COULD THE REVOLUTION IN CENTRAL EUROPE HAVE CONQUERED IN 1918 AS A PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION?
Otto Bauer replies in the negative to this question, drawing a historical parallel with the Russian revolution of 1917. According to Bauer, the Russian revolution was able to conquer as a proletarian revolution owing to three basic reasons. Firstly, the peasants of Russia defended the proletarian revolution owing to their low level of political consciousness and lack of organization, the result of the economic backwardness of Russia. Secondly, because agrarian Russia, which had sources of raw material, was able to feed itself without help of the imperialist states. Thirdly, because Russia' enormous extent has doomed to defeat all armed intervention of capitalist powers since the days of Napoleon. -
If we examine these arguments produced by the 1982 edition of Austrian social-democracy, it would follow from them that the proletarian revolution in Russia was able to win owing to its economic backwardness; that the higher the industrial developments of the advanced capitalist countries, the further they are from a proletarian revolution. Otto Bauer is now turning the main argument put forward by international social-democracy in the first years after the October Revolution inside out, proving that the proletarian revolution could not win in Russia owing to its economic backwardness. The social-democratic press at that time wrote that what the Bolsheviks called the October Revolution was only a "mutiny of the declassed soldiery," that Russia "6th its low productive :forces was not capable of a proletarian revolution, that highly industrialized Europe stood nearer to a socialist revolution than Russia, which had only just abolished tsarism. Now everything is reversed. The "Marxist" Otto Bauer claims that the economic advantage of the industrial development of Central Europe is a factor which hinders the advent of proletarian revolution.
The Russian peasants are not made of different class stuff from the peasants of Central Europe. If they supported the proletarian revolution in Russia, it was just be· cause this revolution put an end to one of the bloodiest of wars, in which their sons were dying by hundreds of thousands and millions in the interests of a hostile class. They supported it because it gave them the land formerly held by the big landlords, the monasteries and the tsar, together with the implements belonging to it, abolished their debts to the tsarist banks, raised them to the dominating position in the state next to the proletariat, opening up to them and to their children the road to the commanding posts in the government, in industry, in agriculture, and in the army, filling the colleges and universities with natives of the village. But who has proved that these tasks could not have been carried out by a really revolutionary workers' part)' in Central Europe, winning the poorer peasants to the side of the proletariat and maintaining neutrality with the middle peasants? The confiscation of the land and implements of the Prussian Junkers, whose privileges were left untouched by the German Social-Democrats, the abolition of debts to banks for the Austrian peasants, with a full guarantee from the government of the proletarian dictatorship that they would have the right to dispose freely of the agricultural produce from their individual farms, the supply of cheap agricultural machinery for the peasants, a marked improvement in the lot of the agricultural laborers--all this would have welded the vast majority of the peasants together in close alliance with the proletariat. and not have delivered the peasantry, as now, into the power of fascist demagogy.
Russia could feed itself. This is true. But the Russian proletariat, betrayed by international aocial-democracy, was not confronted with the starvation which Otto Bauer is now employing to scare the Austrian workers. To avoid starvation, says Otto Bauer, the proletariat of Central Europe had to capitulate to the Entente, which alone was able to give bread to the Austrian workers. But had the proletariat of Central Europe adopted a correct revolutionary policy, Russia would have been able to feed Central Europe. Had there been an alliance between the Russian proletarian revolution and the proletarian revolution of Central Europe, it would not have been necessary for the Russian proletariat to resort to war communism, to wage a hard struggle for bread to feed the workers' centers and the Red detachments of workers and peasants who were fighting against counter-revolution, both foreign and domestic. Had there been close political and economic collaboration between the proletarian republics, not only would victory over the interventionists and counter-revolutionists have been many times easier, but the restoration of the nation's economic life would have proceeded much more rapidly. The government of the proletarian dictatorship in Russia would have sent bread and raw materials to the workers of Central Europe, and the industry of Central Europe, controlled by the proletariat, would have found a vast market in Russia. And if now, after an interval of sixteen years, Otto Bauer recommends this policy of economic collaboration between capitalist Austria and the U. S. S. R., why was this policy impossible between proletarian Austria and proletarian Russia from the very first days of the revolution? The proletarian revolution of the U. S. S. R. took this line from the first days of the German revolution, offering the government of social-democratic representatives to send shiploads of grain immediately to the German proletariat. The refusal of Haase to accept this help is one of the most dastardly betrayals of the cause of the proletarian revolution and solidarity ever known in history. The younger generation of Austrian workers should be reminded of this episode.
