le results.
Bolshevism is not merely a body of belief and speculation. When the
Bolsheviki seized the government of Russia and began to attempt to carry
out their ideas, Bolshevism became a living movement in a world of reality
and subject to the acid test of pragmatic criteria. It must be judged by
such a matter-of-fact standard as the extent to which it has enlarged or
diminished the happiness, health, comfort, freedom, well-being,
satisfaction, and efficiency of the greatest number of individuals. Unless
the test shows that it has increased the sum of good available for the
mass, Bolshevism cannot be regarded as a gain. If, on the contrary, the
test shows that it has resulted in sensibly diminishing the sum of good
available to the greatest number of people, Bolshevism must be counted as a
move in the wrong direction, as so much effort lost. Nothing that can be
urged on philosophical or moral grounds for or against the moral or
intellectual impulses that prompted it can fundamentally change the
verdict. Yet, for all that, it is well to examine the theory which inspires
the practice; well to know the manner and method of thinking, and the view
of life, from which Bolshevism as a movement of masses of men and women
proceeds.

Theoretically, Bolshevism, as such, has no necessary connection with the
philosophy or the program of Socialism. Certain persons have established a
working relation between Socialism, a program, and Bolshevism, a method.
The connection is not inherently logical, but, on the contrary, wholly
adventitious. As a matter of fact, Bolshevism can only be linked to the
program of Socialism by violently and disastrously weakening the latter and
destroying its fundamental character. We shall do well to remember this; to
remember that the method of action, and, back of the method, the philosophy
on which it rests and from which it springs, are separate and distinct from
Socialism. They are incalculably older and they have been associated with
vastly different programs. All that is new in Bolshevism is that a very old
method of action, and a very old philosophy of action, have been seized
upon by a new class which attempts to unite them to a new program.

That is all that is implied in the "dictatorship of the proletariat."
Dictatorship by small minorities is not a new political phenomenon. All
that is new when the minority attempting to establish its dictatorship is
composed of poor, propertyless people, is