The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky
Publisher’s Introduction (1920)
Section summary
The Detroit publisher’s introduction to the 1920 American reprint presents the book to American workers as a handbook of working-class tactics. It hails the Russian workers’ revolution, condemns the “pseudo Marxism” of Kautsky and his American counterparts, and quotes two passages: one on the treachery of confining the proletariat to bourgeois democracy, one on why the exploiters cannot be expropriated at one blow.
The Russian Workers millions strong are writing a new page of human history. Fired by the mission of human emancipation from the thraldom of despotism and Bourgeois slavery, this lowest layer of class rent society is demonstrating by its singleness of purpose, its devotion and heroic sacrifice that it has attained maturity. The Russian working class, by its collective intelligence, co-operation and valor, is challenging the world. It invites all, particularly the workers of all other countries, to serious study, so that the light shed upon human evolution may illuminate the field of the class struggle in which they must participate.
By permission of the English publishers, we herewith make available to the American workers “The Proletarian Revolution,” by N. Lenin. The author in his masterly way has given to the world Socialist dialectics, that fuse completely, theory and practice, as dictated by the inexorable law of working class interests.
In exposing and annihilating, the pseudo Marxism of the Kautsky and his type, by the facts and figures of the Russian revolution, a service is rendered to the working class of the world. The time of lip service to the proletarian cause is past, henceforth action must square with words. The renegade and misinformer is abroad in America, more perhaps than elsewhere. To shorten the period of mischief and harm to the progress of sound revolutionary education, and organization, the widest circulation of this compendium of working class tactics, “The Proletarian Revolution” is needed.
“And although the preparatory work for the proletarian revolution, the formation and drilling of the proletarian army, was possible and necessary within the framework of the bourgeois democratic state, yet, once we have come up to the decisive issue, to the final battles, it is treachery to the working class to try to confine the proletariat to this frame work.” Page 43, P. R.
“It is impossible to expropriate at one blow all the landlords and capitalists of a large country. In addition, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not by far settle the matter, since it is necessary practically to replace the landlords and capitalists, to substitute for theirs another, a working class, management of the factories and estates.” Page 32, P. R.
Knowledge is power. No worker can afford to be without the information contained in this book. Read and study it.