Date: 1909
Source: ru:PSS/v26

For Russian social democracy—and indeed, to an even greater extent than for social democracy worldwide—the German Social Democracy has served as a model over the past several decades. It is therefore only natural that one cannot approach the prevailing social-patriotism—or “socialist” chauvinism—consciously, that is, critically, without first clarifying one’s position toward it with utmost precision. What was it? What is it now? And what will it become?

The first question can be answered by Karl Kautsky’s 1909 pamphlet, “The Road to Power,” which has since been translated into numerous European languages. This work represents the most comprehensive and most favorable exposition—within the context of the hopes it held out—for the tasks of our epoch, penned by the most authoritative writer in the Second International. Let us examine this pamphlet in greater detail; doing so will prove all the more useful as we increasingly witness the shameful rejection of those “forgotten words.”

Here is how Kautsky wrote back in long-ago times—five years ago, to be precise. Here is what German social democracy was, or rather, what it had promised to be. Here is the kind of social democracy that could—and should—have been respected.

Now look at what Kautsky is writing today. Consider the following key statements from his article “Social Democracy During Wartime” (“Neue Zeit,” No. 1, October 2, 1914): “Our party has discussed the question of how to behave during wartime far less often than the question of how to prevent war…” “Never has the government been so powerful, nor the parties so weak, as at the outbreak of war.” “Wartime is the least suitable time for calm, reasoned deliberation.” “The practical question now is: victory or defeat for one’s own country.” As for an agreement among the parties in warring nations to act against war: “In practice, nothing of the sort has ever been tried before. We have always doubted the possibility of such a thing…” The divergence between French and German socialists “is not a matter of principle” (both sides are defending their fatherland)… “Social Democrats of all countries have an equal right—or an equal duty—to participate in the defense of the fatherland: no nation should reproach another for doing so…” “Has the International gone bankrupt?” “Has the party abandoned the direct defense of its own party principles during wartime?” (These were the words of Mehring in the same issue{108}.) A mistaken view… There is no basis for such pessimism… The divergence is not fundamental… The unity of principles remains… Disobedience to the laws of wartime would simply lead to the suppression of our press.” Yet obedience to these laws “means no more than renouncing the defense of party principles—just as similar efforts by our party press under the Damoclean sword of the Socialist Exceptional Law do not signify a departure from socialist principles.”

We have deliberately quoted verbatim passages, for it is hard to believe that such statements could have been written. One searches in vain—in literature, except perhaps among the “literature” of outright renegades—for such self-satisfied banality, such shameful… evasion of the truth, such ugly evasions designed to conceal the most blatant abandonment—not only of socialism itself, but also of the precise international resolutions adopted unanimously (for example, in Stuttgart and especially in Basel), precisely in light of the very nature of the European war currently unfolding! It would be disrespectful to readers if we were to take Kautsky’s arguments “seriously” and attempt to “analyze” them—because while the European war bears little resemblance to a simple, “petty” Jewish pogrom, the “socialist” arguments in defense of participation in that war closely resemble the “democratic” arguments used to justify participation in the Jewish pogrom. Arguments in defense of pogroms are not subjected to careful scrutiny; they are merely pointed out, so that their authors may be publicly shamed before all conscious workers.

But how, the reader may ask, could the foremost authority of the Second International—could the writer who had defended the views set forth at the beginning of this article—have sunk to such a “worse-than-renegade” position? This is incomprehensible, we might reply—but only to those who, perhaps unconsciously, still cling to the view that, in essence, nothing truly extraordinary has happened, that it is not difficult to “make peace and forget,” and so on—that is, to those who hold precisely the renegade standpoint. But anyone who has sincerely and earnestly embraced socialist convictions and shared the views expounded at the beginning of this article will not be surprised to learn that “Vorwärts has died” (as L. Martov put it in Paris’s “Golos”) and that Kautsky too has “died.” The collapse of individual figures is nothing unusual in epochs of great global upheaval. Despite his immense contributions, Kautsky never belonged to those who, during times of profound crisis, immediately assumed a militant, Marxist stance (recall his hesitations on the question of Millerandism{109}).

And we are living through just such an epoch. “Fire the first shot, gentlemen bourgeois!” Engels wrote in 1891, rightly advocating the use of bourgeois legality by revolutionaries during the so‑called era of peaceful constitutional development. Engels’s insight was crystal clear: we, the conscious workers, will fire the second shot; it is now more advantageous for us to exploit the moment when the bourgeoisie itself violates the very legal foundations it had created, in order to make the transition from the electoral ballot to “fire” (that is, to civil war). And when Kautsky declared in 1909 that revolution in Europe was premature and that war itself heralded revolution, he was voicing the undisputed views of all revolutionary social democrats.

Yet the decades of “peaceful” times did not pass without leaving their mark: they inevitably gave rise to opportunism in every country, ensuring its dominance among parliamentary, trade union, journalistic, and other “leaders.” There is not a single country in Europe where, in one form or another, a long and tenacious struggle has not been waged against opportunism—a tendency that the entire bourgeoisie has sought to undermine and weaken the revolutionary proletariat through countless means. Fifteen years earlier, at the dawn of the Bernsteinian controversy, Kautsky himself had written that if opportunism were to evolve from a mere mood into a distinct tendency, then schism would soon become an urgent issue. And here in Russia, the old “Iskra”{110}, which had founded the working-class social democratic party, wrote in No. 2, at the beginning of 1901, in its article “On the Threshold of the Twentieth Century,” that the revolutionary class of the twentieth century, like the revolutionary class of the eighteenth century—the bourgeoisie—had its own Gironde and its own Mountain{111}.

The European War signifies the greatest historical crisis, the dawn of a new epoch. Like any crisis, the war has intensified deeply hidden contradictions and brought them to the surface, tearing away all hypocritical veils, casting off all conventions, and destroying those authorities that had either rotted away or grown moldy. (Incidentally, this is the beneficial and progressive role of all crises—a role that is understood only by those dull admirers of “peaceful evolution.”) The Second International, which over the course of 25–45 years—depending on whether one counts from 1870 or 1889—had accomplished the extraordinarily important and highly useful task of spreading socialism far and wide and of laying the groundwork for its initial, simplest organization, had played its historic role and died, defeated not so much by von Kluck as by opportunism. Let the dead bury the dead. Let the empty busybodies—unless they are the scheming lackeys of chauvinists and opportunists—now “work” to bring Vanderwelde and Samba together with Kautsky and Haase, as if Ivan Ivanovich had just said “goose” to Ivan Nikiforovich and needed a friendly “nudge” toward his opponent{112}. The International does not consist in having people sit around a table and draft hypocritical, quibbling resolutions—people who regard true internationalism as the act of German socialists justifying the German bourgeoisie’s call to shoot French workers, while French socialists, in turn, justify the French call to shoot Germans “in the name of defending the fatherland”!!! The International consists in bringing together—first ideologically, and later, in due course, organizationally—those who are capable, in these difficult days, of genuinely upholding socialist internationalism: that is, of pooling their forces and “firing the second shot” against the governments and commanding classes of each respective “fatherland.” This is no easy task; it will require considerable preparation, great sacrifices, and will not be without its defeats. But precisely because it is not an easy task, it must be undertaken only by those who are determined to pursue it, unafraid of complete rupture with chauvinists and defenders of social chauvinism.

Those who are most committed to the sincere, rather than the hypocritical, restoration of a socialist, rather than a chauvinistic, International are men like Pannekoek, who wrote in his article “The Collapse of the International”: “If the leaders gather and try to patch up their differences, it will mean nothing at all”{113}.

Let us state openly what is: war will force us to do this—whether tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. There are three currents within international socialism: 1) the chauvinists, who consistently pursue a policy of opportunism; 2) the staunch opponents of opportunism, who are already beginning to make themselves heard in every country (though opportunists have largely crushed them, “broken armies learn well”); and 3) the confused and hesitant, who now trail behind the opportunists and inflict the greatest harm on the proletariat through their hypocritical attempts to justify opportunism—with almost scientific, almost Marxist rigor (do not jest!)—even as they seek to defend it. Some of those perishing in this third current may yet be saved and brought back to socialism—but only through the policy of the most resolute break and split with the first current, with all those who are capable of justifying the voting of credits, the “defense of the fatherland,” “submission to the laws of wartime,” the satisfaction of legal formalities, and the renunciation of civil war. Only those who pursue this policy build the Socialist International. For our part, having established contact with the Russian Central Committee and with the leading figures of the St. Petersburg workers’ movement, having exchanged ideas with them and having confirmed that there is basic solidarity among them, we, as the editorial board of the Central Organ, can declare on behalf of our party that only work conducted in this direction constitutes genuine party work and social democratic work.

The prospect of a split within German social democracy may seem to many a thought too daunting in its “unusualness.” But objective reality assures us that either this very unusual outcome will come to pass—as Adler and Kautsky declared at the last meeting of the International Socialist Bureau{114} in July 1914, that they did not believe in miracles and therefore did not believe in the European War!—or else we will witness the agonizing decay of what was once German social democracy. To those who have grown overly accustomed to “believing” in the (former) German social democracy, we will remind them, in conclusion, of how individuals who for many years were our adversaries on a host of issues are now coming to terms with the idea of such a split—how L. Martov wrote in “Golos”: “Vorwärts has died”; “Social democracy, declaring its abandonment of class struggle, would do better to openly acknowledge what is, temporarily dissolve its organization, close its organs”; and how Plekhanov, according to “Golos,” stated in a lecture: “I am strongly opposed to splitting, but if, in the name of preserving organizational integrity, one sacrifices principles, then better a split than a false unity.” Plekhanov said this about the German radicals: he sees the speck in his neighbor’s eye but fails to notice the beam in his own. This is his personal peculiarity—a trait to which we have all grown far too accustomed over the past ten years of Plekhanov’s radicalism in theory and of opportunism in practice. But if even people with such idiosyncratic… quirks are beginning to speak of a split among the Germans, then this is a sign of the times.

“Social Democrat,” No. 35, December 12, 1914

Printed from the text of the newspaper “Social Democrat”