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

132V. I. LENINas the Peace Congress; and there will be no end of piouswishes, sentimental phrases and talk of the need to “defendthe fatherland” in all languages. The stage will bewell set for concealing the transition from an imperialistAnglo-Russian alliance against Germany to an imperialistRusso-German alliance against England!But whether the war ends in this way in the very nearfuture, or whether Russia “holds out” a little longer inher effort to vanquish Germany and rob Austria more;whether the separate peace negotiations will prove ashrewd blackmailer’s trick (tsarism showing England adraft of a treaty with Germany and saying: “Either somany billion rubles and such-and-such concessions orguarantees, or I sign this treaty tomorrow”), in all casesthe imperialist war cannot end otherwise than in an imperialistpeace, unless it is transformed into a civil war ofthe proletariat against the bourgeoisie for socialism. Inall cases, unless this happens, the imperialist war willresult in the strengthening of one or two of the threestrongest imperialist powers—England, Germany andRussia—at the expense of the weak (Serbia, Turkey,Belgium, etc.), and it is quite possible that all three robberswill become stronger after the war, having dividedthe booty among themselves (the colonies, Belgium,Serbia, Armenia). The only argument will be over theshare each should get.In all cases, both the full-fledged and avowed socialchauvinists,i.e., the individuals who openly accept“defence of the fatherland” in the present war, and the disguised,half-way social-chauvinists, i.e., the Kautskyiteswith their preachment of “peace” in general, “without victorsor vanquished”, etc., will inevitably, unavoidablyand undoubtedly be fooled and discredited. For any peaceconcluded by the same, or similar, bourgeois governmentsthat started the war will glaringly show the peoples whata servile role both these types of socialists played in relationto imperialism.Whatever the outcome of the present war, those whomaintained that the only possible socialist way out of itis through civil war by the proletariat for socialism, willhave been proved correct. The Russian Social-Democrats