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Updated: June 27, 2025
Concerned with symptoms, with the allaying of acute and catastrophic miseries, it cannot, if it would, strike at the radical causes of social misery. At its worst, it is sentimental and paternalistic. I shall attempt to show that the Marxian doctrine is both too limited, too superficial and too fragmentary in its basic analysis of human nature and in its program of revolutionary reconstruction.
Marxian socialism has the candor to say, through the mouths of its most authoritative spokesmen, to the great suffering host of the modern proletariat, that it has no magic wand to transform the world in a single day, as one shifts the scenes in a theatre; it says on the contrary, repeating the prophetic exhortation of Marx, "Proletarians of all countries, unite," that the social revolution can not achieve its object, unless it first becomes a vivid fact in the minds of the workers themselves by virtue of the clear perception of their class-interests and of the strength which their union will give them, and that they will not wake up some day under a full-fledged socialist regime, because divided and apathetic for 364 days out of the year they shall rebel on the 365th, or devote themselves to the perpetration of some deed of personal violence.
Secularization the carrying on of systematic work against the Orthodox Church through special channels. One of the early leaders of this society was George Plechanov, who later founded the Russian Social Democracy and gave to the Russian revolutionary movement its Marxian character, inspiring such men as Nikolai Lenine and Leon Trotzky, among many others.
We find the influence of Marx in his ideas, but we cannot affirm that he is an absolute Marxian. It seems as if Veressayev, troubled by the innumerable divergencies of opinion, asks himself secretly: "Will this war lead to the unity of opinion and program, so necessary for victory, or by its quarrels will it only retard the harmony so much sought after?"
Perhaps more than anyone else, the Fabians are responsible for turning English socialist thought from the verbalism of the Marxian disciples to the actualities of English political life. Their appetite for the concrete was enormous; their knowledge of facts overpowering, as the tomes produced by Mr. and Mrs. Webb can testify.
No "dictatorship of the proletariat," no action by any minority, however well armed or however desperate, can overcome that great law. 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 sufficient to say, in closing this chapter, that if these ten essentials of a normal social life could be realized and there is no reason why they cannot be there would be no need to try the social revolution which Marxian socialism advocates.
Another offshoot of the same Marxian Internationale were the "Chicago Anarchists." The Internationale, as we saw, emphasized trade unionism as the first step in the direction of socialism, in opposition to the political socialism of Lassalle, which ignored the trade union and would start with a political party outright.
That important continental organ of socialist and syndicalist theory, Le Mouvement socialiste, suggested that the realism of Karl Marx and Prudhon is hostile to all forms of intellectualism, and that, therefore, supporters of Marxian socialism should welcome a philosophy such as that of Bergson.
The dogmatic character of Marxian Communism finds support in the supposed philosophic basis of the doctrine; it has the fixed certainty of Catholic theology, not the changing fluidity and sceptical practicality of modern science. Treated as a practical approximation, not as an exact metaphysical law, the materialistic conception of history has a very large measure of truth.
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