Der Volksstaat

This proposition is true only in certain exceptional instances, for example in the case of a revolution by the proletariat, e.g. the commune, or in a country in which not only has the bourgeoisie constructed state and society after its own image, but the democratic petty bourgeoisie, in its wake, has already carried that reconstruction to its logical conclusion.

If, for instance, in Germany, the democratic Petit Bourgeoisie were part of this reactionary mass, then how could the Social Democratic Workers' Party have gone hand-in-hand with it, with the People's Party, for years on end? How could the Volksstaat derive virtually all its political content from the Petit Bourgeois Democratic Frankfurter Zeitung? And how can one explain the adoption, in this same programme, of no less than seven demands that coincide exactly and word for word with the programme of the People's Party and of petty bourgeois democracy? I mean the seven political demands, one to five and one to two, of which there is not one that is not bourgeois democratic.

Secondly, The principle that the workers' movement is an international one is, to all intents and purposes, utterly denied in respect of the present, and, this by men who, for the space of five years and under the most difficult conditions, uphold that principle in the most laudable manner.

The German workers' position in the van of the European movement rests essentially on their genuinely international attitude during the war.