On the other hand, Marx and Engels, totally fixated on the primacy of class struggle, accepted the growth of nations as carriers of prog- ress during the period leading up to the revolution. Furthermore, they regarded the assimilation of smaller peoples and the denationalization of colonies through the worldwide penetration of capitalism, and even wars, as more or less explicitly stimulating the maturation of conditions for the revolution. In this connection, they expressed skepticism about internationalizing efforts by the proletariat at an earlier stage in the pro- cess. Marx warned against 'the international brotherhood of peoples',[786]because this bourgeois phrase obscured class antagonism and deflected attention from the priority of class struggle. True brotherhood of nations could be achieved only by the proletariat, which was itself 'essentially humanitarian, anti-nationalist'.[787] Only through the proletariat's solidarity of action would the revolution be achievable. In other words, Marxism did indeed affirm a final state of worldwide harmony, but on its own initiative it did nothing for the rapprochement of the peoples in advance of the revolution.[788]
The setting for the battle of Marx and Engels against their opponents was the International Workingmen's Association (IWA), founded in 1864 and known as the First International. Marx and Engels argued for the principle of centralism, fearing that proletarian struggle at the national level would grow weak if it adopted 'the vague notions of a future society entertained by some dreamers'.[789] Their opponents, the anarchists, pre- ferred a program of European federalism and saw in the Marxist strategy the additional danger that national minorities might be ignored or even suppressed. It was no accident that two resolutions favoring a universal language accepted by IWA congresses in 1866 and 1867 were proposed by supporters of Mikhail Bakunin and that they were rapidly forgotten after Marx's victory over the anarchists.
The lack of emphasis on internationalism in the labor movement fol- lowing the disintegration of the IWA, coupled with the silence of Marx and Engels on pre-revolutionary means to advance world unity, did not, however, signify that the working masses ceased viewing nationalism as the expression of the bourgeois class society. In fact, up until the early years of the twentieth century, the workers persisted in the conviction that they were prevented from participation in national culture and that they would find complete individual fulfillment only in a unified world society. The Austrian theorist Otto Bauer called this attitude naive cosmopolitanism'.[790]
Another Austrian, Karl Kautsky, the leading theorist of the Second International, was particularly insistent in encouraging hope for histori- cally determined world unity. In 1887, the year Esperanto was born, he wrote:
The more international communication intensifies, the more we feel the need for a means of international communication, a universal language.
Despite the parallel in time, the prognoses of Kautsky and Zamenhof diverged fundamentally. Kautsky could not yet have known about Zamenhof's proposed solution, but he does mention Volapuk to empha- size at the outset that a universal language 'cannot, of course, be arbi- trarily invented'.[791] 'Volapuk will not go much beyond the status of a secret language for the few who know it. More likely, one of the already existing languages will probably become a universal language.' In 1908 Kautsky wrote that in a socialist society people will know one or more world lan- guages in addition to their national languages: 'then the basis has been created for the gradual decline and the disappearance, initially of the lan- guages of the smaller nations, and for the eventual fusion of the whole of the culture of humanity into one language and nationality'.[792] In 1917 he reiterated that 'not the differentiation but the assimilation of nationali- ties [...] is the goal of socialist development'. Kautsky stressed that mass production requires not the preservation of multilingualism but the lin- guistic union of humankind: 'Resistance to it is reactionary.'[793]
Kautsky's works, particularly those on the problems of nationality and internationality, had significant influence on the world labor movement.
It was he who first incorporated the question of a world language into the Marxist theory of the stages of economic development. We can con- sider his article of 1887 as the starting point for the essentially negative Marxist stance on the question of a neutral international language—in the sense that it not only abandoned the idea of a supranational, universal language inherited from the utopian pre-Marxian socialism but at the same time excluded the possibility that linguistic unity would be created by way of an artificial language. The principal problem surrounding the Marxist theory of a world language lies in the fact that it not only ignores linguistic pluralism but even goes so far as to proclaim the marginaliza- tion and rejection of smaller languages as an inevitable result of economic progress. This was a radical position with which most Esperantists had nothing in common, because their language aimed to function next to, not instead of, the national languages.
Kautsky never argued for the forced assimilation of nations, but he imagined that the liberated world proletariat would agree, as brothers, to abandon their national connections; however, his orthodox Marxist the- ory revealed a lack of understanding of the aspirations of smaller nations. In practice, such a position could inspire policies of suppression—what the Jewish Zamenhof described as 'the desire of strong nations and lan- guages to swallow weak nations and languages'.[794] In insistently seeking to subordinate national aspirations to the class struggle, Kautsky in effect came close to linguistic imperialism.
But, even independently of Kautsky's explicitness, Marxist theory con- tained justification for the rejection of Esperanto in its requirement that the proletariat not seek linguistic unification before the time was right. Such an effort seemed all the more open to suspicion if it was linked to moral categories. In this connection, Esperanto was particularly exposed to criticism, because Zamenhof and his disciples talked incessantly about 'the brotherhood of peoples' and 'world peace' and announced the com- ing emergence of a humane world in such a manner that there was little room left to recognize the laws of economic development and the spe- cific avant-garde role of the proletariat. The rhetoric of the Esperantists certainly found adepts among the working class, but for the leaders of the proletarian movement, whose attention was focused on the realities of the class struggle, this was a symptom of that nai've cosmopolitanism' to which socialist theory was much indebted, but which, following the transition from utopianism to science, smelled of anachronism.
This was why the spread of Esperanto encountered disapproval from influential Marxist leaders. Particularly the German social democrats sharply criticized the propagandizing of Esperanto among the workers as a remnant of utopian thought, calling it 'petty-bourgeois folly' or simply a waste of time.3 2 Rarely were they willing to consider the popularity of Esperanto among workers as one expression of the spontaneous ten- dency to develop the anti-nationalist sub-culture that was inherent in the proletariat.[795] When, following the outbreak of war in 1914, the workers flocked to the banners of their national leaders, interest in the interna- tional language was inevitably pushed into the background. The criticism that to busy oneself with Esperanto was to anticipate the future while ignoring present essentials was made all the more credible by the height- ened national consciousness now observable among the socialist parties.
At the beginning of 1918, shortly before the end of the First World War, one of the most important Marxist theorists, the Italian Antonio Gramsci, offered an interesting contribution on the question of a supra- national language. He categorically opposed all formal support for Esperanto by socialists, explaining: 'They would like artificially to cre- ate consequences which as yet lack the necessary conditions. Gramsci concluded that Esperanto 'is nothing but a vain idea, an illusion of cosmopolitan, humanitarian, democratic mentalities which have not yet [...] been shaken by historical critical thinking'.