VII. Internationalism and the Revolutionary Spirit

In one point early Christian, medieval, and modern communism are in accord, i.e., in their internationalism, in which they are quite distinct from Platonism, the latter being merely local. Platonism was instituted for a few municipalities and their adjacent territories. Ever since the Christian era, on the contrary, every communist has worked for the good of mankind in general, or at all events for the universal national sphere of civilisation in which he happened to live. The local limitation of Plato’s communism is in accord with the peculiar conditions of peasant and petty trade methods of production.

Capitalists and the proletarians overcome local limitations. The merchant does not live for his local customers alone, but principally to carry on business between home and foreign markets. The more intimate and easy this traffic, the greater his prosperity. Hence the merchant is international, or, to express it better, interlocal. Wherever he can make a profit, he is at home.

The interlocalism of the merchant has its source in his commerce with foreign countries; and his position in the foreign market depends on the power of the State to which he belongs (whether it be an ancient city or a modern nation). A strong governmental power is necessary to his prosperity, and, above all, a strong military power. Hence he is always a patriot either at home or abroad, and particularly in the latter case. We see that he has been, ever since mediaeval days, on the side of princely power and Chauvinism in every place where the conditions are favourable to absolutism.

The interlocal feeling of the proletarian arises from other causes. He possesses nothing to chain him to the soil; his home offers him nothing but oppression and a short purse, and these he can find anywhere. The smallest prospect of bettering his lot in some other place is sufficient to make him pluck up stakes and journey thither. Governmental power is the strongest protector of those who ill-treat and despoil him. From the fall of the Roman Republic to the first decade of our century, the proletarian had no hope of overcoming the government, or of making it useful to him, or of influencing it the least in his favour. The State has been the proletarian’s greatest enemy. Not much wonder, then, that he has found it easy to draw the conclusions natural to this state of things. The special characteristics of all sects of communists, from the early Christians down to our own century, has been not only indifference but undisguised aversion to the government, to participation in politics, and the defence of the country. Anarchism is a posthumous child of these conditions of society. This aversion could only be subdued in times of revolution, when it seemed as if the power of the State were tumbling to pieces, thus putting the proletariat in a position to secure that power for itself. In the time of reaction, however, a disgust for all politics would again set in with even greater force. We shall see that such was the case among the Bohemian Brethren after the downfall of Tabor, among the Anabaptists after the Peasant War, and among the Mennonites after the suppression of the Münster rising.

But, since the time of the early Christians, the communists have always, and under all circumstances, laid stress on the duties of international and interlocal solidarity.

In foreign lands the merchant steps forward as a competitor – as the opponent of the native born. He founds his aspirations not on their good-will, but on the power of his country to protect him. The proletarian on foreign soil shows himself as a struggler against the same spoliation as that from which he suffered at home. He cannot count upon the protection of his government, but he can very often rely on that of the proletarians in the regions into which he has wandered, and by whose side he is fighting a common enemy.

It must be admitted that where the proletarian looks upon himself rather as a seller of his labour-powers than as a combatant, he is more inclined to regard his proletarian associates as rivals than as brothers-in-arms, and, in such a case, the disposition towards international solidarity is overcome without much difficulty.

This, however, does not apply to communists: they are in the first line of combatants against exploitation and oppression, and, in every place, they encounter the same opponents, and suffer from the same persecution. This it is which welds them together. From the days of early Christendom there has always been one special peculiarity among communists, viz., that they form one all-embracing family, that the foreign comrade is just as much a brother as the native born; and that, in whatever part of the world he may happen to be, if he finds comrades he is at home. Thanks to this peculiarity and to the lack of possessions, it was easy for their leaders, their agitators, to go from place to place. Poor they always were, for the man of property who joined them was obliged to distribute his means among the needy. The protagonists of the sect were constantly travelling, sometimes displaying a power of locomotion and covering an extent of ground in their journeys which would be quite respectable even in these days of railways. Thus, for example, the Waldenses of Bohemia were by this means able to keep up a constant communication with those of Southern France.

For this reason, communists became of the greatest importance in the conjoint revolutionary movements of the lower classes of their time. The greatest check to their progress was the local narrow-mindedness of the peasantry and petty citizens, which did them enormous injury in the face of their well-organised enemies. Wherever this narrow-mindedness was conquered and revolutionary risings in isolated localities were brought into communication with each other, it was essentially the work of the communist wandering preachers, and it was mainly due to their centralising influence that the peasant insurrection of 1381 in England and the Taborite movement in Bohemia were so successful. During the great Peasant War in Germany, in 1525, they were active in a similar way, but German particularism was too strong for them; apart from the fact that this rebellion was in a great measure thwarted by the want of cohesion among the peasantry.

Here we must notice another important characteristic of heretical communism, the last which we desire to deal with in this connection – a characteristic which distinguishes it from early Christian communism, and makes it analogous with that of modern times: its revolutionary spirit.

The people of the Middle Ages, the exploited classes, i.e., the peasantry, petty traders, and proletariats, were different from the population of declining Rome. Capable of carrying arms and boorishly insolent, they had no comprehension of the teaching which commands men that “Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also;” which interdicts the taking of the law into one’s hands by “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” and “All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword;” which advocates uncomplaining sorrow and suffering as a Christian duty. As soon as the populace in general could read the Bible for themselves (the Roman Catholic priesthood understood well why they wished to make the knowledge of this book their own privilege), they did not draw from the New Testament its lessons of humility and self-denial, but those of hatred to the rich. The favourite portion of the New Testament to the heretics of the lower classes was the Apocalypse, that revolutionary and blood-curdling imagination of an early Christian brain, in which the Apostle exultingly predicts the downfall of existing society amidst deeds of horror compared with which everything hitherto exhibited in acts and threats by the most debased anarchism appears mild. In addition to the Apocalypse, they zealously studied the Old Testament, which is full of examples of peasant democracy, and teaches not only hatred of tyrants, but also active and restless opposition to them, as well as to the rich and powerful. The adherents of the communistic sects were, in general, too weak to entertain, in times of peace, the thought that they could overthrow existing society by their own power, in order to set up communism in its place. If they were not servile and submissive like the baser proletariat of declining Rome, they were still a universally peace-loving folk up to the time of the Reformation, and such evidence as we have unanimously bears out the fact that love of peace and patience were as much their characteristics as were industry and sobriety.

But when insurrectionary times came, when peasant and trader rose around them, then revolutionary enthusiasm seized the communist also. It then appeared to them, or at least to a portion of them (for they were often divided over this question), that the time had come when God would show strength in weakness, and when no miracle seemed impossible. They threw themselves into the revolutionary movement to make it serve the purposes of communism, and having once cast in their lot with the rest, no compromise with the existing powers was possible. They soon obtained the upper hand over the vacillating and procrastinating factions, easily became leaders of movements (like the Taborites among the Hussites, Münzer and his adherents among the rebels of the Thüringian Peasant War), and gave even these a communistic colouring, thus lending to communism the appearance of a strength which in reality it did not possess. As a result, a combination of all the propertied classes rose against it, furious with rage, and completely shattered it.

It is this spirit of revolt in the communistic agitation of the lower classes which, in spite of many resemblances, most clearly distinguishes it from the communism of the early Christians, and bears the most important testimony to its kinship with modern proletarian-communistic movements.

Early Christian communism was unpolitical and passive. Proletarian communism, on the contrary, ever since the Middle Ages, has necessarily been political and rebellious when circumstances were favourable. Like the social democracy of the present day, its aim has been the dictatorship of the proletariat, as the most efficacious means of bringing about a communistic society.

Chapter 2 |