To the Workers of the World.

MANIFESTO OF THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST BUREAU.

At the very moment in which Nicholas was about to call the first peace conference his policy in the far east was rendering the war with Japan inevitable.

At the moment in which he was receiving the congratulations of the second Hague congress he ordered the dissolution of the second duma.

This double coincidence is an admirable illustration of the farce which has been and is being played now at The Hague and at St. Petersburg. The farce will be complete when the third peace congress shall meet in a palace erected by a man who in his own country, the United States, was one of the first to hurl an armed police against the working class and to illustrate to the world his idea of social peace, by ordering them to fire upon the workers in his shops-the creators of his immense fortune.

For a long time the proletariat has thoroughly understood the traditional policy of the Russian government-that pivot of the reaction. External peace, as it conceives it is not the abolition of war, but the weakening of its opponents and the domination of czarism. Its dream of domestic peace is a people crushed and autocracy perpetuated.

After the first congress at The Hague Nicholas went forth to devastate Manchuria and turn loose the horrors of Blagovechtchensk. He violated his oath to the Finnish people and drowned all Russia in blood. He re-established the tortures of the middle ages at Riga; he permitted the massacre and pillage of the poor peasants of Goria by his soldiers to go unpunished; he has permitted the guards of the prisons to kill with the bayonets political prisoners, both men and women. During the insurrection. of Moscow he permitted his soldiers to fire upon ambulances and his imperial guards have, under form of law, killed railway employes engaged in their regular work.

The czar has treated his own subjects as he would be ashamed to treat the soldiers of an enemy. And it is this chief of a band of capitalists and colonial pirates, who is seeking to impose himself upon the world as the symbol and personification of their right of primitive force, who seeks to show us how peaceable agreements can be substituted for bloody battles and permanent treaties of peace replace fratricidal war.

Admitting sincerity, it is impossible to realize these peaceful intentions, because militarism is nothing more than the organized armament of the state for the purpose of holding the working class beneath the economic and political yoke of the bourgeoise because under capitalism wars between nations are. generally only the result of their struggles for the markets of the world, because each power asserts itself, not alone to maintain the markets which it already possesses, but to conquer new ones, and this, too often, by the subjugation of foreign peoples and the confiscation of their territory.

Let the diplomats who are seated at The Hague look about them! They will see the masters of West Africa by the side of the rulers of India, the conquerors of Madagascar by the side of the exploiters of the Congo, and the victors in Manchuria by the side of their unfortunate adversaries.

Wars, which are systematically undertaken by the dominant classes for the purpose of arousing the mutual antagonism of different peoples, appear to the proletariat as the very essence of capitalism, which will disappear only with the disappearance of capitalist exploitation itself.

The working class, on the contrary is the natural enemy of war, because it is the principal victim-victim through the sacrifice of its children, victim through the loss of its product, and because war is in opposition to the object of Socialism, which is the creation of a new order of things, based upon the solidarity of the producers, upon the fraternity of nations, upon the liberty of the people.

When in 1870 Germany annexed Alsace-Lorraine the representatives of the Socialist proletariat, Bebel and Liebknecht, protested against war and annexation.

When in 1904 the official heads of Russia and Japan were sacrificing thousands of young lives, the representatives of the proletariats of Russia and Japan, were clasping fraternal hands at the Socialist congress at Amsterdam.

In 1870 while the cannon were thundering on the frontiers the German workers wrote to the French workers:

"We must never forget that the workers of all countries are friends, and that the despots of all countries are our enemies.' And the French workers replied to the German workers: "French workers! German workers! Spanish workers!

Let us unite our voices in a cry of denunciation of war."

Such was the language of the first international of the workers. Such is the language of the new international of the laborers. Its representatives have, in spite of calumny and persecution, consistently supported their ideas of peace between nations by their acts, in systematically refusing to vote for all military

credit, and it is certain that the day on which the workers control armies wars will cease.

This is why they demand the military disarmament of the bourgeoisie, and the armament of the working class through the general armament of the whole people.

Each time that a threatening cloud appears upon the political horizon, the working class intervenes in parliaments, in the streets, by its deputies and by manifestations, and it may well decide in the hour of danger to go further than it has hitherto done to anticipate and prevent war.

Its politics will not be contradictory. Just as in the Boer war the English proletariat was opposed to its government, so no two divisions of the international army of labor will permit themselves to be in opposing camps.

The international labor movement has always maintained as a principle that no government can threaten the independence of any nation without arousing against it its own working class and the international working class. This is why the idea of peace can only take form and triumph through the progress and realization of the ideal of Socialism.

