V. I.

Lenin

The latest issue of the American labour weekly, Appeal to Reason , received in Europe reports that its circulation has
increased to 984,000 copies. The letters and demands coming in—writes the
editor (No. 875, September 7, new style)—indicate beyond doubt that we
shall exceed one million copies in the next few weeks.

This figure—a million copies of a socialist weekly which American
courts harass and persecute shamelessly and which is growing and gaining
strength under the fire of persecution—-shows more clearly than long
arguments the kind of revolution that is approaching in America.

Not long ago the sycophantic Novoye Vremya , a mouth piece of
venal hacks, wrote about the “power of money” in America, relating with
malicious joy the facts about the monstrous venality of Taft, Roosevelt,
Wilson and, indeed, all Presidential candidates put up by the
bourgeois parties. Here is a free, democratic republic for you, hissed the
venal Russian newspaper.

The class-conscious workers will reply to that calmly and proudly: we
have no illusions about the significance of broad democracy. No democracy
in the world can eliminate the class struggle and the omnipotence of
money. It is not this that makes democracy important and useful. The
importance of democracy is that it makes the class struggle broad, open and
conscious. And this is not a conjecture or a wish, but a fact.

At a time when the membership of the German Social-Democratic Party has
grown to 970,000 and when the circulation of an American socialist daily
has climbed to 984,000 copies, anyone who has eyes to see must acknowledge
that a proletarian is powerless when alone but that millions of
proletarians are all-powerful.

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