"We recognize our need for outside aid in setting this country on its feet industrially and economically. It is a tremendous enterprise, one that will take two, five, perhaps ten years to carry out, but through the indomitable spirit of our proletariat it will be accomplished with a speed and competency that will amaze our foemen.... And once again I say that the people who help us gain peace will share in the profits, the very considerable profits, resultant from the aid they will have extended to us....
"Foreign capitalists who invest their money in Russian enterprises or who supply us with merchandise we require will receive material guarantees of amply adequate character. They need have no fears on that score.... It is obvious that we must look to the victorious nations, to Great Britain or, still better, to America for machinery, agricultural tools and other imports which Russia's economic renaissance demands."
Thus the old partnership of capital and labor is to be resumed. But what of the Russian workers? Having fought and toiled to put Lenine and Trotzky on the proletarian throne they must keep up military training to keep them there, and must toil hard to produce "the very considerable profits" which Lenine and Trotzky are going to share with the "foreign capitalists" who help them. But let Trotzky explain the destiny of the Russian workers in his own words, as reported by Eyre in the "World" of February 25, 1920:
"The workers and peasants will insist, once the revolution is no longer in peril, on returning to their factories and farms and making Russia a fit land to live in. Frontier guards will be maintained, of course. The framework of our (military) organization must also be preserved in order that with the experience they have received in the past eighteen months our proletarian fighting men can be remodelled in two or three months if the need arises. There will also be some form of military training for the working class, that it may always be ready to defend itself against the bourgeoisie."
Will not this be "militarism?" Of course not; for, in Trotzky's words in the same interview, "Militarism, striking as it does at the very roots of Communism, cannot possibly exist in Soviet Russia, the only truly pacific country in the world!" Thus facts disappear behind words. Conscription was militaristic under the Czar, but it cannot be under a Trotzky, for he has labeled his system a Soviet Republic and since Soviets are never military their military arrangements, though apparently more severe than the other kind, are really only a form of pacifism! Thus the happy Russian workers must serve as "frontier guards," keep up the framework of their military organization, and submit to "some form of military training," but may whistle as they groan, knowing that the yoke they bear "cannot exist."
Other contradictions in these interviews will be discussed later in this book. For example, we shall find, in Chapter XVI, that the Soviet Republic at Moscow can make peace with "capitalistic countries" and form partnerships with "foreign capital" while at the same time the Third International at Moscow carries on a world-wide conspiracy to destroy "capitalism" and overthrow the governments and institutions of "capitalistic countries."
CHAPTER XII
EUROPEAN SPARTACIDES AND COMMUNISTS
In Berlin, shortly after the Revolution against the Imperial Government, Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and their group of Socialists of the extreme Left were raising a merry riot almost every day in the hope of overcoming the ultra-conservative Socialist government and introducing the radical Bolshevist program. The constant disorder occasioned by these Spartacans or Spartacides of the Left provoked the opposition parties very much, annoying them to such an extent that many Germans wished to remove the capital of the country from Berlin to some more orderly city.
The name "Spartacides" or "Spartacans" came from the fact that early in the World War Karl Liebknecht, their leader, issued a number of anti-war pamphlets bearing the pseudonym, "Spartacus."
The Spartacides are the reddest of the Reds, the real Socialists of Germany. They differ very much from the Ebert-Scheidemann group, for the Spartacans want the principles of Socialism applied immediately, whereas Ebert and other members of his government warned their followers that though they held Socialist theories, the application of Socialism must be postponed to the distant future. The Ebert-Scheidemann Majority Socialists are regarded by the others as Socialists only in name, being really social reformers, or, at the most, weak-kneed Socialists who sought power, but fully realized that the application of the Marxian principles would be doomed to absolute failure. The Spartacans, however, still have confidence in Socialism; they agree heart and soul with the Russian Bolsheviki; they are the rowdies and ruffians of Germany, always looking for trouble. Strikes, riots and civil discord are their weapons, and the American Socialists are among their particular friends. Indeed, the Socialist Party of Eugene V. Debs has no use whatever for the Ebert-Scheidemann group, who are looked upon as reactionaries, hypocrites, murderers and traitors to Socialism.