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

PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN WAR ISSUE155preparing for it? Is it studying these problems, gatheringtogether the necessary material, setting up the properbodies and organisations? Is it discussing the issues among thepeople and with the people?Nothing of the kind! The party clings to its old line—athoroughly parliamentarian, thoroughly trade union, thoroughlyreformist and thoroughly legalistic line. The partyremains manifestly incapable of facilitating the revolutionarymass struggle and leading it. It is obviously making no preparationswhatever for this. The old routine rules supremeand the “new” words (rejection of fatherland defence, revolutionarymass struggle) remain mere words! And the Lefts,failing to realise this, are not mustering their forces, systematically,perseveringly and in all fields of party activity,to combat the evil.One can only shrug one’s shoulders on reading, for instance,the following phrase (the last) in Grimm’s theseson the war issue:“In conjunction with trade union organisations, party bodies mustin this event [i.e., the calling of a mass railway strike if there is a dangerof war, etc.] take all the necessary measures.”The theses were published in the summer, and on September16, the Schweizerische Metallarbeiter-Zeitung, 74 issuedover the names of its editors, O. Schneeberger and K. Dürr,contained the following phrase (I was on the verge of saying,the following official reply to Grimm’s theses or pious wishes):“...The phrase ‘the worker has no fatherland’ is in very poor taste ata time when the workers of all Europe, in their overwhelming majority,have for two years been standing shoulder to shoulder with thebourgeoisie on the battlefields against the ‘enemies’ of their fatherland,while those who remain at home want to ‘live through it’ despite allthe poverty and hardship. Should we be attacked by a foreign power weshall doubtlessly see the same picture in Switzerland too!!!”What is this if not “Kautsky” policy, the policy of theimpotent phrase, Left declaration and opportunist practicewhen, on the one hand, resolutions are proposed urging theparty, “in conjunction with trade union organisations”, tocall for revolutionary mass strikes, and, on the other, nostruggle is waged against the Grütli, i.e., social-patriot,