The Beginning

(Part I)
Austria-Hungary has collapsed, the second great victim of those guilty for the world-war after Tsarism. When now the peoples of Austria Hungary and of the whole Europe want to rejoice over such an occurrence, we shout: Don’t celebrate too soon. These guilty ones were mere tools, the great bearer of guilt, capitalism, still lives and tries survive on its last legs by getting rid of said tools. The bourgeoisie seeks to deflect the attention from itself and capital by proclaiming: See, the guilty, the instigators, the perpetrators of imperialism have fallen and a “people’s government” has taken their place. And the social patriots, Victor Adler, [Karl] Renner, the former leaders of the old social democracy, support this attempt by participating in the governments and by giving all kinds of speeches about freedom and people’s governance.

Now, is what has been reached not progress of some kind? Indeed it is, but only as the beginning, the first step. If the masses were to remain content with such progression, it would be worse than the most terrible demise. Because it [the progress -K.V.] does not rise above the undertakings of the 18th March 1848, when absolutism also crumbled under the pressure of the “people” [Volk - K.V.] only to be reinstated again by the bourgeoisie later on.

What occurred radically in Vienna and more moderately in Berlin is a bourgeois revolution. A bourgeois revolution means that the bourgeoisie throws away the up to then carefully preserved military-absolutist complex - because it is useless for a victory against the enemy - and takes matters into its own hands. But this is impossible without a rise of the masses – triggered by the revolution itself, the offensive or the misery of war. In earlier bourgeois revolutions (for example 1848 in Western Europe or 1917 in Russia) - after the fall of the old regime - all participating social classes confronted one another. The old authority, the powerful state, is momentarily uprooted, a new one is not yet capable of holding down the masses. The working masses are mostly armed. And now the class struggle begins. It is possible to postpone it for a while but it becomes inevitable in the end. And the unity of the “freed people” turns into a civil war. The February Revolution of 1848, wrote Marx then, was the “beautiful” revolution, during which everyone was concerned with beautiful phrase mongering and captivated by the notion of brotherhood, then came the June uprising, the terrible class struggle that ripped apart the apparent unity and exposed the reality of the societal conditions.

Why did such a struggle have to happen? Because capitalist society is made up of two classes whose interests are entirely opposed to each other. The proletariat needs to rise up against the exploitation, to rid itself of the yoke of capitalism, the bourgeoisie needs to consolidate the rule of capital and renew it in order to generate new surplus value, new capital and new power. The proletariat needs to aim for a free society without wage-slavery, the bourgeoisie needs to reinstate the old state power in order to hold down the masses. This is also the case now.

Capital has been brutally wounded by the enemy in Central Europe, the most severe conditions will be imposed upon it, its power will be cut in such a way that it will not be able to think of world rule for the next centuries. Nevertheless, it will still have to start its development anew. It will restore the old production, found new factories, repair the devastation, produce new masses, extract surplus-value from these masses again, in order to develop, to form and collect new capital.

(Part II)
And because the losses are enormous, the entire economy has fallen into bankruptcy. Due to Europe being deeply impoverished, the bourgeoisie has to increase the exploitation to the maximum, in order to quickly reachieve wealth and power. This also serves to finance new arms.

But for this a first base condition is needed: the erection of a strong state power to hold down the proletariat. All of the provisional governments, people’s governments, state councils etc. are most ardently concerned with this.

They flatter the masses, give them and themselves beautiful names and seek to pacify the workers to keep them inactive until their new order is consolidated. They seek to disarm the workers, because the armed people are dangerous and could easily, once it reaches unanimous demands, implement those. Because of this, demobilization is ordered in the Austrian countries, satisfying the deepest wishes of the war-weary soldiers, the troops which return home by their own means are attempted to be disarmed on their way there, only “trustworthy” regiments are kept mobilized, in agreement with the victor, in order to “keep the order intact”. If the new governments could organize the demobilization in such a way, they would be instantly freed from the worst nightmares and most terrible horrors. For the time being, a pacifying of the masses is sought through seemingly democratic concessions. Soldiers councils are erected but only in order to trick the masses by utilizing names with an as equally loud sound, as the revolutionary Russian example. In Austria, these councils are made up of soldiers and officers in equal amount, they exist not as a revolutionary tool of rebelling masses but as a reactionary tool for the cushioning and paralyzing of revolutionary impulse. Similar to how Mr. Renner and others turned the workers councils which were formed last year into tools for the suppression of strikes. The social democrats are eagerly taking part in all of this deception, this fearful, convulsive effort of the bourgeoisie to hold back the workers from the revolution by friendly consent. Now, the Scheidemanns of all countries, even more than during the war, have truly become the most valuable servants of capital.

If the workers let themselves be deceived by such games, they will play right into the hands of the worst oppression and exploitation, lasting centuries. But if the workers do not let themselves be deceived, they will be able to reach the great goal, the socialist society, communism.

Never have the conditions been so favorable, never before has the necessity been as tangible and obvious as now. Europe lies in terrible devastation and only organized production, which doesn’t serve profit, can raise production anew and ensure a general welfare. Russia proves exemplary - despite all of the lies and calumnies of the bourgeois press the workers understand what truly goes on there - how despite agonizing hardship the state of the masses continuously improves at the undertaking of constructing a communist economic system. Because of the world war, the belief in state authority shaken, the usual reverence and tolerance of the masses has disappeared. Deeply embittered, they face the leading powers of society, the war years have eradicated the petty fear of earlier times and their armed millions can dictate their will. And in them lives the idea of socialism, the thought of a different social order, they know capital, although not all of its nooses and pitfalls. No matter how often their leaders have falsified socialism and turned it into a harmless reformism – their own life experience, their hardship will drive them further to a radicalism of goals, as it is now necessary.

The talk is of a great, terrible time. The World War has brought a grand, external political revolution. But this upheaval: the collapse of German imperialism, the dissolution of Europe into a series of small states under the sovereignty of America is still insignificant compared to what must come now and in some cases has already begun: the revolution of the proletariat toward communism. The significant time has just begun.