V. I.

Lenin

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

THE SITUATION

WITHIN THE SOCIALIST INTERNATIONAL

16. The international obligations of the working class of Russia
are precisely now coming to the forefront with particular
force.

Only lazy people do not swear by internationalism these
days. Even the chauvinist defencists, even Plekhanov and
Potresov, even Kerensky, call themselves internationalists. It
becomes the duty of the proletarian party all the more urgently,
therefore, to clearly, precisely and definitely counterpoise
internationalism in deed to internationalism in word.

Mere appeals to the workers of all countries, empty assurances
of devotion to internationalism, direct or indirect attempts to
fix a “sequence” of action by the revolutionary proletariat in
the various belligerent countries, laborious efforts to conclude
“agreements” between the socialists of the belligerent countries
on the question of the revolutionary struggle, all the fuss over the summoning of socialist congresses for the purpose of a peace campaign, etc., etc.—no matter how
sincere the authors of such ideas, attempts, and plans may be –
amount, as far as their objective significance is concerned, to mere phrase-mongering, and at best are
innocent and pious wishes, fit only to conceal the deception of the people by the chauvinists. The
French social-chauvinists, who are the most adroit and accomplished in methods of parliamentary hocus-pocus, have long
since broken the record for ranting and resonant pacifist and
internationalist phrases coupled with the incredibly brazen betrayal of socialism and the International, the
acceptance of posts in governments which conduct the imperialist
war, the voting of credits or loans (as Chkheidze, Skobelev, Tsereteli and Steklov have been doing recently in
Russia), opposition to the revolutionary struggle in their own country , etc., etc.

Good people often forget the brutal and savage setting of the
imperialist world war. This setting does not tolerate phrases,
and mocks at innocent and pious wishes.

There is one, and only one, kind of real internationalism, and
that is—working whole-heartedly for the development of the
revolutionary movement and the revolutionary struggle in
one’s own country, and supporting (by propaganda, sympathy, and material aid) this struggle , this, and
only this, line, in every country without exception.

Everything else is deception and
Manilovism . [1]

During the two odd years of the war the international socialist
and working-class movement in every country has evolved
three trends. Whoever ignores reality and refuses to recognise the existence of these three trends, to analyse them,
to fight consistently for the trend that is really internationalist, is doomed to impotence, helplessness and
errors.

The three trends are:

1). The social-chauvinists , i.e., socialists in word and chauvinists in deed. People who
support “defence of the fatherland” in an imperialist war (and
above all in the present imperialist war).

These people are our class enemies. They have gone over
to the bourgeoisie.

They are the majority of the official leaders of the official
Social-Democratic parties in all countries— Plekhanov and Co. in Russia, the Scheidemanns in Germany, Renaudel, Guesde
and Sembat in France, Bissolati and Co. in Italy, Hyndman, the
Fabians [2] and the Labourites (the leaders of the “Labour Party”) in
Britain, Branting and Co. in Sweden, Troelstra and his party in
Holland, Stauning and his party in Denmark, Victor Berger and
the other “defenders of the fatherland” in America, and so
forth.

2) The second trend, known as the “Centre”, consists of people
who vacillate between the social-chauvinists and the true
internationalists.

The “Centre” all vow and declare that they are Marxists and
internationalists, that they are for peace, for bringing every
kind of “pressure” to bear upon the governments, for “demanding”
in every way that their own government should “ascertain the
will of the people for peace”, that they are for all sorts of
peace campaigns, for peace without annexations, etc., etc. –
and for peace with the social-chauvinists . The “Centre”
is for “unity”, the Centre is opposed to a split.

The “Centre” is a realm of honeyed petty-bourgeois phrases, of
internationalism in word and cowardly opportunism and fawning on
the social-chauvinists in deed.

The crux of the matter is that the “Centre” is not convinced of
the necessity for a revolution against one’s own government; it
does not preach revolution; it does not carry on a whole-hearted
revolutionary struggle; and in order to evade such a struggle it
resorts to the tritest ultra-“Marxist”-sounding excuses.

The social-chauvinists are our class enemies, they are bourgeois within the working-class movement. They
represent a stratum, or groups, or sections of the working class
which objectively have been bribed by the bourgeoisie (by better wages, positions of honour, etc.), and which help
their own bourgeoisie to plunder and oppress small and weak peoples and to fight for the division of the
capitalist spoils.

The “Centre” consists of routine-worshippers, eroded by the
canker of legality, corrupted by the parliamentary atmosphere,
etc., bureaucrats accustomed to snug positions and soft
jobs. Historically and economically speaking, they are not a
separate stratum but represent only a transition from a past phase of the working-class
movement—the phase between 1871 and 1914, which gave much
that is valuable to the proletariat, particularly in the
indispensable art of slow, sustained and systematic organisational work on a large and very large scale—to a new
phase that became objectively essential with the outbreak of the first imperialist world war, which
inaugurated the era of social revolution.

The chief leader and spokesman of the “Centre” is Karl Kautsky , the most outstanding authority in the Second
International (1889–1914), since August 1914 a model of utter
bankruptcy as a Marxist, the embodiment of unheard-of spinelessness, and the most wretched vacillations and
betrayals. This “Centrist” trend includes Kautsky, Haase,
Ledebour and the so-called workers’ or labour group [3] in the Reichstag; in France it includes
Longuet, Pressemane and the so-called minorities [4] (Mensheviks) in general; in Britain, Philip Snowden, Ramsay
MacDonald and many other leaders of the Independent Labour Party , [5] and some leaders of the British Socialist Party [6] ; Morris Hillquit and many others in the
United States; Turati, Tréves, Modigliani and others in
Italy; Robert Grimm and others in Switzerland; Victor Adler and
Co. in Austria; the party of the Organising Committee, Axelrod,
Martov, Chkheidze, Tsereteli and others in Russia, and so
forth.

Naturally, at times individuals unconsciously drift from the
social-chauvinist to the “Centrist” position, and vice versa. Every Marxist knows that classes are distinct, even
though individuals may move freely from one class to another;
similarly, trends in political life are distinct in spite of the fact that individuals may change freely from one
trend to another, and in spite of all attempts and efforts to
amalgamate trends.

3) The third trend, that of the true internationalists, is best
represented by the “ Zimmerwald Left ”. [7] (We reprint as a supplement its manifesto of
September 1915, to enable the reader to learn of the inception of this trend at first hand.)

Its distinctive feature is its complete break with both
social-chauvinism and “Centrism”, and its gallant revolutionary
struggle against its own imperialist government and its own imperialist bourgeoisie. Its principle is: “Our
chief enemy is at home.” It wages a ruthless struggle against honeyed social-pacifist phrases (a social-pacifist is a
socialist in word and a bourgeois pacifist in deed; bourgeois
pacifists dream of an everlasting peace without the overthrow of the yoke and domination of capital) and against all
subterfuges employed to deny the possibility, or the appropriateness, or the timeliness of a proletarian
revolutionary struggle and of a proletarian socialist revolution
in connection with the present war.

The most outstanding representative of this trend in Germany is
the Spartacus group or the Internationale group , [8] to which Karl Liebknecht belongs. Karl Liebknecht is a most celebrated
representative of this trend and of the new, and genuine, proletarian International.

Karl Liebknecht called upon the workers and soldiers of Germany
to turn their guns against their own government. Karl Liebknecht did that openly from the rostrum of
parliament (the Reichstag). He then went to a demonstration in
Potsdamer Platz, one of the largest public squares in Berlin,
with illegally printed leaflets proclaiming the slogan “Down
with the Government!” He was arrested and sentenced to hard labour . He is now serving his term in a German convict
prison, like hundreds, if not thousands, of other true German socialists who have been imprisoned for
their anti-war activities.

Karl Liebknecht in his speeches and letters mercilessly attacked
not only his own Plekhanovs and Potresovs (Scheidemanns, Legiens, Davids and Co.), but also his own Centrists, his own Chkheidzes and Tseretelis (Kautsky,
Haase, Ledebour and Co.).

Karl Liebknecht and his friend Otto Rühle, two out of one
hundred and ten deputies, violated discipline, destroyed the
“unity” with the “Centre” and the chauvinists, and went against all of them . Liebknecht alone represents
socialism, the proletarian cause, the proletarian revolution. All the rest of German Social-Democracy, to quote
the apt words of Rosa Luxemburg (also a member and one of the
leaders of the Spartacus group), is a “ stinking corpse ”.

