Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/142

 that is for about one hundredth of the peoples engaged in the present war, this war is really "the continuation" of the bourgeois emancipation movement. For the remaining 99 per cent. the war is a continuation of the politics of the imperialistic and decaying bourgeoisie, capable of corrupting but not of emancipating any nation.

The Triple Entente, while "emancipating" Servia, betrays the interests of Servian freedom when it helps Italy to rob Austria.

This is common knowledge, but Kautsky distorts it all in order to justify opportunism. There is no phenomenon, in nature or in society which is "purely" something and nothing else; this is revealed to us by the application of the Marxist form of reasoning which shows us that the very idea of that "purity" comes from a narrow, one-sided view of things, which does not follow all the threads to their very end and with all their intricacy. There cannot be any "pure" Capitalism showing absolutely no alloy of feudalism or commercialism.

And therefore, to come and tell us that the war is not "purely" imperialistic when we see the imperialists fooling the popular masses and carefully concealing their crudely thievish aims under "nationalistic" phrases, is to betray either infinite pedantry and stupidity or chicanery and deceitfulness. The real fact of the matter is that Kautsky actually abets the imperialists in their attempts at deceiving the nation, when he states that "for the popular masses, among them the proletarian masses, the most important factors are nationalistic problems, while for the ruling masses, imperialistic tendencies are foremost," (page 273) and when he strengthens that statement by mentioning "the infinite variety of activities" on page 274. Of course, activities are extremely varied, this is gospel truth. But it is nevertheless true that in that great variety there are two main currents: in its concrete essence the war is "a continuation" of the policy of Imperialism, that is the exploitation of foreign nations by the decaying bourgeoisie and the governments of the great powers; and abstract ideology amounts to "nationalistic" phrases scattered about to satisfy the masses.

The old sophism, reiterated by Kautsky, that at the beginning of the war, the only alternative according to the left-wing Socialists was: Imperialism or Socialism, has already been shot to pieces.

This presupposes a shameful mental reservation, for Kautsky knows too well that the left-wing faced an entirely different alternative: either join hands with the imperialist thieves and deceivers, or preach and prepare revolutionary action. Kautsky also knows that it is only the censor who prevents the left-wing Socialists from