The Discussion on Imperialism and the Oath of Basle 1911—1913
In the fight against imperialist war, the menace of which drew closer and closer, the Socialist International seemed to be united. But behind this formal unity on the rejection of war were concealed the most profound differences of principle. It is not necessary to be a socialist in order to hate and be repelled by war. Before 1914 the majority of the proletarian and petty bourgeois masses in all countries were hostile to war; it was no accident that the bloody Tsar Nicho-las sought to win popularity by means of the Hague Peace Conference. In France as in England the policy of imperialist war preparations and alliances was carried on under the pacifist mask of securing the country from the danger of attack from German militarism.
In Germany the feeling of the masses against war was clearly demon-strated in the Social Democrats’ great election victory of 1912. It was chiefly the party’s resistance to armaments, to the tremendous growth in the system of de-fence, which won the masses against the imperialist united front of the bour-geois parties. In an election struggle in which the questions of the increased cost of living, of the burden of taxation and the tariff policy were closely bound up with the questions of imperialist policy, the Social Democratic vote in-creased from 3.25 to 4.25 millions and the number of its seats from 43 to 110.
Both in the Tripolitan war in 1911, clearly a war of robbery on the part of Italy against Turkey, and in the Balkan war in 1912, which began under the cloak of a national struggle for the emancipation of the Christian peoples of the Balkans from Turkish domination and which was soon transformed into a fight for the spoils among the small Balkan states acting as the agents of the impe-rialist powers, the socialist parties of the belligerent countries opposed the war decisively. The representatives of social-imperialism were expelled from the Ital-ian Party; the socialists of Turkey and the Balkan countries unanimously con-demned the war which, behind the mask of national emancipation, was really a preliminary encounter of the imperialist powers in the struggle for the redivi-sion of the world.
At that time, immediately before the world war, it seemed unthinkable that on the outbreak of war the socialists’ hostility to war should change into defence of the bourgeois fatherland. But the real weakness and disunity of the International was shown in the confusion on the question of imperialism and the consequent approach to bourgeois pacifism.
Bourgeois pacifists, however sincerely they may detest war, are incapable of carrying on a consistent struggle against imperialist war, which is character-istic of our epoch, for as bourgeois they align themselves with the bourgeois state and they cannot attack and endanger it, once its existence is at stake in war time. It was not surprising that pacifists became defenders of the father-land on the outbreak of war. The same was bound to happen with any “social-ist” who, in his opposition to war, was not differentiated in principle from the bourgeois pacifists.
The Chemnitz Congress of the German Social Democratic Party in Sep-tember 1912 discussed the question of imperialism and bourgeois pacifism. In the discussion the same grouping was apparent which had been characteristic of the internal party situation since the Mannheim Congress of 1908. The rights hid behind the centrists, who opposed them only very mildly, while their struggle against the lefts was very vigorous. The lefts were a comparatively small group as against this united front. The rights concealed their imperial-ism, which was particularly noticeable on the colonial question, behind pacifist phrases, and pacifism was the platform on which centre and right united.
The dispute between the left and the centre centred about the question whether imperialism, with its policy of armaments and its imperialist wars, was a necessary form of capitalism at the present lime, or a policy of the capitalists or of a part of the capitalists which could, still within bourgeois society, be re-placed by a pacifist policy.
The leaders of the centre, Kautsky, Haase, Ledebour, were of the opinion that there were tendencies within capitalism itself directed against imperialism which must be exploited in order to mitigate or to eliminate the danger of war by means of disarmament and courts of arbitration.
The left wing in which, in addition to Rosa Luxemburg, Radek, Panne-koek and Lensch played a leading part, contended that imperialism was the characteristic form of capitalism in (he present stage of development and that competitive armaments, colonial policy and imperialist war were essential con-stituents of the capitalist order of society. They would recognise no tendencies counter to imperialism except the class struggle of the revolutionary proletariat and no means of preventing war except the socialist revolution. Consequently the lefts were against disarmaments and courts of arbitration as being decep-tive bourgeois pacifist slogans.
Haase, reporting for the Party Committee, referred to the fact that from time to time the English government had attempted to negotiate with the Ger-man government on the subject of naval disarmament. That proved that com-petitive armaments were not vital to capitalism; therefore the proposal of the Reichstag fraction for limitation of armaments was correct. He instanced the tendency towards international trustification as running counter to the warlike tendency peculiar to imperialism. If an Anglo-German war was inevitable, what was the point of these demonstrations of peace?
