Part 2 (1/2)
In trying to understand the influences that dominated the government of Germany in its relations to foreign countries it must be clearly realized and remembered that the real rulers of Germany came from the caste that had for nearly two centuries furnished the majority of the members of the officer-corps. The Emperor-King, a.s.suming to rule by the grace of G.o.d, in reality ruled by the grace of the old n.o.bility and landed gentry of Prussia, from whose ranks he sprang. This had been aptly expressed eighty years earlier by the poet Chamisso, in whose _Nachtwachterlied_ appear the lines:
_Und der Konig absolut,_ _Wenn er unseren Willen tut!_
(Let the King be absolute so long as he does our will.) It was inevitable that the views of this cla.s.s should determine the views of government, and the only remarkable thing about the situation was that some of the men who, by the indirect mandate of this caste, were responsible for the conduct of the government, were less bellicose and more pacific than their mandate-givers. There were some men who, infected with the virus of militarism, dreamed of the _Welt-Imperium_, the eventual domination of the world by Germany, to be attained by peaceful methods if possible, but under the threatening shadow of the empire's mighty military machine, which could be used if necessary. Yet even in their own caste they formed a minority.
Such, in brief outline, was Germany--an empire built on the bayonets of the world's greatest and most efficient army and administered by tens of thousands of loyal and efficient civil servants. How was it possible that it could be overthrown?
In the last a.n.a.lysis it was not overthrown; it was destroyed from within by a cancer that had been eating at its vitals for eighty years. And the seeds of this cancer, by the strange irony of fate, were sown in Germany and cultivated by Germans.
The cancer was Socialism, or Social-Democracy, as it is termed in Germany.
CHAPTER III.
Internationalism and Vaterlandslose Gesellen.
The concluding statement in the previous chapter must by no means be taken as a general arraignment of Socialism, and it requires careful explanation. Indiscriminately to attack Socialism in all its economic aspects testifies rather to mental hardihood than to an understanding of these aspects. A school of political thought which has so powerfully affected the polity of all civilized nations in the last fifty years and has put its impress upon the statutes of those countries cannot be lightly dismissed nor condemned without qualification.
Citizens of the recently allied countries will be likely also to see merit in Socialism because of the very fact that, in one of its aspects, it played a large part in overthrowing an enemy government. Let this be clearly set down and understood at the very beginning: the aspects of Socialism that made the German governmental system ripe for fall were and are inimical not only to the governmental systems of all states, but to the very idea of the state itself.
More: The men responsible for the _debacle_ in Germany--and in Russia--regard the United States as the chief stronghold of capitalism and of the privilege of plutocracy, and the upsetting of this country's government would be hailed by them with as great rejoicing as were their victories on the continent.
The aspect of Socialism that makes it a menace to current theories of government is ”internationalism”--its doctrine that the scriptural teaching that all men are brothers must become of general application, and the negation of patriotism and the elimination of state boundaries which that doctrine logically and necessarily implies. And this doctrine was ”made in Germany.”
The basic idea of Socialism goes back to the eighteenth century, but its name was first formulated and applied by the Englishman Robert Owen in 1835. Essentially this school of political thought maintains that land and capital generally--the ”instruments of production”--should become the property of the state or society. ”The alpha and omega of Socialism is the transformation of private competing aggregations of capital into a united collective capital.”[7] Ethically Socialism is merely New Testament Christianity, but, as will be seen later, it is in effect outspokenly material, irreligious and even actively anti-religious.
[7] _Die Quintessenz des Sozialismus_, by Schaffle.
Socialism received its first clear and intelligent formulation at the hands of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, both Germans, although Marx was of Jewish descent. In 1847 these two men reorganized under the name ”Communist League” a society of Socialists already in existence in London. The ”Manifesto of the Communist League” issued by these two men in 1848 was the first real proclamation of a Socialism with outspoken revolutionary and international aims. It demanded that the laboring-cla.s.ses should, after seizure of political might, ”by despotic interference with the property rights and methods of production of the _bourgeoisie_, little by little take from them all capital and centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.
e., in the hands of the proletariat organized as the ruling-cla.s.s.” Marx and Engels recommended therefore the expropriation of real estate, the confiscation of the property of all emigrants and the centralization in the hands of the state of all means of credit (banks) and transportation.
The dominant idea of the Socialism of this period was that set forth by Marx in his book, _Das Kapital_, which became the textbook of the movement. It was, in brief, that all wealth is produced by labor, and that the surplus above the amount necessary for the bare existence of the laborers is appropriated by the capitalists. Marx's admirers have often endeavored to show that the communism advocated by him in these first years was not the violent communism that has eventuated in the last years in Bolshevism and kindred movements under other names. The question is of only academic interest, in view of the fact that Marx himself later realized that existing inst.i.tutions could not so easily be overturned as he had hoped and believed in 1848. Engels had also come to a realization of the same fact, and in 1872, when the two men prepared a new edition of the Manifesto of twenty-four years earlier, they admitted frankly:
”The practical application of these principles will always and everywhere depend upon historically existing conditions, and we therefore lay no especial stress upon the revolutionary measures proposed. In the face of the tremendous development of industry and of the organization of the laboring-cla.s.ses accompanying this development, as well as in view of practical experience, this program is already in part antiquated. The Commune (of 1871 in Paris) has supplied the proof that the laboring-cla.s.s cannot simply take possession of the machinery of state and set it in motion for its own purposes.”
This awakening, however, came, as has been pointed out, nearly a quarter of a century after the founding of a Socialist kindergarten which openly taught revolution. In its first years this kindergarten concerned itself only with national (German) matters, and was only indirectly a menace to other countries by its tendency to awaken a spirit of unrest among the laboring-cla.s.ses and to set an example which might prove contagious. In 1864, however, the _Internationale_ was founded with the cooperation of Marx and Engels, and Socialism became a movement which directly concerned all the states of the world.
This development of Socialism was logical and natural, for its creed was essentially and in its origins international. It had originated in England in the days of the inhuman exploitation of labor, and especially child-labor, by conscienceless and greedy capitalists. It had been tried out in France. Prominent among its advocates were many Russians, notably Michael Bakunin, who later became an anarchist. Perhaps the majority of its advocates on the continent were Jews or of Jewish descent, for no other race has ever been so truly international and so little bound by state lines. The _Internationale_ had been in the air for years before it was actually organized; that organization was delayed for sixteen years by no means indicates that the idea was new in 1864.
The basic idea of the _Internationale_ has already been referred to. It accepted as a working-creed the biblical doctrine that G.o.d ”hath made of one blood all nations of men,” but it disregarded the further declaration in the same verse of the Scriptures that He ”hath determined the bounds of their habitation.” The Socialist creed teaches the brotherhood of man and the equality of all men irrespective of race, color or belief. The inescapable corollary of this creed is that patriotism, understood as unreasoning devotion to the real or supposed interests of the state, cannot be encouraged or even suffered. And this standpoint necessarily involves further the eventual obliteration of the state itself, for any state's chief reason for existence in a non-altruistic world is the securing of special privileges, benefits, advantages and protection for its own citizens, without consideration for the inhabitants of other states. If this exercise of its power be prohibited, the state's reason for existence is greatly diminished.
Indeed, it can have virtually only a social mission left, and a social mission pure and simple cannot inspire a high degree of patriotism.
Many non-Socialist thinkers have perceived the ant.i.thesis between the doctrine of the universal brotherhood of man and the particularism of national patriotism. Bjornstjerne Bjornson wrote: ”Patriotism is a stage of transition.” This doctrine may come as a shock to the average reader, yet it is undoubtedly a prophetic and accurate statement of what will some day be generally accepted. Thoughtfully considered, the idea will be found less shocking than it at first appears. Neither Bjornson nor any other non-Socialist contemplates the abandonment of patriotism and state lines except by natural development. The world, in other words, is in a transitional stage, and when this transition shall have been completed it will find a world where the egoism of national patriotism has made way for the altruism of internationalism. And this will have been accomplished without violent revolutionary changes, but merely by a natural and peaceful evolutionary development.
Against such a development, if it come in the manner described and antic.i.p.ated, n.o.body can properly protest. But the Socialists of the international school--and this is what makes international Socialism a menace to all governments and gradually but surely undermined the German state--will not wait upon the slow processes of transition. Upon peoples for whom the flags of their respective countries are still emblems of interests transcending any conceivable interests of peoples outside their own state boundaries, emblems of an idea which must be unquestioningly and unthinkingly accepted and against which no dictates of the brotherhood of other men or the welfare of other human beings have any claim to consideration, the Socialists would impose over night their idea of a world without artificial state lines, and would subst.i.tute the red flag for those emblems which the majority of all mankind still reverence and adore. It requires no profound thinking to realize that such a change must be preceded by a long period of preparation if anarchy of production and distribution is to be avoided.
To impose the rule of an international proletariat under the present social conditions means chaos. The world has seen this exemplified in Russia, and yet Russia, where the social structure was comparatively simple and industry neither complex nor widely developed, was the country where, if anywhere today, such an experiment might have succeeded.
Socialist leaders, including even the internationalists, have perceived this. The murdered Jaures saw it clearly. But in the very nature of things, the vast majority of the adherents of these doctrines are not profound thinkers. Socialism naturally recruits itself from the lower cla.s.ses, and it is no disparagement to these to say that they are the least educated. Even in states where the higher inst.i.tutions of learning are free--and there are very few such places--the ability of the poor man's son to attend them is limited by the necessity resting upon him to make his own living or to contribute to the support of his family. The tenets of national Socialism naturally appeal to the young man, who feels that he and his fellows are being exploited by those who own the ”instruments of production,” and who sees himself barred from the educational advantages which wealth gives. From the acceptance of the economic tenets of national Socialism to advocacy of internationalism is but a small step, easy to take for one who, in joining the Socialist party, finds himself the a.s.sociate of men who address him as ”comrade”
and who look forward to a day when all men, white, black or yellow, shall also be comrades under one flag and enlisted in one cause--the cause of common humanity. These men realize no more than himself the fact that existing social conditions are the result of historical development and that they cannot be violently and artificially altered without destroying the delicate balance of the whole machine. And since this is the state of mind of the majority of the ”comrades,” even the wisest leaders can apply the brakes only with great moderation, for the leader who lags too far behind the majority of his party ceases to be a leader and finds his place taken by less intelligent or less scrupulous men.