War and the proletariat.

Organ of the St. Petersburg Inter-District Committee of the United Social-Democrats.

No. 1. Sunday 13 (26) December 1915 No. 1.

War is a fundamental fact in the world life of the world life of the present. Not a single social group can pass it by without developing and substantiating its own definite attitude towards it, and a definite attitude towards war becomes in itself a decisive program of action. 

The attitude of the proletariat to the war must first of all proceed from a determination of the character and nature of this war, the character of the epoch that gave birth to the war. Capitalist production, resting on contradictions, has reached the highest stage of its development; conditions were created for the emergence of social production on a large scale; production became more and more intense; there was a need to expand the sales field; the old modes of production were destroyed and capitalistically transformed; the most distant countries were seized into the realm of capital, along with the export of goods, the export of capital acquired tremendous importance; the dominance of finance capital was established; national productions entered into mutual connection, losing their exclusive independence, turning into connected, mutually conditioned parts of one whole - the world market; increased monopolization of production; there was a growing concentration of economic power in the hands of a few magnates of capital; at the same time, the internationalization of economic life was growing; the striving of the productive forces of world capitalism to destroy the limited framework of national-state divisions became ever more irresistible; the objective conditions for the realization of socialism were becoming more and more distinct. But this is the desire of the productive forces to destroy the framework of the national fatherland, to create a world united economic empire, directed by the reactionary classes, subordinating the interests of social development to their mutually contradictory interests. And therefore, the need to expand the united economic arena found expression in the imperialist policy of conquest, the policy of wars and preparations for them, the suppression of the free development of nationalities, the destruction of foreign fatherlands, as a necessary condition for the economic development of one's own country.

Conceived in the womb of highly developed capitalism, born of the imperialist policy of the great-power capitalist cliques, sanctified by the striving of the ruling classes to drown the growing proletarian movement in blood and national hatred, modern war has a pronounced imperialist character. It was engendered by the struggle between British, French and German capitals for possession of Asian and African markets, as well as by the predatory policy of Russian tsarism and the ruling classes, aimed at seizing Persia, Mongolia, Asiatic Turkey, Constantinople, Galicia. Secondary powers were drawn into the orbit of the policies of the great powers, their creditors, and depending on the economic financial connection with one side or the other, were located in one group or another. We were systematically preparing for the war; war was systematically prepared. And therefore, the war in its essence had to turn out to be and turned out to be equally offensive for everyone and equally defensive for everyone. Thus, modern war in its essence is very different from all national wars, which are especially characteristic of the era of 1789-1871, when there was a process of mass national movements, the struggle against absolutism and feudalism, the overthrow of national oppression and the creation of states on a national basis, in a word, when the prerequisites for capitalist development were created and approved. 

Thus, the position of the proletariat in relation to modern war can and must be different from that which we have observed hitherto in relation to previous wars. The course of action of the proletariat is always determined by the circumstances of time and place. These circumstances have changed, the objective conditions have changed, and the attitude of the proletariat in the war is changing. Meanwhile, many and many, making substitutions of concepts in their reasoning, repeat the old obsolete words about "right" and "guilty", about the "defensive" and "offensive" side; it is a burp of the ideology created in the era of national movements, which left deep traces in the petty bourgeoisie and part of the proletariat. 

This leads the socialists to justify the predatory policy of the ruling classes of these or other powers, whose equal "evilness" was recognized as early as the Basel Resolution of 1912, this puts the interests of the unity of the nation above the interests of the class, this leads to the elimination of the independent class struggle of the proletariat against the foundations of the capitalist system. and to the subordination of socialist tactics to the military-strategic considerations of this or that general staff. and the attitude of the proletariat in the war changes. Meanwhile, many and many, making substitutions of concepts in their reasoning, repeat the old obsolete words about "right" and "guilty", about the "defensive" and "offensive" side; it is a burp of the ideology created in the era of national movements, which left deep traces in the petty bourgeoisie and part of the proletariat. 

Also inapplicable to the present epoch is that position which attempts to determine which of the belligerents' success is the most desirable or the least harmful from the point of view of the interests not of the national, but of the entire world proletariat. Let us note, by the way, that in some strange way the supporters of such a position dispersed among themselves and dispersed along the lines of their national affiliation. This position, correct for the era when wars were solving questions of bourgeois-democratic transformations, or foreign national oppression, now in the era of the maturing of the objective conditions of the socialist revolution, in the era of the existence of incessantly growing socialist parties, now this position leads to reconciliation with all governments and to hush up all the crimes they commit in the name of the “liberation mission” that lies on them.

As early as December 1914, Liebknecht said: “The German slogan against tsarism, like the English and French ones against militarism, served as a means to set in motion the noblest instincts, revolutionary traditions and hopes of the people to incite hatred between peoples.” "The main enemy is in one's own country," the revolutionary minority of the German Social Democracy later added.

Along this path, the path of the struggle of the proletariat of each belligerent country against its internal enemy, against its government and its bourgeoisie, the international proletariat must and will inevitably follow. So, and only so. For how else it is possible to use the war "to hasten the collapse of capitalism" by helping to end the war as soon as possible (as the Stuttgart resolution of 1907 says). And doesn't the Basel resolution of 1912 say that the only correct proletarian slogan, which follows from all the conditions of an imperialist war between highly developed bourgeois countries, is "the transformation of the present imperialist war into a civil war", that is, the intensification of the process of class and political struggle, leading it to a socialist revolution in the advanced capitalist countries and a democratic revolution in Russia and other backward monarchical countries. Not an idyll of social peace between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, but a picture of an intensified class struggle looms on the horizon. 

The unprecedented calamities created by the war and falling with all their weight on the poor masses cannot but give rise to revolutionary moods and movements, which, in the very course of things, will be generalized under the slogan of civil war. On the other hand, the war and its consequences will reveal to the masses the real nature and tendencies of capitalist imperialism, they will reveal with unprecedented clarity the contradictions between labor and capital, and thereby lead to the destruction of the democratic ideology of the fatherland, which is now faced with the revolutionary ideology of socialism. It will put an end to that era of the working-class movement, which was characterized by the isolation of its national detachments by the reformist inclination of their tactics. Summing up, let us say that only the active and independent action of the proletariat of all countries against their governments can, by turning this war into a civil war, on the one hand led to its speedy termination, on the other hand, give the proletariat the opportunity to use in the interests of the social revolution the economic war caused by the war and political crisis.