Paul Delesalle on anti-militarism
In certain circles the Bourses du Travail have been taken to task over their anti-militarist propaganda in recent years. This is “politicking”, argue some who would love to see the Bourses reduced to an anodyne role and their action achieve no impact.
Such folk are unaware however that in the event of conflict with the employers the army is immediately deployed on their behalf to ‘protect” the factories, or rather, to stand in for the strikers, just as it was in the Paris electricians’ strike when engineers and naval mechanics took the places of the strikers.
Just let workers sue their employers for better pay or a little more freedom and immediately the army steps in and is placed in the service of the employers.
And the inevitable clashes ensue: as in Fourmies, or Chalon or only recently in Villeneuve-Saint-Georges.* Hardly surprising therefore that the exploited should have learnt to despise the army! Not much separates anti-militarism from anti-patriotism, especially as the capitalists – and the workers know this – are never so keen on them as when their interests are threatened.
The workers know that monsieur Motte, the former mayor of Roubaix, also owns factories in Poland: that Krupp and Schneider, the two largest manufacturers of killing machines, have partly joined forces to see to it that they gain access to many iron and coal mines; the recent scandals over the Ouenza mines are a typical example of this. The big steel plants, the comptoirs, have long been international concerns. In Villerupt during the 1907 strike French, German and Luxemburger troops fraternised with one another during their struggle against the striking workers. In the light of such instances it is scarcely to be wondered that the anti-militarist idea has been making the rapid strides of which we are all aware.
Then again, how right can it be that, after the hundreds of thousands of the exploited have endured the factory for ten or twelve hours a day, their Mother Country cannot meet their essential needs when the employer has his mansion just across the street from the factory where they do penal servitude?
German, French and British exploiters have a common interest, and there is no denying it: similarly, German, French and English workers, etc. share common aspirations: on the other hand, what interest can they have in murdering one another when before as well as after the murderous warfare of which they would pay the price, they would still be the exploited?
This is what the workers have now realised. And for these reasons the anti-militarist propaganda launched by the Bourses du Travail is all too justified.
* In Fourmies on 1 May 1891, the French army killed 9 people and wounded 33 more: in Chalon in December 1900 it killed 3: in Draveil-Villeneuve-Saint-Georges in May-July 1908 it killed 9 and wounded lots more.
P. Delesalle, Les Bourses du Travail et la CGT (Paris 1909)
Translated by: Paul Sharkey.