Left About-Face: Radicals and the War.
Editorial
by Holley R. Cantine, Jr.

Retort, A quarterly journal of Anarchism, art and reviews

Spring, 1945

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

I.

During the First World War, Randolph Bourne and other advanced thinkers who had managed to 
retain their sanity, found occasion to denounce the behavior of the liberals. In the Second World 
War, the antics of the liberals have been even worse, if that is possible, than they were last time, 
and, in addition, the majority of the radicals have thoroughly disgraced themselves. The record of 
American radicals during the last war was, on the whole, far more principled and courageous 
than that of their European counterparts. The actions of Debs and many of his followers, of the 
IWW and the Anarchists, notably Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, stood in sharp 
contrast to the spineless capitulation of the major radical parties of the Old World, and the 
renegacy of such outstanding figures as Kropotkin, Herve and Kautsky. This is not to say that all 
European radicals lacked integrity during that war, but certainly the number of capitulators made 
up a much larger percentage of the total membership than in this country.

In the present war, the European radicals have largely repeated their performance of last time, 
and the Americans have not been far behind. A considerable number of both organized and 
unaffiliated radicals have supported the war, and among those groups which have withheld their 
formal support, there has been no anti-war activity worth mentioning. There have been a number 
of radicals of military age who have preferred prison to the army, but those who have gone into 
the army are far more numerous. And the behavior of the so-called anti-war radicals in general 
has been extremely timid and restrained, so much so, in fact, that the government has apparently 
decided that it has nothing to fear from them and has left them almost entirely alone. The one 
prosecution of any magnitude--the Minneapolis Teamsters Union case--was more the result of an 
intra-union political quarrel than of anti-war agitation, and in any case, the agitation that was used 
as evidence in the trial had occurred before this country entered the war. Since Pearl Harbor, 
there has been quite literally not a single case of radical anti-war activity on a scale to invite 
government repression. The one effort that was made to stop the war-the Peace Now Movement-
a courageous and in many ways admirable beginning, was essentially liberal in its orientation, 
not going beyond urging its adherents to write to their congressmen, but the frenzied haste with 
which the radicals, including even some avowed pacifists, repudiated this organization, once the 
more venomous of the bourgeois newspapers began to smear it, reflected no credit on the quality 
of their radicalism. Some of the criticisms leveled against Peace Now were unquestionably 
justified-its standards for admitting members were too haphazard, its efforts to enlist the support 
of conservative politicians were opportunistic and naive, and its program was too vague and 
ineffectual to promise much hope of success. But such criticism could only be made honestly if 
the critics were themselves making a similar attempt on a sounder and more principled basis. As 
a matter of fact, however, these objections were raised primarily out of sheer fright at the prospect 
of being compromised by an organization which had the courage to stand up for the position 
which all radicals had always advocated--in peace-time--opposing the war in practice as well as 
in theory. Faced with this actual issue, their brave resolutions were forgotten and they 
ignominiously scuttled for cover behind a new-found sectarian purism that was both dishonest 
and disingenuous.

II.

Pro-war radicals (or rather ex-radicals, since it is absurd to consider anyone a radical * while he is 
supporting, however critically, the government-especially in wartime when it is at its most 
repressive and vicious) are a phenomenon which seems to occur in all wars, no matter how 
blatantly imperialistic they are. It is primarily a manifestation of emotional instability rather than a 
serious and principled position. Certain radicals, when confronted by the fact of war, tend to lose 
control of their emotions, and in spite of strong intellectual convictions, sometimes extending over 
many years, are swept into the patriotic camp. Usually, of course, they succeed in rationalizing 
this departure from principle, at least to their own satisfaction, and insist vehemently that they 
have not really changed their views, but the rationalizations are almost invariably a pathetic blend 
of retrospective falsification and an hysterical acceptance of premises which run counter not only 
to their own previous convictions, but to the whole philosophy of radicalism.

