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

TO WORKERS SUPPORTING STRUGGLE AGAINST WAR233critical the pacifist phrases of the governments, but saysnot a word about the socialist pacifism that unites Merrheimand Jouhaux, Raffin-Dugens and Renaudel. In thismanifesto Grimm urges the socialist minorities to fightthe governments and their social-patriot hirelings, but atthe same time, jointly with the “social-patriot hirelings”in the Swiss party, he endeavours to bury the partycongress, thus rousing the just indignation of all the classconsciousand sincerely internationalist Swiss workers.No excuses can conceal the fact that the Parteivorstanddecision of January 7, 1917 signifies the complete victoryof the Swiss social-patriots over the Swiss socialist workers,the victory of the Swiss opponents of Zimmerwald overZimmerwald.The Grütlianer, that organ of the consistent and avowedservants of the bourgeoisie in the labour movement, saidwhat everyone knows is true when it declared that socialpatriotsof the Greulich and Pflüger type, to whom shouldbe added Seidel, Huber, Lang, Schneeberger, Dürr, etc.,want to prevent the congress from being held, want to preventthe workers from deciding the fatherland defence issue,and threaten to resign if the congress is held and a decisionin the spirit of Zimmerwald is adopted.Grimm resorted to an outrageous and intolerable falsehoodat the Parteivorstand and in his newspaper, theBerner Tagwacht, of January 8, 1917, when he claimed thatthe congress had to he postponed because the workers werenot ready, that it was necessary to campaign against thehigh cost of living, that the “Left” were themselves in favourof postponement, etc. 102In reality, it was the Left, i.e., the sincere Zimmerwaldists,who, anxious to choose the lesser of two evils and alsoto expose the real intentions of the social-patriots and theirnew friend, Grimm, proposed postponing the congress untilMarch, voted to postpone it until May, and suggested thatthe meetings of the cantonal committees he held beforeJuly; but all these proposals were voted down by the “fatherlanddefenders”, led by the chairman of the Zimmerwaldand Kienthal conferences, Robert Grimm!!In reality, the question was: shall the Berne InternationalSocialist Committee and Grimm’s paper be allowed to