Nationalism and Culture by Rudolf Rocker Read Free Book Online Page B

consequently the end of all real intellectual culture. That the full scope of this threatening development has not been grasped up to now, that the idea that it is necessitated by current economic conditions has even been accepted, may well be regarded as one of the most fateful signs of the times.
    The dangerous mania which sees in every social phenomenon only the inevitable result of capitalistic methods of production has implanted in men the conviction that all social events arise from definite necessity and are economically unalterable. This fatalistic notion could only result in crippling men's power of resistance, and consequently making them receptive to a compromise with given conditions, no matter how horrible and inhuman they may be.
    Every one knows that economic conditions have an influence on the changes in social relations. How men will react in their thoughts and actions to this influence is of great importance, however, in determining what steps they may decide to take to initiate an obviously necessary change in the conditions of life. But it is just the thoughts and actions of men which refuse to accept the imprint of economic motives alone. Who would, for instance, maintain that the Puritanism which has decidedly influenced the spiritual development of Anglo-Saxon people up to the present day was the necessary result of the economic capitalistic order then in its infancy, or who would try to prove that the World War was absolutely conditioned by the capitalistic system and was consequently unavoidable?
    Economic interests undoubtedly played an important part in this war as they have in all others, but they alone would not have been able to cause this fatal catastrophe. Merely the sober statement of concrete economic purposes would never have set the great masses in motion. It was therefore necessary to prove to them that the quarrel for which they were to kill others, for which they were to be killed themselves, was "the good and righteous cause." Consequently, one side fought "against the Russian despotism," for the "liberation of Poland"—and, of course, for the "interests of the fatherland," which the Allies had "conspired" to destroy. And the other side fought "for the triumph of Democracy" and the "overthrow of Prussian militarism" and "that this war should be the last war."
    It might be urged that behind all the camouflage by which the people were fooled for over four years there stood, after all, the economic interests of the possessing classes. But that is not the point. The decisive factor is that without the continuous appeal to men's ethical feelings, to their sense of justice, no war would have been possible. The slogan, "God punish England!" and the cry, "Death to the Huns!" achieved in the last war far greater miracles than did the bare economic interests of the possessing classes. This is proved by the fact that before men can be driven to war they must be lashed into a certain pitch of passion and by the further fact that this passion can only be aroused by spiritual and moral motives.
    Did not the very people who year after year had proclaimed to the working masses that every war in the era of capitalism springs from purely economic motives, at the outbreak of the World War abandon their historic-philosophical theory and raise the affairs of the nation above those of the class? And these were the ones who, with Marxist courage of conviction, supported the statement in The Commimist Manifesto: "The history of all society up to now has been the history of class struggles."
    Lenin and others have attributed the failure of most of the socialist parties at the beginning of the war to the leaders' fear of assuming responsibility, and with bitter words they have flung this lack of courage in their faces. Admitting that there is a great deal of truth in this assertion—although we must beware in this case of generalizing too freely— what is proved by it?
    If it was indeed fear of responsibility