class="info">Karl Kautsky, Patriotism, War, and Social Democracy, Die neue Zeit, Vol. 23, No. 2 (June 7, 1905), Issue 37, pp. 343–348, No. 38, pp. 364–371.
https://library.fes.de/cgi-bin/neuzeit.pl?id=07.05563&dok=1904-05b&f=190405b_0343&l=190405b_0348.
https://library.fes.de/cgi-bin/neuzeit.pl?id=07.05568&dok=1904-05b&f=190405b_0364&l=190405b_0371.
Translation/Transcription: Daniel Gaido.
HTML Mark-up: Einde O’Callaghan for MIA.
The four questions posed to us by the editors of La vie socialiste could be answered briefly in a few sentences. But they encompass such vast and weighty issues that one could easily write four thick books on the subject. The latter is out of the question here, much to the relief of my readers and myself, but the former, too, seems to me rather pointless, for a person’s opinion is of little more than curiosity value if one does not know the reasons on which it is based. I shall therefore attempt to justify my position at least to some extent. However briefly I do so, I shall not be able to be entirely brief, given the complexity of the questions posed.
Thus, the very first question – whether patriotism and internationalism are compatible – is by no means a simple one. It depends on what one understands by patriotism. Patriotism, however, is not something given by nature; it is a social product. The fatherland changes with social conditions, and within a given society, the role played by the fatherland differs for each class, and thus their patriotism differs as well.
The question refers to the Communist Manifesto, but it is precisely the ste taken by Marx and Engels on the national issues of their time that best illustrates how complex the problem of patriotism is, for this ste was apparently a highly contradictory one. They championed with the utmost determination the national aspirations of the Italians, Hungarians and Poles, but just as much those of the Germans; to such an extent that one might have regarded them as German patriots, had they not, in 1870, sided with the French Republic against imperial Germany and fought most vigorously against the separation of Alsace-Lorraine from Fre. The second address by the General Council of the International on the Fro-Prussian War protested vigorously against the ‘crime of reviving the policy of conquest in the second half of the nineteenth century’ and against the ‘plunder of French territory’.
But however ardently they championed all these nations, they always viewed the independence aspirations of the smaller Slavic nations in Austria and Turkey with suspicion, even with aversion.
This appears highly contradictory when viewed from the standpoint of the bourgeois concept of nationality and patriotism, but not when these phenomena are considered from the standpoint of the proletariat’s struggle for emipation.
It has often been pointed out that the proletariat, as the lowest of all classes, cannot free itself without putting an end to all oppression and exploitation, including national oppression. The proletarian members of a nation that is oppressed, exploited, or even merely threatened in its independence by another nation must fight this oppression just as they would any other. On the other hand, however, the proletarian members of a nation that oppresses and exploits its neighbours – or at least threatens them – have not the slightest interest in this position, which benefits only the ruling classes of their own nation, the very same classes that exploit and oppress them. The proletarians of the dominated nation, on the other hand, are their natural allies. National antagonisms therefore need not find a place within the proletariat. They are alien to it where it has become intellectually and politically independent. Where this has been achieved, it will never develop an aggressive patriotism, nor will it ever seek to promote its own fatherland or nation at the expense of others.
This, however, is only one aspect of proletarian patriotism and not its most characteristic feature. Other classes, too, which do not belong to the exploiting classes, can generate a similar peaceful and tolerant patriotism, as petty-bourgeois radicalism demonstrates.
But the proletarian struggle for emipation is not merely a struggle against every form of oppression and exploitation; it is also a struggle for a new mode of production and thus for a new form of society, through which alone the abolition of every form of oppression and exploitation is possible. This new society is also accompanied by a new ethic.
Commodity production is the production of independent producers who compete with one another in complete freedom. This leads to the ethical ideal of liberalism and anarchism: the full freedom of the individual, who is to live out their life to the full. Liberalism differs from anarchism here merely in that it adapts its ethics to the needs of capitalist commodity production, with its social and national antagonisms, which necessitate the coercive organisation of the state, whilst anarchism is anti-capitalist, which compels it, however modern it may claim to be, to seek its ideal in simple commodity production, that of the petty bourgeoisie and small farmers. Anarchism is liberalism for all. Liberalism is anarchism for the ruling classes and their parasites.
