BOURGEOIS PACIFISM
AND
SOCIALIST PACIFISM

    Kautsky is the most authoritative theoretician of the Second International, the most prominent leader of the so-called "Marxian centre" in Germany, the representative of the opposition which organized a separate group in the Reichstag, the "Social-Democratic Labour Group" (Haase, Ledebour and others). A number of Social-Democratic news papers in Germany are now publishing articles by Kautsky on the terms of peace, which paraphrase the official declaration made by the "Social-Democratic Labour Group" on the German government's well-known note proposing peace negotiations. This declaration calls upon the German government to propose definite terms of peace and contains the following characteristic statement:

    ". . . In order that this note [the German Government's] may lead to peace, all countries must unequivocally renounce all thought of annexing alien territory, of the political, economic or military subjection of any people whatsoever by any other state power. . . ."

    In paraphrasing and concretizing this postulate, Kautsky, in his articles, "argues" with great thoroughness that Constantinople must not be given to Russia and that Turkey must not be made a vassal state to anyone.

    We shall examine these political slogans and arguments of Kautsky and his associates as closely as possible.

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    In a matter that affects Russia, i.e., the imperialist rival of Germany, Kautsky advances, not abstract, not "general," but a very concrete, precise and definite demand: Constantinople must not be given to Russia. By that he exposes the real imperialist designs . . . of Russia. In a matter that affects Germany, however, i.e., the country in which the majority of the party which regards Kautsky as its member (and which appointed him the editor of its principal, leading, theoretical organ, Die Neue Zeit ) is helping the bourgeoisie and the government to conduct an imperialist war, Kautsky does not expose the concrete, imperialist designs of his own government, but confines himself to a "general" desideratum or postulate: Turkey must not be made a vassal state to anyone!!

    In what way does Kautsky's policy, in substance, differ from that of the militant, so to speak, social-chauvinists (i.e., Socialists in words but chauvinists in deeds) of France and England, who, while frankly exposing the concrete imperialist actions of Germany, make shift with "general" desiderata or postulates when it concerns the countries or nations conquered by England and Russia, who shout about the seizure of Belgium and Serbia but say nothing about the seizure of Galicia, Armenia, the African colonies?

    As a matter of fact, both the policy pursued by Kautskv and that pursued by Sembat and Henderson help their respective imperialist governments by concentrating attention principally on the insidiousness of their rival and enemy, while throwing a veil of vague, general phrases and sentimental wishes around the equally imperialist conduct of "their own " bourgeoisie. We wouid cease to be Marxists, we would cease to be Socialists generally, if we confined ourselves to the Christian, so to speak, contemplation of the benignity of

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benign general phrases and refrained from exposing their real political significance. Do we not see the continuous spectacle of the diplomacy of all the imperialist powers flaunting magnanimous "general" phrases and "democratic" declarations in order to screen their robbery, violation and strangulation of small nations?

    "Turkey must not be made a vassal state to anyone. . . ." If I say no more than that, I create the impression that I stand for the complete freedom of Turkey. As a matter of fact, I am only repeating a phrase that is usually uttered by German diplomats who are deliberately lying and deceiving, who employ this phrase in order to conceal the fact that Germany has already converted Turkey into her financial and military vassal! And if I am a German Socialist, my "general" phrases are extremely useful to German diplomacy, for their real significance lies in that they put German imperialism in a good light.

    ". . . All countries must renounce all thought of annexations . . . of the economic subjection of any people whatsoever. . . ." What magnanimity! The imperialists "renounce the thought" of annexations and of the financial strangulation of weak nations a thousand times, but should we not compare these renunciations with the facts which show that any one of the big banks of Germany, England, France and of the United States do hold small nations "in subjection"? Can the bourgeois government of a wealthy country really renounce annexations and the economic subjugation of alien peoples when billions and billions have been invested in the railways and other enterprises of weak nations?

    Who really fights against annexations, etc.? Is it those who utter magnanimous phrases, the objective significance of

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which is the same as that of the Christian holy water that is sprinkled on the crowned and capitalist pirates? Or is it those who explain to the workers that it is impossible to put an end to annexations and financial strangulation without overthrowing the imperialist bourgeoisie and its governments?

    Here is an Italian, illustration of the kind of pacifism that Kautsky preaches.

    Avanti, the central organ of the Socialist Party of Italy, of December 25, 1916, contains an article by the well-known reformist, Filippo Turati, entitled "Abracadabra," in which he writes that on November 22, 1916, the Socialist group in the Italian parliament moved a resolution in favour of peace. In this resolution the group declared that "the principles proclaimed by the representatives of England and Germany were identical, and these principles should lie at the base of a possible peace," and invited "the government to open negotiations for peace through the mediation of the United States and other neutral countries." This is Turati's own account of the Socialist proposal.

    On December 6, 1916, the Chamber "buries" the Socialist resolution by "adjourning" the debate on it. On December 12, the German Chancellor in the Reichstag proposes the very thing proposed by the Italian Socialists. On December 22, Wilson issues his note which, in the words of Turati, "paraphrases and repeats the ideas and arguments of the Socialist proposal." On December 23, other neutral countries come on the scene and paraphrase Wilson's note.

    We are accused of having sold ourselves to the Germans, exclaimed Turati. Have Wilson and the neutral countries also sold themselves to Germany?

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    On December 17, Turati delivered a speech in parliament, one passage of which caused an unusual and deserved sensation. This is the passage, quoted from the report in Avanti :

    "Suppose a discussion like that proposed by Germany is able, in the main, to settle questions like the evacuation of Belgium and France, the restoration of Rumania, Serbia and, if you will, Montenegro; I will add the rectification of the Italian frontiers in regard to what is indisputably Italian and corresponds to guarantees of a strategical character. . . ." At this point the bourgeois and chauvinist Chamber interrupts Turati, and from all sides the shout goes up: "Excellent! So you too want all this! Long live Turati! Long live Turati! . . ."

    Apparently, Turati realized that there was something wrong about the enthusiasm of these bourgeois and tried to "correct" himself and "explain":

    "Gentlemen," he said, "cease this irrelevant jesting. It is one thing to admit the relevance and right of national unity, which we have always recognized, but to provoke, or justify, war for this aim is quite another thing."

    But neither Turati's "explanation" nor the articles in Avanti in his defence, nor Turati's letter of December 21, nor the article by a certain "B.B." in the Zürich Volksrecht can "correct" or explain away the fact that Turati fell into the trap! . . . Or it would be more correct to say that not Turati, but the whole of socialist pacifism represented by Kautsky, and, as we shall see below, the French "Kautskyists," fell into the trap. The Italian bourgeois press was right in seizing upon this passage in Turati's speech and exulting over it.

    The above-mentioned "B.B." tries to defend Turati by arguing that the latter referred only to "the right of nations to self-determination."

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    A bad defence! What has this to do with "the right of nations to self-determination," which, as everyone knows, is that part of the Marxian programme -- and has always been that part of the programme of international democracy -- which deals with the defence of oppressed nations? What has it to do with the imperialist war, i.e., with a war for the division of colonies, a war for the oppression of foreign countries, a war among predatory and oppressing powers to decide which of them shall oppress more foreign nations?

    In what way does this argument about self-determination of nations in defence of an imperialist war, and not a national war, differ from the speeches delivered by Alexinsky, Hervé and Hyndman who argue that republican France is opposed to monarchical Germany, in spite of the fact that everyone knows that this war has nothing to do with the conflict between republican and monarchist principles, but is a war for the division of colonies, etc., between two imperialist coalitions.

    Turati explained and pleaded that he does not "justify" the war in the least.

    We will take the reformist, Kautskyan Turati's word for it that he did not intend to justify the war. But who does not know that in politics it is not intentions that count, but deeds, not good desires, but facts, not the imaginary, but the real?

    Suppose we admit that Turati did not want to justify the war and that Kautsky did not want to justify Germany's placing Turkey in the position of a vassal to German imperialism; the fact remains that these two benign pacifists did justify the war! That is the point. Had Kautsky declared that "Constantinople must not be given to Russia, Turkey must not be made a vassal state to anyone" not in a

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magazine which is so dull that nobody reads it, but in parliament, before a lively, impressionable, bourgeois audience, full of southern temperament, it would not have been surprising if the witty bourgeois had exclaimed: "Excellent! Hear! Long live Kautsky!"

    Whether he wished to or not, deliberately or not, the fact is that Turati expressed the point of view of a bourgeois broker proposing a friendly deal between imperialist pirates. The "liberation" of Italian soil belonging to Austria would, in fact, be a concealed reward to the Italian bourgeoisie for participating in the imperialist war of a gigantic imperialist coalition; it would be a small sop thrown in, in addition to the share of the African colonies and spheres of influence in Dalmatia and Albania. Perhaps the reformist Turati adopts the point of view of the bourgeoisie naturally; but Kautsky really differs in no way from Turati.

