The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution

This is Lenin’s article criticizing the “Disarmament” slogan. It was written before August 9, 1916. The original title was “On Disarmament” written in German and meant for publication in the Swiss, Swedish and Norwegian Left Social-Democratic press. However, it was not published at the time. Lenin somewhat re-edited it for publication in Russian. The article titled as “The ‘Disarmament’ Slogan” appeared in Sbornik Sotsial-Demokrata issue No. 2, December 1916. The original, German text appeared in Jugend-Internationale, organ of the International League of Socialist Youth Organisations, issue No.9 and 10, September and October 1917. The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 28 of the second revised edition of Complete Works of Lenin.

After the World War I erupted, there occurred an unprecedented increase of oppression and exploitation which had led to widespread war-weariness among the masses. Under this situation, the social democrats of some countries, especially those in Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden and Norway, advocated abolishing the old policy of establishing “militia” or “arming the people” in the Social Democrat minimum programme and replaced it with a new provision of “disarmament”. To this end, Lenin wrote this article to expose and criticize the mistake of the “disarmament” and explained the Marxist view on war. The main points of Lenin’s argument were as follows:

(1) Socialists never oppose revolutionary wars. Lenin listed three kinds of revolutionary wars in the era of imperialism. Firstly, the war of national liberation by the colonial or semi-colonial nations oppressed and dominated by the imperialist bourgeoisie; secondly, in any class society, the civil war of the oppressed class against the oppressed class caused by the intensification of class struggle; thirdly, the development of capitalism in various countries is extremely unbalanced and socialism cannot win victory in all countries, simultaneously. Socialism can achieve victory first in one or few countries, while the others will for a period of time will remain in the capitalist or the pre-capitalist status. This was bound to create an attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush socialist states. In such cases, it would be a legitimate and just war for a victorious socialist country to oppose other bourgeois or reactionary countries. Here, Lenin further explained the idea of “socialism first achieving victory in one or few countries” which was mentioned in his August 1915 article “On the Slogan for a United States of Europe”, which put forward a brand new scientific judgment on socialist revolution.

(2) The only feasible strategy of the revolutionary class is to arm the proletariat in order to defeat, deprive and disarm the bourgeoisie. Lenin warned that people living in a class society had no other way out of this society other than class struggle. In any class society, the oppressed classes were always armed. If the oppressed class does not learn to use and possess weapons, they only end up with being oppressed. In a modern capitalist society, facing the fact that the armed bourgeoisie opposes the proletariat with its arms, “disarming” and imagining a peaceful socialism in the future, this is an escape from the ugly reality and is by no means an opposition to this reality. This is to give up class struggle and revolution. Disarmament is of course the ideal of socialism, and the proletariat will undoubtedly achieve this, but only after disarming the bourgeoisie can the proletariat destroy all its weapons without abandoning its world historical mission.

(3) In response to the proposition of abolishing militia, Lenin pointed out that “we are not in favor of a bourgeois militia; we are in favor only of a proletarian militia”. Even in the freest republican countries like the United States, Switzerland and Norway, such militia is being used against strikers. We can demand popular election of officers, abolition of all military law, equal rights for foreign and native-born workers, the right of every hundred, say, inhabitants of a given country to form voluntary military-training associations, with free election of instructors paid by the state, etc. Only under these conditions could the proletariat acquire military training for itself and not for its slave owners. Every success of the Russian revolutionary movement, even a partial success, proves that it is beneficial to the proletarian revolution.

This article strongly refutes the views and demands of disarmament, maintains the minimum programme of the revolutionary Social-Democratic Party, provides ideological and theoretical guidance for Russia’s October Revolution, and is an important landmark article of Leninism.