V. I.

Lenin

Swiss Left Social-Democrats are unanimous in rejecting the
defence of the fatherland principle in the present war. The proletariat, at
any rate its best elements, is likewise opposed to defence of the
fatherland.

Hence, on this most burning issue confronting contemporary socialism in
general and the Swiss Socialist Party in particular, it would appear that
necessary unity has been achieved. Closer examination, however, is bound to
lead us to the conclusion that it is only seeming unity.

For there is absolutely no clarity, let alone unanimity, that a
declaration against defence of the fatherland places exceptionally high demands on the revolutionary consciousness and revolutionary viability
of the party that makes such a declaration, providing, of course, that it
is not reduced to a hollow phrase. And such a declaration does become a
hollow phrase if we merely reject defence of the fatherland without being
fully aware of, i.e., without appreciating, the demands implied, without
realising that all propaganda, agitation, organisation , in short,
the sum total of party activity must be radically changed, “regenerated”
(to use Karl Liebknecht’s expression) and adapted to the supreme
revolutionary tasks.

Let us carefully consider what rejection of fatherland defence implies,
if we approach it as a serious political slogan that must really
be carried out .

First. We call on the proletarians and the exploited of all the
belligerent countries, and of all countries faced with the danger of war,
to reject defence of the fatherland. We definitely know now, from the
experience of several of the warring countries, what this actually
implies in the present war. It implies rejection of all the foundations of modern bourgeois
society, the undermining of the very roots of the modern social system, and
not only in theory, not only “in general”, but in practice, directly and
immediately. Is it not clear that this can be accomplished only if
we go beyond the firm theoretical conviction that capitalism has fully
matured for its transformation into socialism and accept the practical,
direct and immediate carrying out of such transformation, i.e., the
socialist revolution?

Yet that is nearly always lost sight of in discussing refusal to defend
the fatherland. At best there is “theoretical” acceptance of the fact
that capitalism is ripe for transformation into socialism. But
immediate , radical change of all aspects of party activity in the spirit of the directly imminent socialist revolution — that is shunned !

The people, it is alleged, are not prepared for that!

But that is ridiculously inconsistent. Either, or. Either we do not
proclaim immediate rejection of defence of the fatherland—or we
immediately develop, or begin to develop, systematic propaganda
for immediate socialist revolution. In a certain sense the “people”, of
course, are “not prepared” either to reject fatherland defence
or accept socialist revolution. But that does not justify two
years—two years!—of procrastination and delay in starting to
systematically prepare them!

Second. What is being opposed to the policy of defence of the
fatherland and civil peace? Revolutionary struggle against the war,
“revolutionary mass actions”, as recognised by the 1915 Aarau Party
Congress resolution. No doubt a very good decision, but ... but the party’s
record since that congress, the party’s actual policy, show that
it has remained a paper decision.

What is the aim of revolutionary mass struggle? The party has
made no official statement, nor is the question being discussed in
general. It is either taken for granted, or frankly admitted, that the aim
is “ socialism ”. Socialism is being opposed to capitalism (or
imperialism).

That, however, is absolutely illogical (theoretically) and void of all
practical meaning. Illogical because it is too general, too
nebulous. “Socialism” in general, as an aim, as the opposite of
capitalism (or imperialism), is accepted now not only by the Kautsky crowd and social—chauvinists, but by many
bourgeois social politicians. However, it is no longer a matter of
contrasting two social systems, but of formulating the concrete
aim of the concrete “revolutionary mass struggle” against a
concrete evil, namely, the present high cost of living,
the present war danger or the present war.

