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CONCERNING SOME CARDINAL SINS OF MILITARISM. MALTREATMENT OF SOLDIERS OR
MILITARISM AS A REPENTANT, YET UNREFORMED SINNER.
The militarists are not all dull-witted. That is proven by the
extremely clever educational system they have introduced. With
noteworthy skill they rely upon mass psychology. The army of Fredericks
composed of mercenaries and the scum of the population, had to be kept
together for its mechanical tasks by pipe-clay drill and thrashings.
That is no longer possible in an army formed on the basis of a civic
duty and placing much greater demands upon the individual. This was
clearly recognized at once by men like Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, (l)
whose army reorganization began with the proclamation of the
"freedom of the back." Yet, bad treatment, brutal insults,
beatings and all kinds of cruel maltreatment belong also to the
stock-in-trade of our present system of military education.
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1. The men that reorganized the entire Prussian army system after
the Prussian army had been shattered at Jena by Napoleon, in 1806.
[TRANSLATOR.]
The attitude of military circles toward the maltreatment of soldiers
is naturally not determined by considerations of ethics, civilization,
humanity, justice, Christianity and other fine things, but purely by
jesuitical expedients. The hidden danger which that maltreatment
constitutes for the discipline and the "spirit" of the army
itself (2) has not even to-day been generally recognized.(3) The ragging
of new recruits and recalcitrants by the older men, the brutal barracks
jokes and vulgar language of all kind, and the fairly frequent knocks
and blows and hazing, are heartily apt proved without scruple and are
even positively considered necessary by the majority of non-commissioned
officers and even officers, who, estranged from and hostile to the
people, have been trained to become the most narrow-minded petty
despots. The fight against those outrages therefore meets almost at the
outset, with an all but insuperable passive resistance. Privately, but
not publicly, one may hear daily how superiors describe the desire for
decent treatment of the "fellows" as a symptom of a silly
humanitarian soft-headedness. Military service is a rude business. But
even where they have thoroughly recognized the hidden dangers of
disciplinary maltreatments they find themselves again in face of one of
those disagreeable alternatives at which a system based on brute force
and setting itself against the natural development must always arrive,
and several of which we have already pointed out. For those
maltreatments are indeed (as we shall show more conclusively)
indispensable auxiliaries of the external drill which capitalist
militarism, (for which the inward voluntary discipline is an
unattainable goal), can not dispense with for want of a better method.
We repeat that they are considered, not officially, it is true, but
semi-officially, in spite of all the scruples and regrets we hear
expressed, not as a legal, but as an indispensable means of military
education.
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2. In Manteuffel's sensible command of April 18, 1885, we read:
"Insults attack the sense of honor and kill it, and the officer who
insults his subordinates undermines his own position; for there is no
dependence on the loyalty or bravery of him who allows himself to be
insulted." . . . "In a word -- as the subordinates are treated
by their superiors, from the general to the lieutenant thus they
are."
3. A slight indication is furnished by the mass of deserters and men
liable to military service who disobeyed orders to join the army. No
less than 15,000 German deserters perished in the French colonial army
during the first thirty years of the existence of the "splendid
German Empire," whilst the bloody battle of Vionville in the
Franco-German War resulted in only I6,000 men being killed and wounded.
But apart from military scruples, our militarists suffer from a bad
conscience since they have been caught at their game, i.e., since the
relentless Social Democratic criticism of the army institutions began
and large portions of the middle-class commenced to disavow that
military morality. With a gnashing of teeth militarism had to
acknowledge that it was not simply devised and commanded by the supreme
war lord, but that it depends, especially in regard to its material
existence, on the popular representative body on which it looks with
such scornful disdain --on the Reichstag which includes even
representatives of the "mob"; in short, that it depends on the
"rabble" and that under cover of their immunity the people's
representatives in the Reichstag pitilessly exposed its nakedness again
and again. In sullen rage it saw itself obliged to maintain the good
mood of those plebeians, those Reichstag fellows, that despised and
derided "public opinion." The problem was, not to put to too
hard a test the devout belief in militarism possessed by the bourgeoisie
who, as a rule, were ready to grant all possible military demands but
who, especially in times of financial troubles, were not rarely apt to
kick against the pricks, moreover, things had to be made easier for the
bourgeoisie when the latter were dealing with their voters, largely
anti-militarists, because of their social position, and ready to embrace
Social Democracy when they recognize their class interests. Such weapons
as were likely to be most effective had to be withheld or snatched from
Social Democratic propagandists, so militarism had recourse to the
tactics of hushing-up and concealment. The procedure of the military
courts was secret, not a ray penetrated that darkness, and if one
succeeded in penetrating it things were denied, disputed and extenuated
with might and main. But the torch of Social Democracy sent its light
farther and farther, even to behind the barracks walls and through the
bars of the military prisons and fortresses. The military debates that
took place in the German Reichstag in the eighties and nineties of the
last century constitute a tenacious and passionate fight for the
recognition of the fact that the atrocities of the barracks are not rare
and isolated phenomena but regular, extraordinarily frequent, organic,
constitutional occurrences, as it were, in military life. In that fight
effective service was rendered by the publicity of the procedure of
military courts in other countries, proving that military maltreatment
is a regular attribute of militarism, even of republican militarism in
France, even of Belgian militarism, even in a growing degree of the
Swiss militia militarism.
The impression created by the army orders of Prince George of Saxony
(of June 8, 1891 ), which were published by the Vorwarts at the
beginning of 1892, and by the orders of the Bavarian war minister(
December 13, 1891 ), and by the Reichstag debates, which lasted from
February 15 to 17, 1892, was mainly responsible for the effect which the
Social Democratic criticism exercised. After the usual "due
considerations,, and scufflings the reform of our procedure in military
trials was brought about in 1898 with a great amount of painful
exertion. True, the reformed procedure still permitted the courts to a
large extent to exclude the public and thus to cover the terrible
secrets of the barracks with the cloak of Christian charity, but it
succeeded (in spite of all the orders which almost suggested the most
sweeping use of the powers of excluding the public and in spite of the
much discussed disciplining of the judges in the Bilse case) in bringing
down such a hail of appalling cases of maltreatment upon the heads of
the public that all objections against the Social Democratic criticism
were simply swept away, and the existence of the maltreatment of
soldiers as a settled institution of "state-conserving"
militarism was acknowledged almost everywhere, however reluctantly. More
or less honestly the authorities attempted to grapple with this
repelling institution which proved of too great an advantage to the
socialist propaganda, and though they did not believe in any substantial
success, they yet wanted to arouse the impression of dislike for the
institution and readiness to try their best to abolish it. They began to
hunt down with a certain amount of severity those guilty of maltreating
soldiers, but militarism has after all a greater interest in maintaining
military discipline, in training the people in arms to be docile
fighters in the struggle against their own international and national
interests than in attacking the maltreatment of soldiers. It is
instructive to compare the sentences passed upon the basest tormentors
of soldiers with those pronounced almost daily upon soldiers for often
quite petty offences against their superiors, or for of fences committed
in a state of excitement or intoxication by soldiers against their
superiors. For the soldier there is a blood-thirsty, Draconic punishment
for the smallest sin against the holy ghost of militarism; for the other
offender there is, in spite of all, a relatively mild indulgence and
understanding. Thus the campaign of the military courts against the
maltreatment of soldiers, conducted parallel with a campaign to throttle
every vestige of an impulse on the part of the subordinate to exhibit a
consciousness of self-dependence or equality, naturally fails of
practical result. The whole story is told by the case of the Hereditary
Prince of Saxe-Meiningen who had sufficient courage to call upon the men
themselves to assist in the campaign against maltreatment so as to be
able to attack the evil more energetically than ever before at the root.
He was, however, soon forced to quit the army on account of this bold
step. The incident brightly illuminates the whole uselessness and
hopelessness of the official campaign against the maltreatment of
soldiers.
The little book written by our comrade Rudolf Krafft, a former
officer of the Bavarian army, on "The Victims of the Barracks"
treats valuable material with the expert knowledge that can only come
from inside information. Regular compilations of trials for maltreating
soldiers (or sailors), made by the Socialist press at certain intervals,
furnish a positively overwhelming mass of material which has
unfortunately not yet been edited. An important and thankful task is
awaiting some one.
Being fundamentally opposed to militarism we have no delusions about
it. Scharnhorst, in his "Order Concerning Military
Punishments," writes: "Experience teaches that recruits can be
taught the drill without beating them. An officer to whom this may
appear impossible lacks the necessary faculty of instruction or has no
clear idea of training." Of course, theoretically he is right, but
practically he is far in advance of the times. The maltreatment of
soldiers springs from the very essence of capitalist militarism. A large
proportion of the men is intellectually, a still larger proportion
physically, not equal to the military requirements, especially not equal
to those of the parade drill. The number of the young men having a view
of life that is dangerous and hostile to militarism, who enter the army
increases continually. The problem is to tear that soul out of those
"fellows," as it were, and replace it by a new patriotic soul,
loyal to the king. Even the most skilful pedagogue finds it impossible
to solve all those problems, let alone the land of teachers available to
militarism, which must in this respect, too, be more economical than it
would like to be.
