The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution
V.I. Lenin

Source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/miliprog/

Among the Dutch, Scandinavian and Swiss revolutionary Social-Democrats
who are combating the social-chauvinist lies about “defence of the
fatherland” in the present imperialist war, there have been voices in
favour of replacing the old Social-Democratic minimum-programme demand for
a “militia”, or “the armed nation,” by a new demand: “disarmament.”
The Jugend-Internationale [1] has inaugurated a discussion on this
issue and published, in No. 3, an editorial supporting disarmament. There
is also, we regret to note, a concession to the “disarmament” idea in
R. Grimm’s latest
theses. [2] Discussion have been started in the periodicals Neue
Leben [3] and Vorbote .

Let us take a closer look at the position of the disarmament advocates.

I

Their principal argument is that the disarmament demand is the
clearest, most decisive, most consistent expression of the struggle against
all militarism and against all war.

But in this principal argument lies the disarmament advocates’
principal error. Socialists cannot, without ceasing to be socialists, be
opposed to all war.

Firstly, socialists have never been, nor can they ever be, opposed to
revolutionary wars. The bourgeoisie of the imperialist “Great” Powers has
become thoroughly reactionary, and the war this bourgeoisie is now
waging we regard as a reactionary, slave-owners’ and criminal war.  But
what about a war against this bourgeoisie? A war, for instance,
waged by peoples oppressed by and dependent upon this bourgeoisie, or by colonial peoples, for liberation? In
Section 5 of the Internationale group these we read: “National
wars are no longer possible in the era of this unbridled imperialism.”
That is obviously wrong.

The history of the 20th century, this century of “unbridled
imperialism,” is replete with colonial wars. But what we Europeans, the
imperialist oppressors of the majority of the world’s peoples, with our
habitual, despicable European chauvinism, call “colonial wars” are often
national wars, or national rebellions of these oppressed peoples. One of
the main features of imperialism is that it accelerates capitalist
development in the most backward countries, and thereby extends and
intensifies the struggle against national oppression.  That is a fact, and
from it inevitably follows that imperialism must often give rise to
national wars. Junius , who defends the above-quoted “theses” in
her pamphlet, says that in the imperialist era every national war against
an imperialist Great Power leads to intervention of a rival imperialist
Great Power. Every national war is this turned into an imperialist war. But
that argument is wrong, too. This can happen, but does not always
happen. Many colonial wars between 1900 and 1914 did not follow that
course. And it would be simply ridiculous to declare, for instance, that
after the present war, if it ends in the utter exhaustion of all the
belligerents, “there can be no” national, progress, revolutionary wars
“of any kind”, wages, say, by China in alliance with India, Persia, Siam,
etc., against the Great Powers.

To deny all possibility of national wars under imperialism is wrong in
theory, obviously mistaken historically, and tantamount to European
chauvinism in practice: we who belong to nations that oppress hundreds of
millions in Europe, Africa, Asia, etc., are invited to tell the oppressed
peoples that it is “impossible” for them to wage war against “our”
nations!

Secondly, civil war is just as much a war as any other. He who accepts
the class struggle cannot fail to accept civil wars, which in every class
society are the natural, and under certain conditions inevitable,
continuation, development and intensification of the class struggle. That
has been confirmed by every great revolution. To repudiate civil war, or to forget about it, is to fall into extreme opportunism and
renounce the socialist revolution.

Thirdly, the victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke
eliminate all wars in general. On the contrary, it presupposes wars.  The
development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different
countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it
follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several
countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or
pre-bourgeois.  This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct
attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the
socialist state’s victorious proletariat. In such cases, a war on our part
would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for
the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly
right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he clearly
stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to
wage “defensive wars”. What he had in mind was defense of the victorious
proletariat against the bourgeoisie of other countries.

Only after we have overthrown, finally vanquished and expropriated the
bourgeoisie of the whole world, and not merely in one country, will wars
become impossible. And from a scientific point of view it would be utterly
wrong—and utterly unrevolutionary—for us to evade or gloss over the
most important things: crushing the resistance of the bourgeoisie—the
most difficult task, and one demanding the greatest amount of fighting, in
the transition to socialism. The “social” parsons and opportunists are always ready to build dreams of future peaceful
socialism. But the very thing that distinguishes them from revolutionary
Social-Democrats is that they refuse to think about and reflect on the
fierce class struggle and class wars needed to achieve that
beautiful future.

