Men who never were shocked
when a Czar, speaking the language of piety and religion, indulged in the
most infamous methods and deeds of terror and oppression, are shocked
beyond all power of adequate expression when former subjects of that same
Czar, speaking the language of the religion of democracy and freedom,
resort to the same infamous methods of terror and oppression.
II
The idea that a revolting proletarian minority might by force impose its
rule upon society runs through the history of the modern working class, a
note of impatient, desperate, menacing despair. The Bolsheviki say that
they are Marxian Socialists; that Marx believed in and advocated the
setting up, during the transitory period of social revolution, of the
"dictatorship of the proletariat." They are not quite honest in this claim,
however; they are indulging in verbal tricks. It is true that Marx taught
that the proletarian dominion of society, as a preliminary to the abolition
of all class rule of every kind, must be regarded as certain and
inevitable. But it is not honest to claim the sanction of his teaching for
the seizure of political power by a small class, consisting of about 6 per
cent.
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