THE TREND TOWARDS UNITY
"Schon laengst verbreit etsich's in ganze Scharen Das Eigenste,
was im allein gehoert."
SCHILLER's _Wallenstein_.
Now, after long, that diffuses itself through large masses of
men Which once was most private, which belonged to him alone.
Karl Marx closed his manifesto with the celebrated words,
"Proletarians of all lands, unite yourselves!" He uttered this cry on
the eve of the revolution of 1848, which was admittedly
proletarian-socialistic in its character, in various places, but which
exhausted itself in those separate spots where it had broken out. In
Germany, where Marx himself stood in the battle, it reached no
importance. In England, it seemed for a moment as if the February
revolution would infuse new life into the old Chartism; but this had
already been buried. The French movement is the only one left; how it
ended is well known. And then the deep night of the reaction of the
'fifties settled upon Europe. All the seeds of an independent
working-men's movement were suppressed. Only in England the
trade-union movement was developed.
Since the beginning of the year 1860 signs of life among the working
people have appeared in different places. They recover here and there
from the blows and repression which they experienced during and after
the agitation of 1848, and an interest and participation in public
life begin again to awake. The characteristic trait is this: the
activity of the new and independent life receives an international
stamp. Naturally this is no mere chance. It was not by chance that, at
the World's Exposition, the working men of different lands first
reached the hand one to another; it was a development of capitalism
itself, stepping upon a stage of international largeness. The
Continental powers of Europe began to rival England. Commercial
politics were first of all robbed of their exclusive character through
a series of treaties, and were directed towards the unifying of
business life throughout Europe.
Since those first beginnings, at about the year 1860, the idea of
internationalism has never quite disappeared from proletarian
agitation, even though it may have experienced in the course of the
years essential changes in the form of its development.
It will be my duty in what follows to show to you how this tendency
towards internationalism, after many abortive attempts, has been
really carried out, and how, in close connection with it as concerns
goal and progress, the social agitations of individual lands more and
more press towards a unity upon the principles of the Marxian
programme.
The first form in which an attempt was made for international
combination of the proletariat is the celebrated "International."
Allow me to dwell somewhat at length upon this. It is essentially of
importance and interest for two reasons. One is that through it, and
its speedy end, a specific form of the internationalising of the
social agitation has been brought _ad absurdum_. The other is because
in it with striking clearness contradictions are presented, which
pervade all social agitation.
It was in the year 1862, when the French working-men, at the World's
Exposition in London, agreed with the English workers to counsel
together concerning united agitation. Further conferences ensued, and
in 1864 a union was founded which had as its object the uniting of the
representatives of workmen of different lands for common action and
advance. This was the International Association. What were the duties,
what was the thought, of such a brotherhood? Apparently twofold. We
can suppose that they meant to create merely a kind of correspondence
bureau--a place where the working men of different lands might unite
in a general international secretariate, to which they might turn for
information concerning any question pertaining to the social
movement--that is, an institution far from exerting an influence upon
the agitations of the working men in the various lands. The majority
of the men who, at that time, in the beginning of the 'sixties, strove
to carry out the idea of an international union thought of it surely
in this vague form.
The other conception goes further; a central spot should be created
for the working-men's movement, a place from which the working-men's
agitations in turn might receive assistance and inspiration, from
which influence could be exerted upon the separate national efforts.
The most important representative of the latter and larger meaning
was Karl Marx, who was called upon to play a decisive rôle in the
founding of the International Working-Men's Association. For him this
organisation was the first answer to his cry to the world,
"Proletarians of all lands, unite yourselves!" It is not to be doubted
that if a central organisation was to be created, to reveal a spirit
of unity and to ensure a unification of national proletarian
agitation, the Marxian spirit should control. Although he viewed the
situation clearly enough to see that extremest caution was needed, he
aimed to unite the many streams into one great river.
The "International" was founded upon the basis of the so-called
"Inaugural Address" and the "Statutes," both of which were evolved by
Karl Marx and accepted as he presented them. In them great diplomatic
skill is revealed. The "Inaugural Address" is a masterpiece of
diplomatic finesse. It is indefinite throughout its whole structure,
rendered purposely so by Karl Marx. He aimed, by it, to cover various
parties of the time, the Proudhonists, the working-men's associations
of France, the trade unions in England, the followers of Mazzini in
Italy, the supporters of the Lassalle agitation in Germany; and it
actually accomplished this in a masterly way. It commended itself to
each and every one of them. It pictures in effective way the misery
into which the working people are plunged by capitalism; it finds
words of recognition for the results of the English trade unions. It
praises the characteristics and services of the "free-coöperative
movement"--Proudhon, Duchez; but it has also a friendly word for the
organisations which receive aid from the state--Lassalle, Blanc.
