In Switzerland

#PUBLICATION NOTE

This edition of In Switzerland has been prepared and revised for digital publication by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism under the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Switzerland on the basis of the edition published in the Collected Works of Lenin, Fourth English Edition, Volume 18, Progress Publishers, 1964.

#INTRODUCTION NOTE

This is a two-part article written by Comrade Lenin in Cracow, Poland in July-September 1912. It was first published in Pravda, Nos. 63 and 105, 25th of July and 13th of September, 1912.

#Workers and oppressed people of the world, unite!

#IN SWITZERLAND

#Nikolaj Lenin

#July-September 1912

#★

#1

The local Socialists call Switzerland a «republic of lackeys». This small-bourgeois country, in which inn-keeping has long been a major industry, has depended too much on wealthy parasites squandering millions on summer travel in the mountains. A small proprietor toadying to rich tourists — such, until recently, was the most widespread type of Swiss bourgeois.

Things are changing now. A large-scale industry is developing in Switzerland. The use of waterfalls and mountain rivers as direct sources of electric power is laying a big part in this. The power of falling water, which replaces coal in industry, is often called «white coal».

The industrialization of Switzerland, that is, the development there of a large-scale industry, has put an end to the former stagnation in the working-class movement. The struggle between capital and labour is assuming a more acute character. The drowsy, philistine spirit, which often in the past pervaded some of the Swiss workers' associations, is disappearing to give way to the fighting mood of a class-conscious and organized proletariat that is aware of its strength.

The Swiss workers entertain no illusions about the fact that theirs is a bourgeois republic upholding the same kind of wage slavery as exists in all the capitalist countries without exception. At the same time, however, they have learned very well to use the freedom of their republican institutions to enlighten and organize the broad masses of the workers.

The fruits of their work were clearly revealed during the general strike in Zurich on the 12th of July.

This is how it came about. The painters and fitters in Zurich had been on strike for several weeks, demanding higher wages and shorter hours. The enraged employers decided to break the resistance of the strikers. The government of the bourgeois republic, eager to serve the capitalists, came to their aid, and began to deport foreign strikers! (There are many foreign workers, particularly Italians, who go to Switzerland to work.) But the use of brute force did not help. The workers held their ground as one.

Then the capitalists resorted to the following method. In Hamburg, Germany, there is a firm, owned by Ludwig Koch, which specializes in supplying strikebreakers. The Zurich capitalists — patriots and republicans, don't laugh! — had that firm send in strikebreakers, who they knew included all sorts of criminals convicted in Germany for pandering, brawling, and so on. The capitalists supplied this riffraff or gang of convicts (lumpen-proletarians) with pistols. The brazen band of strikebreakers filled the taverns in the workers' district and there engaged in unheard-of hooliganism. When a group of workers gathered together to eject the hooligans, one of the latter shot down a worker who was on strike.

The workers' patience was exhausted. They beat up the murderer. It was decided to make an interpellation in the Zurich City Council on the hooligans' outrages. And when the city authorities, in defence of the capitalists, prohibited strike picketing, the workers resolved to protest by a one-day general strike.

All the trade unions declared unanimously for the strike. The printers were the only sad exception. They declared against the strike, and the meeting of 425 representatives of all the Zurich workers' organizations replied to the printers' decisions with a stentorian cry of «Shame!». The strike was decided on, even though the leaders of political organizations were against it (the same old spirit of the philistine, opportunist Swiss leaders!).

Knowing that the capitalists and the management would try to wreck the peaceful strike, the workers acted according to the wise maxim: «In war as in war.» In wartime, one does not tell the enemy when an attack will take place. The workers purposely declared on Thursday that the strike would take place on Tuesday or Wednesday, whereas, in reality, they had fixed it for Friday. The capitalists and the management were taken by surprise.

The strike was a signal success. 30'000 leaflets in German and Italian were circulated early in the morning. Some 2'000 strikers occupied the tram depots. Everything stopped. Life in the city came to a standstill. Friday is a market day in Zurich, but the city seemed dead. The consumption of spirits (all alcoholic drinks) was prohibited by the strike committee, and the workers strictly obeyed this decision.

An imposing mass demonstration took place at 14:00. When the speeches were over, the workers dispersed peacefully, and without singing.

The government and the capitalists, who had hoped to provoke the workers to violence, saw their failure and are now beside themselves with rage. Not only strike picketing, but also open-air meetings and demonstrations, have been prohibited by special decree throughout the Zurich Canton. The police occupied the People's House in Zurich and arrested a number of the workers' leaders. The capitalists announced a three-day lockout by way of avenging themselves for the strike.

The workers are keeping calm; they scrupulously observe the boycott of spirits and wine, saying among themselves: «Why shouldn't a worker rest three days a year, since the rich rest all the year round?»

#2

In Pravda [Truth], No. 63, on the 25th of July, we told the reader about the general strike in Zurich on the 12th of July. It may be recalled that the strike was decided in defiance of the leaders of political organizations. The meeting of 425 representatives of all the workers' organizations of Zurich, which declared for the strike, greeted the statement of the printers, who were against the strike, with shouts of «Shame!».

By now, the press has published data exposing that opportunism.

It appears that the political leaders of the Swiss workers in their opportunism have gone so far as direct betrayal of the Party. It is this scathing but justified phrase that the best organs of the Swiss and German working-class press use in describing the conduct of the Social-Democratic members of the Zurich Magistracy (City Council). The Zurich City Council, defending the capitalists, prohibited strike picketing (and then the workers decided to protest by a one-day general strike).

There are nine members on the Zurich Magistracy, including four Social-Democrats — Erismann, Pflüger, Fogelsanger, and Klöti.

And now it has become known that the prohibition of picketing was decided on by the Town Council unanimously, that is to say, Erismann and his three Social-Democratic colleagues voted for it!!! The Zurich Cantonal Government had insisted that the City Council should prohibit all picketing, but the four sapient minnows,¹ that is, Zurich Social-Democrats, made a «compromise» proposal to prohibit picketing only in the area of the two mechanical shops where work had been stopped.

Of course, it was just this partial prohibition of picketing that the bourgeoisie was demanding, and the «Social-Democrats'» (?!) proposal was adopted by the bourgeois majority of the City Council!

What is more, the Zurich City Council recently published an account of the events occasioned by the general strike. The capitalists declared a three-day lockout by way of revenge. The Zurich City Council decided unanimously, with all its four Social-Democratic members participating, that it was necessary to call in troops to reinforce the police in maintaining public order.

Nor is that all. The bourgeois City Council of Zurich furiously attacked, by a series of repressive measures, those manual and office workers in the town's establishments who had joined in the strike. It sacked 13 workers and imposed disciplinary punishments (demotion, pay cuts) on another 116. These decisions of the City Council were likewise adopted unanimously, with Erismann and his two colleagues participating.

The conduct of Erismann and Company can only be described as betrayal of the Party.

It is not surprising that the Anarcho-Syndicalists enjoy a certain success in Switzerland, since it falls to them to criticize before the workers a Socialist Party which tolerates such opportunist traitors in its ranks. The reason why the treachery of Erismann and Company is of major international significance is that it shows us clearly from what quarter and in what manner the working-class movement is threatened with internal corruption.

Erismann and Company are by no means common deserters to the enemy camp; they are simply peaceful small bourgeois, opportunists who are accustomed to parliamentary «vermicelli» and who have succumbed to constitutional-democratic illusions. The moment the class struggle took a sharp turn, all illusions about constitutional «order» and a «democratic republic» were dispelled at once, and our philistines holding the office of Social-Democratic members of the City Council lost their heads and slid into the marsh.

Class-conscious workers can see from this sad example the consequences which the spread of opportunism in a workers' party is bound to have.