Bourgeois Pacifism and Socialist Pacifism

In this article, Lenin criticized the bourgeois pacifism and socialist pacifism for their “vapidity, stupidity and hypocrisy”. It was written in Zurich, Switzerland, December 1916 and published in Vol. 2 of the Russian version of Collected Works of Lenin. The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 28 of the second revised edition of Collected Works of Lenin.

Between the eruption of the World War I in July 1914 and the second half of 1916, the two warring imperialist blocs were so badly wounded that many bourgeois governments in Europe shifted their policy from waging imperialist wars to openly advocating the conclusion of imperialist peace treaties. The policy of social pacifism became dominant within the socialist parties of the major European countries, which put forward the slogans such as “disarmament” and “domestic peace and tranquility”.

In September 1915, the Second International held the Zimmerwald conference which was the first conference of the international socialist conference participated by socialist parties, the meeting convened in Zimmerwald. Lenin made a draft resolution on behalf of the left wing of the social democrats before the conference, put forward the basic principles of the common statement for the left wing, namely, the draft condemned the social chauvinists and the centrists (Kautskyites), he also rejected the slogans of “defending the fatherland” and “domestic peace” in the imperialist war, and which encouraged the revolutionary actions.

However, the draft by Lenin was rejected by the Kautskyites majority represented in the conference, which argued that the conference agenda should be limited to the deliberation on the issue of socialist pacifism. Against this background, Lenin wrote this article to reveal the emptiness and hypocrisy of bourgeois pacifism and socialist pacifism.

The main contents and viewpoints are as follows.

(1) The real purpose of the peace treaty that the imperialists were trying to conclude is the division of spoils among the three robbers: Russia, Germany and England. This was the essence of the peace among them. The capitalists and their governments tried their best to cover up the ugly face of the imperialist peace treaty with false empty words such as democratic peace treaty, freedom of small and weak nations, and arms reduction, that is, dividing up spoils. Under this situation, bourgeois pacifism was actually to conceal and cover up the truth.

(2) “War is the continuation of the policies of peace and peace the continuation of the policies of war”. If the bourgeois governments of various countries are not overthrown by a revolution, peace can only be the imperialist peace that will continue the imperialist war. The peace proposal put forward by imperialist and other neutral countries are actually tricks to fool their people, and pacifist tricks played by their diplomats.

(3) Socialist pacifism is just an empty, hypocritical and absurd old tune of bourgeois pacifism. Lenin pointed out that the policy of socialist parties and their fundamental task should be different from that of the bourgeoise, that is, to understand and tell the truth about the division of spoils by imperialist countries. However, these social democrats, who use people’s desire for peace and deceive people with pacifist words, induced the workers to abandon the socialist revolution already on the agenda and tried to replace it with reformism so that imperialism could “peacefully” divide spoils and “peacefully” disarm millions of proletarians, which was the same thing as bourgeois pacifism. After the famous note from the German government proposing peace talks was sent out, Kautsky, wrote his article “On the Conditions of Peace”, which used vague, abstract general words and good intentions and covered up the facts whenever German imperialist plots were involved, while when it came to Russia, Germany’s imperialist competitor, he was completely specific and explicit in his comments.

As for Kautsky’s policy, based on its actual content, was completely consistent with that of the so-called fighting social chauvinists in France and England, which also openly exposed specific steps of German imperialism, while covering up the facts related to the countries or peoples occupied by Britain and Russia with "general" good will desires or proposals.

Thus, both the centrist and the social chauvinists focused their attention mainly on the machinations of their competitors and enemies, and both factions help their imperialist governments by hiding their acts with "general" phrases. This position of theirs was also in line with bourgeois pacifism, because all imperialist powers’ diplomacy flaunted itself with beautiful expressions of “general” and “democratic” statements to hide their plunder, bullying and oppression small and weak nations. Italian Socialist reformist Filippo Turati delivered a speech on peace talks in Conference on December 17, 1916, which was undoubtedly a bourgeois broker’s point of view that suggested various imperialist robbers to make a friendly deal, namely, to divide African colonies. In taking a bourgeois view, Turati was actually no different from Kautsky. In fact, the two “kind-hearts” pacifists were defending the war and covering up their imperialist bourgeoisie’s small concessions to continue their plunder of colonies and oppression of small and weak nations.

In response to the resolution which said “we defenf the federation of nations, which is one of the guarantees of a final peace, can be secured only given the independence, territorial inviolability and political and economic liberty of all nations, big and small” passed by the French General Confederation of Labor on December 28, 1916, Lenin pointed out that this resolution was a deception of the people, since peace cannot be achieved unless the bourgeois governments are overthrown and the bourgeoisie dispossessed, thus this resolution contains nothing but bourgeois pacifist phrases; not a shadow of revolutionary consciousness, not a single socialist idea. Social chauvinists and pacifists were in agreement with the bourgeois on the basis of empty pacifist phrases.

(4) The International Socialist Party, or the Zimmerwaldist alliance, were completely split into two wings on how to deal with the current wave of imperialist peace in Europe and the right faction within the International Socialist Party had completely adopted the position of bourgeois reformist pacifism. And it was quite natural for the social-chauvinists, these agents of the governments and the bourgeoisie in the workers’ parties, to seize upon the approach of peace in particular, or even upon mere peace talk, in order to gloss over the depth of their reformism and opportunism, exposed by the war, and restore their undermined influence over the masses. Here, Lenin added: The pacifists, i.e., the Kautskyists, put aside the question of revolution and proposed either a reformist political movement or a rejected struggle for reforms. It could be seen from this that the open unity of the majority, i.e., the centrists and the social chauvinists had become a fact. Lenin called on the left faction, that is, the revolutionary Marxists, to expose the imperialist nature of the war and the nature of imperialist peace imperialism they were preparing for, and to resolutely fight against the social chauvinists who were the agents of their own governments and bourgeoisie within the working-class parties. Lenin also encouraged them to take the advantage of the current revolutionary situation in Europe to directly promote revolution, to call on people to rise up for revolution, to oppose the evil bourgeois governments in various countries, and to seize power by the armed proletariat. At the same time, even in the course of revolutionary struggle, we should never refuse or give up the use of reform to develop this kind of revolutionary struggle.

In this article, Lenin revealed and criticized the hypocrisy of social chauvinism and centrism as well as the bourgeoisie pacifism in defense of its own bourgoise. It helped the revolutionary social democrats and the general public to grasp the purpose of the peace treaty declarations by the imperialist countries and helped them to uphold the revolutionary tactic of turning imperialist war into domestic war, which was of great practical importance, and it has also further developed Lenin's theory and strategy on imperialism and socialist revolutions and on the question of war and peace, thus constitutes an important document of Leninism.