Published in Sotsial-Demorkrat No. 43, July 26, 1915.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, [1974], Moscow, Volume 21, pages 275-280.
During a
reactionary war a revolutionary class cannot but desire the defeat of
its government.
This is
axiomatic, and disputed only by conscious partisans or helpless
satellites of the social-chauvinists. Among the former, for instance,
is Semkovsky of the Organising Committee (No. 2 of its Izvestia),
and among the latter, Trotsky and Bukvoyed,[2] and
Kautsky in Germany. To desire Russia’s defeat, Trotsky writes, is
“an uncalled-for and absolutely unjustifiable concession to the
political methodology of social-patriotism, which would replace the
revolutionary struggle against the war and the conditions causing it,
with an orientation—highly arbitrary in the present
conditions—towards the lesser evil” (Nashe
Slovo No.
105).
This is
an instance of high-flown phraseology with which Trotsky always
justifies opportunism. A “revolutionary struggle against the war”
is merely an empty and meaning less exclamation, something at which
the heroes of the Second International excel, unless it
means revolutionary action against one’s
own government even
in wartime. One has only to do some thinking in order to understand
this. Wartime revolutionary action against one’s own government
indubitably means, not only desiring its defeat, but really
facilitating such a defeat. ("Discerning reader”: note that
this does not mean “blowing up bridges”, organising unsuccessful
strikes in the war industries, and ·in general helping the
government defeat the revolutionaries.)
The phrase-bandying
Trotsky has completely lost his bearings on a simple issue. It seems
to him that to desire Russia’s defeat means desiring
the victory of Germany. (Bukvoyed and Semkovsky give more direct
expression to the “thought”, or rather want of thought, which
they share with Trotsky.) But Trotsky regards this as the
“methodology of social-patriotism"! To help people that are
unable to think for themselves, the Berne resolution (Sotsial
DemokratNo. 40)[1] made
it clear, that in all imperialist
countries the proletariat must now desire the defeat of its own
government. Bukvoyed and Trotsky preferred to avoid this truth, while
Semkovsky (an opportunist who is more useful to the working class
than all the others, thanks to his naively frank reiteration of
bourgeois wisdom) blurted out the following: “This is nonsense,
because either Germany or Russia can win” (Izvestia No.
2).
Take the
example of the Paris Commune. France was defeated by Germany but the
workers were defeated by Bismarck and Thiers! Had Bukvoyed and
Trotsky done a little thinking, they would have realised
that they have
adopted the viewpoint on the war held by governments
and the bourgeoisie,
i.e., that they cringe to the “political methodology of
social-patriotism”, to use Trotsky’s pretentious language.
A revolution
in wartime means civil war; the conversion of
a war between governments into a civil war is, on the one hand,
facilitated by military reverses ("defeats") of
governments; on the other hand, one cannot actually
strive for such a conversion without thereby facilitating defeat.
The reason
why the chauvinists (including the Organising Committee and the
Chkheidze group) repudiate the defeat “slogan” is that this
slogan alone implies
a consistent call for revolutionary action against one’s own
government in wartime. Without such action, millions of
ultra-revolutionary phrases such as a war against “the war and the
conditions, etc." are not worth a brass farthing.
Anyone who
would in all earnest refute the “slogan” of defeat for one’s
own government in the imperialist war should prove one of three
things: (1) that the war of 1914-15 is not reactionary, or (2) that a
revolution stemming from that war is impossible, or (3) that
co-ordination and mutual aid are possible between revolutionary
movements in all the
belligerent countries. The third point is particularly important to
Russia, a most backward country, where an immediate socialist
revolution is impossible. That is why the Russian Social-Democrats
had to be the first to advance the “theory and practice” of the
defeat “slogan”. The tsarist government was perfectly right in
asserting that the agitation conducted by the Russian
Social-Democratic Labour group in the Duma—the sole instance
in the International, not only of parliamentary opposition but of
genuine revolutionary anti-government agitation among the masses—that
this agitation has weakened Russia’s “military might” and is
likely to lead to its defeat. This is a fact to which it is foolish
to close one’s eyes.
The opponents
of the defeat slogan are simply afraid of themselves when they refuse
to recognise the very obvious fact of the inseparable link between
revolutionary agitation against the government and helping bring
about its defeat.
Are co-ordination
and mutual aid possible between the Russian movement, which is
revolutionary in the bourgeois- democratic sense, and th
socialist movement in the West? No socialist who has publicly spoken
on the matter during the last decade has doubted this, the movement
among the Austrian proletariat after October 17,
1905,[3] actually proving
it possible.
Ask any
Social-Democrat who calls himself an internationalist whether or not
he approves of an understanding between the Social-Democrats of the
various belligerent countries on joint revolutionary action against
all belligerent governments. Many of them will reply that it is
impossible, as Kautsky has done (Die
Neue Zeit,
October 2, 1914), thereby fully
proving his
social-chauvinism. This, on the one hand, is a deliberate and vicious
lie, which clashes with the generally known facts and the Basle
Manifesto. On the other hand, if it were true, the
opportunists would be quite right in many respects!
Many will
voice their approval of such an understanding. To this we shall say:
if this approval is not hypocritical, it is ridiculous to think that,
in wartime and for the conduct of a war, some “formal”
understanding is necessary, such as the election of representatives,
the arrangement of a meeting, the signing of an agreement, and the
choice of the day and hour! Only the Semkovskys are
capable of thinking so. An understanding on revolutionary action even
in a single country,
to say nothing of a number of countries, can be achieved only by
the force of the example of
serious revolutionary action, by launching such
action and developing it.
However, such action cannot be launched without desiring the defeat
of the government, and without contributing to such a defeat. The
conversion of the imperialist war into a civil war cannot be “made”,
any more than a revolution can be “made”. It develops out
of a number of diverse phenomena, aspects, features, characteristics
and consequences of the imperialist war. That development
is impossible without
a series of military reverses and defeats of governments that receive
blows from their ownoppressed
classes.
To repudiate
the defeat slogan means allowing one’s revolutionary ardour to
degenerate into an empty phrase, or sheer hypocrisy.
What is
the substitute proposed for the defeat slogan? It is that of “neither
victory nor defeat” (Semkovsky in Izvestia No.
2; also the entire Organising
Committee in No. 1). This,
however, is nothing but a paraphrase of the “defence
of the fatherland” slogan.
It means shifting the issue to the level of a war between governments
(who, according to the content of this slogan, are to keep to
their old stand, “retain their positions"), and not to the
level of the struggle of
the oppressed classes against their governments! It means justifying
the chauvinism of all the
imperialist nations, whose bourgeoisie are always ready to say—and
do say to the people—that they
are “only” fighting “against defeat”. “The significance of
our August 4 vote was that we are not for war but
against defeat," David,
a leader of the opportunists, writes in his book. The Organising
Committee, together with Bukvoyed and Trotsky, stand on fully the
same ground as David when they defend the “neither-victory
nor-defeat” slogan.
On closer
examination, this slogan will be found to mean a “class truce”,
the renunciation of the class struggle by the oppressed classes in
all belligerent countries, since the class struggle is impossible
without dealing blows at one’s “own” bourgeoisie, one’s “own”
government, whereas dealing a blow at one’s own
government in wartime is (for
Bukvoyed’s information) high treason, means contributing
to the defeat of one’s own country. Those who accept the “neither
victory-nor-defeat” slogan can only be hypocritically in favour of
the class struggle, of “disrupting the class truce”; in
practice,
such people are renouncing an independent proletarian policy because
they subordinate the proletariat of all belligerent countries to
the absolutely
bourgeois task
of safeguarding the imperialist governments against defeat. The only
policy of actual, not verbal disruption of the “class truce”, of
acceptance of the class struggle, is for the proletariat to
take advantage of
the difficulties experienced
by its government and its bourgeoisie in
order to overthrow them. This,
however, cannot be achieved or striven
for,
without desiring the defeat of one’s own government and without
contributing to that defeat.
When, before
the war, the Italian Social-Democrats raised the question of a mass
strike, the bourgeoisie replied, no doubt correctly from
their own point
of view, that this would be high treason, and that Social-Democrats
would be dealt with as traitors. That is true, just as it is true
that fraternisation in the trenches is high treason. Those who write
against “high treason”, as Bukvoyed does, or against the
“disintegration of Russia”, as Semkovsky does, are adopting the
bourgeois, not the proletarian point of view. A
proletarian cannot deal
a class blow at his government or hold out (in fact) a hand to his
brother, the proletarian of the “foreign” country which is at war
with “our side”, without
committing “high
treason”, without
contributing to
the defeat, to the disintegration of
his “own”, imperialist “Great” Power.
Whoever is
in favour of the slogan of “neither victory nor defeat” is
consciously or unconsciously a chauvinist; at best he is a
conciliatory petty bourgeois but in any case he is an -enemy to
proletarian policy, a partisan of the existing ·governments, of the
present-day ruling classes.
Let us
look at the question from yet another angle. The war cannot but evoke
among the masses the most turbulent sentiments, which upset the usual
sluggish state of mass mentality. Revolutionary tactics
are impossible if
they are not adjusted to these new turbulent sentiments.
What are
the main currents of these turbulent sentiments? They are: (1) Horror
and despair. Hence, a growth of religious feeling. Again the churches
are crowded, the reactionaries joyfully declare. “Wherever there is
suffering there is religion," says the arch-reactionary Barr s.
He is right, too. (2) Hatred of the “enemy”, a sentiment that is
carefully fostered by the bourgeoisie (not so much by the priests),
arid is of economic and political value only
to the bourgeoisie.
(3) Hatred of one’s own government
and one’s own bourgeoisie—the
sentiment of all class-conscious workers who understand, on the one
hand, that war is a “continuation of the politics” of
imperialism, which they counter by a “continuation” of their
hatred of their class enemy, and, on the other hand, that “a war
against war” is a banal phrase unless it means a revolution against
their own government.
Hatred of one’s own government and one’s own bourgeoisie cannot
be aroused unless their defeat is desired; one cannot be
a sincere opponent of a civil (i.e., class) truce without arousing
hatred of one’s own government and bourgeoisie!
Those who
stand for the “neither-victory-nor-defeat” slogan are in fact on
the side of the bourgeoisie and the opportunists, for they do not
believe in the possibility of inter national revolutionary action by
the working class against their own governments, and do
not wish to
help develop such action, which, though undoubtedly difficult, is the
only task worthy of a proletarian, the only socialist task. It is the
proletariat in the most backward of the belligerent. Great Powers
which, through the medium of their party, have had to
adopt—especially in view of the shameful treachery of the German
and French Social-Democrats— revolutionary tactics that are quite
unfeasible unless they “contribute to the defeat” of their own
government, but which alone lead to a European revolution, to the
permanent peace of socialism, to the liberation of humanity from the
horrors, misery, savagery and brutality now prevailing.
[3] This refers
to the tsar’s manifesto promulgated on October 17 (30), 1905. It
promised "civil liberties" and a “legislative Duma”.
The manifesto was a concession wrested from the tsarist regime by the
revolution, but that concession by no means decided the fate of the
revolution as the liberals and Mensheviks claimed, The Bolsheviks
exposed the real meaning of the Manifesto and called upon the masses
to continue the struggle and overthrow the autocracy. The first
Russian revolution exerted a great revolutionising influence on the
working-class movement in other countries, in particular in
Austria-Hungary. Lenin pointed out that the news about the tsar’s
concession and his manifesto, with its promise of “liberties”,
“played a decisive part in the final victory of universal suffrage
in Austria”.
Mass demonstrations
took place in Vienna and other industrial cities in Austria-Hungary.
In Prague barricades were put up. As a result, universal suffrage was
introduced in Austria.
Republished from Marxists Internet Archives.
