Lenin and the Imperialist War of 1914-1918

[p019] LENIN AND THE IMPERIALIST WAR OF 1914-1918 emphasised as a special responsibility of the Russian Marxists; and for socialists in Germany, or Britain, precisely the ‘opposite’, a denunciation of their own imperialism in particular, was necessary. Thus Lenin wrote, in late August or September 1914: Everywhere there is the bourgeoisie and the im- perialists, 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 bour- geoisie 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 no opportunists) ought to see their main enemy in their “own” (“home- made”) chauvinism.” (Emphasis in original.) Lenin certainly considered Tsarism to be par- ticularly infamous and barbarous, because of the particular combination in Russia of imperialism with medieval backwardness and autocracy, but he makes it particularly clear in this passage that his defeatism after 1914 was derived specifically from the imperialist character of the war, and would operate in similar fashion for the socialists of any imperialist country in relation to their ‘own’ bourgeoisie. Thus, the German socialists must be prevented from using the particularly reactionary character of Tsarism to excuse their capitulation to the German bourgeoisie. Rather they should have emphasised the reactionary fea- tures of German imperialism. In case there should still be any doubt, we may quote a letter written by Lenin between October 29 and November 8, 1914, not to an individual but to the journals Vorwarts and Wiener-Zeitung: Some days ago, Vorwdrts published a brief item regarding the paper I read in Zurich on the subject of war and socialism and conveying an entirely false impression of that paper. The impression is created that I limited myself to a polemic against Tsarism. In actual fact, however, as one who is convinced that it is the duty of the socialists of every country to wage an unrelenting struggle against chauvinism and patriotism of their own country (and not only of the enemy), I vehemently attacked Tsarism, and, in that connection, I spoke of freedom for the Ukraine.” Lenin insisted on the slogan of defeat for one’s own bourgeoisie and attacked those who rejected 8 Ibid., p. 28. 9 Lenin, ‘The European War and International Socialism’ in Collected Works, Vol. 21, pp. 22-3. 10 Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 42. 83

[p020] it, because he regarded it as the test of real pre- paration for revolution and civil war, as against phrase-mongering about peace. He explained many times that real preparation of mass revolutionary action must imply facilitating the military defeat of the bourgeoisie in one’s ‘own’ country, and since this latter possibility was held up by the oppor- tunists as an argument against revolution, Lenin insisted on an open avowal of ‘wishing for the defeat’ of one’s own bourgeoisie. If you do not ‘wish for their defeat’, he argued, then you either are for ‘defence of the fatherland’ (open social- chauvinism and opportunism) or you _ assert ‘neither victory nor defeat’. But the latter formu- lation would be a capitulation to the claim of the bourgeoisie that it is only fighting to repel an aggressor. David, foremost among the German social chauvinists, for example, said that he was ‘not for war, but against defeat’! It was only one step away from this to ‘oppose’ the war, while rejecting the formula of revolu- tionary defeatism. The bourgeoisie is at war; a military reverse or defeat for the bourgeoisie creates favourable situations for the revolutionary proletariat; an advance for the revolutionary pro- letariat must weaken the bourgeoisie against its military enemy. Without revolutionary defeatism, explicitly and boldly stated, there could be no consistent and undeviating pursuit of the revolu- tionary path or rejection of pacifist phrase- mongering. Lenin explained several times that the condem- nation of the imperialist aims and reactionary character of an enemy capitalist power was the stock-in-trade not only of many social-chauvinists but even of bourgeois-liberal publicists, and that to lay the stress here was actually to contribute to the international political requirements of the imperialists. (In the Second World War, the Stalinists of Britain and France, as well as the USSR, in the period of the Hitler-Stalin pact, found it possible to write at length about the evils of British and French imperialism, though not of German imperialism, and after June 1941 just as easy to turn their ‘talents’ exclusively against the German, Italian and Japanese varieties ) Brian Pearce characterizes the differences be- tween Lenin and Trotsky in 1914 on this question in the following way: In the opening phases of the war, Lenin and Trotsky thus placed the emphasis differently— Lenin upon the need to prevent any illusions arising about the possibility of peace without revo- lution, Trotsky upon the need to find transitional 84 demands which would enable the revolutionaries to link themselves with the broad movement of opposition to the war." This interpretation is based on Trotsky’s claim that the peace slogan, ‘linked with a programme for a democratic peace settlement’, as Pearce puts it, was ‘the surest way by which Social Democracy can isolate militarist reaction in Europe’. (Trotsky: The War and the International, 1914.) Here we have a difference which is not just a matter of emphasis. Was there a ‘broad movement of opposition to the war’ in 1914? On the con- trary, while Lenin insisted on a programme directed to the deepest needs of the masses, he recognized as readily as anyone else that a chauvinist wave engulfed the masses in the first months of the war, a process helped on by the opportunists of the Second International. Lenin was concerned with the correct programme for the revolutionary Marxist vanguard. Arguments about ‘not alienating the broad movement’ were really arguments for not breaking with those who talked peace but would not take the only real road to peace, that of proletarian revolution and ‘turning the imperialist war into civil war’. The term ‘transitional demands’ as used by Brian Pearce is confusing in this context. Once we have established the actual nature of the differences between Lenin and Trotsky in 1914 (not one of emphasis on transitional demands or the prevention of illusions, but one of revolu+ tionary preparation and break with the oppor- tunists) we must approach differently Brian Pearce’s conclusion that perhaps Lenin eventually came round to Trotsky’s point of view. In a series of statements throughout the period - up to the February revolution of 1917, Lenin remained adamant that the socialists of any given imperialist country must openly state the inevit- able conclusions of their rejection of any class truce, i.e. that this involved taking advantage of the military difficulties of the class enemy and also contributing to those military difficulties by political mass work; revolutionary activity during the imperialist war therefore meant actively desiring the defeat of one’s ‘own’ bourgeoisie. This was what Lenin meant by revolutionary de- featism, and insofar as these things were not made explicit, then Lenin considered that decep- tion of the masses was involved. His formula con- tinued to meet with criticism, despite the expla- nations we have quoted. As we have seen, it is possible to quote state- 11 Pearce, op. cit., p. 29. FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, NOVEMBER, 1967

[p021] ments written by Lenin on behalf of the Russian Party and for the Russian Party press, which seem to indicate that this ‘defeatism’ was partly or even largely a special question for Tsarist Russia, . whose victory in the war would be the worst out- come internationally. This is presumably why Trotsky in 1915 called Lenin’s ‘wishing for the defeat of one’s own bourgeoisie’ as the ‘lesser evil’, ‘an uncalled-for and absolutely unjustifiable concession to the political methodology of social patriotism. . . .’. For example, Lenin’s formulation in the resolution of the’ RSDLP Conference of groups abroad (March 1915) reads as follows: In each country, the struggle against a govern- ment that is waging an imperialist war should not falter at the possibility of that country’s defeat as a result of revolutionary propaganda. The defeat of the government’s army weakens the government, promotes the liberation of the nationalities it oppresses, and facilitates civil war against the ruling classes. . This holds particularly true in respect of Russia. A victory for Russia will bring in its train a strengthening of reaction, both throughout the world and within the country, and will be accom- panied by the complete enslavement of the peoples living in areas already seized. In view of this, we consider the defeat of Russia the lesser evil in all conditions.” When objections were raised to this formula- tion, among them the one quoted above from Trotsky, Lenin scoffed at them; they amounted, in his opinion, to nothing more than the ‘simple’ point that if one side were defeated, say Russia, then the other would win, say Germany, so that wishing for the defeat of one bourgeoisie meant effectively desiring the victory of another. Now, said Lenin, is this not just what the bourgeoisie says to the proletariat? Who is cringing to the ‘political methodology of social patriotism’!? Lenin suggests the forceful example of the Paris Commune of 1871: France was defeated by Germany but the workers were defeated by Bismark and Thiers! It was in order to clarify this