The Bolsheviks Raise the Standard of the Third International

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL

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J. Lenz, 

2. The Bolsheviks Raise the Standard of the Third International; Zimmerwald and the Zimmerwald Left

1914—1916

While the official leaders and the biggest parties in the Second Interna-tional behaved treacherously, and while small groups of proletarian interna-tionalists in all countries began to rally together, there was one party which with unswerving consistency drew conclusions from the bankruptcy of the Sec-ond International and clearly formulated the situation, the perspectives of de-velopment and the tasks of the international proletariat in the new epoch of war and revolution: that was the Bolshevik Party under Lenin‘s leadership.

As early as the first days of September 1914 Lenin, who had gone to Switzerland immediately after his release from prison in Galicia, submitted to a small group of party comrades his theses “The Tasks of the Revolutionary So-cial-Democracy in the European War,” containing even then all the basic ideas of Bolshevik strategy and tactics in the struggle against imperialist war.3 Asser-tion of the collapse of the International through the betrayal of socialism by its opportunist leaders, particularly the leaders of the centre; the demand for ruth-less struggle against Great-Russian chauvinism and the tsarist monarchy; whose defeat would be the lesser evil; propaganda for the socialist revolution; the necessity for organising illegal groups and cells in all armies.

On November 1, there appeared the theses of the Central Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party on the war and Lenin‘s article “The Position and Tasks of the Socialist International,”1 historic documents which clearly lay down the attitude of revolutionary Marxism to all the ques-tions raised by the war.

The first thing to be realised was that the collapse of the Second Interna-tional was not the accidental error of individual leaders, not a temporary devia-tion of individual parties, but the triumph of opportunism in the International. Even if, in the crisis of war, various regroupings took place, if individuals such as Guesde in France or Lensch in Germany, who had formerly stood close to the revolutionary Marxists, were seized by the wave of chauvinism, if individual reformists for the time being deserted the social-imperialists and took sides with the pacifist opposition, as MacDonald did in England or Bernstein in Germany, that did not change the essence of the position — the opportunists’ support of the imperialist war and the revolutionaries’ hostility to the war.

A Marxist cannot deal with the question of defence of the fatherland unless he starts from the question of the concrete historical character of the war. If it is an imperialist war — as all the socialist parties maintained on the very eve of its outbreak — if it is a war for the division of Asia and Africa, for the annexation of the iron ore deposits of Briey and Longwy, for the decision of the competitive struggle between German and English capital, for the Bagdad railway and Constantinople, then it is the most vile treachery to describe the capitalists’ fight for profits as a fight for the defence of the fatherland. The pro-letariat must expose this treachery and issue the slogan of transforming the imperialist war into the civil war.

Does that mean, in the demagogic way in which Kautsky put it, that revolutionary socialists wanted immediately on the outbreak of war to replace imperialism by socialism? Lenin answered:

“Such a transformation, of course, is not easy, and cannot be accomplished by the individual parties at will. Such a transfor-mation, however, is inherent in the objective conditions of capital-ism in general, in the epoch of the final stage of capitalism in par-ticular. In this, and only in this direction, must the socialists con-duct their work. To refrain from voting for military appropriations, to refrain from aiding and abetting the chauvinism of ‘our’ country (and its allied nations), to fight, in the first place, against the chau-vinism of ‘our’ bourgeoisie without being confined to the legal forms of struggle when the crisis has set in and the bourgeoisie it-self has done away with the legality created by it—this is the line of work that leads to civil war and that will bring it about at this or that moment of the all-European conflagration.”1

The slogan of the revolutionary worker is not “peace at any price,” for the peace of the imperialists is merely an armistice, a preparation for new conflicts. “The fairy tale of the war to end all wars is an empty, harmful fable;” only in the struggle for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie in all countries can the unity of the workers of different countries be restored. Therefore it is necessary to or-ganise a new International.

“Overwhelmed by opportunism, the Second International has died. Down with opportunism, and long live the Third Interna-tional, purged not only of deserters... but also of opportunism!

