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

190V. I. LENINSocialists could not have allowed a single sentence ofthe resolution, for which Jouhaux and Merrheim unanimouslyvoted, to pass without strong protest. In direct contrastto that resolution, socialists would have declared that Wilson’spronouncement is a downright lie and sheer hypocrisy,because Wilson represents a bourgeoisie which has made billionsout of the war, because he is the head of a governmentthat has frantically armed the United States obviously inpreparation for a second great imperialist war. Socialistswould have declared that the French bourgeois governmentis tied hand and foot by finance capital, whose slave it is, andby the secret, imperialist, thoroughly predatory and reactionarytreaties with England, Russia, etc., and thereforecannot do or say anything except utter the same lies abouta democratic and a “just” peace. Socialists would have declaredthat the struggle for such a peace cannot be wagedby repeating general, vapid, benign, sentimental, meaninglessand non-committal pacifist phrases, which merely serveto embellish the foulness of imperialism. It can be wagedonly by telling the people the truth, by telling the peoplethat in order to obtain a democratic and just peace the bourgeoisgovernments of all the belligerent countries must beoverthrown, and that for this purpose advantage must betaken of the fact that millions of workers are armed andthat the high cost of living and the horrors of the imperialistwar have roused the anger of the masses.This is what socialists should have said instead of whatis said in the Jouhaux-Merrheim resolution.The Congress of the French Socialist Party, which tookplace in Paris simultaneously with that of the C.G.T., notonly refrained from saying this, but passed a resolution thatis even worse than the one mentioned above. It was adoptedby 2,838 votes against 109, with 20 abstentions, that isto say, by a bloc of the social-chauvinists (Renaudel and Co.,the so-called “majoritaires”) and the Longuet-ists (supportersof Longuet, the French Kautskyites)!! Moreover, theZimmerwaldist Bourderon and the Kienthalian Raffin-Dugens voted for this resolution!!We shall not quote the resolution—it is inordinatelylong and totally uninteresting: it contains benign, sentimentalphrases about peace, immediately followed by declara-