Max Shachtman
Archive
Marxist Writers’
Archives
From New International, Vol. XVII No. 3, May–June 1951, pp. 164–174.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
We are still, fortunately, several years away from the outbreak of the Third World War which the victors of the Second World War gave such solemn assurances would never take place. Just how long the interval of frenzied armed truce will last, no one of course is in a position to say with certainty. The war in Korea or a similar localized war between the two big camps may explode unexpectedly and over night into the decisive global war. Such a “premature” development is possible. But while wars do not wait until the belligerents are fully prepared for them – full preparation takes place as a rule only after war has begun – an adequate preparation is nevertheless necessary on one side at least. The main indications are that neither side has yet reached that level, in the realm of political, industrial and military preparation, which it could regard as the minimum required for so enormously risky a trial of strength as the gigantic conflict of the Third World War is sure to be. Until that level is reached, more or less, by one side or both, we are vouchsafed the interlude of the present abominable imperialist peace, and therewith more time in which to prepare our own struggle against imperialism and war. Preparation requires in the first place the clearest possible understanding among us, the socialists, so that we may be in the best position to put forward a correct and effective policy.
That is easier said than done, let us acknowledge. Never before, not in the period of the First World War or of the Second, have the political pressures been applied so heavily to wrench the socialist movement away from its foundations and aims in order to align it with one war camp or the other. It was to be expected that these pressures would yield the intended results among the weary, the characterless, and the cynical, to say nothing of ordinary poltroons. The imperialists are welcome to these human husks. But in addition to them, there are serious and honorable socialists everywhere, devoted to the cause of emancipation and anxious to work for its victory. They do not want to enter the service of either war camp. But in the absence of a powerful and worldwide socialist movement independent of both sides, they are uncertain of the proposition that it is the socialist duty to oppose support of the war, where they are not skeptical or even hostile toward it. Is the traditional socialist position still valid? they ask; do we not have to support one side or the other as a choice between a lesser evil and a greater? Behind them stand no one knows how many millions who, for all their hatred and fear of the coming war, are asking themselves what amount to the same questions. In the midst of the general decay that is ravaging all the organs of society, subjective thinking, rationalization, superficiality, prejudice, and even outright unreason and hysteria, command the field of politics. But because they force objective political thinking into the background for the time being, is only added reason for Marxists – the scientific socialists – to insist upon its indispensable importance.
To establish a socialist policy toward the coming war, it is necessary to start by going back to the First World War. There are good reasons for such an approach to the problem. First, there is no period in the history of the socialist movement so filled with the most extensive and thoroughgoing presentation and counter-presentation of views on the war question as the period of 1914–1918. Second, it is in this period that the war position of modern revolutionary Marxism was so emphatically set forth, mainly by Lenin, that it is generally regarded as the position which Marxists hold and should hold toward the Third World War. Third, calling back to mind the First World War will afford an instructive comparison with the coming war.
We will dwell mainly upon Lenin’s position, not at all because a quotation from Lenin is enough to solve the problem we face today, but because the method he employed in arriving at his views remains the model for Marxists today.
All class societies are based upon social contradictions and conflicts. The important ones are always resolved in the long run by the application of superior force, be it with or without bloodshed. The problems of a given class society, capitalism included, can be resolved in a progressive or in a reactionary way. Wars are one of the means by which society’s problems are resolved. Depending upon its character war is therefore either progressive or reactionary. From the socialist standpoint, war is a barbarous – an ever more barbarous – means of solving social problems. But since war is inherent in class society, and can be done away with only in a classless society, there is no way of avoiding the choice between supporting progressive wars – whose consequences favor the march to socialism – and opposing reactionary wars – whose consequences retard this march. These considerations were as self-evident to Lenin as to every other Marxist. They precluded the pacifist or any other abstract or absolutist position applicable to all wars, at all times and under any conditions. Therefore, as Lenin wrote repeatedly during the war, “to be a Marxist, one must appraise each war separately and concretely.” Such an appraisal requires more than the setting forth of the general conditions of an epoch. It is necessary, he added, “to distinguish a given concrete phenomenon from the sum total of different phenomena in a given epoch. An epoch is called an epoch precisely because it embraces the sum of different phenomena and wars, typical and non-typical, great and small, characteristic of the advanced countries, and also characteristic of backward countries.”
When the First World War broke out, the Socialist International collapsed. Most of the Socialist parties rushed to the “defense of the fatherland” and supported their respective governments in the war. It is not without interest that they sought to justify their betrayal of socialism in general and of their own solemn pledges at the international socialist conference in Basel two years earlier, by reference to Marx and Engels. Lenin, refusing “to depart from the Marxian rule to be concrete,” wrote his most illuminating polemics against the social-patriots (he preferred the more accurate term, “social-chauvinists”), by dealing precisely with the position of Marx and Engels. He showed that where their support of wars fought in the nineteenth century satisfied the interests of democracy and socialism, support of the war fought by the same countries in 1914 was contrary to these interests. The politics of the belligerents had changed in the intervening period, and war being (as he liked to quote from Clausewitz’ famous dictum) the continuation of politics by other means, the character of the war they were now waging had changed accordingly, dictating in turn a change in the politics of the socialist movement.
Throughout the nineteenth century, in fact, beginning with the Great French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century, wrote Lenin, Marx could take the side of the bourgeoisie as a class and even of bourgeois governments in a whole series of wars. In that period, the bourgeoisie could and did play a progressive role; under exceptional conditions, even a representative of the Prussian Junkers like Bismarck could play a progressive role. It was the period of the struggle of young capitalism against outlived, reactionary feudalism. It was the period of the struggle to establish the national state, to end feudal particularism, dispersal and dismemberment, to throw off the foreign yoke or prevent it from being fastened upon the nation. All this came under the heading of a great and progressive historical task. Despite the early illusions of Marx and Engels themselves, capitalism had not yet created and developed a new class, the proletariat, of such strength, degree of organization, experience and consciousness as would enable it to perform this task. It could be carried out only by the bourgeoisie, or even by such a reactionary substitute for the bourgeoisie as Bismarck. Under such conditions, Marx and Engels, studying concretely each particular war, decided their position by answering the question: “The success of which bourgeoisie is more desirable?”
They were guided, wrote Lenin, by these considerations:
... first, for the national movement (of Germany and Italy) – a desire that they develop over the heads of the “representatives of medievalism”; second, considerations of the “central evil” of the reactionary monarchies (the Austrian, the Napoleonic, etc.) in the European concert of powers. These considerations are perfectly clear and cannot be disputed. Marxists never denied the progressivism of bourgeois national movements for liberation directed against feudal and absolutist powers ...
Supposing that two countries are at war in the epoch of bourgeois national movements for liberation. Which country shall we wish success from the point of view of modern democracy? Obviously, the one whose success would give impetus to, and would aid, the tempestuous development of the bourgeois movement for liberation; the one which will more strongly undermine feudalism. Supposing now that the determining feature of the objective historic circumstances has changed, that capital striving for national liberation has been replaced by international, reactionary, imperialist, finance capital. Assuming that the first country possesses three-fourths of Africa, whereas the second possesses one- fourth, and that the objective meaning of their war is the redivision of Africa. Which side should we wish success? This is a question which, if put in this old form, is absurd, since the old criteria of judgment have disappeared: There is neither a long development of the bourgeois movement for liberation, nor a long process of collapse of feudalism. It is not the business of modern democracy either to help the first country to assert its “right” to three-fourths of Africa, or to help the second country (even if it were to develop economically faster than the former) to take away those three-fourths.
Modern democracy will remain faithful to itself only if it does not join one or the other imperialist bourgeoisie, if it says that “both are worst,” if it wishes the defeat of the imperialist bourgeoisie in every country.
Lenin did not draw the conclusion, from his analysis of the world war, that the question of democracy, primarily in the form of the right of nations to self-determination which justified their defense in a war, was in no way involved. The “national element” in the war was represented by the struggle of little Serbia against the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Were war confined to a duel between these two, then notwithstanding the shady and reactionary regime then ruling Serbia, it would be necessary and proper for all socialists to support her against the Habsburg monarchy. But the war was far more than a duel between these two; the national element “occupies an entirely subordinate place and does not alter the general imperialist character of the war.”
