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Issue 180 July/August 2014
 One hundred years since the great slaughter
The first world war began 100 years ago,
unleashing slaughter on an unprecedented scale. This anniversary has
featured prominently in the capitalist media. Most fail, however, to
explain why millions of working-class people were sent to their deaths
in trench-warfare hellholes: capitalism’s drive for profit,
exploitation, raw materials and markets. TONY SAUNOIS writes.
It was dubbed the ‘Great War’, the ‘war to end
wars’. For the ten million killed and more than ten million seriously
injured it was certainly not great. The battles fought saw some of the
bloodiest human slaughter in history. The ineffable misery and losses
suffered on both sides are only surpassed by the scale of these
gargantuan events. At Ypres, Belgium, the British army lost a staggering
13,000 men in three hours only to advance 100 yards! In the first day of
the Battle of the Somme it took 60,000 casualties, the greatest loss
ever suffered by the British army. This was in spite of the fact that in
the preceding six days German lines had been hit by three million
shells!
Total casualties in the Battle of the Somme were 1.1
million men on both sides. By 1918, the Entente powers (led by Britain,
France, Russia and Italy) counted 5.4 million dead and seven million
wounded. The opposing Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, the
Ottoman empire and Bulgaria) suffered four million deaths, 8.3 million
wounded. Young working-class conscripts bore the brunt of these losses.
As subsequent conflicts have erupted around the
planet, it is self-evident that it did not mean an end to war. In the
current carnage in Syria, 6.5 million people have been internally
displaced and a further three million driven into external exile. Human
suffering and killing have been repeated again and again since this ‘war
to end war’.
Yet the bloodbath that erupted between 1914-18 has
possibly evoked the most comment and analysis. According to one
estimate, at least 25,000 books have been published on the subject. It
was, after all, the first truly global conflict. It ended one historical
era, opened another, and reshaped international and class relations. In
its wake, empires collapsed, some rapidly, while others took a slower,
more inglorious decline. It opened the way for the USA to replace
Britain as the world’s leading imperialist power. Above all, it acted as
the midwife to the greatest event in human history: the Russian
revolution in 1917. There, the working class was able to take over the
running of society. At the same time, a revolutionary wave engulfed most
of Europe.
The prospect of a socialist revolution in a series
of European countries was posed. In Germany 1918-19, the kaiser was
forced to abdicate as a workers’ revolution swept the country. In
Bavaria, a soviet republic was declared, and workers’ councils
established in Berlin and other cities. In Hungary, a soviet republic
was briefly established between March and August 1919. Mass strikes and
over 50 recorded military/naval mutinies took place in Britain. A police
strike in 1919 compelled the prime minister, David Lloyd George, to
admit years later: "This country was nearer to Bolshevism that day than
at any time since". However, with the exception of the Russian
revolution, these mass movements were ultimately defeated by the
mistaken polices adopted by the workers’ leaders. The defeat of the
revolutions in Europe sowed the seeds of the second great global
conflict, 1939-45, so that can also be traced to the legacy left by the
carnage of 1914-18.
The approaching war in 1914 posed a decisive test
for the international workers’ movement. Excepting a tiny minority –
including Lenin, Trotsky and the Russian revolutionaries, Karl
Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in Germany, and a handful of others – the
leadership of powerful mass workers’ parties capitulated one after
another. They abandoned an internationalist socialist anti-war position,
and backed their respective ruling classes.
No wonder that this great tragedy of human history
has provoked such comment and analysis. Indeed, even a century after the
conflict began, capitalist historians like Niall Ferguson and Max
Hastings continue to debate its causes and offer their own analysis and
conclusions. All capitalist apologists and commentators find great
difficulty in justifying the war. They justify the conflict in 1939-45
as a war against fascism and for democracy. Not so, the mass slaughter
of 1914-18.
The struggle for markets
The trigger for the carnage was the assassination of
the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. Yet could
this really be the cause of such a global conflict? Although centred in
Europe, the war drew in Africa, Asia, Latin America and, of course, the
USA. While the shooting of the archduke may have been the excuse to
unleash the dogs of war, the real underlying causes lay elsewhere. The
war erupted as a massive struggle in defence of economic interests,
markets and political power and prestige.
In the period up to 1914, Britain was the dominant
global power with a vast empire covering 25% of the earth’s surface.
Most of the countries it ruled had been colonised prior to the mid-19th
century. The empire was a source of raw materials and markets. However,
Britain’s economic growth was slowing. It was a declining power. France,
the other major European power at the time, had an empire mainly centred
in Africa and the Far East. Although substantial, its empire was only
about one fifth the size of Britain’s, and its industrialisation lagged
far behind.
