As The 100th
Anniversary Of The Beginning of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars)
Approaches ... Some Remembrances-Lenin-
The European War and International Socialism (1914)
The events leading up to World War I from the massive
military armament of almost all the capitalist and imperialist parties in
Europe and elsewhere in order to stake their claims to their unimpeded share of
the world’s resources to the supposedly eternal pledges by the Social-Democrats
and other militant leftist formations representing the historic interest of the
international working-class to stop those parties in their tracks at the
approach of war were decisive for 20th century history. The ability
to inflict industrial-sized slaughter and mayhem on a massive scale first
portended toward the end of the American Civil War once the Northern industrial
might tipped the scales their way almost could not be avoided in the early 20th
century once the armaments race got serious, and the technology seemed to grow
exponentially with each new turn in the war machine.
The land war, the war carried out by the “grunts,” by the “cannon
fodder” of many nations was only the tip of the iceberg and probably except for
the increased cannon-power and rapidity of the machine-guns would be carried
out by the norms of the last war. However the race for naval supremacy, or the
race to take a big kink out of British supremacy, went on unimpeded as Germany
tried to break-out into the Atlantic world and even Japan, Jesus, Japan tried
to gain a big hold in the Asia seas. The deeply disturbing submarine warfare
wreaking havoc on commerce on the seas, the use of armed aircraft and other
such technological innovations of war only added to the frenzy. We can hundred
years ahead, look back and see where talk of “stabs in the back” by the losers
and ultimately an armistice rather than decisive victory on the blood-drenched
fields of Europe would lead to more blood-letting but it was not clear, or
nobody was talking about it much, or, better, doing much about calling a halt
before they began among all those “civilized” nations who went into the abyss
in July of 1914. Sadly the list of those who would not do anything, anything
concrete, besides paper manifestos issued at international conferences, included
the great bulk of the official European labor movement which in theory was
committed to stopping the madness.
A few voices, voices like Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg
in Germany, Lenin and Trotsky in Russia, some anti-war anarchists like Monette
in France and here in America Big Bill Haywood and the stalwart Eugene V. Debs,
were raised and one hundred years later those voices have a place of honor in
this space. Those voices, many of them in exile, or in the deportations
centers, were being clamped down as well as the various imperialist governments
began closing their doors to political refugees when they were committed to
clapping down on their own anti-war citizens. As we have seen in our own times,
most recently in America in the period before the “shock and awe” of the
decimation of Iraq in 2002 and early 2003 the government, most governments, are
able to build a war frenzy out of whole cloth. At those times, and in my
lifetime the period after 9/11 when we tried in vain to stop the Afghan war in
its tracks is illustrative, to be a vocal anti-warrior is a dicey business. A
time to keep your head down a little, to speak softly and wait for the fever to
subside and to be ready to begin the anti-war fight another day. So imagine in
1914 when every nationality in Europe felt its prerogatives threatened how the
fevered masses would not listen to the calls against the slaughter. Yes, one
hundred years later is not too long to honor those ardent anti-war voices as
the mass mobilizations began in the countdown to war.
Over the next period as we lead up to the 100th
anniversary of the start of World War I and beyond I will under this headline
post various documents, manifestos and cultural expressions from that time in
order to give a sense of what the lead up to that war looked like, the struggle
against its outbreak before, the forlorn struggle during and the massive
struggles in order to create a newer world out of the shambles of the
battlefields.
********
Teddy Martin had come from a long line of workers, some of
his forbears had been among the first domestic weavers in Spitalfield, had been
the first machine-tenders in Manchester and had been workers like him and his
father in the London shipbuilding trade. He knew deep in his blood there was an
“us” and “them” in the world without his party, the Labor Party, having to tell
him word one on the subject. He had even read Karl Marx in his early teens when
he was trying to figure out why his family was stuck in the faraway outer tenements
with their squalor and their human closeness (he never could get over being in
close quarters ever since then). So yes he was ready to listen to what some
left members of the party had to say if the war clouds on the horizon turned
any darker. But, and hear him true, his was like his forbears and his father
before him as loyal a man as to be found in the country. Loyal to his king
(queen too if it came to that) and his country. So he would have to think,
think carefully, about what to do if those nasty Huns and their craven allies
making loud noises of late threatened his way of life. Most of his mates to the
extent that they had any opinion were beginning to be swept up in the idea that
a little war might not be such a bad thing to settle some long smoldering
disputes. Still he, Teddy Martin, was not a man to be rushed and so he would
think, think hard, about what to do if there was a mass mobilization.
No question, thought Teddy Martin, his majesty’s government
had gotten itself into a hard situation ever since that mangy Archduke somebody
had got himself shot by a guy, a damn anarchist working with who knows who,
maybe freemasons, over in Sarajevo, over in someplace he was not quite sure he
knew where it was if somebody had asked him to point it out in a map. That
seemingly silly little act (except of course to the Archduke and his wife also
killed) apparently has exposed Britain, damn the whole British Empire that they
claim the sun never sets on, to some pretty serious entanglements because if
France were to go to war with Austria or someplace like that then the king is
duty bound to come to France’s rescue. And Teddy Martin as thinking man, as a
working man, as a member in good standing of the Labor Party ever since its
inception was still not sure what he would do. Not sure that he would follow
the war cries being shouted out by the likes of Arthur Henderson from his own
party. All he knew was that the usual talk of football or the prizefights that
filled the air at his pub, The Cock and Bull, was being supplanted by war talk,
by talk of taking a nip out of the Germans and those who spoke in that way were
gaining a hearing. All Teddy knew was that it was getting harder and harder for
him to openly express thoughts that he needed to think about the issues more.
That was not a good sign, not a good omen.
Yes, once the Germans were on the march toward Belgium and
then threatened Paris in a race to the sea if not stopped then the guys at the
Cock and Bull became more pensive, started to see that they would have to do
right by the king. One night, one July night before the blood started flowing
on the continent, one of the boys, Brewster, Teddy thought had led a toast to
the king and all including Teddy rather sheepishly. But now, now with the blood
up, no with the Empire at stake, new with even the wogs in India clamoring to
serve their king and emperor Teddy Martin could see where each must do his
duty. And so Teddy found himself less and less at the pub with the boys and
more and more at home with his wife and two young boys waiting for that minute when he would find himself
heading to the recruiting station to give his all for his country. Although he
lifted no glass to that fact.
********
The German Social-Democratic Party had given Fritz Klein
everything. Had taken him from a small furniture-making factory(less than one
hundred employees constituting in those days small) where he led the fight for
unionization (against all odds for that woefully unorganized industry and against
the then still standing laws against unionization pressed by the state as well
as well as the outlaw status of the S-D Party in those pre-legal days) and
brought him along into the burgeoning party bureaucracy (boasting of this
number of party publications, that number of members, and the pinnacle the
votes attained for the growing number of party parliamentarians in the
Reichstag). Made him a local then regional shop steward agent. Later found him
a spot in the party publications department and from there to alternate member
of the party’s national committee. As he grew older, got married, had two
lovely children the party had severely sapped the youthful idealism out of him.
Still he was stirred whenever Karl Liebknecht, old Wilhelm’s son, the father whom
he knew from the old days, delivered one of his intellectual and rational
attacks against the war aims of the Kaiser and his cabal. Still too though he
worried, worried to perdition, that the British and, especially the French were
deliberately stepping on German toes. Although tired, endlessly tired, he hoped
that he would be able to stick to the Second International’s pledge made at
Basle in 1912 to do everything to stop war in case it came, as was now likely.
He just didn’t know how he would react, didn’t know at all.
Fritz was furious, furious at two things. First that those
damn whatever they were anarchists, nationalists, or whatever had assassinated
the Archduke Ferdinand. Had threatened the peace of Europe, his peace, with
their screwy theory of picking off various state officials thinking that would,
unlike victory in the mass class struggles, change the world. Christ, they
could have at least read Marx or somebody. Make no mistake Fritz had no truck
with monarchy, certainly not the moribund Austro-Hungarian monarchy, despised
the Kaiser himself right here in the German homeland (although on the quiet
since the Kaiser was not above using his courts for the simple pleasure of
skewering a man for lese majeste and had
done so to political opponents and the idle wild-talkers alike). Still his
blood boiled that some desperados would pick at a fellow Germanic target. Fritz
was not at all sure that maybe the French, or the English, the bloody English
were behind the activities. Hugo Heine thought so, his immediate regional director,
so there could be some truth to the assertion.
Secondly, that same Hugo Heine had begun, at the behest of
the national committee of the party, to clamp down on those who were trying to
make the party live up to its promises and try to make a stand against any
German, any Kaiser moves toward war over the incident at Sarajevo. The way
Heine put it was that if war was to come and he hoped that it would not the
Social-Democracy must not be thrown into the underground again like in the old
days under Bismarck. Hugo had spent two years in the Kaiser’s jail back then
for simply trying to organize his shop and get them to vote for the party then
outlawed. The radical stuffing had come out of Hugo though and all he wanted
was not to go back to jail now for any reason. Fritz cursed those damn
anarchists again, cursed them more bitterly since they were surely going to
disturb his peace.
Fritz Klein was beside himself when he heard the news, the Social-Democratic
parliamentary caucus on August 4th had overwhelming to support the
Kaiser’s war budget (and because overwhelming each member was duty-bound to vote
en bloc the way the majority vote went and did so despite the pleas of Karl
Liebknecht), to give him the guns, ammunition and whatever he needed to pursue
the war aims that were just beginning to unfold. Fritz had not expected the
party to be able to stop the war preparations, or once the war clouds got too ominous,
to stop the mobilizations, but he did expect that the parliamentary delegation
(which was under its own discipline and not the party’s) would not cravenly
grant the Kaiser’s every war supply. All those brave peacetime proclamations
about the brotherhood of man and international working-class solidarity were
now so much paper in the wind. He sat for a moment in disgust and disbelief
that now Europe would be in flames for who knew how long before he knew he
would have to explain to the party stalwarts the whys and wherefores of the
budgetary decision. And have to explain why he and his comrades would soon be loading
rifles instead of bags of flour somewhere near the Atlantic Ocean. For a flash
he hoped for a short war but in his gut he knew the fates were fickle and that
the blood of the European working-class youth would be spilled without question
and without end.
********
Jacques Rous (and yes he traced his family roots back to the
revolution, back to the “red” priest who he was named after who had led some of
the plebeian struggles back then that were defeated by those damn moderate
cutthroats Robespierre and Saint Just) had long been a leader the anarchist
delegation in his Parisian district, had been in a few fights in his time with
the damn city bourgeoisie, and had a long, very long memory of what the Germans
had, and had not done, in Paris in ’71,in the time of the bloodedly suppressed
Commune. Also Jacques had long memories of his long past forbears who had come
from Alsace-Lorraine now in German hands. And it galled him, galled him that
there were war clouds gathering daily over his head, over his district and over
his beloved Paris.
But that was not what
was troubling Jacques Rous in the spring of 1914. He knew, knew deep in his
bones like a lot of his fellow anarchists, like a lot of the guys in the small
pottery factory he had worked in for the past several years after being laid off
from the big textile factory across the river that if war came they would know
what to do. Quatrain from the CGT (the large trade union organization to which
he and others in the factory belonged to) had clued them in, had told them
enough to know some surprises were headed the government’s way if they decided
to use the youth of the neighborhoods as cannon fodder. What bothered Jacques
was not his conduct but that of his son, Jacques too named in honor of that
same ancient red priest who was the lifeblood of the family. Young Jacques
something of a dandy like many youth in those days, something of a lady’s man
(he had reportedly a married mistress and somebody else on the side), had told
one and all (although not his father directly) who would listen one night that
he planned to enlist in the Grenadiers just as soon as it looked like trouble
was coming. Old Jacques wondered if other fathers were standing in fear of such
rash actions by their sons just then.
Old Jacques could see the writing on the wall, remembered
what it was like when the German
threatened to come back in ’70 and then came the last time. Came and left the
Parisian poor to eat rats or worse when they besieged the city, old Thiers fled
to Versailles, and Paris starved half-aided by those Germans and he expected
the same if not worse this time because that country was now unified, was now
filled with strange powerful Krupp cannon and in a mood to use it now that one
of the members of their alliance had had one of its own killed in Sarajevo and
all Europe was waiting for the other shoe to drop. He believed that the
anarchists of Paris to a man would resist the call to arms issued by the
government. Quatrain, the great leader ever since Commune days, almost
guaranteed a general strike if they tried to mobilize the Parisian youth for
the slaughter. Yeah Quatrain would stand tall. Jacques though had personal
worries somebody had seen his son, also Jacques, heading with some of his
“gilded” friends toward the 12th Grenadier recruiting office in the
Hotel de Ville ready to fight for bloody bourgeois France, for the memory of
Napoleon, for the glory of battle. And he old Jacques knowing from some
skimpily- held barricades back in ’71 just how “glorious” war was fretted in
the night against his blood.
