V. I.

Lenin

The Economist , [1] a journal that speaks for the British
millionaires, is pursuing a very instructive line in relation to the
war. Representatives of advanced capital in the oldest and richest
capitalist country, are shedding tears over the war and incessantly voicing
a wish for peace. Those Social-Democrats who, together with the opportunists
and Kautsky, think that a socialist programme consists in the propaganda of
peace, will find proof of their error if they read The Economist.
Their programme is not socialist, but bourgeois-pacifist. Dreams of peace,
without propaganda of revolutionary action, express only a horror of war,
but have nothing in common with socialism.

Moreover, The Economist stands for peace just because it is
afraid of revolution. For instance, its issue for February 13, 1915,
contains the following passage:

“ Philanthropists profess to hope that the peace settlement will
bring with it a great international reduction of armies .... But those who
know the forces which really control the diplomacy of Europe see no
Utopias. The outlook is for bloody revolutions and fierce wars between
labour and capital, or between the masses and the governing classes of
Continental Europe ....”

In the issue of March 27, 1915, we again find expression of a desire for
a peace that will guarantee freedom of nationalities, etc., as promised by
Sir Edward Grey. If this hope is not realised, the paper says, the war
“will end in revolutionary chaos, beginning no one can say where, and
ending in no one can say what”.

The British pacifist millionaires have a better understanding of
present-day politics than the opportunists, the followers of Kautsky and
similar socialist whimperers after peace. The bourgeois know, first, that
phrases about a democratic peace are an idle and foolish Utopia while the
old “forces... really control the diplomacy”, i.e., until the
class of capitalists has been expropriated. Secondly, the bourgeoisie have
made a sober appraisal of the outlook, foreseeing “bloody
revolutions” and “revolutionary chaos”. To the bourgeoisie
a socialist revolution always seems “revolutionary chaos”.

In the realistic politics of the capitalist countries, three kinds of
peace sympathies can be seen:

(1) The more enlightened millionaires wish an early peace because they
are afraid of revolutions. They have soberly and correctly described any
“democratic” peace (without annexations, but with limited
armaments, etc.) as Utopian under capitalism.

This philistine Utopia is being advocated by the opportunists, the
adherents of Kautsky, and the like.

(2) The unenlightened masses of the people (the petty bourgeois,
semi-proletarians, part of the workers, etc.) whose desire for peace is very
vague, are thereby expressing a growing protest against the war and a
growing but as yet vague revolutionary sentiment.

(3) The revolutionary Social-Democrats, the enlightened advance guard of
the proletariat, are attentively studying the sentiments of the masses,
utilising the latter’s growing striving for peace, not in order to
bolster the vulgar utopias of a “democratic” peace under
capitalism, not in order to encourage hopes being placed in the
philanthropists, the authorities, and the bourgeoisie, but to bring clarity
into vague revolutionary sentiments, to enlighten the masses with a thousand
facts of pre-war politics; basing that work on the experience of the masses
and on their sent iments,they are out to prove systematically, steadfastly
and unswervingly the need for mass revolutionary action against the
bourgeoisie and the governments of their respective countries as the
only road towards democracy and socialism.

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Notes:
[1]
The
Economist —a capitalist weekly published in London since
1843.