War, Chauvinism and Social Democracy

(quote of the issue)

The support given by the dominant parties of the Second International to their own bourgeois rulers in World War I marked the definitive passage of this organization into what the Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin called “social-chauvinism.” Writing in late 1915, Lenin explained the social roots of this betrayal and the need for a political break with the social democracy in order to forge a new, revolutionary proletarian International.

The war is being fought by all the Great Powers for the purpose of plunder, carving up the world, acquiring markets, and enslaving nations. To the bourgeoisie it brings higher profits; to a thin crust of the labour bureaucracy and aristocracy, and also to the petty bourgeoisie (the intelligentsia, etc.) which “travels” with the working-class movement, it promises morsels of those profits. The economic basis of “social-chauvinism” (this term being more precise than the term social-patriotism, as the latter embellishes the evil) and of opportunism is the same, namely, an alliance between an insignificant section at the “top” of the labour movement, and its “own” national bourgeoisie, directed against the masses of the proletariat; an alliance between the servants of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie, directed against the class that is exploited by the bourgeoisie. Social-chauvinism is a consummated opportunism….

Having for decades to mature in conditions of “peaceful” capitalism, opportunism was so mature by 1914-15 that it proved an open ally of the bourgeoisie. Unity with opportunism means unity between the proletariat and its national bourgeoisie, i.e., submission to the latter, a split in the international revolutionary working class. We do not say that an immediate split with the opportunists in all countries is desirable, or even possible at present; we do say that such a split has come to a head, that it has become inevitable, is progressive in nature, and necessary to the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, and that history, having turned away from “peaceful” capitalism towards imperialism, has thereby turned towards such a split….

Since the onset of the war, the bourgeoisie of all countries, the belligerents in the first place, have united in lauding socialists who recognise the “defence of the fatherland”, i.e., the defence of the bourgeoisie’s predatory interests in the imperialist war, against the proletariat. See how this basic interest of the international bourgeoisie is making its way into the socialist parties, into the working-class movement, to find expression there!...

In its issue of April 1915, Preussische Jahrbücher, a conservative German journal, published an article by a Social-Democrat, a member of the Social-Democratic Party, who concealed his identity behind the pseudonym of Monitor. This opportunist blurted out the truth regarding the substance of the policy pursued by the entire world bourgeoisie towards the working-class movement of the twentieth century. The latter can neither be brushed aside nor suppressed by brute force, he says. It must be demoralised from within, by buying its top section. It was exactly in this manner that the Anglo-French bourgeoisie has been acting for decades, by buying up the trade-union leaders, the Millerands, the Briands and Co. It is in this manner that the German bourgeoisie is now acting. The Social-Democratic Party’s behaviour, Monitor says to (and in essence in the name of) the bourgeoisie, is “irreproachable” in the present war (i.e., it is irreproachably serving the bourgeoisie against the proletariat). “The process of the transformation” of the Social-Democratic Party into a national liberal-labour party is proceeding excellently. It would, however, be dangerous to the bourgeoisie, Monitor adds, if the party were to turn to the right; “it must retain the character of a workers’ party with socialist ideals. On the day it gives that up, a new party will arise to take up the rejected programme, giving it a still more radical formulation” (Preussische Jahrbücher, 1915, No. 4, pp. 50-51).

These words openly express that which the bourgeoisie has always and everywhere done covertly. “Radical” words are needed for the masses to believe in. The opportunists are prepared to reiterate them hypocritically. Such parties as the Social-Democratic parties of the Second International used to be are useful and necessary to the opportunists because they engendered the socialists’ defence of the bourgeoisie during the 1914-15 crisis.

—V.I. Lenin, “Opportunism, and the Collapse of the Second International” (1915)