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

TO WORKERS SUPPORTING STRUGGLE AGAINST WAR231own policy. It voted for the resolution against the socialpatriotInternational Socialist Bureau, a resolution whichcondemned the latter in the sharpest terms, and for theresolution against social-pacifism, which warned the workersagainst lying pacifist phrases, regardless of socialist trimmings.Socialist pacifism, which refrains from explaining tothe workers the illusory nature of hopes for peace withoutoverthrowing the bourgeoisie and organising socialism, ismerely an echo of bourgeois pacifism, which instils in theworkers faith in the bourgeoisie, presents the imperialistgovernments and the deals they make with each other in agood light and distracts the masses from the maturingsocialist revolution, which events have put on the orderof the day.But what transpired? After the Kienthal Conference, theZimmerwald Right, in a number of important countries, inFrance, Germany and Italy, slid wholly and entirely intothe very social-pacifism Kienthal had condemned and rejected!In Italy, the Socialist Party has tacitly accepted thepacifist phrases of its parliamentary group and its principalspeaker, Turati, though, precisely now, when absolutelythe same phrases are being used by Germany and theEntente and by representatives of the bourgeois governmentsof a number of neutral countries, where the bourgeoisie hasaccumulated and continues to accumulate enormous warprofits—precisely now their utter falsehood has been exposed.In fact, pacifist phrases have proved to be a cover for thenew turn in the fight for division of imperialist spoils!In Germany, Kautsky, the leader of the ZimmerwaldRight, issued a similar meaningless and non-committal pacifistmanifesto, which merely instils in the workers hope inthe bourgeoisie and faith in illusions. Genuine socialists,the genuine internationalists in Germany, the Internationalegroup and the International Socialists of Germany, who areapplying Karl Liebknecht’s tactics in practice, were obligedformally to dissociate themselves from this manifesto.In France, Merrheim and Bourderon, who took part in theZimmerwald Conference, and Raffin-Dugens, who took partin the Kienthal Conference, have voted for meaningless and,objectively, thoroughly false pacifist resolutions, which, inthe present state of affairs, are so much to the advantage of