70. The first prerequisite for success is the training of party cadres in the correct understanding of all the conditions of imperialist war and of all the political processes that accompany it. Woe to that party that confines itself in this burning question to general phrases and abstract slogans! The bloody events will crash over its head and smash it.
It is necessary to set up special circles for the study of the political experiences of the war of 1914-18 (ideological preparations for war by the imperialists, misleading of public opinion by military headquarters through the patriotic press, the role of the antithesis defence-attack; groupings in the proletarian camp, the isolation of the Marxist elements, etc., etc.).
71. For a revolutionary party, the moment of declaration of war is especially critical. The bourgeois and social-patriotic press in an alliance with the radio and movies will pour out upon the toiling masses torrents of chauvinistic poison. Even the most revolutionary and tempered party cannot as a whole resist this. The present thoroughly falsified history of the Bolshevik Party does not serve in the realistic preparation of the advanced workers for the test, but lulls them into passive impotence by an invented ideal form.
Despite the fact that tsarist Russia could by no stretch of imagination have been considered either as a democracy or as the bearer of culture, nor, finally, as belonging to the defensive side, the Bolshevik fraction of the Duma together with the Menshevik fraction issued at the beginning a social-patriotic declaration diluted with pink pacifist internationalism. The Bolshevik fraction soon took a more revolutionary position, but at the trial of the fraction all the accused deputies and their theoretic guide Kamenev, with the exception of Muranov, categorically differentiated themselves from the defeatist theory of Lenin. The illegal work of the party almost died down at the beginning. Only gradually did the revolutionary leaflets begin to appear that rallied the workers under the banner of internationalism, without, however, advancing defeatist slogans.
The first two years of the war greatly undermined the patriotism of the masses and moved the party to the left. But the February Revolution, having transformed Russia into a “democracy,” gave rise to a new powerful wave of “revolutionary” patriotism. The overwhelming majority of the leaders of the Bolshevik Party did not withstand it even then. In March 1917, Stalin and Kamenev imparted to the central party organ a social-patriotic direction. On this basis a rapprochement, and in the majority of cities even a direct fusion, of Bolshevik and Menshevik organizations occurred. Protests by the firmest revolutionists, chiefly in the advanced districts of Petrograd, were needed; the arrival of Lenin in Russia and his irreconcilable struggle against social patriotism were needed to straighten out the party’s internationalist front. Such was the case with the best, most revolutionary and tempered party.
72. The study of the historic experience of Bolshevism has an invaluable educational importance for the advanced workers: it shows them the terrific force of the pressure of bourgeois public opinion that they will have to withstand and teaches them, at the same time, not to despair, not to sheath weapons, not to lose courage despite complete isolation at the beginning of war.
It is necessary to study no less carefully the political alignments within the proletariat of other countries, both those that participated in the war and those that remained neutral. Of special significance is the experience of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in Germany, where events took a different course than in Russia but in the final analysis led to the same conclusion: that it is necessary to learn to swim against the current.
73. It is necessary to follow closely the patriotic preparation of cannon fodder now proceeding: the diplomatic fencing that has as its aim the laying of responsibility on the other side; the treacherous formulas of open and hidden social patriots preparing for themselves a bridge from pacifism to militarism; the hollow slogans of the “Communist” leaders who will be just as bewildered on the first day of war as the German “leaders” on the night of the Reichstag fire.
74. it is necessary to gather carefully the most characteristic clippings from official government and opposition articles and speeches, comparing them with the experience of the previous war; to foretell what direction the further work of fooling the people will take; to strengthen these predictions later by the array of facts; to teach the proletarian vanguard to orient itself independently in events so as not to be taken unawares.
75. Reinforced agitation against imperialism and militarism must proceed not from abstract formulas but from concrete facts that strike the masses. It is necessary painstakingly to expose not only the open military budget but also all the masked forms of militarism, not leaving without a protest war manoeuvres, military furnishings, orders, etc.
Through well-trained workers, it is necessary to raise the question of the war danger and of struggle against it in all organizations of the proletariat without exception and in the labor press, demanding from the leaders clear and definite answers to the question: what to do?
76. To gain the confidence of the youth, it is necessary not only to declare a fight to the finish upon the morally corrupting Social Democracy and upon the dull bureaucratism of the Third International but also to actually create an international organization basing itself on the critical thought and revolutionary initiative of the young generation.
It is necessary to arouse the working youth against all kinds and forms of its militarization by the bourgeois state. Simultaneously, it must be mobilized and militarized in the interests of the revolution (committees of defence against fascism, Red fighting detachments, workers’ militia, struggle for the arming of the proletariat).
77. To conquer revolutionary positions in the trade unions and other working-class mass organizations, it is necessary to break pitilessly with bureaucratic ultimatism, to take the workers where they are and as they are, and to lead them forward from partial tasks to general ones, from defence to attack, from patriotic prejudices to the overthrow of the bourgeois state.
Since the leaderships of trade-union bureaucracy in the majority of countries represent essentially an unofficial part of the capitalist police, a revolutionist must know how to fight irreconcilably against it, combining legal activity with illegal, fighting courage with conspirative prudence.
Only by these combined methods can we succeed in rallying the working class, and in the first place the youth, to the revolutionary banner, blaze a trail to the capitalist barracks and arouse all the oppressed.
78. The struggle against war can acquire a genuinely wide, mass character only if the working women and peasant women take part in it. The bourgeois degeneration of the Social Democracy as well as the bureaucratic deterioration of the Third International have delivered the hardest blow to the most oppressed and disfranchised strata of the proletariat, that is, first of all to the working women. To awaken them, gain their confidence, show them the true road, means to mobilize against imperialism the revolutionary passions of the most downtrodden part of humanity.
Anti-militarist work among women must in particular safeguard the replacement of mobilized men by revolutionary working women to whom, in case of war, a great part of party and trade-union work must inevitably pass.
79. If the proletariat should find it beyond its power to prevent war by means of revolution – and this is the only means of preventing war – the workers, together with the whole people, will be forced to participate in the army and in war. Individualistic and anarchistic slogans of refusal to undergo military service, passive resistance, desertion, sabotage are in basic contradiction to the methods of the proletarian revolution. But just as in the factory the advanced worker feels himself a slave of capital, preparing for his liberation, so in the capitalist army too he feels himself a slave of imperialism. Compelled today to give his muscles and even his life, he does not surrender his revolutionary consciousness. He remains a fighter, learns how to use arms, explains even in the trenches the class meaning of war, groups around himself the discontented, connects them into cells, transmits the ideas and slogans of the party, watches closely the changes in the mood of the masses, the subsiding of the patriotic wave, the growth of indignation, and summons the soldiers to the aid of the workers at the critical moment.