''Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky'' (German: ''Terrorismus und Kommunismus: Anti-Kautsky;'' Russian: ''Терроризм и Коммунизм)'' is a book by

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

Communist Party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...

leader

Leon Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian ...

. First published in

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

in August 1920, the short book was written against a criticism of the Russian Revolution, ''Dictatorship of the Proletariat'', published the previous year in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

by prominent Marxist

Karl Kautsky Karl Johann Kautsky (; ; 16 October 1854 – 17 October 1938) was a Czech-Austrian philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theorist. Kautsky was one of the most authoritative promulgators of orthodox Marxism after the death of Friedrich Engels i ...

. Trotsky's book, the first English edition of which bore the title ''The Defense of Terrorism,'' dismisses the notion of

parliamentary democracy A parliamentary system, or parliamentarian democracy, is a system of democratic governance of a state (or subordinate entity) where the executive derives its democratic legitimacy from its ability to command the support ("confidence") of the ...

to govern

Soviet Russia The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR or RSFSR ( rus, Российская Советская Федеративная Социалистическая Республика, Rossíyskaya Sovétskaya Federatívnaya Soci ...

and defends the use of force against opponents of the revolution by the

dictatorship of the proletariat In Marxist philosophy, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a condition in which the proletariat holds state power. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the intermediate stage between a capitalist economy and a communist economy, whereby the ...

History

Opening of the debate with Kautsky

Early in August 1918, mere months after the November 1917

Bolshevik Revolution The October Revolution,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was a key moment ...

which brought the

to power in Russia, European Marxist

published an oppositional political tract, '' The Dictatorship of the Proletariat'', which charged the Bolsheviks with fomenting

civil war A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

due to their failure to uphold the norms of universal suffrage. Kautsky's pamphlet, ''Die Diktatur des Proletariats'' (The Dictatorship of the Proletariat), asserted that the only way to control the growth of bureaucracy and

militarism Militarism is the belief or the desire of a government or a people that a state should maintain a strong military capability and to use it aggressively to expand national interests and/or values. It may also imply the glorification of the mili ...

and to defend the rights of political dissidents was through

based upon free elections and that

V. I. Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 19 ...

and his political associates had blundered badly by departing from democratic practice in favor of a restricted electorate and the use of extra-parliamentary force. The Bolsheviks had sought broad international support from socialists around the world with a view to the achievement of worldwide revolution on a comparatively short timetable and Kautsky's sharply critical book was regarded by Bolshevik Party leader Lenin as a rank betrayal of the Russian Revolution and a grave threat to the revolutionary socialist mission.Max Shachtman, "Foreword to the New Edition" in Leon Trotsky, ''Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky.'' Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1961; pg. vii. Countering the public opposition by the world-famous Marxist Kautsky was regarded as pivotal. Lenin was quick to respond to Kautsky's book with a bitter counterattack of his own, the short book ''

The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky ''The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky'' (most frequently published as ''The Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the Renegade Kautsky)'' is a work by Vladimir Lenin written in October and November 1918 defending the Bolsheviks agai ...

,'' written in October and November 1918. Lenin railed against Kautsky's pamphlet as the "most lucid example of that utter and ignominious bankruptcy of the

Second International The Second International (1889–1916) was an organisation of socialist and labour parties, formed on 14 July 1889 at two simultaneous Paris meetings in which delegations from twenty countries participated. The Second International continued th ...

about which honest socialists in all countries have been talking for a long time. He charged that Kautsky had stripped Marxism of its "revolutionary living spirit" by his rejection of "revolutionary methods of struggle," thereby turning

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

into "a common liberal." Quoting

Frederick Engels Friedrich Engels ( ,"Engels"
'' "Dictatorship is rule based directly upon force and unrestricted by any laws. "The revolutionary

is rule won and maintained by the use of violence by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws." Lenin rejected Kautsky's parliamentarian and legalistic interpretation of the ideas of Marx and Engels, contending that Kautsky knew well that the duo had "''repeatedly'' spoke about the dictatorship of the proletariat, before and especially after the

Paris Commune The Paris Commune (french: Commune de Paris, ) was a revolutionary government that seized power in Paris, the capital of France, from 18 March to 28 May 1871. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, the French National Guard had defended ...

" of 1871, and that Kautsky had intentionally made a "monstrous distortion of Marxism" to bolster his own moderate political ideas.

