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The civil war which now followed took place under the banner of socialism. On the one side stood Social Democracy, which embraced the cause of socialism. It understood this as a simple continuation of the process of concentration characteristic of capitalism, and which found its culmination in the legal nationalisation of large scale industry. Given such a movement, it was inevitable that the council movement, as the embodiment of the self-activity of the working masses, would be seen by Social Democracy as a threat which had to be destroyed. On the other side was newly-born communism, which conceived of the conversion of private property in means of production into socialised property as being attainable only be illegal means, that is to say as being embedded in the self-activity of the working masses themselves. The aim was the same, but the path leading to it a totally different one.
Although the occupation of the factories by the proletariat was in general carried through during the whole of this revolutionary period, nowhere did this come to an "appropriation in the name of society". The factories continued to be administered and managed by the old proprietors, they still remained their property, even if here and there this took place under the effective control of the workers.
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