THE PROGRESS AND PRESENT POSITION OF SOCIALISM.
Socialism being now revolutionary social democracy, we should expect to
find it most widely and most acutely developed in those countries where,
1st, the social condition of the lower classes is most precarious, or,
in other words, where property and comfort are ill distributed; 2nd,
where political democracy is already a matter of popular agitation; and,
3rd, where previous revolutions have left behind them an unquiet and
revolutionary spirit--a "valetudinary habit," as Burke calls it, "of
making the extreme medicine of the State its daily bread." That is very
much what we do find. All these conditions are present in Germany--the
country in which socialism has made the most remarkable and rapid
advance. Dr. Engel, head of the Statistical Bureau of Prussia, states
that in 1875 six million persons, representing, with their families,
more than half the population of that State, had an income less than L21
a year each; and only 140,000 persons had incomes above L150. The number
of landed proprietors is indeed comparatively large. In 1861 there were
more than two millions of them out of a population of 23,000,000; and in
a country where half the people are engaged in agriculture this would,
at first sight, seem to offer some assurance of general comfort. But
then the estates of most of them are much too small to keep them in
regular employment or to furnish them with adequate maintenance. More
than a million hold estates of less than three acres each, and averaging
little over an acre, and the soil is poor. The consequence is that the
small proprietor is almost always over head and ears in debt. His
property can hardly be called his own, and he pays to the usurer a much
larger sum annually as interest than he could rent the same land for in
the open market. More than half of these small estates lie in the Rhine
provinces alone, and the distressed condition of the peasantry there has
been lately brought again before the attention of the legislature. But
while thus in the west the agricultural population suffers seriously
from the excessive subdivision of landed property, they are straitened
in the eastern and northern provinces by their exclusion from it. Prince
Bismarck, speaking of the spread of socialism in a purely agricultural
district like Lauenburg, which had excited surprise, said that this
would not seem remarkable to any one who reflected that, from the land
legislation in that part of the country, the labourers could never hope
to acquire the smallest spot of ground as their own possession, and were
kept in a state of dependence on the gentry and the peasant proprietors.
Half the land of Prussia is held by 31,000 persons; and emigration,
which used to come chiefly from the eastern provinces, where subdivision
had produced a large class of indigent proprietors, proceeds now
predominantly from the quarters where large estates abound. The
diminution of emigration from the Rhine provinces is indeed one cause of
the increase of distress among the peasant proprietary; but why
emigration has ceased, when there seems more motive for it, is not so
clear. As yet, however, socialism has taken comparatively slight hold of
the rural population of Germany, because they are too scattered in most
parts to combine; but there exists in that country, as in others, a
general conviction that the condition of the agricultural labourers is
really a graver social question than the condition of the other
industrial classes, and must be faced in most countries before long.
Socialism has naturally made most way among the factory operatives of
Germany, who enjoy greatest facilities for combination and mutual
fermentation, and who besides, while better off in respect to wages than
various other sections of workpeople, are yet the most improvident and
discontented class in the community. Then, in considering the
circumstances of the labouring classes in Germany, it must be remembered
that, through customs and indirect taxation of different kinds, they pay
a larger share of the public burdens than they do in some countries, and
that the obligation of military service is felt to be so great a
hardship that more than a third of the extensive emigration which now
takes place every year from the German Empire is prompted by a desire to
escape it. Before the establishment of the Empire, only about a tenth
part of the emigrants left the country without an official permit; but
the proportion has been rising every year since then, and sometimes
comes to nearly a half.
Under these circumstances neither the strength nor the progress of the
Social Democratic party in that country affords occasion for surprise.
At the last general election, in February, 1890, this party polled more
votes than any other single party in the Empire, and returned to the
Imperial Diet a body of representatives strong enough, by skilful
alliances, to exercise an effective influence on the course of affairs.
The advance of the party may be seen in the increase of the socialist
vote at the successive elections since the creation of the Empire.
In 1871 it was 101,927.
" 1874 " 351,670.
" 1877 " 493,447.
" 1878 " 437,438.
" 1881 " 311,961.
" 1884 " 549,000.
" 1887 " 774,128.
" 1890 " 1,427,000.
The effect of the coercive laws of 1878, as shown by these figures, is
very noteworthy. In consequence of the successive attempts made in that
year on the life of the Emperor William by two socialists, Hoedel and
Nobiling, Prince Bismarck determined to stamp out the whole agitation
with which the two criminals were connected by obtaining from the Diet
exceptional and temporary powers of repression. The first effect of
these measures was, as was natural, to disorganize the socialist party
for the time. Hundreds of its leaders were expelled from the country;
hundreds were thrown into prison or placed under police restriction; its
clubs and newspapers were suppressed; it was not allowed to hold
meetings, to make speeches, or to circulate literature of any kind. In
the course of the twelve years during which this exceptional legislation
has subsisted, it was stated at the recent Socialist Congress at Halle,
that 155 socialist journals and 1200 books or pamphlets had been
prohibited; 900 members of the party had been banished without trial;
1500 had been apprehended and 300 punished for contraventions of the
Anti-Socialist Laws. These measures paralyzed the old organization
sufficiently to reduce the Socialist vote at the next election in 1881
by thirty per cent.; but the party presently recovered its ground. It
adapted itself to the new conditions, and established a secret
propaganda which was manifestly quite as effective for its purposes as
the old, and charged with more danger to the State. Its vote increased
immensely at each successive election thereafter; and now, as Rodbertus
prophesied, the social question has really proved "the Russian campaign
of Bismarck's fame," for his policy of repression has ended in tripling
the strength of the party it was designed to crush, and placing it in
possession of one-fifth of the whole voting power of the nation. It was
high time, therefore, to abandon so ineffectual a policy, and the
socialist coercive laws expired on the 30th September, 1890, and the
socialists inaugurated a new epoch of open and constitutional agitation
by a general congress at Halle in the beginning of October.
The strength of the party in Parliament has never corresponded with its
strength at the polls. In 1871 it returned only 1 member to the Diet; in
1874, 9; in 1877, 12; in 1878, 9; in 1881, 12; in 1884, 24; in 1887, 11;
and in 1890, with an electoral vote which, under a system of
proportional representation, would have secured for it 80 members, it
has carried only 37. The party has no leaders now, in Parliament or out
of it, of the intellectual rank of Lassalle or Marx; but it is very
efficiently led. Its two chiefs, Liebknecht and Bebel, are well skilled
both in debate and in management, and have for many years maintained
their authority in a party peculiarly subject to jealousy and intrigue,
and have consolidated its organization under very adverse conditions.
Liebknecht, who is a journalist of most respectable talents, character,
and acquirements, is now the veteran of the movement, having been out in
the '48 and passed twelve years of political exile in London in constant
intercourse with Karl Marx. Bebel, a turner in Leipzig, is a much
younger man, and, indeed, is one of Liebknecht's converts, for he
opposed the movement when it was first started in Leipzig by Lassalle;
but he has fought so long and so stout a battle for his cause that he
too seems now one of its veterans. The other parliamentary leaders of
the party are for the most part still under thirty. Von Volmar, a
military officer who has left the service for agitation and journalism,
seems to be the older leaders' chief lieutenant; and Frohme, a young
_litterateur_ of repute, may be mentioned because he heads a tendency to
more moderate policy.
Owing to the paucity of its representatives, the party has hitherto made
little attempt to initiate legislation. No bill can be introduced into
the German Diet unless it is backed by fifteen members; and, except in
the Parliament of 1884-7, the Socialist party never had fifteen members
until last February. The work of its parliamentary representatives,
therefore, has consisted mainly of criticism and opposition, and seizing
every suitable occasion for the ventilation of their general ideas; but
after the election of 1884, when they returned to the Diet twenty-four
strong, they introduced first a bill for the prohibition of Sunday
labour, which was stoutly opposed by Prince Bismarck, and defeated; and
second, a Labourer's Protection Bill, proposing to create an elaborate
organization for securing the general wellbeing of the working class. It
was to create, first, a new Labour Department of State; second, a series
of Workmen's Chambers, one for every district of 200,000 or 400,000
inhabitants, with the necessary number of local auxiliaries; third,
Local Courts of Conciliation for the settlement of differences between
labourers and employers, from whose decision there should be an appeal
to the Workmen's Chamber of the District. Both the Court of Conciliation
and the Workmen's Chamber were to be composed of an equal number of
employers and employed. The connection between the Workmen's Chambers of
the District and the Minister of Labour would be through District
Councils of Labour, the members of which were to be chosen by the
minister out of a list presented by the Workmen's Chamber of the
District, and containing twice the number of names required to fill the
places. It was to be the duty of these Councils of Labour to send a
report every year to the Labour Department in Berlin on the condition
of labour in their respective districts after an annual inspection of
all the factories, workshops, and industrial establishments of any kind
located there. The Workmen's Chambers were to have a wide _role_, and
were the keystone of the system. Besides being the courts of final
appeal in labour disputes, they were to bring to the knowledge of the
competent authorities the existence of any disorders or grievances that
occurred in industrial life; to give advice on the best laws and
regulations for industry; to undertake inquiries into all matters
affecting the conditions of labour, treaties of commerce, taxes, rates
of wages, technical education, housing, prices of subsistence, etc.
In introducing the bill, its promoters said a chief object of the whole
organization was to obtain for working men higher wages for a shorter
day's work, and they proposed the immediate reduction of the day of
labour to eight hours for miners and ten hours for all other trades,
together with some further limitations on the work of women and
children, the abolition of prison work at ordinary trades, and of Sunday
work, and the requirement of the payment of wages weekly, and their
payment in money. The bill was referred to a committee of the House, and
rejected, after that committee brought up an unfavourable report in
February, 1886, and nothing further has been done in the matter since;
but the Minister of the Interior was so much struck with the
unexpectedly moderate and practical character of its proposals that he
said if these proposals expressed the whole mind of the members who
proposed them, then those members might as well sit on the right side of
the House as on the left. The effect of the bill, as far as it was
workable, would merely be to give the working class a real and
systematic, but not unequal, voice in settling the conditions of their
own labour; and its rejection is to some extent an example of the way
the socialist agitation impedes the cause of labour by creating in the
public mind an unnecessary distrust even of reasonable reforms.
There are some questions of general policy on which the socialist
deputies take up a position of their own. They always oppose the
military budget, because, like socialists everywhere, they are opposed
to all war and armaments. Wars are merely quarrels of rulers, for
peoples would make for peace, and armaments only drain the people's
pockets in order to perpetuate the people's oppression. Then they are
opposed to national debts, because national debts enable rulers to carry
on war. They are opposed to the new colonization policy of the Empire,
because in their opinion it is a policy of aggrandisement and conquest
undertaken under hypocritical pretences. They are opposed to protective
duties, because they dislike indirect taxation, as bearing always
unjustly on the labouring class. They are strong supporters of popular
education, but they opposed the new insurance laws because they feared
these laws would place people too much under the power of the
Government, for their jealousy of the Government that exists corrects
their general partiality for Government control, and tends to keep them
back even from some of the minor excesses of State-socialism.
The moderate and apparently temporizing policy of the deputies is a
constant source of dissatisfaction to the wilder and more inexperienced
members of the party, who complain, as they did at the recent Halle
Congress, that trying to improve the present system of things is not the
best way of subverting it, and who will either have socialism _cum_
revolution, or they will have nothing at all. But the older heads merely
smile, and tell them the hour for socialism and revolution is not yet,
that no man knows when it shall be, and that in the meantime it would be
mere folly for socialists to refuse the real comforts they can get
because they think they have ideally a right to a great deal more.
"Why," said Bebel, when he was charged at Halle with countenancing
armaments in violation of socialist principles by voting for a better
uniform to the soldiers,--"why, there are numbers of Social Democrats in
the Reserve, and was I to let them die through inadequate clothing
merely because I object to armaments as a general principle?"
They of course think of this policy of accommodation as only a temporary
necessity, till they become strong enough to be thoroughgoing; but there
is perhaps better reason to believe it to be an abiding and growing
necessity of their position, for they are finding themselves more and
more obliged, if they are to become stronger at all, or even to keep the
strength they have, to bid for the support of aggrieved classes by
working for the immediate removal of their grievances, and thus to keep
on reducing day by day as it rises the volume of that social discontent
which is to turn the wheel of revolution. It is not unlikely that the
socialist party, now that it is sufficiently powerful to do something in
the legislature, but not sufficiently powerful to think of final social
transformation, will occupy themselves much more completely with those
miscellaneous social reforms in the immediate future; that they will
thereby become every day better acquainted with the real conditions on
which social improvement depends; that they will find more and more
satisfying employment in the exercise of their power of securing
palpable, practical benefits, than in agitating uncertain theoretical
schemes; and, in short, that they will settle permanently into what they
are for the present to some extent temporarily, a moderate labour party,
working for the real remedy of real grievances by the means best
adapted, under real conditions, national or political, for effecting the
purpose.
The programme of the party, which was adopted at the Gotha Congress of
1875, after the union of the Marxist socialists and the Lassalleans, and
has remained unaltered ever since, has always consisted of a deferred
part and an actual. It contains, in fact, three programmes--the
programme for to-day, the programme for to-morrow, and the programme for
the day after to-morrow. The last is of course the socialist State of
the future, at present beyond our horizon altogether. Before it appears
there is to be a more or less prolonged period in which individual
management of industry is to be gradually superseded by co-operative
societies founded on State credit; but this intermediate state was only
made an article of the programme to conciliate the Lassalleans, and one
hears less of productive associations to-day from the German socialists
than from the French. The Germans would apparently prefer to go from
private property to public property direct rather than go _via_
corporate property; but in any case their programme leaves the creation
of productive societies to a future period, and their task for the
present is to secure for working men factory and sanitary legislation,
constitutional liberties, and an easier and more equitable system of
taxation.
The programme is as follows:--
"I. Labour is the source of all wealth and civilization, and since
productive labour as a whole is made possible only in and through
society, the entire produce of labour belongs to society, that is, it
belongs by an equal right to all its members, each according to his
reasonable needs, upon condition of a universal obligation to labour.
"In existing society the instruments of labour are the monopoly of the
capitalist class; the dependence of the labouring class which results
therefrom is the cause of misery and servitude in all forms.
"The emancipation of labour requires the conversion of the instruments
of labour into the common property of society, and the management of
labour by association, and the application of the product with a view to
the general good and an equitable distribution.
"The emancipation of labour must be the work of the labouring class, in
relation to which all other classes are only a reactionary mass.
"II. Starting from these principles, the Socialistic Labour Party of
Germany seeks by all lawful means to establish a free State and a
socialistic society, to break asunder the iron law of wages by the
abolition of the system of wage-labour, the suppression of every form of
exploitation, and the correction of all political and social inequality.
"The Socialistic Labour Party of Germany, although at first working
within national limits, is sensible of the international character of
the labour movement, and resolved to fulfil all the duties thereby laid
on working men, in order to realize the brotherhood of all men.
"The Socialistic Labour Party of Germany demands, in order to pave the
way for the solution of the social question, the establishment by State
help of socialistic productive associations under the democratic control
of the workpeople. Productive associations for industry and agriculture
should be created to such an extent that the socialistic organization of
all labour may arise out of them.
"The Socialistic Labour Party of Germany demands, as the basis of the
State, (1) Universal, equal, and direct suffrage, together with secret
and obligatory voting, for all citizens over twenty years of age, in all
elections in State and commune. The election day must be a Sunday or
holiday. (2) Direct legislation by the people. Decision on peace or war
by the people. (3) Universal liability to military service. Militia
instead of standing army. (4) Abolition of all exceptional laws,
especially laws interfering with liberty of the press, of association,
and of meeting; in general, all laws restricting free expression of
opinion, free thought, and free inquiry. (5) Administration of justice
by the people. Gratuitous justice. (6) Universal, compulsory,
gratuitous, and equal education of the people by the State. Religion to
be declared a private affair.
"The Socialistic Labour Party of Germany demands within the conditions
of existing society (1) The utmost possible extension of political
rights and liberties in the sense of the above demands. (2) The
replacement of all existing taxes, and especially of indirect taxes,
which peculiarly burden the people, by a single progressive income tax
for State and commune. (3) Unrestricted right of combination. (4) A
normal working day corresponding to the needs of society. Prohibition of
Sunday labour. (5) Prohibition of the labour of children, and of all
labour for women that is injurious to health and morality. (6) Laws for
protection of the life and health of workmen. Sanitary control of
workmen's dwellings. Inspection of mines, factories, workshops, and home
industry by officers chosen by working men. An effective employers'
liability act. (7) Regulation of prison labour. (8) Entire freedom of
management for all funds for the assistance and support of working men."
A committee was appointed at the recent Halle Congress to revise this
programme and report to the Congress of 1891; but as the revision is
merely intended to place the programme in greater conformity with the
needs of the time, and keep it as it were up to date, only minor
modifications may be expected, and those probably in the direction of a
more practical and effectual dealing with existing grievances. Five
years ago the party thought a ten hours' day corresponded with the needs
of the time; they now ask for an eight hours' one. Instead of the
prohibition of Sunday labour, they now prefer to demand, as a more
workable equivalent, a period of thirty-six hours' continuous and
uninterrupted rest every week, irrespective of any particular day; and
they have sometimes taken up new working-class questions not especially
mentioned in their programme, or included directly under any of its
heads, like the abolition of payment of wages in kind. The whole spirit
of the late Congress leads us to look for the contemplated modifications
in this direction of meeting more effectually immediate working-class
wants.
Many eyes were upon that Congress; for it was the first the German
socialists had held since they had recovered their freedom and proved
their strength. They were now clearly stronger than any socialist party
the world had yet seen, and much stronger than most revolutionary
parties who have made successful revolution. Would then the word now be
revolution? people asked. It was not: the word was caution. The first
effect of the victory in February had been otherwise, and in June, Herr
Bebel was still calling, Steady. "The majority of his party colleagues,"
he said at a public meeting in Berlin on the 20th of that month, "had
been intoxicated by the result of the elections of February 20th, and
believed they could do what they liked with the middle class, as it was
already on the point of going under." But before October steadier
counsels prevailed, and the spirit of the Congress was moderation
itself. Although the Congress did not agree to the motion to restore to
the party programme the phrase "by lawful means," which had been deleted
from the opening paragraph of the second part of it by the Wyden
Congress of 1880, in consequence of the Anti-Socialist Laws no longer
giving them any choice except recourse to unlawful means, the general
and decided feeling of the Congress certainly was that only lawful means
could now answer their purposes. The controversy was repeatedly raised
by an extreme section of the party from Berlin, who complained that the
work of their parliamentary representatives had hitherto entirely
ignored the real aims of social democracy, and that a return should now
be made to its socialism and its revolution. But the voice of the
meeting was invariably against this Berlin movement. There was a time,
said M. Fleischman--and his speech was applauded--when it was counted
the right thing in the party to make revolutionary speeches, and point
to the coming day of account when mankind were to be emancipated at one
blow; but that was not a road they could make any progress by. And as
for boycotting, which had been spoken of, he declared he was all for
boycotting; but it was the boycotting of the military in such a way as
to give them no occasion for the use of their weapons. Liebknecht, the
chief leader of the party, followed, and was quite as emphatic in the
same line. People spoke of revolution, he said; but they should remember
that roast pigeons don't fly into one's mouth by themselves. It was easy
enough to make bitter speeches, and any fool and donkey could throw
bombs; but the misadventures of the anarchists showed plainly enough
that nothing could be done in that way. The socialists had now 20 per
cent. of the population; but what could 20 per cent. do against 80 per
cent. by the use of force? No, it was not force; it was reason they must
use if they would succeed. What, then, he asked, was the Social
Democracy to do? They must avoid divisions among themselves, and go out
and convert the still indifferent masses. The electoral suffrage was
their best weapon of agitation, and their surest means of increasing the
party. Prince Bismarck had been represented in a popular book as
practising peasant-fishery and elector-fishery. "Peasant-fishery and
elector-fishery--" said Liebknecht, amid much applause, "that is the
word for the Social Democrats to-day."