Kautsky's ''Terrorism and Communism''
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/h2>
Kautsky responded to Lenin's counterattack with a second pamphlet on the deteriorating political situation in Soviet Russia, a tract entitled ''Terrorismus und Kommunismus: Ein Beitrag zur Naturgeschichte der Revolution'' (Terrorism and Communism: A Contribution to the Natural History of the Revolution), completed in June 1919. With both Russia and Germany descending into chaos and civil war, Kautsky lamented "a world sinking under economic ruin and fratricidal murder," with Socialists fighting against Socialists in both countries "with similar cruelty to that practiced more than half a century ago by the Versailles butchers of the Commune." Kautsky sought to draw a historical parallel between the ongoing Russian Revolution and
Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...
with the
French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in coup of 18 Brumaire, November 1799. Many of its ...
and the Reign of Terror which followed, culminating in the overthrow of the revolution by the military dictatorship of
Napoleon Bonaparte Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader wh ...
. After expounding at length upon the dialectic of revolutionary violence in the historic French context, Kautsky turned his focus in the final section of ''Terrorism and Communism'' to "The Communists at Work." Kautsky contended that
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
had brutalized the working class and forced it backwards "both morally and intellectually." The social catastrophe of the war had brought about the Russian Revolution, Kautsky noted, leading to a collapse of the army and confiscation by the
peasant A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasant ...
ry of landed estates for division into individual plots of land. The Bolsheviks made calculated use of this elemental force, in Kautsky's view, "introducing anarchy in the country" in exchange for "a completely free hand in the towns in which they had already likewise won over the working classes." Mass
expropriation Nationalization (nationalisation in British English) is the process of transforming privately-owned assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to pri ...
of businesses followed, Kautsky charged, "without any attempt being made to discover whether their organisation on Socialist lines was possible." Success depended upon a "well-disciplined and highly intelligent working class," Kautsky contended, but instead the war had sapped both intelligence and discipline from the workers, leaving only "the most ignorant and most undeveloped sections of the working class in the wildest excitement." The result had been economic collapse. A new system of brutality had emerged, in Kautsky's view:
"The bourgeoisie...appears in the Soviet Republic as a special human species, whose characteristics are ineradicable. Just as a nigger remains a nigger, a Mongolian a Mongolian, whatever his appearance and however he may dress; so a bourgeois remains a bourgeois, even if he becomes a beggar, or lives by his work.... "The bourgeoisie are compelled to work, but they have not the right to choose the work that they understand, and which best corresponds to their abilities. On the contrary, they are forced to carry on the most filthy and most objectionable kind of labour. In return they receive not increased rations, but the very lowest, which scarce suffice to appease their hunger. Their food rations equal only a quarter of those of the soldiers, and of the workingmen who are employed in the factories run by the Soviet Republic.... From all this we perceive not a sign of any attempt to place the proletariat on a higher level, to work out a 'new and higher form of life,' but merely the thirst for vengeance on the part of the proletariat in its most primitive form."
Kautsky singled out Bolshevik leader
Leon Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian ...
for specific criticism, upbraiding him for having seized power despite an admitted foreknowledge that the Russian working class and the revolutionary intelligentsia acting in its name had lacked "the necessary organisation, the necessary discipline, and the necessary historical education" to successfully establish a new economic and political regime. Corruption had flourished in the aftermath and economic production had fallen to a point approaching complete collapse. Soon realizing the necessity of technical experts, Kautsky quotes Trotsky's admission that violence had been used to mercilessly destroy the organizations of "saboteurs" using coercion to transform "the saboteurs of yesterday into servants, into administrators, and technical managers, wherever the new regime demands it." A new centralized administration had emerged, Kautsky contended, one in which "the absolutism of the old bureaucracy has come again to life in a new but...by no means improved form..." New forms of profiteering, speculation, and corruption were emerging, Kautsky charged, so that "industrial capitalism, from being a private system, has now become a State capitalism." Kautsky concluded that ultimately the use of force and dictatorial methods would lead not to socialism, but to some new oppressive social system.Baruch Knei-Paz, ''
The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky ''The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky'', is a history book by professor Baruch Knei-Paz, containing an in-depth analysis of the evolution of the social and political views of Leon Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 Aug ...
.'' Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1978; pg. 248. It was to this challenge that Leon Trotsky was to respond.

