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by critics, some concerning socialist economic or sociological theory, some concerning socialist tactics, others concerning the practical working out of the proposed socialist society. In regard to the latter problems, we have, in the foregoing pages, touched on the most important. It is to be hoped that both the objections and their answers will be carefully weighed in a scientific and fairminded spirit with but one view, that of finding the truth wherever it may lead.

PART II

THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT

CHAPTER IX

SOCIALISM AND INTERNATIONALISM

(1848-1914)

HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL ACTION

1

Beginnings of Internationalism.- Socialists in every country have been engaged in a fight for economic and political reconstruction. This has been primarily a national struggle. Since the earliest beginnings of the movement also, socialists, through their international organizations, have been persistingly fighting for a more genuine brotherhood among the workers of the world.

A virile international note was struck in the first great pronouncement of the socialist movement, The Communist Manifesto in Marx and Engels' famous slogan, " Workingmen of all countries unite!"

The spirit of Internationalism was again voiced at the formation of the first International in 1864, when the delegates made a condition for admittance to their ranks the recognition of "truth, justice, and morality as a rule of their conduct toward each other without distinction of color, faith or nationality."

Four years later at the Brussels congress of 1868, when the war clouds appeared to be hovering above France and Germany, the International took a position against war as such and recommended the general strike in case of an 1 For sketch of the International see last chapter.

outbreak, referring to the impending conflict between France and Germany, as a civil war in favor of Russia.

Concerning the Franco-Prussian War.2- When the conflict between Germany and France actually broke out, however, a somewhat less militant anti-war attitude was taken.

Marx, at that time, in a letter to the German Party Executive, which he composed for the International, declared his belief that the German Social Democracy could take part in the national movement "in so far as and as long as it limits itself to the defense of Germany (which under certain conditions does not exclude the offensive, until peace is declared)." He did not oppose the German side of the struggle when the Napoleonic Empire was still intact, and when he felt that the mercenaries of Napoleon were threatening Germany. However, upon the overthrow of the empire and the establishment of the republic, he demanded peace, and opposed all annexation, predicting that the conquest of Alsace-Lorraine would lead to another conflict and prove "the infallible means of converting the coming peace into a truce which would be broken as soon as France has recuperated sufficiently to recapture the lost territory." In another manifesto, written for the General Council of the International at London, he predicted with rare insight that "this crime of having reëstablished in the second half of the nineteenth century the policy of conquest" would drive France into the arms of Russia and would lead to " with the united Slav and Latin races." He characterized those advocating such a peace as "brainless patriots of the German middle class." His general line of reasoning

a race war, a war

2 Most of the material given in the chapter may be found in Walling, The Socialists and the War. See also Sombart, Socialism and the Socialist Movement, pp. 193–211.

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