Resolution of the Seventh International Socialist Congress at Stuttgart¶
Core Argument¶
Resolution of the Seventh International Socialist Congress at Stuttgart
The Stuttgart Congress of 1907 established that the struggle against militarism is inseparable from the general socialist class struggle. Wars between capitalist states arise from competition for world markets and the subjugation of foreign peoples, driven by the arms race and militarism as instruments of bourgeois rule. National prejudices are deliberately cultivated to distract workers from their class tasks. Wars are inherent to capitalism and will cease only when the system itself is abolished. The proletariat, which supplies the soldiers and bears the material sacrifices, is the natural opponent of war. The Congress therefore tasked workers and their parliamentary representatives with combating armaments, exposing the class nature of bourgeois society, educating youth in international brotherhood, and refusing funds for militarism. It advocated a democratic militia system as a guarantee against offensive wars. While the International could not prescribe rigid anti-militarist actions, it was to coordinate workers’ efforts. The Congress cited successful proletarian interventions against war threats, including Anglo-French trade union cooperation after Fashoda, German and French socialist action during the Morocco crisis, Austro-Italian socialist coordination at Trieste, Swedish workers preventing an attack on Norway, and the heroic struggle of Russian and Polish workers against tsarist war. Crucially, the Congress concluded that if war breaks out, it is the duty of the working class to intervene for its speedy termination and to utilise the resulting economic and political crisis to hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule.
Eight years later, the Zimmerwald Conference of September 1915 confronted the catastrophic betrayal of these principles. Delegates from socialist parties and trade unions across Europe declared that the ruling classes had used the war to impose military dictatorship, gagging the press and crushing political rights. They accused the Socialist parties and the International Socialist Bureau of abandoning the class struggle, granting war credits, and enforcing ‘civil peace’. The conference called for peace without annexations or war indemnities, based on the right of nations to self-determination. It urged socialists in belligerent countries to fight for peace through irreconcilable class struggle. The Zimmerwald Left, led by Lenin and Radek, submitted a draft resolution characterising the war as imperialist, denouncing social-patriotism and the Kautskyite centre as more dangerous than open bourgeois imperialism. Their slogan was ‘civil war, not civil peace’. They called for refusal of war credits, quitting cabinets, street demonstrations, and the transformation of economic strikes into political strikes. The Left voted for the conference manifesto despite reservations, stating it contained no clear condemnation of opportunism or methods of struggle. The manifesto declared the ruling classes fully responsible for the war, noted that after two years of devastation no decisive outcome had been achieved, and insisted that enduring peace requires victorious socialism.