THE November revolution [October 25th, old style; November 7th, new style, 1917] in Russia, realised the dictatorship of the proletariat, which began to build the foundations of communist society, with the aid of the poor peasants or the semi-proletariat. The development of the revolution in Germany and Austria-Hungary, the growth of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat in all advanced lands, the spread of the soviet form of that movement (the form which aimed directly at realising the dictatorship of the proletariat) — these things combined to show that the era of the world-wide proletarian communist revolution had begun.
This revolution was the inevitable result of the development of capitalism, which had hitherto been dominant in the majority of civilised countries. If we ignore the misleading designation of the party as “social democratic,” and use instead the word “communist,” our old program accurately characterised in the following theses the nature of capitalism and of bourgeois society:[§1-5.]
“As the chief characteristic of this society, we have commodity production upon the foundation of capitalist productive relationships, in accordance with which the most important and significant part of the means of the production and distribution of commodities is owned by a comparatively small class of persons, whereas the great Majority of the population consists of proletarians and semi-proletarians compelled by their economic position to sell their labour power permanently or from