Page:Solomon Abramovich Lozovsky - The World's Trade Union Movement (1924).pdf/53

 Rh The first type of disarmament is the one that was accomplished after the Versailles Treaty when the French and British disarmed the Germans. This is an imperialist disarmament, which is the disarming by one bourgeoisie of its opponents, arming itself at the same time for a future war. There is another kind of disarmament, the one that we attained when we disarmed the bourgeoisie and armed the workers. The political crime of the leaders of the Amsterdam International is contained not only in that they left the question of disarmament to the League of Nations, but also that they approached the question of disarmament and arming purely from the bourgeois point of view.

We are against war, and therefore, we are for disarmament. And here the reformist theory of disarmament is for us something entirely strange, for according to its purpose, forms, and methods it is in entire contradiction to the way we approach that problem. The hope of disarmament through the League of Nations by solving problems of international jurisdiction, all that is pure nonsense which proves the political short-sightedness of the leaders of the reformist trade union movement.

A curious discussion on disarmament took place not long ago in the British Parliament. The question was raised by the representative of the Labor Party, MacDonald, (present Premier of Britain) who is trying to find means of saving the British Empire by way of disarmament. Premier Baldwin answered him literally as follows: "At present there can be no question of disarmament. In the character and instincts of people there is a striving to fight, it is the instinct of a tiger and perhaps this instinct was given to man in order that by way of struggle he would bring about millenium to his own people." Thus the old sympathetic formula—"A man is a wolf to a man," as we Russians say, is now changed by the leader of British politics into a no-less sympathetic one: "A man is a tiger to a man." And this does not prevent the leaders of the Second and Amsterdam Internationals from approaching the League of Nations with the proposition that they shall disarm themselves. But who is an enemy to himself and who is going to disarm when, with machine guns and cannon can be obtained such wonderful and realistic economic results!

The question of disarmament is closely connected with the whole problem of the struggle against war. Of course the Amsterdam International is against war, but how to avoid war, how to fight against it? lf we examine all the resolutions adopted concerning this question by the Amsterdam International, again we will find in them the statement that all conflicts started by one nation against another should be solved by international conferences and by international law. In order to solve all these conflicts, to create some kind of higher court composed