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Updated: May 18, 2025
Lenin told me that he hopes to see a Labour Government in England, and would wish his supporters to work for it, but solely in order that the futility of Parliamentarism may be conclusively demonstrated to the British working man. Nothing will do any real good except the arming of the proletariat and the disarming of the bourgeoisie.
The proletariat, thereby cut off from all direct share in the conduct of government, could not fail to be convinced that in the first phase of the Revolution they had merely exchanged one set of masters for another, that at the expense of the nobles and clergy they had exalted the bourgeoisie, and that they themselves were still downtrodden and oppressed.
It proved, incontrovertibly, the disastrous effects of machinery and division of labour; the concentration of capital and land in a few hands; overproduction and crises; it pointed out the inevitable ruin of the petty bourgeois and peasant, the misery of the proletariat, the anarchy in production, the crying inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the industrial war of extermination between nations, the dissolution of old moral bonds, of the old family relations, of the old nationalities.
Then came the three great utopians Saint Simon, in whose eyes bourgeois aims possessed a certain merit as well as those of the proletariat: then Fourier and Owen, who, in the land of the most highly developed capitalistic production, and under the influence of the antagonisms which arise therefrom, developed in direct relation to French materialism their proposals which tended to the abolition of class distinctions.
When a Russian Communist speaks of dictatorship, he means the word literally, but when he speaks of the proletariat, he means the word in a Pickwickian sense. He means the "class-conscious" part of the proletariat, i.e., the Communist Party.
If we know nothing about household economies we can hardly be expected to take an interest in the problems of the proletariat. If we are ignorant of the fundamental data of sociology and politics we can have no real opinions on questions affecting the welfare of the people. The classic phrase "The public be damned!" expresses our true feeling about the matter.
As Engels says elsewhere, when the proletariat seizes the power of the State ``it puts an end to all differences of class and antagonisms of class, and consequently also puts an end to the State as a State. Thus, although State Socialism might, in fact, be the outcome of the proposals of Marx and Engels, they cannot themselves be accused of any glorification of the State.
If, therefore, the proletariat should overthrow the political rule of the bourgeoisie, its victory would be only temporary, only an episode in the service of the bourgeois revolution, so long as the material conditions which would render necessary the abolition of the bourgeois mode of production, and consequently the definitive overthrow of the political rule of the bourgeoisie, had not yet been created in the course of historical development.
The occupation of the public lands, the establishment of industry on an hitherto undreamed of scale, the marvellous, almost overnight creation of enormous cities, all these have resulted in the production of a proletariat, cosmopolitan in its character, and with no traditions of other than cash relations with the class which employs it. The purity of the economic fact is unobscured.
At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all times, with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for its help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena.
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