§ 32 The civil war

Civil war is an extremely intensified class war, and it occurs when the class war has led to revolution. The imperialist world war between the two groups of bourgeois States, the war waged for the repartition of the world, was carried on by the slaves of capital. It imposed such heavy burdens upon the workers that the class war was transformed into a civil war fought by the oppressed against their oppressors, the war which Marx had declared to be the only just war.

It was perfectly natural that capitalism should culminate in civil war, that the imperialist war between the bourgeois States should lead to a war between the classes. Our party foretold this development at the very outset of the war, in the year 1914, when no one dreamed of revolution. Nevertheless it was manifest that the intolerable burdens which the war imposed upon the working class must lead to an insurrection of the proletariat. It was, moreover, perfectly clear that the bourgeoisie could not possibly ensure a lasting peace, for the conflict of interests between the various groups of plunderers was too vital.

Our predictions have been entirely fulfilled. After the terrible years of war, brutality, and devastation, a civil war against the oppressors began. This civil war was opened by the Russian revolutions of March and November, 1917; it was continued by the Finnish revolution, the Hungarian revolution, the Austrian revolution, and the German revolution; revolutions in other countries have begun. The bourgeoisies cannot bring about a lasting peace. The Allies overcame Germany in November 1918; the robbers' peace of Versailles was signed many months later; but no one knows when the final settlement will be effected. It is plain to all that the peace of Versailles is not lasting. Quarrels have already broken out between the Jugoslavs and the Italians, between the Poles and the Czechoslovaks, between the Poles and the Lithuanians, between the Latvians and the Germans. In addition, all the bourgeois States have combined to attack the republic of the victorious Russian workers. Thus the imperialist war is ending in a civil war, of which the inevitable outcome will be the victory of the proletariat.

The civil war is not the result of any party's caprice; its coming has been no chance matter. The civil war is a manifestation of the revolution, and the revolution was absolutely inevitable because the robber war of the imperialists had opened the eyes of the broad masses of the workers.

To think that the revolution can take place without civil war is equivalent to thinking that there can be a 'peaceful' revolution. Anyone who believes this (as the mensheviks who utter laments concerning the hurtfulness of civil war believe it) is turning away from Marx to those antediluvian socialists who imagine that the factory owners can be talked over. We might just as well hope by petting a tiger to persuade the animal to live upon grass and to leave cattle alone ! Marx was an advocate of the civil war, that is to say the fight of the armed proletariat against the bourgeoisie. Writing with reference to the Paris Commune (the rising of the Parisian workers in the year 1871), Marx declares that the communards had not been sufficiently resolute. He uses reproachful terms in the manifesto of the First International. [The Civil War in France.] We read: 'Even the sergents-de-ville, instead of being disarmed and locked up, as ought to have been done, found the gates of Paris flung wide open, for their safe retreat to Versailles. The men of the "party of order" ' [this was the name then given to the counterrevolutionaries] 'were not only left unharmed; they were allowed to rally and quietly to seize more than one stronghold in the very heart of Paris....In its reluctance to continue the civil war opened by Thiers' [the French counterpart of Denikin] '...the Central Committee made a grave mistake. It was urgently necessary to attack Versailles....to put an end, once for all, to the plots of Thiers and the Rurals. Instead of this, the "party of order" was again allowed to test its strength at the ballot-box, in the communal elections of March 26th.' Here Marx clearly advocates the armed suppression of the counterrevolution; he advocates civil war. Engels, too, wrote as follows: 'Would the Commune of Paris have held its ground for a single day unless it had put its trust in the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie? Have we not, rather, the right to blame the Commune for having made so little use of its powers of compulsion?' And this is how Engels defines the term revolution 'A revolution is an act in which one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets, and artillery.'

We see that the leaders of socialism took a very serious view of revolution. They understood that the proletariat cannot peacefully persuade the bourgeoisie; they understood that the workers must impose their will by means of victory in a civil war fought with 'rifles, bayonets, and artillery'.

Civil war ranges one against another, with arms in their hands, the two classes of capitalist society, the two classes whose interests are diametrically opposed. The fact that capitalist society is split up into two parts, that it essentially consists of at least two distinct societies this fact is obscured at ordinary times. For what reason? Because the slaves passively obey their masters. But in time of civil war this passive obedience comes to an end, and the oppressed portion of society rises against the oppressors. It is obvious that in such circumstances the classes cannot possibly ' live harmoniously side by side'. The army splits up into White Guards consisting of the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, the richer members of the professional classes, and so on, and Red Guards consisting of workers and peasants. It is now impossible that there should be a parliament of any sort in which factory owners and workers sit together. How can they meet 'peacefully' in parliament when they are shooting one another in the streets? In time of civil war, class takes up arms against class. This is why the struggle can only end through a victory of one of the two classes. It cannot end in an agreement, or in any sort of compromise. Such a view has been fully confirmed by the experience of civil war in Russia and elsewhere (Germany and Hungary). There must speedily ensue a dictatorship, either of the proletariat or of the bourgeoisie. Government by the middle classes and their parties (the Social Revolutionary Party, the Menshevik Party, etc.) is merely a bridge by which we pass to one side or the other. When the Soviet Government of Hungary was overthrown with the aid of the mensheviks, its place was taken for a brief space by a ' coalition', but then an absolutist reactionary government was established. From time to time the Constitutional Social Revolutionary Party would come to the top in Ufa, Transvolgia, or Siberia, but within twenty-four hours it was always overthrown by Admiral Kolchak, who was supported by the great capitalists and the landlords. This meant the establishment of a landlordcapitalist dictatorship instead of a worker-peasant dictatorship. A DECISIVE VICTORY OVER THE ENEMY AND THE REALIZATION OF THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT - SUCH WILL BE THE INEVITABLE OUTCOME OF THE WORLD-WIDE CIVIL WAR.