Similarly even in the case of Belgium whose neutrality was “shamelessly violated” by the German imperialists. To illustrate his approach to the problem, Lenin wrote:
Suppose all nations interested in maintaining international treaties declared war against Germany, demanding the liberation and indemnification of Belgium. In this case the sympathy of the socialists would naturally be on the side of Germany’s enemies. The truth, however, is that the war is being waged by the “Triple” (and Quadruple) Entente not for the sake of Belgium. This is well known, and only the hypocrites can conceal it. England is robbing German colonies and Turkey; Russia is robbing Galicia and Turkey; France is striving to obtain Alsace-Lorraine and even the left bank of the Rhine; a treaty providing the sharing of spoils (in Albania and Asia Minor) has been concluded with Italy; with Bulgaria and Rumania there is haggling as to the division of the spoils. In the present war, conducted by the present governments, it is impossible to help Belgium without helping to throttle Austria or Turkey, etc. What meaning, then, has the “defense of the fatherland”? This is the peculiar characteristic of the imperialist war, a war between reactionary bourgeois governments that have historically outlived themselves, conducted for the sake of oppressing other nations. Whoever justifies participation in this war, perpetuates imperialist oppression of nations.
Lenin never tired of emphasizing the “peculiar characteristic” of this war, the features which distinguished it from preceding wars. It is not a war for the defense of the German or the French or the Russian or the British nation. The defense of the nation from the threat of foreign subjugation (where that is not simply a cover for imposing the nation’s own yoke upon another land) is an elementary democratic right which Marxists had supported in the past and would continue to support in the future. The Marxist opposition to this war is based upon the fact that the main belligerents are fighting it in order to deprive peoples and nations that are not fighting the war of their democratic right to self-determination.
In reality, the task of the struggle of the English and French bourgeoisie is to seize the German colonies and to ruin a competing nation which is distinguished by a more rapid economic development. For this noble aim, the “advanced” democratic nations are helping ferocious Tsarism still more to choke Poland, the Ukraine, etc., still more to throttle the revolution in Russia. Neither of the two groups of belligerent countries is behind the other in robberies, bestialities and endless brutalities of war ...
Again Lenin writes, this time in the resolution of a war-time Bolshevik conference abroad:
The real substance of the present war is a struggle between England, France and Germany for the division of colonies and for the plunder of the competing countries, and an attempt on the part of Tsarism and the ruling classes of Russia to seize Persia, Mongolia, Turkey in Asia, Constantinople, Galicia, etc.
But does not Germany also threaten the sovereignty, the national independence, of France and Russia? And do not France and Russia threaten the national integrity of Germany? It is with such claims that the pro-war socialists justified support of their governments, support of the war as the means imposed upon them for the defense of their fatherlands. Lenin denied that. It is chauvinism to support the war in Germany, for her bourgeoisie is not fighting to save the country from becoming a colony or vassal of Tsarism but to keep its own foreign colonies and add to them; it is chauvinism to support the war in France, England and Russia, for their ruling classes are fighting not to save their countries from the rule of German militarism, but to keep their own foreign colonies and to add to them. This aspect of Lenin’s analysis, and therefore of his position, is of paramount importance and deserves added emphasis especially because it is so widely unknown or neglected:
England, France and Russia are fighting to retain possession of the colonies they have grabbed and to rob Turkey, etc. Germany is fighting to gain possession of these colonies and to rob Turkey, etc., herself. Let us assume that the Germans even take Paris and St. Petersburg. Will this change the nature of the present war? Not in the least. The object of the Germans – and, what is more important, the politics they can pursue if they are victorious – will then be to take possession of the colonies, to dominate Turkey, and to seize alien territory, for example, Poland, etc.; but it will not be to impose an alien yoke on the French or the Russians. The real nature of the present war is not national, but imperialist. In other words, the war is not being fought because one side is overthrowing the yoke of national oppression while the other side is striving to retain it. It is being waged between two groups of oppressors, between two sets of robbers to decide how the loot is to be divided, to decide which of them is to rob Turkey and the colonies.
Lenin insisted, elsewhere, that this applied not only to France and Russia but even to violated and occupied Belgium:
The Anglo-French bourgeoisie is deceiving the people when it says that it wages war for the freedom of peoples, including Belgium; in reality, it wages war for the sake of holding on to the colonies which it has stolen on a large scale. The German imperialists would free Belgium, etc., forthwith, were the English and the French willing to share with them the colonies on the basis of “justice.” It is a peculiarity of the present situation that the fate of the colonies is being decided by war on the continent ... It is not the business of socialists to help the younger and stronger robber (Germany) to rob the older and fatter bandits, but the socialists must utilize the struggle between the bandits to overthrow all of them.
Given the actual alignment of the two imperialist blocs, given their aims in the war which were only a continuation of the politics pursued up to the time of the war, Lenin called for opposition to the war on both sides, for independence of the socialist movement and the working class from both war camps, and for utilizing difficulties of any and all kinds encountered by the war camps to advance the struggle for the socialist revolution, democracy and peace. He did not of course descend to that vulgarity which argues that since “they” are all capitalist countries, they are all alike. He was not blind to the political differences between one belligerent and another; on the contrary, he pointed them out. Only, these differences were not, taking all the belligerents on the whole, of the kind that determined the character of the war. He was not blind, either, to the question raised in millions of minds: Whose victory will be the lesser evil from the standpoint of the working class? This question he answered, as it were, on two levels which were closely connected with one another.
Under given conditions, it is impossible to determine from the standpoint of the international proletariat which is the lesser evil for socialism: the defeat of one or the defeat of the other group of belligerent nations.
The emphasis here belongs upon the “standpoint of the international proletariat.” First, because in this imperialist war, unlike the national wars of the preceding century, the bourgeoisie plays a progressive role on neither side. But second and more important: the very conception of victory (or defeat) by one imperialist bloc being a lesser evil excluded, in practice, the conception of the revolutionary intervention by the European proletariat to put an end to the imperialist war by putting an end to all the imperialist regimes.
For the same reason, he trenchantly opposed the slogan of “Neither victory nor defeat.” Such a slogan implied the restoration of the status quo ante bellum, that is, the continued rule of the imperialist powers, the continuation of the imperialist rivalries, the recreation of the very conditions that had led to the war. Lenin was not looking backward to the pre-1914 days, but forward to the days when the resurgent proletarian movement would intervene independently in the growing crisis of the war as it finally did in 1917 and 1918. Rejecting the theory of the “lesser evil” for the war of 1914, Lenin put forward the idea that it is necessary for all revolutionary socialists to work for the transformation of the imperialist war into a civil war. “Revolution in war time is civil war.” In place of “civil peace” and “national unity,” he advocated independence of the proletariat and continuation of the class struggle in all the belligerent countries to the point of revolution against the imperialist regimes.
What if prosecution of the class struggle imperils the military position of the government, even to the point where it may be defeated by the enemy and lose the war? No matter. The class struggle must be continued in all countries regardless of the cost to the existing governments. This was Lenin’s famous (but not always very clearly understood) theory of “defeatism” or “revolutionary defeatism.”
It was motivated by two considerations. One was that it had to be and could be applied to all the warring countries. To dispute the “slogan,” wrote Lenin, it would be necessary to prove “that a revolution in connection with it [the war] is impossible,” or “that coordination and mutual aid of the revolutionary movement in all belligerent countries is impossible.” The other was that the proletarian classes could follow a policy of intensified class struggle against their own governments as the main enemy – a struggle that would be facilitated by military defeat and would at the same time contribute to military defeat of their own country – because even if such a defeat were to occur the country would not run the risk of being subjugated by the enemy. Moreover, whatever disadvantages would ensue from such a defeat (disadvantages to the nation itself, not merely to its ruling class) would be far more than compensated by the advantage gained at home for the revolutionary struggle and victory of the working class.
But while it was impossible to determine whose defeat would be the lesser evil from the standpoint of the international proletariat, Lenin did not hesitate to say that it was quite possible to make this determination from the standpoint of the Russian proletariat. Over and again, Lenin repeated in his wartime speeches, articles and letters:
From the point of view of the working class and the laboring masses of all the peoples of Russia, by far the lesser evil would be the defeat of the Tsar’s armies and the Tsar’s monarchy, which oppresses Poland, the Ukraine, and a number of other peoples of Russia, and which inflames national hatred in order to increase the pressure of Great-Russia over the other nationalities and in order to strengthen the reaction of the barbarous government of the Tsar’s monarchy.
Again, in a private letter to a comrade:
In order that the struggle may proceed along a definite and clear line, one must have a slogan that summarizes it. This slogan is: For us Russians, from the point of view of the interests of the laboring masses and the working class of Russia, there cannot be the slightest doubt, absolutely no doubt whatever, that the lesser evil would be, here and now, the defeat of Tsarism in the present war. For Tsarism is a hundred times worse than Kaiserism.
