This is, however, a phenomenon incidental to the war, for even the guerilla bands are compelled to take the grain from the peasants, when they are driven into a region which is strange to them and the peasants refuse them what they need. True, this occurs more seldom with the guerillas, for they are not military idealists, they do not wish to combat world imperialism like the Red Army does and are contented with driving out those who intrude into their own territory. For this reason they are never entirely strange to the region where they are fighting and not compelled to fill their needs by force from the peasants. The peasants, who for a large part themselves participate in the fighting, give it to them most voluntarily. Such is the case with Machno, the Ukrainian guerilla leader. But outside the Red Army there are other military defense organizations of the Russian workers. In Moscow and Petrograd the workers are subject to obligatory military exercises through their membership in the unions, which is also obligatory. They form a militia which is organized according to districts and mustered according to factories. There you find all categories of workers and artisans, even married women and girls, who work in the factories. These organizations prove more efficient, and it was also these that drove Judenitsch from Petrograd. They are not organizations built according to the pattern of the old state armies. And if we really want to accomplish the abolition of the political state, then we must above everything abolish those organizations which have always been the support, yes, the greatest support of the state, namely the centralist armies, and replace them now, and in the so-called period of transition, with workers' defense organizations formed according to districts or industries. Of the two instruments of defense organized by the communists; the Red Army and the defense organization built on the trade unions, the latter are to be preferred, because in them the state principle is already replaced by another principle. It is the one that most indicates progress, and also comes nearer to the abolition of militarism. The workers in the factories are no professional soldiers and form no standing army which must "work" in order to exist. Nevertheless, it is still a militia which also must disappear when socialism or communism shall become a reality. Only in the absence of every kind of militarism is liberty for the individual and for the whole society possible.
Education
The revolutionary people has not been able to accomplish much yet in the field of education. The economic and political situation has been too pressing and important to give the workers and peasants much time to give special attention to the educational question. Furthermore, education is a thing which cannot be greatly benefited by the collapse of the old state and the erection of a new one. It requires much slow detail work and industrious and loving devotion in order to create that which the people can not obtain by sounding the tocsin of the revolution. Nevertheless, individuals as well as the soviet government have done everything in their power in order to restore the destroyed school system upon an altogether new foundation.