have one thing or the other: either a wolves’ will, that of those who enslave the cheated and oppressed sheep; or else a sheep’s will, that of those who wish to deliver the sheep from the wolves and to drive out the plunderers. There can be no middle course in this matter. Now, it is as clear as daylight that the same thing applies to the two main classes of human society. In contemporary society, class is arrayed against class, the bourgeoisie against the proletariat, the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. Between them there is war to the knife. How can they possibly have a common will, a bourgeois-proletarian will? Obviously there is no more possibility of bourgeois-proletarian desires and aspirations than of wolf-sheep desires and aspirations. We can either have the will of the bourgeoisie, of the class which imposes its will in various ways upon the oppressed majority of the people; or else we can have the will of the proletariat, of the class which imposes its will upon the bourgeoisie. It is particularly stupid to speak of a will common to all classes, of interests common to the whole nation, in an epoch of civil war, in a period of revolution, when the old world is crumbling to pieces. The proletariat wants to transform the world; the bourgeoisie wants to strengthen the old slavery.
How can there be a “common” will for bourgeoisie and proletariat? It is manifest that the very phrase about a will common to the whole nation is humbug if the words are intended to apply to all classes. No such common will has been realised or can be realised.
But this fraud is necessary to the bourgeoisie, necessary for the maintenance of capitalist rule. The capitalists are in the minority. They cannot venture to say openly that this small minority rules. This is why the bourgeoisie has to cheat, declaring that it rules in the name of “the whole people,” “all classes,” “the entire nation,” and so on.
How is the fraud carried out in a “democratic republic”? The chief reason why the proletariat is enslaved to-day is because it is *economically