Part 2 (2/2)

Ferdinand La.s.salle, the brilliant but erratic young man who organized the first Socialist party in Germany, was a national Socialist. His party grew slowly at first, and in 1864, when he died, it had but 4,600 members. In 1863 Marx aided by August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht,[8] formed the rival Confederation of German Unions upon an internationalistic basis. This organization joined the _Internationale_ at its congress in Nuremburg in 1868. The parties of Marx and La.s.salle maintained their separate ident.i.ties until 1875, when they effected a fusion at a congress in Gotha. The Marx adherents numbered at that time about 9,000 men and the La.s.salle adherents some 15,000, but the latter had already virtually accepted the doctrines of international Socialism and the _Internationale_, and the German Socialists had until the breaking out of the World War maintained their place as the apostles and leaders of internationalism.

[8] Called ”the elder Liebknecht” to distinguish him from his son Karl Liebknecht, who was killed while under arrest in Berlin in the winter of 1919.

Socialism first showed itself as a political factor in Germany in 1867, when five Socialists were elected to the North German Diet. Two _Genossen_[9] were sent to the first Reichstag in 1871, with a popular vote of 120,000, and six years later nearly a half million red votes were polled and twelve Socialists took their seats in the Reichstag. The voting-strength of the party in Berlin alone increased from 6,700 in 1871 to 57,500 in 1877, or almost ninefold.

[9] _Genosse_, comrade, is the term by which all German-speaking Socialists address each other.

A propaganda of tremendous extent and extreme ability was carried on. No _bourgeois_ German politician except Bismarck ever had such a keen appreciation of the power of the printed word as did those responsible for Socialism's missionary work. Daily newspapers, weekly periodicals and monthly magazines were established, and German Socialism was soon in possession of the most extensive and best conducted Socialist press in the world. The result was two-fold: the press contributed mightily to the spreading of its party's doctrines and at the same time furnished a school in which were educated the majority of the party leaders.

Probably three quarters of the men who afterward became prominent in the party owed their rise and, to a great extent, their general education to their service on the editorial staffs of their party's press. By intelligent reports and special Articles on news of interest to all members of the _Internationale_, whether German, French, English, or of what nationality they might be, this press made itself indispensable to the leaders of that movement all over the world, and contributed greatly to influencing the ideas of the Socialists of other lands.

Bismarck's clear political vision saw the menace in a movement which openly aimed at the establishment of a German republic and at the eventual overthrow of all _bourgeois_ governments and the elimination of local patriotism and state lines. In 1878 he secured from the Reichstag the enactment of the famous _Ausnahmegesetze_ or special laws, directed against the Socialists. They forbade Socialist publications and literature in general, prohibited the holding of Socialist meetings or the making of speeches by adherents of the party. Even the circulation of Socialist literature was prohibited. The _Ausnahmegesetze_ legalized as an imperial measure the treatment that had already been meted out to Socialists in various states of the Empire. Following the Gotha congress in 1875, fifty-one delegates to the congress were sent to prison.

Wilhelm Liebknecht received a sentence of three years and eight months and Bebel of two years and eleven months. In Saxony, from 1870 to 1875, fifty Socialists underwent prison sentences aggregating more than forty years.

But Socialism throve on oppression. In politics, as in religion, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. It would be praising any statesman of the '80's too highly to say that he had learned that ideas cannot be combated with brute force, for the rulers of the world have not yet learned it. But Bismarck did perceive that, to give any promise of success, opposition to Socialism must be based upon constructive statesmans.h.i.+p. To many of the party's demands no objection could be made by intelligent society. And so, in the address from the throne in 1881, an extended program of state socialism was presented. With the enactment of this program into law Germany took the first important step ahead along the road of state Socialism, and all her legislation for the next thirty years was profoundly influenced by socialistic thought, in part because of a recognition of the wisdom of some of Socialism's tenets, in part because of a desire to draw the party's teeth by depriving it of campaign material.

More than a decade earlier the Catholic Church in Germany had recognized the threatening danger and sought to counteract it by the organization of Catholic labor unions. It succeeded much better in its purpose than did the government, which is not to be wondered at, since the temporal affairs of the church have always been administered more intelligently than have the state affairs of any of the world's governments. For many years Socialism made comparatively small gains in Roman Catholic districts. A similar effort by the Lutheran (State) Church in 1878 accomplished little, and Bismarck's state Socialism also accomplished little to stop the spread of Socialist doctrines.

