18-24 August 1907
The Congress confirms the resolutions adopted by previous international congresses against militarism and imperialism and declares once more that the struggle against militarism cannot be separated from the Socialist class struggle in general.
Wars between capitalist states are, as a rule, the outcome of their competition on the world market, for each state seeks not only to secure its existing markets, but also to conquer new ones. In this, the subjugation of foreign peoples and countries plays a prominent role. These wars result furthermore from the incessant race for armaments by militarism, one of the chief instruments of bourgeois class rule and of the economic and political subjugation of the working class.
Wars are favoured by the national prejudices which are systematically cultivated among civilized peoples in the interest of the ruling classes for the purpose of distracting the proletarian masses from their own class tasks as well as from their duties of international solidarity.
Wars, therefore, are part of the very nature of capitalism; they will cease only when the capitalist system is abolished or when the enormous sacrifices in men and money required by the advance in military technique and the indignation called forth by armaments, drive the peoples to abolish this system.
For this reason, the proletariat, which contributes most of the soldiers and makes most of the material sacrifices is a natural opponent of war which contradicts its highest goal – the creation of an economic order on a Socialist basis which will bring about the solidarity of all peoples.
The Congress, therefore, considers it as the duty of the working class and particularly of its representatives in the parliaments to combat the naval and military armaments with all their might, characterising the class nature of bourgeois society and the motive for the maintenance of national antagonisms, and to refuse the means for these armaments. It is their duty to work for the education of the working-class youth in the spirit of the brotherhood of nations and of Socialism while developing their class consciousness.
The Congress sees in the democratic organisation of the army, in the substitution of the militia for the standing army, an essential guarantee that offensive wars will be rendered impossible and the overcoming of national antagonisms facilitated.
The International is not able to determine in rigid forms the anti-militarist actions of the working class which are naturally different in different countries and for different circumstances of time and place. But it is its duty to coordinate and increase to the utmost the efforts of the working class against war.
In fact, since the International Congress at Brussels the proletariat has employed the most diverse forms of action with increasing emphasis and success in its indefatigable struggles against militarism by refusing the means for naval and military armaments and by its efforts to democratise the military organisation – all for the purpose of preventing the outbreak of wars or of putting a stop to them, as well as for utilising the convulsions of society caused by war for the emancipation of the working class.
This was evidenced especially by the agreement between the English and French trade unions following the Fashoda Affair for the maintenance of peace and for the restoration of friendly relations between England and France;[1] by the procedure of the Social-Democratic parties in the German and French parliaments during the Morocco crisis;[2] the demonstrations arranged by the French and German Socialists for the same purpose; the concerted action of the Socialists of Austria and Italy who met in Trieste in order to prevent a conflict between the two countries; furthermore, by the energetic intervention of the Socialist workers of Sweden in order to prevent an attack upon Norway; finally, the heroic, self-sacrificing struggle of the Socialist workers and peasants of Russia and Poland in order to oppose the war unleashed by tsarism, to put a stop to it, and to utilise the crisis of the country for the liberation of the working class.
All these efforts are evidence of the growing power of the proletariat and of its increasing ability to secure the maintenance of peace by resolute intervention. The action of the working class will be all the more successful the more that its spirit is prepared by a corresponding action and the labour parties of the various countries are spurred on and coordinated by the International.
The Congress is convinced that, under the pressure of the proletariat, by a serious use of arbitration in place of the miserable measures of the governments, the benefit of disarmament can be secured to all nations, making it possible to employ the enormous expenditures of money and energy, which are swallowed up by military armaments and wars, for cultural purposes.
If a war threatens to break out, it is the duty of the working classes and their parliamentary representatives in the countries involved, supported by the coordinating activity of the International Socialist Bureau, to exert every effort in order to prevent the outbreak of war by the means they consider most effective, which naturally vary according to the sharpening of the class struggle and the sharpening of the general political situation.
In case war should break out anyway, it is their duty to intervene in favour of its speedy termination and with all their powers to utilise the economic and political crisis created by the war to rouse the masses and thereby to hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule.
24-25 November 1912
At its congresses at Stuttgart and Copenhagen, the International formulated for the proletariat of all countries these guiding principles for the struggle against war:
If a war threatens to break out, it is the duty of the working classes and their parliamentary representatives in the countries involved, supported by the coordinating activity of the International Socialist Bureau, to exert every effort in order to prevent the outbreak of war by the means they consider most effective, which naturally vary according to the sharpening of the class struggle and the sharpening of the general political situation.
In case war should break out anyway, it is their duty to intervene in favour of its speedy termination and with all their powers to utilise the economic and political crisis created by the war to arouse the people and thereby to hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule.[3]
More than ever, recent events have imposed upon the proletariat the duty of devoting the utmost force and energy to planned and concerted action. On the one hand, the universal craze for armaments has aggravated the high cost of living, thereby intensifying class antagonisms and creating in the working class an implacable spirit of revolt; the workers want to put a stop to this system of panic and waste. On the other hand, the incessantly recurring menace of war has a more and more inciting effect. The great European peoples are constantly on the point of being driven against one another; these attempts against humanity and reason cannot be justified by even the slightest pretext of being in the interest of the people.
If the Balkan crisis, which has already caused such terrible disasters, should spread further, it would become the most frightful danger to civilisation and the proletariat.[4] At the same time, it would be the greatest outrage in all history because of the crying discrepancy between the immensity of the catastrophe and the insignificance of the interests involved.
It is with satisfaction that the Congress records the complete unanimity of the Socialist parties and of the trade unions of all countries in the war against war.
The proletarians of all countries have risen simultaneously in a struggle against imperialism; each section of the International has opposed the resistance of the proletariat to the government of its own country, and has mobilised the public opinion of its nation against all bellicose desires. Thus, there resulted the grandiose cooperation of the workers of all countries which has already contributed a great deal toward saving the threatened peace of the world. The fear of the ruling class of a proletarian revolution as a result of a world war has proved to be an essential guarantee of peace.
The Congress therefore calls upon the Social-Democratic parties to continue their action by every means that seems appropriate to them. In this concerted action it assigns to each Socialist party its particular task.
The Social-Democratic parties of the Balkan peninsula have a difficult task. The Great Powers of Europe, by the systematic frustration of all reforms, have contributed to the creation of unbearable economic, national and political conditions in Turkey which necessarily had to lead to revolt and war. Against the exploitation of these conditions in the interest of the dynasties and the bourgeois classes, the Social-Democratic parties of the Balkans, with heroic courage, have raised the demand for a democratic federation. The Congress calls upon them to persevere in their admirable attitude; it expects that after the war the Social-Democracy of the Balkans will make every effort to prevent the results of the Balkan War, attained at the price of such terrible sacrifices, from being misused for their own purposes by dynasties, by militarism, and by the bourgeoisie of the Balkan states which is greedy for expansion. The Congress, however, calls upon the Socialists of the Balkans particularly to resist not only the renewal of the old enmities between Serbs, Bulgars, Romanians, and Greeks, but also every violation of the Balkan peoples now in the opposite camp, the Turks and the Albanians. It is the duty of the Socialists of the Balkans, therefore, to fight against every violation of the rights of these people and to proclaim the fraternity of all Balkans peoples, including the Albanians, the Turks and the Romanians, against the unleashed national chauvinism.
It is the duty of the Social-Democratic parties of Austria, Hungary, Croatia and Slavonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina to continue with all their power their effective action against an attack upon Serbia by the Danubian monarchy. It is their task to continue, as in the past, to oppose the plan of robbing Serbia of the results of the war by armed force, of transforming it into an Austrian colony, and of involving the peoples of Austria-Hungary proper, and together with them all nations of Europe, in the greatest dangers for the sake of dynastic interests. In the future, the Social-Democratic parties of Austria-Hungary will also fight in order that those sections of the South-Slavic people ruled by the House of Habsburg may obtain the right to govern themselves democratically within the boundaries of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy proper.
The Social-Democratic parties of Austria-Hungary, as well as the Socialists of Italy, must pay special attention to the Albanian question. The Congress recognises the right of the Albanian people to autonomy but it protests against Albania, under the pretext of autonomy, becoming the victim of Austro-Hungarian and Italian ambitions for domination. The Congress sees in this not only a peril for Albania itself, but, in a short time, a menace to the peace between Austria-Hungary and Italy. Albania can lead a truly independent life only as an autonomous member of a democratic Balkan federation. The Congress therefore calls upon the Social-Democrats of Austria-Hungary and Italy to combat every attempt of their governments to envelop Albania in their sphere of influence and to continue their efforts to strengthen the peaceful relations between Austria-Hungary and Italy.
It is with great joy that the Congress greets the protest strikes of Russian workers as a guarantee that the proletariat of Russia and of Poland is beginning to recover from the blows dealt it by the tsarist counter-revolution. The Congress sees in this the strongest guarantee against the criminal intrigues of tsarism, which, after having drowned in blood the peoples of its own country, after having betrayed the Balkan peoples themselves innumerable times and surrendered them to their enemies, now vacillates between the fear of the consequences that a war would have upon it and the fear of the pressure of a nationalist movement which it has itself created. However, when tsarism now tries to appear as the liberator of the Balkan nations, it is only to reconquer its hegemony in the Balkans in a bloody war under this hypocritical pretext. The Congress expects that the urban and rural proletariat of Russia, Finland and Poland, which is growing in strength, will destroy this web of lies, will oppose every belligerent venture of tsarism, will combat every design of tsarism, whether upon Armenia or upon Constantinople, and will concentrate its whole force upon the renewal of the revolutionary struggle for emancipation from tsarism. For tsarism is the hope of all the reactionary powers of Europe, the most terrible enemy of the democracy of the peoples dominated by it; the achievement of its destruction must be viewed as one of the foremost tasks of the entire International.
However, the most important task within the action of the International devolves upon the working class of Germany, France and England. At this moment, it is the task of the workers of these countries to demand of their governments that they refuse any support either to Austria-Hungary or Russia, that they abstain from any intervention in the Balkan troubles and maintain absolute neutrality. A war between the three great leading civilised peoples on account of the Serbo-Austrian dispute over a port would be criminal insanity. The workers of Germany and France cannot concede that any obligation whatever to intervene in the Balkan conflict exists because of secret treaties.
However, on further development, should the military collapse of Turkey lead to the downfall of the Ottoman rule in Asia Minor, it would be the task of the Socialists of England, France and Germany to resist with all their power the policy of conquest in Asia Minor, which would inevitably lead in a straight line to war. The Congress views as the greatest danger to the peace of Europe the artificially cultivated hostility between Great Britain and the German Empire. The Congress therefore greets the efforts of the working class of both countries to bridge this hostility. It considers the best means for this purpose to be the conclusion of an accord between Germany and England concerning the limitation of naval armaments and the abolition of the right of naval booty. The Congress calls upon the Socialists of England and Germany to continue their agitation for such an accord.
The overcoming of the antagonism between Germany on the one hand, and France and England on the other, would eliminate the greatest danger to the peace of the world, shake the power of tsarism which exploits this antagonism, render an attack of Austria-Hungary upon Serbia impossible, and secure peace to the world. All the efforts of the International, therefore, are to be directed toward this goal.
The Congress records that the entire Socialist International is unanimous upon these principles of foreign policy. It calls upon the workers of all countries to oppose the power of the international solidarity of the proletariat to capitalist imperialism. It warns the ruling classes of all states not to increase by belligerent actions the misery of the masses brought on by the capitalist method of production. It emphatically demands peace. Let the governments remember that with the present condition of Europe and the mood of the working class, they cannot unleash a war without danger to themselves. Let them remember that the Franco-German War was followed by the revolutionary outbreak of the Commune, that the Russo-Japanese War set into motion the revolutionary energies of the peoples of the Russian Empire, that the competition in military and naval armaments gave the class conflicts in England and on the Continent an unheard-of sharpness, and unleashed an enormous wave of strikes. It would be insanity for the governments not to realise that the very idea of the monstrosity of a world war would inevitably call forth the indignation and the revolt of the working class. The proletarians consider it a crime to fire at each other for the profits of the capitalists, the ambitions of dynasties, or the greater glory of secret diplomatic treaties.
If the governments cut off every possibility of normal progress, and thereby drive the proletariat to desperate steps, they themselves will have to bear the entire responsibility for the consequences of the crisis brought about by them.
The International will redouble its efforts in order to prevent this crisis; it will raise its protest with increasing emphasis and make its propaganda more and more energetic and comprehensive. The Congress therefore commissions the International Socialist Bureau to follow events with much greater attentiveness and, no matter what may happen, to maintain and strengthen the bonds uniting the proletarian parties.
The proletariat is conscious of being at this moment the bearer of the entire future of humankind. The proletariat will exert all its energy to prevent the annihilation of the flower of all peoples, threatened by all the horrors of mass murder, starvation and pestilence.
The Congress therefore appeals to you, proletarians and Socialists of all countries, to make your voices heard in this decisive hour! Proclaim your will in every form and in all places; raise your protest in the parliaments with all your force; unite in great mass demonstrations; use every means that the organisation and the strength of the proletariat place at your disposal! See to it that the governments are constantly kept aware of the vigilance and passionate will for peace on the part of the proletariat! To the capitalist world of exploitation and mass murder, oppose in this way the proletarian world of peace and fraternity of peoples!
21 September 1915
Proletarians of Europe!
The war has lasted more than a year. Millions of corpses cover the battlefields. Millions of human beings have been crippled for the rest of their lives. Europe is like a gigantic human slaughterhouse. All civilisation, created by the labour of many generations, is doomed to destruction. The most savage barbarism is today celebrating its triumph over all that hitherto constituted the pride of humanity.
Irrespective of the truth as to the direct responsibility for the outbreak of the war, one thing is certain. The war which has produced this chaos is the outcome of imperialism, of the attempt on the part of the capitalist classes of each nation, to foster their greed for profit by the exploitation of human labour and of the natural treasures of the entire globe.
Economically backward or politically weak nations are thereby subjugated by the Great Powers who, in this war, are seeking to remake the world map with blood and iron in accord with their exploiting interests. Thus entire nations and countries, like Belgium, Poland, the Balkan states and Armenia, are threatened with the fate of being torn asunder, annexed as a whole or in part as booty in the game of compensations.
