The question, shamelessly muddled by Kautsky, actually presents itself in the following form.

If we do not mock common sense and history, then it is clear that one cannot speak of "pure democracy" so long as different classes exist, but can speak only of class democracy. (In parentheses, let it be said that "pure democracy" is not only an ignorant phrase revealing a lack of understanding both of the class struggle and of the essence of the state, but also thrice an empty phrase, for in communist society democracy will, gradually becoming a habit, die away, but will never be "pure" democracy.)

"Pure democracy" is a deceitful phrase of the liberal, deceiving the workers. History knows bourgeois democracy, which comes in place of feudalism, and proletarian democracy, which comes in place of bourgeois democracy.

If Kautsky devotes nearly dozens of pages to "proving" the truth that bourgeois democracy is progressive compared with the Middle Ages and that the proletariat must necessarily use it in its struggle against the bourgeoisie, then this is precisely liberal chatter deceiving the workers. Not only in educated Germany, but also in uneducated Russia this is a truism. Kautsky simply throws "learned" dust in the workers' eyes, recounting with solemn mien and Weitling and Jesuits in Paraguay, and much else besides, in order to evade the bourgeois essence of contemporary, that is, capitalist, democracy.

Kautsky takes from Marxism what is acceptable to liberals, to the bourgeoisie (criticism of the Middle Ages, the progressive historical role of capitalism in general and capitalist democracy in particular), and discards, passes over in silence, glosses over in Marxism what is unacceptable to the bourgeoisie (the revolutionary violence of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie for its destruction). This is precisely why Kautsky proves to be inevitably, by virtue of his objective position and whatever his subjective conviction may be, a lackey of the bourgeoisie.

Bourgeois democracy, being a great historical advance compared with the Middle Ages, always remains – and under capitalism cannot fail to remain – narrow, mutilated, false, hypocritical, a paradise for the rich, a snare and deception for the exploited, for the poor. This very truth, constituting an essential component part of Marxist doctrine, the "Marxist" Kautsky has not understood. On this – cardinal – question Kautsky presents "pleasantries" for the bourgeoisie instead of a scientific critique of those conditions which make every bourgeois democracy a democracy for the rich.

Let us first remind the most learned Mr. Kautsky of those theoretical statements of Marx and Engels which our pedant shamefully "forgot" (to please the bourgeoisie), and then clarify the matter in the most popular fashion.

Not only ancient and feudal, but also "the modern representative state is an instrument of the exploitation of wage labour by capital" (Engels in his work on the state){106}. "Since the state is only a transitory institution which one has to use in the struggle, in the revolution, to suppress one's enemies by force, it is pure nonsense to speak of a free people's state: as long as the proletariat still needs the state, it does not need it in the interest of freedom but in the interest of suppressing its opponents, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom, the state as such ceases to exist" (Engels in his letter to Bebel of 28. III. 1875){107}. "The state is nothing but a machine for the suppression of one class by another, and in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy" (Engels in the preface to Marx's "The Civil War in France"){108}. Universal suffrage is "an index of the maturity of the working class. It cannot and never will give more than that in the present state" (Engels in his work on the state){109}. Mr. Kautsky chews over extraordinarily tediously the first part of this proposition, acceptable to the bourgeoisie. But the second part, which we have underlined and which is unacceptable to the bourgeoisie, the renegade Kautsky passes over in silence!). "The Commune was to be a working corporation, both legislative and executive at the same time… Instead of every three or six years deciding which members of the ruling class should misrepresent the people in parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people constituted in Communes, as individual suffrage serves every other employer to find workers, foremen, and bookkeepers for his business… Instead of universal suffrage being a chimera under the existing state of affairs, it would become a reality for the first time" (Marx in his work on the Paris Commune, "The Civil War in France"){110}.

Each of these propositions, perfectly well known to the most learned Mr. Kautsky, strikes him in the face, exposes all his renegacy. In all of Kautsky's pamphlet there is not a shred of understanding of these truths. All the content of his pamphlet is mockery of Marxism!

Take the fundamental laws of modern states, take their administration, take freedom of assembly or the press, take "the equality of citizens before the law," – and you will see at every step the all-too-familiar hypocrisy of bourgeois democracy, familiar to every honest and conscious worker. There is not a single, not even the most democratic state, which does not have loopholes or qualifications in its constitutions ensuring the bourgeoisie the possibility of moving troops against the workers, introducing martial law, etc., "in case of disturbance of order" – in reality, in case of "disturbance" of the exploited class's servile position and attempts to behave not as slaves. Kautsky shamelessly embellishes bourgeois democracy, passing over in silence, for example, what the most democratic and republican bourgeois do in America or Switzerland against striking workers.

Oh, wise and learned Kautsky is silent on this! This learned political figure does not understand that silence on this is base. He prefers to tell the workers children's tales such as that democracy means "protection of the minority." Incredible, but true! In the year 1918 of the Christian era, in the fifth year of the worldwide imperialist carnage and the throttling of internationalist minorities (that is, those who have not basely betrayed socialism, like Renaudels and Longuets, like Scheidemanns and Kautskys, like Hendersons and Webbs and so forth) in all the "democracies" of the world, Mr. learned Kautsky in dulcet, dulcet tones sings hymns to the "protection of the minority." Those who wish may read this on page 15 of Kautsky's pamphlet. And on page 16 this learned… individual will regale you with tales of the Whigs and Tories{111} in eighteenth-century England!

Oh, learning! Oh, refined lackey service before the bourgeoisie! Oh, civilized manner of crawling on one's belly before the capitalists and licking their boots! If I were Krupp or Scheidemann, or Clemenceau, or Renaudel, I would begin to pay Mr. Kautsky millions, reward him with Judas kisses, extol him before the workers, recommend "unity of socialism" with such "respected" people as Kautsky. To write pamphlets against the dictatorship of the proletariat, to recount tales of the Whigs and Tories in eighteenth-century England, to assure that democracy means "protection of the minority," and to pass over in silence the pogroms against internationalists in the "democratic" American republic – is this not lackey service to the bourgeoisie?

The learned Mr. Kautsky "forgot" – probably accidentally forgot… – a "trifle," namely: that protection of the minority is given by the ruling party of bourgeois democracy only to another bourgeois party; to the proletariat, on every serious, deep, fundamental question, instead of "protection of the minority" comes martial law or pogroms. The more developed democracy is, the more it tends, whenever a deep political disagreement dangerous to the bourgeoisie arises, toward pogrom or civil war. This "law" of bourgeois democracy the learned Mr. Kautsky could have observed in practice in the Dreyfus affair{112} in the republican France, in the lynching of Negroes and internationalists in the democratic American republic, in the example of Ireland and Ulster in democratic England{113}, in the persecution of Bolsheviks and the organization of pogroms against them in April 1917 in the democratic Russian republic. I deliberately take examples not only from the time of war, but also from before the war, from peaceful times. The saccharine Mr. Kautsky prefers to close his eyes to these facts of the twentieth century and instead regales the workers with remarkably novel, strikingly interesting, extraordinarily instructive, incredibly important tales about the Whigs and Tories in eighteenth-century England.

Take the bourgeois parliament. Can it be supposed that the learned Kautsky has never heard how the stock exchange and bankers all the more subjugate bourgeois parliaments the more strongly democracy is developed? From this it does not follow that bourgeois parliamentarism should not be used (and the Bolsheviks used it as successfully as scarcely any other party in the world, for in 1912–1914 we conquered the entire workers' curia in the Fourth Duma). But from this it does follow that only a liberal can forget the historical limitations and conditionality of bourgeois parliamentarism, as Kautsky forgets about it. At every turn in even the most democratic bourgeois state the oppressed masses encounter a glaring contradiction between the formal equality which capitalist "democracy" proclaims and thousands of actual restrictions and stratagems making the proletarians hired slaves. It is precisely this contradiction that opens the eyes of the masses to the rottenness, falsity, hypocrisy of capitalism. It is precisely this contradiction that propagandists and agitators of socialism constantly expose before the masses to prepare them for revolution! And when the era of revolutions began, Kautsky turned his back on it and began to sing the praises of the charms of dying bourgeois democracy.

Proletarian democracy, one of whose forms is Soviet power, has given unprecedented development and expansion of democracy precisely for a gigantic majority of the population, for the exploited and toiling masses. To write a whole book about democracy, as Kautsky has done, speaking on two pages about dictatorship and on dozens of pages about "pure democracy," and not to notice this – this means to distort the matter in a liberal fashion completely.

Take foreign policy. In not one, not even the most democratic, bourgeois country is it conducted openly. Everywhere there is deception of the masses, in democratic France, Switzerland, America, and England a hundredfold broader and more refined than in other countries. Soviet power revolutionarily tore away the veil of secrecy from foreign policy. Kautsky did not notice this, he is silent about it, although in an epoch of predatory wars and secret treaties on the "division of spheres of influence" (that is, on the division of the world among robber capitalists) this has cardinal significance, for on it depends the question of peace, the question of life and death for tens of millions of people.