Germany, only unified in 1871, had colonies only
about one third the size of those of France. Nonetheless, it had
experienced rapid industrialisation and economic development. Its
economy was more productive than Britain’s. While Britain was producing
six million tons of steel, Germany produced twelve million. However, it
was in desperate need of more colonies to supply it with raw materials
and much larger markets – the logic of capitalist economic development.
The problem was how to secure them. There was nowhere to expand to in
Europe, and Britain and France had the lion’s share of the colonies. To
the east, Germany was blocked by an expanding tsarist Russian empire and
Anglo-French interests in eastern Europe.
This struggle for markets lay at the root of the
great conflagration which was to erupt in 1914. The development of the
productive forces – industry, science and technique – had outgrown the
limitations imposed by the nation state. It drove the imperial powers to
conquer and exploit new colonies in the hunt for raw materials and new
markets. This had already brought Britain, France, Belgium, Portugal and
Germany into conflict in the so-called ‘scramble for Africa’ during the
19th century. Eventually, this competitive struggle brought the main
imperial powers into horrific conflict, as each tried to secure bigger
markets or to defend those threatened by emerging powers. If new markets
cannot be found, capitalism is driven to a destruction of value in order
to begin the productive process anew. The price was to be paid by the
working classes of all countries in this power struggle.
Some argued that this contradiction of capitalism
had been overcome when it seemed, like today, that a major globalisation
of the world economy had taken place. In the four decades following the
Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, there was a period of substantial
economic growth and expansion. The world economy had become more
interdependent. Between 1870-1914, there had been a significant and
until then unprecedented economic globalisation and integration. This
has some comparisons to the situation which has developed in the recent
period, especially since the collapse of the former Stalinist states in
Russia and eastern Europe.
The globalisation of recent decades has gone further
than ever before, but those who argue that there was not an analogous
development before the first world war are wrong. And, like today, in
1914 it did not mean that the nation state or the national interests of
the ruling classes had become obsolete, or a decorative remnant of a
previous historical period of capitalism – as the 1914-18 war
graphically demonstrated. Then, as now, despite a dominant, integrated
global economy, the ruling classes of the different countries still
maintained their own vested historic, economic, political, military and
strategic interests. Recent imperialist interventions and local or
regional military conflicts have also revealed how each ruling class
will act to defend its own specific economic, political and strategic
interests where it can.
Impending disaster
In addition to the underlying cause of the ‘great
war’ – the scramble for colonies and markets – other interconnected
historical factors played an important role in the drive to defend the
interests of the ruling classes of Germany, France, Britain and tsarist
Russia. The Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71 resulted in the establishment
of a unified Germany and opened the road to its rapid economic
development and expansion. France was left weakened. The outcome of this
conflict, along with others, left a legacy which was picked up in 1914.
Karl Marx had commented on this as the Franco-Prussian war unfolded. The
consequences of the changed balance of forces would result, he
anticipated, "in war between Germany and Russia". In the same letter, he
commented that such a conflict would act as "the midwife to the
inevitable social revolution in Russia". (Letter to Friedrich Sorge, 1
September 1870) It may have been a lengthy propinquity but one of the
consequences of the 1870-71 war anticipated by Marx was born out
eventually in 1914.
A weakened France lost part of its territory,
Alsace-Lorraine, and was compelled to pay large war reparations to
Germany. France was in no position to oppose Germany militarily by 1914,
with half the population and far inferior military hardware. The
Tangier’s crisis in 1905 and the Agadir crisis in 1911 both pointed to a
conflict with Germany as it continued to oppose French colonial
expansion.
The outbreak of the Balkan war in 1912 was a crucial
step towards the 1914-18 war. At this juncture it was anticipated that
there was a threat of war across Europe. On 8 December 1912, the German
Kaiser Wilhelm II convened the Imperial War Council in Berlin. Most of
the participants agreed that war was inevitable at some stage, but it
was delayed to allow a strengthening of the German navy. Nothing was
concluded at this council but it was clear that war was being prepared
for. In fact, the end of the 19th century up until 1914 was marked by a
massive arms build-up by all the European powers.
It was also clear for the international workers’
movement. In November 1912, over 500 delegates from the Second
(‘Socialist’) International met in Basel. They agreed a resolution
opposing the Balkan war and the threat of war across Europe in favour of
international working-class struggle. Scandalously, one by one the
social-democratic party leaders capitulated and supported their own
capitalist classes in the conflict.
The collapsing Austro-Hungarian empire was compelled
to act against Serbian attempts to expand in the Balkans as allowing
this to go unchallenged would have weakened it still further. The
outbreak of the 1912 Balkan war was a crucial element in the conflict.
