From The Labor History Archives -In The 80^th Anniversary Year Of The Great San Francisco, Minneapolis And Toledo General Strikes- Lessons In The History Of Class Struggle 

San Francisco's maritime strike, which began May 9, 1934, tumbled out of control when the Industrial Association, made up of employers and business interests who wished to break the strike, and the power of San Francisco unions, began to move goods from the piers to warehouses.
The first running battles between unionists and police began Tuesday, July 3, 1934. There was a lull during the July 4 holiday when no freight was moved, but disturbances picked up again Thursday, July 5, 1934 – known as "Bloody Thursday." This is the San Francisco News' coverage of the first day of the rioting – July 3, 1934.
The area where the rioting took place is now the heart of San Francisco's Multimedia Gulch.

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POLICE BATTLE STEVEDORE MOB, ARREST MANY Trucks Overturned and Cargoes Dumped Into Streets:
Industrial Association Moves Loads Off Piers at Rate of 10 an Hour.

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To the accompaniment of widespread rioting, fist fights and popping of tear gas guns and bombs, the Industrial Association of San Francisco carried out its promise today to begin moving freight from the waterfront piers, blockaded since May 9 by the marine strike. About a score of persons were injured severely enough to require hospital treatment.

Two men were shot and slightly wounded, a half dozen motor trucks were turned over and many persons suffered burning eyes from the gas.

But through it all, trucks moved at the rate of about 10 per hour from the McCormick Steamship Co.'s pier to a warehouse two blocks away.

That was because an area of several blocks, in which are the pier and the warehouse at 128 King st. where goods are being delivered, was kept free of strikers.

But on the outskirts of this area bellowing crowds of strikers and sympathizers were hurtling rocks at policemen, fighting through clouds of tear gas and damaging and overturning trucks.

Clubs Used Freely

Police used their clubs freely and mounted officers rode into milling crowds. The strikers fought back, using fists, boards and bricks as weapons. Rioting was widespread but was centered in the area surrounding the Southern Pacific Depot at Third and Townsend sts.

Several shots were fired in a battle near the railroad station. One bullet struck Eugene Dunbar, union seaman, in the left ankle. He was dragged out of the melee, tended by members of the crowd until an ambulance arrived and removed him to Harbor Emergency Hospital.

A stray bullet crashed through a window of the Bank of America branch at Third and Townsend, felling Berton Holmes, 24, a teller. He was cut over the left eye.

The Industrial Association announced no cars would be moved tomorrow, "because of the holiday."

Bricks Hit Police

One of the bloodiest bits of fighting occurred near the King st. warehouse. Suddenly the strike pickets broke through the police lines and surged around a pile of bricks. Soon the air was filled with missiles. Inspector Jerry Desmond went down, a cut over one eye. Asst. Inspector Cornelius was struck in the head. Officer John LaDue was struck in the leg with a brick.

Police Chief [William J.] Quinn led his men in person. He had a narrow escape when a brick crashed through the side window of his car, missing him by inches.

Another rock crashed through the windshield of a car driven by Sergt. Thomas McInerney as he was hurling tear gas bombs. Showered with glass, he escaped injury.

Another riot broke out at Second and Townsend sts. Police charged the crowd, but it did not move. The officers resorted to tear gas. Members of the mob, coughing and choking, picked up the smoking grenades and hurled them back into the police lines.

Windows of nearby buildings were crowded with onlookers. The gas began filtering through the windows and those watching the riot fell back, tears streaming from their eyes.

Police have a consignment of the new nauseating gas used so effectively in eastern riots, and Capt. Arthur DeGuire, head of Harbor Station, threatened to put it to use unless the rioters quieted down.

Another crowd tried to break through police lines along Second st. They streamed through South Park toward Third st. Police met them and drove them back slowly.

Trucks anywhere within blocks of the guarded area suffered, strikers mistaking them for machines moving cargo from the docks.

Cargo Dumped

Several strikers jumped on a truck at Third and Harrison sts., cowed the driver, and a companion, and started slitting its cargo of rice bags and dumping them into the streets.

At Third and Minna sts., they stopped the truck, beat the driver, Rex Hoffman, 21, Sacramento, and his companion, Bill Brooks. Both men escaped.

Later, at Harbor Emergency Hospital, where they were treated for cuts and bruises, Hoffman told police he was employed by the J.S. Smith Trucking Co., Sacramento, and was delivering a cargo of rice to the Phillips Milling Co., 38 Drumm st., and had no connection with the strike.

