As The 100th Anniversary Of The Beginning of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Approaches ... Some Remembrances - Karl Liebknecht 1912-Where Will Peace Come From?

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 claim 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. 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.     

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Teddy Martin had come from a long line of workers, some of his forbears had been among the first domestic weavers in Spitalfield, the first machine-tenders in Manchester and had been workers like him and his father in the London shipbuilding trade. He knew deep in his blood there was an “us” and “them” in the world without his party, the Labor Party, having to tell him word one on the subject. He had even read Karl Marx in his early teens when he was trying to figure out why his family was stuck in the faraway outer tenements with their squalor and their human closeness (he never could get over being in close quarters ever since then). So yes he was ready to listen to what some left members of the party had to say if the war clouds on the horizon turned any darker. But, and hear him true, his was like his forbears and his father before him as loyal a man as to be found in the country. Loyal to his king (queen too if it came to that) and his country. So he would have to think, think carefully, about what to do if those nasty Huns and their craven allies making loud noises of late threatened his way of life. Most of his mates to the extent that they had any opinion were beginning to be swept up in the idea that a little war might not be such a bad thing to settle some long smoldering disputes. Still he, Teddy Martin, was not a man to be rushed and so he would think, think hard, about what to do if there was a mass mobilization.            

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The German Social-Democratic Party had given Fritz Klein everything. Had taken him from a small furniture-making factory(less than one hundred employees constituting in those days small) where he led the fight for unionization (against all odds for that woefully unorganized industry and against the then still standing laws against unionization pressed by the state as well as well as the outlaw status of the S-D Party in those pre-legal days) and brought him along into the burgeoning party bureaucracy (boasting of this number of party publications, that number of members, and the pinnacle the votes attained for the growing number of party parliamentarians in the Reichstag). Made him a local then regional shop steward agent. Later found him a spot in the party publications department and from there to alternate member of the party’s national committee. As he grew older, got married, had two lovely children the party had severely sapped the youthful idealism out of him. Still he was stirred whenever Karl Liebknecht, old Wilhelm’s son, the father whom he knew from the old days, delivered one of his intellectual and rational attacks against the war aims of the Kaiser and his cabal. Still too though he worried, worried to perdition, that the British and, especially the French were deliberately stepping on German toes. Although tired, endlessly tired, he hoped that he would be able to stick to the Second International’s pledge made at Basle in 1912 to do everything to stop war in case it came, as was now likely. He just didn’t know how he would react, didn’t know at all.   

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Jacques Rous (and yes he traced his family roots back to the revolution, back to the “red” priest who he was named after who had led some of the plebeian struggles back then that were defeated by those damn moderate cutthroats Robespierre and Saint Just) had long been a leader the anarchist delegation in his Parisian district, had been in a few fights in his time with the damn city bourgeoisie, and had a long, very long memory of what the Germans had, and not done, in Paris in ’71,in the time of the bloodedly suppressed Commune. Also Jacques had long memories of his long past forbears who had come from Alsace-Lorraine now in German hands. And it galled him, galled him that there were war clouds gathering daily over his head, over his district and over his beloved Paris.  

 But that was not what was troubling Jacques Rous in the spring of 1914. He knew, knew deep in his bones like a lot of his fellow anarchists, like a lot of the guys in the small pottery factory he had worked in for the past several years after being laid off from the big textile factory across the river that if war came they would know what to do. Quatrain from the CGT (the large trade union organization to which he and others in the factory belonged to) had clued them in, had told them enough to know some surprises were headed the government’s way if they decided to use the youth of the neighborhoods as cannon fodder. What bothered Jacques was not his conduct but that of his son, Jacques too named in honor of that same ancient red priest who was the lifeblood of the family. Young Jacques something of a dandy like many youth in those days, something of a lady’s man (he had reportedly a married mistress and somebody else on the side), had told one and all (although not his father directly) who would listen one night that he planned to enlist in the Grenadiers just as soon as it looked like trouble was coming. Old Jacques wondered if other fathers were standing in fear of such rash actions by their sons just then.  

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George Jenkins dreamed the dream of many young men out in the heartland, out in the wheat fields of Kansas a dream that America, his America would keep the hell out of what looked like war clouds coming from Europe in the spring of 1914 (although dreams and dreamers were located not just on the farms since George was not a Kansas farm boy but a rising young clerk in Doc Dell’s Drugstore located in the college town of Lawrence). George was keenly interested in such matters and would, while on break or when things were slow, glance through the day later copy of the New York Times or Washington Post that Doc provided for his more worldly customers via the passing trains. What really kept George informed though was William White’s home grown Emporia Gazette which kept a close eye on the situation in Europe for the folks.      

