Response to war by Kautsky, Lenin

[Noa Rodman]

Already in 1912 Lenin was troubled by the response Kautsky would take to the war.




Vladimir Ilyich's indignation was aroused by an article by Kautsky in Neue Zeit, an out-and-out opportunist article, arguing that it would be a mistake for the workers to organize armed uprisings or strikes against war. Vladimir Ilyich had written a good deal about the organizing role of strikes during the Revolution of 1905. After Kautsky's article he dealt with the subject more thoroughly still in a number of articles. He attached tremendous importance to strikes, as he did to all forms of direct action by the working class. https://www.marxists.org/archive/krupskaya/works/rol/rol17.htm



In preparation to the Basel congress he wrote to Kamenev:



get the last issue of Neue Zeit (No. 6, 8. XI) where Kautsky advances purely opportunistic arguments
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/…/nov/10lbk.htm (https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1912/nov/10lbk.htm)



And the following week in a letter to Plekhanov he again mentioned Kautsky's response to war:


We ask you to lay before the commission,[3] (https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1912/nov/17.htm#fwV36E234) by way of information, our shade of opinion, too, if we happen to differ with you on the following point.
Kautsky’s article in No. 6 of Neue Zeit, after the October session of the I.S.B.,[4] (https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1912/nov/17.htm#fwV36E235) is obviously the official opinion of the Germans, the Austrians and others. We do not accept the main point of the article (S. 191–92, from the words “Dabei müssen”[1] (https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1912/nov/17.htm#fwV36P202F01) to “heischenden Massen”[2] (https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1912/nov/17.htm#fwV36P202F02) in particular).[5] (https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1912/nov/17.htm#fwV36E236)
With Kautsky it turns out to be a pledge against a revolutionary mass strike. This is inadmissible both from the Russian standpoint (there are 100,000 political strikers now in St. Petersburg, with revolutionary meetings and sympathies for the sailors’ mutiny) and from the general European standpoint. However, you know our point of view from our writings, and I hope you will not object to having a talk with Comrade Kamenev.
Comrade Kamenev is our delegate to the I.S.B.

(I don't know if Plekhanov did differ with Lenin here)


https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1912/nov/17.htm (https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.marxists.org%2Farchive%2 Flenin%2Fworks%2F1912%2Fnov%2F17.htm&h=eAQGh5rQO&enc=AZNmy6yIfojQpqeZ499pj9kO_cLtp5yp8A4Fnz9K11wPIq aNEc8StetPqAW0ebC83TEwW0Ba94W4lUFoe5a3yGha-6rY3EslWl1RIXURIlh5y2HOTeMPQiFIZjMP3fbUQHbJjdUPZTZ _9HQ5X1RyF8SjV7E_ssrvLMbCs3jBG23w6g&s=1)

(https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.marxists.org%2Farchive%2 Flenin%2Fworks%2F1912%2Fnov%2F17.htm&h=eAQGh5rQO&enc=AZNmy6yIfojQpqeZ499pj9kO_cLtp5yp8A4Fnz9K11wPIq aNEc8StetPqAW0ebC83TEwW0Ba94W4lUFoe5a3yGha-6rY3EslWl1RIXURIlh5y2HOTeMPQiFIZjMP3fbUQHbJjdUPZTZ _9HQ5X1RyF8SjV7E_ssrvLMbCs3jBG23w6g&s=1)
I translate here the passage from Kautsky's article which incurred Lenin's wrath:



In this connection, however, we must now be quite clear about the way in which we can and want to counteract the war.


One thing is certain: today, in the age of conscription and the growing strength of the revolutionary proletariat no government dares to go to war, if it has not succeeded previously in producing a general enthusiasm for war in the population.


On the other hand, it is equally certain that it would be hopeless, yes directly ruinous, in a population that is carried away by general war enthusiasm to want to stop by mass actions or even by the mightiest among them, by a mass strike, the government and the war.


Our task is therefore an essentially propagandistic one. Mass actions herewith as planned actions of our party can only come into consideration in so far as they are of a propagandistic nature.


We must reckon with the possibility that from war-inciting elements, whoever they may be, everything imaginable will be summoned, by spreading lies of all kinds to scare, confuse, stir up the masses. The control of the press and the telegraph makes such pitiful incitement only too easily. To prevent this, becomes one of our main tasks, the social democratic daily press our most powerful instrument of peace.


But it would be the worst, if we wanted to use the present moment, to pursue an also otherwise perverted pseudo-Marxism, to turn to the proletariat alone, not even to the other working masses, intellectuals, petty bourgeois and peasants. Sure, the proletariat is the safest bulwark of peace, but petty bourgeois and peasants are no less interested in it.
Even worse it would be, if now we wanted to try to convince the non-proletarian strata, that imperialism and the struggle for Turkish loot is a vital necessity for bourgeois society, and if we oppose the war and called for peace, it is merely done, because we wanted to destroy bourgeois society.


To preach such nonsense today means committing a crime against world peace. Our tactics for its preservation has not to try to separate the socialist proletariat of the other strata interested in peace and to isolate it, but much rather to rally with it all strata of the people, who are not interested in the war, by the force of the proletarian opposition to war, to isolate the warmongers and thereby make them powerless against the ******* of the peace clamouring masses.

http://library.fes.de/cgi-bin/neuzeit.pl?id=07.08523&dok=1912-13a&f=191213a_0185&l=191213a_0193&c=191213a_0191

The response of Kautsky and the center is described by William Walling (in The Outlook, 18th November 1914 http://back.thebrowser.com/article/are-the-german-people-unanimously-for-the-war/):


As editor of the party’s intellectual organ, Die Neue Zeit, his influence in a country as devoted as Germany to intellectual authority is scarcely less than that of Vorwaerts. Kautsky is a revolutionist, and in nearly every number manages to get by the censor with statements which none of his Socialist readers can fail to understand. For example, when he compares existing armies to the people’s army of the French Revolution, it is scarcely necessary for him to go further and remind readers who have been thoroughly informed on this particular period that this revolutionary army overthrew monarch, aristocracy, and ruling classes generally. Yet, to make sure, he goes on to explain (in the number of September 25) that in the wars of the French Revolution ”all respect for private property was cast aside, and all property was regarded as the property of the nation,” adding that the present war may accomplish a great deal in this direction.

In the same article Kautsky speaks at length of the probability of a revolution in Russia, closing by a comparison with Germany and Austria which will suggest to every German reader that in reality he refers to these countries quite as much as to Russia: The war cannot be waged for any long period without concessions by the Czar, the granting of greater liberties, which perhaps are not meant very seriously, but which cannot be taken back after the war; [...]
This must be read in connection with the commonplace among German Socialists already referred to, that a great European war which did not lead to victory is the most promising of all possible situations for a revolution and the establishment of a democratic republic.

(That September 25, 1914 article by Kautsky in full: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?&num=969&u=1&seq=5&view=image&size=100&id=njp.32101074946722
btw Lenin doesn't seem to have comment on it)

The same American journal also published a nice interview with Karl Liebknecht, Kautsky and Bernstein (Three German Socialists on the War):
http://www.unz.org/Pub/Outlook-1916jan26-00182

(Here's some story about that interview: http://www.unz.org/Pub/Outlook-1916apr12-00835)

Clearly the interviewer was upset with Kautsky's cautious response, in contrast to Walling who believed that socialists were able to read between the lines of Kautsky's statements.

Lenin once quoted a Swiss magazine of petty-bourgeois Christian democrats to show that even they were more vocal in opposition to war than Kautsky.

