16. The international obligations of the working class of Russia are precisely now coming to the forefront with particular force.
Only lazy people do not swear by internationalism these days. Even the chauvinist defencists, even Plekhanov and Potresov, even Kerensky, call themselves internationalists. It becomes the duty of the proletarian party all the more urgently, therefore, to clearly, precisely and definitely counterpoise internationalism in deed to internationalism in word.
Mere appeals to the workers of all countries, empty assurances of devotion to internationalism, direct or indirect attempts to fix a “sequence” of action by the revolutionary proletariat in the various belligerent countries, laborious efforts to conclude “agreements” between the socialists of the belligerent countries on the question of the revolutionary struggle, all the fuss over the summoning of socialist congresses for the purpose of a peace campaign, etc., etc.—no matter how sincere the authors of such ideas, attempts, and plans may be –amount, as far as their objective significance is concerned, to mere phrase-mongering, and at best are innocent and pious wishes, fit only to conceal the deception of the people by the chauvinists. The French social-chauvinists, who are the most adroit and accomplished in methods of parliamentary hocus-pocus, have long since broken the record for ranting and resonant pacifist and internationalist phrases coupled with the incredibly brazen betrayal of socialism and the International, the acceptance of posts in governments which conduct the imperialist war, the voting of credits or loans(as Chkheidze, Skobelev, Tsereteli and Steklov have been doing recently in Russia), opposition to the revolutionary struggle in their own country, etc., etc.
Good people often forget the brutal and savage setting of the imperialist world war. This setting does not tolerate phrases, and mocks at innocent and pious wishes.
There is one, and only one, kind of real internationalism, and that is—working whole-heartedly for the development of the revolutionary movement and the revolutionary struggle in one’s own country, and supporting (by propaganda, sympathy, and material aid) this struggle, this, and only this, line, in every country without exception.
Everything else is deception and Manilovism.[1]
During the two odd years of the war the international socialist and working-class movement in every country has evolved three trends. Whoever ignores reality and refuses to recognise the existence of these three trends, to analyse them, to fight consistently for the trend that is really internationalist, is doomed to impotence, helplessness and errors.
The three trends are:
1). The social-chauvinists, i.e., socialists in word and chauvinists in deed. People who support “defence of the fatherland” in an imperialist war (and above all in the present imperialist war).
These people are our class enemies. They have gone over to the bourgeoisie.
They are the majority of the official leaders of the official Social-Democratic parties in all countries—Plekhanov and Co. in Russia, the Scheidemanns in Germany, Renaudel, Guesde and Sembat in France, Bissolati and Co. in Italy, Hyndman, the Fabians[2] and the Labourites (the leaders of the “Labour Party”) in Britain, Branting and Co. in Sweden, Troelstra and his party in Holland, Stauning and his party in Denmark, Victor Berger and the other “defenders of the fatherland” in America, and so forth.
2) The second trend, known as the “Centre”, consists of people who vacillate between the social-chauvinists and the true internationalists.
The “Centre” all vow and declare that they are Marxists and internationalists, that they are for peace, for bringing every kind of “pressure” to bear upon the governments, for “demanding” in every way that their own government should “ascertain the will of the people for peace”, that they are for all sorts of peace campaigns, for peace without annexations, etc., etc. –and for peace with the social-chauvinists. The “Centre” is for “unity”, the Centre is opposed to a split.
The “Centre” is a realm of honeyed petty-bourgeois phrases, of internationalism in word and cowardly opportunism and fawning on the social-chauvinists in deed.
The crux of the matter is that the “Centre” is not convinced of the necessity for a revolution against one’s own government; it does not preach revolution; it does not carry on a whole-hearted revolutionary struggle; and in order to evade such a struggle it resorts to the tritest ultra-“Marxist”-sounding excuses.
The social-chauvinists are our class enemies, they are bourgeois within the working-class movement. They represent a stratum, or groups, or sections of the working class which objectively have been bribed by the bourgeoisie (by better wages, positions of honour, etc.), and which help their own bourgeoisie to plunder and oppress small and weak peoples and to fight for the division of the capitalist spoils.
The “Centre” consists of routine-worshippers, eroded by the canker of legality, corrupted by the parliamentary atmosphere, etc., bureaucrats accustomed to snug positions and soft jobs. Historically and economically speaking, they are not a separate stratum but represent only a transition from a past phase of the working-class movement—the phase between 1871 and 1914, which gave much that is valuable to the proletariat, particularly in the indispensable art of slow, sustained and systematic organisational work on a large and very large scale—to a new phase that became objectively essential with the outbreak of the first imperialist world war, which inaugurated the era of social revolution.
The chief leader and spokesman of the “Centre” is Karl Kautsky, the most outstanding authority in the Second International (1889–1914), since August 1914 a model of utter bankruptcy as a Marxist, the embodiment of unheard-of spinelessness, and the most wretched vacillations and betrayals. This “Centrist” trend includes Kautsky, Haase, Ledebour and the so-called workers’ or labour group[3] in the Reichstag; in France it includes Longuet, Pressemane and the so-called minorities[4] (Mensheviks) in general; in Britain, Philip Snowden, Ramsay MacDonald and many other leaders of the Independent Labour Party,[5] and some leaders of the British Socialist Party[6]; Morris Hillquit and many others in the United States; Turati, Tréves, Modigliani and others in Italy; Robert Grimm and others in Switzerland; Victor Adler and Co. in Austria; the party of the Organising Committee, Axelrod, Martov, Chkheidze, Tsereteli and others in Russia, and so forth.
Naturally, at times individuals unconsciously drift from the social-chauvinist to the “Centrist” position, and vice versa. Every Marxist knows that classes are distinct, even though individuals may move freely from one class to another; similarly, trends in political life are distinct in spite of the fact that individuals may change freely from one trend to another, and in spite of all attempts and efforts to amalgamate trends.
3) The third trend, that of the true internationalists, is best represented by the “Zimmerwald Left”.[7] (We reprint as a supplement its manifesto of September 1915, to enable the reader to learn of the inception of this trend at first hand.)
Its distinctive feature is its complete break with both social-chauvinism and “Centrism”, and its gallant revolutionary struggle against its own imperialist government and its own imperialist bourgeoisie. Its principle is: “Our chief enemy is at home.” It wages a ruthless struggle against honeyed social-pacifist phrases (a social-pacifist is a socialist in word and a bourgeois pacifist in deed; bourgeois pacifists dream of an everlasting peace without the overthrow of the yoke and domination of capital) and against all subterfuges employed to deny the possibility, or the appropriateness, or the timeliness of a proletarian revolutionary struggle and of a proletarian socialist revolution in connection with the present war.
The most outstanding representative of this trend in Germany is the Spartacus group or the Internationale group,[8] to which Karl Liebknecht belongs. Karl Liebknecht is a most celebrated representative of this trend and of the new, and genuine, proletarian International.
Karl Liebknecht called upon the workers and soldiers of Germany to turn their guns against their own government. Karl Liebknecht did that openly from the rostrum of parliament (the Reichstag). He then went to a demonstration in Potsdamer Platz, one of the largest public squares in Berlin, with illegally printed leaflets proclaiming the slogan “Down with the Government!” He was arrested and sentenced to hard labour . He is now serving his term in a German convict prison, like hundreds, if not thousands, of other true German socialists who have been imprisoned for their anti-war activities.
Karl Liebknecht in his speeches and letters mercilessly attacked not only his own Plekhanovs and Potresovs (Scheidemanns, Legiens, Davids and Co.), but also his own Centrists, his own Chkheidzes and Tseretelis (Kautsky, Haase, Ledebour and Co.).
Karl Liebknecht and his friend Otto Rühle, two out of one hundred and ten deputies, violated discipline, destroyed the “unity” with the “Centre” and the chauvinists, and went against all of them . Liebknecht alone represents socialism, the proletarian cause, the proletarian revolution. All the rest of German Social-Democracy, to quote the apt words of Rosa Luxemburg (also a member and one of the leaders of the Spartacus group), is a “stinking corpse”.
Another group of true internationalists in Germany is that of the Bremen paper Arbeiterpolitik.
Closest to the internationalists in deed are: in France, Loriot and his friends (Bourderon and Merrheim have slid down to social-pacifism), as well as the Frenchman Henri Guilbeaux, who publishes in Geneva the journal Demain ; in Britain, the newspaper The Trade Unionist, and some of the members of the British Socialist Party and of the Independent Labour Party (for instance, Russel Williams, who openly called for a break with the leaders who have betrayed socialism), the Scottish socialist school teacher MacLean, who was sentenced to hard labour by the bourgeois government of Britain for his revolutionary fight against the war, and hundreds of British socialists who are in jail for the same offence. They, and they alone, are internationalists in deed. In the United States, the Socialist Labour Party[9] and those within the opportunist Socialist Party[10] who in January 1917 began publication of the paper, The Internationalist ; in Holland, the Party of the “Tribunists”[11] which publishes the paper De Tribune (Pannekoek, Herman Gorter, Wijnkoop, and Henriette Roland-Holst, who, although Centrist at Zimmerwald, has now joined our ranks); in Sweden, the Party of the Young, or the Left[Swedish Social Democrats],[12] led by Lindhagen, Ture Nerman, Carleson, Strölm and Z. Hömlglund, who at Zimmerwald was personally active in the organisation of the “Zimmerwald Left”, and who is now in prison for his revolutionary fight against the war; in Denmark, Trier and his friends who have left the now purely bourgeois “Social-Democratic” Party of Denmark, headed by the Minister Stauning; in Bulgaria, the “Tesnyaki”[13]; in Italy, the nearest are Constantino Lazzari, secretary of the party, and Serrati, editor of the central organ, Avanti![14]; in Poland, Radek, Hanecki and other leaders of the Social-Democrats united under the “Regional Executive”, and Rosa Luxemburg, Tyszka and other leaders of the Social-Democrats united under the “Chief Executive”[executive bodies of the Social democrats in the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuana][15]; in Switzerland, those of the Left who drew up the argument for the “referendum” (January 1917) in order to fight the social-chauvinists and the “Centre” in their own country and who at the Zurich Cantonal Socialist Convention, held at Töss on February 11, 1917, moved a consistently revolutionary resolution against the war; in Austria, the young Left-wing friends of Friedrich Adler, who acted partly through the Karl Marx Club in Vienna, now closed by the arch-reactionary Austrian Government, which is ruining Adler’s life for his heroic though ill-considered shooting at a minister, and so on.
It is not a question of shades of opinion, which certainly exist even among the Lefts. It is a question of trend . The thing is that it is not easy to be an internationalist in deed during a terrible imperialist war. Such people are few; but it is on such people alone that the future of socialism depends; they alone are the leaders of the people, and not their corrupters.
The distinction between the reformists and the revolutionaries, among the Social-Democrats, and socialists generally, was objectively bound to undergo a change under the conditions of the imperialist war. Those who confine themselves to “demanding” that the bourgeois governments should conclude peace or “ascertain the will of the peoples for peace”, etc., are actually slipping into reforms. For, objectively, the problem of the war can be solved only in a revolutionary way.
There is no possibility of this war ending in a democratic, non-coercive peace or of the people being relieved of the burden of billions paid in interest to the capitalists, who have made fortunes out of the war, except through a revolution of the proletariat.
The most varied reforms can and must be demanded of the bourgeois governments, but one cannot, without sinking to Manilovism and reformism, demand that people and classes entangled by the thousands of threads of imperialist capital should tear those threads. And unless they are torn, all talk of a war against war is idle and deceitful prattle.
The “Kautskyites”, the “Centre”, are revolutionaries in word and reformists in deed, they are internationalists in word and accomplices of the social-chauvinists in deed.
[1] Manilovism—from the name Manilov, a character in Gogol’s Dead Souls, represented as a type of easy-going sentimental landowner, whose name has become a synonym for an idle weak-willed dreamer and gas-bag.
[2] Lenin refers to the Fabian Society, an English reformist organisation, founded in 1884, so called after the Roman General Quintus Fabius Maximus (III century B.C.) surnamed Cunctator (Procrastinator) for his mark-time tactics and evasion of decisive battles in the war with Hannibal. The membership of the Fabian Society consisted chiefly of bourgeois intellectuals—scholars, writers and politicians (the Webbs, Ramsay MacDonald, Bernard Shaw and others). They denied the need for the proletariat’s class struggle and a socialist revolution, and maintained that the transition from capitalism to socialism could be brought about by means of minor and gradual reforms. Lenin described Fabianism as “an extremely opportunist trend—(see present edition, Vol. 13, p. 358). In 1900 the Fabian Society joined the Labour Party. Fabian socialism is one of the sources of Labour Party ideology.
During the First World War (1914-18) the Fabians took a social-chauvinist stand.
[3] Workers’ or labour group—Arbeitsgemeinschaft (Social-Democratic Labour Group)—an organisation of the German Centrists formed in March 1916 by breakaway members of the official Social-Democratic group in the Reichstag. Eventually, in 1917, it formed the core of the Centrist Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany, which sought to justify the overt social-chauvinists and stood for preserving unity with them.
[4] Minoritaires or Longuetists—the minority of the French Socialist Party formed in 1915. The minoritaires were followers of the social-reformist Longuet; they held Centrist views and pursued a conciliatory policy towards the social-chauvinists. During the First World War they took a social-pacifist stand. After the victory of the October Revolution in Russia they declared themselves adherents of the dictatorship of the proletariat, but in reality they were against it. They continued the policy of co-operation with the social-chauvinists and supported the annexationist Treaty of Versailles. Finding themselves in a minority at the congress of the French Socialist Party held in Tours in December 1920, where the Left wing won ascendancy, the Longuetists together with the open reformists split away from the party and joined the Two-and-a-Half International, and after its break-down returned to the Second International.
[5] The Independent Labour Party>—a reformist organisation founded by the leaders of the “new trade unions” in 1893 during the active strike movement and the mounting drive for independence of the British working class from the bourgeois parties. The mem- bership of the I.L.P. consisted of the “new trade unionists” and members of some of the old trade unions, as well as intellectuals and petty bourgeois holding Fabian views. The leaders of the Party were James Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald. From the day it was founded the I.L.P. took a bourgeois-reformist stand, devoting its chief attention to parliamentary forms of struggle and parliamentary deals with the Liberal Party. In the words of Lenin, the Independent Labour Party was “actually an opportunist party that has always been dependent on the bour- geoisie” (see V. I. Lenin, On Britain, Moscow, p. 401)
On the outbreak of the imperialist world war the I.L.P. issued a manifesto against the war, but shortly afterwards adopted a social-chauvinist stand.
[6] The British Socialist Party was founded in 1911 in Manchester, as a result of the amalgamation of the Social-Democratic Party with other socialist groups. The B.S.P. carried on propaganda in the spirit of Marxist ideas, it was “not opportunist and was really independent of the Liberals” (see present edition, Vol. 19, p. 273). Owing to its small membership and poor contact with the masses, however, it was somewhat sectarian in character. During the First World War a sharp struggle developed in the party between the internationalist trend (William Gallacher, Albert Inkpin, John MacLean, Theodore Rothstein and others) and the social-chauvinist trend headed by Hyndman. There were inconsistent elements within the internationalist trend who took a Centrist stand on a number of issues. In February 1916 a group of the party’s active members founded the newspaper The Call, which played an important part in uniting the internationalists. The annual conference of the B.S.P. held at Salford in April 1916 condemned the social-chauvinist stand taken by Hyndman and his adherents, and they left the Party.
The British Socialist Party hailed the October Revolution, and its members played a great part in the British working people’s movement in defence of Soviet Russia against foreign intervention.
In 1919 the majority of the Party organisations (98 against 4) declared in favour of joining the Communist International. The B.S.P., together with the Communist Unity Group, played a leading role in the formation of the Communist Party of Great Britain. At the First (Unity) Congress held in 1920 the overwhelming majority of the B.S.P. locals joined the Communist Party.