The militaristic pedagogues have but a precarious subsistence. They
depend entirely on the good will, on the arbitrariness of their
superior, and must expect every minute to be thrown out of employment if
they do not accomplish their chief task, that of forming the soldier in
the image of militarism -- an excellent expedient to make the whole
apparatus of the military hierarchy extremely pliant in the hands of the
supreme command. It goes without saying that such superiors drill their
men with a nervous lack of consideration, that they soon come to the
point where they use force. instead of persuasion and example, and that
such force, owing to the absolute power which the superior has over the
life and death of his subordinate who has to submit to him
unconditionally, is finally applied in the shape of maltreaments. All
this is a natural and, humanly speaking, necessary concatenation in
which the new Japanese militarism, too, has promptly got entangled. It
is another dilemma of militarism.
The causes of such maltreatments are not to be met with everywhere in
a uniform degree. It is above all the degree of popular education which
exercises a strongly modifying influence, and it is not surprising that
even French colonial militarism forms in this respect a favorable
contrast to the Prussian-German home militarism.
It is exactly in this form of exercising disciplinary power, and just
in that necessity by which it arises out of the system, that we
Socialists find an excellent weapon with which to combat militarism
fundamentally and most successfully, arousing against it an ever growing
portion of the people and carrying class-consciousness into groups that
otherwise could not yet be reached or could only be reached with much
greater difficulty. The maltreatment of soldiers and military
class-justice, one of the most provoking phenomena of capitalist
barbarism, are not only dangerously undermining military discipline,
they are also the most effective weapons in the war for the liberation
of the proletariat. That sin of capitalism turns against capitalism
itself in two ways. However much the sinner may repent, honestly in
helpless contrition, or in the style of the fox in the fable, those
weapons can not be taken away from us; for though he appears in
sackcloth and ashes the sinner is irreclaimable.
The Costs of Militarism or La Douloureuse.
Another Dilemma.
Historical materialism, the doctrine of dialectical evolution, is the
doctrine of the inherent necessity of retribution. Every society divided
in classes is condemned to commit suicide. Every society divided in
classes is a force that ever wills the evil and accomplishes the good
and, even if it did not will the evil, must do the evil; it must perish
through the original sin of its class character; it must, whether it
wants to or not, beget the OEdipus who will slay it one day, but, unlike
the fabled Theban, with the full consciousness of committing parricide.
That is at least true with regard to the capitalist order of society,
with regard to the proletariat. Of course, the ruling class of
capitalism, too, would very much like to enjoy its profits in complete
comfort and security. But since that comfort and security neither agree
with the national and international capitalist competition nor with the
permanent taste of those at whose expense it lives, capitalism erects
for the protection of wage slavery round the sanctum of profit a cruel
fortress of despotism, bristling with arms. Though militarism be a vital
necessity of capitalism, the latter is naturally not pleased with the
gigantic expense of militarism and considers it at heart as a very
disagreeable burden. However, as it is impossible today to follow the
old Cadmean recipe of sowing dragon's teeth in order to make the ground
yield armed soldiers, there is nothing to be done but putting up with
Moloch Militarism and feeding its insatiable appetite. The annual
financial debates in the various parliaments demonstrate how painful a
subject this quality of militarism is to the ruling classes. Capitalism,
hungering for surplus value, can only be impressed by touching the
financial spot, its constitutional weak spot. The expense of militarism
is the only thing that keeps it in bounds, at least as far as it is
borne by the bourgeoisie itself. The ethics of profiteering, however,
seeks and finds a way out that is as easy as it is base -- the shifting
of the greatest or a great part of the military burdens to the shoulders
of those parts of the population that are not only the weakest, but for
whose oppression and torture militarism is chiefly established. Like the
ruling classes of other social orders the capitalist classes use their
despotism, which is moreover based in the first place on the
exploitation of the proletariat, not only in order to make the oppressed
and exploited classes forge their own chains, but also to make them pay
for themselves for those chains to as large an extent as possible. Not
content with fuming the sons of the people into the executioners of the
people they press the executioners' pay as much as possible out of the
sweat and blood of the people. And though here and there one is sensible
of the bitterly provoking effect of that infamous outrage, capitalism
remains true to its faith unto death, its faith in the golden calf. To
be sure, that shifting of the military burdens on to the shoulders of
the poorer classes diminishes the possibility of exploiting those
classes. That can not be explained away, and that likewise contributes
to the annoyance of capitalism, ever intent on exploitation, at Moloch.
Militarism rests like a leaden weight on our whole life. It is
particularly, however, a leaden weight for our economic life, a
nightmare under which our economic life is groaning, a vampire
sucking its blood, because it withdraws the best energies of the people
from production and the works of civilization continually, year after
year (In Germany there are at the moment of writing 655,000 of the
strongest and most productive men, mostly between the ages of 20 and 22,
permanently in the army and navy), and also because of its insane direct
costs. In Germany the military and naval budget, which is increasing by
leaps, amounted in the year 1906-07 (inclusive of the colonial budget,
but exclusive of the supplementary estimates) to more than 1,300,000,000
marks, say one billion and a third.(4) The costs to the other military
states are relatively not smaller,(5) and the military expenditure of
even richer countries, such as the United States, Great Britain (which,
in 1904-05, had an army and navy budget of 1,321,000,000), Belgium and
Switzerland, is so extraordinary that it occupies a dominating position
in the budgets of those countries. Everywhere the tendency is in the
direction of a boundless increase, close to the limits of the ability to
pay.
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4. Every soldier fighting in German Southwest Africa meant an
annual expense of 9,500 marks to the German Empire in 1906
5. In France, for instance, in 1905: 1,101,260,000 francs. Since 1870
France has spent some 40 billion francs for military purposes (exclusive
of the colonies).
The following interesting compilation is found in the Nouveau
Manuel du soldat:
"In 1899 Europe had a military budget of
7,184,321,093 francs.
It employed in a military capacity
4, 169,321 men,
who, if they were to work, could produce, at the rate of three francs
per day per man, the value of
12,507,963 francs a day.
Europe further used for military purposes
710,342 horses
which, at a rate of two francs per day per horse, could produce a value
of
1,420,684 francs a day.
Adding that sum to the 12,507,963 francs we obtain a total of
13,928,647 francs.
Multiplied by 300 that sum shows, together with the budget, a lost
productive value of
11,915,913 francs."
But in Germany alone the military budget increased from 1899 to
1906-07 from 920,000,000 to about 1,300,000,000, more than 40 percent.
For the whole of Europe the total amount of military "overhead
charges," not counting the costs of the Russo-Japanese War, reaches
at the moment of writing some
13,000,000,000 marks per annum,
say 13 percent. of the total foreign trade of the world. In truth a
veritable policy of bankruptcy!
In the Russian Baltic provinces the military suppression of the
revolutionary movement was for a long time confided to the very barons
affected by that movement. In a similar manner America has realized the
"unlimited possibility" of leaving the maintenance of
capitalist order even in times of peace to the employers, as a
concession to be exploited, as it were. Thus, the Pinkertons have fairly
become a legal institution for the class-struggle. At all events, that
institution, like its Belgian counterpart, the civic guard, has the
advantage of reducing those effects of militarism which are disagreeable
even to the bourgeoisie (maltreatment of soldiers, expense, etc.) and of
partly withholding some highly effective material for agitation from the
enemies of the capitalist order of society. However, as has been
explained, that way out of the difficulty, which is moreover anything
but pleasant for the proletariat, is as a rule blocked to the capitalist
countries, and the introduction of the much less burdensome militia
system is for a predeterminable time denied them because of the function
the army has to perform at home in the class-struggle, a function which
is even developing a pronounced feeling in favor of the abolition of the
existing militias.
Comparing the entire budget of the German Empire for 190~6-7,
which amounted to 2,397,394,000 marks, with that portion of it devoted
to the army and navy, we notice that all the other items play only the
part of small satellites to that mighty sum, that the entire fiscal
system, the entire financial system group themselves round the military
budget -- "as the host of the stars are mustered round the
sun," as the poet says.
Hence militarism dangerously impedes, and often makes impossible even
such progress in civilization as in itself would advance the interest of
the existing social order. Education, art and science, public
sanitation, the communication system: all are treated in a niggardly
fashion since there is nothing left for works of civilization after
gluttonous Moloch has been fed. The ministerial declaration that the
obligations of civilization (6) did not suffer, convinced at most the
East Elbian junkers with their low cultural demands whilst it could not
wring more than an indulgent smile from the other representatives of
capitalist society. Figures furnish the proof. It suffices to compare
the one billion and a third of the German military budget of 1906 with
the 171 millions that Prussia spent for all kinds of educational
purposes, or the 420 millions that Austria spent for military purposes
in 1900 with the 5 1/2 millions she spent for elementary education. The
latest Prussian school maintenance law, with its niggardly settlement of
the question of teachers' salaries, and the notorious Studt decree
against the raising of teachers' salaries in the cities speak volumes.
Germany should be rich enough to fulfil all her tasks of
civilization, and the more completely these tasks should be performed
the easier it would be to bear their costs. But the barrier of
militarism obstructs the road.
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6 "Kulturaufgaben" -- a very difficult word to
translate correctly. The lately much derided German word Kultur does not
merely signify material civilization, but civilized life in its widest
aspect. [TRANSLATOR.]
Quite especially provoking is the way in which the expenses of
militarism are defrayed in Germany -- and elsewhere, in France, for
instance. It can almost be said that militarism is the creator and
preserver of our oppressive, unjust system of indirect taxation. The
entire tariff and taxation system of the Empire, which amounts to a
squeezing-out of the masses, i.e., the great needy mass of our
population, and to which is due, for example, that in 1906 the cost of
living for the mass of the people rose by no less than from 10 to 15
percent. as against the average for the period from 1900 to 1904, not
only benefits the junkers (that parasitic class so tenderly cared for,
very largely for militaristic reasons), but serves in the first line
militaristic purposes. It is no less mainly the fault of militarism if
our system of communication, the development and perfection of which is
especially to the greatest advantage of a sensible capitalism equipped
with a shrewd understanding of its interests, does not by far meet the
demands of traffic and technical progress, but is used as a milch-cow
for a special indirect taxation of the people. The story of the Stengel
bill on imperial finances ought to make even a blind man see. It is
possible to calculate almost to a cent that this bill was only caused by
the necessity of stopping that 200-million hole which militarism had
once again succeeded in making in the imperial treasury; and the kind of
taxation resorted to, which presses heavily on articles of popular
consumption, beer, tobacco, etc., and even on communication, that breath
of life of capitalism, excellently illustrates what was said above.
No doubt, in many respects militarism is a burden to capitalism
itself, but that burden is as firmly installed on the capitalist back as
the mysterious strong old man was on the shoulders of Sin bad the
Sailor. Capitalism is in need of militarism just as spies are needed in
times of war and executioners and their assistants in times of peace. It
may hate militarism, but it can not do without it, just as the civilized
Christian may detest the sins against the Gospel, but can not live
without them. Militarism is one of the original sins of capitalism,
which may be susceptible of being mitigated here and there, but of which
it will be purged only in the purgatory of Socialism.
The Army as a Weapon Against the Proletariat in the Economic
Struggle.
Preliminary Remarks.
We have seen that militarism has become the centre round which our
political, social and economic life tends to move more and more, that it
is the wire-puller operating the marionettes of the capitalist
puppet-show. We have seen what the purpose is that militarism pursues,
how it tries to accomplish that purpose and how in the pursuit of that
end it must necessarily produce the poison by which it is to die. We
have also pointed out what an important rôle as a conservative force it
plays -- alas! with little success -- as a school for drumming proper
views into the nation in uniform and civilian dress. But militarism is
not content with that part; it exercises even today and in quiet times
its conserving influence in various other directions, as a preparation,
as a preliminary practice for the great day when after a long
apprenticeship and service as a journeyman it has to produce its
masterpiece, for the day when the people rises boldly and fearlessly
against its rulers, the day of the great reckoning.
On that day, which the elect of militarism would see dawn rather
today than tomorrow (because they hope that the sooner it comes the more
surely it will be the deluge of Social Democracy) militarism will shoot,
fire grape-shot and massacre en masse to its heart's content
"with God, for King and Fatherland." The 22nd of January,
1905, the bloody May week of 1871 will be its ideal and model. The
commander of the Vienna corps, Schonfeldt, made a touching vow at a
banquet oœ feasting bourgeois in April, 1894, when he said: "I can
assure you that you, too, will find us behind your front when the
existence of society, the enjoyment of the hard earned property are
endangered. When the citizen stands in the first line the soldier flies
to his assistance."
Thus the mailed fist is ever raised and ready to come down with a
crushing blow. Hypocritically they speak about "the maintenance of
law and order," "the protection of the liberty to work,"
and mean "the maintenance of oppression," "the protection
of exploitation." Whenever the proletariat exhibits an inconvenient
animation and power, militarism at once attempts to scare it back by the
rattling of the sabre, that militarism which, ever present and
omnipotent, is behind every action the forces of the state undertake
against the forces of labor, and gives to such action the ultimate,
still invincible weight. That weight is, however, not merely reserved,
behind the vanguard of the police and constabulary, for important
occasions, but is also constantly available for the clearly understood
purpose of aiding in the everyday work and of strengthening in a
sustained guerilla warfare the pillars of the capitalist society. It is
just that restlessly and craftily employed versatility that
characterizes capitalist militarism.
Soldiers as the Competitors of Free Workers.
As a functionary of capitalism militarism fully understands that its
greatest and most sacred task is that of increasing the profits of the
employing class. Thus it thinks itself authorized and even obliged to
place the soldiers, officially or semi-officially, as beasts of burden
at the disposal of employers, particularly the junkers, who use the
soldiers to supply that want of farm hands which has been caused by the
inhuman exploitation and brutal treatment of the farm laborers.
To send soldiers to help with the harvest is a practice as
constantly met with as it is detrimental and inimical to the interests
of labor. It reveals, like the system of soldier-servants, (7) the whole
mischievous and stupid humbug behind the arguments which are used by
those monomaniacs of the goosestep and the parade drill to show the
purely military necessity of a long period of military service, and
awakens not very flattering reminiscences of the company system of the
time before the crash of Jena. More complicated are the numerous cases
in which the post office and the railroad management temporarily employ
soldiers at times of heavy traffic, but they should also be mentioned in
this connection.
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7. The practice of officers of engaging private soldiers as
domestics. [TRANSLATOR]
The Army and Strike-Breaking.
By sending soldiers under military command to act as strike-breakers
militarism interferes directly with the struggle of labor to emancipate
itself. We need only point to the case of the present com mender of the
Imperial Anti-socialist Union, Lieutenant-General v. Liebert, who even
as a simple colonel had comprehended in 1896 that strikes are a
calamity, like a conflagration or inundation, of course, a calamity for
the employers whose protecting spirit and executive officer he felt
himself to be.
As regards Germany, a special notoriety attaches to the method of
gently pushing the men released from military service into the ranks of
the strike-breakers, a method practiced as late as the summer of 1906
during the Nuremberg strike.
Of much greater importance are three events that occurred outside of
Germany. In the first place we must mention the military strike-breaking
on a large scale that took place during the Dutch general railroad
strike in January, 1903, and which had its crowning achievement in the
law withdrawing from the railroad workers the right to organize. In the
second place we refer to the military strike-breaking on a large scale
during the general strike of the Hungarian railroad workers in 1904, on
which occasion the military administration went farther still and not
only commanded the men in active military service to break the strike,
illegally keeping them with the colors beyond their period of service,
but had the impudence to mobilize the railroad workers of the first and
second reserves and such other men of the military reserves as had the
necessary technical equipment, and force them into strike-breaking
service on the railroad under military discipline. Finally, military
strike-breaking on a large scale was resorted to during the Bulgarian
railroad strike which was proclaimed on January 3, 1907. Of no less
importance is the campaign inaugurated at the beginning of the month of
December, 1906, in Hungary by the minister for agriculture in
conjunction with the minister of war against the right of combination
and the strikes of agricultural laborers, in which campaign stress was
laid upon the desirability of thoughtfully training soldiers to serve as
bands of strike-breakers in harvest-time.
In France, too, strike-breaking by soldiers is well-known.
The fact that military education systematically fosters
strike-breaking propensities and that the workmen released from the
active army become dangerous to the struggling proletariat, on account
of their readiness to attack the members of their own class in the rear,
must also be counted among the international militaristic achievements.
The Rule of the Sabre and Gun in Strikes.
Preliminary Remarks.
Military authorities everywhere have always been convinced of the
capitalist truth of the saying that the Hydra of revolution is
lurking behind every strike. The army is therefore always ready to put
to flight with sabre and gun the disobedient slaves of the capitalist
whenever the fists, sabres and pistols of the police are not immediately
effective in so-called strike riots. That is true in regard to all the
capitalist countries and also, of course, in the highest degree of
Russia, which, as a whole, is not yet a capitalist country, and which
can not be considered as typical in this respect on account of special
political and cultural conditions. Though Italy and Austria are among
the greatest sinners, they are surpassed by the states enjoying a
republican or semi-republican form of government. In judging
historically the value of the republican form of government under the
capitalist economic system it is of the greatest importance to point out
persistently that, apart from England, there were no countries where the
soldiery was so willing to suppress strikes for the benefit of the
employers and behaved so bloodthirstily and recklessly as the republican
or semi-republican countries, like Belgium and France, with which the
freest countries of the world, Switzerland and America, can easily bear
comparison. Russia is, of course in this respect, as in all spheres of
cruelty, beyond comparison. Barbarism and worse than barbarism -- the
savageness of the beast characterizes the general civilization of her
ruling classes and is the natural inclination of her militarism, which
has literally bathed itself, ever since the first timid stirrings of the
proletariat, in the blood of' peaceful workmen who in monstrous misery
vlere crying for deliverance. One must not cite any particular event, as
that would mean tearing in a petty and arbitrary spirit a link out of an
endless chain. For every drop of proletarian blood that has been shed in
the economic struggle in all the other countries taken together, Czarism
has crushed a proletarian body, in order to suppress the most modest
beginnings of a labor movement.
An employment of military power similar in its nature we observe in
the activities of the colonial armies and constabularies against those
natives of the colonies who will not willingly allow themselves to be
brought under the yoke of the meanest exploitation and greed. However,
we can not deal more fully with this particular subject.
It must still be mentioned that often no sharp distinction can be
made in this connection between the army proper and the constabulary and
the police; they work together intimately, they replace and supplement
one another and belong closely together, if for no other reason than
that the quality which counts here -- a violent combative temper, a
willingness and readiness to sabre the people resolutely and ruthlessly,
is also, in the case of the police and constabulary, mainly a genuine
product of the barracks, a fruit of military education and training.