God-fearing philistines go as far as to say that it would not be bad to turn weapons against those who “are urging people into the war”, while “authoritative” Social-Democrats like Kautsky “scientifically” defend the most despicable chauvinism, or, like Plekhanov, declare the propaganda of civil war against the bourgeoisie a harmful “utopia”! Indeed, if such “Social-Democrats” wish to be in the majority and to form the official “International”(= an alliance for international justification of national chauvinism), then is it not better to give up the name of “Social-Democrats”, which has been besmirched and degraded by them, and return to the old Marxist name of Communists? Kautsky once threatened to do that when the opportunist Bernsteinians[3] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/dec/05.htm#fwV21E041) seemed to be close to conquering the German party officially. What was an idle threat from his lips will perhaps become action to others.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/dec/05.htm

What if Kautsky was aware that such a vocal response could even be made by petty-bourgeois (and hence was ineffective)?

Interesting remark by Lenin (to article in Golos):


Perhaps, there is another half a century of oppression before the socialist revolution, but what will our epoch leave, what will be our own contribution? Scorn for the opportunists and traitors or preparation of civil war??
Martov in Golos No. 21
too early for Commune slogan: isolation from the broad popular masses!!?

[A reference to the article “Silence, Eunuchs!” published as an editorial in No. 21 of Golos on October 6, 1914, which said that the German Social-Democrats would have compromised themselves if, in the conditions of Germany pressed by the Russian troops, they were to “issue a call for a revolutionary Commune”, and that this would have isolated them from the broad masses.] http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/oct/00.htm

[Noa Rodman]

Lenin's articles on strikes:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/jan/12.htm
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/jan/00b.htm
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/feb/02.htm
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/jun/08.htm
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/jun/12b.htm
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/oct/25.htm
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/dec/31.htm
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/apr/04.htm

There is however no reference to strategy in context of war in these writings (or others by Lenin afaik).

It seems Lenin was satisfied with the resolution adopted at the Basel congress although it had no explicit statement on insurrection in case of war (which part of the French delegates had wanted to include). There is just implicit comparison with 1871 and 1905. In any case the Basel congress was more of a symbolic thing than a real occasion for discussion.

Lenin based himself on the Basel resolution to speak of betrayal by Kautsky (i.e. Lenin's 'aggressive unoriginality'), but towards the end of his life Lenin wrote:


Examples from, say, pre-war German literature, and in particular, the example of the Basle Congress of 1912, should be used as especially concrete proof that the theoretical admission that war is criminal, that socialists cannot condone war, etc., turn out to be empty phrases, because there is nothing concrete in them.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/04b.htm

I see a lot more similarities between Lenin and Kautsky's position on war than differences. Kautsky's position was expressed as early as 1907, so where was the response by Lenin then?


Already in June 1907, before the Stuttgart International Congress, I developed this thought in a preface to my brochure Patriotismus und Sozialdemokratie, where I showed that we, as long as we lack the strength to take political power during peace, would also be unable to prevent war. The attempts to do were certain to meet defeat.
[...] Governments are never stronger than at the outbreak of war, and I can’t recall any example in history where a declaration of war was met by an insurrection in its own land. Even the bankrupt French Empire in 1870 and the likewise Czarist Empire in 1904 met with no resistance at the opening of their wars.

http://spiritofcontradiction.eu/bronterre/2013/10/21/extract-from-kautskys-die-vereinigten-staaten-mitteleuropas-1916

[Tower of Bebel]

I think this report (https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1907/oct/20.htm) of the Stutgart Congress (1907) represent Lenin's response.

We pass now to the last, and perhaps the most important, resolution of the Congress—that on anti-militarism. The notorious Hervé, who has made such a noise in France and Europe, advocated a semi-anarchist view by naively suggesting that every war be “answered” by a strike and an uprising. He did not understand, on the one hand, that war is a necessary product of capitalism, and that the proletariat cannot renounce participation in revolutionary wars, for such wars are possible, and have indeed occurred in capitalist societies. He did not understand, on the other hand, that the possibility of “answering” a war depends on the nature of the crisis created by that war. The choice of the means of struggle depends on these conditions; moreover, the struggle must consist (and here we have the third misconception, or shallow thinking of Hervéism) not simply in replacing war by peace, but in replacing capitalism by socialism. The essential thing is not merely to prevent war, but to utilise the crisis created by war in order to has ten the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. However, underlying all these semi-anarchist absurdities of Hervéism there was one sound and practical purpose: to spur the socialist movement so that it will not be restricted to parliamentary methods of struggle alone, so that the masses will realise the need for revolutionary action in connection with the crises which war inevitably involves, so that, lastly, a more lively understanding of international labour solidarity and of the falsity of bourgeois patriotism will be spread among the masses.


