p The question of peace is a burning question, the painful question of the day.

p V. I. Lenin

p No problem of international relations has such a long history as the problem of war and peace. It is reckoned that in excess of 14,500 wars have taken place during the last five and a half thousand years. Preparation for wars and the elimination of their consequences have also dominated so-called peaceful periods, and this is expressed in the old Latin saying Si vis vacem, para helium (If you want peace, prepare for war). War has become such a common companion of human society that it has come to be regarded as an eternal law of social development.

p The scale of wars has grown from epoch to epoch, and their influence of human life has become more and more marked. The first half of this century saw armed clashes on a gigantic scale; the two world wars drew into their orbit dozens of countries and had a very direct impact on the course of history. They carried off many millions of human lives. A fresh outbreak on such a scale could threaten the very existence of whole nations.

p It is hardly surprising that the problems of war and peace, which have such vital importance, should always have attracted the attention of politicians, scholars and writers. Hundreds of books, thousands of articles and millions of pages have been 105 devoted both to describing wars and to attempts to explain the phenomenon of war, to analyse its roots and causes and to forecast the future. This literature varies both in form and in content. The theoretical views on war range from praise for its “beneficial” consequences—war, Hegel maintained, “kept nations from rotting”—and from assertions regarding man’s inherent aggressive and contentious nature to wholesale condemnation of all struggle, appeals to non-resistance to evil, and to a passionate preaching of pacifism and humanism.

p The abundance and unsound nature of the numerous attemps to outline ways of resolving the problems of war and peace only underline the contribution of Marxism to this issue, and primarily the great importance of Lenin’s creative thought. Problems of war took up a large part of his theoretical and practical activity, especially in the period of the First World War and the October Revolution. Although the historical situation has changed radically since then and the very presentation of the question of war and peace has altered with it, no serious rational analysis is possible without taking into account the great achievements of Leninist thinking.

p Lenin’s greatest service was that, through the specific example of wars during the imperialist epoch and in the new era ushered in by the October Revolution, he profoundly worked out general methodological issues of analysing wars and created a whole science concerning war, peace and revolution. Lenin’s approach to the issue of wars, which are, as he said, “a supremely varied, diverse, complex thing”,  [105•*  was based on historical materialism.

p Lenin developed the Marxist ideas of the social and historical nature of wars and, in so doing, he revealed the dialectical link between war and the economy and politics, and with the class struggle, particularly in the imperialist epoch. The starting point for a Marxist-Leninist analysis of war is a study of its organic connection with the socio-economic conditions of social development, with the domination of private property and the antagonisms developing on that basis. 106 The main demands of Leninism in examining wars are to look at them in specific terms of history, and to take complete and comprehensive consideration of the nature and peculiar features of the epoch. “One cannot understand the present war without understanding the epoch,”  [106•*  Lenin stressed.

p Lenin described as a mockery of the truth any attempt to apply the appraisal of war in one epoch and of one type to wars of another epoch and another type.  [106•**  These demands of Leninism have special importance in imperialist conditions when, on the one hand, the scale of wars has grown immensely and, on the other, their meaning has considerably changed and become more complex.

p The international conflicts, said Lenin, have, in form , remained the same kind of international conflicts as those of the previous epoch, but the social and class meaning has substantially altered. The objective historical situation has become quite different.  [106•*** 

p This showed clear enough Lenin’s irreconcilable attitude towards any form of dogmatism, any thoughtless transposition of judgements from one epoch to another without account for historical events, and especially towards speculative sophistry deliberately adopted for specific political purposes. In Lenin’s view, the main determinant of the type or character of a war was its social and political content. Lenin gave profound class meaning to the well-known formula of Clausewitz, Prussian military theorist of the early 19th century, that war is a continuation of politics by other means: "War is the continuation, by violent means, of the politics pursued by the ruling classes of the belligerent powers long before the outbreak of war. . . . War does not alter the direction of the prewar policies, but only accelerates their development.”  [106•**** 

p Lenin revealed the dialectical nature of the transition from peace to war and back again as the replacement of forms of struggle whose class content remains unchanged: “ 107 Peaceful alliances prepare the ground for wars, and in their turn grow out of wars; the one conditions the other, producing alternating forms of peaceful and non-peaceful struggle on one and the same basis of imperialist connections and relations within world economics and world politics.”  [107•* 

p Lenin called for a deep-going and all-round study of the political development that preceded war. “How can a war be accounted for without considering its bearing on the preceding policy of the given state, of the given system of states, the given classes?”  [107•**  he asked.

p Lenin’s analysis of the class nature of war was not confined to a study of the policy of the ruling class alone. He pointed out that “the class contradictions dividing the nations continue to exist in wartime and manifest themselves in conditions of war”.  [107•*** 

p This means that when we come to study war we must start with the class struggle and the clash between the policy of the ruling class and of the working class and other classes and social strata which are vitally interested in averting war. Whoever fails to understand the essence of Lenin’s approach to the policy of the imperialist states and leaves out of consideration the fight by the working people against that policy, may end up by denying any reason and meaning for the workers’ political struggle in capitalist countries against the unleashing of war, by adopting a fatalistic attitude which apportions the whole of world politics to the big bourgeoisie and gives the imperialists a free hand to decide the fate of the people. That is especially dangerous in the epoch of thermonuclear weapons.

p A Leninist analysis of the dialectics of war and politics also presupposes a comprehensive consideration of changes in the socio-political situation caused by war. It makes it possible to determine the policy of the working class in relation to a particular war before it breaks out and as it is on the way, having in mind the possible consequences of war from the viewpoint of the proletariat’s class interests.

p The very scope of imperialist wars has lent the question of war a vital and special significance. As Lenin said, “The question of imperialist wars, of the international policy of finance capital which now dominates the whole world, a policy that must inevitably engender new imperialist wars, that must inevitably cause an extreme intensification of national oppression, pillage, brigandry and the strangulation of weak, backward and small nationalities by a handful of ’advanced’ powers—that question has been the keystone of all policy in all the countries of the globe since 1914. It is a question of life and death for m.illions upon millions of people.”  [108•* 

p Lenin called war and revolution the crucial historical issue during the First World War; this issue played an important part during the Second World War as well. Today the relationship between war and revolution and the revolutionary policy in regard to war have acquired exceptional importance. The 20th century has added a fresh burden to exploitation, poverty and lawlessness as the “normal” lot of the working people under capitalism. The vast scale of the world wars which have brought mankind untold calamity and deprived many millions of people of life and health are the most disgraceful offspring of decaying and moribund capitalism.

p In such circumstances the campaign against world war unleashed by the imperialists has become a major task of the revolutionary workers’ movement. The grand ideals of socialism for which the international working class is fighting include saving mankind from the horrors of war as well as from exploitation, oppression and impoverishment. “An end to wars, peace among the nations, the cessation of pillaging and violence—such is our ideal,”  [108•**  Lenin said even before the revolution. This noble aim continues to inspire Communists all over the world. A historic mission of communism, declares the CPSU Programme, is to abolish war and establish everlasting peace on earth.  [108•***  The greatest advantage of Marxists-Leninists over 109 bourgeois and petty-bourgeois pacifists is that they do not simply condemn wars between nations, they indicate realistic ways and forms of struggle to avert and to end them. While the fundamental opposition of Marxists-Leninists to imperialist wars remains unchanged, the paths and forms of struggle against them, the specific tasks and slogans of the working class, change in relation to each particular war according to the changing historical situation and alignment of class forces both in individual countries and in the world as a whole. Historical experience provides an extraordinarily rich and instructive lesson in this respect.

p “Toothless” pacifism based merely on benevolent aspirations was alien to Lenin. His critical attitude to that type of pacifism came from his clear appreciation of the inevitability of wars as long as capitalism ruled; no appeals to humaneness or mere entreaties could contain aggression. Lenin always posed these issues with typical clarity and intrepid thinking: “It [Social-Democracy—Ed.] unreservedly condemns war as a bestial means of settling conflicts in human society. But Social-Democracy knows that so long as society is divided into classes, so long as there is exploitation of man by man, wars are inevitable.”  [109•* 

p It was from this standpoint that Lenin approached the attitude to war taken by the proletariat and other working classes. Again and again he underlined the importance “of an historical analysis of each war”, which is necessary in order “to determine whether or not that particular war can be considered progressive, whether it serves the interests of democracy and the proletariat and, in that sense, is legitimate, just, etc.”.  [109•** 

