Revolution and Other Essays | Page 3

we. We are revolutionists.
Our comrades in Russia have formed what they call "The Fighting
Organization." This Fighting Organization accused, tried, found guilty,
and condemned to death, one Sipiaguin, Minister of Interior. On April
2 he was shot and killed in the Maryinsky Palace. Two years later the
Fighting Organization condemned to death and executed another
Minister of Interior, Von Plehve. Having done so, it issued a document,
dated July 29, 1904, setting forth the counts of its indictment of Von
Plehve and its responsibility for the assassination. Now, and to the
point, this document was sent out to the socialists of the world, and by
them was published everywhere in the magazines and newspapers. The
point is, not that the socialists of the world were unafraid to do it, not
that they dared to do it, but that they did it as a matter of routine, giving
publication to what may be called an official document of the
international revolutionary movement.
These are high lights upon the revolution--granted, but they are also
facts. And they are given to the rulers and the ruling classes, not in
bravado, not to frighten them, but for them to consider more deeply the
spirit and nature of this world-revolution. The time has come for the
revolution to demand consideration. It has fastened upon every
civilized country in the world. As fast as a country becomes civilized,
the revolution fastens upon it. With the introduction of the machine into

Japan, socialism was introduced. Socialism marched into the
Philippines shoulder to shoulder with the American soldiers. The
echoes of the last gun had scarcely died away when socialist locals
were forming in Cuba and Porto Rico. Vastly more significant is the
fact that of all the countries the revolution has fastened upon, on not
one has it relaxed its grip. On the contrary, on every country its grip
closes tighter year by year. As an active movement it began obscurely
over a generation ago. In 1867, its voting strength in the world was
30,000. By 1871 its vote had increased to 1,000,000. Not till 1884 did it
pass the half- million point. By 1889 it had passed the million point, it
had then gained momentum. In 1892 the socialist vote of the world was
1,798,391; in 1893, 2,585,898; in 1895, 3,033,718; in 1898, 4,515,591;
in 1902, 5,253,054; in 1903, 6,285,374; and in the year of our Lord
1905 it passed the seven-million mark.
Nor has this flame of revolution left the United States untouched. In
1888 there were only 2,068 socialist votes. In 1902 there were 127,713
socialist votes. And in 1904 435,040 socialist votes were cast. What
fanned this flame? Not hard times. The first four years of the twentieth
century were considered prosperous years, yet in that time more than
300,000 men added themselves to the ranks of the revolutionists,
flinging their defiance in the teeth of bourgeois society and taking their
stand under the blood-red banner. In the state of the writer, California,
one man in twelve is an avowed and registered revolutionist.
One thing must be clearly understood. This is no spontaneous and
vague uprising of a large mass of discontented and miserable people-- a
blind and instinctive recoil from hurt. On the contrary, the propaganda
is intellectual; the movement is based upon economic necessity and is
in line with social evolution; while the miserable people have not yet
revolted. The revolutionist is no starved and diseased slave in the
shambles at the bottom of the social pit, but is, in the main, a hearty,
well-fed working-man, who sees the shambles waiting for him and his
children and recoils from the descent. The very miserable people are
too helpless to help themselves. But they are being helped, and the day
is not far distant when their numbers will go to swell the ranks of the
revolutionists.

Another thing must be clearly understood. In spite of the fact that
middle-class men and professional men are interested in the movement,
it is nevertheless a distinctly working-class revolt. The world over, it is
a working-class revolt. The workers of the world, as a class, are
fighting the capitalists of the world, as a class. The so-called great
middle class is a growing anomaly in the social struggle. It is a
perishing class (wily statisticians to the contrary), and its historic
mission of buffer between the capitalist and working-classes has just
about been fulfilled. Little remains for it but to wail as it passes into
oblivion, as it has already begun to wail in accents Populistic and
Jeffersonian-Democratic. The fight is on. The revolution is here now,
and it is the world's workers that are in revolt.
Naturally the question arises: Why is this so? No mere whim of the
spirit can give rise to a world-revolution.