.THE PRESENT CONDITION OF RUSSIA
stand or disagree, as also in his love of expounding. I
got the impression that he despises a great many people
and is an intellectual aristocrat.
The first question I asked him was as to how far he
recognized the peculiarity of English economic and
political conditions? I was anxious to know whether
advocacy of violent revolution is an indispensable con-
dition of joining the Third International, although I
did not put this question directly because others were
asking it officially. His answer was unsatisfactory to me.
He admitted that there is little chance of revolution in
England now, and that the working man is not yet
disgusted with Parliamentary Government. But he hopes
that this result may be brought about by a Labour
Ministry. He thinks that, if Mr. Henderson, for in-
stance, were to become Prime Minister, nothing of
importance would be done; organized Labour would
then, so he hopes and believes, turn to revolution. On
this ground, he wishes his supporters in this country to
do everything in their power to secure a Labour
majority in Parliament; he does not advocate absten-
tion from Parliamentary contests, but participation
with a view to making Parliament obviously con-
temptible. The reasons which make attempts at violent
revolution seem to most of us both improbable and
undesirable in this country carry no weight with him,
and seem to him mere bourgeois prejudices. When I
suggested that whatever is possible in England can be
achieved without bloodshed, he waved aside the sug-
gestion as fantastic. I got little impression of knowledge
or psychological imagination as regards Great Britain.
Indeed the whole tendency of Marxianism is against I
psychological imagination, since it attributes every- !
thing in politics to purely material causes.
34