Italy.
In two instructive articles (published in Mouvement Socialiste,
May-June and August-September, 1906, Les massacre de classe en
Italia) Ottavio Dinale gives an historical account of massacres of
workmen in Italy. He does not merely deal with massacres directly
connected with strikes, but also with those got up on occasions of labor
demonstrations in the economic struggle outside of strikes. The articles
show clearly how quickly the army appears on the scene in Italy on such
occasions, for what slight cause and with what sur passing severity
military attacks are made on defenceless crowds, how it is even
customary to continue firing into and slashing at the fleeing, dispersed
crowd. He sums up by stating that in Italy the "bullets of the
King" shatter the bones of Italian workmen every year perhaps some
five, six or even ten times. He points out that the Italian bourgeoisie,
the author of those massacres, is among the most narrow-minded, backward
bourgeois classes of the world, that in the eyes of these capitalists
Socialism is not a political philosophy, but a species of criminal
disposition, criminal propensity, the most dangerous for public order.
He quotes the words written by the Milan newspaper Idea liberale
on the morrow of the butchery of Grammichele: "Killed and wounded
-- those people have met the fate they deserve the grapeshot, that is
the most precious element of civilization and order."
After such samples one need not be astonished to hear that even a
so-called democratic government, like that of Giolitti, never could be
got to call the military to account for their bloodthirsty barbarities,
but rather praised them officially "for having done their
duty." It appears still more natural that a resolution of the
Socialist party in the Italian Chamber demanding restrictive regulations
in regard to the employment of the military in collective conflicts
should be voted down.
The first effect of the shootings of the month of May of 1898 was to
clear the situation in the class-struggle and make even the blind and
the short-sighted optimists see how matters stood. The following is a
nearly complete register of the bloodshed of recent years:
1901, June 27, Berra.........................2 killed, 10 wounded
1902, May 4, Patugnano .... ..............1 ...."......7
..."
1902, August 5, Cassano ....
.............1....."......3....."
1902, September 8, Candela . ...........5....."......11..."
1902, October 13 ,Giarratana . .........2....."......12..."
1903, May 21, Piere ........
...............3....."........1...."
1903, April 20. Galatina ....
..............2....."........1...."
1903, August 31, Torre Annunziata ...7....".......10...."
1904, May 17, Cerignola
..................3...."........40...."
1904, September 4, Buggera ............3...."........10...."
1904, September 11, Castelluzzo ......1.....".......12....."
1904, September 15, Sestri Ponente ..2....".......2......"
1905, April 18, Foggia
......................7...."........20...."
1905, May 15, St. Elpidio
.................4.....".......2......"
1905, August I6, Grammichele..........18....."......20...."
1906, March 23, Muro
....................2.......".......4....."
1906, March 21,
Scarano.................1.......".......9....."
1906, April 30, Calinera
...................2.......".......3...."
1906, April 4, Turino
.......................1.......".......6....."
1906, May 12, Cagliari
.....................2......"........7...."
1906, May 21, Nebida ....................1...... ".......1......
"
1906, May 21, Sonneza....................6......
".......6......."
1906, May 24, Benventare...............2....... "......
2......"
The total number is 23 butcheries with 78 killed and 218 wounded. A good
harvest!
Innumerable are the cases in Italy where the military have been
mobilized against workmen and "peasants" that were on strike
or were demonstrating for some economic reason and where no blood was
shed. Those "exercises" of the army are daily news items on
the other side of the Alps.
We may also mention here as a matter of course a fact attested by
Hervé, viz., that, just as it is in Italy, it is impossible to keep
pace with the butcheries of striking workmen and peasants in Spain, a
country in whose territories once upon a time the sun never set and
where it does not seem ever to rise nowadays.
Austria-Hungary.
As is generally known, matters are not much better under the black and
yellow flag of the Dual Monarchy. The Socialist deputy Daszynski could
justly exclaim in the Austrian parliament on September 25, 1903,
"During strikes and popular demonstrations, as well as during the
ebullitions of national feeling it is always the army which turns its
bayonets against the people, against the workmen, against the
peasants." And with reference to general Austrian politics he could
as justly point. out, "We live in a state in which, even in times
of peace, the army remains the only thing that will cement together such
disparate elements." He could point to the incidents that took
place at Graz in ~897 and the blood shed at Graslitz. At the downfall of
Prime Minister Badeni, in the month of November, ~897, the military were
employed in Vienna, Graz and Budapest with sanguinary results. We
remember the frequent butcheries of workmen in Galicia (a case deserving
special notice is that in which the blood of farm laborers was shed at
Burowicki and Ubinie [Kanimko], in 1902), the bloody events at Falkenau,
Nürschan and Ostrau, which must properly be credited to the
constabulary, a special body which is particularly devoted to maintain
order in the interior and is partly subject to the orders of the
military authorities, partly to those of the civil administrative
authorities, which however is subject to a purely military discipline.
During the general strike at Trieste, in February, 1902, there were also
clashes with the army, and ten persons were either killed or wounded. We
must also mention the incidents that took place during the bricklayers'
strike at Lemberg in 1902, and the political demonstrations succeeding
that strike, when hussars rode and shot into the crowd, killing five
persons. The purely nationalistic scuffle at Innsbruck in 1905 is,
however, outside the scope of our subject.
In Hungary considerable military excesses directed against the
populace occurred quite frequently up to recent years, and the
constabulary has always done its "full duty"; as, for
instance, during the riots on the Pussta Tamasie, where it fired on
peaceful farm hands without any reason whatever. One particular event of
most recent date should be remembered, viz., the battle that was fought
on September 2, 1906, in the county of Hunyad, where the military were
on the rampage among the striking miners of the Petroseny coal mines.
Numerous persons were severely wounded, two mortally, and a hundred and
fifty were slightly wounded.
On a later occasion we shall briefly refer to the other skirmishes
and engagements which the army has fought in the politcal
struggles of the proletariat of the Habsburg Dual Monarchy.
In the speech mentioned above, Daszynski demanded that the "bayonets
should not mix in politics." But since that time, as every one
knows, the bayonets have turned to politics more eagerly and actively
than ever before.
Belgium.
In Belgium the butcheries of workmen have a long history. The events of
the years 1867 and 1868 are of importance, if only on account of the
intercession of the International. The butcheries begin with the
so-called hunger revolt of Marchienne in 1867, when processions of
defenceless demonstrating workmen were set upon by a company of soldiers
and cut down. There followed, in the month of March, 1868, the massacre
of Charleroi and, in 1869, the infamous butcheries of Seraing and the
Borinage.
The massacre of Charleroi, arranged by the military and constabulary
against the miners who had been driven to the utmost desperation in
consequence of the restriction of output and wage reductions, induced
the International at the time to begin a vigorous agitation in Belgium,
and led to a proclamation by the General Council of the International,
which resulted in a considerable success for the International as
regards organization.
The scenes of the sixties were repeated during the so-called hunger
rebellions of 1886 in which not only economic questions, but also the
demand for universal suffrage played a part, the latter in a confused
manner, it is true. General Baron Vandersmissen issued his notorious
circular letter on April 3,1886, a circular later condemned by even the
Chamber of Deputies, in which he declared cynically, "L'usage
des armes est fait sans aucune sommation" [use is made of arms
without previous warning]. There was an unheard-of number of victims. In
Raux alone 16 workmen were killed by a volley. On all this class-justice
set its stamp of approval and laid particular emphasis by numerous heavy
sentences which were imposed on workmen. From 1886 to 1902 there was
scarcely a strike in Belgium without the military interfering. In that
period some 80 men were killed. During the general strike of 1893, which
though of a political nature may be mentioned in this connection,
numerous people were left dead on the field of battle. The names of
Verviers, Roux, La Louvière, Jemappes, Ostende, Bergerhout, Mons have
been burnt as with a red-hot iron into the memory of the class-conscious
Belgian working-class. They are blood-stained leaves in the big book
registering the sins of Belgian capitalism. It was in 1902 that the
standing army, together with the reserves, was mobilized for strike
purposes for the last time, that time in consequence of the general
strike. The unfavorable reports about the disposition and sentiments of
the soldiers that reached the cabinet and were soon verified by the fact
that the soldiers began to show their revolutionary temper in a fairly
open manner, sang the Marseillaise, hissed their officers, etc., led to
the Flemish soldiers being sent to the Walloon districts and vice versa,
and finally brought about the decision not to use the standing army at
all. Since 1902 the proletarian soldiers of Belgium have ceded the
honorable role of acting the watch-dog to capitalism, the part of a
"flying sen try before the money-chest of the employers," at
least as far as the interior militarism is concerned, to the
constabulary and civic guard, as previously set forth. To protect their
sacred exploiting privileges the bourgeoisie were now at all events
obliged to exert themselves and risk their own skins -- if such a danger
can be said to exist at all in face of unarmed crowds. Elsewhere we have
described that the civic guard does excellent work in the fight against
the interior enemy.
France.
