grade employees, etc. It follows, therefore, that capitalist society can maintain itself in being so long only as the private soldier (drawn from the ranks of the workers) obeys the orders of the officer (drawn from the aristocracy, the landed gentry, or the wealthier bourgeoisie); so long only as in the government offices the subordinates obey the orders of their wealthy chiefs; and so long only as in the factories the workers continue to obey the highly paid managers or the factory owners who live upon surplus value. But as soon as the working masses realise that they are nothing but pawns in the hands of their enemies, the ties are broken that bind the private soldier to the service of the officer and that bind the worker to the service of the factory owner. The workers cease to attend to the orders of the factory owner; the private soldiers cease to attend to the orders of their officers; the civil servants cease to attend to the orders of their chiefs. Then begins the period in which the old discipline is relaxed, that discipline which enabled the rich to rule the poor, which enabled the bourgeoisie to fleece the workers. This period will inevitably continue until the new class (the proletariat) has subjugated the bourgeoisie, has forced the bourgeoisie to serve the workers, has established a new discipline.
Such a condition of affairs, in which the old order has been destroyed and the new order has not yet been created, can be ended in no other way than by the complete victory of the proletariat in the civil war.
32. The Civil War.
Civil war is an extremely intensified class war, and it occurs when the class war has led to revolution. The imperialist world war between the two groups of bourgeois States, the war waged for the repartition of the world, was carried on by the slaves of capital. It imposed such heavy burdens upon the workers that the class war was transformed into a civil war