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.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 40273
   :PG.Title: The Bolsheviki and World Peace
   :PG.Released: 2012-07-18
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Leon Trotzky
   :DC.Title: The Bolsheviki and World Peace
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1918
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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THE BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE
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      Cover

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      :alt: Leon Trotzky

      Leon Trotzky

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      THE BOLSHEVIKI
      AND
      WORLD PEACE

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      BY LEON TROTZKY

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      INTRODUCTION BY LINCOLN STEFFENS

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      BONI AND LIVERIGHT
      NEW YORK
      1918

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      Copyright
      1918
      Boni & Liveright Inc.

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      CONTENTS

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      `Introduction`_ by Lincoln Steffens
      `Author's Preface`_

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      CHAPTER

      I.  `The Balkan Question`_
      II.  `Austria-Hungary`_
      III.  `The War against Czarism`_
      IV.  `The War against the West`_
      V.  `The War of Defense`_
      VI.  `What Have Socialists to do with Capitalist Wars?`_
      VII.  `The Collapse of the International`_
      VIII.  `Socialist Opportunism`_
      IX.  `The Decline of the Revolutionary Spirit`_
      X.  `Working Class Imperialism`_
      XI.  `The Revolutionary Epoch`_

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.. _`INTRODUCTION`:

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   INTRODUCTION

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The voice that speaks in this book is the
voice of Leon Trotzky, the Bolshevik Minister
of Foreign Affairs for Revolutionary Russia.
It is expressing ideas and views which lighted
him on the course of his policy toward the War,
Peace and the Revolution.  It throws light,
therefore, on that policy; it helps to an
understanding of it, if one wishes to understand.  But
that isn't all.  The spirit that flames and casts
shadows upon these pages is not only Trotzky's.
It is the spirit also of the Bolsheviki; of the red
left of the left wing of the revolutionary
movement of New Russia.  It flashed from
Petrograd to Vladivostok, in the first week of the
revolt; it burned all along the Russian Front
before Trotzky appeared on the scene.  It will
smoulder long after he is gone.  It is a hot Fact
which has to be picked up and examined, this
spirit.  Whether we like it or don't, it is there;
in Russia; it is elsewhere; it is everywhere
to-day.  It is the spirit of war; class war, but war.
It is in this book.

Nor is that all.

The mind in this book--the point of view from
which it starts, the views to which it
points--Trotzky's mind is the international mind.  We
have heard before of this new intelligence; we
have read books, heard speeches, witnessed acts
demonstrative of thoughts and feelings which
are not national, but international; not
patriotic, but loyal only to the lower-class-conscious
war aims of the workers of the world.  The
class warrior is as familiar a figure to us as the
red spirit is of the red left of revolution.  But
the voice which utters here the spirit and the
mind, not only of the Russian, but of the world
revolution is the voice of one having authority.

And Trotzky, in power, has been as red as he
is in this book.  The minister of foreign affairs
practised in Petrograd what he preached in
Switzerland, where he wrote most of the
chapters of his book.  And he practised also what
all the other great International Socialist
leaders talked and wrote.

That's what makes him so hard to understand,
him and his party and the Bolshevik
policy.  We are accustomed to the sight of
Socialists and Radicals going into office and being
"sobered by the responsibilities of power."  French
and Italian Socialists in the Liberal
ministries of their countries; British Labor
leaders in Parliament in England or in the
governments of their Colonies; and the whole
Socialist party in Germany and Austria
(except Liebknecht in prison)--all are examples
of the effect of power upon the International
Mind.  The phenomenon of compromise and
surrender is so common that many radicals
oppose the taking of any responsible office by any
member of their parties; and some of the
extremists are advocating no political action
whatsoever, nothing but industrial, economic or
what they call "direct action."  (Our I.W.W.'s
don't vote, on principle.)  This is anarchism.

Leon Trotzky is not an anarchist; except in
the ignorant sense of the word as used by
educated people.  He is a Socialist; an orthodox
Marxian Socialist.  But he has seen vividly the
danger of political power.  The body of this
book was addressed originally to the German
and Austrian Socialists, and it is a reasoned,
but indignant reproach of them for letting their
political position and their nationalistic loyalty
carry them away into an undemocratic, patriotic,
political policy which betrayed the weaker
nations in their empires, helped break up the
Second (Socialist) International and led the
Socialist parties into the support of the War.

Clear upon it, Trotzky himself does not
illustrate his own thesis.  He not only detests
intellectually the secrecy and the sordid
wickedness of the "old diplomacy"; when he came as
minister into possession of the archives of the
Russian Foreign Office, he published the secret
treaties.

That hurt.  And so with the idea of a
people's peace.  All the democratic world had been
talking ever since the war began of a peace
made, not by diplomats in a private room, but
by the chosen representatives of all the
peoples meeting in an open congress.  The
Bolsheviki worked for that from the moment the
Russian Revolution broke; and they labored for
the Stockholm Conference while Paul
Milyoukov and Alexander Kerensky were
negotiating with the allied governments.  When the
Bolsheviki succeeded to power, Lenine and
Trotzky formally authorized and officially
proposed such a congress.  Moreover Trotzky
showed that they were willing, if they could,
to force the other countries to accept the
people's peace conference.

This hurt.  This hurt so much that the
governments united in extraordinary measures to
prevent the event.  And when they succeeded,
and it was seen that no people's peace could be
made openly and directly, Trotzky proceeded
by another way to get to the same end.  He
opened negotiations with the Kaiser's
government and allies; arranged an armistice and
agreed tentatively upon terms of peace.

This act not only hurt; it stunned the world,
and no wonder!  It was like a declaration of
war against a whole world at war.  It was
unbelievable.  The only explanation offered was
that Trotzky and Lenine were pro-German or
dishonest, or both, and these things were said
in high places; and they were said with conviction,
too.  Moreover this conviction colored, if
it did not determine, the attitude the Allies took
toward New Russia and the peace proposals
Trotzky got from the German government.
Was this assumption of the dishonesty of
Trotzky the only explanation of his act?

This book shows, as I have said, that Trotzky
saw things from the revolutionary, international
point of view, which is not that of his
judges; which is incomprehensible to them.  He
wrote it after the War began; he finished the
main part of it before the Russian Revolution.
It is his view of the War, its causes and its
effects, especially upon international Socialism
and "the" Revolution.  These are the things he
holds in his mind all through all these pages:
"the" Revolution and world democracy.  Also
I have shown that, like the Russians generally,
his mind is literal.  The Russians mean what
they say, exactly; and Trotzky not only means,
he does what he writes.  Putting these
considerations together, we can make a
comprehensible statement of the motive and the
purpose of his policy; if we want to comprehend.

To all the other secretaries of state or of
foreign affairs in the world, the Russian
Revolution was an incident, an interruption of the
War.  To Minister Trotzky it was the other
way around.

The World War was an incident, an effect,
a check of "the" Revolution.  Not the Russian
Revolution, you understand.  To Trotzky the
Russian Revolution is but one, the first of that
series of national revolutions which together
will become the Thing he yearns for and
prophesies: the World Revolution.

His peace policy therefore is a peace drive
directed, not at a separate peace with the
Central Powers; and not even at a general peace,
but to an ending of the War in and by "the"
Revolution everywhere.

Especially in Germany and Austria.  He
said this.  The correspondent of the London
*Daily News* cabled on January 2, right after
the armistice and the agreement upon peace
terms to be offered the Allies, that "Trotzky
is doing his utmost to stimulate a revolution
in Germany....  Our only chance to defeat
German designs is to publish terms (from the
Allies) ... to help the democratic movement
in Germany."

Trotzky is not pro-German.  He certainly
was not when he wrote this book.  He hates
here both the Austrian and the German
dynasties, and his ill-will toward the House of
Hapsburg is so bitter that it sounds sometimes as if
there were something personal about it.  And
there is.  He shows a knowledge of and a living
sympathy with the small and subject nations
which Austria rules, exploits and mistreats.  He
blames his Austrian comrades for their
allegiance to a throne which is not merely
undemocratic, but "senile" and tyrannical.  That he,
the literal Trotzky, would turn right around
and, as the Russian Minister of Foreign
Affairs, do what he had so recently criticized the
Austrian Socialists for doing is unlikely.

Trotzky is against all the present
governments of Europe, and the "bourgeois system"
everywhere in the world.  He isn't pro-Allies;
he isn't even pro-Russian.  He isn't a patriot
at all.  He is for a class, the proletariat, the
working people of all countries, and he is for
his class only to get rid of classes and get down
or up to--humanity.  And so with his people.

The Russians have listened to the Socialist
propaganda for generations now.  They have
learned the chief lessons it has taught: liberty,
land, industrial democracy and the class-war
the world over.  This War was not their war;
it was the Czar's war; a war of the governments
in the interest of their enemies, the capitalists
of their several countries, who, as Trotzky says,
were forcing their states to fight for the right
to exploit other and smaller peoples.  So when
they overthrew the Czar, the Russians wanted
to drop his war and go into their own, the class
war.  Kerensky held them at the front in the
name of "the" Revolution; he would get peace
for them by arrangement with the allies.  He
didn't; he couldn't; he was dismissed by them.
Not by the Bolsheviki, but by the Russian
people who know the three or four things they
want: land and liberty at home; the Revolution
and Democracy for all the world.

I heard a radical assert one day that that
was the reason Trotzky could be such an
exception to the rule about radicals in power.
He came to the head of the Russian Revolution
when his ideas were the actual demands of
the Russian people and that it was not his
strength of character, but the force of a
democratic public opinion in mob power, which made
him stick to his philosophy and carry out his
theories and promises.  I find upon inquiry
here in New York that while he was living and
working as a journalist on the East Side, he
left one paper after another because he could
not conform, to their editorial policies and
would not compromise.  He was "stiff-necked,"
"obstinate," "unreasonable."  In other, kinder
words, Trotzky is a strong man, with a definite
mind and a purpose of his own, which he has
the will and the nerve to pursue.

Also, however, Trotzky is a strong man who
is ruled by and represents a very simple-minded
people who are acting like him, literally upon
the theory that the people govern now, in
Russia; the common people; and that, since they
don't like the War of the Czar, the Kaiser, the
Kings and the Emperors, their government
should make peace with the peoples of the
world, a democratic peace against imperialism
and capitalism and the state everywhere, for
the establishment in its stead of a free,
world-wide democracy.

That may be the true explanation of Trotzky's
Bolshevik peace policy in the world crisis
of the World War.  That is the explanation
which is suggested by this book.

"Written in extreme haste," he says at the
close of his preface, "under conditions far
from favorable to systematic work ... the
entire book, from the first page to the last, was
written with the idea of the New International
constantly in mind--the New International
which must rise out of the present world
cataclysm, the International of the last conflict and
the final victory."

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   LINCOLN STEFFENS.
   New York, January 4th, 1918

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.. _`AUTHOR'S PREFACE`:

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   AUTHOR'S PREFACE

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The forces of production which capitalism
has evolved have outgrown the limits of nation
and state.  The national state, the present
political form, is too narrow for the exploitation
of these productive forces.  The natural
tendency of our economic system, therefore,
is to seek to break through the state boundaries.
The whole globe, the land and the sea, the
surface as well as the interior, has become one
economic workshop, the different parts of
which are inseparably connected with each
other.  This work was accomplished by
capitalism.  But in accomplishing it the capitalist
states were led to struggle for the subjection
of the world-embracing economic system to the
profit interests of the bourgeoisie of each
country.  What the politics of imperialism has
demonstrated more than anything else is that
the old national state that was created in the
revolutions and the wars of 1789-1815,
1848-1859, 1864-1866, and 1870 has outlived itself,
and is now an intolerable hindrance to
economic development.

The present War is at bottom a revolt of the
forces of production against the political form
of nation and state.  It means the collapse of
the national state as an independent economic
unit.

The nation must continue to exist as a
cultural, ideologic and psychological fact, but its
economic foundation has been pulled from
under its feet.  All talk of the present bloody
clash being a work of national defense is either
hypocrisy or blindness.  On the contrary, the
real, objective significance of the war is the
breakdown of the present national economic
centres, and the substitution of a world
economy in its stead.  But the way the
governments propose to solve this problem of
imperialism is not through the intelligent, organized
coöperation of all of humanity's producers, but
through the exploitation of the world's
economic system by the capitalist class of the
victorious country; which country is by this War
to be transformed from a great power into the
world power.

The War proclaims the downfall of the
national state.  Yet at the same time it proclaims
the downfall of the capitalist system of
economy.  By means of the national state capitalism
has revolutionized the whole economic
system of the world.  It has divided the whole
earth among the oligarchies of the great
powers, around which were grouped the satellites,
the small nations, who lived off the rivalry
between the great ones.  The future
development of world economy on the capitalistic
basis means a ceaseless struggle for new and
ever new fields of capitalist exploitation, which
must be obtained from one and the same source,
the earth.  The economic rivalry under the
banner of militarism is accompanied by robbery
and destruction which violate the elementary
principles of human economy.  World
production revolts not only against the confusion
produced by national and state divisions but also
against the capitalist economic organization,
which has now turned into barbarous
disorganization and chaos.

The War of 1914 is the most colossal
breakdown in history of an economic system
destroyed by its own inherent contradictions.

All the historical forces whose task it has
been to guide the bourgeois society, to speak in
its name and to exploit it, have declared their
historical bankruptcy by the War.  They
defended capitalism as a system of human
civilization, and the catastrophe born out of that
system is primarily *their* catastrophe.  The first
wave of events raised the national governments
and armies to unprecedented heights never
attained before.  For the moment the nations
rallied around them.  But the more terrible will
be the crash of the governments when the
people, deafened by the thunder of the cannon,
realize the meaning of the events now taking
place in all their truth and frightfulness.

The revolutionary reaction of the masses will
be all the more powerful the more prodigious
the cataclysm which history is now bringing
upon them.

Capitalism has created the material
conditions of a new Socialist economic system.
Imperialism has led the capitalist nations into
historic chaos.  The War of 1914 shows the way
out of this chaos by violently urging the
proletariat on to the path of Revolution.

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For the economic backward countries of
Europe the War brings to the fore problems of
a far earlier historic origin--problems of
democracy and national unity.  This is in a
large measure the case with the peoples of
Russia, Austria-Hungary and the Balkan Peninsula.
But these historically belated questions,
which were bequeathed to the present epoch as
a heritage from the past, do not alter the
fundamental character of the events.  It is not the
national aspirations of the Serbs, Poles,
Roumanians or Finns that has mobilized twenty-five
million soldiers and placed them in the
battlefields, but the imperialistic interests of the
bourgeoisie of the Great Powers.  It is imperialism
that has upset completely the European
*status quo*, maintained for forty-five years, and
raised again the old questions which the
bourgeois revolution proved itself powerless to
solve.

Yet in the present epoch it is quite
impossible to treat these questions in and by
themselves.  They are utterly devoid of an
independent character.  The creation of normal
relations of national life and economic
development on the Balkan Peninsula is unthinkable
if Czarism and Austria-Hungary are
preserved.  Czarism is now the indispensable
military reservoir for the financial imperialism of
France and the conservative colonial power of
England.  Austria-Hungary is the mainstay
of Germany's imperialism.  Issuing from the
private family clashes between the national
Servian terrorists and the Hapsburg political
police, the War very quickly revealed its true
fundamental character--a struggle of life and
death between Germany and England.  While
the simpletons and hypocrites prate of the
defense of national freedom and independence,
the German-English War is really being waged
for the freedom of the imperialistic exploitation
of the peoples of India and Egypt on the one
hand, and for the imperialistic division of the
peoples of the earth on the other.

Germany began its capitalistic development
on a national basis with the destruction of the
continental hegemony of France in the year
1870-1871.  Now that the development of
German industry on a national foundation has
transformed Germany into the first capitalistic
power of the world, she finds herself colliding
with the hegemony of England in her further
course of development.  The complete and
unlimited domination of the European continent
seems to Germany the indispensable prerequisite
of the overthrow of her world enemy.  The
first thing, therefore, that imperialistic
Germany writes in her programme is the creation
of a Middle European League of Nations.
Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Balkan
Peninsula and Turkey, Holland, the Scandinavian
countries, Switzerland, Italy, and, if
possible, enfeebled France and Spain and Portugal,
are to make one economic and military
whole, a Great Germany under the hegemony
of the present German state.

This programme, which has been thoroughly
elaborated by the economists, political students,
jurists and diplomats of German imperialism
and translated into reality by its strategists, is
the most striking proof and most eloquent
expression of the fact that capitalism has
expanded beyond the limits of the national state
and feels intolerably cramped within its
boundaries.  The national Great Power must go and
in its place must step the imperialistic World
Power.

In these historical circumstances the working
class, the proletariat, can have no interest in
defending the outlived and antiquated national
"fatherland," which has become the main
obstacle to economic development.  The task of
the proletariat is to create a far more powerful
fatherland, with far greater power of
resistance--*the republican United States of
Europe*, as the foundation of the United States
of the World.

The only way in which the proletariat can
meet the imperialistic perplexity of capitalism
is by opposing to it as a practical programme
of the day the Socialist organization of world
economy.

War is the method by which capitalism, at
the climax of its development, seeks to solve
its insoluble contradictions.  To this method
the proletariat must oppose its *own* method,
the method of the Social Revolution.

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The Balkan question and the question of the
overthrow of Czarism, propounded to us by the
Europe of yesterday, can be solved only in a
revolutionary way, in connection with the
problem of the United Europe of to-morrow.  The
immediate, urgent task of the Russian Social
Democracy, to which the author belongs, is the
fight against Czarism.  What Czarism
primarily seeks in Austria-Hungary and the Balkans
is a market for its political methods of plunder,
robbery and acts of violence.  The Russian
bourgeoisie all the way up to its radical
intellectuals has become completely demoralized by
the tremendous growth of industry in the last
five years, and it has entered into a bloody
league with the dynasty, which had to secure to
the impatient Russian capitalists their part of
the world's booty by new land robberies.  While
Czarism stormed and devastated Galicia, and
deprived it even of the rags and tatters of
liberty granted to it by the Hapsburgs, while it
dismembered unhappy Persia, and from the
corner of the Bosporus strove to throw the
noose around the neck of the Balkan peoples,
it left to the liberalism which it despised the
task of concealing its robbery by sickening
declamations over the defense of Belgium and
France.  The year 1914 spells the complete
bankruptcy of Russian liberalism, and makes
the Russian proletariat the sole champion of
the war of liberation.  It makes the Russian
Revolution definitely an integral part of the
Social Revolution of the European proletariat.

In our war against Czarism, in which we
have never known a "national" truce, we have
never looked for help from Hapsburg or
Hohenzollern militarism, and we are not looking
for it now.  We have preserved a sufficiently
clear revolutionary vision to know that the idea
of destroying Czarism was utterly repugnant
to German imperialism.  Czarism has been its
best ally on the Eastern border.  It is united to
it by close ties of social structure and historical
aims.  Yet even if it were otherwise, even if it
could be assumed that, in obedience to the logic
of military operations, it would deal a
destructive blow to Czarism, in defiance of the logic
of its own political interests--even in such a
highly improbable case we should refuse to
regard the Hohenzollerns not only as an
objective but as a subjective ally.  The fate of the
Russian Revolution is so inseparably bound up
with the fate of European Socialism, and we
Russian Socialists stand so firmly on the
ground of internationalism, that we cannot, we
must not for a moment, entertain the idea of
purchasing the doubtful liberation of Russia
by the certain destruction of the liberty of
Belgium and France, and--what is more
important still--thereby inoculating the German and
Austrian proletariat with the virus of
imperialism.

We are united by many ties to the German
Social Democracy.  We have all gone through
the German Socialist school, and learned
lessons from its successes as well as from its
failures.  The German Social Democracy was to
us not only *a* party of the International.  It
was *the* Party *par excellence*.  We have always
preserved and fortified the fraternal bond that
united us with the Austrian Social Democracy.
On the other hand, we have always taken pride
in the fact that we have made our modest
contribution towards winning suffrage in Austria
and arousing revolutionary tendencies in the
German working class.  It cost more than one
drop of blood to do it.  We have unhesitatingly
accepted moral and material support from our
older brother who fought for the same ends as
we on the other side of our Western border.

Yet it is just because of this respect for the
past, and still more out of respect for the
future, which ought to unite the working class of
Russia with the working classes of Germany
and Austria, that we indignantly reject the
"liberating" aid which German imperialism
offers us in a Krupp munition box, with the
blessing, alas! of German Socialism.  And we hope
that the indignant protest of Russian Socialism
will be loud enough to be heard in Berlin and in
Vienna.

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The collapse of the Second International is
a tragic fact, and it were blindness or
cowardice to close one's eyes to it.  The position
taken by the French and by the larger part of
English Socialism is as much a part of this
breakdown as the position of the German and
Austrian Social Democracy.  If the present
work addresses itself chiefly to the German
Social Democracy it is only because the German
party was the strongest, most influential, and
in principle the most basic member of the
Socialist world.  Its historic capitulation reveals
most clearly the causes of the downfall of the
Second International.  At first glance it may
appear that the social revolutionary prospects
of the future are wholly deceptive.  The
insolvency of the old Socialist parties has become
catastrophically apparent.  Why should we
have faith in the future of the Socialist
movement?  Such skepticism, though natural,
nevertheless leads to quite an erroneous conclusion.
It leaves out of account the good will of
history, just as we have often been too prone to
ignore its ill will, which has now so cruelly
shown itself in the fate that has overcome the
International.

