The Masses (periodical)/Volume 1/Number 1/The Tendencies of German Socialism

by Paul-Louis

The Tendencies of German Socialism

 

A Prominent French Author's Impartial Review of the Present State of German Socialism
By Paul Louis

 

THE German Social Democracy is now more alert than ever. The daily events assign to it a rôle of ever growing importance. Not the slightest incident occurs in the German Empire in which it does not play a part or upon which it does not seize to display its power. Slowly, methodically, it works out its revolution with undeniable patience and prodigious ardor. Even those who pretend to scorn it and question its future chances manifest very marked signs of uneasiness, and those who reproach the German Social Democracy with the heaviness of its gait and the timidity of some of its declarations are obliged to render homage to die tenacity of its efforts and the discipline of its organization. It forms a sort of counter-state rising in opposition to the German state, and it resembles the German state in the robustness of its architecture, the complexity of its mechanism, and its development of a bureaucracy. What most strikes the impartial traveler in Germany next to the exterior solidity of the Empire, is the universal penetration of the Social Democracy. Just as every town has its regiment, its general post office, its well-kept railroad station, so it has its Socialist section, which meets on a fixed date, and periodically passes its members in review. Nowhere else has the government such elements of coercion at its disposal, nowhere else does it more loudly proclaim the principle of divine right, yet nowhere else are the elements of subversion gathered in such numbers, and nowhere else do they press forward on their course with more energy and determination.

Recently the Social Democracy illustrated its activity and accentuated its energy in a whole series of events, the congresses at Copenhagen and Magdeburg, the Moabit disturbances, the successful elections piling up one upon the other, a bold and growing opposition to the imperial will. Perhaps the Social Democracy—and with it Germany—is nearing the decisive hour. At any rate it is by no means out of place to measure its expansion, to take a census of its forces, and describe its different currents and new tendencies now asserting themselves.

The report presented by the German branch of the Socialist party to the International Congress at Copenhagen offers conclusive statistics, the like of which no other Socialist party in the world can show. It had 530,000 members in 1907, 587,000 in 1908, 633,000 in 1909, and 722,000 in 1910. Its receipts averaged more than $240,000 annually during the last three years. Defeated in the general election of 1908 by the liberal conservative coalition, the Social Democrats have since then registered victory after victory. Not only did they regain the seats of which they had been deprived, but they even captured seats which had never belonged to them, and which according to ordinary political probabilities they could not have hoped would be theirs so soon. The rapidity of their progress, to which eleven successive elections testify, was so unexpected that it threw all conservative elements into dismay. The reactionary factions have come to admit more and more that the hour to resort to force has struck.

The German Social Democracy is backed by a powerful labor union organization, almost equal in strength to British trade unionism. It may be called upon to intensify its activity with reinforced celerity. The German labor unions profess the collectivist principles, and stand on the ground of the modern class struggle. They had 277,000 members in 1891 soon after the repeal of the famous exceptional law against the Socialists. In 1900 they increased to 689,000, in 1904 to 1,052,000, and in 1909 they had grown into a body of 1,852,000. While their number multiplied seven times in nineteen years, their receipts increased fiftyfold and their property a hundredfold. The fifty-nine federations into which the corporative body is divided collected $12,000,000 last year and has a reserve capital of $11,000,000.

However, the forward march of German Socialism presents nothing surprising or inexplicable to the observer who takes account of the economic transformation of the Empire. Within a few years Germany has undergone an evolution which required almost a century in the other western countries of Europe. From rudimentary industry and small trade it quickly passed to excessive production and commerce on a formidable scale. The large manufacturing plants built in centres that until then remained secondary, the sudden development of the great sea and river ports, like Hamburg, Bremen, Ruhrort, and Duisburg, the utilization of all the mining resources and all the natural forces have brought about a concentration of men unequalled in the old world. In many respects the giant cities of contemporary Germany are more remarkable in their development than the mushroom cities of the western United States, Australia, and South America. A leisurely trip through the environs of Hamburg, where all the creations of the engineer's art are piled up, or through the environs of Cologne, reveals the causes of the expansion of the Social Democracy. The revolutionary proletariat in automatically formed in an environment such as is provided by the Germany of factory and mills. It attracts to it with an irresistible appeal the rural elements that pour into the urban agglomerations, elements which the economic movement snatches forever from the routine of conservatism. The constitution of a Social Democracy which grows bolder from day to day, absorbs more and more of the population, and makes greater and greater inroads, has something of the inexorability of fate. It moves at an even pace with the enrichment of the Krupps and Thyssens, with the great trusts, which exploit the blast furnaces of Westphalia and the factories of Ruhr, the chemical products of Saxony and the shipyards of Stettin, with the extension of the docks of the Elbe and the Weser, with the multiplication of the large banks which drain the savings of the masses and dominate trade. That is the ransom that power has to pay. A crack is methodically making its way from the bottom to the top of the imperial edifice, apparently so massive and sumptuous.

German Socialism is not free from doctrinal differences and differences as to tactics, no more than is French, English, or German Socialism. Historically it is composed of two parts, two groups, which manifest tendencies if not antagonistic, at least very divergent, the Marxists and the Lassallians. The Lassallians sought to bring about a transformation of society by conquering and democratizing the state. The Marxists distrusted the state and addressed themselves rather to the strength of the wage workers themselves. When they united and agreed upon the program of Gotha, both sides condemned irritating controversies with each other, and thought they had found the cement to hold them together in their respective activities in the common war which they waged against the Empire. However great the enthusiasm that their victories at times inspire, however stern the repression of the government the opposing conceptions of forty years ago still clash. Moreover, new conceptions have appeared, which add to the vivacity of the debates. No Socialist party has achieved more thoroughgoing unity than the German party. Yet in no country do the eternal conflicts spring up with more sustained periodicity. After all, such conflicts are the law of life itself. They have never retarded the progress of power nor dimmed the light of ideas.

Conflicts of this sort are not peculiar to Germany. Nevertheless, to understand and estimate them at their real value it is necessary to examine the particular conditions that obtain in Germany. Its economy, history, and religion are the elements which in this case combine more or less to explain the facts, whose importance, however, it would be a mistake to exaggerate.

Industry on a large scale is not equally distributed over the entire territory of the Empire. It predominates in certain districts of the north and southeast. While factory chimneys rise on all sides in the Rhine basin of the province of Westphalia, in Saxony and Silesia, Würtemburg, Baden and Bavaria are countries of rather small and moderate manufacturing enterprises and agricultural exploitation. The antagonism between the possessing and non-possessing classes shows itself in less marked traits around Stuttgart, Freiburg, Carlsruhe and Augsburg than in the rich valleys of the lower Rhine. Daily life naturally leaves its impress, even upon Socialist theory. In France the socialism of the Haute-Garonne and of the Pyrenees-Orientale differs somewhat from that of the industrial zone of which Lille, Roubaix, and Armentières are the centers.

The Germany of the North and the Germany of the South have undergone very distinct historical developments, both before and after the unification. The principle of divine right is grounded on the one hand upon a perfected militarism and an intolerant nagging bureaucracy, penetrated by the idea of its own importance; and on the other hand, it has had to accommodate itself in a certain degree to constitutional and liberal ideas. The bourgeoisie of Würtemburg collaborated with the people to introduce institutions limiting autocratic power, and this task was the easier for them since the feudalism of the South never had the pretensions nor the territorial power of the country squires of Prussia and Mecklenburg. The bourgeoisie of Brandenburg and Pomerania have as a rule been rather feeble in demanding rights for themselves, while they demanded nothing at all for the workingmen. Their acquiescence or timidity consolidated absolutism in the nineteenth century. The particularism of the South screens itself behind the parlimentary professions which the North never knew. The conflict of the classes is necessarily keener in a country in which the elementary liberties are proscribed than in a country which has a less superannuated political régime.

The North is predominatingly Protestant, the great majority of the South are Catholic. Even though Protestantism is economically and socially as conservative as Catholicism, yet it is inclined to dissemble and disguise its tendencies. The middle class of Würtenburg, Bavaria, and the Grand Duchy of Baden, in order to defend the prerogatives they had acquired—among others a certain degree of liberty of speech and of thought—have courted the proletariat, and visibly sought to obtain its support. The Prussian bourgeois who did not have the same historical education and who did not come into collision with clerical ambitions had no incentive whatsoever to seek the co-operation of the people. The reformed clergy, fulfilling a function of the state, remained subordinate to the established authorities. The ecclesiastical communities did not monopolize either large portions of the land or any part of the industry and commerce.

This brief analysis will perhaps explain the diversity of the currents in the German Social Democracy.

The Congress of Magdeburg held in September gave its attention to the theoretical and practical contentions which arose between the North and the South, more especially between the Executive Committee of Berlin and the group of Baden deputies. The seventeen members of the Diet of Carlsruhe who voted the budget in spite of the interdiction that has always been maintained by the German Social-Democratic congresses and consecarted even by an international congress, appeared as the champions of alliances with the liberals. In fact, they had entered into a "bloc" analgous to that which existed in France from 1889 to 1905.

The adversaries of socialism try to ridicule the principles that prohibit the adoption of the budget by the representatives of the workingmen's parties. It is certain that such a prohibition has only a symbolic value, which value, however, is by no means a negligible quantity. The rejection of the budgets demanded by the government shows that Socialism fights the modern state face to face, and refuses it the means of subsistance in proportion as its power increases. However, this is not the place to enter into a controversy on this subject. The Baden representatives in conceding the money to the government did not merely violate a formal order. They trampled underfoot the doctrine of the class struggle in order to bring about the collaboration of the proletariat with the middle class. It was virtually equivalent to embracing in toto the revisionist principles of which Bernstein had previously given a dogmatic and documentary exposition. The Baden men were condemned. In fact, their condemnation was a foregone conclusion. But what surprised even the most uncompromising of their opponents was that the most qualified of the members of the Carlsruhe Diet, Frank, declared he would not bend before the decision of the majority of the delegates. Thus, the old quarrel between Marxian doctrinarianism and revisionism, instead of losing its edge when a resolution was passed, as many times before, grew sharper, and turned into a schism.

But there will be no schism, and the unity of the Social Democracy is safe. Prussian absolutism, the imperial autocracy, has already taken it upon itself to reconcile the left with the right. When at the conclusion of the Congress the long-standing struggle was invoked which Socialists of Prussia have carried on in order to conquer political rights, the right of equal suffrage, the southern delegates, amid general applause, declared they would be on their side. And a cry of hope went up from the workingmen's delegates, and a breath of revolution swept the assembly.

The democratic alliances that might have worked out slow transformations, the coalitions between the workingmen and the liberals or the radicals are more precarious, more chimerical, and more ineffective in Germany even than in any other country. Even when the ire of the parties devoted to constitutional parliamentarism is roused against the imperial whims and vagaries, they still retain their distrust of the Social Democracy. The normal rule for contemporary politics is the liberal-agrarian combination; nay more, it is the grouping of all the forces of social conservation against the party which seeks to overthrow the present order of society. The radical left dreads the threats of the Social Democrats more than the fatuous blunders of the Kaiser. The very logic of events condemns revisionism and dedicates the workingman to majestic isolation. But this isolation engenders a revolutionary spirit. Allied with the liberals the Social Democracy would eschew all action outside the law. Left to itself and free, it no longer admits the same limitations. Recently it offered a new spectacle both to those who exalted and to those who criticized their uniformly prudent and pacific attitude. At Copenhagen it no longer rejects in express terms the general strike considered as a means to paralyze war. At Magdeburg it admitted the general strike as useful in making political demands. When one thinks of the horror which it formerly manifested of the general strike, one will perceive that there has been some change in its mentality. But before the congresses it had already organized in answer to the police interdictions large and solemn demonstrations which disturbed the official circles. On the very day after the Congress, the Moabit riots broke out, which sounded like the overture to an era of trouble. The labor unions, the great federations of workingmen, hitherto so measured in their movements and actions, now ostensibly incline to harsher tactics. And the militant organizations of the employers likewise confederated take the initiative and answer the threats of strike with the declarations of a lockout, throwing hundreds of thousands of men on the street and carrying the social struggle to a degree of exasperation it never before reached in Germany.

When during the September troubles the conservative press urged the government to bring out its troops and mow down or shoot the manifestants, the emperor, it is said, refused to concede its demands. Certain it is that no soldiers appeared on the streets of Moabit.

A week before, at the Magdeburg Congress, the reading of General Bissing's secret order of the day created a general stir in Germany, because it was the first time that an official document, the authenticity of which was not denied, betrayed the fear of revolution prevailing in high places. Kaiser Wilhelm did not want to bring the army into contact with the crowd. The hour had not yet struck. And besides it is a tradition of the German government to avoid any collision between the troops and the strikers. It is due to this tradition that anti-miltarist sentiment in the trade unions has not assumed the same aspect in the German Empire as in the Latin countries.

But will the German officers never intervene in the social struggles? No one can foretell what the morrow may bring forth. It is certain that the Social Democracy, of necessity uncompromising, despite the revisionist tendiencies that occasionally crop up, is now advancing to the number of four million voters. Many persons who do not allow themselves to be prejudiced or blinded estimate it will have one hundred and twenty seats in the next Reichstag. If we take into consideration the fact that some socialist seats represent 100,000 votes each, while some conservative seats represent no more than 5,000 votes, it will be evident what the moral effect of this invasion must be. And the question that looms up largest of all is whether the Kaiser will not be taking a terrible risk if he decides to resort to force.