Leon
Trotsky: Declaration to the Antiwar Congress at Amsterdam
July
25, 1932
[Writing
of Leon Trotsky, Vol. 4, 1932, New York 1973, p. 148-155]
The
danger of a new world war is becoming more apparent every day. The
causes of this danger have been exposed in irrefutable fashion by
Marxism.
The
productive forces of humanity have long since outgrown the limits of
private property and the boundaries of the nation state The salvation
of humanity lies in a socialist economy based on an international
division of labor. Under the influence of a conservative leadership,
the proletariat failed to carry out its revolutionary task. The world
war of 1914-18 was its retribution. The democratic champions of
"peaceful development," the opponents of revolutionary
methods, bear direct responsibility for the tens of millions killed
and wounded in the imperialist slaughter.
The
imperialist world has learned nothing and forgotten nothing in the
fifteen years that have elapsed since then. Its internal
contradictions have grown more acute. The current crisis reveals a
frightful picture of the social disintegration of capitalist
civilization, with clear signs of advancing gangrene. The salvation
of humanity is possible only through the surgical action of
proletarian revolution.
The
ruling classes are floundering in this hopeless situation. Their
financial difficulties and their fear of the people force them to
seek a solution in arms-limitation agreements. On the other hand, by
raising tariff walls still higher and increasing the restrictions on
imports, the rulers are further constricting the world market,
deepening the crisis, sharpening national antagonisms, and preparing
new wars. The reformist parties, today as yesterday opposed to a
revolutionary solution along the road of socialism, are once more
taking on themselves the full weight of the responsibility for the
misery of the crisis and the impending horror of a new war.
The
contradiction between the productive forces and the boundaries of the
nation-state has taken on its sharpest and most unbearable form in
the old home territory of capitalism — Europe. With its labyrinth
of borders and tariff walls, its swollen armies and monstrous
national debts, the Europe of Versailles is a constant source of
military dangers and war provocations. And it cannot now be united by
the bourgeoisie — the class that has bled it dry and Balkanized it.
For that, other means and other forces are required.
Only
in czarist Russia was power wrested from the hands of the
bourgeoisie. Thanks to its revolutionary leadership, the young
Russian proletariat was able, for the first time in world history, to
show concretely what inexhaustible possibilities are contained in a
system of proletarian dictatorship and planned economy. The gigantic
economic and cultural achievements of a backward country, which had
been transformed into a country of the workers and peasants, point
out the road to a solution for all of humanity.
We
are now awaiting from the Soviet government the complementing of its
second five-year plan by an extensive plan for economic collaboration
with the advanced capitalist countries, which will open up a gigantic
perspective of human possibilities to the masses, suffering under the
burden of the crisis and unemployment Whatever the immediate
practical results of such a plan, its power of attracting millions
and millions of workers to socialism will be immense.
The
social system in the Soviet Union today is, to be sure, still a long
way from socialism. But its inestimable importance lies in the fact
that it has started on the road to socialism. It will the more surely
and quickly proceed to socialism the sooner the proletariat of the
advanced countries seizes power from the hands of its bourgeoisie and
creates the definitive premises of a new society, one that can be
achieved only on an international basis.
The
danger of a world war is a danger to the very existence of the first
workers' state. No matter what the cause of the war may be, no matter
where it may erupt, in its final stage it will inevitably turn
against the USSR. The European and world bourgeoisie will not leave
the scene without attempting a transfusion of blood from the arteries
of the young workers' state into those of imperialism in its death
agony.
In
the last year alone, the flames of war threatened the frontiers of
the Soviet Union both from the Far East and from the West At the same
time that it is strangling the independence of China, Japan is
constructing fortresses in Manchuria from which to strike at the
Soviets. The antagonism between Japan and the United States cannot
deter the militarists in Tokyo, for in a war against the Soviet Union
in the future they will consider themselves to be in the vanguard of
world imperialism. On the other hand, the coup d'état carried out by
Hindenburg on Hitler's orders not only clears the road for a fascist
regime in Germany but also opens up the perspective of a
life-and-death struggle between a fascist Germany and the Soviet
Union. Enormous events are approaching in Europe and the entire
world.
