9 February 1915
Editor’s note:
Nashe Slovo (Our Word) was a Russian language socialist internationalist paper published daily in Paris from January 1915 to September 1916, after the military authorities banned Golos. One of the main editors of the paper was Trotsky, who attended the Zimmerwald conference as its representative. Other editors were Martov (who broke with it in 1915), Manuilsky, Lozovski, Uritski, Chicherin and Antonov-Ovseyenko. The Bulgarian Christian Rakovsky helped finance the paper.
Lenin’s letter to the newspaper was written in reply to the Nashe Slovo editors’ proposal for joint action against social patriotism, in connection with the forthcoming London Conference of Entente Socialists. Lenin agreed to the proposal and submitted a draft declaration addressed to the London Conference. He criticised the social-chauvinist position of the Menshevik Organising Committee and the Bund, whom the Nashe Slovo editors had approached with the same proposal. Nashe Slovo’s editors did not accept Lenin’s declaration, but drew up one of their own.
Following the London Conference, the Nashe Slovo editors again proposed to the Central Committee of the RSDLP that a joint conference of ‘internationalists’ be held, so as to define the attitude towards the war and the social-chauvinists. In his reply to the Nashe Slovo editors dated 10 (23) March 1915, Lenin laid down a number of fundamental conditions for a union of genuine internationalists. (See Lenin Collected Works (henceforth referred to as LCW), Vol. 21, Progress Publishers, 1960, p. 165.) Since the Nashe Slovo editors came out in defence of the Organising Committee and the Bund, Lenin discontinued the talks.
Nashe Slovo’s attempts at unification ended in an “ideological-political fiasco”, as Lenin put it. Lenin discussed this question in Socialism and War, reproduced in this volume, as well as in the following articles included in LCW, Vol. 21: ‘On the London Conference’, p. 178; ‘The Question of the Unity of Internationalists’, p. 188; ‘The Collapse of Platonic Internationalism’, p. 194; ‘The State of Affairs in Russian Social-Democracy’, p. 281.
* * *
Dear Comrades:
In your letter of 6 February you proposed to us a plan of struggle against “official social-patriotism”, in connection with the proposed London Conference of socialists of the ‘allied countries’ of the Triple Entente.[1] As you have, of course, seen from our newspaper Sotsial-Demokrat, we support that struggle in general, and are conducting it. That is why we are very glad to have received your message, and accept with pleasure your proposal for a discussion of a plan of joint action.
The conference, which is said to have been planned for 15 February (we have not yet received a single document regarding it), will perhaps be postponed until 25 February or later (judging from a letter from Huysmans, who wrote of the sitting of the Executive Commission for 20 February and of the plan for personal talks between members (the Secretary) of the Executive Commission and socialists of France, Britain and Russia). The conference may possibly be contemplated as one, not of official members of the International Socialist Bureau, but as private meetings between individual ‘prominent’ socialists.
That is why the contraposition to “official social-patriotism” of a “clear, revolutionary and internationalist” point of view, a contraposition which you write of and which has our full sympathy, should be prepared for all possible contingencies (both for a conference of the official representatives of parties and for a private meeting in all its forms, both for 15 February and for any later date).
For our part and in view of the desire you have expressed, we propose the following draft declaration, which contains such a contraposition (so that the declaration may be read and printed):
The undersigned representatives of the Social-Democratic organisations of Russia (Britain, etc.) proceed from the conviction:
That the present war is, on the part, not only of Germany and Austro-Hungary, but of Britain and France (acting in alliance with tsarism), an imperialist war, i.e. a war of the epoch of the final stage in the development of capitalism, an epoch in which bourgeois states, with their national boundaries, have outlived themselves; a war aimed exclusively at the grabbing of colonies, the plundering of rival countries, and the weakening of the proletarian movement by setting the proletarians of one country against those of another.
Consequently it is the absolute duty of the socialists of all belligerent countries immediately and resolutely to carry out the Basel Resolution, viz.:
- The break-up of all national blocs and the Burgfrieden [class truce] in all countries;
- A call to the workers of all the belligerent countries to wage an energetic class struggle, both economic and political, against the bourgeoisie of their country, a bourgeoisie that is amassing unparalleled profits from war deliveries and makes use of the military authorities’ backing so as to gag the workers and intensify oppression of the latter;
- Decisive condemnation of any voting for war credits;
- Withdrawal from the bourgeois governments of Belgium and France, and recognition that entry into governments and voting for war credits are the same kind of treachery to the cause of socialism as is the entire behaviour of the German and Austrian Social-Democrats;
- That the hand be stretched out to internationalist elements in German Social-Democracy that refuse to vote for war credits, and that an international committee be set up, together with them, for the conduct of agitation for the cessation of the war, not in the spirit of the pacifists, the Christians, and the petty-bourgeois democrats, but in inseparable connection with the propaganda and organisation of mass revolutionary action by the proletarians of each country, against the governments and the bourgeoisie of that country;
- Support for any attempts by the socialists of the belligerent countries to bring about contacts and fraternisation in the fighting forces and the trenches, despite the bans imposed by the military authorities of Britain, Germany, etc.;
- A call to women socialists of the belligerent countries to intensify agitation in the direction indicated above;
- A call for support by the entire world proletariat of the struggle against tsarism, and for support for those Social-Democrats of Russia who have not only refused to vote for credits, but have shown disregard of the danger of persecution and are conducting socialist work in the spirit of internationalist and revolutionary Social-Democracy.
