23 22 THE CLASS STRUGGLE Lenin Versus Wilson By Karl ISLAND (STOCKHOLM)
ty it gives no complete or revolutionary understanding whatever of the process of social evolution.
We have already said above, and will show more in detail in our further exposition, that the teaching of Marx and Engels concerning revolution by force was written with reference to the bourgeois state. The latter cannot be succeeded by the proletarian state (the dictatorship of the proletariat)
by any path of dying out. but may as a general rule be so succeeded only by revolution by force. The panegyric pronounced by Engels on this type of revolutionary action furthermore corresponds to frequent utterances of Marx (we point out the end of The Poverty of Philosophy. and the Communist Manifesto. with its proud and open declaration of the inevitability of revolution by force; we recall the criticism of the Gotha Program of 1875, almost thirty years later, in which Marx mercilessly flays the opportunism of this program) this panegyric is not merely an infatuation. by no means a declamation, nor a polemic gesture. The necessity of training the masses in this, and only in this, view of revolution by force lies at the very foundation of the entire teaching of Marx and Engels. The betrayal of their teaching by the at present prevalent social chauvinistic and Kautskian currents is most clearly expressed by the fact that both factions forget to carry on this kind of propaganda, this kind of agitation.
The substitution of the proletarian state for the bourgeois state cannot take place without revolution by force. The annihilation of the proletarian state, in other words, of the state altogether, is possible only by the dying out process.
Marx and Engels have left us a detailed and concrete presentation of these views in their studies of each separate revolutionary situation, in which they analyzed the lessons of the experience of each separate revolution. And we shall now proceed to take this up, unquestionably the most important part of their teaching.
At the present time there are, broadly speaking, only two great power divisions, namely, the money power of the American millionaires and its opposite: the people will to live. In shorter form: the dollar and liberty.
American capital developed at an unheard of pace through the influence of the war, particularly because of its delivery of war supplies to the Allies, before entering the war, as well by the great war loans it advanced. At the present moment American capital controls the entire capitalist world, everything that a few months or years ago was considered to be allpowerful in national governments, economic life, industry, etc.
At this moment, Mr. Wilson stands before the problem of fulfilling the wishes of the absolute power of capital, as the mighty executor of the will of those who rule the world possessions, as perhaps the Director to be of the world corporation, Iron Heel Co.
He gives us no stupid phrases about his alliance with the gods, when the interests of the system are under discussion, no embarrassed professorial wisdom and high sounding declamations on great ancestors and the traditions of bygone ages appear in his speeches; but a judiciously calculated manipulation of the general opinion, constructed with remarkable skill and consistency, while he permits the chords of liberty to vibrate, and the phrases of liberty to resound, with astonishing virtuosity!
The war and the policy he conducts are not in the interest of war and conquest: who could believe such a thing? His policy and his war are conducted in the name of the oppressed peoples in order to create an empire of peace, in which war shall be impossible and peace enthroned forever.
And this vocabulary is taken seriously by cultured radicals, who are not intimately acquainted with the nature of capital