Playing by the rules of war (2024)

From the June 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Millions of people are horrified by the Israeli war on Gaza. Protests have hit the streets in countries around the world, to the point where armed police battled students on university campuses across the US for occupying in protest against the war and America’s role in backing it.

Many protestors shout that the war is ‘illegal’ and that Israel is committing genocide, pinning hopes on international authority putting an end to malefaction. It should be noted that genocide is a crime of intent, and is not synonymous with mass homicide. That narrow legal definition, though, does trigger international and domestic legal requirements to act against it: hence why America and allied governments are determined to deny that it is genocide, and will continue to do so until the International Court of Justice makes a determinative ruling, which could be years away.

People should not put their faith in the split hairs of legality, but instead on sound analysis of the causes of conflict and action built on that analysis. The faith in the power of legality is misplaced against the tremendous value of the interests at stake in being able to secure and control the supply of oil. It is worth noting, as Tony Blair pointed out in his speech at the George Bush library in 2002, that it is not about monopolising oil, but ensuring that no one state can monopolise and thus threaten the supply of oil:

‘The western world is import dependent. We base our policy on diversity of supply. You in the US import from 50 different countries, no one of which supplies more than 15 per cent of total imports. The EU pursues roughly the same policy.’

Beyond that, it is important to note that international law is not set up to prevent war, but in fact to structure and enable wars to take place. It seeks to limit war and codify its conduct, but the powers that drafted those wars would simply not allow themselves to put aside the tool of war. As Michael Walzer, the theorist of just war writes, alongside Jo-Ann Mort: ‘It is a maxim of just war theory that the rules of war cannot make it impossible to fight a just war. There has to be a way to fight’. Walzer has also said in a recent interview ‘I think the IDF has been trying to adhere to the rules in an environment that probably requires some loosening of the rules.’

As we reported in our May issue part of this ‘loosening’ has been to deploy the Lavender AI targeting system to co-ordinate targeting of Hamas operatives and officials based on mass intelligence gathering. The military doctrine that civilian casualties are permissible in pursuit of a legitimate military objective has been broadly applied (more broadly than in the past). Israel undoubtedly has enough military lawyers to build a broad permissive case for its actions (or to construct one retrospectively where necessary).

It is abundantly clear that Israel is not acting out of absolute necessity: Hamas will never have the capacity to destroy Israel. If the intelligence failures that meant that Israel knew that Hamas was drilling for a 7 October-style operation were fixed Hamas could be securely locked back up. For a fraction of the cost spent on the war, Israel could have bought a bucket load of informants to finger high-level Hamas commanders for reprisal.

Everyone agrees with the concept of the right to self-defence to protect your own and your loved ones’ lives, but most would agree that going after the friends and family of someone who attacked you would be taking it too far; and every human society has mechanisms to stop violent disputes escalating in a spiral of tit for tat. And, of course, it is possible to engineer a situation where a claim of self-defence allows an actor to pursue the use of violence to achieve other ends.

As Arthur Ransome once wrote:

‘It has been said that when two armies face each other across a battle front and engage in mutual slaughter, they may be considered as a single army engaged in suicide. Now it seems to me that when countries, each one severally doing its best to arrest its private economic ruin, do their utmost to accelerate the economic ruin of each other, we are witnessing something very like the suicide of civilization itself.’

Israel is not unique in this. Indeed, their propagandists have been pointing out that there are mass refugee and humanitarian crises being created by savage wars in Sudan, Congo and Ukraine, but that Israel and its actions are being singled out. Possibly this is so, at least in part because of the focus of the western media (spurred on in part by the interest of their states and their capitalists in the Middle East region).

Indeed, in terms of Israel’s tactics, they seem to be following exactly the same military doctrines as were used by the Sri Lankan government when they crushed the Tamil Tigers in 2009:

‘The Sri Lanka Army (SLA) advanced its military campaign in the Vanni, using large-scale and widespread shelling, at times with heavy weapons, such as Multi-Barrel Rocket Launchers (MBRLs) and other large artillery, causing large numbers of civilian casualties. It shelled in three consecutive No Fire Zones, where it had encouraged the civilian population to concentrate, and after it had indicated that it would stop using heavy weapons.’

Likewise, the Tamil Tigers violated human rights by using human shields and forced labour. Sri Lanka was protected from human rights allegations at the UN by allied states.

War is not some inherent feature of humanity. Billions of us live lives without waging war upon one another. War emerges from a social and technological architecture that enables it, and if the marchers who rightly hate war want to put a stop to it, they need to look to action that will make war impossible, not illegal.

