Conscription and the State, by Holley R. Cantine, Jr.

reprinted in Retort Special Anthology Issue, 1942-1951. Retort was originally published by the Retort Press, Bearsville, New York; Holley R. Cantine, Jr., Editor.

The campaign against post-war conscription is being prosecuted in the left-wing press with more enthusiasm than any issue has aroused since the Free India campaign of a few years back. Hardly a radical or pacifist publication has failed to take a stand on the question, and many of them are devoting considerable space to it. The issue is certainly a very important one, which well deserves the attention of all men of good will, but it might be relevant to inquire why, if conscription is as bad as its various opponents are demonstrating it is, with a very convincing display of evidence, they are not demanding its IMMEDIATE ABOLITION, instead of confining their opposition to conscription after the war is over.

While most of the arguments being used against conscription are reasonable and appropriate, there is a regrettable tendency for some leftists, carried away by their zeal for the campaign, to lose sight of the fact that the fight against conscription is only one aspect of the struggle for a better world, and to minimize equally serious threats to freedom, in order to make their case against conscription more acceptable to conservative public opinion. In some instances this has gone so far as to involve the use of arguments that are fundamentally out of harmony with the basic beliefs of their advocates. Certain pacifists, for example, have actually put themselves on record as opposing conscription because it is not an efficient way of raising an army. Such information, coming from such a source, is not likely to be taken seriously by anyone, and what is more important, it casts doubt on the seriousness of the pacifist convictions of those who gave it out.

Donald Calhoun's article in Vol. 2, No. 4 of Retort seems to me a good example of shortsightedness in the cause of anti-conscription. I think that he has made out an excellent case for the thesis that conscription is fundamentally antagonistic to civil liberties and the rights of labor, but I believe he has badly confused the issue and greatly weakened his position by his insistence on distinguishing between conscription and other forms of state coercion in an academic and on the whole meaningless manner. Either to placate public opinion, or because he thinks of the state as a possible agency of social reconstruction and does not want it to be deprived of powers which may someday be utilized for 'good' purposes, he finds it necessary to draw a sharp moral distinction where at most there is only a difference of degree. Conscription, according to Calhoun, coerces the personality while other forms of government coercion do not. This formulation strikes me as naive and superficial, inasmuch as any form of state coercion can be and frequently is utilized for the purpose of coercing the personality. By creating the impression that this is not the case, Calhoun, in effect, is giving a kind of backhanded moral sanction to vagrancy laws, poll taxes, etc. Conscription, it is true, is an extreme example of state coercion, but it is not fundamentally different from other forms. The assumption that "individuals may properly be considered means to political ends," which Calhoun regards as peculiarly tied up with conscription, is actually the characteristic basis of all governmental thinking.

"All restrictions on property," says Calhoun, "... fall outside the question involved in the conscription issue.... The state may levy taxes as it sees fit..." In other words, the power to tax cannot be employed to coerce the personality. This is ridiculous. Suppose, for example, the government, instead of passing a conscription law, were to require that all men reaching military age pay a huge cash indemnity unless they 'voluntarily' enlisted in the army. This may seem to be an arbitrary example, but as a matter of fact it is almost precisely the technique that is employed by British Imperialism in Africa and other colonial regions to persuade the natives to abandon their sinful heathen idleness and go to work in the mines and plantations of the master race. First, the power of taxation is established over a nominally independent tribe (by a complicated process, combining cajolery, threats and the liberal use of Quislings, which need not concern us here). Then a head tax is levied, and by degrees increased, until it is impossible for a man to continue to live according to his tribal ways, but must volunteer for outside labor in order to raise tax money. If this is not "requiring the individual to alter the vocational life enterprise which he has chosen... and embark on one the state may choose for him," I would like to know what it is.

"The state may legitimately decree a certain, relatively small, number of acts forbidden and prohibit people under penalty of law from doing these things." This also provides plenty of loopholes for the coercion of personality, the best known of which is the vagrancy law, whereby the state penalizes individuals for the "offense" of having no means of support. Penal laws of this character have been frequently employed to provide forced labor for building roads, etc., and could easily be used to raise an army without the need of a conscription law.

