Page:Studies in socialism 1906.djvu/151

Rh. All society asked of it was destruction; once this destruction had been accomplished society itself went confidently forward along the route already partly traversed.

The Socialist Revolution, on the contrary, must not rest content after it has abolished capitalism; it must create the new type under which production is to be carried on and the relations of property are to be regulated.

Imagine that all capitalistic claims on production cease, that the ledger of the public debt is destroyed, that tenants pay no more rent, that tenant-farmers pay no land-rent, that farmers who hold land as métayers are no longer required to hand over half their produce to the bourgeois proprietor, that all ground-rent, all commercial profit, all dividends and industrial profits are abolished; if this destruction of capitalism were not instantly supplemented by a Socialistic organisation, if society did not know at once how labour was to be carried on, what was to be the function of the State, of local government, and of the trade-union, and according to what principles the producers were to be remunerated; if, in a word, society were not able to ensure the proper working of a new social system, it would fall into an abyss of disorder and misery, and the Revolution would be lost in one day.

But this new social system cannot be created and inspired by a minority. It can only function with the approval of an immense majority of the