Lenin acknowledging the intentional implementation of State Capitalism in the USSR

But this is missing the point, is it not? I think you've fundamentally misunderstood what was being attempted.

Is economic development possible under socialism? Depends what you mean by economic development.

Was Russia 'ready for socialism'? Of course not. No country is 'ready for socialism'. Socialism will be worldwide. No country on its own can be anything other than state capitalist. The 'soviet regime' was a holding operation until the rest of the world caught up (and overleaped) Russia.

Does this mean, as the Mensheviks believed, that the revolution would of necessity be bourgeois-democratic? Of course not. Because the aim of the revolution wasn't to take, hold, and administer the Russian state, it was to destroy capitalism, which will only be done internationally.

If you believe Russia was 'ready for socialism' then that means you believe that socialism in one country is possible, and co-incidently that Stalin was right. If you believe that the task of the revolution was to develop Russian national capitalism, as the Mensheviks did, then... Stalin, who developed Russian national capitalism, was right.

I don't think Stalin was right, personally, because I don't think either that the Russian revolution was for the development of Russian national capital, and I don't think that Russia was 'ripe' for socialism in one country.

It is correct that he did acknowledge and indeed support the fact that what was created in the USSR was state capitalism.

It is gone into in detail in this excellent pamphlet:
http://libcom.org/library/the-bolsheviks-and-workers-control-solidarity-group

and the nature of the USSR as state capitalist is also analysed in this excellent series in Aufheben:
http://libcom.org/library/what-was-ussr-aufheben

Lenin saw socialism as the progression of the tendency towards the centralisation of capital (certainly in 'Imperialism...'). Thus socialism was conceived as democratic state control of the centralised means of production. Thus conceived, it's easy to see why state capitalism was conceived as progressive rather than counter-revolutionary. The Brinton text is good on the Bolshevik conception of workers control, which was only ever incidental to their idea of socialism.

OK, HM, I'm not sure what the question is any more.

Yes, Lenin promoted State Capitalist measures in Russia and believed (or said he believed, if one thinks he was lying) that this would help prepare the way for socialism. He was impressed with the German postal system I believe. He was wrong, dead wrong. But as far as I recall, it was Bukharin who theorised that capitalist centralisation would increase during the revolutionary period.

What was he supposed to support? Unless you believe socialism in one country is possible, there isn't so much wiggle room. If the idea of preserving the 'gains of the revolution' means anything (OK, it might not mean anything, but Lenin believed it and he wasn't alone) that means peace and stability to mark time while Germany catches up. What other policy is there but state capitalism?

All this took place in a context of a (relatively) successful revolution in Russia which was then locked in a civil war and had failed to extend significantly - hence the 'holding operation' and, at least as I read the situation, the desperate casting about for some theoretical justification for what they were doing.

If the revolution in Germany had kicked off in January 1918, as the Bolsheviks thought, then any talk of 'state capitalist measures' would be hot air. State capitalism only became the policy of the 'Soviet Government' when it was forced to become the permanent adminisistration of a territory where the state had been overthrown but was surrounded by hostile nations. You say it became state policy with the introduction of 'War Communism'; so it wasn't Bolshevik policy going into the October Revolution. It was a reaction to unexpected circumstances. Whether they should have expected is a different matter.

Brest-Litovsk is a whole nother bucket of worms to open up. I don't intend to go there.

I've got to admit that I was initially quite enthralled by the argument that 'Lenin said it was State Capitalism therefore it was', but for some strange reason the more I think about it the more the logic of the argument falls apart (I wonder why such a flawless argument could eventually fall down under it's own weight ). The initial piece was written by Lenin in response to the arguments of the 'Left-Communists' that the economic policy being pursued by the Bolsheviks at the time constituted a compromise between the proletarian state and the 'captains of industry', and that if continued it would lead to the formation of a 'petty bourgeois' 'state capitalism'. Lenin is replying in defence of the not-so-radical economic policies of early 1918. Later in the year the regime began pursuing a much more radical economic policy (Greater nationalisation of industry, formation of the Kombedy etc) and the 'Left-Communist' opposition evaporated. No substantial opposition to the regime would arise again from within the Bolsheviks until 1919.

The piece which the OP links to is Lenin's writing on the Tax in Kind in which he quotes himself from 1918. Here he is trying to defend the move away form war communism towards the much more market-orientated economic policies of the New Economic Policy and appropriately refers back to his earlier arguments in favour of reproachment with the 'captains of industry'. The second quote from 1922 even directly refers to the 'state capitalism of the New Economic Policy'.

The problem is that there are two senses in which 'state-capitalism' has historically been understood. One is the definition used by Bukharin in his writing on the imperialist state where it refers to a market economy in which the state nonetheless plays an extremely prominent role in the economy. The other is that used by anti-stalinist currents after the 30's where it refers to an economy in which absolutely everything is owned by the state. Lenin refers to the first type of state capitalism which in context actually meant a move away from the kind of 'state capitalism' you are taking him to be talking about.

Sorry, but if there's one thing that really pisses me off, it's the tendency by some anarchists and 'ultra-leftists' to argue about the Russian revolution solely by referring to the writings of Lenin and Trotsky. Neither of the pair, nor even the Bolsheviks as a whole, were gods whose will was truth. Endlessly quoting some of their more dangerous formulations really says nothing about the nature of the Russian revolution and why it degenerated. If we're going to talk about the Russian question, I'd really like it if we discussed the work of actual historians on what happened rather than endless irrelevant quoting from the leaders. This is the same kind of 'great man' history which Marx opposed.

(re: Spassmachine's question there) The reference for the section on Bordiga is probably Why Russia isn't socialist (it's not 100% certain it was by Bordiga, but most likely).

I suppose that would be one way of putting it. The archetypal model of that form of 'state capitalism' was Germany prior to the 1918-19 revolution, which Lenin even mentions his original text "'Left-Wing' Childishness and the Petty Bourgeois Mentality'. Certainly pre-Weimar Germany was not comparable to either 'war communism' or the post-1928 Stalinist economy.

The Bukharin text I was referring to earlier is 'Toward a Theory of the Imperialist State' in which the trend of Imperialism is said to be towards a "state capitalism or the inclusion of absolutely everything within the sphere of state regulation." Marcel Van Der Linden's 'Western marxism and the Soviet Union' I believe discusses the difference between 'state capitalism' as extensive state intervention and as total state ownership.

If you want to get a handle on Lenin, why not just read through the key parts of his collected works rather than selected quotes like the ones you've just posted? You could ask on here for a list of reccomended ones, or alternatively the Lenin Internet Archive has a page of Lenin's most important works. Or you could maybe try picking up a decent biography of Lenin?

I think my point was more against a focus on Lenin at all rather than what was happening in Russian society at large and the situation of workers. The focus on Lenin and Trotsky seems to me to just be regurgitating the mythos of the two created by Trotskyists. I'd be much more interested in an analysis of the Russian revolution that focused on the experience of the working-class rather than what Lenin was eating for breakfast the day they signed the Brest-Litovsk treaty.

It might be noted as well that Stalin and Mao also had described the states they ruled as state-capitalist at other times. In the ABC of Communism, by Bukharin and Preobrazhensky, they trace the development of state-capitalism to its source in the drive towards WWI. The argument made by Lenin was that state-capitalism was good in that it was better than what came before under the Czars. The Bolsheviks also made the argument that this state-capitalism was a part of the necessary transitional period.

In the Stalinist and Trotskyist political orbits the measures of the transitional period became either "real existing socialism" or the "gains of October". Now from my perspective the real gains of the revolution were in the conscious action of the workers to liberate themselves and form their own party and their own organizations of power.

For anyone who has had to discuss the "gains" of October with someone of the Trotskyist tradition, or the nature of the USSR in the period post-civil war, seeing Lenin and Stalin quoted openly saying that the USSR was state-capitalist can be an eye opener. It is also interesting to see the leftists try to explain it away. Bukharin and most of the other Bolsheviks held the same perspective regarding nationalization and state-capitalism.

It wasn't for nothing that the New Economic Policy was popularly known as "New Exploitation of the Proletariat". The subsequent fetishization of forms, nationalized state-capital as in the USSR, or nationally subsidized pentagon/wall street style state-capitalism in the west, intentionally ignored the basic content of the system itself. State-capitalism is real existing capitalism in the imperialist epoch. Wage labor presupposes capital as Marx said.