Shortly after this letter, but still in the year 1914, after writing what is quoted above about the “standpoint of the international proletariat,” he adds:
For us Russian Social-Democrats, however, there cannot exist the least doubt that from the standpoint of the working class and of the laboring masses of all the peoples of Russia, the lesser evil would be the defeat of the Tsarist monarchy, the most reactionary and barbarous government oppressing the greatest number of nations and the greatest mass of the populations of Europe and Asia.
Again, in a resolution written for a Bolshevik conference the following year:
... the defeat of Russia represents the least of all evils under all conditions.
Finally, just a few months before the first revolution of 1917 in Russia, and still making it clear that he was speaking not simply of the defeat of Tsarism by the socialist proletariat but of its military defeat by Germany, he wrote:
Whatever the outcome of the present war may be ... it will prove that the Russian Social-Democrats who said that the defeat of Tsarism, the complete military defeat of Tsarism, is “at any rate” a lesser evil were right. For history never stands still, it is moving forward even during the present war; and if the proletariat of Europe is unable to advance to socialism at the present time, if it is unable to cast off the yoke of the social-chauvinists and the Kautskyans during this first great imperialist war, Eastern Europe and Asia can march with seven-league strides toward democracy only if Tsarism meets with utter military defeat and is deprived of all opportunity of practising its semi-feudal imperialist policy.
The military crackup of Tsarist arms followed only a few weeks after Lenin wrote these words, and Tsarism was “deprived of all opportunity of practising its semi-feudal imperialist policy.” The March 1917 revolution exploded all over the Russian empire, collapsing the most reactionary regime in Europe and heralding the beginning of the end of the international slaughter. The revolution was unique, not only in that it was supported by all the classes in Russia but even by British imperialism; and its consequences were also unique. It produced two powers, the official power represented by the Provisional Governments that were successively established, and the unofficial power of the Soviets which democratically represented the vast masses of the peoples of Russia. The first stood for the continuation of the war launched by Tsarism and with the war aims of Tsarism as embodied in the notorious secret treaties with its allies; the other represented a populace that longed for nothing so much as an end to the war and the establishment of democracy.
Lenin was the first to reorient himself in this new and unforeseen situation. Never a prisoner of dogma in general, nor of his own tactics and slogans in particular, he immediately grasped the new element in the situation, especially with regard to the problem of war policy, and adjusted himself to it instantly. Toward the so-called “revolutionary defensists,” he proposed not the slightest concession. The fact that Tsarism had been overthrown by a revolutionary people did not of itself change the character of the war. The new bourgeois regime was a capitalist regime and pursued the same war aims as the regime that had just been crushed. The Provisional Governments continued their alliance with the Western imperialists and were still bound by the secret treaties which they not only refused to denounce but even to make public. Hence, said Lenin, we, the Marxists, the socialists, the advocates of democracy, we continue to oppose the war as an imperialist war, and to remain intransigently opposed to those who are waging it.
But the masses, what is our attitude toward them? Do they want a war to conquer Galicia and Constantinople for a Great-Russian empire? Not at all! It is vitally important for the Bolsheviks to distinguish between the “defensism” of Miluyukov, Lvov and Kerensky, and the defensism and even pro-war spirit of the masses:
The masses regard this thing from a practical, not a theoretical standpoint [were Lenin’s first words upon returning to Russia from Switzerland]. They say: “I want to defend the fatherland, but not to annex foreign lands.” When may one consider a war as one’s own? When there is a complete renunciation of annexations.
The masses approach this question not from a theoretical but from a practical viewpoint. Our mistake lies in our theoretical approach. The class-conscious proletarian may consent to a revolutionary war that actually overthrows revolutionary defensism. Before the representatives of the soldiers, the matter must be put in a practical way, otherwise nothing will come of it. We are not at all pacifists. The fundamental question is: which class is waging the war? The capitalist class, tied to the banks, cannot wage any but an imperialist war. The working class can ...
From this distinction, which was both cause and effect of the new situation created in Russia, and to which Lenin attached the greatest possible importance, he drew the conclusion that, without at all adopting a position of support to the war, it was necessary to renounce the slogan of transforming the imperialist war into a civil war, as well as the thought that a defeat of Russia at the hands of Germany represented, for Russian socialists, a lesser of two evils. Defending his new thesis on war policy before the historic April 1917 conference of the Bolsheviks three weeks later, he enlarged on his views in a way that merits extensive quotation:
We have no doubt that, as a class, the proletariat and semi-proletariat are not interested in the war. They are influenced by tradition and deception. They still lack political experience. Therefore, our task is patient explaining. Our principles remain intact, we do not make the slightest fundamental concessions; yet we cannot approach those masses as we approach the social-chauvinists. Those elements of our population have never been socialists, they have not the slightest conception of socialism, they are just awakening to political life. But their class consciousness is growing and broadening with extraordinary rapidity. One must know how to approach them with explanations, and this is now the most difficult task, particularly for a party that was but yesterday underground.
