Proletarian Christmas Sermon

I.

We are huddled somewhere in a deserted corner of the night and can't even think anymore. We have become rough and hard, I would like to say red; for apart from our hatred and our constant restlessness we have lost everything, compassion and balance, harmony and a sense of security. And yet the last hope cries out from us, brightly: Revolution! A second Golgotha in kindness... will have to be relentlessly avoided. Christianity made the world war possible, tears will not capture an angry predator.

Since when are there people with money who are not criminals? Only the Germans are of the merciless opinion that the Kaiser is an excellent vessel of God. It was once and not again Noske, the hope of the croaking bourgeois... Even Mr. Scheidemann, a long-time member of the not unsocial-democratic party, a shadow that has lost its man, is blissfully aware that democracy must be a virtuosity of assassination. Even the Ebertfritze, a vehement obstacle in any art of government, whose acute cranial congestion has long been talked about, never forgets to sign death warrants against workers. A rebel who still babbles about the immediate absence of domination, who still indulges in peaceable posturing and indolent denial, is sabotaging the world revolution.

The new world will not be built in Bethlehem. First it will be ruthlessly destroyed and then the construction may begin. "Dictatorship" is the fateful word of a truly revolutionary policy. We have been talking and preaching and writing excited sentences for a long time: so we are sitting with whipped bodies in prison, in the cold rooms. Our opponent, however, has for the most part remained silent and has acted, fought, killed and — ruled.

II.

We have to save everything, because everything is heading for destruction. The individual, the people, humanity is threatened with death. We want the eternal word of peace on earth to finally come true... and are enthusiastic supporters of the ruthless class struggle. We know that Tolstoy's gospel of unrestrained non-violence, that his profession of life-deep goodness and complete renunciation can only be realized at the end of the necessary rule of the proletariat. A young, passionate Frenchman gave us the shattering definition: "The true revolutionary is a peaceful man who has lost his patience."

Only the whiny old man will not resist today, an intellectual coward who does not attack now. A moonstruck man of letters is content with useless barricade talk, but the strong-willed man shakes the rotten pillars of society. Higher daughters discuss the prospects of the fight, we fight!