Ukraine and the slogan “The main enemy is at home"

The slogan "the main enemy is in the home camp" dates from a leaflet written by the German revolutionary Karl Liebknecht in May 1915, the focus of which was Italy’s entry into the war on the side of the Allies. It is rightly famous. But it is being abused in relation to the war in Ukraine.

Before the war Italy had been allied with Germany in the Triple Alliance. But then, in 1915, it had joined the war on the side of the Allies. The German ruling classes denounced Italy’s "treachery" in an attempt to whip up renewed pro-war fervour.

The purpose of Liebknecht’s leaflet was to challenge those efforts (“this plan must be wrecked”), by pointing out that it was Germany that bore the main responsibility for the war, for Italy’s entry into the war, and for the continuation of the war:

• The Austrian ultimatum to Serbia of July 1914 (“the spark that ignited the world”) made war with Italy inevitable. It contained “all the antagonisms between Austria-Germany and Italy in one stroke”.

• The lies of “the Italian instigators of war” about their real war aims were no different from those of the German and Austrian imperialists. They “reflected, as is in a mirror, the German and Austrian methods of July and August 1914.”

• The German ruling classes had deceived the German people about the “farce” of the Triple Alliance. They had kept secret its contents (“not one letter of this treaty has been shared with you”) and Italy’s withdrawal from the Alliance (“this crucial fact was withheld from the German people”).

• The sinking of the Lusitania by the German military had provided the Italian ruling class with another pretext, however hypocritical, to join the war. It had “facilitated the disastrous work of the Italian war party right in the critical moment.”

• In March the British had offered peace negotiations but “the greed for profit of the German imperialists led this to be rejected.” The “promising peace endeavours” had been “thwarted by the German parties.”

• Those who were to blame for Italy’s entry into the war and for the continuation of the war were “the irresponsible people at home”, who were “counting on the forgetfulness of the masses.”

Hence, Liebknecht concluded:

“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. The enemy at home must be fought by the German people in a political struggle, co-operating with the proletariat of other countries, whose struggle is against their own imperialists.”

Various forms of the slogan “the main enemy is in the home camp” appeared in the leaflet four times (including its title). Various forms of the slogan “learn everything, forget nothing” also appeared four times, reflecting Liebknecht’s purpose in writing the leaflet.

On the one hand, the slogan about “the main enemy” was raised by Liebknecht because of the particular role played by Germany in that particular war at that particular moment in time.

At the same time, by referring to “co-operation with the proletariat of other countries, whose struggle is against their own imperialists”, Liebknecht was raising a broader principle.

The struggle of the German working class against their rulers was part of an international class struggle in which the working classes of the warring countries should settle accounts with their own ruling classes:

“International proletarian class struggle against international imperialist genocide is the socialist commandment of the hour.”

In raising “the main enemy” slogan Liebknecht was not proposing some kind of international division of labour – German workers deal with the German ruling classes, British workers with the British ruling classes, etc. – but was calling for international revolutionary class struggle against the war.

This was emphasised by Lenin in his comments on Liebknecht’s leaflet:

“It is necessary to fight for the quickest end to the war. But the demand for ‘peace’ has a proletarian meaning only if appeals for revolutionary struggle are raised at the same time. In the absence of a series of revolutions the so-called democratic peace is a bourgeois-philistine utopia.”

As a general principle the “main enemy” slogan is a truism. Who better placed to fight the German, British, French, etc. ruling classes than the working classes of those countries? As the Irish revolutionary James Connolly put it: “None so fitted to break the chains as they who wear them.”

Problems arise when the slogan is grafted onto political arguments in a misplaced attempt to give them a veneer of Marxist orthodoxy, however far removed from reality such arguments may be.

The slogan was popularised, for example, by the "anti-German" current which emerged on the German left at the time of German reunification. The anti-Germans opposed reunification as they equated the very existence of Germany with wars, fascism and genocide.

This was ‘justified’ by invocations of the “main enemy” slogan: Opposing German reunification and the very existence of Germany supposedly stood in Liebknecht’s tradition – even though Liebknecht had advocated a revolution in Germany, not the abolition of Germany.

In later years German Maoist organisations raised the slogan as part of their anti-EU campaign. For the Maoists the EU was an attempt to create a Fourth Reich, a mechanism for German “military diktat”, and a means for Germany to drag Europe into wars against the world’s remaining socialist and progressive states.

The EU was therefore to be opposed as a matter of socialist principle. It was a tool of German imperialism, and had not Liebknecht said that “the main enemy is in the home camp”? Liebknecht had indeed said that. But that did not make the EU a tool of German imperialism.

In more recent years a far more convoluted, and pointless, argument has taken place in and around the German Communist Party about just who “the main enemy” is.

Is it still the German ruling classes? Or is it the USA? Or is the USA maybe the main enemy but best fought by fighting the German ruling classes as the main enemy, given that they act as the agents of the USA in Europe? And so on, and so forth.

Even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine the “main enemy” slogan was being invoked to try to justify straightforward factual inaccuracies. According to a lengthy analysis headlined “The Main Enemy is in the Home Camp” in the anarchist Autonomie Magazin:

“The basic fact is and remains: Russian territorial claims are constantly questioned (by Western imperialism), anti-Russian opposition movements are created and supported in Russia, and fascist movements are positioned in ex-Soviet countries (Ukraine). Only western imperialism behaves in an aggressive manner against other countries and borders.”

The (ab)use of the “main enemy” slogan since the Russian invasion has been simply wrong, and perniciously so:

• It is coupled with a complete misrepresentation of the nature of the war in Ukraine.

The war is not a repeat of the First World War. That war was an inter-imperialist conflict in which all imperialist powers directly participated. The clue is in the name.

The SWP and others are wrong to define the war as “an inter-imperialist conflict between Russia and the West”. They are therefore wrong to argue, on that basis, that “the main job of socialists in Britain is to build opposition to Western imperialism”.

The war in Ukraine is an act of Russian imperialist aggression in which the central issue is Ukraine’s right to national self-determination and to exist as an independent state, both of which are explicitly denied by Putin.

It is a continuation of the Russian imperialist aggression of 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimea and created puppet "people’s republics" in Donetsk and Lugansk. And that, in turn, was a continuation of centuries-long Great-Russian-chauvinist oppression of Ukraine.

• It is inseparable from the argument that NATO is responsible for the war.

According to the SWP, “the bloodshed and destruction have been created by the US and NATO”. According to the Stop the War Coalition, “the conflict is the product of thirty years of failed policies, including the expansion of NATO and US hegemony.”

And according to an article on the Counterfire website: “For the anti-war movement, the task will be to bend the stick in the spirit of saying the 'main enemy is at home'. While condemning Russia, we will need to point out that the West is an aggressive, expansionist set of powers led by the US, which actively contributed to creating the crisis.”

The policies, and existence, of NATO should be criticised and opposed. But NATO has shown no enthusiasm for Ukrainian membership ("on the table" since 2008) and well in advance of the war it pledged that it would not be sending troops to Ukraine.

The only country responsible for the war in Ukraine is the country which has invaded it. To argue otherwise is a travesty of reality. And wheeling out Liebknecht’s slogan of more than a century ago does not make it any the less a travesty of reality.

• Despite the revolutionary pretensions of those who raise the slogan, it leads into pleas for bourgeois diplomacy and horsetrading.

Liebknecht and Lenin saw the “main enemy” slogan as part of a revolutionary struggle against war. Liebknecht appealed for “proletarians of all countries” to “ally yourselves to the international class struggle”. Lenin advocated “revolutionary struggle” and “a series of revolutions”.

Not so the self-appointed elder statesmen and elder stateswomen of the Stop the War Coalition.

Instead, they call for “a unified effort to develop pan-European security arrangements which meet the needs of all states”, “a new security deal for Europe which meets the needs of all states and peoples”, “support for all efforts to reach new arms control agreements in Europe” and “an all-inclusive security architecture in Europe which does not give hegemony to any one state or alliance.”

In one breath we are told that the main enemy is in the home camp. In the next breath we are told to rely on the same main enemy in the home camp to negotiate a new “security deal for Europe and “new arms controls agreements” in Europe”.

John Rees, a leading figure in the Stop the War Coalition, goes a step further and appeals: “We demand that our government represent the interests of working people and stop playing imperial games with our future.”

Hardly the revolutionary struggle advocated by Lenin. And hardly an application of the German Social-Democratic slogan “Not a penny, not a man for this system”.

Raising the slogan “the main enemy is in the home camp” in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a not very sophisticated sleight of hand.

The slogan is not one which flows out of the nature of the conflict. On the contrary, the slogan is raised for the purpose of grafting onto it a particular view of the war:

One in which Ukraine itself is blotted out of the picture – the SWP’s “Five Reasons to Oppose the War” do not even mention Ukraine’s right to self-determination – and the second-biggest nuclear weapons superpower is portrayed as the hapless victim of NATO expansion.

At first sight, the slogan “The enemy is in the home camp” might appear to be very rrrrevolutionary. But in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine it amounts only to empty posturing and a distraction from the tasks in hand for socialists.