We must not allow ourselves to be led astray by words. The term
“defense of the fatherland”, for instance, is hateful to many because
both avowed opportunists and Kautskyites use it to cover up and gloss over
the bourgeois lie about the present predatory war. This is a
fact. But it does not follow that we must no longer see through to the
meaning of political slogans. To accept “defense of the fatherland” in the
present war is no more nor less than to accept it as a “just” war, a war
in the interests of the proletariat—no more nor less, we repeat, because
invasions may occur in any war. It would be sheer folly to repudiate
“defense of the fatherland” on the part of oppressed nations in
their wars against the imperialist Great Powers, or on the part of
a victorious proletariat in its war against some Galliffet of a
bourgeois state.

Theoretically, it would be absolutely wrong to forget that every war is
but the continuation of policy by other means. The present imperialist war
is the continuation of the imperialist policies of two groups of Great
Powers, and these policies were engendered and fostered by the sum total of
the relationships of the imperialist era. But this very era must also
necessarily engender and foster policies of struggle against national
oppression and of proletarian struggle against the bourgeoisie and,
consequently, also the possibility and inevitability; first, of
revolutionary national rebellions and wars; second, of proletarian wars and
rebellions against the bourgeoisie; and, third, of a combination
of both kinds of revolutionary war, etc.

## Notes

[1] 

[2] The reference is to Robert Grimm’s these on the war question published in
the Grütlianer Nos. 162 and 164, July 1916.

[3] Neue Leben (New Life)—A monthly journal of the Swiss
Social-Democratic Party published in Berne from January 1915 to December
1917. It expressed the views of the Zimmerwald Right and early in 1917 took
up a social-chauvinist position.

II

To this must be added the following general consideration.

An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to
acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves. We cannot, unless we
have become bourgeois pacifists or opportunists, forget that we are living
in a class society from which there is no way out, nor can there be, save
through the class struggle. In every class society, whether based on
slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is
always armed. Not only the modern standing army, but even the modern
militia—and even in the most democratic bourgeois republics, Switzerland,
for instance—represent the bourgeoisie armed against the
proletariat.  That is such an elementary truth that it is hardly necessary
to dwell upon it. Suffice it to point to the use of troops against strikers
in all capitalist countries.

A bourgeoisie armed against the proletariat is one of the biggest fundamental and cardinal facts of modern capitalist society. And in
face of this fact, revolutionary Social-Democrats are urged to “demand”
“disarmament”!  That is tantamount of complete abandonment of the
class-struggle point of view, to renunciation of all thought of
revolution. Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat,
expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie.  These are the only tactics
possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and
are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist
militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the
bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission,
to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will
undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled,
certainly not before .

If the present war rouses among the reactionary Christian socialists,
among the whimpering petty bourgeoisie, only horror and fright,
only aversion to all use of arms, to bloodshed, death, etc., then we must
say: Capitalist society is and has always been horror without end .
If this most reactionary of all wars is now preparing for that society an end to horror , we have no reason to fall into despair. But the
disarmament “demand”, or more correctly, the dream of disarmament, is,
objectively, nothing but an expression of despair at a time when, as
everyone can see, the bourgeoisie itself is paving the way for the only
legitimate and revolutionary war—civil war against the imperialist
bourgeoisie.

A lifeless theory, some might say, but we would remind them of two
world-historical facts: the role of the trusts and the employment of women
in industry, on the one hand, and the Paris Commune of 1871 and the
December 1905 uprising in Russia, on the other.

The bourgeoisie makes it its business to promote trusts, drive women
and children into the factories, subject them to corruption and suffering,
condemn them to extreme poverty. We do not “demand” such development, we
do not “support” it. We fight it. But how do we fight? We
explain that trusts and the employment of women in industry are
progressive. We do not want a return to the handicraft system, pre-monopoly
capitalism, domestic drudgery for women. Forward through the trusts, etc.,
and beyond them to socialism!

