A logical analysis of war (one which is not distorted by Plekhanov's shameless bourgeois slant) leads to the conclusion that war is simply "the continuation of politics by other means" (of a violent nature). This is the definition given by Clausewitz,[1] one of the leading authorities on the history of wars, writing under the inspiration of the Hegelian theories.
And this was also the opinion of Marx and Engels who regarded war as the continuation of the politics of certain interested powers and of various classes within the various nations, at a certain time.
Plekhanov's primitive chauvinism stands exactly on the same theoretical plane as Kautsky's more subtle, opportunistic and watery chauvinism, when the latter approves the attitude of the Socialists of every country going over to the camp of "their" own capitalists in the following statement:
"It is everybody's right and duty to defend his country. True intemationlism grants that right to the Socialists of every country, and among them to those who are at war with my country." {Neue Zeit, October 2, 1914, passim.)
This incredible statement is such a base betrayal of Socialism, that the only way to answer it would be to have a medal coined with, on one side, the portraits of William II and Nicholas II and on the other side those of Plekhanov and Kautsky. True internationalism would then justify the French workers in shooting the
- ↑ Carl von Clausewitz, Von Kriege, Vol. I. page 28, of his complete works. "Everybody knows that wars are caused simply by political relations between governments and between nations; but we generally imagine that at the beginning of a war those relations are interrupted and that an entirely different state of affairs obtains, regulated only by its own laws. We wish to repeat on the contrary that war is nothing but a continuation of those political relations with the introduction of different means."
insignificant minority fattens on armaments and wars, but it is backed by society and finance while the unorganized population is vainly striving for peace. (93) The pacifist who yesterday were talking for peace and disarmament, will join tomorrow a party absolutely dominated by the war contractors. (161). As soon as the Triple Entente was concluded it seized Morocco and proceeded to dismember Persia. The Triple Alliance took Tripoli, entrenched itself in Bosnia, and dominated Turkey. (167). London and Pans gave billions to Russia in March, 1906, thus enabling Czarism to crush all the revolutionary movements (225–228). Now England is helping Russia to strangle Persia. (229). Russia lit the fires of the Balkan war. (230). This is not new. This is an old story, which has been told a thousand times in the Socialist papers of the entire world. At the eve of the war, this was very obvious to an English bourgeois. But think of what rot, what hypocrisy, what miserable lies such facts reveal in the statements of Plekhanov and Potresof on Germany's guilt, or in Kautsky's "prospect" of disarmament and lasting peace under a capitalistic form of government.
