HE CRISIS IN THE 
 
 GERMAN 
 iOCIAL-DEMOCRACY 
 
 (Th'3 "Junius" Pamphlet) 
 
 By 
 
 ROSA LUXEMBURG 
 
 Price 
 
 25 Cents 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE SOCIALIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY 
 
 243 -55th STREET, BROOKLYN, N. Y. 
 
 1919
 
 ROSA LUXEMBURG
 
 The Crisis in the 
 
 German 
 Social- Democracy 
 
 (The "Junius" Pamphlet) 
 
 By ROSA LUXEMBURG 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 The Socialist Publication Society 
 243 55th St., Brooklyn, N.Y. 
 
 1919
 
 PREFACE 
 
 This is a reprint of a book which, in the former edition, 
 also published by us, was wrongly attributed to three 
 authors: Karl Liebknecht, Franz Mehring, and Rosa Lux- 
 emburg. We are now in possession of conclusive informa- 
 tion that Rosa Luxemburg is the sole author. Our origin- 
 ally assigning it to the three names above mentioned was 
 due to the fact that authorship had been ascribed to the 
 
 "Spartacus Group," and, following the general consensus 
 
 
 of the German Socialist press, we repeated the statement 
 
 that the authorship lay with the entire group. 
 
 Accordingly, it is Comrade Rosa Luxemburg's picture 
 which now appears as frontispiece, instead of Karl Lieb- 
 knecht's. No changes have been made in the text itself. 
 
 The Socialist Publication Society.
 
 THE CRISIS IN THE GERMAN 
 SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The scene 'has thoroughly changed. The six weeks' march to 
 Paris has become a world drama. Mass murder has become a 
 monotonous task, and yet the final solution is not one step nearer. 
 Capitalist rule is caught in its own trap, and cannot ban the spirit 
 that it has invoked. 
 
 Gone is the first mad delirium. Gone are the patriotic street 
 demonstrations, the chase after suspicious looking automobiles, the 
 false telegrams, the cholera-poisoned wells. Gone, the mad 
 stories of Russian students who hurl bombs from every bridge 
 of Berlin, or Frenchmen flying over Nuremberg; gone the 
 excesses of a spy-hunting populace, the singing throngs, the 
 coffee-shops with their patriotic songs; gone the violent mobs, 
 ready to denounce, ready to persecute women, ready to whip 
 themselves into a delirious frenzy over every wild rumor; gone 
 the atmosphere of ritual murder, the Kishineff air that left the 
 policeman at the corner as the only remaining representative of 
 human dignity. 
 
 The show is over. The curtain has fallen on trains filled with 
 reservists, as they pull out amid the joyous cries of enthusiastic 
 maidens. We no longer see their laughing faces, smiling cheerily 
 from the train windows upon a war-mad population. Quietly they 
 trot through the streets, with their sacks upon their shoulders. 
 And the public, with a fretful face, goes about its daily task. 
 
 Into the disillusioned atmosphere of pale daylight there rings 
 a different chorus ; the hoarse croak of the hawks and hyenas of 
 the battlefield. Ten thousand tents, guaranteed according to 
 specifications, 100,000 kilo of bacon, cocoa powder, coffee sub- 
 stitute, cash *on immediate delivery. Shrapnell, drills, ammuni-
 
 8 THE CRISIS 
 
 tion bags, marriage bureaus for war widows, leather belts, war 
 orders only serious propositions considered. And the cannon 
 fodder that was loaded upon the trains in August and September 
 is rotting on the battlefields of Belgium and the Vosges, while 
 profits are springing, like weeds, from the fields of the dead. 
 
 Business is flourishing upon the ruins. Cities are turned into 
 shambles, whole countries into deserts, villages into cemeteries, 
 whole nations into beggars, churches into stables ; popular rights, 
 treaties, alliances, the holiest words and the highest authorities 
 have been torn into scraps ; every sovereign by the grace of God 
 is called a fool, an unfaithful wretch, by his cousin on the other 
 side ; every diplomat calls his colleague in the enemy's country a 
 desperate criminal ; each government looks upon the other as the 
 evil genius of its people, worthy only of the contempt of the 
 world. Hunger revolts in Venetia, in Lisbon, in Moscow, in 
 Singapore, pestilence in Russia, misery and desperation every- 
 where. 
 
 Shamed, dishonored, wading in blood and dripping with filth, 
 thus capitalist society stands. Not as we usually see it, playing the 
 roles of peace and righteousness, of order, of philosophy, of 
 ethics as a roaring beast, as an orgy of anarchy, as a pestilential 
 breath, devastating culture and humanity so it appears in all its 
 hideous nakedness. 
 
 And in the midst of this orgy a world tragedy has occurred; 
 the capitulation of the Social-Democracy. To close one's eyes 
 to this fact, to try to hide it, would be the most foolish, the most 
 dangerous thing that the international proletariat could do. "The 
 Democrat (i. e. the revolutionary middle-class)" says Karl Marx, 
 "emerges from the most shameful downfall as spotlessly as he 
 went innocently into it. With the strengthened confidence that he 
 must win, he is more than ever certain that he and his party need 
 no new principles, that events and conditions must finally come to 
 meet them." Gigantic as his problems are his mistakes. No
 
 THE CRISIS 9 
 
 firmly fixed plan, no orthodox ritual that holds good for all times, 
 shows him the path that he must travel. Historical experience is 
 his only teacher, his Via Dolorosa to freedom is covered not only 
 with unspeakable suffering, but with countless mistakes. The 
 goal of his journey, his final liberation, depends entirely upon the 
 proletariat, on whether it understands to learn from its own mis- 
 takes. Self criticism, cruel, unsparing criticim that goes to the very 
 root of the evil is life and breath for the proletarian movement. 
 The catastrophe into which the world has thrust the socialist 
 proletariat is an unexampled misfortune for humanity. But 
 Socialism is lost only if the international proletariat is unable to 
 measure the depths of the catastrophe and refuses to understand 
 the lesson that it teaches. 
 
 The last forty-five years in the development of the labor move- 
 ment are at stake. The present situation is a closing of its ac- 
 counts, a summing up of the items of half a century of work. In 
 the grave of the Paris Commune lies buried the first phase of the 
 European labor movement and the first International. Instead of 
 spontaneous revolution, revolts, and barricades, after each of 
 which the proletariat relapsed once more into its dull passiveness, 
 there came the systematic daily struggle, the utilization of bour- 
 geois parliamentarism, mass organization, the welding of the 
 economic with the political struggle, of socialist ideals with the 
 stubborn defense of most immediate interests. For the first time 
 the cause of the proletariat and its emancipation were led by the 
 guiding star of scientific knowledge. In place of sects and 
 schools, Utopian undertakings and experiments in every country, 
 each altogether and absolutely separate from each other, we 
 found a uniform, international, theoretical basis, that united the 
 nations. The theoretical works of Marx gave to the working- 
 class of the whole world a compass by which to fix its tactics 
 from hour to hour, in its journey toward the one unchanging 
 goal. 
 
 The bearer, the defender, the protector of this new method was
 
 10 THE CRISIS 
 
 the German Social-Democracy. The war of 1870 and the down- 
 fall of the Paris Commune had shifted the centre of gravity of 
 the European labor movement to Germany. Just as France was 
 the classic country of the first phase of the proletarian class- 
 struggle, as Paris was the torn and bleeding heart of the European 
 working-class of that time, so the German working-class became 
 the vanguard of the second phase. By innumerable sacrifices in 
 the form of agitational work it has built up the strongest, the 
 model organization of the proletariat, 'has created the greatest 
 press, has developed the most effective educational and propa- 
 ganda methods. It has collected under its banners the most 
 gigantic labor masses, and has elected the largest representative 
 groups to its national parliament. 
 
 The German Social-Democracy has been generally acknowl- 
 edged to be the purest incarnation of Marxian Socialism. It has 
 held and wielded a peculiar prestige as teacher and leader in the 
 second International. Friedrich Engels wrote in his famous fore- 
 word to Marx's "Class-Struggle in France": "Whatever may 
 occur in other countries, the German Social-Democracy occupies 
 a particular place and, for the present at least, has therefore a 
 particular duty to perform. The two million voters that it sends 
 to the ballot boxes, and the young girls and women who stand 
 behind them as non-voters, are numerically the greatest, the most 
 compact mass, the most decisive force of the proletarian interna- 
 tional army." The German Social-Democracy was, as the "Wiener 
 Arbeiter-Zeitung" wrote on August 5th, 1914, the jewel of the 
 organization of the classconscious proletariat. In its footsteps 
 the French, the Italian and the Belgian Social Democracies, the 
 labor movements of Holland, Scandinavia, Switzerland and 
 United States followed more or less eagerly. The Slav nations, 
 the Russians and the Social-Democrats of the Balkan looked up 
 to the German movement in boundless, almost unquestioning ad- 
 miration. In the second International the German Social-De- 
 mocracy was the determining factor. In every congress, in the
 
 THE CRISIS 11 
 
 meetings of the International Socialist Bureau, everything waited 
 upon the opinion of the German group. 
 
 Particularly in the fight against militarism and war the posi- 
 tion taken by the German Social-Democracy has always been 
 decisive. "We Germans cannot accept that," was usually suf- 
 ficient to determine the orientation of the International. Blindly 
 confident, it submitted to the leadership of the much admired, 
 mighty German Social-Democracy. It was the pride of every 
 Socialist, the horror of the ruling classes of all countires. 
 
 And what happened in Germany when the great historical 
 crisis came? The deepest fall, the mightiest cataclysm. No- 
 where was the organization of the proletariat made so completely 
 subservient to imperialism. Nowhere was the state of siege so 
 uncomplainingly borne. Nowhere was the press so thoroughly 
 gagged, public opinion so completely choked off; nowhere was 
 the political and industrial class-struggle of the working-class so 
 entirely abandoned as in Germany. 
 
 But the German Social-Democracy was not only the strongest 
 body, it was the thinking brain of the International as well. 
 Therefore the process of self-analysis and appraisement must 
 begin in its own movement, with its own case. It is in honor 
 bound to lead the way to the rescue of international Socialism, to 
 proceed with the unsparing criticism of its own shortcomings. 
 
 No other party, no other class in capitalist society can dare to 
 expose its own errors, its own weaknesses, before the whole world 
 in the clear mirror of reason, for the mirror would reflect the his- 
 torical fate that is hidden behind it. The working-class can always 
 look truth in the face even when this means bitterest self -accusa- 
 tion; for its weakness was but an error and the inexorable laws 
 of history give it strength and assure its final victory. 
 
 This unsparing self-criticism is not only a fundamental 
 necessity, but the highest duty of the working-class as well. We 
 have on board the highest treasure of humarity, and the proletariat
 
 12 THE CRISIS 
 
 is their ordained protector. While capitalist society, shamed and 
 dishonored, rushes through the bloody orgy to its doom, the 
 international proletariat will gather the golden treasures that were 
 allowed to sink to the bottom in the wild whirlpool of the world- 
 war in the moment of confusion and weakness. 
 
 One thing is certain. It is a foolish delusion to believe that we 
 need only live through the war, as a rabbit hides under the bush 
 to await the end of a thunderstorm, to trot merrily off in his old 
 accustomed gait when all is over. The world-war has changed 
 the condition of our struggle, and has changed us most of all. 
 Not that the laws of capitalist development or the life and death 
 conflict between capital and labor have been changed or mini- 
 mized. Even now, in the midst of the war, the masks are falling, 
 and the old well-known faces grinning at us. But evolution has 
 received a mighty forward impetus through the outbreak of the 
 imperialist volcano. The enormity of the tasks that tower before 
 the socialist proletariat in the immediate future make the past 
 struggles of the labor movement seem but a delightful idyll in 
 comparison. 
 
 Historically the war is ordained to give to the cause of labor 
 a mighty impetus. Marx, whose prophetic eyes foresaw so many 
 historic events as they lay in the womb of the future, writes, in 
 "The Class-Struggle in France," the following significant pass- 
 age: "In France the middle class does what should normally be 
 done by the industrial bourgeoisie (i. e. to fight for the demo- 
 cratic republic) ; but who shall solve the problems of labor? 
 They will not be solved in France. They will be proclaimed in 
 France. They will nowhere be solved within national boundaries. 
 Class war in France will revert into a world war. The solution 
 will begin only when the world war has driven the proletariat into 
 the leadership of that nation which controls the world market, to 
 the leadership of England. The revolution that will here find, 
 not its end, but its organizatory beginning, is no short-lived 
 one. The present generation is like the Jews who were led by
 
 THE CRISIS 13 
 
 Moses through the wilderness. Not only must it conquer a new 
 world, it must go down to make way for those who will be better 
 able to cope with its problems." 
 
 This was written in 1850, at a time when England was the 
 only capitalistically developed nation, when the English proletariat 
 was the best organized and seemed destined through the in- 
 dustrial growth of its nation to take the leadership in the inter- 
 national labor movement. Read Germany instead of England, 
 and the words of Karl Marx become an inspired prohpecy of the 
 present world war. It is ordained to drive the German prole- 
 tariat "to the leadership of the people, and thus to create the or- 
 ganizatory beginning of the great international conflict between 
 labor and capital for the political supremacy of the world." 
 
 Have we ever had a different conception of the role to be 
 played by the working-class in the great world-war? Have we 
 forgotten how we were wont to describe the coming event, only 
 a few short years ago? "Then will come the catastrophe. All 
 Europe will be called to arms, and sixteen to eighteen million 
 men, the flower of the nations, armed with the best instruments 
 of murder will make war upon each other. But I believe that 
 behind this march there looms the final crash. Not we, but they 
 themselves will bring it. They are driving things to the extreme, 
 they are leading us straight into a catastrophe. They will harvest 
 what they have sown. The Goetterdaemmerung of the bourgeois 
 world is at hand. Be sure of that. It is coming." Thus spoke 
 Bebel, the speaker of our group in the Reichstag in the Morocco 
 debate. 
 
 An official leaflet published by the Party, "Imperialism and 
 Socialism," that was distributed in hundreds of thousands of 
 copies only a few years ago, closes with the words: "Thus the 
 struggle against militarism daily becomes more and more clearly 
 a decisive struggle between capital and labor. War, high prices 
 and capitalism peace, happiness for all, Socialism ! Yours is the
 
 14 THE CRISIS 
 
 choice. History is hastening onward toward a decision. The 
 proletariat must work unceasingly at its world mission, must 
 strengthen the power of its organization and the clearness of its 
 understanding. Then, come what will, whether it will succeed, by 
 its power, in saving humanity from the horrible cruelties of the 
 world-war, or whether capitalism shall sink back into history, 
 as it was born, in blood and violence, the historic moment will 
 find the working-class prepared, and preparedness is every- 
 thing." 
 
 The official handbook for socialist voters, in 1911, the date of 
 the last Reichstag elections, contains, on page 42, the following 
 comments on the expected world-war: "Do our rulers and our 
 ruling classes dare to demand this awful thing of the people? 
 Will not a cry of horror, of fury and of indignation fill the 
 country and lead the people to put an end to this murder? Will 
 they not ask: 'For whom and for what? Are we insane that 
 we should be treated thus or should tolerate such treatment ?' He 
 who dispassionately considers the possibility of a great European 
 world-war can come to no other conclusion." 
 
 "The next European war will be a game of va-banque, whose 
 equal the world has never seen before. It will be, in all proba- 
 bility, the last war." 
 
 With such words the Reichstag representatives won their 110 
 seats in the Reichstag. 
 
 When in the summer of 1911 the "Panther" made its spring 
 to Agadir, and the noisy clamor of German imperialists brought 
 Europe to the precipice of war, an international meeting in Lon- 
 don, on the 4th of August, adopted the following resolution : 
 
 "The German, Spanish, English, Dutch and French delegates 
 of labor organizations hereby declare their readiness to oppose 
 every declaration of war with every means in their power. Every 
 nationality here represented pledges itself, in accordance with 
 the decisions of its national and international congresses to oppose 
 all criminal machinations on the part of the ruling classes."
 
 THE CRISIS 15 
 
 But when in November, 1912, the International Peace Congress 
 met at Basel, when the long train of labor representatives entered 
 the Minster, a presentiment of the coming hour of fate made 
 them shudder and the heroic resolve took shape in every breast. 
 
 The cool, sceptical Victor Adler cried out: "Comrades, it is 
 most important that we here, at the common source of our 
 strength, that we, each and every one of us take from hence the 
 strength to do in his country what he can, through the forms and 
 means that are at his disposal, to oppose this crime of war. And 
 if it should be accomplished, if we should really be able to pre- 
 vent war, let this be the cornerstone of our coming victory. That 
 is the spirit that animates the whole International. 
 
 "And when murder and arson and pestilence sweep over civi- 
 lized Europe we can think of it only with horror and indigna- 
 tion, and protests ring from our hearts. And we ask, are the 
 proletarians of today really nothing but sheep to be led mutely 
 to the slaughter?" 
 
 Troelstra spoke in the name of the small nations, in the name 
 of the Belgians as well: 
 
 "With their blood and with all that they possess the proletariat 
 of the small nations swear their allegiance to the International 
 in everything that it may decide to prevent war. Again we repeat 
 that we expect, when the ruling classes of the large nations call 
 the sons of the proletariat to arms to satiate the lust for power 
 and the greed of their rulers, in the blood and on the lands of the 
 small peoples, we expect that then the sons of the proletariat, 
 under the powerful influence of their proletarian parents and of 
 the proletarian press, will think thrice before they harm us, 
 their friends, in the service of the enemies of culture." 
 
 And Jaures closed his speech, after the anti-war manifesto of 
 the International Bureau had been read: 
 
 "The International represents the moral forces of the world! 
 And when the tragic hour strikes, when we must sacrifice our-
 
 16 THE CRISIS 
 
 selves, this knowledge will support and strengthen us. Not 
 lightly, but from the bottom of our hearts we declare that we 
 are ready for all sacrifices !" 
 
 It was like a Ruetli pledge. The whole world looked toward 
 the Minster of Basel, where the bells, slowly and solemnly, rang to 
 the approaching great fight between the armies of labor and 
 capital. 
 
 On the third of September, 1912, the social-democratic deputy, 
 David, spoke in the German Reichstag: 
 
 "That was the most beautiful hour of my life. That I here 
 avow. When the chimes of the Minster rang in the long train 
 of international Social-Democrats, when the red flags were 
 planted in the nave of the church about the altar, when the emis- 
 saries of the people were greeted by the peels of the organ that 
 resounded the message of peace, that was an impression that I 
 can never forget .... 
 
 "You must realize what it was that happened here. The masses 
 have ceased to be willess, thoughtless herds. That is new in the 
 history of the world. Hitherto the masses have always blindly 
 followed the lead of those who were interested in war, who drove 
 the peoples at each others' throats to mass murder. That will 
 stop. The masses have ceased to be the instruments, the yeomen 
 of war profiteers." 
 
 A week before the war broke out, on the 26th of July, 1914, 
 the German party papers wrote : 
 
 "We are no marionettes; we are fighting with all our might, 
 against a system that makes men the powerless tools of blind 
 circumstances, against this capitalism that is preparing to change 
 Europe, thirsty for peace, into a smoking battlefield. If destruc- 
 tion takes its course, if the determined will for peace of the 
 German, of the international proletariat, that will find expression 
 in the next few days in mighty demonstrations, should not be
 
 THE CRISIS 17 
 
 able to prevent the world-war, then it must be at least, the last 
 war, it must be the Goetterdaemmerung of capitalism." 
 
 On the 30th of July, 1914, the central organ of the German 
 Social-Democracy cried out: 
 
 "The socialist proletariat rejects all responsibility for the 'events 
 that are being precipitated by a ruling class that is blinded, and 
 on the verge of madness. We know that for us new life will 
 spring from the ruins. But the responsibility falls upon the rulers 
 of today. 
 
 "For them it is a question of existence! 
 
 "Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht!" 
 
 And then came the awful, the incredible 4th of August, 1914. 
 
 Did it have to come ? An event of such importance cannot be 
 a mere accident. It must have its deep, significant, objective 
 causes. But perhaps these causes may be found in the errors of 
 the leader of the proletariat, the Social-Democracy itself, in the 
 fact that our readiness to fight has flagged, that our courage and 
 our convictions have forsaken us. Scientific Socialism has 
 taught us to recognize the objective laws of historical develop- 
 ment. Man does not make history of his own volition, but he 
 makes history nevertheless. The proletariat is dependent in its 
 actions upon the degree of righteousness to which social evolu- 
 tion has advanced. But again, social evolution is not a thing apart 
 from the proletariat; it is in the same measure its driving force 
 and its cause as well as its product and its effect. And though 
 we can no more skip a period in our historical development than 
 a man can jump over his shadow, it lies within our power to ac- 
 celerate or to retard it. 
 
 Socialism is the first popular movement in the world that has 
 set. itself a goal and has established in the social life of man a 
 conscious thought, a definite plan, the free will of mankind. For 
 this reason Friedrich Engels calls the final victory of the socialist 
 proletariat a stride by human kind from the animal kingdom into
 
 18 THE CRISIS 
 
 the kingdom of liberty. This step, too, is bound by unalterable 
 historical laws to the thousands of rungs of the ladder of the past 
 with its tortuous, sluggish growth. But it will never be accom- 
 plished, if the burning spark of the conscious will of the masses 
 does not spring from the material conditions that have been 
 built up by past development. Socialism will not fall as manna 
 from heaven. It can only be won by a long chain of powerful 
 struggles, in which the proletariat, under the leadership of the 
 Social-Democracy, will learn to take hold of the rudder of society 
 to become, instead of the powerless victim of history, its con- 
 scious guide. 
 
 Friedrich Engels once said : 
 
 "Capitalist society faces a dilemma, either an advance to 
 Socialism or a reversion to barbarism." What does a "reversion 
 to barbarism" mean at the present stage of European civilization? 
 We have read and repeated these words thoughtlessly, without a 
 conception of their terrible import. At this moment one glance 
 about us will show us what a reversion to barbarism in capitalist 
 society means. This world-war means a reversion to barbarism. 
 The triumph of imperialism leads to the destruction of culture, 
 sporadically during a modern war, and forever, if the period of 
 world- wars that has just begun is allowed to take its damnable 
 course to the last ultimate consequence. Thus we stand today, 
 as Friedrich Engels prophesied more than a generation ago, be- 
 fore the awful proposition: Either the triumph of imperialism 
 and the destruction of all culture, and, as in ancient Rome, 
 depopulation, desolation, degeneration, a vast cemetery; or, the 
 victory of Socialism, that is, the conscious struggle of the inter- 
 national proletariat against imperialism, against its methods, 
 against war. This is the dilemma of world history, its inevitable 
 choice, whose scales are trembling in the balance, awaiting the 
 decision of the proletariat. Upon it depends the future of cul- 
 ture and humanity. In this war imperialism has been victorious. 
 Its brutal sword of murder has dashed the scales, with overbear-
 
 THE CRISIS 19 
 
 ing brutality, down into the abyss of shame and misery. If the 
 proletariat learns from this war and in this war to exert itself, 
 to cast off its serfdom to the ruling classes, to become the lord of 
 its own destiny, the shame and misery will not have been in vain. 
 The modern working-class must pay dearly for each realiza- 
 tion of its historic mission. The road to the Golgotha of its 
 class liberation is strewn with awful sacrifices. The June- 
 combatants, the victims of the Commune, the martyrs of the 
 Russian Revolution an endless line of bloody shadows. They 
 have fallen on the field of honor, as Marx wrote of the heroes 
 of the Commune, to be enshrined forever in the great heart of 
 the working-class. Now millions of proletarians are falling on 
 the field of dishonor, of fratricide, of self-destruction, the slave- 
 song on their lips. And that, too, has not been spared us. We 
 are like the Jews whom Moses led through the desert. But we 
 are not lost, and we will be victorious if we have not forgotten 
 how to learn. And if the modern leaders of the proletariat do not 
 know how to learn, they will go down "to make room for those 
 who will be more able to cope with the problems of a new world."
 
 20 THE CRISIS 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 "We are now facing the irrevocable fact of war. We are 
 threatened by the horrors of invasion. The decision, today, is 
 not for or against war; for us there can be but one question: 
 By what means is this war to be conducted? Much, aye every- 
 thing, is at stake for our people and its future, if Russian 
 despotism, stained with the blood of its own people, should be 
 the victor. This danger must be averted, the civilization and the 
 independence of our people must be safeguarded. Therefore we 
 will carry out what we have always promised: In the hour of 
 danger we will not desert our fatherland. In this we feel that 
 we stand in harmony with the International, which has always 
 recognized the right of every people to its national independence, 
 as we stand in agreement with the International in emphatically 
 denouncing every war of conquest. Actuated by these motives, 
 we vote in favor of the war credits demanded by the Govern- 
 ment." 
 
 With these words the Reichstag group issued the counter- 
 sign that determined and controlled the position of the German 
 working-class during the war. Fatherland in danger, national 
 defense, people's war for existence, Kultur, liberty these were 
 the slogans proclaimed by the parliamentary representatives of the 
 Social-Democracy. What followed was but the logical sequence. 
 The position of the Party and the labor union press, the patriotic 
 frenzy of the masses, the civil peace, the disintegration of the 
 International, all these things were the inevitable consequence 
 of that momentous orientation in the Reichstag. 
 
 If it is true that this war is really a fight for national existence, 
 for freedom, if it is true that these priceless possessions can be 
 defended only by the iron tools of murder, if this war is the 
 holy cause of the people, then everything else follows as a matter 
 of course, we must take everything that the war may bring as a
 
 THE CRISIS 21 
 
 part of the bargain. He who desires the purpose must be satis- 
 fied with the means. War is methodical, organized, gigantic 
 murder. But in normal human beings this systematic murder is 
 possible only when a state of intoxication has been previously 
 created. This has always been the tried and proven method of 
 those who make war. Bestiality of action must find a com- 
 mensurate bestiality of thought and senses; the latter must pre- 
 pare and accompany the former. Thus the "Wahre Jacob" of 
 August 28th, 1914, with its brutal picture of the German 
 thresher, the Party papers of Chemnitz, Hamburg, Kiel, Frank- 
 furt a. M., Koburg and others, with their patriotic drive in 
 poetry and prose, were the necessary narcotic for a proletariat 
 that could rescue its existence and its liberty only by plunging 
 the deadly steel into its French and English brothers. These 
 chauvinistic papers are after all a great deal more logical and 
 consistent than those others who attempted to unite hill and 
 valley, war with humanity, murder with brotherly love, the voting 
 for war credits with socialist internationalism. 
 
 If the stand taken by the German Reichstag group on the 
 fourth of August was correct, then the death sentence of the 
 proletarian International has been spoken, not only for this war, 
 but for ever. For the first time since the modern labor move- 
 ment exists there yawns an abyss between the commandments 
 of international solidarity of the proletariat of the world and the 
 interests of freedom and nationalist existence of the people; for 
 the first time we discover that the independence and liberty of the 
 nations command that workingmen kill and destroy each other. 
 Up to this time we have cherished the belief that the interests of 
 the peoples of all nations, that the class interests of the proletariat 
 are a harmonious unit, that they are identical, that they cannot 
 possibly come into conflict with one another. That was the basis 
 of our theory and practice, the soul of our agitation. Were we 
 mistaken in the cardinal point of our whole world philosophy? 
 We are holding an inquest over international Socialism.
 
