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

THESES FOR AN APPEAL TO THE I. S. C.215(1) Socialist pacifism of a definite trend—Longuet-Merrheim, Kautsky, Turati, etc.,—already rejected in principleat Kienthal, and its concrete defence by these representativesof the afore-mentioned trends should be decisivelyand unconditionally rejected as bourgeois reformism (onthe basis of the theses formulated above).(2) A similarly decisive organisational break with socialchauvinism.(3) Explain to the working class its immediate andurgent revolutionary tasks, precisely in connection with thefact that the masses have lost patience with the war and thelying milk-and-water pacifist phrases of the bourgeoisie.(4) Openly brand as a complete break with the spiritand decisions of Zimmerwald and Kienthal, and condemn assuch, the policy of the Italian Socialist Party, which isfollowing a patently pacifist path, and the policy of theSwiss Social-Democratic Party, which on November 4,1916 in Zurich voted to permit indirect taxes, and onJanuary 7, 1917, through an alliance between the “Centrist”R. Grimm and the social-patriots Greulich, G. Müller andCo., secured indefinite postponement of the special partycongress called for February 11, 1917 to discuss the war issue,and which now meekly accepts the outright ultimatum of thesesame social-patriot leaders, who openly threaten to resignfrom parliament if the party rejects fatherland defence.The sad experience of the Second International has clearlydemonstrated the immense damage caused by combining,in actual practice, “general” revolutionary decisions, formulatedin general phrases, with reformist actions—whenprofessions of internationalism are attended by refusaljointly to discuss, in a truly internationalist manner, fundamentalproblems of the tactics of each individual partyas a component part of the international union.Prior to the Zimmerwald Conference and at the Conferenceitself, our Party considered it its duty to acquaint the comradeswith our irrevocable condemnation of pacifism andabstract preachment of peace as a bourgeois deception (a Germantranslation of our Party’s resolution, in the pamphletSocialism and War,* and a French translation, in a separate* See present edition, Vol. 21, pp. 295-338.—Ed.