The present War signalizes the collapse of
the national states.  The Socialist parties of
the epoch now concluded were national parties.
They had become ingrained in the national
states with all the different branches of their
organizations, with all their activities and with
their psychology.  In the face of the solemn
declarations at their congresses they rose to
the defense of the conservative state, when
imperialism, grown big on the national soil, began
to demolish the antiquated national barriers.
And in their historic crash the national states
have pulled down with them the national
Socialist parties also.

It is not Socialism that has gone down, but
its temporary historical external form.  The
revolutionary idea begins its life anew as it
casts off its old rigid shell.  This shell is made
up of living human beings, of an entire
generation of Socialists that has become fossilized
in self-abnegating work of agitation and
organization through a period of several decades
of political reaction, and has fallen into the
habits and views of national opportunism or
possibilism.  All efforts to save the Second
International on the old basis, by personal
diplomatic methods and mutual concessions, are
quite hopeless.  The old mole of history is now
digging its passageways all too well and none
has the power to stop him.

As the national states have become a
hindrance to the development of the forces of
production, so the old Socialist parties have
become the main hindrance to the revolutionary
movement of the working class.  It was
necessary that they should demonstrate to the full
their extreme backwardness, that they should
discredit their utterly inadequate and narrow
methods, and bring the shame and horror of
national discord upon the proletariat, in order
that the working class might emancipate itself,
through these fearful disillusionments, from
the prejudices and slavish habits of the period
of preparation, and become at last that which
the voice of history is now calling it to be--the
revolutionary class fighting for power.

The Second International has not lived in
vain.  It has accomplished a huge cultural
work.  There has been nothing like it in history
before.  It has educated and assembled the
oppressed classes.  The proletariat does not now
need to begin at the beginning.  It enters on
the new road not with empty hands.  The past
epoch has bequeathed to it a rich arsenal of
ideas.  It has bequeathed to it the weapons of
criticism.  The new epoch will teach the
proletariat to combine the old weapons of criticism
with the new criticism of weapons.

This book was written in extreme haste,
under conditions far from favorable to systematic
work.  A large part of it is devoted to the old
International which has fallen.  But the entire
book, from the first to the last page, was
written with the idea of the New International
constantly in mind, the New International which
must rise up out of the present world cataclysm,
the International of the last conflict and
the final victory.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: left

   LEON TROTZKY.

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE BALKAN QUESTION`:

.. class:: center x-large

   THE BOLSHEVIKI AND
   WORLD PEACE

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large

CHAPTER I

.. class:: center medium

THE BALKAN QUESTION

.. vspace:: 2

..
   
   "The War at present being waged against
   Russian Czarism and its vassals is dominated
   by a great historic idea.  The impetus of this
   great historic idea consecrates the battlefields
   of Poland and of Eastern Russia.  The roar
   of cannon, the rattling of machine guns, and
   the onrush of cavalry, all betoken the
   enforcement of the democratic programme for
   the liberation of the nations.  Had Czarism,
   in league with the French capitalistic
   powers and in league with an unscrupulous
   'nation of shopkeepers,' not succeeded in
   suppressing the Revolution of 1905, the present
   slaughter of the nations would have been
   avoided.
   
   "A democratic Russia would never have
   consented to wage this unscrupulous and
   futile War.  The great ideas of freedom and
   justice now speak the persuasive language of
   the machine gun and the sword, and every
   heart susceptible of sympathy with justice
   and humanity can only wish that the power
   of Czarism may be destroyed once for all,
   and that the oppressed Russian nationalities
   may again secure the right to decide their
   own destinies."


The above quotation is from the *Nepszava*
of August 31, 1914, the official organ of the
Socialist party of Hungary.  Hungary is the
land whose entire inner life was erected upon
the high-handed oppression of the national
minorities, upon the enslavement of the
laboring classes, upon the official parasitism and
usury of the ruling caste of large landowners.
It is the land in which men like Tisza are
masters of the situation, dyed-in-the-wool
agrarians, with the manners of political bandits.  In
a word, Hungary is a country closest of kin
to Czar-ruled Russia.

So what is more fitting than that the
*Nepszava*, the Socialist organ of Hungary, should
hail with outbursts of enthusiasm the liberating
mission of the German and Austro-Hungarian
armies?  Who other than Count Tisza could
have felt the call to "enforce the democratic
programme for the liberation of the nations"?
Who was there to uphold the eternal principles
of law and justice in Europe but the ruling
clique of Budapest, the discredited Panamists?
Would you entrust this mission to the
unscrupulous diplomacy of "perfidious Albion," to
the nation of shopkeepers?

Laughter turns away wrath.  The tragic
inconsistencies of the policies followed by the
International not only reach their climax in the
articles of the poor Nepszava; they disarm us
by their humor.

The present series of events began with the
ultimatum, sent to Servia by Austria-Hungary.
There was not the slightest reason why the
international Social Democracy should take
under its protection the intrigues of the Serbs or
any other of the petty dynasties of the Balkan
Peninsula.  They were all endeavoring to hide
their political adventures under the cloak of
national aspirations.  We had still less cause
to lash ourselves into a state of moral
indignation because a fanatic young Serb responded to
the cowardly, criminal and wily national
politics of the Vienna and Budapest government
authorities with a bloody assassination. [#]_

.. [#] It is noteworthy that these opportunistic Austrian and
   German Socialists are now writhing with moral indignation over
   the "treacherous assassination at Sarajevo."  And yet they
   always sympathized with the Russian terrorists more than we,
   the Russian Social Democrats, did, who are opposed on principle
   to the terroristic method.  Lost in the mist of chauvinism,
   they can no longer see that the unfortunate Servian terrorist,
   Gavrilo Prinzip, represents precisely the same national
   principle as the German terrorist, Sand.  Perhaps they will even
   ask us to transfer our sympathies from Sand to Kotzebue?  Or
   perhaps these eunuchs will advise the Swiss to overthrow the
   monuments erected to the assassin Tell and replace them with
   monuments to the Austrian governor, Gessler, one of the
   spiritual forerunners of the murdered archduke?

Of one thing we have no doubt.  In the
dealings between the Danube Monarchy and the
Servian government, the historic right, that is
to say, the right of free development, rests
entirely with Servia, just as Italy was in the right
in the year 1859.  Underneath the duel between
the imperial police scoundrels and the terrorists
of Belgrade, there is hidden a far deeper
meaning than merely the greed of the Kareorgoievitches
or the crimes of the Czar's diplomacy.
On one side were the imperialistic claims of a
national state that had lost its vitality, and on
the other side, the strivings of the dismembered
Servian nation to reintegrate itself into a
national whole and become a living vital state.

Is it for this that we have sat so long in the
school of Socialism to forget the first three
letters of the democratic alphabet?  This absolute
lapse of memory, moreover, made its
appearance only after the fourth of August.  Up to
that fatal date the German Marxists showed
that they knew very well what was happening
in Southeastern Europe.

On July 3, 1914, after the assassination at
Sarajevo, the *Vorwärts* wrote:

.. vspace:: 2

..
   
   "The bourgeois revolution of the South
   Slavs is in full swing, and the shooting at
   Sarajevo, however wild and senseless an act
   in itself, is as much a chapter of this
   revolution as the battles by which the Bulgarians,
   Serbs and Montenegrins liberated the
   peasants of Macedonia from the yoke of Turkish
   feudal exploitation.  Is it a wonder that the
   South Slavs of Austria-Hungary look with
   longing to their racial brothers in the
   kingdom of Servia?  The Serbs in Servia have
   attained the highest goal a people can attain
   in the present order of society.  They have
   attained national independence.  Whereas
   in Vienna or Budapest they treat every one
   bearing the name of Serb or Croatian with
   blows and kicks, with court-martial justice
   and the gallows....  There are seven and a
   half million South Slavs who, as a result of
   the victories in the Balkans, have grown
   bolder than ever in demanding their political
   rights.  And if the imperial throne of
   Austria continues to resist their impact, it will
   topple over and the entire Empire with which
   we have coupled our destiny will break to
   pieces.  For it is in line with historic
   evolution that such national revolutions should
   march onward to victory."

.. vspace:: 2

If the international Social Democracy
together with its Servian contingent, offered
unyielding resistance to Servia's national claims,
it was certainly not out of any consideration for
the historic rights of Austria-Hungary to
oppress and disintegrate the nationalities living
within her borders; and most certainly not out
of consideration for the liberating mission of
the Hapsburgs.  Until August, 1914, no one,
except the black and yellow hirelings of the
press, dared to breathe a word about that.  The
Socialists were influenced in their course of
conduct by entirely different motives.  First of
all, the proletariat, although by no means
disputing the historic right of Servia to strive for
national unity, could not trust the solution of
this problem to the powers then controlling the
destinies of the Servian kingdom.  And in the
second place--and this was for us the deciding
factor--the international Social Democracy
could not sacrifice the peace of Europe to the
national cause of the Serbs, recognizing, as it
did, that, except for a European revolution,
the only way such unity could be achieved was
through a European war.

But from the moment Austria-Hungary
carried the question of her own fate and that of
Servia to the battlefield, Socialists could no
longer have the slightest doubt that social and
national progress would be hit much harder in
Southeastern Europe by a Hapsburg victory
than by a Servian victory.  To be sure, there
was still no reason for us Socialists to identify
our cause with the aims of the Servian army.
This was the idea that animated the Servian
Socialists, Ljaptchevitch and Katzlerovitch,
when they took the manly stand of voting
against the war credits. [#]_  But surely we had
still less reason to support the purely dynastic
rights of the Hapsburgs and the imperialistic
interests of the feudal-capitalistic cliques
against the national struggle of the Serbs.  At
all events, the Austro-Hungarian Social
Democracy, which now invokes its blessings upon
the sword of the Hapsburgs for the liberation
of the Poles, the Ukrainians, the Finns and
the Russian people, must first of all clarify its
ideas on the Servian question, which it has
gotten so hopelessly muddled.

.. [#] To appreciate fully this action of the Servian Socialists we
   must bear in mind the political situation by which they were
   confronted.  A group of Servian conspirators had murdered a
   member of the Hapsburg family, the mainstay of Austro-Hungarian
   clericalism, militarism, and imperialism.  Using this as
   a welcome pretext, the military party in Vienna sent an
   ultimatum to Servia, which, for sheer audacity, has scarcely ever
   been paralleled in diplomatic history.  In reply, the Servian
   government made extraordinary concessions, and suggested that
   the solution of the question in dispute be turned over to the
   Hague tribunal.  Thereupon Austria declared war on Servia.
   If the idea of a "war of defense" has any meaning at all, it
   certainly applied to Servia in this instance.  Nevertheless, our
   friends, Ljaptchevitch and Katzlerovitch, unshaken in their
   conviction of the course of action that they as Socialists must
   pursue, refused the government a vote of confidence.  The
   writer was in Servia at the beginning of the War.  In the
   Skuptchina, in an atmosphere of indescribable national
   enthusiasm, a vote was taken on the war credits.  The voting was
   by roll-call.  Two hundred members had all answered "Yes."  Then
   in a moment of deathlike silence came the voice of the
   Socialist Ljaptchevitch--"No."  Every one felt the moral force
   of this protest, and the scene has remained indelibly impressed
   upon my memory.

The question at issue, however, is not
confined to the fate of the ten million Serbs.  The
clash of the European nations has brought up
the entire Balkan question anew.  The Peace
of Bucharest, signed in 1903, has solved neither
the national nor the international problems in
the Near East.  It has only intensified the
added confusion resulting from the two
unfinished Balkan Wars, unfinished because of the
complete temporary exhaustion of the nations
participating in it.

Roumania had followed in the path of
Austro-Hungarian politics, despite the
Romanesque sympathies of its population,
especially in the cities.  This was due not so much
to dynastic causes, to the fact that a
Hohenzollern prince occupied the throne, as to the
imminent danger of a Russian invasion.  In
1879 the Russian Czar, as thanks for
Roumania's support in the Russo-Turkish war of
"liberation," cut off a slice of Roumanian
territory, the province of Bessarabia.  This
eloquent deed provided a sufficient backing to the
dynastic sympathies of the Hohenzollern in
Bucharest.  But the Magyar-Hapsburg clique
succeeded in incensing the Roumanian people
against them by their denationalizing policy in
Transylvania, which has a population of three
million Roumanians as against three-fourths of
a million in the Russian province of Bessarabia;
and they further antagonized them by their
commercial treaties, which were dictated by the
interests of the large Austro-Hungarian
land-owners.  So that Roumania's entrance into the
War on the side of the Czar, despite the
courageous and active agitation against participation
in the War on either side, carried on by the
Socialist party under the leadership of my
friends Gherea and Rakowsky, is to be
laid altogether at the door of the ruling class
of Austria-Hungary, who are reaping the
harvest they have sown here as well as elsewhere.

But the matter is not disposed of by fixing
the historical responsibility.  To-morrow, in a
month, in a year or more the War will bring to
the foreground the whole question of the
destiny of the Balkan peoples and of
Austria-Hungary, and the proletariat will have to have
its answer to this question.  European
democracy in the nineteenth century looked with
distrust at the Balkan people's struggle for
independence, because it feared that Russia might
be strengthened at the expense of Turkey.  On
this subject Karl Marx wrote in 1853, on the
eve of the Crimean War:

.. vspace:: 2

..

   "It may be said that the more firmly
   established Servia and the Servian nationality is
   the more the direct influence of Russia on the
   Turkish Slavs is shoved into the background.
   For in order to be able to assert its peculiar
   position as a state, Servia had to import its
   political institutions, its schools ... from
   Western Europe."

.. vspace:: 2

This prophecy has been brilliantly fulfilled
in what has actually happened in Bulgaria,
which was created by Russia as an outpost on
the Balkans.  As soon as Bulgaria was fairly
well established as a national state, it developed
a strong anti-Russian party, under the
leadership of Russia's former pupil, Stambulov, and
this party was able to stamp its iron seal upon
the entire foreign policy of the young country.
The whole mechanism of the political parties
in Bulgaria is so constructed as to enable it to
steer between the two European combinations
without being absolutely forced into the
channel of either, unless it chooses to enter it of its
own accord.  Roumania went with the
Austro-German alliance, Servia, since 1903, with
Russia, because the one was menaced directly by
Russia, the other by Austria.  The more
independent the countries of Southeast Europe are
from Austria-Hungary, the more effectively
they will be able to protect their independence
against Czarism.

The balance of power in the Balkans, created
by the Congress of Berlin in 1879, was full of
contradictions.  Cut up by artificial
ethnographical boundaries, placed under the control
of imported dynasties from German nurseries,
bound hand and foot by the intrigues of the
Great Powers, the peoples of the Balkans could
not cease their efforts for further national
freedom and unity.  The national politics of
independent Bulgaria was naturally directed
towards Macedonia, populated by Bulgarians.
The Berlin Congress had left it under Turkish
rule.  On the other hand, Servia had practically
nothing to look for in Turkey with the
exception of the little strip of land, the sandbag
Novy Bazar.  Its national interests lay on the
other side of the Austro-Hungarian boundary,
in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Slavonia and
Dalmatia.  Roumania had no interests in the
south, where it is separated from European
Turkey by Servia and Bulgaria.  Roumania's
expansion policy was directed towards the
northwest and east, towards Hungarian
Transylvania and Russian Bessarabia.  Finally, the
national expansion of Greece, like that of
Bulgaria, collided with Turkey.

Austro-German politics, aiming at the
artificial preservation of European Turkey, broke
down not on account of the diplomatic
intrigues of Russia, although these of course
were not lacking.  It broke down because of
the inevitable course of evolution.  The Balkan
Peninsula had entered on the path of capitalist
development, and it was this fact that raised
the question of the self-determination of the
Balkan peoples as national states to the
historical issue of the day.

The Balkan War disposed of European
Turkey, and thereby created the conditions
necessary for the solution of the Bulgarian and
Greek questions.  But Servia and Roumania,
whose national completion could only be
achieved at the expense of Austria-Hungary,
found themselves checked in their efforts at
expansion southwards, and were compensated at
the expense of what racially belonged to
Bulgaria--Servia in Macedonia, and Roumania in
Dobrudja.  This is the meaning of the second
Balkan War and the Peace of Bucharest by
which it was concluded.

The mere existence of Austria-Hungary,
this Turkey of Middle Europe, blocks the way
to the natural self-determination of the
peoples of the Southeast.  It compels them to keep
constantly fighting against each other, to seek
support against each other from the outside,
and so makes them the tool of the political
combinations of the Great Powers.  It was only in
such chaos that Czaristic diplomacy was
enabled to spin the web of its Balkan politics, the
last thread of which was Constantinople.  And
only a federation of the Balkan states, both
economic and military, can interpose an
invincible barrier to the greed of Czarism.

Now that European Turkey has been disposed
of, it is Austria-Hungary that stands in
the way of a federation of the Balkan states.
Roumania, Bulgaria, and Servia would have
found their natural boundaries, and would
have united with Greece and Turkey, on the
basis of common economic interests, into a
league of defense.  This would finally have
brought peace to the Balkan Peninsula, that
witches' cauldron which periodically threatened
Europe with explosions, until it drew it into
the present catastrophe.

Up to a certain time the Socialists had to
reconcile themselves to the routine way in which
the Balkan question was treated by capitalistic
diplomats, who in their conferences and secret
agreements stopped up one hole only to open
another, even wider one.  So long as this
dilatory method kept postponing the final
solution, the Socialist International could hope that
the settlement of the Hapsburg succession
would be a matter not for a European war, but
for the European Revolution.  But now that
the War has destroyed the equilibrium of the
whole of Europe, and the predatory Powers
are seeking to remodel the map of Europe--not
on the basis of national democratic principles,
but of military strength--the Social
Democracy must come to a clear comprehension
of the fact that one of the chief obstacles to
freedom, peace and progress, in addition to
Czarism and German militarism, is the
Hapsburg Monarchy as a state organization.  The
crime of the Galician Socialist group under
Daszynski consisted not only in placing the
Polish cause above the cause of Socialism, but
also in linking the fate of Poland with the fate
of the Austro-Hungarian armies and the fate
of the Hapsburg Monarchy.

The Socialist proletariat of Europe cannot
adopt such a solution of the question.  For us
the question of united and independent Poland
is on a par with the question of united and
independent Servia.  We cannot and we will not
permit the Polish question to be solved by
methods which will perpetuate the chaos at
present prevailing in Southeastern Europe, in
fact through the whole of Europe.  For us
Socialists the independence of Poland means
its independence on both fronts, on the
Romanoff front and on the Hapsburg front.  We not
only wish the Polish people to be free from the
oppression of Czarism.  We wish also that the
fate of the Servian people shall not be
dependent upon the Polish nobility in Galicia.

For the present we need not consider what
the relations of an independent Poland will be
to Bohemia, Hungary and the Balkan Federation.
But it is perfectly clear that a complex
of medium-sized and small states on the
Danube and in the Balkan Peninsula will
constitute a far more effective bar to the Czaristic
designs on Europe than the weak, chaotic
Austro-Hungarian State, which proves its right to
existence only by its continued attempts upon
the peace of Europe.

In the article of 1853, quoted above, Marx
wrote as follows on the Eastern question:

.. vspace:: 2

..

   "We have seen that the statesmen of
   Europe, in their obdurate stupidity, petrified
   routine, and hereditary intellectual indolence,
   recoil from every attempt at answering the
   question of what is to become of Turkey in
   Europe.  The driving force that favors
   Russia's advance towards Constantinople is the
   very means by which it is thought to keep
   her away from it, the empty theory, never
   carried out, of maintaining the *status quo*.
   What is this *status quo*?  For the Christian
   subjects of the Porte it means nothing else
   than the perpetuation of their oppression by
   Turkey.  As long as they are under the yoke
   of the Turkish rule, they look upon the head
   of the Greek Church, the ruler of 60 million
   Greek Church Christians, as *their natural
   protector and liberator*."

.. vspace:: 2

What is here said of Turkey now applies in
a still greater degree to Austria-Hungary.
The solution of the Balkan question is
unthinkable without the solution of the
Austro-Hungarian question, as they are both
comprised in one and the same formula--the
Democratic Federation of the Danube and Balkan
Nations.

"The governments with their old-fashioned
diplomacy," wrote Marx, "will never solve the
difficulty.  Like the solution of so many other
problems, the Turkish problem, too, is
reserved for the European Revolution."  This
statement holds just as good to-day as when it
was first written.  But for the Revolution to
solve the difficulties that have piled up in the
course of centuries, the proletariat must have
its *own* programme for the solution of the
Austro-Hungarian question.  And this
programme it must oppose just as strenuously to
the Czaristic greed of conquest as to the
cowardly and conservative efforts to maintain the
Austro-Hungarian *status quo*.