With the necessary changes that arguments is applicable also to the
present militarization of the population. Today the imperialist bourgeoisie
militarizes the youth as well as the adults; tomorrow, it may begin
militarizing the women. Our attitude should be: All the better! Full speed
ahead! For the faster we move, the nearer shall we be to the armed uprising
against capitalism. How can Social-Democrats give way to fear of the
militarization of the youth, etc., if they have not forgotten the example
of the Paris Commune? This is not a “lifeless theory” or a dream. It is a
fact. And it would be a sorry state of affairs indeed if, all the economic
and political facts notwithstanding, Social-Democrats began to doubt that
the imperialist era and imperialist wars must inevitably bring about a
repetition of such facts.

A certain bourgeois observer of the Paris Commune, writing to an
English newspaper in May 1871, said: “If the French nation consisted
entirely of women, what a terrible nation it would be!” Woman and teenage
children fought in the Paris Commune side by side with the men. It will be
no different in the coming battles for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie.
Proletarian women will not look on passively as poorly armed or unarmed
workers are shot down by the well-armed forces of the bourgeoisie. They
will take to arms, as they did in 1871, and from the cowed nations of
today—or more correctly, from the present-day labor movement,
disorganized more by the opportunists than by the governments—there will
undoubtedly arise, sooner or later, but with absolute certainty, an
international league of the “terrible nations” of the revolutionary
proletariat.

The whole of social life is now being militarized. Imperialism is a
fierce struggle of the Great Powers for the division and redivision of the
world. It is therefore bound to lead to further militarization in all
countries, even in neutral and small ones. How will proletarian women
oppose this? Only by cursing all war and everything military, only be
demanding disarmament? The women of an oppressed and really revolutionary
class will never accept that shameful role. They will say to their sons:
“You will soon be grown up. You will be given a gun. Take it and learn the
military art properly. The proletarians need this knowledge not to shoot
your brothers, the workers of other countries, as is being done in the present war, and as the traitors to socialism are telling you to do. They
need it to fight the bourgeoisie of their own country, to put an end to
exploitation, poverty and war, and not by pious wishes, but by defeating
and disarming the bourgeoisie.”

If we are to shun such propaganda, precisely such propaganda, in
connection with the present war, then we had better stop using fine words
about international revolutionary Social-Democracy, the socialist
revolution and war against war.

III

The disarmament advocates object to the “armed nation” clause in the programme also because it more easily leads, they allege, to
concessions to opportunism. The cardinal point, namely, the relation of
disarmament to the class struggle and to the social revolution, we have
examined above. We shall now examine the relation between the disarmament
demand and opportunism. One of the chief reasons why it is unacceptable is
precisely that, together with the illusions it creates, it inevitably
weakens and devitalizes our struggle against opportunism.

Undoubtedly, this struggle is the main, immediate question now
confusing the International. Struggle against imperialism that is not
closely linked with the struggle against opportunism is either an empty
phrase or a fraud. One of the main defects of Zimmerwald and
Kienthal [1] —on the main reasons why these embryos of the Third
International may possibly end in a fiasco—is that the question of
fighting opportunism was not even raised openly, let alone solved in the
sense of proclaiming the need to break with the opportunists. Opportunism
has triumphed—temporarily—in the European labor movement. Its two main
shades are apparent in all the big countries: first, the avowed, cynical,
and therefore less dangerous social-imperialism of Messrs. Plekhanov,
Scheidemann, Legien, Albert Thomas and Sembat, Vandervelde, Hyndman,
Henderson, et al,; second, the concealed, Kautskyite opportunism:
Kautsky-Haase and the social-Democratic Labor Group in
Germany [2] ; Longuet, Pressemane, Mayeras, et al., in France; Ramsay
MacDonald and the other leaders of the Independent Labor Party in England; Martov, Chkheidze, et al., in Russia; Treves and the
other so-called Left reformists in Italy.

