Collected Works, Volume 21: August 1914-December 1915

Collected Works #21

by Vladimir Lenin, Julius Katzer (Editor)

Volume 21 contains Lenin’s works of the period between August 1914 and December 1915. In these writings, Lenin raised the banner of struggle against the imperialist war and international social-chauvinism, and laid the foundations of the Bolshevik Party’s theory and tactics on questions of war, peace and revolution.

A group of these works, viz., “The Tasks of Revolutionary Social-Democracy in the European War”, “The European War and International Socialism”, “The War and Russian Social-Democracy”, “The Defeat of One’s Own Government in the Imperialist War”, “Socialism and War”, deal, in the main, with an appraisal of the war, and provide a definition of the tasks confronting the proletarian party and the world working-class movement.

A considerable part of the volume consists of works that expose international social-chauvinism and centrism, and reveal the causes that brought about the collapse of the Second International. Among these works are: “The Collapse of the Second International”, “On the Struggle Against Chauvinism”, “The Position and Tasks of the Socialist International”, and “Revolutionary Marxists at the International Socialist Conference, September 5-8, 1915”.

A number of the works in this volume are directed against social-chauvinism in Russia, viz.: “The Russian Brand of Südekum”, “Under a False Flag”, “The State of Affairs in Russian Social-Democracy”, “The Defeat of Russia and the Revolutionary Crisis”, and “On the Two Lines in the Revolution”.

In the article “On the Slogan of a United States of Europe”, which was written in August 1915, Lenin formulated his masterly conclusion on the possibility of victory for socialism, initially in several countries, or even in a single country.

Also in this volume is the work entitled “Karl Marx”, which gives a concise yet exhaustive characterisation of the Marxist doctrine.

Four hitherto unpublished works have been included in this volume. In the articles “To the International Socialist Committee, I.S.C.” and “Letter to Vorwärts and Wiener Arbeiter-Zeitung” Lenin exposes the imperialist nature of World War I and the betrayal of the working class’s interests by the leaders of the Second International. The following works: “The Kind of ‘Unity’ Larin Proclaimed at the Swedish Congress” and “Letter from the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. to the Editors of Nashe Slovo” are directed against liquidationism and social-chauvinism in Russia.

493 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, leader of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks), statesman and political theorist. After the October Revolution he served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until his death in 1924 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death in 1924.

Reviews

[Michael’ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Volume 21 of Lenin’s collected works is mostly about WWI. Lenin argues for the overthrow of the warring governments whereas the social-chauvinist mainstream argued for “defence of the fatherland”. Kautsky argued that “true internationalism” means supporting not only the defence of the fatherland policy domestically but also forgiving foreign socialists for upholding the same line hostile countries. Plekhanov argued that a worker’s revolution could only come about by opposing a worker’s revolution. This would lead to liberal revolutions with which the workers would grow displeased automatically ending in a more spontaneous worker’s revolution.
Lenin denounces these policies in various articles. German social-chauvinism in Dead Chauvinism and Living Socialism. Russian social-chauvinism in On the London Conference, The Collapse of Platonic Internationalism & On the Two Lines in the Revolution. The Bund in We Are Thankful For Such Frankness. Both the Russian and the Germans in The Social-Chauvinists’ Sophisms & Kautsky, Axelrod and Martov—True Internationalists.
In Socialism and War he and Zinoviev give an overview of the socialist position on war and social-chauvinism in general but this is not very interning if you’re already familiar with their views.
The best texts on this topic are On the Struggle Against Social-Chauvinism, which is about the position socialists should adopt towards social-chauvinism, and The Collapse of the Second International, which provides good material on the theory of imperialism.
There are a few texts on other topics. Karl Marx: A Brief Biographical Sketch With an Exposition of Marxism is a popular introduction to Marxism but not a very good one. Lenin’s own ‘What the “Friends of the People” are and how they fight the social-democrats’ and Engels’ ‘Socialism: Utopian & Scientific’ and Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German philosophy’ are much better. Finally On the slogan of the United States of Europe points out the problems with that slogan and the underlying ideas.
Altogether this volume contains much repetition and much material on the socialist movement in 1914-1915, which simply not very interesting. That is why I read the above mentioned texts, and left most of the the other articles, draft resolutions, etc. aside.

PS: I forgot to mention The Defeat of One’s own Government in the Imperialist War, a short article on strategy. Does exactly what the name implies. The best text in the volume. It and the ‘The Collapse of the Second International’ are the only texts worth reading for a non-scholarly audience.

[Timothy Morrison]

.What a lot of talk, argument and vociferation there is nowadays about nationality and the fatherland! Liberal and radical cabinet ministers in Britain, a host of “forward-looking” journalists in France (who have proved in full agreement with their reactionary colleagues), and a swarm of official Cadet and progressive scribblers in Russia (including several Narodniks and “Marxists”)—all have effusive praise for the liberty and independence of their respective countries, the grandeur of the principle of national independence. Here one cannot tell where the venal eulogist of the butcher Nicholas Romanov[1] or of the brutal oppressors of Negroes and Indians ends, and where the common philistine begins, who from sheer stupidity or spinelessness drifts with the streams, begins. Nor is that distinction important. We see before us an extensive and very deep ideological trend, whose origins are closely interwoven with the interests of the landowners and the capitalists of the dominant nations. Scores and hundreds of millions are being spent every year for the propaganda of ideas advantageous to those classes: it is a pretty big mill-race that takes its waters from all sources—from Menshikov, a chauvinist by conviction, to chauvinists for reason of opportunism or spinelessness such as Plekhanov and Maslov, Rubanovich and Smirnov, Kropotkin and Burtsev.

Let us, Great-Russian Social-Democrats, also try to define our attitude to this ideological trend. It would be unseemly for us, representatives of a dominant nation in the far east of Europe and a goodly part of Asia, to forget the immense significance of the national question—especially in a country which has been rightly called the “prison of the peoples”, and particularly at a time when, in the far east of Europe and in Asia, capitalism is awakening to life and self-consciousness a number of #8220;new” nations, large and small; at a moment when the tsarist monarchy has called up millions of Great Russians and non-Russians, so as to “solve” a number of national problems in accordance with the interests of the Council of the United Nobility[2] and of the Guchkovs, Krestovnikovs, Dolgorukovs, Kutlers and Rodichevs.

[JC Sevart · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a pretty interesting collection of Lenin's essays, my favorites are the concise breakdown of Capital and its relevant components, his essays about WWI as an imperialist conflict as a group of imperialist powers sending their respective working class into the meat grinder to obtain and exploit those powers' colonies (which would later be expanded into Imperialism), and some of his essays breaking down the internationals and where they go wrong.

I do think his lampooning of contemporary socialists is interesting but because the essays are chronologically they can get repetitive