126 THE CLASS STRUGGLE DOCUMENTS 127 high sounding words is gone! The hour of action has struck for the Internationall We ask you to elect Workers and Soldiers Councils everywhere that will seize political power, and, together with us, will restore peace. Not Lloyd George and Poincaré, not Sonnino, Wilson, and Erzberger or Scheidemann, must be allowed to make peace. Peace must be concluded under the waving banner of the Socialist world revolution. Proletarians of all countries! We call upon you to complete the work of Socialist liberation, to give a human aspect to the disfigured world and to make true those words with which we often greeted each other in the old days and which we sang as we parted: And the Internationale shall be the human race. KLARA ZETKIN. ROSA LUXEMBURG. KARL LIEBKNECHT. FRANZ MEHRING.
chaos the ruling classes are not able to control their own creation, The beast of capital that conjured up the hell of the world war is incapable of banishing it, of restoring real order, of insuring bread and work, peace and civilization, justice and liberty, to tortured humanity. What is being prepared by the ruling classes as peace and justice is only a new work of brutal force from which the hydra of oppression, hatred and fresh, bloody wars raises its thousand heads. Socialism alone is in a position to complete the great work of permanent peace, to heal the thousand wounds from which humanity is bleeding, to transform the plains of Europe, trampled down by the passage of the apocryphal horseman of war, into blossoming gardens, to conjure up ten productive forces for every one destroyed, to awaken all the physical and moral energies of humanity, and to replace hatred and dissension and fraternal solidarity, harmony, and respect for every human being. If representatives of the proletarians of all countries could but clasp hands under the banner of Socialism for the purpose of making peace, then peace would be concluded in a few hours. Then there will be no disputed questions about the left bank of the Rhine, Mesopotamia, Egypt or colonies. Then there will be only one people: the toiling human beings of all races and tongues. Then there will be only one right: the equality of all men. Then there will be only one aim: prosperity and progress for everybody. Humanity is facing the alternative: Dissolution and downfall in capitalist anarchy, or regeneration through the social revolution. The hour of fate has struck. If you believe in Socialism, it is now time to show it by deeds. If you are Socialists, now is the time to act. Proletarians of all countries, if we now summon you for a common struggle it is not done for the sake of the German capitalists who, under the label of German nation, are trying to escape the consequences of their own crimes; it is being done for our sake as well as for yours. Remember that your victorious capitalists stand ready to suppress in blood our revolution, which they fear as they do their own.
You yourselves have not become any freer through the victory, you have only become still more enslaved. If your ruling classes succeed in throttling the proletarian revolution in Germany, and in Russia, then they will turn against you with redoubled violence.
Your capitalists hope that victory over us and over revolutionary Russia will give them the power to scourge you with a whip of scorpions and to erect the thousand year empire of exploitation upon the grave of Socialism. Therefore the proletariat of Germany looks toward you in this hour, Germany is pregnant with the social revolution, but Socialism can only be realized by the proletariat of the world. And, therefore, we call to you: Arise for the strugglet Arise for action! The time for empty manifestos, platonic resolutions, and