nitaries to be elective instead of appointed by divine prerogative, and to hold office by the consent and during the pleasure of the governed.
Now let us see what classes of our present society are suited to bring about such changes, and which are not. The bearer of the socialist revolution is the modern Proletariat. It is the class of the proletarians that has the historic mission of tearing down the capitalist system of society. Remember well: not the poor man, nor the workingman, but the proletarian, is going to do this work. There were poor men before, so were there workingmen. But they were not proletarians. So may there be poor now, and even poor workingmen, who are not proletarians. The modern proletarian is not merely a poor man, nor is he necessarily a poor man in the ordinary sense of the word. Nor is he merely a workingman, although he necessarily is one. He is a workingman—usually poor at that—under peculiar historic conditions. Those conditions are that he is not possessed of any property, that is, the only property that counts socially,—means of production. By reason of this condition he is placed in certain social relations, both as to his own kind and as to his social betters, as well as to the social machinery. Through this he acquires certain characteristics of mind and body, a certain mentality and psychology which make him peculiarly fitted for his historic mission.
We will not attempt to give here an exhaustive description of his mental and psychological nature. We will only denote his character by a contrast: he is in every way just the reverse of the peasant. He had to be that, according to Marx, in order to be a fitting instrument for the carrying out of his historical mission. Marx's attitude towards the peasant is most characteristic. The peasant was a positive abhorrence to him, and he eliminated him from his promised land. This had the peculiar consequence that in countries where the peasantry is now undergoing the process of "capitalization," as in Russia, for instance, the Marx-
