Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/168

 war, the connection between the coming war and the proletarian revolution had been demonstrated unofficially as well as officially in the Basel Manifesto! One of the principal mistakes of disarmament advocacy is that it evades all actual problems of the revolution. Or are the advocates of disarmament altogether in favor of a new kind of disarmed revolution?

Moreover, we are by no means opposed to the struggle for reforms. We will not deny the disagreeable possibility that humanity may have to pass through another imperialistic war if the Revolution, in spite of repeated outbreaks of mass resistance and mass revolts, and in spite of our own efforts, does not result from this war. We advocate a program of reforms directed against the opportunists. The opportunists would prefer that we abandoned the struggle for reforms to them, that we should retreat out of this bad reality to the castle in the air of disarmament. For disarmament means to run away from the reality and not to fight it.

In our program we should state: "The slogan, and the acceptance of, 'defense of the fatherland' in this imperialistic war is nothing else than bribing the labor movement with a bourgeois lie." Such a definite answer to a definite question would be more correct theoretically, more beneficial to the proletariat, and more annoying to the opportunists than the demand for disarmament and the rejection of all wars of defense. And we could add: "The bourgeoisie of all the imperialistic powers, England, France, Germany, Austria, Russia, Italy, Japan and the United States, has become so reactionary and obsessed with the struggle for world power, that any war of the bourgeoisie of these countries must necessarily be reactionary. The proletariat must not only oppose such a war, but must also wish the defeat of 'its own' government and use a defeat for the revolutionary uprising, if a revolt to prevent the war has failed."

As far as the system of militia is concerned, we should say: We are not in favor of a bourgeois militia, but only in favor of a proletarian militia. Accordingly, not a cent and not a man either for the standing army or for the bourgeois militia; and in the case of the bourgeois militia, all the more, as we see even in the most liberal republics, as in Switzerland, a continual Prussianizing of the militia, together with the use of troops against strikes.

We might demand: Election of officers by the rank and file, abolition of all forms of military courts, no discrimination between foreign and native workers (which is especially important in im-