Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/121

 their opponents in the same way we will reply simply by reprinting the Basel manifesto, which convicts these leaders of their change and for which there is no other word but treason.

The Basel resolution treats not of a national, not of a people's war, examples of which have occured in Europe, which even were typical of the period between 1789 and 1871, and not of a revolutionary war which Socialists have never renounced, but of the present war on the basis of "capitalistic Imperialism" and "dynastic interests" on the basis of "a policy of conquest" of both the belligerent groups, Austro-German as well as Anglo-French-Russian. Plekhanov, Kautsky & Co. are plainly deceiving the workers in repeating the selfish falsehoods of the bourgeoisie of all lands who strive with all their power to represent the imperialistic colonial predatory war—as a national and self-defensive war (no matter for whom), and in searching justifications for it from the sphere of historical examples of non-imperialistic wars.

The question as to the imperialistic, predatory, anti-proletarian character of this war has long ago passed from the purely theoretical stage. Not only has Imperialism been theoretically appraised in all its main characteristics as the struggle of a perishing, rotting, decrepit bourgeoisie for the partition of the world and the enslavement of "small" nations; not only have these conclusions been repeated in all the vast literature of the Socialists of all countries; not only has, for example, the Frenchman, Deleze, a representative of one of our "Allied" countries, in the pamphlet "The Inevitable War" (in the year 1911!), popularly exposed the predatory character of the present war even from the standpoint of the French bourgeoisie. That isn't enough. The representatives of the proletarian parties of all countries unanimously and formally declared at Basel their firm conviction that a war was imminent precisely of an Imperialistic character and drew tactical conclusion because of that. Therefore, in passing, all allusions as to failure to define the difference between international and national tactics must be repudiated as sophistry (cf. the last interview of Axelrod in Nos. 87 and 90 of Nasche Slovo), It is sophistry because a many-sided, scientific, analysis of Imperialism is one thing—an analysis which eventually is as endless as science itself, and another thing—the principles of Socialst tactics against capitalistic Imperialism explained in millions of copies of Social-Democratic papers and in decisions of the International.

Socialist parties are not debating clubs but organizations of a