As the U.S. entered World War One, Rutgers says that all Socialists with any self-respect are, or should be, conscientious objectors.

‘The Conscientious Objector’ by S.J. Rutgers from New International (S.P.L.A.). Vol. 1 No. 5. June 16, 1917.

THE Socialist is a conscientious objector because it is against our conscience and principles to betray the Working Class.

Knowing that armies in civilized capitalist countries are used in the interest of the ruling class against the working class, it is our conscientious duty to oppose the strengthening of such armies.

It makes little difference whether the army is to be used at home to shoot down workers in their struggles against capitalism, or whether it is used in so-called national wars to strengthen and increase the world-power of the ruling class and the further enslavement of the world proletariat under the iron heel of modern industrial and financial feudalism. Being an Internationalist, the sufferings of foreign workers appeal as strongly to my conscience as those of my fellow-citizens or fellow-residents. And being convinced that the ruling classes will not give up their firm grip upon present society unless realizing that they have to yield before an overwhelming power, the strengthening of the ruling class is about as disastrous as the weakening of the proletariat. This is all the more true in the period of modern imperialism, in which the development of productive as well as mental and moral forces it incompatible with the latest forms of capitalist organization of society, and the only hope of avoiding a reversion to barbarism lies in the rising into power of the proletariat.

In Germany only a growing general mass-movement could have any success against the formidable and well-organized military machinery, and even Liebknecht, convinced that his martyrdom at present could not lead to such a mass-movement including the soldiers, submitted and accepted the fight inside of the army. In Russia, revolutionary workers enter the army in order to keep up and develop the revolutionary spirit from the inside, and this no doubt is under these circumstances most effective in preventing soldiers from being used as cannon-fodder in the interest of Russian and British imperialism.

In the United States those who wish to stick to the interests of the Working Class must do all in their power to prevent the creation of a military system, necessary for the ruling ass to destroy whatever rights were left at home, to protect their war profits and to secure future world power and world exploitation. That is why the conscientious objector works for the repeal of the conscription law socially, and individually claims exemption from military service.

To prevent the building up of militarism now that all ordinary means of protest and demonstration have failed and since a general mass-movement with strikes to bear pressure upon the government did not develop, the conscientious objector refuses as an individual to be conscripted. This is no purely individual action, however, since thousands upon thousands of American citizens have registered as conscientious objectors.

In what measure this will be effective, depends largely upon the numbers involved, but even as a powerful protest it will weaken the imperialistic forces and strengthen the tendencies toward a proletarian revolution. This is the more important, since a revolutionary period is developing in Russia and since the greatest danger to this revolution comes from the American money-kings.

This feeling, although social and political in its origin, has become so deeply rooted in our conscience, is such an integral part of our thoughts and feelings, that to betray these principles is against our conscience and our self-respect.

New International was the paper of the Socialist Propaganda League of America begun in Boston as ‘The Internationalist’ at the start of January 1917 and first edited by John D. Williams. The SPLA was founded by Left Wing SPer C.W. Fitzgerald , who had contacted Lenin in the fall of 1915 over their shared opposition to the war and positions around the Zimmerwald Conference. Lenin and continued their correspondence. With publisher and editor John D Williams and Dutch revolutionary SJ Rutgers, Fitzgerald officially began the SPLA in November, 1916, the first po-Bolshevik organization in the US. In early 1917 Williams went to New York to tour for the SPLA. On January 16, 1917 a meeting in Brooklyn attended by Leon Trotsky, Nikolai Bukharin, Alexandra Kollontay, V. Volodarsky, and Grigory Chudnovsky representing the Russian revolutionary movement with Louis B. Boudin, Ludwig Lore, Louis Fraina, and John D Williams of the SPLA. Both the New International(ist) and Class Struggle journals were born at this meeting. In the spring of 1917 SPLA headquarters moved to New York where Louis Fraina took over as editor. The paper lasted only about a year before Fraina began publishing Revolutionary Age.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/new-international/v1n05-jun-16-1917-ni.pdf