another and directs him, the danger arises that not all his abilities will find full scope. This is everywhere to be seen.
Politically, it finds expression in all strongly centralized forms of Government. Now, Communism is centralistic. Bolshevist centralism, in particular, is very rigid. It is an abstract system deduced from a thesis and applied by force. Bolshevism is the absolute dictatorship of a man and his helpers. It is infallible and inquisitorial. Thus it has nothing in common with science and scientific philosophy; for, without freedom, science, like democracy, is impossible.
Democracy, consistently and rightly applied, I hold to be the state of society most desirable and suitable for our own time and for a long time to come, not only politically but also economically and socially. The capitalist system is imperfect by reason of its onesidedness. True, it gives to some, not to all, openings for individual initiative, spirit of enterprise and productivity; but the values thus created are not distributed or appropriated according to productive efficiency but according to rules for the appropriation of others’ work and what it yields. In practice, democracy signifies a tolerable inequality, a least—and progressively lessening—common multiple of inequality. Doubtless, this is easy to say; but there are many ways of applying it, just as there are and may be many sorts of Communism—witness the Russian experiment, its rapid development and its great transformations.
In 1917, Lenin’s object was not so much to put Communist principles and ideals into practice in Russia as to use Russia for the purpose of applying them, or, at least, of hastening their application, in Europe. On this point he often spoke his mind; but he erred because his view alike of the condition of Europe and of the condition of Russia was mistaken. His philosophy of history was unsound. Both Marx and Engels had been wrong in expecting and foretelling the “final revolution”; but this did not deter Lenin and his followers who, in their turn, looked for the “social revolution.” When? Where?
What Marx, following Feuerbach, says about religious anthropomorphism is also true socially and politically. Not only do men make heaven after their own image but the earthly future as well. The Russians are incapable of carrying out Marxist Communism. Taken as a whole, they are still too uncultured, too perverted by Tsarism to understand and apply the Marxist views of Communism as the final stage of a long historical process. What Lenin and his fellows practised could not be Communism. It was, at most, a thing of Com-