"The state ... may lay down conditions of employment," says Calhoun, and later he speaks of the "need for establishing incentives for socially desirable behavior, while leaving the choices themselves free from direct coercion," going on to mention a number of "non-coercive" techniques a collectivist state might employ to induce individuals to enter unpopular vocations. This approach, reflecting as it does the typical radical intellectual's mistrust of the worker, whom he feels it necessary to manipulate, like a donkey with a carrot, is certainly not very far removed from the attitude that "individuals may properly be considered means to political ends," and an unscrupulous government would have no difficulty in using such techniques to raise an army or to coerce individuals to do anything else it desired without having to resort to actual conscription. Simply making the conditions of employment in every field but the army very difficult for those individuals it wanted to 'volunteer' would be quite coercive enough for all practical purposes. The number of men who would accept starvation wages rather than go into the army is probably no greater than those who would refuse to accept conscription.

The 'moral capital' of freedom in this country has long ago been exhausted. The phrase about "inalienable rights" which Calhoun quotes from the Declaration of Independence has never been respected by the government, which has invariably acted in its own interests, and disregarded the welfare and wishes of the people whenever it was able to get away with it. Left-wing thinkers who persist in creating the impression that the government can be made to respond to moral appeals, thereby helping to perpetuate the myth of responsible government, are doing the cause of radicalism more harm than good. Moreover, narrowing the fight against state coercion to the single issue of conscription, and attempting to arouse public opinion on that issue alone is merely inviting the government to resort to subterfuge to achieve its ends. Let us not forget that public opinion in America was aroused against getting into war before Pearl Harbor, that the government, by means of a series of indirect maneuvers, designed, so we were told, to keep us out, succeeded in jockeying the country into such a position that it was nonetheless drawn in.

The fight against conscription can only be really effective if it is conducted as a fight against the state, since conscription is merely the most obvious expression of the government's drive to reduce all individuals to the status of pawns whose every action it can control. This drive is absolutely basic in all governmental thinking--it is to the bureaucrat what the desire for profit is to the capitalist. When government is weak, its repressive urge is confined to matters of petty detail, but when the state emerges as the strongest single force in society, as it is emerging today throughout the world, its desire to reduce everything to a fixed pattern finds full expression and pervades every aspect of life. Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany have shown how far an unrestricted government is capable of going in this direction, and should serve as a warning of the potentialities latent in government. To combat this monster is the first duty of all sincere radicals, and they cannot afford to ignore its full implications, and blind themselves with illusions about "legitimate state powers." The state must be resisted in all of its manifestations, because every increase in its powers, no matter how desirable it may appear on the surface, serves to strengthen its position in society, and therefore its threat to all civilized values. Recent radical thought has shown itself all too accommodating to the idea that freedom can be preserved by means of 'democratic controls' on an extended state apparatus: that the 'good' attributes of the total state--its efficiency and ability to plan--can be harnessed for the purpose of beneficent social reconstruction, and its menace to human rights negated by a few checks and balances. This seems dangerous nonsense to me, inasmuch as the efficiency and planning of totalitarianism are MADE POSSIBLE by its control over all aspects of life, and would cease to exist without that control.

It is of the utmost importance that radicals, in their campaign against peacetime conscription, keep in mind that a victory on this issue will not mean that the struggle is over, but is merely a step in the long and painful reconquest of the right of the people to control their own destinies, free from supervision and domination by a powerful bureaucracy.

For comic relief on this serious question, there is the stand of the Socialist Workers Party. Unlike most other leftist parties, the Cannonites do not oppose military conscription without qualifications (the Communists and the Social-Democrats are both pro-conscription, but then neither of these can be considered leftist parties according to any plausible definition of leftism). The SWP is of course indignant at the prospect of Wall Street Prussianizing American Youth, but "all important problems of humanity will be solved eventually arms in hand; it would be stupid, therefore, on the part of labor to simply oppose compulsory military training. The working class must call for military training ... under its own control instead of the control of Wall Street." (The Militant, Dec. 16, 1944.) In other words, in order to be better prepared for the eventual revolutionary overthrow of Wall Street, the workers need military training. They must therefore demand that the Wall Street Government finance a program of military training under the control of the unions. Superficially, this might appear to be asking rather a lot of the Wall Street Government, but not if one understands the Marxist-Leninist approach. It is really just a tactic, designed to prove to the workers that the status quo is rotten. It works something like this. The workers are urged to fight for their own conscription program, a demand which should appeal to the average worker as eminently just and reasonable. The Wall Street Government, however, would never grant such a demand, so the workers, outraged at having their just demand refused, overthrow the government. Simple, isn't it? The only problem is to convince the workers that it is just--or for that matter sane--to demand that the government finance a program designed solely to facilitate its overthrow.

H.R.C.Jr.