which may be summed up as follows: In 1851 the percentage of the
population of Prussia having more than 1,000 thalers ($750) annual
income for each family of five persons was less than 1/2 of 1 per cent.;
of those having less than 100 thalers ($75) for such a family was 72-1/4
per cent; those having 100 to 200 thalers, 16-1/4 per cent.; and 200 to
400, 7-1/4 per cent.) The two lowest classes form, therefore, 89 per
cent, of the population; and if you take also the 7% per cent, of the
third class, who must still be considered in oppressive poverty, you
have 96-1/4 per cent, of the population in a most needy, unfortunate
situation. The State, therefore, belongs to you, Gentlemen, to the
suffering classes--not to us, the upper classes; for it is you who
compose it. "What is the State?" I ask; and you see now from a few
figures, more vividly than from heavy volumes, the answer. The great
association of the poorer classes--yourselves--that is the State.
And why should not your great association have a helpful and fruitful
effect upon your smaller associated groups? This question you may also
put to those who talk to you about the inadmissibility of State
intervention and about Socialism and Communism in the demand for it.
If, finally, you desire a special instance of the impossibility of
producing an improvement in the condition of the working class in any
other way than by free association through this helpful intervention
of the State, you may look to England, that country which is most
frequently called in evidence to prove the possibility for an
association of individual workingmen established purely and
exclusively through their unassisted powers, to improve the condition
of the whole class--England, which in fact must appear best suited,
for various reasons based on its particular national conditions, to
carry out this experiment, without, nevertheless, demonstrating
thereby a similar possibility for other countries.
And this special instance comes directly from those English
workingmen's associations which up to this time have usually been
referred to as triumphant proof of such an assertion. I speak of the
Pioneers of Rochdale. This coöperative society, organized in 1844,
established in 1858 a spinning and weaving establishment with a
capital of £5,500 sterling. According to the statutes of this
association, the workmen employed in the factory, whether they were
stockholders in the association or not, drew a profit, in addition to
the usual wages, equal to that distributed as dividends to the
stockholders--the arrangement having been made that the annual
dividends should be reckoned and distributed both on wages and on
capital stock. Now the number of stockholders of this factory is one
thousand six hundred, while only five hundred workmen are employed
there. Accordingly, there exists a large number of stockholders who
are not also workmen in the factory; on the other hand, all the
workmen are not at the same time stockholders. In consequence of this
an agitation broke out in 1861 among the workingmen stockholders who
did not work in the factory, and also among those who were both
employees and stockholders, against the workmen who were not
stockholders receiving a share of the profits. On the part of the
workingmen stockholders the principle was laid down simply and frankly
that, according to the usual custom in the whole industrial world, the
claims of labor were satisfied with the wages and that wages were
determined by supply and demand (we have seen above by what law).
"This fact," relates Professor Huber in his report of this affair,
"was considered valid without further question, as the natural
condition, needing no further justification, in opposition to a quite
exceptional, arbitrary innovation, even though it were according to
the statutes." Bravely, but only with very dimly understood emotional
reasons, this proposition for the changing of the statutes was opposed
by the original founders and managers of the association. In fact, a
majority of five-eighths of the workingmen stockholders voted for the
change of the statutes, taking exactly the same position as the
capitalist employers, and the change was defeated for the time being
only because, according to the statutes, a majority of three-fourths
of the votes was required. "But nobody," states Professor Huber, "is
unaware that the matter is not thereby settled; it is more likely that
still further serious internal dissensions are to be looked for by
this association, the outcome of which, perhaps even next year, may
well be a successful repetition of this attempt--all the more so since
the opposition is determined to make its influence felt in the
election of the officials of the association, an election at which the
majority elects, and through which the controlling offices of the
management may soon be in their hands."
Huber reports further in this matter that most of the associations
producing on a factory scale have fallen in at the outset with the
general custom, evidently without any further consideration or any
consciousness of a principle. Only a few have adopted the coöperative
principle in favor of labor, and Huber must further admit, although
very unwillingly and with a heavy heart, for he is a partisan of
coöperation depending upon individual workingmen alone: "There is no
doubt that this question will very soon come to discussion and
decision in all the producing associations where the opposition of
capital and labor exists, and that the competition of the industrial
macrocosm (i.e., the world's industry as a whole) is reproduced in the
coöperative microcosm (the individual world represented by the
workingmen's associations)."
You see, Gentlemen, if you reflect about these facts that great
questions can be solved only in a large way, never in a small way. As
long as the universal wage is determined by the above-considered law,
the small associations will not be able to escape the prevailing
influence of it; and what does the working class as a whole gain, or
the workingman as such, whether he works for workingmen employers or
for capitalist employers? Nothing! You have only scattered the
employers to whose profit the result of your labor falls. But labor
and the working class are not set free. What does it gain by this! It
gains only depravation, only corruption, which now takes hold of it
and sets workingman as an exploiting employer against workingman. The
employers have changed in person; but labor, the only source of
production, remains, as before, dependent upon the so-called
wage--that is, the maintenance of existence. Under the influence of
this law the perversion of conceptions is so great that, in our
instance, even those workingmen stockholders not employed in the
factory, instead of recognizing that they owe their dividends to the
labor of the workmen who are employed, and accordingly that it is
they who draw the profit from the labor of the latter, will, in
defiance of this, not allow the latter even a share in the product of
their own work, not even a share of what labor has a just claim to.
Workingmen with workingmen's means and employers' hearts--that is the
repulsive caricature into which those workingmen have been changed.
And now finally one more clear and decisive proof based on these
facts. You have seen that in that factory of the Pioneers five hundred
workmen were employed and sixteen hundred workingmen held the stock.
This much must also be clear to you--that, unless we are willing to
imagine the workmen as rich people (in which case all questions are
solved--in imagination), the capital necessary for the establishment
of a factory can never be raised from the pockets of the workmen
employed in it. They will be obliged to take in a much greater number
of other workingmen stockholders, who are not employed in their
factory. In this respect the proportion in the case of that factory of
the Pioneers--sixteen hundred stockholders to five hundred workingmen
in the factory (say a proportion of only about three to one)--may be
called astonishingly favorable and unusual--as small as is in any way
possible, and to be accounted for partly by the especially fortunate
situation of the Pioneers, who represent a great exception in the
working class, partly by the fact that this branch of manufacturing is
far from being one of those which require the heaviest capitalization,
and partly because this factory is not large enough to count among the
really large enterprises, for in these the proportion, even in this
branch of industry, would be a very different one. And, finally, it
may be added that through the development of industrialism itself, and
through the progress of civilization, this proportion must increase
daily. For the progress of civilization consists in the very fact that
from day to day more natural mechanical power--more machinery--takes
the place of human labor, and that accordingly the proportion of the
amount of invested capital to the amount of human labor becomes
larger; so then, if in that factory of the Pioneers sixteen hundred
stockholders were necessary to raise the capital to employ five
hundred workmen, a proportion of one to three, the proportion among
other workmen in other branches and in larger establishments--and also
in consideration of the daily advance of civilization--will be one to
four, one to five, six, eight, ten, twenty, etc. However, let us keep
this proportion of one to three. To establish a factory in which five
hundred workmen find employment, I need sixteen hundred workingmen
stockholders in order to have the necessary capital. Very well: as
long as I try to establish one, two, three, etc., factories, there is
no difficulty in theory (always in theory, Gentlemen--in imagination),
I call to aid (always in theory) the three, four, etc., times the
number of workingmen stockholders. But if I extend this association to
the whole working class--and their cause, not that of individuals who
wish to improve their position, is in question here--if in course of
time I wish to establish factories enough to occupy the whole working
class, where shall I get the three, five, ten, twenty-fold number of
the whole working class who, as workingmen stockholders, must stand
behind the workmen occupied in the factories in order to establish
these factories?
You see then that it is a mathematical impossibility to free the
working class in this way--by the exertions of its members as merely
single individuals; that only very confused, uncritical imaginations
can lend themselves to these illusions, and that the only way to this
end, the only way for the abolition of that cruel law of wages to
which the working class is bound as to a martyr's stake, is the
encouragement and development of free, individual, coöperative
associations of workingmen through the helping hand of the State. The
movement for workingmen's associations founded upon the purely
atomistic, isolated power of individual workingmen had only the
value--and this, to be sure, is an enormous one--of showing
definitely the practical way in which this liberation can take place,
of giving brilliant, practical proofs for overcoming all real or
assumed doubt of its practical feasibility, and, in just that way, of
making it the urgent duty of the State to lend its supporting hand to
those highest cultural interests of humanity. At the same time I have
already proved that the State is essentially nothing else than the
great association of the working class, and that therefore the help
and fostering care through which the State made possible those smaller
associations would be nothing else than the legitimate social
initiative, absolutely natural and lawful, which the working classes
put forth for themselves as a great association, for their members as
single individuals. Once more then: free individual association of the
workingmen, but such association made possible by the supporting and
fostering hand of the State--that is the workingmen's only way out of
the wilderness.
But how shall the State be enabled to make this intervention? The
answer must be immediately evident to you all: it will be possible
only through universal and direct suffrage. When the legislative
bodies of Germany are based on universal and direct suffrage, then,
and only then, will you be able to prevail upon the State to undertake
this duty.
Then this demand will be brought forward in the legislative bodies;
then the limits and the forms and the means of this intervention will
be discussed by reason and science; and then--be assured of
this!--those men who understand your situation and are devoted to your
cause, armed with the glittering steel of science, will stand at your
side and protect your interests; then you, the propertyless class of
society, will have only yourselves and your own unwise choices to
blame if the representatives of your class remain in a minority.
The universal and direct franchise is, as now appears, not merely your
political principle--it is your social principle, the fundamental
principle of all social advancement. It is the only means for
improving the material condition of the working class. But how can
they accomplish the introduction of the universal and direct
franchise? For an answer, look to England! The great agitation of the
English people against the corn laws lasted for more than five years,
but then they had to go--abolished by the Tory ministry itself.
Organize yourselves as a general workingmen's union for the purpose
of a lawful and peaceable, but untiring, unceasing agitation for the
introduction of universal and direct suffrage in all German states.
From the moment when this union includes even one hundred thousand
German workingmen, it will be a force with which everybody must
reckon. Send abroad this call into every workshop, every village,
every cottage. Let the city workingmen pass on their higher standard
of judgment and education to the country workers. Debate, discuss,
everywhere, daily, untiringly, incessantly, as was done in that great
English agitation against the corn laws, in peaceable public assemblies
as well as in private meetings, the necessity of the universal and
direct franchise. The more the echo of your voice resounds in the ears
of millions, the more irresistible its force will be.
Establish financial committees, to which every member of the German
workingmen's union must contribute, and to which your plans for
organization can be submitted.
With these contributions establish funds which, in spite of the
smallness of the individual amounts, would form a tremendous financial
power for the purpose of agitation. A weekly contribution of only one
silver groschen each from one hundred thousand members of the union
would produce over one hundred and sixty thousand thalers yearly.
Establish newspapers which would daily bring forward this demand and
prove that it is founded upon social conditions; send out by the same
means pamphlets for the same purpose; employ with the resources of
this union agents to carry this same view into every corner of the
land, to arouse with the same call the heart of every workingman, of
every cotter and plowman; indemnify from the resources of this union
all those workingmen who suffer injury and persecution on account of
their activity in this cause.
Repeat daily, unceasingly, this same call. The more it is repeated,
the more it will spread and the mightier will become its power. The
whole art of practical success consists in concentrating all efforts
at all times upon one point, and that the most important one, looking
neither to the right nor to the left. Look you neither to the right
nor to the left; be deaf to everything which does not mean universal
and direct suffrage, to everything which is not connected with it, or
able to lead to it.
If you have really spread this call, as you can do within a few years,
through the 89 to 96 per cent. of the total population which, as I
have shown you, constitutes the poor and propertyless classes of
society, then your will can no longer be resisted--depend upon that!
Quarrels and feuds may exist about political rights between the
government and the capitalist. You may even be denied political powers
and therefore universal suffrage, because of the luke-warmness with
which political rights are regarded; but universal suffrage, which 89
to 96 per cent. of the population regard as a life question, and
therefore spread with the warmth of life through the whole national
body--depend upon it, Gentlemen, there is no power which can resist
it.
This is the banner which you must raise. This is the standard under
which you will conquer. There is no other for you.