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115 pages

English

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This year we will see a cascade of patriotic froth surrounding the anniversary of the First World War, which is to be reinvented as a time when the whole nation united against an external threat and through immense sacrifice and heroism triumphed. WWI was, however, a clash of empires. Both the British and the German ruling classes were prepared for any number of dead and maimed to advance their imperial interests. As Dave Sherry shows in this accessible history, working class people suffered during WWI, but also began to fight back in the Russian and German revolutions.

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Histoire

World War I

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Publié par	Bookmarks
Date de parution	10 juillet 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781909026643
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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EMPIRE AND REVOLUTION
A socialist history of the First World War
Dave Sherry
About the author
Dave Sherry lives in Glasgow and is a retired public sector housing worker and trade union activist. He is the author of Occupy! A Short History of Workers Occupations (Bookmarks 2010) and John Maclean: Red Clydesider (Bookmarks 2014). He is a member of the Socialist Workers Party.
EMPIRE AND REVOLUTION
A socialist history of the First World War
Dave Sherry
Empire and Revolution:
A socialist history of the First World War Dave Sherry
Published 2014 by Bookmarks Publications
c/o 1 Bloomsbury Street, London WC 1 B 3 QE
Bookmarks Publications
Designed and typeset by Peter Robinson
Printed by Melita Press
Cover picture: British West Indies
Regiment troops in France, 1916.
Imperial War Museum.
ISBN print edition: 978 1 909026 629
ISBN kindle: 978 1 909026 636
ISBN e-pub: 978 1 909026 643
ISBN PDF : 978 1 909026 650
Contents
Introduction: The present is history
1 Why the world went to war
2 When empires collide
3 Struggle derailed?
4 The collapse of official socialism
5 Propaganda and class consciousness
6 Total war: keeping the home fires burning
7 A long and murderous war of attrition
8 A global war
9 Britain: the first sparks of resistance
10 From war to revolution
11 The Russian Revolution
12 The German Revolution and the end of the war
13 Revolution in Europe and beyond
14 The war after the war
Notes
Further reading
Index
Introduction: The present is history
In Britain there is an attempt by government ministers, commentators and historians to reinvent the First World War as a time when the whole nation rallied against an external enemy and triumphed; a time when we were all in it together fighting for democracy and freedom . This is a travesty of history.
The First World War was the greatest barbarism the world had ever seen. It was a clash of empires in which each of the rival ruling classes was prepared for any number of dead to advance their imperial interests. It provoked mutinies, mass resistance and a wave of revolutionary struggle, which brought it to an abrupt end in November 1918, toppling monarchies and dissolving empires in the process.
Throughout 1919 Britain came closer to socialist revolution than at any time before or since. Its empire plunged into crisis as British military authority crumbled in the face of rebellion in Ireland, Egypt, Iraq, India, China and the West Indies.
In August 2014 the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War coincides with the hosting of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and the final countdown to the Scottish independence referendum in September. Prime Minister David Cameron has made it clear he will use all of these events to promote militarism and a reactionary British nationalism-partly to pander to anti-immigrant sentiment but also to keep Scotland in the union.
Glasgow s merchants-like their counterparts in Britain s other western seaports, Liverpool and Bristol-made vast fortunes from slavery and empire. Their ill-gotten gains laid the basis for Glasgow s emergence as the Second City of Empire and a key munitions hub for the British state and its war profiteers; together they bear responsibility for the slaughter that began in 1914.
Against the present attempt to whitewash militarism and empire stands the tradition of working class resistance. The explosion of working class revolt during the First World War brought to prominence Britain s two finest Marxists, James Connolly and John Maclean.
They led the opposition to the war because they understood it was about repartitioning the world between the great powers and that it would lead to further imperialist conflict. Like Lenin in Russia they anticipated the importance of national liberation struggles in the colonies and how they could weaken the British Empire and imperialism in general.
Connolly was executed by a British firing squad for his part in leading the Dublin Easter Rising in 1916. Maclean was imprisoned on five separate occasions by the British state; twice condemned to lengthy terms of penal servitude for sedition, twice he was released through mass protest. Maclean was only 44 when he died in 1923-his death hastened by the hunger strikes, forced feeding and harsh treatment he endured in prison. Ten thousand Glaswegians lined the streets for his funeral.
A warning of what lies ahead
