DemocracyRussian RevolutionSocialismWorking ClassWorld War

161 160 THE CLASS STRUGGLE Forming a War Psychosis also use the nobles forests and pastures, and mow the nobles meadows. But together with this enormous expansion of the peasant farm area for cultivation, there will loom up before the Russian revolutionary democracy the question of increasing thę productivity of peasant agricultural labor. For this purpose the Russian peasants need numerous new schools, to give instruction; they need agricultural machinery, artificial fertilizer, and other aids in cultivation, to increase the productiveness of the peasants labor. Without all this, the Russian agrarian revolution, by destroying the more productive of the private large scale establishments, will have placed the peasants in a position of economic stagnation.
The establishment of new schools and the providing for the peasants of all the agricultural aids for intensive farm management, will require an enormous amount of financial capital. For securing the latter the government must make use of the great treasures of the monasteries and churches, which have supplies of gold, of precious stones, costly utensils, and other valuable objects.
By the confiscation of these riches for public ownership, the necessary sums will be obtained for increasing the productivity of the reborn agricultural system. Only by such determined measures, together with the increase of the peasant lands, can the Russian Republic reduce the poverty of the peasants and enjoy their continued support against the efforts of counter revolution.
The great Russian agrarian revolution, if thus brought about, will destroy for ever the economic and political power of the Russian nobility, will increase the economic wellbeing of the peasant owners and the proletariat, and lay the foundations for a more rapid economic development of the Russian countryside, thus clearing the way for a complete socialistic reconstruction of Russia, even if the present Russian Revolution should not succeed in immediately bringing about the socialization of all the means of production and distribution.
By Dr. John KALLEN Not since the French Revolution has the social psychologist had such rich material to draw on in the formulation of laws governing the working of what has been called the Social Mind as the World War is hourly creating. If there is any such thing as a disinterested science of society it is decidedly more advantageously equipped today to demonstrate the true psychic forces utilized as means of social control. Not only is the science of psychology itself further advanced. Socialism is here with a scientific basis to develop the negative aspect of social psychology. Non Socialist thinkers from the Revolution on developed the socially constructive psychic laws and, either from unconscious class bias or what not, left to the Socialist the study of the negative and destructive psychic forces utilized by the Parasite in his own interest.
There are two aspects to the social life process mental or psychic, and material, including the economic. Both must be considered. Otherwise Socialists, as have shown (Call, Oct.
21, 1917, Socialists on War Paradox. harbor a gross contradiction in the theory and practice of the movement. Was the war inevitable? Yes, we say, economic development made it so. If inevitable, then why did we attempt to stave it off?
Evidently we thought it was not inevitable, like the coming of night, else we would not, save for effect, have undertaken the task of preventing it. Economic development alone could not bring on the war. It was inevitable with economic development plus the consent of the masses, plus a certain psychologic attitude which, if it can be moulded by the Parasite for war makes the last inevitable and which, if Socialism could have succeeded in making it class conscious, would not have been inevitable, in spite of economic development.
Hence the exploitation of psychic forces by the parasite to confirm him in his economic rights. Between the capitalists as a class and the Socialists as a class conscious group there