Source 17.5: Protest and Song

The travails of working-class life in the early industrial era stimulated protests of many kinds: the machine breaking of the Luddites; the strikes of trade unionists; and, increasingly prominent as the nineteenth century wore on, the organizational and political efforts of socialists. In 1871, a French working-class activist, poet, and songwriter named Eugène Pottier composed “The Internationale,” a song that became the unofficial anthem of working-class and socialist movements. Source 17.5 offers an English translation made in 1900 by Charles Kerr, an American publisher of radical books. The song gave expression to both the oppression and the hopes of ordinary people as they worked for a socialist future.

Questions to consider as you examine the source:

Eugène Pottier (translated by Charles Kerr)

The Internationale, 1871

Arise, ye prisoners of starvation!

Arise, ye wretched of the earth!

For justice thunders condemnation,

A better world’s in birth!

No more tradition’s chains shall bind us,

Arise ye slaves, no more in thrall!

The earth shall rise on new foundations,

We have been nought, we shall be all.

(Chorus:)

’Tis the final conflict,

Let each stand in his place.

The international working class

Shall be the human race.

We want no condescending saviors

To rule us from a judgment hall;

We workers ask not for their favors;

Let us consult for all.

To make the thief disgorge his booty

To free the spirit from its cell,

We must ourselves decide our duty,

We must decide, and do it well.

(Chorus)

The law oppresses us and tricks us,

wage slav’ry drains the workers’ blood;

The rich are free from obligations,

The laws the poor delude.

Too long we’ve languished in subjection,

Equality has other laws;

“No rights,” says she, “without their duties,

No claims on equals without cause.”

(Chorus)

Behold them seated in their glory

The kings of mine and rail and soil!

What have you read in all their story,

But how they plundered toil?

Fruits of the workers’ toil are buried

In the strong coffers of a few;

In working for their restitution

The men will only ask their due.

(Chorus)

Toilers from shops and fields united,

The union we of all who work;

The earth belongs to us, the workers,

No room here for the shirk.

How many on our flesh have fattened;

But if the noisome birds of prey

Shall vanish from the sky some morning,

The blessed sunlight still will stay.

(Chorus)

Source: Eugène Pottier, “The Internationale,” translated by Charles Hope Kerr, in Socialist Songs (1900), Wikisource, http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Internationale_(Kerr).