La Verite - The Truth 82 June 2014 Part 2 Final

8/11/2019 La Verite - The Truth 82 June 2014 Part 2 Final

1/36

LA VERITE

THE TRUTH

ISSUE N 82 (NEW SERIES; NO. 688 OLD SERIES) - PART 1 - JUNE 2014PRICE : US$6 (for Parts 1 & 2) - 5 EUROS

ISSUE No. 82

PART TWO

SPECIAL DOUBLE ISSUE

Another Point of View on theWar of 1914

Karl Liebknecht addresses antiwar rally in Berlin in July 1914


2/36

The politics of Communism stands only to gain from

a truthful clarification of reality. Untruth is needed for

salvaging false reputations, but not for the education of

the masses. The workers need the truth as an

instrument of revolutionary action.

Your paper bears the name Vrit (Truth). This

name, like all others, has been amply abused.

Nevertheless it is a good and honourable name. The

truth is always revolutionary. To lay bare the truth of

their position before the oppressed is to lead them to

the high road of revolution.

Leon Trotsky


3/36


4/36i


5/36


6/362

constant references to a glorious but

mythologised past (the French Revolution,

especially) made them out of touch with

reality.

Much more moderate were the

Possibilists, also called Broussists

after their main leader, Paul Brousse. They

thought that everything that was possible

should be done, so long as this was in theright direction. They were

unquestionably reformists. Shamefully,

the former Socialist Minister Vincent

Peillon identified with them, with one

difference: degree. As far as the

Possibilists were concerned, socialism was

the ultimate objective; for Peillon,

capitalism was insurmountable.

This current produced a left-wing, the

Allemanists, named after Jean

Allemane. They were more syndicalist and

more anti-clerical, but lacking any kind of

theoretical principles.The main figure among the

Independent Socialists was Jean Jaurs.

The main Socialist leader in France was

not a Marxist; more precisely, he espoused

a highly relative Marxism, and on certain

essential points he was openly opposed to

it. It is difficult to summarise Jaurs in just

a few lines. The simplest thing, in a

review like our own, is on the one hand to

refer to the interview given to

In fo rm at io ns ouv ri re s by Fre nc h

historian Gilles Candar, and on the other

to quote Trotsky.Trotsky, who had crossed paths Jaurs

on several occasions, wrote in 1915: In

the essence of his views Jaurs had been

and remained a reformist. But he

possessed an astonish ing capaci ty for

adaptation: and that included adaptation

towards the revolutionary tendencies in

the movement. (4)

He added in 1920: The ideologist of

democracy, Jaurs, pictured democracy as

the nations supreme tribunal rising above

the warring classes. (.. .) An ardent

defender of the interests of the proletariat,

and profoundly devoted to socialism,

Jaurs, as the tribune of a democratic

nation, came out against imperialism. (5)

And in 1922: And we can say now,

and we can say tomorrow, that every

revolutionary party, every oppressed

people, every oppressed working class,

and above all the vanguard of the

oppressed peoples and working classes,

the Communist International, can identify

with Jaurs, with his memory, his figure,

his personality. Jaurs is our common

property, he belongs to the revolutionary

parties, to the working classes, to the

oppressed peoples. (6)

At the insistent request of the

International, all of these currents were to

unite with difficulty (it had been decided

that minutes of the congress would not be

kept) in 1905, and Jaurs gradually

assumed effective leadership.

2) Looming crisis

This was the scene presented by the

apparent situation of the French labour

movement in 1914.

The reality was much more complex.

The three big forces of the labour

movement were fraught with internal

tensions and difficulties, all linked to one

simple question: fight back or adapt.

Anarchism, which had real influence,

especially in the trade union world, had

been undergo ing a serious crisis since1911. It took the form among others of

illegalism, notably with the Bonnot

affair, which saw well-known anarchist

activists take the path of gangsterism,

which led to repression. There was an

undeniable stupor: thus Kropotkin, a

theoretician and an eminent figure in

anarchist circles, was justifying as early as

1905 the Sacred Union that was to come

(7). Activists such as Marcel Hasfeld, the

free-thinker Andr Lorulot, Victor Serge

and Amde Dunois, who joined the SFIO

(8) in 1912 before rejecting the SacredUnion, questioned their commitment to

anarchism.

Trade unionism was also undergoing a

pr ofo un d cri si s. Fa ci ng at te mp ts at

infiltration by the police and the Radical

Party (9), and subjected to provocations

and repression, it also fell prey to

scheming. One such machination resulted

in the resignation of Griffuelhes as

Secretary of the CGT in 1909. His

successor Niel proved incapable and held

on for just a few months before being

replaced by Lon Jouhaux, a revolutionary

syndicalist who hastened to declare that

the trade union needed fine tuning.

Another scheme resulted in the expulsion

of Merrheim, the combative

Metalworkers Federation official; he was

expelled from his industry union. There

was indeed a crisis in thinking among

trade union activists (10).

Strikes became routine affairs, badly

prepared, badly led and often labelled

general strike. Thus on 16 December

1912, the general strike against the war by

the CGT, conceived as a general rehearsal

for the uprising by the working class in

case of conflict, was more symbolic than

real. Almost nobody among the leadership

was worried about a false radicalism that

saw bawlers and rrrrevolutionaries

(11) acting like petty chiefs over the

working class.

The crisis within the SFIO was no less

significant. Having vilified the otherSocialist currents, the Guesdists lost all

legitimacy by unifying with them. They

lapsed into a dogmatism that barely hid a

profoundly elec toralist approach . The

ultra-leftist Gustave Herv, who had

planted the tricolour flag in a dungheap

(12), had been preparing his rallying point

since 1912, and in July 1914 opposed the

general strike against war. Although Jean

Jaurs held sway over the SFIO, he did

soon the basis of his personal, intellectual

and political prestige alone, and not his

theoretical or organisational attributesThe party which in 1905 had declared

itself a party of the working class was

increasingly becoming an electoralist party

whose candidates still could not manage

nor wanted to move away from the

Radical Party, which was the majority

party at that time. For the time being, the

figure of Jaurs, who represented the party

almost single-handedly, was over-

whelmingly charismatic and banished any

uncertainty. But after his death (13)

It was in this French context (and

international context, with the AgadirCrisis in Morocco and the Balkan Wars)

that in 1913 the so-called Three-Year

Law was passed, extending the term of

military service to three years and thus

illustrating and accelerating the rise of

militarism. While it is an indisputable fact

that the SFIO officially pacifist and

internationalist waged a campaign

against this law, all related articles in its

newspaper LHumani t were published

under the rubric For national defence.

As part of a very French tradition

several former revolutionaries and

socialists like Viviani, Briand and

Millerand tried to influence or appeal to

their former comrades and often

succeeded. As for Clemenceau, who had

nicknamed himself the senior cop of

France, he continued to organise the

repression of labour activity as Interior

Minister. Let us recall in passing that

Manuel Valls, Frances current socialist

Prime Minister and former Interior

Minister, recently confided that he

preferred Clemenceau to Jaurs.

Few were ravaged with concern in the

LA VERITE/THE TRUTH


7/36

face of the ineffectiveness and

complacency of the official leadership of

the big labour organisations.

But within that small circle, we can

mention the grouping around La Vie

ouvrire [Working-class Life], th e

recently-established trade union review

centred on Monatte, Merrheim andRosmer.

In fact, it was not the war that led to (or

pr ov oke d) th e cr is is of th e la bou r

movement, especially in France. It was

the crisis of the labour movement that

allowed war to break out; or, to be more

exact, the official policy of the labour

movement did not allow it to stand firm

during the chauvinistic crisis. Put simply,

the war tragically revealed the

powerlessness of the labour leadership.

3) Rallying round

August 1914 was a tragedy, beyond

any shadow of a doubt. Millions of

proletarians and peasants of every country

were to massacre each other.

The assassination of Jean Jaurs, a

declared opponent of the war, on 31 July

1914 by a crank was an extreme form of

that tragedy. When brought to trial in

1919, Jaurss murderer was defended in

court by Zvas, a senior Socialist leader

who had become an Independent

Socialist. At the trial, a man testified on

behal f of the murderer , Raoul Vil lain.This man was Marc Sangnier, the founder

of French Christian Democracy, with

whom several supporters of the official

left identified. He described the

murderer Villain as an upstanding,

sincere, loyal person and insisted on his

moral values (moral values consisting

of firing two bullets to the back of the

head). Villain was so well defended that

he was acquitted, and Jaurss widow was

ordered to pay the legal costs.

