As The 100th
Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars)
Comes To A Close... Some Remembrances
The events leading up to World War I (known as the Great War
before the world got clogged up with expansive wars in need of other numbers and
names and reflecting too in that period before World War II a certain sense of “pride”
in having participated in such an adventure even if it did mow down the flower
of European youth form all classes) from the massive military armament of
almost all the capitalist and imperialist parties in Europe and elsewhere in
order to stake their claims to their unimpeded share of the world’s resources
had all the earmarks of a bloodbath early on once the industrial-sized carnage
set in with the stalemated fronts. Also clogged, or rather thrown in the
nearest bin were the supposedly eternal pledges not honored by most of the
Social-Democrats and other militant leftist formations representing the
historic interest of the international working-class to stop those imperialist
capitalist powers and their hangers-on in their tracks in their tracks at the
approach of war were decisive for 20th century history. Other than isolated
groups and individuals mostly in the weaker countries of Europe the blood lust
got the better of most of the working class and its allies as young men rushed
to the recruiting stations to “do their duty” and prove thir manhood.
Decisive as well as we head down the slope to the last month
of the first year of war although shrouded in obscurity early in the war in
exile was the soon to be towering figure of one Vladimir Lenin (a necessary nom
de guerre in hell broth days of the Czar’s Okhrana ready to send one and all to
the Siberian frosts and that moniker business, that nom de guerre not a bad idea in today’s NSA-driven frenzy to know
all, to peep at all), leader of the small Russian Bolshevik Party ( a
Social-Democratic Party in name anyway adhering to the Second International under
the sway of the powerful German party although not for long), architect of the theory
of the “vanguard party” building off of many revolutionary experiences in
Russia and Europe in the 19th century), and author of an important,
important to the future communist world perspective, study on the monopolizing tendencies
of world imperialism, the ending of the age of “progressive” capitalism (in the
Marxist sense of the term progressive in a historical materialist sense that
capitalism was progressive against feudalism and other older economic models
which turned into its opposite at this dividing point in history), and the hard
fact that it was a drag on the possibilities of human progress and needed to be
replaced by the establishment of the socialist order. But that is the wave of
the future as 1914 turns to 1915 in the sinkhole trenches of Europe that are
already a death trap for the flower of the European youth.
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 when 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 on the fronts (that is how the generals
saw it mainly having won their promotions in those earlier wars and so held
captive to the past). 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 as being
on “the planet without a passport” was then as now, dangerous to the lives of left-wing
revolutionaries), some anti-war anarchists like Monette in France and here in
America the Big Bill Haywood (who eventually would controversially flee to Russia
to avoid jail for his opposition to American entry into war), many of his IWW
(Industrial Workers Of the World) comrades and the stalwart Eugene V. Debs (who
also went to jail, “club fed” for speaking the truth about American war aims in
a famous Cleveland speech and, fittingly, ran for president in 1920 out of his Atlanta
Penitentiary jail cell), were raised and
one hundred years later those voices have a place of honor in this space.
Those voices, many of them in exile, or in the deportations
centers, were being clamped down as well when the various imperialist
governments began closing their doors to political refugees when they were
committed to clapping down on their own anti-war citizens. As we have seen in
our own times, most recently in America in the period before the “shock and
awe” of the decimation of Iraq in 2002 and early 2003 the government, most
governments, are able to build a war frenzy out of whole cloth. 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 the hot summer of 1914 when every nationality
in Europe felt its prerogatives threatened how the fevered masses, including
the beguiled working-classes bred on peace talk without substance, would not
listen to the calls against the slaughter. Yes, one hundred years later is not
too long or too late to honor those ardent anti-war voices as the mass
mobilizations began in the countdown to war, began four years of bloody
trenches and death.
Over the next period as we continue the long night of the
100th anniversary of 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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