.
192 THE CLASS STRUGGLE 193 Self Determination of Nations and Self Defense land into German slavery. They may be forced to stand by and see them carried off into slavery by force majore. But they cannot sign a deed selling them into slavery.
But here something quite unexpected happened. Somethin...

194 THE CLASS STRUGGLE SELF DETERMINATION OF NATIONS 195 And was not the Bonaparte army released, and the support of the Prussian army against the Paris Commune assured by the famous contract between Jules Favre, Thiers and Co. and Bismark? This historical evidence led Karl Marx, 45 years ago, to...

196 THE CLASS STRUGGLE SELF DETERMINATION OF NATIONS 197 In the present imperialistic milieu there can be no wars of national self defense. Every socialist policy that depends upon this determining historic milieu, that is willing to fix its policies in the world whirlpool from the point of view ...

198 THE CLASS STRUGGLE SELF DETERMINATION OF NATIONS 199 determine the socialist position of the world war as a historic Occurrence. its causes, was purely imperialistic, cannot fail to see after a dispassionate view of its effects that war, under the present conditions, automatically and inevita...

201 SELF DETERMINATION OF NATIONS 200 THE CLASS STRUGGLE nionarchy were not voted by the Social Democracy. For the use of the war credits did not in the least depend upon the Social Democracy. They, as a minority, stood against a compact threequarter majority of the capitalistic Reichstag. The So...

202 THE CLASS STRUGGLE SELF DETERMINATION OF NATIONS 203 provises new weapons, enriches the arsenal of the people with weapons unknown and unheard of by the parties and its leaders.
What the Social Democracy as the advance guard of the class conscious proletariat should have been able to give was...

204 GERMANY, THE LIBERATOR 205 Germany, the Liberator By LUDWIG LOR How quickly the human mind forgets! For should we otherwise have believed the peace protestations of the German Government and the assurances of German government socialists. Should we otherwise have allowed them so completely to...

206 THE CLASS STRUGGLE GERMANY, THE LIBERATOR 207 But what were the Germans to liberate? How numerous is the German population in the Baltic Provinces? These provinces, Courland, Livonia and Esthonia, cover an area of 90, 000 square kilometres and, according to the census of 1897, have a populati...

208 THE CLASS STRUGGLE GERMANY, THE LIBERATOR 209 vient tools of the Russian aristocracy. The large landholders, moreover, are a powerful political factor. They hold a number of medieval political privileges and are the sole rulers in the provincial Diets. The Baltic nobility is on a level with i...

211 GERMANY, THE LIBERATOR 210 THE CLASS STRUGGLE contrary emanating from German press agents is based upon lies and falsifications. The entire Lettish people was as one in its opposition against a German war of liberation. The Committee on Foreign Relations of the Lettish Social Democracy, in 19...

212 THE CLASS STRUGGLE 213 and is demanded by the Socialists of every other national group of Russia, is and must be the aim of the Lettish, Polish, Lithuanian and Esthonian Socialists.
It is the fate of every great world empire, that it carries in its body the germs that will cause its own destr...

214 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THE STATE IN RUSSIA 215 masses would show their readiness to die with ecstacy under this red rag, for Constantinople and the Straits.
But the imperialistic cloven hoof of Milyukov was sticking out too plainly. In order to win over the awakened masses and guide their revolut...

216 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THE STATE IN RUSSIA 217 geois in the presence of the sanctity of state power, which was perfectly transparent in the case of the populists (laborites. was veiled, in the case of the menshevik patriots, by doctrinaire notions as to the inadmissibility of having socialists as...

218 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THE STATE IN RUSSIA 219 clusions of a profoundly revolutionary character. The only thing their structure lacks is the driving force of a revolutionary policy. The government, for the most part capitalistic, could not possibly give birth to a system that was diametrically op...

220 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THE STATE IN RUSSIA 221 victory, as Mr. Tereshchenko Department was of leading the nation to peace.
This picture of the impotence of the Provisional Government reaches its climax in the labors of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, which, to use the words of the most loyal So...

222 CURRENT AFFAIRS 223 Current Affairs The new Danger: Peace by Negotiation It is becoming increasingly evident from day to day that the reactionaries of the world are preparing to negotiate and conclude peace at the expense of Russia, and to strangle the Russian Revolution in the process of pea...

224 THE CLASS STRUGGLE CURRENT AFFAIRS 225 our betters are quite familiar. That is quite easily fixed by negotiation. Hence the demand from quite unexpected quarters for peace by negotiation.
As a matter of fact the negotiations have already begun. And the demand now is to give these negotiations...

226 THE CLASS STRUGGLE CURRENT AFFAIRS 227 will always be a secret conclave, is, of course absolutely indispensable for the proper arrangement of a negotiated peace at the expense of the Russian Revolution. It would never do to discuss such delicate matters at long range say, in an exchange of vi...

228 THE CLASS STRUGGLE CURRENT AFFAIRS 229 But how about the preliminary conversations now being carried on in the form of dialogue across the Channel and ocean. why cannot the preliminary agreement be reached by this method? Evidently because the noble Lord and his no less noble friend across th...

230 THE CLASS STRUGGLE CURRENT AFFAIRS 231 German imperialism more palatable to his Socialist readers.
Mr. Berger assured them that the Kaiser Balkan policy had been approved in advance by Karl Marx himself, and that Scheidemann and Co. in supporting that policy were carrying out the last will an...

232 THE CLASS STRUGGLE CURRENT AFFAIRS 233 possible. No nation can do so without being independent in its own internal affairs. fail to understand how Poland will become annexed to Germany by being declared an independent state, especially if the Polish speaking part of Austria and of Germany (Ga...

234 THE CLASS STRUGGLE CURRENT AFFAIRS 235 countries bad war aims, and proceeds to draw the following lesson from the misfortunes of the Allies during the three years of the world war. Surely the moral of these repeated defeats, all associated with the pursuit by members of the Allied coalition o...

236 THE CLASS STRUGGLE 237 Documents for Future Socialist History is merely a means to an end the end being the realization of our several national objects. Your national objects may be of a different kind than mine. Your situation makes you disinterested in the acquisition of territory, at least...

238 THE CLASS STRUGGLE DOCUMENTS 239 but a bourgeois and not a Socialist revolution, rests on a proletariat possessed of a far clearer class consciousness, and which has far more clearly realized its implacable antagonism to the bourgeois world, than any proletariat participating in any of Europe...

240 THE CLASS STRUGGLE DOCUMENTS 241 manner by a backward majority out in the provinces it is quite possible that the threatening elements seek to retain their position by working for complete independence for the provinces, aye, for the communes, as for example the Bakunin adherents in Spain in ...