Trotsky's ''Terrorism and Communism''
920 NOTOC Year 920 ( CMXX) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Byzantine Empire * December 17 – Romanos I has himself crowned co-emperor of the Byza ...
/h2>
Trotsky replied to Kautsky with a short book completed at the end of May 1920 and published in
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in August by the publishing house of the Berlin-based West European Secretariat of the
Communist International The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to "struggle by ...
, ''Terrorismus und Kommunismus: Anti-Kautsky'' (Terrorism and Communism: Against Kautsky). The book was written, Trotsky remembered in 1935, inside a coach attached to his armored train during the tumultuous
Polish Campaign The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week afte ...
of the Russian Civil War.Leon Trotsky, "Introduction to the Second English Edition"
935 Year 935 ( CMXXXV) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Europe * Spring – Arnulf I ("the Bad") of Bavaria invades Italy, crossing through the Upper ...
in Trotsky, ''Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky.'' Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1961; pg. xxxvii. Trotsky retrospectively ascribed the book's harshness of tone to the time and place in which it was written. Trotsky recalled:
"So long as the class struggle flowed between the peaceful shores of parliamentarism, Kautsky, like thousands of others, indulged himself in the luxury of revolutionary criticism and bold perspectives: in practice these did not bind him to anything. But when the war and the after-war period brought the problems of revolution onto the field, Kautsky took up his position definitively on the other side of the barricade. Without breaking away from Marxist phraseology he made himself, instead of the champion of the proletarian revolution, the advocate of passivity of a crawling capitulation before Imperialism."
In the view of Trotsky partisan
Max Shachtman Max Shachtman (; September 10, 1904 – November 4, 1972) was an American Marxist theorist. He went from being an associate of Leon Trotsky to a social democrat and mentor of senior assistants to AFL–CIO President George Meany. Beginnings S ...
, Trotsky based his defense of the political tactics of the early Soviet Republic around two primary matters: the question of the revolutionary seizure of power and "the methods to be pursued by a socialist revolution in realizing socialism." In Shachtman's view, Trotsky consistently argued that "special circumstances had made Russia ripe for a socialist revolution — the seizure of power" while at the same time the backwards agrarian nation was "not at all ripe for the establishment of a socialist society."Shachtman, "Foreword to the New Edition," pg. viii. For this assistance from neighboring advanced industrial countries would be needed, and thus "European revolution was therefore regarded by all Bolsheviks as the only salvation of the Russian revolution." This necessitated the rapid reorganization of European socialist parties on the Bolshevik model, according to Trotsky, marked by a splitting of the radical revolutionary socialist left wing of each from its parliamentarian and pacifist center and right. With respect to the socialist reorganization of the Russian economy, Trotsky rationalized and generalized from the ongoing experiences of
War Communism War communism or military communism (russian: Военный коммунизм, ''Voyennyy kommunizm'') was the economic and political system that existed in Soviet Russia during the Russian Civil War from 1918 to 1921. According to Soviet histo ...
, which featured "labor armies" directed to specific tasks in a quasi-military and more or less dictatorial way and he urged similar militarization of the workers based on the Russian experience. Trotsky abjured this strategy as obsolete when Lenin pressed through the adoption of the
New Economic Policy The New Economic Policy (NEP) () was an economic policy of the Soviet Union proposed by Vladimir Lenin in 1921 as a temporary expedient. Lenin characterized the NEP in 1922 as an economic system that would include "a free market and capitalism, ...
one year later, so the economic portion of Trotsky's book was later dismissed by Shachtman and other Trotsky followers as an anachronistic transmutation of "the expediencies and necessities of the civil war period into virtues and principles." Trotsky defended the use of terror by the Soviet government against the enemies of the Russian Revolution on
utilitarian In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for all affected individuals. Although different varieties of utilitarianism admit different charac ...
grounds. In the estimation of intellectual historian Baruch Knei-Paz, for Trotsky "the 'sacredness of human life' was not rejected in principle; but it was not...a value so absolute as to overshadow all other values." Akin to the principle of self-defense, Trotsky argued in ''Terrorism and Communism'' that "the taking of human life was not only a necessary evil but an expedient act in time of revolution," in Knei-Paz's view. Trotsky justified the use of terror against the revolution's enemies by asserting that its use was directed and controlled by the working class itself rather than by a small circle of individuals in a political party.Knei-Paz, ''The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky,'' pg. 250. The use of parliamentary democracy to maintain the socialist revolution was dismissed out of hand by Trotsky, and the demands for its use called mere "fetishism." Parliamentarism was a cloak and a fiction employed to mask the rule of capitalist societies by vested economic interests, in Trotsky's view, whereas the dictatorship of the proletariat was able to make use of organized state power by the working class to crush its opponents and to pave the way for social transformation. The employment of political force, of violence and terror, was both essential and unavoidable during the revolutionary transition period from capitalism to socialism from Trotsky's perspective.Knei-Paz, ''The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky,'' pg. 251. "The man who repudiates the dictatorship of the proletariat, repudiates the socialist revolution and digs the grave of socialism," Trotsky wrote.