Another suggestion of the extreme section was that the party should now
assail the Church and religion, as socialist and revolutionary parties
have so generally done; but this bit of their old traditional policy
received scant regard from the Halle Congress. A strong feeling was
expressed that the party had damaged itself in the past by its assaults
on the Church, and that its present policy ought, in self-preservation,
to be one of religious neutrality and toleration. "Instead," said
Liebknecht, "of squandering our strength in a struggle with the Church
and sacerdotalism, let us go to the root of the matter. We desire to
overthrow the State of the classes. When we have done that, the Church
and sacerdotalism will fall with it, and in this respect we are much
more radical and much more definite in purpose than our opponents, for
we like neither the priests nor the anti-priests." The old revolutionary
policy of stirring up hatred against all existing institutions is thus
relegated from the present to the distant future, after the present
class-State is overthrown and the working-class or socialist State
established in its place.
"Well, then," suggested another old-world socialist, "let us, at any
rate, issue a pamphlet describing the glories of this socialist State,
and get the people prepared to flock into it"; but this suggestion was
also frowned down. "For," said Liebknecht, "who could say what the
_Zukunft Staat_--the socialist State of the future--is to be? Who could
foresee so much as the development of the existing German State for a
single year?" In other words--I think I am not misinterpreting their
meaning--the State of the future is the concern of the future; the
business of a living party is within the needs and within the lines of
the living present.
What, then, is to be the business of this formidable Social Democratic
party? Peasant-catching is the word. The elections showed that while the
party was very strong in the large towns, it was very weak in the rural
districts, and among special populations like the Poles and Alsatians;
and although previous revolutionists thought everything was gained if
the large towns were gained, the Social Democrats generally admit that
the social revolution is impossible without the adherence of the
peasantry. The peasants, therefore, must be won over to the party. Once
in the party, they may learn socialism and revolution, but they must
first be brought in, and for that purpose there must be started a
special peasants' cry--a cry, that is, for the redress of some immediate
grievance of that class; and one suggestion made at the Congress was,
that the cry for the peasantry should be the abolition of the German
_Gesinde_ (farm-servant) system. In the same spirit the Congress
recommended the parliamentary party to take up the question of seamen's
rights, and agitate for better regulations for securing the wellbeing of
that class. The advance towards practicality is even more evident in
their determination upon strikes. Hitherto, for the most part,
socialists have either looked on strikes with lofty disdain as poor
attempts to get a petty rise in wages instead of abolishing the present
wages system altogether, or they have thrown themselves into strikes for
the mere purpose of fomenting labour troubles, and breaking perchance
the power of the large capitalist class; and this latter view was not
unrepresented at the Halle Congress. The resolution of the Congress,
however, declared (1st) that strikes and boycotting were often useful
means of improving the social position of the labouring class; but (2nd)
that they were to be resorted to even for that purpose with great
circumspection. "Whereas, however, strikes and boycotting are
double-edged weapons which, when used in unsuitable places and at an
inopportune moment, are calculated to do more harm than good to the
interests of the working class, this Congress recommends German working
men carefully to weigh the circumstances under which they purpose to
make use of those weapons." The revolutionary ideal seems thus to be
retreating--perhaps insensibly--in the socialistic mind into an
eschatological decoration, into a kind of future Advent which is to come
and to be believed in; but the practical concerns of the present must be
more and more treated in their own practical way.
Since the Congress, the party has issued a manifesto to the peasantry,
in which, after promising a new and happy day that is coming for them,
which is to restore to them the beautiful earth and the poetry of life,
they declare against the patriarchal system, and the increase of brandy
distilling; and then, confessing that few socialists know anything about
agricultural questions, invite information and discussion for the
enlightenment of the party. Here again they forget that they have a
theory which is as applicable to agriculture as to manufactures, and
they want to make practical investigations with a view to practical
solutions.
Of course the movement will always generate revolutionary elements as
occasions arise, and these sometimes of the wildest character. Most and
Hasselman, and their following, who were expelled at the Congress of
Wyden in 1880, were anarchists of a violent type, and Mosts and
Hasselmans may arise again. But at present anarchism hardly exists in
Germany, and the Social Democratic party is peacefully trying to make
people as comfortable as possible till the fulness of time arrives.
It may be added that the present income of the party, as stated at the
last Congress, is L19,525, and that since February, 1890, they have
established nineteen daily newspapers and forty weekly, with a total
circulation of 254,000.
The socialist movement in other countries may be disposed of much more
briefly, for in no other country has it worn anything like the same
importance, except in Russia, and of the Russian agitation I shall treat
more fully in a subsequent chapter on "Russian Nihilism." I may observe
here, however, that the Russian agitation has not been without its
influence on the nations of Western Europe. It was Bakunin who first
kindled the socialist movements of Spain, Italy, Belgium, and Holland,
and the anarchist fermentations of the last six years have been due in
no inconsiderable measure to the new leaven of Russian ideas introduced
by men like Prince Krapotkin and the two hundred other Russian refugees
that are scattered abroad in the free countries of Europe.
In France there is much animated socialist agitation, but no solid and
coherent socialist party such as exists in Germany. The movement is
disunited and fragmentary, and confined almost entirely to the large
towns, where many circumstances conspire to favour its growth. The
French working class are born to revolutionary traditions. The better
portion of them, moreover, though they long since gave up all belief in
the old native forms of socialism, never ceased to be imbued with
socialist ideas and aspirations; and M. de Molinari said in 1869, from
his experience of French working men's clubs, that out of every ten
French working men who had any interest beyond eating and drinking, nine
were Socialists. Then there is in France a larger proportion of the
working class than in most countries, who are kept in constant poverty
and discontent and commotion by their own improvident habits. A pamphlet
called "Le Sublime," which attracted considerable attention some years
ago, stated that only forty per cent. of the working men of Paris were
out of debt; and Mr. Malet reported to the English Foreign Office that
they were, as a body, so dissipated that none of them had grandchildren
or grandfathers. But, on the other hand, France enjoys a solid security
against the successful advance of socialism in her peasant proprietors.
