Falconetti Peña

/ ANTI-MILITARISM! /

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  (Fragment)

   

  The present war - that is to say, the war imposed by fully developed imperialism - shows more than any other war that military strategy is a matter that concerns not only the army, but the whole State, the whole economic life and the whole population, whose character and capacity for action influence to the highest degree, even in times of peace and with all evidence, the organization of the army. Just as the whole economic life is transformed in function of militarism, the State has become a machine perfected down to the smallest details, much more “complete”, powerful and complex than the Spartan machine, so much admired, that next to it, it produces the effect of a Greek javelin compared to a 42 howitzer of the Skoda factories.

  The bureaucracy has risen to the level of a “missilocracy”. From the official, semi-official and private technical direction aimed at inflaming public opinion in favor of war; from the mobilization of the army, of transport and of the information service; from the financial mobilization and regulation of production to meet the needs of the army (arms and ammunition, equipment and clothing, sanitary material, etc. ) to the continuous conditioning of the civilian population (censorship of “public opinion”, declaration of a state of siege, persecution of those who oppose the war, including the families of soldiers), the administration of the State under the protection of the military dictatorship is an extraordinary field of activity. If the parliaments assist the state administration in this action, it means that the parliamentarians of the ruling classes give the state an important support in their own interest.

  The economic life assures the needs of the army. As much as the human material, the economic material necessary for the prosecution of the war is not today, contrary to past times, a fixed magnitude given once and for all, but a social product that renews itself without ceasing and at the same time changing, as much in what concerns the quantity as the kind, according to the needs of the moment. Given the diversity and immensity of the army's current needs, the part of economic life devoted to satisfying them is absolutely impossible to evaluate. The notion of “armaments industry” and even “war industry”, as well as that of “distribution organs” placed at its service are extraordinarily broad. In the same way, the manufacture and distribution of products destined for the civilian population, including those serving to satisfy intellectual needs (panen et circenses) are part of the necessities of modern warfare. It is necessary to sustain the morale of the civilian population as a reserve of the army.

  The support of “morale”, of the “spirit” is part of the absolute necessities of modern warfare. Thus, placed outside the army and charged with supplying it, a large part of the population is part of the human instruments of imperialist militarism.
  Militarism is always on guard as to the morale of the population as a whole, of its circles of interest and of its ideological groups; it is always on the lookout for any symptom relating to morale which manifests itself in complaints and protests of all kinds.

  The state of mind of the soldiers and of the civilian population, in times of war, constitutes a singular phenomenon. Especially at the front, in a state of permanent danger, with intense nervous tension, this state of mind is anxious, monomaniacal, primitive; impulses dominate, reason becomes mute; the general vision is lost, even as regards the daily events of the conflict itself; all thought that can go beyond self-defense disappears completely, even the concern for help; the comrades. To blunt, to stun, to prevent the soldier from being master of himself, from thinking clearly is an excellent method of moral damming and mechanization to achieve complete docility. But this method also has its limits. In the case of prolonged war, even the prospect of triumph disappears and the impulsiveness of the soldier's moral life is easily transformed into a growing danger.

  Militarism is thus placed, in the struggle against internal danger in times of war, before more serious difficulties than in times of peace.
  To do nothing that could strengthen this spirit in the army and in the civilian population is the first obligation of the class struggle against war before and after it breaks out.
  Before the horrors of modern warfare pale the dangers of the most furious military dictatorship. The postulate of the soldier-king, according to which the soldier must be more afraid of his superiors than of the enemy, cannot, given the infernal cruelty of modern war methods, be maintained: the root of forced military discipline rots.
  The mass of the people must struggle to impose for themselves their goal of ending the war instead of sacrificing themselves for those of the enemy, who are still the masters; they must reject the spirit of servile sacrifice.       

                                                                                                                                                                               Ingraving by Käthe Kollwitz