Page:Raymond Augustine McGowan - Bolshevism in Russia and America (1920).pdf/5



OLSHEVIK and Menshevik are the names of two opposed groups of Socialists in Russia. Their opposition is over the method of introducing; Socialism. The Bolsheviki declare that Socialism can only come through the direct seizure of the political power of society. They call this "the dictatorship of the proletariat" or the dictatorship of the propertyless masses. The Mensheviki looked forward to the introduction of the Socialist society through the more orderly process of majority vote in a political election.

The doctrine of Marx, the founder of modern Socialism, was originally a theory of revolutions and a call to the propertyless of the world to unite and seize the power of the State at the moment of capitalist bankruptcy. It is said that Marx really favored in private the gradual and legislative method of introducing Socialism, but certainly the implications of his teachings leaned all towards the dictatorship of the proletariat. Later he saw in the French Commune the pattern of the future international revolution and the future international society. He thought that Capitalism would develop until on one side would stand a few property owners and on the other the suffering masses. And he prophesied that then would come the break-down of industry and society and Government, and the seizure of political power by the propertyless. Then would come the dictatorship of the proletariat; they would hold the political power and introduce, as speedily as possible, economic socialism.