The New World

(Part I)
1.
The four-year world war has profoundly upheaved the nature of the world. A new world lies around us. But very few have made clear what has changed.

The proletarian world revolution has begun. Everyone sees and knows this. The bourgeoisie looks upon it with horror; they try to salvage what can be salvaged and, with all their might, to maintain or restore the old order of power. The vanguard of the proletariat eagerly takes up the struggle, and the great mass of workers sets itself in motion, still unclear about things but sensing that their time has come. The workers' revolution is underway and will continue. But the conditions under which it takes place are new and completely different from those before the war. Here lies the error of many former social democrats who believe they still live in their archaic conception of the world and therefore do not see how different the conditions of the struggle are now, dissimilar to what they have always thought. They cling to the old slogans, to the old program; they boast that they have remained the same and lead the workers who still follow them onto false paths. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the new world within which the proletarian revolution will proceed closely.

The world war has made the world international – this is its first great effect.

Capitalism created the nation-states, the large political units of the bourgeoisie, which separated sharply from one another but increasingly abolished the contrasts and discrepancies in national character, customs, views, and rights within those nations. Every state was autocratic, sovereign towards the others; none tolerated interference from another in its internal affairs; each made treaties and alliances with others at its own discretion. As armed organizations of the bourgeoisie, they stood beside and against each other, advocating their mutual interests in wars. The consequence was that all further relationships among people took place within state borders. Legislation was an internal matter. The class struggle was fought on national soil as a struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat of the same country. However, influences from beyond the borders did occur: discussions took place at international congresses, and resolutions were drafted; but that was only incidental. Each party was sovereign in its own country; every working class was supposed, as it was said, to settle accounts with its own bourgeoisie.

Imperialism initially brought about alliances among states, which eventually crystallized into two major hostile coalitions. In the war, one of these coalitions was shattered. The victorious coalition has no more opponents. The defeated have partly been dissolved into smaller nations, which, in their desperation, beg to join the victors; the neutrals must likewise submit to the victors. The coalition expands into a League of Nations. The Wilsonian League of Nations is ultimately just the extension of the Entente by incorporating the neutral and defeated remnants of the former state mights.

In this League of Nations, little remains of the old sovereignty and independence of the old states. Even the leading states, England and America, are no longer independent in their internal politics; the loans and war supplies, the decisions of the highest war council regarding their politics have had a profound effect; and to an even greater extent, France and Italy are dependent on them. These states can no longer conduct their internal politics as they wish. This is even more true for the weaker and defeated countries. England, America, and Japan can still maintain a strong sense of autonomy because they are victors, rulers of the world; they can as much as start a new dispute among themselves. But all those others are only formally independent states. If the League of Nations theoretically determines what is already practice, they are not allowed to conclude treaties with one another or maintain a standing army.

The leading power will also pay close attention to ensure that it behaves internally as it deems necessary.

The sharp separation of states has disappeared, but the rift between the proletariat and the exploiters runs even deeper through all of them. As an international unit, the bourgeoisie of all countries stands united against the proletariat of all countries. Not merely theoretically, through sympathy, but practically, through actions. In 1871, Bismarck remained estranged from the struggles between the Commune and Versailles, only supporting the latter indirectly and morally. In 1918, the armies of the Entente entered Russia to restore the rule of the bourgeoisie, the generals, the nobles, and the knout-men [Knutenleute -K.V.]. This is not a war of England and France against Russia, but a war of the bourgeoisie against the revolutionary proletariat, a war of capital against socialism.

Anyone who only sees the conditions in their own country overlooks the most important aspect. The German proletarians must consider that the fate of German socialism is being decided in the steppes of Ukraine, just as the future of the Soviet Republic depends on their struggle in the streets of Berlin and Hamburg. The revolutionary proletariat of all countries forms a single mass, a single army, and if it does not recognize this and does not act accordingly, it will be shattered as a fragmented army, defeated piece by piece. The German proletariat has nothing to gain if it isolates itself, out of fear that the help of the Russian revolutionaries will provoke the hostility of the bourgeoisie of the Entente.

(Part II)
It will, then, be isolated and attacked as soon as it seeks to free itself. It must understand that there is now only one front in the world: capital against the proletariat; whether it wants to or not, it stands on the same front as the Russian people, and through its struggle, it supports its comrades everywhere: in Russia, where they have already liberated themselves, in Scotland, in America, in France, where they are just beginning to rise. Against the International of Capital, the Wilsonian League of Nations, stands the International of Labor [Internationale der Arbeit - K.V.], communism, which is gathering and growing.

2.
The world war has devastated the world and plunged it into the deepest poverty, creating chaos: this is its second great effect.

