sly
conquered, by the bourgeois world in 1789--but it does desire the
laborers, after they have become conscious of the interests and needs of
their class, to make use of that liberty to realize a more equitable and
more human social organization.

Nevertheless, it is only too indisputable that under the system of
private property and its inevitable consequence, the monopoly of
economic power, the liberty of the man who does not share in this
monopoly, is only an impotent and sentimental toy. And when the workers,
with a clear consciousness of their class-interests, wish to make use of
this liberty, then the holders of political power are forced to disown
the great liberal principles, "the principles of '89," by suppressing
all public liberty, and they vainly fancy that they will be able, in
this way, to stop the inevitable march of human evolution.

As much must be said of another accusation made against socialists.
They renounce their fatherland (_patrie_), it is said, in the name of
internationalism.

This also is false.

The national _epopees_ which, in our century, have reconquered for Italy
and Germany their unity and their independence, have really constituted
great steps forward, and we are grateful to those who have given us a
free country.

But our country can not become an obstacle to future progress, to the
fraternity of all peoples, freed from national hatreds which are truly a
relic of barbarism, or a mere bit of theatrical scenery to hide the
interests of capitalism which has been shrewd enough to realize, for its
own benefit, the broadest internationalism.

It was a true moral and social progress to rise above the phase of the
communal wars in Italy, and to feel ourselves all brothers of one and
the same nation; it will be just the same when we shall have risen above
the phase of "patriotic" rivalries to feel ourselves all brothers of one
and the same humanity.

It is, nevertheless, not difficult for us to penetrate, thanks to the
historical key of class-interests, the secret of the contradictions, in
which the classes in power move. When they form an international
league--the London banker, thanks to telegraphy, is master of the
markets in Pekin, New York and St. Petersburg--it is greatly to the
advantage of that ruling class to maintain the artificial divisions
between the laborers of the whole world, or even those of old Europe
alone, because it is only the division of the workers which makes