Dietzgen, too, advocates nothing short of revolution, and sees no reason why violence should be condemned under such conditions.
“Oh, ye short-sighted and narrow-minded who cannot give up the fad of the moderate organic progress!” he says. “Don’t you perceive that all our great liberal passions sink to the level of mere trifling, because the great question of social salvation is in the order of the day? Don’t you perceive that struggle and destruction must precede peace and construction, and that chaotic accumulation of material is the necessary condition of systematic organization, just as the calm precedes the tempest and the latter the general purification of the air?... History stands still because she gathers force for a great catastrophe.”
Both the “Red Catechism” and Joynés’ “Socialist Catechism” teach the same doctrine. In the “Red Catechism,” one looks in vain for any hint of contemplated compensation or peaceful methods of expropriation.
“How are the forms of government changed?” is asked.
“By means of revolution,” is the answer.
And in the “Socialist Catechism,” we find these words:
“Q. What is the revolution for which the Socialists strive? A. A revolution which will render impossible the individual appropriation of the products of associated labor and consequent exploitation and enslavement of the laborers.... Q. How are forms of government changed, so as to readjust them to the economical changes in the forms of production which have been silently evolving in the body of society? A. By means of revolution. Q. Give an instance of this? A. The French Revolution of 1789.”
And even the Socialist hymn-books, the books from which the children in the Socialist schools sing, are filled with such sentiments as:
“They’ll know full soon, the kind of vermin,
Our bullets hit in that last fight.”
Or, as another Socialist song has it: