'July 1914: From assassination to mass slaughter'

[whichfinder]

Date: Sunday, 29th June at 3pm


Venue: The Socialist Party's premises, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN


Directions: About 4 minutes walk south-east from Clapham North station on the Northern line of the London Underground system and 3 minutes walk from Clapham High Street station on the Circular Overground line.


A century has passed since the assassination of Austria-Hungary's Archduke Ferdinand on 28 June 1914. Was this really the spark that ignited the conflagration that followed? Did this seemingly trivial terrorist event really cause the Great War that broke out a month later? Was this war by accident - or was it war by design? It was certainly war by minority decision.

The origins of the war will be examined from a socialist perspective. We shall examine the conditions affecting the decision-makers – both the short term and accidental as well as the long term and planned – and the larger historical and political background against which a tiny number of decision-makers decided the fate of millions.

This war has been called the seminal event of the 20th century and its origins have been the subject of intense study and deep and sometimes bitter controversy. We shall ask what lessons are there to be learned, and whether war is an inevitable condition in human society?

A talk by Gwynn Thomas

Free admission and refreshments

Audience participation invited





http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/event/july-1914-assassination-mass-slaughter-south-london-300pm

[exeexe]

Well it says in a book that im reading atm:


Proudhon lambasts the unitarist and centralising tendencies of the republicans as much as he does the imperial tendencies of the great powers and argued consistently in favor of federalist solutions. This may not seem too radical to us today, but federalism flew in the face of the standard unitarist nationalism of his contemporaries. In Proudhons view the centralising and unitarist republican projects of his contemporaries were likely to pitch Europe into war, but a war that unlike of its predecessors would be between industrialised and militarised states, and thus exponentially more destructive. The three forces of industrialisation, militarisation and centralisation suggested that the republican cause would be trampled underfoot by ever-stronger states. The republicans, Proudhon argued, were stumbling blindly into a trap and his anarchism is central to this foresight.