The whole Second International of 1889–1914 opposed socialism to
capitalism in general, and it was precisely this too general
“generalisation” that brought on its bankruptcy. It ignored the specific
evil of its age, which Frederick Engels nearly thirty years ago, on
January 10, 1887, characterised in the following words:

“... a certain petty-bourgeois socialism finds representation in the
Social-Democratic Party itself, and even in the ranks of the Reichstag
group. This is done in the following way: while the fundamental views of
modern socialism and the demand for the transformation of all the means of
production into social property are recognised as justified, the
realisation of this is declared possible only in the distant future, a future which for all practical purposes is quite out of sight . Thus, for the present one has to have recourse to mere social patchwork ...” ( The Housing Question ,
Preface). [1]

The concrete aim of “revolutionary mass struggle” can only be
concrete measures of socialist revolution , and not “socialism” in general. The Dutch comrades have given a
precise definition of these concrete measures in their programme (published
in the Bulletin of the International Socialist Committee No. 3,
Berne, February 29, 1916): annulment of the national debt, expropriation of
the banks and big industry. When we suggest that these absolutely concrete
measures be included in an official party resolution, and be systematically
explained in the most popular form, in day-to-day party propaganda at
public meetings, in parliamentary speeches, in legislative proposals—we
get the same procrastinating, evasive and thoroughly sophistical reply that
the people are not yet prepared for this, and so on and so forth!

The point is, however, that we should begin preparing them right now,
and firmly stick to this work!

Third, the party has “accepted” revolutionary mass struggle. Very
well. But is the party capable of waging it? Is it preparing for it? Is it studying these problems, gathering
together the necessary material, setting up the proper bodies and
organisations? Is it discussing the issues among the people and with the
people?

Nothing of the kind! The party clings to its old line—a thoroughly
parliamentarian, thoroughly trade union, thoroughly reformist and
thoroughly legalistic line. The party remains manifestly incapable
of facilitating the revolutionary mass struggle and leading it. It is
obviously making no preparations whatever for this. The old routine rules
supreme and the “new” words (rejection of fatherland defence,
revolutionary mass struggle) remain mere words ! And the Lefts,
failing to realise this, are not mustering their forces, systematically,
perseveringly and in all fields of party activity, to combat the evil.

One can only shrug one’s shoulders on reading, for in stance, the
following phrase (the last) in Grimm’s theses on the war issue:

“ In conjunction with trade union organisations, party bodies must in this event [i.e., the calling of a mass railway strike if
there is a danger of war, etc.] take all the necessary measures.”

The theses were published in the summer, and on September 16, the
Schweizerische Metallarbeiter-Zeitung , [2] issued over the names of its editors,
0. Schneeberger and K. Dürr, contained the following phrase (I was on the
verge of saying, the following official reply to Grimm’s theses or
pious wishes):

“... The phrase ‘the worker has no fatherland’ is in very
poor taste at a time when the workers of all Europe, in their overwhelming
majority, have for two years been standing shoulder to shoulder with the
bourgeoisie on the battlefields against the ‘enemies’ of their fatherland,
while those who remain at home want to ‘live through it’ despite all the
poverty and hardship. Should we be attacked by a foreign power we shall doubtlessly see the same picture in Switzerland too!!! ”

What is this if not “Kautsky” policy, the policy of the impotent
phrase, Left declaration and opportunist practice, when, on the one hand,
resolutions are proposed urging the party, “in conjunction with trade
union organisations”, to call for revolutionary mass strikes, and, on the
other, no struggle is waged against the Grütli , i.e., social-patriot, reformist and thoroughly legalistic, trend and its supporters
within the party and the trade unions?

Are we “educating” the masses or corrupting and demoralising them if
we fail daily to say and prove that “leading” comrades like
0. Schneeberger, K. Dürr, P. Pflüger, H. Greulich, Huber and
many others hold exactly the same social-patriot views and pursue exactly the same social-patriot policy as the one Grimm
so “courageously” exposes and castigates... when it concerns the Germans
( in Germany ) and not the Swiss? Rail against the foreigners, but
protect one’s “own” “fellow-citizens”.... Is that “internationalist”?
Is that “democratic”?

