112 THE CLASS STRUGGLE ACCUSE 113 The Austrian minority, which was very small in this country where free speech was impossible, while it was very large in Germany, this minority will not be represented in Stockholm. But it will be spoken of in Stockholm your sentence will accomplish that. And the real greetings from Austria to the Stockholm Conference will be the death sentence that you will pass upon me.
The prosecutor says that called out Down with Absolutism!
We want peace! This cry was not heard by a single witness, It is true, desired to demonstrate for peace without indemnities, without annexations. But if had said that seven months ago in this hall would have been considered a fool, while to day this demand is a strong factor in the negotiations of our own government. On the 23d of October there was not a sign of constitutional government to be seen in Austria. To day we are approaching a reconvening of Parliament, and the necessity of Parliament is much more generally recognized than before. demonstrated furthermore for more revolutionary tactics. have, all my life, been a revolutionist. have seen in the daily political activity of the party a weapon for the revolution and have never regarded revolution as a catch phrase of political activity. Had spoken of revolution seven months ago you would have laughed at the idea of a revolution in times of war. The counsel would have called for alienists and you would have thought him justified. But to day, not only the ArbeiterZeitung, but the entire capitalist press rejoices over the Russian revolution. To be sure, these gentlemen have ever been enthusiastic for freedom in other countries. And to day even the Arbeiter Zeitung celebrates the revolution in Russia.
The public prosecutor speaks of the milieu from which have come. believe it will be difficult for you to understand this, for it is an entirely different world from the one in which you are accustomed to live. Allow me to illustrate. Originally it was believed that the earth was the center of the world and that the sun and the stars moved around it. When Copernicus said This solid earth moves, he was at first believed to be insane.
When this was impossible he was dragged before a court of inquisition, to which at that time was assigned the function of a military reserve court, and conducted a trial against him. To day we can say dispassionately that in a certain sense both were right, that it all depends upon whether one is standing on the earth or transfers oneself to the sun. Both views are logically possible, although logically incompatible. We can never argue from more than one point of view. You are accustomed to see upon this earth the trenches of national warfare, but have fixed all my hopes, so long as have been able to think politically, upon those fronts of the class struggle that also exist in the world. If one argues from the point of view of national warfare, one reaches entirely different conclusions, and will easily be inclined to say to me You are a fool. But when you see that that is useless you would call me maligner, criminal, hireling of the enemy. But and my friends in Germany are just as little the accomplices of the Entente as our friends in France, in Russia and Italy, who support the International there, would be willing to become the accomplices of the Central Powers. This line of argumentation comes from an entirely different world.
We Socialists have always looked upon the world from the point of view of the class struggle until the war began and have subordinated everything else in the whole world to this highest point of view. We have looked upon the International as supreme, and yet there are people who say we must change this point of view; in peace the struggle between classes, in war the struggle between nations.
This change of viewpoint, according to themomentary situation is exceedingly attractive to the Austrian. But even if both points of view were correct, that on the earth and that on the sun, both points of view are nevertheless not of equal value. For the point of view of Copernicus has given to natural science a basis for its entire development, while the point of view of national warfare, the struggle between two competing imperialist powers, leads the world to ruin, leads to hunger, misery, to the destruction of the human race, leads to no higher development of humanity because it aims to establish one group as the rulers of the world.
Whether England or Germany will rule the world, new wars will follow. But the point of view of the International stands higher, because upon it depends the future of the human race, the