More than seventy years have elapsed since the publication of Marx’s _Communist Manifesto_, in which he set forth his theory of the historic rôle of the proletariat. Thirty-seven years--more than a full generation--have elapsed since his death in 1883. Even if it were true that during the period spanned by these two dates Karl Marx believed in and advocated the dictatorship of the proletariat in the sense in which that term is used by the Bolsheviki, that fact would possess little more than historical interest. Much has happened since the death of Marx, and still more since the early ’seventies, when his life-work virtually ended, which the political realist needs must take into account. Marx did not utter the last word of human wisdom upon the laws and methods of social progress and so render new and fresh judgments unnecessary and wrong. No one can study the evolution of Marx himself and doubt that if he were alive to-day he would hold very different views from those which he held in 1847 and subsequently. Our only justification for considering the relation of Leninism to Marxism lies in the fact that in this and other countries outside of Russia a considerable element in the Socialist movement, deceived by Lenin’s use of certain Marxian phrases, gives its support to Leninism in the belief that it is identical with Marxism. Nothing could be farther from the teachings of Marx than the oppressive bureaucratic dictatorship by an infinitesimal minority set up by Lenin and his disciples.