Socialism and Democracy in Europe Part 14

[4] This conference sent the following telegram to the King: "You have asked what is the watchword of the country; the watchword is universal suffrage."

[5] The candidates are arranged in groups or "lists," and the voter votes the list as well as for the individual names on the list. Any 100 electors may prepare such a list. The successful candidate must receive a majority. This often necessitates a second ballot between the two receiving the highest number of votes.

[6] BERTRAND, _Histoire_, Vol. II, p. 552.

[7] One of the significant incidents of this election was the contest against Frere Orban, for thirty years a parliamentary leader and one of the greatest politicians of his day. His seat was contested by an obscure workingman, and the distinguished parliamentarian was compelled to submit to the ordeal of a second ballot.

[8] The Clerical forces are gradually retreating before the repeated onslaughts of Liberals and Socialists. But the loyalty to the Church remains undiminished. On May 17, 1901, a Clerical deputy remarked in the Chamber that he would like to see the temporal power of the pope restored. The Socialists immediately started an uproar which ended in their singing their "Ma.r.s.eillaise" and the adjournment of the sitting.

[9] BERTRAND, _Histoire_, II, p. 590.

[10] _La Greve Generale Belge d'Avril_, 1902, Brussels, 1902.

[11] _Histoire_, II, p. 592.

[12] See DR. STEFFENS-FRAUENWEILER, _Der Agrar-Sozialismus in Belge_.

[13] _Op. cit._, p. 37.

[14] See an article by E. VANDERVELDE, "_Der General Streik_," in _Archiv fur Sozial-wissenschaft und Sozial-Politik_, Tubingen, May, 1908. The same article was published, same date, in _Revue du Mois_, Paris.

[15] _Supra cit._, p. 541.

[16] Bakunin had a large following in Belgium during the days of the "Old International," and Anarchists have never entirely ceased their activities in the large cities.

[17] On the walls of the "Maison du Peuple" you will find n.o.ble paintings. Here labored Constantine Meunier, the sculptor, on his notable "Monument au Travail." Three remarkable sections of this monument, "La Mine," "L'Industrie," "La Glebe," can be seen in the Gallery of Modern Art, in Brussels. There are evidences everywhere of the art interest of these alert working people. One of them, with sincere indignation, pointed out to me the large pile of stone that surmounts the heights of the city, the Palace of Justice, completed in 1883, and said its "bourgeois Babylonian hideousness is the high-water mark of bourgeois taste in art and bourgeois power in politics."

CHAPTER VII

THE GERMAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY

I

It is the constant complaint of the German Democrats that there is no Liberal Party in Germany. The wars that repeatedly devastated the country during past centuries drove property owners to seek the protection of a strong, centralized government. This habit has survived the centuries. Whenever the middle cla.s.ses show signs of breaking away from the conservatism of the "Regierung," the Prince always finds a way of bringing them back. The Period of Revolution--1850--ended in a compromise that ignored the workingmen and virtually left absolutism on the throne. When the new era dawned, and Bismarck, like a young giant, shaped the highways of empire, he used the Liberals so adroitly that, when his national legerdemain was accomplished, they were a broken and impotent faction, lost in the conservative reaction of the hour.

Universal suffrage for the Reichstag elections was written into the Const.i.tution of the new empire, not because the Chancellor and his Prince loved democracy, but because the smaller states insisted upon this safeguard against Prussian omnipotence.

Democracy and Liberalism have never been strong enough to break the fetters of national habit; and nearly all the democracy, certainly all the workingman's democracy, in Germany to-day is found in the Social Democratic Party.

In order to understand the development of Social Democracy in Germany, it is necessary to bear in mind the bureaucratic, autocratic, paternalistic character of the German government.[1]

It is the German governmental policy to do everything for the welfare of its citizens that can be done; and, in return, it expects the people to let the government alone. The medieval conception of cla.s.s responsibility survives. It is the att.i.tude of a self-righteous parent toward ignorant and wilful children. The government a.s.sumes the right, and possesses the power, to regulate every phase of the citizen's life, in domestic, industrial, educational, moral, and political affairs. It is a regal survival of the theory that government is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent.

Germany is a made-to-order country that clings to medieval conservatism in government; a country that is thoroughly modern in industry and distinctly middle-age in caste; where the workingman has always been treated with patronizing condescension and his political acts watched with jealousy; and where he has, against great odds, determined to work out his own salvation. Surrounded by preordained and rigid conditions, he has perfected an organization that is the most remarkable example of proletarian achievement found anywhere in history. To the development and description of this organization we will now address ourselves.

