Theses on the Attitude of the Swiss Social-Democratic Party Toward the War

#PUBLICATION NOTE

This edition of Theses on the Attitude of the Swiss Social-Democratic Party Toward the War has been prepared and revised for digital publication by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism under the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Switzerland on the basis of the edition published in the Collected Works of Lenin, Fourth English Edition, Volume 23, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1964.

#INTRODUCTION NOTE

These theses were written by Comrade Nikolaj Lenin in Zurich, Switzerland in early December 1916 in connection with the discussion of the war issue in the Swiss Social-Democratic Party. They were first published in 1931 in Lenin Miscellany, Volume 27.

In August 1916, the Party Executive decided to call an emergency congress for the 11th and 12th of February, 1917 to discuss the war issue. The Zurich Congress (4th and 5th of November, 1916) endorsed that decision and appointed a commission to draw up draft resolutions for the emergency congress.

The commission framed two drafts: the majority draft, based on Grimm's Centrist theses, published in July 1916, and the minority social-chauvinist draft, which called on Social-Democrats to «defend the homeland» in the event of Switzerland entering the war.

Lenin, who was closely associated with the Swiss Left wing, was well informed of the commission's activities. His Theses on the Attitude of the Swiss Social-Democratic Party Toward the War were written to help the Swiss Left wing. Lenin drew up several variants and drafts, devoting special attention to practical proposals, before working out the final text.

#Workers and oppressed people of the world, unite!

#Nikolaj Lenin

#Early December 1916

#★

#1

The present world war is an imperialist war waged for the political and economic exploitation of the world, for markets, raw material sources and new spheres of capital investment, oppression of weak nations, and so on.

The «defence of the homeland» phraseology of the two warring coalitions is no more than a bourgeois deception of the peoples.

#2

The Swiss government is the steward of the Swiss bourgeoisie, which is wholly dependent upon international finance capital and intimately associated with the imperialist bourgeoisie of the Great Powers.

It is therefore no accident, but an inevitable result of these economic facts, that the Swiss government is from day to day — and this has been so for decades — conducting an increasingly reactionary policy and secret diplomacy, hampering and violating the people's democratic rights and freedoms, bowing to the military clique, and systematically and shamelessly sacrificing the interests of the broad masses to the interests of a handful of financial magnates.

Switzerland may at any moment be drawn into the present war as a result of this dependence of its bourgeois government on the interests of the financial oligarchy, and of powerful pressure by one or another of the imperialist coalitions.

#3

Consequently, in relation to Switzerland, too, «defence of the homeland» is now no more than a hypocritical phrase. For in reality it is not a question of defending democracy, independence, or the interests of the broad popular masses, and so on, but, on the contrary, of preparing to hurl the workers and small farmers into the holocaust in order to maintain the monopoly and privileges of the bourgeoisie, of strengthening capitalist domination and political reaction.

#4

Proceeding from these facts, the Swiss Social-Democratic Party rejects «defence of the homeland» on principle, demands immediate demobilization, and calls on the working class to reply to the bourgeoisie's war preparations and to war itself, should it break out, with the sharpest methods of proletarian class struggle.

Among these methods the following should be especially urged:

Rejection of civil peace, sharper principled struggle against all bourgeois political parties, and also against the Grütli Union as an organization of agents of the bourgeoisie within the workers' movement, and against Grütlian trends within the Socialist Party.
Rejection of all war credits, no matter under what pretext requested, both in peacetime and wartime.
Support of all revolutionary movements and every struggle of the working class of the belligerent countries against the war and against their own governments.
Assistance to the revolutionary mass struggle within Switzerland — strikes, demonstrations, armed uprising against the bourgeoisie.
Systematic propaganda among the armed forces, establishment for this purpose of special Social-Democratic groups in the army and among conscription-age youth.
Establishment by the working class of underground organizations in retaliation to every government curtailment or repeal of political freedoms.
Systematic preparation, through regular and consistent explanatory work among the workers, of a situation in which the leadership of all workers' and office employees' organizations without exception would pass into the hands of persons who accept and are capable of conducting this struggle against the war.

#5

The Party's aim in the revolutionary mass struggle, adopted at the 1915 Party Congress in Aarau, is a socialist revolution in Switzerland. Economically, this can be carried out immediately. Socialist revolution offers the only effective means of liberating the masses from the horror of high prices and hunger. It is being brought nearer as a result of the crisis that has gripped the whole of Europe. It is absolutely necessary for the complete elimination of militarism and war.

The Party declares that all bourgeois pacifist and socialist pacifist phrases against militarism and war that fail to accept this goal and the revolutionary means of achieving it, are illusions or lies and can only have the effect of diverting the working class from any serious struggle against the foundations of capitalism.

Without ceasing its fight to improve the position of the wage-slaves, the Party calls upon the working class and its representatives to put on the order of the day propaganda for an immediate socialist revolution in Switzerland. This should be done through mass agitation, speeches in parliament, legislative proposals, and so on, proving the need to replace the bourgeois government by a proletarian government relying on the support of the mass of the propertyless population, and explaining the imperative need for such measures as expropriation of the banks and big industries, repeal of all indirect taxes, introduction of a single direct tax with revolutionary-high tax-rates for big incomes, and so on.