312 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THE DISARMAMENT CRY 313 and this was done both unofficially and (in the Basel manifesto)
officially.
The chief trouble about the disarmament demand is precisely in the fact that it ignores all the concrete questions of the revolution. Or have the advocates of disarmament chosen to espouse some new form of revolution without arms?
IV.
Furthermore. We are by no means opposed to the struggle for reforms. We do not wish to ignore the sad possibility thatas a supplement to its misery humanity may, at the end of this war, be obliged to pass through another imperialistic war, if the revolution is not born in this war, in spite of the innumerable explosions of the mass ferment, of the mass discontent, and of our own exertions. We advocate such a reform program as shall be directed also against the opportunists. The opportunists could not help being delighted if we should leave to them alone the combat for reforms, while we withdraw to the vague and shadowy eminence of some sort of disarmament, saving ourselves from the wretchedness of reality by flight. For disarmament means running away from squalid reality, not fighting it.
By the way, one of the chief defects in the putting of the question as to the defense of the fatherland, in the hands of some of the Left Wingers, is its insufficient concreteness. It would be both greatly more correct, from the theoretical standpoint, and immeasurably more significant, from the practical standpoint, to say, that in the present imperialistic war the defense of the fatherland is a bourgeois reactionary illusion, than to define a general attitude of opposition to any defense of the fatherland. The latter is both untrue and does not hit the immediate enemies of the workers within the workers parties. the opportunists.
On the question of a militia it is our duty to say, putting the answer concretely and in accordance with practical necessity: we are not in favor of a bourgeois militia, but only of a proletarian militia. Therefore: not one penny and not one man either for standing armies or for a bourgeois militia, such as is maintained in such countries as the United States, or Switzerland, Norway, etc. All the more, since we see, even in the freest of the republican countries (for instance, in Switzerland. an increasing Prussianization of the militia, a prostitution of the militia to mobilize troops against strikers. We must demand: an election of officers by the people, the abolition of all military tribunals, equality in the rights of foreign and domestic workers (a particularly important point in those imperialistic countries which, like Switzerland, to a greater and greater degree, are shamelessly exploiting the foreign laborers, reducing them to a position of legal helplessness. and furthermore: the right of every hundred, let us say, of the population of a given country, to form voluntary organizations for the learning of warlike accomplishments, with instructors of their own election, who are paid out of government funds, etc. Only under these circumstances can the proletariat learn the art of war for themselves, and not for their slaveholders, and this form of instruction is demanded by the interests of the proletariat. The Russian Revolution has shown that every success, even every partial success of a revolutionary movement, such as the conquests of certain cities, of certain factory settlements, certain parts of the army, necessarily requires the action of a successful proletariat for the realization of this very program.
And finally, it is not sufficient to fight opportunism by means of programs alone: we must consider what effects these programs actually produce. The most colossal, most fatal error of the insolvent Second International was in the fact that their words did not correspond to their actions, that they had formed the habit of a conscienceless and irresponsible use of revolutionary phrases (for instance, consider the present relation of Kautsky and Co.
to the Basel manifesto. Approaching the disarmament demand from this angle, we must first of all ask the question: what is its actual implication? Disarmament, as a social idea, e. as an idea produced by a certain social milieu and capable of influencing certain social conditions, as opposed to the whim of an individual or of a clique, in this sense it originates, manifestly, in the special, exceptionally peaceful conditions of life of the various