Bebel and Hervé: German Party Leader As A Jingo. (1907)

From the June 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The “revolutionary” Bebel has again been distinguishing himself as a patriot, both in the Reichstag and in the Press. In the Reichstag he repudiated Liebknecht’s book on anti-militarism, and to a French journalist he made an attack on the anti-militarist propaganda of Hervé.

The Times of 31st April reported that:–

“M. Jules Hedeman, of the Matin has seen Herr Bebel, the German Socialist leader, in Berlin, and obtained from him the following statement in writing upon Mr Hervé’s anti-militarist propaganda in France:–

“The ideas and anti-militarist propaganda of Hervé are impossible in German Social-Democracy. German Social-Democracy is the avowed adversary of the present military system, but it considers that a military organisation is necessary in the States now existing so long as all the civilised nations shall not have established conventions and institutions which would once for all render war impossible. So long as the danger exists and wars are possible, every nation should possess a military organisation sufficient for resisting an aggressive war, and defending its own territory against the invasion of the enemy. If German Social-Democracy supports every local initiative with the object of avoiding war and assuring peace—for example, the organisation of international tribunals of arbitration for the settlement of conflicts between different States—it nevertheless considers a military organisation indispensable so long as the danger of war exists. It is for this reason that German Social-Democracy has inscribed in its programme—first, education which will render all citizens fit for military service; secondly, the substitution of militias for permanent armies.

“Consequently, if a member of the German Socialist Party propagates ideas and claims analogous to those that Hervé defends, one would be justified in asking, in virtue of the programme of the Socialist Party, does this member still belong to that party? The party could not admit a propaganda which goes directly counter to its programme, which seriously damages the party, and of which the aims are in existing circumstances unattainable, because they are contrary to the interests of our own country.”

Bluntly put, the above means that Bebel regards it as the duty of members of the German Socialist Party to sacrifice themselves in defence of their exploiters’ property should the latter be coveted by the exploiters of any other country. In other words it says that the working class of Germany should be prepared to slaughter workers of any other country should their respective masters quarrel over the division of the wealth that has been stolen from the working class!

Every Socialist must know that the problem of militarism—like that of unemployment—is inseparable from capitalism, and while Hervé undoubtedly errs in concentrating his energies upon anti-militarist propaganda since militarism is but an effect of capitalist exploitation, yet our sympathies are heartily with him as against Bebel’s patriotic clap-trap.

In his address to comrades of the Socialist Party, Hervé said:–

“All Socialists call themselves internationalists, and this, to every Socialist, means to be in favour of the international union of the workers.

“But there are two very different ways of understanding this international union; there is the patriotic way, and the anti-patriotic way.

“The patriotic internationalists say: ‘Present day countries, such as history has made them, are moral entities whose existence is useful to human progress. However imperfect they may be, however inhuman even they may be for proletarians, the latter have in each country the duty of defending them when attacked. We are internationalists, but if the country in which we chanced to be born is attacked we will defend it to the death’.

“This in plain language means simply; ‘Workers of the world unite; but if your rulers order you to massacre your comrades, do so!’

“This singular internationalism, a few months ago just missed producing what it threatened.

“If war had broken out over Morocco between France and Germany, the two proletariats, French and German, would have protested through the voices of their parliamentary tenors; resolutions proclaiming eloquently the fraternity of the two peoples would have been exchanged; and, then, fraternally, the French and German working classes would have gone to massacre each other in order to find out with which of the two capitalist classes Morocco would remain.”

Hervé also says in explaining his own attitude:–

“The workers are disinherited and ill-treated in every existing country.

“All nations are equal, or nearly so, in this respect, particularly now that the capitalist regime renders more and more uniform the material, intellectual, and political conditions of life for the labouring class in all countries; and now that the introduction of the capitalist system in Russia will compel even Tsarism to accord to the Russian workers the essentials of political liberty.

“No country at the present day, is so superior to the others that the workers of that country should get themselves killed in its defence.

