The Effects of the War

The real cause of the change, in the process of the hitherto recorded development towards humanisation, into a development towards brutality is attributable to the world-war; but even earlier there were other factors that were inimical to the general tendency of the humanising influence. The most important of these was brought to light by the very French Revolution itself. It was universal military service, which the revolutionary regime found necessary, in order, by means of a superiority of troops and the continual filling up of vacant appointments, to cope with the professional armies of the united monarchs arraigned against them. There was only one of these monarchic States, which introduced this system and indeed preserved and developed it at a time when France had already again discarded it. This was Prussia, the smallest and most recent of the great Powers of Europe, with the most unfavourable frontiers; whose very existence demanded an army, which, in relation to the population, was far greater than that in any other land. Apart from this fact, the old Prussia, from perfectly natural causes, was regarded as a stepchild and the poorest among the great States. If, therefore, it really wished to assert itself, all other considerations had to go in favour of the army. As a consequence, ever since the day of its ascendancy, when it ranked as one of the great Powers, it has been a militarist State par excellence. In his book on Germany (My Four Years in Germany, London 1917, p.447) Gerard, the American Ambassador, makes several remarks, which show up Prussia’s military calling in a drastic light.

Thanks to universal military service and the upholding of militarism in general, Prussia arrived at the height of its power in the West, between 1866 and 1870. As a result, universal service was forced upon the remaining States of the European Continent, and at about the same time the railway system became a military the best a decisive factor in the conduct of war. All States endeavoured to develop this system to of their powers, which brought about the necessity for a continuous increase of armed force – in other words, a more and more rigid application of universal service. Hence we finally arrived at the glorious result, that the whole of the male population, which was not crippled or physically unfit, was pressed into war service! But war service means the becoming accustomed to the shedding of human blood, and to competition in such shedding. It signifies the deadening of human feelings, of culture, and the cultivation of brutality. In the eighteenth century, when there were only small professional armies (militia), the great mass of the people was preserved from such influences on their morals; but, as a consequence of universal military service, the people in the course of the nineteenth century, became more and more brutalised, and first and foremast in Prussia.

The humanising tendencies of the nineteenth century were thereby not wholly without effect; but they were most adversely affected. These humanizing tendencies became most pronounced in the case of the intellectual elements. These remained longest exempt from military service, even at the time when, instead of voluntary enlistment, forced recruiting was resorted to. But, under the conscription system, it was in the first place only the peasants, artisans, and the labouring clauses, who were affected; the middle class and the intellectuals were spared. Universal service, however, could ultimately make no exception in their case. On the contrary, officers to command reserves were required. But before, as after, the educated man occupied a special position in regard to military service. It was not a position that excluded him from the army, but one in which he, within the army itself, as a. volunteer for one year and as a reserve officer, had certain privileges. As a result, the educated classes had the influences of military force on their thoughts and feelings, and indeed to a still higher degree than was the case with the other classes. For it put them in a privileged position and created in them already a certain taste for army life. Moreover, the system of professional officers enhanced the attraction of the army. Those who had made military service their life vocation, for whom it was no mere temporary form of activity, and who in all war measures had to take the initiative, and make their regiment excel in energy and smartness, developed the characteristic traits of militarism; in a still higher degree than the ordinary men, who had to serve for only a short period, and even then were compelled to do so.

As a result, the educated classes were more strongly influenced by militarism than even the rest of the population. Furthermore, professional occupation brings with it a tendency to develop every idea and conception in a more thorough and radical way – which after all is quite compatible with very reactionary modes of thought – than is the case with men, who, through practical experience, know the obstacles that occur in daily life. Those of the educated classes who wished to became reserve officers, and took as their example the professional officers, easily adapted themselves to militarism, and became the very pioneers of roughness and violence which, the outcome of universal service, soon spread to the whole of the people. Even in this respect Prussia was to the forefront of the other States; since it first introduced the system of one year volunteers and reserve officers, and raised the reserve officer, more than any other State had done, to a privileged and much-coveted position. Yet, in spite of universal military service, the humanising tendencies in the proletariat were stronger, as a result of its class position, than the brutalising influence of militarism. In the case of the educated classes, especially in Prussia, a strong check was put on these tendencies, which contributed not a little to the bitterness of class opposition and class struggle.

What is here said of the educated applies especially to the capitalists, whose humane instincts, from the outset, find stronger opposing forces to overcome, as a result of their position. When, therefore, the war broke out and dragged in its train for four years practically the whole of the healthy male population, the coarsening tendencies of militarism sank to the very depths of brutality, and lack of human feeling and sentiment. Even the proletariat could no longer escape from its influence. It was in a very high degree infected by militarism, and when it returned home again, was in every way brutalised. Habituated to war, the man who had come back from the front was only too often in a state of mind and feeling that made him ready, even in peace times and among his own people, to enforce his claims and interests by deeds of violence and bloodshed. That became, as it were, an element of the civil war; it. also contributed further to make the masses mere savages. Nevertheless, many of the more mature, as soon as they were removed from the influences of war, fell easily enough into the ways of thinking and feeling they had acquired in times of peace. It is much worse, however, in the case of youths; for they, without any teachers or guides, have been powerless to withstand the brutalising influences that prevailed during the four years of the war; and hence have received impressions, which they can never eradicate completely, so long as they lived.

Besides all this, there is a very profound change at work in the very conditions of the proletariat. The war has affected most seriously the petty bourgeoisie, and has claimed many of their ranks, and forced them into the proletariat. Moreover, these elements, who hitherto remained aloof from, all proletarian class struggles, have not come into contact with the discipline and the capacity for organisation, which the proletariat had acquired at the time when the class struggle was under the leadership of the Socialist Parties. These took the trouble to enlighten and organise the masses; and even within the proletariat, as it has been hitherto constituted, there have been very profound changes. As was the case with all workers, the reduction in number of the skilled workers in time of war, through death, or through injury and had became much greater than in times of peace.

At the same time, hardly any provision was made for the rising generation. There was no time or strength to educate the young, and there was also lacking the very need to undertake such activity. Instead of the varied industries that existed in times of peace, there rose up the much more monotonous war industry, which offered only small scope for skilled labour; and each labourer had only to learn the use of a little machinery, which most unskilled apprentices could manipulate just as well. In consequence, the number of skilled labourers, who have contributed so enormously to Germany’s industrial development, became very greatly reduced during the war; and in their stead there has sprung up unskilled labour, the numbers of which have rapidly increased. The skilled labourers were the best organised and best educated, and were the clearest thinking of all the labour classes. The unskilled were unorganised, ignorant and indifferent. Their indifference certainly disappeared during the war. For this gigantic event, with its fearful consequences, roused everyone, even the most remote elements of the people, and brought them to the most feverish excitement. At the same, tune, however, the number of skilled workers, brought up on Socialist doctrine, diminished, as against the numbers of those who, in every respect, were ignorant and. undisciplined; and also as against the increase of the petty bourgeoisie, which had been forced into the proletariat. As a result, the minority with superior education and skill, who had hitherto led the proletariat, gradually lost its power of leading, and in its stead there arose the blind passion of ignorance. This became all the more easy, because the war brought in its train the most profound economic chaos, a huge amount of unemployment, an enormous increase in high prices, and lack of the necessaries of life. So the desperate masses demanded the most radical changes; not indeed in order to create a newer and higher form of society about which they, as a matter of fact, had not given a thought, but in order to escape immediately from their horrible misery. For the proletariat the change of its wretched situation is always an urgent matter. That is the chief reason why, since considerable economic and historical knowledge is a necessary requisite for the understanding of Marxism, Marx’s mode of thought has never found it easy to take root among the labouring classes. The masses do not instinctively prefer a doctrine which leads towards the road of development, but one which offers a formula or a plan, the carrying out of which will inevitable relieve them, in all circumstances, from the suffering they have. to endure. For a. proletarian it argues a certain amount of resignation on his part to acknowledge a doctrine, which certainly does not expect of him a state of mere passive waiting, but on the other hand spurs him on to an energetic continuation of the class struggle; yet. which nevertheless makes his ultimate emancipation from conditions dependent on a mode of development, which has first of all to be discovered and created. However difficult it was for the proletarian in the latter decades before the war, his position was such that he could, to a certain extent, live in such a way, that the. immediate transformation of satiety was for him not a question of life or death; at least not for the skilled labourer, who formed the nucleus of the class struggle and of the Socialist movement. Nowadays these workmen are ousted in all political and economic struggles by the unskilled, and the conditions for these latter are so desperate that they cannot afford to wait. Why indeed should they wait, when the conclusion of the war has finally put the political power into their hands?

The war has not only brought the most solid elements of the working-classes into the forefront of the class struggle; but it has also, as the result of the collapse of the armies, especially in those parts of Europe which are economically most solid, created the proletarian class in the various towns, by the side of which illiterate peasants, such as are to be found in Russia, have not been able to acquire any real independent political power. No class ever voluntarily renounces the power that it has won for itself, whatever be the circumstances that have brought it to the fore. It would he folly to demand of the Russian and Hungarian proletariats such renunciation, an account of the backward state of their countries. But a Socialist Party led by a truly Marxist spirit would adapt the present problems confronting the victorious proletariat to the material and psychical conditions to be found ready to hand; and would not endeavour, without further reflection, to introduce an immediate and complete socialisation in a land of undeveloped capitalist production like Russia.

Certainly it is questionable whether such a party could ever lead the masses. To the practical politicians it seems more important to rule at the moment, than to run the danger of an economic failure, with a view to being ultimately in the right. The practical politician does not like being in a position of inviting unpopularity at the present moment, because the inevitable collapse of a policy, which exceeds the bounds of possibility, has been made clear. He prefers to avoid the collapse, and to preserve his ideal from being compromised. The old antagonism between practical politics and theoretical politics, between Lassalle and Marx, rose again after the revolution in Russia in 1917. Marx declared in his letter to Kugelmann, of the 23rd February, 1865 (published by me in the Socialist, 1st May, 1918), that the German working men, as a result of the reaction of 1849-1859, had became too much hampered in their development not to “become jubilant when a deliverer, in the form of a mob orator like Lassalle, comes and promises to help them at one move to enter the promised land.” Such “moves” and such “deliverers” were not to Marx’s taste. But, as at the time of Lassalle, the time of the Second Russian Revolution, if for quite other reasons, proved to be very unfavourable to “Marxist” doctrines. Those among the labouring classes in Russia, who had been trained on Marxist lines, were dead or swept away the backward masses, who had suddenly awakened to life. It was pre-Marxist ways of thought that gained the upper hand, ways such as were represented by Blanqui, Weitling or Bakunin. These were the conditions under which the Revolution, first of all in Russia and then in the neighbouring countries, progressed. No wonder therefore, that it awoke afresh only primitive ways of thought ; and also allowed brutal and murderous forms of political and social war to come to light, forms which one had been led to believe had been overcome by the intellectual and. moral rise of the proletariat.

Chapter 8 |