to the
aim in view; they must know what they want. The history of the
last fifty years has taught us that.[51]

What Engels had in mind when he stressed the fact that history showed that
in 1848 "the prevailing conditions were still capable of expansion" is the
central Marxian doctrine of historical inevitability. It is surely less
than honest to claim the prestige and authority of Marx's teachings upon
the slender basis of a distorted version of his early thought, while
completely ignoring the matured body of his doctrines. It may not matter
much to the world to-day what Marx thought, or how far Lenine follows his
teachings, but it is of importance that the claim set up by Lenine and
Trotzky and many of their followers that they are guided by the principles
of Marxian Socialism is itself demonstrably an evidence of moral or
intellectual obliquity, which makes them very dangerous guides to follow.
It is of importance, too, that the claim they make allures many Socialists
of trusting and uncritical minds to follow them.

Many times in his long life Marx, together with Engels, found himself
engaged in a fierce war against the very things Lenine and Trotzky and
their associates have been trying to do. He thundered against Weitling, who
wanted to have a "daring minority" seize the power of the state and
establish its dictatorship by a _coup d'etat_. He was denounced as a
"reactionary" by Willich and Kinkel because, in 1850, he rejected with
scorn the idea of a sudden seizure of political power through conspiratory
action, and had the courage to say that it would take fifty years for the
workers "to fit themselves for political power." He opposed Lassalle's idea
of an armed insurrection in 1862, because he was certain that the economic
development had not yet reached the stage which alone could make a social
change possible. He fought with all the fierce impetuousness of his nature
every attempt of Bakunin to lead the workers to attempt the seizure of
political power and forcibly establish their rule while still a
minority.[52] He fought all these men because he had become profoundly
convinced that "_no social order ever disappears before all the productive
forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and new and
higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions
of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society_."[53] No
"dictatorship of the proletariat," no action