The last days of July 1914 saw the

CGT organise several big demonstrations(where there were violent clashes with the

police). But the leadership waited and the

military mobilisation began amidst a

nationalist frenzy: the underground

railway station Allemagne [Germany]

was renamed Jaurs before war was

even declared (on 3 August 1914), shops

bearing Germanic names were ransacked,

and so on.

The rallying of the labour leaders

around the Sacred Union, i.e. around the

international slaughter, was explicitly

stated in a joint SFIO-CGT manifesto (an

event in itself) which as early as 28 July

criticised Austria-Hungarys historic

responsibility and sang the praises of the

French leaders who wanted pe ace

sincerely. Consequently, Jules Guesde

was to become a government minister,

like two other Socialist leaders.At Jaurss funeral, CGT General

Secretary Leon Jouhaux spoke in the

name of those who will go to the front,

then remained in the rear and rallied to the

Sacred Union, later becoming a

government commissioner. Of course,

Jouhauxs biography cannot be reduced to

this moment in time (his rejection of the

Ptain-Belin Labour Charter in 1940,

which without his rejection would

have destroyed the CGT within a

corporatist set-up was extremely

important), but it should not be forgotten

either.

The anarchists played their part in this

concert with the famous Manifesto of the

Sixteen, which stated: [U]nless the

German population () finally refuses to

serve any longer as an instrument of the

pr oj ec ts of pan -Ge rm an po li ti ca l

domination, there can be no question of

peace.

The Poincar government blackmailed

those named in the Carnet B (a list of

some 2,500 possible opponents of the war

who would be rounded up in case of

unrest) saying that it would not pursueanyone who formally declared their good

intentions. At the same time it cracked

down selectively on known opponents

(the trade unionists Broutchoux was to

remain in prison for two years;

schoolteacher Julia Bertrand was also

imprisoned, among others) and no less

selectively favoured other labour officials

socially (some sought to gain a military

rank, for example, while others, more

prosaically, wanted to avoid going off

to the front, even if it meant calling on

others to fight). One weapon was veryeffective against both opponents and the

half-hearted: being sent to the front.

The atmosphere against the

internationalists was oppressive: to take

just one example, the trade union leader

Merrheim, who at that time was against

the war, had to be accompanied by two

enormous dogs for his own protection

when attending meetings of the CGT

leadership, where he was regularly called

a Hun and insulted by his comrades.

The wave of chauvinism carried all

before it. Victor Serge, in one dreadful

passage from his memoirs, reports the

remarks of a friend who tries to corrupt

him: The wars business, old chap.

Youll see people are doing well out of it,

nobody wants to end it any more. ()

Jules Guesde and Marcel Sembat are in

the Government; a Socialist is defendingJaurss murderer Maitre Zvas, you

know him. Chose, the Illegalist, has won

the Military Medal, etc. (14).

Moreover, the opponents to the war did

not complain to the leadership that it had

not prevented this wave of

chauvinism, but that it had not

distanced itself from it. We were all of us

po we rle ss , Pierre Monatte told the

CGTs 1919 Congress.

This rallying round did not take place

in the abstract: leaders of the Socialist

Party and the CGT turned themselves into

police auxiliaries, in the literal sense of

the term, informing against their own

comrades for making internationalist

remarks.

4) Resistance

It was the small La Vi e Ou vri r e

group, in liaison with the Russian exiles

around Trotsky and Martov of the

newspaperNashe Slovo, that held out.

This groups activity was marginal,

almost symbolic. A witness tells the story:

Near the corner of Grange-aux-BellesStreet and Quai de Jemmapes in Paris, a

small grey-fronted shop, a Librairie du

Travail bookshop, was still open in 1914.

There lived Pierre Monatte, editor-in-

chief of La Vie ouvrire, who shared with

Merrheim the glory of having formulated

the first protest by the French proletarian

world against the war. This shop closed

on 2 August. And yet, on certain autumn

evenings, towards 9 pm, the police were

able to note furtive signs of life, with

conspirators slipping in one after the

other, and the symposia coming to an endafter 11pm (...) We confined ourselves to

poking sadly at the cold remains of the

International; to draf ting, from bitte r

memory, the enormous list of those who

had failed (...). Rosmer, the poet Martinet,

Trotsky, Guilbeaux, Merrheim and two or

three others of whose names I was not

aware, we knew, sitting there in the

middle of Paris, that we were both the last

Europeans of the wonderful intell igent

Europe which the world had just lost for

ever, and the first men of a future

3

THE LABOUR MOVEMENT IN FRANCE


8/36

International of which we were certain.

We formed the chain linking one century

to the next... (15)

Pierre Monatte, after carrying out (and

before continuing to carry out) a policy of

opposition which earned him the anger of

the government and the trade union

leaders, gave a virulent and public boost

to that opposition within the CGT: on 3

January 1915, he resigned from the

CGTs National Confederal Committee,

in protest against the orientation of the

confederal leadership which notably had

agreed to hold a propaganda tour on

behalf of the government.

His Open Letter was widely distributed

un de rg ro un d. Le t us not e th at hi s

resignation was assessed in various ways

by opponents to the war. For Merrheim, it

was a mistake; for Trotsky, it was a

necessary and healthy act of splitting.

Monatte was quickly despatched to thefront by the government.

On 1 November that same year,

Rosmer, another conspicuous trade union

activist, sent aLetter to the Subscribers of

La Vie Ouvrire: In France, socialism

and syndicalism have abandoned the

working class at the most serious, the

most painful time. The disarray has been

greater than in any other country and,

before such a betrayal, we are willingly

letting ourselves become discouraged and

sceptical. But it is not true that we cannot

do anything.Despite the repression and censorship,

other trade union publications succeeded

in defending labour internationalism; this

was the case with Lunion des mtaux

[Metalworkers Unity], organ of the

CGT-affiliated Federation, which

published the manifesto of the German

workers against the war, and the primary

schoolteachers union. Teaching trade

unionists grouped around the review

LEcole mancipe [The Emancipated

School], which was banned in 1914 and

replaced by LEcole de la fdration ,

were also active.

And it was not, could not, be an

accident that from the inmost depths of

the labour organisations, even those most

mistreated by their official leaders, the

will to say no seeped and then surged

up. The objector Raymond Lefebvre

joined the SFIO in 1916 on his return

from the front where he had been

wounded where he joined the handful of

cadres who rejected the Sacred Union.

Monatte wrote from the frontline in

February 1917: The war will not last for

ever. We will return to you from the

trenches. On our return, the proletariat

will still be the proletariat.

It was this certainty, this confidence

that drove the militant activists on.

These initial regroupments, informal to

begin with, became the Committee for the

Resumption of International Relations

and the Trade Union Defence Committee.

All together in this Committee, despite

the easily explicable friction and old

pre judices, socia lis ts, syndicalis ts and

libertarians were to take action against the

war, against capitalism, and then for the

defence of the Russian Revolution.

This resulted in the attendance of

Albert Bourderon (syndicalist member of

the CGT-affiliated Coopers Federation

and delegate of the Federation of the

Bourses du Travail) (16) and Merrheim in

the International Socialist Conference

held in Zimmerwald from 3 to 8September 1915. The organised threads of

labour internationalism had been re-tied.

Works consulted:

The most important of these are Alfred

Rosmer, Le Mouvement ouvrir pendant

la guerre: De lUnion sacre

Zimmerwald [The Labour Movement

During the War: From the Sacred Union

to Zimmerwald], published in two

volumes in 1936 and 1959; and the

classic work Edouard Dollans, Histoiredu mouvement ouvrier [History of the

Labour Movement], Vol.2 (1871-1920),

published before Rosmers history (thus

allowing him to make some corrections).

Also, Pierre Monatte, La Lu tt e

syndica le [The Trade Union Struggle]

(edited by Colette Chambelland, Paris,

1976); and J Vidal, Le Mo uv em en t

ouvrier franais de la Commune la

guerre mondiale [The French Labour

Movement from the Commune to the

World War], published in 1934. J Vidal

was the pseudonym of the great Soviet

historian Vladimir Dalin, who was a

signatory of a letter of support for Trotsky

in 1924 and who was then deported to the

Gulag, where he spent 20 years.