Half the French population belong to that class, and their industry,
thrift, and comfort have long been held up to our admiration by
economists. According to M. de Lavergne, they are not so well fed, so
well clad, or so well lodged as the farm labourers of England; but,
living in a different climate, they have fewer wants, and are
undoubtedly more contented. Among people like these, passing their days
in frugal comfort and fruitful industry, and looking with quiet hope and
confidence to the future, socialism finds, of course, no open door. On
the contrary, every man of them feels he has something to lose and
nothing to gain by social revolution; the fear of socialism is, indeed,
one of the chief influences guiding their political action; and as they
are as numerous as all the other classes in the community put together,
their worldly contentment is a bulwark of enormous value to the existing
order of things. The impression of their substantial independence is so
marked that even the Frenchmen who were members of the International
Working Men's Association would not assent to the abolition of a peasant
proprietary, but always insisted, contrary to the principles of the
Association, on the continued maintenance of that system as a necessary
counterpoise to the power of the Government.
The present socialist groups and sects of France are all believers in
the so-called scientific socialism of Marx and Lassalle, and the most
important of them work for a programme substantially identical with that
of Gotha. Marx's ideas were introduced among the French by the
International, and they were adopted by a section of the Revolutionary
Committee of the Paris Commune, 1871; but after the suppression of the
Commune, they made so little stir for some years that Thiers declared,
in his last manifesto as President of the Republic, that socialism,
which was then busy in Germany, was absolutely dead in France. Its
recrudescence was chiefly due to the activity of the Communards. Some of
them had escaped to London, where they got into closer communion with
Marx and his friends; and in 1874, thirty-four of these refugees, all
military or administrative officers of the Commune, and most of them
not professed socialists before, issued a manifesto pronouncing entirely
for socialism, and describing the Commune as "the militant form of the
social revolution"; but it was not till after the amnesty of the
Communards, and their return from New Caledonia and elsewhere in 1880,
that the first sensible ripple of socialist agitation was felt in France
since the downfall of the second Republic. Numbers of socialist journals
began to appear, and a general congress of working men, held at Havre in
1880, adopted a programme modelled on the lines of that of the German
Social Democrats, and made preparations for an active propaganda and
organization.
The adoption of the socialistic programme, however, rent the Congress in
three, and the two opposite wings, the Co-operationists and the
Anarchists, withdrew and established separate organizations of their
own. The co-operationists, believing that the amelioration of the
working class would only come by the gradual execution of practicable
and suitable measures, and that these could only be successfully carried
by means of skilful alliances with existing political parties, declared
the Havre programme to be a programme for the year 2000, and that the
true policy of the working-class now was a policy of possibilities. This
last word is said to supply the origin of the term Possibilist, which
has now come to be applied not to this co-operationist party, but to one
of the two divisions into which the third or centre party of the Havre
Congress--the socialists--shortly afterwards split up.
The co-operationists formed themselves into a body known as the
Republican Socialist Alliance, which, as the name indicates, aims at
social reforms under the existing republican form of State. They have
held several congresses, their membership includes many well-known and
even eminent Radical politicians--M. Clemenceau, for example--and they
were supported by leading Radical journals, like _Le Justice_ and
_L'Intransigeant_; but their activity and their numbers have both
dwindled away, probably because their work was done sufficiently well
already by other political or working-class organizations.
The anarchists set up not a single organization, but a number of little
independent clubs, which agree with one another mainly in their dislike
of all constituted authority. They want to have all things in common,
somehow or other; but for master or superior of any sort they will have
none, be it king or committee. Their ideas find ready favour in France,
because they are near allied with the theory of the Revolutionary
Commune cherished among the Communards; and although there is no means
of calculating their numbers exactly, they are believed to be pretty
strong--at least, in the South of France. At the time of the Lyons
Anarchist trial, at which Prince Krapotkin was convicted, they claimed
themselves to have 8,000 adherents in Lyons alone. In 1886 the
authorities knew of twenty little anarchist clubs in Paris, which had
between them, however, only a membership of 1,500; and of these a
considerable proportion were foreign immigrants, especially Austrians
and Russians, with a few Spaniards. Some of these clubs are mainly
convivial, with a dash of treason for pungency; but others have an
almost devouring passion for "deeds," and are ever concerting some new
method of waging their strange guerilla against "princes, proprietors,
and parsons." When a new method is discovered, a new club is sometimes
formed to carry it out. For instance, the _Anti-proprietaires_, which is
said to be one of the best organized of the anarchist clubs, bind their
members (1) to pay no house-rent,--rent, of course, being theft, and
theft being really restitution; and (2) if the landlord at length
resorts to law against any of them for this default, to come to their
brother's help and remove his furniture to safer quarters before the
moment of execution. The group _La Panthere_, to which Louise Michel
belongs, and which has 500 members, and the group _Experimental Chemie_,
as their names indicate, prefer less jocular methods. The best known of
the anarchists are old Communards like Louise Michel herself and Elisee
Reclus, the geographer.
The third section of the Havre Congress contained the majority of the
119 delegates, and they formed themselves into the Socialist
Revolutionary Party of France, with the programme already mentioned,
which was carried on the motion of M. Jules Guesde.
This programme sets out with the declaration that all instruments of
production must be transferred to the possession of the community, and
that this can only result from an act of revolution on the part of the
working class organized as an independent political party, and then it
goes on to say that one of the best means of promoting this end at
present was to take part in the elections with the following platform:--
A. _Political._
1. Abolition of all laws restricting freedom of the press, of
association, or of meeting, and particularly the law against the
International Working Men's Association. Abolition of "work-books."
2. Abolition of the budget of public worship, and secularization of
ecclesiastical property.
3. Abolition of national debt.
4. Universal military service on the part of the people.
5. Communal independence in police and local affairs.
B. _Economic._
1. One day of rest in the week under legal regulation. Limitation of
working day to eight hours for adults. Prohibition of the labour of
children under fourteen, and limitation of work hours to six for young
persons between fourteen and sixteen.
2. Legal fixing of minimum wages every year in accordance with the price
of provisions.
3. Equality of wages of male and female labour.
4. Scientific and technical training for all children, as well as their
support at the expense of society as represented by the State and the
Communes.
5. Support of the aged and infirm by society.
6. Prohibition of all interference on the part of employers with the
management of the relief and sustentation funds of the working classes,
to whom the sole control of these funds should be left.
7. Employers' liability guaranteed by deposit by employers proportioned
to number of workmen.
8. Participation of the workmen in drawing up factory regulations.
Abolition of employer's claim to punish the labourer by fines and
stoppages (according to resolution of the Commune of 27th April, 1871).
9. Revision of all agreements by which public property has been
alienated (banks, railways, mines, etc.). The management of all State
factories to be committed to the workmen employed in them.
10. Abolition of all indirect taxes, and change of all direct ones into
a progressive income tax on all incomes above 3,000 francs.
11. Abolition of the right of inheritance, except in the line of direct
descent, and of the latter in the case of fortunes above 20,000 francs.
At the congress of the party held at St. Etienne two years after this
programme was adopted, M. Brousse, a medical practitioner in Paris, and
a member of the Town Council, who had already shown signs of disputing
the leadership of M. Guesde, carried by a vote of thirty-six to
twenty-seven a motion for introducing some modifications, and the
minority seceded and set up a separate organization. In spite of
repeated efforts at reconciliation, the two sections of the French
socialists have never united again or been able even to work together
temporarily at an election. Besides personal jealousies, there are most
important differences of tendency keeping them apart. The Guesdists
accept the policy of Karl Marx as well as his economic doctrine: the
universal revolution, and the centralized socialist State, as well as
the theory of surplus value and the right to the full product of labour.
The Broussists, on the other hand, believe in decentralization, and
would prefer municipalizing industries to nationalizing them. They are
for giving the commune control of its own police, its own soldiers, its
own civil administration, its own judiciary; and they think the _regime_
of collective property can be best brought in and best carried on by
local bodies. They would have the towns take over their own gas, light,
and water supply, their omnibus and tramway traffic; but they would have
them take over also many of the common industries which never tend
towards monopoly or even call for any special control. They would
municipalize, for example, the bakehouses and the mealshops and the
granaries, apparently as supplying the necessaries of life, and they
would have various other branches of industry undertaken by the towns to
a certain limited extent, in order to provide suitable work for the
unemployed. Then in 1887 they added a fresh plank to their platform, and
asked for the establishment by municipalities, on public money or
credit, of productive associations to be owned--not, like the other
undertakings, by the municipality, but--by the working men employed in
them. This is a reappearance of the old policy of Lassalle, with the
difference that the productive associations are to be founded on
municipal and not on State credit; and the reappearance is not
surprising in France, because co-operative production has, on the whole,
been more successful in that country than in any other. Then another of
their demands is, that all public contracts should be subjected to such
conditions as to wages and hours of labour as the workmen's syndicates
approve; and in Paris they have already succeeded in obtaining this
concession from the Town Council so far as municipal contracts are
concerned. These workmen's syndicates are trade unions, which aim only
at bettering the position of their members without theoretical
prepossessions, but are quite as bold in their demands on the public
powers as the socialists, and apparently more successful. In 1885 their
claims included, not only an eight hours' day and a normal rate of fair
wages, but the fixing of all salaries under 500 francs, a credit to
themselves of 500,000,000 francs, and the gratuitous use of empty houses
by their members; and in 1886 they obtained from the Town Council of
Paris a furnished room, with free lighting and firing, and a subvention
of 20,000 francs, for the establishment of a Labour Bureau, to be a
centre for all working-class deliberations and intelligence, and a
registry for the unemployed.
The socialism of the Broussists is thus practically a municipal
socialism: municipal industries, municipal credit for working men's
productive associations, municipal concessions to trade unions; but all
this seems to the Guesdists to be mere tinkering, to be no better than
the possibilities of the Republican Socialist Alliance, and they have
for that reason given their rivals the name of Possibilists, which for
distinction's sake they still commonly bear. Neither section had any
representative in the Chamber of Deputies till 1889, when the Broussists
succeeded in returning M. Joffrin; but the Broussists have nine in the
Town Council of Paris. The Guesdists have more men of culture among
them; Guesde himself and Lafargue, Karl Marx's son-in-law, are both men
of ability and public position; but they have a smaller following, and
what they have is on the decline. Their sympathy with the principles of
German Socialism, their alliance with the German Socialist party is
against them, for the French working men have a very honest hatred of
the Germans, both from recollections of the war and from the pressure of
German industrial competition; and the feeling seems to be returned by
the Germans, for it appeared even among the socialists at the recent
congress at Halle, international and non-patriotic as socialists often
claim to be. One of the personal accusations that disturbed the sittings
of that congress was, that the leaders of the party had been discovered
in secret conference with the delegates of the French socialists, MM.
Guesde and Ferroul, who had been sent to greet their German comrades.
The Possibilists have no very eminent members, the most leading persons
among them being Brousse himself and MM. Allemane and Joffrin. But they
are not inconsiderable in number, and they are growing. They have 400
Circles of Social Studies all over the country, organized into six
regions, each with its regular regional congress, and all working under
a national executive committee and a general national congress, meeting
once a year. The future of French socialism seems to be with the
Possibilists rather than the Guesdists; and the future of the
Possibilists, like the future of the German socialists, seems to lie in
the direction of releasing their limbs from the dead clothes of
socialist theory, in order to take freer and more practical action for
the positive wellbeing of the working class. At the recent congress of
the Possibilists at Chatellerault in October, 1890, the chief questions
discussed were the reform the system of poor relief and the eight hours'
day. They want an international eight hours' day, but they would be
willing to allow other four hours' overtime, to be paid for by double
wages.
In 1885 the two divisions of socialists combined for electioneering
purposes with one another and with a third revolutionary body called the
Blanquists, and they actually formed together an organization known as
the Revolutionary Union; but the three parties quarrelled again before
the election, and the union was dissolved. The Blanquists are disciples
of the veteran conspirator Blanqui, and include some well-known men,
such as General Eudes, and MM. Vaillant and Roche. They are
revolutionists pure and simple, and in some respects stand near the
anarchists; only, being old birds, they move about more cautiously, and
indeed are sometimes for that reason--and because they act as
intermediaries between other revolutionaries--called the "diplomatists
of lawlessness." With all their love for revolution, however, they have
more than the usual democratic aversion to war, and their chief work at
present is in connection with the league they have founded against
permanent armies.
