The Problem of War, 1933

For the Archives of the Left we present two articles: the first, titled “The Problem of War”, appeared in “Prometeo” in January 1933; the second is a 1919 leaflet by Karl Liebknecht, republished here, with a clear and comprehensive foreword, by our Fraction in August 1934.

The two articles, one written in the aftermath of the end of World War I, the other on the eve of World War II, are united by the same revolutionary concern: that of saving the proletariat from joining the “Sacred Union” with its own national bourgeoisie, the main tasks entrusted by the class enemy to traitors, old and new, of the working class.

The Marxist, dialectical, catastrophic, revolutionary doctrine rejects the possibility of a peaceful and painless transition from the present class-divided society to socialism; this doctrine of catastrophe has been, in the course of various counterrevolutionary waves, polluted by bourgeois notions that the capitalist mode of production might be susceptible to an evolution that would take into account social demands and adapt to the expectations of the working-class masses.

It is natural that this second notion is not the result of political naivete, but, on the contrary, it’s an intelligent work of bourgeois “entryism” in the proletarian ranks in order to transform that body which had come up to accomplish the overthrow of the capitalist regime and the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship into a coefficient of bourgeois balance and conservation.

Consequently, the main necessity for the revolutionary communist party becomes that of conducting, in the doctrinaire field, a radical battle against all kinds of democratic and petit-bourgeois ideology and, by the same token, declaring the irreconcilable antithesis between the proletariat, the bearer of a new doctrine, new systems and new institutions, against the whole democratic mechanism proper to the capitalist system.

All these concepts are found enunciated in Liebknecht’s vigorous article, the same ones that inspired the writing of “Prometeo”. The article took its cue from the Peace Congress held in Amsterdam on the initiative of the petit-bourgeois pacifists and intellectuals Barbusse and Romain Roland. He was placed in the chair “of the non‑sodden gathering the former pipist deputy Miglioli, an emeritus acrobat in keeping his feet in two stirrups and putting both hands in two purses, that of the Comintern and that of the Diocese, if the former runs dry” (Prometheus, 9/18/1932).

The colorful outline of the Congress included other prominent figures among whom stood out the Stalinist Munzenberg (former revolutionary, former international youth leader, former left‑wing internationalist); the right‑wing Indian nationalist Patel; General Baron Schoenaich; professional men of letters and politicians, some sporting the ribbon of the Legion of Honor in their buttonhole. The Moscow-inspired press, although it used different words, confirmed that the composition of those attending was exactly as we have described it: there were delegates from the “honest” intellectuals opposed to the war, the bourgeois and pacifist elements disgusted with “the hypocrisy of the pacifism of the League of Nations”, representatives of the “revolutionary nationalist” movements, those accredited by the Second International and those of the Third. The conference ended with a document of purely sentimental aversion to war that was unanimously approved, including by the anarchists.

The Communist Left has always been very clear that it is not a question of drawing a furrow between the proponents and opponents of war, for among the enemies of war one must well distinguish (and here, yes, draw a clear separation!) those who wish war not to happen because it would upset their reformist, pacifist, Christian, humanitarian schemes; from those who, on the contrary, stand against war because they oppose it with the war waged between classes for the conquest of political power.

Having made this distinction, knowing how many are on our side and how many in the opposite takes on secondary importance compared to maintaining, with stubborn consistency, our theses. And it is for this reason that the Prometeo article concluded with the following statement: "Our Fraction, at the cost of remaining isolated, of appearing to be a mere sect, maintains and will maintain on the terrain of the struggle against the war the implacable revolutionary intransigence against everything and everyone because it is convinced that only in this way does it contribute presently to the reconstruction of the proletarian front against the capitalist monster and is convinced that revolutionaries will not be long in realizing the rightness of these positions, which are an indispensable basis for a real and effective strengthening of the revolutionary struggle”.

The problem of war, for the Left Fractions, takes on a special importance and we thus have an obligation, a duty, to specify the fundamental character of war and the methods and possibilities for fighting against it.

As disciples of Marx and Lenin, we consider that war is a chronic disease of the capitalist regime. In fact, the natural evolution of Capital, having monopolized all the internal resources of the States, in order not to slow down the march for the accumulation of “profit” is led to go outside national frontiers to seek new sources, new possibilities with the conquest of new markets, not hesitating to break all obstacles in its path.

Just as within capitalist States the blood of wage earners must serve the accumulation of capitalist profit, in wars the same blood must serve the maintenance and conquest of new markets.

The fact that in the imperialist period the whole world is divided into spheres of influence or domination by the different capitalist States, all subject to the same needs, the same necessities, they’re led to try to violently change these “spheres of influence” by means of arms. Within the States, the contradictions between what the means of production allow and the needs of the entire population create misery, hunger, unemployment and form the preconditions for the triumph of the proletarian revolution. War is an infamous and illusory attempt to restore the broken balance, with blood, hunger and misery.

Having established this criterion, which is fundamental for us, defined by Lenin as the period “of wars and revolutions”, that war, like hunger and unemployment, are the product and consequence of the capitalist regime, it becomes clear that for us, for the proletarian class, that the only way to fight effectively against war is to intensify the class struggle, the struggle against the capitalist regime.

Only the triumph of the proletarian revolution can mean the abolition of war, as it will mean an end to the exploitation of man by man.

With these general considerations, the problem of the anti‑war struggle becomes more precise and the task of revolutionaries appears clear and glaring: to place themselves at the exclusive service of the working class, to strengthen the instruments of struggle it possesses, on the directive of defending the integral interests of the proletarian class.