Avowed opportunism is openly and directly opposed to revolution and to
incipient revolutionary movements and outbursts. It is in direct alliance
with the governments, varied as the forms of this alliance may be—from
accepting ministerial posts to participation in the war industries
committees (in
Russia). [3] The masked opportunists, the Kautskyites, are much more
harmful and dangerous to the labor movement, because they hide their
advocacy of alliance with the former under a cloak of plausible,
pseudo-“Marxist” catchwords and pacifist slogans. The fight against both
these forms of prevailing opportunism must be conducted in all fields of proletarian politics: parliament, the trade unions, strikes, the
armed forces, etc. The main distinguishing feature of both these
forms of prevailing opportunism is the concrete question of the connection between the present war and revolution, and the other
concrete questions of revolution, and the other concrete questions of
revolution , are hushed up, concealed, or treated with an eye to police
prohibitions. And this despite the fact that before the war the connection
between this impending war and the proletarian revolution was
emphasized innumerable times, both unofficially and officially in the Basle
Manifesto. [4] The main defect of the disarmament demand is its evasion
of all the concrete questions of revolution. Or do the advocates of
disarmament stand for an altogether new kind of revolution, unarmed
revolution?

To proceed. We are by no means opposed to the fight for reforms.  And
we do not wish to ignore the sad possibility—if the worst comes to the
worst—of mankind going through a second imperialist war, if revolution
does not come out of the present war, in spite of our efforts. We favor a
programme of reforms directed also against the opportunists. They
would be only too glad if we left the struggle for reforms entirely to them
and sought escape from sad reality in a nebulous “disarmament” fantasy.
“Disarmament” means simply running away from unpleasant reality, not
fighting it.

In such a programme, we would say something like this: “To accept the
defense of the fatherland slogan in the 1914–16 imperialist war is to corrupt the labor movement with the aid of a
bourgeois lie.” Such a concrete reply to a concrete question would be more
correct theoretically, much more useful to the proletariat and more
unbearable to the opportunists, than the disarmament demand and repudiation
of “all and any” defense of the fatherland. And we would add: “The
bourgeoisie of all the imperialist Great Powers—England, France, Germany,
Austria, Russia, Japan, the United States—has become so reactionary and
so intent on world domination, that any war waged by the
bourgeoisie of those countries is bound to be reactionary. The proletariat must not only oppose all such wars, but must also wish for the defeat of its 'own' government in such wars and utilise its defeat for revolutionary insurrection, if an insurrection to prevent the war proves unsuccessful.”

On the question of a militia, we should say: We are not in favor of a
bourgeois militia; we are in favor only of a proletarian militia.
Therefore, “not a penny, not a man”, not only for a standing army, but
even for a bourgeois militia, even in countries like the United States, or
Switzerland, Norway, etc. The more so that in the freest republican
countries (e.g., Switzerland) we see that the militia is being increasingly
Prussianized, particularly in 1907 and 1911, and prostituted by being used
against strikers. We can demand popular election of officers, abolition of
all military law, equal rights for foreign and native-born workers (a point
particularly important for those imperialist states which, like
Switzerland, are more and more blatantly exploiting larger numbers of
foreign workers, while denying them all rights). Further, we can demand the
right of every hundred, say, inhabitants of a given country to form
voluntary military-training associations, with free election of instructors
paid by the state, etc.  Only under these conditions could the proletariat
acquire military training for itself and not for its slaveowners;
and the need for such training is imperatively dictated by the interests of
the proletariat. The Russian revolution showed that every success of the
revolutionary movement, even a partial success like the seizure of a
certain city, a certain factory town, or winning over a certain section of
the army, inevitably compels the victorious proletariat to carry
out just such a programme.