Tsarist Russia lent support to Serbia in order to extend its own
interests in the region. Germany was compelled to encourage Austria.
Thus, when Russia ordered a full military mobilisation in response to
Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia on 28 July 1914, Germany
responded by declaring war on Russia and France (1-3 August 1914). When
Germany invaded Belgium in order to march on France, Britain declared
war on Germany.
The outbreak of war
Economic expansion had dominated the 40 years
leading up to the war. In 1913 strikes and protests had broken out in
all the main countries as workers demanded their share of the growth.
The German workers’ party, the SPD, had made important gains in the
elections of 1912. At the same time, 1913 saw an abrupt change with the
onset of an economic crisis. The ruling classes were worried that a
further intensification of the class struggle would develop. The threat
of war was used in all countries to try and cut across this.
The nationalistic propaganda on each side inevitably
resulted in a huge patriotic wave at the outbreak of the war. All
governments claimed, as is always the case, that the war was a just
cause and would be over quickly. In Germany, the slogan was, ‘home
before the leaves fall’; in Britain, ‘it’ll all be over by Christmas’.
Behind the scenes, the ruling class had a more realistic assessment of
the situation. Sir Edward Grey, British foreign secretary, commented:
"The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit
again in our lifetime".
There were anti-war demonstrations in most
countries. In Germany, hundreds of thousands took part in peace
protests. Many ‘conscientious objectors’ heroically held out in
opposition. However, the overwhelming mood at the outbreak of the war
was one of patriotic fever. The attitude to the conscientious objectors
was markedly different in 1914-18 compared to 1939-45. In the latter,
the conflict was seen in Britain as a ‘war against fascism’ and
objectors were viewed as cowards, not prepared to fight when ‘the enemy
is at the gate’. This was not the case in the first world war.
Recently, the historian Niall Ferguson has argued
that Britain should have stayed out of the war. He said that it would
have been better to allow Germany to dominate Europe. Britain, he
argues, would then have been in a stronger position to defend its
interests because it would not have used vast resources in fighting the
war. Like all of the powers, the war certainly cost British imperialism
dearly. It had financed most of the Entente’s war costs until 1916 – all
of Italy’s, and two-thirds of France and Russia’s. Gold reserves,
overseas investments and private credit ran out. Britain was compelled
to borrow $4 billion from the USA. According to one estimate, Britain
and its empire spent $47 billion financing the war, Germany around $45
billion.
Yet, how could British imperialism have stood aside
from the conflict and allowed its main rival to emerge in a potentially
far more powerful position to expand its empire? A victorious German
imperialism would have been much better placed, economically,
politically and strategically, to challenge British imperialist
interests. Moreover, war has its own momentum and logic, and puts the
prestige of capitalist and imperialist rulers on the line. This would
have been lost by what was the dominant imperial power at the time. At
best, not entering the war in 1914 would have postponed a conflict
between British and German imperialism. The abstract musings of Ferguson
are disconnected from the realities of the interests of the ruling
capitalist classes when confronted with the dynamics of such conflicts.
Other historians, such as Max Hastings, have a more realistic assessment
and conclude that the war was inevitable. That, in itself, is a crushing
condemnation of the capitalist system he supports.
Revolutionary wave
The patriotic wave gave way to massive opposition as
the realities of trench warfare were experienced by millions on both
sides of the conflict. Troops fraternised at Christmas 1914, playing
unofficial football matches. The great Russian revolution of 1917 was
the first decisive break as the slaughter dragged on and on. The coming
to power of the Bolsheviks ended the war on the eastern front and had a
crucial impact in building opposition to the war on both sides.
Following the revolution, mass strikes broke out in Germany in 1918.
This, together with the now seemingly futile
slaughter, had a decisive impact, transforming the outlook of millions,
especially the soldiers and naval ratings. Mutinies broke out in the
French and British armies. In France, troops on the western front were
ordered to begin a disastrous second Battle of the Aisne in northern
France. They were promised a decisive war-ending battle in 48 hours. The
assault failed and the mood of the troops changed overnight. Nearly half
of the French infantry divisions on the western front revolted, inspired
by the Russian revolution. Three thousand four hundred soldiers faced
court martial.
In August 1917, there was a mutiny aboard the German
battleship, Prinzregent Luitpold, stationed in the northern sea port of
Wilhelmshaven. Four hundred sailors went ashore and joined a protest
demanding an end to the war. The British daily newspaper, The
Independent, recently published a moving letter sent by a young German
naval rating, Albin KÖbis, to his parents: "I have been sentenced to
death today, September 11, 1917. Only myself and another comrade; the
others have been let off with 15 years’ imprisonment… I am a sacrifice
of the longing for peace, others are going to follow… I don't like dying
so young, but I will die with a curse on the German militarist state".
