Chapter VII · (continued 2)

On December 14th the armistice was signed at Brest-Litovsk, to last for a period of twenty-eight days. On December 5th, the Bolsheviki had published the terms upon which they desired to effect the armistice. These terms, which the Germans scornfully rejected, provided that the German forces which had been occupied on the Russian front should not be sent to other fronts to fight against the Allies, and that the German troops should retire from the Russian islands held by them. In the armistice as it was finally signed at Brest-Litovsk there was a clause which, upon its face, seemed to prove that Trotzky had kept faith with the Allies. The clause provided that there should be no transfer of troops by either side, for the purpose of military operations, during the armistice, from the front between the Baltic and the Black Sea. This, however, was, from the German point of view, merely a pro forma arrangement, a "scrap of paper." Grumbach wrote to L'Humanité that on December 20th Berlin was full of German soldiers from the Russian front en route to the western front. He said that he had excellent authority for saying that this had been called to the attention of Lenine and Trotzky by the Independent Social Democrats, but that, "nevertheless, they diplomatically shut their eyes."[88] It is more than probable that, in the circumstances, neither Lenine nor Trotzky cared much if at all for such a breach of the terms of the armistice, but, had their attitude been otherwise, what could they have done? They were as helpless as ever men were in the world, as subsequent events proved.

As one reads the numerous declamatory utterances of Trotzky in those critical days of early December, 1917, the justice of Lenine's scornful description of his associate as a "man who blinds himself with revolutionary phrases" becomes manifest. It is easy to understand the strained relations that existed between the two men. His "neither war nor peace" gesture—it was no more!—his dramatic refusal to sign the stiffened peace terms, his desire to call all Russia to arms again to fight the Germans, his determination to create a vast "Red Army" to renew the war against Germany, and his professed willingness to "accept the services of American officers in training that army," all indicated a mind given to illusions and stone blind to realities. Lenine at least knew that the game was up. He knew that the game into which he had so coolly entered when he left Switzerland, and which he had played with all his skill and cunning, was at an end and that the Germans had won. The Germans behaved with a perfidy that is unmatched in modern history, disregarded the armistice they had signed, and savagely hurled their forces against the defenseless, partially demobilized and trusting Russians. There was nothing left for the Bolsheviki to do. They had delivered Russia to the Germans. In March the "indecent peace" was signed, with what result we know. Bolshevism had been the ally of Prussian militarism. Consciously or unconsciously, willingly or unwillingly, Lenine, Trotzky, and the other Bolshevik leaders had done all that men could do to make the German military lords masters of the world. Had there been a similar movement in France, England, the United States, or even Italy, to-day the Hohenzollerns and Habsburgs would be upon their thrones, realizing the fulfilment of the Pan-German vision.

VIII

In view of the fact that so many of our American pacifists have glorified the Bolsheviki, it may be well to remind them, if they have forgotten, or to inform them, if they do not know it, that their admiration is by no means reciprocated. Both Lenine and Trotzky have spoken and written in terms of utter disdain of pacifist movements in general and of the pacifists of England and America in particular. They have insisted that, in present society, disarmament is really a reactionary proposal. The inclusion in the Constitution, which they have forced upon Russia by armed might, of permanent universal compulsory military service is not by accident. They believe that only when all nations have become Socialist nations will it be a proper policy for Socialists to favor disarmament. It would be interesting to know how our American admirers and defenders of Bolshevism, who are all anti-conscriptionists and ultra-pacifists, so far as can be discovered, reconcile their position with that of the Bolsheviki who base their state, not as a temporary expedient, but as a matter of principle, upon universal, compulsory military service! What, one wonders, do these American Bolsheviki worshipers think of the teaching of these paragraphs from an article by Lenine?[89]

Disarmament is a Socialistic ideal. In Socialist society there will be no more wars, which means that disarmament will have been realized. But he is not a Socialist who expects the realization of Socialism without the social revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Dictatorship is a government power, depending directly upon force, and, in the twentieth century, force means, not fists and clubs, but armies. To insert "disarmament" into our program is equivalent to saying, we are opposed to the use of arms. But such a statement would contain not a grain of Marxism, any more than would the equivalent statement, we are opposed to the use of force.

A suppressed class which has no desire to learn the use of arms, and to bear arms, deserves nothing else than to be treated as slaves. We cannot, unless we wish to transform ourselves into mere bourgeois pacifists, forget that we are living in a society based on classes, and that there is no escape from such a society, except by the class struggle and the overthrow of the power of the ruling class.

In every class society, whether it be based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at the present moment, on wage-labor, the class of the oppressors is an armed class. Not only the standing army of the present day, but also the present-day popular militia—even in the most democratic bourgeois republics, as in Switzerland—means an armament of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat....

How can you, in the face of this fact, ask the revolutionary Social Democracy to set up the "demand" of "disarmament"? To ask this is to renounce completely the standpoint of the class struggle, to give up the very thought of revolution. Our watchword must be: to arm the proletariat so that it may defeat, expropriate, and disarm the bourgeoisie. This is the only possible policy of the revolutionary class, a policy arising directly from the actual evolution of capitalistic militarism, in fact, dictated by the evolution. Only after having disarmed the bourgeoisie can the proletariat, without betraying its historic mission, cast all weapons to the scrap-heap; and there is no doubt that the proletariat will do this, but only then, and not by any possibility before then.

How is it possible for our extreme pacifists, with their relentless opposition to military force in all its forms to conscription, to universal military service, to armaments of all kinds, even for defensive purposes, and to voluntarily enlisted armies even, to embrace Bolshevism with enthusiasm, resting as it does upon the basis of the philosophy so frankly stated by Lenine, is a question for which no answer seems wholly adequate. Of course, what Lenine advocates is class armament within the nation, for civil war—the war of the classes. But he is not opposed to national armaments, as such, nor willing to support disarmament as a national policy until the time comes when an entirely socialized humanity finds itself freed from the necessity of arming against anybody. There is probably not a militarist in America to-day who, however bitterly opposed to disarmament as a present policy, would not agree that if, in some future time, mankind reaches the happy condition of universal Socialism, disarmament will then become practicable and logical. It would not be difficult for General Wood to subscribe to that doctrine, I think. It would not have been difficult for Mr. Roosevelt to subscribe to it.

Not only is Lenine willing to support national armaments, and even to fight for the defense of national rights, whenever an attack on these is also an attack on proletarian rights—which he believes to be the case in the continued war against Germany, he goes much farther than this and provides a theoretical justification for a Socialist policy of passive acceptance of ever-increasing militarism. He draws a strangely forced parallel between the Socialist attitude toward the trusts and the attitude which ought to be taken toward armaments. We know, he argues, that trusts bring great evils. Against the evils we struggle, but how? Not by trying to do away with the trusts, for we regard the trusts as steps in progress. We must go onward, through the trust system to Socialism. In a similar way we should not deplore "the militarization of the populations." If the bourgeoisie militarizes all the men, and all the boys, nay, even all the women, why—so much the better! "Never will the women of an oppressed class that is really revolutionary be content" to demand disarmament. On the contrary, they will encourage their sons to bear the arms and "learn well the business of war." Of course, this knowledge they will use, "not in order that they may shoot at their brothers, the workers of other countries, as they are doing in the present war ... but in order that they may struggle against the bourgeoisie in their own country, in order that they may put an end to exploitation, poverty, and war, not by the path of good-natured wishes, but by the path of victory over the bourgeoisie and of disarmament of the bourgeoisie."[90] Universally the working class has taken a position the very opposite of this. Universally we find the organized working class favoring disarmament, peace agreements, and covenants in general opposing extensions of what Lenine describes as "the militarization of populations." For this universality of attitude and action there can only be one adequate explanation—namely, the instinctive class consciousness of the workers. But, according to Lenine, this instinctive class consciousness is all wrong; somehow or other it expresses itself in a "bourgeois" policy. The workers ought to welcome the efforts of the ruling class to militarize and train in the arts of war not only the men of the nations, but the boys and even the women as well. Some day, if this course be followed, there will be two great armed classes in every nation and between these will occur the decisive war which shall establish the supremacy of the most numerous and powerful class. Socialism is thus to be won, not by the conquests of reason and of conscience, but by brute force.

Obviously, there is no point of sympathy between this brutal and arrogant gospel of force and the striving of modern democracy for the peaceful organization of the world, for disarmament, a league of nations, and, in general, the supplanting of force of arms by the force of reason and morality. There is a Prussian quality in Lenine's philosophy. He is the Treitschke of social revolt, brutal, relentless, and unscrupulous, glorying in might, which is, for him, the only right. And that is what characterizes the whole Bolshevik movement: it is the infusion into the class strife and struggles of the world the same brutality and the same faith that might is right which made Prussian militarism the menace it was to civilization.

And just as the world of civilized mankind recognized Prussian militarism as its deadly enemy, to be overcome at all costs, so, too, Bolshevism must be overcome. And that can best be done, not by attempting to drown it in blood, but by courageously and consistently setting ourselves to the task of removing the social oppression, the poverty, and the servitude which produce the desperation of soul that drives men to Bolshevism. The remedy for Bolshevism is a sane and far-reaching program of constructive social democracy.