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Title: War! Author: Pëtr Kropotkin Date: 1914 Language: en Topics: war Source: Retrieved on March 1st, 2009 from http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/kropotkin/War!/war!.html][dwardmac.pitzer.edu]]. Proofread version retrieved on October 3rd, 2019, from [[http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=442. Notes: Printed by The New Temple Press, Norbury Crescent, S.W
The spectacle presented at this moment by Europe is deplorable enough
but withal particularly instructive. On the one hand, diplomatists and
courtiers hurrying hither and thither with the increased activity which
displays itself whenever the air of our old continent begins to smell of
powder. Alliances are being made and unmade, with much chaffering over
the amount of human cattle that shall form the price of the bargain. "So
many million head on condition of your house supporting ours; so many
acres to feed them, such and such seaports for the export of their
wool." Each plotting to overreach his rivals in the market. That is what
in political jargon is known as diplomacy.[1]
On the other hand, endless development of armed force. Every day we hear
of fresh inventions for the more effectual destruction of our
fellow-men, fresh expenditure, fresh loans, fresh taxation. Clamorous
patriotism, reckless jingoism; the stirring up of international jealousy
have become the most lucrative line in politics and journalism.
Childhood itself has not been spared; schoolboys are swept into the
ranks, to be trained up in hatred of the Prussian, the English or the
Slav; drilled in blind obedience to the government of the moment,
whatever the color of its flag, and when they come to the years of
manhood to be laden like pack-horses with cartridges, provisions and the
rest of it; to have a rifle thrust into their hands and be taught to
charge at the bugle call and slaughter one another right and left like
wild beasts, without asking themselves why or for what purpose. Whether
they have before them starvelings out of Germany or Italy, or their own
brothers roused to revolt by famine -- the bugle sounds, the killing
must commence.
This is the outcome of all the wisdom of our governors and teachers!
This is all they have found to give us an ideal; this at a time when the
wretched of all countries are joining hands across the frontiers.
"You would not have Socialism? Well then you will have War -- war for
thirty, for fifty years." So said Herzen after 1848. And war we have. If
the thunder of the cannon is silent for a moment through out the world,
it is but for a breathing space, it is but to begin afresh more fiercely
somewhere else, while European war -- a general melee of the western
nations-has been threatening for years, though not one knows what the
fight will be about, with what allies, or against which foe, in the name
of what principles, or in whose interest.
In former times when there was war, men knew at least in what cause they
were killing one another.
"Such and such a king has insulted ours-come and slaughter his
subjects." "Such and such an emperor wishes to pilfer provinces from
us-let us keep them, at the cost of our lives, for His Most Christian
Majesty." Men fought in the quarrels of their kings. It was foolish, but
then these kings could only enlist for such purposes a few thousand men.
But why, nowadays, should we have whole peoples flying at each other's
throats.
Kings count for nothing now in questions of war. Victoria did not send
protests about M. Rochefort's rhodomontades; the English are not going
to exact vengeance for her, and yet can you prophecy that in two years'
time France and England will not be at war for supremacy in Egypt?
Similarly in the East. Autocrat and ugly despot as he is, great power as
he thinks himself, the Czar of all the Russias will swallow all the
affronts of Andrassy and Salisbury without stirring a finger, so long as
the stockjobbers of Petersburg and the manufacturers of Moscow -- the
gang who nowadays style themselves "patriots" -- have not given him the
word to set his armies on the move.
In Russia as in England, in Germany as in France, men fight no longer
for the good pleasure of kings; they fight to guarantee the incomes and
augment the possessions of their Financial Highnesses, Messrs.
Rothschild, Schneider and Co., and to fatten the lords of the money
market and the factory. The rivalries of kings have been supplanted by
the rivalries of bourgeois cliques.
No doubt we shall still hear talk of "disturbance of the Balance of
Power." But translate this metaphysical concept into material facts,
examine, for instance, how the "undue political preponderance" of
Germany is manifesting itself at this moment, and you will see that the
pith of the matter is simply an economic "preponderance" on the
international markets. What Germany, France, Russia, England and Austria
are struggling for at this moment, is not military supremacy but
economic supremacy, the right to impose their manufactures, their custom
duties, upon their neighbors; the right to develop the resources of
peoples backward in industry; the privilege of making railways through
countries that have none, and under that pretext to get demand of their
markets, the right, in a word, to filch every now and then from a
neighbor a seaport that would stimulate their trade or a province that
would absorb the surplus of their production.
When we fight nowadays it is to ensure our Factory Kings a bonus of
thirty per cent, to strengthen the "Barons" of finance in their hold on
the money market, and to keep up the rate of interest for shareholders
in mines and railways. If we were only consistent, we should replace the
lion on our standard with a golden calf, their other emblems by money
bags, and the names of our regiments, borrowed formerly from royalty, by
the titles of the Kings of Industry and Finance -- Third Rothschild,"
"Tent Baring," etc. We should at least know whom we were killing for.
The opening of new markets, the forcing of products, good and bad, upon
the foreigner, is the principle underlying all the politics of the
present day throughout our continent, and the real cause of the wars of
the nineteenth century.
In the eighteenth century England was the first nation to introduce the
system of extensive production for export. The proletariat was huddled
into the towns, harnessed to improved machinery, and set to fill the
warehouses with mountains of cotton and woolen goods. But these goods
were not intended for the threadbare artisan that wove them. Receiving
just enough to keep themselves and their families alive, what could
those who were spinning the cotton and the cloth purchase? So the
merchant fleets of England set out to plow the ocean in search of
consumers on the continent of Europe, in Asia, in America, in the
certainty of finding no competitors. Misery -- the blackest misery --
was rife in the manufacturing districts, but the manufacturer and the
merchant grew rich by leaps and bounds, the wealth extracted from the
foreigner accumulated in the hands of a small number, amid the applause
of continental economists and their exhortations to their countrymen to
go and do the like.
