V. I.

Lenin

Plekhanov’s Yedinstvo (which even the
Socialist-Revolutionary Dyelo Naroda justly calls a newspaper at one with the liberal bourgeoisie) has recently
recalled the law of the French Republic of 1793 relating to
enemies of the people.

A very timely recollection.

The
Jacobins of 1793 belonged to the most revolutionary class of the
eighteenth century, the town and country poor. It was against
this class, which had in fact (and not just in words) done away
with its monarch, its landowners and its moderate bourgeoisie by
the most revolutionary measures, including the guillotine—against this truly revolutionary class of the eighteenth
century—that the monarchs of Europe combined to wage war.

The Jacobins proclaimed enemies of the people those "promoting
the schemes of the allied tyrants directed against the
Republic".

The Jacobins’ example is instructive. It has not become obsolete
to this day, except that it must be applied to the revolutionary
class of the twentieth century, to the workers and semi-proletarians. To this class, the enemies of the people in
the twentieth century are not the monarchs, but the landowners
and capitalists as a class.

If the “Jacobins” of the twentieth century, the workers and
semi-proletarians, assumed power, they would proclaim enemies of
the people the capitalists who are making thou sands of millions
in profits from the imperialist war, that is, a war for
the division of capitalist spoils and profits.

The “Jacobins” of the twentieth century would not guillotine the
capitalists—to follow a good example does not mean copying
it. It would be enough to arrest fifty to a hundred financial
magnates and bigwigs, the chief knights of embezzlement and of
robbery by the banks. It would be enough to arrest them for a
few weeks to expose their frauds and show all exploited
people "who needs the war". Upon exposing the frauds of the
banking barons, we could release them, placing the banks, the
capitalist syndicates, and all the contractors “working” for the
government under workers’ control.

The Jacobins of 1793 have gone down in history for their great
example of a truly revolutionary struggle against the class of the exploiters by the class of the working people and the oppressed who had taken all state power into their
own hands.

The miserable Yedinstvo (with which the Menshevik defencists were ashamed to form a bloc) wants to borrow
Jacobinism in letter and not in spirit, its exterior trappings
and not the content of its policy. This amounts in effect to a
betrayal of the revolution of the twentieth century, a betrayal
disguised by spurious reference to the revolutionaries of the
eighteenth century.

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