Chapter 4. Unsustainability of bourgeois pacifism.

Thanks to the christianity of heretics and sects, the humanism of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, the ideals of the bourgeois revolution and the principles of revolutionary socialism the general consciousness of the most civilised peoples was already so developed that this fact was more and more openly acknowledged. Its voice was supported by the voice of the increasingly economically thinking brain. Especially the reaction to the consequences of the napoleontic wars gave rise to a relatively important ‘peace movement’ in the 19^th century, that condemned war as unreasonable and immoral in continent after continent. Although at the beginning of the 20^th century every state competed increasingly passionate in national armament, millions already believed -even somewhat bourgeois thinking people- in every modern country that a never seen before big and gruesome war that was predicted by military specialists and revolutionary sociologists alike, had become impossible: mankind had become too clever, its morals were already too much softened. As if the individual brain of countless well-meaning people had even one iota of decision power on the subject! As if the world’s social process was decided by soft sentiment! In spite of so much well-meant and ever spreading ‘pacifism’ in August 1914 the world war started. In spite of the eloquent pleading for a League of Nations and for Peace, for the Kellogg-pact, etc the states increasingly drifted apart since Versailles, and locked themselves in behind heavily armed walls of tarriffs. Never before was the world armed like during the world disarmement conferences! As it was once said: ‘The closer to Rome, the further from God’, so it must now be said: ‘The closer to Geneva, the further from the League of Nations and Peace.’ Wars and rumours of war – like never before.

Neither God nor devil could change anything about this: it’s in the nature of social life itself. Violence and war are elementary factors in the bourgeois, capitalist system. Our society is violent like rain is wet.

There are three main reasons why waldan (i.e. ‘violence’) is essential:

1. the competition between the different, more or less nationally organised groups, is controlled by entrepreneurs, industrialists, financers, politicians, diplomats, military elites, etc and becomes increasingly more intense. Seeking markets, raw materials, cheap labor forces, high profits, etc, every national capital overflows the borders of the fatherland. The capitalist nations boil over demonically, and each flood an ever bigger part of the globe. The world becomes too small for their competition. Because the system demands for every national capital, for every capitalist nation essentially unlimited expansion possibilities, and ever growing and ever faster turnover and sale of goods. Otherwise soon enough there is no longer any profit to be made! And making a profit for the relatively small groups of owners of money, soil and means of production -not for catering to the physical and mental needs of all the people, peoples and races- is the whole ‘raison d’être’ for this society. The profitability of capital becomes unsure everywhere. And so each wants to keep what they have, or conquer whatever it still can.

Meanwhile a blind game of geographical-economic and socio-political factors had spread the earth’s surface randomly. One ‘nation’ had too much of something, while another didn’t have enough of it; this one had a chance once before, the other arrived too late. Even during the world war, I have distinguished between the oversaturated or defensive, and the underfed or aggressive imperialisms. England, France and the Netherlands are of the first type. They are all very ‘pacifist’ minded, that is to say they only want to use violence to maintain the status quo -the existing situation that benefits them without end. As ‘blissful owners’ they are conservative and wish to leave things as they are. Surely they remain prepared for war. Their attitude in generally rather defensive that offensive in nature: they ‘just’ want to keep what they have. But whát they have, they deem justified and normal. ‘Our small Netherlands for expamle is -just look at the map of the world- in fact a great imperialist state. It has a population bigger than Germany -73,000,000 souls- of whom 65,000,000 are part of the oppressed and exploited colored races: a limitless realm of islands with inexhaustible treasures on and in the soil, and populated by ever growing masses of ‘poor heathens’ that need to be raised capitalistchristianly. Therefore it acts -if necessary- like a real world power with submarines and bombs. The Dutch Lion, that seems like a dilapidated lapdog of Great-Britain in the west -even if it jumps timidly in Marianne’s lap¹ from time to time- is in the east a murderous beast: Atjeh! Bali! Lombok! The ‘Seven Provinces’² must enforce its ‘right’ after all! But of course it doesn’t want war with the much more powerful German Eagle or with the British Lion. So in the west it’s ‘peace loving’. Belgium as well with its Congo is ‘pacifist’. But Germany, Italy, Japan -they don’t have enough from an imperialist point of view, they permanently feel unsatisfied, and demand -hungry- a redrawing of the world map. They were late and fell short, and because the others refused to recongnise this, they are more aggressive and war hungry. And while tiny England can almost hold its centre any longer in the immense circle of its World Empire, the United States try to expand economically, leaning on a very broad base, careful, tactful, now defensive and then aggressive, as non-violently as possible –all while they prepare for war in an incomparable way in order to defend their interests militarily. That is the reason for the imperialistic line from the Panama-canal over Goam to the Philippines -especially sensitive for Japan.

