GOVERNMENT BY THE PEOPLE         22J
Conception of History, expounded by Karl Marx. According
to this view, the fundamental fact in human history is the series
of conflicts for ownership of the means of production. As new
methods of production have been invented, new classes have
risen to power and altered the form of society both for their
own advantage and so that the new methods can be used to the
full. Merchants and industrialists have overthrown feudal
landlords; it now remains for the proletariat, the class of property-
less workers, to overthrow the capitalist. Communists daim that
the development of science, art, and aH human activities, can
only be fully understood as aspects of the class struggle; that
the struggle has always been violent in the past, and the
proletariat will therefore have to use force and establish a
dictatorship in order to destroy the 'power of the class which it
has supplanted. In the U.S.S.R. this dictatorship is exercised
by the Communist Party through the Soviets—councils elected
for every village and town and for the whole Union. No party
but the Communist Party may exist; the citizen who wishes to
join it must accept and understand Communist teaching and
be approved by those who are already members. The presence
of party members at every strategic point, controlling the armed
forces, industry, agriculture and trade, ensures that the policy
chosen by the party prevails. Within the party, Stalin, as General
Secretary, wields enormous influence: although the exaltation
of one mflfr is not part of Communist doctrine, infractice Stalin's
power is probably no less than Mussolini's or Hitler's.
FASCISM  AND   COMMUNISM  CONTRASTED.
Fascism and Communism are thus both dictatorships, and
the arguments advanced against dictatorship may be applied
to both systems. They present, however, important points of
difference. Fascism maintains private ownership of the sources
of wealth, and private profit; Communism does not. Fascism
envisages a State composed of different classes, held together
by the spirit of national unity; Communism plans a classless