“‘The proletarian revolution and the renegade Kautsky’ was the only really substantial piece Lenin found time to write after the Bolsheviks came to power. It contains one hundred pages of bitter invective against his former mentor, and it also constitutes the only serious attempt by Lenin to justify the Soviet regime in terms of Marxist theory. Which goal was paramount in Lenin’s view – to attack Kautsky, or to defend the actions of the Bolsheviks – is a question which can be answered by reading the preface to the work: ‘The question of proletarian revolution is now on the agenda in a practical sense in a number of countries. For this reason a critique of Kautsky’s renegade sophisms and his complete renunciation of Marxism is necessary’. Lenin’s accusations against Kautsky were as follows: 1. That his assertion that the Bolsheviks based their argument about the dictatorship of the proletariat on one brief reference in Marx was false; that Marx and Engels had repeatedly discussed the question in their letters and publications, and that Kautsky was well aware that this was the case. 2. That the argument that dictatorship of the proletariat was a state rather than a specific form of government was adopted by Kautsky to obviate the unpleasant need for revolutionary force, or indeed for revolution. 3. That whilst the Paris Commune had operated on universal suffrage, this was only possible because the Court and the bourgeoisie had abandoned Paris for Versailles. 4. That his argument that a class could not govern was sheer ‘parliamentary cretinism'” [Moira Donald, Marxism and Revolution. Karl Kautsky and the Russian Marxists, 1900-1924, 1993]