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

195AN OPEN LETTER TO BORIS SOUVARINE 92Citizen Souvarine says his letter is addressed also to me.I take all the greater pleasure in replying, since his articletouches on vital problems of international socialism.Souvarine believes that those who consider “defence ofthe fatherland” to be incompatible with socialism are takingan “unpatriotic” view. As for himself, he “defends” the viewof Turati, Ledebour, Brizon who, while voting against warcredits, declare that they accept “defence of the fatherland”;in other words, he defends the trend known as the “Centre”(the “marsh”, I would say), or as Kautskyism—after its chieftheoretical and literary exponent, Karl Kautsky. I mightremark, in passing, that Souvarine is wrong in maintainingthat “they [i.e., the Russian comrades who speak of the collapseof the Second International] equate men like Kautsky, Longuet,etc... with nationalists of the Scheidemann and Renaudeltype”. Neither I nor the Party to which I belong (theR.S.D.L.P. Central Committee) have ever equated the socialchauvinistviewpoint with that of the “Centre”. In ourofficial Party statements, in the Central Committee manifestopublished November 1, 1914*, and in the resolutions adoptedin March 1915** (both documents are reproduced in extensoin our pamphlet Socialism and War,*** which is known toSouvarine), we have always drawn a dividing line betweenthe social-chauvinists and the “Centre”. The former, in ouropinion, have defected to the bourgeoisie. With regard tothem we demand not merely struggle, but a split. The latterhesitate, vacillate, and their efforts to unite the socialist* See present edition, Vol. 21, pp. 25-34.—Ed.** See present edition, Vol. 21, pp. 158-64.—Ed.*** See present edition, Vol. 21, pp. 295-338.—Ed.