Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/108

exchange, which is to establish some system of justice in settling the relations between services and reward, and which is to end the economic organization which produces too much wealth on the one side and too much poverty on the other, is not the kind of change to which revolutions can contribute anything. It is to be regretted that, in order to keep up an honoured but antiquated phraseology, some Socialists still use the word revolution to indicate what they have in mind. It must be observed, therefore, that they use the word in a very special way. They simply mean to indicate by it, that when Socialism has come the change will be so great as to be fundamental, and that the state of society which then will have been evolved will be so different from that from which the evolution sprung, that it will not be the same kind of society at all. That being so, those Socialists consider that they are justified in speaking of "revolutionary Socialism." They only add to the difficulties of those who are trying to understand them. Revolution does not mean a big change, but a sudden and violent change. Even the expression "the Industrial Revolution" always conveys the idea that the change was effected rapidly, and that it disorganised for the time being the existing order. It must therefore be understood that when Socialists use the term "Social Revolution," in connection with Socialism, they wish to indicate the completeness of the change which they contemplate, not the methods by which they propose to bring about the change.