Page:Nikolai Bukharin - Programme of the World Revolution (1920).djvu/16

 "civilised" States. Then begins a struggle for the re-division of that which has already been looted It is quite evident that the struggle for the re-division of the world must be bloody and furious as no war before it. It is conducted by monstrous giants, by the biggest States in the world, armed with perfected death-dealing machines.

The world war which broke out in the summer of 1914 was the first war for the final re-division of the world between the monsters of "civilised" robbery. It has drawn into its whirlpool four of the chief rival giants: England, Germany, America and Japan. And the struggle is being carried on to decide which of these plundering unions will put the world under the domination of its bloody iron heel.

This war has everywhere vastly deteriorated the position of the working class, which was bad enough as it was. Terrible calamities have fallen on the workers: millions of the best men were simply mown down on the battlefields; starvation was the fate of others. Those who dare to protest are menaced with severest punishments. Prisons are filled to overflowing; gendarmes with machine guns are held ready against the working classes. The rights of the workers have vanished even in the most "free" countries: the workers are even forbidden to strike; strikes are looked upon in the same light as treason. The Labour and Socialist Press is stifled. The best workers, the most loyal fighters for the revolution, are compelled to hide and build up their organisations secretly, just as we used to do in the time of the Czar, furtively hiding from crowds of spies and police. No wonder that all these consequences of the war have made the workers not only groan, but rise against their oppressors.

But now the bourgeois States which are responsible for the great slaughter are in their turn beginning to decay at the root and fall. The bourgeois States have "stuck," so to speak, They have stuck in the bloody swamp they have created in their hunt after profit, and there is no way out. To go back, to return empty-handed is impossible after such great losses in money, goods and blood. To go on, encountering new terrible risks, is also practically impossible. The policy of the war has led thorn into a blind alley from which there is no exit. And that is why the war is still continuing without either coming to an end or achieving any definite result. For the same reason the decaying capitalist order is beginning to totter, and will sooner or later