But the capitalist mode of production cannot be overcome by a return to simple commodity production, but only by appropriating the technical achievements of capitalist private production for the whole of society, that is, through social production, through production carried out by society and for society. This will become the ideal of the proletariat of the capitalist mode of production as soon as it has freed itself intellectually and politically from liberalism and anarchism. With this, however, the individual’s personality too ceases to be an end in itself, but becomes a means to an end; this end, however, is not another individual, but society, the whole, which the individual must now serve. Not the reckless indulgence of the individual, but unreserved devotion to the whole becomes the categorical imperative of the new, socialist ethic, a categorical imperative that, unlike Kant’s, does not spring from some mystical world of things-in-themselves, but from the very real world of things-for-us, the mode of production. The proletarian sees his happiness not in the greatness and power of his own personality, but in the greatness and power of the organisation to which he belongs.
This does not, however, abolish the free development of the individual; rather, it transforms it from the privilege of a few ‘supermen’ – as it is today – into the common property of all. For it is only social production, which reduces the individual to a mere cog in a great mechanism, that creates the possibility of sufficient leisure for all, in which they can, once their productive labour is done, freely express themselves and develop their potential.
But this is merely a digression, intended to reassure anxious admirers of the free personality regarding its fate. This last remark has nothing to do with our subject.
However, just as the incorporation of all personalities into a great productive mechanism, which they must serve as small cogs, constitutes the goal of the proletarian struggle for emipation, so too is it already today the most important of its means of struggle. Through the development of its organisations, it adves victoriously. Organisation, however, means nothing other than the subordination of the individual to a whole, the restriction of his personal freedom. Our opponents, then, rail at nothing more than the ‘terrorism’ in social democracy and the trade unions, but they forget that the ‘free individual’ is a luxury which, apart from the lumpenproletariat and the bohemians, only the richest of the rich can afford today; that the question is no longer whether organisation or the free individual should prevail in production and society, but whether capitalist organisation in the service of a few individuals or socialist organisation in the service of society.
But what is the point of all this? most readers will ask. After all, this is a question of patriotism, not of ethics. Quite right; yet the two are most intimately intertwined, and the difference between bourgeois and proletarian patriotism is best understood once one has grasped the difference between bourgeois and proletarian ethics.
For bourgeois thinking, the personality of the individual is paramount. The community exists merely for his sake; its sole purpose is to ensure that individuals do not get in each other’s way. As the Declaration of the Rights of Man of the Revolution stated: ‘The exercise of the natural rights of every man has no other limits than those which ensure to other members of society the enjoyment of the same rights.’ By his personality, however, the bourgeois understands not merely what he is – that is so insignificant that no one threatens it – but also what he has; yet this is threatened more seriously by no one than by those who have nothing, the proletarians. The Declaration of the Rights of Man of the Revolution counted property among these inalienable rights. Not merely the product of personal labour, no, everything one possesses; however one may have acquired it, however much it may be the product of other personalities, however little it may stem from one’s own person. The protection of property is regarded by the bourgeois fatherland as the protection of the individual, just as much as freedom, security and resiste to oppression. And in practice, the protection of property becomes the foremost task of the bourgeois fatherland; the fatherland, as the embodiment of all the nation’s wealth, becomes the embodiment of the totality of property itself.
For the propertied classes, the fatherland is the embodiment of their own wealth, of their own power. Above all for the capitalist class, the fatherland increasingly becomes their domain, which they control, and from the exploitation of which they are able to exclude not only the competing capitalists of foreign countries but also the proletarians of their own country. However selfish the individual capitalist may be, however indifferent to the common good, in all matters where class interests, not personal ones, are at stake, the propertied classes are highly patriotic, placing the fatherland above any other social institution.
On the other hand, however, protecting property means nothing other than excluding those who have none. And if one regards the fatherland as the embodiment of all the wealth it contains, then the proletarian is excluded from it. This is not merely stated in the Communist Manifesto; Tiberius Gracchus already expressed it in that famous speech in which he pointed out that whilst the wild beasts of Italy had their dens and lairs in which to rest, the men upon whom the greatness of the Italian fatherland depended were, with wife and child, without a fixed shelter:
‘It is a mockery when the generals in battle call upon them to fight for their household gods and the graves of their fathers (that is, for the fatherland); for among them there is scarcely a single man who possesses a burial place for his own kin or a household altar of his own. They bear the sword and die on the battlefield solely to procure riches, splendour and rapturous pleasures for others. They have conquered the world and are called its masters; yet not a single patch of land belongs to them.”
