By admin 
(Part I)
Austria-Hungary has collapsed, the second major victim of the world war perpetrators after Tsarism. Now when the peoples of Austria, Hungary and all of Europe want to rejoice at such an event, we cry: Do not celebrate it too soon. These culprits were mere tools, the great carrier of guilt: capitalism, still lifes and attempts to survive on their last legs by getting rid of those tools. The bourgeoisie tries to divert attention from itself and from capital by proclaiming: Look, 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 effort by participating in governments and making all kinds of speeches about freedom and popular government.
Isn’t what has been achieved some form of progress? Indeed it is, but only as the beginning, the first step. If the masses were to remain satisfied with such progress, it would be worse than the most terrible ruin. Because it (progress -KV) does not rise above the undertakings of March 18, 1848, when absolutism also crumbled under the pressure of the “people” (Volk-KV) only to be later restored by the bourgeoisie.
What took place radically in Vienna and more moderately in Berlin is a bourgeois revolution. A bourgeois revolution means that the bourgeoisie throws away the hitherto carefully preserved military-absolutist complex – because it is useless for victory over the enemy – and takes matters into its own hands. But this is impossible without the rise of the masses – caused by the revolution itself, the offensive or the misery of war. In previous bourgeois revolutions (e.g. 1848 in Western Europe or 1917 in Russia) – after the fall of the old regime – all participating social classes faced each other. The old authority, the powerful state, has been temporarily uprooted, a new one is not yet able to hold back the masses. The working masses are largely armed. And now the class struggle begins. It is possible to put it off for a while, but eventually it becomes inevitable. And the unity of the “liberated people” turns into a civil war. The February Revolution of 1848, Marx wrote at the time, was the ‘beautiful’ revolution, in which everyone engaged in beautiful phrases and was fascinated by the idea of brotherhood. Then came the June Uprising, the terrible class struggle that tore apart the apparent unity. and exposed the reality of social conditions.
Why did such a battle have to take place? Because capitalist society consists of two classes whose interests are completely opposed to each other. The proletariat must rise up against exploitation, rid itself of the yoke of capitalism, the bourgeoisie must consolidate and renew the rule of capital in order to generate new surplus value, new capital and new power. The proletariat must strive for a free society without wage slavery, the bourgeoisie must restore the old state power to keep the masses under control. This is also the case now.
Capital has been brutally wounded by the enemy in Central Europe, the harshest conditions will be imposed on it, its power will be limited in such a way that it will no longer be able to think of world domination for centuries to come. Nevertheless, it will still have to start its development again. It will restore the old production, build new factories, repair the destruction, produce new masses, extract surplus value from these masses again, to develop, to form and accumulate new capital.
(Part II)
And because the losses are enormous, the entire economy has gone bankrupt. Because Europe is deeply impoverished, the bourgeoisie must increase exploitation to the maximum in order to quickly acquire wealth and power. This also serves to finance new weapons.
But this requires a first basic condition: the creation of strong state power to keep the proletariat under control. All provisional governments, people’s governments, state councils, etc. are fervently concerned with this.
They flatter the masses, give them and themselves nice names, and try to pacify the workers so that they remain inactive until their new order is consolidated. They try to disarm the workers because the armed people are dangerous and, once unanimous demands are reached, they can easily carry them out. As a result, demobilization is ordered in the Austrian countries, fulfilling the deepest wishes of the war-weary soldiers; the troops returning home under their own power are disarmed along the way; only ‘reliable’ regiments are mobilized, in consultation with the victor, to “keep order intact”. If the new governments could organize demobilization in such a way, they would immediately be freed from the worst nightmares and most terrible horrors. For the time being, the aim is to pacify the masses through apparently democratic concessions. Soldiers’ councils are formed, but only to deceive the masses by using names that sound as loud as the revolutionary Russian example. In Austria these councils consist of as many soldiers as officers; they exist not as a revolutionary instrument for the rebellious masses, but as a reactionary instrument for softening and paralyzing the revolutionary impulse. Similar to how Mr. Renner and others turned the workers’ councils formed last year into tools for strike suppression. The Social Democrats eagerly participate in all this deception, this anxious, frantic attempt by the bourgeoisie to keep the workers from revolution with friendly consent. Now, even more than during the war, the Scheidemanns of all countries have truly become the most valuable servants of capital.
If the workers allow themselves to be deceived by such games, they will be playing into the hands of the worst oppression and exploitation that will last for centuries. But if the workers do not allow themselves to be deceived, they will be able to achieve the great goal of socialist society, communism.
Never before have conditions been so favorable, never before has the need been as tangible and clear as it is now. Europe is in terrible devastation and only organized production, which does not serve profit, can restart production and guarantee general well-being. Russia proves to be an example – despite all the lies and slanders of the bourgeois press, the workers understand what is really going on there – how despite painful hardships the condition of the masses is constantly improving in the enterprise of building a communist economic system. The world war has shaken faith in state authority and the usual respect and tolerance of the masses has disappeared. Deeply embittered, they are confronted by the leading powers of society, the war years have eradicated the petty fear of the past and their armed millions can dictate their will. And in them lives the idea of socialism, the idea of another social order, they know capital, although not all its snares and pitfalls. No matter how many times their leaders have falsified socialism and turned it into an innocent reformism, their own life experience and their hardships will drive them further towards a radicalism of goals, as is now necessary.
It talks about a great, terrible time. The World War brought about a major 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 now happen and in some cases has already begun: the revolution of the proletariat in the direction of communism. The important time has only just begun.