Roland-Holst (Dresden, 1905).

[272] From a private letter published editorially in the _New York Sun_.

[273] The _Outlook_, Nov. 25, 1911.

[274] _Collier's Weekly_, Sept. 2, 1911.

[275] The _Outlook_, Aug. 26, 1911.

[276] _Die Neue Zeit_, Oct. 27, 1911.

CHAPTER VII

REVOLUTION IN DEFENSE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT

"The workers do not yet understand," says Debs, "that they are engaged
in a class struggle, and must unite their class and get on the right
side of that struggle economically, politically, and in every other
way--strike together, vote together, and, if necessary, fight
together."[277] Socialists are prepared to use force when governments
resort to arbitrary violence--for example, to martial "law." In the
Socialist view no occasion whatever justifies the suspension of the
regular government the people has instituted--and even if such an
occasion could arise there is no authority to which they would consent
to give arbitrary power. Military "government" is not government, but
organized violence.

Tolstoi's masterly language on this matter will scarcely be improved
upon:--

"The slavery of the working people is due to this, that there are
governments. But if the slavery of the laborers is due to the
government, the emancipation is naturally conditioned by the
abolition of the existing governments and the establishment of new
governments,--such as will make possible the liberation of the land
from ownership, the abolition of taxes, and the transference of the
capital and the factories into the power and control of the working
people.

"There are men who recognize this issue as possible, and who are
preparing themselves for it.... So long as the soldiers are in the
hands of the government, which lives on taxes and is connected with
the owners of land and of capital, a revolution is impossible. And
so long as the soldiers are in the hands of the government, the
structure of life will be such as those who have the soldiers in
their hands want it to be.

"The governments, who are already in possession of a disciplined
force, will never permit the formation of another disciplined
force. All the attempts of the past century have shown how vain
such attempts are. Nor is there a way out, as the Socialists
believe, by means of forming a great economic force which would be
able to fight successf