The defense of 'Peace among peoples' by the Zimmerwald Socialist Conference and the Russo-Ukrainian War

By Milton Alves 

The Zimmerwald Conference, held clandestinely in Switzerland from September 5th to 8th, 1915, was a landmark in the struggle of revolutionary socialists against the First World War.

The manifesto approved at the meeting outlined the direction and roadmap of the socialist left's position against the war waged by the capitalist-imperialists. The most active sectors of the working class adopted a tactic of struggle against the national bourgeoisies, undermining the war effort in their own countries. Lenin [and his Bolshevik comrades], during the course of the inter-imperialist world conflict, raised the theses of transforming the "imperialist war into a civil war of workers' emancipation and revolutionary defeatism."

Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine has reignited the need for debate on the class character of pacifism and the political revival of the banner of peace among peoples, polarizing opinions among the various political currents of the national left.

“Misery and deprivation, unemployment and rising cost of living, disease and epidemics, are the true results of war. For decades, war expenses will absorb the best of the people's forces, compromising the achievement of social improvements and hindering all progress,” says an excerpt from the manifesto about that war of plunder—the same can be said today.

This war, supported by Putin/NATO, is a setback and has nothing progressive about it, nor is it even remotely favorable to oppressed peoples and nations: on the contrary, it favors conservative reaction, reinforces militarism on a global scale, isolates China, further unites Europe with the United States, and provokes the return of old conflicts and national divisions.

The left must now raise, with militant passion, a vigorous movement in defense of peace between peoples, an immediate ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, the agenda of ending NATO, the disarmament of neo-Nazi militias involved in the conflict, the resumption of negotiations within the United Nations, and an end to the policies of sanctions and future territorial annexations.

Next, read the full text by Zimmerwald and draw your own conclusions.

Zimmerwald Manifesto – Switzerland, September 5-8, 1915

"Proletarians of Europe!"

The war has lasted for more than a year! Millions of bodies cover the battlefields. Millions of men will be mutilated for the rest of their days. Europe has become a gigantic slaughterhouse of men. The entire civilization created by the work of many generations is condemned to destruction. The most savage barbarity celebrates today its triumph over everything that until now constituted the pride of humanity.

Regardless of who is primarily responsible for triggering this war, one thing is certain: the war that caused all this chaos is a product of imperialism. This war arose from the desire of the capitalist classes in each nation to live off the exploitation of human labor and the planet's natural resources. In this way, economically backward or politically weak nations fall under the yoke of the great powers who, with this war, attempt to redraw the world map, by blood and fire, according to their exploitative interests. This is how entire nations and countries like Belgium, Poland, the Balkan states, and Armenia risk being annexed in whole or in part simply through the game of trade-offs.

The war's objectives are revealed in all their nakedness as events unfold. Piece by piece, the veils that conceal the meaning of this global catastrophe from the consciousness of the people fall away.

The capitalists of all countries, who mint the red coin of war profits with the blood of the people, claim that war will serve to defend the homeland, democracy, and the liberation of oppressed peoples. They lie. The truth is that, in reality, they bury beneath the destroyed houses the freedom of their own people, along with the independence of other nations. What will result from the war will be new chains and new burdens, and it is the proletariat of all countries, victors or vanquished, who will have to bear them.

"Increased well-being," they said, when war was declared.

Poverty and deprivation, unemployment and rising cost of living, disease and epidemics are the true results of war. For decades, war expenses will absorb the best of the people's resources, compromising the achievement of social improvements and hindering all progress.

Civilizational collapse, economic depression, political reaction; these are the beneficiaries of this terrible conflict between peoples.

The war thus reveals the true character of modern capitalism, which has proven incompatible not only with the interests of the working classes but also with the basic conditions of existence of the human community.

The institutions of the capitalist regime that controlled the fate of peoples, the governments – monarchical or republican – the secret diplomacy, the powerful employers' organizations, the bourgeois parties, the capitalist press and the Church: upon all of them rests the responsibility for this war born of a social order that nourishes them, that they defend and that serves nothing more than their interests.

Workers!

You, yesterday exploited, dispossessed, despised, were called brothers and comrades when the time came to send you to massacre and death. And today, when militarism has mutilated, destroyed, humiliated, and crushed you, the ruling classes and the powerful demand from you, in addition, the abdication of your interests and the renunciation of your ideals—in a word, a slave-like submission to social peace. They take away the possibility of expressing your opinions, your feelings, your sufferings. They forbid you from formulating your demands and defending them. Controlled press, trampled freedoms and political rights: this is the reign of the militaristic dictatorship with an iron fist.

