62
government is to a certain extent only a blind, whereas power in each individual town is wielded by those who have succeeded in getting hold of it. There are isolated spots in Germany where even up to the present day the actual power is in the hands of the workers. There are separate districts which have set up their small republics, enjoying more or less freedom. But along with them we observe many towns, which are wholly in the hands of the White Guards who refuse to obey their own bourgeois government at Berlin, and which pursue their own policy. Separate towns have their own local currencies. Local Berlin currency is not accepted in Hamburg, and vice versa.
All this indicates that we cannot regard the situation in Germany as being stable in any way. The German Mensheviks of the party of Noske and Scheidemann say this openly, and the German Mensheviks of the party of the Right Independents say the same in a veiled form: they are of the opinion that the revolution is over and a certain stable equilibrium is about to set in. In fact, there is nothing of the kind. There is no equilibrium. What on earth do they mean by equilibrium?
Germany is now passing through an interregrum, and there are only two ways out of it; either the complete victory of the landowners, and consequently the restoration of the monarchy (for the landowners are only dreaming of William the Emperor) or the second alternative, which is this: the semi-revolution of 1918, spoiled and distorted by the Mensheviks, who have sold themselves to the bourgeoisie, will be made by the workers the turning point for a real victorious proletarian revolution. What is now taking place is the molecular grouping of forces beneath the surface, the ripening of a crisis. At a given moment this crisis is bound to come from either of these two directions.
The present economic position of Germany is incredibly hard. Germany is living through utter financial bankruptcy. The value of the rouble is falling with us in Russia—it is a great burden for us, and we do not deny it. But we have a way out of it. We say: "We are approaching a time when we shall do away with all money. We are paying wages in kind, we are introducing free tramways, we have free schools, a free
