The Socialism of to-day

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 835096955

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-28834

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Laveleye, Émile de

Title:: The Socialism of to-day

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Field & Tuer

Year of publication:: 1884

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (XLIV, 331 S.)

Collection:: Economics Books

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THE SOCIALISM OF TO-DAY. 176 all nations will form only one single family. Capital and labour will pass indifferently from one country to another in search of the best remuneration. Already many English people, taking the lead of other nations, look upon the whole globe as their country, and pass the summer in the Alps, the winter at Nice, or Cairo, or Madeira, choosing the best climate and the pleasantest places. There is no illusion about it. We are drawing towards cosmopolitanism. Patriotism is everywhere becoming less exclusive and consequently less intense. How many people are now ready to say. Ubi bene^ ibipatria! But if, in this respect, the International is inspired by the present economic movement, and if it execrates war between nations, we must not forget that it substitutes the universal strife of labour against capital. The enemy is no longer the foreigner, but the employer, the factory lord.* This is the reason why these brotherly effusions, that one would imagine were borrowed from the speeches, suffused with Christianity, of the Peace Congresses, are often accom panied by language of rage and hate which calls to mind the death-chaunt of cannibals. What was the part taken by the International in the revolu tion of the 18th of March ? M. de Molinari, who watched from near at hand the Socialist movement at Paris, affirms that the association, as such, took no part in it,t and all known facts • To quote one extract in illustration of this phase of thought : “Fatherland, a phrase, a folly! Humanity, a fact, a truth. Invented by priests and kings, like the mythical God, the fatherland has only served for penning up human cattle within separate enclosures, where they may be shorn and bled under the very hands of their masters, for the greater profit of these latter and in the name of the unclean fetish. “ To-day we have had enough of it. Nations are brothers. Kings and their hangers-on are the sole enemies. Enough of bloodshed, enough of imbecility. Nations, countries are no longer more than words. France is dead. Humanity takes her place. The Utopia of Anacharsis Clootz is becoming a reality. Nationality, the result of birth, is an evil. Let it perish. To be born in this place or that, the result of pure chance, decides whether we are to be friends or enemies. Let us repudiate this stupid lottery of which we have hitherto been the dupes. Our country is every where, where we can live and work in freedom. Peoples, workers, the light is spreading. Open your eyes I Down with the Despots ! Away with Tyrants! France is dead. Long live humanity!” (Jules Noslag, alias Ruffier, in the Rh'olution politique et soríale, i6th April, 1871.) t Le Mouvement socialiste et les réunions publiques, by M. de Molinari,

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