point that the original resolution had, said Lenin, ‘made it clear that in all imperialist. countries the proletariat must now desire the defeat of its own govern- ment’. In each country the socialist movement must concentrate its fire against the reactionary character of the war aims of its own ruling class, and this Lenin deliberately chose to do in all: statements as a Russian Marxist to the Russian people and the Russian movement. This question was lucidly explained in Lenin’s pamphlet, Socialism and War: . A revolutionary class cannot but wish for the LENIN AND THE IMPERIALIST WAR OF 1914-1918 defeat of its government in a reactionary war, and cannot fail to see that the latter’s military reverses facilitate its overthrow. Only a bourgeois who believes that a war started by governments must necessarily end as a war between govern- ments, and wants it to end as such, can regard as ‘ridiculous’ and ‘absurd’ the idea that the social- ists of all the belligerent countries should express their wish that all their ‘own governments should be defeated. On the contrary, it is a statement of this kind that would be in Keeping with the inner- most thoughts of every class-conscious worker, and be in line with our activities for the conver- sion of the imperialist war into a civil war. This pamphlet was written immediately before the Zimmerwald Conference of socialist interna- tionalists held on September 5-8, 1915. The fact that Lenin had not altered his position is upheld also by the publication in the same covers of all the previous resolutions of the Bolsheviks, to- gether with explanatory notes. Lenin concluded from that Conference that, despite the incomplete- ness of its final manifesto, its existence and its political stand confirmed that the Bolsheviks had taken a correct position in 1914, even though they had appeared completely isolated. Later in the same month, Lenin made a striking explana- tion of the connection between this correct line on the war and the proletarian revolution inter- nationally and in Russia. The formula, ‘Turn the imperialist war into civil war’, began to take on flesh and blood. Defeats for the Tsarist armies and the growth of a strike movement in the towns of Russia pushed the bourgeois parties to form an opposition bloc in the Duma, and this was met by the dissolution of that body. Lenin ex- plained that this turn of events looked like a re- petition of 1905-1906, when in response to mili- tary defeat and a revolutionary crisis, the liberal bourgeoisie put forward a programme of reforms. But the analogy was misleading : There is, however, actually a vast difference, viz., that this war has involved all Europe, all the most advanced countries with mass and powerful socialist movements. The imperialist war has linked. up the Russian revolutionary crisis, which stems from a bourgeois-democratic revolution, with the _ growing crisis of the proletarian socialist revolu- ‘tion in the West. The link is so direct that no individual solution of revolutionary problems is possible in any single country~~the Russian bour- geois-democratic revolution is now not only a prologue to, but an indivisible part of, the socialist revolution in the West. In 1905, it was the proletariat’s task to consum- 12 Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 163. 13 Ibid., p. 276. 14. Ibid., p. 315. 85

[p022] mate the bourgeois revolution in Russia so as to kindle the proletarian revolution in the West. In 1915, the second part of this task has acquired an urgency that puts it on a level with the first party. A new political division has arisen in Russia on the basis of new, higher, more de- veloped and more complex international relations. This new division is between the chauvinist revo- lutionaries, who desire revolution so as to defeat Germany, and the proletarian internationalist re- volutionaries, who desire a revolution in Russia for the sake of the proletarian revolution in the West, and simultaneously with that revolution. This new division is, in essence, one between the urban and the rural petty-bourgeoisie in Russia, and the socialist proletariat. These petty-bourgeois tendencies, said Lenin, trailed in the wake of the bourgeoisie, wishing to achieve their class aims ‘through a victory over Tsarism and over Germany, but without a vic- tory over capitalism’. Here we see Lenin hammer- ing out precise political preparation for the situa- tion after February 1917, struggling to break the socialist proletariat and its leadership from those who desired ‘a victory over Tsarism and over Germany, but without a victory over capitalism’. The development of the revolutionary crisis in fact sharpened up Lenin’s insistence on revolu- tionary defeatism as he understood it, rather than pushing him