3rd. The State ought to reduce the taxes and military burdens of the labouring classes.
4th. The State ought to fetter the domination of the money power, and especially to check excesses of speculation, and control the operations of the Stock Exchange.
From this programme it appears that the Catholic movement goes a long way with the socialists in their cries of wrong, but only a short way in their plans of redress. Moufang's proposals may be wise or unwise, but they contemplate only corrections of the present industrial system, and not its reconstruction. Many Liberals are disposed to favour the idea of establishing courts of conciliation with compulsory powers, and Bismarck himself once said, before the socialists showed themselves unpatriotic at the time of the French war, that he saw no reason why the State, which gave large sums for agricultural experiments, should not spend something in giving co-operative production a fair trial. The plans of labour courts and of State credit to approved co-operative undertakings are far from the socialist schemes of the abolition of private property in the instruments of production, and the systematic regulation of all industry by the State; and they afford no fair ground for the fear, which many persons of ability entertain, of "an alliance"—to use Bismarck's phrase—"between the black International and the red." Bishop Martensen holds Catholicism to be essentially socialistic, because it suppresses all individual rights and freedom in the intellectual sphere, as socialism does in the economic. But men may detest private judgment without taking the least offence at private property. A bigot need not be a socialist, any more than a socialist a bigot, though each stifles the principle of individuality in one department of things. If there is to be any alliance between the Church and socialism, it will be not because the former has been trained, under an iron organization, to cherish a horror of individuality and a passion for an economic organization as rigid as its own ecclesiastical one, but it will be because the Church happens to have a distinct political interest at the time in cultivating good relations with a new political force. How far Moufang and his associates have been influenced by this kind of consideration we cannot pretend to judge, but the sympathy they show is not so much with the socialists as with the labouring classes generally, and their movement is meant so far to take the wind from socialism, whether with the mere view of filling their own sails with it or no.
No voice was raised in the Protestant Churches in Germany on the social question till 1878. They suffer from their absolute dependence on the State, and have become churches of doctors and professors, without effective practical interest or initiative, and without that strong popular sympathy of a certain kind which almost necessarily pervades the atmosphere of a Church like the Catholic, which pits itself against States, and knows that its power of doing so rests, in the last analysis, on its hold over the hearts of the people. The Home Missionary Society indeed discussed the question from time to time, but chiefly in connection with the effects of the socialist propaganda on the religious condition of the country; and it was this aspect of the subject that eventually stirred a section of the orthodox Evangelical clergy to take practical action. They asked themselves how it was that the working classes were so largely adopting the desolate atheistic opinions which were found associated with the socialist movement, when the Church offered to gather them under her wing, and brighten their life with the comforts and encouragements of Christian faith and hope. They felt strongly that they must take more interest in the temporal welfare of the working classes than they had hitherto done, and must apply the ethical and social principles of Christianity to the solution of economic problems and the promotion of social reform. In short, they sought to present Christianity as the labourer's friend. The leaders of this movement were men of much inferior calibre to those of the corresponding Catholic movement. The principal of them were Rudolph Todt, a pastor at Barentheim in Old Preignitz, who published in 1878 a book on "Radical German Socialism and Christian Society," which created considerable sensation; and Dr. Stöcker, then one of the Court preachers at Berlin, a member of the Prussian Diet, and an ardent promoter of reactionary policy in various directions. He is a warm advocate of denominational education, and of extending the power of the Crown, of the State, and of the landed class; and he was a prime mover in the Jew-baiting movement which excited Germany a few years ago. This antipathy to the Jews has been for many years a cardinal tendency of the "Agrarians," a small political group mainly of nobles and great landed proprietors, with whom Stöcker frequently allies himself, and who profess to treat all political questions from a strictly Christian standpoint, but work almost exclusively to assert the interests of the landowners against the growing ascendancy of the commercial and financial classes, among whom Jews occupy an eminent place. We mention this anti-Jewish agitation here to point out that, while no doubt fed by other passions also, one of its chief ingredients is that same antagonism to the bourgeoisie—compounded of envy of their success, contempt for their money-seeking spirit, and anger at their supposed expropriation of the rest of society—which animates all forms of continental socialism, and has already proved a very dangerous political force in the French Revolution of 1848.
Todt's work is designed to set forth the social principles and mission of Christianity on the basis of a critical investigation of the New Testament, which he believes to be an authoritative guide on economic as well as moral and dogmatic questions. He says that to solve the social problem, we must take political economy in the one hand, the scientific literature of socialism in the other, and keep the New Testament before us. As the result of his examination, he condemns the existing industrial régime as being decidedly unchristian, and declares the general principles of socialism, and even its main concrete proposals, to be directly prescribed and countenanced by Holy Writ. Like all who assume the name of socialist, he cherishes a marked repugnance to the economic doctrines of modern Liberalism, the leaven of the bourgeoisie; and much of his work is devoted to show the inner affinity of Christianity and socialism, and the inner antagonism between Christianity and Manchesterdom. He goes so far as to say that every active Christian who makes conscience of his faith has a socialistic vein in him, and that every socialist, however hostile he may be to the Christian religion, has an unconscious Christianity in his heart; whereas, on the other hand, the merely nominal Christian, who has never really got out of his natural state, is always a spiritual Manchestrist, worshipping laissez faire, laissez aller, with his whole soul, and that a Manchestrist is never in reality a true and sound Christian, however much he may usurp the name. Christianity and socialism are engaged in a common work, trying to make the reality of things correspond better with an ideal state; and in doing their work they rely on the same ethical principle, the love of our neighbour, and they repudiate the Manchester idolatry of self-interest. The socialist ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity are part and parcel of the Christian system; and the socialist ideas of solidarity of interests, of co-operative production, and of democracy have all a direct Biblical foundation, in the constitution and customs of the Church, and in the apostolic teaching regarding it.
Radical socialism, according to Todt, consists of three elements: first, in economics, communism; second, in politics, republicanism; third, in religion, atheism. Under the last head, of course, there is no analogy, but direct contradiction, between Socialism and Christianity; but Todt deplores the atheism that prevails among the socialists as not merely an error, but a fatal inconsistency. If socialism would but base its demands on the Gospel, he says, it would be resistless, and all labourers would flow to it; but atheistic socialism can never fulfil its own promises, and issues a draft which Christianity alone has the power to meet. It is hopeless to think of founding an enduring democratic State on the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, unless these principles are always sustained and reinvigorated by the Divine fraternal love that flows from faith in Jesus Christ.
As to the second principle of socialism, Todt says, that while Holy Scripture contains no direct prescription on the point, it may be inferentially established that a republic is the form of government that is most harmonious with the Christian ideal. His deduction of this is peculiar. The Divine government of the world, he owns, is monarchical, but then it is a government which cannot be copied by sinful men, and therefore cannot have been meant as a pattern for them. But God, he says, has established His Church on earth as a visible type of His own invisible providential government, and the Church is a "republic under an eternal President, sitting by free choice of the people, Jesus Christ." This is both fanciful and false, for Christ is an absolute ruler, and no mere minister of the popular will; and there is not the remotest ground for founding a system of Biblical politics on the constitution of the Church. But it shows the length Todt is disposed to go to conciliate the favour of the socialists.