The First World War should be viewed not as a historical curiosity or a matter for academic dispute, but as a powerful reminder of how war and empire are rooted in capitalist competition and a warning of what may lie ahead in the new imperialism of the 21st century.
A BBC TV debate on the Great War between two Tory historians, Niall Ferguson and Max Hastings, ignored this. Despite being given a generous primetime TV slot, neither of them connected the First World War with the world of today. Their was it a necessary or unnecessary war argument begged the question, necessary for whom? The 20 million human beings it killed and the millions wounded and maimed? That the First World War might have political consequences today seems to have escaped the BBC programme planners. This is astonishing, given that the war decisively shaped the 20th century and weighs heavily on the present. The 21st century began with geopolitical rivalries and tensions between the present-day superpowers, which have set proxy wars in motion reminiscent of those in the build-up to 1914.
The First World War followed a series of regional wars-the Boer War of 1899-1902, the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 and the Balkan Wars of 1912-13. Yet Karl Kautsky, the leading thinker in pre-war European social democracy, had argued that as capitalism developed it would become more benign, reducing the tendency to war.
That myth is still around today, expressed in the claim that globalisation and the end of the Cold War would bring a peace dividend . Yet we have witnessed the opposite. Every day on the TV news we see war or the threat of war, as the dominant powers jostle with each other for influence by supporting different sides in regional conflicts.
The 20th century ended with a re-run of the Balkan conflict that preceded 1914, with France, Germany and the US backing different sides in the break-up of former Yugoslavia. In 1999 Nato bombers pounded the towns and cities of Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo, flouting the United Nations and exacerbating tension with China and Russia, who opposed the bombings.
The Project for the New American Century-the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq at the start of this century and the threat to attack Iran-was about American capitalism stamping its authority on the world. Despite Bush s shock and awe , the neo-cons failed in their aims and the US state has been looking for ways to reverse the setbacks it suffered when it occupied those countries and set fire to the Middle East.
That is why the US encouraged Israel to attack Lebanon in 2006, Ethiopia to attack Somalia in 2007 and Georgia to attack Russia s borders in 2008-an act which not only sharpened the tensions between Nato and Russia, but also widened the divisions among Nato member states.
Similar predatory manoeuvring has been taking place in Central Africa, where Chinese influence is growing; around the civil war in Syria; and across the wider Middle East. As I write, the same imperialist brinkmanship is being played out in the Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula.
As with the Balkans, rival imperial powers have fought to control the Ukraine for centuries. Take Lviv, the main city in western Ukraine. In 1914 it was Lemberg, capital of the Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia. Between 1919 and 1939 it was Lwow, second city of Poland. It then became Lvov in the Soviet Republic of the Ukraine after the Second World War.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine s rulers have been trying to balance between Russia, Europe and the US. What began as a battle between two gangs of corrupt and thuggish oligarchs-one aligned with Putin s Russia, the other with the US and the EU-has now been overtaken by international rivalry with the big imperial powers seeking to extend their spheres of influence.
This is exactly what happened in the build up to 1914. The continuing role of imperialism makes it crucial that we have a clear understanding of the First World War.
1
Why the world went to war
My father was a soldier in the Great War, fighting in the trenches of France because of a shot fired in a city he d never heard of called Sarajevo. And when he died at the age of 93, I inherited his campaign medals. One of them depicts a winged Victory and on the obverse side is depicted the words: The Great War for Civilisation .
I used to argue-hopelessly I m sure-that every reporter should carry a history book in his back pocket. In 1992 I was in Sarajevo and once, as Serbian shells whizzed over my head, I stood upon the very paving stone upon which Gavrilo Princip stood as he fired the fatal shot that sent my father to the trenches in the First World War. And of course the shots were still being fired in Sarajevo in 1992, the year in which my father died. It was as if history was a gigantic echo chamber.
-Robert Fisk 1
August 2014 is the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War-the greatest organised slaughter the world had yet seen. No previous war had been so brutal or so vast in scale. Latest estimates are that 10 million were killed and another 20 million wounded in the fighting, while at least 10 million civilians died as a consequence of the war. 2
Long before 1914, Europe s ruling classes knew the continent was heading to war-and so did the leaders of the European socialist movement. Yet very few individuals really grasped what it would be like, how long it would last or where it would lead.
One of those who did was Karl Marx s great friend and collaborator, Friedrich Engels. In