Page:Eden Paul and Cedar Paul - Communism (1921).pdf/7

 gether. So do all communists; but the communists who are not anarchists are convinced that the powers of the bourgeois State must be wrested from the hands of the capitalist class and used by the proletariat throughout a long period of transition while the new society is being upbuilded. Not merely has the centralised organism of ergatocracy or workers' rule to suppress the attempts of the counter-revolution, to suppress the attempts of the feudalists or the "democrats" to regain supremacy; but the ergatocrats have to use all the educational machinery in the hands of the State in order to mould the mentality of the masses and to refit them for communism. In Britain, for example, the work of generations of training in bourgeois individualism will have to be undone. The workers' organisations—the trade unions and the co-operatives—spontaneous growths of the proletarian genius, are already communist in trend; but extensive educational work will have to be undertaken before the evil effects of bourgeois ideology have been eradicated, and before the natural forces making for communist stabilisation have been released. A decentralisation more or less closely resembling that sketched by the anarchist communists may perhaps ultimately ensue, but it will not be achieved the day after the social revolution. Some thinkers wish to apply the term "socialism" to the integrating and highly centralised stage of transition; and to reserve the name "communism" for the subsequent decentralisation, when, as they think, libertarian ideals will be dominant. A sharp distinction between socialism and communism is, indeed, arising to-day; but the distinction is on different lines from those suggested by the above argument.

A comprehensive generalisation was needed, to establish socialist or communist doctrine upon a firm scientific basis. It was supplied by Karl Marx (1818–1883), with the lifelong collaboration of Friedrich Engels (1820–1895). As we have seen, there are still utopists. But Marx showed that communism must be established as a revolutionary change of the whole of capitalist society, that it could not possibly arise through the endeavours of little groups of enthusiasts and idealists whose aim it was to "contract out" of the life of the bourgeois State, The form of society, and the character of the individuals who compose that society, are mainly determined by the dominant type of social production. This, the famous "materialist conception of history," was one of Marx's three main contributions to socialist thought. The two others were the labour theory of value, and the doctrine and tactic of the class struggle. Ever since Marx wrote, the ideas of the utopian socialists have been more than a trifle absurd. The changes wrought by Marx in social science were as overwhelming as those wrought by Darwin in biology, or by Newton in physical science. The work of these thinkers may be supplemented, it may be corrected in points of detail; new developments may render reconsideration necessary; fresh