Militarism & Anti-Militarism (Karl Liebknecht)

Militarism & Anti-Militarism
Author	Karl Liebknecht
Written in	1907
First published	1910
Type	Book

Contents

Part I-Militarism

Chapter One-General Remarks

Chapter Two-Capitalist Militarism

Chapter Three-Methods and the Effects of Militarism

Chapter Four-Particulars of Some of the Chief Sins of Militarism

Part Two-Anti-Militarism

Chapter One-Anti-Militarism of the Old and the New International

Chapter Two-Anti-Militarism Abroad with Special Regard to the Young Socialist Organizations

Chapter Three-Dangers Besetting Anti-Militarism

Chapter Four-Anti-Militarist Tactics

Chapter Five-The Need for Special Anti-Militarist Propaganda

Chapter Six-Anti-Militarism in Germany and the German Social Democracy

Chapter Seven-The Anti-Militarist Tasks of the German Social Democracy

Preface to the English Edition

Soon after Karl Liebknecht published his work, “Militarism and Anti-Militarism,” it was confiscated by the German authorities, and the author was tried for high treason at Leipzig, Saxony, in October 1907. The trial commenced on October 9 and lasted three days. Throughout the whole of the trial, the court was crowded with Liebknecht’s sympathizers.

The proceedings were begun by the presiding judge in his red robe (the fourteen judges who sat with him were also in red robes), who read the following preliminary indictment drawn up on August 9, 1907:

By order of the Imperial state attorney, in accordance with paragraph 138 of the law concerning the judicial procedure of the Imperial courts, the main proceedings are opened before the united 2nd and 3rd criminal chambers of the Imperial court, against Dr. Karl Paul August Friedrich Liebknecht, lawyer, of Berlin, who is suspected of having set afoot a treasonable undertaking in the years 1906 and 1907 within the country: that of effecting a change in the constitution of the German Empire by violence, viz.: abolition of the standing army by means of the military strike, if needs be conjointly with the incitement of troops to take part in the revolution, by writing the work “Militarism and Anti-Militarism,” and causing it to be printed and disseminated, in which he advocated the organization of special anti-militarist propaganda which was to extend throughout the whole Empire, and conjointly with it the setting up a Central Committee for conducting and controlling same, and making use of the Social-Democratic Young People’s Organizations for the purpose of organically disintegrating and demoralizing the militarist spirit; the necessary sequence of which would be—in the case of an unpopular war and in exceptional cases even today: such as in the case of a war between France and Germany or in the case of Germany’s intervention in Russia—the military strike and the eventual incitement of troops to take part in the revolution; that is to say, he not only pointed out the ways and means which appear to be destined and suited to further the aforesaid treasonable undertaking and to insure its success, but he also demanded the speedy application of these methods (crime against paragraph 86 of the criminal code in connection with par. 81, No. 2, Par. 82 of the criminal code). The order for the confiscation of the aforesaid work remains in full force. The accused is not to subjected to preliminary confinement.

Throughout the proceedings Liebknecht bore himself in a manly way. He took upon himself the full responsibility for what was contained in the work, but he fiercely contested all the insinuations made by the public prosecutor and the wrong ideas that he tried to read into his work. He repeated several times that it was absurd to put him on his trial for treason, for nowhere in the book had he advocated illegal action, that his trial was purely a political affair and that his condemnation was a foregone conclusion. The public prosecutor asked the court to pass a sentence of two years’ imprisonment and the loss of civil rights for five years. After deliberating for half-an-hour the court passed the following sentence:

The accused is found guilty of having set afoot a treasonable undertaking and is condemned to incarceration in a fortress for eighteen months. The costs of the prosecution are to be paid by the accused. All copies of the work “Militarism and Anti-Militarism” which has been put under the ban, in the possession of the author, printer, publisher, wholesale booksellers and booksellers, as well as all publicly exposed copies of this work, or those offered for sale, as well as the plates and forms for their production, are to be destroyed.

Thousands of people, chiefly working men and working women, had gathered in the lobbies and outside the court discussing the outcome of the trial. When Comrade Liebknecht appeared outside, he was vociferously cheered by the crowd; this proved the workers’ appreciation of the stand he was taking against German militarism and against militarism in general.

Liebknecht states in his work that the semi-republican and republican countries (with the exception of Great Britain) have been the chief offenders as regards employing the armed forces of the state in bloody conflicts with the strikers. What Liebknecht contended in 1907 has been substantiated in a most striking manner not only as regards France, the United States of America and Australia, but also Great Britain. In the great Coal and Railway strikes of 1911 the British Government lent the whole force of the State to defeat the strikers, and the workers’ blood was spilt. The French Railway strike of 1910 has become a classical example. Briand challenged the workers to choose between allegiance to their class organization or to the capitalist state and scored a signal victory. In Colorado, USA, there was a feud between the Rockefeller interests and the strikers, which culminated in the bestial massacre of workers at Ludlow camp. As the life interests of the bourgeoisie in the various countries became seriously threatened, it never failed to show its ugly claws.

As regards “Militarism against the enemy abroad,” Liebknecht, in lectures and in the Press, repeatedly called upon the German Social Democracy to take up the question of militarism in a serious manner. In the present work he makes the following appeal:

And we keep asking: “Is German Social Democracy, the German Labor movement—the nucleus and the elite troop of the new International, as it likes to be called—being either too prudent or over-confident, is German Social Democracy going to refrain from tackling this problem till, inadequately armed and straining to the utmost all its strength and its methods of fighting, it is faced by the fact of a world war or an intervention in Russia, which can to a certain extent be avoided and for which German Social Democracy would also have to bear the responsibility?”

But his appeals fell upon deaf ears. Liebknecht’s ideas were actively opposed by Bebel and other influential leaders of German Social Democracy. This attitude was plainly manifested at the Stuttgart congress of 1907. Vaillant, on behalf of the French delegation, proposed definite methods of fighting militarism. Bebel, on the other hand, said that German Social Democracy did not want to commit itself to a definite course of action, but that when the time for action came, it would know how to act.

The present war has demonstrated that the policy of the German leaders was an ostrich-like policy: though scenting danger, they stuck their heads in the sand, perhaps lulled into a false sense of security by the increasing Socialist vote in Germany. But this policy contains two palpably weak points: (1) It is absurd to entertain the idea that the mass of the workers need not bother their heads about militarism and that when the times comes the leaders will tell them what to do; (2) A political organization (unless it is backed up by an industrial organization of the workers) is not an instrument that can be used effectively because it is impossible to mobilize the voters for action at a critical moment. The Socialist movement (in its bulk) made straight for disaster with its eyes blindfolded and it was wrecked on the shoals of the present war. The proletariat should take to heart the lessons of the past and set to work to solve the urgent problems now confronting it as regards militarism.

Tackling militarism means tackling a hornet’s nest. Bebel, who gave evidence at Liebknecht’s trial, said he was opposed to a special anti-militarist organization being started in Germany. Amongst other things he stated:

First I said to myself that the comrades who would carry on the agitation have not had such a good legal training as the accused (Liebknecht) and, therefore, they would soon come into collision with paragraph 112 of the Criminal Code, which is such an unpleasant contingency that we would rather not have our comrades face it. Finally, I have opposed the tactics of the accused because I know there are large influential sections in Germany which are waiting for a chance to make a decisive onslaught on Social Democracy either by rendering the provisions of the Criminal Code more stringent or by passing a special law.

The German Social-Democrats refrained from making a serious onslaught upon militarism because they preferred not to run the risk of having their organization disrupted or their members brutally punished. But if we really believe in our ideal of international Socialism we must be willing to face risks. The Prussian Junker lays down his life that his caste may dominate, the German Socialist Patriot calmly faces the bullets of the enemy that Germany may live, and the French nationalist dies for his country; the Russian Socialists have died in thousands in the Tsar’s unhealthy prisons, in the gold-mines of Siberia and the benumbing cold of the Arctic zone. People are willing to suffer and die for the most varied ideals. If our proletarian ideal of international Socialism is worth anything, we must be prepared to give our time, our health, even our life for its realization. Comrade Liebknecht has set us a splendid example. On May 1, 1916, he threw down the gauntlet to the German Government at a public meeting, and he is now pining behind prison walls for his brave deed. The letters (dated May 3 and 8) he addressed to the Royal Court Martial in Berlin express in a nutshell the creed of an international Socialist. Liebknecht appeals to the international proletariat as follows:

The present war is not a war for the defense of national integrity, nor for the liberation of downtrodden people, nor for the benefit of the masses. From the point of view of the proletariat it only signifies the greatest possible concentration and intensification of political oppression, of economic exploitation and of the wholesale military slaughter of the working class for the benefit of Capitalism and absolutism.

To this the working class of all countries can give but one answer: A harder struggle, the international class struggle against the capitalist governments and the ruling classes of all countries for the abolition of oppression and exploitation, for the termination of the war by a peace in the Socialist spirit. In this class struggle is included the defense of everything that a Socialist—whose fatherland is the International—has to defend.

The cry, “Down with the war!” is meant to express that I thoroughly condemn and oppose the present war because of its historical essence, because of its general social causes and the particular form of its origin, because of its methods and its aims; and the cry is also meant to express that it is the duty of every representative of proletarian interests to take part in the international class struggle for its termination.

Alexander Sirnis

July 1917

Preface

A few weeks ago the Grenzbote reported a conversation which took place between Bismarck and Dr. Otto Kaemmel in October 1892. In this conversation the “Hero of the Century” himself threw off the mask of constitutionalism with the cynicism peculiar to him. Amongst other things, Bismarck said:

“He who in Rome put himself outside the pale of the law was banished (aqua et igni interdictus)”; in the Middle Ages he was said to be outlawed. Social Democracy should be similarly treated and deprived of its political rights. I would have gone to this length. The Social-Democratic question is a military question. At present Social Democracy is not taken seriously enough; it strives—and successfully—to win over the non-commissioned officers. In Hamburg a large portion of the troops already consists of Social-Democrats, for the inhabitants have the right to join the local battalions only. Suppose these troops should one day refuse to fire on their fathers and brothers at the Emperor’s order? Should we have to mobilize the Hanover and Mecklenburg regiments against Hamburg? We should, in that case, have something like the Paris Commune. The Emperor took fright. He told me that he did not wish to be called the “Kartaetschenprinz” (Shrapnel prince) some day, like his grandfather, and did not wish to “wade up to his ankles in blood” at the very beginning of his reign. I answered him at the time: “Your Majesty will have to wade much deeper if you draw back now.”

“The Social-Democratic question is a military question.” This puts the whole problem in a nutshell. This expresses more and goes much deeper than von Massow’s cry of distress: “Our only hope lies in the bayonets and cannons of our soldiers.” “The Social-Democratic question is a military question.” This is now the keynote of all tunes sung by the firebrands. If there was anyone whose eyes had not yet been opened by the earlier indiscretions of Bismarck and Puttkamer, by the speech to the Alexandrians, the Hamburger Nachrichten and the thoroughbred Junker von Oldenburg-Januschau, this would now be accomplished by the Hohenlohe-Delbrück revelations confirmed about the end of the year by the county court judge Kulemann, and by the above heartless words of Bismarck.

“The Social-Democratic question—to the extent that it is a political question—is in the last resort a military question.” This should be a constant warning to the Social Democracy and a tactical principle of first importance.

The enemy at home (Social Democracy) is “more dangerous than the enemy abroad, because it poisons the soul of our people and wrenches the weapon from our hands before we have raised it.” Thus the Kreuz-zeitung, of January 21, 1907, announced that class interests come before national interests in an electoral fight which was carried on “under the waving flag of Nationalism.” And over this electoral fight hung the ever-increasing menace to the electoral rights and the right of Trade Union organization, the menace of “Bonaparte’s Sword” which, in his letter of New Year’s eve Prince Buelow flourished round the heads of the German Social-Democrats in order to intimidate them. This electoral fight was carried on under the banner of the class struggle at its fiercest. Only one who is blind and deaf could deny that these and many other signs pointed to a storm, even to a hurricane.

Thus the problem of fighting “militarism at home” has become of the greatest importance.

The Carnival elections of 1907 were also fought on the nationalist question, on the colonial question, on Chauvinism and Imperialism. And they showed, in spite of all this, how miserably small was the power’ of resistance of the German people against the pseudo-patriotic traps laid by these despicable business patriots. They taught us what bombastic demagogy can be employed by the Government, the ruling classes, and the whole howling pack of “patriots” when the “things they hold most holy” are concerned. These elections furnished the proletariat with the necessary enlightenment; they caused it to bethink itself and taught it the social and political relation of forces. They educated it and freed it from the unfortunate “habit of victory.” These elections rendered the proletarian movement more profound by exerting a desirable pressure on it, and enabled one to understand the psychology of the masses in regard to national acts. Certainly the causes of our so-called setback (which, in reality, was no setback, and by which the victors were more taken aback than the vanquished) were manifold. But there is no doubt that just those sections of the proletariat which have been contaminated and influenced by militarism formed an especially solid obstacle which prevents the spreading of Social Democracy. They were, for instance, state workers and lower-grade officials who are at the mercy of governmental terrorism.

This, too, forces the question of anti-militarism and the question of the young people’s movement and of their education to the fore; and the German Labor movement will henceforth certainly pay more attention to these points.

