80 81 DETERMINISM THE CLASS STRUGGLE society which cannot last. Where the proletariat is transient, that is to say, where it disappears by a change of class relations, the class system is again made tolerable for a time instead of being abolished. The first two proletarian situations, that of the Roman proletariat and the agricultural proletariat, were solved in this manner. But no class system can be made healthy by merely trying to maintain and perpetuate proletarian conditions. It is doomed the moment that the necessary mental equipment is placed in the hands of society.
THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION class relation, this combination of knowledge and power in the hands of the mass means the vanishing point of progress by class control and class interests.
Had this knowledge been possible a thousand years ago there is no reason why the class system could not have been permanently pensed with at the time of such realization.
In other words whenever the producing class is able to analyze its class condition and social evolution, when society can thereby really master the forces of production so as to fully control them and no longer to be driven by them, it means that production will be operated and society affairs conducted by one class, e. there will be no classes. This realization might have been possible (so far as the objective factors are concerned) at any period of history from the time of the first class system.
However, the abolition of classes is not absolutely necessary at any and all stages of the class system. Under ancient slavery, under feudalism, and under early bourgeois capitalism, there were periods of general well being, and not until each stage led to a condition of oppression did the material conditions indicate the inevitable necessity of a change. The producing mass then rebels against the conditions of ownership as it sees them, and the new system then corresponds to this understanding of cause and remedy. But each time such a change is made, it is accomplished under the impression that the oppression of ownership has been disposed of, not in favor of a new oppression, but permanently. In other words, the world has all along been seeking the freedom of a one class society, only to find that it is deceiving itself each time that it thinks that it has found it. The aspiration has remained unfulfilled because the mentally indispensable factors were not yet present.
The final acute indication of the need of removing class production is the presence of a permanent proletariat. Just as fever in the human body means that there is something radically wrong, so the existence of a proletariat is a specific indication that there is a dangerously unhealthy condition of That the Russian people are ready mentally for a system without class rule can hardly be questioned; that is the message of the Revolution.
Therefore we come to the final point of our problem: Why do the Mensheviki say that the material conditions are not yet ripe for the Social Revolution?
They contend that Russia has a big agricultural proletariat but proportionately small industrial proletariat, that further industrialization under the supremacy of the bourgeoisie is still necessary so as to reach the stage arrived at in the advanced nations, such as England, Germany, etc.
But why must a big or preponderating portion of the country be industrialized? Because it brings the workers together, makes them a homogeneous unit, and enables them to become conscious of their relation to each other as members of a class. In other words, it is the instrumentality by which the mental equipment and message of Marx and Engels is conveyed to the masses. The average individual cannot acquire a knowledge of socialist philosophy by analysis and abstract thought, and if that were the only way in which the emancipation could take place, it might never occur.
But the worker learns these things very concretely. Pressure and more pressure until the cause penetrates to the consciousness.
Nevertheless, if industrialization heretofore has served the