Page:Nikolai Bukharin - Programme of the World Revolution (1920).djvu/18

 the voice of the labouring class, before which history has laid the problem of putting an end to war and of overthrowing the yoke of capitalism. Thus approaches the hour of the decay of capitalism and the communist revolution of the working class.

The first stone was laid by the Russian October Revolution. The reason why capitalism in Russia became disorganised before it did in any other country, was that the burden of the world war was heaviest for the young capitalist State of our country. We had not the monstrous organisation of the bourgeoisie which they have in England, Germany or America; and our bourgeoisie could not therefore cope with the demands laid on it by the war. Nor could they withstand the mighty onset of the Russian labouring class and of the poor elements of the peasantry who, in the October days, knocked the bourgeoisie out of their seats and put at the head of the Government the party of the working class—the Communist Bolsheviks.

Sooner or later the same fate will overtake the bourgeoisie of Western Europe, where the working class is joining more and more the ranks of the communists. Everywhere, organisations of native "bolsheviks " are growing; in Austria and America, in Germany and in Norway, in France and in Italy. The programme of the communist party is becoming the programme of the universal proletarian revolution.

 

We already know that the root of the evil of all plundering wars, of oppression of the working classes and of all the atrocities of capitalism, is that the world has been enslaved by a few State organised capitalist bands, who own all the wealth of the earth as their private property. The capitalist ownership of the means of production—this is the reason of reasons which explains the barbarity of the present order of things. To deprive the rich of their power by depriving them of their wealth, by force, that is the paramount duty of the working class, of the Labour Party, the party of communists.

Some think that, after depriving the rich of their possessions, these should be religiously, justly and equally divided