V. I.

Lenin

The European war, which the governments and the bourgeois
parties of all countries have been preparing for decades, has broken
out. The growth of armaments, the extreme intensification of the struggle
for markets in the latest—the imperialist—stage of capitalist
development in the advanced countries, and the dynastic interests of the
more backward East-European monarchies were inevitably bound to bring about
this war, and have done so. Seizure of territory and subjugation of other
nations, the ruining of competing nations and the plunder of their wealth,
distracting the attention of the working masses from the internal political
crises in Russia, Germany, Britain and other countries, disuniting and
nationalist stultification of the workers, and the extermination of their
vanguard so as to weaken the revolutionary movement of the
proletariat—these comprise the sole actual content, importance and
significance of the present war.

It is primarily on Social-Democracy that the duty rests of revealing the
true meaning of the war, and of ruthlessly exposing the falsehood, sophistry
and “patriotic” phrasemongering spread by the ruling classes, the
landowners and the bourgeoisie, in defence of the war.

One group of belligerent nations is headed by the German bourgeoisie. It
is hoodwinking the working class and the toiling masses by asserting that
this is a war in defence of the fatherland, freedom and civilisation, for
the liberation of the peoples oppressed by tsarism, and for the destruction
of reactionary tsarism. In actual fact, however, this bourgeoisie, which
servilely grovels to the Prussian Junkers, headed by Wilhelm II, has always
been a most faithful ally of tsarism, and an enemy of the revolutionary
movement of Russia’s workers and peasants. In fact, whatever the
outcome of the war, this bourgeoisie will together with the

Junkers, exert every effort to support the tsarist monarchy against a
revolution in Russia.

In fact, the German bourgeoisie has launched a robber campaign against
Serbia, with the object of subjugating her and throttling the national
revolution of the Southern Slavs, at the same time sending the bulk of its
military forces against the freer countries, Belgium and France, so as to
plunder richer competitors. In fact, the German bourgeoisie, which has been
spreading the fable that it is waging a war of defence, chose the moment it
thought most favourable for war, making use of its latest improvements in
military matériel and forestalling the rearmament already planned and
decided upon by Russia and France.

The other group of belligerent nations is headed by the British and the
French bourgeoisie, who are hoodwinking the working class and the toiling
masses by asserting that they are waging a war for the defence of their
countries, for freedom and civilisation and against German militarism and
despotism. In actual fact, this bourgeoisie has long been spending thousands
of millions to hire the troops of Russian tsarism, the most reactionary and
barbarous monarchy in Europe, and prepare them for an attack on
Germany.

In fact, the struggle of the British and the French bourgeoisie is aimed
at the seizure of the German colonies, and the ruining of a rival nation,
whose economic development has been more rapid. In pursuit of this noble
aim, the “advanced” “democratic” nations are helping the savage tsarist regime to still more throttle Poland, the Ukraine, etc.,
and more thoroughly crush the revolution in Russia.

Neither group of belligerents is inferior to the other in spoiliation,
atrocities and the boundless brutality of war; however, to hoodwink the
proletariat and distract its attention from the only genuine war of
liberation, namely, a civil war against the bourgeoisie both of its
“own” and of “foreign” countries—to achieve so lofty an aim—the bourgeoisie of each country is trying, with the help
of false phrases about patriotism, to extol the significance of its
“own” national war, asserting that it is out to defeat the enemy,
not for plunder and the seizure of territory, but for the
“liberation” of all other peoples except its own.

But the harder the governments and the bourgeoisie of all countries try
to disunite the workers and pit them against one another, and the more
savagely they enforce, for this lofty aim, martial law and the military
censorship (measures which even now, in wartime, are applied against the
“internal” foe more harshly than against the external), the more
pressingly is it the duty of the class-conscious proletariat to defend its
class solidarity, its internationalism, and its socialist convictions
against the unbridled chauvinism of the “patriotic” bourgeois
cliques in all countries. If class-conscious workers were to give up this
aim, this would mean renunciation of their aspirations for freedom and
democracy, to say nothing of their socialist aspirations.

It is with a feeling of the most bitter disappointment that we have to
record that the socialist parties of the leading European countries have
failed to discharge this duty, the behaviour of these parties’
leaders, particularly in Germany, bordering on downright betrayal of the
cause of socialism. At this time of supreme and historic importance, most of
the leaders of the present Socialist International, the Second (1889-1914),
are trying to substitute nationalism for socialism. As a result of their
behaviour, the workers’ parties of these countries did not oppose the
governments’ criminal conduct, but called upon the working class to
identify its position with that of the imperialist governments. The leaders
of the International committed an act of treachery against socialism by
voting for war credits, by reiterating the chauvinist (“patriotic”) slogans of the bourgeoisie of their
“own” countries, by justifying and defending the war, by joining
the bourgeois governments of the belligerent countries, and so on and so
forth. The most influential socialist leaders and the most influential
organs of the socialist press of present-day Europe hold views that are
chauvinist, bourgeois and liberal, and in no way socialist. The
responsibility for thus disgracing socialism falls primarily on the German
Social-Democrats, who were the strongest and most influential party in the
Second International. But neither can one justify the French socialists, who
have accepted ministerial posts in the government of that very bourgeoisie
which betrayed its country and allied itself with Bismarck so as to crush
the Commune.

The German and the Austrian Social-Democrats are attempting to justify
their support for the war by arguing that they are thereby fighting
against Russian tsarism. We Russian Social-Democrats declare that we
consider such justification sheer sophistry. In our country the
revolutionary movement against tsarism has again assumed tremendous
proportions during the past few years. This movement has always been
headed by the working class of Russia. The political strikes of the last
few years, which have involved millions of workers, have had as their
slogan the overthrow of tsarism and the establishment of a democratic
republic. During his visit to Nicholas II on the very eve of the war,
Poincaré, President of the French Republic, could see for himself, in
the streets of St. Petersburg, barricades put up by Russian workers. The
Russian proletariat has not flinched from any sacrifice to rid humanity of
the disgrace of the tsarist monarchy. We must, however, say that if there
is anything that, under certain conditions, can delay the downfall of
tsarism, anything that can help tsarism in its struggle against the whole
of Russia’s democracy, then that is the present war, which has
placed the purses of the British, the French and the Russian bourgeois at
the disposal of tsarism, to further the latter’s reactionary
aims. If there is anything that can hinder the revolutionary struggle of
the Russia’s working class against tsarism, then that is the
behaviour of the German and the Austrian Social-Democratic leaders, which
the chauvinist press of Russia is continually holding up to us as an
example.

Even assuming that German Social-Democracy was so weak that it was
compelled to refrain from all revolutionary action, it should not have
joined the chauvinist camp, or taken steps which gave the Italian socialists
reason to say that the German Social-Democratic leaders were dishonouring
the banner of the proletarian International.

Our Party, the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, has made, and will
continue to make great sacrifices in connection with the war. The whole of
our working-class legal press has been suppressed. Most working-class
associations have been disbanded, and a large number of our comrades have
been arrested and exiled. Yet our parliamentary representatives—the
Russian Social-Democratic Labour group in the Duma—considered it their
imperative socialist duty not to vote for the war credits, and even to walk
out of the Duma, so as to express their protest the more energetically; they
considered it their duty to brand the European governments’ policy as
imperialist. Though the tsar’s government has increased its tyranny
tenfold, the Social-Democratic workers of Russia are already publishing
their first illegal manifestos against the war, thus doing their duty to
democracy and to the International.

While the collapse of the Second International has given rise to a sense
of burning shame in revolutionary Social-Democrats—as represented by
the minority of German Social-Democrats and the finest Social-Democrats in
the neutral countries; while socialists in both Britain and France have been
speaking up against the chauvinism of most Social-Democratic parties; while
the opportunists, as represented, for instance, by the German
Sozialistische Monatshefte , which have long held a national-liberal
stand, are with good reason celebrating their victory over European
socialism—the worst possible service is being rendered to the
proletariat by those who vacillate between opportunism and revolutionary
Social-Democracy (like the “Centre” in the German
Social-Democratic Party), by those who are trying to hush up the collapse of
the Second International or to disguise it with diplomatic phrases.

On the contrary, this collapse must be frankly recognised and its causes
understood, so as to make it possible to build up a new and more lasting
socialist unity of the workers of all countries.

