Imperialist wars – i.e., wars for domination over the world, for markets for bank capital, for the strangulation of small and weak nations – are inevitable under such a state of affairs. And this is precisely what the first great imperialist war of 1914-1917 was.

And the extremely high stage of development of world capitalism in general, the replacement of free competition by monopoly capitalism, the preparation by banks, as well as by capitalist associations, of an apparatus for the social regulation of the process of production and distribution of products, the horrors, calamities, ruin, and barbarism engendered by the imperialist war – all this makes the present stage of development of capitalism an era of proletarian, socialist revolution.

This era has begun.

Only a proletarian, socialist revolution can lead humanity out of the impasse created by imperialism and imperialist wars. Whatever the difficulties of the revolution and its possible temporary failures or waves of counter-revolution, the final victory of the proletariat is inevitable.

Therefore, by virtue of objective conditions, the order of the day of the current epoch is the all-round direct preparation of the proletariat for revolution and a decisive break with that bourgeois distortion of socialism which has gained the upper hand in the official Social-Democratic parties in the form of the social-chauvinist current (i.e., socialism in words, chauvinism in deeds, or the use of the slogan “defence of the fatherland” to cover the defence of the interests of the capitalists in imperialist wars), as well as in the form of the “centre” current (i.e., unprincipled, helpless vacillation between social-chauvinism and the revolutionary internationalist struggle of the proletariat*), for the conquest of political power in order to carry out the economic and political measures that constitute the content of the socialist revolution.

* The text: “revolution and a decisive break... proletarian struggle)” is crossed out in the manuscript. – Ed.

V. I. LENIN

* * *

The fulfilment of this task, which demands the fullest confidence, the closest fraternal union and the direct unity of revolutionary action of the working class of all advanced countries, is impossible without an immediate and principled break with that bourgeois distortion of socialism which has triumphed in the leadership of the enormous majority of official Social-Democratic parties. This distortion is, on the one hand, the current of social-chauvinism, socialism in words, chauvinism in deeds, the use of the slogan “defence of the fatherland” to cover the defence of the rapacious interests of “one’s own” national bourgeoisie, and, on the other hand, the equally widespread and international current of the so-called “centre”, which stands for unity with the social-chauvinists, for the preservation or reform of the bankrupt Second International, vacillating between social-chauvinism and the revolutionary internationalist struggle of the proletariat for the establishment of the socialist system.

* * *

The experience of the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, which created the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies and a number of similar organisations, has thereby confirmed the experience of the Paris Commune, namely that the proletariat needs a state for the transitional period to socialism, but this state* must not be a state of the usual type, but a direct mass and universally comprehensive organisation of armed workers, replacing the former instruments of government: the standing army, the police and the bureaucracy. Clarification to the proletariat of the tasks of such a state, capable of as

* The text: “The experience of the Russian revolutions... but this state” is crossed out in the manuscript. The end of the paragraph was accidentally left uncrossed; it was written on a separate sheet, at the end of which a note was made in an unknown hand: “Add: the preparedness of the apparatus for regulating production in the form of trusts and the concentration of banks” (see Lenin’s insertion in “Draft Amendments to the Theoretical, Political and Some Other Parts of the Programme”, Collected Works, 5th ed., Vol. 32, pp. 139-140). – Ed.