Page:Karl Liebknecht - Militarism (1917).djvu/192

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MILITARISM

as non-political organizations. That is a help which those organs of the capitalist state must render militarism if only for reasons of solidarity and in the interest of the common greater purpose, the protection of the capitalist order of society.

THE ARMY AS A WEAPON AGAINST THE PROLETARIAT IN THE POLITICAL STRUGGLE, OR THE RULE OF THE CANNON.

Just as the political struggle is the highest, most concentrated form of the class-struggle, the direct and indirect political interference in the class-struggle by militarism, that most concentrated manifestation of political power, shows the activities of militarism in their highest, most concentrated form. In this respect militarism operates in the first place as an economic power, as a producer and consumer. The ruthless exclusion of all Social Democrats and workmen suspected of sympathizing with them from the military work-shops, of Spandau, for instance; the practice of handing over the workmen subject to military influence to the absolute control of the reactionary