" It is this "immense majority" that is to establish its
dominion. Marx expressly points out that "all previous historical movements
were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities." It is the
great merit of the movement of the proletariat, as he conceives it, that it
is the "movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense
majority."
Clearly, when Lenine and his followers say that they take their doctrine of
the "dictatorship of the proletariat" from Marx, they pervert the truth;
they take from Marx only the phrase, not their fundamental policy. It is
not to be denied that there were times when Marx himself momentarily lapsed
into the error of Blanqui and the older school of Utopian, conspiratory
Socialists who believed that they could find a short cut to social
democracy; that by a surprise stroke, carefully prepared and daringly
executed, a small and desperate minority could overthrow the existing
social order and bring about Socialism. As Jaures has pointed out,[50] the
mind of Marx sometimes harked back to the dramatic side of the French
Revolution, and was captivated by such episodes as the conspiracy of Babeuf
and his friends, who in their day, while the proletariat was a small
minority, even as it is in Russia now, sought to establish its dominion.
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