(1) See the article by Lucien Gauthierentitled The root causes of the collapseof the Second International in this issueofLa Vrit-The Truth for a detailedexamination of Jules Guesdes conceptionof the party and the trade union.

(2) A quote from St.Matthews Gospel,

Chapter 6.(3) Letter to Louis Watteau in

Brussels, 10 November 1861.(4) FromJean Jaurs, a political

profile by Trotsky published in the liberalnewspaperKievskaya Mysl, No.196, 17July 1915.

(5) Thoughts on the Progress of the

Proletarian Revolution, The First FiveYears of the Communist International,Vol.1.

(6)Report to the Fourth WorldCongress of the Communist International,1 December 1922.

(7) Jean Maitron,Histoire dumouvement anarchiste en France, Vol.1,

p.377 onwards. The union sacre orSacred Union was a political truce inFrance during the First World War, inwhich a significant part of the socialistmovement agreed not to oppose thegovernment or call any strike, in the name

of patriotism.(8) The French Section of the

Workers International (French acronym:SFIO) was formed in 1905 as a merger

between the French Socialist Party andthe Socialist Party of France. Althoughwidely known as the Socialist Party, itadopted the name officially only in 1969.

(9) The traditionally centrist RadicalParty (full name: the Radical Republicanand Radical-Socialist Party) was officiallyfounded in 1901 but traced its roots to the1870s and the reformist wing of the

French Republican Party, known as theRadicals, led by Georges Clemenceau.(10) Pierre Monatte, La Vie Ouvriere

(1909-1914) in Colette Chambelland(ed.),La Lutte syndicale (Paris, 1976).

(11) The first characterisation was byMonatte, the second by Lenin.

(12) Herv gained notoriety in 1901 bywriting an article in the socialist presswhich included the image of the Frenchtricolour planted in a pile of manure.

(13) Jaures was murdered in a Pariscaf on 31 July 1914 by nationalistfanatic Raoul Villain.

(14) Victor Serge,Memoirs of aRevolutionary, Chapter 2.

(15) From the Preface toLEponge devinaigre [The Sponge of Vinegar] by thesocialist writer Raymond Lefebvre,quoted in Alfred Rosmer,Le mouvementouvrier pendant la guerre.

(16)Bourses du Travailwere working-class organisations that encouragedmutual aid, education, and self-organisation amongst their members.They were one type of CGT-affiliatedorganisation, together with regionalunions and national federations.

4

LA VERITE/THE TRUTH


9/36

At first glance, the First World War

may not appear to merit that name. In the

strict sense of military operations, it was a

war that was mainly concentrated on

European soil. However, in the full sense

of the term, it was indeed a world war.

Other articles in this issue of our review

establish the fact that it took place to

allow a new partition of the world

between the capitalist powers. It alsoestablishes how right Lenin was, at the

start of the 20th century, in defining

imperialism, the highest stage of

capitalism, as reaction all down the line,

the maker of wars and revolutions.

It was a world war because it was

caused by the competing international

interests of the colonial powers that

shared the world between them and the

emerging imperialist states that found

themselves deprived of colonies.

A world war, because the peoples ofthe world were thrown onto the European

battlefield.

A world war in terms of its

consequences, which turned the whole

planet upside down.

The First Congress of the Communist

International, held in Moscow in March

1919, explained in its Manifesto of the

Communist International to the Workers

of the World that: The last war, which

was by and large a war for colonies, was

at the same time a war conducted with the

help of colonies. The colonial populations

were drawn into the European war on an

unprecedented scale. Indians, Negroes

(1), Arabs and Madagascans fought on

the territories of Europe for the sake of

what? For the sake of their right to

continue to remain the slaves of England

and France. Never before has the infamy

of capitalist rule in the colonies been

delineated so clearly; never before has

the problem of colonial slavery been

posed so sharply as it is today.

Thus, at a time when the civil war

waged by the forces of White reaction

was encircling Russia, the First Congress

of the Communist International firmly

highlighted the degree unknown up to

that point to which the peoples had been

dragged into the war. It was a mass

deportation. Millions of workers and

pe as ant s we re sn atc he d fo rm th ei r

countries by the colonial powers andthrown into the bloody fray.

A new slave trade

We know that French imperialism

carried out an out-and-out devastation

of its colonial possessions in Africa. It

was not alone in doing so. British

imperialism did the same.

In May 1915, the Black American

militant activist W E B Du Bois explained

in an article entitled The African Roots ofWar: Yet in a very real sense, Africa is

a prime cause for this terrible overturning

of civilisation which we have lived to

see.

According to Du Bois, Africa was the

Land of the Twentieth Century due to the

gold and diamonds of South Africa, the

cocoa of Angola and Nigeria, the rubber

and ivory of the Congo and the palm-oil

of the West Coast.

And although the forms taken by the

outbreak of the First World War did not in

the first instance involve the African

peoples, the rule of the European warring

powers over the continent would soon

drag them into the fray.

By the time the war ende d, ev ery

country in Africa, with the exception of

the small Spanish territories which

remained neutral had been formally

committed to one side or the other. (2)

Their commitment was first and

foremost via the demands of the war

effort that were placed on them (providing

troops and porters, foodstuffs, etc.).

Africa would also suffer economic crisis

induced by the war and the resulting

shortage of manpower. There was also

limited fighting on its soil during the

invasion of the German colonies.

A war needs combatants. The colonial

po we rs qui ck ly re al is ed th at th ei r

African possessions offered them an

advantage. The French General Mangin,promoter of an armed body named the

Black Force and author of a book of the

same name, wrote: Our African forces

would constitute an almost indefinite

reserve, the source of which is beyond the

reach of the adversary. (3)

All of the belligerent powers present in

Africa recruited soldiers there for the

battlefi elds of Europe and Africa , and

po rt er s fo r the ca mpai gn s in Af ri ca .

Several methods were used in carrying

out that recruitment. The promise ofcitizen status not generally enjoyed by

the colonised led some Africans of the

elite to join up voluntarily (we will

return later to all of the false promises

made to the colonised peoples and

examine the consequences of those acts of

deception). But above all, it was the

obligation placed on the traditional chiefs

to deliver a contingent of men, the

number of which was set by the colonial

administrators, together with the

conscription laws (French decree of 1912,

British decree of 1915) that introduced

military service for Africans, which

allowed this mass conscription to occur.

Several historians have described this as

a new slave trade.

But () the recruitment campaign

provok ed widesp read re vo lts and the

insurgent areas were impossible to recruit

in. () At a time when the Allied colonial

regimes in Africa could least afford

trouble in their own backyards, their

authority still only tenuously established

5

A War for Colonies Conducted with the

Help of Colonies

By Olivier Doriane


10/36

in places like southern Ivory Coast, much

of Libya or Karamoja in Uganda was

widely challenged by armed risings and

other forms of protest by their subjects.

()

Large areas of Haut-Sngal-Niger

and Dahomey remained out of French

control for as much as a year (). Insom e ca ses wh at we re de sc ri be d as

revolts were, in effect, as in Libya, just

the continuation of primary resistance to

European occupation. () There can be

no doubt that the visual evidence of the

apparent weakening of European

authority as represented by the exodus of

Eu rop ean s [to fight in Europe]

encouraged those contemplating revolt

(). But not all protests were violent in

character. ()

To avoid recruitment teams,inhabitants of whole villages fled to the

bush. () In Zanzibar, too, men hid all

day and slept in trees at night to avoid

being impressed as porters. (4)

In total, more than a million African

soldiers were involved in these campaigns

[on African soil] or campaigns in Europe.

Even more men, as well as women and

children, were recruited, often forcibly, as

po rt er s to su pp or t armies ( ). Ov er

150,000 soldiers and porters lost theirlives during the war. Many more were

wounded and disabled. () Further,

North Africans were recruited to work at

factory benches vacated by Frenchmen

conscripted into the army. () All in all

over 2.5 million Africans, or well over 1

percent of the population of the continent,

were involved in war work of some kind.

(5)

In Asia too

These veritable slave raids also

affected Asia. The bloodletting on the

fields of battle set the pace for the

requisition of human beings in the

colonies.

