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

144V. I. LENINemployees, etc. A truth most strikingly confirmed by thewar should be brought home to the masses, namely, that socalled“neutrality” is bourgeois deception or hypocrisy,that in fact it means passive submission to the bourgeoisieand to such of its particularly disgusting undertakings asimperialist war. Social-Democratic activity in every organisationof the working class and of the poor strata of thepetty bourgeoisie or office workers must be intensified.Special Social-Democratic groups must be formed within allsuch organisations; systematic efforts must be made tocreate a situation in which revolutionary Social-Democracyshall have the majority in and leadership of these organisations.The special importance of this condition for thesuccess of the revolutionary struggle must be explained tothe masses.23. Social-Democratic work among the troops must beextended and intensified, both before and after the call-up.Social-Democratic groups must be formed in all militaryunits. The historical inevitability and legitimacy, fromthe standpoint of socialism, of using arms in the only legitimatewar, namely, the proletarian war against the bourgeoisieto liberate humanity from wage-slavery, must beexplained. There must be propaganda against isolatedterrorist actions and for linking up the struggle of therevolutionary section of the army with the broad movementof the proletariat and of the exploited population generally.There must be more intensive propaganda in support of thesection of the Olten decision urging soldiers to refuse toobey when troops are used against strikers, and it shouldbe explained that passive disobedience alone is not enough. 7024. To explain to the masses the inseparable connectionbetween the practical, consistent, revolutionary Social-Democratic work, as outlined above, and the systematicstruggle over principles among the three main trends in thepresent-day labour movement that have arisen in all civilisedcountries, and have taken definite shape also in Switzerland(particularly at the 1916 Zurich Congress). Thesethree trends are: (1) the social-patriots who frankly accept“defence of the fatherland” in the present imperialist war of1914-16; this is an opportunist trend of the agents of thebourgeoisie in the labour movement; (2) the Left Zimmerwald-