Kreibich, a fine writer, on the reality that ‘peace’ under imperialist capitalism is always war; both against its ‘own’ working class and its ‘subjects’ among the exploited nations. In addition there are preparations–ideological, diplomatic, and military–for the next world war, which then also included a different kind of rival, that of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and with it many workers in support of every nation.

‘The Danger of War in Permanency’ by Karl Kreibich from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 7 No. 36. June 23, 1927.

When the danger of sanguinary conflict in the revolutionary class war is at its highest, social patriotic treachery is nearest. The truth of this adapted proverb has once more been proved in the days of the highest tension between Great Britain and the Soviet Union. The lackeys of the bourgeoisie, in their pale red liveries, have increased their attacks against the Soviet Union at almost the same rate as have their masters; and whilst, at the beginning of the tension between Great Britain and Russia, even the Berlin “Vorwärts” only wished to remain neutral, when there is a clash between revolution and counter-revolution, even the Prague “Sozialdemocrat”, in whose case, in view of its insignificance from the point of view of the international bourgeoisie, it can be nothing but a work of supererogation, has, during the last few days, raved against the Soviet Union with an acrimony and a zeal which betrays that the alliance between the Social Patriots and the bourgeoisie is beginning to turn from an objective community of interests into a sentimental community of souls. For this reason we can sympathise with these noble souls that they remain callous and cool when English warships slaughter 7000 Chinese in Nanking, but that, they foam at the mouth when a few Russian aristocrats are shot in Moscow.

The Deceitful Manoeuvres of the Bourgeoisie and the Social Patriots.

Every day is not Sunday, and the weekday comes into its own again. Then it becomes a question of resuming the everyday work for the bourgeoisie. And since today war against the Soviet Union does not yet seem opportune to the bourgeoisie, since the workers need not yet be stirred up to direct fratricide, the work must be resumed which the bourgeoisie regards as appropriate when it is preparing for war, until the moment when it has resolved to strike out–at which moment immediate war propaganda begins–the work of soothing the masses, of hushing up the danger, of representing any resistance to the threatened danger of war as “war clamour”, and in this way bringing things to such a path that the bourgeoisie takes the masses by surprise with the war, that it throws over their head the steel net of a state of war before they have resolved on any defensive action.

One of the best tried methods by which the bourgeoisie rules, is that of deceiving the working classes as to the true character of the period of history of the moment. A classical example of this is provided by the policy of the bourgeoisie in the period from the beginning of the imperialist epoch until the great war. That was the first period in world politics in which the Governments had to take into consideration the interest taken by the masses in their policy, to consider the moods of the masses and their movements of opposition. The epoch of the bourgeois revolution and of the formation of the National States was closed in Europe by the Peace of Frankfort in 1871; the Balkans alone lagged behind in the rear in 1878, without at that time causing any appreciable unrest in the other parts of Europe. If we make the experiment of circulating a questionnaire amongst the workers of Central Europe, we can bet a hundred to one that in the memory of most of those who answer, the period from 1871 to 1914 or, at any rate, from 1878 to 1912 (Balkan wars) remains in their memory as an epoch of peace (from their experience, their reading and lectures they have heard).

But what was in reality the aspect of this period? With Great Britain’s campaigns against the Afghans in 1878 and 1879 and against the Zulu Kaffirs, a chain of colonial wars began which was never to be broken, and these were soon followed by the wars of the imperialist Powers among themselves for the colonies (1898 the Spanish-American war) and spheres of interest and for the dividing up of the world. If we follow up the history of this epoch from 1878 to 1914, we have a clear picture of how the net of the threatened imperialist world war was being draw closer and closer; we can, so to speak, see the war in the offing. If however we trace the mass movement of the working classes in this period, we see how, in spite of all the signals and cries of warning, they did not properly grasp the danger and were not prepared to meet it in the right way until finally, in 1914, in the twinkling of an eye, they were bowled over by the monster of the world war, and we almost feel the dramatic excitement of the spectator in a cinema who, in the most thrilling scene, wants to jump up and warn the unsuspecting hero of the murderer who is approaching by stealth.

The nearer the world war approaches, the more zealously and feverishly the Governments prepare for it, the more perfect do the arrangements for the pacifist deception become, from the Czarist manifesto to the Hague institutions, from the “guarantee of peace” of the Alliance to the meetings between monarchs. Even at that time, the pacifist humbug penetrated into the Second International. Was not the “long epoch of peace” an important argument of revisionism about the peaceful development into socialism? Were there not Van Kols who saw positive sides in the colonial policy, and Karl Leuthners, who saw them in the Triple Alliance? It is also interesting to read today some of the speeches in the Reichstag at the time of the crisis in Morocco. How many forewarnings of the 4th of August did we, as good Social Democrats, carelessly pass by at that time?

The Imperialist War in Permanency.

