69. The Red Army is provisional.
The bourgeoisie looks upon the capitalist system as the “natural” ordering of human society; it regards its own regime as everlasting, and it therefore constructs the instrument of its power — the army — solidly, builds it to last for years and years if not forever. The proletariat regards its own Red Army in quite another light. The Red Army has been created by the workers for the struggle with the White Army of capital. The Red Army issued out of the civil war; it will disappear when a complete victory has been gained in that war, when class has been abolished, when the dictatorship of the proletariat has spontaneously lapsed. The bourgeois army is born of bourgeois society, and the bourgeoisie wishes this child to live forever because it reflects the imperishability of the bourgeois regime. The Red Army, on the other hand, is the child of the working class, and the workers desire for their child a natural and glorious death. The day when the Red Army can be permanently disbanded will be the day on which will be signalised the final victory of the communist system.
The Communist Party must make it clear to the soldiers of the Red Army that if that army should gain the victory over the White Guards of capital the victors would be the soldiers of the last army in the world. But the party must also make it perfectly clear to all who participate in the upbuilding of the Red Army, it must convince all the proletarian and peasant troops, that the workers have only become soldiers for a brief space and owing to a temporary need, that the field of production is the natural field for their activities, that work in the Red Army must on no account lead to the formation of any caste permanently withdrawn from industry and agriculture.