Pik Smeet

Editorial: The Priests and Politics. (1930)

Editorial from the March 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Archbishop of Canterbury, and other prelates and religious leaders are making public protests about alleged religious persecution in Russia, and they ask that steps be taken involving interference in the internal affairs of Russia.

Mr. Henderson, the Foreign Secretary, in reply to questions in the House of Commons stated that “the reports of religious persecution were causing the Government grave concern."

The Executive Committee of the National Council of the Evangelical Free Churches, in a resolution passed at the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, express its “utmost horror and reprobation of the policy of persecution adopted by the Soviet Government against the Christian and other religious people of Russia, and its sacrilegious violence against all forms of religious belief.” The Executive also urges upon the British Government the “imperative necessity of using to the utmost all available means of remedying this terrible situation.”

How righteously indignant these people have suddenly become who were silent during the decades of Czarist persecution when the knout was freely used, Jewish pogroms were a commonplace, and “Siberia” became a byword for misery and despotism.

And the basis of their indignation is largely imaginary. The Archbishop himself, in the House of Commons on the 20th of February, stated:

“I propose to make the most exhaustive enquiries” (Daily News, February 21st), thereby admitting that he had so far acted on rumour.

Prebendary Gough, the head of the Christian Protest Movement, has already had to climb down when caught, and admit in the Morning Post for February 20th that “those who are conducting the movement are well aware that the savage orgies which were so frequent in the earlier stages of the Soviet domination do not now characterise the procedure of the persecution.” But neither he nor anyone else has, so far given evidence of the earlier “savage orgies." If there were “earlier savage orgies” how is it that the righteous indignation of the priests has only now found a voice when, according to themselves, the persecution is on the wane?

Further, Arthur Ransome, in a letter to the Manchester Guardian of February 18th, proved that Prebendary Gough’s quotation from Pravda of October 25th, which he alleged was an example of the execution of “persons who openly and actively practise their religion” had been carefully doctored. The real, quotation showed something else entirely—that a military monarchist organisation, composed of the remnants of bands who had distinguished themselves by especial savagery during the civil war, had formed up under the flag of a religious monastic sect, the “name-glorifiers.” Gregorovitch, the leader of the organisation, declared that it set itself the task of ceaseless struggle with the Soviet Government. The seat of the organisation was in the mountains, and they were buying munitions and preparing for armed revolt. The Soviet Government discovered the plot and shot the ringleaders— just as the British Government shot the ringleaders of the Sinn Fein revolt in 1916, all of whom were Christians.

One may ask why the priests should suddenly become so concerned about the fate of their co-religionists in another country. The explanation is not far to seek.

Since the days of the native medicine man religion has been a prop and a handmaiden to each ruling class, and a priestly group has evolved parallel with the evolution of Government and secured a share of the spoil from exploitation. So strong has been the position of religion that each revolution of the past has had a religious glamour cast over it and has involved modification of the creeds of defeated rulers.

So the Church that bids the sweated worker “be patient” and bear his cross in silence, cannot remain still when its position is challenged. The Church leaders imagine that the present regime in Russia threatens the existence of Religion and therefore they would be prepared to violate all the laws they bless sooner than see a diminution in their power.

Should the Workers Fight for Russia? (1928)

From the April 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

Before the Great War there were many workers in this and other countries who would have agreed without a moment’s hesitation that a working class movement should not support a capitalist war, and who, again without hesitation, rushed into the war when it came. This war, they said, was “different"; this was a “defensive” war; the workers must defend their homes, their wives, their liberties.

Since 1918 the vague sentiment against war has grown up again, and we are asked to put our trust in the illusory determination of the organised trade unionists to stop another outbreak. But those non-socialists who are most emphatic in their refusal to support another capitalist war are frequently to be heard expressing their willingness to fight for Russia, and their approval of the Russian military preparations. Thus the Sunday Worker (February 19th), shows a picture of a handsome Russian soldier in full fighting equipment, and under it the words: “Soviet worker in the Red Army ready to defend the factories and land of his class.”

CAPITALISM THE ENEMY.

