The Daily Worker Newspaper, December 4, 1926, Page 11

War and the Proletariat AR, in any case, signifies an extraordinarily pow- erful convulsion of all the forces of capitalism. Many a bourgeols government, having arrived at the end of its tether, has tried to check the threatening proletarian revolution by engineering a foreign ad- venture. Thus'the outbreak of war brings am in- crease of strength to the capitalist government. But—the strerigthening ts only a transitory one. If the war lasts for some time or if it ends without a decided vietory, the fighting spirit of the prole- tariat grows to the point of rebellion. War signi- fies such a mighty threat to the proletariat that after a short time it must openly declare itself against war; it must declare war against war and e@gainst its own eapitalist government. Let us glance at the last great ware of capitalism. What rojie di the proletariat play in them? The War ef 1870-71 and The Proletariat. — PrussianGerman capitalism grew very fast. The breaking up of Germany into numerous little states hindered this development. The bourgeoisie of 1848 had ignominously betrayed its task—the creation of a unified empire. Therefore Bismarck carried the revolution thru from above in a series of wars (1864-71). But instead of ending the war of 1870-71 with the unification of Germany, German capitalism reached out after conquests. Thereby the war became a yeactionary ¢ one. The answer to the procedure of the German junkers was the proclamation of the .Commune. The French bourgeoisie had fled from Paris and abandoned France. It trembled before the revolutionary pro- letariat and called the Prussians to its aid. They wanted to overthow the Parisian proletariat with Prussian bayonets. Thereby the defense of Paris— the war against Prussia~became thé affair of the proletariat, With the defense of Paris, the prole- tarian revolution was defended. The heroic Parisian proletariat could not hold out against the Prussian army. The betrayal of the French bourgeoisie as well as the weak attitude of the petty-bourgeois leaders of the proletariat brought the Parisian proletariat to its downfall. We assert; the Franco-Prussian war ended with the uprising of Ye Parisian proletariat. After a few months of heroic struggle, it was suppressed by the Prussian armies. The Russo-Japanese War ef 1905 and the Proletariat The collision of the ezar’s empire with the aspir- ing great power of the far east, Japan, soon ended with the military defeat of czarism. The war broke out at a time when great strikes were convulsing Russia. The outbreak of the war of 1905 inter rupted the proletarian struggles for a short. time. When the first tidings of the defeat in the far east The Wages of Poverty - - derwear, fearing he had inadvertently stolen some HEY were about the two finest young fellows I had ever met in Chicago, either in or out of jail, in or out of college, in or out of church—as- suming, for the sake of the argument, that I ever meet any in church. They were both just out of Bridewell, and I entertained them in my modest apartment: Jailbirds as guests! None of the near silverware was missing after their visit. I met the first chap in a small park. He was sit- ting on a bench and looked at me as if he felt that I was a sympathetic chap. He thought correctly;"1 am, hopelessby so, About the first thing he told me was that he was just out of the Bridewell. His story was simple, but interesting. He was a California boy, and out there had met a young fel- low from Decatur, Illinois. The Decatur boy urged Charlie to come home with him,ewhere they would both, he thought, be able to get jobs, so the two beat their way to [linois by catching auto rides. At Decatur, the friend took Charlie to his own home. After two weeks of fruitless search for work, Charlie, noticing that his friend’s people were poor, felt that he could no longer impose upon their hospitality, so he came to Chicago. It was in February. He reached Chicago with little or no money, and was walking the streets. | Becoming cold, he stepped into a poo) hall to warm himself, and while there the police raided the place. Finding the youth engaged in the suspicious task pg node ae toe tenth a the detective bureau. In his pocket he happened to have a letter which he had written to a sailor- friend in ‘Frisco but had forgotten to post. Th at roused suspicion; he was perhaps a deserting satl- @r, and the police can obtain a. fifty dollar reward for turning in a deserter, So be was held four nights fm