To expose the argument which the radical victims of war-psychosis put forward to justify their 
position is largely a waste of time, because they are not really prepared to argue the question. 
Their rationalizations are merely a face-saving device and have no causal connection with their 
actual state of mind. For example, most of the war-radicals of the Second World War took the 
position that the failure of independent working-class action to prevent the spread of Nazism had 
left them with no alternative but to support the lesser evil' of the United Nations, since the Nazis 
were so efficient at suppressing internal dissent that a German victory would destroy forever the 
possibility of struggling for a better social system. Once the danger of a Nazi-dominated world 
had been averted, they maintained, it would be safe for radicals to return to their traditional 
opposition to the status quo. This argument, if true, logically reduces the fundamental 
assumptions of radicalism to absurdity, since if the Nazi techniques for suppressing opposition 
are so effective that they could never have been overthrown from below, it should follow that 
these same techniques, in the hands of the victorious rulers of Russia, and the other United 
Nations-who have had ample opportunity to learn everything the Nazis had to teach and have 
given no evidence that they would hesitate to apply it-would be equally effective, thus ending for 
good the possibility of a better world. Moreover, the war-radicals are not even capable of 
accepting the logic of their own 'lesser evil' theory. It has been perfectly obvious for more than a 
year that there was no longer any possible danger of the Nazis dominating the world, and that the 
real threat of world domination comes from the Big Three. Nonetheless, not a single war radical 
has yet remembered that his defection from radicalism was only supposed to last until the Nazi 
Peril had been eliminated.

III.

What radical opposition to the war exists is, for the most part, of a curiously abstract character. 
While opposing the war in theory and noisily proclaiming his ideological purity in this matter, the 
typical anti-war radical is horrified at the suggestion that he should actively resist the war. He 
does not hesitate to take a job in a munitions factory, or even go into the armed forces, and the 
proposal that he should advocate an immediate peace drives him to fury. He stigmatizes this 
position as bourgeois, on the grounds that only a social revolution can really destroy the roots of 
war, and that to advocate anything short of this betrays the working class by creating the illusion 
that the status quo can be trusted to further their interests.

It is quite true that many of the proponents of an immediate peace are heavily influenced by 
bourgeois liberal thinking, and are far from revolutionary in their approach and objectives. It is 
also true that ending the war, in itself, leaves unsolved the major problems of mankind, and does 
not guarantee that there will not be a new war in the near future. However, in my opinion, such 
considerations are largely irrelevant to the real question, and are raised only to confuse the issue 
and excuse the radicals for their inaction. A campaign to end the war can be either bourgeois 
liberal or radical depending on the methods it employs, and its attitude towards the existing 
government. By way of analogy, let us examine the way civil liberties cases are handled by 
radicals, as distinguished from liberals.

According to the logic of the anti-war, anti-peace radicals, if a member of a radical group is 
arrested and imprisoned for his activities, the group should conduct a campaign pointing out that 
the legal system of status quo is unjust and detrimental to the interests of the working class, but 
they should not, by any means, demand that the victim be released. Such a demand, according 
to This viewpoint, would be essentially bourgeois and counterrevolutionary inasmuch as (1) The 
release of the imprisoned radical would not destroy the system under which he was unjustly 
imprisoned and (2) It would help to create the fatal illusion that the government was a benevolent 
institution which could be depended upon to do the right thing for the workers in the long run. 
There may be some extreme sectarians who would argue in this manner, but I have never met up 
with any of them. In actual practice, radical groups, when confronted by a civil liberties case, 
make use of one or the other of two approaches.

The liberal approach, which is comparable with the liberal, write-your-congressman-to-end-the-
war technique, consists of arguing that the arrest is unconstitutional; that there has been a 
miscarriage of justice which must be remedied. The fundamental integrity of the legal system is 
not questioned: on the contrary, the violation of the victim's civil rights is depicted as 
incomprehensible, and the possibility that the authorities might be acting with malice 
aforethought is ignored. Such a campaign can very easily play an essentially counter-
revolutionary role. It buttresses the pretensions of the status quo in the act of opposition. By 
making the case appear as a rare exception, it tacitly implies that the rule is just and honorable.

The radical approach, on the other hand, makes no attempt to conceal the fact that the legal code 
is weighted in favor of the status quo, and that the victim is being persecuted for his views-not 
unexpectedly, through some slip-up in the law-enforcing machinery, but as a logical 
consequence of the whole emphasis of the code. The courts are not called upon, respectfully, to 
undo an error, but indicted as agents of the enemies of the working class. The radicals do not 
stop here, however; they set out to enlist as much popular support for the victim as possible, and 
use this support to put pressure on the government to release its victim. By organizing 
demonstrations, strikes, and similar public disturbances, they make it so uncomfortable for the 
government that finally it grudgingly yields. If and when the victim is released as the result of 
such pressure, no one can possibly conclude that the government has acted out of benevolence 
or a desire that an injustice be corrected; it has obviously been forced, by the action of the 
workers, and against its will, to make a concession. Thus, the system stands condemned as the 
enemy of the elementary rights of the workers, and at the same time the workers have been 
aroused to concrete, and to a degree, successful, action against it.

