CHAPTER VIII.
In spite of military dictatorship and press censorship, in spite of the downfall of the Social-Democracy, in spite of fratricidal war, the class struggle arises from civil peace with elemental force: from the blood and smoke of the battlefields the solidarity of international labor arises. Not in weak attempts to artificially galvanize the old International, not in pledges rendered now here, now there, to stand together after the war is over. No, here, in the war, out of the war arises, with a new might and intensity, the recognition that the proletarians of all lands have one and the same interest. The world war, itself, utterly disproves the falsehoods it has created.
Victory or defeat? It is the slogan of all-powerful militarism in every belligerent nation, and, like an echo, the social-democratic leaders have adopted it. Victory or defeat has become the highest motive of the workers of Germany, of France, of England and of others, just as for the ruling classes of these nations. When the cannons thunder, all proletarian interests subside before the desire for victory of their own, i. e., for defeat of the other countries, And yet, what can victory bring to the proletariat?
According to the official version of the leaders of the Social-Democracy, that was so readily adopted without criticism, victory of the German forces would mean, for Germany, unhampered, boundless industrial growth; defeat, however, industrial ruin. On the whole, this conception coincides with that generally accepted during the war of 1870. But the period of capitalist growth that followed the war of 1870 was not caused by the war, but resulted rather from the political union of the various German states, even though this union took the form of the crippled figure that Bismarck established as the German empire. Here the in-