*******
George Jenkins dreamed the dream of many young men out in
the heartland, out in the wheat fields of Kansas a dream that America, his
America would keep the hell out of what looked like war clouds coming from
Europe in the spring of 1914 (although dreams and dreamers were located not
just on the farms since George was not a Kansas farm boy but a rising young
clerk in Doc Dell’s Drugstore located in the college town of Lawrence). George
was keenly interested in such matters and would, while on break or when things
were slow, glance through the day later copy of the New York Times or Washington
Post that Doc provided for his more worldly customers via the passing
trains. What really kept George informed though was William White’s home-grown Emporia Gazette which kept a close eye
on the situation in Europe for the folks.
And with all of that information here is what George
Jenkins, American citizen, concluded: America had its own problems best tended
to by keeping out of foreign entanglements except when America’s direct
interests were threatened. So George naturally cast skeptical eyes on
Washington, on President Wilson, despite his protestations that European
affairs were not our business. George had small town ideas about people minding
their own business. See too also George had voted for Eugene V. Debs himself,
the Socialist party candidate for President, and while he was somewhat
skeptical about some of the Socialist Party leaders back East he truly believed
that Brother Debs would help keep us out of war.
Jesus, those damn Europeans have begun to make a mess for
themselves now that some archduke, Jesus, an archduke in this day and age (and
George Jenkins thanked some forgotten forebear for getting his clan out of
Europe whenever he did so and avoided that nonsense about going to the aid of
somebody over a damn archduke). Make no mistake George Jenkins had no sympathy
for anarchists and was half-glad a couple of years ago when the Socialist Party
booted the IWW, the damn Wobbies, out if that is what they did and the beggars
didn’t just walk out. Although he had an admiration for Big Bill Hayward and
his trade union fights that is all it was-admiration and policy could not be
made on that basis. So no he had no truck with anarchists but to go to war over
an archduke-damn. Still George was no Pollyanna and kept abreast of what was
going on and it bothered him more than somewhat that guy slike Senator Lodge
from Massachusetts and others from the Northeast were beating the war drums to
get the United States mired in a damn European war. No way, no way good solid
Midwesterners would fall for that line. And so George watched and waited.
Watched too to see what old Debs had to say about matters. George figured that
if the war drums got loud enough then Brother Debs would organize and speak up
to keep things right. That was his way.
********
Ivan Smirnov was no kid, had been around the block a few
times in this war business. Had been in the Russian fleet that got its ass
kicked by the Japanese in 1904 (he never called them “Nips” like lots of his
crewmates did not after that beating they took that did not have to happen if
the damn Czar’s naval officers had been anything but lackeys and anything but
overconfident that they could beat the Johnny-come-lately Japanese in the naval
war game). More importantly he had been in the Baltic fleet when the revolution
of 1905 came thundering over their heads and each man, each sailor, each
officer had to choice sides. He had gone with rebels and while he did not face
the fate of his comrades on the Potemkin
his naval career was over.
Just as well Ivan had thought many times since he was then able
to come ashore and get work on the docks through some connections, and think.
And what he was thinking in the spring of 1914 with some ominous war clouds in
the air that that unfinished task from 1905 was going to come to a head. Ivan
knew enough about the state of the navy, and more importantly, the army to know
that without some quick decisive military action the monarchy was finished and
good riddance. The hard part, the extremely hard part, was to get those future
peasant conscripts who would provide cannon fodder for the Czar’s ill-thought
out land adventures to listen up for a minute rather than go unknowingly
head-long into the Czar’s arm (the father’s arms for many of them). So there
was plenty of work to do. Ivan just that moment was glad that he was not a
kid.