“The Second International did its full share of useful pre-paratory work in the preliminary organisation of the proletarian masses during the long ‘peaceful’ epoch of most cruel capitalist slavery and most rapid capitalist progress in the last third of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. The Third International is confronted with the task of organising the forces of the proletariat for a revolutionary onslaught on the capitalist gov-ernments, for civil war against the bourgeoisie of all countries, for political power, for the victory of Socialism.”2

Lenin began a pitiless struggle for this revolutionary line. Not a mutual amnesty among the social-imperialist traitors, but their sharpest condemna-tion before the working masses; ruthless struggle against centrist attempts to gloss over that betrayal and the sharpest division from all those “socialists” who condemned the war from the standpoint of pacifism but were incapable of revolutionary action, united procedure with all sincere opponents of imperial-ism without making any concessions to confusion or hesitation — these were the principles on which the Bolsheviks laid the foundation of the new, the Communist International.

Under the iron fist of the military dictatorship in Germany the proletar-ian opposition against social-imperialism developed slowly, painfully slowly. On December 14, Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Mehring and Clara Zetkin issued a declaration against Südekum and Richard Fischer who, in the party press of foreign neutral countries, had defended the policy of voting for the war credits. The declaration merely stated that the signatories entirely dis-agreed with this official policy. In the first months of the war Karl Liebknecht tried to influence the Party Committee to make a protest against the annexa-tion campaign and to suppress the chauvinist excesses of the Social Democ-ratic press. But he was soon convinced of the futility of all such efforts.

On December 2, 1914, the question of war credits came up for the sec-ond time in the Reichstag. This time Liebknecht was determined that nothing would induce him to place formal discipline higher than the principles of prole-tarian internationalism. In vain he went among the 14 members of the Reich-stag group who had voted with him against the decision to approve the war ap-propriations, to find even one with the courage to make with himself an open protest. They all absented themselves from the session. Quite alone, amidst the howling of the patriotic pack, Liebknecht voted against the war credits.

The important sections of his speech ran as follows;

“Here are my reasons for voting as I do on today’s motion:

“This war, which was desired by none of the peoples who are taking part in it, is not being waged in the interests of the German or any other people. It is an imperialist war, a war for the capitalist control of world markets, for the political control of important ar-eas for industrial and banking capital...

“The German slogan ‘against tsarism’ — just like the English and French slogan ‘Against militarism’ — serves the purpose of rousing the noblest instincts, the revolutionary traditions and hopes of the people in the interests of national hatred. Germany, equally to blame with tsarism, the model of political backwardness to the present day, has no calling as an emancipator of the peo-ples....

“A rapid peace, a peace that humiliates nobody, a peace without annexations, is to be desired; all efforts in that direction are to be welcomed. Only the strengthening of the tendencies in all belligerent states making for such a peace can stop the bloody car-nage before the peoples taking part are completely exhausted. Only the peace that grows on the soil of the international solidarity of the working class and the freedom of all peoples can be an endur-ing peace. So even now, in war time, the proletariat of every coun-try must work together in socialist work for peace.... Protesting against the war, its sponsors and directors, protesting against the capitalist policy which conjured it up and the capitalist objectives which it pursues, against the plans of annexation and the violation of Belgian and Luxemburgian neutrality, against the military dicta-torship, against the social and political disloyalty of which the gov-ernment and the ruling classes are still guilty, I record my vote against the war credits demanded.”

The party majority carried on a furious campaign against this breach of discipline; in the bourgeois press Liebknecht was denounced as a fool and a criminal, but to the workers of all countries his vote was a signal that proletar-ian internationalism was not dead in Germany, that there were other socialists besides Südekum and Hänisch, Ebert and Scheidemann, the extollers of Ger-man imperialism. Liebknecht’s speech, which the president of the Reichstag did not permit to be included in the official stenographic records, was distrib-uted in thousands among the German working class.