On 3 November 1918, the fleet mutinied at Kiel and hoisted the red flag,
triggering a revolutionary wave across Germany.
These events, above all the Russian revolution, were
decisive in finally bringing to an end to the, by now, hated war. Its
ending ushered in a revolutionary wave across Europe which terrified the
ruling classes. With the exception of Russia, however, these massive
movements did not result in the working class taking power and holding
it.
The end of the war ushered in a new world situation
and changed the balance of power between the imperialist powers. The
triumph of the Bolsheviks in Russia introduced an entirely new factor
for the capitalist classes to confront. Germany was obliged, by the
Treaty of Versailles, to pay massive war reparations following its
defeat – £22 billion at the time – which had a devastating impact on its
economy. The final instalment of £59 million was only paid in 2010 – 92
years after the end of the war! The failure of the German revolution and
mistaken policies of the German workers’ parties paved the way for the
triumph of the fascists and Hitler in 1933, leading to the outbreak of
war again in 1939. The consequences of the first world war also
accelerated the decline of British imperialism, opening the way for the
USA in the 1920s and after to become the dominant imperialist power.
The failure of the socialist revolution in Germany
and the rest of Europe also meant that revolutionary Russia was
isolated. Eventually, that would result in the degeneration of the
Russian revolution and the emergence of a bureaucratic Stalinist regime
in the former Soviet Union. Despite the monstrous distortion of
socialism this regime signified, together with the imposition of similar
regimes in eastern Europe following the second world war, it did hold
the key imperialist powers in check. They were glued together – and were
able, largely, to mask their differences – against a common enemy which
represented an alternative social system to capitalism, based on a
nationalised planned economy. This was in spite of the undemocratic,
bureaucratic and authoritarian methods of rule of the Stalinist regimes.
New wars
However, the collapse of these regimes and the
re-establishment of capitalism have reopened the old and new tensions
which exist between the capitalist powers. The globalisation of the
world economy, which has now reached an unprecedented level – even more
so than 1870-1914 – has once again starkly revealed how, under
capitalism, the productive forces have outgrown the existence of the
nation states. Nonetheless, the recent conflicts which have erupted
between the world powers have revealed that the nation state is still
not obsolete, as each ruling class vies to defend its own economic,
political, military and strategic interests. The growing tensions
between the USA and China in Asia, the crisis within the European Union,
the 1990s conflict in the Balkans, and the current clash between Ukraine
and Russia, are all indications of the clash between the various
imperialist and capitalist powers. At root, these are also part of a
struggle to acquire new spheres of influence and markets, as was the
case in the 1914-18 war.
Many of the new generation are asking whether this
means that another world war is a possibility. Although the USA remains
dominant, it is a declining power, as Britain was in the beginning of
the 20th century. Even so, it remains the largest of the world powers,
still far ahead of China and Japan. The other emerging powers of Russia,
India and Brazil remain far behind but strive to extend their influence
in their own areas. The weakened position of US imperialism has been
clearly demonstrated recently by its inability to intervene directly in
Syria or in the Russian/Ukraine conflict. The catastrophic consequences
of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 have made it far more complicated for
such military interventions to be undertaken by US and British
imperialism, or other powers.
As recent events have revealed, the prospect of
regional conflicts and wars is posed in this era of renewed capitalist
crisis and the struggle for limited markets and resources. However, the
balance of social and class forces prevents, in the short to medium
term, the outbreak of a world war such as developed in 1914-18 and again
in 1939-45. The consequences of such a conflict, with the existence of
nuclear weapons which would mean total destruction, together with the
ruling classes’ fear of the social upheavals and revolution which would
arise, act as a decisive check on the rulers of imperialism and
capitalism today.
The stark reality of the horrors of war, and the
misery and human suffering which have flowed from the disasters
unfolding in Syria, Iraq, Russia/Ukraine and other areas, indicate the
bloody and brutal consequences of capitalism in the modern era. If
capitalism and imperialism are not defeated, further, even more
horrific, conflicts will erupt in the future. The lessons of the
slaughter unleashed between 1914-18 need to be drawn by a new generation
of young people and workers. The need for mass independent workers’
parties which struggle for an internationalist socialist alternative to
capitalism, and which combat the patriotic nationalism of the ruling
classes, is as relevant today as it was in 1914 if future bloodbaths are
to be avoided. Only a socialist world, based on the democratic planning
of the economy, can offer an alternative to the struggle for markets and
economic interests which are the inevitable consequences of modern
capitalism, and the source of conflict. |