Part 29 (1/2)

It goes without saying, replied the revolutionaries, that all Socialists will lend their a.s.sistance to any elements of the population who are fighting against reaction and in favor of labor legislation and reform, but it does not follow that they should consider this the chief part of their work, nor that they should even feel it necessary to claim that the Socialists were _leading_ the non-Socialists in these matters.

In contrasting his section of the French Party with the German movement, Jaures claimed that the French were both more revolutionary than the German, and more practical in their efforts at immediate reform. ”You,”

he said, speaking to the Germans, ”have neither a revolutionary nor a parliamentary activity.” He reminded them that having never had a revolution they could not have a revolutionary tradition, that universal suffrage had been given to them from above (by Bismarck), instead of having been conquered from below, that they had been forced tamely to submit when they had recently been robbed of it in Saxony. ”You continue in this way too often,” he continued, ”to obscure and to weaken, in the German working cla.s.s, the force of a revolutionary tradition already too weak through historic causes.” And finally he a.s.serted that the German Socialists, who, a year or so before this conference, had obtained the enormous number of 3,000,000 votes, had been able to do nothing with them in the Reichstag. He said that this was due in part to the character of the German movement, as shaped by the circ.u.mstances of the past, and partly to the fact that the Reichstag was powerless in the German government, and claimed that they would have been only too glad to follow the French reformists' course, if they could have done so, just as their only reason for not using revolutionary measures was also that the German government was too strong for them.

”Then,” concluded Jaures, ”you do not know which road you will choose.

There was expected from you after this great victory a battle cry, a program of action, a policy. You have explored, you have spied around, watched events; the public's state of mind was not ripe. And then before your own working cla.s.s and before the international working cla.s.s, you masked the feebleness of your activity by taking refuge in extreme theoretical formulas which your eminent comrade, Kautsky, will furnish to you until the life goes out of him.” As time has not yet tested Jaures's accusations, they cannot yet be finally disproved or proved.

The replies of his revolutionary opponents at the Congress were chiefly counter-accusations. But the later development of the German movement gives, as I shall show, strong reasons why Jaures's criticisms should be accepted as being true only of the reformist minority of the German Party.

Jaures referred to the British unionists as an example of the success of reformist tactics. Bebel was able to dispose of this argument. ”The capitalists of England are the most able in the world,” he said. ”If next year at the general elections English Liberalism is victorious, it will again make one of you, perhaps John Burns, an Under Secretary of State, not to take an advance towards Socialism, but to be able to say to the working people that it gives them voluntarily what has been refused after a struggle on the Continent, in order to keep the votes of the workers.” (This is just what happened.)

”Socialism,” he concluded, ”cannot accept a share of power; it is obliged to wait for all of the power.”

The Amsterdam resolution, pa.s.sed by a large majority after this debate, was almost identical with that which had been adopted by a vote of 288 to 11 at the German Congress at Dresden in the previous year (1903), and although the Austrian delegates and others, nearly half the total, had expressed a preference for a subst.i.tute of a more moderate character, they did not hesitate, when this motion was defeated, to indorse the more radical one that was finally adopted. And in 1909, when this Dresden (or Amsterdam) resolution came up for discussion at the German Congress of Leipzig, it was unanimously reaffirmed. Those opposing it did not dare to dispute it at all in principle, but merely expressed the mental reservation that it was qualified by another resolution adopted at a recent Congress which had declared that the party should be absolutely free to decide the question of _temporary_ political alliances in _elections_. As such electoral combinations, valid only for the _second ballot_, and lapsing immediately after the elections, had always been common, the Dresden resolution was never meant by the majority of those voting for it to forbid them. Its purpose was only to insist that the object of the Socialists must always be social revolution and not reform, since, to use its own words, supreme political power ”cannot be obtained step by step.”

”The Congress condemns most emphatically,” the Dresden resolution declared, ”the revisionist attempt to alter our hitherto victorious policy, a policy based upon the cla.s.s struggle; just as in the past _we shall go on achieving power by conquering our enemies, not by compromising with the existing order of things_.” (My italics.) In a recent letter widely quoted by the continental press, August Bebel contended that in Germany at least the Social Democracy and the other political parties have grown farther and farther apart during the last fifty years. While Bebel claims that Socialists support every form of progress, he insists that nevertheless they remain fundamentally opposed even to the Liberal parties, for the reason, as he explained at the Jena Congress (1905), that ”_an opposition party can, on the whole, have no decisive influence until it gains control of the government_,” that until the Socialists themselves have a majority, governments could be controlled only by an alliance with non-Socialist parties. ”If you (the Socialist Party) want to have that kind of an influence,” said Bebel, ”then stick your program in your pocket, leave the standpoint of your principles, concern yourself only with purely practical things, and you will be cordially welcome as allies.” (Italics mine.) At the Nuremburg Congress (1908) he said: ”We shall reach our goal, not through little concessions, through creeping on the ground, and coming down to the ma.s.ses in this way, but by raising the ma.s.ses up to us, by inspiring them with our great aims.”

