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My dear John,

You will meet many Socialists who will tell you that the Marxist creed anticipates that no force will be required in bringing about the change from capitalism to collectivism—no violence, no bloodshed. If anybody attempts to make you believe that the Socialist purpose is a peaceful one, refer him to “The Communist Manifesto,” which was drafted by Marx and Engels, and terminates with these words:

“The Communists do not seek to conceal their views and aims. They declare openly that their purpose can be obtained only by violent overthrow of all existing arrangements of society. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose in it but their chains; they have a world to win.”

If you are still told, as I have been, that such language was used by the founders of Socialism, not because they meant to incite violence, but simply to arouse the interests of the worker in their propaganda, call your Socialist’s attention to the transactions of The Hague Congress in 1872, when Marx declared:

“In most countries of Europe violence must be the lever of our social reform. We must finally have recourse to violence, in order to establish the rule of labor.... The revolution must be universal, and we find a conspicuous example in the Commune of Paris, which has failed because in other capitals—Berlin and Madrid—a simultaneous revolutionary movement did not break out in connection with this mighty upheaval of the proletariat of Paris.”

Indeed, John, so revolutionary a program can never be brought about by anything less than the most violent of revolutions. It is true that there are Socialists who profess to believe that this end can be achieved by legal and political means; yet they themselves admit that this rule will hold good only in times and in countries where the purposes of the revolution can be accomplished by such peaceful methods. Where political means are wanting, or the Socialist majority is insufficient to overawe completely all opposition, recourse to violence must be had.

We must not forget that, as Professor Woolsey says (“Communism and Socialism,” p. 228), “there never was a revolution since history told the story of the world so complete as this” (namely, that which Socialism proposes to effect); and, as he later remarks (p. 280), nothing short of the persuasion of violent revolution “can lead holders of property ... to acquiesce in so complete an overthrow of society and downfall of themselves, as modern Socialism contemplates.”

Personally, with your knowledge of human nature, can you conceive of any other method by which Socialism can accomplish its aims? Do you deem it possible that such world-wide dispossession can come without a struggle on the part of those who are to be excluded from the enjoyment of what they have been brought up to believe they rightfully possess? Is it reasonable to expect that all holders of productive property, both large and small, will placidly surrender at the request of the Socialist demagogues? You don’t believe this could happen? Neither do the Socialists. In his “History of Socialism” (p. 10), Kirkup, who is anything but an extreme radical, admits that “the prevailing Socialism of the day is in large part based on the frankest and most outspoken revolutionary materialism”; while Hyndman, who is conspicuously the advocate of political action, writes in “Social Democracy” (p. 22): “We are not so foolish as to say we will not use force if it would bring us to a better period more rapidly. We do not say we are such men of peace.”

Our own Charles H. Kerr, the head of the great American Socialist publishing house, takes a similar stand. In discussing the means by which American Socialists plan to overthrow capitalism, he says (“What to Read on Socialism,” p. 10):

“As to the means by which the capitalist class is to be overthrown, the real question worth considering is what means will prove most effective. If it could best be done by working for ‘one thing at a time’ and bidding for the votes of the people who have no idea what the class-struggle means, we should no doubt favor that method. But history has made it very clear that such a method is a dead failure.... If, on the other hand, the working class could best gain power by taking up arms, just as the capitalist class did when it dislodged the land-holding nobility from power, why not?”

These advocates of a violent revolution are mild-spoken, indeed, as compared to many of the better-known apologists of Socialism. Bebel, for example, in “Unsere Ziele” (p. 44), speaks more emphatically.

“We must not shudder at the thought of the possible employment of violence; we must not raise an alarm cry at the suppression of ‘existing rights’, at violent expropriation, etc. History teaches us that at all times new ideas were realized, as a rule, by a violent conflict with the defenders of the past, and that the combatants for new ideas struck blows as deadly as possible at the defenders of antiquity. Not without reason does Karl Marx in his work on ‘Capital’ exclaim:

“‘Violence is the midwife that waits on every ancient society that is to give birth to a new one; violence is itself a social factor.’”

Dietzgen, too, advocates nothing short of revolution, and sees no reason why violence should be condemned under such conditions.

“Oh, ye short-sighted and narrow-minded who cannot give up the fad of the moderate organic progress!” he says. “Don’t you perceive that all our great liberal passions sink to the level of mere trifling, because the great question of social salvation is in the order of the day? Don’t you perceive that struggle and destruction must precede peace and construction, and that chaotic accumulation of material is the necessary condition of systematic organization, just as the calm precedes the tempest and the latter the general purification of the air?... History stands still because she gathers force for a great catastrophe.”

