82 THE CLASS STRUGGLE DETERMINISM 83 and gave to society a one class arrangement with relative freedom; moreover, it must be borne in mind that an industrial proletariat did not yet exist, that there was only an agricultural proletariat. Marx said as late as 1848: It is quite evident and equally borne out by the history of all modern countries, that the agricultural population, in consequence of its dispersion over a great space, and of the difficulty of bringing about an agreement among any considerable portion of it, can never attempt a successful independent movement; they require the initiatory impulse of the more concentrated, more enlightened, more easily moved people of the towns. Thus the motive force of the French Revolution was furnished by the physical power of the exploited peasantry under the leadership of the bourgeoisie of the cities.
purpose of developing mental consciousness by exerting pressure intensively and extensively, it is also true that the Russians have arrived at that condition of mind already, so that the Bourgeoisie could only give them what they had attained previously, besides handing them a number of other things which the workers would rather not have.
Moreover, there is a very good reason why Russia does not need the same degree of industrial development as the western nations in order to become a revolutionary mass. The industry that has been introduced came at a late stage, is on a big scale, and did not have to be built up from small beginnings. In other words, the Russians, just as in the case of the Japanese, adopted the completed result that it took the other nations a much longer time to find by experimentation and pioneer work, and together with it they similarly adopted the philosophy and economics of Socialism.
Therefore a much smaller proportion of industry in Russia was able to furnish a much larger proportion of revolutionary understanding than in the nations where these processes first occurred. Russia, consequently, does not have to run through the whole gamut of class relations. What was historically inevitable in the pioneer nations, namely a high degree of industrialization and pressure by concentration, does not mean that similar prolongation of agony must be duplicated in Russia. For while history is a repetition of the application of certain principles and laws, the manner in which this takes place is not a duplication, but varies with our mental capacity.
No wonder, therefore, that the Russian people could not accept the dictum of the Mensheviks to continue to crucify themselves until some later, more suitable time. What on earth the Bourgeoisie was to do for them under such circumstances had better be left to a bourgeois social scientist to explain rather than to a revolutionary socialist.
At the time of the French Revolution the Bourgeoisie at least did a real service to society. It was not only a basic factor in abolishing feudal privilege, but it also had a constructive program The fact that the middle class ideal proved eventually to be a transient makeshift, does not affect its validity in the case of the pioneer nations. Nor does it seem possible to deny that the middle class form is better suited than any other to small scale production; had production not progressed beyond that stage, the personal union of earning and owning in each individual might have remained the best solution.
As the Russian Bourgeoisie can no longer fulfill any such useful functions today, the only thing that it could accomplish would be to develop a revolutionary consciousness where it already existed, and at the same time try its best to preserve the class system as long as possible, a task which it will at all times take up without requiring any special encouragement.
It is contended, also, that we cannot abolish class control until it shall have reached a stage where it is no longer able to fulfill the function of production; in other words when the stage is reached that the forces of production become so great that the maintenance of class relations can be preserved only by limiting production. When such a condition has been reached it is then conceded by the Menshevik scientist that the overthrow of class rule becomes necessary, that this is economically sound because