APPENDIX
I. BIBLIOGRAPHY
The following list of the principal works consulted in the preparation of this volume may serve also as a bibliography on the subject. There are very few American books in the list, because the object of this volume is to summarize the European situation.
For the spirit of the movement the student must consult the contemporary literature of Socialism—the newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets, and the campaign documents that flow in a constant stream from the Socialist press. These are, of course, too numerous and too fluctuating in character to be catalogued. Lists of these publications can be secured at the following addresses:
The Fabian Society, 3 Clements Inn, Strand, London, W.C.
The Labor Party, 28 Victoria Street, Westminster, London, S.W.
The Independent Labor Party, 23 Bride Lane, Fleet Street, London, E.C.
German Social Democracy, Verlags-Buchhandlung Vorwärts, 68 Lindenstrasse, Berlin, S.W.
Belgian Labor Party, Le Peuple, 33-35 rue de Sable, Brussels.
French Socialist Party, La Parti Socialiste, 16 rue de la Corderie, Paris.
GENERAL WORKS: THE FOUNDERS OF SOCIALISM
Blanc, Louis: Socialism. An English edition was published in 1848.
—— Organization of Labor. English edition in 1848.
Booth: Saint-Simon and Saint-Simonism.
Cabet, Étienne: Le Vrai Christianisme, 1846.
Feuerbach, Friedrich: Die Religion der Zukunft, 1843-5.
—— Essence of Christianity. An English translation, 1881, in the "English and Foreign Philosophical Library."
Fourier, F.C.M.: Œuvres Complètes. 6 vols. 1841-5.
Gammond, Gatti de: Fourier and His System, 1842.
Gide, Charles: Selections from Fourier. An English translation by Julien Franklin, 1901.
Godwin, William: An Inquiry Concerning Political Justice, 1796.
Kingsley: Cheap Clothes and Nasty, 1851.
Morrell, J.R.: Life of Fourier, 1849.
Morris, William: Works of; Chants for Socialists, 1885.
Owen, Robert: An Address, etc., 1813.
—— Addresses, etc., 1816.
—— An Explanation of the Distress, etc., 1823.
—— Book of the New Moral World, etc., 1836.
Proudhon, Pierre Joseph: The Works of. English translation by Tucker, American edition, 1876.
Saint-Simon: New Christianity. An English translation by Rev. J.E. Smith. 1834.
Weil, G.: L'École Saint-Simonisme—son Histoire, etc., 1896.
Weitling, William: Garantieen der Harmonie und Freiheit, 1845.
GENERAL WORKS: MODERN DISCUSSION
Bebel, A.: Woman, in the Past, Present, and Future. An English translation appeared in London in 1890.
Bernstein, Edward: Responsibility and Solidarity in the Labor Struggle, 1900.
Brooks, J.G.: The Social Unrest, 1903.
Ely, R.T.: French and German Socialism, 1883.
Ensor, R.C.K.: Modern Socialism. A useful collection of Socialist documents, speeches, programs, etc.
Graham, W.: Socialism New and Old, 1890.
Guthrie, W.B.: Socialism Before the French Revolution, 1907.
Guyot, Y.: The Tyranny of Socialism, 1894.
Jaurès, J.: Studies in Socialism, 1906.
Kautsky, K.: The Social Revolution. An English translation by J.B. Askew. The best Continental view of modern Marxianism, and the most widely read.
Kelly, Edmond: Twentieth Century Socialism, 1910. The most noteworthy of recent American contributions to Socialist thought.
Kirkup: A History of Socialism, 1909. A concise and authoritative narrative.
Koigen, D.: Die Kultur-ausschauung des Sozialismus, 1903.
Levy, J.H.: The Outcome of Individualism, 1890.
MacDonald, J.R.: Socialism and Society, 1905. MacDonald is not only the leader of the British Labor Party, but his writings comprise a comprehensive exposition of the views of labor democracy.
—— Character and Democracy, 1906.
—— Socialism, 1907.
—— Socialism and Government, 1909.
Mill, J.S.: Socialism, 1891. A collection of essays, etc., from the writings of John Stuart Mill touching on Socialism.
Rae, J.: Contemporary Socialism, 1908. A standard work.
Richter: Pictures of the Socialist Future, 1893.
Schaeffle: The Impossibility of Social-Democracy, 1892.
—— The Quintessence of Socialism, 1898. Probably the most authoritative and concise refutation of the Socialist dogmas.
Sombart, Werner: Socialism and the Social Movement, 1909. Widely read, both in the original and in the English translation. Contains an interesting critique of Marxianism.
Spencer, Herbert: The Coming Slavery, 1884. A reprint from The Contemporary Review.
Stoddard, Jane: The New Socialism, 1909. A convenient compilation.
Tugan-Baranovsky, M.I.: Modern Socialism, 1910. A systematic and scholarly résumé of the doctrines of Socialism.
Warschauer, O.: Zur Entwickelungsgeschichte des Sozialismus, 1909.
Wells, H.G.: New Worlds for Old, 1909. One of the most popular expositions of Socialism.
MARX AND ENGELS
Aveling, E.B.: The Student's Marx. A handy compilation. 1902.
Boehm-Bawerk: Karl Marx and the Close of His System. An English translation was made in 1898.
Engels, Friedrich: Die Entwickelung des Socialismus von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft, 1891.
—— Socialism—Utopian and Scientific, 1892.
—— L. Feuerbach und der Ausgang der Klassischen Deutschen Philosophie, 1903.
—— Briefe und Auszüge von Briefen, 1906.
—— Friedrich Engels, Sein Leben, Sein Wirken und Seine Schriften, 1895.
Marx and Engels: The Communist Manifesto. There have been many editions; that of 1888 is probably the widest known for its historical Introduction.
Marx, Karl: The Poverty of Philosophy. An answer to Proudhon's La Philosophie de la Misère. An English translation was made by H. Quelch, 1900.
—— Enthüllungen über den Kommunisten Process zu Köln, 1875. Engels' Preface gives an account of the origin of the "Society of the Just."
—— Die Klassenkämpfe in Frankreich, 1848-50.
—— Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany in 1848. An English translation appeared in 1896.
—— Capital, 1896.
—— The International Workingmen's Association. Two addresses on the Franco-Prussian War, 1870.
—— The international Workingmen's Association—The Civil War in France. An address to the General Council of the International, 1871.
THE INTERNATIONAL
Dave, V.: Michel Bakunin et Karl Marx, 1900.
Engels, F.: The International Workingmen's Association, 1891.
Froebel, J.: Ein Lebenslauf—for an account of Marx vs. Bakunin.
Guillaume, J.: L'Internationale: Documents et Souvenirs, 1905.
Jaeckh, Gustav: L'Internationale. An English translation was published in 1904.
Jaeger, E.: Karl Marx und die Internationale Arbeiter Association, 1873.
Maurice, C.E.: Revolutionary Movements of 1848-9, 1887.
Testut, O.: L'Internationale—son origine, son but, son principes, son organisation, etc. Third edition, 1871. A German edition translated by Paul Frohberg, Leipsic, 1872.
—— Le Livre Bleu de l'Internationale, 1871.
Villetard: History of the International. Translated by Susan M. Day, New Haven, 1874.
Ein Complot gegen die Internationale Arbeiter Association, 1874, gives a careful version of the Marxian side of the Bakunin controversy.
"International Workingmen's Association"—"Procès-verbaux, Congrès à Lausanne," 1867.
Troisième Congrès de l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs, Brussels, 1868.
Manifeste aux Travailleurs des Campagnes. Paris, 1870.
Manifeste addressé à toutes les associations ouvrières, etc. Paris, 1874.
International Arbeiter Association Protokoll. A German edition of the Proceedings of the Paris Congress, 1890, with a valuable Introduction by W. Liebknecht.
FRANCE
Jaeger, Eugen: Geschichte der Socialen Bewegung und des Socialismus in Frankreich, 1890.
Jaurès, Jean: L'Armée Nouvelle—L'Organisation Socialiste de la France, 1911. The initial installment of the long-promised account of the Socialist state.
Lavy, A.: L'Œuvre de Millerand, 1902. An appreciative history of Millerand's work. Contains many documents, speeches, etc.
Peixotto, J.: The French Revolution and Modern Socialism, 1901.
Von Stein, Lorenz: Der Sozialismus und Communismus des Heutigen Frankreichs, 1848.
Weil, Georges: Histoire du Mouvement Socialiste en France, 1904.
BELGIUM
Bertrand, Louis: Histoire de la Démocratie et Socialisme en Belgique depuis 1830, 1906. Introduction by Vandervelde.
—— Histoire de la Coopération en Belgique, 1902.
Bertrand, Louis, et al.: 75 Années de Domination Bourgeois, 1905.
Destrée et Vandervelde: Le Socialisme en Belgique.
Langerock, H.: Le Socialisme Agraire, 1895.
Steffens-Frauweiler, H. von: Der Agrar Sozialismus in Belgien, Munich, 1893.
Vandervelde, Émile: Histoire de la Coopération en Belgique, 1902.
—— Essais sur la Question Agraire en Belgique, 1902.
—— Article on the General Strike in Archiv für Sozial Wissenschaft, May, 1908.
GERMANY
Bebel, August: Die Social-Demokratie im Deutschen Reichstag. A series of brochures detailing the activity of the Social Democrats—1871-1893. Of course from a partisan point of view.
—— Aus Meinem Leben, 1910. An intimate recital of the development of Social Democracy in Germany.
Bernstein, Edward: Ferdinand Lassalle und Seine Bedeutung für die Arbeiter Klasse, 1904.
Brandes, Georg: Ferdinand Lassalle: Ein Literarisches Charakter-Bild. Berlin, 1877. An English translation was published in 1911. This is a brilliant biography.
Dawson, W.H.: German Socialism and Ferdinand Lassalle, 1888.
—— Bismarck and State Socialism, 1890.
—— The German Workman, 1906.
—— The Evolution of Modern Germany, 1908.
Eisner, K.: Liebknecht—Sein Leben und Wirken, 1900. A brief sketch of the veteran Social Democrat.
Frank, Dr. Ludwig: Die Bürgerlichen Parteien des Deutschen Reichstags, 1911. A Socialist's account of the rise of German political parties.
Harms, B.: Ferdinand Lassalle und Seine Bedeutung für die Deutsche Sozial-Demokratie, 1909.
—— Sozialismus und die Sozial-Demokratie in Deutschland.
Hooper, E.G.: The German State Insurance System, 1908.
Kampfmeyer, P.: Geschichte der Modernen Polizei im Zusammenhang mit der Allgemeinen Kulturbewegung, 1897. A Socialist's recital of the use of police.
—— Geschichte der Modernen Gesellschafts-klassen in Deutschland, 1896. From a Socialist standpoint.
Kohut, A.: Ferdinand Lassalle—Sein Leben und Wirken, 1889.
Lassalle, Ferdinand: Offenes Antwortschreiben an das Central-Comité zur Berufung eines Allgemeinen Deutschen Arbeiter Congress zu Leipzig, 1863.
—— Die Wissenschaft und die Arbeiter, 1863.
—— Macht und Recht, 1863. A complete edition of Lassalle's works was published in 1899, under the title "Gesamte Werke Ferdinand Lassalles."
Lowe, C.: Prince Bismarck: An Historical Biography, 1885. A sympathetic description of Bismarck's attempt to solve the social problem.
Mehring, F.: Die Deutsche Sozial-Demokratie—Ihre Geschichte und Ihre Lehre, 1879. Third edition. A compact narrative.
Meyer, R.: Emancipationskampf des Vierten Standes, 1882.
Naumann, Friedrich: Die Politischen Parteien, 1911. History of German political parties. A Radical account.
Schmoele, J.: Die Sozial-Demokratische Gewerkschaften in Deutschland seit dem Erlasse des Sozialisten Gesetzes, 1896, etc.
Sozial-Demokratische Partei-Tag-Protokoll. Annual reports of the party conventions.
Documente des Sozialismus. An annual publication edited by Bernstein.
ENGLAND
Arnold-Foster, H.: English Socialism of To-day, 1908.
Barker, J.E.: British Socialism, 1908. A collection of quotations.
Bibby, F.: Trades Unionism and Socialism, 1907.
Blatchford, R.: Merrie England, 1895.
Churchill, Winston: Liberalism and the Social Problem, 1909.
Engels, F.: The Condition of the Working Classes in England in 1844, 1892.
Fay, C.R.: Co-operation at Home and Abroad, 1908.
Gammage, R.G.: History of the Chartist Movement, 1894.
Hardie, Keir: From Serfdom, to Socialism, 1907.
Hobhouse, L.T.: The Labor Movement, 1898.
—— Liberalism, 1911.
—— Democracy and Reaction, 1904.
Hobson, J.A.: The Crisis in Liberalism, 1909.
Holyoake: History of Cooperation, 1906.
Knott, Y.: Conservative Socialism, 1909.
Lecky, W.E.H.: Democracy and Liberty, 1899.
MacDonald, J.R.: The People in Power, 1900.
—— Socialism To-day, 1909.
Masterman, C.F.G.: The Condition of England, 1909.
McCarthy, J.: The Epoch of Reform, 1882. For Chartism and the reform movements of the nineteenth century democracy.
Money, Chiozza: Riches and Poverty, 1911.
Nicholson, J.S.: History, Progress and Ideals of Socialism. A criticism of the Socialist viewpoint.
Noel, Conrad: The Labor Party. A criticism of the attitude of Liberals and Conservatives toward the social problems. From the Labor Party viewpoint.
Snowden, P.: The Socialist Budget, 1907.
Towler, W.G.: Municipal Socialism. The anti-Socialist viewpoint.
The Times: The Socialist Movement in Great Britain, 1909. A reprint of a series of carefully prepared articles in The Times.
Villiers, B.: The Opportunity of Liberalism, 1904.
—— The Socialist Movement in England, 1908.
Webb, S.: Wanted—A Program: An Appeal to the Liberal Party, 1888.
—— Socialism in England, 1890.
Webb, B. and S.: Industrial Democracy, 1902.
—— The History of Trade Unionism, 1911.
II. FRANCE
1. NOTE ON THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT
Yves Guyot, the distinguished French publicist, told the writer that there was only one compact, disciplined political party in France, the United Socialists. Other than the Socialists, there is no well-organized group in the Chamber of Deputies. The Right, Center, and Left coalesce almost insensibly into each other. Party platforms and party loyalty are replaced by a political individualism that to an American politician would seem like political anarchy.
The Chamber of Deputies is supreme—the ministry stands or falls upon its majority's behest. This gives to the deputy a peculiar personal power. He is only loosely affiliated with his group, is a powerful factor in the government of the Republic, and is directly dependent upon his constituents for his tenure in office. The result is a personal, rather then a party, system of politics.
This remarkably decentralized system of representative governance is counterbalanced by a highly efficient and completely centralized system of administration, which is based on civil service, and outlives all the mutations of ministries and shifting of deputies. The ministry, naturally, has theoretical control over the administrative officials. During the campaign for reorganizing the army and navy, and the disestablishment of the Church, under the Radical-Socialist bloc, a few years ago, General André, acting for the ministry, resorted to a comprehensive system of espionage to ferret out the undesirable officers. Every commune has its official scrutinizer, who reports the doings of the employees to the government.
This, in turn, has created a clientilism. The deputy is needed by the ministry, the deputy needs the votes of his constituency, the local officials need the good will of the deputy. The result is a fawning favoritism that has taken the place of party servitude as we know it in America.
The Socialists have precipitated a serious problem in this relation of the government employee to the state: Can the state employees form a union? There are nearly 1,000,000 state employees. This includes not only all the functionaries, but all the workmen in the match factories, the mint, the national porcelain factory and tobacco plants, and the navy yards. In 1885 and again in 1902 the Court of Cassation decided that "the right of forming a union (syndicat) is confined to those who, whether as employers or as workmen or employed, are engaged in industry, agriculture, or commerce, to the exclusion of all other persons and all other occupations."
The government has, however, countenanced some infringements. A few syndicates of municipal and departmental employees are allowed; but they are mostly workmen, not strictly functionaries. There are several syndicates of elementary school teachers. But they have not been allowed to federate their unions. At Lyons the teachers formed a union and, according to law, filed their rules and regulations with the proper official, who turned them over to the Minister of Justice, and after a cabinet consultation it was decided that the union was illegal, but would be ignored. They then joined the local Bourse du Travail (federation of labor), and Briand, then Minister of Education, vetoed their action. Then a number of branches in the public service, including post-office and customs-house employees, teachers, etc., united in forming a committee "pour la défense du droit syndical des salaries de l'état, des départements et du commerce." This "Committee of Defense" petitioned Clémenceau on the right to organize, and intimated that the great and only difference between the state and the private employer is that the former adds political to economic oppression. This is pure Syndicalism. Under the individual political jugglery that takes the place of the party system in France, the problem is not made any the easier.
2. PROGRAM OF THE LIBERAL WING OF THE FRENCH SOCIALISTS,
ADOPTED AT TOURS, 1902, UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF JAURÈS
I.—Declaration of Principles
Socialism proceeds simultaneously from the movement of democracy and from the new forms of production. In history, from the very morrow of the French Revolution, the proletarians perceived that the Declaration of the Rights of Man would remain an illusion unless society transformed ownership.
How, indeed, could freedom, ownership, security, be guaranteed to all, in a society where millions of workers have no property but their muscles, and are obliged, in order to live, to sell their power of work to the propertied minority?
To extend, therefore, to every citizen the guarantees inscribed in the Declaration of Rights, our great Babeuf demanded ownership in common, as a guarantee of welfare in common. Communism was for the boldest proletarians the supreme expression of the Revolution.
Between the political régime, the outcome of the revolutionary movement, and the economic régime of society, there is an intolerable contradiction.
In the political order democracy is realized: all citizens share equally, at least by right, in the sovereignty; universal suffrage is communism in political power.
In the economic order, on the other hand, a minority is sovereign. It is the oligarchy of capital which possesses, directs, administers, and exploits.
Proletarians are acknowledged fit as citizens to manage the milliards of the national and communal budgets; as laborers, in the workshop, they are only a passive multitude, which has no share in the direction of enterprises, and they endure the domination of a class which makes them pay dearly for a tutelage whose utility ceases and whose prolongation is arbitrary.
The irresistible tendency of the proletarians, therefore, is to transfer into the economic order the democracy partially realized in the political order. Just as all the citizens have and handle in common, democratically, the political power, so they must have and handle in common the economic power, the means of production.
They must themselves appoint the heads of work in the workshops, as they appoint the heads of government in the city, and reserve for those who work, for the community, the whole product of work.
This tendency of political democracy to enlarge itself into social democracy has been strengthened and defined by the whole economic evolution.
In proportion as the capitalistic régime developed its effects, the proletariat became conscious of the irreducible opposition between its essential interests and the interests of the class dominant in society, and to the bourgeois form of democracy it opposed more and more the complete and thorough communistic democracy.
All hope of universalizing ownership and independence by multiplying small autonomous producers has disappeared. The great industry is more and more the rule in modern production.
By the enlargement of the world's markets, by the growing facility of transport, by the division of labor, by the increasing application of machinery, by the concentration of capitals, immense concentrated production is gradually ruining or subordinating the small or middling producers.
Even where the number of small craftsmen, small traders, small peasant proprietors, does not diminish, their relative importance in the totality of production grows less unceasingly. They fall under the sway of the great capitalists.
Even the peasant proprietors, who seem to have retained a little independence, are more and more exposed to the crushing forces of the universal market, which capitalism directs without their concurrence and against their interests.
For the sale of their wheat, wine, beetroot, and milk, they are more and more at the mercy of great middlemen or great industries of milling, distilling, and sugar-refining, which dominate and despoil peasant labor.
The industrial proletarians, having lost nearly all chance of individually rising to be employers, and being thus doomed to eternal dependence, are further subject to incessant crises of unemployment and misery, let loose by the unregulated competition of the great capitalist forces.
The immense progress of production and wealth, largely usurped by parasitic classes, has not led to an equivalent progress in well-being and security for the workers, the proletarians. Whole categories of wage-earners are abruptly thrown into extreme misery by the constant introduction of new mechanisms and by the abrupt movements and transformations of industry.
Capitalism itself admits the disorder of the present régime of production, since it tries to regulate it for its gain by capitalistic syndicates, by trusts.
Even if it succeeded in actually disciplining all the forces of production, it would only do so while consummating the domination and the monopoly of capital.
There is only one way of assuring the continued order and progress of production, the freedom of every individual, and the growing well-being of the workers; it is to transfer to the collectivity, to the social community, the ownership of the capitalistic means of production.
The proletariat, daily more numerous, ever better prepared for combined action by the great industry itself, understands that in collectiveness or communism lie the necessary means of salvation for it.
As an oppressed and exploited class, it opposes all the forces of oppression and exploitation, the whole system of ownership, which debases it to be a mere instrument. It does not expect its emancipation from the good will of rulers or the spontaneous generosity of the propertied classes, but from the continual and methodical pressure which it exerts upon the privileged class and the government.
It sets before itself as its final aim, not a partial amelioration, but the total transformation of society. And since it acknowledges no right as belonging to capitalistic ownership, it feels bound to it by no contract. It is determined to fight it, thoroughly, and to the end; and it is in this sense that the proletariat, even while using the legal means which democracy puts into its hands, is and must remain a revolutionary class.
Already by winning universal suffrage, by winning and exercising the right of combining to strike and of forming trade-unions, by the first laws regulating labor and causing society to insure its members, the proletariat has begun to react against the fatal effects of capitalism; it will continue this great and unceasing effort, but it will only end the struggle when all capitalist property has been reabsorbed by the community, and when the antagonism of classes has been ended by the disappearance of the classes themselves, reconciled, or rather made one, in common production and common ownership.
How will be accomplished the supreme transformation of the capitalist régime into the collectivist or communist? The human mind cannot determine beforehand the mode in which history will be accomplished.
The democratic and bourgeois revolution, which originated in the great movement of France in 1789, has come about in different countries in the most different ways. The old feudal system has yielded in one case to force, in another to peaceful and slow evolution. The revolutionary bourgeoisie has at one place and time proceeded to brutal expropriation without compensation, at another to the buying out of feudal servitudes.
No one can know in what way the capitalist servitude will be abolished. The essential thing is that the proletariat should be always ready for the most vigorous and effective action. It would be dangerous to dismiss the possibility of revolutionary events occasioned either by the resistance or by the criminal aggression of the privileged class.
It would be fatal, trusting in the one word revolution, to neglect the great forces which the conscious, organized proletariat can employ within democracy.
These legal means, often won by revolution, represent an accumulation of revolutionary force, a revolutionary capital, of which it would be madness not to take advantage.
Too often the workers neglect to profit by the means of action which democracy and the Republic put into their hands. They do not demand from trade-unionist action, co-operative action, or universal suffrage, all that those forms of action can give.
No formula, no machinery, can enable the working-class to dispense with the constant effort of organization and education.
The idea of the general strike, of general strikes, is invincibly suggested to proletarians by the growing magnitude of working-class organization. They do not desire violence, which is very often the result of an insufficient organization and a rudimentary education of the proletariat; but they would make a great mistake if they did not employ the powerful means of action, which co-ordinates working-class forces to subserve the great interests of the workers or of society; they must group and organize themselves to be in a position to make the privileged class more and more emphatically aware of the gulf which may suddenly be cleft open in the economic life of societies by the abrupt stoppage of the worn-out and interminably exploited workers. They can thereby snatch from the selfishness of the privileged class great reforms interesting the working-class in general, and hasten the complete transformation of an unjust society. But the formula of the general strike, like the partial strike, like political action, is only valuable through the progress of the education, the thought, and the will of the working-class.
The Socialist party defends the Republic as a necessary means of liberation and education. Socialism is essentially republican. It might be even said to be the Republic itself, since it is the extension of the Republic to the régime of property and labor.
The Socialist party needs, to organize the new world, free minds, emancipated from superstitions and prejudices. It asks for and guarantees every human being, every individual, absolute freedom of thinking, and writing, and affirming their beliefs. Over against all religions, dogmas, and churches, as well as over against the class conception of the bourgeoisie, it sets the unlimited right of free thought, the scientific conception of the universe, and a system of public education based exclusively on science and reason.
Thus accustomed to free thought and reflection, citizens will be protected against the sophistries of the capitalistic and clerical reaction. The small craftsmen, small traders, and small peasant proprietors will cease to think that it is Socialism which wishes to expropriate them. The Socialist party will hasten the hour when these small peasant proprietors, ruined by the underselling of their produce, riddled with mortgage debts, and always liable to judicial expropriation, will eventually understand the advantages of generalized and systematized association, and will claim themselves, as a benefit, the socialization of their plots of land.
But it would be useless to prepare inside each nation an organization of justice and peace, if the relations of the nations to one another remained exposed to every enterprise of force, every suggestion of capitalist greed.
The Socialist party desires peace among nations; it condemns every policy of aggression and war, whether continental or colonial. It constantly keeps on the order of the day for civilized countries simultaneous disarmament. While waiting for the day of definite peace among nations, it combats the militarist spirit by doing its utmost to approximate the system of permanent armies to that of national militias. It wishes to protect the territory and the independence of the nation against any surprise; but every offensive policy and offensive weapon is utterly condemned by it.
The close understanding of the workers, of the proletarians of every country, is necessary as well to beat back the forces of aggression and war as to prepare by a concerted action the general triumph of Socialism. The international agreement of the militant proletarians of every country will prepare the triumph of a free humanity, where the differences of classes will have disappeared, and the difference of nations, instead of being a principle of strife and hatred, will be a principle of brotherly emulation in the universal progress of mankind.
It is in this sense and for these reasons that the Socialist party has formulated in its congresses the rule and aim of its action—international understanding of the workers; political and economic organization of the proletariat as a class party for the conquest of government and the socialization of the means of production and exchange; that is to say, the transformation of capitalist society into a collectivist or communist society.
II.—Program of Reforms
The Socialist party, rejecting the policy of all or nothing, has a program of reforms whose realization it pursues forthwith.
(1) Democratization of Public Authorities
1. Universal direct suffrage, without distinction of sex, in every election.
2. Reduction of time of residence. Votes to be cast for lists, with proportional representation, in every election.
3. Legislative measures to secure the freedom and secrecy of the vote.
4. Popular right of initiative and referendum.
5. Abolition of the Senate and Presidency of the Republic. The powers at present belonging to the President of the Republic and the Cabinet to devolve on an executive council appointed by the Parliament.
6. Legal regulation of the legislator's mandate, to be revocable by the vote of any absolute majority of his constituents on the register.
7. Admission of women to all public functions.
8. Absolute freedom of the press, and of assembly guaranteed only by the common law. Abrogation of all exceptional laws on the press. Freedom of civil associations.
9. Full administrative autonomy of the departments and communes, under no reservations but that of the laws guaranteeing the republican, democratic, and secular character of the State.
(2) Complete Secularization of the State
1. Separation of the Churches and the State; abolition of the Budget of Public Worship; freedom of public worship; prohibition of the political and collective action of the Churches against the civil laws and republican liberties.
2. Abolition of the congregations; nationalization of the property in mortmain, of every kind, belonging to them, and appropriation of it for works of social insurance and solidarity; in the interval, all industrial, agricultural, and commercial undertakings are to be forbidden to the congregations.
(3) Democratic and Humane Organization of Justice
1. Substitution for all the present courts, whether civil or criminal, of courts composed of a jury taken from the electoral register and judges elected under guarantees of competence; the jury to be formed by drawing lots from lists drawn up by universal suffrage.
2. Justice to be without fee. Transformation of ministerial offices into public functions. Abolition of the monopoly of the bar.
3. Examination from opposite sides at every stage and on every point.
4. Substitution for the vindictive character of the present punishments, of a system for the safe keeping and the amelioration of convicts.
5. Abolition of the death penalty.
6. Abolition of the military and naval courts.
(4) Constitution of the Family in conformity with Individual Rights
1. Abrogation of every law establishing the civil inferiority of women and natural or adulterine children.
2. Most liberal legislation on divorce. A law sanctioning inquiry into paternity.
(5) Civic and Technical Education
1. Education to be free of charge at every stage.
2. Maintenance of the children in elementary schools at the expense of the public bodies.
3. For secondary and higher education, the community to pay for those of the children who on examination are pronounced fit usefully to continue their studies.
4. Creation of a popular higher education.
5. State monopoly of education at the three stages; as a means towards this, all members of the regular and secular clergy to be forbidden to open and teach in a school.
(6) General recasting of the System of Taxation upon Principles of Social Solidarity
1. Abolition of every tax on articles of consumption which are primary necessaries, and of the four direct contributions;[1] accessorily, relief from taxation of all small plots of land and small professional businesses.[2]
2. Progressive income-tax, levied on each person's income as a whole, in all cases where it exceeds 3,000 francs (£120).
3. Progressive tax on inheritances, the scale of progression being calculated with reference both to the amount of the inheritance and the degree of remoteness of the relationship.
4. The State to be empowered to seek a part of the revenue which it requires from certain monopolies.
(7) Legal Protection and Regulation of Labor in Industry, Commerce, and Agriculture
1. One day's rest per week, or prohibition of employers to exact work more than six days in seven.
2. Limitation of the working-day to eight hours; as a means towards this, vote of every regulation diminishing the length of the working-day.
3. Prohibition of the employment of children under fourteen; half-time system for young persons, productive labor being combined with instruction and education.
4. Prohibition of night-work for women and young persons. Prohibition of night-work for adult workers of all categories and in all industries where night-work is not absolutely necessary.
5. Legislation to protect home-workers.
6. Prohibition of piece-work and of truck. Legal recognition of blacklisting.
7. Scales of rates forming a minimum wage to be fixed by agreement between municipalities and the working-class corporations of industry, commerce, and agriculture.
8. Employers to be forbidden to make deductions from wages, as fines or otherwise. Workers to assist in framing special rules for workshops.
9. Inspection of workshops, mills, factories, mines, yards, public services, shops, etc., shall be carried out with reference to the conditions of work, hygiene, and safety, by inspectors elected by the workmen's unions, in concurrence with the State inspectors.
10. Extension of the industrial arbitration courts to all wage-workers of industry, commerce, and agriculture.
11. Convict labor to be treated as a State monopoly; the charge for all work done shall be the wage normally paid to trade-unionist workers.
12. Women to be forbidden by law to work for six weeks before confinement and for six weeks after.
(8) Social Insurance against all Natural and Economic Risks
1. Organization by the nation of a system of social insurance, applying to the whole mass of industrial, commercial, and agricultural workers, against the risks of sickness, accident, disability, old age, and unemployment.
2. The insurance funds to be found without drawing on wages; as a means towards this, limitation of the contribution drawn from the wage-workers to a third of the total contribution, the two other thirds to be provided by the State and the employers.
3. The law on workmen's accidents to be improved and applied without distinction or nationality.
4. The workers to take part in the control and administration of the insurance system.
(9) Extension of the Domain and Public Services, Industrial and Agricultural, of State, Department, and Commune
1. Nationalization of railways, mines, the Bank of France, insurance, the sugar refineries and sugar factories, the distilleries, and the great milling establishments.
2. Organization of public employment registries for the workers, with the assistance of the Bourses du Travail and the workmen's organizations: and abolition of the private registries.
3. State organization of agricultural banks.
4. Grants to rural communes to assist them to purchase agricultural machinery collectively, to acquire communal domains, worked under the control of the communes by unions of rural laborers, and to establish depôts and entrepôts.
5. Organization of communal services for lighting, water, common transport, construction, and public management of cheap dwellings.
6. Democratic administration of the public services, national and communal; organizations of workers to take part in their administration and control; all wage-earners in all public services to have the right of forming trade-unions.
7. National and communal service of public health, and strengthening of the laws which protect it—those on unhealthy dwellings, etc.
(10) Policy of International Peace and Adaptation of the Military Organization to the Defense of the Country
1. Substitution of a militia for the standing Army, and adoption of every measure, such as reductions of military service, leading up to it.
2. Remodeling and mitigation of the military penal code; abolition of disciplinary corps, and prohibition of the prolongation of military service by way of penalty.
3. Renunciation of all offensive war, no matter what its pretext.
4. Renunciation of every alliance not aimed exclusively at the maintenance of peace.
5. Renunciation of Colonial military expeditions; and in the present Colonies or Protectorates, withdrawn from the influence of missionaries and the military régime, development of institutions to protect the natives.
3. BASIS OF THE UNITED SOCIALIST PARTY OF FRANCE
Adopted January 13, 1905
The representatives of the various Socialistic organizations of France: the revolutionary Socialist Labor Party, the Socialist Party of France, the French Socialist Party, the independent federations of Bouches-du-Rhône, of Bretagne, of Hérault, of the Somme, and of l'Yonne, commanded by their respective parties and federations to form a union upon the basis indicated by the International Congress of Amsterdam, declare that the action of a unified party should be based upon the principles established by the International Congress, especially those held in France in 1900 and Amsterdam in 1904.
The divergence of views and the various interpretations of the tactics of the Socialists which have prevailed up to the present moment have been due to circumstances peculiar to France and to the absence of a general party organization.
The delegates declare their common desire to form a party based upon the class war which, at the same time, will utilize to its profit the struggles of the laboring classes and unite their action with that of a political party organized for the defense of the rights of the proletariat, whose interests will always rest in a party fundamentally and irreconcilably opposed to all the bourgeois classes and to the state which is their instrument.
Therefore the delegates declare that their respective organizations are prepared to collaborate immediately in this work of the unification of all the Socialistic forces in France, upon the following basis, unanimously adopted:
1. The Socialist Party is a class party which has for its aim the socialization of the means of production and exchange, that is to say, to transform the present capitalistic society into a collective or communistic society by means of the political and economic organization of the proletariat. By its aims, by its ideals, by the power which it employs, the Socialist Party, always seeking to realize the immediate reforms demanded by the working class, is not a party of reforms, but a party of class war and revolution.
2. The members of Parliament elected by the party form a unique group opposed to all the factions of the bourgeois parties. The Socialist group in Parliament must refuse to sustain all of those means which assure the domination of the bourgeoisie in government and their maintenance in power: must therefore refuse to vote for military appropriations, appropriations for colonial conquest, secret funds, and the budget.
Even in the most exceptional circumstances the Socialist members must not pledge the party without its consent.
In Parliament the Socialist group must consecrate itself to defending and extending the political liberties and rights of the working classes and to the realization of those reforms which ameliorate the conditions of life in the struggle for existence of the working class.
The deputies should always hold themselves at the disposition of the party, giving themselves to the general propaganda, the organization of the proletariat, and constantly working toward the ultimate goal of Socialism.
3. Every member of the legislature individually, as well as each militant Socialist, is subject to the control of his federation; all of the officials in all of the groups are subject to the central organization. In every case the national congress has the final jurisdiction over all party matters.
4. There shall be complete freedom of discussion in the press concerning questions of principle and policy, but the conduct of all the Socialist publications must be strictly in accord with the decisions of the national congress as interpreted by the executive committee of the party. Journals which are or may become the property of the party, either of the national party or of the federations, will naturally be placed under the management of authorities permanently established for that purpose by the party or the federations. Journals which are not the property of the party, but proclaim themselves as Socialistic, must conform strictly to the resolutions of the congress as interpreted by the proper party authorities, and they should insert all the official communications of the party and party notices, as they may be requested to do. The central committee of the party may remind such journals of the policies of the party, and if they are recalcitrant may propose to the congress that all intercourse between them and the party be broken.
5. Members of Parliament shall not be appointed members of the central committee, but they shall be represented on the central committee by a committee equal to one-tenth of the number of delegates, and in no case shall their representation be less than five. The Federation shall not appoint as delegates to the Central Committee "militants" who reside within the limits of the Federation.
6. The party will take measures for insuring, on the part of the officials, respect for the mandates of the party, and will fix the amount of their assessment.
7. A congress charged with the definite organization of the party will be convened as soon as possible upon the basis of proportional representation fixed, first upon the number of members paying dues, and second upon the number of votes cast in the general elections of 1902.
III. GERMANY
1. POLITICAL PARTIES IN GERMANY
There are a great many "fractions" in German politics. But, following the Continental custom, they are all grouped into three divisions, the Left or Radical, Right or Conservative, and the Center. In Germany the Center is the Catholic or Clerical Party. The leading groups are as follows:
1. Conservative.—The "German Conservatives" are the old tories; the "Free Conservatives" profess, but rarely show, a tendency toward liberal ideas, although they have, at intervals, opposed ministerial measures. The Conservatives are for the Government (Regierung) first, last, and all the time. They were a powerful factor under Bismarck and docile in his hands. Since his day they have suffered many defeats because of their reactionary policy. But the group still is the Kaiser's party, the stronghold of modern medievalism, opposed to radical reforms, and adhering to "the grace of God" policy of monarchism. Economically they are junker and "big business." The anti-Socialist laws were the expression of their ideas as to Socialism and the way to quench it.
2. National Liberal.—This party is not liberal, in the sense that England or America knows liberalism. It is really only a less conservative party than the extreme Right, although it began as the brilliant Progressist Party of the early '60's. It was triumphant in the Prussian Diet until Bismarck shattered it on his war policy. In the first Reichstag it had 116 members, nearly one-third of the whole. But Bismarck needed it, got it, and left it quite as conservative as he wished. It voted for the anti-Socialist laws and for state insurance.
3. Progressive (Freisinnige, literally, "free-minded").—This faction is a cession from the old Progressist Party of which Lassalle was a member for a few months. They are Radicals of a very moderate type, and are opposed to the junker bureaucracy. There are two wings—the People's Party (Freisinnige Volkspartei) and the Progressive Union (Freisinnige Vereinigung). It is a constitutional party, and has counted in its ranks such eminent scholars as Professor Virchow and Professor Theodor Mommsen. They are in favor of ministerial responsibility, are free traders of the Manchester type, opposed to state intervention and state insurance, but favor factory inspection, sanitation, and other social legislation. They are in favor of freedom in religion, trade, and education, and espouse ballot reform. They have a well-organized party, but do not seem effective in winning elections. They share, to some degree, with the Social Democrats the prejudice of the religious folk against free-thinking and religious latitudinarianism. It is the middle-class party of protest against bureaucracy.
