Page:Karl Radek - Proletarian Dictatorship and Terrorism - tr. Patrick Lavin (1921).djvu/19

12 are quite willing to suffer the peculiar propaganda, with its implied censure upon themselves, to continue, for the sake of its possible effect upon the proletariat. They realize the power of the "persuasive eloqence of example," and their appreciation of this power has heightened considerably since the Russian workers, sword in hand, cut their way through the tangle of feudal and capitalist impediments that beset their path, and shook out the folds of the Red Flag over the palace of the Czars. This, in the eyes of the capitalist lords of the earth, is pre-eminently an example to be avoided by the workers of other countries ; and to dissuade the latter from adopting the same course as the Russian proletariat, they are freely utilizing the services of Socialist renegades like Karl Kautsky.

The attitude of opponents of violence, who place assassin and victim, garrotter and garrotted, counter-revolutionary hireling and Red Guardsman, Black-and-Tanner and Sinn Fein soldier, on the same moral level—and that a low one—is really Christian Science turned inside out. The Christian Scientist can see no evil: the pacifist can see no good. This is clearly trifling with the question, and it is difficult to believe that those who voice this peculiar opinion, and whose power of discriminating between right and wrong is not utterly atrophied, are really sincere.

From the circumstance that the capitalists are prepared to adopt so many and so diverse means as they are more or less openly employing to avert the coming proletarian revolution, it may be inferred that they believe that the term of their long dominion is approaching. And every man and woman who have the interests of the human family at heart will sincerely hope that their apprehension is well founded!