to display towards these State capitalist trusts the same sort of devotion that in earlier days they had displayed towards individual masters.
Only the war has taught them that they must not take the side of their respective bourgeois States, but must join forces for the overthrow of these bourgeois States and for the realisation of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
37. The Watchwords “National Defence” and “Pacifism”.
The leaders of the socialist parties and of the Second International justified their treason to the cause of the workers and to the common struggle of the working class by saying that it was essential to defend the fatherland. We have seen that as far as the imperialist war was concerned this was pure nonsense. In that war not one of the Great Powers was on the defensive; all were aggressors. The slogan “defence of the fatherland” (the defence of the bourgeois State) was humbug, and was shouted by the leaders in order to hide their treason.