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