V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:PSS/v30; en:CW/CW36;es:MIA
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

In Holland, in Scandinavia, and in Switzerland voices are being raised among the revolutionary Social-Democrats who are fighting against the lies of the social-chauvinists about “defence of the fatherland” in the present imperialist war, in favour of replacing the old minimum programme of the Social-Democrats—“the militia” or “the arming of the people”—by a new one: “disarmament”. The *Jugend-Internationale*[49] has opened a discussion on this question and published an editorial in No. 3 in favour of disarmament. In R. Grimm’s latest theses[50] we also, unfortunately, find a concession to the idea of “disarmament”. The journals *Neues Leben*[51] and *Vorbote* have opened a discussion.

Let us examine the position of the advocates of disarmament.

I

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

But it is precisely in this main argument that the main error of the advocates of disarmament lies. 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 “Great” imperialist powers has become completely reactionary, and the war which this bourgeoisie is now waging we regard as a reactionary, slavemasters’, and criminal war. But what about a war against this bourgeoisie? For instance, a war of the peoples oppressed by this bourgeoisie and dependent on it, or of colonial peoples, for their liberation? In the theses of the “International” group, in paragraph 5, we read: “In the era of this unbridled imperialism there can be no more national wars.” This is obviously wrong.

The history of the twentieth century, this century of “unbridled imperialism”, is full of colonial wars. But what we Europeans, the imperialist oppressors of the majority of the peoples of the world, with our characteristic vile European chauvinism, call “colonial wars” are often national wars, or national uprisings, of these oppressed peoples. One of the main features of imperialism is precisely that it accelerates the development of capitalism in the most backward countries, and thereby extends and intensifies the struggle against national oppression. This is a fact. And from this it inevitably follows that imperialism must frequently give rise to national wars. Junius, who in his pamphlet defends the above-mentioned “theses”, says that in the imperialist epoch every national war against one of the imperialist Great Powers leads to the intervention of another, competing, also imperialist, Great Power, and thus every national war becomes transformed into an imperialist war. But this argument is also wrong. This may happen, but it does not always happen. Many colonial wars in the years 1900-1914 did not follow this path. And it would be simply ridiculous if we were to declare that, for example, after the present war, if it ends in the extreme exhaustion of the belligerent countries, there “cannot” be “any” national, progressive, revolutionary wars, say, by China in alliance with India, Persia, Siam, etc., against the Great Powers.

To deny the possibility of national wars under imperialism is theoretically wrong, historically obviously erroneous, and in practice it amounts to European chauvinism: we, who belong to nations that oppress hundreds of millions of people in Europe, Africa, Asia, etc., we must tell the oppressed peoples that their war against “our” nations is “impossible”!

Secondly. Civil wars are also wars. Whoever recognises the class struggle cannot fail to recognise civil wars, which in every class society are the natural, and under certain circumstances inevitable, continuation, development and intensification of the class struggle. All the great revolutions confirm this. To deny civil wars or to forget about them would mean falling into extreme opportunism and renouncing the socialist revolution.

Thirdly. Socialism victorious in one country does not at once eliminate all wars in general. On the contrary, it presupposes them. The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. Hence the incontrovertible conclusion: 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 must create not only friction, but a direct striving on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the victorious proletariat of the socialist state. In such cases a war on our part would be legitimate and just. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other peoples from the bourgeoisie. Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky of September 12, 1882, he directly admitted the possibility of “defensive wars” on the part of a victorious socialism. He had in mind precisely the defence of the victorious proletariat against the bourgeoisie of other countries.

Only after we have overthrown, finally vanquished and expropriated the bourgeoisie throughout the world, and not only in one country, will wars become impossible. And from the scientific point of view it would be utterly wrong and utterly unrevolutionary to evade or gloss over the most important thing—the suppression of the resistance of the bourgeoisie—the most difficult, the most urgent task of the struggle in the transition to socialism. The “social” parsons and opportunists are always ready to dream about a future peaceful socialism, but what distinguishes them from revolutionary Social-Democrats is precisely that they refuse to think and reflect on the bitter class struggle and class wars needed to bring about that beautiful future.

We must not allow ourselves to be deceived by words. For instance, the concept “defence of the fatherland” is hateful to many because the frank opportunists and Kautskyans use it to cover up and gloss over the lies of the bourgeoisie in the present predatory war. That is a fact. But it does not follow that we should cease to reflect on the meaning of political slogans. To recognise “defence of the fatherland” in the present war means to regard it as “just”, as corresponding to the interests of the proletariat—and nothing more, and again nothing more, for invasion is not excluded in any war. It would be simply stupid to deny “defence of the fatherland” on the part of oppressed peoples in their war against the imperialist Great Powers, or on the part of the victorious proletariat in its war against some Galliffet of a bourgeois state.

Theoretically, it would be utterly wrong to forget that every war is but a continuation of politics by other means; the present imperialist war is a continuation of the imperialist politics of two groups of Great Powers, and this politics is engendered and nourished by the sum total of the relations of the imperialist epoch. But the same epoch must necessarily engender and nourish the politics of struggle against national oppression and the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, and hence also the possibility and inevitability, firstly, of revolutionary national uprisings and wars; secondly, of wars and uprisings of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie; thirdly, of the combination of both kinds of revolutionary wars, etc.

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, would deserve to be treated as slaves. We cannot, unless we become bourgeois pacifists or opportunists, forget that we live in a class society, and that there is no way out of it except through the class struggle. In every class society, whether it is based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, on wage-labour, the oppressing class is armed. Not only the present standing army, but also the present militia—even in the most democratic bourgeois republics, for example, in Switzerland—is the arming of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. This is such an elementary truth that it is hardly necessary to dwell on it. It is enough to recall the use of troops against strikers in all capitalist countries.

The arming of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat is one of the biggest, most fundamental and most important facts of modern capitalist society. And in face of this fact, revolutionary Social-Democrats are asked to put forward the “demand” for “disarmament”! This is tantamount to a complete renunciation of the point of view of the class struggle, to the abandonment of all thought of revolution. Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. This is the only possible tactic of the revolutionary class, a tactic that follows from the whole objective development of capitalist militarism, that is prescribed by this development. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie can it, without betraying its world-historical mission, throw all weapons on the scrap-heap; and the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only then, by no means before.

If the present war provokes among the reactionary Christian Socialists, among the whining petty bourgeoisie, only horror and fright, only revulsion against all use of arms, against blood and death, etc., then we must say: capitalist society has always been and always is an endless horror. And if now this society is preparing an end with horror—the most reactionary of all wars—we have no reason to fall into despair. What the “demand” for disarmament—or, more correctly, the dream of disarmament—objectively amounts to is nothing but an expression of despair at a time when the only legitimate and revolutionary war, namely, the civil war against the imperialist bourgeoisie, is being prepared before the eyes of all by the forces of the bourgeoisie itself.

If anyone says that this is a theory divorced from life, we would remind him of two world-historic facts: the role of trusts and the factory work of women, on the one hand; the Paris Commune of 1871 and the December uprising of 1905 in Russia, on the other.

The business of the bourgeoisie is to develop trusts, to drive children and women into factories, to torment them there, to corrupt them, to condemn them to extreme poverty. We do not “demand” such development, we do not “support” it, we fight against it. But how do we fight? We know that trusts and the factory work of women are progressive. We do not want to go backwards, to handicraft, to pre-monopoly capitalism, to domestic work of women. Forward through the trusts, etc., and beyond them to socialism!

This reasoning, with appropriate modifications, applies also to the present militarisation of the people. Today the imperialist bourgeoisie is militarising not only the whole people, but also the youth. Tomorrow it will perhaps proceed to militarise the women. To this we must say: so much the better! Forward faster! The faster, the nearer to the armed uprising against capitalism. How can Social-Democrats allow themselves to be frightened by the militarisation of the youth, etc., if they do not forget the example of the Commune? This is not a “theory divorced from life”, not a dream, but a fact. And it would be really too bad if Social-Democrats, in spite of all economic and political facts, began to doubt that the imperialist epoch and imperialist wars must inevitably lead to a repetition of such facts.

A bourgeois observer of the Commune wrote in an English newspaper in May 1871: “If the French nation consisted only of women, what a terrible nation it would be!” Women and children of thirteen fought in the Commune side by side with the men. Nor can it be otherwise in the future battles for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. The proletarian women will not look on passively while the well-armed bourgeoisie shoots down the poorly armed or unarmed workers. They will take to arms, as they did in 1871, and from the present frightened nations—or rather, from the present working-class movement, disorganised more by the opportunists than by the governments—there will undoubtedly, sooner or later, but absolutely certainly, arise an international union of the “terrible nations” of the revolutionary proletariat.

