# Date: 1917-02

cf. Engels on revolution in Anti-Dühring!!
This is what they have debased Marxism to!!
Kautsky in his book against Bernstein also bypassed the question, stating:
«Die Entscheidung über das Problem der proletarischen Diktatur können wir wohl ganz ruhig der Zukunft überlassen» (S. 172). Pearl! Ha-ha-ha!! «Ganz ruhig»!! One can hardly cope with Messrs. de Junkers, Rockefellers, etc., without a dictatorship, but I don't want to «schwören» that the class rule of the proletariat will take on «Formen klassischer Diktatur». But democracy will not eliminate the need for the class rule of the proletariat. (S. 172).
I am for the dictatorship of the proletariat, but I don't want to insist on it and analyze it. Neither for nor against!!!!
S. 180: we supposedly don't know either when or how the proletariat will obtain political power, in one crash, in a series of catastrophes, or in gradual development... but we supposedly are the «party of social revolution»..........
Regarding Bernstein's reference to Marx's words that the working class cannot simply seize the ready-made state apparatus, Karl Kautsky quotes a — β (see above, p. 33 in this notebook) and limits himself to this (S. 22)**. Supposedly, you cannot simply and ready-made, but you can in general!
K. MARX: «REVOLUTION UND KONTRE-REVOLUTION IN DEUTSCHLAND».
STUTTGART, 1907. 2 AUFLAGE.
S. 117: «Nun ist der Aufstand eine Kunst ebenso wie der Krieg oder andere Künste, und gewissen Regeln unterworfen, deren Vernachlässigung zum Verderben der Partei führt, die sich ihrer schuldig macht. Diese Regeln, logische Folgerungen aus dem Wesen der Parteien und der Verhältnisse, mit denen man in solchem Falle zu tun hat, sind so klar und einfach, dass die kurze Erfahrung von 1848 die Deutschen ziemlich bekannt mit ihnen gemacht hatte. Erstens darf man nie mit dem Aufstand spielen, wenn man nicht entschlossen ist, allen Konsequenzen des Spiels Trotz zu bieten. Der Aufstand ist eine Rechnung mit höchst unbestimmten Größen, deren Wert sich jeden Tag ändern kann; die Streitkräfte, gegen die man zu kämpfen hat, haben den Vorteil der Organisation, Disziplin und der herkömmlichen Autorität ganz auf ihrer Seite; kann man nicht grosse Gegengewichte dagegen aufbringen, so wird man geschlagen und vernichtet. Zweitens, ist der Aufstand einmal begonnen, dann handle man mit der grössten Entschiedenheit und ergreife die Offensive. Die Defensive ist der Tod jeder bewaffneten Erhebung; diese ist verloren, ehe sie sich noch mit dem Feinde gemessen hat. Überrasche die Gegner, so lange ihre Truppen zerstreut sind, sorge täglich für neue, wenn auch kleine Erfolge; halte das moralische Übergewicht fest, das die erste erfolgreiche Erhebung dir gebracht; ziehe jene schwankenden Elemente an dich, die immer dem stärksten Anstoß folgen und sich immer auf die sicherere Seite schlagen; zwinge deine Feinde zum Rückzug, bevor sie ihre Kräfte gegen dich zusammenfassen können; kurz, nach den Worten Dantons, des grössten bisher bekannten Meisters revolutionärer Taktik: de l’audace, de l’audace, encore de l’audace!» (118).

K. MARX: «REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN GERMANY» 385
'The consequences of the essence of the parties and the circumstances with which one has to deal in such a case are so clear and simple that the short experience of 1848 familiarized the Germans quite well with them. Firstly, one should never play at insurrection unless one is resolved in advance to reckon with all the consequences of this game. Insurrection is a calculation with very indefinite quantities, the value of which can change every day; the combat forces against which one has to fight have entirely on their side the advantages of organization, discipline and established authority; if it is impossible to oppose significant forces to them, then the insurgents will be defeated and destroyed. Secondly, once an insurrection has begun, one must act with the greatest determination and go on the offensive. Defense is the death of any armed insurrection; it perishes before it manages to measure its strength against the enemy. Seize the enemies by surprise while their troops are scattered; strive daily for new, even small successes; firmly retain the moral advantage that the first successful battle has given you; attract to yourself those shaky elements that always follow in the direction of the strongest push and always fight on the safer side; force the enemies to retreat before they manage to gather their forces against you; in short, follow the precept of Danton — the greatest of the hitherto known masters of revolutionary tactics: "courage, courage and still more courage!"' (118).
Lenin Miscellany XIV.
2з

1 The quote is taken from a letter from M. Bakunin to Palix, written by him upon his departure from Lyon on September 29, 1870 (Lenin mistakenly marks this letter as being from October). Palix was a French socialist, Bakunin's landlord, a tailor by profession. The letter was seized from him during his arrest in October 1870 and was first partially published by Oscar Testut in 1812 in the second volume of his book: "L'Internationale et le Jacobinisme au ban de l'Europe" ("The Banishment of the International and Jacobinism from Europe"), p. 280. Lenin quotes Bakunin's letter from Yu. Steklov's book: "Michael Bakunin. Ein Lebensbild." Stuttgart, 1913 ("Mikhail Bakunin. A Biography." Stuttgart, 1913), p. 113.
2 The third German edition of Marx's "The Eighteenth Brumaire" was published in 1885. Engels' preface to this edition is not dated, but it was undoubtedly written in the same year, 1885, as evidenced by the first sentence of the preface concerning the publication of the 3rd edition of "The Eighteenth Brumaire" 33 years after its first appearance in print (the first edition was published in 1852).
3 Engels' letter to Kautsky of June 29, 1891, regarding the sending of criticism of the draft Erfurt Program, was published in "Letters" by K. Marx and F. Engels, translated by V. V. Adoratsky, 3rd ed., M. 1928, p. 274. This criticism by Engels was first published by Kautsky in the "Neue Zeit" in 1901, 10 years after it was sent by Engels. In Russian, the criticism was printed in the brochure "Marx and Engels on the Program and Tactics of Social Democracy." Compiled by G. Dunker, Russian translation edited by A. A. Sanin, Leningrad, 1930 (German ed. Berlin, 1928).
The draft Erfurt Program, compiled by the Central Committee of the German Social-Democratic Party and criticized by Engels, was not adopted at the party congress in Erfurt. In a letter to Sorge dated October 24, 1891, Engels writes: "Kautsky's draft program, supported by me and Bebel, has been taken as the basis (Engels' italics) of the program, as its theoretical part. We have had the satisfaction that Marx's criticism has had its full effect" ("Letters of K. Marx, F. Engels and others to F. Sorge and others", St. Petersburg, 1908, p. 373).
4 This refers to Engels' letter to the editorial board of the "Saxon Workers' Newspaper," dated September 7, 1890, and published at Engels' request in "Sozialdemokrat" on September 13, 1890, under the title "Eine Antwort" ("An Answer"). The "Saxon Workers' Newspaper" was one of the organs of the "young" – the "left" opposition, which had slid into anarchism in its struggle against the "petty-bourgeois-parliamentary" trend in the German Social-Democratic Party. (For more details on the "young," see note 75 to Lenin's Collected Works, Vol. IX, pp. 510-512.) Engels' answer was prompted by the "farewell word" of the outgoing editorial board, published in No. 105 of the "Saxon Workers' Newspaper" of August 31, 1890, in which the editorial board wrote that "it hopes, together with Fr. Engels, that just as Lassalle's naive state socialism was overcome in its time, so too will the careerist parliamentary trend in modern social democracy soon be overcome by the common sense of the German workers."
