dominant; the creation by the banks, and also by the capitalist combines, of an apparatus for the joint regulation of the process of the production and distribution of commodities; the rise in the cost of living, the oppression of the workers by the employers’ syndicates, the enslavement of the working class by the imperialist State, the colossal difficulties facing the proletariat in its economic and political struggle (phenomena inevitably associated with the growth of capitalist monopoly); the miseries, the poverty, and the ruin which issued from the imperialist war — all these things have inevitably contributed to the collapse of capitalism and to the transition to a higher type of social economy.[§31.]
The imperialist war could not end in a just peace or even in any sort of stable peace between the bourgeois governments. At the stage of development which capitalism has now reached this war must inevitably be transformed, and is being transformed under our very eyes, into a civil war between the exploited and toiling masses (led by the proletariat) and the bourgeoisie.[§32.]
The vigorous onslaught made by the proletariat, and the victories secured by the workers in various lands, have intensified the resistance of the exploiters, and have led to the creation of new forms of international union among the capitalists (the League of Nations, etc.); these, organising upon a world scale, by the systematic exploitation of all the peoples of the globe, and concentrating their forces, aim at the direct crushing of the proletarian movement in all lands.
All this inevitably leads to the conjuncture of civil wars within the individual States, with revolutionary wars, waged in part by the proletarian States that are defending themselves against capitalist attack, and in part by the oppressed peoples that are endeavouring to throw off the yoke of the imperialist Powers.[§33& 34.]