The first attempt to organise an international conference during the war was undertaken by Clara Zetkin as international women’s secretary. In March 1915 an international women’s conference met in Berne, at which Germany France, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Italy, Holland and Switzerland were repre-sented. Krupskaya, Lenin‘s wife, upheld the Bolshevik platform. Nevertheless a pacifist resolution, which failed to lay down a clear line on the decisive question of the class struggle, was accepted by a large majority. The manifesto was of such a general character that women representatives of the most frankly so-cial-patriotic parties, such as the French and the Dutch, had no hesitation in subscribing to it in the name of their parties. It was a repetition of the old mis-take of the Second International, the mistake of diplomacy in dealing with op-portunism.1

At Easter 1915 the socialist youth organisations in Berne took a similar step. On this occasion the representatives of ten countries assembled together to protest against the war and the complete failure of the International Youth Secretariat which, following the example of the I. S. B., had ceased its activities on the outbreak of war. But neither did the decision of this conference contain any clear demarcation from social-pacifism. Shortly afterwards, however, the Youth Bureau set up at the conference, under Willi Münzenberg‘s leadership, decided to adhere to the left wing led by the Bolsheviks.

The inadequacy of a mere protest against war and of the slogan of an immediate democratic peace was particularly apparent when, in June 1915, Kautsky and Haase, the leaders of the German centre, published, together with Bernstein, a manifesto in favour of peace. A few months of war had sufficed to shake the masses free from their patriotic war madness. They were driven to resistance not only because Wilhelm’s promise that “before the leaves fall you will be home again” had proved nothing but empty words and the frightful mass murder seemed to have no end, but because, more and more clearly, the masses saw the social background of the war, the huge gains of the war profi-teers, the unbridled appetite of the annexationists and, in contrast, the growing poverty of the hinterland. The centrists were aware of this mood when they op-posed to the “hold out” slogan of the Party Committee their pacifist slogans of peace. But the slogans of social-pacifism did not point the way to a really en-during peace; they diverted the attention of the masses from the only correct road of revolutionary struggle.

In calling an international socialist conference the question immediately arising was the relationship to the social-pacifist centre. The Central Commit-tee of the Bolsheviks insisted that only really revolutionary socialists should be invited. The leaders of the Italian and Swiss Social Democratic Parties, who were in charge of the preparations, decided to exclude from the invitation only those parties whose frankly social-patriotic character made their participation in an international conference virtually impossible.

In fact various attempts made by the socialists of neutral countries, such as Holland and America, to convene an international conference, had come to nought. The social-patriots divided according to the coalitions of the imperial-ists, the “Entente socialists” at a conference in London, the “Central Power so-cialists’’ at Vienna and the neutrals at Copenhagen. Naturally enough, none of these conferences could take up an international proletarian attitude, they could only accuse the Social Democrats in the other camp and defend their own sins.

In September 1915 the first international conference of revolutionary so-cialists met at Zimmerwald. The composition of the conference indicated the growth in the opposition to social imperialism in all countries, but also the lack of clarity within that opposition. From Germany there came, not the official leaders of the centre, it is true, but Ledebour and Adolf Hoffmann, who were on the left wing of that group. For the “International” group whose leader, Rosa Luxemburg, was in prison, came Ernst Meyer and Bertha Thalheimer and Julian Borchardt for the editorial board of the journal Lichtstrahlen which was at that time close to the left radical group led by Radek. The French metal workers’ union was represented officially by Merrheim and the opposition in the socialist party and trade union federation was also represented; the Italian Party was officially represented as well as the Socialist Party of Rumania and the “narrow” Bulgarians. In England the I. L. P. and the anti-Hyndman opposi-tion in the B. S. P. had decided to send delegates, but the British government prevented them from making the journey. The Russian delegation consisted not only of Lenin and Zinoviev for the Bolsheviks, but also those representatives of the Menshevik organisation committee, Martov and Axelrod, who were opposed to the social-patriotic wing of the liquidators, as well as Trotsky, who at that time hesitated between the Mensheviks and (he Bolsheviks; there were also present representatives of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Latvian Social De-mocrats and the Jewish Bund. The Polish revolutionary group was represented by Radek, Warski and Lapinski, the Dutch by Roland-Holst and the fairly strong Swedish and Norwegian organisations by Höglund and Nerman.

