Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/162



Certain revolutionary Socialists who are advocates of disarmament use as their main argument the claim that this demand expresses most clearly, most emphatically and most thoroughly the struggle against all forms of militarism, against every war. And this main argument constitutes precisely the fundamental mistake of all the advocates of disarmament. Socialists cannot be opposed to every war without ceasing to be Socialists.

Socialists have never been opposed to revolutionary wars, and they never can accept that attitude. The bourgeoisie of the imperialistic nations is thoroughly reactionary, and we know that the war waged at present by this bourgeoisie is a reactionary, criminal war of spoliation. If this is a fact, what about a war against this bourgeoisie? For example, a war of the suppressed and subject or colonial peoples against the imperialistic bourgeoisie?

In this program of the German "International Group" we read in paragraph 5: "In the period of Imperialism no national wars are possible" This is evidently wrong. The history of the twentieth century, of this century of Imperialism, is full of colonial wars. And what we, with our dirty European chauvinism, call "colonial wars" are often national wars or national revolts of oppressed peoples.

One of the essential characteristics of Imperialism is precisely that it accelerates the development of Capitalism in backward countries and with it the struggle against national oppression. This is a fact. And from this fact it follows inevitably that Imperialism must often breed national wars.

Junius, who defends the program of the International Group, says that in the epoch of Imperialism every national war against one of the imperialistic powers results in the action of another imperialistic power competing with the first one, and that every national war accordingly changes into an imperialistic war. This