Rigidly conceived and applied, the Marxian doctrine of the class-struggle may lead to ultra-revolutionary tactics of the Socialist and Labour movement, to the system of Workers' Councils, and Proletarian Dictatorship. If the emerging class and its struggle constitutes the lever of social revolution and the impulse of the dialectical social process, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is justified, and in any case, democracy, which includes both the capitalist and working class, cannot be the State form during the transition period from private property to Socialism. Considered from the economic standpoint, political democracy is generally impossible, or only sham democracy so long as economic inequality exists. The Communist Manifesto does not contain a single political democratic reform. The conclusion can be drawn from Marx's idea, as a whole, that in his estimation, the class stood higher than so-called democracy. This is one of the sources of Bolshevism. III. THE ROLE OF THE LABOUR MOVEMENT AND THE PROLETARIAN DICTATORSHIP. The Labour Party is the political expression of the whole Trade Union movement so far as the latter formulates national demands, directed towards the State and society generally. The Labour Party will function the more effectively, and be able to accomplish its allotted task, as its foundation--the Trade Union movement--becomes established and strengthened, and the more comprehensive will be its effects. The Trade Unions are not merely to be satisfied with the work of the present, but are to become the focus and centre of gravity of the proletarian aspirations which arise out of the social transformation process, and are to work for the abolition of Capitalism. The most effective lever for the achievement of this object is the conquest of political power. With its aid the proletariat can consciously carry out the transformation of a Capitalist into a Communist society. To this transformation, there also corresponds a political transition period, the state of which can be nothing else than a revolutionary Dictatorship of the Proletariat.--(Marx, Letter to the German Social Democracy, 1875, on their Gotha Programme.) Marx considered himself to be the real author of the idea of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. In a letter written by him, in 1852, to his American friend, Weydemeyer, he declares: