We need hardly return to the _rôle_ which is played by surplus value in

this vast historical process. The capitalist appropriates the product of

labour because it contains surplus value. It is the part of the product

that embodies surplus value and represents a clear gain which attracts

him. Surplus value is the beginning, middle, and end of capitalism. It

moves it alike in its origin and progress, decline and fall. It is the

keynote of a great process of historic evolution continued for

centuries; the secret of a vast development, which becomes more and more

open as time goes on. And capitalism grows sick of the sustenance which

formerly nourished it. It dies of over-repletion, of habitual excess in

surplus value.

Let us now inquire how far the Marx school have thrown any light on the

forms likely to be assumed by the new society after the downfall of

capitalism. In his mature works as far as published Marx himself has

said little to guide us. The clearest indication of his views is

contained in the following passage:—‘Let us assume an association of

free men, who work with common means of production and consciously put

forth their many individual labour powers as a social labour power. The

total product of the association is a social product. A part of this

product serves again as means of production. It remains social property.

But another part is as means of living consumed by the members of the

association. It must therefore be distributed among them. The nature of

this distribution will change according to the special nature of the

organisation of production and the corresponding grade of historical

development of the producers.’ And then he goes on to assume that the

share of each producer in the means of living may be determined by his

labour time. Labour time will at once serve as measure of the share of

each producer in the common labour, and therefore also of his share in

the portion of the common product which is devoted to consumption.[5]

Another important indication by one who has full right to speak for Marx

is contained in Fr. Engels’ views regarding the State. After the

proletariat have seized political power and transformed the means of

production into State property, the State will cease to exist. In the

old societies the State was an organisation of the exploiting class for

the maintenance of the conditions of exploitation that suited it.

Officially the representatives of the whole society, the exploiting

class only represented itself. But when the State at last becomes the

real representative of the whole society it renders itself superfluous.

In a society which contains no subject class, from which class rule and

the anarchy of production and the collisions and excesses of the

struggle for individual existence have been removed, there is nothing to

repress, and no need for a repressing force like the State. The first

act wherein the State really appears as representative of the entire

society—the appropriation of the means of production in the name of

society—is also its last independent act as State. In place of the

government over persons, there will be an administration of things and

the control of productive processes. The State is not abolished; it dies

away.[6]

In effect, these two indications of opinion point to a condition of

society which is not fundamentally different from that contemplated by

the anarchist school. Both look forward to a period when men will live

in free associations, and when the administration of social affairs will

be conducted without the exercise of compulsion.

It will have been seen that what Marx and his school contemplate is an

economic revolution brought about in accordance with the natural laws of

historic evolution. But in order to understand the full import of this

revolution in the mind of Marx, we must remember that he regards the

economic order of society as the groundwork of the same, determining all

the other forms of social order. The entire legal and political

structure, as well as philosophy and religion, are constituted and

controlled in accordance with the economic basis. This is in harmony

with his method and his conception of the world, which is the Hegelian

reversed: ‘For Hegel the thought process, which he transforms into an

independent subject under the name idea, is the creator of the real,

which forms only its external manifestation. With me, on the contrary,

the ideal is nothing else than the material transformed and translated

in the human brain.’ His conception of the world is a frank and avowed

materialism.

And to a world thus understood he applies the dialectic method of

investigation. Dialectic is a word current in the Hegelian and other

philosophies. It sounds rather out of place in a materialistic view of

the world. In the system of Marx it means that the business of inquiry

is to trace the connection and concatenation in the links that make up

the process of historic evolution, to investigate how one stage succeeds

another in the development of society, the facts and forms of human life

and history not being stable and stereotyped things, but the

ever-changing manifestations of the fluent and unresting real, the

course of which it is the duty of science to reveal. Both Marx and Fr.

Engels, moreover, are fond of expressing the development of capitalism

in the language of the well-known Hegelian threefold process—thesis,

antithesis, and synthesis. Private property resting on a man’s own

labour of the former times is the thesis. The property resting on other

men’s labour of the capitalistic era is the negation of this individual

property. The expropriation of the capitalists by the proletariat is the

negation of the negation, or synthesis. But how far this use of the

Hegelian terms is merely a form of literary expression, or how far it is

a survival in Marx of a real belief in Hegelianism, it is not easy to

determine.[7]

The whole position of the Marx school may be characterised as

evolutionary and revolutionary socialism, based on a materialistic

conception of the world and of human history. Socialism is a social

revolution determined by the laws of historic evolution—a revolution

which, changing the economic groundwork of society, will change the

whole structure.

It may now be convenient to sum up the socialism of the Marx school

under the following heads:—

(1) Materialistic conception of the world and of history.

(2) Dialectic method of investigation.

(3) The economic order is the basis of all social order; the

entire legal and political structures of society, religion, and

philosophy are to be explained in accordance with the economic

basis.

(4) The historic evolution of capitalism; how, from the

fifteenth century onwards, the capitalist class was developed,

and how a corresponding proletariat was created.

(5) The capitalist class grows by the appropriation and

accumulation of the surplus value contained in the product of

labour, whilst the proletariat is reduced to a subsistence wage.

It is social production and capitalistic appropriation.

(6) Organisation in the factory; anarchy in society as a whole.

(7) This anarchy is intensified, especially in the great

commercial crises, showing that the middle class are no longer

able to control the productive forces.

(8) All these contradictions can be solved only by an explicit

recognition of the social character of production. The

proletariat seizes political power and transforms the means of

production into social property.

(9) The State, which has hitherto been an arrangement for

holding the producing class in subjection, will become

superfluous, and die a natural death. Henceforward, government

will consist simply in the control of industrial processes.

The work of Marx is a natural history of capital, especially in its

relation to labour, and in its most essential features is a development

of two of the leading principles of the classic economics—that labour

is the source of value, but that of this value the labourer obtains for

himself merely a subsistence wage, the surplus being appropriated by the

exploiting capitalist. Marx’s great work may be described as an

elaborate historical development of this glaring fundamental

contradiction of the Ricardian economics, the contradiction between the

Iron Law of Wages and the great principle that labour is the source of

wealth. Marx’s conception of labour is the same as that of Ricardo, and

as a logical exposition of the historic contradiction between the two

principles, on the basis of Ricardo, the work of Marx is quite

unanswerable. It is obvious, however, that the definition of labour

assumed both in Ricardo and Marx is too narrow. The labour they broadly

posit as the source of wealth is manual labour. In the early stages of

industry, when the market was small and limited, and the technique was

of the simplest and rudest description, labour in that sense might

correctly enough be described as the source of value. But in modern

industry, when the market is world-wide, the technique most complex, and

the competition most severe, when inventiveness, sagacity, courage, and

decision in initiative, and skill in management, are factors so

important, no such exclusive place as has been claimed can be assigned

to labour. The Ricardian principle, therefore, falls to the ground.

And it is not historically true to maintain, as Marx does, that the

profits of the capitalist are obtained simply by appropriating the

products of unpaid labour. In initiating and managing, the capitalist is

charged with the most difficult and important part of the work of

production. As a natural consequence, it follows that Marx is also

historically inaccurate in roundly explaining capital as the

accumulation of unpaid labour appropriated by the capitalist. In past

accumulation, as in the control and management of industry generally,

the capitalist has had the leading part. Capital, therefore, is not

necessarily robbery, and in an economic order in which the system of

free exchange is the rule and the mutually beneficial interchange of

utilities, no objection can be raised to the principle of lending and

borrowing of money for interest. In short, in his theory of unpaid

labour as supplying the key to his explanation of the genesis and

development of the capitalistic system, Marx is not true to history. It

is the perfectly logical outcome of certain of the leading principles of

the Ricardian school, but it does not give an adequate or accurate

account of the facts of economic evolution.

In his theory of unpaid labour Marx is not consistent with the general

principles of his own philosophy of social evolution. With him history

is a process determined by material forces, a succession of orderly

phenomena controlled by natural laws. Now we may waive the objection

suggested by the principle enunciated in the Marx school itself, that it

is not legitimate to apply ethical categories in judgment on economic

processes that are merely natural; which, however, Marx does with

revolutionary emphasis throughout some hundreds of pages of his great

work. It is more important to point out, in perfect consistency with the

principles of the school, that the energy and inventiveness of the early

capitalists especially were the most essential factors in determining

the existence and development of a great economic era, and that the

assertion of freedom was an indispensable condition in breaking the

bonds of the old feudal order, which the new system displaced. Instead,

therefore, of living and growing rich on the produce of unpaid labour,

the capitalist had a great social and industrial function to perform,

and played a great part in historic evolution. The position and function

of the workman was subordinate.

In short, Marx has not sufficiently recognised the fact that the

development of the new social forces brought with it a new set of

functions: that of initiating and directing industrial enterprise. These

functions are not comprehended in the narrow definition of labour, but

they are, nevertheless, most essential to progress; and the men that

performed them have a most complete historical reason for their

existence and a share in the results of industry. We need not add that

such an argument does not justify all they did as the heads of the new

industry. There is ample evidence that they were often rough, hard,

cruel, and unscrupulous in the prosecution of their industrial

enterprises. Nor does it prejudice the question whether the like

direction of industry must and should continue in the future.

There can be no doubt that in his theory of surplus value obtained from

unpaid labour, Marx, as agitator and controversialist, has fallen into

serious contradiction with himself as scientific historian and

philosopher. The theory that labour is the source of value was widely

accepted among economists during his early life, and by its justice and

nobleness it was well adapted to the comfortable optimism prevalent

among so many of the classical school. The economists, however, did not

follow the principle to its obvious conclusion: that if labour is the

source of wealth, the labourer should enjoy it all. It was otherwise

with the socialists, who were not slow to perceive the bearing of the

theory on the existing economic order. In his controversial treatise

against Proudhon, Marx gives a list of writers (beginning with the

political economy of Hopkins,[8] published in 1822, only five years

after the appearance of Ricardo’s great work), by whom the principle was

applied to revolutionary purposes. Its simplicity and seeming

effectiveness must have made it most attractive. As posited by the

classic economy, and applied by the socialists, Marx accepted the

principle. It was an unanswerable _argumentum ad hominem_ when addressed

to an economist of the Ricardian school; but it should have broken down

when confronted with historical fact. Nevertheless it was made, and

continued to be, the foundation-stone of the system of Marx, and is

really its weakest point. His doctrine of surplus value is the vitiating

factor in his history of the capitalistic system. The most obvious

excuse for him is that he borrowed it from the classic economists.

Fr. Engels sums up the achievement of his friend Marx in the two great

discoveries—the materialistic conception of history, and the revelation

of the secret of the capitalistic method of production by means of

surplus value. Materialism is a very old theory of the world. It is now

given up by competent thinkers, and we need not discuss it here. Nor

need we say that it is a grave exaggeration to maintain that all social

institutions, including philosophy and religion, are to be explained by

reference to the economic factors. History is a record of the activity

of the human mind in very many directions. Men have had various

interests, which have had a substantive, and so far, an independent

value, though they must also be regarded as an organic whole. It is

absolutely impossible to account for all by reference to any one.

Nevertheless, it is a great merit of Marx that he has so powerfully

called attention to the vast importance of the economic side of history.

The economic factors in the life of mankind have been sadly neglected,

even by philosophic historians. Such neglect has been partly due to the

scarcity of material relating to this aspect of their subject, partly

owing to false conceptions of the function of the historian, chiefly

because their public was a high-bred class, which had no particular wish

to read about such unfashionable topics as those connected with the

daily toil of the lower orders. In this way the true causation of

history has often been overlooked, or totally misconceived, and results

have, in thousands of instances, been traced to conventional and

imaginary agencies, when the real origin lay deep down in the economic

life of the people. We are now beginning to see that large sections of

history will need to be rewritten in this new light.

To proceed with our criticism of Marx. It is a feature of his

materialistic conception of history that his language respecting the

inevitable march of society would sometimes suggest a kind of fatalism.

But this is more than counterbalanced by his strong assertion of the

revolutionary will. On both sides we see overstatement. The most

prominent feature of his teaching, however, in this reference, is the

excessive stress which he lays on the virtues and possibilities of the

revolutionary method of action. The evolution he contemplates is

attended and disturbed by great historic breaks, by cataclysm and

catastrophe. These and other features of his teaching, to which

objection must be made, were most pronounced in his early writings,

especially in the Manifesto of the Communist League, but they continue

to be visible throughout his life. According to his latest teaching, a

great revolutionary catastrophe is to close the capitalistic era; and

this must be regarded as a very bad preparation for the time of social

peace which is forthwith to follow. The proletariat, the class which is

to accomplish the revolution, he described as oppressed, enslaved, and

degenerate. How can such a class be expected to perform so great an

historic function well and successfully?

But the main defect of his teaching lies in the arbitrariness and

excessive abstractness that characterise his method of investigation and

presentation; and this defect particularly attaches to the second great

discovery attributed to him by Fr. Engels—his theory of surplus value.

We shall better understand the position of Marx if we recall some of the

important circumstances in his life and experience. As we have seen, his

family passed from the profession of Judaism to Christianity when he was

six years of age, and he thus lost the traditions of the faith of his

ancestors without living into the traditions of the new faith. Like many

Jews in a similar position the traditions of the past therefore had

little influence on Karl Marx, and he was so far well fitted to take a

wide and unprejudiced view of human affairs. With his great endowments

and vast knowledge he should have been one of the freest heads in

Europe. His practical energy was not inferior to the range of his

intelligence.

All the more regrettable, therefore, is it that Marx should have adopted

such a narrowing system of philosophy as materialism. It is also

remarkable that he, the severest of critics, should have adopted, at so

early an age and without due scrutiny, the theory of value set forth by

Adam Smith and Ricardo, and that he should have applied it without

question during the remainder of his life to the building up of a vast

system of thought, and to a socialistic propaganda which was meant to

revolutionise the world. Another instance of the premature dogmatism

which has so often exercised a great and not seldom a mischievous

influence on human thought.

In this connection it may not be altogether fanciful to observe that his

heredity derived from rabbinical ancestors may account for much that is

peculiar in his way of thinking. The excessive acumen, the relentless

minuteness with which he pursues his course through details which often

seem very unreal, the elaboration which he bestows upon distinctions

which are often abstract and artificial, may well be regarded as alien

to Western modes of thought. Revolutionary materialism was a strange

sphere in which to exercise a logic after the manner of the rabbi.

However this may be, we know that when his mind was being formed the

Hegelian philosophy was supreme in Germany; and it can hardly be said

that the study of Hegel is a good training for the study of history,

according to the freest and purest conception of the subject. The study

of history, in the highest sense of the word, requires a modest attitude

towards objective fact which is not easily attained in the philosophy of

the schools.

Marx was a German, trained in the school of Hegel; and he passed most of

his life in laborious seclusion, in exile and revolt against dominant

ideas and institutions. Though a materialist, he does not show

sufficient respect for facts, for history. In reading his great work we

feel that the facts are in chronic rebellion against the formulas to

which he seeks to adapt them.

Adam Smith, the founder of Political Economy, was also academic at the

outset of his life; but he was a Scotsman of a period when the ablest

Scotsmen were trained by French clearness and common sense. And he was

not in revolt, like Marx, but in full sympathy with a cause whose time

had come, whereas Marx represented a cause which had not yet attained to

any considerable degree of clearness. In learning and philosophic power,

Marx will compare favourably with Adam Smith; but in historic

reasonableness, in respect for fact and reality, Smith is decidedly his

superior. In Smith’s great work we see philosophy controlled by fact, by

historic knowledge and insight. The work of Marx, in many of its most

important sections, is an arbitrary and artificial attempt to force his

formulas on the facts of history. Whether the fault lay in the Hegelian

philosophy, or in Marx’s use of it, there can be no doubt that its

influence has inflicted most serious damage on what might otherwise have

been a splendid historical work.

We are therefore obliged to say that the historical work of Marx does

not by any means rise to the highest conception of history. It is

deficient in the free outlook, in the clear perspective, in the sympathy

and impartiality which should characterise the best historical

achievements. The historical work of Marx is placed at the service of a

powerful and passionate propaganda, and of necessity is disturbed and

troubled by the function which it is made to serve.

In dealing with history we must accept facts and men as we find them.

The facts are as they are; and the men of history are not ideal men.

Like other men Marx had to work under human limitations. The great task

of his life was to rouse the proletariat of the world to a sense of its

position, its mission, and destiny, to discover the scientific

conditions under which a new era in the evolution of the human race

could be inaugurated and carried on by the working classes of all lands.

It was a mixed task in which science and practice were combined, and in

which the purely scientific study of history naturally suffered in the

partnership with a very strenuous revolutionary practice.

We need not say that it was not the fault of Marx that he adopted the

revolutionary career. He was born at a time and in a country where men

of independence and originality of character of necessity became

revolutionists. In face of the European reaction Marx never made any

concession or compromise. He never bowed himself in the house of Rimmon.

Seldom in the history of human thought has there been a man who

travelled right ahead in so straightforward a path, however formidable

the opposition and however apparently hopeless surrounding circumstances

might be. Public opinion had no weight with him; neither idle sentiment

nor amiable weaknesses found any place in his strongly-marked

individuality.

In view of such a career spent in the unflinching service of what he

regarded to be truth, and in the greatest of human causes, it would be

mean and disgraceful not to speak of Marx in terms of profound respect.

His sincerity, his courage, his self-abnegation, his devotion to his

great work through long years of privation and obloquy, were heroic. If

he had followed the broad and well-beaten highway of self-interest,

Marx, with his exceptional endowments both for thought and action, might

easily have risen to a foremost place in the Prussian State. He

disdained the flesh-pots of despotism and obscurantism so much sought

after by the average sensual man, and spent forty hard and laborious

years almost wholly in exile as the scientific champion of the

proletariat. Many men are glad to live an hour of glorious life. Few are

strong and brave enough to live the life heroic for forty years with the

resolution, the courage, and consistency of Karl Marx.

In the combination of learning, philosophic acumen, and literary power,

he is second to no economic thinker of the nineteenth century. He seems

to have been master of the whole range of economic literature, and

wielded it with a logical skill not less masterly. But his great

strength lay in his knowledge of the technical and economic development

of modern industry, and in his marvellous insight into the tendencies in

social evolution determined by the technical and economic factors.

Whether his theories in this department are right or wrong, they have

suggested questions that will demand the attention of economic thinkers

for a long time to come. It is in this department, and not in his theory

of surplus value, that Marx’s significance as a scientific economist is

to be found.

Notwithstanding all that may justly be said in criticism of Marx, it

remains, then, that his main achievement consists in the work he has

done as scientific inquirer into the economic movement of modern times,

as the philosophic historian of the capitalistic era. It is now admitted

by all inquirers worthy of the name that history, including economic

history, is a succession of orderly phenomena, that each phase in the

line of succession is marked by facts and tendencies more or less

peculiar to itself, and that laws and principles which we now condemn

had formerly an historical necessity, justification, and validity. In

accordance with this fundamental principle of historical evolution,

arrangements and institutions which were once necessary, and originally

formed a stage in human progress, may gradually develop contradictions

and abuses, and thus become more or less antiquated.

The economic, social, and political forms which were the progressive and

even adequate expressions of the life of one era, become hindrances and

fetters to the life of the succeeding times. This, the school of Karl

Marx says, is precisely the condition of the present economic order. The

existing arrangements of landlord, capitalist, and wage-labourer under

free competition are burdened with contradiction and abuse. The life of

society is being strangled by the forms which once promoted it. They

maintain that the really vital and powerful tendencies of our time are

towards a higher and wider form of social and economic

organisation—towards socialism. Here, as we believe, is the central

point of the whole question. The place of Marx in history will depend on

how far he has made a permanent contribution towards the settlement of

it.

During his lifetime the opinions of Marx were destined to find

expression in two movements, which have played a considerable part in

recent history—the International and the Social Democracy of Germany.

Of the International, Marx was the inspiring and controlling head from

the beginning; and the German Social Democracy, though originated by

Lassalle, before long fell under Marx’s influence. Marx wrote the famous

inaugural address of the International and drew up its statutes,

maintaining a moderation of tone which contrasted strongly with the

outspoken vigour of the communist manifesto of 1847. But it was not long

before the revolutionary socialism which underlay the movement gained

the upper hand. The International no doubt afforded a splendid

opportunity for the propaganda of Marx. The fortunes of the

International and of the German Social Democracy will be sketched in

subsequent chapters.

-----

[1] Franz Mehring, _Geschichte der Deutschen Sozialdemokratie_, part i.

p. 156.

[2] An English translation of vol. i. by Messrs. Moore and Aveling has

appeared, Engels being editor. There are translations also of vols. ii.

and iii.

[3] This book of Engels, _Eugen Dühring’s Revolutionising of Science_,

is better known in its much shorter form, _Entwickelung des Sozialismus

von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft_. Eng. tr. _Socialism: Utopian and

Scientific_.

[4] See Fr. Engels’ _Umwälzung der Wissenschaft_, p. 253, and _passim_.

[5] _Das Kapital_, i. 48.

[6] _Umwälzung der Wissenschaft_, pp. 267, 268.

[7] See Preface to second edition of the _Kapital_, p. xix.

[8] This, however, must be a mistake for T. Hodgskin, who in 1825

published a pamphlet, _Labour defended against the Claims of Capital_,

in which such views are set forth.

CHAPTER VIII

THE INTERNATIONAL

It is an inevitable outcome of the prevalent historic forces that the

labour question has become international.

From the dawn of history there has been a widening circle of communities

with international relations. Civilisation had its earliest seats on the

banks of the Nile and the Euphrates. The Greeks and Phœnicians carried

it round the shores of the Mediterranean. The Romans received it from

the Greeks, and, after adding to it a valuable contribution of their

own, handed it on to the nations of Western and Central Europe. The

Christian Church spread over the countries in which the Roman peace

prevailed, but did not confine itself to the limits of the empire.

Amidst the group of nations who thus participated in the Greco-Roman

culture and in the Christian life, there has always been a special

degree of international sympathy: ideas and institutions have been

largely common to them all. Feudalism and the Church, chivalry and the

Crusades, all these were international in their influence.

Then, as now, great ideas and great movements could not be confined

within national barriers. In the expansive and progressive epochs of

history, particularly, supreme interests have raised men above the

prejudices of race, and have united them by wider and deeper principles

than those by which they are separated into nations.

At the great religious revolt of the sixteenth century, Germans combined

with the Swedes and the French against their own countrymen. The

Catholic Church, as its name implies, has always been, and still

continues to be, a great international institution.

The enlightenment of the eighteenth century had an international

influence, and at the French Revolution high concerns of political and

social freedom for a time broke through the conventional feelings of

patriotism. Germans, Italians, and even Englishmen, were in many cases

ready to receive the boon of a better order of things at the price of

French victory over their own countrymen. Only for a time, till the

enthusiasm of the Revolution was made subservient to the selfishness of

the new France—an instrument for the colossal egotism of a single man.

In our time, steam and the electric telegraph have become the bearers of

a widening international movement. All the great human interests are

cultivated and pursued on a wider scale than ever—religion, science,

literature, art.

Commerce and industry have naturally shared in the general expansion. We

have only to scan the operations of the great markets and exchanges in

any daily paper as a proof of this. In a small space round the Bank of

England, financial transactions are carried on which powerfully affect

the entire world. Even the very simple breakfast of an ordinary citizen

is a great international function, in which the productions of the most

diverse countries combine to appease his wants.

The methods and appliances of this modern industry have been developed

in England since the middle of the eighteenth century. Not many years

ago England was still the supreme, almost the exclusive, representative

of the new industry; now it is becoming the common possession of all

countries dominated by European culture, and is rapidly gaining ground

in the long-isolated nations of the East. The competition for business

among the capitalists of various countries grows more intense every

year. Once carried on chiefly or entirely for local needs, production

has now to work for a market of wide and often incalculable extent.

Under these circumstances, we need not be surprised that labour, the

prime factor in industry, has international interests and relations of

the most serious importance. Its antagonism to capitalism must declare

itself on the international arena. In the competitive struggles of the

last sixty years, the cheap labour of one nation has not seldom been

thrown into the scale to weigh down the dear labour of another.

Irishmen, Germans, Belgians, and Italians have often rendered unavailing

the efforts of English and French workmen for a higher standard of

living. Continuous emigration from Europe depresses American labour. The

Chinese and other Eastern races, habituated to a very low standard of

subsistence, menace the workmen of America and Australia. The great

industry which is now being established in the East will be a most

serious danger alike to workmen and capitalists in the Western World.

The capitalists of most countries have long sought to shield themselves

against the consequences of competition by protection, by combinations

tacit or avowed among themselves, of wide and frequently international

magnitude. In view of the facts that we have indicated, in view of the

example thus set them, why should not the working men seek to regulate

their international interests?

Efforts towards the international organisation of labour have proceeded

chiefly from men who, banished from their own country by reactionary

governments, have carried to other lands the seeds of new thought, and,

meeting abroad those of like mind and like fate with themselves, have

naturally planned the overthrow of their common oppressors. The origin

of the famous International Association of Working Men was largely due

to such a group of exiles.

In 1836, a number of German exiles at Paris formed themselves into a

secret society, under the name of the _League of the Just_, the

principles of which were communistic.[1] Being involved in a rising at

Paris in 1839, they removed to London. Here they met with workmen

belonging to the nations of Northern Europe, to which German is a common

speech, and the League naturally began to assume an international

character.

This was not the only change which the League underwent. Its members

began to understand that their real duty under the present circumstances

was not conspiracy or the stirring up of revolutionary outbreaks, but

propaganda. The basis of the League had been a sentimental communism,

based on their motto that ‘all men are brothers.’ From Marx they learned

that the emancipation of the proletariat must be guided by scientific

insight into the conditions of its own existence and its own history;

that their communism must indeed be a revolutionary one, but it must be

a revolution in harmony with the inevitable tendencies of social

evolution. The cardinal point in the theory worked out by Marx and now

impressed upon the League, was the doctrine that the economic conditions

control the entire social structure, therefore the main thing in a

social revolution is a change in economic conditions.

The group of exiles put themselves into communication with Marx, and a

Congress was held in London in 1847, with the result that the

association was reorganised under the name of the Communist League.

The aim of the League is very comprehensively stated in the first

article of its constitution: ‘The aim of the League is the overthrow of

the _bourgeoisie_, the rule of the proletariat, the abolition of the old

society resting on class antagonisms, and the founding of a new society

without classes and without private property.’

Marx and Engels were commissioned by the League to set forth its

principles in a manifesto, which, as the manifesto of the communistic

party, was published shortly before the Revolution of February 1848. We

shall best illustrate the spirit and aim of the treatise by quoting Fr.

Engels’ Preface to the edition of 1883:—

‘The Preface to the present edition I must, alas! sign alone. Marx, the

man to whom the entire working class of Europe and America owes more

than any other—Marx rests in the cemetery at Highgate, and the grass

already begins to grow over his grave. Since his death nothing further

can be said of a revisal or completion of the manifesto. It is therefore

the more necessary expressly to make the following statement.

‘The pervading thought of the manifesto: that the economic production

with the social organisation of each historical epoch necessarily

resulting therefrom forms the basis for the political and intellectual

history of this epoch; that accordingly (since the dissolution of the

primitive common property in land) the entire history is a history of

class struggles—struggles between exploited and exploiting, ruled and

ruling, classes at different stages of social development; but that this

struggle has now reached a stage when the exploited and oppressed class

(the proletariat) can no more free itself from the exploiting and

oppressing class (the _bourgeoisie_) without at the same time delivering

the whole of society for ever from exploitation, oppression, and class

struggles—this pervading thought belongs exclusively and alone to

Marx.’

‘The history of all society hitherto has been the history of class

struggles’; such is the keynote of the manifesto. ‘But it is a

distinguishing feature of the present time that it has simplified class

antagonisms; the entire human society more and more divides itself into

two great hostile camps, into two great conflicting classes,

_bourgeoisie_ and proletariat.’ The manifesto is for the most part an

exposition and discussion of these two classes, the historical

conditions under which they have grown up, their mutual relations, past,

present, and future.

It would not be easy to give a brief analysis of the manifesto, nor is

it necessary, as we have, in our chapter on Marx, already given an

account of the same views in their maturer and more philosophic

expression. The manifesto is a treatise instinct with the fiery energy

and enthusiasm of a young revolutionary party, and its doctrines are the

doctrines of Marx in a crude, exaggerated, and violent form. In such a

pamphlet, written for propaganda, we must not expect the

self-restraining moderation of statement, the clear perspective, or the

high judicial charity which should characterise a sober historical

exposition.

The Iron Law of Wages is stated in its hardest and most exaggerated

form. To the charge that they desire to abolish private property, its

authors reply that individual property, the produce of a man’s own

labour, is already abolished. What they desire to abolish is the

appropriation of other men’s labour by the capitalist. To the charge

that they wish to abolish the family, they reply to the _bourgeoisie_

with a _tu quoque_: ye have already abolished it by the exploitation of

women and children in the factories, which has broken up the family

ties, through the prevalence of prostitution and the common practice of

adultery. The charge of abolishing patriotism they repudiate in the same

manner: the workman has no country.

We cannot understand the manifesto unless we remember that it was drawn

up by young men living in exile, and that it was written in 1847,

shortly after some of the earliest inquiries into the condition of

labour both in England and the Continent had revealed facts which ought

to fill every human heart with sorrow and indignation.

As the manifesto of the first international combination of workmen, it

has a special historical importance, and claims special attention. And

apart from that, it is one of the most remarkable utterances of the

nineteenth century.

‘The manifesto,’ says Fr. Engels, ‘was sent to the press at London a few

weeks before the February Revolution. Since then it has made the tour of

the world. It has been translated into almost every tongue, and in the

most different countries still serves as the guiding-star of the

proletarian movement. The old motto of the League, “All men are

brethren,” was replaced by the new battle-cry, “Proletarians of all

lands unite,” which openly proclaimed the international character of the

struggle. Seventeen years later this battle-cry resounded through the

world as the watchword of the International Working Men’s Association,

and the militant proletariat of all lands has to-day written it on its

banner.’[2]

The Revolution of 1848, as we have already seen,[3] was a rising of the

people in France, Italy, Germany, Austria, and Hungary against

antiquated political arrangements and institutions. It was partly an

interruption to the operations of the League, as it was far too weak to

exercise any great influence on the course of events; but it was also an

opportunity, as its members found access to the land of their birth, and

in many parts of Germany formed the most resolute and advanced wing of

the struggling democracy during that troubled period.

After the triumph of the reaction it became clear that the hope of

effective revolutionary activity had again for a time passed away. A

period of unexampled industrial prosperity set in. Capitalism was about

to enter a far wider phase of development than it had yet seen, a fact

which abundantly showed that the time was not favourable for an active

propaganda in the interests of the proletariat. When capitalism has

become a hindrance to progressive social development, when it is

obviously too weak and narrow a framework for further evolution, only

then is there hope of successful effort against it. So reasoned Marx and

his associates. He withdrew, therefore, from the scene of action to his

study in London. In 1852 the first international combination of working

men came to a close. Observers who could not reasonably be considered

superficial, thought that the movement had died without hope of

resurrection.

But the triumph of reactionary governments in 1849 was not a settlement

of the great questions that had been raised during that period of

revolution; it was only a postponement of them. Before many years had

passed, the peoples of Europe again began to move uneasily under the

yoke of antiquated political forms. The rising of Italy against Austria

in 1859; the struggle of Prussian Liberals against the Ministry; the

resolve of Bismarck and his Sovereign to have the Prussian army ready

for action in the way of reconstituting a united Germany on the ruins of

the old Federation—these were only different symptoms of a fresh

advance. They were ere long to be followed by similar activity in

France, Spain, and Eastern Europe, all proving that the history of

European communities is an organic movement, the reach and potency of

which often disturb the forecast of the politician. In the generation

after 1848 the governments were everywhere constrained to carry out the

political programme which the people had drawn out for them during the

revolution.

The social question may seem to have only a remote connection with the

political movements just mentioned, and yet the revival of the social

question was but another sign of the new life in Europe, which could not

be repressed. The founding of the Social Democracy of Germany by

Lassalle, and the appearance of the International on a wider and

worthier scale under the auspices of Marx, were a clear proof that the

working classes of the most advanced countries of Europe now meant to

claim a better share in the moral and material inheritance of the human

race. We have now to sketch the growth of the movement, which is

properly styled the International.

Appropriately enough, the event which gave the first occasion for the

founding of the International Association of Working Men was the

International Exhibition of London in 1862. The workmen of France sent a

deputation to visit the Exhibition. This visit had the approval and even

pecuniary support of the Emperor; and it was warmly commended by some of

the leading Parisian journals as a means not only of acquainting the

workmen with the industrial treasures of the Exhibition, but of removing

from the relations of the two countries the old leaven of international

discord and jealousy. In the course of their visit the French delegates

were entertained by some of their English brethren at the Freemasons’

Tavern, where views as to the identity of the interests of labour, and

the necessity for common action in promoting them, were interchanged.

In the following year a second deputation of French workmen crossed the

Channel. Napoleon was interested in the Polish insurrection of 1863, and

it was part of his policy to encourage the expression of opinion in

favour of an intervention in Poland by the Western Powers. At this visit

wishes for the restoration of Poland and for general congresses in the

interest of labour against capital were expressed. Nothing decisive,

however, was done till 1864, when on the 28th September a great public

meeting of working men of all nations was held in St. Martin’s Hall,

London. Professor Beesly presided, and Karl Marx was present. The

meeting resulted in the appointment of a provisional committee to draw

up the constitution of the new association. This committee consisted of

fifty representatives of different nations, the English forming about

half of its number. At the first meeting of the committee the sum of

three pounds was collected, a humble beginning of the finances of an

association which was designed to shake the world.

The work of drafting the constitution was first of all undertaken by

Mazzini, but the ideas and methods of the Italian patriot were not

suited to the task of founding an international association of labour.

The statutes he drew up were adapted to the political conspiracy,

conducted by a strong central authority, in which he had spent his life;

he was strongly opposed to the antagonism of classes, and his economic

ideas were vague. Marx, on the other hand, was in entire sympathy with

the most advanced labour movement—had indeed already done much to mould

and direct it; to him, therefore, the duty of drawing up a constitution

was transferred. The inaugural address and the statutes drawn up by him

were unanimously adopted by the committee.

In the inaugural address[4] three points were particularly emphasised.

First, Marx contended that, notwithstanding the enormous development of

industry and of national wealth since 1848, the misery of the masses had

not diminished. Secondly, the successful struggle for the ten-hours

working-day meant the break-down of the political economy of the middle

classes, the competitive operation of supply and demand requiring to be

regulated by social control. Thirdly, the productive association of a

few daring ‘hands’ had proved that industry on a great scale, and with

all the appliances of modern science, could be carried on without the

existence of capitalist masters; and that wage-labour, like

slave-labour, was only a transitory form, destined to disappear before

associated labour, which gives to the workman a diligent hand, a

cheerful spirit, and a joyful heart.

The numbers of the workmen gave them the means of success, but it could

be realised only through union. It was the task of the International to

bring about such an effective union, and for this end the workmen must

take international politics into their own hands, must watch the

diplomacy of their Governments, and uphold the simple rules of morality

in the relations of private persons and nations. ‘The struggle for such

a policy forms part of the struggle for the emancipation of the working

class; proletarians of all lands, unite!’

The preamble to the statutes contains implicitly the leading principles

of international socialism. The economic subjection of the workmen to

the appropriator of the instruments of labour—that is, of the sources

of life—is the cause of servitude in all its forms, of social misery,

of mental degradation and political dependence; the economic

emancipation of the working class is the great aim to which every

political movement must be subordinated; the emancipation of the working

class is neither a local nor a national, but a social problem, to be

solved only by the combined effort of the most advanced nations.

‘For these reasons the International Association of Working Men has been

founded. It declares:

‘That all societies and individuals who adhere to it recognise truth,

justice, and morality as the rule of their conduct towards one another,

and to all men without distinction of colour, faith, or nationality. No

duties without rights; no rights without duties.’

Such are the leading ideas of the preamble; we have only to develop

them, and we have the programme of international socialism. Whatever

opinion we may hold of the truth and practicability of the theories set

forth in it, we must respect the lucid and masterly form in which Marx

has presented them. It is seldom in the history of the world that

talents and learning so remarkable have been placed at the service of an

agitation that was so wide and far-reaching.

The International Association was founded for the establishment of a

centre of union and of systematic co-operation between the working-men

societies, which follow the same aim—viz. the protection, the progress

and the complete emancipation of the working class. It would be a

mistake to regard its organisation as one of excessive centralisation

and dictatorial authority. It was to be a means of union, a centre of

information and initiative, in the interests of labour; but the existing

societies which should join it were to retain their organisation intact.

A General Council, having its seat in London, was appointed. While the

president, treasurer, and general secretary were to be Englishmen, each

nation was to be represented in the Council by a corresponding

secretary. The General Council was to summon annual congresses and

exercise an effective control over the affairs of the Association, but

local societies were to have free play in all local questions. As a

further means of union, it was recommended that the workmen of the

various countries should be united in national bodies, represented by

national central organs, but no independent local society was to be

excluded from direct correspondence with the General Council. It will be

seen that the arrangements of the Association were so made as to secure

the efficiency of the central directing power on the one hand, and on

the other to allow local and national associations a real freedom and

abundant scope for adapting themselves to the peculiar tasks imposed on

them by their local and national position.

As in founding, so in conducting the International, Marx took the

leading part. The proceedings of the various congresses might be

described as a discussion, elucidation, and filling up of the programme

sketched by him in the inaugural address and in the statutes of the

Association. Men representing the schools of Proudhon (who died in

1865), of Blanqui, and of Bakunin also exercised considerable influence;

but the general tendency was in accordance with the views of Marx.

It was intended that the first congress for finally arranging the

constitution of the Association should be held at Brussels in 1865, but

the Belgian Government forbade the meeting, and the Council had to

content itself with a conference in London. The first congress was held

at Geneva in September 1866, sixty delegates being present. Here the

statutes as drafted by Marx were adopted. Among other resolutions it

decided on an agitation in favour of the gradual reduction of the

working day to eight hours, and it recommended a most comprehensive

system of education, intellectual and technical, which would raise the

working people above the level of the higher and middle classes.

Socialistic principles were set forth only in the most general terms.

With regard to labour the International did not seek to enunciate a

doctrinaire system, but only to proclaim general principles. They must

aim at free co-operation, and for this end the decisive power in the

State must be transferred from capitalists and landlords to the workers.

The proposal of the French delegates for the exclusion of the

intellectual proletariat from the Association led to an interesting

discussion. Was this proletariat to be reckoned among the workers?

Ambitious talkers and agitators belonging to this class had done much

mischief. On the other hand, their exclusion from socialistic activity

would have deprived the labourers of the services of most of their

greatest leaders, and the intellectual proletariat suffered from the

pressure of capital quite as much as any other class of workers. The

proposal for their exclusion was rejected.

The second congress, held at Lausanne in 1867, made considerable

progress in the formulating of the socialistic theories. It was resolved

that the means of transport and communication should become the property

of the State, in order to break the mighty monopoly of the great

companies, under which the subjection of labour does violence to human

worth and personal freedom. The congress encouraged co-operative

associations and efforts for the raising of wages, but emphatically

called attention to the danger lest the spread of such associations

should be found compatible with the existing system, thus resulting in

the formation of a fourth class, and of an entirely miserable fifth. The

social transformation can be radically and definitely accomplished only

by working on the whole of society in thorough accordance with

reciprocity and justice.

In the third congress, held at Brussels in September 1868, the

socialistic principles which had all along been implicitly contained in

the aims and utterances of the International received most explicit

statement. Ninety-eight delegates, representing England, France,

Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland, assembled at this

congress. It resolved that mines and forests and the land, as well as

all the means of transport and communication, should become the common

property of society or of the democratic State, and that they should by

the State be handed over to associations of workers, who should utilise

them under rational and equitable conditions determined by society. It

was further resolved that the producers could gain possession of the

machines only through co-operative societies and the organisation of the

mutual credit system, the latter clause being a concession apparently to

the followers of Proudhon. After proposing a scheme for the better

organising of strikes, the congress returned to the question of

education, particularly emphasising the fact that an indispensable

condition towards a thorough system of scientific, professional, and

productive instruction was the reduction of the hours of labour.

The fundamental principle, ‘to labour the full product of labour,’ was

recognised in the following resolution: ‘Every society founded on

democratic principles repudiates all appropriation by capital, whether

in the form of rent, interest, profit, or in any other form or manner

whatsoever. Labour must have its full right and entire reward.’

In view of the struggle imminent between France and Germany, the

congress made an emphatic declaration, denouncing it as a civil war in

favour of Russia, and calling upon the workers to resist all war as

systematic murder. In case of war the congress recommended a universal

strike. It reckoned on the solidarity of the workers of all lands for

this strike of the peoples against war.

At the Congress of Basel in September 1869, little remained for the

International to accomplish in further defining the socialistic

position. The resolution for transforming land from private to

collective property was repeated. A proposal to abolish the right of

inheritance failed to obtain a majority, for while thirty-two delegates

voted for the abolition, twenty-three were against it, and seventeen

declined to vote.[5]

If we now turn from the congresses of the International to consider the

history of its influence in Europe, we shall see that its success was

very considerable. A conference of delegates of English Trade Unions

which met at Sheffield in 1866 most earnestly enjoined the unions to

join the International; and it repeatedly gave real help to the English

trade unionists by preventing the importation of cheap labour from the

Continent. It gained a substantial success in the effectual support of

the bronze-workers at Paris during their lock-out in 1867. At the

beginning of 1868 one hundred and twenty-two working men’s societies of

South Germany, assembled at Nuremberg, declared their adhesion to the

International. In 1870 Cameron announced himself as the representative

of 800,000 American workmen who had adopted its principles.

It soon spread as far east as Poland and Hungary; it had affiliated

societies, with journals devoted to its cause, in every country of

Western Europe. The leading organs of the European press became more

than interested in its movements; the _Times_ published four leaders on

the Brussels Congress. It was supposed to be concerned in all the

revolutionary movements and agitations of Europe, thus gaining a

world-historic notoriety as the rallying-point of social overthrow and

ruin. Its prestige, however, was always based more on the vast

possibilities of the cause it represented than on its actual power. Its

organisation was loose, its financial resources insignificant; the

Continental unionists joined it more in the hope of borrowing than of

contributing support.

In 1870 the International resolved to meet at the old hearth of the

revolutionary movement by holding its annual congress in Paris. This

plan was rendered abortive by the Franco-German war. The war, however,

helped to bring the principles of the Association more prominently

before the world. During the Austro-German struggle of 1866 the

International had declared its emphatic condemnation of war; and now the

affiliated societies of France and Germany, as well as the General

Council at London, uttered a solemn protest against a renewal of the

scourge. Some of its German adherents likewise incurred the wrath of the

authorities by venturing to protest against the annexation of Alsace and

Lorraine.

All will agree that it is a happy omen for the future that the democracy

of labour as represented by the International was so prompt and

courageous in its denunciation of the evils of war. It gives us ground

to hope that as the influence of the democracy prevails in the council

of nations the passion for war may decline. On this high theme no men

have a better right to speak than the workers, for they have in all ages

borne the heaviest of the burden of privation and suffering imposed on

the world by the military spirit, and have had the least share in the

miserable glories which victory may obtain.

The relation of the International to the rising of the Commune at Paris

in 1871 is often misunderstood. It is clear that the International, as

such, had no part either in originating or conducting the Commune; some

of the French members joined it, but only on their individual

responsibility. Its complicity after the event is equally clear. After

the fall of the Commune, Karl Marx, in the name of the General Council,

wrote a long and trenchant manifesto commending it as substantially a

government of the working class, whose measures tended really to advance

the interests of the working class. ‘The Paris of the workers, with its

Commune, will ever be celebrated as the glorious herald of a new

society. Its martyrs will be enshrined in the great heart of the working

class. History has already nailed its destroyers on the pillory, from

which all the prayers of their priests are impotent to deliver them.’[6]

The Commune was undoubtedly a rising for the autonomy of Paris,

supported chiefly by the lower classes. It was a protest against

excessive centralisation raised by the democracy of Paris, which has

always been far in advance of the provinces, and which found itself in

possession of arms after the siege of the city by the Germans. But while

it was prominently an assertion of local self-government, it was also a

revolt against the economic oppression of the moneyed classes. Many of

its measures were what we should call social-radical.

In two important points, therefore, the communal rising at Paris had a

very close affinity with socialism. In the first place, it was a

revolutionary assertion of the Commune or local unit of self-government

as the cardinal and dominating principle of society over against the

State or central government. That is to say, the Commune was a

vindication of the political form which is necessary for the development

of socialism, the self-governing group of workers. And in the second

place, the Commune was a rising chiefly of the proletariat, the class of

which socialism claims to be the special champion, which in Paris only

partially saw the way of deliverance, but was weary of oppression, and

full of indignation against the middle-class adventurers that had on the

fall of the Empire seized the central government of France.

It would, however, be a mistake to assume for the Commune a clearness

and comprehensiveness of aim which it did not really possess. We should

not be justified in saying that the Commune had any definite

consciousness of such an historical mission as has been claimed for it.

The fearful shock caused by the overwhelming events of the Franco-German

war had naturally led to wide-spread confusion and uncertainty in the

French mind; and those who undertook to direct it, whether in Paris or

elsewhere, had painfully to grope their way towards the renovation of

the country. At a time when it could hardly be said that France had a

regular government, the Commune seized the opportunity to make a new

political departure. The true history of its doings will, we hope, be

written after passion and prejudice have sufficiently subsided to admit

of it. The story of its rise and fall was only one phase of a sad series

of troubles and disasters, which happily do not often overtake nations

in so terrible a form.

From this point the decline and fall of the Association must be dated.

The English trades unions, intent on more practical concerns at home,

never took a deep interest in its proceedings; the German socialists

were disunited among themselves, lacking in funds, and hampered by the

police.

It found its worst enemies perhaps in its own household. In 1869,

Bakunin, with a following of anarchists, had joined the International,

and from the first found themselves at variance with the majority led by

Marx. It can hardly be maintained that Marx favoured a very strongly

centralising authority, yet, as his views and methods were naturally

entirely repugnant to the anarchists, a breach was inevitable.

The breach came at the Hague Congress in September 1872. Sixty-five

delegates were present, including Marx himself, who with his followers,

after animated discussion, expelled the anarchist party, and then

removed the seat of the General Council to New York. The congress

concluded with a meeting at Amsterdam, of which the chief feature was a

remarkable speech from Marx. ‘In the eighteenth century,’ he said,

‘kings and potentates used to assemble at the Hague to discuss the

interests of their dynasties. At the same place we resolved to hold the

assize of labour’—a contrast which with world-historic force did

undoubtedly mark the march of time. ‘He could not deny that there were

countries, like America, England—and, as far as he knew its

institutions, Holland also—where the workmen could attain their goal by

peaceful means; but in most European countries force must be the lever

of revolution, and to force they must appeal when the time came.’ Thus

it was a principle of Marx to prefer peaceful methods where peaceful

methods are permitted, but resort to force must be made when necessary.

Force also is an economic power. He concluded by expressing his resolve

that in the future, as in the past, his life would be consecrated to the

triumph of the social cause.

The transfer of the General Council of the Marx International from

London to New York was the beginning of the end. It survived just long

enough to hold another congress at Geneva in 1873, and then quietly

expired. The party of destruction, styling themselves _autonomists_ and

led by Bakunin, had a bloodier history. The programme of this party, as

we shall see in our chapter on Anarchism, was to overturn all existing

institutions, with the view to reconstructing them on a communal basis.

This it endeavoured to realise by the great communal risings in Southern

Spain in 1873, when its adherents set up their special form of

government at Barcelona, Seville, Cadiz, and Cartagena—at the

last-mentioned place also seizing on part of the iron-clad fleet of

Spain. The risings were suppressed, not without difficulty, by the

national troops. The autonomists had a lingering existence till 1879.

In its main practical aim, to serve as a common centre for the combined

efforts of working men of all nations towards their universal

emancipation, the International had only a moderate and transitory

success. It was a great idea, for which the times were not ripe. How

effectually organise so many millions of working men, of different

countries, at different stages of social development—men ignorant of

each other’s language, with little leisure, without funds for travelling

and purposes of propaganda? It was inevitable that some such effort

should be made; for we need not repeat that labour has international

interests of vital and supreme importance. And men might have expected

that the attempt would be renewed. But on the vast scale contemplated by

the International it was at least premature, and inasmuch as it drew the

attention of the workmen from practical measures to far-distant and

perhaps utopian aims, and engaged them in revolutionary schemes for

which the times were not ready, even if they were otherwise desirable,

its influence was not salutary.

In a movement so momentous, however, it is important to have taken the

first step, and the International took more than the first step. It

proclaimed a great cause in the face of the world—the cause of the poor

man, the cause of the suffering and oppressed millions of labour. As an

instrument of propaganda, as a proclamation of a great cause with

possibilities of vast and continual growth, it has had a world-historic

significance, and teaches lessons from which all governments and all men

may learn. Its great mission was propaganda, and in that it has

succeeded marvellously. Largely by means of it, the ideas of Marx and

his associates are making the tour of the world. The governments most

menaced by the social revolution, and most antagonistic to its

principles, must perforce have regard to the questions raised by the

International. It is a movement that will not rest, but will in many

ways, and for many a year, claim the attention of the world.

Though the International was dead, the forces which gave it birth were

still alive. The principles it proclaimed continued to exercise the

thoughts of men. It had placed before the world a whole group of

problems for study, for experiment, to be pursued through doubt,

struggle, and agony, to some kind of wise and beneficial solution, we

fervently hope.

We should not be discouraged by the fact that the efforts made for the

solution of the questions of the world have so often been so hopelessly

incommensurate with the greatness of the task which they attempted.

In beginning these high endeavours, men have always been like children

groping in the dark. Yet the failures of one generation have frequently

shown the way to success in the next. The International attempted the

great task of the present epoch of the world in its most difficult form.

We need not be surprised that its success was partial; and we may with

confidence expect that the lessons taught by it will prove most helpful

for the future.

In truth the International had only suffered a brief eclipse. The

various socialistic societies all over the world continued to be fully

conscious of the international character of the movement in which they

were engaged. Without a formal organisation they represented the claims

and aspirations of the same class, had common sympathies, and pursued

like aims. While differing greatly in methods of action, and even in

principle, they felt that they belonged to the same stream of historic

effort and tendency.

The international movement soon began again to find expression in

congresses representing the different countries. Such was the congress

at Ghent in 1877, which was not marked by any noteworthy feature.

Greater than any socialist congress previously held were those which

assembled at Paris in 1889, the centenary of the Revolution, on the 14th

of July, the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. There were two

congresses, one representing, as far as any difference of principle was

concerned, the more uncompromising Marx school, the other consisting of

delegates who are not indisposed to co-operate with other democratic

parties. But the cleavage of principle was by no means definite; the

difference between the two meetings originated largely in personal

matters, especially as regards the French socialist parties, which

issued the invitations. The immediate occasion of disagreement related

to the manner of proving the mandates of the members. Both congresses

advocated an energetic collectivism, while both also urged more

practical measures for the protection of labour, such as Sunday rest, an

eight-hours working-day, etc. The Marx congress consisted of 395

delegates, and the other congress of about six hundred delegates from

the various countries of the civilised world.

International Congresses followed at Brussels in 1891, at Zürich in

1893, and in London in 1896. Both at Brussels and London there was much

disorder, caused chiefly by the presence of a considerable number of

delegates with anarchist sympathies, and proving too clearly that the

International of Workers was like the Concert of Europe, not yet ready

to march.

After being alarmed by an International of Workers, the world was

agreeably startled by the project for an International of Governments.

In 1889 the Swiss Government brought forward a proposal for an

International Conference on Labour of the countries most interested in

industrial competition. The question assumed a new aspect when, early in

1890, the young German Emperor issued rescripts, one of which contained

the same proposal. Naturally, the matters presented for discussion by

the Emperor covered only a small part of the ground occupied by the

International of Workers. The protection of adult labour, except in

mines, was excluded from the business of the conference. Sunday labour,

the protection of women, children, and young persons, were the chief

questions laid before the meeting. There can be no doubt that the

conference gave a much-needed and a beneficial stimulus to legislation

for the protection of labour in civilised countries, though it by no

means realised the sanguine expectations that many formed regarding it.

The main result of the conference has been the recognition by the

Governments of the fact that there are labour questions of vast

importance, and that these questions have international aspects which

can no longer be ignored. Let us hope that it may be the beginning of

better things. In the course of human improvement we may hope that the

question of the needs and rights of labour will ever take a large place

beside the concerns of war and diplomacy, and that it will eventually

supersede them. The workers have a growing influence at the elections in

civilised countries. It is their duty to press their just claims on the

Governments, and so to bring about that desirable consummation.

-----

[1] _Enthüllungen über den Communisten-Prozess zu Köln_, von Karl Marx,

Einleitung von Fr. Engels, p. 3.

[2] _Enthüllungen_, Introduction, p. 11.

[3] P. 47.

[4] For the official documents connected with the International, see R.

Meyer’s _Emancipationskampf des vierten Standes_, vol. i. 2nd ed.

[5] Oscar Testu, _L’Internationale_, p. 153.

[6] _Der Bürgerkrieg in Frankreich_.

CHAPTER IX

THE GERMAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY

To understand the modern development of Germany, we must recall a few of

the leading facts of its history. German history is largely a record of

disunion, and this became chronic at the Reformation, which divided the

country between two conflicting forms of religion. The religious

struggle had its culmination and its catastrophe in the Thirty Years’

War.

Seldom, if ever, in the history of the world, has a calamity so awful

befallen a people so highly endowed and so well fitted to excel in all

the paths of progress. In every respect—economical, political, and

moral—Germany in the Thirty Years’ War received wounds from which she

has hardly recovered even to-day. Division and weakness at home invited

interference and aggression from abroad. For generations it was the

corner-stone of French policy to foster the divisions of Germany, and so

to maintain her supremacy in Western Europe.

The victories of the Great Frederick, the works of her great

writers—Lessing, Schiller, and Goethe, and of her great

philosophers—Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, and the mighty

struggles of the War of Liberation in 1813, did much to restore the

national consciousness of Germany. But the disunion continued, and in

her industrial organisation she was far behind England and France.

Feudalism survived, especially in the regions east of the Elbe, far into

the nineteenth century. The power-loom was not introduced, even into the

more progressive Rhine country, till the middle of the nineteenth

century.

The results of the War of Liberation were, for the German people, most

disappointing. After throwing off the French yoke, citizen and peasant

alike found that the enthusiasm and devotion with which they had spent

blood and treasure had been in vain. The German princes took to

themselves all the fruits of victory, and the old abuses continued to

flourish under the old _régime_. The only considerable reforms were

those which had been established in the Rhine country by the hereditary

enemy, the French, and which the German reaction did not venture to

abolish.

In these circumstances we need not wonder that a profound and brooding

discontent began to occupy the best German minds. A Fatherland which was

disunited at home and weak abroad, princely despotisms which fostered

servility and raised a barrier to progress, backward methods and

institutions which were all the more galling when contrasted with the

pre-eminence which Germany had attained in literature and

philosophy—how could any patriot be satisfied with such a wretched

condition of affairs? Thus it happened that Germany took a leading part

in the revolutionary troubles of 1848. Both at Vienna and Berlin the old

_régime_ was for a time overturned; and a national Parliament met at

Frankfort. But the German reformers were not united; they had no clear

aims; and there was little or no material strength behind them. The

reaction had been taken by surprise. But it wielded the organised

military power, and so was able to act whilst the Liberals talked and

proposed. Before the troubled year had come to a close the reaction was

triumphant both in Vienna and Berlin.

Then a time of darkness which could be felt, and which apparently was as

hopeless as ever, followed in Germany. Parliaments were dispersed. Many

who had shared in the struggle were put to death or imprisoned. In 1849

Switzerland counted within her borders as many as 11,000 German

refugees, most of whom eventually found a home in America. It appeared

as if only one failure the more had been made in the toilsome march of

human progress.

But it was not an entire failure. The revolutionary disturbances had at

least proved that many of the old institutions were untenable, and must

in whole or in part be removed. It was found necessary to make some

concessions to Liberalism. Much of the old feudalism was set aside.

Above all, both in the middle and working class there had arisen a new

spirit which only awaited the opportunity that was sure to come. The

opportunity arrived a few years afterwards, when the forces which have

made the Germany of to-day came into action. In the new circumstances it

was an interesting question how far the _bourgeoisie_ and the working

class could march together. It is a standing charge brought against

German Liberalism by the Social Democrats, that it has never led the

progressive forces against the reaction with any degree of courage or

resolution. They maintain that in the revolutionary struggles of 1848

the German Liberals never trusted the working class, that when the

choice came to be made between the reaction and a strenuous democratic

policy supported by the proletariat, they preferred to transact with the

reaction, and so committed treason on the sacred cause of progress. On

this question largely turns the history of recent German politics. It is

a wide and complicated question which can be rightly answered only by

due consideration of the facts of the historical situation.

The middle class had triumphed both in France and England. But the

industrial revolution which naturally brings with it the rule of the

middle class, was in Germany much later than in France and England. In

1848 the German middle class was still in its infancy, and had neither

the insight nor the material means to lead the democracy against the

reaction with any prospect of success; nor was it reasonable to expect

that it should.

Further, it may be maintained that the German working class, following

the example of their French brethren, has been too ready to enter on

revolutionary courses, and by thus exciting the alarm and suspicion of

all sober-minded men, has done vital injury to the cause of rational and

hopeful progress. There can be no doubt that for those who are bent on

revolutionary courses, and those who are content with what is usually

comprehended under the name of liberalism, the parting of the ways must

come sooner or later. That is no reason why the parting should be

premature. If they can with mutual advantage make their way along a

common road against their common enemy, feudalism and the reaction, why

should they not do so?

Unfortunately for German Liberals and the energetic Democratic party,

there was no common way. The parting came at the very outset, and it may

be regarded as inevitable. The chief aim of the Democrats was universal

suffrage, and for a time at least universal suffrage in Germany, as in

France, meant the strengthening of Conservatism. In Germany, as in

France, universal suffrage would give the deciding power at the polls to

the peasantry and the rural population generally which were under the

control of the reaction, and which largely outnumbered the urban

population. The German Liberals did not wish universal suffrage, as it

was not in their interest. They treated the working men and their

leaders with scant courtesy or consideration. They wished to utilise

them as subordinates, or, at the best, as dependent allies. If the

workmen were not willing to be thus treated, the Liberals were ready to

show them the door.

The working men were not willing to be so treated, and they turned to

Lassalle, with the result which we have already briefly narrated. As

time went on the gulf between Liberals and Democrats widened, and the

democratic working men became Social Democrats. It was a breach which

may fairly be regarded as extremely hurtful to the sound political

development of Germany. On one hand it has led to the result that the

German middle class has never with resolution and comprehensiveness of

purpose led the democracy along the path on which a really free German

State might have been established. Partly from choice, partly from the

necessities of its position, the German middle class has followed the

policy of making for itself the best terms it could with the reaction;

and the socialists say that this meant the sacrifice of democratic

ideals to the material interests of the middle class. ‘The treason of

the _bourgeoisie_,’ ‘the abdication by the _bourgeoisie_’ of its

historic place at the head of the democratic movement: these phrases sum

up the worst accusations brought by the Social Democrats against the

German middle class.

On the other hand, the working men, finding themselves neglected or

repudiated by those who, according to the natural laws of historical

development, should for a time at least have been their leaders, gave

ear, it may be prematurely, to men of revolutionary views and

antecedents like Lassalle and Karl Marx; and in this manner was formed a

revolutionary party which in many ways has not had a salutary organic

relation to the main stream of German life. It is in fact the reaction

which has profited by the division between the _bourgeoisie_ and the

working class.

* * * * *

We shall now return to the history of the Universal Working Men’s

Association which, as we have seen, was founded by Lassalle in 1863.[1]

At the death of the founder in 1864 the membership of the Association

amounted to 4610, a small number, but we must recollect that it had

existed for only about fifteen months.

Lassalle, in his will, had recommended as his successor Bernhard Becker,

a man totally unqualified for such a difficult post. At the founding of

the Association it had been thought good that the president should

exercise a species of dictatorship. This arrangement might be suitable

so long as the office was filled by a Lassalle. It was not easy to get a

competent man of any kind. In such a novel organisation we need not say

that there were hardly any members of ability and experience. Lassalle’s

choice was therefore extremely limited. The most capable of his

adherents undoubtedly was Von Schweitzer, a young man who belonged to a

patrician house of Frankfort on the Main, but his reputation was so far

from stainless that the German workmen for some time refused to have

anything to do with him. Becker was elected, and conducted the affairs

of the Association with more energy than wisdom, while the Countess

Hatzfeldt, as the intimate friend of Lassalle, used her wealth and

social position to control its fortunes in a way little calculated to

satisfy the self-respecting German working men. It was a time of

confusion and uncertainty in the Association; of suspicion, jealousy,

and contention among its leading members. There would be no profit,

however, in narrating the squabbles which disturbed the progress of the

Association in its helpless infancy.

Indeed, if we consider the matter with some measure of sympathy and

impartiality, it would hardly have been natural had it been otherwise.

Let us try to realise from what low estate the German working men were

now endeavouring to rise. We must remember that the German workman had

no share or experience in government, either local or national. The

right of combination, of free speech in a free meeting, and even of free

movement, had been denied him for generations. He could hardly turn to

the right hand or the left without coming into collision with the police

and the courts of law. He had no leaders whom he could trust. The German

working men, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say, had in the sphere of

social and political action everything to learn. Under conditions which

were most trying and uncertain they had to shape out a policy which

suited their interests and ideals; they had to learn to know each other

and to work in union, and they had to find trustworthy and capable

leaders.

Nameless misery and degradation prevailed in too many of the industrial

regions on the Rhine in Saxony and Silesia. Men, women, and children

were worked for fifteen hours a day. Hand labour was disappearing with

the wonted unspeakable suffering before the machinery brought in by the

industrial revolution. Both the hand labour and the factory labour of

Germany suffered under the pressure of the competition of the more

advanced mechanical industry of England.

In the lot of the German working man there had been neither light,

leading, nor hope. The men who represented State and Church, law and

learning, and who should have been responsible for his guidance, were

too often found among his oppressors.

In view of facts like these need we wonder that Lassalle, with all his

eloquence and energy, found it difficult to rouse the German working men

out of their apathy and hopelessness? Under such depressing

circumstances it was no particular disgrace for an ordinary man like

Bernhard Becker to fail. Becker’s tenure of the presidency was of short

duration. He was succeeded by Tölcke, a man of ability and energy; but

at his entrance into office the prospects of the Association were not

bright. The funds in its treasury amounted to only six thalers or

eighteen shillings. If finance be the test of success the Association

founded by Lassalle was indeed at a very low ebb.

The brightest feature in the early history of the Association was the

_Sozialdemokrat_, a paper founded by Schweitzer at the end of 1864, and

which had on its list of contributors the names of Marx and Engels. But

even here the evil fortune of the Association clung to it. In a series

of articles on Bismarck, Schweitzer had given expression to views

regarding that statesman which were highly displeasing to the two

revolutionists in England, and they publicly renounced all connection

with the paper. Following Lassalle, Schweitzer had shown his readiness

to join hands with the Conservatives of Prussia when circumstances made

it advisable in the interests of the Social Democracy. Such a policy met

with no favour in the eyes of Marx and Engels. They demanded from

Schweitzer the same energetic opposition to the feudal and reactionary

party as he showed to the Progressists. Schweitzer claimed the right to

shape his tactics in accordance with the situation of affairs in

Prussia, which he knew better than men living in exile. A socialist who

could take a lucid and comprehensive view of the theories which he

professed, a man of the world of real insight and tact, Schweitzer, by

his articles in the _Sozialdemokrat_, rendered effectual service to the

Association and to the socialist cause in Germany at a most critical

time in their history.

During those years the political condition of Germany was most uncertain

and chaotic, and the Association had to grope its way through the

darkness as best it could. It was a new party composed of members who

had no experience of common action, and who had with much labour and

perplexity to work out a set of common convictions. Under the

circumstances a clear line of policy was impossible. The first mighty

step out of this political chaos was made in 1866, when Bismarck, after

defeating Austria, established the North German Confederation. The

elections to the North German Diet, which was now established, were

based on universal suffrage. The first North German Diet met in 1867,

and in the same year Schweitzer was elected president of the Association

founded by Lassalle. How were the Social Democrats of Germany to relate

themselves to the new order of things? Before answering this question we

must say something of important movements which were proceeding on the

Social Democratic side.

The adherents of the Universal Working Men’s Association were drawn

chiefly from Prussia and North Germany. In Saxony and South Germany

there had meanwhile grown up a new working men’s party, from which

Schweitzer encountered the most strenuous opposition. Under the

influence of the new life which prevailed in Germany in the years

following 1860, many workmen’s unions were established. As it was

dangerous to make too open a profession of a political object these

unions adopted the name of workmen’s educative associations

(_Arbeiterbildungsvereine_). Some of these working men’s associations

had attached themselves to Lassalle, but from the first many had held

aloof from him. Many of these associations had been founded and promoted

under liberal democratic influences, and their aim may generally be

described as political and educational rather than economical; but it

would be more accurate still to describe them as having no clear aims,

and as on the look-out for a policy rather than possessing one. It is

certain that as Saxons and South Germans they were to a large degree

inspired by the hatred to the growing ascendency of Prussia which

prevailed around them.

Shortly after the founding of the Lassalle Association a Union of the

working men’s associations which continued loyal to the Progressist

party was founded at Frankfort in 1863, and was intended to form a

bulwark against the influence of Lassalle. But this Union of

associations speedily began to move in the direction of democracy and

through democracy to socialism. Two men were chiefly responsible for

this result, Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel.

Liebknecht had taken an active part in the revolutionary disturbances in

Germany in 1848, had been a member of the group of exiles that gathered

round Karl Marx in London, and from him had imbibed the principles of

international revolutionary socialism. He had joined the Universal

Association of Lassalle, but he never enjoyed the entire confidence of

his chief. Liebknecht counted Luther among his ancestors, and was

descended from the learned middle class of Germany. His friend, August

Bebel, was a working man, who, being left an orphan at an early age, had

been educated at charity schools. Brought up to the handicraft of

turner, Bebel continued with the most laudable diligence and

thoroughness to educate himself. By his acquirements, his natural talent

and his force of character, he soon gained considerable influence among

his comrades. Bebel before long became a force in the German workmen’s

unions.

At first Bebel was merely a radical of strong convictions, and he had no

love for a socialistic agitation like that of Lassalle which was to

adapt itself so much to Prussian nationalism. It was only a question of

time, however, when a nature so thorough and strenuous would make the

transition from radicalism to socialism. As the representative man of

the German workmen’s educative associations, we see him making his way

in a few short years to Social Democracy, and the associations followed

him step by step. Influential members soon expressed their preference

for universal suffrage. The Union of associations at its meeting in

Stuttgart in 1865 declared for universal suffrage, whilst their organ in

the same year repudiated the Schulze-Delitzsch schemes in the most

emphatic language. In 1866 a great meeting of workmen’s associations at

Chemnitz in Saxony adopted a programme which on its political side was

entirely democratic, and on its economic side made considerable advances

towards socialism. At its congress in Nuremberg in 1868 the Union by a

large majority declared its adhesion to the principles of the

International. In a great congress at Eisenach in 1869 they founded the

Social Democratic Working Men’s Party, and in the same year sent

representatives to the International Congress at Basel. The Union which

had been designed by the Progressists as a bulwark against Social

Democracy had proved a roadway by which the workmen marched into the

enemy’s camp.

Thus two socialist parties were established in Germany, the Lassalle

Association, which had its membership chiefly in Prussia, and the

Eisenach Party, which found support in Saxony and South Germany. Both

parties were represented in the North German Diet, in which at one time

as many as six socialists sat. They now had a tribune from which to

address the German people, but it cannot be said that they were

particularly grateful to Bismarck for the opportunity which he had given

them. To men of the revolutionary party of 1848, whose ideal had been

the unification of Germany under the free initiative of the people, the

work of Bismarck could not appear a very delightful consummation, even

though it was accompanied with the gift of universal suffrage.

Schweitzer regarded the North German Confederation as a very unpleasant

and very unwelcome, but yet irrevocable fact, with which the Social

Democracy would need to find a way of getting on, on whose basis they

would have to establish themselves as the extreme opposition if they

wished to continue a political party.

Liebknecht, on the other hand, looked upon the North German

Confederation as a reactionary work of violence and injustice that must

be overthrown. In order not to strengthen it he repudiated all practical

participation in the legislative measures of the Diet. The parliamentary

tribune was only a platform from which he could hurl his protest against

the new arrangement of things among the masses of the German people. In

his opinion the creation of Bismarck meant the division, weakening, and

servitude of Germany, and history would march over its ruins.

During the Franco-German War of 1870-71 the flood of patriotic

enthusiasm for a time almost submerged the socialistic agitation. At the

commencement of hostilities Liebknecht and Bebel refrained from voting

on the question of a war loan; they disapproved alike of the policy of

Prussia and of Bonaparte. The other socialist deputies, including

Schweitzer, voted for it, as the victory of Napoleon would mean the

overthrow of the socialist workmen in France, the supremacy of the

Bonapartist soldiery in Europe, and the complete disintegration of

Germany. But after the fall of the French Empire all of them voted

against a further loan and recommended the speediest conclusion of peace

with the Republic, without annexation of French territory. Such views

did not meet with much acceptance in Germany, either from Government or

people. Several of the socialist leaders were thrown into prison. At the

first election to the German Reichstag in 1871 the socialists counted

only 102,000 votes, and returned two members.

Soon afterwards Schweitzer announced his intention of retiring from the

leadership of the Universal Working Men’s Association. He had been

defeated at the general election. His position at the head of the

Association, which, as we have seen, was a species of dictatorship, was

no longer tenable. His trials and struggles with the Prussian police and

courts of justice, the troubles he experienced in the midst of his own

party, the persecution and calumny which he endured from the opposing

Eisenach party, the sacrifice of time and money, of health and quiet,

which were inseparable from such a post, had made it a very uneasy one.

He had conducted the affairs of the Association with a tact, insight,

and appreciation of the situation to which his successors in the

leadership of the German socialists have apparently never been able to

attain. He died in Switzerland in 1875.

About the same time, in the spring of 1871, came the tidings of the

great rising of the working class in the Commune at Paris. Mass meetings

of German workmen were held in Berlin, Hamburg, Hanover, Dresden,

Leipzic, and other large towns, to express their sympathy with their

French brethren in the struggle which they were waging. In the Reichstag

Bebel made a speech which contained the following passage:—‘Be assured

that the entire European proletariat, and all that have a feeling for

freedom and independence in their heart, have their eyes fixed on Paris.

And if Paris is for the present crushed, I remind you that the struggle

in Paris is only a small affair of outposts, that the main conflict in

Europe is still before us, and that ere many decades pass away the

battle-cry of the Parisian proletariat, war to the palace, peace to the

cottage, death to want and idleness, will be the battle-cry of the

entire European proletariat.’[2]

When the war fever of 1871 subsided the socialistic agitation resumed

its course, and it was fostered by the wild speculations of the time,

and by the industrial crisis which followed it. At the elections of 1874

the socialist party polled 340,000 votes and returned nine members.

From Lassalle’s first appearance on the scene in 1862, the socialistic

agitation had encountered the German police at every step of its career.

Its leaders were prosecuted and thrown into prison. Meetings were broken

up, newspapers and organisations were suppressed. The free expression of

opinion on the platform and through the press was curtailed in every

way.

Such experience taught the socialist leaders the advantage and necessity

of union in face of the common enemy. The retirement of Schweitzer from

the control of the Lassalle party in 1871 had removed the most serious

obstacle to union. Hasenclever had been elected president in his stead,

but it was felt that the party had outgrown the autocratic guidance

which had been helpful and perhaps necessary to it in its early years.

All the tendencies and influences of the time served to bring the

Lassalle and the Eisenach parties together. They were pursuing the same

aims under the same conditions, against the same opposition; and there

was really nothing now to keep them apart except the recollection of old

rivalries and animosities which soon faded under the pressure of their

practical difficulties.

Under these circumstances the process of union was easy, and the fusion

of the Eisenach and Lassalle parties was effected in a congress at Gotha

in 1875. At this congress 25,000 regular members were represented, of

whom 9000 belonged to the Marx party and 15,000 to that of Lassalle. The

united body assumed the name of the Socialistic Working Men’s Party of

Germany, and drew up a programme, which, as the most important that till

that time had been published by any socialistic organisation, deserves

to be given entire.[3]

The union of the two parties thus accomplished was the starting-point of

a new career of prosperity for the German Social Democracy. At the

election of 1877 the new party polled nearly half a million votes, and

returned twelve members to the Reichstag. This result was largely due to

the admirable organisation to which the socialistic propaganda had now

attained. A staff of skilful, intelligent, and energetic agitators

advocated the new creed in every town of Germany, and they were

supported by an effective machinery of newspapers, pamphlets, treatises,

social gatherings, and even almanacs, in which the doctrines of

socialism were suggested, inculcated, and enforced in every available

way. At all the great centres of population—in Berlin, Hamburg, and in

the industrial towns of Saxony and on the Rhine—the Social Democrats

threatened to become the strongest party.

Such a rate of progress, and the aggressive attitude of the spokesmen of

the party, naturally awakened the apprehensions of the German rulers.

They resolved to meet it by special legislation. The Social Democrat

programme contained nothing that was absolutely inconsistent with the

idea of a peaceful development out of the existing state. As we have

seen, it is a principle of the Marx socialism that its realisation

depends on the inherent tendencies of social evolution; but the process

can be hastened by the intelligent and energetic co-operation of living

men, and as this co-operation may take the shape of revolutionary force,

and was actually in Germany assuming a most aggressive and menacing

attitude, both on the platform and in the press, it was inevitable that

the German Government should adopt measures to repress it.

The occasion of the anti-socialist legislation was found in the attempts

of Hödel and Nobiling on the Emperor’s life in 1878. It is needless to

say that neither attempt was authorised by the Social Democratic party.

The two men had no official connection with the party. Both were weak in

character and intellect. Their feeble brains had been excited by the

socialistic doctrines which were fermenting around them. No further

responsibility for their acts attaches to the Social Democratic party,

whose principles and interests were entirely opposed to such attempts at

assassination.

The Bill introduced after the attempt of Hödel was rejected by the

Reichstag. On the attempt of Nobiling the Government dissolved the

Reichstag and appealed to the country, with the result that a large

majority favourable to exceptional legislation was returned. At the

general election the socialist vote declined from 493,000 to 437,000.

Severe anti-socialist laws were speedily carried by the new Reichstag.

A most interesting feature of the discussions which took place in

connection with the exceptional legislation was the attitude of

Bismarck. Now when the great statesman is no more it is specially

necessary to state that he approached the subject of socialism with an

open-mindedness which does him honour. He felt it his duty to make

himself acquainted with all the facts relating to his office, and took

particular pains to understand the new social and economic problems

which were engaging the attention of the country.

In a sitting of the Reichstag on September 17, 1878, he did not hesitate

to express his sympathy and even respect for Lassalle. He explained how

he had met Lassalle three or four times at the request of the latter,

and had not regretted it. Referring to baseless rumours that had been

circulated to the effect that he had been willing to enter into

negotiation with the agitator, he stated that their relations could not

have taken the form of a political transaction, for Lassalle had nothing

to offer him, and there could be no bargain when one of the parties had

nothing to give. ‘But Lassalle had something,’ Bismarck went on to say,

‘that attracted me exceedingly as a private man. He was one of the

cleverest and most amiable men with whom I ever met; a man who was

ambitious in great style, and by no means a republican; he had a very

strongly marked national and monarchical feeling, the idea which he

strove to realise was the German Empire, and therein we had common

ground. Lassalle was ambitious in the grand style; it was doubtful,

perhaps, whether the German Empire should close with the Hohenzollern

dynasty or the dynasty Lassalle, yet his feeling was monarchical through

and through.... Lassalle was an energetic and most intellectual man,

whose conversation was very instructive; our talks lasted for hours, and

I always regretted when they came to an end.... I should have been glad

to have had a man of such endowments and genius as neighbouring

landlord.’

It should be added also that Bismarck saw no objection in principle to

the scheme of productive associations with State help recommended by

Lassalle. Such experiments were not unreasonable in themselves, and were

entirely consistent with the range of duties recognised by the State as

he understood them; but the course of political events had not left him

the necessary leisure. Before leaving this matter we should note that,

as regards universal suffrage and the scheme of productive associations

with State help, Bismarck and Lassalle had common ground, on which they

could have co-operated without sacrifice of principle on either side.

In his speech in the Reichstag of September 17, 1878, the Chancellor

also explained the origin of his hostility to the Social Democracy. One

of its leading representatives, either Bebel or Liebknecht, had in open

sitting expressed his sympathy with the Commune at Paris. That reference

to the Commune had been a ray of light on the question; from that time

he felt entirely convinced that the Social Democracy was an enemy

against which the State and society must arm themselves.

As we have seen, it was Bebel who had used the objectionable language in

the Reichstag; but Liebknecht had never been backward in the frank and

uncompromising expression of views of a similar nature. Such views were

not the passing feeling of the hour; they were the statement of firm and

settled conviction, and may fairly be taken as representative of the

beliefs and convictions of the German Social Democracy in general. The

Social Democrats were hostile to the existing order in Germany, and they

did not hesitate to say so. In these circumstances it is hardly

necessary to say that a collision with a Government like that directed

by Bismarck was inevitable.

Bismarck himself was a Prussian Junker who had become a great European

statesman, but in many ways he remained a Junker to the end of his life.

With rare sagacity and strength of will he had shaped the real forces of

his time towards the great end of uniting the Fatherland and restoring

it to its fitting place among the nations of Europe. To use his own

words, he had lifted Germany into the saddle, and his task afterwards

was to keep her there. The methods, however, by which he had

accomplished the first part of his task, were scarcely so suitable for

the accomplishment of the second.

In the now united Germany he found two enemies which appeared to menace

the new structure which he had so laboriously reared, the Black

International, or the Ultramontane party, and the Red International, or

the Social Democrats. These enemies he tried to suppress by the

high-handed methods which had been familiar to him from his youth. He

was about fifty-six years of age when the German Empire was established.

It was too much to expect of human nature that he should at so late a

time of life break away from his antecedents as Prussian Junker and

statesman, and adopt the methods which would make Germany a free as well

as a united State.

Yet it is only right to say that he went a considerable distance on this

desirable path. Both as realist statesman and as patriot he wished to

have the German people on his side. When he attempted to suppress the

Social Democracy by methods which are not worthy of a free and

enlightened nation, he did so in all seriousness, as a German patriot.

He was a man working under the human limitations of his birth,

antecedents, and position. On the other hand, the Social Democrats had

endured oppression for many generations from the classes which Bismarck

represented. They had now risen in anger out of the lower depths of

society as an organised party, demanding that the hereditary oppression

should cease. Considered in this aspect the anti-socialist legislation

of Bismarck was only a new phase in a secular process. Time has not yet

fully revealed the means by which a process of this kind can be brought

to a close.

The anti-socialist laws came into force in October 1878. Socialist

newspapers and meetings were at once suppressed, and the organisation of

the party was broken up. Generally, it may be said that during the

operation of the laws the only place in Germany in which the right of

free speech could be exercised by the socialists was the tribune of the

Reichstag, and the only organisation permitted to them was that formed

by the representatives of the party in the Reichstag. As time went on

the minor state of siege was established in Berlin, Hamburg, Leipzig,

and other towns, and the police did not hesitate to exercise the power

thereby put into their hands of expelling Social Democratic agitators

and others who might be objectionable to them.

For some time confusion, and to some extent dismay, prevailed among the

Social Democrats. But ere long they found that their union and their

power did not depend on any formal organisation. As Marx had taught, the

organisation of the factory necessarily brings with it the organisation

of the proletariat. A well-drilled working class is a natural and

inevitable result of modern industrial evolution, which no _fiat_ of the

law can disturb, if the workmen have the intelligence to understand

their position and mission. Thus the German workman realised that the

union in which he trusted was beyond the reach of repressive laws,

however cunningly devised and however brutally exercised.

The want of an organ, however, was greatly felt, and accordingly, in

September 1879, the _Socialdemocrat, International Organ of the

Socialdemocracy of German Tongue_, was founded at Zürich. From 1880 it

was edited by Eduard Bernstein with real ability and conscientious

thoroughness. Every week thousands of copies were despatched to Germany,

and, in spite of all the efforts of the police, were distributed among

the Social Democrats in the Fatherland. In 1888 it was removed to

London, whence it was issued till the repeal of the anti-socialist laws

in 1890.

The efforts of Bismarck against socialism apparently had a temporary

success, for in 1881, the first election after the passing of the laws,

the voting power of the party sank to about 312,000. But it was only

temporary, and probably it was more apparent than real. The elections in

1884 showed a marked increase to 549,000, and in 1887 to 763,000. These

symptoms of growth, however, were vastly exceeded by the results of the

poll in 1890, when the number of Social Democratic votes swelled to

1,427,000. They were now the strongest single party of the Empire.

In all the large towns of the Empire, and especially in the largest of

all, such as Berlin, Hamburg, and Leipzig, where the minor state of

siege had been proclaimed, the socialists could show an enormous

increase of votes. Till about 1885 the Social Democrats had, by their

own confession, made very little progress in country districts, or among

the Catholic population either of town or country. At the election of

1890 there was evidence of a very considerable advance in both quarters.

The election sounded the knell of Bismarck’s system of repression, and

the anti-socialist laws were not renewed.

The Social Democrats thus came out of the struggle against Bismarck with

a voting power three times as great as it had been when the

anti-socialist laws were passed. The struggle had proved the

extraordinary vitality of the movement. The Social Democrats had shown a

patience, resolution, discipline, and, in the absence of any formal

organisation, a real and effective organisation of mind and purpose

which are unexampled in the annals of the labour movement since the

beginning of human society. They had made a steady and unflinching

resistance to the most powerful statesman since the first Napoleon, who

wielded all the resources of a great modern State, and who was supported

by a press that used every available means to discredit the movement;

and, as a party, they had never been provoked to acts of violence. In

fact, they had given proof of all the high qualities which fit men and

parties to play a great _rôle_ in history. The Social Democratic

movement in Germany is one of the most notable phenomena of our time.

After the anti-social legislation had ceased the Social Democratic party

found that its first task was to set its house in order. At a party

meeting at Halle in 1890 an organisation of the simplest kind was

adopted. The annual meeting forms the highest representative body of the

party. The party direction was to consist of two chairmen, two

secretaries, one treasurer, and also of two assessors chosen by a Board

of Control of seven members. The _Sozialdemokrat_, which, as we have

seen, had for some time been published in London, was discontinued, and

the _Vorwärts_ of Berlin was appointed the central organ of the party.

In 1891, at the party meeting at Erfurt, a new programme, superseding

that of Gotha, was adopted; and as it may fairly be regarded as the most

developed expression of the Social Democratic principles yet put forth

by any body of working men, we give it here entire for the perusal and

study of our readers.[4]