truth must be a little extended. In point of fact, under Socialism there will not exist the apparatus of compulsion itself, namely, the State: for it will have melted away entirely into a producing and consuming commune. None the less, the road to Socialism lies through a period of the highest possible intensification of the principle of the State. And you and I are just passing through that period. Just as a lamp, before going out, shoots up in a brilliant flame, so the State, before disappearing, assumes the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, _i.e._, the most ruthless form of State, which embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively in every direction. Now just that insignificant little fact--that historical step of the State dictatorship--Abramovich, and in his person the whole of Menshevism, did not notice; and consequently, he has fallen over it. No organization except the army has ever controlled man with such severe compulsion as does the State organization of the working class in the most difficult period of transition. It is just for this reason that we speak of the militarization of labor. The fate of the Mensheviks is to drag along at the tail of events, and to recognize those parts of the revolutionary programme which have already had time to lose all practical significance. To-day the Mensheviks, albeit with reservations, do not deny the lawfulness of stern measures with the White Guards and with deserters from the Red Army: they have been forced to recognize this after their own lamentable experiments with "democracy." They have to all appearances understood--very late in the day--that, when one is face to face with the counter-revolutionary bands, one cannot live by phrases about the great truth that under Socialism we shall need no Red Terror. But in the economic sphere, the Mensheviks still attempt to refer us to our sons, and particularly to our grandsons. None the less, we have to rebuild our economic life to-day, without waiting, under circumstances of a very painful heritage from bourgeois society and a yet unfinished civil war.