As The 100th Anniversary Of World War I Continues -The Anti-War Resistance Builds –The Russian Revolution Breaks The Logjam

As The 100^th Anniversary Of World War I Continues -The Anti-War Resistance Builds –The Russian Revolution Breaks The Logjam    

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 epic adventure even if it did mow down the flower of European and in some cases colonial youth from all classes) from the massive military armament of almost all the capitalist and imperialist parties in Europe and elsewhere in order to stake their claims to their unimpeded share of the world’s resources had all the earmarks of a bloodbath early on once the industrial-sized carnage set in with the stalemated fronts (as foretold by the blood-letting in the American Civil War and the various “small” wars in Asia, Africa, and, uh, Europe in the mid to late 19^th century once war production on a mass scale followed in the train of other less lethal forms of  industrial production).

Also trampled underfoot in the opposing trenches, or rather thrown in the nearest trash bin of the their respective parliamentary buildings were the supposedly eternal pledges against war in defense of one’s own capitalist-imperialist  nation-state against the working masses and their allies of other countries by most of the Social-Democrats and other militant leftist formations (Anarchists, Syndicalists and their various off-shoots)representing the historic interest of the international working-class to stop those imperialist capitalist powers and their hangers-on in their tracks at the approach of war were decisive for 20^th century history. All those beautifully written statements and resolutions that clogged up the international conferences with feelings of solidarity were some much ill-fated wind once bullet one came out of gun one.

Other than isolated groups and individuals, mostly like Lenin and Trotsky in exile or jail, and mostly in the weaker lesser capitalistically developed countries of Europe the blood lust got the better of most of the working class and its allies as young men rushed to the recruiting stations to “do their duty” and prove their manhood. (When the first international conference of anti-war socialists occurred in Switzerland in 1915, the famous Zimmerwald conference, one wag pointed out that they could all fit in one tram [bus].) Almost all parties assuming that the damn thing would be over by Christmas and everyone could go back to the eternal expressions of international working-class solidarity after the smoke had settled (and the simple white-crossed graves dug in the vast bone-crushed cemeteries that marked the nearby battle fields too numerous to mention). You see, and the logic is beautiful on this one, that big mail-drop of a Socialist International, was built for peace-time but once the cannons roared then the “big tent” needed to be folded for the duration. Jesus.  

Decisive as well as we head down the slope to the first months of the second year of the war although shrouded in obscurity early in the war in exile was the soon to be towering figure of one Vladimir Lenin (a necessary nom de guerre in the 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 because “Long Live The Communist International,”  a new revolutionary international, would become the slogan and later order of the day in the not distant future), architect of the theory of the “vanguard party” building off of many revolutionary experiences in Russia and Europe in the 19^th century (including forbears Marx and Engels), 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 turned to 1915 in the sinkhole trenches of Europe that are already a death trap for the flower of the European youth.  

Lenin also has a "peace" plan, a peace plan of sorts, a way out of the stinking trench warfare stalemate eating up the youth of the Eurasian landmass. Do what should have been done from the beginning, do what all the proclamations from all the beautifully-worded socialist manifestos called on the international working-class to do. Not a simple task by any means especially in that first year when almost everybody on all sides thought a little blood-letting would be good for the soul, the individual national soul, and in any case the damn thing would be over by Christmas and everybody could start producing those beautifully worded-manifestos against war again. (That by Christmas peace “scare” turned out to be a minute “truce” from below by English and German soldiers hungry for the old certainties banning the barbed wire and stinking trenches for a short reprieve in the trench fronts in France and played soccer before returning to drawn guns-a story made into song and which is today used as an example of what the lower ranks could do-if they would only turn the guns around. Damn those English and German soldiers never did turn the damn things around until too late and with not enough resolve and the whole world has suffered from that lack of resolve ever since.)

Lenin’s hard-headed proposition: turn the bloody world war among nations into a class war to drive out the war-mongers and bring some peace to the blood-soaked lands. But that advanced thinking is merely the wave of the future as the rat and rain-infested sinkhole trenches of Europe were already churning away in the first year as a death trap for the flower of the European youth.   

The ability to inflict industrial-sized slaughter and mayhem on a massive scale first portended toward the end of the American Civil War once the Northern industrial might tipped the scales their way as did the various German-induced wars attempting to create one nation-state out of various satraps almost could not be avoided in the early 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 range and the increased rapidity of the machine-guns would be carried out by the norms of the last wars. However the race for naval supremacy, or the race to take a big kink out of British supremacy, went on unimpeded as Germany tried to break-out into the Atlantic world and even Japan, Jesus, Japan tried to gain a big hold in the Asia seas.

The deeply disturbing submarine warfare wreaking havoc on commerce on the seas, the use of armed aircraft and other such technological innovations of war only added to the frenzy. We can hundred years ahead, look back and see where talk of “stabs in the back” by the losers and ultimately an armistice rather than decisive victory on the blood-drenched fields of Europe would lead to more blood-letting but it was not clear, or nobody was talking about it much, or, better, doing much about calling a halt before they began the damn thing among all those “civilized” nations who went into the abyss in July of 1914. Sadly the list of those who would not do anything, anything concrete, besides paper manifestos issued at international conferences, included the great bulk of the official European labor movement which in theory was committed to stopping the madness.

A few voices, voices like Karl Liebknecht (who against the party majority bloc voting scheme finally voted against the Kaiser’s war budget, went to the streets to get rousing anti-war speeches listened to in the workers’ districts, lost his parliamentary immunity and wound up honorably in the Kaiser’s  prisons) and Rosa Luxemburg ( the rose of the revolution also honorably prison bound) in Germany, Lenin and Trotsky in Russia (both exiled at the outbreak of war and just in time as being on “the planet without a passport” was then as now, dangerous to the lives of left-wing revolutionaries and not just them), some anti-war anarchists like Monette in France and here in America “Big Bill” Haywood (who eventually would controversially flee to Russia to avoid jail for his opposition to American entry into war), many of his IWW (Industrial Workers Of the World) comrades and the stalwart Eugene V. Debs (who also went to jail, “Club Fed” for speaking the truth about American war aims in a famous Cleveland speech and, fittingly, ran for president in 1920 out of his Atlanta Penitentiary jail cell),  were raised and one hundred years later those voices have a place of honor in this space.

Those voices, many of them in exile, or in the deportations centers, were being clamped down as well when the various imperialist governments began closing their doors to political refugees when they were committed to clapping down on their own anti-war citizens. As we have seen in our own times, most recently in America in the period before the “shock and awe” of the decimation of Iraq in 2002 and early 2003 the government, most governments, are able to build a war frenzy out of whole cloth. Even my old anti-war amigo from my hometown who after I got out of the American Army during the Vietnam War marched with me in countless rallies and parades trying to stop the madness got caught in the bogus information madness and supported Bush’s “paper war” although not paper for the benighted Iraqi masses ever since (and plenty of other “wise” heads from our generation of ’68 made that sea-change turn with him).

At those times, and in my lifetime the period after 9/11 when we tried in vain to stop the Afghan war in its tracks is illustrative, to be a vocal anti-warrior is a dicey business. A time to keep your head down a little, to speak softly and wait for the fever to subside and to be ready to begin the anti-war fight another day. “Be ready to fight” the operative words.

So imagine in the hot summer of 1914 when every nationality in Europe felt its prerogatives threatened how the fevered masses, including the beguiled working-classes bred on peace talk without substance, would not listen to the calls against the slaughter. Yes, one hundred years later is not too long or too late to honor those ardent anti-war voices as the mass mobilizations began in the countdown to war, began four years of bloody trenches and death.                  

Over the next period as we continue the long night of the 100^th anniversary of World War I and beyond I will under this headline post various documents, manifestos and cultural expressions from that time in order to give a sense of what the lead up to that war looked like, the struggle against its outbreak before the first frenzied shots were fired, the forlorn struggle during and the massive struggles after it in places like Russia, Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the hodge-podge colonies all over the world map, in order to create a newer world out of the shambles of the battlefields.

Leon Trotsky

Pacifism As The Servant of Imperialism

Transcribed for the Trotsky Internet Archive, now a sub-section of the Marxists’ Internet Archive, by J.J. Plant and HTML markup by David Walters in August of 1996. Transcribed from Communist International, English Edition, No.5 New Series. No translator is credited. No date is provided although it clearly dates from the period of the Provisional Government of mid-1917.

There were never so many pacifists in the world as now, when in all countries men are killing one another. Every historical epoch has not only its own technique and its own political form, but also a hypocrisy peculiar to itself. Once peoples destroyed each other in the name of the Christian teaching of love of humanity. Now only backward governments call upon Christ. Progressive nations cut each others’ throats in the name of pacifism. Wilson drags America into the war in the name of the League of Nations, and perpetual peace. Kerensky and Tseretelli call for an offensive for the sake of an early peace.

Our epoch lacks the indignant satire of a Juvenal. In any case, even the most potential satirical weapons are in danger of being proved powerless and illusory in comparison with triumphant infamy and grovelling stupidity; which two elements were unfettered by the war.
Pacifism is of the same historical lineage as democracy. The bourgeoisie made a great historical attempt to order all human relations in accordance with reason, to supplant blind and dumb tradition by the institutions of critical thought. The guilds with their restriction of production, political institutions with their privileges, monarchistic absolutism – all these were traditional relics of the middle ages. Bourgeois democracy demanded legal equality for free competition, and for parliamentarism as the means of governing public affairs. It sought also to regulate national relations in the same manner. But here it came up against war, that is against a method of solving all problems which is a complete denial of “reason”. So it began to advise the people in poetry, in philosophy, in ethics, and in business methods, that it is far more useful for them to introduce perpetual peace. These are the logical arguments for pacifism.
The inherited failing of pacifism, however, was the fundamental evil which characterises bourgeois democracy. Its criticism touches only the surface of social phenomena, it has not the courage to cut deeper into the underlying economic facts. Capitalist realism, however, handles the idea of perpetual peace based on the harmony of reason, perhaps more pitilessly than the idea of liberty, equality and fraternity. Capitalism, which developed technique on a rational basis, failed to regulate conditions rationally. It prepared weapons for mutual extermination which would never have occurred to the dreams of the “barbarians”of medieval times.
The rapid intensification of international conditions, and the unremitting growth of militarism, knocked away the ground from under the feet of pacifism. But at the same time, these same forces were giving pacifism a new life before our very eyes, a life as different from the old one as a blood-red sunset is from a rosy dawn.
The ten years which preceded the war were the period of what has been called “armed peace”. The whole time was in reality nothing but an uninterrupted war, a war waged in colonial lands.
This war was fought out upon the territories of backward and weak peoples; it led to the participation of Africa, Polynesia and Asia, and prepared the way for the present war. But, as there had been no European war since 1871, although there had been quite a number of small but sharp conflicts, common opinion among the petty- bourgeois had been systematically encouraged to look upon an ever-growing army as a guarantee of peace, which would gradually bear its fruits in a new organisation of popular international law. As for the capitalistic governments and big business, they naturally saw nothing to object to in this “pacifist”interpretation of militarism. Meanwhile world conflicts were in preparation and the world catastrophe was there.
Theoretically and politically, pacifism has just the same basis as the doctrine of social harmony between different class interests.
The opposition between capitalistic national states has just the same economic basis as the class struggle. If we are ready to assume the possibility of a gradual toning down of the class struggle, then we must also assume the gradual toning down and regulation of nationalistic conflicts.
The guardian of democratic ideology, with all its traditions and illusions, was the petty bourgeoisie. During the second half of the nineteenth century, it had become completely transformed inwardly, but it had not yet disappeared from the scene. At the very time when the development of capitalistic technique was permanently undermining the economic role of the petty bourgeoisie, universal franchise and compulsory military service were giving it, thanks to its numerical strength, the appearance of a political factor. Where the small capitalist had not been crushed out of existence altogether by big business, he was completely subjugated by the credit system. It only remained to the representatives of big business to subjugate the petty bourgeoisie also in the political field, by taking all its theories and prejudices and lending them a fictitious value. This is the explanation of the phenomena which were to be observed in the last ten years before the war, when reactionary imperialism was growing to such a terrific height, while at the same time the illusive blossoming of a bourgeois democracy, with all its reformism and pacifism took place. Big business subjugated the petty bourgeoisie to its imperialistic ends by means of its own prejudices.
France was the classic example of this two sided process. France is a country of finance-capital supported upon the basis of a numerous and generally conservative petty bourgeois. Thanks to foreign loans, to the colonies, and to the alliance with Russia and England, the upper strata of the population were dragged into all the interests and all the conflicts of world capitalism. Meanwhile, the French petty bourgeoisie remained a provincial to his very marrow. He has an instinctive dread of geography, and all his life long he has had the greatest horror of war, mainly because he usually has only one son, to whom he will leave his business and his furniture. This petty bourgeois sends a bourgeois radical to represent him in parliament, for that gentleman promises him that he will preserve peace for him by means of the League of Nations on the one hand and of Russian Cossacks, who will chop off the Kaiser’s head for him, on the other. The radical deputy arrives in Paris from his circle of provincial lawyers, not only full of the will to peace, but also with only the vaguest of notions as to the position of the Persian Gulf, and without any clear idea of why or for whom the Baghdad Railway is necessary. These “radical pacifist” deputies provided from their midst a Radical Ministry, which immediately found itself entangled up to the ears in the meshes of all the previous diplomatic and military obligations undertaken by all the various financial interests of the French Bourse in Russia, Africa and Asia. The Ministry and Parliament never ceased intoning their pacifist phraseology, but at the same time they were automatically carrying out a foreign policy which finally brought France into the war.
English and American pacifism, despite all the variety of social conditions and ideology (despite also the lack of any ideology as in America) carry out essentially the same work : they provide an outlet for the petty bourgeoisie citizens’ fear of world-shaking events, which after all can only deprive him of the remnants of his independence; they lull to sleep his watchfulness by useless notions of disarmament, international law, and arbitration tribunals. Then, at a given moment, they hand him over body and soul to capitalistic imperialism which has already mobilised every means necessary for its end: i.e., technical knowledge, art, religion, bourgeois pacifism and patriotic “Socialism.”
“We were against the war, our deputies, our Ministers, were all against the war,”cry the French petty bourgeois: “Therefore, it follows, that we have the war forced upon us, and in order to realise our pacific ideals we must pursue the war to a victorious end.”And the representative of French pacifism, Baron d’Estournel de Constant, consecrates this pacifist philosophy with a solemn “jusqu’au bout!” – war to the end!