But the proletarians wish to abolish private ownership of the nation’s capitalist wealth, of the fatherland, in order to make it the common property of all; they wish to transform the state from an organisation of domination and exploitation into an organism of social production. The proletarians therefore do not yet have a fatherland, but they wish to conquer it and expand its domain by making it – that is, its wealth – accessible to all members of the nation, and they wish to free it from all domination by native or foreign oppressors and exploiters. In this sense, they are national and have a keen interest in the prosperity and independence of the fatherland.
But the social organism of social production to which they aspire cannot be confined to a single nation or country. The capitalist mode of production has created the world market; whereas formerly only surplus goods were exchanged between countries, and each country produced for itself everything essential that it needed, today international trade has become a condition of life for all capitalist nations, and none of these nations can any longer exist on its own. The abolition of commodity production therefore necessarily leads ultimately to a social regulation of the entire international production, to the establishment of an organism of social production encompassing the whole world market; but with this, the whole to which the individual must serve is no longer the fatherland or the nation, but civilised humanity.
This is by no means a fiful utopia of the future; it is already making itself felt in a most practical way in the proletarian class struggle, which is becoming more and more international.
Admittedly, the bourgeois world must also recognise a kind of internationality that world trade brings with it. But this internationalism is merely a transposition of the relationship that, according to bourgeois ethics, should prevail between individuals, onto the relationship between nations. Capitalist ethics proclaims for the individual country, just as for the individual, the right to extend its property and sphere of influence at the expense of others, and to use them to the extent that its means of power permit. Not so brutal is the petty-bourgeois radicalism or anarchism that corresponds to simple commodity production. This calls for laisser faire, laisser aller for nations as for individuals; but just as the latter, according to the Declaration of Human Rights, are to find their limits in the equal rights of others, so too must the former.
Quite different from this kind of internationalism, which allows every nation to do as it pleases so long as it does not encroach upon others, is that of the proletariat, which calls for the unification of both nations and individuals in joint, planned action and, accordingly, already unites the proletarian organisations of the various nations in such action today.
The ultimate goal of the international socialist society and the movement of the proletariat’s international struggle for emipation are inseparable; they are synonymous. Nothing is more absurd than the idea of treating one as nothing and the other as everything. But whether one considers the ultimate goal, the movement, or both together, the fatherland, just like the individual, will always cease to be the fulcrum around which all our political and social thinking and work revolves. The attainment of the socialist ultimate goal must certainly liberate the masses of individuals far more, and must make the individual nations richer and more secure than any social organisation has hitherto been able to do. And the movement towards this ultimate goal must, on the whole and in the grand scheme of things, already be accompanied by an increasing liberation of individuals, by the growth of wealth and security of individual nations. Yet both the individual and the nation must be subordinated to the proletariat’s international struggle for emipation, and where any of their particular interests conflict with the needs of this struggle, the individual or national interest – like any other particular interest, such as that of a guild or profession – must take a back seat.
The capitalist-minded nationalist may declare: right or wrong, my country – whether it is right or wrong, I always stand by my fatherland; the Social Democrat must have enough intelligence and courage to recognise when the particular interest of a nation, even if it is his own, stands in the way of the proletariat’s struggle for emipation, and to act accordingly. It is this conviction that explains why Marx and Engels opposed not only the national aspirations of the Slavs of Austria (with the exception of the Poles) and of Turkey, as long as they believed that the worst enemy of the international struggle for emipation was deriving benefit from them; it also explains why they undertook, together with the entire German Social Democracy, to oppose the nationalism of their own nation during the Franco-Prussian War, when it took forms that could only serve to promote the Hohenzollerns and Tsarism, but which were bound to cause the deepest harm to democracy in both Germany and France.
So much for the first question, concerning the relationship
between the fatherland and internationalism. And now to the others,
of which I wish to address only the fourth; the second and third
resolve themselves incidentally. The fourth, on the other hand,
requires some longer elaboration.
If one answers the question of war too categorically, one can easily find oneself in an unpleasant dilemma; both when one believes it is the duty of social democracy to abhor and render impossible every war, whatever it may be, and when one declares that it is the duty of social democracy, whenever the fatherland finds itself in conflict with a foreign enemy, to joyfully mobilise everything for its defence.
The latter point has already been touched upon in the previous article. If, for the Social Democrat, the fatherland is not the highest good, if its interests are subordinate to those of the general proletarian struggle for emipation, then its defence cannot be the duty of Social Democracy under all circumstances, but only when patriotic interests coincide with proletarian interests or those of general social development. Note, we are speaking here of that participation by social democracy which is voluntary, not of that which it may be compelled to perform under the obligation of conscription. We shall deal with the latter later.
But can it not be the duty of a country’s social democracy to rally behind any war it may have to wage under any circumstes, even a defensive war, that it may have to wage; nor is it its duty to condemn outright, from the outset, any voluntary participation in a war, on the grounds that war is an immoral, barbaric means, and that we desire peace among all peoples.
Certainly we want eternal peace, but no more than we want, for inste, the abolition of class antagonisms. But does this desire mean that we renounce the class struggle? On the contrary, we in particular recognise its necessity in today’s society far more keenly than all those who wish to perpetuate this society of class antagonisms and class struggle. The same applies to war. We Social Democrats wish to create an international social organism in which all major social and national antagonisms are overcome and a common social power exists which transcends every individual nation and thereby stands above them all as an arbiter in any minor differences. In this way, we wish to create the possibility of eternal peace between nations. But precisely for this reason, we recognise all the more clearly the impossibility of such peace today, when we are still far removed from such an international socialist society, and know all the better that all attempts to bridge and conceal the deep chasms yawning between them – and from which new causes of war arise time and again – by means of arbitration tribunals of the sovereign capitalist governments of individual countries and similar cosmetic measures are nothing but utopian fantasies. War, like revolution, is a catastrophe that from time to time afflicts modern society with iron necessity and can only disappear along with it.
For a century now, both have been declared dead countless times, only to awaken again and again to new, robust life in defie of all eulogies. In these prophecies, the thought has always been born of a wish – a wish arising from the fact that war and revolution become ever more terrible scourges for bourgeois society in direct proportion to its growth and to the development within its bosom of the seeds of new wars and revolutions.
True, some of the earlier causes of war have receded, but only to make way for new ones. A country’s capitalist mode of production requires constant development, constant expansion of its market and sphere of influence; this, however, leads to a constant policy of conquest on the part of all the great capitalist nations. Admittedly, a state of equilibrium has been established in Europe itself for the past thirty years, one that could only be disrupted by the most terrible catastrophes and which therefore, for the time being, prevents any nation from entertaining thoughts of wars of conquest on our continent – except perhaps against Turkey. But all the more eagerly are they all endeavouring to grab as much territory in Asia and Africa as still lies ‘ownerless’, that is, without a European master. Every such campaign of conquest, however, also harbours within it the seeds of European entanglements and wars. One need only think of Fashoda and Morocco.
Any society based on class or national antagonisms requires the force of arms for its preservation. It is folly for bourgeois peace-loving idealists to seek to uphold the capitalist mode of production whilst abolishing war, its necessary consequence.
However great our longing for peace may be, however much we may shrink from all means of violence, we cannot prevent situations arising in the modern struggles of classes and nations, just as in earlier times, in which violence is employed by one side or the other, and only violence is capable of warding off that violence; the use of violence then becomes a necessity. Anyone who, à la Tolstoy, declares the use of violence to be sinful under all circumstes thereby only aids those among the ruling classes who are the most unscrupulous in their use of violence.
However, if one considers violence to be justified under certain circumstances, then one cannot, from the outset, condemn war as such under all circumstances in today’s society. War, as is well known, is the continuation of politics by other means. If we are to judge the justification of a war from the proletarian standpoint, we must first and foremost form a judgement on the politics of which war is the continuation. That, and not the mere fact of the use of force, is decisive for us.
It goes without saying that, in view of the horrors caused by every war – and under which the working classes suffer far more than anyone else – the use of military force can only be justified in the most urgent cases. But a Social Democrat could find himself in a very awkward position if he were to condemn every war in the light of these horrors. Not even every war of aggression is to be condemned.
The distinction between a war of aggression and a war of defence is, in most cases, a very dubious one. War is such a terrible venture that there are likely to be few governments, however despotic and frivolous they may be, that would willingly undertake it. As a rule, they resort to it only in a desperate situation, in a conflict created by circumstances from which the two adversaries can no longer find a peaceful way out. Who then takes the initiative and declares war is a question of very secondary importance; it is decided less by considerations of ‘justice’ and the ‘common good’ of one side or the other than by diplomatic skill and strategic considerations here and there.
Was Japan the aggressor in the current war? Were the Boers the aggressors against the British? Who could answer these questions with certainty? Anyone wishing to make their approval of a war contingent on whether their nation is the victim or the aggressor is unlikely to be in a position to answer this question precisely until several years after the peace treaty has been concluded.
Social democracy, however, may even find itself in a position to call for a war of aggression. In 1848, Marx and Engels considered Germany’s war of aggression against Russia to be necessary. On 2 July 1848, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung wrote:
“Only a war with Russia is a war of revolutionary Germany, a war in which it can wash away the sins of the past, in which it can steel itself, in which it can defeat its own autocrats, in which, as befits a people shaking off the chains of long, sluggish slavery, purchases the propaganda of civilisation with the sacrifice of its sons and liberates itself internally by liberating itself externally.” [2]
Later, Marx and Engels sought to influence public opinion in England with the aim of inciting that country to take military action against Russia. Tsarism appeared to them as the most dangerous enemy of European freedom, and only the force of arms of a major Western European power capable of rendering it harmless. May we reproach them for this? Certainly not.
But this is about more than a mere judgement on the past, which would in any case be rather incidental. Rather, it is a question which, precisely now, due to the Russian Revolution, could become acute at any moment. Let us suppose that the revolution triumphs in Russia and its repercussions bring a proletarian regime to power in Fre as well, thereby provoking a coalition of European monarchs against the Russian Revolution. Would international social democracy protest if the French Republic came to the aid of the Russian? We hardly think so. In that case, however, it would do well not to condemn every war out of hand under all circumstances.
Admittedly, as long as we are dealing solely with capitalist governments, almost every war they instigate will be detrimental to the interests of the proletariat and to the interests of general social development that coincide with these, and will therefore be reprehensible from the proletarian standpoint.
In the recent discussions on Hervé’s propaganda in Fre, it was indeed objected to Comrade Hervé from some quarters that, should war break out between France and Germany, it could become a war between republic and monarchy, in which democracy would also be threatened along with France; the spectre was even conjured up that a France defeated by Germany would run the risk of losing its national integrity, its distinct character, indeed its very language. But all this is mere fantasy.
Even in 1871, when France lay defenceless on the ground, its Republic had not yet shed the eggshells of its revolutionary origins, and the republican idea still possessed propagandistic power within the liberalism of all nations, Bismarck was careful not to impose a monarchy on France. And now is some German statesman to entertain such a thought, when the bourgeois Third Republic has become a conservative power that fraternises with the hereditary enemy of democracy and has made the Marseillaise socially acceptable in the Tsar’s realm? When the idea of the bourgeois republic has lost all its propagandistic power and the monarchies feel threatened only by social democracy and not by bourgeois republicanism? Where Paris has become the Mecca of all monarchs, whose bourgeois population cheers them on more enthusiastically today than, say, in 1867 under the Second Empire?
But just as little does any German statesman think of demanding, should a war with France ever break out, a piece of French territory in Europe as the prize of victory. Germany still suffers enough today from the fact that it is not a purely national state, that it has French, Danish and Polish peoples on its borders who often lie heavy on its stomach. An increase in these elements would only mean an increase in the German Empire’s difficulties.
And is the German Empire not Protestant? Yet every piece of France it annexed would merely increase its Catholic or, even more worryingly, its non-Christian population. The particularism of Catholic Bavaria alone is already troublesome enough for the Prussian Protestant Empire.
Germany has one direction in which it could still expand without encountering too much resistance. The majority of Germans in Austria would gladly consent to annexation by Germany; the decrepit Habsburg monarchy could offer no significant resistance. Nevertheless, Prussian statesmen have always rejected German irredentism in Austria, because it would seem dangerous to them to increase the non-Prussian, non-Protestant elements within the Empire. How could a German desire for French territory possibly arise in such circumstances!
There are only two causes that could involve France in a war today: its alliance with Russia and its colonial policy.
And the situation in the other European states is much the same as in Fre. At a time when Tsarist Russia lies prostrate, no European war is conceivable that would not be utterly nefarious and reprehensible. None that would not profoundly harm the interests of the proletariat and social progress. None whose prevention we should not strive to achieve by every promising means.
But what means can be employed to this end?
