it, and to continue to support the war carried on by this Government until such time as all belligerents had accepted the formula: No annexations, no indemnities. Such a view was repeatedly expressed by Turati and by the Kautskians (Haase and others), and Longuet and Co., who used to add that they were for the defence of their respective fatherlands.
From a theoretical point of view, this is a complete inability to dissociate oneself from the Social Chauvinists and a complete muddle on the question of the defence of the fatherland. From the political point of view it is a substitution of petty bourgeois nationalism in the place of Internationalism, and a desertion to the reformists' camp, a renunciation of the revolution.
The recognition of the defence of the fatherland is a justification, from the point of view of the proletariat, of the present war, the admission of its lawfulness. And since the war remains Imperialist both under Monarchy and Republic, irrespectively of the territory—mine or the enemies'—occupied at the given moment by the епеmy troops, the recognition of the defence of the fatherland is, in point of fact, tantamount to the support of the Imperialist predatory bourgeoisie, to a complete betrayal of Socialism. The war continued to be Imperialist in Russia even under Kerensky, under the bourgeois democratic republic, since it was being carried on by the bourgeoisie in the position of a ruling class (war, it must be remembered, is a continuation of politics); and the most characteristic mark of the Imperialist character of the war was the secret treaties relating to the partition of the world and violation of other people's countries, which had been made by the ex-Tsar with the capitalists of England and France.
The Mensheviks were unscrupulously deceiving the people by calling this war a defensive or revolutionary war; and Kautsky, when approving the policy of the Mensheviks, is approving the deception practised on the
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