Under
these conditions the struggle against war is a struggle to save the
lives of tens of millions of workers and peasants of the new
generation which has grown up since the great slaughter, to preserve
all the conquests of labor and thought, to save the first workers'
state and the future of humanity.
All
the greater is the task, therefore, and all the more necessary is
clarity on the method of its solution. To condemn war is easy; to
overcome it is difficult. The struggle against war is a struggle
against the classes which rule society and which hold in their hands
both its productive forces and its destructive weapons. It is not
possible to prevent war by moral indignation, by meetings, by
resolutions, by newspaper articles, and by congresses. As long as the
bourgeoisie has at its command the banks, the factories, the land,
the press, and the state apparatus, it will always be able to drive
the people to war when its interests demand it But the propertied
classes never cede power without a struggle. Look at Germany. When
the fundamental interests of the propertied classes are threatened,
democracy gives way to violence. The overthrow of the bourgeoisie is
possible only with guns in hand: imperialist
war can
be stopped only by civil
war.
We
Bolshevik-Leninists absolutely reject and denounce the deceptive
differentiation between a "defensive" and an "offensive"
war. In a war between the capitalist states such a differentiation
represents only a diplomatic cover to deceive the people. Capitalist
brigands always conduct a "defensive" war, even when Japan
is marching against Shanghai and France against Syria or Morocco. The
revolutionary proletariat distinguishes only between wars
of oppression
and wars
of liberation.
The character of a war is defined, not by diplomatic falsifications,
but by the class which conducts the war and the objective aims it
pursues in that war. The wars of the imperialist states, apart from
the pretexts and political rhetoric, are of an oppressive character,
reactionary and inimical to the people. Only the wars of the
proletariat and of the oppressed nations can be characterized as wars
of liberation. After its victory the armed insurrection of the
proletariat against its oppressors is inevitably transformed into a
revolutionary war of the proletarian state for the consolidation and
extension of its victory. The policy of socialism does not and cannot
have a purely "defensive" character. It is the task of
socialism to conquer the world.
It
is from this that we derive our position with regard to all forms of
pacifism:
purely imperialist pacifism (Kellogg-Briand-Herriot, etc.), and
petty-bourgeois pacifism (Rolland-Barbusse, and their partisans all
over the world). The essence of pacifism is a condemnation, whether
hypocritical or sincere, of the use of force in
general.
By weakening the willpower of the oppressed, it serves the cause of
the oppressors. Idealistic pacifism confronts war with moral
indignation the way the lamb confronts the butcher's knife with
plaintive bleatings. But the task consists of confronting the knife
of the bourgeoisie with the knife of the proletariat.
The
most influential pacifist force is the Social Democracy. In a period
of peace it's not stingy with cheap tirades against war. But it
remains tied to "national defense." This is decisive. Every
war, however it may begin, menaces each of the warring nations. The
imperialists know in advance that the pacifism of the Social
Democracy at the first roar of cannon will be transformed into the
most servile patriotism and become the most important' reserve for
militarism. That is why a most intransigent struggle against
pacifism, unmasking its treacherous character, is the very first step
on the road toward a revolutionary struggle against war.
The
League of Nations is the citadel of imperialist pacifism. It
represents a transitory historical combination of capitalist states
in which the stronger command and buy out the weaker, then crawl on
their bellies before America or try to resist; in which all equally
are enemies of the Soviet Union, but are prepared to cover up each
and every crime of the most powerful and rapacious among them. Only
the politically blind, only those who are altogether helpless or who
deliberately corrupt the conscience of the people, can consider the
League of Nations, directly or indirectly, today or tomorrow, an
instrument of peace.
