V. I.

Lenin

Eduard David’s book Die Sozialdemoleratie im Wellkrieg (Vorwärts Publishers, Berlin, 1915) provides a good collection
of facts and arguments on the tactics pursued by the official German
Social-Democratic Party in the present war. Those who follow opportunist
literature and that of the German Social-Democrats in general will find
nothing new in this book. It is, however, quite useful, and not only for
purposes of reference. Anyone who would gain a deeper insight into the
historic collapse of German Social-Democracy, anyone who really wishes to
understand the reasons why a leading Social-Democratic party has
“suddenly” (allgedly all of a sudden) become a party of
lackeys of the German bourgeoisie and the Junkers, anyone who wishes to
inquire into the meaning of the commonplace sophisms which serve, to
justify or conceal that collapse, will find David’s dull hook far
from tedious. As a matter of fact, there is an integral quality in
David’s opinions; he has the conviction of a liberal-labour
politician, something that is entirely missing in the works of Kautsky,
for instance, that hypocrite who trims his sails to the wind.

David is an opportunist through and through, a contributor of long
standing to Sozialistische Monatshefte —the German counterpart of Nashe Dyelo; be is the author of a big volume on the
agrarian question, which contains not even a grain of socialism or
Marxism. The very fact that a person like this, whose entire life has been
devoted to corrupting the working-class movement in the bourgeois spirit,
has become one of many just as opportunist party leaders, a Deputy,
and even a member of the Executive (Vorstand)

of the German
Social-Democratic parliamentary party, is a serious enough indication of the
extent, depth and violence of the process of putrefaction within the German
Social-Democracy.

David’s book is of no scientific value whatever, since the author
cannot or will not even pose the question of how the principal classes of
present-day society have for decades been preparing, encouraging and
building up their present attitude towards the war, this through
definite politics that stem from definite class interests. Even the thought that, without an examination like the one just
mentioned, no Marxist attitude towards the war can exist, and that only an
examination such as this can provide the basis for a study of the
ideology of the various classes in their attitude towards the war,
is entirely alien to David. He is an advocate of a liberal-labour
policy, who adapts all his exposition and all his arguments to the task of
influencing working-class audiences, concealing from thorn the weak points
in his stand, making liberal tactics acceptable to them, and stifling
proletarian revolutionary instincts with the aid of the greatest possible
number of authoritative examples from ‘The Socialists’ Tactics
in the West-European States” (Chapter 7 in David’s book), etc.,
etc.

From the ideological standpoint David’s book is therefore
interesting only inasmuch as it provides an opportunity to analyse how the
bourgeoisie should speak to the workers in order to influence them. The essence of Eduard David’s ideological stand, considered
from this angle, the only correct one, is contained in the following
proposition: “The significance of our vote [for war creditslWe
voted, not for war but against defeat” (p. 3, table of contents, and many passages in the book). This is the theme of the entire
book. To back this main thesis, David has hand-picked examples of the way
Marx, Engels and Lassalle regarded Germany’s national wars (Chapter
2), data on the Triple Entente’s vast plans of conquest (Chapter 4),
as well as facts from the diplomatic history of the war (Chapter 5), the
latter being nothing more than an attempt to whitewash Germany by referring
to the ridiculously trivial and no less ridiculously insincere official
exchange of telegrams on the eve of the war, etc. A special chapter (6)
entitled “The Magnitude of the Danger” contains considerations
and figures on the Triple Entente’s preponderance of might, the
reactionary nature of tsarism, etc. Of course, David is fully in favour of
peace. The preface to the book, dated May 1, 1915, winds up with
the slogan, “Peace on Earth!” David, of course, considers
himself an internationalist: the German Social-Democratic Party, he says,
“has not betrayed the spirit of the International” (p. 8); it
has “fought against the sowing of poisonous hatred among the
peoples” (p. 8); it “has declared since the very first day of
the war that in principle it is ready for peace as soon as the security of
the country has been achieved” (p. 8).

David’s book strikingly reveals that, to influence the workers and
the masses in general, the liberal bourgeoisie (and their agents in the
labour movement, i. e., the opportunists) are prepared to swear allegiance
to internationalism any number of times, accept the peace slogan, renounce
the annxationist aims of the war, condemn chauvinism, and so on and so forth
anything except revolutionary action against their own government,
anything in the world, if only they can come out “against
defeat”. In point of fact, this ideology, in terms of mathematics, is
both necessary and sufficient to fool the workers. One cannot offer
them less because the masses cannot be rallied unless they are promised a
just peace, and scared with the danger of invasion, and unless allegiance to
internationalism is sworn to; one need not offer them more because
all that is “more”, i. e., the seizure of colonies, the
annexation of foreign territories, the pillaging of conquered countries, the
conclusion of advantageous trade agreements, etc., will be effected, not directly by the liberal bourgeoisie, but by the imperialist —militarist governmental war clique after the
war.

The roles are well distributed; while the government and the military
clique—with the suppoit of the multi-millionaires and all bourgeois
“men of affairs"—are waging the war, the liberals console and
dupe the masses with the nationalist ideology of a defensive war, with
promises of a democratic peace, etc. Eduard David’s ideology is that
of the liberal and humanitarian pacifist bourgeois; so is the ideology of
the Russian opportunists in the Organising Committee, who are waging a
struggle against the desirability of defeat, against the disintegration of
Russia, for the peace slogan, etc.

A non-liberal brand of tactics, one that differs in principle from the
above, begins with the onset of a decisive break with any attempts
to justify participation in the war, with the practical conduct of
a policy of propaganda and preparation for revolutionary action, in wartime
and with the full exploitation of wartime difficulties, against the
respective governments. David does approach this borderline, the
real line between bourgeois and proletarian politics, but he approaches it
only with the purpose of glossing over an unpleasant subject. He mentions
the Basle Manifesto several times, but he carefully steers clear of all its
revolutionary passages; he recalls how Vaillant appealed in Basic “for
a military strike and social revolution” (p. 119), but does so only to
defend himself by using the example of the chauvinist Vaillant, not
in order to cite and analyse the revolutionary directives of the resolution
of the Basle Congress.

David quotes a considerable portion of our Central Committee’s
Manifesto, including its main slogan—the conversion of the imperialist
war into a civil war—but he does it only to declare that these
“Russian” tactics are nothing short of “madness” and “gross distortion of the decisions of the International”
(pp. 169, 172). This, he says, is Hervéism (p. 176); Hervé’s
book, he says “contains the whole theory of Lenin, Luxemburg, Radek,
Pannekoek, etc.” But, my dear David, is not there some Hervéism in
the revolutionary passages of the Basic resolution and the Communist Manifesto? The mention of the latter document is just as unpleasant to
David as the name of our journal, which is reminiscent of that very
document, is unpleasant to Semkovsky. The thesis of the
Communist Manifesto to the effect that “the workingmen have no
country” has, as David is convinced, “long been disproved”
(p. 176 if.). As to the question of nationalities, the entire concluding
chapter of David’s book offers us the most unmitigated bourgeois
nonsense about the “biological law of differentiation” (!),
etc.

What is international is not at all anti-national; we stand for the right
of nations to self-assertion; we are against the browbeating of weak
nations, David asserts, failing to understand (or rather pretending not to
understand) that justifying participation in the imperialist war and
advancing the “against defeat” slogan in this war means acting,
not only as an anti-socialist, but also as an anti-national politician. For
the present-day imperialist war is a war between Great Powers (i.e., powers
that oppress a number of other nations), conducted for the purpose of oppressing new nations. One cannot he “national” in an imperialist war otherwise than by being a socialist politician, i.e., by recognising the right of oppressed nations to liberation, to secession from the Great Powers that oppress them. In the era of imperialism, there can be no other salvation for most of the world’s nations than through
revolutionary action undertaken by the proletariat of the Great Powers,
spreading beyond the boundaries of nationality, smashing those boundaries,
and overthrowing the international bourgeoisie. Until the bourgeoisie is
overthrown, there will remain nations known as “Great Powers”,
i.e., the oppression will remain of nine-tenths of the nations of the whole
world. The overthrow of the bourgeoisie will enormously accelerate the
downfall of national partitions of every kind, this without
decreasing but, on the contrary, increasing a millionfold the
“differentiation” of humanity, in the meaning of the wealth and
the variety in spiritual life, ideological trends, tendencies, and
shades.

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