Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 27, 2025
Also we shall be able to render to ourselves a clearer account of the changes, with time, in the intensity of the struggle, which, were we to follow the Marxian theory, would appear hopelessly irregular. We shall take for an illustration the shoe industry.
For socialists these two problems may be said to be practically new. So long as socialism based itself on the Marxian theory of production, the selection, and the subsequent conduct of the men who would compose the industrial state presented no appreciable difficulties.
In respect to the existing social order Marxian socialism emphasizes property conflict as the maker of opinion, in respect to the loosely defined working class it ignores property conflict as the basis of agitation, in respect to the future it imagines a society without property conflict, and, therefore, without conflict of opinion.
A shallow and specious other-worldliness has been driven out: an other-worldliness which is really nothing but laziness about this one. And if from a speculative angle the Marxian tradition has shaded too heavily the economic facts, it was at least a plausible and practical exaggeration.
It remains to be seen whether the Marxian prophecy of the international alliance of workingmen that is obscured by the present conflict in Europe, and other of his forecastings, will be ultimately verified. There have been secular teachers like Darwin, who, by a scientific reconstruction of the past, have implied an evolutionary future based on the biological outlook.
The greater the number of hungry mouths, the emptier the stomachs, the more quickly would the "Class War" be precipitated. The greater the increase in population among the proletariat, the greater the incentive to revolution. This may not be sound Marxian theory; but it is the manner in which it is popularly accepted. It is the popular belief, wherever the Marxian influence is strong.
The Bolshevist conception of Socialism had its origin in Marxian theory. Both Marx and Engels freely predicted the setting up of "a dictatorship of the proletariat" the phrase which the Bolsheviki have made their own. Yet, the Bolsheviki are not Marxians. Their Socialism is as little Marxian as Russian.
When he wants to fight the Germans, he tells himself that their competition is ruining his trade. If, on the other hand, he is an "idealist," who holds that his politics should aim at the advancement of the human race, he will tell himself that the crimes of the Germans demand their humiliation. The Marxian sees through this latter camouflage, but not through the former.
This organization was based upon the principles and tactics of Marxian Socialism and sought to create a purely proletarian movement. As we have seen, when revolutionary terrorism was at its height Plechanov and his disciples had proclaimed its futility and pinned their faith to the nascent class of industrial wage-workers.
The Marxian theory has long ago criticized beyond misunderstanding this petty bourgeois-democratic and anarchistic nonsense. And Russia of 1917-18 confirms in this respect the Marxian theory so clearly, palpably, and convincingly that only those who are hopelessly stupid or who have firmly determined to ignore the truth can still err in this respect.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking