|
 |
CAPITALISTIC MILITARISM.
PRELIMINARY REMARKS.
Militarism is not specifically a capitalistic institution. It is, on
the contrary, an institution peculiar and essential to all societies
divided in classes, of which capitalist society is the last. It is true
that capitalism develops, like every other society divided in classes, a
kind of militarism peculiar to itself,(1) for militarism is in its
nature a means to an end, or to several ends, which differ with the kind
of the society and which are to be attained in various ways according to
the different characters of the societies. That fact appears not only in
the constitution of the army, but also in the remaining substance of
militarism which mani tests itself in the tasks militarism has to
accomplish.
---------------------
1. Bernstein [the prominent German Socialist leader] wrongly
stated in Vie socialiste of June 5, 1905, that modern military
institutions were only the heritage of the more or less feudal monarchy.
Best adapted to the capitalistic stage of development is the army
built on universal military science which, though an army constituted by
the people, is not an army of the people, but an army against the
people, or becomes increasingly. converted into such a one.
Now it appears in the shape of a standing army, now as a militia. The
standing army,(2) which is likewise not an institution peculiar to
capitalism, appears as its most developed, and even its normal form,
this will be shown in the following pages.
"Militarism for Abroad," Navalism and Colonial Militarism.
Possibilities Of War and Disarmament.
The army of the capitalist order of society serves a double purpose,
like the army of the other social systems.
---------------------
2. 0ne need only consider Russia where, however, entirely
peculiar circumstances which did not arise from interior conditions
helped to bring about the result. Standing armies resting on a basis
different from that of universal military service are, for instance, the
mercenary armies. In the Italian cities of the XVth century militias
were also known (Burckhardt, p. 327).
It is, in the first place, a national institution destined for attack
abroad or for the protection against a danger coming from abroad, in
short, designed for international complications or, to use a military
catch-phrase, against the foreign enemy.
That function has in no way been done away with by more recent
developments. For capitalism war is indeed, in Moltke's phrase, "a
part of God's world order."(3) It is true that there exists in
Europe itself at least a tendency to eliminate certain causes of war,
and the probability of a war originating in Europe itself decreases more
and more, in spite of Alsace-Lorraine, the anxiety about the trio,
Clemenceau, Pichon, Picquart, in
-------------------
3. In his well-known letter to Bluntschli (December, 1880) we
read: "Eternal peace is a dream, and not even a beautiful one, and
war is a part of God's world order. In it are developed the noblest
virtues of man, courage and abnegation, dutifulness and self-sacrifice
at the risk of life. Without war the world would sink into
materialism." A few months earlier Moltke had written: "Every
war is a national misfortune" (Collected Works V, p. 193 and p.
200), and in 1841 he even wrote in an article that appeared in the Augsburger
Allgemeine Zeitung: "We confess openly to be in favor of the
much derided idea of a general European peace."
spite of the Eastern Question, in spite of pan-islamism, and in spite
of the revolution going on in Russia. In their place, however, new and
highly dangerous causes of friction have arisen in consequence of the
desires for commercial and political expansion (4) cherished by the
so-called "civilized nations," desires which are mainly
responsible for the Eastern Question and pan-islamism, and in
consequence of world politics, especially colonial politics which, as
Chancellor Bulow frankly recognized in the Reichstag, on November 14,
1906,(5) contains innumerable possibilities. (6) Of conflict and forces
to the front ever more vigorously two other forms of militarism -- navalism
and colonial militarism. We Germans can tell a story of that!
-------------------
4. The value of the entire foreign trade of the world rose,
according to Hubler's tables, from 75,224 million marks in 1891 to
109,000 million marks in 1905.
5. "What complicates our situation to-day and renders it more
difficult are our oversea pursuits and interests."
6. Moltke's views in this respect were highly fantastic. According to
him the times when wars were resolved upon by cabinets were indeed past,
but he considers the political party leaders to be wicked and
dangerous provokers of war. The party leaders and -- the stock exchange!
It is true that here and there he has a deeper view of things (Collected
Works, 3, pp. I, 126, 135, 138).
Navalism, militarism on sea, is the natural brother of land
militarism and shows all its repulsive and vicious traits. It is in a
still greater degree than land militarism is at present not only an
effect, but also a cause of international dangers, of the danger of a
world war.
Some good folk and deceivers want to make us believe that the
strained relations between Germany and England (7) are merely the result
of some misunderstandings, agitations of mischievous journalists, the
braggings of unskilful diplomatists; but we know better. We know that
these strained relations are a necessary result of the increasing
economic competition between Germany and England in the world's markets,
a direct result of the unbridled capitalistic development and
international competition. The Spanish-American War for Cuba, Italy's
Abyssinian War, England's South African
------------------
7. Characterized by that fantastic abortion, entitled, "The
Invasion of 1910."
War, the Chinese-Japanese War, the Chinese adventure of the Great
Powers, the Russian-Japanese War, all of them, however different their
special causes and the conditions from which they sprung might have
been, yet exhibit the one great common characteristic feature of wars of
expansion. And if we remember the strained relations between England and
Russia on account of Thibet, Persia and Afghanistan, the disagreements
between Japan and the United States in the winter of 1906, and finally
the Morocco conflict of glorious memory with the Franco-Spanish coöperation
of December, 1906, (8) we must recognize that the capitalistic policy of
colonization and expansion has placed numerous mines under the edifice
of world peace, mines whose fuses are in many hands and which can
explode very easily and unexpectedly.(9) It is certainly thinkable that
a time may come when the division of the world has progressed to such an
extent that a policy of placing all possible colonial possessions in
trust for the colonial empires becomes feasible, thus eliminating
colonial competition, as has been accomplished in regard to private
capitalist competition to a certain extent by the combines and trusts.
But that is a distant possibility which the economic and national rise
of China alone may defer for an incalculable space of time.
------------------
8. On account of the quarrel about Morocco France spent, in 1906,
far more than a hundred million for the military protection of her
eastern frontiers.
9. About the alleged, not yet fully explained plan of Semler, the
Reichstag representative of the Hamburg shipowners, to capture Fernando
Po in the Jameson manner, see the budgetary debates of the Reichstag of
December, 1906.
All the alleged plans for disarmament are thus seen to be for
the present nothing but foolery, phrase-making and attempts at
deception. The fact that the Czar was the chief originator of the comedy
at the Hague puts the true stamp on all of them.
Indeed, in our own days-the bubble of an alleged English disarmament
burst in a ridiculous fashion. Secretary for War Hilton, the alleged
promoter of those intentions, came out in strong words as an opponent of
each and every reduction of the active military forces and showed
himself as a true military hotspur, (l0) whilst at the same
----------------
10. That is not disproved because he declared for the time being
against universal military service, which is regretted by the Kreuzzeitung
[the junker organ], of November 29, 1906, because, according to the
paper, universal service would educate the English people into a better
understanding of the seriousness of war. In Germany, of course,
universal military service has only the importance to force the people
to make sacrifices in blood and money, in conformity with the will of
the noble knights of the Kreuzeeitung, whilst the decision about
peace and war rests with those for whom the seriousness of war exists
least. They can even appreciate democracy for abroad! Concerning
the strong tendency in England and America towards a universal militia,
see p. 51.
time the Anglo-French military convention appeared above the horizon.
Moreover, at the very hour when preparations were being made for the
second "Peace Conference," Sweden increased her fleet, America
(11) and Japan saw their military budgets mount higher and higher, and
the Clémenceau government in France demanded an increase of 208
millions, (12) dwelt upon the necessity of a strong army and navy, the Hamburger
Nachrichten [an important semi-official German newspaper] was
describing the unshakeable faith in the holy savior Militarism as the
quintessence of the feeling dominating Germany's ruling classes, and the
German people were treated by their government to increased military
demands (13) which were greedily grasped at even by our Liberals.(14)
Such facts give us a measure of the naïveté displayed by the French
Senator, d'Estournelles de Constant, a member of the Hague Tribunal, in
an essay on the limitation of armaments.(l5) Indeed, in the imagination
of this political dreamer it needs not even the proverbial swallow to
make the summer of disarmament, a simple sparrow will do. After that it
is almost refreshing to encounter the honest brutality with which the
great powers at the conference dropped Mr. Stead's proposals and refused
even to place the question of disarmament on the agenda of the second
conference.
----------------------
11. Cf. p. 51 and Roosevelt's message of December 4, 1906.
12. Chiefly motivated by the Morocco conflict.
13. Twenty-four and three-fourths millions for the navy, 51 millions
for the army, 7 millions for interest -- a total increase of some 83
million marks as compared with the budget of 1906-7. Fine prospects of
further extravagant naval armaments were held out by an evidently
inspired article that appeared in the Reichbote, on December 21,
1906. To all that must be added the enormous expenses for colonial wars
(454 millions for the China Expedition, 490 millions already for the
rebellion in Southwest Africa, 2 millions for the rebellion in East
Africa, etc.); the question of footing those bills led, in December,
1906, to a conflict and the dissolution of the Reichstag.
14 See Berliner Tageblatt of October 27, 1906. Note above all
the notorious resolution handed in by Ablass, December 13, 1906, and the
Liberal platform for the Reichstag elections of January 25, 1907.
15. La Revue, October 1, 1900. The "actual results
achieved" by the movement for disarmament, are a well preserved
secret of the editorial board of the Revue.
A few more remarks must be made about the third offspring of
capitalism on the military side, viz., colonial militarism. The
colonial army (by this is meant not the colonial militia, (l6) as
planned for German Southwest Africa, still less the entirely different
militia of the almost independent British colonies) is of
extraordinarily great importance for England, and its importance is also
increasing for the other civilized countries. Whilst for England it not
only fulfils the task of oppressing and keeping in check the colonial
"interior enemy," i.e., the natives of the colonies, but also
constitutes a weapon against the exterior colonial enemy, Russia, for
instance, it serves the other colonizing powers, especially America and
Germany, often under the names of "Schutztruppe" (protective
troops) or foreign legion, (l7) almost exclusively for the first named
purpose, that of driving the miserable natives to slave in the bagnios
for capitalism, and to shoot and cut them down and starve them without
pity whenever they attempt to protect their country against the foreign
conquerors and extortioners. The colonial army, which frequently
consists of the scum of the European population, (l8) is the most brutal
and abominable of all the tools employed by our capitalistic states.
There is hardly a crime which colonial militarism and savage tropical
brutality [Tropenkoller, the Germans call it], directly
cultivated by it, have not produced. (19) The names of Tippelskirch,
Woermann, Podbielski, Leist, Wehlau, Peters, Ahrenberg, and others
testify and prove it for Germany, too. They are the fruit by which the
nature of the policy of colonization can
--------------
16. Germany's colonial expenditure is in a greatly preponderating
measure of a military nature, even according to Dernburg's memorial of
October, 1906, in spite of all his cooking of accounts.
17. Since December 31, 1900, France possesses a real colonial army
which has brought her the saddest disappointments. See the Hamburg
Correspondent, December 7, 1906 (No. 621), also note 18 on next page
and p. 72. In Germany they are busily engaged in creating a colonial
army. We are approaching it at the double quick.
18. See Péroz, France et Japon en Indochine, Fanin, l'armée
coloniale; E. Reclus, in his Patriotisme et Colonisation; Däumig,
Schlachtopfer des Militarismus, in Neue Zeit, vol. 99/00,
p. 365, about the bataillons d'Afrique, p. 369. Regarding Germany
see the speech of Roeren, member of the Reichstag, of December 3, 1906,
Reichstag debates.
19. Military punishment, too, here adopts a peculiarly brutal form.
About France's foreign legion and bataillons d'Afrique see Däumig,
cited above; about the abolition of the "biribiri, p. 53
be known, that colonial policy which, pretending (20) to spread
Christianity of civilization or to protect national honor, piously
practices usury and fraud for the advantage of capitalists interested in
colonies, which murders and-violates defenceless human beings, burns
down the possessions of the defenceless, robbing and pillaging them,
mocking and disgracing Christianity and civilization.(21) Even the fame
of a Cortez or a Pizarro fades before India and Tongking, the Congo,
German Southwest Africa and the Philippines.
------------------
20. This hypocritical and, at the same time, shamefaced excuse is
now being dropped with frank cynicism; see the article, signed by G B.,
in the monthly magazine, Die deutschen Kolonien (October, 1906),
and the remark made by Strantz at the pan-German convention (September,
1906), where he said: "In the colonies we don't want to convert
people into Christians; they are to work for us. This humanitarian
softheadedness is downright ridiculous. German sentimentality has
deprived us of a man like Peters." Again, Heinrich Hartert wrote in
the Tag, December 21,1906, that it is "the duty of the
missions . . . to adapt themselves to given circumstances"; but
they had succeeded "in frequently becoming a nuisance to the
commercial man." It is at this point that the principal
friction arises between the German Clerical Party and the Government in
regard to colonial policy, this alone explains the furious fight entered
upon in December 1906, by the merchant Dernburg against the so-called
collateral government of the Clerical Party. --For America the Kreuzzetung
( September 29, 1906) preaches: "The simple extermination of
whole tribes of Indians is so inhuman and unchristian that it cannot be
defended under any circumstances, especially as it is in no way a
question of existence for the Americans." But where it is such
a question whole tribes may be "exterminated" even by the
believer in Christian charity -- according to the views of the colonial
Christian.
21. See the memorable debates of the German Reichstag between
November c8 and December 4, 1906, where the " abscess was
lanced."
The Proletariat and War.
lt the function of militarism was above defined as being a national one
directed against the foreign enemy it must not be understood to mean
that it is a function answering the interests, welfare and wishes of the
capitalistically governed and exploited peoples. The proletariat of the
whole world can not expect any profit from the policies which make
necessary the "militarism for abroad", its interests are most
sharply opposed to such policies. Directly or indirectly those policies
serve the exploiting interests of the ruling classes of capitalism. They
are policies which prepare more or less skilfully, the way for the
world-wide expansion of the wildly anarchical mode of production and the
senseless and murderous competition of capitalism, in which process all
the duties of civilized man towards the less developed peoples are flung
aside; and yet nothing is really attained except an insane imperiling of
the whole existence of our civilization in consequence of the warlike
world complications that are conjured up. The working-class, too,
welcome the immense economic developments of our days. But they also
know that this economic development could be carried on peacefully
without the mailed fist, without militarism and navalism, without the
trident being in our hand and with out the barbarities of our colonial
system, if only sensibly managed communities were to carry it on
according to international understandings and in conformity with the
duties and interests of civilization. They knew that our world policy
largely explains itself as an attempt to fight down and confuse forcibly
and clumsily the social and political home problems confronting the
ruling classes, in short, as an attempt at a policy of deceptions and
misreadings such as Napoleon III. was a master of. They know that the
enemies of the working-class love to make their pots boil over the fires
of narrow-minded jingoism, that the fear of war in 1887, unscrupulously
engineered by Bismarck, did excellent service to the most dangerous
forces of reaction, that according to a nice little plan, lately
revealed, (22) and hatched by a number of highly placed personages, the
Reichstag suffrage was to be filched from the German people in the
excitement of jingoism, "after the return of a victorious
army." They know that the advantages of the economic development
which those policies attempt to exploit, especially all the advantages
of our colonial policies, flow into the ample pockets of the exploiting
class, of capitalism, the arch-enemy of the proletariat. They know that
the wars the ruling classes engage in for their own purposes demand of
the working-class the most terrible sacrifice of blood and treasure,(23)
for which they are recompensed, after the work has been done, by
miserable pensions, beggarly grants to war invalids, street organs and
kicks.
----------------------
22. See Hamburger Nachrichten, November 3, I906.
23. The number of the victims of the wars between 1799 and 1904
(excluding the Russo-Japanese War) is estimated at about 15,000,000 men
killed.
They know that after every war a veritable mud-volcano of Hunnic
brutality and baseness sends its floods over the nations participating
in it, rebarbarizing all civilization for years.(24) The worker knows
that the fatherland for which he is to fight is not his fatherland; that
there is only one real enemy for the proletariat of every country the
capitalist class who oppresses and exploits the proletariat, that the
proletariat of every country is by its most vital interests closely
bound to the proletariat of every other country, that all national
interests recede before the common interests of the international
proletariat, and that the international coalition of exploiters and
oppressors must be opposed by the international coalition of the
exploited and oppressed. He knows that the proletarians, if they were to
be employed in a war, would be led to fight against their own brethren
and the members of their own class, and thus against their own
interests. The class-conscious proletarian therefore not only frowns
upon that international purpose of the army and the entire capitalist
policy of expansion, he is fighting them earnestly and with
understanding. To the proletariat falls the chief task of fighting
militarism in that direction, too, to the utmost, and it is more and
more becoming conscious of that task, which is shown by the
international congresses; by the exchange of protestations of solidarity
between the German and French Socialists at the outbreak of the
Franco-German War of 1870, between the Spanish and American Socialists
at the outbreak of the war about Cuba, between the Russian and Japanese
Socialists at the outbreak of the war in eastern Asia in 1904, and by
the resolution to declare a general strike in case of war between Sweden
and Norway, adopted by the Swedish Social Democrats. It was further
shown by the parliamentary attitude of the German Social Democracy
towards the war credits of 1870 and during the Morocco conflict, as also
by the attitude taken up by the class-conscious proletariat towards
intervention in Russia.
-----------
24. Cf. Moltke, p. 24, note 6, of this book, and "Moltke's
Collected Works," II, p. 288. In his opinion war is supposed to
promote virtue and efficiency, especially moral energy.
Fundamental Features of "Militarism For Home and its Purpose.
Militarism does not only serve for defence and attack against the
foreign enemy; it has a second task, (25) one which is being brought out
ever more clearly with the growing accentuation of class antagonism,
defining ever more clearly the form and nature of militarism, viz., that
of protecting the existing state of society, that of being a pillar of
capitalism and all reactionary forces in the war of liberation engaged
in by the working-class. Here it shows itself purely as a weapon in the
class struggle, a weapon in the hands of the ruling classes, serving, in
conjunction with the police and law-courts, school and church, the
purpose of obstructing the development of class-consciousness and of
securing, besides, at all costs to a minority the dominating position in
the state and the liberty of exploiting their fellow-men, even against
the enlightened will of the majority of the people.
--------------------
25. That task of bolstering up the existing interior order of
things devolves upon militarism not only in the capitalist order of
society, but in all societies based upon class-division.
This is modern militarism, which attempts nothing less than squaring
the circle, which arms the people against the people itself, which, by
trying with all means to force upon social division an artificial
division according to ages, makes bold to turn the workman into an
oppressor and an enemy, into a murderer of members of his own class and
his friends, of his parents, sisters and brothers and children, into a
murderer of his own past and future; which pretends to be democratic and
despotic, enlightened and mechanical, popular and anti-popular at the
same time.
It must, however, not be forgotten that militarism can also turn the
point of its sword against the interior national, and even the interior
(26) religious "enemy" (in Germany, for instance, against the
Poles, (27) Alsatians and Danes), and can moreover be employed in
conflicts among the non-proletarian classes, that militarism is a highly
polymorphous phenomenon, capable of many changes, and that the
Prusso-German militarism has attained a peculiarly flourishing state in
consequence of the peculiar semi-absolutist, feudal bureaucratic
conditions of Germany. This Prusso-German militarism is endowed with all
the bad and dangerous qualities of any form of capitalist militarism, so
that it is best suited to serve as a paradigm for showing militarism in
its present stage, in its forms, means and effects. As nobody has as yet
succeeded, to use a Bismarckian phrase, in imitating our Prussian
lieutenants, nobody has as yet been fully able to imitate our
Prusso-German militarism, which has not only become a state within the
state, but positively a state above the state.
Let us first consider the army systems of some other countries. In
doing so we must take into consideration not only the army proper, but
also the constabulary and police forces, which frequently appear to be
merely special military organizations for everyday use against the
interior enemy, but betray their military origin by their very violence
and brutality.
--------------------
26. See the struggle between the French state and church during
the conflict of December, 1906.
27 See the disorders during the election in Upper Silesia in 1903.
Army Systems of Some Foreign Countries
We encounter peculiar forms in the army systems of countries such as
England and America, Switzerland and Belgium.
Great Britain(28) has a mercenary army ("regular
army"), a militia with a mounted yeomanry; besides, the so-called
Volunteers, a force voluntarily recruited which, on the whole, is unpaid
and numbered 245,000 men in 1905. The standing army, including the
militia (in which the furnishing of substitutes is permitted) numbered
444,000 men in 1905, of whom however only some 162,000 were stationed in
England. For Ireland there exists, moreover, a militarily organized
police force of some 12,000 men. The standing army is largely employed
abroad, especially in India, where two-thirds of the army of almost
230,000 (29) men consists of natives. The colonies have, as a rule,
their own militias and volunteer forces. The relation between Great
Britain's home and colonial militarism is characterized by the military
budget, which, in 1897, was about 360 million marks for the home country
and about 510 million marks for India. To this must be added the immense
fleet, with crews and marines numbering almost 200,000 men.
The army system of the United States is a mixture of standing army
and militia. The army, which is made up by recruiting (30) and is by law
limited to a maximum strength of 100,000 men, numbers in times of peace,
according to the enlisted strength of 1905, 61,000 men (on October 15,
1906, including the Philippine Scouts, 67,253 men), among them 3,800
officers, mostly educated at the military academy at West Point. In the
same year the militia numbered some 111,000 men. The militia is
organized on a fairly democratic basis. In times of peace it is under
the control of the governors of the various states, and its armament and
training is not in accordance with modern efficiency. Besides, an
important part is played by the police force, frequently organized on a
military basis.
Of quite an original kind is another institution which, considered in
its formal aspect, does not fall within the frame of this chapter, but
which, however, must not be left unmentioned in this connection on
account of the function it performs. In all the capitalist countries we
find the gun-men of the employers, even if, in some cases, they be only
strike-breakers armed by the employers. (This is no rare occurrence in
Switzerland and France, for instance, and as to Germany we refer the
reader to the Hamburg ship-builders' strike and the incidents at
Nuremberg in 1906). But the American capitalists have at all times at
their disposal such a band of gun-men of prime quality in the shape of
the armed Pinkerton detectives. Finally, taking into consideration some
30,000 men in the American navy, in 1905, we see that the United States,
too, furnishes a choice collection of the main forms of the armed forces
of the state.
---------------------
28. Since the above was written great changes have taken place in
the army system of Great Britain. During the world war the mercenary
army has disappeared and a conscript army has taken its place. Moreover,
in the years immediately preceding the war Great Britain's volunteer
forces underwent great changes in composition and name. The militia,
too, ceased to exist, either in name or in fact, after 1908.
[TRANSLATOR. ]
29. In 1905-6, 229,820. In the Native States 136,837 soldiers in
1903.
30. Recruiting is becoming ever more difficult, and the percentage of
alien recruits is growing, a fact that worries the American government.
In Switzerland there existed until lately a real people's
army, a general arming of the people. Every Swiss citizen, able to bear
arms, had his gun and ammunition continually in his house. That was the
army of democracy of which Gaston Moch treats in his well-known book.
Switzerland enjoying an international guarantee equal to that of
Belgium, it was only natural that in this country "militarism for
abroad" should assume and retain a particularly mild character, a
result to which numerous other circumstances contributed their share.
But the "militarism for home" changed with the accentuation of
class antagonism. The fact that the proletariat possessed arms and
ammunition was increasingly felt, by the capitalist class that wanted to
dominate, to be an impediment to its liberty to exploit and oppress and
even a danger to its existence. So, in September, 1899, they began to
disarm the people by taking its cartridges away and endeavoring at the
same time to develop with continually increasing vigor the existing
rudiments of militarism in the direction of the institutions of the
great military powers. Attempts were made to transform successively the
active portions of the army into a willing instrument of class
domination by all the means employed by those military powers. In that
way the celebrated Swiss militia developed more and more the repellent
traits which have made all standing armies a disgrace to civilization.
Nothing has been changed by the resolution on the employment of soldiers
in strikes which was passed by the National Council, on December 21,
1906, in connection with the law on military organization.(31)
---------------------
31 See p. 151.
Because of her neutrality, Belgium's demand for soldiers for
her standing army is considerably smaller (by about one-half) than her
"stock" of material for soldiering. On that account the system
of universal military service is modified by a draft system
(drawing lots) and by the substitute system, which latter deeply
influences the character of the army. Naturally, only the well-to-do are
able to furnish substitutes, and they as naturally make the widest use
of it. At first that system of furnishing substitutes, which was
formerly so general, may not have been of any special political
significance, but in Belgium it has led to a result very serious for the
ruling class, as the country possesses a numerous proletariat and the
percentage of workmen is very great among the men liable to military
service and drawn by lot. Even that portion of the proletarian Belgian
army which did not consist of class-conscious proletarians and
proletarians ready to risk all, so rapidly succumbed to the
anti-militarist propaganda that for years past it has not had any value
as a weapon in the hands of the ruling class against the interior enemy
and is no longer used as such. But they found a way out of the
difficulty. From former times there existed an institution, called the
civic guard. To the civic guard belong those who have drawn a lucky
number and have furnished substitutes, but only if they can buy their
own uniforms and arms, a condition almost excluding the poorer
population. It used to be nothing but a fancy-dress parade, its members
were mostly Liberals, its organization, democratic. Members of the civic
guard kept their arms at home, elected their own officers, etc. A change
was brought about in consequence of the increasing untrustworthiness of
the standing army. The administration and management of the civic guard
were taken out of the hands of the municipalities and transferred to
those of the government, the democratic institutions were abolished, and
the arms were taken away from the individuals and locked away in the
depots of the military administration. A fairly rigorous system of
military drill was introduced, and the training of the civic guard was
confided to the most objectionable characters among the former officers
of the standing army. Men between the ages of 20 and 30 have to train no
less than three nights a week and on half of a Sunday every two weeks,
and if formerly those military exercises reminded one of the happy-go
lucky functions of our German civic soldiers of olden days, they are now
carried out under a sharp control and punctuality is enforced by
punishments. It is to be noted that this reorganization of the civic
guard has only taken place in communities of more than 20,000
inhabitants, whilst in the other places the civic guard has remained a
ridiculous presence. That fact, too, marks the civic guard to be a
special force of the government in the struggle against the
"interior enemy." Excluding the military police, the standing
army numbered, in 1905, about 46,000 men; the active civic guard
numbered about 44,000 men, almost as many.