H.E. Foster, president of the Phillips Company, sent a protest to Mayor Ross, charged the truck was on a peaceful mission to Sacramento. Strikers had contended the truck came from the vicinity of the King st. warehouse.

R.T. Custi, 4049 Third st., was driver of another truck, and was employed by the Phillips Mill Co., Drumm st. Strikers slugged him, split open the rice bags, spilling their contents.

Another truck was stopped at Second and Townsend sts, and precipitated the rioting there. Strikers tried to tip it over, but were driven back.

Strikers attacked another truck on Third st. near Townsend and swarmed all over it. Ropes around a trailer were cut and the windows of the cab were smashed before tear bombs began dropping among the rioters.

Trucks Overturned

Still another truck was halted and overturned at First and Harrison sts.

Later, police were rushed to Fourth and Townsend, where two more trucks had been attacked and overturned.

These two trucks, one empty, the other loaded with empty boxes, were heading away from the Embarcadero toward the Hockwald Chemical Co. Part of the crowd chased the drivers, who escaped.

Gasoline and oil were oozing from the motors of the overturned machines. The crowd surged forward, men shouting, "Set the damn trucks on fire." Police drove them back. Time passed and the crowd began gathering again. When 1000 men were present, the mob rushed the trucks, began trying to tear them up. Police charged, driving them back again.

Fires Over Heads

The mob was blocking streetcars and mounted police tried to clear a path so that passengers could be escorted to cars on the other side of the crowd. Bricks began to fly through the air. Finally a policeman drew his gun and opened fire over the heads of the crowd.

Police fired shots again in the same vicinity when strikers began to hurl rocks at them over a passing freight train.

Several false alarms were turned in and the screaming of sirens from fire trucks added to the pandemonium. The Industrial Association blamed strikers for it.

Three men were arrested for turning in the alarms.

While this was going on, matters were proceeding peacefully enough in front of Pier 38, for strikers could not get within several blocks of the pier.

It was at 1:24 p.m., more than an hour behind schedule, that the first movement of cargo began.

The big steel doors of the pier rumbled up and two trucks emerged. One was a closed affair, loaded with auto tires. The second, which had an open body, was half filled with sacks of cocoa beans.

Twenty feet from the pier a line of police radio cars had been driven end to end across the Embarcadero, forming a complete blockade.

Two men were on each truck, a driver and a helper. They looked scared.

Behind the trucks were six policemen mounted on motorcycles. They swing in around the two machines as they turned south on the Embarcadero, heading for the warehouse.

Jeered by Thousand

A block away, in front of Pier 32, 1000 strikers swayed against police lines, shouted jeers and cures.

Fifteen minutes after they had left the two trucks returned peacefully to the pier. Their progress had been unimpeded while riots were going on on the outskirts of the closed area.

As the two empty trucks swung into the pier, three more loaded ones set out for the warehouse. Only a police radio car escorted them.

The trucks continued to shuttle back and forth–carrying bird seed in addition to tires and coca beans.

A serious accident was narrowly averted when a fire engine came roaring down the Embarcadero. Police saw it coming and hurried to the line of cars blockading the right of way, getting two of them out of the path just as the fire engine shot through, its brakes screaming.

The biggest crowds of picketers were held in check at Second and Townsend sts., and in front of Piers 30 and 32. More than 1000 men had gathered at the former spot and fully 2000 at the piers.

Smaller Groups Halted

Smaller groups were halted at First and Brannan and at the [Mission] Channel.

Clearing of the area began two hours before the scheduled hour of opening. One striker tried to object while police were moving the crowd back. Five officers grabbed him and hustled him into a waiting police car.

At noon, the hour scheduled for the first truck to move, the atmosphere grew electric. Motorcycle policemen kicked up the stands on their machines, threw one leg over the saddle. Foot patrolmen outside the dock and in the cleared area gripped clubs and riot guns more firmly.

But the hour passed and the tension relaxed somewhat.

More Pickets Sought

Meanwhile, the joint marine strike committee had sent out a plea to all unemployed members of every labor union to come down and join the picket lines, no matter whether they were on strike or not. The committee claimed several thousand answered the call.

At dawn groups of strikers had begun to gather on the Embarcadero across from the pier. The numbers grew as the day progressed.

Brick Piles Guarded

On King between Second and Third sts. were two piles of bricks left by a construction company. Uniformed officers stood guard over each pile, although, when the trouble started they were unable to keep the mob from them.

