Against the War While the War Lasts, by Amadeo Bordiga
From L’Avanguardia, originally published on August 25, 1912, as Contro la guerra mentre la guerra dura.
Against the War While the War Lasts
There are comrades whose opinion on the war may be summarized in these words: the war should not be done, but, now that we are committed, how can one be opposed? Whoever says this evidently finds it desirable, and in the interest of the proletariat, for the war to end well and to be crowned with success and with glory for the arms of Italy. I believe that this is an undeniable concession to nationalism, and arises from a false conception of “the interest of the proletariat”, which many hold and which has led so many comrades to a most aberrant degeneration of socialism.
When socialism affirms the solidarity of exploited workers, transforming the interests of each into the collective interest of the class, it also comes to counterpose the collective good against the good of some individuals, igniting those feelings of abnegation and of sacrifice in the half of the proletariat most conscious of the future of the class. Indeed, in the same way, the most pressing interest of the workers becomes precisely the future good of the entire proletariat, and the socialist masses become capable of collective renunciation of small victories today, in view of the great victory tomorrow. It therefore logically results that socialism should oppose all those movements that might stave off the emancipation of the proletariat by extinguishing in it class consciousness, even when such movements represent in any form an improvement of the current condition.
The present war opposes and impedes the great revolutionary victory of the working classes, snuffing out in them the consciousness of socialism, in two essential ways.
In the first place, the war declares the principle of violence and of collective belligerence as a primary fount of progress and of civilization, idealizing brutal force, attempting to destroy our vision of a society based upon harmony and human brotherhood, and opposing the logical evolution of the relations of socialism, in the sense of the abolition of the right of strongest (here remember that we, unlike the idle bourgeois pacifists, do not deny that in certain historical circumstances violence can be an unavoidable factor in evolution).
In the second place the war has another effect: deluding the masses that their welfare arises from the welfare of the nation, from its strength or dignity, and that for this object they must renounce all social dissent, creating in them an artificial patriotic idealism, ensuring for the bourgeoisie their class domination by inducing in the workers the renunciation of struggle against the exploitation that insatiably bleeds them at home, and sending them away to murder foreigners.
We reduce the problem therefore to its schematic endpoint: war and national exaltation, glorification of collective criminality, drowsiness of class struggle, departure from the demand of workers’ rights and of the transformation of society.
It follows logically: if the war is victorious and triumphant for the nation, then, from that, the proletariat will suffer — not directly, but through an indefinite abandonment of its revolution. This is why we, opposed to the war in principle, thus resist it in practice, shattering the unity of the nation, free of concern for impairment of national government.
All of the other anti-Tripoline arguments are incidental. When we say that the war is tough and grueling, or that the diplomatic situation is obscure, or that the consequence of all this will be the destruction and undoing of the politics and economy of Italy, we must not go so far as to imply to the listener that if Turkey were an Eden we would be less opposed. Woe if this were true, for the future of proletariat in Italy!
The objections made, that the time is inopportune for war, have their value only in demonstrating this: in some cases the bourgeoisie has motive to bring considerable destruction to the nation — rushing into a frivolous war — provided that it draws as compensation a revival of patriotism and the subsequent attenuation of class struggle. This serves to demonstrate the bad faith of the early proponents of the war, and gives another angle for criticism of the idea of nationalism that we can summarize as follows:
The interests of the nation are not those of the working class. They are not even those of the bourgeoisie, which does not hesitate to incur destruction of the homeland, provided it can wave its banners before the eyes of proletariat. Therefore no shared interest lies between the dominant and the dominated, the concepts of nation and of all patriotic ideals are pure sophistry, and the actuality of history lies in the social struggle of the classes.
The proletariat fights loyally in all the world, in the light of the sun, against the exploitation of capital. But the bourgeoisie that tries to tame it in the name of the nation acts as one who approaches the enemy smiling, while hurling the blade and treacherously planting the dagger in its heart.