which implies labor unions and consumers' unions. The party, consequently, does not demand a nationalization of production, and this on the ground that it means only the turning over of all the economic processes to the state and the worst kind of state capitalism. The socialization of the means of production and distribution should not mean the transfer of the same into the "ownership" of the state, but their transformation into the common wealth o/ all the workers, as the party had outlined it in the land socialization law, which has been almost repealed by the present government. The party advocates the creating of pro^ ductive societies by the active peasantry. But the distribution of goods shall be in the hands of the workers' and peasants' consumers' societies. The federative co-ordination of these two kinds of economic organs creates the social pyramid which connects the economic activity of the village and the city, through which arrangement the role of the state — including the soviet state — is replaced with the active participation of all the organized citizens.
The party of the social-revolutionaries of the left has from the beginning recognized individual terror as one of the fighting methods, with the precaution that it be used with the greatest care. But it rejects completely terrorism as a system of government and as a system for the realization of socialism. For that reason it also rejects capital punishment, which was again introduced by the bolsheviks.
On the international field the party wants to enter into connection with all organizations and social-revolutionary movements, which defend other than purely Marxian methods for the building of a socialist society.
I have treated the program of this party a little more at length than that of the bolsheviks, because bolshevik literature has inundated all Europe, and hence it may be assumed that most of the politically interested hand and brain workers know this program. On the other hand, hardly anything is known about this party outside the boundaries of Russia, and it is therefore an act of equalizing justice.
The Maximalists
Out of the great movement of the narodniki or social-revolutionaries ^there grew, during the pangs of the revolution of 1905, the Maximalist movement. At the congress of the social-revolutionaries of 1904, a wing, under Riefkin, placed itself to the extreme left. It put up a maximum program and rejected not only the minimum program of the Social-Revolutionary Party, but also the program of all other parties, such as the then still united Marxist parties. All other parties, the present bolsheviks included, were then minimalists.
Already at the congress of 1904 they wished to have nothing to do with the reform program of the other parties. They did not want to be reformists, but revolutionaries, and demanded of a revolution the realization of the maximum that a revolution can bring. Already then, one of their theoreticians represented the idea of the Soviets. The maximalist Tagin was the man who put forward the idea of Soviets, and together with the anarchists he represented the most pronounced maximalism.
When the maximalists could not come to any unity with the minimalists, they cut loose from the other parties and foundecf an independent organization. But they did not call themselves a party, but a union, being that they did not believe in the revolutionary qualities of a party. In a party, tendencies towards power are always noticeable, which never allow the revolutionary principle of freedom to come to full development. For that reason they rejected the centralist party and formed a federalist union.