Written February – March 1916
Editor’s note:
A second Socialist Zimmerwald Conference took place during the war, on 24-30 April 1916, in the small town of Kienthal in neutral Switzerland. Forty-three delegates from ten countries attended. The Left was stronger at this conference than it had been at Zimmerwald. The Kienthal Manifesto is reproduced later in this volume.
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Theses on points 5, 6, 7a, 7b, and 8 of the agenda: the struggle to end the war; the attitude towards the problems of peace, parliamentary action and mass struggles, and the convocation of the International Socialist Bureau.
The International Socialist Committee, in its notice convening the Second Conference, invited the affiliated organisations to discuss the above questions, and to send in their proposals. In reply to this invitation our Party submits the following theses.
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- Just as all war is but a continuation by violent means of the politics which the belligerent states and their ruling classes had been conducting for many years, sometimes for decades, before the outbreak of war, so the peace that ends any war can be nothing but a consideration and a record of the actual changes brought about in the relation of forces in the course of and as a result of the war.
- As long as the foundations of present, i.e. bourgeois, social relations remain intact, an imperialist war can lead only to an imperialist peace, i.e. to greater, more extensive and more intense oppression of weak nations and countries by finance capital, which grew to gigantic proportions not only in the period prior to the war, but also during the war. The objective content of the policies pursued by the bourgeoisie and the governments of both groups of Great Powers before and during the war leads to intensified economic oppression, national enslavement and political reaction. Therefore, provided the bourgeois social system remains, the peace that follows upon the war, whatever its outcome, must perpetuate this worsening of the economic and political condition of the masses.
To assume that a democratic peace may emerge from an imperialist war is, in theory, to substitute vulgar phrases for an historical study of the policies conducted before and during that war. In practice, it is to deceive the masses of the people by beclouding their political consciousness, by covering up and prettifying the real policies pursued by the ruling classes to prepare the ground for the coming peace, by concealing from the masses the main thing, namely, that a democratic peace is impossible without a whole series of revolutions.
- Socialists do not refuse to fight for reform. Even now, for example, they must vote in parliament for improvements, however slight, in the condition of the masses, for increased relief to the inhabitants of the devastated areas, for the lessening of national oppression, etc. But it is sheer bourgeois deception to preach reforms as a solution for problems for which history and the actual political situation demand revolutionary solutions. That is precisely the kind of problems the present war has brought to the fore. These are the fundamental questions of imperialism, i.e. the very existence of capitalist society, the questions of postponing the collapse of capitalism by a re-division of the world to correspond to the new relation of forces among the ‘Great’ Powers, which in the last few decades have developed, not only at fantastic speed, but – and this is particularly important – also with extreme unevenness. Real political activity working a change in the relation of social forces, and not merely deceiving the masses with words, is now possible only in one of two forms – either helping ‘one’s own’ national bourgeoisie to rob other countries (and calling this ‘defence of the fatherland’ or ‘saving the country’), or assisting the proletarian socialist revolution fostering and stirring up the ferment which is beginning among the masses in all the belligerent countries, aiding the incipient strikes and demonstrations, etc., extending and sharpening these as yet feeble expressions of revolutionary mass struggle into a general proletarian assault to overthrow the bourgeoisie.
Just as all the social-chauvinists are at present deceiving the people by covering up the real, i.e. imperialist, policy of the capitalists, which is being continued in the present war with hypocritical phrases about the ‘dishonest’ attack and ‘honest’ defence on the part of this or that group of predatory capitalists, so phrases about a ‘democratic peace’ serve only to deceive the people, as if the coming peace, which is already being prepared by the capitalists and diplomats, could ‘simply’ abolish ‘dishonest’ attacks and restore ‘honest’ relations, and as if it would not be a continuation, a development, and a perpetuation of this very imperialist policy, i.e. a policy of financial looting, colonial robbery, national oppression, political reaction and intensified capitalist exploitation in every form. What the capitalists and their diplomats now need is ‘socialist’ servants of the bourgeoisie to deafen, dupe and drug the people with talk about a ‘democratic peace’ so as to cover up the real policy of the bourgeoisie, making it difficult for the masses to realise the real nature of this policy and diverting them from the revolutionary struggle.
- The ‘democratic’ peace programme, in drafting which prominent representatives of the Second International are now engaged, is precisely such a piece of bourgeois deception and hypocrisy. For example, Huysmans at the Arnhem Congress and Kautsky in Die Neue Zeit, the most authoritative, official, and ‘theoretical’ spokesmen of this International, formulated this programme as suspension of the revolutionary struggle until the imperialist governments have concluded peace; in the meantime, there are verbal repudiation of annexations and indemnities, verbal recognition of the self-determination of nations, democratisation of foreign politics, courts of arbitration to examine international conflicts between states, disarmament, a United States of Europe, etc., etc. The real political significance of this ‘peace programme’ was revealed with particular force by Kautsky, when, to prove the “unanimity of the International” on this question, he cited the unanimous adoption by the London Conference (February 1915) and the Vienna Conference (April 1915) of the main point of this programme, namely, the “independence of nations”. Kautsky, before the whole world, thus openly gave his sanction to the deliberate deception of the people perpetrated by the social-chauvinists, who combine verbal, hypocritical recognition of ‘independence’ or self-determination of nations, recognition that binds no one and leads nowhere, with support for ‘their own’ governments in the imperialist war, notwithstanding the fact that on both sides the war is accompanied by systematic violations of the ‘independence’ of weak nations and is being waged for the purpose of consolidating and extending their oppression.
Objectively, this cheap ‘peace programme’ reinforces the subjection of the working class to the bourgeoisie by ‘reconciling’ the workers, who are beginning to develop a revolutionary struggle, with their chauvinist leaders, by underplaying the gravity of the crisis in the socialist movement to bring back the pre-war state of affairs in the socialist parties which led the majority of the leaders to desert to the bourgeoisie. The fact that this ‘Kautskyite’ policy is clothed in plausible phrases and that it is being conducted not only in Germany but in all countries, makes it all the more dangerous for the proletariat. In Britain, for instance, this policy is being pursued by the majority of the leaders; in France, by Longuet, Pressemane and others; in Russia, by Axelrod, Martov, Chkheidze and others; Chkheidze is screening the chauvinist idea of ‘defence of the country’ in the present war with the ‘save the country’ phrase, paying lip-service to Zimmerwald, on the one hand, and on the other, praising Huysmans’ notorious Arnhem speech in an official declaration by his group; but neither from the floor of the Duma nor in the press has he actually opposed the participation of the workers in the war industries committees, and remains on the staff of newspapers advocating such participation. In Italy, a similar policy is being pursued by Treves: see the threat made by Avanti!, the Central Organ of the Italian Socialist Party, of 5 March 1916, to expose Treves and other ‘reformist-possibilists’, to expose those “who resorted to every means to prevent the Party Executive and Oddino Morgari from taking action to secure unity at Zimmerwald and to create a new International”, etc., etc.
- The chief of the ‘peace questions’ at the present time is that of annexations. It most strikingly reveals the now prevailing socialist hypocrisy and the tasks of real socialist propaganda and agitation.
It is necessary to explain the meaning of annexations, and why and how socialists must fight against them, Not every appropriation of ‘foreign’ territory can be described as an annexation, for, generally speaking, socialists favour the abolition of frontiers between nations and the formation of larger states; nor can every disturbance of the status quo be described as an annexation, for this would be extremely reactionary and a mockery of the fundamental concepts of the science of history; nor can every military seizure of territory be called annexation, for socialists cannot repudiate violence and wars in the interests of the majority of the population. Annexation must apply only to the appropriation of territory against the will of the population of that territory; in other words, the concept of annexation is inseparably bound up with the concept of self-determination of nations.
The present war, however – precisely because it is an imperialist war insofar as both groups of belligerent powers are concerned – inevitably had to and did give rise to the phenomenon of the bourgeoisie and the social-chauvinists ‘fighting’ violently against annexations when this is done by an enemy state. This kind of ‘struggle against annexations’ and this kind of ‘unanimity’ on the question of annexation is plainly sheer hypocrisy. Obviously, the French socialists who defend war over Alsace-Lorraine, and the German socialists who do not demand freedom for Alsace-Lorraine, for German Poland, etc., to separate from Germany, and the Russian socialists who describe the war being waged to return Poland to tsarist bondage as a war to ‘save the country’, and who demand that Polish territory be annexed to Russia in the name of ‘peace without annexations’ etc., etc., are in fact annexationists.
To prevent the struggle against annexations from being mere hypocrisy, or an empty phrase, to make it really educate the masses in the spirit of internationalism, the question must be presented in such a way as to open the eyes of the masses to the fraud in this matter of annexations, instead of covering it up. It is not enough for the socialists of each country to pay lip-service to the equality of nations or to orate, swear and invoke the name of God to witness their opposition to annexations. The socialists of every country must demand immediate and unconditional freedom to secede for the colonies and nations oppressed by their own ‘fatherland’.
Without this condition, recognition of the self-determination of nations and principles of internationalism would, even in the Zimmerwald Manifesto, remain a dead letter, at best.
- The socialists’ ‘peace programme’, and their programme of ‘struggle to end the war’, must proceed from the exposure of the lie of the ‘democratic peace’, the pacific intentions of the belligerents, etc., now being spread among the people by demagogic ministers, pacifist bourgeois, social-chauvinists and Kautskyites in all countries. Any ‘peace programme’ will deceive the people and be a piece of hypocrisy, unless its principal object is to explain to the masses the need for a revolution, and to support, aid and develop the mass revolutionary struggles breaking out everywhere (ferment among the masses, protests, fraternisation in the trenches, strikes, demonstrations, letters from the front to relatives – for example, in France – urging them not to subscribe to war loans, etc., etc.).
It is the duty of socialists to support, extend and intensify every popular movement to end the war. But it is actually being fulfilled only by those socialists who, like Liebknecht, in their parliamentary speeches, call upon the soldiers to lay down their arms, and preach revolution and transformation of the imperialist war into a civil war for socialism.
The positive slogan we muse put forward to draw the masses into revolutionary struggle and to explain the necessity for revolutionary measures to make a ‘democratic’ peace possible, is that of repudiation of debts incurred by states.
It is not enough to hint at revolution, as the Zimmerwald Manifesto does, by saying that the workers must make sacrifices for their own and not for someone else’s cause. The masses must be shown their road clearly and definitely. They must know where to go and why. That mass revolutionary actions during the war, if successfully developed, can lead only to the transformation of the imperialist war into a civil war for socialism is obvious, and it is harmful to conceal this from the masses. On the contrary, this aim must be indicated clearly, no matter how difficult its attainment may appear now, while we are still at the beginning of the road. It is not enough to say, as the Zimmerwald Manifesto does, that “the capitalists lie when they speak about defence of the fatherland” in the present war, and that the workers in their revolutionary struggle must ignore their country’s military situation; it is necessary to state clearly what is merely hinted at here, namely, that not only the capitalists, but also the social-chauvinists and the Kautskyites lie when they allow the term ‘defence of the fatherland’ to be applied in the present, imperialist war and that revolutionary action during the war is impossible unless ‘one’s own’ government is threatened with defeat; it must be stated clearly that every defeat of the government in a reactionary war facilitates revolution, which alone is capable of bringing about a lasting and democratic peace. Finally, the masses must be told that unless they themselves create illegal organisations and a press that is free from military censorship, i.e. an illegal press, it will be quite impossible to render serious support to the incipient revolutionary struggle, to develop it, to criticise some of its steps, to correct its errors and systematically to extend and sharpen it.
- On the question of socialist parliamentary action, it must be borne in mind that the Zimmerwald resolution not only expresses sympathy for the five Social-Democratic deputies in the State Duma, who belong to our Party, and who have been sentenced to exile to Siberia, but also expresses its solidarity with their tactics. It is impossible to recognise the revolutionary struggle of the masses while resting content with exclusively legal socialist activity in parliament. This can only arouse legitimate dissatisfaction among the workers, cause them to desert Social-Democracy for anti-parliamentary anarchism or syndicalism. It must be stated clearly and publicly that Social-Democratic members of parliament must use their position not only to make speeches in parliament, but also to render all possible aid outside parliament to the underground organisation and the revolutionary struggle of the workers, and that the masses themselves, through their illegal organisation, must supervise these activities of their leaders.
- The question of the convocation of the International Socialist Bureau boils down to a fundamental question of principle, i.e. whether the old parties and the Second International can be united. Every step forward taken by the international labour movement along the road mapped out by Zimmerwald shows more and more clearly the inconsistency of the position adopted by the Zimmerwald majority; for, on the one hand, it identifies the policy of the old parties and of the Second International with bourgeois policy in the labour movement, with a policy which does not pursue the interests of the proletariat, but of the bourgeoisie (for example, the statement in the Zimmerwald Manifesto that the “capitalists” lie when they speak of “defence of the fatherland” in the present war; also the still more definite statements contained in the circular of the International Socialist Committee of 10 February 1916);[1] on the other hand, the International Socialist Committee is afraid of a break with the International Socialist Bureau and has promised officially to dissolve when the Bureau reconvenes.
