urst forth from Paris to Vienna, from Palermo to Berlin. Only in this
way will it be possible for us to find in the present social form the
explanation of the tendency toward socialism, thus showing by its
present necessity the inevitability of its triumph.

Is not that in fact the vital part of the Manifesto, its essence and its
distinctive character?

We surely should be taking a false road if we regarded as the essential
part the measures advised and proposed at the end of the second chapter
for the contingency of a revolutionary success on the part of the
proletariat,--or again the indications of political relationship to the
other revolutionary parties of that epoch which are found in the fourth
chapter. These indications and these measures, although they deserved to
be taken into consideration at the moment and under the circumstances
where they were formulated and suggested, and although they may be very
important for forming a precise estimate of the political action of the
German communists in the revolutionary period from 1848 to 1850,
henceforth no longer form for us a mass of practical judgments for or
against which we should take sides in each contingency. The political
parties which since the International have established themselves in
different countries, in the name of the proletariat, and taking it
clearly for their base, have felt, and feel, in proportion as they are
born and develop, the imperious necessity of adopting and conforming
their programme and their action to circumstances always different and
multiform. But not one of these parties feels the dictatorship of the
proletariat so near that it experiences the need or desire or even the
temptation to examine anew and pass judgment upon the measures proposed
in the Manifesto. There are really no historic experiences but those
that history makes itself. It is as impossible to foresee them as to
plan them beforehand or make them to order. That is what happened at the
moment of the Commune, which was and which still remains up to this day
the only experience (although partial and confused because it was sudden
and of short duration) of the action of the proletariat in gaining
control of political power. This experience, too, was neither desired
nor sought for, but imposed by circumstances. It was heroically carried
through and it has become a salutary lesson for us to-day. It might
easily happen that where the socialist movement is still in its
b