In the course of the war, its driving forces are revealed in all their vileness. Shred after shred falls the veil with which the meaning of this world catastrophe was hidden from the consciousness of the peoples. The capitalists of all countries who are coining the red gold of war-profits out of the blood shed by the people, assert that the war is for defence of the fatherland, for democracy and the liberation of oppressed nations! They lie. In actual reality, they are burying the freedom of their own people together with the independence of the other nations in the places of devastation.
New fetters, new chains, new burdens are arising, and it is the proletariat of all countries, of the victorious as well as of the conquered countries, that will have to bear them. Improvement in welfare was proclaimed at the outbreak of the war – want and privation, unemployment and high prices, undernourishment and epidemics are the actual results. The burdens of war will consume the best energies of the peoples for decades, endanger the achievements of social reform, and hinder every step forward. Cultural devastation, economic decline, political reaction – these are the blessings of this horrible conflict of nations. Thus the war reveals the naked figure of modern capitalism which has become irreconcilable, not only with the interests of the labouring masses, not only with the requirements of historical development, but also with the elementary conditions of human communal existence.
The ruling powers of capitalist society who held the fate of the nations in their hands, the monarchic as well as the republican governments, the secret diplomacy, the mighty business organisations, the bourgeois parties, the capitalist press, the Church – all these bear the full weight of responsibility for this war which arose out of the social order fostering them and protected by them, and which is being waged for their interests.
Workers!
Exploited, disfranchised, scorned, they called you brothers and comrades at the outbreak of the war when you were to be led to the slaughter, to death. And now that militarism has crippled you, mutilated you, degraded and annihilated you, the rulers demand that you surrender your interests, your aims, your ideals – in a word, servile subordination to ‘civil peace’. They rob you of the possibility of expressing your views, your feelings, your pains; they prohibit you from raising your demands and defending them. The press gagged, political rights and liberties trod upon – this is the way the military dictatorship rules today with an iron hand.
This situation which threatens the entire future of Europe and of humanity cannot and must not be confronted by us any longer without action. The Socialist proletariat has waged a struggle against militarism for decades. With growing concern, its representatives at their national and international congresses occupied themselves with the ever more menacing danger of war growing out of imperialism. At Stuttgart, at Copenhagen, at Basel, the international Socialist congresses have indicated the course which the proletariat must follow.
Since the beginning of the war, Socialist parties and labour organisations of various countries that helped to determine this course have disregarded the obligations following from this. Their representatives have called upon the working class to give up the class struggle, the only possible and effective method of proletarian emancipation. They have granted credits to the ruling classes for waging the war; they have placed themselves at the disposal of the governments for the most diverse services; through their press and their messengers, they have tried to win over the neutrals to the government policies of their countries; they have delivered up to their governments Socialist Ministers as hostages for the preservation of civil peace, and thereby they have assumed the responsibility before the working class, before its present and its future, for this war, for its aims and its methods. And just as the individual parties, so the highest of the appointed representative bodies of the Socialists of all countries, the International Socialist Bureau, has failed them.
These facts are equally responsible for the fact that the international working class, which did not succumb to the national panic of the first period of the war, or which freed itself from it, has still, in the second year of the slaughter of peoples, found no ways and means of taking up an energetic struggle for peace simultaneously in all countries.
In this unbearable situation, we, the representatives of the Socialist parties, trade unions and their minorities, we Germans, French, Italians, Russians, Poles, Letts, Romanians, Bulgarians, Swedes, Norwegians, Dutch and Swiss, we who stand, not on the ground of national solidarity with the exploiting class, but on the ground of the international solidarity of the proletariat and of the class struggle, have assembled to retie the torn threads of international relations and to call upon the working class to reorganise itself and to fight for peace.
This struggle is the struggle for freedom, for the reconciliation of peoples, for Socialism. It is necessary to take up this struggle for peace, for a peace without annexations or war indemnities. Such a peace, however, is only possible if every thought of violating the rights and liberties of nations is condemned. Neither the occupation of entire countries nor of separate parts of countries must lead to their violent annexation. No annexation, whether open or concealed, and no forcible economic attachment made still more unbearable by political disfranchisement. The right of self-determination of nations must be the indestructible principle in the system of national relationships of peoples.
Proletarians!
Since the outbreak of the war, you have placed your energy, your courage, your endurance at the service of the ruling classes. Now you must stand up for your own cause, for the sacred aims of Socialism, for the emancipation of the oppressed nations as well as of the enslaved classes, by means of the irreconcilable proletarian class struggle.
It is the task and the duty of the Socialists of the belligerent countries to take up this struggle with full force; it is the task and the duty of the Socialists of the neutral states to support their brothers in this struggle against bloody barbarism with every effective means. Never in world history was there a more urgent, a more sublime task, the fulfilment of which should be our common labour. No sacrifice is too great, no burden too heavy in order to achieve this goal: peace among the peoples.
Working men and working women! Mothers and fathers! Widows and orphans! Wounded and crippled! We call to all of you who are suffering from the war and because of the war: Beyond all borders, beyond the reeking battlefields, beyond the devastated cities and villages:
Proletarians of all countries, unite!
Zimmerwald,
September 1915
* * *
In the name of the International Socialist Conference:
For the German delegation: Georg Ledebour, Adolf Hoffmann
For the French delegation: A Bourderon, A Merrheim
For the Italian delegation: GE Modigliani, Constantino Lazzari
For the Russian delegation: N Lenin, Pavel Axelrod, M Bobrov
For the Polish delegation: St. Lapinski, A Warski, Cz. Hanecki
For the Inter-Balkan Socialist Federation: (for the Romanian delegation) C Rakovsky; (for the Bulgarian delegation) Wassil Kolarov
For the Swedish and Norwegian delegation: Z Höglund, Ture Nerman
For the Dutch delegation: H Roland-Holst
For the Swiss delegation: Robert Grimm, Charles Naine
September 1915
The International Socialist Conference at Zimmerwald sends its expression of profoundest sympathy to the countless victims of the war, to the Polish and Belgian people, to the persecuted Jewish and Armenian peoples, to the millions of human beings who are tormented by boundless sufferings and who have had to bear untold horrors.
The Conference honours the memory of the great Socialist Jean Jaurès, the first victim of the war who fell as a martyr and fighter in the struggle against chauvinism and for peace. It honours the memory of the Socialist fighters Tutzowicz and Catanesi, who lost their young lives on the battlefield.
The Conference sends the expression of its profound and fraternal sympathy to the Duma Deputies exiled to Siberia who are continuing the glorious revolutionary tradition of Russia, to Liebknecht and Monatte, fettered by capitalism, both of whom have taken up the struggle against the civil peace policy of the workers in their respective countries, to Comrades Luxemburg and Clara Zetkin who have been imprisoned for their Socialist convictions, and to all comrades, men and women, who have been persecuted or arrested because they have waged a struggle against war.
The Conference solemnly vows to honour the living and dead by following the example of these brave fighters and by indefatigably carrying out the task of awakening the revolutionary spirit in the masses of the international proletariat, and uniting them in the struggle against the fratricidal war and against capitalist society.
September 1915
Editor’s note:
The following two documents were submitted by Lenin and Karl Radek on behalf of the Zimmerwald Left. The resolution was intended for educational use among active Socialists, and the manifesto was intended for broader agitation.
The draft resolution was signed by two representatives of the Central Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (Zinoviev and Lenin); a representative of the Opposition of the Polish Social-Democracy (Radek); a representative of the Latvian province (Winter); a representative each of the Left Social-Democrats of Sweden (Höglund) and Norway (Nerman); a Swiss delegate (Platten); and a German delegate. On the question of submitting the draft to the commission, twelve delegates voted for (the eight mentioned above, two Socialist-Revolutionaries, Trotsky, and Roland-Holst) and nineteen against.
* * *
Draft Resolution on the World War and the Tasks of Social-Democracy
The World War, which has been devastating Europe for the last year, is an imperialist war waged for the political and economic exploitation of the world, export markets, sources of raw material, spheres of capital investment, etc. It is a product of capitalist development which connects the entire world in a world economy, but at the same time permits the existence of national state capitalist groups with opposing interests.
If the bourgeoisie and the governments seek to conceal this character of the World War by asserting that it is a question of a forced struggle for national independence, it is only to mislead the proletariat, since the war is being waged for the oppression of foreign peoples and countries. Equally untruthful are the legends concerning the defence of democracy in this war, since imperialism signifies the most unscrupulous domination of big capital and political reaction.
Imperialism can only be overcome by overcoming the contradictions which produce it, that is, by the socialist organisation of the advanced capitalist countries for which the objective conditions are already ripe.
At the outbreak of the war, the majority of the labour leaders had not raised this only possible slogan in opposition to imperialism. Prejudiced by nationalism, rotten with opportunism, at the beginning of the World War they betrayed the proletariat to imperialism and gave up the principles of socialism and thereby the real struggle for the everyday interests of the proletariat.
Social-patriotism and social-imperialism, the standpoint of the openly patriotic majority of the formerly Social-Democratic leaders in Germany, as well as the opposition-mannered centre of the party around Kautsky, and to which in France and Austria the majority, in England and Russia a part of the leaders (Hyndman, the Fabians, the Trade-Unionists, Plekhanov, Rubanovich, the Nasha Zarya group) confess, is a more dangerous enemy to the proletariat than the bourgeois apostles of imperialism, since, misusing the banner of socialism, it can mislead the unenlightened workers. The ruthless struggle against social-imperialism constitutes the first condition for the revolutionary mobilisation of the proletariat and the reconstruction of the International.
It is the task of the Socialist parties, as well as of the Socialist opposition in the now social-imperialist parties, to call and lead the labouring masses to the revolutionary struggle against the capitalist governments for the conquest of political power for the socialist organisation of society.
Without giving up the struggle for every foot of ground within the framework of capitalism, for every reform strengthening the proletariat, without renouncing any means of organisation and agitation, the revolutionary Social-Democrats, on the contrary, must utilise all the struggles, all the reforms demanded by our minimum programme for the purpose of sharpening this war crisis as well as every social and political crisis of capitalism of extending them to an attack upon its very foundations. By waging this struggle under the slogan of socialism, it will render the labouring masses immune to the slogans of the oppression of one people by another as expressed in the maintenance of the domination of one nation over another, in the cry for new annexations; it will render them deaf to the temptations of national solidarity which has led the proletarians to the battlefields.
The signal for this struggle is the struggle against the World War, for the speedy termination of the slaughter of nations. This struggle demands the refusal of war credits, quitting the cabinets, the denunciation of the capitalist, anti-socialist character of the war from the tribunes of the parliaments, in the columns of the legal, and where necessary illegal, press, the sharpest struggle against social-patriotism, and the utilisation of every movement of the people caused by the results of the war (misery, great losses etc.) for the organisation of street demonstrations against the governments, propaganda of international solidarity in the trenches, the encouragement of economic strikes, the effort to transform them into political strikes under favourable conditions. “Civil war, not ‘civil peace’” – that is the slogan![5]
As against all illusions that it is possible to bring about the basis of a lasting peace, the beginning of disarmament, by any decisions of diplomats and the governments, the revolutionary Social-Democrats must repeatedly tell the masses of the people that only the social revolution can bring about a lasting peace and the emancipation of humanity.
* * *
Draft Manifesto
Proletarians of Europe!
The war has now lasted for more than a year. The battlefields are strewn with millions of dead, millions have been crippled and doomed to remain a burden to themselves and to others for the rest of their lives. The war has caused terrific devastations, it will result in an unheard-of increase in taxes.
The capitalists of all countries, who at the price of proletarian blood, have been reaping enormous profits during the war, demand of the masses that they strain all their efforts and hold out to the end. They say: “The war is necessary for the defence of the fatherland, it is waged in the interests of democracy.” They lie! In not a single country did the capitalists start the war because the independence of their country was threatened, or because they wanted to free an oppressed people. They have led the masses to slaughter because they want to oppress and to exploit other peoples. They were unable to agree between themselves as to how to divide the peoples of Asia and Africa that were still independent; they were lying in ambush for each other, watching for a chance to snatch from each other the spoils previously seized. It is not for their own freedom, nor for the freedom of other peoples, that the masses are bleeding in all parts of the immense slaughterhouse called Europe. This war will bring the proletariat of Europe and the peoples of Asia and Africa new burdens and new chains.
There is, therefore, no reason why this fratricidal war should be waged to the end, to the last drop of blood; on the contrary, every effort must be strained to put an end to it.
The time for this has already come. What you must demand first is that your Socialist Deputies, those whom you delegated to parliament to fight against capitalism, against militarism, against the exploitation of the people, do their duty. All of them, with the exception of the Russian, Serbian and Italian comrades, and with the exception of Comrades Liebknecht and Rühle, have trampled upon that duty; they have either supported the bourgeoisie in their rapacious war, or else have vacillated and have shirked responsibility. You must demand that they either resign from their seats or that they use the platform of parliament to make clear to the people the nature of the present war, and that outside of parliament they help the working class to resume its struggle. Your first demand must be this: refusal of all war credits, withdrawal from the cabinets in France, Belgium, and England.
But that is not all! The Deputies cannot save you from that rabid beast, the World War, that subsists on your blood. You must act yourselves. You must make use of all your organisations, of your entire press, to rouse the broadest masses groaning under the burden of the war to revolt against it. You must go out into the streets and throw into the face of the ruling classes your rallying cry: ‘Enough of slaughters!’ Let the ruling classes remain deaf to it, the discontented masses will hear it and they will join you and take a part in the struggle.
The demand must immediately and energetically be made that the war be stopped, a loud protest must be raised against the exploitation of one people by another, against the division of any people among several states. All this will take place if any capitalist government comes out victorious and is able to dictate the terms of peace to the others. If we allow the capitalists to conclude peace in the same manner as they started the war, without the participation of the masses, the new conquests will not only strengthen reaction and arbitrary police rule in the victorious country, but they will sow the seeds of new wars even more horrible.
The overthrow of the capitalist governments – this is the object which the working class in all belligerent countries must set themselves, because only then will an end be put to the exploitation of one people by another, an end put to wars, when capital has been deprived of the power of disposing of the life and death of peoples. Only peoples who shall be freed of want and misery, of the rule of capital, will be in a position to settle their mutual relations, not by war, but by friendly agreement.
Great is the goal we set ourselves, great are the efforts that will be required to attain it, great will be the sacrifices before it is attained. Long will be the road to victory. Methods of peaceful pressure will be insufficient to overcome the enemy. But it is only when you are ready to make for your own liberation, in the struggle against capital, part of those innumerable sacrifices that you have been making on the battlefield for the interests of capital, only then will you be able to put an end to the war, to lay a firm foundation for a lasting peace, which will transform you from slaves of capital into free people.
But if the deceitful phrases of the bourgeoisie and of the Socialist parties that support it succeed in restraining you from energetic struggle, and if you confine yourselves to pious wishes because you are unwilling to proceed to an attack and to sacrifice your bodies and souls for the great cause, then capital will go on shedding your blood and wasting your belongings at its own discretion.
In all countries, the number of those who think as we do grows daily. It is by their order that we have assembled representatives of various countries to address to you this call to battle. We shall carry on this struggle with mutual support as there are no interests to divide us. It is essential that the revolutionary workers of each country deem it their duty and honourable distinction to serve as a model for others, a model of energy and self-sacrifice. Not timid expectation as to whither the struggle of others will lead, but struggle in the first ranks – that is the road that leads to the formation of a powerful International which will put an end to war and capitalism.
* * *
The draft resolution and manifesto is signed by the delegations of the Central Committee of the Social Democratic Labour Party of Russia; the Regional Committee of the Social Democracy of Russian Poland and Lithuania; the Central Committee of the Social Democracy of Latvia; the Swedish and Norwegian Social Democratic Youth League; a representative of the revolutionary Social Democrats of Germany; and a Swiss delegate.
September 1915
1
The undersigned declare as follows:
The manifesto adopted by the Conference does not give us complete satisfaction. It contains no pronouncement on either open opportunism or opportunism that is hiding under radical phraseology – the opportunism which is not only the chief cause of the collapse of the International, but which strives to perpetuate that collapse. The manifesto contains no clear pronouncement as to the methods of fighting against the war.
We shall continue, as we have done heretofore, to advocate in the Socialist press and at the meetings of the International, a clear-cut Marxist position in regard to the tasks with which the epoch of imperialism has confronted the proletariat.
We vote for the manifesto because we regard it as a call to struggle and in this struggle we are anxious to march side by side with the other sections of the International.
We request that our present declaration be included in the official proceedings.
N Lenin, G Zinoviev, Radek, Nerman, Höglund, Winter
2
The other declaration, which was signed, in addition to the group that had introduced the resolution of the Left, by Roland-Holst and Trotsky, read as follows:
Inasmuch as the adoption of our amendment (to the manifesto) demanding the vote against war appropriations might in a way endanger the success of the Conference, we do, under protest, withdraw our amendment and accept Ledebour’s statement in the commission to the effect that the manifesto contains all that is implied in our proposition.
It may be added that Ledebour, as an ultimatum, demanded the rejection of the amendment, refusing to sign the manifesto otherwise.
April 1916
Editor’s note:
The Kienthal Manifesto was drafted by a committee of Giuseppe Modigliani, Ernst Meyer and Karl Radek, representing respectively the conference’s Right, Center and Left currents. It was adopted on 30 April 1916.
* * *
Proletarians of all countries, unite!
Two years of world war! Two years of devastation! Two years of victims’ blood and reaction’s fury!
Who is to blame? Who stands behind those who threw the burning torch into the keg of gunpowder? Who had long desired this war and prepared for it?
The ruling classes!
In September 1915, we met as socialists from warring and neutral countries alike in Zimmerwald, joining hands across the bloody chaos. Amid the horrors unleashed by war, we united to declare in our manifesto:
The ruling powers of capitalist society who held the fate of the nations in their hands, the monarchic as well as the republican governments, the secret diplomacy, the mighty business organisations, the bourgeois parties, the capitalist press, the Church – all these bear the full weight of responsibility for this war which arose out of the social order fostering them and protected by them, and which is being waged for their interests.
As Jaurès said a few days before his death: “Every nation rushed through the streets of Europe brandishing burning torches.”
* * *
Millions of men have fallen into their graves. Millions of families are obliged to mourn. Millions of women and children have been turned into widows and orphans. Ruins have been piled on top of ruins, while irreplaceable cultural monuments have been destroyed. And after all this, the war has reached a dead end.
Despite the untold masses of victims on all battlefronts, nothing decisive has been achieved. The governments sacrifice millions upon millions of soldiers merely to shift the battle lines ever so slightly.
Neither victors nor vanquished! Or rather, all sides are defeated – all are bled white, all are ruined, all are exhausted: that will be the outcome of this gruesome war. All this to show the ruling classes that their fantasies of imperialist world domination have not been achieved.
Once again it has been made clear that the only socialists to have served the interests of their peoples are those who, despite persecution and slander, have stood firm against nationalist hysteria and demanded an immediate peace without annexations.
So join with us in crying out across the battlefields: Down with the war! Long live peace!
Workers of city and countryside:
The governments and imperialist cliques, together with their press, tell you to hold out to the end, in order to liberate oppressed nations. This is the crudest method of deception of all those that have been utilised in this war. The true goal of this generalised slaughter is, for some, to secure lands that they have assembled and conquered through centuries of war. Others want to divide the world anew in order to expand their holdings. They aim to annex additional lands, to cut apart and tear apart entire peoples, in order to reduce them to the status of common serfs and chattels.
Your governments and your press tell you that the war must be continued in order to destroy militarism.
Do not be deceived! Militarism in a nation can only be eliminated by this nation itself, and the task of bringing it down is posed in every country.
Your governments and your press also tell you that the war must be continued so that it can be the last war. This too is a deception. Never has a war put an end to war. On the contrary, each war awakens the lust for revenge. Violence begets violence.
Thus after each sacrifice, your tormentors will demand new ones. Nor do the bourgeois pacifist zealots offer an escape from this vicious circle.
There is only one way to prevent future wars, namely for the working classes to conquer political power and abolish capitalist property.
Enduring peace can only be achieved by victorious socialism.
Proletarians! Who are those who urge you to ‘hold out to the end’ until ‘victory’?
They are the ones who were truly responsible for causing the war. Among them: the venal press, the war contractors, the war profiteers, and also the social patriots who ape the bourgeois war slogans. Among them are the reactionaries, who are secretly pleased by the death on the battlefields of those who only yesterday were threatening the rulers’ privileges – socialists, trade unionists, and all those who sowed the seeds of socialism in town and countryside.
That is the party of the politicians who insist that we hold out!
They control state power; they rule over the mendacious press that poisons the people; they enjoy freedom to agitate for continuing the war and increasing death and devastation.
And you are the victims. You have only the right to go hungry, to be silent, to suffer the chains of the state of siege, the censorship, and the musty air of the dungeon.
* * *
You, the people, the working masses, are made victims of a war that is not your own.
You, the workers from city and countryside, stand in the trenches, in the front lines, while behind the lines you see many of the rich and their accomplices – shirkers living in safety. For them war means the death of others.
And even as they wage their class struggle against you even more fiercely than before, they preach to you of ‘civil peace’. Mercilessly they draw profit from your poverty, your suffering, while inciting you to betray your class and drive from your heart your greatest strength – your hopes in socialism.
Social injustice and class rule are even more apparent in war than in peacetime.
In peace, the capitalist system robs workers of the joys of life; in war it robs them of everything, including life itself.
* * *
And let us be done with devastation. It is you, working people, who will bear the burden of these heaps of ruins today and in the future.
The hundreds of billions in cash thrown into the maw of the god of war are unavailable for maintaining the people’s well-being, for cultural purposes, and for social reform that could ease your lot, promote popular education and alleviate poverty.
And tomorrow new and heavy taxes will be laid on your stooped shoulders.
So let us end the squandering of your labour, your money, and your life’s energy. Rise up in struggle for an immediate peace with no annexations!
* * *
In every warring country, working women and men are turning against the war and its consequences, against poverty and want, against joblessness and inflation. Let them raise their voices for restoration of the civil rights taken from them, for social legislation presenting the demands of the working classes in city and countryside.
Let proletarians of the neutral countries stand by socialists in the warring countries in their difficult struggle and resist with all their strength any further expansion of the war.
Let socialists of every country act on the decisions of international congresses, which made it the duty of the working class to make every effort to bring the war to a rapid conclusion.
Put all the pressure that you can on your deputies, parliaments and governments.
Demand that parliamentary representatives of parliamentary parties immediately reject any form of support for the governments’ war policies. Demand that from now on they vote against all budgetary credits for the war.
Use every means possible to bring a rapid end to the human slaughter!
Take up the slogan: For an immediate armistice! Peoples suffering ruin and murder, rise up in struggle!
Take courage! Bear in mind that you are the majority and, when you so desire, you can assume power.
Let the governments know that hate against the war is growing in every country and, with it, the desire for social retribution. This is bringing closer the hour of peace among the peoples.
Down with the war!
Long live peace, immediate peace, without annexations!
Long live international socialism!
The Second International Socialist
Zimmerwald Conference
Endnotes
[1] The Fashoda Crisis was a territorial dispute between Britain and France in 1898 over control of Sudan. Both powers sought to expand their colonial influence in Africa. There was war hysteria in both countries, but the crisis was eventually resolved, with France conceding the territory to Britain.
[2] The First Moroccan Crisis took place in 1905 when the German Kaiser attempted to weaken French influence in Morocco and increase German presence. The crisis brought France and Germany to the brink of war, but it was averted by a conference where Germany was supported only by Austria-Hungary and thus had to give up on its demands
[3] Emphasis added by the Basel delegates.
[4] A reference to the political upheavals and territorial disputes in the Balkan Peninsula, then part of the Ottoman Empire. It was to culminate in the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, where the Balkan states (Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Montenegro) sought to break away from Ottoman rule and expand their territories. These conflicts destabilised the region and contributed to the outbreak of First World War.
[5] These words are taken from the letter to the Zimmerwald Conference of an outstanding leader of the German opposition. – Footnote in original
The individual being referred to was Karl Liebknecht.