And with all of that information here is what George Jenkins, American citizen, concluded: America had its own problems best tended to by keeping out of foreign entanglements except when America’s direct interests were threatened. So George naturally cast skeptical eyes on Washington, on President Wilson, despite his protestations that European affairs were not our business. George had small town ideas about people minding their own business. See also George had voted for Eugene V. Debs himself, the Socialist party candidate for President, and while he was somewhat skeptical about some of the Socialist Party leaders back East he truly believed that Brother Debs would help keep us out of war. 

 

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Ivan Smirnov was no kid, had been around the block a few times in this war business. Had been in the Russian fleet that got its ass kicked by the Japanese in 1904 (he never called them “Nips” like lots of his crewmates did not after that beating they took that did not have to happen if the damn Czar’s naval officers had been anything but lackeys and anything but overconfident that they could beat the Johnny-come-lately Japanese in the naval war game). More importantly he had been in the Baltic fleet when the revolution of 1905 came thundering over their heads and each man, each sailor, each officer had to choice sides. He had gone with rebels and while he did not face the fate of his comrades on the Potemkin his naval career was over.

Just as well Ivan had thought many times since he was then able to come ashore and get work on the docks through some connections, and think. And what he was thinking in the spring of 1914 with some ominous war clouds in the air that that unfinished task from 1905 was going to come to a head. Ivan knew enough about the state of the navy, and more importantly, the army to know that without some quick decisive military action the monarchy was finished and good riddance. The hard part, the extremely hard part, was to get those future peasant conscripts who would provide cannon fodder for the Czar’s ill-thought out land adventures to listen up for a minute rather than go unknowingly head-long into the Czar’s arm (the father’s arms for many of them). So there was plenty of work to do. Ivan just that moment was glad that he was not a kid.     

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Karl Liebknecht 1912-Where Will Peace Come From?

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Source: Le Socialisme, November 2, 1912;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor.

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Dear and Venerated Comrade Guesde,
Incendiary capitalism is carrying its out evil works more dangerously than ever, and is doing so in the increasingly dangerous neighborhood of the powder kegs that are the great European military powers. Starving slaves traverse the countryside at the foot of the Balkans, waving war torches; lulled by their despots into the illusion that they are the flame carriers of liberty for the slaves on the other side of the frontiers, behind which they themselves live deprived of rights and economically reduced to a state of poverty. All the international conflicts have been brought to their greatest point of intensity. Like a cyclone, imperialism spins across the globe; militarism crushes peoples and sucks their blood like a vampire. The Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Famine and Massacre, gallop across the world.
All the diplomatic plotting was in vain: they were naught but charlatanism and mirage. For capitalism, war and peace are business and nothing but business. As far as it’s concerned, the lives and wellbeing of the millions of men that constitute the proletariat of all countries are an object of exploitation and nothing but that.
Only the international proletariat can avert this horrific danger, for only the interests of the proletariat are the same in all capitalist countries. The international solidarity of the proletariat without accepting frontiers, the common fight against common enemies — national and international — of the proletariat: those who profit by political pressure, those who live off economic exploitation and the misery of the masses.
Capitalism is war; socialism is peace. Will socialism have the strength to halt the war fury? It will have this strength if the proletariat of France, England, Austria and Germany fulfill their obligations. And they will fulfill their obligations, as the past has shown and as the fatal month of January 1911 — with its great workers’ movements in France and England and the imposing peace demonstrations in Germany — has shown. Sunday October 20 the German working class once again demonstrated its desire for peace in huge public demonstrations.
The capitalist and imperialist war- mongers must know what is at risk if they throw down Mars’ iron dice. We will warn them, we will threaten them: we in Germany, like our friends in France and England. It is only internationally that we can carry out our war against war, and it is internationally that it is being carried out. Just as we have confidence in our brothers in France, England an Austria, you can have confidence in us, in the German proletariat in struggle.
Internal war against the internal enemy: the oppressors and the exploiters of the masses. Class struggle: external peace, international solidarity, peace among peoples. This is the sacred slogan of international socialist democracy that liberates nations. It is under this sign that we can and we must win, even against a world of enemies. No hesitation! Confident of victory! Whatever the cost, brothers of France: Into battle! Long live socialism!