Belgium thus possesses an army against the exterior, and a special
army against the interior enemy, an exquisite arrangement which, as the
employment of the civic guard during the late suffrage struggles and
strikes has proved, renders and will continue to render good service to
the capitalist regime in Belgium.
In addition, there is in Belgium the constabulary or military police,
who have simply to perform military tasks in war as well as during
strikes and riots. They are very numerous and spread all over the
country, of great mobility, and can be concentrated, shifted and
mobilized at a moment's notice, at Tervueren, near Brussels, they have
general barracks for their flying brigade, and they swarm out during
strikes and such like movements all over the country like a flight of
wasps. Most of them are former non-commissioned officers of the army,
they are well paid, excellently armed, in short, an elite force. Whilst
the civic guard is as if created for its task in the class-struggle,
because it represents nothing less than a special military mobilization
of the capitalist bourgeoisie, which is well aware of its interests, the
"watch-dogs" of capitalism, organized in the constabulary,
play their part no less efficiently for the present, according to the
rule that they must play the tune called for by him who pays the piper.
Japan, a country in about the same capitalist feudal stage of
development as Germany, has in spite of her insular position, which is
similar to that of England, and in consequence of her strained foreign
relations, of late become even from a military point of view a veritable
counterpart of Germany, except perhaps that her troops are given a more
serviceable war training.
Conclusions.
Russia.
It follows from all this that the size and the particular character of
the organization of an army accommodate themselves to the international
situation, to the function the army has as regards the exterior enemy.
The international tension is driving states (even those which are not
yet capitalist and which compete with and have to protect themselves
against the capitalist states) to train all citizens capable of bearing
arms and to adopt the most rigorous form of military organization, the
standing conscript army. This can be considerably relaxed by natural
causes as, for instance, by the insular position of Great Britain or the
comparatively insular situation of the United States, and by artificial
political means as, for instance, the neutralization of Switzerland and
the states of the Low Countries. But the function of "militarism
for home," against the interior enemy, militarism as a weapon in
the class-struggle, is an ever necessary accompanying feature of
capitalist development, and even Gaston Moch regards the
"re-establishment of order" as a "legitimate function of
a people's army." The reason why "militarism for home"
exhibits forms greatly differing from one another explains itself simply
by the fact that such militarism has hitherto had a more national
purpose, the fulfilment of which was not so much influenced by
international competition, that therefore it can give much more
consideration to national peculiarities. However, England and also
America (a country in which the standing army was increased from 27,000
to about 61,000 men from 1896 to 1906, where the number of men in the
war navy was doubled, the war budget multiplied by two and a half and
the navy budget by three in the same space of time, and where Mr. Taft
asked for 100 millions more for 1907), are being increasingly pushed
into the paths of the militarism of the European continent. This is
certainly caused in the first line by changes in the international
situation and the requirements of jingo and imperialist world policy,
but in the second line quite unmistakably by changes in the interior
tension, the intensification of the class struggle. It is scarcely
possible that the militaristic velleities of the British war secretary,
Haldane, in September, 1906, have only a temporal relation to the
energetic political activity of the British working-class. The
propensity to introduce universal military training of the Swiss kind,
which for the time being has been repulsed in England in spite of the
strong agitation in favor of such training and which in the United
States found significant expression in Mr. Roosevelt's message of
December 4, 1906, is not a symptom of progress. It signifies, in spite
of all said to the contrary, a strengthening of militarism as compared
to its present condition, and is a station on the precipitous road
leading to a standing army, as the example of Switzerland proves.