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`AUSTRIA-HUNGARY`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER II


.. class:: center medium

   AUSTRIA-HUNGARY

.. vspace:: 2

Russian Czarism undoubtedly represents a
cruder and more barbarian form of state
organization than does the feebler absolutism of
Austria-Hungary, which has been mitigated by
the weakness of old age.  But Russian
Czarism and the Russian state are by no means
identical.  The destruction of Czarism does not
mean the disintegration of the state.  On the
contrary it means its liberation and its strengthening.
All such assertions, as that it is necessary
to push Russia back into Asia, which
found an echo even in certain Social
Democratic organs, are based on a poor knowledge of
geography and ethnography.  Whatever may
be the fate of various parts of present
Russia--Russian Poland, Finland, the Ukraine or
Bessarabia--European Russia will not cease to
exist as the national territory of a many-millioned
race that has made notable conquests
along the line of cultural development during
the last quarter century.

Quite different is the case of Austria-Hungary.
As a state organization it is identical
with the Hapsburg Monarchy.  It stands or
falls with the Hapsburgs, just as European
Turkey was identical with the feudal-military
Ottoman caste and fell when that caste fell.  A
conglomerate of racial fragments centrifugal
in tendency, yet forced by a dynasty to stick
together, Austria-Hungary presents the most
reactionary picture in the very heart of Europe.
Its continuation after the present European
catastrophe would not only delay the
development of the Danube and Balkan peoples for
more decades to come and make a repetition of
the present War a practical certainty, but it
would also strengthen Czarism politically by
preserving its main source of spiritual nourishment.

If the German Social Democracy reconciles
itself to the ruin of France by regarding it as
punishment for France's alliance with Czarism,
then we must ask that the same criterion be
applied to the German-Austrian alliance.  And
if the alliance of the two Western democracies
with a despotic Czarism gives the lie to the
French and English press when they represent
the War as one of liberation, then is it not
equally arrogant, if not more so, for the
German Social Democracy to spread the banner of
liberty over the Hohenzollern army, the army
that is fighting not only *against* Czarism and
its allies but also *for* the entrenchment of the
Hapsburg Monarchy?

Austria-Hungary is indispensable to
Germany, to the ruling class in Germany as we
know it.  When the ruling Junker class threw
France into the arms of Czarism by the
forceful annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, and
systematically embittered the relations with
England by rapidly increasing naval armaments;
when it repulsed all attempts at an understanding
with the Western democracies because such
an understanding would have implied the
democratization of Germany--then this ruling
class saw itself compelled to seek support from
the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy as a reserve
source of military strength against the enemies
in the East and the West.

According to the German point of view the
mission of the Dual Monarchy was to place
Hungarian, Polish, Roumanian, Czech,
Ruthenian, Servian and Italian auxiliaries in the
service of the German military and Junker
policy.  The ruling class in Germany had
easily reconciled itself to the expatriation of
ten to twelve millions of Germans, for these
twelve millions formed the kernel around which
the Hapsburgs united a non-German
population of more than forty million.  A democratic
federation of independent Danube nations
would have made these peoples useless as allies
of German militarism.  Only a monarchy, in
Austria-Hungary, a monarchy enforced by
militarism, would make that country of any
value as an ally to Junker Germany.  The
indispensable condition for this alliance,
sanctified by the Nibelungen troth of dynasties,
was the military preparedness of Austria-Hungary,
a condition to be achieved in no other way
than by the mechanical suppression of the
centrifugal national tendencies.

Since Austria-Hungary is surrounded on all
sides by states composed of the same races as
are within its own borders, its foreign policy
is necessarily intimately connected with its
internal policy.  To keep seven million Serbs
and South Slavs within the frame of its own
military state, Austria-Hungary is compelled
to extinguish the hearthfire that kindles their
political leanings--the independent kingdom
of Servia.

Austria's ultimatum to Servia was the
decisive step in this direction.  "Austria-Hungary
took this step under the pressure of
necessity," wrote Eduard Bernstein in *Die
Sozialistische Monatshefte* (No. 16).  To be sure
it was, if political events are considered from
the viewpoint of *dynastic* necessity.

To defend the Hapsburg policy on the
ground of the low moral standard of the
Belgrade rulers is to close one's eyes to the fact
that the Hapsburgs did make friends with
Servia, but only when Servia was under the
most despicable government that the history of
the unfortunate Balkan Peninsula has known,
that is, when it had at its head an Austrian
agent, Milan.  The reckoning with Servia came
so late because the efforts made at self-preservation
were too weak in the enfeebled organism
of the Dual Monarchy.  But after the death of
the Archduke, the support and hope of the
Austrian military party--and of Berlin--Austria's
ally gave her a sharp dig in the ribs,
insisting upon a demonstration of firmness and
strength.  Not only was Austria's ultimatum
to Servia approved of in advance by the rulers
of Germany, but, according to all information,
it was actually inspired from that quarter.  The
evidence is plainly set forth in the very same
White Book which professional and amateur
diplomats offer as a document of the
Hohenzollern love of peace.

After defining the aims of Greater Servian
propaganda and the machinations of Czarism
in the Balkans, the White Book states:

.. vspace:: 2

..
   
   "Under such conditions Austria was
   forced to the realization that it was not
   compatible with the dignity or the self-preservation
   of the Monarchy to look on at the doings
   across the border and remain passive.  The
   Imperial Government informed us of this
   view and asked for our opinion.  We could
   sincerely tell our ally that we agreed with
   his estimate of the situation and could
   assure him that any action he might find
   necessary to put an end to the movement in
   Servia against the Austrian Monarchy would
   meet with our approval.  In doing so, we
   were well aware of the fact that eventual war
   operations on the part of Austria-Hungary
   might bring Russia into the field and might,
   according to the terms of our alliance,
   involve us in a war.
   
   "But in view of the vital interests of
   Austria-Hungary that were at stake, we could
   not advise our ally to show a leniency
   incompatible with his dignity, or refuse him our
   support in a moment of such grave portent.
   We were the less able to do so because our
   own interests also were vitally threatened by
   the persistent agitation in Servia.  If the
   Serbs, aided by Russia and France, had
   been allowed to go on endangering the
   stability of our neighboring Monarchy, this
   would have led to the gradual breakdown of
   Austria and to the subjection of all the
   Slavic races to the Russian rule.  And this
   in turn would have made the position of the
   Germanic race in Central Europe quite
   precarious.  An Austria morally weakened,
   breaking down before the advance of
   Russian Pan-Slavism, would not be an ally with
   whom we could reckon and on whom we
   could depend, as we are obliged to depend,
   in the face of the increasingly threatening
   attitude of our neighbors to the East and the
   West.  We therefore left Austria a free
   hand in its action against Servia."

.. vspace:: 2

The relation of the ruling class in Germany
to the Austro-Servian conflict is here fully and
clearly defined.  It is not merely that
Germany was informed by the Austrian Government
of the latter's intentions, not merely that
she approved them, and not merely that she
accepted the consequences of fidelity to an ally.
No, Germany looked on Austria's aggression
as unavoidable, as a saving act for herself, and
actually made it *a condition of the continuance
of the alliance*.  Otherwise, "Austria would not
be an ally with whom we could reckon."

The German Marxists were fully aware of
this state of affairs and of the dangers lurking
in it.  On June 29th, a day after the murder of
the Austrian Archduke, the *Vorwärts* wrote
as follows:

.. vspace:: 2

..
   
   "The fate of our nation has been all too
   closely knit with that of Austria as a result
   of a bungling foreign policy.  Our rulers
   have made the alliance with Austria the basis
   of our entire foreign policy.  Yet it becomes
   clearer every day that this alliance is a source
   of weakness rather than of strength.  The
   *problem of Austria* threatens more and more
   to become a *menace to the peace of Europe*."

.. vspace:: 2

A month later, when the menace was about
to culminate in the dread actuality of war, on
July 28th, the chief organ of the German
Social Democracy wrote in equally definite terms.
"How shall the German proletariat act in the
face of such a senseless paroxysm?" it asked;
and then gave the answer: "*The German proletariat
is not in the least interested in the
preservation of the Austrian national chaos*."

Quite the contrary.  Democratic Germany is
far more interested in the disruption than in
the preservation of Austria-Hungary.  A
disrupted Austria-Hungary would mean a gain
to Germany of an educated population of
twelve million and a capital city of the first
rank, Vienna.  Italy would achieve national
completion, and would cease to play the rôle
of the incalculable factor that she always has
been in the Triple Alliance.  An independent
Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, and a Balkan
Federation including a Roumania of ten
million inhabitants on the Russian frontier, would
be a mighty bulwark against Czarism.  And
most important of all, a democratic Germany
with a population of 75,000,000 Germans could
easily, without the Hohenzollerns and the
ruling Junkers, come to an agreement with
France and England and could isolate
Czarism and condemn its foreign and internal
policies to complete impotence.  A policy directed
towards this goal would indeed be a policy of
liberation for the people of Russia as well as
of Austria-Hungary.  But such a policy
requires an essential preliminary condition,
namely, that the German people, instead of
entrusting the Hohenzollerns with the
liberation of other nations, should set about
liberating themselves from the Hohenzollerns.

The attitude of the German and Austro-Hungarian
Social Democracy in this war is in
blatant contradiction to such aims.  At the
present moment it seems convinced of the
necessity of preserving and strengthening the
Hapsburg Monarchy in the interests of
Germany or of the German nation.  And it is
absolutely from this anti-democratic viewpoint--which
drives the blush of shame to the cheek of
every internationally minded Socialist--that
the *Wiener Arbeiter-Zeitung* formulates the
historical meaning of the present War, when it
declares "it is primarily a war [of the Allies]
against the German spirit."

"Whether diplomacy has acted wisely,
whether this has had to come, time alone can
decide.  Now the fate of the German nation
is at stake!  And there can be no hesitation, no
wavering!  The German people are one in the
inflexible iron determination not to bend to the
yoke, and neither death nor devil can succeed"--and
so forth and so on.  (*Wiener Arbeiter-Zeitung*,
August 5th.)  We will not offend the
political and literary taste of the reader by
continuing this quotation.  Nothing is said here
about the mission of liberating other nations.
Here the object of the war is to preserve and
secure "German humanity."

The defense of *German* culture, *German*
soil, *German* humanity seems to be the
mission not only of the German army but of the
Austro-Hungarian army as well.  Serb must
fight against Serb, Pole against Pole,
Ukranian against Ukranian, for the sake of
"*German* humanity."  The forty million
non-German nationalities of Austria-Hungary are
considered as simply historical manure for the field
of German culture.  That this is not the
standpoint of international Socialism, it is not
necessary to point out.  It is not even pure national
democracy in its most elementary form.  The
Austro-Hungarian General Staff explains
this "humanity" in its communiqué of
September 18th: "All peoples of our revered
monarchy, as our military oath says, 'against any
enemy no matter whom,' must stand together
as one, vying with one another in courage."

The *Wiener Arbeiter-Zeitung* accepts in its
entirety this Hapsburg-Hohenzollern
viewpoint of the Austro-Hungarian problem as an
unnational military reservoir.  It is the same
attitude as the militarists of France have
toward the Senegalese and the Moroccans, and
the English have toward the Hindus.  And
when we consider that such opinions are not a
new phenomenon among the German Socialists
of Austria, we have found the main reason why
the Austrian Social Democracy broke up so
miserably into national groups, and thus
reduced its political importance to a minimum.

The disintegration of the Austrian Social
Democracy into national parts fighting among
themselves, is one expression of the inadequacy
of Austria as a state organization.  At the same
time the attitude of the German-Austrian
Social Democracy proved that it was itself the
sorry victim of this inadequacy, to which it
capitulated spiritually.  When it proved itself
impotent to unite the many-raced Austrian
proletariat under the principles of
Internationalism, and finally gave up this task
altogether, the Austro-German Social Democracy
subordinated all Austria-Hungary and even
its own policies to the "Idea" of Prussian
Junker Nationalism.  This utter denial of
principles speaks to us in an unprecedented
manner from the pages of the *Wiener
Arbeiter-Zeitung*.  But if we listen more carefully to
the tones of this hysterical nationalism we
cannot fail to hear a graver voice, the voice of
history telling us that the path of political
progress for Central and Southeastern Europe
leads over the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian
Monarchy.

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE WAR AGAINST CZARISM`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER III


.. class:: center medium

   THE WAR AGAINST CZARISM

.. vspace:: 2

But how about Czarism?  Would not Germany's
and Austria's victory mean the defeat
of Czarism?  And would not the beneficent
results of the defeat of Czarism greatly
outbalance the beneficent results of a dismembered
Austria-Hungary?

The German and Austrian Social Democrats
lay much stress upon this question in the
arguing they do about the War.  The crushing
of a small neutral country, the ruin of France--all
this is justified by the need to fight
Czarism.  Haase gives as the reason for voting the
war credits the necessity of "defense against
the danger of Russian despotism."  Bernstein
goes back to Marx and Engels and quotes old
texts for his slogan, "Settling with Russia!"

Südekum, dissatisfied with the result of his
Italian mission, says that what the Italians are
to blame for is not understanding Czarism.
And when the Social Democrats of Vienna and
Budapest fall in line under the Hapsburg
banner in its "holy war" against the Servians
struggling for their national unity, they
sacrifice their Socialistic honor to the necessity for
fighting Czarism.

And the Social Democrats are not alone in
this.  The entire bourgeois German press has
no other aims, for the moment, than the
annihilation of the Russian autocracy, which
oppresses the peoples of Russia and menaces the
freedom of Europe.

The Imperial Chancellor denounces France
and England as vassals of Russian despotism.
Even the German Major-General von
Morgen, assuredly a true and tried "friend of
liberty and independence," calls on the Poles to
rebel against the despotism of the Czar.

But for us who have gone through the school
of historical materialism it would be a disgrace
if we did not perceive the actual relations of the
interests in spite of these phrases, these lies,
this boasting, this foul vulgarity and stupidity.

No one can genuinely believe that the
German reactionaries really do cherish such a
hatred of Czarism, and are aiming their blows
against it.  On the contrary, after the War
Czarism will be the same to the rulers of
Germany that it was before the War--the most
closely related form of government.  Czarism
is indispensable to the Germany of the
Hohenzollerns, for two reasons.  In the first place, it
weakens Russia economically, culturally and
militaristically, and so prevents its
development as an imperialistic rival.  In the second
place, the existence of Czarism strengthens the
Hohenzollern Monarchy and the Junker
oligarchy, since if there were no Czarism, German
absolutism would face Europe as the last
mainstay of feudal barbarism.

German absolutism never has concealed the
interest of blood relationship that it has in the
maintenance of Czarism, which represents the
same social form though in more shameless
ways.  Interests, tradition, sympathies draw
the German reactionary element to the side
Czarism.  "Russia's sorrow is Germany's
sorrow."  At the same time the Hohenzollerns,
behind the back of Czarism, can make a show of
being the bulwark of culture "against barbarism,"
and can succeed in fooling their own
people if not the rest of Western Europe.

"With sincere sorrow I see a friendship
broken that Germany has kept faithfully,"
said William II. in his speech upon the
declaration of war, referring neither to France
nor to England, but to Russia, or rather, to
the Russian dynasty, in accordance with the
Hohenzollern's Russian religion, as Marx
would have said.

We are told that Germany's political plan
is to create, on the one hand, a basis of
rapprochement with France and England by a
victory over those countries, and, on the other
hand, to utilize a strategic victory over France
in order to crush Russian despotism.

The German Social Democrats must either
have inspired William and his chancellor with
this plan, or else must have ascribed this plan
to William and his chancellor.

As a matter of fact, however, the political
plans of the German reactionaries are of
exactly the opposite character, must necessarily
be of the opposite character.

For the present we will leave open the
question of whether the destructive blow at France
was dictated by strategic considerations, and
whether "strategy" sanctioned defensive tactics
on the Western front.  But one thing is
certain, that not to see that the policy of the
Junkers required the ruin of France, is to prove
that one has a reason for keeping one's eyes
closed.  France--France is the enemy!

Eduard Bernstein, who is sincerely trying to
justify the political stand taken by the German
Social Democracy, draws the following
conclusions: Were Germany under a democratic
rule, there would be no doubt as to how to
settle accounts with Czarism.  A democratic
Germany would conduct a revolutionary war on
the East.  It would call on the nations
oppressed by Russia to resist the tyrant and
would give them the means wherewith to wage
a powerful fight for freedom.  [Quite
right!]  However, Germany is not a democracy, and
therefore it would be a utopian dream
[Exactly!] to expect any such policy with all its
consequences from Germany as she is.
(*Vorwärts*, August 28.)  Very well then!  But
right here Bernstein suddenly breaks off his
analysis of the actual German policy "with all
its consequences."  After showing up the
blatant contradiction in the position of the
German Social Democracy, he closes with the
unexpected hope that a reactionary Germany
may accomplish what none but a revolutionary
Germany could accomplish.  *Credo quid absurdum*.

Nevertheless, it might be said in opposition
to this that while the ruling class in Germany
has naturally no interest in fighting Czarism,
still Russia is now Germany's enemy, and,
quite independently of the will of the
Hohenzollerns, the victory of Germany over Russia
might result in the great weakening, if not the
complete overthrow of Czarism.  Long live
Hindenburg, the great unconscious instrument
of the Russian Revolution, we might cry along
with the Chemnitz *Volksstimme*.  Long live
the Prussian Crown Prince--also a quite
unconscious instrument.  Long live the Sultan
of Turkey who is now serving in the cause of
the Revolution by bombarding the Russian
cities around the Black Sea.  Happy Russian
Revolution--how quickly the ranks of her
army are growing!

However, let us see if there is not something
really to be said on this side of the question.
Is it not possible that the defeat of Czarism
might actually aid the cause of the Revolution?

As to such a *possibility*, there is nothing to
be said against it.  The Mikado and his
Samurai were not in the least interested in freeing
Russia, yet the Russo-Japanese War gave a
powerful impetus to the revolutionary events
that followed.

Consequently similar results may be
expected from the German-Russian War.

But to place the right political estimate upon
these historical possibilities we must take the
following circumstances into consideration.

Those who believe that the Russo-Japanese
War brought on the Revolution neither know
nor understand historical events and their
relations.  The war merely hastened the
outbreak of the Revolution; but for that very
reason it also weakened it.  For had the
Revolution developed as a result of the organic growth
of inner forces, it would have come later, but
would have been far stronger and more
systematic.  Therefore, revolution has no real
interest in war.  This is the first consideration.
And the second thing is, that while the
Russo-Japanese War weakened Czarism, it strengthened
Japanese militarism.  The same considerations
apply in a still higher degree to the
present German-Russian War.

In the course of 1912-1914 Russia's
enormous industrial development once for all
pulled the country out of its state of
counter-revolutionary depression.

The growth of the revolutionary movement
on the foundation of the economic and political
condition of the laboring masses, the growth of
opposition in broad strata of the population,
led to a new period of storm and stress.  But in
contrast to the years 1902-1905, this movement
developed in a far more conscious, systematic
manner, and, what is more, was based on a far
broader social foundation.  It needed time to
mature, but it did not need the lances of the
Prussian Samurai.  On the contrary, the
Prussian Samurai gave the Czar the opportunity of
playing the rôle of defender of the Serbs, the
Belgians and the French.

If we presuppose a catastrophal Russian
defeat, the war *may* bring a quicker outbreak of
the Revolution, but at the cost of its inner
weakness.  And if the Revolution should even gain
the upper hand under such circumstances, then
the bayonets of the Hohenzollern armies would
be turned on the Revolution.  Such a prospect
can hardly fail to paralyze Russia's revolutionary
forces; for it is impossible to deny the fact
that the party of the German proletariat stands
behind the Hohenzollern bayonets.  But this
is only one side of the question.  The defeat of
Russia necessarily presupposes decisive
victories by Germany and Austria on the other
battlefields, and this would mean the enforced
preservation of the national-political chaos in
Central and Southeastern Europe and the
unlimited mastery of German militarism in all
Europe.

An enforced disarmament for France,
billions in indemnities, enforced tariff walls
around the conquered nations, and an enforced
commercial treaty with Russia, all this in
conjunction would make German imperialism
master of the situation for many decades.

Germany's new policy, which began with the
capitulation of the party of the proletariat to
nationalistic militarism, would be strengthened
for years to come.  The German working
class would feed itself, materially and
spiritually, on the crumbs from the table of
victorious imperialism, while the cause of the
Social Revolution would have received a mortal
blow.

That in such circumstances a Russian revolution,
even if temporarily successful, would be
an historical miscarriage, needs no further
proof.

Consequently, this present battling of the
nations under the yoke of militarism laid upon
them by the capitalistic classes contains within
itself monstrous contrasts which neither the
War itself nor the governments directing it
can solve in any way to the interest of future
historical development.  The Social Democrats
could not, and can not now, combine their
aims with any of the historical possibilities of
this War, that is, with either the victory of the
Triple Alliance or the victory of the Entente.

The German Social Democracy was once
well aware of this.  The *Vorwärts* in its issue
of July 28, discussing the very question of the
war against Czarism, said:

.. vspace:: 2

..
   