The opportunists have wrecked the decisions of the Stuttgart, Copenhagen
and Basle congresses, [1] which made it binding on socialists of all
countries to combat chauvinism in all and any conditions, made it binding on
socialists to reply to any war begun by the bourgeoisie and governments,
with intensified propaganda of civil war and social revolution. The collapse
of the Second International is the collapse of opportunism, which developed
from the features of a now bygone (and so-called “peaceful”)
period of history, and in recent years has come practically to dominate the
International. The opportunist have long been preparing the ground for this
collapse by denying the socialist revolution and substituting bourgeois
reformism in its stead; by rejecting the class struggle with its inevitable
conversion at certain moments into civil war, and by preaching class
collaboration; by preaching bourgeois chauvinism under the guise of
patriotism and the defence of the fatherland, and ignoring or rejecting the
fundamental truth of socialism, long ago set forth in the Communist Manifesto , that the workingmen have no country; by
confining themselves, in the struggle against militarism, to a sentimental,
philistine point of view, instead of recognising the need for a
revolutionary war by the proletarians of all countries, against the
bourgeoisie of all countries; by making a fetish of the necessary
utilisation of bourgeois parliamentarianism and bourgeois legality, and
forgetting that illegal forms of organisation and propaganda are imperative
at times of crises. The natural “appendage” to opportunism—one that is just as bourgeois and hostile to the
proletarian, i.e., the Marxist, point of view—namely, the
anarcho-syndicalist trend, has been marked by a no less shamefully smug
reiteration of the slogans of chauvinism, during the present crisis.

The aims of socialism at the present time cannot be fulfilled, and real
international unity of the workers cannot be achieved, without a decisive
break with opportunism, and without explaining its inevitable fiasco to the
masses.

It must be the primary task of Social-Democrats in every country to
combat that country’s chauvinism. In Russia this chauvinism has
overcome the bourgeois liberals (the “Constitutional-Democrats”), and part of the
Narodniks—down to the
Socialist-Revolutionaries [2] and the “Right” Social-Democrats. (In particular, the chauvinist
utterances of E. Smirnov, P. Maslov and G. Plekhanov, for example, should be
branded; they have been taken up and widely used by the bourgeois
“patriotic” press.)

In the present situation, it is impossible to determine, from the
standpoint of the international proletariat, the defeat of which of the two
groups of belligerent nations would be the lesser evil for socialism. But to
us Russian Social-Democrats there cannot be the slightest doubt that, from
the standpoint of the working class and of the toiling masses of all the
nations of Russia, the defeat of the tsarist monarchy, the most reactionary
and barbarous of governments, which is oppressing the largest number of
nations and the greatest mass of the population of Europe and Asia, would be
the lesser evil.

The formation of a republican United States of Europe should be the
immediate political slogan of Europe’s Social-Democrats. In contrast
with the bourgeoisie, which is ready to “promise” anything in
order to draw the proletariat into the mainstream of chauvinism, the
Social-Democrats will explain that this slogan is absolutely false and
meaningless without the revolutionary overthrow of the German, the Austrian
and the Russian monarchies.

Since Russia is most backward and has not yet completed its bourgeois
revolution, it still remains the task of Social-Democrats in that country to
achieve the three fundamental conditions for consistent democratic reform,
viz., a democratic republic (with complete equality and self-determination
for all nations), confiscation of the landed estates, and an eight-hour
working day. But in all the advanced countries the war has placed on the
order of the day the slogan of socialist revolution, a slogan that is the
more urgent, the more heavily the burden of war presses upon the shoulders
of the proletariat, and the more active its future role must become in the
re-creation of Europe, after the horrors of the present
“patriotic” barbarism in conditions of the tremendous technological progress of large-scale capitalism. The bourgeoisie’s
use of wartime laws to gag the proletariat makes it imperative for the
latter to create illegal forms of agitation and organisation. Let the
opportunists “preserve” the legal organisations at the price of
treachery to their convictions—revolutionary Social-Democrats will
utilise the organisational experience and links of the working class so as
to create illegal forms of struggle for socialism, forms appropriate to a
period of crisis, and to unite the workers, not with the chauvinist
bourgeoisie of their respective countries, but with the workers of all
countries. The proletarian International has not gone under and will not go
under. Notwithstanding all obstacles, the masses of the workers will create
a new International. Opportunism’s present triumph will be
short-lived. The greater the sacrifices imposed by the war the clearer will
it become to the mass of the workers that the opportunists have betrayed the
workers’ cause and that the weapons must be turned against the
government and the bourgeoisie of each country.

The conversion of the present imperialist war into a civil war is the
only correct proletarian slogan, one that follows from the experience of the
Commune, and outlined in the Basle resolution (1912); it bas been dictated
by all the conditions of an imperialist war between highly developed
bourgeois countries. However difficult that transformation may seem at any
given moment, socialists will never relinquish systematic, persistent and
undeviating preparatory work in this direction now that war has become a
fact.

It is only along this path that the proletariat will be able to shake off
its dependence on the chauvinist bourgeoisie, and, in one form or another
and more or less rapidly, take decisivo steps towards genuine freedom for
the nations and towards socialism.

Long live the international fraternity of the workers against the chauvinism and patriotism of the bourgeoisie of all countries!

Long live a proletarian International, freed from opportunism!

Central Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party