Since war, both from the standpoint of the working class as a whole, and the radical workers in 
particular, is a much greater menace than the mere imprisonment of an individual, it should follow 
that radicals would act in the most vigorous manner to bring it to an end. Not only are large 
numbers of workers being drafted into the army, thereby running a serious risk of being killed or 
wounded, but the right to strike, and civil liberties generally, are endangered in wartime as at no 
other time. Only the assumption that the war is in the interests of the oppressed--an assumption 
which no genuine radical could make concerning the present conflict--could provide a principled 
excuse for the radicals' failure to act.

Contemporary radicals, however, are not really very much concerned with principles, and when 
pressed will usually defend their inactivity with arguments that are based on pure expediency. 
Since the working class, and particularly the organized workers, have accepted the war with great 
docility, the radicals contend that they cannot advocate anti-war activity, thereby running the risk 
of alienating their potential followers. Anyhow, they argue, the war is nearly over, and it is too late 
to do anything about it.

It is difficult to cope with arguments like this, not because they are valid, but because they 
represent such a thoroughly debased version of radicalism that it scarcely seems worth bothering 
with. These are not the arguments of people who are seriously working for a better world, but of 
cynical politicians who are only interested in power for themselves. Radicalism that is worthy of 
the name does not wait for the 'masses' to make the first move. If this had been the policy of 
radicals in the old days, it is impossible to imagine how the movement would have gotten started. 
The true radical is an agitator, who regards it as his function to combat apathy and hostility on the 
part of the workers; he does not go into hiding until they begin to act in a revolutionary manner, 
and then jump on the bandwagon.

The argument that it is too late to do anything about the war is also a byproduct of the modern 
radical's lack of initiative rather than honest conviction. It has been current now for at least two 
years, during which time something could surely have been done. Even today, although Europe 
has already been "liberated"--obliberated would be a better word--the armies have not yet been 
withdrawn, and the Asiatic war is still in progress.

A radical campaign for an immediate peace would resemble the liberal efforts in this direction 
only in its broad objective-just as in civil liberties cases, both radicals and liberals are attempting 
to free the victims. Radicals would not, as the liberal pacifists are inclined to do, present the 
demand for peace as if they were asking the government to correct an oversight, nor would they 
pretend that peace would mean enduring bliss for the country, and the world. On the contrary, 
they could continue to emphasize that the existing government is incapable of making a just and 
lasting peace-as it cannot be trusted to maintain civil liberties. They would consequently present 
the goal of peace frankly as a stopgap, which would solve no fundamental problems, and which, 
in all probability, wouldn't last-unless the workers took further action. It might be objected that 
such a presentation would be too negative and colorless to have any appeal, but I believe that the 
average worker is sufficiently sophisticated to recognize that the advantages of not being shot at, 
and not being restricted and regimented in the hundred and one ways the war requires, are 
desirable in themselves, even though they do not represent Utopia.

IV.

Many of the radicals who oppose the present war are not against war as such, but only 
'imperialist wars', that is, wars which are fought by capitalist or totalitarian states for profits, 
foreign markets and colonies. Radicals of this school of thought believe that wars fought for 
'progressive' ends-notably civil wars-warrant their full support and participation. Today, they are 
enthusiastic champions of the irregular armies of Poland, Greece and France, and become 
furiously indignant if it is suggested that the American Civil War, the French Revolutionary Wars, 
the Spanish Civil War, or even the Russian Civil War did not benefit the cause of the oppressed.

This attitude has long seemed to me a romantic carryover from an earlier day when the full 
implications of radicalism had not yet been worked out. Most of the radicals of the nineteenth 
century did not believe that the achievement of a free and equal society would be a very difficult 
problem. They either assumed that such a society could be brought about by a radical minority 
which would seize control of the state, and then manipulate the masses into the proper state of 
mind, or they believed that the new society would spring into being spontaneously once the old 
order had been destroyed. In neither case did it matter especially what means were employed, 
and since military methods promised to achieve results more quickly than any other, they were 
widely favored. This was given a certain plausibility at the time, moreover, by the fact that the art 
of war was still in a relatively primitive stage of development, and a poorly equipped army of 
revolutionists might very well be a match for the forces that could be mustered by the existing 
government.

