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p12

process. The logical development of this trend must unavoidably bring about the following dilemma: either a complete disintegration of human society, or the abolition of capitalism and the creation of a new, more progressive social and political system. There can be no other alternative. The modern form of social organization has run its course and is proving, in our times, an obstacle to human advance, as well as a source of social decay; This outworn system is therefore due to be relegated to the museum of social evolutionary relics.

The days of capitalism are numbered. In its organism the process of decomposition moves forward very rapidly indeed. All the cures, under the guise of various reforms (towards which, incidentally, capitalism puts up an obstinate resistacne) can only prolong the agony, but are useless as a means for full recovery. In the past, capitalism would have saved itself from deadly crisis by seizing colonial markets and those of agriarian nations. Nowadays, most of the colonies are themselves competing in the world market with the metropolitan countries, while the agrarian lands are proceeding in the direction fo intensive industrialization; For the sake of their own security, but with an utter disregard of the people's interests, the capitalist countries keeping on erecting high tariff barriers between themselves, thus endeavouring to escape from an inevitable fate. This, however, proves of as little avail to the moribund system as medicine would be to a corpse.

Since political life is determined by economic forms, the degenerative process which is turning bourgeois democracy into dictatorship is self-explanatory. With an economic dictatorship of financial capital there must arise a corresponding political dictatorship over the nation. Accordingly, we are now witnessing parliaments degeneration either into personal dictatorshipos (Italy, Poland, etc.) or into group dictatorships (U.S.A., France, Germany, etc.) the government becoming an obedient and submissive tool in the hands of banks and stock exchanges. Parliamentary democracy, at present, is no more than a protective covering for disguised dictatorship. And dictatorship in any shape is merely an outward symptom of the dissolution of the old social form, an attempt on the part of the dying capitalism to stop the forward march of progress which, despite all obstacles, clears for us the road of transition, an uphill and narrow road, to the more perfect forms of organized social existence.

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