Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 26 - From Marx to Mao

446V. I. LENIN11. It is said that the German Social-Democratic opponentsof the war have now become “defeatists” and arerequesting us not to yield to German imperialism. But werecognised defeatism only in respect of one’s own imperialistbourgeoisie, and we always discountenanced victoryover an alien imperialism, victory attained in formal oractual alliance with a “friendly” imperialism, as a methodimpermissible in principle and generally wrong.This argument is therefore only a modification of theprevious one. If the German Left Social-Democrats wereproposing that we delay concluding a separate peace for adefinite period, and guaranteed revolutionary action inGermany within this period, the question might assume adifferent aspect for us. Far from saying this, however, theGerman Lefts formally declare: “Hold out as long as you can,but decide the question from the point of view of the stateof affairs in the Russian socialist revolution, for we cannotpromise you anything positive regarding the German revolution.”12. It is said that in a number of Party statements weactually “promised” a revolutionary war, and that by concludinga separate peace we would be going back on ourword.That is not true. We said that in the era of imperialisma socialist government had to “prepare for and wage” a revolutionarywar*; we said this in order to combat abstractpacifism and the theory that “defence of the fatherland”must be completely rejected in the era of imperialism,and, lastly to combat the purely selfish instincts of a partof the soldiers, but we never gave any pledge to start a revolutionarywar without considering whether it is possible towage it at a given moment.Unquestionably, even at this juncture we must preparefor a revolutionary war. We are carrying out this promise,as we have, in general, carried out all our promises thatcould be carried out at once: we annulled the secret treaties,offered all peoples a fair peace, and several times did ourbest to drag out peace negotiations so as to give other peoplesa chance to join us.* See present edition, Vol. 21, p. 404.—Ed.