[The author then quotes figures showing the numbers of wage-earners and industrial proletarians in Germany, Belgium and England: in Germany, in 1895, 12.5 millions proletarians; in Belgium 1.8 millions, or 60 per cent. of all the persons who make a living independently; in England 12.5 millions.]
In the leading European countries, city population numerically predominates over the rural population. Infinitely greater is its predominance through the aggregate of means of production represented by it, and through the qualities of its human material. The city attracts the most energetic, able and intelligent elements of the country.
Thus we arrive at the conclusion that economic evolution—the growth of industry, the growth of large enterprises, the growth of cities, the growth of the proletariat, especially the growth of the industrial proletariat—have already prepared the arena not only for the struggle of the proletariat for political power, but also for the conquest of that power.
3. Here we approach the third prerequisite to Socialism, the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Politics is the plane where objective prerequisites intersect with subjective. On the basis of certain technical and socio-economic conditions, a class puts before itself a definite task—to seize power. In pursuing this task, it unites its forces, it gauges the forces of the enemy, it weighs the circumstances. Yet, not even here is the proletariat absolutely free: besides subjective moments, such as understanding, readiness, initiative which have a logic of their own, there are a number of objective moments interfering with the policies of the proletariat, such are the policies of the governing classes, state institutions (the army, the class-school, the state-church), international relations, etc.
Let us first turn our attention to the subjective moment; let us ask, Is the proletariat ready for a Socialist change? It is not enough that development of technique should make Socialist economy profitable from the viewpoint of the productivity of national labor; it is not enough that social differentiation, based on technical progress, should create the proletariat, as a class objectively interested in Socialism. It is of prime importance that this class should understand its objective interests. It is necessary that this class should see in Socialism the only way of its emancipation. It is necessary that it should unite into an army powerful enough to seize governmental power in open combat.
It would be a folly to deny the necessity for the preparation of the proletariat. Only the old Blanquists could stake their hopes in the salutary initiative of an organization of conspirators formed independently of the masses. Only their antipodes, the anarchists, could build their system on a spontaneous elemental outburst of the masses whose results nobody can foresee. When Social-Democracy speaks of seizing power, it thinks of a deliberate action of a revolutionary class.
There are Socialists-ideologists (ideologists in the wrong sense of the word, those who turn all things upside down) who speak of preparing the proletariat for Socialism as a problem of moral regeneration. The proletariat, they say, and even "humanity" in general, must first free itself from its old selfish nature; altruistic motives must first become predominant in social life. As we are still very far from this ideal, they contend, and as human nature changes very slowly, Socialism appears to be a problem of remote centuries. This view seems to be very realistic, evolutionistic, etc. It is in reality a conglomeration of hackneyed moralistic considerations.
Those "ideologists" imagine that a Socialist psychology can be acquired before the establishment of Socialism; that in a world ruled by capitalism the masses can be imbued with a Socialist psychology. Socialist psychology as here conceived should not be identified with Socialist aspirations. The former presupposes the absence of selfish motives in economic relations, while the latter are an outcome of the class psychology of the proletariat. Class psychology, and Socialist psychology in a society not split into classes, may have many common features, yet they differ widely.
Coöperation in the struggle of the proletariat against exploitation has developed in the soul of the workingmen beautiful sprouts of idealism, brotherly solidarity, a spirit of self-sacrifice. Yet those sprouts cannot grow and blossom freely within capitalist society: individual struggle for existence, the yawning abyss of poverty, differentiations among the workingmen themselves, the corrupting influence of the bourgeois parties,—all this interferes with the growth of idealism among the masses.