He
thinks that, if Mr. Henderson, for instance, 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
abstention from Parliamentary contests, but participation with a view
to making Parliament obviously contemptible. 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 suggestion as fantastic. I got little impression of knowledge or
psychological imagination as regards Great Britain. Indeed the whole
tendency of Marxianism is against psychological imagination, since it
attributes everything in politics to purely material causes.
I asked him next whether he thought it possible to establish Communism
firmly and fully in a country containing such a large majority of
peasants. He admitted that it was difficult, and laughed over the
exchange the peasant is compelled to make, of food for paper; the
worthlessness of Russian paper struck him as comic. But he said--what
is no doubt true--that things will right themselves when there are
goods to offer to the peasant.
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