TO DRAW CONCLUSIONS merely from visible surface facts and general experiences, has only a limited value and does notp ermit us to see clearly the character of future developments. History does not move in a straight line, the zig-zags are not determined by one trend, but are a composite of under-currents which must be taken into serious consideration.
In each country the interests of the ruling-class are closely bound up with the country's previous history, existing relations, and its particular position within the frame of a given world situation. Any activities, alliances, losses, and opportunities are power and property relations. All external shifts, changes, and struggles are thus irrevocably connected with internal shifts and struggles between the classes, and within the ruling-class or group.
No doubt, all previous existing ruling groups have hindered the development of a truly social production and distribution. The key to the understanding of history lies in the historical development of labour.
The class-struggle alone wil1 be the decisive and determining factor, with its highest point - the revolution. The latter is a matter of tactics.
As we have seen, in the practical field of revolutionary and social activities, the political parties are no better informed than the masses. This has been proved in all actual revolutionary struggles. As long as parties operate as separate groups within the mass, the mass is not revolutionary, but neither are the parties. They can only function a capitalist appendages.
The fact remains, the liberativn of the working class, can only be carried out by the working class itself.
Since the teachings of Marx, Bakunin, and others, many shifts and changes have taken place in the political, ecanoniic and social spheres. There are no such things as eternal values.
It is therefore, not enough to merely repeat the teachings and timely truths of our pioneers and advisors, we must develop them and carry them out.
The period when capitalis was advancing is past, and with it the basis of the old forms of organisation. Every epoch has its own forms of organisation, which are significant for the onward movement of that same period in the course of development, however, with the beginnings of a new period, the old organisational forms hamper more and more the new development. The older forms which were used as a means of progress in the beginning of a particular period, become at the end of that same period a hampering factor, and their effect is highly reactionary.
The time of the still - in some parts of the world - existing capitalistic-labour organisation is obviously past. New conditions must be met with new forms of organisations and methods and with the least possible delay. The workers themselves, organised as a revolutionary class must act. The workers must be the masters, not the servants of their own organisations.
The working class is in need of a movement which will closely trace the paths of the laws of motion. An entirely new movement based on working class solidarity, unification on the job, free and independent workers councils in cadres of self asserting fighting units, based on ships, rail, aircraft, workshops, pits, factories and agricultural communities.
The workers do not require professional leaders, our confidential men shall be class-conscious comrades and teachers only, dismissable at any time by a vote of their direct electors.
We have no ready-made blue-prints of the near future, but we will dare to predict. that the present world-war will inevitably end with a deeper economic and sucial crisis with revolutionary consequences. The self acting workers of Europe, freed from the ties of outmoded organisational forms, will not wait for the call of professional party leaders. There will be at anyrate a true revolutiunary working class movement on the European Continent.
I CANNOT END my story without regarding the present state if affairs in the ranks of the German workers, which is of the greatest interest to the anti-nationalist working class as a whole.
It is quite true, the German labouring masses tied to an outmoded system and under the pressure of a careerist leader dictatorship have lost its long and bloody revolutionary battles. But so have until now the great masses in all countries. In fact, the German working class in general, though tortured with terrible suffering, is - contrary to the nationalistic idiocy - free from any kind of race hatred, nationalism, and so-called patriotism.
Nevertheless, they knew that they have - under conditions which often were the logical outcome of their own activities - failed to defeat ÒFascism" and that they therefore strive to value the arguments of their class-conscious fellow workers abroad. But they cannot be expected to change their present nationalistic hangman for another nationalistic hangman.
Equipped with an empirically organised underground network, using continually changing methods, the German revolutionary workers are trying their utmost to inform the masses as to just what is going on, so that they will more readily understand the true situation. These fellow workers cannot be fooled by any nationalistic propaganda. They are aware that to destroy "Fasicsm" - which is more or less the ruling form of the capitalist powers today - the workers of all lands must destroy capitalism, and that this can be achieved only on the basis of true working class solidarity. The time is not far away, when it cannot be ignored any longer, that considerable parts of the German working class have resolutely fought for the great cause, and are even in the time of the darkest reaction still fighting in the forefront of the revolutionary proletariat.
Let the Nationalists, who are surely the last to be entitled to throw stones at anyone, shout spreading their lies and mockery at the real fighters for freedom, this will only strengthen and raise the spirits of the anti-nationalist forces and, in process of time remove the scum of human community.