Lensch, who, since Rosa Luxemburg was prevented by ill health from at-tending the Congress, appeared as the principal speaker for the lefts, correctly contested this centrist argument. From time to time and to some extent, ar-mament agreements between individual powers were certainly possible, but an international agreement on general limitation of armaments was impossible. Yes, there were tendencies against competitive armaments and against imperi-alism, but they were the tendencies which were opposed to capitalism alto-gether — socialism.
“These counter-tendencies are in their nature revolutionary, they go beyond the existing order of society. We have to place our-selves in their service. But they know nothing of disarmament....
“Let us say to the masses that imperialism is the last word for existing society, that it opens all the sources of social revolu-tion. By subjecting the whole earth to its rule it has opened the last reservoirs from which its life flows and has choked up the channels along which its tremendously increased productive forces find an outlet. But in the home country itself it drives every con-tradiction to a head; while the tables of the capitalist magnates groan under the weight of gold, the spectre of hunger stalks the streets of the working people. The class struggle is sharpening visibly and in the great modern struggles of the trade unions the organised classes confront each other so closely that each fighter looks directly into the eyes of his class enemy. We are approaching a time of great mass struggles and bitter conflicts which will make the greatest demands on the insight and the strength in action of proletarian organisations. For those struggles we must be armed.”
The force of this argument could not entirely escape Haase; and perhaps the agreement of Bernstein, who had been enthusiastically in favour of disar-mament and courts of arbitration, also influenced him. At any rate, in his reply he said that too great importance should not be attached to courts of arbitra-tion and the party was one in its determination to exert the whole strength of the proletariat against the danger of war.
“Imperialism is the grave-digger of the capitalist system of production; at the height of its development capitalism is trans-formed into socialism.”
The resolution, which was passed with three dissentions and two absten-tions, contained that mixture of revolutionary acknowledgment of imperialism as the stage preceding socialism with pacifist illusions which is characteristic of centrism.
“Although imperialism, arising from the capitalist economic system, can only be completely overcome with the latter, nothing which can mitigate its dangerous effects must be overlooked.
“The Party Congress declares its resolute determination to do everything lo bring about understanding among the nations and to preserve peace.
“The Party Congress demands that competitive armaments should be ended by international agreements as they threaten peace and are driving humanity forward to a dreadful catastrophe.
“In place of the present robber policy greedy for booty, the Congress demands freedom of world trade and the abolition of the protective system which only serves to enrich the capitalist mag-nates and the large landowners.
“The Party Congress expects that all party comrades will un-tiringly exert all their strength in building up the political, trade union and co-operative organisations of the class conscious prole-tariat, in order to fight with greater power against imperialism until it has been defeated. For it is the task of the proletariat to trans-form capitalism, which has reached its. highest stage, into socialist society and thus to ensure enduring peace, independence and freedom to the peoples.”
The attitude of friendly neighbourliness to bourgeois pacifism was not an isolated deviation from the line of proletarian class struggle; it had its counter-part in the attitude of the party in the election struggle. The German Party Committee not only agreed on an election pact with the “Progressive People’s Party” — ‘ a party which, with all its democratic and liberal phrases, was com-pletely imperialist — but also agreed to “damp down” the election struggle in a number of constituencies where it was feared that a sharp election struggle would drive the progressives into the arms of the right wing parties. The plan for damping down was as follows: until the actual election no meetings were to be held, no leaflets distributed, no voting papers submitted to the electors and on election day itself there was to be no effort to take the electors to the poll. This agreement was a violation of the principles of the revolutionary class struggle as set forth in the resolution on tactics adopted by the Zurich Con-gress in 1893.
These damping down tactics, which were very sharply attacked by Rosa Luxemburg in the press,1 and against which Wilhelm Pieck, on behalf of a great part of the Berlin organisation, protested, were endorsed by a large majority at the party congress.
It is clear that with such a policy of compromise towards imperialist par-ties, so long as they called themselves progressive, no real struggle against im-perialism could be conducted. In fact in 1911 Molkenbuhr, on behalf of the Party Committee, opposed the organisation of mass demonstrations against German policy in Morocco on the ground that in the elections it would give the bourgeois parties a handle against the Social Democrats.