In France the history of the class-struggle has been written with rivers
of blood. We will not conjure up the hecatombs of the three days' battle
of July, 1830; nor the 10,000 that died in the street fighting from June
23 to 26, 1848, the victims of the executioner Cavaignac; nor the first
of December, 1851, of Napoleon the "Little"; nor the sea of
blood made with those 28,000 heroes, in which the French bourgeoisie,
murdering in a wholesale fashion as the agent and avenger of a
capitalism that was shrieking with rage, tried in the red week of May of
1871 to drown the Commune, that capitalist slave war; nor the Pere
Lachaise cemetery and its wall of the Federals, the monuments of an
incomparable heroism. These struggles, revolutionary in the highest
degree, in which militarism did its fearful work, are outside the scope
of our historical speculations.
The exploits of French militarism against defenceless striking
workmen begin at an early date. The so-called "rebellion" of
the silk weavers of Lyons, whose banner bore the famous and moving
words, "vivre en travaillant ou mourir en combattant" [to
live working or to die fighting, began in the month of November, 1831,
by the military firing on a peaceful demonstration; in a fight lasting
two days the indignant workmen conquered the town, the national guard
fraternizing with them; but soon the military occupied the town without
a blow. Ricamari, Saint-Aubin and Decazeville are names of localities
rendered famous by the first exploits of militarism under the second
French Empire. In those times the bourgeois republicans were most
vehemently opposed to sending soldiers to the strike districts. These
same republicans had scarcely got into power when they themselves began
to adopt the method of Bonapartism which they had only just fought
against, and they soon excelled their model. They found words of
disapproval only when the culprit was a Clerical or a Monarchist, and
then only out of political spite. At Fourmies a bullet from a Lebel
rifle, striking down a young girl, Marie Blondeau, on May 1, 1891,
inaugurated the new regime's baptism of blood. The bag of the day, which
was made by the 145th regiment of the line, consisted of 10 killed and
35 wounded. But the butchers of Fourmies, Constant and his assistant,
Captain Chapuis, were soon to have companions. Fourmies was followed by
Chalons in 1899, La Martinique in 1900, then Longwy, where the officers
sealed and celebrated the Franco-Russian alliance by using Russian
knouts; finally, in the months of May and June, 1905, there were the
events of Villefranche-sur-Saone and particularly Limoges with the
cavalry charges and shootings of April 17, 1905. In December, 1905, the
drama of Combree was enacted, and on January 20, 1907, the people
demonstrating in favor of Sunday as a day of rest were chased off the
streets of Paris by an immense muster of troops. In this recital we must
also not forget Dunkirk, Creuset and Montceau-les-Mines where, according
to the report made by the Conféderation Générale du Travail
(the French Federation of Labor) to the Dublin international conference,
the soldiers declared their solidarity with the strikers.
What Meslier exclaimed during the latest great anti-militaristic
trial is true: "Since the murder of little Marie Blondeau at
Fourmies the workingclass of France has passed through a long martyrdom
abounding in victims." Nothing shows better the absurdity of the
illusion of a peaceful development cherished by the adherents of
the"new method," than the fact that the vigorous growth and
increase of anti-clerical and republican sentiment and activities which
could be noticed in the France of the last five years, the France of
Millerandism, has not resulted in a diminution, but positively in an
increase of the "punitive expeditions", of the military
against strikers. The latest radical democratic government of Clémenceau
with its two Socialists will also not bring about a change. Lafargues's
pointed remark in the Humanité, "The modern armies serve
exclusively for the protection of capitalist property, in so far as they
do not concern themselves with plundering colonies," hits the nail
on the head in regard to France also.
United States of America.
It is easy to show what that "tone of equality" signifies
which, according to Professor Sombart, pervades in many respects the
social and public life of the United States, and to demonstrate that
capitalism, when it comes to the point, can very effectively reinforce
its "tone" by the sound of the cannon, the rattling of
musketry and the swishing of the sabre, an accomplishment in which it
still outstrips even the proletariat of America. The following facts are
not only instructive in regard to the great importance which the methods
of military recruiting and the disposition and training of troops have
for their availability against the "interior enemy. They often
assume a peculiar character in consequence of the comparatively
well-armed condition of the working-class, attributable to circumstances
peculiar to America.
Beyond the ocean, as in Belgium, the period of the butchery of
workingmen begins with the movement of the unemployed. On January 13,
1874, a strong police force pounced upon an unemployed demonstration
without any provocation. Hundreds of severely wounded workmen remained
on the battle-field of Tompkins Square, New York. Then followed the
dramatic events of the railroad strike in the month of July, 1877.
Against the strikers of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad the governor of
West Virginia sent several companies of state militia which proved too
weak however. The 250 men of the Federal army sent to their aid by
President Hayes achieved no better result. In Maryland the rifles of the
militia killed ten and wounded a greater number of men. In Pittsburgh
the local militia, called upon by the sheriff, refused to act. The old
trick of employing men from other parts of the country was resorted to.
Six hundred men of the militia sent from Philadelphia fought a short but
fierce battle with the strikers, but were beaten and fled the next
morning. The militia called out against the strikers in Reading,
Pennsylvania consisted mostly of workmen who fraternized with the
strikers, distributed their ammunition among them and threatened to turn
their arms against all hostile militia units. But one company, which was
almost exclusively composed of men belonging to the possessing classes
and was led by a reckless officer, opened fire on the crowd, killing 13
and wounding 22 persons. The company was, however, given no time to
enjoy its exploit, and had to retire soon in a badly beaten-up
condition. St. Louis, which for a time was entirely in the hands of the
strikers, was finally re-conquered for "law and order", by,
the entire police force and several companies of the militia, after a
veritable siege of the headquarters of the executive committee.(8)
-------------------------
8. See Hillquit's History of Socialism in the United States,
which has been mostly used for the part referring to the United States.
The terror which overtook Chicago in the month of May, 1886, is
attributable to the Pinkertons and the police force. Mr. McCormick, of
the McCormick Reaper Works, let his armed Pinkertons loose upon the
strikers (to protect the "willing workers," as was alleged),
and thus started off the sanguinary attacks by the police, who clubbed
men, women and children without distinction, killed six persons and
wounded numerous others. That occurred on May 3. On the 4th of May the
celebrated dynamite bomb affair occurred, which produced a violent
street battle in which 4 workmen were killed and about 50 wounded,
whilst of the police 7 were killed and 60 wounded. The whole world is
acquainted with the horrible trial arising out of the events of May 4,
1886, a trial in which the democratic class-justice of America gave a
splendid proof of its qualifications.
The events during the period from 1892 to 1894 deserve a more
detailed treatment. In the first place, violent fights took place in the
month of July, 1892, during the strike in Carnegie's iron and steel
works at Homestead between the armed Pinkertons, called in by the
employer; 12 men were killed and 20 severely wounded, the Pinkertons
were beaten, and finally Federal troops brought about the defeat of the
strikers by occupying the town, and with the help of military law.
Almost at the same time a miners' strike broke out in Coeur d'Alene,
Idaho. Here the militia, which was only some 100 strong, was not in a
position to interfere in the fight between the strike-breakers and~the
strikers, who were well armed. It was only when Federal troops, asked
for by the governor, arrived that the strikers were routed.
In Buffalo the switchmen went on strike in the month of August, 1892.
The local militia, called out immediately at the beginning of the
strike, did not appear to be inclined to prevent picketing. Finally the
sheriff was asked to request the governor to send troops, whereupon the
entire militia of the state, twenty times more numerous than the
strikers, appeared on the scene within forty-eight hours and restored
"peace and quiet."
In the same month the strikes at the iron mines of Inman and at the
coal mines of Oliver Springs and Coal Creek caused the governor of
Tennessee to concentrate the whole available force of the state militia,
after some portions of the militia had been disarmed by the strikers and
sent home again. Here, too, the suppression of the strike was followed
by the merciless work of class-justice.
Finally we must make mention of the Pullman strike of 1894, when the
President of the United States, not heeding the protest of Mr. Altgeld,
the governor of Illinois, despatched Federal troops who broke the strike
in conjunction with the state militia; 12 men were killed. As in all the
other preceding cases the courts, it is true, worked jointly with
militarism and contributed so much to the defeat of the workmen by means
of the famous injunctions and wholesale imprisonments that the leader of
the strike, Debs, attested: "Not the railroads, not the army
defeated us, but the power of the courts of the United States."
It still remains true that, though the militia failed frequently and
though the strikers were frequently armed, it was the military power
that decided the defeats of the workers in all the cases .mentioned, and
subsequently, too, the strikers in America "were in a majority of
cases quelled by the aid of the local police, state militia or Federal
troops," also aided, to be sure, by "government by
injunction." Almost without an exception the strikes ended thus
with the defeat of the workmen, according to Hillquit, who seems to be
somewhat too pessimistic in this connection.
Canada.
Canada's "free" soil was reddened by the blood of workmen at
Hamilton on November 24, 1906. During a collision with striking
railroadmen the militia wounded 50 persons, some of them severely.
Switzerland.
Switzerland's record in this field of military activity is truly quite a
long one. As early as 1869 the government of Geneva employed both the
police force and the militia against striking workmen. In the same year
the government of the canton of Vaud recalled by telegraph a battalion
that had marched off to do military exercises, supplied it with
ball-cartridges and had it march with fixed bayonets into the town,
where the workmen were on strike. It was also in 1869 that the
government of Basle made troops act as pickets against the workers when
the women silk weavers struck to improve their miserable conditions, and
when in the same year a strike of vase-makers and engravers broke out at
La Chaux de Fonds, the new bourgeois government provided itself with
arms and ammunition for a possible mobilization of the militia.
