30. The first imperialist war completely dissolved the Second International as a revolutionary party and thereby created the necessity and possibility of creating the Third International. But the republican “revolution” in Germany and Austro-Hungary, the democratization of suffrage in a number of countries, concessions by the frightened European bourgeoisie in the sphere of social legislation in the first years after the war – all this, in conjunction with the disastrous policy of the epigones of Leninism, gave the Second International a considerable respite, no longer as a revolutionary but as a conservative-liberal workers’ party of pacific reform. However, very soon – finally with the coming of the last world crisis – all the possibilities on the road of reforms proved exhausted. The bourgeoisie passed over to counter-attack. The Social Democracy treacherously gave up one gain after another. All species of reformism-parliamentarian, trade-union, municipal, co-operative “socialism” – have suffered irreparable bankruptcies and catastrophes in recent years. As a result of this, the preparation for a new war finds the Second International with a broken spine. The Social Democratic parties are undergoing an intensive process of discoloration. Consistent reformism takes on new colour; it becomes silent or splits off. Its place is being taken by various shadings of centrism, either in the form of numerous factions within the old parties or as independent organizations.
31. On the question of the defence of the fatherland, masked reformists and right centrists (Léon Blum, Hendrik de Man, Robert Grimm, Martin Tranmael, Otto Bauer and others) resort increasingly to diplomatic, confused, conditional formulations calculated at one and the same time to pacify the bourgeoisie and to fool the workers. They put forward economic “plans” or a series of social demands, promising to defend the fatherland from external “fascism” to the extent that the national bourgeoisie will support their program. The purpose in thus posing the question consists in glossing over the question of the class character of the state, evading the problem of the conquest of power and, under the cover of a “socialist” plan, in dragging in the defence of the capitalist fatherland.
32. The left centrists, who are in turn distinguished by a great number of shadings (SAP in Germany, OSP in Holland, ILP in England, the Zyromsky and Marceau Pivert groups in France and others) arrive in words at the renunciation of the defence of the fatherland. But from this bare renunciation they do not draw the necessary practical conclusions. The greater half of their internationalism, if not nine-tenths of it, bears a platonic character. They fear to break away from the right centrists; in the name of the struggle with “sectarianism,” they carry on a struggle against Marxism, refuse to fight for a revolutionary International and continue to remain in the Second International, at the head of which stands the king’s footman, Vandervelde. Expressing at certain moments the leftward shift of the masses, in the final analysis the centrists put a brake upon the revolutionary regrouping within the proletariat and consequently also upon the struggle against war.
33. In its very essence, centrism means half-heartedness and vacillation. But the problem of war is least of all favourable for the policy of vacillation. For the masses, centrism is always only a short transition stage. The growing danger of war will make for ever-sharper differentiation within the centrist groupings that now dominate the workers’ movement. The proletarian vanguard will be the better armed for the struggle against war the sooner and more fully it will free its mind from the web of centrism. A necessary condition for success on this road is to pose clearly and irreconcilably all questions connected with war.