ploitation, oppression, class distinctions and class struggles. That view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause and the great moving power of all important historic events in the economic development of society, in the changes in the modes of production and exchange, in the consequent division of society into classes against one another."

Marx himself says:

"In the social production which men carry on, they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material powers of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society-the real foundation, on which rise legal and political superstructures and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual processes in life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material forces of production in society come into conflict with the existing relations of production, or-what is but a legal expression of the same thingwith the property relations within which they had been at work before. From forms of development of the forces of production these relations turn into their fetters. Then comes the period of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations the distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, æsthetic or philosophic-in short, idealological-forms in which men become conscious of their conflict and fight it out."

"To Hegel," Marx declared, "the life processes of the human brain, i. e., the process of thinking, which under the name of the Idea' he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of the Idea.' With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind and translated into terms of thought."

Karl Marx, as a Prussian materialist, based his philosophy, not upon the general welfare, patriotism or any other idealism, but upon the assumption that society is divided into permanent classes in the struggle for wealth, and that those who employ exploit and oppress those who labor. Thereby a class struggle or class war is caused which must continue until the laboring class can not only conquer the employing class but destroy them as a class and substitute the State for them. This is yas contrary to English and American history and philosophy. Our great struggles have been for political, not industrial, freedom; that is, for the right of the individual to carve out his own career. Democracy is founded and has grown, not upon class hatred, but upon the coöperation for the general welfare between all classes of society, of a more and more wonderful and varied nature and to a greater extent.

The inherent falsity and baseness of Marx's political philosophy are shown by the words which he uses to express the objects or purposes of his scheme. The word proletarii (from proles, children) was used in Rome as a term of obloquy or reproach, to describe the very lowest class of the population who were of no value to the State except as "children-breeders." The word bourgeoisie originally meant the town dwellers of France who rose against the aristocracy in the French Revolution.

Marx as a Prussian university graduate and scholar knew the value and meaning of the terms which he used. Therefore the true meaning of his objects or purposes are illuminated by his proposal to improve political and social conditions by establishing, through a social revolution, the dictatorship of the lowest class over all other classes, including the solid middle class which has been the source of all reforms during the past three centuries. Our national and state development of purposive government, founded upon absolute political and individual liberty, demonstrates why we have never had and never can have a proletarian class. If the word proletariat signifies, nowadays, the daily wage earning class who have no property, our history shows that substantially all our property owning class has come very recently from the daily wage earners, who have been chiefly recruited from the European proletariat. These immigrants have found political freedom, universal education and unheard-of economic opportunities awaiting them and their posterity. These blessings of liberty, in the form of purposive government, have come, not from class conflicts and the social revolutions of the lower class, but from the orderly evolution in government initiated and carried through by the voluntary action of the bourgeoisie class; not from below upwards, but from above downwards a fact which will become more and more evident as the history of our purposive government unrolls before us,

III

THE PRUSSIAN RUTHLESSNESS OF MARXIAN

W

SOCIALISM

E cannot understand the development of the American nation unless we appreciate that it has been the conscious and unconscious working out through one hundred and forty years of the ideals and spirit of English and American political thought and philosophy so well embodied in the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence. Only when we realize this view of our history can we understand how a President of our people, in the midst of the greatest civil war in history, during which he had been assailed and reviled beyond measure, could utter those words which we prize as among the greatest spoken by any man of our race or nation:

"With malice toward none; with charity toward all.”

Or how, only a generation later, another beloved President could declare that the hates and antagonisms of that Civil War should be forgotten and forgiven, and that Memorial Day should commemorate the bravery alike of the Blue and the Grey.

In precisely the same way, when we would compare the true purposes of American Democracy with those of Marxian Socialism, we must know the national spirit and ambitions, and the national concept of right and wrong, of ethics and of the equities between man and man, which environed Karl Marx in his youth, and in his

school and university days. These necessarily colored his thoughts as a philosopher and political reformer, and likewise have imbued his Prussian disciples and followers ever since. As George Washington, though the richest man of his country, was the embodiment of English Americanism, so Marx, in his political philosophy, was the embodiment of Prussian Prussianism-the pitilessness of Prussia in Belgium and Serbia-advocated to be used in a pitiless social revolution of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie: the might of the proletariat to justify the right of its revolt.

Karl Marx was born a Prussian, in 1818. He took his university course at Berlin, a Prussian university. His chief collaborator was Engels, a Prussian. Marx's conception of the state which was to apply his theories of social hatred was modelled upon the state-ocracy of Prussia-although his was to be a Prussian proletariatocracy; a Prussian state of, by and for a proletariat bred and steeped in Prussian ruthlessness. Therefore we must treat Marxism as we would any other product of Prussianism, and from that standpoint examine the underlying thoughts-hatred, deception, cruelty, selfishness and unfairness, and the political and individual ruthless oppression-in which Marx was taught and grew up, which drove him from Prussia into abject poverty in Paris and London, and which necessarily made Marxism what it is, a world-wide and ruthless social revolution, and Bolshevism its legitimate offspring; and which differentiate it from anything English or American in origin or thought.

As we shall see later in regard to American Democracy, the purposes, the ambitions of a race gradually, but inevitably, mold its character, its outlook upon the future, its will to progress, peacefully and benignly or by unfair