314 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THE DISARMAMENT CRY 315 small states which have for some time held aloof from the bloody world highway of war, and hope to continue to enjoy this privilege of non participation. Anyone who wishes to convince himself on this point, needs only to consider, for example, the reasoning of the Norwegian disarmament advocates: We are a small nation, our army is very small, we cannot undertake any aets against the great powers (and, therefore, we are also powerless to prevent being dragged into an imperialistic alliance with one group of great powers or the other. We want to remain at peace in our little corner and to continue our own provincial policy; we demand disarmament, compulsory arbitration, permanent neutrality, etc. Permanent neutrality. do they forget that this means Belgian neutrality. Switzerland, her international situation (surrounded by the great cultured nations, and speaking, thank God. not her own language, but three universal languages. for the purpose of extending, making permanent, strengthening the revolutionary alliance of the revolutionary elements of the proletariat of all Europe. Let us enable our bourgeoisie to maintain itself in the position of monopoly in trading with the charms of the Alps, and a few coppers will fall to our share that is the actual content of the policy of the Swiss opportunists. Let us support the alliance of the revolutionary proletariat of France, Germany, and Italy, so that they may overthrow the bourgeoisie that is the actual content of the policy of the Swiss revolutionary social democracy.
Unfortunately, this policy is not being pushed with sufficient energy by the Left in Switzerland, and the fine declaration of the Party Congress at Aarau in 1915 (recognizing the revolutionary mass struggle) remains on paper only. But that is not the subject of our present discussion.
The question now before us is this: Is the disarmament demand consistent with the revolutionary tendency among the Swiss social democrats? Manifestly it is not. As a matter of fact, the disarmament demand expresses the opportunistic, narrowly national, circumscribed horizon of the small nation type of workers movement. As a matter of fact, disarmament is the most nationalistic, outright nationalistic, program of the small states, and not by any means an international policy of the international revolutionary social democracy.
The pathetic desire of the small nations to keep aloof, the petite bourgeois desire to continue to keep out of the great combats of universal history, to enjoy their position of comparative monopoly and to remain in timid passivity this is the actual social condition which may assure to the idea of disarmament a certain degree of success and a certain popularity in some of the small nations. It is clear, however, that this tendency is neactionary and illusory, for imperialism will, in some way or other, drag all the small states into the whirlpool of universal production and of universal politics.
Let us illustrate with the case of Switzerland. The imperialistic position of this country actually dictates two lines of action to the workers movement. The opportunists, in alliance with the bourgeoisie, aspire to make of Switzerland a republican democratic monopolistic federation, for the deriving of profits from the tourists of the imperialist bourgeoisie, and to exploit this peaceful monopolist position under the most favorable and the most peaceful circumstances possible. As a matter of fact, this policy is a policy of agreement between a rather small privileged section of the workers of a small nation, which nation is in a privileged position, with the bourgeoisie of their own country, and against the masses of the proletariat. But the real social democrats of Switzerland wish to utilize the comparative freedom of In the last number of the English periodical, The Socialist Review (September, 1916. the organ of the opportunistic Independent Labor Party, we find, on page 287, a resolution of the Newcastle Conference of this party: a refusal to support any war at all, waged by any government at all, even though it might nominally be a defensive war. But on page 205 we find the following declaration in an editorial article: We do not approve the Sinn Fein rebellion (the Irish uprising of 1916. We do not approve any armed rebellion, any more than we approve any other form of militarism or of war.