The thing which above all others the English Stock Exchange required for the successful conduct of the war, was pacifist like the liberal Asquith, and the radical demagogue Lloyd George. “If these men are running the war,” said the English people, “then we must have right on our side.”
And so pacifism had its allotted part to play in the mechanism of the war, like poison gas, and the ever-rising pile of war loans.
In the USA the pacifism of the petty-bourgeoisie showed itself in its true role, as the servant of imperialism, in an even less disguised manner. There, as elsewhere, it was the banks and the trusts which really managed politics. Even before the war, owing to the extraordinary development of industry, and of the export trade, the USA had been steadily moving in the direction of world interests and of imperialism. But the European war drove on this imperialistic development at a feverish pace. At the very moment when many pious people (even Kautsky) were hoping that the horrors of the butchery in Europe would fill the American bourgeoisie with horror of militarism, the real influence of the events in Europe was proceeding, not on psychological, but on materialistic lines, and was leading to the very opposite results. The exports of the USA, which in 1913 had totalled 2,466 millions of dollars, rose in 1916 to the crazy height of 5,481 milliards of dollars. Naturally the lion’s share of this export trade was allotted to the munitions industry. Then came the sudden threat of a cessation in he export trade to the Entente countries, when unrestricted submarine warfare began. In 1915 the Entente had imported American goods up to thirty-five milliards, while Germany and Austria-Hungary had barely imported as much as fifteen millions. Thus, not only a diminution of the gigantic profits was indicated, but the whole of American industry, which had its basis in war industry, was now threatened with a severe crisis. It is to these figures that we must look for the key to the division of “sympathies”in America. And so the capitalists appealed to the State: “It is you who started this development of war-industry under the banner of pacifism, it is now up to you to find us a new market.” If the State was not in a position to promise the “freedom of the seas” (in other words, freedom to squeeze capital out of human blood) then it must open a new market for the threatened war industries – in America itself. And so the requirements of the European slaughter produced a sudden, a catastrophic militarisation of the USA.
This business was bound to arouse the opposition of the great masses of the people. To conquer this undefined discontent, and transform it into patriotic co-operation was the most important task in the domestic politics of the USA. And it was by a strange irony of fate that the official pacifism of Wilson, like the “opposition” pacifism of Bryan, provided the most powerful weapons for the performance of this task, i.e., the taming of the masses by militaristic methods.
Bryan hastened to give loud expression to the natural dislike of the farmers, and of all the petty-bourgeoisie to imperialism, militarism and increase in taxation. But at the very time when he was sending off wagon-loads of petitions and deputations to his pacifist colleagues, who occupied the highest places in the government, Bryan was also using every effort to break away from the revolutionary lead of this movement.
“If it comes to war,” thus for instance Bryan telegraphed to an anti-war meeting held in Chicago in February, “then, of course, we shall support the government, but up to that moment it is our most sacred duty to do everything that lies in our power to save the people from the horrors of war.” In these few words we have the whole programme of petty bourgeois pacifism. “Everything that is in our power to prevent war,” means to provide an outlet for the opposition of the masses in the shape of harmless manifestos, in which the government is given a guarantee that if war comes, no hindrance will be put in its way by the pacifist opposition.
That indeed, was all that was required by the Official pacifism personified by Wilson, who had already given plenty of proofs to the capitalists who were making the war, of his “readiness to fight.” And even Mr Bryan himself found it enough to have made this declaration, after which he was content to put aside his noisy opposition to the war; simply for one purpose – that of declaring war. Like Mr Wilson, Mr Bryan hastened over to the other side of the government. And not only the petty-bourgeoisie, but also the great mass of the people, said to themselves: “If our government, headed by a pacifist of such world-wide reputation as Wilson, can declare war, and Bryan himself can support the government on the question of war, then surely this must be a righteous and necessary war.” This explains why the pious, Quakerish kind of pacifism, indulged in by the demagogues who led the government, was so highly valued by the Stock Exchange and the leaders of war industry.
Our own Menshevik, social-revolutionary pacifism, despite the difference in outward conditions, played in its own way exactly the same part. The resolution on war, which was adopted by a majority of the All-Russian Congress of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils, is founded not only on the common pacifist prejudices concerning war, but also on the characteristics of an imperialistic war. The Congress declared that the “first and most important task of revolutionary democracy” was the speedy ending of war. But all these assumptions are only directed towards a single end: so long as the international efforts of democracy have failed to make an end of war, so long must Russian revolutionary democracy demand with all its strength that the Red Army shall be prepared to fight whether defensive or offensive.
The revision of the old international treaties makes the Russian Congress dependent upon voluntary understandings with the diplomacy of the Entente, and it is not in the nature of these diplomats to liquidate the imperialistic character of war, even if they could. The “international efforts of democracy” leaves the congress and its leaders dependent upon the will of the Social-Democratic patriots, who are tied and bound to their imperialistic governments. And this same majority of the congress, having first of all led itself into a blind alley with this business of the “quickest possible ending to war,” has now landed itself, where practical politics are concerned, in a definite conclusion: the offensive. A “pacifism” which rallies the petty-bourgeoisie and brings us to the support of the offensive will naturally be most warmly welcomed, not only by Russians but also by Entente imperialism.
Miliukov, for instance, says: “In the name of our loyalty to the allies and to our old (imperialistic) treaties, the offensive must inevitably be entered upon.”
Kerensky and Tseretelli say: “Although our old treaties have not yet been revised, the offensive is inevitable.”
The arguments vary, but the policy is the same. And it could not be otherwise, since Kerensky and Tseretelli are inextricably bound up in the government with Miliukov’s party.
The Social-Democratic, patriotic pacifism of Dan, like the Quaker pacifism of Bryan, are, when we come to actual facts, equally in the service of the imperialists.
It is for this reason that the most important task of Russian diplomacy does not consist in persuading the Entente diplomacy to revise something or other, or to abrogate something else, but in convincing them that the Russian revolution is absolutely reliable, and can safely be trusted.
The Russian ambassador, Bachmatiev, in his speech to the Congress of the USA on June 10th, also characterised the activity of the Provisional Government from this point of view :