German Social Democracy, while Marxian in theory, owes its active existence to Ferdinand La.s.salle, one of those brilliant and daring geniuses who flash, in an hour of adventure, across the prosaic days of history.[2] He was p.r.o.nounced a _Wunderkind_ by William von Humboldt; dashed his way through university routine; attracted the friends.h.i.+p of poets, philosophers, and politicians; was lionized by society; became a revolutionist in 1848, and was, at the age of twenty-three, indicted for inciting a mob of Dusseldorf workingmen to acts of violence. He defended himself in a brilliant speech which launched him fully into the campaign of the workingman.[3]

Early in his career he volunteered to defend the cause of the Countess Hatzfeldt, whose unfaithful husband was squandering his estates and suffering her to live in want. La.s.salle fought the case through thirty-six courts for nine years, and won an ample fortune for the countess, who became the main financial support of La.s.salle's campaigns.

After his first arrest, La.s.salle was kept under vigilance by the government. But finally, through the interposition of distinguished friends, he was allowed to return to Berlin. There, in 1862, he delivered a series of addresses that soon brought him into conflict with the police. His defense in the court was published later under the t.i.tle, _Science and the Workingman_. This he followed with a letter, _Might and Right_,[4] sent broadcast over the land.

In these two publications he succinctly enunciated his theory of democracy: "With Democracy alone dwells right, and in Democracy alone will might be found. No person in the Prussian state to-day has the right to speak of 'rights,' except the Democracy, the old and true Democracy. For Democracy alone has constantly clung to the right, and has never lowered herself by compromising with might."[5]

In the political turmoil of that period, when new forces were awakening to their power and feudalism, conservatism, Cobdenism, and democracy were all contending for supremacy, there were three predominating currents of thought. The first was naturally the feudal, the absolutist that would put down by the police power, and failing in that by the soldiery, every attempt at changing the organization of the government. This was embodied in the reactionary, or Conservative Party, which held then, as it still does, the high places in army and government. Bismarck was its leader. It had ample nationalist aims, and was called the "Great German Party" ("Gross Deutschland"); Austria was included in its ambitions, and monarchic supremacy was the token of its power. It comprised the landowners, the n.o.bles, and the agrarians.

The second tendency was commercial, bourgeois. It found expression in the National Liberal Party, which was liberal in name only. It was the "Small German" ("Klein Deutschland") Party, preferring the ascendency of Prussia. It comprised the enterprising traders, manufacturers, and bankers, and was strongest in the cities. It was attached to monarchy, cared little for military or political glory, except as it affected trade and taxes.

The third tendency had nothing in common with the other two. It was the revolt of the proletarians, led by men of great ability. It was the democratic movement. It abhorred both the idea of feudal prerogative in government, as expressed by king and n.o.ble, and the vulgar trade patriotism, as expressed by the National Liberals, the bourgeoisie. It took its inspiration from France and its example from England. From France came the political plat.i.tudes of equality and liberty with which we are familiar in America; from England, the example of strongly organized trade unions. In Germany these two movements, economic and political, were blended into one.

Not that the workingman's movement was a unity. Schultze-Delitsch, the founder of the German co-operative movement, contended that labor should keep out of politics and devote itself to economic activities alone. Rodbertus, the distinguished economist, who was potent in shaping economic and political thought in Germany, wrote La.s.salle, when he was entreated to join the brilliant agitator's propaganda, that he could "tolerate no political agitation which would excite the working cla.s.ses against the existing executive power."[6]

There was no unity in the theories of the workingman's movement. The first organizations, the "Workingmen's a.s.sociations," were founded soon after 1848, as soon as the laws gave a limited right of a.s.sociation to the working cla.s.s. The government looked with suspicion on every political act of labor, and especially upon organizations for political purposes. The ban of the law was put upon those organizations in July, 1854, and the right of public meeting was greatly restricted; police autonomy increased, giving them arbitrary power to stop meetings; and the right of free press was virtually denied. Democracy became a movement of silent intrigue and occasional rough outbreak.

At this juncture a new political party was organized, to absorb what was "legal" in the democratic workingman's movement and what was truly liberal in the National Liberal Party. The new party was called Progressist ("Fortschrittler"). It was a German party, devoted to the Manchester doctrine: Free commerce, free trade, free press, free speech; freedom of expression in every phase of human activity. It was _laissez-faire_ to the uttermost plunged into the reactionary ma.s.s of German politics. The economic issue became freedom of contract _versus_ feudal status; the political issue, freedom of ballot _versus_ hereditary prerogative.