The conference voted unanimously in condemnation of the imperialist war and social-imperialism, but it was by no means united on the conclusions to be drawn therefrom. The majority of those present shrank from the idea of an organisational split and the foundation of a new International. The lefts, who lined up under the leadership of the Bolsheviks and to whom Radek, Höglund and Borchardt adhered, moved a resolution proclaiming the principles of Bolshevism. It branded not only imperialism as the cause of the war, but also official social-patriotism and the centrist social-pacifism of the Kautsky-ists. It called upon the proletariat, without giving up the struggle for any partial demands, to utilise the crisis unleashed by the war to attack the foundations of capitalism.

“The signal for this struggle is the struggle against the World War, for the speedy termination of the slaughter of nations. This struggle demands the refusal of war credits, quitting the cabinets, the denunciation of the capitalist, anti-Socialist character of the war from the tribunes of the parliaments, in the columns of the le-gal and, where necessary, the illegal press, the sharpest struggle against social-patriotism, and the utilisation of every movement of the people caused by the results of the war (misery, great losses

etc.) for the organisation of street demonstrations against the gov-ernments, propaganda of international solidarity in the trenches, the encouragement of economic strikes, the effort to transform them into political strikes under favourable conditions. Civil war, not civil peace — that is the slogan!

“As against all illusions that it is possible to bring about the basis of a lasting peace, the beginning of disarmament, by any de-cisions of diplomats and the governments, the revolutionary Social-Democrats must repeatedly tell the masses of the people that only social revolutions can bring about a lasting peace and the emanci-pation of mankind.”1

When the majority at the conference rejected this resolution a manifesto was unanimously accepted which was, in some essential points, more back-ward than the resolution of the Zimmerwald lefts. It was particularly character-istic that the right wing of the conference, led by Ledebour, would not at any cost accept the unconditional obligation to reject war credits. This social-pacifist group was not convinced of the necessity for a break with the oppor-tunists, although disrespect for the discipline of the social- imperialist parties was bound to have this result.

Moreover they maintained no consistent attitude on the question of de-fence of the fatherland. Ledebour, for example, thought it correct at that time to vote against war credits because the German army was quartered on enemy ground. But he believed that the question would take on a different colour if enemy armies were in Germany and Germany had to defend itself. That implied making the principle of the attitude to imperialist war dependent on the situa-tion in the arena of war and rejecting any mass action against war. For it is clear that once a proletarian party with its roots in the masses fights against the war, not with empty protests, but with real activities, with demonstrations and strikes, with fraternisation in the trenches, with illegal as well as legal propaganda against the belligerent governments, particularly in the army, such a struggle necessarily weakens the fighting strength of the army and makes the conduct of war more difficult. If such a struggle against war is successful, it must lead to military defeats, it must further the defeat of one’s “own” govern-ment.

Whoever does not dare to draw this conclusion of furthering the defeat of “one’s own fatherland,” whoever shrinks from the reproach of “traitor to the fa-therland,” is incapable of carrying on the struggle against war, for whatever the occasion of the war may be, the possibility of hostile invasion exists, the exis-tence of the belligerent states is placed at stake by a defeat.

1 Ibid., p. 478.

Whoever does not believe in the possibility of revolution cannot find an answer to this question. For the contention that it is a matter of indifference whether the Russians rule in Germany or the Germans in France, as Hervé maintained, was best refuted by Hervé himself when he gave up his anti-militarism on the outbreak of war and volunteered for service like the best of chauvinists. Only the recognition that in the epoch of imperialism conditions are ripe for the proletarian revolution supplies an answer to the question: what will happen if the revolutionary struggle against war leads to the defeat of our own government?

