Imperialist wars and Bolsheviks Klara Zetkin

A shame that nothing can atone for

Clara Zetkin,

The article was written for the book “Decade- Anniversary of World War”, by Ohitovich dated 1925.

The decade that has elapsed since the outbreak of the imperialist war has fully proved that the outbreak of war was a harbinger of the bankruptcy of the Second International.

Bankruptcy, incomparable to anything, not finding any justification in history, shameful and at the same time fatal bankruptcy.

The war piled up mountains of corpses and ruins, produced enormous destruction of material values and gave rise to deep economic ruin.

In the dialectical process of historical phenomena, this disruption in turn gave birth to new forces, developed them and for the first time fertilized the revolution. The immediate, most tangible consequence of the bankruptcy of the Second International was: the distortion of the real historical essence of the proletariat as a class, the false direction of the revolutionary forces and the resulting slowdown in the pace of social development.

Tales about the "defense of the fatherland" poisoned the consciousness and struck the will of the worker to fight, to revolution. The international proletariat was demarcated along the frontier pillars states and their groupings: each uniting in his own country in "sacred unity" (union sacré) and in "civil peace" (Burgfrieden) with his mortal class enemies. Born as fighters for the world revolution, the detachments of the international proletariat were compelled to play the role of executioner and victim in the imperialist slaughterhouse. This is how the proletariat got lost on its way from the historically necessary to the historically possible: on the way to turning the imperialist war into an international civil war. The effective conditions for the victorious outcome of the civil war of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie were laid down in the sharp contradiction between the development of the productive forces, on the one hand, and the capitalist mode of production and the institution of private ownership of the means of production, on the other. On this basis, economic and social conflicts arose, which found their expression in the World War.

Only one force in human society could prevent war, prevent it; this force is the proletariat, whose ideological leader was the Second International. And a heavy responsibility for the world war falls on the leaders of the Second International. They were only executors of the will of a class whose historical function was to plunder and enslave the poor, a class for which war was a commercial business, a profitable enterprise.

The propertied classes did not betray their class interests when they drove armies of millions to destroy each other—on the contrary, they served their class ideals.

The parties of the Second International, on the contrary, betrayed the interests and ideals of the class to which they swore under oath to serve. Next to Scheidemann, Renaudel, Vandervelde, Henderson, such people as Ludendorff and Foch, Stinnes, De Wendel, Armstrong and Co. seem downright noble and honest.

War would have been unthinkable given the serious resistance of the proletariat.

But war became possible, became a fact, thanks to the activities of the social-chauvinists, who darkened the consciousness of the working class, weakened, and poisoned, its' will to fight, to revolution.

The most shameless, the most arrogant is the hypocrisy with which, after the end of the war, the leaders of the Second International acted as accusers of the imperialist world bourgeoisie, vilifying it in the sharpest manner.

But all the accusations, all the stigmatizing speeches must fall equally on themselves.

From year to year, shoulder to shoulder with the merciless, greedy imperialists, they trudged knee-deep into the sea of blood shed during the World War.

From year to year, they made the waves of this blood rise higher and higher, at the same time, to the accompaniment of social-patriotic, Janissary music, leading the proletariat of the warring countries to a terrible slaughter or with the social-pacifist unctuous speeches of the pastors, restraining the proletariat from the struggle against disasters, against the bourgeois order.

It seems that in the face of such lies and shamelessness, from countless huge graves on the battlefields, from quiet forest thickets, mountain gorges, from the dark depths of the seas, the souls of many hundreds of thousands of victims of the war must rise up and cry loudly to social patriotic tomboys and social pacifist cowards, at the head of the Second International:

You, our murderers, do not desecrate our graves, do not disturb our peace; your crocodile tears will not wash away your bloody guilt.

You will only soil yourself with blood even more and aggravate your guilt*—And the endless ranks of military invalids, the sick, parents who have lost children, widows, orphans must stifle every attempt at a new deception of the masses, every preparation for war.

Death often seems an enviable fate to these depressed unfortunate victims, and all of them can present to the reformist leaders of the Second International the too generously issued, but unpaid bills of the "grateful fatherland", the payment of which these leaders guaranteed with the swagger and zeal of well-trained lackeys serving noble gentlemen.

Along with the bloody disasters of individual victims of the war, a gigantic picture of the disasters of all the peoples of Europe is put forward. This is not a threatening ghost, but a painful reality. The war and its consequences ruined the world, especially the masses of workers, middle and petty bourgeois, and small peasants, pushing them out of comparatively cultural well-being towards barbarism. The cry of suffering of countless millions of the ruined and trampled is so strong that neither orgies nor the cries of military victors, usurers and speculators can drown it out.

The world war left behind only one vanquished, both in the victorious Entente states and in the defeated Central Powers, and the defeated are the working people. Even in the most economically and politically ruined Germany and Austria, big capitalists and speculators find something to warm their hands on. They can hardly count the millions and billions that the war, economic ruin and financial crisis of states brought to them after the end of the war.

