the favored
position in the community, is only a provisional institution. As
the opposition of the Bourgeoisie is broken, as it is expropriated
and gradually absorbed into the working groups, the proletarian
dictatorship disappears, until finally the State dies and there are
no more class distinctions....

"In an empire of destruction where not only the means of production
and transportation, but also the institutions of political
democracy have become bloody ruins, the proletariat must create its
own forms, to serve above all as a bond of unity for the working
class and to enable it to accomplish a revolutionary intervention
in the further development of mankind. Such apparatus is
represented in the Workmen's Councils. The old parties, the old
unions, have proved incapable, in person of their leaders, to
understand, much less to carry out the task which the new epoch
presents to them. The proletariat has created a new institution
which embraces the entire working class without distinction of
vocation or political maturity, an elastic form of organization
capable of continually renewing itself, expanding, and of drawing
into itself ever new elements, ready to open its doors to the
working groups of city and village which are near to the
proletariat. This indispensable autonomous organization of the
working class in the present struggle and in the future conquests
of different lands, tests the proletariat and constitutes the
greatest inspiration and the mightiest weapon of the proletariat of
our time. Wherever the masses are awakened to consciousness,
Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Councils will be formed....

"The outcry of the bourgeois world against the civil war and the
red terror is the most colossal hypocrisy of which the history of
political struggles can boast. There would be no civil war if the
exploiters who have carried mankind to the very brink of ruin had
not prevented every forward step of the laboring masses, if they
had not instigated plots and murders and called to their aid armed
help from outside to maintain or restore their predatory
privileges. Civil war is _forced upon_ the laboring classes by
their arch-enemies. The working class must answer blow for blow, if
it will not renounce its own object and its own future whi