[18]Issue of Nov. 14, 1891.
[18]Issue of Nov. 14, 1891.
[19]Le Radical, May 30, 1893.
[19]Le Radical, May 30, 1893.
Just as the idea of revolution is identified with the ideas of murder and destruction, in the same way the internationalism of the workers is identified withanti-patriotism. There is in the latter case as in the former a fundamental error, and it remains for me to show that, theoretically and practically, the identification of the internationalism of labor with anti-patriotism is unjustifiable. And, to begin with, he who says internationalism says internationalism, and does not say anti-nationalism; consequently, you see at once that no one ought—either to approve or condemn it—to use the word, internationalism, to express what it does not mean and what other words do mean.
Instead of allowing ourselves to be led astray by our various fantastic notions, let us here as elsewhere examine the facts and see what conclusions they impose upon us. Socialism flows from the facts, it follows them and does not precede them. This is the truth to which we must constantly return, which we must never forget. Now, the facts show us,bon gré mal gré, two things: on the one hand, the existence of countries (fatherlands); on the other, the existence, in every social stratum, of an international solidarity.
It is with countries as with classes; some deny the existence of the former, others of the latter. Now, in reason it is no more possible to deny the existence of the country (fatherland) than the existence of classes in that country. It is all right to look forward to the day when national patriotism shall be swallowed up inworld-wide brotherhood, when classes shall vanish in human solidarity, but while waiting for the facts to turn this noble ideal into a reality, we must, in both cases, adapt ourselves to the facts as they actually are at present. To wish to suppress them (classes, etc.) does not suppress them, to protest against their existence does not at all prevent them from existing and, so long as countries and classes shall exist, it will be necessary for us, not to deny their existence in declamations in the Bryan-McKinley style, but to adapt our tactics to the facts which are the consequences of their existence.
Just as the feeling of national solidarity is added to the feeling of family solidarity, without destroying the latter, in the same way the relatively new sentiment of international solidarity is added to the former which is still retained. A new sentiment springing from a new situation does not annihilate the older sentiments and emotions as long as the conditions that gave them birth continue to exist, and families and nations are still in existence.
The tendency toward internationalism was inaugurated by capital. In obedience to its own law of continuous growth, it has, more and more, substituted international commerce for national trade. It has created industries whose raw materials come from abroad and whose products require, for an outlet, the universal or world market. It has thus developed the reciprocal interdependence of nations, no one of which to-day can live without the aid of the others.
Capitalist internationalism, moreover, pursues its ends with stern remorselessness. In order to lower nationalwages and gain greater profits, the capitalist does not hesitate to deprive his fellow-countrymen of work, and to import, to compete with them on the labor market, foreigners wonted by greater poverty to a lower standard of living, and therefore able and willing to work for lower wages. To prohibit them, not from employing foreigners, but from paying them less than the national rate of wages is the only effective means of meeting this evil. On the other hand, provided he sees a goodly profit in the transaction, the capitalist never hesitates to loan money or sell military supplies to a foreign country, though he thus increases its power to wage war against his own.
This international character, assumed by capital in all its forms, is, in its effects, co-extensive with the domain of human affairs. And so, as M. Aulard declared in a lecture about which there has been too much talk: "There are no national boundaries for reason and science * * * They are neither French, nor English, nor German, but international and human." How, therefore, can the workingmen be justly reproached for taking the road on which everything and everybody has started, and along which the capitalists have preceded them? Face to face with the international domination of capital, they have come to understand, in all civilized nations, the common character, the oneness, of their own interests. They are everywhere the victims of the same kind of exploitation, due everywhere to the same cause. The same facts have suggested to them the same demands, the same means and tactics to attain the same goal. International exploitation has thus given birth to anever growing international solidarity among the workers who resist its encroachments. And the international concurrence of the workers is publicly declared by the world-wide celebration of the First day of May.
Notwithstanding the most sincere sentiment of international solidarity on both sides, the workingmen of two countries may still have to fight against each other. This is one of the numerous contradictions—and one of the most horrible—inherent in the capitalist regime, which is condemned to aspire to peace and to unchain the horrid dogs of war. While, for example, commerce on the world market requires peace, the bitterness of competition on that market begets conflicts. * * * *
To safeguard the little independence left to them as laborers, the workers have been led by the state of affairs, by actual conditions, as were the business men before them, to be internationalists; but they are patriots, and must be patriots only whenever their country—be it France or America—is menaced by danger from abroad.
I hope you now see that the internationalism of the workers and the socialists cannot, by any possibility lead to anti-patriotism. These are two distinct ideas which cannot be legitimately confounded, no matter what the object of this confusion. Our internationalism and our patriotism spring from two wholly distinct categories of facts, and different facts logically necessitate different solutions, logic consisting, here and everywhere, in adapting the solution to the facts and not in applying the same solution indiscriminately to all sorts of facts.
To sum up, workingmen and socialists ought to be internationalists in their relations with their toiling comrades when the interests of labor are at stake in times of peace, patriots and Frenchmen before all when France, our country shall be, if it must be, in danger of war, conscious always of the duty to be performed, conscious, if need be, especially in victory, of the duty of respecting in the case of others, especially the conquered, the rights that they claim for themselves.
I have finished. That is all that socialism means. I have taken pains to set it forth in its entirety, free from both the attenuations and the exaggerations by which it is often mutilated or disfigured, but which seem to me to have no foundation in reality. Its goal is the socialization of the means of labor which have already manifested collective tendencies—either in their mode of ownership or in the mode of their employment as exploiting agencies—and the abolition of classes. Its means, the transference to the political battlefield of the Class Struggle, the existence of which it is compelled to acknowledge. It must, for the time being, be resolved to preserve legality at home and peace abroad, but equally energetically determined to tolerate no measure that will make the situation of the toilers more intolerable, to preserve republican institutions intact and to defend the national territory against all foreign foes.
GABRIEL DEVILLE.
[20]In France, where pseudo-patriotism, or jingoism, runs riot, the argument that international socialism is unpatriotic is much in vogue with the hireling scribes of capitalism. Hence, this section. In this country, owing in part to its geographical isolation, but still more to the almost complete lack of a sense of international solidarity on the part of the American worker, we seldom have to meet this argument, and so I will condense and abridge this section.—Tr.
[20]In France, where pseudo-patriotism, or jingoism, runs riot, the argument that international socialism is unpatriotic is much in vogue with the hireling scribes of capitalism. Hence, this section. In this country, owing in part to its geographical isolation, but still more to the almost complete lack of a sense of international solidarity on the part of the American worker, we seldom have to meet this argument, and so I will condense and abridge this section.—Tr.
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The publishing house which issues this book is not owned by a capitalist nor by a group of capitalists. It is owned by a constantly growing number of working people (1,640 in February, 1907) who have each put in ten dollars.
They get no dividends; what they do get is the privilege of buying books at half price. Moreover, they make possible in this way the publication of the real books of International Socialism at prices within the reach of laborers.
Whatever profit is made on these books is used to bring out more books, but our prices are so low that this does not provide more than a small fraction of the money that is needed.
That is why we want more partners. A dollar a month for ten months will give you the privilege of buying books at special rates as soon as you have made your first payment. But by paying ten dollars at one time you can get a certain number of books free and special rates on your first order for other books.
Write for particulars.
Charles H. Kerr & Company(Co-operative)264 Kinzie Street, Chicago
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