(b) A pamphlet, International Peace, a list of Books with References to Periodicals: 600 titles with comment on contents, published by the Brooklyn Public Library, 1908.
(c) A well selected list of readings in The Arena, December, 1894.
Following is a list of pamphlets, magazine articles and books, directly or indirectly on the subject of social conflict, of which war is a phase. The list is short, tho’ sufficient, it is hoped, to make a helpful beginning, a short reading course, for any one who would understand the subject of social conflicts, that is, would understand, not the science of war, but the cause, the meaning and results of class struggles and war.
There is a vast amount of worthless, or worse than worthless, literature on war: worthless because of the writers’ neglect of the heart of the problem, namely, the industrial structure of all class-labor forms of society, with their unsocial purpose and method of production, resulting in the class struggle.
Whoever would understand war must give special attention: (1) to the economic interpretation of history; (2) to the class struggle, considered historically and currently; and (3) to surplus value, produced by the workers, but legally escaping from their control to the capitalist class—as a result of the institution of private ownership and private control of the collectively used means of production. The fact, the method, the purpose, and the result of the legal confiscation of that part of the world’s wealth which the workers produce and are not permitted to enjoy—must have careful study. In the light of such studies, national and international policies, politics and war can be understood. And as war is thus understood we can make rapid headway against war. Pretty little speeches and essays on the beauties of peace, with “please-be-good” perorations,—such efforts, however carefully prepared, tearfully punctuated, elegantly printed and prayerfully delivered, will result in—nothing. That is to say, occasional literary and oratorical snowballs ignorantly, gracefully and grammatically tossed in the direction of hell will have no effect on the general temperature of that warlike region. (See Index: “Another War,” “The Hague Peace Conference,” and “The Explanation.”)
A Reading Course.
In the following list of readings those indicated by parenthesis thus () would serve as a shorter course.
(1) Kautsky: The Capitalist Class; The Working Class; The Class Struggle; Ethics and the Materialistic Conception of History; and The Road to Power, Chapters 8 and 9.
(2) Simons: The Man Under the Machine, and Class Struggles in America.
(3) Marx: Wage-Labor and Capital; Marx and Engels: The Communist Manifesto.