Model
Digital Document
Publisher
Florida Atlantic University
Description
An examination of the attitudes of the French and German
Socialists toward war and peace between 1870 and 1914 provides
an understanding of the dilemma faced by Socialists
in August, 1914. Discussed is Marx's position on the Franco-
Prussian War, doctrinal and theoretical contradictions, and
different anti-war strategies put forward by the French and
German Socialist Parties. Rather than a simplistic response
to innate patriotic sentiment, wide-spread Socialist support
of the war-effort in 1914 emerged from revised (and more
pacifist) Socialist interpretations of capitalism, shifting
moods in the workers' anti-war movement, and changing economic
conditions upon these moods and working class behavior.
Socialists toward war and peace between 1870 and 1914 provides
an understanding of the dilemma faced by Socialists
in August, 1914. Discussed is Marx's position on the Franco-
Prussian War, doctrinal and theoretical contradictions, and
different anti-war strategies put forward by the French and
German Socialist Parties. Rather than a simplistic response
to innate patriotic sentiment, wide-spread Socialist support
of the war-effort in 1914 emerged from revised (and more
pacifist) Socialist interpretations of capitalism, shifting
moods in the workers' anti-war movement, and changing economic
conditions upon these moods and working class behavior.
Member of