From Germany's Aims in the First World War by Fritz Fischer, 1967

Finnish and Estonian socialists (Zilliakus and Kesküla) had early imported a new element into Germany’s revolutionary activities. They said that the revolution could not succeed unless supported by the German Social Democrats, and in fact German Social Democrats were soon taking a hand in the revolutionising of Russia. Furthermore, the leading Finnish patriots regarded revolution in Finland as only one link in the chain of the liberation of the non-Russian nationalists as a whole—confirming the Germans’ own view on this point. The Finn Wetterhoff, for example concluded a regular treaty with the Georgian Committee, and the most important of these Finns, a lawyer named Castrén, pronounced the mission of this war against Russia to be the liberation from Russian rule of the Poles, Finns, Lithuanians, Mohammedans, Armenians, Jews, Estonians and Letts.

Fritz Fischer, Germany's aims in the First World War.
With introd. by Hajo Holborn and James Joll.
New York : Norton, 1967, pages 144-5.

I.

The term (hence notion) of class-struggle seems to have been due to Karl Marx. Whether that man was sincere I do not know.

His pseudo-system of two basic, and antagonistic, classes, has by now given us over 100,000,000 people dead, directly by wars, Stalin’s (etc) murders, less directly by famines, ruined individual lives, etc.

Such statistics are hard to make entirely exact ; however, if the recent reports from China are a measure then the number of people dead following the ‘class-struggle’ ideas by Karl Marx may be reaching 200,000,000.

One notes that Adolf Schicklgruber-Hitler’s “Aryan vs. Jew” national 'socialism' was but a version of some fundamental “class-x versus class-y” proposition ; another version exemplified in the “proletariat versus bourgeoisie” of Karl Marx' “class struggle”.

II.

The text by Fritz Fischer quoted above, not a hypothetical ratiocination but part of the historic record, affords an example of some ‘class’ struggles present in the years 1914-18.

What do we mean by ‘class’. To me, briefly, a term placed on a collection of objects.

The 'class' has been the subject of many a "great philosopher", some of them decidedly questionable. The history of the ‘class’-theories may be the key to the political developments to-day and to-morrow.

For the time being, the example above, as afforded by Fritz Fischer : “  a lawyer named Castrén, pronounced the mission of this war against Russia to be the liberation from Russian rule of the Poles, Finns, Lithuanians, Mohammedans, Armenians, Jews, Estonians and Letts. ”

Any such listings of the interested groups took some basic criteria. With some exactness one can distinguish :

(a) ‘racial’ (national in terms of the genetic stock),
(b) linguistic,
(c) religious.

It becomes immediately apparent that the listing of “Poles, Finns, Lithuanians, Mohammedans, Armenians, Jews, Estonians and Letts” was inexact by there having been differing criteria used in naming (classing) the groups.

Poles, Finns, Lithuanians, Armenians, Estonians, and Letts, are 'races', who speak different languages ; the Aryan dialects being spoken by the Poles, Lithuanians, Armenians, Letts, the Turanian dialects spoken by the Finns, Estonians.

The Mohammedan is a religion. The Jew is a religion and a ‘race’.

In the linguistic terms, both the Jew and the Mohammedan are of the Semitic stock. However, the Mohammedan did also influence some of the Aryan ‘races’, or, Aryan-language-speaking peoples in India, Persia, etc, on one hand and the Turanian Turks (etc) on the other hand.

Thus any such ‘liberation’ as the one cited above was confounded on the basic levels, of the proper representation.¹

The above example could be sorted out thus :

(a) The Semitic religions : the Jew (Hebrew scriptures) and the Mohammedan (Arabic scriptures). One notes many non-Semitic 'race' peoples under the Mohammedan influence, usually Aryan or Turanian.
(b) The Aryan (Indo-European) linguistic stock (and usually ‘race’) : Poles, Lithuanians, Letts, Armenians,
(c) The Turanian linguistic stock (and usually ‘race’) : Finns, Estonians,

The provisional conclusion (this is a material for many a treatise) : carefully distinguish the grouping (‘classing') by (a) language, (b) ‘race’ and (c) religion one from the other.

These are very often intertwined in reality ; in theory this needs clear statements of the premises (else, wars and/or revolutions).

    ¹ One notes that the opinion by Mr. Castrén has been got 'second-hand', possibly via more than just two sources. With due respect to the integrity of every one author involved, data get very easily altered 'in transit', also via translations. This article by me is not meant as a critique of Mr. Castrén, at least not till I have seen his actual exact utterances. The example of propositions attributed to him, as got from a 1967 publication, came in handy to a broad purpose.

III.

The nationality in terms of the genetic stock is immutable on the level of the individual (and that is all I for one am interested in, the level of the individual).

Thus the nationality ('race') might be the most natural ‘class’ of those mentioned : one merely states the fact — the immutable genetic make-up of the individual — the overall racial theories being a different facet of the issue, here disregarded. Self-perceptions by an individual as part of this or that nationality may be of more practical consequence than somebody's theories of 'people-x national characteristics', or even some entirely exact parts of the science of genetics.

The language and the religion, if any, are naturally got from one’s early environment, in the most normal instances. These three ‘classes’ are less arbitrary, it seems, than other ways of ‘classing’ the interested individuals.

This being a sort of exploratory essay, one notes that Karl Marx's 'capital' could not exist before there had been the notion and the practice of fiat money and the interest accruing on such money. It seems that he had projected some high order abstractions, and there may have been some truth in some of his observations, onto the lower-level (physical) realities of the human existence with some resulting error on the order of consideration.

WPT

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