Thus in 1916, there were terrible losses

in the Battle of the Somme. On 1 July, in

a single day, there were 60,000 British

casualties, including 19,240 dead. In total

the July battles put 400,000 British troops

out of action, half of them dead ormissing. British imperialism had already

begun mass conscription in India: over

750,000 men were drafted (36,000 died)

That was not enough. Following the

Battles of the Somme, the British colonial

authorities set up the Chinese Labour

Corps, which recruited 100,000 Chinese

workers.

We should in fact remember that at the

start of the war, the European

imperialisms were present in China,occupying foreign concessions. These

were 25 in number and were shared

between France, Great Britain, German,

6

LA VERITE/THE TRUTH

At another level, the fate of Black

Americans was also revealing. Some

200,000 Black workers were thrown onto

the European battlefields, in a muchhigher proportion to the actual ratio with

the population of the US. The Trinidadian

Black Trotskyist C L R James explained:

The war was a war for democracy,

but the Negroes were segregated. There

was not a single regiment consisting of

white and Negro soldiers mixed.

American democracy did not want to

have even American coloured officers,

and it took a hard fight to have a few

hundred. When they did agree, they

trained Negroes as officers in a specialNe gro cam p. An d th es e me n we re

informed by the State Department that

when they visited the South, they should

not wear their uniforms. Democracy

was sending the Negro to fight for

democracy, but could not bear the

sight of him in the officers uniform of

democracy. () When they went to

France, the discrimination continued.

American democracy forced most of

the black soldiers to be common

labourers. () Far from practicing any

sort of democracy to Negroes, the

American commanders did their best tomake the French maltreat the Negroes.

() But when the American officers saw

this and the friendly way in which Negro

soldiers were being welcomed both by

French men and women, they issued a

military order, Order No.40, instructing

Negroes not even to speak to French

women. For this offense against

democracy, many Negroes were

arrested, though the French people, men

and women, had made no complaint. The

Am er ic an of fi ce rs, in th is wa r fo rdemocracy, wrote a special document

to the French commanding staff, telling

them that Negroes were a low and

degenerate race, that they could not be

trusted in the company of white people,

that although some Negroes were

officers, the French officers should have

nothing to do with them, except in matters

relating strictly to fighting. The French,

said this American order, should not eat

with Negroes, nor even shake hands.

The author went on: as soon as the

war was over, there was such a desperate

series of race riots in America as had notbeen seen for many years. In Washington,

in Chicago, white mobs inspired and

encouraged by American employers and

American capitalis t pol ice , shot down

Ne gr oes , ma ny of wh om ha d lo st

relations in the great war for

democracy. The Southern whites were

so anxious to put the Negro back in his

place that they lynched Negroes who

dared to wear the uniform of a private.

The great war for democracy and the

bravery and the sacrifices fordemocracy of the Negro people ended

with thousands of them having to fight

desperately, not for democracy, but for

their lives in democratic America.

CLR James (under the name J R

Johnson), Why Negroes Should Oppose

the War, published by the American SWP

as a pamphlet in 1939.

The Role of Blacks in the US Army


11/367

bu t al so th e Un it ed St at es . Al th ou gh

Chinese historians refer to the war as the

European War, the presence of troops

from the various belligerent countries on

the same territory, in addition to the fact

that the majority of Chinese cities subject

to the Unequal Treaties were also

accessible by sea, meant that the Chinesesoil itself faced the threat of armed

confrontation. On 6 August 1914, the

Chinese government declared its str ict

neutrality in the European war and

accompanied this declaration with a

statement of the neutrality regulations of

the Republic of China. China asked the

warring states to respect its neutrality.

Some conflict resulted from the Anglo-

Japanese alliance of 1902, which pushed

Japan into declaring war on Germany and

to seize the German territory of Qingdaoin November 1914. But it was in 1915,

with the sending of Chinese workers en

masse to Russia and then to the battlefields

of France in 1916, that China really entered

the war.

In total, 200,000 Chinese workers left

for Russia between 1915 and 1917, and

140,000 for France between 1916 and

1918, transported to Europe in atrocious

conditions. Some 27,000 would never

return. In neighbouring Vietnam also,

90,000 Annamites (6) were conscripted.

The deception of the promises by the

imperialist powers

This involvement in the war would have

pr of ou nd con seq uen ce s in te rm s of

relations between the peoples of the

colonies and the colonial authorities.

Everywhere, national questions arose

forcefully.

The Second Congress of the Communist

International, held in 1920, rightly insisted:

The imperialist war of 1914-18 has veryclearly revealed to all nations and to the

oppressed classes of the whole world the

falseness of bourgeois-democratic phrases,

by practically demonstrating that the

Treaty of Versailles of the celebrated

Western democracies is an even more

brutal and foul act of violence against

weak nations than was the Treaty of Brest-

Litovsk of the German Junkers and the

Kaiser. (7)

This policy of aggression, the document

stressed, was hastening the collapse of the

petty-bourgeois nationalist illusions that

nations can live together in peace and

equality under capitalism.

Because colonial powers everywhere

had hardly been reticent in terms of

promises of future recompense. Now, far

from marking a relaxation of the colonialorder or of the racism that was prevalent in

the United States, the post-war period

would be marked by a reinforcement of the

mechanisms of repression.

In India, promises of reform had been

made in return for a commitment to the

side of the democrats against barbarous

militarism. (8)

The reality? In March 1919, the

Imperial Legislative Council passed the

Rowland Act, which extended indefinitely

the wartime state of emergency, thusallowing the colonial authorities to

imprison those suspected of terrorism for

two years and to strictly control the press.

Anyone found guilty of assisting enemies

of His Majesty could be sentenced to

death.

A non-violent protest demonstration

organised in Amritsar (in the Punjab) on 13

April 1919 was bloodily put down,

resulting in well over 1,000 deaths (the

official figure was 370 dead and 1200

wounded). A new stage in the struggle for

national liberation was opening. It had to

wait 28 years before ending in

independence.

British imperialism had previously

applied this repressive policy with ferocity

in its oldest colony: Ireland. When Ireland

was dragged into the war, voices were

raised within the Irish labour movement,

calling for rejection of a war being waged

by the colonial power. The revolutionary

socialist James Connolly was one of the

main leaders of the Irish labour movement,

and in particular of the Irish Transport andGeneral Workers Union. A banner hung in

the unions headquarters, Liberty Hall in

Dublin, which declared: We serve neither

king nor Kaiser, but Ireland.

As Connolly put it: The power which

holds in subjection more of the worlds

population than any other power on the

globe, and holds them in subjection as

slaves without any guarantee of freedom or

power of self-government, this power that

sets Catholic against Protestant, the Hindu

against the Mohammedan, the yellow man

against the brown, and keeps them

quarrelling with each other whilst she robs

and murders them all this power appeals

to Ireland to send her sons to fight under

Englands banner for the cause of the

oppressed. () The cause of labour is the

cause of Ireland, the cause of Ireland is thecause of labour. They cannot be

dissevered. (9).

At that time Liberty Hall was under the

protection of armed members of the Irish

Citizen Army (ICA), the workers self-

defence organisation set up during the

famous Dublin general strike (the Lockout

of 1913). The ICA was the spearhead of

the insurrection against British rule

launched on 24 April 1916. The Easter

Rising was put down and repressed

mercilessly.But in the aftermath of the First World

War, the Irish people identified with the

republican cause. A war of independence

began in 1918. It would continue until

1921, forcing the British government into

negotiations.

The link with the labour movement in

Europe

Even though colonial oppression

endured throughout the world and even

though repression hit hard, social relations

within the dominated countries were

modified as a consequence of the war. As

noted by S K Koza, author of a series of

articles on Africa published in

Informations Ouvrires [Labour News], the

organ of the Independent Workers Party

(POI) in France:

The forced recruitment of Africa into

the war was to have considerable

consequences. There is no doubt that the

war opened up new horizons for very many

Africans, especial ly to members of theeducated elite. The new image of the white

man whom they had been urged to kill

during the war, whilst up to the war the

white man had belonged to a clan whose

members were regarded as sacrosanct due

to the colour of their skin together with

the failure to keep the promise of reforms,

convinced many Africans not only that an

improvement in their condition could only

come from regaining their sovereignty, but

that henceforth victory was possible.

