How a revolution stopped a war
By Greg Butterfield
People new to progressive politics might wonder why
revolutionary Marxists study V. I. Lenin's writings on World
War I and the Russian Bolshevik Party's role in the anti-war
movement of the time.
After all, the world has changed a lot in the nine decades
since World War I. Back then nerve gas and bi-planes were the
cutting edge of military technology. Today there are
mini-nukes, smart bombs and bunker busters, CNN, MSNBC and Fox,
and George W. Bush's plan for a $200-billion war and occupation
of Iraq.
What hasn't changed, though, is the fundamental nature of
imperialism. Its insatiable drive to war for profit operates
24/7. But so too does the irreconcilable class struggle between
workers and bosses, between labor and the repressive capitalist
state.
Witness the ongoing battle of the International Longshore
and Warehouse Union on the West Coast. After the bosses locked
out the dockers as part of an ongoing fight over jobs and
safety, the Bush administration ordered them back to work
without a contract, supposedly for reasons of "national
security."
One of the best introductions you'll find to that earlier
era is the book "The Bolsheviks and War: Lessons for Today's
Anti-War Movement," written in 1985 by Sam Marcy, the founder
and chairperson of Workers World Party.
In clear, contemporary language, Marcy explains the
controversies that wracked the European and U.S. anti-war
movements during World War I, and how the Bolsheviks in Russia
staked out a revolutionary internationalist position,
advocating class struggle to stop the bloody war of the
imperialist powers. This culminated in Russia's 1917 socialist
revolution.
Marcy also shows how the lessons of that time can be applied
to anti-war struggles today. Along the way, he uncovers the
long-buried history of the Green Corn Rebellion, a
socialist-led insurrection against the war in the United
States.
Lenin on war and revolution
In every war crisis, many of the same conflicts and
questions arise within the movement over how best to oppose the
war, or even whether to oppose it.
Is imperialism just a bad policy or is it a system? Do the
United States and other imperialist powers have "legitimate
interests" in the Middle East or elsewhere?
Should the movement advocate sanctions or weapons
inspections as an alternative to outright invasion, or should
it oppose all forms of imperialist domination? Does a country
that has been oppressed and plundered by colonialism and
imperialism have the right to self-defense?
Is the anti-war movement's goal simply to curb the war
machine's worst excesses? Or should it be to get rid of the
system that breeds war, racism and environmental devastation on
a global scale?
As Marcy's book recounts, the European workers' movement
adopted many fine-sounding anti-war resolutions before World
War I broke out in 1914. But as soon as war was declared,
nearly all the officialdom of the Social Democratic parties
abandoned the workers' interests and backed their national
ruling classes in the war.
Only Lenin and the Bolsheviks in Russia, along with Karl
Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in Germany, the left wing of the
U.S. Socialist Party and a few others, stood firm.
Instead of using the war as an excuse to pull back from the
class struggle, Lenin and his co-thinkers argued that it was
exactly the right time to direct the struggle of the workers
and oppressed against capitalism. "Turn the imperialist war
into a civil war" was the Bolsheviks' motto.
"A revolutionary class cannot but wish for the defeat of its
government in a reactionary war," Lenin wrote in 1915, "and
cannot fail to see that the latter's military reverses must
facilitate its overthrow." This thoroughly internationalist
position, which scandalized the "official, loyal" anti-war
opposition then and now, is called revolutionary defeatism.
Dying for the bosses' profits
The Russian workers and peasants wanted peace desperately.
It became clear to them that the only way to get it was to
overthrow their government. The war with Germany was literally
killing them by the hundreds of thousands, in the trenches and
by starvation at home.
First they overthrew the czarist regime. But the
"democratic" capitalist government that followed still refused
to get out of the war. It kept sending young men to be killed
because the bankers and industrialists didn't want to give up
territories valuable to them.
After the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917, one of the
first things the new workers' and peasants' government did was
make public the secret treaties these rulers had made. The
treaties showed what the capitalists had expected to get out of
the war--much like the secret agreements being made today over
who gets Iraqi oil after a U.S. invasion and occupation.
Marcy's book also explains the Bolshevik view on wars of
imperialist powers against underdeveloped countries striving
for national liberation or to maintain their independence. The
planned U.S. aggression against Iraq falls into that
category.
Lenin argued that communists "of the oppressor countries
should recognize and champion the oppressed nation's right to
self-determination. The socialist of a ruling country who does
not stand for this right is a chauvinist."
Class struggle and war
Marcy contends, "If the struggle against imperialist war is
to become serious, it must take on a working class character."
What does this mean?
"Taking on a working-class character means that the
fundamental aim of the anti-war struggle is not merely against
the military-industrial complex, but also the defense
contractors and the big banks, as well as the giant oil
corporations," he writes.
Unless the class nature of war is clearly understood by the
anti-war forces, their focus can be sidetracked. Instead of
building a militant, grassroots movement, they can waste their
energies trying to win over liberal politicians and capitalists
who are beholden to the interests of Big Oil, Wall Street and
the military contractors.
The movement's energy can also be diverted into making
demands on an oppressed country to weaken its sovereignty, like
the trend today that demands Iraq open itself to the
U.S.-dominated United Nations weapons inspection regime.
"The Bolsheviks and War" can be purchased for $5 plus $2
shipping and handling from: World View Forum, 55 W. 17 St., 5th
fl., New York, NY 10011.
Reprinted from the Oct. 31, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
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