As the war clouds thickened after the killing of the
archduke in bloody damn Sarajevo in early summer 1914 Ivan Smirnov knew in his
bones that the peasant soldier cannon fodder as always would come flocking to
the Czar like lemmings to the sea the minute war was declared. Any way the deal
was cut the likely line-up of the Czar with the “democracies” of the West,
Britain and France and less likely the United States would immediately give the
Czar cover against the villainies of the Huns, of the Germans who just the
other day were propping up the Czar’s treasury. It could not end well. All Ivan
hoped for was that his party, the real Social-Democrats, locally known as the
Mensheviks from the great split in 1903 with the Bolsheviks and who had definitely
separated from that organization for good in 1912, would not get war fever just
because the damn Czar was lined up with the very democracies that the party
wished to emulate in Russia.
He knew too that the talk among the leadership of the
Bolsheviks (almost all of them in exile and thus far from knowing what was
happening down in the base of society at home) about opposing the Czar to the
bitter end, about fighting in the streets again some said to keep the young
workers and the peasants drifting into the urban areas from the dead-ass farms
from becoming cannon-fodder for a lost cause was crazy, was irresponsible.
Fortunately some of the local Bolshevik committee men in Russia and among their
Duma delegation had cooler heads. Yea this was not time to be a kid, with kid’s
tunnel vision, with great events working in the world.
***********
V. I. Lenin
The European War and International Socialism
To the socialist it is not the horrors of war that are the hardest to endure—we are always for “santa guerra di tutti gli oppressi per la conquista delle loro patrie!”[1] —but the horrors of the treachery shown by the leaders of present day socialism, the horrors of the collapse of the present-day International.
Is it not treachery to Social-Democracy when we see the German socialists’ amazing change of front (after Germany’s declaration of war); the false phrases about a war of liberation against tsarism; forgetfulness of German imperialism, forgetfulness of the rape of Serbia; the bourgeois interests involved in the war against Britain, etc., etc.? Chauvinist patriots vote for the Budget!
Have the socialists of France and Belgium not shown the same kind of treachery? They are excellent at exposing German imperialism, but, unfortunately they are amazingly purblind with regard to British, French, and particularly the barbarous Russian imperialism. They fail to see the disgraceful fact that, for decades on end, the French bourgeoisie have been paying out thousands of millions for the hire of the Black-Hundred gangs of Russian tsarism, and that the latter has been crushing the non-Russian majority in our country, robbing Po]and, oppressing the Great Russian workers and peasants, and so on.
At such a time, the socialist feels refreshed when he reads of the bitter truth so courageously and straightforwardly told by Avanti![11] to Südekum,[12] the truth that paper told the German socialists, namely, that they are imperialists, i.e., chauvinists. One feels even more refreshed on reading the article by Zibordi (Avanti!, Sept. 2) exposing not only the German and the Austrian brands of chauvinism (which is to the advantage of the Italian bourgeoisie), but also the French, an article which shows that this war is a war of the bourgeoisie of all lands!
Avanti!’s stand and the Zibordi article—[as well as the resolution of the group of revolutionary Social-Democrats (at a recent conference in a Scandinavian country)[2] ]—shows us what is right and what is wrong in the usual phrase about the collapse of the International. This phrase is reiterated with malicious relish by the bourgeois and the opportunists (riformisti di destra[3] ), and with bitterness by socialists (Volksrecht[13] in Zurich, and Bremer Bürger-Zeitung[14]). There is a great deal of truth in the phrase! The downfall of the leaders and of most of the parties in the present-day International is a fact. (Compare Vorwärts,[15] Wiener Arbeiter-Zeitung[16] and Hamburger Echo[17] versus l’Humanité,[18] and the appeals of the Belgian and the French socialists versus the “reply ”of the German Vorstand.[19]) The masses have not yet spoken out!
However, Zibordi is a thousand times right in saying that it is not a matter of “dottrina è sbagliata”, or of the “rimedio ”of socialism being “errato”, but “semplicemente non erano in dose bastante”, “gli altri socialisti non sono ‘abbastanza socialisti’”.[4]
It is not socialism that has collapsed, in the shape of the present-day European International, but an insufficient socialism, i.e., opportunism and reformism. It is this “tendency"—which exists everywhere, in all countries, and has found such vivid expression in Bissolati and Co. in Italy—that has collapsed, for it has for years been teaching forgetfulness of the class struggle, etc., etc.—from the resolution.[20]
Zibordi is right when he sees the European socialists’ main guilt in “cercano nobilitare con postumi motivi la loro incapacità a prevenire, la loro necessità di partecipare al macello”, in the fact that they “preferisce fingere di fare per amore ciò ch’è [European socialism][5] costretto a fare per forza”, that the socialists “solidarizzarono ciascuno con la propria nazione, col Governo borghese della propria rulzione . . . in una misura da formare una delusione per noi [also in all socialists who are not opportunists] e un compiacimento per tutti i non socialisti d’Italia”[6] (and not of Italy alone, but of all countries; cf., for instance, with Russian liberalism).
