Page:Eden Paul and Cedar Paul - Communism (1921).pdf/8

 discoveries, no less revolutionary, may be made in other fields of thought. But the centenary of Marx's birth found the tower of "scientific socialism" standing foursquare to all the winds that blow; and found in being the first workers' republic the world had ever known.

By this time the need for two supplements to or modifications in the teaching of Marx and Engels had, however, become apparent. Though both these writers had again and again emphasised the necessity for the dictatorship of the proletariat, it seems improbable that either of them had realised that the forms of parliamentary democracy were destined to become entirely obsolete. That recognition was reserved for twentieth-century communists. The other modification concerns the doctrine of the world revolution. Marx's and Engels' conception of revolution was based upon the power of the working class, integrally united across all national barriers. They were among the founders of the International Working-men's Association, or First International (1864). Yet it seems probable that they conceived of socialism as being established nationally at various times in various countries, while the other countries, non-socialist, kept the noiseless tenor of their way. The development of capitalist imperialism, the growth of armaments, the struggle for raw materials, the intensity of the competition for markets, which were to make the next great war a world war, were but dimly foreshadowed when Marx died in 1883. It is the world-staging of the duel between imperialism and communism which has led to the present extraordinary position of Soviet Russia confronted by a capitalist world in arms; and it is this, following upon the shipwreck of social democracy against the rock of "social patriotism" at the outset of the war, which has rendered it necessary for us to dismiss the old words "socialism" and "social democracy," and to revise our conception of the meaning of the term communism.

The famous Manifesto of the Communist Party was drafted by Marx and Engels as the platform of the Communist League. This was a working-men’s association, at first exclusively German, and subsequently international. Under the political conditions then prevailing on the Continent, it was necessarily a secret organisation. The writing of the programme was entrusted to the authors at a meeting held in London during November, 1847, and the German original was sent to the printer a few weeks before the Paris revolution of February 24, 1848. The first English translation appeared in 1850. Writing a preface to the English edition of 1888, Engels uses words which seem strangely apposite to-day. The manifesto is, he declares, a communist manifesto. “"We could not have called it a socialist manifesto. By 'socialists,' in 1847, were understood … men outside the working-class movement, and looking rather to the 'educated' classes for support. Whatever portion of the working class had become