Page:Maxim Gorki on the Bolsheviki.djvu/3

 honest and thinking man and woman can see that Capitalism has lost its constructive ability, and has become a survival of the past, an obstacle to progress and civilisation, that it causes enmity between individuals, families, classes and nations, and that the beautiful ideal of the fraternity of the peoples cannot be realised so long as the irreconcilable struggle between Capital and Labour subsists.

I do not wish to deny the services rendered by capitalism in the past to the working portion of mankind, out of whose blood and flesh it has created the conditions for the transition to a new and more perfect and just social system under Socialism. But now that the accursed war has revealed in the highest degree the meanness, the inhumanity and cynicism of the old system, it has pronounced its own death sentence.

We Russians, who are justly regarded as a culturally backward nation, a people without traditions, are therefore bolder, more rebellious and less attached to the inspirations of the past. We were the first to show the way to destroy the obsolete conditions of the capitalist order of society. We are convinced that in our great work we are entitled to the sympathy and assistance of the working classes of the whole world, as well as of those individuals who before the war already denounced the social conditions under which the masses live. If that denunciation were sincere and justified, it is the duty of all honest men and women in Europe and America to recognise our right to shape our life in the way we think necessary. If intellectual people have a real interest in the solution of the great social problem, they must revolt against those who aim at the restoration of the old regime, who are endeavouring to drown the Russian revolution in torrents of Russian blood, and who desire to subject Russia in order to plunder her, as they used to plunder Turkey and other countries before the war, and as they are preparing to plunder Germany now. These are the real intentions of the Imperials, this is their sacred task.

The leader of the campaign against Russia is Woodrow Wilson.* The torch of the Russian revolution, which is throwing a light all over the world is firmly held by Lenin, and the proletariat. The intellectuals will have to decide who is nearer to them—the champion of the old regime, the representative of the culture-destroying system of government by minorities, which has now outlived itself; or the leader and teacher of new social ideas and emotions, who embodies the beautiful ideal of labour happy in a fraternity of nations—an ideal which is precious to all workers.

Almost every race and nation has at some time