Bolshevism: The Enemy of Political and Industrial DemocracySpargo, John
History
Bolshevism: The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy
Spargo, John
Communism -- Soviet Union; Soviet Union -- History -- Revolution, 1917-1921
How can you, in the face of this fact, ask the revolutionary
Social Democracy to set up the "demand" of "disarmament"? _To ask
this is to renounce completely the standpoint of the class
struggle, to give up the very thought of revolution_. Our
watchword must be: to arm the proletariat so that it may defeat,
expropriate, and disarm the bourgeoisie. This is the only possible
policy of the revolutionary class, a policy arising directly from
the _actual evolution_ of capitalistic militarism, in fact,
dictated by the evolution. Only after having disarmed the
bourgeoisie can the proletariat, without betraying its historic
mission, cast all weapons to the scrap-heap; and there is no doubt
that the proletariat will do this, but only then, and not by any
possibility before then.
How is it possible for our extreme pacifists, with their relentless
opposition to military force in all its forms to conscription, to universal
military service, to armaments of all kinds, even for defensive purposes,
and to voluntarily enlisted armies even, to embrace Bolshevism with
enthusiasm, resting as it does upon the basis of the philosophy so frankly
stated by Lenine, is a question for which no answer seems wholly adequate.
Of course, what Lenine advocates is class armament within the nation, for
civil war--the war of the classes. But he is not opposed to national
armaments, as such, nor willing to support disarmament as a national policy
_until the time comes when an entirely socialized humanity finds itself
freed from the necessity of arming against anybody_. There is probably not
a militarist in America to-day who, however bitterly opposed to disarmament
as a present policy, would not agree that if, in some future time, mankind
reaches the happy condition of universal Socialism, disarmament will then
become practicable and logical. It would not be difficult for General Wood
to subscribe to that doctrine, I think. It would not have been difficult
for Mr. Roosevelt to subscribe to it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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