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

192V. I. LENINOn the one hand, Jouhaux joins with Merrheim; Bourderon,Longuet and Raffin-Dugens join with Renaudel, Sembatand Thomas, while the German social-chauvinists, Südekum,David and Scheidemann, announce the forthcoming “restorationof Social-Democratic Unity” with Kautsky and theSocial-Democratic Labour Group.On the other hand, the International Socialist Committeecalls upon the “socialist minorities” vigorously to fight“their own governments” and “their social-patriot hirelings”(Söldlinge).Either one thing, or the other.Either expose the vapidity, stupidity and hypocrisy ofbourgeois pacifism, or “paraphrase” it into “socialist” pacilism.Fight the Jouhaux, Renaudels, Legiens and Davids asthe “hirelings” of the governments, or join with them in emptypacifist declamations on the French or German models.That is now the dividing line between the ZimmerwaldRight, which has always strenuously opposed a break withthe social-chauvinists, and the Left, which at the ZimmerwaldConference had the foresight publicly to dissociateitself from the Right and to put forward, at the Conferenceand after it in the press, its own platform. It is no accidentthat the approach of peace, or even the intense discussionby certain bourgeois elements of the peace issue, has led toa very marked divergence between the two policies. To bourgeoispacifists and their “socialist” imitators, or echoers,peace has always been a fundamentally distinct concept, forneither has ever understood that “war is the continuationof the policies of peace and peace the continuation of thepolicies of war”. Neither the bourgeois nor the social-chauvinistwants to see that the imperialist war of 1914-17 isthe continuation of the imperialist policies of 1898-1914,if not of an even earlier period. Neither the bourgeois pacifistsnor the socialist pacifists realise that without therevolutionary overthrow of the bourgeois governments,peace now can only be an imperialist peace, a continuationof the imperialist war.In appraising the present war, they use meaningless,vulgar, philistine phrases about aggression or defence in general,and use the same philistine commonplaces in appraisingthe peace, disregarding the concrete historical situa-