The following brochure is the enlargement of a paper read by the author on November 28, 1906, at the Mannheim Conference of the German Young Socialist organizations. It does not pretend to offer anything essentially new; it only presumes to be a compilation of material already known. Nor does it pretend to exhaust the subject. The author has endeavored, as far as possible, to collect the disconnected material scattered in papers and magazines all over the world. And thanks especially to our Belgian comrade De Man, it has been possible to give a short account of the anti-militarist and Young Socialist movement in the most important countries.

If mistakes have crept in here and there, they should be excused on account of the difficulty of mastering the material and, frequently, by reason of the unreliability of the sources of information.

In the realm of militarism many things change quickly at the present time. What, for instance, is said further on in regard to French and English military reforms will very soon be rendered out-of-date by events.

This is still more true of anti-militarism and the proletarian Young Socialist movement, these latest manifestations of the proletarian struggle for freedom. They develop quickly everywhere, and one is glad to see them make headway in spite of setbacks now and then. Since this brochure was set up in type, I have learned that the Finnish Young Socialist societies held their first congress in Tammerfors, on December 9 and 10, 1906, where a union of youthful workers was founded. Apart from educating the class-consciousness of youthful workers, the special object of this union is to fight militarism in all its aspects.

People will be inclined to complain that the theoretical principles of our work are too briefly stated and their historical depth not sufficiently probed. In reply to this I must point out that the political aim of this brochure is to propagate anti-militarist thought.

Some people again will be dissatisfied with the piling up of countless details, often seemingly unimportant, especially in regard to the history of the Young Socialist movement and anti-militarism. This dissatisfaction may be justified. The author started from the assumption that only through details is one enabled to see clearly the upward and downward movement in the development of the organization, the molding and changing of the tactical principles and the manner in which their application has been arrived at. One has to take into account that it is just detail that presents the chief difficulty in anti-militarist agitation and organization.

Dr. Karl Leibknecht

Berlin, February 11, 1907

Part I: Militarism

Chapter One-General Remarks

About the Essence and Meaning of Militarism

Militarism—one of the most oft-repeated war cries of our time— denotes a phenomenon at once intricate, complex, many-sided, and at the same time most interesting and significant by reason of its origin and nature, its methods and effects. It is a phenomenon deeply rooted in the life of class-organized societies, yet it can assume within similar social systems the most varied forms, according to the special natural, political, social, and economic conditions of individual states and territories.

Militarism is one of the most important and most vital manifestations of the life of most social systems, because it expresses in the strongest, most concentrated and exclusive form the national, cultural, and class instinct of self-preservation.

A history of militarism written in its full meaning reveals the inner nature of the story of human evolution and its driving power. A dissection of capitalist militarism means the laying bare of the most secret and the finest rootlets of capitalism. The history of militarism is at the same time a history of the political, social, economic and, in general, the cultural relations of tension between states and nations, as well as a history of the class struggles within individual state and national units.

It is plain that there can be no question here of even an attempt at such a history. But we will indicate a few general points.

Origin and Basis of Social Relations of Power

The deciding factor in every social relation of power is, in the last resort, the superiority of physical force which, as a social phenomenon, does not appear in the form of the greater physical strength of some individuals. Moreover, on an average, one human being equals another, and a purely numerical proportion decides who is in the majority. This proportion of numbers does not simply correspond to the numerical proportion of those groups of persons whose interests are contradictory, but is determined chiefly by the extensive and intensive degree of the class consciousness, the intellectual and moral development of an individual class, since not everyone knows his real interests, especially his fundamental interests; and, above all, not everyone recognizes or acknowledges the interests of his class as his own individual interests. This intellectual and moral stage is determined by the economic position of individual groups of interests (classes), whilst the social and political position represents more a consequence (though one that reacts strongly) and an expression of the relation of power.

Economic superiority also helps directly to displace and to confuse the numerical proportion, because economic pressure not only influences the height of the intellectual and moral stage and, thereby, the recognition of class interests, but also produces a tendency to act in conformity with more or less well understood class principles. That the political machinery of the governing class lends it increased power to “correct” the numerical proportion in favor of the ruling group of interests is taught us by all the well-known institutions such as: the police, justice, schools, and the Church which must also be included here. These institutions are set up through the political machinery and employed in an administrative capacity. The first two work chiefly by threats, intimidation and violence: the school chiefly by blocking up all those channels by which class-consciousness might reach the brain and the heart: the Church most effectively by blinding the people to present evils and awakening their desire for the joys of a future life, and by terrifying them with threats of the torture chamber in hell.

But even the numerical proportion thus acquired does not decide absolutely the relation of power. A weapon in the hands of an armed man increases his physical strength many times. It depends upon the development of the technique of arms (including outer fortification and strategy whose form is chiefly a consequence of the technique of arms) how many times this power is multiplied. The intellectual and economic superiority of one group of interests over another is turned into a downright physical superiority through the possession of armaments, or of better armaments, on the part of the superior class. Thus the possibility is created of a class-conscious minority completely dominating a class-conscious majority. Even when the division into classes is determined by the economic position, the political relation of power of the classes is regulated by the economic position of individuals only in the first place; it is regulated in the second place through the countless intellectual, moral, and physical means at the disposal of the economically dominant class. The concentration of all this power exerts no influence on the constitution of the classes, for this constitution is created by a situation which does not depend upon it. This situation forces certain classes (which themselves may constitute a majority), as if in accordance with nature’s bidding, into economic dependence on other classes which may form a small minority. The former remain in this state of dependence without the class struggle or any political means of power being able to bring about a change. So that the class struggle can only be a struggle to further class-consciousness which embraces the readiness for sacrifice and for revolutionary deeds in the interest of one’s class—a struggle to capture those means of power which are of importance either in the creation or suppression of class-consciousness, as well as of those physical and intellectual means of power whose possession means the multiplication of physical force.

From all this one may grasp what an important role is played by the technique of arms in social struggles. It depends upon this technique whether a minority, when there is no longer an economic necessity, still remains in a position to dominate, at least for a certain time, a majority against its will by military action which is “political action of the most concentrated type.” Apart from the division of the classes, the development of the relations of power is in reality everywhere closely bound up with the development of the technique of arms. As long as everyone—even he who is in the worst possible economic position—can produce arms which are essentially equally good under equally difficult conditions, the majority principle and democracy will be the regular political form of society. As long as the above proposition holds good, this should also be the case when an economic division into classes has taken place. The natural process of development is that the division into classes (the consequence of economic and technical development) runs parallel with the improvement of the technique of arms, including the art of fortification and strategy. Thereby the production of arms becomes more and more a specialized profession.

