Terrorism and Communism

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• • Prefaces
  • Introduction
  • 1. The Balance of Power
  • 2. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat
  • 3. Democracy
  • 4. Terrorism
  • 5. The Paris Commune and Soviet Russia
  • 6. Marx and Kautsky
  • 7. The Working Class and Its Soviet Policy
  • 8. Problems of the Organization of Labor, Soviet Government and Industry
  • 9. Karl Kautsky, His School and His Book
  • In Place of an Epilogue

[Dictatorship versus Democracy]

A Reply to Karl Kautsky

This book was written by Leon Trotsky at the height of the Russian Civil War. While it is a polemical response to German social-democrat Karl Kautsky, it is also represents the Bolshevik defense of the extraordinary means the young workers’ republic had to take in order to defend itself from the almost two dozen armies that were on its soil trying to turn back the revolution. The version we use here, the facsmile of the inside cover in the upper left hand corner of this page, was printed by the newly formed Workers Party of America, the Communist Party of the United States as it was called in 1920. The American title Dicatorship vs. Democracy was not a title that Trotsky was fond of according to one of his American translators, Max Shachtman, and in fact, the work is republished only under Terrorism and (or) Communism in subsequent editions. We have kept true to the form of the style of English used in this edition of the book, making only some spelling corrections and, of course, using the contemporary title, Terrorism or Communism. Additionally we’ve kept both the Preface and Foreword by the American Communist editors to place the work in its political and chronological context.