the fact of their economic
condition and status. That is the only difference between the dictatorship
of Russia by the Romanov dynasty and the dictatorship of Russia by a small
minority of determined, class-conscious working-people. It is not only the
precise forms of oppressive power used by them that are identically
characteristic of Czarism and Bolshevism, but their underlying philosophy.
Both forms of dictatorship rest upon the philosophy of might as the only
valid right. Militarism, especially as it was developed under Prussian
leadership, has exactly the same philosophy and aims at the same general
result, namely, to establish the domination and control of society by a
minority class. The Bolsheviki have simply inverted Czarism and Militarism.

What really shocks the majority of people is not, after all, the methods or
the philosophy of Bolshevism, but the fact that the Bolsheviki, belonging
to a subject class, have seized upon the methods and philosophy of the most
powerful ruling classes and turned them to their own account. There is a
class morality and a class psychology the subtle influences of which few
perceive as a matter of habit, which, however, to a great extent shape our
judgments, our sympathies, and our antipathies. Men who never were shocked
when a Czar, speaking the language of piety and religion, indulged in the
most infamous methods and deeds of terror and oppression, are shocked
beyond all power of adequate expression when former subjects of that same
Czar, speaking the language of the religion of democracy and freedom,
resort to the same infamous methods of terror and oppression.

II

The idea that a revolting proletarian minority might by force impose its
rule upon society runs through the history of the modern working class, a
note of impatient, desperate, menacing despair. The Bolsheviki say that
they are Marxian Socialists; that Marx believed in and advocated the
setting up, during the transitory period of social revolution, of the
"dictatorship of the proletariat." They are not quite honest in this claim,
however; they are indulging in verbal tricks. It is true that Marx taught
that the proletarian dominion of society, as a preliminary to the abolition
of all class rule of every kind, must be regarded as certain and
inevitable. But it is not honest to claim the sanction of his teaching for
the seizure of political power by a small class, consisting of about 6 per
cent. of the population