x Eastman giving his benediction and
approval to precisely such a program in Russia as a substitute for
universal suffrage. We find him quoting with apparent approval an article
setting forth Lenine's plan, hardly disguised, to disfranchise every farmer
who employs even a single hired helper.[54]

Lenine's position is quite clear. "Only the proletariat leading on the
poorest peasants (the semi-proletariat as they are called in our program)
... may undertake the steps toward Socialism that have become absolutely
unavoidable and non-postponable.... The peasants want to retain their small
holdings and to arrive at some place of equal distribution.... So be it. No
sensible Socialist will quarrel with a pauper peasant on this ground. If
the lands are confiscated, _so long as the proletarians rule in the great
centers, and all political power is handed over to the proletariat_, the
rest will take care of itself."[55] Yet, in spite of Lenine's insistence
that all political power be "handed over to the proletariat," in spite of a
score of similar utterances which might be quoted, and, finally, in spite
of the Soviet Constitution which so obviously excludes from the right to
vote a large part of the adult population, an American Bolshevist
pamphleteer has the effrontery to insult the intelligence of his readers
by the stupidly and palpably false statement that "even at the present time
95 per cent. in Russia can vote, while in the United States only about 65
per cent. can vote."[56]

Of course it is only as a temporary measure that this dictatorship of a
class is to be maintained. It is designed only for the period of transition
and adjustment. In time the adjustment will be made, all forms of social
parasitism and economic exploitation will disappear, and then it will be
both possible and natural to revert to democratic government. Too simple
and naive to be trusted alone in a world so full of trickery and tricksters
as ours are they who find any asurance in this promise. They are surely
among the most gullible of our humankind!

Of course, the answer to the claim is a very simple one: it is that no
class gaining privilege and power ever surrenders it until it is compelled
to do so. Every one who has read the pre-Marxian literature dealing with
the dictatorship of the proletariat knows how insistent is the demand that
the period of dictatorship must be _prolonged as much as possible_. Even
Marx himself insisted, on one occasio