   "But if it is not possible to localize the
   trouble, if Russia should step into the field?
   What should our attitude toward Czarism
   be then?  Herein lies the great difficulty of
   the situation.  Has not the moment come
   to strike a death blow at Czarism?  If
   German troops cross the Russian frontier, will
   that not mean the victory of the Russian
   Revolution?"

.. vspace:: 2

And the *Vorwärts* comes to the following
conclusion:

.. vspace:: 2

..
   
   "Are we so sure that it *will* mean victory
   to the Russian Revolution if German troops
   cross the Russian frontier?  It may readily
   bring the collapse of Czarism, but will not
   the German armies fight a revolutionary
   Russia with even greater energy, with a
   keener desire for victory, than they do the
   absolutistic Russia?"

.. vspace:: 2

More than this.  On August 3, on the eve of
the historical session of the Reichstag, the
*Vorwärts* wrote in an article entitled "The War
upon Czarism":

.. vspace:: 2

..
   
   "While the conservative press is accusing
   the strongest party in the Empire of high
   treason, to the rejoicing of other countries,
   there are other elements endeavoring to
   prove to the Social Democracy that the
   impending war is really an old Social
   Democratic demand.  War against Russia, war
   upon the blood-stained and faithless
   Czarism--this last is a recent phrase of the press
   which once kissed the knout--isn't this what
   Social Democracy has been asking for from
   the beginning? ...
   
   "These are literally the arguments used
   by one portion of the bourgeois press, in fact
   the more intelligent portion, and it only goes
   to show what importance is attached to the
   opinion of that part of the German people
   which stands behind the Social Democracy.
   The slogan no longer is 'Russia's sorrow is
   Germany's sorrow.'  Now it is 'Down with
   Czarism!'  But since the days when the
   leaders of the Social Democracy referred to
   [Bebel, Lassalle, Engels, Marx] demanded
   a democratic war against Russia, Russia has
   quite ceased to be the mere palladium of
   reaction.  Russia is also the seat of revolution.
   The overthrow of Czarism is now the task of
   all the Russian people, especially the
   Russian proletariat, and it is just the last weeks
   that have shown how vigorously this very
   working class in Russia is attacking the task
   that history has laid upon it....  And all
   the nationalistic attempts of the 'True
   Russians' to turn the hatred of the masses away
   from Czarism and arouse a reactionary
   hatred against foreign countries, particularly
   Germany, have failed so far.  The Russian
   proletariat knows too well that its enemy is
   not beyond the border but within its own
   land.  Nothing was more distasteful to these
   nationalistic agitators, the True Russians
   and Pan-Slavists, than the news of the great
   peace demonstration of the German Social
   Democracy.  Oh, how they would have
   rejoiced had the contrary been the case, had
   they been able to say to the Russian
   proletariat, 'There, you see, the German Social
   Democrats stand at the head of those who
   are inciting the war against Russia!'  And
   the Little Father in St. Petersburg would
   also have breathed a sigh of relief and said,
   'That is the news I wanted to hear.  Now
   the backbone of my most dangerous enemy,
   the Russian Revolution, is broken.  The
   international solidarity of the proletariat is
   torn.  Now I can unchain the beast of
   nationalism.  I am saved!"

.. vspace:: 2

Thus wrote the *Vorwärts* after Germany
had already declared war on Russia.

These words characterize the honest manly
stand of the proletariat against a belligerent
jingoism.  The *Vorwärts* clearly understood
and cleverly stigmatized the base hypocrisy of
the knout-loving ruling class of Germany,
which suddenly became conscious of its mission
to free Russia from Czarism.  The *Vorwärts*
warned the German working class of the
political extortion that the bourgeois press would
practise on their revolutionary conscience.
"Do not believe these friends of the knout,"
the *Vorwärts* said to the German proletariat.
"They are hungry for your souls, and hide their
imperialistic designs behind liberal-sounding
phrases.  They are deceiving you--you, the
cannon-fodder with souls that they need.  If
they succeed in winning you over, they will
only be helping Czarism by dealing the
Russian Revolution a fearful moral blow.  And if,
in spite of this, the Russian Revolution should
raise its head, these very people will help
Czarism to crush it."

That is the sense of what the *Vorwärts*
preached to the working class up to the 4th of
August.

And exactly three weeks later the same
*Vorwärts* wrote:

.. vspace:: 2

"Liberation from Muscovitism (?),
freedom and independence for Poland and
Finland, free development for the great Russian
people themselves, dissolution of the
unnatural alliance between two cultural nations
and Czaristic barbarism--these were the
aims that inspired the German people and
made them ready for any sacrifice,"

.. vspace:: 2

and inspired also the German Social
Democracy and its chief organ.

What happened in those three weeks to cause
the *Vorwärts* to repudiate its original standpoint?

What happened?  Nothing of importance.
The German armies strangled neutral
Belgium, burned down a number of Belgian towns,
destroyed Louvain, the inhabitants of which
had been so criminally audacious as to fire at
the armed invaders when they themselves wore
no helmets and waving feathers. [#]_  In those
three weeks the German armies carried death
and destruction into French territory, and the
troops of their ally, Austria-Hungary,
pounded the love of the Hapsburg Monarchy
into the Serbs on the Save and the Drina.
These are the facts that apparently convinced
the *Vorwärts* that the Hohenzollerns were
waging the war of liberation of the nations.

.. [#] "How characteristically Prussian," wrote Marx to Engels,
   "to declare that no man may defend his 'fatherland' except in
   uniform!"

Neutral Belgium was crushed, and the Social
Democrats remained silent.  And Richard
Fischer was sent to Switzerland as special
envoy of the Party to explain to the people of a
neutral country that the violation of Belgian
neutrality and the ruin of a small nation were
a perfectly natural phenomenon.  Why so
much excitement?  Any other European
government, in Germany's place, would have
acted in the same way.  It was just at this time
that the German Social Democracy not only
reconciled itself to the War as a work of real
or supposed national defense, but even
surrounded the Hohenzollern-Hapsburg armies
with the halo of an offensive campaign for
freedom.  What an unprecedented fall for a party
that for fifty years had taught the German
working class to look upon the German
Government as the foe of liberty and democracy!

In the meantime every day of the War
discloses the danger to Europe that the Marxists
should have foreseen at once.  The chief blows
of the German government were not aimed at
the East, but at the West, at Belgium, France
and England.  Even if we accept the
improbable premise that nothing but strategic
necessity determined this plan of campaign, the
logical political outcome of this strategy remains
with all its consequences, that is, the necessity
for a full and definite defeat of Belgium,
France and the English land forces, so that
Germany's hands might be free to deal with
Russia.  Wasn't it perfectly clear that what
was at first represented as a temporary
measure of strategic necessity in order to soothe the
German Social Democracy, would become an
end in itself through the force of events?  The
more stubborn the resistance made by France,
whose duty it has actually become to defend
its territory and its independence against the
German attack, the more certainly will the
German armies be held on the Western front;
and the more exhausted Germany is on the
Western front, the less strength and
inclination will remain for her supposedly main task,
the task with which the Social Democracy
credited her, the "settling with Russia."  And then
history will witness an "honorable" peace
between the two most reactionary powers of
Europe, between Nicholas, to whom fate
granted cheap victories over the Hapsburg
Monarchy, [#]_ rotten to its core, and William,
who had his "settling," but with Belgium, not
with Russia.

.. [#] "Russian diplomacy is interested only in such wars," wrote
   Engels in 1890, "as force her allies to bear the chief burden of
   raising troops and suffering invasion, and leave to the Russian
   troops only the work of reserves.  Czarism makes war on its
   own account only on decidedly weaker nations, such as Sweden,
   Turkey and Persia."  Austria-Hungary must now be placed in
   the same class as Turkey and Persia.

The alliance between Hohenzollern and
Romanoff--after the exhaustion and
degradation of the Western nations--will mean a
period of the darkest reaction in Europe and
the whole world.

The German Social Democracy by its
present policy smooths the way for this awful
danger.  And the danger will become an
actuality unless the European proletariat interferes
and enters as a revolutionary factor into the
plans of the dynasties and the capitalistic governments.

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE WAR AGAINST THE WEST`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER IV


.. class:: center medium

   THE WAR AGAINST THE WEST

.. vspace:: 2

On his return from his diplomatic trip to
Italy, Dr. Südekum wrote in the *Vorwärts*
that the Italian comrades did not sufficiently
comprehend the nature of Czarism.  We agree
with Dr. Südekum that a German can more
easily understand the nature of Czarism as he
experiences daily, in his own person, the
nature of Prussian-German absolutism.  The two
"natures" are very closely akin to each other.

German absolutism represents a
feudal-monarchical organization, resting upon a
mighty capitalist foundation, which the
development of the last half-century has erected for
it.  The strength of the German army, as we
have learned to know it anew in its present
bloody work, consists not alone in the great
material and technical resources of the nation,
and in the intelligence and precision of the
workman-soldier, who had been drilled in the
school of industry and his own class organizations.
It has its foundation also in its Junker
officer caste, with its master class traditions, its
oppression of those who are below and its
subordination to those who are above.  The
German army, like the German state, is a
feudal-monarchical organization with inexhaustible
capitalistic resources.  The bourgeois
scribblers may chatter all they want about the
supremacy of the German, the man of duty, over
the Frenchman, the man of pleasure; the real
difference lies not in the racial qualities, but
in the social and political conditions.  The
standing army, that closed corporation, that
self-sufficing state within the state, remains,
despite universal military service, a caste
organization that in order to thrive must have
artificial distinctions of rank and a monarchical
top to crown the commanding hierarchy.

In his work, "The New Army," Jaurès
showed that the only army France could have
is an army of defense built on the plan of
arming every citizen, that is, a democratic army, a
*militia*.  The bourgeois French Republic is
now paying the penalty for having made her
army a counterpoise to her democratic state
organization.  She created, in Jaurès' words,
"a bastard régime in which antiquated forms
clashed with newly developing forms and
neutralized each other."  This incongruity between
the standing army and the republican régime is
the fundamental weakness of the French
military system.

The reverse is true of Germany.  Germany's
barbarian retrograde political system gives her
a great military supremacy.  The German
bourgeoisie may grumble now and then when
the pretorian caste spirit of the officers' corps
leads to outbreaks like that of Zabern.  They
may make wry faces at the Crown Prince and
his slogan, "Give it to them!  Give it to
them!"  The German Social Democracy may inveigh
ever so sharply against the systematic personal
ill-treatment of the German soldier which has
caused proportionately double the number of
suicides in the German barracks of that in any
other country.  But for all that, the fact that
the German bourgeoisie has absolutely no
political character and that the German Socialist
party has failed to inspire the proletariat with
the revolutionary spirit has enabled the ruling
class to erect the gigantic structure of
militarism, and so place the efficient and intelligent
German workmen under the command of the
Zabern heroes and their slogan, "Give it to them!"

Professor Hans Delbrück seeks the source
of Germany's military strength in the ancient
model of the Teutoburgerwald, and he is
perfectly justified.

.. vspace:: 2

..
   
   "The oldest Germanic system of warfare,"
   he writes, "was based on the retinue of
   princes, a body of specially selected warriors,
   and the mass of fighters comprising the
   entire nation.  This is the system we have
   to-day also.  How vastly different are the
   methods of fighting now from those of our
   ancestors in the Teutoburgerwald!  We have
   the technical marvels of modern machine
   guns.  We have the wonderful organization
   of immense masses of troops.  And yet, our
   military system is at bottom the same.  The
   martial spirit is raised to its highest power,
   developed to its utmost in a body which once
   was small but now numbers many thousands,
   a body giving fealty to their War Lord, and
   by him, as by the princes of old, regarded as
   his comrades; and under their leadership the
   whole people, educated by them and
   disciplined by them.  *Here we have the secret of
   the warlike character of the German nation*."

.. vspace:: 2

The French Major, Driant, looks on at the
German Kaiser in his White Cuirassier's
uniform, undoubtedly the most imposing military
uniform in the world, and republican by
constraint that he is, his heart is filled with a lover's
jealousy.  And how the Kaiser spends his time
"in the midst of his army, that true family of
the Hohenzollerns!"  The Major is fascinated.

The feudal caste, whose hour of political and
moral decay had struck long ago, found its
connection with the nation once more in the
fertile soil of imperialism.  And this connection
with the nation has taken such deep root that
the prophecies of Major Driant, written
several years ago, have actually come
true--prophecies that until now could only have
appeared as either the poisonous promptings of
a secret Bonapartist, or the drivellings of a
lunatic.

.. vspace:: 2

..
   
   "The Kaiser," he wrote, "is the
   Commander in Chief ... and behind him stands
   the entire working class of Germany as one
   man....  Bebel's Social Democrats are in
   the ranks, their fingers on the trigger, and
   they too think only of the welfare of the
   Fatherland.  The ten-billion war indemnity
   that France will have to pay will be a greater
   help to them than the Socialist chimeras on
   which they fed the day before."

.. vspace:: 2

Yes, and now they are writing of this future
indemnity even in some *Social Democratic (!)*
papers, with open rowdy insolence--an indemnity,
however, not of ten billions, but of twenty
or thirty billions.

Germany's victory over France--a deplorable
strategic necessity, according to the
German Social Democrats--would mean not only
the defeat of France's standing army; it would
mean primarily the victory of the feudal-monarchical
state over the democratic-republican state.

For the ancient race of Hindenburgs,
Moltkes and Klucks, hereditary specialists in
mass-murder, are just as indispensable a
condition of German victory as are the 42
centimeter guns, the last word in human technical
skill.

The entire capitalist press is already talking
of the unshakable stability of the German
Monarchy, strengthened by the war.  And
German professors, the same who proclaimed
Hindenburg a doctor of All the Sciences, are
already declaring that political slavery is a
higher form of social life.

.. vspace:: 2

..
   
   "The democratic republics, and the so-called
   monarchies that are under subjection
   to a parliamentary régime, and all the other
   beautiful things that were so extolled--what
   little capacity they have shown to stand the
   storm!"

.. vspace:: 2

These are the things that the German
professors are writing now.

It is shameful and humiliating enough to
read the expressions of the French Socialists,
who had proved themselves too weak to break
the alliance of France with Russia or even to
prevent the return to three-years' military
service, but who, when the War began, nevertheless
donned their red trousers and set out to
free Germany.  But we are seized with a
feeling of unspeakable indignation on reading the
German Socialist party press, which in the
language of exalted slaves extols the brave heroic
caste of hereditary oppressors for their armed
exploits on French territory.

On August 15, 1870, when the victorious
German armies were approaching Paris,
Engels wrote in a letter to Marx, after describing
the confused condition of the French defense:

.. vspace:: 2

..
   
   "Nevertheless, a revolutionary government,
   if it comes soon, need not despair.  But
   it must leave Paris to its fate, and continue
   to carry on the war from the south.  It is
   then still possible that such a government
   may hold out until arms and ammunition
   are bought and a new army organized with
   which the enemy can be gradually pushed
   back to the frontier.  That would be the
   right ending to the war--for both countries
   to demonstrate that they cannot be conquered."

.. vspace:: 2

And yet there are people who shout like
drunken helots, "On to Paris."  And in doing
so they have the impudence to invoke the names
of Marx and Engels.  In what measure are
they superior to the thrice despised Russian
liberals who crawled on their bellies before his
Excellency, the military Commander, who
introduced the Russian knout into East Galicia.
It is cowardly arrogance--this talk of the
purely "strategic" character of the War on the
Western front.  Who takes any account of it?
Certainly not the German ruling classes.  They
speak the language of conviction and of main
force.  They call things by their right names.
They know what they want and they know how
to fight for it.

The Social Democrats tell us that the War
is being waged for the cause of national
independence.  "That is not true," retorted Herr
Arthur Dix.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   "Just as the high politics of the last
   century," wrote Dix, "owed its specially marked
   character to the *National Idea*, so the
   political-world events of this century stand under
   the emblem of the *Imperialistic Idea*.  The
   imperialistic idea that is destined to give the
   impetus, the scope and the goal to the
   striving for power of the great (*Der
   Weltwirtschaftskrieg*, 1914, p. 3).

   "It shows gratifying sagacity," says the
   same Herr Arthur Dix, "on the part of
   those who had charge of the military
   preparations of the War, that the advance of our
   armies against France and Russia in the
   very first stage of the War took place
   precisely where it was most important to keep
   valuable German mineral wealth free from
   foreign invasion, and to occupy such
   portions of the enemy's territory as would
   supplement our own underground resources"
   (Ibid., p. 38).

.. vspace:: 2

The "strategy," of which the Socialists now
speak in devout whispers, really begins its
activities with the robbery of mineral wealth.

The Social Democrats tell us that the War
is a war of defense.  But Herr Georg Irmer
says clearly and distinctly:

.. vspace:: 2

..

   "People ought not to be talking as though
   the German nation had come too late for
   rivalry for world economy and world
   dominion,--that the world has already been
   divided.  Has not the earth been divided over
   and over again in all epochs of history?"
   (*Los vom englischen Weltjoch*, 1914, p. 42.)

.. vspace:: 2

The Socialists try to comfort us by telling
us that Belgium has only been temporarily
crushed and that the Germans will soon vacate
their Belgian quarters.  But Herr Arthur Dix,
who knows very well what he wants, and who
has the right and the power to want it, writes
that what England fears most, and expressly
so, is that *Germany should have an outlet to
the Atlantic Ocean*.

"For this very reason," he continues, "we
must neither *let Belgium go out of our hands*,
nor must we fail to make sure that the coast line
from Ostende to the Somme shall not again fall
into the hands of any state which may become a
political vassal of England.  We must see to
it that in some form or other *German influence*
is securely established there."

In the endless battles between Ostende and
Dunkirk, sacred "strategy" is now carrying
out this programme of the Berlin stock
exchange, also.

The Socialists tell us that the War between
France and Germany is merely a brief prelude
to a lasting alliance between those countries.
But here, too, Herr Arthur Dix shows
Germany's cards.  According to him, "there is but
one answer: *to seek to destroy the English
world trade, and to deal deadly blows at
English national economy*."

"The aim for the foreign policy of the
German Empire for the next decades is clearly
indicated," Professor Franz von Liszt
announces.  "'Protection against England,' that
must be our slogan" (*Ein mitteleuropäischer
Staatenverband*, 1914, p.  24).

.. vspace:: 2

..
   
   "We must crush the most treacherous and
   malicious of our foes," cries a third.  "We
   must break the tyranny which England
   exercises over the sea with base self-seeking and
   shameless contempt of justice and right."

.. vspace:: 2

The War is directed not against Czarism,
but primarily against England's supremacy on
the sea.

.. vspace:: 2

..
   
   "It may be said," Professor Schiehmann
   confesses, "that no success of ours has given
   us such joy as the defeat of the English at
   Maubeuge and St. Quentin on August 28."

.. vspace:: 2

The German Social Democrats tell us that
the chief object of the War is the "settlement
with Russia."  But plain, straightforward
Herr Rudolf Theuden wants to give Galicia to
Russia with North Persia thrown in.  Then
Russia "would have got enough to be satisfied
for many decades to come.  We may even make
her our friend by it."

"What ought the War to bring us?" asks
Theuden, and then he answers:

.. vspace:: 2

..
   
   "*The chief payment must be made us by
   France*....  France must give us Belfort,
   that part of Lorraine which borders on the
   Moselle, and, in case of stubborn resistance,
   that part as well which borders on the Maas.
   If we make the Maas and the Moselle
   German boundaries, the French will some day
   perhaps wean themselves away from the idea
   of making the Rhine a French boundary."

.. vspace:: 2

The bourgeois politicians and professors tell
us that England is the chief enemy; that
Belgium and France are the gateway to the
Atlantic Ocean; that the hope of a Russian
indemnity is only a Utopian dream, anyway; that
Russia would be more useful as friend than as
foe; that France will have to pay in land
and in gold--and the *Vorwärts* exhorts the
German workers to "hold out until the decisive
victory is ours."

And yet the *Vorwärts* tells us that the War
is being waged for the independence of the
German nation, and for the liberation of the
Russian people.  What does this mean?  Of
course we must not look for ideas, logic and
truth where they do not exist.  This is simply
a case of an ulcer of slavish sentiments
bursting open and foul pus crawling over the pages
of the workingmen's press.  It is clear that the
oppressed class which proceeds too slowly and
inertly on its way toward freedom must in the
final hour drag all its hopes and promises
through mire and blood, before there arises
in its soul the pure, unimpeachable voice--the
voice of revolutionary honor.

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE WAR OF DEFENSE`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER V


.. class:: center medium

   THE WAR OF DEFENSE

.. vspace:: 2

..
   
   "The thing for us to do now is to avert
   this danger [Russian despotism], and to
   secure the culture and the independence of our
   land.  Thus we will make good our word,
   and do what we have always said we would.
   In the hour of danger we will not leave our
   Fatherland in the lurch....  Guided by
   these principles we vote for the war credits."

.. vspace:: 2

This was the declaration of the German Social
Democratic fraction, read by Haase in the
Reichstag session of August 4.

