50 Years Ago: The Illusions of Anti-Militarists

When the masses are converted to socialist ideas and organised, and in control of the political machine, the armed forces will be under their control. While socialists welcome the acceptance of Socialism by any and every member of the working class, we do not delude ourselves with the notion that any rapid and widespread conversion of the army and navy is possible. Soldiers may tire of prolonged war or be driven to stop fighting by lack of food, but that is not a conversion to the revolutionary policy of Socialism.

Anti-militarism does not denote an acceptance of Socialism. Pacifists and Liberals, Anarchists and Quakers, may all be anti-militarists, opposed to all wars, sighing for perfect peace, yearning for brotherly love, but they are dreamers and ignore the nature of the system under which we live. Armed forces are required by ruling classes to keep the subject classes in slavery and wars are inseparable from a system of private property.

Socialists, therefore, go to the roots of the matter. The system depends upon the ignorance of the masses of workers and therefore until the workers obtain real knowledge of the causes of their conditions and organise in agreement with that knowledge — there is no possibility of abolishing the effects of the system.

(From an article “The Illusions of Anti-Militarism”, by Adolph Kohn, in the Socialist Standard, September 1925)