We tell the workers of each capitalist nation that support for capitalist wars, offensive or defensive, is not in accordance with working class interests, for the simple reason that “their” country does not in fact belong to them but to the capitalist class. The factories and land of England do not belong to the workers but to their masters, and the same is true of Germany, America and other countries. What the workers have not got they cannot lose. What then does it matter to them if "their” country, which isn’t theirs at all, is taken away from the English section of the capitalist class by another section? Win or lose, the workers are still workers, and the kindly interest taken in them by English capitalists is precisely the same in kind as that of American, German, or any other exploiters, i.e., the desire to make a profit out of them.

CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA.

So far the members and followers of (he Communist Party in this country would doubtless signify their agreement. But the next step in the argument is to consider whether Russian workers are in an essentially different position. Do the factories and land in Russia really belong to the Russian working class, and if not why should they defend interests which are not their own, but those of another class ?

Let us first take the land. In theory the land of Russia belongs to the State, as in this country all land is in theory held from the Crown; in fact the land belongs in Russia to the peasants as it belongs here to the landowners. Issuing decrees declaring that the land has been socialised is of no significance whatever except as an evidence of good intentions. The Soviet Government has not the machinery to carry out such decrees, nor the power enforce them. The consent of the peasants is unobtained and unobtainable, and the Government never did in fact seriously regard such a step as practical politics. No Russian Government would survive for a month if it endeavoured to dispossess the peasants of their land. They were the makers of the "revolution” and they would crush any Government which openly opposed their interests. Their seizure of the land preceded the Bolshevik coup d’etat and they will resist fiercely any change from Monarchists to go back or from Communists to go forward.

PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND.

Mr. Arthur Ransome (Manchester Guardian, 2nd March) quotes from Pravda an article on this question in which it is shown from official records that whereas there were at the end of the Civil War between 15 and 16 million separate peasant holdings there are now 25 million. Peasant proprietorship is growing, not declining.

There are, it is true, some Soviet Government model farms run on up-to-date industrial lines and intended to undermine the barbaric individualism of the peasants and their methods of cultivation. As a means of raising the standard of cultivation they have had some success, but as the basis of social ownership of the land and a socially organised agriculture they are negligible. Out of a rural population of some 116,000,000 (see Statesman’s Year Book, page 1227) only “about 500,000 workers, of whom 45 per cent, are permanent workers, are employed in the Soviet farms and their dependent enterprises." (See Weekly Bulletin of the Anglo-Russian Parliamentary Committee, 23rd February 1928). That is to say that less than one-half of one per cent, of the rural population are employed on these model farms. The value of the output of the State Agricultural Syndicate and the Sugar Trust is only 5.5 per cent, of the gross agricultural output in 1926-27. (See above Bulletin.)

The land in Russia belongs not to the working class but to the peasants. It is privately owned and controlled by them and cultivated on an individualistic basis for private profit. The Russian working class have no more direct interest in the defence of peasant proprietorship, than have the French workers in the defence of peasant proprietorship in France. Peasant proprietorship is economically backward and socially reactionary. As sellers of farm products, as purchasers of manufactured goods, as employers of wage earners or exploiters of the unpaid labour of their wives and children, and finally as owners of land, the interests of the peasants are in direct conflict with those of the working class and are directly opposed to the movement towards socialism. The Russian workers emphatically do not possess the land of Russia. Why. then should they fight to defend what is not theirs?

WHO OWNS THE FACTORIES?

Now let us consider the factories. Do the Russian workers own the Russian factories and workshops, railways and steamships, and industrial capital in general? The answer is plainly No! The Russian workers are wage-earners as in this country. Some are employed by Russian and foreign private capitalist undertakings, frankly carried on for profit. Others, as in our Post Office, are employed in State capitalist concerns, their general conditions of labour being governed as here by the general standard of living of the workers and by the need of the Government to pay; interest on borrowed capital and foreign credits, and to run the concerns at a profit on ordinary commercial lines. It has even happened that wages in the Russian State concerns have been lower than in outside industry. This, however, is due to special circumstances and is hardly likely to be more than temporary. It has been explained in Russian official quarters as being due to the willingness of State employees to take lower wages in order to build up capital reserves for the expansion of State industry. Workers in private concerns have, on the other hand, been directly encouraged to, stand out for higher wages among other reasons for the purpose of crippling their accumulation of reserves.

NO PROFITS WITHOUT EXPLOITATION.

Profit and interest only come from the exploitation of wage labour, and capitalism in Russia is no exception. That is not to question the sincerity or good intentions of the Bolshevik administrators of Russian capitalism. But whatever their intentions may be there is in essentials only one way of administering capitalism, that is in the capitalist way. The policy of the Soviet Government is dominated by the solid resistance of the peasants to any attempt at socialisation, by the need to produce manufactured goods cheaply and by the necessity of paying for the capital which they must borrow at home or abroad.

The peasants already complain of the fact that they are compelled to buy home produced manufactures at prices well above those ruling abroad. As their knowledge increases so they will press more and more strongly for the destruction of the State control of foreign trade, for the right to sell their products in the dearest market and the right to buy manufactures in the cheapest market. To meet this the rulers of Russia will in turn be compelled to introduce all the modern capitalist methods of speeding up in the endeavour to make their employees produce goods cheaply enough to compete with goods produced in Germany, England and elsewhere. The Russian workers are wage-earners like any others, living under capitalist economic conditions and exploited like any other wage-earners.

The issue of the Sunday Worker from which we quoted above gives very pointed evidence of this.

THE SHARE PUSHERS.

Under the heading “Big Chance for Investors,” it spreads the glad tidings that a Russian Government Railway Loan for £6,000,000 has been placed on the English market, offering a total actual return of over 11 per cent. The Sunday Worker says: “High yielding loans are usually not available for public subscription, especially with the security this offers. The profits on the railways last year would cover the loan four times.” Here we have our old familiar enemy capitalism in all its nakedness. The Russian workers have no more interest in defending Russian capitalism than we have in defending English capitalism.

But, we are told, surely the control of the Russian Government by the Bolsheviks makes a difference; as also the numerous and important improvements in wages and conditions of labour which have been introduced. Should the Russian workers not be willing to fight in defence of these gains?

THE PROGRESS OF CAPITALISM.

Let us clear the air, by stating one or two facts. First, it is evident from the more reliable accounts that the condition of the Russian workers is better than before the war, as measured by the amount of real wages. Second, it can readily be admitted that the “sympathetic” and enlightened administration of the capitalist system can bring certain definite but limited gains to the workers. For example, it is plainly better for the workers to be protected by Factory Acts than not to be protected, and probably better to be scientifically exploited by a Ford or a Cadbury than to be brutally and unscientifically sweated by some unintelligent early Victorian who has not realised that it pays to have healthy and contented workers. But while this may be admitted to be true that is no sufficient cause for the workers to sacrifice their lives. In the first place, the difference of degree is small and certainly not worth fighting about, and more importantly, the workers will not lose these small advantages by any action or inaction of theirs, because the motive is not at all the welfare of the workers. The changes in methods of exploitation are due to the development of capitalist industry itself. It is not kindness but necessity which compels the factory owner to raise the standard of living of the coolie when he takes him from his field work and introduces him into the more exhausting factory system. Russia, whether ruled by Bolsheviks or as an adjunct of a British-American Banking trust, cannot compete with foreign highly developed capitalist industry unless it gives its wage-slaves approximately the same physical standards and inducements to work. Carrying the argument to its logical extreme, the conquest of Russia by America, might result in the Russians being forced to accept the American more developed system of intensified exploitation based on the payment of those higher wages of which we hear so much.

A PEASANT GOVERNMENT?

There is of course the possibility that the Russian Government might come to be controlled by a peasant party, openly hostile to and ignorant of capitalist industry and its needs. (This is in Trotsky’s view the present tendency.) Should that happen capitalist industry and incidentally the care of the workers as profit-producing agents, would be neglected. This is no doubt the reason why Factory legislation, health and unemployment insurance, etc., are so backward in France with its largely peasant dominated parliament, as compared with Germany. But that danger in Russia would point to the need of the workers endeavouring to protect themselves against the encroachments both of the peasants and of the capitalist class and not to the fatal policy of lining-up under the national flag in the pathetic belief that they have an interest in defending their "country.” Their county, like our "motherland” and the German “fatherland,” belongs not to them but to classes with interests opposed to those of the working class. The chief enemy of the working class is the capitalist class and the task of the Socialist is to overthrow the capitalist system in Russia as elsewhere.

In conclusion, it may be as well to point out that this is in no sense a condemnation of the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 Our criticism was and, is that they claimed to be able to achieve the impossible. Certain definite tasks lay before them and have been achieved. They brought Russia out of the war, exposed the purely capitalist nature of the conflict to the workers in both camps, and hastened the building of capitalism in Russia at a time when there was no other party with sufficient experience or determination to tackle so great an administrative work. They cannot, however, by legislation solve the fundamental conflicts between contending classes in Russia. They cannot permanently make the working class content with the capitalist economic system, and it would be better that they should recognise before it is too late that if they remain in office the discontent of the workers will come to be directed against them.

