V. I.

Lenin

The transformation of individuals from radical
Social-Democrats and revolutionary Marxists into social-chauvinists is a
phenomenon common to all the belligerents. The spate of chauvinism is so
overwhelming that on all sides it has carried along with it a number of
Left-wing Social-Democrats who are spineless or have outlived
themselves.
Parvus, who showed himself to be an adventurer as far back as the Russian revolution, has now really reached the
uttermost limit, this in his little magazine, Die Glocke [1] . With an
incredibly brazen air of self-satisfaction, he has taken the German
opportunists under his wing. He flouts the beliefs he once cherished, and
has forgotten the struggle between the revolutionary and the opportunist
trends, and their history in the international Social-Democratic
movement. With the bounce of a columnist confident of the
bourgeoisie’s approval, he pats Marx on the shoulder, “correcting” him, without a vestige of conscientious or
attentive criticism. He treats a certain Engels with undisguised contempt,
and defends Britain’s pacifists and internationalists and
Germany’s nationalists and jingoists. Rebuking the British
social-patriots, whom he calls chauvinists and toadies to the bourgeoisie,
he at the same time lauds the German social-patriots as revolutionary
Social-Democrats and exchanges embraces with Lensch, Haenisch, Grunwald. He
fawns upon Hindenburg, assuring his readers that “the German General
Staff has taken a stand for a revolution in Russia”, and publishing
servile paeans to this “embodiment of the German people’s
soul”, its “mighty revolutionary sentiment”. He promises
Germany a painless transition to socialism through an alliance between the conservatives and part of the socialists, and through “bread ration
cards”. Like the petty coward he is, he condescendingly semi-approves
of the Zimmerwald Conference, pretending not to have noticed in its
manifesto the expressions directed against all shades of social-chauvinism,
from the Parvus and Plekhanov variety, to that of Kolb and Kautsky.

In all six issues of his little journal there is not a single honest
thought or earnest argument or sincere article. It is nothing but a cesspool
of German chauvinism covered over with a coarsely painted signboard, which
alleges it represents the interests of the Russian revolution! It is
perfectly natural for this cesspool to come in for praise from such
opportunists as Kolb and the editors of the Chemnitz Volksstimme . [2]

Mr. Parvus has the effrontery to publicly declare it his
“mission” “to serve as an ideological link between the armed German proletariat and the revolutionary Russian
proletariat”. lt is enough to expose this clownish phrase to the
ridicule of the Russian workers. If Prizyv of Messrs. Plekhanov,
Bunakov and Co; has won full approval from the chauvinists and the Khvostovs
in Russia, then Mr. Parvus’s Die Glocke is the organ of
apostacy and grovelling flunkeyism in Germany.

In this connection another useful aspect of the present war should be
noted. Not only are its quick-firing guns killing opportunism and anarchism,
but the war itself is stripping the mask off the adventurers and renegades
of socialism. It is to the proletariat’s advantage that history has
started this preliminary purge of its movement on the eve of the socialist
revolution, not during its course.

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Notes:
[1]
Die Glocke ( The Bell )—a fortnightly journal published in
Munich und later in Berlin 1915-25 by Parvus (Alexander Gelfand).

, a social-chauvinist member of the German Social-Democratic Party and an agent of German
imperialism.

[2]
Volksstimme ( The People’s Voice )—an organ of the German Social-Democratic Party, published in Chemnitz from 1891
onwards.