MILITARISM.
We may be very brief upon the correlation of militarism and the present economic system. This correlation is so clear that there are few persons who deny it. The motives which, under all earlier modes of production, have engendered wars are principally of an economic nature. But besides these there have been at times others; but we have not to enquire here what was in the last analysis their correlation with the mode of production of that day. The relation between capitalism and war is always so close that we can find in the economic life the direct causes of the wars waged under the empire of capitalism.
As we have seen above in our exposition of the present economic system, a part of the surplus-value that comes to the moneyed class is invested as new capital. The continually increasing amount of capital does not readily find investment in full in a country where capitalism is already in force. This is why the moneyed class desires to invest a part of the surplus-value in countries whither capitalism has not yet penetrated. If the inhabitants of the country chosen as field of operation are opposed to this, or if the same country is coveted by other capitalistic powers, the resulting antagonism generally leads to war.
In the second place, the producers can sell in their own country only a part of the increasing quantity of their products; whence come their efforts to find an outlet into other countries. But as capitalism expands with increasing rapidity over the whole world, the difficulty of finding a country in a position to buy, or to which capitalism has not yet penetrated, becomes greater and greater. Encounters with other capitalistic powers pursuing the same end are the inevitable consequence.
It is upon the State that the task is imposed of finding new territories [[375]]where capital may be invested, or new outlets for goods which do not find purchasers in the country where they are produced. Beside the duty of the State to maintain a certain order in a society confused and complicated through the nature of our economic life (civil and criminal jurisprudence), there is its more important duty of warding off other groups of competitors, or even at need attacking them by force of arms.
But the army serves not only to act against the foreigner, it has equally a domestic duty to fulfil. In the cases where the police cannot maintain order the army reinforces them. The army must especially then be active at the time of great strikes, when so-called free labor is to be protected, that is when employers are trying to replace the striking workmen with others who, in consequence of their poverty, or their lack of organization, put their personal interests above those of their comrades. Also it has its part to play in connection with great political movements, like that to obtain universal suffrage, for example.
Our present militarism is, therefore, a consequence of capitalism. The double duty of the army proves it; for its function is to furnish the bourgeoisie with the means of restraining the proletariat at home, and of repulsing or attacking the forces of foreign countries. [[377]]
[1] This sketch is based upon Karl Marx’s “Kapital” and K. Kautsky’s works primarily, with some indebtedness to Marx’s “Oekonomischen Lehren”, and “Das Erfurter Programm.” [↑]