As The 100th Anniversary Of World War I Continues... Some Remembrances-The 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 Question of the Unity of Internationalists
Published: Sotsial-Demokrat No. 41, May 1, 1915. Published according to the text in Sotsial-Demokrat.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, [197[4]], Moscow, Volume 21, pages 188-191.
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
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, [197[4]], Moscow, Volume 21, pages 188-191.
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 war has led to a grave crisis in the whole of international socialism. Like any other crisis, the present crisis of socialism has revealed ever more clearly the inner contradictions lying deep within it; it has torn off many a false and conventional mask, and has shown up in the sharpest light what is outmoded and rotten in socialism, and what its further growth and advance towards victory will depend on.
Practically all Social-Democrats in Russia realise that. the old divisions and groupings are, if not obsolescent, then at least undergoing a transformation. In the forefront is the division on the main issue raised by the war, viz., the division into “internationalists” and “social-patriots”. We have taken these terms from the editorial in Nashe Slovo No. 42, and for the time being shall not deal with the question of whether they should be supplemented by contrasting revolutionary Social-Democrats with national liberal-labour politicians.It is not a matter of names, to be sure; the gist of the main present-day division has been correctly indicated in Nashe Slovo . The internationalists, it says, are “united in their negative attitude towards social-patriotism as represented by Plekhanov”. The editors call upon the “now disunited groups” “to come to an understanding and unite for at least a single act-expressing the attitude of Russian Social-Democrats towards the present. war and Russian social-patriotism”.
Besides this appeal through the press, the editors of Nashe Slovo have sent a letter to us and the Organising Committee, proposing that, with their participation, a conference be called to discuss the matter. In our reply we spoke of the necessity “to clarify certain preliminary questions, so as to know whether we are at one in the main issue”. We stressed two such preliminary questions: (1) no declaration would help unmask the “social-patriots” (the editors naming Plekhanov, Alexinsky, and the well-known group of Petrograd liquidationist writers who support the XYZ journal[1] who “falsify the will of the advanced proletariat of Russia” (the expression used by the editors of Nashe Slovo); to unmask the social-patriots, a protracted struggle is necessary; (2) what grounds were there to count the Organising Committee among the “internationalists”?
On the other hand, the Organising Committee’s secretariat abroad sent us a copy of its reply to Nashe Slovo, which, in short, asserted that a “preliminary” selection of certain groups and the “exclusion of others” were out of the question; and that “invitations to the conference should be sent to the representatives abroad of all party centres and groups that attended ... the Brussels Conference of the International Socialist Bureau before the war” (letter of March 25, 1915).
Thus, the Organising Committee has declined on principle to confer with the internationalists alone, since it wishes also to confer with the social-patriots (the Plekhanov and the Alexinsky trends are known to have been represented at Brussels). The same spirit marked the resolution of the Social-Democrats gathered in Nervi (Nashe Slovo No. 53), which was adopted following Yonov’s report (and obviously expressed the views of this representative of the most radical and internationalist elements in the Bund).
This resolution, which is highly characteristic and valuable in helping us specify the “middle road” being sought by many socialists living abroad, expresses sympathy with Nashe Slovo’s “principles”, but at the same time expresses disagreement with Nashe S/ova’s stand, “which consists in creating organisational divisions, uniting internationalist socialists alone, and defending the necessity of splits within socialist proletarian parties that have historically come into being”. In the opinion of the gathering, Nashe Slovo’s “one-sided handling” (of these questions) is “highly detrimental to clarification of problems connected with the restoration of the International”.
We have already pointed out that the views of Axeirod, the Organising Committee’s official representative, are social-chauvinist. Neither in the press nor in its correspondence has Nashe Slovo made any reply to this. We have pointed out that the Burid’s stand is the same, with a bias towards Germanophile chauvinism. The Nervi resolution has born this out in a manner which, if indirect, is highly significant: it has declared that unification of internationalists alone is harmful and schismatic. The question has been presented with a clarity that is most praiseworthy.
Still clearer is the Organising Committee’s reply, which expresses, not an oblique attitude towards the issue, but one that is straightforward and formal. We must confer, it says, not without the social-patriots, but with them.
We should be thankful to the Organising Committee for its letter to Nashe Slovo, confirming the correctness of our opinion of that body.
Does that mean that Nashe Slovo’s entire idea of uniting the internationalists has been wrecked? No, it does not. While there exist ideological solidarity and a sincere desire to combat social-patriotism, no failure of any conferences can check unity among internationalists. At the disposal of the editors of Nashe Slovo is the great instrument of a daily paper. They can do something immeasurably more businesslike and serious than calling conferences and issuing declarations; they can invite all groups, and themselves start: (1) to immediately evolve full, precise, unequivocal and perfectly clear definitions of the content of internationalism (it being a fact that Vandervelde, Kautsky, Plekhanov, Lensch, and Haenisch also call themselves internationalists!), of opportunism, the collapse of the Second International, the tasks and the methods of combating socialpatriotism, etc.; (2) to rally forces for a severe struggle for certain principles, not only abroad, but mainly in Russia.
Indeed, can anyone deny that there is no other way towards the victory of internationalism over social-patriotism, and that there can be none? Half a century of Russian political emigration (and thirty years of Social-Democratic emigration)-have these not shown that all declarations, conferences, etc., abroad are powerless, insignificant, and empty, unless they are supported by a lasting movement of some social stratum in Russia? Does not the present war also teach us that everything that is immature or decaying, everything that is conventional or diplomatic, will collapse at the first blow?
During the eight months of war, all Social-Democratic centres, groups, currents, and shades of opinion have held conferences with all and sundry, and have come out with “declarations”, i.e., made their opinions known to the public. Today the task is different, and closer to action: more distrust of resonant declarations and spectacular conferences; more energy in evolving precise replies and advice to writers, propagandists, agitators, and all thinking workers, written in a way that cannot but be understood; more clarity and purposefulness in mustering the forces for a long-term effort to give effect to such advice.
Much has been given to the editors of Nashe Slovo—after all, they are a daily paper!—and they will have much to answer for if they fail to carry out even this “minimum programme”.
A final remark: in May 1910, exactly five years ago, we made mention, in our press abroad, of a highly outstanding political fact, of “far greater significance” than the conferences and declarations of many very “powerful” Social-Democratic centres, i. e., the fact of the formation in Russia of a group of legalist writers working in the selfsame XYZ journal. What has been shown by the facts during these five years, so eventful in the history of the labour movement in Russia and the whole world? Have not the facts shown that in Russia we have a certain social nucleus to rally the elements of a national liberal-labour party (after the “European” pattern)? What are the conclusions forced on all Social-Democrats by the circumstance that, with the exception of Voprosy Strakhovaniya,[2] we see, in Russia, the open expression only of this current, Nashe Dyelo, Strahhovaniye Rabochikh, Severny Gobs,[3] Maslov and Plekhanov?
So we repeat: more distrust of resonant declarations, and more courage in facing grave political realities.
Notes
[2] Voprosy Strakhovaniya (Problems of Insurance)—a Bolshevik legal journal, published at intervals in St. Petersburg from October 1913 to March 1918. It worked, not only for the achievement of workers’ insurance, but also for the Bolshevik “uncurtailed slogans” of an eight-hour day, confiscation of the landed estates, and a democratic republic. The Bolsheviks A. N. Vinokurov, N. A. Skripnik, P. I. Stuka, N. M. Shvernik and others contributed to the journal.
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