As The 100th Anniversary Of The First
Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues... Some
Remembrances-The First Small Anti-War Cries-
From
The Pen Of Frank Jackman
The
events leading up to World War I 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 to 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 parties in their tracks at the
approach of war were decisive for 20th century history. Also
decisive 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 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
although not for long), architect of the theory of the “vanguard party” building
off of many revolutionary experience in Russia and Europe in the 19th
century), and author of an important, important to the future communist world
perspective, study on the tendencies of world imperialism, the ending of the
age of progressive capitalism, 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 the sinkhole
trenches of Europe are already 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 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 rapidity of the machine-guns would be carried out by
the norms of the last war. 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 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), some anti-war anarchists like Monette in
France and here in America Big Bill Haywood (who eventually would
controversially flee to Russia to avoid jail for his opposition to American
entry into war) and the stalwart Eugene V. Debs (who also went to jail, “club
fed” and ran for president in 1920 out of his 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 as 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. 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. So imagine in 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 the start 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 forlorn struggle during and the massive
struggles after it in order to create a newer world out of the shambles of the
battlefields.
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