The new party began to appeal for the workingman's support. Their lure of free speech and freedom of organization was not without effect. The older workingmen, who were not familiar with the teachings of Marx and Engels, and who had not even read Weitling's communistic idealizations, were brought, in some numbers, into the new party.

The younger and more radical element in the workingmen's clubs were restless. In 1862 some of them had visited the International Exposition in London and had talked with Marx. The fire of the "International" was kindled. A movement for calling a national workingman's convention was started among these radicals. The Progressists tried to check the agitation, saying that every effort should be directed toward establis.h.i.+ng a new Const.i.tution. But it was in vain. In Leipsic a group of radicals seceded from the Workingman's Union (Arbeiter Bildungs-Verein), and formed a new organization, which they called "Vorwarts" (Progress). These now invited La.s.salle to address them on his views of the labor situation.

The movement was opportune, and La.s.salle's answer is the basic doc.u.ment of present-day Social Democracy.[7]

There is no salvation for the workingman except through "political freedom," he says. This freedom demands laws, and to secure laws united action is essential. They must be powerful enough to get laws to their liking. This power they will not get by being an appendix to the Progressists, for they are dominated by a trade doctrine, not by altruistic ideals for the oppressed.

With a clearness that has not been excelled, he showed the dependence of economic upon political power and influence. His economic program was none other than Louis Blanc's state-subsidized workshops. It made no great impression and soon faded away. But his bold plan of a workingman's party fighting fiercely for democracy, and for the betterment of the "normal conditions of the entire working cla.s.ses,"

has been developed to surprising perfection.

The state, he says, must be the instrument of their power, not the object of their striving. They are in politics, not as politicians, but as proletarians. "The state is nothing but the great organization, the all-embracing a.s.sociation of the working cla.s.ses." No "sustaining and helping hand" will be their guide. Political supremacy is the "only way out of the desert." And how win the state? There is only one way: through universal suffrage, democracy. "Universal suffrage is not only your political but also your social foundation principle, the condition precedent of all social help. It is the only means for bettering the material conditions of the working cla.s.ses."

Cut loose from Rodbertus economically, and from the Progressists politically, La.s.salle was invited to take the leaders.h.i.+p of the new movement, which from the start was political rather than economic. He aimed to organize the German workingmen into a great national party, so powerful that it could control governments, make laws, and demand obedience. But it was slow work, and to the fiery spirit of La.s.salle its snail's pace was exasperating. It provoked him into violence of speech which led him everywhere into the courts and into constant altercations with the Crown's solicitors.

His powerful personality and unusually active mind made a profound impression everywhere. At the last conference of his a.s.sociation which he attended he claimed the Bishop of Mayence and the King of Prussia as converts. The Bishop, Baron von Ketteler, was indeed turning toward Socialism, but not La.s.salle's political Socialism. He was the founder of that Christian Socialism which has made the Catholic Church in South Germany and the Rhineland a potent factor in the labor movement.

The King, whose conversion La.s.salle boldly announced, had only received a delegation of Silesian weavers who laid their grievances before him and were promised the royal sympathy.

However, La.s.salle and Bismarck had formed a general liking for each other, and the great minister received from the brilliant agitator many suggestions which he later embodied in his state insurance laws.

Both Bismarck and La.s.salle believed in the power of the state for the amelioration of social conditions. They met several times at the Chancellor's solicitation, and Bismarck disclosed their conversations to the Reichstag, on the insistence of Bebel, when the insurance bills were under discussion. The Chancellor expressed his admiration for the virility of the Socialist's mind and said he believed La.s.salle perfectly sincere in his purpose.[8]

La.s.salle did not live to see his General Workingmen's a.s.sociation ("Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeitsverein") attain political power. He was killed in a duel over a love affair August 31, 1864. His brilliant campaign for democracy had resulted in a petty organization of 4,610 members.

La.s.salle's influence is increasing every year. His death-day is celebrated by the German Socialists (La.s.salle Feier). The present-day German movement is La.s.sallian rather than Marxian.[9]

In a letter to Rodbertus, February, 1864, La.s.salle says that he aimed to show the workingman "how identical the economic and the political forces are. Every separation of them is an abstraction, and I believe that uniting the two is the princ.i.p.al potency which I can give to the cause."

II