Part 6 (1/2)

The question is not, how strong the proletariat is numerically, but what is its position in the general economy of a country.

[The author then quotes figures showing the numbers of wage-earners and industrial proletarians in Germany, Belgium and England: in Germany, in 1895, 12.5 millions proletarians; in Belgium 1.8 millions, or 60 per cent. of all the persons who make a living independently; in England 12.5 millions.]

In the leading European countries, city population numerically predominates over the rural population. Infinitely greater is its predominance through the aggregate of means of production represented by it, and through the qualities of its human material. The city attracts the most energetic, able and intelligent elements of the country.

Thus we arrive at the conclusion that economic evolution--the growth of industry, the growth of large enterprises, the growth of cities, the growth of the proletariat, especially the growth of the industrial proletariat--have already prepared the arena not only for the _struggle_ of the proletariat for political power, but also for the _conquest_ of that power.

3. Here we approach the third prerequisite to Socialism, the _dictators.h.i.+p of the proletariat_.

Politics is the plane where objective prerequisites intersect with subjective. On the basis of certain technical and socio-economic conditions, a cla.s.s puts before itself a definite task--to seize power.

In pursuing this task, it unites its forces, it gauges the forces of the enemy, it weighs the circ.u.mstances. Yet, not even here is the proletariat absolutely free: besides subjective moments, such as understanding, readiness, initiative which have a logic of their own, there are a number of objective moments interfering with the policies of the proletariat, such are the policies of the governing cla.s.ses, state inst.i.tutions (the army, the cla.s.s-school, the state-church), international relations, etc.

Let us first turn our attention to the subjective moment; let us ask, _Is the proletariat ready for a Socialist change?_ It is not enough that development of technique should make Socialist economy profitable from the viewpoint of the productivity of national labor; it is not enough that social differentiation, based on technical progress, should create the proletariat, as a cla.s.s objectively interested in Socialism. It is of prime importance that this cla.s.s should _understand_ its objective interests. It is necessary that this cla.s.s should _see_ in Socialism the only way of its emanc.i.p.ation. It is necessary that it should unite into an army powerful enough to seize governmental power in open combat.

It would be a folly to deny the necessity for the preparation of the proletariat. Only the old Blanquists could stake their hopes in the salutary initiative of an organization of conspirators formed independently of the ma.s.ses. Only their antipodes, the anarchists, could build their system on a spontaneous elemental outburst of the ma.s.ses whose results n.o.body can foresee. When Social-Democracy speaks of seizing power, it thinks of _a deliberate action of a revolutionary cla.s.s_.

There are Socialists-ideologists (ideologists in the wrong sense of the word, those who turn all things upside down) who speak of preparing the proletariat for Socialism as a problem of moral regeneration. The proletariat, they say, and even ”humanity” in general, must first free itself from its old selfish nature; altruistic motives must first become predominant in social life. As we are still very far from this ideal, they contend, and as human nature changes very slowly, Socialism appears to be a problem of remote centuries. This view seems to be very realistic, evolutionistic, etc. It is in reality a conglomeration of hackneyed moralistic considerations.

Those ”ideologists” imagine that a Socialist psychology can be acquired before the establishment of Socialism; that in a world ruled by capitalism the ma.s.ses can be imbued with a Socialist psychology.

Socialist psychology as here conceived should not be identified with Socialist aspirations. The former presupposes the absence of selfish motives in economic relations, while the latter are an outcome of the cla.s.s psychology of the proletariat. Cla.s.s psychology, and Socialist psychology in a society not split into cla.s.ses, may have many common features, yet they differ widely.

Cooperation in the struggle of the proletariat against exploitation has developed in the soul of the workingmen beautiful sprouts of idealism, brotherly solidarity, a spirit of self-sacrifice. Yet those sprouts cannot grow and blossom freely within capitalist society: individual struggle for existence, the yawning abyss of poverty, differentiations among the workingmen themselves, the corrupting influence of the bourgeois parties,--all this interferes with the growth of idealism among the ma.s.ses.

However, it is a fact that, while remaining selfish as any of the lower middle cla.s.s, while not exceeding the average representative of the bourgeois cla.s.ses by the ”human” value of his personality, the average workingman learns in the school of life's experience that _his most primitive desires and most natural wants can be satisfied only on the debris of the capitalist order_.

If Socialism should attempt to create a new human nature within the limits of the old world, it would be only a new edition of the old moralistic Utopias. The task of Socialism is not to create a Socialist psychology as a prerequisite to Socialism, but to create Socialist conditions of human life as a prerequisite to a Socialist psychology.

CHAPTER VIII

A LABOR GOVERNMENT IN RUSSIA AND SOCIALISM

The objective prerequisites of a Social revolution, as we have shown above, have been already created by the economic progress of advanced capitalist countries. But how about Russia? Is it possible to think that the seizure of power by the Russian proletariat would be the beginning of a Socialist reconstruction of our national economy?

A year ago we thus answered this question in an article which was mercilessly bombarded by the organs of both our factions. We wrote:

”The workingmen of Paris, says Marx, had not expected miracles from the Commune. We cannot expect miracles from a proletarian dictators.h.i.+p now.

Governmental power is not almighty. It is folly to think that once the proletariat has seized power, it would abolish capitalism and introduce socialism by a number of decrees. The economic system is not a product of state activity. What the proletariat will be able to do is to shorten economic evolution towards Collectivism through a series of energetic state measures.

”The starting point will be the reforms enumerated in our so-called minimum program. The very situation of the proletariat, however, will compel it to move along the way of collectivist practice.

”It will be comparatively easy to introduce the eight hour workday and progressive taxation, though even here the center of gravity is not the issuance of a 'decree,' but the organization of its practical application. It will be difficult, however,--and here we pa.s.s to Collectivism--to organize production under state management in such factories and plants as would be closed down by their owners in protest against the new law.

”It will be comparatively simple to issue a law abolis.h.i.+ng the right of inheritance, and to put it into operation. Inheritances in the form of money capital will not embarra.s.s the proletariat and not interfere with its economy. To be, however, the inheritor of capital invested in land and industry, would mean for a labor government to organize economic life on a public basis.

”The same phenomenon, on a vastly larger scale, is represented by the question of expropriation (of land), with or without compensation.

Expropriation with compensation has political advantages, but it is financially difficult; expropriation without compensation has financial advantages, but it is difficult politically. Greater than all the other difficulties, however, will be those of an economic nature, the difficulties of organization.