 22 THE CRISIS 
 
 This world war is not the first crisis through which our inter- 
 national principles have passed. Our Party was first tried forty- 
 five years ago. At that time, on the 21st of July, 1870, Wilhelm 
 Liebknecht and August Bebel made the following historical 
 declaration before the Reichstag: 
 
 "The present war is a dynastic war in the interest of the 
 Bonaparte dynasty, as the war of 1866 was conducted in the 
 interest of the Hohenzollern dynasty. 
 
 "We cannot vote for the funds which are demanded from the 
 Reichstag to conduct this war because this would be, in effect, 
 a vote of confidence in the Prussian government. And we know 
 that the Prussian government, by its action in 1866, prepared 
 this war. At the same time we cannot vote against the budget, 
 lest this be construed to mean that we support the conscienceless 
 and criminal policies of Bonaparte. 
 
 "As opponents, on principle, of every dynastic war, as Social- 
 ist-Republicans and members of the 'International Working- 
 men's Association' which, without regard to nationality, has 
 fought all oppressors, has tried to unite all the oppressed into 
 a great band of brothers, we cannot directly or indirectly lend 
 support to the present war. We therefore refuse to vote, while 
 expressing the earnest hope that the peoples of Europe, taught 
 by the present unholy events, will strive to win the right to con- 
 trol their own destinies, to do away with the present rule of 
 might and class as the cause of all social and national evil." 
 
 With this declaration the representatives of the German prol- 
 etariat put their cause clearly and unreservedly under the banner 
 of the International and definitely repudiated the war against 
 France as a national war of independence. It is well known 
 that Bebel many years later, in his memoirs, stated that he would 
 have voted against the war loan had he known, when the vote 
 was taken, the things that were revealed in the years that 
 followed. 
 
 Thus, in a war that was considered by the whole bourgeois
 
 THE CRISIS 23 
 
 public, and by a powerful majority of the people under the influ- 
 ence of Bismarckian strategy, as a war in the national life interest 
 of Germany, the leaders of the German Social-Democracy held 
 firmly to the conviction that the life interest of a nation and the 
 class interest of the proletariat are one, that both are opposed to 
 war. It was left to the present world war and to the Social- 
 Democratic Reichstag group to uncover, for the first time, the 
 terrible dilemma either you are for national liberty or for inter- 
 national Socialism. 
 
 Now the fundamental fact in the declaration of our Reichstag 
 group was, in all probability, a sudden inspiration. It was simply 
 an echo of the crown speech and of the Chancellor's speech of 
 August fourth. "We are not driven 'by the desire for conquest," 
 we hear in the crown speech, "we are inspired by the unalterable 
 determination to preserve the land upon which God has placed 
 us for ourselves, and for all coming generations. From the docu- 
 ments that have been presented to you, you will have seen how 
 My Government, and above all My Chancellor strove, to the last, 
 to avert the utmost. We grasp the sword in self-defense, with a 
 clear conscience and a clean hand." And Bethmann-Hollweg de- 
 clared: "Gentlemen, we are acting in self-defense, and necessity 
 knows no law. He who is threatened as we are threatened, he 
 who is fighting for the highest aims can be guided by but one 
 consideration, how best to beat his way out of the struggle. We 
 are fighting for the fruits of our peaceful labor, for the heritage 
 of our great past, for the future of our nation." Wherein does 
 this differ from the social-democratic declaration? 1. We have 
 done everything to preserve peace, the war was forced upon us 
 by others. 2. Now that the war is here we must act in self- 
 defense. 3. In this war the German people is in danger of losing 
 everything. This declaration of our Reichstag group is an 
 obvious rehashing of the government declaration. As the latter 
 based their claims upon diplomatic negotiations and imperial tele- 
 grams, so the socialist group points to peace demonstrations of
 
 24 THE CRISIS 
 
 the Social-Democracy before the war. Where the crown speech 
 denies all aims of conquest, the Reichstag group repudiates a war 
 of conquest by standing upon its Socialism. And when the 
 Emperor and the Chancellor cry out, "We are fighting for the 
 highest principles. We know no parties, we know only Ger- 
 mans," the social-democratic declaration echoes: "Our people 
 risks everything. In this hour of danger we will not desert our 
 Fatherland." Only in one point does the social-democratic 
 declaration differ from its government model, it placed the danger 
 of Russian despotism in the foreground of its orientation, as a 
 danger to German freedom. The crown speech says, regarding 
 Russia: "With a heavy heart I have been forced to mobilize 
 against a neighbor with whom I have fought upon so many battle 
 fields. With honest sorrow I have seen a friendship faithfully 
 kept by Germany, fall to pieces." The social-democratic group 
 changed this sorrowful rupture of a true friendship with the 
 Russian Tsar into a fanfare for liberty against despotism, used 
 the revolutionary heritage of Socialism to give to the war a 
 democratic mantle, a popular halo. Here alone the social-demo- 
 cratic declaration gives evidence of independent thought on the 
 part of our Social-Democrats. 
 
 As we have said, all these things came to the Social Democracy 
 as a sudden inspiration on the fourth of August. All that they 
 had said up to this day, every declaration that they had made, 
 down to the very eve of the war, was in diametrical opposition 
 to the declaration df the Reichstag group. The "Vorwaerts" 
 wrote on July 25th, when the Austrian ultimatum to Servia was 
 published : 
 
 "They want the war, the unscrupulous elements that influence and 
 determine the Wiener Hofburg. They want the war it has been 
 ringing out of the wild cries of the black-yellow press for weeks. 
 They want the war the Austrian ultimatum to Servia makes it plain 
 and clear to the world. 
 
 "Because the blood of Franz Ferdinand and his wife flowed under 
 the shots of an insane fanatic, shall the blood of thousands of workers
 
 THE CRISIS 25 
 
 and fanners be shed? Shall one insane crime be purged by another 
 even more insane? . . . The Austrian ultimatum may be the torch 
 that will set Europe in flames at all four corners. 
 
 "For this ultimatum, in its form and in its demands, is so shameless, 
 that a Servian Government that should humbly retreat before this 
 note, would have to reckon with the possibility of being driven out 
 by the masses of the people between dinner and dessert. . . . 
 
 "It was a crime of the chauvinistic press of Germany to egg on our 
 dear Ally to the utmost in its desire for war. And beyond a doubt, 
 Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg promised Herr Berchtold our support. 
 But Berlin is playing a game as dangerous as that being played 
 by Vienna." 
 
 The "Leipziger Volkszeitung" wrote on July 24th: 
 
 "The Austrian military party has staked everything on one card, 
 for in no country in the world has national and military chauvinism 
 anything to lose. In Austria chauvinistic circles are particularly bank- 
 rupt; their nationalistic howls are a frantic attempt to cover up 
 Austria's economic ruin, the robbery and murder of war to fill its 
 coffers ..." 
 
 The "Dresden Volkszeitung" said, on the same day : 
 
 "Thus far the war maniacs of the Wiener Ballplatz have failed to 
 furnish proof that would justify Austria in the demands it has made 
 upon Servia. So long as the Austrian Government is not in a posi- 
 tion to do this, it places itself, by its provocative and insulting attacks 
 upon Servia, in a false position before all Europe. And even if Servia's 
 guilt was proven, even if the assassination in Serajewo had actually 
 been prepared under the eyes of the Servian Government, the demands 
 made in the note are far in excess of normal bounds. Only the most 
 unscrupulous war lust can explain such demands upon another 
 state. . ." 
 
 The "Muenchener Post," on July 25th, wrote : 
 
 "This Austrian note is a document unequalled in the history of the 
 last two centuries. Upon the findings of an investigation whose con- 
 tents have, till now, been kept from the European public, without 
 court proceedings against the murderer of the heir-presumptive and 
 his spouse, it makes demands on Servia, the acceptance of which 
 would mean national suicide to Servia. ."
 
 26 THE CRISIS 
 
 The "Schleswig-Holstein Volkszeitung" declared, on the 24th of 
 July: 
 
 "Austria is provoking Servia. Austria-Hungary wants war, and is 
 committing a crime that may drown all Europe in blood. . . Austria 
 is playing va banque. It dares a provocation of the Servian state that 
 the latter, if it is not entirely defenseless, will certainly refuse to 
 tolerate. . . 
 
 "Every civilized person must protest emphatically against the 
 criminal behavior of the Austrian rulers. It is the duty of the 
 workers above all, and of all other human beings who honor peace 
 and civilization, to try their utmost to prevent the consequences of 
 the bloody insanity that has broken out in Vienna." 
 
 The "Magdeburger Volksstimme" of July 25th said : 
 
 "Any Servian Government that even pretended to consider these 
 demands seriously would be swept out in the same hour by the Parlia- 
 ment and by the people. 
 
 "The action of Austria is the more despicable because Berchtold 
 is standing before the Servian Government and before Europe with 
 empty hands. 
 
 "To precipitate a war such as this at the present time, means to 
 invite a world war. To act thus shows a desire to disturb the peace 
 of an entire hemisphere. One cannot thus make moral conquests, or 
 convince non-participants of one's own righteousness. It can be 
 safely assumed that the press of Europe, and with it the European 
 governments, will call the vainglorious and senseless Viennese states- 
 men energetically and unmistakably to order." 
 
 On July 24th the "Frankfurter Volksstimme" wrote: 
 
 "Upheld by the agitation of the clerical press, which mourns in Franz 
 Ferdinand its best friend and demands that his death be avenged 
 upon the Servian people, upheld by German war patriots whose lan- 
 guage becomes daily more contemptible and more threatening, the 
 Austrian Government has allowed itself to be driven to send an ulti- 
 matum to Servia couched in language that, for presumptuousness, 
 leaves little to be desired; containing demands whose fulfillment by 
 the Servian Government is manifestly impossible." 
 
 On the same day the "Elberf elder Freie Presse" wrote : 
 "A telegram of the semi-official Wolf Bureau reports the terms of 
 the demands made on Servia by Austria. From these it may be
 
 THE CRISIS 27 
 
 gathered that the rulers in Vienna are pushing toward war with 
 all their might. For the conditions imposed by the note that was 
 presented in Belgrade last night are nothing short of a protectorate 
 of Austria over Servia. It is eminently necessary that the diplomats 
 of Berlin make the war agitators of Vienna understand that Germany 
 will not move a finger to support such outrageous demands, that a 
 withdrawal of the threats would be advisable." 
 
 The "Bergische Arbeiterstimme" of Solingen writes: 
 
 "Austria demands a conflict with Servia, and uses the assassination 
 at Serajewo as a pretext for putting Servia morally in the wrong. 
 But the whole matter has be'en approached too clumsily to influence 
 European public opinion. 
 
 "But if the war agitators of the Wiener Ballplatz believe that their 
 allies of the Triple Alliance, Germany and Italy, will come to their 
 assistance in a conflict in which Russia, too, will be involved, they 
 are suffering from a dangerous illusion. Italy would welcome the 
 weakening of Austria-Hungary, its rival on the Adriatic and in the 
 Balkans, and would certainly decline to burn its fingers to help 
 Austria. In Germany, on the other hand, the powers that be even 
 should they be so foolish as to wish it would not dare to risk the 
 life of a single soldier to satisfy the criminal lust for power of the 
 Hapsburgers without arousing the fury of the entire people." 
 
 Thus the entire working-class press, without exception, judged 
 the war's causes a week before its outbreak. Obviously the ques- 
 tion was one of neither the existence nor the freedom of Ger- 
 many, but a shameful adventure of the Austrian war party ; not 
 a question of self-defense, national protection and a holy war 
 forced upon us in the name of freedom, but a bold provocation, an 
 abominable threat against foreign, Servian, independence and 
 liberty. 
 
 What was it that happened on August fourth to turn this 
 clearly denned and so unanimously accepted attitude of the 
 Social-Democracy upside down? Only one new factor had ap- 
 peared the White Book that was presented to the Reichstag by 
 the German Government on that day. And this contained, on 
 page 4, the following:
 
 28 THE CRISIS 
 
 "Under these circumstances Austria must say to itself that it 
 is incompatible with the dignity and the safety of the monarchy 
 to remain inactive any longer in face of the occurrences across 
 the border. The Austrian Imperial Government has notified us 
 of this, their attitude, and has begged us to state our views. Out 
 of a full heart we could but assure our Ally of our agreement 
 with this interpretation of conditions and assure him that any 
 action that would seem necessary to put an end to Servian 
 attempts against the existence of the Austrian monarchy would 
 meet with our approval. We fully realized that eventual war 
 measures undertaken by Austria must bring Russia into the situ- 
 ation and that we, in order to carry out our duty as ally, might 
 be driven into war. But we could not, realizing as we did that 
 the most vital interests of Austria-Hungary were threatened, 
 advise our ally to adopt a policy of acquiescence, that could not 
 possibly be brought into accord with its dignity, nor could we 
 refuse to lend our aid in this attitude. 
 
 "And we were particularly prevented from taking this stand by 
 the fact that the persistent subversive Serbian agitation serious- 
 ly jeopardized us. If the Serbians had been permitted, with the 
 aid of Russia and France, to continue to threaten the existence 
 of the neighboring monarchy, there would have ensued a gradual 
 collapse of Austria and a subjection of all the Slavic races under 
 the Russian sceptre, which would have rendered untenable the 
 situation of the Germanic race in Central Europe. A morally 
 weakened Austria, succumbing before the advance of Russian 
 Panslavism, would no longer be an ally on which we could count 
 and depend, as we are obliged to do in view of the increasingly 
 menacing attitude of our neighbors to the East and to the West. 
 We therefore gave Austria a free hand in her proceedings against 
 Serbia. We have had no share in the preparations." 
 
 These were the words that lay before the social-democratic 
 Reichstag group on August 4th, the only important and deter-
 
 THE CRISIS 29 
 
 mining phrases in the entire White Book, a concise declaration of 
 the German Government beside which all other yellow, grey, blue, 
 orange books on the diplomatic passages that preceded "fhe war 
 and its most immediate causes become absolutely irrevelant and 
 insignificant. Here the Reichstag group had the key to a correct 
 judgment of the situation in hand. The entire social-democratic 
 press, a week before, had cried out that the Austrian ultimatum 
 was a criminal provocation of the world war and demanded 
 preventative and pacific action on the part of the German Gov- 
 ernment. The entire socialist press assumed that the Austrian 
 ultimatum had descended upon the German Government like a 
 bolt from the blue as it had upon the German public. But now 
 the White Book declared, briefly and clearly : 1. That the Aus- 
 trian Government had requested German sanction before taking 
 a final step against Servia. 2. That the German Government 
 clearly understood that the action undertaken by Austria would 
 lead to war with Servia, and ultimately, to European war. 3. That 
 the German Government did not advise Austria to give in, but 
 on the contrary declared that an acquiescent, weakened Austria 
 could not be regarded as a worthy ally of Germany. 4. That 
 the German Government assured Austria, before it advanced 
 against Servia, of its assistance under all circumstances, in case 
 of war, and finally, 5. That the German Government, withal, had 
 not reserved for itself control over the decisive ultimatum from 
 Austria to Servia, upon which the whole world war depended, but 
 had left to Austria "an absolutely free hand." 
 
 All of this our Reichstag group learned on August 4th. And 
 still another fact it learned from the Government that German 
 forces already had invaded Belgium. And from all this the 
 Social-Democratic group concluded that this is a war of defense 
 against foreign invasion, for the existence of the fatherland, for 
 "Kultur," a war for liberty against Russian despotism. 
 
 Was the obvious background of the war, and the scenery that 
 so scantily concealed it, was the whole diplomatic performance
 
 30 THE CRISIS 
 
 that was acted out at the outbreak of the war, with its clamor 
 about a world of enemies, all threatening the life of Germany, 
 all moved by the one desire to weaken, to humiliate, to subjugate 
 the German people and nation were all these things such a 
 complete surprise? Did these factors actually call for more 
 judgment, more critical sagacity than they possessed? Nowhere 
 was this less true than of our Party. It had already gone through 
 two great German wars, and in both of them had received mem- 
 orable lessons. 
 
 Even a poorly-informed student of history knows that the war 
 of 1866 against Austria was systematically prepared by Bismarck 
 long before it broke out, and that his policies, from the very 
 beginning, led inevitably to a rupture and to war with Austria. 
 The Crown Prince himself, the later Emperor Frederick, in his 
 memoirs under the date of November 14th of that year, speaks 
 of this purpose of the Chancellor: 
 
 "He (Bismarck), when he went into office, was firmly resolved 
 to bring Prussia to a war with Austria, but was very careful 
 not to betray this purpose, either at that time or on any other 
 premature occasion to his Majesty, until the time seemed 
 favorable." 
 
 "Compare with this confession," says Auer in his brochure 
 'Die Sedanfeier und die Sozialdemokratie,' "the proclamation 
 that King William sent out 'to my people.' '' 
 
 "The Fatherland is in danger! Austria and a large part of 
 Germany have risen in arms against us. 
 
 "It is only a few years ago since I, of my own free will, without 
 thinking of former misunderstandings, held out a fraternal hand 
 to Austria in order to save a German nation from foreign dom- 
 ination. But my hopes have been blasted. Austria cannot forget 
 that its lords once ruled Germany ; it refuses to see in the younger, 
 more virile Prussia an ally, but persists in regarding it as a dan- 
 gerous rival. Prussia so it believes must be opposed in all its
 
 THE CRISIS 31 
 
 aims, because whatever favors Prussia harms Austria. The old 
 unholy jealousy has again broken out; Prussia is to be weakened, 
 destroyed, dishonored. All treaties with Prussia are void, Ger- 
 man lords are not only called upon, but persuaded, to sever their 
 alliance with Prussia. Wherever we look, in Germany, we are 
 surrounded by enemies whose war cry is Down with Prussia!" 
 
 Praying for the blessings of heaven, King William ordered a 
 general day of prayer and penance for the 18th of July, saying: 
 
 "It has not pleased God to crown with success my attempts 
 to preserve the blessings of peace for my people." 
 
 Should not the official accompaniment to the outbreak of the 
 war on August 4th have awakened in the minds of our group 
 vivid memories of long remembered words and melodies? Had 
 they completely forgotten their party history? 
 
 But not 'enough! In the year 1870 there came the war with 
 France, and history has united its outbreak with an unforgettable 
 occurrence; the Ems dispatch, a document that has become a 
 classic byword for capitalist-government art in war making, and 
 which marks a memorable episode in our party history. Was it 
 not old Liebknecht, was it not the German Social-Democracy who 
 felt in duty bound, at that time, to disclose these facts and to 
 show to the masses "how wars are made ?" 
 
 Making war simply and solely for the protection of the Father- 
 land was, by the way, not Bismarck's invention. He only carried 
 out, with characteristic unscrupulousness, an old, well known and 
 truly international recipe of capitalist statesmanship. When and 
 where has there been a war since so-called public opinion has 
 played a role in governmental calculations, in which each and 
 every belligerent party did not, with a heavy heart, draw the 
 sword from its sheath for the single and sole purpose of defend- 
 ing its Fatherland and its own righteous course from the shameful 
 attacks of the enemy? This legend is as inextricably a part of 
 the game of war as powder and lead. The game is old. Only, 
 that the Social-Democratic Party should play it is new.
 
 THE CRISIS 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Our Party should have been prepared to recognize the real 
 aims of this war, to meet it without surprise, to judge it by its 
 deeper relationship according to their wide political experience. 
 The events and forces that led to August 4th, 1914, were no 
 secrets. The world had been preparing for decades, in broad 
 daylight, in the widest publicity, step by step and hour by hour, 
 for the world war. And if today a number of Socialists threaten 
 with horrible destruction the "secret diplomacy" that has brewed 
 this deviltry behind the scenes, they are ascribing to these poor 
 wretches a magic power that they little deserve, just as the Boto- 
 kude whips his fetish for the outbreak of a storm. The so-called 
 captains of nations are, in this war, as at all times, merely chess- 
 men, moved by all-powerful historic events and forces, on the 
 surface of capitalist society. If ever there were persons capable 
 of understanding these events and occurrences, it was the mem- 
 bers of the German Social-Democracy. 
 
 Two lines of development in recent history lead straight to 
 the present war. One has its origin in the period when the so- 
 called national states, i. e. the modern states, were first constituted, 
 from the time of the Bismarckian war against France. The war 
 of 1870, which, by the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, threw the 
 French Republic into the arms of Russia, split Europe into two 
 opposing camps and opened up a period of insane competitive 
 armament, first piled up the fire-brands for the present world 
 conflagration. Bismarck's troops were still stationed in France 
 when Marx wrote to the "Braunschweiger Ausschuss": 
 
 "He who is not deafened by the momentary clamor and is not 
 interested in deafening the German people, must see that the war 
 of 1870 carries with it, of necessity, a war between Germany and 
 Russia, just as the war of 1866 bore the war of 1870. I say 
 of necessity, unless the unlikely should happen, unless a revolu-
 
 THE CRISIS 33 
 
 tion breaks out in Russia before that time. If this does not occur, 
 a war between Germany and Russia may even now be regarded 
 as *un fait accompli.' It depends entirely upon the attitude of the 
 German victor to determine whether this war has been useful or 
 dangerous. If they take Alsace-Lorraine, then France with 
 Russia will arm against Germany. It is superfluous to point out 
 the disastrous consequences." 
 
 At that time this prophecy was laughed down. The bonds 
 which united Russia and Prussia seemed so strong that it was 
 considered madness to believe in a union of autocratic Russia with 
 Republican France. Those who supported this conception were 
 laughed at as madmen. And yet everything that Marx has 
 prophesied has happened, to the last letter. "For that is," says 
 Auer in his Sedanfeier, "social-democratic politics, seeing things 
 clearly as they are, and differing therein from the day-by-day 
 politics of the others, bowing blindly down before every momen- 
 tary success." 
 
 This must not be misunderstood to mean that the desire for 
 revenge for the robbery accomplished by Bismarck has driven 
 the French into a war with Germany, that the kernel of the 
 present war is to be found in the much discussed "revenge for 
 Alsace-Lorraine." This is the convenient nationalist legend of 
 the German war agitator, who creates fables of a darkly-brooding 
 France that "cannot forget" its defeat, just as the Bismarckian 
 press-savants ranted of the dethroned Princess Austria who 
 could not forget her erstwhile superiority over the charming Cin- 
 derella Prussia. As a matter of fact revenge for Alsace- 
 Lorraine has become the theatrical property of a couple of 
 patriotic clowns, the "Lion de Belfort" nothing more than an 
 ancient survival. 
 
 The annexation of Alsace-Lorraine long ago ceased to play a 
 role in French politics, being superseded by new, more pressing 
 cares; and neither the government nor any serious party in 
 France thought of a war with Germany because of these terri-
 
 34 THE CRISIS 
 
 tories. If, nevertheless, the Bismarck heritage has become the fire- 
 brand that started this world conflagration, it is rather in the 
 sense of having driven Germany on the one hand, and France, 
 and with it all of Europe, on the other, along the downward 
 path of military competition, of having brought about the Franco- 
 Russian alliance, of having united Austria with Germany as an 
 inevitable consequence. This gave to Russian Czarism a tremen- 
 dous prestige as a factor in European politics. Germany and 
 France have systematically fawned before Russia for her favor. 
 At that time the links were forged that united Germany with 
 Austria-Hungary, whose strength, as the words quoted from the 
 "White Book" show, lie in their "brotherhood in arms," in the 
 present war. 
 
 Thus the war of 1870 brought in its wake the outward political 
 grouping of Europe about the axes of the Franco-German 
 antagonism, and established the rule of militarism in the lives of 
 the European peoples. Historical development has given to this 
 rule and to this grouping an entirely new content. The second 
 line that leads to the present world war, and which again bril- 
 liantly justifies Marx's prophecy, has its origin in international oc- 
 currences that Marx did not live to see, in the imperialist develop- 
 ment of the last 25 years. 
 
 The growth of capitalism, spreading out rapidly over a recon- 
 stituted Europe after the war period of the 60s and 70s, particu- 
 larly after the long period of depression that followed the in- 
 flation and the panic of the year 1873, reaching an unnatural 
 zenith in the prosperity of the 90s, opened up a new period of 
 storm and danger among the nations of Europe. They were 
 competing in their expansion toward the non-capitalist countries 
 and zones of the world. As early as the 80s a strong tendency 
 toward colonial expansion became apparent. England secured 
 control of Egypt and created for itself, in South Africa, a power- 
 ful colonial empire. France took possession of Tunis in North 
 Africa and Tonkin in East Asia; Italy gained a foothold in
 
 THE CRISIS 35 
 
 Abyssinia ; Russia accomplished its conquests in Central Asia and 
 pushed forward into Manchuria ; Germany won its first colonies 
 in Africa and in the South Sea, and the United States joined 
 the circle when it procured the Phillipines with "interests" in 
 Eastern Asia. This period of feverish conquests has brought on, 
 beginning with the Chinese-Japanese War in 1895, a practically 
 uninterrupted chain of bloody wars, reaching its height in the 
 great Chinese invasion, and closing with the Russo-Japanese War 
 of 1904. 
 
 All these occurrences, coming blow upon blow, created new, 
 extra-European antagonisms on all sides : between Italy and France 
 in Northern Africa, between France and England in Egypt, be- 
 tween England and Russia in Central Asia, between Russia and 
 Japan in Eastern Asia, between Japan and England in China, 
 between the United States and Japan in the Pacific Ocean a 
 very restless ocean, full of sharp conflicts and temporary alliances, 
 of tension and relaxation, threatening every few years to break 
 out into a war between European powers. It was clear to every- 
 body, therefore, (1) that the secret underhand war of each 
 capitalist nation against every other, on the backs of Asiatic and 
 African ^peoples must sooner or later lead to a general reckoning, 
 that the wind that was sown in Africa and Asia, would return to 
 Europe as a terrific storm, the more certainly since increased 
 armament of the European States was the constant associate of 
 these Asiatic and African occurrences; (2) that the European 
 world war would have to come to an outbreak as soon as the 
 partial and changing conflicts between the imperialist states 
 found a centralized axis, a conflict of sufficient magnitude to 
 group them, for the time being, into large, opposing factions. 
 This situation was created by the appearance of German im- 
 perialism. 
 
 In Germany one may study the development of imperialism, 
 crowded as it was into the shortest possible space of time, in 
 concrete form. The unprecedented rapidity of German indus-
 
 36 THE CRISIS 
 
 trial and commercial development since the foundation of the 
 Empire, brought out during the 80s two characteristically 
 peculiar forms of capitalist accumulation; the most pronounced 
 growth of monopoly in Europe and the best developed and most 
 concentrated banking system in the whole world. The monop- 
 olies have organized the steel and iron industry, i. e., the branch 
 of capitalist endeavor most interested in government orders, in 
 militaristic equipment and in imperialistic undertakings (railroad 
 building, the exploitation of mines, etc.) into the most influential 
 factor in the nation. The latter has cemented the money in- 
 terests into a firmly organized whole, with the greatest, most 
 virile energy, creating a power that autocratically rules the 
 industry, commerce and credit of the nation, dominant in private 
 as well as public affairs, boundless in its powers of expansion, 
 ever hungry for profit and activity, impersonal, and therefore 
 liberal-minded, reckless and unscrupulous, international by its 
 very nature, ordained by its capacities to use the world as its 
 stage. 
 
