From The First To The Second World War
Table of Contents
1. The “Gran Rifiuto”
During the war, the German Marxists hesitated even less than the English laborites. 1
Every belligerent nation was fully convinced that it was waging a purely defensive war—every war is defensive or at least “preventive” in the eyes of the nations that wage it. 2 Still, if we reflect that the socialist parties had an indubitable constitutional right to vote against war budgets and that within the general moral schema of bourgeois democracy there is no obligation to identify oneself with national policy—men far removed from socialist anti-militarism in fact disapproved of the war in all the belligerent countries—we seem to face a problem that is not solved by doubtful references to Marx or to previous declarations by Bebel and von Vollmar that they would defend their country if attacked. There should have been no difficulty in recalling Marx’s true teaching on the subject. Moreover, defending one’s country means only doing one’s duty with the army; it does not imply voting with the government and entering into unions sacrées.3 Guesde and Sembat in France and Vandervelde in Belgium who took office in war cabinets, and the German socialists who voted the war budgets, thus did more than loyalty to their nations required, as then commonly understood. 4
There is but one solution to the puzzle. Whether or not the majority of socialist politicians believed in Marxian internationalism—perhaps this belief had by that time shared the fate of the cognate belief in a spectacular revolution—they certainly realized that any stand taken upon the gospel would have cost them their following. The masses would have first stared at them and then they would have renounced allegiance, thereby refuting via facti the Marxian doctrine that the proletarian has no country and that class war is the only war that concerns him. In this sense, and with a proviso to the effect that things might have been different if the war had impinged after a longer spell of evolution within the bourgeois framework, a vital pillar of the Marxian structure broke in August 1914. 5
This was in fact widely felt. It was felt in the conservative camp: German conservatives suddenly began to refer to the socialist party in language that was the pink of courtesy. It was felt in that part of the socialist camp in which the faith still retained its old ardor. Even in England MacDonald lost the leadership of the labor party and eventually his seat rather than join the war coalition. In Germany, Kautsky and Haase left the majority (March 1916) and in 1917 organized the Independent Social Democratic party, though most of its important members returned to the fold in 1919. 6 Lenin declared that the Second International was dead and that the cause of socialism had been betrayed.
There was an element of truth in this. So far as the majorities of the Marxist parties were concerned, socialism at the crossroads had in fact not stood the test. It had not chosen the Marxist route. The creeds, the slogans, the ultimate goals, the organizations, the bureaucracies, the leaders had not changed. They remained on the morrow of the gran rifiuto what they had been on its eve. But what they meant and stood for had changed all the more. After that experimentum crucis neither socialists nor anti-socialists could any longer look at those parties in the same light as before. Nor could those parties themselves go on with their old antics. For better and for worse they had stepped out of their ivory tower. They had testified to the fact that the fate of their countries meant more to them than did the socialist goal.
The case was different however with those of them who, like the Social Democratic parties of the Scandinavian countries, never had been in any ivory tower. And even with the others the case will look different to observers 5 To some extent this must also be attributed to the success of non-socialist reforms. 6 It is worth noting that the Independents recruited themselves by no means exclusively from the uncompromising Marxists. Kautsky and Haase belonged to that sector, but many who joined with them did not. Bernstein, for instance, joined and so did several other revisionists whose motive cannot have been respect for the Marxian faith. But there is nothing to wonder at in this. Orthodox Marxism was of course not the only reason a socialist might have had for disapproving the course taken by the majority. These revisionists simply shared Ramsay MacDonald’s persuasion.
who never took those revolutionary antics seriously. As regards the German party in particular, it may well be nearer the truth to say that the “social traitors”—as they were dubbed—simply came down from unrealistic clouds and that the national emergency taught them to stand on their feet instead of on their heads—which, so some of us will add, was all to their credit and no rifiuto at all. But whichever view we take, there cannot be any doubt that the new attitude of responsibility drastically shortened the long stretch that before 1914 seemed to lie between them and the natural goal of every party—office. I am far indeed from attributing to German Social Democrats any calculations of this kind or from doubting the sincerity of their decision not to take office in bourgeois society. But it is obvious that, as a result of the stand they took at the beginning of the war, they were—if I may say so— “sitting pretty” at the end of it. Unlike the other parties, they had not compromised themselves by running along in full cry. But neither had they deserted their nation in the hour of danger.