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From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 41, 2 September 1933, p. 3.
Another translation available in the Lenin Internet Archive.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
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This article was published by comrade Lenin in October 1916, in the Social-Democrat, the Bolshevik publication issued in Geneva, Switzerland, during the war. It is of especial importance now, when preparations are being made for an Anti-War Congress with the participation of Barbusse and other pacifists. It clearly states the revolutionary line in the struggle against war, and distinguishes it from petty-bourgeois pacifism. To read this document now enables one to measure the distance which separates the line of Lenin and that of Stalin, the “greatest disciple of Lenin”. – Ed. |
One of the main arguments in favor of disarmament is that, and it is not always directly expressed: We are against war, in general against any war, and the most definite, clear and unequivocal expression of this view of ours is the demand for disarmament.
We have dealt with the incorrectness of this argument in an article on the Junius Pamphlet, to which we refer the reader. Socialists cannot be against every war, without ceasing to be socialists. One must not let himself be blinded by the present imperialist war. For the imperialist epoch, just such wars among the great powers are typical, but democratic wars and insurrections too, are absolutely not impossible, such as for instance wars of oppressed nations against their oppressors, for their liberation from oppression. Civil wars between proletariat and bourgeoisie, for socialism, are inevitable. Wars between victorious Socialism in one country against other countries, bourgeois or reactionary are possible.
Disarmament is the ideal of Socialism. In Socialist society there will be no wars, consequently disarmament will be realized. But Me is no Socialist, who expects the realization of Socialism without the social revolution and the dictatorship. Dictatorship is state force, which supports itself, immediately, upon force. Force in the twentieth century – as in the epoch of civilization in general – is neither the fist nor the club, but the army. To take disarmament into our program would mean to say: We are against the use of arms. In that there is to be found just as little Marxism as if we were to say We are against the use of force!
We want to point out that the international discussion on this question has been carried out mainly, if not exclusively, in the German language. And in German, two words are used, the distinction between which is hard to reproduce in Russian. One is (Abruestung) “disarmament”, and is used, for instance, by Kautsky and the Kautskyans in the sense of limitation of armaments. The other is (Entwaffnung) “total disarmament”, and is mainly used by the Lefts in the sense of abolition of militarism, in the sense of abolition of every militarist (warlike) system. We are speaking in this article of the second demand, which is prevalent among some revolutionary Social-Democrats.
An oppressed class, which does not endeavor to learn how to use arms and to possess arms, would only deserve to be treated like slaves. Without becoming bourgeois pacifists or opportunists, we must not forget that we live in a class society, and that there is not and cannot be any other way out of it than the class struggle and the overthrow of the power of the ruling class.
In every class society – whether based on slavery, serfdom or, as at present, on wage labor – the oppressing class is also armed. Not only the present standing army, but also the present militia – even in the most democratic bourgeois republics such as Switzerland is there arming of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. This is such an elementary truth that it is scarcely necessary to spend much time on it here. It suffices to point to the use of the army (including the republican-democratic militia) against strikers, a phenomenon which is the same in all capitalist countries without exception. The arming of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat is one of the most important, most fundamental, and most significant facts of capitalist society in the present period.
And in the face of such a fact it is proposed that the revolutionary social-democrats set up the demand for total disarmament! That means the same as the complete rejection of the standpoint of the class struggle, the rejection of every thought of revolution. Our slogan must be: Arm the proletariat, to conquer the bourgeoisie, to expropriate and to disarm it. This is the only possible tactic for the revolutionary class, a tactic which arises out of the whole objective development of capitalist militarism and is prescribed by this development. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie, can it throw all weapons onto the ash-pile, without being disloyal to its world-historical task; and the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only then, and in no case before.
If the present war produces fear union;; the reactionaries, the Christian-socialists and the weepy petty-bourgeois, only horror and fear, only aversion to any use of weapons, to blood, death, etc., then we must say: Capitalist society is and always was terror without an end. And if the present war, the most reactionary of all the wars of this society, is preparing an end in terror, then we have no occasion to fall into despair. In its objective meaning the “demand” for disarmament – or, more correctly, the dream of disarmament at a time when before the eyes of the whole world, through the forces of the bourgeoisie itself, the only legitimate and revolutionary war, that is the civil war against the imperialist bourgeoisie, is being prepared, is nothing but an expression of just such despair.
If anyone says that this is a visionary theory, we want to remind him of two world-historical facts: the role of the trusts and of factory work for women on the one hand, the Commune of 1871 and the December insurrection of 1905 in Russia on the other.
It is the bourgeoisie’s affair to develop trusts, to drive children and women into the factory, to ruin and skin them alive there, and condemn them to the worst misery. We do not “demand” such a development. We do not “support it”, but we struggle against it. But how do we struggle? We know that trusts and factory work for women are a progressive step. We do not want to go backward, to handwork, to capitalism without monopoly, to home-work for women. Forward through trusts and the rest, and over them, to Socialism!
These considerations, which take into account the objective course of the development, can be applied with suitable changes to the present militarization of the people. Today the imperialist bourgeoisie is militarizing not only the whole people, but the youth too. Tomorrow perhaps it will go on to the militarization, of women too. To this we can only say: So much the better! So much the faster is it going ahead! And the faster it goes ahead, the nearer we are to the armed insurrection against capitalism ! How can the social-democrats let themselves be intimidated by the militarization of the youth, if they have not forgotten the example of the Commune? This is no “visionary theory”, no dream, but a fact. And it would be very bad in fact if the social-democrats, in spite of all economic and political facts, were to begin to doubt that the imperialist epoch and the imperialist war must inevitably lead to a repetition of such facts.
A bourgeois witness of the Commune wrote the following in an English newspaper in May 1871: “If the French nation consisted only of women, what a terrible nation it would be!” Women and children over 13 fought at the time of the Commune alongside the men. It cannot be otherwise in the future battles for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. The proletarian women will not stand by passively and see how the well-armed bourgeoisie shoot down the poorly-armed or unarmed workers. As was the case in 1871, they will take up arms, and out of the present intimidated nations – or more correctly, out of the present workers’ movement, which has been disorganized by the opportunists more than by the governments – there will develop, sooner or later, but with absolute certainty, an international union of the “terrible nations” of the revolutionary proletariat.
Now militarization embraces all of public life. Imperialism is a bitter struggle of the great powers for the division and redivision of the world, and therefore it must lead to further militarization in all countries, even in the neutral and the small countries. But what will the proletarian women do about it? Will they only curse at every war and every phase of militarism and only demand disarmament? Never will the women of an oppressed class, which is truly revolutionary, content themselves with such a miserable role. They will say to their sons:
“Soon you will be grown up. They will give you weapons. Take them and learn the craft of war. This knowledge is necessary for the proletarian – not in order to shoot at your brothers; the workers of other countries, as happens in this war and as the betrayers of socialism are advising you to do – but in order to fight against the bourgeoisie of your own country, in order to put an end to exploitation, to poverty and to wars, not with pious wishes, but through victory over the bourgeoisie and through their disarming.”
If anyone rejects such propaganda, particularly in connection with the present war, he would do better not to use big words about international social-democracy, about the struggle against war.
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