BERKAY KARTAV reviews a new collection of Leon Trotsky’s writings on imperialist war, half of which are translated into English for the first time.
Against Imperialist War: Writings 1914-1916
By Leon Trotsky
Published by Mentmore Press, 2024, £14.99
“If Europe wants to avoid war, Europe must get ready for war”. These were the words of Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, when addressing the cadets of the Royal Danish Military Academy earlier this year. They highlight the dramatic shifts taking place in today’s capitalist world, marked by increased geopolitical rivalry, polarisation, conflicts, volatility and uncertainty.
The horrific wars in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Congo and elsewhere, are graphic illustrations of the rotten nature of capitalism – a chaotic, conflict-ridden system. Capitalism must be overthrown so that, in the words of the Turkish socialist poet Nazim Hikmet, “the children of this world can live and grow and laugh and play”.
Against Imperialist War is a collection of Leon Trotsky’s extensive writings on war, written between 1914-1916, and recently translated into English from their original Russian by Pete Dickenson. It is a must-read for those fighting for such a world.
Written during the bloodbath of the first world war, Trotsky analyses the causes of the war and takes up the debates in the Second International – an international organisation uniting different workers’ parties and trade unions under a socialist banner – about what position socialists should take on war.
The original position of the Second International, agreed at its Stockholm conference in 1907, was to actively oppose war between the imperialist powers. But once war broke out in 1914, the leaders of the International came out in defence of the ‘fatherland’.
The Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin, with Trotsky and others in a tiny minority in the Second International, stood by their internationalist principles and opposed the imperialist war which was fought between rival capitalist states in the struggle for markets and the redivision of colonies. Those small forces came together in Zimmerwald, Switzerland, in September 1915, a year after the outbreak of the war, and issued the manifesto of the International Socialist Conference, drafted by Trotsky – which is published in this book.
The huge significance of the conference – despite the differences that existed between the different participants – was its attempt to restore the ties of socialists internationally by a commitment to international working-class solidarity and opposition to capitalist wars.
First world war
As Trotsky explains in the book, “at the heart of this war is a revolt of the productive forces [industry, science and technique] nurtured by capitalism against their exploitation by the nation-state”. Capitalism is a global system, but it is nevertheless based on nation states. The development in productive forces, however, had long outgrown the narrow limits of private property and individual nation states, becoming obstacles to their further development.
This had driven imperialist countries to compete with each other for new colonies, markets and raw materials, in pursuit of the economic interests of their national capitalist classes.
In trying to justify why they sided with their national capitalist class, the leadership of the Second International argued that the war was for ‘national freedom and independence’. Trotsky, responding to these arguments, wrote about how “the Anglo-German war is actually being fought for the freedom of imperialism to exploit the Indian and Egyptian peoples on the one hand, and on the other, in the name of a new imperialist division of the world’s nations”.
This was a result of the growing inter-capitalist rivalry and rising tensions that were building up in the lead up to 1914. Up until the war, Britain had been the dominant global power with a vast empire covering 25% of the earth’s surface. But it was in decline. At the same time, Germany – unified after the 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian war – was experiencing rapid industrialisation and becoming more productive than Britain. But the further development of German capitalism, as explained by Trotsky, collided with Britain’s world hegemony.
The assassination of Austrian Archduke Ferdinand in Serbia on 28 June 1914 might have been the trigger for the war, but at root it was about the struggle for markets between different capitalist powers.
National defence
The question of war and what position socialists should take has served as a litmus test in the workers’ movement. It differentiates those who succumb to the ‘national unity’ mood, abandoning class struggle, and those who take an independent position in the interests of the working class. These mistakes were particularly fatal in 1914, as these were made by the leaders of mass working-class political organisations, like the German Social Democratic Party.
Today, since the collapse of Stalinism in the Soviet Union, such mass working-class political organisations no longer exist in most countries. But in a period where the working class is ‘re-entering’ the scene of history – and striving to build its own mass parties – there are many lessons for socialists from the debates in the Second International.
This was a mass organisation, where the vast majority, succumbing to the national unity mood created by their national ruling classes, and trying to halt the class struggle, argued that the war was in ‘self-defence’ and that they all needed to support ‘their side’ in the mass slaughter that was taking place across Europe.