The extraordinary international Congress convened at Basle in November 1912 also took place under the banner, not of revolutionary class struggle, but of compromise with bourgeois pacifism. The accentuation of the international situation in consequence of the Balkan war was the occasion for the hasty con-vening of the congress. The Austrian government had ordered mobilisation and even then it was clear to every person with insight that an Austro-Serbian con-flict was bound to ignite a great world conflagration.
All the external characteristics of the Congress, which should have been rather an international demonstration than an international deliberation, ex-pressed the sentimental, pacifist nature of the Social Democratic anti-war pol-icy. The meeting was welcomed by a government councillor, on behalf of the Swiss. The government of the Canton of Basle extended to the Congress its warmest greetings and wishes. The church authorities placed the historic ca-thedral at the disposal of the anti-war assembly. In the demonstration to the cathedral marched a group of white-robed children waving palms bearing the touching inscription: “It is more glorious to dry your tears than to shed streams of blood.” Behind the children marched Jaurès and Kautsky; the worthy grey-beard certainly did not dream that a few years later he would become one of the most zealous advocates of war against a proletarian state.
Each country marched separately, and each sang its own song, a pointed symbol of the unity which was soon to be made apparent in the International!
In the demonstration there was also a carriage wreathed in flowers in which a white-robed queen of peace blew the trumpet of peace. Four comrades carried a large red book inscribed with the motto of the well known patron of peace, Bertha von Suttner: “Down with weapons!”
At the demonstration in the cathedral admiration was aroused by the Great Council, the Civic Council, the Synod and the Church Council. The cele-bration was ushered in to the sound of church bells. The Social Democratic President of the government, Blocher, who opened the meeting, praised the hospitality of the church authorities with the words: “The ideals of socialism have grown out of a world of thought and feeling which has left deep traces in the history of the Christian religion.” Only the grey-haired Bebel protested against this base flattery of the church. It is true that he spoke of his joy at be-ing able, as an atheist, to express his thanks to the church and expressed the opinion that if Christ came again, he would not stand with those who called themselves Christians, but in the ranks of the socialists, but he added the pro-phetic words:
“Peace on earth and good will to men — in the next few weeks those words will again echo from a hundred thousand pul-pits in the Christian churches, and yet in truth it is the greatest hypocrisy. For the same men who preach those words would mount the pulpit with perhaps even greater joy to spur on the peo-ple to murderous war, annihilating mankind and destroying every-thing.”
The Swiss veteran of the working class movement, the old opportunist Hermann Greulich, celebrated the election victory in Germany as “a splendid guarantee of peace,” and at the same time proclaimed the patriotic duty of the Swiss citizen: “You will not ask us to deny our duty as citizens.”
Sakasov, representative of the Serbian Social Democrats, who had cou-rageously opposed the government during the Balkan war, took the opportu-nity of emphasising that reforms must be carried out by peaceful means. “This peaceful reform policy is our strength.” But apart from such frank acknowl-edgments of reformism, there was no lack of revolutionary speeches and in par-ticular a number of speakers referred to the idea that formed the base of the Stuttgart resolution, that of utilising the crisis into which an imperialist war would thrust the capitalist system in order to bring about the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.
The Swiss Social Democrat Blocher said:
‘‘The European Social Democrats detest the war which looms over the horizon of Europe, but they do not fear it. If there is one power in Europe which has nothing to fear from a world war, but rather much to win, it is Social Democracy. In all probability a European war would liberate tremendous movements and upheav-als which must accelerate the collapse of the economic system un-der which the working class today suffers.”
Keir Hardie appealed to the power of fifteen million Social Democratic electors and cried triumphantly: “The fight for freedom and progress in the po-litical sphere has to a large extent already been won.” Democracy and war were irreconcilable contradictions. Should, however, a world war break out, then he hoped that the working class would make use of its economic weapons — of the international revolutionary strike against war.
Victor Adler expressed the hope that should war be unleashed by Aus-tria, the punishment of history would follow upon this crime.
“We hope that if this crime is committed, then it will auto-matically — I say automatically — mean the beginning of the end of the rule of the criminals.”
Even if the emphasis on the automatic collapse of capitalism denied any thought of a violent revolution, the speech showed that even the opportunists who stood furthest to the right were clear as to the revolutionary consequences of an imperialist war.