Some may ask: have we not repudiated our own principles? We have been advocating the transformation of the imperialist war into a civil war, and now we have reversed ourselves. We must bear in mind, however, that the first civil war in Russia has come to an end; we are now advancing toward the second war, the war between imperialism and the armed people. In this transitional period, as long as the armed force is in the hands of the soldiers, as long as Milyukov and Guchov have not resorted to violence, this civil war is transformed for us into peaceful, extensive and patient class propaganda. To speak of civil war before people have come to realize the need of it, is undoubtedly to fall into Blanquism. We are for civil war, but for civil war waged by a class-conscious proletariat. Only he can be overthrown who is known to the people as a despot. There are no despots in Russia at the present moment; it is the soldiers and not the capitalists who are in possession of the guns and cannons; the capitalists are in power not by force but by deception, and to speak of violence now is impossible, it is nonsense. One must know how to look from the Marxian standpoint which says that the imperialist war will be transformed into civil war as a result of objective conditions and not as a result of subjective desires. For the time being we are abandoning this slogan, but only for the time being.
“For the time being” proved to be a long time. The slogan of transforming the imperialist war into a civil war was never again put forward by the Bolsheviks in Russia. Instead, Lenin denounced those who charged him and his party with advocating civil war in Russia as despicable liars and pogrom-instigators. With the change in conditions, it turned out that it was the monarchists and other reactionaries who sought to “transform” the imperialist war into a civil war, even going to the extent of making a tacit alliance with the Germans for the purpose of jointly crushing the, to them, menacing working-class movement represented by the Soviets (even the Soviets led by the Mensheviks and Social-Revolutionists before the Bolsheviks gained the Soviet leadership).
With Tsarism in power, and even now after the March revolution, with the bourgeoisie in power, only an imperialist war can be and is being conducted; only an imperialist peace can be expected to terminate the war. However, in addition to the bourgeois power, we now have a working class (and soldier and peasant) power. The working class is now freely organized into powerful institutions of its own, the Soviets. Its power is so great that the reaction dare not or cannot crush it. So great indeed is its power, Lenin repeated insistently, that it can take over complete state power peacefully, without civil war, without violence. If it takes power, and only in that event, a democratic peace is possible. No government of Europe can withstand the forcefulness of an appeal for a general democratic peace, without annexations and tribute, made by a Russian working-class government. Or, if one does withstand the appeal for a while and impose a war on such a Russian government, the nature of the war will thereby be transformed. In that case, the Russian working- class government, having renounced the secret treaties and all annexations and taken a firm position for the self-determination of all peoples and nations, will be fighting a just war deserving the support of the workers and peasants in general and of socialists in particular. Precisely because the working class is now so organized that it can take all the power into its hands peacefully, it is necessary to abandon all talk of civil war, all talk about transforming the imperialist war into a civil war, all talk about defeatism. And, until the working class takes power and puts forward its peace program as a government, the Bolsheviks, still refusing to support the war led by the Russian bourgeoisie, recognize, as Lenin said again and again, that the war cannot be brought to an end by the Russian soldiers simply “sticking their bayonets into the ground,” that is, by one-sidedly abandoning the war front and therewith assuring the victory of German arms. – Thus Lenin.
In sum, with the overturn of Tsarism and the appearance of a free working-class movement which could speedily develop into a socialist movement striving to take power, Lenin replaced the old war policy of the Bolsheviks for “transforming the imperialist war into a civil war,” with the new policy of transforming the reactionary war into a progressive war, the imperialist war into a just and democratic war.
