34 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THE CLASS STRUGGLE 35 of the community. All paths of thought and all efforts travel henceforth not from the individual to the mass but the other way around from the mass to the individual. The reversal of attitude is complete. On the basis of the solidarity of the community, the smaller group adjusts its activity to the allotment that it receives from the larger body, the formation being hierarchical. The whole no longer gets what is left over just the other way the part gets its share by subdivision of the total.
The interest of the part is subordinated to the interest of the whole.
In practice we usually figure the interests of individual and community separately before co ordinating them finally. This reasoning is dialectic, nevertheless, the facts established concerning the nature of solidarity show that where the process of thought is social instead of self centered, the deciding angle must be the interest of the larger unit exclusively, and not a compromise between the whole and any of its parts.
The community based on Solidarity is far more than the sum of the interests of the individuals composing it. The difference is not alone quantitative but becomes qualitative. The mere combining of interests into a sum total is replaced by the attitude and sentiment of each toward the community as a separate superior entity.
This fundamental change was experienced for the first time by the present generation of the Bourgeoisie, it became conscious of its Solidarity with the rest of the people of the country, in the shape of patriotism. In the proletariat the feeling of Solidarity could not produce the effect of something new or overwhelming, as it was already a living force in the ranks of the wage earners. And all that Socialist teaching does, in the end, is to get the worker to think socially, so as to develop the understanding of the interest of all when taken together, of the community based on Solidarity.
Superficial opponents of the labor movement persist in saddling upon Socialist agitation the objection that it merely aims to awaken the dormant egotism of the proletarians However, the task of Socialism is not to stimulate individual wants and demands, which after all occur automatically even without agitation, but to awaken understanding of the destiny of the entire class. The opening up of the field of vision begins with a sense of Solidarity in the factory and the union, and expands in extent until it culminates in the conception of the Solidarity of the proletariat of all countries; this constitutes the highest form of mass action until it is superseded by the attainment of the final goal the brotherhood of Humanity.
The worker reaches the stage of Solidarity once he realizes that his individual interests are best served by effort in common, or organized effort. But he has not learned to think in social terms until his interest in organization has attained the breadth of a consciousness of Solidarity, that is to say, when his attitude is no longer based on the personal interest which was its starting point, but when the interest of his class has become the deciding factor. His point of view is social in just so far as it obeys the general law of social thinking, which places the interest of the greater body above any part.
The sentiment of Solidarity at the outset of the war could not be a new thing to the proletariat in view of its entire historical development, but what did prove to be new was the community of interests to which Solidarity was applied. In place of the accustomed Solidarity of the working class of all countries there was unexpectedly substituted the solidarity of all classes within the nation.
Humanity is divided doubly nowadays. On the one hand is the division, into classes, in hierarchical formation, on the other geographically plus industrially into nations, in adjacent formation. Both entities involve solidarity of interests. But we know that solidarities of both class and nation are not eternal essentials of society. They are attributes of a stage indicating a split condition of society. Their existence is a relative manifestation due to an inferior stage of human solidarity. Both will disappear when solved by the higher stage which Socialism aims to estab lish, a society based on the absence of class lines and national divisions, the Solidarity of Humanity.
National solidarity was looked upon all along as a defensive