Page:Studies in socialism 1906.djvu/65

Rh Declaration of the Rights of Man and the right to life. But this internal logic of the idea of right and humanity would have remained dormant and powerless without the external vigorous action of the proletariat. The proletariat intervened from the very first days of the Revolution. It did not listen to the absurd advice of those who, like Marat, animated by the spirit of class, said: "What are you doing? Why are you going to seize the Bastille, whose walls never imprisoned a working man?" It marched to the attack, determined the success of great victories, rushed to the frontier, saved the Revolution at home and abroad, became an indispensable power, and gathered as it went the fruits of its incessant activity. In three years, from 1789 to 1792, it transformed a semi-democratic and semi-middle-class system to a pure democracy in which proletarian action was sometimes even the dominant factor. Having shown the strength of which it was capable it gained self-confidence, and ended by telling itself, with Babeuf, that the new power it had created, the national power that was the common possession of all, ought to be made the instrument by whose means happiness for all could be established.

Thus, by the action of the proletariat, Communism ceased to be a vague philosophic speculation and became a party, a living force. Thus, Socialism arose from the French Revolution under the combined action of two forces, the force of the