a cell at the bureau, a place infested with vermin, Then a police judge gave him sixty days m the Bridewell. Arriving thore, his firat act was to burn his um fe insufficient. became known, the mood against the war grew and swelled, until finally, the spark was thrown into the powder keg: Cuzarism, trembling with anxiety, had the workers demonstrating before the Winter Palace shot down. That let loose the uprising. Workers’ and soldiers’ soviets arose. The Russian capitalists had to make peace with the Japanese in all haste in order to be able to pro- tect itself against the enemy within. Here too we see: The Russo-Japanese war was ended by the proletarian revolution, "The World War and the Proletariat, The World War was the attempt of aspiring Ger- man imperialism to atrike down her hated competi- tor, Great. Britain. Let us speak first.of the Russian proletariat, he July of the year 1914 saw barricades in the streets of Leningrad. The war broke out. The enormous, chauvinistic propaganda apparently swept the. class conflict from the order of the day. In. reality, it. was only driven from the surface.. Years full of sacrifice and blood passed; front broke. Czarism was incapable of carrying, on the war. The bourgeoisie seized the state power itself in order to carry on the war. The Russian bourgeoisie wanted to carry the war to a victorious end side by side with the capitalists of France and England. The Bolsheviks, in a clear, concise slo- gan, expressed the wishes of the proletariat and the peasants: Peace and bread! The slogans inflamed. The people arose, The victorious proletarian revolution in October, 1917 brought the dictatorship of the proletariat and —peace. For the first time in the history of the world, the proletariat seized the state power with full consciousness. What a difference between the Communards of 1871 and the Bolsheviks of 1917! There, hesitation and lack of clearness—here, will to power and’ highest clarity! a But the year 1917 must not be named without men- tioning. the events in Germany, France, Italy and Sweden. In the year 1913 there occurred in Germany the first proletarian struggles. In many industrial cities, the economic distress had reached a point where it was no longer bearable. The proletariat went out on the streets and demonstrated against the war. But *the: movement’ was mot ‘organized--the capitalist state was victorious. The second attack in the year 1917 came from the navy. Here highly qualified workers—and class conscious proletarians . were united. But.this movement too was struck down: Reichpietsch and Koebes paid with their lives for their faithfulness to the proletarian revolution. Simultaneously a revolutionary wave passed thru lice, owned and bred by the City of Chicago at the: detective bureau. The Bridewell was crowded and) unsanitary. At night, rats as large as cats prowled * through the corridors.. The walls were bloodstained from mashed bedbugs. The food was coarse and For breakfast, oatmeal (called “con- ’ crete” in the prison vernacular) and black coffee, both without cream or sugar. Fridays were fast (!) days; for dinner, a plate wiflt some syrup on the bottom of five slices of bread superimposed thereon. For thirty days of Charlie’s stay, he had as a cell- mate a stupid man of about #, a sexual degenerate, to whom Charlie “looked good.” At last his sixty days were ended. He was given back his suit, cleaned and pressed—the only de- cent service they had rendered him. He explained why he had no underwear and was given a clean suit, probably belonging to some other prisoner. His overcoat had not been fumigated, and, as it was old and the weather was now mild, he calmly dropped off a bridge into the Chicago River, for the same reason. he had burned his underwedr, I took the chap to my apartment. After a nap, he had dinner; the best meal, he said, that he had had in months. Before going to bed, he mentioned that he wished to go to the Bridewell in the morning to meet a fellow whom he had first known there and who was to be discharged next day. The two had decided to be pals ‘and to go to Detroit to look for work. As Charlie laid down his napkin next morning, he _ remarked that it had been a “wonderful” breakfast. He then asked if I would like to go to the Bride- well with him. I went. The place outwardly was quite attractive. Green grass, an artificial lake, from which ran a brook, with even a small attempt et a waterfall. Charlie pointed out éne wing of the buflding, where, he said, 600 were confined. After a