Out of it all is drawn only this conclusion, with which all
sympathise--that the proletariat of all lands should be conscious of
an international solidarity. In some general and sentimental phrases,
which surely were traced by Marx with reluctance, national differences
find their adjustment, and their representatives find a uniting bond.
The "Statutes" were prefaced by some considerations which contained
_in nuce_ the principles of Marxism--with various concessions, as, for
example, the appeal to _vérité_, _justice et morale_. But even here is
all pressure avoided. A man could, on any point of uncertainty, always
think that something else was meant, and could at least feel himself
free concerning it. Very little reference was made to the objects of
the International Working-Men's Association. Its activity during the
first years consisted essentially in the support of strikes, for which
reason it enjoyed at the beginning the lively sympathy of many outside
of the circles of working men.
But now Marx began to develop his plan systematically; that is, slowly
to fill the International Working-Men's Association with his spirit,
and through it to support the proletarian agitation of different
lands. As we look at the congresses of this organisation, in Geneva,
1866; Lausanne, 1867; Brussels, 1868; Basle, 1869, we find that in
fact, step by step, from congress to congress, the International
Working-Men's Association supports more and more the Marxian ideas,
noticeably, and without any appearance of the moving spirit on the
scene. But now it is interesting to observe, and it shows the degree
of development which at that time the social movement had reached,
that the time for the inspiration of the whole European world of
working men with the Marxian ideas evidently had not yet come. In
proportion as the "International" began to display the spirit of Marx,
opposition raged in every quarter. The Proudhonists began to oppose
it; then the trade unions, especially after that moment when Marx
declared himself in sympathy with the Commune in Paris; the followers
of Lassalle began to grumble at it. A great part of the opposition
crystallised itself, towards the end of the 'sixties, in one man,
Michael Bakunin. As to the part which personal anger and envy played
in this opposition, we are not interested. It is possible that this
personal friction was essentially the reason for the destruction of
the "International." It seems to me, however, that at the bottom of
the antagonism of Bakunin against Marx lay a much more essential and
considerable opposition. For in 1868 Bakunin founded the _Alliance
Internationale de la Démocratie Sociale_, in which he united chiefly
Italian and Spanish associations, and as well the French; and it is in
this _alliance_ that the opposition on principle to Marx's efforts
comes to clear and sharp expression. But the real point of difference
lies in the distinction which you already know between revolutionism
on the one side and the evolution idea on the other, between the
idealistic and the realistic conception of history. Bakunin based his
whole activity upon the idea of revolution by force, upon the belief
that revolutions must be made because they can be made. In opposition
to him, Marx defended the fundamental thought that a revolution is at
most the last feature of a process of development, the breaking of the
husk through the ripening of the fruit.
The opposition of Bakunin led finally, as is well known, to the
dissolution of the International Working-Men's Association. In 1872
its general office was transferred to New York, apparently in order to
avoid a formal burial of the organisation.
Thus it came to pass that the Bakunists were shut out, and with them
were a number of "exclusions" from the circles of the orthodox; the
process of excommunication began, which to-day, as you know, is not
ended. Exactly the same thought lies at the bottom of the exclusion of
the Bakunists from the "International" as, this very year, in the
driving of the anarchists out of the London congress. Always again the
contradiction presents itself, socialism and anarchism; or, as deeply
understood, evolutionism and revolutionism.
Thus was shattered that first attempt to make a union of the
proletariat of all lands, and it will be many years before the thought
of international solidarity can again rule the working man. In spite
of its speedy ruin, the "International" has large historic
significance, and this lies in the fact that for the first time it
brought the internationalism of the movement and the international
community of interest of the proletariat in some measure to clear
expression; further, in that for the first time the social movement of
different lands was made familiar with the Marxian scheme of thought,
and at the same time affected with the Marxian spirit.
The compromises of the Marxian scheme gave the first impulse to the
general linking of international social agitation. But finally this
unification would be accomplished in a way quite other than that which
the founder of the International Working-Men's Association had
imagined. A mistake as to way was made; for this reason the
"International" went down. It had placed before itself the task of
forcing solidarity into the social movement from without, inwards.
This is a thought which is essentially un-Marxian; again, one of the
cases in which Marx was not Marxian. The way to unity should have been
reversed; from within, outwardly. First must the agitations in
individual lands be divested to some degree of their national and
contingent features, first must the general economic development be
further advanced, before the proletariat could by internal development
become conscious of its international solidarity and come to a
recognition of this unity in the chief points of its programme.
This internal and external unification, which is the product of the
last decade, I might specify as the third stage in the development of
the social movement; and then the second stage would be the complete
saturation of the German social democracy with the Marxian spirit.
This political party becomes thereby the organ through which those
ideas spread into other lands.
In Germany there has grown into recognition a social movement which,
at the beginning, was conducted in the spirit of both Marx and
Lassalle, but which soon came under the control of pure Marxism. I
recall the following stages of development. When thirty-two years ago
the deadly bullet struck Lassalle in Geneva, that man was removed who
alone had represented the German working-men's movement; and what he
left behind was next to nothing. His "Working-Men's Union" numbered
only four thousand six hundred and ten members at the moment when he
closed his eyes. So also immediately after Lassalle's death the
agitation was nothing more than a useless and petty strife. It was a
coterie rather than a social party. Thus the field in Germany was open
for the development of a new social-democratic movement from another
source. This was started in 1864 by Wilhelm Liebknecht, who came to
Germany as the direct envoy of Karl Marx, and with strong belief in
his ideas; the purpose was to establish the working-men's movement
upon a basis other than that of Lassalle. He won to this cause the
youthful energy of the master-turner August Bebel, who, at the age of
twenty-four, was already the leader of a number of working-men's
unions which had been until that time in advanced radicalism. These
are the organisations, you know, which in the year 1868, in Nuremberg,
seceded from Schulze to Marx. Fourteen thousand working men were
represented. The resolution through which this transfer was
accomplished was drawn by Liebknecht and was inspired by the Marxian
spirit. Thus in 1868 a new social party was formed in Germany which
took the name of the Social-Democratic Working-Men's Party, and which,
after the congress in Eisenach, stood for a time alone as the
so-called "Honorables," until in the year 1875 the union of the
Lassalle and the Bebel faction was accomplished in Gotha. Since that
time, as you know, the one "Social-Democratic Party" exists. It is
significant that the present union rests upon a compromise between
Lassalle and Marx, but is really directed by the Marxists, who step by
step have won control in the party. The "Gotha" programme remained as
the platform of the movement in Germany for sixteen years; and not
until the year 1891 was it replaced by a new platform, the "Erfurt"
programme, which now constitutes the confession of faith of the
Social-Democratic movement in Germany. It is pervaded by a strongly
Marxian spirit and contains essentially only a statement of Marxian
doctrines in accordance with the spirit of the age. Let me in a few
words present merely the lines of thought in this programme. It begins
with the phrases:
"The economic development of middle-class society leads by a
necessity of nature to the extinction of that economic order,
production on a small scale, which rests upon the private
ownership of the workman in his means of production. It
separates the workman from his means of production, and changes
him into a possessionless proletarian; while the instruments of
production become the monopoly of a small number of capitalists
and landowners, etc."
As you see, this programme proceeds from the fundamental thought that
economic development completes itself in a specific way; hence follow
all the other matters with which the programme deals. This special
Marxian thought, that an economic evolution is involved, has become
the central point of the Erfurt programme. It shows, further, how out
of the economic development a conflict emerges in the form of class
strife; and then it concludes that only a change to communal ownership
of the means of production can quiet this conflict. The party for
which the platform was created takes hold of the communistic thought
of the Erfurt programme in this sense, that the duty of a political
party can only be to bring to the consciousness of the workman the
existing economic revolution.
These are the words: "To bring this warfare of the working classes to
consciousness and unity, to show the natural and necessary goal--that
is the duty of the Social-Democratic Party." This is the point that is
especially important for us--the German agitation becomes completely
saturated, rapidly and uninterruptedly, with Marxian ideas, and thus
this spirit spreads gradually into other lands.
If you now ask me how this gradual extension of the Marxian system and
in connection with it the unification of the Marxian movement are
shown, the following, points seem to me of especial importance. In
1873 the "International" came to an end. It seemed as if, with it, the
internationalisation of the social movement in like manner had ceased.
But for about a decade past we have had again general and formal
"International Working-Men's Congresses." The year 1889 opened the
series with a working-men's congress in Paris, again at a world's
exposition. Here again, in a new and freer form, this idea of the old
"International" arises, and in a much larger form than the old
international working-men's associations had ever realised it. For
these former international working-men's associations had been really
only a combination of a number of representatives and secretaries.
