A highly relevant text still to this day that teaches us firstly what imperialism is and what it is not, secondly how it is used to bribe the imperial core’s proletariat, and thirdly, how opportunists support a pro-imperialist agenda “from the left”.

Keep these lessons in mind as the imperial core heightens its belligerence against Russia and China while the opportunist elements of the western left spread false narratives about the supposed “imperialism” of these countries.

  • cfgaussianOP
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    1 year ago

    And finally if you take nothing else out of this remember his conclusion:

    "Neither we nor anyone else can calculate precisely what portion of the proletariat is following and will follow the social-chauvinists and opportunists. This will be revealed only by the struggle, it will be definitely decided only by the socialist revolution. But we know for certain that the “defenders of the fatherland” in the imperialist war represent only a minority. And it is therefore our duty, if we wish to remain socialists to go down lower and deeper, to the real masses; this is the whole meaning and the whole purport of the struggle against opportunism. By exposing the fact that the opportunists and social-chauvinists are in reality betraying and selling the interests of the masses, that they are defending the temporary privileges of a minority of the workers, that they are the vehicles of bourgeois ideas and influences, that they are really allies and agents of the bourgeoisie, we teach the masses to appreciate their true political interests, to fight for socialism and for the revolution through all the long and painful vicissitudes of imperialist wars and imperialist armistices.

    The only Marxist line in the world labour movement is to explain to the masses the inevitability and necessity of breaking with opportunism, to educate them for revolution by waging a relentless struggle against opportunism, to utilise the experience of the war to expose, not conceal, the utter vileness of national-liberal labour politics."