The Commonweal/Volume 1/Number 2/Record of the International Movement
RECORD OF THE INTERNATIONAL MOVEMENT.
The members of the Socialist League are International Revolutionary Socialists. Hence, while admitting that different methods of propaganda may be necessary in different countries, under different conditions, they profess the same uncompromising principles, have at heart the same ends and aims as the Revolutionary Socialists of all other countries.
The following letters from our fellow-workers abroad will, I am sure, be read by us in England with the deepest interest, the heartiest sympathy. The knowledge that the Socialists of other lands look to us for help in the great struggle should be an incentive—if incentive is needed in such a cause as ours—to work more earnestly, more zealously than ever.
I feel I need offer no apology for putting these letters in the place of my usual notes.
The names of our friends are too well known to call for any sort of introduction from me. But perhaps I may be allowed, in the name of the Socialist League, to thank them for their sympathy with our work and their confidence in our principles, and, above all, for putting into practice the old precept: “Proletarians of all countries, unite!”
When there arise differences of opinion on matters of principle between fellow-workers, a split is as necessary as it is unpleasant. The energy of the workers is only weakened by such differences in opinion, and any real work rendered impossible; and clearness and definiteness of aim, the uncompromising enunciation of principles, alone are sure of success with the masses. On these grounds I hail with pleasure the fact that the members of the S.L. have freed themselves from all organisations that, on account of vagueness of ideas and indefiniteness of aims, can but harm the cause of revolutionary Socialism—and any other Socialism is a contradiction in itself. I hope and trust the S.L. will at last succeed in creating a movement in England, economically the most developed country in the world, and therefore well prepared for the reception of our ideas. Socialists of all lands are deeply interested in such a result. As Lassalle in his day could with truth say of Germany, that with a great Socialist movement in Berlin the Socialist movement in Germany would become irresistible, so International Socialism may say with regard to England: if England is gained to us, our way through the whole civilised world is won. Hence you have before you a great and most important field for active work, and I hope in the interest of us all you will succeed in cultivating it. Of our sympathy and goodwill you may be sure.—With hearty greeting. yours,
I am proud of having been invited to contribute to the Commonweal; I consider it my duty to help you as far as I am able. Nobody knows better than myself the difficulties that are in your way, but nobody knows better also that England, in consequence of her high economical development, has, economically, the central position amongst the civilised states, and that the triumph of Socialism in England means the triumph of Socialism all over the world. Unfortunately I have been prevented by over-work (parliamentary and other) from sending you an article for your first number, and the same is the case with Bebel, who, like me, is most desirous of co-operating with you. As soon as we can snatch a leisure hour you may count upon us. I know you have the will to do the right thing; and where there is a will there is a way, is an English saying. The time cannot be distant when the working men of England will put their own immense power and their unparalleled organisation into the service of their own class. With Social Democratic greeting, truly yours,
| Berlin, Reichstag, Feb. 16, 1885. | W. Liebknecht. |
I do not know whether I shall be able to write to you as often as I should like. Anyhow, if time is wanting, good-will is not. One thing I can say to you, that I hail with as much of joy as hope the formation of the Socialist League. Through your action, at last, revolutionary Communism is to have in Great Britain an organ, a flag, and men worthy of the party of revolution, free from all alliance with reactionaries, free from all Chauvinism. I hope heartily that your appeal will be heard, and that behind you the masses of the English proletariat will rally to take their place in the great struggle for political power and for the deliverance that we must with all our strength urge on, and can, if we choose, attain; to save modern society from the ruin towards which the capitalistic régime is dragging it, and by the revolutionary abolition of all privilege of all classes, to found the popular and communistic republic of equality, science and commonweal. The one thing wanting to the Socialist proletariat of Europe and America, the one thing wanting to the Revolution to declare war and to conquer, is the fellowship of England. The Socialist League promises us this, and will give it to us. No country will be nearer the goal than yours when once it wills to strain towards it. And if, despite the necessity that urges us, we move slowly, that you may hasten the ay of triumph, and, leading the way, give us the signal and the example, is the sincere wish of your devoted friend,
I wish you good luck in your undertaking, and I shall be at your disposal for the journal.
