July 1916
At last there has appeared in Germany, illegally, without any adaptation to the despicable Junker censorship, a Social-Democratic pamphlet dealing with questions of the war! The author, who evidently belongs to the ‘Left-radical’ wing of the Party, takes the name of Junius (which in Latin means junior) and gives his pamphlet the title: The Crisis of Social-Democracy.[1] Appended are the ‘Theses on the Tasks of International Social-Democracy’, which have already been submitted to the Bern ISC (International Socialist Committee) and published in No. 3 of its Bulletin; the theses were drafted by the Internationale group, which in the spring of 1915 published one issue of a magazine under that title (with articles by Zetkin, Mehring, R Luxemburg, Thalheimer, Duncker, Ströbel and others), and which in the winter of 1915-16 convened a conference of Social-Democrats from all parts of Germany where these theses were adopted.[2]
The pamphlet, the author says in the introduction dated 2 January 1916, was written in April 1915, and published “without any alteration”. “Outside circumstances” had prevented its earlier publication. The pamphlet is devoted not so much to the “crisis of Social-Democracy” as to an analysis of the war, to refuting the legend of it being a war for national liberation, to proving that it is an imperialist war on the part of Germany as well as on the part of the other Great Powers, and to a revolutionary criticism of the behaviour of the official party. Written, in a very lively style, Junius’ pamphlet has undoubtedly played and will continue to play an important role in the struggle against the ex-Social-Democratic Party of Germany, which has deserted to the bourgeoisie and the Junkers, and we extend our hearty greetings to the author.
To the Russian reader who is familiar with the Social-Democratic literature in Russian published abroad in 1914-16, the Junius pamphlet does not offer anything new in principle. In reading this pamphlet and comparing the arguments of this German revolutionary Marxist with what has been stated, for example, in the manifesto of the Central Committee of our Party (September-November 1914),[3] in the Bern resolutions (March 1915)[4] and in the numerous commentaries on them, it only becomes clear that Junius’ arguments are very incomplete and that he makes two mistakes. Before proceeding with a criticism of Junius’ faults and errors we must strongly emphasise that this is done for the sake of self-criticism, which is so necessary to Marxists, and of submitting to an all-round test the views which must serve as the ideological basis of the Third International. On the whole, the Junius pamphlet is a splendid Marxist work, and its defects are, in all probability, to a certain extent accidental.
The chief defect in Junius’ pamphlet, and what marks a definite step backward compared with the legal (although immediately suppressed) magazine, Internationale, is its silence regarding the connection between social-chauvinism (the author uses neither this nor the less precise term social-patriotism) and opportunism. The author rightly speaks of the “capitulation” and collapse of the German Social-Democratic Party and of the “treachery” of its official leaders”, but he goes no further. The Internationale, however, did criticise the ‘Centre’, i.e. Kautskyism, and quite properly poured ridicule on it for its spinelessness, its prostitution of Marxism and its servility to the opportunists. This same magazine began to expose the true role of the opportunists by revealing, for example, the very important fact that on 4 August 1914, the opportunists came out with an ultimatum, a ready-made decision to vote for war credits in any case. Neither the Junius pamphlet nor the theses say anything about opportunism or about Kautskyism! This is wrong from the standpoint of theory, for it is impossible to account for the “betrayal” without linking it up with opportunism as a trend with a long history behind it, the history of the whole Second International. It is a mistake from the practical political standpoint, for it is impossible either to understand the “crisis of Social-Democracy”, or overcome it, without clarifying the meaning and the role of two trends – the openly opportunist trend (Legien, David, etc.) and the tacitly opportunist trend (Kautsky and co.). This is a step backward compared with the historic article by Otto Rühle in Vorwärts of 12 January 1916, in which he directly and openly pointed out that a split in the Social-Democratic Party of Germany was inevitable (the editors of Vorwärts replied by repeating honeyed and hypocritical Kautskyite phrases, for they were unable to advance a single material argument to disprove the assertion that there were already two parties in existence, and that these two parties could not be reconciled). It is astonishingly inconsistent, because the Internationale’s thesis No. 12 directly states that it is necessary to create a “new” International, owing to the “treachery” of the “official representatives of the socialist parties of the leading countries” and their “adoption of the principles of bourgeois imperialist policies”. It is clearly quite absurd to suggest that the old Social-Democratic Party of Germany, or the party which tolerates Legien, David and co., would participate in a “new” International.
We do not know why the Internationale group took this step backward. A very great defect in revolutionary Marxism in Germany as a whole is its lack of a compact illegal organisation that would systematically pursue its own line and educate the masses in the spirit of the new tasks; such an organisation would also have to take a definite stand on opportunism and Kautskyism. This is all the more necessary now, since the German revolutionary Social-Democrats have been deprived of their last two daily papers; the one in Bremen (Bremer Bürger-Zeitung), and the one in Brunswick (Volksfreund), both of which have gone over to the Kautskyites. The International Socialists of Germany (ISD) group alone clearly and definitely remains at its post.
Some members of the Internationale group have evidently once again slid down into the morass of unprincipled Kautskyism. Ströbel, for instance, went so far as to drop a curtsey in Die Neue Zeit to Bernstein and Kautsky! And only the other day, on 15 July 1916, he had an article in the papers entitled ‘Pacifism and Social-Democracy’, in which he defends the most vulgar type of Kautskyite pacifism. As for Junius, he strongly opposes Kautsky’s fantastic schemes like “disarmament”, “abolition of secret diplomacy”, etc. There may be two trends within the Internationale group: a revolutionary trend and a trend inclining to Kautskyism.
The first of Junius’ erroneous propositions is embodied in the fifth thesis of the Internationale group.
National wars are no longer possible in the epoch (era) of this unbridled imperialism. National interests serve only as an instrument of deception, in order to place the working masses at the service of their mortal enemy, imperialism.
The beginning of the fifth thesis, which concludes with the above statement, discusses the nature of the present war as an imperialist war. It may be that this negation of national wars generally is either an oversight, or an accidental overstatement in emphasising the perfectly correct idea that the present war is an imperialist war, not a national war. This is a mistake that must be examined, for various Social-Democrats, in view of the false assertions that the present war is a national war, have likewise mistakenly denied the possibility of any national war.
Junius is perfectly right in emphasising the decisive influence of the “imperialist atmosphere” of the present war, in maintaining that behind Serbia stands Russia, “behind Serbian nationalism stands Russian imperialism”, and that the participation of, say, Holland in the war would likewise be imperialist, for, first, Holland would be defending her colonies and, second, would be allied with one of the imperialist coalitions. That is irrefutable in respect to the present war. And when Junius stresses what for him is most important, namely, the struggle against the “phantom of national war”, “which at present holds sway over Social-Democratic policies” (p. 81), then it must be admitted that his views are both correct and fully to the point.
The only mistake, however, would be to exaggerate this truth, to depart from the Marxist requirement of concreteness, to apply the appraisal of this war to all wars possible under imperialism, to ignore the national movements against imperialism. The sole argument in defence of the thesis, “national wars are no longer possible”, is that the world has been divided among a small group of ‘great’ imperialist powers and for that reason any war, even if it starts as a national war, is transformed into an imperialist war involving the interest of one of the imperialist powers or coalitions (Junius, p. 81).
The fallacy of this argument is obvious. That all dividing lines, both in nature and society, are conventional and dynamic, and that every phenomenon might, under certain conditions, be transformed into its opposite, is, of course, a basic proposition of Marxist dialectics. A national war might be transformed into an imperialist war and vice versa. Here is an example: the wars of the Great French Revolution began as national wars and indeed were such. They were revolutionary wars – the defence of the great revolution against a coalition of counter-revolutionary monarchies. But when Napoleon founded the French Empire and subjugated a number of big, viable and long-established national European states, these national wars of the French became imperialist wars and in turn led to wars of national liberation against Napoleonic imperialism.
Only a sophist can disregard the difference between an imperialist and a national war on the grounds that one might develop into the other. Not infrequently have dialectics served – and the history of Greek philosophy is an example – as a bridge to sophistry. But we remain dialecticians and we combat sophistry not by denying the possibility of all transformations in general, but by analysing the given phenomenon in its concrete setting and development.
Transformation of the present imperialist war of 1914-16 into a national war is highly improbable, for the class that represents progressive development is the proletariat which is objectively striving to transform it into a civil war against the bourgeoisie. Also this: there is no very considerable difference between the forces of the two coalitions, and international finance capital has created a reactionary bourgeoisie everywhere. But such a transformation should not be proclaimed impossible: if the European proletariat remains impotent, say, for twenty years; if the present war ends in victories like Napoleon’s and in the subjugation of a number of viable national states; if the transition to socialism of non-European imperialism (primarily Japanese and American) is also held up for twenty years by a war between these two countries, for example, then a great national war in Europe would be possible. It would hurl Europe back several decades. That is improbable. But not impossible, for it is undialectical, unscientific and theoretically wrong to regard the course of world history as smooth and always in a forward direction, without occasional gigantic leaps back.
Further. National wars waged by colonies and semi-colonies in the imperialist era are not only probable but inevitable. About 1,000 million people, or over half of the world’s population, live in the colonies and semi-colonies (China, Turkey, Persia). The national liberation movements there are either already very strong, or are growing and maturing. Every war is the continuation of politics by other means. The continuation of national liberation politics in the colonies will inevitably take the form of national wars against imperialism. Such wars might lead to an imperialist war of the present ‘great’ imperialist powers, but on the other hand they might not. It will depend on many factors.
Example: Britain and France fought the Seven Years’ War for the possession of colonies. In other words, they waged an imperialist war (which is possible on the basis of slavery and primitive capitalism as well as on the basis of modern highly developed capitalism). France suffered defeat and lost some of her colonies. Several years later there began the national liberation war of the North American States against Britain alone. France and Spain, then in possession of some parts of the present United States, concluded a friendship treaty with the States in rebellion against Britain. This they did out of hostility to Britain, i.e. in their own imperialist interests. French troops fought the British on the side of the American forces. What we have here is a national liberation war in which imperialist rivalry is an auxiliary element, one that has no serious importance. This is the very opposite to what we see in the war of 1914-16 (the national element in the Austro-Serbian War is of no serious importance compared with the all-determining element of imperialist rivalry). It would be absurd, therefore, to apply the concept imperialism indiscriminately and conclude that national wars are “impossible”. A national liberation war, waged, for example, by an alliance of Persia, India and China against one or more of the imperialist powers, is both possible and probable, for it would follow from the national liberation movements in these countries. The transformation of such a war into an imperialist war between the present-day imperialist powers would depend upon very many concrete factors, the emergence of which it would be ridiculous to guarantee.
Third, even in Europe, national wars in the imperialist epoch cannot be regarded as impossible. The ‘epoch of imperialism’ made the present war an imperialist one and it inevitably engenders new imperialist wars (until the triumph of socialism). This ‘epoch’ has made the policies of the present great powers thoroughly imperialist, but it by no means precludes national wars on the part of, say, small (annexed or nationally-oppressed) countries against the imperialist powers, just as it does not preclude large-scale national movements in Eastern Europe. Junius takes a very sober view of Austria, for example, giving due consideration not only to ‘economic’ factors, but to the peculiar political factors. He notes “Austria’s intrinsic lack of cohesion” and recognises that the “Habsburg monarchy is not the political organisation of a bourgeois state, but only a loose syndicate of several cliques of social parasites”, and that “the liquidation of Austria-Hungary is, from the historical standpoint, only the continuation of the disintegration of Turkey and, at the same time, a requirement of the historical process of development”. Much the same applies to some of the Balkan countries and Russia. And if the ‘great’ powers are altogether exhausted in the present war, or if the revolution in Russia triumphs, national wars and even victorious national wars, are quite possible. Practical intervention by the imperialist powers is not always feasible. That is one point. Another is that the superficial view that the war of a small state against a giant is hopeless should be countered by the observation that even a hopeless war is a war just the same. Besides, certain factors operating within the ‘giant’ countries – the outbreak of revolution, for example – can turn a ‘hopeless’ war into a very ‘hopeful’ one.
We have dwelt in detail on the erroneous proposition that “national wars are no longer possible” not only because it is patently erroneous from the theoretical point of view – it would certainly be very lamentable if the ‘Left’ were to reveal a light-hearted attitude to Marxist theory at a time when the establishment of the Third International is possible only on the basis of unvulgarised Marxism. But the mistake is very harmful also from the standpoint of practical politics, for it gives rise to the absurd propaganda of ‘disarmament’, since it is alleged that there can be no wars except reactionary wars. It also gives rise to the even more ludicrous and downright reactionary attitude of indifference to national movements. And such an attitude becomes chauvinism when members of the ‘great’ European nations, that is, the nations which oppress the mass of small and colonial peoples, declare with a pseudo-scientific air: “national wars are no longer possible”! National wars against the imperialist powers are not only possible and probable; they are inevitable, progressive and revolutionary, though of course, to be successful, they require either the concerted effort of huge numbers of people in the oppressed countries (hundreds of millions in our example of India and China), or a particularly favourable conjuncture of international conditions (e.g. the fact that the imperialist powers cannot interfere, being paralysed by exhaustion, by war, by their antagonism, etc.), or the simultaneous uprising of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie in one of the big powers (this latter eventuality holds first place as the most desirable and favourable for the victory of the proletariat).
It would be unfair, however, to accuse Junius of indifference to national movements. At any rate, he remarks that among the sins of the Social-Democratic parliamentary group was its silence on the death sentence passed on a native leader in the Cameroons on charges of ‘treason’ (evidently he attempted to organise an uprising against the war). Elsewhere Junius especially emphasises (for the benefit of the Legiens, Lensches and the other scoundrels who are still listed as ‘Social-Democrats’) that colonial peoples must be regarded as nations along with all the others. Junius clearly and explicitly states:
Socialism recognised the right of every nation to independence and freedom, to independent mastery of its destinies […] international socialism recognises the right of free, independent and equal nations, but it is only socialism that can create such nations, and only it can realise the right of nations to self-determination. And this socialist slogan [Junius justly remarks] serves, like all other socialist slogans, not to justify the existing order of things, but to indicate the way forward, and to stimulate the proletariat in its active revolutionary policy of transformation… (pp. 77-8.)
It would be a grave mistake indeed to believe that all the German Left Social-Democrats have succumbed to the narrow-mindedness and caricature of Marxism now espoused by certain Dutch and Polish Social-Democrats who deny the right of nations to self-determination even under socialism. But the specific, Dutch-Polish, roots of this mistake we shall discuss elsewhere.
Another fallacious argument is advanced by Junius on the question of defence of the fatherland. This is a cardinal political question during an imperialist war. Junius has strengthened us in our conviction that our Party has indicated the only correct approach to this question; the proletariat is opposed to defence of the fatherland in this imperialist war because of its predatory, slave-owning, reactionary character, because it is possible and necessary to oppose to it (and to strive to convert it into) civil war for socialism. Junius, however, while brilliantly exposing the imperialist character of the present war as distinct from a national war, makes the very strange mistake of trying to drag a national programme into the present, non-national, war. It sounds almost incredible, but there it is.
The official Social-Democrats, both of the Legien and of the Kautsky stripe, in their servility to the bourgeoisie (who have been making the most noise about foreign ‘invasion’ in order to deceive the mass of the people as to the imperialist character of the war), have been particularly assiduous in repeating this ‘invasion’ argument. Kautsky, who now assures naive and credulous people (incidentally, through Spectator, a member of the Russian Organising Committee) that he joined the opposition at the end of 1914, continues to use this ‘argument’! To refute it, Junius quotes extremely instructive examples from history, which prove that “invasion and class struggle are not contradictory in bourgeois history, as official legend has it, but that one is the means and the expression of the other”. For example, the Bourbons in France invoked foreign invaders against the Jacobins; the bourgeoisie in 1871 invoked foreign invaders against the Commune. In his Civil War in France, Marx wrote:
The highest heroic effort of which old society is still capable is national war; and this is now proved to be a mere governmental humbug, intended to defer the struggle of classes, and to be thrown aside as soon as that class struggle bursts out into civil war.[5]
“The classical example for all times”, says Junius, referring to 1793, “is the Great French Revolution.” From all this, he draws the following conclusion:
The century of experience thus proves that it is not a state of siege, but relentless class struggle, which rouses the self-respect, the heroism and the moral strength of the mass of the people, and serves as the country’s best protection and defence against the external enemy.
Junius’ practical conclusion is this:
Yes, it is the duty of the Social-Democrats to defend their country during a great historical crisis. But the grave guilt that rests upon the Social-Democratic Reichstag group consists in their having given the lie to their own solemn declaration, made on 4 August 1914, “In the hour of danger we will not leave our fatherland unprotected”. They did leave the fatherland unprotected in the hour of its greatest peril. For their first duty to the fatherland in that hour was to show the fatherland what was really behind the present imperialist war; to sweep away the web of patriotic and diplomatic lies covering up this encroachment on the fatherland; to proclaim loudly and clearly that both victory and defeat in the present war are equally fatal for the German people; to resist to the last the throttling of the fatherland due to the state of siege; to proclaim the necessity of immediately arming the people and of allowing the people to decide the question of war and peace; resolutely to demand a permanent session of the people’s representatives for the whole duration of the war in order to guarantee vigilant control over the government by the people’s representatives, and control over the people’s representatives by the people; to demand the immediate abolition of all restrictions on political rights, for only a free people can successfully defend its country; and finally, to oppose the imperialist war programme, which is to preserve Austria and Turkey, i.e. perpetuate reaction in Europe and in Germany, with the old, truly national programme of the patriots and democrats of 1848, the programme of Marx, Engels and Lassalle – the slogan of a united, Great German Republic.
This is the banner that should have been unfurled before the country, which would have been a truly national banner of liberation, which would have been in accord with the best traditions of Germany and with the international class policy of the proletariat. […]
Hence, the grave dilemma – the interests of the fatherland or the international solidarity of the proletariat – the tragic conflict which prompted our parliamentarians to side, “with a heavy heart”, with the imperialist war, is purely imaginary, it is a bourgeois nationalist fiction. On the contrary, there is complete harmony between the interests of the country and the class interests of the proletarian International, both in time of war and in time of peace; both war and peace demand the most energetic development of the class struggle, the most determined fight for the Social-Democratic programme.
This is how Junius argues. The fallacy of his argument is strikingly evident, and since the tacit and avowed lackeys of tsarism, Plekhanov and Chkhenkeli, and perhaps even Martov and Chkheidze, may gloatingly seize upon Junius’ words, not for the purpose of establishing theoretical truth, but for the purpose of wriggling, covering up their tracks and throwing dust into the eyes of the workers, we must in greater detail elucidate the theoretical source of Junius’ error.
He suggests that the imperialist war should be “opposed” with a national programme. He urges the advanced class to turn its face to the past and not to the future! In France, in Germany and in the whole of Europe, it was a bourgeois-democratic revolution that, objectively, was on the order of the day in 1793 and 1848. Corresponding to this objective historical situation was the “truly national”, i.e. the national bourgeois programme of the then existing democracy; in 1793, this programme was carried out by the most revolutionary elements of the bourgeoisie and the plebeians, and in 1848 it was proclaimed by Marx in the name of the whole of progressive democracy. Objectively, the feudal and dynastic wars were then opposed by revolutionary-democratic wars, by wars for national liberation. This was the content of the historical tasks of that epoch.
At the present time, the objective situation in the biggest advanced states of Europe is different. Progress, if we leave out for the moment the possibility of temporary steps backward, can be made only in the direction of socialist society, only in the direction of the socialist revolution. From the standpoint of progress, from the standpoint of the progressive class, the imperialist bourgeois war, the war of highly developed capitalism, can, objectively, be opposed only with a war against the bourgeoisie, i.e. primarily civil war for power between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie; for unless such a war is waged, serious progress is impossible; this may be followed – only under certain special conditions – by a war to defend the socialist state against bourgeois states. That is why the Bolsheviks (fortunately, very few, and quickly handed over by us to the Prizyv group) who were ready to adopt the point of view of conditional defence, i.e. defence of the fatherland on condition that there was a victorious revolution and the victory of a republic in Russia, were true to the letter of Bolshevism, but betrayed its spirit; for being drawn into the imperialist war of the leading European powers, Russia would also be waging an imperialist war, even under a republican form of government!
In saying that the class struggle is the best means of defence against invasion, Junius applies Marxist dialectics only half way, taking one step on the right road and immediately deviating from it. Marxist dialectics call for a concrete analysis of each specific historical situation. It is true that class struggle is the best means of defence against invasion both when the bourgeoisie is overthrowing feudalism, and when the proletariat is overthrowing the bourgeoisie. Precisely because it is true with regard to every form of class oppression, it is too general, and therefore, inadequate in the present specific case. Civil war against the bourgeoisie is also a form of class struggle, and only this form of class struggle would have saved Europe (the whole of Europe, not only one country) from the peril of invasion. The ‘Great German Republic’, had it existed in 1914-16, would also have waged an imperialist war.
Junius came very close to the correct solution of the problem and to the correct slogan: civil war against the bourgeoisie for socialism; but, as if afraid to speak the whole truth, he turned back, to the fantasy of a ‘national war’ in 1914, 1915 and 1916. If we examine the question not from the theoretical angle but from the purely practical one, Junius’ error remains just as evident. The whole of bourgeois society, all classes in Germany, including the peasantry, were in favour of war (in all probability the same was the case in Russia – at least a majority of the well-to-do and middle peasantry and a very considerable portion of the poor peasants were evidently under the spell of bourgeois imperialism). The bourgeoisie was armed to the teeth. Under such circumstances, to ‘proclaim’ the programme of a republic, a permanent parliament, election of officers by the people (the ‘armed nation’), etc., would have meant, in practice, ‘proclaiming’ a revolution (with the wrong revolutionary programme!).
In the same breath, Junius quite rightly says that a revolution cannot be ‘made’. Revolution was on the order of the day in the 1914-16 period, it was hidden in the depths of the war, was emerging out of the war. This should have been ‘proclaimed’ in the name of the revolutionary class, and its programme should have been fearlessly and fully announced – socialism is impossible in time of war without civil war against the arch-reactionary, criminal bourgeoisie, which condemns the people to untold disaster. Systematic, consistent, practical measures should have been planned, which could be carried out no matter at what pace the revolutionary crisis might develop, and which would be in line with the maturing revolution. These measures are indicated in our Party’s resolution: (1) voting against war credits; (2) violation of the ‘class truce’; (3) creation of an illegal organisation; (4) fraternisation among the soldiers; (5) support for all the revolutionary actions of the masses.[6] The success of all these steps inevitably leads to civil war.
The promulgation of a great historical programme was undoubtedly of tremendous significance; not the old national German programme, which became obsolete in 1914, 1915 and 1916, but the proletarian internationalist and socialist programme. “You, the bourgeoisie, are fighting for plunder; we, the workers of all the belligerent countries, declare war upon you for, socialism” – that’s the sort of speech that should have been delivered in the parliaments on 4 August 1914, by socialists who had not betrayed the proletariat, as the Legiens, Davids, Kautskys, Plekhanovs, Guesdes, Sembats, etc., had done.
Evidently Junius’ error is due to two kinds of mistakes in reasoning. There is no doubt that Junius is decidedly opposed to the imperialist war and is decidedly in favour of revolutionary tactics; and all the gloating of the Plekhanovs over Junius’ ‘defencism’ cannot wipe out this fact. Possible and probable calumnies of this kind must be answered promptly and bluntly.
But, first, Junius has not completely rid himself of the ‘environment’ of the German Social-Democrats, even the Leftists, who are afraid of a split, who are afraid to follow revolutionary slogans to their logical conclusions.[7] This is a false fear, and the Left Social-Democrats of Germany must and will rid themselves of it. They are sure to do so in the course of their struggle against the social-chauvinists. The fact is that they are fighting against their own social-chauvinists resolutely, firmly and sincerely, and this is the tremendous, the fundamental difference in principle between them and the Martovs and Chkheidzes, who, with one hand (à la Skobelev) unfurl a banner bearing the greeting, “To the Liebknechts of All Countries”, and with the other hand tenderly embrace Chkhenkeli and Potresov!
Secondly, Junius apparently wanted to achieve something in the nature of the Menshevik ‘theory of stages’, of sad memory; he wanted to begin to carry out the revolutionary programme from the end that is ‘more suitable’, ‘more popular’ and more acceptable to the petty bourgeoisie. It is something like a plan ‘to outwit history’, to outwit the philistines. He seems to say, surely, nobody would oppose a better way of defending the real fatherland; and the real fatherland is the Great German Republic, and the best defence is a militia, a permanent parliament, etc. Once it was accepted, that programme would automatically lead to the next stage – to the socialist revolution.
Probably, it was reasoning of this kind that consciously or semi-consciously determined Junius’ tactics. Needless to say, such reasoning is fallacious. Junius’ pamphlet conjures up in our mind the picture of a lone man who has no comrades in an illegal organisation accustomed to thinking out revolutionary slogans to their conclusion and systematically educating the masses in their spirit. But this shortcoming – it would be a grave error to forget this – is not Junius’ personal failing, but the result of the weakness of all the German Leftists, who have become entangled in the vile net of Kautskyite hypocrisy, pedantry and ‘friendliness’ for the opportunists. Junius’ adherents have managed, in spite of their isolation, to begin the publication of illegal leaflets and to start the war against Kautskyism. They will succeed in going further along the right road.
Written August – October 1916
“No one can discredit revolutionary Social-Democracy as long as it does not discredit itself.” That maxim always comes to mind, and must always be borne in mind, when any major theoretical or tactical proposition of Marxism is victorious, or even placed on the order of the day, and when, besides outright and resolute opponents, it is assailed by friends who hopelessly discredit and disparage it and turn it into a caricature. That has happened time and again in the history of the Russian Social-Democratic movement. In the early ’nineties, the victory of Marxism in the revolutionary movement was attended by the emergence of a caricature of Marxism in the shape of Economism, or ‘strikeism’. The Iskrists would not have been able to uphold the fundamentals of proletarian theory and policy, either against petty-bourgeois Narodism or bourgeois liberalism, without long years of struggle against Economism. It was the same with Bolshevism, which triumphed in the mass labour movement in 1905 due, among other things, to correct application of the boycott of the tsarist Duma slogan in the autumn of 1905, when the key battles of the Russian revolution were being fought.[8] Bolshevism had to face – and overcome by struggle – another caricature in 1908-10, when Alexinsky and others noisily opposed participation in the Third Duma.[9]
It is the same today too. Recognition of the present war as imperialist and emphasis on its close connection with the imperialist era of capitalism encounters not only resolute opponents, but also irresolute friends, for whom the word ‘imperialism’ has become all the rage. Having memorised the word, they are offering the workers hopelessly confused theories and reviving many of the old mistakes of the old Economism. Capitalism has triumphed – therefore there is no need to bother with political problems, the old Economists reasoned in 1894 – 1901, falling into rejection of the political struggle in Russia. Imperialism has triumphed – therefore there is no need to bother with the problems of political democracy, reason the present-day imperialist Economists. Kievsky’s article, printed above, merits attention as a sample of these sentiments, as one such caricature of Marxism, as the first attempt to provide anything like an integral literary exposition of the vacillation that has been apparent in certain circles of our Party abroad since early 1915.[10]
If imperialist Economism were to spread among the Marxists, who in the present great crisis of socialism have resolutely come out against social-chauvinism and for revolutionary internationalism, that would be a very grave blow to our trend – and to our Party. For it would discredit it from within, from its own ranks, would make it a vehicle of caricaturised Marxism. It is therefore necessary to thoroughly discuss at least the most important of Kievsky’s numerous errors, regardless of how ‘uninteresting’ this may be, and regardless of the fact, also, that all too often we shall have to tediously explain elementary truths which the thoughtful and attentive reader has learned and understood long since from our literature of 1914 and 1915.
We shall begin with the ‘central’ point of Kievsky’s disquisitions in order to immediately bring to the reader the very ‘substance’ of this new trend of imperialist Economism.
1. The Marxist Attitude Towards War and ‘Defence of the Fatherland’
Kievsky is convinced, and wants to convince his reader, that he “disagrees” only with §9 of our Party Programme dealing with national self-determination. He is very angry and tries to refute the charge that on the question of democracy he is departing from the fundamentals of Marxism in general, that he has “betrayed” (the angry quotation marks are Kievsky’s) Marxism on basic issues. But the point is that the moment our author begins to discuss his allegedly partial disagreement on an individual issue, the moment he adduces his arguments, considerations, etc., he immediately reveals that he is deviating from Marxism all along the line. Take §b (Section 2) of his article. “This demand [i.e. national self-determination] directly [!!] leads to social-patriotism”, our author proclaims, explaining that the “treasonous” slogan of fatherland defence follows “quite [!] logically [!] from the right of nations to self-determination”… In his opinion, self-determination implies
… sanctioning the treason of the French and Belgian social-patriots, who are defending this independence [the national independence of France and Belgium] with arms in hand! They are doing what the supporters of ‘self-determination’ only advocate […] Defence of the fatherland belongs to the arsenal of our worst enemies […] We categorically refuse to understand how one can simultaneously be against defence of the fatherland and for self-determination, against the fatherland and for it.
That’s Kievsky. He obviously has not understood our resolutions against the fatherland defence slogan in the present war. It is therefore necessary again to explain the meaning of what is so clearly set out in our resolutions.
The resolution our Party adopted at its Bern Conference in March 1915, ‘On the Defence of the Fatherland Slogan’, begins with the words: “The present war is, in substance…”[11]
That the resolution deals with the present war could not have been put more plainly. The words “in substance” indicate that we must distinguish between the apparent and the real, between appearance and substance, between the word and the deed. The purpose of all talk about defence of the fatherland in this war is mendaciously to present as national the imperialist war of 1914-16, waged for the division of colonies, the plunder of foreign lands, etc. And to obviate even the slightest possibility of distorting our views, we added to the resolution a special paragraph on “genuinely national wars”, which “took place especially (especially does not mean exclusively!) between 1789 and 1871”.
The resolution explains that the “basis” of these “genuinely” national wars was a “long process of mass national movements, of a struggle against absolutism and feudalism, the overthrow of national oppression…”
Clear, it would seem. The present imperialist war stems from the general conditions of the imperialist era and is not accidental, not an exception, not a deviation from the general and typical. Talk of defence of the fatherland is therefore a deception of the people, for this war is not a national war. In a genuinely national war the words ‘defence of the fatherland’ are not a deception and we are not opposed to it. Such (genuinely national) wars took place “especially” in 1789 – 1871, and our resolution, while not denying by a single word that they are possible now too, explains how we should distinguish a genuinely national from an imperialist war covered by deceptive national slogans. Specifically, in order to distinguish the two we must examine whether the “basis” of the war is a “long process of mass national movements”, the “overthrow of national oppression”. The resolution on ‘pacifism’ expressly states:
Social-Democrats cannot overlook the positive significance of revolutionary wars, i.e. not imperialist wars, but such as were conducted, for instance [note: “for instance”], between 1789 and 1871 with the aim of doing away with national oppression…
Could our 1915 Party resolution speak of the national wars waged from 1789 to 1871 and say that we do not deny the positive significance of such wars if they were not considered possible today too? Certainly not.
A commentary, or popular explanation, of our Party resolutions is given in the Lenin and Zinoviev pamphlet Socialism and War. It plainly states, on page 5, that “socialists have regarded wars ‘for the defence of the fatherland’, or ‘defensive’ wars, as legitimate, progressive and just” only in the sense of “overthrowing alien oppression”. It cites an example: Persia against Russia, “etc.”, and says:
These would be just, and defensive wars, irrespective of who would lie the first to attack; any socialist would wish the oppressed, dependent and unequal states victory over the oppressor, slave-holding and predatory ‘Great’ Powers.
The pamphlet appeared in August 1915 and there are German and French translations. Kievsky is fully aware of its contents. And never, on no occasion, has he or anyone else challenged the resolution on the defence of the fatherland slogan, or the resolution on pacifism, or their interpretation in the pamphlet. Never, not once! We are therefore entitled to ask: are we slandering Kievsky when we say that he has absolutely failed to understand Marxism if, beginning with March 1915, he has not challenged our Party’s views on the war, whereas now, in August 1916, in an article on self-determination, i.e. on a supposedly partial issue, he reveals an amazing lack of understanding of a general issue?
Kievsky says that the fatherland defence slogan is “treasonous”. We can confidently assure him that every slogan is and always will be “treasonous” for those who mechanically repeat it without understanding its meaning, without giving it proper thought, for those who merely memorise the words without analysing their implications.
What, generally speaking, is ‘defence of the fatherland’? Is it a scientific concept relating to economics, politics, etc.? No. It is a much bandied about current expression, sometimes simply a philistine phrase, intended to justify the war. Nothing more. Absolutely nothing! The term ‘treasonous’ can apply only in the sense that the philistine is capable of justifying any war by pleading ‘we are defending our fatherland’, whereas Marxism, which does not degrade itself by stooping to the philistine’s level, requires an historical analysis of each war in order to determine whether or not that particular war can be considered progressive, whether it serves the interests of democracy and the proletariat and, in that sense, is legitimate, just, etc.
The ‘defence of the fatherland’ slogan is all too often unconscious philistine justification of war and reveals inability to analyse the meaning and implications of a particular war and see it in historical perspective.
Marxism makes that analysis and says: if the ‘substance’ of a war is, for example, the overthrow of alien oppression (which was especially typical of Europe in 1789 – 1871), then such a war is progressive as far as the oppressed state or nation is concerned. If, however, the ‘substance’ of a war is redivision of colonies, division of booty, plunder of foreign lands (and such is the war of 1914-16), then all talk of defending the fatherland is ‘sheer deception of the people’.
How, then, can we disclose and define the ‘substance’ of a war? War is the continuation of policy. Consequently, we must examine the policy pursued prior to the war, the policy that led to and brought about the war. If it was an imperialist policy, i.e. one designed to safeguard the interests of finance capital and rob and oppress colonies and foreign countries, then the war stemming from that policy is imperialist. If it was a national liberation policy, i.e. one expressive of the mass movement against national oppression, then the war stemming from that policy is a war of national liberation.
The philistine does not realise that war is ‘the continuation of policy’, and consequently limits himself to the formula that ‘the enemy has attacked us’, ‘the enemy has invaded my country’, without stopping to think what issues are at stake in the war, which classes are waging it, and with what political objects. Kievsky stoops right down to the level of such a philistine when he declares that Belgium has been occupied by the Germans, and hence, from the point of view of self-determination, the “Belgian social-patriots are right”, or: the Germans have occupied part of France, hence, “Guesde can be satisfied”, for “what is involved is territory populated by his nation” (and not by an alien nation).
For the philistine the important thing is where the armies stand, who is winning at the moment. For the Marxist the important thing is what issues are at stake in this war, during which first one, then the other army may be on top.
What is the present war being fought over? The answer is given in our resolution (based on the policy the belligerent powers pursued for decades prior to the war). England, France and Russia are fighting to keep the colonies they have seized, to be able to rob Turkey, etc. Germany is fighting to take over these colonies and to be able herself to rob Turkey, etc. Let us suppose even that the Germans take Paris or St. Petersburg. Would that change the nature of the present war? Not at all. The Germans’ purpose – and more important, the policy that would bring it to realisation if they were to win – is to seize the colonies, establish domination over Turkey, annex areas populated by other nations, for instance, Poland, etc. It is definitely not to bring the French or the Russians under foreign domination. The real essence of the present war is not national but imperialist. In other words, it is not being fought to enable one side to overthrow national oppression, which the other side is trying to maintain. It is a war between two groups of oppressors, between two freebooters over the division of their booty, over who shall rob Turkey and the colonies.
In short: a war between imperialist Great Powers (i.e. powers that oppress a whole number of nations and enmesh them in dependence on finance capital, etc.), or in alliance with the Great Powers, is an imperialist war. Such is the war of 1914-16. And in this war ‘defence of the fatherland’ is a deception, an attempt to justify the war.
A war against imperialist, i.e. oppressing, powers by oppressed (for example, colonial) nations is a genuine national war. It is possible today too. ‘Defence of the fatherland’ in a war waged by an oppressed nation against a foreign oppressor is not a deception. Socialists are not opposed to ‘defence of the fatherland’ in such a war.
National self-determination is the same as the struggle for complete national liberation, for complete independence, against annexation, and socialists cannot – without ceasing to be socialists – reject such a struggle in whatever form, right down to an uprising or war.
Kievsky thinks he is arguing against Plekhanov: it was Plekhanov who pointed to the link between self-determination and ‘defence of the fatherland’! Kievsky believed Plekhanov that the link was really of the kind Plekhanov made it out to be. And having believed him, Kievsky took fright and decided that he must reject self-determination so as not to fall into Plekhanov’s conclusions… There is great trust in Plekhanov, and great fright, but there is no trace of thought about the substance of Plekhanov’s mistake!
The social-chauvinists plead self-determination in order to present this war as a national war. There is only one correct way of combating them: we must show that the war is being fought not to liberate nations, but to determine which of the great robbers will oppress more nations. To fall into negation of wars really waged for liberating nations is to present the worst possible caricature of Marxism. Plekhanov and the French social-chauvinists harp on the republic in France in order to justify its ‘defence’ against the German monarchy. If we were to follow Kievsky’s line of reasoning, we would have to oppose either the republic or a war really fought to preserve the republic!! The German social-chauvinists point to universal suffrage and compulsory primary education in their country to justify its ‘defence’ against tsarism. If we were to follow Kievsky’s line of reasoning, we would have to oppose either universal suffrage and compulsory primary education or a war really fought to safe guard political freedom against attempts to abolish it!
Up to the 1914-16 war, Karl Kautsky was a Marxist, and many of his major writings and statements will always remain models of Marxism. On 26 August 1910, he wrote in Die Neue Zeit, in reference to the imminent war:
In a war between Germany and England the issue is not democracy, but world domination, i.e. exploitation of the world. That is not an issue on which Social-Democrats can side with the exploiters of their nation. (Neue Zeit, 28. Jahrg., Bd. 2, S. 776.)
There you have an excellent Marxist formulation, one that fully coincides with our own and fully exposes the present-day Kautsky, who has turned from Marxism to defence of social-chauvinism. It is a formulation (we shall have occasion to revert to it in other articles) that clearly brings out the principles underlying the Marxist attitude towards war. War is the continuation of policy. Hence, once there is a struggle for democracy, a war for democracy is possible. National self-determination is but one of the democratic demands and does not, in principle, differ from other democratic demands. ‘World domination’ is, to put it briefly, the substance of imperialist policy, of which imperialist war is the continuation. Rejection of ‘defence of the fatherland’ in a democratic war, i.e. rejecting participation in such a war, is an absurdity that has nothing in common with Marxism. To embellish imperialist war by applying to it the concept of ‘defence of the fatherland’, i.e. by presenting it as a democratic war, is to deceive the workers and side with the reactionary bourgeoisie.
September 1916
Editor’s note:
The ‘Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution’ (in a letter Lenin refers to it as ‘On Disarmament’) was written in German and meant for publication in the Swiss, Swedish and Norwegian Left Social-Democratic press. However, it was not published at the time. Lenin somewhat re-edited it for publication in Russian which appeared with the name ‘The ‘Disarmament’ Slogan’ in Sbornik Sotsial-Demokrata, No. 2, December 1916.
The original, German text appeared in Jugend-Internationale, organ of the International League of Socialist Youth Organisations, Nos. 9 and 10, September and October 1917 under the heading ‘Das Militärprogramm der proletarischen Revolution’. The article was printed with this editorial foreword:
In our day, when Lenin is one of the most spoken-of leaders of the Russian revolution, the following article by this veteran revolutionary stalwart, in which he sets out a large part of his political programme, is of especial interest. We received it shortly before his departure from Zürich in April 1917.
The heading was apparently given by the editors of Jugend-Internationale.
* * *
Among the Dutch, Scandinavian and Swiss revolutionary Social-Democrats who are combating the social-chauvinist lies about ‘defence of the fatherland’ in the present imperialist war, there have been voices in favour of replacing the old Social-Democratic minimum-programme demand for a ‘militia’, or ‘the armed nation’, by a new demand: ‘disarmament’. The Jugend-Internationale has inaugurated a discussion on this issue and published, in No. 3, an editorial supporting disarmament. There is also, we regret to note, a concession to the ‘disarmament’ idea in R Grimm’s latest theses. Discussions have been started in the periodicals Neues Leben and Vorbote.
Let us take a closer look at the position of the disarmament advocates.
I
Their principal argument is that the disarmament demand is the clearest, most decisive, most consistent expression of the struggle against all militarism and against all war.
But in this principal argument lies the disarmament advocates’ principal error. Socialists cannot, without ceasing to be socialists, be opposed to all war.
Firstly, socialists have never been, nor can they ever be, opposed to revolutionary wars. The bourgeoisie of the imperialist ‘Great’ Powers has become thoroughly reactionary, and the war this bourgeoisie is now waging we regard as a reactionary, slave-owners’ and criminal war. But what about a war against this bourgeoisie? A war, for instance, waged by peoples oppressed by and dependent upon this bourgeoisie, or by colonial peoples, for liberation? In §5 of the Internationale group theses we read: “National wars are no longer possible in the era of this unbridled imperialism.” That is obviously wrong.
The history of the twentieth century, this century of ‘unbridled imperialism’, is replete with colonial wars. But what we Europeans, the imperialist oppressors of the majority of the world’s peoples, with our habitual, despicable European chauvinism, call ‘colonial wars’ are often national wars, or national rebellions of these oppressed peoples. One of the main features of imperialism is that it accelerates capitalist development in the most backward countries, and thereby extends and intensifies the struggle against national oppression. That is a fact, and from it inevitably follows that imperialism must often give rise to national wars. Junius, who defends the above-quoted ‘theses’ in his pamphlet, says that in the imperialist era every national war against an imperialist Great Power leads to intervention of a rival imperialist Great Power. Every national war is thus turned into an imperialist war. But that argument is wrong, too. This can happen, but does not always happen. Many colonial wars between 1900 and 1914 did not follow that course. And it would be simply ridiculous to declare, for instance, that after the present war, if it ends in the utter exhaustion of all the belligerents, “there can be no” national, progress, revolutionary wars “of any kind”, waged, say, by China in alliance with India, Persia, Siam, etc., against the Great Powers.
To deny all possibility of national wars under imperialism is wrong in theory, obviously mistaken historically, and tantamount to European chauvinism in practice: we who belong to nations that oppress hundreds of millions in Europe, Africa, Asia, etc., are invited to tell the oppressed peoples that it is ‘impossible’ for them to wage war against ‘our’ nations!
Secondly, civil war is just as much a war as any other. He who accepts the class struggle cannot fail to accept civil wars, which in every class society are the natural, and under certain conditions inevitable, continuation, development and intensification of the class struggle. That has been confirmed by every great revolution. To repudiate civil war, or to forget about it, is to fall into extreme opportunism and renounce the socialist revolution.
Thirdly, the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all wars in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases, a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of 12 September 1882, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”. What he had in mind was defence of the victorious proletariat against the bourgeoisie of other countries.
Only after we have overthrown, finally vanquished and expropriated the bourgeoisie of the whole world, and not merely in one country, will wars become impossible. And from a scientific point of view it would be utterly wrong – and utterly un-revolutionary – for us to evade or gloss over the most important thing: crushing the resistance of the bourgeoisie – the most difficult task, and one demanding the greatest amount of fighting, in the transition to socialism. The ‘social’ parsons and opportunists are always ready to build dreams of future peaceful socialism. But the very thing that distinguishes them from revolutionary Social-Democrats is that they refuse to think about and reflect on the fierce class struggle and class wars needed to achieve that beautiful future.
We must not allow ourselves to be led astray by words. The term ‘defence of the fatherland’, for instance, is hateful to many because both avowed opportunists and Kautskyites use it to cover up and gloss over the bourgeois lie about the present predatory war. This is a fact. But it does not follow that we must no longer see through to the meaning of political slogans. To accept ‘defence of the fatherland’ in the present war is no more nor less than to accept it as a ‘just’ war, a war in the interests of the proletariat – no more nor less, we repeat, because invasions may occur in any war. It would be sheer folly to repudiate ‘defence of the fatherland’ on the part of oppressed nations in their wars against the imperialist Great Powers, or on the part of a victorious proletariat in its war against some Galliffet of a bourgeois state.[12]
Theoretically, it would be absolutely wrong to forget that every war is but the continuation of policy by other means. The present imperialist war is the continuation of the imperialist policies of two groups of Great Powers, and these policies were engendered and fostered by the sum total of the relationships of the imperialist era. But this very era must also necessarily engender and foster policies of struggle against national oppression and of proletarian struggle against the bourgeoisie and, consequently, also the possibility and inevitability, first, of revolutionary national rebellions and wars; second, of proletarian wars and rebellions against the bourgeoisie; and, third, of a combination of both kinds of revolutionary war, etc.
II
To this must be added the following general consideration.
An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves. We cannot, unless we have become bourgeois pacifists or opportunists, forget that we are living in a class society from which there is no way out, nor can there be, save through the class struggle. In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labour, the oppressor class is always armed. Not only the modern standing army, but even the modern militia – and even in the most democratic bourgeois republics, Switzerland, for instance – represent the bourgeoisie armed against the proletariat. That is such an elementary truth that it is hardly necessary to dwell upon it. Suffice it to point to the use of troops against strikers in all capitalist countries.
A bourgeoisie armed against the proletariat is one of the biggest fundamental and cardinal facts of modern capitalist society. And in face of this fact, revolutionary Social-Democrats are urged to ‘demand’ ‘disarmament’! That is tantamount of complete abandonment of the class-struggle point of view, to renunciation of all thought of revolution. Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.
If the present war rouses among the reactionary Christian socialists, among the whimpering petty bourgeoisie, only horror and fright, only aversion to all use of arms, to bloodshed, death, etc., then we must say: capitalist society is and has always been horror without end. If this most reactionary of all wars is now preparing for that society an end to horror, we have no reason to fall into despair. But the disarmament ‘demand’, or more correctly, the dream of disarmament, is, objectively, nothing but an expression of despair at a time when, as everyone can see, the bourgeoisie itself is paving the way for the only legitimate and revolutionary war – civil war against the imperialist bourgeoisie.
A lifeless theory, some might say, but we would remind them of two world-historical facts: the role of the trusts and the employment of women in industry, on the one hand, and the Paris Commune of 1871 and the December 1905 uprising in Russia, on the other.
The bourgeoisie makes it its business to promote trusts, drive women and children into the factories, subject them to corruption and suffering, condemn them to extreme poverty. We do not ‘demand’ such development, we do not ‘support’ it. We fight it. But how do we fight? We explain that trusts and the employment of women in industry are progressive. We do not want a return to the handicraft system, pre-monopoly capitalism, domestic drudgery for women. Forward through the trusts, etc., and beyond them to socialism!
With the necessary changes that argument is applicable also to the present militarisation of the population. Today the imperialist bourgeoisie militarises the youth as well as the adults; tomorrow, it may begin militarising the women. Our attitude should be: All the better! Full speed ahead! For the faster we move, the nearer shall we be to the armed uprising against capitalism. How can Social-Democrats give way to fear of the militarisation of the youth, etc., if they have not forgotten the example of the Paris Commune? This is not a ‘lifeless theory’ or a dream. It is a fact. And it would be a sorry state of affairs indeed if, all the economic and political facts notwithstanding, Social-Democrats began to doubt that the imperialist era and imperialist wars must inevitably bring about a repetition of such facts.