Although revolutionary socialism is so ill represented in the French
Legislature, there is a special parliamentary party, known as the
Socialist Group, which was founded by nineteen deputies in 1887, and
returned thirty candidates to the Chamber at the election of 1889. They
are for communal autonomy; for the transformation of industrial
monopolies into public services, to be directed by the respective
companies under the control of the public administration; and for the
progressive nationalization of property, so as to make the individual
employment of it accessible to free labourers; and they have no lack of
other planks in their platform: international federation and
arbitration; abolition of standing armies; abolition of capital
punishment; universal suffrage; minority representation; sexual
equality; free education, primary, secondary, and technical; suppression
of the budget of public worship; separation of Church and State;
absolute liberty to think, speak, write, meet, associate, and contract;
abolition of indirect taxes and customs, and introduction of a
progressive income tax, and a progressive succession duty; public
_creches_; establishment of superannuation, sick and accident insurance
at public expense. Among the deputies who signed the programme in 1887
were the two Boulangists, MM. Laisant and Laur, and MM. Clovis Hughes,
Basley, Bower, etc. The idea of the party seems to be what M. Laisant
recommends in his "L'Anarchie Bourgeoise," published in the same year
1887, a Republican Socialist party, which, accepting the good works of
socialism, without caring for its political or economic theory, shall do
its best to abolish misery by any means open to it under the existing
republican form of government. Republican socialism corresponds
therefore to what is called State socialism in Germany--the abolition of
poverty by means of the power of the present State; and the question
between socialists and other reformers is narrowing in France, as
elsewhere, into a question of the justice and the suitability of the
individual measures proposed.
There is also a body of Christian Socialists in France, of whom,
however, I shall have more to say in a subsequent chapter on the
Christian Socialists.
Socialism crossed very early from Prussia into Austria and took quick
root among the German-speaking population, but has never to this day
made much way among any of the other nationalities in the Empire. The
Magyars are, on the whole, fairly comfortable and contented in their
worldly circumstances, and they have a strong national aversion to
anything German, even a German utopia; so that they lent no ear to the
socialist agitation till 1880, when a socialist congress of 119
delegates was held at Buda Pest and founded the Hungarian Labour Party.
The agitation, however, has not assumed any important dimensions. The
Poles of Austria, like the Poles of Russia and the Poles of Prussia,
have all along been a source of much disappointment to socialist
leaders, who expected they would leap into the arms of any revolutionary
scheme, but find them too pre-occupied with their own nationalist cause
to care for any other. The same observation applies to the Czechs. They
are Czechs and Federalists first, and a social system under which they
would cease to be Czechs and Federalists, and become mere atoms under a
powerful centralized government, led possibly by Germans, is naturally
not much to their fancy. But in the German-speaking part of the monarchy
socialism has found a ready and general welcome, and has latterly grown
most popular in the anarchist form. This development is due to various
causes. The federalist ideas prevalent in the country would be a bridge
to the general principles of anarchism, while the coercive laws in force
since 1870 would naturally provoke a recourse to revolutionary methods
and an impatience with the sober and Fabian policy of the Austrian
Social Democrats. The Social Democrats of Austria were advised from the
first by Von Schweitzer and Liebknecht, the leaders of German socialism
at the time, to adopt this temporizing policy, as being on the whole the
best for the party in the circumstances existing in their country. They
were advised to give a general support at the elections to the Liberal
party, because nothing could be done for socialism in Austria till the
priestly and feudal ascendancy was abolished, and that could only be
done by strengthening the hands of the Liberals. They have continued to
observe this moderate course. Unlike their German comrades, they looked
with favourable eyes on the labour legislation introduced by Government
for improving the condition of the working classes; and though they have
suffered from coercive legislation much longer and sometimes quite as
severely, they have never struck the qualification "by legal means" out
of their principles, but, on the contrary, have declared, when they were
permitted to hold a meeting--as for example at Bruenn in 1884--that they
adhered entirely and exclusively to peaceful methods, and repudiated the
deeds of the anarchists. But then they are apparently not prospering in
number, while the anarchists are. For one thing they have never had good
leaders, and though they sometimes invite Liebknecht or one of the
German socialist leaders to come and rouse them, Government has always
refused liberty for such addresses to be delivered in Austria. The
anarchists, on the other hand, had an energetic and eloquent leader in
Peukert, a house-painter, who is now a chief personage in anarchist
circles in London, and from here no doubt still carries on relations
with his old friends; and their propaganda seems to be spreading, if we
judge from the political trials, and from the fresh measures of
repression directed against it in 1884, when Vienna was put under siege,
and again in the latter part of 1888. They have nine or ten newspapers,
and the socialists six or seven. Neither faction has any representative
in Parliament.
Both parties direct their chief attention to the peasantry, especially
where any germ of an agrarian movement happens already to prevail. The
Galician agitation against great landlords in 1886 was fomented by
anarchist emissaries, and we occasionally hear of anarchist operations
among the people of Northern Bohemia or Styria as well as in Upper
Austria, where rural discontent has long been more or less acute.
Austria is mainly an agricultural country; but greater part of the land
is held in very large estates by the clergy and nobility, and the evils
of the old feudal _regime_ are only now being gradually removed. There
are, it is true, as many as 1,700,000 peasant proprietors in the
Cisleithanian half of the Empire alone; but then their properties are
seriously encumbered by the debt of their redemption from feudal
servitudes and by the severity of the public taxation. The land tax
amounts to 26 per cent. of the proprietor's income, and the indirect
taxes on articles of consumption are numerous and burdensome. But
three-fourths of the rural population are merely farm servants or day
labourers, and are worse off even than the same class elsewhere. The
social question in Austria is largely agrarian, but the spontaneous
movements of the Austrian peasantry seem rather unlikely to run in
harness with social democracy. Unions of free peasants for example have
sprung up of recent years in various provinces. Their great aim is to
procure a reduction in the taxes paid by the peasantry; but then they
add to their programme the principle of State-help to labour, the
abolition of all feudal privileges and all rights of birth, gratuitous
education, and cessation of the policy of contracting national debt, and
they speak vaguely about instituting a peasant State, and requiring
every minister and responsible official to serve an apprenticeship to
peasant labour as a qualification for office, in order that he may
understand the necessities and capacities of the peasantry. This idea of
the peasant State is analogous to the idea of the labour State of the
Social Democrats; but of course this is agreement which is really
conflict. It is like the harmony between Sforza and Charles VIII.: "I
and my cousin Charles are wonderfully at one; we both seek the same
thing--Milan." The class interest of the landed peasant is contrary to
the class interest of the working man, and would be invaded by social
democracy. The peasantry are simply fighting for their own land, and as
their votes are courted by both political parties they will probably be
able to secure some mitigation of their grievances. Distress is
certainly serious among them when, as happened a few years ago, in a
parish of 135 houses as many as 35 executions were made in one day for
failure to pay taxes, and in another of 250 houses as many as 72; but on
the whole there seems to be little of that hopeless indigence which
appears among the peasant proprietary in countries where the practice of
unrestricted or compulsory subdivision of holdings exists, or has
recently existed, to any considerable extent.
There is an influential Catholic Socialist movement in Austria, led by
the clergy and nobility, and dealing in an earnest spirit with the
social question as it appears in that country.