The international tensions have led to a new system of coalitions since the world war -in spite of the League of Nations, the Kellogg-pact, disarmament commissions, etc- where several smaller political planets circle around one sun-like big opportunity or another. The big powers constantly try to steal eachother’s smaller powers. After all: competition is everything. Even in Geneva it’s every state for itself! At the Disarmament Conference one of the most decent small states, ‘neutral Switzerland’, tried to exempt those means of defence that it was good at, but demanded international abolition of every other means of defence. The same for the Netherlands. Because everyone wants the others to go first, and no-one wants to be first, and therefore disarmament is impossible. War, at least the threat of war -because in international negotiations anyone is worth as much as they have fingers to make a fist- is part of the capitalist system. Waldan is one of the first rules of the imperialist game.

2. as we saw violence is indispensable for the ruling class to maintain its priviliged position over the exploited masses domestically, to keep the increasingly rebellious workers, petit-bourgeois and farmers under the yoke. The army is first of all aimed against the ‘domestic enemy’, the people’s army or militia army just as well: nowhere was the national armed force more directed against fellow citizens than precisely in Switzerland, that ideal example of ‘pacifists’.

3. evern more violence is required to control the millions of coloreds³: the European colonial powers parasitize on 900,000,000 of Asians and Africans. Those who were prepared in Geneva -in view of the possible war against other states- to abdicate certain murder tools under certain conditions, still maintain them mercilessly inasfar as they need them to ‘maintain order’ in their colonies. The Dutch government can advocate for the ban of aerial bombardments in the war with its peers, but in the East-Indies it can’t do without them for maintaining its ‘right’⁴ over the coloreds.

As if all this wasn’t enough, certain industrial powers whose special interest it is to accentuate the national contradictions and to keep stimulating the international arms race, cooperate ever more intensely across every border and in spite of any war. Their detrimental influence shines through even in the Disarmament Conference. By the way they control large parts of the world’s press and… of the world’s politics. They form the ‘Bloody International of the Arms Industry’⁵, the only International that survived when the christian and socialist internationals crumbled in 1914, and it came out of the world war even stronger than before. There is no difference between ‘christian’ and ‘heathen’ politics either; between the principles of English, French, Dutch, Italian, American or German imperialism and the foundations of Japanese imperialism.⁶

Everywhere the youth and the population receive the same nationalist education –the nuances only linked to secundary traditions and the different political-economic conditions of the countries concerned- in schools and universities, in churches and press, by Party and cinema. Especially when there is international tension, heaven, earth and hell are set to work in order to to fire up the masses into blind sacrifice for the ‘defence of the nation’. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori!: ‘it’s duty and bliss to die for the fatherland!’, even when the fatherland has kept its millions of children small, subordinate and oppressed, and leaves ever less of their political and social rights.

Bourgeois pacifism is thus untenable. Even the peace loving Dutch bourgeoisie can’t survive for a single moment without horizontal and vertical violence. War, capitalism and imperialism go hand in hand like keynote, terts and quint. War, capitalism and imperialism are a trinity. War, capitalism and imperialism permeate eachother like the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And that other Trinity is only welcome if it quietly allows the war, capitalism and imperialism to continue without. The Dutch liberal democrats⁷ may lure their fellow-citizens to the ballots with such a fine slogan -‘national disarmament’-, their representatives hadn’t even been part of government yet before they were forced to delay this disarmament ‘for the time being’, even if they advocated in favour of it ‘in principle’ just like Hitler for example.

So they joined the Colijn⁸-cabinet.

Colijn; his name is small, but the idea is big.

This former colonial and bosom friend of the butcher of Atjeh⁹ -who was advisor for the foreign office of Colonies as well as chairman-commissioner of the Dutch-Indian Land Syndicate, and later on one hand the God-given leader of the Anti-Revolutionary Party as well as director of the Batavian- he knows very well how war, capitalism and imperialism are inseparable. In that sense he was right with his radical advice about the ‘Seven Provinces’: we need absolute reliability of the apparatus of authority and violence from a bourgeois point of view.

Holland’s First Minister is also Minister of colonies -not by accident-, nor is young lord de Graeff -former envoy in Tokyo and former Governor-General- Minister of foreign affairs, nor young lord de Jonge -former director of the Royal Petroleum Society- Governor General of the East-Indies. The politics of the ‘Realm’ is these days determined from the Indies, and not from the Netherlands, especially since things heat up more and more in the Pacific Ocean; Japan lurks at the oil of Borneo and to New-Guinea; and Indonesia risks ending up in the east like Belgium in the west in 1914 in the event of a conflict.

With this in mind the Netherlands remains prepared for ‘national defence’: to defend Indonesia against a possible attacker with the help of one or more big powers. That way it can soon happen, that malnourished Javan ‘desa’-inhabitants¹⁰, unemployed boys from the marshes of Drenthe, destitute farmers from Holland and Friesland, and pregnant women from Brabant and Limburg are summoned to participate -each in their own way- in a war against… the Emperor of Japan, who is even more alien to them than Queen Wilhelmina. And the danger is real that not just bourgeois, but social-democrats as well, will choose national unity over the national conflicts, so tens of thousands will agree to a Godpeace-pact¹¹ with the government and will suspend any action against the war just as the war begins, completely in line with bourgeois pacifism.