“All these events,”he said, “show us that the power and significance of the Provisional Government are growing every day, and the more they grow the more capable will the government be of throwing out all disintegrating elements, whether these come from the reaction or from the agitation of the extreme left. The Provisional Government has just decided to take all possible means to achieve this end, even if it has to resort to force, although it does not cease to strive for a peaceful solution of its problems.”

One need not doubt for a moment that the “national honour” of our Social-Democratic patriots remained undisturbed while he ambassador of the “revolutionary democracy” eagerly proved to the American plutocracy that the Russian government was ready to pour out the blood of the Russian proletariat in the name of law and order. The most important element of law and order being its loyal support of Entente capitalism.

And at the very moment when Herr Bachmatief was standing hat in hand, humbly addressing himself to the hyaenas of the American Stock Exchange, Messieurs Tseretelli and Kerensky were setting the “revolutionary democracy” by the ears, in assuring then that it was impossible to combat the “anarchy of the left” without using force, and were threatening to disarm the workers of Petrograd and the regiment which supported them. We can see now that these threats were delivered at just the right moment: they were the best possible guarantee for the Russian loan from America.
“You see, now,” Herr Bachmatiev might have said to Mr. Wilson, “our revolutionary pacifism does not differ by a hair’s breadth from the pacifism of your Stock Exchange. And if they can believe Mr. Bryan, why should they not believe Herr Tseretelli?”

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