the most difficult task, the task that contributes most to the struggle during the period of transition of Socialism: the crushing of the resistance of the bourgeoisie. The social quacks and opportunists like to dream of the coming of Socialism peacefully: they are distinguished from the revolutionary Socialists precisely in this, that they refuse to consider and prepare for the desperate class struggles necessary to realize the beautiful future.
We should not be fooled by words. Many of us hate the phrase "defensive wars" because the opportunists try to cover up and justify with those words the lie of the bourgeoisie in this war of robbery. This is a fact, but it does not follow that we must therefore neglect thinking about the meaning of political conceptions. To accept the defense of the country in the present war of Imperialism is to declare this war a "just" war in the interest of the proletariat: a fraudulent declaration. Invasion is always possible in any war. But it would simply be stupid not to justify defense of the country by suppressed and subject people in their war against imperialistic powers, or by a victorious proletariat in its war against the bourgeois of a capitalist country.
It would be absolutely wrong, theoretically, to forget that every war is the continuation of politics by other means: the present imperialistic war is the continuation of the imperialistic policy orginating and developing under the conditions of the epoch of Imperalism. But this same epoch must necessarily produce the policy of fighting against national suppression and the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie; there develops, accordingly, the possibility and inevitability, first, of revolutionary national uprisings and wars, second, of wars and revolts of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, and third, of the unity of both kinds of revolutionary wars.
II
There is, moreover, another general argument. A suppressed class that does not strive to acquire knowledge of arms, that does not possess and use arms, such an oppressed class invites being suppressed and enslaved. We should not degrade ourselves to the level of bourgeois pacifists and opportunists; we should not forget that we are in a society based on class divisions, and that no salvation is possible or imaginable other than through the class struggle.
In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or as at present on wage-labor, the ruling classes are armed. Not