The proof is in the exploitation pudding.

Just on background reading on this topic - this is very good.

Western Marxism and the Soviet Union, Marcel van der Linden

Yes, I've seen the quotes rolled out by many advocates of the theory of state-capitalism. I've always found it amusing how a group which under normal circumstances would dismiss anyone trying to argue a point on the basis of assorted quotes by Lenin, Stalin and Mao, will suddenly turn around and endorse exactly the same tactic when it comes to defending their own theories.

Again, the NEP was not the Stalinist economy. The whole sordid affair that was the Russian experience would have been very different if they'd stuck with the NEP.

I think it is valid to say that just because Lenin and Trotsky and Mao said that the respective regimes they presided over were state capitalist doesn’t necessarily mean that they were.

The primary issue is that that the followers of these intellectual leaders have always denied it and to that extent that they ever said it. Which is an issue that has only comparatively recently been resolved.

[ am not aware of Stalin having ever said or admitted that Bolshevik Russia was state capitalism, other than falsely stating that when Lenin said it was he was only referring to the concession system. Where the Bolsheviks ‘rented’ out land mineral rights and sometimes even machinery, factories etc to foreign capitalist to exploit in their own familiar way.]

Actually for what it matters, Lenin referred to this ie the ‘concession’ rent obtained from the foreign capitalists as the more “clear cut” type of state capitalism as opposed to the less clear cut form of ‘state enterprises’.

Also in contradiction to what has been said; the object of introducing state capitalism was suggested by Lenin in September 1917 before they seized power.

The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/ichtci/11.htm

Going back to the history of Marxist and Bolshevik theory, the idea was that Russia would, and would have to, pass through capitalist development before it could arrive at the material conditions where socialism was possible.

And, following on from that, trying to do anything else would fail and disrupt and delay the process.

Anarchists and the socialistic Narodniks, SR’s etc did disagree.

That was Lenin’s position clearly put in 1905 eg

http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/TT05.html#c6

An idea repeated and maintained in 1914 eg

Left-Wing Narodism and Marxism Published: Trudovaya Pravda No. 19, June 19, 1914

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/jun/19.htm

In fact there is a seamless line of continuity “running through” Lenin’s economic theory from the ‘progressive capitalism’ of 1905 and 1914 and the progressive state capitalism of September 1917.

As there is a ‘progressive’ development of his political theory; in that in 1905 the Bolsheviks were suggesting controlling capitalism by going into the Marble Halls of Power. But even the Mensheviks never dared suggest that that would lead to the farthest extreme and ambition of the Bolsheviks running, or claiming to run, state capitalism.

And the point suggested earlier that the ‘state capitalism’ idea was some kind of internal narrow party theoretical construct is nonsense.

Lenin’s pamphlet ‘The Chief Tasks of Our Times’ was produced and distributed to the British Workers in 1918 by Pankhurst’s lot making clear that state capitalism was the objective in Russia. In that translation some of the ‘state capitalism’ quotes were substituted for ‘state socialism’ with the two terms being effectively used interchangeably.

The ‘meaning’ was also made clear by Trotsky in 1922; repeating the original idea of September of 1917.

Tasks of Young Workers (Report to the 5th All-Russian Congress of the Russian Communist League of Youth 1922)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1922/youth/youth.htm

You could of course argue that the later state planned production without a market (in as much as there wasn’t a market) isn’t state capitalism; or something else, perhaps worse.

From Bukharin;

http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1920/abc/04.htm

http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1926/01/x01.htm

Quite, let the bourgeoisie intelligentsia thrash about the subtle differences of interpretation as regards ‘our industries’ and ‘our capital’ as that is all that is likely to directly concern them.

Bukharin never fully appreciated dialectics.

Gee, that sounds so familiar. I know I've heard that before but I just can't place where.

Lenin's Will and Testament:

"They are, in my opinion, the most outstanding figures (among the younger ones), and the following must be borne in mind about them: Bukharin is not only a most valuable and major theorist of the Party; he is also rightly considered the favorite of the whole Party, but his theoretical views can be classified as fully Marxist only with the great reserve, for there is something scholastic about him (he has never made a study of dialectics, and, I think, never fully appreciated it)."

