INTERNATIONALITY.
In the very nature of things, an existence worthy of human beings can never be the exclusive possession of a single privileged people. Isolated from all others, no nation could either raise or keep up such an establishment. The development that we have reached is the product of the co-operation of national and international forces and relations. Although with many the national idea still wholly sways the mind, and subserves the purpose of maintaining political and social dominations, possible only within national boundaries, the human race has reached far into internationalism.
Treaties of commerce, of tariffs and of shipping, postal unions, international expositions, conventions on international law and on international systems of measurement, international scientific congresses and associations, international expeditions of discovery, our trade and intercommunication, especially the international congresses of workingmen, who are the carriers of the new social order and to whose moral influence was mainly due the international congress for factory legislation in the interest of the workingmen, assembled in Berlin in the spring of 1890 upon the invitation of the German Empire,—these and many other phenomena testify to the international character that, despite national demarcations, the relations between the various civilized nations have assumed. National boundary lines are being broken through. The term "world's economy" is taking the place of "national economy": an increasing significance is attaching to it, seeing that upon it depends the well-being and prosperity of individual nations. A large part of our own products is exchanged for those of foreign nations, without which we could no longer exist. As one branch of industry is injured when another suffers, so likewise does the production of one nation suffer materially when that of another is paralyzed. Despite all such transitory disturbances as wars and race persecutions, the relations of the several nations draw ever closer, because material interests, the strongest of all, dominate them. Each new highway, every improvement in the means of intercommunication, every invention or improvement in the process of production, whereby goods are made cheaper, strengthens these relations. The ease with which personal contact can be established between distantly located countries and peoples is a new and powerful link in the chain that draws and holds the nations together. Emigrations and colonizations are additional and powerful levers. One people learns from the other. Each seeks to excel. Along with the interchange of material products, the interchange of the products of the mind is going on, in the original tongue as well as in translations. To millions the learning of foreign living languages becomes a necessity. Next to material advantages, nothing contributes more towards removing antipathies than to penetrate into the language and the intellectual products of a foreign people.
The effect of this process of drawing together, that is going on upon an international scale, is that the several nations are resembling one another ever more in their social conditions. With the most advanced, and therefore pace-setting nations, the resemblance is now such that he who has learned to understand the social structure of one, likewise knows that of all the others in essentials. It happens similarly as in Nature where, among animals of the same species the skeleton formation and organization is the same, and, if in possession of a part of such a skeleton, one can theoretically construct the whole animal.
A further result is this, that where the same social foundations are found, their effects must be the same—the accumulation of vast wealth, and its opposite pole of mass-poverty, wage-slavery, dependence of the masses upon the machinery of production, their domination by the property-holding minority, and the rest of the long train of consequences.
Indeed, we see that the class antagonisms and the class struggles, that rage throughout Germany, equally keep all Europe, the United States, Australia, etc., in commotion. In Europe, from Russia across to Portugal, from the Balkans, Hungary and Italy across to England and Ireland, the same spirit of discontent is prevalent, the identical symptoms of social fermentation, of general apprehension and of decomposition are noticeable. Externally unlike, according to the degree of development, the character of the people and their political organization, these movements are all essentially alike. Deep-reaching social antagonisms are their cause. Every year these antagonisms become more pronounced, the fermentation and discontent sinks deeper and spreads wider, until finally some provocation, possibly insignificant in seeming, brings on the explosion, that then spreads like lightning throughout the civilized world, and calls upon the people to take sides—pro or con.
The battle is then on between New and Old Society. Masses of people step upon the stage; an abundance of intelligence is enlisted, such as the world never before saw engaged in any contest, and never again will see gathered for such a purpose. It is the last social struggle of all. Standing at the elevation of this century, the sight is obvious of the steady coming to a head of the forces for the struggle in which the New Ideas will triumph.
The new social system will then rear itself upon an international basis. The peoples will fraternize; they will reach one another the hand, and they will endeavor to gradually extend the new conditions over all the races of the earth.[228] No people any longer approaches another as an enemy, bent upon oppression and exploitation; or as the representative of a strange creed that it seeks to impose upon others;—they will meet one another as friends, who seek to raise all human beings to the height of civilization. The labors of the new social order in its work of colonization and civilization will differ as essentially in both purpose and method from the present, as the two social orders are essentially different from each other. Neither powder nor lead, neither "firewater" (liquor) nor Bible will be used. The task of civilization is entered upon with the instruments of peace, which will present the civilizers to the savages, not as enemies, but as benefactors. Intelligent travelers and investigators have long learned to know how successful is that path.