But as early as the end of the eighteenth century France was entering on
the same phase of development. There also production was organizing
itself on a large scale with a view to exportation. The Revolution, by
transferring the center of power, by crowding the towns with country
folk, by enriching the middle class, gave a fresh impulse to this
economic evolution. Then the English middle-class took fright, much more
at this evolution than at the proclamation of the Republic and the blood
spilled in Paris, and joining with the aristocracy, declared war to the
death with the French bourgeoisie who were threatening to close the
markets of Europe to English products.
Everyone knows how the war ended. France was beaten, but she had won her
place upon the markets. The two bourgeoisies, the English and the French
even made for a moment a touching alliance; they recognized each other
as sisters.
But before long France begins to go too fast. As one result of this
production for export, she finds herself compelled to find markets by
fair means or foul, without taking account of the progress of industry
which was spreading from West to East, and quickening other nations. The
French middle-class seeks to enlarge the circle of its beneficence. It
submits for eighteen years to be ridden by the third Napoleon, in the
continual hope that that usurper will find means to force Europe into
accord with his economic policy, and only throws him over when it sees
that he cannot serve that purpose.
A new nation, Germany, adopts the same economic system. Here again we
have the country drained of its inhabitants, and the towns crammed with
starvelings, doubling the urban population in a few years. Here again we
have production organized on a large scale. A gigantic industrial
organization, equipped with perfected machinery and backed up by the
free diffusion of technical and scientific instruction, here again piles
up its products, destined, not for the use of the producers but for
exportation, for the enrichment of the masters. Capital accumulates, and
seeks profitable investment in Asia, in Africa, in Turkey, in Russia;
the Bourse at Berlin rises into rivalry with the Bourse at Paris -- it
aims at outrivaling it.
Then rises a cry from the heart of the German bourgeoisie. Unity, under
any flag, no matter which, even were it that of Prussia, so long as the
power so accruing will ensure to that class the means of forcing on
neighboring states its products and its custom tariffs, of grabbing a
good harbor on the Baltic, and, if possible, on the Adriatic; of
breaking the military power of France which has been threatening for
twenty years past to lay down mercantile law, and to dictate commercial
treaties for all Europe.
The war of 1870 was the result. France is no longer mistress of the
markets; it is Germany who is aiming at supremacy there. She, too, in
her thirst for gain, is engaged in the unending endeavor to extend her
area of exploitation, with utter disregard of the industrial crisis, the
financial failures, the uncertainty and misery that are gnawing at the
foundations of her economic edifice. The coasts of Africa, the harvests
of Corsica, the plains of Poland, the arid steppes of Russia, the
"pusztas" of Hungary, the rose-tangled valleys of Bulgaria, the steaming
forests of the neglected heritage of Spain--all are raising the avarice
of the German bourgeoisie. So often as the German merchant traverses
these ill-cultured plains, these towns that have not risen to the
glories of the "grande industrie," these rivers still unfouled by mill
refuse, his heart bleeds within him at the spectacle. His fancy paints
to him how well he could find means to reap rich harvests of gold from
these fallow plains, how he could grind these profitless beings in the
mill of Capital. He registers an oath that he will one day find for
"civilization," that is "exploitation," a new home in the East.
Meanwhile he will do his best to force his commodities and his railways
on Italy, Austria and Russia.
But these, too, are emancipating themselves in their turn from the
economic tutelage of their neighbors. These, too, are creeping by
degrees into the circle of the "industrial" countries; and those infant
bourgeoisies ask no better than the means to enrich themselves in their
turn by exportation. In the last few years Russia and Italy have made
enormous strides in the extension of their industries, and since the
peasant can buy nothing -- reduced as he is to the blackest misery --
here also it is for exportation that the manufacturers are endeavoring
to produce.
Consequently Russia, Italy and Austria also must find markets, and those
of Europe being already occupied, they are forced to fall back on Asia,
or on Africa, with the certainty of some day coming to blows over the
appropriation of the choice morsels.
What alliances can be binding in such a situation as this, created of
necessity by the character impressed upon industry by those who have the
direction of it? The alliance between Germany and Russia is a matter
purely of temporary convenience. Alexander and William may kiss each
other as often as they like -- the bourgeoisie that is growing up in
Russia will cordially detest the German bourgeoisie, which repays it in
the same coin. Everyone remembers the furious outcry raised by the whole
German press when the Russian Government raised its import duties by
one-third. "War with Russia" -- ever the cry of the German middle-class
and the workmen dependent thereon -- "would be even more popular with us
than the war of 1870."
Assuredly -- you would not have Socialism, and you will have war. You
could have wars to last you thirty years or more, if the Revolution were
not on its way to put an end to this preposterous and contemptible
situation. But let us, too, clearly recognize the position. Arbitration,
the "balance of power," reduction of standing armies, disarmament -- all
these are fine ideas, but practical bearing they have none. The
Revolution alone, when it has restored the machinery and raw material of
production and all the wealth of Society to the hands of the producers,
and organized production in a manner that will provide for the needs of
those on whom all production depends, can put an end to these conflicts
for markets.
Each one laboring for all and all for each -- that is the only talisman
that can bring peace to the hearts of the nations that cry for peace
with earnest entreaty but cannot win it, for the hurrying of the
vultures that prey on the wealth of the world.
[1] While it will be understood that the political situation of Europe
has changed since these lines were written, the same arguments are
entirely applicable to the present time.