Chapter structure
''Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky'' is divided into 9 chapters, bracketed by an introduction and an epilogue. The first section of the book, four chapters, deals with the practical political issues of holding power in Soviet Russia, with the so-called Dictatorship of the Proletariat in theory and practice, and with the nature of democracy and the use of force in the Russian context. A transitional middle section of compares the Paris Commune with the Russian Revolution, emphasizing the political tactics and fate of each and upbraiding Kautsky for a lack of fidelity to the revolution, in which his failure is contrasted with the published writing of Karl Marx. There follows two lengthy chapters on the specific political and economic policies of Soviet Russia during the ongoing period of War Communism, followed by a concluding polemic entitled "Karl Kautsky, His School and His Book."

Publication history
''Terrorism and Communism'' is a widely reprinted work of Leon Trotsky which has been translated into a host of languages. The Russian language original, ''Terrorizm i Kommunizm,'' saw print in 1920 and was excerpted in issues 10 and 11 of eponymous magazine of the
Communist International The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to "struggle by ...
.Louis Sinclair, ''Trotsky: A Bibliography: Volume 1.'' Aldershot, England: Scolar Press, 1989; pp. 248-249. German, French, Latvian, and Spanish editions followed later in 1920. The book appeared the next year in translations in English,
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,
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,
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, and
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. The year 1922 saw a first American edition of the booklet, as well as a
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book and translation into Lithuanian through a magazine. A
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edition followed in 1923. In subsequent decades the book has seen print in
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, and Turkish, with multiple editions in some of the aforementioned languages.

Legacy
Trotsky's ''Terrorism and Communism'' motivated another pamphlet by Kautsky, ''Von der Demokratie zur Staats-Sklaverei: Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Trotzki'' (From Democracy to State-Slavery: A Debate with Trotsky), completed in August 1921. The work was never translated into English. In it Kautsky noted the existence of drought and famine in Soviet Russia, a deadly situation which he asserted was exacerbated by a dysfunctional form of agrarian organization, transportation problems resulting the disruption of the national railway system which impeded the importation of food from non-famine areas, and bureaucratic paralysis.Karl Kautsky, ''Von der Demokratie zur Staats-Sklaverei: Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Trotzki.'' Berlin: Freiheit, 1921; pp. 5-6. In this 1921 reprise, Kautsky returned to his theme that Trotsky and the Bolsheviks had been reckless in rushing to socialist revolution in a country ill-suited for the event economically or intellectually, intimating that economic collapse and famine were inevitable byproducts of this lack of preparation.

See also
*
List of books by Leon Trotsky The following is a chronological list of books by Leon Trotsky, a Marxist theoretician, including hardcover and paperback books and pamphlets published during his life and posthumously during the years immediately following his assassination i ...

Footnotes

Further reading

Primary sources
* Karl Kautsky
''The Dictatorship of the Proletariat''
(1918). H.J. Stenning, trans. London: National Labour Press, n.d. . 1925 * V.I. Lenin
''The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky''
(1919). From ''V.I. Lenin Collected Works, vol. 28.'' Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1974; pp. 227–325. * Karl Kautsky
''Terrorism and Communism: A Contribution to the Natural History of Revolution''
(1919). W.H. Kerridge, trans. London: National Labour Press, 1920. * L. Trotsky
''The Defense of Terrorism (Terrorism and Communism): A Reply to Karl Kautsky''
(1920). London: Labour Publishing Company and George Allen & Unwin, 1921. ** L. Trotzki
''Terrorismus und Kommunismus: Anti-Kautsky.''
Hamburg: Westeuropäischen Sekretariat der Kommunistischen Internationale, 1920. * Karl Radek
''Proletarian Dictatorship and Terrorism''
(1920).
Patrick Lavin Patrick Peter Lavin (1881-unknown) was an English communist, activist, and translator. He started off as a miner, but as an autodidact he was attracted to Independent Working Class Education. Lavin was secretary of the Scottish Labour College. ...
, trans. Detroit, MI: Marxian Educational Society, n.d. 921 * Karl Kautsky
''Von der Demokratie zur Staats-Sklaverei: Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Trotzki''
(From Democracy to State-Slavery: An Answer to Trotsky). Berlin: Freiheit, 1921. —In German.

Secondary sources
* Baruch Knei-Paz, ''The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky.'' Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1978. * Massimo L. Salvadori, ''Karl Kautsky and the Socialist Revolution, 1880–1938.'' Jon Rothschild, trans. London: New Left Books, 1979. * Gary P. Steenson, ''Karl Kautsky, 1854–1938: Marxism in the Classical Years.'' Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1978.

External links
*

' by
Leon Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian ...
at the
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*
The Defence of Terrorism: Terrorism and Communism''
a 1935 edition of the book in PDF format with a then-new introduction by the author {{DEFAULTSORT:Terrorism and Communism 1920 non-fiction books Communist books Works by Leon Trotsky Books about the Soviet Union Books about the Russian Revolution Books about Trotskyism Karl Kautsky