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 with anti-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 gre mal gre_, 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 in world-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 national wages 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 an ever 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.