A certain bourgeois observer of the Paris Commune, writing to an English newspaper in May 1871, said: “If the French nation consisted entirely of women, what a terrible nation it would be!” Woman and teenage children fought in the Paris Commune side by side with the men. It will be no different in the coming battles for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. Proletarian women will not look on passively as poorly armed or unarmed workers are shot down by the well-armed forces of the bourgeoisie. They will take to arms, as they did in 1871, and from the cowed nations of today – or more correctly, from the present-day labour movement, disorganised more by the opportunists than by the governments – there will undoubtedly arise, sooner or later, but with absolute certainty, an international league of the ‘terrible nations’ of the revolutionary proletariat.
The whole of social life is now being militarised. Imperialism is a fierce struggle of the Great Powers for the division and redivision of the world. It is therefore bound to lead to further militarisation in all countries, even in neutral and small ones. How will proletarian women oppose this? Only by cursing all war and everything military, only by demanding disarmament? The women of an oppressed and really revolutionary class will never accept that shameful role. They will say to their sons: “You will soon be grown up. You will be given a gun. Take it and learn the military art properly. The proletarians need this knowledge not to shoot your brothers, the workers of other countries, as is being done in the present war, and as the traitors to socialism are telling you to do. They need it to fight the bourgeoisie of their own country, to put an end to exploitation, poverty and war, and not by pious wishes, but by defeating and disarming the bourgeoisie.”
If we are to shun such propaganda, precisely such propaganda, in connection with the present war, then we had better stop using fine words about international revolutionary Social-Democracy, the socialist revolution and war against war.
III
The disarmament advocates object to the ‘armed nation’ clause in the programme also because it more easily leads, they allege, to concessions to opportunism. The cardinal point, namely, the relation of disarmament to the class struggle and to the social revolution, we have examined above. We shall now examine the relation between the disarmament demand and opportunism. One of the chief reasons why it is unacceptable is precisely that, together with the illusions it creates, it inevitably weakens and devitalises our struggle against opportunism.
Undoubtedly, this struggle is the main, immediate question now confusing the International. Struggle against imperialism that is not closely linked with the struggle against opportunism is either an empty phrase or a fraud. One of the main defects of Zimmerwald and Kienthal – on the main reasons why these embryos of the Third International may possibly end in a fiasco – is that the question of fighting opportunism was not even raised openly, let alone solved in the sense of proclaiming the need to break with the opportunists. Opportunism has triumphed – temporarily – in the European labour movement. Its two main shades are apparent in all the big countries: first, the avowed, cynical, and therefore less dangerous social-imperialism of Messrs. Plekhanov, Scheidemann, Legien, Albert Thomas and Sembat, Vandervelde, Hyndman, Henderson, et al.; second, the concealed, Kautskyite opportunism: Kautsky-Haase and the Social-Democratic Labour Group in Germany; Longuet, Pressemane, Mayeras, et al., in France; Ramsay MacDonald and the other leaders of the Independent Labour Party in England; Martov, Chkheidze, et al., in Russia; Treves and the other so-called Left reformists in Italy.
Avowed opportunism is openly and directly opposed to revolution and to incipient revolutionary movements and outbursts. It is in direct alliance with the governments, varied as the forms of this alliance may be – from accepting ministerial posts to participation in the war industries committees (in Russia).[13] The masked opportunists, the Kautskyites, are much more harmful and dangerous to the labour movement, because they hide their advocacy of alliance with the former under a cloak of plausible, pseudo-‘Marxist’ catchwords and pacifist slogans. The fight against both these forms of prevailing opportunism must be conducted in all fields of proletarian politics: parliament, the trade unions, strikes, the armed forces, etc. The main distinguishing feature of both these forms of prevailing opportunism is the concrete question of the connection between the present war and revolution, and the other concrete questions of revolution, are hushed up, concealed, or treated with an eye to police prohibitions. And this despite the fact that before the war the connection between this impending war and the proletarian revolution was emphasised innumerable times, both unofficially and officially in the Basel Manifesto. The main defect of the disarmament demand is its evasion of all the concrete questions of revolution. Or do the advocates of disarmament stand for an altogether new kind of revolution, unarmed revolution?
To proceed. We are by no means opposed to the fight for reforms. And we do not wish to ignore the sad possibility – if the worst comes to the worst – of mankind going through a second imperialist war, if revolution does not come out of the present war, in spite of our efforts. We favour a programme of reforms directed also against the opportunists. They would be only too glad if we left the struggle for reforms entirely to them and sought escape from sad reality in a nebulous ‘disarmament’ fantasy. ‘Disarmament’ means simply running away from unpleasant reality, not fighting it.
In such a programme, we would say something like this:
‘To accept the “defence of the fatherland” slogan in the 1914-16 imperialist war is to corrupt the labour movement with the aid of a bourgeois lie.’
Such a concrete reply to a concrete question would be more correct theoretically, much more useful to the proletariat and more unbearable to the opportunists than the disarmament demand and repudiation of ‘all and any’ ‘defence of the fatherland’. And we would add:
‘The bourgeoisie of all the imperialist Great Powers – England, France, Germany, Austria, Russia, Japan, the United States – has become so reactionary and so intent on world domination, that any war waged by the bourgeoisie of those countries is bound to be reactionary. The proletariat must not only oppose all such wars, but must also wish for the defeat of its “own” government in such wars and utilise its defeat for revolutionary insurrection, if an insurrection to prevent the war proves unsuccessful.’
On the question of a militia, we should say: We are not in favour of a bourgeois militia; we are in favour only of a proletarian militia. Therefore, ‘not a penny, not a man’, not only for a standing army, but even for a bourgeois militia, even in countries like the United States, or Switzerland, Norway, etc. The more so that in the freest republican countries (e.g. Switzerland) we see that the militia is being increasingly Prussianised, particularly in 1907 and 1911, and prostituted by being used against strikers. We can demand popular election of officers, abolition of all military law, equal rights for foreign and native-born workers (a point particularly important for those imperialist states which, like Switzerland, are more and more blatantly exploiting larger numbers of foreign workers, while denying them all rights). Further, we can demand the right of every hundred, say, inhabitants of a given country to form voluntary military-training associations, with free election of instructors paid by the state, etc. Only under these conditions could the proletariat acquire military training for itself and not for its slaveowners; and the need for such training is imperatively dictated by the interests of the proletariat. The Russian Revolution showed that every success of the revolutionary movement, even a partial success like the seizure of a certain city, a certain factory town, or winning over a certain section of the army, inevitably compels the victorious proletariat to carry out just such a programme.
Lastly, it stands to reason that opportunism can never be defeated by mere programmes; it can only be defeated by deeds. The greatest, and fatal, error of the bankrupt Second International was that its words did not correspond to its deeds, that it cultivated the habit of hypocritical and unscrupulous revolutionary phrase-mongering (note the present attitude of Kautsky and co. towards the Basel Manifesto). Disarmament as a social idea, i.e. an idea that springs from, and can affect, a certain social environment, and is not the invention of some crackpot, springs, evidently, from the peculiar ‘tranquil’ conditions prevailing, by way of exception, in certain small states, which have for a fairly long time stood aside from the world’s path of war and bloodshed, and hope to remain in that way. To be convinced of this, we have only to consider the arguments advanced, for instance, by the Norwegian advocates of disarmament. “We are a small country”, they say.
‘Our army is small; there is nothing we can do against the Great Powers [and, consequently, nothing we can do to resist forcible involvement in an imperialist alliance with one or the other Great Power group]… We want to be left in peace in our backwoods and continue our backwoods politics, demand disarmament, compulsory arbitration, permanent neutrality, etc. [“permanent” after the Belgian fashion, no doubt?]’
The petty striving of petty states to hold aloof, the petty-bourgeois desire to keep as far away as possible from the great battles of world history, to take advantage of one’s relatively monopolistic position in order to remain in hidebound passivity – this is the objective social environment which may ensure the disarmament idea a certain degree of success and a certain degree of popularity in some small states. That striving is, of course, reactionary and is based entirely on illusions, for, in one way or another, imperialism draws the small states into the vortex of world economy and world politics.
In Switzerland, for instance, the imperialist environment objectively prescribes two courses to the labour movement: the opportunists, in alliance with the bourgeoisie, are seeking to turn the country into a republican-democratic monopolistic federation that would thrive on profits from imperialist bourgeois tourists, and to make this ‘tranquil’ monopolistic position as profitable and as tranquil as possible.
The genuine Swiss Social-Democrats are striving to use Switzerland’s relative freedom and her ‘international’ position to help the victory of the close alliance of the revolutionary elements in the European workers’ parties. Switzerland, thank God, does not have ‘a separate language of her own’, but uses three world languages, the three languages spoken in the adjacent belligerent countries.
If 20,000 Swiss party members were to pay a weekly levy of 2 centimes as a sort of ‘extra war tax’, we would have 20,000 francs per annum, a sum more than sufficient periodically to publish in three languages and distribute among the workers and soldiers of the belligerent countries – in spite of the bans imposed by the general staffs – all the truthful evidence about the incipient revolt of the workers, their fraternising in the trenches, their hope that the weapons will be used for revolutionary struggle against the imperialist bourgeoisie of their ‘own’ countries, etc.
That is not new. It is being done by the best papers, like La Sentinelle, Volksrecht, and the Berner Tagwacht, although, unfortunately, on an inadequate scale.[14] Only through such activity can the splendid decision of the Aarau Party Congress become something more than merely a splendid decision.[15]
The question that interests us now is: Does the disarmament demand correspond to this revolutionary trend among the Swiss Social-Democrats? It obviously does not. Objectively, disarmament is an extremely national, a specifically national programme of small states. It is certainly not the international programme of international revolutionary Social-Democracy.
6 November 1916
Russia and Germany are already negotiating a separate peace. The negotiations are official, and the two powers have already reached agreement on the main points.
A statement to that effect appeared recently in the Bern socialist paper and is based on information in its possession.[16] The Russian Embassy in Bern hastened to issue an official denial, and the French chauvinists ascribed these rumours to ‘German dirty work’, but the socialist paper refused to attach any importance whatsoever to these denials. In support of its statement it pointed to the presence in Switzerland of German (Billow) and Russian “statesmen” (Shturmer, Giers and a diplomat who arrived from Spain), and to the fact that Swiss commercial circles were in possession of similar reliable information obtained from Russian commercial circles.
Of course, deception on both sides is quite possible. Russia cannot very well admit that she is negotiating a separate peace, and Germany cannot miss an opportunity to create discord between Russia and England, irrespective of whether or not there are negotiations, and if so, how successfully they are proceeding.
To understand the question of a separate peace we must proceed not from rumours and reports about what is taking place in Switzerland, which cannot be effectively verified, but from indisputably established political facts of the last few decades. Let Messrs. Plekhanov, Chkhenkeli, Potresov and co., now cast in the role of Marxist-liveried lackeys or jesters of Purishkevich and Milyukov, try as they will to prove ‘Germany’s war guilt’ and that Russia is fighting a ‘war of defence’ – the class-conscious workers have not listened and will not listen to these clowns. The war was engendered by the Great Power imperialist relations, i.e. by their struggle for division of the loot, a struggle to decide which of them is to gobble up this or that colony or small state. Two conflicts are in the foreground in this war. First, between England and Germany. Second, between Germany and Russia. These three Great Powers, these three great freebooters, are the principal figures in the present war. The rest are dependent allies.
Both conflicts were prepared by the whole policy these powers pursued for several decades before the war. England is fighting to rob Germany of her colonies and to ruin her principal competitor, who has ruthlessly outrivalled England by her superior technique, organisation and commercial drive – and so thoroughly that England could not retain her world domination without war. Germany is fighting because her capitalists consider themselves – and rightly so – entitled to the ‘sacred’ bourgeois right to world supremacy in looting and plundering colonies and dependent countries. In particular, Germany is fighting to subjugate the Balkan countries and Turkey. Russia is fighting for possession of Galicia, which she needs, in particular, to throttle the Ukrainian people (for Galicia is the only place where the Ukrainians have, or can have, liberty – relatively speaking, of course), Armenia and Constantinople, and also to subjugate the Balkan countries.
Parallel with the Russo-German conflict of predatory ‘interests’ is another no less – if not more – profound conflict between Russia and England. The aim of Russia’s imperialist policy, determined by the age-long rivalry and objective international strength-ratio of the Great Powers, may be briefly defined as follows: smash Germany’s power in Europe with the aid of England and France in order to rob Austria (by annexing Galicia) and Turkey (by annexing Armenia and, especially, Constantinople); and, after that, smash England’s power in Asia with the aid of Japan and Germany in order to seize the whole of Persia, complete the partition of China, etc.
For centuries tsarism has been striving to conquer Constantinople and a larger and larger part of Asia. It has systematically shaped its policy accordingly and has exploited every antagonism and conflict between the Great Powers. England has resisted these efforts longer, and with more persistence and vigour, than Germany. From 1878, when the Russian armies were approaching Constantinople and the English fleet appeared at the Dardanelles and threatened to bombard the Russians if they dared enter ‘Tsargrad’,[17] to 1885, when Russia was on the verge of war with England over division of the spoils in Central Asia (Afghanistan; the Russian army’s advance into the heart of Central Asia threatened British rule in India), and down to 1902, when England concluded a treaty with Japan, in preparation for the latter’s war against Russia – throughout all these years. England was the most resolute opponent of Russia’s predatory policies, because Russia threatened to undermine British domination over a number of other nations.
And now? Just see what is happening in the present war. One loses patience with the ‘socialists’, who have deserted the proletariat to go over to the bourgeoisie and talk about Russia waging a ‘war of defence’, or to ‘save the country’ (Chkheidze). One loses patience with sentimental Kautsky and co. and their talk of a democratic peace, as if the present governments, or any bourgeois government for that matter, could conclude such a peace. As a matter of fact, they are enmeshed in a net of secret treaties with each other, with their allies, and against their allies. And the content of these treaties is not accidental, it was not determined merely by ‘malice’, but by the whole course and development of imperialist foreign policy. Those ‘socialists’ who hoodwink the workers with banal phrases about nice things in general (defence of the fatherland, democratic peace) without exposing the secret treaties their own governments have concluded to rob foreign countries – such ‘socialists’ are downright traitors to socialism.
The German, the English and the Russian governments only stand to gain from speeches in the socialist camp about a nice little peace, because, firstly, they instil belief in the possibility of such a peace under the present governments, and, secondly, divert attention from these governments’ predatory policies.
War is the continuation of policy. But policy also ‘continues’ during war! Germany has secret treaties with Bulgaria and Austria on the division of spoils and continues to conduct secret negotiations on the subject. Russia has secret treaties with England, France, etc., and all of them concern plunder and robbery, robbing Germany of her colonies, robbing Austria, partitioning Turkey, etc.
The ‘socialist’ who under such circumstances delivers speeches to the people and the governments about a nice little peace resembles the clergyman who, seeing before him in the front pews the mistress of a brothel and a police officer, who are working hand in glove, ‘preaches’ to them, and to the people, love of one’s neighbour and observance of the Christian commandments.
There is undoubtedly a secret treaty between Russia and England, and among other things it concerns Constantinople. That Russia hopes to get Constantinople, and that England does not want to give it to her is well known. If England does give Russia Constantinople, she will either attempt to take it from her later, or else will make this ‘concession’ on terms directed against Russia. The text of the secret treaty is unknown, but that the struggle between England and Russia centres around precisely this question, that this struggle is going on even now, is not only known, but beyond the slightest doubt. It is also known that, in addition to the old treaties between Russia and Japan (the 1910 treaty, for instance, which allowed Japan to ‘gobble up’ Korea and Russia to gobble up Mongolia), a new secret treaty was concluded during the present war, directed not only against China, but, to a certain extent, also against England. That is beyond doubt, although the text of the treaty is unknown. In 1904-05 Japan defeated Russia with England’s aid; now she is carefully preparing to defeat England with Russia’s aid.
There is a pro-German party in Russian ‘governing circles’ – the Court gang of Nicholas the Bloody, the nobility, army, etc. In Germany, the bourgeoisie (followed by the socialist-chauvinists) has of late markedly turned towards a pro-Russian policy, towards a separate peace with Russia, towards placating Russia in order to strike with full force against England. As far as Germany is concerned, this plan is clear and leaves no room for doubt. As for Russia, the situation is that tsarism would, of course, prefer to smash Germany first in order to ‘take’ as much as possible – the whole of Galicia, the whole of Poland, Armenia, Constantinople – ‘crush’ Austria, etc. It would then be much easier, with the aid of Japan, to turn against England. But, apparently, Russia has not the strength for that. That’s at the bottom of it.
Mr. Plekhanov, the ex-socialist, has tried to make out that the Russian reactionaries are generally in favour of peace with Germany, whereas the ‘progressive bourgeoisie’ are in favour of crushing ‘Prussian militarism’ and support friendship with ‘democratic’ England. That is a fairytale suitable to the mental level of political infants. The fact is that tsarism and all the Russian reactionaries and the ‘progressive’ bourgeoisie (Octobrists and Cadets) want the same thing: rob Germany, Austria and Turkey in Europe, and defeat England in Asia (so as to take the whole of Persia, Mongolia, Tibet, etc.). These ‘dear friends’ disagree only as to when and how to turn from a struggle against Germany to a struggle against England. Only about when and how!
This question, the only one on which the dear friends differ, will be determined by military and diplomatic considerations known in full only to the tsarist government; the Milyukovs and Guchkovs know only a quarter of them.
Take the whole of Poland from Germany and Austria! Tsarism is in favour of that, but has it the strength? And will England allow it?
Take Constantinople and the Straits! Crush and dismember Austria! Tsarism is entirely in favour of that. But has it the strength? And will England allow it?
Tsarism knows just how many millions of soldiers have been slaughtered and how many more may be drawn from the people; it knows just how many shells are being expended and how many more can be obtained (in the event of war with China, which is threatening, and which is quite possible, Japan will not supply any more ammunition!). Tsarism knows how its secret negotiations with England concerning Constantinople have been and are progressing; it knows the strength of the British forces in Salonika, Mesopotamia, etc. Tsarism knows all this. It has all the cards in its hands and is making exact calculations – insofar as exact calculations are possible in such matters where that very doubtful and elusive element, the ‘fortune of war’, plays so great a part.
As for the Milyukovs and Guchkovs, the less they know the more they talk. And the Plekhanovs, the Chkhenkelis, the Potresovs know nothing at all of tsarism’s secret pacts; they are forgetting even what they knew before, do not study what can be learned from the foreign press, do not examine the course of tsarism’s foreign policy before the war, do not trace its course during the war, and are consequently playing the part of socialist Simple Simons.
If tsarism has become convinced that even with all the aid of liberal society, with all the zeal of the war industries committees, with all the help the Plekhanovs, Gvozdyovs, Potresovs, Bulkins, Chirkins, Chkheidzes (‘Save the country’, don’t laugh!), Kropotkins, and the whole of that menial crowd are giving to the noble cause of producing more shells – that even with all this help and with the present state of military strength (or military impotence) of all the allies it can possibly drag and has dragged into the war, it cannot achieve more, it cannot hit Germany harder, or that it can do so only at excessive cost (for example, the loss of 10 million more Russian soldiers, the recruiting, training and equipment of whom would cost so many more billions of rubles and so many more years of war), then tsarism cannot but seek a separate peace with Germany.
If ‘we’ go after too much booty in Europe, ‘we’ run the risk of utterly exhausting ‘our’ military resources, of gaining almost nothing in Europe and of losing the opportunity of getting ‘our share’ in Asia. This is how tsarism argues, and it argues correctly from the standpoint of imperialist interests. It argues more correctly than the bourgeois and opportunist chatterboxes, the Milyukovs, Plekhanovs, Guchkovs and Potresovs.
If no more can be obtained in Europe even after Romania and Greece (from which ‘we’ have taken all we could) have joined in, then let us take what can still be had! England cannot give us anything just now. Germany will perhaps return to us Courland and a part of Poland, certainly Eastern Galicia – which ‘we’ particularly need for the purpose of throttling the Ukrainian movement, the movement of historically hitherto dormant people numbering many millions, for freedom and the right to use their native language – and, very likely, Turkish Armenia also. If we take this now, we may emerge from the war with increased strength, and tomorrow we may, with the aid of Japan and Germany, with a wise policy and with the further aid of the Milyukovs, Plekhanovs and Potresovs in ‘saving’ the beloved ‘fatherland’, get a good slice of Asia in a war against England (the whole of Persia and the Persian Gulf with an outlet to the ocean much better than Constantinople, which is an outlet only to the Mediterranean and is guarded by islands which England can easily take and fortify, thus depriving ‘us’ of every outlet to the open sea), etc.
This is exactly how tsarism argues, and, we repeat, it argues correctly, not only from the narrow monarchist point of view, but also from the general imperialist point of view. It knows more and sees farther than the liberals, the Plekhanovs and the Potresovs.
It is quite possible, therefore, that tomorrow, or the day after we shall wake up and hear the three monarchs proclaim:
‘Hearkening to the voices of our beloved peoples, we have resolved to endow them with the blessings of peace, to sign an armistice and to convene a general European Peace Congress.’
The three monarchs may even display their sense of humour by quoting fragments of the speeches of Vandervelde, Plekhanov and Kautsky, such as: we “promise” – promises are the only thing that is cheap, even in this period of soaring prices – “to discuss the question of reducing armaments and of a ‘lasting’ peace”, etc. Vandervelde, Plekhanov and Kautsky will run along and arrange their ‘socialist’ congress in the same city as the Peace Congress; and there will be no end of pious wishes, sentimental phrases and talk of the need to ‘defend the fatherland’ in all languages. The stage will be well set for concealing the transition from an imperialist Anglo-Russian alliance against Germany to an imperialist Russo-German alliance against England!
But whether the war ends in this way in the very near future, or whether Russia ‘holds out’ a little longer in her effort to vanquish Germany and rob Austria more; whether the separate peace negotiations will prove a shrewd blackmailer’s trick (tsarism showing England a draft of a treaty with Germany and saying: “Either so many billion rubles and such-and-such concessions or guarantees, or I sign this treaty tomorrow”), in all cases the imperialist war cannot end otherwise than in an imperialist peace, unless it is transformed into a civil war of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie for socialism. In all cases, unless this happens, the imperialist war will result in the strengthening of one or two of the three strongest imperialist powers – England, Germany and Russia – at the expense of the weak (Serbia, Turkey, Belgium, etc.), and it is quite possible that all three robbers will become stronger after the war, having divided the booty among themselves (the colonies, Belgium, Serbia, Armenia). The only argument will be over the share each should get.
In all cases, both the full-fledged and avowed social-chauvinists, i.e. the individuals who openly accept ‘defence of the fatherland’ in the present war, and the disguised, half-way social-chauvinists, i.e. the Kautskyites with their preachment of ‘peace’ in general, ‘without victors or vanquished’, etc., will inevitably, unavoidably and undoubtedly be fooled and discredited. For any peace concluded by the same, or similar, bourgeois governments that started the war will glaringly show the peoples what a servile role both these types of socialists played in relation to imperialism.
Whatever the outcome of the present war, those who maintained that the only possible socialist way out of it is through civil war by the proletariat for socialism, will have been proved correct. The Russian Social-Democrats who maintained that the defeat of tsarism, its complete military smash-up, is, ‘in all cases’, the lesser evil, will have been proved correct. For history never stands still; it continues its forward movement during this war too. And if the European proletariat cannot advance to socialism now, cannot cast off the social-chauvinist and Kautskyite yoke in the course of this first great imperialist war, then East Europe and Asia can advance to democracy with seven-league strides only if tsarism is utterly smashed and deprived of all possibility to pursue its semi-feudal type imperialist policy.
The war will kill and destroy everything weak, social-chauvinism and Kautskyism included. An imperialist peace would further accentuate these weaknesses, show them up in a still more despicable and abhorrent light.
1 January 1917
Editor’s note:
Lenin intended this series of articles for the newspaper Novy Mir (New World) published in New York by Russian socialist émigrés. They did not appear in Novy Mir and Lenin re-edited the first two articles, which were published in the last issue (No. 58) of Sotsial-Demokrat, on 31 January 1917, under the heading ‘A Turn in World Politics’.
* * *
1. The turn in world politics
There are symptoms that such a turn has taken place, or is about to take place, namely, a turn from imperialist war to imperialist peace.
The following are the outstanding symptoms: both imperialist coalitions are undoubtedly severely exhausted; continuing the war has become difficult; the capitalists generally, and finance capital in particular, find it difficult to skin the people substantially more than they have done already in the form of outrageous ‘war’ profits; finance capital in the neutral countries, the United States, Holland, Switzerland, etc., which has made enormous profits out of the war, is satiated; the shortage of raw materials and food supplies makes it difficult for it to continue this ‘profitable’ business; Germany is making strenuous efforts to induce one or another ally of England, her principal imperialist rival, to desert her; the German government has made pacifist pronouncements, followed by similar pronouncements by a number of neutral governments.
Are there any chances for a speedy end to the war?
It is very hard to give a positive reply to this question. In our opinion, two possibilities present themselves rather definitely.
First, conclusion of a separate peace between Germany and Russia, though perhaps not in the usual form of a formal written treaty. Second, no such peace will be concluded; England and her allies are still in a position to hold out for another year or two, etc. If the first assumption is correct the war will come to an end, if not immediately, then in the very near future, and no important changes in its course can be expected. If the second assumption is correct, then the war may continue indefinitely.
Let us examine the first possibility.
That negotiations for a separate peace between Germany and Russia were conducted quite recently, that Nicholas II himself, or the top court clique, favour such a peace, that a turn has taken place in world politics from a Russo-British imperialist alliance against Germany to a no less imperialist Russo-German alliance against England – all that is beyond doubt.
The replacement of Shturmer by Trepov, the tsarist government’s public declaration that Russia’s ‘right’ to Constantinople has been recognised by all the Allies, and the setting up by Germany of a separate Polish state – these seem to indicate that the separate peace negotiations have ended in failure.[18] Perhaps tsarism entered into them solely to blackmail England, obtain formal and unambiguous recognition of Nicholas the Bloody’s ‘right’ to Constantinople and certain ‘weighty’ guarantees of that right?
There is nothing improbable in that assumption, considering that the main, fundamental purpose of the present imperialist war is the division of the spoils among the three principal imperialist rivals, the three robbers, Russia, Germany and England.
On the other hand, the clearer it becomes to tsarism that there is no practical, military possibility of regaining Poland, winning Constantinople, breaking Germany’s iron front, which she is magnificently straightening out, shortening and strengthening by her recent victories in Romania, the more tsarism is finding itself compelled to conclude a separate peace with Germany, that is, to abandon its imperialist alliance with England against Germany for an imperialist alliance with Germany against England. And why not? Was not Russia on the verge of war with England as a result of their imperialist rivalry over the division of the spoils in Central Asia? And did not England and Germany negotiate in 1898 for an alliance against Russia? They secretly agreed then to divide up the Portuguese colonies ‘in the event’ of Portugal failing to meet her financial obligations!
The growing trend among leading imperialist circles in Germany towards an alliance with Russia against England was already clearly defined several months ago. The basis of this alliance, apparently, is to be the partition of Galicia (it is very important for tsarism to strangle the centre of Ukrainian agitation and Ukrainian liberty), Armenia and perhaps Romania! In fact there was a ‘hint’ in a German newspaper that Romania might be divided among Austria, Bulgaria and Russia! Germany could agree to other minor concessions to tsarism if only she could achieve an alliance with Russia, and perhaps also with Japan, against England.
A separate peace between Nicholas II and Wilhelm II could have been concluded secretly. There have been instances in diplomatic history of treaties known only to two or three persons and kept secret from everyone else, even Cabinet Ministers. Diplomatic history knows instances of the ‘Great Powers’ gathering at ‘European’ congresses after the principal rivals had secretly decided the main questions among themselves (for example, the secret agreement between Russia and England to plunder Turkey, prior to the Berlin Congress of 1878). It would not be at all surprising if tsarism rejected a formal separate peace between the governments for the reason, among others, that the present situation in Russia might result in Milyukov and Guchkov, or Milyukov and Kerensky, taking over the government, while at the same time, it may have concluded a secret, informal, but none the less ‘durable’ treaty with Germany to the effect that the two ‘high contracting parties’ undertake jointly to pursue such-and-such a policy at the forthcoming peace congress!
It is impossible to say whether or not this assumption is correct. At any rate, it is a thousand times nearer the truth, is a far better description of things as they actually are, than are the pious phrases about peace between the present governments, or between any bourgeois governments for that matter, on the basis of no annexations, etc. These phrases either express innocent desires or are hypocrisy and lies meant to conceal the truth. And the truth of the present time, of the present war, of the present attempts to conclude peace, is the division of the imperialist spoils. That is at the bottom of it all; and to understand this truth, to express it, “to show things as they actually are”, is the fundamental task of socialist policy as distinct from bourgeois policy, the principal aim of which is to conceal, to gloss over this truth.
Both imperialist coalitions have grabbed a certain amount of loot, and the two principal and most powerful of the robbers, Germany and England, have grabbed most. England has not lost an inch of her territory or of her colonies; but she has ‘acquired’ the German colonies and part of Turkey (Mesopotamia). Germany has lost nearly all her colonies, but has acquired immeasurably more valuable territory in Europe, having seized Belgium, Serbia, Romania, part of France, part of Russia, etc. The fight now is over the division of the loot, and the ‘chieftain’ of each of the robber gangs, i.e. England and Germany, must to some degree reward his allies, who, with the exception of Bulgaria and to a lesser extent Italy, have lost a great deal. The weakest of the allies have lost most: in the English coalition, Belgium, Serbia, Montenegro and Romania have been crushed; in the German coalition, Turkey has lost Armenia and part of Mesopotamia.
So far Germany has secured undoubtedly far more loot than England. So far Germany has won; she has proved to be far stronger than anyone anticipated before the war. Naturally, therefore, it would be to Germany’s advantage to conclude peace as speedily as possible, for her rival might still be able, given the most favourable opportunity conceivable (although not very probably), to mobilise a larger reserve of recruits, etc.
Such is the objective situation. Such is the present position in the struggle for the division of the imperialist loot. It is quite natural that this situation should give rise to pacifist strivings, declarations and pronouncements, mainly on the part of the bourgeoisie and governments of the German coalition and of the neutral countries. It is equally natural that the bourgeoisie and its governments are compelled to exert every effort to hoodwink the people, to cover up the hideous nakedness of an imperialist peace – the division of the loot – by phrases, utterly false phrases about a democratic peace, the liberty of small nations, armaments reduction, etc.
But while it is natural for the bourgeoisie to try to hoodwink the people, how are the socialists fulfilling their duty? This we shall deal with in the next article (or chapter).
2. The pacifism of Kautsky and Turati
Kautsky is the most authoritative theoretician of the Second International, the most prominent leader of the so-called ‘Marxist centre’ in Germany, the representative of the opposition which organised a separate group in the Reichstag, the Social-Democratic Labour Group (Haase, Ledebour and others). A number of Social-Democratic newspapers in Germany are now publishing articles by Kautsky on the terms of peace, which paraphrase the official Social-Democratic Labour Group declaration on the German government’s well-known note proposing peace negotiations. The declaration, which calls on the German government to propose definite terms of peace, contains the following characteristic statement:
In order that this [German government] note may lead to peace, all countries must unequivocally renounce all thought of annexing foreign territory, of the political, economic or military subjection of any people whatsoever…
In paraphrasing and concretising this, Kautsky set out to ‘prove’ in his lengthy articles that Constantinople must not go to Russia and that Turkey must not be made a vassal state to anyone.
Let us take a closer look at these political slogans and arguments of Kautsky and his associates.
In a matter that affects Russia, i.e. Germany’s imperialist rival, Kautsky advances, not abstract or ‘general’ demands, but a very concrete, precise and definite demand: Constantinople must not go to Russia. He thereby exposes the real imperialist designs… of Russia. In a matter that affects Germany, however, i.e. the country where the majority of the party, which regards Kautsky as its member (and appointed him editor of its principal, leading theoretical organ, Die Neue Zeit), is helping the bourgeoisie and the government to conduct an imperialist war, Kautsky does not expose the concrete imperialist designs of his own government, but confines himself to a ‘general’ desideratum or proposition: Turkey must not be made a vassal state to anyone!!
How, in substance, does Kautsky’s policy differ from that of the militant, so to speak, social-chauvinists (i.e. socialists in words but chauvinists in deeds) of France and England? While frankly exposing the concrete imperialist actions of Germany, they make shift with ‘general’ desiderata or propositions when it is a matter of countries or nations conquered by England and Russia. They shout about the seizure of Belgium and Serbia, but are silent about the seizure of Galicia, Armenia, the African colonies.
Actually, both the policy of Kautsky and that of Sembat and Henderson help their respective imperialist governments by focusing attention on the wickedness of their rival and enemy, while throwing a veil of vague, general phrases and sentimental wishes around the equally imperialist conduct of ‘their own’ bourgeoisie. We would cease to be Marxists, we would cease to be socialists in general, if we confined ourselves to the Christian, so to speak, contemplation of the benignity of benign general phrases and refrained from exposing their real political significance. Do we not constantly see the diplomacy of all the imperialist powers flaunting magnanimous ‘general’ phrases and ‘democratic’ declarations in order to conceal their robbery, violation and strangulation of small nations?
“Turkey must not be made a vassal state to anyone…” If I say no more than that, the impression is that I favour Turkey’s complete freedom. As a matter of fact, I am merely repeating a phrase usually uttered by German diplomats who are deliberately lying and deceiving, and employ that phrase to conceal the fact that Germany has already converted Turkey into her financial and military vassal! And if I am a German socialist, my ‘general’ phrases can only be to the advantage of German diplomacy, for their real significance is that they put German imperialism in a good light.
“All countries must renounce all thought of annexations… of the economic subjection of any people whatsoever…” What magnanimity! A thousand times the imperialists have ‘renounced all thought’ of annexations and of the financial strangulation of weak nations. But should we not compare these renunciations with the facts, which show that any one of the big banks of Germany, England, France and the United States does hold small nations ‘in subjection’? Can the present bourgeois government of a wealthy country really renounce annexations and the economic subjugation of alien peoples when millions and millions have been invested in the railways and other enterprises of weak nations?
Who is really fighting annexations, etc.? Those who bandy magnanimous phrases, which, objectively, have the same significance as the Christian holy water sprinkled on the crowned and capitalist robbers? Or those who explain to the workers the impossibility of eliminating annexations and financial strangulation without overthrowing the imperialist bourgeoisie and its governments?
Here is an Italian illustration of the kind of pacifism Kautsky preaches.
Avanti!, the Central Organ of the Socialist Party of Italy, of 25 December 1916, contains an article by the well-known reformist, Filippo Turati, entitled ‘Abracadabra’. On 22 November 1916, he writes, the socialist group tabled a peace resolution in the Italian Parliament. It declared that “the principles proclaimed by the representatives of England and Germany were identical, and these principles should be made the basis of a possible peace”; and it invited “the government to start peace negotiations through the mediation of the United States and other neutral countries”. This is Turati’s own account of the socialist proposal.
On 6 December 1916, the Chamber ‘buries’ the socialist resolution by ‘adjourning’ the debate on it. On 12 December, the German Chancellor proposes in the Reichstag the very thing the Italian socialists proposed. On 22 December, Wilson issues his Note which, in the words of Turati, “paraphrases and repeats the ideas and arguments of the socialist proposal”. On 23 December, other neutral countries come on the scene and paraphrase Wilson’s Note.
We are accused of having sold ourselves to the Germans, exclaims Turati. Have Wilson and the neutral countries also sold themselves to Germany?
On 17 December Turati delivered a speech in Parliament, one passage of which caused an unusual and deserved sensation. This is the passage, quoted from the report in Avanti!:
Let us assume that a discussion similar to the one proposed by Germany is able, in the main, to settle such questions as the evacuation of Belgium and France, the restoration of Romania, Serbia and, if you will, Montenegro; I will add the rectification of the Italian frontiers in regard to what is indisputably Italian and corresponds to guarantees of a strategical character…
At this point the bourgeois and chauvinist Chamber interrupts Turati, and from all sides the shout goes up: “Excellent! So you too want all this! Long live Turati! Long live Turati!”
Apparently, Turati realised that there was something wrong about this bourgeois enthusiasm and tried to ‘correct’ himself and ‘explain’.
Gentlemen [he said], there is no occasion for irrelevant jesting. It is one thing to admit the relevance and right of national unity, which we have always recognised, but it is quite another thing to provoke, or justify, war for this aim.
But neither Turati’s ‘explanation’, nor the articles in Avanti! in his defence, nor Turati’s letter of 21 December, nor the article by a certain ‘BB’ in the Zürich Volksrecht can ‘correct’ or explain away the fact that Turati gave himself away! Or, more correct, not Turati, but the whole of socialist pacifism represented by Kautsky, and, as we shall see below, the French ‘Kautskyites’, gave itself away. The Italian bourgeois press was right in seizing upon and exulting over this passage in Turati’s speech.
The above-mentioned ‘BB’ tried to defend Turati by arguing that the latter referred only to ‘the right of nations to self-determination’.
Poor defence! What has this to do with ‘the right of nations to self-determination’, which, as everyone knows, the Marxist programme regards – and the programme of international democracy has always regarded – as referring to the defence of oppressed nations? What has it to do with the imperialist war, i.e. a war for the division of colonies, a war for the oppression of foreign countries, a war among predatory and oppressing powers to decide which of them shall oppress more foreign nations?
How does this argument about self-determination of nations, used to justify an imperialist, not national, war, differ from the speeches of Alexinsky, Hervé and Hyndman? They argue that republican France is opposed to monarchist Germany, though everyone knows that this war is not due to the conflict between republican and monarchist principles, but is a war between two imperialist coalitions for the division of colonies, etc.
Turati explained and pleaded that he does not ‘justify’ the war.
We will take the reformist, Kautskyite Turati’s word for it that he did not intend to justify the war. But who does not know that in politics it is not intentions that count, but deeds, not good intentions, but facts, not the imaginary, but the real?
Let us assume that Turati did not want to justify the war and that Kautsky did not want to justify Germany’s placing Turkey in the position of a vassal to German imperialism. But the fact remains that these two benign pacifists did justify the war! That is the point. Had Kautsky declared that “Constantinople must not go to Russia, Turkey must not be made a vassal state to anyone” not in a magazine which is so dull that nobody reads it, but in parliament, before a lively, impressionable bourgeois audience, full of southern temperament, it would not have been surprising if the witty bourgeois had exclaimed: “Excellent! Hear, hear! Long live Kautsky!”
Whether he intended to or not, deliberately or not, the fact is that Turati expressed the point of view of a bourgeois broker proposing a friendly deal between imperialist robbers. The ‘liberation’ of Italian areas belonging to Austria would, in fact, be a concealed reward to the Italian bourgeoisie for participating in the imperialist war of a gigantic imperialist coalition. It would be a small sop thrown in, in addition to the share of the African colonies and spheres of influence in Dalmatia and Albania. It is natural, perhaps, for the reformist Turati to adopt the bourgeois standpoint; but Kautsky really differs in no way from Turati.
In order not to embellish the imperialist war and help the bourgeoisie falsely represent it as a national war, as a war for the liberation of nations, in order to avoid sliding into the position of bourgeois reformism, one must speak not in the language of Kautsky and Turati, but in the language of Karl Liebknecht: tell one’s own bourgeoisie that they are hypocrites when they talk about national liberation, that this war cannot result in a democratic peace unless the proletariat ‘turns its guns’ against its own governments.
That is the only possible position of a genuine Marxist, of a genuine socialist and not a bourgeois reformist. Those who repeat the general, meaningless, non-committal, goody-goody desires of pacifism are not really working for a democratic peace. Only he is working for such a peace who exposes the imperialist nature of the present war and of the imperialist peace that is being prepared, and calls upon the peoples to rise in revolt against the criminal governments.
At times some try to defend Kautsky and Turati by arguing that, legally, they could no more than ‘hint’ at their opposition to the government, and that the pacifists of this stripe do make such ‘hints’. The answer to that is, first, that the impossibility of legally speaking the truth is an argument not in favour of concealing the truth, but in favour of setting up an illegal organisation and press that would be free of police surveillance and censorship. Second, that moments occur in history when a socialist is called upon to break with all legality. Third, that even in the days of serfdom in Russia, Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky managed to speak the truth, for example, by their silence on the Manifesto of 19 February 1861,[19] and their ridicule and castigation of the liberals, who made exactly the same kind of speeches as Turati and Kautsky.
In the next article we shall deal with French pacifism, which found expression in the resolutions passed by the two recently held congresses of French labour and socialist organisations.
3. The pacifism of the French socialists and syndicalists
The congresses of the French General Confederation of Labour (CGT) and of the French Socialist Party have just been held. The true significance and true role of socialist pacifism at the present moment were quite definitely revealed at these congresses.
This is the resolution passed unanimously at the trade union congress. The majority of the ardent chauvinists headed by the notorious Jouhaux, the anarchist Broutchoux and… the ‘Zimmerwaldist’ Merrheim all voted for it:
This Conference of National Corporative Federations, trade unions and labour exchanges, having taken cognisance of the Note of the President of the United States which “invites all nations now at war with each other to publicly expound their views as to the terms upon which the war might be brought to an end”:
- Requests the French Government to agree to this proposal;
- Invites the government to take the initiative in making a similar proposal to its allies in order to speed the hour of peace;
- Declares that the federation of nations, which is one of the guarantees of a final peace, can be secured only given the independence, territorial inviolability and political and economic liberty of all nations, big and small.
The organisations represented at this conference pledge themselves to support and spread this idea among the masses of the workers in order to put an end to the present indefinite and ambiguous situation, which can only benefit secret diplomacy, against which the working class has always protested.
There you have a sample of ‘pure’ pacifism, entirely in the spirit of Kautsky, a pacifism approved by an official labour organisation which has nothing in common with Marxism and is composed chiefly of chauvinists. We have before us an outstanding document, deserving the most serious attention, of the political unity of the chauvinists and the ‘Kautskyites’ on a platform of hollow pacifist phrases. In the preceding article we tried to explain the theoretical basis of the unity of ideas of the chauvinists and the pacifists, of the bourgeois and the socialist reformists. Now we see this unity achieved in practice in another imperialist country.
At the Zimmerwald Conference, 5-8 September 1915, Merrheim declared: “The party, the Jouhaux and the government are three heads under one bonnet”, i.e. they are all one. At the CGT Conference, on 26 December 1916, Merrheim voted together with Jouhaux for a pacifist resolution. On 23 December 1916, one of the frankest and most extreme organs of the German social-imperialists, the Chemnitz Volksstimme, published a leading article entitled ‘The Disintegration of the Bourgeois Parties and the Restoration of Social-Democratic Unity’. Needless to say, it praises peace-loving Südekum, Legien, Scheidemann and co., the whole German Social-Democratic Party majority and, also, the peace-loving German government. It proclaims:
The first party congress convened after the war must restore party unity, with the exception of the few fanatics who refuse to pay party dues [i.e. the adherents of Karl Liebknecht!]; … Party unity based on the policy of the Party Executive, the Social-Democratic Reichstag group and the trade unions.
This is a supremely clear expression of the idea, and a supremely clear proclamation of the policy of ‘unity’ between the avowed German social-chauvinists on the one hand and Kautsky and co. and the Social-Democratic Labour Group on the other – unity on the basis of pacifist phrases – ‘unity’ as achieved in France on 26 December 1916, between Jouhaux and Merrheim!
The Central Organ of the Socialist Party of Italy, Avanti!, writes in a leading article in its issue of 28 December 1916:
Although Bissolati and Südekum, Bonomi and Scheidemann, Sembat and David, Jouhaux and Legien have deserted to the camp of bourgeois nationalism and have betrayed internationalist ideological unity, which they promised to serve faithfully and loyally, we shall stay together with our German comrades, men like Liebknecht, Ledebour, Hoffmann, Meyer, and with our French comrades, men like Merrheim, Blanc, Brizon, Raffin-Dugens, who have not changed and have not vacillated.
Note the confusion expressed in that statement:
Bissolati and Bonomi were expelled from the Socialist Party of Italy as reformists and chauvinists before the war. Avanti! puts them on the same level as Südekum, and Legien, and quite rightly, of course. But Südekum, David and Legien are at the head of the alleged Social-Democratic Party of Germany, which, in fact, is a social-chauvinist party, and yet this very Avanti! is opposed to their expulsion, opposed to a rupture with them, and opposed to the formation of a Third International. Avanti! quite correctly describes Legien and Jouhaux as deserters to the camp of bourgeois nationalism and contrasts their conduct with that of Liebknecht, Ledebour, Merrheim and Brizon. But we have seen that Merrheim votes on the same side as Jouhaux, while Legien, in the Chemnitz Volksstimme, declares his confidence that party unity will be restored, with the single exception, however, of Liebknecht supporters, i.e. ‘unity’ with the Social-Democratic Labour Group (including Kautsky) to which Ledebour belongs!!
This confusion arises from the fact that Avanti! confuses bourgeois pacifism with revolutionary Social-Democratic internationalism, while experienced politicians like Legien and Jouhaux understand perfectly well that socialist and bourgeois pacifism are identical.
Why, indeed, should not Mssr. Jouhaux and his organ, the chauvinist La Bataille, rejoice at the ‘unanimity’ between Jouhaux and Merrheim when, in fact, the unanimously adopted resolution, which we have quoted in full above, contains nothing but bourgeois pacifist phrases; not a shadow of revolutionary consciousness, not a single socialist idea!
Is it not ridiculous to talk of the “economic liberty of all nations, big and small”, and yet not say a word about the fact that, until the bourgeois governments are overthrown and the bourgeoisie expropriated, this talk of “economic liberty” is just as much a deception of the people as talk of the “economic liberty” of the individual in general, of the small peasants and rich, workers and capitalists, in modern society?
The resolution Jouhaux and Merrheim unanimously voted for is thoroughly imbued with the very ideas of “bourgeois nationalism” that Jouhaux expresses, as Avanti! quite rightly points out, while, strangely enough, failing to observe that Merrheim expresses the same ideas.
Bourgeois nationalists always and everywhere flaunt ‘general’ phrases about a ‘federation of nations’ in general and about ‘economic liberty of all nations, big and small’. But socialists, unlike bourgeois nationalists, always said and now say: rhetoric about ‘economic liberty of all nations, big and small’, is disgusting hypocrisy as long as certain nations (for example, England and France) invest abroad, that is to say, lend at usurious interest to small and backward nations, billions of francs, and as long as the small and weak nations are in bondage to them.
Socialists could not have allowed a single sentence of the resolution, for which Jouhaux and Merrheim unanimously voted, to pass without strong protest. In direct contrast to that resolution, socialists would have declared that Wilson’s pronouncement is a downright lie and sheer hypocrisy, because Wilson represents a bourgeoisie which has made billions out of the war, because he is the head of a government that has frantically armed the United States obviously in preparation for a second great imperialist war. Socialists would have declared that the French bourgeois government is tied hand and foot by finance capital, whose slave it is, and by the secret, imperialist, thoroughly predatory and reactionary treaties with England, Russia, etc., and therefore cannot do or say anything except utter the same lies about a democratic and a ‘just’ peace. Socialists would have declared that the struggle for such a peace cannot be waged by repeating general, vapid, benign, sentimental, meaningless and non-committal pacifist phrases, which merely serve to embellish the foulness of imperialism. It can be waged only by telling the people the truth, by telling the people that in order to obtain a democratic and just peace the bourgeois governments of all the belligerent countries must be overthrown, and that for this purpose advantage must be taken of the fact that millions of workers are armed and that the high cost of living and the horrors of the imperialist war have roused the anger of the masses.
This is what socialists should have said instead of what is said in the Jouhaux-Merrheim resolution.
The Congress of the French Socialist Party, which took place in Paris simultaneously with that of the CGT, not only refrained from saying this, but passed a resolution that is even worse than the one mentioned above. It was adopted by 2,838 votes against 109, with twenty abstentions, that is to say, by a bloc of the social-chauvinists (Renaudel and co., the so-called ‘majoritaires’) and the Longuetists (supporters of Longuet, the French Kautskyites)!! Moreover, the Zimmerwaldist Bourderon and the Kienthalian Raffin-Dugens voted for this resolution!!
We shall not quote the resolution – it is inordinately long and totally uninteresting: it contains benign, sentimental phrases about peace, immediately followed by declarations of readiness to continue to support the so-called “national defence” of France, i.e. the imperialist war France is waging in alliance with bigger and more powerful robbers like England and Russia.
In France, unity of the social-chauvinists with pacifists (or Kautskyites) and a section of the Zimmerwaldists has become a fact, not only in the CGT, but also in the Socialist Party.
4. Zimmerwald at the crossroads
The French newspapers containing the report of the CGT Congress were received in Bern on 28 December, and on 30 December Bern and Zürich socialist newspapers published another manifesto by the Bern ISK (Internationale Sozialistische Kommission), the International Socialist Committee, the executive body of Zimmerwald. Dated the end of December 1916, the manifesto refers to the peace proposals advanced by Germany and by Wilson and the other neutral countries, and all these governmental pronouncements are described, and quite rightly described, of course, as a “farcical game of peace”, “a game to deceive their own peoples”, “hypocritical pacifist diplomatic gesticulations”.
As against this farce and falsehood the manifesto declares that the “only force” capable of bringing about peace, etc., is the “firm determination” of the international proletariat to “turn their weapons, not against their brothers, but against the enemy in their own country”.
The passages we have quoted clearly reveal the two fundamentally distinct policies which have lived side by side, as it were, up to now in the Zimmerwald group, but which have now finally parted company.
On the one hand, Turati quite definitely and correctly states that the proposals made by Germany, Wilson, etc., were merely a “paraphrase” of Italian “socialist” pacifism; the declaration of the German social-chauvinists and the voting of the French have shown that both fully appreciate the value for their policy of the pacifist screen.
On the other hand, the International Socialist Committee manifesto describes the pacifism of all belligerent and neutral governments as a farce and hypocrisy.
On the one hand, Jouhaux joins with Merrheim; Bourderon, Longuet and Raffin-Dugens join with Renaudel, Sembat and Thomas, while the German social-chauvinists, Südekum, David and Scheidemann, announce the forthcoming “restoration of Social-Democratic unity” with Kautsky and the Social-Democratic Labour Group.
On the other hand, the International Socialist Committee calls upon the “socialist minorities” vigorously to fight “their own governments” and “their social-patriot hirelings” (Söldlinge).
Either one thing, or the other.
Either expose the vapidity, stupidity and hypocrisy of bourgeois pacifism, or “paraphrase” it into “socialist” pacifism. Fight the Jouhaux, Renaudels, Legiens and Davids as the “hirelings” of the governments, or join with them in empty pacifist declamations on the French or German models.
That is now the dividing line between the Zimmerwald Right, which has always strenuously opposed a break with the social-chauvinists, and the Left, which at the Zimmerwald Conference had the foresight publicly to dissociate itself from the Right and to put forward, at the Conference and after it in the press, its own platform. It is no accident that the approach of peace, or even the intense discussion by certain bourgeois elements of the peace issue, has led to a very marked divergence between the two policies. To bourgeois pacifists and their ‘socialist’ imitators, or echoers, peace has always been a fundamentally distinct concept, for neither has ever understood that ‘war is the continuation of the policies of peace and peace the continuation of the policies of war’. Neither the bourgeois nor the social-chauvinist wants to see that the imperialist war of 1914-17 is the continuation of the imperialist policies of 1898 – 1914, if not of an even earlier period. Neither the bourgeois pacifists nor the socialist pacifists realise that without the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeois governments, peace now can only be an imperialist peace, a continuation of the imperialist war.
In appraising the present war, they use meaningless, vulgar, philistine phrases about aggression or defence in general, and use the same philistine commonplaces in appraising the peace, disregarding the concrete historical situation, the actual concrete struggle between the imperialist powers. And it was quite natural for the social-chauvinists, these agents of the governments and the bourgeoisie in the workers’ parties, to seize upon the approach of peace in particular, or even upon mere peace talk, in order to gloss over the depth of their reformism and opportunism, exposed by the war, and restore their undermined influence over the masses. Hence, the social-chauvinists in Germany and in France, as we have seen, are making strenuous efforts to ‘unite’ with the flabby, unprincipled pacifist section of the ‘opposition’.
Efforts to gloss over the divergence between the two irreconcilable lines of policy will certainly be made also in the Zimmerwald group. One can foresee that they will follow two lines. A ‘practical business’ conciliation by mechanically combining loud revolutionary phrases (like those in the International Socialist Committee manifesto) with opportunist and pacifist practice. That is what happened in the Second International. The arch-revolutionary phrases in the manifestos of Huysmans and Vandervelde and in certain congress resolutions merely served as a screen for the arch-opportunist practice of the majority of the European parties, but they did not change, disrupt or combat this practice. It is doubtful whether these tactics will again be successful in the Zimmerwald group.
The ‘conciliators in principle’ will try to falsify Marxism by arguing, for example, that reform does not exclude revolution, that an imperialist peace with certain ‘improvements’ in nationality frontiers, or in international law, or in armaments expenditure, etc., is possible side by side with the revolutionary movement, as ‘one of the aspects of the development’ of that movement, and so on and so forth.
This would be a falsification of Marxism. Reforms do not, of course, exclude revolution. But that is not the point at issue. The point is that revolutionaries must not exclude themselves, not give way to reformism, i.e. that socialists should not substitute reformist work for their revolutionary work. Europe is experiencing a revolutionary situation. The war and the high cost of living are aggravating the situation. The transition from war to peace will not necessarily eliminate the revolutionary situation, for there are no grounds whatever for believing that the millions of workers who now have excellent weapons in their hands will necessarily permit themselves to be ‘peacefully disarmed’ by the bourgeoisie instead of following the advice of Karl Liebknecht, i.e. turning their weapons against their own bourgeoisie.
The question is not, as the pacifist Kautskyites maintain: either a reformist political campaign, or else the renunciation of reforms. That is a bourgeois presentation of the question. The question is: either revolutionary struggle, the by-product of which, in the event of it not being fully successful, is reforms (the whole history of revolutions throughout the world has proved this), or nothing but talk about reforms and the promise of reforms.
The reformism of Kautsky, Turati and Bourderon, which now comes out in the form of pacifism, not only leaves aside the question of revolution (this in itself is a betrayal of socialism), not only abandons in practice all systematic and persistent revolutionary work, but even goes to the length of declaring that street demonstrations are adventurism (Kautsky in Die Neue Zeit, 26 November 1915). It goes to the length of advocating and implementing unity with the outspoken and determined opponents of revolutionary struggle, the Südekums, Legiens, Renaudels, Thomases, etc., etc.
This reformism is absolutely irreconcilable with revolutionary Marxism, the duty of which is to take the utmost possible advantage of the present revolutionary situation in Europe in order openly to urge revolution, the overthrow of the bourgeois governments, the conquest of power by the armed proletariat, while at the same time not renouncing, and not refusing to utilise, reforms in developing the revolutionary struggle and in the course of that struggle.
The immediate future will show what course events in Europe will follow, particularly the struggle between reformist pacifism and revolutionary Marxism, including the struggle between the two Zimmerwald sections.
January 1917
Editor’s note:
This article was written in reply to an open letter by Boris Souvarine, the French Centrist, ‘To Our Friends in Switzerland’, published in Le Populaire du Centre, 10 December 1916.
Lenin sent the article to Souvarine, who in January 1918 turned it over to the socialist La Vérité for publication, together with his preface. The article was to have appeared on 24 January in No. 45 of the paper, but was banned by the censor. La Vérité came out with a blank space, over which was the heading ‘Unpublished document. A Letter from Lenin’, with the signature ‘Lénine’. Three days later, on 27 January, La Vérité published the article, with many cuts and with its own subheadings, in No. 48. The full text was published in the magazine Proletarskaya Revolutsia (Proletarian Revolution), No. 7, in 1929 from the La Vérité galleys.
* * *
Citizen Souvarine says his letter is addressed also to me. I take all the greater pleasure in replying, since his article touches on vital problems of international socialism.
Souvarine believes that those who consider ‘defence of the fatherland’ to be incompatible with socialism are taking an ‘unpatriotic’ view. As for himself, he ‘defends’ the view of Turati, Ledebour, Brizon who, while voting against war credits, declare that they accept ‘defence of the fatherland’; in other words, he defends the trend known as the ‘Centre’ (the ‘marsh’, I would say), or as Kautskyism – after its chief theoretical and literary exponent, Karl Kautsky. I might remark, in passing, that Souvarine is wrong in maintaining that
… they [i.e. the Russian comrades who speak of the collapse of the Second International] equate men like Kautsky, Longuet, etc… with nationalists of the Scheidemann and Renaudel type.
Neither I nor the Party to which I belong (the RSDLP Central Committee) have ever equated the social-chauvinist viewpoint with that of the ‘Centre’. In our official Party statements, in the Central Committee manifesto published 1 November 1914,[20] and in the resolutions adopted in March 1915[21] (both documents are reproduced in extenso in our pamphlet Socialism and War, which is known to Souvarine), we have always drawn a dividing line between the social-chauvinists and the ‘Centre’. The former, in our opinion, have defected to the bourgeoisie. With regard to them we demand not merely struggle, but a split. The latter hesitate, vacillate, and their efforts to unite the socialist masses with the chauvinist leaders cause the greatest damage to the proletariat.
Souvarine says he wants to “examine the facts from a Marxist viewpoint”.
But from a Marxist viewpoint, such general and abstract definitions as ‘unpatriotic’ are of absolutely no value. The fatherland, the nation are historical categories. I am not at all opposed to wars waged in defence of democracy or against national oppression, nor do I fear such words as ‘defence of the fatherland’ in reference to these wars or to insurrections. Socialists always side with the oppressed and, consequently, cannot be opposed to wars whose purpose is democratic or socialist struggle against oppression. It would therefore be absurd to deny the legitimacy of the wars of 1793, of France’s wars against the reactionary European monarchies, or of the Garibaldi wars, etc… And it would be just as absurd not to recognise the legitimacy of wars of oppressed nations against their oppressors, wars that might break out today – rebellion of the Irish against England, for instance, rebellion of Morocco against France, or the Ukraine against Russia, etc…
The Marxist viewpoint requires that in each individual case we define the political content of the war.
But what determines the political content of a war?
Every war is only the continuation of policy. What kind of policy is being continued in the present war? The policy of the proletariat, which from 1871 to 1914 was the sole exponent of socialism and democracy in France, England and Germany? Or imperialist policy, the policy of colonial rapine and oppression of weak nations by the reactionary, decadent and moribund bourgeoisie?
The question has only to be squarely put and we get a perfectly clear answer: the present war is an imperialist war. It is a war of slave-owners quarrelling over their chattels and eager to consolidate and perpetuate slavery. It is the “capitalist brigandage” of which Jules Guesde spoke in 1899, thereby condemning in advance his own betrayal. Guesde said at the time:
There are other wars … they arise every day, wars for the acquisition of markets. This kind of war does not disappear, but, on the contrary, bids fair to become continuous. It is chiefly a war between the capitalists of all countries for profits and possession of the world market, and it is fought at the price of our blood. Now, just imagine that in each of the capitalist countries of Europe, this mutual slaughter for the sake of plunder is directed by a socialist! Just imagine an English Millerand, an Italian Millerand, a German Millerand, in addition to a French Millerand, working to embroil the proletarians in this capitalist brigandage and make them fight each other! What would remain I ask you, comrades, of international solidarity? On the day the Millerands became a common phenomenon, we would have to say ‘farewell’ to all internationalism and become nationalists, and this neither you nor I will ever agree to. (Jules Guesde, En Garde!, Paris, 1911, pp. 175-6.)
It is not true that France is waging this 1914-17 war for freedom, national independence, democracy, and so on… She is fighting to retain her colonies, and for England to retain hers, colonies to which Germany would have had a much greater right – from the standpoint of bourgeois law, of course. She is fighting to give Russia Constantinople, etc… Consequently, this war is being waged not by democratic and revolutionary France, not by the France of 1792, nor the France of 1848, nor the France of the Commune. It is being waged by bourgeois France, reactionary France, that ally and friend of tsarism, the ‘world usurer’ (the expression is not mine, it belongs to Lysis, a contributor to l’Humanité), who is defending his booty, his ‘sacred right’ to possess colonies, his ‘freedom’ to exploit the entire world with the help of the millions loaned to weaker or poorer nations.
Do not tell me it is hard to distinguish between revolutionary and reactionary wars. You want me to indicate a purely practical criterion that would be understood by all, in addition to the scientific criterion indicated above?
Here it is: Every fair-sized war is prepared beforehand. When a revolutionary war is being prepared, democrats and socialists are not afraid to state in advance that they favour ‘defence of the fatherland’ in this war. When however, in contrast, a reactionary war is being prepared, no socialist will venture to state in advance, before war is declared, that is, that he will favour ‘defence of the fatherland’.
Marx and Engels were not afraid to urge the German people to fight Russia in 1848 and 1859.
In contrast, at their Basel Congress in 1912 the socialists did not venture to speak of ‘defence of the fatherland’ in the war they could see was maturing and which broke out in 1914.
Our Party is not afraid to declare publicly that it will sympathise with wars or uprisings which Ireland might start against England; Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia against France; Tripoli against Italy; the Ukraine, Persia, China against Russia, etc.
But what of the social-chauvinists? And the ‘Centrists’? Will they have the courage openly and officially to state that they favour, or will favour, ‘defence of the fatherland’ in the event of war breaking out between, say, Japan and the United States, a clearly imperialist war prepared over the course of many years, and one which would imperil many hundreds of millions of people? I dare them! I am prepared to wager that they will not, for they know only too well that if they make such a statement, they will become a laughing stock in the eyes of the workers, they will be jeered at and driven out of the socialist parties. That is why the social-chauvinists and those in the ‘Centre’ will avoid any open statement and will continue to wriggle, lie and confuse the issue, seeking refuge in all manner of sophisms, like this one in the resolution of the last, 1915 French party congress: “An attacked country has the right to defence.”
As if the question were: Who was the first to attack, and not: What are the causes of the war? What are its aims? Which classes are waging it? Could one imagine, for example, a sane-minded socialist recognising England’s right to ‘defence of the fatherland’ in 1796, when the French revolutionary troops began to fraternise with the Irish? And yet it was the French who had attacked England and were actually preparing to land in Ireland. And could we, tomorrow, recognise the right to ‘defence of the fatherland’ for Russia and England, if, after they had been taught a lesson by Germany, they were attacked by Persia in alliance with India, China and other revolutionary nations of Asia performing their 1789 and 1793?
That is my reply to the really ludicrous charge that we share Tolstoy’s views.[22] Our Party has rejected both the Tolstoy doctrine and pacifism, declaring that socialists must seek to transform the present war into a civil war of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, for socialism.
Should you object that this is utopian, I will answer that the bourgeoisie of France, England, etc., do not, apparently, subscribe to that opinion. They would not play so vile and ridiculous a role, going to the length of jailing or conscripting ‘pacifists’, had they not felt and foreseen the inevitable and steady rise of revolution and its early approach.
This leads me to the question of a split, raised also by Souvarine. A split! That is the bogy with which the socialist leaders are trying to frighten others, and which they themselves fear so much!
What useful purpose could now be served by the foundation of a new International? [Souvarine asks.] Its activity would be blighted by sterility, for numerically it would be very weak.
But the day-to-day facts show that, precisely because they are afraid of a split, the ‘activity’ of Pressemane and Longuet in France, Kautsky and Ledebour in Germany, is blighted by sterility! And precisely because Karl Liebknecht and Otto Rühle in Germany were not afraid of a split, openly declaring that a split was necessary (cf. Rühle’s letter in Vorwärts, 12 January 1916), and did not hesitate to carry it out – their activity is of vast importance for the proletariat, despite their numerical weakness. Liebknecht and Rühle are only two against 108. But these two represent millions, the exploited mass, the overwhelming majority of the population, the future of mankind, the revolution that is mounting and maturing with every passing day. The 108, on the other hand, represent only the servile spirit of a handful of bourgeois flunkies within the proletariat. Brizon’s activities, when he shares the weaknesses of the Centre or the marsh, are blighted by sterility. And, conversely, they cease to be sterile, help to awaken, organise and stimulate the proletariat, when Brizon really demolishes ‘unity’, when he courageously proclaims in parliament ‘Down with the war!’, or when he publicly speaks the truth, declaring that the Allies are fighting to give Russia Constantinople.
The genuine revolutionary internationalists are numerically weak? Nonsense! Take France in 1780, or Russia in 1900. The politically-conscious and determined revolutionaries, who in France represented the bourgeoisie – the revolutionary class of that era – and in Russia today’s revolutionary class – the proletariat, were extremely weak numerically. They were only a few, comprising at the most only 1/10,000, or even 1/100,000, of their class. Several years later, however, these few, this allegedly negligible minority, led the masses, millions and tens of millions of people. Why? Because this minority really represented the interests of these masses, because it believed in the coming revolution, because it was prepared to serve it with supreme devotion.
Numerical weakness? But since when have revolutionaries made their policies dependent on whether they are in a majority or minority? In November 1914, when our Party called for a split with the opportunists,[23] declaring that the split was the only correct and fitting reply to their betrayal in August 1914, to many that seemed to be a piece of insensate sectarianism coming from men who had completely lost all contact with real life. Two years have passed, and what is happening? In England, the split is an accomplished fact. The social-chauvinist Hyndman has been forced to leave the party. In Germany, a split is developing before everyone’s eyes. The Berlin, Bremen and Stuttgart organisations have even been accorded the honour of being expelled from the party… from the party of the Kaiser’s lackeys, the party of the German Renaudels, Sembats, Thomases, Guesdes and co. And in France? On the one hand, the party of these gentlemen states that it remains true to ‘fatherland defence’. On the other, the Zimmerwaldists state, in their pamphlet The Zimmerwald Socialists and the War, that ‘defence of the fatherland’ is un-socialist. Isn’t this a split?
And how can men who, after two years of this greatest world crisis, give diametrically opposite answers to the supreme question of modern proletarian tactics, work faithfully side by side, within one and the same party?
Look at America – apart from everything else a neutral country. Haven’t we the beginnings of a split there, too: Eugene Debs, the ‘American Bebel’, declares in the socialist press that he recognises only one type of war, civil war for the victory of socialism, and that he would sooner be shot than vote a single cent for American war expenditure (see Appeal to Reason No. 1032, 11 September 1915).[24] On the other hand, the American Renaudels and Sembats advocate ‘national defence’ and ‘preparedness’. The American Louguets and Pressemanes – the poor souls! – are trying to bring about a reconciliation between social-chauvinists and revolutionary internationalists.
Two Internationals already exist. One is the International of Sembat-Südekum-Hyndman-Plekhanov and co. The other is the International of Karl Liebknecht, Maclean (the Scottish schoolmaster whom the English bourgeoisie sentenced to hard labour for supporting the workers’ class struggle), Höglund (the Swedish MP and one of the founders of the Zimmerwald Left sentenced to hard labour for his revolutionary propaganda against the war), the five Duma members exiled to Siberia for life for their propaganda against the war, etc. On the one hand, there is the International of those who are helping their own governments wage the imperialist war, and on the other, the International of those who are waging a revolutionary fight against the imperialist war. Neither parliamentary eloquence nor the ‘diplomacy’ of socialist ‘statesmen’ can unite these two Internationals. The Second International has outlived itself. The Third International has already been born. And if it has not yet been baptised by the high priests and Popes of the Second International but, on the contrary, has been anathemised (see Vandervelde’s and Stauning’s speeches), this is not preventing it from gaining strength with every passing day. The Third International will enable the proletariat to rid itself of opportunists and will lead the masses to victory in the maturing and approaching social revolution.
Before concluding, I would like to say a few words in reply to Souvarine’s personal polemics. He asks (the socialists now residing in Switzerland) to moderate their personal criticism of Bernstein, Kautsky, Longuet, etc… For my part, I must say that I cannot accept that. And I would point out to Souvarine, first of all, that my criticism of the ‘Centre’ is political, not personal. Nothing can restore the mass influence of the Südekums, Plekhanovs, etc.: their authority has been so undermined that everywhere the police have to protect them. But by their propaganda of ‘unity’ and ‘fatherland defence’, by their striving to bring about a compromise, by their efforts to draw a verbal veil over the deep-seated differences, the ‘Centrists’ are causing the greatest damage to the labour movement, because they are impeding the final break-down of the social-chauvinists’ moral authority, and in that way are bolstering their influence on the masses and galvanising the corpse of the opportunist Second International. For all these reasons I consider it my socialist duty to fight Kautsky and other ‘Centre’ spokesmen.
Souvarine “appeals”, among others, to:
Guilbeaux, to Lenin, to all those who enjoy the advantage of being ‘outside the battle’, an advantage that often enables one to take a reasonable view of men and affairs in socialism, but one that, perhaps, is fraught also with certain inconveniences.
A transparent hint. In Zimmerwald, Ledebour expressed the same thought without any ambiguity. He accused us ‘Left Zimmerwaldists’ of addressing revolutionary appeals to the masses from abroad. I repeat to Citizen Souvarine what I told Ledebour in Zimmerwald. It is twenty-nine years since I was arrested in Russia. And throughout these twenty-nine years I have never ceased to address revolutionary appeals to the masses. I did so from prison, from Siberia, and later from abroad. And I frequently met in the revolutionary press ‘hints’ similar to those made in the speeches of tsarist prosecutors – ‘hints’ that I was lacking in honesty, because, while living abroad, I addressed revolutionary appeals to the Russian people. Coming from tsarist prosecutors these ‘hints’ surprise no one. But I must admit that I expected arguments of another kind from Ledebour. Apparently he has forgotten that when they wrote their famous Communist Manifesto in 1847, Marx and Engels likewise addressed revolutionary appeals to the German workers from abroad! The revolutionary struggle is often impossible without revolutionaries emigrating abroad. That has repeatedly been the experience in France. And Citizen Souvarine would have done better not to follow the bad example of Ledebour and… the tsarist prosecutors.
Souvarine also says that Trotsky,
… whom we [the French minority] consider one of the most extreme elements of the extreme Left in the International, is simply branded as a chauvinist by Lenin. It has to be admitted that there is a certain exaggeration here.
Yes, of course, “there is a certain exaggeration”, but on Souvarine’s part, not mine. For I have never branded Trotsky’s position as chauvinistic. What I have reproached him with is that all too often he has represented the ‘Centre’ policy in Russia. Here are the facts. The split in the RSDLP has existed officially since January 1912.[25] Our Party (grouped around the Central Committee) accused of opportunism the other group, the Organising Committee, of which Martov and Axelrod are the most prominent leaders. Trotsky belonged to Martov’s party and left it only in 1914.[26] By that time the war had started. Our five Duma deputies (Muranov, Petrovsky, Shagov, Badayev and Samoilov) were exiled to Siberia. In Petrograd, our workers voted against participation in the war industries committees (the most important practical issue for us, just as important in Russia as the question of participation in the government in France). On the other hand, the most prominent and most influential Organising Committee writers – Potresov, Zasulich, Levitsky and others – have come out for ‘defence of the fatherland’ and participation in the war industries committees. Martov and Axelrod have protested and advocated non-participation in the committees. But they have not broken with their party, one faction of which has turned chauvinist and accepts participation. That is why at Kienthal we reproached Martov with having wanted to represent the Organising Committee as a whole, whereas in fact he can represent only one of its two factions. This party’s Duma group (Chkheidze, Skobelev and others) is divided, with some of its members for and others against ‘fatherland defence’. But all of them favour participation in the war industries committees, resorting to the ambiguous formula of ‘saving the country’, which, essentially, is but another wording of the Südekum and Renaudel ‘fatherland defence’ slogan. More, they have in no way protested against Potresov’s position (which is actually identical to Plekhanov’s; Martov publicly protested against Potresov and declined to contribute to his journal because Plekhanov had been invited to contribute).
And Trotsky? Having broken with Martov’s party, he continues to accuse us of being splitters. Little by little he is moving to the Left, and even calls for a break with the Russian social-chauvinist leaders. But he has not definitely said whether he wants unity or a break with the Chkheidze faction. And that is one of the key issues. For, indeed, if peace comes tomorrow, we shall be having Duma elections the day after tomorrow, and the question will immediately arise of siding with or opposing Chkheidze. We oppose such an alliance. Martov favours it. And Trotsky? His attitude is unknown. There has been no definite indication of it in the 500 issues of the Paris Russian-language newspaper Nashe Slovo, of which Trotsky is one of the editors. These are the reasons why we do not agree with Trotsky.
We are not the only ones. In Zimmerwald, Trotsky refused to join the Zimmerwald Left. Together with Comrade Henriette Roland Hoist he represented the ‘Centre’. And this is what Comrade Roland Hoist now writes in the Dutch socialist paper Tribune (No. 159, 23 August 1916):
Those who, like Trotsky and his group, want to wage a revolutionary struggle against imperialism must overcome the consequences of émigré differences – largely of a personal nature – which disunite the extreme Left, and join the Leninists. A ‘revolutionary centre’ is impossible.
I must apologise for having dwelt at such length on our relations with Trotsky and Martov, but the French socialist press refers to this quite frequently and the information it gives its readers is often very inaccurate. The French comrades must be better informed of the facts concerning the Social-Democratic movement in Russia.
Endnotes
[1] The anonymous author was in fact Rosa Luxemburg.
[2] The all-Germany conference of Left-wing Social-Democrats was held at Karl Liebknecht’s home in Berlin on 1 January 1916.
[3] Lenin, ‘The War and Russian Social-Democracy’.
[4] Lenin, ‘The Conference of the RSDLP Groups Abroad’.
[5] Marx, The Civil War in France, Wellred Books, 2021, p. 71.
[6] See Lenin, ‘The Conference of the RSDLP Groups Abroad’.
[7] We find the same error in Junius’ arguments about which is better, victory or defeat? His conclusion is that both are equally bad (ruin, growth of armaments, etc.). This is the point of view not of the revolutionary proletariat, but of the pacifist petty bourgeoisie. If one speaks about the ‘revolutionary intervention’ of the proletariat – of this both Junius and the theses of the Internationale group speak, although unfortunately in terms that are too general – one must raise the question from another point of view, namely: (1) Is ‘revolutionary intervention’ possible without the risk of defeat? (2) Is it possible to scourge the bourgeoisie and the government of one’s own country without taking that risk? (3) Have we not always asserted, and does not the historical experience of reactionary wars prove, that defeats help the cause of the revolutionary class? – Lenin
[8] The Bulygin Duma, named after Alexander Bulygin, Minister of the Interior, had no legislative functions, permitted merely to discuss certain questions as a consultative body under the tsar.
[9] The reference is to the Otzovists and Ultimatumists. The Otzovists demanded the recall of the Social-Democratic deputies from the Third Duma and the cessation of activities in legal organisations such as the trade unions, the cooperatives, etc. Ultimatumism was a variant of Otzovism.
[10] ‘The Proletariat and the “Right of Nations to Self-Determination”, in the Era of Finance Capital’, published in August 1916 by the Bolshevik Georgy Pyatakov, whose pseudonym was ‘P Kievsky’.
[11] Lenin, ‘The Conference of the RSDLP Groups Abroad’.
[12] General Galliffet was a leading commander in the repression of the Paris Commune, noted for his brutality. He became Minister of War in Waldeck-Rousseau’s government.
[13] The war industries committees were established in Russia in May 1915 by the imperialist bourgeoisie to help the tsarist government in the prosecution of the war. The Central War Industry Committee was headed by one of Russia’s biggest capitalists, Alexander Guchkov, leader of the Octobrists. In an attempt to bring the workers under their influence and foster chauvinist sentiments, the bourgeoisie decided to organise ‘workers’ groups’ in these committees, thereby creating the impression that a ‘class peace’ had been achieved in Russia between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
The Bolsheviks declared a boycott of the committees and successfully carried it out with the support of the majority of workers. As a result of Bolshevik propaganda, elections to the ‘workers’ groups’ were held only in seventy out of a total of 239 regional and local committees, and workers’ representatives were elected only in thirty-six of them.
[14] La Sentinelle was produced by the Social-Democratic organisation of Neuchâtel Canton in western Switzerland.
Volksrecht (People’s Right) was the daily organ of the Swiss Social-Democratic Party founded in Zürich.
Berner Tagwacht (Bern Guardian) was a Social-Democratic newspaper founded in Bern.
[15] The Aarau Congress of the Swiss Social-Democratic Party met on 20-21 November 1915. The central issue was the party’s attitude towards the Zimmerwald internationalist groups, and the struggle developed between the three following trends: (1) anti-Zimmerwaldists; (2) supporters of the Zimmerwald Right; and (3) supporters of the Zimmerwald Left. Robert Grimm tabled a resolution urging the party to affiliate with the Zimmerwald group and endorse the political programme of the Zimmerwald Right.
The Left forces, in an amendment moved by the Lausanne branch, called for mass revolutionary struggle against the war, declaring that only a victorious proletarian revolution could put an end to the imperialist war. Under Grimm’s pressure, the amendment was withdrawn, but it was again proposed by MM Kharitonov, a Bolshevik with the right to vote delegated by one of the party’s branches. Out of tactical considerations, Grimm and his supporters were obliged to approve the amendment and it was carried by 258 votes to 141.
[16] Lenin is here referring to the Berner Tagwacht, which published the following articles on the Russo-German negotiations for a separate peace: ‘Die Vorbereitung des Separatfriedens’ (‘Preparation of a Separate Peace’) in its issue No. 230, 11 October 1916; an editorial, ‘Die Friedensgerüchte’ (‘Peace Rumours’), in No. 241, 13 October; and ‘Zum Separatfrieden’ (‘On a Separate Peace’) in No. 242, 14 October.
[17] Tsargrad is the old Russian name for Constantinople.
[18] Boris Shturmer, Prime Minister of Russia from 2 February 1916, was dismissed and replaced with Alexander Trepov on 23 November 1916.
[19] The Manifesto of 19 February 1861 abolished serfdom in Russia.
[20] Lenin, ‘The War and Russian Social-Democracy’.
[21] Lenin, ‘The Conference of the RSDLP Groups Abroad’.
[22] Leo Tolstoy was one of the most outstanding authors in Russian and world literature, who also developed a religious doctrine based on Christian anarchism and pacifism.
[23] See Lenin, ‘The War and Russian Social-Democracy’.
[24] The title of Debs’ article was ‘When I Shall Fight’.
[25] The Prague Conference, in January 1912, marked the final parting of the ways between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, with the latter boycotting the meeting.
[26] Trotsky was invited to the Prague Conference as a representative of his Pravda grouping but refused to attend. He then participated in a Menshevik organised conference in Paris in March 1912, and later on he attempted to organise ‘unity’ between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks at a gathering in Bern in August. The Bolsheviks refused to attend. The ‘August Bloc’ therefore was an unprincipled amalgam because it was made up of different tendencies with nothing in common except their hostility to Lenin, and quickly collapsed. Trotsky himself admitted he had been wrong:
… I had not freed myself at that period, especially in the organisational sphere, from the traits of a petty-bourgeois revolutionist. I was sick with the disease of conciliationism toward Menshevism and with a distrustful attitude toward Leninist centralism. Immediately after the August conference the bloc began to disintegrate into its component parts. Within a few months I was not only in principle but organisationally outside the bloc. (Leon Trotsky, In Defence of Marxism, Wellred Books, 2019, p. 185.)
However, it was not until December 1914 – January 1915 that Trotsky made a public statement to the effect that he was not responsible for the positions of the Organising Committee (the Mensheviks).