Title | Revolutionary essays |
Series Title | International socialist library, 15 |
Creator (LCNAF) |
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Publisher | British Socialist Party |
Place of Creation (TGN) |
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Date | 1920 |
Subject.Topical (LCSH) |
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Subject.Geographic (TGN) |
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Genre (AAT) |
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Language | English |
Type (DCMI) |
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Original Item Extent | 46 pages; 18 cm. |
Original Item Location | HX256.K84 |
Original Item URL | http://library.uh.edu/record=b8304436~S11 |
Original Collection | Socialist and Communist Pamphlets |
Digital Collection | Socialist and Communist Pamphlets |
Digital Collection URL | http://digital.lib.uh.edu/collection/scpamp |
Repository | Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries |
Repository URL | http://libraries.uh.edu/branches/special-collections |
Use and Reproduction | This item is in the public domain and may be used freely. |
File Name | index.cpd |
Title | Image 18 |
Format (IMT) |
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File Name | uhlib_1028723_017.jpg |
Transcript | is the fact that their thoughts do not leave the path in which the latter's whole life moves, and that therefore they come, by a theoretical road, to the same problems and solutions as the lower middle class reaches in actual life. Such, in general, is the relation between the political and literary representatives of a class and the class itself." Marx was merciless in dealing with this kind of poisoners of proletarian class-consciousness. The whole Labour movement ought to be the same. With the weapons of ridicule and hatred he fought against the "heroes" of the French social democracy of the time—the po/litical movement which represented an unlawful union between the lower middle class and the proletariat. He wished to separate the Labour movement from all lower middle class elements, because the lower middle class attitude—attachment to the idea of private property, more or less open striving to uphold credit, terror of every fundamental social disturbance—is in practice the greatest internal enemy of the proletariat and the proletarian revolution. III. A proletarian dictatorship that betrays a readiness to make concessions to the lower middle class is threatened with destruction. A working class struggling against the bourg*eoisie "from below" escapes this peril more easily than a victorious proletariat. A proletariat fighting "from above," possessing State power, and grappling with the problems of organisation of production, is in a much more difficult position than a proletariat which has not yet attained victory. The working class itself is not yet free from all lower middle class habits of mind, while the mass of middle class parasites which lived on the back of the old order is now equally ready to live on the back of the proletarian State. The crushing of counter-revolution in Russia shows that, here too, the time has come when, as Marx says in "The Civil War in France," all sections of the bourgeoisie except the great capitalists—"shopkeepers, tradesmen, merchants" recognise that the proletariat is the only class capable of initiative in the sphere of social reconstruction. This means, (16) sm |