At the same time Socialist investigators appear, who not only show the reasonableness and justice of Socialism, but exhibit the proof that the new economic order of Socialism is being prepared in the womb of Capitalism, and that therefore the aspirations of the worker are in harmony with the course of social development.
In this wise, a science and an aspiring Socialist movement founded upon reality develops from Utopian Socialism, and, conscious of class, of power, and of aim, enters upon the decisive struggle with the capitalist economic order. The class struggle acts as a lever of social revolution.
The original antagonism of the worker and capitalist over wages and hours of labour becomes am impassionate struggle of two classes over the question of the maintenance or transformation of the social and economic system—one of which classes fights for the existing order of private property and the other for the coming Socialistic system. Great social class struggles inevitably become political struggles. The immediate object of the struggle is the possession of the power of the State, with the aid of which the capitalist class endeavours to maintain its position, whilst the working class aims at the conquest of the power of the State in order to accomplish its larger objects.
The following chapter will show the direction taken by the Labour movement. Here we will but briefly refer to the profound influence of Marx's doctrine of the class struggle as exercised in political thought. Prior to Marx, political thought and the struggles of political parties seemed to revolve around ideas and great personalities. Idealogy and hero-worship were prevalent. Now, political thought, consciously or unconsciously, proceeds along class and economic lines. This is equally true of historical investigations. These new political and historical orientations are largely the result of Marx's life-work.
Rigidly conceived and applied, the Marxian doctrine of the class-struggle may lead to ultra-revolutionary tactics of the Socialist and Labour movement, to the system of Workers' Councils, and Proletarian Dictatorship. If the emerging class and its struggle constitutes the lever of social revolution and the impulse of the dialectical social process, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is justified, and in any case, democracy, which includes both the capitalist and working class, cannot be the State form during the transition period from private property to Socialism. Considered from the economic standpoint, political democracy is generally impossible, or only sham democracy so long as economic inequality exists. The Communist Manifesto does not contain a single political democratic reform. The conclusion can be drawn from Marx's idea, as a whole, that in his estimation, the class stood higher than so-called democracy. This is one of the sources of Bolshevism.
III. The Role of the Labour Movement and the Proletarian Dictatorship.
The Labour Party is the political expression of the whole Trade Union movement so far as the latter formulates national demands, directed towards the State and society generally. The Labour Party will function the more effectively, and be able to accomplish its allotted task, as its foundation—the Trade Union movement—becomes established and strengthened, and the more comprehensive will be its effects. The Trade Unions are not merely to be satisfied with the work of the present, but are to become the focus and centre of gravity of the proletarian aspirations which arise out of the social transformation process, and are to work for the abolition of Capitalism. The most effective lever for the achievement of this object is the conquest of political power. With its aid the proletariat can consciously carry out the transformation of a Capitalist into a Communist society. To this transformation, there also corresponds a political transition period, the state of which can be nothing else than a revolutionary Dictatorship of the Proletariat.—(Marx, Letter to the German Social Democracy, 1875, on their Gotha Programme.)
Marx considered himself to be the real author of the idea of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. In a letter written by him, in 1852, to his American friend, Weydemeyer, he declares:
"As far as I am concerned, I can't claim to have discovered the existence of classes in modern society or their strife against one another. Middle-class historians long ago described the evolution of the class struggles, and political economists showed the economic physiology of the classes. I have added as a new contribution the following propositions: (1) that the existence of classes is bound up with certain phases of material production; (2) that the class struggle leads necessarily to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat; (3) that this dictatorship is but the transition to the abolition of all classes and to the creation of a society of free and equal."—("Neue Zeit," Vol. XXV., second part, p. 164.)
With the exception of the year 1870, Marx remained true to his doctrine of Proletarian Dictatorship: he thought in 1875 as he did in 1847, when he sketched the groundwork of the Proletarian Dictatorship in the Communist Manifesto: