Betrayal of socialism¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter excoriates the leadership of the British labour movement and the Stalinists for their betrayal of socialist principles during the Second World War. The core argument is that these figures, by supporting a “hard peace” for Germany and directing hatred solely against the German people, have abandoned the fundamental Marxist teaching that the working class of all nations has nothing to gain from imperialist war. The text insists that the real culprits are not German workers but the “criminals of finance capital” in Britain, Germany, Wall Street, and Rome alike. The author charges that the labour and Stalinist leaders deliberately obscure this class analysis to protect the system of private ownership of the means of production, both in Britain and abroad. The drive for a punitive peace is thus exposed as a manoeuvre to unload war burdens onto German workers while shielding the German capitalist class—the co-responsible party—from revolutionary justice.
The chapter draws heavily on the authority of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, as well as earlier British socialist pioneers like Keir Hardie, to argue that nothing in their writings could justify the current policy. This invocation serves to frame the contemporary leadership as apostates from a clear theoretical tradition. The polemic is sharp and personal: Citrine is mocked as the “new apostle of the barricades” for urging German workers to rise up from the safety of London, while the Stalinists are derided as “new found lovers of constitutionalism” who sneer at Germans for accepting Hitler’s rule. The author argues that German workers will indeed take to the barricades, but despite—not because of—the appeals of these “Pharisees and hypocrites.” The evidence presented is not empirical but rhetorical, relying on the contradiction between the leaders’ professed socialism and their actual alignment with capitalist war aims. The chapter thus functions as a militant denunciation of reformist and Stalinist betrayal, reasserting the necessity of international working-class solidarity against the real enemy: finance capital in all belligerent nations.