Mr. P. Struve is neither the first nor the last forerunner of the theory of the “blunting” of contradictions between the interests of the proletariat and those of the bourgeoisie. This theory had many adherents prior to Mr. Struve, and there will be still more after him, since it is spreading extremely rapidly in the educated stratum of the petty bourgeoisie, i.e., that class whose very position has doomed it to vacillation between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. It deserves the closest consideration for the very reason that it is spreading so rapidly, trying to pass itself off as the most 514 up-to-date and also “critical” socialism, which has come to take theplace of the allegedly outmoded socialism of Marx and his " dogmatic" followers. Whoever wants to combat that theory should know both its theoretical genealogy and its present value. For that reason, the reader will feel no surprise if we leave our “critic” for a while so as to get a closer knowledge of his precursors and: his still extant and more or less distant kinsmen.