As The 100th Anniversary Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues... Some Remembrances-The First Small Anti-War Cries Are Raised To Stop The Madness -
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
The events leading up to World War I (known as the Great War before the world got clogged up with expansive wars in need of other numbers and names and reflecting too in that period before World War II a certain sense of “pride” in having participated in such an adventure even if it did mow down the flower of European youth from all classes) from the massive military armament of almost all the capitalist and imperialist parties in Europe and elsewhere in order to stake their claims to their unimpeded share of the world’s resources had all the earmarks of a bloodbath early on once the industrial-sized carnage set in with the stalemated fronts. Also clogged in the trenches, or rather thrown in the nearest bin were the supposedly eternal pledges not honored by most of the Social-Democrats and other militant leftist formations representing the historic interest of the international working-class to stop those imperialist capitalist powers and their hangers-on in their tracks at the approach of war were decisive for 20th century history. Other than isolated groups and individuals mostly in the weaker lesser capitalistically developed countries of Europe the blood lust got the better of most of the working class and its allies as young men rushed to the recruiting stations to “do their duty” and prove their manhood.
Decisive as well as we head down the slope to the first months of the second year of the war although shrouded in obscurity early in the war in exile was the soon to be towering figure of one Vladimir Lenin (a necessary nom de guerre in hell broth days of the Czar’s Okhrana ready to send one and all to the Siberian frosts and that moniker business, that nom de guerre not a bad idea in today’s NSA-driven frenzy to know all, to peep at all), leader of the small Russian Bolshevik Party ( a Social-Democratic Party in name anyway adhering to the Second International under the sway of the powerful German party although not for long), architect of the theory of the “vanguard party” building off of many revolutionary experiences in Russia and Europe in the 19th century), and author of an important, important to the future communist world perspective, study on the monopolizing tendencies of world imperialism, the ending of the age of “progressive” capitalism (in the Marxist sense of the term progressive in a historical materialist sense that capitalism was progressive against feudalism and other older economic models which turned into its opposite at this dividing point in history), and the hard fact that it was a drag on the possibilities of human progress and needed to be replaced by the establishment of the socialist order. But that is the wave of the future as 1914 turns to 1915 in the sinkhole trenches of Europe that are already a death trap for the flower of the European youth.
Lenin also has a "peace" plan, a peace plan of sorts, a way out of the stinking trench warfare stalemate eating up the youth of the Eurasian landmass. Do what should have been done from the beginning, do what all the proclamations from all the beautifully-worded socialist manifestos called on the international working-class to do. Not a simple task by any means especially in that first year when almost everybody on all sides thought a little blood-letting would be good for the soul, the individual national soul, and in any case the damn thing would be over by Christmas and everybody could start producing those beautifully worded-manifestos against war again. (That by Christmas peace “scare” turned out to be a minute “truce” from below by English and German soldiers hungry for the old certainties banning the barbed wire and stinking trenches for a short reprieve in the trench fronts in France and played soccer before returning to drawn guns-a story made into song and which is today used as an example of what the lower ranks could do-if they would only turn the guns around. Damn those English and German soldiers never did turn the damn things around until too late and with not enough resolve and the whole world has suffered from that lack of resolve.)
Lenin’s hard-headed proposition: turn the bloody world war among nations into a class war to drive out the war-mongers and bring some peace to the blood-soaked lands. But that advanced thinking is merely the wave of the future as the rat and rain-infested sinkhole trenches of Europe were already in the first year a death trap for the flower of the European youth.
The ability to inflict industrial-sized slaughter and mayhem on a massive scale first portended toward the end of the American Civil War once the Northern industrial might tipped the scales their way as did the various German-induced wars attempting to create one nation-state out of various satraps almost could not be avoided in the early 20th century once the armaments race got serious, and the technology seemed to grow exponentially with each new turn in the war machine. The land war, the war carried out by the “grunts,” by the “cannon fodder” of many nations was only the tip of the iceberg and probably except for the increased cannon-power and range and the increased rapidity of the machine-guns would be carried out by the norms of the last wars. However the race for naval supremacy, or the race to take a big kink out of British supremacy, went on unimpeded as Germany tried to break-out into the Atlantic world and even Japan, Jesus, Japan tried to gain a big hold in the Asia seas.
