The “dictatorship of the proletariat” in the sense in which that term is used by the Russian Bolshevik leaders, and by those who in other countries are urging that their example be followed, is not a policy of Marxian Socialism.  It is not a product of modern conditions.  Rather it harks back to the earlier conspiratory Socialism of Blanqui, with its traditions inherited from Robespierre and Babeuf.  So far as its advocates are concerned, Marx and the whole modern Socialist movement might as well never have existed at all.  They take us back three-quarters of a century, to the era before Marx, to that past so remote in intellectual and moral character, though recent in point of time, when the working class of no country in Europe possessed the right to vote—­when the workers were indeed proletarians and not citizens; not only propertyless, but also “without a fatherland.”

In truth, it is not difficult to understand how this theory has found acceptance in Russia.  It was not difficult to understand why Marx’s doctrine of economic evolution was for many years rejected by most Russian Socialists; why the latter took the view that Socialism must be more quickly attained, that capitalism was not a necessary precursor of Socialism in Russia, but that an intelligent leadership of passive masses would successfully establish Socialism on the basis of the old Russian communal institutions.  It was quite easy to understand the change that came with Russia’s industrial awakening, how the development of factory production gave an impetus to the Marxian theories.  And, though it presents a strange paradox, in that it comes at a time when, despite everything, Russian capitalism continues to develop, it is really not difficult to understand how and why pre-Marxian conceptions reappear in that great land of paradoxes.  Politically and intellectually the position of the proletariat of Russia before the recent Revolution was that of the proletariat of France in 1848.

But that which baffles the mind of the serious investigator is the readiness of so many presumably intelligent people living in countries where—­as in America—­wholly different conditions prevail to ignore the differences and be ready to abandon all the democratic advance made by the workers.  There is nothing more certain in the whole range of social and political life than the fact that the doctrine that the power of the state must be seized and used by the proletariat against the non-proletarian classes, even for a relatively brief period, can only be carried out by destroying all the democracy thus far achieved.

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