Marxism draws its-conclusions as to the "interests" of the various classes from class antagonisms and the class struggle revealed by innumerable acts of our every-day life. The little bourgeois blabbers sentimentally about allaying class antagonisms and brings "proofs" that their accentuation would have "harmful consequences."
Imperialism is simply the subjugation of all the propertied classes by financial capital and the partition of the world among the five or six great powers, most of whom are now engaged in the war. That partition of the world by the great powers means that all their propertied classes are interested in the conquest of colonies, in spheres of influence, in the oppression of other nations, in the more or less profitable positions and privileges, which redound from belonging to a great power and to a nation capable of oppressing others.[1]
We can no longer live as we did in the past, in a quiet, cultured, peaceful environment, with Capitalism developing itself smoothly and spreading gradually over new parts of the earth, for we have entered a new era.
Financial capital is removing and will remove completely certain countries from the ranks of the great powers, taking away their colonies and their spheres of influence (as Germany's threat is in her war with England), despoiling the small bourgeois of his "great-power" privileges and his income. This is one of the things the war has taught us. This has been brought about by the accentuation of antinomies whose reality everybody admitted long ago, even Kautsky in his Road to Power.
And at the very time when a war is being waged for the privileges redounding from "great powerdom," Kautsky tells capitalists and petty bourgeois that war is an awful thing, that disarmament is
- ↑ E. Schultze states that in 1915 the total value of all the stocks and bonds in the whole world was 7.32 billion francs, including the loans of governments and cities, mortgages and stocks of commercial and financial enterprises. Of this amount England's share was 130 billion francs. The United States' 115, France's 100, Germany's 75; in other words, these four powers held some 420 billions or over one half of all the paper in existence. We can estimate from these data the advantages and privileges enjoyed by the large powers of the first rank, which are able to dominate, subjugate and exploit the other nations. (Dr. Emil Schultze Das Franzosische Kapital in Russland in Finanz. Archiv Berlin 1915, Vol. 38, page 127), The so-called "defense of the fatherland" when great powers are concerned is simply one defense of the right to plunder other nations. In Russia, as everybody knows, capitalist Imperialism is less powerful, but military-feudal Imperialism is stronger on that account.
