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CHAPTER IV.
Socialist Jingoism : Can the War be Justified from a Working-class Point of View.
What is the explanation of the betrayal of Socialism by the “leaders” of the Second International The two chief apologists for Socialist jingoism are Plekhanov and Kautsky. Plekhanov repeats the bourgeois arguments of Hyndman, etc., but Kautsky is more subtle. Theoretically, Kautsky’s arguments appear better founded. The most hackneyed apology for the betrayal of Socialism in the crude excuse of defence against “oppression.” “We were attacked and are defending ourselves,” therefore, it is argued, that “the interests of the proletariat demand that we oppose those who violate the peace of Europe.” This is but a re-hash of the declarations of every government and of the vapourings of the yellow press. “We must find the aggressor and make short shrift of him, postponing all other questions until a further occasion,” says Plekhanov in his pamphlet “On War,” Paris 1914, and Axelrod echoes this in the Golos, No.’s 86 and 87. Plekhanov substitutes sophistry for dialectics. One can find “arguments” to prove anything under the sun, Hegel has rightly said. Sophistry picks out one plausible argument and parades it, but dialectics demand a many-sided investigation of any given subject. To get at the truth we must investigate social phenomena in the course of its development: seek beneath the external surface manifestations of the driving forces, and examine their relations to the productive forces and the class struggle.
Plekhanov picks out a quotatios from the German S.D. press and draws attention to the fact that the Germans themselves, before the war, regarded Austria and Germany as the aggressors―this, in his eyes, caps the argument. He passes over in silence the fact that Russian Socialists have repeatedly exposed the plans of conquest of Tsarism in regard to Galicia, Armenia, and so forth. He makes no attempt to touch upon the economic and diplomatic history of the last three
