‘On the Foreign Workers Who Undercut Wages and on the Attitude of the International Towards Them.’ *Neue Zeit*, 25th year of publication (1907).

‘Inviting the English trade unions to take part in the Brussels Congress of 1868, the General Council declares:

“The fundamental principle of the association is that the product of labour should belong to the worker, that the basis of society should be the fraternity of labour, and that the workers of all countries should cast aside petty rivalry and national antipathies in order to wage a united struggle against capital. Labour has no fatherland. The worker has everywhere to struggle against the same evil. Capital represents merely accumulated labour. Why should the worker be the slave of his own product? Too long have the capitalists profited from the national disunity of the sons of toil. Foreign competition always serves as a convenient pretext for reducing wages” (pp. 511–512).

“The constant outcry of the English capitalists that the longer working day and the lower wages of the continental workers make a lowering of wages inevitable can be successfully countered only by striving to bring the working day and wages to one and the same level throughout Europe. This is one of the tasks of the International Workingmen’s Association” (p. 512).

* Italics of ‘Neue Zeit’.—Ed.

Solange die Masse eines Landes oder der gesamten Weltmärkte auf einem niedrigeren Niveau steht, gilt dies für die Massen innerhalb eines Landes wie für die des gesamten Weltmarktes. Durch Solidarität, durch Unterstützung der Zurückgebliebenen, nicht durch Exklusivität, durch Abschließung und Niederhaltung dieser kann ein vorgeschrittenes Proletariat sich behaupten. Wo es unter dem Einfluss kurzsichtiger Zünftlerei der letzteren Methode verfällt, macht sie früher oder später bankrott und wird sie von vornherein eines der verderblichsten Mittel zur Lähmung des proletarischen Emanzipationskampfes (S. 512).

On the Foreign Workers Who Undercut Wages

with this minority. This applies to the masses within a single country as well as within the entire world market. The advanced proletariat can hold its own by showing solidarity with, by supporting those who have lagged behind, not by shutting itself off from them, excluding them, suppressing them. Where, under the influence of shortsighted guildism, the proletariat resorts to the latter method, this method sooner or later goes bankrupt and becomes one of the most pernicious means of weakening the proletarian struggle for emancipation (p. 512).

L 211 ]

J. R. Seeley. ‘THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND’
The expansion of England by J. R. Seeley, M[aster of] A[rts].

‘Here is a fundamental characteristic of the European States during the eighteenth and seventeenth centuries, which is seldom borne in mind, namely that each of the five Western States has an Empire in the New World attached to it. Before the seventeenth century this condition of things was but beginning, and since the eighteenth it has ceased again to exist. The vast immeasurable results of the discovery of Columbus were developed with extreme slowness, so that the whole sixteenth century passed away before most of these nations bestirred themselves to claim a share in the New World. There existed no independent Holland till near the end of that century, so that a fortiori there could be no Greater Holland, nor did either England or France in that century become possessors of colonies. France did indeed plan a settlement in North America, as the name Carolina, derived from Charles IX. of France, still remains to prove, but the neighbouring Spaniards of Florida interfered to destroy it. A little later Sir Walter Raleigh’s colony in the same neighbourhood disappeared altogether, leaving no trace behind it. Accordingly during almost the whole of that century the New World remained in the possession of the two States which had done most to lay it open, viz. Spain and Portugal, Spain looking chiefly towards America and Portugal towards Asia, until in 1580 the two States coalesced in a union which lasted sixty years. The Dutch made their grand entrance into the competition for empire in the seven years from 1595 to 1602, and they were followed by France and England in the early years of the seventeenth century, that is, in the reign of our King James I.’

The subsequent pages of the notebook were not numbered by Lenin, and there are no notes by him in the text of the excerpts.—Ed.