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Lenin's "The Defeat of One's Own Government in the Imperialist War" | GZD Reading Group | Week 12, 2024

We're starting off with a very short one for the first week. This text was published in 1915, two years before the October revolution, and is sadly still highly relevant in the imperial core.

This reading group is meant to educate, and people from any instances federated with Lemmygrad are welcome. Any comments not engaging in good faith will be removed (don't respond to hostile comments, just report them).

You can post questions or share your thoughts at any time. We'll be moving on to a new text next week, but this thread won't be locked.

You can read the text here.

20 comments

  • This is what I took from this text:

    If you're in a capitalist country and your country is at war, you can't claim to have revolutionary ideals while also advocating against your country's defeat/for its victory.

    Also, wow, this part has aged incredibly well: ("Discerning reader": note that this does not mean "blowing up bridges", organising unsuccessful strikes in the war industries, and in general helping the government defeat the revolutionaries.)

  • While the notion is simple, i find this text very hard to digest. The world was very different when Lenin wrote this, it was a very multipolar world in that time, albeit these polars were imperialists competing for the distribution of the world while multipolarity now is about the right of self-determination.

    The case of Russia is very interesting, a capitalist country that is ideologically reactionary but one way or another is found itself fighting for a globally progressive cause, the weakening of US hegemony throught the disarment of Ukraine, an US satellite state. Would this be the moment for the working class of Russia to organize to topple their oligarchy? Maybe it would be the prime time to do it even if it could potentially lead to an US invasion?

    • This is the reason I commented on the other thread about "On Protracted People's War" and how it talks seemingly similar conditions but take very different stances. One is written from the perspective of revolutionaries on a reactionary country waging a war that is principally imperialist in character, the other from the perspective of a reactionary country defending from such a war.

      The war in Ukraine is somewhere in-between, as there will be sectors of the Russia bourgeoisie that benefit from this war, but it also weakens the global hegemon (I disagree that we already have a multipolar world). On the other hand, it assures some measure of self determination for the peoples of Donbas and Ukraine.

      From a very distant and somewhat ignorant perspective, (actual) revolutionary communists in Russia should not defend the overthrow of the Russian bourgeois state as an immediate objective (but a long term one). But they should have advocate for the immediate overthrow of the Ukrainian regime and, controversially, non-antagonistic autonomy from the Russian state and socialist restoration for the Donbas and Luhansk.

    • Would this be the moment for the working class of Russia to organize to topple their oligarchy?

      Organization is an ongoing project, but taking power without the support of the army would likely lead to a civil war, and now is not a good time for Russia to be destabilized

      • would likely lead to a civil war, and now is not a good time for Russia to be destabilized

        This is exactly the position Lenin critisises in this text. Lenin is quite clear:

        A revolution in wartime means civil war

  • To help people that are unable to think for themselves, the Berne resolution (Sotsial-Demokrat No. 40) made it clear, that in all imperialist countries the proletariat must now desire the defeat of its own government.

    Gotta love Lenin, he never forgets to restate his points in clear and simple terms, and he's always snarky too

    • Its fairly straightforward for imperialist countries, e.g. US, European states. But it gets incredibly complex when it's about ascendant capitalist countries like Russia.

      • it gets incredibly complex when it’s about ascendant capitalist countries like Russia.

        It really doesn't though. Russia was a backwards agrarian state barely on its way out of feudalism when Lenin wrote this, he even explicitly acknowledges it right in this text:

        Russia, a most backward country, where an immediate socialist revolution is impossible.

        If Lenin's thesis applied to WW1 Russia, it surely applies to SMO Russia.

      • Agreed, we have to make sure base analysis is correct first before applying strategies.

  • The phrase-bandying Trotsky has completely lost his bearings on a simple issue. It seems to him that to desire Russia’s defeat means desiring the victory of Germany.

    This makes me think of Russia-Ukraine right now, or even "Israel"-Palestine. Maybe it's just the general way that war is framed in the US. It has been used to an even greater degree in Palestine imo, where they've bent the word Hamas to mean "anything vaguely against the genocide". Even if the working class doesn't actually carry out treasonous acts, they'll end up being criminalized anyways.

    On closer examination, this slogan will be found to mean a "class truce", the renunciation of the class struggle by the oppressed classes in all belligerent countries, since the class struggle is impossible without dealing blows at one’s "own" bourgeoisie, one’s "own" government, whereas dealing a blow at one’s own government in wartime is (for Bukvoyed’s information) high treason, means contributing to the defeat of one’s own country.

    I like this, as it expands on the previous quote. I see this logic a lot when it comes to criticizing the gov or demanding anything at all from them, like our class is supposed to deprive ourselves in support of some war instead of seeing it as a time where our gov's grasp on authority is weaker & more vulnerable.

    • Just to note that Palestine is different because Palestinians are not waging an imperialist war but an anti-colonial war. This text doesn't apply to the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and Palestinian communists are correct in supporting their government even if it is not progressive or communist:

      The struggle that the Emir of Afghanistan is waging for the independence of Afghanistan is objectively a revolutionary struggle, despite the monarchist views of the Emir and his associates, for it weakens, disintegrates and undermines imperialism; whereas the struggle waged by such “desperate” democrats and “Socialists,” “revolutionaries” and republicans as, for example, Kerensky and Tsereteli, Renaudel and Scheidemann, Chernov and Dan, Henderson and Clynes, during the imperialist war was a reactionary struggle, for its results was the embellishment, the strengthening, the victory, of imperialism. For the same reasons, the struggle that the Egyptians merchants and bourgeois intellectuals are waging for the independence of Egypt is objectively a revolutionary struggle, despite the bourgeois origin and bourgeois title of the leaders of Egyptian national movement, despite the fact that they are opposed to socialism; whereas the struggle that the British “Labour” Government is waging to preserve Egypt’s dependent position is for the same reason a reactionary struggle, despite the proletarian origin and the proletarian title of the members of the government, despite the fact that they are “for” socialism. There is no need to mention the national movement in other, larger, colonial and dependent countries, such as India and China, every step of which along the road to liberation, even if it runs counter to the demands of formal democracy, is a steam-hammer blow at imperialism, i.e., is undoubtedly a revolutionary step.

      https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/ch06.htm

20 comments