This is how Hermann Greulich describes the position of the Swiss
workers, the crisis of Swiss socialism and also the substance of
Grütli policy within the Socialist Party:

“... The standard of living has risen insignificantly and
only for the top strata [hear! hear!] of the proletariat. The mass of
workers continue to live in poverty, beset by worry and hardship. That is
why, from time, to time, doubts arise as to the correctness of the path we
have been following. The critics are looking for new paths and place
special hope on more resolute action. Efforts are being made in that
direction, but as a rule [?] they fail [??] and this increases the urge to
revert to the old tactics [a case of the wish being father to the
thought?].... And now the world war ... drastic decline in the standard of
living, amounting to outright poverty for those sections which in the past
still enjoyed tolerable conditions. Revolutionary sentiments are
spreading. [Hear! hear!] In truth, the party leadership has not been equal
to the tasks confronting it and all too often succumbs [??] to the
influence of hot heads [??].... The Grütli-Verein Central Committee is
committed to a ‘practical national policy’ which it wants to operate
outside the party... Why has it not pursued it within the party? [Hear!
hear!] Why has it nearly always left it to me to fight the
ultra-radicals?” (Open Letter to the Hottingen Grütli-Verein,
September 26, 1916.)

So speaks Greulich. It is not at all, therefore, a matter (as the
Grütlians in the party think, and hint in the press, while the
Grütlians outside the party say so openly) of a few “evil-minded
foreigners” wanting, in a fit of personal impatience, to inject a
revolutionary spirit into the labour movement, which they regard through
“foreign spectacles”. No, it is none other than Hermann Greulich—whose
political role is tantamount to that of a bourgeois Labour Minister in a
small democratic republic—who tells us that only the upper strata of the
workers are somewhat better off now, while the mass is steeped in poverty, and that “revolutionary
sentiments are spreading” not because of the accursed foreign
“instigators”, but because of “the drastic decline in the standard of
living”.

And so?

And so, we shall be absolutely right if we say:

[[ DOUBLE-LEFT-BOX-ENDS:

Either the Swiss people will suffer hardships that will increase
with every passing week and they will be faced daily with the threat of
involvement in the imperialist war, i.e., of being killed in the
capitalists’ interests, or they will follow the advice of the
finest part of their proletariat, muster all their forces and carry out a
socialist revolution. ]]

Socialist revolution? Utopia! “A remote and practically indefinable”
possibility!...

It is no more a utopia than rejection of fatherland defence in the
present war or revolutionary mass struggle against it. One should not be
deafened by one’s own words or frightened by the words of others. Nearly
everyone is prepared to accept revolutionary struggle against the war. But
one must visualise the magnitude of the task of ending the war by
revolution! No, it is not a utopia. The revolution is maturing in
all countries and the question now is not whether to continue to
live in tranquillity and tolerable conditions, or plunge into some reckless
adventure. On the contrary, the question is whether to continue to suffer
hardship and be thrown into the holocaust to fight for alien interests , or to make great sacrifices for socialism, for the
interests of nine-tenths of mankind.

Socialist revolution, we are told, is a utopia! The Swiss people, thank
God, have no “separate” or “independent” language, but speak the three
world languages of the neighbouring warring countries. It is not
surprising, therefore, that they are in such close touch with developments
in these countries. In Germany, things have reached a point where the
economic life of 66 million people is directed from one centre . The national economy of a country of 66 million is run from
this one centre. Tremendous sacrifices are imposed on the vast majority of
the people in order that the “upper

30,000” can pocket thousands of millions in war profits, and that millions
die in the shambles for the enrichment of these “finest and noblest”
representatives of the nation. And in the fase of these facts , of this experience , is it “utopian” to
believe that a small nation, with no monarchy or Junkers, with a very high
level of capitalism and perhaps better organised in various unions than in
any other capitalist country, will try to save itself from hunger and the danger of war by doing the very same thing that has
already been practically tested in Germany? With the difference, of course,
that in Germany millions are being killed and maimed to enrich a few, open
the road to Baghdad, conquer the Balkans, whereas in Switzerland it is
merely a matter of expropriating a maximum of 30,000 bourgeois, i.e., not
condemning them to perish, but to the “horrible fate” of receiving
“ only ” 6,000–10,000 francs income and giving the rest to the
socialist workers’ government in order to ward off hunger and the war
danger.

The Great Powers, however, will never tolerate a socialist Switzerland
and will use their immensely superior strength to crush the socialist
revolution at the very beginning!