 Germany is under a personal regime, with strong initiative and 
 spasmodic activity, with the weakest kind of parliamentarism, 
 incapable of opposition, uniting all capitalist strata in the sharp- 
 est opposition to the working class. It is obvious that this live, 
 unhampered imperialism, coming upon the world stage at a time 
 when the world was practically divided up, with gigantic ap- 
 petites, soon became an irresponsible factor of general unrest. 
 
 This was already foreshadowed by the radical upheaval that 
 took place in the military policies of the Empire at the end of 
 90's. At that time two naval budgets were introduced which 
 doubled the naval power of Germany and provided for a naval 
 program covering almost two decades. This meant a sweeping 
 change in the financial and trade policy of the nation. In the 
 first place, it involved a striking change in the foreign policy of 
 the Empire. The policy of Bismarck was founded upon the 
 principle that the Empire is and must remain a land power, that
 
 THE CRISIS 37 
 
 the German fleet, at best, is but a very dispensible requisite for 
 coastal defence. Even the secretary of state, Hollmann, de- 
 clared in March, 1897, in the Budget Commission of the Reich- 
 stag: "We need no navy for coastal defence. Our coasts pro- 
 tect themselves." With the two naval bills an entirely new 
 program was promulgated : on land and sea, Germany first ! This 
 marks the change from Bismarckian continental policies to 
 "Welt-Politik," from the defensive to the offensive as the end 
 and aim of Germany's military program. The language of these 
 facts was so unmistakable that the Reichstag itself furnished the 
 necessary commentary. Lieber, the leader of the Centrum at 
 that time, spoke on the llth of March, 1896, after a famqus speech 
 of the emperor on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the 
 founding of the German Empire, which had developed the new 
 program as a forerunner to the naval bills, in which he mentioned 
 "shoreless naval plans" against which Germany must be pre- 
 pared to enter into active opposition. Another Centrum leader, 
 Schadler, cried out in the Reichstag on March 23rd, 1898, when 
 the first naval bill was under discussion, "The nation believes that 
 we cannot be first on land and first on sea. You answer, gentle- 
 men, that is not what we want ! Nevertheless, gentlemen, you are 
 at the beginning of such a conception, at a very strong begin- 
 ning!" When the second bill came, the same Schadler declared 
 in the Reischstag on the fifth of February, 1900, referring to 
 previous promises that there would be no further naval bills, 
 "and today comes this bill, which means nothing more and noth- 
 ing less than the inauguration of a world fleet, as a 'basis of 
 support for world policies, by doubling our navy and binding 
 the next two decades by our demands." As a matter of fact 
 the government openly defended the political program of its new 
 course of action. On December llth, 1899, Von Buelow, at that 
 time state secretary of the foreign office, in a defence of the 
 second naval bill stated, "when the English speak of 'a greater 
 Britain,' when the French talk of 'la nouvelle France,' when
 
 38 THE CRISIS 
 
 the Russians open up Asia for themselves, we too have a right to 
 aspire to a greater Germany. If we do not create a navy suffi- 
 cient to protect our trade, our natives in foreign lands, our mis- 
 sions and the safety of our shores, we are threatening the most 
 vital interests of our nation. In the coming century the German 
 people will be either the hammer or the anvil." Strip this of its 
 coastal defence ornamentation, and there remains the colossal 
 program: greater Germany, as the hammer upon other nations. 
 
 It is not difficult to determine the direction toward which 
 these provocations, in the main, were directed. Germany was to 
 become the rival of the world's great naval force England. 
 And England did not fail to understand. The naval reform 
 bills, and the speeches that ushered them in, created a lively un- 
 rest in England, an unrest that has never again subsided. In 
 March, 1910, Lord Robert Cecil said in the House of Commons, 
 during a naval debate: "I challenge any man to give me a 
 plausible reason for the tremendous navy that Germany is build- 
 ing up, other than to take up the fight against England." The 
 fight for supremacy on the ocean that lasted for one and a half 
 decades on both sides and culminated in the feverish building of 
 dreadnoughts and super-dreadnoughts, was, in effect, the war 
 between Germany and England. The naval bill of December 
 11, 1899, was a declaration of war by Germany, which England 
 answered on August 4, 1914. 
 
 It should be noted that this fight for naval supremacy had 
 nothing in common with the economic rivalry for the world 
 market. The English "monopoly of the world market" which 
 ostensibly hampered German industrial development, so much 
 discussed at the present time, really belongs to the sphere of 
 those war legends of which the ever green French "Revanche" is 
 the most useful. This "monopoly" had become an old time 
 fairy tale, to the lasting regret of the English capitalists. The 
 industrial development of France, Belgium, Italy, Russia, India 
 and Japan, and above all, of Germany and America, had put an
 
 THE CRISIS 39 
 
 end to this monopoly of the first half of the 19th century. Side 
 by side with England, one nation after another stepped into the 
 world market, capitalism developed automatically, and with' 
 gigantic strides, into world economy. 
 
 English supremacy on the sea, which has robbed so many 
 social-democrats of their peaceful sleep, and which, it seems to 
 these gentlemen, must be destroyed to preserve international 
 socialism, had, up to this time, disturbed German capitalism so 
 little that the latter was able to grow up into a lusty youth, 
 with bursting cheeks, under its "yoke." Yes, England itself, and 
 its colonies, were the cornerstone for German industrial growth. 
 And similarly, Germany became, for the English nation, its most 
 important and most necessary customer. Far from standing in 
 each other's way, British and German capitalist development 
 were mutually highly interdependent, and united by a far-reach- 
 ing system of division of labor, strongly augmented by England's 
 free trade policy. German trade and its interests in the world 
 market, therefore, had nothing whatever to do with a change of 
 front in German politics and with the building of its fleet. 
 
 Nor did German colonial possessions at that time come into 
 conflict with the English control of the seas. German colonies 
 were not in need of protection by a first-class sea power. No 
 one, certainly not England, envied Germany her possessions. 
 That they were taken during the war by England and Japan, 
 that the booty had changed owners, is but a generally accepted 
 war measure, just as German imperialist appetites clamor for 
 Belgium, a desire that no man outside of an insane asylum would 
 have dared to express in time of peace. Southeast and South- 
 west Africa, Wilhelmsland or Tsingtau would never have 
 caused any war, by land or by sea, between Germany and Eng- 
 land. In fact, just before the war broke out, a treaty regulating 
 a peaceable division of the Portuguese colonies in Africa between 
 these two nations had been practically completed.
 
 40 THE CRISIS 
 
 
 
 When Germany unfolded its banner of naval power and world 
 policies it announced the desire for new and far reaching con- 
 quest in the world by German imperialism. By means of a first 
 class aggressive navy, and by military forces that increased in 
 a parallel ratio, the apparatus for a future policy was established, 
 opening wide the doors for unprecedented possibilities. Naval 
 building and military armaments became the glorious business of 
 German industry, opening up a boundless prospect for further 
 operations by trust and bank capital in the whole wide world. 
 Thus, the acquiescence of all capitalist parties and their rallying 
 under the flag of imperialism was assured. The Centrum fol- 
 lowed the example of the National Liberals, the staunchest de- 
 fenders of the steel and iron industry, and, by adopting the naval 
 bill it had loudly denounced in 1900, became the party of the 
 government. The Progressives trotted after the Centrum when 
 the successor to the naval bill the high-tariff party came up; 
 while the Junkers, the staunchest opponents of the "horrid navy" 
 and of the Canal, brought up the rear as the most enthusiastic 
 porkers and parasites of the very policy of sea-militarism and 
 colonial robbery they had so vehemently opposed. The Reich- 
 stag election of 1907, the so-called Hottentot Elections, found 
 the whole of Germany in a paroxism of imperialistic enthusiasm, 
 firmly united under one flag, that of the Germany of von Buelow, 
 the Germany that felt itself ordained to play the role -of the ham- 
 mer in the world. These elections, with their spiritual progrom 
 atmosphere, were a prelude to the Germany of August 4th, a 
 challenge not only to the German working class, but to other 
 capitalist nations as well, a challenge directed to no one in 
 particular, a mailed fist shaken in the face of the entire world.
 
 THE CRISIS 41 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Turkey became the most important field of operations of Ger- 
 man imperialism ; the "Deutsche Bank," with its enormous Asiatic 
 business interests, about which all German oriental policies center, 
 became its pacemaker. In the 50's and 60's Asiatic Turkey 
 worked chiefly with English capital, which built the railroad from 
 Smyrna and leased the first stretch of the Anatolian railroad, 
 up to Ismid. In 1888 German capital appeared upon the scene 
 and procured from Abdul Hamid the control of the railroad 
 that English capital had built and the franchise for the new 
 stretch from Ismid to Angora and branch lines to Scutari, Brussa, 
 Konia and Kaizarili. In 1899 the Deutsche Bank secured con- 
 cessions for the building and operation of a harbor and improve- 
 ments in Hardar Pasha, and the sole control over trade and tariff 
 collections in the harbor. In 1901 the Turkish Government 
 turned over to the Deutsche Bank the concession for the great 
 Bagdad railroad to the Persian Gulf, in 1907 for the drainage 
 of the Sea of Karaviran and the irrigation of the Koma plain. 
 
 The reverse of this wonderful work of "peaceful culture" is 
 the "peaceful" and wholesale ruin of the farming population of 
 Asia Minor. The cost of this tremendous undertaking was 
 advanced, of course, by the Deutsche Bank on the security of a 
 widely diversified system of public indebtedness. Turkey will 
 be, to all eternity, the debtor of Messrs. Siemens, Gwinner, 
 Helfferich, etc., as it was formerly that of English, French and 
 Austrian capital. This debtor, now, was forced not only to 
 squeeze enormous sums out of the state to pay the interest on 
 these loans, but, in addition, to guarantee a net income upon the 
 railway thus built. The most modern methods of transportation 
 were grafted upon a primitive, in many cases purely agricultural, 
 population. From the unfruitful soil of farming sections that 
 had been exploited unscrupulously, for years, by an oriental
 
 42 THE CRISIS 
 
 despotism, producing scarcely enough to feed the population 
 after the huge state debts had been paid, it is practically impossi- 
 ble to secure the profits demanded by the railroads. Freight and 
 traveling are exceedingly undeveloped, since the industrial and 
 cultural character of the region is most primitive, and can im- 
 prove only at a slow rate. The deficit that must be paid to 
 raise the required profit is, therefore, paid by the Turkish Gov- 
 ernment in the form of a so-called kilometer guarantee. Euro- 
 pean Turkey was built up according to this system by Austrian 
 and French capital, and the same system has been adopted by the 
 Deutsche Bank in its operations in Asiatic Turkey. As bond and 
 surety that the subsidy will be paid, the Turkish Government 
 has handed over to the representatives of European capital, the 
 so-called Executive Board in control of public debt, the main 
 source of Turkish national income, which has given to the 
 Deutsche Bank the right to collect the tithe from a number of 
 provinces. In this way, for instance, the Turkish Govern- 
 ment paid, from 1893 to 1910, for the railroad to Angora and 
 for the line from Eskishehir to Konia, a subsidy of about 
 9,000,000 Frcs. The tithes thus leased by the Turkish Govern- 
 ment to its European creditors are ancient payments rendered in 
 produce such as corn, sheep, silk, etc. They are not collected 
 directly but through sub-lessees, somewhat similar to the famous 
 tax-collectors, so notorious in pre-revolutionary France, the state 
 selling the right to raise the amount required from each vilayet 
 (province) by auction, against cash payment. When the specu- 
 lator or company has thus procured the right to collect the tithe 
 of a vilayet, it, in turn, sells the tithe of each individual sanjak 
 (district) to other speculators, who again divide their portion 
 among a veritable band of smaller agents. Since each one 
 of these collectors must not only cover his own expenses but 
 secure as large a profit as possible besides, the tithe grows like 
 a landslide as it approaches the farmer. If the lessee has been 
 mistaken in his calculation, he seeks to recompense himself at
 
 THE CRISIS 43 
 
 the expense of the farmer. The latter, practically always in 
 debt, waits impatiently for the time when he can sell his crop. 
 But after his grain is cut he must frequently wait for weeks be- 
 fore the tithe collector comes to take his portion. The collector, 
 who is usually graindealer as well, exploits this need of the 
 farmer whose crop threatens to rot in the field, and persuades 
 him to sell at a reduced price, knowing full well that it will be 
 easy to secure the assistance of public officials and particularly 
 of the muktar (town mayor) against the dissatisfied. When no 
 tax-collector can be found the government itself collects the 
 tithe in produce, puts it into storage houses and turns it over 
 as part payment to the capitalists. This is the inner mechanism 
 of the "industrial regeneration of Turkey" by European capital. 
 
 Thus a twofold purpose is accomplished. The farming popu- 
 lation of Asia Minor becomes the object of a well organized 
 process of exploitation in the interest of European, in this case 
 German, financial and industrial capital. This again promotes 
 the growth of the German sphere of interest in Turkey and lays 
 the foundation for Turkey's "political protection." At the same 
 time the instrument that carries out the exploitation of the farm- 
 ing population, the Turkish Government, becomes the willing 
 tool and vassal of Germany's foreign policies. For many year* 
 Turkish finance, tariff policies, taxation and state expenditures 
 have been under European control. German influence has made 
 itself particularly felt in the Turkish military organization. 
 
 It is obvious from the foregoing, that the interests of German 
 imperialism demand the protection of the Turkish State, to the 
 extent at least of preventing its complete disintegration. The 
 liquidation of Turkey would mean its division between England, 
 Russia, Italy, and Greece among others and the basis for a large- 
 scale operation by German capital would vanish. Moreover, an 
 extraordinary increase in the power of Russia, England and the 
 Mediterranean States would result. For German imperialism, 
 therefore, the preservation of this accommodating apparatus of
 
 44 THE CRISIS 
 
 the "independent Turkish State," the "integrity" of Turkey is a 
 matter of necessity. And this necessity will exist until such time 
 as this state will fall, having been consumed from within by 
 German capital, as was Egypt by England and more recently 
 Morocco by France, into the lap of Germany. The well known 
 spokesman of German imperialism, Paul Rohrbach, expressed this 
 candidly and honestly when he said: 
 
 "In the very nature of things Turkey, surrounded on all sides 
 by envious neighbors, must seek the support of a power that has 
 practically no territorial interests in the Orient. That power is 
 Germany. We, on the other hand, would be at a disadvantage 
 if Turkey should disappear. If Russia and England fall heir to 
 the Turkish State, obviously it will mean to both of these states 
 a considerable increase in power. But even if Turkey should 
 be so divided that we should also secure an extensive portion, 
 it would mean for us endless difficulties. Russia, England, and 
 in a certain sense France and Italy as well, are neighbors of 
 present Turkish possessions and are in a position to hold and 
 defend their portion by land and by sea. But we have no direct 
 connection with the Orient. A German Asia Minor or Mesopo- 
 tamia can become a reality only if Russia, and in consequence 
 France as well, should be forced to relinquish their present politi- 
 cal aims and ideals, i. e., if the world-war should take a decisive 
 turn in favor of German interests." (The War and German 
 Policy, page 36). 
 
 Germany swore solemnly on November 8th, 1898, in Damascus, 
 by the shadow of the great Saladin, to protect and to preserve 
 the Mohammedan world and the green flag of the Prophet, and 
 in so doing strengthened the regime of the bloody Sultan Abdul 
 Hamid for over a decade. It has been able, after a short period 
 of estrangement, to exert the same influence upon the Young 
 Turk regime. Aside from conducting the profitable business of 
 the Deutsche Bank, the German mission busied itself chiefly with 
 the reorganization and training of Turkish militarism, under
 
 THE CRISIS 45 
 
 German instructors with von der Goltz Pascha at the head. The 
 modernization of the army, of course, piled new burdens upon 
 the Turkish farmers, but it was a splendid business arrangement 
 for Krupp and the Deutsche Bank. At the same time Turkish 
 militarism became entirely dependent upon Prussian militarism, 
 and became the centre of German ambitions in the Mediterranean 
 and in Asia Minor. 
 
 That this "regeneration" of Turkey is a purely artificial at- 
 tempt to galvanize a corpse, the fate of the Turkish revolutions 
 best shows. In the first stage, while ideal considerations still 
 predominated in the Young Turkish movement, when it was still 
 fired with ambitious plans and illusions of a real springtime of 
 life and of a rejuvenation for Turkey, its political sympathies 
 were decidedly in favor of England. This country seemed to 
 them to represent the ideal state of modern liberal rule, while 
 Germany, which had so long played the role of protector of the 
 holy regime of the old sultan was felt to be its natural opponent. 
 For a while it seemed as if the revolution of 1908 would mc.in 
 the bankruptcy of German oriental policies. It seemed certain 
 that the overthrow of Abdul Hamid would go hand in hand 
 with the downfall of German influence. As the Young Turks 
 assumed power, however, and showed their complete inability to 
 carry out any modern industrial, social or national reform on a 
 large scale, as the counter-revolutionary hoof became more and 
 more apparent, they turned of necessity to the tried and proven 
 methods of Abdul Hamid, which meant periodic bloody massacres 
 of oppressed peoples, goaded on until they flew at each other's 
 throats, boundless, truly oriental exploitation of the farming 
 population became the foundation of the nation. The artificial 
 restoration of rule by force again became the most important 
 consideration for "Young Turkey" and the traditional alliance 
 of Abdul Hamid with Germany was reestablished as the deciding 
 factor in the foreign policy of Turkey. 
 
 The multiplicity of national problems that threaten to dis-
 
 46 THE CRISIS 
 
 rupt the Turkish nation make its regeneration a hopeless under- 
 taking. The Armenian, Curdian, Syrian, Arabian, Greek, and 
 (up to the most recent times) the Albanian and Macedonian 
 questions, the manifold economic and social problems that exist 
 in the different parts of the realm, are a serious menace. The 
 growth of a strong, a hopeful, capitalism in the neighboring 
 Balkan states and the long years of destructive activity of inter- 
 national capital and international diplomacy stamp every attempt 
 to hold together this rotting pile of timber as nothing but a re- 
 actionary undertaking. This has long been apparent, particularly 
 to the German Social-Democracy. As early as 1896, at the 
 time of the Cretan uprising, the German Party press was filled 
 with long discussions on the Oriental problem, that led to a 
 revision of the attitude taken by Marx at the time of the Crimean 
 war and to the definite repudiation of the "integrity of Turkey" 
 as a heritage of European reaction. Nowhere was the Young 
 Turkish regime, its inner sterility and its counter-revolutionary 
 character, so quickly and so thoroughly recognized as in the Ger- 
 man Social-Democratic press. It was a real Prussian idea, this 
 building of strategic railroads for rapid mobilization, this sending 
 of capable military instructors to prop up the crumbling edifice 
 of the Turkish State. 
 
 In 1912 the Young Turkish regiment was forced to abdicate 
 to the counter-revolution. Characteristically, the first act of 
 "Turkish regeneration" in this war was a coup d'etat, the annihi- 
 lation of the constitution. In this respect too there was a formal 
 icturn to the rule of Abdul Hamid. 
 
 The first Balkan war brought bankruptcy to Turkish militar- 
 ism, in spite of German training. And the present war, into 
 which Turkey was precipitated as Germany's "charge," will lead, 
 with inevitable fatality, to the further or to the final liquida- 
 tion of the Turkish Empire. 
 
 The position of German militarism and its essence, the inter- 
 ests of the Deutsche Bank has brought the German Empire in
 
 THE CRISIS 47 
 
 the Orient into opposition to all other nations. Above all to 
 England. The latter had not only rival business relations and 
 fat profits in Mesopotamia and Anatolia which were forced to 
 retreat before their German rivals. This was a situation that 
 English capitalism grudgingly accepted. But the building of 
 strategic railroad, and the strengthening of Turkish militarism 
 under German influence was felt by England to be a sore point, 
 in a strategic question of its world political relations; lying as it 
 did at the cross roads between Central Asia, Persia and India, on 
 the one side, and Egypt on the other. 
 
 "England," writes Rohrbach in his Bagdadbahn, "can be at- 
 tacked and mortally wounded on land in Egypt. The loss of 
 Egypt will mean to England not only the loss of control over the 
 Suez Canal and its connections with India and Asia, but probably 
 the sacrifice of its possessions in Central and Eastern Africa as 
 well. A Mohammedan power like Turkey, moreover, could exer- 
 cise a dangerous influence over the 60 millions of Mohammedan 
 subjects of England in India, in Afghanistan and Persia, should 
 Turkey conquer Egypt. But Turkey can subjugate Egypt only 
 if it possesses an extended system of railroads in Asia Minor and 
 Syria, if by an extension of the Anatalion Railway it is able 
 to ward off an English attack upon Mesopotamia, if it increases 
 and improves its army, if its general economic and financial con- 
 ditions are improved." 
 
 And in his The War and German Policies, which was published 
 after the outbreak of the war, he says : 
 
 "The Bagdad Railroad was destined from the start to bring 
 Constantinople and .the military strongholds of the Turkish 
 Empire in Asia Minor into direct connection with Syria and the 
 provinces on the Euphrates and on the Tigris. Of course it was 
 to be foreseen that this railway, together with the projected and, 
 partly or wholly, completed railroads in Syria and Arabia, would 
 make it possible to use Turkish troops in the direction of Egypt. 
 No one will deny_that, should the Turkish-German alliance re-
 
 48 THE CRISIS 
 
 main in force, and under a number of other important conditions 
 whose realization will be even more difficult than this alliance, 
 the Bagdad Railway is a political life insurance policy for Ger- 
 many." 
 
 Thus the semi-official spokesman of German imperialism openly 
 revealed its plan and its aims in the Orient. Here German policies 
 were clearly marked out, and an aggressive fundamental tend- 
 ency most dangerous for the existing balance of world power, 
 with a clearly defined point against England, was disclosed. Ger- 
 man oriental policies became the concrete commentary to the 
 naval policy inaugurated in 1899. 
 
 With its program for Turkish integrity, Germany came into 
 conflict with the Balkan states, whose historic completion and 
 inner growth are dependent upon the liquidation of European 
 Turkey. It came into conflict with Italy, finally, whose imperial- 
 istic appetite was likewise longing for Turkish possessions. At 
 the Morocco Conference at Algeciras in 1905, Italy already sided 
 with England and France. Six years later the Italian expedi- 
 tion to Tripolis, which followed the Austrian annexation of 
 Bosnia and gave the signal for the Balkan War, already indicated 
 a withdrawal of Italy, foreshadowed the disruption of the Triple 
 Alliance and the isolation of German policies on this side as well. 
 The other tendency of German expansionist desires in the west 
 became evident in the Morocco affair. Nowhere was the negation 
 of the Bismarck policy in Germany more clearly shown. Bis- 
 marck, as is well known, supported the colonial aspirations of 
 France in order to distract its attention from Alsace-Lorraine. 
 The new course of Germany, on the other hand, ran exactly 
 counter to French colonial expansion. Conditions in Morocco 
 were quite different from those that prevailed in Asiatic Turkey. 
 Germany had few legitimate interests in Morocco. To be sure, 
 German imperialists puffed up the claims of the German firm of 
 Mannesmann, which had made a loan to the Moroccan sultan 
 and demanded mining concessions in return, into a national issue.
 
 THE CRISIS 49 
 
 But the well known fact that both of these rival groups in Mo- 
 rocco, the Mannesmann as well as the Krupp-Schneider Company 
 are a thoroughly international mixture of German, French and 
 Spanish capitalists, prevents anyone from seriously speaking of 
 a German sphere of interest. The more symptomatic was the 
 determination and the decisiveness with which the German 
 Empire, in 1905,suddenly announced its claim to participation 
 in the regulation of Moroccan affairs, and protested against 
 French rule in Morocco. This was the first world-political clash 
 with France. In 1895 Germany, together with France and Rus- 
 sia, assumed a threatening attitude toward victorious Japan to 
 prevent it from exploiting its victory over China at Shimonoseki. 
 Five years later it went arm in arm. with France all along the 
 line on a plundering expedition against China. Morocco caused 
 a radical reorientation in Germany's relations with France. The 
 Morocco crisis which, in the seven years of its duration, twice 
 brought Europe to the verge of war between France and Ger- 
 many, was not a question of "revenge" for continental conflicts 
 between the two nations. An entirely new conflict had arisen, 
 German imperialism had come into competition with that of 
 France. In the end, Germany was satisfied with the French 
 Congo region, and in accepting this admitted that it had no spe- 
 cial interests to protect in Morocco itself. This very fact gave 
 to the German attack in Morocco a far reaching political signifi- 
 cance. The very indefinitiveness of its tangible aims and demands 
 betrayed its insatiable appetite, the seeking and feeling for prey 
 it was a general imperialistic declaration of war against France. 
 The contrast between the two nations here was brought into 
 the limelight. On the one hand, a slow industrial development, 
 a stagnant population, a nation living on its investments, con- 
 cerned chiefly with foreign financial business, burdened with a 
 large number of colonial possessions that it could hold together 
 only with the utmost difficulty. On the other hand, a mighty 
 young giant, a capitalism forging toward the first place among
 
 50 THE CRISIS 
 
 nations, going out into the world to hunt for colonies. English 
 colonies were out of the question. So the hunger of German im- 
 perialism, besides feeding on Asiatic Turkey, turned at once to 
 the French heritage. The French colonies moreover were a con- 
 venient bait with which Italy might eventually be attracted and 
 repaid for Austrian desires of expansion on the Balkan peninsula, 
 and be thus more firmly welded into the Triple Alliance by mutual 
 business interests. The demands Germany made upon French 
 imperialism were exceedingly disturbing, especially when it is 
 remembered that Germany, once it had taken a foothold in any 
 part of Morocco, could at any time set fire to the entire French 
 North-African possessions, whose inhabitants were in a chronic 
 state of incipient warfare with the French conquerors, by sup- 
 plying them with ammunition. Germany's final withdrawal for 
 suitable compensation did away with this immediate danger. But 
 they could not allay the general disturbance in France and the 
 world-political conflict that had been created. 
 
 Its Morocco policy not only brought Germany into conflict 
 with France but with England as well. Here in Morocco, in the 
 immediate neighborhood of Gibraltar, the second important 
 center of world-political interests of the British Government, 
 the sudden appearance of German imperialism with its demands, 
 and the drastic impressiveness with which these demands were 
 supported, were regarded as a demonstration against England as 
 well. Furthermore the first formal protest of 1911 was directed 
 specifically against the agreement of 1904 between England and 
 France concerning Egypt and Morocco. Germany insisted briefly 
 and definitely that England be disregarded in all further regula- 
 tions of Moroccan affairs. The effect that such a demand was 
 certain to have on German-English relations is obvious. The 
 situation was commented upon in the Frankfurter Zeitung of 
 November 8, 1911, by a London correspondent: 
 
 "This is the outcome : a million negroes in Congo, a great 
 katzenjammer and a furious resentment against perfides Albion.
 
