The Proletarian Revolution in Russia/Part 2/Chapter 7
VII
ARMAMENTS AND WAR
I
Certain revolutionary Socialists who are advocates of disarmament use as their main argument the claim that this demand expresses most clearly, most emphatically and most thoroughly the struggle against all forms of militarism, against every war. And this main argument constitutes precisely the fundamental mistake of all the advocates of disarmament. Socialists cannot be opposed to every war without ceasing to be Socialists.
Socialists have never been opposed to revolutionary wars, and they never can accept that attitude. The bourgeoisie of the imperialistic nations is thoroughly reactionary, and we know that the war waged at present by this bourgeoisie is a reactionary, criminal war of spoliation. If this is a fact, what about a war against this bourgeoisie? For example, a war of the suppressed and subject or colonial peoples against the imperialistic bourgeoisie?
In this program of the German "International Group" we read in paragraph 5: "In the period of Imperialism no national wars are possible" This is evidently wrong. The history of the twentieth century, of this century of Imperialism, is full of colonial wars. And what we, with our dirty European chauvinism, call "colonial wars" are often national wars or national revolts of oppressed peoples.
One of the essential characteristics of Imperialism is precisely that it accelerates the development of Capitalism in backward countries and with it the struggle against national oppression. This is a fact. And from this fact it follows inevitably that Imperialism must often breed national wars.
Junius, who defends the program of the International Group, says that in the epoch of Imperialism every national war against one of the imperialistic powers results in the action of another imperialistic power competing with the first one, and that every national war accordingly changes into an imperialistic war. This argument, however, is also incorrect. It may be so, but it need not always be so. Different colonial wars in the period between 1900 and 1914 did not have this result; and it would be ridiculous to consider it possible, if this war ends in a general exhaustion of the warring countries, that there should not be a national revolutionary war, perhaps by China together with India, Persia, Siam, etc., against the existing world powers.
The negation of all possible national wars under Imperialism is theoretically and historically incorrect, and in practice promotes European chauvinism: we, belonging to nations that suppress hundreds of millions of people in Europe, Africa and Asia, we declare to these oppressed people that their war against "our" nation is impossible!
Civil wars are also wars. Those who accept the class struggle must accept civil wars, which, under certain circumstances, are a natural and inevitable continuance, development and accentuation of the class struggle in every society based on class divisions. All great revolutions prove this. To deny or to overlook civil wars would mean becoming a victim of the most hopeless opportunism and abandoning the Social Revolution.
The victory of Socialism in one country does not all of a sudden exclude all wars in general. On the contrary, this situation implies wars. The development of Capitalism proceeds differently in different countries: this is inevitable in a society based on the production of commodities. The result is: Socialism cannot be victorious in all countries at the same time. Socialism will be victorious first in one or in some countries, other countries continuing for a certain length of time on a bourgeois or pre-bourgeois basis. This will not only result in antagonisms, but will develop the direct tendency of the bourgeoisie in the other countries to crush the victorious proletariat of the Socialist country. In such cases our war would be justifiable and right, it would be a war for Socialism, for liberation of other peoples from their bourgeoisie. Engels was right when he recognized clearly, in his letter to Kautsky, September 12, 1882, the possibility of wars of defense of Socialism, meaning the defense of the victorious proletariat against the bourgeoisie of other countries.
Only after we have completely forced down and expropriated the bourgeoisie of the whole world and not of one country alone, will wars become impossible. And it is scientifically incorrect and not at all revolutionary to overlook or confuse the most important, 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 only the present standing army, but also the militia, that in Switzerland not excepted, is armament of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. I consider it necessary to prove this elementary truth; it is sufficient to point to the mobilization of troops during and against strikes in all the capitalistic countries.
The armament of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat is one of the most important features of capitalist society. And with this fact in view, the revolutionary Socialist should accept the "demand" for disarmament! That would be complete abandonment of our class policy and of every thought of the revolution. We claim: armament of the proletariat to overthrow, to expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie, as the only possible tactic prepared by, based on and forced upon us by the objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the disarmament of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat can the latter, without betraying its world historical task, throw armaments on the scrap heap, and it will do this—but not until then.