There is no doubt, of course, that the proletariat of the U. S. S. R. was helped by the extent of its territory. But the proletarian revolution in Central Europe would have enlarged this territory and strengthened the defenses of the proletariat of the U. S. S. R. and of Central Europe. And this territory would have increased not only in a military, strategic and geographical sense, but in a political sense too. Can you so distort facts as to pretend that the revolution in Central Europe was a revolution in an Austrian province isolated from all the outside world, and therefore doomed to defeat? In 1918 the point at issue was a proletarian revolution in Central Europe, in the very countries where productive forces, to a far greater extent than the productive forces of tsarist Russia, were ripe for Socialism. Could not the proletarian revolution in Central Europe, finding its support in the proletarian revolution of Russia, have evoked a mighty response in other capitalist countries, have led the proletariat of other countries to follow suit?
A revolution in Central Europe would have reversed the whole balance of international forces. It would not only have met with response in the Balkans, but would have brought the French and British proletariat into such a revolutionary state that, even if we suppose that the proletarian revolution had not conquered there, the British and French proletariat would have upset the intervention of the capitalist world, just as they helped to upset the intervention of the capitalist world in Russia. The burden of Versailles would not have been forced on the proletariat of Central Europe. The Versailles "peace" treaty would have been exploded just as effectively as was the Brest peace which was forced on the proletariat of the U. S. S. R. by German imperialism. It was precisely the capitulation of socialdemocracy to imperialism and its betrayal of the proletarian revolution in Central Europe which led to the dismemberment of Central Europe into small parts, which led to the terrible situation into which the Allies thrust the working masses of Austria, converting the country into a kind of Monaco for themselves.
Otto Bauer and the Austrian social-democrats are never tired of harping on the example of the Hungarian soviet power-which was crushed. But the Hungarian Soviet Republic fell for the very reason that it was betrayed by the Social-Democrats of the Central Empires-and above all by Austrian social-democracy. Do the Austrian workers remember how Otto Bauer, who was foreign minister in 1919, made the excuse of neutrality and refused the request to issue part of the weapons from the arsenals of the late Austro-Hungarian army for the Hungarian Republic, which was being bled to death? Another reason why the Hungarian Soviet Republic fell was because the Communist Party made the mistake of believing the Hungarian Social-Democrats, and making an alliance with them. And it is known that no sooner had the first difficulties appeared than Hungarian social-democracy stabbed the Hungarian proletarian dictatorship in the back. Finally, the tragic end of the Hungarian Soviet Republic was connected with the fact that Otto Bauer and the whole of the Second International, either by their neutrality or by direct support, helped the intervention of the bourgeoisie against the proletarian revolution in the U. S. S. R. The Russian workers and peasants had to defend themselves against the intervention organized by England and France, against the armies of Denikin and Kolchak, against the Czecho-Slovaks, etc.; they were cut off from the Hungarian proletariat. And now Otto Bauer cites the treachery of the Austrian and German social-democrats as an "objective" law demonstrating the inevitability of the defeat of revolution in Central Europe. But why was the proletarian revolution bound to be defeated in the revolutionary conditions of 1918, while Austria alone, divided and partitioned, must in the opinion of Otto Bauer now stand firm as an "island of democracy" in the midst of a ring of European fascism (Germany, Italy, Yugo-Slavia. Hungary, etc.)?
ls there a shade of logic, of political sense in all this?
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WAS THERE AND IS THERE A DICTATORSHIP OF THE BOURGEOISIE IN AUSTRIA?
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