# Date: August 1915

GERMAN TRANSLATION OF A DRAFT RESOLUTION

169

task] The duty of socialists — without renouncing a single means
of legal struggle of the working class, to subordinate all of them to this
essential and primary task, to develop revolutionary consciousness
among the workers, to unite them in an international revolutionary
struggle, to support and advance every revolutionary uprising, to strive
for the transformation of the imperialist war [of peoples] between peoples*
into civil war of the oppressed classes against their oppressors,**
a war for the expropriation of the capitalist class, for the conquest of political power by the pro
letariat, for the realization of socialism.

20034

GERMAN TRANSLATION OF A DRAFT RESOLUTION (OF THE C.C.). *
[August 1915]

The present war is born of imperialism.
Capitalism has already reached this its highest stage, in which the
productive forces of society and the magnitude of capital have grown
beyond the bounds of individual nation-states.
Hence the striving of the great powers to enslave foreign nations, to plunder colonies as sources
of raw materials and fields for capital investment. The entire world is
becoming a unified world economic organism. [The entire world is divided
among a handful of great powers. The objective preconditions for so
cialism have become completely mature. The present war is a capitalist
war over privileges and monopolies, which are supposed to postpone the
collapse of capitalism.

Since socialists strive for the liberation of labor from the yoke of
capital and stand on the point of view of the fraternization of workers
of all nations, they struggle against every oppression of nations and
against all national privileges. In the epoch when the [bourgeoisie] was
still progressive, when on the historical agenda stood the overthrow of
absolutism, feudalism and foreign domination, socialists recognized — and
only in this sense — the defense of the fatherland, since they have always
been the most consistent and resolute democrats. Even now, if in Eastern
Europe or

* The words: "between peoples" are omitted in the German text. Ed.
** The words: "oppressed classes" are omitted in the German text. Ed.
The title is written by Lenin. Ed.

in the colonies a war of oppressed nations against their oppressors —
the great powers — were to break out, then socialists would completely
sympathize with these exploited nations.

The present war, however, is born of a completely different historical
epoch, when the bourgeoisie has long since ceased to be progressive and
has become directly reactionary. On the part of both groups of the war
ring powers, this war is a war of slaveholders for the preservation and
strengthening of slavery: that is, for a new partition of colonies, for
the "right" to oppress other nations, for the privileges of great-power
capital, for the perpetuation of wage slavery through the division of
workers of different countries and the oppression of workers by the most
reactionary means. Therefore, the phrases about the defense of the father
land on the part of both groups of warring powers are merely a deception
of the people by the bourgeoisie. Neither the victory of one of the two
coalitions nor the return to the status quo can prevent either the freedom
of the majority of nations from imperialist oppression by a handful of
great powers, nor guarantee the working class even its present modest
cultural conquests. The epoch of relatively peaceful capitalism is gone
forever. Imperialism brings the working class an unprecedented sharpening
of class struggle, of need, of unemployment, of price increases, of the
pressure of trusts, of militarism, political reaction, which is becoming
sharper even in the freest countries.

The real meaning of the slogan of defense of the fatherland is the
advocacy of the "right" of "one's own" national bourgeoisie to oppress
foreign nations, is national-liberal workers' politics, is an alliance of
a tiny part of privileged workers with "their" national bourgeoisie
against the mass of the proletariat. The socialists who pursue such a
policy are in fact chauvinists, social-chauvinists. The policy of voting
credits, of entry into ministries, of civil peace, etc., is a betrayal of
socialism. Opportunism, produced by the conditions of the entire past
"peaceful"* epoch, has now matured into a complete break with socialism,
into a direct enemy of the emancipation struggle of the proletariat.

The word "peaceful" was inserted later by Lenin. Ed.
Up to this point written in the hand of G. Zinoviev. The entire con
clusion of the translation is written by Lenin. Ed.

GERMAN TRANSLATION OF A DRAFT RESOLUTION
171

The working class cannot achieve its world-historical goals without
a ruthless struggle both against open opportunism and social-patriotism*
(the majority of the social-democratic parties of France, Germany,
Austria, Hyndman, Fabians and trade unionists in England, Rubanowitsch,
Plekhanov and "Nasha Zarya" in Russia, etc.), and against the so-called
"Center," which has surrendered Marxism to opportunism.

The Basel Manifesto of 1912, unanimously adopted by socialists of all
countries at a time when such a war as the one that has now broken out
was precisely foreseen, has quite definitively recognized its imperialist,
reactionary character and declared that the Congress considers it a crime
when workers of one nation shoot at workers of another nation; the
Congress has proclaimed the coming of the proletarian revolution precisely
in connection with this war. And in fact, this war creates a revolutionary
situation, generates revolutionary mood and ferment in the masses, and
everywhere in the best part of the proletariat awakens [evokes] conscious
ness of the harmfulness of opportunism and sharpens the struggle against
it. The demand for peace, which is growing among the working masses,
expresses the disillusionment of the masses, the collapse of the bourgeois
lie about the defense of the fatherland, the beginning of clarification of
the revolutionary consciousness of the masses. By socialists utilizing this
mood for revolutionary agitation, by taking no account of possible** de
feat of "one's own" fatherland, they will not deceive the peoples with
the hope of the possibility of a speedy, somehow durable, democratic
peace excluding the oppression of nations and disarmament without the
revolutionary overthrow of the present governments. Only the social revo
lution of the proletariat opens the road to peace and to the freedom of
nations.

The imperialist war opens the era of social revolution. All objective
conditions of the modern epoch place on the historical agenda the revo
lutionary mass struggle of the proletariat. The task of socialists is,
without renouncing a single legal means of struggle, to subordinate all
such means to

* Here, apparently, a misprint; should read: "Sozialchauvinismus." Ed.
** Here the page ends, and Lenin has written: "See reverse side / Rück
seite." Ed.