Page:Zelda Kahan - The Life and Work of Friedrich Engels (1920).pdf/23

of Friedrich Engels treat in greater detail below, "Universal suffrage is the gauge of the maturity of the working class. It cannot, and never will, be anything else but that in the modern State. But that is sufficient. On the day when the thermometer of universal suffrage reaches its boiling point among the labourers, they, as well as the capitalists, will know what to do." That is to say, the granting of universal suffrage shows the growing strength of the working class, the fact that the governing classes in order to maintain their rule must, whilst preserving for themselves the reality, grant the masses the appearance of power. But when the working class or its active class-conscious section is really ready to use this power, then it will have become obsolete, for the capitalist classes, seeing the reality of their power about to be filched from them, will take, as so far in history they always have taken, to far different weapons than that of moral suasion and the kissing of grimy little children or shaking hands with bewildered housewives at election times.

And it is necessary to note here that no Socialist or Communist advocates forcible or violent revolution as an end in itself. But we must face realities. If the other side will not abdicate and quietly give up their possessions—what is to be done? So long as they are possessed of their wealth and are allowed to use that wealth freely, so long do the governing classes possess a weapon far stronger than any vote of the workers, and this wealth and the power it gives them they will not yield up without a struggle.

Should the Russian workers' Republic, surrounded by internal and external foes ready and eager to rend it to pieces, should it, figuratively speaking, fold its arms and turn the other cheek to be smitten by its enemies? Would it really be more "moral" for the Russian Red Army, instead of defending themselves and their revolution, to lay down their arms and let the Whites and the Blacks and Tans over-run them and make a shambles of their country like the Horthy gangs are doing in Hungary? The absurdity of the anti-force fanaticism has only to be stated to be at once recognised.

At the same time, we are not, as Engels shows in his Anti-Dühring, to make a fetish of force. Force alone will not make a revolution or preserve a dominant class indefinitely in power. It is the underlying economic conditions and the degree of development of the productive forces which gives rise to particular forms of society, and it is the further development of the means of production which again gives rise to our scorn of former or still prevailing forms of society and our will and ability to overthrow them when conditions are ripe for such a step.

Thus, after pointing out the useful and necessary role played even by slavery in, the progress of society from primitive Communism, Engels says: "It is very easy to make sermons about slavery and to express our moral indignation at such a scandalous institution.