Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 21 - From Marx to Mao

32
V. I. LENIN
revolution and substituting bourgeois reformism in its
stead; by rejecting the class struggle with its inevitable
conversion at certain moments into civil war, and by
preaching class collaboration; by preaching bourgeois
chauvinism under the guise of patriotism and the defence of
the fatherland, and ignoring or rejecting the fundamental
truth of socialism, long ago set forth in the Communist
Manifesto, that the workingmen have no country; by
confining themselves, in the struggle against militarism,
to a sentimental, philistine point of view, instead of
recognising the need for a revolutionary war by the proletarians
of all countries, against the bourgeoisie of all countries;
by making a fetish of the necessary utilisation of bourgeois
parliamentarianism and bourgeois legality, and forgetting
that illegal forms of organisation and propaganda are imperative
at times of crises. The natural “appendage” to
opportunism—one that is just as bourgeois and hostile to
the proletarian, i.e., the Marxist, point of view—namely,
the anarcho-syndicalist trend, has been marked by a no less
shamefully smug reiteration of the slogans of chauvinism,
during the present crisis.
The aims of socialism at the present time cannot be
fulfilled, and real international unity of the workers cannot
be achieved, without a decisive break with opportunism, and
without explaining its inevitable fiasco to the masses.
It must be the primary task of Social-Democrats in every
country to combat that country’s chauvinism. In Russia
this chauvinism has overcome the bourgeois liberals (the
“Constitutional-Democrats”), and part of the Narodniks—
down to the Socialist-Revolutionaries 20 and the “Right”
Social-Democrats. (In particular, the chauvinist utterances
of E. Smirnov, P. Maslov and G. Plekhanov, for example,
should be branded; they have been taken up and widely used
by the bourgeois “patriotic” press.)
In the present situation, it is impossible to determine,
from the standpoint of the international proletariat, the
defeat of which of the two groups of belligerent nations
would be the lesser evil for socialism. But to us Russian
Social-Democrats there cannot be the slightest doubt that,
from the standpoint of the working class and of the toiling
masses of all the nations of Russia, the defeat of the tsarist