“Disarming is emasculation. Disarming is a reactionary-Christian jeremiad. Disarming is not a struggle against the imperialist reality, but a flight from it into the beautiful future after the victorious socialist revolution!!” (cf. Victor Fischer)....
“Militarisation of the nation” , “an armed people”, what a misfortune!—one hears this more and more frequently. But we say: militarisation of the nation, an armed people, drawing children and, if you like, women, into military training—so much the better, the speedier will the war be turned into a civil war, into an uprising. Help? No, we will not help the trusts.
Disarmament instead of arming the people.
To the question “Militia or disarmament?”
I. Disarmament or disarming of the people or something similar? (instead of a militia).
II. The oppressed class has not sought to study and master the art of war? (Engels in Anti-D\"uhring, on militarism on the way to destruction).[2]
III. Concession to opportunism, or the ease of slipping into opportunism?
| + attempts to avoid revolution | || | All democratic changes facilitate this. (The republic. Separation of the church from the state, etc.).... Exception (America).... |
| General struggle, all along the line, against overt and masked opportunism (Kautskyism). | ||
| + imperialism in Switzerland (Nakhimson) | Press down on the enemy (opportunism) everywhere. Changes in programme. No to Swiss militia (especially after 1907). |
IV. Practice. Formulas or revolutionary practice? Now, at this moment—propaganda of disarmament or disarming? Nonsense! Help the revolutionary struggle in neighbouring countries, turn the imperialist war into a civil war. 20,000 x 2 pfennigs = 20,000 francs per annum. Three newspapers, their delivery.
[1] See present edition, Vol. 23, pp. 77–87 and 94–104.—Ed.
[2] Engels in Anti-D\"uhring, Part II, Chapter III, “The Force Theory (Continuation)”, writes as follows about the capitalist states: = “The army has become the main purpose of the state, and an end in itself; the peoples are there only to provide soldiers and feed them. Militarism dominates and is swallowing Europe. But this militarism also bears within itself the seed of its own destruction. Competition among the individual states forces them, on the one hand, to spend more money each year on the army and navy, artillery, etc., thus more and more hastening their financial collapse; and, on the other hand, to resort to universal compulsory military service more and more extensively, thus in the long run making the whole people familiar with the use of arms, and therefore enabling them at a given moment to make their will prevail against the war-lords in command.... At this point the armies of the princes become transformed into armies of the people; the machine refuses to work, and militarism collapses by the dialectics of its own evolution”. p. 248
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