The deeply disturbing submarine warfare wreaking havoc on commerce on the seas, the use of armed aircraft and other such technological innovations of war only added to the frenzy. We can hundred years ahead, look back and see where talk of “stabs in the back” by the losers and ultimately an armistice rather than decisive victory on the blood-drenched fields of Europe would lead to more blood-letting but it was not clear, or nobody was talking about it much, or, better, doing much about calling a halt before they began the damn thing among all those “civilized” nations who went into the abyss in July of 1914. Sadly the list of those who would not do anything, anything concrete, besides paper manifestos issued at international conferences, included the great bulk of the official European labor movement which in theory was committed to stopping the madness.
A few voices, voices like Karl Liebknecht (who against the party majority bloc voting scheme finally voted against the Kaiser’s war budget, went to the streets to get rousing anti-war speeches listened to in the workers’ districts, lost his parliamentary immunity and wound up honorably in the Kaiser’s prisons) and Rosa Luxemburg ( the rose of the revolution also honorably prison bound) in Germany, Lenin and Trotsky in Russia (both exiled at the outbreak of war and just in time as being on “the planet without a passport” was then as now, dangerous to the lives of left-wing revolutionaries), some anti-war anarchists like Monette in France and here in America the Big Bill Haywood (who eventually would controversially flee to Russia to avoid jail for his opposition to American entry into war), many of his IWW (Industrial Workers Of the World) comrades and the stalwart Eugene V. Debs (who also went to jail, “club fed” for speaking the truth about American war aims in a famous Cleveland speech and, fittingly, ran for president in 1920 out of his Atlanta Penitentiary jail cell), were raised and one hundred years later those voices have a place of honor in this space.
Those voices, many of them in exile, or in the deportations centers, were being clamped down as well when the various imperialist governments began closing their doors to political refugees when they were committed to clapping down on their own anti-war citizens. As we have seen in our own times, most recently in America in the period before the “shock and awe” of the decimation of Iraq in 2002 and early 2003 the government, most governments, are able to build a war frenzy out of whole cloth. Even my old anti-war amigo from my hometown who after I got out of the American Army during the Vietnam War marched with me in countless rallies and parades trying to stop the madness (and plenty of other “wise” heads from our generation of ’68 made that sea-change turn with him).
At those times, and in my lifetime the period after 9/11 when we tried in vain to stop the Afghan war in its tracks is illustrative, to be a vocal anti-warrior is a dicey business. A time to keep your head down a little, to speak softly and wait for the fever to subside and to be ready to begin the anti-war fight another day. Be ready to fight the operative words.
So imagine in the hot summer of 1914 when every nationality in Europe felt its prerogatives threatened how the fevered masses, including the beguiled working-classes bred on peace talk without substance, would not listen to the calls against the slaughter. Yes, one hundred years later is not too long or too late to honor those ardent anti-war voices as the mass mobilizations began in the countdown to war, began four years of bloody trenches and death.
Over the next period as we continue the long night of the 100th anniversary of World War I and beyond I will under this headline post various documents, manifestos and cultural expressions from that time in order to give a sense of what the lead up to that war looked like, the struggle against its outbreak before the first frenzied shots were fired, the forlorn struggle during and the massive struggles after it in places like Russia, Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the hodge-podge colonies all over the world map, in order to create a newer world out of the shambles of the battlefields.
V. I. Lenin
The Defeat of Russia and the Revolutionary Crisis
Written: Written in the second half of September, 1915
Published: First published in Pravda No. 260, November 7, 1928. Published according to the manuscript.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, [197[4]], Moscow, Volume 21, pages 378-382.
Translated:
Transcription\Markup: D. Walters and R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive 2003 (2005). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
Other Formats: Text • README
Published: First published in Pravda No. 260, November 7, 1928. Published according to the manuscript.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, [197[4]], Moscow, Volume 21, pages 378-382.
