The proletariat for your Messiah, the poor and many are to
seize power and make the world new.
They cannot even conduct a strike without cunning leaders: if
they make a revolution their leaders
Must take the power. The first duty of men in power: to defend
their power. What men defend
To-day they will love to-morrow; it becomes theirs, their property.
Lenin has served the revolution,
Stalin presently begins to betray it. Why? For the sake of power,
the Party's power, the state's
Power, armed power, Stalin's power, Caesarean power.
This is
not quite a new world.
The old shepherd has been known before; great and progressive
empires have flourished before; powerful bureaucracies
Apportioned food and labor and amusement; men have been
massed and moulded, spies have gone here and there,
The old shepherd Caesar his vicious collies, watching the flock.
Inevitable? Perhaps, but not new.
The ages like blind horses turning a mill tread their own hoofmarks.
Whose corn's ground in that mill?
