35 34 THE CLASS STRUGGLE The Russian Revolution By KARL KAUTSKY that a union between the thirteen states was impossible, and that each sovereign state ought to go it alone. There were also those who, like our own Dr. Naumann, realized that it was impossible for each state to go it alone, but who did not believe that the time had yet arrived when there should be one shepherd and flock, and who therefore advocated the creation of several confederations. The discussions during those days make interesting reading now. Not only because they sound so strange to us who live and work in the actual United States of America, but because they are so curiously like the present day discussions about the future organization of the world.
We know the verdict of history on the objections to the creation of a real unified state out of the thirteen colonies that broke away from England. The same historical forces which have welded the thirteen colonies into the nation of the United States of America one and indivisible are welding the shattered fragments of the civilized world into the United States of the World.
The fight for peace, the question of questions in these times, is intimately associated with the problems of the Russian Revolution and the revival of the International. And these two, again, are closely allied with each other. Stockholm was to have been the visible realization of the triumph of both these forces. But the glad hopes that greeted the revolution and the Stockholm meeting have ebbed as the months have gone by. And yet we must not despair. The revolution in Russia is but undergoing the various stages through which every revolution must go. The glorious, most hopeful, most exalted stage is the first, when the power that has threatened to crush and choke everything is swept aside. The people draw the first deep breath of freedom, and look forward upon the open road that leads to progress and happiness. Never, in all the revolutions of the past, has this first stage been the work of a single class; always these up heavals have been the product of the revolt of different classes, all suffering under the same oppression, all straight jacketed by: the same insufferable conditions, all with the same hope, the overthrow of the power that is oppressing them.
This co operation of classes may be kept up, yes, may even increase during the second period of the revolution, in which the new regime first takes the place of the old.
They are held together by a common fear, the dread that the power just overthrown may again raise its head. It becomes the most important task of the new regime to clean away the refuse that the old has left behind it. Furthermore, the exploiting class hesitates to maintain its own class interests, largely because it fears the strength demonstrated by the laboring masses in the struggle against the rulers whom they have overthrown.
They are trembling with fear, and dare not step into the foreground. They still hope to pacify the masses by small concessions and sacrifices.