Yesterday’s socialism in the face of today’s war Pt.1

I.

It is at the moment when militarism is unleashed on the best part of the world that the values of anti‑militarist propaganda undergo violent attempts to demolish them by precisely those who were its most determined advocates. Does such a clear condemnation of the hitherto accepted socialist conception and tactics emerge from the unfolding events? Are the theoretical “frameworks” of our way of thinking about the social becoming and the process of history broken in such a way that our practical action must precipitously fall back into other directions? Not a few comrades show that they believe this and throw away as useless doctrinal baggage what was yesterday the content of their thinking and the guide to their action. Of course, they believe that they are no less socialist than before and that they have only made – with such admirable solicitude! – to their convictions the correction imposed by the eloquent lesson of facts. Thus we see, in the name of revolutionary socialism, syndicalism, and anarchism, praising the war as a phase and episode in the historical process from which the new society will spring, and which may, according to the victory of the ones or the others, accelerate the pace or inflict on it a delay of unforeseeable duration. There is, however, a lack of agreement when it comes to assessing the direction of this colossal historical crisis, with some placing the health of democracy, of the International and I don’t know what else in the victory of the Triple Entente, others in that of the Germans, and with one or the other, from every corner of Europe that has been burnt or is about to burn, mocking the fossilisation of the few who dare to remain on the old platform of anti‑militarist socialism and think and act accordingly. Sudekum and Hervé suffice as examples.

Well then, at the risk of being branded gallows fans, we ask for the floor in defence of “old‑fashioned” anti‑militarism. It is understood that we do not set out personal cases of conscience, nor do we discuss those of others. We are only analysing, in a necessarily summary manner, the events; and we take the liberty of showing why they neither surprised nor upset our socialist thinking. Blind obstinacy! But obstinacy that has to put forward, modestly, arguments.

Was the war «impossible»?

Apparently we all made a big anti‑militarist propaganda precisely because… we were sure that there would be no more wars between the great powers of Europe. When war broke out, the basis of this typical anti‑militarism would logically have been destroyed, and every socialist would have had the right to say: there is a war, all that remains is to choose the lesser evil and to side with these or those. Reasoning that from socialists in States committed from the beginning extended to those in neutral States. But when and how had socialism prophesied that there would be no more wars? And if so, what reason remained to work on anti‑militarist propaganda with the press, in rallies, with the “Soldo al Soldato” (Soldier’s Money), and with the organisation of young socialists?

In truth, the thesis of the impossibility of war had its greatest formulation in the famous book by Normann Angeli – a bourgeois – in the monstrous bourgeois conception of armed peace, and in the specifically anti‑socialist concept that civilisation was proceeding in an evolutionary and educational manner by opening the eyes of the governed and rulers to the enormous error and obvious folly of a European conflagration, given the “modern means of destruction”.

Since the bourgeoisie of the various States could not fail to be aware of the enormous damage that the war would do to them, with no exceptions of victors, it was thought that the ruling classes and the governments that are their expression would at all costs avoid the immense clash. It was also foreseen, in the great mechanism of modern economics, the complication of the vast interweaving of international trade and relations, which had reached a development that history had never recorded and was made up of very delicate threads that war would break, causing the economic ruin of all social classes. It was thus believed that the various bourgeoisies would not run to suicide. But the key to the socialist concept is instead that the ruling class under the capitalist regime is unable to govern and control the forces that are unleashed by the present relations of the forms of production, and it remains in its turn victim of certain inevitable contradictions of the economic regime, which does not respond to the requirements of the vast majority of people. The great Marxist description of capitalist production casts a light on these conflicts and on the impotence of the Bourgeoisie in its attempts to dominate them. Since the instruments of production and exchange are not yet socialized, a rational utilization of them is not possible, and neither is there a correct relationship between needs and production, which is based solely on the interests of the capitalist; and from all this there follows the colossal and extremely damaging economic crises which shake the markets, and the absurd overproduction from which out of abundance there is generated poverty, and unemployment for the wage earners; and as a further consequence the ruin of some of the capitalists themselves, in the interests of whom is assembled the monstrous machinery of the present economy. From this it follows – we will go on to summarize – that modern life is not a continuous evolution towards a greater civilization but is on the path of that fatal parabola which, though an exacerbation of class struggle and increasing malaise among the workers, will end in the final collapse of the bourgeois regime.