And further, as class domination as a rule corresponds to the economic superiority of one class over another, and as the improvement of the technique of arms continually renders the production of arms more difficult and more expensive, such production of arms gradually becomes the monopoly of the economically ruling class, whereby the physical basis of democracy is done away with. Then the point is: he who is in possession is in the right. It may happen that the class, which was once in possession of the political means of power, is able to retain its political domination, at least for a time, even after it has lost its economic superiority.

After what has been said above it is unnecessary to dwell here on the point that not only the form and the character of the political relations of power are determined by the technique of arms, but also the form and the character of the class struggles of the period.

It is not sufficient that all citizens are equally armed and in charge of their arms to permanently safeguard the domination of democracy. Merely an equal distribution of arms, as events in Switzerland have shown us, does not obviate the danger that this distribution may be done away with by a majority which is about to become a minority or even by a minority which is better organized for striking a blow. The whole population can only be armed equally and permanently when the production of arms is in the hands of the people.

The role of democratizing which the technique of arms can play has been clearly depicted by Bulwer in the remarkable Utopia, “The Coming Race,” which is one of his less known works. In this book Bulwer presupposes such a high development of the technique that every citizen can at any moment achieve the most disastrous results by means of a small stick, easily procurable and loaded with a mysterious force resembling electricity. And, indeed, we can reckon with the possibility that the easy domination by man over the most powerful forces of nature—even if it be in the remote future—will reach a stage which will render the application of the technique of slaughter impossible, for it would mean the annihilation of the human race. Technical progress will bring it about that the making of arms, instead of being exploited by the plutocracy to a certain extent, will again to a certain extent become the possession of men on a wide basis of democracy.

A Few Items from the History of Militarism

In the lower cultures which know no division into classes, the weapon as a rule serves, not only as a means of defense, but at the same time as a working tool. The weapons and tools are of such a primitive character that anyone can easily procure them at any time (stones and sticks, spears with stone arrowheads, bows, etc.). As no division of Labor worthy of note yet exists, apart from the most primitive of all divisions of Labor (that between man and wife), and as all the members of the community, at any rate those of one sex, either male or female, fulfill about equal social functions, and as there are as yet no economic or political relations of power, the weapon cannot be used inside the community to support such relations of power. It could not be used as such a support, even should relations of power exist. Alongside of a primitive technique of arms, only democratic relations of power are possible.

If under this lower culture the weapon is used inside the community, at the most to settle individual conflicts, the situation is changed when a division into classes and a greater improvement in the technique of arms make their appearance. The primitive communism of the lower agricultural peoples with their constitution under which women dominated knows no social and, therefore, no political relations of class domination under normal circumstances. Generally militarism does not make its appearance at all; external complications compel them to be ready for war and even produce temporary military despotisms which, among the Nomadic peoples, is of frequent occurrence, owing to the division into classes which has, as a rule, preceded.

Let us recall the organization of the Greek and Roman armies in which, corresponding to the division of the classes, there existed a purely military hierarchy, divided according to the class position of the individual; upon his class position depended the quality of the armament. Further, let us recall the feudal armies of knights with their troops of squires mostly afoot who were always much more badly armed and who, according to Patrice Laroque, played more the part of assistants to the combatants than that of active participants in the conflict. That at that time the arming of the lower classes was tolerated at all and even aided is explained, not so much by the fact that the state could offer little security to the individual, thus making it necessary that everyone should be armed, as by the necessity of the nation or the state being armed in the case of a possible attack upon or defense against the external enemy. The differentiation in the armament of individual classes of society always made it possible that the technique of arms might be employed in maintaining or setting up the relation of power. The slave wars of Rome throw remarkable light upon this aspect of the question.

A significant light is thrown on the question by the German Peasant War and the Wars of the German Towns. The direct reasons why the outcome of the German Peasant War was unfavorable were the military-technical superiority of the feudal armies of the Church, in the first instance. The Wars of the Towns in the 14th century against these very armies were successful, not only because at that period the technique of firearms was exceptionally backward (the reverse of what it was during the Peasant War of 1525), but, above all, in consequence of the great economic power of the towns which, as locally circumscribed centers of social interests brought together within narrow confines, the representatives of these interests, and that without any considerable admixture of conflicting interests.

Further, through the art of building the towns from the first, occupied a tactical position of the same importance as that of the feudal lords, the Church and the Emperor in their burgs and fortresses—this also presents a military-technical element (fortification). Lastly, the production of arms was in the hands of the towns, and as their citizens were altogether superior as regards technical preparedness, they vanquished the army of the knights.

One must not lose sight of the important part played by the various classes of society either living together in the same locality or scattered amongst other classes, as an examination of the Peasant and the Town Wars in particular shows us. When the class division coincides with the division in regard to locality, the class struggle is rendered easier. This circumstance not only helps to develop the class-consciousness but also, from the technical point of view, aids the linking together of the classmates into a military organization and also aids the production and supply of arms. This favorable grouping of the classes in regard to locality has stood all bourgeois revolutions in good stead; in the proletarian revolution it is almost entirely absent.

Also in the hired armies still existing in our day, just as in the case of armament, we find economic power turned into physical power according to the Mephistophelian maxim: “If I can pay for six stallions, am I not entitled to their strength? I drive away and am a proper man just as if I had twenty-four legs!”; and according to a further maxim: divide et impera! (“Divide and rule!”). Both these maxims are applied in the so-called elite troops. On the other hand, the Italian condottieri show in a striking way— as the Praetorians once did—what political power is placed in the hands of those who possess weapons, military training and the art of strategy. The hired soldier reached out boldly after kings’ crowns, played ball with them, and became the natural heir to the supreme power in the state. It is a phenomenon which we see repeated down to our day in times of excitement and war when the military power ready to strike rests in the hands of individuals: Napoleon and his generals, also Boulanger.