In 1875 blood was shed. The government of the canton of Uri mobilized
the militia against 2,000 striking workmen employed at the construction
of the St. Gothard tunnel, who were chiefly up in arms against the
shameful truck system, it is said that the employers interested placed
20,000 francs at the disposal of the government for that mobilization.
As a result of the bold attack several people were killed and some 15
remained wounded on the battle-field of the class-struggle. Blood was
also shed in 1901 by two companies called out against the strikers of
the Simplon tunnel by the government of the canton of Valais. Some
workmen were severely wounded on that occasion. In the same year two
companies of the militia had to do duty as pickets against striking
Italian bricklayers in the canton of Tessino. In the month of October,
1902, occurred the well-known affair of Geneva where, during a strike
directed against an American band of exploiters, the workmen were chased
and clubbed by order of the government of Geneva. Militiamen who refused
at the time to act as bum-bailiffs were imprisoned and declared to have
forfeited their civic rights. Incidentally it may be mentioned that on
that occasion even many of the bourgeois that had not been called out
armed themselves against the workers. At about the same time the militia
was mobilized at Basle for a strike. In 1904 the employers of the
building trade at Chaux de Fonds called upon the government for military
help against a strike which to their disgust was perfectly orderly in
spite of all provocations and therefore hopeless from the employers'
point of view; as a result, cavalry and a battalion of infantry appeared
promptly on the scene and, by intimidating the proletarians who were
conducting a legal fight, forced them back into capitalist slavery. It
was also in 1904 that the military was called out against strikers at
the Ricken, in the canton of St. Gall, to protect, as was alleged, the
fruit and vegetable harvest which was in no way endangered. St. Gall
also sent its militia to Rohrschach, where, during a disagreement about
wages in the foundries owned by French capitalists, an excited crowd had
smashed a few windowpanes. A very serious affair took place at Zurich in
the summer of 1906. In consequence of the great increase in the prices
of all necessaries of life several strikes for higher wages had broken
out in that city, when the workmen employed in the building trades
likewise proclaimed a strike for the same reason. The militia interfered
without the slightest cause with sanguinary results, and beat and
clubbed the striking workmen in the most brutal fashion, dragging
especially the foreign strikers off to the barracks where they were
struck with riding-whips under the direction of the officers. Moreover,
picketing was prohibited as well as every kind of demonstration. The
interpellation relating to those infamous events which was presented in
the Grand Council was at first laid on the shelf and finally simply
throttled without any discussion by the solid bourgeois majority. And to
cap it all, six of the strike leaders were put on trial and, on August
24, 1906, Sigg was sentenced to be imprisoned for eight months and to
forfeit his active civic rights for one year, for an alleged incitement
to mutiny by means of an anti-militarist leaflet addressed to the
militia; the other five were acquitted.
More can hardly be expected from a bourgeois republic and a militia.
These things appear in their proper significance in connection with
the fact mentioned elsewhere -- that the Swiss citizens not in active
military service had their ammunition taken out of their custody in
1899. It will be seen that this happened just early enough to
facilitate, in view of the intensified form of the class-struggle, the
employment of the militia in the interests of the capitalists.
On December 21, 1906, the National Council had adopted, by a majority
of 65 against 55, a clause of the law on military re-organization
providing that, if conflicts of an economic nature "should endanger
or disturb internal peace," the calling-out of troops
"necessitated thereby" shall be resorted to solely for the
purpose of "maintaining public order." The whole law
was adopted by 105 votes against 4. Undoubtedly the provision referred
to does not mean anything but what was hitherto the rule of conduct
followed when the military was called out; it is thus worthless, doubly
worthless, nay, positively suspicious in view of the great minority who
declared themselves even against that clause.
Norway.
Norway, the free country that went through the most agreeable revolution
in the world's history in the summer of 1905 and then proceeded to
indulge in a monarchical head for her state out of pure love of
pleasure, follows entirely the development of the capitalistic countries
in spite of all the rustic romanticism still clinging to her. The
employment of military force against striking workmen is also no rare
occurrence in that country of the peasant democracy. In an article that
appeared in the Tyvende Aarhundrede on May 1, 1903, a report is
made on the subject. We learn that in 1902 alone two cases of the kind
occurred, one in Dunderlands Dalen and the other in Tromsö.
Germany.
There remains to be considered Germany. It is just in Germany where the
employment of the military in economic conflicts is not customary.
Scarcely any cases in which the army interfered actively can be
reported, if we except the weaver riots of 1847, when the Prussian
infantry killed 11 and wounded 24 of those wretched, atrociously
tortured proletarians and class-justice finished the soldiers' work by
sending a great number of people to the penitentiary, and if we further
except the miners' strike of 1889, when the troops called for by
Provincial President von Hagemeister, on May 10, killed 3 and wounded 4
persons at the Moltke mine and killed 2 and wounded 5 in Bochum. During
the riots of the Berlin unemployed, February, 1892, the military did not
go into action, but it has been asserted on good authority that the
Berlin military were consigned as early as January 18, 1894, on the mere
rumor that the unemployed planned a demonstration before the palace in
Berlin.
However, that military "moderation" does not find an
explanation, as might be supposed, in a particularly mild and just
disposition of the men at the helm of German affairs. The contrary is
true of them. Germany possesses a strong police and constabulary force,
excellently organized for rendering service to the capitalists. It is
not for nothing that Germany enjoys the reputation of being the police
state par excellence. Police and constabulary, both armed with
deadly weapons, fulfil entirely the functions which elsewhere are
allotted rather to the military, and in face of the greatly varying
momentary requirements they prove themselves more handy and adaptable
than the more clumsy and cumbrously working machinery of the army. The
number of sanguinary conflicts between strikers and the police or
constabulary is quite large in Germany. The strike of the Berlin street
railroadmen in 1900 and the so-called Breslau riots of 1906 are by no
means exceptions. Biewald's (9) hacked-off hand is only; an
exceptionally provoking piece of evidence for the blindly furious
recklessness of our police, that recklessness which is a fruit of
military training. That hand is in goodly company alongside of split
heads, amputated ears, noses, fingers and other parts of the body, and
that collection is increasing rapidly. Altogether the number of cases in
which blood is shed by the armed forces of the government during strikes
can hardly be much lower in Germany than in other countries. To be sure
it is quite impossible to estimate them even approximately as,
unfortunately, the cases of people hurt by the police during strikes are
not adequately registered and inefficiently heeded. But if the number of
those victims should be smaller in Germany than elsewhere this is not to
be credited to the good, humane intentions of the employers, of the
capitalist state. That is proved most conclusively by the fact that in
Germany, too, military consignations and the holding ready of troops are
almost uniformly resorted to during great strikes. The gravest case in
point was furnished by the great strike of the Westphalian miners which
lasted from January 8 to February 10, 1905.(10)
The successful prevention of greater bloodshed should rather be
exclusively ascribed to the sobermindedness, moderation and strict
self-discipline, to the training and the enlightened state of mind of
the German working-class. And we should not doubt that the Prussian and
Saxon governments, for instance, would not think twice before coming to
the assistance of capitalism in the economic conflict or a suitable
occasion with rifles, sabres and guns and all the paraphernalia- of
militarism.
----------------
9. The name of an inoffensive workman who had one of his hands
hacked off by an infuriated custodian of law and order whose identity
was never disclosed. [TRANSLATOR.]
10. The foot-note, continued on page 150, refers to the first great
modern strike of the Westphalian miners, in 1880, when the men, who had
great faith in the then very young Emperor, sent a deputation to Berlin
to ask for his help. [TRANSLATOR.]
On May 19, 1889, the German Emperor explained to the deputation the
miners had sent to him: "If I should notice that Social-Democratic
tendencies get mixed up with the movement and men are incited to illegal
resistance I shall interfere with merciless rigor and employ the power
-- and it is a large one -- which belongs to me." According to the Freisinnige
Zeitung he also expressed himself thus: If the least resistance
were offered to the authorities he would have everybody shot down.
Veterans' Associations and Strikes.
Considering that militarism takes pains by means of veterans'
associations to keep up the militaristic sentiments of the men even
after they have passed out of active military service and to propagate
such sentiments, it must appear almost as a matter of course that the
veterans' associations also interfere in strikes. To be sure, they are
not able to take an active part in the violent suppression of the
economic struggles of labor, but they may yet be called predestined
strike-breaking organizations. In certain places at least one would very
much like to employ them for that purpose. But the full exploitation of
the veterans' associations for that purpose is impeded by the following
facts and considerations: that these clubs contain, in spite of all the
precautions taken, a considerable percentage of oppositional and even
Social Democratic elements, that it is in conflicts between capital and
labor sooner than in other cases that even the most lamb-like workmen,
men who are least intelligent in regard to social questions find
themselves getting angry and have an appreciation of the class-struggle
and the position of their own class drummed into them, and that too
reckless an anti-labor policy fails in its purpose and rouses even the
Catholic and Liberal labor organizations. At any rate, the discussion
about this subject which took place in July, 1906, at Ostheim, at the
convention of the Grandducal Saxon Veterans' and Military Association of
Saxe-Weimar, is of the greatest interest. The discussion arose in
connection with a principle adopted by the convention, according to
which every member of the association is in duty bound to urge the
expulsion of such members as are shown to be adherents of parties
hostile to the government, especially of the Social Democratic party.