A score of police were stationed north of the pier. As large groups of strikers began arriving from I.L.A. headquarters they were turned back or broken up into smaller groups.

Despite a plea from Police Chief Quinn that they stay away from the waterfront, crowds of curious also assembled on nearby vantage points.

Developments Listed

Highlighted against the ominous background of today's activities were the following developments late yesterday and overnight:

Stating that the job of keeping order on the waterfront was "up to the police," P.W. Meherin, president of the State Board of Harbor Commissioners, declared he would make no request for special policemen to guard the docks.

"If police find they can't take care of the situation, they can inform me and I'll take it up with the governor," he said.

In Sacramento, Gov. Merriam said he had no intention of calling the National Guard at present, and would act only if requested by city officials or if state property is endangered.

Gov. Merriam said he may cancel engagements to review an Oakland parade and speak in San Francisco tomorrow if the strike trouble becomes too serious.

"It may be necessary for me to stay here, in the office, where I can be reached quickly," he said.

Mayor Rossi called a conference yesterday to discuss the situation. Informed that the national Longshoremen's board expected important advice from Washington this morning, he requested the postponement.

The advices have not arrived, the President's board said.

The mayor continued active today in efforts to avoid trouble. He conferred for some time with Edward Vandeleur, president of the San Francisco Labor Council, and admitted he was attempting to reach the strikers through organized labor. He also said he had been in touch with both sides in the dispute, but had not yet conferred with members of the President's board.

Later, the mayor issued a statement, appealing for both parties to acquiesce to the latest arbitration appeal of the President's board, urging there be no violence and calling upon citizens to stay away from the waterfront.

Decision of the State Harbor Commissioners not to employ additional dock guards came after a conference with police officials.

"We're not in the police business," said Mr. Meherin. "If we hired a large group of special policemen, some one would have to train them, organize them, command them. Our regular wharfingers and collectors are special policemen and their duty is to protect the docks. I'm not going to request special policemen to reinforce their numbers. If police can't handle the situation, and the docks are actually endangered, the next move would be up to the governor.

Michael J. Casey, president of the Teamsters' Union, who said yesterday that the teamsters "would not break strike for anybody," was asked if they would handle goods moved from the docks after they had been delivered to the warehouses.

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," he answered.

Lee J. Holman, who organized a right-wing union of striking longshoremen, called upon the membership to "get back to work as fast as possible, or it will be too late."

"There are a lot of husky young fellows working right now, and they are learning the business fast," he said. "One hundred more members of our union went back to work last night and today. That makes 200 in all now at work and they are making an average of $15 a day."

Following San Francisco's lead, the city of Emeryville took steps to break the strangle hold the strike has there. The City Council empowered Police Chief E.J. Carey to hire additional police and buy equipment. His first move was the installation of four giant floodlights to illuminate the industrial district.

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San Francisco News

As The 100th Anniversary Of The Beginning of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Starts ... Some Remembrances-Russian Revolutionary Leon Trotsky On The Anti-War Movement From War And The International   

 

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 by 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 20^th century history. 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 20^th 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 and Rosa Luxemburg in Germany, Lenin and Trotsky in Russia, some anti-war anarchists like Monette in France and here in America Big Bill Haywood and the stalwart Eugene V. Debs, 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 would not listen to the calls against the slaughter. Yes, one hundred years later is not too long to honor those ardent anti-war voices as the mass mobilizations began in the countdown to war.                   

Over the next period as we lead up to the 100^th 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 in order to create a newer world out of the shambles of the battlefields.     

CHAPTER VI

WHAT HAVE SOCIALISTS TO DO WITH CAPITALIST WARS?

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 labour 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 was not 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 defence 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 defence. These standards are numerous and contradictory. Yet in the present case they testify unanimously that Germany’s military acts cannot possibly he construed as the acts of a war of defence. 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 favourable 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 Serbia. 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 the Belgian neutrality.
If all this is defence, 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 their 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:

“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 agon-nail, and mobilization moved with the precision of clockwork.” (Autobiography, Vol.III, pp.167-168).

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 [33], Kautsky answered him:

“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 pon 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 overnment 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, tomorrow 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 asking 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 workingmen 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 would want to judge by national and not by international considerations, and felt itself to be first a German and then a proletarian party.

