V. I.

Lenin

The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution (Draft Platform for the Proletarian Party)

REVOLUTIONARY DEFENCISM

AND ITS CLASS SIGNIFICANCE

9. Revolutionary defencism must be regarded as the most
important, the most striking manifestation of the petty-bourgeois wave that has swept over “nearly
everything”. It is the worst enemy of the further progress
and success of the Russian revolution.

Those who have yielded on this point and have been unable to
extricate themselves are lost to the revolution. But the masses
yield in a different way from the leaders, and they extricate
themselves differently , by a different course of development, by different means.

Revolutionary defencism is, on the one hand, a result of the
deception of the masses by the bourgeoisie, a result of the
trustful lack of reasoning on the part of the peasants and a
section of the workers; it is, on the other, an expression of
the interests and point of view of the small proprietor, who is
to some extent interested in annexations and bank profits, and
who “sacredly” guards the traditions of tsarism, which demoralised the Great Russians by making them do a hangman’s
work against the other peoples.

The bourgeoisie deceives the people by working on their noble
pride in the revolution and by pretending that the social and political character of the war, as far as Russia is
concerned, underwent a change because of this stage of the
revolution, because of the substitution of the near republic of
Guchkov and Milyukov for the tsarist monarchy. And the people
believed it—for a time—largely owing to age-old prejudices, which made them look upon the other peoples of
Russia, i.e., the non-Great Russians, as something in the nature
of a property and private estate of the Great Russians. This
vile demoralisation of the Great Russian people by tsarism which
taught them to regard the other peoples as something inferior,
something belonging “by right” to Great Russia, could not
disappear instantly.

What is required of us is the ability to explain to the
masses that the social and political character of the war is
determined not by the “good will” of individuals or groups, or
even of nations, but by the position of the class which
conducts the war, by the class policy of which the war is a continuation, by the ties of capital, which is the
dominant economic force in modern society, by the imperialist character of international capital, by
Russia’s dependence in finance, banking and diplomacy upon
Britain, France, and so on. To explain this skilfully in a way
the people would understand is not easy ; none of us would be able to do it at once without committing errors.

But this, and only this, must be the aim or, rather, the message
of our propaganda. The slightest concession to revolutionary
defencism is a betrayal of socialism , a complete renunciation of internationalism , no matter by what
fine phrases and “practical” considerations it may be justified.

The slogan “Down with the War!” is, of course, correct. But it
fails to take into account the specific nature of the tasks of
the present moment and the necessity of approaching the
broad mass of the people in a different way . It reminds
me of the slogan “Down with the Tsar!” with which the inexperienced agitator of the “good old days” went simply and
directly to the countryside—and got a beating for his pains. The mass believers in revolutionary defencism are
honest , not in the personal, but in the class sense, i.e., they belong to classes (workers and the peasant
poor) which in actual fact have nothing to gain from annexations and the subjugation of other peoples. This is
nothing like the bourgeois and the “intellectual” fraternity,
who know very well that you cannot renounce annexations
without renouncing the rule of capital, and who unscrupulously
deceive the people with fine phrases, with unlimited promises
and endless assurances.

The rank-and-file believer in defencism regards the matter in
the simple way of the man in the street: “I don’t want annexations, but the Germans are ’going for’ me ,
therefore I’m defending a just cause and not any kind of
imperialist interests at all.” To a man like this it must be
explained again and again that it is not a question of his
personal wishes, but of mass, class , political relations and conditions, of the connection between the war and
the interests of capital and the international network of banks,
and so forth. Only such a struggle against defencism will be
serious and will promise success—perhaps not a very rapid
success, but one that will be real and enduring.

---
Notes: