Date: 1911
Source: ru:PSS/v49
Source: CW vol 49

For Alexander*

Dear friend! In a day or two you will receive our Central Organ, and then, I hope, there will be complete "harmony" in our views. To be frank, I am a bit afraid that some of your steps might be interpreted as if you were bypassing our legitimate representative in the International Socialist Bureau - Mr. Litvinoff. 76. High Street.

Hampstead. London. N. W. Of course, such an interpretation would be a malicious misinterpretation, but still, be more careful.

Troelstra has deceived or misled you. He is an arch-opportunist and an agent of intrigue for the most despicable center of the most despicable opportunists - the German Social-Democrats (with Kautsky at the head, shamelessly defending the opportunists) and their vilest Vorstand. We will not go to any conferences or take any steps initiated by such scoundrels; we will distance ourselves: let them disgrace themselves! And once they have disgraced themselves once, they will continue to do so. The French have already rejected their intrigues, and without the French, only a dirty comedy of dirty scoundrels is possible.

Larin, it seems, is deceiving you shamelessly. If he expresses "trust" in the German Vorstand, then I understand that Troelstra has "recorded" this. Indeed!! Trust in the most despicable opportunists!! For heaven's sake, correct what can be corrected, and do not express the slightest trust, either directly or indirectly, to any of the opportunists, neither the Germans nor the French. Pannekoek is right: the Second International is finally dead. It was killed by the opportunists (not "parliamentarism," as the clumsy Pannekoek put it). "Patching up" disagreements is merely a petty intrigue, and we must not participate in it, either directly or indirectly.

* - For Alexander. Ed.

We will try to send you a couple of leaflets soon. Do not leave, hold on. Arrange everything I wrote to you, wait until the Central Organ is in Russia, wait until we are fully in agreement with our Russian colleagues (including Kamenev and others) after they receive the Central Organ. Until all this is done, there is no point in thinking about your departure. Our relocation is premature for now. By the way, find out if it is possible to print socialist materials in Sweden (like our Central Organ).

Poor Gorky! It is a pity that he disgraced himself by signing a vile little paper of the Russian liberals. Merezhkovsky and Plekhanov, among others (Maslov and Smirnov included), have also slid into their camp.

Be sure to get and reread (or ask someone to translate for you) Kautsky's "Weg zur Macht"* - what he wrote there about the revolution of our days!!

And now, how he has acted basely, renouncing all of this!

Our task now is an unrelenting war against chauvinism, masked (by talk of defending the "fatherland" and the like), especially against the "socialist chauvinism" of Plekhanov, Hyndman, Kautsky (the most despicable of all, a hypocrite!) and Co. Defending the revolution (bourgeois in Russia and socialist in the West), we preach it even in wartime. Our slogan is civil war. All these are pure sophisms, that this slogan is inappropriate, and so on. We cannot "make" it, but we preach it and work in this direction. In each country - first and foremost, the struggle against the chauvinism of that country, stirring up hatred towards one's own government, calls (repeated, persistent, multiple, tireless) for the solidarity of the workers of the warring countries, for their joint civil war against the bourgeoisie.

No one can guarantee when and to what extent this preaching will be "justified" in practice: that is not the point (only despicable sophists renounce revolutionary agitation because of the uncertainty of when the revolution will come). The point is in such a line of work. Only this work -

* - "The Path to Power". Ed.