4. The Center, or Catholic Party, is a homogeneous, isolated, well-disciplined, inflexible group, dominated by loyalty to their religion. Whenever they have co-operated with the government it has been in return for favors shown. The ranks of this party were closed by the Culturkampf, which resulted in the expulsion of the Jesuit orders and the separation of the elementary schools from the Church. The party is reactionary in politics and economics.
5. Anti-Semitic.—The name discloses the ideals of a party inspired by dread and hatred of an element that comprises less than 1.5 per cent. of the population, and whose political disabilities were not all removed until 1850 in Prussia and 1869 in Mecklenburg. This party was formed in 1880, largely through the agitation of the Court Chaplain, Pastor Stöcker, whose diatribes were peculiarly effective in Berlin, where some very disgraceful scenes were enacted by members of this party.
6. Independent groups are formed by the various nationalities that are under subjection to German dominance. These are the Danish, Hannoverian, Alsace-Lorraine, and Polish groups. They usually are grouped with the Center.
7. There are also a number of independent members in the Reichstag. They adhere loosely to the larger groups, but as a rule merit the name given them—Wilden, "wild ones."
The accompanying table (p. 297) shows the distribution of seats in the Reichstag, for the past thirty years.
2. SOME MODERN GERMAN ELECTION LAWS
Analysis of the New Election Law of Saxony
A. One vote—every male 25 years of age.
B. Two votes, every male, as follows:
1. Those who have an annual income of over 1,600 marks ($400).
2. Those who hold public office or a permanent private position with an annual income of over 1,400 marks ($350).
3. Those who are eligible to vote for Landskulturrat (Agricultural Board) or Gewerbskammer (Chamber of Commerce) and from their business have an income of over 1,400 marks. (This includes merchants, landowners, and manufacturers.)
4. Those who are owners or beneficiaries of property in the kingdom from which they have an income of 1,250 marks ($312.50) a year, and upon which at least 100 tax units are assessed.
5. Those who own, or are beneficiaries of, land in the kingdom, to the extent of at least 2 hectares, devoted to agriculture, or forestry, or horticulture, or more than one-half hectare devoted to gardening or wine culture.
6. Those who have conducted such professional studies as entitle them to the one-year volunteer military service.
C. The following have three votes:
1. Those who have an income of over 2,200 marks ($550).
2. Those in division B, 2 and 3, who have an income from office or position of over 1,900 marks ($475).
3. Those who are not in private or public service and have a professional income of over 1,900 marks. (This includes lawyers, physicians, artists, engineers, publicists, authors, professors.)
4. Those in B, 4, whose income is over 1,600 marks ($400).
5. Those in B, 5, with 4 hectares devoted to agriculture, etc., and 1 hectare to gardening or wine culture.
D. The following have four votes:
1. Those who have an income of 2,800 marks ($700).
2. Those in B, 2 and 3, or in C, 3, with an income over 2,500 marks ($625).
3. Those in B, 4, with an annual income of over 2,200 marks ($550).
4. Those in B, 5, with 8 hectares devoted to agriculture or 2 hectares devoted to gardening or wine culture.
E. Voters over 50 years old have an extra vote (Alters-stimme), but no voter is allowed over four votes.
Sachsen-Altenburg, in 1908-9, modified its election laws as follows: The legislature is composed of 9 representatives elected by the cities; 12 by the rural districts; 7 by the highest taxpayers; one each by the Chamber of Commerce, the Board of Agriculture, the Craft guilds (Handwerks-kammer), and the Labor Council (Arbeiter-kammer). The vigorous protest of the Social Democrats did not avail against the passage of this law.
Saxe-Weimar recently modified its election law as follows: All citizens of communes were given the right to vote. The great feudal estates (165 persons in 1909) elect 5 representatives to the Diet; the rest of the highest taxpayers, i.e., those who have a taxable income of over 3,000 marks, elect 5. The University of Jena elects 1 member, the Chamber of Commerce 1, the Handwerks-kammer (Craft Guilds) 1, Landwirthschaftkammer (Agricultural Board) 1, the Arbeitskammer (Labor Council) 1. There are 38 members in the Diet: the remaining 23 are elected at large.
3. STATISTICAL TABLES
STATE INSURANCE IN GERMANY
Industrial Insurance in Germany, 1908.
| Sick benefits: | Number insured | 13,189,599 | |
| Men | 9,880,541 | ||
| Women | 3,309,058 | ||
| Income | 365,994,000 | marks | |
| Outlay | 331,049,900 | marks | |
| Accident Insurance: | Number insured | 23,674,000 | |
| Men | 14,795,400 | ||
| Women | 8,878,600 | ||
| Income | 207,550,500 | marks | |
| Outlay | 157,884,700 | marks | |
| Old-Age Pensions: | Number insured | 15,226,000 | |
| Men | 10,554,000 | ||
| Women | 4,672,000 | ||
| Income | 285,882,000 | marks | |
| Outlay | 181,476,800 | marks |
From 1885 to 1908 a total of 9,791,376,100 marks ($2,447,844,025) was paid out in industrial insurance. (Compiled from Statistisches Jahrbuch des Deutschen Reiches.)
LABOR UNIONS IN GERMANY
| Name of Union | Membership | No. of Unions | Amount in Treasury—Marks | |||
| 1908 | 1909 | 1908 | 1909 | 1908 | 1909 | |
| Social Democratic | 1,831,731 | 1,892,568 | 11,024 | 11,725 | 40,839,791 | 43,743,793 |
| Hirsh-Duncker | 105,633 | 108,028 | 2,095 | 2,102 | 4,210,413 | 4,372,495 |
| Christian | 264,519 | 280,061 | 3,212 | 3,856 | 4,513,409 | 5,365,338 |
| Patriotic | 16,507 | 9,957 | 69 | 91 | 57,786 | 24,858 |
| "Yellow" | 47,532 | 53,849 | 79 | 85 | 386,305 | 437,602 |
| Independent* | 615,873 | 654,240 | 1,357,802 | 1,655,325 | ||
| * This is a nondescript group of local organizations, containing (1909) 56,183 Poles, as well as the organization of railwaymen, telegraph operators, postal employees, all in the government service, and organized as friendly societies rather than as fighting bodies. Government employees are not supposed to participate in "Unionism." Compiled from Statistisches Jahrbuch des Deutschen Reiches. | ||||||
TABLE SHOWING VOTE CAST IN REICHSTAG ELECTIONS SINCE THE FOUNDING OF THE EMPIRE*
| Election Year | 1871 | 1874 | 1877 | 1878 | 1881 | 1884 | 1887 | 1890 | 1893 | 1898 | 1903 | 1907 | 1912 | ||
| Population of Empire | 40,997,000 | 42,004,000 | 43,610,000 | 44,129,000 | 45,428,000 | 46,336,000 | 47,630,000 | 49,241,000 | 50,757,000 | 54,406,000 | 58,629,000 | 61,983,000 | 65,407,000 | ||
| Number of voters | 7,656,000 | 8,523,000 | 8,943,000 | 9,128,000 | 9,090,000 | 9,383,000 | 9,770,000 | 10,146,000 | 10,628,000 | 11,441,000 | 12,531,000 | 13,353,000 | 14,442,000 | ||
| Number who voted | 3,885,000 | 5,190,000 | 5,401,000 | 5,761,000 | 5,098,000 | 5,663,000 | 7,541,000 | 7,229,000 | 7,674,000 | 7,753,000 | 9,496,000 | 11,304,000 | 12,207,000 | ||
| Per cent. of vote cast | 51.0 | 61.2 | 60.6 | 63.3 | 56.3 | 60.6 | 77.5 | 71.6 | 72.2 | 68.1 | 75.8 | 84.7 | 84.5 | ||
| Conservative | 549,000 | 360,000 | 526,000 | 749,000 | 831,000 | 861,000 | 1,147,000 | 895,000 | 1,038,000 | 859,000 | 935,000 | 1,099,000 | 1,126,000 | ||
| Imperial Conservative | 346,000 | 376,000 | 427,000 | 786,000 | 379,000 | 388,000 | 736,000 | 482,000 | 438,000 | 344,000 | 333,000 | 494,000 | 383,000 | ||
| Anti-Semites | — | — | — | — | — | — | 12,000 | 48,000 | 264,000 | 284,000 | 249,000 | 261,000 | — | ||
| Other Conservative Groups | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 66,000 | 250,000 | 250,000 | 230,000 | 272,000 | 424,000 | ||
| Center | 724,000 | 1,446,000 | 1,341,000 | 1,328,000 | 1,183,000 | 1,282,000 | 1,516,000 | 1,342,000 | 1,469,000 | 1,455,000 | 1,866,000 | 2,159,000 | 1,991,000 | ||
| Guelphs | 73,000 | 72,000 | 86,000 | 107,000 | 87,000 | 96,000 | 113,000 | 113,000 | 106,000 | 109,000 | 101,000 | 94,000 | 91,000 | ||
| Danes | 21,000 | 20,000 | 17,000 | 16,000 | 14,000 | 14,000 | 12,000 | 14,000 | 14,000 | 15,000 | 15,000 | 15,000 | 17,000 | ||
| Poles | 176,000 | 209,000 | 216,000 | 216,000 | 201,000 | 203,000 | 220,000 | 247,000 | 230,000 | 252,000 | 354,000 | 458,000 | 448,000 | ||
| Alsatians | — | 190,000 | 149,000 | 130,000 | 147,000 | 166,000 | 234,000 | 101,000 | 115,000 | 107,000 | 127,000 | 107,000 | 157,000 | ||
| National Liberal | 1,171,000 | 1,499,000 | 1,470,000 | 1,331,000 | 747,000 | 997,000 | 1,678,000 | 1,179,000 | 997,000 | 984,000 | 1,338,000 | 1,696,000 | 1,723,000 | ||
| Other Liberal groups | 281,000 | 98,000 | 89,000 | 69,000 | 429,000 | — | — | — | 258,000 | 235,000 | 285,000 | 435,000 |
| ||
| Progressist or Radical | 361,000 | 469,000 | 403,000 | 388,000 | 649,000 | 997,000 | 973,000 | 1,160,000 | 666,000 | 558,000 | 538,000 | 744,000 | |||
| People's Party | 50,000 | 39,000 | 49,000 | 69,000 | 108,000 | 96,000 | 89,000 | 148,000 | 167,000 | 109,000 | 92,000 | 139,000 | |||
| Social Democrats | 124,000 | 352,000 | 493,000 | 437,000 | 312,000 | 550,000 | 763,000 | 1,427,000 | 1,787,000 | 2,107,000 | 3,011,000 | 3,259,000 | 4,250,000 | ||
| * In round numbers. From Kürschner's Deutscher Reichstag, p. 24. | |||||||||||||||
PARTY REPRESENTATION IN THE REICHSTAG
The Years are those of General Elections—Excepting 1911
| Party or Faction. | 1881 | 1884 | 1887 | 1890 | 1893 | 1898 | 1900 | 1903 | 1906 | 1907 | 1911 | 1912 | |||||||||
| Conservatives | 50 | 76 | 80 | 72 | 67 | 53 | 51 | 52 | 52 | 58 | 59 | 43 | ||||||||
| German or Imperial Conservatives | 27 | 28 | 41 | 20 | 28 | 22 | 20 | 19 | 22 | 22 | 25 | 14 | |||||||||
| "Wild" Conservatives | 1 | 2 | — | 1 | 5 | 4 | 7 | 6 | 1 | 4 | 2 | 2 | |||||||||
| Anti-Semites | — | — | 1 | 5 | 16 | 14 | 13 | 11 | 14 | 20 |
| 13 | |||||||||
| League of Landowners | — | — | — | — | — | 5 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 7 | |||||||||||
| Bavarian Land League | — | — | — | — | 4 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 1 | — | 2 | |||||||||
| Center | 98 | 99 | 98 | 106 | 96 | 102 | 102 | 100 | 100 | 104 | 103 | 90 | ||||||||
| Poles | 18 | 16 | 13 | 16 | 19 | 15 | 14 | 16 | 16 | 20 | 20 | 18 | |||||||||
| Guelphs | 10 | 11 | 4 | 11 | 7 | 9 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 2 | 3 | 5 | |||||||||
| Alsatians | 15 | 15 | 15 | 10 | 8 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 8 | 7 | 9 | |||||||||
| Danes | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
| "Wild" Clericals | 2 | — | — | — | — | — | 1 | — | 1 | — | — | 1 | |||||||||
| National Liberals | 45 | 51 | 98 | 41 | 53 | 48 | 53 | 50 | 51 | 54 | 51 | 45 | ||||||||
| United Progressives (Radicals) |
| 47 |
| 32 |
| 14 | 13 | 15 | 9 | 10 | 14 |
| 42 | ||||||||
| Other Progressive groups (Radicals) | 59 | 23 | 29 | 28 | 21 | 20 | 28 | ||||||||||||||
| People's Party | 8 | 7 | — | 10 | 11 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 6 | 7 | |||||||||||
| "Wild" Liberals | 3 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 2 | — | 4 | 4 | 2 | |||||||||
| Social Democrats* | 12 | 24 | 11 | 35 | 44 | 56 | 58 | 81 | 79 | 43 | 53 | 110 | |||||||||
| * They form the extreme Radical Left. (These groups are those given in Kürchner's Deutscher Reichstag, p. 398.) | |||||||||||||||||||||
4. PROGRAM OF THE GERMAN SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY
Adopted at Erfurt, 1891
The economic development of bourgeois society leads by natural necessity to the downfall of the small industry, whose foundation is formed by the worker's private ownership of his means of production. It separates the worker from his means of production, and converts him into a propertyless proletarian, while the means of production become the monopoly of a relatively small number of capitalists and large landowners.
Hand-in-hand with this monopolization of the means of production goes the displacement of the dispersed small industries by colossal great industries, the development of the tool into the machine, and a gigantic growth in the productivity of human labor. But all the advantages of this transformation are monopolized by capitalists and large landowners. For the proletariat and the declining intermediate classes—petty bourgoisie and peasants—it means a growing augmentation of the insecurity of their existence, of misery, oppression, enslavement, debasement, and exploitation.
Ever greater grows the number of proletarians, ever more enormous the army of surplus workers, ever sharper the opposition between exploiters and exploited, ever bitterer the class-war between bourgeoisie and proletariat, which divides modern society into two hostile camps, and is the common hall-mark of all industrial countries.
The gulf between the propertied and the propertyless is further widened through the crises, founded in the essence of the capitalistic method of production, which constantly become more comprehensive and more devastating, which elevate general insecurity to the normal condition of society, and which prove that the powers of production of contemporary society have grown beyond measure, and that private ownership of the means of production has become incompatible with their application to their objects and their full development.
Private ownership of the means of production, which was formerly the means of securing to the producer the ownership of his product, has to-day become the means of expropriating peasants, manual workers, and small traders, and enabling the non-workers—capitalists and large landowners—to own the product of the workers. Only the transformation of capitalistic private ownership of the means of production—the soil, mines, raw materials, tools, machines, and means of transport—into social ownership and the transformation of production of goods for sale into Socialistic production managed for and through society, can bring it about, that the great industry and the steadily growing productive capacity of social labor shall for the hitherto exploited classes be changed from a source of misery and oppression to a source of the highest welfare and of all-round harmonious perfection.
This social transformation means the emancipation not only of the proletariat, but of the whole human race which suffers under the conditions of to-day. But it can only be the work of the working-class, because all the other classes, in spite of mutually conflicting interests, take their stand on the basis of private ownership of the means of production, and have as their common object the preservation of the principles of contemporary society.
The battle of the working-class against capitalistic exploitation is necessarily a political battle. The working-class cannot carry on its economic battles or develop its economic organization without political rights. It cannot effect the passing of the means of production into the ownership of the community without acquiring political power.
To shape this battle of the working-class into a conscious and united effort, and to show it its naturally necessary end, is the object of the Social Democratic Party.
The interests of the working-class are the same in all lands with capitalistic methods of production. With the expansion of world-transport and production for the world-market the state of the workers in any one country becomes constantly more dependent on the state of the workers in other countries. The emancipation of the working-class is thus a task in which the workers of all civilized countries are concerned in a like degree. Conscious of this, the Social Democratic Party of Germany feels and declares itself one with the class-conscious workers of all other lands.
The Social Democratic Party of Germany fights thus not for new class-privileges and exceptional rights, but for the abolition of class-domination and of the classes themselves, and for the equal rights and equal obligations of all, without distinction of sex and parentage. Setting out from these views, it combats in contemporary society not merely the exploitation and oppression of the wage-workers, but every kind of exploitation and oppression, whether directed against a class, a party, a sex, or a race.
Setting out from these principles the Social Democratic Party of Germany demands immediately—
1. Universal equal direct suffrage and franchise, with direct ballot, for all members of the Empire over twenty years of age, without distinction of sex, for all elections and acts of voting. Proportional representation; and until this is introduced, re-division of the constituencies by law according to the numbers of population. A new Legislature every two years. Fixing of elections and acts of voting for a legal holiday. Indemnity for the elected representatives. Removal of every curtailment of political rights except in case of tutelage.
2. Direct legislation by the people by means of the initiative and referendum. Self-determination and self-government of the people in empire, state, province, and commune. Authorities to be elected by the people; to be responsible and bound. Taxes to be voted annually.
3. Education of all to be capable of bearing arms. Armed nation instead of standing army. Decision of war and peace by the representatives of the people. Settlement of all international disputes by the method of arbitration.
4. Abolition of all laws which curtail or suppress the free expression of opinion and the right of association and assembly.
5. Abolition of all laws which are prejudicial to women in their relations to men in public or private law.
6. Declaration that religion is a private matter. Abolition of all contributions from public funds to ecclesiastical and religious objects. Ecclesiastical and religious communities are to be treated as private associations, which manage their affairs quite independently.
7. Secularization of education. Compulsory attendance of public primary schools. No charges to be made for instruction, school requisites, and maintenance, in the public primary schools; nor in the higher educational institutions for those students, male and female, who in virtue of their capacities are considered fit for further training.
8. No charge to be made for the administration of the law, or for legal assistance. Judgment by popularly elected judges. Appeal in criminal cases. Indemnification of innocent persons prosecuted, arrested, or condemned. Abolition of the death-penalty.
9. No charges to be made for medical attendance, including midwifery and medicine. No charges to be made for death certificates.
10. Graduated taxes on income and property, to meet all public expenses as far as these are to be covered by taxation. Obligatory self-assessment. A tax on inheritance, graduated according to the size of the inheritance and the degree of kinship. Abolition of all indirect taxes, customs, and other politico-economic measures which sacrifice the interests of the whole community to the interests of a favored minority.
For the protection of the working-class the Social Democratic Party of Germany demands immediately—
1. An effective national and international legislation for the protection of workmen on the following basis:
(a) Fixing of a normal working-day with a maximum of eight hours.
(b) Prohibition of industrial work for children under fourteen years.
(c) Prohibition of night-work, except for such branches of industry as, in accordance with their nature, require night-work, for technical reasons, or reasons of public welfare.
(d) An uninterrupted rest of at least thirty-six hours in every week for every worker.
(e) Prohibition of the truck system.
2. Inspection of all industrial businesses, investigation and regulation of labor relations in town and country by an Imperial Department of Labor, district labor departments, and chambers of labor. Thorough industrial hygiene.
3. Legal equalization of agricultural laborers and domestic servants with industrial workers; removal of the special regulations affecting servants.
4. Assurance of the right of combination.
5. Workmen's insurance to be taken over bodily by the Empire; and the workers to have an influential share in its administration.
6. Separation of the Churches and the State.
(a) Suppression of the grant for public worship.
(b) Philosophic or religious associations to be civil persons at law.
7. Revision of sections in the Civil Code concerning marriage and the paternal authority.
(a) Civil equality of the sexes, and of children, whether natural or legitimate.
(b) Revision of the divorce laws, maintaining the husband's liability to support the wife or the children.
(c) Inquiry into paternity to be legalized.
(d) Protective measures in favor of children materially or morally abandoned.
5. COMMUNAL PROGRAM OF THE BAVARIAN SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY
Inasmuch as our communes are hindered in the fulfilment of their economic and political duties by reactionary laws, we demand:
A.—Of the State:
1. A change of the municipal code, granting genuine local autonomy. A single representative chamber, a four-year term of office, one-half retiring every two years. Universal adult suffrage, secret ballot, the franchise not to be denied to those receiving public aid.
2. Radical tax reform, through the establishing of a uniform, progressive income and property tax, collected by the communes; local taxes to be assessed upon increment value; and prohibition of all taxes upon the necessaries of life.
3. A common-school law providing universal public education free from all religious bias, compulsory up to fourteen years of age. Obligatory secondary schools, the inclusion of social and political economy in their curricula; the defraying of expenses of pupils by the state. Substitution of professional supervision of schools for clerical supervision.
4. Enactment of a domiciliary law, in place of the present inadequate laws, providing for all the necessary sanitary and socio-political demands. Extending the municipalities' right of condemnation to the extent that towns may erect houses and schools, open streets, and make all necessary public improvements demanded by the public welfare.
5. Passage of a sanitary code. Regulation of sanitation in the public interests. Free medical attendance at births. Public nurseries.
6. The administration of public charities by the local authorities.
B.—Of the Commune We Demand:
1. Abolishing all taxes upon the rights of citizenship and of residence. Granting of full franchise rights after one year's residence.
2. Elections to be held on a holiday or on Sunday.
3. Pensions for communal employees.
4. The cost of local administration to be borne by local property or from additions to the direct state taxes. Abolishing of all indirect taxes. Denial of all public aid to the Church.
5. All public services to be conducted by the commune; these to be considered as public conveniences and necessities, and not to serve a mere pecuniary interest, but to be run as the public welfare demands. Rational development of existing water-power, means of communication, etc.
6. Stipulating, in every contract for municipal work, the wages to be paid, and other conditions of labor, such arrangements to be made with the labor organizations; the right to organize into unions not to be denied to laborers and municipal employees and officers. Abolishing of strike clause in contracts for public works. Prohibition, of the sub-contractor system. Securing wages of workmen by bonds. Forbidding municipal officers participating in any business that will bring them into contract relations with the municipality.
7. Development of a public school system which shall be non-sectarian and free to all. Restricting the number of pupils in the classes as far as practical. Furnishing free meals and clothing to needy school children; such service not to be counted as public charity. Establishing continuation schools for both sexes, and schools for backward children. Establishing of public reading-rooms and free public libraries.
8. The advancement of public housing plans. The purchasing of large land areas by the municipality, to prevent speculation in building lots. Simplification of the procedure in examination of building plans, and the granting of building permits. Simplifying the regulations pertaining to the building of cottages and small residences. Municipal aid in the building of workingmen's homes. Providing cheaper homes in municipal houses and tenements. Providing loans of public moneys to building associations and agricultural associations. Leasing of land by the municipality. Municipal inspection of dwellings and of all buildings, the municipality to keep close scrutiny on all real estate developments. Establishment of a public bureau of homes, where information and aid can be secured, and where proper statistics can be gathered concerning building conditions.
9. Providing for cheap and wholesome food through the regulation and supervision of its importation and inspection.
10. Extension of sanitation. Conducting hospitals according to modern medical science. Establishing municipal lying-in hospitals. Free burials.
11. Public care for the poor and orphans. The bettering of the economic condition of women. The granting of aid out of public funds. Public inspection and control of all orphanages, hospitals for children, and nurseries.
12. The establishment of public labor bureaus, which are to act as employment agencies, information bureaus, gather labor statistics, and supervise the sociological activities of the municipality.
Providing work for those in need of employment, on the public works of the commune. Provision for the support of those out of work in co-operation, with the labor unions' efforts in the same direction. The extension of municipal factory inspection and labor laws, as far as the general laws permit. Appointment of laborers as building inspectors. The development of the industrial and commercial courts. Sunday as a day of rest.
13. Liberal wages to be paid workmen employed on public works. Fixing a minimum wage in accordance with the rules of the labor unions; formation of public loan and credit system; eight-hour day. Insuring public employees against sickness, accident, and old age. Making provision for widows and orphans of public employees. Right to organize not to be denied all municipal employees and officials. Recognition of the unions. Annual vacation, on full pay, to every municipal employee and official. Municipal employees to be given their wages during their attendance on military manœuvers, and the payment of the difference between their wages and their sick-benefits in case of illness.
14. Formation of a union of communes or towns, when isolated municipalities find themselves impotent in securing these demands.
6. ELECTION ADDRESS (WAHLRUF) OF THE GERMAN SOCIAL DEMOCRATS
FOR THE REICHSTAG ELECTIONS OF 1912
On the 12th of January, 1912, the general election for the Reichstag takes place. Rarely have the voters been called upon to participate in a more consequential election. This election will determine whether, in the succeeding years, the policy of oppression and plundering shall be carried still farther, or whether the German people shall finally achieve their rights.
In the Reichstag elections of 1907 the voters were deceived by the government and the so-called national parties: many millions of voters allowed themselves to be deluded. The Reichstag of the "National" bloc from Heydebrand down to Weimar and Nauman has made nugatory the laws pertaining to the rights of coalition; has restricted the use of the non-Germanic languages in public meetings; has virtually robbed the youth of the right of coalition, and has favored every measure for the increase of the army, navy, and colonial exploitation.
The result of their reactionaryism is an enormous increase of the burdens of taxation. In spite of the fact that in 1906 over 200,000,000 marks increase was voted, in stamp tax, tobacco tax, etc., in spite of the sacred promise of the government, through its official organ, that no new taxes were being contemplated, the government has, through its "financial reforms," increased our burden over five hundred millions.
Liberals and Conservatives were unanimous in declaring that four-fifths of this enormous sum should be raised through an increase in indirect taxes, the greater part of which is collected from laborers, clerks, shopkeepers, artisans, and farmers. Inasmuch as the parties to the Bülow-bloc could not agree upon the distribution of the property tax and the excise tax, the bloc was dissolved and a new coalition appeared—an alliance between the holy ones and the knights (Block der Ritter und der Heiligen). This new bloc rescued the distiller from the obligations of an excise tax, defeated the inheritance tax, which would have fallen upon the wealthy, and placed upon the shoulders of the working people a tax of hundreds of millions, which is paid through the consumption of beer, whiskey, tobacco, cigars, coffee, tea—yea, even of matches. This Conservative-Clerical bloc further showed its contempt for the working people in the way it amended the state insurance laws. It robbed the workingman of his rights and denied to mothers and their babes necessary protection and adequate care.
In this manner the gullibility of the voters who were responsible for the Hottentot elections of 1907 was revenged. Since that date every by-election for the Reichstag, as well as for the provincial legislatures and municipal councils, has shown remarkable gains in the Social Democratic vote. The reactionaries were consequently frightened, and now they resort to the usual election trick of diverting the attention of the voters from internal affairs to international conditions, and appeal to them under the guise of nationalism.
The Morocco incident gave welcome opportunity for this ruse. At home and abroad the capitalistic war interests and the nationalistic jingoes stirred the animosities of the peoples. They drove their dangerous play so far that even the Chancellor found himself forced to reprimand his junker colleagues for using their patriotism for partisan purposes. But the attempt to bolster up the interests of the reactionary parties with our international complications continues in spite of this.
Voters, be on your guard! Remember that on election day you have in your hand the power to choose between peace or war.
The outcome of this election is no less important in its bearing upon internal affairs.
Count Bülow declared, before the election of 1907, "the fewer the Social Democrats, the greater the social reforms." The opposite is true. The last few years conclusively demonstrate this. The socio-political mills have rattled, but they have produced very little flour.
In order to capture their votes for the "national" candidates, the state employees and officials were promised an increase in their pay. To the high-salaried officials the new Reichstag doled out the increase with spades, to the poorly paid humble employees with spoons. And this increase in pay was counterbalanced by an increase in taxes and the rising cost of living.
To the people the government refused to give any aid, in spite of their repeated requests for some relief against the constantly increasing prices of the necessities of life. And, while the Chancellor profoundly maintained that the press exaggerated the actual conditions of the rise in prices, the so-called saviors of the middle class—the Center, the Conservatives, the anti-Semites and their following—rejected every proposal of the Social Democrats for relieving the situation, and actually laid the blame for the rise in prices upon their own middle-class tradesmen and manufacturers.
New taxes, high cost of living, denial of justice, increasing danger of war—that is what the Reichstag of 1907, which was ushered in with such high-sounding "national" tom-toms, has brought you. And the day of reckoning is at hand. Voters of Germany, elect a different majority! The stronger you make the Social Democratic representation in the Reichstag, the firmer you anchor the world's peace and your country's welfare!
The Social Democracy seeks the conquest of political power, which is now in the hands of the property classes, and is mis-used by them to the detriment of the masses. They denounce us as "revolutionists." Foolish phraseology! The bourgeois-capitalistic society is no more eternal than have been the earlier forms of the state and preceding social orders. The present order will be replaced by a higher order, the Socialistic order, for which the Social Democracy is constantly striving. Then the solidarity of all peoples will be accomplished and life will be made more humane for all. The pathway to this new social order is being paved by our capitalistic development, which contains all the germs of the New Order within itself.
For us the duty is prescribed to use every means at hand for the amelioration of existing evils, and to create conditions that will raise the standard of living of the masses.
Therefore we demand:
1. The democratizing of the state in all of its activities. An open pathway to opportunity. A chance for every one to develop his aptitudes. Special privileges to none. The right person in the right place.
2. Universal, direct, equal, secret ballot for all persons twenty years of age without distinction of sex, and for all representative legislative bodies. Referendum for setting aside the present unjust election district apportionment and its attendant electoral abuses.
3. A parliamentary government. Responsible ministry. Establishment of a department for the control of foreign affairs. Giving the people's representatives in the Reichstag the power to declare war or maintain peace. Consent of the Reichstag to all state appropriations.
4. Organization of the national defense along democratic lines. Militia service for all able-bodied men. Reducing service in the standing army to the lowest terms consistent with safety. Training youth in the use of arms. Abolition of the privilege of one-year volunteer service. Abolition of all unnecessary expense for uniforms in army and navy.
5. Abolition of "class-justice" and of administrative injustice. Reform of the penal code, along lines of modern culture and jurisprudence. Abolition of all privileges pertaining to the administration of justice.
6. Security to all workingmen, employees, and officials in their right to combine, to meet, and to organize.
7. Establishment of a national Department of Labor, officials of this Department to be elected by the interests represented upon the basis of universal and equal suffrage. Extension of factory inspection by the participation of workingmen and workingwomen in the same. Legalized universal eight-hour day, shortening the hours of labor in industries that are detrimental to health.
8. Reform of industrial insurance, exemption of farm laborers and domestic servants from contributing to insurance funds. Direct election of representatives in the administration of the insurance funds; enlarging the representation of labor on the board of directors; increasing the amounts paid workingmen; lowering age for old-age pensions from 70 to 65 years; aid to expectant mothers; and free medical attendance.
9. Complete religious freedom. Separation of Church and State, and of school and Church. No support of any kind, from public funds, for religious purposes.
10. Universal, free schools as the basis of all education. Free text-books. Freedom for art and science.
11. Diminution and ultimate abolition of all indirect taxes, and abolition of all taxes on the necessities of life. Abolition of duties on foodstuffs. Limiting the restrictions upon the importation of cattle, fowl, and meat to the necessary sanitary measures. Reduction in the tariff, especially in those schedules which encourage the development of syndicates and pools, thereby enabling products of German manufacture to be sold cheaper abroad than at home.
12. The support of all measures that tend to develop commerce and trade. Abolition of tax on railway tickets. A stamp tax on bills of lading.
13. A graduated income, property, and inheritance tax; inasmuch as this is the most effective way of dampening the ardor of the rich for a constantly increasing army and navy.
14. Internal improvements and colonization; the transformation of great estates into communal holdings, thereby making possible a greater food supply and a corresponding lowering of prices. The establishment of public farms and agricultural schools. The reclamation of swamp-lands, moors, and dunes. The cessation of foreign colonization now done for the purpose of exploiting foreign peoples for the sake of gain.
Voters of Germany! New naval and military appropriations await you; these will increase the burdens of your taxes by hundreds of millions. As on former occasions, so now the ruling class will attempt to roll these heavy burdens upon the shoulders of the humble, and thereby increase the burden of existence of the family.
Therefore, let the women, upon whom the burden of the household primarily rests, and who are to-day without political rights, take active part in this work of emancipation and join themselves with determination to our cause, which is also their cause.
Voters of Germany! If you are in accord with these principles, then give your votes on the 12th of January to the Social Democratic Party. Help prepare the foundations for a new and better state whose motto shall be:
Death to Want and Idleness! Work, Bread, and Justice for all!
Let your battle-cry on election day resound: Long live the Social Democracy!
Executive Committee of the Social Democratic
Representation in the Reichstag.
Berlin, December 5, 1911.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Personal tax; tax on movables; tax on land; door and window tax.
[2] A license to trade is required for many businesses in France.
IV. BELGIUM
POLITICAL UNIONISM IN BELGIUM
The Catholic Church essayed to organize in Belgium a "Christian Socialist" movement, patterned after Bishop Kettler's movement in the Rhine provinces. The movement was called "Fédération des Sociétés Ouvriers Catholiques" and grew to considerable power. The federation soon, however, developed democratic tendencies that separated it from the Clerical Party, and the Abbé Daens, their first deputy in the Chamber of Representatives, provoked the hostility of the ecclesiastical authorities and was deprived of his clerical prerogatives.
The Catholic labor unions, which did not join in this democratic movement, have in the last few years developed some strength, and have now about 20,000 members.
The Progressists or Radicals have from the first been favorable to labor and have in their ranks many workmen from the industries "de luxe," such as bronze workers, jewelers, art craftsmen, etc.
The Liberals have a trades-union organization which does not flourish. It has about 2,000 members. The Liberals have, however, together with the Progressists, some influence over the independent unions, with their 32,000 members.
The Socialist labor unions are the largest and most powerful. Their average yearly membership in the years 1885-90 was 40,234; in 1899 it was 61,451; in 1909 it had increased to 103,451.
STATISTICAL TABLES
Table Showing the Development of Co-operative Societies in Belgium
| Year | No. of Societies | Sales—Francs | Profits—Francs | No. of Members | No. of Employees | Value of Realty Francs | Paid-up Capital Francs |
| 1904 | 168 | 26,936,873 | 3,140,210 | 103,349 | 1785 | 10,302,059 | 1,146,651 |
| 1905 | 161 | 28,174,563 | 3,035,941 | 119,581 | 1752 | 12,091,300 | 1,655,061 |
| 1906 | 162 | 33,569,359 | 3,493,586 | 126,993 | 1809 | 12,844,976 | 1,694,878 |
| 1907 | 166 | 39,103,673 | 3,843,568 | 134,694 | 2093 | 14,280,955 | 1,940,175 |
| 1908 | 175 | 40,655,359 | 3,855,444 | 140,730 | 2128 | 14,837,114 | 1,942,266 |
| 1909 | 199 | 43,288,867 | 4,678,559 | 148,042 | 2223 | 15,850,158 | 1,893,616 |
Table Showing the Growth of the Wholesale Co-operative Movement in
Belgium from the Date of Its Beginning in 1901
| Year | Amount of Business Done—Francs |
| 1901 | 760,356 |
| 1902 | 1,211,439 |
| 1903 | 1,485,573 |
| 1904 | 1,608,475 |
| 1905 | 2,219,842 |
| 1906 | 2,416,372 |
| 1907 | 2,796,196 |
| 1908 | 2,995,615 |
| 1909 | 3,221,849 |
| 1910 | 4,489,996 |
PROGRAM OF THE BELGIAN LABOR PARTY
Adopted at Brussels in 1893
Declaration of Principles
1. The constituents of wealth in general, and in particular the means of production, are either natural agencies or the fruit of the labor—manual and mental—of previous generations besides the present; consequently they must be considered the common heritage of mankind.
2. The right of individuals or groups to enjoy this heritage can be based only on social utility, and aimed only at securing for every human being the greatest possible sum of freedom and well-being.
3. The realization of this ideal is incompatible with the maintenance of the capitalistic régime, which divides society into two necessarily antagonistic classes—the one able to enjoy property without working, the other obliged to relinquish a part of its product to the possessing class.
4. The workers can only expect their complete emancipation from the suppression of classes and a radical transformation of existing society.
This transformation will be in favor, not only of the proletariat, but of mankind as a whole; nevertheless, as it is contrary to the immediate interests of the possessing class, the emancipation of the workers will be essentially the work of the workers themselves.
5. In economic matters their aim must be to secure the free use, without charge, of all the means of production. This result can only be attained, in a society where collective labor is more and more replacing individual labor, by the collective appropriation of natural agencies and the instruments of labor.
6. The transformation of the capitalistic régime into a collectivist régime must necessarily be accompanied by correlative transformations—
(a) In morals, by the development of altruistic feelings and the practice of solidarity.
(b) In politics, by the transformation of the State into a business management (administration des choses).
7. Socialism must, therefore, pursue simultaneously the economic, moral, and political emancipation of the proletariat. Nevertheless, the economic point of view must be paramount, for the concentration of capital in the hands of a single class forms the basis of all the other forms of its domination.
To realize its principles the Labor Party declares—
(1) That it considers itself as the representative, not only of the working-class, but of all the oppressed, without distinction of nationality, worship, race, or sex.
(2) That the Socialists of all countries must make common cause (être solidaires), the emancipation of the workers being not a national, but an international work.
