Militarism/Chapter 4
IV.
CONCERNING SOME CARDINAL SINS OF MILITARISM.
MALTREATMENT OF SOLDIERS OR MILITARISM
AS A REPENTANT, YET UNREFORMED
SINNER.
TWO DILEMMAS.
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 Frederick, 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,[1] 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.
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 approved 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.
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 peopie'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 de- bates 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 Vorwärts 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 offences 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 kind 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 Œdipus 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 turning 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.
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 1906–07, which amounted to 2,397,324,000 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 5½ 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.
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 Sinbad 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 role 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, Schönfeldt, made a touching vow at a banquet of 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 goose-step 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.
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 commander 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 practised 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 riot 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 were 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 surpassing 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 grape-shot, 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 | killed,„ | 7 | wounded„ |
| 1902, | August 5, Cassano | 1 | killed,„ | 3 | wounded„ |
| 1902, | September 8, Candela | 5 | killed,„ | 11 | wounded„ |
| 1902, | October 13, Giarratana | 2 | killed,„ | 12 | wounded„ |
| 1903, | May 21, Piere | 3 | killed,„ | 1 | wounded„ |
| 1903, | April 20, Galatina | 2 | killed,„ | 1 | wounded„ |
| 1903, | August 31, Torre Annunziata | 7 | killed,„ | 10 | wounded„ |
| 1904, | May 17, Cerignola | 3 | killed,„ | 40 | wounded„ |
| 1904, | September 4, Buggera | 3 | killed,„ | 10 | wounded„ |
| 1904, | September 11, Castelluzzo | 1 | killed,„ | 12 | wounded„ |
| 1904, | September 15, Sestri Ponente | 2 | killed,„ | 2 | wounded„ |
| 1905, | April 18, Foggia | 7 | killed,„ | 20 | wounded„ |
| 1905, | May 15, St. Elpidio | 4 | killed,„ | 2 | wounded„ |
| 1905, | August 16, Grammichele | 18 | killed,„ | 20 | wounded„ |
| 1906, | March 23, Muro | 2 | killed,„ | 4 | wounded„ |
| 1906, | March 21, Scarano | 1 | killed,„ | 9 | wounded„ |
| 1906, | April 30, Calinera | 2 | killed,„ | 3 | wounded„ |
| 1906, | April 4, Turino | 1 | killed,„ | 6 | wounded„ |
| 1906, | May 12, Cagliari | 2 | killed,„ | 7 | wounded„
|
| 1906, | May 21, Nebida | 1 | killed,„ | 1 | wounded„ |
| 1906, | May 21, Sonneza | 6 | killed,„ | 6 | wounded„ |
| 1906, | May 24, Benventare | 2 | killed,„ | 2 | wounded„ |
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 1897 and the blood shed at Graslitz. At the downfall of Prime Minister Badeni, in the month of November, 1897, 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 political 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 decreed 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 Roux 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 sentry 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 Père-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 régime'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-Saône and particularly Limoges with the cavalry charges and shootings of April 17, 1905. In December, 1905, the drama of Combrée 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 working-class 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]
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 Cœur 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 window-panes. 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 "maintain-ing 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, 19O5.[10] The successful prevention of greater bloodshed should rather be exclusively ascribed to the sober-mindedness, 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.
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 carousals, 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 class-struggle 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 work-shops, 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.
But these are merely "the little 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, sabres, 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-Lötzen 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.[12] 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 1905 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.
However, it was the 2ist 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'etat. 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 strong-hold 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.[14]
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.
VETERANS' ASSOCIATIONS 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 known, 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 "Götzendämmerung."[16]
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 cat's paw of; that the bourgeoisie had bought up, as it were, the I 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.
- ↑ The men that reorganized the entire Prussian army system after the Prussian army had been shattered at Jena by Napoleon, in 1806. [Translator.]
- ↑ 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."
- ↑ 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 16,000 men being killed and wounded.
- ↑ Every soldier fighting in German Southwest Africa meant an annual expense of 9,500 marks to the German Empire in 1906.
- ↑ 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).
- ↑ "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.]
- ↑ The practice of officers of engaging private soldiers as domestics. [Translator.]
- ↑ See Hillquit's History of Socialism in the United States, which has been mostly used for the part referring to the United States.
- ↑ 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.]
- ↑ The foot-note, continued on page 156, refers to the first great modern strike of the Westphalian miners, in 1889, 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.
- ↑ A great German iron-master who was notorious for his reactionary views and his patriarchial ideas on industrial life. [Translator.]
- ↑ 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 Socal 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."
- ↑ "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.
- ↑ 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 inclinations. 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!
- ↑ 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.]
- ↑ The German title of Nietzsche's "The Twilight of the Idols." It is a titular parody on Wagner's "Götterdämmerung." [Translator.]