For the proletarian party that seriously sets itself the task of utilising the crisis to overthrow capitalism, the answer is clear: every defeat weakens the power of the government, of the ruling classes. The more serious the defeat, the better for the revolutionary class. “A revolutionary class in a reactionary war cannot help wishing the defeat of its government,”1 wrote Lenin in a polemic directed against Trotsky. If one sees, as at that time Trotsky and Kautsky saw, in the defeat of one’s own country merely the victory of the imperialist enemy, then this revolutionary principle is incomprehensible. But the defeat of the re-actionary government of one’s own country creates the best conditions for the victory of the revolution in that country and consequently for the beginning of the revolution in all other countries.

Only when the proletarian revolution has triumphed and the revolution-ary country is threatened by hostile powers, only then can and must the prole-tarian party take up the defence of the fatherland, organise it, place themselves at its head, as the heroic Paris proletariat did in 1871. In their theses pub-lished in 1915 the Bolsheviks saw this clearly. But such revolutionary ideas were strange to the Social Democrats who, like Ledebour, vacillated between Kautsky and Liebknecht. Lenin pointed out the most important mistake of the first Zimmerwald manifesto in refraining from an open admission of the neces-sity for the revolutionary struggle by a direct discussion of the methods, in not mentioning the maturity of conditions from the point of view of socialism, al-though that was essential to tactics directed towards the social revolution, in failing to condemn the dangerous and shameful lies of the social-chauvinists and particularly their “left’’ defenders, although these were more dangerous and more shameful than the imperialist lies of the bourgeoisie, against which the manifesto protested.2 Finally, Lenin pointed out that it mentioned the viola-tion of duty on the part of a number of socialist parties and the International Socialist Bureau>but did not analyse the real cause and meaning of this col-lapse.

Nevertheless Lenin considered it correct to agree to this inconsistent manifesto for it was one step forward in the fight against opportunism and it would have been sectarian not to take that step together with those socialists who had not yet decided on resolute struggle; the lefts, however, were to con-tinue frankly and clearly to express their own standpoint and to retain the right of criticism. These were the Bolshevik tactics at the time that the revolutionary forces were rallying: to proceed unitedly in every practical struggle against im-perialism and social patriotism, but to criticise clearly and ruthlessly all the weaknesses and superficialities of the movement; to differentiate between the

still confused tendencies, to win the left revolutionary elements for a consistent revolutionary policy, to expose the weak, hesitating elements doomed to fall back into reformism and to undermine their influence among the masses.

Thus, at the Zimmerwald Conference, Lenin and the Bolshevik Party laid the foundations of the principles, the organisation and the tactics of the Third International, the germ of which was represented by the Zimmerwald lefts.

The conference decided to set up an international socialist committee to maintain contact between the organisations represented.

With great joy the Bolsheviks greeted a letter from Karl Liebknecht and his slogan: “Civil war, not civil peace.” In the revolutionary group in Germany, which in .January 1916 was formed into the Spartakusbund, they saw the em-bodiment of revolutionary Marxism in that country, but the relatively low stage of revolutionary clarity reached in Germany was made abundantly clear by the attitude adopted by the German delegation at the conference. Zinoviev was speaking not only for himself when he wrote, after the conference:

“But the conference undoubtedly proved that the former role of the German Social Democracy is finally played out; the heritage of the past weighs too heavily even on the oppositional elements for them to be able to become leaders of the new International.’’

It is certainly true that the development of the German opposition and the crystallisation of its ideas were considerably impeded by the unprecedented terrorism of the state of siege. Karl Liebknecht had been conscripted into the army, Rosa Luxemburg and Clara Zetkin were in prison, revolutionary shop stewards were spied upon, not only by the police, but also by the reformists.

In addition they encountered the greatest difficulties in the publication and distribution of illegal revolutionary literature. All these factors made the formation of a revolutionary group more difficult, particularly in a party such as the German which, since the abolition of the anti-socialist laws, had become unused to illegal work. Thus Lenin explained the theoretical weaknesses of the Junius Pamphlet written by Rosa Luxemburg in prison early in 1915, in saying that in the author one could trace the “individual person”

“…who has no comrades in the illegal organisation who are used to thinking revolutionary slogans out to their end and sys-tematically training the masses in their spirit. But such a defect — and it would be wrong to forget this — is not the personal fault of Junius, but the result of the weaknesses of all the German lefts, who are bound on all sides to the opportunists by the closely woven net of Kautskyist hypocrisy, of pedantry and the ‘love of peace’.”Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. XIX

The Junius Pamphlet was a passionate indictment of imperialist crime and social-patriotic treachery. Therein lay its strength, its weakness in the con-fusion of the slogans and the perspective. This was shown in the surrender to defeatism, in the formulation that victory or defeat would be equally fatal, and still more in the development of a national revolutionary programme for the Great German Republic for which the proletariat would declare itself ready to defend its country. In the environment of the arch-reactionary imperial Social Democracy, which could have competed with the professors for the title of bodyguard to the Hohenzollerns, it needed revolutionary courage merely to ad-vance the programme of the bourgeois republic. Nevertheless it was a mistake not to carry on propaganda for the socialist republic, the real aim of the prole-tariat in the epoch of imperialism. With Rosa Luxemburg this formulation was only a temporary deviation, as her subsequent consistent struggle against the bourgeois republicans and for a soviet republic after November 1918 demon-strated.1 But after the victory of the bourgeois revolution in Russia, after the proclamation of the bourgeois republic, the Mensheviks took up the position of “revolutionary” defence of the fatherland, thereby lining up with the French so-cial-imperialists who also justified their social-patriotism by the necessity of defending the republic.

In January 1916 a national conference of the Spartakusbund drew up directions for the tasks of the international Social Democracy, containing the ideas of this group on the form and content of the new International which was to be created. The most important advance marked by these directions as against earlier indecision, was the recognition that the bankruptcy of the Sec-ond International made the creation of a new International necessary.

This new International was to have a fundamentally different character from the one disintegrated by the war.

“The centre of gravity of the class organisation of the prole-tariat lies in the International. In times of peace the International decides the tactics of the national sections on the questions of mili-tarism, colonial policy, commercial policy, the May Day celebration and the tactics to be employed in time of war.

“The duty of carrying out the decisions of the International takes precedence of all other duties. National sections which act contrary to these decisions place themselves outside the Interna-tional.”

The proletarian internationalists of Germany recognised that the princi-ple which the Second International had never put into practice, the principle of international discipline, of the unconditional execution of international deci-sions, must form the basis of the new International if it, too, was not to be a knife without a blade. It is true that complete clarity on the character of such an organisation was not achieved; if the carrying out of international decisions is to be really assured, the questions which are to be decided by the Interna-tional cannot be limited, as was done in this instance, to a definite sphere of international policy; a complete break had to be made with the evil tradition of national autonomy. Less than ever in the age of imperialism can questions of international policy be separated from external problems. A party which, in times of peace, deviates from the line of irreconcilable class struggle in its fight against the bourgeoisie, will, in time of war, when the pressure of the class en-emy is a thousand times greater, really be incapable of carrying out its interna-tional duty. A party which does not keep its ranks clear of opportunism before the decisive revolutionary crisis arrives will be unable, when the decisive mo-ment comes, to fulfil its obligations as leader of the revolution. Consequently the Third International had to go beyond the formulas of the “International” group.

The directions also contained the thesis refuted by Lenin in his criticism of the Junius Pamphlet.

“In the present era there can be no national wars. National interests can only be used as a deception in order to place the working masses at the service of their deadly enemy, imperialism.”

