V. I.

Lenin

Huysmans, the Secretary of the International
Social-Chauvinist
Bureau, [1] has sent a telegram of greetings to Danish Minister without
portfolio Stauning, the leader of the Danish quasi-“Social-Democratic”
Party. The telegram reads: “I learn from the newspapers that you have been
appointed Minister. My heartiest congratulations. And so, we now have ten
socialist Cabinet Ministers in the world. Things are moving. Best wishes.”

Things are indeed moving. The Second International is rapidly
moving—towards complete merger with national-liberal politics. Quoting
this telegram, the Chemnitz
Volksstimme , [2] militant organ of the extreme German opportunists and social-chauvinists, remarks, somewhat venomously: “The
Secretary of the International Socialist Bureau unreservedly welcomes the
acceptance by a Social-Democrat of a ministerial post. And yet only shortly
before the war all party congresses, and international congresses,
expressed sharp opposition to this! Times and views change—on this issue
as on others.”

The Heilmanns, Davids and Südekums are quite justified in their
condescending praise of the Huysmane, Plekhanovs and Vanderveldes.

Stauning recently published a letter he wrote to Vandervelde. It is
full of the stinging remarks a pro-German social-chauvinist would write
about a French social-chauvinist. Among other things, Stauning boasts of
the fact that “we [the Danish Party] have sharply and definitely
disassociated ourselves from the organisationally pernicious splitting
activities conducted on the initiative of the Italian and Swiss parties
under the name of the Zimmerwald movement”. This is literally what he
says!

The formation of a national state in Denmark dates back to the
sixteenth century. The masses of the Danish people passed through the
bourgeois liberation movement long ago. More than 96 per cent of the
population are Danes. The number of Danes in Germany is less than two
hundred thousand. (The population of Denmark is 2,900,000.) This alone
proves what a crude bourgeois deception is the talk of the Danish
bourgeoisie about an “independent national state” being the task of the
day! This is being said in the twentieth century by the bourgeoisie and the
monarchists of Denmark, who possess colonies with a population
nearly equal to the number of Danes in Germany, and over which the Danish
Government is trying to strike a bargain .

Who says that in our day there is no trade in human beings? There is
quite a brisk trade. Denmark is selling to America for so many millions
(not yet agreed upon) three islands, all populated, of course.

In addition, a specific feature of Danish imperialism is the
superprofits it obtains from its monopolistically advantageous position in
the meat and dairy produce market: using cheap maritime transport, she
supplies the world’s biggest market, London. As a result, the Danish
bourgeoisie and the rich Danish peasants (bourgeois of the purest type, in
spite of the fables of the Russian Narodniks) have become “prosperous”
satellites of the British imperialist bourgeoisie, sharing their
particularly easy and particularly fat profits.

The Danish “Social-Democratic” Party completely succumbed to this
international situation, and staunchly sup ported and supports the Right
wing, the opportunists in the German Social-Democratic Party. The Danish
Social-Democrats voted credits for the bourgeois-monarchist government to
“preserve neutrality”—that was the euphemistic formula. At the Congress
of September 30, 1916, there was a nine tenths’ majority in favour of
joining the Cabinet, in favour of a deal with the government! The
correspondent of the Berne socialist paper reports that the opposition to
ministerialism in Denmark was represented by Gerson Trier and the editor
J. P. Sundbo. Trier defended revolutionary Marxist views in a splendid
speech, and when the party decided to go into the government, he resigned from the Central Commit tee and from
the party, declaring that he would not be a member of a bourgeois
party. In the past few years the Danish “Social-Democratic” Party has in
no way differed from the bourgeois radicals.

Greetings to Comrade G. Trier! “Things are moving”, Huysmans is
right—moving towards a precise, clear, politically honest,
socialistically necessary division between the revolutionary Marxists, the
representatives of the masses of the revolutionary proletariat,
and the Plekhanov-Potresov Huysmans allies and agents of the imperialist
bourgeoisie, who have the majority of the “ leaders ”, but who
represent the interests, not of the oppressed masses, but of the minority
of privileged workers, who are deserting to the side of the bourgeoisie.

Will the Russian class-conscious workers, those who elected the
deputies now exiled to Siberia, those who voted against participation in
the war industries committees to support the imperialist war, wish to
remain in the “International” of the ten Cabinet Ministers? In
the international of the Staunings ? In the International which men
like Trier are leaving?

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Notes:
[1]

Reference is to the International Socialist Bureau (I.S.B.)—the
permanent executive and information body of the Second International,
founded by decision of the Paris International Congress (1900) and
headquartered in Brussels. Each national affiliate had two members on the
Bureau, which was to meet four times a year, with the Executive of the
Belgian Labour Party acting for it in the intervals. Emile Vandervelde was
Chairman of the Bureau and Camille Huysmans Secretary. Lenin was elected
R.S.D.L.P. representative in 1905 and re-elected in 1912 at the Sixth
All-Russia Party Conference in Prague. M. M. Litvinov was appointed
R.S.D.L.P. representative in June 1914 at Lenin’s suggestion.

With the outbreak of the First World War the I.S.B. became a pliant
tool of the social-chauvinists. Its headquarters were moved to The Hague
and its activities were directed by Huysmans.

[2]

Volksstimme (People’s Voice)—organ of the German
Social-Democratic Party, published in Chemnitz from January 1891 to
February 1933. Followed a social-chauvinist line in the First World War.