 THE CRISIS 51 
 
 The katzen jammer Germany will live down. But what is to 
 become of our relations with England? As they stand today 
 matters are untenable. According to every historic probability 
 they will either lead to something worse, that is war, or they 
 will have to be speedily patched up ... The trip of the Panther 
 was, as a Berlin correspondent so well said in the Frankfurter 
 Zeitung the other day, a dig into the ribs of France to show that 
 Germany is still here. . . Concerning the effect that this event 
 would create here, Berlin cannot possibly entertain the slightest 
 doubt. Certainly no correspondent in London was for a moment 
 in doubt that England would stand energetically on the side of 
 France. How can the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung still 
 insist that Germany must treat with France alone? For several 
 hundred years Europe has been the scene of a steadily increasing 
 interweaving of political interests. The misfortune of one, ac- 
 cording to the laws of politics, fills some with joy, others with 
 apprehension. When two years ago Austria had its difficulties 
 with Russia, Germany appeared upon the scene with shimmering 
 armor, although Vienna, as was afterwards stated, would have 
 preferred to settle matters without German intervention. It is 
 very unlikely that England, having just emerged from a period 
 of anti-German feeling, should consider that our dealings with 
 France are none of- its business. In the last analysis, it was a 
 question of might; for a dig in the ribs, be it ever so friendly, 
 is a very tangible matter. For no one can be quite sure when a 
 blow on the teeth may follow. Since then the situation has be- 
 come less critical. At the moment when Lloyd George spoke, the 
 danger of a war between Germany and England was acute. Are 
 we justified in expecting a different attitude from Sir Edward 
 Grey after the policies that he and his followers have been 
 pursuing? If Berlin entertained such ideas then it seems to me 
 that the German foreign policies have been weighed and found 
 wanting." 
 
 Thus did our imperialistic policies create sharp conflicts in
 
 52 THE CRISIS 
 
 Asia Minor and in Morocco, between England and Germany, 
 between Germany and France. But what of German relations 
 with Russia? In the murderous spirit that took possession of 
 the German public during the first weeks of the war everything 
 seemed credible. The German populace believed that Belgian 
 women had gouged out the eyes of the German wounded, that 
 Cossacks ate tallow candles, that they had taken infants by the 
 legs and torn them to pieces; they believed that Russia aspired 
 to the annexation of the German empire, to the destruction of 
 German "Kultur," to the introduction of absolutism from Kiel 
 to Munich, from the Warthe to the Rhine. The Social-Democratic 
 Chemnitser Volksstimme wrote on August 2nd: 
 
 "At this moment we all feel it our duty to fight first against the 
 Russian knout. German women and children shall not become the 
 victims of Russian bestiality, German territory must not fall into 
 the hands of the cossacks. For if the Entente is victorious, not the 
 French Republicans, but the Russian Tsar will rule over Germany. 
 In this moment we defend everything that we possess of German 
 culture and German freedom against a pitiless and barbarous foe." 
 
 On the same day the Fraenkische Tagespost cried out : 
 
 "Shall the cossacks, who have already taken possession of our 
 border towns, in their onrush on our country, bring destruction to 
 our cities? Shall the Russian Czar, whose love of peace the Social- 
 Democrats refused to trust even on the day when his peace manifesto 
 was published, who is the worst enemy of the Russian people them- 
 selves, rule over one man of German blood?" 
 
 And the Koenigsberger Volksseitung wrote on August 3rd : 
 
 "Not one of us can doubt, whether he is liable for military service 
 or not, that he must do everything to keep these worthless vandals 
 from our borders so long as the war may last. For if they should 
 be victorious, thousands of our comrades will be condemned to hor- 
 rible prison sentences. Under the Russian scepter there is no such 
 thing as self-expression of the people, no social-democratic press is al- 
 lowed to exist, social-democratic meetings and organizations are pro-
 
 THE CRISIS 53 
 
 hibited. We cannot conceive for a moment the possibility of a Rus- 
 sian victory. While still upholding our opposition to war, we will all 
 work together to protect ourselves against these vandals that rule 
 the Russian nation." 
 
 We shall later enter a little more fully into the relations that 
 exist between German culture and Russian Czarism. They form 
 a chapter by itself in the position of the German Social- 
 Democracy on the war. This much may 'be said now, one might 
 with as much justification assume that the Czar desires to annex 
 Europe, or the moon, as to speak of his desire to annex Germany. 
 In the present war only two nations are threatened in their 
 national existence, Belgium and Servia. While we howled about 
 safeguarding the national existence of Germany, our cannon were 
 directed against these two states. It is impossible to discuss with 
 people who still believe in the possibility of ritual murder. But 
 to those who do not act from mob instinct, who do not think 
 in terms of clumsy slogans that are invented to catch the rabble, 
 who guide their thoughts by historic facts, it must be obvious that 
 Russian Czarism cannot have such intentions. Russia is ruled by 
 desperate criminals, but not by maniacs. And after all, the 
 policies of absolutism, in spite of all their characteristic differ- 
 ences, have this similarity in all nations, that they live not on thin 
 air but upon very real possibilities, in a realm where concrete 
 things come into the closest contact with each other. We need 
 have no fear of the arrest of our German comrades and their ban- 
 ishment to Siberia, nor of the introduction of Russian absolutism 
 into Germany. For the statesmen of the bloody Czar, with all 
 their mental inferiority, have a clearer materialistic conception 
 of the situation than some of our party editors. These statesmen 
 know very well that political forms of government cannot be 
 "introduced" anywhere and everywhere according to the desire 
 of the rulers ; they know full well that every form of government 
 is the outcome of certain economic and social foundations, they 
 know from bitter experience that even in Russia itself conditions
 
 54 THE CRISIS 
 
 are almost beyond their power to control ; they know, finally, that 
 reaction in every country can use only the forms that are in 
 accord with the nature of the country, and that the absolutism 
 that is in accord with our class and party conditions is the Hohen- 
 zollern police state and the Prussian three-class electoral system. 
 A dispassionate consideration of the whole situation will show 
 that we need not fear that Russian Czarism, even if it should win 
 a complete victory over Germany, would feel called upon to do 
 away with these products of German culture. 
 
 In reality the conflicts that exist between Germany and Rus- 
 sia are of an entirely different nature. These differences are 
 not to be found in the field of inner politics. Quite the contrary : 
 their mutual tendencies and internal relationships have established 
 a century-old traditional friendship between the two nations. 
 But in spite of and notwithstanding their solidarity on questions 
 of inner policy, they have come to blows in the field of foreign, 
 world-political hunting grounds. 
 
 Russian imperialism, like that of western nations, consists of 
 widely diversified elements. Its strongest strain is not, how- 
 ever, as in Germany or England, the economic expansion of 
 capital, hungry for territorial accumulation, but the political 
 interests of the nation. To be sure, Russian industry can show 
 a considerable export to the Orient, to China, Persia and Central 
 Asia, and the Czarist Government seeks to encourage this export 
 trade because it furnishes a desirable foundation for its sphere 
 of interest. But national policies here play an active, not a 
 passive, role. On the one hand, the traditional tendencies of a 
 conquest-loving Czardom, ruling over a mighty nation whose 
 population today consists of 172 millions of human beings, de- 
 mand free access to the ocean, to the Pacific Ocean on the East, 
 to the Mediterranean on the South, for industrial as well as for 
 strategic reasons. On the other hand, the very existence of 
 absolutism, and the necessity of holding a respected place in the 
 world-political field, and finally the need of financial credit in
 
 THE CRISIS 55 
 
 foreign countries, without which Czarism cannot exist, all play 
 their important part. We must add to these, as in every other 
 monarchy, the dynastic interest. Foreign prestige and temporary 
 forgetfulness of inner problems and difficulties are well known 
 family remedies in the art of ruling, when a conflict arises be- 
 tween the government and the great mass of the people. 
 
 But modern capitalist interests are becoming more and more 
 a factor in the imperialist aims of the Czarist nation. Russian 
 capitalism, still in its earliest youth, cannot hope to perfect its 
 development under an absolutist regime. On the whole it has 
 advanced little beyond the primitive stage of home industry. But 
 it sees a gigantic future before its eyes in the exploitation of the 
 nation's natural resources. As soon as Russia's absolutism is swept 
 away, of this there can be no doubt, Russia will develop rapidly 
 into the foremost capitalist nation, provided always that the in- 
 ternational situation will give it the time necessary for such 
 development. It is this hope, and the appetite for foreign markets 
 that will mean increased capitalistic development even at the 
 present time, that has filled the Russian bourgeoisie with imperial- 
 istic desires and led them to eagerly voice their demands in the 
 coming division of the world's resources. This historic desire 
 is actively supported by very tangible immediate interests. There 
 are, in the first place, the armament industry and its purveyors. 
 In the second place the conflicts with the "enemy within," the 
 revolutionary proletariat, have given to the Russian bourgeoisie 
 an increased appreciation of the powers of militarism and the 
 distracting effects of a world-political evangel. It has bound 
 together the various capitalist groups and the nobility under one 
 counter-revolutionary regime. The imperialism of bourgeois 
 Russia, particularly among the Liberals, has grown enormously 
 in the stormy atmosphere of the revolutionary period, and has 
 given to the traditional foreign policies of the Romanoffs a 
 modern stamp. Chief among the aims of the traditional policies 
 of monarchic Russia, as well as of the more modern appetites of
 
 56 THE CRISIS 
 
 the Russian bourgeoisie, are the Dardanelles. They are, accord- 
 ing to the famous remark made by Bismarck, the latchkey to the 
 Russian possessions on the Black Sea. Since the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, Russia has waged a number of bloody wars against Turkey, 
 has undertaken its mission as the liberator of the Balkans, for the 
 realization of this goal. For this ideal, Russia has piled up 
 mountains of dead in Ismael, in Navarin, in Sinope, Silistria and 
 Sebastopol, in Plevna and Shipka. To the Russian muzhik, the 
 defense of his Slavic and Christian brothers from the horrors of 
 Turkish oppression has become as potent a war legend as the 
 defense of German culture and freedom against the horrors of 
 Russia has become to the German Social-Democracy. 
 
 But the Russian bourgeoisie also was much more enthusiastic 
 over the Mediterranean prospect than for its Manchurian and 
 Mongolian "mission." The liberal bourgeoisie of Russia criti- 
 cised the Japanese war so severely as a senseless adventure, 
 because it distracted the attention of Russian politics from the 
 problem that was to them more important, the Balkans. And in 
 another way, the unfortunate war with Japan had the same 
 effect. The extension of Russian power into Eastern and Cen- 
 tral Asia, lo Thibet and down into Persia necessarily aroused a 
 feeling of discomfort in the minds of English imperialists. Eng- 
 land, fearing for its enormous Indian empire, viewed the Asiatic 
 movements of Russia with growing suspicion. In fact, at the 
 beginning of the present century the English-Russian conflict in 
 Asia was the strongest world-conflict in the international situa- 
 tion. Moreover this will be, in all probability, the most critical 
 issue in future world-political developments when the present 
 war is over. The crushing defeat of Russia in 1904 and the sub- 
 sequent outbreak of the Russian revolution only temporarily 
 changed the situation. The apparent weakening of the empire 
 of the Czar brought about a relaxation of the tension between 
 England and Russia. In 1907 a treaty was signed between the 
 two nations providing for a mutual control of Persia that estab-
 
 THE CRISIS 57 
 
 lished, for the time being, friendly and neighborly relations in 
 Central Asia. This kept Russia from undertaking great projects 
 in the East, and her energies reverted all the more vigorously 
 to their old occupation, Balkan politics. Here the Russia of the 
 Czar came for the first time into sharp conflict with German 
 culture, after a century of faithful and well-founded friendship. 
 The road to the Dardanelles leads over the corpse of Turkey. 
 But for more than a decade Germany has regarded the "integ- 
 rity" of this corpse as its most important world-political task. 
 Russian methods in the Balkans had changed at various times. 
 Embittered by the ingratitude of the liberated Balkan Slavs who 
 tried to escape from their position as vassals to the Czarist Gov- 
 ernment, Russia for a time supported the program of Turkish 
 integrity with the silent understanding that the division of that 
 country should be postponed to some more auspicious time. But 
 today the final liquidation of Turkey coincides with the plans 
 of both Russian and English politics. The latter aims to unite 
 Arabia and Mesopotamia, and the Russian territories that lie 
 between Egypt and India, under British rule, into a great Mo- 
 hammedan empire, thus conserving its own position in India and 
 Egypt. In this way Russian imperialism, as in earlier times 
 English imperialism, came into opposition with that of Germany. 
 For this privileged exploiter of Turkish disintegration had taken 
 up her position as sentinel on the Bosphorus. 
 
 Russian interests came to a clash in the Balkans not only 
 directly with Germany but with Austria as well. Austrian im- 
 perialism is the political complement of German imperialism, 
 at the same time its Siamese twin brother and its fate. 
 
 Germany, having isolated herself on all sides by her world 
 policy, has in Austria her only ally. The alliance with Austria 
 is old, having been founded by Bismarck in 1879. But since that 
 time it has completely changed its character. Like the enmity 
 toward France, the alliance with Austria received an entirely new 
 content through the development of the last decades. In 1879
 
 58 THE CRISIS 
 
 its chief purpose was the mutual defense of the possessions gained 
 in "the wars of 1864-1870. The Bismarck Triple Alliance was 
 conservative in character, especially since it signified Austria's 
 final renunciation of admission to the German federation of states, 
 its acceptance of the state of affairs created bv Bismarck, and 
 the military hegemony of Greater Prussia. The Balkan aspir- 
 ations of Austria were as distasteful to Bismarck as the South- 
 African conquests of Germany. In his Gedanken und Erin- 
 nerungen he says : 
 
 "It is natural that the inhabitants of the Danube region should 
 have needs and aspirations that extend beyond the present boun- 
 daries of their monarchy. The German national constitution 
 points out the way along which Austria can form a union of the 
 political and material interests that exist between the most eas- 
 tern Rumanian tribe and the Bay of Cattaro. But the duty of the 
 German Empire does not demand that it satisfy the desires of its 
 neighbors for increased territory with the blood and wealth of 
 its subjects." 
 
 He expressed the same thought still more drastically when he 
 uttered the well known sentiment that, to him, the whole of Bos- 
 nia was not worth the bone of a Pomeranian grenadier. Indeed, 
 a treaty drawn up with Russia in 1884 proves conclusively that 
 Bismarck never desired to place the Triple Alliance at the service 
 of Austrian annexationist desires. By this treaty, the German 
 Empire promised, in the event of a war between Austria and 
 Russia, not to support the former, but rather to observe a "bene- 
 volent neutrality." 
 
 But since imperialism has taken hold of German politics, its 
 relations to Austria have changed as well. Austria-Hungary lies 
 between Germany and the Balkan, in other words, on the road 
 over the critical point in German Oriental politics. To make 
 Austria its enemy at this time would mean complete isolation, 
 and complete abdication by Germany of its world-political plan.
 
 THE CRISIS 59 
 
 But the weakening of Austria, which would signify the final li- 
 quidation of Turkey, with a consequent strengthening of Russia, 
 the Balkan States, and England, would probably accomplish the 
 national unification of Germany, but would, at the same time, 
 wipe out, forever, its imperialistic aspirations. The safety of the 
 Hapsburg monarchy has therefore logically become a necessary 
 complement to German imperialism, the preservation of Turkey 
 its chief problem. 
 
 But Austria means a constant latent state of war in the Bal- 
 kans. For Turkish disintegration has promoted the existence and 
 growth of the Balkan States in the immediate neighborhood of 
 the Hapsburg monarchy, and the resulting state of chronic in- 
 cipient warfare. Obviously the existence of virile and indepen- 
 dent national states on the border of a monarchy that is made 
 up- of fragments of these same nationalities, which it can rule 
 only by the whip-lash of dictatorship must hasten its downfall. 
 Austrian Balkan politics and particularly its Serbian relations 
 have plainly revealed its inner decay. Although its imperialistic 
 appetites wavered between Saloniki and Durazzo, Austria was 
 not in a position to annex Servia, even before the latter had 
 grown in strength and size through the two Balkan wars. For 
 the forcible annexation of Servia would have dangerously 
 strengthened in its interior one of the most refractory South 
 Slavic nationalities, a people that even now, because of Austria's 
 stupid regime of reaction, can scarcely be held in check. But 
 neither can Austria tolerate the normal independent development 
 of Servia or profit from it by normal commercial relations. For 
 the Habsburg monarchy is not the political expression of a capi- 
 talist state, but a loose syndicate of a few parasitic cliques, striv- 
 ing to grasp everything within reach, utilizing the political power? 
 of the nation so long as this weak edifice still stands. For the 
 benefit of Hungarian agrarians, and for the purpose of increas- 
 ing the prices of agricultural products, Austria has forbidden
 
 60 THE CRISIS 
 
 Servia to send cattle and fruits into Austria, thus depriving this 
 nation of farmers of its most important market. In the interests 
 of Austrian monopolies it has forced Servia to import industrial 
 products exclusively from Austria, and at the highest prices. To 
 keep Servia in a state of economic and political dependence, it 
 prevented Servia from uniting on the East with Bulgaria, to se- 
 cure access to the Black Sea, and from securing access to the 
 Adriatic, on the West, by prohibiting the acquisition of a harbor 
 in Albania. In short, the Balkan policy of Austria was nothing 
 more than a barefaced attempt to choke off Servia. Also, it was 
 directed against the establishment of mutual relations between, 
 and against the inner growth of the Balkan States, and was, there- 
 fore, a constant menace for them. 
 
 Austrian imperialism constantly threatened the existence and 
 development of the Balkan States; now by the annexation of 
 Bosnia, now by its demands upon the Sanjak of Novibazar and 
 on Saloniki, now by its encroachments upon the Albanian coast. 
 To satisfy these tendencies on the part of Austria, and to meet 
 the competition of Italy as well, the caricature of an independent 
 Albania under the rule of a German nobleman was created after 
 the second Balkan war, a country which was, from the first hour, 
 little more than the plaything of the intrigues of imperialistic 
 rivals. 
 
 Thus the imperialistic policies of Austria during the last decade 
 were a constant hindrance to the normal progressive development 
 of the Balkans, and led to the inevitable alternative: either the 
 Habsburg monarchy or the capitalist development of the Balkan 
 States. 
 
 Emancipated from Turkish rule, the Balkan now faced its 
 new hindrance, Austria, and the necessity of removing it from its 
 path. Historically the liquidation of Austria-Hungary is the 
 logical sequence of Turkish disintegration, and both are in direct 
 line with the process of historical development.
 
 THE CRISIS 61 
 
 There was but one solution: war a world war. For behind 
 Servia stood Russia, unable to sacrifice its influence in the Bal- 
 kans and its role of "protector" without giving up its whole im- 
 perialisitc program in the Orient as well. In direct conflict with 
 Austrian politics, Russia aimed to unite the Balkan States under 
 a Russian protectorate, to be sure. The Balkan union that had 
 almost completely annihilated European Turkey in the victorious 
 war of 1912 was the work of Russia, and was directly and inten- 
 tionally aimed against Austria. Inspite of Russian efforts, the 
 Balkan union was smashed in the second Balkan war. But Ser- 
 via, emerging the victor, became dependent upon the friendship 
 of Russia in the same degree as Austria had become Russia's 
 bitter enemy. Germany, whose fate was firmly linked to that 
 of the Habsburg monarchy, was obliged to back up the stupid 
 Balkan policy of the latter, step by step, and was thus brought 
 into a doubly aggravated opposition to Russia. 
 
 But the Balkan policies of Austria, furthermore, brought Aus- 
 tria into conflict with Italy, which was actively interested in the 
 dissolution of the Turkish and Austrian Empires. The imperial- 
 ism of Italy has found in the Italian possessions of Austria a 
 most popular cloak for its own annexationist desires. Its eyes 
 are directed especially toward the- Albanian coast of the Adriatic, 
 should a new regulation of Balkan affairs take place. The Triple 
 Alliance, having already sustained a severe blow in the Tripoli- 
 tan war, was destroyed by the acute crisis in the Balkans during 
 the two Balkan wars. The Central Powers were thus brought 
 into conflict with the entire outside world. German imperialism, 
 chained to two decaying corpses, was steering its course directly 
 toward a world war. 
 
 Moreover, Germany embarked upon this course with a full 
 realization of its consequences. Austria, as the motive power, 
 was rushing blindly into destruction. Its clique of clerical-mili- 
 tarist rulers with the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his right
 
 62 THE CRISIS 
 
 hand man Baron von Chlumezki at the head, fairly jumped at 
 every excuse to strike the first blow. In 1909 Austria framed up 
 the famous documents by Professor Friedmann, exposing what 
 purported to be a widespread, criminal conspiracy of the Serbs 
 against the Habsburg monarchy, for the sole purpose of infus- 
 ing the German nations with the necessary war-enthusiasm. 
 These papers had only one slight drawback they were for fe cd 
 from beginning to end. A year later the rumor of the horrible 
 martyrdom of the Austrian consul Prohaska in Ueskub was buji- 
 ly spread for days to serve as the spark that would ignite the keg 
 of powder, while Prohaska roamed unmolested and happy 
 through the streets of Ueskub. Then came the assassination at 
 Serajewo, a long desired, truly shameful crime. "If ever a blood 
 sacrifice has had a liberating, releasing effect, it was the case 
 here," rejoiced the spokesman of German imperhMsm. Among 
 Austrian imperialists the rejoicing was still greater, and they 
 decided to use the noble corpses while they were still warm. 
 After a hurried conference with Berlin, war was virtually de- 
 cided and the ultimatum sent out as a flaming torch that was to 
 set fire to the capitalist world at all four corners. 
 
 But the occurrence at Serajewo only furnished the immediate 
 pretext. Causes and conflicts for the war had been overripe for 
 a long time. The conjuncture that we witness today was 
 ready a decade ago. Every year, every political occurrence of 
 recent years has but served to bring war a step nearer : the Tur- 
 kish revolution, the annexation of Bosnia, the Morocco crisis, 
 the Tripolis expedition, the two Balkan wars. All military bills 
 of the last years were drawn up in direct preparation for this 
 war; the countries of Europe were preparing, with open eyes, 
 for the inevitable final contest. Five times during recent years 
 this war was on the verge of an outbreak: in the summer of 1905, 
 when Germany for the first time made her decisive demands in 
 the Morocco crisis ; in the summer of 1908, when England, Rus-
 
 THE CRISIS 63 
 
 sia and France threatened with war after the conference of the 
 monarchs in Reval over the Macedonian question, and war was 
 prevented only by the sudden outbreak of the Turkish revolution ; 
 in the beginning of 1909 when Russia replied to the Bosnian an- 
 nexation with a mobilization, when Germany in Petersburg for- 
 mally declared its readiness to go to war on the side of Austria ; 
 in the summer of 1911 when the "Panther" was sent to Agadir, 
 an act that would certainly have brought on war if Germany had 
 not finally acquiesced in the Morocco question and allowed itself 
 to be compensated with the Congo concession ; and finally, in the 
 beginning of 1913, when Germany, in view of the proposed Rus- 
 sian invasion of Albania, a second time threatened Petersburg 
 with its readiness for warlike measures. 
 
 Thus the world war has been hanging fire for eight years. It 
 was postponed again and again only because always one of the 
 two sides in question was not yet ready with its military prepara- 
 tions. 
 
 So, for instance, the present world war was imminent at the 
 time of the "Panther" adventure in 1911 without a murdered 
 Grand Duke, without French fliers over Nuremberg, without a 
 Russian invasion into East Prussia. Germany simply put it off 
 for a more favorable moment one need only read the frank ex- 
 planation of a German imperialist: "The German government 
 has been accused by the so-called pan-Germans of weakness in 
 the Morocco crisis in 1911." Let them disabuse their minds of 
 this false impression. It is a fact that, at the time when we sent 
 the "Panther" to Agadir, the reconstruction of the North-East 
 Sea Canal was still in progress, that building operations on Helgo- 
 land for the construction of a great fort were nowhere near com- 
 pletion, that our fleet of dreadnoughts and accessories, in com- 
 parison with the English sea power, was in a far more unfavor- 
 able position than was the case three years later. 
 
 Compared to the present time, 1914, the canal as well as Helgo-
 
 64 .THE CRISIS 
 
 land were in a deplorable state of unreadiness, were partially ab- 
 solutely useless for war purposes. Under such circumstances, 
 where one knows that one's chances will be far more favorable in 
 a few years, it would be worse than foolish to provoke a war. 
 First the German fleet had to be put in order; the great mili- 
 tary bill had to be pushed through the Reichstag. In the sum- 
 mer of 1914 Germany was prepared for war, while France was 
 still laboring over its three years military service program, while 
 in Russia neither the army nor the naval program were ready. 
 It was up to Germany to utilize the auspicious moment." 
 
 The same Rohrbach, who is not only the most serious represen- 
 tative of imperialism in Germany, but is also in intimate touch 
 with the leading circles in German politics and is their semi-offi- 
 cial mouthpiece, comments upon the situation in July, 1914, as 
 follows. "At this time there was only one danger, that we might 
 be morally forced, by an apparent acquiescence on the part of 
 Russia, to wait until Russia and France were really prepared." 
 In other words, Germany feared nothing so much as that Russia 
 might give in. "With deep pain we saw our untiring efforts to 
 preserve world peace shipwrecked, etc., etc." 
 
 The invasion of Belgium, therefore, and the accomplished fact 
 of war was not a bolt from the blue. It did not create a new, un- 
 heard of situation. Nor was it an event that came, in its political 
 associations, as a complete surprise to the social-democratic 
 group. The world war that began officially on August 4th, 1914, 
 was the same world war toward which German imperialism had 
 been driving for decades, the same war whose coming the Social- 
 Democracy had prophesied year after year. This same war has 
 been denounced by social-democratic parliamentarians, news- 
 papers and leaflets a thousand times as a frivolous imperialistic 
 crime, as a war that is against every interest of culture and 
 against every interest of the nation. 
 
 And, indeed, not the "existence and the independent develop-
 
 65 
 
 ment of Germany in this war" are at stake, in^pite of die reiura 
 tions of the social-democratic press, but the immediate profits of 
 the "Deutsche Bank" in Asiatic Turkey and the future profits of 
 the "Mannesmann" and "Krupp" interests in Morocco, the exist- 
 ence and the reactionary character of Austria, "this heap of or- 
 ganized decay, that calls itself the Habsburg monarchy," as the 
 "Vorwaerts" wrote on the 25th of July, 1914; Hungarian pigs 
 and prunes, paragraph 14, the "Kultur" of Friedmann-Prohaska, 
 the existence of Turkish rule in Asia Minor and of counter-revo- 
 lution on the Balkan. 
 
