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SOME CARDINAL SINS
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tive in so-called strike riots. That is true in regard to all the capitalist countries and also, of course, in the highest degree of Russia, which, as a whole, is not yet a capitalist country, and which can not be considered as typical in this respect on account of special political and cultural conditions. Though Italy and Austria are among the greatest sinners, they are surpassed by the states enjoying a republican or semi-republican form of government. In judging historically the value of the republican form of government under the capitalist economic system it is of the greatest importance to point out persistently that, apart from England, there were no countries where the soldiery was so willing to suppress strikes for the benefit of the employers and behaved so bloodthirstily and recklessly as the republican or semi-republican countries, like Belgium and France, with which the freest countries of the world, Switzerland and America, can easily bear comparison. Russia is, of course in this respect, as in all spheres of cruelty, beyond comparison. Barbarism and worse than barbarism—the savageness of the beast characterizes the gen-