Page:Boris Souvarine - The Third International.djvu/15

 theses, which they had formerly denounced. They each invented their theory of the first aggressor, the Germans laying the blame on the Russian mobilisation, the French on the German attack, as the principal event justifying their new attitude. They pretended to forget that, according to the luminous formula of Montesquieu, the real responsibility for a war rests not on him who declares it, but on him who renders it inevitable, and that, for us Socialists, it is the actual regime under which we live which renders war inevitable.

One of the characteristics of their policy was the repudiation of international policy, common to all Socialist parties. Each group of opportunists maintained that his country was in some special sort of situation necessitating a special policy. Each one was a revolutionary—for a neighbouring country. The French opportunists applauded the revolt of Karl Liebknecht, and the German opportunists approved the protests of the French Internationalists. Both declarations were hideous hypocrisies.

Logical in their opportunism, Vandervelde, Jules Guesde, Albert Thomas, etc., adjured the Russian nation not to revolt, but submit docilely to Tsarism. The war first, the republic later, wrote Guesde. The Russian revolution was a crime against the cause of the Allies, and therefore according to our Socialist-patriots against Justice and Socialism. On the other hand the German revolution was beneficial from the Socialist-patriotic Russian point of view; the Russian revolutions were beneficial, those of Germany and of Austria were criminal.

Thus does opportunism lead Socialists to espouse the interests of their respective bourgeoisies, and revolutionary Socialists cannot fight the ones without the others. As a matter of fact they should oppose the opportunists more firmly because they are more dangerous than are the declared enemies of Socialism, because of the Socialist mask behind which they hide.

It must be recorded that the Socialist parties of France, Germany and Belgium, which made common