(3) That in their struggle against the capitalist class the workers must fight by every means in their power, and particularly by political action, by the development of free associations, and by the ceaseless propagation of Socialistic principles.
I.—Political Program
1. Electoral reform.
(a) Universal suffrage without distinction of sex for all ranks (age-limit, twenty-one; residence, six months).
(b) Proportional representation.
(c) Election expenses to be charged on the public authorities.
(d) Payment of elected persons.
(e) Elected persons to be bound by pledges, according to law.
(f) Electorates to have the right of unseating elected persons.
2. Decentralization of political power.
(a) Suppression of the Senate.
(b) Creation of Legislative Councils, representing the different functions of society (industry, commerce, agriculture, education, etc.); such Councils to be autonomous, within the limits of their competence and excepting the veto of Parliament; such Councils to be federated, for the study and defense of their common interests.
3. Communal autonomy.
(a) Mayors to be appointed by the electorate.
(b) Small communes to be fused or federated.
(c) Creation of elected committees corresponding to the different branches of communal administration.
4. Direct legislation.
Right of popular initiative and referendum in legislative, provincial, and communal matters.
5. Reform of education.
(a) Primary, all-round, free, secular, compulsory instruction at the expense of the State. Maintenance of children attending the schools by the public authorities. Intermediate and higher instruction to be free, secular, and at the expense of the State.
(b) Administration of the schools by the public authorities, under the control of School Committees elected by universal suffrage of both sexes, with representatives of the teaching staff and the State.
(c) Assimilation of communal teachers to the State's educational officials.
(d) Creation of a Superior Council of Education, elected by the School Committees, who are to organize the inspection and control of free schools and of official schools.
(e) Organization of trade education, and obligation of all children to learn manual work.
(f) Autonomy of the State Universities, and legal recognition of the Free Universities. University Extension to be organized at the expense of the public authorities.
6. Separation of the Churches and the State.
(a) Suppression of the grant for public worship.
(b) Philosophic or religious associations to be civil persons at law.
7. Revision of Sections in the Civil Code concerning marriage and the paternal authority.
(a) Civil equality of the sexes, and of children, whether natural or legitimate.
(b) Revision of the divorce laws, maintaining the husband's liability to support the wife or the children.
(c) Inquiry into paternity to be legalized.
(d) Protective measures in favor of children materially or morally abandoned.
8. Extension of liberties.
Suppression of measures restricting any of the liberties.
9. Judicial reform.
(a) Application of the elective principle to all jurisdictions. Reduction of the number of magistrates.
(b) Justice without fees; State-payment of advocates and officials of the Courts.
(c) Magisterial examination in penal cases to be public. Persons prosecuted to be medically examined. Victims of judicial errors to be indemnified.
10. Suppression of armies.
Provisionally; organization of a national militia.
11. Suppression of hereditary offices, and establishment of a Republic.
II.—Economic Program
A.—General Measures
1. Organization of statistics.
(a) Creation of a Ministry of Labor.
(b) Pecuniary aid from the public authorities for the organization of labor secretariates by workmen and employers.
2. Legal recognition of associations, especially—
(a) Legal recognition of trade-unions.
(b) Reform of the law on friendly societies and co-operative societies and subsidy from the public authorities.
(c) Repression of infringements of the right of combination.
3. Legal regulation of the contract of employment.
Extension of laws protecting labor to all industries, and especially to agriculture, shipping, and fishing. Fixing of a minimum wage and maximum of hours of labor for workers, industrial or agricultural, employed by the State, the Communes, the Provinces, or the contractors for public works.
Intervention of workers, and especially of workers' unions, in the framing of rules. Suppression of fines. Suppression of savings-banks and benefit clubs in workshops. Fixing of a maximum of 6,000 francs for public servants and managers.
4. Transformation of public charity into a general insurance of all citizens—
(a) against unemployment;
(b) against disablement (sickness, accident, old age);
(c) against death (widows and orphans).
5. Reorganization of public finances.
(a) Abolition of indirect taxes, especially taxes on food and customs tariffs.
(b) Monopoly of alcohol and tobacco.
(c) Progressive income-tax. Taxes on legacies and gifts between the living (excepting gifts to works of public utility).
(d) Suppression of intestate succession, except in the direct line and within limits to be determined by law.
6. Progressive extension of public property.
The State to take over the National Bank. Social organization of loans, at interest to cover costs only, to individuals and to associations of workers.
i. Industrial property.
Abolition, on grounds of public utility, of private ownership in mines, quarries, the subsoil generally, and of the great means of production and transport.
ii. Agricultural property.
(a) Nationalization of forests.
(b) Reconstruction or development of common lands.
(c) Progressive taking over of the land by the State or the communes.
7. Autonomy of public services.
(a) Administration of the public services by special autonomous commissions, under the control of the State.
(b) Creation of committees elected by the workmen and employees of the public services to debate with the central administration the conditions of the remuneration and organization of labor.
B.—Particular Measures for Industrial Workers
1. Abolition of all laws restricting the right of combination.
2. Regulation of industrial labor.
(a) Prohibition of employment of children under fourteen.
(b) Half-time system between the ages of fourteen and eighteen.
(c) Prohibition of employment of women in all industries where it is incompatible with morals or health.
(d) Reduction of working-day to a maximum of eight hours for adults of both sexes, and minimum wage.
(e) Prohibition of night-work for all categories of workers and in all industries, where this mode of working is not absolutely necessary.
(f) One day's rest per week, so far as possible on Sunday.
(g) Responsibility of employers in case of accidents, and appointment of doctors to attend persons wounded.
(h) Workmen's memorandum-books and certificates to be abolished, and their use prohibited.
3. Inspection of work.
(a) Employment of paid medical authorities, in the interests of labor hygiene.
(b) Appointment of inspectors by the Councils of Industry and Labor.
4. Reorganization of the Industrial Tribunals (Conseils de Prud'hommes) and the Councils of Industry and Labor.
(a) Working women to have votes and be eligible.
(b) Submission to the Courts to be compulsory.
5. Regulation of work in prisons and convents.
C.—Particular Measures for Agricultural Workers
1. Reorganization of the Agricultural Courts.
(a) Nomination of delegates in equal numbers by the landowners, farmers, and laborers.
(b) Intervention of the Chambers in individual or collective disputes between landowners, farmers, and agricultural workers.
(c) Fixing of a minimum wage by the public authorities on the proposition of the Agricultural Courts.
2. Regulation of contracts to pay farm-rents.
(a) Fixing of the rate of farm-rents by Committees of Arbitration or by the reformed Agricultural Courts.
(b) Compensation to the outgoing farmer for enhanced value of property.
(c) Participation of landowners, to a wider extent than that fixed by the Civil Code, in losses incurred by farmers.
(d) Suppression of the landowner's privilege.
3. Insurance by the provinces, and reinsurance by the State, against epizootic diseases, diseases of plants, hail, floods, and other agricultural risks.
4. Organization by the public authorities of a free agricultural education.
Creation or development of experimental fields, model farms, agricultural laboratories.
5. Purchase by the communes of agricultural implements to be at the disposal of their inhabitants.
Assignment of common lands to groups of laborers engaging not to employ wage labor.
6. Organization of a free medical service in the country.
7. Reform of the Game Laws.
(a) Suppression of gun licenses.
(b) Suppression of game preserves.
(c) Right of cultivators to destroy all the year round animals which injure crops.
8. Intervention of public authorities in the creation of agricultural co-operative societies—
(a) For buying seed and manure.
(b) For making butter.
(c) For the purchase and use in common of agricultural machines.
(d) For the sale of produce.
(e) For the working of land by groups.
9. Organization of agricultural credit.
III.—Communal Program
1. Educational reforms.
(a) Free scientific instruction for children up to fourteen. Special courses for older children and adults.
(b) Organization of education in trades and industries, in co-operation with workmen's organizations.
(c) Maintenance of children; except where the public authorities intervene to do so.
(d) Institution of school refreshment-rooms. Periodical distribution of boots and clothing.
(e) Orphanages. Establishments for children abandoned or cruelly ill-treated.
2. Judicial reforms.
Office for consultations free of charge in cases coming before the law-courts, the industrial courts, etc.
3. Regulation of work.
(a) Minimum wage and maximum working-day to be made a clause in contracts for communal works.
(b) Intervention of trade associations in the fixing of rates of wages, and general regulation of industry. The Echevin of Public Works to supervise the execution of these clauses in contracts.
(c) Appointment by the workmen's associations of inspectors to supervise the clauses in contracts.
(d) Rigorous application of the principle of tenders open to all, for all services which, during a transition-period, are not managed directly.
(e) Permission to trade-unions to tender, and abolition of security-deposit.
(f) Creation of Bourses du Travail, or at least offices for the demand and supply of employment, whose administration shall be entrusted to trade-unions or labor associations.
(g) Fixing of a minimum wage for the workmen and employees of a commune.
4. Public charity.
(a) Admission of workmen to the administration of the councils of hospitals and of public charity.
(b) Transformation of public charity and the hospitals into a system of insurance against old age. Organization of a medical service and drug supply. Establishment of public free baths and wash-houses.
(c) Establishment of refuges for the aged and disabled. Night-shelter and food-distribution for workmen wandering in search of work.
5. Complete neutrality of all communal services from the philosophical point of view.
6. Finance.
(a) Saving to be effected on present cost of administration. Maximum allowance of 6,000 francs for mayors and other officials. Costs of entertainment for mayors who must incur certain private expenses.
(b) Income tax.
(c) Special tax on sites not built over and houses not let.
7. Public services.
(a) The commune, or a federation of communes composing one agglomeration, is to work the means of transport—tramways, omnibuses, cabs, district railways, etc.
(b) The commune, or federation of communes, is to work directly the services of general interest at present conceded to companies—lighting, water-supply, markets, highways, heating, security, health.
(c) Compulsory insurance of the inhabitants against fire; except where the State intervenes to do so.
(d) Construction of cheap dwellings by the commune, the hospices, and the charity offices.
V. ENGLAND
GROWTH OF SOCIALISTIC SENTIMENT IN ENGLAND
In 1885 the Earl of Wemyss made a speech in the House of Lords deploring the advancement of state interference in business and giving a résumé of the Acts of Parliament that showed how "Socialism" invaded St. Stephens from 1870 to 1885.
His speech is interesting, not because it voices the ultra-Conservative's apprehensions but because the Earl had really discovered the legal basis of the new Social Democratic advance, which had come unheralded. The Earl reviewed the bills that Parliament had sanctioned, which dealt with state "interference." Twelve bills referred to lands and houses. "All of these measures assume the right of the state to regulate the management of, or to confiscate real property"—steps in the direction of substituting "land nationalization" for individual ownership. Five laws dealt with corporations, "confiscating property of water companies," etc.; nine dealt with ships: "all of them assertions by the Board of Trade of its right to regulate private enterprise and individual management in the mercantile marine;" six with mines, "prompting a fallacious confidence in government inspection;" six with railways, "all encroachments upon self-government of private enterprise in railways—successive steps in the direction of state railways." Nine had to do with manufactures and trades, "invasions by the state of the self-government of the various interests of the country, and curtailment of the freedom of contract between employers and employed." "The Pawnbrokers' Act of 1872 was the thin edge of the wedge for reducing the business of the 'poor man's banks' to a state monopoly." Twenty laws dealt with liquor, "all attempts on the part of the state to regulate the dealings and habits of buyers and sellers of alcoholic drinks." Sixteen dealt with dwellings of the working class, "all embodying the principle that it is the duty of the state to provide dwellings, private gardens, and other conveniences for the working classes, and assume its right to appropriate land for these purposes." There were nine education acts, "all based on the assumption that it is the duty of the state to act in loco parentis." Four laws dealt with recreation, "whereby the state, having educated the people in common school rooms, proceeds to provide them with common reading-rooms, and afterwards turns them out at stated times into the streets for common holidays."
Of local government and improvement acts, there were passed "a vast mass of local legislation ... containing interferences in every conceivable particular with liberty and property."
The Earl quotes Lord Palmerston as saying in 1865, "Tenant right is landlord wrong," and Lord Sherbrooke, in 1866, "Happily there is an oasis upon which all men, without distinction of party, can take common stand, and that is the good ground of political economy." And the noble lord concludes by predicting, "The general social results of such Socialistic legislation may be summed up in 'dynamite,' 'detectives,' and 'general demoralization.'"[1]
In 1887 the Earl again turned his guns upon the radical advance, but only seven peers were on the benches to listen. In 1890 he made a third résumé under a more liberal patronage of listeners; this time the factory laws and inspection measures came in for his especial criticism. He said: "Now, my lords, what is the character of all this legislation? It is to substitute state help for self help, to regulate and control men in their dealings with one another with regard to land or anything else. The state now forbids contracts, breaks contracts, makes contracts. The whole tendency is to substitute the state or the municipality for the free action of the individual."[2]
AN EARLY POLITICAL BROADSIDE BY THE MARXIANS.
The earlier attitude of the Marxian Socialists of London toward participating in elections is shown in the following broadside, dated July, 1895:
"We, revolutionary Social Democrats, disdain to conceal our principles. We proclaim the class war. We hold that the lot of the worker cannot to any appreciable extent be improved except by a complete overthrow of this present capitalist system of society. The time for social tinkering has gone past. Government statistics show that the number of unemployed is slowly but surely increasing, and that the decreases in wages greatly preponderate over the increases, and everything points to the fact that the condition of your class is getting worse and worse.
"Refuse once for all to allow your backs to be made the stepping stones to obtain that power which they (the politicians) know only too well how to use against you.
"Scoff at their patronizing airs and claim your rights like men. Refuse to give them that which they want, i.e., your vote. Give them no opportunity of saying that they are your representatives. Refuse to be a party to the fraud of present-day politics, and
"Abstain from Voting."
THRIFT INSTITUTIONS IN ENGLAND FOR SAVINGS, INSURANCE, ETC., 1907
(From Chiozza Money—"Riches and Poverty," p. 56)
| Name of Institution | Number of Members | Funds—£ |
| Building Societies | 623,047 | 73,289,229 |
| Ordinary Friendly Societies | 3,418,869 | 19,346,567 |
| Friendly Societies having branches | 2,710,437 | 25,610,365 |
| Collecting Friendly Societies | 9,010,574 | 9,946,447 |
| Benevolent Societies | 29,716 | 337,393 |
| Workingmen's Clubs | 272,847 | 381,463 |
| Specially Authorized Societies | 70,980 | 532,717 |
| Specially Authorized Loan Societies | 141,850 | 897,784 |
| Medical Societies | 313,755 | 65,513 |
| Cattle Insurance Settlers | 4,029 | 8,570 |
| Shop Clubs | 12,207 | 1,349 |
| Total | 15,983,264 | 57,128,168 |
| Co-operative Societies, industry and trade | 2,461,028 | 53,788,917 |
| Business Co-operative Societies | 108,550 | 984,680 |
| Land Co-operative Societies | 18,631 | 1,619,716 |
| Total | 2,588,209 | 56,393,313 |
| Trade Unions | 1,973,560 | 6,424,176 |
| Workmen's Compensation Schemes | 99,371 | 164,560 |
| Friends of Labor Loan Societies | 33,576 | 260,905 |
| Grand Total of Registered Provident Societies | 21,301,027 | 193,660,351 |
| Railway Savings Banks | 64,126* | 5,865,351@ |
| Trustee Savings Banks | 1,780,214* | 61,729,588@ |
| Post Office Savings Banks | 10,692,555* | 178,033,974@ |
| Bank Total | 12,536,895 | 245,628,634 |
| Grand Total | 33,837,922 | 439,388,985 |
| * Depositions | @ Deposits | |
| In this table allowance must be made for those belonging to more than one society, and, of course, not all the depositors or members are workingmen, especially in the savings banks and building-societies. | ||
CONSTITUTION AND STANDING ORDERS OF THE INDEPENDENT LABOR PARTY OF ENGLAND
Standing Orders (1911)
Contributions
Affiliation Fees and Parliamentary Fund Contributions must be paid by December 31st each year.
1. The Annual Conference shall meet during the month of January.
2. Affiliated Societies may send one delegate for every thousand or part of a thousand members paid for.
3. Affiliated Trades Councils and Local Labor Parties may send one delegate if their affiliation fee has been 15s., and two delegates if the fee has been 30s.
4. Persons eligible as delegates must be paying bona fide members or paid permanent officials of the organizations sending them.
5. A fee of 5s. per delegate will be charged.
6. The National Executive will ballot for the places to be allotted to the delegates.
7. Voting at the Conference shall be by show of hands, but on a division being challenged, delegates shall vote by cards, which shall be issued on the basis of one card for each thousand members, or fraction of a thousand, paid for by the Society represented.
Conference Agenda
1. Resolutions for the Agenda and Amendments to the Constitution must be sent in by November 1st each year.
2. Amendments to Resolutions must be sent in by December 15th each year.
Nominations for National Executive and Secretaryship
1. Nominations for the National Executive and the Secretaryship must be sent in by December 15th.
2. No member of the Parliamentary Committee of the Trade Union Congress or of the Management Committee of the General Federation of Trade Unions is eligible for nomination to the National Executive.
Constitution
(As revised under the authority of the Newport Conference, 1910)
ORGANIZATION
I. Affiliation.
1. The Labor Party is a Federation consisting of Trade Unions, Trades Councils, Socialist Societies, and Local Labor Parties.
2. A Local Labor Party in any constituency is eligible for affiliation, provided it accepts the Constitution and policy of the Party, and that there is no affiliated Trades Council covering the constituency, or that, if there be such Council, it has been consulted in the first instance.
3. Co-operative Societies are also eligible.
4. A National Organization of Women, accepting the basis of this Constitution, and the policy of the Party, and formed for the purpose of assisting the Party, shall be eligible for affiliation as though it were a Trades Council.
II. Object.
To secure the election of Candidates to Parliament and organize and maintain a Parliamentary Labor Party, with its own whips and policy.
III. Candidates and Members.
1. Candidates and Members must accept this Constitution; agree to abide by the decisions of the Parliamentary Party in carrying out the aims of this Constitution; appear before their constituencies under the title of Labor Candidates only; abstain strictly from identifying themselves with or promoting the interests of any Parliamentary Party not affiliated, or its Candidates; and they must not oppose any Candidate recognized by the National Executive of the Party.
2. Candidates must undertake to join the Parliamentary Labor Party, if elected.
IV. Candidatures.
1. A Candidate must be promoted by an affiliated Society which makes itself responsible for his election expenses.
2. A Candidate must be selected for a constituency by a regularly convened Labor Party Conference in the constituency. [The Hull Conference accepted the following as the interpretation of what a "Regularly Convened Labor Party Conference" is:—All branches of affiliated organizations within a constituency or divided borough covered by a proposal to run a Labor Candidate must be invited to send delegates to the Conference, and the local organization responsible for calling the Conference may, if it thinks fit, invite representatives from branches of organizations not affiliated but eligible for affiliation.]
3. Before a Candidate can be regarded as adopted for a constituency, his candidature must be sanctioned by the National Executive; and where at the time of a by-election no Candidate has been so sanctioned, the National Executive shall have power to withhold its sanction.
V. The National Executive.
The National Executive shall consist of fifteen members, eleven representing the Trade Unions, one the Trades Councils, Women's Organizations, and Local Labor Parties, and three the Socialist Societies, and shall be elected by ballot at the Annual Conference by their respective sections.
VI. Duties of the National Executive.
The National Executive Committee shall
1. Appoint a Chairman, Vice-Chairman, and Treasurer, and shall transact the general business of the Party;
2. Issue a list of its Candidates from time to time, and recommend them for the support of the electors;
3. Report to the affiliated organization concerned any Labor Member, Candidate, or Chief Official who opposes a Candidate of the Party, or who acts contrary to the spirit of the Constitution;
4. And its members shall strictly abstain from identifying themselves with or promoting the interests of any Parliamentary Party not affiliated, or its Candidates.
VII. The Secretary.
The Secretary shall be elected by the Annual Conference, and shall be under the direction of the National Executive.
VIII. Affiliation Fees and Delegates.
1. Trade Unions and Socialist Societies shall pay 15s. per annum for every thousand members or fraction thereof, and may send to the Annual Conference one delegate for each thousand members.
2. Trades Councils and Local Labor Parties with 5,000 members or under shall be affiliated on an annual payment of 15s.; similar organizations with a membership of over 5,000 shall pay £1 10s., the former Councils to be entitled to send one delegate with one vote to the Annual Conference, the latter to be entitled to send two delegates and have two votes.
3. In addition to these payments a delegate's fee to the Annual Conference may be charged.
IX. Annual Conference.
The National Executive shall convene a Conference of its affiliated Societies in the month of January each year.
Notice of resolutions for the Conference and all amendments to the Constitution shall be sent to the Secretary by November 1st, and shall be forthwith forwarded to all affiliated organizations.
Notice of amendments and nominations for Secretary and National Executive shall be sent to the Secretary by December 15th, and shall be printed on the Agenda.
X. Voting at Annual Conference.
There shall be issued to affiliated Societies represented at the Annual Conference voting cards as follows:
1. Trade Unions and Socialist Societies shall receive one voting card for each thousand members, or fraction thereof paid for.
2. Trades Councils and Local Labor Parties shall receive one card for each delegate they are entitled to send.
Any delegate may claim to have a vote taken by card.
PARLIAMENTARY FUND
I. Object.
To assist in paying the election expenses of Candidates adopted in accordance with this Constitution, in maintaining them when elected; and to provide the salary and expenses of a National Party Agent.
II. Amount of Contribution.
1. Affiliated Societies, except Trades Councils, and Local Labor Parties shall pay a contribution to this fund at the rate of 2d. per member per annum, not later than the last day of each financial year.
2. On all matters affecting the financial side of the Parliamentary Fund only contributing Societies shall be allowed to vote at the Annual Conference.
III. Trustees.
The National Executive of the Party shall, from its number, select three to act as Trustees, any two of whom, with the Secretary, shall sign checks.
IV. Expenditure.
1. Maintenance.—All Members elected under this Constitution shall be paid from the Fund equal sums not to exceed £200 per annum, provided that this payment shall only be made to Members whose Candidatures have been promoted by one or more Societies which have contributed to this Fund; provided further that no payment from this Fund shall be made to a Member or Candidate of any Society which has not contributed to this Fund for one year, and that any Society over three months in arrears shall forfeit all claim to the Fund on behalf of its Members or Candidates, for twelve months from the date of payment.
2. Returning Officers' Expenses.—Twenty-five per cent. of the Returning Officers' net expenses shall be paid to the Candidates, subject to the provisions of the preceding clause, so long as the total sum so expended does not exceed twenty-five per cent. of the Fund.
3. Administration.—Five per cent. of the Annual Income of the Fund shall be transferred to the General Funds of the Party, to pay for administrative expenses of the Fund.
THE INDEPENDENT LABOR PARTY: CONSTITUTION AND RULES, 1910-1911
NAME
The Independent Labor Party.
MEMBERSHIP
Open to all Socialists who indorse the principles and policy of the Party, are not members of either the Liberal or Conservative Party, and whose application for membership is accepted by a Branch.
Any member expelled from membership of a Branch of the I.L.P. shall not be eligible for membership of any other branch without having first submitted his or her case for adjudication of the N.A.C.
OBJECT
The Object of the Party is to establish the Socialist State, when land and capital will be held by the community and used for the well-being of the community, and when the exchange of commodities will be organized also by the community, so as to secure the highest possible standard of life for the individual. In giving effect to this object it shall work as part of the International Socialist Movement.
METHOD
The Party, to secure its objects, adopts—
1. Educational Methods, including the publication of Socialist literature, the holding of meetings, etc.
2. Political Methods, including the election of its members to local and national administrative and legislative bodies.
Program
The true object of industry being the production of the requirements of life, the responsibility should rest with the community collectively, therefore:—
The land being the storehouse of all the necessaries of life should be declared and treated as public property.
The capital necessary for the industrial operations should be owned and used collectively.
Work, and wealth resulting therefrom, should be equitably distributed over the population.
As a means to this end, we demand the enactment of the following measures:—
1. A maximum of 48 hours' working week, with the retention of all existing holidays, and Labor Day, May 1st, secured by law.
2. The provision of work to all capable adult applicants at recognized Trade Union rates, with a statutory minimum of 6d. per hour.
In order to remuneratively employ the applicants, Parish, District, Borough, and County Councils to be invested with powers to:—
(a) Organize and undertake such industries as they may consider desirable.
(b) Compulsorily acquire land; purchase, erect, or manufacture buildings, stock, or other articles for carrying on such industries.
(c) Levy rates on the rental values of the district, and borrow money on the security of such rates for any of the above purposes.
3. State pension for every person over 50 years of age, and adequate provision for all widows, orphans, sick and disabled workers.
4. Free, secular, moral, primary, secondary, and university education, with free maintenance while at school or university.
5. The raising of the age of child labor, with a view to its ultimate extinction.
6. Municipalization and public control of the Drink Traffic.
7. Municipalization and public control of all hospitals and infirmaries.
8. Abolition of indirect taxation and the gradual transference of all public burdens on to unearned incomes with a view to their ultimate extinction.
The Independent Labor Party is in favor of adult suffrage, with full political rights and privileges for women, and the immediate extension of the franchise to women on the same terms as granted to men; also triennial Parliaments and second ballot.
Organization
I.—OFFICERS
1. Chairman and Treasurer.
2. A National Administrative Council.—To be composed of fourteen representatives, in addition to the two officers.
3. No member shall occupy the office of Chairman of the Party for a longer consecutive period than three years, and he shall not be eligible for re-election for the same office for at least twelve months after he has vacated the chair.
4. Election of N.A.C.—Four members of the N.A.C. shall be elected by ballot at the Annual Conference, and ten by the votes of members in ten divisional areas.
5. Duties of N.A.C.—
(a) To meet at least three times a year to transact business relative to the Party.
(b) To exercise a determining voice in the selection of Parliamentary candidates, and, where no branch exists, to choose such candidates when necessary.
(c) To raise and disburse funds for General and By-Elections, and for other objects of the Party.
(d) To deal with such matters of local dispute between branches and members which may be referred to its decision by the parties interested.
(e) To appoint General Secretary and Officials, and exercise a supervising control over their work.
(f) To engage organizers and lecturers when convenient, either permanently or for varying periods, at proper wages, and to direct and superintend their work.
(g) To present to the Annual Conference a report on the previous year's work and progress of the Party.
(h) To appoint when necessary sub-committees to deal with special branches of its work, and to appoint a committee to deal with each Conference Agenda. Such Committee to revise and classify the resolutions sent in by branches and to place resolutions dealing with important matters on the Agenda.
(i) It shall not initiate any new departure or policy between Conferences without first obtaining the sanction of the majority of the branches.
(k) Matters arising between Conferences not provided for by the Constitution, shall be dealt with by the N.A.C.
(l) A full report of all the meetings of the N.A.C. as held shall be forwarded to each branch.
6. Auditor.—A Chartered or Incorporated Accountant shall be employed to audit the accounts of the Party.
II.—BRANCHES
1. Branch.—An Association which indorses the objects and policy of the Party, and affiliates in the prescribed manner.
2. Local Autonomy.—Subject to the general constitution of the Party, each Branch shall be perfectly autonomous.
III.—FINANCES
1. Branches shall pay one penny per member per month to the N.A.C.
2. The N.A.C. may strike off the list of branches any branch which is more than 6 months in arrears with its payments.
3. The N.A.C. may receive donations or subscriptions to the funds of the Party. It shall not receive moneys which are contributed upon terms which interfere in any way with its freedom of action as to their disbursement.
4. The financial year of the Party shall begin on March 1st, and end on the last day of February next succeeding.
IV.—ANNUAL CONFERENCE
1. The Annual Conference is the ultimate authority of the Party, to which all final appeals shall be made.
2. Date.—It shall be held at Easter.
3. Special Conferences.—A Special Conference shall always be called prior to a General Election, for the purpose of determining the policy of the Party during the election. Other Special Conferences may be called by two-thirds of the whole of the members of the N.A.C, or by one-third of the branches of the Party.
4. Conference Fee.—A Conference Fee per delegate (the amount to be fixed by the N.A.C.) shall be paid by all branches desiring representation, on or before the last day of February in each year.
5. No branch shall be represented which was not in existence on the December 31st immediately preceding the date of the Annual Conference.
6. Branches of the Party may send one delegate to Conference for each fifty members, or part thereof. Branches may appoint one delegate to represent their full voting strength. Should there be two or more branches which are unable separately to send delegates to Conference, they may jointly do so.
7. Delegates must have been members of the branch they represent from December 31st immediately preceding the date of the Conference.
8. Notices respecting resolutions shall be posted to branches not later than January 3d. Resolutions for the Agenda, and nominations for officers and N.A.C. shall be in the hands of the General Secretary eight weeks before the date of the Annual Conference, and issued to the branches a fortnight later. Amendments to resolutions on the Agenda and additional nominations may be sent to the Secretary four weeks before Conference, and they shall be arranged on the final Agenda, which shall be issued to branches two weeks before Conference. A balance sheet shall be issued to branches two weeks before the Conference, showing the receipts and expenditure of the Party for the year, also the number of branches affiliated and the amount each branch has paid in affiliation fees during the year.
9. The Chairman of the Party for the preceding year shall preside over the Conference.
10. Conference Officials.—The first business of the Conference shall be the appointment of tellers. It shall next elect a Standing Orders Committee, with power to examine the credentials of delegates, and to deal with special business which may be delegated to it by the Conference.
11. In case any vacancy occurs on the N.A.C. between Conferences, the unsuccessful candidate receiving the largest number of votes at the preceding election shall fill the vacancy. Vacancies in the list of officers shall be filled up by the vote of the branches.
12. The principle of the second ballot shall be observed in all elections.
13. The Conference shall choose in which Divisional Area the next Conference shall be held.
V.—PARLIAMENTARY CANDIDATES
1. The N.A.C. shall keep a list of members of the Party from which candidates may be selected by branches.
2. Any Branch at any time may nominate any eligible member of the Party to be placed upon that list.
3. The N.A.C. itself may place names on the list.
4. No person shall be placed upon this list unless he has been a member of the Party for at least twelve months.
5. Branches desiring to place a candidate in their constituencies must in the first instance communicate with the N.A.C., and have the candidate selected at a properly convened conference of representatives of the local branches of all societies affiliated with the Labor Party, so that the candidate may be chosen in accordance with the constitution of the Labor Party. The N.A.C. shall have power to suspend this clause where local or other circumstances appear to justify such a course.
6. Before the N.A.C. sanctions any candidature it shall be entitled to secure guarantees of adequate local financial support.
7. No Branch shall take any action which affects prejudicially the position or prospects of a Parliamentary candidate, who has received the credentials of the Labor Party, without first laying the case before the N.A.C.
8. Each candidate must undertake that he will run his election in accordance with the principles and policy of the Party, and that if elected he will support the Party on all questions coming within the scope of the principles of the I.L.P.
The Constitution shall not be altered or amended except every third year, unless upon the requisition of two-thirds of the N.A.C. or one-third of the branches of the Party, when the proposed alterations or amendments shall be considered at the following Conference.—Resolution, Edinburgh, 1909.
BASIS OF THE FABIAN SOCIETY
The Fabian Society consists of Socialists.
It therefore aims at the re-organization of society by the emancipation of land and industrial capital from individual and class ownership, and the vesting of them in the community for the general benefit. In this way only can the natural and acquired advantages of the country be equitably shared by the whole people.
The Society accordingly works for the extinction of private property in land and of the consequent individual appropriation, in the form of rent, of the price paid for permission to use the earth, as well as for the advantages of superior soils and sites.
The Society, further, works for the transfer to the community of the administration of such industrial capital as can conveniently be managed socially. For, owing to the monopoly of the means of production in the past, industrial inventions and the transformation of surplus income into capital have mainly enriched the proprietary class, the worker being now dependent on that class for leave to earn a living.
If these measures be carried out, without compensation (though not without such relief to expropriated individuals as may seem fit to the community), rent and interest will be added to the reward of labor, the idle class now living on the labor of others will necessarily disappear, and practical equality of opportunity will be maintained by the spontaneous action of economic forces with much less interference with personal liberty than the present system entails.
For the attainment of these ends the Fabian Society looks to the spread of Socialist opinions, and the social and political changes consequent thereon. It seeks to promote these by the general dissemination of knowledge as to the relation between the individual and society in its economic, ethical, and political aspects.
The following questions are addressed to Parliamentary candidates by the Fabians:
Will you press at the first opportunity for the following reforms:—
I.—A Labor Program
1. The extension of the Workmen's Compensation Act to seamen, and to all other classes of wage earners?
2. Compulsory arbitration, as in New Zealand, to prevent strikes and lockouts?
3. A statutory minimum wage, as in Victoria, especially for sweated trades?
4. The fixing of "an eight-hours' day" as the maximum for all public servants; and the abolition, wherever possible, of overtime?
5. An Eight-Hours' Bill, without an option clause, for miners; and, for railway servants, a forty-eight-hours' week?
6. The drastic amendment of the Factory Acts, to secure (a) a safe and healthy work-place for every worker, (b) the prevention of overwork for all women and young persons, (c) the abolition of all wage-labor by children under 14, (d) compulsory technical instruction by extension of the half-time arrangements to all workers under 18?
7. The direct employment of labor by all public authorities whenever possible; and, whenever it is not possible, employment only of fair houses, prohibition of sub-contracting, and payment of trade-union rates of wages?
8. The amendment of the Merchant Shipping Acts so as (a) to secure healthy sleeping and living accommodation, (b) to protect the seaman against withholding of his wages or return passage, (c) to insure him against loss by shipwreck?
II.—A Democratic Budget
9. The further taxation of unearned incomes by means of a graduated and differentiated income-tax?
10. The abolition of all duties on tea, cocoa, coffee, currants, and other dried fruits?
11. An increase of the scale of graduation of the death duties, so as to fall more heavily on large inheritances?
12. The appropriation of the unearned increment by the taxation and rating of ground values?
13. The nationalization of mining rents and royalties?
14. Transfer of the railways to the State under the Act of 1844?
III.—Social Reform in Town and Country
15. The extension of full powers to parish, town, and county councils for the collective organization of the (a) water, (b) gas and (c) electric lighting supplies, (d) hydraulic power, (e) tramways and light railways, (f) public slaughter-houses, (g) pawnshops, (h) sale of milk, (i) bread, (j) coal, and such other public services as may be desired by the inhabitants?
16. Reform of the drink traffic by (a) reduction of the number of licenses to a proper ratio to the population of each locality, (b) transfer to public purposes of the special value of licenses, created by the existing monopoly, by means of high license or a license rate, (c) grant of power to local authorities to carry on municipal public houses, directly or on the Gothenburg system?
17. Amendment of the Housing of the Working Classes Act by (a) extension of period of loans to one hundred years, treatment of land as an asset, and removal of statutory limitation of borrowing powers for housing, (b) removal of restrictions on rural district councils in adopting Part III. of the Act, (c) grant of power to parish councils to adopt Part III. of the Act, (d) power to all local authorities to buy land compulsorily under the allotments clauses of the Local Government Act, 1894, or in any other effective manner?
18. The grant of power to all local bodies to retain the free-hold of any land that may come into their possession, without obligation to sell, or to use for particular purposes?
19. The relief of the existing taxpayer by (a) imposing, for local purposes, a municipal death duty on local real estate, collected in the same way as the existing death duties, (b) collecting rates from the owners of empty houses and vacant land, (c) power to assess land and houses at four per cent. on the capital value, (d) securing special contributions by way of "betterment" from the owners of property benefited by public improvements?
20. The further equalization of the rates in London?
21. The compulsory provision by every local authority of adequate hospital accommodation for all diseases and accidents?
IV.—The Children and the Poor
22. The prohibition of the industrial or wage-earning employment of children during school terms prior to the age of 14?
23. The provision of meals, out of public funds, for necessitous children in public elementary schools?
24. The training of teachers under public control and free from sectarian influences?
25. The creation of a complete system of public secondary education genuinely available to the children of the poor?
26. State pensions for the support of the aged or chronically infirm?
V.—Democratic Political Machinery
27. An amendment of the registration laws, with the aim of giving every adult man a vote, and no one more than one vote?
28. A redistribution of seats in accordance with population?
29. The grant of the franchise to women on the same terms as to men?
30. The admission of women to seats in the House of Commons and on borough and county councils?
31. The second ballot at Parliamentary and other elections?
32. The payment of all members of Parliament and of Parliamentary election expenses, out of public funds?
33. Triennial Parliaments?
34. All Parliamentary elections to be held on the same day?
THE PROGRAM OF THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC FEDERATION, 1906
OBJECT
The Socialization of the Means of Production, Distribution, and Exchange, to be controlled by a Democratic State in the interests of the entire community, and the complete Emancipation of Labor from the Domination of Capitalism and Landlordism, with the establishment of Social and Economic Equality between the Sexes.
The economic development of modern society is characterized by the more or less complete domination of the capitalistic mode of production over all branches of human labor.
The capitalistic mode of production, because it has the creation of profit for its sole object, therefore favors the larger capital, and is based upon the divorcement of the majority of the people from the instruments of production and the concentration of these instruments in the hands of a minority. Society is thus divided into two opposite classes: one, the capitalists and their sleeping partners, the landlords and loanmongers, holding in their hands the means of production, distribution, and exchange, and being, therefore, able to command the labor of others; the other, the working-class, the wage-earners, the proletariat, possessing nothing but their labor-power, and being consequently forced by necessity to work for the former.
The social division thus produced becomes wider and deeper with every new advance in the application of labor-saving machinery. It is most clearly recognizable, however, in the times of industrial and commercial crises, when, in consequence of the present chaotic conditions of carrying on national and international industry, production periodically comes to a standstill, and a number of the few remaining independent producers are thrown into the ranks of the proletariat. Thus, while on one hand there is incessantly going on an accumulation of capital, wealth, and power into a steadily diminishing number of hands, there is, on the other hand, a constantly growing insecurity of livelihood for the mass of wage-earners, an increasing disparity between human wants and the opportunity of acquiring the means for their satisfaction, and a steady physical and mental deterioration among the more poverty-stricken of the population.
But the more this social division widens, the stronger grows the revolt—more conscious abroad than here—of the proletariat against the capitalist system of society in which this division and all that accompanies it have originated, and find such fruitful soil. The capitalist mode of production, by massing the workers in large factories, and creating an interdependence, not only between various trades and branches of industries, but even national industries, prepares the ground and furnishes material for a universal class war. That class war may at first—as in this country—be directed against the abuses of the system, and not against the system itself; but sooner or later the workers must come to recognize that nothing short of the expropriation of the capitalist class, the ownership by the community of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, can put an end to their abject economic condition; and then the class war will become conscious instead of unconscious on the part of the working-classes, and they will have for their ultimate object the overthrow of the capitalist system. At the same time, since the capitalist class holds and uses the power of the State to safeguard its position and beat off any attack, the class war must assume a political character, and become a struggle on the part of the workers for the possession of the political machinery.
It is this struggle for the conquest of the political power of the State, in order to effect a social transformation, which International Social Democracy carries on in the name and on behalf of the working-class. Social Democracy, therefore, is the only possible political party of the proletariat. The Social Democratic Federation is a part of this International Social Democracy. It, therefore, takes its stand on the above principles, and believes—
1. That the emancipation of the working-class can only be achieved through the socialization of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, and their subsequent control by the organized community in the interests of the whole people.
2. That, as the proletariat is the last class to achieve freedom, its emancipation will mean the emancipation of the whole of mankind, without distinction of race, nationality, creed, or sex.
3. That this emancipation can only be the work of the working-class itself, organized nationally and internationally into a distinct political party, consciously striving after the realization of its ideals; and, finally,
4. That, in order to insure greater material and moral facilities for the working-class to organize itself and to carry on the class war, the following reforms must immediately be carried through:—
Political
Abolition of the Monarchy.
Democratization of the Governmental machinery, viz., abolition of the House of Lords, payment of members of legislative and administrative bodies, payment of official expenses of elections out of the public funds, adult suffrage, proportional representation, triennial parliaments, second ballot, initiative and referendum. Foreigners to be granted rights of citizenship after two years' residence in the country, without any fees. Canvassing to be made illegal. All elections to take place on one day, such day to be made a legal holiday, and all premises licensed for the sale of intoxicating liquors to be closed.
Legislation by the people in such wise that no legislative proposal shall become law until ratified by the majority of the people.
Legislative and administrative independence for all parts of the Empire.
Financial and Fiscal
Repudiation of the National Debt.
Abolition of all indirect taxation and the institution of a cumulative tax on all incomes and inheritance exceeding £300.
Administrative
Extension of the principle of local self-government.
Systematization and co-ordination of the local administrative bodies.
Election of all administrators and administrative bodies by equal direct adult suffrage.
Educational
Elementary education to be free, secular, industrial, and compulsory for all classes. The age of obligatory school attendance to be raised to 16.
Unification and systematization of intermediate and higher education, both general and technical, and all such education to be free.
State maintenance for all attending State schools.
Abolition of school rates; the cost of education in all State schools to be borne by the National Exchequer.
Public Monopolies and Services
Nationalization of the land and the organization of labor in agriculture and industry under public ownership and control on co-operative principles.
Nationalization of the trusts.
Nationalization of railways, docks, and canals, and all great means of transit.
Public ownership and control of gas, electric light, and water supplies, as well as of tramway, omnibus, and other locomotive services.
Public ownership and control of the food and coal supply.
The establishment of State and municipal banks and pawnshops and public restaurants.
Public ownership and control of the lifeboat service.
Public ownership and control of hospitals, dispensaries, cemeteries, and crematoria.
Public ownership and control of the drink traffic.
Labor
A legislative eight-hour working-day, or 48 hours per week, to be the maximum for all trades and industries. Imprisonment to be indicted on employers for any infringement of the law.
Absolute freedom of combination for all workers, with legal guarantee against any action, private or public, which tends to curtail or infringe it.
No child to be employed in any trade or occupation until 16 years of age, and imprisonment to be inflicted on employers, parents, and guardians who infringe this law.
Public provision of useful work at not less than trade-union rates of wages for the unemployed.
Free State insurance against sickness and accident, and free and adequate State pensions or provision for aged and disabled workers. Public assistance not to entail any forfeiture of political rights.
The legislative enactment of a minimum wage of 30s. for all workers. Equal pay for both sexes for the performance of equal work.
Social
Abolition of the present workhouse system, and reformed administration of the Poor Law on a basis of national co-operation.
Compulsory construction by public bodies of healthy dwellings for the people; such dwellings to be let at rents to cover the cost of construction and maintenance alone, and not to cover the cost of the land.
The administration of justice and legal advice to be free to all; justice to be administered by judges chosen by the people; appeal in criminal cases; compensation for those innocently accused, condemned, and imprisoned; abolition of imprisonment for contempt of court in relation to non-payment of debt in the case of workers earning less than £2 per week; abolition of capital punishment.
The disestablishment and disendowment of all State churches.
The abolition of standing armies, and the establishment of national citizen forces. The people to decide on peace and war.
The establishment of international courts of arbitration.
The abolition of courts-martial; all offenses against discipline to be transferred to the jurisdiction of civil courts.
THE LABOR PARTY: SESSION OF PARLIAMENT, 1911-1912
[At the beginning of every session of Parliament, the Labor Party members agree on a program of procedure to which they adhere for that session. They stick to the bills, in the order chosen, until they are either passed or defeated. The following is the list for 1911.]
Bills to be balloted for in order named:
1. Trade Union Amendment Bill.
2. Unemployed Workmen Bill.
3. Education (Administrative Provisions) Bill.
4. Electoral Reform Bill.
5. Eight-Hour Day Bill.
6. Bill to Provide against Eviction of Workmen during Trade Disputes.
7. Railway Nationalization Bill.
Motions to be balloted for in order named:
1. Militarism and Foreign Policy: (on lines of Resolution passed by the Special Conference at Leicester).
2. Defect in Sheriffs' Courts Bill (Scotland) relating to power of Eviction during Trade Disputes.
3. General 30s. Minimum Wage.
Other Motions from which selection may be made after the three foregoing subjects have been dealt with:
Saturday to Monday Stop.
Eviction of Workmen during Trade Disputes.
Extension of Particulars Clause to Docks, etc.
Nationalization of Hospitals.
Adult Suffrage.
Commission of Inquiry into Older Universities.
Workmen's Compensation Amendment.
Atmosphere and Dust in Textile Factories.
System of Fines in Textile and Other Trades.
Inclusion of Clerks in Factory Acts.
Eight-Hour Day.
Electoral Reform.
Inquiry into Industrial Assurance.
Poor Law Reform.
Truck.
Railway and Mining Accidents.
Labor Exchanges Administration.
Labor Ministry.
Veto Conference.
Day Training Classes.
School Clinics.
Indian Factory Laws.
Hours in Bakehouses.
House-letting in Scotland.
FABIAN ELECTION ADDRESS
[The following is an election broadside issued for the municipal election of London, soon after the establishment of municipal home rule for the metropolis, by the organization of the London County Council. It discloses the practical nature of the earlier Fabian political activities.]
County Council Election: Address of Mr. Sidney Webb, LL.B. (London University), (Progressive and Labor Candidate)
Central Committee Rooms,
484, New Cross Road, S.E.
Electors of Deptford,
On the nomination of a Joint Committee of Delegates of the Liberal and Radical Association, the Women's Liberal Association, the Working Men's Clubs, and leading Trade Unionists and Social Reformers in Deptford, I come forward as a Candidate for the County Council Election. I shall seek to lift the contest above any narrow partisan lines, and I ask for the support of all who are interested in the well-being of the people.
The Point at Issue
For much is at stake for London at this Election. Notwithstanding the creation of the County Council, the ratepayers of the Metropolis are still deprived of the ordinary powers of municipal self-government. They have to bear needlessly heavy burdens for a very defective management of their public affairs. The result is seen in the poverty, the misery, and the intemperance that disgrace our city. A really Progressive County Council can do much (as the present Council has shown), both immediately to benefit the people of London, and also to win for them genuine self-government. Do you wish your County Council to attempt nothing more for London than the old Metropolitan Board of Works? This is, in effect, the Reactionary, or so-called "Moderate," program. Or shall we make our County Council a mighty instrument of the people's will for the social regeneration of this great city, and the "Government of London by London for London?" That is what I stand for.
Relief of the Taxpayer
But the crushing burden of the occupier's rates must be reduced, not increased. Even with the strictest economy the administration of a growing city must be a heavy burden. The County Council should have power to tax the ground landlord, who now pays no rates at all directly. Moreover, the rates must be equalized throughout London. Why should the Deptford ratepayer have to pay nearly two shillings in the pound more than the inhabitant of St. George's, Hanover Square? And we must get at the unearned increment for the benefit of the people of London, who create it.
A Labor Program
I am in favor of Trade Union wages and an eight-hours day for all persons employed by the Council. I am dead against sub-contracting, and would like to see the Council itself the direct employer of all labor.
Municipalization
At present London pays an utterly unnecessary annual tribute, because, unlike other towns, it leaves its water supply, its gas-works, its tramways, its markets, and its docks in the hands of private speculators. I am in favor of replacing private by Democratic public ownership and management, as soon and as far as safely possible. It is especially urgent to secure public control of the water supply, the tramways, and the docks. Moreover, London ought to manage its own police, and all its open spaces.
The Condition of the Poor
But the main object of all our endeavors must be to raise the standard of life of our poorer fellow-citizens, now crushed by the competitive struggle. As one of the most urgent social reforms, especially in the interests of Temperance, I urge the better housing of the people; the provision, by the Council itself, of improved dwellings and common lodging-houses of the best possible types, and a strict enforcement of the sanitary laws against the owners of slum property.
Local Questions
I believe in local attention to local grievances, and I should deem it my duty, if elected, to look closely after Deptford interests, especially with regard to the need for more open spaces, and the early completion of the new Thames tunnel.
A more detailed account of my views may be found in my book, "The London Programme," and other writings. I am a Londoner born and bred, and have made London questions the chief study of my life. I have had thirteen years' administrative experience in a Government office, a position which I have resigned in order to give my whole time to London's service. With regard to my general opinions, it will be enough to say that I have long been an active member of the Fabian Society, and of the Executive Committee of the London Liberal and Radical Union.
Sidney Webb.
4, Park Village East, Regent's Park, N.W.
The following meetings have already been arranged. Others will be announced shortly.
February 11.—Lecture Hall, High Street, at 8 P.M.
February 25.—Lecture Hall High Street, at 8 P.M.
March 3.—New Cross Hall, Lewisham High Road, at 8 P.M.
FABIAN ELECTION DODGER
[The Fabians and other Socialists broke into London municipal politics under the name "Progressives." The following is one of their earliest election dodgers.]
County Council Election
Saturday, March 5, 1892
Part of the
PROGRAM OF THE PROGRESSIVES
Rates.—Reduce the Occupiers' Rates one-half, by charging that portion upon the great Landlords, whose ground values are increased by every improvement, and are now untaxed; and by a Municipal Death Duty.
Gas and Water.—Reduce the cost and improve the quality and quantity by new sources of supply, if the present Companies will not come to terms favorable to the Taxpayer.
City Companies.—Apply their whole Income of, say £500,000 (on leave obtained from the new Parliament), for the benefit of London. The Royal Commission of 1884 stated that this income is virtually Public Property. About £300,000 is now squandered each year among the members and their friends.
Homes for the Poor.—The Poor can all be comfortably housed, as in the Municipal Dwellings of Glasgow and Liverpool, without extra cost to the Taxpayer, and the "Doss-houses" abolished.
Cheap Food.—By doing away with the Market Monopolies of the City Corporation and other private owners, Food can be lowered in price. Good food, especially fish, is now often destroyed or sold for manure to keep up the price.
Poor Man's Vote.—One-third of your Votes are lost. The Registration Laws must be thoroughly altered.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Debates, House of Lords, July, 31, 1885. The speech was privately printed.
[2] Debates, May 19, 1890. This speech was also given private circulation.
VI. GENERAL
1. ORIGIN OF THE WORD "COLLECTIVISM"
"This word, invented by Colins, came into common use toward the end of the Empire. Bakunin used it in the congress at Berne in 1868, to oppose it to the communistic régime of Cabet. An economist in 1869 designated, under this name, the system under which production will be confined to communes or parishes. The Socialists who opposed authority, disciples of Bakunin, used the word for a long time to designate their doctrine. The section of Locle was one of the first to employ it. But by and by, about 1878, the Marxists, partisans of the proletarian reign, used the word 'collectivism' to distinguish their 'scientific Socialism,' of which term they were fond, from the communistic utopias of the older school, which they discovered. And they gave to Bakunins the name Anarchists. These accepted the name, taking care to write it with a hyphen, an-archie, as their master Proudhon had done. They soon dropped the hyphen and accepted the word anarchy as a declaration of war against all things as they are."[1]
2. TABLE SHOWING RESULTS OF PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS
(Compiled from Report of Secretary of the International, 1910)
| Country | No. Socialist Votes | Total No. Seats in Parliament | No. Seats Held by Socialists | Per cent. of Socialists Seats |
| Great Britain (1910) | 505,690 | 670 | 40 | 5.97 |
| Germany (1912) | 4,250,000 | 397 | 110 | 38.81 |
| Luxemburg (1909) | — | 48 | 10 | 20.8 |
| Austria (1907) | 1,041,948 | 516 | 88 | 17.06 |
| France (1910) | 1,106,047 | 584 | 76 | 13.01 |
| Italy (1909) | 338,885 | 508 | 42 | 8.26 |
| Spain (1910) | 40,000 | 404 | 1 | 0.25 |
| Russia | — | 442 | 17 | 3.82 |
| Finland (1910) | 316,951 | 200 | 86 | 43.00 |
| Norway (1907) | 90,000 | 123 | 11 | 8.94 |
| Sweden (1909) | 75,000 | 165 | 36 | 21.81 |
| Denmark (1910) | 98,721 | 114 | 24 | 21.06 |
| Holland (1909) | 82,494 | 100 | 7 | 7.00 |
| Belgium (1910) | 483,241 | 166 | 35 | 21.08 |
| Switzerland (1908) | 100,000 | 170 | 7 | 4.11 |
| Turkey (1908) | — | 196 | 6 | 3.06 |
| Servia (1908) | 3,056 | 160 | 1 | 0.62 |
| U.S.A. (1910) | — | — | 1 | — |
In 1910 the Socialists Held the Following Number of Local Officers, According to the Report of the International Secretary
| Great Britain | 1126 | Finland | 351 |
| Germany | 7729 | Norway | 873 |
| Austria-Bohemia | 2896 | Sweden | 125 |
| Hungary | 96 | Denmark | 1000 |
| France | 3800 | Belgium | 850 |
| Bulgaria | 7 | Servia | 22 |
3. TABLE SHOWING THE MEMBERSHIP OF THE SOCIALIST PARTY, IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES
(Compiled from Reports of the Secretary of the International, 1909-10)
| 1907 | 1908 | 1909 | ||||
| Country | Local Groups | Members | Local Groups | Members | Local Groups | Members |
| Great Britain, L.P. | 275 | 1,072,412 | 307 | 1,152,786 | 318 | 1,481,368 |
| (4,000) | ||||||
| Great Britain, J.L.P. | 600 | 35,000 | 765 | 50,000 | 900 | 60,000 |
| Great Britain, S.D.F. | 202 | 14,500 | 250 | 16,000 | — | 17,000 |
| Great Britain, Fabians | 10 | 1,207 | 27 | 2,015 | 39 | 2,462 |
| Germany | 2704 | 530,466 | 3120 | 587,336 | 3281 | 633,309 |
| (10,943) | (29,458) | (62,259) | ||||
| Austria | — | — | — | — | — | 126,000 |
| Bohemia | — | — | — | — | 2462 | 156,000 |
| (6,000) | ||||||
| Hungary | — | 130,000 | — | 102,054 | 769 | 85,266 |
| France | — | 48,237 | — | 49,328 | 2500 | 51,692 |
| Italy | — | — | — | 43,000 | — | 30,000 |
| Russia* | 8 | 16,000 | 8 | 5,000 | 8 | 3,000 |
| Spain | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Poland-Prussian | — | — | 10 | 400 | 40 | 1,500 |
| Poland-Russian | — | 22,700 | — | — | — | 3,500 |
| Finland | 1156 | 80,328 | 1127 | 71,266 | — | — |
| (18,873) | (16,826) | |||||
| Norway | 499 | 23,000 | 602 | 27,500 | 637 | 26,500 |
| (1,800) | (2,000) | (2,500) | ||||
| Sweden | — | — | 296 | 112,693 | 338 | 60,183 |
| Denmark | — | — | — | — | 360 | 47,000 |
| Holland | 167 | 7,471 | 176 | 8,411 | 211 | 9,289 |
| Belgium | 803 | 161,239 | — | 183,997 | 906 | 185,318 |
| Switzerland | — | — | — | — | 23 | 21,132 |
| Servia | — | 615 | — | — | — | 1,950 |
| Bulgaria | 71 | 2,658 | 80 | 2,886 | 109 | 4,287 |
| U.S.A. | 1900 | 26,784 | — | — | 3200 | 53,375 |
| * Province of Lettland. Figures in parenthesis indicate number of women members. | ||||||
4. AMERICAN SOCIALIST PARTY PLATFORM
[Adopted by National Convention May, 1908, and by Membership Referendum August 8th, 1908. Amended by Referendum September 7th, 1909.]
Principles
Human life depends upon food, clothing, and shelter. Only with these assured are freedom, culture, and higher human development possible. To produce food, clothing, or shelter, land and machinery are needed. Land alone does not satisfy human needs. Human labor creates machinery and applies it to the land for the production of raw materials and food. Whoever has control of land and machinery controls human labor, and with it human life and liberty.
To-day the machinery and the land used for industrial purposes are owned by a rapidly decreasing minority. So long as machinery is simple and easily handled by one man, its owner cannot dominate the sources of life of others. But when machinery becomes more complex and expensive, and requires for its effective operation the organized effort of many workers, its influence reaches over wide circles of life. The owners of such machinery become the dominant class.
In proportion as the number of such machine owners compared to all other classes decreases, their power in the nation and in the world increases. They bring ever larger masses of working people under their control, reducing them to the point where muscle and brain are their only productive property. Millions of formerly self-employing workers thus become the helpless wage slaves of the industrial masters.
As the economic power of the ruling class grows it becomes less useful in the life of the nation. All the useful work of the nation falls upon the shoulders of the class whose only property is its manual and mental labor power—the wage worker—or of the class who have but little land and little effective machinery outside of their labor power—the small traders and small farmers. The ruling minority is steadily becoming useless and parasitic.