in the direction of Trotsky’s earlier formulations on the struggle for peace, even though the movement of events was richly con- firming Trotsky’s prognoses contained in the theory of permanent revolution. Those prognoses, as Trotsky himself recognized, would have been nothing more than brilliant interpretations but for the building and preparation of the Bolshevik Party, which Trotsky joined in 1917, to actually carry through the strategy of the permanent revo- lution. Lenin’s emphasis on the war question was an essential element in the building of that Party and its struggle against opportunism and centrism. It is in this way that the differences between Lenin and Trotsky should be understood. Lenin’s deeper understanding of the tasks of the proletariat in the Russian Revolution was thus a development, and a deepening through ex- perience, of his revolutionary defeatism: . . in the face of the revolutionary crisis in Russia, which is being accelerated by defeat—and this is what the motley opponents of “defeatism” are afraid to admit—. And again: The lessons of the war are compelling even our opponents to recognize in practice both the stand of ‘defeatism’ and the necessity of issuing .. the slogan of ‘a revolt in the rear’ of the German 86 militarists, in other words, the slogan of a civil war. The lessons of the war, it appears, are knock- ing into their heads that which we have been in- sisting on since the very outset of the war. The defeat of Russian has proved the lesser evil, for it has tremendously enhanced the revolutionary crisis and has aroused millions, tens and hundreds of millions. Moreover, in conditions of an imperialist war, a revolutionary crisis in Russia could not but lead people’s thoughts to the only salvation for the people—the idea of ‘a revolt in the rear’ of the German army, i.e. the idea of civil war in all the belligerent countries. Life teaches. Life is advancing, through the defeat of Russia and, toward a revolution in Russia and, through that revolution and in connection with it, towards a civil war in Europe. Life has taken this direction. And, drawing fresh strength from these lessons of life, which has justified its position, the party of the revolutionary prole- - tariat of Russia will, with ever greater energy, follow the path it has chosen.1* On a number of occasions between the after- math of Zimmerwald and the autumn of 1916, i.e. until only three or four months before the February revolution in Russia, after which Lenin’s tactics on the war question were entirely sub- ordinated to the strategy of advancing from ‘dual power’ to workers’ power, Lenin reaffirmed the necessity for the proletariat in every country to ‘wish for the defeat of “its’ government .. .’ Brian Pearce writes about ‘the disappearance of “defeatism” from Lenin’s writings’ after this time, but if this is taken to imply that Lenin changed his line it must be rejected. The swift develop- ment of the revolutionary situation certainly turned Lenin to devote his writings more and more to the changes in the international situation and its effect on the masses, whereas in the earlier years he had turned almost the whole of his attention to the split in world socialism and the need for the revolutionary vanguard to differentiate itself irrevocably from the social- chauvinists. As he had explained at an earlier stage, ‘The slogans of the workers’ class-con- scious vanguard are one thing, while the spon- taneous demands of the masses are something quite different.” Through 1916 and early 1917 he became par- ticularly concerned to expose the ‘peace’ plans of the bourgeoisie, as various sections of the ruling 15 Lenin, ‘The Defeat of Russia and the Revolu- tionary Crisis’ (written in the second half of September 1915). Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 16 Ibid., p. 382. 17 ‘The’ Ouestion of Peace’ (July-August 1915) in Collected ‘Works, Vol. 21, p. 292. ‘FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, NOVEMBER, 1967 eusginasescresaseenteeesg

[p023] segeseetinnenme nate classes in the belligerent countries sought ways of ending the war to their own advantage and in order to reduce the risk of successful prole- tarian revolution. But this does not by any means imply that Lenin came to the conclusion that the criticisms by Trotsky and others of his ‘defeatist’ slogans had been justified. Quite the contrary. In the first of his famous Letters From Afar (March - 7, 1917) Lenin summed up his earlier clashes with critics in the light of the new situation: _ Those who, grovelling to the bourgeoisie or simply lacking backbone, howled and wailed about ‘defeatism’, are now faced by the fact of the historical connection between the defeat of the most backward and barbarous Tsarist monarchy and the beginning of the revolutionary conflagration.