Yesterday’s socialism in the face of today’s war Pt.2

II.

The «failure of socialism»

The only force seriously opposed to the militarism of all the great European States were the socialist tendencies of the proletariat. The outbreak of war would therefore, according to some, constitute the theoretical and practical bankruptcy of socialism.

Now, never has this taken on the task of radically improving the present world, remaining within the framework of bourgeois institutions; we are instead for that of transforming it in its foundations, considering this transformation to be the only end to the suffering of the exploited class (it is understood that we are dealing with the whole question from the point of view of revolutionary socialism). Only in the socialist regime, with communism of the means of production and exchange, will humanity be able to dominate the forces of production, eliminating social oppression and misery (Marx), and only in the classless society will wars be impossible. We repudiate the reformist anti‑militarism that dreams of the armed nation and fails to realise that the evolution of bourgeois States, especially the most democratic ones, takes place in precisely the opposite direction.

The war will be ended by the social revolution. Without entirely accepting Mussolini’s well‑known dilemma about the general strike in the event of mobilisation, we note that a revolutionary attempt would always have a greater chance of success in peacetime than on the eve of war.

The proletariat has already made some communist revolutionary attempts, and they have failed; others, certainly, will fail again, without the condemnation of socialism arising from this. What has collapsed in current events is the dream of a bourgeois, democratic and pacifist Europe.

But an unquestionable failure of socialism has occurred in the sense that, in addition to the lack of any serious attempt at opposition, there has almost universally been the adherence of national socialist parties to the war. This is certainly very serious. But we Italian socialists, in the position – comfortable if you like – of spectators, can discuss the causes, perhaps even seek the remedies, and perhaps attempt to apply the remedies to our current situation, by turning theory into practice. The socialist conviction, the ideal flag of proletarian interests, is the result of the economic conditions of environment on the great working masses; and in the case of intellectuals it is the effect of a special psychological and mental process, which is more difficult to investigate. How, under the pressure of the militarist and patriotic currents, did the directives of the various socialist parties falter?

It is not difficult to explain.

Militarism is the most fearsome adversary of our propaganda precisely because it does not make use of persuasion, but is based on the constitution of a forced and artificial environment, in which living relations are completely different from those of the ordinary environment.

The worker, made a soldier, taken away from the closeness of friends, relatives, acquaintances, taken away from the life of the workshop, sees his right to discuss suppressed, his individuality cut off, his freedom cancelled, and he is fatally transformed into an automaton, into a plaything in the hands of discipline.

The called‑up man who wears the uniform automatically returns under the influence of the military environment. The smallest gesture of rebellion is paid for with death. Desertion is practically impossible. Collective revolt would require an unattainable concert and understanding.

On the other hand, in the space of a few hours, the soldier is transported elsewhere, to countries he does not know, among comrades whom he is seeing for the first time, he lacks any information other than from his superiors: there is only one alternative for salvation left to him: to obey blindly and fight against the enemy in the hope of victory… In any case, his mentality is so violently forced and altered that it is no wonder he ends up betraying his socialist convictions, which in most cases boil down to having voted for a socialist candidate. For the leaders, the party leaders, it is a different matter. But they too are victims of a suggestion of environment. Their greater culture very often makes them imperfect socialists. They have too many intellectual links with bourgeois ideologies. Few of them have repudiated all patriotic sentimentality and almost all of them feel more like representatives of the Nation than exponents of the proletarian class.

Their programme as wreckers leaves too much room for the responsibilities of those involved in the protection of a State. Therefore, when bourgeois governments, whatever their pre‑war work, ensure that they are dragged into it despite themselves, for the defence of the supreme national interests, and demand the unanimous trust of the country, the first coefficient of success…, then the socialist deputy hesitates and allows himself to be swept along by the current of enthusiasm. At this critical moment in history, parliaments, the pride of democracy, have done nothing but ratify without debate the bestial and murderous policies of governments. When a category of wars is admitted in the name of socialism, it will always be very easy for the ruling class, which alone has the elements of the situation, to put forward its war as falling into that category and wrest for it the socialist allegiance, perhaps even calling its leaders to participate in the ministry of national defence. This is how the French, Austrian, German, etc. socialists were duped. Does this need to be proven?