Having thus resolved the general problem of the struggle against the war, it remains to specify the simplest way in which our Fraction conceives, on the basis of the above lines, the actual struggle against the war. Through this clarification one can easily understand the reasons for our hostility to the Amsterdam Congress.

It is well known that for communists the fundamental classes of capitalist society are two: proletariat and bourgeoisie; there are middle strata which we guard against neglecting and underestimating, but already the Communist Manifesto of 1848 and all the acquired experience of proletarian struggles, teach us that these strata tend between the two extreme poles, either toward the proletariat or toward the bourgeoisie depending on whether the latter or the proletariat appears stronger and more resolute in the struggles and class battles.

While the bourgeoisie owes its strength to the power it holds in its hands, to the administrations, police forces, monopoly of the press, divided into a multitude of parties ostensibly fighting each other, the proletarian class owes its power to the trade union organizations for the defense of its immediate interests and its chances of victory to its vanguard – the communist parties – which educate it, direct it in the correct revolutionary line in the battles toward the conquest of power.

It is clear from this premise – having already established that war is the child of the capitalist regime, the struggle against it must take on the character of a struggle against the regime itself, and not an apparent protest in the name of some abstract humanity or an interclass morality that have no basis in the inexorable logic of the class struggle, which is not periodic but permanent with more or less acute phases – that the struggle against the capitalist regime can only be conducted by the proletarian vanguard: by the communist parties.

It is therefore up to the communist parties to take over the leadership of an anti‑war agitation.

The Communist International has the task and duty of promoting an international congress with the “problem of war” on its agenda.

Such an approach, besides rallying the proletarians of the whole world, if done seriously, would not fail to move large strata of the middle classes to the proletarian side, on its methods, for its goals.

If then the communist parties, through the powerful leverage of their trade union fractions, would exert serious and continuous pressure within the trade union organizations, raising the need for trade union unity, and while waiting for it to be imposed by events, would agitate in the core of the proletarian class the necessity of the united front among the various trade union centers for the defense of the immediate interests of the working masses – within which the struggle against the war and the defense of the victims of proletarian struggles imprisoned in capitalist jails, particularly in Mussolini’s jails – we would witness a mighty regrouping of revolutionary forces which could not only prevent the war, but would create favorable conditions for the destruction of the germ that causes the war in the first place: the capitalist regime.

Are we on this path with the Amsterdam Congress? Are we actually following in its footsteps? No, between the anti‑war struggle conceived according to the Amsterdam initiators and the communist, Leninist, let us say the word, conception, there is an unbridgeable gulf.

Under the pretext of the “united front from bellow”, the Amsterdam Congress was organized “above the parties”. To comply with this clause the Communist parties, as such, were absent, and they allowed the rank-and-file organizations to participate not to sabotage as Lenin had taught us at the Hague Congress, but to help the Congress, from which can be deduced an abdication of the proletarian vanguard in the face of a problem of such great importance as that of war, and in the most favorable, but no less dangerous hypothesis, a glimpse is left for the masses to fight against the war on different grounds than communist interpretation, i.e. other than the degree of the experience of the last war and particularly the triumph of the October Revolution.

One is against the united front among the trade union centers, under the pretext that the reformist leaders are at this point part of the bourgeois State and that they are social-fascists, but in Amsterdam one is united front with the German generals, with bourgeois deputies like Bergery, with Italian careerists like Miglioli, with the Indian nationalist bourgeoisie (Patel), etc.

Isn’t it characteristic that Racamond, secretary of the CGTU finds it incompatible to be confused with Jouhaux, secretary of the CGT and instead finds himself speaking at public rallies alongside a Herriottist deputy by the skin of his teeth, like Bergery, on the basis of working together against the war?

Meanwhile under the cover of this hybrid embrace, one forgets the real work against the war, the work for the strengthening of trade union organizations and the revolutionary vanguard, indeed one allows these petty-bourgeois literati like Barbusse and co to sneak into the midst of proletarian organizations by taking the initiative in congresses, trade union conferences, etc.

Is it possible that abdication, misunderstanding can go so far without the revolutionaries, the rank-and-file militants of the communist parties realizing that they are marching headlong toward catastrophe, toward the annihilation of the revolutionary forces?

In the anti‑war struggle, revolutionary intransigence is the trial by fire of revolutionary militants: Lenin reminded us of this when he wrote about the anti‑war congress to be held in the Hague in 1922: “It seems to me that if we will have a few people who are able to make speech, es against war in various languages at the Hague Conference, then our most important job will be to refute the idea that those participating in the conference are real opponents of war, that they understand how war may and can burst upon them at the most unexpected moment, that they have the least comprehension of the means of combating war, or that they are in any way capable of undertaking an intelligent and effective course in combating war.”.

Ten years have passed since Lenin gave these directives and today we find ourselves with the exact same task, except those who were supposed to go to the congress for a speech, in Lenin’s spirit, meant to expose this sort of cheap petit-bourgeois pacifism instead find themselves promoting the penetration of bourgeois ideology into the very heart of the proletarian class.

Our Fraction, at the cost of remaining isolated, of appearing to be a mere sect, maintains and will maintain on the terrain of the struggle against the war the implacable revolutionary intransigence against everything and everyone because it is convinced that only in this way does it contribute presently to the reconstruction of the proletarian front against the capitalist monster and is convinced that revolutionaries will not be long in realizing the rightness of these positions, which are an indispensable basis for a real and effective strengthening of the revolutionary struggle.