Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

NOTEBOOK “ζ”

(“ZETA”)


ARTICLES BY HUGO BÖTTGER IN DER TAG

Der Tag, 1915, No. 93 (edition A), April 22, 1915.

Article: “The Free Trade Unions and the Government” by Dr. Hugo Böttger, Reichstag deputy.

The author begins with the fact that the managing director of a mining company (in Gelsenkirchen), Kirdorf , reproached Minister Delbrück (Minister of the Interior) for maintaining “close contact with the trade union leaders”.

This was dangerous for the workers would become more restless.

The author replies that there is no harm in this,
that workers and employers are standing side by
Bide in the trenches, that “if they (= the free trade
unions = the Social-Democrats) are enlisted for
joint work on certain labour and general national
questions in the Ministry of the Interior, that is
just as much a recognition of the need, as it is an
obligation, for the duration of the war, to re-
nounce
certain provisions of the Social-Democratic
programme
which belong to the sphere of the Inter-
national
and, in common with all other sections of
the population, to do their duty and defend the
fatherland”....
N.B.

An article by the same author in No. 82 (April 9) “The Development of Our Policy”, in which, inter alia, it is stated:

“It is surprising that even in Social-Democratic dis-
cussions the opinion clearly emerges, against the back-
ground of Marxist thinking, that now one has to reckon
with the further development of imperialism, the devel-
opment of large world powers, externally sovereign, as
far as possible independent. Some reject this, others try to
include imperialism in socialist development, and, of
course, there can be no doubt as to which of these two trends
is the wiser and has the greatest prospect of success”....

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH, APRIL 22 AND 23, 1915 | “THE OBJECTS OF THE WAR”, ARTICLE IN THE ECONOMIST

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