Translated:
Transcription\Markup: D. Walters and R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive 2003 (2005). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
Other Formats: Text • README
The dissolution of the Fourth Duma in retaliation for the formation of an Opposition bloc consisting of liberals, Octobrists and nationalists, is one of the most vivid manifestations of the revolutionary crisis in Russia. The defeat of the armies of the tsarist monarchy; the growth of the strike movement and the revolutionary movement of the proletariat; the discontent of the masses and the formation of the liberal-Octobrist bloc for the purpose of reaching an understanding with the tsar on a programme of reforms and mobilising industry for the victory over Germanysuch is the sequence and texture of events at the end of the first year of war.
There is obviously a revolutionary crisis in Russia, but its significance and the attendant tasks of the proletariat are not correctly understood by all. History seems to be repeating itself: again there is a war, as in 1905, a war tsarism has dragged the country into with definite, patently annexationist, predatory and reactionary aims. Again there is military defeat, and a revolutionary crisis accelerated by it. Again the liberal bourgeoisie—in this case even in conjunction with large sections of the conservative bourgeoisie and the landowners are advocating a programme of reform and of an understanding with the tsar. The situation is almost like that in the summer of 1905, prior to the Bulygin Duma, or in the summer of 1900, after the dissolution of the First Duma.
There is, however, actually a vast difference, viz., that this war has involved all Europe, all the most advanced countries with mass and powerful socialist movements. The imperialist war has linked up the Russian revolutionary crisis, which stems from a bourgeois-democratic revolution, with the growing crisis of the proletarian socialist revolution in the West. This link is so direct that no individual solution of revolutionary [problems] is possible in any single country—the Russian bourgeois-democratic revolution is now not only a prologue to, but an indivisible and integral part of, the socialist revolution in the West.
In 1905, it was the proletariat’s task to consummate the bourgeois revolution in Russia so as to kindle the proletarian revolution in the West. In 1915, the second part of this task has acquired an urgency that puts it on a level with the first part. A new political division has arisen in Russia on the basis of new, higher, more developed and more complex international relations. This new division is between the chauvinist revolutionaries, who desire revolution so as to defeat Germany, and the proletarian internationalist revolutionaries, who desire a revolution in Russia for the sake of the proletarian revolution in the West, and simultaneously with that revolution. This new division is, in essence, one between the urban and the rural petty bourgeoisie in Russia, and the socialist proletariat. The new division must be clearly understood, for the impending revolution makes it the prime duty of a Marxist, i.e., of any class-conscious socialist, to realise the position of the various classes, and to interpret general differences over tactics and principles as differences in the positions of the various classes.
There is nothing more puerile, contemptible and harmful, than the idea current among revolutionary philistines, namely, that differences should he “forgotten” “in view” of the immediate common aim in the approaching revolution. People whom the experience of the 1905-14 decade has not taught the folly of this idea are hopeless from the revolutionary standpoint. Those who confine themselves, at this stage, to revolutionary exclamations, without analysing which classes have proved their ability to adopt, and have indeed adopted, a definite revolutionary programme, do not really differ from “revolutionaries” like Khrustalyov, Aladyin and Alexinsky.
We have before us the clear-cut stand of the monarchy and the feudal-minded landowners—“no surrender” of Russia to the liberal bourgeoisie; better an understanding with the German monarchy. Equally clear is the liberal bourgeoisie’s stand—exploit the defeat and the mounting revolution in order to wrest concessions from a frightened monarchy and compel it to share power with the bourgeoisie. Just as clear, too, is the stand of the revolutionary proletariat, which is striving to consummate the revolution by exploiting the vacillation and embarrassment of the government and the bourgeoisie. The petty bourgeoisie, however, i. e,, the vast mass of the barely, awakening population of Russia, is groping blindly in the wake of the bourgeoisie, a captive to nationalist prejudices, on the one hand, prodded into the revolution by the unparalleled horror and misery of war, the high cost of living, impoverishment, ruin and starvation, but on the other hand, glancing backward at every step towards the idea of defence of the fatherland, towards the idea of Russia’s state integrity, or towards the idea of small-peasant prosperity, to be achieved through a victory over tsarism and over Germany, but without a victory over capitalism.
This vacillation of the petty bourgeois, of the small peasant, is no accident, but the inevitable outcome of his economic position. It is foolish to shut one’s eyes to this bitter but profound truth; it must be understood and traced back in the existing political currents and groupings, so as not to deceive ourselves and the people, and not to weaken and paralyse the revolutionary party of the Social-Democratic proletariat. The proletariat will debilitate itself if it permits its party to vacillate as the petty bourgeoisie does. The proletariat will accomplish its task only if it is able to march unfalteringly towards its great goal, pushing the petty bourgeoisie forward, letting the latter learn from its mistakes when it wavers to the right, and utilising all the petty bourgeoisie’s forces to the utmost when life compels it to move to the left.
The Trudoviks, the S.R.s, and the Organising Committee’s liquidationist supporters—these are the political trends in Russia which have taken shape during the past decade, have proved their links with the various groups, elements and strata in the petty bourgeoisie, and shown vacillation from extreme revolutionism in word, to an alliance with the chauvinist Popular Socialists, or with Nasha Zarya , in deed. On September 3, 1915, for instance, the five secretaries of the Organising Committee abroad issued a manifesto on the tasks of the proletariat, which said not a word about opportunism and social-chauvinism, but called for a “revolt” in the rear of the German army (this after a whole year of struggle against the slogan of civil war!) and proclaimed a slogan praised so highly in 1905 by the Cadets, viz., a “constituent assembly for the liquidation of the war” and for the abolition of the autocratic [June 3[1]] regime”! People who have failed to understand the need for a cleavage between the party of the proletariat and these petty-bourgeois trends so that the revolution may he successful, have assumed the name of Social-Democrats in vain.
No, in the face of the revolutionary crisis in Russia, which is being accelerated by defeat—and this is what the motley opponents of “defeatism” are afraid to admit it will be the proletariat’s duty to carry on the struggle against opportunism and chauvinism, or otherwise it will be impossible to develop the revolutionary consciousness of the masses, and to assist their movement by means of straightforward revolutionary slogans. Not a constituent assembly, but the overthrow of the monarchy, a republic, the confiscation of landed estates, and an eight-hour day will, as hitherto, he the slogans of the Social-Democratic proletariat, the slogans of our Party. In direct connection with this, and to make it possible really to single out the socialist tasks and contrast them with the tasks of bourgeois chauvinism (including the Plekhanov and the Kautsky brands) in all its propaganda and agitation, and in all working-class action, our Party will preserve the slogan of “transform the imperialist war into a civil war”, i.e., the slogan of the socialist revolution in the West.
The lessons of the war are compelling even our opponents to recognise in practice both the stand of “defeatism” and the necessity of issuing—at first as a spirited phrase in a manifesto, but later more seriously and thoughtfully—the slogan of “a revolt in the rear” of the German militarists, in other words, the slogan of a civil war. The lessons of the war, it appears, are knocking into their heads that which we have been insisting on since the very outset of the war. The defeat of Russia has proved the lesser evil, for it has tremendously enhanced the revolutionary crisis and has aroused millions, tens and hundreds of millions. Moreover, in conditions of an imperialist war, a revolutionary crisis in Russia could not but lead people’s thoughts to the only salvation for the people-the idea of “a revolt in the rear” of the German army, i.e., the idea of a civil war in all the belligerent countries.
Life teaches. Life is advancing, through the defeat of Russia, towards a revolution in Russia and, through that revolution and in connection with it, towards a civil war in Europe. Life has taken this direction. And, drawing fresh strength from these lessons of life, which have justified its position, the party of the revolutionary proletariat of Russia will, with ever greater energy, follow the path it has chosen.
Notes
On June 3 (10), 1907, the tsar issued a manifesto dissolving the Second Duma and modifying the electoral law. The new law considerably increased the Duma representation of the landowners and of the trade and industrial bourgeoisie, and greatly reduced the number of peasants’ and workers’ representatives, which was small enough as it was. This was a gross violation of the Manifesto of October 17, 1905, and the Fundamental Law of 1908 by which no laws could be passed by the government without approval by the Duma. The Third Duma, which was elected on the basis of this law and convened on November 1 (14), 1907, was a Black-Hundred Octobrist Duma.
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