, and the imposition by force of its rule upon the
majority of the population that is either unwilling or passive. That is the
negation of Marxian Socialism. _It is the essence of Marx's teaching that
the social revolution must come as a historical necessity when the
proletariat itself comprises an overwhelming majority of the people_.

Let us summarize the theory as it appears in the _Communist Manifesto_:
Marx begins by setting forth the fact that class conflict is as old as
civilization itself, that history is very largely the record of conflicts
between contending social classes. In our epoch, he argues, class conflict
is greatly simplified; there is really only one division, that which
divides the bourgeoisie and the proletariat: "Society as a whole is more
and more splitting up into great hostile camps, into two great classes
directly facing each other, bourgeoisie and proletariat." ... "With the
development of industry the proletariat not only increases in numbers; it
becomes concentrated in great masses, its strength grows, and it feels that
strength more." ... "The proletarian movement is the _self-conscious,
independent movement of the immense majority in the interests of the
immense majority_." It is this "immense majority" that is to establish its
dominion. Marx expressly points out that "all previous historical movements
were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities." It is the
great merit of the movement of the proletariat, as he conceives it, that it
is the "movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense
majority."

Clearly, when Lenine and his followers say that they take their doctrine of
the "dictatorship of the proletariat" from Marx, they pervert the truth;
they take from Marx only the phrase, not their fundamental policy. It is
not to be denied that there were times when Marx himself momentarily lapsed
into the error of Blanqui and the older school of Utopian, conspiratory
Socialists who believed that they could find a short cut to social
democracy; that by a surprise stroke, carefully prepared and daringly
executed, a small and desperate minority could overthrow the existing
social order and bring about Socialism. As Jaures has pointed out,[50] the
mind of Marx sometimes harked back to the dramatic side of the French
Revolution, and was captivated by such episodes as the conspiracy of Babeuf
and his friends, who in their day, while the proletariat was a small
min