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having recourse to violent methods, was an historical impossibility.
It is easy enough at this distance to discover this important truth, but it was more difficult to do so in Finland last year. The relative feebleness of the Finnish bourgeoisie. its inability to carry on a Parliamentary struggle, and the fact that it had no armed forces, were so many factors through which we Social-Democrats were predestined to suffer from the democratic illusion, inasmuch as we wished to reach Socialism by means of a struggle in the Diet and by democratic representation of the people. This was equivalent to entering on a course which could not agree with the true postulates of history—to seek to avoid a Socialist Revolution, to shun the real bridge between Capitalism and Socialism, i.e., the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is an historical necessity.
In our eyes the Democracy of the past year appeared as the programme of the future, not as a thing of the past. It showed itself, however, to be too much stained with error, too feeble, to be capable of serving as a foundation for the erection of the Socialist edifice. That is why it was so necessary to complete and strengthen it. It was weak, extremely weak. We did not perceive that it was so weak that it was impossible to buttress it. Weakness was, in fact, its main characteristic, a weakness to which Democracy is perforce condemned in every bourgeois society. It was weak even as a stay for the bourgeoisie, and still more so as an arm in the working-class struggle. Its sole historic advantage—an advantage for both parties at one and the same time—was that which had always characterised Democracy, namely, that it allowed the class-war to be carried on in relative freedom. It allowed it to develop up to that point when a decision by force of arms became necessary. Thus the historic mission of this democracy was to crumble as useless, after having fulfilled its task and served as an old worm-eaten bulwark between the two conflicting fronts.
