is a characteristic common to every army. A severe internal regime is inseparable from the military organization. In war every piece of slackness, every lack of thoroughness, and even a simple mistake, not infrequently bring in their train the most heavy sacrifices. Hence the striving of the military organization to bring clearness, definiteness, exactness of relations and responsibilities, to the highest degree of development. "Military" qualities in this connection are valued in every sphere. It was in this sense that I said that every cla.s.s prefers to have in its service those of its members who, other things being equal, have pa.s.sed through the military school. The German peasant, for example, who has pa.s.sed out of the barracks in the capacity of an N.C.O. was for the German monarchy, and remains for the Ebert Republic, much dearer and more valuable than the same peasant who has not pa.s.sed through military training. The apparatus of the German railways was splendidly organized, thanks to a considerable degree to the employment of N.C.O.'s and officers in administrative posts in the transport department. In this sense we also have something to learn from militarism. Comrade Tsiperovich, one of our foremost trade union leaders, admitted here that the trade union worker who has pa.s.sed through military training--who has, for example, occupied the responsible post of regimental commissary for a year--does not become worse from the point of view of trade union work as a result. He is returned to the union the same proletarian from head to foot, for he was fighting for the proletariat; but he has returned a veteran--hardened, more independent, more decisive--for he has been in very responsible positions. He had occasions to control several thousands of Red soldiers of different degrees of cla.s.s-consciousness--most of them peasants. Together with them he has lived through victories and reverses, he has advanced and retreated.

There were cases of treachery on the part of the command personnel, of peasant risings, of panic--but he remained at his post, he held together the less cla.s.s-conscious ma.s.s, directed it, inspired it with his example, punished traitors and cowards. This experience is a great and valuable experience. And when a former regimental commissary returns to his trade union, he becomes not a bad organizer.

On the question of the _collegiate principle_, the arguments of Abramovich are just as lifeless as on all other questions--the arguments of a detached observer standing on the bank of a river.

Abramovich explained to us that a good board is better than a bad manager, that into a good board there must enter a good expert. All this is splendid--only why do not the Mensheviks offer us several hundred boards? I think that the Supreme Economic Council will find sufficient use for them. But we--not observers, but workers--must build from the material at our disposal. We have specialists, we have experts, of whom, shall we say, one-third are conscientious and educated, another third only half-conscientious and half-educated, and the last third are no use at all. In the working cla.s.s there are many talented, devoted, and energetic people. Some--unfortunately few--have already the necessary knowledge and experience. Some have character and capacity, but have not knowledge or experience. Others have neither one nor the other. Out of this material we have to create our factory and other administrative bodies; and here we cannot be satisfied with general phrases. First of all, we must select all the workers who have already in experience shown that they can direct enterprises, and give such men the possibility of standing on their own feet. Such men themselves ask for one-man management, because the work of controlling a factory is not a school for the backward. A worker who knows his business thoroughly desires to _control_. If he has decided and ordered, his decision must be accomplished. He may be replaced--that is another matter; but while he is the master--the Soviet, proletarian master--he controls the undertaking entirely and completely. If he has to be included in a board of weaker men, who interfere in the administration, nothing will come of it. Such a working-cla.s.s administrator must be given an expert a.s.sistant, one or two according to the enterprise. If there is no suitable working-cla.s.s administrator, but there is a conscientious and trained expert, we shall put him at the head of an enterprise, and attach to him two or three prominent workers in the capacity of a.s.sistants, in such a way that every decision of the expert should be known to the a.s.sistants, but that they should not have the right to reverse that decision. They will, step by step, follow the specialist in his work, will learn something, and in six months or a year will thus be able to occupy independent posts.

Abramovich quoted from my own speech the example of the hairdresser who has commanded a division and an army. True! But what, however, Abramovich does not know is that, if our Communist comrades have begun to command regiments, divisions, and armies, it is because previously they were commissaries attached to expert commanders.

The responsibility fell on the expert, who knew that, if he made a mistake, he would bear the full brunt, and would not be able to say that he was only an "adviser" or a "member of the board." To-day in our army the majority of the posts of command, particularly in the lower--_i.e._, politically the most important--grades, are filled by workers and foremost peasants. But with what did we begin? We put officers in the posts of command, and attached to them workers as commissaries; and they learned, and learned with success, and learned to beat the enemy.

Comrades, we stand face to face with a very difficult period, perhaps the most difficult of all. To difficult periods in the life of peoples and cla.s.ses there correspond harsh measures. The further we go the easier things will become, the freer every citizen will feel, the more imperceptible will become the compelling force of the proletarian State. Perhaps we shall then even allow the Mensheviks to have papers, if only the Mensheviks remain in existence until that time. But to-day we are living in the period of dictators.h.i.+p, political and economic. And the Mensheviks continue to undermine that dictators.h.i.+p.

When we are fighting on the civil front, preserving the revolution from its enemies, and the Menshevik paper writes: "Down with the civil war," we cannot permit this. A dictators.h.i.+p is a dictators.h.i.+p, and war is war. And now that we have crossed to the path of the greatest concentration of forces on the field of the economic rebirth of the country, the Russian Kautskies, the Mensheviks, remain true to their counter-revolutionary calling. Their voice, as. .h.i.therto, sounds as the voice of doubt and decomposition, of disorganization and undermining, of distrust and collapse.

Is it not monstrous and grotesque that, at this Congress, at which 1,500 representatives of the Russian working cla.s.s are present, where the Mensheviks const.i.tute less than 5%, and the Communists about 90%, Abramovich should say to us: "Do not be attracted by methods which result in a little band taking the place of the people." "All through the people," says the representative of the Mensheviks, "no guardians of the laboring ma.s.ses! All through the laboring ma.s.ses, through their independent activity!" And, further, "It is impossible to convince a cla.s.s by arguments." Yet look at this very hall: here is that cla.s.s!

The working cla.s.s is here before you, and with us; and it is just you, an insignificant band of Mensheviks, who are attempting to convince it by bourgeois arguments! It is you who wish to be the guardians of that cla.s.s. And yet it has its own high degree of independence, and that independence, it has displayed, incidentally, in having overthrown you and gone forward along its own path!

9

KARL KAUTSKY, HIS SCHOOL AND HIS BOOK.

The Austro-Marxian school (Bauer, Renner, Hilferding, Max Adler, Friedrich Adler) in the past more than once was contrasted with the school of Kautsky, as veiled opportunism might be contrasted with true Marxism. This has proved to be a pure historical misunderstanding, which deceived some for a long time, some for a lesser period, but which in the end was revealed with all possible clearness. Kautsky is the founder and the most perfect representative of the Austrian forgery of Marxism. While the real teaching of Marx is the theoretical formula of action, of attack, of the development of revolutionary energy, and of the carrying of the cla.s.s blow to its logical conclusion, the Austrian school was transformed into an academy of pa.s.sivity and evasiveness, because of a vulgar historical and conservative school, and reduced its work to explaining and justifying, not guiding and overthrowing. It lowered itself to the position of a hand-maid to the current demands of parliamentarism and opportunism, replaced dialectic by swindling sophistries, and, in the end, in spite of its great play with ritual revolutionary phraseology, became transformed into the most secure b.u.t.tress of the capitalist State, together with the altar and throne that rose above it. If the latter was engulfed in the abyss, no blame for this can be laid upon the Austro-Marxian school.

What characterizes Austro-Marxism is repulsion and fear in the face of revolutionary action. The Austro-Marxist is capable of displaying a perfect gulf of profundity in the explanation of yesterday, and considerable daring in prophesying concerning to-morrow--but for to-day he never has a great thought or capacity for great action.

To-day for him always disappears before the wave of little opportunist worries, which later are explained as the most inevitable link between the past and the future.

The Austro-Marxist is inexhaustible when it is a question of discovering reasons to prevent initiative and render difficult revolutionary action. Austro-Marxism is a learned and boastful theory of pa.s.sivity and capitulation. Naturally, it is not by accident that it was just in Austria, in that Babylon torn by fruitless national antagonisms, in that State which represented the personified impossibility to exist and develop, that there arose and was consolidated the pseudo-Marxian philosophy of the impossibility of revolutionary action.

The foremost Austrian Marxists represent, each in his own way, a certain "individuality." On various questions they more than once did not see eye to eye. They even had political differences. But in general they are fingers of the same hand.

_Karl Renner_ is the most pompous, solid, and conceited representative of this type. The gift of literary imitation, or, more simply, of stylist forgery, is granted to him to an exceptional extent. His May Day article represented a charming combination of the most revolutionary words. And, as both words and their combinations live, within certain limits, with their own independent life, Renner's articles awakened in the hearts of many workers a revolutionary fire which their author apparently never knew. The tinsel of Austro-Viennese culture, the chase of the external, of t.i.tle of rank, was more characteristic of Renner than of his other colleagues. In essence he always remained merely an imperial and royal officer, who commanded Marxist phraseology to perfection.