With splendid clearness, Kautsky in this speech reveals the terrible dangers – now a still more terrible actuality – that are latent in the endeavour to make the position of the Social Democracy dependent upon an indefinite and contradictory formal estimate of whether a war is one of defence or one of aggression. Bebel in his reply said ilothing of importance; and his point of view seemed quite inexplicable, especially after his own experience of the year 1870.

Nevertheless, in spite of its theoretical inadequacy, Bebel’s position had a quite definite political significance. 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 his as a threat to Wilhelm 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 policy 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. [34] And when the storms 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 weight the instant the first shots were fired at the front iers. That terrible thing took place which Kautsky had prophesied.
What at first glance appeared 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 father land must be defrnded. 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 theposition of the one power that can protect and save its people. Thelarge 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 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 vaned 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 Vorwaerts, in view of the position taken by the Social Democracy, he has a perfect right to say so. But he had still another right. If conditions had not induced him to postpone polemics to a more favourable moment, he might have said at the Reichstag session of August 4th, addressing the representatives of the Socialist proletariat:

“Today 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 hel less in the face of this Russian menace that has broughi 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 today in favour of the war credit of five billions 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 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 hemselves the danger of war, we want Germany to be safi against foreign invasion and servitude. What we are trying for is a military organisation 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 defence. We want a militia. We cannot trust you with the work of national defence. 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 vei 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 Wilhelm 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 defence. But when we refuse the rulers our confidence we by no means rob the bourgeois state of its weapons or its means of defence and even of attack as long as we are not strong enough to wrest its powers 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 on 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 Socia Democracy lays the cornerstone of true national independence in th 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 Wilhelm 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 the state just when he began to talk in terms of blood and iron.

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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 defence"‘as an argument, by no means as an actual possibility. ow that this picture has bec6me a bloody actuality, Kautsky endeavours to reconcile us to it. He beholds no collapse of the international.

“The difference between the German and the French Socialists is not to be found in their standards of judgement, 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 dfference 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.)

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When Guesde and Sembat appear as aides to Poincaré, Delcasse 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 judgement” 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 pi-inciple; 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.

“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 defence, and none of them may make of this a cause for casting reproaches (!) at each other.” (Neue Zeit, p.7.)

Of such sort is this common standard to save one’s own skin, to break one another’s skulls in self-defence, and not to “reproach” one another for doing so.
But will the question be answered by the agreement in the standard of judgement? Will it not rather be answered by the quality of this common standard of judgement? Among Bethmann-Hollweg, Sazonov, Grey and Delcasse 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?

“Fortunately, it is a misconception to assume that the German Social Democracy in case of war would want to judge by national and not by international considerations, and felt itself to be first a German and then a proletarian party.”

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.

“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.)

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. More over 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 pdwer 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 program of national independence and democracy in opposition to the activitiy of the bayonet, and of carrying out this program in a greater or lesser 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.

As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-Poet’s Corner-German Poets   

 

August Stramm

Like many of his fellow German military poets, Stramm was killed in action.  Though Stramm worked for the German Post Office Ministry, he was an accomplished writer prior to the war. As a reservist with the German Army Stramm rose to the rank of Captain and in 1914 was called to active service. He was sent to the Eastern Front in 1915. A recipient of the German Iron Cross, Stramm was a Battalion Commander. He was shot through the head in a hand-to-hand fight. A collection of his poems, Dripping Blood, was published posthumously in 1919.

“War Grave”
Staffs fliehen* cross arms
Writing zag* pale unknown
Flowers impudent
Dust shyly.
Flare
Water
Glas*
Forgotten.

Attack

Cloths
Signs
Flutter
Rattle.
Hoist applaud.
Your laughter blows.
Seize a seizing
Bellow ferrules
Kiss
Clasped
Sink
Nothing. 

---

- See more at: http://voiceseducation.org/node/247#sthash.Ob3bN8bO.dpuf

Free  Chelsea Manning Now! 

Chelsea Manning Files Suit Against DoD for Gender Surgery

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Chelsea Manning’s lawyers on Tuesday officially filed a lawsuit against the Department of Defense in an effort to get gender-reassignment surgery for Manning during her incarceration in Fort Leavenworth prison.

The suit, which names Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel as a defendant along with two commanding officers at the prison and the Defense Department, claims that Manning has been, “denied access to medically necessary treatment for her gender dysphoria." It seeks to “compel defendants to treat her serious medical need consistent with their obligation under the Constitution."

