EDITORIALS THE CLASS STRUGGLE 224 225 tionary government has appointed a commissariat for housing problems, which has gone at once to work not only to formulate, but to put into immediate practice a thorough going system of housing reform. According to the conditions laid out by this commission no single individual shall for the present have the right to occupy more than one room with the necessary appurtenances. All larger domiciles have been investigated and assigned. Rents have been ordered reduced, particularly for the cheaper houses, where the reduction has aggregated approximately 20 per cent. The socialization of the financial institutes of the country is already well under way. The right to draw upon bank deposits has been materially restricted. The suffrage has been extended to all men and women over 18 years of age who are doing socially useful work, or who are employed in home work that furthers the labor of those who are employed in socially useful occupations. All persons who insist upon living without labor are excluded from participation in political affairs.
The Hungarian socialist republic has been fortunate in that it has been able to profit by the lessons that the Russian revolution learned only after long and often bitter experiences. Where our Russian comrades were forced to grope blindly, step by step, to find their way out of the maze of capitalist mismanagement that surrounded them on every side, their Hungarian followers are working, with eyes that can see and weigh the consequences of each act, along a well defined course of action. One of the most interesting signs of the new spirit that pervades the Hungarian revolution is the union of the two wings of the social democracy, a union not only for the purpose of conducting the affairs of state, but an actual merging of identity of the two organizations. According to socialist press reports the Communist Party has ceased to exist and will henceforward be known, together with the old majority Party, under the name of Socialist Party. In Russia the revolution was seriously hampered by the counter revolutionary opposition of the Mensheviki and Social Revolutionists of the Right. Only now, when the determined resistance of the entire Russian nation to the invasion of Allied forces has made further support of intervention a suicidal policy to pursue, after two years of persistent effort have shown that the social revolution in Russia has come to stay, only now it appears that these elements are prepared to support the Bolshevik regime. The course of the Hungarian revolution will be the easier for this lesson, because the men and women of the reactionary wing of the Hungarian socialist movement were, if any, thing, more conservative than the Russian Mensheviki, and yet they were immediately ready to join the forces of the Communist movement, once it was pushed into power.
But not only the proletariat has learned. The bourgeoisie, too, has profited by the example of their fallen Russian brethren, and have, up to the present time, refrained from all counter revolutionary demonstrations. According to the reports that reach us from Hungary they are leaving the inhospitable confines of the new proletarian republic as fast as possible, and to all appearances, the proletariat is more than willing to see them go. It is possible, therefore, that Hungary will prove the truth of Lenin contentions, when he says that the Red Terror, that has aroused such a storm of indignation against the Russian Bolsheviki, is by no means an inseparable accompaniment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. There has been no Red Terror in Hungary, because there was no White Terror; because the Socialist movement, in its entirety, stands behind the Communist program of socialization, because the Hungarian bourgeoisie does not dare to engage in counter revolutionary propaganda in the face of a united proletarian opposition; because, finally, the Allied nations and the smaller nations, whose capitalist rulers may desire to foment counter revolutionary activity by means of armed invasion, will do so only at the risk of carrying the conflagration into their own lines.
As we go to press, the cable brings the news of a victory of the Reds in Vienna. With each new victory of the proletarian movement of the world, the dictatorship of the proletariat loses some of its terror. The proletarian revolution, e. Bolshevism, has ceased to function as bugaboo, as a horrible example in the interests of a capitalist world. It has become the hope and the highest achievement of the revolutionary proletariat.
The Left Wing The most vital fact in the Socialist Party at this moment is the development of a left wing. It is not yet definite and organized; but the process is accelerating. There is a passionate activity in the party, a developing revolutionary consciousness, a desire to reconstruct the party in accord with the new concepts of proletarian purposes and action expressed by the proletarian revolutions in Russia and in Germany, which promises to bring real results.
It is, of course, impossible to estimate accurately the strength of these sentiments. Local Boston is completely left; Locals Seattle, Cleveland, Rochester, Philadelphia, etc. are either completely left or turning to the left. In the Greater