* * *
As for certain Social-Democratic men of letters in Russia who have come out in defence of the official social-patriotism (as, for instance, Plekhanov, Alexinsky, Maslov, and others), the undersigned disclaim all responsibility for any action or statements by them, energetically protest against the latter, and declare that, according to all available information, the Social-Democratic workers of Russia do not hold that point of view.
It goes without saying that Comrade Litvinov, our Central Committee’s official representative in the International Socialist Bureau (his address: We are sending him your letter and a copy of our reply to you. Please address him directly on all urgent matters), as he has been authorised to use his own judgement in the matter of all particular amendments, special steps in negotiations, etc.; we can merely state our complete solidarity with this comrade on all essential points.
As for the Organising Committee and the Bund, who are both represented in the International Socialist Bureau, we have grounds for apprehension that they stand for ‘official social-patriotism’ (in its Francophile or Germanophile form, or in any other that would reconcile these two tendencies). At any rate we would appreciate your kindness in sending us both your reply (your amendments, your counter-draft of the resolution, etc.) and the reply of those organisations (the Organising Committee, the Bund, etc.) that you have already addressed or intend doing so.
With comradely greetings,
Lenin
Written no later than 19 February (4 March) 1915
Editor’s note:
Convened on Lenin’s initiative, this conference was held in Bern on 27 February – 4 March 1915, and is also referred to as the Bern Conference. It was in fact a general conference of the Party, since neither a party congress nor an all-Russia conference could be convened during the war.
The Conference was attended by representatives of the RSDLP Central Committee, the RSDLP Central Organ, Sotsial-Demokrat, and delegates from RSDLP (Bolshevik) groups in Paris, Zürich, Geneva, Bern, Lausanne and from the Baugy group. Lenin was delegated by the Central Committee and the Central Organ, directed the work of the Conference, and made a report on the main item on the agenda, ‘The War and the Tasks of the Party’. The Conference adopted resolutions on war as drafted by Lenin.
* * *
Held in Switzerland, a conference of the RSDLP groups whose members are resident abroad concluded its work several days ago. Besides discussing purely foreign affairs, which we shall try briefly to comment on in the next issues of the Central Organ, the conference framed resolutions on the important and burning question of the war. We are publishing these resolutions forthwith, in the hope that they will prove of use to all Social-Democrats who are earnestly seeking the way towards live work from the present-day welter of opinions which boil down to an acknowledgement of internationalism in word, and an urge to come to terms at any cost with social-chauvinism in deed. We might add that, on the question of the ‘United States of Europe’ slogan, the discussion was purely political, it being decided that the question be deferred pending a discussion, in the press, of the economic aspect of the matter.
The Conference’s Resolutions
The conference, which stands on the basis of the Central Committee’s manifesto, as published in No. 33, lays down the following principles designed to bring system into propaganda:[2]
On the character of the war
The present war is imperialist in character. This war is the outcome of conditions in an epoch in which capitalism has reached the highest stage in its development; in which the greatest significance attaches, not only to the export of commodities, but also to the export of capital; an epoch in which the cartelisation of production and the internationalisation of economic life have assumed impressive proportions, colonial policies have brought about the almost complete partition of the globe, world capitalism’s productive forces have outgrown the limited boundaries of national and state divisions, and the objective conditions are perfectly ripe for socialism to be achieved.
The ‘Defence of the Fatherland’ slogan
The present war is, in substance, a struggle between Britain, France and Germany for the partition of colonies and for the plunder of rival countries; on the part of tsarism and the ruling classes of Russia, it is an attempt to seize Persia, Mongolia, Turkey in Asia, Constantinople, Galicia, etc. The national element in the Austro-Serbian war is an entirely secondary consideration and does not affect the general imperialist character of the war.
The entire economic and diplomatic history of the last few decades shows that both groups of belligerent nations were systematically preparing the very kind of war such as the present. The question of which group dealt the first military blow or first declared war is immaterial in any determination of the tactics of socialists. Both sides’ phrases on the defence of the fatherland, resistance to enemy invasion, a war of defence, etc. are nothing but deception of the people.
At the bottom of genuinely national wars, such as took place especially between 1789 and 1871, was a long process of mass national movements, of a struggle against absolutism and feudalism, the overthrow of national oppression, and the formation of states on a national basis, as a prerequisite of capitalist development.
The national ideology created by that epoch left a deep impress on the mass of the petty bourgeoisie and a section of the proletariat. This is now being utilised in a totally different and imperialist epoch by the sophists of the bourgeoisie, and by the traitors to socialism who are following in their wake, so as to split the workers, and divert them from their class aims and from the revolutionary struggle against the bourgeoisie.
The words in The Communist Manifesto that “the working men have no country” are today truer than ever before. Only the proletariat’s international struggle against the bourgeoisie can preserve what it has won, and open to the oppressed masses the road to a better future.
The slogans of the revolutionary Social-Democrats
The conversion of the present imperialist war into a civil war is the only correct proletarian slogan, one that follows from the experience of the Commune, and outlined in the Basel Resolution (1912); it has been dictated by all the conditions of an imperialist war between highly developed bourgeois countries.[3]
Civil war, for which revolutionary Social-Democracy today calls, is an armed struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, for the expropriation of the capitalist class in the advanced capitalist countries, and for a democratic revolution in Russia (a democratic republic, an eight-hour working day, the confiscation of the landowners’ estates), for a republic to be formed in the backward monarchist countries in general, etc.
The appalling misery of the masses, which has been created by the war, cannot fail to evoke revolutionary sentiments and movements. The civil war slogan must serve to coordinate and direct such sentiments and movements.
The organisation of the working class has been badly damaged. Nevertheless, a revolutionary crisis is maturing. After the war, the ruling classes of all countries will make a still greater effort to throw the proletariat’s emancipation movement back for decades. The task of the revolutionary Social-Democrats – both in the event of a rapid revolutionary development and in that of a protracted crisis, will not consist in renouncing lengthy and day-by-day work, or in discarding any of the old methods of the class struggle. To direct both the parliamentary and the economic struggle against opportunism, in the spirit of revolutionary struggle of the masses – such will be the task.
The following should be indicated as the first steps towards converting the present imperialist war into a civil war:
- An absolute refusal to vote for war credits, and resignation from bourgeois governments;
- A complete break with the policy of a class truce (bloc national, Burgfrieden);
- Formation of an underground organisation wherever the governments and the bourgeoisie abolish constitutional liberties by introducing martial law;
- Support for fraternisation between soldiers of the belligerent nations, in the trenches and on battlefields in general;
- Support for every kind of revolutionary mass action by the proletariat in general.
Opportunism and the collapse of the Second International
The collapse of the Second International is the collapse of socialist opportunism. The latter has grown as a product of the preceding ‘peaceful’ period in the development of the labour movement. That period taught the working class to utilise such important means of struggle as parliamentarianism and all legal opportunities, create mass economic and political organisations, a widespread labour press, etc.; on the other hand, the period engendered a tendency to repudiate the class struggle and to preach a class truce, repudiate the socialist revolution, repudiate the very principle of illegal organisations, recognise bourgeois patriotism, etc. Certain strata of the working class (the bureaucracy of the labour movement and the labour aristocracy, who get a fraction of the profits from the exploitation of the colonies and from the privileged position of their ‘fatherlands’ in the world market), as well as petty-bourgeois sympathisers within the socialist parties, have proved the social mainstay of these tendencies and channels of bourgeois influence over the proletariat.
The baneful influence of opportunism has made itself felt most strongly in the policies of most of the official Social-Democratic parties of the Second International during the war. Voting for war credits, participation in governments, the policy of a class truce, the repudiation of an illegal organisation when legality has been rescinded – all this is a violation of the International’s most important decisions, and a downright betrayal of socialism.
The Third International
The crisis created by war has exposed the real essence of opportunism as the bourgeoisie’s accomplice against the proletariat. The so-called Social-Democratic ‘Centre’, headed by Kautsky, has in practice completely slid into opportunism, behind a cover of exceedingly harmful and hypocritical phrases and a Marxism falsified to resemble imperialism. Experience shows that in Germany, for instance, a defence of the socialist standpoint has been possible only by resolute opposition to the will of the majority of the Party leadership. It would be a harmful illusion to hope that a genuinely socialist International can be restored without a full organisational severance from the opportunists.
The Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party must support all and every international and revolutionary mass action by the proletariat, and strive to bring together all anti-chauvinist elements in the International.
Pacifism and the ‘Peace’ slogan
Pacifism, the preaching of peace in the abstract, is one of the means of duping the working class. Under capitalism, particularly in its imperialist stage, wars are inevitable. On the other hand, however, Social-Democrats cannot overlook the positive significance of revolutionary wars, i.e. not imperialist wars, but such as were fought, for instance, between 1789 and 1871, with the aim of doing away with national oppression, and creating national capitalist states out of the feudal decentralised states, or such wars that may be waged to defend the conquests of the proletariat victorious in its struggle against the bourgeoisie.
At the present time, the propaganda of peace unaccompanied by a call for revolutionary mass action can only sow illusions and demoralise the proletariat, for it makes the proletariat believe that the bourgeoisie is humane, and turns it into a plaything in the hands of the secret diplomacy of the belligerent countries. In particular, the idea of a so-called democratic peace being possible without a series of revolutions is profoundly erroneous.
The defeat of the tsarist monarchy
In each country, the struggle against a government that is waging an imperialist war should not falter at the possibility of that country’s defeat as a result of revolutionary propaganda. The defeat of the government’s army weakens the government, promotes the liberation of the nationalities it oppresses, and facilitates civil war against the ruling classes.
This holds particularly true in respect of Russia. A victory for Russia will bring in its train a strengthening of reaction, both throughout the world and within the country, and will be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the peoples living in areas already seized. In view of this, we consider the defeat of Russia the lesser evil in all conditions.
The attitude towards other parties and groups
The war, which has engendered a spate of chauvinism, has revealed that the democratic (Narodnik) intelligentsia, the party of the Socialist-Revolutionaries (with complete instability of the oppositional trend, which is centred in Mysl), and the main group of liquidators (Nasha Zarya) which is supported by Plekhanov, are all in the grip of chauvinism. In practice, the Organising Committee is also on the side of chauvinism, beginning with Larin and Martov’s camouflaged support of chauvinism and ending with Axelrod’s defence of the principle of patriotism; so is the Bund, in which a Germanophile chauvinism prevails. The Brussels bloc (of 3 July 1914) has disintegrated, while the elements that are grouped around Nashe Slovo are vacillating between a Platonic sympathy with internationalism and a striving for unity, at any price, with Nasha Zarya and the Organising Committee. The same vacillation is manifest in Chkheidze’s Social-Democratic group. The latter has, on the one hand, expelled the Plekhanovite, i.e. the chauvinist, Mankov; on the other hand, it wishes to cover up, by all possible means, the chauvinism of Plekhanov, Nasha Zarya, Axelrod, the Bund, etc.
It is the task of the Social-Democratic Labour Party in Russia to consolidate the proletarian unity created in 1912-14, mainly by Pravda, and to re-establish the Social-Democratic Party organisations of the working class, on the basis of a decisive organisational break with the social-chauvinists.[4] Temporary agreements are possible only with those Social-Democrats who stand for a decisive organisational rupture with the Organising Committee, Nasha Zarya and the Bund.
26 July 1915
Editor’s note:
After the Bern conference the Bolsheviks decided to issue a magazine called Kommunist as an international organ of the Left anti-war Social-Democrats. Trotsky was invited as a contributor, showing that they considered him a principled internationalist. Trotsky refused, explaining that there were a number of differences, one of them being the use of the ‘defeat of your own government is the lesser evil’ slogan. (See ‘Open Letter to the Editorial Board of Kommunist’, June 1915, Nashe Slovo, No. 105, in Lenin’s Struggle for a Revolutionary International, John Riddell (ed.), Pathfinder, 1986, p. 365.) This article is Lenin’s reply.
We have already discussed in the Introduction the context of the differences between Lenin and Trotsky on the question of slogans and the evolution of Lenin’s use of ‘revolutionary defeatism’.
Aside from this question, Lenin’s main criticism of Trotsky in this whole period was that he entertained illusions that unity could be reached with the conciliators. In this, Lenin was absolutely correct and Trotsky admitted as much later on. In a letter to the Dutch Marxist Gorter, around the same time, Lenin says:
I congratulate you on your splendid attacks on opportunism and Kautsky. Trotsky’s principal mistake is that he does not attack this gang. (LCW, Vol. 43, pp. 453-4a)
For a full exposition of Trotsky’s views see The War and the International (which was published after the Revolution by the Soviet publishing house) and The Programme for Peace, a series of articles written in 1915-16 and then published by the Bolshevik press in June 1917.
* * *
During a reactionary war a revolutionary class cannot but desire the defeat of its government.
This is axiomatic, and disputed only by conscious partisans or helpless satellites of the social-chauvinists. Among the former, for instance, is Semkovsky of the Organising Committee (No. 2 of its Izvestia), and among the latter, Trotsky and Bukvoyed,[5] and Kautsky in Germany. To desire Russia’s defeat, Trotsky writes, is
… an uncalled-for and absolutely unjustifiable concession to the political methodology of social-patriotism, which would replace the revolutionary struggle against the war and the conditions causing it, with an orientation – highly arbitrary in the present conditions – towards the lesser evil. (Nashe Slovo, No. 105.)
This is an instance of high-flown phraseology with which Trotsky always justifies opportunism. A “revolutionary struggle against the war” is merely an empty and meaningless exclamation, something at which the heroes of the Second International excel, unless it means revolutionary action against one’s own government even in wartime. One has only to do some thinking in order to understand this. Wartime revolutionary action against one’s own government indubitably means, not only desiring its defeat, but really facilitating such a defeat. (‘Discerning reader’: note that this does not mean ‘blowing up bridges’, organising unsuccessful strikes in the war industries, and in general helping the government defeat the revolutionaries.)
The phrase-bandying Trotsky has completely lost his bearings on a simple issue. It seems to him that to desire Russia’s defeat means desiring the victory of Germany. (Bukvoyed and Semkovsky give more direct expression to the ‘thought’, or rather want of thought, which they share with Trotsky.) But Trotsky regards this as the “methodology of social-patriotism”! To help people that are unable to think for themselves, the Bern resolution (Sotsial Demokrat, No. 40) made it clear, that in all imperialist countries the proletariat must now desire the defeat of its own government.[6] Bukvoyed and Trotsky preferred to avoid this truth, while Semkovsky (an opportunist who is more useful to the working class than all the others, thanks to his naively frank reiteration of bourgeois wisdom) blurted out the following: “This is nonsense, because either Germany or Russia can win.” (Izvestia, No. 2.)
Take the example of the Paris Commune. France was defeated by Germany but the workers were defeated by Bismarck and Thiers! Had Bukvoyed and Trotsky done a little thinking, they would have realised that they have adopted the viewpoint on the war held by governments and the bourgeoisie, i.e. that they cringe to the “political methodology of social-patriotism”, to use Trotsky’s pretentious language.
A revolution in wartime means civil war; the conversion of a war between governments into a civil war is, on the one hand, facilitated by military reverses (‘defeats’) of governments; on the other hand, one cannot actually strive for such a conversion without thereby facilitating defeat.
The reason why the chauvinists (including the Organising Committee and the Chkheidze group) repudiate the defeat ‘slogan’ is that this slogan alone implies a consistent call for revolutionary action against one’s own government in wartime. Without such action, millions of ultra-revolutionary phrases such as a war against ‘the war and the conditions, etc.’ are not worth a brass farthing.
Anyone who would in all earnest refute the ‘slogan’ of defeat for one’s own government in the imperialist war should prove one of three things: (1) that the war of 1914-15 is not reactionary, or (2) that a revolution stemming from that war is impossible, or (3) that coordination and mutual aid are possible between revolutionary movements in all the belligerent countries. The third point is particularly important to Russia, a most backward country, where an immediate socialist revolution is impossible. That is why the Russian Social-Democrats had to be the first to advance the ‘theory and practice’ of the defeat ‘slogan’. The tsarist government was perfectly right in asserting that the agitation conducted by the Russian Social-Democratic Labour group in the Duma – the sole instance in the International, not only of parliamentary opposition but of genuine revolutionary anti-government agitation among the masses – that this agitation has weakened Russia’s ‘military might’ and is likely to lead to its defeat. This is a fact to which it is foolish to close one’s eyes.
The opponents of the defeat slogan are simply afraid of themselves when they refuse to recognise the very obvious fact of the inseparable link between revolutionary agitation against the government and helping bring about its defeat.
Are coordination and mutual aid possible between the Russian movement, which is revolutionary in the bourgeois-democratic sense, and the socialist movement in the West? No socialist who has publicly spoken on the matter during the last decade has doubted this, the movement among the Austrian proletariat after 17 October 1905, actually proving it possible.[7]
Ask any Social-Democrat who calls himself an internationalist whether or not he approves of an understanding between the Social-Democrats of the various belligerent countries on joint revolutionary action against all belligerent governments. Many of them will reply that it is impossible, as Kautsky has done (Die Neue Zeit, 2 October 1914), thereby fully proving his social-chauvinism. This, on the one hand, is a deliberate and vicious lie, which clashes with the generally known facts and the Basel Manifesto. On the other hand, if it were true, the opportunists would be quite right in many respects!
Many will voice their approval of such an understanding. To this we shall say: if this approval is not hypocritical, it is ridiculous to think that, in wartime and for the conduct of a war, some ‘formal’ understanding is necessary, such as the election of representatives, the arrangement of a meeting, the signing of an agreement, and the choice of the day and hour! Only the Semkovskys are capable of thinking so. An understanding on revolutionary action even in a single country, to say nothing of a number of countries, can be achieved only by the force of the example of serious revolutionary action, by launching such action and developing it. However, such action cannot be launched without desiring the defeat of the government, and without contributing to such a defeat. The conversion of the imperialist war into a civil war cannot be ‘made’, any more than a revolution can be ‘made’. It develops out of a number of diverse phenomena, aspects, features, characteristics and consequences of the imperialist war. That development is impossible without a series of military reverses and defeats of governments that receive blows from their own oppressed classes.
To repudiate the defeat slogan means allowing one’s revolutionary ardour to degenerate into an empty phrase, or sheer hypocrisy.
What is the substitute proposed for the defeat slogan? It is that of “neither victory nor defeat” (Semkovsky in Izvestia, No. 2; also the entire Organising Committee in No. 1).[8] This, however, is nothing but a paraphrase of the ‘defence of the fatherland’ slogan. It means shifting the issue to the level of a war between governments (who, according to the content of this slogan, are to keep to their old stand, “retain their positions”), and not to the level of the struggle of the oppressed classes against their governments! It means justifying the chauvinism of all the imperialist nations, whose bourgeoisie are always ready to say – and do say to the people – that they are ‘only’ fighting ‘against defeat’. “The significance of our 4 August vote was that we are not for war but against defeat”, David, a leader of the opportunists, writes in his book. The Organising Committee, together with Bukvoyed and Trotsky, stand on fully the same ground as David when they defend the ‘neither-victory nor-defeat’ slogan.
On closer examination, this slogan will be found to mean a ‘class truce’, the renunciation of the class struggle by the oppressed classes in all belligerent countries, since the class struggle is impossible without dealing blows at one’s ‘own’ bourgeoisie, one’s ‘own’ government, whereas dealing a blow at one’s own government in wartime is (for Bukvoyed’s information) high treason, means contributing to the defeat of one’s own country. Those who accept the ‘neither victory-nor-defeat’ slogan can only be hypocritically in favour of the class struggle, of ‘disrupting the class truce’; in practice, such people are renouncing an independent proletarian policy because they subordinate the proletariat of all belligerent countries to the absolutely bourgeois task of safeguarding the imperialist governments against defeat. The only policy of actual, not verbal disruption of the ‘class truce’, of acceptance of the class struggle, is for the proletariat to take advantage of the difficulties experienced by its government and its bourgeoisie in order to overthrow them. This, however, cannot be achieved or striven for, without desiring the defeat of one’s own government and without contributing to that defeat.
When, before the war, the Italian Social-Democrats raised the question of a mass strike, the bourgeoisie replied, no doubt correctly from their own point of view, that this would be high treason, and that Social-Democrats would be dealt with as traitors. That is true, just as it is true that fraternisation in the trenches is high treason. Those who write against ‘high treason’, as Bukvoyed does, or against the ‘disintegration of Russia’, as Semkovsky does, are adopting the bourgeois, not the proletarian point of view. A proletarian cannot deal a class blow at his government or hold out (in fact) a hand to his brother, the proletarian of the ‘foreign’ country which is at war with ‘our side’, without committing ‘high treason’, without contributing to the defeat, to the disintegration of his ‘own’, imperialist ‘Great’ Power.
Whoever is in favour of the slogan of ‘neither victory nor defeat’ is consciously or unconsciously a chauvinist; at best he is a conciliatory petty bourgeois, but in any case he is an enemy to proletarian policy, a partisan of the existing governments, of the present-day ruling classes.
Let us look at the question from yet another angle. The war cannot but evoke among the masses the most turbulent sentiments, which upset the usual sluggish state of mass mentality. Revolutionary tactics are impossible if they are not adjusted to these new turbulent sentiments.
What are the main currents of these turbulent sentiments? They are: (1) Horror and despair. Hence, a growth of religious feeling. Again the churches are crowded, the reactionaries joyfully declare. “Wherever there is suffering there is religion”, says the arch-reactionary Barres. He is right, too. (2) Hatred of the ‘enemy’, a sentiment that is carefully fostered by the bourgeoisie (not so much by the priests), and is of economic and political value only to the bourgeoisie. (3) Hatred of one’s own government and one’s own bourgeoisie – the sentiment of all class-conscious workers who understand, on the one hand, that war is a ‘continuation of the politics’ of imperialism, which they counter by a ‘continuation’ of their hatred of their class enemy, and, on the other hand, that ‘a war against war’ is a banal phrase unless it means a revolution against their own government. Hatred of one’s own government and one’s own bourgeoisie cannot be aroused unless their defeat is desired; one cannot be a sincere opponent of a civil (i.e. class) truce without arousing hatred of one’s own government and bourgeoisie!
Those who stand for the ‘neither-victory-nor-defeat’ slogan are in fact on the side of the bourgeoisie and the opportunists, for they do not believe in the possibility of international revolutionary action by the working class against their own governments, and do not wish to help develop such action, which, though undoubtedly difficult, is the only task worthy of a proletarian, the only socialist task. It is the proletariat in the most backward of the belligerent Great Powers which, through the medium of their party, have had to adopt – especially in view of the shameful treachery of the German and French Social-Democrats – revolutionary tactics that are quite unfeasible unless they ‘contribute to the defeat’ of their own government, but which alone lead to a European revolution, to the permanent peace of socialism, to the liberation of humanity from the horrors, misery, savagery and brutality now prevailing.
Written July – August 1915
The question of peace as an immediate programme of action for the socialists, and in this connection the question of peace terms, presents a universal interest. One can only be grateful to Berner Tagwacht for its efforts to pose the question, not from the usual petty-bourgeois national angle, but from one that is genuinely proletarian and internationalist. The editorial note in No. 73 (‘Friedenssehnsucht’), that the German Social-Democrats who wish for peace must break (sich lossagen) with the policies of the Junker government, was excellent. Also excellent was Comrade AP’s [Anton Pannekoek’s] attack (Nos. 73 and 75) on the “pompous airs of impotent phrase-mongers” (Wichtigtuerei machtloser Schönredner), who are vainly attempting to solve the peace question from the petty-bourgeois point of view.
Let us see how this question should be posed by socialists.