Even given the total incapacità and impotence of the European socialists, the behaviour of their leaders reveals treachery and baseness: the workers have been driven into the slaughter, while their leaders vote in favour and join governments! Even with their total impotence, they should have voted against, should not have joined their governments and uttered chauvinistic infamies; should not have shown solidarity with their “nation”, and should not have defended their “own ”bourgeoisie, they should have unmasked its vileness.
Everywhere there is the bourgeoisie and the imperialists, everywhere the ignoble preparations for carnage; if Russian tsarism is particularly infamous and barbarous (and more reactionary than all the rest), then German imperialism too is monarchist: its aims are feudal and dynastic, and its gross bourgeoisie are less free than the French. The Russian Social-Democrats were right in saying that to them the defeat of tsarism was the lesser evil, for their immediate enemy was, first and foremost, Great-Russian chauvinism, but that in each country the socialists (who are not opportunists) ought to see their main enemy in their “own ”(“home-made”) chauvinism.
Is it true, however, that the “incapacità ”is so very absolute? Is that so? Fucilare?[7] Heldentod[8] and a miserable death? All this in vantagglo di un altra patria?[9] Not always!! The initiative was possible and even obligatory. Illegal propaganda and civil war would be more honest, and obligatory for socialists (this is what the Russian socialists are calling for).
For Instance, they take comfort in the illusion that the war will end and things will settle down. .. But no! For the collapse of the present-day (1889-1914) International not to turn into the collapse of socialism, for the masses not to turn away, and to prevent the domination of anarchism and syndicalism (just as shamefully [as] in France), the truth must be looked in the face. Whoever wins, Europe is threatened by the growth of chauvinism, by “revenge-seeking”. etc. Militarism, whether German or Great Russian, fosters counter-chauvinism and the like.
It is our duty to draw the conclusion of the complete collapse of the opportunism, the reformism, so impressively proclaimed in Italy (and so decisively rejected by the Italian comrades[21] and[10] N. B. insert: the contemptuous and scornful attitude of Die Neue Zeit[22] towards the Italian socialists and Avanti!: petty concessions to opportunism! “The golden mean.”
[[BOX-ENDS:
The so-called “Centre ”= lackeys of the opportunists. ]]
Notes
[1] “a holy war of all the oppressed, for the conquest of their own fatherland!”—Ed.
[3] the reformists of the Right.—Ed.
[4] … it is not a matter of “theory being wrong”, or of the “remedy ”of socialism being “wrong ”but “simply of its not being available in sufficient doses ”and of “certain socialists not being ’sufficiently socialist’”.—Ed.
[5] Interpolations in square brackets (within passages quoted by Lenin) have been introduced by Lenin, unless otherwise indicated.—Ed.
[6] … their attempts to backdate their justification, with plausible excuses, both of their inability to prevent the carnage and their need to take part in the latter”, . . . they “prefer to create the semblance of doing voluntarily [European socialism] what they are forced to do of necessity”, that the socialists have “lined up with their own particular nation, with the latter’s bourgeois government . . . in a measure capable of engendering disappointment in us [also in all socialists who are not opportunists] and delight all non-socialists in Italy”. —Ed.
[9] For the sake of another country?—Ed.
[10] The manuscript breaks off here. The next two sentences are marginal notes.—Ed.
[11] Avanti!—a daily and central organ of the Italian Socialist Party, was founded in December 1896. During the First World War its policy was not consistently internationalist, and it failed to break with the reformists. At present Avanti! is the central organ of the Italian Democratic Left Party.
[12] Südekum, Albert—a German Social-Democrat, who was an extreme social-chauvinist during the First World War. His name has come to denote social-chauvinism.