This thesis takes account only of the imperialist states, whose wars of robbery can be justified by no national interest. But it leaves out of account that the suppression of the more backward nations by the great imperialist powders is an essential part of imperialism and that consequently national wars of liberation directed against imperialism, particularly in the colonies, are not only not impossible, but are in fact necessary. In actual fact the world war gave rise to a number of colonial revolutions and, in connection with them, na-tional wars.

In February 1916 the International Socialist Committee set up at the Zimmerwald Conference instituted a discussion with several affiliated organisa-tions, including representatives of the Bureau of the International Socialist Youth organisation which, under Willi Münzenberg‘s leadership, was taking up to an increasing extent the struggle against social-pacifism in addition to the struggle against social-patriotism. The result of the discussion was a circular which drew attention to the growth in the revolutionary movement: demonstra-tions in Germany against the increased cost of living, protests against con-scription in England, political strikes in Russia, fraternisation in the trenches. The attitude of the German majority which, by a peace interpellation, had helped the pacifists to conceal the annexationist nature of the government’s policy; the French Socialist Party which at its congress had again ratified the policy of the union sacré, voting for war credits and a coalition policy and initi-ating a bitter struggle against the minority; the social-patriotism of the majority in Austria and England and the minority of the Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries in Russia — all these were sharply condemned. The attitude of the centre was not criticised, upon which Lenin, Zinoviev and Radek, by whose efforts the passages which allowed an advance on earlier documents of the Zimmerwald movement had been inserted, qualified their votes with the reser-vation that the appeal, though marking a step forward, was not adequate in all its sections.

It was again declared that since the outbreak of the war the I. S. B. had failed completely. Huysmans, the international secretary, had declared at the Dutch party congress that the duty of national defence had to be recognised, but that, notwithstanding, the International would arise “more alive than ever.” On this point the circular read,

“Any attempt to re-establish the International by a mutual amnesty among the compromised opportunist leaders, while the policy of civil peace is recognised and continued, is in reality noth-ing but a pact against socialism and a blow directed against the reawakening of the revolutionary working class movement.”

The necessity of united revolutionary action against imperialism was em-phasised even more clearly than at Zimmerwald, the circular demanding a complete break with the policy of civil peace and the rejection of war credits without reference to the strategic situation.

A manifesto issued at about the same time by the French minority shows the same tendency towards growing enlightenment. The centrist preachers of reconciliation with the social-patriots were openly attacked.

“Between those who have remained true to the banner of so-cial revolution and the social-patriots, the mercenaries, the prison-ers or the willing slaves of imperialism, stand the adherents of a socialist armistice without principle and without clarity. In the name of socialist unity they ask the minority to disarm themselves in face of the social-patriots just as these latter, in the name of civil peace, have laid down their arras in face of our class enemies.

“We will not and we cannot recognise such an armistice, so long as the fate of socialism is at stake.”

The French socialists also clearly realised the necessity for a new Inter-national, warning the workers against the attempts of the “social-patriotic sen-tinels of the bourgeoisie to establish, with the help of the I.S.B., sham contacts between the official socialist parties,” and added:

“A new International can be established only on the steadfast principles of socialism. The allies of the ruling classes, the minis-ters, the servile deputies, the advocates of imperialism, the agents of capitalist diplomacy, the gravediggers of the Second Interna-tional, can have no part in its creation.”

So the second international conference, which met at Kiental in Switzer-land in April 1916, encountered more favourable conditions for the develop-ment of the new proletarian International. In Germany particularly the struggle against social-patriotism had reached a new stage. The “International” group openly demanded the withdrawal of financial support from chauvinist party or-ganisations. In March 1918 for the first time the centrist group of Haase and Ledebour dared to vote, 18 men strong, against the war credits, upon which the majority excluded the minority from the fraction and the latter constituted themselves as the Social Democratic Labour Group. Thus the logic of events forced the break from the social-patriots as an essential preliminary to the re-establishment of international unity.