    In order not to embellish the imperialist war, in order not to help the bourgeoisie falsely to represent this war as a national war, as a war for the liberation of nations, in order to avoid taking up the position of bourgeois reformism, one must speak, not in the language of Kautsky and Turati, but in the language of Karl Liebknecht: one must tell one's own bourgeois that they are hypocrites when they talk about national liberation, one must say that this war cannot result in a democratic peace unless the proletariat "turns its guns" against its own governments.

    Such and only such could be the position of a genuine Marxist, of a genuine Socialist and not a bourgeois reformist. It is not he who repeats the general, meaningless, non-committal, goody-goody desires of pacifism who really works for a democratic peace but it is he who exposes the imperialist character of the present war and of the imperialist peace

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that is being prepared, he who calls upon the peoples to rise in revolt against the criminal governments.

    Some people sometimes try to defend Kautsky and Turati with the argument that it is impossible openly to do more than drop "hints" against the government and that the pacifists of this sort do "hint" at this kind of thing. The reply to this is, first, that the impossibility of speaking the truth openly is an argument, not in favour of concealing the truth, but in favour of the need for an illegal organization and press, i.e., an organization and press free from the surveillance of the police and the censorship. Secondly, that moments occur in history when a Socialist is called upon to throw off all legality. Thirdly, that even in serf-ridden Russia, Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky managed to speak the truth, for example, by their silent comment on the Manifesto of March 3 (February 19), 1861, and the ridicule and abuse they hurled against the liberals of their day who made exactly the same kind of speeches as those made today by Turati and Kautsky.

    In the next article we shall deal with French pacifism, which found expression in the resolutions passed by the two recently held congresses of the labour and Socialist organizations of France.

 

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    The French newspapers containing the report of the Congress of the C.G.T. were received in Berne on December 28, and on December 30 the Socialist newspapers of Berne and Zürich published another manifesto issued by the Berne I.S.K. ("Internationale Sozialistische Kommission"), the International Socialist Committee, the executive body of Zimmerwald. This manifesto, dated the end of December 1916, refers to the peace proposals made by Germany and by Wilson and the other neutral countries, and all these governmental pronouncements are described, and quite rightly described, of course, as a "farcical game of peace," "a game to deceive their own peoples," "hypocritical pacifist gesticulations of diplomats."

    As against this farce and falsehood the manifesto declares that the "only force" capable of bringing about peace, etc., is the "firm determination" of the international proletarians to "turn their weapons, not against their brothers, but against the enemy in their own country."

    The passages we have quoted clearly reveal the two fundamentally distinct policies which have lived side by side, as it were, up to now in the Zimmerwald group, but which have now finally parted company.

    On the one hand Turati quite definitely and correctly states that the proposals made by Germany, Wilson, etc.,

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were a "paraphrase " of Italian "Socialist" pacifism; the declarations of the German social-chauvinists and the voting of the French have shown that both fully appreciate the value of the pacifist screen for their policy.

    On the other hand, the manifesto of the International Socialist Committee describes the pacifism of all belligerent and neutral governments as a farce and hypocrisy.

    On the one hand, Jouhaux joins with Merrheim; Bourderon, Longuet and Raffin-Dugens join with Renaudel, Sembat and Thomas, while the German social-chauvinists, Südekum, David and Scheidemann, announce the forthcoming "restoration of Social-Democratic unity" with Kautsky and the "Social-Democratic Labour Group."

    On the other hand the manifesto of the International Socialist Committee calls upon the "Socialist minorities" to fight strenuously against "their own governments" and "against their social-patriotic hirelings" (Söldlinge ).

    Either one thing or the other.

    Either expose the vapidity, stupidity and hypocrisy of bourgeois pacifism, or "paraphrase" it into "Socialist" pacifism. Fight against the Jouhaux, the Renaudels, the Legiens and the Davids as the "hirelings" of the governments, or join with them in making empty pacifist declamations on the French or German models.

