Karl Liebknecht is a name that goes side by side with Rosa Luxemburg. Not only were they both martyred at the same time in the fight for socialism, but they also held similar views on the imperialist war in 1915. While Rosa Luxemburg was writing the Junius Pamphlet in prison, Karl Liebnecht released the leaftlet The Main Enemy Is At Home. This was a much shorter work than Rosa’s, but still an important piece of antiwar propaganda.
Karl released this leaflet after Italy joined the war. This development meant that the war would be further prolonged and the class struggle once more pushed to the side. He explained that the ruling class of Italy was no different than that of Germany and Austria.
The Italian instigators of war deserve every denunciation. But they are nothing but copies of the German and Austrian instigators, the ones who are chiefly responsible for the outbreak of war. Birds of a feather!
Karl notes that it is the ruling class who makes these decisions, the people are not asked:
You were given no influence on Germany and Austria’s negotiations with Italy, on which Italy’s intervention depended. You were treated as sheep in this vital question, while the war party, the secret diplomacy, a handful of people in Berlin and Vienna rolled the dice about the fate of Germany.
This remains true today - it is never the working people who get to choose between war and peace.
The last section of the leaflet really gets to the point, it is posted in its entirety below:
The main enemy of every people is in their own country!
The main enemy of the German people is in Germany: German imperialism, the German war party, German secret diplomacy. This enemy at home must be fought by the German people in a political struggle, cooperating with the proletariat of other countries whose struggle is against their own imperialists.
We think as one with the German people – we have nothing in common with the German Tirpitzes and Falkenhayns, with the German government of political oppression and social enslavement. Nothing for them, everything for the German people. Everything for the international proletariat, for the sake of the German proletariat and downtrodden humanity.
The enemies of the working class are counting on the forgetfulness of the masses – provide that that be a grave miscalculation. They are betting on the forbearance of the masses – but we raise the vehement cry:
How long should the gamblers of imperialism abuse the patience of the people? Enough and more than enough slaughter! Down with the war instigators here and abroad!
An end to genocide!
Proletarians of all countries, follow the heroic example of your Italian brothers! Ally yourselves to the international class struggle against the conspiracies of secret diplomacy, against imperialism, against war, for peace with in the socialist spirit.
The main enemy is at home!
As citizens of the United States, the heart of the worst of the capitalist empire, it is our task to oppose the enemies at home. The capitalist class is our enemy! They are the instigators of war - whether that is in Afghanistan through harsh sanctions that will kill more than US bombs did or in Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Iraq, or the ongoing proxy war in Ukraine. It is the capitalist class that has created these wars. The military industrial complex (MIC) has an insatiable appetite for profit. They cannot sell their weapons without international conflict. These purveyors of death are reliant upon capitalist states for their funding.
The Biden administration is full of connections to the MIC. Lloyd Austin III is the Secretary of Defense, but he should be called the Secretary of Death. He served in the US military and then was given a lucrative position on the board of Raytheon, one of the top arms dealers in the world. He also has sat on the board of Nucor, which is a steel company - traditionally an industry which has profited from war. Nucor paid $98 million in 2000 to settle a lawsuit with the Environmental Protection Agency responding to allegations “that Nucor violated environmental standards regulating the release of pollutants into the air, water and soil.” Lloyd Austin has also had a position on the board of Tenet Healthcare, a for profit healthcare company that has “has settled a number of multimillion settlements related to defrauding Medicare, Medicaid, and patients, which includes admitting psychiatric patients who did not need hospitalization and then charging these patients inflated prices.” These connections didn’t stop the Senate from voting 93-2 to confirm him. Every Democratic Senator and independent voted yes, only two Republicans voted no and not because of his corporate connections. Both parties can agree on having a Raytheon board member run the Defense department.
Jake Sullivan is the National Security Advisor for the United States. He was Deputy Chief of Staff and Director of Policy Planning for Hillary Clinton during her time as Secretary of State. During this time, he “played a leading role in shaping U.S. policy toward Libya and Syria, as well as the historic opening of relations with the isolated Asian nation of Myanmar.” The result of U.S. policy toward Libya ended up with open air slave markets. And Syria remains a disaster with US troops still occupying oil fields and launching drone strikes killing civilians. Jake was also closely involved in the US backing of the 2014 coup in Ukraine.
Victoria Nuland who was front and center in the 2014 coup and was caught on tape saying “Fuck the E.U.” has been rewarded with a position in the Biden administration as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. She was a senior counselor at the Albright Stonebridge Group. According to the Revolving Door Project, Albright Stonebridge “is a secretive shadow lobbying firm co-founded by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Albright Stonebridge’s consultants have repeatedly engaged in lobbying on behalf of foreign governments like the UAE and Saudi Arabia, whose U.S.-backed military intervention in Yemen has caused a humanitarian disaster.” This does not seem like someone who would be qualified as a babysitter, let alone as a high official involved in life and death foreign policy decisions.
Biden’s Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, co-founded WestExec Advisors. At WestExec, he advised Boeing, Blackstone, and McKinsey and Co. He was also a partner with Pine Island Capital Partners. Boeing is one of the largest arms dealers on the planet. Blackstone is heavily invested in ARKA, “an advanced technologies company serving the U.S. military, intelligence community and commercial space industry.” McKinsey includes the CIA as one of its clients. Pine Island Capital Partners recently named former Defense Intelligence Agency director Vince Stewart as a partner. They also recently purchased “weapons system parts manufacturer Precinmac and a company until recently known as Meggitt Training Systems and now known as InVeris, which sells computer-simulated weapons training systems to the Pentagon and law enforcement agencies.” Blinken is in deep with corporate dark money connections.
This is just a short list of some of the more notorious actors. The entire administration is full of connections to big money lobbying and the transnational corporate class. This is not a government for the people but rather a government for big capital. While the media brings Hillary Clinton to scream about Russian oligarchs, something needs to be done about the oligarchy at home. Clinton is strangely quiet about them.
United States foreign policy is being run by those who stand to profit the most from war. It is no surprise that they are hawks. They do not care about the plight of the people who are suffering and dying. The weapons they sell will result in civilian casualties and destabilized governments. Suffering and death are the wages of war and only the capitalists stand to benefit.
What Karl Liebknecht called for in 1915 remains true today:
International proletarian class struggle against international imperialist genocide is the socialist commandment of the hour.
And this battle starts at home.