Today the situation is greatly altered. While an irregular army of revolutionists stood some 
chance of defeating a regular army equipped with single-shot rifles and muzzle-loading cannons, 
it is no match for tanks, dive-bombers and modern siege artillery, as events in Spain, and more 
recently in Poland and Greece have demonstrated. But what is infinitely more important is the 
fact that military methods have been discovered to be utterly incompatible with the attainment of a 
really free and equal society. It is now recognized by radicals who have given serious 
consideration to the matter that such a society cannot be imposed by a benevolent minority, nor 
will it arise spontaneously upon the destruction of the status quo. The Russian Revolution has 
exploded both of these hypotheses. Serious radicals have come to realize that the means 
employed to bring about socialism have a very important influence on the kind of socialism 
achieved, and that to prepare for a society of freedom and equality, it is necessary to build up the 
sort of organization, and to foster the attitudes and behavior, which will promote these values. 
Therefore, aside from purely humanitarian considerations--and these also are very important in a 
movement dedicated to brotherhood and human dignity (it is one of the worst inconsistencies of a 
large section of contemporary radicalism that, while it professes to be working for the good of all 
mankind, it dismisses any concern for the victims of bloodshed as "sentimentality")--military 
methods of achieving the new society must be rejected because they are fundamentally out of 
harmony with the psychological basis of equality and freedom.

The taking of human life, as Tolstoy has pointed out, is not an activity in which the average 
individual engages voluntarily and in cold blood. The average man can be made into an efficient 
and ruthless killer, but first he must undergo a rigorous period of preparation, to deaden his moral 
sensibilities and his sense of responsibility. Except in comparatively rare instances, men are only 
able to take human life when they are acting under orders from some higher authority which 
sanctions the killing and absolves them of all personal responsibility for the act. It does not matter 
particularly whether this authority is an imperialist state, the Church Militant, or a revolutionary 
party--in each case it is the organization that bears the responsibility and not the individual. From 
the standpoint of social equality and freedom, the dangers inherent in this situation should be 
obvious. Once an individual has been trained, or come to accept the principle that he is not 
personally responsible for what he does, his ability to act independently, as a member of a free, 
self-governing community is necessarily impaired. It is well known that ex-soldiers do not make 
good democrats; that their tendency is to follow a leader, blindly and unquestioningly. It is 
frequently argued that this could be remedied, in a revolutionary army, by giving greater 
individual responsibility to the soldiers, choosing officers by popular vote, etc. This reasoning 
seems to me to be based on a fundamental misconception of the nature of militarism: it is not 
authoritarian simply because it has an undemocratic heritage, which could be destroyed by 
changing the leadership and making certain structural changes in the army, but because the 
natural tendency of the average soldier, consciously or unconsciously, is to evade moral 
responsibility for his actions by transferring it to his superiors. Let us not forget that Napoleon 
started his career as an officer in a revolutionary army, and that he achieved his power to a great 
extent because of the support of his troops. Likewise, in both the Russian and the Spanish Civil 
Wars, the revolutionary armies started out very democratic, but had become thoroughly 
autocratic before the war was over.

It will be objected that without the use of armed force, the overthrow of the existing system would 
be impossible. I do not believe that this is true. It is quite possible that a revolutionary minority 
would be unable to establish itself in control of the state without making use of military methods, 
but since a maneuver of this sort has nothing to do with a genuine classless society, it is beside 
the point. A truly free and equal social system can only be realized when a substantial majority of 
the working population are consciously in favor of it, and in this case, such techniques of struggle 
as the strike, the boycott, sabotage and civil disobedience should be perfectly adequate to shake 
loose the ruling class.

Note

* The words 'socialist' and 'radical' are frequently used as though they were synonyms. I do not 
believe that this is altogether accurate, if we accord to the words their common meanings, and do 
not try to fit the definitions to our own ideas. A socialist, broadly speaking, is anyone who 
advocates common ownership of the means of production (although there is considerable 
disagreement among socialists of different schools, as to which social unit should be vested with 
ownership: opinion on this question ranges all the way from the village community to the Total 
State.) A radical is simply one who believes that fundamental changes in the social system are 
necessary. At the present time I think It is quite safe to say that nearly all radicals are socialists of 
one sort or another, but many socialists are not, and indeed never have been, radicals. Those 
socialists who believe that socialism can be achieved legally, by electing a majority in the 
legislative branch of the government, and then passing constitutional amendments legislating 
socialism into being, are not radicals but liberals. they do not advocate fundamental social 
change, but a New Deal within the framework of existing institutions. Similarly, those socialists 
who uphold the rulers of the Russian State are conservatives rather than radicals, since they 
seldom advocate anything but the retention of the status quo in Russia.