As a disciple of Karl Marx, and an old member of the International Working Men's Association [and we may add Minister of Public Workers under the Commune] I am with all those who profess the same scientific ideas, i.e., the same principles. Presuming that the Socialist League, as well as its official organ, the Commonweal, serves to propagate the true, i.e., the Scientific Socialism, and thus to effect a revolution in the minds which, in my opinion has to be made ere the people can do away with all the existing rotten political and economical privileges—I shall be delighted to contribute to your paper as often as time and circumstances will allow.—Yours affectionately,
Permit me in my own name, and in that of many of my Austrian fellow Socialists to express to you the sympathy we feel with the efforts of the Socialist League.
We Austrians have always felt the necessity for the international solidarity of the working classes—and for a good reason. Nowhere, probably, has the development of Social democracy been more cramped by national struggles than in Austria, whose rare national contrasts have reached a degree of intensity that, at the outside, is perhaps only to be equalled by the differences between English and Irish men. In these national struggles a great part of the attention and strength of the working classes is absorbed that would be far more advantageously spent upon the international class-struggle against capital. The Socialist movement itself is in Austria no united one. We have a German, a Bohemian, a Hungarian, a Polish, a Servian, an Italian working class movement, each independent of the other, as the means for a common understanding are wanting. Only the most earnest lessons of internationalism make it possible for the workers recognising the class struggle, on the one hand, to abstain from taking part in the national struggles and thus wasting their strength, and on the other hand to maintain if only a feeble link between the working class movements in Austria, so that they may in decisive moments act in common against the common enemy.
But there is also another matter that forces us always to bear in mind our international solidarity. We are a small party fighting a desperate battle with unequal weapons on a disadvantageous soil. This struggle would for the moment have appeared hopeless under our present political condition and in face of the small class-consciousness of Austrian workers, recruited to a great extent from backward undeveloped races. But one thing has supported us—the sense of international solidarity. However unsatisfactory conditions in Asurtia may be, when we look upon the whole European movement we can still cry “And yet it moves.”
As Austrian Social democracy we are weak and insignificant; as part of the great International Social democracy we are strong and full of import. The victories of our brethren in Russia, France, Germany, are our victories also, strengthening us also, and giving us courage to toil on in the work of emancipation of the proletariat.
Hence the development of the Social democracy in different lands is not indifferent to us, and we have long awaited the time when the motherland of capitalistic production would join the Socialistic movement. Russia and England are the two poles of modern society. When Russian absolutism shall be conquered, when the mass of English workers has been won to Socialism the last hour of Capitalism will have come. The Socialists of England do not fight for themselves, for the English working classes alone. They fight for the exploited of the whole world. The more conscious they are of this, the more resolutely they devote themselves to the thought of international solidarity, the greater will be the sympathy with which the whole proletariat will watch their struggle.
I hope you have not doubted that I am heart and soul with you and the other friends and coreligionnaires. . . . My best greetings and good wishes to all.
Yes. I will collaborate with your Commonweal as much as my time will allow me. The cause of Russian liberty quickly wins the public opinion of English-speaking people, without any distinction of class or party. All preconceived ideas are melting away before facts that every-day life brings forth. But among English Socialists—and I daresay English workmen in general—no prejudice against the Russian Revolutionary movement has ever existed. From the very beginning their sympathies were with us. And the toast proclaimed by their representatives in Paris was that of frank approbation and unconditional sympathy with Russian Socialists, struggling for the liberty of their country. I am proud of your invitation and will lose no opportunity of addressing such people.
If my collaboration can be of any use to your journal, I shall make it my duty to contribute to the success of an organ which has for its aim the propagation of Socialistic ideas in England. I wish every success to the Commonweal.
When I find time, I'll send you some notes on events in our country. All that happens in England interests me very much; the economical development of that country makes it the most ripe for the accomplishment of our aims.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse