not
deny that _after we have convinced the majority of the people_, we
are going to use force if the minority should hesitate."[188] (My
italics.)

Few will question the revolutionary nature of this language. But such
expressions have always been common at critical moments, even among
non-Socialists. We have only to recall the "bloody-bridles" speech of a
former populist governor of Colorado, or the advice of the _New York
Evening Journal_ that every citizen ought to provide against future
contingencies by keeping a rifle in his home. Revolutionary language has
no necessary relation to Socialism.

Mr. Berger, moreover, has also used the threat of revolution, not as a
progressive but as a reactionary force, not in the sense of Marx, who
believed that a revolution, when the times were ripe and the Socialists
ready, would bring incalculably more good than evil, but in the sense of
the capitalists, for whom it is the most terrible of all possibilities.
It is common for conservative statesmen to use precisely the same threat
to secure necessary capitalist reforms.

"Some day there will be a volcanic eruption," said Berger in his first
speech in Congress; "a fearful retribution will be enacted on the
capitalist class as a class, and the innocent will suffer with the
guilty. Such a revolution would throw humanity back into semi-barbarism
and cause even a temporary retrogression of civilization."

Such is the language used against revolutions by conservatives or
reactionaries. Never has it been so applied by a Marx or an Engels, a
Liebknecht, a Kautsky or a Bebel. Without underestimating the enormous
cost of revolutions, the most eminent Socialists reckon them as nothing
compared with the probable gains, or the far greater costs of continuing
present conditions. The assertion of manhood that is involved in every
great revolution from below in itself implies, in the Socialist view,
not retrogression, but a stupendous advance; and any reversion to
semi-barbarism that may take place in the course of the revolution is
likely, in their opinion, to be far more than compensated in other
directions, even during the revolutionary period (to say nothing of
ultimate results).

Revolutionary phrases and scares are of course abhorred by capitalistic
parties, and considered dangerous, unless there is some very strong
occasion for reverting to their use. But such occasions are becoming
more and more frequent. Conservati