At the Kiental Conference, however, the majority had not yet decided to draw this conclusion. The question arose practically on the subject of relations with the I.S.B. which had been transferred to the Hague and which, under the guidance of Belgian and Dutch social-chauvinists, was working as an agent of Entente imperialism, although it is true the Bureau had made some attempt to establish contact with the Kautskyists and the social-patriots of the Central Powers. In the Hague Bureau the Zimmerwald lefts saw, as Zinoviev put it, “the germ of the future international joint stock company for misleading the workers of all countries.’’ Under the slogan of “unity and the re-establishment of the Second International this company will inaugurate the fight against the inter-nationalists.”

From such an estimation of the position followed the necessity for a sharp struggle against this institution. But the Menshevik Axelrod proposed that a mass campaign for convening the I.S.B. should be undertaken.

Serrati, leader of the Italian Socialist Party, who lined up with the re-formists on this question, together with Adolf Hoffmann and Hermann Fleiss-ner, present as representatives of the Kautskyist opposition, suggested co-operation with the I.S.B. on the ground that it was there that the social-patriots must be attacked and exposed. After lengthy and violent discussion a compromise resolution, “The I.S.B. and the War,” was agreed upon, which po-litically made great concessions to the left but was, from the organisational standpoint, a partial surrender to the centre. The social-patriotic activities of the I.S.B. were sharply condemned, the attempt to re-establish international connections by a mutual amnesty among the supporters of war credits de-scribed as a “separate peace among the social-patriots,” the defeat of social-imperialism declared to be an essential preliminary to the rebirth of the Inter-national. In the event of the I.S.B.’s being convened, the representatives of the Zimmerwald organisations were to take part and to oppose to the social-patriots the revolutionary principles of the internationalist opposition. In addi-tion the affiliated parties were given the right, in compliance with an ultimative demand from the Italians, to demand on their own initiative the convening of the I.S.B. At the same time however, on a motion from Zinoviev, the Interna-tional Socialist Committee was instructed to convene a conference before the meeting of the I.S.B. in order to determine the procedure to be adopted there by the Zimmerwald comrades.

The resolution on the peace question, unanimously adopted, cleared up the relations to social-pacifism. The resolution declared that courts of arbitra-tion, disarmament, democratic foreign policy could bring about no enduring peace within capitalism. The fight for a lasting peace must consist in the fight for socialism.

Annexations and war indemnities were denounced and the slogan issued that the economic consequences of the war were to the borne, not by the de-feated people, that is, the working class, who were already bearing the burdens of the war, but by the possessing classes through the cancellation of all state obligations arising from the war.

The Central Committee of the Bolsheviks put before the Conference a declaration expressing principles on which the Kiental Conference, because of the opposition of the centrists, could come to no clear statement of opinion. It exposed the social-patriots’ talk against annexations; for annexation is not merely the military occupation of a country, but also forcibly retaining the given country within the state, against the wishes of the population. Every vio-lation of the self-determination of nations is an act of annexation. Whoever is a sincere opponent of annexations must be in favour of freedom for the colonies and the oppressed peoples. Any programme of peace during an imperialist war is a piece of hypocrisy if it is not connected with an appeal to the masses to change the imperialist war into a civil war for socialism. But that means the frank admission that revolutionary action during war is impossible unless one’s “own” government is threatened with defeat in war. It is impossible to carry on the revolutionary struggle against war without an illegal organisation. Members of parliament who only protest against the war in parliament but do nothing to lead the workers, together with the illegal organisation, into the struggle, are not carrying out their duty. The unavoidability of a split must be recognised, for in the attitude to war two irreconcilable positions are apparent.

“To re-establish the bankrupt I. S. B. is a task that may well be conceded to the social-chauvinists of all countries. The duty of socialists is to make clear to the masses the inevitability of separa-tion from those who, under the banner of socialism, fall in with the policy of the bourgeoisie.”

After the Kiental Conference Zinoviev wrote that it could not yet be said that Zimmerwald had become the germ of the Third International; it was still quite possible for the right wing of the Second International to return.

INCOMPLETE