#title Anti-War Manifesto
#author The Anarchist International
#LISTtitle Anti-War Manifesto
#SORTauthors Errico Malatesta, Alexander Schapiro, Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis, Leonard D. Abbott, Luigi Bertoni, L. Bersani, G. Bernard, George Barrett, A. Bernardo, E. Boudot, A. Calzitta, Joseph J. Cohen, Henrry Combes, Nestor Ciele van Diepen, F.W. Dunn, Carlo Frigerio, V. Garcia, Hippolyte Havel, Thomas Keell, Harry Kelly, J. Lemaire, H. Marques, Noel Panavich, E. Recchioni, Gerhard Rijnders, I. Rochtchine, A. Savioli, William Shatoff, Nicolaas Jacob Cornelis Schermerhorn, C. Trombetti, P. Vallina, G. Vignati, Lillian G. Woolf, Saul Yanovsky
#SORTtopics World War I, anti-war, anarchist international, manifesto
#date February 15, 1915
#source Chapter entitled “Malatesta, The Anarchist International, and War,” pages 387–390 of *No Gods, No Masters* edited by Daniel Guérin. Proofread online source [[http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=4678][RevoltLib.com]], retrieved on July 3, 2020.
#lang en
#pubdate 2020-02-05T08:41:18
#notes Note the opposing manifesto, [[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-manifesto-of-the-sixteen][The Manifesto of the Sixteen]]
Europe in flames, tens of millions of men at loggerheads in the most frightful
butchery in recorded history, hundreds of millions of women and children in
tears, the economic, intellectual and moral life of seven great peoples brutally
suspended, with the daily more grave threat of further military complications—such, five months on, is the dismal, harrowing, odious spectacle offered by the
civilized world.
But this spectacle was anticipated, by anarchists at any rate.
For there never
has been and is no doubt—and today’s horrific events reinforce this confidence—that war is permanently incubating within the existing body of society and that
armed conflict, be it specific or general, in the colonies or in Europe, is the
natural consequence and necessary, inescapable destiny of a regime founded
upon the economic inequality of its citizens, relying upon the unbridled clash of
interests, and placing the world of labor under the narrow, painful oversight of a
minority of parasites who hold both political power and economic might. War
was inevitable; from whatever quarter, it simply had to come. Not for nothing
has the last half-century been spent on feverish preparation of the most
formidable armaments and every passing day seen the death budgets swell.
Continual refinement of war materials, every mind and every will kept
constantly geared towards ever-better organization of the military machine—scarcely the way to work for peace.
So it is naive and puerile, once the causes and the occasions of strife have
been multiplied, to try to define the degree of blame attaching to such and such a
government. No distinction is possible between offensive wars and defensive
wars. In the current conflict, the governments in Berlin and Vienna have justified
themselves by producing documents every bit as authentic as those produced by
the governments in Paris, London and Petrograd. It is for whoever on each side
who will produce the most unchallengeable, most telling documentation to prove
their bona fides and portray themselves as the unblemished defender of the right
and of freedom, the champion of civilization.
Civilization? Who stands for that at the moment? Is it the German State with its redoubtable militarism, so
powerful that it has stifled every vestige of rebellion? Or the Russian State,
whose only methods of persuasion are the knout, the gibbet and Siberia? Or the
French State with its Hiribi, its bloody conquests in Tonkin, Madagascar,
Morocco and forcible conscription of black troops; the France whose prisons
have housed, for years past, comrades whose only crime was to have written and
spoken out against war? Or England, as she exploits, divides, starves, and
oppresses the peoples of her huge colonial empire?
No. None of the belligerents has any right to lay claim to civilization, just as
none of them is entitled to claim legitimate self-defense.
The truth is that the root of wars, of the war currently bloodying the plains of
Europe, just like all the ones that went before it, is located exclusively in the
existence of the State, which is the political form of privilege.
The State is born of military might; it has grown through recourse to military
might, and, logically, it is upon military might that it must rely if it is to retain its
omnipotence. Whatever the form it may assume, the State is merely oppression
organized for the benefit of a privileged minority. The present conflict offers a
striking illustration of this: all forms of the state are embroiled in the present
war—absolutism is represented by Russia, absolutism mitigated by
parliamentarism, by Germany, a State ruling over very different peoples, by
Austria, constitutional democracy by England and the democratic republican
system by France.
The misfortune of the peoples, who were nevertheless all deeply committed
to peace, is that they trusted in the State with its scheming diplomats, in
democracy and in the political parties (even the opposition parties, like the
parliamentary socialists) to avert war. That trust was deliberately abused and
continues to be abused when those in government, with the help of their whole
press, persuade their respective peoples that this war is a war of liberation.
We
are determinedly against any war between peoples, and, in the neutral countries,
like Italy, where those in government are seeking once again to push more
peoples into the inferno of war, our comrades have opposed, oppose and always
will oppose war with every ounce of energy they possess.
No matter where they
may find themselves, the anarchists’ role in the
current tragedy is to carry on proclaiming that there is but one war of
liberation: the one waged in every country by the oppressed against the
oppressor, by the exploited against the exploiter. Our task is to summon the
slaves to revolt against their masters.
Anarchist propaganda and anarchist action should set about doggedly
undermining and breaking up the various States, cultivating the spirit of
rebellion and acting as midwife to the discontent in the peoples and in the
armies.
To every soldier from every country convinced that he is fighting for
justice and freedom, we must explain that their heroism and their valor will serve
only to perpetuate hatred, tyranny and misery.
To the factory workers, we must be a reminder that the rifles they now hold
in their hands have been used against them during strikes and legitimate revolts,
and will again be deployed against them later to force them to submit to the
employers’ exploitation.
We have to show the peasants that after the war they will once again have to
bend beneath the yoke and carry on working their masters’ land and feeding the
rich.
All of the outcasts must be shown that they should not lay down their
weapons until such time as they have settled scores with their oppressors and
taken the land and the factory for their own.
We will show mothers, sweethearts and daughters, the victims of
overwhelming misery and deprivation, who bears the real responsibility for their
grief and for the carnage of their fathers, sons and spouses.
We must capitalize upon every stirring of rebellion, every discontent in order
to foment insurrection, to organize the revolution to which we look for the
ending of all of society’s iniquities.
No loss of heart, even in the face of a calamity such as war! It is in such
troubled times, when thousands of men are heroically giving their lives for an
idea, that we must show such men the generosity, grandeur and beauty of the
anarchist ideal: social justice achieved through the free organization of
producers: war and militarism eradicated forever, complete freedom won
through the utter demolition of the State and its agencies of coercion.
Long live Anarchy!
Signed by –
Leonard D. Abbott, Alexander Berkman, L. Bertoni,
L. Bersani, G. Bernard, G. Barrett, A. Bernardo,
E. Boudot, A. Calzitta, Joseph J. Cohen, Henrry Combes,
Nestor Ciele van Diepen, F.W. Dunn, Ch. Frigerio,
Emma Goldman, V. Garcia, Hippolyte Havel, T.H. Keell,
Harry Kelly, J. Lemaire, E. Malatesta, H. Marques,
F. Domela Nieuwenhuis, Noel Panavich, E. Recchioni,
G. Rijnders, I. Rochtchine, A. Savioli, A. Schapiro,
William Shatoff, V.J.C. Schermerhorn, C. Trombetti,
P. Vallina, G. Vignati, Lillian G. Woolf, S. Yanovsky.