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Last month, in an exclusive statement to NBC News, the former Army private once known as Bradley Manning said life in the Kansas military lockup has limited her ability to express her gender identity, writing: "For example, in my daily life, I am reminded of this when I look at the name on my badge, the first initial sewed into my clothing, the hair and grooming standards that I adhere to, and the titles and courtesies used by the staff. Ultimately, I just want to be able to live my life as the person that I am, and to be able to feel comfortable in my own skin."

Manning is serving a 35-year sentence at Fort Leavenworth for sending classified documents to the WikiLeaks website.

         

Attorney vows to fight for Manning’s hormone therapy

TODAY

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IN-DEPTH

• Chelsea Manning to Begin Gender Treatment While in Prison
• Pentagon OKs Chelsea Manning Transfer for Gender Treatment
• Chelsea Manning Says Military Still Denying Gender Treatment

— Hasani Gittens

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• Chelsea Manning Files Suit Against DoD for Gender Surgery

First published September 23rd 2014, 5:19 pm

• Chelsea Manning Files Suit Against DoD for Gender Surgery

• Chelsea Manning Files Suit Against DoD for Gender Surgery

From The Labor History Archives -In The 80^th Anniversary Year Of The Great San Francisco, Minneapolis And Toledo General Strikes- Lessons In The History Of Class Struggle 

San Francisco General Strike

Questions to Consider

What were the main events surrounding the General Strike?
Who was involved, and what kind of work did they do?
Why was this strike important?

About the Images

The images in this group capture moments from a pivotal episode in the rise of organized labor in the United States: San Francisco’s 1934 General Strike marked the first time a major US port city was completely shut down by a strike. Photographs show picketers, as well as some of the violence that occurred when strikers clashed with police.

Overview

Many people who were employed during the Great Depression grew increasingly dissatisfied with working conditions, and took action by forming labor unions. Although the General Strike of San Francisco took place from July 16 to 19, 1934, it had been brewing for months. In March, Harry Bridges (shown in two photographs) led his International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA, which represented the dockworkers), in a vote to strike for control of hiring halls, better pay, and better hours. The ILA strike officially began on May 9, 1934. A photograph from May 8 shows longshoremen waiting for the strike deadline, and an image from May 10 shows Bridges leading picketers down San Francisco’s Embarcadero. Other images show strikers in line for food, and a young man trying to decide whether or not to picket.
On July 5, when employers tried to open the docks and unload ships, strikers clashed with 1,000 armed police officers. Photographs show police confronting the strikers with what appears to be gunsmoke on one side, and police with tear gas guns. When it was over, 64 were injured and two men were killed on what became known as "Bloody Thursday." The deaths of the men and the huge, public funeral for them (shown in two photographs), helped Bridges rally the support of other unions in the city to join the strike. This General Strike effectively shut down the city of San Francisco for four days. The strike was a success: many of the ILA’s demands were met. A photograph taken in front of the Emporium department store shows a newspaper vendor selling the issue announcing the end of the strike.
The following year, 1935, the Wagner Act created the National Labor Relations Board that protects the rights of workers to organize into unions. The General Strike brought economic and political power for labor unions that would last for decades.

As The 100th Anniversary Of The Beginning of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Starts ... Some Remembrances-Russian Revolutionary Leon Trotsky On The Anti-War Movement From War And The International   

 

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 by 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 20^th century history. 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 20^th 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 and Rosa Luxemburg in Germany, Lenin and Trotsky in Russia, some anti-war anarchists like Monette in France and here in America Big Bill Haywood and the stalwart Eugene V. Debs, 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 would not listen to the calls against the slaughter. Yes, one hundred years later is not too long to honor those ardent anti-war voices as the mass mobilizations began in the countdown to war.                   

Over the next period as we lead up to the 100^th 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 in order to create a newer world out of the shambles of the battlefields.     

*************

CHAPTER V

THE WAR OF DEFENCE

“THE thing for us to do now is to avert this danger (Russian’ despotism), and to secure the culture and 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.”

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

Here only the defence 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 defence, 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 Luxembourg 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 sacifice 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 defence 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 defence of the fatherland is a very broad and very elastic conception. The world castastrophe began with Austria’s ultimatum to Serbia. Austria, naturally, was guided solely by the need of defending her borders from her uneasy neighbour. Austria’s rop 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 defence 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, entenag 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 threeyear army reform. Is it not clear, then, that an intelligent self-defence 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 defence?
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 defence.
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-defence. 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-defence. 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. Serbia “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 among the Balkan States but also between Russian and Austrian influence. A successful Austrian attack on Serbia threatened to disturb this balance of power in Austria’s favour, 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 Serbia and Montenegro, Belgium and Luxembourg, could also produce some proofs of the defensive character of their policy. 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 role 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 act as a hindrance? This matenalistic evaluation of wars stands above all formal or external considerations, and in its nature has no relation to the question of defence 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 defence 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 conside?ations induced Bismark to take the actual initiative in the war. It might have happened just the other way, however. Witk 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 the 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 twofold task to perform. First, it must bring about war at the moment most favourable 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 role 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. [31] Next follows the purely military aspect. The strategic plan operations can be calculated chiefly for defence or attack, regardless of which side declared the war and under what conditions. Finally, the first tactics followed in the carrying out of the plan not infrequently play a great part in a strategic estimating the war as a war of defence or of aggression.

“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 Fiench terrifory then it will certainly not produce the same impression as if the Germans had marched into France without a previous invasion In ths way the war remains, on the French side, more Bonapartistic.

Thus we see by the classic example of the Franco Prussian War that the standards for judging whether a war is defensive or agressive 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 defence. 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 defence” 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 meaps a matter of indifference as to who conducted the war and flow it 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:

“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 Republicans and members of the International Labour Association, which, without distinction of nationality fights all oppressors and endeavours to unite all the oppressed in one great brotherhood, we cannot declare ourselves either directly or indirectly in favour of the present war.”

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 prove useful 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 those very consequences of the War which 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:

“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.)

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 4th 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 communiques which are written to justify an already accomplished act. The leader writer of Die Neue Zeit writes – with the blessing of Comrade Kautsky #8211; 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 in line now. It is a question of national existence. “Substitute Czarism for Bonapartism, and Engels’ words are true today.” 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 labour 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.
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 belore 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 Lassallean – 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.

“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 regime 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)

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 before the anti-Socialist laws [32] were passed. In these 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 role 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 labour movement under the banner of scientific Socialism. But now the international conditions point to the very opposite prognosis. Germany’s victory would mean taking the edge off the revolutionary movement, its theoretic shallowing, and the dying out of the Marxist ideas.

As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-Poet’s Corner-German Poets   

 

Peter Baum

Blog post submitted by Marilyn Turkovich on Thursday, September 9, 2010 - 10:23am.

World War I Battle Scene

Peter Baum was a Rhinelander, born in Eberfeld, Germany in 1869 to parents who were religious and strict. Against this background his imagination flowered, and he became a writer of strange and fantastical stories and poems.
 He has been described as 'a naturally trusting, naive and peaceable man'. Some people took advantage of his good nature, and his early attempts to make a living as a publisher came to nothing. But in 1898, through his portrait painter sister, he was introduced to well-known writers who took a sincere interest in him. His work was even accepted by a ground-breaking literary magazine.
When he found himself, at the age of 45, caught up in the real, not imaginary, terrors of war, his poetry changed. Now he worked at a more subtle use of poetic language, exploring the way in which poetic images can convey a process or sequence of events. 'Am Beginn des Krieges' (below) is a moving example of this. It moves from the beginning of the war to its peak, playing on the contrast between images of hope and peace (the arch of a rainbow, doves) and images of the over-arching power and destructiveness of war.
A gentle, peace-loving man like Peter Baum was naturally deeply distressed by his time on the western front. He served as a stretcher-bearer, which meant that he saw, many times, the terrible sufferings of wounded and dying soldiers. His experiences prevented him from sleeping, an additional stress. His tasks included grave-digging, and this is what he was doing on June 5, 1916, when a stray piece of shrapnel hit him. He died the next day.

At the Beginning of the War
At the beginning of the war there was a rainbow.
Black birds against grey clouds cut circles.
Doves gleamed silver as, on their wheeling flight
They twisted through a slender shaft of light.
Battle follows hard on battle. They were superb liars.
Rank on rank of gaping heads rouse horrors.
Shells continually explode as, whistling softly,
The arc of their trajectory bows down from its climb.
The pain-bow of the shells is waxing all the time.
Stalled between Death and the rainbow arch of peace,
To protect their land men grip their rifles tighter,
Spit at the enemy, lean on each other as they totter.
Toppling like billows over hillocks in their course,
They waver on, drawn by Death's magnetic force.
 

- See more at: http://voiceseducation.org/content/peter-baum#sthash.I9xItcfx.dpuf