In his "Answer," Engels sharply distanced himself from the position of the "young," referring to their attempt to present him as "in solidarity with the leaps of these gentlemen" as "colossal impudence," and applying to their "convulsively distorted Marxism" the words of Marx, spoken by him in the late seventies regarding the "Marxism" that was widespread among a certain part of the French: "I only know one thing, that I am not a Marxist."
6 In paragraph 3, Chapter II of the brochure "The State and Revolution," added by Lenin to the second edition of this brochure (December 1918), an excerpt is given from Marx's letter to Weidemeyer of March 5, 1852, in which Marx says that "class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat" (Collected Works, Vol. XXI, p. 392).
6 This refers to Engels' letters to E. Bernstein, excerpts from which were published by Bernstein first in "Mouvement Socialiste" No. 45 (November 1, 1900) under the general title "Lettres inédites de Frédéric Engels sur la politique socialiste" ("Unpublished Letters of Friedrich Engels on Socialist Politics"), and then in "Vorwärts'e" of November 28 and 29, 1900, under the title "Aus Briefen von Friedrich Engels." ("From the Letters of Friedrich Engels.") The excerpts from the letters were selected by Bernstein so tendentiously that they created a completely incorrect idea of Engels' attitude towards J. Guesde and P. Lafargue. This forced Lafargue to publish in response excerpts from Engels' letters to him "Quelques lettres d’Engels", "Le Socialiste", 24 novembre 1900 ("Some Letters of Engels", "The Socialist", November 24, 1900). In the "Neue Zeit" (XIX Jahrgang. Band I, No. 14) these letters are placed in translation and with a preface by Clara Zetkin.
Engels' letters to Bernstein were fully published only in 1924 by D. Ryazanov ("Archive of K. Marx and F. Engels" book 1, pp. 287-398) and after that were published by Bernstein as a separate book.
7 This refers to Engels' introduction to the second edition of K. Marx's "The Class Struggles in France." In the excerpt from Engels' letter to Lafargue of April 3, 1895, quoted here by Lenin, as well as in Engels' letter to him of April 1, 1895, published by Kautsky in the brochure "Der Weg zur Macht" ("The Road to Power"), reference is made to an article in the "Vorwärts’e": "Wie man heute Revolution macht" ("How Revolution is Made Today"). In this article, excerpts from Engels' "Introduction" were specially selected, according to Kautsky, "with the aim of influencing the work of the parliamentary commission, which was discussing the bill on 'subversives' in such a way that the impression was indeed created in the spirit of later revisionists ("The Road to Power", p. 51 2nd German ed.).
The story of the distortion of Engels' "Introduction" and its use by Bernstein and other opportunists to create the fable that Engels at the end of his life renounced his previous revolutionary views, is described by D. Ryazanov in the note "Engels' Introduction to 'The Class Struggles in France'" ("Archive of K. Marx and F. Engels", book 1, M. 1929, pp. 257 - 261). Kautsky devoted a number of articles in the "Neue Zeit" to exposing this attempt to present Engels as "a compliant admirer of legality at all costs": "Der charakterlose Engels" ("The Characterless Engels") - "Neue Zeit" No. 39, XXVII, 2, c. 414 - 416, "Bernstein und die Dialektik" ("Bernstein and Dialectics") - "Neue Zeit", No. 28, XVII, 2, pp. 36 - 50, "Einige Feststellungen über Marx und Engels" ("Some Facts Concerning Marx and Engels") - "Neue Zeit", No. 1, XXVII, 1. pp. 5-7.
8 The quote is taken from one of the variants of Heine's "Confessions," which was not included in the complete collection of Heine's works and is only given in the commentaries to vol. IV (pp. 147-149) and vol. VI (p. 536) of Heine's works in the German edition of the Leipzig Bibliographic Institute edited by Elster.