Militarism now permeates the whole of social life. Imperialism is a fierce struggle of the Great Powers for the division and redivision of the world—hence it must inevitably lead to further militarisation in all countries, even in neutral and small ones. What will the proletarian women do against this? Only curse all war and all things military, only demand disarmament? The women of an oppressed class which is really revolutionary will never consent to such a shameful role. They will say to their sons: “You will soon be grown up. You will be given a rifle. Take it and learn the military art thoroughly. This science is necessary for the proletarians—not in order to shoot against your brothers, the workers of other countries, as is being done in the present war and as the traitors to socialism advise you to do—but in order to fight against the bourgeoisie of your own country, in order to put an end to exploitation, poverty and wars not by goody-goody wishes, but by the victory of the bourgeoisie and its disarmament.”

If we refuse to carry on such propaganda, and precisely such propaganda, in connection with the present war, then it is better not to talk at all about international revolutionary Social-Democracy, about the socialist revolution, about the war against war.

III

The advocates of disarmament oppose the programme point “arming of the people”, among other reasons, because this latter demand, they claim, more easily leads to concessions to opportunism. We have examined above the most important point: the relation of disarmament to the class struggle and to the social revolution. Let us now examine the question of the relation of the demand for disarmament to opportunism. One of the most important reasons why this demand is unacceptable is precisely that it, and the illusions it engenders, inevitably weaken and enervate our struggle against opportunism.

There is no doubt that this struggle is the main immediate question of the International. The struggle against imperialism, if not inseparably connected with the struggle against opportunism, is an empty phrase or a fraud. One of the main defects of Zimmerwald and Kienthal,[52] one of the main reasons for the possible fiasco of these embryos of the Third International, is precisely that the question of the struggle against opportunism was not even openly raised, let alone solved in the sense of the necessity of a break with the opportunists. Opportunism has triumphed—temporarily—inside the European working-class movement. In all the major countries two main shades of opportunism have taken shape: first, the frank, cynical, and therefore less dangerous, social-imperialism of the Plekhanovs, Scheidemanns, Legiens, Alberts Thomas and Sembats, Vanderveldes, Hyndmans, Hendersons, etc.; second, the concealed, Kautskyan opportunism: Kautsky—Haase and the “Social-Democratic Labour Group”[53] in Germany; Longuet, Pressemane, Mayéras, etc., in France; Ramsay MacDonald and other leaders of the “Independent Labour Party”[54] in England; Martov, Chkheidze, etc., in Russia; Treves and other so-called Left Reformists in Italy.

The frank opportunists openly and directly oppose revolution and the incipient revolutionary movements and outbreaks, and are in direct alliance with the governments, however varied the forms of this alliance, from participation in the ministry to participation in the War-Industries Committees (in Russia).[55] The concealed opportunists, the Kautskyans, are much more harmful and dangerous to the working-class movement, because they conceal their defence of the alliance with the former by means of plausible-sounding, also “Marxist” phrases and pacifist slogans. The struggle against both these forms of the dominant opportunism must be waged on all fields of proletarian policy: parliamentarism, trade unions, strikes, military affairs, etc. The main feature distinguishing both these forms of the dominant opportunism is that the concrete question of the connection between the present war and the revolution, and other concrete questions of the 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 very impending war and the proletarian revolution was pointed out countless times, both unofficially and officially in the Basle Manifesto.[56] The main defect of the demand for disarmament is precisely that it evades all the concrete questions of the revolution. Or do the advocates of disarmament stand for a completely new kind of unarmed revolution?

Further. We are by no means opposed to the struggle for reforms. We do not want to ignore the sad possibility that mankind may—at worst—go through a second imperialist war if the revolution does not grow out of the present war, despite the numerous outbreaks of mass ferment and mass discontent and despite our efforts. We are in favour of a programme of reforms which must also be directed against the opportunists. The opportunists would be only too glad if we left the struggle for reforms to them alone, while we retire to the empyrean heights of some “disarmament”, fleeing from the sad reality. “Disarmament” is precisely a flight from the unpleasant reality, and not a struggle against it.

In such a programme we would say approximately the following: “The slogan and recognition of defence of the fatherland in the imperialist war of 1914-1916 is only a corruption of the working-class movement by bourgeois lies.” Such a concrete answer to concrete questions would be theoretically more correct, much more useful for the proletariat, more unbearable for the opportunists, than the demand for disarmament and the renunciation of “all” defence of the fatherland. And we could add: “The bourgeoisie of all the imperialist Great Powers—Britain, France, Germany, Austria, Russia, Italy, Japan, the United States—has become so reactionary and so imbued with the striving for world domination that every war waged by the bourgeoisie of these countries can only be reactionary. The proletariat must not only be opposed to all such wars, but must also desire the defeat of ‘its’ government in such wars and use it for a revolutionary uprising, if an uprising to prevent the war does not succeed.”

