The First World War¶
Core Argument¶
The First World War is analysed not as a clash of nations but as an imperialist conflict that reopened unresolved questions from the epoch of bourgeois revolution, albeit now stripped of any independent character. The war’s fundamental content is a life-or-death struggle between German and British capital for world markets and a new division of the globe. Tsarism serves as a military reserve for French finance capital and British colonialism, while Austria-Hungary props up German offensive imperialism. Britain fights to preserve her colonial domains, yet faces growing tensions with Japan, whose claims threaten British positions in Australia, Canada, and the Pacific. France is pressured to consider ceding Indo-China to Japan, but Britain resists. British pacifist schemes for international arbitration are exposed as hollow: an international army to enforce rulings would require Britain to weaken her Navy, which she would never accept, and Britain would likely refuse to recognise any court ruling against her, as demonstrated during the Boer War.
The secret treaties reveal the true character of the Entente. On 13 November 1914, Britain’s ambassador to Russia, Sir George Buchanan, informed Foreign Minister Sazonov that Britain recognised Constantinople and the Straits must go to Russia. Four days later, Buchanan demanded Russia not oppose Britain’s annexation of Egypt; Sazonov consented. Three days after that, France’s ambassador Paléologue secured Tsar Nicholas II’s approval for French claims to Syria and Palestine. On 12 March 1915, Buchanan demanded Russia cede neutral Persia to Britain in return for Constantinople; Sazonov agreed. Thus two democracies and tsarism carved up Ottoman and Persian territory. Paléologue praised French socialists as ‘impeccable’ for their correct attitude to the war. The Hendersons, British socialists, treat Anglo-Saxon domination as natural and limit national self-determination to outside the British Empire; this national arrogance binds western social-patriots to their bourgeoisie. The secret treaties show that Britain and France reserved the right to fix Germany’s western frontiers, conceding the same for Austria’s eastern frontiers to Russia. Russia was promised all European Turkey, not just Constantinople. Asiatic Turkey was to be partitioned: France got Syria and the Mediterranean coast; Russia got part of the Black Sea coast; Britain got Mesopotamia and Baghdad. An ‘independent’ Arab federation was to be divided into spheres of influence, meaning domination by international capital. Britain provoked the war, hoping to exhaust both Germany and its own allies, but German strength forced full British intervention; the United States then played the role of the gleeful third partner, entering late to secure victory and profits.