The leaders of the Second International will forever remain fully responsible for the total amount of misfortune resulting from the war. Their crime, in reality, will be even greater since they cover up their betrayal with the will of the Social Democratic parties and the chauvinistic mood of the masses.

Leaders must go ahead of their party and ahead of the masses and not allow others to rule them.

The German Social Democracy reveled in the proud consciousness that it was the leading party, the exemplary party of the Second International. It proved its superiority by the number of its members, the votes of the electors, the parliamentary mandates, the volume, and content of its daily press, its agitational and lakat literature, party resolutions and speeches in the Reichstag. At the congresses of the Second International, these opinions, its influence, were dominant and decisive.

In the atmosphere of the imperialist C&D crisis, however, its spirit of revolutionary struggle has not been strengthened. On the contrary, from a leading, revolutionary, militant party imbued with a class spirit, it has turned into a vulgar, philistine-democratic, reformist organization.

With the outbreak of the World War, the German Social Democracy was the first of all parties to sink into a deep quagmire of alliance with the bourgeoisie and its Wilhelminian government. It's shameful betrayal at a decisive moment in history, poorly concealed by the indecisiveness of its leaders, and their complete political inability to act (the dual game of Hermann Muller in Paris) signaled the final decline of the Second International, which was the hope of the proletariat of all countries for the preservation of peace.

And the German Social Democracy was a brilliant example, followed by a number of other parties of the Second International under the “victorious banners of the fatherland” (in other words, to satisfy the imperialist appetites of the bourgeoisie). Its Social Democratic leaders hurriedly carried out, one after another, all the military credits required by this or that government, at the whim of Wilhelm II or at the orders of the ministers of war, which placed a heavy burden on the working people.

Under the hospitable roof of Gelferich, they touched the hand of the monarch, whom they had already despised. Both at the front and away from the shots (after all, bullets are so thoughtless!), In government offices and parliamentary lobby, they fraternized with important generals dressed in uniform.

As traveling salesmen of German imperialism, they visited neutral countries and begged them to enter into a military alliance with Germany, such as Südekum in Italy or Otto Braun and other luminaries of the party who prepared in Switzerland the "White Paper" of the government on the causes of the war - this is a collection of "documents" representing one continuous tendentious lie.

They supported in their press and literature the military psychosis of those doomed to die in the trenches and starve in their homeland. They suspected, persecuted, and slandered everyone who was not interested in the Social Democratic program and the decisions of the International Congress seemed like a dirty piece of paper and tried to crush any revolutionary movement among the masses.

When I was imprisoned for my "treacherous actions" the magistrate presented me with an appeal from the Social-Democratic Party as an exclusively aggravating material for my guilt. It suggested to the comrades that the manifesto and resolutions of the International Women's Conference in Bern, in March 1915, should not be circulated on the grounds that this appeal was undoubtedly a call for action by the state authorities. Hugo Haase pointed out in vain, relying on his authority as a lawyer, that this appeal should be qualified as a denunciation addressed to the authorities.

Social-pacifists, opponents of Scheidemann, Ebert and their accomplices, fought against the slaughter of peoples without the courage and readiness for sacrifice, which is characteristic of bourgeois pacifists, and their revolutionary tendencies were out of the question.

Party discipline did not serve as an instrument for the unity and decisiveness of revolutionary actions, but, on the contrary, killed revolutionary energy. The parliamentary representatives of the opposition, cursing behind the backs of the close-knit Social-Democratic leaders, could not find strong enough and rude expressions to address the social-patriotic "rogues" and "fools", but in fact, for a long time, by their silence supported the behavior of the official leaders of the Social-Democratic faction.

In order to reject the war loan, they decided, albeit too late, to break with the social patriots after they had sacrificed Liebknecht, the only brave banner-Josz of the International and the revolutionary proletariat.

Laase, Dittmann, Josenfeld refused to mobilize the proletarian masses and lead them into battle. Instead of relying on the strength of the worker to prepare and organize the struggle, they relied on Wilson, his program and his League of Nations. Could it be otherwise?

Their thought and will were so weak that they could not free themselves from walking on the slings of Kautsky, the most ardent theoretician of the Second International. He tried to cover up their bankruptcy with the cowardly stupid saying that the International could only be an instrument of peace, not of war.

By the will of the pitiless nemesis of history, no proletariat is paying so heavily for its guilt in the war as the German one, which allowed the passionate imperialist activity of Scheidemann and the submissive pacifist passivity of Dittmann. Not because the reformist leaders of the working class in other imperialist powers were even one half better than these people, far from it.

However, they did not all enjoy the same advantage: behind them there were no toiling masses, behind them there was no such superbly organized force as behind the Germans, they were not illumined by the dazzling brilliance of the traditions and authority of profound Marxist teaching, the experienced practical struggle, that brilliance that completely illuminates the German Social Democracy, and enemy listened with intense attention as long as their statements expressed the opinions and will of a million-strong party.

A party which ensured the decisive influence of its leaders on the German proletariat and the Second International became historically great. Everything that was said by Hermann Müller or Otto Wels was considered to be the "expression of the personal opinion" of these gentlemen, supposedly of no importance. Friend and foe listened with intense attention as long as their statements expressed the opinions and will of a million-strong party. The leading German social patriots and social pacifists have thrown into the balance the steely might and significance of Social Democracy in the Second International for the benefit and advantage of the imperialist bourgeoisie.

Thanks to their decisions and their deeds, the Second International fell.

But the last capitulation of the Social Democracy is an even greater crime than hunger, the decline of culture, the ruin and death of countless millions. It polluted and shattered in the eyes of the enslaved all over the world the great ideal of revolutionary proletarian brotherhood, because with its blessing and at its call, the proletarians of the countries waging war began to destroy each other. The broad masses have lost faith in the liberating power of the international solidarity of the working people of all countries, in their own fetter-breaking power, in socialism and revolution.

Everything that had hitherto been dearer and above everything to them seemed to them in the murderous clouds of the poisonous gas of the desert as insignificant phrases. While bombs and long-range guns sent from the air turned flourishing cities into ruins, their strength seemed pitiful to them. But the international solidarity of the proletariat is, after all, not a vague fantasy; it exists and grows, nourished by painful suffering—the lot of the destitute. Proletarian solidarity grew out of a thousand bloody wounds on the battlefields. She spoke in speeches ridiculed by four outstanding people of Germany, who were the first to protest against the imperialist war and the vile behavior of the representatives of the Social Democracy, these four leaders who did not avert their gaze from the proletarian revolution.

Its voice resounded in Karl Liebknecht's repeated "no!" at the voting of war credits, at the International Socialist Women's Conference in Bern, and somewhat later at the International Youth Conference, the first organizations that called on the working masses of all countries to unite and to revolutionary class struggle.

In Zimmerwalde-Kienthal it advanced with force. Finally, in all its historical growth, it came out before the world proletariat in the October (November) revolution of the Russian workers.

This immortal cause once again strengthened the faith of the oppressed in their strength in socialism and gave hope that the solidarity of the proletariat would put an end to imperialism.

Since the fateful summer of 1914, the story has been posted twice. For the first time, when in October 1917 the glorious Russian revolution threw out the slogan of peace to the whole blood-soaked world.

Peace not only for the young Republic of Soviets fighting for its life, but peace for all peoples who were ready to fall from the wounds inflicted on them by imperialist madness.

A world secured by liberation from the war-producing yoke of capitalism that only a revolution could overcome. The second time the New International was to manifest itself a year later (XI-I8), when the revolution broke out in Germany. Vandervelde, Henderson and Zainbat both times led the international proletariat into slavery to the bourgeoisie, and not into the camp of the revolution.

Some of them, without any hesitation, assumed responsibility for the "armed peace" of Brest-Litovsk, which was supposed to overthrow the first workers' and peasants' state and make possible the triumph of the central imperialist powers. Others gloatingly signed the bloody Treaty of Versailles, which turned Germany and Austria politically and economically into Entente colonies.

However, what separated them as faithful lackeys of their own* bourgeoisie from the proletariat of another country, this same thing bound them with iron fetters to the bourgeoisie in general. They have made it their historic task to protect the most sacred property of the bourgeois order and to see to it that it is not swallowed up by the red current of Bolshevism.

The reformist leaders of the International are one heart, one soul in their inflamed, viscous, stubborn hatred of the victorious Russian revolution, of every proletarian revolution. They hate the revolution as a bad conscience that reproaches them, and they try to suppress it at any manifestation; they helped the bourgeoisie do what they could never have done on their own. With their help, she has reasserted her power over the working people and is mercilessly using it.

Wels and Co. of various countries are equally responsible for the indescribable suffering and sacrifice with which the anti-Bolshevik campaign of lies and slander, like the counter-revolutionary newspapers, soiled the heroic Russian workers and peasants. From their hands dripped the blood of the revolutionary fighters of the Baltic, Finland, the Hungarian and Munich Soviet Republics,

The blood of the revolutionary fighters of the Baltic, Finland, the Hungarian and Munich Soviet Republics dripped from their hands, the blood of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, Leo Jogiches, Levine, and all those who were killed by the Nazis at the signal of the democracies of Ebert clung to them.

The starving and exhausted in capitalist dungeons speak against them. The leaders of the 2nd International continued after the war the work they started during the war: betrayal of the proletariat and revolution.

They are made responsible for the impending threat of an imperialist war, which will be even more terrible, more murderous, a real hell in comparison with the previous one.

The 2nd International has not atoned for its shameful role in the World War. It increased more and more its guilt against the revolution.

The redemption of this disgrace will never be the work of its leaders, it can only be the work of the proletarian masses, who will be freed with a shudder from the consequences of the reformist crimes against the revolution.

Only a proletarian world revolution can be a historical redemption to such disgrace. Its battles, however, will never take place under the leadership of the 2nd International.

The leader and leader of the world proletariat in the world revolution will be the Communist International, the descendant of the Russian revolution, the stimulus will be the striving for freedom of the ruined and enslaved, a striving that nothing can kill.

It calls on the working masses to atone for shame through struggle, to raise the proletariat defeated in the world war through the victory of the world revolution.

Translation from Russian MLDG - S.M