are interconnected, they are all parts of the world economy, nearly all of them were involved in the war, and were united by the war in a common understanding. In all countries alike, the war produced terrible devastation, led to famine, and to the enslavement of the proletariat. Everywhere it promoted the gradual decomposition and decay of capitalism, and ultimately caused a revolt against the savage discipline in the army, the factory, and the workshop. With the like inevitability it led to the communist revolution of the proletariat.
Once they had begun, the disintegration of capitalism and the growth of the communist revolution could no longer be stayed. The ruin of capitalism was imminent. Every attempt to establish a truly human society upon the old capitalist foundations is foredoomed to absolute failure. The class consciousness of the proletarian masses is now so fully developed, that they neither can nor will work for capital. They refuse to slay one another in the interests of capital, of colonial policy, etc. The army of William II cannot possibly be reestablished in Germany to-day. And just as it is impossible to reestablish an imperialist discipline in the army, just as it has become impossible to compel proletarian soldiers to subject themselves to the yoke of junker generals, so is it impossible to reestablish the capitalist discipline of labour, and to compel the workers to toil for a master or the peasants to toil for a landlord. The new army can only be created by the proletariat; the new labour discipline can only be created by the working class.
We are thus confronted by two alternatives, and two only. There must either be complete disintegration, hell broth, further brutalisation and disorder, absolute chaos, or else communism. All attempts that have been made to reestablish capitalism in a country where for a time the masses have had power in their own hands, confirm this statement of alternatives. Neither the Finnish bourgeoisie nor the Hungarian bourgeoisie, neither Kolchak nor Denikin nor Skoropadsky,