1914: War Splits The Internationa

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Luxemburg - German internationalist, addressing mass meeting The years from 1910 saw i slow but sustained rebirth the revolutionary vement of the Russian rking class. Revolutionary espapers began to be blished within Russia; broad ¡tical agitation was reloped; the strike mement steadily drew in der sections of workers; by 14 the leadership of many in working class bodies had won to the Bolsheviks. This whole process of plutionary mobilisation was, ever, cut short in August 1914 • the opening of the First World r. The principled revolutionary guard in the working class anised around the Bolsheviks swamped by the 'war fever' and riotism which gripped the ses.

In our next article we will look the response of the different mes in Russia to the war and at • struggle of the Bolsheviks inst chauvinism in the workers trement. In this article we must * at the origins of the war and impact on the parties and Mership of the working class crationally.

OCTOBER ¡For the October revolution did I grow from purely Russian soul, t was a first product of the sociai passe reached by capitalism in all : major imperialist countries. dy in this international context • the true significance of the aggle of the Bolshevik party be covered.

The war itself dealt an mediate blow to the workers' prements in every country. In Ih of the belligerent countries, • ruling class whipped up a actionary mood of patriotism and vid nationalism and mounted an lensive against the economic Ins and political liberties won by e working class.

«OWN" BOURGEOISIE But far greater was the blow alt to the international unity of i working class by the leadership I the Second International who erwhelmingly lined up with the • policies of their own" surgeoIs governments.

At International Congresses, in solutions and manitestos, the scond International had affirmed • opposition to war and pledged self "to exert every effort in order • preveat the outbreak of war by means they consider most might well break out despite the efforts of the International, the Stuttgart Resolution of 1907 went on to call on the parties of the working class:

"to intervene in favow of its speedy termination and with al their powers to utilise the economic and political crisis created by the war to rouse the masses and thereby hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule"

Though in the weeks and months following the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, meetings and demonstrations against wat were geld by Social Democracy throughout Europe, as soon as war brake out this resolution was brushed aside.

CR EDITS On August 4th 1914, two days after a massive working class demonstration against the war in Berlin, the German Social Democratic fraction in the Reichstag voted for the war credits needed by German militarism. So profound was this betrayal . of principle that when newspaper reports reached Lenin in Galicia he refused to believe that they could be anything other than a forgery produced by the Prussian police to disorient the working class.

In the first days of August 1914, in country after country, the Social Democratic leaders voted almost to a man for support for their own" bourgeoisie in the war. In many industrial truce for the duration of countries declared the war.

• Elaborate justifications were produced for this desertion to the side of the ruling class - that their participation in the war was "defensive" that it was "a war against Tsarism" "in defence of democracy" . The Social Democrats of each warring country vied with each other in the invention of magnificent phrases to cover their own tracks, casting the blame for the imperialist holocaust onto the aggressive policies the bourgeoisie of some other nation.

To the cynical sophistries of the social-chauvinists, Lenin replied as early as September 1914:

"The struggle for markets and for plundering foreign lands, the eagerness to head off the revolutionary movement of the proletariat and to crush democracy within each country, the urge to deceive, divide and crush. the proletarians of all countries, to incite the wage slaves of one nation against the wage slaves of another nation for the profits of the bourgeoisie - that is the real content and meaning of the war"

Ine wat was not the result of the aggressive policies of one nation aione, nor even of the policies of all inevitable outcome of the development of capitalism in its its final phase, imperialism.

Rapid concentration of production into ever larger enterprises is one of the characteristic features of capitalism. In this way by the early twentieth century in the major European countries free competition had been definitely transformed into monopoly. In place of a variety of small enterprises competing with each other on the market, there were a handful of great cartels and trusts in the major branches of industry which divided up the market between themselves.

ADVANCE

This development indicates the great advance in the socialisation and organisation of production had been achieved by capitalism. But at the same time, as Lenin points out this development is contradictions:

"Production becomes social, but appropriation remains private. The social means of production remain the private property of the few. The general framework of formally recognised free competition remains, and the yoke of a few monopolists on the rest of the population becomes a hundred times heavier, more burdensome and intolerable". (Selected Works MONOPOLY Moreover, the monopoly created in certain branches of industry, far from leading to a stable and rational development of production, in fact increases and intensifies the anarchy inherent in capitalist production as a whole. Competition within national industries largely disappears to be replaced by an even sharper struggle between monopolist associations for the domination of the world market.

