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

11PREFACEVolume 23 contains works written by V. I. Lenin in Switzerlandbetween August 1916 and March 1917.Most of the articles are expressive of the struggle Leninand the Bolsheviks waged against the imperialist war andthe treasonous policy of the avowed social-chauvinist andCentrist leaders of the Second International parties. In thiscategory belong “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism”,“Ten ‘Socialist’ Ministers!”, “Bourgeois Pacifism and SocialistPacifism”, “To the Workers Who Support the StruggleAgainst the War and Against the Socialists Who HaveSided with Their Governments”.The volume includes Lenin’s famous article “The MilitaryProgramme of the Proletarian Revolution”, in which, usingthe data on imperialist capitalism contained in his Imperialism,the Highest Stage of Capitalism, he elaborates thenew theoretical proposition on the impossibility of thesimultaneous triumph of socialism in all countries and thepossibility of its triumph in one single capitalist country.In this article, Lenin also substantiates the theory of justand unjust wars.Articles defining the tasks of the revolutionary Social-Democrats in the imperialist war of 1914-18 hold an importantplace in Lenin’s writings of this period. These include“Tasks of the Left Zimmerwaldists in the Swiss Social-Democratic Party”, “Principles Involved in the War Issue”,“On the Defence of the Fatherland Issue” and “Defence ofNeutrality”.In “The Nascent Trend of Imperialist Economism”, “Replyto P. Kievsky (Y. Pyatakov)”, “A Caricature of Marxismand Imperialist Economism”, Lenin criticises the attitude