A WAR FOR COLONIES


12/36


13/36

rivals upon whom they still depended for

so much . () It al so me ant that the

solution of Chinas revolutionary tasks

passed into the hands of the newest and

youngest class, the urban proletariat,

organizing and drawing behind it the

millions of toilers and artisans in the

towns and on the fields. ().For China the lessons of the Russian

revolutions bore a peculiar cogency. In

Russia, the proletariat of a backward

country had taken over the tasks a

bankrupt bourgeoisie proved unable to

shoulde r. The October revolution had

sh ow n ho w th e co mb in at io n of a

proletarian insurrection the culmination

of the new class antagonisms and a

peasant war the carry-over of the old

offered the only way out for a backward

country in the modern world of

imperialism. (15)

Soviet Russia also played an active

role: in 1919 and 1920 it declared it

would rescind all the Unequal Treaties

which the tsarist government had imposed

on China, giving further impetus to the

national question.

The shining phrases of Woodrow

Wilson, his promises of self-determination

and social justice for all peoples had bred

the hope that in the general readjustment

China too would come into her own.

When at Versailles these illusions werecynically spiked by the imperialist horse-

traders, the new youth rose in fury against

the treachery of the corrupt Japanophile

Peking Government. On May 4, 1919,

there were huge student demonstrations in

Peking. The homes of traitorous Ministers

were attacked and wrecked. The

movement spread across the country. In it

a new note sounded. Workers in factories

struck in support of the student demands.

The growth of industry had brought a

modern proletarian class on to the scene.At the end of 1916 there were already

nearly one million industrial workers and

their number nearly doubled by 1922. To

the Western front in Europe went an army

of nearly 200,000 Chinese labourers, who

learned there to read and write a little

and, what was more important still, came

into contact with European workers and

the higher European standard of living.

They returned with new ideas of how men

struggle for better lives. They had seen

the great nations locked in conflict and

they came back determined to free their

own. Many on their way back from

Europe refused to land at Japanese ports

during the furore over Shantung. (16) ()

The eyes of the new youth turned from

Versailles to Russia, where the October

revolution offered them an example andan inspiration infinitely more compelling

in its reality. (17)

The government in Moscow had

already indicated that it was prepared to

treat the issue of Sino-Soviet relations on

a radically new basis. On 4 July 1918, the

then Peoples Commissar for Foreign

Affairs Chicherin had stated that

Bolshevik Russia was renouncing all the

tsarist Unequal Treaties had signed with

China, as well as all the arrangements

previous ly made with Japan and other

countries regarding China.

This policy was once again declared in

a manifesto dated 25 July 1919 (known as

the Karakhan Manifesto). The

declarations by the Soviet government in

1919 and 1920 had made a new wind

bl ow th rough th e cor ri do rs of

international diplomacy, which irritated

the western powers.

The appeal to struggle to liberate

the East from the European tyrants

This was of value throughout the

world. The Declaration of the Rights of

the People of Russia (15 November 1917)

had made a huge impression wherever it

became known: it declared the equality

and sovereignty of all the peoples of

Russia, and their right to self-

determination, including the right to

secede and form an independent state.

In the Maghreb region of North Africa,

leaflets that were passed from hand to

hand reproduced in Arabic the Appeal ofthe Council of Peoples Commissars to

the Muslims of Russia and the East (3

December 1917). This document declared

that the beliefs and customs of Muslims

were free and inviolable. Appeals such

as Build your nat ional life freely and

without hindrance and We look to you

for sympathy and support were well-

received.

It was significant that three years after

the October Revolution, the Syrian-based

Patriotic Committee of Arab Unity

declared: The Arabs regard the

government of Lenin and his friends, and

the Great Revolution they have launched

to liberate the East from the European

tyrants as a great force capable of

ensuring their well-being and happiness.

The dismantling of the Ottoman

Empire

The dismantling of the Ottoman

Empire in fact resulted in the national

question being posed in strong terms

throughout the Maghreb and the Middle

East. Different imperialisms had torn into

the region during the war itself. In 1914,

Egypt became a British protectorate. In

1917, they occupied Mesopotamia. With

the Balfour Declaration that same year,

Great Britain foresaw and prepared its

takeover of Palestine. The Treaty of

Sevres, signed on 10 August 1920,

formalised the dismemberment of the

Ottoman Empire. France and Britain then

launched into a complicated struggle for

influence in the former Ottoman

possessions of Lebanon, Palestine, Syria,

Iraq and Arabia.

France occupied Syria in 1920. And in

1926, Iraq was placed under British

mandate. This Balkanisation of the Near

and Middle East was said to have beenprepar ed by sec re t An gl o- Fr en ch

agreements in 1916 known as the

Sykes-Picot negotiations in liaison

with tsarist Russia.

But the end of the war also meant the

revolt in Turkey led by Mustafa Kemal,

who was to abolish the Empire and found

the Republic of Turkey.

There were also numerous revolts

throughout the Middle East. After 1919,

the repression was extremely brutal in

every territory placed under mandate.Between 1920 and 1926, French Generals

Gouraud, Weygand and Sarrail practically

operated a military dictatorship in Syria,

and used bloody repression against the

Arab masses who rose up several times.

In Iraq in late 1919, a genuine revolt

developed against the British. Following

bloody repress ion, the Brit ish installed

Faisal as King of Iraq.

In Palestine, riots occurred against the

British mandate and Zionism in 1920,

9

A WAR FOR COLONIES


14/36

1921 and 1929. On each occasion, they

were brutally put down by British troops.

The two poles

Thus, immediately following the war,

the situation seemed to be clearly defined:

on one side the victorious RussianRevolution which called for national

liberation, for the mobilisation of the

broadest masses for the right to a nation

and for the expropriation of the exploiters.

On the other side, the powers which,

having won the war, were sharing out the

world between themselves while

increasing the oppression of nations.

But everything had been turned upside

down. The Manifesto of the Second

Congress of the Communist International

po in ted ou t: The bourgeoisie of the

whole world is looking back wistfully

upon the days just past. All the

foundations of international and internal

relations have been overthrown or

shaken. Threatening clouds darken the

future of the capitali st world . The old

system of alliances and mutual insurance

which formed the foundations of

international equilibrium and of armed

peace has been utterly destroyed by the

Imperialist War. The Versai lles Treaty

has failed to establish any other

adjustment in its stead.

Russia, Austria-Hungary and Germany

in succession have fallen out of the world

race. Some of the powerful empires which

had themselves previously played a

prominent par t in the wor lds plunder

have now become the objects of plunder

and dismemberment. ()

But there are defeated parties even in

the camp of the conquerors. Stupefied by

the fumes of a chauvinistic victory which

it had won for the benefit of others the

French bourgeoisie fancies that it hasbecome the ruler of Europe. But in reality

France has never been in such slavish

dependence upon the more powerful

governments of England and America

than she is today. ()

Japan, torn within her feudal shell by

capitalist contradictions, stands on the

verge of a great revolutionary crisis

which is already paralysing her

imperialist aspirations, in spite of the

favourable international situation.

Thus only two great powers remain:

Great Britain and the United States. ()

At the same time the national str ife

within the bounds of the victorious

countries has reached its climax. The

English bourgeoisie which pretends to be

the guardian of the nations of the world is

incapable of solving the Irish question athome.

Still more threatening is the national

question in the colonies. Egypt, India,

Persia are shaken by internal upheavals.

(18)

The First World War thus put an end to

any possibility of stabilising the

imperialist order; instead, as Trotsky

pointed out, it opened the epoch of wars

and revolutions and the epoch of

counter-revolution.

And in this new epoch, the flag of the

struggle for national independence, for

pu tt in g an end to co lo nia l ru le , ha d

definitively passed into the hands of the

working class engaged in the long and

difficult struggle for socialism.

EDOTES

(1) The term Negroes, which was

used in every publication at that time, did

not have the pejorative content it has

today. This also applies to documentsproduced in the 1930s.

(2) General History of Africa, Vol.VII:

Africa under Colonial Domination 1880-

1935 , Chapter 12, (UNESCO Press,

1990).

(3)Ibid.

(4)Ibid.

(5)Ibid.

(6) Annam (Vietnamese: An Nam) was

a French protectorate encompassing the

central region of Vietnam. Vietnamese

were subsequently referred to as

Annamites.(7) V I Lenin, Pr eli mi nar y Dr af t

Theses on National and Colonial

Questions, 5 June 1920.