And yet, parallel with this process, through which the ruling class prepares, without being able to avoid it, for its historical suicide, we witness another absurdity. The development of the means of production in the economic field, the diffusion of culture in the intellectual field, and the democratization of the states in the political field, instead of paving the way for the cessation of war and the disarmament of the fratricidal armies, leads to an intensification of military preparations. Is this a survival from earlier times – the feudal period for instance –, is it a return to the age of barbarism, or is it not rather an essential characteristic of the modern, bourgeois, democratic regime? We note, meanwhile, that those state-controlled bourgeoisies who cannot keep the production lines running in peace time, and avert financial catastrophes, are likewise powerless, even if they should actually want it, to stop wars breaking out, which appear as the only, fateful way out from the politico-economic situations they have got themselves into.

And, on the other hand, is the damage the bourgeoisie can expect to sustain in a war really so very great? It certainly involves a destruction of capital, but to the bourgeoisie understood as a class, rather than just as the material possessor of capital, what interests it is the preservation of the legal relations that allow it to live off the labor of the vast majority. These relations, existing within each nation, consist of the right to monopolize the instruments of labor, which, in their turn, are the fruit of other labor expended by the proletarian class. As long as, to be extra clear, the law of private property in the land, in houses, in the mines, remains intact, the proletariat, after the devastation of the war, will rebuild machines, factories, etc, and hand them back to its exploiters, suffering once again all the consequences of a lack of consumer goods, but reconstituting the capital necessary for the life of all in order to make it once again the monopoly of the few. Of course, no few members of the bourgeoisie, will, as individuals, be swept away, but others will replace them. It is observed that in the war the complex organism of financial and banking relations, of the circulation of money, is crashed; but the bourgeois governments partly make up for this with special suspensions of ordinary economic life, and partly make up for it with the indemnity due to the victor. In conclusion, war, disastrous in every respect for the proletariat, is unfortunately possible today; and the bourgeoisie sees its material wealth eroded, but its potential relations for reconstituting it preserved and perhaps strengthened, as the class struggle slumbers and dies down in national exaltation. There are unforeseeable complications from a wave of revolt over so much suffering; a revolt that would, however, have little chance of success, led by a people exhausted, drained and obscured by bloody hatreds towards proletariats on the other side of the border.

War and democracy

Given the progress of technology, the cannons, the explosives, the ships that are built nowadays are incomparably more powerful that the old weaponry. The development of bourgeois economy and the enormous importance assumed by the organizations of the State, through their centralizing of so many vital functions, allow the latter to invest financial resources in preparation for war on a scale that was entirely unknown to the old monarchs and condottieri of every past epoch. What is more, the obligations placed by modern States on individuals, under the veneer of democratic civilization, are becoming so strict that the State can dispose of enormous numbers of armed citizens, absorbing every able-bodied citizen down the very last man. The military State has at its beck and call a huge number of soldiers and veterans trained in the use of arms thanks to obligatory conscription, which was introduced following the French Revolution (indeed in France it was decided by the Convention). The immense railways networks, which modern States have the capacity to organize, make it possible to deploy and mobilize in a few hours huge numbers of people, who can be recruited, armed and moved to the border in their millions at amazing speed. Pause to consider modern mobilizations for a moment! What greater insult to individual liberty, than that which is made possible by the very latest resources of so-called civilization and the formation of States with bourgeois governments operating under democratic directives?

Wars in ancient times were nothing like this. The armies were much smaller and were composed for the most part as a technical necessity of veterans, all non-mercenary volunteers, and forced recruitment was limited, episodic and much more unlikely than it is today. Most workers were left to work in the fields or at their trade; you became a soldier either because it was your profession, or you had made a free choice – todays’ enormous masses and massacres on the battlefield with modern weaponry was unknown. Even the barbarian invasions were migrations of peoples, who were on the move with their families, their herds and tools, with a view to seizing pleasant, fertile land for the greater good of all – even if achieved by brute force – whereas the modern soldier, if he evens survives the war he fought in and maybe won, goes back to the same old life of exploitation and misery, or probably worse, after having left his family at home to be supported by the State… with a few pennies.

Wars in feudal times were different again. The barons personally took up arms and put their own lives at risk, with their retinue of a few thousand armed men, for whom war was a profession and with the attendant risks that go with any profession. The war we are witnessing then is not a return to barbarian or feudal time but is a historical phenomenon of our own time, which came about not despite modern civilization but because of it; because of the capitalist regime which conceals under the appearance of civilization a most profound barbarism. The potential for and inevitability of war is built into the structure of modern states, which under the regime of political democracy maintain the current economic slavery and extend their own excessive power, apparently based on the consensus of all, to the point that a handful of ministers, representing the ruling class, can place millions of men in the line of fire in the space of 24 hours, and send them to their death without them knowing where they are going, or why, or against whom they are being sent: a shocking fact and representing the maximum of arbitrary tyranny that the human multitude over the course of the centuries has ever suffered.