On the Amendment to Bebel's Resolution at the Stuttgart Congress

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A reference to the amendments to Bebel’s resolution on anti-militarism tabled at the Stuttgart Congress of the Second International, held from August 18 to 23, 1907. Bebel’s resolution had the basic defect of failing to state the active tasks of the proletariat, which gave the opportunists (Vollmar and others) an opportunity of reading it their own way. Accordingly, on behalf of the Russian and Polish delegations, Rosa Luxemburg motioned amendments to Bebel’s resolution which were signed by Lenin. They = 1) said that militarism was the chief instrument of class oppression; = 2) stated the task of carrying on agitation among the youth, and = 3) emphasised the task of Social-Democrats not only to struggle against the outbreak of wars or for the earliest halt to wars, but also use the wartime crisis to speed the downfall of the bourgeoisie. = All these amendments were in the main included in Bebel’s resolution and adopted by the Congress. For details, see Lenin’s articles “The International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart” (present edition, Vol. 13, pp. 75–81 and 82–93).

I remember very well that the final drafting of this amendment was preceded by prolonged negotiations directly between ourselves and Bebel. The first draft made a much more straightforward statement about revolutionary agitation and revolutionary action. We showed it to Bebel; he replied: I don’t accept it, because then the Public Prosecutor will dissolve our party organisations, and we can’t have that, as there are no serious developments as yet. After consultation with legal specialists and numerous redraftings of the text in order to give legal expression to the same idea, a final formula was found which Bebel agreed to accept.

N. Lenin