Take the structure of the state. Kautsky seizes upon "trifles" down to the point that the elections are "indirect" (in the Soviet constitution), but does not see the essence of the matter. The class essence of the state apparatus, of the state machine, he does not notice. In bourgeois democracy capitalists by thousands of tricks – all the more artful and effectively working the more developed "pure" democracy is – push the masses away from participation in administration, from freedom of assembly and the press, etc. Soviet power was the first in the world (strictly speaking, the second, for the Paris Commune began to do the same thing) to draw the masses, precisely the exploited masses, into administration. Participation in bourgeois parliament (which never decides the most serious questions in bourgeois democracy: they are decided by the stock exchange, the banks) is barred from the toiling masses by thousands of barriers, and the workers magnificently know and feel, see and touch, that the bourgeois parliament is an alien institution, an instrument for the oppression of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie, the institution of a hostile, exploiting minority class.

The Soviets are the direct organization of the toiling and exploited masses themselves, facilitating for them the possibility of arranging the state themselves and administering it in every way possible. It is precisely the vanguard of the toiling and exploited – the urban proletariat – which receives the advantage in this, that it is best unified by large-scale enterprises; it is easiest for it to elect and supervise the elected. Automatically the Soviet organization facilitates the unification of all the toiling and exploited around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old bourgeois apparatus – officialdom, the privileges of wealth, of bourgeois education, of connections, etc. (these actual privileges are all the more diverse the more developed bourgeois democracy is) – all this falls away with Soviet organization. Freedom of the press ceases to be hypocrisy, for printing presses and paper are taken from the bourgeoisie. The same with the best buildings, palaces, mansions, landowner houses. Soviet power took from the exploiters at once many thousands of these best buildings and in this way made the right of assembly for the masses a million times more "democratic" – that right of assembly without which democracy is deception. Indirect elections to non-local, non-territorial Soviets facilitate congresses of Soviets, make the whole apparatus cheaper, more mobile, more accessible to workers and peasants at a time when life is seething and requires especially the possibility to speedily recall one's local deputy or send him to the general congress of Soviets.

Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.

Only either a conscious servant of the bourgeoisie or a man completely politically dead, unable to see living life through the dusty bourgeois books, utterly saturated with bourgeois-democratic prejudices and thereby transforming himself, objectively, into a lackey of the bourgeoisie – only such a man could fail to notice this.

Only a man who is incapable of posing the question from the point of view of the oppressed classes could fail to notice it: is there a single country among the most democratic bourgeois countries in which the average, rank-and-file worker, the average, rank-and-file farm laborer or rural semi-proletarian in general (that is, a representative of the oppressed masses, the enormous majority of the population) has enjoyed anything like such freedom to arrange assemblies in the best buildings, such freedom to have for the expression of his ideas, for the defense of his interests the largest printing presses and best supplies of paper, such freedom to put forward precisely people of his own class to administer the state and to "arrange" the state, as in Soviet Russia?

It is laughable even to think that Mr. Kautsky would find in any country even one in a thousand informed workers and farm laborers who would doubt the answer to this question. Instinctively, hearing snatches of truthful admissions from the bourgeois press, workers throughout the world sympathize with the Soviet republic precisely because they see in it proletarian democracy, democracy for the poor, and not democracy for the rich, which is what every, even the best, bourgeois democracy actually is.

We are governed (and our state is "arranged") by bourgeois officials, bourgeois parliamentarians, bourgeois judges. Here is a simple, obvious, indisputable truth, which people know from their life experience, which tens and hundreds of millions of people from the oppressed classes in all bourgeois countries, including even the most democratic ones, feel and touch daily.

But in Russia they completely smashed the bureaucratic apparatus, did not leave one stone upon another, drove out all the old judges, dispersed the bourgeois parliament – and gave far more accessible representation precisely to workers and peasants, replaced officials with their Soviets, or placed their Soviets over officials, made their Soviets into electors of judges. This fact alone is sufficient for all oppressed classes to recognize Soviet power, that is, this form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, as a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.

Kautsky does not understand this truth, comprehensible and obvious to every worker, because he "forgot," "unlearned" to pose the question: democracy for which class? He reasons from the point of view of "pure" (that is, classless? or above-class?) democracy. He argues like Shylock: "a pound of flesh," nothing more. Equality of all citizens – otherwise there is no democracy.

The learned Kautsky, "Marxist" and "socialist" Kautsky, is forced to pose the question: can there be equality of the exploited with the exploiter?

It is monstrous, it is incredible, that one must pose such a question when discussing a book by the ideological leader of the Second International. But "he who has taken up the task must not say he is not strong enough for it." Having undertaken to write about Kautsky, one must explain to the learned man why there cannot be equality of the exploiter with the exploited.