The history of the German Wars of Liberation teaches important lessons about the influence of the external political situation on the form of the military organization and of militarism in general. In the Coalition wars of 1806 against the French Revolution the feudal standing army of Frederick the Great was demolished by the citizen army of France. As the wars had ended so disastrously for them the helpless German governments were faced by the alternative: either to be constantly at the mercy of the Corsican conqueror or to defeat him with his own weapons—with a citizen army under a system of universal service. Their own desire to survive and the spontaneous impulse on the part of the people compelled them to choose the latter course. Then began the great period of the democratization of Germany and especially of Prussia, brought on by pressure from without which lessened for a time the political, social and economic tension at home. Money and enthusiastic fighters for freedom were wanted. The value of man increased. His social quality as a producer of values and a prospective payer of taxes and his natural physical quality as the embodiment of physical force and intelligence, of the capacity to become enthusiastic, acquired a decisive meaning and raised his rate of exchange, as is always the case in times of general danger. On the other hand, the influence of class differentiation went down. The “Prussian people” had to put it in the jargon of military weeklies, “learnt to forget all their quarrels during long years of foreign rule.” As often is the case, the financial and the military question played a revolutionizing role. Some economic, social and political obstacles were removed. Industry and commerce which were financially of prime importance were fostered as much as the petty bureaucratic spirit of Prussia-Germany would permit it. Even political liberties were introduced or, at least, promised. The people rose, the storm began to rage, the Scharnhorst-Gneisenau army under the system of universal service drove the “hereditary foe” back over the Rhine during the great Wars of Liberation. They set up a contemptible model to him who had convulsed the world and had undermined the France of the Great Revolution, although it was not even the kind of democratic organization that Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had wished to create. After the nigger (the German people) had done his duty he received suitable thanks from the House of Hapsburg. The Karlsruhe resolutions followed the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig, and one of the most important acts of the futile Metternich regime of perfidious and accursed memory was (after the pressure from without had been removed and all the reactionary devils at home had been let loose again) the abolition of the democratic army of the Wars of Liberation. The territories of Germany which stood on a high level of culture might have been ripe for such an army, but the dead weight of the East Elbean-Borussian lack of culture abruptly crushed the democratic army and nearly all the glories of the great rising of the people.

A superficial review of the development of the military organization finally shows one how closely dependent is the constitution and the size of the army not only on the social division, but in a still higher degree on the technique of arms. The revolutionizing action which, for instance, the discovery of firearms exerted in this direction is one of the most striking facts in the history of war.

Chapter Two-Capitalist Militarism

Preliminary Remark

There is nothing specifically capitalistic about militarism. Moreover, it is proper and essential to all systems of class society of which the capitalist system is the last. Capitalism, like any other system of class society, develops its own special variety of militarism; for militarism, by its very essence, is a means to an end, or to several ends, which vary in accordance with the kind of social system, and which can be attained in different ways in accordance with this variance. This is brought to light not only by the military organization but also by the other attributes of militarism which manifest themselves when militarism carries out its tasks.

An army based on universal military service corresponds best to the capitalist stage of development. Although it is an army composed of the people, it is not a people’s army but an army against the people, or is being shaped more and more with this end in view.

It appears either as a standing army or as militia. The standing army which is not a special feature of capitalism alone appears as its most developed and even as its normal form. This will be shown later.

Militarism “Against the Enemy Abroad,” Navalism and Colonial Militarism. Possibilities of War and Disarmament.

The army of the capitalistic order of society as well as that of other systems of class society serves a double purpose.

It is first of all a national institution destined to attack a foreign country or to be protection against danger from without. In short, the army is destined for use in international complications or, to use a military expression, “against the external enemy.”

The latest developments by no means do away with this function of the army. For capitalism war is indeed, to use the words of Moltke, “a link in God’s world order.” To be sure, in Europe itself there is the tendency to do away with certain causes of war. It becomes less and less probable that a war might break out in Europe in spite of Alsace-Lorraine and the anxiety caused by the French trinity: Clemenceau, Pichon and Picquart, in spite of the Eastern question, in spite of Pan-Islamism, and in spite of the revolution now taking place in Russia. On the other hand, highly dangerous sources of friction have arisen in consequence of the commercial and political aims of expansion which are being pursued by the so-called civilized states. These sources of friction have been handed down to us by the Eastern question and by Pan-Islamism in the first instance and have arisen in consequence of the world policy, especially of colonial policy, which—as Buelow himself acknowledged without reserve in the German Reichstag on November 14, 1906,—bears in its womb countless possibilities of conflict and which, at the same time, pushed more and more strenuously to the fore two other kinds of militarism: marinism and colonial militarism. We Germans can tell a thing or two about this development!

Marinism, or naval militarism, is the twin brother of militarism on land and has all the repulsive and malignant traits of the latter. At the present time it is not only the consequence but also the cause of international dangers, of the danger of a world war in a still higher degree than militarism.

When pious people and deceivers want to make us believe, for instance, that the tension between Germany and England is merely due to misunderstandings, incitement by malicious newspaper writers, and to the boastful speeches of the bad musicians in the concert of diplomacy, we know better. We know that this tension is a necessary consequence of the ever-growing economic rivalry between England and Germany on the world market, i.e., a direct consequence of unbridled capitalist development and of international competition. The Spanish-American war over Cuba, the Abyssinian war of Italy, the Transvaal war of England, the Sino-Japanese war, the adventure of the Great Powers in China, the Russo-Japanese war, even though their special causes and conditions are manifold, yet they all possess one great common feature, that of wars of expansion. If we recall the Anglo-Russian tension in Tibet, Persia and Afghanistan, the Japanese-American disagreement in the winter of 1906, and, finally, the Morocco conflict of glorious memory with its Franco-Spanish co-operation of December 1906, we recognize that the capitalist policy of expansion and colonial policy have placed countless mines under the edifice of world peace. The fuses are held by most varied hands, and the mines may easily and unexpectedly explode. Certainly a time may come when the partition of the world has progressed so far that one may expect the trustification of all possible colonial possessions by the states owning colonies, i.e., the elimination of colonial competition between states as has been achieved in regard to private competition between capitalists in the cartels and trusts within certain limits. But we have to wait long for that, and it may be postponed to the remote future by the economic and national awakening of China alone.

So that all the alleged plans of disarmament for the time being appear merely as tomfoolery, empty talk, and attempts to hoodwink. They bear the stamp of the Tsar as the chief author of the Hague comedy.

Quite recently the soap bubble of the alleged disarmament by England has burst in a ludicrous way; the war minister Haldane, the alleged promoter of such intentions, has bluntly expressed his opposition to a reduction of the active forces and has been exposed and proven to be a militarist firebrand. At the same time as the Anglo-French military convention rises above the horizon and at the same hour as the second Peace Conference is being prepared, Sweden increases its navy; in America and Japan the war budget is on the upgrade; in France the Clemenceau ministry emphasises the necessity for a strong army and navy by demanding 208 million (£10,400,000) more. At the same time the Hamburger Nachrichten states that faith in military armaments as the only salvation is the quintessence of the state of mind of the ruling classes of Germany, and the German people are favored by the Government with further demands for increased war expenditure after which even our Liberals eagerly reach out. By this we can measure the naivete displayed by the French senator d’Estournelles de Constant, a member of the Hague court of arbitration, in his latest article on the limitation of armaments. In fact, this political dreamer does not even need one swallow to make the summer of disarmament; a sparrow is enough for him. Quite refreshing, as opposed to this, is the frank brutality with which the Great Powers participating in the conference let Stead’s proposals drop and even fought against the disarmament question being put on the agenda of the second Conference.

