THE SECOND AND THIRD INTERNATIONAL

that everything was now in a state of such great confusion that it was no use dreaming about socialism. The reasoning amounts to this. While the war was on, we must drop the class struggle, for it would be useless, and we must wait until after the war; when peace has come, there is no use thinking about the class war, for the imperialist war has entailed general exhaustion. It is plain that Kautsky’s theory is an avowal of absolute impotence, that it is calculated to lead the proletariat utterly astray, and that it is closely akin to rank treason. Worse still, when we were in the very throes of revolution, Kautsky could find nothing better to do than to raise the hunt against the bolsheviks. Forgetting Marx’s teaching, he persisted in a campaign against the proletarian dictatorship, the Terror, etc., ignoring the fact that in this way he was himself assisting the White Terror of the bourgeoisie. His own hopes would appear to be now those of the ordinary pacifist; he wants courts of arbitration, and things of that sort. Thus he has come to resemble any bourgeois pacifist you care to name.