Page:Lenin - The Proletarian Revolution and Kautsky the Renegade (1920).pdf/78

 As against these, the Socialist, the revolutionary proletarian the Internationalist, reasons differently. He says: "the character of the war (whether reactionary or revolutionary) does not depend upon who was the aggressor, or on whose territory the enemy is standing. It depends on what class is carrying on the war, and what is the politics of which the war is a continuation. If the war is a reactionary Imperialist war, that is being waged by two world-coalitions of the Imperialist predatory bourgeoisie, then every bourgeoisie, even of the smallest country, becomes a participant in the brigandage, and my duty as representative of the revolutionary proletariat is to prepare the world-proletarian revolution as the only escape from the horrers of the world-war. In other words, I must reason, not from the point of view of "my" country (for this is the reasoning of a poor stupid nationalist Philistine who does not realize that he is only a plaything in the hands of the Imperialist bourgeoisie), but from the point of view of my share in the preparation, in the propaganda, and in the acceleration of a world-proletarian revolution".

This is what Internationalism is, and this is the duty of the international revolutionary worker, of the genuine Socialist. But Kautsky the renegade has "forgotten" this elementary truth, and his apostasy becomes still more palpable when he passes from the approval of the tactics of the petty bourgeois nationalists (the Mensheviks in Russia, the Longuetists in France, the Turatis in Italy, and the Haases and others in Germany), to a criticism of the Bolshevik tactics. This is what he says:

"The Bolshevik revolution was based on the supposition that it would became the starting point of a general European revolution, that the bold initiative of Russia would arouse the proletarians of all Europe to an insurrection. From this point of view it was, of course, immaterial what forms the Russo-German separate peace would assume, what hardships or mutilations it would