When the social popes and the petty bourgeois point to the terror and fear in armed force, the blood and death produced by this war, we answer: Capitalist society has always been a terror without end. And if this most reactionary of all wars should prepare an end of the terror of this society, there should be no reason to despair. From an objective standpoint, the theory, the demand, or, better, the illusion of disarmament is a result at this moment of despair, since it is now clearly apparent that the bourgeoisie itself prepares the way for the only acceptable revolutionary war, the civil war against the imperialistic bourgeoisie.
Those who call this "pure theory" and "only theoretical talk" are referred to two facts in the world's history: the influence of the trusts and woman labor, and the Paris Commune and the events of 1905 in Russia. [And, again, the Russian Revolution of 1917.]
It is a necessity for the bourgeoisie to further develop the trusts and to send women and children into the factories, to torture and exploit them. We do not support this development, we do not co-operate in this horror: we fight against it. But how do we fight? We explain that trusts and woman labor are transitory periods. We want to go back neither to hand-work and pre-concentrated Capitalism, nor to the period of domestic work for women. On towards the future, beyond trusts, etc., and through them to Socialism.
The same holds, mutatis mutandis, for the present militarization of the people. At present Imperialism and the bourgeoisie not only militarize the whole people, but youth also. To-morrow they may, for all we care, militarize the women. We answer: so much the better! Faster, always faster—and the faster the sooner armed revolt against Capitalism. How can Socialists become frightened or discouraged by the militarization of the youth, etc., with the example of the Paris Commune in their minds? That surely was not a theory of a dream, but reality. And it would undoubtedly breed despair if Socialists, in defiance of all economic and political reality, would doubt that the imperialistic epoch and imperialistic wars must lead with elementary force and inevitably toward a repetition of the reality of the Commune.
It was a bourgeois observer of the Commune who wrote in May, 1871, in an English newspaper: "If the French nation consisted wholly of women, what a frightful nation it would be."
The women and the youth, from thirteen years up, fought during the Commune side by side with the men: and it will not be otherwise in the coming battles to subdue the bourgeoisie. The proletarian women will not look on passively while the well-armed bourgeoisie orders the badly armed or unarmed proletariat to be shot down; they will seize arms as they did in 1871. And from the now unnerved or discouraged nations, or, more accurately, from the labor movement now disorganized by the opportunists more than by the governments, will arise, sooner or later, but beyond the shadow of a doubt, an international alliance of "frightful nations" of the revolutionary proletariat.
Militarism permeates the whole public life. Militarism becomes supreme. Imperialism means bitter struggle among the world powers to divide and re-divide the world—and this, therefore, militarizes even the small and neutral countries. What will the proletarian women do against this development? Condemn all war and all militarism, and demand disarmament? Never will the women of a revolutionary class accept such a contemptible task. On the contrary, they will urge their sons: "You will soon be grown up and they will give you a rifle. Take it, and qualify in all military knowledge—that is necessary for the workers, not in order to shoot at your comrades, as is done in this war of robbery and as you have been urged to do by the traitors of Socialism, but to fight the bourgeoisie of your own country to put an end to exploitation and the misery of wars, not by pious wishes, but by overpowering and disarming the bourgeoisie."
Those who refuse to carry on such a propaganda, and such a propaganda particularly in connection with the present war, should be kind enough to stop talking in grandiloquent phrases about international revolutionary Socialism, about the Social Revolution, about war against war.
III
The advocates of disarmament are opposed to the armament of the people because in their opinion, this demand might lead readily to concessions towards opportunism. We have examined the main issue: the relation of disarmament to the class struggle and the Social Revolution. Examining the relation of disarmament towards opportunism, we find that one of the most convincing arguments against the demand for disarmament is precisely the fact that this demand and the illusions it creates weakens our fight against opportunism.
The fight against opportunism is a very real issue in the International. The fight against Imperialism is empty and deceitful if it is not combined with a fight against opportunism. One of the principal mistakes of the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences and one of the main reasons for the failure of these efforts toward organizing a third International, consist exactly in the fact that the question of a fight against opportunism was not even brought up openly, far less decided in the sense of a complete break with the opportunist Socialists. Outspoken opportunism works in the open and directly against the revolution and against developing revolts and revolutionary movements, and in co-operation with the governments. The clandestine opportunists, as Kautsky & Co., are much more detrimental to the workers' interests and much more dangerous, because they cover up and make attractive their coalition with the undisguised opportunists by using fine Marxian phrases and peace proposals. The struggle against both these forms of opportunism can only be waged on all issues of proletarian policy: parliamentary action, economic action, strikes, propaganda, etc. The fundamental character of both forms of opportunism consists in this, that it tries to conceal and deny or else to answer in the spirit of the police, all actual questions of the revolution and of the general connection between the present war and the revolution. And all this notwithstanding the fact that just prior to the war, the connection between the coming war and the proletarian revolution had been demonstrated unofficially as well as officially in the Basel Manifesto! One of the principal mistakes of disarmament advocacy is that it evades all actual problems of the revolution. Or are the advocates of disarmament altogether in favor of a new kind of disarmed revolution?
