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From Socialist Appeal, Vol. IV No. 33, 17 August 1940, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghanfor ETOL.
A sympathizer of our party, in a letter which he sent me very recently, takes us to task for our position on conscription. He believes that we should not have raised, at this time, the question of military training under trade-union control and should have confined our agitation purely to a struggle against conscription.
“Most of the young workers”, he writes, “are opposed to conscription, and it is only introducing confusion when you talk to them about the necessity of military training under trade-union control. Leave that until after the conscription bill is passed. It may be right then but for the present stick to an anti-conscription issue.”
By inference our sympathizer indicates that every other group opposing conscription will have nothing to do after the conscription bill is passed. They must fold up and shut up. At best they will be limited to a futile movement to repeal the conscription measure.
Our agitation for military training under tradeunion control, however, will continue. For that slogan is independent of the struggle against a particular capitalist conscription bill. As a matter of fact the thesis of the Fourth International on the Death Agony of Capitalism contains the following demands (among others):
... Before the Burke-Wadsworth bill was thought of, during the debate, before its enactment, and after its enactment, our basic demand was, is and will be: military training for workers under control of workers’ organizations.
Because that training is absolutely essential in the present period of war and militarism. Into the consciousness of every advanced worker must penetrate that primary and fundamental idea: military training for the working masses for the defense of their class interests.
It may be true that most of the young workers are opposed to conscription. I seriously doubt that proposition but I shall grant its correctness for the sake of argument.
That would not in the least modify our attitude. For we are not interested in concealing such a fundamental truth from any worker as the necessity for military training. We are interested in impressing every worker with the idea that a negative attitude to any fundamental question is not sufficient.
The capitalist class wants to take every worker into its military clutches for its purposes – our reply is NO! But every worker must have military training and we must demand that his own workers’ organization furnish him with that training.
And right now is the time to raise the question. We would, be committing the greatest error if we failed to raise it at this very moment when every worker is thinking about and discussing the problem of conscription and military training.
Every demagogue (in which category I include, of course, the Stalinists), every muddle-headed liberal, every well-meaning and not-so-well-meaning pacifist, is shouting against conscription, is trying to catch the support of those workers who are more or less naturally opposed to the idea of giving up their jobs and being drafted into the army.
Our party alone distinguishes itself from all of these shouting against conscription by saying clearly and definitely: Yes, oppose conscription by the capitalist government but fight for military training for the workers under their own control.
In the last analysis the difference between our attitude on conscription and the attitude of every other group is the difference between people who are simply dissatisfied with the existing order and we who see the problem of our epoch clearly and are determined to solve that problem in the only way possible.
It is the same difference that exists between those democrats who raise pitiful cries about the advance of fascism and offer nothing better to fight that advance than mere opposition to the undemocratic methods of the capitalist class and the revolutionary Marxists who see the necessity for the workers to organize and take over power in order to wage a victorious struggle against fascism at home and abroad.
Our party opposes every step taken by the capitalists and their government to limit the democratic rights of the workers in any way. Our party urges the workers to struggle for every immediate demand.
But our party teaches the workers that it is not sufficient to wage a defensive struggle against the capitalists or to try to gain a few advantages here and there. Fascism cannot be destroyed in that way. It can be destroyed only if the workers, in addition to fighting for their immediate demands, take power into their own hands.
Our attitude on conscription and military training reflects that positive and militant attitude which every advanced worker must be taught to accept.
It is the same attitude which Lenin took to the question of disarmament. Instead of giving in to the sentiments of some left-wing workers who favored disarmament, he fiercely attacked that attitude as incompatible with revolutionary Marxism. Instead of disarmament, demand, advised Lenin, the right of the “inhabitants of the country to form voluntary associations for the learning of the military arts, the free selection of instructors, their payment out of government funds, etc.”
Instead of joining the pacifists of every type and description to fight conscription in general, our party says to the workers: fight against capitalist conscription; demand the right to bear arms and to have military training under your own control; demand funds from the government for such military training.
Our party will never regret the position that it is now taking on military training.
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