Theoretically, Bolshevism, as such, has no necessary connection with the philosophy or the program of Socialism. Certain persons have established a working relation between Socialism, a program, and Bolshevism, a method. The connection is not inherently logical, but, on the contrary, wholly adventitious. As a matter of fact, Bolshevism can only be linked to the program of Socialism by violently and disastrously weakening the latter and destroying its fundamental character. We shall do well to remember this; to remember that the method of action, and, back of the method, the philosophy on which it rests and from which it springs, are separate and distinct from Socialism. They are incalculably older and they have been associated with vastly different programs. All that is new in Bolshevism is that a very old method of action, and a very old philosophy of action, have been seized upon by a new class which attempts to unite them to a new program.
That is all that is implied in the "dictatorship of the proletariat." Dictatorship by small minorities is not a new political phenomenon. All that is new when the minority attempting to establish its dictatorship is composed of poor, propertyless people, is the fact of their economic condition and status. That is the only difference between the dictatorship of Russia by the Romanov dynasty and the dictatorship of Russia by a small minority of determined, class-conscious working-people. It is not only the precise forms of oppressive power used by them that are identically characteristic of Czarism and Bolshevism, but their underlying philosophy. Both forms of dictatorship rest upon the philosophy of might as the only valid right. Militarism, especially as it was developed under Prussian leadership, has exactly the same philosophy and aims at the same general result, namely, to establish the domination and control of society by a minority class. The Bolsheviki have simply inverted Czarism and Militarism.
What really shocks the majority of people is not, after all, the methods or the philosophy of Bolshevism, but the fact that the Bolsheviki, belonging to a subject class, have seized upon the methods and philosophy of the most powerful ruling classes and turned them to their own account. There is a class morality and a class psychology the subtle influences of which few perceive as a matter of habit, which, however, to a great extent shape our judgments, our sympathies, and our antipathies. Men who never were shocked when a Czar, speaking the language of piety and religion, indulged in the most infamous methods and deeds of terror and oppression, are shocked beyond all power of adequate expression when former subjects of that same Czar, speaking the language of the religion of democracy and freedom, resort to the same infamous methods of terror and oppression.