22.05.1997

The coming defeat of imperialism

From The Call, paper of the British Socialist Party, May 17 1917

The supreme issue between imperialism and democracy is being fought out at this very moment by the socialist proletariat and peasant soldiers of Russia. It is being fought out against the overwhelming powers of modem capitalism of two hemispheres for ourselves and the world at large as well as for the Russian people themselves.

... The vast majority of socialists throughout the world had capitulated to the imperialist enemy at the very outset of the struggle. But the most downtrodden working and peasant classes in Europe have risen in revolt against him, have smashed the head of the tsardom, and are now fighting at every twist and turn those who would substitute for its yoke that of their own, the yoke of imperialism and militarism.

For it is quite plain that if the war is to end in the manner demanded by the revolutionary people of Russia - that is, without any party drawing any profit from it in the shape of annexations and indemnities - international imperialism, which has set out to conquer, to capture and to dominate, will have received a blow from which it will never recover. For the first time in its long and bloody career capitalism will have embarked upon a business which will bring it nought hut disappointment, resentment and the spectre of a revolution. That is what is at stake in the fight which the revolutionary people of Russia is waging today. It is a world-historical fight which potentially marks a new stage in the social and political development of mankind.

That its meaning is gradually being realised by the proletariat of other countries is shown by the unrest which has seized them, and which is finding its expression in the efforts to bring about an international meeting of the socialist parties. It is felt on every hand that the long nightmare is at an end, and that the undivided sway of imperialism over the minds of the nations is over.

But there is no doubt that the imperialist classes themselves appreciate the meaning of the light in Russia much better than the masses of the people. They scent the danger much more keenly than those classes on whose behalf the Russian proletariat and peasantry are struggling. Their press and their diplomacy are being furiously manipulated in support of the Russian imperialists, and every artifice and chicane are being used to discredit and to disrupt the forces of the Russian Revolution ...

But we do know that unless the Allies accept Russia’s terms of peace, they will lose Russia altogether ... And because we credit them still with some amount of cool common sense, we think that they know this too and that therefore peace will have to be made. And it is the duty of the British working class to accelerate its advent and to see to it that its terms do not imply the enslavement of some hitherto independent race like the Arabs or the Persians.