“In case of mobilisation, no matter who is the apparent aggressor (it is, indeed, never exactly known, when war breaks out, who is the legal aggressor), the proletariats of the belligerent countries should reply to the order to mobilise by insurrection against their own rulers, in an attempt, each, in his own country, to establish Socialist Society.

“Rather insurrection than war!”

Certainly no one country’s exploiters are so superior to the rest that the workers should sacrifice themselves in defending them; but it is equally certain that if the proletarians were to rise in armed revolt against their rulers immediately on the outbreak of war, while the master class controlled the armed forces of the nation, and while the workers were yet unable and unready to assume control of Society, they would be courting a shambles that would make war peace by contrast.

And when the working class is able and ready to assume control of the political and industrial forces of the country, it is its bounden duty to do so, whether its masters are at war or not, for the lives of millions of workers under capitalist rule perpetuate horrors that are worse than any war.

Since, therefore, Hervé’s statement implies that the workers even though they are not in a position to successfully emancipate themselves should nevertheless sacrifice themselves in a fruitless and bloody attempt to do so on the outbreak of war, it is necessary to dissent from that position of his declaration.

Militarism is an inevitable effect of capitalist domination and the struggle for markets and profit, and so long as the workers are ruled by a master class, so long will their masters use them as cannon fodder. The only solution of the question of militarism from the proletarian point of view is the abolition of capitalist exploitation. It is then our duty to concentrate our efforts upon Socialism, upon the triumph of those who labour. The revolutionary Socialist is the truest peace advocate.

The particularly anti-militarist propaganda of Hervé has undeniably an educational value, and to that extent it is to be welcomed; it is also an inevitable reaction against the jingoism of men like Bebel. We have so-called Socialist advocates of militarism in this country, and indeed, though it appears a harsh saying to many would believe their parties and their leaders to be Socialist, it is true that The Socialist Party is the only party of which it can be said that it advocates undiluted Socialism.

All the various problems that affect the working class hinge upon the ownership of the means of life, and yet outside of our ranks practically the whole of the workers’ energies are being directed against effects rather than to the removal of the cause of the trouble. The origin of poverty, war and slavery lies in class ownership of the means whereby the people live. The straightest road is the shortest road, and the only way to get rid of the evil of militarism is to get rid of capitalism.

F. C. Watts

50 Years Ago: Argument about War in 1907 (1957)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

[Hervé, in France, had been carrying on anti-militarist propaganda. Bebel, in Germany, denounced it. Hervé referred to a recent tense situation between Germany and France over Morocco. When war did break out in 1914 Hervé supported it]

Hervé:

“If war had broken out over Morocco between France and Germany, the two proletariats, French and German, would have protested through the voices of their parliamentary tenors; resolutions proclaiming eloquently the fraternity of the two peoples would have been exchanged, and then, fraternally, the French and German working classes would have gone to massacre each other in order to find out with which of the two capitalist classes Morocco would remain.”

Bebel:

“The ideas and the anti-militarist propaganda of Hervé are impossible in German Social Democracy. German Social Democracy is the avowed adversary of the present military system, but it considers that a military organisation is necessary in the states now existing so long as all the civilised nations shall not have established conventions and institutions which would once for all render war impossible. So long as the danger exists and wars are possible, every nation should possess a military organisation sufficient for resisting an aggressive war and defending its own territory against the invasions of the enemy.”

(From the “Socialist Standard," June 1907.)

The Parable of the Table. (1909)

From the July 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

[Being a further extract from the speech of Gustave Hervé of his trial (vide June S.S.) translated for the Socialist Party of Great Britain by Fritz..]

Ah! I know that I wound your conscience, gentlemen of the jury. Your conscience pricks you all the more because you feel that I am speaking the truth. I feel sure that when I say this I wound the universal conscience which the Paris Bar with its eloquence, knows so well how to interpret.

But do you believe that Voltaire, Diderot and the rest of the encyclopaedists were able to avoid treading on people’s corns?

It is a lamentable fact that every time a new form of society is about to come forth from the womb of one on the point of death, it always does so by a long and painful child-birth, producing in every family, and in every heart, trouble and anguish; suffering that every innovator would fain spare those whose convictions he hurts.

As for us revolutionary Socialists, we have discarded the folds of this flag on which the names of so many deeds of butchery are displayed in letters of gold.

Flags are but emblems; and are worth something only in so far as they represent something worthy. What, after all, is one’s native country? Or what, in actual fact, do all these “fatherlands” consist?

Allow me, if you please, gentlemen of the jury, to draw for you a mental picture, to speak if I may a kind of parable, which will the better help you to understand what our feelings are. One’s native land, every country, no matter under what form of government it be masked, is made up of two groups of men, consisting on the one hand of a quite small number, on the other including the immense majority of people.

The first of these is seated round a well furnished table where nothing is lacking. At the head of this table, in the seat of honour, you find the great financiers; some, perhaps, are Jews, others Catholics or Protestants, or it may be even Freethinkers. It is possible for them to be in entire disagreement on questions of religion or philosophy, and even on questions affecting their individual interests, but as against the mass of the people, they are as thick as thieves.

Seated on their right and left hand you have Cabinet Ministers, high officials of every department of civil, religious or military administration. Paymasters-general with salaries of 30, 40, and 60 thousand francs a year: a little further off fully fledged barristers, by their unanimity glorious interpreters of the “Universal Conscience” – the whole Bench and Bar, not forgetting their precious assistants, the solicitors, notaries and ushers.

Large shareholders in mines, factories, railways, steamship companies and big shops: manorial magnates, big landed proprietors; all are seated at this table: everybody that has two-pence is there too, but at the foot. These latter are the small fry, who have for that matter, all the prejudices, all the conservative instincts, of the big capitalists.

Ah! gentlemen of the jury, I wish that you may be of the number of these privileged ones seated around this festive board. Verily, you are not so badly off there, after all, you know. In return for a little work – when you have any work at all – work I say which is oft-times intelligent, occasionally agreeable, which always leaves you with some spare time for yourself, directive work that flatters your pride and vanity – in return for this you can enjoy a life of plenty, made pleasant by every comfort, every luxury that the progress of science has placed at the service of Fortune’s favoured ones.

Far from the table I see a great herd of beasts of burden doomed to repulsive, squalid, dangerous, unintelligent toil, without truce or rest, and above all without security for the morrow; petty shop-keepers chained to their counters, Sundays and holidays, more and more crushed by the competition of the big shops; small industrial employers, ground down by the competition of the big factory owners; small peasant proprietors, brutalised by a sixteen to eighteen hours day, who only toil that they may enrich the big middlemen: millers, wine factors, sugar refiners. At a still greater distance from this table of the happy ones of this world, I see the crowd of proletarians who have but their strength of arm or their brain for sole fortune, factory hands, men and women exposed to long periods of unemployment, petty officials and shop-assistants forced to bow and scrape and hide their opinions, domestic servants of both sexes, labouring flesh, cannon fodder, matériel of “pleasure”.

There are your beloved countries! Your country to-day is made up of this monstrous social inequality, this horrible exploitation of man by man.

When the proletarians doff their hats to the flag as it passes by, it is to this that they uncover. They in effect say: “What a splendid country is ours! How free, kind and just is she!”

How! how you must laugh, Mr. Attorney-General, when you hear them sing:

“ah! glorious is death indeed,
When for our native land – for liberty – we bleed!”

Blatchford, Jingo & Patriot. (1909)

From the May 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

Where He may lead I'll follow,

       My trust in Him repose,

And every hour in perfect peace

        I'll sing, He knows, He knows.

When Pope Blatchford issues his encyclical he obtains explicit obedience from his followers. No matter what fad Blatchford for the moment may patronise, he is humbly supported by Messrs. Suthers, Thompson, Dawson and Beswick. When father says turn they all turn. Blatchford is a great one. He is the Hero as prophet. Clarionettes claim that he has made more Socialists than any other living Socialist, that he has effectually smothered Christianity, and of course is the editor of a Socialist (!) weekly “possessing a larger circulation than any other Labour or Socialist newspaper." Blatchford preaches “Socialism" without having studied Marx and Engels; he teaches Determinism without having read Mill and Bain; he initiates a campaign against Germany with remarkably finite assets in the way of facts. “Since God is responsible for man's existence he is responsible for all his acts.” (Bottom Dog.) Poor God! To be held answerable for R. B.’s mental twists! Socialism learnt from Thoreau, Dickens and Emerson! Tactics learnt at the feet of Hyndman and Grayson! But our business in this article is to examine briefly Blatchford’s latest—the supposed coming German invasion.

He claims that over four years ago he drew attention to the "German Peril" and our unsatisfactory defences on the East Coast. And Hyndman, Quelch and other S.D.Peers have ever since been asserting it with a great weariness of repetition. Let us examine the quality of Blatchford’s "evidence." On one occasion after a sinister reference to miles of quays and wonderful harbours capable of holding 200 torpedo boats, he made the reader's hair stand on end by a yarn that 200,000 soldiers had practised embarking at Emden. Obviously the preliminary steps of a mighty invasion: history was to repeat itself with a great German Armada. But the Liberal Manchester Guardian took upon itself the task of abolishing this legend. It traced the story back beautifully to its source—the National Review and Toby of Punch. What had actually occurred was a single regiment practising embarkation. Four days Jater Blatchford humbly apologised, admitted that he had been duped, “had felt at the time all the difficulties," but “had confidence in his informant," and so on ad nauseam.

But what an experience for a Socialist! To see a Liberal organ with dearly a larger knowledge of the subject calmly, and with much real dignity, rebuking a popular “Socialist leader” for his commonplace jingoism. I say jingoism. Take this as typical: “In the old days, when war threatened our fathers, it was the custom to light beacon fires upon the hills. I light my fire to-day, and it shall not go out if I can keep it burning." When Blatchford, the creator of that outburst, was at Burnley a few months ago, he was raucously cheered for five minutes by six thousand Social Democrats, I.L. Peers., and the like. And this man is referred to as the actual potentate of Socialism in this England of ours. Last week's circulation—81,000. Eighty~one thousand what? Jingoes, sentimentalists, altruists, cyclists.

Blatchford speaks of “ this hour of national peril" Mark, national peril, not class peril. Anyone who was the proprietor of a universal store in Liverpool, and there was a danger of the precious pile being shelled by the German fleet, could rationally be rhetorical about national peril and beacon fires. But from the worker's point of view the capitalists who exploit “this little isle in the silver sea" are of the same calibre as the capitalists who extract surplus-value in the Fatherland. Hasn't Hyndman always been a defender of German working-class conditions against the charges of the Liberal Free Traders? The British Board of Trade, after an elaborate investigation into the condition of the German working class, concluded that it was equal to three-fourths of the English standard. And if the Germans had made an examination into English working-class conditions it is probable that they would have issued a like bulky report with the opposite as a conclusion. Why, then, this Clarion hysteria ? Surely we have evolved past the stage where it is believed that Kaiser William or Edward Rex govern their respective domains? They occupy the position so long as their respective ideas are in harmony with capitalist interests.

Then let Blatchford spout and rave and declaim. Let us not be gulled with passionate sentiment about national sentiment and defensive wars. Hervé has well shown that where capitalist interest are concerned it is impossible for the workers to know which country is the aggressor in case of war. Germany as a rapacious nation may be all that Blatchford makes her out to be. So the British lion is rapacious, the American eagle, the Russian bear, and all the other atavistic symbols of birds and beasts of prey. The attitude of the worker should be one of deliberate detachment from all national perils and quarrels. The ties and attachments we will defend are those created for us by economic development and the class struggle, namely: unity and solidarity among the oppressed toilers of all lands. The Hyndmans and Blatchfords must not be allowed to lead us into the arms of the workers’ common enemy, the international capitalist class. Divide and rule has ever been the oppressor's motto, and when the S.D.P. and Clarion crowd seek to set British and German workers against each other they play the oppressors’ game, and thereby become our enemies, for they are misleaders of the working class.