The
pretense of "disarmament" has and can have nothing in
common with the prevention of war. The program of "disarmament"
only signifies an attempt — up to now only on paper — to reduce
in peacetime the expense of this or that kind of armaments. It is
above all a question of military technique and the imperialist
coffers. The arsenals, the munition factories, the laboratories, and
finally, what is most important, capitalist industry as a whole
preserve all their force in all the "disarmament programs."
But states do not fight because they are armed. On the contrary, they
forge arms when they have to fight. In case of war, all the peace
limitations will fall aside like so much chaff. As far back as
1914-18, states no longer fought with the armaments which they had
provided for themselves in peacetime, but with those they
manufactured during the war. It is not the arsenals but the
productive capacity of the country which is decisive. For the United
States a limitation of armaments in Europe in time of peace is very
much to its advantage because it allows it to demonstrate its
industrial domination all the more decisively in time of war. The
German bourgeoisie inclines toward a reduction of armaments in order
to equalize the handicap in case of a new bloody conflict. General
"disarmament" has the same meaning for Germany as naval
parity with France has for Italy. The worth these plans will have
depends on the combination of the imperialist forces, the state of
their budgets, the international financial settlements, etc. The
question of disarmament is one of the levers on the arena of
imperialism in which the new wars are being prepared. It is pure
charlatanism to attempt to distinguish between defensive and
offensive machine guns, tanks, airplanes. American policy is dictated
in this also by the particular interests of American militarism, the
most terrible of all. War is not a game which is conducted according
to conventional rules. War demands and creates all the weapons which
can most successfully annihilate the enemy. Petty-bourgeois pacifism,
which sees in a 10 percent, or 33 percent, or 50 percent disarmament
proposal the "first step" towards prevention of war, is
more dangerous than all the explosives and asphyxiating gases.
Melinite and yperite can do then work only because the masses of
people are poisoned in peacetime by the fumes of pacifism.
Without
the slightest confidence in the capitalist programs for disarmament
or arms limitation, the revolutionary proletariat asks one single
question: In
whose hands are the weapons?
Any weapon in the hands of the imperialists is a weapon directed
against the working class, against the weak nations, against
socialism, against humanity. Weapons in the hands of the proletariat
and of the oppressed nations are the only means of ridding our planet
of oppression and war.
The
struggle for the self-determination of nations, for all people, for
all those who are oppressed and who strive for independence, is one
of the most important aspects of the struggle against war. Whoever
directly or indirectly supports the system of colonization and
protectorates, the domination of British capital in India, the
domination of Japan in Korea or in Manchuria, of France in Indochina
or in Africa, whoever does not fight against colonial enslavement,
whoever does not support the uprisings of the oppressed nations and
their independence, whoever defends or idealizes Gandhism, that is,
the policy of passive resistance on questions which can be solved
only by force of arms, is, despite good intentions or bad, a lackey,
an apologist, an agent of the imperialists, of the slaveholders, of
the militarists, and helps them to prepare new wars in pursuit of
their old aims or new.
The
principal force against war is the proletariat It is only through its
example and under its leadership that the peasants and other popular
layers of the nation can rise up against war. Within the proletariat
two parties are struggling for influence: the Communist Party and the
Social Democracy. The intermediate groups (the SAP in Germany, the
PUP in France, the ILP in England, etc.) cannot expect to play an
independent historical role. On the question of war, which is the
other side of the question of the proletarian revolution, the
irreconcilable opposition between communism and social patriotism
will reach its most acute expression.
Whoever
attempts to put all the programs, all the parties, all the flags into
one package in the name of pacifism, that is, of a superficial
struggle against war in words, performs the greatest service for
imperialism. On the question of war, no less than on all other
questions, the Communist Party must seek to free the masses of
working people from the disintegrating and demoralizing influence of
reformism.
