184 THE CLASS STRUGGLE SOCIALISM AND THE LEAGUE 185 The ready to beat upon the head any one who shall attempt to rise to question its designs, protest its acts, or challenge its authority.
The principal one of consequence that will so question, protest and challenge, is the rising worker. It is his head then, at which the blow is to be aimed. He must, therefore, use the head to provide means for its own protection.
The practical position to be taken by the workers of a country in which they have attained political ascendency resolves itself at the outset into the question of whether or not a Socialist republic should join he League of Nations. Of course the refusal of the League to include a Socialist country in its ranks will likely eliminate the practical necessity for rendering an answer.
failure of the dominant members of the League to recognize a Socialist government would necessarily be followed by such exclusion. Assuming a welcome on the part of the League, however, the answer to the question does not, it seems to me, involve a question of principle. It is rather a question of expediency, a question of international Socialist tactics. It is entirely conceivable that conditions may prevail which would justify the entry of a Socialist government into the League of Nations. Was fit the Socialist government of Russia justified in entering into the Brest Litovsk treaty with a capitalist Germany? The significant point is that such entry could only be from considerations of preservation of the gains of the revolution; the activities of the Socialists being directed towards the undermining of the League by the overthrow of its bourgeois constituencies in the Ci pitalist countries.
But, facing the facts as they exist at the present time, a Socialist government must look to some agency other than the League of Nations, for the execution of its international policies.
The alternative to the League of Nations is a federation of the Proletariats of the world. This would be the common agency of Socialist countries just as the League of Nations will be of capitalist ones. It would be the instrument through which the workers of the world unite to defend their gains and organize for further encroachment upon capitalist control of the world.
And its functions, at its inception, would necessarily be of a character different from those it would assume after the revolutionary process had placed the workers in control of the greater nations.
May we speculate?
At the outset it would be incumbent upon such a federation to hasten the process of socialization within the countries in which the workers had gained control. It must work to establish the new order so firmly that differences of policy within a country shall be confined to differences, affecting administration within the limits of the new society, and not differences as to the desirability of the maintenance of that society. It is vital that the social processes should be speeded in order to completely foredoom any attempt at counter revolution. This would only be doing internationally what Premier Lenin has insisted must be done to preserve the revolution in Russia.
Likewise means must be provided for a unified defense against attacks which may be made upon it by capitalist countries, which attacks will not unlikely find their outlet through the League of Nations. Such unity of defense is indispensable since the causes of all Socialist countries are identical; and because of the unified power of the foe, the strongest of the Socialist nations will be as much in need of the aid of the weakest as the latter will be of the help of the former.
Following the firm. establishment of the new order in the countries of the federation, and of provision for the means of unified defense, and indeed, simultaneous with these while they remain matters of prime importance, tremendous effort must be made to assist the Socialist movements throughout the world, not inerely as a stimulating expression of comradeship, but as a inethod of forestalling attacks upon Socialist governments by capitalist ones. The Socialist movement at home is the most vital factor in discouraging attacks upon the Socialist movement abroad.
Means innumerable will be advised and employed to carry out these objects. In establishing the new order beyond the possibility of overthrow, concern must be directed to the problem of the production and distribution of wealth both within the countries and between them. The shifting of industrial management and the transfer of land ownership to the working class must be accomplished with the greatest possible speed, consistent with stability. There must also be established trade relations which will result in the total disappearance of lines of economic demarcation; and there must be developed a unity of economic administration.
In providing for a unified defense the federation will be compelled to consider, as one of its means, the erection and maintenance of a military force. The particular course of such plans would, to a great extent, depend upon the military aspect