But the most important element of socialism is its third or economic principle—communism; and this he represents to be entirely in harmony with the economic ideal of the New Testament. He describes the communistic idea as consisting of two parts: first, the general principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, which he finds directly involved in the Scriptural doctrines of moral responsibility, of men's common origin and redemption, and of the law of love; and second, the transformation of all private property in the instruments of production into common property, which includes three points: (a) the abolition of the present wages system; (b) giving the labourer the full product of his labour; and (c) associated labour. As to the first two of these points, Todt pronounces the present wages system to be thoroughly unjust, because it robs the labourer of the full product of his labour; and because unjust, it is unchristian. He accepts the ordinary socialist teaching about "the iron and cruel law." He accepts, too, Marx's theory of value, and declares it to be unanswerable; and he therefore finds no difficulty in saying that Christianity condemns a system which in his opinion grinds the faces of the labouring classes with incessant toil, filches from them the just reward of their work, and leaves them to hover hopelessly on the margin of destitution. If there is any scheme that promises effectually to cure this condition of things, Christianity will also approve of that scheme; and such a scheme he discovers in the socialist proposal of collective property and associated labour. This proposal, however, derives direct countenance, he maintains, from the New Testament. It is supported by the texts which describe the Church as an organism under the figure of a body with many members, by the example of the common bag of the twelve, and by the communism of the primitive Church of Jerusalem. But the texts about the Church as an organism have no real bearing on the subject at all; for the Church is not meant to be an authoritative pattern either for political or for economic organization; and besides, the figure of the body and its members would apply better to Bastiat's theory of the natural harmony of interests than to the socialist idea of the solidarity of interests. Then the common bag of the disciples did not prevent them from having boats and other instruments of production of their own individual property; and we know that the communism of the primitive Church of Jerusalem (which was a decided economic failure, for the poverty of that Church had to be repeatedly relieved by collections in other parts of Christendom) was not a community of property, but, what is a higher thing, a community of use, and that it was not compulsory but spontaneous.
Todt, however, after seeming thus to commit himself and Christianity without reserve to socialism, suddenly shrinks from his own boldness, and draws back. Collective property may be countenanced by Scripture, but he finds private property to be as much or even more so; and he cannot on any consideration consent to the abolition of private property by force. It was right enough to abolish slavery by force, for slavery is an unchristian institution. But though private property is certainly founded on selfishness, there are so many examples of it presented before us in the New Testament without condemnation, that Todt shrinks from pronouncing it to be an unchristian institution. Collective property may be better, but private property will never disappear till selfishness is swallowed up of love; and a triumph of socialism at present, while its disciples are unbelievers and have not Christ, the fount of love, in their hearts, would involve society in much more serious evils than those which it seeks to remove. Todt's socialism, therefore, is not a thing of the present, but an ideal of the distant future, to be realized after Christian proprietors have come of their own accord to give up their estates, and socialists have all been converted to Christianity. For the present, in spite of his stern view of the great wrong and injustice the working classes suffer, Todt has no remedy to suggest, except that things would be better if proprietors learnt more to regard their wealth as a trust of which they were only stewards, and if employers treated their workmen with the personal consideration due to Christian brothers; and he thinks the cultivation of this spirit ought to be more expressly aimed at in the work of the Church. This is probably, after all, the sum of what Christianity has to say on the subject; but it seems a poor result of so much figuring and flourishing, to end in a general truth which can give no offence even in Manchester.
Soon after the publication of Todt's book, Stöcker and some Evangelical friends founded two associations, for the purpose of dealing with the social question from a Christian point of view, and established a newspaper, the Staats-Socialist, to advocate their opinions. Of the two associations, one, the Central Union for Social Reform, was composed of persons belonging to the educated classes—professors, manufacturers, landowners, and clergymen; and the other, the Christian Social Working Men's Party, consisted of working men alone. This movement was received on all sides with unqualified disapprobation. The press, Liberal and Conservative alike, spoke with contemptuous dislike of this Mucker-Socialismus, and said they preferred the socialists in blouse to the socialists in surplice. The Social Democrats rose against it with virulence, and held meetings, both of men and of women, at which they glorified atheism and bitterly attacked the clergy and religion. Even the higher dignitaries of the Church held coldly aloof or were even openly hostile. Stöcker met all this opposition with unflinching spirit, convened public meetings in Berlin to promote his cause, and confronted the socialist leaders on the platform. The movement gave promise of fair success. In a few months seven hundred pastors, besides many from other professions, including Dr. Koegel, Court preacher, and Dr. Buchsel, a German Superintendent, had enrolled themselves in the Central Union for Social Reform; and the Christian Social Working Men's Party had seventeen hundred members in Berlin, and a considerable number throughout the provinces. But its progress was interrupted by the Anti-Socialist Law, passed soon after the same year, which put an end to meetings of socialists; and since this measure was supported, though hesitatingly, by Stöcker and his leading allies, that impaired their influence with the labouring classes.