17.04.1997

The defence of the Russian Republic

From The Call, paper of the British Socialist Party, April 12 1917

A Russian friend of the present writer, who had hitherto regarded himself as an internationalist, made to me in the course of an interesting conversation the following remark:

“The Russian Revolution, though effected mainly by the efforts of the socialist proletariat, is not a socialist revolution. It is a middle class revolution which will establish in the country the rule of democracy. Of course, middle class democracy is not everything, but it is a sufficiently precious acquisition to be defended against Germany. I am therefore for national defence.”

... It is a very plausible and very captivating argument, but of course it is not new. It has all along been the argument of the French socialists, both of the ‘majority’ and the ‘minority’, who have insisted that it is both their right and their duty to defend the work of the great French Revolution and the existence of the republic against the absolutist monarchy of Prusso-Germany.

... In our opinion the French patriotic socialists have all along been wrong, and so are now also their Russian imitators. Their attitude betrays in the first place a signal misconception of the character of the present war ...

The political forms of these [warring] states are as varied as the colours of the rainbow, and the only thing they have in common is a capitalist class in power or emerging to power. It is between these capitalist classes that the fight is proceeding and not between the political forms of the state which they respectively use as their instrument.

.. The patriotic socialists of Germany also declare that they have something important to defend against all-comers: their social legislation, the trade union and socialist movement, their splendid municipal organisation, their schools, their industry, in all of which Germany is far in advance of all other countries ...

What reply could one give to these arguments from the point of view of national defence? It is obvious that from that point of view war becomes an eternal process, working dialectically now in favour of one and then in favour of another country.

It is indeed perfectly futile to talk of “national defence” in an era of capitalist-imperialist rivalries, when one’s country, whether it be a republic or an autocracy, is threatened and threatens other countries in turn, or even at the same time, just on account of those rivalries. A Russian or French or American republic is still a republic of the bourgeois classes and its conflicts with other states are conflicts of the ruling capitalist interests ...

Let the people of Russia and the Allied countries compel their respective governments to proclaim that they are prepared to make peace on the basis of no annexations and no indemnities; then, if Germany should refuse such terms, there will be time enough to talk of “national defence”.

John Bryan