9 Marx's speech on free trade, which Lenin has in mind here, was to be delivered by him at the congress of economists, which took place in Brussels in September 1847. Due to the fact that he was denied the floor at this congress on the pretext that the number of registered speakers was already too large, Marx handed over to the presidium of the congress and the press a brief outline of his speech in French. This outline was published in a Belgian journal and reprinted by Weidemeyer in 1848 together with another speech by Marx on the same topic, in a brochure entitled "Zwei Reden über die Freihandels- und Schutzzollfrage von Karl Marx, aus dem Französischen übersetzt. 1848" ("Two Speeches by Marx on the Issue of Free Trade and Protective Duties, translated from the French. 1848"). In the "Neue Zeit," this speech by Marx is given only in the part relating to protectionists.
10 Lenin has in mind the following passage from A. Bebel's brochure "Unsere Ziele" ("Our Goals") p. 44: "I recommend to the "Demokratischen Korrespondenz" to study the above-mentioned work [K. Marx's "Capital." Ed.], I also recommend the works of the same author: "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy", published in 1859 by F. Dunker in Berlin, "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte", published in 1852, 2nd edition 1870; further, "The Condition of the Working Class in England" by Friedrich Engels, Leipzig, 1844, the already cited work by Eckarius and the works of Lassalle, so often anathematized, in relation to whom I once committed a great injustice."
This refers to E. Bernstein's book "Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie" ("The Prerequisites of Socialism and the Tasks of Social Democracy"), Stuttgart, 1899. [See Bernstein's objections mentioned by Lenin on p. 137.
11 The articles: Marx's "L’indifferenza in materia politica" ("Political Indifferentism") and Engels' "Dell’ Autorità" ("On the Authoritarian Principle") were originally printed in the Italian collection "Almanacco Republicano per l’anno 1874". Lodi, 1873. ("Republican Almanac for 1874").
12 The quote from Engels' "Anti-Dühring" on the significance of violent revolution is given by Lenin in the brochure "The State and Revolution" (Collected Works, Vol. XXI, p. 382).
This refers to the article by K. Kautsky: "Ein Sozialdemokratischer Katechismus" ("A Social-Democratic Catechism") in "Neue Zeit" No. 12 and 13, XII, 1, 1893-1894, pp. 361-369 and 402-410. In the brochure "The Road to Power" Kautsky gives a long excerpt from this article, directed against the anarchists, in which, among other things, he writes: "Here it is necessary to point out the harm that the anarchists caused to the International and the revolutionary uprising in Spain in 1873. Five years after this uprising, there was an attack of universal madness, caused by the assassination attempts of Hoedel and Nobiling; without these attempts, Bismarck would hardly have been able to pass the law against the socialists; this law would in no case have been applied as harshly as it was applied in the first years of its existence - the German proletariat would have been spared gigantic sacrifices, and its victorious march would not have slowed down for a single moment.
The next defeat suffered by the labor movement took place in Austria in 1884, as a result of the fraud and atrocities of Kammerer, Stellmacher and Co. The powerfully flourishing socialist movement was crushed there with one blow without any trace of resistance, being suppressed not by the authorities, but by the universal rage of the population, which blamed socialism for the actions of the named anarchists.
The next defeat occurred in America in 1886. The labor movement at that time was developing there quickly and powerfully... But then, in one of the numerous clashes between the police and workers that took place at that time, on May 4 in Chicago, bombs were thrown. It has not yet been established who was responsible for this... But this act corresponded to the tactics constantly preached by the anarchists, it gave vent to the rage of the entire American bourgeoisie, confused the workers, and discredited the social democrats, who were not able, and often did not want, to be distinguished from the anarchists." (K. Kautsky "The Road to Power", trans. from German edited by N. Meshcheryakov, M. Giz., 1923, p. 49.)
Lenin has in mind the following passage in Bernstein's "Prerequisites": "At the end of his life, Engels frankly admitted in the preface to "The Class Struggle" that Marx and he were mistaken in determining the duration of social and political development. It is difficult to assess the service rendered to the socialist movement by this work, which can rightly be called his political testament" (see above, note 7).