Page:Lenin - The Collapse of the Second International - tr. Sirnis (1919).pdf/40



The preceding pages were already written when No. 9 of the Neue Zeit, of May 28th, appeared with the concluding portion of Kautsky's argument on "The Collapse of Social Democracy" (paragraph 7 of his reply to Cunow). Kautsky briefly formulates all his old sophisms as well as a fresh one in defence of Socialist Chauvinism as follows:

The new sophism and fraud perpetrated upon the workers consists in this, that the war, you see, is not "purely" imperialist war!

On the question of the character and meaning of the present war Kautsky wavers terribly, while he circumvents the precise declarations of the Basle and Chemnitz conferences as carefuly as does a thief the spot where his last theft was committed. In the pamphlet "The National State," written in February, 1915, Kautsky asserted that "in the last degree the war is an imperialist one" (p. 64). Now a fresh reservation is being made to the effect that it is not a purely imperialist war. What sort of war is it, then?

It is, it appears, also a national war! Kautsky has talked and argued until he has actually put forward the following defence, and in doing so, makes use of Plekhanov's dialectics:

"The present war is not only an off-shoot of imperialism, but also of the Russian Revolution." As early as 1904 Kautsky foresaw that the Russian Revolution would resurrect Pan-Slavism in a new form, and that "a democratic Russia must needs powerfully influence the efforts of the Austrian and Turkish Slavs after the attainment of their national independence. In such a case the Polish question would also become… Austria is bound to collapse, for with the downfall