[7] The Zimmerwald Left group was founded on Lenin’s initiative at the International Socialist Conference held in Zimmerwald in September 1915. It consisted of delegates from the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P., the Left Social-Democrats of Sweden, Norway, Switzerland and Germany, the Polish Social-Democratic opposition and the Social-Democrats of the Latvian area. The Zimmerwald Left group, headed by Lenin, waged a struggle against the Centrist majority of the Conference and moved resolutions condemning the imperialist war, exposing the betrayal by the social-chauvinists, and urging the necessity of active struggle against the war. These draft resolutions were rejected by the Centrist majority. The Zimmerwald Left succeeded, however, in getting a number of important points from its own draft resolution included in the manifesto adopted by the Conference. Regarding this manifesto as a first step in the fight against the war, the Zimmerwald Left voted for it, and in a special statement pointed out the inadequacy and inconsistency of the manifesto and their reasons for voting for it. They declared that while remaining within the Zimmerwald organisation they would disseminate their views and work independently on an international scale. The group elected an executive body—a Bureau, consisting of Lenin, Zinoviev and Radek. The Zimmerwald Left published a journal Vorbote (Herald) in German, which carried a number of articles by Lenin.
The Bolsheviks, the only group to take a consistent interna- tionalist stand, were the guiding force in the Zimmerwald Left. Lenin opposed Radek’s opportunist waverings and criticised the mistakes of other Leftists. The Zimmerwald Left soon became the rallying point for internationalist elements of world Social- Democracy. At the Second International Socialist Conference in April 1916 in Kienthal, Switzerland, the Zimmerwald Left had 12 out of the 43 delegates to the Conference, and on a number of issues obtained nearly half of the total votes. The Social- Democrats of various countries who belonged to the Zimmerwald Left group carried on active revolutionary work and played an important role in the establishment of Communist parties in their countries.
On the Zimmerwald Left see Lenin’s articles: “The First Step”, “Revolutionary Marxists at the International Socialist Conference, September 5-8, 1915” (see present edition, Vol. 21, pp. 383-93).
[8] The Internationale group, later called the Spartacus League, was formed by the German Left Social-Democrats Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Mehring, Clara Zetkin and others at the beginning of the First World War. The group played an important part in the history of the German labour movement. At the national conference of Left Social-Democrats held in January 1916 the group adopted the thesis concerning the tasks of international Social-Democracy drafted and proposed by Rosa Luxemburg. The Internationale group carried on revolutionary propaganda among the masses against the imperialist war, exposing the aggressive policy of German imperialism and the treachery of the leaders of Social-Democracy. The group was not free, however, from serious errors on the most important questions of theory and policies: it rejected the principle of self-determination of nations in its Marxist interpretation (that is, including the right of secession and the formation of a separate state), denied the possibility of national liberation wars in the epoch of imperialism, and underestimated the role of the revolutionary party, so on. Lenin criticised the errors of the German Lefts in his articles: “The Junius Pamphlet”, “The War Programme of the Proletarian Revolution” and others (see present edition, Vols. 22 and 23). In 1917 the Internationale group became affiliated to the Centrist Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany preserving its organisational independence. After the November revolution in Germany in 1918 it broke with the “Independents”, and in December of the same year founded the Communist Party of Germany.
[9] The Socialist Labour Party of America was founded in 1876 at the unity congress held in Philadelphia as a result of the amalgamation of the American sections of the First International and other socialist organisations. A leading part at the congress was played by F. A. Sorge, an associate of Marx and Engels. The overwhelming majority of the party were immigrants who had poor contacts with the American working class. During the early years the party was controlled by the Lassalleans who made mistakes of a sectarian and dogmatic nature. Some of the party’s leaders considered parliamentary activity to be the chief task of the party and underestimated the importance of leadership of the economic struggle of the masses; others slid down to trade-unionism and anarchism. The ideological and tactical waverings of the leaders weakened the party and led to a number of groups dropping away from it. Marx and Engels sharply criticised the sectarianism of the American socialists.
In the nineties the leadership of the party was assumed by the Left wing, headed by D. De Leon, but this group, too, committed errors of an anarcho-syndicalist nature. The S.L.P. withdrew from the struggle for satisfaction of partial demands of the working class, withdrew from work in the reformist trade unions and gradually lost its already weakened contacts with the mass labour movement. During the First World War (1914-18) the S.L.P. leaned towards internationalism. Under the impact of the October Revolution in Russia the more revolutionary section of the S.L.P. took an active part in organising the Communist Party of America. Today the S.L.P. is a small organisation having no influence on the labour movement in the U.S.A.
