108 DANGEROUS THOUGHTS

it is therefore important to understand why social democracy
failed to win their support, and whether the teaching of Marx
helps us to understand how to do so. It seems to me that if we
approach our problem from the standpoint which Marx himself
would have adopted, what has happened since his own time
forces us to conclusions which are opposite to those stated in his
writings and to the beliefs of the overwhelming majority of his
followers who base their conduct on the Jiteral inspiration of
his works.

The great merit of Marx was that he saw very clearly how the
policies and prejudices of his time l^.ad been shaped by the intro-
duction of steam as a source of power in manufacturing processes.
A vast extension of the factory system with concomitant shifting
of the population had brought isolated craftsmen from their
homes, and had concentrated diem in compact milling or mining
communities, where conditions were propitious to the growth
of militant class solidarity. The new conditions made increasing
demands for unskilled labour, and skilled craftsmanship was on
the decline. If no new agencies had entered into the situation
it is possible that the results might have been as Marx anticipated.
A landless, letterless proletariat would have continued to grow in
numbers and in militancy, till the owners of industry were expro-
priated by sheer force of numbers. The Communist Manifesto
of 1848 was very emphatic in its assertion that the middle classes
would be squeezed out of existence in the process of levelling
down. It explicitly states that the poet, the lawyer, and the
physician were becoming more and more the hired slaves of the
master class and were thus sinking into the ranks of the proletariat.
Resort to reasoned appeal was therefore futile and violent conflict
was the inescapable climax.

Such was the forecast on which Marx based a social tactic
which has failed in every highly industrialized country where his
disciples have acted upon it. How and why it was wrong has
been sufficiently discussed in another context.1 Technological
changes and educational expansion which have taken place since

1 Page 19 et seq.