The masses scarcely stood upon paper. The congresses which now again
the world of working men have created rest upon a much broader basis,
in my opinion, since, in spite of all "exclusions" and factional
strife, these international meetings represent a real combination of
working men conscious of their aim and organised for it--a fact which
we can no longer hide from ourselves, since the old English
trade-unions have become represented at the congresses. Thus the
international congresses now include the so-called "socialists" and
the trade unions as well. In spite of all differences of opinion on
certain points, at these congresses there is such expression of
internationality and solidarity on the part of the proletariat as was
never approached by any of the meetings of the old "International."
And it is certainly not by chance that the pictures of Marx and Engels
look down upon these new unions of the international proletariat.
But let us now look at a number of evidences, which make clear to us
that the movements of different lands approach more and more to a
unanimity resting upon the leading thoughts of the Marxian programme.
There is first the important fact to remember that the French,
originally uneconomic in temperament, have now begun effectively the
trade-union agitation. The creation of _Bourses du Travail_ prove how
earnestly this part of the social movement is cultivated by the
French. Through the agitation of class strife, the general movement
towards such associations receives a new impulse. And as the French,
inclined to revolutionary and political agitation, begin to become
economic, we see on the other side the very important fact that the
English working-man recedes step by step from his purely trade-union
"Manchester" platform.
I have never believed what some years ago was announced to the world,
in connection with a snap resolution of a working-men's congress, that
the English trade-unions would go over to the socialistic camp with
torch and trumpet. Such decisive changes in social life are not
accomplished in that way; there is needed a slow ripening. And the
proceedings of the London congress in this year (1896) prove how much
antipathy yet exists between the English trade-unions and certain
elements of Continental socialism. But in spite of all these
tendencies the fact remains that the English working-men's movement
approaches the Continental on important points; that is, it has at
least begun to be socialistic in aim and political in the means used.
That an "Independent Working-Men's Party" as yet plays no rôle in
England proves for the present nothing. The peculiar conditions of
English party life make a representation of the working men in
Parliament unnecessary under the circumstances. But who can doubt, in
view of the proceedings of the last decade, that the English
trade-unions, even the older ones, stretch out the hand more than
formerly towards the door-latch of legislation? Let me remind you of
the fact that with small, though deeply interested, minorities the
trade unions have written upon their programme a legal work-day of
eight hours. Also, in spite of much limitation and qualification, the
resolution of the English working-men in the year 1894 remains--the
communisation of the English means of production, at least the most
important of them, as the object of their agitation. Is that anything
other than a conversion of the English working-men's association?
In Germany we find that the normal line, upon which the social
movement in all nations begins to arrange itself, was nearly reached
at the start. It was only necessary to throw off some of Lassalle's
peculiar ideas, those revolutionary notions which arose here and there
about the year 1870, and especially to give broader play to the
trade-union movement, in order to reach the "minimum programme" of all
social agitation. This programme is, to repeat concisely:--the object
of the social movement is the communisation of the means of production
in its largest technical development upon a democratic basis; the
means of reaching this aim is the struggle of classes; this has two
equally justifiable forms, the economic--which finds its expression in
the trade-union movement, the political--which finds its expression in
representation in Parliament. The formulation of this proposition is
the specific service of Karl Marx, as we have seen; and for this
reason I think I am warranted in speaking of the whole social movement
of our time as infused with the Marxian spirit. For it is not unknown
to you that the social agitation in lands of later capitalistic
development--Italy, Austria, and Russia--has been from the beginning
in accordance with the thought of that platform.
If in any such way I think that I see a unification of the social
movement, that does not mean that I see a machine-like uniformity of
this movement in the different lands. I am not blind to the
innumerable diversities which are developed by the various nations,
and which are revealed every moment. I have attempted to show to you
how absolutely necessary these national peculiarities are, and to a
certain degree always will be--because of historic tradition and
difference of national character. So when I speak of a unity, I only
mean, as I have already often said, a tendency to this which struggles
to assert itself in spite of national disposition. The social
agitation will always retain a double tendency, a centripetal and a
centrifugal. The former, arising from the uniformity of capitalistic
development and from the similarity of original causes, tends towards
conformity; the latter, the product of national differences and of
manifold causes, tends to divergence.
I have to-day attempted to show to you how the centripetal tendency
reveals itself. The object of my next lecture will be to present to
you a systematic review of the manifold points of difference which
have already often been referred to in the course of these lectures.
Thus will be completed the picture of the essentials of the modern
social movement, which I am attempting to sketch for you.