 Our party press was filled with moral indignation over the fact 
 that Germany's foes should drive black men and barbarians, Ne- 
 groes, Sikhs and Maoris into the war. Yet these peoples play a 
 role in this war that is approximately identical with that played 
 by the socialist proletariat in the European states. If the Maoris 
 of New Zealand were eager to risk their skulls for the English 
 king, they showed only as much understanding of their own in- 
 terests as the German Social-Democratic group that traded the 
 existence, the freedom and the civilization of the German people 
 for the existence of the Habsburg monarchy, for Turkey and for 
 the vaults of the "Deutsche Bank." 
 
 One difference there is between the two. A generation ago, 
 Maori negroes were still cannibals and not students of Marxian 
 philosophy.
 
 66 THE CRISIS 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 But Czarism! In the first moments of the war this was un- 
 doubtedly the factor that decided the position of our party. In 
 its declaration, the social-democratic group had given the slogan : 
 Against Czarism! And out of this the socialist press has made 
 a fight for European culture. 
 
 The Frankfurter Volksstimme wrote on July 31 : 
 
 "The German Social-Democracy has always hated Czardom 
 as the bloody guardian of European reaction: From the time 
 that Marx and Engels followed, with far-seeing eyes, every move- 
 ment of this barbarian government, down to the present day, 
 where its prisons are filled with political prisoners, and yet it 
 trembles before every labor movement. The time has come when 
 we must square accounts with these terrible scoundrels, under 
 the German flag of war." 
 
 The Pfaelzische Post of Ludwighafen wrote on the same day : 
 
 "This is a principle that was first established by our August 
 Bebel. This is the struggle of civilization against barbarism, and 
 in this struggle the proletariat will do its share." 
 
 The Muenchener Post of August ist: 
 
 "When it comes to defending our country against the bloody 
 Czardom we will not be made citizens of the second class." 
 
 The Halle Volksblatt wrote on August 5th : 
 
 "If this is so, if we have been attacked by Russia, and every- 
 thing seems to corroborate this statement then the Social-De- 
 mocracy, as a matter of course, must vote in favor of all means 
 of defense. With all our strength we must fight to drive Czar- 
 ism from our country !" 
 
 And on August i8th : 
 
 "Now that the die is cast in favor of the sword, it is not only
 
 THE CRISIS 67 
 
 the duty of national defense and national existence that puts the 
 weapon into our hands as into the hands of every German, but 
 also the realization that in the enemy whom we are fighting in the 
 east we are striking a blow at the foe of all culture and all pro- 
 gress. . . . The overthrow of Russia is synonymous with the vic- 
 tory of freedom in Europe. .". " 
 
 On August 5th, the Braunschweig er Volksfreund wrote : 
 
 "The irresistible force of military preparation drives every- 
 thing before it. But the class-conscious labor movement obeys, 
 not an outside force, but its own conviction, when it defends the 
 ground upon which it stands, from attack in the east." 
 
 The Essener Arbeiterzeitung cried out on August 3rd : 
 
 "If this country is threatened by Russia's determination, then 
 the Social-Democrats, since the fight is against Russian Blood- 
 Czarism, against the perpetrator of a million crimes against free- 
 dom and culture, will allow none to excell them in the fulfilment 
 of their duty, in their willingness to sacrifice. Down with Czar- 
 ism! Down with the home of Barbarism! Let that be our 
 slogan !" 
 
 Similarly the Bielef 'elder Volkswacht writes on August 4th : 
 
 "Everywhere the same cry: against Russian Despotism and 
 faithlessness." 
 
 The Elberf eld party-organ on August 5th : 
 
 "All western Europe is vitally interested in the extermination 
 of rotten murderous Czarism. But this human interest is crushed 
 by the greed of England and France to check the profits that 
 have been made possible by German capital." 
 
 The Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne : 
 
 "Do your duty, friends, wherever fate may place you. You 
 are fighting for the civilization of Europe, for the independence 
 of your fatherland, for your own welfare." 
 
 The Schleswig-Holstein Volkszeitung of August 7th writes :
 
 68 THE CRISIS 
 
 "Of course we are living in an age of capitalism. Of course 
 we will continue to have class struggles after the great war is 
 over. But these class struggles will be fought out in a freer 
 state, they will be far more confined to the economic field than 
 before. In the future the treatment of Socialists as outcasts, as 
 citizens of the second class, as politically rightless will be im- 
 possible, once the Czardom of Russia has vanished." 
 
 On August nth, the Hamburger Echo cried: 
 
 ''We are fighting to defend ourselves not so much against Eng- 
 land and France as against Czarism. But this war we carry on 
 with the greatest enthusiasm, for it is the war for civilization." 
 
 And the Luebeck party-organ declared, as late as September 
 4th: 
 
 "If European liberty is saved, then Europe will have German 
 arms to thank for it. Our fight is a fight against the worst enemy 
 of all liberty and all democracy." 
 
 Thus the chorus of the German party press sounded and re- 
 sounded. 
 
 In the beginning of the war the German government accepted 
 the proffered assistance. Nonchalantly it fastened the laurels of 
 the liberator of European culture to its helmet. Yes, it en- 
 deavored to carry through the role of the "liberator of nations," 
 though often with visible discomfort and rather awkward grace. 
 It flattered the Poles and the Jews in Russia, and egged one na- 
 tion on against the other, using the policies that had proven so 
 successful in their colonial warfare, where again and again they 
 played up one chief against the other. And the Social-Democrats 
 followed each leap and bound of German imperialism with re- 
 markable agility. While the Reichstag group covered up every 
 shameful outrage with a discrete silence the social-democratic 
 press filled the air with jubilant melodies, rejoicing in the liber- 
 ty that "German riflebutts" had brought to the poor victims of 
 Czarism.
 
 THE CRISIS 69 
 
 Even the theoretical organ of the party, the Neue Zeit, wrote 
 on the 28th of August : 
 
 "The border population of the "little father's" realm greeted 
 the coming of the German, troops with cries of joy. For these 
 Poles and Jews have but one conception of their fatherland, that 
 of corruption and rule by the knout. Poor devils, really father- 
 landless creatures, these downtrodden subjects of bloody Nicho- 
 las. Even should they desire to do so, they could find nothing to 
 defend but their chains. And so they live and toil, hoping and 
 longing that German rifles, carried by German men, will crush 
 the whole Czarist system. ... A clear and definite purpose still 
 lives in the German working-class, though the thunder of a world- 
 war is crashing over its head. It will defend itself from the allies 
 of Russian barbarism in the west to bring about an honorable 
 peace. It will give to the task of destroying Czarism the last 
 breath of man and beast." 
 
 After the social-democratic group had stamped the war as a 
 war of defense for the German nation and European culture, the 
 social-democratic press proceeded to hail it as the "savior of the 
 oppressed nations." Hindenburg became the executor of Marx 
 and Engels. 
 
 The memory of our party has played it a shabby trick. It for- 
 got all its principles, its pledges, the decision of international 
 congresses just at the moment when they should have found 
 their application. And to its great misfortune, it remembered 
 the heritage of Karl Marx and dug it out of the dust of passing 
 years at the very moment when it could serve only to decorate 
 Prussian militarism, for whose destruction Karl Marx was wil- 
 ling to sacrifice "the last breath of man and beast." Long for- 
 gotten chords that were sounded by Marx in the Neue Rheini- 
 sche Zeitung against the vassal state of Nicholas I, during the 
 German March Revolution of 1848, suddenly reawakened in the 
 ears of the German Social-Democracy in the year of Our Lord
 
 70 THE CRISIS 
 
 1914, and called them to arms, arm in arm with Prussian jun- 
 kerdom against the Russia of the Great Revolution of 1905. 
 
 This is where a revision should have been made; the s'ogan:-- 
 of the March Revolution should have been brought into accord 
 with the historical experiences of the last seventy years. 
 
 In 1848 Russia Czarism was, in truth, "the guardian of Europ- 
 ean reaction." The product of Russian social conditions, firmly 
 rooted in its medieval, agricultural state, absolutism was the 
 protector and at the same time the mighty director of monarchi- 
 cal reaction. This was weakened, particularly in Germany, 
 where a system of small states still obtained. As late as 1851 it 
 was possible for Nicholas I, to assure Berlin through the Prus- 
 sian consul von Rochow "that he would, indeed, have been pleased 
 to see the revolution destroyed to the roots when general von 
 Wrangel advanced upon Berlin in November, 1848." At another 
 time, in a warning to Manteuffel, the Czar stated, "that he relied 
 upon the Imperial Ministry, under the leadership of His High- 
 ness, to defend the rights of the crown against the chambers, 
 and give to the principles of conservatism their due." It was 
 possible for the same Nicholas I to bestow the Alexander Nevski 
 order on a Prussian Ministerial President in recognition of his 
 "constant efforts ... to maintain legal order in Prussia." 
 
 The Crimean war worked a noticeable change in this respect. 
 It ended with the military and therefore with the political bank- 
 ruptcy of the old system. Russian absolutism was forced to 
 grant reforms, to modernize its rule, to adjust itself to capitalist 
 conditions. In so doing, it gave its little finger to the devil who 
 already holds it firmly by the arm, and will eventually get it alto- 
 gether. The Crimean War was, by the way, an instructive exam- 
 ple of the kind of liberation that can be brought to a downtrod- 
 den people "at the point of the gun." The military overthrow at 
 Sedan brought France its republic. But this republic was not the
 
 THE CRISIS 71 
 
 gift of the Bismarck soldiery. Prussia at that time, as today, 
 can give to other peoples nothing but its own junker rule. The 
 republican France was the ripe fruit of inner social struggles 
 and of the three revolutions that had preceded it. The crash at 
 Sebastopol was in effect similar to that of Jena. But because 
 there was no revolutionary movement in Russia, it led to the out- 
 ward renovation and reaffirmation of the old regime. 
 
 But the reforms that opened the road for capitalist develop- 
 ment in Russia during the 6o's were possible only with the money 
 of a capitalist system. This money was furnished by western 
 European capital. It came from Germany and France, and has 
 created a new relationship that has lasted down to the present 
 day. Russian absolutism is now subsidized by the western 
 European bourgeoisie. No longer does the Russian Ruble "roll 
 in diplomatic chambers" as Prince William of Prussia bitterly 
 complained in 1854, "into the very chambers of the King." On 
 the contrary, German and French money is rolling to Petersburg 
 to feed a regime that would long ago have breathed its last with- 
 out this life-giving juice. Russian Czarism is today no longer 
 the product of Russian conditions; its root lies in the capitalist 
 conditions of western Europe. And the relationship is shifting 
 from decate to decade. In the same measure as the old root of 
 Russian absolutism in Russia itself is being destroyed, the new, 
 west-European root is growing stronger and stronger. Besides 
 lending their financial support, Germany and France, since 1870, 
 have been vicing with each other to lend Russia their political 
 support as well. -As revolutionary forces arise from the womb 
 of the Russian people itself to fight against Russian absolutism, 
 they meet with an ever growing resistence in western Europe, 
 which stands ready to lend to threatened Czarism its moral and 
 political support. So when, in the beginning of the 8o's the older 
 Russian socialist movement severely shook the Czarist govern- 
 ment and partly destroyed its authority within and without, Bis-
 
 72 THE CRISIS 
 
 marck made his treaty with Russia and strengthened its position 
 in international politics. 
 
 Capitalist development, tenderly nurtured by Czarism with its 
 own hands, finally bore fruit : in the 90*5 the revolutionary move- 
 ment of the Russian proletariat began. The erstwhile "guard- 
 ian of reaction" was forced to grant a meaningsless constitution, 
 to seek a new protector from the rising flood in its own country. 
 And it found this protector in Germany. The Germany of Bue- 
 low must pay the debt of gratitude that the Prussia of Wrangei 
 and Manteuffel had incurred. Relations were completely reversed. 
 Russian support against the revolution in Germany is superseded 
 by German aid against the revolution in Russia. Spies, outrages, 
 betrayals a demagogic agitation, like that which blessed the 
 times of the Holy Alliance, was unleashed in Germany against 
 the fighters for the cause of Russian freedom, and followed them 
 to the very doorsteps of the Russian Revolution. In the Koenigs- 
 berg trial of 1904 this wave of persecution was at its height. This 
 trial threw a scathing light upon a whole historical development 
 since 1848 and showed the complete change of relations between 
 Russian absolutism and European reaction. "Tua res agitur!" 
 cried a Prussian Minister of Justice to the ruling classes of Ger- 
 many, pointing to the tottering foundation of the Czarist regime. 
 "The establishment of a democratic republic in Russia would 
 strongly influence Germany," declared First District-Attorney 
 Schulze in Koenigsberg. "When my neighbor's home burns my 
 own is also in danger." And his assistant Casper also empha- 
 sized : "it is naturally not indifferent to Germany's public interests 
 whether this bulwark of absolutism stands or falls. Certainly the 
 flames of a revolutionary movement may easily spring over into 
 Germany. . ." 
 
 The Revolution was overthrown, but the very causes that led 
 to its temporary downfall are valuable in a discussion of the po- 
 sition taken by the German Social-Democracy in this war. That
 
 THE CRISIS 73 
 
 the Russian uprising in 1905-1906 was unsuccessful inspite of its 
 ..unequalled expenditure of revolutionary force, its clearness of 
 purpose and tenacity, can be ascribed to two distinct causes. The 
 one lies in the inner character of the Revolution itself, in its enor- 
 mous historical program, in the mass of economic and political 
 problems that it was forced to face. Some of them, for instance, 
 the agrarian problem, cannot possibly be solved within capitalist 
 society. There was the difficulty, furthermore, of creating a 
 class-state for the supremacy of the modern bourgeoisie against 
 the counter-revolutionary opposition of the bourgeoisie as a 
 whole. To the onlooker it would seem that the Russian Revolu- 
 tion was doomed to failure because it was a proletarian revolution 
 with bourgeois duties and problems, or if you wish, a bourgeois 
 revolution waged by socialist proletarian methods, a crash of two 
 generations amid lightning and thunder, the fruit of the delayed 
 industrial development of class conditions in Russia and their 
 overripeness in western Europe. From this point of view its 
 downfall in 1906 signifies not its bankruptcy, but the natural clos- 
 ing of the first chapter, upon which the second must follow with 
 the inevitability of a natural law. The second cause was of ex- 
 ternal nature: it lay in western Europe: European reaction once 
 more hastened to help its endangered protege. Not with lead and 
 bullets, although "German guns" were in German fists even in 
 1905 and only waited for a signal from Petersburg to attack the 
 neighboring Poles. Europe rendered an assistance that was 
 equally valuable: financial subsidy and political alliances were 
 arranged to help Czarism in Russia. French money paid for the 
 armed forces that broke down the Russian Revolution ; from Ger- 
 many came moral and political support that helped the Russian 
 government to clamber out from the depths of shame into which 
 Japanese torpedoes and Russian proletarian fists had thrust it. 
 In 1910, in Potsdam, official Germany received Russian Czarism 
 with open arms. The reception of the bloodstained monarch at
 
 74 THE CRISIS 
 
 the gates of the German capital was not only the German blessing 
 for the throttling of Persia, but above all for the hangman's work 
 of the Russian counter-revolution. It was the official banquet of 
 German and Europeon Kultur over what they believed to be the 
 grave of the Russian Revolution. 
 
 And strange! At that time, when this challenging feast upon 
 the grave of the Russian Revolution was held in its own home, 
 the German Social-Democracy remained silent, and had com- 
 pletely forgotten "the heritage of our masters" from 1848. At 
 that time, when the hangman was received in Potsdam, not a 
 sound, not a protest, not an article vetoed this expression of soli- 
 darity with the Russian counter-revolution. Only since this war 
 has begun, since the police permits it, the smallest party organ 
 intoxicates itself with bloodthirsty attacks upon the hangman of 
 Russian liberty. Yet nothing could have disclosed more clearly 
 than did this triumphal tour of the Czar in 1910, that the op- 
 pressed Russian proletariat was the victim not only of domestic 
 reaction but of western European reaction as well. Their fight, 
 like that of the March revolutionists in 1848, was against reac- 
 tion, not only in their own country, but against its guardians in 
 all other European countries. 
 
 After the inhuman crusades of the counter-revolution had 
 somewhat subsided, the revolutionary ferment in the Russian pro- 
 letariat once more became active. The flood began to rise and to 
 boil. Economic strikes in Russia, according to the official re- 
 ports, involved 46,623 workers and 256,386 days in 1910; 96,730 
 workers and 768,556 days in 1911; and 89,771 workers and 
 1,214,881 days in the first five months of 1912. Political mass- 
 strikes, protests and demonstrations comprised 1,005,000 workers 
 in 1912, 1,272,000 in 1913. In 1914 the flood rose higher and 
 higher. On January 22nd, the anniversary of the beginning of 
 the Revolution there was a demonstration mass-strike of 200,000
 
 THE CRISIS 75 
 
 workers. As in the days before the revolution in 1905, the flame 
 broke out in June, in the Caucasus. In Baku, 40,000 workers 
 were on a general strike. The flames leaped over to Petersburg. 
 On the 1 7th of June 80,000 workers in Petersburg laid down their 
 tools, on the 2Oth of July, 200,000 were out, July 23rd, the gene- 
 ral strike movement was spreading out all over Russia, barricades 
 were being built, the revolution was on its way. A few more 
 months and it would have come, its flags fluttering in the wind. 
 A few more years, and perhaps the whole world-political constel- 
 lation would have been changed, imperialism, perhaps, would 
 have received a firm check in its mad impulse. 
 
 But German reaction checked the revolutionary movement. 
 From Berlin and Vienna came declarations of war, and the Rus- 
 sian revolution was buried beneath its wreckage. "German guns" 
 are shattering, not Czarism, but its most dangerous enemy. The 
 hopefully fluttering flag of the revolution sank down amid a wild 
 whirlpool of war. But it sank honorably, and it will rise again 
 out of the horrible massacre, in spite of "German guns," in spite 
 of victory or defeat for Russia on the battlefields. 
 
 The national revolts in Russia which the Germans tried to 
 foster, too, were unsuccessful. The Russian provinces were 
 evidently less inclined to fall for the bait of Hindenburg's cohorts 
 than the German Social-Democracy. The Jews, practical people 
 that they are, were able to count out on their fingers that "Ger- 
 man fists" which have been unable to overthrow their own Prus- 
 sian reaction can hardly be expected to smash Russian absolu- 
 tism. The Poles, exposed to the tripleheaded war, were not in the 
 position to answer their "liberators" in audible language. But 
 they will have remembered that Polish children were taught to 
 pray the Lord's prayer in the German language with bloody welts 
 on their backs, will not have forgotten the liberality of Prussian 
 anti-Polish laws. All of them, Poles, Jews and Russians had no
 
 76 THE CRISIS 
 
 difficulty in understanding that the "German gun," when it des- 
 cends upon their heads, brings not liberty, but death. 
 
 To couple the legend of Russian liberation with its Marxian 
 heritage is worse than a poor joke on the part of the German So- 
 cial-Democracy. It is a crime. To Marx, the Russian revolution 
 was a turning point in the history of the world. Every political 
 and historical perspective was made dependent upon the one 
 consideration, "provided the Russian revolution has not already 
 broken out." Marx believed in the Russian revolution and ex- 
 pected it even at a time when Russia was only a state of vassals. 
 When the war broke out the Russian revolution had occurred. Its 
 first attempt had not been victorious ; but it could not be ignored ; 
 it is on the order of the day. And yet our German Social-Demo- 
 crats came with "German guns," declaring the Russian revolution 
 null and void; struck it from the pages of History. In 1848 
 Marx spoke from the German barricades; in Russia there was 
 hopeless reaction. In 1914 Russia was in the throes of a revolu- 
 tion; while its German "liberators" were cowed by the fists of 
 Prussian junkerdom. 
 
 But the liberating mission of the German armies was only an 
 episode. German imperialism soon raised its uncomfortable 
 mask and turned openly against France and England. Here, too, 
 it was supported valiantly by a large number of the party papers. 
 They ceased railing against the bloody Czar, and held up "per- 
 fidious Albion" and its merchant soul to the public disdain. They 
 set out to free Europe, no longer from Russian absolutism, but 
 from English naval supremacy. The hopeless confusion in 
 which the party had become entangled, found a drastic illustra- 
 tion in the desperate attempt made by the more thoughtful por- 
 tion of our party-press to meet this new change of front. In 
 vain they tried to force the war back into its original channels, 
 to nail it down to the""heritage of our masters" that is, to the
 
 THE CRISIS 77 
 
 myth that they, the Social-Democracy had themselves created 
 "With heavy heart I have been forced to mobilize the army 
 against a neighbor at whose side I have fought on so many 
 battlefields. With honest sorrow I saw a friendship, truly served 
 by Germany, break." That was simple, open, honest. But when 
 the rhetoric of the first weeks of war backed down before the 
 lapidary language of imperialism, the German Social-Democracy 
 lost its only plausible excuse.
 
 78 THE CRISIS 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Of equal importance in the attitude of the Social-Democracy 
 was the official adoption of a program of civil peace, i. e. the 
 cessation of the class struggle for the duration of the war. The 
 declaration that was read by the Social-Democratic group in the 
 Reichstag on the fourth of August had been agreed upon in ad- 
 vance with representatives of the government and the capitalist 
 parties. It was little more than a patriotic grand-stand play, 
 prepared behind the scenes and delivered for the benefit of the 
 people at home and in other nations. 
 
 To the leading elements in the labor movement, the vote in 
 favor of the war credits by the Reichstag group was a cue for 
 the immediate settlement of all labor controversies. Nay more, 
 they announced this to the manufacturers as a patriotic duty in- 
 curred by labor when it agreed to observe a civil peace. These 
 same labor leaders undertook to supply city labor to farmers in 
 order to assure a prompt harvest. The leaders of the Social- 
 Democratic women's movement united with capitalist women for 
 "National service" and placed the most important elements that 
 remained after the mobilization at the disposal of national Samar- 
 itan work. Socialist women worked in soup kitchens and on ad- 
 visory commissions instead of carrying on agitation work for the 
 party. Under the socialist exception laws the party had utilized 
 parliamentary elections to spread its agitation and to keep a firm 
 hold upon the population in spite of the state of siege that had 
 been declared against the party and the persecution of the social- 
 ist press. In this crisis the social-democratic movement has 
 voluntarily relinquished all propaganda and education in the in- 
 terest of the proletarian class struggle, during Reichstag and 
 Landtag elections. Parliamentary elections have everywhere 
 been reduced to the simple bourgeois formula; the catching of
 
 THE CRISIS 79 
 
 votes for the candidates of the party on the basis of an amicable 
 and peaceful settlement with its capitalist opponents. When the 
 social-democratic representatives in the Landtag and in the muni- 
 cipal commissions with the laudable exceptions of the Prussian 
 and the Alsatian Landtag with high sounding references to the 
 existing state of civil peace, voted their approval of the war 
 credits that had been demanded, it only emphasized how complete- 
 ly the party had broken with things as they were before the war. 
 The social-democratic press, with a few exceptions, proclaimed 
 the principle of national unity as the highest duty of the Ger- 
 man people. It warned the people not to withdraw their funds 
 from the savings banks lest by so doing they unbalance the eco- 
 nomic life of the nation, and hinder the savings banks in liberally 
 buying war-loan bonds. It pleaded with proletarian women that 
 they should spare their husbands at the front the tales of suffer- 
 ing which they and their children were being forced to undergo, 
 to bear in silence the neglect of the government, to cheer the fight- 
 ing warriors with happy stories of family life and favorable re- 
 ports of prompt assistance through government agencies. They 
 rejoiced that the educational work that had been conducted for 
 so many years in and through the labor movement had become a 
 'conspicuous asset in conducting the war. Something of this spirit 
 the following example will show: 
 
 "A friend in need is a friend indeed. This old adage has once 
 more proven its soundness. The social-democratic proletariat 
 that has been prosecuted and clubbed for its opinions went, like 
 one man, to protect our homes. German labor unions that had so 
 often suffered both in Germany and in Prussia report unanimous- 
 ly that the best of their members have joined the colors. Even 
 capitalist papers like the General-Anzeiger note the fact and ex- 
 press the conviction that "these people" will do their duty as well 
 as any man, that blows will rain most heavily where they stand." 
 
 "As for us, we are convinced that our labor unionists can do
 
 80 THE CRISIS 
 
 more than deal out blows. Modern mass armies have by no means 
 simplified the work of their generals. It is practically impossible 
 to move forward large troop divisions in close marching order 
 under the deadly fire of modern artillery. Ranks must be care- 
 fully widened, must be more accurately controlled. Modern war- 
 fare requires discipline and clearness of vision not only in the di- 
 visions but in every individual soldier. The war will show how 
 vastly human material has been improved by the educational work 
 of the labor unions, how well their activity will serve the nation 
 in these times of awful stress. The Russian and the French sol- 
 dier may be capable of marvelous deeds of bravery. But in cool 
 collected consideration none will surpass the German labor union- 
 ists. Then too, many of our organized workers know the ways 
 and by-ways of the border land as well as they know their own 
 pockets, and not a few of them are accomplished linguists. The 
 Prussian advance in 1866 has been termed a schoolmasters' vic- 
 tory. This will be a victory of labor union leaders." (Frankfur- 
 ter Volksstimme, August 18, 1914). 
 
 In the same strain the Neue Zeit, the theoretical organ of the 
 party, declared (No. 23, Sept. 25, 1914) : 
 
 "Until the question of victory or defeat has been decided, all 
 doubts must disappear, even as to the causes of the war. Today 
 there can be no difference of party, class and nationality within 
 the army or the population." 
 
 And in No. 8, Nov. 27, 1914, the same Neue Zeit declared 
 in a chapter on "The Limitations of the International" : 
 
 "The world war divides the socialists of the world into differ- 
 ent camps and especially into different national camps. The In- 
 ternational cannot prevent this. In other words, the International 
 ceases to be an effective instrument in times of war. It is, on 
 the whole, a peace instrument. Its great historic problem is the 
 struggle for peace and the class struggle in times of peace." 
 
 Briefly, therefore, beginning with the fourth of August until
 
 THE CRISIS 81 
 
 the day when peace shall be declared, the social-democracy has 
 declared the class struggle extinct. The first thunder of Krupp 
 cannons in Belgium welded Germany into a wonderland of class 
 solidarity and social harmony. 
 
 How is this miracle to be understood? The class struggle is 
 known to be not a social-democratic invention that can be arbi- 
 trarily set aside for a period of time whenever it may seem con- 
 venient to do so. The proletarian class struggle is older than the 
 social-democracy, is an elementary product of class society. It 
 flamed up all over Europe when capitalism first came into power. 
 The modern proletariat was not led by the social-democracy into 
 the class struggle. On the contrary, the international social-dem- 
 ocratic movement was called into being by the class struggle -to 
 bring a conscious aim and unity into the various local and scat- 
 tered fragments of the class struggle. What then changed in this 
 respect when the war broke out ? Have private property, capital- 
 ist exploitation and class rule ceased to exist? Or have the 
 propertied classes in a spell of patriotic fervor declared: in view 
 of the needs of the war we hereby turn over the means of produc- 
 tion, the earth, the factories and the mills thereon, into the pos- 
 session of the people? Have they relinquished the right to make 
 profits out of these possessions? Have they set aside all political 
 privileges, will they sacrifice them upon the altar of the father- 
 land, now that it is in danger? It is, to say the least, a rather 
 naive hypothesis, and sounds almost like a story from a kinder- 
 garten primer. And yet the declaration of our official leaders 
 that the class struggle has been suspended, permits no other in- 
 terpretation. Of course nothing of the sort has occurred. Prop- 
 erty rights, exploitation and class rule, even political oppression 
 in all its Prussian thoroughness have remained intact. The can- 
 non in Belgium and in Eastern Prussia have not had the slightest 
 influence upon the fundamental social and political structure of 
 Germany.
 
