Dictatorship Vs. Democracy (Terrorism and Communism) - The Original Classic Edition

Book excerpt: Finally available, a high quality book of the original classic edition of Dictatorship vs. Democracy (Terrorism and Communism). It was previously published by other bona fide publishers, and is now, after many years, back in print. This is a new and freshly published edition of this culturally important work by Leon Trotsky, which is now, at last, again available to you. Enjoy this classic work today. These selected paragraphs distill the contents and give you a quick look inside Dictatorship vs. Democracy (Terrorism and Communism): But when the tornado of the first victorious proletarian revolution swept over Russia and destroyed in its fury some of the tormentors and exploiters of the working class-then Kautsky's 'humanitarianism' killed the last remnant of revolutionary spirit and instinct in him and left only a pitiful wreck of an apologist for capitalism, that was once Kautsky, the Marxist. ...Trotsky's book is not only an answer to Karl Kautsky; it is an answer to the thousands of Kautskys in the socialist movement the world over who want the proletariat to drown the memory of seas of proletarian blood shed by their treachery in an ocean of tears shed for the suppressed bourgeoisie of Russia. ...Up to that moment there was little in his career to distinguish him from his comrades of the revolutionary under-world-a university course cut short by prison, an apprenticeship to agitation in Russia, some years of exile spent in Vienna, Paris, and New York, the distinction which he shares with Tchitcherin of 'sitting' in a British prison, a ready wit, a gift of trenchant speech, but as yet neither the solid achievement nor the legend which gives confidence. ...The external strength in organization of the old party and trade union democracy of the working class has not only not created conditions for a more peaceful and 'humane' transition to Socialism-as follows from the present theory of Kautsky-but, on the contrary, has served as one of the principal reasons for the long-drawn-out character of the struggle, and its constantly growing ferocity. ...Had Kautsky, Friedrich Adler, and Otto Bauer been told that the system of the dictatorship of the proletariat would hold out in Russia-first against the attack of German militarism, and then in a ceaseless war with the militarism of the Entente countries-the sages of the Second International would have considered such a prophecy a laughable misunderstanding of the 'balance of power.'