On the question of the militia we should have to say: we are not for a bourgeois militia, but only for a proletarian militia. Hence, “not a penny and not a man” not only for the standing army, but also for the bourgeois militia, even in such countries as the United States, Switzerland, Norway, etc. Moreover, we see in the freest republican countries (e.g., in Switzerland) an increasing Prussianisation of the militia, especially in 1907 and 1911, its prostitution for the mobilisation of troops against strikers. We can demand: election of officers by the people; abolition of all military justice; equal rights for foreign and native workers (a particularly important point for those imperialist states which, like Switzerland, exploit foreign workers in ever greater numbers and with ever greater shamelessness, leaving them without rights); further, the right of, say, every hundred inhabitants of a given country to form free associations for the study of all military affairs, with free election of instructors, their payment at state expense, etc. Only under such conditions could the proletariat study military affairs really for itself, and not for its slave-owners, and such study is absolutely required by the interests of the proletariat. The Russian revolution proved that every success, even a partial success, of the revolutionary movement—for example, the capture of a certain town, a certain factory settlement, a certain section of the army—will inevitably compel the victorious proletariat to carry out precisely such a programme.

Finally, it goes without saying that opportunism cannot be combated by programmes alone, but only by unflagging vigilance to see that they are actually carried out. The biggest, fatal mistake of the bankrupt Second International was that words did not correspond to deeds, that the habit of hypocrisy and shameless revolutionary phrase-mongering was fostered (see the present attitude of Kautsky and Co. to the Basle Manifesto). Disarmament as a social idea—i.e., an idea engendered by a definite social environment and capable of influencing a definite social milieu, and not remaining a personal whim—is obviously engendered by the exceptional, “peaceful” conditions of life of certain small states, which have stood aside for quite a long time from the bloody world highway of wars and hope to continue to stand aside. To convince oneself of this, it is enough to reflect, for example, on the arguments of the Norwegian advocates of disarmament: “We are a small country; our army is small; we can do nothing against the Great Powers” (and therefore are also powerless against being forcibly drawn into an imperialist alliance with one or another group of Great Powers)… “we want to remain at peace in our own little corner and continue to pursue a provincial policy, to demand disarmament, compulsory arbitration courts, permanent neutrality, etc.” (“permanent”—like that of Belgium?).

The petty striving of small states to stand aside, the petty-bourgeois desire to keep as far away as possible from the great battles of world history, to take advantage of their relatively monopolistic position for the sake of remaining in a musty passivity—such is the objective social environment which may ensure a certain success and a certain spread of the idea of disarmament in some small states. Of course, this striving is reactionary and is based entirely on illusions, for imperialism in one way or another drags the small states into the whirlpool of world economy and world politics.

For Switzerland, for example, its imperialist environment objectively prescribes two lines for the working-class movement: the opportunists strive, in alliance with the bourgeoisie, to turn Switzerland into a republican-democratic monopolist union for deriving profit from the tourists of the imperialist bourgeoisie, and to use this “peaceful” monopolist position as profitably and as peacefully as possible.

The real Social-Democrats of Switzerland strive to use the relative freedom and the “international” position of Switzerland to help the close union of the revolutionary elements of the workers’ parties of Europe. Switzerland, thank God, does not speak “its own independent” language, but three world languages, and precisely those spoken in the belligerent countries bordering on it.

If the 20,000 members of the Swiss Party contributed 2 centimes weekly as an “extraordinary war tax”, we would get 20,000 francs a year—more than enough to print and distribute periodically, in defiance of the prohibitions of the general staffs, in three languages, among the workers and soldiers of the belligerent countries, all that contains the truth about the incipient revolt of the workers, about their fraternisation in the trenches, about their hopes of using their arms in a revolutionary way against the imperialist bourgeoisie of their “own” countries, etc.

All this is not new. It is precisely what is being done by the best newspapers, such as *La Sentinelle*, *Volksrecht*,[57] *Berner Tagwacht*, but, unfortunately, to an insufficient extent. Only by such activity can the fine resolution of the Aarau Party Congress[58] become something more than a mere fine resolution.

The question that interests us now is this: does the demand for disarmament correspond to the revolutionary trend among the Swiss Social-Democrats? Obviously not. Objectively, “disarmament” is the most national, the specifically national programme of small states, by no means an international programme of international revolutionary Social-Democracy.