Edgar Hardcastle

News and views about Russia. (1919)

Book Review from the July 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Six Weeks in Russia in 1919" by Arthur Ransome. (Paper, 2s. 6d. I.L.P., S.L.P., and George Allen & Unwin, Ltd.)

This interesting work by an observer who has recently returned from Russia consists of a series of short sketches descriptive of the situation there during February and part of March this year.

The position of our Party in relation to the Russian insurrection receives in this book a good of justification. Much of the work consists of interesting though brief accounts of the personalities of prominent characters in the revolt, and their opinions upon various phases of the situation confronting them.

The industrial difficulties which face the Bolsheviks are dealt with, but so also are the valiant efforts being made to overcome them. Railways and roads are under construction; the Baltic-Volga canal system has been improved to admit the movement of large ships; power-stations on a peat fuel basis are in process of building, and improvements in textile production have been made enabling the utilisation of the abundant supply of flax which is available. There is a great shortage of transport, fuel, and food, but the last two items have become more plentiful since the acquisition of the Ukrainian supplies.

In the control of industrial establishments technical and managing experts are appointed by a central authority instead of being, as formerly, elected by workers in the concern—an important modification.

The most important problem in Russia, is, however, that of agriculture, and this is, unfortunately, all too briefly dealt with. One thing is made clear—the utter impossibility of land socialisation for a long period to come is now recognised by the Soviet Government. Let us quote Ransome:

In the afternoon I met Sereda, the Commissar of Agriculture. He insisted that their agrarian policy had been much misrepresented by their enemies for the purpose of agitation. They had no intention of any such idiocy as the attempt to force the peasants to give up private ownership. The establishment of communes was not to be compulsory in any way; it was to be an illustrative means of propaganda of the idea of communal work, not more. The main task before them was to raise the standard of Russian agriculture, which under the old system was extremely low. By working many of the old estates on a communal system with the best possible methods they hoped to do two things at once: to teach the peasant to realise the advantage of communal labour, and to show him that he could himself get a very great deal more out of his land than he does. "In other ways also we are doing everything we can to give direct help to the small agriculturists. We have mobilised all the agricultural experts of the country. We are issuing a mass of simply written pamphlets explaining better methods of farming." (Page 99-100. Italics mine.)

According to some of our critics the Russian moujik needs neither force nor persuasion to acquiesce in the socialisation of the land, but those in Russia know different. Philips Price, in his pamphlet "Capitalist Europe and Socialist Russia," tells us that: "the decree on land, issued by the Bolshevik Council of the People's Commissaries, instantly quieted the peasants. They knew that the land would indeed be theirs if the land committees, which they controlled, had the handling of it." But, we may add, "theirs" in a different sense from that the Bolsheviks intended, for on January 23rd, 1918, they passed the new land law which declared, according to Price, "All private property in land, minerals, water, forests, and the forces of Nature within the limits of the Republic are abolished for ever, and "the land without any compensation to the owners (open or hidden) becomes the property of the whole people to be used for objects of common utility." (Italics mine.)

How does this decree square with the statement of Sereda as to the non-interference with private peasant property? This is one instance of what Ransome in more than one place refers to, namely, that many of the fine sounding Soviet decrees exist largely or wholly on paper owing to the difficulty of enforcing them: "the spirit is willing" but the materials are damned rotten.

Does not the idea of model communes and propaganda pamphlets remind us of the work of Owen, Cabet, and the other Utopians who hoped to banish capitalism by "good examples"; by demonstrating the "superiority" of communism with "model factories" and co-operative colonies. Of course the conditions are vastly different, for the experiments in Russia are undertaken with the assistance of the State authority, but even so, to convince tens of millions of semi-barbarian, grossly superstitious, illiterate and intensely conservative peasants by such means is a colossal, an insuperable, task.

Ransome reports the continuation of his conversation:

I told Sereda I had heard that the peasants were refusing to sow more than they wanted for their own needs. He said that on the contrary the latest reports gave them the right to hope for a greater sown area this year than ever before, and that even more would have been sown if Denmark had not been prevented from letting them have the seed for which they had actually paid. I put the same question to him that I put to Nogin as to what they most needed; he replied "Tractors." (Page 100.) 

