Montana news. [volume] (Lewistown, Mont.) 1904-191?, 1904-04-27
66e Socialists
Are For Peace
BY ERNEST UNTERMAN.

The enemies of Socialism claim
that we Socialists appeal to the low
est passions of the MOB, and set class
against class. II this charge is made
in good faith, it shows a superficial
understanding of the Socialist phil
osophy. If it is made in bad faith,
it is a calumny. In either case, an
explanation is due to the people who
are searching for truth.
The class struggle is not an inven-
ton of the Socialists. 1t is a fact
which they discovered by scientific
analysis of human history. The
class struggle was raging in human
society thousands of years before the
Socialists discovered its existence
and pointed it out. So did the strug-
gle for existance between organic
and inorganic creation, and between
the various divisions of the organic
creation, rage for uncounted ages
before Darwin formulated his defni-
ton of it. But the first enunciation
of the class struggle in human lang
uage was no more gospel of hatred
than was the assertion of the strug-
gle for eXistance by Darwin. 1t was
simply the statement of a scientific
fact in plain scientific terms.
| The first Socialists who pointed
cut the existance of the class strug-
giles did so only to show their histor-
ical function in the development OF
society, and to declare that their aim
was the absolution of all class strug-
giles. This alone should be sufficient
proof to the unbiased mind that the
Socialist philosophy is a scientific
foundation for a new ethics, not a
philosophy of hatred.
In IS47, Marx and Engles, who
then called them selves communists
in distinction from the Utopian So.
cialists of their time stated the fol.
lowing truths in the 'Communis'
Manifesto:"
The history of all past society
has consisted in the development OF
class antagonisms that assumed diff.
ferent forms at different epochs.
But whatever form they may
have taken, one fact is common to
all past ages, viz, the exploitation
of one part of society by the other
No wonder, then that the socia
consciousness of past ages, despite
all the multiplicity and variety dis
plays, moves within certain com
mon forms, or general ideas, which
cannot completely vanish excep
with the total disappearance o
class antagonisms.
When in the course of develop
ment class distinctions have dissp
peared, and all production has beer
concentrated in the hands of vas
association of the whole nation, tn,
public power will lose its politica
! character. Political power, properly
so called, is merely the organized
. power of one class for oppressin.
another. IL the proletariat durinl
: its contest with the bourgeois j.
7 compelled. by the force of circum
stances, to organize itself as a clas
if by means of revolution, j
makes itself the ruling class, and
: as such, sweeps away by force th'
old conditions of production, ther
il will, along with these conditions
have swept away the conditions fo
the existence of class antsgonisms
and Of classes generally and will
thereby have abolished its own su
premacy as a class.
In place of the old bourgeoi
society, with its classes and clas
antagonisms, we shall have an as
sociation in which the free develop
ment of each is the condition of tn,
free development of ALL"
There is not a word of hatred
taught in this statement, nor is ther,
any sentence in the whole Com
munist Manifesto" melting to clas
hatred. A scientific criticism, be i
couched in ever so sharp terms, ha
certainly nothing in common with
fanatical appeal to passion. Her