Sherry Chandler

The war to end wars

Haven’t we won that little altercation yet?

Capitalist nations not only exploit their workers, but ruthlessly invade, plunder, and ravage one another. The profit system is responsible for it all.

— Eugene V. Debbs, quoted in Ernest Freeberg’s Democracy’s Prisoner (Havard, 2008), p. 26

At the beginning of the 20^th Century, the Socialists had a plan for stopping war, which they saw as the ultimate capitalist exploitation of the working class. When war was declared, Socialists would call a general world-wide strike, and without workers or warriors, the war could not go forward.

This grand plan hit a small glitch in the form of World War I. When war was declared, German workers chose national security over solidarity, and they were soon followed by workers in France and England.

Socialists in the United States still had some hope. Woodrow Wilson wanted to be a mediator for peace, and there was a sizable peace contingent in the country. The famous Chicago social worker Jane Addams was associated with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, which had 40,000 members. Henry Ford was an active pacifist, though his efforts were met with ridicule. The American Union Against Militarism “proposed public ownership of armaments factories to remove the profit motive from mass destruction” (Freeberg p. 27). It was this latter group that spawned what became The American Civil Liberties Union.

But the war escalated. Wilson’s efforts to bring peace were rebuffed. The Germans sank the Lusitania and made some overtures to Mexico to form an alliance against the U.S. Wilson decided to begin arming the nation, which at that time had very little in the way of a standing army. He called his policy preparedness.

Not everybody was on board with the policy. Socialists still hoped for a universal disarmament overseen by some version of international governing body, a “United States of the World.” In May, 1915, they sent a delegation to meet with Wilson on this subject:

When the Socialist delegation called on Wilson, they were delighted to hear that he was already working on a “similar plan” to end the war and build a new international order founded on a league of nations. The president offered the same assurances to other pacifist groups. When a committee of liberals and socialists from the American Union Against Militarism visited the White House, Wilson disarmed them by taking them into his “intellectual bosom” and sympathizing with their fears. “I am just as opposed to militarism as any man living,” he told them, but he argued that the arms buildup was a tool that would allow America to lead the postwar world in the creation of an international peacekeeping body. The petitioners warned him that the “reactionary” forces of big business would use America’s new military force to pursue the “aggressive grabbing for the trade of the world.” Wilson professed to share their concerns, but insisted that a strong American army would have just the opposite effect, empowering the country to lead a “world federation” for the “international enforcement of peace.” Guns, bombs, and battleships were the unsavory means to a beautiful end, one long cherished by conservative peace advocates, liberal Christians, and Socialists alike.

“We all liked him,” the socialist editor Max Eastman reported, “and we all sincerely believed that he sincerely believes he is anti-miliarist.” (Freeberg, pp. 32-33)

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