THE SECOND AND THIRD INTERNATIONAL

It means nothing of the kind. Let us suppose that there are two manufacturers whom we will call Schultz and Petrov. They are rivals in the market. Schultz says to his men: “Friends, stand by me with all your strength. Do all the harm you can to the Petrov factory, to Petrov himself, to his workmen. Then my factory will flourish, for I shall have downed Petrov and my business will boom. I shall be able to give all you fellows a rise.” Petrov says just the same to his men. Now let us suppose that Schultz has the best of it. It is quite likely that in the flush of victory he will give his workers a rise. But after a time he will cut down wages to the old level. If now the workers in the Schultz factory go on strike, and would like those who had formerly worked in the Petrov factory to help them, the latter would say: “Mighty fine! You did us all the harm you could, and now you come crawling to us for help! Clear out!” It would be impossible to arrange for a general strike. When the workers are disunited, the capitalist is strong. Now that he has overthrown his competitor, he is able to get the better of his disunited workers. For a brief space the workers in Schultz’s factory enjoyed higher wages, but their gains were soon lost. Just the same thing happens in the international struggle. The bourgeois State is a masters’ league. When one such league grows fat at the expense of the others, it is able to bribe the workers. The collapse of the Second International and the betrayal of socialism by the leaders of the working-class movement occurred because these leaders determined to “defend” the crumbs that fell from the masters’ table and hoped for an increase in the amount of these crumbs. During the war, when, owing to the aforesaid treason, the workers were disunited, capital in all countries imposed terrible burdens upon them. The workers came to realise their miscalculation; they came to understand that their leaders had sold them for the merest trifle. Thus began the rebirth of socialism. We can readily understand that the first protests came from the badly paid, unskilled workers. The “aristocracy of labour” (the printers, for instance) and the old leaders, continued to play a traitor’s game.