10 THE CLASS STRUGGLE PACIFISM IN THE SERVICE OF IMPERIALISM 11 led inexorably to a catastrophic militarization of the United States at a single stroke.
It was impossible for this thing to go on without some resistance from the masses of the people. To overcome their unorganized dissatisfaction and to turn it into the channels of patriotic co operation with the government was therefore the first great task for the internal diplomacy of the United States during the first quarter of the present year. And it is the irony of history that the official pacifism of Wilson, as well as the oppositional pacifism of Bryan, should be the chief instruments for the accomplishment of this task: the education of the masses to military ideals.
The English Stock Exchange, in its prosecution of the war, had need first of all of pacifists of the Asquith (liberal) and Lloyd George (radical demagogue) type. If these people go in for war, say the English masses, right must be on our side.
Thus a responsible function is allotted to pacifism, in the economy of warfare, by the side of suffocating gases and inflated government loans.
More evident still is the subordinate rôle played by petit bourgeois pacifism with regard to imperialism in the United States.
The actual policy is there more prominently dictated by banks and trusts than anywhere else. Even before the war the United States, owing to the gigantic development of its industry and its foreign commerce, was being systematically driven in the direction of world interests and world policies. The European war imparted to this imperialistic development a speed that was positively feverish. At a time when many well meaning persons were hoping that the horrors of the European slaughter might inspire the American bourgeoisie with a hatred of militarism, the actual influence of European events was bearing on American policy not in psychological channels, but in material ones, and was having precisely the opposite effect. The exports of the United States, which in 1913 amounted to 2, 466 billions of dollars, rose in 1916 to 5, 481 billions! Of course the lion share of this export fell to the lot of the war industries. The sudden breaking off of exports to the allied nations after the declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare meant not only the stoppage of a flow of monstrous profits, but threatened with an unprecedented crisis the whole of American industry, which had been organized on a war footing. Hence the following appeal by Capital to the Government: Under the ensigns of neutrality and pacifism you have aided the development of our war industries. you now must guarantee the safety of our sales. If the government cannot at once promise the establishment of freedom of the seas it can create a new market, in America, for the war industries which are now choking with their own products. The act of aiding and abetting the European slaughter Bryan rashly and noisily expressed the natural aversion of the farmers and of the small man generally, to all such things as world policy, military service and higher taxes. Yet, at the same time that he was sending wagonloads of petitions, as well as deputations, to his pacifistic colleague at the head of the government, Bryan did everything in his power to break the revolutionary edge of the whole movement. If war should come, Bryan telegraphed, on the occasion of an anti war meeting in Chicago last February, we will all support the government, of course; yet at this moment it is our sacred duty to do all in our power to preserve the nation from the horrors of war. These few words contain the entire program of petit bourgeois pacifism. to do everything in our power against the war means to afford the voice of popular indignation an outlet in the form of a harmless demonstration, after having previously given the government a guarantee that it will meet with no serious opposition, in the case of war, from the pacifist faction.
Official pacifism could have desired nothing better. It could now give to warlike Capital a satisfactory assurance of imperialistic preparedness. After Bryan own declaration, only one thing was necessary, to dispose of his noisy opposition to war, and that was, simply, to declare war. And so Wilson did, and Bryan rolled right over into the government camp. And not only the petite bourgeoisie, but also the broad masses of the workers,