The first part of Sereda's statement looks like an exaggeration. It probably means more has been sown than during the past four years, which should be pretty obvious seeing that the millions of peasants drawn from production for the Imperial army completely disorganised agriculture and almost brought it to a standstill. But if Sereda means literally what he says: "more than ever before," this would not be surprising, for after centuries of impoverishment both in land and products, the poorer peasants would indeed be fools if they did not use to the full their present opportunity to raise their level of subsistence.

But really Sereda's evasive reply does not settle Ransome's pertinent query at all. The point is, can the Soviet Government assure a constant and automatic supply of agricultural products as food and raw material whilst retaining the system of peasant farming and, at the same time, socialising the industries of the towns?

Sereda's last point is significant—"Tractors." Without machinery, and the consequent abolition of the primitive, individually used tools of production true socialisation is impossible. The manufacture or importation of agricultural machinery in sufficient quantities and its practical use embodying the destruction of the traditional mode of production and social relations in Russian rural life is the only solution—and this will take years to accomplish.

In an account of a conversation with Lenin Ransome says:
We talked then of the antipathy of the peasants to compulsory Communism, and how that idea had also considerably whittled away. I asked him what were going to the the relations between the Communists of the towns and the property-loving peasants, and whether there was not great danger of antipathy between them, and said I regretted leaving too soon to see the elasticity of the Communist theories tested by the inevitable pressure of the peasantry.

Lenin said that in Russia there was a pretty sharp distinction between the rich peasants and the poor. "The only opposition we have here in Russia is directly or indirectly due to the rich peasants. The poor, as soon as they are liberated from the political domination of the rich, are on our side and are in an enormous majority." I said that would not be so in the Ukraine, where property among the peasants is much more evenly distributed. (Lenin) "No. And there, in the Ukraine, you will certainly see our policy modified. Civil War, whatever happens, is likely to be more bitter in the Ukraine than elsewhere, because there the instinct of property has been further developed in the peasantry, and the minority and majority will be more equal. (Pp. 150-151.)

Now, without pretending to any detailed knowledge of the situation, is not the support of the poor and the opposition of the rich peasantry due to the fact that the Bolsheviks support the aspirations of the poor peasants for larger allotments even at the expense of the richer peasants, and that the latter are prevented from employing wage labourers and thus cultivating and making a profit upon whatever surplus land was them, in addition to having to bear a heavy taxation? The support of the poor peasants does not mean they are in favour of land socialisation, but that they have received land from the Soviet regime which was hitherto denied them, as well as backing against their would-be exploiters.

It has been repeatedly stated in this journal that the Bolsheviks do not draw their power from a class-conscious working class. The above bears evidence of that, but Mr. Ransome's book contains even more definite information on the point. He states that the discontent engendered by hunger and cold was so great and widespread, though unorganised, that the non-Bolshevik parties could, were they not afraid of reactionary invasion, use it with such effect as to overthrow the Communist Party. Now were the workers conscious supporters of Communism it is obvious that they would easily recognise their impoverishment to be due to causes outside the control of any political party, and that neither the Social Democratic reformers nor the Socialist Revolutionary Anarchists can materially alleviate their hardship. The evidence, on the contrary, shows that the Bolsheviks have proved far better organisers politically and economically than any of their predecessors in power, and that whatever improvement has occured is, in a measure, due to them.

Most of the Bolshevik leaders seem to think that England is on the verge of a Socialist revolution, and Lenin in an amusing sentence quoted by Ransome declared that "Ramsay Macdonald will try to (stop it) at the last minute." We here, however, know only too painfully how mistaken the Russian revolutionaries are. Let those who think it possible for a minority of workers here to seize political power in the way the Bolsheviks successfully adopted in Russia, ponder over the words of Meshtcheriskov, quoted by Mr. Ransome on page 58 of his book. This old Siberian exile, who has recently visited England, says:

In the West, if there is revolution, they will use artillery at once, and wipe out whole districts. The governing classes in the West are determined and organised in a way our home-grown capitalists never were. The autocracy never allowed them to organise, so, when the autocracy itself fell, our task was comparatively easy. There was nothing in the way. It will not be like that in Germany. 

The suppression and massacre of the Spartacists in Berlin, Munich, and elsewhere in Germany proved this judgement correct.

Let the revolutionary workers of this country continue their urgent task of agitation, education, and organisation for the day when, having full control of the armed forces of society through the only source of that power—the State machinery—they will be enabled to handle in no uncertain fashion the pro-slavery revolt of the present ruling parasites and their allies, and proceed with the only method of proletarian emancipation, the ownership and control by the community of the means of life.

R. W. Housley.