Page:Lenin - The Collapse of the Second International - tr. Sirnis (1919).pdf/12

10 Looking at the matter scientifically, i.e., from the viewpoint of the relationship of the different classes in modern society, we are obliged to say that the majority of the social democratic parties went over to the side of the rulers’ general staffs and governments in opposition to the working class. The lead in this direc­tion was given by the German social democracy, which was the largest and most influential party in the second International. This event is of world-historic impor­tance, and we propose to subject it to a searching analysis.

We recognise that wars, despite the horrors and calamities which they breed, are more or less useful in so far as they reveal and make for the destruction of much that is rotten and obsolete within social insti­tutions. Further, the European war has done mankind a service, because it has revealed the undoubted weak­nesses inherent in organisations of the working class. And the European war has already demonstrated that a loathsome cancer is gnawing at the very vitals of the Labour movement—a cancer as dangerous as it is evil smelling.