Jaurès, whose revolutionary heart often went beyond his reformist head, announced that the International would everywhere develop its “legal or revolu-tionary activities” in order to prevent war or in order “to give the criminals the reward they had earned,” closing with the words:
“Governments should remember, when they conjure up the danger of war, how easy it would be for the peoples to make the simple calculation that their own revolution would cost them less sacrifice than the war of others.”
Vaillant emphasised that in the manifesto which had been accepted, every method of fighting against war was recommended.
“Neither insurrection against war nor the general strike is excluded!... But should capitalism to its own misfortune really bring about war, then it would itself have to bear full responsibility for all the consequences which the will of the proletariat would draw. Those consequences would be found in the social revolu-tion!”
In the name of all socialist women, Clara Zetkin made a revolutionary speech which was sharply distinguished from the sentimentality of the anti-war demonstration. She said:
“If we mothers were to fill our children with the deepest de-testation of war, if we were from their earliest youth to plant in them the feeling, the consciousness of socialist fraternity, then the time would come when even in the hour of gravest danger there would be no power on earth able to tear that ideal from their hearts... Then, in the times of most bitter conflict and danger, they would think first of all of their proletarian and human duty.
“If we women and mothers rise against mass murder it is not because we, in our selfishness and weakness, are incapable of making great sacrifices for the sake of great objects and ideals; we have been through the hard school of life in capitalist society, and in that school we have become fighters... So we can bear to see our own fight and fall if that serves the cause of freedom. In that fight we shall see that the women of the masses are filled with the spirit of those mothers of old times who gave their sons their shields with the words: ‘Return either with it, or upon it.’ Our most urgent care should be the mental development of the growing generation, which will prevent our sons from being forced to murder their
brothers for capitalist and dynastic interests, for the anti-cultural purposes of profits, for the greed for power, the ambition of a mi-nority, but which will also make them strong and prepared volun-tarily and consciously to give their whole existence to the struggle for freedom.
“For capitalism in its present stage of development arma-ments and wars are vital necessities by means of which it tries to maintain its rule... Therefore in its war against war the interna-tional proletariat can only be successful if it mobilises all its strength, uses every available means, in great mass action....
“The socialist women of all countries are rallying with pas-sionate enthusiasm under our banner of war against war. They know that the more imperialism becomes the deciding policy of capitalist states, the more does this struggle become the central point of the entire work of proletarian emancipation. It will serve not only to rally the masses, but to train and to school them. The proletariat does not take up its work as a finished power, measur-able and ponderable; its power arises and grows with its struggles. Therefore this war will be a living source for developing and matur-ing its forces, bringing nearer the hour when capitalism, exploiting, enslaving and murdering the people, must give way. Precisely be-cause the future victory of socialism is prepared in the struggle against war do we women support that struggle. Even less than for the working men can the national states be for us women a true fa-therland. We must ourselves create that fatherland in socialist so-ciety which alone guarantees the conditions for full human eman-cipation.”
This basic idea was expressed in the manifesto unanimously accepted by the Congress as well as in the speeches. Fight against war by every possible means, but should it come, then it must be utilised to hasten the social revolu-tion. The manifesto quoted the important passages from the Stuttgart resolu-tion and referred to the unanimity of the socialist parties in the recent imperi-alist conflicts.
“The ruling classes’ fear of a proletarian revolution as a re-sult of a world war has proved to be an essential guarantee of peace.”
The manifesto welcomed the admirable attitude of the Balkan socialists who had put forward the demand for a democratic Balkan Federation and the protest strike of the Russian workers as the strongest safeguard against the criminal intrigues of tsarism. The working masses of Germany, France and England were called upon to force their governments to maintain neutrality in the Austro-Serbian conflict for access to the Adriatic. German and English so-cialists were to endeavour to get an agreement on the limitation of the con-struction of naval armaments and the abolition of the right of naval booty. Then to the capitalist governments the manifesto issued a solemn warning:
“Let the governments remember that with the present condi-tion of Europe and the mood of the working class, they cannot unleash a war without danger to themselves; let them remember that the Franco-German War was followed by the revolutionary outbreak of the Commune, that the Russo-Japanese War set into motion the revolutionary energies of the peoples of the Russian Empire, that competition in military and naval armaments gave the class conflicts in England and on the continent an unheard-of sharpness, and unleashed an enormous wave of strikes. It would be insanity for the governments not to realise that the very idea of the monstrosity of a world war would inevitably call forth the in-dignation and the revolt of the working class. The workers consider it a crime to fire at each other for the profits of the capitalists, the ambitions of dynasties or the greater glory of secret diplomatic treaties.”