War, on the contrary, finds its best ground for culture in the growth of absolutism. Viewed from this point the dissolution of the duma constitutes a danger for all Europe. It has surprised no one. We are accustomed to seeing czarism violate its pledges, and the moment that it has the power it will treat other nations as its treats the Russian people.

Nicholas II, during a moment of danger, promised liberty. But when the peril seemed less threatening he sent back the first duma, since it did not appear sufficiently docile. He desired a parliament of servants.

The government of Russia accepted the words, government by parliament, but not the thing. In response to the desires of the bureaucracy and his sovereign, Stolypin promulgated restrictive legislation, tampered with the electoral lists, imprisoned his opponents. This great minister showed his chivalry by turning loose the Black Bands and the police to massacre women and children.

Events baffled the ministerial calculations. In spite of the interference and violence of the officials the second duma appeared more radical than the first. It included more than 100 deputies, professing some of the different shades of Socialism.

On the morrow of the elections it became evident that the days of the second duma were numbered. But Stolypin wished to play the part of the good prince, and so he permitted a parliament to exist on condition that it always consented to just what the government wished. The cadets were weak enough frequent

ly to agree to his suggestions. They repulsed the project of amnesty; they refused to censure the official assassins, and they did not even dare to reject a budget over which they had no control. They guarded Stolypin against all words of censure and smiled while he persecuted and murdered.

The chief of the cabinet has made easy game of them. He searched the homes of the deputies. He forged telegrams in the name of the people commanding the dissolution of the duma. He demanded that the proceedings of the sessions in which the question of the army was discussed should be secret. He presented resolutions of sympathy with the police. He gave them an opportunity to discover plots against the government and the peace of the nation. He demanded immediate and unquestioning solid support at all times. The bourgeois representatives did not have the courage to give this impudence the reply which it merited and dissolution was announced without the cadets having been permitted the honor of once taking a manly attitude.

The organized proletariat of Russia is charged and has charged itself with the task of meeting this situation. There must be no truce in the battle against autocracy, and it is the duty of the workers of he world to come once more to the assistance of their comrades in the strugle.

The Socialist deputies in the Austrian reichsrath have already announced their intention of questioning their government upon the consequences of dissolution, some of the already apparent complications of which menace the interests of foreign governments.

The Socialists of France have not been slow to call the attention of their government to the solemn obligations which it has taken in regard to Russian bonds.

The Socialists of Great Britain, the traditonal parliamentary country, have already held meetings of protest on the 14th of July, the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille,, against the succession of coup d'etats, which their authors have sought to justify by hypocrisy and lying.

The proletariats of other countries may be depended upon to support this movement and to recall to treir members that Socialism alone means Peace, and that the watchword must always be "Down with Autocracy; long live the Russian Revolution."

*

This statement is signed by the representatives of twentyfive nations, Russia being omitted, because of the fact that signing such a document by a Russian would at once make him a marked man.

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.

Of all the writings of Karl Marx there is none better adapted than this to give the reader an insight into the practical applications of the doctrine of historical materialism. It is especially helpful to American Socialists just at this time, for, just as Louis Bonaparte was a sort of second edition of the great Napoleon, so Theodore Roosevelt is a sort of second edition of Louis Bonaparte, Farmer support enabled both Louis Napoleon and Theodore Roosevelt to dictate to a divided and incompetent bourgeoisie; but the French bourgeoisie of 1849-52 was incompetent because it had not yet arrived at maturity, while the American bourgeoisie of 1906-07 is incompetent because it is rotten ripe and only waiting to be mowed down by the scythe of the Class Conscious. proletariat.

The way in which the psychology of the individual is moulded by material class conditions is clearly shown in the following passage. Marx has been showing that the House of Bourbon was the political representative of large landed property, while the House of Orleans was the political representative of Capital; he continues:

"That simultaneously old recollections; personal animosities, fears and hopes; prejudices and illusions; sympathies and antipathies; convictions, faith and principles bound these factions to one House or the other, who denies it? Upon the several forms of property, upon the social conditions of existence, a whole superstructure is reared of various and peculiarly shaped feelings, illusions, habits of thought and conceptions of life. The whole class produces and shapes these out of its material foundation and out of the corresponding social conditions. The individual unit to whom they flow through tradition and education, may fancy that they constitute the true reasons for and premises of his conduct."

The following description of the coalition of the small traders and workingmen in the Social Democratic party of 1849 may be applied almost word for word to the followers of Roosevelt, Hearst or Bryan; and it comes far nearer than I could wish to being a description of the Socialist Party. It should be noted that Marx credited the small traders and their spokesmen with a sincere conviction that they were trying to save Society by avoid

*) The Eighteenth Brunaire of Louis Bonaparte. By Karl Marx, translated by Daniel De Leon, Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co. Paper, 25 Cents.