414 THE CLASS STRUGGLE LABORISM AND SOCIALISM 415 nationalistic purposes. subtle, insidious, counter revolutionary propaganda emanated from these organizations, even during the early stages of the Revolution, when they didn have the alibi of the pro German Bolsheviki: and so apparent and infamous was this propaganda, particularly from French Socialist sources, that even the Mensheviki in April, 1917, sternly protested against the so called majorities of the English and French Socialists which have undertaken a systematic campaign for the purpose of exerting pressure on the Russian Socialist proletariat in the sense that it should discontinue all efforts for peace and should waive any independent political policy founded on International Solidarity and the Class Struggle. The protest stigmatizes these Socialists complete willingness to sacrifice the freedom of the Russian people and the Revolution on the altar of narrow nationalist interests. and asserts that they wish to force on the Russian workers a civil peace together with the imperialistic war aims of the bourgeois liberals, the same as that which demoralized the proletarian movement in England and France. that Jules Guesde demanded quite openly in his telegram: first victory, and only then the republic. and moans: never has the revolutionary uprising of a people been so betrayed by those very elements from which it was justified in expecting sympathy and support. All this refers to the same individuals, groups and tendency that were represented at the Inter Allied Socialist and Labor Conference (with the exception of the Italian Socialist Party. But, it may be argued, that is ancient history. It isn These crimes against Socialism are not ancient history; they are crimes that must be remembered, that must be held against the perpetrators, that must become an active factor in the coming reconstruction of Socialism. They are crimes that indict for all time the perpetrators and the tendency they represent.
There is a more conclusive answer. The British Labor Party memorandum on War Aims, subsequently the Inter Allied Socialist and Labor Program, was adopted December 28, 1917, at a time when revolutionary Russia was proposing to the belligerent nations an armistice on all fronts and general peace negotiationsthe Labor Party completely ignored the proposals. While the Inter Allied Conference was holding its sessions, revolutionary Russia, desperately and in isolation, was waging a struggle for a general, democratic workers peace. It had sent its appeal to the proletariat and Socialism of the world, particularly of the belligerent nations. The Conference completely ignored the struggle and the appeal for solidarity; all the more reprehensible because at the time a million or more Austrian and German workers were on strike, protesting against the governments peace policy and affirming solidarity with the Bolsheviki; its organizations repudiated revolutionary Russia, betrayed it; more, they slandered the proletarian revolution and its representatives steeled their governments determination to ignore the proposals for peace, and to crush the Soviet Republic at the first opportunity. To day, the Allies are waging war upon the proletarian Soviet Republic, rallying the counter revolutionary forces, preparing to crush the proletarian revolution; and the British Labor Party, the dominant French and Belgian Socialism, do not repudiate their governments, do not break with the imperialistic bourgeoisie. The French Socialist Party protested recently against intervention in Russia, but its majority (which is steadily losing strength, however) still clings to tactics that necessarily encourage its government to pursue an imperialistic policy the tactics of abandoning the independent class policy and action of Socialism.
These general considerations might dispose of the Inter Allied Labor and Socialist program on peace: a reactionary tendency can produce only a reactionary policy. fuller analysis is necessary, however, to appreciate its relation to the fundamental facts and tendencies of Imperialism and of Socialism: this is the determinant consideration.
III.
The Inter Allied program on peace accepts the formula of no annexations, no indemnities, and the self determination of nations.
It declares that the problem of Alsace and Lorraine is not one of territorial adjustment, but one of right. This is a petty bourgeois conception of the problem. The clash over Alsace Lorraine, notwithstanding its ideologic and moral forms, is precisely the