Here only the defense of the fatherland is
mentioned.  Not a word is said of the
"liberating" mission of this War in behalf of the
peoples of Russia, which was later sung in every
key by the Social Democratic press.  The logic
of the Socialist press, however, did not keep
pace with its patriotism.  For while it made
desperate efforts to represent the War as one
of pure defense, to secure the safety of
Germany's possessions, it at the same time pictured
it as a revolutionary offensive war for the
liberation of Russia and of Europe from Czarism.

We have already shown clearly enough why
the peoples of Russia had every reason to
decline with thanks the assistance offered them
at the point of the Hohenzollern bayonets.
But how about the "defensive" character of
the War?

What surprises us even more than what is
said in the declaration of the Social Democracy
is what it conceals and leaves unsaid.  After
Hollweg had already announced in the Reichstag
the accomplished violation of the neutrality
of Belgium and Luxemburg as a means of
attacking France, Haase does not mention this
fact in a single word.  This silence is so
monstrous that one is tempted to read the
declaration a second and a third time.  But in vain.
The declaration is written as though such
countries as Belgium, France and England had
never existed on the political map of the
German Social Democracy.

But facts do not cease to be facts simply
because political parties shut their eyes to them.
And every member of the International has the
right to ask this question of Comrade Haase,
"What portion of the five billions voted by the
Social Democratic fraction was meant for the
destruction of Belgium?"  It is quite possible
that in order to protect the German fatherland
from Russian despotism it was inevitable
that the Belgian fatherland should be crushed.
But why did the Social Democratic fraction
keep silent on this point?

The reason is clear.  The English Liberal
government, in its effort to make the War
popular with the masses, made its plea
exclusively on the ground of the necessity of
protecting the independence of Belgium and the
integrity of France, but utterly ignored its
alliance with Russian Czarism.  In like manner,
and from the same motives, the German Social
Democracy speaks to the masses only about
the war against Czarism, but does not mention
even by name Belgium, France and England.
All this is of course not exactly flattering to
the international reputation of Czarism.  Yet
it is quite distressing that the German Social
Democracy should sacrifice its own good name
to the call to arms against Czarism.  Lassalle
said that every great political action
should begin with a statement of things as they
are.  Then why does the defense of the Fatherland
begin with an abashed silence as to things
as they are?  Or did the German Social
Democracy perhaps think that this was not a "big
political action"?

Anyway, the defense of the Fatherland is a
very broad and very elastic conception.  The
world catastrophe began with Austria's
ultimatum to Serbia.  Austria, naturally, was
guided solely by the need of defending her
borders from her uneasy neighbor.  Austria's prop
was Germany.  And Germany, in turn, as we
already know, was prompted by the need to
secure her own state.  "It would be senseless
to believe," writes Ludwig Quessel on this
point, "that one wall could be torn away from
this extremely complex structure (Europe)
without endangering the security of the whole
edifice."

Germany opened her "Defensive War" with
an attack upon Belgium, the violation of
Belgium's neutrality being allegedly only a
means of breaking through to France along
the line of least resistance.  The military
defeat of France also was to appear only as a
strategic episode in the defense of the Fatherland.

To some German patriots this construction
of things did not seem quite plausible, and
they had good grounds for disbelieving it.
They suspected a motive which squared far
better with the reality.  Russia, entering upon
a new era of military preparation, would be a
far greater menace to Germany in two or three
years than she was then.  And France during
that time would have completely carried out
her three-year army reform.  Is it not clear,
then, that an intelligent self-defense demanded
that Germany should not wait for the attack
of her enemies but should anticipate them by
two years and take the offensive at once?  And
isn't it clear, too, that such an offensive war,
deliberately provoked by Germany and Austria,
is in reality a preventive war of defense?

Not infrequently these two points of view
are combined in a single argument.  Granted
that there is some slight contradiction between
them.  The one declares that Germany did not
want the War now and that it was forced upon
her by the Triple Entente, while the other
implies that war was disadvantageous to the
Entente now and that for that very reason
Germany had taken the initiative to bring on the
War at this time.  But what if there is this
contradiction?  It is lightly and easily glossed
over and reconciled in the saving concept of a
war of defense.

But the belligerents on the other side
disputed this advantageous position of being on
the defensive, which Germany sought to
assume, and did it successfully.  France could
not permit the defeat of Russia on the ground
of her own self-defense.  England gave as the
motive for her interference the immediate
danger to the British Islands which a strengthening
of Germany's position at the mouth of the
Channel would mean.  Finally, Russia, too,
spoke only of self-defense.  It is true that no
one threatened Russian territory.  But
national possessions, mark you, do not consist
merely in territory, but in other, intangible,
factors as well, among them, the influence over
weaker states.  Servia "belongs" in the sphere
of Russian influence and serves the purpose of
maintaining the so-called balance of power in
the Balkans, not only the balance of power
between the Balkan States but also between
Russian and Austrian influence.  A successful
Austrian attack on Servia threatened to disturb
this balance of power in Austria's favor, and
therefore meant an indirect attack upon
Russia.  Sasonov undoubtedly found his strongest
argument in Quessel's words: "It would be
senseless to believe that one wall could be torn
away from the extremely complex structure
(Europe) without endangering the security of
the entire edifice."

It is superfluous to add that Servia and
Montenegro, Belgium and Luxemburg, could
also produce some proofs of the defensive
character of their policies.  Thus, all the countries
were on the defensive, none was the aggressor.
But if that is so, then what sense is there
in opposing the claims of defensive and
offensive war to each other?  The standards applied
in such cases differ greatly, and are not
frequently quite incommensurable.

What is of fundamental importance to us
Socialists is the question of the *historical* rôle
of the War.  Is the War calculated to
effectively promote the productive forces and the
state organizations, and to accelerate the
concentration of the working class forces?  Or is
the reverse true, will it hinder in this?  This
materialistic evaluation of wars stands above
all formal or external considerations, and in
its nature has no relation to the question of
defense or aggression.  And yet sometimes these
formal expressions about a war designate with
more or less truth the actual significance of the
war.  When Engels said that the Germans
were on the defensive in 1870, he had least of
all the immediate political and diplomatic
circumstances in mind.  The determining fact for
him was that in that war Germany was fighting
for her right to national unity, which was a
necessary condition for the economic
development of the country and the Socialist
consolidation of the proletariat.  In the same sense
the Christian peoples of the Balkans waged a
war of defense against Turkey, fighting for
their right to independent national
development against the foreign rule.

The question of the immediate international
political conditions leading to a war is
independent of the value the war possesses from the
*historico-materialistic* point of view.  The
German war against the Bonapartist Monarchy
was historically unavoidable.  In that war the
right of development was on the German side.
Yet those historical tendencies did not, in
themselves, predetermine the question as to which
party was interested in provoking the war just
in the year 1870.  We know now very well that
international politics and military considerations
induced Bismarck to take the actual
initiative in the war.  It might have happened
just the other way, however.  With greater
foresight and energy, the government of
Napoleon III could have anticipated Bismarck,
and begun the war a few years earlier.  That
would have radically changed the immediate
political aspect of events, but it would have
made no difference in the historic estimate of
the war.

Third in order is the factor of diplomacy.
Diplomacy here has a two-fold task to perform.
First, it must bring about war at the moment
most favorable for its own country from the
international as well as the military standpoint.
Second, it must employ methods which throw
the burden of responsibility for the bloody
conflict, in public opinion, on the enemy
government.  The exposure of diplomatic trickery,
cheating and knavery is one of the most
important functions of Socialist political
agitation.  But no matter to what extent we
succeed in this at the crucial juncture, it is clear
that the net of diplomatic intrigues in themselves
signifies nothing either as regards the
historic rôle of the war or its real initiators.
Bismarck's clever manoeuvres forced Napoleon
III to declare war on Prussia, although the
actual initiative came from the German side.

Next follows the purely military aspect.  The
*strategic* plan of operations can be calculated
chiefly for defense or attack, regardless of
which side declared the war and under what
conditions.  Finally, the first tactics followed
in the carrying out of the strategic plan not
infrequently plays a great part in estimating the
war as a war of defense or of aggression.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   "It is a good thing," wrote Engels to
   Marx on July 31, 1870, "that the French
   attacked first on German soil.  If the Germans
   repel the invasion and follow it up by
   invading French territory, then it will certainly
   not produce the same impression as if the
   Germans had marched into France without
   a previous invasion.  In this way the war
   remains, on the French side, more Bonapartistic."

.. vspace:: 2

Thus we see by the classic example of the
Franco-Prussian War that the standards for
judging whether a war is defensive or
aggressive are full of contradictions when two
nations clash.  Then how much more so are they
when it is a clash of several nations.  If we
unroll the tangle from the beginning, we
arrive at the following connection between the
elements of attack and defense.  The first
*tactical* move of the French should--at least in
Engels' opinion--make the people feel that the
responsibility of attack rested with the French.
And yet the entire *strategic* plan of the
Germans had an absolutely aggressive character.
The *diplomatic* moves of Bismarck forced
Bonaparte to declare war against his will and thus
appear as the disturber of the peace of Europe,
while the military-political initiative in the war
came from the Prussian government.  These
circumstances are by no means of slight importance
for the *historical* estimate of the war, but
they are not at all exhaustive.

One of the causes of this war was the
growing ambition of the Germans for national
self-determination, which conflicted with the
dynastic pretensions of the French Monarchy.  But
this national "war of defense" led to the
annexation of Alsace-Lorraine and so in its
second stage turned into a dynastic war of conquest.

The correspondence between Marx and
Engels shows that they were guided chiefly by
historical considerations in their attitude towards
the War of 1870.  To them, of course, it was
by no means a matter of indifference as to
who conducted the war and how it was
conducted.  "Who would have thought it
possible," Marx writes bitterly, "that twenty-two
years after 1848 a nationalist war in Germany
could have been given such theoretical
expression."  Yet what was of decisive significance to
Marx and Engels was the objective consequences
of the war.  "If the Prussians triumph,
it will mean the centralization of the state
power--useful to the centralization of the
German working-class."

Liebknecht and Bebel, starting with the
same historical estimate of the war, were
directly forced to take a political position
toward it.  It was by no means in opposition to
the views of Marx and Engels, but, on the
contrary, with their perfect acquiescence that
Liebknecht and Bebel refused, in the Reichstag,
to take any responsibility for this War.  The
statement they handed in read:

.. vspace:: 2

..

   "We cannot grant the war appropriations
   that the Reichstag is asked to make because
   that would be a vote of confidence in the
   Prussian government....  As opponents
   on principle of every dynastic war, as Social
   Republicians and members of the International
   Labor Association, which, without
   distinction of nationality, fights all oppressors
   and endeavors to unite all the oppressed in
   one great brotherhood, we cannot declare
   ourselves either directly or indirectly in
   favor of the present war."

.. vspace:: 2

Schweitzer acted differently.  He took the
historical estimate of the war as a direct guide
for his tactics--one of the most dangerous of
fallacies!--and in voting the war credits gave
a vote of confidence to the policy of Bismarck.
And this in spite of the fact that it was
necessary, if the centralization of state power
arising out of the War was to turn out of use to
the Social Democratic cause, that the
working-class should from the very beginning oppose
the dynastic-Junker centralization with their
own class-centralization filled with
revolutionary distrust of the rulers.

Schweitzer's political attitude invalidated
the very consequences of the War that had
induced him to give a vote of confidence to the
makers of the War.

Forty years later, drawing up the balance
sheet of his life-work, Bebel wrote:

.. vspace:: 2

..

   "The attitude that Liebknecht and I took
   at the outbreak and during the continuance
   of the war has for years been a subject of
   discussion and violent attack, at first even
   in the Party; but only for a short time.
   Then they acknowledged that we had been
   right.  I confess that I do not in any way
   regret our attitude, and if at the outbreak of
   the War we had known what we learned
   within the next few years from the official
   and unofficial disclosures, our attitude from
   the very start would have been still harsher.
   We would not merely have abstained, as we
   did, from voting the first war credits, we
   would have voted *against* them."  (*Autobiography*,
   Part II, p. 167.)

.. vspace:: 2

If we compare the Liebknecht-Bebel statement
of 1870 with Haase's declaration in 1914,
we must conclude that Bebel was mistaken
when he said, "Then they acknowledged that
we had been right."  For the vote of August 4
was eminently a condemnation of Bebel's
policy forty-four years earlier, since in Haase's
phraseology, Bebel had then left the
Fatherland in the lurch in the hour of danger.

What political causes and considerations
have led the party of the German proletariat
to abandon its glorious traditions?  Not a
single weighty reason has been given so far.  All
the arguments adduced are full of contradictions.
They are like diplomatic communiqués
which are written to justify an already
accomplished act.  The leader writer of *Die Neue
Zeit* writes--with the blessing of Comrade
Kautsky--that Germany's position towards
Czarism is the same as it was towards
Bonapartism in 1870!  He even quotes from a letter
of Engels: "All classes of the German
people realized that it was a question, first of all,
of national existence, and so they fell in line at
once."  For the same reason, we are told, the
German Social Democracy has fallen into line
now.  It is a question of national existence.
"Substitute Czarism for Bonapartism, and
Engels' words are true to-day."  And yet the
fact remains, in all its force, that Bebel and
Liebknecht demonstratively refused to vote
either money or confidence to the government
in 1870.  Does it not hold just as well, then,
if we "substitute Czarism for Bonapartism"?
To this question no answer has been vouchsafed.

But what did Engels really write in his
letter concerning the tactics of the labor party?

"It does not seem possible to me that under
such circumstances a German political party
can preach *total obstruction*, and place all sorts
of minor considerations above the main issue."  *Total
obstruction!*--But there is a wide gap
between total obstruction and the total capitulation
of a political party.  And it was this gap
that divided the positions between Bebel and
Schweitzer in 1870.  Marx and Engels were
with Bebel against Schweitzer.  Comrade
Kautsky might have informed his leader
writer, Hermann Wendel, of this fact.  And
it is nothing but defamation of the dead for
*Simplicissimus* now to reconcile the shades of
Bebel and Bismarck in Heaven.  If *Simplicissimus*
and Wendel have the right to awaken
anybody from his sleep in the grave for the
endorsement of the present tactics of the German
Social Democracy, then it is not Bebel, but
Schweitzer.  It is the shade of Schweitzer that
now oppresses the political party of the
German proletariat.

.. vspace:: 2

But the very analogy between the Franco-Prussian
War and the present War is superficial
and misleading in the extreme.  Let us
set aside all the international relations.  Let us
forget that the War meant first of all the
destruction of Belgium, and that Germany's main
force was hurled not against Czarism but
republican France.  Let us forget that the
starting point of the War was the crushing of
Servia, and that one of its aims was the
strengthening and consolidation of the arch-reactionary
state, Austria-Hungary.  We will not dwell
on the fact that the attitude of the German
Social Democracy dealt a hard blow at the
Russian Revolution, which in the two years
before the War had again flared up in such a
tempest.  We will close our eyes to all these
facts, just as the German Social Democracy
did on August 4th, when it did not see that
there was a Belgium in the world, a France,
England, Servia, or Austria-Hungary.  We
will grant only the existence of Germany.

In 1870 it was quite easy to estimate the
historical significance of the war.  "If the
Prussians win, the centralization of state power will
further the centralization of the German
working class."  And now?  What would be the
result for the German working class of a
Prussian victory now?

The only territorial expansion which the
German working class could welcome, because
it would complete the national unity, is a union
of German Austria with Germany.  Any other
expansion of the German fatherland means
another step towards the transformation of
Germany from a national state to a state of
nationalities, and the consequent introduction
of all those conditions which render more
difficult the class struggle of the proletariat.

Ludwig Frank hoped--and he expressed
this hope in the language of a belated
Lassallian--that later, after a victorious war, he
would devote himself to the work of the
"internal building up" of the state.  There is no
doubt that Germany will need this "internal
building up" after a victory no less than before
the War.  But will a victory make this work
easier?  There is nothing in Germany's historical
experiences any more than in those of any
other country to justify such a hope.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   "We regarded the doings of the rulers of
   Germany [after the victories of 1870] as a
   matter of course," says Bebel in his
   *Autobiography*.  "It was merely an illusion of the
   Party Executive to believe that a more
   liberal spirit would prevail in the new order.
   And this more liberal régime was to be
   granted by the same man who had till then
   shown himself the greatest enemy, I will not
   say of democratic development, but even of
   every liberal tendency, and who now as
   victor planted the heel of his Cuirassier boot on
   the neck of the new Empire."  (Vol. II, p. 188.)

.. vspace:: 2

There is absolutely no reason to expect
different results now from a victory from above.
On the contrary.  In 1870 Prussian Junkerdom
had first to adapt itself to the new
imperial order.  It could not feel secure in
the saddle all at once.  It was eight years after
the victory over France that the anti-Socialist
laws were passed.  In forty-four
years Prussian Junkerdom has become the
imperial Junkerdom.  And if, after half a
century of the most intense class struggle,
Junkerdom should appear at the head of the
victorious nation, then we need not doubt that it
would not have felt the need of Ludwig
Frank's services for the internal building up of
the state had he returned safe from the fields
of German victories.

But far more important than the strengthening
of the class position of the rulers is the
influence a German victory would have upon
the proletariat itself.  The war grew out of
imperialistic antagonisms between the capitalist
states, and the victory of Germany, as stated
above, can produce only one result--territorial
acquisitions at the expense of Belgium, France
and Russia, commercial treaties forced upon
her enemies, and new colonies.  The class
struggle of the proletariat would then be placed
upon the basis of the imperialistic hegemony
of Germany, the working class would be
interested in the maintenance and development of
this hegemony, and revolutionary Socialism
would for a long time be condemned to the rôle
of a propagandist sect.

Marx was right when in 1870 he foresaw, as
a result of the German victories, a rapid
development for the German labor movement
under the banner of scientific Socialism.  But
now the international conditions point to the
very opposite prognosis.  Germany's victory
would mean the taking of the edge off the
revolutionary movement, its theoretic shallowing,
and the dying out of the Marxist ideas.

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`WHAT HAVE SOCIALISTS TO DO WITH CAPITALIST WARS?`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER VI


.. class:: center medium

   WHAT HAVE SOCIALISTS TO DO WITH CAPITALIST WARS?

.. vspace:: 2

But the German Social Democracy, we shall
be told, does not want victory.  Our answer
must be in the first place that this is not true.
What the German Social Democracy wants is
told by its press.  With two or three
exceptions Socialist papers daily point out to the
German workingman that a victory of the
German arms is *his* victory.  The capture of
Maubeuge, the sinking of three English warships, or
the fall of Antwerp aroused in the Social
Democratic press the same feelings that otherwise
are excited by the gain of a new election
district or a victory in a wage dispute.  We must
not lose sight of the fact that the German labor
press, the Party press as well as the trade union
papers, is now a powerful mechanism that in
place of the education of the people's will for
the class struggle has substituted the education
of the people's will for military victories.  I
have not in mind the ugly chauvinistic excesses
of individual organs, but the underlying
sentiment of the overwhelming majority of the
Social Democratic papers.  The signal for this
attitude seems to have been given by the vote
of the fraction on August 4th.

But the fraction wasn't thinking of a
German victory.  It made it its task only to avert
the danger threatening from the outside, to
defend the Fatherland.  That was all.

And here we come back to the question of
wars of defense and wars of aggression.  The
German press, including the Social Democratic
organs, does not cease to repeat that it
is Germany of all countries that finds itself on
the defensive in this War.  We have already
discussed the standards for determining the
difference between a war of aggression and a
war of defense.  These standards are
numerous and contradictory.  Yet in the present case
they testify unanimously that Germany's
military acts cannot possibly be construed as the
acts of a war of defense.  But this has
absolutely no influence upon the tactics of the
Social Democracy.

From a *historical* standpoint the new
German imperialism is, as we already know,
absolutely aggressive.  Urged onward by the
feverish development of the national industry,
German imperialism disturbs the old balance of
power between the states and plays the first
violin in the race for armaments.

And from the *standpoint of world politics*
the present moment seemed to be most favorable
for Germany to deal her rivals a crushing
blow--which however does not lessen the guilt
of Germany's enemies by one iota.

The *diplomatic* view of events leaves no
doubt concerning the leading part that
Germany played in Austria's provocative action
in Servia.  The fact that Czarist diplomacy
was, as usual, still more disgraceful, does not
alter the case.

From the standpoint of *strategy* the entire
German campaign was based on a monstrous
offensive.

And finally from the standpoint of *tactics*,
the first move of the German army was the
violation of Belgian neutrality.

If all this is defense, then what is attack?
But even if we assume that events as pictured
in the language of diplomacy admit of other
interpretations--although the first two pages
of the White Book are very clear as to this
meaning--has the revolutionary party of the
working class no other standards for determining
its policy than the documents presented by
a government that has the greatest interest in
deceiving it?

.. vspace:: 2

..

   "Bismarck duped the whole world," says
   Bebel, "and knew how to make people
   believe that it was Napoleon who provoked
   the war, while he himself, the peace-loving
   Bismarck, found himself and his policy in
   the position of being attacked.
   
   "The events preceding the war were so
   misleading that France's complete
   unpreparedness for the war that she herself
   declared was generally overlooked, while in
   Germany, which appeared to be the one
   attacked, preparations for war had been
   completed down to the very last wagon-nail, and
   mobilization moved with the precision of
   clockwork."  (*Autobiography*, Vol. III,
   pages 167-168.)

.. vspace:: 2

After such an historical precedent one might
expect more critical caution from the Social
Democracy.

It is quite true that Bebel more than once
repeated his assertion that in case of an attack
on Germany the Social Democracy would
defend its Fatherland.  At the convention held at
Essen, Kautsky answered him:

.. vspace:: 2

..

   "In my opinion we cannot promise
   positively to share the government's war
   enthusiasm every time we are convinced that the
   country is threatened by attack.  Bebel
   thinks we are much further advanced than
   we were in 1870 and that we are now able to
   decide in every instance whether the war
   which threatens is really one of aggression
   or not.  I should not like to take this
   responsibility upon myself.  I should not like to
   undertake to guarantee that we could make
   a correct decision in every instance, that we
   shall always know whether a government is
   deceiving us, or whether it is not actually
   representing the interests of the nation
   against a war of attack....  Yesterday it
   was the German government that took the
   aggressive, to-morrow it will be the French
   government, and we cannot know if the day
   after it may not be the English government.
   The governments are constantly taking
   turns.  As a matter of fact what we are
   concerned with in case of war is not a national,
   but an international question.  For a war
   between great powers will become a world
   war and will affect the whole of Europe, not
   two countries alone.  Some day the German
   government might make the German
   proletariat believe they were being attacked; the
   French government might do the same with
   its subjects, and then we should have a war
   in which the French and German working
   men would follow their respective
   governments with equal enthusiasm, and murder
   each other and cut each other's throats.
   Such a contingency must be avoided, and it
   will be avoided if we do not adopt the
   criterion of the aggressive or defensive war,
   but that of the interests of the proletariat,
   which at the same time are international
   interests....  Fortunately, it is a
   misconception to assume that the German Social
   Democracy in case of war wanted to judge
   by national and not by international considerations,
   and felt itself to be first a German
   and then a proletariat party."

.. vspace:: 2

With splendid clearness Kautsky in this
speech reveals the terrible dangers--now a still
more terrible actuality--that are latent in the
endeavor to make the position of the Social
Democracy dependent upon an indefinite and
contradictory formal estimate of whether a war
is one of defense or one of aggression.  Bebel
in his reply said nothing of importance; and
his point of view seemed quite inexplicable,
especially after his own experiences of the year 1870.

Nevertheless, in spite of its theoretical
inadequacy, Bebel's position had a quite definite
political meaning.  Those imperialistic
tendencies which the danger of war begat excluded
the possibility for the Social Democracy's
expecting salvation from the victory of either of
the warring parties.  For that very reason its
entire attention was directed to the preventing
of war, and the principal task was to keep the
governments worried about the results of a war.

"The Social Democracy," said Bebel, "will
oppose any government which takes the
initiative in war."  He meant this as a threat
to William II.'s government.  "Don't reckon
upon us if some day you decide to utilize your
cannon and your battleships."  Then he turned
to Petrograd and London: "They had better
take care not to attack Germany in a miscalculation
of weakness from within on account of
the obstructionist policies of the powerful
German Social Democracy."

Without being a political doctrine, Bebel's
conception was a political threat, and a threat
directed simultaneously at two fronts, the
internal front and the foreign front.  His one
obstinate answer to all historical and logical
objections was: "We'll find the way to expose
any government that takes the first step
towards war.  We are clever enough for that."

This threatening attitude of not only the
German Social Democracy but also of the
International Party was not without results.
The various governments actually did make
every effort to postpone the outbreak of the
War.  But that is not all.  The rulers and the
diplomats were doubly attentive now to
adapting their moves to the pacifist psychology of
the masses.  They whispered with the Socialist
leaders, nosed about in the office of the
International, and so created a sentiment which
made it possible for Jaurès and Haase to
declare at Brussels, a few days before the
outbreak of the War, that their particular
governments had no other object than the preservation
of peace.  And when the storm broke
loose, the Social Democracy of every country
looked for the guilty party--on the other side
of the border.  Bebel's utterance, which had
played a definite part as a threat, lost all
meaning the instant the first shots were fired at the
frontiers.  That terrible thing took place which
Kautsky had prophesied.

What at first glance appears the most
surprising thing about it all is, that the Social
Democracy had not really felt the need for a
political criterion.  In the catastrophe that has
occurred to the International the arguments
have been notable for their superficiality.  They
contradicted each other, shifted ground, and
were of only secondary significance--the gist
of the matter being that the *fatherland must be
defended*.  Apart from considerations of the
historical outcome of the War, apart from
considerations of democracy and the class
struggle, the fatherland that has come down to us
historically must be defended.  And defended
not because our government wanted peace and
was "perfidiously attacked," as the international
penny-a-liners put it, but because apart
from the conditions or the ways in which it was
provoked, apart from who was right and who
was wrong, war, once it breaks out, subjects
every belligerent to the danger of invasion and
conquest.  Theoretical, political, diplomatic
and military considerations fall into ruins as in
an earthquake, a conflagration or a flood.  The
government with its army is elevated to the
position of the one power that can protect and
save its people.  The large masses of the
people in actuality return to a pre-political
condition.  This feeling of the masses, this elemental
reflex of the catastrophe, need not be criticized
in so far as it is only a temporary feeling.  But
it is quite a different matter in the case of the
attitude of the Social Democracy, the
responsible political representative of the masses.
The political organizations of the possessing
classes and especially the power of the
government itself did not simply float with the stream.
They instantly set to work most intensively
and in very varied ways to heighten this
unpolitical sentiment and to unite the masses
around the army and the government.  The
Social Democracy not only did not become
equally active in the opposite direction, but
from the very first moment surrendered to the
policy of the government and to the elemental
feeling of the masses.  And instead of arming
these masses with the weapons of criticism and
distrust, if only passive criticism and distrust,
it itself by its whole attitude hastened the
people along the road to this pre-political
condition.  It renounced its traditions and political
pledges of fifty years with a conspicuous readiness
that was least of all calculated to inspire
the rulers with respect.

Bethmann-Hollweg announced that the
German government was in absolute agreement
with the German people, and after the
avowal of the *Vorwärts*, in view of the position
taken by the Social Democracy, he had a
perfect right to say so.  But he had still another
right.  If conditions had not induced him to
postpone political polemics to a more favorable
moment, he might have said at the Reichstag
session of August 4th, addressing the
representatives of the Socialist proletariat:
"To-day you agree with us in recognizing the
danger threatening our Fatherland, and you join
us in trying to avert the danger by arms.  But
this danger has not grown up since yesterday.
You must previously have known of the existence
and the tendencies of Czarism, and you
knew that we had other enemies besides.  So
by what right did you attack us when we built
up our army and our navy?  By what right
did you refuse to vote for military appropriations
year after year?  Was it by the right of
treason or the right of blindness?  If in spite
of you we had not built up our army, we should
now be helpless in the face of this Russian
menace that has brought you to your senses,
too.  No appropriations granted now could
enable us to make up for what we would have
lost.  We should now be without arms, without
cannons, without fortifications.  Your voting
to-day in favor of the war credit of five billion
is an admission that your annual refusal of the
budget was only an empty demonstration, and,
worse than that, was political demagogy.  For
as soon as you came up for a serious historical
examination, you denied your entire past!"

That is what the German Chancellor could
have said, and this time his speech would have
carried conviction.  And what could Haase
have replied?

"We never took a stand for Germany's
disarmament in the face of dangers from without.
Such peace rubbish was never in our thoughts.
As long as international contradictions create
out of themselves the danger of war, we want
Germany to be safe against foreign invasion
and servitude.  What we are trying for is a
military organization which cannot--as can an
artificially trained organization--be made to
serve for class exploitation at home and for
imperialistic adventures abroad, but will be
invincible in national defense.  We want a militia.
We cannot trust you with the work of national
defense.  You have made the army a school of
reactionary training.  You have drilled your
corps of officers in the hatred of the most
important class of modern society, the proletariat.
You are capable of risking millions of lives,
not for the real interests of the people, but for
the selfish interests of the ruling minority,
which you veil with the names of national ideals
and state prestige.  We do not trust you, and
that is why we have declared year after year,
'Not a single man or a single penny for this
class government!''

"But five billions!" voices from both the
right and the left might interrupt.

"Unfortunately we are now left no choice.
We have no army except the one created by the
present masters of Germany, and the enemy
stands without our gates.  We cannot on the
instant replace William II.'s army by a
people's militia, and once this is so, we cannot
refuse food, clothing and materials of war to the
army that is defending us, no matter how it
may be constituted.  We are neither repudiating
our past nor renouncing our future.  We
are forced to vote for the war credits."

That would have been about the most
convincing thing that Haase could have said.

Yet, even though such considerations might
give an explanation of why the Socialist
workers as *citizens* did not obstruct the military
organization, but simply fulfilled the duty of
citizenship forced upon them by circumstances,
we should still be waiting in vain for an answer
to the principal question: Why did the Social
Democracy, as the political organization of a
class that has been denied a share in the
government, as the implacable enemy of bourgeois
society, as the republican party, as a branch of
the International--why did it take upon itself
the responsibility for acts undertaken by its
irreconcilable class enemies?

If it is impossible for us immediately to
replace the Hohenzollern army with a militia,
that does not mean that we must now take upon
ourselves the responsibility for the doings of
that army.  If in times of peaceful normal
state-housekeeping we wage war against the
monarchy, the bourgeoisie and militarism, and
are under obligations to the masses to carry on
that war with the whole weight of our
authority, then we commit the greatest crime against
our future when we put this authority at the
disposal of the monarchy, the bourgeoisie and
militarism at the very moment when these
break out into the terrible, anti-social and
barbaric methods of war.

Neither the nation nor the state can escape
the obligation of defense.  But when we refuse
the rulers our confidence we by no means rob
the bourgeois state of its weapons or its means
of defense and even of attack--as long as we
are not strong enough to wrest its power from
its hands.  In war as in peace, we are a party
of opposition, not a party of power.  In that
way we can also most surely serve that part of
our task which war outlines so sharply, the
work of national independence.  The Social
Democracy cannot let the fate of any nation,
whether its own or another nation, depend upon
military successes.  In throwing upon the
capitalist state the responsibility for the method
by which it protects its independence, that is,
the violation of the independence of other
states, the Social Democracy lays the
cornerstone of true national independence in the
consciousness of the masses of all nations.  By
preserving and developing the international
solidarity of the workers, we secure the
independence of the nation--and make it
independent of the calibre of cannons.

If Czarism is a danger to Germany's
independence, there is only one way that promises
success in warding off this danger, and that
way lies with us--the solidarity of the working
masses of Germany and Russia.  But such
solidarity would undermine the policy that
William II. explained in saying that the entire
German people stood behind him.  What
should we Russian Socialists say to the Russian
workingmen in face of the fact that the bullets
the German workers are shooting at them bear
the political and moral seal of the German
Social Democracy?  "We cannot make our policy
for Russia, we make it for Germany," was the
answer given me by one of the most respected
functionaries of the German party when I put
this question to him.  And at that moment I
felt with particularly painful clearness what a
blow had been struck at the International from
within.

The situation, it is plain, is not improved if
the Socialist parties of *both* warring countries
throw in their fate with the fate of their
governments, as in Germany and France.  No
outside power, no confiscation or destruction of
Socialist property, no arrests and imprisonments
could have dealt such a blow to the
International as it struck itself with its own hands
in surrendering to the Moloch of state just when
he began to talk in terms of blood and iron.

----

In his speech at the convention at Essen
Kautsky drew a terrifying picture of brother
rising against brother in the name of a "war of
defense"--as an argument, by no means as an
actual possibility.  Now that this picture has
become a bloody actuality, Kautsky endeavors
to reconcile us to it.  He beholds no collapse of
the International.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   "The difference between the German and
   the French Socialists is not to be found in
   their standards of judgment, nor in their
   fundamental point of view, but merely in the
   difference of their interpretation of the
   present situation, which, in its turn, is
   conditioned by the *difference in their geographical
   position* [!].  Therefore, this difference can
   scarcely be overcome while the war lasts.
   Nevertheless it is not a difference of
   principle, but one arising out of a particular
   situation, and so it need not last after that
   situation has ceased to exist."  (*Neue Zeit*, 337,
   p. 3.)

.. vspace:: 2

When Guèsde and Sembat appear as aides
to Poincaré, Delcassé and Briand, and as
opponents to Bethmann-Hollweg; when the
French and German workingmen cut each
other's throats and are not doing so as enforced
citizens of the bourgeois republic and the
Hohenzollern Monarchy, but as Socialists
performing their duty under the spiritual leadership
of their parties, this is not a collapse of the
International.  The "standard of judgment"
is one and the same for the German Socialist
cutting a Frenchman's throat as for the
French Socialist cutting a German's throat.
If Ludwig Frank takes up his gun, not to
proclaim the "difference of principle" to the
French Socialists, but to shoot them in all
agreement of principle; and if Ludwig Frank
should himself fall by a French bullet--fired
possibly by a comrade--that is no detriment to
"standards" they have in common.  It is
merely a consequence of the "difference in their
geographical position."  Truly, it is bitter to
read such lines, but doubly bitter when they
come from Kautsky's pen.

The International was opposed to the war.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   "If, in spite of the efforts of the Social
   Democracy, we should have war," says
   Kautsky, "then every nation must save its
   skin as best it can.  This means for the Social
   Democracy of every country the same right
   and the same duty to participate in its
   country's defense, and none of them may make of
   this a cause for casting reproaches [!] at each
   other."  (*Neue Zeit*, 337, p. 7.)

.. vspace:: 2

Of such sort is this common standard to save
one's own skin, to break one another's skulls
in self-defense, and not to "reproach" one
another for doing so.

But will the question be answered by the
*agreement* in the standard of judgment?  Will
it not rather be answered by the *quality* of this
common standard of judgment?  Among
Bethmann-Hollweg, Sasonov, Grey and
Delcassé you also find agreement in their
standards.  Nor is there any difference of principle
between them either.  They least of all have
any right to cast reproaches at each other.
Their conduct simply springs from "a
difference in their geographical position."  Had
Bethmann-Hollweg been an English minister,
he would have acted exactly as did Sir Edward
Grey.  Their standards are as like each other
as their cannon, which differ in nothing but
their calibre.  But the question for us is, can
we adopt *their* standards for *our own*?

.. vspace:: 2

..

   "Fortunately, it is a misconception to
   assume that the German Social Democracy in
   case of war wanted to judge by national and
   not by international considerations, and felt
   itself to be first a German and then a
   proletariat party."

.. vspace:: 2

So said Kautsky in Essen.  And now when
the national point of view has taken hold of all
the workingmen's parties of the International
in place of the international point of view that
they held in common, Kautsky not only
reconciles himself to this "misconception," but even
tries to find in it agreement of standards and
a guarantee of the rebirth of the International.

.. vspace:: 2

..

   "In every national state the working class
   must also devote its entire energy to keeping
   intact the independence and the integrity of
   the national territory.  This is an essential of
   democracy, that basis necessary to the struggle
   and the final victory of the proletariat."
   (*Neue Zeit*, 337, p. 4.)

.. vspace:: 2

But if this is the case, how about the
Austrian Social Democracy?  Must it, too, devote
its entire energy to the preservation of the
non-national and anti-national Austro-Hungarian
Monarchy?  And the German Social Democracy?
By amalgamating itself politically with
the German army, it not only helps to preserve
the Austro-Hungarian national chaos, but also
facilitates the destruction of Germany's
national unity.  *National unity is endangered not
only by defeat but also by victory*.

From the standpoint of the European
proletariat it is equally harmful whether a slice
of French territory is gobbled up by Germany,
or whether France gobbles up a slice of
German territory.  Moreover the preservation of
the European *status quo* is not a thing at all for
our platform.  The political map of Europe
has been drawn by the point of the bayonet,
at every frontier passing over the living bodies
of the nations.  If the Social Democracy
assists its national (or anti-national) governments
with all its energy, it is again leaving it
to the power and intelligence of the bayonet to
correct the map of Europe.  And in tearing
the International to pieces, the Social
Democracy destroys the one power that is capable of
setting up a programme of national independence
and democracy in opposition to the
activity of the bayonet, and of carrying out this
programme in a greater or less degree, quite
independently of which of the national
bayonets is crowned with victory.

The experience of old is confirmed once
again.  If the Social Democracy sets national
duties above its class duties, it commits the
greatest crime not only against Socialism, but
also against the interest of the nation as rightly
and broadly understood.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE COLLAPSE OF THE INTERNATIONAL`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER VII


.. class:: center medium

   THE COLLAPSE OF THE INTERNATIONAL

.. vspace:: 2

At their Convention in Paris two weeks
before the outbreak of the catastrophe, the
French Socialists insisted on pledging all
branches of the International to revolutionary
action in case of a mobilization.  They were
thinking chiefly of the German Social
Democracy.  The radicalism of the French Socialists
in matters of foreign policy was rooted not so
much in international as national interests.
The events of the War have now definitely
confirmed what was clear to many then.  What
the French Socialist Party desired from the
sister party in Germany was a certain
guarantee for the inviolability of France.  They
believed that only by thus insuring themselves
with the German proletariat could they finally
free their own hands for a decisive conflict with
national militarism.

The German Social Democracy, for their
part, flatly refused to make any such pledge.
Bebel showed that if the Socialist parties signed
the French resolution, that would not
necessarily enable them to keep their pledge when
the decisive moment came.  Now there is little
room for doubt that Bebel was right.  As
events have repeatedly proved, a period of
mobilization almost completely cripples the
Socialist Party, or at least precludes the
possibility of decisive moves.  Once mobilization is
declared, the Social Democracy finds itself face
to face with the concentrated power of the
Government, which is supported by a powerful
military apparatus that is ready to crush all
obstacles in its path and has the unqualified
co-operation of all bourgeois parties and institutions.

And of no less importance is the fact that
mobilization wakes up and brings to their feet
those elements of the people whose social
significance is slight and who play little or no
political part in times of peace.  Hundreds of
thousands, nay millions of petty hand-workers,
of hobo-proletarians (the riff-raff of the
workers), of small farmers and agricultural
laborers are drawn into the ranks of the army and
put into a uniform, in which each one of these
men stands for just as much as the class-conscious
workingman.  They and their families
are forcibly torn from their dull unthinking
indifference and given an interest in the fate of
their country.  Mobilization and the declaration
of war awaken fresh expectations in these
circles whom our agitation practically does not
reach and whom, under ordinary circumstances,
it will never enlist.  Confused hopes of a
change in present conditions, of a change for
the better, fill the hearts of these masses
dragged out of the apathy of misery and
servitude.  The same thing happens as at the
beginning of a revolution, but with one all-important
difference.  A revolution links these newly
aroused elements with the revolutionary class,
but war links them--with the government and
the army!  In the one case all the unsatisfied
needs, all the accumulated suffering, all the
hopes and longings find their expression in
revolutionary enthusiasm; in the other case
these same social emotions temporarily take
the form of patriotic intoxication.  Wide
circles of the working class, even among those
touched with Socialism, are carried along in
the same current.  The advance guard of the
Social Democracy feels it is in the minority;
its organizations, in order to complete the
organization of the army, are wrecked.  Under
such conditions there can be no thought of a
revolutionary move on the part of the Party.
And all this is quite independent of whether
the people look upon a particular war with
favor or disfavor.  In spite of the colonial
character of the Russo-Japanese war and
its unpopularity in Russia, the first half
year of it nearly smothered the revolutionary
movement.  Consequently it is quite clear that,
with the best intentions in the world, the
Socialist parties cannot pledge themselves to
obstructionist action at the time of mobilization,
at a time, that is, when Socialism is more than
ever politically isolated.

And therefore there is nothing particularly
unexpected or discouraging in the fact that the
working-class parties did not oppose military
mobilization with their own revolutionary
mobilization.  Had the Socialists limited
themselves to expressing condemnation of the
present war, had they declined all responsibility
for it and refused the vote of confidence in
their governments as well as the vote for the
war credits, they would have done their duty at
the time.  They would have taken up a
position of waiting, the oppositional character of
which would have been perfectly clear to the
government as well as to the people.  Further
action would have been determined by the
march of events and by those changes which
the events of a war must produce on the
people's consciousness.  The ties binding the
International together would have been
preserved, the banner of Socialism would have
been unstained.  Although weakened for the
moment, the Social Democracy would have
preserved a free hand for a decisive interference
in affairs as soon as the change in the
feelings of the working masses came about.
And it is safe to assert that whatever influence
the Social Democracy might have lost by such
an attitude at the beginning of the war, would
have been won several times over once the
inevitable turn in public sentiment had come about.

But if this did not happen, if the signal for
war mobilization was also the signal for the fall
of the International, if the national labor
parties fell in line with their governments and the
armies without a single protest, then there must
be deep causes for it common to the entire
International.  It would be futile to seek these
causes in the mistakes of individuals, in the
narrowness of leaders and party committees.
They must be sought in the conditions of the
epoch in which the Socialist International first
came into being and developed.  Not that the
unreliability of the leaders or the bewildered
incompetence of the Executive Committees
should ever be justified.  By no means.  But
these are not fundamental factors.  These must
be sought in the historical conditions of an
entire epoch.  For it is not a question--and we
must be very straightforward with ourselves
about this--of any particular mistake, not of
any opportunist steps, not of any awkward
statements in the various parliaments, not of
the vote for the budget cast by the Social
Democrats of the Grand Duchy of Baden, not of
individual experiments of French ministerialism,
not of the making or unmaking of this or
that Socialist's career.  It is nothing less than
the complete failure of the International in the
most responsible historical epoch, for which all
the previous achievements of Socialism can be
considered merely as a preparation.

A review of historical events will reveal a
number of facts and symptoms that should
have aroused disquiet as to the depth and
solidity of Internationalism in the labor movement.

I am not referring to the Austrian Social
Democracy.  In vain did the Russian and
Servian Socialists look for clippings from articles
on world politics in the *Wiener Arbeiter
Zeitung* that they could use for Russian and
Servian workingmen without having to blush for
the International.  One of the most striking
tendencies of this journal always was the
defense of Austro-German imperialism not only
against the outside enemy but also against the
internal enemy--and the *Vorwärts* was one of
the internal enemies.  There is no irony in
saying that in the present crisis of the
International the *Wiener Arbeiter Zeitung* remained
truest to its past.

French Socialism reveals two extremes--an
ardent patriotism, on the one hand, not free
from enmity of Germany; on the other hand,
the most vivid anti-patriotism of the Hervé
type, which, as experience teaches, readily
turns into the very opposite.

As for England, Hyndman's Tory-tinged
patriotism, supplementing his sectarian
radicalism, has often caused the International
political difficulties.

It was in a far less degree that nationalistic
symptoms could be detected in the German
Social Democracy.  To be sure, the opportunism
of the South Germans grew up out of the soil
of particularism, which was German
nationalism in octavo form.  But the South Germans
were rightly considered the politically
unimportant rearguard of the Party.  Bebel's
promise to shoulder his gun in case of danger
did not meet with a single-hearted reception.
And when Noske repeated Bebel's expression,
he was sharply attacked in the Party press.
On the whole the German Social Democracy
adhered more strictly to the line of internationalism
than any other of the old Socialist
parties.  But for that very reason it made the
sharpest break with its past.  To judge by the
formal announcements of the Party and the
articles in the Socialist press, there is no
connection between the Yesterday and To-day of
German Socialism.

But it is clear that such a catastrophe could
not have occurred had not the conditions for it
been prepared in previous times.  The fact that
two young parties, the Russian and the
Servian, remained true to their international
duties is by no means a confirmation of the
Philistine philosophy, according to which
loyalty to principle is a natural expression of
immaturity.  Yet this fact leads us to seek the
causes of the collapse of the Second International
in the very conditions of its development
that least influenced its younger members.





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.. _`SOCIALIST OPPORTUNISM`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER VIII


.. class:: center medium

   SOCIALIST OPPORTUNISM

.. vspace:: 2

The Communist Manifesto, written in 1847,
closes with the words: "Workingmen of all
countries, unite!"  But this battle cry came too
early to become a living actuality at once.  The
historical order of the day just then was the
middle class revolution of 1848.  And in this
revolution the part that fell to the authors of
the Manifesto themselves was not that of leaders
of an international proletariat, but of fighters
on the extreme left of the national Democracy.

The Revolution of 1848 did not solve a
single one of the national problems; it merely
revealed them.  The counter-revolution, along
with the great industrial development that then
took place, broke off the thread of the
revolutionary movement.  Another century of peace
went by until recently the antagonisms that
had not been removed by the Revolution
demanded the intervention of the sword.  This
time it was not the sword of the Revolution,
fallen from the hands of the middle class, but
the militaristic sword of war drawn from a
dynastic scabbard.  The wars of 1859, 1864,
1866, and 1870 created a new Italy and a new
Germany.  The feudal caste fulfilled, in their
own way, the heritage of the Revolution of
1848.  The political bankruptcy of the middle
class, which expressed itself in this historic
interchange of rôles, became a direct stimulus to
an independent proletarian movement based
on the rapid development of capitalism.

In 1863 Lassalle founded the first political
labor union in Germany.  In 1864 the first
International was formed in London under the
guidance of Karl Marx.  The closing watch-word
of the Manifesto was taken up and used
in the first circular issued by the International
Association of Workingmen.  It is most
characteristic for the tendencies of the modern
Labor Movement that its first organization had
an international character.  Nevertheless this
organization was an anticipation of the future
needs of the movement rather than a real
steering instrument in the class-struggle.  There
was still a wide gulf between the ultimate goal
of the International, the communistic revolution,
and its immediate activities, which took
the form mainly of international co-operation
in the chaotic strike movements of the laborers
in various countries.  Even the founders of the
International hoped that the revolutionary
march of events would very soon overcome the
contradiction between ideology and practice.
While the General Council was giving money
to aid groups of strikers in England and on the
Continent, it was at the same time making
classic attempts to harmonize the conduct of
the workers in all countries in the field of world
politics.

But these endeavors did not as yet have a
sufficient material foundation.  The activity
of the First International coincided with that
period of wars which opened the way for
capitalistic development in Europe and North
America.  In spite of its doctrinal and
educational importance, the attempts of the
International to mingle in world politics must all the
more clearly have shown the advanced
workingmen of all countries their impotence as
against the national class state.  The Paris
Commune, flaring up out of the war, was the
culmination of the First International.  Just
as the Communist Manifesto was the theoretical
anticipation of the modern labor movement,
and the First International was the practical
anticipation of the labor associations of the
world, so the Paris Commune was the revolutionary
anticipation of the dictatorship of the
proletariat.

But only an anticipation, nothing more.
And for that very reason it was clear that it is
impossible for the proletariat to overthrow the
machinery of state and reconstruct society by
nothing but revolutionary improvisations.
National states that emerged from the
wars created the one real foundation for this
historical work, the national foundation.
Therefore, the proletariat must go through the
school of self-education.

The First International fulfilled its mission
of a nursery for the National Socialist
Parties.  After the Franco-Prussian War and the
Paris Commune, the International dragged
along a moribund existence for a few years
more and in 1872 was transplanted to America,
to which various religious, social and other
experiments had often wandered before, to die there.

Then began the period of prodigious capitalistic
development, on the foundation of the
national state.  For the Labor Movement this
was the period of the gradual gathering of
strength, of the development of organization,
and of political possibilism.

In England the stormy period of Chartism,
that revolutionary awakening of the English
proletariat, had completely exhausted itself ten
years before the birth of the First
International.  The repeal of the Corn Laws (1846)
and the subsequent industrial prosperity that
made England the workshop of the world; the
establishment of the ten-hour working day
(1847), the increase of emigration from
Ireland to America, and the enfranchisement of
the workers in the cities (1867), all these
circumstances, which considerably improved the
lot of the upper strata of the proletariat, led
the class movement in England into the
peaceful waters of trade unionism and its
supplemental liberal labor policies.

The period of possibilism, that is, of the
conscious, systematic adaptation to the economic,
legal, and state forms of national capitalism
began for the English proletariat, the oldest
of the brothers, even before the birth of the
International, and twenty years earlier than
for the continental proletariat.  If nevertheless
the big English unions joined the International
at first, it was only because it afforded
them protection against the importation of
strike breakers in wage disputes.

The French labor movement recovered but
slowly from the loss of blood in the Commune,
on the soil of a retarded industrial growth, and
in a nationalistic atmosphere of the most
noxious greed for "revenge."  Wavering between
an anarchistic "denial" of the state and a
vulgar-democratic capitulation to it, the French
proletarian movement developed by
adaptation to the social and political framework of
the bourgeois republic.

As Marx had already foreseen in 1870, the
center of gravity of the Socialist movement
shifted to Germany.

After the Franco-Prussian War, united
Germany entered upon an era similar to the
one England had passed through in the twenty
years previous: an era of capitalistic
prosperity, of democratic suffrage, of a higher standard
of living for the upper strata of the proletariat.

Theoretically the German labor movement
marched under the banner of Marxism.  Still
in its dependence on the conditions of the
period, Marxism became for the German
proletariat not the algebraic formula of the
revolution that it was at the beginning, but the
theoretic method for adaptation to a
national-capitalistic state crowned with the Prussian
helmet.  Capitalism, which had achieved a
temporary equilibrium, continually revolutionized
the economic foundation of national life.  To
preserve the power that had resulted from the
Franco-Prussian War, it was necessary to
increase the standing army.  The middle class
had ceded all its *political* positions to the
feudal monarchy, but had intrenched itself all
the more energetically in its *economic* positions
under the protection of the militaristic police
state.  The main currents of the last period,
covering forty-five years, are: victorious
capitalism, militarism erected on a capitalist
foundation, a political reaction resulting from the
intergrowth of feudal and capitalist classes--a
revolutionizing of the economic life, and a
complete abandonment of revolutionary methods
and traditions in political life.  The entire
activity of the German Social Democracy was
directed towards the awakening of the
backward workers, through a systematic fight for
their most immediate needs--the gathering of
strength, the increase of membership, the filling
of the treasury, the development of the press,
the conquest of all the positions that presented
themselves, their utilization and expansion.
This was the great historical work of the
awakening and educating of the "unhistorical" class.

The great centralized trade unions of
Germany developed in direct dependence upon the
development of national industry, adapting
themselves to its successes in the home and the
foreign markets, and controlling the prices of
raw materials and manufactured products.
Localized in political districts to adapt itself to
the election laws and stretching feelers in all
cities and rural communities, the Social
Democracy built up the unique structure of the
political organization of the German
proletariat with its many-branched bureaucratic
hierarchy, its one million dues-paying
members, its four million voters, ninety-one daily
papers and sixty-five Party printing presses.
This whole many-sided activity, of immeasurable
historical importance, was permeated
through and through with the spirit of possibilism.

In forty-five years history did not offer the
German proletariat a single opportunity to
remove an obstacle by a stormy attack, or to
capture any hostile position in a revolutionary
advance.  As a result of the mutual relation of
social forces, it was forced to avoid obstacles or
adapt itself to them.  In this, Marxism as a
theory was a valuable tool for political guidance,
but it could not change the opportunist character
of the class movement, which in essence was
at that time alike in England, France and
Germany.  For all the undisputed superiority of
the German organization, the tactics of the
unions were very much the same in Berlin and
London.  Their chief achievement was the system
of tariff treaties.  In the political field the
difference was much greater and deeper.
While the English proletariat were marching
under the banner of Liberalism, the German
workers formed an independent party with a
Socialist platform.  Yet this difference does not
go nearly as deep in politics as it does in
ideologic forms, and the forms of organization.

Through the pressure that English labor
exerted on the Liberal Party it achieved certain
limited political victories, the extension of
suffrage, freedom to unionize, and social
legislation.  The same was preserved or improved by
the German proletariat through its independent
party, which it was obliged to form because
of the speedy capitulation of German liberalism.
And yet this party, while in *principle*
fighting the fight for political power, was
compelled in actual practice to adapt itself to the
ruling power, to protect the labor movement
against the blows of this power, and to achieve
a few reforms.  In other words: on account of
the difference in historical traditions and
political conditions, the English proletariat adapted
itself to the capitalist state through the
medium of the Liberal Party; while the German
proletariat was forced to form a party of its
own to achieve the very same political ends.
And the political struggle of the German
proletariat in this entire period had the same
opportunist character limited by historical
conditions as did that of the English proletariat.

The similarity of these two phenomena so
different in their forms comes out most clearly
in the final results at the close of the period.
The English proletariat in the struggle to meet
its daily issues was forced to form an
independent party of its own, without, however,
breaking with its liberal traditions; and the
party of the German proletariat, when the
War forced upon it the necessity of a decisive
choice, gave an answer in the spirit of the
national-liberal traditions of the English labor
party.

Marxism, of course, was not merely something
accidental or insignificant in the German
labor movement.  Yet there would be no basis
for deducing the social-revolutionary character
of the Party from its official Marxist ideology.

Ideology is an important, but not a decisive
factor in politics.  Its rôle is that of waiting on
politics.  That deep-seated contradiction,
which was inherent in the awakening
revolutionary class on account of its relation to the
feudal-reactionary state, demanded an
irreconcilable ideology which would bring the whole
movement under the banner of social
revolutionary aims.  Since historical conditions
forced opportunist tactics, the irreconcilability
of the proletarian class found expression in the
revolutionary formulas of Marxism.  Theoretically,
Marxism reconciled with perfect success
the contradiction between reform and
revolution.  Yet the process of historical
development is something far more involved than
theorizing in the realm of pure thought.  The
fact that the class which was revolutionary in
its tendencies was forced for several decades
to adapt itself to the monarchical police state,
based on the tremendous capitalistic
development of the country, in the course of which
adaptation an organization of a million
members was built up and a labor bureaucracy
which led the entire movement was educated--this
fact does not cease to exist and does not
lose its weighty significance because Marxism
anticipated the revolutionary character of the
future movement.  Only the most naïve ideology
could give the same place to this forecast
that it does to the political actualities of the
German labor movement.

The German Revisionists were influenced in
their conduct by the contradiction between the
reform practice of the Party and its
revolutionary theories.  They did not understand that
this contradiction is conditioned by temporary,
even if long-lasting circumstances and that it
can only be overcome by further social
development.  To them it was a logical contradiction.
The mistake of the Revisionists was not that
they confirmed the reformistic character of the
Party's tactics in the past, but that they wanted
to perpetuate reformism theoretically and
make it the only method of the proletarian class
struggle.  Thus, the Revisionists failed to take
into account the objective tendencies of
capitalistic development, which by deepening class
distinctions must lead to the social revolution
as the one way to the emancipation of the
proletariat.  Marxism emerged from this theoretical
dispute as the victor all along the line.  But
revisionism, although defeated on the field of
theory, continued to live, drawing sustenance
from the actual conduct and the psychology of
the whole movement.  The critical refutation
of revisionism as a theory by no means signified
its defeat tactically and psychologically.  The
parliamentarians, the unionists, the comrades
continued to live and to work in the atmosphere
of general opportunism, of practical specializing
and of nationalistic narrowness.  Reformism
made its impress even upon the mind of
August Bebel, the greatest representative of
this period.

The spirit of opportunism must have taken
a particularly strong hold on the generation
that came into the party in the eighties, in the
time of Bismarck's anti-Socialist laws and of
oppressive reaction all over Europe.  Lacking
the apostolic zeal of the generation that was
connected with the First International, hindered
in its first steps by the power of victorious
imperialism, forced to adapt itself to the
traps and snares of the anti-Socialist laws, this
generation grew up in the spirit of moderation
and constitutional distrust of revolution.  They
are now men of fifty to sixty years old, and
they are the very ones who are now at the head
of the unions and the political organizations.
Reformism is their political psychology, if not
also their doctrine.  The gradual growing into
Socialism--that is the basis of Revisionism--proved
to be the most miserable Utopian dream
in face of the facts of capitalistic development.
But the gradual political growth of the Social
Democracy into the mechanism of the national
state has turned out to be a tragic actuality--for
the entire race.

The Russian Revolution was the first great
event to bring a fresh whiff into the stale
atmosphere of Europe in the thirty-five years
since the Paris Commune.  The rapid
development of the Russian working class and the
unexpected strength of their concentrated
revolutionary activity made a great impression on
the entire civilized world and gave an impetus
everywhere to the sharpening of political
differences.  In England the Russian Revolution
hastened the formation of an independent labor
party.  In Austria, thanks to special
circumstances, it led to universal manhood suffrage.
In France the echo of the Russian Revolution
took the form of Syndicalism, which gave
expression, in inadequate practical and theoretical
form, to the awakened revolutionary
tendencies of the French proletariat.  And in
Germany the influence of the Russian Revolution
showed itself in the strengthening of the young
Left wing of the Party, in the rapprochement
of the leading Center to it, and in the isolation
of Revisionism.  The question of the Prussian
franchise, this key to the political position of
Junkerdom, took on a keener edge.  And the
Party adopted in principle the revolutionary
method of the general strike.  But all this
external shaping up proved inadequate to shove
the Party on to the road of the political
offensive.  In accordance with the Party
tradition, the turn toward radicalism found
expression in discussions and the adoption of
resolutions.  That was as far as it ever went.





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.. _`THE DECLINE OF THE REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER IX


.. class:: center medium

   THE DECLINE OF THE REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT

.. vspace:: 2

Six or seven years ago a political ebb-tide
everywhere followed upon the revolutionary
flood-tide.  In Russia the counter-revolution
triumphed and began a period of decay for the
Russian proletariat both in politics and in the
strength of their own organizations.  In
Austria the thread of achievements started by the
working class broke off, social insurance
legislation rotted in the government offices,
nationalist conflicts began again with renewed vigor
in the arena of universal manhood suffrage,
weakening and dividing the Social Democracy.
In England, the Labor Party, after separating
from the Liberal Party, entered into the closest
association with it again.  In France the
Syndicalists passed over to reformist positions.
Gustav Hervé changed to the opposite of
himself in the shortest time.  And in the German
Social Democracy the Revisionists lifted their
heads, encouraged by history's having given
them such a revenge.  The South Germans
perpetrated their demonstrative vote for the
budget.  The Marxists were compelled to
change from offensive to defensive tactics.  The
efforts of the Left wing to draw the Party
into a more active policy were unsuccessful.
The dominating Center swung more and more
towards the Right, isolating the radicals.
Conservatism, recovering from the blows it
received in 1905, triumphed all along the line.

In default of revolutionary activity as well
as the possibility for reformist work, the Party
spent its entire energy on building up the
organization, on gaining new members for the
unions and for the Party, on starting new
papers and getting new subscribers.  Condemned
for decades to a policy of opportunist waiting,
the Party took up the cult of organization as
an end in itself.  Never was the spirit of inertia
produced by mere routine work so strong in the
German Social Democracy as in the years
immediately preceding the great catastrophe.
And there can be no doubt that the question of
the preservation of the organizations,
treasuries, People's Houses and printing presses
played a mighty important part in the position
taken by the fraction in the Reichstag towards
the War.  "Had we done anything else we
would have brought ruin upon our organization
and our presses" was the first argument I heard
from a leading German comrade.

And how characteristic it is of the opportunistic
psychology induced by mere organization
work, that out of ninety-one Social
Democratic papers not one found it possible to
protest against the violation of Belgium.  Not one!
After the repeal of the anti-Socialist laws, the
Party hesitated long before starting its own
printing presses, lest these might be confiscated
by the government in the event of great
happenings.  And now that it has its own presses,
the Party hierarchy fears every decisive step
so as not to afford opportunity for confiscation.

Most eloquent of all is the incident of the
*Verwärts* which begged for permission to
continue to exist--on the basis of a new
programme indefinitely suspending the class
conflict.  Every friend of the German Social
Democracy had a sense of profound pain when he
received his issue of the central organ with its
humiliating "By Order of Army
Headquarters."  Had the *Verwärts* remained under
interdiction, that would have been an important
political fact to which the Party later could
have referred with pride.  At any rate that
would have been far more honorable than to
continue to exist with the imprint of the
general's boots on its forehead.

But higher than all considerations of policy
and the dignity of the Party stood considerations
of membership, printing presses, organization.
And so the *Verwärts* now lives as two-paged
evidence of the unlimited brutality of
Junkerdom in Berlin and in Louvain, and of
the unlimited opportunism of the German
Social Democracy.

The Right wing stood more by its principles,
which resulted from political considerations.
Wolfgang Heine crassly formulated these
principles of German Reformism in an absurd
discussion as to whether the Social Democrats
should leave the hall of the Reichstag when the
members rose to cheer the Emperor's name, or
whether they should merely keep their seats.
"The creation of a republic in the German
Empire is now and for some time to come out of
the range of all possibility, so that it is not
really a matter for our present policy."  The
practical results still not yet achieved may be
reached, but only through co-operation with
the liberal bourgeoisie.  "For that reason, not
because I am a stickler for form, I have
called attention to the fact that parliamentary
co-operation will be rendered difficult by
demonstrations that needlessly *hurt the feelings*
of the majority of the House."

But if a simple infringement of monarchical
etiquette was enough to destroy the hope of
reformist co-operation with the liberal middle
class, then certainly the break with the
bourgeois "nation" in the moment of national
"danger" would have hindered, for years to come,
not only all desired reforms, but also all
reformist desires.  That attitude that was
dictated to the routinists of the Party center by
sheer anxiety over the preservation of the
organization was supplemented among the
Revisionists by political considerations.  Their
standpoint proved in every respect to be more
comprehensive and won the victory all over.
The entire Party press is now industriously
acclaiming what it once heaped scorn upon, that
the present patriotic attitude of the working
class will win for them, after the war, the good
will of the possessing classes for bringing about
reforms.

