PROJECT [RESOLUTION ON THE QUESTION OF WAR]¹
[August 1915. Zürsberg]
The modern war is born of imperialism—that is, the highest stage of capitalism—when
the accumulation of capital compels the development of productive forces and the expansion of capital beyond the narrow confines of individual national states, driving “great” powers to seek the subjugation of foreign nations and the seizure of colonies as sources of raw materials and outlets for capital.
The objective conditions for socialism have fully ripened, and the great powers in this present war are no longer fighting merely to buy time, to postpone the inevitable demise of capitalism by preserving and intensifying colonial dependency, by seizing privileged positions in the global market, or by dividing and suppressing the international revolutionary struggle of the working class.
Socialist democracies fully recognize the necessity of freedom for all peoples.
[In the course of the struggle]
In the epoch of struggle against feudalism, absolutism, and foreign national oppression, they acknowledged the defense of the fatherland; and today, they likewise recognize the legitimacy of the wars waged by oppressed nations—especially the colonies—against their oppressors, the “great” powers.
But the present war among the great powers is, in essence, a war of the exploiters against the exploited, a war to intensify and consolidate slavery, to extend the boundaries of colonial domination, to assert the “right” to oppress foreign nations, to secure privileges for the great-power bourgeoisie, and to suppress the workers’ movement with reactionary force.
Therefore, the claims made by both warring blocs regarding “defense of the fatherland” are nothing more than a deceptive cover for the interests of the bourgeois classes.
No government, however powerful, no return to the status quo ante bellum* can safeguard the freedom of nations from the imperialist great powers—or provide
* The state of affairs prior to war. Ed.
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the possibility of a tolerable life for the working class, which is increasingly burdened by rising prices, monopolistic trusts, militarism, and the political reaction that accompanies them—even in the most ostensibly free countries.
The true significance of the slogan “defense of the fatherland” in this war lies in the defense of great-power privileges and advantages; it is the defense of the “right” of a particular bourgeoisie to oppress foreign nations—it is a policy that is, in effect, reformist and liberal toward the workers, a policy that allies a small section of the working class with its own national bourgeoisie against the vast majority of the proletariat and the exploited. Socialists who pursue such a policy are, in practice, social-chauvinists—social-chauvinists. The politics of voting for war credits, of entering into ministries, of advocating Burgfrieden* and the like, is a politics of opportunism—a betrayal of socialism. And the working class cannot attain its great goals of labor emancipation without waging a resolute struggle against opportunism and social-chauvinism.
The Basel Manifesto of 1912—adopted precisely in anticipation of a war between the great powers, a war that would indeed come to pass—clearly and unequivocally recognized the reactionary, imperialist character of this war and explicitly pointed to the “possibility and likelihood” of an approaching proletarian revolution, arising precisely in the context of such a war. And indeed, the war created a revolutionary situation, giving rise to revolutionary uprisings and fermentations. The task of the Social Democrats is to sustain and develop these movements, to help clarify the revolutionary consciousness of the masses and to liberate their minds from the lies of bourgeois and socialist chauvinism, to support every effort at mass revolutionary struggle against imperialism in the name of socialism, and to strive to transform the imperialist war into a civil war for socialism.
Social Democrats must harness the growing desire for peace among the masses—their deepening disillusionment and the first signs of the emergence of revolutionary consciousness—to strengthen revolutionary agitation. Yet in doing so, Social Democrats must not delude the people with the hope of a quick, even if only temporary, democratic peace that excludes national oppression—a peace achieved without the revolutionary overthrow of the existing governments.
* A peace based on civil concord. Ed.


PROJECT RESOLUTION ON THE QUESTION OF WAR

1 The draft resolution printed here is a variant of the text of this resolution, published in Collected Works, Volume XXX, page 230. Lenin wrote this draft to submit it on behalf of the “Lefts” to the Zimmerwald Conference.
8 The Manifesto of the International Socialist Congress in Basel was reprinted in Lenin’s Collected Works, Volume XVIII, page 408. The Congress had been convened in protest against the Balkan War—and the looming European war—and took place on November 24–25, 1912 (see Lenin’s Collected Works, Volume XVIII, page 199, and Lenin’s excerpts below, p. 225).
Lenin’s Collected Works, Volume XXX


TO THE REFERENCE WORK “IMPERIALISM AND THE RIGHT OF NATIONS TO SELF-DETERMINATION”
OCTOBER 1918. BERNE