The transformation of the author of the jubilee article on Karl Marx, famous for its revolutionary pathos, into a comic-opera-Chancellor, who expresses his feelings of respect and thanks to the Scandinavian monarchs, is in reality one of the most instructive paradoxes of history.

_Otto Bauer_ is more learned and prosaic, more serious and more boring, than Renner. He cannot be denied the capacity to read books, collect facts, and draw conclusions adapted to the tasks imposed upon him by practical politics, which in turn are guided by others. Bauer has no political will. His chief art is to reply to all acute practical questions by commonplaces. His political thought always lives a parallel life to his will--it is deprived of all courage. His words are always merely the scientific compilation of the talented student of a University seminar. The most disgraceful actions of Austrian opportunism, the meanest servility before the power of the possessing cla.s.ses on the part of the Austro-German Social-Democracy, found in Bauer their grave elucidator, who sometimes expressed himself with dignity against the form, but always agreed in the essence. If it ever occurred to Bauer to display anything like temperament and political energy, it was exclusively in the struggle against the revolutionary wing--in the acc.u.mulation of arguments, facts, quotations, _against_ revolutionary action. His highest period was that (after 1907) in which, being as yet too young to be a deputy, he played the part of secretary of the Social-Democratic group, supplied it with materials, figures, subst.i.tutes for ideas, instructed it, drew up memoranda, and appeared almost to be the inspirer of great actions, when in reality he was only supplying subst.i.tutes, and adulterated subst.i.tutes, for the parliamentary opportunists.

_Max Adler_ represents a fairly ingenuous variety of the Austro-Marxian type. He is a lyric poet, a philosopher, a mystic--a philosophical lyric poet of pa.s.sivity, as Renner is its publicist and legal expert, as Hilferding is its economist, as Bauer is its sociologist. Max Adler is cramped in a world of three dimensions, although he had found a very comfortable place for himself with the framework of Viennese bourgeois Socialism and the Hapsburg State. The combination of the petty business activity of an attorney and of political humiliation, together with barren philosophical efforts and the cheap tinsel flowers of idealism, have imbued that variety which Max Adler represented with a sickening and repulsive quality.

_Rudolf Hilferding_, a Viennese like the rest, entered the German Social-Democratic Party almost as a mutineer, but as a mutineer of the Austrian stamp, _i.e._, always ready to capitulate without a fight.

Hilferding took the external mobility and bustle of the Austrian policy which brought him up for revolutionary initiative; and for a round dozen of months he demanded--true, in the most moderate terms--a more intelligent policy on the part of the leaders of the German Social-Democracy. But the Austro-Viennese bustle swiftly disappeared from his own nature. He soon became subjected to the mechanical rhythm of Berlin and the automatic spiritual life of the German Social-Democracy. He devoted his intellectual energy to the purely theoretical sphere, where he did not say a great deal, true--no Austro-Marxist has ever said a great deal in any sphere--but in which he did, at any rate, write a serious book. With this book on his back, like a porter with a heavy load, he entered the revolutionary epoch.

But the most scientific book cannot replace the absence of will, of initiative, of revolutionary instinct and political decision, without which action is inconceivable. A doctor by training, Hilferding is inclined to sobriety, and, in spite of his theoretical education, he represents the most primitive type of empiricist in questions of policy. The chief problem of to-day is for him not to leave the lines laid down for him by yesterday, and to find for this conservative and bourgeois apathy a scientific, economic explanation.

_Friedrich Adler_ is the most balanced representative of the Austro-Marxian type. He has inherited from his father the latter's political temperament. In the petty exhausting struggle with the disorder of Austrian conditions, Friedrich Adler allowed his ironical scepticism finally to destroy the revolutionary foundations of his world outlook. The temperament inherited from his father more than once drove him into opposition to the school created by his father. At certain moments Friedrich Adler might seem the very revolutionary negation of the Austrian school. In reality, he was and remains its necessary coping-stone. His explosive revolutionism foreshadowed acute attacks of despair amidst Austrian opportunism, which from time to time became terrified at its own insignificance.

Friedrich Adler is a sceptic from head to foot: he does not believe in the ma.s.ses, or in their capacity for action. At the time when Karl Liebknecht, in the hour of supreme triumph of German militarism, went out to the Potsdamerplatz to call the oppressed ma.s.ses to the open struggle, Friedrich Adler went into a bourgeois restaurant to a.s.sa.s.sinate there the Austrian Premier. By his solitary shot, Friedrich Adler vainly attempted to put an end to his own scepticism.

After that hysterical strain, he fell into still more complete prostration.