Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/173

 3.—The third, truly internationalist, is most accurately represented by the so-called "Zimmerwald Left." The declaration of war on August 4. 1914, swept organized Socialism into a support of the government, in Germany, France, Austria and England. After a year of war the majority Socialists retained their pro-government attitude, and the minority determined upon initiating some sort of international action. The Socialist Party of Italy, which opposed Italy's entry into war and after war was declared acted and still acts against it, on May 15, 1915, decided through its Executive Committee to take the initiative in calling an international conference of Socialist parties or groups and labor organizations opposed to the war and of whom it could be assumed that they would favor common action in resuming and carrying on the proletarian class struggle against the war. The Conference met in Zimmerwald, Switzerland, September 15, 1915. Italy, Russia, Rumania and Bulgaria were officially represented by party delegates; from Germany, France, Sweden, Norway, and Switzerland only groups or minorities were represented. The majority of the delegates agreed on a 60cial-pacifist resolution, a resolution obviously a compromise and which did not break completely with the dominant Socialism. A minority, however, dissatisfied with the spirit and resolution of the Conference, broke away and adopted a revolutionary declaration of their own. Shortly after, another Conference was held at Kienthal. Another "Zimmerwald" Conference was held in Stockholm, September 5–7, at which the Independent Socialist Party of Germany, which had refused to meet in the Stockholm Conference together with the Government Socialists of Germany, the Austrian minority, etc., and the Socialist Propaganda League of the United States were represented. The resolution adopted was much more radical than the one adopted at Zimmerwald. The Government Socialists were completely condemned: "Only a peace won and shaped by the Socialist proletariat through decisive mass actions can permanently prevent the renewal of the world-wide massacre. A capitalistic peace, no matter how it might be shaped, would lead to die shifting upon the shoulders of the working masses of the immense war debts in every country. … The only guarantee against a return of the world war is the social republic. … The hour has struck for beginning the great common battle in all countries for the bringing of peace, for the liberation of the peoples through die Socialist proletariat. The means for this is the international mass strike."—L. C. F.

It is characterized by its complete schism from the social-patriots and the centrists. It has been waging a relentless war against its own imperialistic government and its own imperialistic bourgeoisie. Its motto is: "Our worst enemy is at home." It has fought ruthlessly the nice and respectable social pacifist's phraseology, for those people who are social pacifists in words are bourgeois pacifists in deeds; bourgeois pacifists dream of an everlasting peace which shall not be preceded by the overthrow of capitalist domination. They have been employing every form of sophistry to demonstrate the impossibility, the inopportunities of keeping up the proletarian class struggle or of starting a proletarian Social Revolution in connection with the present war.

The members of this group in Germany are known as the Spartacus or International Group, to which Karl Liebknecht be-