444 THE CLASS STRUGGLE EDITORIALS 445 months truce could be carried out. It is not in the power of either side of the controversy or struggle to cease fighting.
The struggle they are waging is the very essence of their existence.
The class conscious workingman, therefore, never even for a moment doubted the outcome of this conference. Now that the inevitable end has come, let us score another point for the Marxian interpretation of Society.
ment against the workers in spite of all theories of equality, so it manifests itself in the incessant struggle of the workers against capital. But while the capitalist state does not admit the class character of its own manifestations of life, disguising it under the veil of democracy and equality, it does not hesitate to recognize the fight of the workers against capital as a class war. Wherever that fight is carried on with revolutionary tendencies and a consciousness of its character the capitalist state tries to protect itself in the name of society and accuses such fighters of inciting class hatred and of creating a class struggle. But such tactics do not in the least prove the absence of a class struggle but are only forms in which it is fought by the capitalist class through the state it controls.
The class struggle is the ever present stream of life of society, is the heart that drives the fluid of life through its veins. Naturally it is also fought by those parts of the two classes that are ignorant of its existence. It is fought by the not class conscious workers in spite of their belief in a harmony of interests between capital and labor. This struggle, though it is carried on unconsciously, has a tendency to create an understanding of its character. And that is its most dangerous aspect. As the understanding on the part of the workers grows it becomes increasingly dangerous for capitalism. The revolutionary character of the class struggle grows, because the working class, once conscious of the essentials of the class struggle, tires of the endless struggle and tries to get at the root of the evil by striking at the classcharacter of society itself. The greatest problem of the capitalist state, therefore, is to camouflage this struggle to prevent the workers from recognizing its revolutionary character.
Such an attempt was the call for a conference between capital and labor, with a group of representatives of the public between them. President Wilson could never for a moment doubt the futility of the conference. On the contrary he distinctly recognized the class character of society and indicated his readiness to strengthen the position of capital in that conference by appointing one of the biggest capitalists and employers of labor, Mr. John Rockefeller, Jr. as a representative of the public.
That the conference ended in a hopeless deadlock is due not so much to its personnel as to the insolubility of the problems it was called upon to solve. Not even the proposed six One Year German Revolution With the second anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the first year of the German Revolution draws to a close. Contemporary the two occurrences have been, and outgrowths of the same constellation of world political events. But further the parallel does not extend. In Russia these two years have meant a hard struggle to secure and to carry out the liberation of the productive forces of the nation. In Germany, from the very beginning the revolution was one long series of destructive compromises in the interests of the bourgeoisie; its course has been a certain and inevitable relapse into the capitalist social state. In Russia the revolution has been a consistent battle against a dethroned bourgeoisie; in Germany even in the first days of the uprising there was nothing of the determination with which a rising revolutionary class is wont to treat its vanquished exploiting class. Is it surprising therefore that in Russia, after two years of Revolution, the working class government is more firmly established than ever before, while in Germany all that is left of the promise that the first days of last November held out to the world proletariat is that a few social patriots are left in office, as jobholders of a once more invincible bourgeoisie?
To day we can see it more clearly than ever. The great mistake of the German Revolution lay in the uniting of the Independent Social Democratic Party with the Majority Socialists for the purpose of establishing a revolutionary government.
The leaders of the Social Democratic Party were opposed to revolutionary methods during the war. Only very recently Erzberger publicly affirmed this fact to Herr Ebert. During the critical days of October again, they did everything in their power to prevent the outbreak of the revolution. When at last even they realized that its outbreak was inevitable, they gracefully placed themselves at its head. If at that time the Independents had re