Page:The German Spartacists, Their Aims and Objects (1919).djvu/9

 The struggle for Socialism is the greatest civil war in history, and the proletarian revolution must prepare for this civil war the necessary weapons; it must learn to use them—to fight and to conquer.

By arming the compact mass of working people with full political power for the purposes of the revolution is established the dictatorship of the proletariat, and therefore the true democracy. True democracy, democracy that does not defraud the people, does not exist where the wage slave sits in would-be equality with the capitalist, or the farm hand with the landowner, in order to debate in parliamentary manner over questions most vital to them—true democracy is to be found only where the mass of the workers take the entire power of government into their toil-hardened hands in order to wield it over the heads of the ruling classes as the god Thor wielded his hammer.

To enable the proletariat to solve this problem the Spartacus Union demands:—

1. The disarming of the entire police force, of all officers, as well as of the non-proletarian soldiers.

2. The seizure of all supplies of arms and ammunition, as well as of all war industries, by the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils.

3. The arming of the entire adult male population as the workers' militia. The formation of a red guard of the workers, as the active part of the militia, for the effective protection of the revolution against counter-revolutionary plots and risings.

4. Abolition of the commanding power of the officers and non-commissioned officers. The substitution of the voluntary discipline of the soldiers for the old brutal barrack discipline. Election of all superiors by the rank and file, with the right to recall these superiors at any time. Abolition of courts-martial.