(8) The huge impact of the Russian

Revolution of 1917 was no doubt a factor

in the strong necessity felt by imperialism

to announce reforms. Presenting the

Report on Indian Constitutional

Reforms to Parliament in April 1918,

Lord Chelmsford, Viceroy of India,

explicitly referred to the Russian

Revolution in his justification: Th e

Russian Revolution in its beginning was

regarded in India as a triumph over

despotism; and notwithstanding the fact

that it has since involved that unhappy

country in anarchy and dismemberment, it

has given impetus to Indian political

aspirations. One will appreciate thishomage of vice to virtue.

(9) James Connolly, The Irish Flag

published in Workers Republic, 8 April

1916.

(10) The French Section of the

Workers International (French acronym

SFIO, widely known as the Socialist

Party) was formed in 1905 as a merger

between the French Socialist Party and

the Socialist Party of France. At its 18th

National Congress , he ld in Tours in

December 1920, a three-quarters majority

of delegates, who had opposed the FirstWorld War and who now supported the

newly-created Communist International

voted to split away to form the Section

Fr an ai se de l Int er nat io na le

Communiste (SFIC). The majority of the

SFIOs elected officials chose to remain

in the SFIO and the Second International

The SFIC was formally renamed the

Communist Party of France in 1943.

(11) From the first two Supplementary

Theses on National and Colonial

Questions, submitted as an amendment to

Lenins Theses of 5 June 1920 on this

subject. The Supplementary Theses were

adopted during the fourth session on 25

July 1920.

(12) This refers to the general strike of

1919, which mobilised 150,000 workers.

(13) Ma ni fe st o of th e Co mm un is t

International to the Workers of the World

adopted unanimously at the First World

Congress on 6 March 1919. See Leon

Trotsky, The First Five Years of the

Communist International, Vol.1.

(14) Harold R Isaacs, The Tragedy of

the Chinese Revolution, Chapter 1.

(15) Isaacs, op. cit., Chapter 2.

(16) The Shantung (or Shandong)

pe ni ns ul a, pr ev ious ly unde r Ge rm an

control, was occupied by Japan following

its allocation under the Treaty of

Versailles.

(17) Isaacs, op. cit., Chapter 3.

(18) The Capitalist World and the

Communist International, August 1920.

10

LA VERITE/THE TRUTH


15/36


16/36

economic and also the political literature

of the two hemispheres has more and

more often adopted the term

imperialism in order to describe the

present era. (3) As the 19th century drew

to a close, US capitalism and the US state

were already draping themselves in the

need to bring democracy in order toinstall their rule using the worst forms of

violence. It was in Cuba that Pershing

who in 1914 was to command the US

forces in France first came to fame. The

carving-up by force of the colonial

pos ses si on s of th e bi g po we rs , th at

characteristic trait of imperialism which

was to be the root-cause of the First

World War, was the motivation for US

policy 15 years earlier, with regard to

Spain. The emergence of the United

States as a world power was a constituentelement of imperialism at the world level.

In the United States itself, the period

that followed the Civil War was a period

of frenzied development in every sector of

the economy. Between 1860 and 1884,

coal-extraction rose from 14 million to

100 million tons; between 1880 and 1910

steel production increased 25-fold. This

period also saw the spread of the railways.

There were already 330,000 kilometres of

railtrack in 1890; in 1911 this had risen to

540,000 km. We will not review here thebloody epic of the building of a modern

economy across the country-continent, the

reign of the robber barons. In order to

carry out this titanic task, the number of

loans had to increase tenfold. The banks

brough t th e dev el op in g bra nc he s of

industry under their control and

guaranteed them in order better to control

their concentration; during the 1890s, the

majority of the rail companies merged

into six networks, four of which were

completely controlled by the Morganbank. The banks themselves underwent

the same process of concentration, as

pointed out by Bukharin: In the United

States there are only two banks of such

importance: The National City Bank (the

Rockefeller firm) and the National Bank

of Commerce (the Morgan firm). (4)

Lenin pointed to the United States as a

country where concentration was

increasing: Al mo st ha lf th e to ta l

production of all the enterprises of the

country was carried on by one-hundredth

part of these enterprises! These 3,000

giant enterprises embrace 258 branches

of industry. From this it can be seen that

at a certain stage of its development

concentration itself, as it were, leads

straight to monopoly. (5)

It was in reference to US firms Standard Oil, the United States Steel

Corporation as well as German

examples that Lenin specified his

definition of the concentration of the

monopolies: The concentration of

pr od uct io n; th e mo no po li es ari si ng

therefrom; the merging or coalescence of

the banks with industry such is the

history of the rise of finance capital and

such is the content of that concept. (6)

This epoch of tempestuous

developments was also a period of violentclass struggles.

If one of the conditions of capitalism

booming in the United States had been the

destruction of the slavery system through

war, one of the necessities for the stability

of the system of capitalist exploitation had

been the crushing of the revolutionary

movement of the Blacks in the South,

who for the first time in the history of the

United States were in the majority in

some state assemblies and were posing

the question of radical land reform. It wasthis process that was to form the basis of

widespread racial segregation.

It was at the moment when this

veritable counter-revolution was

completed in 1877 that the state placed its

means for repression at the service of the

railway magnates to crush a strike-wave

which had been started by the railworkers

bu t which was ac tive ly suppor ted by

broad sectors of the population.

It was again the railworkers who

entered into struggle in 1884. In 1885-6,there was the huge movement for the 8-

hour day which culminated in Chicago on

1 May 1886 and was smashed through

bloody repression, notably accompanied

by th e con vi ct io n of six of th e

movements main organisers following a

provocation involving a bombing. The

latter decades of the 19th century and the

first decades of the 20th were marked by

intense class conflicts, especially in the

mines. It was during this period that the

labour organisations that succeeded the

Knights of Labor, which were to play a

predominant role in the class struggle,

were formed: the American Federation of

Labor (AFL) set up in 1886 and the

Industrial Workers of the World (IWW),

founded in 1905 (7).

The particular characteristic of thedevelopment of capitalism in the United

States during the second half of the 19th

century and the early part of the 20th was

that its expansion in the course of which

some of the characteristics of imperialism

emerged occurred mainly within

national borders as they had been defined

at the time, including through previous

conquests (e.g. the Mexican War, 1846-

8). In order to consolidate its empire, US

capitalism needed to expand, hence the

war in Cuba and the Philippines, and theincursions into Central America and

Mexico. But these imperialist thrusts had

a secondary impact on the economy: the

domestic market remained the

determining factor.

At the turn of the century, the United

States became the most powerful

industrial power in the world. In absolute

figures, its coal production, for example,

was higher than in all other capitalist

countries, and the same was true for steel

production. Although American capitalwas exported in large quantities to

Mexico and Latin America, the United

States remained above all a country where

foreign capital was invested. British

capital in particular realised large profits

from its financing of the building of the

railways.

Although a big industrial power the

worlds leading power in certain sectors

the United States did not yet challenge the

domination of the world market exercised

by the old capitalist powers, notably GreatBritain. But everything about its

development headed towards challenging

the basis on which the world market was

constituted. War would provide the

occasion and the form through which

these imperialist tendencies would impose

themselves.

The master of the capitalist world

The main outcome of the First World

12

LA VERITE/THE TRUTH


17/36

War which had clearly turned into a

civil war was the victory of the

October Revolution under the direction of

the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky

and the establishment of the first workers

state.

On 28 July 1924, ten years after the

start of the war, Leon Trotsky delivered aspeech on the Perspectives of World

Development. (8) He spoke of the United

States at that time as the central figure in

the modern history of mankind and

emphasised that whoever wishes or tries

today to discuss the destiny of Europe or

of the world proletariat without taking the

power and signif icance of the USA into

account, is in a certain sense drawing up

a balance-sheet without consulting the

master. For the master of the capitalist

world and let us firmly understand this! is New York, with Washington as its

state department. We observe this today

even if only in the plan drawn up by the

experts. We observe that Europe, which

only yesterday was so powerful and so

proud of her culture and her historical

past we observe that in order to get out

from under, in order to crawl out on all

fours from those fearful contradictions

and misfortunes into which Europe has

driven herself, she is compelled to invite

from across the Atlantic a general by thename of Dawes () [to draw up] a

pr ec is e pre scr ip ti on co nce rni ng th e

regulations and dates of Europes

restoration. (9)

It was during this speech that Trotsky

defined the wishes of US capitalism with

regard to the European imperialisms using

his famous and often-quoted formulation:

under the hegemony of American

capitalism, Europe will be permitted to

rise again, but within limits set in

advance, with certain restricted sectionsof the world market allotted to it. (). If

we wish to give a clear and precise

answer to the question of what American

imperialism wants, we must say: It wants

to put capitalist Europe on rations.