On account of the great multiplicity of possible combinations between
the factors determining the extent and nature of the special
requirements for protection against the exterior and interior enemy,
militarism shows unmistakably a pronounced multiformity and
transmutability. But that transmutability is always kept within the
limits prescribed by the absolutely essential capitalistic purpose of
militarism. Nevertheless, development may temporarily take directly
opposite roads. While France, for example, under Picquart, is earnestly
attacking the problem of greatly reducing the training period of her
reserve and territorial troops, reforming the "biribiri" and
abolishing separate military jurisdiction, the president of the German
central military court, von Massow, quitted the service in the fall of
1906, because the military command (the Prussian war ministry) had on
the strength of legal interpretation formally invaded the independence
of the military courts, an independence which had indeed already
received a curious construction by the disciplining of the judges acting
in the Bilse case. French conditions are almost exclusively due to the
prevailing anti-clericalism; clericalism has an important pillar in the
army, the government needs the help of the proletariat for its
anti-clerical policy. Such a combination is of course not of eternal
duration, nor has it sprung from a real, lasting tendency of evolution.
It results from a constellation, transient in its nature, and is quite
compatible, as has been proved, with an energetic fight against anti
militarism.
From these points of view an interesting case is furnished by Russia
which has been forced to adopt universal military service on account of
her intensely strained foreign relations, and which as an Asiatic
despotic state is confronted by an interior discord without example. The
interior enemy of Czarism is not only the proletariat, but also the
immense mass of the peasantry and the bourgeoisie, and even a large
portion of the nobility. Ninety-nine percent. of the Russian soldiers
belong to classes that are the arch-enemies of the Czar's despotism. The
development of class consciousness is extremely hampered by the low
state of education, national and religious antagonisms and the clashes
of economic and social interests; further by the greater or smaller
pressure exercised by the widely ram)fied bureaucratic apparatus, by the
unfavorable arrangement of political districts, the insufficiently
developed means of communication, and other things. By a cunningly
devised system of elite forces, like the constabulary and, above all,
the Cossacks, who have been positively changed into a special social
class by means of good pay and other material rewards, large political
privileges and the establishment of semi-socialist Cossack communities,
and are thus artificially bound to the despotic regime, Czarism attempts
to secure a sufficiently strong band of faithful retainers to fight down
the unrest which has penetrated deeply into the ranks of the army. In
addition to these "watch-dogs of Czarism" there are the
Circassians (32) and other barbarian populations living in the empire of
the knout who, for instance, were let loose upon the land like a pack of
wolves during the counterrevolution in the Baltic Province, and all the
other armed beneficiaries of Czarism whose name is legion, the police
and their accomplices, as well as the Russian toughs, the black bands.
In the bourgeois capitalist state the conscript army, in its function as
a weapon against the proletariat, is a crude and, at the same time,
terrible and fantastic contradiction in itself, under the Czar's
despotic regime the conscript army is a weapon which must 1:urn itself
more and more with crushing power against the despotism of Czarism
itself, from which at the same time the conclusion must be drawn that
the experience derived from the antimilitarist developments in Russian can
be utilized only with great care in regard to the bourgeois capitalist
states. In the bourgeois capitalist states, the attempts of the
ruling classes to buy the people to fight against itself, and that even
largely with money taken from the people for the purpose mentioned, are
condemned to ultimate failure. In regard to Russia, we are witnessing
already how desperate and wretched attempts of Czarism to bribe the
revolution, as it were, are resulting in an early and pitiable fiasco
amidst the miseries of the financial situation, in spite of all the
endeavors of the unscrupulous international stock-exchange financiers to
retrieve the situation. It is certain that the loan question is an
important one, at least in re yard to the rate at which the revolution
develops, but as little as revolutions can be artificially made as
little and still less can they be bought, (33) even if the means of the
high finance of the world should be employed.
--------------
32. Even Sheriff von Sievers-Roemershof writes of the
"blood-thirsty Circassians" in the Dünazeitung of
December 4, (17,) 1906.
33. Not even, as now proposed, in the modern way of jobbing away and
discounting concessions and natural resources to American trusts, that
last invention and cry of despair of the financial policy of Czarism
|