25. The commandment of national defence follows from the dogma that the national solidarity of classes stands above the class struggle. In reality, no possessing class ever recognized the defence of the fatherland as such, that is, under any and all conditions, but rather covered up by this formula the protection of its privileged position in the fatherland. Overthrown ruling classes always become “defeatists,” that is, are ready to restore their privileged position with the aid of foreign arms.
The oppressed classes, not conscious of their own interests and accustomed to sacrifices, accept the slogan “national defence” at face value, that is, as an absolute duty that stands above the classes. The basic historic crime of the parties of the Second International consists in their fostering and strengthening the slavish habits and traditions of the oppressed, in neutralizing their revolutionary indignation and falsifying their class consciousness with the aid of patriotic ideas.
If the European proletariat did not overthrow the bourgeoisie at the end of the great war; if humanity writhes now in the agonies of the crisis; if a new war threatens to transform cities and villages into heaps of ruins – the chief responsibility for these crimes and calamities falls on the Second International.
26. The policy of social patriotism rendered the masses helpless before fascism. If in time of war it is necessary to reject the class struggle for the sake of national interests, it is also necessary to renounce “Marxism” in the epoch of a great economic crisis that endangers “the nation” no less than war. Back in April 1915, Rosa Luxemburg exhausted this question with the following words: “Either the class struggle is the imperative law of proletarian existence also during war … or the class struggle is a crime against national interests and the safety of the fatherland also in time of peace.” The idea of “national interests” and the “safety of the fatherland” has been transformed by fascism into chains and fetters for the proletariat.
27. The German Social Democracy supported Hitler’s foreign Policy up to the very moment that he drove it out. The final replacement of democracy by fascism revealed that the Social Democracy remains patriotic just so long as the political régime assures it its profits and privileges. Finding themselves in emigration, the former Hohenzollern patriots turn about-face and are ready to welcome a preventive war of the French bourgeoisie against Hitler. Without any difficulty, the Second International amnestied Wels and Co. who would on the morrow be reconverted into ardent patriots if only the German bourgeoisie should beckon them back with one little finger.
28. The French, Belgian and other socialists responded to the German events by an open alliance with their own bourgeoisie on the question of “national defence.” While official France was carrying on a “small,” “insignificant” but exceptionally atrocious war against Morocco, the French Social Democracy and reformist trade unions discussed at their congresses the inhumanity of war in general, having in mind thereby chiefly the war of revenge on the part of Germany. Parties that support the brutalities of colonial robberies, where it is merely a question of new profits, will support with eyes shut any national government in a great war where the fate of the bourgeois republic itself will be involved.
29. The incompatibility of Social Democratic policy with the historic interests of the proletariat is incomparably deeper and sharper now than on the eve of the imperialist war. The struggle with the patriotic prejudices of the masses means, above all, an irreconcilable struggle against the Second International as an organization, as a party, as a program, as a banner.