[13] Volksrecht (The People’s Right)—a Swiss Social-Democratic daily, published in Zurich since 1898. During the First World War it published articles by Left Zimmerwaldists, including Lenin’s articles “Twelve Brief Theses on H. Greulich’s Defence of Fatherland Defence”, “The Tasks of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party in the Russian Revolution ”and “Tricks of the Republican Chauvinists”.
[14] Bremer Bürger-Zeitung—a daily published by the Bremen Social-Democrats from 1890 to 1919. In 1914-15 it was actually the organ of the Left Social-Democrats, and in 1916 it was taken over by the social-chauvinists.
[15] Vorwärts—a daily, central organ of the German Social-Democrats, published in Berlin from 1876 by Wilhelm Liebknecht and other editors. Through this newspaper Engels fought against all manifestations of opportunism. In the latter half of the 1890s, following Engels’s death, the newspaper systematically published articles by opportunists, who had become dominant among German Social-Democrats and in the Second International. During the First World War (1914-18) the paper pursued a social-chauvinist policy, and after the October Socialist Revolution it became a mouthpiece of anti-Soviet propaganda. It ceased publication in 1933.
[16] Wiener Arbeiter-Zeitung—a daily newspaper, central organ of the Austrian Social-Democratic Party, published in Vienna from 1889. During the First World War it took a social-chauvinist stand, Lenin describing it as the newspaper of “Vienna betrayers of socialism”. Suppressed in 1934, it resumed publication in 1945 as the central organ of the Austrian Socialist Party.
[17] Hamburger Echo—German Social-Democratic daily newspaper published from 1887; took a social-chauvinist stand during the First World War.
[18] l’Humanité—a daily founded by Jean Jaurès in 1904 as the organ of the French Socialist Party. During the First World War the news paper became a mouthpiece of the extreme Right wing of the French Socialist Party, and pursued a social-chauvinist policy. Shortly after the split in the Socialist Party at the Tours Congress in December 1920, and the formation of the Communist Party, it became the organ of the Communist Party.
[19] The reference is to the appeal addressed to the German people by the French and Belgian delegations to the International Socialist Bureau, and published in l’Humanité on September 6, 1914. It accused the German Government of pursuing predatory designs and the German troops of perpetrating atrocities in the occupied areas. Vorwärts of September 10, 1914 carried a protest by the German Social-Democratic Party’s Executive against this appeal. This started off a press polemic between French and German social-chauvinists, each side seeking to justify its own government’s participation in the war and put the blame on the other side.
[20] Lenin is referring to the resolution adopted by the Bolshevik group at its meeting in Berne, August 24-26 (September 6-8) 1914 (see this volume, pp. 15-19).
[21] Ever since its foundation in 1892, a sharp ideological struggle was conducted in the Italian Socialist Party between the opportunist and revolutionary wings, which differed on the question of the Party’s policy and tactics. Under pressure from the Lefts, the most outspoken reformists (Bonomi, Bissolati), who supported the war and advocated collaboration with the government and the bourgeoisie, were expelled from the Party at its congress in Reggio Emilia in 1912. After the outbreak of the war, and before Italy’s entry into it, the Party took an anti-war stand under the slogan: “Against the war, for neutrality! ”In December 1914, the Party expelled a group of renegades (Mussolini and others) who defended the imperialist policy of the bourgeoisie and favoured Italy’s participation in the war. The Italian Socialists met in a joint conference with the Swiss Socialists at Lugano (1914) and took an active part in the international socialist conferences in Zimmerwald (1915) and Kienthal (1916). On the whole however, the Italian Socialist Party followed a Centrist policy. With Italy’s entry into the war in May 1915, the Party renounced its anti-war stand and issued a slogan “neither participate in the war, nor sabotage it”, which in practice meant support for the war.
[22] Die Neue Zeit (New Times)—theoretical journal of the German Social-Democratic Party published in Stuttgart from 1883 to 1923. Until October 1917 it was edited by Karl Kautsky and afterwards by Heinrich Cunow. Several works by Marx and Engels were first published in it. Engels helped the journal with advice, frequently criticising it for its deviations from Marxism. In the latter half of the nineties, following Engels’s death, it systematically published articles by revisionists, including a series of Bernstein’s articles called “Problems of Socialism”, which launched a revisionist crusade against Marxism. During the First World War Die Neue Zeit held a Centrist position, which in practice supported social-chauvinists. [See also Glossary entry which also contains related links]
