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

LETTERS FROM AFAR337“only” “loot” it would get now would be Armenia and part ofGalicia, whereas it also wants to get Constantinople and regainfrom the Germans Poland, which tsarism has always soinhumanly and shamelessly oppressed. Further, the Guchkov-Milyukov government is, in essence, only the agent of Anglo-French capital, which wants to retain the colonies it haswrested from Germany and, on top of that, compel Germanyhand back Belgium and part of France. Anglo-French capitalhelped the Guchkovs and Milyukovs remove NicholasII in order that they might help it to “vanquish” Germany.What, then, is to be done?To achieve peace (and still more to achieve a reallyFROM MARXTO MAOdemocratic, a really honourable peace), it is necessary thatpolitical power be in the hands of the workers and poorest⋆peasants, not the landlords and capitalists. The latterrepresent an insignificant minority of the population, andthe capitalists, as everybody knows, are making fantasticprofits out of the war.The workers and poorest peasants are the vast majorityof the population. They are not making profit out of thewar; on the contrary, they are being reduced to ruin andstarvation. They are bound neither by capital nor by thetreaties between the predatory groups of capitalists; theycan and sincerely want NOT to end FOR the war.If political power in Russia were in the hands of theSoviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, theseSoviets, and theCOMMERCIALAll-Russia Soviet elected by them, could,and no doubt would, agree to carry out the peace programmewhich our Party DISTRIBUTION(the Russian Social-Democratic LabourParty) outlined as early as October 13, 1915, in No. 47 ofits Central Organ, Sotsial-Demokrat* (then published inGeneva because of the Draconic tsarist censorship).This programme would probably be the following:1) The All-Russia Soviet of Workers’, Soldiers’ andPeasants’ Deputies (or the St. Petersburg Soviet temporarilyacting for it) would forthwith declare that it is notbound by any treaties concluded either by the tsarist monarchyor by the bourgeois governments.* See present edition, Vol. 21, pp. 401-04.—Ed.