A very effective means would be the conversion of standing armies into militia forces. This conversion does not render warfare impossible, nor does it leave the country defenceless. Admittedly, given the current state of the art of war or military science, successful warfare is only possible through trained soldiers under the command of a scientifically educated officer corps. But it is nonsense to claim that this can be achieved only through the form of a standing army, only through a corps of officers constituting a privileged caste, only through the separation of the soldier from the people, through the subjection of the soldier-to-be to special military law which makes him, in all matters both on and off duty, a mindless slave to those who instruct him in shooting, marching and fencing in formation; and that this training ultimately requires that conscripts, who are not in the barracks under a regime of blind obedience, be unarmed.
The militia system does not prevent the adequate training of conscripts; rather, it makes it possible to train even more conscripts than the standing army; but it makes it impossible to use the army as a blind tool of the government. This rules out the possibility of the government waging a war for which there is no enthusiasm among the people, and thus the danger of war, whilst not entirely eliminated, is at least considerably reduced.
To oppose the standing army in every way, including during budget votes, is one of the primary duties of every socialist politician. Anyone who fails to do so betrays the cause of the proletariat.
However, we are not yet in a position to enforce the implementation of the militia system through this means. It will take a revolution to achieve that.
But is there no other means, in the meantime, of thwarting wars? For years now, the anarchists, who are, after all, fond of ‘direct action’, have believed they have found a direct path leading straight to the goal, and this has been adopted by the trade unionists in France, who are heavily influenced by anarchism; from their ranks, supporters of this direct path have also found their way into the Socialist Party. This path is simply the refusal to serve by soldiers or at least reservists, as advocated, amongst others, by Comrade Hervé, which indeed prompted the current inquiry.
In fact, the method is a very simple one and, if carried out, an infallible one. If its application were actually to render war impossible, one could hardly object to it in those cases – and there are 99 out of 100 – where war must prove detrimental to the interests of the people. I see no ethical grounds which, from the standpoint of proletarian patriotism, would preclude it from the outset.
But will it and can it be carried out?
That is the crucial question.
Firstly, if the measure is to make war impossible, it must not be applied unilaterally, but must be applied on both sides. If it is applied on only one side, it does not result in the prevention of war, but in the opening of the national border to an enemy invasion; it thus merely causes the war to take the worst form it can assume for the country. But that cannot be the aim of a proletarian action. An invasion by enemy armies would mean such unspeakable misery for the whole country that it would of itself call upon the entire population to defend against it, and no class could escape this powerful tide.
Indeed, when some comrades draw a distinction between a defensive war and a war of aggression, and believe that in the former case everyone capable of doing so – whether obliged or not – must take up arms against the enemy under all circumstances, they have in any event had in mind, by ‘defensive war’, the repulsion of an enemy invasion. Yet these are two different things. Whatever the cause of the war may be, every nation, whether attacked or attacking, must strive to keep the theatre of war away from its own territory and shift it to enemy territory. Whether this comes to pass, however, does not depend on who causes the war, but on who is the stronger and more agile. It should be noted that a militia army by no means precludes the war being waged on enemy territory. On the contrary. It allows the army to be larger and to be mobilised more swiftly – since every soldier has his equipment to hand – than the system of standing armies with reserves who first have to fetch their equipment.
However much one may condemn war, one cannot possibly seek to combat it by imposing the worst of its devastation solely upon one’s own country. The idea of a military strike therefore makes sense from the outset only if it is initiated by both sides. Unilateral propaganda for a military strike would be pointless. Anyone wishing to proceed in this way must at least ensure that a similar agitation is stirred up in other nations.
This is not to say, however, that a bilateral military strike promises greater success.
Should this strike be effective, it would have to become a genuine mass strike. Is that to be expected? As for the standing army, Hervé gives up on the matter himself. That leaves the reservists. But the peasants will certainly not strike, nor will the petty bourgeoisie, nor even the indifferent proletarians. So only the organised proletarians come into consideration, that is to say, those among them who are reservists. But does one really believe that even these will strike en masse? A strike whose participants could be punished by death! And this is not the death one exposes oneself to, surrounded by the mass of comrades, in the heat of battle, but one for which one must decide in cold blood, in the bosom of one’s family! Would it not be unheard-of optimism to assume that in any state 10,000 men would be capable of such heroism? But what are 10,000 men to a modern mass army? Their absence would scarcely be noticed.