 82 THE CRISIS 
 
 The cessation of the class struggle was, therefore, a deplorably 
 one-sided affair. While capitalist oppression and exploitation, 
 the worst enemies of the working class remain, socialist and labor 
 union leaders have generously delivered the working class, with- 
 out a struggle, into the hands of the enemy for the duration of 
 the war. While the ruling classes are fully armed with the prop- 
 erty and supremacy rights, the working class, at the advice of the 
 Social-Democracy has laid down its arms. 
 
 Once before, in 1848 in France, the proletariat experienced 
 this miracle of class harmony, this fraternity of all classes of a 
 modern capitalist state of society. In his "Class Struggles in 
 France," Karl Marx writes: In the eyes of the proletariat, who 
 confused the moneyed aristocracy with the bourgeoisie, in the 
 imagination of republican idealists, who denied the very exist- 
 ence of classes, or attributed them to a monarchical form of gov- 
 ernment, in the deceitful phrases of those bourgeois who had 
 hitherto been excluded from power, the rule of the bourgeoisie 
 was ended when the republic was proclaimed. At that time all 
 royalists became republican, all millionaires in Paris became 
 laborers. In the word "Fraternit6," the brotherhood of man, this 
 imaginary destruction of classes found official expression. This 
 comfortable abstraction from class differences, this sentimental 
 balancing of class interests, this Utopian disregard of the class 
 struggle, this "Fraternit6" was the real slogan of the February 
 revolution. . . The Parisian proletariat rejoiced in an orgy of 
 brotherhood. . . The Parisian proletariat, looking upon the re- 
 public as its own creation, naturally acclaimed every act of the 
 provisional bourgeois government. Willingly it permitted Caus- 
 sidiere to use its members as policemen to protect the property 
 of Paris. With unquestioning faith it allowed Louis Blanc to 
 regulate wage differences betwen workers and masters. In their 
 eyes it was a matter of honor to preserve the fair name of the 
 republic before the peoples of Europe."
 
 THE CRISIS 83 
 
 Thus in February, 1848, a naive Parisian proletariat set aside 
 the class struggle. But let us not forget that even they committed 
 this mistake only after the July monarchy had been crushed by 
 their revolutionary action, after a republic had been established. 
 The fourth of August, 1914, is an inverted February revolution : 
 It is the setting aside of class differences, not under a republic, 
 but under a military monarchy, not after a victory of the people 
 over reaction, but after a victory of reaction over the people, not 
 with the proclamation of "Libert^, Egalite, Fraternite," but with 
 the proclamation of a state of siege, after the press had been 
 choked and the constitution annihilated. 
 
 Impressively the government of Germany proclaimed a civil 
 peace. Solemnly the parties promised to abide by it. But as ex- 
 perienced politicians these gentlemen know full well that it is 
 fatal to trust too much to promises. They secured civil peace for 
 themselves by the very real measure of a military dictatorship. 
 This too the social-democratic group accepted without protest or 
 opposition. In the declarations of August fourth and December 
 second there is not a syllable of indignation over the affront con- 
 tained in the proclamation of military rule. When it voted for 
 civil peace and war credits, the social-democracy silently gave its 
 consent to military rule as well, and laid itself, bound and gagged, 
 at the feet of the ruling classes. The declaration of military rule 
 was purely an anti-socialist measure. From no other side were 
 resistance, protest, action, and difficulties to be expected. As a 
 reward for its capitulation the social-democracy merely received 
 what it would have received under any circumstances, even after 
 an unsuccessful resistance, namely military rule. The impres- 
 sive declaration of the Reichstag group emphasizes the old so- 
 cialist principle of the right of nations to self-determination, as 
 an explanation of their vote in favor of war credits. Self-deter- 
 mination for the German proletariat was the straight- jacket of 
 a state of siege. Never in the history of the world has a party 
 made itself more ridiculous.
 
 84 THE CRISIS 
 
 But more ! In refuting the existence of the class struggle, the 
 social-democracy has denied the very basis of its own existence. 
 What is the very breath of its body, if not the class struggle? 
 What role could it expect to play in the war, once having sacri- 
 ficed the class struggle, the fundamental principle of its exist- 
 ence? The social-democracy has destroyed its mission, for the 
 period of the war, as an active political party, as a representative 
 of working class politics. It has thrown aside the most important 
 weapon it possessed, the power of criticism of the war from the 
 peculiar point of view of the working class. Its only mission now 
 is to play the role of the gendarme over the working class under 
 a state of military rule. 
 
 German freedom, that same German freedom for which, ac- 
 cording to the declaration of the Reichstag group, Krupp can- 
 nons are now fighting, has been endangered by this attitude of 
 the social-democracy far beyond the period of the present war. 
 The leaders of the Social-Democracy are convinced that demo- 
 cratic liberties for the working class will come as a reward for 
 its allegiance to the fatherland. But never in the history of the 
 world has an oppressed class received political rights as a reward 
 for service rendered to the ruling classes. History is full of 
 examples of shameful deceit on the part of the ruling classes, 
 even when solemn promises were made before the war broke out. 
 The Social-Democracy has not assured the extension of liberty 
 in Germany. It has sacrificed those liberties that the working 
 class possessed before the war broke out. The indifference with 
 which the German people have allowed themselves to be deprived 
 of the freedom of the press, of the right of assembly and of pub- 
 lic life, the fact that they not only calmly bore, but even ap- 
 plauded the state of siege, is unexampled in the history of modern 
 society. In England the freedom of the press has nowhere been 
 violated, in France there is incomparably more freedom of public 
 opinion than in Germany. In no country has public opinion so
 
 THE CRISIS 85 
 
 completely vanished, nowhere has it been so completely super- 
 seded by official opinion, by the order of the government, as in 
 Germany. Even in Russia there is only the destructive work of 
 a public censor who effectively wipes out opposition of opinion. 
 But not even there have they descended to the custom of provid- 
 ing articles ready for the press to the opposition papers. In no 
 other country has the government forced the opposition press to 
 express in its columns the politics that have been dictated and 
 ordered by the government in "Confidential Conferences." Such 
 measures were unknown even in Germany during the war of 
 1870. At that time the press enjoyed unlimited freedom, and ac- 
 companied the events of the war, to Bismarck's active resent- 
 ment, with criticism that was often exceedingly sharp. The 
 newspapers were full of active discussion on war aims, on ques- 
 tions of annexation, and constitutionality. When Johann Jacobi 
 was arrested, a storm of indignation swept over Germany, so 
 that even Bismarck felt obliged to disavow all responsibility for 
 this "mistake" of the powers of reaction. Such was the situation 
 in Germany at a time when Bebel and Liebknecht, in the name 
 of the German working class, had declined all community of 
 interests with the ruling jingoes. It took a Social-Democracy with 
 four and one-half million votes to conceive of the touching 
 "Burgfrieden," to assent to war credits, to bring upon us the 
 worst military dictatorship that was ever suffered to exist. That 
 such a thing is possible in Germany to-day, that not only the bour- 
 geois press, but the highly developed and influential socialist press 
 as well permits these things without even the pretence of oppo- 
 sition bears a fatal significance for the future of Germany liberty. 
 It proves that society in Germany to-day has within itself no 
 foundation for political freedom, since it allows itself to be thus 
 lightly deprived of its most sacred rights. Let us not forget that 
 the political rights that existed in Germany before the war were 
 not won, as were those of France and England, in great and re-
 
 86 THE CRISIS 
 
 peated revolutionary struggles, are not firmly anchored in the 
 lives of the people by the power of revolutionary tradition. They 
 are the gift of a Bismarckian policy granted after a period of 
 victorious counter - revolution that lasted over twenty years. 
 German liberties did not ripen on the field of revolution, they are 
 the product of diplomatic gambling by Prussian military mon- 
 archy, they are the cement with which this military monarchy 
 has united the present German empire. Danger threatens the 
 free development of German freedom not, as the German Reichs- 
 tag group believe, from Russia, but in Germany itself. It lies 
 in the peculiar counter-revolutionary origin of the German 
 constitution, and looms dark in the reactionary powers that have 
 controlled the German state since the empire was founded, con- 
 ducting a silent but relentless war against these pitiful "German 
 liberties." The Junkers of east of the Elbe, the business jingoes, 
 the arch-reactionaries of the Center, the degraded "German 
 liberals," the personal rulership, the sway of the sword, the 
 Zabern policy, that triumphed all over Germany before the war 
 broke out, these are the real enemies of culture and liberty, and 
 the war, the state of siege and the attitude of the social demo- 
 cracy, are strengthening the powers of darkness all over the land. 
 The Liberal, to be sure, can explain away this graveyard quiet 
 in Germany with a characteristically liberal explanation; to him 
 it is only a temporary sacrifice, for the duration of the war. But 
 to a people that is politically ripe, a sacrifice of its rights and its 
 public life, even temporarily, is as impossible as for a human 
 being to give up, for a time, his right to breathe. A people that 
 gives silent consent to military government in times of war 
 thereby admits that political independence at any time is super- 
 fluous. The passive submission of the Social Democracy to the 
 present state of siege and its vote for war credits without attach- 
 ing the slightest condition thereto, its acceptance of a civil peace, 
 has demoralized the masses, the only existing pillar of German
 
 THE CRISIS S? 
 
 constitutional government, has strengthened the reaction of its 
 rulers, the enemies of constitutional government. 
 
 By sacrificing the class struggle our party has moreover, once 
 and for all, given up the possibility of making its influence ef- 
 fectively felt in determining the extent of the war and the terms 
 of peace. To its own official declaration, its acts have 
 been a stinging blow. While protesting against all annexations, 
 which are, after all, the logical consequences of an imperialistic 
 war that is successful from the military point of view, it has 
 handed over every weapon that the working class possessed that 
 might have empowered the masses to mobilize public opinion in 
 their own direction, to exert an effective pressure upon the terms 
 of war and of peace. By assuring militarism of peace and quiet 
 at home the Social Democracy has given its military rulers per- 
 mission to follow their own course without even considering the 
 interests of the masses, has unleashed in the hearts of the ruling 
 classes the most unbridled imperialistic tendencies. In other 
 words, when the Social Democracy adopted its platform of civil 
 peace, and the political disarmament of the working class, it con- 
 demned its own demand of no annexations to impotency. 
 
 Thus the Social Democracy has added another crime to the 
 heavy burden it already has to bear, namely the lengthening of the 
 war. The commonly accepted dogma that we can oppose the 
 war only so long as it is threatened, has become a dangerous trap. 
 As an inevitable consequence, once the war has come, social 
 democratic political action is at an end. There can be, then, 
 but one question, victory or defeat, i. e., the class struggle must 
 stop for the period of the war. But actually the greatest prob- 
 lem for the political movement of the Social Democracy begins 
 only after the war has broken out. At the international con- 
 gresses held in Stuttgart in 1907 and in Basel in 1912, the German 
 party and labor union leaders unanimously voted in favor of a 
 resolution which says:
 
 88 THE CRISIS 
 
 "Should war nevertheless break out, it shall be the duty of the 
 Social-Democracy to work for a speedy peace, and to strive with 
 every means in its power to utilize the industrial and political 
 crisis to accomplish the awakening of the people, thus hastening 
 the overthrow of capitalist class rule". 
 
 What has the Social-Democracy done in this war? Exactly 
 the contrary. By voting in favor of war credits and entering 
 upon a civil peace, it has striven, by all the means in its power, 
 to prevent the industrial and political crisis, to prevent an awak- 
 ening of the masses by the war. It strives "with all the means 
 in its power" to save the capitalist state from its own anarchy, 
 to reduce the number of its victims. It is claimed we have often 
 heard this argument used by Reichstag deputies that not one 
 man less would have fallen upon the battle fields if the Social 
 Democratic group had voted against the war credits. Our party 
 press has steadfastly maintained that we must support and join 
 in the defence of our country in order to reduce the number of 
 bloody victims that this war shall cost. But the policy that we 
 have followed out has had exactly the opposite effect. In the 
 first place, thanks to the civil peace, and the patriotic attitude of 
 the Social Democracy, the imperialistic war unleashed its furies 
 without fear. Hitherto, fear of restiveness at home, fear of the 
 fury of the hungry populace, have been a load upon the minds 
 of the ruling classes that effectively checked them in their bel- 
 licose desires. In the well known words of Buelow: "they are 
 trying to put off the war chiefly because they fear the Social 
 Democracy". Rohrbach says in his "Krieg und die Deutsche 
 Politik", page 7, "unless elemental catastrophies intervene, the 
 only power that can force Germany to make peace is the hunger 
 of the breadless". Obviously he meant a hunger that attracts at- 
 tention, that forces itself unpleasantly upon the ruling classes in 
 order to force them to pay heed to its demands. Let us see,
 
 THE CRISIS 89 
 
 finally, what a prominent military theoretician, General Bern- 
 hardi, says, in his great work "Vom Heutigen Kriege." "Thus 
 modern mass armies make war difficult for a variety of reasons. 
 Moreover they constitute, in and of themselves, a danger that 
 must never be underestimated. 
 
 "The mechanism of such an army is so huge and so compli- 
 cated that it can remain efficient and flexible only so long as its 
 cogs and wheels work, in the main, dependably, and obvious 
 moral confusion is carefully prevented. These are things that 
 cannot be completely avoided, as little as we can conduct a war 
 exclusively with victorious battles. They can be overcome if 
 they appear only within certain restricted limits. But when 
 great, compact masses once shake off their leaders, when a spirit 
 of panic becomes widespread, when a lack of sustenance becomes 
 extensively felt, when the spirit of revolt spreads out among 
 the masses of the army, then the army becomes not only in- 
 effectual against the enemy, it becomes a menace to itself and to 
 its leaders. When the army bursts the bands of discipline, when 
 it voluntarily interrupts the jcourse of military operation, it 
 creates problems that its leaders are unable to solve. 
 
 "War, with its modern mass armies is, under all circumstances, 
 a dangerous game, a game that demands the greatest possible 
 personal and financial sacrifice the state can offer. Under such 
 circumstances it is clear that provision must be made every- 
 where that the war, once it has broken out, be brought to an end 
 as quickly as possible, to release the extreme tension that must 
 accompany this supreme effort on the part of whole nations." 
 
 Thus capitalist politicians and military authorities alike be- 
 lieve war, with its modern mass armies, to be a dangerous game. 
 And therein lay for the Social Democracy the most effectual op-
 
 90 THE CRISIS 
 
 portunity, to prevent the rulers of the present day from precipit- 
 ating war and to force them to end it as rapidly as possible. But 
 the position of the Social Democracy in this war cleared away 
 all doubts, has torn down the dams that held back the storm- 
 flood of militarism. In fact it has created a power for which 
 neither Bernhardi nor any other capitalist statesman dared hope 
 in his wildest dreams. From the camp of the social-democrats 
 came the cry : "Durchhalten", i. e., a continuation of this human 
 slaughter. And so the thousands of victims that have fallen 
 for months on the battlefields lie upon our conscience.
 
 THE CRISIS 91 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 "But since we have been unable to prevent the war, since it 
 has come in spite of us, and our country is facing invasion, shall 
 w.e leave our country defenseless! Shall we deliver it into the 
 hands of the enemy? Does not Socialism demand the right of 
 nations to determine their own destinies ? Does it not mean that 
 every people is justified, nay more, is in duty bound, to protect its 
 liberties, its independence? 'When the house is on fire, shall we 
 not first try to put out the blaze before stopping to ascertain the 
 incendiary?' " 
 
 These arguments have been repeated, again and again in de- 
 fense of the attitude of the Social-Democracy, in Germany and in 
 France. 
 
 Even in the neutral countries this argument has been used. 
 Translated into Dutch we read for instance: "When the ship 
 leaks must we not seek, first of all, to stop the hole?" 
 
 To be sure. Fie upon a people that capitulates before invasion 
 and fie upon a party that capitulates before the enemy within. 
 
 But there is one thing that the fireman in the burning house has 
 forgotten : that in the mouth of a Socialist the phrase "Defending 
 one's fatherland" cannot mean playing the role of cannon fodder 
 under the command of an imperialistic bourgeoisie. 
 
 Is an invasion really the horror of all horrors, before which all 
 class conflict within the country must subside as though spell- 
 bound by some supernatural witchcraft ? According to the police 
 theory of bourgeois patriotism and military rule, every evidence 
 of the class struggle is a crime against the interests of the country 
 because they maintain that it constitutes a weakening of the 
 stamina of the nation. The Social-Democracy has allowed itself 
 to be perverted into this same distorted point of view. Has not
 
 92 THE CRISIS 
 
 the history of modern capitalist society shown that in the eyes of 
 capitalist society, foreign invasion is by no means the unmitigated 
 terror as which it is generally painted ; that on the contrary it is a 
 measure to which the bourgeoisie has frequently and gladly 
 resorted as an effective weapon against the .enemy within? Did 
 not the Bourbons and the aristocrats of France invite foreign 
 invasion against the Jacobites? Did not the Austrian counter- 
 revolution in 1849 call out the French invaders against Rome, the 
 Russian against Budapest? Did not the "Party of Law and 
 Order" in France in 1850 openly threaten an invasion of the Cos- 
 sacks in order to bring the national assembly to terms ? And was 
 not the Bonaparte army released, and the support of the Prussian 
 army against the Paris Commune assured, by the famous contract 
 between Jules Favre, Thiers and Co., and Bismarck? This his- 
 torical evidence led Karl Marx, 45 years ago, to expose the 
 "national wars" of modern capitalist society as miserable frauds. 
 In his famous address to the General Council of the International 
 on the downfall of the Paris Commune, he said : 
 
 "That, after the greatest war of modern times the belligerent 
 armies, the victor and the vanquished, should unite for the mutual 
 butchery of the proletariat this incredible event proves, not as 
 Bismarck would have us believe, the final overthrow of the new 
 social power but the complete disintegration of the old bour- 
 geois society. The highest heroic accomplishment of which the 
 old order is capable, is the national war. And this has now 
 proved to be a fraud perpetrated by government for no other 
 purpose than to put off the class struggle, a fraud that is bared 
 as soon as the class struggle flares up in a civil war. Class rule 
 can no longer hide behind a national uniform. The national gov- 
 ernments are united against the proletariat." 
 
 In capitalist history, invasion and class struggle are not oppo- 
 sites, as the official legend would have us believe, but one is the 
 means and the expression of the other. Just as invasion is the
 
 THE CRISIS 93 
 
 true and tried weapon in the hands of capital against the class 
 struggle, so on the other hand the fearless pursuit of the class 
 struggle has always proven the most effective preventative of 
 foreign invasions. On the brink of modern times are the 
 examples of the Italian cities, Florence, and Milano, with their 
 century of bitter struggle against the Hohenstaufen. The stormy 
 history of these cities, torn by inner conflicts, proves that the 
 force and the fury of inner class struggles not only does not 
 weaken the defensive powers of the community, but that on the 
 contrary, from their fires shoot the only flames that are strong 
 enough to withstand every attack from a foreign foe. 
 
 But the classic example of our own times is the great French 
 Revolution. In '1793 Paris, the heart of France, was surrounded 
 by enemies. And yet Paris and France at that time did not suc- 
 cumb to the invasion of a stormy flood of European coalition ; on 
 the contrary, it welded its force in the face of the growing danger, 
 to a more gigantic opposition. If France, at that critical time, 
 was able to meet each new coalition of the enemy with a new 
 miraculous loosening of the inmost forces of society in the great 
 miraculous and undiminished fighting spirit, it was only because 
 of the impetuous loosening of the inmost forces of society in the 
 great struggle of the classes of France. Today, in the perspective 
 of a century, it is clearly discernible that only this intensification of 
 the class struggle, that only the Dictatorship of the French people 
 and their fearless radicalism, could produce means and forces out 
 of the soil of France, sufficient to defend and to sustain a new- 
 born society against a world of enemies, against the intrigues of 
 a dynasty, against the traitorous machinations of the aristocrats, 
 against the attempts of the clergy, against the treachery of their 
 generals, against the opposition of sixty departments and provin- 
 cial capitals, and against the united armies and navies of 
 monarchial Europe. The centuries have proven that not the state 
 of siege, but relentless class struggle is the power that awakens 
 the spirit of self-sacrifice, the moral strength of the masses, that
 
 94 THE CRISIS 
 
 the class struggle is the best protection and the best defense 
 against a foreign enemy. 
 
 This same tragic quidproquo victimized the Social-Democracy 
 when it based its attitude in this war upon the doctrine of the 
 right of national self-determination. 
 
 It is true that Socialism gives to every people the right of inde- 
 pendence and the freedom of independent control of its own 
 destinies. But it is a veritable perversion of Socialism to regard 
 present day capitalist society as the expression of this self-deter- 
 mination of nations. Where is there a nation in which the people 
 have had the right to determine the form and conditions of their 
 national, political and social existence? In Germany the deter- 
 mination of the people found concrete expression in the demands 
 formulated by the German revolutionary democrats of 1848; the 
 first fighters of the German proletariat, Marx, Engels, Lassalle, 
 Bebel and Liebknecht, proclaimed and fought for a united Ger- 
 man Republic. For this ideal the revolutionary forces in Berlin 
 and in Vienna, in those tragic days of March, shed their heart's 
 blood upon the barricades. To carry out this program, Marx 
 and Engels demanded that Prussia take up arms against Czar- 
 ism. The foremost demand made in the national program was 
 for the liquidation of "the heap of organized decay, the Hapsburg 
 monarchy," as well as of two dozen other dwarf monarchies 
 within Germany itself. The overthrow of the German revolu- 
 tion, the treachery of the German bourgeoisie to its own 
 democratic ideals, led to the Bismarck regime and to its creature, 
 present-day Greater Prussia, twenty-five fatherlands under one 
 helm, the German empire. Modern Germany is built upon the 
 grave of the March Revolution, upon the wreckage of the right 
 of self-determination of the German people. The present war, 
 supporting Turkey and the Hapsburg monarchy, and strengthen- 
 ing German military autocracy is a second burial of the March 
 revolutionists, and of the national program of the German people.
 
 THE CRISIS 95 
 
 It is a fiendish jest of history that the Social-Democrats, the heirs 
 of the German patriots of 1848, should go forth in this war with 
 the banner of "self-determination of nations" held aloft in their 
 hands. But, perhaps the third French Republic, with its colonial 
 possessions in four continents and its colonial horrors in two, 
 is the expression of the self-determination of the French nation ? 
 Or the British nation, with its India, with its South African rule 
 of a million whites over a population of five million colored 
 people? Or perhaps Turkey, or the Empire of the Czar? 
 
 Capitalist polfticians, in whose eyes the rulers of the people 
 and the ruling classes are the nation, can honestly speak of the 
 "right of national self-determination" in connection with such 
 colonial empires. To the Socialist, no nation is free whose 
 national existence is based upon the enslavement of another 
 people, for to him colonial peoples, too, are human beings, and, 
 as such, parts of the national state. International Socialism 
 recognizes the right of free independent nations, with equal 
 rights. But Socialism alone can create such nations, can bring 
 self-determination of their peoples. This slogan of Socialism is 
 like all its others, not an apology for existing conditions, but a 
 guide-post, a spur for the revolutionary, regenerative, active 
 policy of the proletariat. So long as capitalist states exist, i. e., 
 so long as imperialistic world policies determine and regulate the 
 inner and the outer life of a nation, there can be no "national 
 self-determination" either in war or in peace. 
 
 In the present imperialistic milieu there can be no wars of 
 national self-defense. Every socialist policy that depends upon 
 this determining historic milieu, that is willing to fix its policies 
 in the world whirlpool from the point of view of a single nation 
 is built upon a foundation of sand. 
 
 We have already attempted to show the background for the 
 present conflict between Germany and her opponents. It was 
 necessary to show up more clearly the actual forces and relations
 
 96 
 
 that constitute the motive power behind the present war, because 
 this legend of the defense of the existence, the freedom and 
 civilization of Germany plays an important part in the attitude of 
 our group in the Reichstag and our Socialist press. 
 Against this legend historical truth must be emphasized to show 
 that this is a war. that has been prepared by German militarism 
 and its world-political ideas for years, that it was brought about 
 in the Summer of 1914, by Austrian and German diplomacy, with 
 a full realization of its import. 
 
 In a discussion of the general causes of tha war, and of its 
 significance, the question of the "guilty party" is completely 
 beside the issue. Germany certainly has not the right to speak of 
 a war of defense, but France and England have little more 
 justification. They too, are protecting, not their national, but their 
 world-political existence, their old imperialistic possessions, from 
 the attacks of the German upstart. Doubtless the raids of Ger- 
 man and Austrian imperialism in the Orient started the confla- 
 gration, but French imperialism, by devouring Morocco, and 
 English imperialism, in its attempts to rape Mesopotamia, and all 
 the other measures that were calculated to secure its rule of force 
 in India, Russia's Baltic policies, aiming toward Constantinople, 
 all of these factors have carried together and piled up, brand for 
 brand, the firewood that feeds the conflagration. If capitalist 
 armaments have played an important role as the mainspring that 
 times the outbreak of the catastrophe, it was a competition of 
 armaments in all nations. And if Germany laid the cornerstone 
 for European competitive armaments by Bismarck's policy of 
 1870, this policy was furthered by that of the second Empire and 
 by the military-colonial policies of the third empire, by its ex- 
 pansions in East Asia and in Africa. 
 
 The French Socialists have some slight foundation for their 
 illusion of "national defense," because neither the French gov- 
 ernment nor the French people entertained the slightest warlike 
 desires in July 1914. "Today everyone in France is honestly,
 
 THE CRISIS 9? 
 
 uprightly and without reservation for peace," insisted Jaures in 
 the last speech of his life, on the eve of the war, when he ad- 
 dressed a meeting in the People's House in Brussels. This was 
 absolutely true, and gives the psychological explanation for the 
 indignation of the French Socialists when this criminal war was 
 forced upon their country. But this fact was not sufficient to 
 determine the Socialist attitude on the world war as an historic 
 occurrence. 
 
 The events that bore the present war did not begin in July 1914 
 but reach back for decades. Thread by thread they have been 
 woven together on the loom of an inexorable natural develop- 
 ment, until the firm net of imperialist world politics has encircled 
 five continents. It is a huge historical complex of events, whose 
 roots reach deep down into the Plutonic deeps of economic crea- 
 tion, whose outermost branches spread out and point away into 
 a dimly dawning new world, events before whose all-embracing 
 immensity, the conception of guilt and retribution, of defense and 
 offense, sink into pale nothingness. 
 