Bebel’s resolution (move.d by the Germans and coinciding in all essentials with Guesde’s resolution) had one shortcoming—it failed to indicate the active tasks of the proletariat. This made it possible to read Bebel’s orthodox propositions through opportunist spectacles, and Vollmar was quick to turn this possibility into a reality.


That is why Rosa Luxemburg and the Russian Social-Democratic delegates moved their amendments to Bebel’s resolution. These amendments (1) stated that militarism is the chief weapon of class oppression; (2) pointed out the need for propaganda among the youth; (3) stressed that Social-Democrats should not only try to prevent war from breaking out or to secure the speediest termination of wars that have already begun, but should utilise the crisis created by the war to hasten the overthrow of the bourgeoisie.


The subcommission (elected by the Anti-Militarism Commission) incorporated all these amendments in Bebel’s resolution. In addition, Jaurès made this happy suggestion: instead of enumerating the methods of struggle (strikes, uprisings) the resolution should cite historical examples of proletarian action against war, from the demonstrations in Europe to the revolution in Russia. The result of all this redrafting was a resolution which, it is true, is unduly long, but is rich in thought and precisely formulates the tasks of the proletariat. It combines the stringency of orthodox—i. e., the only scientific Marxist analysis with recommendations for the most resolute and revolutionary action by the workers’ parties. This resolution cannot be interpreted à la Vollmar, nor can it be fitted into the narrow framework of naïve Hervéism.

This explains why Kautsky's response was, according to Lenin, "inadmissible both from the Russian standpoint (there are 100,000 political strikers now in St. Petersburg, with revolutionary meetings and sympathies for the sailors’ mutiny) and from the general European standpoint." Lenin assumed that in 1912 the situation was ripe for political mass strikes in Europe. This must have meant that Lenin thought that, if the war was going to break out in 1912, the mass strike could be used against it because they are happening right now. Note that in 1907 Lenin was less specific about the use of the strike weapon because presumebly that year was a year of tsarist reaction against the strike wave of 1905. 1912-1913 was a period of upsurge however. The question is: what found Lenin appropriate in 1914? What was his analysis of the situation at that crucial moment? In 1907 and in 1912 Kautsky assumed that at the outbreak of war the revolutionary action of the proletariat would temporarily subside. I guess he thought the same in 1914.

[Noa Rodman]

There might be more specific statements on anti-war strategy by the bolsheviks because Lenin also wrote to Plekhanov that "you know our point of view from our writings", but maybe not (I haven't checked the 1907-1912 period).

Notes On The Tasks Of Our Delegation At The Hague (1922) is the best thing written though.


We must take special pains to explain that the question of “defence of the fatherland” will inevitably arise, and that the overwhelming majority of the working people will inevitably decide it in favour of their bourgeoisie.
...
In all probability, the communist press in most countries will also disgrace itself.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/04b.htm

The Report of the international peace congress isn't online, but Radek writes that the soviet delegation said:


We did nut call upon them to perform any feats of heroism; we did not say: Gentlemen, if a war breaks out you must make a revolution. On the contrary, we said: If a war broke out, the workers would not be in a position to resist it, the workers would go to war and then the task would be to do everything in order to make the war end in social revolution.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/radek/1922/ci/essen.htm

some great passages in there:

The Hague Conference justified the worst fears. It represented a picture of a cemetery in which the corpses that had long decayed had crawled out of their graves to drink beer and to talk about the advantages of peace and the evils of war. The “old leaders of the proletariat,” as they described themselves, but who are really people who had outlived their time by at least 300 years, sat together with not less ancient, pacifist, dames, digesting their dinners, listening to addresses on the use of the cinematograph in combating war and how to train the coming generation so as to lessen the possibilities of war.