Kaiser Wilhelm II early realized the menace to the state of these enemies of patriotism and of all _bourgeois_ states. In a much quoted speech he termed the Socialists _vaterlandslose Gesellen_ (fellows without a Fatherland). The designation stung all German Socialists, who, ready as they were in theory to disavow all attachment to any state, did not relish this kind of public denunciation by their monarch. The word _Gesellen_, too, when used in this sense has an unpleasant connotation.

The Socialists, whose political tenets necessarily made them opponents of royalty and monarchism everywhere, were particularly embittered against a Kaiser whose contempt for them was so openly expressed. Their press, which consistently referred to him baldly as ”Wilhelm II” sailed as closely into the wind of _lese majeste_ as possible, and sometimes too closely. Leading Socialist papers had their special _Sitzredacteur_, or ”sitting-editor,” whose sole function consisted in ”sitting out” jail sentences for insulting the Kaiser or other persons in authority. Police officials, taking their keynote from the Kaiser, prosecuted and persecuted Socialists relentlessly and unintelligently. Funeral processions were stopped to permit policemen to remove red streamers and ribbons from bouquets on the coffins, and graves were similarly desecrated if the friends or mourners had ventured to bind their floral offerings with the red of revolutionary Socialism. The laws authorizing police supervision of all public meetings were relentlessly enforced against Socialists, and their gatherings were dissolved by the police-official present at the least suggestion of criticism of the authorities. There was no practical remedy against this abuse of power.

An appeal to the courts was possible, but a decision in June that a meeting in the preceding January had been illegally dissolved did not greatly help matters. Socialist meetings could not be held in halls belonging to a government or munic.i.p.ality, and the Socialists often or perhaps generally found it impossible to secure meeting-places in districts where the Conservatives or National Liberals were in control.

Federal, state and munic.i.p.al employees were forbidden to subscribe for Socialist publications, or to belong to that party.

The extent of these persecutions is indicated by a report made to the Socialist congress at Halle in 1890, shortly after the _Ausnahmegesetze_ had expired by limitation, after a vain attempt had been made to get the Reichstag to reenact them. In the twelve years that the law had been in operation, 155 journals and 1,200 books and pamphlets had been prohibited; 900 members of the party had been banished from Germany without trial; 1,500 had been arrested on various charges and 300 of these punished for violations of the law.

The _Ausnahmegesetze_ failed of their purpose just as completely as did the Six Acts[10] of 1820 in England. Even in 1878, the very year these laws were enacted, the Socialists polled more votes than ever before. In 1890 their total popular vote in the Empire was 1,427,000, which was larger than the vote cast for any other single party. They should have had eighty members in that year's Reichstag, but the s.h.i.+ft in population and consequent disproportionateness of the election districts kept the number of Socialist deputies down to thirty-seven. At the Reichstag election of 1893 their popular vote was 1,800,000, with forty-four deputies.

[10] These acts were pa.s.sed by Parliament after the Manchester Riots of 1819: to prevent seditious meetings for a discussion of subjects connected with church or state; to subject cheap periodical pamphlets on political subjects to a duty; to give magistrates the power of entering houses, for the purpose of seizing arms believed to be collected for unlawful purposes.

It may be seriously questioned whether Bismarck's unfortunate legislation did not actually operate to increase the Socialists'

strength. Certain it is that it intensified the feeling of bitterness against the government, by men whose very creed compelled them to regard as their natural enemy even the most beneficent _bourgeois_ government, and who saw themselves stamped as Pariahs. This feeling found expression at the party's congress in 1880 at Wyden, when a sentence of the program declaring that the party's aim should be furthered ”by every lawful means” was changed to read, ”by every means.” It must in fairness be recorded, however, that the revolutionary threat of this change appeared to have no effect on the subsequent att.i.tude of the party leaders or their followers. The record of German Socialism is remarkably free from violence and sabotage, and the revolution of 1918 was, as we shall see, the work of men of a different stamp from the elder Liebknecht and the st.u.r.dy and honest Bebel.