p The dialectical approach to understanding social processes is also evident in the way Lenin studied the attitude of the working class to the First World War of 1914-1918, in which two imperialist groupings confronted one another: the Quadruple Alliance headed by Germany and the Anglo- FrancoRussian Entente. The war that broke out in 1914 was, on both sides, a 110 continuation of imperialist politics and was conducted in the class interests of the bourgeoisie and to consolidate its domination and, as such, it had an utterly conspicuous counterrevolutionary bias. For that reason, even before the war Lenin maintained that the campaign against the war was a vital task of the workers’ movement in every country. He did all he could to get the Second International to pass corresponding resolutions. Being a principled enemy of that war, which the working class was unable to stop, Lenin believed that “it is the duty of socialists to support, extend and intensify every popular movement to end the war”.  [110•* 

p It was Lenin and his consistent supporters who waged a principled struggle against the imperialist war, as distinct from the leaders of the Second International who, embroiled in opportunism and social chauvinism, went back on their own decisions. When, at the beginning of the war, pseudopatriotic, chauvinistic and militaristic passions ran high and embraced all the belligerent countries, Lenin was not afraid to go against the current.

p In his unrelenting criticism of bourgeois pacifists and sophists, Lenin indicated the only real, well-substantiated way of campaigning against the war: a revolutionary popular movement and the victory of a socialist revolution. He taught the working class that since the war had already begun they should use the subsequent worsening of the deep-going capitalist contradictions in their own interests and in the interests of propaganda and preparation for a socialist revolution.

p Lenin did not confine himself to a theoretical view of the connection between the struggle against the war and the struggle for socialism. He advanced the practical slogan of the revolutionary movement in conditions of the First World War: “The conversion of the present imperialist war into a civil war is the only correct proletarian slogan ... now that war has become a fact.”  [110•**  The slogan of defeating “one’s own” government in the war went hand in hand with the above-mentioned slogan. This directly corresponded to the interests of the proletarian revolutionary movement (as Lenin 111 said, it was the least of all evils) in all belligerent countries. It was for that outcome of the war that the proletariat should strive, since they had been unable to avert the war. In his criticism of the “Defence of the Fatherland” slogan Lenin drew attention to the fact that the proletariat, in rejecting this slogan, was referring to the particular imperialist war and it did not preclude the slogan being applied to a national liberation war.

p At the end of 1916 Lenin summed up the strategy of the working class during the imperialist war: “The proletariat’s answer to war must be propaganda and the preparation and carrying out of revolutionary mass actions for the overthrow of bourgeois rule, the conquest of political power and the achievement of socialist society, which alone will save mankind from wars....”  [111•* 

p He believed that within the bounds of one and the same historical epoch, wars could sharply differ from one another in their type and content. He wrote: “War is the continuation of the politics of this or that class; and in every class society, slave-owning, feudal, or capitalist, there have been wars which continued the politics of the oppressor classes and also wars which continued the politics of the oppressed classes.”  [111•** 

p In the present epoch, Lenin differentiated between wars which are imperialist, predatory, plundering and, therefore, reactionary and unjust on both sides, and wars of national liberation, which are directed against foreign domination, are just from the standpoint of the oppressed and have a progressive significance. “There are wars and wars,” he wrote. “There are adventurist wars, fought to further dynastic interests, to satisfy the appetite of a band of freebooters, or to attain the objects of the knights of capitalist profit. And there is another kind of war—the only war that is legitimate in capitalist society—war against the people’s oppressors and enslavers.”  [111•*** 

p Lenin approached wars in a dialectical way and he granted 112 the possibility of a change in the character of war in the course of its development and of the combination in the content of one and the same war of socially different elements. Thus, on the American War of Independence Lenin wrote: “What we have here is a national liberation war in which imperialist rivalry is an auxiliary element, one that has no serious importance.”  [112•*  On the other hand, he noted the national liberation elements in the struggle of Serbia during the First World War, although this did not alter the overall imperialist character of the war.

p In defining a war’s character Lenin attributed decisive importance to its class, political content, and not to formal elements. Speaking about the wars of oppressed nations against their oppressors, Lenin said: “As a general rule, war is legitimate on the part of the oppressed (irrespective of whether it is defensive or offensive in the military sense).”  [112•**  Just as justified he considered revolutionary wars which “may prove necessary in the interests of socialism”.  [112•*** 

The connection and relation which Lenin revealed existing between war and revolution, between the campaign for peace and the battle for socialism, was completely borne out by the further development and the practice of the proletarian revolution in Russia.