Both the “Red Catechism” and Joynés’ “Socialist Catechism” teach the same doctrine. In the “Red Catechism,” one looks in vain for any hint of contemplated compensation or peaceful methods of expropriation.

“How are the forms of government changed?” is asked.

“By means of revolution,” is the answer.

And in the “Socialist Catechism,” we find these words:

“Q. What is the revolution for which the Socialists strive? A. A revolution which will render impossible the individual appropriation of the products of associated labor and consequent exploitation and enslavement of the laborers.... Q. How are forms of government changed, so as to readjust them to the economical changes in the forms of production which have been silently evolving in the body of society? A. By means of revolution. Q. Give an instance of this? A. The French Revolution of 1789.”

And even the Socialist hymn-books, the books from which the children in the Socialist schools sing, are filled with such sentiments as:

“They’ll know full soon, the kind of vermin,
Our bullets hit in that last fight.”

Or, as another Socialist song has it:

“Rise in your might, brothers, bear it no longer,
Assemble in masses throughout the whole land;
Teach the vile blood-suckers who are the stronger
When workers and robbers confronted shall stand.”

Certainly, Kirkup is not far from the true Socialist ideal when he asserts (“History of Socialism,” p. 160), that “a great revolutionary catastrophe is to close the capitalistic era”; even though he adds, “this must be regarded as a very bad preparation for the time of social peace which is forthwith to follow.”

It is not easy for Socialists to evade this issue, especially in view of the fact that the instructions they have received from their leaders so invariably tend to incite violence. “If the people have not a scrapnel to shoot, they have broken bottles to throw,” said Victor Grayson at Huddersfield, on August 12, 1907. “Chemistry,” says Hyndman (“Historical Basis of Socialism,” p. 443), “has placed at the disposal of the desperate and the needy cheap and powerful explosives, the full effects of which are as yet unknown. Every day adds new discoveries in this field; the dynamite of ideas is accompanied in the background by the dynamite of material force. These modern explosives may easily prove to capitalism what gunpowder was to feudalism.”

If there remained any doubt as to the precise purposes of Socialism, the attitude which its press and its speakers assume toward the use of violence during the French Revolution and the Paris Commune would afford evidence in plenty. Marx lauded the uprising of 1871 and praised its bloodthirsty crimes as the work of heroes. “Workingmen’s Paris, with its Commune, will be forever celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society,” he said, in “The Civil War in France” (p. 78); and there is practically no end to the quotations that might be presented from the writings of Socialists who support Marx’s position. Herron refers to the Commune as “a sort of glad and beatific moment, a momentary and prophetic spring-time in the long procession of the changing forms of parasitism and hypocrisy and brute force which we know as law and government” (Boston Address, 1903).

Quelch, too, in Justice (London, March 18, 1911), signalizes the Paris Commune as “a glorious event, which should ever be borne in mind and celebrated by the proletariat of all civilized countries,” while the Appeal to Reason, when asked why American Socialists celebrated the anniversary of the Commune, replied (August 29, 1893):

“Because it represented a rise of the working class and served as a splendid example of what working men can accomplish.”

And this glorious event, this “glad and beatific moment,” is thus described by Mazzini, the Italian patriot:

“A people was wallowing about as if drunk, raging against itself and lacerating its limbs with its teeth, while howling triumphant cries, dancing an infernal dance before the grave which it had dug with its own hand, killing, torturing, burning and committing crimes without sense, shame or hope. It put one in mind of the most horrid visions of Dante’s Hell.”

The Socialist historian, Benham, describes the events of the Commune in his “Proletarian Revolt,” and the following summary of this description, with the pages for reference, appears in “Questions of Socialists and Their Answers” (p. 108), by Rev. William Stephens Kress:

It is such scenes of bloodshed and injustice—just this kind of triumph of might over right—that Socialists would have repeated. They cannot deny this, John, because this program, horrible as it may seem to us, is perfectly logical from the Socialist point of view. “According to Socialist ethics,” says Ming (“The Morality of Modern Socialism,” p. 344), “all means are morally good which lead to the victory of the proletariat. Why, then, should violence not be justified if it brings success? The working class is the only class that has the right and power to be; it is society, the nation, the true public, while capitalism is but a cancer of the social organism. Why should it not employ violence when deemed an effective means for emancipation, conquest of power and introduction of collectivism?”

No, John, it is not when Socialists advocate violence that they are illogical; it is when they deny that they advocate and plan to resort to violence in accomplishing their purposes that they show a lack of logic.