The epoch since the world war exhibits all the phenomena of the pre-war period on an extended scale. The almost uninterrupted chain of wars has grown into a war in permanency. Murder has never ceased at all. We have also entered on a new epoch of colonial wars, the epoch of the defence of colonies and spheres of influence against the revolutionary uprisings of the population of those districts. The armaments for war, preparations, contradictions and dangers of war have become much mightier and more alarming than before the Great War. Consequently, the endeavours of the bourgeoisie to deceive the working masses as to the true character of the present character must be much more strenuous. The League of Nations and the guarantee pacts together with all the rest of the pacific humbug are the result of these endeavours, and moreover, behind these institutions, are hidden the efforts of the great imperialist Powers to guard themselves against premature explosions; for the experience of the world war has taught them that not only must every preparation be made for a war, but that the moment of its outbreak must be well chosen and should not come by surprise.

The imperialists can be well satisfied with the result of their endeavours to deceive the masses as to the true character of the present period as one of war in permanency. Millions of workers who are under the influence of the Social Patriotic leaders, believe their asseverations that the danger of war is only a Communist clamour and that the League of Nations, the Treaties of Locarno etc. are actually guarantees of peace. Can there be a greater triumph for the imperialist propaganda than the fact that the leaders of the revived Second International can without being ignominiously turned out, announce to the masses the exact opposite of the truth and can represent the present period when peace is better ensured than ever, whereas, as compared with the time before the war, the danger of war is far more imminent?

Clausewitz, in his famous saying that war is the continuation of politics with other means (i.e. the means of force), has pointed out the close relationship between politics and war. Today, his saying is out of date. Even the variation that the whole world policy of the imperialists since 1918 is nothing but the continuation of the imperialist world war with other means, does not express this enormous change precisely enough. In the present period of imperialism, politics and war have been welded into one, they form one unit. It may almost be regarded as a symbol that the imperialist statesmen, at the very time when they are sitting together in League of Nations Conferences or peace conferences, issue orders for the bombardment of Chinese towns and Riff villages in Morocco, and that Geneva and Locarno are at the same time centres for international profiteers who traffic in war material.

The Class War in Permanency.

Not only the imperialist war however, but the class war also is in permanency today. The bourgeoisie, from its side only, has declared it in permanency against the revolutionary proletariat which at the same time has prompted it to conceal this war as it did the imperialist war, behind a pacifist delusion, in this case that of democracy and parliamentarism, in order to deceive the masses as to its true attitude towards them.

The parallel forces itself upon us. Neither the Paris Commune nor the murders in Chicago, neither the intensification of the revolutionary fights in Russia, nor the massacres of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie in other States prevented most of the leaders of the Second International from regarding the period of civil war as finally concluded and from considering it out of the question that the proletarian class war should develop into a civil war. The forged preface by Engels to Marx’ “Class War in France” has remained for them the most precious jewel of political Marxist literature, and the experiences of the first Russian revolution of 1905 have existed for them only as interesting events in an exotic country which have as much significance for their “own” country, as have the canals on Mars for the actual geography of mother earth. The more the class fights have been intensified the more obstinately have these leaders refused to enter into any definite discussion, not to mention making any practical preparations for more serious methods of fighting. They have not gone beyond the ballot paper.

What are the occasional massacres instituted by the bourgeoisie against the proletariat from May 1871 in Paris to the fights on the Lena in 1912 as compared with the sanguinary war of extermination which the bourgeoisie has been carrying on against the revolutionary Labour movement from October 1917 until the present day? How many thousands of proletarians have been slaughtered by the bourgeoisie and their Social Patriotic executioners in Russia, Finland, Bavaria and Hungary, in the Ruhr district and in Central Germany, (March 1920 and 1921), in Roumania and Poland, in Yugoslavia and Italy? Has this murdering, this blood-thirsty class was stopped for a single year? The bourgeoisie carries it on uninterruptedly, whenever there is a pause, it prepares for the next wholesale slaughter.

This does not prevent the leaders of the Second International from holding out prospects of a victory of socialism by peaceful means even more than they did before the world war, and thus making the proletariat all the more defenceless, the more the bourgeoisie rages against it. For the Social Patriotic leaders are true philanthropists and pacifists, their heart bleeds when they think of the many proletarians who will have to allow themselves to be slaughtered in the next revolutionary fights so that the bourgeoisie may be victorious; for this reason they wish to make and maintain the proletariat as defenceless as possible so that as few victims as possible may be demanded when it is defeated. It is only necessary to read the Austro-Marxists, to listen to Otto Bauer and Julius Deutsch and hear how they boast of having attained the same end as Noske without having sacrificed a fraction of the victims that he did.

The Attacks on the Soviet Union.

The policy of the international bourgeoisie towards the Soviet Union is nothing more nor less than the combination of war and civil war in permanency. The bourgeoisie knows that the annihilation of the Soviet Power is a prerequisite for the final stabilisation of imperialism for which they hope and towards which they work. This is why it carried on war against the Soviet Power uninterruptedly from 1918 to 1921. Only when the bitter conviction was borne in upon it that it would not succeed in defeating it, whilst at the same time the complete and permanent exclusion of the Russian market intensified the crisis of capitalism, was the bourgeoisie moved to conclude a temporary peace and to enter into economic relations with the Soviet Union.

In doing so, the bourgeoisie tried to explain this change in its policy to the masses with the help of the Social Patriots, by means of a similar swindle as they employed later with regard to the introduction of the “New Economic Policy” in the Soviet Union. These same Social Patriots know very well from Lenin’s writings, especially from his speech “On Taxation in Kind”, that the “Nep”, with State capitalism, was in essentials the original economic plan of he Bolsheviki after they had seized the power, but that it proved impossible to carry it out because of the sabotage of the bourgeoisie and of the technical intelligentsia and because of the war and the civil war which enforced war communism. They represented the “Nep” and State capitalism which had only become possible after the complete defeat of the bourgeoisie and after the termination of the war and the civil war, as a capitulation to capitalism on the part of the Soviet Government, as an unprecedented change in the economic policy of the Bolsheviki.

The social patriotic megaphones of the bourgeoisie are guilty of a similar deception with regard to the foreign policy of the Soviet Government. They know perfectly well that, from the very beginning, the Soviet Government announced its intention to carry on a policy of peace and of the restoration of economic relations, but that this was rendered impossible by the warlike machinations of the capitalist Governments against the Soviet Union. They however represent the matter as though the wicked Bolsheviki had at first intended to overrun the peaceful capitalist world with war, and as though it was only when this proved impossible that they were converted to a “more reasonable” foreign policy. The whole campaign of the Social Patriots of all countries against the Soviet Union, which is of course above all a campaign against the Communist International, is under the sign of this fraud.

In this way the international bourgeois can calmly carry on its subterranean war against the Soviet Union as an apparent action of defence against Communist propaganda and can, with the help of its Social Patriotic megaphones, represent any actual resistance to this action which does not stop short at the most infamous methods, as a justification of the war manoeuvres of the imperialists. This has been clearly shown by the attitude of the Social Democratic Press towards the execution of the monarchists conspirators.

The acts of individual terror, the attempts on people’s lives, have been, to some extent, acts of despair on the part of the oppressed, not only of despair because of the tortures of the oppression but also because of their incapability of finding the right way to gain their freedom. Marxism and Leninism, just because they have taught the right way to liberate the oppressed, have always, in their policy, rejected the tactics of making attempts on people’s lives. Such attempts however are also a means used by the rulers in order to deprive the oppressed of their leaders, if this cannot be done in a “legal” way. The ruling classes know that a loss of this kind is at far greater blow to the oppressed classes, because honest revolutionary leaders of the masses are rare, whereas bourgeois society produces monarchs, statesmen, politicians and prominent economists etc. in masses. The bourgeois society of post-war imperialism has developed the policy of murdering revolutionary leaders into a system, and when it has not been able to carry on war against the Soviet Power or to stir up a civil war, it has sent out murderers against the leading personalities of the Soviet Union.

What, however, is the attitude of the leaders of the Second International in this respect? They suppress the documentary evidence about this policy of the bourgeoisie, they prevent the discovery of the connection between these acts of murder and preach indignation when the Soviet Power resists this campaign of murder. In this way, the Social Patriots support the infamous plans of assassination of which the bourgeoisie is guilty. Is it not more than characteristic that the party of the Social Revolutionaries was refused admission to the Second International as long as it employed the tactics of individual terror and of deeds of violence against Czarism, but has been allowed to join it since it turned its murderous weapons against the functionaries of the Soviet Power? And does not this International keep silence on this point, does it not approve and support the fact that the Social Revolutionaries and Menshevists are maintained in the same way and with the same money as the monarchist crew of Russian emigrants, as the murderers of Vorovsky and Voykov?

Days of this kind are very instructive, they refresh our memory with regard to things which have been half forgotten and to which little attention is being paid otherwise, and this ought to be turned to account even though the days of the culminating point of agitation and murderous attacks, which are so glorious for the bourgeoisie and its Social Patriotic creatures, once more give place for a time to more peaceful days.

International Press Correspondence, widely known as”Inprecor” was published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) regularly in German and English, occasionally in many other languages, beginning in 1921 and lasting in English until 1938. Inprecor’s role was to supply translated articles to the English-speaking press of the International from the Comintern’s different sections, as well as news and statements from the ECCI. Many ‘Daily Worker’ and ‘Communist’ articles originated in Inprecor, and it also published articles by American comrades for use in other countries. It was published at least weekly, and often thrice weekly.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1927/v07n36-jun-23-1927-inprecor-op.pdf