310 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THE DISARMAMENT CRY 311 everything warlike simply demand disarmament? Never will the women of an oppressed class that is really revolutionary be content with such a base inaction. They will say to their sons. Soon you will be a man. They will give you arms. Bear them and learn well the business of war. This knowledge is necessary for the proletarians, not in order that they may shoot at their brothers, the workers of other countries, as they are doing in the present war, and as they are being advised to do by renegades from Socialism, but in order that they may struggle against the bourgeoisie of their own country, in order that they may put an end to exploitation, poverty and war, not by the path of good natured wishes, but by the path of victory over the bourgeoisie and of disarmament of the bourgeoisie.
If we should renounce the carrying on of this propaganda, and particularly, if we should renounce it in connection with the present war, we had better at once give up all our big words about the international revolutionary social democracy, about the socialistic revolution, about the war against war.
International, is in the fact that this question was not frankly put, and of course the question was therefore not answered by deciding to break irreparably with opportunism. For the moment opportunism has won the upper hand within the European workers movement. In all the great nations there have developed two main currents of opportunism: one is the frank and cynical and therefore less dangerous social imperialism of Messrs. Plekhanov, Scheidemann, Legien, Albert Thomas, Sembat, Vandervelde, Hyndman, Henderson, etc. and the other is the more veiled Kautskian variety: Kautsky and Haase and the Social Democratic Workers Group in Germany; Longuet, Pressman, Mayeras, etc. in France; Ramsay MacDonald and other leaders of the Independent Labor Party in England; Martov, Cheidze, etc. in Russia; Treves and the other so called reformists of the Left, in Italy.
Outright opportunists are openly and directly opposed to revolution and to incipient revolutionary movements and outbursts, in frank alliance with their governments, although the forms of this alliance may differ, beginning with participation in the ministry and winding up with participation in the War Industry Committees. The veiled opportunists, or Kautskians, are much more harmful and dangerous to the workers movement, for, from the very outset they conceal their advocacy of such an alliance by resorting to certain high sounding near Marxian catchwordsand slogans. The struggle against these at present predominant forms of opportunism must be carried on in every field of proletarian policy: parliamentarism, trades unions, strikes, war activity, etc.
What is the distinguishing mark of both these forms of the prevalent opportunism?
In this: that both keep silent, or cover up, or limit themselves to what the police regulations will permit, when they deal with the concrete problem of the relations between the present war and revolution, and the other concrete problems of the revolution.
And this in spite of the fact that before the war a countless number of times the relation was pointed out between this very war, which was then impending, and the proletarian revolution, III.
The advocates of disarmament oppose the passage in our program on arming the people, among other things, because this demand might easily be made the basis of concessions to opportunism. We have above considered the most important point, the relation of disarmament to the class struggle and to the social revolution. Let us now consider the question of the relation between disarmament and opportunism. One of the principal reasons why this demand is unwise is, precisely, that it, together with the illusions it calls forth, will inevitably weaken and emasculate our struggle with opportunism.
There is no doubt that this struggle is the chief one now confronting the International. To fight imperialism without at the same time ceaselessly fighting opportunism, would be an empty phrase or delusion. One of the chief difficulties connected with the Zimmerwald and Kienthal movements, one of the principal causes for the possible failure of these embryos of the Third