It is to this division in the ranks of the petty bourgeoisie that the decline of the bourgeois democracy is due. A portion of it joins the proletarian Social- Democracy, others the reactionary democracy, which, though flying different colours of anti-Semitism, Nationalism, Christian Socialism, of certain sections of the Conservative and Centre parties, are nevertheless always, essentially and socially, the same.
Many of their phrases and arguments this reactionary democracy have borrowed from the Social-Democratic mode of thinking, and some at the beginning believed that they formed but a special transitional stage from Liberalism to Social-Democracy. To-day this view is manifestly no longer tenable. Social-Democracy has no more bitter enemy than the reactionary democracy. If it has devolved on Social-Democracy to champion every and any kind of progress, whether it directly advances the class interests of the proletariat or not, the reactionary democracy is by its whole being, driven to oppose all progress, even where it does not directly threaten the petty bourgeoisie. If Social-Democracy is the most progressive, the reactionary-democracy is the most reactionary of all parties, since over and above the hatred which all reactionary classes feel towards progress, it is yet inspired by the recklessness which comes from crass ignorance of everything lying outside its narrow mental horizon. To this must be added that the petty bourgeoisie succeeds in dragging on its existence, thanks only to the merciless exploitation of the weaker and most defenceless human labour, that of women and children. In this it naturally meets, first and foremost, with the opposition of the Social-Democracy, which tries by organisation and compulsory laws to prevent such a wastage of human life.
Thus the petty bourgeoisie, so far as it does not come over to Social-Democracy, turns from an ally and an intermediary element between the upper classes and the proletariat into b bitter foe of the latter. Instead, therefore, of softening down, the class antagonism becomes here as accentuated as can be; indeed, it increases very rapidly, since it is but recently that it has become clearly noticeable at all.
What is true of the petty bourgeoisie, is also—with but a few qualifications—true of the peasantry. This also splits into two camps, one of proletarian (peasant owners of tiny plots) and another of propertied elements. It is our task to accelerate this process by enlightening the former as to the solidarity of their interests with those of the proletariat, and by thus winning them over for Social-Democracy. We hinder it, however, if we ignore it and appeal to the entire agricultural population without distinction of class. The reactionary democracy in the country, though, perhaps, not always fully conscious of this antagonism, is, in its essence, just as hostile to us as that in the towns. Those, therefore, who believed that the peasant association movement is for the peasants