wait, the prisoners discharged that day filed out. Im the line was a fellow of 24, about the In 1917, the Russian‘, G By Rudolf Haus France, Numerous regiments mutined at the front. Officers were killed. Enthused, the soldiers sang the “International.” As on the German front later, so too in France in the summer of 1917, the troops going to the strug- gle were greeted with the cry: Strikebreakers! Down with the War! But—also in France the state bower was yictorious. Hundreds of upright prole- tarians were deported to the colonies, many shot according to martial law, it can be said without any exaggeration: The pro- letarian Revolution ended the World War. In ‘Rus sia the Revolution was victorious.. German and |French capitalism escaped the same fate with “great difficulty. Why did the’ proletarian uprising win ‘in Russi¢ and why ‘was: the German and French Ptoletir hit” defeated? To begin with, this question is to be answered by the fact that German and French capitalism had at its. disposal a°much more solid state apparatus than the. young Russian one, That is one side of the matter. However, we want especially to draw atten- tion to the other side: to the proletariat. It won in Russia because a determined group of class fighters, because the illegal bolshevik organization, conscious of its goal, carried on a war against war. In Germany and France there was wanting this de- termined vanguard of the Revolution. Or, in Ger many, thanks to the betrayal of the Social Demde- racy, it was too weak to organize the ‘war against war. * The proletariat must not let itself be confused by the pacifist, social-democratic slogan Again War” nor by the anarcho-syndicalist “War against ALL War.” It is a ridiculous superficiality to believe that war can be fought by pseudo-revolu- tionary declamations. But just as dangerous is the allegedly revolutionary slogan “War against ALL War.” As Communists, we are against war, but we know that the imperialist war can be done away with solely by the civil war. Under Communism there will be no more wars. But till then there is still a long and difficult road. The usufructu- aries of present-day sociéty who also draw gain from every great slaughter, will not renounce their preregatives—of plundering the people—go0d-na Datu edly, They must be forced down in the struggle, weapon in hand. “Never Let us Summarize: Today, no war can be con- ducted without the proletariat answering the im- perialist war with the civil war. The more deter- mined the vanguard of the Revolution carries on the war, the more certain it is of the proletariat. By C. A. Moseley cleanest, most wholesome looking chap I had seen in many a day. He greeted Charlie and was intro- duced to me. His name, we will say, was Eddie. He was an automobile racing driver. Ever,. singe. his eighteenth year he had driven motorcycles.on, the perpendicular walls of motordromes or racing- cars on speedways. A clean liver, in the pink of condition. He told me how he had happened to be in the Bridewell. His story too was simple—too simple from the point of justice. One evening he wag in a railway station, waiting for a cousin to arrive by train. While there he met a “fluzzey.” As she was leaving on a train, he had no object in talking to her except to kill time. But a policeman, who evidently recognized the girl efor what she was, interfered. Hddie resented it and “talked back’’—result, sixty days. The two boys debated whether to start for De- troit that afternoon or wait until morning. I men- tioned that they could both stay at my place over night if they wished. That settled it’ I took them to the apartment where we had lunch together, an- other “wonderful” meal in Charlie’s opinion. They slept there. Four or five times, Eddie exclaimed: “Gee, I didn’t expect to tumble into anything like this when I left the Bridewell,” Next morning, after breakfast, they bade me good- bye, over and over again, thanking me for my kind-. These boys were both gentlemen, in the best., ness. meaning of the word, Mayor Dever might have felt . no condescension in entertaining both in his own home. But, being strangers, the City of Chicago had “taken them in.” At the expense of the municipal- ity, the city had entertained them in one of. its largest institutions, and, that they might not feel pauperized thereby, they had been permitted to work there. - These boys were not grafters, bootleggera, gun- men, or crooks, they were poor, , rome 7 ney a pod? os MS gia * % ong Ust ’ / iO Their inexcusable crime was that | —/