Page:The German Spartacists, Their Aims and Objects (1919).djvu/3



On the 9th of November, 1918, the workers and soldiers of Germany overthrew the old régime. The bloody dream of subjecting the world to the domination of militarism vanished like smoke on the battlefields of France. The band of criminals who kindled the world conflagration and drove Germany into the sea of blood reached on that day the end of their career. The people, who were deceived for four years, and, in the service of Moloch, forgot their duties as cultured people, lost all sense of honour and humanity, and allowed themselves to be used in connection with any base act, finding themselves on the brink of an abyss, awakened from the stupor in which they were in for more than four years.

On the 9th of November the German workers arose to throw off the disgraceful yoke. The Hohenzollerns were driven out; soviets of workers' and soldiers' deputies were elected.

But the Hohenzollerns were never more than the agents of the imperialist capitalists and junkers. The class rule of the capitalists—that was the real cause of the world war in Germany and France, in Russia and England, in Europe and America. The capitalists of all countries—these are the real initiators of the slaughter of peoples. International capitalism is the insatiate Moloch into whose bloody jaws are thrown millions upon millions of fresh human sacrifices.

The world war confronted society with a choice of two alternatives: either the continued existence of capitalism, with its consequent new wars and inevitable and speedy destruction due to chaos and anarchy, or the abolition of capitalist exploitation.