This all gets to the question of Red Thermidor- the idea that the communists had to sacrifice the working class gains made in the former Russian Empire at the alter of the failure of the world revolution. That it would be better for the revolutionaries to stop the progress of the revolution towards socialism rather than let it be wholly recuperated by world capital. In the grand scheme of things, the RSFSR/USSR was recuperated by world capital- but by becoming a willing participant as a 'Communist State' rather than a monarchist, bourgeois, white-guardist etc counter-revolution from outside.

In this regard Bukharin was a proponent of the Red Thermidor idea. He went from being a leader among the left communists pushing for workers control of the means of production, collectivization, anti-militarism, etc during the climax of the world revolutionary wave to a proponent of the RCP(B) Right-Wing after the revolutionary wave began to recede, under the impression it is better for the counter-revolution to come from within rather than without (to save some gains of October).

I don't think the 'holding mechanism' idea makes sense unless you consider the red thermidor idea.

No no no no no. It was the Mensheviks (you know that bunch that your SPGB mates idolise) that thought that 'Russia was not ripe for socialism'. Lenin (leaving aside any arguments about whether we should be seeing the process refracted through the actions of a single individual) didn't even frame the question as 'was Russia ripe for socialism', if you believe that Russia was or was not 'ripe for socialism' that means 'socialism in one country' is possible. Lenin did not believe it was, the Mensheviks and later Stalin did, and I find it disgusting and hypocritical that the SPGB should parrot this analysis. It's a fraud. Lenin did not set out to impliment a state-capitalist dictatorship in Russia, he set about to begin the world revolution.

Brest-Litovsk was primarily a way of stopping the war. The Bolsheviks consistently opposed the war, unlike the Mensheviks (that your SPGB friends etc etc) and took Russia out of it when they could. The Bolsheviks and the Spartakists between them stopped WWI, that was the most important thing.

I don't see it as being inevitable that state capitalism will lead to a bureaucratic class. If communisation can't be instant (and it can't be because the capitalists won't just roll over and give in and hand power to the workers' councils) then in some places for a period it will be necessary for the 'new proletarian (non-)state' to impliment state capitalist measures. It seems to me you're failing to see the international dimension. Isolated, yes it's inevitable that the post-revolutionary period will produce an horrific bureaucratic dictatorship. If the revolution had extended to Germany the Brest-Litovsk treaty would have been binned before the ink was dry. This is why Rosa Luxemburg said that though the questions had been posed in Russia, they could not be solved there; and, that the future belonged to Bolshevism.

You use the bogeyman of Stalinism. If someone is a Stalinist it will not convince.
As far as I know the Mensheviks didn't believe Russia was ripe.

Agree with slothjabber's last post.

No, this basically reduces itself to an ultra-left version of the Trotskyist thesis that the crisis of the working-class movement is a crisis of leadership. Rather than attempting to understand why certain events played out the way they did, we have everything reduced to the issue of the subjective will of a few leaders riding roughshod over the crystal pure intentions of the formless mass.

You're contradicting yourself - on the one hand you recognise that Lenin did not believe that Russia was ready for socialism and on the other hand you claim that the goal of 'vanguardism' is that the party takes power and begins to institute regardless of the current situation of the workers' movement. Would you care to square the circle and inform us why Lenin was agitating for your interpretation of his vanguardist strategy in a country which he recognised was not ready for socialism at the time?

The alternative was to let the German Imperial Army continue the march they'd begun during the eleven days war and allow them to run roughshod over the bands of armed workers' and soldiers' that were being used for defence against counter-revolution in a straight line to Moscow. What would you have done in that situation?

And the November 1918 - January 1919 revolution was...?

That might have been feasible if the Bolsheviks had begun to organise the Red Army starting with the triumph of Soviet Power in October/November 1917. Otherwise what you're arguing is that you'd rather have seen the Russian workers' and peasants' slaughtered as long as you could claim to have remained pure to your fascile version of 'internationalism'. What does that remind me of? Ah yes...

"Workers must not struggle to establish a legal limit to the working day, because this is to compromise with the masters, who can then only exploit them for ten or twelve hours, instead of fourteen or sixteen. They must not even exert themselves in order legally to prohibit the employment in factories of children under the age of ten, because by such means they do not bring to an end the exploitation of children over ten: they thus commit a new compromise, which stains the purity of the eternal principles." (Marx caricaturing a Proudhonist in Political Indifferentism)

But weren't there Mensheviks as well who opposed the war 'consistently'? And about Menshevik-baiting, it is a Stalinist tactic. I quite like what Ryazonov said:

Now see what the 'marxist internet archive' says about him:

Where he died, yes...

Such views are still dominant. This is why libcom is a refuge for marxists.

Maybe, but if you take a figure such as Hilferding, the representative of social-democracy, he opposed even the concept (and ofcourse didn't support the RCP).

Yes there were Mensheviks who opposed the war consistently - Julius Martov's Menshevik-Internationalists. The problem was that they tailed the rest of the Menshevik party and as such ended up not really meaning much.

Before I start on all the other bits of slothjabber’s stuff, I have to say I am not a Menshevik and have no need to defend them. At the time the SPGB would have in fact been hostile to them as they held to the orthodox position of the minimum programme.

That is not to say that I don’t share similar criticisms of the Bolsheviks as the Mensheviks had.

The Mensheviks did not support the war and were, amongst the left, exceptional in being against it and part of the internationalist Zimmerwald fraction.

I have never even heard of the Mensheviks, as a party, being accused of believing in Socialism in one country before, so presumably slothjabber will support that with something or retract it.

[There was the peculiar issue of the ‘Georgian Mensheviks’, and I would like to know more about that from an objective non-Bolshevik source.]

The issue over Russia needing to pass through capitalism before being able to become socialist was the general view, not Lenin’s as an individual. As it was Kautsky’s; as the generally accepted theoretical heir of Marxism.

In fact Lenin took his position from Kautsky.

Karl Kautsky Differences Among the Russian Socialists (1905)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1905/xx/rsdlp.htm

The issue had been whether it would have been possible for Russia to have been absorbed into a socialist Europe of say; Germany, France and Britain.

The idea had been that Russia with a large part of the population being allegedly “primitive communists” ie the Mir, then they and Russia might have been able to have been absorbed into a socialist Europe on its doorstep as ‘they’ already had a ‘communist’ consciousness or way of life.

The point then, almost totally redundant now, seemed be whether or not backward primitive communist parts of the world could or should be absorbed into the multinational socialism of the formerly capitalist advanced industrial countries.

[There were in fact two issues ie the actual amount of industrial infrastructure and the level of socialist consciousness that was supposed to develop in tandem with it. ]

Lenin did set out to implement state capitalism in one country, which is on the record, denying it is useless.

Whether he intended it to be a dictatorship of one party one could argue over, but he achieved it fairly quickly.

V. I. Lenin, SPEECH AT THE FIRST ALL-RUSSIA CONGRESS OF WORKERS IN EDUCATION AND SOCIALIST CULTURE JULY 31, 1919

http://www.marxistsfr.org/archive/lenin/works//1919/aug/05.htm

The justification for a one party state capitalist dictatorship as being a prelude to a world revolution probably sits more comfortably with the Stalinists, you would have thought.

But that is the kind of mess you can get yourself in when you abandon theory for opportunism.

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Karl Marx 1852,I

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch01.htm

Otto Rühle described it as rashness

Otto Rühle From the Bourgeois to the Proletarian Revolution 1924

http://www.marxists.org/archive/ruhle/1924/revolution.htm

Far from Lenin being opposed to the war he must have been one of the few on the left who looked forward to it before it even started.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/jan/00mg12.htm

There was some stuff from Kautsky on Georgia

Eg;

http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1921/georgia/ch01e.htm

and

http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1921/georgia/ch02.htm

Correct, I don't know if you think I thought they did think 'Russia was ripe'. My point was that if you (or Harrison Myers, the Mensheviks, Stalin or the SPGB) think 'Russia was ripe' or that 'Russia was not ripe, but could have been following more development of Russian capitalism' then logically you must believe that socialism is possible in one country. Else, the state of capitalism in Russia is not the issue.

So, maybe I shouldn't have left aside the question of whether we should see the process of the Russian revolution refracted through the actions of Lenin, because even though I continued to argue as if Lenin's actions were the be-all and end-all of the process, you accused me of it any way. Nice.