The manifesto concluded with an appeal for mass demonstrations every-where in favour of the fraternity of the peoples. Jaurès, who submitted the manifesto to the Congress, ended his speech in great agitation with the words:
“Not speaking lightly, no, but from the very depths of our be-ing, we declare that we are ready for any sacrifice.”
And in truth at that time the revolutionary proletariat was prepared to make any sacrifice in the fight against war. It was not only in Russia that the proletariat, after the shootings in the Lena strike of 1912, moved with new strength in a wave of great demonstrations and strikes. When a peace demon-stration of the Hungarian workers in Budapest was beaten down by the clubs of the police, the working class united in defence. Revolutionary collisions be-tween the working class and the armed forces of the bourgeoisie occurred in Italy, Spain, France and Austria.
But the strongest parties in the Second International, the German Social Democratic Party with its four and a quarter million voters, the French Social Democracy and the British Labour Party, in spite of their revolutionary vows at international congresses, sedulously avoided mass struggle and continued the policy of compromise with bourgeois parties.
On Whitsunday, 1913, a Franco-German Conference took place at Berne to which the parliamentary representatives of all parties were invited. It was an attempt to reach mutual understanding, and a permanent Franco-German commission for this purpose was set up of which, besides Jaurès and Haase, bourgeois pacifist members of parliament were also members. A resolution was unanimously accepted consisting of general phrases about disarmament and the Hague court of arbitration.
In the same year the Reichstag S. D. group decided by a majority of eight to vote for the defence estimates, on the ground that the costs of armaments, which they had tried in vain to eliminate, would thereby be transferred to the possessing classes. Actually this meant that the principle: “not a man, not a penny for this system,” was already violated, and the first step taken along the
road which led to the abyss of jingo socialism.
In 1913 Noske made his notorious Reichstag speech in which he de-scribed the Social Democrats’ military programme as the best safeguard of the German fatherland.
After Bebel had died in 1913 the reins were held by narrow-minded bu-reaucrats of the type of Ebert and demagogues like Scheidemann, while the old principles were represented by hesitating figures such as Kautsky.
It is clear that with this opportunist decay in the German Party the at-tempt made at the last pre-war Party Congress at Jena by the left wing under Rosa Luxemburg‘s leadership to carry the mass strike was bound to fail. Al-though debates on the mass strike had again been conducted among the work-ers and a growing militancy in face of the acuteness of the internal and exter-nal situation was apparent, the Party Committee remained blind and deaf. Scheidemann, reporting for the Party Committee, ignored the discontent of the masses and saw complete order prevailing everywhere. Noske quite understood that the “soul of the people” had not made too great a response to the military campaigns because during the Balkan crisis Russian troops had been standing in readiness on the eastern frontier.
Gustav Bauer, who was later to achieve a certain lamentable fame by his friendship with the speculator Barmat, declared that in Russian conditions it was quite right to be in favour of the mass strike, but that did not hold for Germany where the workers “had a very great deal to lose,” the valuable results of the work of decades.
The International Socialist Bureau, which had never in the course of its existence attempted to put into operation the decisions of international con-gresses against the nationalist and opportunist saboteurs of proletarian soli-darity, considered it necessary, shortly before its pitiful end in 1914, to assert its authority in order to get the Bolsheviks, in the name of unity, to unite un-conditionally with the opportunists of all shades in Russia.
On the basis of information given by the unprincipled conciliator Trotsky and those Menshevik liquidators who wanted to model the Russian working class movement on the pattern of the reformist European parties, Vandervelde and Kautsky tried to induce the Bolsheviks to capitulate. Fortunately for the international proletariat these efforts failed. Thus there was at least one party in the Second International which, united and resolute, based on a firm or-ganisation that did not fail under the terror of the military dictatorship, was capable of putting into practice the principles of proletarian internationalism.
CHAPTER III
THE COLLAPSE OF THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL AND THE RISE OF THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL
1914—1918
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