Denver labor bulletin., 1917-12-29

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The Bolsheviki are not pacifists
Lenine and Trotzky have insisted
again and again on this point. They
are merely opposed to all existing or
bourgeois" wars. If revolutionary
Russia had any prospect of overthrow
ing any bourgeois" government by a
| combination of war with an appeal to
| the people to revolt, there is no ques-
tion that the Bolsheviki would favor
such a war-even if directed against
republican France or America. They
do not object to fighting Germany,
they object to fighting with England
America and France. They are pledged
to war against Germany if their peace
offers are refused and the German
people do not revolt Their pledges
are of no value. But this is not be-
cause they do not mean them at the
time they are made, but because they
are being swept along the tide of
events-as l shall show. The pledge
shows their psychology, their motive
and acting principle.
All Actions Are Based on Hate.
They are not for peace at any price
between the nations; they are for war
at any price between the social classes.
They are neither Tolstoyan fanatics
nor primitive Christians. Their ac-
tions are based not on love, but on
hate. The word most commonly on
their lips is "class war" And they
mean this not as a doctrine with many
interpretations, as it has hitherto been
preached by MARKHAM Socialists, from
the most moderate to the most radical,
but literally civil war" accompanied
by wholesale violence and bloodshed.
The Russian revolution was not two
weeks old, when Lenine and the Boil
shevik general staff in Zurich issued
statement calling for civil war. p"
an appeal made again and again thru
not end with the Bolsheviki in power.
Revolution in permanence" is an
equally important and fixed Bolshe
vik principle. The power is not to be
used for governing or for establishing
social peace but for a class war"
The power is not to be used
to establish a condition, not even
Socialist state, but to organize
further revolution against all those
social classes who have any function
of exceptional Importance in the pres
ent society.
Thus they propose to annihilate not
only the large capitalist, but small
capitalists, small shop-keepers, small
and more or less well-to-do peasants
and workers who have submitted to a
bourgeois point of view" This last
class means practically, skilled. For
in this same platform, drawn up by
Lenine, all the non-Bolshevik Social
lists are put in the category of "bour-
geois." Thus the "class war" is to be
waged against the skilled labor and
brain-workers of the cities, who make
up the Social Democrats and the ma
iority of the peasants of the villages
who-as the elections for the Consti-
tutional Assembly have shOwn-are
Social Revolutionists. Both these
parties are thoroly revolutionary, pa
cifist and MARKHAM.
But Lenine Jumps them all together
as bourgeois" and proposes to wage
civil war against them because they
will not join him in declaring war
against all the other classes, not only
in Russia, but also-as far as his
power lies-in England France, and
America. For let us not forget that
the Bolshevih have openly appealed
to the peoples of these countries to
overthrow their governments and pro-
fess to believe that this is about to
happen.
The Bolsheviki, let us not forgot,
have taught their uniformed follow
ers that the American people are rep
resented not by the 400 n-Socialist
members of Congress, but by Meyer
London, elected almost exclusively by
the vote of inhabitants of New York
speaking a German dialect, and many
Of them knowing neither English nor
Russian, tho born in that country.
Not immediate peace, but immedi-
ate worldwide civil war-this is the
foundation of the Bolshevik program
He is for immediate peace only be-
cause it happens to be a means to an
end. Nor is he disturbed by the fact
that the kaiser and every pro-kaiser-
ite on earth today is jubilating even
more over his agitation for world
wide revolutionary class war than
this immediate separate peace be-
tween Germany and Russia. Indeed
the German propaganda and the Boil
shevik propaganda-tho they un-
doubtedly started from the opposite
poles-have now become identical.
Under such conditions a complete fu-
sion of the two propagandas, where it
has not already taken place, is in
evitable.
But outer events are forcing the
Bolsheviki to place their chief hope in
the kaiser's armies, even more rapidly
than their inner logic is forcing them
to cooperate with his "peace" intrigue
for the permanent worldwide en-
thronement of German militarism.
Lenine's Strength and Weakness.
For what are the actual sources of
Lenine's power? He controls ma
jority of the industrial working
classes-tho only minority of the
skilled workers. This gives him
large majority in the arsenals, a slight
majority in the large cities and a still
more tenuous hold on the railways