 Imperialism is not the creation of any one or of any group of 
 states. It is the product of a particular stage of ripeness in the 
 world development of capital, an innately international condition, 
 an indivisible whole, that is recognizable only in all its relations, 
 and from which no nation can hold aloof at will. From this point 
 of view only is it possible to understand correctly the question of 
 "national defense" in the present war. 
 
 The national state, national unity and independence were the 
 ideological shield under which the capitalist nations of central 
 Europe constituted themselves in the past century. Capitalism 
 is incompatible with economic and political divisions, with the 
 accompanying splitting up into small states. It needs for its 
 development large, united territories, and a state of mental and 
 intellectual development in the nation that will lift the demands 
 and needs of society to a plane corresponding to the prevailing
 
 98 THE CRISIS 
 
 stage of capitalistic production, and to the mechanism of modern 
 capitalist class rule. Before capitalism could develop, it sought 
 to create for itself a territory sharply defined by national limita- 
 tions. This program was carried out only in France at the time 
 of the great revolution, for in the national and political heritage 
 left to Europe by the feudal middle ages, this could be accom- 
 plished only by revolutionary measures. In the rest of Europe this 
 nationalization, like the revolutionary movement as a whole, 
 remained the patchwork of half-kept promises. The German 
 empire, modern Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey, the Russian 
 Empire and the British world-empire, are all living proofs of this 
 fact. The national program could play a historic role only so 
 long as it represented the ideological expression of a growing 
 bourgeoisie, lusting for power, until it had fastened its class rule, 
 in some way or other, upon the great nations of central Europe 
 and had created within them the necessary tools and conditions 
 of its growth. Since then, imperialism has buried the old bour- 
 geois democratic program completely by substituting expansion- 
 istic activity irrespective of national relationships for the original 
 program of the bourgeoisie in all nations. The national phrase, 
 to be sure, has been preserved, but its real content, its function 
 has been perverted into its very opposite. Today the nation is 
 but a cloak that covers imperialistic desires, a battle cry for im- 
 perialistic rivalries, the last ideological measure with which the 
 masses can be persuaded to play the role of cannon fodder in 
 imperialistic wars. 
 
 This general tendency of present day capitalist policies deter- 
 mines the policies of the individual states as their supreme 
 blindly operating law, just as the laws of economic competition 
 determine the conditions under which the individual manufac- 
 turer shall produce. 
 
 Let us assume for a moment, for the sake of argument, for the 
 purpose of investigating this phantom of "national wars" that 
 controls Social-Democratic politics at the present time, that in
 
 THE CRISIS 99 
 
 one of the belligerent states, the war at its outbreak was purely 
 one of national defense. Military success would immediately 
 demand the occupation of foreign territory. But the existence 
 of influential capitalist groups, interested in imperialistic annex- 
 ations, will awaken expansionistic appetites as the war goes on. 
 The imperialistic tendency that, at the beginning of hostilities, 
 may have been existent only in embryo, will shoot up and expand 
 in the hothouse atmosphere of war until they will in a short time, 
 determine its character, its aims and its results. Furthermore, the 
 system of alliance between military states that has ruled the 
 political relations of these nations for decades in the past, makes 
 it inevitable that each of the belligerent parties in the course of 
 war, should try to bring its allies to its assistance, again purely 
 from motives of self-defense. Thus one country after another is 
 drawn into the war, inevitably new imperialistic circles are 
 touched and others are created. Thus England drew in Japan, 
 and, spreading the war into Asia, has brought China into the 
 circle of political problems and has influenced the existing rivalry 
 between Japan and the United States, between England and 
 Japan, thus heaping up new material for future conflicts. Thus 
 Germany has dragged Turkey into the war, bringing the question 
 of Constantinople, of the Balkans and of Western Asia directly 
 into the foreground of affairs. Even he who did not realize at 
 the outset that the world war, in its causes, was purely impe- 
 rialistic, cannot fail to see after a dispassionate view of its effects 
 that war, under the present conditions, automatically and inevi- 
 tably develops into a process of world division. This was apparent 
 from the very first. The wavering balance of power between the 
 two belligerent parties forces each, if only for military reasons, 
 in order to strengthen its own position, or in order to frustrate 
 possible attacks, to hold the neutral nations in check by intensive 
 deals in peoples and nations, such as the German-Austrian offers 
 to Italy, Rumania, Bulgaria and Greece on the one hand, and the 
 English-Russian bids on the other. The "National war of de-
 
 100 THE CRISIS 
 
 fense" has the surprising effect of creating, even in the neutral 
 nations, a general transformation of ownership and relative 
 power, always in direct line with expansionistic tendencies. 
 Finally the fact that all modern capitalist states have colonial 
 possessions that will, even though the war may have begun as a 
 war of national defense, be drawn into the conflict from purely 
 military considerations, the fact that each country will strive to 
 occupy the colonial possessions of its opponent, or at least to 
 create disturbances therein, automatically turns every war into 
 an imperialistic world conflagration. 
 
 Thus the conception of even that modest, devout fatherland- 
 loving war of defense that has become the ideal of our parlia- 
 mentarians and editors is pure fiction, and shows, on their part, a 
 complete lack of understanding of the whole war and its world 
 relations. The character of the war is determined, not by solemn 
 declaration, not even by the honest intentions of leading poli- 
 ticJans, but by the momentary configuration of society and its 
 military organizations. At the first glance the term "national war 
 of defense" might seem applicable in the case of a country like 
 Switzerland. But Switzerland is no national state, and, therefore, 
 no object of comparison with other modern states. Its very 
 "neutral" existence, its luxury of a militia, are after all only the 
 negative fruits of a latent state of war in the surrounding great 
 military states. It will hold this neutrality only so long as it is 
 willing to oppose this condition. How quickly such a neutral 
 state is crushed by the military heel of imperialism in a world 
 war the fate of Belgium shows. This brings us to the peculiar 
 position of the "small nation." A classic example of such 
 "national wars" is Servia. If ever a state, according to formal 
 considerations, had the right of national defense on its side, that 
 state is Servia. Deprived through Austrian annexations of its 
 national unity, threatened by Austria in its very existence as* a 
 nation, forced by Austria into war, it is fighting, according to all 
 human conceptions, for existence, for freedom and for the civili-
 
 THE CRISIS 101 
 
 zation of its people. But if the Social-Democratic group is right 
 in its position, then the Servian Social-Democrats who protested 
 against the war in the parliament at Belgrade and refused to vote 
 war credits are actually traitors to the most vital interests of their 
 own nation. In reality the Servian Socialists Lapschewitsh and 
 Kanzlerowitsh have not only enrolled their names in letters of 
 gold in the annals of the international socialist movement, but 
 have shown a clear historical conception of the real causes of the 
 war. In voting against war credits they therefore have done 
 their country the best possible service. Servia is formally en- 
 gaged in a national war of defense. But its monarchy and its 
 ruling classes are rilled with expansionist desires as are the ruling 
 classes in all modern states. They are indifferent to ethnic 
 lines, and thus their warfare assumes an aggressive character. 
 Thus Servia is today reaching out toward the Adriatic coast 
 where it is fighting out a real imperialistic conflict with Italy on 
 the backs of the Albanians, a conflict whose final outcome will be 
 decided not by either of the powers directly interested, but by the 
 great powers that will speak the last word on terms of peace. 
 But above all this we must not forget: behind Servian national- 
 ism stands Russian imperialism. Servia itself is only a pawn in 
 the great game of world politics. A judgment of the war in 
 Servia from a point of view that fails to take these great relations 
 and the general world-political background into account, is 
 necessarily without foundation. The same is true of the recent 
 Balkan War. Regarded as an isolated occurrence, the young 
 Balkan States were historically justified in defending the old 
 democratic program of the national state. In their historical 
 connection, however, which makes the Balkan the burning point 
 and the center of imperialistic world policies, these Balkan wars, 
 also, were objectively only a fragment of the general conflict, a 
 link in the chain of events that led, with fatal necessity, to the 
 present world war. After the Balkan war the international 
 Social-Democracy tendered to the Balkan Socialists, for their
 
 102 THE CRISIS 
 
 determined refusal to offer moral or political support to the war, 
 a most enthusiastic ovation at the peace congress at Basel. In 
 this act alone the International condemned in advance the position 
 taken by the German and French Socialists in the present war. 
 
 All small states, as for instance Holland, are today in a posi- 
 tion like that of the Balkan states. "When the ship leaks, the 
 hole must be stopped"; and what, forsooth, could little Holland 
 fight for but for its national existence and for the independence 
 of its people? If we consider here merely the determination of 
 the Dutch people, even of its ruling classes, the question is doubt- 
 lessly one purely of national defense. But again proletarian 
 politics cannot judge according to the subjective purposes of a 
 single country. Here again it must take its position as a part of 
 the International, according to the whole complexity of the world's 
 political situation. Holland, too, whether it wishes to be or not, 
 is only a small wheel in the great machine of modern world 
 politics and diplomacy. This would become clear at once, if 
 Holland were actually torn into the maelstrom of the world war. 
 Its opponents would direct their attacks against its colonies. Auto- 
 matically Dutch warfare would turn to the defense of its present 
 possessions. The defense of the national independence of the 
 Dutch people on the North Sea would expand concretely to 
 the defense of its rule and right of exploitation over the Malays 
 in the East Indian Archipelago. But not enough : Dutch militar- 
 ism, if forced to rely upon itself, would be crushed like a nutshell 
 in the whirlpool of the world war. Whether it wished to or not 
 it would become a member of one of the great national alliances. 
 On one side or the other it must be the bearer and the tool of 
 purely imperialistic tendencies. 
 
 Thus it is always the historic milieu of modern imperialism that 
 determines the character of the war in the individual countries, 
 and this milieu makes a war of national self-defense impossible. 
 
 Kautsky also expressed this, only a few years ago, in his 
 pamphlet "Patriotism and Social-Democracy," Leipzig, 1907:
 
 THE CRISIS 103 
 
 "Though the patriotism of the bourgeoisie and of the prole- 
 tariat are two entirely different, actually opposite phenomena, 
 there are situations in which both kinds of patriotism may join 
 forces for united action, even in times of war. The bourgeoisie 
 and the proletariat of a nation are equally interested in their 
 national independence and self-determination, in the removal of 
 all kinds of oppression and exploitation at the hands of a foreign 
 nation. In the national conflicts that have sprung from such 
 attempts, the patriotism of the proletariat has always united with 
 that of the bourgeoisie. But the proletariat has become a power 
 that may become dangerous to the ruling classes at every great 
 national upheaval ; revolution looms dark at the end of every war, 
 as the Paris Commune of 1871 and Russian terrorism after the 
 Russian-Japanese war have proven. In view of this the bour- 
 geoisie of those nations which are not sufficiently united have 
 actually sacrificed their national aims where these can be main- 
 tained only at the expense of their government, for they hate and 
 fear the revolution even more than they love national independ- 
 ence and greatness. For this reason, the bourgeoisie sacrifices 
 the independence of Poland and permits ancient constellations 
 like Austria and Turkey to remain in existence, though they have 
 been doomed to destruction for more than a generation. Na- 
 tional struggles as the bringers of revolution have ceased in 
 civilized Europe. National problems that today can be solved 
 only by war or revolution, will be solved in the future only by the 
 victory of the proletariat. But then, thanks to international soli- 
 darity, they will at once assume a form entirely different from that 
 which prevails today in a social state of exploitation and oppres- 
 sion. In capitalistic states this problem needs no longer to trouble 
 the proletariat in its practical struggles. It must divert its whole 
 strength to other problems." (Page 12-14.) 
 
 "Meanwhile the likelihood that proletarian and bourgeois 
 patriotism will unite to protect the liberty of the people is be- 
 coming more and more rare." Kautsky then goes on to say that
 
 104 THE CRISIS 
 
 the French bourgeoisie has united with Czarism, that Russia 
 has ceased to be a danger for western Europe because it has 
 been weakened by the Revolution. "Under these circumstances 
 a war in defense of national liberty in which bourgeois and 
 proletarian may unite, is nowhere to be expected." (Page 16.) 
 
 "We have already seen that conflicts which, in the 19th century, 
 might still have led some liberty loving peoples to oppose their 
 neighbors, by warfare, have ceased to exist. We have seen that 
 modern militarism nowhere aims to defend important popular 
 rights, but everywhere strives to support profits. Its activities 
 are dedicated not to assure the independence and invulnerability 
 of its own nationality, that is nowhere threatened, but to the 
 assurance and the extension of over-sea conquests that again only 
 serve the aggrandizement of capitalist profits. At the present 
 time the conflicts between states can bring no war that proletarian 
 interests would not, as a matter of duty, energetically oppose." 
 (Page 23.) 
 
 In view of all these considerations, what shall be the practical 
 attitude of the Social-Democracy in the present war? Shall it 
 declare: since this is an imperialistic war, since we do not enjoy 
 hvour country, any Socialist self-determination, its existence or 
 non-existence is of no consequence to us, and we will surrender 
 it to the enemy? Passive fatalism can never be the role of a 
 revolutionary party, like the Social-Democracy. It must neither 
 place itself at the disposal of the existing class state, under the 
 command of the ruling classes, nor can it stand silently by to wait 
 until the storm is past. It must adopt a policy of active class 
 politics, a policy that will whip the ruling classes forward in every 
 great social crisis, and that will drive the crisis itself far beyond 
 its original extent. That is the role that the Social-Democracy 
 must play as the leader of the fighting proletariat. Instead of 
 covering this imperialistic war with a lying mantle of national 
 self-defense, the Social-Democracy should have demanded the
 
 THE CRISIS 105 
 
 right of national self-determination seriously, should have used 
 it as a lever against the imperialistic war. 
 
 The most elementary demand of national defense is that the 
 nation take its defense into its own hands. The first step in this 
 direction is the militia; not only the immediate armament of the 
 entire adult male populace, but above all, popular decision in all 
 questions of peace and war. It must demand, furthermore, the 
 immediate removal of every form of political oppression, since 
 the greatest political freedom is the best basis for national de- 
 fense. To proclaim these fundamental measures of national 
 defense, to demand their realization, that was the first duty of 
 the Social-Democracy. 
 
 For forty years we have tried to prove to the ruling classes as 
 well as to the masses of the people that only the militia is really 
 able to defend the fatherland and to make it invincible. And yet, 
 when the first test came, we turned over the defense of our 
 country, as a matter of course, into the hands of a standing army, 
 to be the cannon fodder under the club of the ruling classes. Our 
 parliamentarians apparently did not .even notice that the fervent 
 wishes with which they sped these defenders of the fatherland to 
 the front were, to all intents and purposes, an open admission 
 that the imperial Prussian standing army is the real defender of 
 the fatherland. They evidently did not realize that by this ad- 
 mission they sacrificed the fulcrum of our political program, that 
 they gave up the militia and dissolved the practical significance 
 of forty years' of agitation against the standing army into thin 
 air. By the act of the Social-Democratic group our military 
 program became a Utopian doctrine, a doctrinaire obsession, that 
 none could possibly take seriously. 
 
 The masters of the international proletariat saw the idea of 
 fatherland defense in a different light. When the proletariat of 
 Paris, surrounded by Prussians in 1871, took the reins of the 
 government into its own hands, Marx wrote enthusiastically :
 
 106 THE CRISIS 
 
 "Paris, the center and seat of the old government powers, and 
 simultaneously the social center of gravity of the French working 
 class, Paris has risen in arms against the attempt of Monsieur 
 Thiers and his Junkers to reinstate and perpetuate the govern- 
 ment of the old powers of imperial rule. Paris was in a position 
 to resist only, because, through the state of siege, it was rid of its 
 army, because in its place there had been put a national guard 
 composed chiefly of \vorking men. It was necessary that this 
 innovation be made a permanent institution. The first act of the 
 Commune was, therefore, the suppression of the standing army 
 and the substitution of an armed people. ... If now, the Commune 
 was the true representative of all healthy elements of French 
 society and, therefore, a true national government, it was likewise, 
 as a proletarian government, as the daring fighter for the libera- 
 tion of labor, international in the truest sense of that word. 
 Under the eyes of the Prussian army, which has annexed two 
 French Provinces to Germany, the Commune has annexed the 
 workers of a whole world to France." (Address of the General 
 Council of the International.) 
 
 But what did our masters say concerning the role to be played 
 by the Social-Democracy in the present war? In 1892 Friedrich 
 Engels expressed the following opinion concerning the fun- 
 damental lines along which the attitude of proletarian parties in 
 a great war should follow : 
 
 "A war in the course of which Russians and Frenchmen should 
 invade Germany would mean for the latter a life and death 
 struggle. Under such circumstances it could assure its national 
 existence only by using the most revolutionary methods. The 
 present government, should it not be forced to do so, will cer- 
 tainly not bring on the revolution, but we have a strong party that 
 may force its hand, or that, should it be necessary, can replace it, 
 the Social-Democratic party. 
 
 "We have not forgotten the glorious example of France in 1793.
 
 THE CRISIS 107 
 
 The one hundredth anniversary of 1793 is approaching. Should 
 Russia's desire for conquest, or the chauvinistic impatience of the 
 French Bourgeoisie, check the victorious but peaceable march of 
 the German Socialists, the latter are prepared be assured of 
 that to prove to the world that the German proletarians of today 
 are not unworthy of the French Sansculottes, that 1893 will be 
 worthy of 1793. And should the soldiers of Monsieur Constans 
 set foot upon German territory we will meet them with the words 
 of the Marseillaise : 
 
 "Shall hateful tyrants, mischief breeding, 
 With hireling host, a ruffian band, 
 Affright and desolate the land?" 
 
 "In short, peace assures the victory of the Social-Democratic 
 party in about ten years. The war will bring either victory in 
 two or three years or its absolute ruin for at least fifteen or 
 twenty years." 
 
 When Engels wrote these words, he had in mind a situation 
 entirely different from the one existing today. In his mind's eye, 
 ancient Czarism still loomed threateningly in the background. 
 We have already seen the great Russian Revolution. He thought, 
 furthermore, of a real national war of defense, of a Germany 
 attacked on two sides, on the East and on the West by two enemy 
 forces. Finally, he overestimated the ripeness of conditions in 
 Germany and the likelihood of a social revolution, as all true 
 fighters are wont to overrate the real tempo of development. But 
 for all that, his sentences prove with remarkable clearness, that 
 Engels meant by national, defense in the sense of the Social- 
 Democracy, not the support of a Prussian Junker military govern- 
 ment and its Generalstab, but a revolutionary action after the 
 example of the French Jacobites. 
 
 Yes, Socialists should defend their country in great historical 
 crises, and here lies the great fault of the German Social-Demo-
 
 108 THE CRISIS 
 
 cratic Reichstag group. When it announced on the 4th of August, 
 ''in this hour of danger, we will not desert our fatherland," it 
 denied its own words in the same breath. For truly it has 
 deserted its fatherland in its hour of greatest danger, The 
 highest duty of the Social-Democracy toward its fatherland de- 
 manded that it expose the real background of this imperialistic 
 war, that it rend the net of imperialistic and diplomatic lies that 
 covers the eyes of the people. It was their duty to speak loudly 
 and clearly, to proclaim to the people of Germany that in this war 
 victory and defeat would be equally fatal, to oppose the gagging 
 of the fatherland by a state of siege, to demand that the people 
 alone decide on war and peace, to demand a permanent se.ssion 
 of Parliament for the period of the war, to assume a watchful 
 control over the government by parliament, and over parliament 
 by the people, to demand the immediate removal of all political 
 inequalities, since only a free people can adequately govern its 
 country, and finally, to oppose to the imperialist war, based as it 
 was upon the most reactionary forces in Europe, the program of 
 Marx, of Engels, and Lassalle. 
 
 That was the flag that should have waved over the country. 
 That would have been truly national, truly free, in harmony with 
 the best traditions of Germany and the International class policy 
 of the proletariat. 
 
 The great historical hour of the world war obviously demanded 
 a unanimous political accomplishment, a broadminded, compre- 
 hensive attitude that only the Social-Democracy is destined to 
 give. Instead, there followed, on the part of the parliamentary 
 representatives of the working class, a miserable collapse. The 
 Social-Democracy did not adopt the wrong policy it had no 
 policy whatsoever. It has wiped itself out completely as a class 
 party with a world-conception of its own, has delivered the 
 country, without a word of protest, to the fate of imperialistic 
 war without, to the dictatorship of the sword within. Nay more, 
 it has taken the responsibility for the war upon its own shoulders.
 
 THE CRISIS 109 
 
 The declaration of the "Reichstag group" says : "We have voted 
 only the means for our country's defense. We decline all respon- 
 sibility for the war." But as a matter of fact, the truth lies in 
 exactly the opposite direction. The means for "national defense," 
 i. e., for imperialistic mass butchery by the armed forces of the 
 military monarchy, were not voted by the Social-Democracy. For 
 the availability of the war credits did not in the least depend upon 
 the Social-Democracy. They, as a minority, stood against a com- 
 pact three-quarters majority of the capitalist Reichstag. The 
 Social-Democracy group accomplished only one thing by voting 
 in favor of the war credits. It placed upon the war the stamp of 
 democratic fatherland defense, and supported and sustained the 
 fictions that were propagated by the government concerning 
 the actual conditions and problems of the war. 
 
 Thus the serious dilemma between the national interests and 
 international solidarity of the proletariat, the tragic conflict that 
 made our parliamentarians fall "with heavy heart" to the side of 
 imperialistic warfare, was a mere figment of the imagination, a 
 bourgeois nationalist fiction. Between the national interests and 
 the class interests of the proletariat, in war and in peace, there is 
 actually complete harmony. Both demand the most energetic 
 prosecution of the class struggle, and the most determined in- 
 sistence on the Social-Democratic program. 
 
 But what action should the party have taken to give to our 
 opposition to the war and to our war demands weight and em- 
 phasis? Should it have proclaimed a general strike? Should it 
 have called upon the soldiers to refuse military service? Thus 
 the question is generally asked. To answer with a simple yes 
 or no, were just as ridiculous as to decide : "When war breaks out 
 we will start a revolution." Revolutions are not "made" and 
 great movements of the people are not produced according to 
 technical recipes that repose in the pockets of the party leaders. 
 Small circles of conspirators may organize a riot for a certain 
 day and a certain hour, can give their small group of supporters
 
 110 THE CRISIS 
 
 the signal to begin. Mass movements in great historical crises 
 cannot be initiated by such primitive measures. The best pre- 
 pared mass strike may break down miserably at the very moment 
 when the party leaders give the signal, may collapse completely 
 before the first attack. The success of great popular movements 
 depends, aye, the very time and circumstance of their inception 
 is decided, by a number of economic, political and psychological 
 factors. The existing degree of tension between the classes, the 
 degree of intelligence of the masses and the degree or ripeness 
 of their spirit of resistance all these factors, which are incal- 
 culable, are premises that cannot be artificially created by any 
 party. That is the difference between great historical upheavals, 
 and the small show-demonstrations that a well disciplined party 
 can carry out in times of peace, orderly, well-trained perform- 
 ances, responding obediently to the baton in the hands of the 
 party leaders. The great historical hour itself creates the forms 
 that will carry the revolutionary movement to a successful out- 
 come, creates and improvises new weapons, enriches the arsenal 
 of the people with weapons unknown and unheard of by the 
 parties and their leaders. 
 
 What the Social-Democracy as the advance guard of the class- 
 conscious proletariat should have been able to give was not 
 ridiculous precepts and technical recipes, but a political slogan, 
 clearness concerning the political problems and interests of the 
 proletariat in times of war. 
 
 For what has been said of mass strikes in the Russian Revo- 
 lution is equally applicable to every mass movement : "While the 
 revolutionary period itself commands the creation and the com- 
 putation and payment of the cost of a mass strike, the leaders of 
 the Social-Democracy have an entirely different mission to fill. 
 Instead of concerning itself with the technical mechanism of the 
 mass movement, it is the duty of the Social-Democracy to under- 
 take the political -leadership even in the midst of a historical 
 crisis. To give the slogan, to determine the direction of the
 
 THE CRISIS 111 
 
 struggle, to so direct the tactics of the political conflict that in its 
 every phase and movement the whole sum of availabk 
 and already mobilized active force of the proletariat is realized 
 and finds expression in the attitude of the party, that the tactics 
 of the Social-Democracy in determination and vigor shall never 
 be weaker than is justified by the actual power at its back, but 
 shall rather hasten in advance of its actual power, that is the 
 important problem of the party leadership in a great historical 
 crisis. Then this leadership will become, in a sense, the technical 
 leadership. A determined, consistent, progressive course of 
 action on the part of the Social-Democracy will create in the 
 masses assurance, self-confidence and a fearless fighting spirit. 
 A weakly vacillating course, based upon a low estimate of the 
 powers of the proletariat, lames and confuses the masses. In the 
 first case mass action will break out "of its own accord" and "at 
 the right time" ; in the second even a direct call to action on the 
 part of the leaders often remains ineffectual." (Rosa Luxem- 
 burg, "Mass Strike, Party and Labor Unions," Hamburg, 1907.) 
 
 Far more important that the outward, technical form of the 
 action is its political content. Thus the parliamentary stage, for 
 instance, the only far reaching and internationally conspicuous 
 platform, could have become a mighty motive power for the 
 awakening of the people, had it been used by the Social-Demo- 
 cratic representatives to proclaim loudly and distinctly, the 
 interests, the problems and the demands of the working class. 
 
 "Would the masses have supported the Social-Democracy in its- 
 attitude against the war?" That is a question that no one can 
 answer. But neither is it an important, one. Did our parliamen- 
 tarians demand an absolute assurance of victory from the 
 generals of the Prussian army before voting in favor of war 
 credits ? What is true of military armies is equally true of revo- 
 lutionary armies. They go into the fight, wherever necessity 
 demands it, without previous assurance of success. At the worst,
 
 112 THE CRISIS 
 
 the party would have been doomed, in the first few months of 
 the war, to political ineffectuality. 
 
 Perhaps the bitterest persecutions would have been inflicted 
 upon our party for its manly stand, as they were, in 1870, the 
 reward of Liebknecht and Bebel. "But what does that matter," 
 said Ignatz Auer, simply, in his speech on the Sedanfeier in 1895. 
 "A party that is to conquer the world must bear its principles 
 aloft without counting the dangers that this may bring. To act 
 differently is to be lost !" 
 
 "It is never easy to swim against the current," said the older 
 Liebknecht, "And when the stream rushes on with the rapidity 
 and the power of a Niagara it does not become easier! Our 
 older comrades still remember the hatred of that year of greatest 
 national shame, under the Socialist exception laws of 1878. At 
 that time millions looked upon every Social-Democrat as having 
 played the part of a murderer and a vile criminal in 1870; the 
 Socialist had been in the eyes of the masses a traitor and an 
 enemy. Such outbreaks of the "popular soul" are astounding, 
 stunning, crushing in their elemental fury. One feels powerless, 
 as before a higher power. It is a real force majeure. There is no 
 tangible opponent. It "is like an epidemic, in the people, in the 
 air, everywhere. 
 
