(8) Report of the Central Committee (9) Conduct of the Bundist.
(10) Liebknecht's letter ("Burgkrieg"*)...
(11) Voting against credits (Ledebour's hysteria)...
(12) Polemic with Ledebour.
(13) "Kautskyism" in the German delegation.
(14) Anticipation of revolutionary battles (both Ledebour and Merheim).
(15) Roland-Gölst's speech (for once a bloc to the right).
(16) Merheim's report: struggle against Jouhaux and "L'Humanité".
(17) Our statement of protest against Ledebour's "ultimatum".
(18) Turati (resignation) and Co. in the Italian party.

(8 September) 1915

ON THE ARTICLE "THE REVOLUTIONARY PROLETARIAT
AND THE RIGHT OF NATIONS TO SELF-DETERMINATION"

... To Comrade Parabellum, the "right of nations to self-determination" seems a return to an outlived antiquity, to the petty-bourgeois utopia of "separatism" and peaceful competition between independent national states.

In struggling against this enemy (petty-bourgeois utopians), who in essence has long since died and been buried, Comrade Parabellum inadvertently plays into the hands of social-chauvinists, who dominate in England, France, Germany, and partly in Russia.

We cannot counterpose the revolutionary mass struggle for socialism to a revolutionarily consistent programme on the national question. We must
2 quotations from "En
Garde"

* — "Civil War". Ed.

unite the first with the second. One cannot imagine the socialist revolution as a single battle on a single front: imperialism against socialism. This revolution will be an entire epoch of intensified class struggle and all manner of social upheavals, a whole series of battles on the most diverse fronts, over the most varied economic and political transformations that have matured and demand a radical break with the old relations. Among these democratic transformations, encompassed within the concept of social revolution, transformations of national relations cannot fail to occupy a prominent place. The revolutionary proletariat will not fulfill its task if it does not now defend a consistent programme on this question as well*...

... a revolutionary programme on the national question. According to Comrade Parabellum, it turns out that the socialist revolution is a single battle on a single economic front: socialism against imperialism. This is not correct. The proletarian revolution will be an epoch of a whole series of battles on all fronts, i.e., on all economic and political questions, including the national one. The resolution of the sum of conflicts arising from all these unresolved questions will give birth to the social revolution. The sum of battles over all these transformations will give the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the establishment of full democracy, and the organization of a socialist society. It is absurd to counterpose the revolutionary struggle against capitalism to one of the questions of democracy—the national question. The proletariat cannot conquer except through democracy, except by realizing democracy fully. Therefore, all democratic demands—militia, election of officials by the people, equality of nations, self-determination of nations, etc.—must be completed and unified with the demand for revolutionary struggle against capitalism. Not to counterpose this struggle to individual democra-

* Text: ""the right of nations to self-determination" seems... and on this question" is crossed out in the manuscript. Ed.

Written after 26 August

First published in 1933 in Lenin Miscellany XIV

Printed from the manuscript