That, undoubtedly, would be so if, first, the beginnings of a
revolution in Switzerland did not generate a class movement of
solidarity in neighbouring countries, and, second, if these Great Powers
were not tied up in a “war of attrition” which has practically exhausted
the patience of the most patient peoples. Military intervention by the
mutually hostile Great Powers would, in present circumstances, only be the
prelude to revolution flaring up throughout the whole of Europe.

Perhaps you think I am so naïve as to believe that such issues as
socialist revolution can be resolved by “persuasion”?

No. I only wish to illustrate , and, what is more, merely one
partial issue , the change that must take place in all party propaganda if we want to approach the question of rejection of fatherland defence with all the seriousness it deserves. That is
only an illustration, and it concerns only one partial issue. I lay claim to no more.

It would be absolutely wrong to believe that immediate struggle for
socialist revolution implies that we can, or should, abandon the fight for reforms. Not at all. We cannot know
beforehand how soon we shall achieve success, how soon the objective
conditions will make the rise of this revolution possible. We
should support every improvement, every real economic and political
improvement in the position of the masses. The difference between us and
the reformists (i.e., the Grütlians in Switzerland) is not that we oppose
reforms while they favour them. Nothing of the kind. They confine
themselves to reforms and as a result stoop—in the apt expression of one
(rare!) revolutionary writer in the Schweizerische Metallarbeiter-Zeitung (No. 40)—to the role of “hospital orderly
for capitalism”. We tell the workers:
vote for proportional representation, etc., but don’t stop at that. Make it
your prime duty systematically to spread the idea of immediate socialist
revolution, prepare for this revolution and radically reconstruct every
aspect of party activity. The conditions of bourgeois democracy very often
compel us to take a certain stand on a multitude of small and petty
reforms, but we must be able, or learn, to take such a position on
these reforms (in such a manner) that—to oversimplify the matter for the
sake of clarity—five minutes of every half-hour speech are devoted to
reforms and twenty-five minutes to the coming revolution.

Socialist revolution is impossible without a hard revolutionary mass
struggle in which many sacrifices have to be made. But we would be
inconsistent if we accepted the revolutionary mass struggle and the desire
for an immediate end to the war while, at the same time, rejecting
immediate socialist revolution! The former without the latter is nil, a
hollow sound.

Nor can we avoid hard struggle within the party . It would be
sheer make-believe, hypocrisy, philistine “head-in-the sand” policy to
imagine that “internal peace” can rule within the Swiss
Social-Democratic Party. The choice is not between “internal peace” and
“inner-party struggle”. Suffice it to read Hermann Greulich’s letter
mentioned above and examine developments in the party over the past several
years to appreciate the utter fallacy of any such supposition.

The real choice is this: either the present concealed forms of inner-party struggle, with their demoralising effect on
the masses, or open principled struggle between the internationalist revolutionary trend and the Grütli trend inside and
outside the party.

An “inner struggle” in which Hermann Greulich attacks the
“ultra-radicals” or the “hotheads”, without naming these monsters and
without precisely defining their policy, and Grimm publishes articles in
the Berner Tagwacht larded with hints and only comprehensible to
one out of a hundred readers, articles in which he castigates those who see
things through “foreign spectacles”, or those “actually responsible”
for the draft resolutions he finds so annoying—that kind of inner
struggle demoralises the masses, who see, or guess, that it is a
“quarrel among leaders” and do not understand what it is really all about .

But a struggle in which the Grütli trend within the party—and it is much more important and dangerous than outside the
party—will be forced openly to combat the Left, while both
trends will everywhere come out with their own independent views
and policies, will fight each other on matters of principle ,
allowing the mass of party comrades, and not merely the
“leaders”, to settle fundamental issues—such a struggle is both
necessary and useful, for it trains in the masses independence and
ability to carry out their epoch-making revolutionary mission.

---
Notes:
[1]

See Marx and Engels, Selected Works , Vol. I, Moscow, 1962,
pp. 549–50.

[2]

Schweizerische Metallarbeiter-Zeitung (Swiss Metalworkers’
Gazette)—a weekly paper founded in Berne in 1902; adopted a
social-chauvinist position during the First World War.