The Internationale

First sung at the 1st Local Convention of Central Mass & Worcester DSA on December 20, 2025, and slightly tweaked after, we’re pleased to share this new U.S. English adaptation of the lyrics to “The Internationale,” and to facilitate their use, a full lyrics video and printable lyrics sheet.

Our members Ethan Carmichael and Shane Levett built on Charles H. Kerr’s already well-known U.S. lyrics, bringing the song back up to six verses while trying to remain relatively faithful, with some additions and alterations, to the original French.

Socialist Eugène Pottier first penned “The Internationale” after the bloody defeat of the Paris Commune. A member of the namesake First International’s French section, Pottier had been elected to the Commune Council during the uprising that seized power in the city in 1871. Set to the melody of “La Marseillaise” when first published in 1887, “The Internationale” was sung in this form at Pottier’s burial later that year. Soon after, Pierre De Geyter, a member of the French Workers’ Party, composed the music that is still in use today.

By the turn of the century, “The Internationale” had assumed its familiar place as the international anthem of the working class and the socialist movement. It was sung in the Russian Revolution and Spanish Civil War, in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912, and in Paris in 1968.

Socialist publisher Charles H. Kerr had prepared the first U.S. adaptation in the 1890s, and his version was popularized by songbooks of the Industrial Workers of the World. The work of Pottier, De Geyter, and Kerr has since entered the public domain. Other English language versions do exist, including an obscure one by Daniel De Leon, plus the standard English adaptation and a controversial one by Billy Bragg. One of the world’s most translated songs, “The Internationale” still, in many languages, unites the human race.

We hope more comrades will sing “The Internationale” and enjoy this new adaptation, and we share our work under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-SA 4.0), and with the lyrics video and lyrics sheet, so that others may make good use of it!

Printable PDF lyrics sheet

Arise, all pris’ners of starvation!
Arise, ye wretched of the earth!
If you tremble with indignation,
Know a better world’s in birth!
No more tradition’s chains shall bind us.
Arise, all workers, stand up tall!
The earth shall rise on new foundations.
We have been naught; we shall be all!

[Chorus x2]
It’s the final struggle;
Let each take their place.
The international soc’list cause
Unites the human race.

We want no condescending saviors
To rule us from their judgement hall.
Labor is all that can free labor;
Let all decide for all.
To make the thieves give up their treasure,
To free the spirit from its cell,
Make no rev’lution by half measures;
To our class we pledge ourselves!

[Chorus x2]
It’s the final struggle;
Let each take their place.
The international soc’list cause
Unites the human race.

The state oppresses, and law deceives
Wage slaves taught to do as we’re told.
The rich are shameless tax-dodging cheats;
The poor’re left in the cold.
Too long we’ve languished in subjection;
Their laws equality indicts.
No rights without their obligations;
No obligations without rights.

[Chorus x2]
It’s the final struggle;
Let each take their place.
The international soc’list cause
Unites the human race.

From up on high, the parasites smirk,
The kings of tech and bank and land.
In what besides profit off our work
Have they ever had a hand?
The fruits of our labor lie tallied
In accounts’of the idle few.
Demanding it all, we do rally
Simply for what workers are due.

[Chorus x2]
It’s the final struggle;
Let each take their place.
The international soc’list cause
Unites the human race.

No more deluded by reaction;
Among us peace, on tyrants war.
The soldiers too will take strike action;
They’ll break ranks and fight no more.
But if the warmong’ring fanatics
Insist still at their own peril,
Their troops will merely be pragmatic
And frag each bloodthirsty gen’ral.

[Chorus x2]
It’s the final struggle;
Let each take their place.
The international soc’list cause
Unites the human race.

We workers and oppressed, united
Together in a party, stand.
From a spark a flame ignited;
It’s our world, the workers’ of all lands.
On our flesh too long’ve fed the vultures,
But if those greedy birds of prey
Shall vanish from the sky some morning,
Then the sun will shine always.

[Chorus x2]
It’s the final struggle;
Let each take their place.
The international soc’list cause
Unites the human race.

Updated lyrics by Ethan Carmichael and Shane Levett of Central Mass & Worcester DSA, drawing from the original lyrics by Eugène Pottier and the American English lyrics by Charles H. Kerr, still sung to the music by Pierre De Geyter

Published December 28, 2025

© 2025 by Central Mass & Worcester DSA, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA 4.0)