§ 57. The causes of national enmity

But it does not suffice that the communists should declare war on the oppression of nationalities and upon national prejudices, that they should advocate international unity in the struggle against capitalism, and that they should desire to found a world-wide economic alliance of the victorious proletariat. We must seek a far quicker way towards the overthrow of all jingoism and national egoism, of national stupidity and pride, of mutual mistrust among the workers of the various nations. This legacy from a brutal period of human life and from the brutal nationalist quarrel of the feudal and capitalist epochs, still hangs like a heavy burden round the neck of the world proletariat.

National enmities are of very ancient date. There was a time when the different tribes were not content with fighting one another for lands and forests, but when the men of one tribe would actually eat those of another. Remnants of this brutal mistrust and enmity between nation and nation, between race and race, continue to exist between the workers and peasants of all lands. These vestiges of intertribal enmity are gradually dying out; in proportion as world commerce develops, as economic contact ensues, as migrations and minglings bring people of various stocks into close association on the same territory; but especially do they die out owing to the universality of the class struggle of the workers of all lands. Yet these vestiges of intertribal enmity do not merely fail to become extinct, but actually glow with renewed life, when to the old causes of national ill-feeling there is superadded an antagonism of class interests or the appearance of such antagonism.

The bourgeoisie in each country exploits and oppresses the proletariat of its own land. But it does its utmost to convince its own proletariat that the latter's enemies are not to be found among bourgeois fellow-countrymen, but among the peoples of other lands. The German bourgeoisie cries to the German workers, 'Down with the French! Down with the English!' The British bourgeoisie cries to the British workers, 'Down with the Germans!' The bourgeoisies of all countries, especially of late, join in the cry, 'Down with the Jews!' The aim of this is to switch off the class struggle of the workers against their capitalist oppressors, into a struggle between nationalities.

The bourgeoisie, however, in its desire to divert the workers' minds from the struggle for socialism, is not content with inflaming national hatred. It endeavours in addition to give the workers a material interest in the oppression of other peoples. During the recent war, when the bourgeois were chanting the German national anthem 'Germany, Germany above all', the bourgeois economists of Germany tried to convince the German workers that the latter stood to gain a great deal from the victory, stood to gain from the oppression and plunder of the workers of the conquered lands. Before the war the bourgeoisie made a practice of bribing the leaders of the working class with the lure of the profits derivable from colonial plunder and from the oppression of backward and weakly nationalities. The workers of the more advanced European lands, acting on the instigation of the most highly paid members of the working class, acceded to the proposals of the capitalists, and allowed themselves to be talked over by the jingo socialists into accepting the belief that they too would have a fatherland if only they would acquiesce in the plunder of the colonies and of the partially dependent nations. The worker who, under capitalism, proclaims himself a patriot, is selling for a copper or two his real fatherland, which is socialism; and thereby he becomes one of the oppressors of the backward and weak nations.