Lastly, it stands to reason that opportunism can never be defeated by
mere programmes; it can only be defeated by deeds. The greatest, and fatal,
error of the bankrupt Second International was that its words did not
correspond to its deeds, that it cultivated the habit of hypocritical and
unscrupulous revolutionary phrase-mongering (note the present attitude of
Kautsky and Co. towards the Basle Manifesto). Disarmament as a social
idea, i.e., an idea that springs from, and can affect, a certain social
environment, and is not the invention of some crackpot, springs, evidently,
from the peculiar “tranquil” conditions prevailing, by way of exception,
in certain small states, which have for a fairly long time stood aside from
the world’s path of war and bloodshed, and hope to remain in that way. To
be convinced of this, we have only to consider the arguments advanced, for
instance, by the Norwegian advocates of disarmament. “We are a small
country,” they say. “Our army is small; there is nothing we can do
against the Great Powers [and, consequently, nothing we can do to resist
forcible involvement in an imperialist alliance with one or the
other Great Power group].... We want to be left in peace in our backwoods
and continue our backwoods politics, demand disarmament, compulsory
arbitration, permanent neutrality, etc.” (“permanent” after the Belgian
fashion, no doubt?).

The petty striving of petty states to hold aloof, the petty-bourgeois
desire to keep as far away as possible from the great battles of world
history, to take advantage of one’s relatively monopolistic position in
order to remain in hidebound passivity—this is the objective social environment which may ensure the disarmament idea a certain degree
of success and a certain degree of popularity in some small states. That
striving is, of course, reactionary and is based entirely on illusions,
for, in one way or another, imperialism draws the small states into the
vortex of world economy and world politics.

In Switzerland, for instance, the imperialist environment objectively
prescribes two courses to the labor movement: the opportunists, in
alliance with the bourgeoisie, are seeking to turn the country into a
republican-democratic monopolistic federation that would thrive on profits
from imperialist bourgeois tourists, and to make this “tranquil” monopolistic position as profitable and as tranquil as possible.

The genuine Swiss Social-Democrats are striving to use Switzerland’s
relative freedom and her “international” position to help the victory of
the close alliance of the revolutionary elements in the European workers’
parties. Switzerland, than God, does not have “a separate language of her
own”, but uses three world languages, the three languages spoken in the
adjacent belligerent countries.

If twenty thousand Swiss party members were to pay a weekly levy of two
centimes as a sort of “extra war tax”, we would have 20,000 francs per
annum, a sum more than sufficient periodically to publish in three
languages and distribute among the workers and soldiers of the belligerent
countries—in spite of the bans imposed by the general staffs—all the
truthful evidence about the incipient revolt of the workers, their
fraternizing in the trenches, their hope that the weapons will be used for
revolutionary struggle against the imperialist bourgeoisie of their “own”
countries, etc.

That is not new. It is being done by the best papers, like La
Sentinelle , Volksrecht , and the Berner
Tagwacht , [5] although, unfortunately, on an inadequate scale. Only
through such activity can the splendid decision of the Aarau Party
Congress [6] become something more than merely a splendid decision.

The question that interests us now is: Does the disarmament demand
correspond to this revolutionary trend among the Swiss Social-Democrats?
It obviously does not. Objectively, disarmament is an extremely national, a
specifically national programme of small states. It is certainly not the
international programme of international revolutionary Social-Democracy.

## Notes

[1] Lenin is referring to the international socialist conferences at Zimmerwald
and Kienthal.

The first Zimmerwald Conference met on September 5–8 1915 and
was attended by 38 delegates from 11 European countries. Lenin headed the
R.S.D.L.P. Central Committee delegation.

The Conference adopted the Manifesto “To the European Proletariat”,
in which, at the insistence of Lenin and the Left Social-Democrats, several
basic propositions of revolutionary Marxism were included. It also adopted
a joint declaration by the German and French delegations, a message of
sympathy with war victims and fighters persecuted for their political
activities, and elected the International Socialist Committee (I.S.C.).

The Zimmerwald Left group was formed at this Conference. It included
representatives of the R.S.D.L.P. Central Committee headed by Lenin, the
Regional Executives of the Social-Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland
and Lithuania, the Central Committee of the Lettish Social Democratic
Party, the Swedish Left (Karl Zeth Hoglund), the Norwegian Left (Ture
Nerman), the Swiss Left (Fritz Platten), and the “International Socialists
of Germany” group (Julius Borchardt). The Zimmerwald Left waged an active
struggle against the Centrist majority at the Conference. But it was only
the Bolsheviks among the Left who advocated a fully consistent policy.