A bitter struggle over the division of the products of labor is waged between the exploiting propertied classes on the one hand and the exploited propertyless class on the other. In this struggle the wage-working class cannot expect adequate relief from any reform of the present order at the hands of the dominant class.
The wage workers are therefore the most determined and irreconcilable antagonists of the ruling class. They suffer most from the curse of class rule. The fact that a few capitalists are permitted to control all the country's industrial resources and social tools for their individual profit, and to make the production of the necessaries of life the object of competitive private enterprise and speculation is at the bottom of all the social evils of our time.
In spite of the organization of trusts, pools, and combinations, the capitalists are powerless to regulate production for social ends. Industries are largely conducted in a planless manner. Through periods of feverish activity the strength and health of the workers are mercilessly used up, and during periods of enforced idleness the workers are frequently reduced to starvation.
The climaxes of this system of production are the regularly recurring industrial depressions and crises which paralyze the nation every fifteen or twenty years.
The capitalist class, in its mad race for profits, is bound to exploit the workers to the very limit of their endurance and to sacrifice their physical, moral, and mental welfare to its own insatiable greed. Capitalism keeps the masses of workingmen in poverty, destitution, physical exhaustion, and ignorance. It drags their wives from their homes to the mill and factory. It snatches their children from the playgrounds and schools and grinds their slender bodies and unformed minds into cold dollars. It disfigures, maims, and kills hundreds of thousands of workingmen annually in mines, on railroads, and in factories. It drives millions of workers into the ranks of the unemployed and forces large numbers of them into beggary, vagrancy, and all forms of crime and vice.
To maintain their rule over their fellow-men, the capitalists must keep in their pay all organs of the public powers, public mind, and public conscience. They control the dominant parties and, through them, the elected public officials. They select the executives, bribe the legislatures, and corrupt the courts of justice. They own and censor the press. They dominate the educational institutions. They own the nation politically and intellectually just as they own it industrially.
The struggle between wage workers and capitalists grows ever fiercer, and has now become the only vital issue before the American people. The wage-working class, therefore, has the most direct interest in abolishing the capitalist system. But in abolishing the present system, the workingmen will free not only their own class, but also all other classes of modern society. The small farmer, who is to-day exploited by large capital more indirectly but not less effectively than is the wage laborer; the small manufacturer and trader, who is engaged in a desperate and losing struggle for economic independence in the face of the all-conquering power of concentrated capital; and even the capitalist himself, who is the slave of his wealth rather than its master. The struggle of the working class against the capitalist class, while it is a class struggle, is thus at the same time a struggle for the abolition of all classes and class privileges.
The private ownership of the land and means of production used for exploitation, is the rock upon which class rule is built; political government is its indispensable instrument. The wage-workers cannot be freed from exploitation without conquering the political power and substituting collective for private ownership of the land and means of production used for exploitation.
The basis for such transformation is rapidly developing within present capitalist society. The factory system, with its complex machinery and minute division of labor, is rapidly destroying all vestiges of individual production in manufacture. Modern production is already very largely a collective and social process. The great trusts and monopolies which have sprung up in recent years have organized the work and management of the principal industries on a national scale, and have fitted them for collective use and operation.
There can be no absolute private title to land. All private titles, whether called fee simple or otherwise, are and must be subordinate to the public title. The Socialist Party strives to prevent land from being used for the purpose of exploitation and speculation. It demands the collective possession, control, or management of land to whatever extent may be necessary to attain that end. It is not opposed to the occupation and possession of land by those using it in a useful and bona fide manner without exploitation.
The Socialist Party is primarily an economic and political movement. It is not concerned with matters of religious belief.
In the struggle for freedom the interests of all modern workers are identical. The struggle is not only national but international. It embraces the world and will be carried to ultimate victory by the united workers of the world.
To unite the workers of the nation and their allies and sympathizers of all other classes to this end, is the mission of the Socialist Party. In this battle for freedom the Socialist Party does not strive to substitute working class rule for capitalist class rule, but by working class victory, to free all humanity from class rule and to realize the international brotherhood of man.
Program
As measures calculated to strengthen the working class in its fight for the realization of this ultimate aim, and to increase its power of resistance against capitalist oppression, we advocate and pledge ourselves and our elected officers to the following program:
General Demands
1. The immediate government relief for the unemployed workers by building schools, by reforesting of cut-over and waste lands, by reclamation of arid tracts, and the building of canals, and by extending all other useful public works. All persons employed on such works shall be employed directly by the government under an eight-hour work-day and at the prevailing union wages. The government shall also loan money to states and municipalities without interest for the purpose of carrying on public works. It shall contribute to the funds of labor organizations for the purpose of assisting their unemployed members, and shall take such other measures within its power as will lessen the widespread misery of the workers caused by the misrule of the capitalist class.
2. The collective ownership of railroads, telegraphs, telephones, steamboat lines, and all other means of social transportation and communication.
3. The collective ownership of all industries which are organized on a national scale and in which competition has virtually ceased to exist.
4. The extension of the public domain to include mines, quarries, oil wells, forests, and water power.
5. The scientific reforestation of timber lands, and the reclamation of swamp lands. The land so reforested or reclaimed to be permanently retained as a part of the public domain.
6. The absolute freedom of press, speech, and assemblage.
Industrial Demands
7. The improvement of the industrial condition of the workers.
(a) By shortening the workday in keeping with the increased productiveness of machinery.
(b) By securing to every worker a rest period of not less than a day and a half in each week.
(c) By securing a more effective inspection of workshops and factories.
(d) By forbidding the employment of children under sixteen years of age.
(e) By forbidding the interstate transportation of the products of child labor, of convict labor, and of all uninspected factories.
(f) By abolishing official charity and substituting in its place compulsory insurance against unemployment, illness, accidents, invalidism, old age, and death.
Political Demands
8. The extension of inheritance taxes, graduated in proportion to the amount of the bequests and to the nearness of kin.
9. A graduated income tax.
10. Unrestricted and equal suffrage for men and women, and we pledge ourselves to engage in an active campaign in that direction.
11. The initiative and referendum, proportional representation, and the right of recall.
12. The abolition of the senate.
13. The abolition of the power usurped by the supreme court of the United States to pass upon the constitutionality of legislation enacted by Congress. National laws to be repealed or abrogated only by act of Congress or by a referendum of the whole people.
14. That the Constitution be made amendable by majority vote.
15. The enactment of further measures for general education and for the conservation of health. The bureau of education to be made a department. The creation of a department of public health.
16. The separation of the present bureau of labor from the department of commerce and labor, and the establishment of a department of labor.
17. That all judges be elected by the people for short terms, and that the power to issue injunctions shall be curbed by immediate legislation.
18. The free administration of justice.
Such measures of relief as we may be able to force from capitalism are but a preparation of the workers to seize the whole power of government, in order that they may thereby lay hold of the whole system of industry and thus come to their rightful inheritance.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Georges Weil, Histoire du Mouvement Social en France, p. 208.
INDEX
- Allemane, [77]
- American Socialist Party platform, [341]
- Amsterdam Congress, [228]
- Anarchy, [29], [65], [127]
- Anselee, [122]
- Anti-militarism, in France, [110-112];
- Anti-Socialist Law (German), [160-167]
- Asquith, Premier, and the Parliament Bill, [238-240]
- Austria, revolution in, [47]
- Bakunin, [65], [71]
- Barthou, on French post-office strike, [97];
- on railway strike, [101]
- Bebel, August, [155], [158];
- on Anti-Socialist Law, [161], [162], [163], [165], [166];
- arrest of, [167];
- candidate for President of Reichstag, [190];
- on defeat of Socialism, 1907, [194];
- on inheritance tax, [188];
- as a party leader, [264];
- on new Alsatian Constitution, [198];
- on militarism, [202-203];
- on participation in legislation, [188], [189];
- on party discipline, [177], [193], [195], [196];
- on Socialism in United States, [268]
- Belgium, [118-145];
- Bernstein, Ed., [192]
- Bibliography, [273-279]
- Bismarck and Lassalle, [154];
- Blanc, Louis, [13], [26-28], [62];
- Lassalle adopts plan of, [152]
- Bourgeoisie, defined, [2]
- Bourse du Travail, [77], [80];
- Brentano, Prof., on Socialism in U.S., [269]
- Briand, Aristide, [78], [81], [91], [97];
- Brousse, [76], [105]
- Brussels, city of refuge, [122];
- Burns, John, [215];
- Cabet, [23]
- Carlyle, on Chartist movement, [52]
- "C.G.T." See Syndicalists and Syndicalism
- Chartist movement, [51-54], [208]
- Christian Socialism, [9], [221-222]
- Christian Social Union, [221]
- Church Socialist League, [222]
- See also Marx
- Class basis of Socialism, [1-6], [15], [35].
- Class interests, illusion of, [253-254]
- Class War, Guesdists on the, [85]
- Class War and Syndicalists, [106-107]
- on post-office strike, [96-97]
- Clémenceau, debate with Jaurès, [92], [94];
- in Germany, [200].
- See also political parties
- Clerical Party in Belgium, [129], [134], [135], [136], [308];
- Colin, co-operative movement started by, [122]
- "Collectivism," origin of word, [339]
- of Belgian Socialists, [314]
- Communal Program of Bavarian Socialists, [301];
- Communist League, the, [56]
- Communist Manifesto, [13], [56-61]
- Compère-Morel, [115-116]
- Competition and the Socialist theory, [11], [35]
- Co-operation, [11];
- spread of, by Socialists, [257]
- Davidson, Thomas, [220]
- in Germany, [146-148]
- Democracy and Socialism, [42], [43];
- Democratic revolutions, [26-55];
- Dennis, Prof. Hector, [142]
- Development Act (Eng.), [233]
- Dicey, Prof., on the Liberal and Socialist parties, [230]
- Dockers' strike, [215]
- Dreyfus affair, [84-90]
- Eisenach Program, [157-158]
- Election laws, German, [293-294]
- Electoral reform. See Saxony, Prussia, "Free Cities," Chartist Movement
- Ely, Prof. R.T., conservation in U.S., [269]
- Emperor William's life attempted, [159-160]
- Engels, Frederick, [50], [52], [56-61];
- income of the, [213-214]
- England, growth of Socialism in, [315];
- dissatisfaction with, [192-194]
- English, characteristics of the, [209-211];
- Erfurt Program, [191];
- in Germany, [147]
- Fabian Society, origin, [220-221];
- Feudalism, class ideals of, [43], [44], [45];
- commune of 1871, [49], [61];
- Socialist Party of, [75-117];
- factions in Socialist Party, [76-78];
- "United Socialists," [77], [78];
- Socialist Radicals, [78];
- the "Bloc," [84], [85];
- labor unions in, [77];
- post-office strike in, [94-97];
- railway strike in, [98-99];
- local Socialism in, [112-113];
- government of, [280-281]
- Feuerbach, [31-32]
- Fourier, [19-22], [24]
- on the intellectual classes and Socialism, [254]
- France, Revolution of 1848, [47];
- France, Anatole, [117]
- Frank, Dr., on the Baden budget, [196-198];
- "Free Cities," election laws in, [183]
- French Revolution, [42]
- Gambetta, [79]
- General strike, [256];
- revolution in, [46];
- character of government in, [147];
- the new Empire, [158];
- most "socialized" country, [169-190];
- labor unions in, [171-175];
- party representation in Reichstag, [297];
- vote of all parties in, [296];
- political parties in, [292-293].
- See also "Free Cities;" Suffrage; Progressists; Labor Organizations; Liberal Party
- George, Henry, [220]
- George, Lloyd, [232];
- Germany, Social Democracy in, [146-170];
- Gneist, Prof., and Anti-Socialist law, [162]
- Godin, J., [21]
- Godwin, [24]
- Guesde, Jules, [75], [76], [81], [85], [87], [105], [106]
- expelled from Social Democratic Party, [166]
- Guise, community at, [21]
- Hardie, Keir, [222],
- Hasselman, [158];
- Hegel, [23], [31]
- Hegelians, Young, [31], [50]
- Hervé, Gustave, [110], [112]
- Hobhouse, Prof., [247]
- Hyndman, H.M., [219]
- I.L.P., organization of, [222], [243];
- Industrial revolution, [43];
- Insurance Bill (Eng.), [240-241]
- International, the, [56];
- International Socialist Bureau, [72], [74]
- International Socialist Statistics, [339], [340]
- International Workingmen's Association, [71]
- Jaurès, Jean, [80], [81], [82], [84], [85], [87], [100];
- Kaiser, the, and German Social Democrats, [180], [181]
- Kautsky, K., [50], [85];
- Kingsley, [212]
- in Belgium, see Belgium;
- Program of, [309]
- Labor Exchange Act (England), [233]
- Labor Organization in France, [104];
- See also Belgium
- Labor Party, English, [74], [274], [223-225], [226], [227-232], [228], [231], [241], [242];
- Labor Party, the first, [75];
- Labor Questions and Socialism, [258]
- See also Germany
- Labor unions in Belgium, political activity of, [308].
- Labor unions in England. See Trades Unions
- Labor unions in France. See Bourse du Travail, and Syndicats
- Labor unions in Germany, [295].
- Land system of England, [236-237]
- in England, [231-241]
- Lassalle, [147-155], [185];
- League of the Just, [56-57], [69]
- Ledebour, on ministerial responsibility, [189]
- Legislation, advocated by Socialists, in Germany, see Social Democratic Party;
- Liberal Party, in Germany, [146-148], [150], [151];
- on Democracy, [254-255]
- Liebknecht, [70], [155], [156], [157], [158], [163];
- London, progress in, [235]
- Lords, House of, an issue, [237-239], [240]
- theories of [32-36];
- formulæ of, "capital," [37-38];
- influence on Socialist movement, [39-40];
- criticism of, [40], [41];
- theory of Revolution, [43];
- on German revolution, [47], [48], [49];
- on the Commune, [49], [69];
- the Communist Manifesto, [56-61];
- "address" and "statutes" of the "Old International," [62], [63], [67], [68];
- at The Hague, [64];
- present influence in Germany, [194]
- MacDonald, J. Ramsay, on I.L.P., [245-247];
- Mazzini, [54], [61], [62]
- McCarthy, Justin, on Chartism, [52]
- Marx, Karl, [9], [32], [38], [39];
- Marxian influence in the International, [69-71]
- Marxians and the Possibilists, [85], [91]
- Marxians in England, [219], [317]
- Maurice, [212]
- and the Syndicalists, [108-109]
- Menger, Adolph, critique of Marxianism, [40-41]
- Mill, John Stuart, [10]
- Millerand, [77], [78], [80], [81], [82], [84], [85], [86], [91];
- on Whigs, [229]
- Militarism, and the International, [72-74];
- expelled from Socialist Party, [166]
- Money, Chiozza, [213], [214], [215], [236]
- Morley, Lord, on new Liberalism, [230]
- in Germany, [204-206]
- Morris, Wm., [9], [219];
- Most, Herr, in Reichstag, [158];
- Munich, Socialist activity in, [204-206]
- Rochdale, [27]
- Municipal Socialism in France, [112-115];
- Old Age Pensions, [101]
- Osborne Judgment, the, [217]
- Belgian, [142-143]
- Owen, Robert, [6], [8], [21-23], [25];
- in England, [213-215];
- in Belgium, see Belgium
- Paepe, Cæsar de, [122]
- Paris, Commune. See Commune. First meeting of "New International," [69-71]
- Parliament Bill, [238-240]
- Peasantry, French, [115-116];
- Possibilists, [70]
- in Germany, [192-193]
- Poverty and Socialism, [10-11];
- Progressists, in Belgium, [128], [129];
- modern idea, [53]
- Proudhon, [28-31], [62]
- Proudhonism in England, [106]
- Prussia, election laws, [183]
- Réformistes, in France, see Millerand, Briand;
- Revisionist controversy in Germany, [192-193]
- Revolution, social, [12], [13], [255], [256];
- Revolutionary era, [26-55]
- Rodbertus, [150], [153], [155]
- Rosebery, Lord, [229]
- Rousseau, [42]
- Ruskin, [212]
- Sabotage, [96], [100], [101], [102], [104], [108]
- Sachsen-Altenburg, election law, [294]
- Saint-Simon, [17-19], [23]
- Saxe-Weimar, election law, [294]
- Saxony, new election law, [182], [293]
- discipline, [177-179];
- attitude of government towards, [179-181];
- change in temper, [186-204];
- attitude towards legislation, [186-191];
- first bill in Reichstag, [187];
- attitude on state insurance, [188];
- present temper, [191];
- program of, [191], [198], [199], [297];
- attitude towards other parties, [194], [199];
- election address of, [303]
- Schultze-Delitsch, [150]
- theories, [11];
- development of, [17];
- political awakening of, [42];
- modern conception of revolution, [51];
- what is, [62], [63];
- changes in, [250];
- illusions of, [253];
- in different countries, [257];
- limits of, [262];
- characteristics of present, [262-266];
- in Parliaments, [251];
- what it has accomplished, [257-260];
- nature of its demands, [261-262];
- difference between Socialism and Democracy, [265-266];
- when the word was first used, [23]
- Shaw, G.B., [220], [240], [247]
- Simiyan, on French post-office strike, [95]
- Small Holdings Act, [234], [235]
- Social Democratic Federation, (English), [219], [220], [317], [330]
- Social Democratic Party (German), [175-190];
- Socialism, ideals of, [6-10];
- Socialist officers, list of, [340]
- Socialist Party, membership of, [340]
- Socialist vote in leading countries, [339]
- Sorel, Georges, [107]
- South Germany budget controversy, [159-199]
- State, increased functions of, [259-260]
- State Insurance, opposed by Socialists, [167];
- Südekum, Dr., on nature of Social Democratic Party, [199]
- Suffrage, struggle for, in Belgium, [124-133];
- Syndicalism, [94], [107-110], [96-98], [99-102], [105-106], [256]
- Taff Vale decision, [216-217], [232]
- Thiers, President, [75]
- Town Planning Act, [234], [235]
- Trades Disputes Act, [232]
- Trades Unions, English, and the International, [62], [67], [69];
- Transportation strike, England, [244], [245]
- United Socialist Party of France, Basis of Union, [289];
- Vaillant, [81], [82], [100]
- Vandervelde, [118], [134], [137], [138], [142], [143]
- Villiers, Brougham, [247-248]
- Viviani, [78], [91], [101]
- Von Kettler, Baron, Bishop of Mayence, [153], [172]
- Von Vollmar, [181], [193], [195], [200], [203], [204]
- Waldeck-Rousseau, [79], [84], [85]
- Webb, Sidney, [220], [221], [234], [242]
- Weitling, Wm., [7]
- Wells, H.C., [10]
- Wescott, Dr., Bishop of Durham, [221]
- Workingmen's Association of Lassalle, [154], [156], [157], [158]
- Workingmen's Compensation Act (England), [233]
- Yvetot on Syndicalism, [108], [109]
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