Parallel to the economic division of the world between the capitalist trusts who each demand their share of the super-profits to be obtained from monopoly, a territorial division of the world between states each possessing its own colonies, "spheres of influence" , etc., was created.

the beginning of the twentieth century this division of the world between the imperialist powers was largely completed. By 1914, Britain, France, Russia and Germany ruled over territories of over 64 million square kilometres, while they themselves only occupied 6.7 million square kilometres.

Plekhanoy - defencist.

But this completion of the division of the world 'does not imply an end to the struggle for olonies, but that future struggles vould be for the re-division ol these conquests.

Thus Germany whose capitalist but more vigorously than that of Britain and France was driven to challenge simultaneously the domination of British goods on the international market and Britain's privileged position in the size and wealth of its colonies.

The only way for these antagonisms to be resolved was through war.

It would be pure deception to place the label of aggressor on any one of the warring camps.

"For decades" , wrote Lenin, Lenin - internationalist "three bandits (the bourgeoisie and governments of England, Russia and France) armed themselves to despoil Germany. Is it surprising that the two bandits (Germany and Austria-Hungary) launched an attack before the three bandits had succeeded in obtaining the new knives they had ordered?"

The wat indicated the impossibility of further progressive and peaceful development of capitalism; at the same time it showed that the historical usefulness of capitalism as an agent for. developing the productive forces was entirely exhausted, that it had entered its final phase of stagnation and decline.

"Monopoly", Lenin argued "is of monopoly has organised and planned the production and distribution of goods on a vast scale "then it becomes evilent that we have socialisation of production .., that private economic and private property relations constitute a shell which no longer fits its contents, & shell which may remain in a state of decay for a fairly long period (if, at worst, the cure of the opportunist abscess is protracted), but which will inevitably be removed."

(Selected Works, p262).

This 'opportunist abscess' on the labour movement was the reactionary leadership of the Second International, which praised socialism in woras, but defended imperialism by its deeds.Its betrayal of internationalism. in 1914 did not fall from the skies, but was an inevitable continuation of its reformist adaptation to capitalism.

DOCTRINE

Though the International had revolutionary Marxism as its doctrine, it had in practice limited itself and adapted to a struggle for reforms within bourgeois society:

This opportunist tendency had been strengthened in the period of capitalist prosperity by the growth of a labour aristocracy. The super-profits earned by the plunder of vast colonies made it economically possible for capitalism to bribe an upper strata of the working class, to grant this minority such crumbs as led them to identify their interests with imperialism. It was in this labour aristocracy and the union bureaucracy that opportunism Three Internationalists -But the conclusions Lenin drew from his analysis of the labour aristocracy were not pessimistic ones. The war had confirmed that further prograssive development under capitalism was excluded; just as surely it increased the irreconcilability between the opportunist upper layer of the working class and the vital interests of the masses.

With the whole leadership of the working class treacherously allying with its "own" bourgeoisie no mass response could be expected at once; but gradually month by month disillusionment with the war spread, the old leaders began to be discredited and the ranks of the working class began to form up again, now under new leaders. Troops fraternise at the Front The war in this respect proved of enormous educational significance. Not only did it thrust a gun into the workers hand, but through the course of the war the mask of hypocrisy with which the bourgeoisie disguised its class rule began to fall away. Trotsky, in a pamphlet distributed illegally in Germany in 1915, sums up this process:

"Even though the vanguard of the working class knew in theory that Might is mother of Rights, still their political thinking was completely permeated by the spirit of opportunism, of adaptation of bourgeois legalism. Now they are learning from the teaching of facts to despise this legalism and tear it down... Monarchs walk about in public places calling each other liars in the language of market women;

governments repudiate their solemnly acknowledged obligations;

and the national church ties it God to the national cannon like a criminal condemned to hard labour.

Is it not clear that all these circumstances must bring about a profound change in the mental attitude of the working class, curing them radically of the hypnosis of legality in which a period of political stagnation expresses .. War and the international

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STATEMENT BY THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE WORKERS SOCIALIST LEAGUE THE COLLAPSE OF SECOND ATTACK ON THE WRP'S EDUCATIONAL CENTRE IN DERBYSHIR

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