Another question arose in the German Party which at the bottom involved the same principles. It had been settled that Socialists could not accept a share in any non-Socialist administration, no matter how progressive it might be. But if a social reform government is ready to grant one or more measures much desired by Socialists, shall the latter vote the new taxes necessary for these measures, thus affording new resources to a hostile government, and shall it further support the annual budget of the administration, thus extending the powers of the capitalist party that happens to be in power? The Socialist policy, it is acknowledged, has. .h.i.therto been to vote for these individual reforms, but never to prolong the life of an existing non-Socialist government.

The fundamental question, says Kautsky, _is to whom is the budget granted_, and not _what measures are proposed_. ”To grant the budget,”

he says, ”means to give the government the right to raise the taxes provided for; it means to put into the hands of the governor the control of hundreds of millions of money, as well as hundreds of thousands of people, laborers and officeholders, who are paid out of these millions.”

That is to say, the Socialist Party, according to the reasoning of Kautsky and the overwhelming majority of Socialists, wherever it has become a national factor of the first importance, must remain an opposition party--until the main purpose for which it exists has been accomplished; namely, the capture of the government, and for this purpose it must make every effort to starve out one administration after another by refusing supplies. At the National Congress at Nuremburg in 1908 it was decided by a two-thirds vote that in no one of the confederated governments of Germany would Socialists be allowed to vote for any government other than that of their own party, no matter how radical it might be, unless under altogether extraordinary circ.u.mstances, such as are not likely to occur. Some of the delegates of South Germany said that they would not be bound by this decision, but later a number expressed their willingness to accede to it, while others of them were forced to do so by the local congresses of their own party.

This question was brought up at the German Congress at Leipzig in 1909.

The parties in possession of the government had proposed a graduated inheritance tax, which nearly all Socialists approve. Moreover, a _part_ of the taxes of the year would be used for social reforms. Favoring as they did the change in the method of taxation, would the Socialist members of the Reichstag be justified in voting for the proposed tax at the third reading? All agreed that it was well to express their friendly att.i.tude to this form of tax at the earlier readings, but approval at the third reading might have the effect of finally turning over a new sum of money to an unfriendly government; although it would be collected from the wealthier cla.s.ses alone, it might be expended largely for anti-democratic purposes. The revolutionaries, with whom stood the chairman of the convention, the late Paul Singer, were against voting for the tax on the third reading, for they argued that if the Socialists granted an increased income to a hostile government merely because they were pleased with the form of the taxes proposed, it might become possible in the future for capitalist governments to secure Socialist financial support in raising the money for any kind of reactionary measures merely by proving that they were not obtaining the means for carrying them out from the working people.

Half of the members of the Parliamentary group, on the other hand, decided in favor of voting for the tax on the third reading, the reformists largely on the ground that it would furnish the means for social reforms, Bebel and others, however, on the entirely different ground that if the upper cla.s.ses had to pay the bill for imperialism and militarism, the increase of expenditures on armaments would not long continue.

The ”radical” Socialists represented by Ledebour proposed that not one penny should be granted the Empire except in return for true const.i.tutional government by the Kaiser. Certainly this was not asking too much, even though it would const.i.tute a political revolution, for the majority of the whole Reichstag afterwards adopted a resolution proposed by Ledebour demanding such guarantees. In other words, he would make all other questions second to that of political power--no economic reform whatever being a sufficient price to compensate for turning aside from the effort to obtain democratic government, _i.e._ more power.

Bebel, however, said he would have voted for the bill if he had been present, though he made it clear both at this and at the succeeding congress that he had no intention of affording the least support to a capitalistic administration (see below).

It appears that Bebel's position on this matter is really the more radical. Ledebour and Singer seemed to feel that the further democratization of the government depends on Socialist pressure. The more revolutionary view is that capitalism in Germany, with the irresponsible Kaiser, the unequal Reichstag election districts, the anti-democratic suffrage law and const.i.tution in Prussia, is impregnable--but that the progressive capitalists may themselves force the reactionaries to take certain steps toward democracy in order to check absolutism, bureaucracy, church influence, agrarian legislation, and certain excesses of militarism. (See the previous chapter.) The position of the ”radicals” was that capitalism was so profoundly reactionary that even the s.h.i.+fting of the burdens of taxation for military purposes to capitalist shoulders should not check it. Bebel's view was more revolutionary. For even conceding to capitalism the possibility of checking armaments and ending wars, and of establis.h.i.+ng semidemocratic governments on the French or English models, he finds the remainder of the indictment against it quite sufficient to justify the most revolutionary policy.

