proletariat a social class which can only have as its object the abolition of the capitalist system of ownership and its replace- ment by the proletarian system of common ownership.
But there is this new feature in the struggle and future victory of the proletariat, that, whereas all previous class struggles have resulted simply in the rule of a new minority the rise to power of a new separate stratum of society the victory of the prole- tariat carries with it the emancipation of the whole of humanity, because there is no remaining class below them to be freed. The struggle of the working class is thus the struggle of the humanity of the future, and this is the secret of the class basis of all com- munist thinking.
It is with this struggle that the communists identify them- selves, not as any special party, but simply as the champions of the interests of the working class. They believe that just as each succeeding class has won to power only after violent and revolu- tionary struggle with the preceding class, so the working class can never realize its aims save by the violent overthrow of the capitalist class and its whole system of power. " The com- munists disdain to reveal their aims and intentions. They de- clare openly that their ends can only be attained by the forcible overthrow of every obtaining order of society. Let the ruling classes tremble before a communist revolution; the workers have nothing to lose by it but their chains. They have the world to win. Workers of every land, unite! "
The Later Period of Marxism.—In The Communist Manifesto may thus be traced all the characteristic conceptions of Marx: the materialist conception of history (not to be confused with either materialism or economic determinism), the doctrine of the class struggle, and the theory of the revolutionary transference of power to the proletariat. At the same time the analysis of the role of capitalism, which was to be worked out later with a wealth of detail in the pages of Capital (1867), is already briefly indicated, and in a rapid forward glance the prospect is presented of a transition through the revolutionary rule of the proletariat to a classless society. It remained in his later work to give elabora- tion and precision to these original conceptions in the light of the experience of European history and the working-class struggle for the next generation. These writings have particular reference to two dominant events, the revolution of 1848 which led in Paris to the first distinct attempt of the working class to seize power in "the days of June," with the consequent coalition of all the bourgeois forces into a single "Party of Order," and the Commune of Paris in 1871 when for the first time the working class held power for six weeks. The later developments in Marx's historical and other writings are of especial interest for the new light they throw on the practical questions of the communist attitude to the State and the conception of the dictatorship of the proletariat (a phrase which did not take shape till after the writing of The Communist Manifesto, its first appearance in Marx's writings coming in 1850).
The modern State has already been described in The Communist Manifesto as the "executive committee for administering the affairs of the capitalist class as a whole." The experience of the 19th-century revolutions appears to have convinced Marx that it was idle to expect any fundamental change so long as the apparatus of the existing State was left unaffected. Alike in writing of 1848 and of 1871 he stresses the necessity for destroying and shattering the existing machinery of the State. The one and only amendment of substance to The Communist Manifesto that he makes in his last preface to it before his death, written in 1872, is to declare that " One thing especially was proved by the commune, namely, that the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery and wield it for its own purposes." But he demands not merely the destruction of the existing State, but its replacement by a new type of State, a Workers' State or the dictatorship of the proletariat as the transitional organ to carry through the change to communist society:—
" Between capitalist society and communist society there lies a period of revolutionary transformation from the former to the latter. A stage of political transition corresponds to this period, and
the State during this period can be no other than the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat." (Critique of the Gotha Pro- gramme, 1875.)
This new State will be based on the workers' organizations: - " Against this new official Government," Marx wrote, in de- scribing the tactics for communists during a revolution in its first stages, " they must set up a revolutionary workers' government, either in the form of local committees, communal councils, or workers' clubs or committees, so that the democratic middle class government not only immediately loses its support among the working class, but from the commencement finds itself supervised and threatened by a jurisdiction behind which stands the entire mass of the working class." (Address to the League of Communists, 1850.)
On the other hand the proletarian State is in its nature tempo- rary, because, in proportion as it carries out its task of suppressing class distinctions it destroys its own class basis, and the State as a special organ of class power and coercion gives way to the machinery of a homogeneous communist society. It is only in this second phase of communism that freedom becomes realizable.
The First and Second Internationals. While the main body of communist doctrine was thus receiving its completed form, the first attempts were being made at giving expression to com- munism in working-class organization. The First International (1864-73) was not a Marxian body; it was a coming together of various types of working-class organization and theory; but from the first Marx played a leading part in it, he drafted its principal declarations, and his ideas became more and more dominant within its ranks, until the controversy with the anarchist Bakunin led to its break-up. The First International was the battle-ground in which Marxism established its supremacy as the social phil- osophy of the working class. By the time of its demise in 1873 the seed of Marxian socialism had been sown in the working-class movements of Europe.
When the movement towards international working-class organization was resumed with the formation of the Second International in 1889, Marxian socialism was now assumed as the natural basis. Henceforward the class struggle and the transference of power to the proletariat were the statutory objects of international working-class organization. But mean- while, beneath this apparently rapid victory of Marxism, a deep change in conditions had taken place. The movements that came together in the Second International were no longer the scattered sections of a handful of pioneers in working-class organization. They were powerful national organizations of the workers, numbering their adherents in millions. Thus the second stage had been reached of winning the masses to organization; but the work of training in the principles of the revolutionary struggle still remained. This was the task begun, but never fully achieved, by the Second International, as the war revealed. The peaceful conditions of the period led to hopes of peaceful progress and a gradual transition to socialism without the disastrous necessities of catastrophic change. It was not until the World War, with the collapse that it brought to the ideals of peaceful progress, that communism appeared once more in its full force and with all the revolutionary implications with which Marx had left it.
The War and Bolshevism. The World War, then, is the start- ing-point of modern communism. The war forced to the fore- front in an acute form the issues and divisions that had been latent in the socialist movement. It was no longer possible for the great national movements to maintain their dual allegiance, at once to the existing national State which they hoped some day to control, and to the international class war which they had still continued to proclaim in their resolutions. So there came the division of forces, the division of majority and minority which manifested itself in every belligerent country. The bulk of the official parties supported the war, and in consequence found them- selves involved in closer and closer alliance with the Govern- ments. Sections in each country, and in some cases (notably Italy and Russia) the majority, were in opposition.
This division, which began as a difference over the issue of war and peace, soon developed into a deeper opposition. It was not possible for one side to support the war without entering into closer and closer relations with the whole administration of the
