Date: Sat, 06 Jul 1996 16:01:28 +0100
From: Richard Bos <Richard.Bos-AT-hagcott.meganet.co.uk>
Subject: The Battle of the Somme - 80 years ago


I have been watching some of the coverage of the Battle of the Somme and 
found it very moving.

When I see what the ruling-classes are prepared to do to other human 
beings it makes me want to re-double my efforts to get rid of them.

Sometimes I think that revolutionaries have to be just as ruthless as our 
enemies if we are to win. Other times I think that if we were to behave 
the same as them - how would that make us better?.....just a thought.

Anyway the editorial in this week's New Worker is on that subject and the 
betrayal of the workers by the Second International.
<HR>
                    A Terrible Sacrifice
The battle of the Somme started on 1 July 1916. That day 20,000 British 
and Empire soldiers died and a further 40,000 were wounded. Four months 
later, the offensive against the Germans petered out. Over 1,250,000 men 
were killed or wounded on both sides and the British and Empire 
death-toll alone exceeded 250,000.
 Last Monday the handful of survivors took part in a ceremony in France 
to mark the 80th anniversary of a terrible chapter in the First World 
War. The dead are remembered and the talk is of the futility of war.
 The First World War was an imperialist war. The German Empire and its 
allies wanted to redivide the world in its favour at the expense of 
Britain and France, whose empires spanned the globe. Millions upon 
millions of working people paid for it with their labour and their lives, 
betrayed by social democratic leaders who backed the slaughter.
 The Second International and the socialist parties in Europe had opposed 
war and militarism for many years. In 1910 they all said that if war came 
socialists in parliament would vote against war credits. In 1912 they 
declared that workers of all countries considered it a crime to shoot one 
another for the sake of increasing the profits of the capitalists. That's 
what they said. That's what they proclaimed in their resolutions.
 Lenin saw through them. He constantly warned against the opportunism of 
the Second International and the wavering attitude of its leaders. They 
had already abandoned the revolutionary road in favour of the never-never 
land of the parliamentary road to socialism. He knew that these people 
could talk bravely about opposing war when there was peace, and speedily 
desert to the side of their rulers when war broke out.
 And when it came in 1914, the Labour Party's opposition was overturned 
in days and the German social-democrats, the French, Belgian and Austrian 
socialists and the Russian Mensheviks all made common cause with the 
ruling class in their own countries exactly as Lenin had foreseen.
 There were exceptions. Some, Labour leaders, mainly for pacifist 
reasons, continued to argue for peace. The Irish, and Serbian socialists 
took the principled stand, and the French socialist leader Jean Jaures 
was murdered for trying to mobilise the class against the war.
 Lenin and the Bolsheviks remained true to the principles of proletarian 
internationalism. The five Bolshevik deputies in the Tsar's Duma were 
sent to Siberia for speaking out against the war.
 Lenin, then in Switzerland, called for a new revolutionary struggle in 
war conditions. He was the first socialist leader to call it an 
imperialist war and he denounced the social democratic leaders as 
traitors who deceived working people by concealing from them who was 
really responsible for the war and declaring that their own bourgeoisie 
was not to blame.
 The Bolsheviks campaigned for peace, but not the peace of the pacifists 
whose protests went unheeded. The Bolsheviks called for an active 
revolutionary struggle for peace which could lead to the overthrow of 
those who started the war. They held that the surest way to end the war 
and secure a just peace, a peace without annexations and reparations was 
to overthrow the bourgeoisie in the imperialist countries. The Bolsheviks 
called on working people, including the millions of armed workers and 
peasants, to turn the guns on their own oppressors to end the war and 
achieve peace.
 The ruling classes of Europe had armed the people. They had given the 
masses rifles to kill each other. But these rifles could and should be 
turned in another direction, against the capitalists, land-owners and 
colonialists, against the forces of imperialism. ?he imperialist war 
should be converted into civil war.
 In 1917 the soldiers, workers and peasants of the Russian Empire took 
power into their own hands and ushered in a new era. The torch lit by the 
October Revolution spread across wartime Europe and plunged the 
capitalist world into crisis. French soldiers refused to fight and the 
rising temper of the German working class hastened the end of the war in 
November 1918.
 Over Nine million died and a further 21 million were wounded in what was 
called the Great War until it was superseded by the dreadful global 
conflict which began in 1939.
 Today we pause to remember those who fell in the Somme. But we must 
never forget that it was imperialism which sent them to their slaughter.

                                   Best wishes,
                                    Richard



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