The result was that not all strikes, but all those strikes which run
counter to the members' duty of "fidelity to Emperor, Prince and
Fatherland" are considered as actions betraying sentiments hostile
to the government and revolutionary sentiments. Since it will depend
upon the eminent gentlemen who as a matter of course play the first
fiddle in the veterans' associations, to declare where and when said
fidelity is called in question by a strike, and since those gentlemen,
like our police and courts, are only too much accustomed to consider
strikes (which only too often touch their own vital interests, directly
or indirectly) as Social Democratic machinations, we can count upon a
profitable activity of the veterans' associations in that field of
labor. But it will be profitable not so much for the capitalists as for
the Social Democracy, to which nothing can be more welcome than such
clumsy tomfoolery that can only serve to enlighten the workmen and
weaken the veterans' associations. The latter are expelling more
systematically than ever not only the Social Democrats, but all of their
members belonging to trade unions pervaded by the spirit of the modern
labor movement. In the smaller places, no doubt, they create temporary
difficulties for the unions by such methods, as they hold their members
not only by means of the usual parades and carousels, but also by
certain material advantages which have often been acquired through the
payment of considerable dues.
The activities of the veterans' associations are energetically
promoted by the courts of class-justice and the administrative
authorities, who still have the courage to take up the grotesque
position that these clubs, which betray their political propagandist
character at every turn, are to be treated as non-political
organizations That is a help which those organs of the capitalist state
must render militarism if only for reasons of solidarity and in the
interest of the common greater purpose, the-protection of the capitalist
order of society.
The Army as a Weapon Against the Proletariat in the Political
Struggle, or the Rule of the Cannon.
Just as the political struggle is the highest, most concentrated form of
the class-struggle, the direct and indirect political interference in
the classstruggle by militarism, that most concentrated manifestation of
political power, shows the activities of militarism in their highest,
most concentrated form. In this respect militarism operates in the first
place as an economic power, as a producer and consumer. The ruthless
exclusion of all Social Democrats and workmen suspected of sympathizing
with them from the military workshops, of Spandau, for instance, the
practice of handing over the workmen subject to military influence to
the absolute control of the reactionary parties, particularly to the
anti-socialist union, the black hundreds of Germany, the complete
isolation of those workmen from even the slightest contact with the
Social Democracy: all this demonstrates how perfectly militarism has
comprehended its chief task, that of protecting the capitalists, and how
it performs it with professional smartness. In this respect no Krupp, no
Stumm (11) is fit to hold a candle to militarism, which even surpasses
those whose interests it looks after in the energetic manner in which
those interests are cared for. In the military work-shops of Spandau,
for instance, the influence of the anti-socialist union is such as to
make that organization positively the keeper of every workman's
conscience in the royal factories, and it is simply for that
organization to decide whether a workman is to be dismissed. Another
striking proof of that statement was furnished by the incidents
connected with the dismissal of the committee of a harmless society of
unskilled laborers of the military shops in the summer of 1906. A
considerable influence, which is now, however, rapidly decreasing, is
exercised by militarism by means of a boycott directed against all those
saloon keepers whose places are used by workmen's societies or
associations even slightly suspected of Social Democratic sympathies. By
that boycott it kills two birds with one stone. It protects the soldiers
as much as possible from coming into contact with the poison of
revolution (that, by the way, is part of the chapter on military
pedagogy). In the second place, it makes it harder for the workmen to
procure meeting places, as the policy is often carried out
systematically so as to prevent the workmen from renting any halls at
all. In Berlin that kind of boycott has proved impracticable and has
been nearly done away with for that reason, but our comrades in the
smaller places have had no little to suffer from that policy of pin
pricks, which is naturally also directed against the proletariat in its
economic conflicts.
-------------------
11. A great German iron-master who was notorious for his
reactionary views and his patriarchial ideas on industrial life
[TRANSLATOR.]
But these are merely "the lttle wee ones" of its tricks.
Militarism is not content with taking part in its tenacious and
dashing manner in the intricate political guerilla warfare of every day;
it has infinitely higher aspirations. It knows itself to be the most
important and strongest pillar of throne and altar in all the great and
greatest, severe and severest conflicts of capitalist reaction against
the revolution, and it has thrown its weight into the scales in all the
previous great revolutionary movements. Brief references will suffice.
We have already referred to the frightful laurels earned by capitalist
militarism in its battles with the Parisian proletariat in the month of
July, 1830, in June, 1848, and in the month of May, 1871. We have also
mentioned the provocation to riot, staged by "Napoleon the
Little," on December 2, 1852. The butchering of Chartists at
Newport and Birmingham in 1839, when 10 people were killed and 50
wounded, deserves our special interest because it happened in England --
"Et tu, Brute!" For two years Russia has been under
military law of varying degrees of severity and given up, for the
protection of the Czar's barbaric rule of the knout and the cruel
suppression of the movement for liberty, to the fists, whips, sa. lores,
rifles and guns of the brutal soldiery that is about to turn that
unhappy country into a great cemetery, and it is only the growing
revolutionary development and the corresponding disintegration of the
army (which necessarily keeps pace with the energy of the revolutionary
forces) that make it certain that such a "Christian," but also
suicidal project will not be realized. However, Russia can be considered
only with great qualifications in an examination of the capitalist
countries, as has been stated several times before.
Of importance is the part played by the standing army in the first
great Belgian suffrage fight and that played by the civic guard, that
specifically militaristic class-struggle organization of the
bourgeoisie, in the second great Belgian suffrage fight in 1902.
Apart from the calling-out of troops against the workmen who
demonstrated in the Vienna Prater on May 1, 1896, and the events of
Prague, Vienna and Glatz (1897), of Lemberg and Trieste (1902) which
were treated of before, Austria has furnished another notable brilliant
example of militaristic political action on a large scale in the
electoral struggle of 1905. It is generally known that Bohemia was on
the point of becoming the scene of civil war. On November 5 and 28,
1905, when the suffrage demonstrations took place, the city of Prague
(where the miners were on strike, too) was filled with and surrounded by
troops; the heights in the neighborhood of the city were occupied by
artillery, ready to fire, some 80 persons were wounded -- by the police,
it is true.
The Italian events that should find a place here have already been
mentioned elsewhere.
Let us now pass on to Germany whose supreme war-lord in a sentence of
universal fame, which has been admitted as the most effective of weapons
to the arsenal of the anti-militarist propaganda of all countries,
supplied the soldiers with such a peculiar interpretation of the fourth
commandment, and who not only made that well-known speech against that
"rabble of men" (he meant the Socialists) at the guards'
banquet, on the occasion of the anniversary of the battle of Sedan in
1895, but also directed, on March 28, 1901, that famous appeal to his
Alexandrian regiment. The military preparations and the exploits of
General Wrangel by which, in 1848 and 1849, the German revolutionary
movement, three-quarters betrayed and entirely left in the lurch by the
bourgeoisie, was overwhelmed and basely robbed of its birth right, were
meant for the proletariat as such, as being then the only sound pillar
of the "constitution", We further remind the reader of the
Boyen-Lotzen chain affair of September, 1870, and the ravings of
Bismarck and Puttkamer in which those gentlemen of the nineteenth
century, at the time of the shameful anti-socialist law, anticipated and
longed for an opportunity when the working people, driven to revolution,
could be sabred, shot and shelled to pieces in the dashing, correct,
sportsmanlike military fashion. (l2) The military consignations during
May-day demonstrations (13) and Reichstag elections remain very
well-known up to these days, very well-known are also the incidents
accompanying the suffrage theft committed against the Saxon people in
1896, and the part the military played in the "pacification"
of the Saxon populace in 1896 and 1906. During the Hamburg election
parades in November, 1905, on "Red Wednesday," the military,
which consists of Hamburgers, was kept in the background; the sabre and
revolver of the police sufficed, the result of their work were the two
corpses which decorated the streets of the free Hansa city.
---------
12. Ludwigshafen in the Palatinate was literally occupied by
troops on the Sunday preceding the Reichstag elections of 1887, and only
the self-possession of the Social Democrats prevented the rifles from
going off. Of interest in this connection is an utterance by the German
Emperor which is entered under December 12, 1889, in Hohenlohe's
reminiscences: "then (when the Social Democrats had the majority in
the Berlin city council) they would plunder the bourgeoisie; it was all
one to him, he would have the castle loop-holed and watch them pillage;
then the bourgeois would be forced to implore him to help them."
13 The first May-day demonstration (1890) deserves particular
attention as the "military party" (Hohenlohe's reminiscences,
September 14, 1893) then wanted very much to use the occasion for a
bloody settlement with the troublesome and hated Social Democracy. into
the very heart of militarism. That rattling of cannons still rings in
our ears and encourages us to proceed with our fight against militarism
with indefatigable persistence and unsparing ruthlessness.
However, it was the 21st day of January, 1906, which showed the
bulwark of capitalism in its full splendor. He who on that day, in the
quiet of "holy" sabbath, saw the guns that were rattling along
in the streets of Berlin might have looked into the very heart of
militarism. That rattling of cannons still rings in our ears and
encourages us to proceed with our fight against militarism with
indefatigable persistence and unsparing ruthlessness.