The second International Conference was held at Kienthal, a
village near Berne, between April 24 and 30 1916. It was attended by
43 delegates from 10 countries. The RSDLP Central Committee was represented
by Lenin and two other delegates.

The Conference discussed the following questions:

1) the struggle to end the war; = 2) attitude of the proletariat on the peace issue; = 3) agitation and propaganda; = 4) parliamentary activity; = 5) mass struggle; = 6) convocation of the International Socialist Bureau.

Led by Lenin, the Zimmerwald Left was much stronger at Kienthal than at
the earlier Zimmerwald Conference. At Kienthal, it united 12 delegates and
some of its proposals obtained as many as 20 votes, or nearly half the total. This was
indicative of how the internationalism in the world labor movement had
changed in favor of internationalism.

The Conference adopted a Manifesto “To the Peoples Suffering Ruination
and Death” and a resolution criticizing pacifism and the International
Socialist Bureau. Lenin regarded the Conference decisions as a further step
in uniting the internationalist forces against the imperialist war.

The Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences helped to unite the Left
elements in the West-European Social-Democratic movement on the principles
of Marxism-Leninism. Subsequently these Left elements took an active part in founding communist
parties in their countries and in organizing the Third, Communist
International.

[2] The Social-Democratic Labor Group —An organization of German
Centrists founded in march 1916 by Reichstag members who had broken with
the Social-Democratic Reichstag group. It had the support of the majority
of the Berlin organization and became the backbone of the Independent
Social-Democratic Party of Germany, founded in April 1917. The new party
sought to justify avowed social-chauvinists and advocated preservation of
unity with them.

[3] The war industries committees were established in Russia in May
1915 by the imperialist bourgeoisie to help the tsarist government in the
prosecution of the war. The Central War Industry Committee was headed by
one of Russia’s biggest capitalists, Guchkov, leader of the Octobrists. In
an attempt to bring the workers under their influence and foster chauvinist
sentiments, the bourgeoisie decided to organize “workers’ groups” in
these committees, thereby creating the impression that a “class peace”
had been achieved in Russia between the bourgeoisie and the
proletariat. The Bolsheviks declared a boycott of the committees and
successfully carried it out with the support of the majority of workers.

As a result of Bolshevik propaganda, elections to the “workers’
groups” were held only in 70 out of a total of 239 regional and local
committees, and workers’ representatives were elected only in 36 of them.

[4] The Basle Manifesto —A manifesto on the war issue. Was adopted at
the extraordinary International Socialist Congress held in Basle on
November 24–25 1912.

[5] La Sentinelle —A Newspaper, organ of the Swiss Social-Democratic
organization of Neuchatel Canton (Switzerland), published at La
Chaux-de-Fonds from 1890 to 1906 and resumed in 1910. During the First
World War it followed an internationalist policy.

Volksrecht (People’s Right)—A daily paper, organ of the Swiss
Social-Democratic Party founded in Zurich in 1898. During the First World
War it published articles by Left Zimmerwaldists.

Berner Tagwacht (Berne Guardian)—A Social-Democratic newspaper
founded in Berne in 1893. It published articles by Karl Liebknecht, Franz
Mehring and other Social-Democrats in the early days of the First World
War. In 1917, it came out in open support of the social-chauvinists.

[6] The Aarau Congress of the Swiss Social-Democratic Party met on
November 20–21 1915. The central issue was the party’s attitude towards
the Zimmerwald internationalist groups, and the struggle developed between
the three following trends: =

1) anti-Zimmerwaldists; =

2) supporters of the Zimmerwald Right; and =

3) supporters of the Zimmerwald Left.

Robert Grimm tabled a resolution urging the party to affiliate with the Zimmerwald
group and endorse the political programme of the Zimmerwald Right. The Left
forces, in an amendment moved by the Lausanne branch, called for mass
revolutionary struggle against the war, declaring that only a victorious
proletarian revolution could put an end to the imperialist war.  Under
Grimm’s pressure, the amendment was withdrawn, but it was again proposed by
M. M. Kharitonov, a Bolshevik with the right to vote delegated by one of
the party’s branches. Out of tactical considerations, Grimm and his
supporters were obliged to approve the amendment and it was carried by
258 votes to 141.