However, the main question was not really involved at this Congress. A government might be supported on this tax question and the support be withdrawn later when it came to a critical vote on the budget as a whole, or on some other favorable occasion.

It was only at the Congress at Magdeburg, in 1910, that the latter question was finally disposed of. The Magdeburg Congress not only reaffirmed the revolutionary policy previously decided upon by the German and International Congresses already mentioned, but it also showed that the revolutionary majority, stronger and more determined than ever, was ready and able to carry out its intention of forcing the reformist minority to follow the revolutionary course. This congress, besides more accurately defining the view of the revolutionary majority, made clearer than ever the profound differences of opinion in the Socialist camp. The subject under discussion was: Can a Socialist party support a relatively progressive capitalist government by voting for the budget when no fatal danger threatens the party's existence, such as some _coup d'etat_? Seventeen of the twenty Socialist members of the Legislature of Baden, without any such excuse, had supported a more or less progressive government and kept it in power, the very action that had been so often forbidden.

The importance of this act of revolt lay in the fact that the government the Socialists had supported, however progressive it might be, was frankly anti-Socialist. On several occasions the Prime Minister, Herr von Bodman, has made declarations of the most hostile character, as, for instance, that no employee of the government could be a Social-Democrat, and that the local officials should make reports of the personnel of the army recruits ”so that those of Social-Democratic leanings could be properly attended to.” After one of these declarations, even the Socialist members of the legislature who had previously planned to vote for the government, were repelled, and decided that was impossible to carry out their intentions. The Prime Minister thereupon made a conciliatory speech for the purpose of once more obtaining this vote.

But even this speech was by no means free from the most marked hostility to Socialism. ”To portray the Social-Democracy as a mere disease is not correct,” said he; ”it is to be cast aside in so far as it fights the monarchy and the political order. But, on the other hand, it is a tremendous movement for the uplift of the fourth estate, and therefore it deserves recognition.”

It will be seen that the Prime Minister withdrew nothing of his previous accusations. But the Baden Social-Democrats finally decided that, if they did not support him, some important reforms would be lost, especially a proposed improvement of the suffrage for town and towns.h.i.+p officials. This was not a very radical advance, for even the _Frankfurter Zeitung_, a strongly anti-Socialist organ, wrote that ”from the standpoint of consistent Liberalism the bill left so many aspirations and so many just demands unfulfilled that even the parties of the left, not to speak of the Social-Democrats, would be justified in declining to pa.s.s the measure.”

Indeed the South German reformists do not really pretend that it is any one particular reform that justifies laying aside or temporarily subordinating the fight against capitalist government. At the Nuremburg Congress in 1908 the ground given for an act of this kind was that if Socialists did not vote for that budget particularly, a large number of the officials and workingmen employed by the government would fail to receive the raise of wages or salary that it offered. Herr Frank, spokesman of the Baden Party, now defended the capitalist government of Baden and the Socialist action in supporting it, on the general ground that _advantages could thus be secured for the working cla.s.ses_. Of course, this brings up immediately the question: if moderate material advantages are all the working people are striving for, why cannot some other party which has more _power_ than the Socialists give still more of these advantages? Indeed, the fact that all these reforms were supported by capitalist parties and were allowed to pa.s.s by a frankly capitalistic government (progressive, no doubt, but anti-Socialist), gives this government and these parties a superior claim to the credit of having brought the reforms about.

What were ”the advantages for the struggle of the working cla.s.s” that Frank and his a.s.sociates could obtain by voting for the Baden Budget of 1910--besides the extension of the suffrage? First importance was placed upon school reforms. Several religious normal schools were abolished; women were permitted to serve on munic.i.p.al committees for school affairs and charities; the wages of teachers were somewhat increased; school girls were given an extra year; physicians were introduced into the schools; and a law was pa.s.sed by which, for the first time, children were no longer forced to take religious instruction against the will of their parents. Social-Democrats in the legislature were allowed for the first time to write the reports for important committees, such as those on the schools, factory inspection, and town or towns.h.i.+p taxation. Aside from these considerable improvements in the schools and in the election law, the only advantage of importance was a decrease of the income tax for those who earn less than 1400 marks ($350). One might have expected that a government which claims to be progressive, to say nothing of being radical or Socialistic, would altogether have exempted from taxation incomes as small as $350--modest even for Germany. Frank mentions also that 100,000 marks ($20,000) was appropriated for insurance against unemployment, but this sum is trifling for a State the size of Baden.

It was not denied by the radical Socialists that such measures are desirable, but they did not feel that it was worth while, on that account, to lay aside their main business, that of building up a movement to overthrow capitalist government. As I have shown, capitalist governments may be expected continually to inaugurate programs of reform which, while strengthening capitalism, are incidentally of more or less benefit to the working cla.s.s. This is neither any part of Socialism, nor does it tend towards decreasing the economic disparity between the cla.s.ses.