DIE NEUE ZEIT, 1911 (ON WAR N.B.) AND 1912 (INTER ALIA, ON A UNITED STATES OF EUROPE) (original) (raw)

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

NOTEBOOK “ι”

(“IOTA”)

DIE NEUE ZEIT, 1911 (ON WAR N.B.) AND 1912

(INTER ALIA, ON A UNITED STATES OF EUROPE)

Die Neue Zeit, 30th year (1912)

[N.B. Also an article on the history of private fortunes in America.]

30th year, 1 (October 1911-1912)

articles by Varga (p. 660), Hilferding (p. 773) and Kautsky (p. 837 et seq.) on gold, commodities, money.

Otto Bauer on the same subject in 2nd volume, 30th year.
N.B. also, p. 1, “Bandit Politics” (October 6, 1911)—an article by Kautsky on the war in Tripoli, ending withthe words: “It (our electoral struggle) can overnight turninto a struggle for power” (p. 5).
!!

30th year, 2 (1912)

an article by Pannekoek (“Mass Action and Revolution”) (p. 541 et seq.) and one by Kautsky, “New Tactics” (August 2, 1912 et seq.) with vile passages about ministries, etc. (a vile opportunist article). [N.B. prior to Basle.] Radek, “Concerning Our Struggle Against Imperialism” (p. 233).

[Also a polemic between Lensch and Kautsky on disarmament. N.B.

[Also articles by Eckstein against Pannekoek

[Pannekoek’s article: “The Nature of Our Present-Day Demands”, p. 810.

Deals specially with the “feasibility” of the demands.

“Why, in fact, does the programme contain demandsfor political democracy, a militia, democratisation of thejudicial system, etc., all of them unrealisable undercapitalism, but no demands for the right to work ora ban on the introduction of labour-saving machinery,likewise unrealisable under capitalism?” Two kinds ofimpossibility: “economically impossible” and “politicallyprecluded” (811). The present-day demands are “notin an absolute sense” unrealisable under capitalism (812).

Die Neue Zeit, 1911, 2 (29th year).

pp. 248 and 276. Minor “polemic” between Karl Kautsky and Leipziger Volkszeitung (Rosa Luxemburg) over a United States of Europe—remarks which do not touch on the essence of the matter, but are indicative of the polemic that is being conducted in Leipziger Volkszeitung.

Leipziger Volkszeitung attacked also Ledebour for his statement:

“We put ... to capitalist society ... the demand ... that they [the statesmen] prepare to unite Europe in a United States of Europe in the interests of Europe’s capitalist development, in order that later on Europe shall not be completely ruined in world competition” (p. 276).

This, it says, is the same argument Calwer used in urging a customs union against America.

Kautsky retorts: no, it is not the same. In Ledebour’s statement there is not a word about a customs struggle, only about a United States of Europe, “an idea which ... is not necessarily spearheaded against the U.S.A.” (277). ((Consequently, an idea of peaceful competition!))

Karl Kautsky, p. 248, says that both Parvus and Johann Philipp Becker are (or were) in favour of a United States of Europe.

Ibidem, pp. 943-44 (September 29, 1911), report of an article by H. Quelch (in The Social-Democrat, 1911, August), who says that the capitalists, too, favour peace (capital, he says, is already international): capital can already create a “United States of the _World_” (N.B.: sic! “of the world”), but this world-wide trust would oppress the workers still more. “Capitalist world peace... the all-powerful international police, nowhere any right of political asylum... peace and tranquillity would prevail in this slave state”... (p. 944).

From the war Quelch (contrary to Karl Kautsky) expects not revolution, but economic prosperity, deliverance from the “pressure of production”.

Die Neue Zeit, 1911, 2 (29th year, 2nd volume), No. 30, April 28, 1911 (pp. 97-107).

Karl Kautsky, “_War and Peace_”.

Karl Kautsky pronounces in favour of peace propaganda and for United States of Europe (§ 3 of the article is in fact headed: “A United States of Europe”).

Karl Kautsky is against the proposal to decide beforehand to reply to war by a strike (here there is a passage he quoted in 1915, that the people (“the population”), the “crowd”, would itself kill opponents of the war if it considered the frontiers in danger, if it feared _invasion_—p. 104, etc., etc.).

But, in quoting such passages from this 1911 article, Kautsky in 1915 did not quote the following passages:

  1. In § 1: “Dynastic War and People’s War.” N.B. ((My emphasis.))

...“In the eighteenth century the princes regarded the states merely as their domains....

...“In the same way the capitalists of the variousnations of Europe (and of the U.S.A.) now regard thevarious nationalities outside European civilisation astheir domains, and the antagonisms between the variouscapitalist governments arise merely from the endeav-our to enlarge or round off these domains—thecolonies and ‘spheres of influence’. _Just like_the dynastic antagonisms of the eighteenth century.And today the welfare of the peoples of Europeis no more related to this than two centuries ago”...(p. 99).
2) “The conviction is growing that a European war is bound, by natural necessity, to endin social revolution. This is a strong, perhapsthe strongest, motive for the ruling classes to preservepeace and demand disarmament” (p. 100).3) “War is followed by revolution with inevitablecertainty, not as the product of a Social-Democraticplan, but due to the iron logic of things. Thestatesmen themselves now reckon with the possibilityof this outcome” (p. 106).

...“Whether the revolution arises from the competition in armaments or from war—it will in any case be an _international phenomenon_” (p. 106)....

...“Even if the revolution does not arise from reaction against the burden of armaments or against the horrors of war, but from other causes, and if at the outset it is not international, but restricted to a single state, it cannot remain so for long under present conditions. It [the revolution] is bound to spread to other states”... (107). And from this Karl Kautsky deduces the United States of Europe “and its eventual expansion into the United States of the civilised world”.

p. 105: Karl Kautsky defines the United States ofEurope as an alliance “with a _common tradepolicy_” (++ a single parliament, etc., a singlearmy).In § 1 of the article (p. 97), Karl Kautsky describes“the change in the world situation” (“during the lasttwo decades”).... “Industrial capital has become financecapital, it has united with the landowner-monopolists”....“Social reform has come to a complete standstill”.... [S]
[Reverse S]

“Nevertheless [despite all the difficulties of realising the United States of Europe] the effort to peacefully unite the European states in a federative community is by no means hopeless. Its prospects are bound up with those of the _revolution_” (K. Kautsky’s italics, p. 106).

Die Neue Zeit, 1911, 2, p. 96: an account of _Otto Bauer_’s article in the symposium Der Kampf (1911, No. 3): “World war is its [capitalism’s] last word.... If the Turkish revolution leads to a European war, the inevitable result will be a European revolution.”

Die Neue Zeit, 1911, 2, p. 179.

An article by Rothstein on the congress in Coventry (1911), where the British Socialist Party adopted a resolution in favour of “the maintenance of an adequate fleet for national defence”.

...“Thereby the Party Congress not only retreatedfrom international Social-Democracy, but actuallyjoined the worst jingoists” (p. 182)....

against Hyndman’s propaganda

“However aggressive Germany may be, her aggres-sion concerns matters of as little importance for theBritish people as the gold-mines in the Transvaal....But if, on the other hand, the actions of the Britishruling classes, as expressed in the policy of en-circlement (etc.) directed against Germany, are ap-proved or permitted, then there really can come a timewhen even the proletariat will find itself compelledto take up arms and, by defending the country,do the job of the capitalist class”... (p. 183).
N.B.

Die Neue Zeit, 1911, 1, article by Askew on British colonial policy in Egypt.

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