John A. Dawson

No War But The Class War! (2003)

Book Review from the October 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

No War But The Class War! Libertarian Anti-Militarism Then and Now. Edited by Anna Key. Kate Sharpley Library. 2003.

Some purchasers of this short, 20-page pamphlet might find it a bit of a con since, though it opposes militarism, it does not oppose violence. Far from it. It praises violence and advocates this as the way to confront the State. We ourselves are not pacifists, but we always make it clear that we think that Socialists should only contemplate resorting to violence reluctantly and as a last resort should an anti-socialist minority attempt to prevent by violent means the implementation of the democratically-expressed will of a majority for socialism. So you will find no glorification of violence—such as the talk of “armed joy” by the sick individual who wrote this pamphlet's last contribution—in our literature

The items in this collection of anti-militarist leaflets and articles start from an appeal to conscript soldiers in Spain in 1896 not to go and fight in Cuba to a leaflet against the recent war in Afghanistan. The contrast between the early and the later ones is striking, with the early ones coming from the heart in contrast to the more intellectual later ones. Not that the message in the earlier ones is that coherent or, frankly, sensible.

There are two contributions from the pre-WWI French anti-militarist militant, Gustave Hervé, who wrote a book called Leur Patrie (in English “Their Country”, but whose English version is called My Country Right or Wrong). One starts off well enough, excellently in fact:

  “For anybody who is not satisfied with words, or anybody who wants to forget for a moment the fantastic definitions of the Country which have been taught him at school, a Country is a group of men living under the same laws; because they themselves or their ancestors have been brought willingly or by force, more often by force, to obey the same sovereign, the same government. Patriotism groups men according to their land of origin, as decided by the vicissitudes of history; within every country, thanks to the patriotic link, rich and poor unite against the foreigner. Socialism groups men, poor against rich, class against class, without taking into account the differences of race and language, and over and above the frontiers traced by history”.

But it then goes on to advocate, as the working-class response to the outbreak of war, an armed uprising to attempt to overthrow capitalist rule: “Insurrection rather than War!”

The early SPGB (since we were founded in 1904) was aware of Hervé views and commented on this particular slogan in the July 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard:

“Certainly no one country's exploiters are so superior to the rest that the workers should sacrifice themselves in defending them; but it is equally certain that if the proletarians were to rise in armed revolt against their rulers immediately on the outbreak of war, while the master class controlled the armed forces of the nation, and while the workers were yet unable and unready to assume control of Society, they would be courting a shambles that would make war peace by contrast.” 

“Since, therefore, Hervé's statement implies that the workers even though they are not in a position to successfully emancipate themselves should nevertheless sacrifice themselves in a fruitless and bloody attempt to do so on the outbreak of war, it is necessary to dissent from that position of his declaration.” 

“The particularly anti-militarist propaganda of Hervé has undeniably an educational value, and to that extent it is to be welcomed.”

It has to be added that, when the first world slaughter did break out in August 1914, Hervé rushed to join the French army to defend “their Country”, a fact referred to (but without naming him) in the next following article in the pamphlet: “the same man who had once proclaimed 'insurrection rather than war' now exhorts his comrades to defend the 'civilization' of the exploiters”.

Hervé later became a fascist. He wasn't the only pre-WWI anti-militarist militant to take this road, the most notorious being Mussolini. The publishers of this pamphlet, with its talk of “armed joy” and “transforming life arm in hand”, might like to ponder whether the glorification of non-state violence is not in the fascist rather than the “libertarian” tradition.

There's not much wrong with the slogan “No War but the Class War”. But there's a lot wrong with “No War but Civil War” which is how this pamphlet interprets it.

Adam Buick