The third offshoot of Capitalism in the military realm, colonial militarism, deserves a few words. The colonial army, that is to say, the standing colonial troops, not the colonial militia presumably projected for German South-West Africa, nor still less the totally different militia of the almost autonomous English colonies, play for England an extremely important role; its importance increases also for the other civilized states. In the case of England the colonial army, apart from fulfilling the task of oppressing the colonial “enemy at home” or keeping him in check (viz., the natives of the colonies), is a force against the external colonial enemy, for instance, Russia. In the other states which own colonies, especially America and Germany, the almost exclusive and primary task of the colonial army, under the designation of a “defensive detachment” or the “foreign legion,” is to turn the unlucky natives into serfs and to drive them into capitalist slavery. When they wish to defend their fatherland against the foreign conquerors and bloodsuckers, it is the duty of the army to shoot them down mercilessly, to cut them to pieces with the sword and to starve them out. The colonial army which often consists of the dregs of the European population is the most bestial and the most abominable of all the tools employed by our capitalist states. There is hardly a crime which colonial militarism and tropical madness born of it have not committed. The Tippelskirches, Woermanns, Podbielskis, the Leists, Wehlans, Peters, Arenbergs and Co. are a proof of this and bear witness to it as regards Germany. They are the fruits by which we recognize the essence of colonial policy, that colonial policy which, under the cloak of spreading Christianity and civilization or of defending the national honor, exploits and deceives with eyes raised to heaven, for the benefit of the capitalists with colonial interests. It murders and violates the defenseless, burns their property, robs and plunders their belongings, thus mocking and bringing disgrace upon Christianity and civilization. The things perpetrated in India and Tong-king, the Congo State, German South-West Africa and the Philippines eclipse even the stars of a Cortez or of a Pizarro.

Proletariat and War

When the function of militarism against the enemy abroad is called a national function, it does not mean that it is a function which corresponds to the interests, the welfare and the will of the exploited peoples ruled by capitalism. The proletariat of the whole world has no advantage to expect from this policy, which necessitates militarism directed against the enemy abroad; its interests are, in fact, opposed to it in the most striking way. This policy serves directly or indirectly the interests of the exploiting classes of capitalism. It tries with more or less dexterity to pave the way into the world for the recklessly chaotic production and the senseless and murderous competition of Capitalism. In doing this it tramples under foot all the duties of civilization towards the less developed peoples. And in reality it attains nothing save that it insanely endangers the whole fabric of our culture by conjuring up the complications of a world war.

The proletariat, too, welcomes the mighty industrial boom of our day. But it knows that this economic boom could have come about peacefully without the armed hand, without militarism and navalism, without the trident in our fist, and without the bestialities of our economic policy in the colonies, if only it were served by states conducted on a rational basis and working according to an international agreement and in harmony with the duties and interests of Culture. The proletariat knows that our world policy is to a large extent a policy of confusing and overcoming clumsily, by means of violence, the social and political difficulties at home with which the ruling classes see themselves confronted. In short, it is a policy of Bonapartist attempts at deception and leading astray. The proletariat knows that the foes of the workers prefer to cook their soup on the fire of moderate Chauvinism and that already the fear of war unscrupulously worked up by Bismarck in 1887 aptly furthered the interests of the most dangerous reaction. It knows that a recently exposed little plan of high personages had for its object the filching of the Reichstag electoral rights from the German people while it was in a boisterously patriotic mood “after the home coming of a victorious army.” The proletariat knows that this policy tries to turn the economic boom to its advantage, and especially that all the benefit from our colonial policy flows only into the pockets of the employing class, of Capitalism, the hereditary foe of the proletariat. The proletariat knows that the wars which are waged by the ruling classes impose on it heavy sacrifice of life and property for which it is rewarded with miserable pensions for the disabled, funds in aid of veterans, street organs and kicks of all kinds after it has done the work. The proletariat knows that in every war brutality and baseness are rampant amongst the peoples participating in it and culture is set back for years. The proletariat knows that the fatherland, for which it must fight, is not its fatherland, that in every country it has only one real foe—the capitalist class which oppresses and exploits it. It knows that all national interests give precedence to the common interests of the international proletariat, and that the international coalition of the exploiters and enslavers must be opposed by the international coalition of the exploited and the enslaved. It knows that the proletariat, to the extent that it might be employed in a war, would be led to fight its own brothers and comrades and, therefore, to fight against its own interests. The class-conscious proletariat remains not only supremely indifferent to the international task of the army and to the whole capitalist policy of expansion, but takes up a position of antagonism to it, clearly understanding why it does so. It is its important task to fight also this class of militarism tooth and nail, and it becomes more and more conscious of this task. This is shown by the international congresses, by the manifestations of fraternity between the German and the French Socialists when the Franco-German war broke out, between the Spanish and American Socialists when the Cuban war broke out, between the Russian and Japanese Socialists when the war of East Asia, broke out in 1904. It is also evidenced by the decision arrived at by the Swedish Social-Democrats in 1905 to declare a general strike in the case of a Swedish-Norwegian war; and further by the parliamentary attitude taken up by the German Social Democracy towards the war credits in 1870 as well as by the Morocco conflict. It has also been proved by the attitude of the class-conscious proletariat towards an intervention in Russia.

Characteristics of Militarism “Against the Enemy at Home” and Its Task

Militarism is not only a means of defense against the external enemy; it has a second task which comes more and more to the fore as class contradictions become more marked and as proletarian class-consciousness keeps growing. Thus the outer form of militarism and its inner character take a more definite shape: its task is to uphold the prevailing order of society, to prop up capitalism and all reaction against the struggle of the working class for freedom. Militarism manifests itself here as a mere tool in the class struggle, as a tool in the hands of the ruling class. It is destined to retard the development of class-consciousness by working together with the police and the courts of justice, the school, and the Church. The task of militarism is, above all, to secure for a minority, at whatever cost, even against the enlightened will of the majority of the people, domination in the state and freedom to exploit.

Thus we are confronted by modern militarism which wants neither more nor less than the squaring of the circle, which arms the people against the people itself, which dares to force the workers (by artificially introducing by every means the distinction of class according to age into our social organization) to become oppressors and enemies, murderers of their own comrades and friends, of their parents, brothers and sisters and children, and which compels them to blight their own past and future. Modern militarism wants to be democratic and despotic, enlightened and machine-like, nationalist and antagonistic to the nation at the same time.

