Lenin reports on the Zimmerwald conference held by anti-war Socialists in Switzerland during September, 1915 where the left and right battled over the meaning and means of peace in a world at total war, with Lenin and the lefts wanting to turn the world war into civil war, with revolution the way out of the crisis.

‘Revolutionary Marxists at the International Socialist Conference’ (1915) by V.I. Lenin from Selected Works, Vol. 5. International Publishers, New York. 1936.

THE ideological struggle at the conference was waged between a compact group of internationalists, revolutionary Marxists, and the vacillating near-Kautskyists who formed the Right wing of the conference. The compactness of the former group is one of the most important facts and one of the greatest achievements of the conference. After a whole year of war, the only trend in the International which adopted a perfectly definite resolution and also a draft manifesto based on it, and which united the consistent Marxists of Russia, Poland, the Lettish province, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland and Holland, proved to be the trend that was represented by our party.

What arguments were advanced against us by the vacillating elements? The Germans admitted that we were heading for revolutionary battles, but. they said, we must not shout to the whole world about such things as fraternisation in the trenches, political strikes, street demonstrations and civil war. Such things are done, they said, but not talked about. Others added: this is childishness, putschism.

The German semi-Kautskyists punished themselves for these ridiculously, indecently contradictory and evasive speeches when they adopted a resolution expressing sympathy for, and a declaration of the necessity of “following the example” of, the members of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour fraction’ who distributed our central organ, Sotsial-Demokrat, which “shouted to the whole world” about civil war.

You follow the bad example of Kautsky, we said to the Germans; in words, you recognise the impending revolution; in practice, you refuse to tell the masses about it openly, to call for it, to indicate the most concrete means of struggle which the masses are to test and legitimize in the course of the revolution. In 1847, Marx and Engels, while living abroad—the German philistines were horrified to think that revolutionary methods of struggle should be spoken of from abroad!—in the famous Manifesto of the Communist Party, called for revolution; they openly and directly spoke of using force; and they declared the attempt to hide revolutionary aims, tasks and methods of struggle to be contemptible. The Revolution of 1848 proved that Marx and Engels alone had approached the events with correct tactics. Several years before the 1905 Revolution in Russia, Plekhanov, then still a Marxist, wrote an unsigned article in the old Iskra of 1901, expressing the views of all the editors on the coming insurrection, on ways of preparing for it, such as street demonstrations, and even on technical devices, such as using wire in the fight against the cavalry. The revolution in Russia proved that only the old Iskra-ists had approached the events with correct tactics. Now we are faced with this alternative; either we are really and firmly convinced that the war is creating a revolutionary situation in Europe, that all the economic and social-political circumstances of the imperialist epoch are leading to a revolution of the proletariat—in that case we are in duty bound to explain to the masses the need for a revolution, to call for it, to create the necessary organisations, to speak fearlessly and in the most concrete manner of the various methods of violent struggle and of its “technique.” Thia duty that devolves upon us does not depend upon whether the revolution will be strong enough and whether it will come in connection with the first or second imperialist war, etc. Or we are not convinced that the situation is revolutionary; in that case there is no sense in our just talking about war against war. In that case. we are, in fact, national-liberal labour politicians of the Siidekum-Plekhanov, or Kautsky shade.

The French delegates also declared that they were convinced that the present situation in Europe would lead to revolution. But, they said, first, “we have not come here to provide a formula for a Third International”; secondly, the French worker “believes nobody and nothing,” he is demoralised and oversaturated with anarchist and Hervé phrases. The first argument is foolish, because the joint compromise manifesto does “provide a formula” for a Third International, though inconsistent, incomplete and not sufficiently thought out. The second argument is very important as a very serious factual argument that takes stock of the peculiar situation in France, not in the sense of defence of the fatherland, or enemy invasion, but in noting the “sore spots” of the French labour movement, The only thing that logically follows from this, however, is that the French Socialists would, perhaps, join the general European revolutionary action of the proletariat more slowly than others, and not that such action is unnecessary. The question as to how quickly, by which ways, in which particular forms, the proletariat of the various countries is capable of passing to revolutionary action was not and could not have been raised at the conference. The conditions for this are not yet ripe. Our task for the present is jointly to preach the right tactics and leave it to events to show the tempo of the movement, and the changes in the general trend (according to nation, locality and trade). li the French proletariat has been demoralised by anarchist phrases, it has also been demoralised by Millerandism, and it is not our task to increase this demoralisation by leaving things unsaid in the manifesto.

It was none other than Merrheim who uttered the characteristic and profoundly correct phrase: “The [Socialist] Party, the Jouhaux [secretary of the General Confederation of Labour] and the government are three heads under one bonnet.” This is correct; this is a fact proved by a year’s experience of the fight which the French internationalists have waged against the Party and Messrs. Jouhaux. But there is only one way out of this: the government cannot be fought without fighting the opportunist parties and the leaders of anarcho-syndicalism. Unlike our resolution, the joint manifesto only indicated, but did not say all that should have been said about the tasks of the struggle.

One of the Italians, in arguing against our tactics, said: “Your tactics come either too late” (since the war has already begun) “or too early” (because the war has not yet created the conditions for revolution) ; “besides,” he said, “you propose to ‘change the programme’ of the International, for all our propaganda has always been conducted ‘against violence.’” It was very easy for us to reply to this by quoting Jules Guesde in En garde to the effect that not a single influential leader of the Second International ever opposed the use of violence and direct revolutionary methods in general. Everybody always argued that the legal struggle, parliamentarism and insurrection are interconnected, and must inevitably pass from one to the other according to the changes in the conditions of the movement. From the same book, En garde, we quoted a passage from a speech delivered by Guesde in 1899, in which he spoke of the possibility of a war for markets, colonies, etc., and went on to say that if there were any French, German and English Millerands in such a war, then “what would become of the international solidarity of the proletariat?” In this speech Guesde condemned himself in advance. As for the preaching of revolution being “inopportune,” this objection rests on a confusion of terms customary with the Latin Socialists: they confuse the beginning of a revolution with the open and direct propaganda for revolution. In Russia, nobody places the beginning of the 1905 Revolution before January 22 (9), 1905, whereas revolutionary propaganda, in the very narrow sense of the word, the propaganda and the preparation of mass action, demonstrations, strikes, barricades, had been conducted for years before that. The old Iskra, for instance, began to preach this at the end of 1900, as Marx did in 1847, when there could have been no thought as yet of the beginning of a revolution in Europe.

After the revolution has begun, it is “recognised” even by its liberals and other enemies; they often recognise it in order to deceive and betray it. Before the revolution, revolutionaries, foreseeing it, realise its inevitability, make the masses understand its necessity, explain to the masses its course and methods.

By the irony of history, Kautsky and his friends, who tried to take the initiative in convening the conference out of Grimm’s hands, who attempted to disrupt the conference of the Left wing (Kautsky’s nearest friends even went on a tour for this purpose, as Grimm disclosed at the conference), were the very ones who pushed the conference to the Left. By their deeds the opportunists and the Kautskyists prove the correctness of the position taken by our party.

October 24 (11), 1915

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