On January 21, 1906, the military interference was brought about by a
demonstration against the infamous Prussian franchise. We know, however,
that our militarism will be just as ready to slash and shoot if the
issue were the overthrow of the imperial constitution in the reactionary
interest by a coup d'état. The latest disclosures of Hohenlohe
and Delbrück have shown that Bismarck, in 1890, was on the point of
dispersing the Reichstag, doing away with the Reichstag suffrage,
driving the proletarian masses into the street in front of the mouths of
rifles and cannon, smashing the defenceless ranks of the people to crush
the Social Democracy, so as to erect with blood and iron on the
lacerated proletarian bodies a stronghold of Bismarckian and junker
reaction. We have also heard that the German Emperor could not be had
for that plan because he wanted first "to redress the legitimate
grievances of the workmen, and wanted at least to see everything done to
fulfil their legitimate demands." We know that the views of the
workmen and the ruling classes as to what demands of the workers are
legitimate are entirely different, that the hostility shown to the
Reichstag suffrage (to the most vehement opponents of which also
belonged the ex-communist Miquel, as the Hohenlohe memoirs have
disclosed) is continually gathering in strength at least in very
influential North German circles, and that thus the danger of a
"military solution" of the social question by rifle and cannon
appears to be nearer than ever to-day. Should the chief of the general
staff, Helmut von Moltke, be appointed Chancellor, as was recently
reported, it would signify to all appearances a victory of the notorious
military court party.(l4)
------------------------------
14. This coming man is characterized by the Berlin Tageblatt
as follows: "Helmut von Moltke is considered a pronounced
reactionary, a quality tempered with a certain soldierly frankness and
buoyancy, but he is also said to have spiritualistic inelinations. He is
not at all a man of theory, but rather a dashing fighter who also
possesses the 'courage of coolness' to carry on politics with the
slashing sabre and the shooting rifle." So here we find at last the
qualities desired by our violent reactionaries all in one heap!
There has never been in the world's history a lack of
"grape-shot princes," (15) grape-shot junkers and grape-shot
generals. One ought to be prepared for everything. There is no time to
be lost.
------------------------------
15. Grape-shot prince was the name given the Prince of Prussia,
the later Emperor William I., who was the head of the military camarilla
that tried to crush and finally succeeded in crushing the revolutionary
movement in Germany in 1848 and 1849. [TRANSLATOR.]
Veterans' Association in the Political Struggle.
It is clear to everybody that the veterans' associations are very
intensely engaged in political activities, but the German Justitia has
not yet been able to see it through the bandage that covers her eyes.
Everybody knows, too, how they are mobilized at elections and how they
force their members to leave the political organizations of the
opposition. Mention must be made of their "loyal" practice of
trying to prevent the class-conscious workers from renting halls for
meetings. Two facts of recent date should be especially noted, viz., the
boycott resolved upon (October, 1906) by the "Association of Former
Soldiers of the Sixteenth Army Corps of Duisburg-Beek" against the
Kaiserhof Hotel at Duisburg for having let its hall for a miners'
meeting, and the expulsion from Saxon veterans' associations of
proprietors of saloons and halls who rent their rooms to labor
organizations. In the smaller places such fighting methods are of no
little efficacy; employed against well organized workmen they are
useless, however.
Militarism, a Menace to Peace.
International political strains can even today be produced by
nationalistic antagonistic principles; by the necessity of national
expansion in consequence of the increase in population, by the necessity
of annexing territories with natural resources for the purpose of
increasing the national wealth (i.e., the wealth of the ruling classes)
and rendering the state as self-dependent as possible in point of
production (a natural complementary tendency arising from the policy of
protection, a tendency which, however, can be only of the slightest
importance in face of the international division of labor which is
establishing itself ever more vigorously and widely), by the necessity
of facilitating traffic in the interior or with foreign countries (for
instance, by acquiring navigable rivers, sea ports, etc.), traffic being
the means by which the metabolism of the economic body, trade, is
carried on; by antagonisms arising from a difference in general
civilization, particularly also differences in the stage of political
development. But the most important political strains that can nowadays
lead to warlike complications arise, as has been already stated above,
through the competition of the various countries in the economic field,
through the world trade, world politics with all its complications,
especially colonization. The persons on whose account those strains
chiefly arise are the powerful expansionist capitalists of industry and
commerce, who may be said to have an interest in a successful war.
It must, however, be admitted that the existence of the standing
armies, which represent militarism in its most pronounced form, is in
itself a menace to international peace, an independent danger of war.
That is true even if we leave out of account the argument that the
increase of military burdens, that Archimedean screw, can produce in a
country a disposition not to let a favorable moment of military
superiority pass unused, or to bring about a military decision which is
thought to be necessary in any case, before any further unfavorable
movement in the relative military strength has taken place. Such a
disposition, as is l~nown, was not without influence in France during
the latest Morocco conflict, but it is always more decisive for the
moment at which the war breaks out than for the outbreak itself. But the
standing army produces, as does indeed on a much smaller scale also the
militia, a modern caste of warriors, a caste of persons who have been
trained for war from infancy, as it were, a privileged caste of conquistadores
that seeks adventure and promotion in war. To these must be added the
groups that feather their particular nests during a war -- the
manufacturers of and traders in arms, munitions, warships, horses,
material for equipment and clothing, provisions and means of
transportation, in short, the army contractors, who exist of course
also, but in smaller numbers, in countries having a militia. Both the
groups who have a specific interest in war, in the making of war, viz.,
the officers who love adventure and the army contractors whose interest
is quite independent of the success of the war, are composed of
people of consequence. They are related to the highest functionaries of
the state, they have great influence with the men with whom rests the
formal decision about war and peace. They let no opportunity go by
without trying to convert that influence (which in most cases they have
acquired only through the exploitation of militarism) into gleaming
gold, sacrificing hecatombs of proletarians on the altar of their
profit. In the role of colonial enthusiasts they push the "beloved
fatherland" into dangerous, costly adventures which prove
exceedingly profitable for themselves, only to save that same fatherland
afterwards at other people's expense in the role of naval enthusiasts in
a manner which brings to them again exceedingly great profits.
The fight against the standing armies and the jingoist militaristic
spirit is a fight against the danger threatening the peace of the
nations. The old adage, "Si vis pacem, para bellum," may
be true for the individual state surrounded by militaristic states, but
it is in no wise true for the capitalist countries taken collectively,
with which the international propaganda of the Social Democracy is
concerned. Still less does that adage prove the necessity of preparing
for war in the particular form of the standing army, to which on the
contrary exactly the opposite aphorism applies -- "Si vis bellum
para pacem": there is no greater danger of war than such a
peace insurance! It is true that for the aggressive economic-political
imperialism of our days the standing army is the suitable form of war
preparations.
As truly as the maintenance of international peace is in the interest
of the international proletariat and beyond that in the interest of the
civilization of the whole of humanity, as truly is the struggle against
militarism -- that epitome of national hatreds, that sum and extract of
all peace disturbing tendencies of capitalism, in short, that serious
danger of world war -- a fight for civilization which the proletariat is
proud to wage, which it must wage in its very own interest and which to
wage no other class as such (leaving out of account some
well-intentioned enthusiasts who only prove the rule) is even remotely
so much interested in.
But militarism also disturbs the national peace, not only by
the brutalizing effect it has upon the people, the heavy economic
burdens it imposes upon the people and the pressure of taxes and tariff
thus brought about; not only by the corruption accompanying it (see the
cases of Wörmann, Fischer, von Tippelskirch, Podbielski and friends),
not only by dividing into two castes a people already sufficiently
oppressed by class-division; not only by its practice of maltreating
soldiers and its system of dispensing justice: but above all by being a
powerful obstacle in the way of every kind of progress, by being an
ingenious and highly efficient instrument for closing by force the valve
of the social steam-boiler. He who believes that the progress of
humanity is inevitable must see in the existence of militarism the most
important obstacle in the way of a peaceful and continuous evolution, to
him an unbroken militarism must mean the necessity of a blood-red dawn
of the capitalist idols -- a capitalist "Gotzendammerung." 16
----------------------------
16. The German title of Nietzsche's "The Twilight of the
Idols." It is a titular parody on Wagner's "Götterdämmerung."
[TRANSLATOR.]
The Obstacles of the Proletarian Revolution.
To do away with militarism or to weaken it as much as possible is thus a
question of vital importance in waging the struggle for political
emancipation, the form and manner of which militarism debases in a
sense, therefore influencing their character in a decisive fashion. It
is all the more a vital question as the superiority of the army to the
unarmed people, the proletariat, is far greater to-day than it was ever
before on account of the highly developed military arts and strategy,
the enormous size of the armies, the unfavorable local distribution of
the various classes and the relative economic strength of proletariat
and bourgeoisie .which shows the proletariat in a particularly
disadvantageous position, wherefore alone a future proletarian
revolution will be far more difficult than any revolution that has taken
place hitherto. It is important always to remember that in the bourgeois
revolution the driving force, the revolutionary bourgeoisie, was the
dominant economic class long before the revolution in the narrower sense
broke out; that the bourgeoisie found a numerous class, economically
dependent on it and subject to its political influence, which it could
send into the fire and make a catspaw of, that the bourgeoisie had
bought up, as it were, the old junk of feudalism before smashing and
throwing it on the dumping heap, whereas all that the bourgeois have
acquired by wealth the proletarians have to conquer by hunger and with
their bare bodies.
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