V. I.

Lenin

THE INTERNATIONAL POLICY OF THE BOURGEOISIE

Government newspapers and liberal newspapers are full of
news, rumours, speculations and calculations about “Balkan”
policy. What a mess! Sensation follows upon sensation, each report is more spectacular than the last. Yesterday,
it was said that war was about to break out between Austria
and Montenegro, between Bulgaria and Serbia. Today there is a spate of denials of yesterday’s news, and
assurances that “peace has been secured”.

Yesterday there were piquant stories about Essad pasha,
his secret treaty with the King of Montenegro, and his insidious plans for seizing power in Albania. Today comes
denial of these stories, and more piquant reports about
agreements between Austria and Essad.

The man in the street, swallowing everything he is told,
listens to these fables, taking them at their face value,
and blindly following the swindlers who try to divert “public” attention with exactly the kind of thing that
serves their interest. The man in the street does not suspect
that he is being led by the nose, and that the ringing phrases about “patriotism”, “the country’s honour and
prestige” and “the Concert of Great Powers” are a deliberate
attempt to cover up the machinations of financial swindlers
and all sorts of capitalist adventurers. The sensational
reports cooked up daily by the big bourgeois newspapers,
whose occupation it is to sell the “latest” and the “most
exciting” news at a profit, are designed specifically to
distract the attention of the crowd from the really important
questions and the real background of “high” politics.

The conservative newspapers in Europe, the

Black-Hundred [1] and Octobrist, and also non-party, papers in
our own country, are playing this game crudely and in primitive fashion. In Russia, for example, they carry daily
incitements against Austria, and depict Russia as the “
protector” of the Slavs. The liberal press, like Rech and similar
other papers, is carrying on the, very same game , only in
more subtle fashion, concealing it more skilfully, making
its “digs” at Austria with greater caution, assuming the
air of statesmen discussing the issues confronting the Concert
of Europe.

In reality, all this quarrelling between Austria am)
Russia, between the Triple Alliance and the Triple
Entente, [2] all these subtle approaches, are nothing but
disputes between capitalist profiteers and capitalist governments over the division of the spoils. They are trying to
drag the man in the street into the issue of how “we” can
tear off a bigger slice, and how to let “them” have a smaller
one; they are trying to get the man in the street to take
an interest and show concern in the squabbling.

Nothing is being written or said about the number of skins to be taken off the backs of the peasant and the
worker in Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece to cover the expenses
of war, or in Austria to cover the expenses of mobilisation,
or in Russia for the same purpose and for her imperialist
policy; or whether, and how, democratic institutions are
to be ensured in the “new” states of the Balkans, or in
Armenia, or in Mongolia. That is not news. The profits of
the international sharks do not depend on that.
Democratic institutions even tend to hamper “steady” profit-making. Instead of exposing the policy of the Great Powers,
the newspapers—both conservative and liberal—are engaged
in discussing how best to help the sharks have their fill
through this policy.

---
Notes:
[1]
Black Hundreds —monarchist gangs set up by the tsarist police
to fight the revolutionary movement. They killed revolutionaries, attacked progressive intellectuals and staged anti-Jewish
pogroms.

[2]
The Triple Alliance —an imperialist bloc of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy, which took shape between 1879 and 1882.

The Triple Entente —an imperialist bloc of Britain, France
and Russia, which was formalised in 1907 as a counter-weight
to the Triple Alliance.