The peace slogan can be advanced either in connection with definite peace terms, or without any conditions at all, as a struggle, not for a definite kind of peace, but for peace in general (Frieden ohne weiteres). In the latter case, we obviously have a slogan that is not only non-socialist but entirely devoid of meaning and content. Most people are definitely in favour of peace in general, including even Kitchener, Joffre, Hindenburg, and Nicholas the Bloodstained, for each of them wants an end to the war. The trouble is that every one of them advances peace terms that are imperialist (i.e. predatory and oppressive, towards other peoples), and to the advantage of his ‘own’ nation. Slogans must be brought forward so as to enable the masses, through propaganda and agitation, to see the unbridgeable distinction between socialism and capitalism (imperialism), and not for the purpose of reconciling two hostile classes and two hostile political lines, with the aid of a formula that ‘unites’ the most different things.
To continue: can the socialists of different countries be united on definite terms of peace? If so, such terms must undoubtedly include the recognition of the right to self-determination for all nations, and also renunciation of all ‘annexations’, i.e. infringements of that right. If, however, that right is recognised only for some nations, then you are defending the privileges of certain nations, i.e. you are a nationalist and imperialist, not a socialist. If, however, that right is recognised for all nations, then you cannot single out Belgium alone, for instance; you must take all the oppressed peoples, both in Europe (the Irish in Britain, the Italians in Nice, the Danes in Germany, 57 per cent of Russia’s population, etc.) and outside of Europe, i.e. all colonies. Comrade AP has done well to remind us of them. Britain, France, and Germany have a total population of some 150 million, whereas the populations they oppress in the colonies number over 400 million! The essence of the imperialist war, i.e. a war waged for the interests of the capitalists, consists, not only in the war being waged with the aim of oppressing new nations, of carving up the colonies, but also in its being waged primarily by the advanced nations, which oppress a number of other peoples comprising the majority of the Earth’s population.
The German Social-Democrats, who justify the seizure of Belgium or reconcile themselves to it, are actually imperialists and nationalists, not Social-Democrats, since they defend the ‘right’ of the German bourgeoisie (partly also of the German workers) to oppress the Belgians, the Alsatians, the Danes, the Poles, the Negroes in Africa, etc. They are not socialists, but menials to the German bourgeoisie, whom they are aiding to rob other nations. The Belgian socialists who demand the liberation and indemnification of Belgium alone are also actually defending a demand of the Belgian bourgeoisie, who would go on plundering the 15,000,000 Congolese population and obtaining concessions and privileges in other countries. The Belgian bourgeoisie’s foreign investments amount to something like 3,000 million francs. Safeguarding the profits from these investments by using every kind of fraud and machinations is the real ‘national interest’ of ‘gallant Belgium’. The same applies in a still greater degree to Russia, Britain, France and Japan.
It follows that if the demand for the freedom of nations is not to be a false phrase covering up the imperialism and the nationalism of certain individual countries, it must be extended to all peoples and to all colonies. Such a demand, however, is obviously meaningless unless it is accompanied by a series of revolutions in all the advanced countries. Moreover, it cannot be accomplished without a successful socialist revolution.
Should this be taken to mean that socialists can remain indifferent to the peace demand that is coming from ever greater masses of the people? By no means. The slogans of the workers’ class-conscious vanguard are one thing, while the spontaneous demands of the masses are something quite different. The yearning for peace is one of the most important symptoms revealing the beginnings of disappointment in the bourgeois lie about a war of ‘liberation’, the ‘defence of the fatherland’, and similar falsehoods that the class of capitalists beguiles the mob with. This symptom should attract the closest attention from socialists. All efforts must be bent towards utilising the masses’ desire for peace. But how is it to be utilised? To recognise the peace slogan and repeat it would mean encouraging “pompous airs of impotent [and frequently what is worse: hypocritical] phrase-mongers”; it would mean deceiving the people with illusion that the existing governments, the present-day master classes, are capable – without being ‘taught’ a lesson (or rather without being eliminated) by a series of revolutions – of granting a peace in any way satisfactory to democracy and the working class. Nothing is more harmful than such deception. Nothing throws more dust in the eyes of the workers, nothing imbues them with a more deceptive idea about the absence of deep contradictions between capitalism and socialism, nothing embellishes capitalist slavery more than this deception does. No, we must make use of the desire for peace so as to explain to the masses that the benefits they expect from peace cannot be obtained without a series of revolutions.
An end to wars, peace among the nations, the cessation of pillaging and violence – such is our ideal, but only bourgeois sophists can seduce the masses with this ideal, if the latter is divorced from a direct and immediate call for revolutionary action. The ground for such propaganda is prepared; to practice that propaganda, one need only break with the opportunists, those allies of the bourgeoisie, who are hampering revolutionary work both directly (even to the extent of passing information to the authorities) and indirectly.
The slogan of self-determination of nations should also be advanced in connection with the imperialist era of capitalism. We do not stand for the status quo, or for the philistine utopia of standing aside in great wars. We stand for a revolutionary struggle against imperialism, i.e. capitalism. Imperialism consists in a striving of nations that oppress a number of other nations to extend and increase that oppression and to repartition the colonies. That is why the question of self-determination of nations today hinges on the conduct of socialists of the oppressor nations. A socialist of any of the oppressor nations (Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, the United States of America, etc.) who does not recognise and does not struggle for the right of oppressed nations to self-determination (i.e. the right to secession) is in reality a chauvinist, not a socialist.
Only this point of view can lead to a sincere and consistent struggle against imperialism, to a proletarian, not a philistine approach (today) to the national question. Only this point of view can lead to a consistent application of the principle of combating any form of the oppression of nations; it removes mistrust among the proletarians of the oppressor and oppressed nations, makes for a united international struggle for the socialist revolution (i.e. for the only accomplishable regime of complete national equality), as distinct from the philistine utopia of freedom for all small states in general, under capitalism.
This is the point of view adopted by our Party, i.e. by those Social-Democrats of Russia who have rallied around the Central Committee. This was the point of view adopted by Marx when he taught the proletariat that “no nation can be free if it oppresses other nations”.[9] It was from this point of view that Marx demanded the separation of Ireland from Britain, this in the interests of the freedom movement, not only of the Irish, but especially of the British workers.
If the socialists of Britain do not recognise and uphold Ireland’s right to secession, if the French do not do the same for Italian Nice; the Germans for Alsace-Lorraine, Danish Schleswig, and Poland; the Russians for Poland, Finland, the Ukraine, etc.; and the Poles for the Ukraine – if all the socialists of the ‘Great’ Powers, i.e. the great robber powers, do not uphold that right in respect of the colonies, it is solely because they are in fact imperialists, not socialists. It is ridiculous to cherish illusions that people who do not fight for ‘the right to self-determination’ of the oppressed nations, while they themselves belong to the oppressor nations, are capable of practising socialist policies.
Instead of leaving it to the hypocritical phrase-mongers to deceive the people by phrases and promises concerning the possibility of a democratic peace, socialists must explain to the masses the impossibility of anything resembling a democratic peace, unless there are a series of revolutions and unless a revolutionary struggle is waged in every country against the respective government. Instead of allowing the bourgeois politicians to deceive the peoples with talk about the freedom of nations, socialists must explain to the masses in the oppressor nations that they cannot hope for their liberation, as long as they help oppress other nations, and do not recognise and uphold the right of those nations to self-determination, i.e. the freedom to secede. That is the socialist, as distinct from the imperialist, policy to be applied to all countries, on the question of peace and the national question. True, this line is in most cases incompatible with the laws punishing high treason – but so is the Basel Resolution, which has been so shamefully betrayed by almost all the socialists of the oppressor nations.
The choice is between socialism and submission to the laws of Joffre and Hindenburg, between revolutionary struggle and servility to imperialism. There is no middle course. The greatest harm is caused to the proletariat by the hypocritical (or obtuse) authors of the ‘middle-course’ policy.
Endnotes
[1] The London Conference of Socialists of the ‘allied countries’ of the Triple Entente met on 14 February 1915. Its delegates represented the social-chauvinists and the pacifist groups of the Socialist parties of Britain, France, Belgium, as well as the Russian Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries.
Though the Bolsheviks were not invited to the Conference, Litvinov (Maximovich) presented to the Conference the declaration of the Central Committee of the RSDLP, which was based on Lenin’s draft. The declaration demanded the withdrawal of socialists from bourgeois governments and a complete rupture with the imperialists; it called for an end to cooperation with the imperialist governments, a resolute struggle against the latter, and condemnation of voting for war credits. The chairman interrupted Litvinov as he was reading the declaration, and deprived him of the right to speak. The latter handed the declaration over to the presidium and left the Conference hall.
[2] See VI Lenin, ‘The War and Russian Social-Democracy’.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Pravda – a legal Bolshevik daily published in St. Petersburg, founded in April 1912. Lenin directed Pravda from exile abroad. He wrote for the paper almost daily, gave instructions to the editorial board, and rallied the Party’s best literary forces around the newspaper.
Pravda was constantly persecuted by the police, eventually being closed down on 8 (21) July 1914, on the eve of the First World War. Publication was not resumed until after the February Revolution in 1917.
[5] Bukvoyed was a pseudonym of David Riazanov.
[6] See ‘The Conference of the RSDLP Groups Abroad’.
[7] This refers to the tsar’s manifesto promulgated on 17 (30) October 1905. It promised “civil liberties” and a “legislative Duma”. The manifesto was a concession wrested from the tsarist regime by the revolution, but that concession by no means decided the fate of the revolution as the liberals and Mensheviks claimed. The Bolsheviks exposed the real meaning of the manifesto and called upon the masses to continue the struggle and overthrow the autocracy.
The 1905 Russian Revolution exerted a great influence on the working-class movement in other countries, in particular in Austria-Hungary. Lenin pointed out that the news about the tsar’s concession and his manifesto, with its promise of “liberties”, “played a decisive part in the final victory of universal suffrage in Austria”.
Mass demonstrations took place in Vienna and other industrial cities in Austria-Hungary. In Prague barricades were put up. As a result, universal suffrage was introduced in Austria.
[8] Note that this was the position of the Menshevik Semkovsky, not Trotsky.
[9] See Marx and Engels, ‘On Poland’, in MECW, Vol. 6, p. 389.