Lenin CW-Vol. 23.pdf - From Marx to Mao

104V. I. LENINP. S. In the last issue of the English Socialist Reviews 50(September 1916), organ of the opportunist IndependentLabour Party, we find, on page 287, the resolutionof the party’s Newcastle Conference—refusal to supportany war waged by any government even if “nominally”it is a war of “defence”. And in an editorial on page 205of the same issue we read the following declaration: “Inno degree do we approve the Sinn Fein rebellion [theIrish Rebellion of 1916]. We do not approve armed rebellionat all, any more than any other form of militarismand war.”Is there any need to prove that these “anti-militarists”,that such advocates of disarmament, not in a small,but in a big country, are the most pernicious opportunists?And yet, theoretically, they are quite right in regardinginsurrection as one “form” of militarism and war.Written in October 1916Published in Sbornik Sotsial-Demokrata No. 2,December 1916Signed: N. LeninPublished according tothe Sbornik text