The outbreak of the First World War immediately provoked a crisis in the Socialist International. Violating every decision of the International, the leaders of the German, French, British, and Austrian parties of the Second International had lined up behind their own bourgeoisie and became the most rabid chauvinists. The German Social Democratic press began to call on the working class to ‘defend the fatherland’. At a meeting of the Reichstag fraction on 3 August, the SPD leaders decided to vote for the war credits. The very next day, they voted with the bourgeois and Junker parties five billion marks for war purposes. The ‘Lefts’ who had spoken against in the fraction meeting, now voted ‘for’ on formal grounds of group discipline! This perfectly exposes the perfidious role of left reformism and centrism, which, despite their radical phrases, at decisive moments are inextricably bound up with the right wing. Their essential function is always to act as a left cover for the right reformists.
In all the belligerent countries, the Social Democratic leaders entered coalition governments with the representatives of the bourgeoisie. They preached the doctrine of ‘national unity’ – that emptiest of all slogans – opposing strikes ‘for the duration of the war’, accepting all the impositions placed on the shoulders of the workers and peasants in the name of the struggle for victory. In Germany, Vorwärts published an editorial statement promising not to publish articles reflecting “class discord and class hatred” for the duration of the war. The SPD was the most important and prestigious party of the Second International, with about a million members. Their betrayal was decisive. But the others were no better.
On 31 July 1914, the anti-war French Socialist leader Jean Jaurès was murdered by reactionaries. Four days later, the French Socialist leaders voted for war credits, as did the Belgians, and entered the bourgeois coalition government (the ‘union sacrée’ or sacred union). In Britain, Labour’s Arthur Henderson did the same. In France, the sell-out was actively backed by the ‘Syndicalist’ trade union leaders who before the war had demagogically called for a general strike against war. This slogan was opposed by the Marxists even before 1914. The idea of the pacifists and anarcho-syndicalists that it is possible to call a general strike to prevent war overlooks the obvious fact that a general strike can only be called when the necessary conditions exist. The situation on the eve of a war is normally the least appropriate for such a development. Unless we are talking about a general strike as part of a revolutionary situation, the prelude to the taking of power by the proletariat, it is ruled out as a means of preventing war. At best it is a utopian illusion, at worst it is a way of throwing dust in the eyes of the advanced workers by giving the impression of a radical policy, where nothing of the sort exists. Trotsky characterised it as “the most ill-considered and unfortunate of all types [of general strike] possible”. And he explains why:
Hence it follows that a general strike can be put on the agenda as a method of struggle against mobilisation and war only in the event that the entire preceding developments in the country have placed revolution and armed insurrection on the agenda. Taken, however, as a ‘special’ method of struggle against mobilisation, a general strike would be a sheer adventure. Excluding a possible but nevertheless exceptional case of a government plunging into war in order to escape from a revolution that directly threatens it, it must remain as a general rule that precisely prior to, during, and after mobilisation the government feels itself strongest, and consequently is least inclined to allow itself to be scared by a general strike. The patriotic moods that accompany mobilisation, together with the war terror, make hopeless the very execution of a general strike, as a rule. The most intrepid elements who, without taking the circumstances into account, plunge into the struggle would be crushed. The defeat and the partial annihilation of the vanguard would make revolutionary work difficult for a long time in the atmosphere of dissatisfaction that war breeds. A strike called artificially must turn inevitably into a putsch, and into an obstacle in the path of the revolution. (L. Trotsky, Writings: 1935-36, pp. 140-41.)
The truth of this assertion was demonstrated in 1914 when the anarcho-syndicalist leaders, the day after war was declared, immediately dropped the slogan of a general strike against war and meekly took up their ministerial portfolios in the government of the ‘sacred union’.
The official leaders of the Social Democracy of all the belligerent powers were easily ensnared, since they needed no encouragement to rally to the support of ‘their’ bourgeoisie. In the celebrated phrase of Clausewitz, ‘war is the continuation of politics by other means’. The right wing of the labour movement conducts a pro-bourgeois policy in peace time. Their collaboration with the most reactionary imperialist circles in time of war is only the continuation of this. The only difference is that war necessarily strips off the veneer of hypocrisy and mercilessly reveals every political trend in its true colours. The left reformists, as a petty bourgeois tendency, wriggle uncomfortably between a bourgeois and a proletarian policy, and express their confusion and impotence in pacifism. But the serious representatives of the ruling class in the labour movement, the labour lieutenants of capital, as they used to be called in the USA, make no bones about their support for war. The only difference between them is which particular imperialist gang they support. The British labour leaders backed king and country in a coalition with Lloyd George and Churchill, the German Social Democrats backed the Kaiser and the reactionary Junkers. The Social Democrats of the smaller capitalist powers backed either one or the other, reflecting the dependence of their bourgeoisie on German or Anglo-French imperialism. Thus, the Belgian Social Democrats lined up with the Allies, while the Dutch and Scandinavian Social Democratic leaders were more inclined to Germany.
The wave of social-patriotism swept away all before it. The ruling class of the belligerent countries disposed of ample means to confuse and intoxicate the masses with a thousand arguments. With the enthusiastic collaboration of the workers’ leaders, they succeeded in disorienting even a large layer of organised workers at the beginning of the war. Many German Social Democrats – not only the right-wing leaders, but honest workers – were prepared to justify the war, at least at first. They argued as follows: victory for the Tsar means that his Cossacks would destroy our party and our unions, papers, and halls. In the same way, the average French worker likewise listened trustingly to the appeals of Renaudel, Cachin, and co. to keep the Republic and democracy out of the hands of the Kaiser and his Junkers. But the worries of the average German or French worker are one thing, the cowardice, hypocrisy and cynicism of the leaders of the Socialist parties another thing altogether.
Unlike the masses, they could not plead ignorance. The imperialist character of the war was evident from the war aims of the contending powers. This was not a war for defence on the part of any of the contending powers, but solely a war for the redivision of the globe, for the possession of markets, raw materials, colonies, and spheres of influence between Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Russia, and Austria-Hungary. Russia had her eyes on Turkey, leading directly to a conflict between Germany and Russia over Constantinople and the Straits. Russia and Turkey were also in conflict over Armenia, with Austria over the Balkans and with Austria and Italy over Albania. Nor could it be argued that the outbreak of war had taken the Socialist International by surprise. For at least a decade before 1914, the great powers had been systematically preparing for war. Thus, the question of who struck the first blow was therefore of no significance.
The danger of war had been widely discussed. In two congresses of the International – at Stuttgart (1907) and Basel (1912) – all the socialist parties in the world solemnly pledged themselves to oppose any attempt to unleash an imperialist war. At the Stuttgart Congress, they approved an amendment moved by Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg that:
In case a war should break out anyway, it is their duty to intervene for its speedy termination and to strive with all their power to utilise the economic and political crisis created by the war to rouse the masses and thereby hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule.
The Basel congress, called as an emergency response to the Balkan war, unanimously ratified the earlier decision. As Zinoviev later commented:
The Basel resolution was not worse, but better than that of Stuttgart. Every word in it is a slap in the face to the present tactics of the ‘leading’ parties of the Second International. (Lenin’s Struggle for a Revolutionary International, p. 35 and p. 103.)
Because in the moment of truth, every one of the socialist parties betrayed the cause of socialism and the working class. Only the Russian and Serbian parties stood against the war. The Italian party took a halfway position of ‘neither collaboration nor sabotage’.