We need more Liebknechts. From a speech delivered in the German Reichstag on June 20, 1913.

‘Militarism as a Weapon Against the Internal Foe’ (1913) by Karl Liebknecht from Voices of Revolt No. 4. International Publishers, New York. 1927.

The Minister of War spoke a few days ago of a connection between the army and the people, a connection he wished to see maintained…I also intend to speak now of a specific type of connection between the army and the people, namely, the relation in which the army serves as the hammer and the people as the anvil. This is the most serious section of the serious chapter of militarism in its work against the people.

Our motion deals in the first place with the relation of the army to strike-breaking. The army has often enough intervened in strikes, its soldiers have been commanded to do strike service. You will particularly recall the occurrence which took place—if I am not mistaken—at Torgau, in 1896, and in which General von Liebert, a member of the Reichstag, played a prominent part. If I remember correctly, it was a bakers’ strike, in connection with which General von Liebert had made an assignment of military forces. At the time, General von Liebert declared that this strike was comparable with a conflagration or with a water famine. The military repeatedly intervened, particularly in strikes of transport workers, in these cases replacing the striking workers with their own forces. I shall not dwell on this subject in detail; one of my party comrades will take care of this phase of the matter. I wish here only to point out, in addition, those irresponsible excesses on the part of the military authorities that were resorted to, for instance, at Nurnberg, at the strike of 1906, when the soldiers who were being dismissed to the reserves were asked to engage in strike-breaking work.

I shall place my principal emphasis on the use of the army as a tool of force in the economic and political struggle for holding down and subjecting the people, particularly the working class…The Minister of War has answered him in rather full detail, but he has not found a word with which to reply to the attacks on the use of the Guard against the inner foe. It is the more necessary that we again enter into this subject thoroughly.

Please do not think that you will now hear the blood-thirsty imaginings of some revolutionary of the pitchfork type; I am going to present to you only the Weltanschauung of German-Prussian militarism. We are enabled to draw on a great number of speeches and testimonials, of disturbing words, and threats, which have only to be enumerated to enable one to understand the full seriousness of this extremely dangerous phase of militarism.

Gentlemen, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army (the Emperor) said, in May, 1889, to the well-known delegation of mine-workers: “As soon as the slightest resistance is offered, I shall have them all shot down.”

In the memoirs of Prince Hohenlohe, we read under date of December 12, 1889: “The Commander-in-Chief declared that if the Social-Democrats should attain a majority in the Berlin City Hall, the Social-Democrats would proceed to plunder the citizens.” This would matter very little to him, the Commander-in-Chief, for he would have embrasures cut in the walls of the Palace and watch the plundering; he could afford to wait for the citizens to ask for aid.

On November 23, 1891, on the occasion of the taking of the oath by the troops at Potsdam, the following words occur in the official text of the Emperor’s speech:

“You have sworn to be faithful to me, i.e., you are now my soldiers; you have devoted yourselves body and soul to me. You have now only one enemy, namely, my enemy. In view of the Socialist intrigues of the present day, it may indeed occur that I shall command you to shoot down your own relatives, your brothers, even your parents, but even in such case you must carry out my command without a murmur.”

Gentlemen, note this: without a murmur! This is the one enemy of whom the Commander-in-Chief here speaks; the internal foe is Socialism, as is clear from the text and from the context. In other words, this speech does not for a moment mention the external enemy; it mentions only one enemy, namely, the domestic enemy: the Social-Democracy.

Gentlemen, in voting against our motion, you will dissipate and destroy a legend, namely, the legend of the patriotic mission of the knight in shining armor. Your attitude on our motion shows that it is your desire, as well as the desire of the military administration, to have further increases of out army serve the purpose of making use of the so-called people’s army against the people itself as an instrument of violence, to secure the operation of the people in their struggle for political liberty and economic well-being. I shall quote an old dictum to the Minister of War: socialismum expellas furca, tamen usque recurret, “Socialism may be driven out by lance and spear, but it will return again and again.” The internal foe to be combated by you is no longer outside the army; he is inside the army itself. Thus all the attempts to ward off this internal foe by militaristic means will be in vain; and we confidently look forward to the time—which is no longer very distant—when even your strongest weapon, even the weapon of militarism, will be shattered by the resistance of a people in insurrection, as blades of straw crumble against a stone wall.

The fourth in the Voices of Revolt series begun by the Communist Party’s International Publishers under the direction of Alexander Trachtenberg in 1927.

PDF of original book: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/parties/cpusa/voices-of-revolt/04-Karl-Liebknecht-VOR-ocr.pdf