The Zimmerwald Manifesto

“Millions of corpses cover the battlefields. Millions of human beings have been crippled for the rest of their lives. . . . The war that has produced this chaos is the outcome of imperialism, of the attempt on the part of the capitalist classes of each nation to foster their greed for profit by the exploitation of human labor and of the natural resources of the entire globe."

So begins Leon Trotsky in his Zimmerwald Manifesto. By this point, the First World War was about a year old. Trotsky attempts to unite socialists throughout Europe in opposing the war. He does this, along with other ways, by painting a narrative that fits to his mold of dissent.

According to Trotsky, the war clearly was the product of imperialist self-interests. He ignores other causes of the war, like nationalism and militarism, to allow his followers to unite around a common enemy. As we discussed in class yesterday, it’s much easier to channel hate into something constructive when that hate is directed at one thing or idea. In this essay, Trotsky uses imperialism as that one thing or idea. In light of his socialist ideals, this made sense because his audience, primarily “workingmen and workingwomen! Mothers and fathers! Widows and orphans! Wounded and crippled” of the “Socialists of the belligerent countries,” were likely to rally around that cause.

He describes the horrors of war, the bloodshed, the economic devastation, and the “gigantic human slaughterhouse” that was Europe to induce pathos in his audience. This pathos helped his audience identify with the narrative that Trotsky presented. The audience’s emotions could then carry them toward the change that Trotsky suggested, a uniting of peoples in protest against the war.