We cannot and must not remain inactive in the face of this situation, which threatens the future of Europe and humanity.

For many years, the socialist proletariat led the struggle against militarism; with growing apprehension, its representatives concerned themselves in their national and international congresses with the danger of war that imperialism was making step by step more threatening. In Stuttgart, in Copenhagen, in Basel, the international socialist congresses charted the course to be followed by the proletariat.

However, socialist parties and workers' organizations in various countries, despite having contributed to the drafting of these decisions, forgot and repudiated from the beginning of the war the obligations imposed upon them. Their representatives and leaders appealed to and induced workers to abandon the class struggle, the only possible and effective means for proletarian emancipation. They voted with their ruling classes on war budgets; they placed themselves at the disposal of their governments to provide them with the most diverse services; they tried, through their press and envoys, to win over those neutral to the policies of their respective governments; they incorporated the governments' "socialist ministers" as hostages for the preservation of the "Sacred Union," and for this they accepted before the working class to share with the ruling classes the current and future responsibilities of this war, its objectives, and its methods. And just as happened with the parties separately, the highest body of socialist organizations in all countries, the International Socialist Bureau, also failed and neglected its obligations.

These are the reasons that explain why the working class, which had not succumbed to the national panic of the first period of the war or which had freed itself from it shortly afterwards, still did not find, in the second year of the massacre of peoples, the means to undertake an active and simultaneous struggle for peace in all countries.

In this intolerable situation, we, representatives of the socialist parties, trade unions and minorities within these organizations; Germans, French, Italians, Russians, Poles, Latvians, Romanians, Bulgarians, Swedes, Norwegians, Swiss, Dutch, we who do not place ourselves in the camp of national solidarity with our exploiters, but who remain faithful to the international solidarity of the proletariat and to the class struggle, have gathered here to restore the broken ties of international relations, to call upon the working class to regain its self-awareness and to engage it in the struggle for peace.

This struggle is a struggle for freedom, for the fraternity of peoples, for socialism. It is necessary to undertake this struggle for peace, for peace without annexations or war reparations. But such peace is only possible if any project that violates the rights and freedoms of peoples is condemned. This peace must not lead to the occupation of entire countries nor to partial annexations. No annexation, neither acknowledged nor hidden, and even less so economic subordination, which, due to the loss of political autonomy they imply, becomes even more intolerable. The right of peoples to self-determination must be the unshakeable foundation of the order of relations between nations.

Workers!

Since the war broke out, you have placed all your strength, all your courage and capacity for resistance at the service of the owning classes, killing each other. Today, while remaining on the ground of irreconcilable class struggle, you must act in the best interests of your own cause, for the sacred aims of socialism, for the emancipation of oppressed peoples and enslaved classes.

It is the duty and task of socialists in belligerent states to develop this struggle with all their energy. It is the duty and task of socialists in neutral states to help their brothers, by all means, in this struggle against bloody barbarity.

Never in the history of the world has there been a more urgent, more elevated, more noble task; its accomplishment must be our common endeavor. No sacrifice is too great, no burden too heavy to achieve this goal: the restoration of peace among nations.

Workers, fathers and mothers, widows and orphans, wounded and maimed, to all of you who are suffering from war and because of war, we say: Above the borders, above the battlefields, above the war zones, above the devastated countries and cities. Proletarians of all countries, unite!

Zimmerwald, September 1915.

Signatories: For the German delegation: Georg Ledebour, Adolf Hoffmann; for the French delegation: A. Bourderon, A. Merrheim; for the Italian delegation: GE Modigliani, Constantino Lazzari; for the Russian delegation: Vladimir Lenin, Paul Axelrod, M. Bobrov; for the Polish delegation: St. Lapinski, A. Varski, Cz Hanecki. On behalf of the Romanian delegation: C. Racovski; on behalf of the Bulgarian delegation: Vassil Kolarov. For the Swedish and Norwegian delegations: Z. H őglund, Ture Nerman; for the Dutch delegation: H. Roland Holst; for the Swiss delegation: Robert Grimm, Charles Naine. The German socialist leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were imprisoned and did not participate in the conference, but they advocated for an end to the war.