Page:Solomon Abramovich Lozovsky - The World's Trade Union Movement (1924).pdf/103

 Rh protesting resolutions; the question is somewhat different. It is in the problem of the working class leading a fight against war with some expectations of success.

What are the difficulties in the fight against war? I think we will better understand them if we acquaint ourselves with the role which the workers organizations and the workers themselves played in the imperialist war.

First of all, there is no doubt at all that the war itself was made possible only because the working masses, at least in the first period, were for war. The leaders of the labor organizations were for war, and more than that, helped their governments to carry it on. Thus, the struggle against war leads to the struggle against all war ideology.

On the other hand, it is impossible to conduct an anti-war propaganda if we will not at the same time try our best to liberate the workers from all that helps to create the war ideology. It is natural, therefore, that as the first thing in our plan of struggle against war we always put forward the necessity of fighting against all nationalistic superstition, against the idea of "fatherland," and the defense of "our" country.

It is known that the anarchists are also against war. It is true that during the last war a great majority of them were for war. But at any rate they are, in general, against it, not as revolutionists but as pacifists. That means that they are against war because war brings along death and destruction. We are not against every war, but against those conducted in the interest of the bourgeoisie, It is our aim to instill into the minds of the workers this seemingly plain, but in reality profound, difference between nationalist and class war.

It is our aim to prove to the workers that without the creation of a class-militant army, without declaration of decisive war against the bourgeoisie, the workers cannot liberate themselves, they cannot conquer. Thus, the struggle against the whole nationalist ideology, the struggle, against the idea of defending "our" country as such, and the advocacy of the necessity of war for the defense of a socialist country, for our own proletarian state—this is the foundation of our anti-war tactics.

But, on the other hand, in our anti-war agitation, we have to reckon on the connection between the workers and "their" country. Thus, we have repeatedly to express the opinion that to organize a strike of protest in the moment of the declaration of war is utopian, because at that moment the bourgeoisie is armed to the maximum and the working class is disorganized.

Therefore, we see that the question is not that of organizing a strike, at the moment of the declaration of war, but in preparing the working masses before the war against it. As long as the class struggle sharpens itself we will be creating the power which may interfere with the very