Page:Landmarks of Scientific Socialism-Anti-Duehring-Engels-Lewis-1907.djvu/16

 in the course of his political peregrinations he strays into the socialist movement and there finds those who profess a socialism based upon abstract conceptions and "eternal truths" his contempt is as outspoken as that of a Friedrich Engels who chances upon a certain Eugen Duehring spouting paraphrases of Rousseau by the socialistic wayside. Engels simply anticipated by the way of books the point of view reached by the industrial proletarian of to-day by the way of experience, and by the American machine-made proletarian in particular. This is a matter of no mean importance. In the following pages we can detect if we can look beyond and beneath the mere criticism of Duehring, an attitude of mind, not of one controversialist to another merely but of an entire class, the class upon which modern society is driven more and more to rely, to the class which relies upon it.

For their popular support classes and governments rely upon formulæ. When the cry of "Down with the Tsar" takes the place of the humbly spoken "Little Father" what becomes of the Tsardom? When the terms "Liberty" and "Equality" become the jest of the workshop, upon what basis can a modern democratic state depend? This criticism of "eternal truths" is destructive criticism, and destructive of much more than the "truths." It is more destructive than sedition itself. Sedition may be suppressed cheaply in these days of quick-firing guns and open streets. But society crumbles away almost insensibly beneath the mordant acid of contemptuous analysis. So to-day goaded on the one side by the gibes of the machine-made proletariat, and on the other, by the raillery of the philosophic jester, society staggers along like a wounded giant and is only too glad to creep into its cave and to forget its sorrows in drink.