Draft

The present war has been engendered by imperialism, i.e., the highest stage of capitalism, when the development of productive forces and the growth of capital have outgrown the narrow confines of individual national states and impel the “great” powers to strive for the enslavement of other nations and the seizure of colonies as sources of raw material and spheres for the export of capital.

The objective conditions for socialism have fully matured, and in the present war the great powers are fighting for the artificial postponement of the doom of capitalism by preserving and intensifying the dependence of colonies, by seizing privileges on the world market, by splitting and suppressing the international revolutionary struggle of the workers.

The Social-Democrats fully recognise the necessity of freedom for all nations. In the epoch of the struggle against feudalism, absolutism and alien national oppression they recognised the defence of the fatherland—and at the present time they recognise the legitimacy of a war of oppressed nations (especially colonies) against their oppressors, the “great” powers.

But the present war between the great powers is a war of slave-owners for the strengthening and consolidation of slavery, for the redivision of colonies, for the “right” to oppress alien nations, for the privileges of great-power capital, for the reactionary suppression of the working-class movement.

Therefore, the phrases about “defence of the fatherland” on the part of both belligerent groups of powers are a deception of the people by the bourgeoisie. Neither the victory of any of the present governments nor the status quo ante bellum[66] can either safeguard the freedom of nations from the imperialist great powers or ensure a tolerable existence for the working class, which is increasingly oppressed by the high cost of living, the trusts, militarism and the political reaction bound up with it, even in the freest countries.

The real meaning of the slogan “defence of the fatherland” in this war is the defence of great-power privileges and advantages, the defence of the “right” of the given bourgeoisie to oppress alien nations; it is a national-liberal labour policy, an alliance of a small section of the workers with “their own” national bourgeoisie against the mass of proletarians and exploited people. The socialists who pursue such a policy are in fact chauvinists, social-chauvinists. The policy of voting for war credits, of entering ministries, of Burgfrieden, etc., is a policy of opportunism, a betrayal of socialism. And the working class cannot achieve its great aims, the emancipation of labour, without waging a determined struggle against opportunism and social-chauvinism.

The Basle Manifesto of 1912, adopted unanimously in anticipation precisely of such a war between the great powers as has now broken out, explicitly recognised the reactionary, imperialist character of this war and clearly declared that the proletarian revolution was approaching precisely in connection with such a war. Indeed, the war has created a revolutionary situation, has engendered revolutionary moods and fermentation. The task of the S.-D. is to support and develop these, to help clarify the revolutionary consciousness of the masses and to free their minds from the lies of bourgeois and socialist chauvinism, to assist every attempt at revolutionary mass struggle against imperialism for socialism, to strive to transform the imperialist war into a civil war for socialism.

The Social-Democrats must utilise the masses’ growing desire for peace, which expresses their disillusionment and the beginning clarification of their revolutionary consciousness, in order to intensify revolutionary agitation. But in doing so the S.-D. must not deceive the people with hopes of the possibility of a rapid, more or less durable, democratic peace that excludes the oppression of nations without the revolutionary overthrow of the present governments.

Written before July 13 (26), 1915.

First published in 1937 in Lenin Miscellany XXX.

Printed from the manuscript.