[10] The Socialist Party of America was formed in July 1901 at the congress in Indianapolis as a result of the amalgamation of groups that had split away from the Socialist Labour Party and the Social-Democratic Party of the U.S.A., one of whose organisers was Eugene Debs, a popular leader of the American labour movement; he was one of the founders of the new party. The party had a mixed social composition, being made up of American workers immigrant workers, as well as small farmers and petty bourgeois. The Centrist and Right opportunist leadership of the party (Victor L. Berger, Morris Hillquit and others) denied the need for a dictatorship of the proletariat, rejecting revolutionary methods of struggle, and reduced the activities of the party mainly to participation in election campaigns. During the First World War three trends appeared in the S.P.—the social-chauvinists, who supported the government’s imperialist policy, the Centrists, who paid only lip-service to the cause of anti-imperialism, and the revolutionary minority, who took an internationalist stand and were actively anti-war.
The Left wing of the Socialist Party headed by Charles Ruthenberg, William Foster, William Haywood and others, and backed by the proletarian membership, waged a struggle against the party’s opportunist leadership and for independent political action by the proletariat, for the creation of industrial trade unions based on the principles of the class struggle. In 1919 a split occurred in the Socialist Party. The breakaway Left wing took the lead in forming the Communist Party of America, of which it was the core.
At the present time the Socialist Party is a small sectarian organisation.
[11] Tribunists—members of the Social-Democratic Party of Holland, whose mouthpiece was the newspaper De Tribune. The leaders of the Tribunists were David Wijnkoop, Herman Gorter, Anton Pannekoek, and Henriette Roland-Holst. The Tribunists were not a consistently revolutionary party, but they represented the Left wing of the Dutch labour movement, and during the First World War (1914-18) they adopted, in the main, an internation- alist stand.
In 1918 the Tribunists formed the Communist Party of Holland.
De Tribune—a newspaper founded in 1907 by the Left wing of the Social-Democratic Labour Party of Holland. In 1909, after the expulsion of the Leftists, who formed the Social-Democratic Party of Holland, the paper became the official organ of this party; in 1918 it became the organ of the Dutch Communist Party, and appeared under this name until 1940.
[12] Party of the Young, or the Left—the name given by Lenin to the Left wing of the Swedish Social-Democrats. During the First World War (1914-18) they took an internationalist stand and aligned themselves with the Zimmerwald Left. In May 1917 they formed the Left Social-Democratic Party of Sweden. At the party’s congress in 1919 a resolution was adopted in favour of joining the Communist International. The revolutionary wing of the party formed the Communist Party of Sweden in 1921.
[13] Tesnyaki—the revolutionary Social-Democratic Labour Party of Bulgaria, founded in 1903 after the split in the Social-Democratic Party. The founder and leader of the Party was D. Blagoev; subsequent leaders, Blagoev’s disciples, were G. Dimitrov, V. Kolarov and others. In 1914-18 the Tesnyaki came out against the imperialist war. In 1919 they joined the Communist International and formed the Communist Party of Bulgaria, later reorganised into the Bulgarian Workers’ Party (Communists).
[14] Avanti!—a daily, central organ of the Italian Socialist Party, founded in December 1896 in Rome. During the First World War (1914-18) the paper took an inconsistent internationalist stand without breaking with the reformists. In 1926 it was closed down by Mussolini’s fascist government, but continued to appear irregularly outside the country. In 1943 it resumed publication in Italy. At present Avanti! is the central organ of the Italian Socialist Party.
[15] Regional Executive and Chief Executive—executive bodies of the Social-Democrats of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania.
| NATIONALISATION OF THE BANKS AND CAPITALIST SYNDICATES | | | THE COLLAPSE OF THE ZIMMERWALD INTERNATIONAL.— THE NEED FOR FOUNDING A THIRD INTERNATIONAL |
| Document Index | ||
| < Backwards | Forwards > | |||||
| Works Index | | | Volume 24 | | | Collected Works | | | L.I.A. Index |