Two great factors in the growth of Socialism in Germany remain to be described. These were, first, the peculiar tendency of the Teutonic mind, already mentioned, to abstract philosophical thought, without regard to practicalities, and, second, the accident that the labor-union movement in Germany was a child of party-Socialism.

Socialism, in the last a.n.a.lysis, is nearer to New Testament Christianity than is any other politico-economic creed, and the professions and habits of thought of nearly all men in enlightened countries are determined or at least powerfully influenced by the precepts of Christ, no matter how far their practices may depart from these precepts. Few even of those most strongly opposed to Socialism oppose it on ethical grounds. Their opposition is based on the conviction that it is unworkable and impracticable; that it fails to take into consideration the real mainsprings of human action and conduct as society is today const.i.tuted. In an ideally altruistic society, they admit, it would be feasible, but, again, such a society would have no need of it. In other words, the fundamental objection is the objection of the practical man.

Whether his objection is insuperable it is no part of the purpose of the writer to discuss. What it is desired to make plain is that Socialism appeals strongly to the dreamer, the closet-philosopher who concerns himself with abstract ethical questions without regard to their practicality or practicability as applied to the economic life of an imperfect society. And there are more men of this type in Germany than in any other country.

Loosely and inefficiently organized labor unions had existed in Germany before the birth of the Socialist movement, but they existed independently of each other and played but a limited role. The first labor organization of national scope came on May 23, 1863, at Leipsic, when La.s.salle was instrumental in founding _Der allgemeine deutsche Arbeiterverein_ (National German Workmen's Union). Organized labor, thus definitely committed to Socialism, remained Socialist. To become a member of a labor union in Germany--or generally anywhere on the continent--means becoming an enrolled member of the Socialist party at the same time. The only non-Socialist labor organizations in Germany were the Catholic Hirsch-Duncker unions, organized at the instance of the Roman Catholic Church to prevent the spread of Socialism. These were boycotted by all Socialists, who termed them the ”yellow unions,” and regarded them as union workmen in America regard non-union workers. It goes without saying that a political party which automatically enrolls in its members.h.i.+p all workmen who join a labor union cannot help becoming powerful.

That international Socialism is inimical to nationalism and patriotism has already been pointed out, but a word remains to be said on this subject with reference to specific German conditions. We have already seen how the Germany of the beginning of the nineteenth century was a loose aggregation of more than three hundred dynasties, most of which were petty princ.i.p.alities. The heritage of that time was a narrowly limited state patriotism which the Germans termed _Particularismus_, or particularism. Let the American reader a.s.sume that the State of Texas had originally consisted of three hundred separate states, each with its own government, and with customs and dialects varying greatly in the north and south. a.s.sume further that, after seventy years filled with warfare and political strife, these states had been re-formed into twenty-six states, with the ruler of the most powerful at the head of the new federation, and that several of the twenty-six states had reserved control over their posts, telegraphs, railways and customs as the price for joining the federation. Even then he will have but a hazy picture of the handicaps with which the Imperial German Government had to contend.

Particularism was to the last the curse and weakness of the German Empire. The Prussian regarded himself first as a Prussian and only in second place as a German. The Bavarian was more deeply thrilled by the white-and-blue banner of his state than by the black-white-red of the Empire. The republican Hamburger thanked the Providence that did not require him to live across the Elbe in the city of Altona, which was Prussian, and the inhabitants of the former kingdoms, duchies and princ.i.p.alities of Western Germany that became a part of Prussia during the decades preceding the formation of the Empire regularly referred to themselves as _Muss-Preussen_, that is, ”must-Prussians,” or Prussians by compulsion.

The attempt to stretch this narrowly localized patriotism to make it cover the whole Empire could not but result in a seriously diluted product, which offered a favorable culture-medium for the bacillus of internationalism. And in any event, to apply the standards of abstract ethical reasoning to patriotism is fatal. The result may be to leave a residue of traditional and racial attachment to one's state, but that is not sufficient, in the present stage of human society, for the maintenance of a strong government. Patriotism of the my-country-right-or-wrong type must, like revealed religion, be accepted on faith. German patriotism was never of this extreme type, and in attacking it the Socialists made greater headway than would have been the case in most countries.

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