Posted on 09/23/2009 12:00:39 PM PDT by mainestategop
That was how Sotsial-Demokrat posed the alternative with regard to the German Social-Democratic Party, back in its issue No. 35[1] , when it elaborated the fundamental ideas of the Manifesto on war issued by our Party’s Central Committee.[2] Notice how the facts bear out this conclusion.
The German Social-Democratic Party is clearly disintegrating. Otto Ruhle, Karl Liebknecht’s closest associate, quite apart from the I.S.D. group (International Socialists of Germany),[3] which has been consistently fighting the hypocritical Kautskyites, has openly come out for a split. Vorwarts had no serious, honest answer. There are actually two workers’ parties in Germany.
Even in Britain, a statement was made by T. Russell Williams in the moderate, pacifist Labour Leader (the Central Organ of the Independent Labour Party), and he was supported by many local functionaries. Comrade Ornatsky,[4] who has done very good internationalist work in Britain, came out in the conciliatory Nashe Slovo in Paris for tin immediate split there. We are naturally in full agreement with Ornatsky in his polemic with T. Rothstein, a correspondent of Kommunist,[5] who takes a Kautskyite attitude.
In France, Bourderon is a fervent opponent of any split but–has proposed to the Party Congress a resolution calling for outright disapproval both of the Party’s Central Committee and the parliamentary group! Adoption of such a resolution would mean an immediate split in the Party.
In America, the Socialist Party appears to be united. Actually, some of its members, like Russell and others, preach “preparedness”, stand for war, and want an army and navy. Others, like Eugene Debs, the Party’s presidential candidate, openly preach civil war “in the event” of an imperialist war, rather, in connection with one.
There are now actually two parties all over the world. There are in fact already two Internationals. And if the Zimmerwald majority are afraid to recognise this, if they dream of unity with the social-chauvinists, and declare their readiness to have such unity, these “pious hopes” in practice remain nothing but hopes, expressive of inconsistency and timidity of thought, Consciousness lags behind reality
PING!
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