Socialism and War—The Attitude of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party Towards the War

An article where Lenin expounded the views of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party on the nature, attitude and tactics towards the approaching imperialist war. This article was jointly written with Grigori Zinoviev, between July-August 1915, on the eve of the first representative meeting of the International Socialist Party held in Zimmerwald, Switzerland. In August of the same year, Geneva’s Social Democrats published several texts on the issue in Russian and in German languages and distributed them to the representatives attending the Zimmerwald meeting. It was later translated into French, Norwegian and other languages. When the Soviet Union, represented by Petrograd workers and the Red Army, published a pamphlet in Petrograd in 1918, the preface of the second edition was added. That pamphlet (part of the first and third and fourth chapters) was mainly written by Lenin. He also revised the whole book. The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 26 of the second revised edition of Complete Works of Lenin.

After the World War I broke out, many European countries experienced revolutionary situations. However, under the influence of revisionism, most leaders of the Socialist Party and the Second International of the belligerent countries have betrayed Marxism and socialism, but supported the war policy of their imperialist governments, incited nationalism, advocated social chauvinism, deceived their people and suppressed the revolutionary demands of the proletariat under the guise of “defending the fatherland”. Lenin argued that under such circumstances, it was necessary to publish a pamphlet summarizing the Social-Democratic party’s revolutionary tactic in the face of the imperialist war.

Therefore, Lenin and Zinoviev jointly wrote this article during the preparation of the first representative meeting of the International Socialist Party, which focused on four issues: the principles of socialism and the war during 1914-1915; the classes and political parties in Russia; how to rebuild “International”; and the history and current situation of the split of the Social-Democratic Party in Russia. The main contents were as follows: (1) It was clearly pointed out that the attitude of the Russian Social Democrats towards the war depended on the social and political nature of the war, which required studying each war according to Marx’s dialectical materialism and class analysis. Lenin quoted the war cases from 1789 to 1871, that is, from the French Revolution to the Paris Commune, and analyzed the historical types of modern wars. He divided them into two types: one was “just” war, that is, the war against oppression carried out by the oppressed class. Such wars aimed at overthrowing the feudal system, autocratic system and oppression, promoted liberation. Such wars were of a progressive nature; another was the “unjust aggressive” war, that is, the war by the oppressors against the oppressed. Such wars aimed at carving of the sphere of influences and conquering vast colonial regions, plundering and enslaving other nations and countries. In the era of imperialism, any war that liberated the workers from exploitation and oppression of feudalism and capitalism and freed colonies and the oppressed subordinate nations from imperialist aggression and oppression was a just war. All wars that plundered other nations and suppressed national liberation, suppressed democratic revolution and socialist movement were unjust wars. The Russian Social Democrats have always condemned the brutal and unjust wars and acknowledged the legitimacy, progressiveness and inevitability of the just wars. Lenin stressed that war could not be eliminated without eliminating classes and building socialism. He regarded German military scientist Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz’s famous assertion that war is the continuation of politics by another way (violent means) as the theoretical basis for Marxists to examine the significance of any war. Therefore, we could see that the nations and countries that fought for freedom from 1789 to 1871 have changed from progressive ones to reactionary ones and became oppressors and enslavers of the most nations due to their highly developed capitalism and “excessive development” after 1876.

The governments and ruling classes of England, France, Germany, Italy, Austria and Russia had been carrying out, for decades, the politics of plundering colonies, oppressing other nations and suppressing the workers’ movement. The current war continued precisely this kind of politics. It was an outdated war waged by the reactionary bourgeois governments to oppress other nations. It was a war waged by the biggest slave owners to preserve and consolidate slavery. This was exactly the feature of the imperialist war. On the contrary, in China, Persia, India and other subordinated countries, what we have seen in recent decades was a kind of politics that aroused millions of people to strive for national survival and get rid of oppression by the reactionary “major” oppressing countries. The war on this historical basis was a national liberation war with its bourgeoise democratic progressive nature. The Marxists have always recognized that “defending the fatherland” or “defensive” war could be just and progressive only in the sense of national liberation. However, in the imperialist war, the use of the concept of “nation”, “defensive” war or the slogan of “defending the fatherland” was the deception of the people by the imperialist bourgeoisie, thus Lenin evaluated such policies as blatantly anti-historical, deceptive and hypocritical.

