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When at the end of January the Finnish bourgeoisie gave the word of command to its butchers to begin the attack, Social Democracy was indignant because of democracy. "The bourgeoisie is violating and destroying democracy—"so ran the cry from the Social-Democrat side—"To arms! Democracy is in danger." And so indeed it was. The bourgeois wished once and for all to emerge from their torpor, to throw off their democratic chains, which were for them no obstacle if not a danger. They desired to set up a naked class tyranny, an unchecked pillaging authority, a "strong police," a butchers' republic, or, as we shall see, a butchers' monarchy.

That is what the bourgeoisie wanted. Social-Democracy replied by revolution. But what was its watchword? The power of the workers? No, it was democracy, a democracy which should not he violated.

Our position from a Socialist standpoint was not clear, and viewed historically was Utopian. Such a democracy could at best be created only on paper. Such a thing had never existed in a society formed of classes, and can never develop there. In Democracy a robber class has always stolen power from the people.

If in future the capitalist system were to continue to exist on the economic field, such a Democracy would be an impossibility; a Democracy in which the proletariat would have become the ruling class in the Statea, and by means of the State would have striven to reach the primitive sources of the exploiting power of capitalism. If, on the other hand, the economic system of capitalism were already ripe for its fall, then for this work democracy was both useless and impossible. In the first case the form of the Democratic State, if it had been realised on paper, would have become a screen masking the absolute power of the bourgeois.class, and up to a certain point it would have proved an inconvenience and an obstacle. In the second case it would have proved a mask and an obstacle to the absolute power of the working class. In any event a true democracy could not spring from it. In a class