® In this statement, after the February revolu- tion, there is no change as compared with Lenin’s conclusions immediately after Zimmerwald, in Autumn 1915. It must therefore be concluded—, and it is a conclusion of great importance to Marxists—that Lenin maintained a_ thoroughly consistent and principled position on the question of imperialist war and revolutionary defeatism from the beginning until the end of the First World War. Against this we have only the fact to which Brian Pearce draws attention: that for some three or four months before the February Revolution,’ in the twelve articles and various letters of Lenin concerned with the war, none mentions the ‘wish-defeat’ formula. It would have been out of character with all of Lenin’s work for a shift in his political position to take place without any explanation and there is no state- ment of his for the period which contradicts his earlier formulations in any way. Furthermore, we have his own statements in Letters From Afar, already quoted, which is clearly directed against the ‘lesser evil’ thesis, and does not simply defend ‘defeatism’ in general, as might be implied from the 1918 speech quoted by Pearce, referring to the ‘defeatism’ of the Bolsheviks before February. After the February Revolution the dangers of ‘reactionary defeatism’ (i.e. moves by the ruling classes to hand victory to the German imperialists, in order to defeat the Revolution) faced the Bol- sheviks with the task of popularizing a programme of peace through the exclusive channel of the proletarian struggle for power in the Soviets. The fight against the Provisional Government had to be combined wih the defeat of the plots of the ruling classes to combine with the German imperialists to suppress the workers and peasants of Russia, just as the representative of the French ‘fatherland’ in 1871, Thiers, combined with the ‘enemy’ Bismarck to bloodily suppress LENIN AND THE IMPERIALIST WAR OF 1914-1918 the Paris Commune. Brian Pearce has adequately summarized, with appropriate quotations, the way in which Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks stood for a holding of the front while making urgent preparations for the transfer of power to the proletariat in the Soviets, supported by the peasantry.” The ability of the Bolshevik Party to organize the struggle in the Soviets between February and October 1917, was not something that fell from the skies. Until August 4, 1914, Lenin himself had not yet recognized the extent of the funda- mental split which had come in the world ‘social- ist movement. The chauvinism of the oppor- tunists, and the veiled chauvinism of the centrists like Kautsky, had to be surgically cut out of the Marxist movement. Lenin’s positions on the war question were an absolutely indispensable part of this operation, and only those in Russia whose policies had been guided by ‘the wish for defeat of their own. bourgeoisie’ could organize the re- volutionary proletariat of Petrograd and Moscow, when the day came of Russia’s military defeat actually sparking off the Revolution. The building of the revolutionary party and the international is a constant struggle against the pressure of the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie, which on every political question of importance finds an echo in one or another section of the movement. It was the success of Lenin in building the kind of Party which could develop Marxism in struggle against such pressures that Trotsky recognized and accepted in joining the Bolsheviks in 1917. In the epoch of imperialism there is no other road to the proletarian revolution, in 1967 as in 1917.” 18 Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 301. 19 Pearce, op. cit., pp. 35-38. 20 Further work. on. certain aspects of these prob- Iems is important for Marxists and the following lines may be indicated: (i) the writings of Trotsky on war and defeat- ism, and particularly his post-1917 references to the differences with Lenin, which should be brought together; . ” (ii) the particularly reactionary character of Tsarist Russia, first in the time of Marx, when he considered a war against it by the European capitalist powers a progressive step, to be sup- ported by socialists, then, in the transitional period preceding the first impérialist war, when despite this, it was no longer possible for socialists to side with their own bourgeoisie in waging a war against Tsarism; (iii) the connection between Lenin’s revolu- tionary defeatism and his increasing emphasis, during the war, upon the self-determination of nations; : . (iv) the propaganda and agitational material of the Bolsheviks in Russia through all the phases of the imperialist war. 87

