Page:Karl Liebknecht - Militarism (1917).djvu/39

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NATURE AND SIGNIFICANCE
7

ness, including a readiness for revolutionary action and sacrifice in the interest of the class, among its members, and a struggle for obtaining those means of power which are important for creating or suppressing class-consciousness, as well as those bodily and intellectual means of power the possession of which signifies a multiplication of physical force.

All this makes it clear what an important role the development of armament plays in social struggles. It decides whether it is not, or no longer, an economic necessity that a minority should continue, at least for a time, to rule over a majority against the will of the latter by military action, that "most concentrated political action." Apart from class-division the evolution of the forms of domination is actually everywhere closely bound up with the development of armament. As long as virtually everybody, even those in the most disadvantageous economic position, can procure arms of essentially equal value under practically the same difficulties, democracy, the reign of the majority principle, will as a rule be the