That isn't 'socialism in one country', it's state capitalism. And the world revolution, if it lasts years with liberated 'red bastions' engaged in conventional wars with 'capitalist powers' will surely fail due being a massive f***-up and failure of the revolutionary wave. The revolution will for a period (short I hope) produce revolutionary administrations in liberated areas that must implement state capitalist policies. We shopuld not fool ourselves into thinking this is socialism. It isn't. It even a step towards socialism. Lenin was wrong. But it is necessary while the civil war is happening.

I didn't say you did. I said the SPGB that you are relying on for your analysis sympathise with the Mensheviks.

I'm not sure I agree that Brest-Litovsk was a major factor in the ebb of the revolutionary wave. But it's perhaps a debate worth having, maybe in another thread. My view is that was of primary importance, and Lenin was right, whereas Bukharin, the Left SRs, and Trotsky were wrong.

I also disagree that Brest-Litovsk was the most important factor in the defeat of Makhno. The most important factor as far as I can see was the on-off military campaign waged by the Bolsheviks.

And how do the workers 'abolish wage labour' when the revolution isn't finished? I don't believe in 'socialism in one country' or if you like 'socialism in one liberated territory'. Until the revolution is over and capitalism is defeated the workers aren't in control, they're still fighting to establish this control. The state still exists. And the working class must be on constant guard that this state doesn't become a dictatorship over the proletariat.

The most internationalist thing to do would be to ciontinue to throw the Russian working class against the German working class? Get real. If you think that this is intyernationalism then I say your internationalism is shit and I want nothing to do with it.

As far as I know, I'm the only person who describes themself as a Luxemburgist who frequents LibCom. I completely reject this notion of Rosa's thought. She welcomed the Russian revolution, and urged the workers in Germany to follow its example.

No; the best that can be established until the overthrow of capitalism is state capitalism. Socialism in one country is still impossible. Where is the contradiction? There is no short-cut. Until capitalism is overthrown there can be no socilaism, only state capitalism.

You're claiming I'm a Stalinist for identifying Stalinism with Menshevism? Great logic there.

And for what it's worth, I don't have a problem with the Menshevik Internationalists, apart from them being wrong of course. Honest, but wrong, in my estimation.

As you say; at the time the SPGB believed the Mensheviks (and all parties of the IInd International) were reformist and opposed them. They also supported the exit of Russia from the war. Sadly, in my estimation, that was the high-point of the SPGB's political career. It doesn't mean that in later years the SPGB hasn't defended the Mensheviks.

They weren't 'exceptional'. There were other fractions represented at Zimmerwald.

Happily. If the Mensheviks believed that socialism in Russia could be established if the economic conditions were right, ie given a particular development of economic conditions in Russia, then they believed that socialism in one country was possible.

There is so much else in your post Dave that consists of de-contextualized gobbets that I fear I must come back to demolishing the rest of it later.

It is important to know what Lenin thought. Where did he differ from the (Menshevik or other) 'reformists'? Was Lenin's insight only that he knew that socialism=international, hence, socialism in one country is impossible, whereas Mensheviks believed socialism can be within one nation? Is it so simple?

And about Stalinism, what did they mean that socialism was possible within one country? How did they differ from Lenin/Trotsky?

(I agree the Brest-Litovsk question is better for another thread)

I think the issue was then that a country could not be part of multinational socialism until it had sufficiently advanced industrially and economically.

That is not the same as saying that one country could be socialist on its own once it had had sufficiently advanced industrially and economically.

Just how many advanced industrial countries you need in the world before international socialism becomes viable is another question and argument that will change over time.

If one advanced and industrialised country is politically ready for socialism before the rest I would not advocate state capitalism.

It is an old chestnut of an argument about alternatives and we have it regularly.

But it is spurious time wasting to introduce that argument in reference to Russia in 1917 as it was disqualified and excluded from it.

The parties and individuals of the European left that opposed the war throughout, like the SPGB, were exceptional as in the use of the word not ordinary or uncommon.

I would have thought that was obvious from what I said otherwise the Zimmerwald would have been the Mensheviks, which would have been palpably absurd even as an inference