Le
Monde,
the journal of Barbusse, Gorky, and the other organizers of the
antiwar congress, is conducting a sustained agitation for the fusion
of the Communist and Second Internationals. For a struggle against
war, Barbusse addresses himself in the same voice to Lenin and to
Vandervelde. This serves only to falsify Lenin and rehabilitate
Vandervelde We reject the policy of Barbusse and his followers and we
condemn it as the most dangerous political poison. We believe that
the Communist International and the Red International of Labor Unions
committed a serious error by leaving the initiative for the call of
the conference to the unprincipled and impotent pacifists.
We
consider the fact that the USSR did not enter the League of Nations
altogether correct, in tactics and in principle. It is all the more
regrettable, therefore, that the Soviet Union has lent its authority
to the Kellogg Pact, which is a complete fraud whose purpose is to
justify" only such wars as correspond to American interests.
We
also consider incorrect the tendency of Soviet diplomacy to embellish
the policy of American imperialism and particularly its initiative on
the question of disarmament We fully recognize the importance for the
USSR of normal economic and diplomatic relations with the USA. But
this aim cannot be achieved by verbal capitulations to the maneuvers
of American imperialism, the strongest and most rapacious of all. We
await from Soviet diplomacy a clear and public statement on the
danger of war and the struggle against it It is necessary to loudly
sound an alert to the people. The less Soviet diplomacy adapts itself
to the maneuvers of the imperialists on this burning question, the
more courageously it raises its own voice, the more ardently will the
laboring masses of the whole world respond, the more closely will
they align themselves with the USSR, and the more surely will they
defend it against the rising danger.
At
the same time we consider it our task to declare here openly: Now, in
the face of the terrible danger that is drawing close, it is
necessary at last to repair the crimes of the Stalinist bureaucracy
against the revolution and communism; it is necessary to free the
thousands of Bolshevik-Leninists, the organizers of the October
Revolution, the creators of the Red Army, the participants in the
civil war, the inflexible revolutionary fighters, from the prisons
and exile. For the dictatorship of the proletariat and the world
revolution, against imperialist war, they want to fight and they will
fight with an energy incomparably greater than that of the parlor
pacifists and the innumerable Stalinist bureaucrats.
The
policy of the united front in the struggle against war demands
special attention and revolutionary perseverance. The Communist Party
can and must propose openly, without dubious intermediaries, that all
the working-class organizations coordinate their efforts in the
struggle against war. For our part the Bolshevik-Leninists propose
the following points as a basis on which agreement for a struggle is
possible, at the same time maintaining a complete guarantee of the
independence of the organizations and their banners.
1.
Renunciation of all hopes in the League of Nations and other pacifist
illusions.
2.
Denunciation of the capitalist "disarmament" programs,
which serve to dupe the people.
3.
Refusal of all votes to the capitalist governments for military
budgets and conscription — not a man, not a cent.
4.
Exposure of the fraud of "national defense," because the
capitalist nation defends itself by oppressing and dividing the
weaker nations.
5.
A campaign for economic collaboration with the USSR on the basis of a
broadly formulated program, with the mass organizations of the
working class drawn into its elaboration and execution.
6.
Continual and systematic exposure of the imperialist intrigues
against the first and only workers' state.
7.
Agitation against war in the war factories, among the soldiers and
sailors. Preparation of revolutionary points of support in the war
industries, in the army and navy.
8.
The training of the Red Army not only in the spirit of a courageous
defense of the socialist fatherland but also in the spirit of
constant readiness to come to the aid of the proletarian revolution
and of the uprisings of the oppressed people in other countries.
9.
Systematic education of the laboring masses of the entire world in
the spirit of the greatest devotion to the first proletarian state.
Despite the unquestionable mistakes in the policy of the present
ruling faction, the USSR remains the genuine fatherland of the
international proletariat Its defense is the unflinching duty of
every honest worker.
10.
Indefatigable explanation to the workers of the whole world that a
socialist society can be established only on an international scale,
and that the real support of the USSR lies in the extension of the
proletarian world revolution.