Page:Raymond Augustine McGowan - Bolshevism in Russia and America (1920).pdf/45

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Bolshevism in Russia and America
45

ership, and their yearning for a revolution even at the cost of life itself, are the bitter fruits of Capitalism. As long as Capitalism stands, we are not safe from revolution. Out of Capitalism comes the demand for the evolutionary and political Socialism of the American Socialist and the revolutionary, industrial Socialism of the Bolshevik. "It is only when the reasonable and practicable are denied that men demand the unreasonable and impracticable; only when the possible is made difficult that they fancy the impossible to be easy."

Present Danger of a Revolution.

But in the United States, at the present time, the demand for common ownership has made only slight headway, while Bolshevism has obtained even fewer adherents. Social unrest is wide and deep, but people have not yet turned in large numbers either to Socialism or to Communism. The members of the organizations pledged to a Communist United States are relatively few. Many who belong to those organizations have little influence, while others, though members, do not believe in the Communist theory and tactics. But if the threat now of a revolution cannot be taken seriously no one can be certain of the future. For our social unrest can easily grow to revolutionary proportions, unless concerted and far-reaching action is taken to right the economic wrongs which are the soil from which revolutions spring.