Moreover, we are by no means opposed to the struggle for reforms. We will not deny the disagreeable possibility that humanity may have to pass through another imperialistic war if the Revolution, in spite of repeated outbreaks of mass resistance and mass revolts, and in spite of our own efforts, does not result from this war. We advocate a program of reforms directed against the opportunists. The opportunists would prefer that we abandoned the struggle for reforms to them, that we should retreat out of this bad reality to the castle in the air of disarmament. For disarmament means to run away from the reality and not to fight it.
In our program we should state: "The slogan, and the acceptance of, 'defense of the fatherland' in this imperialistic war is nothing else than bribing the labor movement with a bourgeois lie." Such a definite answer to a definite question would be more correct theoretically, more beneficial to the proletariat, and more annoying to the opportunists than the demand for disarmament and the rejection of all wars of defense. And we could add: "The bourgeoisie of all the imperialistic powers, England, France, Germany, Austria, Russia, Italy, Japan and the United States, has become so reactionary and obsessed with the struggle for world power, that any war of the bourgeoisie of these countries must necessarily be reactionary. The proletariat must not only oppose such a war, but must also wish the defeat of 'its own' government and use a defeat for the revolutionary uprising, if a revolt to prevent the war has failed."
As far as the system of militia is concerned, we should say: We are not in favor of a bourgeois militia, but only in favor of a proletarian militia. Accordingly, not a cent and not a man either for the standing army or for the bourgeois militia; and in the case of the bourgeois militia, all the more, as we see even in the most liberal republics, as in Switzerland, a continual Prussianizing of the militia, together with the use of troops against strikes.
We might demand: Election of officers by the rank and file, abolition of all forms of military courts, no discrimination between foreign and native workers (which is especially important in imperialistic countries that ruthlessly exploit and discriminate against foreign workers), and, furthermore, the right for, every hundred inhabitants of a state to select freely its military instructors, to be paid by the state, etc. In this way the proletariat would acquire military knowledge for its own use and its own interest, and not in favor of the master class. And every result of the revolutionary movement, even when only partial, as, for example, victory in a town or an industrial centre or a part of the army, as has been demonstrated by the Russian Revolution, must naturally result in the adoption by the victorious proletariat of just this program.
After all, it is impossible to overcome opportunism simply with paper programs; only effective action will do it. The greatest and most disastrous mistake of the collapsed second International was the separation of words and deeds, the furtherance of hypocrisy and "revolutionary" phrases. Disarmament as a social expression, that is, an idea that is not simply a personal fancy but arises out of a social condition and influences a social environment, evidently springs from the petty and accidentally "quiet" conditions of some of the small nations that lie close to the bloody war and anxiously hope to continue vegetating. It is worthwhile to examine the arguments of the Norwegian advocates of disarmament: We are a small nation, our army is small, we cannot defend ourselves against the world powers nor being forced into an imperialistic alliance with one or another of these powers, we want to remain quietly in our corner and carry on a corner policy, we demand disarmament, courts of arbitration with binding decisions, permanent (perhaps as exhibited by Belgium) neutrality, etc. The wish of the small nations to stay outside of great world movements, the petty bourgeois conception of living outside of the gigantic world struggle, to use its special situation to remain inactive—this is the objective social condition that secures for the policy of disarmament a certain amount of influence and following in some of the smaller nations. Such an effort is, of course, an illusion and reactionary, because in some way or other Imperialism will sweep the small nations into the whirl-pool of social development and world policy.
Objectively, disarmament only benefits the opportunistic nationalist and narrow tendency in the labor movement. Disarmament is the most nationalistic and the special national program of the small nations, not an international program of revolutionary international Socialism.