Socialism was introduced into Italy in 1868 by Bakunin, who, in spite of
the opposition of Mazzini, gained wide acceptance for his ideas wherever
he went, and founded many branches of the International in the country,
which survived the extinction of the parent society, and continued to
bear its name. They were, like Bakunin himself, anarchist in their
social and political views, and were marked by an especial violence in
their attacks on Church and State and family. They published a great
number of journals of various sorts, and kept up an incessant and very
successful propaganda; but no heed was paid them by the authorities till
1878, when an attempt on the life of the king led to a thorough
examination being instituted into the whole agitation. The dimensions
and ramifications of the movement were found to be so much more
extensive than any one in power had anticipated, that it was determined
to set a close watch thereafter on all its operations, and its meetings
and congresses were then from time to time proclaimed. But after the
passing of the Franchise Act of 1882, a new socialist movement came into
being which looked to constitutional methods alone. The franchise was
not reduced very low: it only gave a vote to one person in every
fourteen, while in England one in six has a vote; but the reduction was
accompanied with _scrutin de liste_ and the ballot, and it was felt
that something could now be done. Accordingly a new Socialist Labour
Party was formed on the usual Marxist lines, under the leadership of a
very capable man, an orator and a good organizer, Andrea Costa, who was
formerly an anarchist. This party obtained 50,000 votes at the first
subsequent election, and returned two candidates to the Legislature, one
of them being Costa. In 1883 it formed a working alliance with the
Italian Democratic Society--an active working-class body of which Costa
was a leading member; and in 1884 it entered into an incorporating union
with another working-class body, the Lombardy Labour Federation, which
had a large number of local branches. With their help it had become, in
1886, an organization of 133 branches, and Government resolved to
suppress it. Most of the branches in the north of Italy were dissolved,
and their funds, flags, and libraries confiscated. But the party is
still active over the country. They returned three members at the late
election in November, 1890. The growth of this party was even more
displeasing to the anarchists than to the Government, and in 1882 they
called back Maletesta, one of their old leaders, from abroad, to conduct
a regular campaign over the whole kingdom against Costa, and to denounce
every man for a traitor to the socialist cause who should take any
manner of part in parliamentary elections, or show the smallest sign of
reconciliation to the existing order of things. His campaign ended in
his arrest in May, 1883, and the condemnation of himself and 53 comrades
to several years' imprisonment for inciting to disturbance of the public
peace. Besides their contentions with the Socialist Labour Party, the
Italian anarchists are much given to contending among themselves, and
split up, even beyond other parties of the kind, upon trifles of
doctrine or procedure. But however divided they may be, socialists and
anarchists in Italy are all united in opposing the new social
legislation of the Government. When the Employers' Liability Bill was
introduced, Costa declared that legislation of that kind was utterly
useless so long as the people were denied electoral rights, because till
the franchise was reduced far enough to give the people a real voice in
public affairs, there could be no security for the loyal and faithful
execution of the provisions of such an act.
The Italian socialists and anarchists have always had a lively brood of
journals, which, however, are generally shorter lived than even
socialist organs elsewhere; but when one dies for want of funds to-day,
another comes out in its place to-morrow. This remarkable fertility in
journals seems to be due to the large literary proletariat that exists
in Italy--the unemployed educated class who could live by their pen if
they only had a paper to use it in. Through their presence among the
socialists new journals are pushed forward without sufficient funds to
carry them on, and as the people are too poor to subscribe to them, and
the party too poor to subsidize them, they soon come to a natural
termination.
The development of socialism in Italy is no matter of surprise. Though
there is no great industry in the country, the whole population seems a
proletariat. There is a distressed nobility, a distressed peasantry, a
distressed working class, a distressed body of university men. Mr.
Gallenga says that for six months of the year Italy is a national
workshop; everybody is out of employment, and has to get work from the
State; and he states as the reason for this, that the employing class
wants enterprise and ability, and are apt to look to the Government for
any profitable undertakings. The Government, however, are no better
financiers than the rest, and the state of the public finances is one of
the chief evils of the country. Taxation is very heavy, and yet property
and life are not secure. "The peasants," says M. de Laveleye, "are
reduced to extreme misery by rent and taxation, both alike excessive.
Wages are completely inadequate. Agricultural labourers live huddled in
bourgades, and obtain only intermittent employment. There is thus a
rural proletariat more wretched than the industrial. Excluded from
property by _latifundia_, it becomes the enemy of a social order that
crushes it." The situation is scarcely better in parts of the country
which are free from _latifundia_. In Sicily most of the agricultural
population live on farms owned by themselves; but then these farms are
too small to support them adequately, and their occupiers scorn the idea
of working for hire. There are as many nobles in Sicily as in England,
and Mr. Dawes (from whose report on Sicily to the Foreign Office in 1872
I draw these particulars states) that 25 per cent. of the lower orders
are what he terms drones--idlers who are maintained by their wives and
children. In Italy there is little working-class opinion distinct from
the agricultural. There are few factories, and the artisans who work in
towns have the habit of living in their native villages near by, and
going and coming every day to their work. Two-thirds of the persons
engaged in manufactures do so, or at least go to their rural homes from
Saturday till Monday. Their habits and ways of thinking are those of
agriculturists, and the social question of Italy is substantially the
agricultural labourers' question. The students at the universities, too,
are everywhere leavened with socialism. The advanced men among them seem
to have ceased to cry for a republic, and to place their hope now in
socialism. They have no desire to overturn a king who is as patriotic as
the best president, and they count the form of government of minor
importance as compared with the reconstitution of property. Bakunin
thought Italy the most revolutionary country of Europe except Spain,
because of its exceptionally numerous body of enthusiastic young men
without career or prospects; and certainly revolutionary elements abound
in the peninsula, but, as M. de Laveleye shrewdly remarks, a revolution
is perhaps next to impossible for want of a revolutionary metropolis.
"The malaria," he says, "which makes Rome uninhabitable for part of the
year will long preserve her from the danger of becoming the seat of a
new commune."
In Spain, as in Italy, socialism made its first appearance in 1868
through the agency of the International, and found an immediate and warm
response among the people. In 1873 the International had an extensive
Spanish organization with 300,000 members and 674 branches planted over
the whole length and breadth of the country, from industrial centres
like Barcelona to remote rural districts like the island of Majorca. M.
de Laveleye was present at several sittings of these socialist clubs
when he visited Spain in 1869, and he says: "They were usually held in
churches erected for worship. From the pulpit the orators attacked all
that had previously been exalted there--God, religion, the priests, the
rich. The speeches were white hot, but the audience remained calm. Many
women were seated on the ground, working, nursing their babes, and
listening attentively as to a sermon. It was the very image of '93." He
adds that their journals wrote with unparalleled violence, especially
against religion and the Church.