could not overthrow the regime of Scheidemann and Noske unless they could destroy the army of White Guards. If the opposing army remain intact, the victory of the revolution will be impossible; if the revolution be victorious, the army of the bourgeoisie will disintegrate and crumble. This, for example, is why the victory over tsarism signified no more than a partial destruction of the tsarist State and a partial decomposition of the army; but the victory of the November revolution denoted the final overthrow of the State organisation of the Provisional Government and the total dissolution of the Kerenskyite army.
Thus the revolution destroys the old power and creates a new one, a different power from that which existed before. Of course the new power takes over some of the constituent parts of the old, but it uses them in a different way.
It follows that the conquest of State power is not the conquest of the pre-existent organisation, but the creation of a new organisation, an organisation brought into