    This is now the dividing line between the Right wing of Zimmerwald, which has always strenuously opposed a split from the social-chauvinists, and the Left wing, which had the foresight at the Zimmerwald Conference publicly to dissociate itself from the Right and to put forward, at the conference and after it in the press, its own platform. The approach of peace, or at least the intense discussion of the question of peace by certain bourgeois elements, not accidentally, but

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inevitably gave rise to a particularly marked divergence between the two policies. Bourgeois pacifists and their "Socialist" imitators, or followers, have always pictured, and now picture, peace as being something in principle distinct from war, for the pacifists of both shades have never understood that "war is the continuation of the politics of peace and peace is the continuation of the politics of war." Neither the bourgeoisie nor the social-chauvinists wanted, nor do they wish to see that the imperialist war of 1914-17 is the continuation of the imperialist politics of 1898-1914, if not of an earlier period. Neither the bourgeois pacifists nor the Socialist pacifists see that if the bourgeois governments are not overthrown by revolution peace now can only be an imperialist peace, a continuation of the imperialist war.

    In the same way as they approached the question of appraising the present war with silly, vulgar, philistine phrases about aggression or defence in general, so they are approaching the question of appraising the peace with the same philistine commonplaces, forgetting all about the concrete historical situation, the actual concrete struggle between the imperialist powers. And it was quite natural for the social chauvinists, these agents of the governments and of the bourgeoisie in the workers' parties, to seize upon the approach of peace, or even upon mere peace talk, in order to gloss over the depths of their reformism and opportunism which the war has exposed and in order to restore their damaged influence over the masses. Hence, the social-chauvinists in Germany and in France, as we have seen, are making strenuous efforts to "unite" with the soft, unprincipled pacifist section of the "opposition."

    No doubt, efforts will be made also in Zimmerwald to gloss over the divergence between the two irreconcilable lines of

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policy. One can foresee these efforts being made along two lines. A "practical business" conciliation will take the form of mechanically combining loud revolutionary phrases (like those in the manifesto of the International Socialist Com mittee) with opportunist and pacifist practice. This is what happened in the Second International. The arch-revolutionary phrases in the manifestoes of Huysmans and Vandervelde and in certain congress resolutions merely served as a screen for the archopportunist practice of the majority of the European Parties, but they did not change, disrupt or combat this practice. It is doubtful whether these tactics will again be successful in Zimmerwald.

    The "conciliators in principle" will strive to falsify Marxism by advancing such arguments: reform does not exclude revolution; an imperialist peace with certain "improvements" in the frontiers of certain nationalities, or in international law, or in expenditure on armaments, etc., is possible side by side with the revolutionary movement as "one of the aspects of the development" of this movement, and so on and so forth.

    This would be a falsification of Marxism. Of course, reforms do not exclude revolution. But this is not the point at issue at the present moment. The point is that revolutionaries must not efface themselves before the reformists, i.e., that Socialists should not substitute reformist work for their revolutionary work. Europe is experiencing a revolutionary situation. The war and the high cost of living are making this situation more acute. The transition from war to peace will not necessarily alter this situation, for there are no grounds whatever for believing that the millions of workers who now have excellent weapons in their hands will necessarily permit themselves to be "peacefully disarmed" by the

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bourgeoisie instead of following the advice of Karl Liebknecht, i.e., turning their weapons against their own bour geoisie.

    The question is not as it is put by the pacifist Kautskyists: either a reformist political campaign or else the renunciation of reforms. This is a bourgeois presentation of the question. The question is: either revolutionary struggle, the by-product of which, in the event of its not being quite successful, is reforms (the whole history of revolutions throughout the world has proved this), or nothing but talk about reforms and the promise of reforms.

    The reformism of Kautsky, Turati and Bourderon, which now comes out in the form of pacifism, not only leaves aside the question of revolution (this in itself is a betrayal of socialism), not only abandons in practice all systematic and persistent revolutionary work, but even goes to the length of declaring that organizing street demonstrations is the work of adventurers (Kautsky in Die Neue Zeit, November 26, 1915). It goes to the length of advocating unity and uniting with the outspoken and determined opponents of revolutionary struggle, the Südekums, Legiens, Renaudels, Thomases, etc., etc.

    This reformism is absolutely irreconcilable with revolutionary Marxism, the duty of which is to take the utmost possible advantage of the present revolutionary situation in Europe in order openly to preach revolution, the overthrow of the bourgeois governments, the conquest of power by the armed proletariat, while at the same time not renouncing and not refusing to utilize reforms for the purpose of developing the revolutionary struggle and in the course of that struggle.

    The immediate future will reveal how the progress of events in Europe in general, and the struggle between

reformist pacifism and revolutionary Marxism, in particular, including the struggle between the two sections of Zimmerwald, will develop.

Zürich, January 1, 1917.