 "The outbreak of 1878 cannot, however, be compared with the 
 outbreak in 1870. This hurricane of human passions, 
 breaking, bending, destroying all that stands in its way and with 
 it the terrible machinery of militarism, in fullest, most horrible 
 activity; and we stand between the crushing iron wheels, whose 
 touch means instant death, between iron arms, that threaten every 
 moment to catch us. By the side of this elemental force of libe- 
 rated spirits stood the most complete mechanism of the art of 
 murder the world had hitherto seen ; and all in the wildest activ- 
 ity, every boiler heated to the bursting point. At such a time, 
 what is the will and the strength of the individual? Especially,
 
 THE CRISIS 113 
 
 when one feels that one represents a tiny minority, that one pos- 
 sesses no firm support in the people itself. 
 
 "At that time our party was still in a period of development. 
 We were placed before the most serious test, at a time when we 
 did not yet possess the organization necessary to meet it. When 
 the anti-socialist movement came in the year of shame of our 
 enemies, in the year of honor for the Social-Democracy, then we 
 had already a strong, widespread organization. Each and every 
 one of us was strengthened by the feeling that he possessed a 
 mighty support in the organized movement that stood behind him, 
 and no sane person could conceive of the downfall of the party. 
 
 "So it was no small thing at that time to swim against the cur- 
 rent. But what is to be done, must be done. And so we gritted our 
 teeth in the face of the inevitable. There was no time for fear .". . 
 Certainly Bebel and I ... never for a moment thought of the 
 warning. We did not retreat. We had to hold our posts, come 
 what might !" 
 
 They stuck to their posts, and for forty years the Social-Demo- 
 cracy lived upon the moral strength with which it had opposed 
 a world of enemies. 
 
 The same thing would have happened now. At first we would 
 perhaps have accomplished nothing but to save the honor of the 
 proletariat and thousands upon thousands of proletarians who 
 are dying in the trenches in mental darkness, would not have 
 died in spiritual confusion, but with the one certainty that that 
 which has been everything in their lives, the international, liber- 
 ating Social-Democracy, is more than the figment of a dream. 
 
 The voice of our party would have acted as a wet blanket upon 
 the chauvinistic intoxication of the masses. It would have pre- 
 served the intelligent proletariat from delirium, would have made 
 it more difficult for Imperialism to poison and to stupefy the 
 minds of the people. The crusade against the Social-Democracy 
 would have awakened the masses in an incredible short time.
 
 114 THE CRISIS - 
 
 And as the war went on, as the horror of endless massacre and 
 bloodshed in all countries grew and grew, as its imperialistic hoof 
 became more and more evident, as the exploitation by bloodthirsty 
 speculators became more and more shameless, every live, honest, 
 progressive and humane element in the masses would have rallied 
 to the standard of the Social-Democracy. The German Social- 
 Democracy would have stood in the midst of this mad whirlpool 
 of collapse and decay, like a rock in a stormy sea, would have 
 been the lighthouse of the whole International, guiding and lead- 
 ing the labor movements of every country of the earth. The 
 unparalleled moral prestige that lay in the hands of the German 
 Socialists would have reacted upon the Socialists of all nations 
 in a very short time. Peace sentiments would have spread like 
 wildfire and the popular demand for peace in all countries would 
 have hastened the end of the slaughter, would have decreased 
 the number of its victims. 
 
 The German proletariat would have remained the lighthouse- 
 keeper of Socialism and of human emancipation. 
 
 Truly this was a task not unworthy of the disciples of Marx, 
 Engels, and Lassalle.
 
 THE CRISIS 115 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 In spite of military dictatorship and press censorship, in spite 
 of the downfall of the Social-Democracy, in spite of fratricidal 
 war, the class struggle arises from civil peace with elemental 
 force : from the blood and smoke of the battlefields the solidarity 
 of international labor arises. Not in weak attempts to artificially 
 galvanize the old International, not in pledges rendered now here, 
 now there, to stand together after the war is over. No, here, 
 in the war, out of the war arises, with a new might and intensity, 
 the recognition that the proletarians of all lands have one and the 
 same interest. The world war, itself, utterly disproves the false- 
 hoods it has created. 
 
 Victory or defeat? It is the slogan of all-powerful militarism 
 in every belligerent nation, and, like an echo, the social-democratic 
 leaders have adopted it. Victory or defeat has become the 
 highest motive of the workers of Germany, of France, of Eng- 
 land and of others, just as for the ruling classes of these nations. 
 When the cannons thunder, all proletarian interests subside before 
 the desire for victory of their own, i. e., for defeat of the other 
 countries. And yet, what can victory bring to the proletariat ? 
 
 According to the official version of the leaders of the Social- 
 Democracy, that was so readily adopted without criticism, victory 
 of the German forces would mean, for Germany, unhampered, 
 boundless industrial growth; defeat, however, industrial ruin. 
 On the whole, this conception coincides with that generally ac- 
 cepted during the war of 1870. But the period of capitalist 
 growth that followed the war of 1870 was not caused by the war, 
 but resulted rather from the political union of the various German 
 states, even though this union took the form of the crippled figure 
 that Bismarck established as the German empire. Here the in-
 
 116 THE CRISIS 
 
 dustrial impetus came from this union, in spite of the war and 
 the manifold reactionary hindrances that followed in its wake. 
 What the victorious war itself accomplished was to firmly estab- 
 lish the military monarchy and Prussian junkerdom in Germany; 
 the defeat of France led to the liquidation of its Empire and the 
 establishment of a Republic. But today the situation is different 
 in all of the nations in question. Today war does not function 
 as a dynamic force to provide for rising young capitalism the 
 indispensable political conditions for its "national" development. 
 Modern war appears in this role only in Serbia, and there only 
 as an isolated fragment. Reduced to its objective historic sig- 
 nificance, the present world war as a whole is a competitive 
 struggle of a fully developed capitalism for world supremacy, for 
 the exploitation of the last remnant of non-capitalistic world 
 zones. This fact gives to the war and its political after effects an 
 entirely new character. The high stage of world-industrial 
 development in capitalistic production finds expression in the 
 extraordinary technical development and destructiveness of the 
 instruments of war, as in their practically uniform degree of 
 perfection in all belligerent countries. The international organi- 
 zation of war industries is reflected in the military instability, that 
 persistently brings back the scales, through all partial decisions 
 and variations, to their true balance, and pushes a general decision 
 further and further into the future. The indecision of military 
 results, moreover, has the effect that a constant stream of new 
 reserves, from the belligerent nations as well as from nations 
 hitherto neutral, are sent to the front. Everywhere war finds 
 material enough for imperialist desires and conflicts ; itself creates 
 new material to feed the conflagration that spreads out like a 
 prairie fire. But the greater the masses, and the greater the 
 number of nations that are dragged into this world-war, the 
 longer will it rage. All of these things together prove, even 
 before any military decision of victory or defeat can be estab- 
 lished, that the result of the war will be : the economic ruin of all
 
 THE CRISIS 117 
 
 participating nations, and, in a steadily growing measure, of the 
 formally neutral nations, a phenomenon entirely distinct from the 
 earlier wars of modern times. Every month of war affirms and 
 augments this effect, and thus takes away, in advance, the ex- 
 pected fruits of military victory for a decade to come. This, in 
 the last analysis, neither victory nor defeat can alter; on the 
 contrary it makes a purely military decision altogether doubtful, 
 and increases the likelihood that the war will finally end through 
 a general and extreme exhaustion. But even a victorious Ger- 
 many, under such circumstances, even if its imperialistic war 
 agitators should succeed in carrying on the mass murder to the 
 absolute destruction of their opponents, even if their most daring 
 dreams should be fulfilled would win but a Pyrrhic victory. A 
 number of annexed territories, impoverished and depopulated, 
 and a grinning ruin under its own roof, would be its trophies. 
 Nothing can hide this, once the painted stage properties of finan- 
 cial war-bond transactions, and the Potemkin villages of an 
 "unalterable prosperity" kept up by war orders, are pushed aside. 
 The most superficial observer cannot but see that even the most 
 victorious nation cannot count on war indemnities that will stand 
 in any relation to the wounds that the war has inflicted. Perhaps 
 they may see in the still greater economic ruin of the defeated 
 opponents, England and France, the very countries with which 
 Germany was most closely united by industrial relations, upon 
 whose recuperation its own prosperity so much depends, a sub- 
 stitute and an augmentation for their victory. Such are the 
 circumstances under which the German people, even after a 
 victorious war, would be required to pay, in cold cash, the war 
 bonds that were "voted" on credit by the patriotic parliament; 
 i. e., to take upon their shoulders an immeasurable burden of 
 taxation, and a strengthened military dictatorship as the only per- 
 manent tangible fruit of victory. 
 
 Should we now seek to imagine the worst possible effects of
 
 118 THE CRISIS 
 
 a defeat, we shall find that they resemble, line for line, with the 
 exception of imperialistic annexations, the same picture that pre- 
 sented itself as the irrefutable consequence of victory : the effects 
 of war today are so far reaching, so deeply rooted, that its 
 military outcome can alter but little in its final consequences. 
 
 But let us assume, for the moment, that the victorious nation 
 should find itself in the position to avoid the great catastrophe 
 for its own people, should be able to tkrow the whole burden of 
 the war upon the shoulders of its defeated opponent, should be 
 able to choke off the industrial development of the latter by all 
 sorts of hindrances. Can the German labor movement hope for 
 successful development, so long as the activity of the French, 
 English, Belgian and Italian laborers is hampered by industrial 
 retrogression? Before 1870 the labor movements of the various 
 nations grew independently of each other. The action of the 
 nations grew, independently of each other. The action of the 
 labor movement of a single city often controlled the destinies of 
 the whole labor movement. On the streets of Paris the battles 
 of the working class were fought out and decided. The modern 
 labor movement, its laborious daily struggle in the industries of 
 the world, its mass organization, are based upon the co-operation 
 of the workers in all capitalistically producing countries. If the 
 truism that the cause of labor can thrive only upon a virile, pul- 
 sating industrial life applies, then it is true not only for Germany, 
 but for France, England, Belgium, Russia, and Italy as well. And 
 if the labor movement in all of the capitalist states of Europe 
 becomes stagnant, if industrial conditions there result in low 
 wages, weakened labor unions, and a diminished power of re- 
 sistance on the part of labor, labor unionism in Germany cannot 
 possibly flourish. From this point of view the loss sustained by 
 the working class in its industrial struggle is in the last analysis 
 identical, whether German capital be strengthened at the expense 
 of the French or English capital at the expense of the German.
 
 THE CRISIS 119 
 
 But let us investigate the political effects of the war. Here 
 differentiation should be less difficult than upon the economic 
 side, for the sympathies and the partisanship of the proletariat 
 have always tended toward the side that defended progress 
 against reaction. Which side, in the present war, represents 
 progress, which side reaction? It is clear that this question can- 
 not be decided according to the outward insignias that mark the 
 political character of the belligerent nations as "democracy" and 
 absolutism. They must be judged solely according to the tenden- 
 cies of their respective world policies. 
 
 Before we can determine what a German victory can win for 
 the German proletariat we must consider its effect upon the gen- 
 eral status of political conditions all over Europe. A decisive 
 victory for Germany would mean, in the first place, the annexa- 
 tion of Belgium, as well as of a possible number of territories in 
 the East and West and a part of the French colonies ; the sustain- 
 ing of the Hapsburg Monarchy and its aggrandizement by a 
 number of new territories ; finally the .establishment of a fictitious 
 "integrity" of Turkey, under a German protectorate i. e., the 
 conversion of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, in one form or 
 another, into German provinces. In the end this would result in 
 the actual military and economic hegemony of Germany in 
 Europe. Not because they are in accord with the desires of im- 
 perialist agitators are these consequences of an absolute German 
 military victory to be expected, but because they are the inevit- 
 able outgrowth of the world-political position that Germany has 
 adopted, of conflicting interests with England, France, and Russia, 
 in which Germany has been involved, and which have grown, 
 during the course of the war, far beyond their original dimen- 
 sions. It is sufficient to recall these facts to realize that they 
 could under no circumstances establish a permanent world- 
 political equilibrium. Though this war may mean ruin for all 
 of its participants, and worse for its defeated, the preparations
 
 120 THE CRISIS 
 
 for a new world war, under England's leadership, would begin 
 on the day after peace is declared, to shake off the yoke of 
 Prussian-German militarism that would rest upon Europe and 
 Asia. A German victory would be the prelude to an early second 
 world-war, and therefore, for this reason, but the signal for new 
 feverish armaments, for the unleashing of the blackest reaction 
 in every country, but particularly in Germany. On the other 
 hand a victory of England or France would mean, in all likeli- 
 hood, for Germany, the loss of a part of her colonies, as well as of 
 Alsace-Lorraine, and certainly the bankruptcy of the world-polit- 
 ical position of German militarism. But this would mean the 
 disintegration of Austria-Hungary and the total liquidation of 
 Turkey. Reactionary as both of these states are, and much as 
 their disintegration would be in line with the demands of pro- 
 gressive development, in the present world-political milieu, the 
 disintegration of the Hapsburg Monarchy and the liquidation of 
 Turkey would mean the bartering of their peoples to the highest 
 bidder Russia, England, France, or Italy. This enormous re- 
 division of the world and shifting of the balance of power in the 
 Balkan states and along the Mediterranean would be followed 
 inevitably by another in Asia : the liquidation of Persia and a 
 redivision of China. This would bring the English-Russian as 
 well as the English-Japanese conflict into the foreground of 
 international politics, and may mean, in direct connection with 
 the liquidation of the present war, a new world war, perhaps for 
 Constantinople ; would certainly bring it about, inescapably, in the 
 immediate future. So a victory on this side, too, would lead to 
 new, feverish armaments in all nations defeated Germany, 
 of course, at the head and would introduce an era of undivided 
 rule for militarism and reaction all over Europe, with a new war 
 as its final goal. 
 
 So the proletariat, should it attempt to cast its influence into 
 the balance on one side or the other, for progress or democracy, 
 viewing the world policies in their widest application, would place
 
 THE CRISIS 121 
 
 itself between Scylla and Charybdis. Under the circumstances 
 the question of victory or defeat becomes, for theEuropean work- 
 ing class, in its political, exactly as in its economic aspects, a 
 choice between two beatings. It is, therefore, nothing short of a 
 dangerous madness for the French Socialists to believe that they 
 can deal a death blow to militarism and imperialism, and cleai 
 the road for peaceful democracy, by overthrowing Germany. 
 Imperialism, and its servant militarism, will reappear after every 
 victory and after every defeat in this war. There can be but one 
 exception: if the international proletariat, through its interven- 
 tion, should overthrow all previous calculations. 
 
 The important lesson to be derived by the proletariat from this 
 war is the one unchanging fact, that it can and must not become 
 the uncritical echo of the "victory and defeat" slogan, neither in 
 Germany nor in France, neither in England nor in Austria. For 
 it is a slogan that has reality only from the point of view of im- 
 perialism, and is identical, in the eyes of every large power, with 
 the question: gain or loss of world-political power, of annexa- 
 tions, of colonies, of military supremacy. 
 
 For the European proletariat as a class, victory or defeat of 
 either of the two war groups would be equally disastrous. For 
 war as such, whatever its military outcome may be, is the great- 
 est conceivable defeat of the cause of the European proletariat. 
 The overthrow of war, and the speedy forcing of peace, by the 
 international revolutionary action of the proletariat, alone can 
 bring to it the only possible victory. And this victory, alone, can 
 truly rescue Belgium, can bring democracy to Europe. 
 
 For the class-conscious proletariat to identify its cause with 
 either military camp is an untenable position. Does that mean 
 that the proletarian policies of the present day demand a return 
 to the "status quo," that we have no plan of action beyond the 
 fond hope that everything may remain as it was before the war?
 
 122 THE CRISIS 
 
 The existing conditions have never been our ideal, they have 
 never been the expression of the self-determination of the people. 
 And more, the former conditions cannot be reinstated, even if 
 the old national boundaries should remain unchanged. For even 
 before its formal ending this war has brought about enormous 
 changes, in mutual recognition of one another's strength, in alli- 
 ances, and in conflict. It has sharply revised the relations of 
 countries to one another, of classes within society, has destroyed 
 so many old illusions and portents, has created so many new 
 forces and new problems, that a return to the old Europe that 
 existed before August 4, 1914, is as impossible as the return to 
 pre-revolutionary conditions, even after an unsuccessful revo- 
 lution. The proletariat knows no going back, can only strive 
 forward and onward, for a goal that lies beyond even the most 
 newly created conditions. In this sense, alone, is it possible 
 for the proletariat to oppose, with its policy, both camps in the 
 imperialistic world war. 
 
 But this policy cannot concern- itself with recipes for capitalist 
 diplomacy worked out individually by the Social-Democratic 
 parties, or even together in international conferences, to deter- 
 mine how capitalism shall declare peace in order to assure future 
 eaceful and democratic development. All demands for complete 
 or gradual disarmament, for the abolition of secret diplomacy, 
 lor the dissolution of the great powers into smaller national en- 
 ticies, and all other similar propositions, are absolutely Utopian 
 so long as capitalist class rule remains in power. For capitalism, 
 in its present imperialistic course, to dispense with present-day 
 militarism, with secret diplomacy, with the centralization of many 
 national states, is so impossible that these postulates might, much 
 more consistently, be united into the simple demand "abolition 
 of capitalist class society." The proletarian movement cannot 
 reconquer the place it deserves by means of Utopian advice and 
 projects for weakening, taming, or quelling imperialism within 
 capitalism by means of partial reforms. The real problem that
 
 THE CRISIS 123 
 
 the world war has placed before the Socialist parties, upon whose 
 solution the future of the working class movement depends, is 
 the readiness of the proletarian masses to act in the fight against 
 imperialism. The international proletariat suffers, not from a 
 dearth of postulates, programs, and slogans, but from a lack of 
 deeds, of effective resistance, of the power to attack imperialism 
 at the decisive moment, just in times of war. It has been unable 
 to put its old slogan, war against war, into actual practice. Here 
 is the Gordian knot of the proletarian movement and of its 
 future. 
 
 Imperialism, with all its brutal policy of force, with the inces- 
 sant chain of social catastrophe that it itself provokes, is, to be 
 sure, a historic necessity for the ruling classes of the present 
 world. Yet nothing could be more detrimental than that the prol- 
 etariat should derive, from the present war, the slightest hopo 
 or illusion of the possibility of an idyllic and peaceful develop- 
 ment of capitalism. There is but one conclusion that the prole- 
 tariat can draw from the historic necessity of imperialism. To 
 capitulate before imperialism will mean to live forever in its 
 shadow, off the crumbs that fall from the table of its victories 
 
 Historic development moves in contradictions, and for every 
 necessity puts its opposite into the world as well. The capital- 
 ist state of society is doubtless a historic necessity, but so abo 
 is the revolt of the working class against it. Capital is a historic 
 necessity, but in the same measure is its grave digger, the Socialist 
 proletariat. The world rule of imperialism is a historic necessity, 
 but likewise its overthrow by the proletarian international. Side 
 by side the two historic necessities exist, in constant conflict with 
 each other. And ours is the necessity of Socialism. Our necessity 
 receives its justification with the moment when the capitalist class 
 ceases to be the bearer of historic progress, when it becomes a 
 hindrance, a danger, to the future development of society. That
 
 124: THE CRISIS 
 
 capitalism has reached this stage the present world war has re- 
 vealed. 
 
 Capitalist desire for imperialistic expansion, as the expression 
 of its highest maturity in the last period of its life, has the eco- 
 nomic tendency to change the whole world into capitalistically 
 producing nations, to sweep away all superannuated, precapi- 
 talistic methods of production and of society, to subjugate all the 
 riches of the earth and all means of production to capital, to 
 turn the laboring masses of the peoples of all zones into wage 
 slaves. In Africa and in Asia, from the most northern regions 
 to the southernmost point of South America and in the South 
 Seas, the remnants of old communistic social groups, of feu'Jal 
 society, of patriarchal systems, and of ancient handicraft produc- 
 tion are destroyed and stamped out by capitalism. Whole peo- 
 ples are destroyed, ancient civilizations are leveled to the ground, 
 and in their place profiteering in its most modern forms is being 
 established. .This brutal triumphal procession of capitalism 
 through the world, accompanied by all the means of force, of 
 robbery, and of infamy, has one bright phase: It has created 
 the premises for its own final overthrow, it has established the 
 capitalist world rule upon which, alone, the Socialist world revo- 
 lution can follow. This is the only cultural and progressive 
 aspect of the great so-called works of culture that were brought 
 to the primitive countries. To capitalist economists and politi- 
 cians railroads, matches, sewerage systems and warehouses are 
 progress and culture. Of themselves such works, grafted upon 
 primitive conditions, are neither culture nor progress, for they 
 are too dearly paid for with the sudden economic and cultural 
 ruin of the peoples who must drink down the bitter cup of mis- 
 ery and horror of two social orders, of traditional agricultural 
 landlordism, of supermodern, superrefined capitalist exploitation, 
 at one and the same time. Only as the material conditions for 
 the destruction of capitalism and the abolition of class society
 
 THE CRISIS 125 
 
 can the effects of the capitalist triumphal march through the 
 world bear the stamp of progress in an historical sense. In this 
 sense imperialism, too, is working in our interest. 
 
 The present world war is a turning point in the course of im- 
 perialism. For the first time the destructive beasts that have 
 been loosed by capitalist Europe over all other parts of the world 
 have sprung with one awful leap, into the midst of the Euro- 
 pean nations. A cry of horror went up through the world when 
 Belgium, that priceless little jewel of European culture, when 
 the venerable monuments of art in northern France, fell into 
 fragments before the onslaughts of a blind and destructive force. 
 The "civilized world" that had stood calmly by when this same 
 imperialism doomed tens of thousands of heroes to destruction, 
 when the desert of Kalahari shuddered with the insane cry of 
 the thirsty and the rattling breath of the dying, when in Putu- 
 mayo, within ten years, forty thousand human beings were tor- 
 tured to death by a band of European industrial robber-barons, 
 and the remnants of a whole people were beaten into cripples, 
 when in China an ancient civilization was delivered into the hands 
 of destruction and anarchy, with fire and slaughter, by the 
 European soldiery, when Persia gasped in the noose of the 
 foreign rule of force that closed inexorably about her throat, when 
 in Tripoli the Arabs were mowed down, with fire and sword, 
 under the yoke of capital, while their civilization and their homes 
 were razed to the ground this civilized world has just begun to 
 know that the fangs of the imperialist beast are deadly, that its 
 breath is frightfulness, that its tearing claws have sunk deep into 
 the breasts of its own mother, European culture. And this be- 
 lated recognition is coming into the world of Europe in the dis- 
 torted form of bourgeois hypocrisy, that leads each nation to 
 recognize infamy only when it appears in the uniform of the 
 other. They speak of German barbarism, as if every people that 
 goes out for organized murder did not change into a horde of 
 barbarians! They speak of Cossack horrors, as if war itself
 
 126 THE CRISIS 
 
 were not the the greatest of all horrors, as if the praise of human 
 slaughter in a Socialist periodical were not mental Cossackdom 
 in its very essence. 
 
 But the horrors of imperialist bestiality in Europe have had 
 another effect, that has brought to the "civilized world" no 
 horror-stricken eyes, no agonized heart. It is the mass destruc- 
 tion of the European proletariat. Never has a war killed off 
 whole nations; never, within the past century, has it swept over 
 all of the great and established lands of civilized Europe. Millions 
 of human lives were destroyed in the Vosges, in the Ardennes, in 
 Belgium, in Poland, in the Carpathians and on the Save ; millions 
 have been hopelessly crippled. But nine-tenths of these millions 
 come from the ranks of the working class of the cities and the 
 farms. It is our strength, our hope that was mowed down there, 
 day after day, before the scythe of death. They were the best, the 
 most intelligent, the most thoroughly schooled forces of inter- 
 national socialism, the bearers of the holiest traditions, of the 
 highest heroism, the modern labor movement, the vanguard of 
 the whole world proletariat, the workers of England, France, 
 Belgium, Germany and Russia who are being gagged and 
 butchered in masses. Only from Europe, only from the oldest 
 capitalist nations, when the hour is ripe, can the signal come for 
 the social revolution that will free the nations. Only the Eng- 
 lish, the French, the Belgian, the German, the Russian, the Italian 
 workers, together, can lead the army of the exploited and op- 
 pressed. And when the time comes they alone can call capitalism 
 to account for centuries of crime committed against, primitive 
 peoples; they alone can avenge its work of destruction over a 
 whole world. But for the advance and victory of Socialism we 
 need a strong, educated, ready proletariat, masses whose strength 
 lies in knowledge as well as in numbers. And these very masses 
 are being decimated all over the world. The flower of our youth- 
 ful strength, hundreds of thousands whose socialist education in 
 England, in France, in Belgium, in Germany and in Russia was
 
 THE CRISIS 127 
 
 the product of decades of education and propaganda, other 
 hundreds of thousands who were ready to receive the lessons of 
 Socialism, have fallen, and are rotting upon the battlefields. The 
 fruit of the sacrifices and toil of generations is destroyed in a 
 few short weeks, the choicest troops of the international prole- 
 tariat are torn out by the life roots. 
 
 The blood-letting of the June battle laid low the French labor 
 movement for a decade and a half. The . blood-letting of the 
 Commune massacre again threw it back for more than a decade. 
 What is happening now is a massacre such as the world has never 
 seen before, that is reducing the laboring population in all of the 
 leading nations to the aged, the women and the maimed; a 
 blood-letting that threatens to bleed white the European labor 
 movement. 
 
 Another such war, and the hope of Socialism will be buried 
 under the ruins of imperialistic barbarism. That is more than 
 the ruthless destruction of Liege and of the Rheims Cathedral. 
 That is a blow, not against capitalist civilization of the past, but 
 against Socialist civilization of the future, a deadly blow against 
 the force that carries the future of mankind in its womb, that 
 alone can rescue the precious treasures of the past over into a 
 better state of society. Here capitalism reveals its death's head, 
 here it betrays that it has sacrificed its historic right of existence, 
 that its rule is no longer compatible with the progress of 
 humanity. 
 
 But here is proof also that the war is not only a grandiose 
 murder, but the suicide of the European working class. The 
 soldiers of socialism, the workers of England, of France, of 
 Germany, of Italy, of Belgium are murdering each other at the 
 bidding of capitalism, are thrusting cold, murderous irons into 
 each others' breasts, are tottering over their graves, grappling in 
 each others' death-bringing arms.
 
 128 THE CRISIS 
 
 "Deutschland, Deutschland iiber alles," "long live democracy," 
 "long live the czar and slavery," "ten thousand tent cloths, 
 guaranteed according to specifications," "hundred thousand 
 pounds of bacon," "coffee substitute, immediate delivery" . . . 
 dividends are rising proletarians falling; and with each one 
 there sinks a fighter of the future, a soldier of the revolution, 
 a savior of humanity from the yoke of capitalism, into the grave. 
 
 This madness will not stop, and this bloody nightmare of hell 
 will not cease until the workers of Germany, of France, of Russia 
 and of England will wake up out of their drunken sleep; will 
 clasp each other's hands in brotherhood and will drown the bestial, 
 chorus of war agitators and the hoarse cry of capitalist hyenas 
 with the mighty cry of labor, "Proletarians of all countries, 
 unite !"
 
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