For example – as illustrated clearly many times in the book – speaking at the German parliament, the Reichstag, soon after the outbreak of the war, Hugo Hasse, a leader of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) said: “To secure the integrity of our culture and independence it is necessary to fend off this danger [of Russian despotism]. So, we are doing what we have always insisted on, in the moment of danger we will not betray the fatherland”.
The fact that this statement came from the leader of the German SPD, a nominally Marxist organisation, seen by many socialists at the time as ‘the party’ of the international, illustrates the extent of the ideological bankruptcy that characterised the Second International at the onset of the war.
In trying to justify their position, the leaders of the SPD were claiming that Germany’s victory over Tsarist Russia would liberate Russian people from the yoke of Tsarism. Trotsky’s answer was clear: “In our fight against Tsarism… we have not sought, nor will we seek, help from Habsburg or Hohenzollern militarism… We, Russian Social Democrats, sufficiently firmly stand by an internationalist position to absolutely refuse to pay for a dubious step towards Russia’s liberation with the certain destruction of Belgian and French liberty”.
Similarly, the Austro-Hungarian section of the International was defending its ‘own’ empire by talking about the liberating mission of the Austro-Hungarian empire’s ‘cannons, machine guns and cavalry’ for the liberation of the oppressed nations of Poland, Ukraine and Finland.
But as Trotsky explains, acting on the basis of its own imperialist interests, the Austro-Hungarian empire could not resolve the national question of the oppressed nationalities in the Balkans and Eastern Europe. That would require, he argued, the overthrow of the Tsar and the Austro-Hungarian dynasty as part of a struggle for socialist change in the region and across Europe.
Some might dismiss these debates as belonging to the past. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, in particular, has led to similar debates and caused rifts in socialist groups internationally. It has also served as a litmus test. Some tried to justify Russia’s invasion through an unbalanced analysis that Putin’s Russia had no choice but to start the war to stop Western aggression and Nato’s eastward expansion, and to defeat the reactionary regime of Zelensky. Other groups on the left in Western European countries have called on their governments to arm Ukraine to stop the Russian aggression and ‘defeat Putin’s regime’.
Even without these calls, Western capitalist governments would have armed Ukraine anyway to defend their own geopolitical interests. Germany, Britain, France, the US under both Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and many more countries, have supplied billions in military and financial support to Ukraine. This wasn’t done to help save ordinary Ukrainians and Russians from Putin, but to defend their own interests in the region.
What was missing on the left was a balanced Marxist analysis of the causes of the war, emphasising the need to place no trust in any of the capitalist powers, and arguing for workers’ unity and a socialist programme.
Why did the Second International collapse?
Trotsky devotes a chapter in his pamphlet, War And The International, to explain the objective conditions that led to the collapse of the Second International. He says: “If the signal for war mobilisation was also the signal for the fall of the International, if the national labour parties fell in line with their governments and the armies without a single protest, then there must be deep causes for it common to the entire International. It would be futile to seek these causes in the mistakes of individuals, in the narrowness of leaders and party committees. They must be sought in the conditions of the epoch in which the Socialist International first came into being and developed”.
As Trotsky then goes on to explain, the task of the First International (1864-1872) – which Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels helped to found – was to propagate the ideas of socialism, to help the working class understand its role in changing society. But it was during the time of the Second International that in many countries mass organisations of the working class were built. The task of those forces was to help the working class understand the crucial need to fight for their immediate interests but linking that to the need for a revolutionary transformation of society.
Marxist ideology dominated the International, but in practice the organisation had reformist deeds. The German ‘revisionists’, theorising this contradiction, argued that you can achieve socialism through painless, gradual reforms. But in reality, this meant accommodating themselves to the confines of capitalism and a narrow self-preservation of their organisation.
So, when the war broke out, the leaders of most of the parties that made up the International abandoned their original internationalist position and considered it to be in their own interests for ‘their’ country to succeed in winning new markets and new colonies, as this would develop ‘their’ productive forces and ‘their’ workers would get a bigger share of a bigger pie.