Socialism will have to draw vital lessons from these grave defeats: put anti‑militarist action back on a firmer footing, revise in a more revolutionary direction its parliamentary action, so rich so far in bitter disappointments. Rather than – we will return to this later – adapting to a national socialism, the proletariat will have to be more openly anti‑militarist tomorrow and define its attitude in the face of patriotism, the old trap of its worst enemies. We Italian socialists – drawing a first conclusion in passing – will also have to deny the State our solidarity in national defence, without which we would be victims of another colossal deception equal to that of the Tripoli enterprise.

The war that socialism «should admit»

Against the anti‑war precondition, it is assumed by not a few socialists:

1)1) that socialists must take part in any war of national defence against foreign aggression; 2) that socialists cannot disregard wars of nationalities, since it would be a necessary precondition of the advent of socialism to settle all nationalities within their natural boundaries; 3) that socialists should, in a war of nations regimented with more democratic order against others less socially evolved, side with the former against the latter. The warmongering thesis, in the last two cases, would range from simple sympathy to personal intervention and up to pressure on one’s own State to intervene militarily in the conflict in the desired sense.

Well, these three open windows into anti‑militarism are based on sentimental degenerations that are socialism’s absolute negation. Firstly, they clearly contradict each other. If France had attacked Germany in order to retake Alsace-Lorraine (we are in the realm of examples), German socialists would have had to defend the fatherland or march against it in the name of the principle of nationality and democracy? And in colonial wars, that are wars of aggression and oppression, but also of extension of democratic civilisation, what are socialists to do? These sophistries stem from a fundamental error, from wanting to settle wrong from right in contests that are resolved not with elements of justice, but with brute violence. Moreover, these are distinctions that could only be made by those who have a decisive and definitive force in resolving conflicts, not those who with their intervention could only shift the probability of the results of war, in the meantime surely increasing the consequences of hatred and revenge.

The war of defence

We will not recall extensively the notion that the proletariat has no interest to defend with the fatherland and the national frontiers. We will only say that in all wars, aggression and defence are reciprocal and often simultaneous. Aggression is an elastic word. Does it mean the violation of borders? But – militarily – it might be imprudent to wait for such a fact; it is necessary to prevent it by breaking off enemy attempts with a counter-invasion. Does aggression mean the breaking of diplomatic relations? But, according to books of various colours, no government lacks arguments to shift the responsibility for this onto the other. Is aggression understood as preparing for war? Then all modern States are aggressors, for they ceaselessly build ships and cannons and continually increase the numbers of their armies. Without going any further, it follows that adherence to the eventual national defence is a blank bill of exchange signed by socialists in the hands of bourgeois governments, who can make use of it as they see fit. To justify going to Libya it was said that the Turks had disgraced an Italian girl. It is the very old case of the wolf and the lamb.

The wars of nationality and independence

Let us come to the problem of nationalities.

Is it true that, before talking about international socialist action, we must resolve all irredentism and give all peoples political accommodation according to nationalities?

This needs to be looked at a little deeper. When the feudal regime gave way to the modern bourgeoisie, the latter wrote the postulate of national claims in large letters in its idealistic revolutionary class programme. The bourgeois revolution appeared to be made in the interests of the people, rather than in the interests of a new oligarchy, precisely because it emphasised its political rather than economic character. It was believed by bourgeois philosophers that all slavery would disappear with the elimination of the domination of one people over another and with the political equality of citizens before the law. Socialism has since shown that there is another, more substantial and deeper reason for the malaise of the masses, and that is class oppression, even within national groups. But without detracting from the great historical importance of the problem of nationalities, let us note that a partial, but fairly extensive, solution has already been found, and was found by means of war‑revolutions, in the heroic epoch of the bourgeoisie; when militarism was not as developed as it is today and with a few thousand huddled men, the bastions were knocked down as nations were liberated. That historical epoch was resolved in the formation and settlement of the great modern States, within which the bourgeoisie, less idealistic than then, largely exploits the proletariat and does conservation work.

Today, wars are waged by States and not by “nations”. They are resolved by the dominance of one or the other power, which, with little concern for romantic prejudices, extends its economic and political influence over peoples of all races and colours. Without going any further, the adjustment of nationalities has become unattainable. The motives for wars are quite different. Their results depend on economic-military coefficients, and since wealth and armed force are in the hands of the most solidly constituted States, the solutions to war problems are State, not national. The famous principle of nationality is then something elusive. Apart from a few classic cases, questions of national independence are controversial. Historical, geographical, ethnographic reasons authorise the most contradictory solutions. Even assuming the concord and goodwill of all European States, not even the famous arrangement that would then allow us to strive to overthrow the bourgeoisie would be possible. And such a difficult problem to solve peacefully would be entrusted to the randomness of war, to the ancipital fate of arms! But every war will create or resurrect at least as many problems of irredentism as it will destroy. And rivalries, alliances will become ever more absurd and complicated. Should the socialist proletariat join this bloody game, instead of devoting itself as of now and without prejudice of any kind to prepare the revolutionary effort?

After the classic Balkan national war against Turkey, the redeemed nationalities slaughtered each other. Japan is now an ally of Russia. The Boers fight under the British flag. All the wars of recent years fit badly into the old cliché of nationalities. And the nationalist who also poses the problem of the redemption, triumph, and hegemony of a nationality is more logical than the pseudo-socialist who wants to redeem and reconcile them all, but through a series of bloody wars which, in order to be led to that end, would have to be individually concocted.

Democratic wars

There remains the other alleged reason for socialist participation in the war: the need to favour the triumph of the more civilised, more evolved, more democratic nations over those backward in the historical and social process. The usual need to accelerate the completion of bourgeois evolution, which is the main argument for all kinds of transgressions, is therefore invoked; this would lead to the approval of colonial wars as wars of civilisation, against the concurring opinion of all socialists and against the other principle of wars of aggression, which we all agree with. In the Italo-Turkish war, we Italian socialists should not have been opponents, because the more or less democratic Italy was facing the less than feudal Turkey.

But the fundamentally erroneous notion is that socio-political tendencies of various States prevail over each other in wars and spread across the universe according to the fate of arms. Those tendencies depend on internal economic and social conditions and the relations of the social classes within each State, they change according to the unfolding of class and party struggles and their decisive moments are revolutions and civil wars.

In external wars, States do not take the luxury of fighting to make a more or less academic or pro‑sophisticated principle of democracy or absolutism prevail over the world… In their international relations, States live in a totally amoral environment and are inspired by the utmost selfishness. States that require their subjects to conform to certain rules in order to make social coexistence possible do not recognise any law in international relations, and even in times of peace they use the weapons of deception, cunning, corruption, and espionage against other States; to resort in times of war to the last resort of lawless violence. So‑called international law is in force as long as it is not convenient for a nation to violate it; applied to large modern States, it is utopian, for there is no law without an authority with superior powers to enforce it. Every government sees and can only see the cynical interests of its own State (it is with good reason that we always say “State” and not “nation”) and tends to preserve and defend them against internal and external enemies. Whatever party or philosophical school he belongs to, the government man always acts as a fierce conservative. The freedom he grants his subjects is in relation to the need to preserve the internal balance between the economic and political forces of classes and parties.

There are different schools of government, but they are different methods of ensuring maximum power to the State, and ultimately to the economic oligarchy that it impersonates. Hence, governments do not tend to make a principle triumph within a nation – let alone spread it abroad with arms – but only to strengthen the State and look after its interests in the most suitable way. One understands that this tendency is concealed under the fine phrases of civilisation, democracy, progress or perhaps order, religion, monarchical loyalism etc. The aim, however, is unique. The crusades, the Napoleonic wars, the wars of the Restoration, all the Holy Alliances, were inspired by other motives than mystical and philosophical reasons of universal propaganda…

Modern nations, governed by democracy, oppress and tyrannise in their colonies because of the lesser strength of their subjects. England, Germany, France, Italy, all have a shameful colonial history. And therefore the spread of certain modern principles cannot be expected from the military triumph of the countries in which they are already widespread, especially in the present age which is no longer a heroic age like the one in which the bourgeoisie was formed and could still have certain generosity.

On the other hand, is the triumph of a democratic regime always a step towards socialism? If we refuse to help bourgeois democracy either in its internal conflicts with the feudal classes and clerical parties or in the logical field of its further development – on the basis of the reasons for our intransigence – why should we then favour its military successes, which are such a questionable way of making propaganda of principle, and very little likely to provide coefficients of progress?

Firstly, then, “democracy” does not spread around the world with bayonets; secondly, it has long since ceased to deserve either our sympathy or our support.

The phenomenon – so much cited these days as an unquestioned truth – occurs perhaps in precisely the opposite sense. Military victories are a coefficient of political returns. After the Napoleonic epic, France suffered a restoration. After Sedan, we have the republic and a socialist attempt: the Commune. Every war, bringing about the famous national unanimity of parties and classes, raising the prestige of institutions and the army, whatever its cause and outcome, is not a step backwards in our revolutionary aspirations, whose natural means is the class struggle?