base was the dogma (really so considered)[1] that a socialistic commonwealth is possible only after and in consequence of, over-mature Capitalism; that the wage slaves (industrial and agricultural wage workers) are the main and leading forces of the forthcoming revolution; that the socialization of the industries, including agriculture, will be the ultimate outcome of the economic evolution in society and the revolution to be actuated by the modern proletariat—the wage workers of highly developed industry. Accordingly, the S. D. Party (Social Democrats) was more concerned about the city wage workers than the peasantry, working for the organization, education and betterment of the industrial proletariat primarily. The peasantry was regarded as a disappearing mass from which capitalistic economic development forced new recruits into the ranks of the factory slaves; the peasantry a mass, "revolutionary" only in the old sense of protest against abject conditions of poverty, etc., but lacking the ideal to bring a new social order to life, and apt to be in a crisis at one moment of revolutionary assistance and at the next turn of wind, the tool of reaction to crush the revolution. By skillful leadership and manipulation, the city proletariat may draw assistance from the peasant masses, even get them as
- ↑ The "dogma" referred to is that theory tenaciously held by most of the Socialist Parties that made up the lately deceased International. Certainly, Marx taught that Capitalism must ripen; but Marx looked at the world, while the parliamentary socialist's eyes were turned inward, upon his national soil where offices were to be obtained and retained—and "foolish extremists" whose ultra-radical acts endangered the party machine—were to be frowned upon.
