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14

An unavoidable result of this kind of social organization is a strong police state, which subjugates to itself every manifestation of the citizens' lives. Strong by reason of tis centralized power, the communist state subjects everybody to police regimentation and, with the help of espionage, keeps a vigilant eye upon each and all. Such a system is bound to destroy all liberty and inevitably institutes state slavery; one can look in vain for freedom of association, of assembly, of knowledge and enlightenment and education, while the inviolability of personal liberty and the privacy of the home are conspicuously absent.

The development of this system leads inevitably to an exacerbation of its inner contradictions, and --- just as under private capitalism --- to a class struggle. It is, however, a more difficult struggle, and one which is likely to be suppressed with even fiercer fcruelty than under bourgeois capitalism. The Russian experiment, judged quite independently of its builders, has fully demonstrated the unworkableness of such a regime.

The Russian revolution, having set out with liberty and the liquidation of bourgeois society as its starting point, has, owing to its recourse to the aristocratic principle of dictatorship, brought us back via "military communism" to the point of departure, to capitalism or --- more correctly --- to state capitalism.

Under the bankrupt state capitalism of Russia and the discredited socialist democracy of Germany, and also as a consequence of the intensified decline of capitalist society throughout the world, the fight of the workers is growing and expanding against the existing regime and its tendency to replace the moribund bourgeois world by a regime of state slavery. In this respect a particular importance must be given to the revolutionary struggle of the Spanish proletariat, an event of the greatest historical significance.

Meanwhile, continuous technical progress, leading as it does to the consolidation of industrial concerns and the socialization of their production, creates the indispensible material circumstances for the transition of capitalist economy both feasible and realistic a successful social revolution, which is the supreme goal of the international anarchist movement of the working classes.

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