But while the ‘victor’ countries might be able to offer more concessions, any gains for the working class would be through mass struggle rather than any handouts from capitalist states. And even in situations where concessions can be extracted through struggle, these are often given by the capitalists and their representatives by one hand and then taken away with another, especially under conditions of severe economic crisis.
Today, you see similar arguments made by trade union leaders who express their support for increased military spending because this is ‘good for jobs’. Of course, it is right for unions to fight to defend their members’ jobs. However, this shouldn’t mean supporting warmongering governments who seek the defend their own capitalist interests. The working class needs its own independent position, demanding democratic nationalisation under workers’ control of the arms industry to secure jobs and skills, and their transfer to socially useful production.
Peace programme
As Trotsky puts it clearly in relation to the first world war: “If socialists as a first step had confined themselves to declaring their view of the present war, rejected all responsibility for it and denied their government confidence and credits, they would have fulfilled their duty”. Further action would have then followed as events and popular consciousness changed with the continuation of the war.
In opposing imperialist war, however, Trotsky did not put forward policies dogmatically. They had to take into account the mood and aspirations of the working class. Trotsky and Lenin had enormous confidence in the ability of the working class to rise up to its historical role and overthrow capitalism. When Trotsky was writing these articles in Against Imperialist Wars, the revolutionary movement that overthrew the Tsarist monarchy had not yet happened, and workers had not yet taken power in Russia.
Nonetheless, even in the most unfavourable conditions for Marxists, the Bolsheviks were able to offer a way forward for the working class. This meant taking an independent class position on all the issues facing the class, including on the question of peace.
Trotsky sets out a peace programme by differentiating it from the peace programme of capitalists. He says for capitalists, these programmes are a set of demands implemented through military force. But from the standpoint of socialists, the programme does not start from the military position of belligerent countries but flows from the international struggle for socialism.
The peace programme, therefore, he writes, starts with recognising the independence of those weaker or smaller nations, which have paid heavily the price of the imperialist policies of bigger nations. But in the case of the first world war this did not necessarily mean going back to pre-1914 borders. Trotsky correctly argued that “in the struggle against imperialism, the proletariat cannot set itself the political goal of returning to the old European map. It should put forward its own programme for state and national relations that addresses the main trends in economic development, the epoch’s revolutionary character and proletarian socialist interests”.
But to win the confidence of the masses and oppressed nationalities, Trotsky defended the right of national self-determination and linked it to the need for a ‘united states of Europe, without monarchies, standing armies and secret diplomacy’, in effect arguing for a socialist confederation of Europe, as we would put it today.
Today’s multipolar world
There are many differences today with the era Trotsky was writing in. We don’t yet have mass political working-class organisations in most countries. The German SPD, the party of the German working class, had about one million members at the onset of the war.
A new world war, on the scale of the first and second, is also not posed today due to the class balance of forces and the threat of nuclear Armageddon. However, there are some important similarities too. The first world war was a consequence of a decades-long ‘globalisation’ and integration of the world capitalist economy, which was already causing conflicts in the so-called ‘scramble for Africa’ in the 19th century. Today, the ‘hyper globalisation’ era – when, after the collapse of Stalinism in the Soviet Union, the US was the world’s sole superpower – has long come to an end. The US is in relative decline and is being increasingly challenged by the Chinese regime.
We are now living in an unstable, multipolar world, of increasing protectionist policies, global conflicts and military spending. Many young people looking at global events today see a world in flames; a world which doesn’t offer any future apart from the horrors of war and destruction. As Lenin said, capitalism means war. Understanding the era we live in and the real causes of capitalist wars is vital for the new generation of socialists who are fighting against warmongering, pro-capitalist governments.
But most importantly, flowing from this analysis – and in opposition to capitalist wars – it is necessary to put forward an independent class programme and raise socialist demands to develop the understanding of the working class. The only way out of these horrors is by cohering the forces of the working class, building its own mass organisations with an independent class programme that can take on the governments of the super-rich. The working class, putting itself at the helm of mass revolutionary struggles, armed with a revolutionary programme and an internationalist standpoint, can succeed in taking the wealth and productive forces out of the hands of the capitalist class and reorganising society along socialist lines: a socialist world free from wars and conflicts.