All the same one must not forget that militarism is directed also against the nationalist and even the religious enemy at home—in Germany, for instance, against the Poles, Alsatians and Danes. It is employed even in conflicts between the non-proletarian classes. One must not forget that it is a changeable phenomenon capable of assuming many forms, and that the Prusso-German militarism has blossomed out into a special flower owing to the peculiar semi-absolutist, feudal-bureaucratic conditions of Germany. This Prusso-German militarism has all the bad and dangerous qualities of any kind of Capitalist militarism, so that it is an exemplary model of militarism in its present condition, its forms, its methods and effects.

To use Bismarck’s words, no one has presumably been able to imitate the Prussian lieutenant; likewise no one has been able to imitate Prusso-German militarism, which has become not only a state within a state, but actually a state above the state…

Chapter Three-Methods and the Effects of Militarism

The Immediate Object

We now pass to a special examination of the methods and effects of militarism, and in doing so adhere to the exemplary model of the Prussian-German bureaucratic-feudal-capitalist militarism, the worst form of militarism, this state above the state.

Even if it is true that the present-day militarism is nothing but a manifestation of our capitalist society, yet it is one which asserts itself more and more as time goes on.

In order to attain its end, militarism must turn the army into a handy, pliable, and effective instrument. On the one hand, it must raise it to the highest possible level as to the military technique and, on the other hand, as it consists of men and not machines and presents a living mechanism, it must be filled with the right “spirit.”

The first aspect of the thing resolves itself finally into a financial question, which will be discussed later. We shall now occupy ourselves with its second aspect.

Its contents are threefold. Militarism seeks to produce and to further the military spirit, first of all, in the active army, then in the strata which are on importance as the reserve and the landwehr from which the army is supplemented in case of mobilization and, finally, in all the other strata of the population serving as a milieu which nurtures those strata of the population which are to be employed either for militarist or anti-militarist purposes.

Military Pedagogy. Education of the Soldier.

The true “military spirit,” also called “patriotic spirit” and in Prussia-Germany “spirit of loyalty to the king,” means, in short, readiness at all times to strike at the enemy at home or abroad at the word of command. To produce this spirit perfect stupidity or, at least, a very low level of intelligence is needed which makes it possible to drive the masses in the direction dictated by the interests of the “existing order,” as one would drive a herd of cattle. The admission of the minister of war, von Einem, that he preferred a soldier who was loyal to the king, even though he was a bad shot, to a soldier whose way of thinking was less correct even though he were a good shot, must surely have come from the bottom of the heart of this representative of German militarism. But here militarism finds itself between the devil and the deep sea. The technique of arms, strategy and tactics now make a great demand upon the intelligence of the soldier and, therefore, the soldier who is more intelligent, caeteris paribus, is also more thorough. For this reason alone, militarism could effect nothing with merely a stupid crowd at the present time. But Capitalism has no use for a stupid crowd, either, because of the economic functions performed by the masses, especially by the proletariat. In order to be able to exploit, to make the biggest possible profits (this is its inevitable life task) Capitalism is forced by a tragic fate to produce systematically on a vast scale amongst its slaves that very intelligence which, as capitalism knows full well, must be the cause of its own death and destruction. All attempts at skillful maneuvering and at a cunning co-operation with the Church and the school to steer the ship of Capitalism between the Scylla of an intelligence so low that it renders exploitation altogether too difficult and turns the proletarian himself into an unsuitable beast of burden, and the Charybdis of an education—necessarily destructive of Capitalism—which increases class-consciousness on all sides, and revolutionizes the exploited—all such attempts are bound to fail.

The East-Elbean agricultural workers, according to the noted words of Kroecher, are indeed the most stupid workers, but can still become the best workers for the Junker, be it remembered. They provide militarism on a large scale with material which allows itself to be driven like hordes of slaves at the word of command. Nevertheless this material can be used to advantage only with caution and within certain limits on account of its low level of intelligence, too low even for militarism.

“Our best soldiers are Social-Democrats,” one often hears said. This shows how difficult is the task of instilling the true military spirit into an army under universal military service. Since mere slavish and blind obedience does not suffice and is no longer practicable, militarism is compelled to strengthen the will of the men in a roundabout way in order to create for itself “shooting automatons.” It must shape the will by exerting a moral and a psychological influence or by using means of violence; it must either coax or force it. The maxim “by fear or favor” is applied here, too.

The true “spirit” required by militarism in regard to its function against the enemy abroad is, first represented by Chauvinist stolidity, narrow-mindedness and self-exaltation, secondly—with regard to its function against the enemy at home—by a lack of understanding or even hatred of all progress, of every undertaking or striving which might threaten the domination of the ruling class in power for the time being. This is the channel into which militarism has to lead the thoughts and feelings of the soldiers when it wishes to influence by favor those whose class interests are so opposed to Chauvinism and for whom all progress, in the light of these class interests, should appear as the only sensible aim until the downfall of the existing order of society is brought about. And one should not ignore the fact that the proletarian of military age, although he as a rule excels the bourgeois of the same age as regards independence and political insight, is not so firm in his class-consciousness.

The system of influencing the soldiers morally and psychologically is most audacious and cunning. Instead of separating them according to their social class, they are classified according to their age, and the system attempts to create a special class consisting of proletarians of 20-22 whose ways of thinking and feeling are to be diametrically opposed to those of the proletarians in the other and older “classes.”

In the first place, the proletarian in uniform is ruthlessly cut off from his comrades and his family. This is effected by removing him from his native place and, above all, by shutting him up in barracks, as is done systematically in Germany. One can almost call it a repetition of the Jesuit system of education, a counterpart of the monastic system.

There is next an attempt to continue this isolation as long as possible. When from the military and the technical point of view there is no longer a necessity for a long term of service, this tendency to prolong the isolation is only checked by the financial difficulty. The introduction of the two-year service in Germany in 1892 is due to this circumstance.

And, lastly, it is a question of making the most of the time allotted to influence the mental outlook of those who are being trained.

As in the case of the Church, all human weaknesses and the senses are enlisted in the service of this military pedagogy. Ambition and vanity are excited, the uniform is proclaimed the best uniform, a soldier’s honor is glorified as something especially dignified, and the military caste is trumpeted as being the most important and respected; and, indeed, it is endowed with many privileges. They pander to man’s love for adornment by cutting the uniforms according to the coarse taste of the lower classes which they wish to attract; contrary to their purely military purpose, they trim the uniforms with tinsel like carnival costumes. All sorts of petty glittering distinctions, decorations, stripes for good shooting, etc., appeal to the same low instinct—the desire for gay apparel and for being looked up to as a distinguished person. And how much of the suffering of soldiers has been soothed by the military bands to which, along with the glittering trimmings on the uniform and the bombastic pomp, is due that widespread popularity—amongst children, fools, servant girls, and the dregs of the proletariat—-on which our “magnificent war army” can pride itself. He who has once seen the dubious public which watches parades and the crowd which follows a procession of the guard of the royal palace in Berlin will quite understand this. It is well known that this liking for the uniform, felt in certain civilian circles, really constitutes a strong temptation for the unenlightened elements in the army.

