Page:Roads to freedom.djvu/156

 ruling classes. The last words of the Communist Manifesto embody this idea:—

So long as the proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains, it is not likely that their enmity will be directed against other proletarians. If the world had developed as Marx expected, the kind of Internationalism which he foresaw might have inspired a universal social revolution. Russia, which developed more nearly than any other country upon the lines of his system, has had a revolution of the kind which he expected. If the development in other countries had been similar, it is highly probable that this revolution would have spread throughout the civilized world. The proletariat of all countries might have united against the capitalists as their common enemy, and in the bond of an identical hatred they might for the moment have been free from hatred towards each other. Even then, this ground of union would have ceased with their victory, and on the morrow of the social revolution, the old national rivalries might have revived. There is no alchemy by which a universal harmony cart be produced out of hatred. Those who have been inspired to action by the doctrine of the class war will have acquired the habit of hatred, and will instinctively seek new enemies when the old ones have been vanquished.

But in actual fact the psychology of the working