Revolutionary Marxists at the International Socialist Conference, 5-8 September 1915¶
Core Argument¶
At the International Socialist Conference of September 1915, the revolutionary Marxist wing—represented by the Bolsheviks and their closest allies from Poland, Latvia, Germany, Scandinavia, Switzerland, and Holland—achieved a decisive ideological consolidation, standing as the only current within the International to produce a fully principled resolution and draft manifesto. The core argument of this chapter is that the central fault line at the Conference ran not between revolutionaries and outright social-chauvinists, but between consistent internationalists and the vacillating “near-Kautskyites” who formed the Right wing. The latter, while paying lip service to the coming revolution, refused to draw the necessary tactical conclusions.
The polemic is directed primarily against the German semi-Kautskyites, who admitted that Europe was moving toward revolutionary battles but argued that such things as fraternisation in the trenches, political strikes, street demonstrations, and civil war should be done, not spoken of from the housetops. The author exposes the absurdity of this position by noting that the same Germans passed a resolution of sympathy for the Bolshevik Duma group, which had openly distributed Sotsial-Demokrat—a paper that proclaimed civil war. This contradiction is presented as a direct inheritance of Kautsky’s method: acknowledging revolution in the abstract while refusing to prepare the masses for it concretely.
The chapter draws on two decisive historical precedents to refute the charge that open revolutionary propaganda is premature or adventurist. First, Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto of 1847 called for revolution and spoke forthrightly of force, despite living abroad and horrifying German philistines; the revolutions of 1848 proved them correct. Second, Plekhanov in the old Iskra of 1901 wrote openly about preparing insurrection, including technical details such as using wire against cavalry, years before the 1905 Revolution began. The author insists that revolutionary propaganda must precede the revolution itself: after a revolution begins, even liberals recognise it in order to betray it; the task of Marxists is to foresee it, explain its necessity, and outline its methods before the masses have tested them in action.
The French delegates, while agreeing that revolution was approaching, raised two objections: that the Conference should not provide a formula for a Third International, and that the French worker, demoralised by anarchist and Hervéist phrases, believed nobody. The author dismisses the first as unreasonable, noting that the compromise manifesto already provided such a formula, albeit inconsistently. The second is treated as a serious factual observation, but one that leads only to the conclusion that the French proletariat might move more slowly, not that revolutionary action should be abandoned. The chapter further cites Merrheim’s remark that the Socialist Party, the trade union leader Jouhaux, and the government were “three heads under one bonnet,” drawing the lesson that the government cannot be fought unless opportunist parties and anarcho-syndicalist leaders are fought simultaneously.
Finally, the Italian objection—that revolutionary tactics come either too late or too soon, and that they amount to changing the International’s programme “against violence”—is refuted by quoting Jules Guesde’s own earlier writings, which affirmed the interconnection of legal struggle, parliamentarism, and insurrection. The author concludes with an ironic observation: Kautsky and his friends, who tried to disrupt the Conference of the Left wing, succeeded only in pushing the Conference to the left, thereby confirming the correctness of the Bolshevik position.