War and the

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To mark the centenary of the birth of Leon Trotsky, Socialist Press is publishing a series of 16 articles to review and present the importance of many of Trotsky's major writings.

Writing in 1933 Trotsky argued:

"The basic historic crime of the parties of the Second International consists in their fostering and strengthening the slavish habits and traditions of the oppressed in neutralizing their revolutionary indignation and falsifying their class consciousness with the aid of patriotic ideas.

"If the European proletariat did not overthrow the bourgeoisie at the end of the great war, if humanity writhes now in the agonies of the crisis; if a new war threatens to transform cities and villages into heaps of ruins-the chief responsibility for these crimes and calumnies falls on the Second International."

In his work, War and the International, written in the Autumn of 1914, Trotsky analysed the circumstances and likely consequences of this gross, barbaric betrayal.

The pamphlet is, of course, no mere abstract analysis.

Like all of Trotsky's writings it is full of fire, rage, invective and emotion.

Speaking of the aboutturn on the war question in the pages of Vorwaerts, the paper of the German Social Democratic Party, •he writes:

"This is simply a case of an ulcer of slavish sentiments bursting open and foul pus crawling over the pages of the working men's press.

"It is clear that the oppressed class which proceeds too slowiy and mertly on its way toward freedom must in the final hour drag all its hopes and promises through mire and blood before there arises in its soul the pure, unimpeachable voice-the voice of revolutionary honour."

Trotsky however never stops at the level of rage and scorn.

He utilises them for political purposes-and his political purpose as early as Autumn 1914 was to fight for the resurrection of proletarian internationalism.

This basic principle of the Marxist movement was indeed dragged into mire and blood, impaled against the barbed wire of the battlefields and drowned in the trenches of the first imperialist world war.

The blow against. the working class consisted not merely in the fact that millions of workers were marched to their deaths, with their heads stuffed with patriotic illusions.

The real catastrophe was that they were marched there with the total support, agreement and even praise of the parties of the Second Un August 3, 1914 the German Social Democratic Party voted in the Reichstag (Parliament) in favour of granting the war credits necessary for German imperialism to wage its war.

The Social Democratic deputy Haase declared:

"In the hour of danger we will not leave our Fatherland in the lurch Guided by these principles we vote for the war credits."

Thus in that vote and the parallel moves by the French and English workers' parties, the supposedly "Marxist" Second International thrust the sword of imperialism into the heart of the fundamental principle of internationalism so clearly expressed in the Communist Manifesto which states that:

«The Communists are distinguished from the other working class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletariat of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proltariat, independently of all nationality."

Further on the Communist Manifesto declares boldly that:

"The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation..."

And its ringing conclusion is a direct opposite to the positions adopted by the traitors of the Second International, when it proclaims:

"Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

Working men of all countries unite!"

The social patriots of the Second International however chose to «unite" with their "own" capitalist class, their own exploiters, rather than unite with the world's proletariat in the struggle lor the overthrow of capitalism.

5047 This split the Second International into warring national groupings.

This capitulation to imperialist pressures drew a line, a class line, between Second International and Marxism.

Trotsky, Lenin, Luxembourg, and Kollontai with only a handful of supporters stood on one side of that line facing and fighting the traitors.

It was not however enough to condemn the betrayal: it was important to understand it, to understand its material roots.

This was the task undertaken by Trotsky in War and the International. Trotsky argued that the causes of the betrayal did not lie in the mistakes and individual wickedness and faults of the leaders of the Second International, but in the fundamental historical conditions of the entire epoch.

It was Troops in action in the First World War changes all that:

tion, the proletariat oroved ti have a direct dependenc ments."

Karl Marx material factors that had led been analysed: to the war itself.

The war was a result of which Considerably the economic rivalry improved the lot of produced by the crisis of capitalism. This epoch, the iat, epoch of, as Lenin puts it. and is supreen tal inneral "wars and revolutions" saw waters the capitalist search for world markets turn into the labour policies.' fight between nation states for markets for economic dominance in the 'dog-eatdog' world of inter-imperial- movement had however ist rivalry. evolved differently, and The war, Trotsky until 1914 had: stressed, was "economic rivalry under the banner of Marxism. Sill in its depen under TEne banner militarism."

Imperialism is not however a phenomenon whose impact is restricted to the ruling class.

Trotsky's contribution in this pamphlet is to explain: the beginning, but "the dependence of the proletarian class movement, particularly in its economic crowned conflicts, upon the scope Prussian helmet." and the successes of the imperialistic policy of the movement had grown up state." openly adapting to the The proletariat, capitalist state through the Di Parkin reviews Trotsky's pamphlet The War and the medium of the Liberal The leadership • of the German workers' movement, however, which had initially built an independent party, was pushed by the logic of its identical material dependence on imperialism into an identical capitulation.

"The political struggle of the German proletariat in this entire period had the same opportunist character limited by historical conditions as did that of the English proletariat."

This had taken the form earlier of the emergence of Bernstein's revisionist conceptions-vigorously opposed by Lenin in What Is To Be Done? Bernstein denied the revolutionary content of Marxism, and in to improve its conditions particular substituted becomes interested in the vision of gradual reforms for development of the forces the need to seize and of production. At first this destroy the old capitalist development took place on state machine. a national basis, but the Tied to legality, to the epoch of imperialism nation state, the parties of the Second International, "As capitalism passed however "Marxist" their from a national to an inter- rhetoric, in practice abannational imperialistic doned the road of revoluground, national produc- tion and abandoned the working class to imperialomic struggle of the prolet- ism. ariat, came into direct dependence on those conditions of world market which are secured by dread- However Trotsky's naughts and cannon. In pamphlet is no depressing other words, in contradic- chronicle of betrayal: tion to the fundamental 'We revolutionary nterests of the proletariat Marxists have no cause for taken in their wide histori despair. The epoch into extent, the immediate trade which we are now entering interests of various strata of will be our epoch. Marxism is not defeated."

The lesson Trotsky draws upon the successes and the firmly from. the 1914 failures of the foreign experience is that: policies of the govern- "Socialist reformism has actually turned into socialist The dependence of the imperialism."

English labour aristocracy The booklet goes on to on the spoils of imperialism advocate demands for interand its consequent liberal or nationalists to fight on: reformist and non-political *Immediate cessation of trade union orientation was the war. something that had long *No reparations.

*The right of every "All these circumstances nation to self determination. *The Socialist United States of Europe-without monarchies, without standing armies, without ruling feudal castes, without secret diplomacy.

On that basis-posing the alternative between permanent war or permanThe German labour ent revolution-Trotsky maintained that the banner of Marxism could remain unstained.

"theoretically marched This pamphlet written three years before the Bolsheviks, guided by an internationalist policy, seized power in Russia, is of great importance. Trotsky's work is part of the process wheremunise inter fonacom was to be built in 1919.

ane English workers'

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