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

230V. I. LENINkind to this, the only way out of the impasse, is compelling itto take giant strides towards state capitalism, and is demonstratingin a practical manner how planned social economycan and should be conducted, not in the interests of thecapitalists, but by expropriating them, under the leadershipof the revolutionary proletariat, in the interests of themasses who are now perishing from starvation and the othercalamities caused by the war.The more obvious this truth becomes, the wider becomesthe gulf separating the two irreconcilable tendencies, policies,trends of socialist activity, which we indicated atZimmerwald, where we acted as a separate Left wing, and ina manifesto to all socialist parties and to all class-consciousworkers issued on behalf of the Left wing immediatelyafter the conference. This is the gulf that lies betweenthe attempts to conceal the obvious bankruptcy of officialsocialism and its representatives’ desertion to the bourgeoisieand their governments, as well as the attempts to reconcilethe masses with this complete betrayal of socialism, onthe one hand, and, on the other, the efforts to expose thisbankruptcy in all its magnitude, to expose the bourgeoispolicy of the “social-patriots”, who have deserted the proletariatfor the bourgeoisie, to destroy their influence overthe masses and to create the possibility and the organisationalbasis for a genuine struggle against the war.The Zimmerwald Right wing, which was in the majorityat the conference, fought the idea of breaking with the socialpatriotsand founding the Third International tooth andnail. Since then the split has become a definite fact in England;and in Germany the last conference of the “opposition”,on January 7, 1917, revealed to all who do not wilfullyshut their eyes to the facts, that in that country too thereare two irreconcilably hostile labour parties, working inopposite directions. One is a socialist party, working forthe most part underground, and with Karl Liebknecht oneof its leaders. The other is a thoroughly bourgeois, socialpatriotparty, which is trying to reconcile the workers tothe war and to the government. The same division is to beobserved in every country of the world.At the Kienthal Conference the Zimmerwald Right wingdid not have so large a majority as to be able to continue its