[p024] IT IS APPROPRIATE, in celebrating the fiftieth anni- versary of the establishment of the first workers’ state, to examine the reasons for its bureaucratic degeneration and the efforts of one of its founders, Leon Trotsky, to prevent it. It is necessary, at the same time, to emphasize that the present rulers of the Soviet Union are not the legitimate representatives of the victorious working ¢lass but a usurping caste which attained its position by destroying the Bolshevik Party through a long, bitter and violent struggle. Although not able to destroy the basic conquests of the October Revo- lution, the nationalized property relations which made possible the development of a planned It is necessary first to recall that no serious Marxist in 1917 expected that the revolution could, or would, remain confined to Russia. At least by comparison with other European countries, Russia was poor and backward and, although the Revolution of 1917 was spearheaded by a highly concentrated industrial proletariat, the great bulk of. the population was composed of a poverty- stricken and largely illiterate peasantry. It was 88 By Tom Kemp economy, Stalin and his clique were able to ride roughshod over the organs of working class power ‘which the Revolution had established. The suc- cessors to this clique retain power to this day, worried men sitting on a volcano as an increasingly powerful and self-conscious working class presses for its rights. For over a decade now the political revolution which they fear has assumed a more definite form, heralded by the Workers’ Councils established during the Hungarian Revolution. Now more than ever Trotsky’s struggle appears not as the wasted efforts of a defeated man but as the link between the victorious Bolsheviks of 1917 and the tasks of the working class in 1967. assumed, therefore, by Lenin and the other Bol- shevik leaders that the Russian Revolution could only be part of an international revolution which would rapidly spread into the more advanced areas of Europe and North America! Thus it was 1 Many quotations could be given. to illustrate the point. Lenin made his position very clear,. on the eve of leaving for Russia in April, 1917, in his ‘Farewell Letter to the Swiss Workers. FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, NOVEMBER, 1967

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[p026] a priority task to re-establish the international links severed by the war and to expose before the working class the betrayals of the leaders of the Second International. The call for the Third International was thus a revolutionary act which paralleled in importance the taking of power in Russia. Nothing was further from the minds of Lenin and Trotsky than a narrow, national view of the tasks which faced them. The failure of the revolutions in Central and Western Europe and the ebbing tide of class struggle which became clear after the events of 1923 in Germany, combined with the ability of the Soviet government to crush the counter-revolu- tion and armies of intervention, thus created a wholly unique and unforeseen situation. A working-class party had maintained power in a vast but relatively backward country whose economy had been disrupted and devastated: Under the best of conditions there lies before a revolutionary socialist regime an enormous task of remaking society and changing the people who compose it: which means combating all the vestiges of capitalism embodied in institutions but also embedded in men’s minds. In the case of Russia after 1917 this task was made especially formidable by the circumstances already referred to. The revolutionaries, in many ways, had not only to prepare the way for socialism, they had also to carry out tasks which in more advanced countries had been performed by the bourgeoisie. For example, the predominance of peasant agri- culture was reflected in a generally low cultural and educational level in the population. Moreover, while the Bolsheviks had enabled the peasants to take over the estates of the nobility they still had to face the problem of how to obtain from the ‘peasants the grain and other foodstuffs required to feed the cities. As long as agriculture remained in the hands of small peasant cultivators there was a tendency for capitalist relations to arise spontaneously in the villages. And this was aggra- vated by the prevailing scarcity of all sorts of goods and the drastic reduction of industrial pro- duction. In short, these economic difficulties, coupled with the conditions of war and civil war, greatly enhanced the role of administration and thus the power of officials. While officials of lower rank were often drawn from the pre-existing ad- ministration of Tsardom many party members had inevitably been drawn into it. Just as the run