Therefore, the German Social Democracy
did not feel itself, under the stress of these
great events, a revolutionary power with
tasks far exceeding the question of widening
the state's boundaries, a power that does not
lose itself for an instant in the nationalistic
whirl, but calmly awaits the favorable moment
for joining with the other branches of the
International in a purposeful interference in the
course of events.  No, instead of that the
German Social Democracy felt itself to be a sort of
cumbersome train threatened by hostile
cavalry.  For that reason it subordinated the
entire future of the International to the quite
extraneous question of the defense of the
frontiers of the class state--because it felt itself
first and foremost to be a conservative state
within the state.

"Look at Belgium!" cries the *Verwärts* to
encourage the workmen-soldiers.  The
People's Houses there have been changed into
army hospitals, the newspapers suppressed, all
Party life crushed out. [#]_  And therefore hold
out until the end, "until the decisive victory is
ours."  In other words, keep on destroying, let
the work of your own hands be a terrifying
lesson to you.  "Look at Belgium," and out of
this terror draw courage for renewed destruction.

.. [#] A sentimental correspondent of the *Vorwärts* writes that he
   was looking for Belgian comrades in the *Maison du Peuple* and
   found a German army hospital there.  And what did the
   *Vorwärts* correspondent want of his Belgian comrades?  "*To win
   them to the cause of the German people*--just when Brussels
   itself had been won 'for the cause of the German people!'"

What has just been said refers not to the
German Social Democracy alone, but also to
all the older branches of the International that
have lived through the history of the last half
century.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`WORKING CLASS IMPERIALISM`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER X


.. class:: center medium

   WORKING CLASS IMPERIALISM

.. vspace:: 2

There is one factor in the collapse of the
Second International that is still unclarified.
It dwells at the heart of all the events that the
Party has passed through.

The dependence of the proletarian class
movement, particularly in its economic
conflicts, upon the scope and the successes of the
imperialistic policy of the state is a question
which, as far as I know, has never been
discussed in the Socialist press.  Nor can I
attempt to solve it in the short space of this work.
So what I shall say on this point will
necessarily be in the nature of a brief review.

The proletariat is deeply interested in the
development of the forces of production.  The
national state created in Europe by the
revolutions and wars of the years 1789 to 1870 was
the basic type of the economic evolution of the
past period.  The proletariat contributed by
its entire conscious policy to the development
of the forces of production on a national
foundation.  It supported the bourgeoisie in its
conflicts with alien enemies for national
liberation; also in its conflicts with the monarchy,
with feudalism and the church for political
democracy.  And in the measure in which the
bourgeois turned to "law and order," that is,
became reactionary, the proletariat assumed
the historical task it left uncompleted.  In
championing a policy of peace, culture and
democracy, as against the bourgeoisie, it
contributed to the enlargement of the national
market, and so gave an impetus to the development
of the forces of production.

The proletariat had an equal economic
interest in the democratizing and the cultural
progress of all other countries in their relation of
buyer or seller to its own country.  In this
resided the most important guarantee for the
international solidarity of the proletariat both
in so far as final aims and daily policies are
concerned.  The struggle against the remnants of
feudal barbarism, against the boundless
demands of militarism, against agrarian duties
and indirect taxes was the main object of
working-class politics and served, directly and
indirectly, to help develop the forces of production.
That is the very reason why the great majority
of organized labor joined political forces with
the Social Democracy.  Every hindrance to
the development of the forces of production
touches the trade unions most closely.

As capitalism passed from a national to an
international-imperialistic ground, national
production, and with it the economic struggle
of the proletariat, came into direct dependence
on those conditions of the world-market which
are secured by dreadnaughts and cannon.  In
other words, in contradiction of the fundamental
interests of the proletariat taken in their
wide historic extent, the immediate trade
interests of various strata of the proletariat proved
to have a direct dependence upon the successes
or the failures of the foreign policies of the
governments.

England long before the other countries
placed her capitalistic development on the basis
of predatory imperialism, and she interested
the upper strata of the proletariat in her world
dominion.  In championing its own class
interests, the English proletariat limited itself to
exercising pressure on the bourgeois parties
which granted it a share in the capitalistic
exploitation of other countries.  It did not begin
an independent policy until England began to
lose her position in the world market, pushed
aside, among others, by her main rival, Germany.

But with Germany's growth to industrial
world-importance, grew the dependence of
broad strata of the German proletariat on
German imperialism, not materially alone but also
ideally.  The *Vorwärts* wrote on August 11th
that the German workingmen, "counted among
the politically intelligent, to whom we have
preached the dangers of imperialism for years
(although *with very little success*, we must
confess)" scold at Italian neutrality like the
extremest chauvinists.  But that did not prevent
the *Vorwärts* from feeding the German
workingmen on "national" and "democratic"
arguments in justification of the bloody work of
imperialism.  (Some writers' backbones are as
flexible as their pens.)

However, all this does not alter facts.  When
the decisive moment came, there seemed to be
no irreconcilable enmity to imperialistic policies
in the consciousness of the German workingmen.
On the contrary, they seemed to listen
readily to imperialist whisperings veiled in
national and democratic phraseology.  This is not
the first time that Socialistic imperialism
reveals itself in the German Social Democracy.
Suffice it to recall the fact that at the
International Congress in Stuttgart it was the
majority of the German delegates, notably the trade
unionists, who voted against the Marxist
resolution on the colonial policy.  The occurrence
made a sensation at the time, but its true
significance comes out more clearly in the light of
present events.  Just now the trade union press
is linking the cause of the German working
class to the work of the Hohenzollern army
with more consciousness and matter-of-factness
than do the political organs.

As long as capitalism remained on a national
basis, the proletariat could not refrain from
co-operation in democratizing the political
relations and in developing the forces of
production through its parliamentary, communal and
other activities.  The attempts of the anarchists
to set up a formal revolutionary agitation in
opposition to the political fights of the Social
Democracy condemned them to isolation and
gradual extinction.  But when the capitalist
states overstep their national form to become
imperialistic world powers, the proletariat
cannot oppose this new imperialism.  And the
reason is the so-called minimal programme which
fashioned its policy upon the framework of the
national state.  When its main concern is for
tariff treaties and social legislation, the
proletariat is incapable of expending the same
energy in fighting imperialism that it did in
fighting feudalism.  By applying its old methods
of the class struggle--the constant adaptation
to the movements of the markets--to the
changed conditions produced by imperialism, it
itself falls into material and ideological
dependence on imperialism.

The only way the proletariat can pit its
revolutionary force against imperialism is under the
banner of Socialism.  The working class is
powerless against imperialism as long as its
great organizations stand by their old
opportunist tactics.  The working class will be
all-powerful against imperialism when it takes to
the battlefield of Social Revolution.

The methods of national parliamentary
opposition not only fail to produce objective
results, but the laboring masses lose all interest in
them because they find that their earnings and
their very existence are not affected by what
is done in parliament.  Behind the backs of
the parliamentarians imperialism wins its
successes in the world market.

The methods of national-parliamentary
opposition not only fail to produce practical
results, but also cease to make an appeal to the
laboring masses, because the workers find that,
behind the backs of the parliamentarians,
imperialism, by armed force, reduces the wages
and the very lives of the workers to ever greater
dependence on its successes in the world market.

It was clear to every thinking Socialist that
the only way the proletariat could be made to
pass from opportunism to Revolution was not
by agitation, but by a historical upheaval.  But
no one foresaw that history would preface this
inevitable change of tactics by such a catastrophal
collapse of the International.  History
works with titanic relentlessness.  What is the
Rheims Cathedral to History?  And what a
few hundred or thousand political reputations?
And what the life or death of hundreds of
thousands or of millions?

The proletariat has remained too long in the
preparatory school, much longer than its great
pioneer fighters thought it would.  History
took her broom in hand, swept the International
of the epigone apart in all directions
and led the slow-moving millions into the field
where their last illusions are being washed away
in blood.  A terrible experiment!  On its
result perhaps hangs the fate of European civilization.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE REVOLUTIONARY EPOCH`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XI


.. class:: center medium

   THE REVOLUTIONARY EPOCH

.. vspace:: 2

At the close of the last century a heated
controversy arose in Germany over the question,
What effect does the industrialization of
a country produce upon its military power?
The reactionary agrarian politicians and
writers, like Sehring, Karl Ballod, Georg
Hansen and others, argued that the rapid increase
of the city populations at the expense of the
rural districts positively undermined the
foundation of the Empire's military power, and
they of course drew from it their patriotic
inferences in the spirit of agrarian protectionism.
On the other hand Lujo Brentano and his
school championed an exactly opposite point of
view.  They pointed out that economic
industrialism not only opened up new financial and
technical resources, but also developed in the
proletariat the vital force capable of making
effective use of all the new means of defense and
attack.  He quotes authoritative opinions to
show that even in the earlier experiences of
1870-71 "the regiments from the preponderantly
industrial district of Westphalia were
among the very best."  And he explains this
fact quite correctly by the far greater ability
of the industrial worker to find his bearings in
new conditions and to adjust himself to them.
Now which side is right?  The present War
proves that Germany, which has made the
greatest progress along capitalistic lines, was
able to develop the highest military power.
And likewise in regard to all the countries
drawn into it the War proves what colossal and
yet competent energy the working class
develops in its warlike activities.  It is not the
passive horde-like heroism of the peasant
masses, welded together by fatalistic
submissiveness and religious superstition.  It is the
individualized spirit of sacrifice, born of inner
impulse, ranging itself under the banner of the
Idea.

But the Idea under whose banner the armed
proletariat now stands, is the Idea of
war-crafty nationalism, the deadly enemy of the
true interests of the workers.  The ruling class
showed themselves strong enough to force their
Idea upon the proletariat, and the proletariat,
in the consciousness of what they were doing,
put their intelligence, their enthusiasm and
their courage at the service of their class-foes.
In this fact is sealed the terrible defeat of
Socialism.  But it also opens up all possibilities
for a final victory of Socialism.  There can be
no doubt that a class which is capable of
displaying such steadfastness and self-sacrifice in
a war it considers a "just" one, will be still
more capable of developing these qualities when
the march of events will give it tasks really
worthy of the historical mission of this class.

The epoch of the awakening, the enlightenment
and the organization of the working-class
revealed that it has tremendous resources of
revolutionary energy which found no
adequate employment in the daily struggle.  The
Social Democracy summoned the upper strata
of the proletariat into the field, but it also
checked their revolutionary energy by
adopting the tactics it was obliged to adopt, the
tactics of *waiting*, the strategy of letting your
opponent exhaust himself.  The character of this
period was so dull and reactionary that it did
not allow the Social Democracy the opportunity
to give the proletariat tasks that would
have engaged their whole spirit of sacrifice.

Imperialism is now giving them such tasks.
And imperialism attained its object by pushing
the proletariat into a position of "national
defense," which, to the workers, meant the defense
of all their hands had created, not only the
immense wealth of the nation, but also their own
class-organizations, their treasuries, their press,
in short, everything they had unwearyingly,
painfully struggled for and attained in the
course of several decades.  Imperialism
violently threw society off its balance, destroyed
the sluice-gates built by the Social Democracy
to regulate the current of proletarian revolutionary
energy, and guided this current into its
*own* bed.

But this terrific historical experiment, which
at one blow broke the back of the Socialist
International, carries a deadly danger for
bourgeois society itself.  The hammer is wrenched
out of the worker's hand and a gun put into
his hand instead.  And the worker, who has
been tied down by the machinery of the capitalist
system, is suddenly torn from his usual
setting and taught to place the aims of society
above happiness at home and even life itself.

With the weapon in his hand that he himself
has forged, the worker is put in a position
where the political destiny of the state is
directly dependent upon him.  Those who
exploited and scorned him in normal times,
flatter him now and toady to him.  At the same
time he comes into intimate contact with the
cannon, which Lassalle calls one of the most
important ingredients of all constitutions.  He
crosses the border, takes part in forceful
requisitions, and helps in the passing of cities
from one party to another.  Changes are taking
place such as the present generation has never
before seen.

Even though the vanguard of the working-class
knew in theory that Might is the mother
of Right, still their political thinking was
completely permeated by the spirit of opportunism,
of adaptation to bourgeois legalism.  Now
they are learning from the teachings of facts
to despise this legalism and tear it down.  Now
dynamic forces are replacing the static
forces in their psychology.  The great guns are
hammering into their heads the idea that if it
is impossible to get around an obstacle, it is
possible to destroy it.  Almost the entire adult
male population is going through this school
of war, so terrible in its realism, a school which
is forming a new human type.  Iron necessity
is now shaking its fist at all the rules of
bourgeois society, at its laws, its morality, its
religion.  "Necessity knows no law," said the
German Chancellor on August 4th.  Monarchs
walk about in public places calling each other
liars in the language of market-women;
governments repudiate their solemnly acknowledged
obligations, and the national church ties
its God to the national cannon like a criminal
condemned to hard labor.  Is it not clear that
all these circumstances must bring about a
profound change in the mental attitude of the
working-class, curing them radically of the
hypnosis of legality in which a period of
political stagnation expresses itself?

The possessing classes, to their consternation,
will soon have to recognize this change.  A
working-class that has been through the school
of war will feel the need of using the language
of force as soon as the first serious obstacle
faces them within their own country.  "Necessity
knows no law" the workers will cry when
the attempt is made to hold them back at the
command of bourgeois law.  And poverty, the
terrible poverty that prevails during this war
and will continue after its close, will be of a
sort to force the masses to violate many a
bourgeois law.  The general economic exhaustion
in Europe will affect the proletariat most
immediately and most severely.  The state's
material resources will be depleted by the war,
and the possibility of satisfying the demands
of the working-masses will be very limited.
This must lead to profound political conflicts,
which, ever-widening and deepening, may take
on the character of a social revolution, the
course and outcome of which no one, of course,
can now foresee.

On the other hand, the War with its armies
of millions, and its hellish weapons of
destruction can exhaust not only society's resources
but also the moral forces of the proletariat.  If
it does not meet inner resistance, this War may
last for several years more, with changing
fortunes on both sides, until the chief belligerents
are completely exhausted.  But then the whole
fighting energy of the international proletariat,
brought to the surface by the bloody
conspiracy of imperialism, will be completely
consumed in the horrible work of mutual
annihilation.  The outcome would be that our entire
civilization would be set back by many decades.
A peace resulting not from the will of the
awakened peoples but from the mutual exhaustion
of the belligerents, would be like the peace
with which the Balkan War was concluded; it
would be a Bucharest Peace extended to the
whole of Europe.

Such a peace would seek to patch up anew
the contradictions, antagonisms and deficiencies
that have led to the present War.  And with
many other things, the Socialist work of two
generations would vanish in a sea of blood
without leaving a trace behind.

Which of the two prospects is the more
probable?  This cannot possibly be theoretically
determined in advance.  The issue depends
entirely upon the activity of the vital forces of
society--above all upon the revolutionary
Social Democracy.

"*Immediate cessation of the War*" is the
watchword under which the Social Democracy
can reassemble its scattered ranks, both within
the national parties, and in the whole
International.  The proletariat cannot make its will
to peace dependent upon the strategic
considerations of the general staffs.  On the contrary,
it must oppose its desire for peace to these
military considerations.  What the warring
governments call a struggle for national
self-preservation is in reality a mutual national
annihilation.  Real national self-defense now
consists in the struggle for peace.

Such a struggle for peace means for us not
only a fight to save humanity's material and
cultural possessions from further insane
destruction.  It is for us primarily a fight to
preserve the revolutionary energy of the proletariat.

To assemble the ranks of the proletariat in
a fight for peace means again to place the
forces of revolutionary Socialism against
raging, tearing imperialism on the whole front.

The conditions upon which peace should be
concluded--the peace of the peoples themselves,
and not the reconciliation of the
diplomats--must be the same for the whole
International.

.. class:: left white-space-pre-line

   NO CONTRIBUTIONS.
   THE RIGHT OF EVERY NATION
   TO SELF-DETERMINATION.
   THE UNITED STATES OF
   EUROPE--WITHOUT MONARCHIES,
   WITHOUT STANDING ARMIES,
   WITHOUT RULING FEUDAL
   CASTES, WITHOUT SECRET DIPLOMACY.

The peace agitation, which must be
conducted simultaneously with all the means now
at the disposal of the Social Democracy as
well as those which, with a good will, it could
acquire, will not only tear the workers out of
their nationalistic hypnosis; it will also do the
saving work of inner purification in the
present official parties of the proletariat.  The
national Revisionists and the Socialist patriots in
the Second International, who have been
exploiting the influence that Socialism has
acquired over the working masses for national
militaristic aims, must be thrust back into the
camp of the enemies of the working class by
uncompromising revolutionary agitation for peace.

The revolutionary Social Democracy need
not fear that it will be isolated, now less than
ever.  The War is making the most terrible
agitation against itself.  Every day that the
War lasts will bring new masses of people to
our banner, if it is an honest banner of peace
and democracy.  The surest way by which the
Social Democracy can isolate the militaristic
reaction in Europe and force it to take the
offensive is by the slogan of Peace.

----

We revolutionary Marxists have no cause
for despair.  The epoch into which we are now
entering will be *our* epoch.  Marxism is not
defeated.  On the contrary: the roar of the
cannon in every quarter of Europe heralds the
theoretical victory of Marxism.  What is left
now of the hopes for a "peaceful" development,
for a mitigation of capitalist class contrasts,
for a regular systematic growth into Socialism?

The Reformists on principle, who hoped to
solve the social question by the way of tariff
treaties, consumers' leagues, and the parliamentary
co-operation of the Social Democracy with
the bourgeois parties, are now all resting their
hopes on the victory of the "national" arms.
They are expecting the possessing classes to
show greater willingness to meet the needs of
the proletariat because it has proved its patriotism.

This expectation would be positively foolish
if there were not hidden behind it another, far
less "idealistic" hope--that a military victory
would create for the bourgeoisie a broader
imperialistic field for enriching itself at the
expense of the bourgeoisie of other countries, and
would enable it to share some of the booty with
its own proletariat at the expense of the
proletariat of other countries.  *Socialist reformism
has actually turned into Socialist imperialism*.

We have witnessed with our own eyes the
pathetic bankruptcy of the hopes of a peaceful
growth of proletarian well-being.  The Reformists,
contrary to their own doctrine, were forced
to resort to violence in order to find their way
out of the political *cul-de-sac*--and not the
violence of the peoples against the ruling classes,
but the military violence of the ruling classes
against other nations.  Since 1848 the
German bourgeoisie has renounced revolutionary
methods for solving its problems.  They left it
to the feudal class to solve their own bourgeois
questions by the method of war.  Social
development confronted the proletariat with the
problem of revolution.  Evading revolution,
the Reformists were forced to go through the
same process of historical decline as the liberal
bourgeoisie.  The Reformists also left it to
their ruling classes, that is the same feudal
caste, to solve the proletarian problem by the
method of war.  But this ends the analogy.

The creation of national states did really
solve the bourgeois problem for a long period,
and the long series of colonial wars coming
after 1871 finished off the period by broadening
the arena of the development of the
capitalistic forces.  The period of colonial wars
carried on by the national states led to the present
War of the national states--for colonies.  After
all the backward portions of the earth had been
divided among the capitalist states, there was
nothing left for these states except to grab the
colonies from each other.

"People ought not to talk," says George
Irmer, "as though it were self-evident that the
German Empire has come too late for rivalry
for world economy and world markets, that the
world has already been divided.  Has not the
earth been divided over and over again in all
epochs of history?"

But a re-division of colonies among the
capitalist countries does not enlarge the foundation
of capitalist development.  One country's gain
means another country's loss.  Accordingly a
temporary mitigation of class-conflicts in
Germany could only be achieved by an extreme
intensification of the class-struggle in France and
in England, and *vice versa*.  An additional
factor of decisive importance is the capitalist
awakening in the colonies themselves, to which
the present War must give a mighty impetus.
Whatever the outcome of this War, the
imperialistic basis for European capitalism will not
be broadened, but narrowed.  The War,
therefore, does not solve the labor question on an
imperialistic basis, but, on the contrary, it
intensifies it, putting this alternative to the
capitalist world: *Permanent War or Revolution*.

If the War got beyond the control of the
Second International, its immediate
consequences will get beyond the control of the
bourgeoisie of the entire world.  We revolutionary
Socialists did not want the War.  *But we do
not fear it*.  We do not give in to despair over
the fact that the War broke up the International.
History had already disposed of the
International.

The revolutionary epoch will create new
forms of organization out of the inexhaustible
resources of proletarian Socialism, new forms
that will be equal to the greatness of the new
tasks.  To this work we will apply ourselves
at once, amid the mad roaring of the
machine-guns, the crashing of cathedrals, and the
patriotic howling of the capitalist jackals.  We
will keep our clear minds amid this hellish death
music, our undimmed vision.  We feel
ourselves to be the only creative force of the
future.  Already there are many of us, more than
it may seem.  To-morrow there will be more of
us than to-day.  And the day after to-morrow,
millions will rise up under our banner, millions
who even now, sixty-seven years after the
Communist Manifesto, have nothing to lose but
their chains.

.. vspace:: 4

.. footnotes::
   :class: smaller

.. vspace:: 6

.. pgfooter::