(2) Lenin clearly proposed to turn the imperialist war into a civil war. Lenin pointed out that socialists should never help a younger and stronger robber (Germany) to rob those older robbers. They should take advantage of the struggle between robbers to overthrow them all. Furthermore, he reiterated the importance of the proletarian revolutionary strategy formulated in the 1912 “The Basel Manifesto” for the current war, namely, once the war broke out, socialists should take advantage of the “economic and political crisis” brought by the war to “accelerate the collapse of capitalism”, which means to take advantage of the war-brought difficulties on governments and the indignation of the masses to carry out the socialist revolution. Therefore, socialists should first explain the true nature of the war to the people, carry out anti-war publicity, and explain to the masses that they had no other way out but to overthrow its “own” government by revolution.

Only one slogan could correctly express this task: turn the imperialist war into a civil war. Whoever hoped for a lasting and democratic peace should support a civil war against the government and the bourgeoisie. Lenin pointed out that in order to conscientiously implement the tactic of “mass action” to mobilize the masses towards revolution, legal organizations should be combined with secret organizations and underground newspaper publicity should be used. The Social-Democratic Party could not refuse to use even the smallest legal opportunity to organize the masses and promote socialism on any occasion or under any circumstances, but it must abandon the mistaken idea of worshipping legality. In the capitalist countries, the imperialist war could not be turned into a civil war without well-organized secret Social Democrat organizations which can agitate and publicize against the governments and without preparing various concrete means of revolution.

(3) Lenin further put forward the strategy of fighting against opportunism and social chauvinism, breaking with the Second International who was collapsed, and forming a new Third International. Lenin pointed out that after the war broke out, most Social-Democratic parties adopted reactionary tactics rather than revolutionary tactics. They sided with their own government and the bourgeoisie. Such betrayal of socialism meant the bankruptcy of the Second International. As for the cause of this bankruptcy, Lenin argued it was closely linked with social chauvinism. He thus analyzed social-chauvinism, revealing the inner link between social-chauvinism and opportunism: the imperialist war accelerated the development of opportunism in the workers’ movement and turned opportunism into social-chauvinism, which was actually the most degenerated opportunism. They have the same economic basis, that is, the interests of the privileged working class and the petty bourgeoisie, which are few in number. Their ideological and political meanings are the same, that is, to replace class struggle with class cooperation, to give up revolutionary means of struggle, to support their “own” government get out of trouble, and to make it the representative of the bourgeoisie in the workers’ movement. All these had completely betrayed all socialist beliefs and “The Basel Manifesto”. Lenin criticized the international social-chauvinists who distorted Marx and Engels’ views on war and peace issues written in the period of peaceful capitalist progress in order to justify the argument of “defending the fatherland”. Lenin pointed out that it was a mockery of truth to apply the evaluation of the war with bourgeois progressiveness and national liberation significance war to the current imperialist war. This was to substitute socialist views with bourgeois views. Lenin also revealed the eclectic nature of Karl Kautsky’s position, the famous leader of the Second International. Lenin pointed out that no matter what form it took, its essence was to theoretically replace revolutionary Marxism with eclecticism. Giving up to opportunism or being weak and incompetent was in fact more harmful to the cause of Marxism than advocating open social-chauvinism. Therefore, the task before the revolutionary social democrats was not to restore the old “International”, but to make the revolutionary social democrats break thoroughly with opportunism and social chauvinism. Lenin took Social-Democratic Party of Germany as an example to illustrate that comprising with opportunists in wartime was sheer hypocrisy. Such alliance with opportunists meant that workers allied with the bourgeoisie of their “own” nation, which was to split the revolutionary working class in the “International”. Lenin gave a detailed introduction to the history and the current situation of split within the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party to illustrate that Party’s tactics towards war was an inevitable result of its development in the past 30 years. He pointed out that in the early 1890s, the upsurge of social movements, the agitation among workers and the strike movements made the Social-Democratic Party develop from an ideological faction that had no connection with the mass workers’ movement in Russia to a positive political force that had close connection with the struggle of the working class, but later a split occurred in it as “Economists” and “Iskraists”. Between 1894-1903, the old original Iskra (1900-1903) waged a victorious struggle against “Economism” and defended the principles of revolutionary Social-Democracy. In the period of bourgeois-democratic revolution, between 1903-1908, “Economism” trend was gradually transformed into the “Menshevism” trend. However, the “old Iskra” newspaper championed the revolutionary tactics and fought to prepare the conditions for the establishment and maintenance of “Bolshevik” trend, the “old Iskra” resolutely inherited the spirit of the past struggle. During 1908-1914, the main part of Menshevik faction was indulged in the ideological trend of Liquidationism—which advocated the availability of legal participation in political life, and that the underground revolutionary party organizations and the secret activities of the Party should be liquidated. Relying on the support of the Russian liberal bourgeoisie, the Liquidators constituted a clique which was independent of the R.S.D.L.P.. In the January Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. in 1912, the leaders of this opportunist group were expelled from the Party. An intense struggle occurred within the R.S.D.L.P. between the Pravdaists or Marxists and the Liquidationists led by Nikolay Chkheidze. During the 1914-1915 European War, the main part of the Liquidationists became open social-chauvinists, which fully proved the correctness of Party’s appraisal of liquidationizm and of the expulsion of the liquidators from the Party. It was necessary to break away from the opportunists for the development interests of the Russia’s socialist movement. For whether to break away from the social-chauvinism because it had broken away from the opportunists in early times. The question now was whether this break can be achieved internationally in the near future. Lenin called for the establishment of an international Marxist organization by expelling opportunists from the workers’ party and setting up a “true socialist” party of working classes and advocated the establishment of a new International—The Third International, on the basis of such revolution.

As for how to rebuild the International, Lenin criticized the methods proposed by the social-chauvinists and the eclecticists: to defend the “fatherland” in wartime, support our “own” government and “amnesty” each other after the war. He argued that such solution was a coalition with hypocrites and was extremely dangerous for the proletariat. The tactics for the establishment of “The Third International” should be to unite the opposition factions in the socialist parties of all countries, namely, a small number of truly left groups, who were the hope of all internationalists. At the same time, Lenin said we should maintain good relations with all the vacillating elements in the Second International, mainly the socialists with pacifist color, in order to oppose social chauvinism. But, we should also not forget that they are only fellow travelers. Otherwise, we would become the captives of these vacillating pacifist elements on major and fundamental questions such as the re-establishment of the Third International and its action programme. Lenin said that no matter how the international political situation developed and whether the conditions for setting up a new Marxist International were ripe, Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party would continue to work among the proletariat in the above defined direction. Through these efforts, the R.S.D.L.P. would act as the Russian branch of Marxist International.

(4) Lenin briefly explained the position and attitude of Russian classes and political parties towards the Tsarist government’s participation in the world war: the landlord class and the upper class of the industrial and commercial bourgeoisie, the urban “middle” bourgeoisie, bourgeois intelligentsias, freelancers and other classes all supported the Tsarist government. Chauvinism was also fanned among the peasants. The only class that was not tainted with Chauvinism was the proletariat; Constitutional Democratic Party, the liberal bourgeois party in Russia, had long been a government party in the issues of foreign policy. Various bourgeois democratic parties with ties to the peasants, such as the Labor Party and Narodniks, failed to resist the wave of chauvinism. Even the left wing of the bourgeois democracy, the so-called the Socialist Revolutionary Party, also followed this trend; only the R.S.D.L.P. insisted on Marxism and proletarian Internationalism, went deep into the proletarian masses, carried out propaganda against the imperialist war, and won the support of the workers. Lenin explained that the Russian working class formed its own political party in the 30-years of resolute struggle against various opportunisms; and with the support of the class-conscious Russian proletariat, Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party shall persistently continue its original path of complete revolution.

This article comprehensively expounded on R.S.D.L.P.’s theories and tactics on the questions of war, peace and revolution. It still has theoretical and practical guiding significance for the proletarian parties to correctly understand and deal with these questions.