All these means are the more effective the lower the intellectual level of the soldiers, and the lower their social position. It is easy to deceive these elements with tinsel and baubles, not merely on account of their small capacity for judgment (one need only imagine an American negro or an East Prussian menial slave suddenly dressed in the “best” uniform!), but also by reason of the difference between the level of their former civilian life and that of their military position. Thus we have the tragic contradiction that the influence exerted by these means on the intelligent industrial proletarians (for whom they are designed in the first place) is not so great as that exerted on those elements which it seems hardly necessary to influence in this direction, at least for the time being, because they, as things stand, present a sufficiently pliable material for militarism. Nevertheless these means may also help in this case to preserve the spirit agreeable to militarism. The regimental feasts, celebration of the Kaiser’s birthday, etc., serve the same end.

When everything has been done to put the soldier into a state of intoxication, to deaden his soul, to fire his imagination and his feelings, they begin systematically to play upon his reasoning powers. They start to instruct him and attempt to cram into him a childish representation of the world distorted and whittled down to suit the aims of militarism. Naturally this instruction given mostly by uneducated men without capacity for teaching does not react at all on the intelligent industrial proletarians who are often more intelligent than their instructors. It is an attempt to teach unsuitable subjects or resembles an arrow which rebounds and hits the archer who shot it. This has not long since been proved to General Liebert by the Post and by Max Lorenz (whose perception has been quickened by competition for profit) in regard to anti-Social-Democratic “instruction” of soldiers. Exacting drill, life in the barracks, turning the officer’s and the non-commissioned officer’s uniform (which in many departments of life really seems to be legibus solutus and sacrosanct) into a sacred thing, in short, the discipline and control which hold the soldier in iron clamps regarding everything he does or thinks, on duty or off duty, serve to produce the necessary elasticity and obedience of the will. Every individual is so mercilessly bent, tugged at and twisted that the strongest spine is in danger of breaking, and either bends or breaks.

The zealous cultivation of the “religious” spirit was demanded by a motion in the budget committee of the Reichstag in February 1892 (rejected, however, without prejudice). This spiritual training expressly designated as a special object of military education is also here destined to complete the work of military oppression and enslavement

Instruction and religious belaboring represent at the same time sweetmeats and the whip. The whip is used only sparingly and, for the most part, in a veiled form.

The sweetmeats used as bait for the formation and filling up of the important permanent cadres of the army successfully employed is the system of “capitulation” with the prospect of premiums for the non-commissioned officers and of “certificates of provision in civil life.” This is a very cunning and dangerous arrangement by which militarism contaminates our whole public life, as will be shown later. First and foremost comes the system of discipline which is a whip in the hands of militarism, then comes the military criminal law which threatens rigorously even the slightest opposition to the so-called military spirit, and military justice with its semi-medieval procedure, with its inhuman, barbarous punishments meted out even for the slightest insubordination. Excesses committed by superiors against subordinates are only slightly punished, and the right of self-defense has been practically filched from the subordinates. There is nothing more instructive and nothing that incites one more against militarism than the perusal of military articles and military criminal cases.

Here belong also cases of the ill-treatment of soldiers of which more will be said later. Ill-treatment is not a method sanctioned by the law, but it is perhaps the most effective of the coercive disciplinary methods of militarism.

They attempt to tame men as they tame wild beasts. They deaden the senses of the recruits, flatter, bribe, press, imprison, polish, and flog them. Thus grain upon grain is mixed and kneaded together to serve as mortar for the mighty edifice of the army, and stone put upon stone, to form a bulwark well calculated to prevent a revolution.

That these means of luring, punishing and pressure bear the character of the class struggle is rendered obvious by the institute for the “one-year volunteers.” The “one-year volunteer,” the son of a bourgeois, intended for an officer of the reserve, is generally above the suspicion of having anti-militarist and revolutionary leanings; therefore he escapes being sent away from his native place, being shut up in barracks, instructed and forced to attend church; he even escapes a large part of the exacting drill. It is natural that he is caught in the mesh of discipline and of military criminal law only as an exception and is let off lightly. Those who ill-treat the soldiers seldom dare touch them in spite of their fierce hatred for everything “cultured.” The training of the officers furnishes another striking proof of this proposition.

The fact that a mass of men work together among whom the individual has lost his independence is of supreme importance for military discipline. Each individual in the army, like a criminal in a galley, is chained to all the others and is practically incapable of independent action. The strength of all the others which is a thousand times greater prevents him by its overwhelming power from making an independent move. All the members of this mighty organism, or rather of this mighty mechanism, are, apart from the hypnotic influence exerted by those in command, subjected to a special kind of hypnotism, mass hypnotism whose influence over enlightened and resolute opponents of militarism is bound to be nil.

In the domain of educating the soldier, some conflict and difficulty arise out of the fact that the purpose of militarism is two-fold. This applies both to training and to equipment. The military training demands more and more imperiously an ever-increasing degree of independence on the part of the soldiers. The soldier requires no independence as a watch-dog of capital, in fact he must not have any; his qualification for committing suicide should not be taken away from him. In short, war against the external enemy requires men; war against the enemy at home requires slaves, machines. As regards equipment and armament they cannot dispense with the bright uniforms, glittering buttons and helmets, the flags, parade drills, cavalry attacks, and all the rubbish needed to create the necessary spirit in the struggle against the enemy at home; in war against the external enemy, these things may become downright fatal or simply impossible. All the well-intentioned critics of our militarism who in their innocence merely lay down the criterion for military training have not grasped this tragic conflict whose many aspects cannot be depicted here in extenso.

In this conflict of interests within militarism itself, the self-contradiction from which it suffers has the tendency to become more and more acute. It depends each time upon the relation between the political tension at home and abroad which of the two conflicting interests gains the upper hand. One must bear in mind that here lies the germ which will cause militarism to destroy itself.

When the war against the enemy at home in the case of an armed revolution assumes such a forbidding aspect of a purely military-technical character that the decked-out slaves and machines are no longer able to suppress it, then the last hour of the coercive domination by a minority, the capitalist oligarchy, will strike. It is important enough that this military spirit means generally a perversion and confusion of the proletarian class-consciousness, and that militarism serves Capitalism by contaminating with this spirit our whole public life in every direction simultaneously, apart from the purely militarist contamination wrought by it. Militarism does this, for instance, by producing and furthering the spirit of servility in the proletarian who thus submits more readily to economic, social and political exploitation. Militarism also thus retards considerably the proletarian struggle for freedom. We shall have to return to this.