For four years, all productive forces have been put to the service of war. This means that all raw materials, all machinery, all means of transport, and all human labor have been wasted unproductively. They were used for the purpose of destruction; they were consumed not to produce anything but to defeat the enemy. The consequence had to be an absolute shortage of everything that society needs to continue to exist. That this could go on for four years was only possible because during these four years, the living conditions of the masses were reduced to the bare minimum: production for the war meant less covering of the basic needs. However, this could only offset a part of the war's waste; alongside this comes the neglect of all means of production and transport; instead of renewing them, they were exhausted. Thus, at the end of the war, one faces a complete disruption of economic life: there is a lack of means of production, raw materials, and labor; for the people have been physically weakened by the long deprivation. One might counter that capital has indeed increased and concentrated significantly. However, this capital consists primarily of titles of ownership, not productive capital. It represents ownership of factories that do not have the ability to produce immediately; it is primarily state debt, i.e., claims on vast sums of interest that must be paid to capitalists by the proletariat and the petty bourgeoisie and farmers in the form of taxes. The accumulation of capital conditions the distribution of products—it signifies that the produced products are distributed as unjustly as possible—but does not increase production. The enrichment of the powerful means that the vampyrs will further aggravate the general poverty by seizing the largest part of the meager supplies for themselves. From a purely economic perspective, the world already faces an enormous bankruptcy, a barren wasteland, and economic chaos.

This applies more or less to all countries; least for countries like Japan and America; but most for Central Europe – as before for Russia. Germany has exhausted its economic resources for the war more than England has – how differently it would have went if the workers had made a revolution last February! – And because it is defeated, the last remnants of its possessions are now being taken from it. The opponents want to prevent it at all costs from rising again as a capitalist power. According to the speeches of the English ministers, there is no doubt that Germany will have to pay everything it owns in war reparations, leaving it completely plundered and without possessions. The gold needed to purchase abroad and thus get production started has been taken by the victors; Germany is cut off from foreign raw materials, and foreign markets are closed to it; the most important iron and coal regions, Lorraine, the Saar area, the Silesian basin are being separated from it or will be; a significant portion of the existing means of transport or machinery will have to be delivered – everything is lacking for the revival of capitalist production. Capital can no longer provide a livelihood for its former wage slaves – terrible unemployment grins in the faces of the proletariat. For capital itself is nothing anymore. The tremendous industrial development of Germany in the past half-century has suddenly been cut off. Germany is thrown back by this war – similar to the Thirty Years' War – to a much lower stage of economic development. As in all of Central Europe, it will have to start again at a primitive level of agriculture, and it will take decades before it can rise to a higher development.

These are the prospects if bourgeois production remains, meaning therefore that the bourgeoisie retains state power in its hands.

And for the near future, the prospects are even worse. The food and means of transport for its distribution are available in such small quantities that only the strictest enforcement of the most painful regulations by a strong government will enable people to survive with their bare lives. As long as the provisional Ebert government continues to waddle through with incoherent aims, trying to accommodate both classes, nothing will happen, and a worse collapse is only being prepared. A strong government can only be a class government; either an open bourgeois government that has such great means of power that it leads the proletarians barely past the brink of starvation through minimal rationing and ruthlessly suppresses them – as the previous government did during the war – or a truly proletarian government that mercilessly touches all the supplies and privileges of the bourgeoisie and determines everything that is available or to be procured for the masses and distributes it honestly.

Capitalism has nothing more to offer to the proletariat. Necessity forces socialism upon the proletariat.

In the time before the war, capitalism could offer the workers something: a somewhat stable, albeit not secure, modest existence; and in contrast stood the uncertain uproar of a revolution that would disrupt and paralyze the highly developed process of production. Therefore, the mass of the proletariat did not dare to make the revolution; they were content and pacified themselves with the illusion that things would continue as they were. Socialism appeared as a leap into the void, into emptiness, into chaos.

Now the world stands in chaos, in nothingness. Capitalism can no longer provide a stable existence, no peaceful work. The people are faced with the choice: either to leave the direction of the world in the incapable hands that have caused this chaos, the bourgeoisie, the bureaucracy, the Ebert people, and then perish while they preserve their system of exploitation – or to take the direction into their own hands and get production started themselves. In the first case, production will struggle to rise because lack of capital and profit interests will hinder it, and the yield will serve to rebuild capital; in the second case, it will be energetically set in motion as self-supply for the whole working population. The choice will be made with compelling force. Not from clear insight, not from theoretical consideration of its excellence, but from immediate necessity will the workers have to implement socialism.

Ebert, or someone else, has said that this time of need is not suitable for realizing theory. For these people, socialism has always been merely an abstract theory instead of a practical necessity for the workers. They dreamed, like so many others, of an ideal capitalism in which an enlightened social-democratic parliamentary majority would carry out a peaceful transformation amid an abundance of production and welfare. But reality is different: socialism must come as a savior in the most terrible need, as the only possibility for the masses to save themselves from complete ruin. And it will be the savior. Without socialism, the people in bankrupt Russia would have completely succumbed to hunger and destruction; the beginnings of socialism have lead the masses through the worst times, economically strengthened them, despite the attacks from within and without that severely threatened food supply. Socialism will also save the masses in Germany and the other Central European countries through a planned but strictly implemented organization of production and food supply during this terrible time, while simultaneously laying the seed of a new mode of production, the seed of new freedom. Marx told the proletarians in 1847: "You have nothing to lose but your chains." A decade ago, representatives of the workers, in defense against Marxism, said: "The workers now have something to lose, so no revolution." Indeed, as long as the workers, in times of prosperity, felt or believed they had something to lose, they did not listen to Marx; his words fell on deaf ears. Now they become true once again. Everything that capitalism could offer, either genuinely or representatively, is lost. The workers have nothing more to lose. Stripped of everything, naked and bare, they stand in the wilderness – at the gates of the future. They have a world to win.