Any attempt at mass desertion would be immediately drowned in the blood of the proletariat’s bravest fighters. But it could not even come to a mere attempt without years of persistent propaganda in favour of desertion. But do we know what that means in most states? If German Social Democracy were to recognise the military strike as a tactical weapon at one of its congresses and then propagate this resolution accordingly, this would be the best means of overcrowding German prisons and sweeping away the editorial offices and organisations of German Social Democracy.
Does one wish to say, in the end, that one must take this risk for the sake of the great idea one is defending? But what would one achieve? A martyrdom for the sake of an idea that would appear to the mass of the population as a crime, as the crime of opening the country to enemy invasion with all its horrors in the event of war.
Without the slightest possibility of actually preventing a war, one would provoke the worst persecutions, merely to achieve a single result: to compromise the party to the deepest degree, to completely paralyse its propagandistic power. And the latter would also have to occur in countries where freedom of the press and speech permits such agitation. They can only harm our cause under all circumstes.
The idea of a military strike is therefore certainly well-intentioned, most noble and heroic, but a heroic folly. It is more heroic, but no less a folly, than the attempts by bourgeois peace-mongers to eliminate wars from the world through arbitration tribunals.
Both forms of folly are based on the mistake of viewing war as an isolated fact. In contrast, we must constantly remind ourselves that it is merely the continuation of politics by other means. As long as we lack the power to prevent the politics that lead to war, we also lack the power to prevent war itself. But once we have the ability to prevent such politics, we must use it before it has gone so far that war is looming on the horizon. Only in this way can wars be avoided. All efforts to counteract war, in contrast to the governments, only when it threatens to become a tangible reality, are doomed to failure.
Our party, however, has long been active in this preventive manner in all countries. Only under exceptionally favourable circumstes, which cannot be foreseen, might it be possible for it to thwart a war that has already been declared through an isolated heroic display of strength; but everywhere it works unceasingly to strengthen the bonds of internationalism and to paralyse the incitement of nations. Through its principled opposition to modern protectionism and colonial policy, and by demonstrating that these serve not the interests of the proletariat or of society as a whole, but only those of individual privileged strata within the state to the detriment of the proletariat and society; that the peoples have not the slightest reason to fall out over tariffs and colonies; through this propaganda, it has prevented colonial wars and tariff wars from gaining popular support; it has made it impossible for governments to unleash large-scale popular movements for their purposes of inciting hostility between nations.
The strongest obstacle to a European war, however, is constituted by the socialist parties of the various countries, simply by virtue of their powerful existence and their revolutionary programme, which threatens any capitalist regime that collapses as a result of a catastrophe. The catastrophe that leads to the most complete collapse, however, is defeat in a frivolous war.
All governments know this; they know that where a strong social democracy exists, a defeat in war means far more to them than merely a loss of power, money, perhaps also taxpayers, and prestige: that it can bring about the end of all bourgeois rule in the country. And that is why they repeatedly come to terms with one another and postpone their reckoning.
Just as we can generally do little today to prevent a war when it is on the very brink of breaking out, so we need only fulfil our duty in everyday life, fight in accorde with our programme, and increase our strength in order to do everything for world peace that can be done for it under the present bale of power.
Should war nevertheless break out, however, the proletariat is today scarcely strong enough anywhere to make war impossible before it begins through a revolution – and a military strike constitutes a revolution, and a prepared, organised one at that. Yet it is already strong enough in all capitalist states that any costly, futile war must become the starting point for a revolution that establishes a proletarian regime and thereby opens the way to a development leading to eternal world peace.
1. This article was written for our French sister publication, La Vie Socialiste, in response to a request worded as follows:
Dear Comrade,
In view of the current situation, where bourgeois imperialism threatens world peace, and following the recent controversies in France, La Vie Socialiste believes it would be of interest to launch an extensive inquiry into socialist internationalism and its practical consequences.
More than half a century ago, Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto’:
‘The workers have no country. One cannot take from them what they do not possess. Inasmuch as the proletariat must first win political power, rise to become a national class, and constitute itself as a nation, it is itself still national, though by no means in the sense of the bourgeoisie.’
We hope, dear comrade, that you will share with us your personal views, as they arise from the situation of the socialist party in your country, etc.
2. Gesammelte Schriften von Marx und Engels, herausgegeben von Mehring, 3. Band, S. 114.
Last updated on 14 September 2026