This had nothing to do with a

pr og ra mm e ai me d at es ta bl is hi ng a

peaceful balance, a harmonious division.

This American pacifist programme of

universal bondage is by no means a

pe ac efu l one . On th e co ntr ar y, it is

preg na nt wi th wa rs an d th e grea te st

revolutionary paroxysms. () The

indicated era of pacifist Americanism is

laying the groundwork for new wars on

an unprecedented scale and of

unimaginable monstrousness, Trotsky

added.

These lines first appeared in 1924. Itwould be misleading to yield to

temptation and see them by analogy as a

key which on its own would allow us to

understand todays developments, almost

a century later, just as it would be

pointless to indulge in academic exercises

aimed at evaluating, after the event, the

validity of this or that forecast.

The onward march of the international

class struggle had already changed many

of the facts ten years further on: the crisis

of the whole capitalist system, certainlyadding to the decline of Europe but also

hitting the leading capitalist power itself

with unparalleled force; the rise of

fascism in the face of the threat of social

revolution; the degeneration of the state

that resulted from the Russian Revolution;

the political counter-revolution waged by

Stalinism, etc.

The Second World War, its

consequences, the revolutionary

upheavals it generated, the situation

created by the survival of an imperialistsystem in decay, the collapse of the USSR

whose foundations had been undermined

by the bureaucracy, all constituted a new

situation in which the United States

nevertheless remained the leading

imperialist power.

What is striking above all is the degree

to which the issues raised by Trotsky have

in no way been resolved and have retained

all of their importance. The world

capitalist system has only been able to

survive by preserving and enhancing themajor role played by the United States.

There has not been any new factor,

redistribution of roles or change in the

hierarchy within the capitalist system:

This Babylonian tower of American

economic might must find its expression

in everything, and it is already expressing

itself, but not yet fully by far, Trotsky

said in 1924. Is this not exactly what was

imposed via the catastrophes that have

punctuated the history of the preservation

of the capitalist system? And are not the

obstacles facing US capital rooted in the

generalised crisis of the capitalist system

itself?

The amazing expansion of American

capitalism, its manifest power acquired in

the very first years of the 20th century, the

degree of concentration that was achievedin the US, the role of the monopolies and

the role of finance capitalism, all required

that in order for the United States to

become ful ly- formed as an imperiali st

power, its combative diplomacy and its

recourse to military aggression should no

longer be exercised first and foremost at

the regional or continental level. In order

to become the leading imperialist power

in the full sense of the term realising the

potential offered by the development that

had brought it thus far the Americanimperialist state had to assert its rights

through war.

When President Wilson who on

several occasions had repeated that the

United States would remain neutral

asked Congress for its approval for

entering the First World War (which

Congress granted by a large majority) he

justified it by defending the right of US

citizens to sail on merchant ships in the

war zone. In fact, this was an affirmation

of free trade in a sophisticated form.Once again, the main issue is stated in

Europe and America. After detailing the

stages on the path of imperialism to which

the United States had deliberately

committed (the Spanish-American War of

1898, the detaching of the province of

Panama from Colombia and the

construction of the Panama Canal),

Trotsky wrote:

The decisive signpost along this road

was the war. As you will recall, the US

intervened in the war toward the very end.For three years the US did no fighting.

Mo re th an th at , tw o mo nt hs be fo re

intervening in the war, Wilson announced

that there could be no talk of American

pa rt ic ip at io n in th e bl oo dy do gf ig ht

among the madmen of Europe. Up to a

certain moment the US remained content

with rationally coining into dollars the

blood of European madmen. But in that

hour when fear arose lest the war

conclude with victory for Germany, the

13

APRIL 1917: USA GOES TO WAR


18/36

most dangerous future rival, the United

States intervened actively. This decided

the outcome of the struggle. () America

avariciously fed the war with her industry

and avariciously intervened in order to

help crush a likely and dangerous

competitor.

War is the health of the state

War is the health of the state. This is

the title given by American historian

Howard Zinn to a chapter in his book A

Peoples History of the United States. It

was the title of a book by an American

writer, Randolph Bourne, published

during the First World War.

On the eve of the war in 1914, Zinn

points out, the United States was suffering

a serious recession. During his 1912presidentia l campaign, Wilson stated:

Our domestic markets no longer suffice,

we need foreign markets.

The outbreak of the war in Europe

constituted a drive-wheel that benefited

the whole of the US economy. US

industries became the main suppliers of

war materials to the Allies: the massacre

that was underway offered an endlessly

renewable outlet for the means of

destruction supplied by the Americans. In

April 1917, the United States had soldmore than US$2 billions worth of goods

to the Allies. To appreciate the

significance of this amount, we should

bear in mind that during the same period,

private investment in the United States

amounted to US$3.5 billion. Howard Zinn

notes: With World War I, England

became more and more a market for

American goods and for loans at interest.

J P Morgan and Company acted as agents

for the Allies, and when, in 1915, Wilson

lifted the ban on private bank loans to theAllies, Morgan could now begin lending

money in such great amounts as to both

make great profit and tie American

finance closely to the interest of a British

victory in the war against Germany. (10)

More generally, it was in the crucible

of war that US imperialism re-invented

itself, undergoing the transformation that

would see it become the worlds principal

factory, its principal depot for

commodities and its central banker, as

Trotsky explained in Eu rop e an d

America.

Immediately, there was prosperity,

accumulation of profits linked to the war

and good health for the exploiters,

which also meant good health for their

state.

The war would of course be good forthe state in yet another sense. We referred

in the first part of this article to the

intensity of the class struggle in the

United States. The years leading up to the

outbreak of the First World War were

marked by an upsurge in the activity of

the working class in all fields, an upsurge

in struggles for demands which

sometimes resulted in clashes with the

state apparatus and which in every case

signalled a broadening and deepening of

trade union activity. This was the caseover the course of several months,

including after the United States entry

into the war.

The revolutionary trade union

organisation Industrial Workers of the

World (IWW) was to play a decisive role

in these conflicts. It was the IWW that led

the big strike by textile workers in

Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912 a

strike that could not be broken through

attempts to divide or recourse to police

repression (the town of Lawrence wasplaced under siege and the trade union

leaders were jailed). The IWW turned the

strike, which involved nearly 30,000

workers, into a national issue. Another

strike began in early 1913, in the silk

industry in Paterson, New Jersey. There

again, police repression and solidarity

demonstrations turned it into a national

event.

Other strikes did not succeed in having

the demands met. But they were

significant, not only because theyevidenced the workers combativity and

wish to organise, but also because they

marked the IWWs entry into the most

crucial of industrys sectors, sometimes

also drawing AFL trade unions into

joining the strikes. This was the case in

Akron, Ohio, following a spontaneous

movement that began in the big tyre-

pressing factories, and with the strike at

auto-manufacturer Studebaker in Detroit.

We could also include in the list of

significant conflicts the strike the by iron

ore miners of the Messabi Range in

Minnesota, which involved 6,000 workers

in 1916. There, the powerful United

States Steel Corporation had to give way,

and was forced to agree to an 8-hour

working day and a wage-rise across the

board of around 10 percent.The trade union leader Eugene Debs,

who was the moving spirit of the big

Pullman Strike in 1894, has become one

of the main representatives of the

Socialist Party. Under his leadership, the

party developed widely, and in the 1912

pres idential el ec tion Debs stood as a

candidate and received nearly one million

votes, doubling the result he obtained in

1908.