A few months after the March revolution, Lenin made this exceptionally clear in his writings on the economic, political and military catastrophe to which the country had been brought by the bourgeois Provisional Government. To rise out of the catastrophe, he proposed a series of practical measures (nationalization of banks, compulsory trustification in industry, complete control of distribution, steep income tax, universal labor service, democratic controls everywhere) – measures which “will not yet be socialism, but ... will no longer be capitalism.” His observations on these practical measures, particularly in relation to the war which was still going on (the Kaiser’s armies were already deep in Russian territory), are so indicative for us today that they must be quoted at length. In speaking of “the connection between home policy and foreign policy, or, in other words, the relation between a war of conquest, an imperialist war, and a revolutionary, proletarian war, between a criminal predatory war and a just democratic war,” he wrote:
All the measures to avert catastrophe we have described would, as we have already stated, greatly enhance the defensive power, or, in other words, the military might of the country. That, on the one hand. On the other hand, these measures cannot be put into effect without transforming the war from a war of conquest into a just war, from a war waged by the capitalists in the interests of the capitalists into a war waged by the proletariat in the interests of all the toilers and exploited ...
The defensive power, the military might of a country whose banks have been nationalized is superior to that of a country whose banks remain in private hands. The military might of a peasant country whose land is in the hands of peasant committees is superior to that of a country whose land is in the hands of landlords.
Reference is constantly made to the heroic patriotism and the miracles of military valor displayed by the French in 1792–1793. But the material, historical economic conditions which alone made such miracles possible are forgotten. The abolition of obsolete feudalism in a really revolutionary way, and the introduction throughout the country of a superior method of production and a free system of peasant land tenure, effected, moreover, with truly revolutionary-democratic speed, determination, energy and self- sacrifice – such were the material economic conditions which with “miraculous” speed saved France by regenerating and reconstructing her economic foundation.
The example of France shows one thing and one thing only, namely, that in order that Russia may be capable of self-defense, in order that she may display “miracles” of mass heroism, the old system must be swept away with “Jacobin” ruthlessness and Russia reconstructed and regenerated economically. And in the twentieth century this cannot be done merely by sweeping away Tsarism (France did not confine herself to this 125 years ago) ...
[Russia is] continuing to wage an imperialist war in the interests of the capitalists, in alliance with the imperialists and in accordance with the secret treaties the Tsar concluded with the capitalists of England and other countries, promising the Russian capitalists in these treaties the spoliation of foreign countries, Constantinople, Lvov, Armenia, etc.
This war will continue to be an unjust, reactionary and predatory war on Russia’s part as long as she does not propose a just peace and as long as she does not break with imperialism. The social character of the war, its real meaning, is not
determined by the position of the hostile troops (as the Social-Revolutionists and Mensheviks think, sinking to the vulgarity of an ignorant muzhik). The character of the war is determined by the policy of which the war is a continuation (“the war is the continuation of politics”), by the class that is waging the war, and by the aims for which it is being waged.
You cannot lead the masses into a war of conquest in accordance with secret treaties and expect them to be enthusiastic. The advanced class in revolutionary Russia, the proletariat, is coming more and more clearly to realize the criminal character of the war, and not only have the bourgeoisie been unable to persuade the masses to the contrary, but the realization of the criminal character of the war is growing. The proletariat of both capitals of Russia has definitely become internationalist!
How, then, can you expect mass enthusiasm for the war?
The one is intimately bound up with the other, home policy with foreign policy. The country cannot be made capable of self-defense without the supreme heroism of the people in carrying out great economic reforms boldly and resolutely. And it is impossible to arouse the heroism of the masses without breaking with imperialism, without proposing a democratic peace to all the nations, and without transforming the war in this way from a predatory and criminal war of conquest into a just, revolutionary war of defense.
Only a thorough and consistent break with the capitalists in both home and foreign policy can save our revolution and our country, which is gripped in the iron vise of imperialism.
With this outline of the development of Lenin’s ideas through the different stages of the First World War, we are better equipped to establish the lines of socialist policy toward the Third World War, both before it breaks out (if the altogether too patient peoples of the world allow it to break out at all) and once it is under way. We do not consider it necessary here to check Lenin’s policies against the actual events, not because the mere enunciation of a policy by Lenin is enough to demonstrate its correctness but because the subsequent course of the March revolution and the subsequent course of the First World War and the peace that followed it are well enough known to obviate the need – at least at this point and among Marxian socialists – of adding anything to the justification of Lenin’s policy which was so richly supplied by the living events. But it is necessary and profitable to compare the character of the Third World War with that of the First to see wherein they are similar and wherein they differ.
Max Shachtman Archive |
Marxist Writers’ Archives |
Last updated on 20 November 2018