Another group of true internationalists in Germany is that of
the Bremen paper Arbeiterpolitik.

Closest to the internationalists in deed are: in France, Loriot
and his friends (Bourderon and Merrheim have slid down to
social-pacifism), as well as the Frenchman Henri Guilbeaux, who
publishes in Geneva the journal Demain ; in Britain, the newspaper The Trade Unionist, and some of the
members of the British Socialist Party and of the Independent
Labour Party (for instance, Russel Williams, who openly called
for a break with the leaders who have betrayed socialism), the Scottish socialist school teacher
MacLean, who was sentenced to hard labour by the bourgeois government of Britain for his revolutionary fight
against the war, and hundreds of British socialists who are in
jail for the same offence. They, and they alone, are internationalists in deed. In the United States, the Socialist Labour Party [9] and those within the opportunist Socialist Party [10] who in January 1917 began publication of the paper,
The Internationalist ; in Holland, the Party of the “ Tribunists ” [11]
which publishes the paper De Tribune ( Pannekoek , Herman
Gorter, Wijnkoop, and Henriette Roland-Holst, who, although
Centrist at Zimmerwald, has now joined our ranks); in Sweden,
the Party of the Young, or the
Left[ Swedish Social Democrats ], [12] led by Lindhagen, Ture Nerman, Carleson,
Strölm and Z. Hömlglund, who at Zimmerwald was personally active in the organisation of the “Zimmerwald Left”,
and who is now in prison for his revolutionary fight against the
war; in Denmark, Trier and his friends who have left the now
purely bourgeois “Social-Democratic” Party of Denmark, headed by the Minister Stauning; in Bulgaria, the
“ Tesnyaki ” [13] ; in Italy, the nearest are Constantino Lazzari, secretary of the
party, and Serrati, editor of the central organ, Avanti! [14] ;
in Poland, Radek, Hanecki and other leaders of the
Social-Democrats united under the “Regional Executive”, and Rosa
Luxemburg, Tyszka and other leaders of the Social-Democrats
united under the “Chief Executive” [executive bodies of the Social democrats in the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuana] [15] ; in Switzerland, those of
the Left who drew up the argument for the “referendum” (January
1917) in order to fight the social-chauvinists and the “Centre”
in their own country and who at the Zurich Cantonal
Socialist Convention, held at Töss on February 11, 1917,
moved a consistently revolutionary resolution against the war;
in Austria, the young Left-wing friends of Friedrich Adler, who
acted partly through the Karl Marx Club in Vienna, now closed by
the arch-reactionary Austrian Government, which is ruining

Adler’s life for his heroic though ill-considered shooting at a
minister, and so on.

It is not a question of shades of opinion, which certainly exist
even among the Lefts. It is a question of trend . The thing is that it is not easy to be an internationalist in deed
during a terrible imperialist war. Such people are few; but it
is on such people alone that the future of socialism depends; they
alone are the leaders of the people, and not their corrupters.

The distinction between the reformists and the revolutionaries,
among the Social-Democrats, and socialists generally, was
objectively bound to undergo a change under the conditions of
the imperialist war. Those who confine themselves to “demanding”
that the bourgeois governments should conclude peace or
“ascertain the will of the peoples for peace”, etc., are
actually slipping into reforms. For, objectively, the problem of the war can be solved only in a
revolutionary way.

There is no possibility of this war ending in a democratic,
non-coercive peace or of the people being relieved of the burden
of billions paid in interest to the capitalists, who have made fortunes out of the war, except through a revolution
of the proletariat.

The most varied reforms can and must be demanded of the
bourgeois governments, but one cannot, without sinking to
Manilovism and reformism, demand that people and classes
entangled by the thousands of threads of imperialist capital
should tear those threads. And unless they are torn, all talk of a war against war is idle and deceitful prattle.

The “Kautskyites”, the “Centre”, are revolutionaries in word and
reformists in deed, they are internationalists in word and
accomplices of the social-chauvinists in deed.

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