We state that not only was such a promise never voted on, but it was never even discussed in Zimmerwald.
The six months since Zimmerwald have proved that actual work in the spirit of Zimmerwald – not empty phrases but work – is bound up throughout the world with the split that is becoming deeper and wider. In Germany, illegal anti-war leaflets are being printed despite the Party’s decisions, i.e. schismatically. When Deputy Otto Rühle, Karl Liebknecht’s closest friend, said openly that there were actually two parties in existence, one helping the bourgeoisie and the other fighting against it, many, including the Kautskyites, reviled him, but no one refuted him. In France, Bourderon, a member of the Socialist Party, is a determined opponent of a split, but at the same time he submits a resolution to his Party disapproving of the Party’s Central Committee and of the parliamentary group (desapprouver Comm. Adm. Perm. et Gr. Parl.), which, if adopted, would certainly have caused an immediate split. In Britain, T Russell Williams, a member of the ILP, writing in the moderate Labour Leader, openly admits that a split is inevitable and finds support in letters written by local functionaries. The example of America is perhaps still more instructive, because even there, in a neutral country, two irreconcilably hostile trends in the Socialist Party have become revealed: on the one hand, the adherents of so-called ‘preparedness’, i.e. war, militarism and navalism, and on the other, socialists like Eugene Debs, former presidential candidate from the Socialist Party, who openly preaches civil war for socialism, precisely in connection with the coming war.
Actually, there is already a split throughout the world; two entirely irreconcilable working-class policies in relation to the war have crystallised. We must not close our eyes to this fact; to do so would only result in confusing the masses of the workers, in befogging their minds, in hindering the revolutionary mass struggle with which all Zimmerwaldists officially sympathise, and in strengthening the influence over the masses of those leaders whom the International Socialist Committee, in its circular of 10 February 1916, openly accuses of “misleading” the masses and of hatching a “plot”, (Pakt) against socialism.
It is the social-chauvinists and Kautskyites of all countries who will undertake the task of restoring the bankrupt International Socialist Bureau. The task of the socialists is to explain to the masses the inevitability of a split with those who pursue a bourgeois policy under the flag of socialism.
29 February 1916
The Bern resolution of our Party declared:
Pacifism, the preaching of peace in the abstract is one of the means of duping the working class… 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. (See Sotsial-Demokrat, No. 40 and Socialism and War)[2]
The opponents of our point of view on the question of peace, who are numerous among Russian political émigrés, but not among the Russian workers, have never taken the trouble to analyse these propositions. Theoretically irrefutable, these propositions have now received striking and practical confirmation from the turn of events in our country.
Rabocheye Utro, the organ of the Petersburg legalist-liquidators, which is ideologically supported by the Organising Committee, is known to have adopted a social-chauvinist, ‘defencist’ position from its very first issue. It published the ‘defencist’ manifestos of the Petersburg and Moscow social-chauvinists. Both manifestos express, inter alia, the idea of ‘peace without annexations’, and Rabocheye Utro, No. 2, which particularly stresses that slogan, prints it in italics and calls it “a line which provides the country with a way out of the impasse”. It is calumny to call us chauvinists, the paper seems to say; we fully accept the most “democratic”, even “truly socialist” slogan of “peace without annexations”.
No doubt Nicholas the Bloody finds it to his advantage to have his loyal subjects put forward such a slogan at the present time. Tsarism, supported by the landowners and the bourgeoisie, led its armies to rob and enslave Galicia (not to mention the treaty to carve up Turkey, etc.). The armies of the no less predatory German imperialists repulsed the Russian robbers and expelled them, not only from Galicia, but also from ‘Russian Poland’. (In this struggle for the interests of both these cliques, hundreds of thousands of Russian and German workers and peasants fell on the field of battle.) The ‘peace without annexations’ slogan thus turned out to be an excellent “plaything in the hands of the secret diplomacy” of tsarism; the latter can now say: “Look, we are the aggrieved; we have been robbed, deprived of Poland; we are opposed to annexations!”
How much the Rabocheye Utro social-chauvinists ‘relish’ the part of lackeys to tsarism is particularly evident from an article in the first issue of that paper, entitled ‘Polish Emigration’.
The months of the war [we read] have engendered in the minds of broad sections of the Polish people a strong urge to independence.
The implication is that there was no such thing before the war.
The mass [this seems to be a misprint and ought to read “the idea, the thought”, etc.] of Poland’s national independence has triumphed in the social consciousness of broad sections of Polish democrats… The Polish question looms relentlessly in all its magnitude before Russian democrats…
“The Russian liberals” refuse to give straightforward answers to the vexed questions “of Poland’s independence”.
Nicholas the Bloody, Khvostov, Chelnokov, Milyukov and co. are, of course, entirely in favour of Poland’s independence – they are heart and soul in favour of it now, when this slogan, put into practice, means victory over Germany, the country which has deprived Russia of Poland. Let us not forget that before the war, the creators of ‘the Stolypin labour party’[3] were wholly and unreservedly opposed to the slogan of the self-determination of nations and Poland’s right to secede, putting up the opportunist Semkovsky for the noble purpose of defending the tsarist oppression of Poland. Now that Poland has been taken from Russia they are in favour of the ‘independence’ of Poland (from Germany; but on this point they maintain a discreet silence).
You social-chauvinist gentlemen will not deceive the class-conscious workers of Russia! Your 1915 ‘Octobrist’[4] slogan on ‘independence for Poland’ and ‘peace without annexations’ is in practice servility to tsarism, which at the present time, in February 1916 to be precise, is sorely in need of camouflaging its war with fine words about ‘peace without annexations’ (driving Hindenburg out of Poland) and ‘independence for Poland’ (independence from Wilhelm, but dependence upon Nicholas II).
The Russian Social-Democrat who has not forgotten his Programme argues differently. Russian democracy, he will say, having Great-Russian democracy in mind first of all and most of all, for it alone in Russia has always enjoyed freedom of language – this democracy has undoubtedly gained from the fact that at present Russia does not oppress Poland and hold it by force. The Russian proletariat has undoubtedly gained from the fact that it no longer oppresses a people it had helped to oppress yesterday. German democracy has undoubtedly lost, for as long as the German proletariat tolerates Germany’s oppression of Poland it will remain in a position which is worse than that of a slave – it is the position of a flunkey helping to keep others enslaved. Only the German Junkers and the bourgeoisie have really gained.
Hence, Russian Social-Democrats must expose the deception of the people by tsarism, now that the slogans of ‘peace without annexations’ and ‘independence for Poland’ are being played up in Russia, for in the present situation both these slogans express and justify the desire to continue the war. We must say: No war over Poland! The Russian people do not want to become Poland’s oppressor again!
But how can we help liberate Poland from Germany? Isn’t it our duty to do so? Of course it is, though never by supporting the imperialist war waged by Russia, be it tsarist, or bourgeois, or even bourgeois-republican, but by supporting the revolutionary proletariat of Germany, by supporting those elements in the Social-Democratic Party of Germany who are fighting against the counter-revolutionary labour party of the Südekums, and Kautsky and co. Kautsky very recently demonstrated his counter-revolutionary nature in a most flagrant manner; on 26 November 1915, he described street demonstrations as “adventurism” (just as Struve said on the eve of 9 January 1905, that there were no revolutionary people in Russia), and yet, on 30 November 1915, 10,000 working women demonstrated in Berlin!
All those who do not want to back the freedom of nations, the right of nations to self-determination, hypocritically, in the Südekum, Plekhanov, Kautsky fashion, but want to do this sincerely, must oppose the war over the oppression of Poland, they must stand for the right of the nations Russia is now oppressing, namely, the Ukraine, Finland, etc., to secede from Russia. Those who do not wish to be social-chauvinists in deed must support only those elements in the socialist parties of all countries which are working, directly, immediately, right now, for the proletarian revolution in their own countries.
Not ‘peace without annexations’, but peace to the cottages, war on the palaces; peace to the proletariat and the working people, war on the bourgeoisie!
Endnotes
[1] The ‘Appeal to All Affiliated Parties and Groups’, adopted unanimously by the enlarged meeting of the ISC in Bern on 5-9 February 1916. The delegation of the RSDLP Central Committee, led by Lenin, stated that it regarded the ‘Appeal’ as a step forward as compared with the decisions of the First International Socialist Conference at Zimmerwald, but did not find it satisfactory on all points.
[2] Both texts are included in this edition: ‘The Conference of the RSDLP Groups Abroad’; Socialism and War.
[3] A group of Mensheviks who adapted themselves to the Stolypin regime and tried to obtain the tsarist government’s permission to set up a legal ‘labour’ party, with the price being abandonment of the programme of the RSDLP.
[4] The Octobrists or the League of October Seventeenth were a counter-revolutionary party of the big merchants and industrialists, and big landowners who ran their estates on capitalist lines.