The capitalists and their political

representation, their state, demonstratedtheir concern in the face of this surge of

the socialist labour movement. Just before

Wilson became President, a strike broke

out in the mines in Colorado run by the

Colorado Fuel and Iron Corporation,

owned by the Rockefeller family. Very

quickly, the bosses turned to violence;

strike-breakers were brought into the

mines under the protection of armed men

who attacked the strikers, killing several

of them. In April 1914, after eight months

of strike, Rockefeller called out theNational Guard, who attacked the strikers

encampment, killing 26 people. Many

miners then took up arms in turn. Finally,

federal troops had to be called in, and a

conciliation commission was set up

What appeared at the time as a messy

moment was to become the norm. the

United States entry into the war gave the

State the opportunity to engage in a

violent and bloody offensive against the

labour movement, amounting to a

preventive civil war.In June 1917, Congress passed the

Espionage Act. In the name of taking

action against espionage, this repressive

law in fact put into question the most

fundamental of democratic rights enjoyed

by US citizens, including thei r right to

have an opinion and to express it at least

as far as the war was concerned.

The new law had a clause that

provided penalties up to twenty years in

prison for Whoever, when the United

14

LA VERITE/THE TRUTH


19/36

States is at war, shall wilfully cause or

attempt to cause insubordination,

disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty in

the military or naval forces of the United

States, or shall wilfully obstruct the

recruiting or enlistment service of the

US. (11)

As one can gather, an article or a

speech explaining the causes of the war,

even if it did not involve any slogan,

could fall under the Act. Randolph

Bourne, the author of the book War Is the

He alt h of th e Sta te , was obliged to

undergo its rigours.

Howard Zinn quotes one example of

the application of this law which

demonstrates all of its arbitrariness but

which also displays unintended humour.

The maker of a film entitled The Spirit of

76 was sentenced to 10 years in prison

under this law because, the judge said, the

film tended to question the good faith of

our ally, Great Britain. The film was

based on the American Revolution of

1776 and depicted atrocities committed by

the British colonial troops! (12)

But where the Espionage Act was used

most liberally was against the labour

movement, combined with activities by

extra-legal militias that involved

attacks, kidnapping and lynching.

Although Samuel Gompers and mostof the AFL leadership agreed to

pa rt ic ip at e in th e wa r eff or t, th e

government was not able to enlist the

support of the Socialist Party or the IWW.

Just after the declaration of war, the

Socialist Party held an emergency

conference in St. Louis which described

the declaration of war as a crime against

the people of the United States. Without

giving slogans opposing recruitment and

then conscription, the IWW condemned

the United States entry into the war.Initially, the government was counting

on attracting volunteers, but after six

weeks only 73,000 volunteers had

enlisted. It needed to pass a law bringing

in conscription.

Throughout the United States,

thousands of socialist activists, trade

unionists and pacifists were arrested.

More than 900 people were convicted

under the Espionage Act. There were

hundreds of incidents where groups of

outraged patriots broke up meetings,

trashed offices and injured or killed

labour activists.

In the case of the IWW, a real manhunt

was unleashed across the country. Daniel

Gurin summarised the situation as

follows, in O va le peuple amricain?

[Where Are the American People Going?]

(Paris: Julliard, 1950-1): The entry of the

United States into the war unleashed

fierce repression against the. All of the

combined forces of capitalism, the public

authorities and veterans used as fascist

militias were employed in crushing them

(). Thousands of IWW members were

arrested and given long prison

sentences.

The American Trotskyist leader James

P. Cannon, who before being one of the

founders of the Communist Party of

America had been a IWW organiser,

shared this view. He even thought that the

disorganisation produced by the

repression and the need to concentrate

every effort on solidarity between

prisoners had hindered the discussion on

the Russian Revolution which would have

allowed the majority of the IWW to move

towards the Communist International.The same policy of repression was

unleashed on the Socialist Party.

Thus, its most popular leader, Eugene

Debs, was convicted for having delivered

a speech against war in Canton, Ohio, on

16 June 1918, recalling that Wars

throughout history have been waged for

conquest and plunder (see the excerpts

from this speech featured separately in

this article). He was charged under the

Espionage Act on the basis that his words

could incite his audience to resist thedraft. He was sentenced to 10 years in

prison. He appealed, and his appeal was

heard by the Supreme Court in 1919. The

war had ended. Nevertheless, the sentence

was upheld. That 66-year-old man then

spent three years in a federal penitentiary

under strict conditions, before being freed

by presidential order. (13)

Physically worn-out, Debs died in

1926. During the final phase of his life, he

did not play the role he could have. In the

name of unity between all socialists, he

came out in favour of a utopian

reconstitution of the Socialist Party on the

same basis as just before the war he

refused to go further down the path of the

Bolshevism he had begun to draw on in

his Canton, Ohio Speech. His evolution

cannot be separated from the

consequences for the whole of the

American labour movement of the wave

of reaction generated by the war. All the

restrictions on the right to organise and

the right of expression decreed in the

name of the state of war were

maintained for years afterwards. They

provided the legal basis for a reign of

terror directed against Communist,

anarchist and trade union activists, against

Blacks and against immigrant workers

during the 1920s, as means of

discouraging a new upsurge by the

working class in the world and in the

United States itself, expressed most

notably in the Seattle General Strike of

January 1919.

Through its participation in the first

global conflict, US imperialism created

the conditions for the global role it was to

play. In direct terms, the United Statesgoing to war met counter-revolutionary

objectives, forming part of the

conversion of the imperialist war into

civil war (14), but in the camp of the

counter-revolution. Occurring in 1917,

after the Russian Revolution had begun to

erupt and at the time when the first

mutinies were occurring at the Front and

strikes were breaking out in Britain,

Germany and France, it was a counter-

revolutionary operation.

At the same time as US imperialismwas using war to begin to impose itself as

the leading imperialism, it was led to play

the role of main guarantor of the world

order against the revolution. In order to

play that role, it first had to carry it out in

the United States itself, against the

American working class.

15

APRIL 1917: USA GOES TO WAR


20/36

Excerpts from

the anti-war

speech given by

Eugene Debs on16 June 1918

(The Canton,

Ohio Speech)

Wars throughout history have been

waged for conquest and plunder. (...)

And here let me emphasize the fact

and it cannot be repeated too often that

the working class who fight all the battles,

the working class who make the supreme

sacrifices, the working class who freely

shed their blood and furnish the corpses,

have never yet had a voice in either

declaring war or making peace. It is the

ruling class that invariably does both.

They alone declare war and they alone

make peace. ()

Yes, my comrades, my heart is attuned

to yours. Aye, all our hearts now throb as

one great heart responsive to the battle

cry of the social revolution. Here, in this

alert and inspiring assemblage our hearts

are with the Bolsheviki of Russia. Those

heroic men and women, those

unconquerable comrades have by their

incomparable valour and sacrifice added

fr esh lu str e to th e fa me of th e

international movement. Those Russian

comrades of ours have made greater

sacrifices, have suffered more, and have

shed more heroic blood than any like

number of men and women anywhere on

earth; they have laid the foundation of the

first real democracy that ever drew the

breath of life in this world. And the very

fi rst ac t of th e tr iu mp han t Ru ss ia n

revolution was to proclaim a state of

peace with all mankind ().

He re we ha ve th e ve ry br ea th of

democracy, the quintessence of the

dawning freedom. The Russian revolution

proclaime d its glorious triumph in its

ringing and inspiring appeal to the

peoples of all the earth. ()

EDOTES

(1) Introduction to Nikolai Bukharins

Imperialism and World Economy.

(2) Imperialism, the Highest Stage ofCapitalism, Chapter VII: Imperialism as

a Special Stage of Capitalism.

(3) Preface to the French and German

editions, July 1920.

(4) Imperialism and World Economy,

Chapter IV.

(5) Imperialism, the Highest Stage of

Capitalism, Chapter I: Concentration of

production and monopolies.

(6) Op. cit., Chapter III: Finance

Capital and the Financial Oligarchy.

(7) The Knights of Labor was one ofthe first national organisations of a trade

union nature formed just after the

American Civil War. It retained the

character of a society whose members

were initiates, but addressed all workers.

It was to play an important role after

1876. The AFL organised the workers on

the basis of craft unions. For decades it

was to be the main trade union

organisation in the United States. By

refusing to organise unskilled workers or

those in insecure jobs the mass of

immigrant workers and by rejecting

Black workers, in practice it limited its

activity to the labour aristocracy. Its main

leader, Samuel Gompers, would give his

name to what was referred to as business

unionism: Gomperism.

The Industrial Worke

Documents

La Verite - The Truth 82 June 2014 Part 2 Final