"Military strikes" have also been frequent in Russia as well as in France—and have received the unanimous approval of the Socialists of all countries. No matter how small the causes, Socialists usually justify them, because they consider military discipline in itself wholly an evil—and the worst tyranny of capitalist government. They promote military revolts in favor of great popular causes for a double reason, and they also have a double motive for supporting purely military revolts against militarism. For if Socialists are engaged in a class war, which practically all of them believe may, and many believe must, lead to revolution, it is as necessary to disarm the opposing classes as it is to abolish military discipline because of its inherent evil. It is this fact that explains the importance of all Socialist efforts against imperialism, colonialism, nationalism, patriotism, war and armies—and not the idea, common among Socialists, that Socialism alone can be relied on to establish permanent international peace.
Moreover, the most successful attacks on existing governments in their coercive and arbitrary aspects, as the Stuttgart resolution suggests (see above), have been when there were threats of an unpopular war. The Socialist attack is then not only leveled against war, but also against armies. A good example is the sending of a delegation of workingmen to Berlin by the French federation at the invitation of that of Germany at the time of the Morocco affair (July, 1911). There the Secretary of the associated labor councils of France, Yvetot, made a speech, the importance of which was fully appreciated by the German government, which ordered him to be immediately expelled. His remarks were also appreciated by his German Socialist audience which responded to them by stormy applause lasting several minutes. The sentiments so widely appreciated were contained in the following remarks addressed to the French and German governments:—
"Just try once, you blockheads, to stir up one people against the other, to arm one people against the other, you will see if the peoples won't make an entirely different use of the weapons you put into their hands. Wait and see if the people don't go to war against an entirely different enemy than you expect."
The significance of this declaration was not that it declared war against war, but that, under a certain highly probable contingency of the immediate future, it prepared the minds of the people for the forceful overthrow of capitalist governments.
To the preparations of capitalist governments to revert to military rule in the case of a successful nation-wide general strike, the Socialists reply at present by plans for weakening and disintegrating armies. And they do not hesitate to say that they will use more active measures if capitalist governments persist in what seems to be their present determination to resort to some form of military despotism when the Socialists have won over a majority of the population to their views.
FOOTNOTES:
[277] Eugene V. Debs, "Life and Writings," p. 456.
[278] Tolstoi's Essay entitled, "Where is the Way Out?"—October, 1900.
[279] Dr. Karl Liebknecht, "Militarismus und Anti-Militarismus" (brochure).