BourgeoisieCapitalismEngelsOpportunismSocialismWorking Class

410 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THE MILITARY PROGRAM 411 perialistic powers would result in the participation of a second imperialistic power in competition with the first, and that thús every national war is changed into an imperialistic war. But this argument also is not true. It may be true, but it is not always true. Several of the colonial wars between 1900 and 1914 did not follow this course. It would be ridiculous to say that, when the present war ends with the complete exhaustion of the fighting nations, there can be no national, progressive and revolutionary war against the great powers, say on the part of China, in alliance with India, Persia, Siam, etc. All denial of the possibility of national wars under imperialism is theoretically untrue, historically incorrect, and practically it is European chauvinism. We who belong to the nations oppressing hundreds of millions of people in Europe, Africa, Asia, etc. we explain to the oppressed peoples that their war against our nations is impossible!
In the second place, civil wars, too, are wars.
Whoever accepts the class struggle must also accept civil wars, which represent a natural, at times unavoidable, continuation, development, and intensification, of the class struggle. All great revolutions prove this. To deny or to disregard civil wars would mean to turn to extreme opportunism and to abandon the idea of socialistic revolution.
In the third place, socialism, victorious in one country, does in no way thereby exclude all wars as such. On the contrary, it presupposes them. The development of capitalism in the various countries proceeds very unequally. It cannot be different in the age of industrialism. Hence it unavoidably follows that socialism cannot be victorious in all countries simultaneously. It first will gain control in one or several countries, the others will for some time remain bourgeois or prebourgeois. This will not only produce friction, but will lead, moreover, to direct efforts on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to destroy the victorious proletariat of the socialistic state. In such a case war on our part would be legitimate and just; it would be a war for socialism, for the freeing of other peoples from the bourgeoisie.
Engels in his letter to Kautsky, of December 12, 1882, was quite right when he unreservedly acknowledged the possibility of wars of defense on the part of already victorious socialism.
By that he meant the defense of the victorious proletariat against the bourgeoisie of other countries. Not until we have overthrown the bourgeoisie in all countries, conquered and expropriated them, will wars be impossible.
It is scientifically incorrect, and not at all revolutionary, for us to avoid and to conceal the most important thing, that which will prove the most difficult in the transition to socialism, namely, the overthrow of the bourgeois opposition. The social clergy and the opportunists are always ready to dream of peaceful socialism in the future, but they differ from the revolutionary social democrats in this particular: they dodge all thoughts of bitter class struggles and class wars as well as all other real efforts to realize this beautiful future.
We must not allow ourselves to be deceived by words.
For example, the idea of defense is hateful to many, because it serves the outspoken opportunists and the Kautskians to cover up the lie of the bourgeoisie in the present war of aggression. This is true. But it need not lead us to disregard the importance of political slogans. To accept the defense idea in the present war would mean to consider it a just war serving the interests of the proletariat. That and nothing else! For, after all, every war may bring invasions. On the other hand it would be foolish not to recognize the idea of defense on the part of oppressed peoples in their struggle against imperialistic powers, or of the victorious proletariat in its struggle against some Gallifet of a bourgeois country.
Theoretically it would be altogether wrong to overlook the fact that every war is but a continuation of politics with changed methods. The present capitalistic war is the continuation of the imperialistic policies of two groups of world powers, policies which were created and nourished by the sum total of conditions of the imperialistic epoch.
However, this same epoch must of necessity give rise to the policies of war against national oppression and the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. Thus we see the possibility and unavoidability first, of revolutions and national wars, second, of wars and uprisings of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, and third, of a combination of these two types of revolutionary wars.
There still remains another general question to be considered. An oppressed class which does not strive to be familiar with, to wield, and to possess arms deserves to be oppressed, maltreated, and enslaved. If we do not wish to degrade ourselves to bourgeois pacifists and opportunists, we must not forget that we are living in a class society from which there is no possible or thinkable escape except through class. wars.
In every class society, whether it rest upon slavery, serf